myeerah (myeerah) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2009-01-02 08:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 2009 eight characters challenge, author: myeerah, crossover: kh/russian trilogy, pairing: eveshka/sora |
Into the Woods [Kingdom Hearts/Russian Trilogy]
Title: Into the Woods
Author: myeerah
Rating: worksafe
Prompt: Eveshka and Sora: It was a dark and stormy night
Word Count: ~6,500
Characters: Sora/Kairi/Riku UST, Pyetr/Eveshka, Sasha
Notes: This is the first in a series set in the same 'verse with the KH crew visiting the world of C. J. Cherryh's Russian Trilogy; this is set between Rusalka and Chernevog. If you're familiar with KH, then you should be fine. Many, many thanks to the wonderful ciceqi for the beta. Any and all remaining errors are mine alone.
(Un)Kindness
Into the Woods <-- You are here
Beginnings
Summary: Getting into the woods is the easy part. Surviving them requires some help.
Things had not gone at all well. The improbable number of Heartless ships had driven them off course and damaged their ship to the point where an emergency landing was called for. Unfortunately, what they got was a crash, as they missed the river and landed in a dead forest.
Sora painfully hefted himself into a sitting position, ran a hand through unruly spikes, and stared, bemused, at the wet gleam on his hand. “Kairi?” he croaked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Kairi?” he called. “Riku?”
A groan answered him, so Sora levered himself to his feet and looked around. It took him a moment to recognize what he was seeing, between the poor illumination of the faint emergency lights and the jumbled chaos of their wrecked vessel. When the image clarified, all thought poured from his head in a blind panic as he hurried to his friends.
Kairi was in a heap at the base of a wall; the groan had come from her as she struggled to rise, or at least reorganize her tangled limbs. Riku, however, lay pale and still, a long strip of metal from the cockpit’s interior protruding from his back as if some conquering soul had planted a flagpole in bleeding ground. Sora froze, unsure which of his friends to go to first. “Kairi?” he asked again, his voice spiraling high and strained.
“’M’kay,” he heard, which was enough for him to throw himself to his knees at Riku’s side.
Colors had gone strange in the distorted firelight flickering through the exterior windows and the greenish glow of the overhead lights, but Sora was sure that the darkness in Riku’s pale hair was entirely from blood, as was the trickle trailing from the corner of his open mouth. “Kairi,” Sora said once more, “Riku’s hurt.” His fingers fumbled as he spoke, feeling for Riku’s neck, trying to find a pulse. All this time as a Keybearer and I never thought to take first aid? he thought. Riku was so pale.
“Riku?” Kairi grunted as she finally managed to get her feet under her. “There was an explosion. Something fell. He pushed me.” She panted between phrases, in obvious pain, even if not obviously injured. Stumbling a little, she moved the short distance to join Sora at Riku’s side. She gasped when she saw him, motionless and bleeding on the floor with the injury he’d taken for her. “This is awful! Sora, can’t you cure him?”
“Help me,” he begged. “We need to get that out of him. Can you pull it out while I start casting? I don’t want him to bleed too much.”
“Of course!” Wrapping unsteady hands around the length of metal, Kairi looked at Sora and said, “Nod when you’re ready.”
Sora took a deep breath and focused on the spell. As he felt the power build right to the point of release, he nodded at Kairi; she wrenched clumsily upward on the makeshift lance impaling their friend, and he let the energy flow out in a rush.
A deafening crash of thunder shook the battered ship as the simultaneous flash of lightning revealed Riku: deathly pale, no longer skewered, and bleeding copiously from the unhealed wound.
There was a beat of stunned silence as they stared. It…didn’t work? Sora thought, dazed and shaken to the bone. Kairi recovered first, desperately clapping her hands to Riku’s back, trying to slow the blood loss. “Sora! Get an elixir or something!” she ordered, frantic.
Blinking stinging eyes, Sora hurried to obey. A moment’s fumbling in his pockets produced a crystalline vial, which he unstoppered with all the haste his trembling hands could muster. He drizzled a few drops into Riku’s mouth, held his jaw closed, and stroked his throat, with vague memories of giving a cat medication in the same way and hoping that it worked for humans, too. He emptied nearly half of the vial in this manner and watched Riku anxiously for improvement. There was none forthcoming.
Wiping the back of his hand across his eyes, Sora pleaded, “Riku, c’mon. Don’t do this to us.” His voice was nearly lost under the drone of the sudden storm outside, the rain hammering against the ship’s hull and creating a constant thrumming of echoes.
“Listen!” Kairi ordered as her head snapped up. Keeping her hands pressed to Riku’s back, she elaborated, “Someone’s out there.”
Cocking his head and trying to ignore the pounding in his chest, Sora heard the voice this time. It was high and thready, but distinct as it said, “Hello? Can you hear me?”
Sora locked eyes with Kairi for a spare moment before leaping to his feet and rushing to the entrance. He managed to shoulder the slightly warped door open with a grunt of effort and poked his head out into the night. “Hello!” he called. “Yes, we can hear you. Can you help? My friend is—” he choked, then continued, “hurt.”
Another flash of lightning revealed the area outside the ship. Broken trees were strewn haphazardly in a rough circle about him, and Sora could see a hint of the trail of destruction they’d left carved in their wake. In the frozen moment of time, he also spotted the source of the voice.
A young woman, barely more than a girl, was standing in the smoldering embers of the forest. Water streamed from her cloaked form, and from pale hair that fell in two thick braids down past her waist. He blinked rapidly to clear the ghostly image from his seared retinas.
Stepping back out of the way, he felt a wave of relief, and a surety that she could help and that more help was on the way. Once she passed him, Sora turned to follow her into the ship, until he was hit with a massive urge to wait outside to guide the promised help and stay out of this girl’s way.
Wait, what promised help?
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, “but I need you to leave. Help is coming, I’ve called for them, but I can’t help your friend with you underfoot.”
Sora was standing out in the rain before he realized it, and he couldn’t believe that he’d abandoned Riku to some strange girl. He steeled himself to go back in and had just started walking when Kairi emerged, running into him and jarring both of their aching bodies.
Kairi was the first to get her breath back. “Sora, who was that?”
“I-I don’t know,” he stammered, “but I feel pretty sure that she’s here to help.”
“She walked in, and I just felt like I had to get up and come out here! I left Riku, and he’s bleeding!” Kairi grabbed for him. She missed his hands, instead capturing him by one arm, with her other hand slapping into his gut. “We left Riku with some stranger and I can’t make myself go back in there!”
“I—Kairi…. Let’s both try. We can remind each other why we’re doing it. Okay?” He looked into her eyes and waited for her to nod. “Right, then. Let’s go.” He turned and tried once more to walk back into the ship. This time it was Kairi’s hand pulling against his that stopped him. “Ignore it,” Sora advised.
“No, Sora, look!”
“Look at what?”
“Just look!” She waved a hand, and he tracked it to a light bobbing through the forest. As it drew nearer, it resolved into two lights, each held by a figure silhouetted against the rain-lashed wreckage of the woods.
The people clambered over the debris and, as they came into the clearing around the ship, it became obvious that they were two young men. They were hooded against the rain, faces obscured, even despite the lanterns they carried. “What have we here?” one of them asked as he came close enough to be heard over the storm and the noise of their progress.
“This must be the help she promised,” Sora muttered before calling back, “Our friend is hurt, and there’s a lady inside who won’t let us see him!”
The newcomers exchanged a look at that, and as the taller one sighed, the shorter said mildly, “I’ll go help her, shall I?”
“God, do, Sasha,” the other said. “I’ll talk to her later about manners. You just be sure to mind yours.”
“Sorry.”
“Go, boy!”
The shorter of the two—Sasha—slipped past Sora and Kairi with a murmured, “Pardon me.” As he disappeared into the ship, Sora felt that it would be fine to step back in out of the rain, please, just mind that they didn’t get underfoot.
Sora blinked some more at the odd thought. It really hadn’t felt like his own. He turned to face the remaining man. “Who are you?” he asked, quite reasonably in his opinion.
“A fair question, lad, and one I might ask of you, too, but let’s save the introductions for the dry, hmm?” He gestured back to the open doorway and added, “It’s not right to keep such a lovely young lass out in the rain.”
“Kairi!” Sora yelped, after turning to see her shivering and turning blue in the wet cold. He wrapped his own, chilled arms around her and started easing her back under shelter. The man followed behind.
Once they were out of the rain, if not exactly cozy and warm, the man pushed back his hood. “Introductions, then. I am Pyetr,” he said with a mocking little bow, “my young friend is Sasha, as you may have heard, and the lady tending your friend is my wife, Eveshka. I do apologize for her, by the way. She means well, but she really doesn’t know how to deal with people. God, she still doesn’t know how to deal with me, which is lucky for you, otherwise we’d still be snug in bed at home rather than out here in the middle of the night in a rainstorm they called to put out your fires, and I very much doubt the leshys would appreciate you burning down the forest.” He shook his head, a trifle ruefully. “But I digress. Who might you be, who have dropped into our lives so unexpectedly? A tsarina and her guard come from Kiev, perhaps?”
The two of them merely stared at him. Neither one had hardly heard a word he said, still stunned from the appearance of his naked face. Pyetr ran a hand over eerily familiar features and said, with somewhat less grace and patience, “Children, I am cold, wet, and out of sorts. I do understand that you’re probably in the same boat, but I would very much appreciate it if you were to stop staring as if I’d grown another head and answer a civil question.”
Sora, and Kairi in the circle of his arms, jumped. “Ah, sorry,” Sora said. “I’m Sora.”
“Kairi.” She shivered, and Sora rubbed his hands comfortingly over her arms.
“It’s just…” Sora explained, “you look like Riku. Our friend.” He gestured in the direction of the cockpit, sparing a hope that Sasha and Eveshka were having luck putting him back together.
It was true; Pyetr looked like he could have been Riku’s older brother. The lines of his face were sharper, more masculine, his hair was yellow-white rather than silver-white, and his eyes were the cool blue of a spring sky instead of warm, tropical seas, but the resemblance was uncanny, nonetheless.
A pale brow lifted at Sora’s words, shortly followed by a quirk of the mouth. It was a wry, bitter look, with more than a hint of dark humor. “Ah, well, if your friend is from anywhere nearby, I very much doubt I was the only bastard child my worthless excuse of a father left behind.”
Sora coughed, unsure how to reply to that, but Kairi came to his rescue. “We’re really not from around here.”
Pyetr simply nodded, apparently willing to accept that answer for now. “It seems,” he said, as Sora got a feeling that matched Pyetr’s words, “that you can go see your friend now.”
They made their way back to the cockpit and found Riku laid out on the floor, with what must have been Sasha’s cloak bundled beneath his head, his shirt cut off of him, Sasha and Eveshka seated on the floor on either side of him…and a small, black creature curled into a bristling lump on Riku’s legs that turned and hissed at them as they entered.
“Good Babi,” Pyetr said from behind them before Sora could summon his Keyblade. “Did you help? Thank you, Babi. When we get home we’ll have vodka, and maybe even honeycakes. Would you like that, Babi?” The black thing that looked for all the worlds like a Shadow Heartless, except for not looking anything like one, vanished. When Sora whirled back to look at Pyetr, he found the creature perched on one cloaked shoulder and clinging to a fistful of fair hair.
“Babi is a dvorovoi,” Sasha explained, as Sora turned back with a baffled shrug. Kairi had already knelt down on Riku’s side where Eveshka had vacated the spot, so Sora hurried over to claim his friend’s other hand. Sasha, too, vacated his spot and joined Pyetr for a muffled discussion.
Sora tuned everything else out but the feel of Riku’s hand in his, the sight of his bare abdomen with its new, shiny pink scar where the metal had speared him, the sound of his breath, steady and even. He was still pale, but he looked infinitely better than when he’d been bleeding out. Sora touched a trembling hand to Riku’s forehead, ran fingers through stained hair, and his eyes unfocused as pent-up tears began to fall. His blind fingers met Kairi’s, and they spent a long moment just drinking in the sensation of the three of them and the sheer relief that they were all still there.