Ashes to Ashes

ASHES TO ASHES

Namine was in the library when her heart started beating again.

There was a sudden rush in her ears like the pounding of the sea. It set her off-balance and she held onto a bookshelf to hold herself up, her white knuckles growing practically translucent. She felt nauseous for a second, then numb, as she struggled to regain her breath- then…

Th-thmp.

Th-thmp.

She placed a hand on her chest- her heart was sending imaginary blood through her veins, pushing stale air through the arteries of her necks and the joints of her fingers, filling up her ears with the sound of thunderstorms. She felt like she was being torn apart, like she was being eaten from the inside, like she was about to faint or about to hurl- and sure enough, black spots began to dot the very edges of her vision. Her grip on the bookshelf became stronger as her breaths became more erratic. 

One of them was here- that was the only possible reason. She knew a lot of things- she had accumulated knowledge instead of experience or emotion- and she knew that people acted different when they were by themselves, she knew that people turned into different people within the first month of isolation, she knew that people died of broken hearts. She knew what happened to people when they were alone, and she had been alone.

She had been brought back to life- alone- in a new world, with no one she knew, with foster parents and a new language and a new life. She had been reborn with a dead heart- a heart that didn’t work. Nothing in her body worked quite right- she kept growing taller but never became a woman, she couldn’t eat- every time she ate, her body expelled the food. She gave up trying almost a decade ago. She was asexual, her voice box did not move when she spoke, her eyes did not actually need to blink, her hair and fingernails stopped growing after a while, her skin and eyes didn’t receive pigment from the sun, and her heart did not beat. There had been no reason for her heart to start up… until now. And that reason could only be that one of the others had found her. There was nothing else important enough to make her heart wake up.

Someone was in the library- her sanctuary, her home. Everything rushed around her like a storm of wind and lightning, she felt like her feet had been lifted from the ground, or like the cement ceiling was crashing around her- then, calm. The near-silence of the library once again enveloped her except for the humming in her ears. The sheer amount of oxygen in her vision opened her eyes wide to the amount of light in the library, it made everything swim and twist and turned everything colors.

Once the pounding in her skull finally stopped and she was able to stand up without knocking herself over, she shakily began to walk out of the aisle to the main hall of the Library. Darting her eyes from corner to corner, she searched the dusty boxes of her memory to try to recall what the others looked like. Her heat beat faster when she began to run, like it was trying to rebel and burst out of her chest. She gripped one tense, pale hand over the spot to try to keep it in. She ran from a secluded corner of non-fiction listening to the ringing in her ears get louder and louder until she stumbled into the back hall of Adult Fiction- the divider between the Romance section of the Sci-fi Fantasy shelf.

And there, skimming one of his finger casually over the works of Marion Zimmer-Bradley, was a boy; a tall and skinny boy who looked as if he had dressed himself in a rainbow. His hair was partially gelled up and partially neglected where it seemed to disagree with him, with some unruly sand blonde bangs drifting lazily over his eyes. His face looked pale and tight, like a man who had noticed a beast and had hoped the beast had not noticed him. She remembered him, even though she had never seen him much, had never really talked to him. Number nine.

“Demyx?...”

The boy startled so badly that his forehead squarely hit the edge of a shelf. The squawk he made at contact was so sudden and high-pitched that Namine found herself giggling. And giggling… was an odd feeling, breathy as it was… it still felt as if her lungs hurt with the convulsions.

A look of bafflement crossed the boy’s face as he looked up. His eyes widened noticeably. “Ah! You! I mean! Are you… from then?”

“Yes.” His voice, she thought, was jarring, disharmonic, it seemed too loud for the small space in the library. It was a shouter’s voice, an actor’s voice. But perhaps right then he was just a little nervous.

He stood. He was tall, taller than she remembered. That was possibly because he was so skinny from the presumed lack of eating, if he had the same problems with eating and sleeping and things like that that she did. He had a good head and a half of height on her, though judging by his rounded features he could only be three or four years older than her. He just looked… different. There was still the light in his eyes she recalled for the few times she had seen him, but back then it was a fluorescent fake light, now it was like trapped sunlight.

And he wasn’t wearing the iconic organization cloak, not unless the outfit had been updated to purple tennis shoes, a bright orange t-shirt, jeans with spirals and storm clouds drawn on them in marker ink, a silver heart locket and a layer of skinny blue bangle bracelets. The real difference was impossible to pin down, it couldn’t be described, it was just something between bright colored clothing and thin limbs and sunshine eyes, and inside them, and somehow made by a combination of them—the influence of a new life on an old soul. He would probably look strange to anyone, though, since he was so ill-dressed and punctured here and there with piercings, even if he didn’t look different and juxtaposed to them.

Well, she probably looked the same to him anyway- anyone who remembered a preteen in a tiny white dress and children’s sandals would be shocked by the oversize grey sweatshirt and long, ill-fit jeans that almost covered her checkerboard shoes. She had always been so damn cold when she was forced to wear that dress.

“So… Namine,” he said, whispering.

“Yes,” she repeated. She didn’t talk all that often, to be honest, so she wasn’t quite sure what to say. It didn’t feel like her throat was forming words, just mechanic clunks and gasping, but it seemed like Demyx understood anyway.

“Uh… wow! I mean berjesus Namine, I didn’t think that you’d be here, you know, kind of… took me by surprise, I guess. But I mean… I thought I was alone except I thought it was Zexy… I thought he’d be here and… but it’s not, it’s you instead! And… this is… weird…” he mumbled, stepping uneasily from foot to foot, his eyes darting back and forth from eye contact. The imminent awkwardness was broken by the loud rumbling of Demyx’s stomach.

He stared at himself in embarrassed wonder. “Damn. I am so hungry.”

Namine giggled again, slightly. (It was like bubbles, like carbonation, champagne, rising up from her stomach and chest and tickling their way up her throat.) Come to think of it, she was pretty hungry to- which was incredibly odd, because she could never even remember being hungry- not until her old, old memories of being Kairi.

“Do you wanna… go somewhere to eat?” asked the boy. “I mean, the mall’s just next door, you know, and they give us food if we give them money.”

“Yeah, definitely,” agreed Namine, prompted by her new-found appetite as well as the desire to find a place hat would work better for conversation.

As they walked from the Library, Demyx asked “So, what do you want? Coffee place? Crepes? Burgers? Bagels? Pizza? Smoothies? Um… there’s a Chipotle just down the hall, I think…”

“Chipotle? That’s the really modern-looking Mexican place, right?”

“Yeah, I always thought that place smelled so good, but…” He ended the thought with a shrug of his skinny rainbow shoulders.

She thought for a second. Why not? “Sounds good.”

“Then it is decided,” drawled the boy in a fake movie caster voice, throwing one arm up in the air with his index finger pointed at the ceiling. “Tonight we dine!!” He said, and Namine almost completely laughed as they walked through the glass doors into the mall.

-

Demyx gave no warning. He was halfway through his second burrito when he just stood up and left- he ran out of the store, actually, dumping his tray messily on his way out.

But Namine knew why- she had felt it too, a shuddering in her heart, a stop, and a re-start- the declaration of Someone near by- someone else. And though Namine couldn’t tell who it was, the last word Demyx had gasped before running out of the restaurant was “Zexy-”

“Demyx, wait!” cried Namine, her voice rising to a volume she had never before used- what some would call a normal speaking voice.

Namine hadn’t been allowed to get close to any of the nobodies- except perhaps Axel- in her rather short life. She hadn’t wanted to, in any case. She hadn’t known how deep the relationships among nobodies could get, and she would have doubted nobodies could relate if it weren’t for her connection with Roxas (Roxas! What if Roxas was alive-) but the way Demyx murmured his nickname for his friend told Namine all she needed to know about them.

The mall was a rushing river of people in which Demyx and Namine stuck out like fish jumping against the flow. Both of their hearts were pounding, like bats using echolocation to seek their prey. Demyx would duck into this door and then the next, then shake his head an jump into the street to a place next door. He grabbed Namine’s hand and practically drug her through the crowds of people outside and inside of the strip malls, muttering to himself and occasionally looking back to smile and assure her- “Don’t worry, he has to be somewhere around here.”

        

Namine noticed something odd, though- nothing to do with her heart or the search for Zexion, but with the people around them. At first she thought they were staring because they were angry at the two of them for tearing their own path through the crowd. But then she realized they were smiling- some they passed, elderly people sitting on benches in the sunlight, would even point at them and talk behind their hands, grinning and shaking their hands. She and Demyx seemed to be making them happy.

Namine mulled over why this could be right up to the second that they opened the doors to a Bath and Body works, the absolute last place they expected to find him. Demyx walked in and Namine followed him, panting after all that running. Demyx’s eyes followed the line of the shelf on the left wall- the neatly arranged bottles and tins went through the rainbow spectrum with cherry blossom and pomegranate at the front, which became orange honeysuckle and yellow vanilla honey and green country apple and blue dancing waters and purple tulips and midnight amesyst- which almost hid the young man dressed all in black at the very end of the row. He had soft looking grey hair and his eyes were huge in a look of- of horror. Namine’s heart jolted, and her stomach did too.

She realized that the people who had been smiling at her thought that she and Demyx were a couple the second Demyx jolted forward and said “Zexion!” He stepped and the man stepped back. He stared, a half smile creeping u, down, u, and down on his face- horribly uncertain- and the man stopped and stared at him. “Zexion.” He waited.

Finally, he spoke, in a voice as low and quiet as Namine’s- “When I felt my heart beat, I thought it beat in fear- I thought it was telling me to run…”

Demyx’s long legs only took two and a half strides to cross the store, and then he pulled the thin man into him arms. Zexion was about six inches shorter than him and Demyx held him tight, murmuring maybe to himself or maybe to himself: “Zexion, Zexion, I missed you, I missed you…”

Inside Namine’s chest, there was a feeling like weight pushing on her heart, but also there was a lightness in her throat, like a bird her dug it’s talons into her heart to push off and fly out of her.

Zexion placed his hands on Demyx’s chest and pushed him, gently, not to move his body but suggest its movement. Demyx backed away.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be,” Zexion told him. He was looking away.

-

They spoke, in halting tones, about their lives in this world. They were all shocked, and the conversation was full of bewildered pauses. Namine told them she was a high school student, being raised by foster parents, and that she hadn’t really done much with her life so far, being heartless.

Demyx was in college, studying theater, since it was one of the only things he had enjoyed in this new life—being someone else, with such light in his eyes that no one else existed. He spoke glowingly of the theater, praising artists, lauding the stage and the crowded backstage and the maze-like rigging and the buzzing house. Other than that… no girlfriends, no boyfriends, no big achievements, since being heartless was apparently the greatest of all causes of depression. He was proud of his roles and he loved his collection of plays.

Zexion’s life story was more Spartan still—he was not in college, he had not finished schooling. He read all day, and he was Wiccan. He had tried to write, but never wrote more than two pages at once. His spells did nothing, but he cast them anyway. His spells and his books were all he considered himself to be.

Munching on food, clearing their throats, watching the sun go down on the horizon, they stewed in the mystery of life, and the mystery of many lives. Not much was said, but damn if they would spend the silence alone that day, with hearts suddenly beating.

Demyx finally let the two of then leave him at nightfall, once he had their addresses and phone numbers, saying he would call tomorrow so that they could Discuss Things- things like hearts and existence. Zexion said he was looking forward to it but Namine had just pulled a face.

Her head was humming as she walked down the turning, twisted roads to her suburban house. The sun set behind her and streetlights blinked on in front of her as she walked. She had been trying for the past five hours to decipher Demyx and Zexion’s relationship, and had gotten as far as ‘it’s complicated.’ They had probably been close, but how close she couldn’t quite tell, Demyx was more attached to Zexion than Zexion was to Demyx, or else Zexion had some other complication of their relationship lying on his mind that Demyx hadn’t realized yet. They hadn’t seen each other before in this life and neither were quite sure how to talk to each other now, and it seemed to Namine that they had different opinions of what their relationship was- Demyx was adamant in saying nothing had changed, but Zexion was distant, more like they were strangers.

And Namine? Both men treated Namine almost distantly, like one would treat a person met many years ago. Demyx paid more verbal attention to her than Zexion did, but that was obviously his nature. Zexion seemed more predisposed to staring. He had large eyes, she imagined they had grown large just from the staring.

Namine turned onto a steep driveway- her final destination only separated from her by the turquoise front door up on top of the hill. She had been adopted into this house ten years ago at age five by a young, well-off couple- a woman with bloodshot eyes and a big smile and a man with red hair, strong hands, and an anxious, worrying face. They were good people trying too hard to be happy, scared of the world around them. They tried hard to love their adopted daughter, but she was so good at hiding they hardly saw her. They didn’t quite start out as a family and then never quite made it. The parents were a little scared of a child that didn’t eat or sleep and the child was a little scared of parents that tried to hold and coddle her. 

The foster mother and father were in the living room with the lights off and the TV on, watching a movie in black and white. Thomas was an office worker and Linda was a painter, a woman wearing a ponytail and paint-stained jeans. Namine had re-learned all the tricks or line and color and light by watching Linda in her living room made studio from between the bars on top of the staircase.

“I’m home,” Namine said, just loud enough to hear.

“Welcome home, Nami,” said Linda just as quietly, leaning against her husband in a way that looked like she just fell there and couldn’t bring herself to get back up.

Namine almost smiled and then walked to the refrigerator, suddenly feeling hungry. She found a jug of cranberry-apple juice and poured a glass into a cut crystal cup, chugged that and poured another. She had drunk the second glass when she saw the image of her foster parents sating at her through the end of the cup. That’s when she realized that what she was doing was strange in context to the fact that they had never seen her eat or drink before, at least not without vomiting a few hours later.

She was being stared at again. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be!” said Linda. “It’s good to see you with an appetite.”

Thomas simply looked skeptical, but let the matter go, pulling Linda to him with an arm around her waist. She smiled and they focused on the television. Namine wondered what might happen if she stared a conversation, if maybe one of them might tell her something she had never heard before or if she might let them know something she had never said, but then, she didn’t know how to start a conversation in the first place, how to get attention or what you even said, or how to keep the conversation going once it had begun.

She poured a third glass of juice and silently walked out of the kitchen, watching her own feet ascend the carpeted staircases step by step. Her room was at the end of the hallway, beyond an unmarked wooden door. The walls were white- the most comfortable color for her- and the bed spread was a gentle, powdery blue. She put the glass of juice on her stained, chipped desk, which was loaded with canvas and ink wells and sets of oil pastels, its drawers stacked with old sketchbooks and replacement paints and scratch paper. She found her most recent sketchbook under her pillow and turned a few pages until they were blank and white.

Most of the filled pages were pictures of architectural designs or life drawing of birds and tree branches or still lifes of store windows and streetlights and statues in the art museum, but tonight she was going to draw something different.

She drew how Demyx’s thin neck looked with the slope of his shoulders and painful curve of his cheeks, she drew a spiraling heart reaching out with tentacles in his chest, curving in and out of his skin, on his face and around his stomach. She drew how Demyx looked when something outside the window distracted him, and how Zexion looked like when an off-hand comment made him grin. He did smile, she thought, he had had a sense of humor, but what had he laughed at, exactly? She practiced drawing the side of Zexion’s face and his eye several times but was never quite happy with it.

-

Namine hardly even dreamed. Perhaps, though, she dreamed often and never remembered that she had, perhaps her dream world was another place that couldn’t be discovered for its own safety, whose name couldn’t be spoken in the waking world for the dissonance it would create. In any case, she could only remember a few mornings in her life when she had woken up with pictures in her mind.            

That night, she was in a long white hallway, not unlike the ones she remembered from Castle Oblivion. She rested a hand against the smooth wall to see if it was there- and it was, for the second her nails touched the stone, colors sprang out of the surface- abstract swirls and dips of sky blue and gold and silver, pictures with names- Peace in a big circle around her hand, Kindness a glittering ribbon lacing in and out of the other pictures, Joy running down the hallway, and Love stretching over the ceiling like a warm, encompassing umbrella. She watched as splatters of green and pink billowed farther down the walls like the clouds of a sunset- pictures of Patience, Honor, Truthfulness.

But as the colors raced farther down the hall Happiness became an amalgamation and billowed with strange colors that twisted in on themselves- Despondency, Doubt, and Confusion in purple and blue and grey. Shyness was folded in grey wings in a corner and Jealousy preyed everywhere where once Kindness interlaced, mucking up colors and blurring lines. The Love that once spanned the ceiling became a fractal, shattered many times into manifold colors and became known as Sacrifice, Longing, Suppression, then Anger and Hatred and Horror, and then the great blackness of Sorrow began to crowd all the other colors, hungry for attention, dripping and splattering on the floors, ceilings, walls, domineering the painting until the very black end of the hallway.

Namine pulled her hand away from the wall, backing up into the side of the hall painted with Joy and Goodness and Contentment, pulling her arms across her chest. But abandoned artwork has the strange tendency to finish itself- when she removed her hands from the walls, stars and flowers and fleur du lis curls were sketched on her fingernails, then tattoo spirals and moons and little birds appeared on her fingers, thorn bracelets swirled around her wrists and then color creeped light blue and spring green and orange down her arms. On her shoulders it became purple, navy blue, black, and snowy winter white, and single curl of darkness, of the absence of light, began to swarm over her face and down her neck and her chest, coiling around the beating spot of Life in her chest, spreading like a stain.

After that, she might have ran, she might have screamed, the dream might have ended or someone might have just turned out the lights. That was all she remembered.

-

Namine was a graceful person. She had been told that many times—she was a gracefully eater, and a graceful dancer, and she cried gracefully, and she walked gracefully, and now, she woke up gracefully.

When Namine woke up that morning, she didn’t move for a while, she just looked across the room and wondered why it was so bright until she realized she had forgot to close the curtains over her window the night before. She sat up, and the pop of her bones and the rustling of the sheets were just static, background noise, like falling snow. Something had happened last night. What was it?

She figured it couldn’t really matter, whatever happened. Nothing matter in this life—this broken promise of a heart. The stared at the window that she hadn’t bothered to close the night before. A quiet breeze filled the room, but nothing rustled or shifted, and the stuffy temperature did not budge. Her skin felt stretched, badly stitched, and tattered and worn over skinny bones. Her mouth was dry and still like a desert and she could feel gathering shadows under her eyes. There was silence.

And then there wasn’t.

She tilted her head back, and she could hear it in the shell of her ears. And she could feel it in the tendons of her neck.

Demyx. And Zexion. And to the mall, and to the library, and out to dinner. Light in her eyes, a breath on her lips, and joy in the streets. All of this, in how her lungs flexed and her skin jittered with veins.

She almost fell out of bed, when her heart jolted, and she quickly grabbed the sketch-book that had fallen hap-hazardly the night before. Pictures of hearts, and her heart, and of the heartless, and sketchy and panicked reliefs of the faces of Demyx and Zexion, of them eating sushi and burritos and drinking coke and cherry lemonade, of them watching her and smiling, of their faces captured from the side, and from behind, their shoulders hunched and incredulous, and most importantly—one hurried sketch of the two embracing.

Something had happened yesterday, and it was no small thing.

She felt her wrist, the joint of her fingers to the arm, where doctors had found the loss of their hopes. And she felt.

The promise had been held.

And that meant—it must mean—that they all were back. She had only met two—only seen two—but that meant there had to be many. She hadn’t been reborn alone. She wasn’t alone, at all. She wasn’t alone in this world.

She felt like crying, but she wasn’t sure she could handle the feeling of tears yet, as if her feeble old body could not handle the expulsion of such new emotions. When she thought about yesterday, she was unable to contain herself, and she laughed, full of relief—but she stopped, afraid to start again, because she knew the sound in her room would make her feel lonely. She was full, but had no way to pour herself out.

She leaned back, falling back into the bed, so overwhelmed that she started thinking pointless thoughts instead. What day was it? Wednesday? Thursday? It was so hard to keep track of the time in the summer. And she had never cared what time it was since life was always the same. She didn’t measure time in hours; she slept when her body refused to keep moving and left the house when the house felt sweltering, never certain whether it would be dark or light outside, having been holed up in her room, without care for food or interaction, for who even knows how long. She wondered whether she liked the contemplative freedom of summer, as oppressive as her thoughts were or the mindless drudgery of the school year better.

Well, she used to like the school schedule better. But all of that would be different now.

A strange noise suddenly burst from the corner of her room. She stared, confused, at where a very pixelated and warped version of “The Flowers” by Regina Spektor was playing steadily from the floor of her bedroom before she finally realized that it was the ringtone of the cellphone Linda had bought for her ‘just in case’, though Namine never used it. She only changed the ringtone so that she could listen to that song, one of her favorites, about the rotting flowers, when she didn’t want to listen to anyone talk.

She leaned over to pick up the slim white phone, rushing to answer it before the ring tone ran out. When she opened it and put it to her ear, it took her a second to remember that she had to say something. “Hi?”

“Namine?”

“Demyx?”

“Ha ha, so it is!” His bright voice sounded strange over the crackling phone line, it sounded more nasal and obnoxious than happy and bubbly, as it did in person. Namine wondered why a phone would change your voice, and accidentally spent too long wondering, so Demyx picked up the conversation for her.

“So well, if you’re free today, I though Zexion and I would meet back up at the library, which was totally his choice and not my fault at all, and we’re going to talk, see if we can figure a few things out, you know. You should come! Considering you are very much in the same situation as the rest of us.”

“Sure. Yes!” What else would she do with her time? What else could she possibly want to do? This was light calling her from a depths of darkness. Her room still stank of mold and dirty apathy, and a voice of fresh air came to her through the phone, purifying. How could she refuse to see them? It was all she wanted, and perhaps the only thing she needed. “Where? When?”

“The good old bookish sanctuary, home away from home for all and sundry nerds. The library. That is the library. So come over whenever, though, my bet is that Zexy is already there and brooding and I’ll be there the second I’ve finished stumbling about tripping over things trying to put clothes on my damn body. So just show up.”

“Alright.”

“See you there!”

Her phone buzzed to a silence, and she found her heart shaky and her forehead covered with sweat. She supposed this was probably phone anxiety. She suddenly remembered that she used to have feelings that she had not really missed.

She quickly got up and put a loose t-shirt over the faded camisole that she had worn to bed, and tugged on whatever pair of frayed jeans she found nearby. Onto her feet went a pair of ratty blue flip flops and into her canvas bag went her sketchbook, her pencils and erasers, her phone, and whatever small amount of money she had inside a leather coin purse. This took her all of three minutes before she was out the door and into the bathroom to pin up her hair on her head so that it would stay out of her way almost at the same time as she brushed her teeth.

She sprinted downstairs and was almost out the door when she suddenly saw Linda out of the corner of her eye, working on a bright, yellowy painting of a fairy, raining light upon the grass.

“I’m going out,” said Namine, suddenly hesitant. For the first time, she saw something in Linda’s eyes as she watched her. Some careful emotion.

“Where to?” asked Linda, turning back to her canvas.

“The library. I’m meeting up with Demyx and Zexion.”

And then she immediately clamped her mouth shut, realizing exactly how that sounded. Talking, it seemed, was a dangerous weapon, not to be used by people not used to thinking much.

Linda’s head snapped back to her foster-daughter (and some lavender paint snapped with her) as she asked, rightfully shocked, “Who?”

“They’re these guys I used to know. From a while ago. They’re nice?” she wondered how she could make Linda look less worried.

“Nami… I don’t want you to worry, because I’m happy for you, of course,” said Linda, babbling somewhat, “but I’ve never heard of them before. When did you meet them?”

“A few years ago?” Namine tried.

“I’m sure they’re fine people, since you have good discretion, but this is the first I’ve heard of them, so, as a mother, you know, I’m worried.”

“I’ll be fine?” said Namine. “They are good people.”

“I… am sure they are…” Linda sighed. “I won’t dodge around the issue, I’m worried because they are boys I have never met. And you’re a very smart girl, Namine, but I wouldn’t want you to be hurt by some trick.”

She was worried about sex or something? Namine wasn’t sure. “Oh, I think they’re together with each other.”

“Oh.”

Namine really wasn’t sure if she had just ended the disagreement or complicated it vastly. Linda thought for a second, her head tilting from side to side, but then, in tiny degrees, she nodded.

After a minute of silence, Namine found herself distracted by Linda’s painting. “Who is that? A fairy?”

“A fairy,” said Linda, distracted. “Her name is Hope.”

“Hope,” said Namine. Linda was painting feelings. “Use some blue. Light stuff. Blue-grey.”

“Would Hope be a very blue emotion?”

“It’s for contrast, you need it,” said Namine, and though she wanted to explain more, she found she couldn’t quite. “May I go? I’ll be back before dark.” In truth, she had no idea when dark was.

Linda eventually nodded. “Go ahead. Do you have your phone?”

“Yes.”

“Call me if you need anything.”

“Okay,” said Namine, and she left.

-

When Namine got to the library, she decided that Demyx was probably still at home wrapped up his laborious effort to tripping over everything, since Zexion sat alone at a table in the corner of the library, surrounded by grey-bound books, sitting very still.

She walked over and sat silently across form him, figuring that she wouldn’t want to be disturbed when thinking like that. She watched, but he did not move. Eventually, she pulled out her sketchbook and a pencil and began sketching Zexion’s concentrated expression, the curve of his lips and the fall of his unbrushed and ratty hair, with the criss-cross shadows it made on his criss-cross bones.

The more she looked at him, the more he looked dirty, grimy, badly put together. It did not disturb her in any way, as it would to most people, to her, it was merely a look. A look like he had recently clawed out of his grave, but no less legitimate than any other. She drew his bony, clutching hands, she drew the spine of a book, and a bird out the window, standing on the ground, spreading its wings, and then in open flight—and then Zexion looked up from his book.

“Did Demyx say when he was going to be here?” his voice was monotone, and he did not look her in her face. But Namine did not really notice these things, since she didn’t look up at him either, and her voice was whispery and unused.

“No. He said he was tied up.”

“By what?”

“Terrible coordination.”

Zexion sighed. “Sounds right. But…” his closed face, long used to scheming, clouded over with thought. Namine thought again about his claim to working spells and casting magic. She had no clue what he was thinking.

“Zexion?”

“Oh. Sorry,” he said, with a calm shrug. They were both used to introversion. When it became clear that he wasn’t offering an explanation, she didn’t push for one.

The silence stretched out, not awkward, necessarily, but unfamiliar. They were together, now, but not yet companionate. Zexion gazed out of the corner of his eye to where the birds darted and jumped on the cobble stones of the public garden. The mid-morning sun danced a slow waltz on his strange features, and Namine found herself thinking of the glow and the deeps on his face as like the tilted striped light of the rafter ribs of an old church or the shadows of a leafy forest. He had eyes that spoke storm clouds and lips like a carved marble statue, but they were put on a drooping face, unused to smiling, plain, perhaps unpleasant. He was dour, and he did not look kind, and the overall grimness of his visage made his few beautiful forms look like jealously stolen treasures.

His eyes finally found Namine’s, once she had been staring at him for a while. “Yes?”

“Is it very odd for you to have a heart again?” she asked. “I feel like mine does not fit. Like I don’t have a place to put it.”

Zexion frowned, thinking. Namine suddenly, felt embarrassed, and turned away from him, smoothing her corn silk hair impulsively as she tried to rephrase her strange thought.

Suddenly, Zexion was broken out of his reverie, and he turned with a jerk to look back out the window, sending those lights across his face spinning, kaleidoscopic—and his eyes were focused, and his face expressive for the first time Namine had seen.

Namine quickly looked where he was looking, and saw nothing strange for a few seconds—the man-made garden, bursting with snapdragons and bleeding hearts and ivy, around a circular stone mosaic, almost covered in the same flock of preening white birds that had been there all day, bobbing and scattering the white and gold budding flowers that had fallen off of trailing green vines at their feet. There was the light of the sun, and the birds, and many flowers and leaves. And then she saw him—a boy, when there had been nothing the second before. He was more like the shadow of a boy, like a cut-out silhouette, a flickering image with choppy hair and loose clothes which masked his form, facing slightly away but watching her.

Then, after perhaps a second after the boy appeared, something frightened the birds—and they all rose up in a sudden white wave like angels in flight—and then, nothing.

An empty garden, with leaves blowing in the summer breeze, and a stone mosaic glowing in the sun, partly covered with shed petals and feathers.

Zexion faced Namine, and opened his mouth—but before he could say anything, there was Demyx. Demyx, and two full grocery bags of French bread and brie and peanut butter and candy and soda and yogurt and raspberries and whatever else he had apparently found exciting in the grocery store dangling off of his arms. They were dumped onto the table, dangerously close to all the books, as Demyx dumped himself into a third chair.

“Salutations!” he said, in a theater student’s projecting voice, absolutely oblivious to the mood he had shattered. 

“I don’t think food is allowed in the library,” said Zexion, annoyance breaking into his tone, obviously flustered, though he did make a tentative grab for a package of Greek yogurt.

Demyx gave him a look and started making a peanut butter and raspberry and clementine orange sandwich on a loaf of French bread. Namine quietly reached for the bag of gummy candy. “Details,” said Demyx. “We’re in the very back of the library, in the NONFICTION section for fuck’s sake, and no one will come to see us. SO. Now that we are all gathered in this wonderful public library…”

“Wonderful?” asked Zexion. “It is perhaps one level of 500 feet squared with an absolute paltry attempt at reference materials.”

“Public library, I said, not college library. Now that we are in the place with an amount of books, what have we all to discuss?”

Zexion cleared his throat, giving Demyx something of a glare. “Well, I’m sure that over the some-teen or twenty-some years we have all spent in this second, maybe third life…”

“Second and a half?” Proposed Demyx through a mouth full of starch and sugar.

“Sure. I’m sure over the some-teen or twenty-some years we have all spent in this second-and-a-half life with our current souls, we have each developed slightingly varying philosophies on what, exactly, happened in our remarkably fractured past lives, and why we were given another life for no apparently reason after our life in the world of the castle and Kingdom Hearts ended. We have wondered if our past lives happened at all, and why we all have been gifted a second life, with memories of our past lives intact. We have wondered, I am sure, why we were reincarnated after being beings without hearts, and why, if we were all given a second chance, why we were given a second chance alone… and heartless again.

“A strange sort of mercy, if it was meant to be a mercy,” he whispered. “The chance meeting of us three throws a wrench into my former theories about what I was given this life for. I thought, at first, that I was meant to atone for past mistakes, and then I figured that this was a world of my mind, a sort of echo of what I had experienced, and that is why I felt nothing, and could make no atonement, even though I knew I had done great wrongs. But now, I find that I have not been set in this place alone, to wait, or to pay my price, or to change, or for any reason that seemed obvious before. I assumed it was my purgatory—but now, I am not alone.”

“And everything is different,” said Namine. “Because I was born heartless, and I thought it was my fate to be nothing, but now I have a heart.”

“My heart did not work,” Zexion confirmed. “Nothing in my body was alive, and yet I moved and I spoke.”

“I assumed I was a nobody again,” said Namine.

“And so did I,” muttered Zexion, his face turned into his clasped hands. “I assumed the punishment for me, for commiting such crimes as a nobody, was to stay a nobody. And then…”

“And then,” Demyx repeated, kicking back in his chair and opening his arms wide, “Ta daaaaa! Not heartless, not hopeless, not dead. No zombie.”

“That’s about the size of it,” admitted the schemer. “We had no hearts, and then we met each other, and we did. And that is what baffles me. I accepted being heartless. I reluctantly accept having a faulty heart that much be started by something else. But why would another nobody be the key?”

The was a short silence. Namine felt the weight of what they were saying settling into her. Had her life always been so strange to say? She had never talked about these things out loud before, or, not in a long time, not since the childhood doctor visits. Was it all… how it sounded?

“Maybe half a person and half a person makes a whole,” Demyx posited, pulling out a hidden bar of chocolate form his grocery bags.

“Maybe it was the fault of buried memories. There were memories in our hearts, and they just slept in us, useless, but when one memory found its copy in another, then, with confirmation, like a mirror suddenly being held up to the truth…” When Namine spoke, her words felt like heavy marbles rolling off of her tongue, making cracks in the table as they fell one by one. She hated talking about memories.

“It’s something, but it’s so… abstract,” muttered Zexion, frustrated. “There’s no reason…”

“Oh, hush you,” interrupted Demyx. “It sounds plausible to me. Our hearts were tied up to the past, you know, which is bad for a guy, and when we all found each other, we didn’t have to worry about being the only nobody no longer, so…”

“That isn’t logical and you know it,” Zexion sighed.

“Did you ever meet that Keyblade kid?” asked Demyx, eyes widening. “He owned every one of our sorry evil butts and he did it through the power of friendship even though the Superior could toss BUILDINGS. Where is your logic now.”

“And that is impossible.”

“Well, he did it! I was there.”

“You were not there, you were dead by then.”

“I outlived YOU—“

“Maybe it was me.”

Namine’s voice, uncertain and stilted, brought them to silence instantly. “I mean… I was… perhaps am… the witch of memory. I am the one who can change the past and warp the present. Maybe when I met you, I changed something, and strung your memories back together, to have you remember how to be human, and change our nothing pasts.”

“Your powers…” said Zexion, struggling with his words, “are unique, and undeniably powerful. But you were like us, in this world. A nobody with no heart. How could you remind us of humanity when you didn’t know it?”

“My power was best exercised in false memories. Back there, Marluxia made me replace Sora’s true memories with false ones, piece by piece, and his life changed without his mind knowing. I didn’t try to change anyone this time, it took me by surprise too. But the heart is powerful, and I am as good at unlocking buried memories as I am making false ones.”

“So…” Demyx furrowed his brow. “You are saying you may have, possibly, unlocked the memories in our hearts, just by being near us, because you unlock and restore memories subconsciously?”

“Maybe,” she whispered.

“So…” repeated Zexion, “You think that maybe you still have your powers, and your power, focused on connecting memories of the past, reached back and… pulled our memories of being a nobody and our memories of being human together… or even reminded us of being human before we were nobodies?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t feel anything. But I don’t know.”

“But you did something like that before,” said Zexion.

Suddenly upset, Namine glanced up at Zexion through her lashes. “You were there, weren’t you? You watched me make fake memories for Sora by chaining him to memories of that castle. If memories existed, and they were in my web, I could tie them however I wanted.”

Zexion held Namine’s eyes for a minute, and she became uncomfortable, but he looked away quickly. “Enviable,” he whispered.

“Not really.”

The meeting was adjourned with Demyx remembering that there was an arcade in the mall, and that attempting to play dance dance revolution WITH a heart would be an experience worth trying. Whether it was an attempt to dispel the atmosphere or an honest manifestation of Demyx’s somewhat manic tendencies was impossible to say. Though Zexion did notice that they both seemed distracted, Namine more than Demyx, yes, but Demyx as well.

As the day wore on, Namine clung more obviously to the two of them, slowly becoming determined to be their friends again, though Zexion could see that he did disturb her. He hadn’t before she got it in her head that he really was once a nobody, one of the nobodies that haunted the castle where she was prisoner.

Zexion himself didn’t really feel like he remembered these people yet. And as for what Demyx thought—well, who knew what Demyx thought.

-

 

Okay note to self. They will become real friends. But not yet. You have to throw a bit more chemistry between dem and Zex—make them attracted for a reason.

-

Roxas rolled to his side, clutching his swimming head. Everything spun, and pressure pushed at him from every side. It felt like a headache—not that he could have headaches, of course. He couldn’t have the blood vessels in his head painfully constricted if there was no blood in his veins. And since he had no blood, he could not have a headache. And since he had no tears, his eyes couldn’t be blurring. And since he had no heart, his heart could not suddenly pound twice and then fall silent again.

In fact, none of this was probably happening at all. Probably, nothing had happened for fifteen years.

“Another dream about her,” he whispered. Another dream about that girl from his last life, which he remembered—the cobblestone-paved town, that sometimes froze silent, like a movie on pause, and then she would be there, like a ghost, in a white dress, her arms clutched in front of her. Or she would appear in a window, behind lace curtains, or at a table across from him, half hidden by white flowers…

He stared out the window at the gray city. It was raining, this morning… or afternoon. Whichever. Cars screamed at each other, and a dull buzz of human noise penetrated his locked and blinded window.

He had dreamed he was standing on a vast stained glass window which depicted people he felt he should have known. Birds and vines gathered at his feet, obscuring the images. He looked through a window at a murky, dark place, full of bookshelves. It was hard to tell what he was seeing, because the whole inside of the building was like a static-filled TV screen. But then, everything cleared for a second.

For a second, he saw a girl, with pale, messy hair, and an expression of surprise in her bright eyes, her hands clutching a book, gazing back at him. Just staring.

For a second, he knew. And for a second, his heart beat like the fluttering wings of a white bird.

But he was only dreaming. He was always dreaming.

Roxas had had such dreams before, but not many. In fact, he had had twelve dreams in the whole of his life. He figured that, being heartless, he had nothing to think or dream about, so that’s why the few dreams he did have were about very old memories and thoughts that belonged to someone else.

He had had one dream, very long ago, about speaking with The Superior. The Superior had been his childhood boogie monster after that dream. He had had one nice dream about the flower lady from Hollow Bastion. Three were about Axel, his old friend, and each of them was more unsettling than the last. He had had two dreams about Sora, and one about falling from a very high place.

And now, he had had five dreams about Namine.

He figured that he shouldn’t have dreams at all, but then again, he figured that he shouldn’t be able to do anything. He had no heart, right? So he shouldn’t be able to talk or move or breathe. Perhaps there was a placeholder in his chest, some contraption of pulp and blood and organ tissue, but it sure didn’t do anything.

He was sure everyone could tell he was heartless, anyway. It showed under his eyes, all over his skin, beneath his fingernails—he was pale, everywhere, like a fish living in a cave pool. He was sickly and unhealthy. Well-meaning women pushed him to eat more, but eating was so unpleasant. He was a zombie, and could not swallow human food. He was a vampire and he couldn’t eat the dead. Eating the dead when you were dead had to be some sort of taboo.

His friends mocked him for his physique, and for how slow he was, how weak, and how sluggish and lazy. And when he reacted to their discussions of sexuality and dating with nothing but disgust, they mocked him for his prudish tendencies. He told someone once that he was asexual, not a prude, and he was mocked for that. He was broken, and he was mocked, and when he tried to fix it, he was mocked.

As far as he was concerned, he didn’t work and he would never work. He wasn’t interested in anyone or anything. He used to want someone to come at him with glue and a screwdriver and screw him up a bit, push him a bit farther, and a bit farther until Roxas had to react, one way or another. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to rise out of his pile of blood a new person, a whole person, like everyone else, or if he just wanted his ribcage to crack and a few screws to secure him into the ground.

Either would be an acceptable change. He had never experienced change before, and he wanted to feel different once.  

“Roxas!” someone shouted. Roxas blinked. “Are you awake?”

“Yes, Anne.”

Anne coughed and shuffled back downstairs. Poor Anne. He would feel for her if he could. She was a barren woman, and a sickly one, with bad joints and bad blood, so not trusting in herself, she married her boyfriend young and adopted a poor orphaned boy to take care of. Then her husband cheated and left and her baby boy grew into Roxas. Roxas, who was her hope of support, and who didn’t leave his bed some weekends.

Poor Anne.

He slouched out of his bed and oozed into his clothes, fighting himself to make his body work, and then proceeded to fall out of his bedroom and into the kitchen. He muttered and tripped through life, more or less, keeping himself small, in dual hope that nothing would happen and that it would all end soon.

He was on call for his real second life, and all he got were the words ‘your reincarnation is very important to us, please hold’ over and over, interspersed with shitty music.

Anne gave him a spare breakfast of toast and water. She used to give him more, but he eventually made it clear that it was all he wanted. She informed him of the changes in her life, and he said nothing in return. Eventually, it was time for her to leave for work, which meant it was almost time for him to leave for work.

Roxas tied on his shoes and grabbed his old, scuffed-up skateboard from the hallway. He had adopted the so-called ‘skater’ look to go with his preferred mode of transport—he wore loose, largely unwashed clothes of whatever color was drabbest, and though he apparently had nice, thick blond hair, he never brushed it. The only part of his attire he paid any attention to was the singular piercing in his upper ear, as homage to the young Roxas who considered the piercing gun his last hope of feeling something. He seemed to have cultivated a bit of pride in it, so close enough.

With his apathetic look came an apathetic personality—not infused with callousness or bitterness, since he was never uncaring because he particularly hated anyone, but saturated with slowness, misunderstanding, and hopelessness—entirely constructed on a desire to be left alone.

Though he seemed to have mostly been born unable to do anything, up to and including feeding himself, he did remember a few things instinctually, as if he had already trained those skills long ago—he could hack a computer with decent success, he could write and edit with notable success, he could hit a baseball with remarkable success, he could throw any fucker, no matter what they weighed, right over his shoulder and onto the pavement for a few good kicks, and he could skate. He probably could have gotten onto a skateboard as a baby and rolled right down the street. He knew that he had been taught how to do these things, much longer ago than he should remember, but by now, those who had taught him these things—his friends—had forgotten him.

And so he had turned the other cheek and forgotten them.

After stumbling down the stairs to the road, he had to cover his eyes and wait for the bright summer sunlight to stop hurting. He had hoped that since school was out of the summer, he could just close his eyes and go to sleep for a   few months—but some sort of decency buried within him told him that Anne would have a much nicer time of it if there was a small reservoir of extra money lying around that she could pretend she wasn’t taking rent from. So he found himself a job as the receptionist in an abortion clinic—no one else wanted it, and his only qualification for a job was that he would do pretty much anything. At least he really didn’t have to do much other than hand really upset people papers.

Still, he had to travel almost a mile through the city to get to his paper-handing job. It wouldn’t be that long a ride, honestly, if he lived anywhere BUT an old, badly paved, horrendously crowded city.

He had memorized the route, so he cut across streets and waited for no man—he figured it didn’t matter if he took risks. He knew what to dodge and what to jump over, and he was prepared for his knees to jar and bruise over the many split and fractured stones he had to bounce over. He could more or less assume that everyone would jump out of his way, unless they were really determined to stare at their phones instead of looking ahead.

Today, he was proven wrong. A foot was placed purposefully on the pavement before him, with intention to trip him up, and tripped he was. His ass was in the air in less than a second, his legs were flipped over his head, and his only thought was, ‘it’s been a while since someone’s tried to kill me.’

He fell hard, and could feel the skin of his back and his hands scrape up, though he never bled. The buzz of physical pain was a strong sensation for him, since it was one of the only things he could claim to feel—but it was as fleeting for him as he assumed drugs and sex were to everyone else, so he avoided addiction. “Shit,” he said, holding his head as he sat up so that his brains wouldn’t fall out or something, “What was that for?”

The first thing he saw when he glared up at his attacker were his horrendously torn-up jeans, looking almost too large to hang onto his thin, bony hips, which stood perhaps five miles off of the ground. If his hips were thin, his waist was practically corseted—he looked like a normal human grasped by the hands of a giant and stretched one foot vertically— and was covered only with an undershirt. His arms were buckled up with leather jewelry, his nails appeared to be actually painted, and Roxas saw the telltale black marks of tribal tattoos tracing up his arms beneath his excessive costuming.

As for his face… Roxas was pretty sure he was beholding a clown escaped from the circus. Not just any clown, but the clown used to make children afraid of clowns.

There were more tattoos on his face—long, knife-like black marks under his eyes. And there was silver glittering in his ears. And his hair was as red as spilled blood but it stuck up in an armory of spikes over his skull and all around his shoulders, as if he had stuck a fork into a socket and stayed there forever. His fiery hair and brilliantly green eyes made him look like Christmas in hell, on a bed of pale skin like December snow. Freezing, burning, malevolent December snow.

And perhaps his image as a whole would be strange but not so incredibly disturbing if he weren’t smiling, gorgeously, widely, with an excited, toothy mouth but glazed eyes.

Roxas’s heart shuddered.

Shuddered, stopped, and restarted, like an engine being forced into action. He felt an emotion, and it was the terror of death struck into him. Maybe this guy had killed him in his last life.

The man imitated the grin of Jaws, crossed his arms, and said, in possibly the most obnoxious tone Roxas had ever heard, “Wow, good job Roxas. Don’t you know how to make an entrance.”

Fuck.

“Axel.”

Roxas tried to stand back up, but his head—his back—his hands—his chest—all suddenly throbbed with pain, and the world turned and swam around him. He gingerly clutched his hesitating fist over the previously dead hunk of meat in his chest, which seemed to be pounding hard enough to break him.

Well, he was finally getting his wish, then. He was really going to explode and die.

“Awwww, he remembers me.” Axel imitated him, clutching at the fabric over his heart. “I always knew you would be there, somewhere, close to me, beside me, just out of my reach, should I come back to life at all. I knew you would be here, and all I would have to do is find you and swoop you into my arms. My heart was dead, but I knew you were waiting for me, somewhere, so I lived.” Axel’s voice was breathy, sighing, and it was mocking and honest at once. His gaze was intense, and dark, and strange.

“I waited for you. I was dead, but I waited for you. But I was betrayed! I was betrayed when life had me faithfully working a job as a barista, waiting for my true prince, and life poured the actual hero of heart Sora and his actual princess of heart Kairi into my little coffee shop, there to order a fluffy caramel crappuccino and give me back my heart against my will. The kids gave me the funniest fucking faces, you have no idea, followed by some of the most girly squeaking I have ever held ears to, and they bolt out of the room like rabbits running for their lives. And their fear was better than a defibrillator. IT WAS ALIVE!” he shouted, flinging his arms out and baring his chest so that the whole world could behold what a nutcase he was.

Roxas held up a finger to shush Axel before he pushed himself up past the pain. “So, you’re crazy now?” he asked, breathless.

“Gloriously,” sighed Axel. “Manic is a more apt word.” He went from smiling to concerned in a second, lowering himself from the waist, like a crane, until he gazed at Roxas at his own level, green eyes expanding, arms folded. “I knew it even then. I’m serious. Maybe we would dodge around each other for a while, dance a little, be a little separated by fate just for the tragedy of it. I knew it as a fact, algebraically proved, that if I was here, you were here, and even if we waltzed on the opposite sides of the dance floor our whole lives, both of us were here, alive, somewhere hidden in the depths of the city. Two star-crossed rats.”

“And how would you—”

“I knew, blondie. I knew like a fox knows where to hunt under the snow. I knew because if I was here then you were here, because we are a balanced equation. And here I am and here you are, you staring at me wide-eyes with wonder, me staring at you wide-eyes with wonder, you shocked to silence, me spitting bullshit cause I’ve got nothing good enough to say for this actual moment of miracle.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’ve always been good at that.” Roxas did feel a bit bewildered, he would admit that. He was bound up in a web of sudden nerves. He didn’t know what feeling they were resolving into yet. Or maybe he would just feel like a bunch of exposed nerves forever, like a jellyfish, exposed electrical impulses.

“Always,” whispered Axel, delighted. “You know it, boy. I’m very good at speaking without thinking.” Axel leaned towards Roxas, so that his face was only about a foot away from his. “Huh.” He was starting, unabashed, into Roxas’s face, tracing his eyes, and the curve of his cheeks, and the line of his lips, framing his form, as if drawing him into the space of the city with his eyes.

“What are you doing?” asked Roxas.

“Checking you out,” said Axel. His breath smelled like fish, like sushi, like smoke and like alcohol. It was absolutely impossible to tell form his flat tone exactly how he meant what he just said.

“Could you not,” said Roxas, in an equally flat tone.

Axel gave Roxas another strikingly demonic sort of grin, leaning backwards onto the heels of his feet. “Roxas, you know what I never damn realized, in that dark life?”

“You… never realized… the value of tact,” Roxas guessed. Roxas couldn’t quite remember… had Axel always acted like this? Was this sort of invasiveness a new things that came with Axel’s heart, and if so, how could he get it to stop?

“We did jobs together for years, brother, we sat side by side and took our food and drink together, we were each other’s real confidants, we were partners in crime and partners in crime against crime, and I never got to the truth of the matter that you are ADORABLE.”

With that, Axel lurched forward (reminding Roxas, in a second of panic, of the movements of the unfortunate undead in zombie movies)and Roxas found himself being embraced by what felt like a bundle of twigs. Axel was burning so warm he could have been suffering a fever (and maybe he was, that would explain a lot) and his arms wrapped around Roxas like the legs of an insect clinging to a branch. He breathed down Roxas’s neck, and Roxas felt as if he was struck by lightning.

Not to say he was warm and fuzzy. He felt like he had just gone through a traumatic electrical shock and now every nerve in his body was overloaded and burning.

Roxas moved to extract Axel from his new position around his body, meaning to shove him back, but it ended out he overdid it and slammed Axel onto his ass. It was pretty satisfying, if accidental. “I didn’t—shit—“ he began. “Sorry, didn’t meant too—I just don’t like being touched out of nowhere, shit, I swear that was accidental.”

“I love you too, Roxy,” stated an actually bewildered Axel. “That was a surprise.” 

“Don’t call me Roxy,” said Roxas. “That… no.”

As the two men stared at each other, one from his position on the ground and the other looking like he would be clutching a shield to his chest if he could, it occurred to the both of them that maybe they got off on the wrong foot here.

“I thought you still liked me?” said Axel, sounding strange.

“Like… I…” Roxas shook his head. “I remember you, but do I know you? I’m just… confused. I’m sorry.”

“What’s to be confused about?” Axel stood up as gracefully as he could. “I remember you, and you remember me. We’ve got each other memorized, and we have each other from beyond death. You can’t turn your back on a call like that!”

Roxas felt like fists were punching him from inside. It was especially awful after being used to feeling nothing. Suddenly guilt and confusion and uncertainty flooded into him as if a hurricane had come after a drought, and there was no reservoir in him to hold the water. “I have work?”

“What?”  

Roxas turned on his heel, got on his skateboard, and got away as fast as he could. His heart was hammering and he felt sick. But the farther he got from Axel, the more ridiculous he felt for running away. Surely he could control a few confused feelings for the sake of his… for him?

But he, at least, though he felt stupid about himself, was assured that this wouldn’t be the end. His thrumming heart told him that now, surely, Axel would find him again.

-

Roxas spent work almost as usual, sorting papers, accepting calls, letting people into see the doctor, with only one massively annoying difference. Work was miserable, because he worked with miserable, disrupted people. Suddenly, the gathered sadness meant something for him.

Once home, he curled up and lay on the couch, feeling like he was in the ocean. Waves of blood flowed through him, rocking his whole body. He didn’t know how to describe how he felt. Like he was being suffocated, a little, but also like he was disconnected from reality, unable to see where he was, or feel, totally, what was happening to him. Maybe he had already drowned and he was dying. Oh god, maybe he was dying. That would explain everything. Like how, after barely eating for a decade, he ate a bag of gummy worms and washed it down with a half gallon of soda in one evening. Or why he was suddenly massively uncoordinated and bouncing off the walls when he tried to walk.

The sudden, piercing call of the phone broke his thoughts and made him wince. The sound was like a nail being driven into his head. He ignored it, waiting for Anne to pick it up.

“Roxas?” said Anne suddenly. “It’s for you?”

“It’s what?” asked Roxas. Who on earth would call him? He never gave anyone the house’s phone number, and he didn’t know anyone anyway, so—

Oh. “Oh no,” he groaned to himself. “He couldn’t. could he?”

He nervously put the phones up to his cheek. “Hello?”

“Roxas!!!”

He could.

Anne raised one overplucked eyebrow at Roxas’s look of defeat. “Who is it?” she hissed.

“This… Guy…” muttered Roxas. “I can explain later.”

“Er, this is Roxas, right?” came the voice over the phone.

“Yes,” said Roxas. “You got lucky in that regard.”

“Look, I’m sorry…”

“Look, I’m upset!”

Anne, who had been leaning as close to the phone as she could, snorted to hide her laughter and began to waltz away. “Sounds like a gem,” she said, reaching for her bottle of peppermint schnapps.

“Hey, Roxy, please—”

“No, really, do not call me Roxy,” Roxas muttered.

Anne was forced to leave the room to avoid cackling so loud that Axel could hear her.

“Alright. Sorry. You already said that, sorry, I forgot.” Axel sounded reasonably contrite. But listening to him… everything he said made Roxas’s stomach twist. Not terribly, and not pleasantly, just twist. But every time Axel spoke, he was just fucking awed, because Axel was here, and Axel made him feel his own heart, his own full body, his blood and his bones, all moving and shifting. And it was too much to have at once. Maybe ever. “Roxas, please, I don’t know what I’ve done, but you have to come see me. We have to meet up somewhere. Because we used to know each other, brother.”

“I… I don’t know. I want to see you, but…”

Axel’s sigh came out broken and pixelated like a dying gasp. It was only the phone, separating one long sound into syllables—but Roxas’s stomach twisted. “All we have to do is talk,” said Axel. “Just talk about what happened then. Just see each other. How could we not?”

Roxas bit his lip. He didn’t know if he could handle knowing Axel, in the same way a person normally wasn’t sure if they could handle a severe electric shock. Why hadn’t he waited to call him later?

And Roxas might have stayed in a place of indecision, but then he remembered something. He remembered saying something. He had promised Axel that he would find him again. Specifically, in this next life, he had promised Axel to find him. He had failed there, so why couldn’t he at least… follow him?

And then Roxas’s heart just hurt.

“Yes. Fine. Yes. Let’s see each other. I have a lot to ask.”

“Great!” Roxas remembered exactly the sort of face Axel must have right now. Sparkling eyes, a big smile, a bliss so intense on his face it almost looked like worry. “Where? When?”

“Uh.” Damn. The choices somehow kept getting harder. “Well, the things is, I…”

“…Don’t get out much?”

“Oh, fuck it, Axel,” Roxas sighed.

Axel just laughed. “Oh, how I understand. I’ll just give you my address, okay?”

“Oh, okay…” Roxas darted to get something to write on before Axel rattled off the numbers.

“You got that?” Axel asked after the fact.

“Mmhmm. Yeah. Written down. Not memorized, sorry.”

Axel’s laughter was surprised and heartfelt. But then, after an uncomfortable silence, he said, “Okay, then, come over! See ya!”

“Wait, now??” Roxas asked. But Axel hung up to make his meaning quite clear.

Roxas started at the phone in his hands, wondering what exactly had just happened to his life. Anne found a way to walk nonchalantly back in as if she had to pick something up in the room anyway. “So…” she asked, “what’s this guy like? Does he have a good job? Is he rich? Is he handsome?”

“What?”

“Indulge me, okay? It’s almost like girltalk,” she said nostalgically. “What’s the guy like?”

“None of the above,” said Roxas, “unless… can ‘scary’ be kind of ‘handsome?’”

“…no,” said Anne. She pursed her lips. “Well, is he nice?”

Roxas was about to say something unkind, but then, he paused. He remembered Axel in the past. He remembered… and he wondered if he was being fair. “Yes. In a roundabout way.”

“Well,” said Anne, pursing her lips. “sounds fun. Not like a keeper, but exciting. Good for you, but bad for you, you know? I do know a few things about that sort of guy, but as for you…”

“Me? What?”

Anne tossed a few crumped dollars out of her purse at Roxas. “Take this. And take your phone. Don’t let him trick you into thinking things you don’t think. Wonder why he’s being nice to you from time to time. And crying does actually get you places, even if he seems tough. And no, really, find out if he has a good job.”

“W… Wait. Are you under the impression I am dating him?” asked Roxas.

“Kid, I totally don’t know anymore,” said Anne, sounding sage and learned. “I don’t fucking know what you do. And it looks like you’re gonna start surprising me from now on, huh?” With that, she waved her hand in the direction of the door and said, “Have fun.”

Roxas was silent for a second. “Thanks,” he said.

Anne shrugged, and turned away, clutching her drink. Roxas packed up everything she had given him, got his skateboard, and went out the door.

-

Namine was drawing.

She drew Demyx dancing. He was very good at it, just like he said— and he looked perfect that, way, when concentrated, in focus, with his wiry body used for the purpose theater and dancing had formed it to—determined motion. She drew him how he looked when leaning against the bar, smiling, after beating a difficult song, smile boosted by the cheers he received from around the arcade.

He looked like he had been alive for a long time, not just recently. Perhaps he had spent a lot of time trying to be alive. Or perhaps he was the type that was cheerful anyway. Her mind began to wander, and she drew a few songs as people instead, whatever songs were in her head, given feet and dancing alongside Demyx.

She drew Zexion as well, as he look while half-watching Demyx, and half absorbed in his own thoughts. Perhaps not happy, but perhaps not angry. Perhaps fond, perhaps not. She drew his hunched, compressed, but somehow… balanced form, leaning against the wall, looking away, contained, but not isolated. To capture Zexion was to insist on many small clarifications and balance many traits on a thin edge.

She drew little white birds on the next blank page, she lightly sketched little white birds, and then, flowering vines, from the corner of the page, trailing slowly into the center, eating up the page. She tried to draw the shadow of the boy.

Her hands shook as she drew a little heart in the center of the boy’s chest, a hearts with tapers and swirls, and then labeled, the picture “Roxas.”

Some pictures asked to be painted, and some did not. Some remained as little shadows, some wanted little lines of gold and green and some blue to make a brilliant sky.

This one she would paint.

-

Axel lived in the attic above an occult shop that catered to Hindus, Pagans, Wiccans, and the Spiritual of all sorts, stocked with crystals and incense and candles and hardcover volumes of strange knowledge. The store was run by a friend of Axel’s, but he was a new friend. Roxas asked the person at the desk where he would find Axel, and he just sort of waved in a direction that led Roxas to the back of the store, smiling dreamily. Roxas pulled apart several thin cotton hangings emblazoned with illustrations of the pentacle, the chakras, and the tree of life, before finding a set of wooden stairs hidden in the very back, with a gate in front of it.

The gate was unlocked—he supposed it only served as a way to signify that customers weren’t supposed to be back here. The stairs were rickety, and they creaked, and they were home to a small colony of beetles, but luckily, there weren’t many of them. They curved around to find the floor above the store, and dumped him into Axel’s house without so much as a door or a curtain.

What Roxas found looked a little less like… whatever he expected, and a little more like one level of a suburban home. Before him was a living room and a kitchen, there was one or two closed door that he could see, but one hung halfway open to a bedroom. The place was sparsely furnished in what was obviously cheap furniture, and sheets and rugs that had clearly come freshly tie-dyed from the store below were laid everywhere as decoration. There were books lying about, and a few coffee mugs and knick knacks, but for the most part, the place was surprisingly clean. The air was stuffy and sweet, as influenced by the amount of burning incense below, but it wasn’t suffocating, and the fact that everything was actually very clean and plain helped that along. There was no mad, punk clown decoration scheme like Roxas had expected—the walls had been painted purple, and there was a poster or two, but that was it.

It was, over all, a comfortable place. Air conditioner, rugs, interesting little statues and stones gathered from the store below, a cage of what appeared to be lizards. A notably old boom box sat on the floor, playing some sort of slow, repetitive, bass-heavy experimental rock. And Axel was lounging on an old, worn, floral couch, with what looked for all intense and purposes to be a book on chemistry and a notebook in his lap.

He was studying.

Well. 

“Wow,” said Roxas, “Are you in college? And you can you afford this place? I think it’s bigger than my apartment.” He looked wonderingly at the high ceilings and well-stocked kitchen. When Axel jumped and looked up at him, startled to see him there, eye wide, suddenly Roxas wished he had introduced himself by saying something else. He wasn’t sure what. 

Axel scrambled to turn off the grinding music. “Shit. Roxas! Sit down, I have coke out. Somewhere.”

Roxas sat uncomfortably on the edge of the couch, taking in his surroundings. Axel jumped up to grab drinks (there might have been something more than coke in Axel’s). He was barefoot, and Roxas was pretty sure that his toenails were ALSO painted. And he may have been wearing an ankle bracelet. “I’ve been in college a few years, yeah. Just the state university. I’m studying bio and chem. In Engineering.”

“Really?”

“Hell yes.” Axel approached the couch, giving Roxas his drink and sitting almost… delicately on the other side of the couch. Maybe hesitantly. The awkwardness of his bone-skinniness was very much emphasized. “And since this shit is the sort of shit no one wants to learn, I worked with an advisor to pretty much give me a full ride once I promised to be a slave to the study of bioengineering forever. I hope he wants super powered illegal human clones, because that’s what he’s getting.”

“Damn. So you must be actually pretty smart then,” said Roxas, who realized how dickish the statement was AFTER he said it.

“I’m a genius starchild, but don’t tell anyone,” said Axel, grimacing. “They might make me set the bar higher than a foot off the ground.”

Roxas chuckled. He felt a bit of his nervousness finally relaxing. “So how did you get this apartment, though? Did you get it from a parent? Did you have parents?”

“Nnnno. Nope,” sighed Axel. “I was kind of a freaky kid. I stayed in the foster system, more often in large homes than with actual foster families, until I hit high school, at which point the caretakers said, ‘shit, kid, you’re one of the ones that never get adopted ever. We could send you to the coal farms if you want. Or maybe to the laboartories where they give you super experimental strains of AIDs and feed your eyeballs to the rats.’ And I said, ‘thanks, but actually, I think I’ll try to make my own way.’”

“And so what did you do?”

“I made my own way. I mooched off a friend with very nice parents for a few months, tried to live in a craigslist apartment that… didn’t work out… and then my buddy Jake down below at the register found out I was on the brink of homelessness and said ‘dude, give me your minimum wage and I shall let you live comfortably above my Buddha temple and feed you and we will call it even. Don’t complain about my midnight Hare Krishna séances, I won’t complain about your music, and we will be a happy couple.’ Then I got to college and started earning enough to buy my own food, so for the heck of it, I opened a bank account.”

Roxas stared. “College? Bank account? Is this the Axel I remember?”

“Teasing? Humor? Is this the Roxas I remember?” countered Axel. “I screwed up my last life. I think you’ll remember. I decided to avoid royally fucking everything over twice. I’ll have enough hounds on my heels naturally. It comes with being a genetic fuck up.”

Roxas bit his lip. “Also. Couple?”

Axel truly winced, and rubbed the back of the neck. “We may or may not sleep with each other from time to time. I promise that this is not considered payment in any way. I was given living space WITHOUT Jake having designs on my purity. Or. Maybe he did, but they weren’t REALLY devious designs. Jake has no capacity for scheming left in his head. The man is high most of his life anyway so in the end it’s just all really hilarious and fun. Not that you needed to know any of that.”

Roxas shuffled a little. “I dunno. So are you boyfriends? I guess I don’t understand.”

Axel buried his face in his hands. “Fuck me with a rake. No. This is what a person could call a casual relationship. I am sort of a slut.”

“I’m sure it’s not like that?” said Roxas, uncomfortable.

“I didn’t need to tell you about this,” sighed Axel. “You can just ignore that this is happening.”

“Have you been in a lot of relationships?”

Axel opened his mouth and closed it again. “A few. Not many of them long lasting.”

“It’s just weird to me. I’ve never felt like… without my heart, I didn’t even consider things like that. And I don’t now, either. I always called myself asexual. So it’s all… different for you?”

“Yeaaaaaaah heck tons different.” Was Axel blushing? “You probably are asexual, then. There are people with hearts that are also asexual. It happens. I think it’s safe to say that I was never asexual.”

“Even without your heart?”

Axel considered. “It was different then. Not always fun. It felt strange. But I couldn’t say I was asexual, no. I mean, if I was able to… do you really have to know all this?”

“No!” said Roxas. “No, no, sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I really didn’t. I’m just… confused.”

“About what?”

Roxas looked away.

“No, really, Roxas, what is it? Shit, if I said something that hurt you…”

“I assumed we would be the same?” said Roxas. “You were heartless, and I was heartless. I mean, you had a heart for a few years before me, so that’s already different, but if you were already so alive while heartless…”

“Then we’re different, I get it,” said Axel. “That’s no big deal. Everyone reacts to problems differently. Some people ignore it and go nuts trying to do what everyone else does, like me, some people wait it out like you do. That’s just a difference of personality.”

“Then you think we had personalities?”

“Being a man of science,” said Axel lazily, stretching his long arms behind him, over the couch, and grinning as he did, his amazingly wide grin, like his mouth was a somewhat sharp canyon in his skin, “I can’t help but feel that the source of personality lies in the codes of our DNA and the interpretation of our natural impulses is the jurisdiction of the brain, not the heart. I mean, I’m being technical, but we have hearts in our bodies. I know. I was x-rayed and shit. But just because the heart decides how alive you feel, adjusts how warm and cold you are, wakes you up with pounding blood or lets you go dull, doesn’t mean the heart decides everything about you.”

“I suppose.” Roxas huddled over the little glass in his hands. “I never felt like I had a personality.”

“Well, I mean, you were always a little lifeless,” Axel admitted. “You had sort of a zombie-like charm. Not all put together, brings dead things to your door sometimes, always a little confused, but how can you hate something so weirdly sweet? It would be like hating a cat for bringing you corpses of love.”

“I… did not always know what I was doing in the organization,” muttered Roxas, blushing a little.

“I think you noticed that I didn’t always have the best plans of action either.”

Roxas suddenly burst out laughing. Axel jumped, bright eyes wide. “Was it that funny?”

“It was hilarious,” Roxas giggled. “Oh. My god. If I had been more aware of how dumb you were at the time.”

Axel looked at Roxas, sighed, and looked down. He covered his smile with his hand. “Laugh it up, whatever,” he said, though he didn’t sound at all upset.

It was a weird dissonance for Roxas. Axel looked exactly as he had back then, but he acted differently now. He had been kind to Roxas before, he had listened to him, and cared for him, and he was really upset when Roxas tried to leave the organization, but now… he was considerate. Perceptive. Forward looking, a so much calmer, and… well… not murderous. It was incredible how much being less homicidal than more seemed to change a person. Well, having a heart, and a real conscience for some years seemed to change a few things.

All the same, it was just incredibly obvious how hard Axel was trying now; how desperately he wanted to be careful and kind. Axel realized that his enthusiastic speeches upon meeting Roxas were met with negative response, so he was toning himself down as much as he possibly could, acting calm, acting unfazed, acting like he wasn’t witnessing an actual miracle, even though inside his composed expression his eyes still glowed like spotlights. Even though he still liked like a demon displaced from hell, even though he was still gnarled and angular and sharp to look at.

Axel was composed. He had always been friendly, but now he was considerate. And that was something very new.

Suddenly, Roxas felt young.

“Hey,” said Axel suddenly, staring back up at the ceiling, “Do you want something to eat? I discovered eating a few years ago and it’s fucking incredible.”

“Uh. Sure. Yes? What brought that on?”

“Hunger brought this on. The fridge is this way,” he said, standing up with no further ceremony. When Roxas seemed reluctant to follow, Axel grinned and said, “It’s the dining room, not the Sacrifice To Kingdom Hearts room. I promise.”

“Becoming surprise-sacrificed became a real problem after a while, okay,” Roxas muttered.

After relocation to the kitchen table (wooden, stained, slightly uneven) and approximately six bowls of ramen noodles later (going through half of one’s teenage years with absolutely no existent appetite produced strange side effects) Axel cleared his throat. “What about you? You’re living somewhere, right? With parents maybe?”

“Just Anne. My adoptive mother. She’s… she tries her best. She has to work a lot, and she isn’t always altogether there. She married a huge douchebag when she was young, and adopted me, but then the guy left her alone with me to take care of. Which, she kept me, even when I grew up less than helpful.”

“She cared for you.”

“She is a bit slow and she makes at least two bad decisions before lunch every day but she’s very kind,” said Roxas.

“So she’s the only other one at home?”

“Yeah, just me and her. I don’t really know many other people. Any other people,” Roxas admitted. “Meeting people was just… a chore.”

Axel looked down at the table. “Well, the list can go from Anne to Anne and myself. If you’d like.”

“Do I have a choice in the matter?” said Roxas, smiling.

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Roxas’s guts twisted up a bit. “I mean, when a guy calls you, even if he shouldn’t even know your phone number…”

“When a guy has his number and address written on his backpack, what does he expect?” said Axel. There was a short silence before he added “… that was meant to sound a lot less creepy.”

“When did you even get to look at my backpack?”

“So are you going to school, then? Or do you just need a lot of supplies for work?”

Roxas glared at him a little. “Both. I usually bring something to do to the clinic, since I’m just a receptionist and I don’t do that much, and I am going to high school at—”

Axel choked on his drink. “High school?” he asked.

“Yes?” Roxas flushed. “I mean, there always was an age difference between us. Like. You knew that. Right.”

“Yes, yeah, obviously, but at that time—auuuugh.” He looked actually embarrassed. “So you’re, like, seventeen now?”

“Fifteen.”

Axel’s head hit the table. “Oh no. I think I could get arrested just for inviting you over.” He rubbed his eyes, then his head snapped up. “Wait, and Jake just let you up? Knowing that trippy asshole, he definitely thought there was something going on, so did he just… augh.”

“Wait, does he just… let people up to your room a lot?”

“If they’re able to mention me by name, I guess.”

Roxas was silent.

It took a few beats for Axel to realize what Roxas thought. “It’s mostly friends that come looking for me.”

“Okay.”

“Jake’s the only one I’m in a relationship-of-sorts right now.”

“Okay.”

“One of my exes keeps coming over, the one who kind of reminds me of Larxene, but I always tell her to go away, and I don’t even give her money, so that doesn’t count,” he said, sounding intense.

“Okay. Wait. Are you implying that you and Larxene—”

“No. Never. That’s terrifying. She and I were good partners. But in the name of purgatory did you ever TALK to her. She’s sadistic. She’s terrifying. I don’t know who you would have to be to… nooo.” Axel sighed, burying his face in his hands again. “I don’t need to be telling you all this, right? Why would it matter? Shit, I’m sorry. It was no big deal whenever it was my own problem, doing all this. I don’t mean to freak you out. I’m just… freaky, I guess.”

“It’s okay.”

“Do I gross you out?” Axel asked, quietly.  

“No, no, no,” said Roxas quickly. “I… sorry. I’m sorry. I missed you. I wanted to see you again. I always did. You were the one I remembered. You were the one that hurt me to remember. I wanted you. But now that I see you again, it’s just a lot? I guess? I see you and it’s overwhelming. It’s my problem. I’m dumb.” With that, Roxas definitely buried his face in his folded arms with the intention of staying there for a while.

He heard Axel shuffle around, but nothing happened for a second. “You know,” he said, sounding subdued, “People keep telling me that. One of my girlfriends, she said she was freaked out when she first met me, because I was way too intense or something. Too weird. I dunno what I do, but people keep saying that. Axel is super intense, and super weird, and you have to get used to him to be his friend. Jake appraises me as being like a really good batch of hallucinogenic, which the novice cannot imbibe, which is about the best way it’s ever been phrased to me. All the same. I freak people out. And I don’t want to overload you. I can’t keep it in, Roxas, inside, I am freaking crazy about you. Never leave me crazy about you. But I can’t tell you the amount of wrecked I would be if I fucked up our relationship again. So none of that. Absolutely none of that. You tell me to back off, I promise I will back off off of a fucking cliff. Into the waters of never see you again, if you want. I am enough nuts for you to do whatever. So whatever you want. In summary.”

“I want you,” said Roxas, voice muffled. “It’s me I don’t want.”

Axel has decided against touching him before. Now, he sort of half-held him, arm across Roxas’s shoulders. He was still very warm, Roxas noted. Maybe he was just at a constant high body temperature. Oddly enough, the extra contact calmed Roxas down a bit, when he usually hated to be touched.

“I got an idea,” said Axel, after a minute of silence.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got something cool I should show you,” said Axel. “Basically the best distraction ever.”

“How cool?” asked Roxas, voice still muffled.

“Absolutely rad,” said Axel.

Roxas sort of choked and laughed at once. Axel replied with an almost manic giggle. Eventually, they found their way onto their feet, sort of shoving and pushing each other on the way across the room to the shelf where Axel kept this mysterious, rad thing.

-

Namine couldn’t sleep. She twisted around in her coiled blankets, upside down and sprawled, like the image of the hanged man. She tried sneaking down to drink some water and eat some leftover food, but she was still awake, and she tried getting up to paint to release to energy, but she couldn’t start painting, and she tried meditating, which failed, and breathing deep and reciting poetry by memory, but nothing calmed her mind.    

She just ended up more awake than she was before.

She knew what she had to do. Distractions would not help her; she had to confront what was keeping her awake. She walked out of bed, slipped a long green sundress over her nightclothes, and tugged her sandals onto her feet.

It was the dead of night, but visions of birds and vines and a mosaic crowded her mind. She was going to the library.

-

“What is this?” Roxas asked.

“This is the keychain that I gave to Sora. You might remember. Or might not. I was dying, and he was there, so I gave his Keyblade the power of awesome.”

“That doesn’t sound like exactly how it was…”

“Hush up,” said Axel, “and Merry Christmas.”

Roxas clasped the little charm in his hands. It was shaped like Axel’s chakrams, a little wheel of spikes and points, fashioned with what really looked and felt like steel, with chipped red paint brushed over parts of it. “Really? You’d give it to me?”

“Yes. Use it to accessorize your dull black backpack. Make everyone at school jealous. And your teachers a bit worried. Think of me. Besides, I gave it to you in the first place. Even if I had to hand it to Sora, it’s not really him I was giving it to. As far as I’m concerned, it was already yours.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Roxas turned the sharp, heavy charm around in his hands. “It looks just like it,” he said, and then, “It’s a shame it doesn’t do anything anymore.”

“Well, trust me, it still has a wicked edge, but yeah, it’s a little more pointless without a Keyblade around.”

“I don’t even know how I’ll explain to Anne what it is,” sighed Roxas.

“Will she not like you to have it?” asked Axel.

“No, she’ll think it’s adorable, she’s just incredibly nosy and has to have the full story about everything that happens ever,” sighed Roxas.

“Well, she’ll enjoy the story of why you’re getting home so late then,” laughed Axel.

Roxas froze. “Wait. What time is it?”

“One in the morning,” said Axel.

Roxas rained incredible curses upon an unsuspecting Axel, who looked halfway between bewildered and impressed. “One in the morning? Jesus Christ!”

“It’s not that late,” said Axel.

“It is if your foster mother is expecting you back!!”

“Can you call her?”

“She always passes out early! If she’s up this late, it’s because she’s worried sick and sort of angry with me! I used to stay outside all night without meaning to, since I didn’t always know where I was, but it’s not happened in a while, so she probably thinks something happened, oh God, if I walk in, she’ll just wake up and give me a lecture about using protection or something—”

“If it’ll suck that much, then just stay here.”

Roxas gave him a look. “Are you crazy? Stay out all night when she’s already paranoid?”

“Well, if the damage is already done…”

Roxas closed his eyes. “And she locks the door at night and I think I forgot my key. Ugh. Yeah I should probably stay over.”

Axel grinned brightly. “Alright! We’ll make it a party! You drink?”

“Um. Never.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Axel sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Look at this clever guy. Let’s see. You into movies?”

“Yeah, actually. Even when I didn’t really connect to the story, I always thought film was kind of beautiful,” Roxas admitted.

“Ah, a budding Cinema buff. Perfect. I’ll have plenty of things you’d love to see, if you’re looking for good cinematography. But anyway. The cinema a few blocks away shows movies all night, and a new Batman movie came out last week, and fuck if I’ll miss that.”

As Axel sprinted about, babbling about how excited he was for the movie, and how long it would take them to walk over there, Roxas decided that it would be a bad idea to ask what a Batman was.

-

The streets were silent but for a few sleepless households and Namine’s feet crunching on the loose gravel road. It was perhaps seventy degrees that summer night, windless and warm, with all the stars in fiery display. Namine could recognize the north star, and the two bears, and the hunter, Orion… the moonless night was, for the most part, lit by the white bulbs of scattered streetlights, and in the poor light, the young girl walking down the street alone looked like nothing more than a ghost. Full tree branches rose dark and obscuring overhead, and sometimes, strange early birds called to Namine as she walked by, but aside from those simple creatures, she passed by nothing living on her walk. Suburbia is a ghost town in the early hours, stretching for miles, still and quiet enough for the ring of the cicadas to seem loud.

The walk from her house to the library was barely a mile. To her, it was a short walk. She was used to pacing for miles to find what she needed in the turning, sprawling, hilly suburb. She liked to think that walking the labyrinth of quiet streets like this, as she often did, made her contemplative.

There was no traffic, so she crossed the street as she liked. The few lights around the library were out, so it was very dark there. The only light, it seemed, was the reflective glow of the mosaic in the courtyard, whose glossy flat stones seemed to be illuminated by their own power.

Namine stood still just outside of the circle, not totally certain about what she had come here for. She walked around the perimeter of the mosaic, noticing that even though there were usually birds there all day long, there was no trace of them at night. The whole garden, stones and vines and blooming flowers alike, looked simply untouched and unspoiled, like the ferns and fruits of Eden, scarce seen by humanity and thus open to the power of nature or God instead. There was a serenity to the place, and a sacredness; the concentration of beauty inside a veil of mystery. The garden had a taste of both the unknown and the ideal.

She was careful not to step on any vines or branches, tiptoeing around the stones as if she were dancing ballet. As careful as she was, though, her shoes hit something she hadn’t seen with bare eyes—something that sounded metallic, and clucked as it clattered around the cobblestones, sent flying by her foot.

For a second, her heart pounded, as the loud sound shattered her reverie. Then, calming herself down, she bent over to pick the object up, figuring it was some soda can or other such litter.

But it was something much nicer than that. It was a little keychain, a charm on a silver chain— a little box, perhaps the size of a cigarette case, heavy and solid, certainly made of a good metal, with the ace of hearts painted on the outside. Namine recognized instantly.

It was the keychain she made to make Lady Luck, the Wonderland Keyblade she invented for Sora while he was in Castle oblivion. It was a simple design, but there was no way she could mistake it—its form and weight were exact, and it bore that little mark carved on its base that she sketched onto the corner of all her finished paintings—the swirl-decorated heart. She no longer owned her original designs form those days, but she remembered the look exactly.

She held the charm to her chest, for a minute, just wondering, and then clipped it to the strap of her purse. When she looked back up, she saw something strange.

The door from the garden to the library was simple, rectangular, glass door, as far as she remembered, but now, it looked different. It was ornate, wooden and painted white, double sided, with small stained glass windows upon it, and she was almost certain that it didn’t look like that before. And seeing it… she felt a strange sense of Déjà vu.

She approached it slowly, very slowly, clutching the strap of her purse. Some part of her was worried about the sudden change, and wary, the other part of her was just curious. When she got to the door, which shone through the cracks and the colored windows with a bright light from inside (should it be doing that?), she took a calming, but shaky breath and grasped the door’s handle.

A shock rippled through her, hurting her fingers, and she jumped back. Everything flashed brightly, blinding her vision for a second, and she could swear, in that moment when she couldn’t see, that she heard a voice from above whisper to her, saying, “the door is still shut.”

She whirled on her heel, blinking, but no one was behind her, or beside her, or above her, or anywhere. No one hid in the darkness, but her heart was beating loud and hard enough to shake her.

Her vision came back slowly. Her panic subsided. Blinking, gazing around her at the night, at the glaring stars, at the silent, bent trees, she suddenly felt very nervous. The unreality of the situation dawned on her and she found herself running for home.

-

When she finally opened the front door, breathing heavily and disoriented, she almost absent mindedly walked up the stairs to her room before she saw Linda, seated at the kitchen table, in her robe, waiting.

“You’re back.” Linda smiled, her eyes crinkling, but she looked nervous.  She was clutching a cup of hot chocolate, which smelled like it had some sort of mint in it, in her white-knuckled hands.

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” Namine said.

“Where were you?”

“The library.”

“It’s closed at this time of night.”

“I know. I just wanted to walk. I really didn’t mean to worry you.”

Linda smiled a little. “I shouldn’t have been worried. You go out at night a lot.” Namine decided to sit next to her at the table. “But you’ve been acting differently in the past few days. I guess I was thinking about that.”

“I know I have,” said Namine. She’s love to explain the truth to Linda, since she had always been such a patient, kind sort of mother, but it was impossible. She settled for saying, “I’ve felt cheerful lately.”

“I know. It’s good. I don’t feel bad about it,” said Linda. “Is it about those new friends of yours?”

“They have cheered me up,” she admitted.

“What are they like?”

“Why?”

“I’m curious. I do want to know what your friends are like, if you’ll be around them often.”

“Well…” Namine looked at her folded hands on the table, uncertain about what to say. “Demyx is… he’s sort of strange. He’s very loud and energetic, he loves the theater, and music, and dancing… he seems a bit oblivious. I’m not sure he always understands what’s happening around him, but he’s kind. He’s so strange, really, that’s the only thing to call him. Sort of the artistic bohemian, I guess.”

Linda chuckled. “I remember art school. He sounds like fine company. And the other one?”

“Zexion,” Namine supplied. “Zexion… is…”

“Strange?”

“Well… yes,” said Namine. “He’s introverted. He loves books, and reading, and he mostly keeps to himself. He doesn’t say much, but he’s smart, he’s rational, and he likes to help, to find things out and get things fixed… he’s devoted, and a hard worker, that much I remember. He doesn’t exactly take care of himself, though…”

“They sound like interesting folk, that’s for sure,” said Linda, sounding a bit perturbed. “Where on earth did you meet them?”

Namine blinked. “Well… I knew them years ago, at school, but they graduated…” close enough. “And I thought they had moved away, and I wouldn’t see them again, but it ends up they were back this summer. I ran into them, well in the library.” Linda chuckled. “I was just browsing around when I ran into Demyx, who was… looking for Zexion at the time. Though it had been a long time since we had seen each other, we all went out to dinner, and Demyx, who pretty much likes to accept everyone as his dear friend, decided we should all see more of each other before we went back to school.”

“I can’t help but think I never heard to the two of them before.”

“It. It was a few years ago. In school.” Namine’s face was burning. “I met Demyx in a class, and he was kinder to me than everyone else… once I dropped all my drawings, and he helped me gather them up, and he would talk to me, about art and books…” He would. It wasn’t in class, and he wasn’t supposed to be talking to her, not ever, but he did. “He was nice, and he was good friends with Zexion,” well, as close a friend as anyone was to Zexion, “so I knew both of them. Not so well. But Demyx likes to be good friends with everyone.”

“It almost sounds like you have a crush on Demyx,” said Linda fondly.

Namine gaped. “No!” talking this much was strange. It almost felt like she was tearing up her throat. “No, I… don’t think he would like me that way. I think they have something between themselves. I wouldn’t complicate anything.” She folded her fingers together, looking down.

“Sorry,” said Linda, smiling, “that was silly. I was prying. They sound like good friends, anyway.”

“I think they are.” Now that they weren’t heartless… perhaps she had never known them well before, but she remembered examining the members of the organization, judging most of them cruel, or apathetic, or unwilling to help her… but holding out hope for a few.

There was a silence. Linda drank out of her mug, contemplative. Finally, she sighed, and said, “Well, Nami, I don’t know about you, but I’m very tired, so I think—”

“Is that your Hope painting over there?”

“Yes, why?”

“It looks wonderful.” Namine stood up, brushing off the dust on her skirt. “It looks just like it.”

“Thank you,” said Linda.

With that, and with a friendly ‘good night,’ they both went to bed.

-

Namine pulled out an old sketchbook—the memory sketchbook, where she drew loose designs of the place and people and objects she remembered from her past life, perfecting them as she remembered more. Lady Luck, along with those other things she had designed for Sora’s dreams in Castle Oblivion, were more clear than anything else in the sketchbook. They were her work, after all.

The drawing of Lady Luck in the sketchbook was exact, to the last detail, to the one she held in her hand. She had thought it would be. And those drawings of the Organization members, her captors—she was proud of her memory when she saw those as well.

She opened up a new page in that sketchbook, and started drawing a few scenes of Wonderland. She drew a long tunnel, and a trial room, filled with flowers, a forest of giant trees and rivers full of lily pads, with a grinning cat hiding in the shadowy corners of each scene. And then she picked up her current sketchbook, and she drew Linda, sitting at the kitchen counter, clutching a coffee mug with reserved panic. She worked to draw each one of Linda’s stray hairs and little worry wrinkles, enjoying the patterns of shade and glow on her expressive face, and then, on a whim, drew tiny hope wings on her back.

Though she usually took inspiration from her life, she felt inspired to start an original drawing. Having a heart seemed to endow one with remarkable creative abilities. She vaguely sketched a scene of an apartment, set out on one level with several rooms—old couch, boom box, rugs, clothes lying about, food in the kitchen, lamps and posters and books in the bedroom.

She stared at the drawing, idly shading, and felt a twist in her gut for some reason. There was nothing in the drawing to worry her, and she had never seen the apartment before… perhaps her encounter at the garden earlier had made her nervous. Or maybe not. It felt like she knew something about this drawing… but yet she felt like she didn’t know anything anymore.

She picked up her old Walkman, and found a Laura Viers album inside. She let the music run softly in her ears until she fell asleep.

-

Somewhere in the room, music was playing. Roxas thought of bands like A Perfect Circle, or Alice in Chains, or Nine Inch Nails, people who made music both heavy and dark, like a dream or a trance, but he couldn’t quite place it.

He was sleeping on a couch, and it felt like he hadn’t been sleeping for long. His stomach hurt, and his eyes felt dry. Maybe he had slept for a few hours, but not much more than that.

He felt oddly cold, too.

“Roxas? Are you awake? I don’t know what time your mother wants you back but you’re getting on late.”

Was that… it couldn’t be. Where was he?

He coughed a few times. He was in a place full of weird, sweet smelling smoke. Maybe he had been kidnapped by a cult?

“You’d better be awake, though, because I made you breakfast.”

That WAS Axel’s voice.

Finally, he woke up enough to actually remember what was happening. He blinked his eyes open to see Axel’s apartment, with purple walls, scattered pagan paraphernalia, many books, and one window cranked open to allow a breeze into the room. People shouted outside, busses droned, and somewhere, eggs were frying. Somewhere close.

And then, he heard crackling, broken singing, in a low voice, absentminded, coming from a nearby room. And it was Axel, singing. He had never heard it before.

Roxas seemed to have a heart, and it seemed to be full of joy and hope. How about that.

“Breakfast?” he asked.

“Eggs! Toast! Butter! Cereal! Coffee!! All here for your enjoyment once you stand up!”

Roxas groaned and tried to sit up. It happened mostly painlessly, but lethargy tried hard to pull him down. He wasn’t sure what the heck he had been doing to get his body to punish him so badly, but he wish he hadn’t have done it.

He remembered… going to see a movie? Maybe? All he remembered was explosions and a man with too much makeup dressed as a nurse.

Alright, Roxas finally knew where he was. Did Anne know? Probably not.

“Wait, eggs and toast?”

“Yes! Sugar in your coffee?”

“No…” said Roxas blearily. His best friend had been reincarnated as a housewife. Roxas couldn’t even imagine Axel cooking. Maybe he didn’t want to see this.

Finally, he struggled his way off the couch and into the kitchen, as hunger won over his other impulses, wearing his clothes from last night and feeling something rather like a headache building in his head.

“Fuck. You really did make eggs,” he said, his voice gravelly.

“Suuuuunny side up, babe,” said Axel, who looked like he had already downed an entire pot of coffee.

Roxas sat down, subdued, and silently accepted the full plate handed to him. “Axel. There’s stuff in my eggs.”

“Yes. That stuff is fresh garlic, salt, chili powder, some small amount of jalapeno, and a pinch of rosemary.”

“Are you serious?”

“It’s good, trust me.”

“Is it supposed to be, like…” Roxas poked at his plate, searching for words. “Cajun?”

“No, this is just how they are laid. You see, these are dinosaur eggs.”

“Oh.” Roxas decided to stop tempting fate and just eat his eggs. They tasted weird, but not bad, and they were better on buttered toast. For a while, he ate in silence, while Axel cleaned up dishes with a gleam in his eye more manic than is required for dishes.

“Just curious,” said Roxas, “when do you let it all out?”

“What?”

“When do you, like, reveal your repressed homicidal pyromaniac side? The part of you that used to actually burn people sometimes? This is actually a lot of reform,” he said bluntly.

“Roxas, I am shocked and appalled,” said an absolutely peppy Axel. “Maybe I channel my troubled tendencies into wholesome artistic pursuits.”

“Sure, maybe if you were Demyx,” said Roxas, which sent Axel into choking laughter. “But luckily, there is only one Demyx. As for you, I don’t believe you changed THAT much.”

“Oh, Roxas, you of little faith,” he sighed. “”If you must know, I do have fun with Bunsen burners sometimes.”

“And?”

“What do you mean and? Maybe I am totally reformed, you ever thought of that? Hm? Maybe I don’t dabble in making illegal fireworks and pyrotechnics for fledgling circus performers at all.”

“That’s the Axel I remember,” muttered Roxas.

“And some people say I’m promiscuous, would you believe it.”

Roxas chuckled. “Stop it.”

“Alright, alright. You know, believe it or not, some of those tendencies die down a bit once you have a functional heart. Being a sub-human creature of the darkness comes with a bit of angst.”

“Yeah, it’s you with a heart that I’m not very used to seeing.”

Suddenly, Axel paused. He let the water just run over the pan he was watching. “Because I’ve been so black hearted, huh?”

Roxas blinked. “No, that’s not what I meant! I was just…”

“No, never mind, that was me being pissy,” axel said, waving his arms. “Sorry. No sleep. I knew what you meant. I’m all wired up again, like I used to get, and there I go off, bitching about nothing.”

“No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I shouldn’t have argued,” said Axel, quietly. “You were right.” He shrugged, as if compulsively. “I used to burn things when I was young. Papers. Trash. Leaves. When I was upset, I would burn lines on myself. I got some attention in later years, and I’ve broken the habit. I got the tattoos to go over the marks I made.”

Roxas’s blood turned into ice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Now you do, even though I wasn’t going to tell you at fucking all, because it’s behind me. I said I wasn’t going to be a total fuck up in this life, and I meant it. Its work, work, and more work, but I mean it.”

Roxas felt tears stinging his eyes. He had never felt that before. It was weird. It was warm, and helpless, and panicked. “Axel,” he said. “No. I mean. I’m sorry.”

Axel was still for a moment, his back to Roxas, with the corners of his eyes just visible in the bright sunlight. Then he walked over to where Roxas sat, eyes downcast, arms folded in front of him. In the bright light of the morning sun, he was a candle flame. His white shin was molded wax, thin, twisted, and his hair erupted in flames above him. Axel cleared his throat.

“You meant no harm, Roxas. I know that. No harm done by you. It’s just that harm was done, lots of it, and I can’t take it back. I shouldn’t be angry at you, at all. Sorry.

“We knew each other, Roxas, but we knew each other as nobodies, right? It’s like meeting a friend in a hospital, and you’re both doped up to the gills and angry, and then you see them in ten years, healed up, and you’re like, who’s this asshole? We knew each other as nobodies, but we were nobodies.

“Meeting you now is just like knowing you before, since it’s you, and a person doesn’t change that much, but it’s different, because everything else is different. Different, weird, and older, and we both have another decade or so of pain under our belts. I’m half the same, and something else, and you’re half the same, and half not, and so… I don’t know.”

“Axel, I really am sorry,” Roxas insisted. “I wasn’t thinking. I was jealous. You’ve done so much without me.” Was he crying?

“No, don’t be like that,” said Axel, sounding sad and tired, trying to clean up Roxas’s face with the tips of his long fingers. “We know, but I think we have to relearn, right? We knew each other, and things have changed. And I can’t think but think that we’ll be able to do it again. Do it better, even. Be friends. Like each other. Spend our time together. It’s just that we’ve forgotten a lot and learned a lot new, so we have to grow close again.”

Roxas found himself nodding, though his throat was tight.

“I don’t know, but I know, right?” said Axel. “Have I not fucked up? Can we try again?”

“Yeah,” said Roxas, miserably.

Axel gently put his fingers on Roxas’s cheeks. He smiled. In a moment of promise, he kissed Roxas, gently, and chastely, without any mockery, any joking, any violence, any innuendo, or any design. And though Roxas wasn’t a fan of flesh like Axel was, he felt on his lips the feeling of joy rather than the feeling of skin.

And then, an angry looking blonde woman wearing incredibly short black denim pants and a grey tank top that was falling off one shoulder barreled up the steps in heeled black boots into Axel’s apartment, stormed down his hallway, shoved Axel onto the ground, like a child having a tantrum, and crossed her arms haughtily over her chest, saying, “Thanks for having the goddamn reunion without me!! Wow, I feel really appreciated!! You give the little kid kisses but I don’t even get looked for. Where the fuck is the rest of the Organization? We don’t give a fuck, we’re way too fucking deep in gay baby love for such responsibilities!!”

Axel, who sat on the floor bewildered, took one horrified second to connect a name to her face. “Larxene,” he said, as if pronouncing his own doom.

“You summoned her by speaking her name,” said Roxas, though maybe he shouldn’t have. “Amazing.”

“Amazing,” said Larxene, “Is exactly what I am! And if you think my entrance was amazing, you’re going to love what happens next.”

-

When Namine opened her eyes, the sun was already gone past casting the bright rays of morning and into the dull glow of the afternoon. Sleeping in so late wasn’t strange for her, as it as it never mattered when she was awake. Well, now, she might have to make a more solid schedule.

Pages of her sketchbook were scattered around her, since she had fallen asleep without putting things away, and a page full of ink doodles had ended out under her leg, so now their mirror was printed, blurry, on her skin. And, most baffling of all, there was a strange, cold weight of something resting on her stomach.

When she finally sat up to grab it, she saw it was a Keychain laid to rest on top of her as she fell asleep—Lady Luck.

Then, in the new light of the morning, she noticed something where hadn’t before. On this side of the little card charm, there were tiny hinges—and an almost invisible black line ran along its whole length. Lady Luck wasn’t just a key chain, she was a locket.

She didn’t see any keyhole or lock, so she took a few of her slightly less than bitten off fingernails and worked at prying it open. After a minute of pulling and tugging, the locket popped open like a clam.

Inside, there was nothing.

She stared at the locket, shook it upside does, and then sighed and closed it again. Well, it wasn’t like she had designed it to have anything inside. What did she expect? The key to the door to darkness?

“Well, no, actually, we couldn’t fit it in there!”

Namine gasped and jumped, but no one was in her room. Then, a smile appeared.

Just a smile. Two curving lines of sharp, white, animal’s teeth, floating in the air above her, as if her very room had grown fangs and a voice. Absolutely frozen, she watched as a tongue appeared from between the teeth as nothingness let out a yawn, revealing its pink, ridged insides and rows of sharp incisors. “And since we couldn’t give you that,” it said, “you got me instead.”

Two yellow eyes with thin, oval pupils blinked themselves into existence, looked around at the corners of Namine’s bedroom, and then focused on her, growing wide. “Ah, there you are,” said the little grinning mouth.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Just a friendly bit of exposition. I might be here to help you along with your plot! Or I might be here to confuse you. Or even scare you. My, aren’t there possibilities!” underneath the wide, yellow eyes, a pink nose suddenly appeared, with some thin, white whiskered on either side of it. Slowly, fur began to form in the air, form nothing, around what was obviously a little cat’s face.

“I remember you,” said Namine, slowly.

“I remember you as well!” The cat’s furry throat and shoulders slowly faded into view, moving with unseen muscles into more of a crouching position, so that the mostly invisible cat gazed up at her from a hunter’s bow.

“You are the Cheshire Cat, and you belong in Wonderland,” she said.

“And you are Namine, of no surname, and you belong in Kairi. We all get lost from time to time.” The cat idly examined his first paw to appear, and tested his retractable claws.

Namine frowned, hand fluttering up to her chest. “But—” she began.

“But you have a heart now! For which I must commend you. It isn’t easy to rise from nothing into something. People don’t like nothing, it makes them very uncomfortable. And now you can blend in with all the something.”

Namine frowned. “What is it that you want? I remember you coming into my world of memories unbidden, giving advice I did not write for Sora to hear. You aren’t any normal creature. What do you want from me?”

“Look at her, offended at someone meddling. She’s a witch, can she really be offended at meddlers?”

Namine looked down. “I wasn’t a witch because I wanted to be.”

The half a cat rolled over playfully, seeming to almost giggle. “The burning happened before she became a witch. What an interesting situation!”

“Just say what you came to say, alright?” The cat made her deeply uncomfortable, since it came more and more to her mind how he helped Sora without her even knowing he had entered her worlds until after he was gone, but she also grudgingly remember that all his advice to Sora had been good and useful advice—should he have had the sense to follow it.

“Rude,” proclaimed the cat, stretching himself across her bed. “Very rude.”

“No worse than you, cat. You were uninvited.”

“Oh, true.” The cat grinned. It was absolutely grotesque. “Well, we can move onto matters of substance, I guess.”

“Let’s,” said Namine.

“Do you at all feel ill?”

Namine raised her eyebrows. She was about to ask if this was really something of substance, but she halted herself in time, remembering that the cat was a creature of riddles. “I do not feel ill. Do you?”

The cat purred. Its back paws were coming into view, and she thought that it might be flicking his tail. “Considerate human. I am quite unwell.”

“You look healthy, cat. Though you are missing a tail still.”

“Clever.” With a single flick, his long, striped tail appeared. “I look healthy, but illnesses mostly brew inside.”

“Odd, I can usually see your insides.”

“Then the illness must be invisible. What a sneaky sickness we deal with!”

“Then perhaps it affects your heart,” said Namine, unwilling, “Or your memories. Why, you’re right, I almost feel ill myself now.”

“Two good guesses. Think along those lines. Oh, it’s so much more fun to talk to you than it was to talk to those other silly children. You have a good head on your shoulders. A very good head. And a full head. Full of many memories.”

“You worked against me once, cat. I haven’t forgotten that.”

“I don’t forget anything. Just like you! Did you know the rest of the nobodies struggled to remember what they once were? I digress. I will reward your prodding with one direct hint—my sickness is chronic.”

“What a shame,” said Namine, thinking hard. “Would… is there no cure?”

“Oh, she’s clever. Dreadfully. There might be a doctor for me. Maybe. If only someone would help a poor cat! They would have to have a caring heart.”

“Look to Demyx, maybe. He is kind.”

“She offers her friends! She must not be a good friend herself.”

“I offer a service I find lacking in myself,” she whispered. “The general doctor says to go find a specialist.”

“She is not a general doctor, she is a doctor of psychology.” The cat licked his paws. “You please me so much, I might say too much! I offer just one more hint for your cleverness.”

“If I may ask one more question about it, why not?”

The cat purred again. “As sneaky as a cat, I would call her. Does she remember seeing a door? She must have found her keychain there.”

“Yes. The back door by the library, in the garden, but that stone mosaic.”

Suddenly, the cat stopped washing itself. It narrowed its eyes, and its ears fell back. “Which door? The door outside of the stone circle?”

“Yes.”

The cat hissed, leaning backwards. Namine resisted the urge to cover her face. “That is all wrong!”

“All wrong?” Namine pried, heart hammering.`

The cat paced a few steps back and forth. “Entirely wrong! You really found Lady Luck before the white door in front of the bright stone circle.”

“Exactly,” said Namine. The glare of the cat’s slit pupils suddenly made her unwilling to poke and prod him for information any more.

“Lucky she is,” the cat hissed darkly. “You—” and then, just like any cat, he froze, and his head whipped over his shoulder, his ears thrown back, and his eyes dilated, staring at nothing. He tensed. And then, he vanished, all at once, without his usual leisure, and all was just as if he had never been there.

The pressure instantly dropped from the room, and it was just a warm summer afternoon again. Namine blinked, her nerves still jangling, and saw that her hands were shaking. And then, after gazing down at the keychain, clasped in her pale hands, she smiled.

Maybe it was those distant memories of being under Marluxia’s thumb, but anything that messed with the system of meddlers and schemers was totally fine with her. She held Lady Luck close to her chest, then clipped it onto her skirt, where it would stay. She dressed herself quickly and prepared for a light lunch and then a trip to her favorite library. “Lucky she is,” she said to herself, giggling.

-

“How long??”

“Oh, about five years. We just found out that you were here as we drove by this crappy little city on our way to somewhere much more glamorous.”

“You and Marluxia met in this life five years ago?”

“Yeeees.” Larxene sat beside Roxas at Axel’s kitchen table, kicking the leg of the table with her boots.

“Five years, and you never found me.”

“Well, like, sorry, but we weren’t so fond of you after a while,” said Larxene, rolling her eyes.

“Are you kidding?” Axel held his arms out, grinning. “Unbeknownst to me, I avoided you two obnoxious, controlling assholes for five years! Three cheers for the crappy little city!!”

Larxene scoffed. “And this is exactly why we didn’t go trying to find YOU, by the way. Look at this guy, look at how loyal a friend he is!”

“Ahhhh, I could only be a loyal friend if I was your friend in the first place.”

“You were an ally!”

“You and your boyfriend promised to kill everyone who wasn’t your ally! What was I supposed to do, just strap myself to a martyr’s cross instead?”

“You did sort of kill people for us.”

“They were very annoying people.”

Roxas sipped his coffee and watched, awed, as he beheld the concept he had once heard called ‘bringing out the worst in each other.’ Fascinating.

“You know what?” said Larxene, showing Roxas her palm. “I’m not going to talk to you. Nope. You’re no fun. I’m going to talk to Roxas instead. Hello little Roxas!” said Larxene, smiling. “How are you? Still alive? Incredible.”

“I’ve never been sure about that,” said Roxas.

“Yeah very droll.” Larxene rolled her eyes. But about halfway through their roll, they got caught on something Roxas was wearing. “Nice trinket you have there. Doesn’t exactly look child safe, though. Did Axel give it to you?”

Roxas protectively put one hand over Bond of Flame. “He did, thanks.”

“It’s a bit weird to pretend he’s five years old,” said Axel.

Larxene ignored him. “You know, that’s cute! Adorable. I got something just like that from my own boyfriend!”

Larxene dug into her black leather purse, covered with metal studs and buttons, and pulled out her own Keychain. It had a chain long enough to make a choker necklace, and the charm at the end was a spiky, many-petaled, sharp-looking metal rose, painted red and green. Axel looked at it blankly, but the wheels in Roxas’s head were turning. He didn’t REMEMBER being Sora, even though he was Sora once, yet sometimes he could find Sora’s memories in him, vague and uncertain, as if they were lines form a book he had read once.

“That’s Rumbling Rose,” he said, “Sora found it in the Beast’s Castle.”

“Yes!” said Larxene. “And now it’s my favorite accessory. Funny how that happens. Kid runs down my Castle, murders myself and Marluxia, and one lifetime later, I have one of his pieces of jewelry. Makes you really wonder what weirdo is running this show.”

“As long as it isn’t your terrible boyfriend or our terrible lord and ruler Xemnas, who even cares?” said Axel.

“My, maybe I should call Marluxia in to listen to you!” Larxene giggled.

“Oh, I—” Axel paused. “You make it sound like that’s possible.”

“Well, he’s outside. I didn’t WALK here,” shuddered Larxene. “Why, want to see him?”

“No,” said Axel, sounding horrified. “Larxene no. We have actually tried to kill each other. We would probably burn the apartment down the second we saw each other. Not even with fire. With passionate rage.”

With a look of mock surprise, Larxene lazily moved to cover Roxas’s ears. “Wow, is it just me or is there a minor here? I am APPALLED, Axel.”

Roxas muttered something unintelligible. Axel covered his face and sighed. “Why, Larxene. Why.”

“Well,” she gasped. “If you don’t want to talk to me, you know, I can leave.” She sniffed and turned away. Roxas found himself utterly unable to tell whether she was being dramatic or not. That is, until she smiled with the very corner of her mouth.

“Larxene,” Axel sighed. “Ugh. I never LIKED you much, Larxene. You know that. But I missed not having you around to dislike. I did. You’re part of my past life, and I hold that closely. Whore.”

Larxene stuck her tongue out. “Ugh, rude.” She finally let Roxas out. “For your information, that wasn’t an attempt to guilt trip you into confessing your hidden feelings, that was a graceful segue to my EXIT. I am leaving because Marluxia is expecting me and I said I would only see you for a minute.”

“WHAT?” Axel asked, sounding genuinely angry. Roxas thought he saw a glimmer of arson in his eyes. “This is really why I never liked you.”

“Yeah, well, I have things to do, people to elude and bewilder, enemies to slay, and you two—” she said, pointing at them with two fingers in front of her sharp, icy eyes, “Are supposed to be in the dark right now. Actually. I’m not allowed to see you. Guess what? Surprise! I broke a few rules just to say hi.”

“No, really, this is why I never liked you,” said Axel, sounding weary… but then he chuckled. “Bitch, Larxene. What enemies? What people to avoid and bamboozle? What are we supposed to be in the dark about? If you apparently bent the rules to see me, can you bend them enough to reveal a few occult mysteries to me?”

Roxas quietly nudged the lighter on the table a bit farther away from Axel’s twitching fingers. Just in case.

“Don’t be stupid,” said Larxene. “This is why I never liked you either. I was always coy with you, but not vague. Do I sound like I’m playing games, or do I sound pissed off myself?”

“No, really, it’s been too long since I’ve seen you. Whoops, I meant to say that I really hate you, how’d that come out?” Axel smoothed his hair back, chuckling. “Oh, Larxene.”

She smiled, and opened her mouth.

Axel’s palms slammed down on the table, making a noise like thunder and causing black burn marks and puffs of smoke to appear where he struck. His eyes blazed and his mouth was twisted into a grimace. “YOU SOUND PISSED,” Axel screamed. “YOU SOUND ALMOST AS PISSED AS ME. BUT NOT AS PISSED AS I WILL BE IF YOU KEEP PLAYING AROUND WITH ME!” He glowered at her, breathing heavily. “Are our fucking lives in danger?” he hissed, like smoldering ashes.

“Lives, hearts, and souls,” said Larxene, as serious as the grave. “I missed you. I’m glad to see you alright. You look better than you’ve ever been. There are loose ends, and Marluxia and I are trying to tie them up. But he’s not okay, and I can’t stay too long, because we are tagged and staying still means being hunted.”

Roxas, who found himself shaking, asked, “Do you mean the heartless?”

“Sweet boy,” said Larxene. It was eerie to hear her sincere. “Not as such.”

“Can you tell us anything?” asked Roxas. “Can you name your enemy?”

Larxene’s face grew spiteful again. “Ignorance helps you. Trust me. But in deference to flame boy’s rage, I’ll say something.” She started gathering up her belongings into her purse. “Have you heard about what happens to first year med students? It’s a bit of an urban legend. They say that all young kids studying to be doctors and nurses and surgeons always get very sick in their first year of school! It must be that the wrong sort of people are attracted to the healing business, I thought, at first. If they can’t handle it, why try?

“But it’s actually a totally different problem. What happens is they all have weak minds. They are, upon being thrown into college, exposed to a bottomless grimy pit of books and files about everything that can go wrong with a human body. Rare diseases. Terrible wasting parasites. Blood conditions. Skin conditions. Bacteria and infections in all sorts of cuts, bruises, scrapes, and holes. All the subtle poisons in the air and water and all the ways they can make the organs of the body die, separately. And all these poor kids think about how they’ve maybe always had problems digesting, or maybe they’ve always had dry skin, or maybe the poor babies just feel depressed sometimes, and they think, what if it’s not a bad bladder or bad skin or a bit of depression? What if I’m really special and have a really special disease?

“And then they start thinking they really DO have a super special disease, and they get sicker and more anxious thinking of it, and they think of it more, and become more sick, and before you know it, they’re bedridden, and no single disease has touched them! They make themselves sick. Their minds are weak.

“And then I thought to myself, if this happens to every poor med student who tried to help someone, maybe everyone has a weak mind. Everyone has a weak body, after all. Everyone is just weak and defenseless and hopeless. You slip up once, you make one little mistake, and the diseases finds your one weakness and floods you. Nothing you can do. Your skin is too weak. You’re human and helpless. The disease finds you. Sends tears out of your eyes and rises your skin in red welts. Closes up your throat and drowns your lungs in your own pus. 

“The name of your enemy is Virus,” she said. “And I wouldn’t think about it too much. You know. Just in case it worries you.” She slammed the door behind her.

“Virus?” asked Roxas. Axel’s empty apartment had nothing to say in return.

-

“A virus can’t be alive!” said Demyx. “That’s way weird. And also gross. These aren’t things that think and work and build. They’re just invaders.”

Namine must have entered the conversation at a good point. Perhaps this would cheer her up after finding out that there were absolutely no doors leading into or out of the library that weren’t dull, rectangular glass.

How does a door appear and disappear in one night?

Zexion sighed. “Hello, Namine. Demyx and I seem to somehow gotten ourselves into a pointless discussion. I don’t remember how it started. You can join if you’d like.”

“I think I will,” said Namine, sitting down as gracefully as she could with such a long skirt to tuck under her. “I sort of remember having a class where we had this same debate. It’s about whether viruses really fit the five requirements of life, right?”

Zexion shrugged. “I consider it the seven requirements.”

“Go on,” said Namine.

“The seven scientific requirements for life are as follows: one, homeostasis, which is the ability of a living being to change their internal situation to compensate for their external situation. This is more a way to stay alive than proof of life, so I suppose that can half be left alone. Two, organization—being made of one or more cells. A ball of gas does not live, an organized cell unit can. Three, metabolism—some form of ingesting organic matter and producing energy. Requirements four and five are growth and adaption. An organism, to be alive in both a scientific and an unscientific sense, has to both enlarge itself through life and change through life. Six—the ability to respond to outside stimuli. When the organism is prodded or effected, they must react in some way. This was, incidentally, one of the most compelling arguments against the life of nobodies. Requirement seven is reproduction—a living thing must be able to make more like itself. As a species, individuals can be barren.”

“Wonderfully memorized,” said Namine, smiling.

Zexion nodded his head, looking vaguely pleased. “I was interested in studying science before my mind was more or less conquered by the occult… maybe I’ll get to look back into that now.”

“So your argument is for viruses being alive?”

“My argument is for the possibility. So far, no one is sure about this, and since I’ve done no research into the issue, I won’t say that I know any better.”

“And Demyx is against?” she asked brightly.

“I just really don’t want the common cold to be alive,” he muttered miserably. “Hunting in packs. Like hoards of stampeding Mongols. Their tribes gathered on the wind, ready to strike.”

“How about we go through the requirements of life one at a time?” Namine asked, covering her mouth.

“Why not,” Zexion said, sounding tired already. “Item one is homeostasis, which is a bad place to start. Especially with viruses.”

“I’m not sure they could claim homeostasis anyway,” Namine said. “Since you can boil them out of food.”

“Well, humans don’t like boiling either, but we’re alive.”

“Oh… good point,” sighed Namine.

“Like I said,” muttered Zexion. “Bad place to start. It’s really more something that one produces to stay alive than something that one must produce ahead of time to be living.”

“Alright, we can talk about that later,” Namine said.

“Item two,” said Zexion, without further ceremony, “Organization in cell or cells. Which is a good argument against viruses.”

“I thought that they were one cell,” said Namine.

Zexion closed his eyes, and then spoke as if he was reciting something. “A basic cell requires cytoplasm, some system for motion, a membrane, and a nucleus to be recognized as a ‘cell’ by science.”

“There’s a lot of being recognized by science in your argument, it seems,” Demyx said. He showed his discontent by turning to his book bag and digging around in that instead of listening.

“I intended to get into non-scientific arguments later,” Zexion said. “Anyway, a virus has most of those things, but not a proper nucleus. So a virus doesn’t even have one cell.”

“But could you call it organized anyway?”

Zexion shrugged. “This is something scientists are in disagreement about. The one-cell bacteria is called alive, even though it does not think like a human or act like an animal, and dumb and immobile plants are called alive, so you don’t need much to be considered a form of life, yet viruses are just so very basic… it’s like calling a greenhouse close enough to a real house, because it has walls. But then you find out there’s no bathroom, no kitchen…”

“It’s still shelter,” said Demyx.

“Shelter, but not a house,” said Zexion. “A virus has very limited genetic material, and when it isn’t focused on replicating that through parasitic use of a foreign cells, it is doing nothing. Thinking nothing, not moving, not interacting with its environment. Most people don’t consider humans who live primarily for reproduction and lie on the couch the rest of the time very ‘alive’.”

“What was the third requirement again?” asked Namine, who accepted, with thanks, surprise, and confusion, the warm cup of tea Demyx somehow pulled out of his bookbag. It was an herbal tea that seemed to be heavily sugared, which wasn’t exactly her idea of tea, but she was thirsty.

“The third requirement for life is metabolism. Taking in matter to make energy.”

“And do they do that?” Namine took a sip of the tea offered to find it bordered on being sweet tea.

“No, not at all. They use the metabolism of whatever cell they’re invaded to produce all the energy and matter they need. If I remember correctly.”

“They never consume anything during the course of their… lives while looking for host cells?” asked Namine.

“You know,” said Zexion, looking up at the ceiling, “I think I’ve forgotten that. But I really don’t think they do.”

“You think but do you know?” asked Demyx. “Do you know any viruses, really? When will their voice be heard?”

“When they speak,” said Zexion. “Honestly, I think in this situation, it’s a clear negative. The only time a virus produces a lot of matter and energy, it uses a different organism to do so. It does not do the conversion process itself.”

“That sounds right to me,” Namine said. “What was the fourth part again?”

“Four and five are the related concepts of growth and adaption. Can it be said that a virus grows and evolves, even though they don’t seem to metabolize or live?”

“Well, we all know they adapt,” said Demyx dismissively. “That’s how you get strains of vaccine-resistant super viruses. The really nasty stuff.”

“Which is an argument for them being alive,” said Zexion. “Does a rock or a plastic toy adapt physically? No. But everything living does over processes of evolution.”

“Wouldn’t that be a shaky argument, though,” considered Namine, “since adaption is just a reaction, not something one actively does?”

“Do rocks change themselves to survive when something unfavorable happens to them?” asked Zexion. “No, but the virus does. It doesn’t think about doing it. Humans don’t think about doing it either. But even though a volcano can melt and reform rock, the changes that happens to the virus becoming immune to a medication are not cause by the medication invading or changing the virus, but by the virus’s own structure being changed. The change is caused by the body of the virus.”

“Most change happens in the heart, not the head, even for us,” said Namine. “Even if it isn’t exactly comparable. But do they grow?”

“Do they grow larger over their existence? Not that I’ve heard of. They’re formed, they’re put in their protein capsule, they stay there.” said Zexion. “So item six: response to stimuli.”

“They must fulfill that requirement as well,” said Namine. “For the same reason. They respond to the pressures of medication and change their ways.”

“But what else do they do?” asked Zexion. “When everything is freezing, do they do something in response to that? when something touches them, do they react? They don’t do anything to change themselves unless they have found the one thing they care about finding—a cell to exploit. They lack to the ability to react to anything at all except the one thing they need to reproduce. Aside from that, they don’t care where they are, what they are doing, or what is around them. Total apathy is the opposite of life, and complete indifference to situation, quality of life, and extremes of environment are a strong argument against something being alive in any meaningful way.”

“So what if it exists,” agreed Namine, “if it is nothing but a shell? But to claim higher thinking makes life discounts such things as plants.”

“Plants care about the outside world.” said Demyx, almost surprising himself by interrupting. “Vines climb up trees, sunflowers follow the sun across the sky, roots seek out rich soils-- the tough desert trees have roots that reach down hundreds of feet to find underground water. That’s why I say viruses can’t be alive, really, even if they do some things of their own accord,” Demyx shrugged. “A plant is part of the world, right? They act like they’re part of us. A virus doesn’t recognize the living world, so it’s not part of it.”

“The virus has very much influenced the living world, however,” said Zexion. “Humans owe a great debt to viruses for how they have advanced our knowledge of medicine. Viruses are a problem and curse to every living thing. We all recognize them.”

“Then that’s our problem,” said Demyx. “They don’t recognize us as alive. And if nothing is alive and autonomous and meaningful to them, then they don’t have the concepts in them. You get it?”

“You’re very far into the objective, and also into the personified,” muttered Zexion. “Just because they ‘consider’ their selves to be one way does not mean we must accept their own definition of themselves. Especially since they don’t consider and they have no definitions.”

“So the things are at least brain dead, even if we consider them TECHNICALLY alive,” said Demyx.

“I hope they are, they have no brains!”

Namine cleared her throat. “Wasn’t there one final requirement?”

“Oh, yes,” said Zexion, “reproduction.”

“Ah, yes,” said Demyx, in a flat tone, “reproduction. Delightful topic. I know quite a bit about it.”

“I think that we already agreed that the whole point of their ‘existence’ is to reproduce.”

“Yes, but the problem with that is, they don’t do that in their own power. They make new viruses, but they can’t do it alone. A virus by itself is powerless. A million viruses all alone would all die out if they had nothing to infect, since they cannot help each other, and probably don’t recognize each other.”

“And if that’s life, who wants it,” sighed Demyx.

“All the same, they do reproduce,” said Namine. “It’s the only important thing to them.”

“But not alone. The point it, viruses need something that isn’t virus in order to reproduce.”

“So is any item on this list anything other than a ‘maybe?’” asked Namine.

“I think we said ‘no’ a few times,” said Demyx, “so in general, since is more in favor of viruses not being alive.”

“You would think so,” said Zexion.

“That isn’t the case?” Namine asked.

“The general scientific consensus, which, actually, is more like the conclusion that the majority of scientists happen to consent to, is that viruses are on the very edge of being alive. They’re considered alive, but barely. If you bend, and by bend I mean lower, your expectations of what life is a little, you find the virus to be alive. Single-minded, malignant, and alive. Anything that does less to support itself and find a place in the world, says science, is not living. Anything that does more is clearly alive. And the virus, which is on the border of the living and the never-living, is given humanity’s gracious benefit of the doubt.”

“Well, lowering our expectations of life is something we do all the time,” said Demyx despondently.

“When one finds themselves lacking what used to make them alive,” Zexion whispered, “one has to find some excuse for themselves. Even if it’s just ‘I’ll be better someday.’ Am I right?”

Everyone was silent for a minute. Namine gripped the warm edges of Demyx’s travel mug and bit her lip. “You know, the requirements for life only work for a species as a whole.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Think of the barren woman,” said Namine. “She cannot reproduce. But it would be stupid to say she isn’t alive, just because she does not fulfill one of the seven requirements. It is only her that is barren, as an individual, and she belongs to a species which is fruitful. Though she lacks something, in her relationship to her species, she has enough merit to be alive herself. That’s another part of being connected to the world, like you were saying earlier. A species must be considered as a whole species, and so individuals with flaws are excused and forgiven in the general eye of science. So if some humans, by some trick, were to find themselves deadened to their environment, unable to reproduce, unable to live and change and grow like other humans are—we can pretend I’m talking about humans with severe brain damage, if you want—they are still humans, and still alive, and still excused, because they have greater origins and their flaws are only mistakes. They are still part of a species and their species lifts them up. After all, that’s how the philosophy of life works. You’re not really just judged by your own merits, but of what those around you think.”

Demyx rubbed his eyes. Zexion cleared his throat. “A very good argument,” he said.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with viruses,” said Demyx.

“I wasn’t talking about viruses, I said that already,” said Namine. “I was making an argument for those members of living species who find themselves unable to fulfill science’s exacting requirements for life. Once sentience has been gained, and free thought attained, then the physical requirements are trivial, I say.”

“Hear, hear,” said Demyx. “That’s what I always thought as well.” He smiled. “I guess we were always on the same page.”

Zexion was quiet. Finally, he said, “I must agree with you. Even in science, the thinking being is always considered alive, regardless of its body.”

There were a few smiles, though Zexion was still clearly in deep concentration. He seemed to be struggling. Demyx hummed a few lines of an upbeat song, and Namine drank her tea. It wasn’t so bad, when she was used to it. Underneath the flowery, fruity flavors, there was something minty and earthy, some sort of green herb.

“But no, really, we were talking about viruses a few minutes ago, and I don’t think we answered that question.”

“Well, I did tell you that science’s consensus is that viruses are at the border of living and not living, which, though it isn’t the most satisfying answer, it is an answer. That is the result of the data put forth.”

“Oh no, Zexion,” Demyx sighed, “Don’t be a cyborg. Science is great in the lab, but once you take your goggles off and you’re blinking at the sun, things are different.”

“Yes, things are dirty,” countered Zexion.

“Personally, I can’t see them as alive,” said Namine. “Perhaps it’s only because my mind won’t stretch that way. But viruses, to me, are part of the microscopic world, of cells and atoms, and none of that is alive. Not in a real sense. The sense of feeling, reacting, communicating. Viruses are on the level of cells, and my cells are part of me, they make me, but it isn’t them that’s alive. It’s my mind, and my heart.”

“What are your mind and your heart made up of?” asked Zexion. “What part of you stores and retrieves thoughts and memories? The cells of your brain. What feels sunlight and contact? The skin cell does. What part of you feels the pain when your heart spasms or you step on a stone? Your nerve cells do. The cell is alive because it feels the outside world and reacts to it. Life is a gathering. We are a collection of those reactions, which are little chemicals finding little cells, and those many feelings are what cause great emotions in us.”

“And the virus just isn’t alive in that way,” Demyx continued. “Like you said. A million viruses come together would just make a million viruses. They wouldn’t do anything. Put one cell that shies away from icy water and drifts up to the sunlight seems alive for just doing that.”

“Viruses don’t come from anything great, and they don’t make anything great,” continued Zexion. “If you heighten your definition of ‘living’ to ‘producing something’ or ‘feeling something’ then viruses have a lot to show.”

“They exist, but they aren’t alive. Those were two different things all along, despite what some crazy philosophers wanted to claim,” muttered Demyx.

Namine grinned. “Just like a memory of a dead person is not alive, but it exists. I see what you mean now.”

“And a memory will move, will affect a person, and will interact with the real world, but it is not alive,” confirmed Zexion. “A memory is an illusion.”

“So as to the life of the virus?” Namine pressed.

Demyx shrugged. “No?”

“Different avenues of thinking led to different answers,” said Zexion. “Science had one answer, and philosophy had another. As usual.”

“Then if we can’t figure out if a virus is alive,” said Namine, suddenly sad, “we don’t actually have a definition of life.”

They both paused. “Not in consensus,” said Zexion.

“We judge life by our standards, as humans,” said Demyx. “I don’t know if we can know what’s alive and what’s not. But yeah, it sort of reveals your biases, doesn’t it? Whether or not you’re gonna call the little virus alive says a lot about what you think.”

“Says the man who thought they were too gross to really be alive,” said Zexion.

“That shows I value life enough to set the bar high up for it,” countered Demyx.

Demyx and Zexion continued to turn the conversation against each other, but Namine found herself unable to pay attention. She had always been sure that they counted. The nobodies. They thought, and they remembered, so they were alive. But if the value of life was in being with the world, reacting to others, and making connections, did they measure up?

She remembered being a nobody, alone. She knew she had been alive. It only made sense. She dreamed, and she struggled, and she had cared, hadn’t she? But now she felt so much less certain that she knew these things. So what if she had felt alive? Did that constitute proof?

Vacillating back and forth, Namine sipped her tea. Maybe Zexion was right to have devoted his time to studying the science of the nobody, back then. Now she might never know what they were.

It as a sort of unique oddity to look back on her memories, sorting out recollection from sensation, and wonder, if I had ended up in some human’s laboratory, what would they have said? If she were a human, she could just be a mistake, and her species would bear her with them. But if they judged her to be inhuman…

But she had to have been human then, because she was human NOW, and she was still the same being, even if she felt different. She had to be human. A living human. Because what could switch back and forth between being human and being something else?

Nothing could do that, after all. Absolutely nothing.

She finished her tea and felt uncomfortable and hollow.

-

Kairi didn’t know why she had been given life again. She went to death happy the first time, certain she had done all she had wanted to while alive; balancing her love for her friends with her duties as a keyblade bearer, spending time keeping peace between worlds as well as taking long, idyllic breaks on the never changing Destiny Islands.

At first, she figured she had just been given a chance to have a normal and simple life, and she was grateful, though it felt hollow without her friends. And then, she had found them, and everything was complete again (and everything stopped being as bad as she wouldn’t admit it had been) and she became certain that this was a gracious reward, given to them for fighting hard. She wasn’t sure why they had been given it, since they hadn’t asked for it, but she accepted it all the same.

So she lived in peace for a few years. But then peace had shattered again. Axel lived, tall and skinny and strange, having been given a new life, just like the rest of them. Kairi and Sora had run away, confused, when they saw him the first time, unable to understand why all the nobodies had been given a second life. At first she was convinced it was some sort of treachery from them, but Sora convinced her that they were the ones that really deserved new life. Those who are the most unfortunate deserve the most compassion, he would say.

She thought about it for a while. To her, the nobodies were her abusers and captors. Axel scared her, and her memories of the World that Never Was were dark. But after some time, she began to think of the situation differently. Not all of the nobodies had been bad. There had been Roxas and Namine, their nobodies, and sometimes, a few of the nobodies in the castle were kind to her. If they were ever cruel, it was because they were stuck in the Superior’s control, she became convinced.

She had been reborn to be compassionate. It was the NOBODIES life had given a second chance to, and it was up to her to make peace to them. She had just been too young when she encountered Axel out of nowhere. Young, and not so open-minded as she was now.

It was no mistake they had all been born again. She was going to meet those who had been their enemies, and they were going to start their friendship anew and finally end the cosmic war that had been tearing things apart for so long. The end of war, she was convinced, wasn’t ceasefire, the end of war was the end of whatever had caused the war. The world was wise—it reincarnated two enemies to make the final peace between them. And Kairi was ready for it.

The problem was, after that day, she had never seen another nobody again. They had blended into the shadows again, just like they used to, and days of waiting in that coffee shop she was sure Axel worked in availed her nothing. Maybe they were hidden from her, Kairi began to think. Maybe she was the problem, in the end. She could believe that. It seems like she always made mistakes, and whenever she was certain about something, she ended out wrong.

There was no ocean to send message bottles into. She launched balloons instead. More and more, she began to think about Namine, the woman who was half-her. Maybe she didn’t see any nobodies, and hadn’t been given any chances to see them, because she was missing something.

To her own surprise, as she grew a bit older, Kairi began to grow introverted. Maybe she had been more than a little wrong at first—maybe she had been very wrong. Maybe this second life wasn’t a present for a job well done. Maybe she was meant to live differently this time. Very differently. But the more she wondered about what she was meant to do, the less conclusive her thoughts became.

It took her a long time to wonder if she wasn’t MEANT to do anything. Maybe there were no gifts and there were no punishments. Maybe this world wasn’t what it looked like. Maybe she couldn’t find any of those missing nobodies because it didn’t matter if she did or not.

In her last life, fate was obvious. She was led to where she needed to go by the tug of invisible threads, and always found herself back where she belonged with those who needed her, when they needed her. In that life, the hands of fate had almost been clasping her own. When she closed her eyes, she could see the patterns of everything, the reason why this had gone wrong to lead to one thing right.

But now, fate was silent. Fate was slow. Fate seemed to not care about her the way it had on Destiny islands. It took, it promised, it broke the promise, and everything changed— she could see it, but the weave of this world was illogical, threads were knotted and badly placed, and holes lined the tapestry of fate in every place. She could see the map of the world in her mind, it was her power. And it took a long time to put the pieces together, but now, everything was clear. She knew what had changed in this life.

Fate was not neglecting her, and fate was not waiting for her to learn. Fate had not discredited her. Fate had not disappeared. Fate had turned malevolent.

-

All was silent in Axel’s apartment except for the slightly shouldering burns on his kitchen table. Ashes fell from the deepening burn marks every few minutes, as an internal heat ate away at them, sometimes making little popping or crackling noises. 

The slight waft of smoke would probably alarm most people, but the residents of the apartment didn’t seem to care. They were currently at a fast food restaurant wolfing down burgers as if burgers were the only thing in the world that mattered, and damn if everything else burned to the ground.

“Hey, you know what we should do?” asked Axel after his third cup of cheap coffee. Axel seemed, by all appearances, to be one of those few people who reacted to caffeine as if it were a sedative, and so he was low-lidded and low-key, sitting across with Roxas with an almost glazed look, appraising the green light streaming in from the leaves of the trees outside.

Roxas made himself stop eating for a second. “What’s that?”

Axel smiled a smoky smile. “We should go on a road trip.”

“A what? No we shouldn’t.”

“A road trip! It’s the perfect idea! It’s the end of summer, we need to spend some time with each other and catch up, I need to unwind and you need to get out, there is no problem that this doesn’t solve. We can borrow Jake’s old car, since it’s no loss if THAT thing gets junked up, go south and visit the big cities, hit the major highways, stop in sunflower fields and by rivers and the ocean, wreck up the car throwing fries at each other and hitting stray birds, cause trouble everywhere we go, chicken someone into a high-speed car chase, it’ll be fun!”

“What? That’s ridiculous. I’ve never done anything like that before and Anne—would probably let me. All the same, to her, you’re a stranger! I mean, wouldn’t that be a big deal? Like, expensive?”

“Oh, when will Anne want you home?”

“Probably by nightfall, after that, it might occur to her to be worried.”

“Alright then.” Axel leaned backward leisurely. “It won’t be that expensive, since I haven’t been out this summer much. Had myself a bit of an upset, and didn’t want to go out much, so I have money piled up. In a few days, we’ll pack the car light, drive fast, and take a coastal trip over the weekend. Friday through Monday, if you can take the days off work. What do you say?”

“I’ve never taken a day off before, I think they would let me…” Roxas said, considering. “I’d love too, I’d just worry that Anne…”

“Just ask her. The worst she can do is say no.”

Roxas shrugged. “Sure. I’ll… ask her, I guess. Sure. Sure! Why not?”

“Why not, exactly!” Axel was smiling the smile he suddenly got sometimes. It was bright, and big, and sort of made Roxas light-headed. It was really great to see Axel this way after everything he remembered. “Fantastic. And with that, I get myself more coffee!” Axel announced, standing up and stretching. Roxas would have to take a tape measure to this guy sometime, he had no idea how tall he was.

Roxas watched Axel walk away. He swayed when he walked, from side to side, lazily, never walking very quickly, considering his way along. He drew stares, not all of them comfortable, though he seemed to not notice any of them, and just made his slow way past. Against the beige, white, and drab world of the diner, he was a violent color, moving with a different rhythm, and drawn with a different pen. When Axel disappeared around the corner, Roxas blinked, and looked at the rest of the restaurant for the first time.

Had he been that absorbed?

There were few people eating at that time of day, and probably ten times as many birds as people pecking around outside. Roxas worried his lips, wondering why he felt so nervous. He wanted to spend time with Axel. He didn’t think Anne would tell him no.

But he had never done anything like this. For some reason, he just felt afraid. He felt afraid, and he figured he shouldn’t, but he did.

He found himself biting his nails. Maybe he was just worried about everything going wrong again. Larxene has said there was trouble. Trouble usually meant that someone died, especially when he and Axel were involved. When had they ever gotten out of an episode alive? When had they ever been allowed to stay together?

It’s not that death meant that much to him. He had died before. He had lost his heart before. He had been ill, he had felt mad, and he had died many times. There wasn’t much he was scared of happening. But… when had he and Axel ever been allowed to stay together?

That was the heart of the matter. He didn’t want to be in danger again, but he wanted to spend time without Axel less. That was why he was so unconcerned about Larxene’s warnings, even though they were dire. What warning would matter?

In that moment, Axel turned around the corner, dripping mug of coffee in his hand. He smiled when he saw Roxas, and Roxas smiled back.

“So, what day do you want to start?”

“Friday. Definitely Friday. I’ll call the clinic.”

-

“Huh.”

Leon was staring at his computer. The glowing screen accented the grooves of his face in glow and shade and threw his hands on the desk into spidery shadows.

He had been searching, on and off, for records of the former Number VIII after Kairi claimed to have met him. He had always come up blank—no one that looked like him, nothing that looked like a marauding heartless, no newspaper articles about anything resembling Nobody actions.

But just some days ago, he had thought of a different angle. Kairi had described him as being young, either in his late teens or early twenties, and besides that, on the counter in front of him, there had been a notebook on the counter in front of them, with, she noted, a ball point pen snapped cleanly in half and leaking on top of it. With these two factors, Leon had somehow got it into his head that the boy might actually be a college student. so, following that line of thought, Leon started looking into the records of the local colleges.

And after some days of searching, he found some records of notable students in the science departments of the state college based in Bastion. And call him suspicious, but the alias “Alex Hearth” piqued his interest.

-

“Hey… do you really think there are more of us out here?”

Namine and Demyx had been idly strolling through the mall again, making each other try on new clothes (Demyx wanted to see Namine in sundresses and Namine wanted to see Demyx in a poet’s shirt and sleek black jackets) and eating frozen yogurt piled with fruit and throwing old pennies into the mermaid fountain. Demyx had decided in the end to buy them both one new outfit (“I get plenty of money from home,” he said) and they spent their time wearing their new clothes as they walked past the store fronts and sidewalks, watching everyone else and drinking a mango smoothie.

“What do you mean?” asked Demyx.

“Well, if us three are here, alive again, wouldn’t you think everyone else was? The rest of the organization?”

Demyx shrugged. “Yeah, you would think so. But they could be anywhere.”

“I guess.”

Namine gazed out at the swallows calling in the trees outside the wide glass windows. She thought about seeing Roxas in her dreams. Talking to him, frantic conversations. Everything turning blurry as she tried to reach him, and then, he wasn’t there.

“Hey,” said Demyx, “You ever thought of busking?”

“Of doing what?”

“Preforming on the street. Singing, dancing, for you, you could probably do paintings for people.”

“No. It never occurred to me to do something like that.”

“I’ve done it,” said Demyx wistfully. “Good days. I would bring out my guitar, or my harp, and I’m not much of a singer, but I would sit on the staircase in front of the museum playing with my case on the step in front of me. I didn’t get that much money, but it was doing it that was the gift. Watching people listening to the music, some would even close their eyes…”

Namine tightened his fingers where he was holding her hand. “You have a harp?”

“A Celtic harp. It’s small. I happen to live in a house that used to be owned by nutty historians that didn’t move out half of their belongings. I want a hammered dulcimer next…”

“Didn’t you used to play something else?” said Namine. She remembered seeing it, but she had never learned what it was called.

“I used to play a sitar,” he said wistfully. “It’s an Indian instrument. I still remember how to play it, if one were in my hands right now, I’m sure…” he sighed. “It’s not cheap to get one. No stringed instrument is cheap, it takes a lot of skill to make one.”

“I remember hearing you play it,” said Namine. “I do.”

“It’s all I could do that I liked. Everything else human was cut off from me. I was in love with my sitar, my fingers bled all the time and everything. Which, like, I don’t know why I thought theater would be a MORE healthy obsession…” Demyx shrugged. “But seriously. It’s, what, half an hour of a drive out of the suburbs where we are now into downtown? It wouldn’t be hard to find somewhere where people both appreciate harp music and watercolor paints, believe it or not.”

“I haven’t been around the city much, actually,” Namine admitted.

“Wow, then we really should do this! Paint in the afternoon, use the money to go somewhere in the evening. And you’ll be home before your parents can say anything.”

“It sounds like fun,” Namine said, considering. “They want to meet you, though.”

“Who?”

“My parents.”

“Well, I could do that,” said Demyx. “Zexion wouldn’t want to, but I’m sure I could find a way to make him. He’s more human every day, I swear, even if he just seems grouchy and occult now.”

“Oh, but,” Namine looked away. “When she asked who you two were, I said you were old school friends. I said I had a class with you once, and met Zexion through you.”

“Well, I can do that. I’ve told much more terrible lies.”

“Also… when I first saw the two of you, I may have gotten something of an incorrect impression.”

“I do have a pretty unkempt appearance,” Demyx muttered, “and I’m not sure how often Zexion bathes. Must be the schizophrenia he probably has.”

“Actually, when I first met you two, I thought you had been a couple. So that’s what I told Linda?”

“Really?” asked Demyx, looking shocked.

“Sorry!” Namine exclaimed. “I had just gotten my heart back, I guess I misinterpreted the situation, you know? Because you seemed close.”

Demyx started giggling. The effect was something like a squealing kettle. It was high pitched and unpleasant and sort of worrying because it made one think that the machinery somewhere was broken. All the same, he looked amused. Eventually, he had to stop walking and bend over, wheezing cackling to himself, as Namine stood in embarrassed silence. “I was that wrong?” she finally said.

“Ahhhhh,” gasped Demyx. “No. Stop. Wow. Okay. Oh, you make it sound so cute. Wow, together. I wish. You’re so nice, Namine. No okay help I’m going to fall over.”

Namine sheepishly sat him down on the marble side of the mermaid fountain, where water splashed into a deep, checkered mosaic basin. “So I wasn’t wrong?”

“No, I think we were,” he said, and then started laughing all over again. He very nearly fell into the fountain and was only saved by Namine bracing him.

“Honestly? We didn’t KNOW each other for very long in the organization,” Demyx said. “It wasn’t long lived, in general, and I came in late. Zexion was one of the original six, but he wasn’t like the Superior or his cronies.”

“No?”

“No. Zexion was a child when he was made a nobody. Not like you or Roxas, though you’re young too, but a pre-pubescent child.”

Namine’s eyes grew wide, and she covered her mouth.

“He grew up as a Nobody. That’s why I wouldn’t push the ‘nobodies are totally people!’ edge around him, he’s probably the only one aside from the Superior that derived pride from being a nobody. He scarcely remembers anything else, so, you know, I don’t know if he’s ever going to act like anything else. Don’t be too eager to insist to him that he has feelings now.”

“I won’t,” said Namine. “I had no idea.”

“I bet you think it must be awful.”

“I was a Nobody,” said Namine, sharply. “I know how it felt.”

Demyx raised his hands, smiling. “I know you know. So you know that Zexion was even less concerned about being a Nobody than we were. At first, I thought he was the only one really trying to get his heart back. Everyone else was fucking around with office politics or with private interests, I thought. But that wasn’t it at all. Zexion was the only one determined to stay heartless, and study the heck out of the situation of the heartless. He accepted his place and he would stay there.”

Namine was thinking. “You know, he hints at being unbalanced in this life. Even though you say he seemed stable in the last one, as a Nobody.”

“That is odd, now that you mention it.” Demyx bit his lip. “He seems to think that this life has actually been a lot worse for him than the last. Weird until the end.

“As I was going to say, I was a latecomer to the Organization. They had high hopes for me, all of which I failed. They knew I had a volatile nature, but since I started life as a water nymph, as a spirit on a world of heroes, they figured I would have exceptional powers.”

“Did you?”

“Of course!! But they underestimated HOW difficult I would be. You see, personality wise, I—”

“No, wait,” said Namine suddenly, holding up one finger. “A spirit? A nymph?”

“I was born into a world wreathed with blossoming laurels, ruled by a pantheon which lived on top of a mountain, full of heroes, spirits, and guardians,” declared Demyx, “But all in all, the heroes, gods, and guardians were shitty, black-hearted people. Brave, battle-like, honorable, stong, commendable, but rarely nice and never pure. Perhaps I, spirit of a still, freshwater lake, deep in the forest, was the only pure heart still there, except for the goddesses of the moon and the hearth, and Gods cannot be forced to be Nobodies.”

“Oh,” said Namine, summarily impressed.

“I was lived alone in that forest, ruling the isolated lake by myself, with only the nymphs of the forest for company, until the heartless came to our world. When the superior arrived to reap what was left of the world of the Gods, only I remained sentient in a field of burnt earth with an army of heartless. He took my hand, raised me up, took me to The Castle That Never Was, and I was their creature from that time forth.

“It ended up that the isolated lake remained an isolated lake, preferring the sounds of nature and the stillness of night to the squawking of people and battle. I was always idyllic. Idyllic became discontent and lazy. I came to the organization a dislocated spirit, and Zexion came as a child. To me, when I met him, he was one thing, and that one thing I loved deeply. He was quiet. His was the only company I endured seriously, though I joked and played trickster with a few others. Mostly Axel, that tease. I did not like the company of most the others in the organization. I was a playful spirit by nature and the solemn hierarchy of the superiors grated on me.

“I was absolutely a problem, you have no idea,” Demyx sighed. “I was lazy and uncontrollable. I never did anything, I whined when anyone ask me to do something, and basically acted like I was a child unless I was left alone to brood. In life, I had been cheerful and simple. I would have loved to stay that way. Be more of a free soul and less of a, you know, zombie slave. Instead, I walked the avenue of the brooding artist, like Wilde, disobeying everyone and doing nothing, and so I would have stayed, placid enough, until, like Mann, I was consumed by a vision.”

“Zexion was your vision,” said Namine. “What was it between you two?”

“If you had understood either of those references, this would be a lot easier to explain,” Demyx sighed. “He was an ideal to me, and so I studied him. Everyone else, they were Nobodies, but he was Nothing. He lived the hardcore minimalist life and had no idea. Zen Nothing, that was Zexion. I admired him, that’s the long and short of it. I admired him, but I didn’t think that he noticed or cared. So it was one sided. Could you say I had loved him? Would I have different feelings for him if we had been human? I don’t have a very good human-nobody feeling analog, so I can’t tell you the actual translation of obsessive Nobody single-mindedness to human feelings.

“But as a spirit, if I remember being a spirit—and I only do in parts—I remember that to be attracted to someone once was to love them forever. For us. That was our way. And the way of the naiad was to drown those we loved, and keep them in out embrace forever, so that they could not be lonely or afraid or sad ever again, but be absorbed in their love for us.

“The naiad wants to consume their love in nothingness. But Zexion was already Nothingness! Like the Buddhist, he was the quiet lake already. All I am saying, I suppose, is that our natures came together. I treated him like a sedative. He would calm me. I would make him a temple to be still in, and play hymns. And I had no idea of what he thought of about me but for one thing.

“One day, I stopped my music to watch him read. And he stopped his reading to look at me and say, ‘Keep playing. You drown out the others.’

“Maybe I wouldn’t have been encouraged if he hadn’t said ‘drown’. I was very tempted after he did, anyway. But you’ve seen Zexion. He encouraged my presence. As better than the lack of my presence. In words. While looking me in the eye.”

“Are you sure he said that?” asked Namine, smiling. “For him, it’s coming on a bit strongly.”

“That’s what I thought, too. But perhaps I was wrong. I thought he appreciated me like I did him. As solace. But he hasn’t been so interested in me here, has he?”

“He speaks to both of us,” said Namine.

“When has he been friendly? Or even nice?” Demyx dramatically slumped over the side of the fountain. “Auuuugh it’s so hard to tell what he’s thiiiinking. And he never tells me anything. He’s so cute and it’s not fair.” The transition to monotonous musing to theatrics was dramatic, but, well, that was the nature of theatrics, in which Demyx had been thoroughly trained.

Namine giggled. “Well, you said he’d never change much.”

“I doubt he’ll ever feel much, either. I never bought the no-hearts shit. We so CLEARLY had hearts and saying otherwise was Superior bullshit. But Zexion was so into the no hearts thing.”

“I guess it’s one way to live.”

“I bet it’s a comfortable way to live too,” said Demyx. “Does your heart ever just explode and weep and fall into pieces in the light?”

“No?”

“Dammit,” sighed Demyx. “Why am I the only one with these problems?”

“It flutters sometimes,” said Namine quietly, hand on her heart. “Like a bird taking off.”

Demyx sighed. “Why does every get such nice, moderate hearts. I need to find a lake somewhere and just sort of hibernate under the ice for a winter.”

“Wouldn’t you die?”

“I never used to die.”

“You really weren’t human before,” marveled Namine, tilting her head. “Yet I can tell, I think. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how I know, and yet, you are… not like a human.” Well, not totally. She steepled her fingers. “Why not use Zexion as an icy lake like you used to?”

Demyx sighed. “Duh, he totally doesn’t like me.”

Namine frowned, her fingers still pressed together. “Are you—”

“Sure? Yes, of course I’m sure. He’ll never fall in love with anyone. Or admire anyone, or need to protect anyone, or desire to be beside someone.”

Namine smiled softly. “Tell me, if you’re the one who is only now human, why is it that you’re the human of the two of you?”

Demyx smiled himself. It wasn’t very soft. “We’re you listening? I just said that the similarity between the two of us was that unlike most of the organization, WE WERE NEVER HUMANS. Not for any remarkable length of time. They struggled to be humans again, and we never were. This is why he and I were both so unusually complacent as Nobodies. A life of heartlessness had the same calm stillness of the life of being a water spirit among forest spirits, if not the charm, and the simple child who becomes a Nobody does not know what he lacks.

“And also? I am the spirit of the two of us. He is the human.”

Namine spent some time, long afterwards, thinking of what Demyx had told her. Eventually, she revised her interpretation of Demyx as a strange, sometimes obnoxious, sometimes charismatic person into a more total image, but that time wasn’t yet. In that second, the gravity of Demyx’s story hadn’t sunk in, and all she felt was a strange unreality at being unable to find the lines connecting the apathetic, isolated spirit who had revealed some his depth to her and the childish, artistic, wayward man that she had seen glimmering on his surface.

-

“I’m home,” said Roxas.

Anne looked up from where she had been reduced to doodling over a Sudoku puzzle, looking shocked. “My god,” she said, “You are. I thought you might have actually ran away.”

“I didn’t. Sorry to take so long. I lost track of time last night.”

“Well,” said Anne definitively, sipping her coffee. “Did everything go well?”

“Better than I feared, actually,” said Roxas, leaning down to take off his shoes. “Axel was really great. Really nice. I had a good time.”

“Does he actually have a job?”

“Not a good one, but he’s also in college.”

“What did you do this whole time?”

“Ate a lot of food?” Roxas shrugged. “We saw a movie. About Batman. And… met a friend of his. Not much.”

Anne gave Roxas a very strange look. He wasn’t sure what it was. “I guess I should assume that this will be an ongoing thing then?”

“Yeah,” said Roxas, surprising himself with his own certainty. “Well…”

Anne raised an eyebrow, which was swiftly followed by a whole grimace across her face, and a dramatic slumping of her head into her arms. “He wants you back already?”

“I was hoping to get Friday off so we could go on a week-end road trip?”

“Oh my god, fast much?” asked Anne from her perch inside her faux-oriental robe. “Why are you suddenly growing uuuuuup. Oh my god, is it a whirlwind romance? Have you had sex already?”

“No,” said Roxas, somewhat horrified. “No, it is no sort of romance at all. I am not romantic. I don’t like romance. We talked about this once.”

“No, you are SO in love with this guy, I can tell already,” Anne protested. “Oh god, now I can’t stop you, because I DID THE SAME THING. Twice. Oh no, don’t go on a road trip. He’ll take advantage of you.”

“He won’t,” said Roxas, suddenly quiet. “Axel is very kind. I mean it. He has a tough look. He looks really punk, actually. But he’s so kind. He wouldn’t push me.”

Anne peered with watery eyes above the edge of her sleeve. “Oh god, he’s so in love with YOU.”

“Anne…”

“Don’t give him all your trust yet,” she insisted. “Keep some of your heart for yourself. Always. You might need it back some time.”

Roxas looked down. He was turning red and pink in blossoms across his face, and his stomach was uncomfortably boiling. “It’s not… quite like that.”

“What’s it all like, then?” Anne asked forlornly. “Maybe poor old Anne doesn’t understand the illustrious ways of the homoromantic. But this is sudden, Roxas. This is a whirlwind something, even if you want to say it isn’t a romance. Which. It is. I’m slow, but I get some things. I mean, Roxas, there’s a reason I’m worried.”

“What is it?” Roxas asked. “I know I just met him… which, actually, it’s more like I re-met him… but I swear, he’s a good guy.” Oh, was Roxas banking on Axel being a good guy this time. He remembered Axel’s insistence that he wasn’t screwing up his new life. He remembered Axel’s patience and gentleness with him. He remembered how put together and clean Axel’s life looked. He remembered Axel’s testimony of cleaning up after injuring himself. But he remembered the burn marks on his dining room table.

“No, for all I know, this guy is a saint,” said Anne, sighing. She directed her face at the table again, so her words were dreamy and muffled. “It’s you. You’re changing, Roxas. You came back home a different person yesterday. And I wasn’t thinking about it at first, but the whole time you were gone, it became more and more obvious… when have you just spent time with a person like this before? Why are you blushing now? Why are you making plans, and telling me someone is good and nice, and that you need to see him? You’ve never done anything like this before. And you went from how you always were to this, suddenly. And I don’t know what to do.” She rocked her head back and forth a bit in the cradle of her arms. “Selfish Anne. Why is her boy growing up? She doesn’t think that’s fair to her.”

“I really didn’t mean to worry you. Really.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Anne murmured. “I wouldn’t care if you came home dressed in a ball gown saying you’re a girl now and your new dream is to be an actress and pop singer if I was sure it was… you know… you. If you were the pop singer. But you just suddenly went 180 on me because you met a guy. And I’m scared he’s changing you, and it’s not you changing you. You know? He takes your identity, and he leaves, and where’s Roxas?”

Roxas squirmed, twisting his fingers together. He hadn’t thought about any of this. How could he be scared of Axel taking his personality from him? Axel had given him a personality. More or less. Roxas didn’t feel like any emotions or quirks belonged to him. He just felt like he had been given warmth, suddenly, and awareness, and it came from Axel.

He didn’t know if that was what Anne meant or not. It was alien to him. “Would you… like to meet him, I guess?” he asked.

“Never,” said Anne. “Don’t let me see any of them till there’s a ring on your finger. Anne’s heart is weak anymore.”

Anne could have said any amount of derogatory information about Axel, could have insisted he was changing until she was blue in the face, and nothing she could have said would have struck Roxas like her final flippant comment. The concept of being ‘weak-hearted’ struck Roxas, painfully. For maybe the first time, Roxas looked at his foster mother.

He noticed she had buried herself in her own arms just to speak to him. He noticed she was wrinkled. He realized that as long as he had known her, she had been brokenhearted, and because she was brokenhearted, she had never endured any friendships, boyfriends, or outings of any sort. That was why she was always so comfortable in the company of her heartless son.

In a conflicted moment, Roxas came both to the painfully soothing revelation that he had never been a burden to her, and to the thunderously terrifying revelation that the gift of a heart was the gift of a great weapon, and it could break a whole person. Nothing else would have taught him pause against his need to re-learn his self and his emotions at the cost of everyone else. But he was suddenly, and permanently, pulled back from marveling at himself to gaping at how much emotion everyone else felt, and the magnitude of suffering and loss that he had not noticed over his whole life.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been careless. I should have been more… I should have waited a bit. For your sake. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Oh, no,” sighed Anne, “now I feel terrible. No, never mind, you’re probably happy, and I don’t even realize it, because I’m your horrible mother.”

“You’re not horrible,” Roxas said.

Anne seemed to scrunch up for a few seconds, and hold her breath, and then she relaxed again. “Just a few days, right?” she asked.

“What?”

“You’ll be gone for a few days, right?”

“Yeah. If I can go.”

“Charge your phone,” Anne said, “And always keep it on. I’ll give you whatever cash I’ve got lying around, since he’ll need gas money. Keep yourself guarded, please, for me.”

“I will.”

“Call me at least once? Just update me quickly on you being alive. Doesn’t have to be more than five minutes.”

“I will.”

“And then you come back and if you aren’t sobbing, you don’t have to tell me anything.”

“Okay.”

Anne looked up from her arms, finally, leaning back to peer out of him through puffy eyes. “If you’re ever in trouble, I will find a way to get to you. If I have to hijack a police car and burn my way over to you.”

Somehow, Roxas felt himself more disturbed than when Axel was screaming at Larxene. He wasn’t scared of Anne. He knew she meant well. He knew she wasn’t going to stop him, even though the idea clearly scared her.

He felt a feeling like a fishhook lashed into his chest, dragging him down. He felt guilty. He felt retroactively guilty for being unkind for sixteen years, and it was an awful feeling.

-

“Alex Hearth?” asked Riku, eyes narrow.

“Yes. A student at the state university.”

“Are you sure?”

Leon tapped his finger impatiently against his desk. “I looked him up. There’s no mistaking him. Trust me.”

“And so what are we going to do about it?”

“I assumed we would go looking for him.”

Riku sighed. “I would ask what we would want him around for, since he’s never been trustworthy…”

“But like Kairi always says,” muttered Leon.

“Like Kairi always says.” Riku agreed. “Well, where’s he living then?”

“In uptown,” said Leon, quickly opening a map on his computer. “There.”

“In the market district?”

“In an attic above a store.”

“An attic.”

Riku shook his head. “Well, we can’t at least say he’s not up to any ladder-climbing this time.”

Leon chuckled.

“So when are we heading out to pick him up?”

“Why waste time? Tomorrow morning sounds good to me.”

Riku nodded. “Tomorrow morning.”

-

Friday morning dawned a bit chilly but clear. Roxas tried to make breakfast for Anne, and failed, and only ended up more uncomfortable when she thanked him profusely and warmly anyway. He packed enough clothes for the weekend in a backpack, along with anything he would need to not end up a stinking, grimy mess after four days, and headed out with his phone in his pocket and his skateboard under his feet.

Axel was waiting for him on the small through road next to Jake’s store (which played strange music loud enough to be heard on the street through the gently wafting beaded purple curtains) beside a cherry-red car that seriously looked like it had driven there out of the 1950s. He was, at the moment, stuffing what looked like copious amounts of junk food into the trunk, looking a little proud of himself.

“What is that?” asked Roxas incredulously. “Does it really work?”

“This,” said Axel, slamming down its trunk, “is the shell of a 1964 Ford thunderbird with a modern engine stuffed inside. Don’t ask me how it works, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a miracle.” He put his fists on his hips, grinning at the old machine. “And yes, it runs. You have to put a bit of soul into it, but it runs.”

“Is that a stick shift?” asked Roxas, peering into the dirty window.

“It is most definitely a stick shift. If you think that’s exciting, you should see what the breaks demand from you.”

“And you’re going to drive this HOW far?”

“As far down the coast as we can in two days. Why, don’t trust it?”

“Hell no, this is the best car I’ve ever seen. Let’s go.”

Axel laughed. “Hop in, then. Toss me your backpack first, though.”

Roxas happily scrambled into the ribbed leather passenger seat. “I can’t believe it really runs. It looks like Grease came to life inside here.”

After slamming down the trunk again, Axel climbed in beside Roxas, dangling the keys form one finger. “I didn’t believe it either, trust me. I was worried that Jake just believed it was his magical spaceship resting in the road that ran on smiles or something. But no, it runs on reality. So, where to first?”

Roxas tilted his head back. “Um?...”

“We can just go through the east suburbs to find the shore road and head down until we find something nice. There are a lot of lakeside towns that are just gorgeous on the way to the first city. Almost eerily quaint. Like the postcard companies built them to trap us.”

Roxas smiled. “Sounds perfect.”

Axel smiled and revved up the motor. “The car is stacked gill-full with sugar and carbonation, so if you ever want something, sort through the mess until you find edible mess.”

“Will do,” Roxas said, and then leaned back to watch the colorful facades and broken up lamps and signposts of the city run by.

Soon enough they were turned onto the highway. The traffic that morning was light, though Axel said something about wanting to make sure he was out of Uptown before lunch rush. They drove over a bridge and onto a wide road, like a rushing black river, that tore through a swath of earth so suddenly barren after the past ten minutes of city driving that it seemed like civilization had just been struck of the map by a momentary apocalypse. Behind them, skyscrapers loomed with colors sparkling off their heights, and roads twisted and waved among a clustered mess of both building and trees, and before them, there was long prairie grass, dotted by sparse gas stations and depressed, flat car lots.

“There’s some twenty minutes of this,” Axel said, “The we have to swing past, or through, the suburbs, depending on how you feel about twisted, confused, circular suburban roads, and then a few more miles of grass and bullshit before we find the shore side highway.”

Roxas shrugged. “I sort of like all the grass and bullshit. It’s calm.”

“Sort of like watching a screensaver, but, like, a nice screensaver,” said Axel.

The conversation petered out quickly as both of them because absorbed with the serene monotony of the drive. To pour through endless golden fields, like waves, felt like a pleasant dream, like they had landed in a strange, people-less world, where the sun sparkled on flowing ground, and nothing but bird song interrupted the course of their minds. Roxas hadn’t travelled much before, figuring it would be boring and repetitive, but the repetition of scenery and sound flying past them was less like completing fifty math problems and more like listening to a slow but sweet album of good music. It was like waves pouring over their ears and their eyes. Everything was bright, and the wind whispered softly, and there was no one and nothing alive to bother them.

Well, except for the one other car travelling on the highway. Axel kept the car going pretty slowly, since it was old, so every once in a while a faster car would slip by them, but there was one car that seemed to be following at the same pace behind them. At first, Roxas didn’t pay attention to them, but the more he saw them, out of the corner of his eye, the closer they seemed to be, as if they were inching up towards them. As Roxas began to be more concerned, Axel started glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“Don’t look now,” said Roxas, “But it seems to me like the guys behind us are following us pretty closely.”

Axel peered calmly into the rearview mirror. “They are close,” he muttered.

“It could mean nothing,” Roxas said.

Axel nodded, but pressed on the accelerator anyway. He made the car ramp up a good ten mph, but the van behind them just sped up along with them. “Could just be tailgating,” he muttered, but when he sped up more still, the van continued to speed up to meet him.

Axel sighed shakily. “Roxas?” he asked. “Peer in the mirrors, tell me what the driver looks like.”

Roxas trained his eyes on one mirror, and then another, before finally getting a good look. “A man is driving… big, grown man, brown hair… I think he’s got a scar… he looks like… fuck.”

“Fuck was what I thought,” muttered Axel. “Who? How bad?”

“Do you happen to think we have any reason to trust Squall Leonheart?”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” agreed Roxas, despondently. “Step on it, maybe?”

“Sure,” said Axel, making the old car go maybe 10 mph faster, causing the engine to quit calmly purring and start growling. The van accelerated alarmingly, as if they actually meant to stop them in the road. “Shiiiiiiit,” Axel hissed, teeth clenched and eyes darting between the road ahead and the road behind.

“What’s around here?” Roxas asked quickly. “Any exits?”

“I don’t drive this often enough to know… there should be exits every few miles… but exits sometimes go on longer than the highway, so there’s no assurance we would lose them.”

The van gained on them. Roxas could see Leon turn to his side and shout—and what Roxas saw made his blood freeze. “Him,” he whispered.

“Who?” Axel asked.

“The silver-haired boy. Riku.”

Axel groaned. “Doesn’t this just keep getting better. What in all heck are they doing in OUR new life? We said we’d meet up in a new life, all good, but we said NOTHING about any of these jokers—FUCK!” Axel raged as he hit a stone on the road and almost went spinning.

“There’s a chance they aren’t trying to kill us with single-minded hatred,” Roxas muttered, obviously unwilling to give them the benefit of the doubt.

“If that’s so, they can give us a phone call later,” Axel growled, wrapping his fingers tightly around the steering wheel. “But for now…” A grin that Roxas seriously didn’t like flashed out of the corner of the eye through the bumps and spasms the car endured. “For now, I think we lose these bastards.”

“And how do you think we’ll do that?” Roxas asked, vainly looking for exit signs.

“Don’t you think that sawed-up field over there looks pretty flat?”

“AXEL, NO.” Roxas clutched to the side of the car for the sake of his life, staring openmouthed at Axel’s psychopathically excited smile.

Axel reached about 25 mph above the speed limit and swerved suddenly, with a massive convulsion, onto the grass beside the road. The car leaped over rocks and bumps the second it hit unpaved ground, landing with jolts like a person twisting their ankle, and protested with keening and metallic screeches. Roxas, however, was silent with shock, watching a range of farmhouses grow nearer to him as the road fell behind, white in his face and his knuckles, utterly still. As far as he was concerned, everything was silent and slow, as he and Axel sped on the way to their graves.

The thunderbird continues to bounce and jostle in a way reminiscent of bumper cars, but it kept going, albeit more slowly, and Roxas could have sworn he heard Axel giggling.

Roxas watched Leon’s van desperately try to stop and turn around on the highway. “Axel, what are you doing?” he tried to shout, but it came out as a croak.

“IT’S ONLY, LIKE, FIVE MINUTES TO THE EAST SUBURBS PROPER AT THIS RATE!” Axel shouted. “WE SHOULD BE FINDING AN ACTUAL ROAD SOMWHERE UP AHEAD. MAYBE A COUNTY HIGHWAY.”

Roxas whimpered, unable to say anything more.

They ran through dry fields of grass and dirt (Axel tried his hardest to stay away from anything resembling crop land) and only garnered attention from a troop of rather impressed kids playing in the dirt. Roxas began to wonder if maybe it wasn’t so uncommon for farmers to take their tractors and what not straight through the neighborhood as an easy way to get around. To his unending shock, they DID find a pressed-dirt road some few miles ahead, and Axel sedately turned onto it, slowing the thunderbird down to a reasonable speed. “Well, that ended well,” he said cheerfully.

Roxas made a noise that resembled the sound of a smashed microwave with water being poured on top of it.

-

A blueish van lay on its side, hissing and growling, just off the very edge of the highway. One of the wheels still spun forlornly, though the rest of the car seemed to just be settling into the road. Approximately six passengers in the car had to bail out one by one, coughing and dazed.

Leon blinked at the wreckage, and then gazed at the suburbs some five miles away. “Goddammit,” he sighed. He was painfully aware that there was no way to blame the crazy man who drove off into the fields for him wrecking his car at 15 mph over the speed limit.

Yuffie was the last one out of the car. Wide-eyed and grinning, she asked, “Do you think we could find a way to tip the car over and do that again?”

-

“Some start to a road trip this is, huh?”

“Look,” said Axel, wincing, “There’s nothing I can do. We’re lucky that Jake’s car didn’t run into any major damage, all they have to do it straighten the axle back out. No big deal. It’ll just be in the shop overnight and then we can go on our way. It was my fault, I have the money to fix it, no damage done. It’s just one day, and sometimes the suburbs are hiding some pretty cool stuff, right?” Axel wrapped on arm around Roxas’s waist, and Roxas sighed and leaned into him. It was disturbing how much that calmed him.

“So where are we staying tonight, brilliant one?”

“We would have to get hotels anyway, right?”

“In the suburbs?”

Axel laughed. “I’m lucky. We’ll find something. Trust me, things always work out when I’m around. I’ll find an old friend from nowhere or something. You’ll have a bed to sleep on tonight or… you can toss me over a cliff, I don’t know.”

Roxas seemed to seriously consider these terms. “Fine. Sounds fair.”

“Good! Let the game begin. Hotel room or death, no in-betweens. In the meanwhile, however, I think it is more important to find entertainment.”

-

Namine almost couldn’t believe it. She was in the library, but completely alone, without either of her new friends, to immerse herself in contemplation and silence.

It had been a week since the world had sounded this quiet. Her heart beat eighty times a minute, more than once a second, and still she felt like she should be counting every beat, in order to remember them later. Her heart beat faithfully every hours, even when she was neglectful, or tired, when she was asleep, or when she forgot about it entirely. For some reason, it was strange, to her, that the body had a force of its own. She had always seen it as a vehicle of the mind. But it slowly came to her, in waves, that the body and its powers of impulse and endurance had a power over that of the fragile mind, which grew sick and tired and was subject to awful plagues with only minutes of stress.

The heart, in its physical form, had no fear of stopping. It would dance forever, ankle-deep in blood, and sway on every beat of the body for many years, and it would not be stopped. To her, it seemed like an impossible power.

And maybe it was her nervousness that did it, but in that second, as she was thinking, her fingers balanced on the spines of medical textbook, her heart jolted, and she was certain it was about to stop.

But her heart kept up. It had only shuddered for a second, so it must be fine.

But what was happening now? Her vision was bright and swimming, and the air was cold. Her skin was tingling, and her veins were humming, as if she were breathing something strange. Unevenly, she sank into the ground, feeling light, and feeling limp.

She placed the feeling. This is how she felt when she found Demyx and Zexion.

-

They had been idly wandering around the local shopping mall for an hour, buying drinks and dumb-looking pairs of sunglasses to wear as seriously as they could manage, with Axel’s arm around Roxas’s waist and Roxas’s hands in his pockets. Axel was searching for something more like a bar or a club when he paused, looking through a clear window.

“Is that a library?” asked Axel incredulously.

“I think it is.”

“Attached to the mall? That’s weird,” said Axel, reaching for the door handle.

He opened the door, intending to look inside for a second to confirm his suspicions. Roxas took half a step into the door way in front of him.

When he crossed the threshold, curiously, into the library, which was brightly lit and inviting, Roxas felt a little strange. It was almost like he was going to be sick, since there was a turning in his stomach, yet it wasn’t definitively unpleasant. It was more like taking a deep breath out of a long time under the sea. It hurt, and the new air felt uncomfortable in him, but his blood vessels sighed and relaxed the pressure and panic that being underwater had built in him.

A glance at Axel, whose eye were now open and confused, told Roxas that he felt the same thing. They glanced at each other for a minute, then silently decided to walk forward. They walked slowly down the hallway, looking up and down the unfolding rows of books, before a short blonde woman intercepted their movement with obvious determination. Her eyes were wide, nervous, and intense, as she pushed a curtain of thin hair away from her wan face with a shaking hand, flickering back and force between the two men before fixing certainly on Roxas. The sight of her resonated in Roxas’s head, as if before his sight had been blurred, and now it was clear, and the landscape of the world ahead of him was balanced and complete. A series of waves of déjà vu ran over him, each bringing a picture of a woman in a white dress, distant down the street, or in an upper window, hidden by lace curtains, or hunched in a chair far across the table from him, building up until they crashed over him, confirmed.

He took a step towards her, hesitating.

The woman clasped her hands in front of her mouth, then before her chest, and finally she held them down by her stomach. “Roxas,” she said. “We met again.”

“Namine.”

Shock overtook Roxas. He felt distant and bewildered and blurred. After a second of silence, he turned back to look at Axel, as if asking for confirmation.

“I told you,” said Axel, shrugging, eye on Namine. “I’m serendipitous. Problem solved.”

Namine smiled, and held out her arms.

-

Demyx and Zexion were quickly contacted in a series of confused phone calls, and they (meaning Demyx) decided that the reunion was to take place in a pizza parlor. Demyx and Zexion arrived at said parlor before anyone else and Demyx had taken it upon himself to order enough food to feed an elephant. When Roxas and Namine, who were walking alongside each other and grinning, entered the store (followed by an uncharacteristically nervous Axel), Demyx screamed a joyous screech the likes of which Roxas had only heard come from birds before and barreled through the teenagers to knock Axel to the floor.

“Hello, Demyx,” wheezed Axel, who looked both a little pained and a little proud of himself. “I see you’re as pleasantly obnoxious as ever. Though I don’t remember even being actually tackled by you before?”

“I MISSED YOU, YOU FREAK,” screamed Demyx. “WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I HAD TO MURDER MY PROFESSORS BY FIRE?”

“Murdering my professors,” said Axel. “And without anyone to drown them in the lake. For shame, Demyx. I missed you too. Life isn’t as terrible and messy without you there.”

Namine case a suspicious look at Zexion. “He was known for acting out in a destructive fashion when in the castle,” Zexion muttered. “They both were,” he added, with a glance at Axel that made Namine more than a little uncomfortable.

Demyx extracted himself from Axel (who was gingerly poking at his lungs) and gave Roxas a slightly more subdued embrace. “And you,” he announced, “You are still adorable.”

“Thank you?” said Roxas, feeling a bit overwhelmed. All he really remembered about Demyx was that he was lazy and a bit scary. He didn’t remember his days in the castle very well if they didn’t involve Axel, to be honest.

“And still a bit sparse with your words,” said Demyx sagely. “Excellent. Hope you’re still a diligent worker too.”

Roxas said nothing as the strange man glided off to where pizza awaited him. Everyone nervously followed, Roxas looking uncertain and Namine feeling a sort of tension rising behind her. Having Axel and Zexion in one room… she hadn’t had time to be worried about it before. But memories of Castle Oblivion came to her mind now, of the deadly tension between those above stairs and those below, and the poisonous atmosphere of the castle that bred hatred and violence where schisms rose up… they were bad, cold days.

As despite the fact that there had been many sides in that castle, almost more sides than players, Namine remembered that Zexion and Axel always managed to be on opposite sides of the matter.

Great.

Food proved to be an excellent way to stall the inevitable clash. Namine chose to sit close to Zexion, who was silent, while Axel and Demyx enthusiastically consumed pizza while joyfully bickering and messing with each other’s plates. Roxas stared at the two of them, bewildered.

Namine closed her eyes, and sorted through her memories of what happened between factions at Castle Oblivion, to decide how to handle this situation. From what she remembered, those in the basement had the right of the situation, since all three, Zexion, Vexen, and Lexaeus, were trying to learn the secrets of the heart and create Kingdom Hearts, and were working quickly towards their goals. Marluxia and Larxene, rather, were aiming towards success as Nobodies, and Axel had been an agent of many sides, but his premier loyalty, it had always seemed, was to death. He had killed at least a few in that castle, and though Namine could never be sure of it, she felt Zexion had been one of his victims. At the time, she had been a prisoner, so she only learned what she could glean from Marluxia and Larxene.

Besides that, Axel had been unkind to her, as another one of her captives. She had come to her peace with him much later when she witnessed his devotion to Roxas, but despite not being at odds with him, back then, she had never found it in herself to like him.

“So,” said Demyx, eventually, once he had eaten his own weight twice, “What brings you and little mister eromenos here to suburbia?” 

“Well,” said Axel grandly, “we were about to go on a glamorous, romantic road trip, when we found ourselves distracted by a high speed road chase with a few dead people and I ended up putting some strain on my fantastic vintage car. It’s going through repairs for a night while the two of us are stuck here.”

“Romantic?” asked Roxas.

Axel laughed. “So, Demyx, what are you doing here, then? Cornfields are your haunt now?”

“I am a gorgeous and talented actor, of course,” said Demyx cheerfully. “Living in peaceful idyll in my country home, away from the depressing rush and noise of the city. Not being chased by any dead people, you know.”

“Sounds fantastic,” sighed Axel.

“I wouldn’t be surprised that Axel has found enemies before any of us, of course,” said Zexion.

Axel laughed nervously. “Guess who else isn’t surprised. Ha ha. I have so many enemies I’ve forgotten some of them.”

“Not too many, I hope,” said Zexion.

“You know Demyx, old friend,” said Axel, “Roxas and I are sort of in a pinch with this broken down car thing, would we be able to stay with you for a night?”

“Gosh, I would just love to help, but my lonely old home just wouldn’t be the best environment. Made for a suffering artist, you know. Zexion’s house, however…”

“Do you really all hate me?” Axel sighed.

“No, I just like Zexion better,” said Demyx, with a mocking sigh.

“Um…” said Namine, “My foster parents probably wouldn’t mind you staying for a night if I told them you needed help. I could just say you’re friends of Demyx and Zexion… friends of Demyx… and you could probably take the guest room.”

Axel grinned. “My charm wins for us again.”

“Of course,” said Roxas.

“Besides,” said Namine, fingers laced, “I would love to have some time to talk to the both of you. Roxas and I, for one, sorely need to catch up, since there are things about his past life I must tell him. There are a few things I never got a chance to make clear to you!”

“Like what?” Roxas asked.

Namine waved her hand. “Not now. Things to do with your memories and the timeline of your life. I’m sure it would bore everyone else.”

“Okay…” said Roxas, sounding uncertain.

“And as for Axel,” said Namine, looking shyly up at him, “I’m sure it’ll be nice to catch up. There are some things about your role in our past lives that I still haven’t straightened out.”

Axel sobered for a second. He looked off to the side. “Sure,” he said. “Why not.”

“Oh, and now that we’re all talking about secrets and loose ends,” said Namine, making sure no one else (especially not the glowering Zexion) could take the conversation at that second, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Well, Demyx and Zexion in particular, but I think Axel and Roxas would like to know about it as well.”

“Know about what?” asked Demyx.

As quickly as she could, Namine summarized the visions she had about the mosaic outside of the library, and produced Lady Luck from her purse, reproducing the words of the Cheshire cat as well as she could remember. “I haven’t pieced together what the appearance of the door and the riddles of the apparition mean,” Namine confessed. “All I can figure out is there is some force, aware of my past as a Nobody, which is using this cat as an agent and is attempting to lead me to some truth.”

Axel cleared his throat. “We might be able to give you a few clues, actually,” he confessed.

“Really?” Namine asked. After a nudge from Axel, Roxas reached down and unhooked Bond of Flame from his jeans to show it to Namine. He placed it in her hand, and she turned it around. “The same substance as Lady Luck,” she said. “But not a locket.”

“No,” said Roxas. “And I’ve not had any visions. Larxene didn’t say if she had any, though, but she seemed—”

“Hold on a damn second,” said Demyx, turning pale. “Did you say…”

“Larxene?” finished Zexion, looking legitimately worried.

Axel buried his face in his hands. “Larxene,” he confirmed mournfully. He summarized his own story to them, about giving Roxas Bond of Flame, being found by Larxene, who carried Rumbling Rose and cited the existence of Marluxia, and who seemed to know something about an enemy who she would not say much about. “She seemed to think we were under serious danger,” he said. “Of the fatal kind. She gave a name to the enemy, but didn’t really say anything about it.”

“What was the name?” asked Namine.

“Virus.”

“Virus,” said Zexion. “How unpleasant. Almost as unpleasant as tidings of our favorite upstarts back from the grave.”

Namine shook her head. “What does this all mean? An enemy called Virus, some nobodies with hearts and some without, people we used to know back and chasing us, a door that seems to only exist at night, the Cheshire cat, and key chains that, last I checked, belonged on the Keyblade. It’s like a few loose ends from our past lives,” she said, seeing chains in her head, “have come back for us.”

“But only now that some of us have met,” said Roxas.

“In summary,” sighed Demyx, “we, my friends, have been zapped by shitty Karma. What goes around, comes around.”

“It looks like some of us aren’t getting off from doing penance for our actions,” whispered Zexion smoothly.

No one had anything to say to that.

-

Zexion sat outside, where he had burned a circle of earth black several years ago, and lined it with stones. In his yard there were willow trees, and aspens, and a grove of apple trees sat not far yonder. He was very tired, like he usually was, and his vision kept blurring in and out. A book he had tried to read, about biology, lay beside him, its pages being turned by the wind.

Evidence of his obsession with the occult lay everywhere. Signs were scrawled onto the walls of his house and marred the bark of the willow tree. Herbs in the garden were stripped bare. A skull hung on the door, beneath hanging herbs and charms. Stones stood around the yard, placed into geometrical patterns. He had just reluctantly pulled out the rib bones he had stuck into the ground some years earlier. The grass around the house was flecked with salt and yellowed by smoke. He had always felt that there was never too much he could do to protect himself.

It was… still research, in a way.

Now his old obsession was dulling as his head slowly cleared. He felt those dark spirits who had threatened him at the corner of his eyes and his mouth for years receding. As far as he could tell, he was the only one of them to become delusional in this incarnation. Demyx was obviously deeply depressed, but he wasn’t talking about it, and Namine seemed anxious, but for the most part, she had adjusted very well. She was a level-headed girl.

It occurred to him that delusions were the price that the maker of illusions had to pay, though he did not have that power still.

He wished he had not met the rest of them. To him, knowing people was a hassle. His memories of being in the organization were memories of violence and darkness. In his years of madness, he had believed that his memories were actually memories of living in a city of hell with spirits of darkness before his birth. That was why he put so many wards around his house, because he knew spirits of darkness sought him, who could pull the life out of him, and leave him to be devoured. Sorting out these spirits into ranks of Nobodies and Heartless from other worlds didn’t really help.

To know there was something from his previous life chasing after him and those like him was some relief. Now he knew his paranoia had been founded. His learning of the occult taught him to offer Virus a sacrifice other than himself.

He wouldn’t. He was living in the real world now. He would hunt this thing out, classify it as a creature, and exorcise it as a scientist would. As he would have when he was a scientist, as sparsely as he remembered those days.

Or perhaps he would not. Perhaps he was remembering his days as a scientist falsely, and there was no benefit to going back to those days. Why fight with this thing called Virus? He no longer owed loyalty to anyone he thought he had, when he was a child. Perhaps, when it showed itself, he would let the fever begin to burn. If it came for Axel or Demyx or Namine, perhaps he should just let them be sick. He wasn’t going to pretend to be very attached to them, even if… one or two were pleasant. Perhaps he should be sick again himself, and hallucinate again, and go back to being bound in a world rules by the laws or visions and spirits.

There was no way to know that attempting to get back sanity and clarity wasn’t a mistake, after all. Hadn’t he been content as a nobody? Hadn’t he had all he wanted as a student of spirituality in the halls of hell? Hadn’t he been the maker of illusions? What pretentions had he to reality? What hopes had he that reality would make him glad? What stock had he in a solid world, a realm of light, in which all was made clear by the blinding revelation of the sun?

He wished that he had not been given a heart.

-

Linda and Thomas accepted their guests reluctantly, after an absolutely harrowing introduction. Linda pretended to believe that Roxas was an old friend that Thomas just somehow hadn’t heard of, though Namine knew she was worried.

The guest room was dark but there were no blind over the window, so the moon came into the room in a reaching rectangular beam. That night, across the old, dust guest bed from Axel, who slept silently, stretched out on his back, corpse-like, his body casting hilly shadows across the bed in the moonlight, Roxas had his thirteenth dream.

He was in a deserted hallway. It wasn’t a sparse, white, hospital hallway, but a grand foyer sort of hallway, with high wood paneling and the walls painted with many colors and vast iron-bordered windows with spotless glass gazing out into a garden with a worn grey fountain. On the far side of the foyer, two spiral staircases led up to a wide balcony, bordered with carve wooden bars, and a chandelier sparkled overhead. The house spoke of taste and refinement, colored in burgundy and brown, but Roxas saw thin layers of dust here and there, and some spiders scuttled along the floor.

He had been here before. This There was from Then.

A voice, which came from above him, perhaps on the balcony, muttered, “so much to do…”

Roxas squinted to look up. “Who’s there?” he asked.

“And so little time.” The low, haughty voice sounded like it was right behind Roxas, but when Roxas jumped and turned, he saw nothing in the gloom of the old house. He braced himself, his hand spastically clutching.

“What to do?”

This time, Roxas heard the voice form directly in front of him. He tensed, but did nothing.

“Power sleeps within you,” whispered the lordly voice from up above. “If you give it form, it will give you strength.” Slowly, as it spoke, the voice morphed to sound like it was coming from everywhere, from every corner of the mansion.

“I remember your voice,” Roxas said.

“The time has come, Roxas.”

“DiZ, you BASTARD,” Roxas broke into a run, dashing up the left-hand stairs, which led to Namine’s room. “Where are you? Where are you? What do you want? To imprison me again?”

“Roxas, you are the one—”

“Roxas!”

Roxas turned around slowly. The voice that now came from behind him, the new voice which came from the person suddenly standing there, belonged to the familiar redhead whose physical body was sleeping right next to his in a bed in Namine’s house. He wore his ole Organization cloak, instead of an old tank-top and torn jeans.

Roxas looked down at his own hands. Black bracelets. Checkerboard sleeves.

“Roxas!” Shouted Diz’s voice, “Roxas, the time is now! Come!”

“Roxas!” called Axel, holding out his arms. “You don’t have to listen to him!”

“Roxas!” called DiZ.

“Roxas!”

Roxas’s head swam. He shook it harshly to help himself focus, and took a few deep breaths. He looked sadly up the railing to where he knew the white room was waiting.

“Sorry,” he said, silencing them both. “I don’t know why I even had this debate before.”

“Roxas?” asked Axel quietly.

Roxas turned around, and walked slowly to Axel’s side to clutch his hand tightly, looking back up at the balcony. “Sorry, Ansem. You have the wrong hero again.”

A silence rose in the mansion. Roxas looked up at Axel, who swiftly pulled him into an embrace, kissing the skin on the back of Roxas’s neck briefly. “Don’t look, Roxas,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Don’t look.” Axel gripped him tight, so that he couldn’t move.

From the corner of his eye, Roxas could see some plaster falling down from the ceiling. A wall cracked, splitting from the top to the bottom in fingers like a lightning bolt. A statue toppled, and the crystals of the chandelier began to shake. That’s all Roxas saw before Axel turned his head to his chest so that he could not see anything.

Btu he could hear the screaming of the pipes and the groaning of the beams inside the walls as their metal screws were slowly wrenched asunder. And he heard the snaps and cracks like the ice on a lake breaking as great rifts appeared in the ground, and he heard the hail pitter-patter of shingles being torn off the roof and hitting the ground like discarded fingernails, and the rumble of plaster and the great, resounding CRASH of a whole upper story collapsing around them. He could hear Axel’s meaningless whispers, leaking from his mouth, and though his eyes were closed, he saw the darkness.

It had a thousand eyes.

-

Larxene groaned in pain and annoyance when she stepped out of the shower, with steam still rising from her reddened skin. She could risk getting sick, and having to watch black shit stream out of her mouth for an hour, or she could take medicine for her migraine and stay up all night and probably get another migraine tomorrow.

Pills it was.

She didn’t bother to put on any clothes before stumbling into the hotel room and collapsing onto the bed next to the man who already sat there. He raised an eyebrow at her and put his book aside. “Hello, then,” he said casually.

She flopped down deliberately on top of him. “”My brain is trying to escape from my skull. By way of my eye sockets.”

Marluxia sighed. “I can get the wine.”

“No you’re not,” Larxene muttered. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re going to stay here and be warm.”

“You need me here that much?”

“Didn’t I tell you to not question my orders?” she asked, flicking him on the shoulder. Then she scrunched up with her arms beneath her head and her legs curled around him, and sighed. “I am so dumb.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You? Larxene, your logic is always flawless. And your decrees wise.”

“I’m not sure whether you’re being sarcastic or not right now, so just shut up,” she groaned. She tried to look up at him, but had to cover her eyes from the bright lamp light, so Marluxia shut it off. “You know how much of the plan I rested on Axel’s shoulders. Well, he’s fucked right up.”

“How? You talked to him for two minutes. What could he have fucked up in that amount of time?”

“He’s grown a heart,” Larxene said miserably. “A real heart in his chest that does blood-pumpy things. And a conscience, too, to go with it.”

“Axel?” Marluxia asked, sounding astonished. “Axel, the flurry of dancing flames? The man who I once saw burn a priest until his bones were black inside his own temple? Which he also burnt?”

“Yeah. That one.” Larxene groaned in frustration, and Marluxia rubbed her stomach soothingly. “I found him with his adorable little boyfriend, acting like a domestic house husband just to make his little sweetheart feel safe. You know, if he goes to jail for statutory rape, we’re really screwed.”

“Is Roxas THAT young?”

“There’s a good six years between them, at least,” said Larxene happily. “And baby Roxas has to be in high school.”

“Oh Axel,” Marluxia laughs, “he never stops surprising us. Or, well, not really. I knew his life would be going in one direction from now on the second I saw him with Roxas.”

“He’s so BORING now,” Larxene complained. “He’s trying really hard to be good. And he’s struggling and being noble and it’s just dull. I hate it when people do that. But anyway,” said Larxene snobbishly, “The plan.”

“The plan,” Marluxia agreed. “I think I remember who ‘option b’ was.”

“I do feel horribly sorry about everything we did in our last life, you know,” said Larxene, not sounding sorry at all.

“Of course.”

“But it’s ends to the mean, dear.”

“Of course.”

“That poor girl,” she sighed dramatically. “Oh well. I never really liked the little witch.”

-

Namine was sitting on the edge of her warm bed, cross-legged, her hair tossed over one shoulder, wearing comfortable bed clothes. She had just woken up, and as usual, having just woken up, she spent some time sitting and thinking. She would look out the window at the warm, climbing sun, and sometimes she would sketch out her ideas. Usually, though, she just sat, and she looked, and sometimes it was dull, and sometimes it was interesting. It was interesting more often now, now that it didn’t ever tire her to think.

A soft double knock sounded on her door. She whispered, “Come in.”

The door opened to reveal Roxas, who just barely stepped in before he closed the door. “Uh, hey.”

Namine smiled. “Hello, Roxas! I was hoping to talk to you soon.” she patted the bed right next to her, and Roxas nervously sat down.

“Namine…” he said. “I’m so happy to see you. That you’re here. I didn’t expect to ever see you again.”

“Me too,” said Namine, wondering why he sounded so hesitating.

“Namine,” he said, “do you remember how we promised to be together? Forever?”

“Of course I remember,” she said.

Roxas looked down at his hands. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

Namine tilted her head to the side. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Odd for you to say, right after seeing me again.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I feel… I don’t know how to explain. It was wonderful to see you again, Namine. It was. It really was. I missed you, I wasn’t lying when I said that. But I don’t… I mean… I wouldn’t be able to…” he hung his head. “I think I picked someone else.”

Namine blinked. “I don’t know what you mean… oh!” She pressed her hands together. “Oh, Roxas, are you worried that you have to love me?”

Roxas tried to answer, turned red, and hid his face.

“Roxas!” Naminé said, and quickly tossed herself at him to embrace him from the side. “You don’t have to do anything for me! That’s not what I meant. I wanted you to promise to just be with me, not to be mine.”

Roxas stiffened. Namine let him go. “I thought… back then…”

“We were wrong back then,” said Namine. “Sora and Kairi were too. Don’t you remember? They weren’t in love either.”

“They weren’t?”

“No! How do you not remember?” she asked. “They tried to date and it died out in a week. They were good friends, and important to each other, and nothing else.”

“Oh…” said Roxas, looking embarrassed.

“Our words were too strong,” said Namine. “We promised to give ourselves to each other rashly, when we thought we might die. But that isn’t what happened. We got to live, and now, we’ve had entirely different lives before we met each other. I can’t expect you to be the boy I watched in Twilight Town when it’s been so many years.”

“When you put it that way…” Roxas muttered. “I mean… I just felt bad. When I saw you… I hadn’t even been looking for you. I almost forgot about you. Even thought you were so important to me back then. I promised to stay with you, and then I didn’t even try. I felt awful. I had completely left you behind for someone else.”

Namine leaned forward, her arms crossed on her knees. “You know,” she said, “I was upset in this life, because when I was born, you weren’t born as my brother.”

“Your brother?”

“Yeah. I expected you to come back as my twin brother.” She smiled shyly. “We looked just alike. More alike than Sora and Kairi did. And I was connected to Sora too, you know? I wasn’t just Kairi. In a way, we were already related.”

“Oh,” Roxas said. “I remember being told you were a special sort of nobody…” Roxas peered at Namine, and tried to think of her as his sister. He had never had a sibling before. He didn’t know what to think.

“I couldn’t just fall in love with you either,” whispered Namine. “Just because it’s been so long. I’ve lived a life. I’ve changed. We can’t help that. Being apart causes people to grow apart. It’s not kind, but it doesn’t have to be miserable. You find other people, but hang on to those memories that were nice. That way you just build up a great forest of good things, and good trees. It’s just always most important to be where you are, and not where you were.” She sighed. “I don’t like to live in memories. Or go backward on the path. You would think it would be comfortable for me, but it isn’t. There’s only a few things I like to remember. And I get uncomfortable spending a lot of time in the past, looking at all the chains. They rattle, I suppose.”

“They rattle?”

Namine paused awkwardly. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“Okay?”

“I still have my powers,” she said. “I can see memories. I could unhook them if I wanted. Change things. Reconnect them. Make new machines. I don’t do it, because it scares me, changing people. I’ve been tempted to unhook some of mine. But I ended up keeping them. I was more scared of not knowing than knowing. Even if I had to remember things like… Castle Oblivion.”

Namine’s voice trailed into a watery whisper. Roxas shuffled awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Namine peered at him curiously. “Did you… imply… earlier that you had fallen love with someone else?”

“What.”

“You said you couldn’t love me because you had chosen someone else,” she reminded him. “Is it Axel?”

Roxas turned slightly red. “I don’t know anymore,” he confessed. “I don’t mean to say… that I’m in love with him… I don’t think I could love anyone.”

“That’s fine,” Namine said.

“I had a dream,” Roxas said. “Last night. All I remember now is that there was a house falling all around me, and there was darkness, and I would have been crushed to death and suffocated, but Axel was holding me. Like a shield. It doesn’t sound important now,” Roxas admitted. “But when I woke up, I remember feelings like that was the way it was meant to be. Not even meant to be. It’s not about fate. Life sucked when it was all about fate.”

At that moment, for the first time, Namine gave Roxas a look that could have been called sarcastic.

“I suppose you know what I mean,” Roxas said, somewhat disturbed. “I just felt… I woke up and I felt like I wanted that. What I dreamed. To be close to Axel. Not anything big or important. To just be beside him. To be with him, in his house, and by him at the kitchen table, and to stay there. For him to be most important to me, and me to him. And I don’t know if it’s really a big deal, but at the time, it felt like a lot to me. And I realized that if these feelings are that important to me, if being close to Axel is that important, I couldn’t lie to you or act like you could be the most important person to me too.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “None of it bothers me.”

“I guess,” Roxas said. Namine let him go. “Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t worry about being my best friend,” said Namine. “Our past lives are important, but you don’t have to let them rule our lives.”

“I hope not,” Roxas sighed. “It’s not like all of that was fun.”

Namine laughed. Roxas also chuckled in relief, feeling a bit giddy now that he had gotten all of that off his chest and hadn’t disappointed Namine. He had never had the chance to be close to her, but he felt like he was a little in debt to her, so he didn’t know what he’d do if he upset her. Leaning back to stretch, he accidentally knocked something off Namine’s desk, making them both jolt as it hit the ground with a clatter.

Namine bent over to pick it up. “Bond of Flame,” she said. “You brought it in here with you.”

“Yeah, forgot about that,” Roxas said.

Namine smiled. Bond of flame. What a perfect name. If only she could see the ties between people, instead of just the burdening chains of their memories… “This could be important, you know,” she said. “Lady Luck was. It summoned the Cheshire Cat.”

“It probably is important,” Roxas said, “Somehow. I’ve never seen it do anything, though.”

“Huh.” As she gazed at it, poking at the edges, her head tilted, like she used to do when she was happy. Suddenly, Roxas knew what he wanted to ask her. “Hey,” he said, “You know how Axel and I are going on that road trip?” he said.

“Yes?” she asked, idly testing exactly how sharp the miniature chakram was.

“You should come with!”

“What?”

“Yeah! You and Demyx and Zexion too! We can make it an end-of-summer fling, all of us can catch up, try to figure out what’s going on, that kind of thing.”

Namine but her lips. “Well, my parents…”

“Will just be glad you have so many friends now, right? You can bring your sketchbook and your canvases along and paint what we see, and we can watch Zexion heroically resist killing Axel in his sleep, and maybe answer some of these questions we have before school starts in September!”

“I… don’t know. I’ll ask,” she said, doubtfully. She had never asked if she could do something like this before. She wasn’t sure Linda would let her. “You’re sure being enthusiastic about this,” she said.

“Well, I just finally met you again now. I don’t want to just leave right now.”

Namine nodded. “I would rather spend some time together too. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Hey, said Roxas suddenly, his tone changing to one of curiosity, “Don’t you think it’s weird that people like Riku and Leon are around in this life? And Axel said he saw Kairi once too. Why would they be back? It’s not like they needed a second chance.”

“Kairi? Really?” Namine asked. She looked down. “I wouldn’t expect that. I haven’t felt any… pull to her.” She sighed. “Which, since I didn’t even know Kairi was here, maybe she and Sora aren’t our somebodies anymore. Maybe we aren’t that connected to them.”

Roxas shook his head. “I dunno…”

“Well, we’re people now, aren’t we?” asked Namine. “We have hearts. So since we aren’t Nobodies at all, we can’t be their Nobodies.”

“Maybe. But all the same. Why would they be back here? I assumed… that this would be a life given to us. Not the people who tried to hunt us down and kill us all.”

“Kill the Organization, not us. I’m pretty sure we both left the Organization. Besides,” sighed Namine. “I think you’re right. They don’t need a second chance. I was thinking… maybe they’re part of our second chance. Maybe now we can know them, and be friends. You know?”

Roxas nodded. “Yeah. I’d like that. I’d love to just be friends with Sora. Or with Riku. But there’s something I’ve been wondering, that I wanted to ask you…”

“What is it?”

“What if this isn’t a second chance?” he asked, biting his lip. “The Nobodies were a mistake once. What if we’re a mistake again? And Sora just has to kill us all again?”

“No!” Namine declared with surprising force, leaning into Roxas so suddenly that he flinched back. “The mission of the Keyblade Wielder was and is to balance light and darkness! Sora was an embassy of light because forces of darkness were becoming too great. And the Organization was the origin of many heartless and much strife. Sora’s mission was not to destroy us—not us, but the darkness in us. And he did that. Some had to die in pain, but those of us who rejected darkness were peacefully pardoned. And besides that, after he destroyed Xehanort and rebuilt Kingdom Hearts, it may have even been that Sora overbalanced light against darkness by eliminating the Organization as well! Killing any of us now, when we are not creators of darkness, would never be necessary.”

“But without attacking the Organization, how could Sora possibly get rid of the darkness in the world?”

Namine glowered. “Roxas, are you listening? He wasn’t sent to get rid of all darkness. This wasn’t a mission of purging. He was supposed to balance light and darkness by getting rid of one man who went too far and caused a lot of pain. Honestly, I think he could have just killed Xemnas in his many annoying iterations and been done with it. The universe would straighten out the rest of us. Besides,” she huffed, “There’s no way Sora is still the Keyblade Wielder. So he won’t be duty-bound to kill anyone.”

“So, you really think this was a second chance?” Roxas asked, staring out Namine’s window. “That the universe took pity on our hearts?”

“Yes. I hope so. I think so.”

The wind from outside shifted the shafts of light that flooded in from the leave of the tree, which reverberated on the bright walls of Namine’s room, casting glowing colors around the whole space. Roxas’s face was a soft, light blue, like the sky, and shadows poured down the side of it from every ridge, like water from a mountain. “Do you really think Sora was a hero?”

“I suppose.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Namine thought for a minute. “Well, like I said, I believe he did too much. He made some mistakes. He made the mistake of not thinking, and so, he didn’t stop his campaign when he might have. But all the same. A hero is someone who fights because of a compassionate feeling. Not a sense of being right. But the driving desire to help. Everywhere he went, he tried to help. Sometimes, his mind failed him, and he was unable to discern the real situation. A hero can be wrong. Being right is not the most important aspect of the hero. Compassion is. The hero is a person who does something incredible because they must help, and they must not let someone be so sad. And that is all Sora did. I remember when he thought he loved me. I hated doing that to him. But he worked from then on with the goal of trying to help me, because I was sad and hurting.”

Roxas nodded. “Yeah. I suppose. He was like that.”

Namine smiled gently. “Roxas?”

“Huh?”

“Were you really asking me if you were a hero, too? If you did well back then?”

Roxas flinched.

“Maybe you were, maybe you weren’t. You were struggling, and miserable, and confused, and no matter what movies like to say, being miserable makes it exponentially harder to be a hero. But what does it matter? I never remember you doing anything wrong. You were kind. You might not remember much of being in the Organization, but what mattered to you were your friends. But again, what does it matter? That life is over now. You can be who you want to be, from here on, without chains of memory to bind you back.

“This isn’t such a dynamic world as our last one. Maybe, in this life, you will never have a chance to bind the door to darkness, or save a city from an attacking army, or any valiant thing. Maybe all you can do is love and try, try your best, to be kind. That is what I do. Sora was a soldier, when it comes down to it. And what a soldier is is a justified killer. He will be bound to many deaths. Roxas, you are unbound to these things.”

“Namine…” he said. “I don’t know.” Her hand moved into his grip, and he did not refuse it. They leaned against each other and watched the slow yellow beams of light glide across the room.

Some minutes passed. “Well,” said Roxas, “I can tell you one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know if you’re right about being unbound by guilt or by blood. The Organization had me do a lot of unpleasant things. I don’t know if you’re right about being free and able to be what I want to be now. You’re right that what I have to do is be kind. Emotions… like fear, and sadness… were more terrible than I imagined. I won’t cause them.”

Namine squeezed his hand. “You were wrong about one thing, though,” Roxas sighed.

“What’s that?”

“Friends?” he asked. “I only had Axel. I wasn’t the cool kid in the Organization, I can tell you that.”

There was a short silence. Namine bit her lip. Roxas balked and realized what he might have said. “I mean,” he stammered, “You were my friend too, but I met you so much later, I meant,”

“Roxas,” she said, “I told you I wanted to talk to you in private because there were a few things I wanted to clear up about your past life.”

“Yeah?” Roxas said.

Namine ducked her eyes. “I remember things clearly from back then. More clearly than anyone else, I think. I remember what steps I took to take Sora’s mind apart and then put it back together. Putting it back together, of course, involved you. You had a lot of his memories, and I had to take them out of you, and unravel you completely, in order to put him together. It wasn’t fun, I promise you. I didn’t like doing it. And DiZ was always so angry, because I took so long to do it. But it was almost an impossible task! Roxas, I had to put all of your memories into Sora, but I couldn’t, because you didn’t have all of your memories!”

“What?” Roxas felt something twist in the pit of his stomach. He seemed to go still when she said that. He wasn’t sure why it was as disturbing as it was.

“I kept trying to find all of your memories of your time in the Organization, but some of them were just gone. Entire hours. Entire days. And not a few days, either. This was a lot of time. Scenes were missing that made the whole story disjointed and weird. And no matter what I did, I couldn’t find those memories.”

Roxas’s breathing went shallow. “I forgot a lot from those days,” he muttered. “I was a zombie then. I was barely a person. And my memory was torn apart afterwards. Of course I don’t remember.”

“I know. I tore it apart,” said Namine, frustrated. “I had your whole mind in my hands. These memories weren’t repressed. They weren’t lost by a childish brain. It wasn’t that they were never there. They were there, and removed. I saw their imprint. It was like looking across a desk, which a lot of dust has fallen on top of, and in some places, there is no dust, because an object was clearly resting there. But the object is not there.

“Your memories had been stolen. Efficiently, too. With precision. But whatever wiped your mind missed an angle that they should have considered, and they were a fool for doing so.

“You don’t dream often, Roxas. But as a Nobody, you had a few nightmares.”

Roxas felt his head grow full of static and his cheeks flush. “I—”

Namine held up her hand. “You had a few nightmares. One of which… well, there’s no reason to describe most of it. But there was a part of the nightmare, where you were sitting on the clock tower in twilight town, with the sun setting behind you. On your right side sat Axel, and on your left side sat darkness in the shape of a human.

“Suddenly, Axel disappeared. You were very worried. You turned to the darkness and told it that the two of you had to find Axel. The darkness said that you had to help it first, because if you didn’t, they would know that it was helpless, and they would kill it. You spent some time arguing with it about whether you had to save it or Axel first, and the darkness kept getting more worried.

“The dream was interrupted suddenly. It doesn’t matter what happened next. I don’t have true proof of this… but I felt your feelings, in that dream. You were with your friends. I know it. Whatever that thing was, it once had a face, and it once was your friend. All your deleted memories are memories of a person. They fit the shape of a person. They revolve around something missing, one specific object ripped out, that was so important to you they had to be a human. I didn’t find them then, I can’t see them now. You have chains going nowhere, suspended by nothing, rotting, in your mind. Someone is supposed to be there, connecting them. And they aren’t.

“And I looked at Axel. I shouldn’t have, but I did. It was wrong of me, very wrong, especially since it was Axel. That person is missing from Axel’s memory too. You and he are missing many days in your mind. The same days. The same hours, which you should remember. And you don’t.”

Roxas felt cold. “That’s impossible.”

“There was someone else in the Organization,” Namine said with absolute certainty. “There was a number fourteen. And they were your friend. There is no way I am wrong about this.”

Namine looked up at Roxas, full of determination. He was pale and looked sick. “You have to be wrong,” he said.

“I might be wrong about who they were,” Namine admitted, “but I am not wrong about their existence. Someone was there. And someone has worked very hard to erase them. If you really want a goal in this life, it is here, in the darkness, where pieces of your mind should be.”

Roxas swallowed. He opened his mouth to talk. He could only squeak.

“Roooooxaaaas!” a voice bellowed. “Where are you? Hellooooooo?”

Color returned to Roxas’s cheeks in a sudden flush. “Axel’s awake,” he whispered.

Namine giggled. Roxas began to laugh too. When Axel audibly whined downstairs, they both burst into laughter.

Namine, shaking, shoved Roxas off of her bed. “Go on, alright? I refuse to explain him to my parents.”

Roxas grinned an uncertain smile. “Thank you, again,” he said.

“Oh, just go,” she insisted, and he did.

The second her door closed, the smile fell off of Namine’s face.

He had been awfully terrified of something he didn’t even remember.

-

The next day, the five of them all moved their mutual insanity to a small noodle store and claimed a nice, sunny table in the corner for upwards of three hours. There were several finished plates stacked up already, but Namine was only idly poking at a plate of pad thai, looking upset.

“You’re not going to eat that?” Demyx said with surprise.

“I’m… not hungry,” she said with equal surprise. She had been an eating machine since gaining her heart.                                                                      `Well, she supposed that there was only so much food the body could handle at once. She had felt a bit sick today, anyway, so maybe she had caught a cold.

“So,” said Axel happily, his arms around Roxas’s shoulders, “where are we going today?”

Everyone had managed to wheedle permission out of their families to go on a spontaneous road trip, though it seemed, mysteriously, that only Namine had had trouble getting it. She was starting to suspect the other two lived alone.

“Maybe we can just head out down the Lakeshore after lunch?” Demyx suggested. “The next big city isn’t far.”

“I have a different proposition,” said Zexion. “After lunch, we spend some time trying to open that door outside the library before we leave.”

“Is it that important?” asked Axel lazily. “We really only have so much time to adventure, you know.”

“Well,” hissed Zexion, bristling, “I suppose we don’t know if it’s important yet. I suppose Larxene didn’t seem THAT bothered by the thought of elusive Virus, and I suppose a frighteningly Omnipotent cat wasn’t VERY worried about the door in question. I guess none of us have any REASON to be worried about danger, anyway.”

Axel slowly raised his hands in defeat, rolling his eyes, as everyone chuckled. Eventually, there was general agreement that something had to be done about the door while it was in their grasp. At this moment, even though Namine hadn’t been hungry, she was shocked to discover that the giant bottle of lemon iced tea she had bought was already three quarters empty. When had she done that?

“Out of curiosity,” said Roxas, addressing the group, “The door in the back of the library is next to a circular stone mosaic, right?” He spoke slowly and with hesitation, as if searching for a certain, small fact.

“Mm-hm,” said Namine, wiping a bit of tea off the corner of her mouth.

“Well…” said Roxas, “has anyone looked to see, well, what the mosaic is? What picture it makes?”

Zexion, Demyx, and Namine all went stock still in unison. Demyx giggled nervously, and Zexion put his face in his hands.

“Just wondering,” said Roxas, while Axel stifled laughter.

“Seriously?” Axel asked. “This thing has proved so important to you guys, but none of you even looked to figure out?”

“But I do know,” said Namine. “Except I don’t.”

Axel smiled broadly, folded his hands, and rested his chin on top of them. “Do tell.”

“I painted it,” she said, “but I’ve never looked at it.”

“Whoa,” Axel whistled, sounding impressed. “That’s talent.”

“I had a vision once,” said Namine, “Not long after I received my heart. I was sitting with Demyx at the library, waiting for Zexion.”

“I remember the day,” said Zexion.

“In my vision, I looked out a window that faced the courtyard with the mosaic, and I saw a boy standing there. It was only the silhouette of the boy, more like a shadow, but I realized later that it was Roxas’s form. And then something frightened the bird in the courtyard, and they all rose around him, blocking his image, and when they were gone, so was he. At the time, I didn’t think…”

“That was the moment Demyx arrived,” said Zexion. “I remember that moment. I felt something in the air.”

“And that night,” Namine finished, “When I was home, I drew Roxas, and the birds, and the mosaic he stood on, in every detail, without thinking of it, though I had never clearly looked at the mosaic. I am sure I painted it, I remember filling the circle with color. I still have the pallet where I mixed the paints.”

“Suffering from a memory lapse?” asked Axel.

Namine frowned, and looked down at the table. She said nothing in return.

Roxas cleared his throat. “It was like that for me when I was in Twilight Town,” he said. “I knew things, even though I had never learned them. I saw things that I had never witnessed. Many times, I remembered people that I had never known. At the time, it felt like another life was intruding on mine. And I remember that mosaic. I dreamed about it. I dreamed that I was there, watching the bird, and I was torn away when a girl turned to look at me through the window. It was you.”

“Do you have this painting?” asked Zexion.

“At home,” Namine mused. “I was proud of it. It was done in watercolor, instead of my usual oils, since the colors were meant to be faint and thin, like stained glass with light shining through it, so I used a lot of water and had to set it out to dry… anyway, that’s not important, all it means is that it should still be up on my easel drying.”

“Bring it, if you can, tonight,” said Zexion, “When we go to study this strange mosaic.”

“Tonight?” Axel complained. “Why do we have to wait until tonight? We’ll never go anywhere at this rate.”

Zexion stared at him levelly. “Wasn’t it at nighttime that Namine saw the door? I know none of us have seen it in the day time.”

“Makes sense to me,” Demyx said.

Murmurs of assent rose from around the table. The short, unanimous silence was broken by the sound of a straw bubbling at it hit the air at the bottom of an empty glass. Everyone looked at Namine, who flushed. “I’m sorry,” she said weakly.  

Axel smiled, and then purposefully belched. Namine hid her face in her hands.

-

“I am about two hundred percent sure,” Larxene insisted, dipping her mascara wand back into its tube for one final swipe of her lower lashes. “I spied on them for how long? I heard it with my own damn ears.”

“Alright, I understand,” said Marluxia, holding up his hands. He had already dressed in a polished suit and tied back his long hair, going from ‘bathroom lounger’ to ‘composed businessman’ in about five minutes. Larxene had no idea how he did it.

“Afraid they aren’t the only pain in our collective ass either,” Larxene sighed. “Axel met a little opposition trying to meet up with those other three losers today.”

Marluxia raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. “Well, we always knew they were too close for comfort.”

Larxene grumbled. “Well, it’s not so bad as it sound, I guess. We don’t have to really worry about what Axel does anymore as long as it doesn’t interfere with the progress of the Princess.”

-

They broke off to go their separate ways for the evening once Axel started clinging to Roxas, declaring that they HAD to go out and see the town while they were there. Roxas complied without hesitation, waving off Namine, Demyx, and Zexion, who were probably going to debate complex theory in the library or something.

But before he was let off, Namine pulled him aside, smiling apologetically at everyone else as she dragged her recently adopted brother to the corner.

“Nami? What is it?”

“The things is...” she turned around, with a hand covering her mouth. She was struggling to control a bout of giggles, not nervous or awkward, but totally joyful. “I guess it’s not really important, but I had to say something. I was watching you, and Demyx, and Zexion, and even Axel, and it’s just…” she giggled again. “It’s so wonderful. It’s so amazing. I remember that once I was just waiting for all of us to die or disappear since there was no way we would be happy. And now it’s just so peaceful. It’s so great. It’s like the sun suddenly coming from behind the clouds on a dreary day. Everything is perfect and it’s unbelievable.”

She covered her eyes with her hands. “It’s not important, but I just had to tell you. I couldn’t keep it in. I didn’t want to get weepy, but I am delighted. I am joyful. This is more happiness that I can handle, because we are all alive and smiling and feeling. I’m overwhelmed. I’m full of brightness and warm air like a balloon about to burst. I have seen the miserable step up and dance. I have seen the inconsolable embrace and smile. I’m sorry, I couldn’t keep it in.”

She was wiping tears off her face. Roxas was, well, surprised. And shocked. The last he had known this woman, she was watching her friends die. And now, she was elated and practically bubbly, smiling and smiling sunshine through her teeth, and honestly, Roxas didn’t know what to do. He thought maybe he should hug her, since she was crying? But she didn’t really need comforting, he guessed.

“I think I know what you mean, though,” he decided to say. “Maybe not in those terms. But you, and Axel, you’re both… glowing. You might actually be glowing right now, but that’s just the aesthetic lighting.”

She laughed again. But then, she sobered for a second. “So, Roxas,” she said intently, “You could be really happy here, right? With Axel, in the city. You could call yourself happy.”

Roxas thought. “Happy is so new to me. I lived most of my life thinking that it was something I would never have. And I haven’t thought of myself as happy, recently, just… new. I dunno. I hadn’t thought about it. I probably am happy, though. This is probably what it feels like. What else could happiness be?”

Namine clasped her hands. “So you will be happy. In this life.”

Roxas smiled. “Probably. I’ll be happy. With Axel, and with you, and whoever it is you choose to be with.”

“If I ever want anyone.”

Roxas shook his head. “Whatever you decide. You’ll be with me too. You’ll have me.”

Namine smiled, and offered her arms to Roxas to embrace him. While holding him, this was her thought: greater things are yet to come

-

Axel and Roxas explored the hell out of Namine’s sprawling suburban hometown, populated with strip malls and overgrown lakeside pathways alike, feeding birds, running across freeways, finding strange stores by the farms on the edge of town and eventually hitting the jackpot at some sort of free sample day at a grocery store. They had walked in for ice cream, and ended out awed and somewhat disturbed by rows and rows of organic, vegan produce marked up at prices Roxas had never even imagined at a grocery store. “Does this avocado cost ten dollars? Really? What the hell is this?”

“Rich suburban snob grocery store,” said Axel reverently. “I had heard of them, but I didn’t believe.”

“Are we really allowed in here?”

“Are you rich, suburban, or a snob?”

Roxas considered. “I have been called stuck-up and prudish.”

“Close enough!” Axel took Roxas’s arm to lead him through the aisles. “Look for stands of free samples around the deli area, if you play your cards right, you can get almost enough for dinner.”

“So we’re mooching tonight?”

“Nah, I can totally buy you something. If I have too, that is. If we can weasel enough food out of these strange middle-class cheese connoisseurs, though, let’s fucking do it. I’ll go to a stand, then you can, we’ll pretend we don’t know each other, dodge out of view when someone looks at it funny… it’ll be sort of like playing the retail game.”

“The what?”

“The retail game. You walk into an expensive store on an off day and try to touch the back wall without any sales clerks trying to talk to you. It’s reminiscent of being circled by a pack of sharks and almost as terrifying.”

“Sounds… harrowing.”

“It’s sort of like the experience of laser tag. But without any of the other players knowing they are playing.”

Roxas hummed, suddenly overtaken by the sight of the exotic fruit section. Exactly how many oceans had these things been shipped over?

“Hey, look at this thing,” Axel said. “It looks like a star.”

“Hm?” In his hand, Axel was holding a yellow, waxy, star-shaped fruit, dotted with brown. “Hey, where’d you get that?”

“Right here, from this little… cubby-box-thing… the label straight-up says ‘starfruit’. Very imaginative.” He tilted it over in his hand. “It’s got a little ‘greetings from Florida’ sticker. Want one?”

“Uh… yeah, actually. It would be kind of nostalgic.” Looking at them, they weren’t quite what he remembered as Paupu; thy were smaller, with thicker kinds and a tougher feeling, and they were labeled as being a type of citrus, when the Paupu had been more like a mango. It probably wasn’t the same thing at all, but it made him feel sentimental all the same.

Not that he was totally okay with feeling gushy and sentimental. He sort of wished the sensation of longing and confusion that came with remembering things would stop.

“Nostalgic? I don’t remember any star-shaped fruit trees hanging around in Twilight Town.”

“On the Destiny Islands. I suppose, actually, that I never ate one. It was Sora who did. They called it a Paupu, and I don’t think it was the same thing as this, but it looked like it.”

“Well, we can be fruity anyway,” Axel drawled, all implications intended.

“Fabulous,” Roxas replied.

-

Demyx drove fifteen minutes out of the suburbs, where he usually went to research and run errands, into a world of razed cornfields, dry yellow grass, and sprawling decay. He pulled his old, rusting car into a shuddering stop outside of a rambling farmhouse, where the whole yard was silent except for the bird as the wind.

No one was home. He breathed a happy sigh and stretched as he hopped out of the car, taking his time looking at the growing autumn flowers; the sunflowers and the violets, the marigold and the snapdragon, where cicadas rustled and grasshoppers leaped from bushes to rushes. Old, leafless trees loomed over the gravel road leading to the house, and the grass was overtaken everywhere by spiny weeds and clovers. The whole yard was sparse, with colorful amber blossoms only here and there, with wind chimes sounding almost desolate where the slight wind tickled them on the other side of the house.

He didn’t need a key to open the wooden door with tan paint peeling off onto the concrete porch, and he didn’t bother to turn on any of the old, humming lights, covered with pink crystal shades. The floors creaked on top of hidden fruit cellars, but Demyx knew from tests and trials that nothing would make them crumble. The refrigerator groaned in the corner and the occasional fly wandered the living rooms, having wandered in from the open, screen-less windows, but Demyx ignored them, climbing up the creaking stairs.

The old farmhouse, having been built once by an individual, burnt once by a family, and partially rebuilt by the community, was, at least in Demyx’s mind, strangely like a three dimensional Fibonacci spiral. On the newer side of the house, especially on the ground floor, there were large, spacious rooms, furnished with couches and dressers and writing desks, but the high and farther in one climbed, to the old parts of the house, which were simply blocked off instead of rebuilt, filled with artificially created rooms where old desks and tables made walls, everything seemed to get smaller and thinner, pressing farther into the center of the spiral. There were barer floorboards where carpets had been torn away, blackened walls that still remembered fire, great spiders and nests of birds, and small books scattered here and there where Demyx had left them. Plays, novels, sometimes poetry.

Demyx eventually reached a small, white room on the very top of the irregular house, that almost jutted out like a balcony, with some of the thin boards on the wall torn away so that the broad sky was revealed to the inside. There was an iron-frame bed with rust flaking off of it that the rest of the residents didn’t know existed- Demyx had dragged it here from one of the attics. They all thought he slept in the room they had given him, but usually, he slept here, where the house was open to the night and the dawn, and he could hear the calls of farm beasts far off but not the voices of humans downstairs.

It was because people who lay in the bare light of the moon were supposed to be mad that they made the word ‘lunatic,’ fancy that. Humans were never that close to nature.

He sat himself on the ‘window’ seat, a leather ottoman he had placed there himself, running his hand absently up and down the unevenly torn boards. A little above him, if he had the nerve to crawl out of the side of the house and upwards, was a triangular room, inside of the roof, which was once used for storing bootleg liquor. Now, it was used for storing anything he wanted to keep private so badly that he would risk his neck for it.

But for that minute, he just sat in that cramped room, crouched on the window seat, staring out into an uneven sliver of the world.

The land was billowing green and gold, flecked with colors like the little facets of a prism, facing a slow-moving, grey-blue river. Demyx smiled to himself, and sat in silence.

As a heartless, he would usually sit here for most of the day, and think of nothing. Just watch. He was active in school, or when he needed to talk to someone, but for the rest of the day, he did nothing. He sat, and didn’t think. He would sometimes play his guitar or his harp, but only if he had the energy. His mind was occupied now. He thought about acting and singing, and about covering a stage with gold and blue and green, and about the pastoral lyrics of the medieval poets, and about those travelling bards who once roamed the land, making poetry out of beauty, and returning adoration with rhyme.

Weird, he had thought these dreams were all about wanting his heart back, wanting emotions again, wanting more than he had before.

If he still had them, they can’t have been.

-

Zexion was the first to be there, partly because he had already been at the library for a few hours, until it closed at eight. Their meeting time was, of course, after dark, which was to fully fall at 9:10 that night, so Zexion decided to take a scientific approach and observe what happened to the mosaic and the wall as it changed.

He settled onto a bench and picked out a fairly dry book about renaissance cosmology (one that assured he would look up often) now that his actual studies were over for the day.

And thus, he waited.

The population of birds that normally flocked the garden and hanging flower baskets slowly dispersed as the bright yellow sun sunk. The daytime flowers shrank into themselves for sleep, exposing the pale underside of their petals, while a small selection of moon flowers, on their trailing vines whish hung above Zexion’s head and curled on the back of his bench, unfurled.

They glowed silver and pure, mirrors of the nearly full moon. As they began to brighten, so too the stone floor. Zexion resisted the urge to pluck and dry a few, assuming they had power. Zexion was startled out of his occult reverie when the floor seemed suddenly bright and he realized that he must look at it, and see what picture was on it.

It was a long-tailed white bird, looking almost like a pale peacock, its bowed head frazzled and old with an image of the rising sun made in feathers on its stomach. Its feather curled around, bringing its body in a circle, and it had a large egg clutched in its claws. A tracery of stone lines in elaborate knot work circled the bird, with little stones like opals blossoming on them.

Zexion closed his eyes, and the luminescent bird burned in the darkness of his vision. His mind, used to extrapolating power from plants and feathers and stone, searched for meaning and symbols in the depths of his mythic knowledge.

It was too dark to read, and the others would be arriving before too long.

-

Papers were scattered across Namine’s room as she hunted for connections. On her easel was the image of a boy in the shadows, wreathed with the feathers of birds, and behind him, like a gigantic halo, and gold, white, and green circle, painted with bright colors, depicting nothing but a white bird clutching an egg.

At first, Namine was disappointed when she saw it. She figured all she had done was paint the circle with subconscious influences form the environment—a white bird, flowers, vines, the sun in the background. But, she reasons, if that was true, why the egg? And why make a bird more like a large water bird than a little dove? Eventually, convinced she had made those changes for SOME reason, she found herself rifling through her archives of images copied from her memories, trying to find some connection to this bird in her previous life.

She found nothing. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed.

Demyx said he would pick her up in his car, so that they all had some sort of quick getaway, just in case. For all they knew, they were about to open the very door to darkness and flood the world with gigantic shadow titans.

When she stepped downstairs, dressed in a silk wrap-around skirt and a simple tank top, book bag filled to the brim with drawing materials, extra clothes, and granola bars, Linda and Thomas were eating a late dinner. Over the years, they had gotten used to her almost never eating, so they didn’t try to fit her into their schedule anymore. After a second of hesitation, she tiptoed to the fridge and pulled out a box of cold leftover tortellini, and began to pull them apart with a fork.

There was no conversation beyond the initial hellos, just silent eating, until Demyx pulled up onto the driveway and the sound of knocking was heard on their front door. “Hello? Namine? Do I have the right house this time?” he called.

Namine smiled, and ran up to put the rest of the tortellini away. Her foster parents looked summarily shocked. She almost ran to the door to let Demyx in. “Hey,” Demyx said, catching sight of the two adults at the kitchen table.

“Who’s this, Namine?” Linda asked.

“This is Demyx,” she said. “My old friend. Who has been in town.”

He waggled his fingers. “Hi. I am Demyx. Said old friend. Staying in town while college is not in session.”

“Oh, what are you studying?”

“Theater.”

“Oh, wonderful,” gushed Linda, “I was a fine arts student myself. I was in a dorm with lots of theater and dance students for several years, it was always lots of fun to live with them.”

“Never a dull moment.”

“Exactly.”

There was a silence.

“Well, I’ll be off on the road trip, then,” Namine said. “I’ll be back in a few days.”

“Alright. Be safe.”

“I will. See you.”

“See you.”

The door shut.

Demyx made an exaggerated sigh, wiping the nonexistent sweat of his forehead with dramatic flourish. Namine was supposed to laugh, but she sort of felt like taking a deep breath and then falling over herself.

His car was old and dirty, obviously drove on dirt roads more often than not, with room to fit four people, maybe five it if were stretched. It looked like it had been dark green and sporty once, but it was out of fashion by now, and as much brown as green, so that it just looked overgrown with moss. “The Wise Grasshopper,” Demyx commented. “My car, that is.”

Namine nodded. “Creative name.” She jumped into the passenger side, deciding she liked the old, squishy leather of the seats and the slightly musty smell. There was a bamboo plant growing in one of the cup holders, and various items were strewn across the backseat—fake guns, hats, parasols, plastic jewelry—obviously assorted stage props. A glimmer caught the corner of her eye—a silver charm was hanging from the rearview mirror, shaped like some sort of large bird. “Um, Demyx? What’s this?”

“What, the little metal bird? I dunno. I thought it looked kind of like a chocobo, which is hilarious, since there are no chocobos here, so I kept it.”

“So, you’re saying this is a metal chocobo?”

“Yes?”

“I’m going to assume that you’re totally unaware that Sora had a keyblade called Metal Chocobo?”

“Oh? OHHHHH.” Demyx did a double take and stared at his little charm with wide eyes. “Oh.”

Namine smiled. “Never realized, huh?”

“Hey, how was I supposed to know? That wasn’t the Keyblade he came after me with. And, like, he had about fifty of those damn things, was I supposed to study them?”

Namine giggled. “That is true.” Lady Luck, the Wonderland Keyblade, Bond of Flame, Axel’s Keyblade, and Metal Chocobo, the Keyblade that came from Cloud Strife. Why? What was the connection? The appearance of the keycharms was, so far, a total mystery to her. There were no Keyblades here that she had seen.

They spent the few minutes it took to the driveway in polite conversation, both anxious about what could happen. Demyx drove to the parking lot on the back of the library, where they ran a farmer’s market on Sundays in the summer. Now, it was deserted. Namine took a second to unclip Metal Chocobo from Demyx’s car, attaching it on her book bag next to Lady Luck for now. They walked silently across the blacktop to the hanging garden over the courtyard, where a still figure was stationed on a bench.

“Zexy!” called Demyx. Zexion seemed shockingly unperturbed by the name. He seemed shockingly unperturbed by Demyx in general, Namine noticed. Perhaps Demyx’s fears about his distaste were unfounded? She chased after him as he broke into a run, exuberantly catching Zexion from behind in an almost-hug, which he endured.

When Namine caught up with them, both Zexion and Demyx were staring at the ground, transfixed.

She clattered to a stop in shock, more surprised by the beauty of her surroundings than by the image on the mosaic. Blooming, many-petalled moonflowers floated like stars in a dark river, whispers floated in the grass and light danced on the stones, and a chill breeze suddenly found and rustled her hair. Around the great, glowing spotlight on the ground, she could see nothing beyond the courtyard but the barest of dark forms.

When she saw the image on the ground, she recognized it twice over. First, it was the white bird, with the sun on its stomach, surrounded by vines and flowers, an egg in its claw. Second, it was a memory, a bright bird of yellow and red plumage, in a pyre of its own light, eyes like black soot. “The phoenix,” she said.

“You think?” Zexion asked. “That did occur to me too, what with the adult and the unborn bird in one circle, but its not the traditional representation of the fire-bird.”

“He’s old, you can see the wrinkles around his eyes. His feathers turned white with age. He’s about to be reborn—see the rising sun on his stomach?”

“Makes sense to me,” Demyx said. “Think outside the box, Zexion.”

“I will make my utmost attempt. Anyway, the sun is well set. Does anyone have any idea where our regretful comrades would be?”

They shrugged and shuffled. They stood in a semicircle, shadows against the bright ring, as if prepared for a séance, silent and anticipatory.

The silent night was broken by the sound of shrill laughter and the chanting of an obnoxious bar song. Judging from the slow, strained sigh that escaped Zexion, they were all unanimously certain about exactly which two voices were raised. Sure enough, the two men soon came blundering into view, arms around each other, Axel singing and Roxas cackling like a hyena. They were clutching shopping bags, wearing totally new outfits, and, for some unknown reason, carrying a hockey stick.

“Well,” said Demyx, “Whatever party you two came from must have just fucking died when you animals left.”

“HEEEEY!” shouted Axel. “We made it!! Did you know that behind one of the lovely suburban facades in this town some kids are actually running a functioning speak easy? Everyone was dressed up and everything! We wouldn’t have even found it if we hadn’t started talking to the dudes in the steampunk.”

“Sorry we’re a little late, we are kind of on foot, though,” Roxas said, lifting Axel off of his shoulders.

Zexion looked like he was resisting the urge to grab the hockey stick and start using it in absolutely illegal moves. “You know what,” he said, “let’s not talk about this at all. Let’s just open this door.”

Namine had noticed that Roxas had tied Bond of Flame around her neck. And then, to her surprise, she saw a matching chain on Axel’s, holding what looked mostly like a yellow star.

She frowned, recognizing the design instantly. How could she not? It was the keychain to Roxas’s Keyblade, Oathkeeper. “Axel, where exactly did you find Oathkeeper?” she asked.

Axel looked down at his chest. “Oh. Yeah. Well, we were at that speakeasy party, you know, and we all decided it was time for bar games, and crazy things happen at bar games. Why, why do you have two keychain thingies now?”

“That’s mine!” shouted Demyx. “Um, it was given to me at the Renaissance fair when I was thirteen. I knew someone who worked there then. I was like, ‘what, a chicken necklace, why?’ but I took it from the girl anyway because she was one of the paid silent fairies that went around with the glitter and the flower basket with the gigantic butterfly wings on her back making everyone beautiful, and how could I refuse a gift from a fairy?”

Zexion shook his head. ‘Can we please get back to the task at hand?”

Axel shrugged, nodded, and removed himself from Roxas. “Fine by me.”

They all quietly lined up at the white door, with Zexion in front. Without announcement or ceremony, he reached out, grasped the handle, and ignoring whatever fantastical shock suddenly sparked him, pulled the door wide open.

-

The light was green and soft, and the ground under her feet was velvety grass interspersed with tough little flowers. Somewhere, water was pouring over stones, shushing and soothing, filling the air with a calm, wet taste. Above the emerald field, there was a pale hill, which rose gently and naturally out of the flat plain and was topped with two stone platforms, both gently shielded by a half-finished dome. On one of the platforms, two men were waiting—one sleeping, with his head in the other’s lap, and the other sitting up but barely awake. The other four travelers filed in around Namine, awed into silence by the seemingly endless field and the dreamy, soft, greyish sky that rolled overhead.

The man sitting up, whose hands cradled the head of the sleeper, slowly opened his eyes, lashes framed by long blue bangs unfurled. His eyes were bright yellow, his hands were very pale, and his clothes were long and dark. The man on his lap was tall, dark-skinned, and bright haired, with a blank expression on his face. He was also clothed in dark robes, which rose and fell incredibly slowly as he slept. There could be absolutely no doubt as to who these men were.

A few of them gasped, and in response, Saix slowly raised one finger to his lips, indicating the need for silence.

“He is sleeping,” Saix said. To Axel, his tone was unbelievably calm, not as if it were a charade, but as if the man were actually in peace, the sort of peace he had never known before. Axel’s eyes were trained on Saix, unbelieving.

“Don’t shout, or cause a disturbance. This is meant to be a sacred place.”

The rest of them were eyeing the former master of nothingness lying peaceably in another man’s lap, who hadn’t even stirred up to this point. They complied immediately to the demand for silence, as they were all justifiably nervous.

“Saix,” said Axel, eventually.

Saix looked at him. “Axel,” he said. “I regret we couldn’t meet before.”

To Roxas, Axel looked like he was angry. Yet he didn’t say anything. He looked like he wanted to accuse or argue with Saix, yet something about Saix’s own calm stilled him. “I do too,” he said, eventually. “I really do regret that.”

“Where are we?” asked Roxas.

“You opened a door to the place of Rebirth,” responded Saix. “This is the place where cycles continue.”

There was a soft sound that came from the side of the bench, like a sigh or a hum. Saix lowered his hand. An old phoenix, white and bent, strutted to Saix’s extended palm, placing its tired head into his grasp and closing his eyes. For a second, little pinpricks of light danced around the bird’s head, but they winked away. “I assume, then, that you have all found new lives for yourselves, and, hopefully, some happiness?”

“Yes,” said Namine, “I suppose. We’re all alive. We are all working for our happiness.”

Saix smiled with bittersweet warmth. “Good.”

“But why are you here?” asked Axel. His voice was hollow. “What are you doing in some dream world? Didn’t you get a new life?”

“I am sure you wouldn’t recall. After the deaths of all the Nobodies who retained sentience, which was, for the most part, our Organization, we were called together by a group of higher powers who deliberated what was to be done with us. Eventually, a vote of mercy ruled, and it was decided that since the life of a Nobody was an aberration in the normal course of life, all who had been Nobodies would be offered a chance to live a second life, with the stipulation that they would work to be better people than they were before. It was assumed that everyone would accept this chance. And the rest of the crowd said ‘Yes’ to this offer without hesitation. But Xemnas and I waited a while, and talked with each other, and we eventually decided that we had no desire to live again. We wanted to stay in the grey world and be content.

“No one was exactly supposed to make this choice, so after some time of debating, our fate was decided thus: we would be given a space in the place where souls go for reincarnation, a space meant only for the two of us, and we were to be put to sleep there on stone beds and stay asleep forever, unless we were needed, specifically, as guardians of the place of reincarnation. Then one of us would wake for some short time to send lost souls on our way before returning to sleep. Since he has expressed a desire to never be awoken, so far, I have responded to every call.”

There was silence except for the sighing wind. Namine saw Demyx shaking his head and whispering something to himself, and Roxas saw Axel squeeze his eyes shut.

(Most worryingly, Zexion folded his hands and looked down with a look of consideration on his face.)

It was Roxas who spoke. “Are you happy like this?”

“More than ever before,” said Saix. “More than ever before. And I will never risk it to chase some vanity. Many would find this cowardly of me. Many would say I neglect my purpose as a human being. But…” Saix lowered his head so that his hair brushed Xemnas’s face. “But not everyone was made for lofty thoughts. I sleep.”

The phoenix cried softly, and Saix smoothed the feathers of its crown. “This bird is old, my friends.” Zexion looked up at these words and frowned. “He will not last much longer as he is. Some day soon he will die and you must be aware. Rebirth doesn’t have long before, once again, he starts the cycle of life. This is normal. It will disturb no one. No one, that it, but for those whose place in life, or hold on life, is uncertain.

“And someone, I have to say, is very angry that you found this door to Rebirth soon… angry that you found it at all.”

“Who?” Roxas asked. “Marluxia?”

Saix shook his head. “No. Believe me or don’t, but Marluxia and poor Larxene are fighting for you and not against. But their work with be for nothing now if you do not begin to work with them, because your enemy is now awaked to where you are, and it watches you, angry, at your subverting its plan.”

“Virus?” asked Namine.

“Yes. Virus. A good name, Larxene’s, if I remember, a name it does not recognize as its own. She is clever. Yes, Virus is awake now, awake and aware. And angry. It will accuse you, and you will stand trial. Use all your allies, even the ones who were once enemies. You will need their witness. It is time to reconcile and make bonds against the powers that want to tear them apart. By which door will you leave?”

“What do you mean?” Zexion asked, looking around at the blank landscape.

“Two doors, ahead and behind,” said Saix. At this point Xemnas shifted and murmured, and Saix took time to smooth his long hair back with his fingernails, murmuring. “Two doors,” he whispered, “One leading behind, to where you came from, and one going forward, to where you could go. Behind is something you left in your wake, ahead is something you are looking for. You must decide whether it is more important to seek ahead and forge new ties or look back to bind broken ones. Either way could lead to success or failure. The path could be bright or dark on either side.”

The five of them glanced at each other. Demyx shrugged, showing he had no preference. Zexion was gazing, not ahead or behind, but around, curiously, at the Land of Rebirth. Namine was looking resolutely ahead, nodding at the path towards something new. After seeing her choice, Roxas followed suit. Axel, with his gaze still pressed on Saix, with an expression that could almost be called forlorn, unconsciously pointed behind himself.

“Forward,” said Namine eventually. “We were on a journey to new places.”

“A word of warning, before you state your final decision,” Saix amended. “Your enemy has some power here. It made the door to Rebirth that you plan to walk through. It has no power over Rebirth, and it abandoned its own door, but it might try to thwart your passage ahead.”

“Why make a door that will help your enemy?” asked Zexion curiously. “There is no way any enemy of ours would want us to meet you.”

Saix smiled. A glint showed for a second in his yellow eyes, like a crater on the moon. “Your enemy rests behind a wide gate, where it keeps its physical form, waiting. That door is usually called the Door to Death, though I prefer more subtle names. Desolation, I feel, is more accurate. It was once the Door to Silence. It changes with time. That aside, when it chose to make a pathway between the Door to Death and this world, it was required to make a passage between this world and the Door to Rebirth as well.

“If it had only opened this world to death, it would die, and then its victims would simply perish. In the name of balance, it was required to make a full circuit around this world connecting it to Death and Rebirth both. I am certain it hoped to keep you from finding this door at all, even though it had to make it. And the fact that you found this door, the only benign door, first, when you weren’t meant to find it at all, must be great luck… or maybe not?”

“What are you thinking?” Zexion prodded.

Saix locked his eyes with Namine’s. “Lady luck,” he smiled, “and the power to unlock a heart. More than that… the power to undo a heart. Remember this, Namine.”

“To undo?” asked Namine.

“You were the heartless of the Princess of Heart. The opposite gate to the one which has been opened. What must this mean? Think.” Saix’s gaze travelled away. “Now, Axel. Step forward.”

Axel’s breath caught. His expression was piercing. He stepped forward some feet.

Saix smiled. “To me.”

“Not to be a prick,” said Axel, his voiced strained, “But the passed out Superior is sort of putting me off.” All the same, he walked until he stood just in front of Saix, his hunched back to everyone else. He was taught, uncomfortable, and tense, his arms folded tightly, his fingers digging and stumbling.

Saix slowly folded his hands in his lap, ignoring Xemnas for a minute. It was the phoenix who reached out to Axel, bending forward to peck at Oathkeeper hanging around Axel’s neck.

“Will you fight?” Saix asked.

“Yes,” said Axel, sounding subdued. “I will never stop.”

Saix seemed to pause, as if he was unsure. In the silence, a tiny flame sprung into life between the head of the phoenix and Oathkeeper, lighting up Axel’s face for a second, in pain, before the bird closed its eyes again and turned its head to rest on Xemnas’s chest. Saix reached to take Axel’s hand, which he held in grip. “Then you shan’t allow yourself to die, either, if you must fight forever,” Saix said. He shifted his attention slowly. “Zexion, when you return, check the shelf.”

“For what?”

“The Sleeping Lion.”

Another keychain, Namine noted, without surprise. That would make one for each of them, delivered with sudden speed. It would bother her less if they had been distributed by one person.

“Demyx, Roxas, you have both made yourself protectors of this woman, so keep her safe. And Namine,” said Saix, “To me, for a second.”

Axel did not drop Saix’s hand. Saix looked as if he did not see Axel, yet his hand squeezed tightly around the other. “A gift for you,” he said, and, with a turn of his wrist, he unwound a chain from the air.

It was a dull ashen color, long enough to just loop around someone’s neck twice, thin, without decoration, and humming with power. “It binds shut. Use it carefully. What it shuts will never be opened again. I give it to you with a purpose in mind. Think before you use it, think one way, and then another way, about what shutting a door with this chain would mean. And make sure you do not shut something without being aware that it was open. Do not wind it if you mean to undo it again.”

Without waiting for a response, he handed the chain to her, and once it felt the flesh of her hand, it disappeared. “It is too dangerous to keep it. If you need it, fetch it from the air.”

“I understand.”

“Do not tell anyone you have it. Do not reveal its source.”

“I understand.”

“If you die, and you have not used it, do not fetch it.”

“I understand.”

“Now go,” Saix said finally, sounding tired. “You shouldn’t wait here longer.” He pointed behind him at the white door that Demyx, at least, had been watching slowly fade into view.

Demyx looked around, smiled with encouragement, and was the first to step through that door and leave. He was holding himself as he did so, and Namine was not sure he looked comfortable. The look was jarring on his face. Nevertheless, Namine took Zexion’s arm (because she was scared to leave him) and encouraged him to walk with her, so that they left the place of Rebirth together, heading forward. Namine walked calmly into the light, but Zexion glanced behind himself, looking upset, looking reluctant, betraying his desire to stay.

They both disappeared. The door was open, but neither Axel nor Roxas had moved.

Saix looked, reluctantly, up at Axel, ignoring Roxas, who stood far back, pondering. “You must leave too.”

“Why are you here?” asked Axel. “Why can’t you leave?”

Saix looked down, ashamed. “At the time, the thought of living again was inconceivable. I couldn’t possibly do it. There was no strength in me to leave a peaceful place. And he,” said Saix, laying his head on Xemnas’s face, “he was unable to think of living any longer.”

“You chose him,” Axel accused.

Saix glanced before him, to where Roxas was trying to not listen to the two of them. “Didn’t you chose someone else to be most important to you also?”

“Sure. That doesn’t mean no one else is important.” Axel twisted his fingers through Saix’s. “How could you think I’d want to do this without you? You’re my oldest friend. You knew me before I was a Nobody. You knew me when I was a child and would tell you anything. You remember…”

“I remember everything,” Saix said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It was my choice to stay here, and I knew it was a cruel choice. I knew it was not fair. I knew it wasn’t right. I know what it is called when one refuses to live. I don’t delude myself.”

“Come with me,” Axel said. “For Christ’s sake, the door is right there. You have legs, don’t you? Stand up.”

Roxas closed his eyes, and remembered the days when Axel was trying to bring him back to the real world.

“I made a promise to stay here,” whispered Saix.

“You can’t even stand once?” asked Axel. “Look, I’m not expecting you to go anywhere. Just stand up. Look at the sky. Is there a moon up there?” Axel looked around, vainly, for any light in the greyness.

“Axel, please,” sighed Saix. “I cannot go.”

“Just stand up,” Axel insisted. “Take a step. Look up. Stand up, goddammit.”

“You must understand, Axel. I refused to live. It’s not a choice I can take back.”

Axel clutched at Saix’s hand, shoulders bent. “There’s nothing can say that will convince you to go? Nothing? No memory out of decades of knowing each other, decades of depending on each other…”

Saix began to cry. It looked less like something he was doing and more like something that was happening to him, since he outright ignored it. “You could convince me. I know you could. That’s why I’m asking you to just leave, now. You could convince me, but there is nothing I can too. I unlatched my soul from life. I have no way to live now. This was not a choice I could take back.”

Axel covered his mouth.

“I’ll remember you,” Saix promised, looking forlorn.

Axel shook his head.

“You agreed to go forward,” said Saix. “It’s good that you can. You have to go now.”

“How can I leave you?”

“Didn’t you live without me for many years?”

“I never forgot you. And I never will.”

“Go on,” Saix insisted. “You have to go on. Here,” he said, and, in a burst of inspiration, pulled some scissors out of the air, just like he had when he grasped the chain, and began to hack off chunk of his hair. “Take this,” he said, tying it all into a knot. “Bury it. Burn it and cremate it. I don’t care. Have it. Have a funeral for me, if you want me to have a presence in existence. Tell everyone to remember me. Make a headstone. But don’t forget that I am dead.”

Axel wrapped Saix’s hair around his wrist. Saix tried to grab Axel’s hand one more time, but Axel pulled angrily away and started heading for the door. He stopped, though, before he walked through it. “I refuse to leave angry at you,” he said. He turned around, and his eyes were red. “I’ll miss you, Saix. I’ll remember you. I might have many lives, I might stop being recognizable to you, but I’ll remember you.”

“I’ll know you whenever I see you,” Saix said, “And I’ll remember you too.”

Axel left.

In his daze, he didn’t notice that Roxas hadn’t come with him until he was through the door.

Saix turned to look at Roxas reluctantly, his uneven, messed-up hair now stuck to the wetness on his face. His expression transferred quickly into one of confusion. “Roxas,” he said, “You haven’t left.”

“Saix, what is Virus? What is our enemy?”

Saix smiled in a way that was a little closer to how Roxas remembered his smile being, in life. “I remember you when you were with us, Roxas. You were always very focused on your goals. You learned a lot more than the rest of us distracted, emotional people that way. Very good.”

“What is Virus?” Roxas insisted.

“Ah, and I remember how you attacked Ansem,” Saix sighed, “When he attempted to tell you you were not a person. You didn’t even listen to him. He was wrong, and cruel, and you attacked him. Roxas will not listen to any lies.”

“Saix,” Roxas warned.

“Speaking the true name of Virus draws it to you,” he admitted. “I would advise against doing that. I could tell you the name, once, if you promised not to tell Axel… but I believe you know what it is anyway.”

“So, once broken…” murmured Roxas.

“You do know. I figured. You, of all people, had a chance at recognizing it. Well, since I can’t tell you anything about that, I’ll answer another question you want to ask: if you had decided to go backwards, you would have met with Marluxia and Larxene. Forward, you will run into someone much… closer to you, specifically, Roxas.”

“So it WAS Sora following us in that car. With Riku and Leon.”

“You are perceptive. Now, are you planning on rejoining your friends or not?”

Roxas paused on the threshold of the door. “Just curious. Would it be an option to say no?”

Saix put a finger on his lips. “Yes.”

“How interesting,” said Roxas, and stepped through the door.

The phoenix sighed, and lowered his shaking head onto Saix, who lowered his eyes slowly, looking immensely tired. He carefully lifted Xemnas’s head from his lap, and standing up, set the man back down on his stone bed. He walked across the grass, almost limping, to his own bed, and curled onto it, clutching his arms around his legs.

Saix fell into dreamless sleep.

-

Larxene hit her head onto the top of her steering wheel, hitting the car horn and cussing up a storm.

“I thought you had a head ache,” Marluxia said.

She pulled the car to the side of the road, and shut off the ignition with her head on the wheel. “We’ve lost them AGAIN—”

“Again, I know, I can tell, damn,” he agreed, leaning backwards to stretch.

“It’s awake,” she cried. “It’s awake, and it won’t be that long before—”

“It knows. Yes.” Marluxia sighed. “Well, with every door we closed, we risked being known. We didn’t know when it was watching, or when it would find us. We did the best we could.”

“It doesn’t MATTER,” Larxene whined, “It doesn’t matter because we all know the little pickings we managed to pull out of its lap won’t affect—”

“Ssh,” the man sighed, pulling Larxene into an embrace form the side, his arms around her shoulders. “Larxene, I’m telling you, there’s nothing that could have been done.”

Larxene groaned and shoved him away. “What happened to Mr. Take Over The Whole Organization? You know I’m not stupid. I know we did all that we could do. And YOU know that it was not enough, and we are Virus’s prey now, and so are they, and that’s our life now.”

“Then that’s how we’ll live now,” Marluxia said resolutely. “We’re prepared.”

“We’re prepared,” she repeated morosely. “This isn’t fair.”

“I know.”

“We’ve been fucking cheated, you know that? All those great big bosses in the sky said we’d get a second chance, and we didn’t. We were fucking cheated.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t chose to come here to do fucking penance. I came to live. They said I had a second fucking chance.”

Marluxia leaned his head on Larxene’s shoulder, and for a while, they waited in silence, darkness growing outside the windows.

-

When Roxas materialized somewhere in the living world, Zexion was turning over a keychain in his hand; bright, silver, shaped like the head of a lion. The five of them were in some sort of storage room, surrounded by shelves full of canned food, all in dusty glass pint jars, obviously made at the house they were now in.

“Are they preparing for the apocalypse?” Demyx asked, observing a row of homemade salsa in Kerr jars. “We ended up in a survivalist’s house? Who did we know that was a survivalist?”

Namine reached for the door at the end of the dark, dusty room, and opened it. It swung about halfway open before she made a little noise that sounded something like a frightened mouse and slammed the door shut again.

“What? Who is it?” Demyx asked, jumping to her side. He started to open the door, one arm in front of Namine, and then slammed it shut just as quickly as she did. “Nothing to see here,” he said in monotone.

“Oh, sure, just slam the door shut and it’ll go away,” Axel sighed, and walked forward to shove them both away and throw the door open. Light flooded in from beyond, framing a figure that stood, arms crossed, in the door way.

“Oh,” said Axel. “Squall Leonheart. A pleasure.”

Roxas suppressed laughter. He had never heard Axel sound so terrified, not even around Zexion.

“Axel, I believe. Also known as the man who crashed my car two days ago. What brings you to my storage cellar?”

“What, two full days ago? Holy crap, is it light outside?” Axel barreled out of the cellar, roughly shoving Squall out of the way, stomping into what looked like an unfinished basement, buried beneath the earth on one side, with walls open to a patio on the other, through which bright light, threaded through fields of wheat and thin wisps of cloud, poured through. “Oh, that is not right. Back me up, kids. Last I checked, it was maybe eleven at night?”

“Something like that,” Zexion concerned, striding past Squall in much the same way. “Apparently, we pulled an all-nighter.”

“In my cellar?” asked Squall, confused beyond petty accusations. “Why, when, and how did you get in there?”

“Magic,” sound Demyx, making sure to sound absolutely convinced, holding Squall’s gaze until he broke and started shaking his head. With that, Demyx also shoved past him to examine the basement.

“He’s not kidding, is he?” asked Squall.

“Not really,” said Namine, who had been hiding in the corner of the storage room with Roxas. Squall’s head whipped around to her, with a look of surprise on his face. “We came here because we were sent here, we arrived only just now, and we went through a door in a land called Rebirth, to answer your questions.”

“Namine and Roxas,” said Squall, with shock and something like reverence in his voice.

“Yup, definitely,” responded Roxas bluntly. “So what’s up? I heard that Sora hangs around here. Him and Riku at the least, so I’m assuming there’s a lot of old friends here. Think we could meet up? Talk maybe? Have breakfast? Play some poker, hang out, have a pool party, order pizza? You know, sleepover, paint each other’s nails? Work with me here?”

Squall had continued shaking his head, and Namine saw him quietly pinch himself. From deep in the basement, irregular, deep chuckling came from a slightly manic looking Axel who muttered something like “taught you well, my apprentice…”

“We have met new enemies,” Namine said, trying to get Squall’s attention back. “Please. Just let us see everyone. Let us talk to them. We need all the help we can get in the coming fight.”

“Oh, I need help,” Axel giggled, “lots.”

Roxas raised one eyebrow. “Hey Namine, you take Zexion and Demyx and go with this guy… I think I’ll find Axel a couch to lie on. And maybe some construction paper and crayons for some art therapy or something.”

“He does look like he might need some time in quiet,” Namine admitted.

Squall considered the five of them. Demyx was seriously considering a jar of apple cider, Zexion was trying to look innocent as he examined the corner of their basement, for some reason, Namine looking tired and close to tears, Roxas looking angry and already inching towards the door, and Axel muttering to himself and glaring at the sun like is had deeply betrayed him. All in all, they looked like they were in bad shape. He sighed.

“Well, I can’t keep you in my cellar. You three will come with me. And Roxas… do whatever you have to do, I guess.”

-

For a while, Roxas just stared at Axel, who, in turn, just stared at the rising sun. “The world goes around the sun again, I guess,” said Axel.

Roxas thought that maybe he should hug him. He’s probably upset about Saix, so wouldn’t he want comforting? Or maybe he wants to pretend nothing happened and get past it? Or maybe it would just be annoying to have someone hanging onto him when he was upset? Roxas wasn’t sure. He usually hated being comforted, himself. “I guess,” Roxas said.

Axel crossed his arms. “Do you ever remember watching the sun set with me?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Roxas, “Many times. The ledge up on the clock tower in Twilight Town was our place.”

“On the clock tower,” repeated Axel. “I didn’t even think of it at the time, but wasn’t it perfect? Because our time was running out. It was always a matter of time before we were separated. And we watched the sun set, because we were always headed to the end of the day.”

“Pretty great coincidence,” Roxas admitted.

“Sure,” said Axel. “We’ll have to watch the sunset somewhere else, then. Or maybe you want to switch to the sunrise?”

“I’m not sure I can get up that early…”

“Well, you better take some initiative. We wouldn’t want to waste any of our time, right?”

Roxas walked up to Axel, standing, nervously, just behind him. “We have plenty of time, though, don’t we? I mean, maybe summer vacation is almost over, but that doesn’t mean anything. We can spend our whole lives together.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought last time. The clock was winding down, the sun was setting over summer, as we drug ourselves closer and closer to the equinox. When day and night would be equal. And despite that, I acted as if we had forever to live on.”

“Is this about what Saix said? About how the sun was about to rise again in Rebirth? And we didn’t have much time?”

Axel turned to him. The light from the sun lit up his eyes so that they looked golden and pale. “Can’t you just taste it? We don’t have any time. Summer is ending again. The cycle’s beginning again. And every time the cycle starts over again, Roxas, one of us dies. Without fail.”

Roxas put his hands on his hips. “Becoming superstitious?”

Axel turned away. “Cautious. There’s nothing wrong with being cautious. I said I wouldn’t screw up again, and dying would sort of be screwing up.”

Roxas leaned in close to him, side by his side. “I trust you to keep your promise, you know.”

“That I won’t fuck up?”

“Yeah. I know you can do it.”

“Thanks.” Axel leaned gently against him. “I am worried. About what Saix said. But it was something else he said.”

“What was it?”

Axel lifted his left hand from his side, extending it out in front of him, into the sunbeam. For a second, his skin blazed, and Roxas had to cover his eyes. He realized that that was became a thin column of flame was dancing on top of Axel’s hand. “Your powers,” Roxas said.

“I got them back from the Phoenix,” Axel said. “When it touched me, everything was quiet. And then I heard Saix’s voice, though his mouth didn’t move. I don’t think you heard him.”

“What did he say?”

Axel twisted his hand around, letting bright flames spiral through his fingers. To Roxas, it was like the heat of the oven on his face, but Axel wasn’t perturbed. “He told me that those who fight hardest will suffer the most. I knew that already. I told him I was prepared to suffer. I think he believed me. But then he said that I would have to do something in return to keep these powers.”

“What do you have to do?”

Axel turned to Roxas, confusion evident on his face. “Have a heart.”

Roxas blinked. “Well, what?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

“But you do have a heart, like, literally,” Roxas said, “and you’re the last person who needs a lecture about compassion or forgiveness. You’ve cleaned your act up. Obviously. You feel, you’re nice to people, you’re considerate… I’m the one who should be getting lectures about being nice to people. Instead of being an ass. What would Saix even mean, have a heart?”

Axel’s eyebrows slowly raised. “Wow, if I ever need a defense in court, I know who to ask.”

“It’s true, though. You’re great, Axel. You’ve been so kind to me. Why would you need to have more of a heart?”

Axel folded his arms again, looking contemplative. “Were you scared?” he whispered.

“What?”

“When I threatened Larxene.”

Roxas paused. He considered holding Axel again. He felt too nervous. “Yeah, I guess. It wasn’t a big deal. I mean, it worked, didn’t it?”

Axel chuckled. “Yeah. It worked. But… it’s not like I had to do it. I really didn’t. We could have found out just as much information from Saix. There was no reason to be angry. I knew there was no reason to be angry. I just… got angry. Because it was nice.”

Roxas swallowed, and moved to hold Axel’s hand.

“I just wonder what Saix saw in me, you know?”

“Don’t say that,” said Roxas. “I mean, I’m sure he was just sort of saying… here are your powers. Use them wisely. You know. Don’t be an ass about it.”

“Maybe,” said Axel, shifting. “Maybe not. You do realize that I’ve had serious fucking problems, right Roxas? You realize I used to harm myself, right? You realize that when they signed me up with ‘behavioral problems’ they didn’t mean cussing and skipping class, right?”

“You did cuss and skip class, though, right?”

“You do realize that I was trying to kill you?” Axel asked. Roxas went still. “That time, in Twilight Town. When you were going to rejoin Sora. I was going to kill you. And then myself.”

Roxas squeezed his hand. He couldn’t think of anything to say. He leaned his head on Axel’s shoulder, and held his eyes shut.

Axel, reluctantly, put his head on top of Roxas’s, leaning down to meet him. “I don’t want to scare you. Fuck knows I don’t want to scare you. I just don’t want you to… think of me in a way that isn’t true. I guess. Don’t go in thinking I’m a dashing gentleman. I have problems. I don’t want you to be surprised when I suddenly have all these fucking problems. I’m dealing with them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Or that you’ll never see them. They’ll come out. At night. Or when I’m angry. And I try, but…”

Roxas swallowed. “This is why Saix doesn’t need to fucking lecture you. You’re already working on it, right? Like he can talk about having a heart. He didn’t even try. Having a heart is all about trying. It’s all you have to do. Try, and you’ve already done it. If you keep trying, then it’s part of you. That’s what I think, anyway.”

Axel pressed his weight against Roxas as he waxed weak for a second. Roxas compensated by wrapping his arms around him. “Dunno what that guy was talking about,” Roxas continued muttering. “If you don’t even try to have a heart, you don’t get to say anything. Just like DiZ and his ‘nobodies don’t deserve an existence’ bullshit. What did he know? He wasn’t working hard to have one like we were. Idiots. Anyway. Saix has been out of the loop. He doesn’t know how hard you’ve been working, lately.”

“You don’t know, either,” said Axel, his voice sounding thick. “You’ve known me for, what, a few days?”

“No, I’ve known you for, like, years,” said Roxas, “and it’s obvious that you’re different now. You have to have been working hard. You’re not killing people any more, right?”

Axel began to actually, really cry. Roxas felt terrible. “No,” he said, “no, you’re right, I’m not. No one is dead. And that scares me. How long does that ever last? When do I get the option to just stay here, nobody dead, no sword in my hand? I already agreed to fight. I’m dangerous again. It’s like handing an alcoholic a damn drink. What do I do now? What’ll I do if they tell me I have to kill someone again? What if I just want to?”

Roxas held Axel, mostly because he was afraid to look away, partly because he felt terrible himself, partly because he was afraid he could not stand. He started to feel grossly inadequate as a partner for Axel. “You can do it,” said Roxas finally, “I know you can.”

Axel wanted to reject what Roxas was saying to him. He didn’t really want to believe he could do it. He knew how hard doing it would be. But after a minute, he just closed his eyes, and tried to believe in the version of himself Roxas believed in.

Maybe that guy could do it. He hoped he could.

-

Upstairs, they found what used to be a plot of farm land that was now several farms and barn houses turned into what looked like a boarding house. There were maybe half a dozen old, creaking structures in all, painted white, with a crumbling grain silo some way off. It clearly wasn’t being used as a traditional farm anymore—in the stretch of fields, the only things blooming were apple trees and acres and acres of flowers. In the middle of the semi-circle of buildings, there was the end of a gravel road, where several vehicles were collected, trucks and tiny cars alike. The gravel road stretched out to a highway in the west, which could only be seen if one squinted. Right at the place where driveway met highway, there were several road signs and an old gas station. Right next to the compound of buildings was a shooting range, with only a few targets left standing, though the ground was littered everywhere with bullet shells.

Squall, through some means unknown, called an entire compound meeting in the only barn that was still a barn, a towering wooden structure with only cats and a few horses wandering about. The meeting began with only Squall, Namine, Zexion, and Demyx standing in the center of the pressed-dirt circle in the midst of piles of hay.

Then a dark-haired girl fell from the rafters of the ceiling, straight onto Squall’s back. “Surprise, evildoers! It is the Great Ninja Yuffie,” she shouted, “and my trainee? I think?”

“I can’t jump like that!” screamed the voice of a girl from above.

“I’ll catch you!” said Yuffie, extending her arms above Squall’s head.

“Oh, mother of God, no you WON’T,” moaned Squall, but his request was not heeded. A small, red-headed teenager wearing short-shorts and a tie dye t-shirt fell many feet down, and was caught effortlessly, bridal style, by the young ninja. Kairi smiled and started giggling, Yuffie snorted as she laughed, and eventually the two girls were clutching each other in helpless hysterics for reasons undivined to everyone else.

“Could you two please stop being sappy on top of me?” groaned Squall, sounding actually hurt.

Yuffie jumped off of Squall’s back, still holding Kairi in her arms and laughing. “Alright,” she said, “not so bad, Kairi! You just have to learn a bit of showmanship. Trust in your abilities!”

“Kairi?”

Namine had stepped forward, her arms folded behind her back. “Is it you? You look different.”

Kairi slowly lowered herself from Yuffie’s arms. The girl did look different. Her red hair had been chopped very short, and she had grown tall, as well as tan in the sunlight. She looked older, really, than Namine had ever remembered her looking—older, more self-assured, and more capable. After all, she wasn’t flinching away and hiding at the sight of danger. “Namine? Is that you?”

Namine figured she looked different as well. She was older too, and she had let her blonde hair grow long and develop stray, uneven split ends… and surely Kairi had never seen her as a happy person, a person with a heart. She wondered if, with her long jeans and French-braided hair, if she looked any wiser, or any stranger.

“It is you,” said Kairi, “it has to be you. I can feel you.”

Namine smiled. “You, too.”

Whatever their reaction to meeting each other was going to be, they never got to find out. At that moment, the slightly opened doors of the barn burst fully agape with the sound of yelling and squabbling as two men, who could have been father and son, practically fought their way in. One was middle aged and the other was perhaps twenty, and both had short blonde hair, tall, built statures, and lines and scars on their faces and shoulders. The older was carrying a thermos of tea, and the younger was brandishing a metal pipe with the obvious intention to threaten.

“Dammit old man,” the younger one shouted, “You’ve got the rest of them in your little drug ring, but you can’t push your fucking tea on me! I don’t want any damn tea!”

“This is why you’re always sniffing with a pansy-ass cold, pretty boy bourgeoisie!!”

“Seifer came from a very rich family,” murmured Squall in privacy to the new arrivals, “and Cid hates anything to do with money, since he manages the funds around here. That’s how their rivalry began, at least. Now, I think they just like to keep each other sharp. Keeps Seifer out of my face, anyway.”

Though Squall tried to whisper, Seifer stopped shouting at Cid mid-rant the second he caught the sound of Squall’s voice, and turned around with a definitively evil smile on his face. “Aw, Squall’s back. Lovely to see you, dear. Let me guess, false alarm?”

“Um. Queer alert,” whispered Demyx from Namine’s side. “Actually, I’m sort of blinded by the gay,” he sighed, turning around. “I’ll be back when I can see.”

“Honestly,” Yuffie whispered back, “he sets off my creep alert so bad I hadn’t even thought about his sexuality. I don’t WANT to. One day, I walked into the house and he had Squall… and with…” she turned green. “Ugh, it doesn’t even bear thinking of. I’m not sure it was legal.”

“Denial’s the worst stage,” said Demyx sadly and seriously.

“When I said everyone gather, Seifer, I meant everyone but you. I thought you had learned that by now,” Squall said.

“Wait—could I be wrong?” asked Seifer, completely ignoring Squall. “It looks like you caught something! Kind of small, though.”

Squall gestured at the former Nobodies in a way that could be called ironically grandiose. “Behold my not-failure.”

Seifer peered at Namine through eyes like slits. She found herself actually a little nervous, even though posturing people like him usually didn’t faze her much. “Well, Squall,” he said lowly, “Even I can admit that’s not bad. I think I recognize her.”

“SEIFER ALMASY,” shouted a booming voice, “ARE YOU CREEPING ON MY OLDER BROTHER AGAIN. THE GODS OF THE ANCIENTS HELP YOU IF YOU ARE.” A brown-haired girl who was probably Squall’s twin, since she had a face so much like his, stomped into the barn in impressively high heels and a little dress, literally dragging two teenage boys in pajamas behind her. It looked like it didn’t strain her any, either.

“Where am I?” Riku groaned. “Is this the realm of sleep? Xehanort? Is it Xehanort? I’m used to Xehanorts.”

“Oh, shut up,” Selphie told him. “I’m busy defending my brother’s honor.”

Seifer, who did actually look a little pale, turned around slowly. “As if your brother’s honor is in danger with me. When have I ever not been absolutely honorable in dealing with him? We follow the rules of chivalrous combat and everything.”

“Notwithstanding the time with the kitchen knives,” muttered Squall. Yuffie shuddered.

“You shouldn’t be following rules of combat at all,” Selphie said, whilst dumping the boys she carried in on the dusty ground, “because you shouldn’t be competing. Weren’t boys supposed to stop being boys at age ten?”

“Don’t try to stop us—” Seifer began, but he was interrupted by a gaggle about half a dozen people walking into the room, chattering and laughing loudly among themselves Namine recognized them quickly as Aeris, Zack, Tifa, Cloud… and one man whom she had never seen before, with long black hair, wearing red and black clothing, purposefully holding to the edges of the crowd.

 “Well, now that everyone is here,” Squall said, silencing the various squabbles, “everyone who lives here and pays rent, anyways, may I introduce to you former Nobodies Namine, Zexion, and Demyx.”

There was true dead silence in the barn—the silence that only falls when cut down with the axe of terrible news. Demyx took the moment to wave to everyone.

“Wait wait wait wait up,” demanded Cid. “Aren’t these the kids all of you have your hackles raised about? The fuck are they doing in my barn?”

“Your barn?” Zack asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Technically, it was his first,” Aeris reminded him gently.

Zack sighed. “Well, it’s not like he WORKS anymore.”

“I work damn hard!!” Cid bellowed.

“Not at anything that gets money!!” Seifer yelled back.

“SITUATION DISSOLVED IMMEDIATELY!” Selphie shouted, backhanding both men in warning. “Can’t you bird-brains realize that something more important than our financial situation is happening right now?”

They both shut up. Selphie beamed up at Aeris, looking a lot like a puppy, and Aeris smiled back. Namine was suddenly reminded of prefects in a boarding school.

“Personally,” said Aeris, “I can’t see anything better to do than offer them welcome.”

“HOLD UP,” said Riku, scrambling up from where he had been lying down to rest. Loud shouts rang from around the barn to agree with him, like Yuffie’s and Tifa’s, or Cid’s boisterous yell, or Selphie’s surprised squeak. And then, a boy with atrociously tousled brown hair leapt up in a single bound beside Riku, shouting, “Red light!!”

In total seriousness, Sora took the confused pause that ensued to run the length of the barn, stopping perhaps a foot in front of Namine, who didn’t flinch even slightly. “Namine?” he asked, fists held in front of him. “Did you really say you were Namine?”

“Why?” the tiny girl asked, her voice so soft that it created a vacuum in the room, as everything focused around the tiny point where her words resided. “Do you remember me, Sora?”

Sora, straight-faced, put both hands on Namine’s shoulders, and, in an earnest voice, said, “Thank you, Namine.”

Namine began to smile. It spread over her face slowly, wobbling. She had to put a hand over her mouth “You’re welcome,” she said. And then, without meaning too, without being able to control herself, she began to cry. “You’re welcome, already,” she sniffled.

Sora immediately held her. “I have all of my memories,” he said. “They’re mine now. I know everything you did for me. I know everything you had to sacrifice and put aside for me, because they needed me to fight. I know how much you’ve helped me. You let Roxas go for me, didn’t you? And other people. You let them all pass away to save me. And aside from that, you gave up your own life, all your time in the world, to help me… And I meant to thank you a long time ago. So thank you.”

Namine rubbed her eyes fiercely. “You’re welcome,” she said again, quietly. She took breaths as deeply as she could, but still found herself hanging limply on Sora’s shoulder. Demyx nervously put a hand on her back, and she tried to smile at him. “I missed you, Sora. I never really got to meet you on good terms. Now, you’re free from all my meddling.”

“Don’t blame yourself for that,” said Sora. “Kairi put a lot of things straight in my head. I never saw, before, how much Organization Thirteen was manipulating you, or Roxas…” The gears began turning in Sora’s head. “Wait. If you’re here…”

“Roxas is downstairs,” said a surprisingly icy voice, as Zexion walked up to take Namine’s hand in his own. “He is with Axel.”

Demyx turned to stare at Zexion. “Hey…” he said, for a second, but then apparently thought better of whatever he was about to say. Zexion didn’t pay him any heed. Namine wondered, for maybe the twentieth time, how the hell they were trying to treat each other.

“Oh man,” said Sora, almost bouncing with excitement, “Axel too? I never saw enough of that guy!! Oh man, I can’t wait to talk to him!”

“Are we talking about the same Axel,” groaned Riku. “Are we talking about the same guy.”

“Axel helped me!” Sora argued. He turned around to Aeris to appeal to her. “I can’t just let them go without talking to Roxas! And how many of them were really bad guys? Namine wasn’t. Neither was Roxas. They were both being used! And Axel helped me, and…” he turned around to look at Demyx and Zexion. “And… uh…”

“If you can find something I did to seriously complain about, I’d like to know what,” said Demyx, stretching out his arms. “What did I do, steal things that weren’t yours? If you even met the asshole pantheon I stole from…”

“I suppose…” Sora said, “I don’t know much about Demyx… and as for… that other guy…”

Zexion, who was totally aware that Sora was searching for his name, refused to say anything. Namine could swear that, somewhere inside, he was laughing. Demyx poked him in the ribs. “This was Zexion. He was literally exiled form the Organization for being a stick in the mud.”

“I was exiled because my research into the heart was insightful and accurate, and Xemnas was actually trying to avoid any of us researching our predicament,” hissed Zexion. “He wished to get rid of a potential rival.”

“Oh my god, Zexion,” said Demyx in a stage whisper, “no; you’re trying to convince them that you’re HARMLESS. How will we win their trust and then betray them by stealing all their chickens now?”

“Well,” said Aeris, “since we’re set up to always be accepting new arrivals, I know we have some empty rooms…”

“Namine can bunk with me!” Kairi shouted, throwing one arm up. “I volunteer!”

“But I already bunk with you!!” shouted Yuffie.

“Exactly! It’ll be like a big, awesome sleepover!” Kairi argued. She was practically vibrating with excitement.

“We have at least three extra rooms,” said Aeris, “and I’m sure Namine could find one that was acceptable. And as for the rest of them…” she clasped her hands, “I don’t know if any of them would like to sleep together?”

“But I really want to have Namine, if just for a few nights,” Kairi begged. “Yuffie, please?”

“Whoa, wait.” everyone turned to see Tifa Lockhart, who had her arms crossed over her chest. “Are we really just going to give them free hospitality? Most of us know nothing about them.”

“As far as Nobodies were concerned,” Demyx countered, “No news was usually good news. You can ask Sora here about how THREATENING and DEADLY a Nobody I was. Or you can walk over that away to Squall here’s cellar and get Roxas’s confirmation that I was the laziest, most ungrateful shit in the whole Organization. I promise I will do nothing more threatening than hug the trees while in your lovely home,” he declared, lifting his right hand.

Sora put one finger on his head. “Now that you mention it, I don’t remember you being a very good fighter.”

Demyx rolled his head and shrugged, arms open to the ceiling, as if saying, ‘god knows.’

“Right, and how many nights do you think you’re going to stay?” asked Seifer. “Are you planning to eat with us?”

Zack appeared behind Seifer, grasping the back of his shoulder with a smile. “You,” he said, “can pinch pennies later. Yes, they are staying for a few days, and yes, we will be hospitable to our old friends. Yuffie, would you mind at all moving to a spare room for a few days so that these girls can stay together?”

Aeris nodded at Zack, as if to say ‘good job.’ Namine revised her previous impression of ‘boarding school hierarchy with head girl and prefects’ to ‘no stops matriarchy.’ Yuffie sighed and shrugged. “Sure, I can figure something out. Guess I’m not that upset. Namine has a pretty good rap for a nobody, from what I’ve heard.”

“Oh my god, former Nobody,” said Demyx in the background.

Sora raised his hand. “Yes, Sora?” Zack asked.

“Can Roxas and I bunk too?”

Riku raised his hand. “Yes, Riku?”

“As Sora’s roommate, I oppose,” he said. “Roxas and I never got on very well. And I’m sure Roxas would rather room with Axel.”

“You know what, the four of you can have a battle royale over specific room arrangements,” Zack decided. “I already know this will get too complicated. Demyx, Zexion, are you fine situating yourself into a room?”

The two men looked at each other and nodded. “No reason to get complicated,” Demyx said.

Zexion was busy wondering whether he should put circle wards around the room or not. He should resist. He knew he should.

“Oh!” said Namine, suddenly, and she blushed. “Oh, no, it’s nothing. I just remembered that I have to call my foster mother to tell her I might be gone longer than I thought…”

“Oh yeah!” Demyx snapped his fingers. “Right! Namine and Roxas both live with fosters who are gonna need contacted. Axel and Zexion both live alone and their apartments and/or houses are all locked up, so we don’t have to worry about them…”

“Aren’t they supposed to be missing, anyway?” said Zexion. “We’re on a road trip, last I checked.”

“Well, I dunno if we’ll just end up staying a weekend,” Demyx said. “This is an important fucking reunion. Namine left her entire self over here and finally ran across her again.”

“And what about you?” Selphie interjected.

“Huh?” Demyx asked.

“Namine and Roxas are living with fosters,” she said, counting off on her fingers, “Axel and Zexion both live alone, what about you?”

Demyx waved one hand idly. “I won’t be missed. They’ll never know.”

“Won’t be missed?” asked Selphie, raising an eyebrow.

“Sometimes I stay in the attic for days at a time. At least until the mice—”

“Hungry?” Zack interrupted. There were stares. “Are you hungry? It’s been a long night and we left some waffles in the house. Er, we might have left some waffles burning in the house. This isn’t a factor in my urgent need to return to the house right now. I think this debate would just be more pleasant with full stomachs.”

There was general assent, though given reluctantly in a few situations. “Feed them and they never leave,” Namine thought she heard Seifer mutter. Demyx grabbed Zexion’s hand and dragged him along, despite his unwillingness to be held, babbling about something inane. Kairi and Yuffie, following suit, both grabbed one of Namine’s hands and pulled her along. She grasped them both back firmly.

The last sight she caught of the barn, turning briefly in her vision, was a sight of the black-haired man in the red cloak gazing at her. When she met his eyes, he either nodded or lowered his head down—it was impossible to tell—before she was pulled forcibly forward to breakfast.

-

Larxene crossed her arms as she stepped onto the circle of stone, followed by Marluxia, who was tying his hair back into a pony tail with a black binder. “This is it,” she said. “I can tell.”

“The firebird,” said Marluxia, gazing at the ground. “Well. Looks like we’re better off than we hoped. Lady Luck paid off.”

“And all it was was luck,” Larxene said forcibly. “We can’t forget that—”

“We’re in a bad position and can’t assume that life will be any better for us than it has to be,” Marluxia finished. “Can’t let our guards down.”

“Exactly. Well, it’s the middle of the day right now, so it’s not going to work,” she said, knocking on the average, metallic doorframe. “It’s not even here right now. Too many people around. This means Virus doesn’t have them yet.”

“No, but it’s hot on YOUR trail.”

Larxene and Marluxia cussed in unison at hearing the familiar, annoying voice. “Cat,” muttered Marluxia, “to what do we owe the pleasure?”

The Avatar of Virus, who, for now, only existed as a head with some spiral stripes trailing behind it, like a comet, smiled. The Cat was known for his smile, and when it stretched across his face from ear to ear, narrowing its eyes, even Larxene shuddered. “Cut that out, Cat. It gives me the fucking creeps.”

The Cheshire Cat continued to smile, of course. “Oh, errant children. Crude, uncouth, and always rebellious. Loyalty is beyond the both of you.”

Trying to move as little as possible, Larxene’s hand slowly creeped to Rumbling Rose clipped on her purse. “I won’t aspire to heights I can’t reach,” Marluxia said.

The cat stretched, lifting up its invisible hind legs so that its front was crouched down. “You two prodigals are in very, very deep trouble.”

“Oh, for what?” Larxene snorted. “Virus should thank us. It’s risking too much with its dumb game and it knows it. If it had any sense, it would have snapped them up already. Like I planned to. I could have just grabbed Roxas days ago.”

The Cat opened its mouth wide. Marluxia tensed. “In fact, I have been sent to—”

There was a sudden burst of light and a sound like a snap. Larxene leaped forward, arms extended, and the Cat hissed and arched. After a matter of seconds, there was no cat to be seen—only Larxene standing, triumphant smirk on her face, and Rumbling Rose dangling from her fingers, which she promptly snapped shut. “Piece of cake,” she sighed.

Marluxia gaped. “Alright. I knew some of the powers of those keycharms, but I don’t know if I’ve seen… whatever you just did?” he crossed his arms.

Larxene smiled, and put one hand on his shoulder. “We sent the Cat to the witch in a locket, didn’t we? Lady Luck isn’t the only one that locks.”

“I’m impressed,” Marluxia admitted. “I didn’t expect that to be your course of action at all.”

“Yeah, the thing about the element of surprise is that it all works best when people are SURPRISED. Though I admit that I wasn’t totally sure that would work either,” she muttered.

“Well, many thanks that it did,” said Marluxia, looking up at the sky, as if addressing a god. “Then we’re ready to fight fire with fire again.”

Larxene grinned. “How I missed that.”

“Weren’t the one telling me that we should keep our efforts underground?”

“Should. Did you really believe I ever wanted to?”

Marluxia grinned. “I can remember your silhouette framed in a burst of light as you tore a man’s spine from out of his chest.”

“Oh, that was in the world with all the pirates, wasn’t it?” Larxene said, clapping her hands. “That reminds me, however.” Larxene shook Rumbling Rose in front of his face. “Now that it’s probably taken away your powers again, we should get you one of these.”

“I don’t think you can get them in vending machines, dear. Besides, it’s not like they can do much besides ward, cloak, repel, disenchant, and APPARENTLY trap. They used to be weapons, now they are only amulets.”

“Well, they have properties in special cases. How about Lady Luck or Fenrir? God help the man who finds Oblivion, and I hope whoever has their hands on Ultima or the Kingdom Key is with us. If not, I’m convincing them however I can… Oathkeeper, as well, if it still exists.”

“Well, I hope I find SOMETHING to cloak myself soon. How I miss those damn capes…”

Larxene smiled and clipped Rumbling Rose onto her purse. “Well, just hang on to me for a while, honey, and you’ll be totally safe,” she purred. Then, as an afterthought, she turned around and narrowed her gaze at the door. “Though, if we had a chance at finding one for you anywhere, I think I know where.”

-

They had halfway finished eating when Axel and Roxas walked up the stairs. Axel’s smile immediately fell from his face upon seeing the company he was facing. He turned on his heel to hide in his basement again, which only accomplished him getting violently embraced by Sora from behind. He went down screeching as Sora yelled about how glad he was to see him at about 120 decibels. Most everyone else regarded Axel with disinterest, since they had all been made to accept his presence in the interim. Opinions on the most famous assassin in a dozen worlds varied, suffice to say.

“Every time,” Axel wheezed from the vicinity of the floor.

Silently, warily, Roxas appeared from behind him, peeking around the frame of the door. “Hi?” he asked. His eyes lighted on Namine, who was poking at a bowl of strawberries. “I’m going to guess the meeting went well?”

To his surprise, people seemed rather… glad to see him. People he vaguely recognized as Sora’s friends waved and smiled, and one person named Kairi ran in for the hug. He accepted the hug after some surprised fumbling. “It’s so great to see you, Roxas!” she gushed, and leaned back to look at him. “To see you, finally.”

“Well…” Roxas cleared his throat. “It’s pretty great to see you too, Kairi. We’ve only talked, like, once?”

Kairi grinned. “We’ll have to fix that. I have been cosmically cheated out of being friends with you.”

“Huh,” said Roxas.

A black-haired woman snuck up behind Kairi to examine him. He recognized her face as one of Sora’s friends… but his ‘memories’ of her were dim. “Now you, I’ve heard plenty about,” said the girl.

“…yes?...”

Yuffie delicately shoved Kairi aside and moved in to hug Roxas herself. Roxas, baffled, had no response, and just stood there, stiff.

When he finally got to look back up at the people sitting or standing around the crowded kitchen table, he saw tears in a few eyes. What the hell? Was there something he didn’t know about going on?

Axel struggled up to his feet at about that point, opened his mouth to say something, but forgot that as he released Sora that the boy would only fly to his next target. Roxas was slammed unevenly into a wall as Sora attempted to pulverize him with glee. “Roxas! You’re finally here!!”

“I… breathe…” said Roxas unevenly, while worrying about the state of his ribs.

Axel quietly eased Sora off of him from behind. “Not so much, dude,” said Axel. “Kid’s got a heart, now, makes him all fragile. Can’t just go screaming at him face-first with hundred-pound keybludgeons.”

Sora was absolutely undeterred. “I’m so glad to see you!! I knew you would come back, I knew it, even though they said you had no place in the world, I knew there was a place for you!”

“Well, thanks,” said Roxas, not sure what to say, though he had to admit that Sora’s appreciation, finally, made him feel a little warm about the whole situation. “It’s great to see you too, actually.”

Alright, it was an understatement, but at least it was in character for him. Sora looked into his eyes and smiled, holding Roxas’s shoulders in both his hands, appraising him. “You look different,” he finally said.

Wanly, Roxas smiled in return, a smile that creeped onto his face as if from out of hiding. “Thanks. I feel different.”

Sora grinned widely, and spent a moment rubbing some tears from his eyes. “This is great. We’re going to be brothers now, ok?”

Roxas shrugged. “Ok, but I’m getting siblings at an alarming rate anymore.”

“Huh? Who else do you mean?”

Namine waved vaguely from the direction of the waffles. “Sorry, I sort of adopted him a few days ago,” she admitted.

Sora crossed his arms. “Well, can I join the brotherhood already?”

“What, I don’t make the decisions here,” Roxas protested.

“Yes, you both can, you should also eat breakfast right about now,” Namine told them, gesturing them over.

“Why aren’t you eating, though?” Demyx asked Namine, poking her.

Namine got as far as “I’m not sure” before she was intercepted by a Sora to the side. He decided to slide pretty much right onto her seat, though, then again, the seats were all packed close enough around the kitchen table to be benches.

“Next to me, Roxas!” he declared, brooking no argument.

Roxas sat, and Axel sat beside him, even if he felt way less than comfortable in the sudden crush of people. “Jesus, you all try to fit a lot of people in one house all at the same time,” he said lamely.

“We’re all close,” said Tifa, pouring syrup onto her plate.

“I’ve noticed,” said Axel, wincing.

For once, Roxas didn’t notice. He was busy smiling at Sora, who leaned on his arm, almost bursting as he introduced old enemies back to each other, full of smiles.

-

It was all minty grass and weeds, all for miles, under a goose feather sky. Larxene smiled thinly, and Marluxia took her hand at her side. The place was as quiet and as damp as if it was underwater, swimming with lethargy, deep in inertia.

Saix was curled up on the grass, sound asleep. Xemnas was awake for Larxene’s entrance, staring over his shoulder at the open door, hair mussed with sleep and face schooled. He stood to greet them.  

“I felt you coming,” he said to Marluxia, “you particularly, and I woke for you.”

The two stood some way from him, Larxene posed with the expectation to wait, Marluxia before her, hands clutched.

“I am surprised, and happily so,” said Xemnas, facing as much away from them as they from him, “that you both made it here without being harmed. I commend you on your quick thinking, Larxene. It’s well to see you both again.”

Larxene grinned. “Is it really?”

“I speak only the truth,” Xemnas said.

Larxene twisted her head from side to side, and then looked to Marluxia, one eyebrow raised. Marluxia put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you saying,” said Marluxia, “that now that you’re dead, you’ve left all the past behind you?” he asked.

Xemnas looked around his new realm of existence, at the breeze that rustled the grass, at the clouds that hovered low. “Much like Nothingness, isn’t it?” he asked. “Yet I like it better.” He looked at them with a level stare. “You’re correct. I am dead. I meant to spend the rest of the live of this world, the rest of the life of all worlds, asleep in utter blackness. I had plans, once. More than you knew. And more rage than you ever felt. But this, I think,” he sighed, “this is what I wanted. This is all.”

The conspirators looked at each other. Marluxia shrugged, Larxene took a minute to consider, and nodded.

“We are here for your help,” Marluxia implored. “We’ve locked six doors, but six and one still remain. We were locking the weakest first, always in fear of being discovered. Now that the passage between Earth and Rebirth is open, Virus is always watching. We can’t assume it doesn’t see us.”

“Please,” sighed Xemnas. “I wish to call my own mistake by its own name. I thought it would help me accomplish my goals, but it only causes me more grief now… Kingdom Hearts.”

Larxene grimaced. “Can’t it hear you?”

“Not here,” said Xemnas, “and not me.” He tilted his head, seeming to glare at the sky, his expression growing grim. “Not me. If the Keyblade Wielder had the thought to return, and finish those scraps of Kingdom Hearts that were left after my demise, and not leave so many loose ends… it wasn’t the only creature left unavenged when we were destroyed. Now the judgment day has come…”

“Yeah, of course,” said Larxene. “Judgment day. Yes. Do you think you can help us with that? We need to recruit the Princess, but we can’t get to her without endangering her. We have a huge target on our asses.”

“You need to be hidden,” said Xemnas. “I assume you would want the keycharms, those clever contraptions with the powers of our cloaks… hiding, recycling, repelling… though a few are special, aren’t they? And we’re not sure why. The wonderland Keyblade, drawn to its creator, by a force unknown to us, and Fenrir, in the position of Vincent Valentine—a new player, to my knowledge. Then again,” he said consideringly, “didn’t he once travel with you two?”

“He did,” said Marluxia. “He left to stay by allies he thought were in more danger. He seems to be protecting one of the wielders.”

“I see,” responded Xemnas. “I will not pretend to understand what happens in Valentine’s mind any longer. But don’t be shy,” he said, turning around with something of a grin. “I know you have some things to ask of me.”

“In that case,” Larxene said abruptly, “Why is it that Marluxia and I still have the hearts that Kingdom Hearts gave us? It took away Marluxia’s powers the second it knew he was using them against it.”

“But never gave you anything, did it?” Xemnas asked. He shrugged. “This is hard to explain. Your powers are something that are not essential to you, a power you do not need to live. The heart is essential for the human, without it, they wither. The human without a heart strives always to bring one back… power to force and control come and go from a human like tides. Kingdom Hearts can give you the power to destroy, and take it away, and your person has not changed, only your position of power. But the heart is different. You become attached to your heart. It can’t be taken away from you at a distance like a fly can be plucked away from a corpse, it is more important to you. You guard it, hold it with both hands. It is at your core, when your powers were only extraneous, in an aura around you, to be blown away by the wind. To take your hearts away, ti would have to catch you. The irregularities of when hearts are given to us or taken away…” he mused, “it baffles us all. You two were merely lucky. Axel... we may only call him an aberration. Roxas as well, come to think of it.”

Larxene snorted, rolling her eyes. “So, you don’t know why we do or don’t have hearts, then? At all?”

“Not truly,” Xemnas confessed. “I assume it is because of Kingdom Hearts itself that none of you were born with one. Why you have them again now—the reason varies. The heart is determined. If given a seed, it will root it, if the seed is watered, it will grow. Ask not why you have one, but why anyone wouldn’t. If they haven’t grown one, they are refusing it.”

“Superior,” asked Marluxia, “then what should we think about you?”

“Insidious, as always,” Xemnas said. “You haven’t changed. I suppose you’re still grasping for power, then, in which case, you’ll appreciate this.” He tossed something to Marluxia, which glittered as it went.  

“Ultima?” Marluxia asked with some doubt, examining the shining keychain.

“Are you SERIOUS?” Larxene asked, grasping Marluxia’s shoulder. He had to twist and hop around a bit to keep up. “Ultima? Of all things? And you just… had that?”

“You are now hidden from Kingdom Hearts,” said Xemnas, “And Ultima has many of the same powers that Fenrir does, so you can lean on your upper hand now. Now, I’ll offer you two a final decision… will you go backwards, or forwards? It will be the first and last time I really give you a choice, so make it carefully.”

“We know the full implications of going forward,” Marluxia sighed. “Virus is searching directly for us. Who knows where any door will lead us? Larxene,” he asked her, “will you go forward, or fall back? Whatever you will.”

Larxene crossed her arms, glaring at the Rumbling Rose, which, to her concern, was turning steadily violet. “You don’t have to be so kind, Marluxia. You know we fall backwards. We’ll continue right where we left off.”

“And you know what going backwards could mean, too?”

“Yes, I know! And I am fully ready to face anything we have faced before.”

Marluxia nodded. “So be it. Xemnas, we will return by the path we came.”

Larxene tapped her fingers on her arms for a minute, displeased by something. “One last thing, Xemnas. Well, a few. Does anyone but us know Virus is Kingdom Hearts, aside from us and Valentine? And what about the REAL Kingdom Hearts, the one that existed before you made your sham?”

“I assume the heart of light is where it always was,” said Xemnas, “separate and safe. As for who has that knowledge, but for you and Valentine, Saix and myself, and those powers omniscient that inhabit my new realm, Saix says that Roxas knows now, and that means Axel will know soon.”

Larxene erupted with some impressively ugly laughter and had to stifle it before Xemnas could continue.

“I can tell you that Cloud Strife suspects, because he has some experience with such creatures,” said Xemnas, “but he is a self-contained man. I would assume Aeris Gainsborough knows, but they rest of them are probably ignorant, having never much dealt with Kingdom Hearts in the past. Don’t worry about Cloud or Roxas, but you may worry about Axel. I would advise you to always worry about Axel.”

“Ya know?” said Larxene. “I already figured that one out.”

Xemnas, though he worked to hide it, smiled a fond smile. “He was, out of all my enemies, the one who most digs in my side. May he now be a thorn for someone else.”

“And Aeris?”

“What?”

“And AERIS?” Larxene repeated. “DON’T worry about Roxas and Cloud, DO worry about Axel, what about Aeris?”

“I do not understand Aeris,” Xemnas said, and let that hung in the air for a minute.

“What do you mean by THAT?” Larxene demanded.

“Aeris is not a human,” Xemnas began. “Perhaps she is now, but she wasn’t once. She was a different sort of being, from another world, and she brought… something of that with her. But aside, even, from that, I do not understand Aeris. Her actions… her emotions… are beyond me. I cannot surmise her. Like Sora, our enemy from old, she is a sort of… unpredictable person. I won’t say that I know what she will or won’t do next.”

“So she must be a kind person,” Marluxia whispered wryly to Larxene. She smiled.

“Any more questions?” Xemnas asked, crossing his arms.

“You can’t just, like, tell us how to defeat Virus?” Larxene asked.

“I could tell you who, but not how. There is no one answer. I could tell you who to look out for, but remember what was in the heart of everyone you knew then, and you will know who deserves suspicion and who trust. I could tell you who has such a power that they could defeat Kingdom Hearts, but surely you remember who among us had powers that could outdo all the rest of us. Why ask me? Don’t you have the memories I had?”

“Not all of them,” said Marluxia. “I believe there are a few things we missed.”

“And a few people,” Larxene mentioned. “And maybe a few years of life? We came in to the game late and left early. You can’t cut us a little slack?”

“Frankly,” said Xemnas, “it isn’t my concern anymore. I intercepted your entrance into our realm because I would not have Saix face the two of you alone. I have let the past wither away, and I have no hatred for you. But I shall never trust you.”

“Funny,” said Marluxia, “we’re in a position where we have to trust you. I think the untrustworthy one is the one who cannot repay trust.”

Xemnas eyed him doubtfully. “You were ever a clever speaker, Marluxia. There were contenders, but I never had a rival quite like you. Oh, more powerful than you, certainly, but never quite like you. You only didn’t have enough people to do the fighting for you, I believe, just as you have your girlfriend speak for you now. You know where to place a pawn.”

Larxene looked at Marluxia. “Go for it,” he shrugged.

Larxene stomped up to Xemnas with deadly intent. She pulled her fist back, waited for Xemnas to block it, and then used her already turned pose to kick Xemnas in the shin, which caused him to bend over, and then used his kneeling pose to knock him flat with her heel. “This was going so well, asshole,” she said to his back, teeth bared, eyes glittering, “until you failed to recognize the difference between an alliance for the sake of power and a relationship. Don’t you insult me in that way, or insult Marluxia. He only uses people that he can expend.”

Swift as a snake, Xemnas grabbed Larxene’s ankle and yanked her to the ground. She shrieked, her scream a sudden crack in the stillness of the air, and braced herself with her elbows on the way down, scrambling away. Xemnas was crouching more quickly than one could see him move. “Marluxia’s power, that which made him one of my most impressive enemies, was always his devotion, as a heartless, to being truly without emotion. If he has lost that, he is powerless.”

Marluxia, for one reason or another, or perhaps a few, had not moved. He watched as Larxene jumped back to her feet and came at Xemnas, fingers not clutched to hit but curled to snare. Xemnas was too dignified for her way of fighting, and struggled to defend himself as she came, claws in his hair, feet trying to stomp him down, until, eventually, they came to a lock, palm pushing against fist, feet braced on the ground.

Marluxia strode silently, in a half circle around them, until he was nearly between them, watching at their struggling hands. He looked Larxene in the face until her eyes flickered his way, and slowly, he placed his hand on theirs, and pulled them apart.

Marluxia spared his old enemy a glace. “The term I use is charm,” he said.

Larxene just couldn’t help but smile. “If you want the encounter to be bloodless,” she conceded, “we can go. I’m just letting you know that it, really, really doesn’t have to be bloodless. You know. Just in case you want to see if the mystical undead can die.”

“I think we have more important things to do than linger on burning bridges,” decided Marluxia, taking her arm.

She accepted his offer, and they turned to go without another word. The fact that they were letting a valuable source of information go seemed lost on the both of them.

Xemnas watched them go from him, a buzz in his head. It would be back to sleep soon. Back to sleep, to visions of what had become, old allies scattered around the worlds, thriving or not, multiple plots overlaid upon each other, in secrecy, and sinking suspicions.

-

It was when Namine reached Kairi’s room with the intent to unpack that she realized she had nothing but the clothes on her back and her shoulder bag, whose contents consisted entirely of art supplies, identification, some spare change, and a few granola bars. It was only the afternoon, but she was tired and her vision was clouding over, because she had missed an entire night and just wanted to sleep—she heard that Demyx had already walked off to do just that, though a somewhat confused Roxas was still being occupied by Sora.

Namine’s bag was emptied further as she swallowed the last of her scattered pain pills, downed with what must have been an entire gallon of metallic well water, brought up from the kitchen in a plastic water bottle. Even though she wasn’t hungry before now, her stomach was growling, feeling uncomfortably tight. She figured she must be sick, somehow; since she tended to not get colds when she was heartless, this sort of experience was new to her, so she couldn’t guess at what was wrong.

She was waiting for Kairi to use the bathroom so that she could be situated, and for now, she was left tired and ill, alone with her worries, in an unfamiliar bedroom, smelling strongly of the scent that can only signify another human being’s personal space, like hair and skin, cosmetics, expended breaths and worn clothing, an individual and pungent scent. The room was an average bedroom, perhaps eight feet on every side, with walls painted green and detailed with flowers; two twin beds standing on either side of the window by the far wall. Kairi’s bed had pale pink sheets and a half-dozen comforters, the other had several brightly colored pillows and a large stuffed creature, and the end table between them was piled up laboriously with two alarm clocks, a stained-glass shaded lamp, many books and notebooks and pencils and bottles, decorated with lace underneath the junk. The window was shaded with something tie-dyed, and flags and posters and concert tickets, including one gigantic Jolly Roger, cluttered the wall over the side of the room that could only be Yuffie’s.

The shelves and dressers around the room, despite being filled with clothes and books and stacked with knick-knacks and the evidence of various hobbies, were draped with vines and bonsai trees and bamboo, partly hiding the one wall that was entire plastered by a comic book story board, well defined in some parts, left sketched in others, as thick as wall paper, drawn with alternating art styles that blended as the comic went on. The story, as Namine could discern about it, was about two girls imbued with strange super-powers (one enhanced other people’s natural talents, one reduced them) who fought injustice on their skateboards or in the arcade and ran an ice-cream shop together. They were either a couple or good friends, Namine couldn’t tell; that revelation seemed to be being put off until later chapters. Further on in the story, other characters were tied into the tapestry, co-workers, family, peripheral superheroes, a cat, and a black-haired woman with a rifle who looked like she was a potential arch-rival. Down near the bottom of the wall, she saw chapters with a darker tone, philosophical, where the two girls were forced to live in separate towns as the gun-wielding girl tried to move in close to both of them. The story cut out about there, with vague suggestions and written notes, as well as vibrantly colored sticky notes saying things like ‘finish inking this, Yuffie!’ or ‘I have an idea for this chapter…’ or ‘how about instead of Kate finding the gun-wielder down by the river, Delaney does?’ Extras ideas and finished pages were laid in uneven piles on one of the desks, besides bottles of nail polish and various kitschy souvenirs.

The room did not have overhead light, but instead, there were a dozen little lamps scattered here and yonder, on every available surface, some lit, some not, and a string of green and yellow Chinese lanterns on the ceiling. A laptop hummed in one corner, a phone was charging in another.

It was a messy room, chaotic, overall, a room that had been molded to fit its inhabitants over years, with clothes and a few dirty dishes strewn around without shame. Stuff was bursting out of the drawers, floor space and wall space were scarce, and both personalities were vibrantly available through decoration, through habits of cleanliness, through the arrangement and style of their possessions.

Namine was more used to white walls, and something about the room inspired her—its familiarity, its saturation. How long had the two women lived together, she wondered. Years, at least, probably for most of their lives, unless they were incredibly speedy comic writers.

As she examined the story on the walls, thought about the room, and the situation of two people living with each other, it occurred to Namine that the two of them might be in a relationship. That’s what living together usually meant, wasn’t it? That’s what you’d think, seeing two people who had blended into each other like this, on their walls, in their hearts, but that’s what she had thought about Demyx and Zexion, wasn’t it, and hadn’t she been wrong? Maybe she couldn’t tell what was a significant relationship and what wasn’t. Maybe she just had no way to know these things. When had she ever had something like this? So how could she pretend to understand?

There was a disconnect, really, between outside appearance and inside state, she knew that, but it seemed there was a gulf between these two things, a gulf of understanding, which she could not traverse. In some areas, she could see through someone’s pretense and cut to their heart, but in other situations…

The light of the Chinese lanterns flickered on, like spring light through tree leaves, and Kairi appeared shyly in the doorway, short red hair pinned back to keep the heat off her neck, feet bare, one arm awkwardly behind her neck. “Hey,” she said, “if you want to sleep, aren’t you going to change your clothes? I’m guessing my stuff will fit you, if you need nightclothes. We look like the same size, really,” she said, appraising Namine’s slight frame. “Well, okay, we look like we’re the same height. My clothes might not quite fit, in retrospect.”

“I’ve been told I’m malnourished,” Namine admitted, opening a drawer full of clothing on her side of the room. It consisted entirely of brightly-colored underwear, and she shut it quickly. She decided her own underwear could stay where it was.

Kairi settled onto Yuffie’s patchwork and pillow-covered bed, observing Namine. “I mean, you look malnourished. Not to say…” he tried again. “I figure you would be, with everything you went through.”

Namine shrugged, one shoulder before the other, sorting through Kairi’s collection of sun dresses. “I could never really eat. It wasn’t my choice.”

Upon finding a loose t-shirt that Namine thought would work as a sleeping shirt (it was a band shirt whose name Namine had never heard of, sold at a tour three years ago, worn and soft now) and black cotton shorts to go with it, Namine wasn’t sure what to do, if she should leave or change here, but girls all dressed together at school, so she figured here was fine. She pulled her sweater (covering her skin had always been more important than accommodating for the warm weather) over her head, which caused her hair to go everywhere, and she had to stop and pull it back into a ponytail (she kept binders on her wrist) before pulling off her camisole.

Kairi looked away, of course, in the interest of modesty, but then she looked back, because what she saw was… weird. It was a double-take fueled by the uncanny. She saw just an impression of bones, and it was the sort of scare that comes from watching a horror movie, not the desire to stare at Namine, that made her look back.

Namine was untouched by the sun under her clothes, with the rare skin of a person who never allows most of their body to be seen; soft, thin, and as pale as a fish. Her form was uncomfortably exaggerated, because she was so impossibly thin, the sort of underfed that comes with starvation, wrists defined, ribs visible, her colors oddly bruised and splotchy, the hairs of her body dark. Kairi, being a young woman in high school, had heard warning about girls who became like this, was told the signs, so she could look out for her friends… she hadn’t seen it, though.

It wasn’t the same for Namine, of course. Namine couldn’t eat. It wasn’t that Namine had ever done something wrong. It just… wasn’t what Kairi expected to see, not on her.

Namine slipped the old Gaelic Storm t shirt over her torso, and Kairi looked away again. “Being a nobody is pretty rough, isn’t it?” she asked.

Namine thought about it. “Only in comparison. It’s worse looking back on it than being there. That’s why the nobodies who remembered having a heart well were so much worse off than the ones who didn’t remember or didn’t care, usually. I heard Axel actually had a lot of problems with it… but not everyone really felt there was something wrong. At the time, it’s just what you have. Now, recovering from it…” Namine sighed. “A lot of us have to build up our emotions, our understanding of people and relationships from the ground. It must make us difficult to deal with.”

“Not at all,” Kairi said. “You’re so nice.”

“Anything at all can be hiding behind nice,” Namine said. “I’m starting to wonder… if you can really trust anybody who was once a nobody. We weren’t always good people.”

“Why does that matter,” Kairi asked, as Namine was straightening up from putting the shorts on, “when that’s all in the past now? You have new lives now. You don’t have to be bound by the things which happened before.”

“You know,” said Namine, turning around, her dirty clothes still in her arms, “that’s what I just told Roxas a few days ago. He didn’t seem to believe what I was saying. I’m starting to see why. Being reformed, being different now… yes, but we still remembering doing those things we did back then. Having an excuse doesn’t mean you didn’t do it, does it?”

“You can put the dirty laundry in the basket over there,” Kairi noted, since Namine looked uncomfortable. “Maybe it’s just because it seems so recent to you, you know? And you might feel bad here because we all used to be enemies. And not everyone was nice to you today. I’m really sorry about that, by the way. Some of the people here are just… contentious. And I’ll speak to Riku. He’s acting like he’s forgotten everything he used to… never mind. I’m just saying it might all be coming back up because it seems immediate here. Sit right by me,” she added, smiling.

Namine settled awkwardly close to and awkwardly far away from Kairi on the bed. “I suppose,” said Namine. “But I fight with myself about it all the time. Sometimes I feel like I just did what I had to do, sometimes I’m so angry that I didn’t try something else, didn’t try to contradict Marluxia and leave Sora alone, or didn’t go along with DiZ’s scheme to… to… erase Roxas in favor of Sora, didn’t do… anything I did. I had reasons back then, but looking back, it looks weak, and despicable. Perhaps I’m only being unkind to myself. But don’t you feel, too, like we all could have done better back then?”

Kairi slowly collapsed backwards onto the pile of pillows. “I feel like I could have done anything but sit on the beach way, way earlier than I did, yeah,” she sighed.

“I do remember you coming into the game a little late,” Namine mused.

Kairi lifted up her hands in front of her face. “What was I supposed to do? Swim to Castle Oblivion? I was a little stuck. Well, I get angry at myself for waiting so long anyway. But what could I conceivably do?”

Namine nodded absently. “I suppose. It’s just weird… to remember hurting people. Or to remember hating people so avidly. To be wary because you used to worry this person would kill you, or that one might kill your friend. I still can’t quite relax around Axel, even knowing…” Namine trailed off. “I wish I could just let it go.”

Kairi just thought about what Namine had said. Namine, however, felt herself too quickly falling asleep for thoughts such as these. “Do you feel uncomfortable here?” Kairi asked her suddenly.

Namine’s head jerked up. “No,” she said, “not really. No more than I usually do, so that’s all not an issue. I’m excited to meet everyone again, really. I’ve missed a lot of you. I’m only nervous, I suppose. Only…”

“Only?”

“I keep searching my memory…” Namine said. “Even those of you I didn’t meet, for the most part, I know of them… someone will remember them… but there’s one man I’ve never even heard of before. He never said a word… tall, long, black hair, stands very straight, seemed to be close to Cloud?”

Kairi snapped her fingers, sitting up again, leaning against the head board. “That’s Vincent,” she said.

“Vincent,” repeated Namine. “I know I never heard of him.”

“He was another person from Gaia,” said Kairi. “I never understood the specifics, but a lot of Sora’s old friends, which he met in Traverse Town, came from a planet named Gaia. We’ve noticed before that a really unusual number of people survived Gaia falling to darkness… they have a personal history to explain it, something about a disease, they feel their previous experiences might have made them immune to the heartless fall. Vincent came from there, and Yuffie too, and Cloud, Cid, Tifa, Aeris, and Zach… I think that’s all of them. Well, more survived, too, but those are all the ones living here. Gaia was familiar with darkness, Vincent once told me, so it didn’t fall in the way a lot of other worlds did. It was more like Gaia dispersed, and not everyone had to die for that to happen. Aeris, he said, just left, because she wasn’t human… she was like… an angel, I think.”

“An angel?” Namine asked.

“I don’t remember most of this, and I don’t like to ask, cause it makes them uncomfortable,” Kairi explained. “She wasn’t human, is all. Vincent did the same thing. He just… left Gaia. He said he escaped Gaia when the heartless attacked, and ended up somewhere totally different.”

“Where?”

“A world called Galbadia, which was close to Gaia. Galbadia is where Squall and Seifer and Selphie come from, but since the heartless were going the same way as Vincent did, Vincent didn’t stay there long. They tell me Galbadia fell to darkness in the middle of a war, so the survivors sometimes are on different sides. Squall and Selphie tell me they and Seifer were on opposite sides. It doesn’t really seem to bother them, though, not usually. But it’s because they were soldiers that they’re such great fighters now… sometimes Selphie goes away, looking for other survivors. What did you ask me about again?” Kairi asked, putting a hand to her forehead.

“Vincent.”

“Vincent. He says he went ‘world-hopping’ after Galbadia, just trying to run from the heartless. He told me a bit about the worlds, but he keeps to himself, usually… a world that had this gigantic, evil, flying monster the people couldn’t eradicate, a world with sky pirates, he would talk about the sky pirates, two worlds connected to each other, one of whom would wane while the other flourished, a world where they could create perfect replicas of living people, and a world with a town whose fate was bound magically to its prince… he’s seen dragons and demons and lifeless planets… and then when he ended up here, on this planet, he knew he could stop running, because the heartless wouldn’t touch it.”

“Why is that?”

“I have no idea,” said Kairi. “I never wanted to ask him why. I assumed it was just very far away.”

Namine had an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach, a feeling like the one that comes when you’re reading a mystery novel and you know the narrative just gave you an important clue, some awkward transition, some flicker of the eyes, some sentence left unended, but the main character doesn’t pick up on it, and you don’t know where the arrow is pointing. “But if he started running from Gaia… and keep running until he came here… are you trying to say he never… died?”

“He said he died once here, and came back. After all, he first arrived on Earth one hundred and fifty years ago… but some of us aren’t sure he’s telling the truth.”

“No?”

Kairi shrugged. “Cloud says he has the habit of hiding beneath old building for a hundred years and pretending he’s dead when he’s really not. I wouldn’t know how. Cid, at least, insists that Vincent has never died, not since faraway days on Gaia when he worked apparently as an assassin for the electrical company.”

“What.”

“I know.”

“That means…” Namine pondered. “Cid thinks Vincent has actually been alive since… before Kingdom Hearts, you know? Before the Heartless, and before Xemnas… before Xehanort, even.”

“Yeah, I guess. Why?”

“It’s just odd to think about,” Namine shrugged. “It seems like it was all so definitive, like it changed the universe. It sort of did change the universe. And all of them come from a place that existed before then.”

“They have some pretty cool stories,” Kairi confirmed. “You should talk to some of them. I suggest Cid. His versions of the Gaia story are probably the least accurate but I promise they are the best.”

“I will,” said Namine. “I hope to be here for a while. I don’t know what I’m going to tell my parents… but I can’t just leave, now that I see everything happening here.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” Kairi said. Namine chanced a glance at Kairi, after having spent most of those minutes staring awkwardly at her hands in her lap. Kairi was smiling softly, a smile that was mostly in her eyes. Namine had to look away, feeling embarrassed. Kairi had spoken so intensely- so honestly—and Namine felt the same way, but was shy to say it.

“I have all summer,” Namine finally said. “Even if I have to go back north for a little while, I can always come right back. Learn from you. Meet everyone again, finally. Maybe we can all figure out this Virus business together.”

“Figure out what?” Kairi asked.

Namine sighed. “I told Leon that there seems to be… something troubling all of us again. We have reason to believe it’s connected to all of our pasts, since it’s found several of us, separately…” she clutched Lady Luck absently in her hand. “I don’t want to explain it all now.”

“I believe you,” said Kairi softly. “For a long time, I’ve felt something… wrong. I couldn’t say in what. It seems sometimes like there’s something wrong in this entire world, wrong in a way I haven’t felt before. But… yeah, it’s hard to explain, isn’t it?”

“It is,” said Namine.

They were silent for a minute. “You seriously look exhausted,” Kairi said.

“I am exhausted,” Namine admitted. “We somehow skipped an entire night.”

Kairi stood up with a bounce. “I’ll leave you to sleep,” she said. “Take all the time you need. If you wake up in the middle of the night and I’m not here, don’t feel scared to wander around the house and find people. Someone’s awake at any hour of the day. Avoid going outside, though. We have more than one trigger-happy resident willing to pull a gun if someone looks like they might be a burglar.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I usually look like a Woodstock attendee then,” said Namine. Kairi giggled. “See you later, then,” she said.

“See you,” called Kairi, and left the room, shutting the door and turning off the lanterns behind her.

Namine sat there for a minute, just thinking. She pulled down the blinds on the little window, as much as she could, with everything cluttered on the end table. Reluctantly, she pulled back the covers on Yuffie’s bed, feeling not a little like she was invading someone else’s space. It looked like another person’s bed, it smelled like another person’s bed. And Namine… actually wasn’t prepared for how nice and comforting that would be.

It wasn’t like she had ever had another person in her bed before. Not even their smell, or this lingering warmth, from where Kairi had just been. She found herself quietly wishing she were sleeping in the other bed, just across the way.

The sun was not yet setting at that time, so though she had pulled the blinds down, the room was a bit too bright, and she found herself lying awake for some time. Weird thoughts flittered to her head and were gone, in half-sentences, unformed, and she more felt a sense of confusion and being unsettled than she had any concrete thoughts about it.

It was a situation surreal to her. She was in another person’s bed, in their warmth, among the objects of their life, looking at their creative exploits. It was a vibrant life, a complex one, one that felt welcoming, and human. She wouldn’t have called it overwhelming, because, at that point, it all felt so pleasant… but it was new, it was odd, and it was odd that she found it pleasant. She always considered herself a person that avoided people. Not a person… so fond of their presence. Or the ghost of it.

As even these thoughts dissipated, all she felt was her heart beating in her body, the awareness of her body, from the arch of her foot to her ten fingertips, filled with blood vessels, muscles, and bones. She felt her heart beating, and so many sensations flittering around that, which all built into a physical feeling of change. She knew things were turning in a new direction, and turning inside her.

And then she was asleep.

-

Roxas ended up being awake slightly longer than she was. By slightly longer, we mean something like six hours. Being accustomed to insomnia leaves a person with an odd sense of time.

He had talked with Sora for several hours before Sora had to drive off to go somewhere—he was apparently employed in town doing a late shift somewhere. “Never sleeps,” said Tifa solemnly. “Not as far as we can tell. What the rest of us get from sleeping, he gets through photosynthesis and the consumption of soda.” Axel had long since left the house to work out his emotions with a pack of cigarettes or something. He looked twitchy, Roxas had decided to let him go.

Talking to Sora so long had taken a weight off his shoulders—despite all his fears of being broken, being changed so much, of maybe not being fit to be a human anymore—he and Sora had just clicked. He didn’t think they had spent the time talking about anything important, though they skirted the subject of adjusting to life on Earth and without having to fight for their lives anymore, but mostly, it was simple subjects—school, music, bands, what they had done with their lives, how everyone else had changed.

Some things had to be brought up—“Are you and Kairi?” “No, well, kind of,” “Then are you and Riku,” “also kind of?” along with “but you and Axel,” “Well… yes,” and “are we… cool? Are you angry about everything that happened before?”

“No.”

Despite having had very few chances to know Sora, Roxas fell right back in with him. He liked him. As a person. As a personality. He felt he was close to him already. They had become friends.

That was that.

Sora was gone, though, off to do some sort of job that sent him into sighing and slouching but that was only described as ‘terrible, horrible things’, the sun had set, and though most people had wandered off to do this or that, Roxas suddenly found himself in a room full of a few curious strangers.

Not totally his cup of tea. By now he could recognize them and refer to them all by name—Seifer and Leon sat at the card table set up to accommodate all the people who had been eating, talking lowly with one another, backs to the window. Leon, he noticed, sat with his arms crossed, and hardly ever moved, whereas Seifer would twitch and move restlessly. He wouldn’t have noticed if the contrast hadn’t have been so clear. Tifa Lockhart was across the table from him, starting, after a few successive meals that had run into each other, to clean up the table.

Roxas jumped off his chair when he realized what she was doing. “I can help you with that,” he offered.

Tifa waved her hand. “You don’t have to, I’ve got it.”

Roxas froze for a second, unwilling to take the response, and not sure how to argue. Anne had always asked him to help with tasks like washing the dishes, cleaning the apartment, doing the laundry, and paying the bills because her disorder made it difficult for her to focus on chores sometimes. While before, he had simply regarded cleaning up as his job, in retrospect, he was beginning to see it as his duty, something… kind he had always done for Anne. Though he didn’t put a lot of thought into it, he just found it uncomfortable to sit there and watch someone else clean.

Tifa saw him hesitating. “Hey, if you really want to help, I don’t mind the help,” she said. Roxas starting picking plates and glasses off the table and bringing them to the sink for her to stack away.

“Should anything be washed by hand?”

Tifa glanced at the stove. “Yeah, looks like there’s still a few pans.”

“Where do you keep the dish soap and stuff?”

“Under the sink.”

Once Roxas was more or less elbows-deep in dirty water, he heard someone chuckling behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see Seifer smiling at him. “Is there a problem?” he asked icily.

Seifer shrugged and nudged Leon. “Makes you almost ashamed of being such a lazy ass, huh?”

Leon raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me, who’s such a lazy ass? I don’t see you getting up to help.”

“I need you two to help like I need a bull in a china shop,” Tifa told them. “I know better than to ask you to come anywhere near the kitchen.”

Roxas decided that he was pointedly not interested in all of this and went back to scrubbing. Seifer and Leon bickered in the background, but, Roxas noticed, it wasn’t a venomous sort of bickering. He could see Axel in their place, arguing back in forth with… oh, someone, himself, even, just teasing, back and forth. It was a sort of friendship, after all, wasn’t it? Even back then, it had been a sort of friendship—the bickering and pushing and pulling confirmed their familiarity. Even when it wasn’t so great. Even when it wasn’t supposed to mean anything. Even then, knowing so much about each other meant something, whether he felt a connection or not aside. Time together is an acknowledgment of a connection as much as the stirrings of the heart are.

Lost in his thoughts, Roxas found himself swishing the water absently around, and finally realized there was nothing left in it. He drained the water, wiped off his hands, and looked to Tifa for something else to do.

“Put these leftovers in the fridge, would you?” she asked.

Roxas opened the refrigerator door to put the leftovers down, and was in awe.

Living with Anne, he was used to the fridge containing some liquor, some condiments, some old fruits past eating, some half-eating burgers from a restaurant, and the odds and ends of what could be made into meals, conceivably, but you might be better off eating cereal or ordering pizza. Anne didn’t have much money or many cooking skills. This fridge, however, was equipped to feed an army. The crisper was full of fresh vegetables. The breadbox was full of bread. Tupperware containing meals, clearly home-cooked, stacked the shelves, alongside exotic food from Asian or Mexican markets. There was soda, juice, wine, chocolate, real butter (instead of margarine), grapes and peaches and oranges and kiwi fruit, and it was all stacked on top of each other in a gigantic, delicious mess. “Holy shit, that’s a lot of food,” he said, before he had time to check himself.

Tifa laughed at him outright, though the other tried to hide it. “Poor kid?” she asked.

“I guess,” Roxas said. Creature comforts didn’t matter much to him before now. “I’ve never seen something like this,” he said. “I don’t know what half of these are. Or. How I’m going to fit the leftovers in here.”

“Try fitting them in above the old Chinese boxes,” Tifa suggested. “I know how you feel. I grew up on a farm so poor it folded before I was twelve. Had to move intercity just when I just started junior high school, which was all sorts of terrible.”

“I was always intercity,” Roxas said. After some struggling, he got the food in the fridge and the fridge door shut. “Anne… my foster mom… was pretty much as poor as dirt for as long as I can remember.”

“I remember cooking a lunch with nothing to work with but rice, bread, mustard, and maybe some eggs,” said Tifa fondly.

“That wouldn’t be impossible,” Roxas considered. “Especially if you had a little butter, you know, you could at least make breakfast.”

“Can you cook?” she asked, surprised. “You look a bit too punkish to cook, you know, like anything more fancy than a sandwich makes you a bit confused.”

Roxas looked at Tifa, baffled, and looked down at himself. “Punkish? I just sort of… don’t care what I wear.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“That’s what I always used to hear from this guy,” Seifer said, nudging Leon. “You would try to give him a compliment, he’d say, whatever, it doesn’t matter to me anyway.”

“Its clothes,” Leon said dully, “It doesn’t matter. I can’t believe you even remember that sort of thing; didn’t you have more important things to do? Evil organizations to aid? Perfectly viable plans to wreck? Schools to bomb?”

“Hey now,” Seifer began, but Roxas accidentally interrupted him with a thoughtful noise.

Aware, after a few second of silence, that everyone was looking at him, Roxas put up his hands. “Oh. Uh. Sorry about that. Carry on.”

“No, no, you go,” said Seifer, “whatever you have to say will be infinitely more interesting that this stupid argument. Trust me. There is nothing to hear here.”

“Look at me, I’m Seifer, and I never quite lost my knack for starting arguments and then never finishing them,” said Leon, right before being elbowed in the gut.

“So, yeah,” said Roxas, deciding to just talk to Tifa instead, “I was thinking, isn’t it odd that there are so many of you… you know… here? Axel and I had our reasons to believe we’d have this second life, I mean… well, it made sense for us, what we had been told, that we’d eventually get a sort of reset,” he awkwardly concluded, “but what about you guys? Why are all of you here? Not that I’m trying to sound, like, ungrateful?” he asked. “Wow, that fell apart on me.”

“No, I know what you mean,” Tifa sighed. “It’s not like we have any clue why everyone was put here either.”

“I mean, I literally met an agent of reincarnation, or something,” said Roxas, “and it still makes no sense.”

“Cloud and I used to wonder if it was about unfinished business, you know, our regrets, but if that were true, then why doesn’t everyone get second chances, it’s not like no one else—you what.”

“Yeah, I dunno, he’s one of Axel’s friends, I always thought he was weird,” shrugged Roxas. “So Namine didn’t go over, like, any of the metaphysical mysteries that have been springing up like dandelions recently?”

“It was glossed over, I think,” said Leon. “Basically all I got was that you’re in trouble.”

Seifer grinned and held out his hands in front of him. “Most viable reincarnation explanation theory right now: one point to Seifer.”

“Oh come on,” said Leon, followed by Tifa loudly sighing.  

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t make sense,” he argued. “We are soldiers. Well, those of us who were actually in an army, and not just, you know, part of ragtag guerrilla factions,”

“Hold on just a,” Tifa started to say.

“And the army doesn’t particularly care what state you’re in if you can fight, if they could bypass death, they would. Picked up, fixed up, put on a new battleground. Don’t tell me it doesn’t make sense,” he said, looking at Roxas.

Roxas thought back uncomfortably to his time spent with Axel that day. “Well,” he said.

“Well, exactly!” finished Seifer. “And that’s why I can’t let any of these assholes slack off on their training, appearance of normalcy or not.”

“Fucking first off,” said Tifa, “I could punch a hole through a bear and walk away unscathed, you have nothing to teach me.”

“I’m Tifa Lockhart and which side of the gun is the fro—”

“SECOND OFF,” snapped Tifa, pointing at Seifer accusingly, “I’m pretty sure living for like, how old are you, thirty some years and being attacked by nothing ever and still being convinced that malignant magical forces are just waiting for you to let your guard down is not something that makes sense, that’s called paranoia, and that’s a disease, not a compliment.”

Leon patted Seifer’s shoulder with a straight face. “Be kind to him. He did a lot of Mind Control when we were young, it messed with him.”

“I am not even thirty,” said Seifer. “And besides that,”

There was a sound of something slamming hard into the door, a bit of cursing, and then a slow creak as the door slid open, revealing a very tired looking Axel. “You pull that one instead of pushing it,” he said dully, “in case anyone was curious.”

Tifa snorted and tried not to giggle, and Roxas cracked a smile. “Thank you, Axel,” he said.

Axel glared at him. “Are you still awake? We have to have been up for a day and a half by now.”

Roxas said nothing. He merely extended one hand in a sweeping gesture towards Axel’s person. “That is not the same, alright,” said Axel, holding up a hand, “I’ve already ruined my life; you are a growing young man.”

“Please, never say that thing again,” said Roxas. “I was thinking of going to bed soon anyway,” he said, as with a final snap, he closed the dishwasher. “But if you’re so concerned about your sleep, what are you doing up so late?”

Axel stared at Roxas for a few seconds too long before answering, causing Roxas to regret asking a question whose answer he probably knew. “Sleeping in someone else’s house doesn’t sit well with me,” he lied. “You start worrying too much about people’s intentions.”

“That’s… probably a sign that you should go to sleep.” With a quick turn of his wrists, Roxas grabbed Axel’s sides and spun him around to face the door he came in through. “I’m going to put this guy down,” he said over his shoulder. “Thanks again, for everything.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Tifa. “Naysayers aside, we also like to have more company.”

“She says that, but whenever I try to bring someone home,” Seifer began.

“No one enjoys that, Seifer,” said Leon.

“Are you really going to pretend that even happens often enough for it to be an issue?” Roxas heard Tifa say, mocking, before the door shut behind him and Axel.

“That is a lot of energy at once in that room,” said Axel noncommittally. “I think I would have to be at my best to even process all that.”

“They… know each other well,” Roxas decided. He gave Axel’s back one final push, since Axel had been slowly leaning back against Roxas, as if prepared to fall. “Are you that tired?”

Axel sighed petulantly and straightened up. Shaking his head, Roxas followed where Axel lead, up the stairs and down a hall, around a corner, and finally to an unmarked door. “Here’s where they’re keeping the two of us until our sentencing,” he droned.

“Don’t be so morbid,” said Roxas. “No one is going to be breathing down your neck here.”

“Yes, I totally believe that,” muttered Axel, stepping into the bare room and turning on the single light bulb under its milky glass dome. “If there’s one thing I have learned from being a child assassin, it is that no one is trying to find me and harm me.”

The room was clearly a guest room, but because of the bits of personal touch here and there, it looked like it had been used before. The wallpaper was faded and floral, fit for a farmhouse, in pale greens and lavender. The end table and cabinet were of matching dark woods, with lamps and framed pressed flower collections and other such things scattered here and there. An inexplicable poster for a foreign film was on the wall, the window was shaded with nothing but lace, and though the room was dusty and undisturbed but for the sound of pipes in the walls, there was a deep coffee stain in the carpet. The room spoke of temporary living, of ins and outs, leaving the unessential and yet somehow revealing behind them.

And they were the next, Roxas reflected, just as transitory. He bit his lip for a second, wondering if he should comfort Axel, try to take back some of those years—but then he decided he was just too tired. Insomnia keeps a person running, but not necessarily feeling. “We can lock the door if it makes you feel better, but get your butt in bed.”

“Doesn’t help, it’s an all-purpose lock, you could open it with a pen if you tried hard enough,” Axel muttered, but commenced in taking his shirt off all the same.

Which is about when Roxas realized he just ordered Axel to prepare for bed and then sleep with him, and that Axel had done so without a second thought. Which was. Not unprecedented for the sort of relationship they were setting themselves up to have. But a bit… telling. 

More telling about Axel than himself, he guessed.

At first, Axel didn’t seem to feel the air building around Roxas as he grew more fidgety, but then, once his pants were off and he had to figure out his next move, Axel paused for a second, and stood still, back to Roxas, one arm around his shoulder. Roxas looked away.

“Whatever,” said Axel, and collapsed on the bed without moving the covers.

Whatever, Roxas thought. Something about the sentiment he liked, though he couldn’t explain why he felt that way at the moment. He smiled to himself, and, though he did, in the end, have to turn his back, took off his shirt and then moved for the light switch.

The room was surprisingly visible in the dark. Moonlight seeped in through the thin lace curtain, lighting up the room halfway, like dusk, in parts here and there. He could still see the curls of the wallpaper, with their little silvery lines, in the darkness.

Axel had taken up one side of the bed; for falling haphazardly onto the sheets, he had fallen with consideration. Halting, Roxas climbed as softly as he could onto the other side, as if frightened to jostle something.

When he was settled under the stiff white covers, he saw that Axel’s eyes were still open, and were now watching him. Most people would have just closed their eyes and pretended to be asleep. Axel thinly smiled.

Roxas smiled back. He wondered if Axel meant to say anything, but he didn’t. After a few seconds, he slipped his eyes closed, curled slightly towards Roxas, and, as if it were a process, over a course of minutes, relaxed; cheek settling into the pillow, legs and arms shifting just slightly, as gravity pulled him down. Roxas dully was aware that he shouldn’t be watching, and yet, he didn’t feel wrong about it. He looked at Axel’s face, his thin wrists and fingers, his hair scattering, and felt, somewhere in his heart, his gut, who knows—a feeling a little like being warm in the sunlight, peaceable and quiet, subtle, but ever growing, not much to speak of, but somehow, completely absorbing.

It was the feeling, he thought, of something being right.

Roxas was an insomniac, so though he was exhausted, he had an hour or so until he slept. He eventually closed his eyes, pulling closer to Axel. While the feeling faded, not becoming colder but becoming less and less a special moment and more and more a reality—as if this very night changed the context of all his life—his thoughts roamed from this to that; tentative hopes and wishes, which normally he wouldn’t broach with himself; memories usually left abandoned, too painful to reconnect to—but tangible now, reachable now, visible now, when everything seemed possible because, after all, everything was right here.

-

Namine felt the pains even before she properly awoke, like red police sirens flashing in her dreams—calm dreams, unaffected, about hallways, libraries, empty rooms, empty spaces, dungeons—and then she woke up, by degrees, as the pains got more and more intense. They opened her eyes up not long after dawn, hitting her every few minutes or so, forcing her to curl up tighter and tighter.

Eventually, she could not ignore them. Not sure of what to do, too tired to realize what was happening, she pulled herself out of Yuffie’s bed and opened the door of the bedroom to an uncomfortably bright, white-walled hallway. Wincing, suddenly on edge, Namine felt her way to the room that she knew was the bathroom, and pushed inside.

Kairi was similarly awoken by a sharp, but quickly muffled screech. Blearily (she hadn’t slept long) she walked to the bathroom, not sure why she was so worried until she realized it was Namine’s voice that had screamed. She knocked on the bathroom door. “Namine? Was that you?”

There was a few seconds of shuffling. “Everything is alright,” said Namine, not quite disguising the strain in her voice.

“Are you sure?” Kairi asked.

“It’s… fine. It’s fine. I should have expected this.”

“Expected what?”

Again, there was strained silence. Kairi, who couldn’t help but pick up on Namine’s nervousness, made a quick decision—which was a talent of hers, all things considered, and it hadn’t proved itself useless yet. “Look, I’m going to come in and help you, okay?”

“Well—” said Namine, paused, “it’s not that… alright.”

Kairi creaked open the door as slowly as she could, hoping not to startle Namine any more. She found Namine bent halfway over the sink, with her hands in the water, blushing hotly and looking away. She didn’t look very hurt, but her eyes were watering. Kairi wasn’t sure what had happened, exactly, until she saw her shorts on the floor, and the red puddle inside them.

“Oh, okay,” said Kairi, and turned away a little. “Don’t worry, it wouldn’t be the first time my shorts have gotten blood on them. If you need a tampon, they’re…” and then she realized that Namine looked too upset to be worrying about dirtied shorts. “Did something… go wrong?” she asked weakly.

Namine tried to answer, but ended up too embarrassed.

Kairi put a hand over her mouth. “Oh. Could it be… that because of your condition, you’ve never… this is the first time?”

“I shouldn’t have been frightened, I’m sorry,” said Namine awkwardly, shifting to hide the stains on her legs. “I assumed this would never happen to me, you know, because I wasn’t… the same as other women. So I forgot that it would happen, you know, if I became a normal human. I shouldn’t have been as startled as I was, I just… forgot.”

“That much blood would startle anyone if you weren’t expecting it,” said Kairi quietly, and giggled a little at the absurdity. “There’s no reason to feel bad. We can just put these in the wash… I’ll get you new underwear, and the tampons… no, the pads are the in drawer down there. Use a green one. You just put the cotton side facing you and wrap the little flaps around the back, okay?”

“Okay,” whispered Namine.

Before shutting the door, Kairi paused. “It’s really not a big deal. You don’t have to feel bad about it. No worries, alright?”

“Alright.”

Namine didn’t sound hugely convinced, but Kairi figured there was nothing she could do. Reluctantly, she shut the door, and walked back to her bedroom to pick out some underwear, though her mind was wandering. Kairi wasn’t a person who could ignore someone else in pain easily—it bothered her when she couldn’t comfort someone enough, even if it was something like this. Feeling vaguely uneasy, she shifted around her underwear drawer without really thinking about it and picked out something with maximum fabric and minimum lace, in pale pastel, which she hoped wouldn’t offend Namine too much. Then, realizing she would need something else to go with that, she sorted through her closet until she found a light-colored pair of jeans she thought might fit. They no longer went over her own hips, and Namine was very thin. She knocked a few pain pills out of the jar she kept on her desk, figuring two would be enough, and went back to the bathroom.

When she knocked, Namine opened the door this time. There was the faint but tell-tale scent of blood in the room which told Kairi that Namine had already cleaned up. “Here’s some new clothes,” Kairi said, smiling softly. Namine took them from her without a word, and Kairi carefully placed the two pills on the counter. “I figure you would like some pain meds too, so I have some of those.”

“Actually, that sounds fantastic,” said Namine. “I never actually thought of what ‘cramps’ would be like, but…”

“It means the muscles you want to cramp the least literally have a rave every five minutes,” Kairi said, “and I am sorry.”

Namine chuckled, very lightly, but it made Kairi smile all the same. “Will you be alright in here, then?”

Namine nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I should be fine.”

“Awesome. Just bring the dirty clothes to my room when you’re done and we’ll chuck them in the laundry bin.”

All the same, it was about ten minutes before Namine came back to Kairi’s bedroom. Kairi remembered, personally, staring back and forth between her underwear and a tampon the first time she had to take care of a period herself for an ungodly amount of time. Namine arrived in the new clothes (they fit) and with the old ones padded in as tiny a ball as possible in her fists. Kairi indicated the laundry bin, and Namine placed them inside with much more reverence than could have possibly been warranted.

“I am sorry about your shorts,” she finally said.

“Like I said, it isn’t the first time that’s happened,” Kairi shrugged. “Is any on the bed sheets though?”

Namine startled. She hadn’t thought about that at all. She ran to the bed (she ran on her toes, Kairi noticed, as if she was always endeavoring to be quiet) and threw the sheets back to check. Her shoulders slumped. “There is,” she admitted.

“It really isn’t a big deal,” Kairi said, “we have a washing machine for a reason. It’s seen more blood than this.” She was interrupted by a yawn. “Are you put together then? I hate to ditch but… I’m really tired.” She laughed self-consciously, rubbing the back of her neck, and Namine smiled thinly.

“I am. I think I’ll go down a get breakfast, then,” she said, “not to say I’m particularly hungry.”

“I’m usually not either on my first day,” Kairi confided. “But then again, I usually eat like an elephant in the days leading up to my period, and you haven’t been eating much?”

“Well,”

Kairi waved a hand to cut Namine off early. “Never mind, it isn’t important. Just head downstairs, someone should be up and about to show you where breakfast is.”

Namine nodded vaguely and slipped out of Kairi’s door, still feeling a little shaky and bothersome. She felt a bit stupid for not having expected this to happen, since it would obviously happen to every genetically normal adult female. Which, to her discontent and uncertainty, it seemed she was. She hadn’t bet on living to adulthood, she realized. It wasn’t something she had actively thought about, at least, not in those terms, but whenever witnessing a successful woman, with her feet in heels or her lovely form snug in a dress, walking purposefully to and fro, with a phone or with a child or with a friend, hair pinned on her head, Namine felt a little envious, but assumed she would never have that life. Their meaningful, busy lives were a gift meant for the average person, for the whole person, and not something she had ever aspired to have before. But the reality of her blood, the mark of a healthy adult with a heart, was starting to quietly shake her perception of her place in the world, and softly whisper to her that she might have more, she might have the things she wanted, if she were willing to take the responsibility to get them.

She knew very well the pains of sacrificing things, but not at all the pains of gaining them. Aside from the friends who had fallen fortuitously into her lap, she had no clue where to start.

Lost in these thoughts, with her hand idly trailing along the ivory, floral wallpaper, she didn’t notice the voices speaking somewhere around a few turns until she was closer to them than she would usually be. She had become hyperaware of the location of people in her proximity over the years, since, at first, her life sometimes would depend on avoiding them, and after some time, her preference was to avoid them.

She wasn’t happy to hear the conversation, in unfamiliar voices, before her today either. These serious thoughts demanded more time from her, and she didn’t like being interrupted from them.

There were only a few people in the kitchen, however, one at the stove and two more at the table, each looking languid and calm, which helped her relax somewhat. All the same, she didn’t like the attention that came immediately after clearing her throat to announce herself. It was Tifa at the stove, fiddling around with some eggs and toast, and Aeris and Riku at the table. Two of these she wasn’t especially surprised to see, figuring that both of the older women were the sort to get up early and work hard in the morning, but in the time she had known Riku, he was very much a night owl and a late riser. But as she accidentally and very briefly met his eyes now, she saw a film of exhaustion over them, and shadows beneath them, and knew that he had slept poorly if he had slept at all.

“Good morning,” said Namine to the room.

“Good morning,” said Aeris, taking her hand off of Riku’s arm, where it had been resting so subtly that Namine hadn’t even noticed before. “Did you sleep well?” Aeris asked.

“I did,” said Namine, and it was true, because she did technically sleep well until her rude awakening. The sun had risen to the point where it was after dawn now, and all the reds had faded out of the feathery clouds, leaving only soft blue and yellow behind, but it was still very early, and Namine wondered if they were concerned.

“Do you want some breakfast?” Tifa asked, turning round. “The true breakfast rush won’t start for some time now, so you have your pick of things until everyone else wakes up or gets back from morning work.”

“I could eat a little something,” said Namine.

Tifa motioned her into the kitchen, and pointed out various dishes that Namine considered more lunch than breakfast before she sheepishly admitted that when she ate in the mornings, all she wanted was cereal. The pantry, it turned out, boasted a dozen kinds of cereal, from the plain to the puerile, and after fretting a little bit about whether or not it would be weird, Namine decided to go straight for Sora’s lucky charms and feel no shame about it. She sat down at the table vaguely across from Riku and Aeris and was thinking of how to talk to them when Tifa intercepted her with a hot mug of tea.

“Jasmine green,” she said simply.

Namine thanked her for it and wrapped her hands around it. Tea had been something she drank rarely as a nobody, but enjoyed, because, for whatever reason, she could feel its warmth, even if she could not properly taste its bitterness, illuminating her throat and brightening her hands.

She took a sip of the tea. It was incredibly hot, even more than tea usually seemed to her, so it was a struggle to get down, but it felt like sunlight inside her, and she liked the herbal taste it left on her tongue. She smiled.

Looking up, she accidentally met Riku’s eyes again, and they both looked away again.

The two of them had actually spend a lot of time in each other’s company while under DiZ’s thumb, united in the cause of fixing her mistakes, but never really friends. They were both, at that time, in some of the darkest places they had ever been in, and Namine probably wasn’t alone in admitting she had forgotten most of the time they had spent together, out of embarrassment at the memories. She didn’t want to remember all the mistakes they made in those desperate times, and she doubted he did either. He had been sent to do some pretty unkind things—and she had too. It wasn’t the best chapter of either of their lives.

“Hey,” said Riku suddenly, quietly, like an offering. Namine said the same in return. After a few seconds, she took a few bites of cereal, and found herself, if not hungry for substance, more hungry for sugar than she supposed.

“How have you been?” Riku asked, sounding just as awkward as the question begged. Namine frowned at him, not sure what he was going for. She tried to shake the image of the boy whose sole life goal was trading one life for another’s, who would spin a conversation to lead it to wherever he wanted it to go expertly, and she couldn’t quite manage.

“Fine,” she said absently, then checked herself. “Well, it’s been strange. Life has. I was… reincarnated. Yeah. My fosters are really nice.”

Riku looked like he didn’t know what to say. Namine sort of wondered if all of them had found themselves without any parents or place, like she had. Had they had less luck than her in finding a life? She bit her lip. “How… have you been?”

Riku shrugged his shoulders, awkwardly, one before the other. “Fine. I guess. I’ve not been doing much. Haven’t finished school, actually, ha ha. Spent a lot of time here, just… catching up.”

Namine was over equipped to see the omissions in that sentence. Lost, confused drop-out, probably not dealing well with his memories. She wasn’t surprised, exactly. “That must have been nice.”

“Catching up?”

“Yeah. I always wondered where everyone else was.”

Riku looked to the side. The front door was slammed open by a body falling on it, and then, subsequently, the floor.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” said Sora.

Riku turned around casually, with the air of someone used to this and a smile sneaking onto his lips. “How was work tonight?”

“Ugh, fine,” Sora admitted, clambering onto his elbows. “Since it’s the tail end of the weekend, HI NAMINE, I had people in and out of the store literally all hours of the night looking for liquor and chips and stuff to take care of their messes with. Someone kept trying to pay me for gas but couldn’t understand he hadn’t put gas in his car yet. I really hope he wasn’t the man driving it, but I think he was. I really think he was. How are you Namine.”

“Fine? Hi Sora, uh,”

“Are those Lucky Charms?”

Namine reflexively pulled them towards her. “Yes.”

“I am going to eat some of that.”

Tifa had already pulled the box back out of the cabinet. Sora poured the rest of it into a chipped floral bowl, bottom of the bag sugary fairy dust and all, stuck a spoon in it, and grabbed a glass of water before sitting down at the table across from Riku and net to Namine. “And how are you,” he said to Riku before literally downing a spoonful of broken cereal bits and marshmallow powder.

“Decent,” said Riku. He was smiling at Sora, smiling, and his words were too soft for their meaning. “Didn’t sleep much, but you know, like usual.”

“I probably slept more than YOU did,” Sora admitted, while honest to god eating more marshmallow dust without even washing the last spoonful down. Namine wasn’t sure if she was amazed or horrified. “Not that I’m not going to fall into bed after this, though. I’m wiped.”

“Hm,” Riku said, still smiling. “Sounds rough.” Dear lord, the man was resting his cheek in his hand as he gazed at Sora under his eyelashes. Namine internally awarded herself for at least being able to recognize obvious feelings. And externally rewarded herself by eating a spoon full of marshmallows herself.

“You could come to bed too,” Sora said. “I could like, literally hold you down until you sleep.”

Riku chuckled. “You know I don’t like sleeping during the day. Doesn’t work.”

“Because sleeping in the night works so well,” interrupted Tifa. “Are you still taking those pills I recommended, or?”

It was Aeris’s glance that reminded them that they still had a GUEST in the room, thank you. Sora returned to eating artificially colored sugar and Riku accepted a cup of tea pushed into his hands, just like one has been pushed into Namine’s. He sipped it and had the same reaction Namine had in the process of not spitting out boiling how tea.

Tifa clicked one of the stovetops off, reducing the amount of hissing and sputtering coming from the kitchen. “Some of the boys will be up soon,” she warned Namine and Riku.

“By boys, she means grown men,” clarified Aeris, “but you can hardly tell.”