Hollow Bastion, Third Visit:
In Which Roxas Tries Something New
There was no longer any question of leaving Hollow Bastion. The day of the confrontation could be at any moment, and it seemed like the whole city was taking it seriously. They moved quickly deeper into the ruins and coached the townspeople on their roles in the attack. Merlin was even enchanting broomsticks; Roxas wasn't sure how that was supposed to help, but he was assured that it would.
But despite the impending crisis, there were still lulls in the action. Roxas almost wished there weren't.
"Do you remember?" Leon asked quietly. "What it was like... before?"
They had fielded questions like this ever since Axel and Namine had been revealed as Nobodies. There was no surprise left, not even at such an apparently random, contextless question tacked onto the end of their breakfast. Axel said neutrally, "Most of us."
Leon didn't look away from the sink, washing dishes. It was just Roxas with the two of them in the kitchen. He murmured after a long beat, "This world fell into darkness. Completely. Of course there were casualties..."
Shit, Roxas thought. This complication hadn't occurred to him. He said, as gently as he could manage, "Nobodies don't really -- dwell much on who they used to be. It's kind of just something we all silently agree on." He waved at the redhead in example. "I don't know anything about Axel's Somebody."
Axel was perfectly still, as if he hadn't heard Roxas say anything. He just said, "We have their memories. But we aren't them. It's like... say you woke up tomorrow, and you were still you, but you had... the memories of a dog. Would you be that dog?"
Leon nodded, slowly, but it didn't really seem to have helped him; he tilted his head back, and he said slowly, "Her name--"
"Listen. It wouldn't be her name anymore," Axel said coldly. "If she even became a Nobody."
Leon turned around, his expression tight and angry. Roxas couldn't help empathizing with both of them. It was hard to think that someone he'd cared about and considered dead might still be alive in some way, in some form; but at the same time, Leon couldn't even imagine how hard it was to face someone you recognized, someone you remembered, someone who wanted you back, and who meant nothing to you.
Less than nothing.
The door opened and Aerith entered, with a duck in her wake; she was saying, "Drake, I know you're worried about the school, but we just can't do anything about it until we have more resources," and Leon's gaze darted to her and then, flustered, he turned back to washing dishes.
"Goz needs a real education!" the duck protested. "All this running around with the triplets is destroying her ability to sit still. And she didn't have that much of it in the first place! Hi, Leon."
"Hi, Drake," Leon said to the sink.
Aerith clasped her hands together. "Please believe me when I say that securing the school is definitely a priority, but right now is not the time to be expanding the secure zone. We just don't have the manpower to protect it during a real, sustained attack. After the attack..."
"I don't see what all the fuss is about! Heartless, Nobodies, whatever. You-know-who will be there to help defend," Drake insisted, darting a suspicious glance at Axel and Roxas.
Apparently giving up on her pleading, Aerith put her hands on her hips, patient. "I'm sure that he will be, but all the same, we can't just leave it up to Darkwing Duck." She looked up at Roxas. "Namine said she wanted to see you in the backyard when you're done eating."
"Nice girl," Drake said off-handedly. "See, now if we had the school, she and Gosalyn would probably meet and become great friends! That Namine could be the good influence my Goz--"
"She's much older than Gosalyn, Drake, they wouldn't be in any of the same classes."
"Let's get out of here before Gosalyn's daddy tries to arrange a playdate with you," Axel murmured under his breath, getting to his feet.
It took two tries to get the door to open on the backyard, and then the sounds of the discussion faded quickly into the background. Namine was standing on the sandy patch by Aerith's greenhouse, turning something over in her hands. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at them as they arrived.
"What's going on?" Roxas asked, matching her smile briefly.
She shifted from foot to foot while she waited for him to approach, and then held out her hands when they were across from each other. "I found this in the upstairs bathroom," she said.
There was a fuzzy red ball cupped in her hands. He wondered what the significance of it was for a long moment before the jolt of recognition to go through him. Stiltzkin's keychain. He must have emptied his pockets and left it there at some point.
"Thanks for bringing it back," he said, smiling at her again and reaching out to take it.
Her fingers closed around it before he could. "You wouldn't be able to lose it if you actually used it," she pointed out. "All this time we've been practicing with Oathkeeper and Oblivion. Why haven't you tried your new keyblades yet?"
An awkward question. Roxas slid his gaze to Axel; the redhead's face was blank again, shut down to avoid giving away his own reactions the way he always did. He looked back at Namine and shrugged, saying, "I don't really want to fight with other keyblades. I like mine. I'm used to them."
"They're all the same keyblade, Roxas," she murmured. "It's only the shape that's different. Are you used to them -- or are they important to you?"
He frowned, self-conscious now. "Well," he said slowly, "I've always had them. So, can't it be both? I mean, I'm used to them. But, they're important to..." He faltered. "To him."
The longer he thought about why he was so attached to those particular keyblades, the more it seemed like an irrational attachment -- felt by the heart, but not really about him at all. He'd had those keyblades all his life. They had been the one constant in an existence fraught with self-doubt and isolation, where his colleagues and his servants had come and gone with only darkness to mark their passing, and no one had cared or even been interested.
But he didn't form attachments to objects that way. They didn't mean anything to him... except.
"So they're important to you because they're important to Sora," Namine said softly. She was still smiling, apparently not suffering the same crippling fear of mentioning that name when Sora's friends were only a few feet away inside the house. He didn't know how she did it. "They represent his connections to the people he loves."
It was easy, now, to think back and consider what those keyblades really signified. The things that had been foremost in Sora's mind when he had sacrificed himself, the things he would never give up -- they had carried over into his Nobody. They only existed to mean something to Roxas because they had meant something to Sora.
If he let go of those things -- connections he didn't really have... wouldn't they...?
"But, you know, Roxas... Sora doesn't need you to hold onto his memories for him." Namine took his hands in hers, and pressed the keychain into his palm. "You have your own now."
Slowly, Roxas let out a breath, and some tension he didn't realize he was holding in simply fled out of him. The words were magic. "Is it because of your affinity to memories that you're really good at that?" he asked with a shaky quirk of his lips.
She grinned a little, shy. "You could say I have a knack for it."
Roxas turned and gestured Axel closer. The tall Nobody was standing off to the side, feigning interest in the curtains on the window into the kitchen (was it the kitchen?). "Hey, you." That caught his attention. Roxas smiled more at him, slightly more genuine. "Over here. You don't want to miss the show, right?"
Axel smirked in answer and moved in. Roxas called both keyblades into his hands, and they came so naturally that it was almost unsettling after that conversation: smooth and easy, in a shower of bright sparkling light. He turned them so that the hilts faced up instead of the blades, considering the keychains that dangled so insignificantly beside his hands. He honestly had never even thought of them as something he could... change, before a few days ago.
Axel and Namine were both watching him now, an almost identical tension. It made it slightly harder to make the moves that they were waiting for. Roxas mustered a smile and tossed Oathkeeper lightly at Axel, almost catching him off-guard. "Here goes nothing," he said lightly.
I'm going to lose this keyblade the moment I take the chain off, he thought. He knew it with a certainty that tightened his stomach. It had just been a fleeting thought, but he knew he'd been right about it.
And there was no point in clinging to it if it wasn't really his.
He slid his fingers up the embedded metal, up to the black links that trailed from Oblivion's hilt. He allowed himself only a beat of hesitation, and then deftly unhooked the metal links; it came loose into his hand and promptly vanished, taking the keyblade with it, leaving behind nothing but the same sparkling, fading light that it had arrived in.
Roxas let out a slow breath. There it goes. He flexed his hand and then reached out to Axel expectantly. There was something unreadable in his friend's eyes as he handed Oathkeeper to him.
It took a longer moment of looking at this keyblade before he was ready. Kairi would never know what had happened, and he might never come into contact with her again. Aside from that brief moment in the simulation, where she had almost, almost acknowledged him -- they had nothing to bring them together, unlike Riku. Is this really okay, Sora? he wondered, but if there was any response, he couldn't tell.
He gently unhooked the keychain, his fingers tightening reflexively around the hilt. Don't go, he thought fleetingly, but the inevitable happened, and the moment the keychain separated from the keyblade, Oathkeeper went up in sparks. When they faded away, it was only the plain gold weight of the Kingdom Key left in his hand.
"Okay," Roxas said, a little numbly but managing to sound good, he thought. "Time for a new keychain, I guess."
"Are you okay?" It was Axel.
"Sure," he said, turning over the fob of the moogle's keychain. What sort of keyblade would Stiltzkin's connection give him...? After a beat, he hooked it onto the hilt of the Kingdom Key, on top of the one that was already there. A burst of gold almost blinded him, and when he could look again he saw that it had changed into an elongated blade, red laced with black teeth in the shape of a moogle's wing. The hilt was patterned in tiger-print, like Stiltzkin's bandanna, with a sweeping crest.
"Nice," Axel said, half-hearted even by his standards.
Roxas waved the keyblade, taking a few practice swings, and he frowned thoughtfully. The balance was perfect, he had to admit that much, and it seemed tailor-made for concerted attacking. He gathered his concentration, and then paused.
"What's wrong?" Namine asked, hushed.
"I just realized I have no idea how to summon the second keyblade," he said.
"Ah," Axel observed. "That... could be a problem."
Roxas scratched his head, thinking. Even if he needed a second keychain, which he had -- back up in his room -- he had nothing to attach it to; the Kingdom Key had already transformed.
"Doesn't Sora know what to do?" Axel tried.
"Sora only used one keyblade," Roxas said flatly. He was starting to feel something unpleasant -- fear. He shook the keyblade, harder, as if a second one might fall out of it. He'd never heard of another keyblade master who could use two. Maybe the only reason he could do it was because those weren't real.
What if this was... really stupid?
Namine suggested, "You could try just fighting with one."
"No!" he snapped at her, and then shook his head. "Sorry. But -- no."
It had been so natural before. He'd just reached for Oathkeeper, and Oblivion, each in turn. But no matter how much he willed a second keyblade to appear, it just... didn't.
Frustrated, he grasped the hilt of the keyblade in both hands and pulled them apart -- and as simply as that, the keyblade split into two, with what felt like an incredible surge of tension welling up in his chest. Roxas stared dazedly at the offhand blade, shorter than the first and shaped like a hammer, while the others let out surprised sounds of relief.
He took another swing, and the balance -- complimented the first blade perfectly. He could dance with these weapons, forever, maybe, except for the way that he felt something heavy weighing him down. Lifting his head, he smiled at the others. "I think I've figured it out," he said. "Think I could probably make a third blade, if I had the hands for it."
Namine giggled, but Axel said, "Yeah, don't know if I like that idea. You look a little pale, Roxas. Something wrong?"
Roxas glanced up at him, frowning, but he could feel it as much as Axel could. The breeze felt unusually good on his face, which meant that he was starting to sweat, and he felt... strange. Like his skin was stretched too tightly, and his blood was pounding too thickly.
"I don't know," he murmured. "Kind of like -- something's pressing me apart from the inside." At any moment one beat of his heart might be too strong and split him open. He wiped at his forehead.
"Only now?" Namine asked. "Not before?"
He paused, and then banished the second keyblade. Immediately there was a dizzying flood of release, and he sighed, nodding. "Just -- like that."
Axel and Namine exchanged a glance that Roxas just barely managed to catch, and he frowned at them. If they were going to suggest that he fight with only one keyblade again...
Namine murmured, "I think it sounds like the problem is with... your heart."
"There's nothing wrong with his heart," Axel said immediately, defensive.
"Well, then tell it to stop doing this!" Roxas said, tone sharper than he meant it to be. He threw himself down to sit sullenly on the ground. It was childish, but it fit his agitation. If it wasn't one thing... "What if I've only managed this long because my keyblades weren't even real?"
"They were real," Axel murmured. "Or at least, they hurt a lot."
Roxas felt his lips quirk up with reluctant amusement, some of the misery fading. "I guess that's what counts, anyway," he said.
Namine drifted a step or two away, and said, almost to herself, "I wonder if Dr. Finklestein would know what to do?"
"Who?"
She tangled her fingers together over her stomach thoughtfully. "Dr. Finklestein is a scientist who lives in Halloween Town, a world nearby. He does a lot of experimenting with hearts and that sort of thing. Once, he even... made one," she added, hushed.
"Made one?" Roxas echoed, his focus narrowing. He almost, almost remembered that--
"It didn't work," Axel said, quiet. "Right?"
Namine shook her head. "The experiment wasn't successful. But that was a year ago. And even if he hasn't managed that, he's one of the only people left investigating hearts who isn't... biased." She smiled ruefully.
"Are those Sora's memories?" Roxas asked her. "I can't remember."
Namine said lightly, "That's okay, Roxas. I'll remember for you."
He scowled a bit at her, but Axel patted him on the head carelessly, and Roxas began to rethink sitting on the ground. He pushed himself to his feet as the redhead observed, "It's a good idea. Or, well, it's harmless." He shrugged, casual, obviously not inclined to admit that anything Namine came up with was a good idea until such time as it was proven to be.
He made a heart, Roxas thought. Even if he couldn't help with the keyblades, if there was even a chance that he could help Axel and Namine...
"We have to go now," he said, decisive. "I won't be able to defend Hollow Bastion as well if I can't fight with both keyblades. If we go, and come back, as quickly as we can..."
He glanced between the two of them, and they nodded in turn.
"Let's go tell Aerith where we're going."
NEXT >>> Halloween Town, First Visit (Part 1)