[Kingdom Hearts AU] Someone to Watch Out for You

Someone Worth Fighting For

"You're late."

Somehow, for some reason, Ven had thought his welcome would have been warmer than that. Sabrina had been waiting for Ven to arrive in Wasteland. Her outfit now was far more relaxed than what he had seen her in during the knighting. Which made sense- this was more of a house call than a formal social gathering. Something about her still made Ven's heart thrum a bit faster, though. He had to force it down. He was here as a knight, not a lovestruck moron.

"It's not very easy to travel the worlds with a single Star Shard, you know." he reminded her with a bit of bite to his words.

"Excuses." Sabrina huffed. "You have that armor of yours too. That resists darkness in the Lanes Between, does it not?"

"It does, but I think that's beside the point."

"Oh you think so?"

"Oh I know so."

Ven gave Sabrina a rather smart smirk, in return she scowled. That was when Ven notices something golden colored next to her. He almost couldn't believe he hadn't seen it beforehand. For, you see, beside Sabrina was a large, round mechanical man Ven had never seen before. The thing was a little under their height, and hadn't so much moved since the duo started bickering at each other.

"What... Who is this?" Ven wondered out loud.

Sabrina let out a bemused scoff before placing a hand on top of the mechanical man.

"This is Tik-Tok." she told him. "Think of him as my guardian, or nanny."

"A plea-sure to meet you." the mechanical man said in a monotone cadence. The sudden voice with very little lip movement surprised Ven for a moment. "Are you Ven-tus? Dor-ro-thy talks a-bout you some-times. It is ver-ry... scat-tered."

"Dorothy?" Ven wondered, looking to Sabrina. "Who's Dorothy?"

For this, she shrugged. "I'm not his first charge."

"Gotcha." Ven nodded. With that settled, it was time to get to the matter at hand. "So what's the problem?"

Sabrina was the one to answer with a short, "Tik-Tok is."

"In-deed." Tik-Tok agreed in a motion that seemed akin to a nod. "I am not as fun-ction-al as I should be. It is scar-ry. I fear that I have been tam-pered with."

Sabrina's body tensed, folding her arms in annoyance.

"If someone messes with Tik-Tok, they mess with me." she told Ventus, punctuating it with dark glare and holding herself even tighter. "End of story."

Something about the idea was funny to Ven. He couldn't help but snort at it.

"I didn't know you could care so much about someone like that."

"Shows what you know, cousin."

And just like that, she shot him in the heart. It hurt a bit more than he had been expecting. Not that her calling him cousin was particularly new, not since their first meeting. But this was the third time they'd been face to face in the past few years. Could she really be that persistent with a cruel joke? She had to have been noticing how quickly his smiles turned to frowns when she called him that. She just had to.

"So where do we start?" Ven asked, hoping to divert his breaking heart to something more productive.

"The Lonesome Manor." Sabrina said.

"I have been do-ing work there re-cent-ly." Tik-Tok added. "Man-y of my mem-mor-ies be-come lost there. It is the com-mon var-ia-ble."

"Then let's get to it." Ven agreed with a nod.