Prologue:
Day 6: In Which An End is a Beginning
The old mansion was dark and covered in dust on the inside, seemingly long abandoned and still, but somehow the silver creatures appeared to melt out of the shadows to attack Roxas. The truth was that they were hardly even slowing him down; he didn't know where he was going. He found himself in a sitting room, in a dining room, heading up the stairs, aimlessly drifting. Survival instincts kept him fighting, but it was ages before he could think, and when he did -- when he turned around and surveyed the top floor, and his eyes settled on one particular door -- he thought, Namine.
There was still a chance that someone could answer his questions, even if the girl had been as lost as she looked. He glanced around and started to move towards the door that should lead to her room. Would it be empty, or dark and dusty like everything else, proving even his visions of her just another lie?
As he rounded the corner, two more slim white figures manifested out of nothing, undulating in place, and a third creature rose up behind them -- one he'd never seen before, a large, sinuous thing with what seemed to be wings instead of arms, long limbs with razor-blades jutting out like feathers.
Roxas sank into a ready position, watching the newcomer warily. "What is this thing?" he murmured to himself, and then it startled him by sliding straight through the floorboards, heading for him with only its limbs visible, like some menacing -- floor shark. It quickly became less amusing as it slashed at him with swift, vicious strokes from its vantage points, forcing him to stumble back almost against the wall to avoid it.
"I don't have time for this," he muttered, eyes narrowing. He was on some sort of timer, he couldn't... wait any longer. He darted around the bladed creature and struck at the two silver beings, swinging around them and dispatching them in two quick, easy strokes.
A nervous glance behind him found the bladed creature gone -- the corridor suspiciously empty and still. It couldn't be dead, he hadn't even hit it, but it was gone. Roxas hesitated only a beat, glancing back at the door, and then he darted for Namine's room, running as fast as he could manage. Just when he thought he was in the clear, a blade launched up from the floor and tore into his side, causing him to gasp and stumble, but his hand wrapped around the doorknob and he flung himself into the white room.
And suddenly, everything seemed to stop. The silver creature curled into a loop in the air, as if thwarted by the doorway, and then vanished in a soundless bit of static. Roxas touched his side gingerly to see how bad the damage was, but there was no blood. It hurt, every breath in and out making sharp pain arc through him, but he wasn't bleeding.
It's not real...
Namine was not there. Restless, he circled the room, but there were no attacks coming either. He looked at the pictures lining the walls, deliberately, putting the pain and the surreal moment behind him. One image featured a blond figure that he knew was himself, striding down a dark blue and purple corridor... Something about it caught his eye.
He stared at it, hard, trying to dissect its strange familiarity, until it felt like his head was about to split, something -- something -- so close...
"You're really leaving?" comes Axel's voice, but not surprising him; he knows Axel is there before he speaks, knew he was there when his arrival was only a possibility darkening the pitch black night. He's always on guard, always paying attention. That's the only way to survive.
"I have to know," he says coolly, not bothering to look back. "The keyblade must've chosen me for a reason."
Axel threatens, desperately, "They'll kill you if you leave!" and warns, just as desperately, "The boss doesn't like traitors!"
He laughs shortly, but it feels like nothing. "What would it mean if they killed me?" he says, dismissive. "No one would even miss me."
"That's not true!" Axel says, starting to make a sharp gesture and then stopping. "...I would."
The words are quiet, like a confession, drowned out by the rain. Nonsense words. Roxas flips his hood up over his damp hair and he does not stop walking.
"Roxas."
He sucked in a strangled breath and spun around. Namine was sitting at the table again, just like before, watching him with a strange intensity -- as if more confident, now, as if waiting for the inevitable to happen. She didn't seem surprised by his... episode.
"Is that why?" he managed. "Because I was with Axel's group... because they were bad people?"
"No, Roxas," she said softly. "They're not bad -- they're just. Incomplete people, who will do anything to be whole again. Other people hate and fear them, but you... you're different."
"Why?"
"Because--"
And then her words warped in the air, the sound and the image of her breaking up like poor reception on an old TV set; she dissolved once, then twice, into static -- and vanished.
"No!" he said sharply, stepping forward. His hands closed on air. Damn -- his answers! He had been so close!
A pool of darkness billowed up out of the ground, and he stepped back, startled, as a man clad in shrouding red stepped forward. It was the same man who had interrupted his fight with Axel at the Struggle Tournament, and Roxas felt his eyes narrow, reflexive anger. This man...
"Never mind her, Roxas," the man said coolly. "It is too late to start resisting now."
Fuck this man. He slammed his fist down on the table and snapped, "Hey, I was talking to her. I have the right to have my questions answered!"
"You have the right?" The tall man's lips curled, although Roxas couldn't tell if he was smiling or sneering. "You... have a right to something, is that so?"
"Yes! My whole existence has been a plaything for you people, so I think I deserve some answers!"
He was speaking out of anger, frustration, agitated by this one last chance to really learn what was happening to him being snatched away, but he could never have anticipated the venom with which the man hissed, "You have no existence; you were never meant to be. Nobodies like you are only accidents of circumstance."
Roxas stared at him, and then recovered enough to demand, "But what does that mean?!"
There was a very abrupt flare of darkness, and when it faded, there was a tall man in a black coat like Axel's, and he said shortly, "DiZ, they've breached the perimeter. I can't hold them off any longer."
"Filthy creatures," muttered the man in red.
Then yet a third portal appeared, and Namine emerged, saying quickly, "Roxas, Nobodies may not be a whole person, but that doesn't mean you aren't a person. The only one who can decide that is you!"
"That's enough!" snarled DiZ, grabbing her arm and wrenching her back. Roxas stepped forward, reaching for the keyblade, but it wouldn't come, and he stared at his hand in confusion.
"Remember that, Roxas!" the blonde girl cried, struggling. "You can be more than just a Nobody!"
DiZ snarled at her and they vanished together, and then a beat later, the tall, shrouded figure seemed to glance at Roxas before following in his quick well of darkness.
The room was empty once more, and Roxas was alone. He closed his eyes, sighing softly, and then rallied himself. He still had to go somewhere -- and he thought he knew where. It called out to him, like it held some key to the questions he was still seeking to answer. He pounded out into the hallway and this time no creatures appeared to attack him.
Somehow he knew that he was headed for the library, as if he'd been here before; and when he moved into the room he knew to approach the table with Namine's crayons scattered across the topic, and he looked down at the drawings and he knew what was missing.
A riven heart...
An upside-down heart...
...and...
a crown?
Roxas watched his hand reach for the yellow crayon and draw the missing symbol. (The symbol of soul.) He backed away quickly as the floor started to glow, to the edges of the room with stable ground, and then the floor was just -- gone, replaced by open space and stairs leading down into the basement. But as the floor opened up, four strange little white things spawned in a hiss of static -- much smaller than the previous enemies, and oddly shaped, like... feet?
"What the," he murmured, and now the keyblade responded when he held out an arm, shimmering into his hand as the little creatures wobbled towards him, growing in size and shifting in shape. By the time he was ready for them they were swords, hovering in the air and swinging in sharply to attack him.
Bracing himself, Roxas spun low to the ground, using the quick motion trick that had confused the other white ones, getting behind the so that he could strike. They spun about, confused, and left their aggressive shapes. Although he was ready for them to prove resistant to his attacks, the moment the keyblade came into contact with them they squealed and vanished in a shower of sparks.
Two of them were down before the others had even recovered enough to find him. These two cocked their -- heads, damn! they had heads on the misshapen, flat bodies extending behind the feet -- and seemed to be listening before sharpening their posture abruptly. When he darted for them they dodged, tried to work around behind him, one even charged into his back and hurt him before he could strike them.
That was weird, he thought, frowning at them. They hadn't been nearly as tough as the bladed creature, which he had been expecting, but the last two had seemed much... smarter than the first two.
He lifted his gaze to find the bladed creature from before, spinning out of the ceiling and staring at him. He'd swear it was laughing. Roxas scowled at the bratty monster, and said, "Well?" but it only circled lazily away, sliding back into the ceiling in a ripple of impossibility.
Like he was falling for that trick twice. Roxas descended the stairs warily, attuned to every sound, every movement that wasn't his own, but nothing happened, and he reached the door to the basement unhindered.
The room beyond was dark, filled with the glow of computer monitors and strange machines, but obviously a room that had only recently been vacated -- there was no dust, no broken furniture. Roxas approached the monitors, frowning and slowly lowering his guard. They were monitoring something, bars and numbers shifting before his eyes, but the machine seemed...
...familiar. Where had he seen it before?
His gaze drifted to the tube next to the machine, and then he remembered -- a rush, but gentle, painless, as a thousand memories came washing back into his mind, slipping over all the questions and filling all the holes. He knew what Nobodies were -- Dusks, the reanimated shell of a strong-willed human who had lost his heart; Creepers, the unfortunate maimed who still refused to give up their mangled bodies; Assassins, the mischievous servants of Number VIII, the Flurry of Dancing Flames, Axel, his best friend.
And he remembered this machine.
Roxas felt his lips curl back. This machine -- this damn machine -- they had thrown him into it and tut-tutted amongst themselves about what a shame it was to have no choice but to shove him into someone else's life, to break him down until he was a good little boy who had never known a day of hardship, could never dream of fighting back against someone trying to forcefeed him Sora's memories, all those fucking lies
With a raw sound, he lifted the Kingdom Key and brought it down with crushing force on the bright displays, the humming machinery, again and again, anything that looks like it might've been involved in the fabrication of his lies. When the last of the monitors died he drove the keyblade into the heart of the computer and stepped back, panting.
He didn't need it. He knew now that it would come when he called. And more importantly -- he knew that his would come when he wanted them.
But he wasn't done here yet.
Roxas moved into the adjoining rooms, his own footsteps the only sounds in the place. He didn't know what he was looking for. Namine, to take her out of this horrible place with him? DiZ, for a revenge far more satisfying than smashing up a keyboard? Or...
The next room was immaculate, gleaming white capsules lining gleaming white walls. Only two capsules were occupied: a duck in blue, a dog in mismatched armor... Sora's friends, Donald and Goofy, from his dreams. They weren't Roxas's friends, but part of him felt better knowing that DiZ would have no reason to mistreat them when he...
Went home? Roxas paused in the threshold, just long enough to really wonder where he would go and whether or not he would get out at all, and then he resolutely put one foot ahead of the other.
The chamber was blindingly white, and empty except for the single capsule in the center of the room. Sora was in that capsule, sleeping hidden in its petals.
"At last," said DiZ, appearing between them, "the one chosen by the keyblade."
The bastard was smiling. Roxas stiffened slowly. "Who are you talking to?" he asked coolly. "Me? Or Sora."
DiZ chuckled, in a good humor. "To half of Sora, of course. Half of someone who can move freely in the realm of light, and destroy Organization XIII."
Roxas felt his hackles raise still further. DiZ wanted to use Sora to pass judgment on the Organization, but he had no idea what it was like to be hollow -- to ache for something you had lost and could never have again. To be willing to do anything to feel like you could breathe again, when he had never remembered what it felt like in the first place... "Who the hell do you think you are?"
"I am... a servant of the world," DiZ said diplomatically. "Which makes you, at best, a tool."
Roxas's jaw tightened. Laughing at him, after everything he'd done. It was pointless, DiZ wasn't here, no one was here, but Roxas snarled, "Is that your idea of a joke?! Don't start with me!" and then he was hurtling across the white floor, Oathkeeper and Oblivion scissoring through the illusion.
DiZ reappeared behind him, and said slowly, "I'm afraid this is only a data-based projection."
But finally he sounded troubled, something touching beneath his smug facade; startled, perhaps, that Roxas held his own keyblades (were they really?) instead of the toy Kingdom Key that DiZ had given him in this -- this program. Maybe he was even afraid. He should be.
Still, even that grimly pleasant idea couldn't lighten Roxas's attitude. He wanted to scream, throw back his head and yell to the domed ceiling until his lungs gave out, but he couldn't -- couldn't give the son of a bitch the satisfaction. "I hate you," he hissed, "so much."
DiZ said agreeably, "You should share some of that hatred with Sora. He's far too nice for his own good."
"No!" Roxas bit off, clutching a hand to his chest. "This is mine!" He flung the keyblade at DiZ, wordless rage, but it passed right through him and struck the capsule. DiZ vanished as the capsule began to glow and open, a flower finally come into bloom.
Sora was not impressive, hovering in his sleeping chamber. He was on the short side, like Roxas, but still too big for the childish clothes he was wearing. His hair was rumpled and his features were slack, peaceful in whatever dreams he was having.
Lucky, Roxas thought, the hostility suddenly draining out of him. If only he could be that blissfully ignorant... If only he had so many people working so hard to wake him... If only he could be that content in knowing that his existence was natural, and normal, and complete.
But all he had were false memories, false friends...
A speck of darkness appeared in the midst of the stark white, almost hard to see, and then erupted into a dark corridor. Axel stepped through, expression drawn. "Roxas!"
In spite of himself, Roxas relaxed his grip on the keyblades. He rubbed at his eyes, aching from all the unrelieved light. "...Axel."
"Hey, right in one." A thin smile turned up the edges of Axel's lips, not nearly as convincing as usual. "Do you really remember this time?"
"I guess. No, I-- I remember." He might not be sure what to say, after all that he had said and done, but it was true. He remembered everything -- dozens, maybe hundreds of missions, loitering by Memory's Skyscraper with their servants for company, and eating ice cream on the Station Tower...
Those memories weren't really lies, then.
Axel let out a slow breath, and grinned at him, a bit more confidently. "So you know you can trust me, right?"
"Do I?" Roxas said, bemused in spite of himself. Maybe even fond. "I said I remember."
Axel smirked. "Okay, stupid thing to say. But you've got to trust me. We don't have a lot of time. I rigged the bot that was monitoring his program, he can't see what's going on in here, but I don't know how long it'll last."
He makes it sound like there's a plan, Roxas thought, impressed. "Okay. So... what do we do?"
Axel sighed. "I'd like to just take you back right now. But..." As if someone had convinced him otherwise. Roxas frowned, now dubious. "This is where you make your big choice. What's it gonna be, Roxas?"
Roxas scowled slightly. "What do you mean? What choice?"
"You can exist, or..." Axel shrugged, but his eyes were flat and narrow as he looked over at Sora.
Roxas considered that, considered everything that had just happened. All the lies, all the frustrations, all the disappointments and anxieties and emptiness could just go away, if he could let go.
But if he had been willing to let go, he would never have existed in the first place. Nobodies were what happened when someone's spirit was too strong to just let go.
"Namine said something to me," he said finally. So much of what she had said made sense to him now, but this one thing was still strange. "She said I could be more than just a Nobody." Roxas met Axel's eyes. "What did she mean by that?"
"Maybe she meant that if your heart was strong enough, you could become a real boy," Axel said wryly.
It lacked the biting edge that Roxas knew meant he was mocking someone, but Roxas couldn't help thinking that such a ridiculous comment could only be making fun of him. "My heart."
"Yes, yours." Now there was no trace of amusement, Axel's dry tone turning to intensity, encouragement. "All we are is the will to keep being. DiZ knew that, so he tried to break you down, so that when you looked at him--" They both glanced over at Sora in the same beat. "--he'd want it more than you. But if you want it badly enough, it can be your heart."
I already have a heart. Roxas looked at Sora for a long moment. Did he look like that when he was sleeping, he wondered. It made sense. It would make the broken pieces fit together again. It would be... undeniably... completion. "What would happen to Sora?"
Axel didn't, quite, shrug off the question, but Roxas could read his disinterest in every line of his body. "Not sure. She made it sound like... he'd be okay."
"So it's me or him," Roxas murmured. Sora was so peaceful, but so... still. Maybe like he was more than sleeping. Maybe like he was suspended -- lifeless.
They had picked the wrong Nobody to try to break. "Then I guess my decision's made," Roxas said, more easily than he really felt. He had half-been Sora for so long, in his dreams, when the rest of his existence had been so flimsy and distant and only Sora's memories had been real. "Okay. I just need to ask a favor -- another favor of you."
"Anything," Axel said immediately, and then, "well, you know. If it's not too much trouble. Heh." He smirked, unconvincing.
Roxas felt his lips quirk up, even though the whole situation weighed down on him irrevocably. Liar. "Can you wait for me outside or something? I kind of need to be alone for this."
Axel hesitated, looking at Roxas, then at Sora, and finally allowed reluctantly, "Don't go anywhere without me, okay?" He headed out the threshold into the other chamber, slow, as if waiting for Roxas to call him back, or make some sound of distress that indicated that Axel would need to step in.
He wasn't going to need help, though, he thought. For long minutes Roxas just watched the gleaming white capsule and the sleeping boy. What happened to you in Castle Oblivion? he wondered; that was where his memories ended, sharp and abrupt. How did this happen?
But it didn't really matter -- not anymore. It was about to stop mattering, maybe forever. As long as he held onto the one basic foundation of his life, his unlife, his existence.
I want to keep going.
NEXT >>> Prologue (Part 15)