Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The world was real and Roxas wasn’t.

<You feel nothing.>

Or maybe Roxas was real and the whole world was fake, designed by a cruel being with ulterior motives.

<Nothing is real.>

Even as he stood in the round room, the memories Roxas was making were strangers in a crowd brushing elbows with him. Everything felt far away, even when nestled up against him. Perhaps something needed to get so close it got under his skin, crawl around inside of him.

<...lange for rank. Do you wish to partake in such a task?> Xemnas’ voice was the void that came before the few hours when Roxas had met him and whatever was to come after; a vast, endless, indescribable nothingness. His voice, the nothingness, echoed in the room before collapsing in on itself.

Wish were desires. Wants. He wanted what he was missing and those before him didn’t have it. Therefore, they were undesirables. Lackluster. —Lust. Desire. Want. They didn’t have it. Wants. Wishes? Certainly none for them. He just knew the way the body knew it was in pain when it starved.

His fingers twitched.

<...Dude, even dusks have more life in ‘em than the little guy.> This voice was gruff, barely containing a differentiation between speech and Nobody whispers. Xigbar was blunt joints and shoulders, all recoil and blowback, the rest of him lithe avoidance and half a spine.

<Maybe he just doesn’t know what’s on the line with rank. No response can mean he just doesn’t understand, not necessarily that he’s not interested. Should we explain it to him?> Axel, who stood by his side, was was too much; too many ribs, too many joints, too many words. Perhaps it was to compensate for his lack of a waist and consideration.

<Higher rank means more hearts, bud.> Demyx plucked strings, using them to muffle his voice but hiss implications of well played heartstrings and manipulation. His body responded independently to eons of unheard echoes of rhythm, not even a single knuckle in tandem with another part of himself. Only his hips, which were jagged and tilted with unease, were still.

By the time the third Nobody spoke, the memory of the first was already being swallowed by the hazy fog of time, gagging the whole way down as Roxas struggled to pull the memory back. By now, he’d forgotten the question and didn’t understand what his motivation was supposed to be.

Xemnas was the only one among them who mocked the concept of breathing. He looked the most human, yet he radiated the most unease from his strong aura. Even the light of the round room didn’t hide the yellow, reflective animal glow of his eyes.

<...As you wish. Then we welcome you amongst our ranks—Roxas, number XIII.> They had nothing to give him. No pleasantries, no welcoming arms. He was. He lacked, just like them. They left, abandoning their expectations.

That was the only thing Roxas remembered from his first week with the Organization.

Everyone wrote their mission reports differently. Roxas had a hard time telling each incident apart if he hadn’t made a particular memory for each one or brought something back. A chunk of brick, a dead insect with a glimmering body, a piece of jewelry, a scab he wasn’t sure was his, the empty head of a dandelion, a copper wire.

He wasn’t sure when he’d stopped putting these things in with his mission reports and started putting them in his room. He wasn’t sure when he’d been able to glance over and just know which object related to which mission without counting anymore. His missions would be limited to the world where he’d come to exist until he was stronger. Other Nobodies always smelled like bitter summer heat or the last breath of nightshades. Not one of them smelled like ozone and amber like his birthplace did.

Roxas knew what to call it when they came back with their otherworldly smells; he understood the concept of jealousy. When he collected hearts, be it from gouging the oozing Heartless from the world or when he happened upon a lone human in a precarious place, he knew he wanted. He knew a heart was what he was missing. But he found out no matter how tightly he held onto a heart, he could never get it to stay. Jealousy was a desire for something he couldn’t have.

He wanted more than mementos. He wanted more than hearts. He wanted something that he could keep just because it wouldn’t vanish. He wanted something that was his. Roxas found for Nobodies, desire was powerful. Desire meant a will to obtain, a will to take, a place to put yourself so no one else would consider taking from him.

He let out a sharp exhale that hung low to the ground, dense and thick like fog. He understood Xemnas’ question now, but his answer came too late. Something inside of him coiled and tightened inside of his ribs as the feeling grew.

Roxas raised a claw to his chest, pushing it against his sternum. Pressure alleviated pain; pressure to do well or be turned into a dusk, pressure to collect hearts to feel the sensation of being alive. Marluxia was like him and had told Roxas to be careful of his overgrowth, which collected in his chest, but ran throughout his whole body.

<...It hurts.>

Humans were unusual. When they were hurt, they oozed. When they spoke, everyone could hear them. When they were present, it was never subtle. When they moved, it was always the same way and from their joints.

Larxene had shown him once that humans were predictable, which made them easy to corner. Humans didn’t like to ooze, so they’d run from something that could hurt them. They could be so overtaken by their emotions that they didn’t bother to think. They lived in the same town their whole lives and yet, they ran into secluded places, into alleyways, and then into a dead end. She had told him if he can learn to control his aura, he can make humans so scared it would be like running them into that dead end. They would have nowhere to go, even in an open space.

Humans were nonsensical. This one said he had a family who needed him. Roxas didn’t know what that was or why he would want it, so he didn’t care to stop her. Maybe he should have asked him.

Larxene snapped her arm back, her radius settling itself back next to her ulna, her wrist and elbow welcoming them back into their comfortable resting places. Humans weren’t supposed to know what they really looked like, but that one had just lost his heart, so it didn’t matter since dead things couldn’t get them in trouble.

<We’re different. Humans are either scared of different or try to destroy it—destroy them first, got it?> Her lesson didn’t quite make sense, but he understood even humans could hurt him if given the opportunity. Everything had a desire to exist, even if they needed to hurt something else to continue to do so.

Desire. Want. Did Roxas want to exist the way this human had? Would it have mattered if he did? Would he have tried anything to continue to exist if he was cornered like he had been? He quietly watched the human's heart float away, wondering if he would understand if he held that heart close, just for a second.

He picked up the cloth the human had left behind for his collection.

 The questions hadn’t stopped swelling in his head. Why did they want to exist? What was their reason? Humans were all so similar, yet reacted so differently for some reason. The members of the Organization were all so vastly different, but he felt they would all fade the same from the world if it came down to it.

Was it their hearts that made them all different, even though they were all so alike? Was it a lack of hearts that made the organization members all feel the same to him? Was his uninterest in his own desire to continue existing what proved he didn’t have a heart? If he could just hold one more, just for another second, maybe he’d understand. If he could just—one more. One heart that meant something. Were big hearts more important than smaller ones? If he could just hold one more. One more heart. A precious heart.

Yes, a precious heart. What made a heart precious? Was it one full of light? The ones consumed by darkness were heavy, tar and oil. What did hearts of light taste like, feel like? He swallowed by accident. One more. Maybe this Heartless would have it. Just one more heart for today, then he’d call his mission over. He swallowed. Just one more. Just one more. Just one more. Just one more.

He swallowed.

He was duly congratulated on a job well done by Saix once he returned to the castle. Axel eyes had lingered on the Heartless ink he was covered in, eyes catching on Roxas’ right claw lightly closed in front of himself. His eyes followed up as if trailing the overgrowth that spanned his body, stopping at his mouth. <Another memento?>

Roxas nodded, slipping past him to quickly get to his room. He could feel the sensation of Axel’s eyes on him long after he turned down another corridor. It wasn’t an obvious thing to hide, but it was his for now. For now.

He had been careful not to swallow this time. It was a painfully precarious place to keep something so delectable with its soft, peeling layers like carved flesh. He’d accidentally swallowed several already, wasting precious resources for Xemnas’ kingdom hearts project.

But Roxas had his own project. He unzipped his coat, shrugging his arms out of it and letting it collect at his waist. He pressed his fingers where he tended to feel the overgrowth the most, claws sinking into the space next to his sternum. He pulled, a wet snap as he opened himself up, exposed his heartspace.

This was where humans held their hearts. This was where he was told to press his claws into and pull. His heartspace was empty save for his overgrowth and aura, which was pink like wounded human flesh just before it bruised. His own aura overwhelmed him with dread, insisting he close his hollow heartspace at once. He ignored it, knowing Nobodies didn’t really feel anything. Xemnas said as much. It was just his body trying to protect an already desecrated tomb.

It was almost painful to convince himself to open his mouth, to tell himself to let go. He had to force his claw into his mouth, jaw straining while he fought his urge to consume the heart hidden there. Drool, thick and proof of his desire to swallow, dripped out of his mouth and made several puddles on the floor.

He was gentle, but only exacerbating himself. A desire to understand; a desire to consume.

He pressed the heart into his heartspace, his overgrowth, thin like roots, twined around it, a poor mock of heartstrings. Drool dripped from his chin onto his coat. He didn’t feel different. He still felt like he was missing something. Why wouldn’t this one work? The overgrowth tightened in his chest, rolling and squirming in its cavernous desire for something else. Why? Why did he feel the same? Why? The overgrowth squeezed.

Maybe he needed something else. Humans and their hearts were precious. Maybe he needed something precious. His mementos were precious. He grabbed for his collection, his aura coiling like tendrils but not leaking like a human’s would, searching for something the way he was.

He shoved memento after memento into his chest, memory after memory, the overgrowth suffering and strangling the heart among his objects. Precious. He just needed it to be precious, didn’t he? Important and precious were the same, weren’t they?

He could perform as many vivisections on himself as he wanted, stuff it with as many things as he could accumulate in his room, and yet why did he still feel so empty? What was he missing? His overgrowth tightened, tightened.

<…It hurts…> He felt the slivers of the heart slip through his overgrowth, reaching for kingdom hea—Roxas snatched it from the air and swallowed. One more. Maybe he just needed one more. One more memento, one more heart, one more precious thing he was missing. Just one more—maybe one more would make it hurt less.

 There was one more human than last time. He’d seen all three of them before, but he didn’t remember if he’d seen them all together like this. Humans were very codependent, always traveling in groups like that. That one he’d seen leaving the same restaurant right before dusk came around. The other he’d seen waiting for the train at particular times. The other he would usually see with smaller, more delicate humans clinging to his sides.

He would sometimes see the one from the restaurant running to the one waiting for the train, always out of breath. But now, the one he’d seen at the town square was with them. He never would have guessed just by looking at them which human happened to know another. Their interactions were interesting.

Why did those three pick each other? Why not that one or another one? Why, when they could choose whoever they wanted, did they decided to be with those particular humans out of everyone there? Did that have to do with having a heart or was it a desire? Was it a desire of the heart? Did hearts have desire?

Maybe the desire to exist came from the heart.

Maybe, if he understood those who already had hearts sewn properly inside of themselves, he would be able to keep a heart. Maybe, if he could steal heartstrings without them breaking like gossamer strands, he could tie a heart inside of himself. Maybe he could hold several at once, swap them out like humans did clothing.

Would they feel different, throbbing properly underneath the overgrowth in his chest? Which of them would he wear around the most? Would he construct a preference? Would their desire overwhelm him the way a Nobody's aura could paralyze a human? Would their desires linger even after he removed their hearts or would they simply become his own? What did they desire?

One of them glanced over his shoulder, the train running late. Roxas locked eyes with him. The human’s eyes were liked glazed honey in the sunset.

“Can we help you or something? I’ve been feeling someone staring holes into the back of my head for at least five minutes, man.” the human called out. One of the humans next to him whispered, but humans were so noisy.

Hayner, you think it’s the same guy as before? He’d whispered, the third one pressed behind them both.

No idea, not risking it, especially not with the rumors that people have been going missing. The one called Hayner hissed back. Roxas could feel the fear rolling off of the third one and he wasn’t sure if it was from the human’s words or the fact he’d been addressed.

Roxas hadn’t ever had to speak to humans. He’d been told he might need to on occasion for a mission, but he had to do it their way or they’d never tell him what he wanted. But Roxas didn’t know how to put what he wanted into words.

He wanted to vanish into the dark, but he couldn’t expose himself—he tugged at the strings of his hood, the second best thing he could get to hiding. Humans on guard made his job harder. He also wasn’t quite sure how to hide all of his Nobody features yet. He could shrink his claws which looked fine under gloves, but his face was more tedious. It had so many small details he could accidentally yet very easily overlook.

“That’s what I thought!” the human Hayner called out, Roxas unsure why he’d been hostile. He hadn’t done anything, hadn’t approached them, hadn’t let his aura breach that far. Was he being territorial of the other two humans? Were they precious to him? Precious hearts? Maybe he could take thei—

The train pulled up. The human Hayner ushered the two of them into the train by their shoulders, shooting another glare back to Roxas. He was reminded of Larxene’s warning that humans could hurt them if they had to. In groups it was more dangerous, but even a single one could cause great harm if he wasn’t cautious. He wondered if the human Hayner was the kind he should be cautious around.

Or maybe he only needed to be cautious around humans when they were near something precious, something they wanted to protect. That made sense. He also desired something precious and would have fought to keep it. He was grateful he’d watched them because now, he’d learned something.

The train pulled out of the station, Roxas feeling his overgrowth coil around. He wanted to watch them more—a shame, but another time, he’d make sure of it. He had a lot he wanted to learn from those three.

Chapter Text

Roxas had learned humans liked to experience danger without actually harming themselves, but it was still curious thing to witness. The three he’d taken to watching liked to sit on a clocktower, legs dangling over the edge. One wrong step, one wet surface, and it was over for them. Yet they’d become so familiarized with such danger that there was no fear from them as they sat in such a place. Humans could grow accustomed to fear. They were tenacious things that always piqued his insatiable curiosity.

When they got ready to leave, Roxas quickly melted into a portal he’d made in the side of the clock to avoid being caught by them. They made their way downstairs and back into the train station. The human called Hayner tensed once they reached the bottom, glancing around again the way he had been the entire time they ate on the clocktower.

“You okay?” the one with the bandana asked.

“Let’s just get back quick today. Something doesn’t feel right…” he grumbled, eyes still searching. His eyes lingered on a train that was done running for the day. Humans were attuned to fear, able to pick out a source of danger if they needed to. Roxas had been inside, his hiding place until he could find another vantage point to watch them.

The human Hayner had to be gently pulled along to get moving, but his eyes scanned as they urged him along.

“Hey can we stop by the usual place before we go home? I left my camera because I thought we’d go back before we got ice cream.” the one in the bandana asked the human Hayner. They always deferred to him. Roxas wondered if for humans, their leader was their protector or if their protector was their leader or if it even made a difference.

“Yeah, sure.”

Roxas mocked the sound under his breath, practicing human speech. It was hard, a lot softer, a lot more tongue involved. Nobody whispers were all teeth, hissing, and echoes that circled a room. Vowels and getting his voice to echo properly was his weak suit for each language.

The human Hayner still seemed on edge their entire walk, but Roxas was careful. He knew to keep out of sight, to keep his distance. He knew to not get too close. He knew that.

Knowledge and application was hard sometimes. The one in orange almost walked right into him as she came out of what they called their usual spot. He tugged at the strings of his hood.

“You again?! You been following us?!” The human Hanyer had shoved himself between Roxas and the other human, arm out to defend her and baring his teeth. Their teeth were mostly flat. That was noteworthy. Roxas locked his jaw, quietly adjusting himself in case he had to open his mouth while being this close. Should he mock their flathead tongues too? Maybe that would make it easier to speak like a human compared to his forked tongue.

The one behind the human Hayner kept her eyes on him, her fear the kind that came with the unknown. That fear for most humans felt like a static sensation of numbness, like a channel that wasn’t coming in but you could still hear. That kind of fear was rooted in anticipation, having to wait for something more.

The third one peered out from behind the gate, keeping his distance. His curiosity was more overwhelming than his fear, but it was still present all the same. The human Hayner had anger flushing any sort of fear Roxas’ aura gave out of his system.

Two of them were so close. They were alone, no one else would be close enough to catch him even if they did come running. He could just reach out, press his claw into his heartspace and then reach into hers. The third he could pounce on, be gone by the time his scream finished echoing in the alleyway.

Maybe, if he held their hearts in his hands, in his heartspace, he’d understand. Maybe they were only precious if they were together, which would explain why Xemnas wanted so many. But what if he did take their hearts and then they were gone forever? What if no other humans would teach him as much as these three had so far?

“Yes. Like…” Was like the right word? Like was to enjoy. He did enjoy learning from them, so like felt right. “You.” The human Hayner scowled, clenching his fists and ready to throw a punch.

“Wait,” the human behind Hayner tugged him back, stepping closer to Roxas. She peered at his face, Roxas tugging once more at the string on his hood. Hide. Be unknowable. Her fear had almost completely evaporated into the ether at her surprise. “Oh my god, you’re just a kid. How old are you—like fifteen? Sixteen?” Yes, he was about sixteen days old now.

“He just admitting to following us.” the human Hayner reminded. “Did Seifer put you up to this to freak us out? Well consider us freaked and piss off already. I thought at the very least he was better than that.”

“Hayner!” she scolded.

“What? He’s been following us since the train station, Olette! It’s the same guy!”

“I don’t remember seeing him before then either…” the one farther away admitted. “Are you new to town? You with those other guys in black people have said they’ve seen around?”

Roxas nodded. He had no concept of lying, of the truth being dangerous. They asked, he answered. The human Olette glanced behind her to the other human. They shared a look, an emotion Roxas didn’t know a name for, and the human just shrugged.

Roxas could sense a change in the human Hayner now the longer he stood there. His bravado was whittling down into unease and underneath it, fear. It was the kind that came with failure and he could tell for this human it was familiar like the path water ran in a creek.

“You said you were following us because you liked us? So it’s got nothing to do with Seifer or the guys you’re with?” the human Olette asked. Roxas nodded, yes he liked them; he shook his head, nothing to do with either the Organization or a Seifer, whatever that was.

“Well great, message delivered, thanks for liking us—Bye now! Please leave Olette alone!” The third gave him a wave, the human Olette whipping around, her face cherry red.

“Pence!”

“No, he’s right. How do we know you’re not lying? That sounded like a really lame excuse.” Hayner crossed his arms, made himself smaller than when he’d thrown his arm out to protect the human Olette. What an interesting question. They wanted proof he liked them? Or did he want proof he wasn’t there because of either a Seifer or the Organization? Either wasn’t an easy thing to produce.

Roxas shrugged.

“Guys, calm down. He’s a kid, just like us. He’s not…” The human Olette shook her head, turning back to Roxas. “Do you want to be friends? Is that why you’ve been following us?” the human Olette asked, her voice soft, but the gentleness of it was being used to soothe her own fear, to lie to herself. Roxas didn't answer. He didn't know what a friend was. “What’s your name?”

“Rox…<as>. ” He had a hard time saying his name in a way that didn’t sound like whispers, but he managed. Hayner’s eye twitched, but he remained ever cautious.

“Hello, Roxas. It’s nice to meet you! You can call me Olette. If you’re new in town, it’s probably hard to make friends, huh?” Olette offered him her hand. He looked at her, unsure of what to do with it. “…You shake it.” He was utterly bewildered and it must have shown on his face. “Here, like this.” She grabbed for his hand, clutching it in hers and jerking it up and down. The human Hayner scowled at him.

“Why?”

“It’s what people do when they introduce themselves.” she explained. Humans were weird. He stared at his hand, expecting some kind of residual effect or sensation or maybe for something to appear in his hand. There wasn’t one. Why touch him? What was the point?

“Why?”

“Dude, you’ve seriously never just shaken anyone’s hand before?” the human Hayner asked, crossing his arms and looking doubtful. The third had finally pried himself away from the safety of their hangout. Roxas shook his head.

The human Pence pulled out a black rectangle that lit up, tapping his thumbs along it. “…Okay, so handshakes come from when people used to carry around weapons. You shake with your right hand because that’s most everyone’s dominant hand. So if you were using it to hold someone else’s hand, you couldn’t draw your sword—so it was a way to show you were being friendly.”

“But I have two hands.” Roxas reminded, staring at his left. He’d used his keyblade in his left in a bind before, but it did appear in his right and feel more comfortable there if he had to pick a side.

The human Olette made a sound. It was airy, from her throat and made her body tremble—she was devoid of fear for just a moment as she made it. He’d never been this close to a human that didn’t feel fear around him, even instinctually, even for such a short burst of time.

Roxas was overcome, lunging and snatching. His. He wanted that sound. 

“Woah!”

Pence had jumped back, Hayner in the offensive stance but frazzled. Olette stood there, bewildered and confused.

“What just…?” Olette looked back and forth to where Roxas had been standing, then to where he had lunged to.

“What’d you do?! Did you hurt her—leave something on her?!” Hayner clenched his fist, ready to hit him, but the girl held onto his arm. The sound bounced around in his claw, Roxas immediately wanting to go home and put it with his collection of mementos.

“Hayner, I’m fine! He didn’t even touch me…” He wasn’t sure if he should write about this part in his mission report. Maybe he should ask Axel since he tended to answer his questions a bit more seriously. She shoved past the human Hayner and approached Roxas. “I didn’t mean to upset you by laughing if that’s what happened.”

He looked over his shoulder at her, tipping his head. “I don’t feel upset—I didn’t feel anything.”

The human Pence looked at her, she looked at him, then they both looked at Roxas. “Hey,” she started, unease a fear he didn’t quite like. It made the air taste earthy and suffocating, one wrong move from causing a scene that could hurt him—like uprooting a mandrake. He should go now. “Rox—”

“Bye.” Roxas marched his way up the hill with her laugh in hand, then vanished into the darkness once he rounded the corner, the sound of their footsteps cut off.

 <Roxas.>

He stopped at Vexen calling his name, heels scuffing the castle floors. He didn’t need to make noise, but he did it to acknowledge he’d heard him.

<What is it you plan to do with that?> Vexen’s body wavered, stuck to the floor, the pleura over Roxas’ overgrowth frosting over in his presence.

<It’s mine,> he explained. The claim meant the others couldn’t touch it, couldn’t take it.

<I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you should be careful what you take—some things are noticeable and cannot be put back as easily as you’ve taken them. The last thing we need is to arouse suspicious. You understand, yes?> he asked, a threat and a warning.

Roxas understood they could not get caught. He understood humans couldn’t know what they were. He understood they needed to be subtle or it could make their jobs in other worlds complicated. He didn’t understand what that had to do with the sound he’d taken, but he didn’t want to hear whatever nonsensical rambling Vexen had prepared for him.

He nodded.

Vexen raised an eyebrow, his eye bulging from his skull and filmed over from his brille. He’d be shedding again soon, which meant that terrible crunching noise from his room that Roxas hated when he was trying to sleep. Roxas scuffled off to his room, no longer wanting to bear his scrutiny.

He closed his bedroom door, rolling the sound around in his hand, listening to it echo, replay. The sound was so light, so gentle. He tried to mock it from his throat, but the echoing from whispers sounded terrible in comparison. He scrunched up his nose, sticking his tongue out just long enough to gauge the length of a humans and made the tip of his tongue flat again.

Once more, he listened to Olette’s stolen laughter, trying to mock it. His voice sounded too deep, even to himself. He tried jostling his own shoulders like he’d seen her do, but then he sounded like he’d been hit. Maybe he needed to breathe—humans did that, right?

He tried again, the laugh in his hand making his overgrowth stir, but it wasn’t painful like when it usually moved in his chest. He narrowed his eyes, listening to it again. It was a sound that had bubbled up from her—had it come from her heart or somewhere else? If the sound was emotion based, he’d never be able to copy it right.

Maybe if he swallowed it—but would he get it back if that didn’t work? Would he be able to take another one just like this one? He pressed the sound to his mouth as he debated, licking his lips as he pulled it away. It left no taste, but rather a sensation of tingling warmth. Not yet, he’d wait until he tried everything else first. 

He listened to it again, but he just wasn’t quite sure what he was doing wrong. Zexion knew lots of things, but if it involved emotions, Axel wouldn’t be condescending about his response. He’d go to Axel first and if he didn’t like his answer, he’d go to Zexion.

He held the sound close to his chest, protected in his claw. Axel was always easy enough to find, especially if Roxas always craned his neck up—that or Lexaeus, but Lexaeus was more compact, more put together. Roxas would have hated to see him explode, all coiled tension and concrete.

<Axel.> he called his name in the hallway, searching him out in his head with his whisper.

There was a hiss of annoyance. Axel liked to sleep when he wasn’t working. Roxas thought sleeping was a little like dying, so he thought it was weird Axel liked to do it so much.

<Axel,> he called again, outside of his room now.

<Can’t a guy get any shut eye around this place?>

<You can still keep your eyes closed.> Roxas offered. The door opened.

<You gotta stop taking everything so literally. What’s up?> Roxas craned his neck to look back at Axel, who was up. He understood by now that was his way of asking what did he want or what was going on.

<A human made a sound today. It’s mine now, but I don’t understand how to make it.>

<Well, lemme hear it.> He motioned for Roxas to show him, it clear he’d brought it with him. Roxas showed Axel the laugh, watching his brow furrow. <Humans make that noise when they’re happy. It’s not a noise we can imitate with practice, but if you were to take our imitation of the sound and compare it to that one, you’d see they’re totally different in structure. How did you even get close enough to take that? >

Roxas pulled back, pressing the sound back to his chest as the sepal of his arm flared out in warning.

<I’m not gonna take it, calm down.> Axel sighed, scratching the back of his head. <Just...give it back if she’s still alive, yeah? Taking something like that can really mess them up and that’s dangerous for us. If not it’s whatever. I’m going back to bed.>

 Roxas hadn’t given Olette her laugh back. He did notice that Axel had been right, however. He’d seen the three of them together still, but they were more weary, more on edge. They didn’t make that sound, but sometimes he’d catch her trying when she wasn’t with them. She’d give a wide smile, alight with delight, then—nothing. Then her expression would drop, her hand would go to her throat. Was what he took from her making the other two just like her? If they were entangled sounds, why didn’t he have either of their laughs?

He leaned forward over the edge of the building, resting on his haunches, her laugh pressed to his mouth. Most of his mementos he’d left in his room, but this one he liked to take with him. He’d been careful to never put it in his mouth once he realized all humans’ laughs sounded different.

Some were grating, some chortled, snickered, some even choked. But they didn’t sound like hers. She’d laughed for him, so it was his. He held it often, so he noticed when it started to harden like tree sap, like amber. It could be the same, perpetual in the moment if he wanted it to be.

He liked how it sounded, he was just curious as to what else her laugh could sound like. Was there one that she could make that sounded better than this one if he gave it back to her? Or was this best left to become eternal, something to pocket into his overgrowth and something to mock once he learned how?

He watched her press her hand to her throat, speaking into her light up black box before putting it in her pocket once the train pulled up. Roxas watched her get on, watched her glance over her shoulder in unease. He had to ask her or it would interfere with his ability to do his missions because of how distracted he’d become in his own head. He’d practiced talking more like humans to not scare her, to get information.

Trains weren’t too hard to follow since they told him beforehand where they were going. Roxas followed the tracks, keeping out of view as he should. He was careful this time, a lot better than last time. He’d been practicing more.

She got off, making her way to a shop with an awning. Why couldn’t she just make more sounds? It was just a sound and if a Nobody could imitate it, why couldn’t she? Or for humans was imitation not enough without the original?

The human Olette turned around with ice cream in hand and almost ran into him, stumbling back.

“Oh my gosh! Sorry, I—you!” The shopkeeper looked up, bewildered by his sudden presence, the human Olette’s back pressed to the counter.

 “You stopped.”

“So I didn’t run into you, yeah! You don’t have to stand that close when you’re waiting, you know.” She’d misunderstood. Her voice had trembled.

“Not that, this.” he pointed to her throat, his coat clinking as he moved. The human Olette’s eyes studied his hand as she bent back to avoid being touched by him.

“A friend?” the shopkeeper asked, already shrinking into the shadows of the awning to pull away from him. But she reached for something Roxas couldn’t see.

“Um, this is Roxas.” the human Olette mumbled softly. The shopkeeper tensed with the same kind of anger that overwhelmed her fear of him.

“Why did you stop because one went missing? You have more, don’t you?” Humans had different kinds of laughs, so why didn’t she just use one of those?

“I…What? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Do you mind backing up a bit?” Roxas did as she asked and took a step back. Did he not look right? Roxas’ hand hovered over the strings of his hood. Her shoulders lowered, but her back was still tense.

“Use another one. Why’d you stop?” he asked. If she made another one, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep himself from taking it though.

“Use another what, Roxas?”

“Laugh. You three haven’t done that again every time I see you.” Her eyes went wide, ice cream slowly starting to soften in her hands. She looked around for a moment, then her eyes searched for something in the sky, yet that existed only in the present; time and distance couldn’t be measured equally. She finally looked back at him.

“You’re still following us? You could just talk to us again…” She looked down at the ice cream in her hands. “Here, have one. I can just buy Hayner another one and Pence wasn’t feeling up to eating one right now anyway.” Roxas debated telling her no, but something about the way she offered it to him reminded him of a human who’d had their heart stolen.

The Heartless had been quick, the human’s eyes glazed over, but the tears didn’t have a moment to even make it to the ground. They’d known they were about to lose something precious and would never be able to get it back. They’d known there was nothing they could do; defeat, despair, hopelessness, loss. If taking the weird human food would make her feel less like that, then it was the least he could do for her.

The human Olette pulled herself away from the counter, walking over to a bench and sitting down. She unwrapped the ice cream, letting the plastic sit underneath her thigh to avoid being taken by the wind. Unease lingered under her feelings in the same way, easily overpowered by a gust of fear if Roxas pushed too hard.

Roxas copied her—he didn’t know what else to do with the wrapper anyway.

“Did you not want to bother us because we’ve been kind of down lately?” she asked, turning to face him better. “You worrying that we haven’t been smiling as much is really sweet.” Sweet? Nobodies could smell sweet—maybe that’s what she meant. He quietly sniffed his shoulder, only smelling the leather from his coat and the residual darkness from a corridor.

“Everyone is just anxious. People have been going missing and it’s freaking everyone out and makes it hard for everyone to be happy. Plus there’s been these weird shadows and people have been talking about you guys in your coats and…”

“I get rid of the shadows,” Roxas explained, the nasty little ant Heartless annoying him to no end. Was he supposed to tell her that? Would that expose the Organization? No, he was told not to tell humans about them, not about Heartless. She even admitted to seeing them first.

“You—what?”

“I get rid of them,” he repeated. He wanted to tell her that was why people vanished, but then he’d have to tell her some of them vanished because of the Organization too. “You’re safer if I get rid of them. When you’re safe, you’re happy right? So, make the noise again. Can you make the noise again?”

Ice cream dripped down her fingers. She let out this soft gasping noise, but she still looked like that human who’d had their heart taken. There wasn’t fear though, at least nothing that wouldn’t be an instinctual reaction to him. Why wasn’t there fear if she was making that sort of face?

“It’s hard—I feel like I can’t. We think Pence, he…he lost someone important to him to those shadows. It’s not nice to be happy when your friends are grieving, you know?” He didn’t know. Roxas quietly rubbed the sound between his claws in his pocket while she put the ice cream in her mouth. Roxas copied her. It was cold—and salty. “And it reminds me of when…” She shook her head, trying to let a memory fall off and rot away. “But thanks for worrying about us. You can just talk to us next time though, okay? Hayner is on edge as it is.”

“Being on edge keeps him alive—you too.” He spoke around globs of ice cream, sounding ridiculous as it now tasted sweet. Human food was so strange. He realized she must have swallowed it in order to keep talking.

“Yeah, but…it makes everyone tense and sad.” she explained. So, because of the Heartless, they were tense. When they were tense, they were sad, and when they were sad, they didn’t laugh. Or rather in Olette’s case, since he’d taken her laugh from her, she couldn’t anymore.

How would he even go about giving a human their laugh back?

Roxas copied her as she put the food into her mouth again, waiting for the sweet taste. His mouth was certainly sweet now if that’s what she’d meant earlier. Maybe if she swallowed the sound the way he did hearts—would that work for a human? Would it go through her? He studied her chest, trying to remember exactly where he’d pulled it from. Stomach, heart, throat, mouth. Would giving it back expose him? He should just give it to her, figure it out after.

“You’re quiet. What are you thinking about?” He looked up from her stomach to her face, pulling the sound out of his pocket.

“How to get your laugh back.” The sound slipped through his fingers before he even got a chance to offer it to her, attracted to her like a bird to a heat in the winter.

She laughed.

It was different, shorter and not as light as before—but it was a laugh. Her eyes went wide. She studied him for a moment, quietly pressing her fingers to her mouth as a smile played at the corners of her lips. “Well I guess that wasn’t so hard. Maybe you should have talked to me sooner.”

“I’m bad—at talking. It’s hard and different from how I…” Normally whisper. He couldn’t tell her that.

“Is that why you just follow us around? Because it’s hard for you to talk to us?” she asked, a light in her eyes that wasn’t from the sun. He’d never seen a light from the heart reach the eyes like that before—how curious. He couldn’t help but lean forward to see it better.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you.” he admitted. That truth wasn’t exposing anything about the Organization.

Her eyes went wide again and she blinked a few times. “Why not?”

“Xemnas says I shouldn't.”

“Who’s Xemnas?”

He looked away from her, shoving ice cream in his mouth. It was harder to understand what he said with food in his mouth. It was harder to talk the more food he shoveled into his mouth. She leaned back against the bench, licking the ice cream that had dripped into the soft divet of her hand.

“...Okay, you don’t have to tell me. But, Roxas?”

He turned his head to look at her, the rest of his ice cream in his mouth.

“Thank you for talking with me anyway, it made me happy. I hope you don’t get in trouble with Xemnas for it.” His overgrowth writhed around in his chest and he worried she’d see it. Happy meant more laughter.

“…Me neither. You’re easy to talk to.” Everyone in the Organization was either uptight and only wanted to discuss missions, lectured him, talked too much and wore him out, or was as dull as talking to a dusk.

“Well, maybe, if you feel you won’t get in trouble another time, we can talk again instead of you following us around?” There was wariness there, something she couldn’t hide in her features. Again, his overgrowth moved around in his chest. Again, she wanted to talk to him. Again, he’d get to hear her make a different kind of laugh. Again.

He nodded. He’d like to talk to her again.

Chapter Text

“She’s so goddamn lazy.”

Olette had gotten her laugh back, but she wondered how it was possible to lose the same thing twice while not finding it the first time. How was it possible to lose her laugh at home and then with her friends? Maybe it was because being with her friends felt like being in an alternate reality or maybe it was a lapse in time back to when she was happy.

“You have to practically beg her to do anything around here and all she does is sleep.”

Olette was exhausted, emotionally, physically, mentally. She could hear them arguing inside again, so she'd been outside the front door for almost twenty minutes now, forehead pressed to it. She listened, to them and her intrusive thoughts.

Maybe she should have let herself get kidnapped by her stalker. Maybe he would have made her life nicer, kinder.

It would be nice if everything would be quiet for once. She dug her headphones out from her bag. It was already late, what did it matter if she waited to go inside a bit longer? She sat in front of the door, head pressed against the door.

“She doesn’t even make an effort to go out and do anything aside from fuck around with those boys from school and get in trouble.”

She put her headphones in, not caring what it was that played so long as she didn't have to hear the repeat conversation that always made her feel guilty for something that she actually was putting effort into. She was trying. She was trying so hard and her parents didn't care to see it. She did her homework, got good grades, she did her chores, she didn't do drugs, she wasn't pregnant. She was a good kid. She knew she was a good kid. But because she slept till noon when she didn't have plans because she'd stayed up all night in the quiet, she was reprehensible. Because she didn't want to be in a home with ash trays making holes in walls so she left to go be with her friends she was despicable.

Olette was good. She knew she was good. She deserved to feel good, feel happy. How was it that a total stranger had so easily noticed something she'd meticulously hidden away from everyone but Hayner and Pence? How was it he'd noticed and her parents hadn't? How was it a total stranger cared about her more than them?

The door pushed at Olette, forcing her head down. She scrambled away from it, her brother stepping out from between the gap. He looked at her. Her gave her a nod. Olette took her headphones off.

“Was gonna go get some cigarettes for mom. Wanna come?” His birthday present when he'd finally been old enough had been to go buy her cigarettes. From then on, he'd used it as an excuse to leave the house, even if the store wasn't far.

Olette abandoned her bag by the door, but took her phone and her headphones as she trailed after him.

“How was school?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Hayner almost convinced me to skip last period because we had a sub,” Olette explained, glancing at the time on her phone.

“Did you?” He glanced over his shoulder at her.

“No, but I got a pass to the nurse and sat in there instead to actually do my work.” Her homework was done. She'd done the dishes before she left. She just needed to put them up and then she could hide under her covers.

“Good for you.” He gave an appraising nod. “So, um…I want to talk to you about something serious for a sec.” He stopped, turning to properly face her, but still didn't outright look at her. He had a bruise under his eye that had healed to a sickly green so far.

Olette waited, the sky full of fantastical pink clouds. It felt surreal.

“I've signed papers for a lease agreement for this apartment.” He was leaving. He deserved to leave, he got the brunt of it and always had, but Olette still couldn't help the rising terror that flooded into her throat that she was being abandoned. Alone. She was being left alone, in that house, on the train—

“I also made a new friend today.” She blurted out, desperate to talk about something else. Her brother's brows furrowed.

“Lette—”

“He has a hard time communicating, but he's really sweet, you know?” Her brother reached for her hands, but Olette practically danced away from him to keep walking to the store. “I decided I want to be around people like that. People who can take one look at you and ask what they can do to help you. I want to be around people who are kind to each other. I want to be that kind of person, but sometimes that's so hard . Sometimes I want to get so, so angry, but then I feel like I'd be like mom and dad and I just—!”

Her brother grabbed for her, hand around her wrist. “Lette, please let me finish. Please?” Her eyes welled up. She was so angry. He didn't deserve for her to be angry with him. It wasn't fair and she knew she was being irrational. “It's an hour away and you'd have to go to a new school, but I'm gonna see if I can convince mom and dad to let you live with me.”

So I'm supposed to run away too, but I have to wait for your say so?

She told her intrusive thoughts to shut up. 

“But I just made a new friend…” Her voice broke. She had made progress. Something had changed for the better for once. Was she just supposed to abandon everyone?

“Lette…”

If she moved, couldn't always rely on her brother to pick her up, to work her through her panic attacks. But here, Hayner and Pence had similar schedules because they all went to the same school. What was she going to do when they graduated? What would she do if she moved? Nothing would line up anymore. Everything would fall apart. She'd fall apart.

But she'd made a new friend. He got her to laugh. They'd eaten ice cream together. He walked her up to the hill of their hangout. He'd made sure she was okay. How was she supposed to be okay if she left?

Was it wrong that she'd rather stay in that house to keep the few good things she had over giving them up to ensure she'd have better things? Was it wrong that she relied on them so much? Was it wrong how she needed them so badly that she'd let herself get hurt just to keep them? Was it wrong? Was she wrong?

Her brother wiped away her tears.

She didn't know what direction her life was taking, so she stood stock still before the new path offered to her, paralyzed with fear. What was she going to do when Hayner and Pence decided what they wanted with their lives wouldn't involve her as intimately anymore? What was she going to do when they moved on like her brother?

She'd made friends with Roxas on her own. It was the first thing she'd done outside of them. She couldn't abandon what she considered her first step towards real change since she'd been stalked. She said they'd talk again. What if she left before they talked again? The way his eyes had started to shine, the way the corners of his mouth had softly turned up—she wouldn't hurt the boy who’d been just as uneasy talking to others as she was. She couldn't.

“I can't…” she whispered. “I can't…” She didn't want to hurt anyone. She didn't want to become her parents. “But I'm happy for you…”

Chapter Text

“Why do you keep buying four ice creams?” Hayner asked, Olette spinning away from the counter with them. Roxas watched the boys take their respective bars, his claws clicking quietly against the roof of the building.

“Because Roxas said we’d talk again.” Olette explained, the overgrowth in Roxas’ chest pressing against his skin, desperate to escape, to be closer to her. He liked that human the most out of the three of them so far.

“The freaky kid in the cult?” the human Pence asked, unwrapping his ice cream, the three of them heading to their usual place.

“He’s not in a cult, Pence.” the human Olette snapped back, but the way she pouted and didn’t look at him implied she might not have believed her own words.

“Wait woah, woah—when did you talk to him and why didn’t you tell us?” Hayner asked, stopping in his tracks and looking up from his struggle with his ice cream wrapper.

“Last week.” Olette didn’t look back at him, jogging to run in front of Pence.

“What’s a cult?”

“ FUCKIN— !”

“Hi, Roxas!”

Hayner had launched his ice cream at Roxas’ face on reflex, Roxas catching it before it could hit him. He offered it back to Hayner, who’s eyes flickered down to the ice cream, then back up to Roxas.

He stormed off, waving his hand and grumbling, “Keep it.” He took the extra bar Olette had, glaring over his shoulder as he violently ripped it open—then almost dropped it on the pavement.

“A cult is a group of people who devote themselves to a figurehead or object in a creepy way that’s kind of like worshiping it. They tend to have weird requirements to join and force you to do stuff and you can’t talk to people outside of the cult about the cult.” Pence explained.

“He’s not in a cult, Pence.” Olette groaned.

“Are you in a cult, Roxas?” Pence asked, turning to face him and walk backward, eyebrows vanishing up into his bandana. Roxas opened his ice cream.

“I can’t talk about it.” He popped the dessert into his mouth, glancing up at Olette. Hayner hadn’t stopped staring at him, but something about Roxas giving Olette any sort of obvious attention seemed to make him angry. He put himself directly behind Olette, blocking her from view, an arm around her waist.

“Oh—oh, he’s making a joke! Took me a second there. You’re funny!” the human Pence praised.

“Funny means you’ll laugh, right?” He’d heard humans say things were funny sometimes when they were laughing.

“You still feel worried about us?” Olette asked, tipping her head back against Hayner’s shoulder to look at him.

“I don’t feel worried.” He’d already told them he didn’t feel anything. Had they forgotten? Maybe humans had a hard time keeping memories just like he did.

“Yeah, you’re right. We’ll be okay.” Olette agreed, turning around against Hayner’s arm to face Roxas. Hayner and Pence were a lot more uneasy around him, but Olette’s fear was swirling like oil and water against her curiosity. “Are you going to hang out with us today?”

“Hang out?” He could hang from things if that was what humans liked to do.

“Yeah, hang out. It’s when you’re around your friends and enjoy each other’s company. It doesn’t really matter what you do. Do you have other friends you hang out with?” Roxas had to think about it. He didn’t mind being around Axel, but he didn’t know if they were friends. Olette was the only one who asked if he wanted to be friends with her.

“…I think you’re my only friend.”

The three of them shared a look Roxas didn’t understand, but there was also a shared emotion that rippled through them. He’d noticed them do this before around him. Could humans share emotions just by looking at each other? He was learning eyes and hearts were intrinsically connected.

“We can be your friends too.” the human Pence offered, the slope of the ground forcing him to turn back around to avoid tripping.

“Nope, not me. I don’t trust you yet.” the human Hayner objected.

“Hayer, dude, guy just said Olette was literally his only friend and you’ve only talked like—?” He looked over to Olette.

“Twice.”

“ —Twice! That sucks man! Do you remember when Penny first started school? She was attached to my hip because she didn’t know anyone else. Roxas is practically doing the same thing.”

Hayner scowed, taking a big bite out of his ice cream, then wincing. “…Couldn’t he have picked someone else for his first friend…?” He grumbled, bitterness and anger boiling inside of him. Roxas could have, but no one else had talked to him and no one else had asked him.

“You and I can be friends, Roxas. Don’t worry about Hayner, he’ll come around.”

“So I can have two friends?” Roxas asked, Olette stopping to look at him. There was an expression there he didn’t recognize. It was a kind of sadness, he could gather that much, but she wasn’t going to cry because she was hurt or scared. From what he could gather, her sadness had nothing to do with her and everything to do with his question.

She walked back towards him, reaching for his hand. He assumed she going to shake it again, but she didn’t. She just held it in hers and squeezed it. Her blue bracelet glinted in the twilight. “You can absolutely have two friends, Roxas. Give Hayner a bit of time and you’ll have three, okay?”

“Three? That’s a lot…” Roxas didn’t even know what he’d do with one friend, yet alone three . Olette’s eyes flickered over to Hayner, who sighed and rubbed the back of his head. Axel did that too, but Roxas could never pinpoint why.

“You can come into our hangout, but only when we’re there, got it? No letting yourself in.” the human Hayner snapped at him, unlocking the gate. Olette tugged at Roxas’ hand, welcoming him into their human space. This was a secluded place, a place of vulnerability.

They were letting a monster into their safe haven.

Hayner watched as Roxas lingered in the doorway and took a quick survey of the room. One exit, weak overhead structure. A lack of hiding places, but sufficient makeshift weapons if need be. Perching places, but nothing too far off of the ground.

“Nothing in here bites, take a seat man.” Hayner suggested bitterly, sitting himself on some kind of dead radiator.

“I’m in here.” Roxas reminded. Roxas bit if need be. He didn’t think he’d bite them though. Maybe Hayner, but only if Hayner bit him first. Pence laughed, Roxas having to refrain from lunging and taking the sound from him. Olette gently tugging him inside to sit next to her.

“Welcome to our usual hangout spot, Roxas!”

 “Roxas, if I say your name three times in the mirror in the dark will you show up?” the human Pence asked him, Roxas on his heels as he bought ice cream. “Four please!” He didn’t ask Roxas to back up, he just put his arm out and nudged Roxas to take a step back.

“If you wanted me to, but one time should be fine. Why in front of a mirror?”

“Have you never heard of Bloody Mary? Urban legend everyone knows about the dead lady? Almost as popular as our local boogeymen—Shadows? Silver Devils? Visitors?”

Roxas shook his head. He didn’t know what a boogeymen was, but shadows were Heartless, but a common enough name to potentially be something else.

“Dude, you are the most sheltered person I know. But anyway, you’d just show up out of nowhere like you do if we called?” Pence collected the ice cream from the shopkeeper, who was still ever weary of Roxas.

“If you needed me.” Roxas offered. Sometimes he’d hear them say his name as he fought off Heartless and he’d listen to them talk, a distant company he kept.

...Roxas walks into a room he looks like he’s waiting for something to jump out and hit him. It doesn’t matter how many times he’s been here now, he’s still doing it.

Thought you said you didn’t want to be friends.

I don’t, Pence! But like…I dunno, when it’s a zillion degrees out and he won’t take his coat off, doesn’t that say something?

Yeah, that he’s hiding something. Doesn’t mean it’s what you’re thinking.

Because thinking he’s in a cult is a better thing to think?

Shut uuup. It's better than what you're thinking…

“Aw hell yeah, local cryptid saves the day!” the human Pence fist bumped the air, then offered Roxas an ice cream. He would often catch himself recalling the taste of the dessert when he was in his room and couldn’t sleep. He associated the sweet and salty taste with them, the dichotomy of an interaction he wasn’t supposed to be engaging in.

Roxas’ eyes swept over Market Street, popping the ice cream into his mouth. He’d finished his mission for the day, so there should have been less Heartless, but he swore something was lurking. He bit the ice cream, quietly searching with his aura for whatever had their eyes on them.

“Uh…Roxas? You good bud?”

Roxas was quiet. Found it. He handed the ice cream back to Pence as he marched across Market Street.

“Where are you going?”

<What do you want? > He whispered to Axel, voice reaching only him. He narrowed his eyes as Pence still called out to him. “Stay.” Pence stopped dead in his tracks. Roxas hadn’t meant to whisper at him, even if it was only in half tongues.

“O-okay. I’m just gonna…” Pence gestured behind him, then looked back over at Roxas. “Um…Yeah…” The human Pence’s eyes had gotten wide, his breathing uneven, dread clamping down on his ribs like a vice.

<Been told to check in and see what you’ve been up to since your missions have been taking a long time lately. You know, told to see if you're struggling,> Axel replied. He understood they'd have sent dusks for that, not Axel—something was wrong. <But you're just fraternizing with the locals, aren't you?>

<They don’t know anything. Are you going to hurt them?> Roxas’ aura coiled around his back, wide spread. It was a wall of protection for Pence, a warning for Axel.

<No reason to so long as you’re telling the truth. Besides, you’re already riled up at the thought, which means you’ve been careful. Just remember if it comes down to it, it’s not just your secret. You might even end up getting punished, which would suck because I kinda like you, Rox.>

Roxas was a little taken aback by the compliment. He relaxed his shoulders, but kept his head high.

<Enjoy your living mementos.>

<…Thanks?>

Axel took his leave, Roxas still feeling a lingering sensation of his own domineering violence. He turned back to Pence, who had made his way farther back than he realized. He was talking into his light up black box again, glancing at Roxas and then up to the direction of their usual spot. He was breathing heavily, eyes wide and an exhaustion overtaking him.

Roxas walked over, sure to make noise as he did so. Noise was unusual in the regard that if humans could see it, they were off-put if they couldn’t hear it. Everything made noise in their worlds, sometimes even if it didn’t move. True to form, he could hear the human Pence, ever noisy despite trying to be quiet.

“…st stood there, just glaring at nothing? Oh, uh, he’s coming back now. Yeah, we’ll be there in a bit.” He put the box back into his pocket. “You, uh…you okay back there, Roxas?” He was trying so hard to act like Roxas hadn’t scared him, like he couldn’t smell the delicious low broiling of anxiety in his stomach. He would behave himself though. He liked them more like this than nebulous hearts.

Roxas nodded. “Yes.” He took his ice cream back from Pence, heading off to their usual spot. “…What’s a cryptid?”

 Roxas had never been in a moving train with other humans before. He’d rested on top of one, hidden in stationary ones, but never this. Pence was running late, so Hayner offered to pick Olette up instead. He’d tried to tell Roxas to stay behind, but Roxas had reminded Hayner he had explicitly told him not to be in their hangout without them.

So, he had to allow Roxas to come along. Hayner kept throwing glares his way, but he didn’t say anything. Roxas had noted that Olette was different when it came to crowds of humans. The boys didn’t ever leave her in them alone and she refused to find herself in a crowd without them. Most of all, he noticed in crowds she was terrified. It was an overwhelming familiarity, the exact opposite of the edge of their clocktower. Something had happened, something that didn’t leave her.

He wondered if he opened her heartspace what her heart would look like. Would it be smaller, dented, or missing pieces? Would it have patches of darkness that might overtake her? Hayner acted like how Roxas had for Pence when Axel had shown up, but he did it to everyone who got near Olette.

“You,” Roxas started, standing in front of him. Hayner looking up from sitting hunched over his black light up box—Roxas learned it was called a phone. “Are a protector. You protecting means you don’t like me.” It was easier to eliminate a threat before it could bother getting close enough to hurt you. Hayner was just trying to keep his friends safe, his precious things.

“Protecting?” Roxas watched the human Hayner turn red, tense and look away. Embarrassment, he was pretty sure. He glanced at some of the other people on the train, uneasy in regards to their proximity. “What, you mean like with Olette?”

Roxas nodded. “I won’t hurt her. Or Pence. Or you. I’m not good with protecting emotions or hearts…you are. I like watching you protect them.”

Hayner just stared at him for a long moment, red in the face before running his hand through his hair. “…Maaaan, you can’t just be all gushy like that and mean it, especially with all these other people around. You’re making another joke right?”

“No. I understand why you don’t like me. I just decided to tell you. You don’t have to like me if it keeps them safer. I want to keep you safer too.” The train pulled into the station, doors opening, people flooding out. “You can keep protecting them, even from me.” Hayner grabbed for his wrist, grip tight as he stood up. He was rather close to Roxas' face. He hoped he looked human enough. He couldn't help but look away in case he didn't.

“Is that a threat?”

Roxas was a monster that had silently laid claim on their hearts and would become volatile if something tried to take them, but he wasn’t sure if the extent of a violent episode would extend to them or not. His claim meant he might not risk losing them to anything, be it Heartless, other Nobodies, or kingdom hearts. Roxas knew that even if there was a slim chance, he'd be likely to take their hearts before attempting to save them instead. Even the fantasy of them ending up in a situation that would give him an excuse to eat their hearts was enough to make him salivate. They were his, and he wanted them, and yet.

"…No. I just don’t want to hurt you.” Roxas felt Hayner's grip slacken. He watched the human Hayner’s eyes study him, then he let go.

“You don’t want to hurt us but you’re warning me anyway?”

Roxas nodded.

“Then just don’t hurt us, man. Jeeze, you think too much for someone who’s so…” Hayner shook his head. “Let’s just go get Olette.” He gave Roxas a pat on the shoulder, then got off of the train, Roxas following.

He paused once he stepped onto the sidewalk, looking back. A bit of Hayner’s hostility was left behind in that train car.

 <Roxas.> Saix’s call was to arms, to obey an instinct that could easily overtake his sense of logic. Saix’s aura was like an ever present taunt, making him want to be violent, to forego his human appearance and lash out. Roxas was always careful to never look him in the eyes, to maintain himself and the image he presented. <Lord Xemnas would like a word with you after your mission briefing.>

Roxas scuffled his shoes against the linoleum floor. Lexaeus glanced over at him, a corpse in rigor mortis, a suffocating weight from his stare. Roxas didn’t need to make noise, yet he found he constantly chose it in his responses to his superiors.

<’Kay.>

Xemnas had a tendency to address them all directly, leaving them to their own devices so long as his goals took precedence over theirs. Aside from his initial meeting with Xemnas, he’d never spoken with him alone after that. Come to think of it, the only time Roxas ever spoke to anyone alone was if he distinctly sought them out as such. When he did, it was because it was a private curiosity, so he could only imagine what this meant to speak with Xemnas alone.

The room he’d met him in was neutral ground, neither his nor Xemnas’, but lacking the uptight familiarity of the round room. Roxas wasn’t sure what the proper response to the situation was, so he simply didn’t give one. Xemnas stood staring out of long windows at the sky, a languid pause before turning to face him. He gestured to a chair, Roxas scuffling his feet before deciding to take it.

Xemnas wasted no time with formalities, sitting himself across from Roxas. He lounged in his chair, arms resting on either side with his knees shoulder length apart. Roxas watched his chest mock breathing, a rhythmic rise and fall for a bodily system none of them had.

<I’ve been recently made aware of your exploits. A pursuit of knowledge is admirable and one many of us in the Organization share. Although because of your important distinction, I must make it abundantly clear that you take more precautionary measures than everyone else.>

<Um…I’m sorry, what did I do that we’re talking about? > Xemnas leaned forward, knee pressed against Roxas’ as he tapped his chest.

<Why, your desire to fill the void of course. Nothing happens in this castle or with it’s residence that I am not made aware of.> He leaned back into his chair, their knees still touching. The physical contact was a warning that they were all tether together in their pursuits, no matter the differences, no matter the divide between their numbers.

<So I’m…being praised?> Roxas clarified, not seeing why this conversation would need to happen otherwise.

<Oh, yes. If you require any resources, Vexen will be happy to provide anything you cannot claim yourself. So long as you are strong enough to take what it is you desire without causing lasting harm to the Organization, you are allowed your own curiosities. Everyone is allowed a vice to a degree. I just request with yours that you make an effort to keep it reasonably contained.>

Roxas felt his overgrowth writhe against his chest, quite sure Xemnas could see it through his coat. This was about Hayner, Pence, and Olette. He was being told he could keep them, bring them home. People would just assume they were some of the missing from the Heartless attacks. He could keep them.

<…They’re different when they’re scared—humans. I didn’t realize they could feel more than one thing at once and even with one feeling, there’s so many different kinds. There’s so much I haven’t even seen from them yet that I don’t think I’d get to if I moved them.> Roxas admitted. Xemnas knew. Roxas didn’t understand why people would lie, but he wondered if it would have made a difference if he hadn’t addressed the truth.

<Then you must take greater precautions if you wished to be allowed the variable of freedom in your experiments. You will not be allowed any assistance in your personal endeavors and they are not to come before the tasks of the Organization. Do you understand what I’m asking of you?>

There was an overbearing weight in Roxas’ chest that came from Xemnas’ aura. He was sure the physical contact made it worse, made it easier to strangle Roxas’ own and hold him in his place. Roxas could keep his humans, but he needed to remember they were human, they were resources. If they were a risk, they would be removed. He needed to remember his priorities were with the Organization and his main task was always to collect hearts for them—for Xemnas.

 <Yes, Xemnas.> 

Xemnas stood up, placing a hand on Roxas’ shoulder, a sensation of exhaustion and defeat overwhelming him. It would just be easier to listen to whatever Xemnas said than try to fight him—he hadn’t even considered opposing him, but was reminded anyway. His heavy eyelids tried to meet Xemnas’ eyes, only making it to his throat. <I’m glad we could come to such a facile agreement.>

Xemnas left the room, leaving Roxas to ponder the definition of the unknown word. Instead, Roxas wondered for a brief moment what Xemnas really looked like underneath his human exterior. Perhaps there was nothing underneath his exterior, nothing to expose. Wouldn’t it be a more terrible display of power to know their leader looked like the thing they so desperately craved without even trying?

<…Xemnas?> Roxas called after him, rising to his feet. His superior stopped in the doorway, turning back around to give Roxas his attention. <If I do decide to keep them, nothing will happen to them unless I want it to, right?>

<They are but three meager hearts. If they keep you placated, I see no reason for them to come to harm, but understand the desires of your comrades so you can ensure what happens to them is of your own volition and not theirs.>

Roxas nodded, the room flooded with the scent of lotus flowers. He could tell by the way the room hazed over that his pupils were blown, desperate to take in more of his distant surroundings.

<The mock of ravenous delight suits you. You learn rather quickly, which I hope will yield promising results in your personal project.>

More praise. Roxas couldn’t disappoint him, not with those kind of expectations. Maybe, if Roxas could learn to mock other emotions better, Xemnas would send him on more personalized missions like he did Saix or Xigbar.

Chapter Text

Roxas considered for a long time where he would keep the humans Hayner, Pence, and Olette during his missions. They had such vastly different rooms in their homes than their usual spot, than their comfortable clocktower hazard. He hadn’t thoroughly examined their personal rooms enough to even consider remaking them yet, but he had decided at the very least he would need to get a bigger wing of the castle than he anticipated. A placaited human was a happy human, after all.

He’d already decided it would be best to take all three of them if he had to. Olette was rarely ever alone which would make it harder to take her first. Pence was too curious to let anything go, but could be left alone with Olette. If Roxas could ensnare him, that would make it easier to take Olette, then Hayner would easily fall in line once he had both of them.

But for now, those were just ambling considerations. For now, he liked watching them rush about Twilight Town without a passing thought for their safety or their futures. Their carefree nature was what dictated a lot of their behaviors and that would change drastically if he took them from their home. Maybe he could do it gradually, bring them over, let them go back, bring them over, make it so they never wanted to leave.

His ears perked up at a call from the distance, Heartless ink smearing all over the side of a building as he sliced it with his keyblade.

“Roxas, Roxas, olly olly oxen free!” Pence called, the sound cupped in his hand to span a distance. Roxas quietly felt for his aura, finding them clustered together in a park. “Okay now watch, he’s gonna show up.”

“No, all that’s proving is that he’s still stalking us instead of just hanging out with us like he said he would!” Hayner sneered. They were all facing the vast openness of the park, lounging along the railing as they waited.

“No, that’s different. I’m telling you, I could do this at any hour of the day and he’ll just—poof!” Pence threw his hands up in the air for dramatic effect. “Swear on my life! Like he could be out somewhere with you, I could call him from half way across town, you’d turn around and he’d be over here—at least I think he would, I obviously haven’t gotten to try it yet.”

“Gotten to try what?” Roxas asked, leaning over Pence’s shoulder.

“JEEZUS—” Hayner made karate chop motions with his hands as he twisted away from Roxas.

“Roxas, get off of the railing, that’s not safe!” Olette grabbed for his hand, trying to tug him down.

“It’s only unsafe if I fall. I won’t fall,” he reassured her, getting down anyway. He stared at his hand after Olette pulled hers away, clenching and unclenching. Something about the squeezing contact of it left him wanting to experience it again.

“How the hell did you even get up their, man!? You’d have to climb steep rock for us not to see you! Just walk up like a normal person!” Hayner snapped, glaring at Roxas’ hand as he reached for Olette’s. She started swinging their hands, making a big dorky show of it, which seemed to make Hayner less hostile about the contact.

“Roxas is in a cult of ninjas.” Pence made karate hands, trying to whack Hayner with them, who shrugged him off. He was clearly mocking Hayner’s startled reaction earlier.

“I don’t have ninja, I have samurai,” he corrected. “Larxene has ninja.”

Pence must have thought he was making another joke because he let out a chuckle, giving him a pat on the back. “Good one!” Roxas had been better about keeping himself from lunging every time one of them laughed. He got Pence to laugh a lot, which helped. “But see? Told you he comes whenever you call him!”

“I said I would.” Roxas reminded, furrowing his brow and pulling his hand out of Olette’s to reach for Pence’s. “Did you forget? When I forget stuff, I write it down so I can remember it later. I can get you a notebook. Please don’t forget, it’s important you know I’ll be there if you need me.”

They were all quiet for a long moment, Roxas unable to understand what emotions they were feeling because they were flickering through them too fast. Pence used his other hand to hide his face, grumbling softly as his ears turned red, “Oh my god…”

“That’s sweet of you, Roxas.” Olette praised, but she had this high pitch to her voice like a tittering bird.

“Dude, you’re totally shameless.” Hayner grumbled, but his face was just as red as Pence’s.

“Do you want a notebook? I mean it, I’ll get you one.” Roxas offered again, trying to peer at Pence’s face. The fear he had melted with his embarrassment, making it tremble like viscous ripples any time he breathed.

“I’m—I’m good, Roxas. Thanks, bud. I won’t forget, I promise.”

“You promise?” Roxas asked, confused.

“Yes, yes, I promise.” Pence reiterated.

“What does that do?”

Pence lowered his hand from his face. “Promising something? You’ve never made a promise to anyone? Like no locked pinkies or anything?”

Roxas shook his head.

“Dude, that’s so sad! What the hell!” Pence shook his head, shooting a pleading look to Hayner. Roxas looked over his shoulder at him, Hayner avoiding eye contact. Something was there, something sad, but not for himself—it was like that time with Olette. He didn’t understand why the humans kept feeling sad for him.

 He looked back at Pence to explain.

“A promise is like…you can’t go back on your word, no matter what. You gotta mean it and you can’t break your promises. They’re super serious among friends, okay?” Roxas understood it was an agreement among friends, so he couldn’t go making promises to the Organization.

“Okay. So that means no matter what you won’t forget, right?” Roxas asked, giving a squeeze to Pence’s hand like a grip to his keyblade before anticipating a swing.

“Right!” Pence agreed, squeezing it back twice.

“…Can you ask someone to make a promise?” Roxas asked, glancing back at Hayner and Olette.

“Sure!” Pence agreed.

“Then can I have you three promise to be my friends no matter what?” Then they’d still be friends, even when Roxas took them back to the castle.

“I’m gonna eat him up, oh my god.” Olette whispered, Hayner rolling his eyes. Did humans eat Nobodies? Should Roxas be wary of her trying to eat him now? Before Roxas could put much thought into it, Hayner locked his arm around Roxas’ shoulders and pulled him down into a headlock, forcing his hand from Pence’s.

“You’re such a dork! I thought I had my hands full with Pence!” Roxas couldn’t tell if Hayner was complaining or not. He looked up at him, trying to discern based on his expression rather than the thick, sticky feeling of his aura. He still had no idea.

“We promise, Roxas.” Pence agreed.

“Promise!” Olette agreed. Roxas still stared at Hayner, waiting.

“Ugh, fiine! We’re friends, promise!” Roxas couldn’t help the way his overgrowth tangled in his chest or the way the corners of his mouth pulled up. It was an untrained reaction he couldn’t refrain from, like ducking a blow. No matter what, they’d be his precious, important hearts, his friends. He relaxed, not feeling as guilty at the thought of taking them away later.

<Friends,> Xemnas started, Roxas’ eyes darting over to him during the meeting. That was the first time he’d ever called any of them that. For the most part, Roxas had a hard time paying attention during these meetings.

It usually dissolved into petty arguments over nothing the second Xemnas dismissed it and half of the time when he was talking Roxas knew he’d hear it from Saix later or could get the abridged version from Axel. But being called friends was new, attention grabbing. Roxas couldn’t help but wonder if Xemnas had done it because of him or if he even meant it in the same way Roxas had come to hear it.

He didn’t know if he’d consider everyone here his friends. He was civil with most of them, but friends was a separate entity of a word. It was more delicate than comrades, more familiar than companions. Friends. He didn’t know if Xemnas used that word right or was trying to use it to evoke its meaning upon them.

Either way, Roxas paid attention to the entire meeting just to hear him potentially use it again, even if he was bored out of his mind the whole time. But to be friends, didn’t you need to ask? Had they asked him when he joined and it was just something he couldn’t remember agreeing to? Did it count if he couldn’t remember? What would happen then if Hayner, Pence, and Olette forgot they were his friends?

Roxas couldn’t focus on the meeting anymore. He wanted to know if promises would outweigh a lack of memories.

The Heartless in Twilight Town had been acting unusual for the past few days. Roxas wondered if it was because he had thinned their numbers, but he listened to his humans discuss how people were still vanishing. They didn’t talk about it too long, Pence always becoming unusually quiet when they did. The fear of the unknown was a vast no man’s land inside of Pence that Roxas was curious to traverse, but refrained from asking about.

But all it meant was that the Heartless had learned they were now hunted. It meant they learned they had to wait for opportunities rather than rushing out at their own discretion. They were cornered animals, which Roxas understood to mean they’d bite back soon. He’d written this down in his mission reports, but he was now in a precarious situation.

Because the Heartless were being more cautious, Roxas didn’t have enough hearts to collect in Twilight Town. The Heartless either would revert to their old ways if he left them alone long enough, but that would put his humans in danger. Or, the Heartless would come to prefer their adaption of grouping together which would make Twilight Town more dangerous than before he’d shown up. 

Either way, Roxas didn’t like it. He found himself lingering in Twilight Town, long after his humans were returned safely to their beds. He told Saix he was being vigilant. Saix told him he didn’t care what he was so long as he completed the missions he was given.

Roxas didn’t realize how much he slept and how much it affected him until he stopped doing it as much. He was sluggish when he was with his humans, with no real goal to focus on. His guard was down a bit more in fights, his reactions seconds too late—he’d taken a heafty beating to the face, unable to retaliate right away.

He had no potions and was so tired his magic wasn’t replenishing as quickly as it should have. What did humans do when they were hurt? Did they have potions? Could they cast cure? His cheek hurt. He was tired. He decided to wait outside of their usual spot until one of them showed up, then he could ask. He refused to go back to the castle looking like this, not when he was trying to prove his worth to Xemnas so he could keep Hayner, Pence, and Olette.

He was just going to sit outside of their usual spot and wait.

He was just going to rest his eyes.

He was just…

“Roxas—hey.”

Roxas jerked awake, snapping his claw back into a hand the second he realized it was Hayner. Hayner had been too busy staring wide-eyed at his face to notice his hand, too close to even have seen it out of his peripheral.

“Dude—what the hell happened?”

“I fell asleep.” Roxas grunted.

“No man, I mean your face! Just—come on, get inside and sit on the couch.” Hayner offered him his hand, Roxas using it to hoisting himself up to his feet. Hayner watched Roxas until he sat down on the couch before rummaging around in their small fridge that was mostly soda and half eaten ice cream. “So, how’d you get the shiner?”

Roxas hummed softly, still very tired. Was he allowed to nap in a place that wasn’t a bed on purpose? Now that he thought about it, he needed to check in for his mission report, but did that mean the hours in between when he was normally sleeping needed to be spent in the castle? Could he check in, then come back to be with them? Was that allowed?

“Roxas?” Hayner called his name, Roxas jerking in attention. Did thoughts take longer when he was tired?

“Was in a fight.” He finally explained, Hayner pulling out an ice pack and sitting next to him. Hayner pushed his hood back, Roxas wondering if they’d ever really seen him without it.

“With who? I don’t even think you’ve met Seifer or his crew yet.” Hayner turned Roxas’ face towards him, gingerly poked at the bruise. Roxas hissed and narrowed his eyes, realizing his mistake too late. He hoped humans hissed like that sometimes or that would be unfortunate—he didn’t want to hurt Hayner.

Hayner studied his face for a moment, but Roxas wasn’t sensing fear out of him. Again, that—what was it? Was it called pity? A sorrow for something else was pity, wasn’t it? Why? Was it because the bruise hurt and Hayner felt bad for touching it? But then wouldn’t it be guilt, not pity?

Hayner gingerly pressing the ice pack to Roxas’ face.

“Cold—!” He hissed, Hayner swatting his hand away as he immediately reached for the ice pack. Oh. He never answered Hayner. “…Shadows. I was fighting shadows.”

Hayner sighed, offering Roxas the ice pack to hold onto his own face. “Fine, don’t tell me. If you’re tired, you should at least sleep. I’ll wake you up before it gets too late.” Roxas glanced down at the couch, Hayner getting up to go sit at his usual spot on the radiator.

He slouched down, resting his cheek on the ice pack, even though he greatly disliked it. A cure would have been faster and less cold. Maybe once he was a little more rested he could cast one. Was this all humans had? Roxas should have asked for something else.

Actually, now that he thought about it, Roxas didn’t need to ask. Hayner had just set about trying to help, to keep him from hurting. Roxas’ eyes popped open as he sat up, pulling the ice pack from his face. “You’re doing it for me too.”

“Huh?” Hayner looked up from his phone.

“Protecting me, like with Pence and Olette.” He had tried to keep him from further harm by offering him the ice pack. A human wanted to protect a Nobody. Did that mean he was their monster they way they were his humans? Was this Hayner’s way of laying a mutual claim on him as well?

He watched Hayner turn cherry red. Embarrassment. “I am not —now shut up and take a nap!”

Roxas stared at him, not understanding why Hayner felt the need to lie about it. Was it to hide his feelings? He heard humans didn’t like each other knowing their personal feelings all of the time and Hayner had no reason to believe Roxas wasn’t human yet.

“You don’t have to hide how you’re feeling, I can tell. I’ve never had anyone protect me before and I was always told I need to take care of everything myself if I want to amount to anything. I’m grateful.” Hayner’s embarrassment left him in a wave of cold. Roxas could not for the life of him tell what that emotion was even though he’d felt them give it off in small intervals depending on what he said sometimes.

“Roxas…” Hayner wasn’t exactly scowling, but something in his expression told Roxas he felt helpless. He glanced down at his phone, then sat next to Roxas and left it face down on the arm of the couch. “Just lay down, okay? Get some rest. I’ll be right here if you need me.”

Roxas nodded, curling up on the couch and pressing the ice pack to his face again. It was cold, but Hayner’s thigh by his head radiated heat. Roxas debated if it would be quicker to just curl up on Hayner to rest so he could cast cure than to sit there with a brick of ice on his face. But the ice was Hayner being nice to him, protecting him. Roxas quietly pressed his hand to his chest, trying to get his overgrowth to be still before Hayner saw it.

He sat there for a moment, just staring at the couch and trying to get himself to calm down.

“…You’re not sleeping if your eyes are open.” Hayner grunted, glancing away from his phone to look at Roxas. Roxas squeezed his eyes shut, Hayner snorted. “Dork.”

Roxas peeked an eye open, a smile playing at the corners of Hayner’s mouth. Roxas tried to remember if he’d ever seen Hayner smile when Olette or Pence or the older human he lived with weren’t around. He would have to write that down in his journal. Hayner smiled and he was pretty sure it was because of him being whatever a dork was.

Roxas tipped his head back to look up at him, wanting a better image to burn into his mind. Hayner snorted again, holding his hand over his eyes. “Roxas, dude go to sleep.” Roxas couldn’t say he wasn’t tired anymore, but he did want to stay awake and stare at Hayner’s mouth than he wanted to rest.

“But you were smiling. It was nice.” He pulled Hayner’s hand away from his eyes, watching him insistently stare at his phone, face red. More embarrassment. Hayner squeezed his hand.

“Just try to rest, okay? Just for a little bit? If you really don’t want to sleep too long, I’ll wake you once Pence and Olette get here.” Roxas sighed, but closed his eyes again, not letting go of Hayner’s warm hand, the ice pack held to his face.

Chapter Text

Protecting them. Roxas had said Hayner was protecting them. Hayner had never really taken a moment to assess the reason behind his actions, but it made sense. He was always quick to offer to take Olette home, quick to go on errands with Pence for his family, quick to huddle them all together during the cold of emotional storms. He'd been quick to get ice out for Roxas, quick to try to comfort him and see how he could help.

He’d been too slow to help his mom, the only thing remaining inky black pools on the pavement before those vanished into the air like reverse rain in bad tv static.

Now that it was brought to his attention, was Hayner protecting them out of guilt and obligation? To say he tried, to say he was ever-present and making an effort? To say he'd done everything he could so he wouldn't have any regrets? Roxas had seen right through him in a way that was too painful to self evaluate.

Roxas slept like he was dead, unmoving, barely breathing.

Hayner couldn’t help but wonder if Roxas had been through a similar trauma, which made it easier to notice with someone else. Or maybe Roxas was just good at reading people between all of his observing and staring. It had unnerved Hayner the way he’d studied them like he wanted to pull them apart then put them back together to see if they’d still work the same way. But regardless of which it was, it was clear Roxas was just trying to understand them.

Roxas had no idea how he should react to them, what was alright to tell them. He was constantly hesitating and avoided talking about himself. For someone as awkward as Roxas to tell him he fought monsters in the dark—Hayner just couldn’t see it. It wasn’t feasible for someone who was so enamored with something as simple as a smile to be dealing with the unspoken horrors of Twilight Town.

Or maybe he really was. Hayner hadn’t been focused on what was on his phone screen for a while now. He put it down and glanced over at Roxas, still unmoving in his sleep. If he was, that was worse. That meant he only knew a kind of fantastical violence for the widely ignored. It meant Roxas hadn’t been allowed to have moments of normalcy. His perplexed and delighted reactions to their company meant he’d never been allowed kindness before.

Even if Roxas didn’t fight monsters, that part at least seemed to be true. Roxas was alone, even if it was with others like whoever Xemnas was. Hayner’s heart squeezed, blood going still and cold without being worked through his body. He leaned over Roxas, removing the melted ice pack and keeping his hand in his. He must have been so lonely.

Hayner couldn’t help it—the moment he’d been welcomed into their space, amongst their fold of carefully woven friendship, Hayner had already accepted him and had decided to protect him like Olette and Pence. Hayner just couldn’t help but wonder if it was now out of guilt. He’d been rude when they first met and even well into introductions. He’d been mean when Roxas clearly was experiencing enough of that when he was away from them.

If he could, Hayner would let him sleep forever on that couch in their hangout. He wouldn’t have to go back to whatever had hurt him. He wouldn’t have to marvel at basic instances of kindness. He wouldn’t ever have to let go of his hand. Roxas would feel safe.

Hayner sighed, dropping the ice pack beside the couch, fingers wet. For Hayner, liking someone meant wanting to make sure they never had to experience the loss and grief that he had—which meant it was just like Roxas had said. It was embarrassing to be called out like that when he hadn’t even realized it. “Goddamn it…”

He sent a text to Pence and Olette, telling them when they showed up to be quiet, that Roxas was asleep and he needed it. If he was going to protect him, he may as well be a bit more forward about it then. If he was going to be more forward, he may as well try to find out what had hurt Roxas to make sure that never happened again. In order to do that, it would be easier to know more about Roxas to know what really hurt him, if it was human or otherwise. He wasn't going to let his friends become another inky pool on the road.

Chapter Text

Roxas had almost missed it, the sound of his shoulder shattering against a building drowning out the soft call of his name. He hated armor types sometimes. He snarled in anger, all forked tongue and mashing fangs.

“…Roxas?”

It was Olette. She could wait, he was almost done. He still listened though.

“…So I know it’s probably a joke that you can just show up whenever, but if that’s seriously a thing, that’d be really nice right now…”

The Heartless rushed at him, Roxas hoisting himself over its shoulders and landing a blow to its backside before jerking his keyblade up into an emerald serenade. He could cast cure on his shoulder in a second, first he needed to—

“My phone just died even though it said it had 10% left and I’m literally just trying to get to the restaurant to charge it and go home with Hayner. I just want to go to the restaurant…” Her voice trembled.

—take out that other serenade as soon as he got this third armor Heartless off of his back already. He was getting agitated, his gloves having dissolved into a black haze of darkness to allow him to use his claws.

“It’s not even three blocks away and I said I’d be fine and I feel so stupid for getting this worked up…I mean, you think I’d have gotten over it by now, you know? And sometimes I feel like I’m okay, like I did get over it—then I feel all alone like this and I just…I don’t…I just wanna go ho—”

She stopped. Why she’d stop? He was almost done. He’d be there in a second, why’d she stop talking to him?

“…Roxas?” He barely heard her and it had nothing to do with his fight. The Heartless had been acting weird. The Heartless knew they were being hunted. The Heartless needed to be more careful with their attacks.

The Organization came first. Humans could be replaced. His mission was more important, but if he was distracted from further missions because of his personal project, wasn’t that counter productive? Wasn’t it important to ensure the safety of his personal endeavors to give his undivided attention to his missions when he had them? As long as Roxas’ performance for Xemnas was exemplary, as long as it didn’t cause harm to the Organization, wasn’t he allowed to do whatever he pleased otherwise?

He summoned samurai, leaving them to finish off the Heartless while he checked in on Olette. He stepped out of the stifling desert heat of Agrabah and into the crisp, murky dusk of Twilight Town. A sharp terror filled the air like a kaleidoscope of stained glass shattering from an extreme shift in temperatures.

“Please no—! ”

The Heartless lunged for Olette, her arms flying up to shield her face as she fell flat on her butt.

Roxas hadn’t even a moment to consider using his keyblade in his left hand, grabbing for the Heartless despite his dislocated shoulder. The shadow oozed into an inky mess in his claw, its captured hearts escaping their confines and floating back to kingdom hearts.

All of that debate over a mere shadow.

He relinquished his grip on his keyblade, letting it vanish.

“…Olette?” He called to her, Olette trembling violently. That was the first time he’d ever said her name out loud. She slowly lowered her arms and peered her eyes open as Roxas willed his gloves back into their tangible form on his hands. “You okay?”

“Rox…as…?” Her fear was palpable, heady, intoxicating. The smell pulled at reminders of when he’d first been shown how to eat human hearts from their chests. Roxas decided it was best to keep his distance, swallowing. “It’s…you came. You really showed up…” She couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t raise her voice more than a whisper. Her fear enveloped her, overwhelmed her, suffocated her—she burst into tears, a snap, an expansion, making a mess all over the alleyway.

Roxas wanted to tear her damn rib cage open.

“Olette, it’s okay. I told you I’d show up and that I get rid of shadows.” He reminded, crouching down. She scrambled closer, scraping her knees and palms to throw her arms around his neck. Roxas tensed so violently he felt his entire overgrowth ripple through his body in reply. Her pulse was shrieking into his, her aura colliding heavily like a frozen wave of solid mercury.

When had fear ever been bad? Fear was good, fear meant he won— 

“You showed up…! You really showed up…!” She hiccuped through sobs, squeezing him. Unless that fear wasn’t entirely hers. Roxas had never been afraid before. But what could he possibly have to be afraid of? Maybe her aura had just overwhelmed him—could humans do that like Nobodies could to each other? Olette was the one who’d been scared, so why was it every time he had to swallow to avoid drooling all over her did he feel that reverb of terror in his overgrowth?

“I said I would.” He reminded, choking on his own words. He spoke into her hair, trying not to whisper and trying to hide his face. She couldn’t look at him—he couldn’t keep his body together. He wrapped his arm around her middle, squeezing her back the way she was doing to him. This was to let her feel safe. This wasn’t to keep her in place. This was to let Olette feel safe.

He didn’t even know if she’d heard him over all of her crying—humans were very noisy things. Noisy hearts, noisy tears, noisy, noisy… Did hearts throb because of their desire to leave the body and return to kingdom hearts? Did she feel that close to dying that her heart felt the need to try to abandon her? Out here, the world wasn’t safe. They’d be safer in the castle. He should take her right now so she’d never have to feel like that again.

“Olette… ” He swallowed a thick pool of saliva that had welled up in his mouth. “Do you not feel safe here? Do you want to leave? I could take you somewhere else.” he asked her, deciding it would probably be nicer to ask than just taking her to the castle.

“I just want to go to the restaurant to have Hayner take me home…” she whispered, her words small puffs of air against his neck. It made him shiver, it felt so much like the trembling heart in her chest.

“I could take you to the castle. It’s safer there.” he offered. She sniffed, rubbing her face against his shoulder, but not relinquishing her grip on him.

“A castle huh? Gonna whisk me away to fairy tale land, prince charming? You’re sweet for trying to make jokes to cheer me up right now…” Her voice shook and she couldn’t look him in the eyes. Why did they always think he was joking?

“I just want you to be safe, Olette. You and Pence and Hayner. If something happened to you, I’d…” He’d what? Nobodies didn’t feel emotions, so he wouldn’t feel sad or angry. This right now was just a mock of her feelings tugging at memories he had no access to from when he’d had a heart. “I’d…” he struggled. “I don’t know.” he admitted.

Once he finally decided to swallow their hearts, they’d be gone after that. No more laughing, no more talking with them, no more feeling their auras shift, nothing. Void, like what came before he met Xemnas—but not like in the future anymore. The future had become full of desires and experiences he knew he was going to have. He knew they’d get ice cream again, he knew he’d get them to laugh again, he knew he’d miss them if he was away for too long.

He knew. He didn’t just understand, he knew. If he lost any of his precious humans, he knew the future would be full of void without them and he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t eat their hearts if he wanted more of that, so his alternative was ensuring their safety. He realized he had mirrored Olette’s fear so greatly because there was a fear of going back to that void without them.

He was scared of being the one to hurt them.

Roxas felt his overgrowth shrivel up so quickly it hurt. He’d almost hurt her. He loosened his grip around her middle, stroking her hair instead. “I don’t want to go back to what it was before without you. You three are important to me, Olette. I’ll keep you safe—I promise. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

She started to cry again, burying her face against his shoulder. It hurt. The veil of relief his presence had given her was fortified by the security of his words. She had believed him so easily, even without proof, even with contradictory facts pooling his mouth the whole time. Humans were so curious.

“...lette? Where are you—Olette!” Hayner’s voice drew closer as he rushed over, footsteps heavy and his aura filled with overwhelming intensity. “What happened?! Why didn’t you call me?” He dropped to his knees, hands hovering over her as if he was scared she’d break if he touched her.

“My phone died…” she mumbled, obviously feeling foolish about it.

“A shadow. She’s okay.” Roxas explained, keeping his face away from Hayner. “She wants to go home. I have to go back. Will you take her home?” Roxas requested, gently easing her into Hayner’s arms instead while she wiped her eyes. He was still drooling. It would be better to go if she was still that tempting, despite his revelation.

“You fought one of those things…?” he asked incredulously. Roxas popped his shoulder back into place. Hayner’s eyes jerked over to stare at him from the crunching noise, then he glanced back to Olette, then back to Roxas, but he studied him as if he’d missed something obvious and important.

“It’s my job. Will you take her home?” Roxas asked once more, still not looking at him. “I can’t go until I know you’ll take her home—or Pence.”

“I’ll get her home.” Hayner agreed. Roxas stood up, quick to try to take his leave. “—Roxas?”

He paused, waiting. Humans were scared of things they couldn’t see, even if they were familiar. Roxas sounded like the version of him they were used to. He was shaped like the version of himself they were used to. Yet, unease rolled off of Hayner. “…Yes, Hayner?”

Hayner jerked and looked away, furrowing his brow. “Your shoulder just now…You don’t seriously fight those shadows, right?” Roxas couldn’t recall a time when Hayner had addressed him with such a soft unease in his voice—or was it worry? Why was Hayner worried about him? Hayner needed to protect Pence and Olette, so it was them he should be worried about.

“Xemnas says I have to, so yes.”

“Who’s—”

“See you tomorrow.” He needed to get back now that she’d be okay. He’d have to offer to take them to the castle another time. He rounded a corner as Hayner called for him, listening to his voice vanish into the echo of the dark.

Blistering heat made his leather stick to him, but that was the farthest thing from Roxas’ mind now. <Where was I?> Roxas asked his subordinates, his samurai bowing out of his way.

<Hunting Heartless, my liege.>

They reminded, as if he’d meant his question.

<Right. Heartless.>

A lack of. A want. He wanted a heart. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, he wanted, ͈͎͙h̹̺ȩ͚̞͎ ̥w͘a̗͓̟n̼͕͕͉̣̼ͅt̳̣͝e̴d̻̭̭̫̮̣,̦̝̦̗̘͇ ͖͙͕̲ͅh͔e̗̗̙̥ w̤͍̘̭͓͚̹a̪̩̤̰̰͓̝͠n̜̮̺t̤̰͈̱̥̣e̛̪͈̞̱͚d,̠̪ͅ ̖͎̤̞̠͝h̴̞̖̞̹̤e͉̫͖͓̱̤ ̰͕̥̬͈̙̣w̺̤̩͟a̳̳̤͖͜n̫̬͈̗͕̳̬t͓̰͍͎̥̜ͅe͏͙̺̯̣̹̬d̨͈̙̲,̧͔͍͓̥̟̠ ̮̙͔ͅh̨̹͓̼̹͓e̗̜̰̫͙͇̖ ̷̪̘̹w̲̻̟̹̝̻a͜n̯̗͇̠͔̰t͈͎̙͚̕ȩ͍͇̙d͎͉͇,͝ ͏͓͍̘̘̬̳̥h̝̼e̥̘͡ ̵̫̲̫͇̤̖̬w̧̲̭͚͖̥̯a̭̙̰̙̟̩͓ṋ̲t͉̙̕ed͔̜̱͠ͅ, ̙̣̺͙̪h̞̻͚̝̲̗̮e̶̻̪̱͈ ҉̖͔̟̘̗͙̻w̠̖̳̭͙̙̺a̴̫͍͓n̠̯̣̠̰͍t͓̘̟e̦̲̲̤͔d̘͉̼̩͍̬̗,̹͓͉̜̙̞ ̖̪͈̬̝̞h̶̖̼̩̠͎̤e̝̖ w̝͞a̶̬͙͇͉̖̣n̡t͖͔ͅe̩d̨̬,̱̫͔̥̙̝ͅ ̧̳̠̻̻͕͉he̴̻̞̼̪̱ ̱̪̱̻̥̭̭͜w͕͚̺͞a̦̳̤̥̲n̯̠͉͍͝t̙̤͖͢e͙̰̤̕d͇̳̯̱͘,̵̮͕̫̫̗͎ ̳̱̥͇h̶̰̦͇̫͍̣̲e͏̝̫̩̻̜ ̻̼̤̱̱͟w͕̫̦͈͈͖͉a̛n̛̥̝̠t͏͍e͖͇̕d, ͘h̻̦e͓̖̻̟͈̯ ̙̠̹̯͚̭̬͞w̡̻̥̟̺͚̞a̺̫̱̳̱͖͘n͉̗͝t̫̻̮e̬̲d͖̣͓͖̟̤,̡͕͇̩̯͔̞͕ ̪͈̮͕͞h̺̯̱̰ẹ̼̱̞ ̧̞̗͇͉w͏̥̜̱̤a̼̤̤nt͍̹̻̦͝e͉d̲,̘̤̪̤̮ͅ ̲̬h̹̪̤̙͝e͝ ̝̜͇̝͙̳̠w̜͕͖̣̙ą̥͖n̛̩̭̗̮͇ͅṱ̜͚̤͞e̦̯̩ḍ͙,̵̘͙ ̴̘̼̫͚h͚̤͓̭̘̳e̱̪͔͙͖ ̞̯w̴̞ą̮̱n̬͢t̳͖͎̥͟ed̝͜,̱̘̙̬̲ ̤̲͔h̥̰̠̱̙e͎͚͍͈͈̟ͅ ̹͍̝wan̞̝̜t҉e̫d̖͝ —

He swallowed, keyblade trembling in his hand.

He exhaled, a leg twitching and falling out of his mouth with a muffled thud on desert sand as the Heartless kept their distance. He could feel the gore dribbling down his chin, the bitter taste that coated his throat as he swallowed the heart encapsulated in it.

<I miss them already.> he complained to his samurai, who had put up a perimeter for their master’s oncoming frenzy. <I’ve smelled human fear before, but not for that long,> he explained to them, flicking heavy ink off of his claw. <It’s usually so short. Is that why Larxene chases humans around first, you think?>

A Heartless lunged, Roxas dropping his keyblade in the sand to catch it by its face. He squeezed, the Heartless squirming, desperate to survive. It wanted to live—not. The stupid thing just didn’t want to be hurt.  it didn’t even understand the concept of existing, of what came after hunger and void.

Roxas couldn’t help the smile on his face, wide and jubilant at his realization, his overgrowth shifting in response, tail lashing in delight.

He squeezed the way he could have squeezed Olette, but it was different. She’d have made noise, she’d have bled all over the cobblestone ground. She’d have gasped and choked and probably called for Hayner and Pence. She’d have felt more fragile in his hands.

Hayner would have shown up eventually. He wondered if he’d have been too shocked by his failure to protect Olette to react properly. Would Roxas have calmed down enough to want to watch him run? Would he have just lunged? But Hayner was a fighter, he deserved to fight. He deserved to see what he failed to protect. He deserved to feel her blood cool in his arms as he held her, even if it was just for a moment.

Heartless ink was viscous, weighted, but only mocked the temperature of the area they were in. It wasn’t like blood, so fighting them in warmer climates was a pain. He ducked a fireball. His overgrowth shriveled.

<I feel dizzy.> But that had nothing to do with the heat. His pupils narrowed, expanded, unable to focus or decide how he wanted to process the world.

What would Pence do? Would he wait for them forever? Would he ask Roxas to help find them? Would he be so simultaneously curious and naive to not even consider him? Would he be relieved at the answers once he found them? Roxas wasn’t quite sure if Pence would run or fight or freeze. He hoped he’d run, hoped he’d consider what else he wanted to struggle to survive for.

Struggle. The Heartless under his foot struggled, clawed—popped, splattered all over the damn sand. Roxas’ fangs grazed the heart that left it, a disappointing miss, but there would be others. There would always be other hearts, but not like the three he’d picked out.

They were special.

They were precious.

They couldn’t be eaten like these hearts could. They had to be protected. They were so vulnerable, so easily pulled from their heartspace. He could have done it, just a split second decision and it would have been over.

He whined, agitated by regret and relieved by his indecision.

Roxas hissed, clawing at his overgrowth. The constant shift of drying out and flourishing since he’d checked on Olette was becoming a distraction. He should talk to Marluxia when he was done. He should calm down and then check on Olette—but the thought of seeing her made his overgrowth feel like he was bloating it up with over-watering from his own thoughts.

He didn’t like this, not one bit.

 <You’re experiencing a vivarium echo.> Marluxia explained, Roxas unable to keep his eyes focused, head bobbing as he sat in Marluxia’s room. His room was always flooded with the scent of roses, with an urge to do something drastic like flourish into a supernova and die for everyone’s pleasure. Roxas clenched and unclenched his claws.

<When the body lacks a heart, it will try to reconstruct sensations from before.> Marluxia knelt down so eye level with Roxas, twisting his hand over, palm up. He removed Roxas’ glove, pushing his coat up to expose his wrist. <If you get too close to a human while it’s experiencing strong, overwhelming emotions, your body will try to emulate that. Sometimes, even long after you’re no longer around that human, the sensation will echo in your empty chest and make you believe it’s your own feelings.>

Marluxia snapped an end of his hair off, using it to slice just next to the overgrowth that could be seen pressing against Roxas’ wrist. Roxas skin folded back like a bulb before they were ready, snapping and oozing.

<It’s why it’s important to be aware that we don’t have hearts because our bodies will try to lie to us.> Marluxia coaxed his overgrowth out to coil it around his fingers without snapping it. It flushed, dried out, expanded, shriveled. Marluxia yanked—Roxas jerked forward, Marluxia gripping his shoulder to keep him in place.

 A throbbing tangle coiled with aura hung from the section of overgrowth Marluxia had pruned from him. <You don’t need this feeling—it’s just a lie your body is trying to trick you with. Understand?> Marluxia squeezed Olette’s echo of fear between in his fist with a sickening squelch. The pruned part of his overgrowth lost its aura and turned black, scattering to nothingness once Marluxia opened his palm. He would never get that back, not exactly the way it had been in that moment he experienced it.

Roxas nodded.

Chapter Text

“What do you want?” Hayner asked, nodding to their usual ice cream stand. “It can be whatever, it’s on me today,” he offered, shifting from foot to foot.

“Why would I put an ice cream on you?” Roxas asked, wondering if this was another weird human thing.

“No I mean I’m paying for it. So if you want something fancy or with toppings or whatever, I’ll get it for you,” Hayner clarified.

“Oh. Then I just want a sea salt ice cream then,” Roxas decided.

“Seriously? You could have anything here and that’s what you want? No toppings, nothing in a cone, no candy coating layer? Just the same old same old? Come on, I’m trying to thank you for the other day and you’re making it kind of lackluster…” Hayner groaned, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Thank me? What did I do?”

“You know, with Olette…You got hurt doing that, right?” Hayner tapped his own shoulder for emphasis. “I actually feel bad because I can’t do more and the only thing you want is the same boring thing as always?”

“I didn’t get hurt helping her. That happened before I got there, so you don’t need to. The same thing is fine with me,” Roxas reassured.

“Seriously? What the heck were you doing before you got there, then? Four of the usual please.” Hayner held up four fingers to the woman behind the counter, then got out his wallet.

“Fighting other ones.”

“Fighting ‘shadows’?” Roxas didn’t know why Hayner said shadows so sarcastically. “And that’s like… normal for you?” Hayner glanced over his shoulder as he asked, but couldn’t bring himself to look at Roxas.

“Yeah,” he replied simply.

Hayner turned around, resting his elbows on the counter and scuffing his shoes on the ground. “The other day you…you said someone named Xemnas makes you go out and do that stuff?”

Roxas nodded.

“He your step-dad or something?”

He was their leader, his boss. Roxas didn’t know what a step-dad was, but he’d never heard Xemnas get called that by anyone at the Organization. Roxas shook his head. “I wouldn’t call him that, no.”

Hayner gave him an appraising nod, then seemed to hesitate with his next question. “You get hurt a lot doing that?”

Roxas shrugged.

Something broiled inside of Hayner. Something bitter and angry, but like it had been left there for a long time and Roxas was just now realizing the heat was on. He turned back around to the counter, taking the ice creams and offering one to Roxas. The moment Roxas was given his, that was all the permission he needed to start eating it. He popping the ice cream into his mouth, salty as ever.

Hayner didn’t say anything for half of their walk back to the usual spot, but his steps were heavy, more careless. “You can…you can talk to us, you know?” he mumbled. “Like I get you can’t tell us some stuff or might be scared to but like…we’re your friends. If you need to tell us something, we’re here to listen and do what we can to help, okay? You don’t have to deal with everything yourself.”

Oh. The ice cream tasted sweet now.

“I like talking with you three. It’s nice.” Roxas agreed.

“Yeah, and it can be about serious stuff too, man. Like…like just between you and me—” 

“Are they yelling?” Roxas asked, grabbing for Hayner’s wrist, a quick jerking motion with a vice grip.

“What—?”

Roxas quickly handed Hayner his ice cream and went off ahead.

“Is who ye—Roxas!” Hayner called after him, rushing to keep up.

“—eggshells just because of what happened with Frankie! We’re friends, you’re supposed to trust me!”

“Pence that’s not fair! You don’t get to throw that back in my face when I’m worried about you!”

“Yeah sure, because keeping big secrets like that again is totally you worrying about me !”

“Pence! ” Hayner snapped the second he caught up to Roxas, who was looking back and forth between them. Their aura were clashing, a sore muscle struggle to overpower the others. Pence apparently had won, Olette shrinking back.

“Did you know she got attacked by one of those shadow things?! Were they even shadows or is that another lie?!” Something sharp pierced the air, jagged and cold steel. Lies hurt human hearts.

“Cut it out! ” Hayner snapped, tossing the ice creams onto the couch, a domineering threat from their leader forcing Pence to clamp his mouth shut. The room was heavy. Roxas wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. Hayner sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“…It wasn’t him—from before. It really was a shadow…” Olette mumbled softly, still trying to defend herself. Roxas tried not to focus on the smell of her aura too much.

“You don’t get to use my brother as an excuse not to tell me when something is going on, Olette. He didn’t run away and the last thing I need is people saying you did too…” He shoved past Roxas, wiping at his face.

“Pence, wa—” Hayner called out to him, Roxas already off on Pence’s heels.

“Go away, Hayner!” Pence snapped over his shoulder, not realizing he hadn’t been the one who followed him. His human was upset. Why was he upset? Why was he yelling with Olette? He’d never seen friends yell at each other before. Something happened before he’d met them. They had befores, he had a void. How special it must be to have a past that fueled your heart’s emotions.

“Who’s Frankie?”

Something rolled in Pence like a storm with blinding lightning that overtook everything else. “Roxas go back to the hangout, leave me alone.”

“Why were you mad Olette got attacked by a shadow?”

Everything about Pence was tense, Roxas’ question making him snap back, “I’m not mad Olette got attacked by a shadow, I’m mad she didn’t tell me, okay?! It’s the same as last time!”

“Last time?”

“Yes, last time! Some bad stuff was happening and she didn’t tell me and because she didn’t, I wasn’t there for her and—and I’m tired of being kept in the dark about what’s going on!” Pence stopped short, voice echoing in the alleyway.

Roxas didn’t know what to say, so he just stared at him, waiting.

“…Frankie is my big brother—and he’s a good one. Yeah he liked to be off on his own, but he wouldn’t just run away like everyone keeps saying he did…I’m mad because if something happened to Olette, something I could have helped prevent, and people didn’t look for her the way they aren’t for Frankie…” Pence shook his head, shoulders shaking.

Roxas didn’t know if he should touch him or where. His hand, his shoulder? What if Pence didn’t want to be touched? Roxas closed and opened his hand several times as he debated. Should he at least try to look at Pence’s face as they spoke? They always tried that with him when he went to hide away.

“And if it was those shadow things, then all of the adults would go looking in the wrong places because they think they’re just rumors. This town has too many mysteries people are just content to leave unsolved and I’m not gonna let my brother or my friends be another one.”

Roxas didn’t understand. Pence was angry because he cared? That didn’t make any sense. Caring tended to make the heart feel weightless, full of light. Anger was heavy like oil on fire. How could such conflicting states of emotion reside in one place at the same time? Roxas stepped around to face Pence, pressing a hand to his chest.

“What are you—”

“It’s complicated in there, isn’t it?” Pence looked down at Roxas’ hand, then up to his face, then back to his hand. Pence’s heart gave a heavy thrum in reply. “I didn’t realize how much you were like Hayner…but it makes sense.” He understood similar things tended to gravitate together. 

“Like Hayner?” Pence asked, Roxas noticing that after yelling about his thoughts, his aura had seemed less tense. Words were precarious things that could affect humans very deeply.

“You protect things because they’re precious to you. I didn’t realize you can hurt hearts with lies or by not telling someone the truth…” Roxas pulled his hand away, the sensation of Pence’s heartbeat leaving a residual echo in his overgrowth. An echo. How long would that last? “But I don’t think Olette was trying to hurt you. You’re precious to her too, so she also wants to protect you.”

Pence sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I know, but sometimes being left out hurts more—it makes me feel like they don’t really care one way or another if I’m there or not. Like, it doesn’t matter if I know she was attacked because what can I do, right?”

“Nothing to the shadows.” Roxas agreed.

“Aw, gee, thanks Roxa—”

“—but when people are alone and they’re scared, it’s harder for them to move. So you might not have been able to fight the shadows, but maybe you could have gotten Olette to run. Sometimes, you just need someone else there. You don’t need them to know how to fight or even what it is you’re fighting.”

Pence stared at him, wide-eyed. “So, what you’re saying is not everything is my battle and I shouldn’t take it so personally because they’re not trying to leave me out. Sometimes you just have to be there for your friends.”

Roxas didn’t know where he was getting all of those ideas from, but his aura seemed less like it wasn’t trying to tear itself apart, so he’d let Pence think whatever he wanted.

“You say some weird stuff sometimes, but you’re a really good guy.” Pence sighed, looking up at the sky in defeat. “…I guess I should go back and apologize to Olette, huh?” Pence asked, scratching his cheek.

“I’ve noticed that makes things better, yeah.” Roxas agreed. Pence looked down at Roxas’ hand, grasping the air in hesitation for a reason Roxas didn’t understand. He ended up giving Roxas a pat on the shoulder, hand lingering.

“…Thanks, Roxas.”

Roxas didn’t understand why he didn’t want Pence to take his hand back or why it made his overgrowth tighten ever so slightly.

He followed Pence back to their hangout, hearing Olette sniffling before he saw her. Hayner had his mouth pressed to her forehead, a gesture Roxas didn’t understand the meaning of. Pence cleared his throat, Hayner narrowing his eyes, but not looking his way.

“I, um…I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to say a lot—no, actually I didn’t mean to say any of it.” Pence clarified.

“I know,” Olette croaked. “And I should have told you…” She wiped at her eyes again, Hayner sitting next to her while Pence inched his way into the room, Roxas on his heels. “I just kept thinking you’re already so worried about your brother, it wouldn’t be fair to make this about me again…”

“Olette I’d much rather have you tell me than think you need to go through that alone.” Pence bit his bottom lip, hands clenched at his sides. It was a precarious way to keep himself in check.

“What happened before?” Roxas chimed in over his shoulder, Hayner shooting a glare his way.

“Dude, not the time.” Hayner hissed.

“No, it’s okay.” Olette shook her head. “He deserves to know—since he came to my rescue just like you guys and all,” she tried to joke, desperate to lighten the mood. “I um…my parents…I don’t like spending time at home a lot. I like being out, being with everyone here.” She started, pressing each fingertip from one hand to the other. She was giving herself something to focus on, something to do aside from focus on the memory of her story.

Whatever the memory was, it made Roxas nauseous, bubbling rot left to fester.

“So a few years ago, when I was out, I had someone that followed me around—but he wasn’t like you Roxas. He didn’t want to be friends and he was a lot older than us. He…” Olette struggled, Hayner quietly grasping her hand. Roxas listened to her inhale, listened to her struggle to breathe. He swallowed, forced himself to look away from her and just listen to her talk.

“We didn’t know what he looked like for a long time. I didn’t know if he was the person next to me on the train or the waiter taking my order. I didn’t know if he went to my school or if he lived nearby. I didn’t know anything about him and he knew everything about me and kept trying to take me away because he thought I wasn’t happy.” Her voice broke, Pence unable to keep himself in the doorway. He sat next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“It’s okay, Olette…He gets it, it’s okay…” Pence whispered, but Roxas heard him just fine.

“I don’t get it.” Roxas admitted, Pence snapping his head up to look at him. Hayner stood up, a mishap of emotions flooding him to act. Olette grabbing for his hand. “It’s bad to not know things about people and try to get them to leave a place where they’re unhappy or unsafe?”

“No, it’s…” Hayner started, narrowing his eyes and locking his jaw as he stared at the dead radiator. The room felt heavy, muffled like a blanket of snow.

“It’s bad when you don’t know anything about them . It’s one thing to go with your friends, but you don’t go with people who don’t know if you can trust.” Pence explained, giving a bitter glare to a wall.

How much did they know about him? Was it enough for them to trust him? They knew what he looked like, but not really. They could talk to him, but clearly Hayner felt they really didn’t. What was the difference between the person who had scared Olette this badly and himself? He wanted to take them away too. That person clearly hadn’t, but she was still this scared about it.

That person had hurt her, long after he was gone.

But they were friends, right? They’d agreed, called him that and everything. But Xemnas had misused the word too, hadn’t he? Were they friends when Roxas was keeping so much from them? Could they trust him, when days before, he had wanted so badly just to think about nothing but swallowing their hearts and watching the light fade out of their eyes?

“…Roxas? You okay?” Olette asked softly, both of her friends still holding her to comfort her. Her friends, her protectors. When she’d been scared, he hadn’t put himself around her to protect her, but to remind himself he had a claim on her. “Did I scare you with all of that? I’m sorry. It was a long time ago, you don’t have to worry about it. Come here.” She held her hand out to him, Pence with his arm still around her waist, Hayner with his hand still in hers.

They’d let a monster into their den of mice.

“…I could hurt you too,” he warned. There had to be some sort of echo still left. There had to because his overgrowth hurt. Who’s was it? Her fear of the unknown? Pence’s fear at his loss? Hayner’s at not being enough? That wasn’t his because Nobodies didn’t feel anything.

“You wouldn’t hurt us—stop freaking yourself out.” Hayner grumbled, defeated and riddled with exhaustion.

Maybe Marluxia had missed a piece. Maybe Roxas could get it himself. But if he cut it all out, would he care if they got hurt? Would he be able to restrain himself if something like that with Olette happened again? He’d only stopped because they were precious, because something had echoed around from his heartspace into his headspace and told him that they were worth protecting.

Three meager hearts. That’s what Xemnas had called them. That’s all it took to get him to fall apart. Three meager hearts.

“I don’t want to, but I could,” Roxas admitted, a swelling, an overwatering. He clutched his overgrowth, wondering if he would vanish if he tore the whole thing out. Just because he knew how to play with his food didn’t make him any better than a Heartless. “I don’t want to be like him, I don’t want to scare Olette or you or Pence.” Long after he was gone, long after, long after.

“Hey, it’s ok—”

“Roxas! ”

He ran.

They didn’t know. Lies hurt hearts the same way avoiding the truth could. He hadn’t told them anything. Was avoiding the truth the same as lying? Is that why it hurt just the same? The only thing they knew about him was his name. They didn’t know where he lived, what he was, what he could do, what he really looked like.

What was the difference between himself and a Heartless? An absence of a heart, a desire for one. Roxas just knew how to get closer, how to make them tremble and desire him the way he wanted them. Heartless just took, Nobodies could convince them to give.

The one thing he still didn’t understand was why humans grouped together like that. Out of all of the humans he could have picked from, why them? Why did he have to pick the ones that treated each other as if they were those most precious things in the whole universe? Why did he end up picking those three—because now the echo of those feelings had been ringing for so long he hadn’t even had time to notice it.

He unzipped his coat, creating a corridor near the abandoned mansion like a wound as he stumbled through it. He pressed his fingers into the side of his sternum, pulling with a discordant pop, leaking aura everywhere.

Marluxia had missed something. He had to have missed something. Something had to have worked its way to the core of his overgrowth, he just had to find it and pull it out because Nobodies didn’t feel anything. Nobodies didn’t get scared. They didn’t worry. They didn’t feel anxious.

Nobodies didn’t feel any of that, yet alone over humans and their safety, yet alone when it was his fault.

He was worse than that human that had scared her because he had gotten closer to her. There had been opportunity and he had just decided in that moment not to take it. What if Hayner hadn’t shown up? What if Hayner hadn’t let him leave? What if he really had hurt them?

Roxas letting out a scream, overwhelmed by the physical agony as he pulled at his overgrowth. Atom by atom, he’d ruin himself if he needed to. Where was it? Where was the echo, the lie? He was lying to himself, but he couldn’t be sure about what until the echo they’d left in him was gone completely. Was he their friend; was he just using them? Did he want to protect them; did he want to devour them?

Roxas ranked his claws along his overgrowth, desperate to find any sort of tangle. Where? He shoved his claw back against his spine, forced it up into his throat. Where was it? He gagged, dry heaving his own fingers before yanking them down to searching in his stomach. Where? His vision started to haze over.

Where was the lie that he was telling himself?

Chapter Text

Pence’s house was always loud. There wasn’t a moment of peace, a moment of solitude. You couldn’t pee without the bathroom door opening and someone else doing the pee dance. You couldn’t watch a movie without someone talking over it to ask what was going on. You couldn’t put headphones in to listen to music without someone calling for you.

Pence loved it in a contradictory sort of way. It was annoying, but he felt uneasy without it. Frankie was the kind of older brother that was like a poltergeist. He’d flit through everyone’s rooms, adjusting things, brushing fingers lightly through hair, then vanishing for hours into his room or to work.

He was everyone’s favorite—he was Pence’s favorite. Yes, Frankie was a bit spacey and self kept, but he would never run away. Not with the way he’d let the twins crawl into his bed, not when he’d sit down and ask Penny how her day was and if she needed help with her homework, not when he’d spent whole paychecks on Pence’s camera, not when he stay up hours into the night talking with their mom.

Pence just kept expecting him to walk through the door from his part-time job like it was any other day. He’d come home like nothing was wrong, he’d sit on the far right side of the couch, and he’d watch cop shows while telling Pence he was debating if he wanted to play a video game instead until it was time for bed and never end up playing anything.

Then when everyone was asleep, he’d sit out on the back step and tell Pence everything that happened. He’d tell him about how he fought off the Silver Devils and ran from Shadows and how the Visitor’s weren’t aware of how clever humans were. They didn’t think to lock something up right or they’d not expected such resilience. They’d know not to come back for him because Frankie would be ready and so would Pence. He’d—

“Pence?” Penny asked, standing so close she was touching his knees. 

“Yeah, Pen?” Pence asked, turning his camera off, the photo of Frankie clicking to black.

“When is Frankie coming home? I miss him…” Pence didn’t know what was worse. His siblings thinking Frankie ran away, that they might think he didn’t love them anymore, or that he was taken and might not be coming home. Pence hadn’t even entertained the idea—it was too painful. Frankie loved them. He wouldn’t leave them. 

“He'll be home soon, Pen…” Pence just needed to find him first. Pence promised, tugging her into his lap. He kissed her forehead, burying his nose in his hair. He needed more clues as to where he went, more answers. Once he found those, maybe he’d find Frankie. He’d be exhausted, wounded, but alive. Frankie would barely be able to walk, but Pence would have Hayner and Olette on look out. They’d carefully get Frankie out, away from the Visitors.

If they had to, they’d fight—but they’d live. Pence wouldn’t let his family lose two siblings, let them think they’d been abandoned more than once. So long as Pence kept looking, nothing would unravel. His family that had tightened, bundled together, wouldn’t rip at the seams and fall apart.

“Promise?” Penny wrapped her arms around his neck, nose brushing against his jaw and tickling him.

“Of course,” he reassured, stroking her hair.

“But Toonie and Loonie said that the Visitors took Frankie…If they took him, how is he supposed to come home?” Of course they’d have thought that. That damn nursery rhyme was all over the place lately and the only thing Pence had to go on. It was all rumors and speculations and barely substantial.  Pence had been all over town, tried to talk to people who saw or might have seen them. He’d learned nothing that wasn’t in that nursery rhyme, nothing that wasn’t regurgitated nonsense.

It didn’t tell him what the Visitors did when they took people, where they hid them. But if they were taken, they had to have gone somewhere. They had to be in some place that Pence could get to, break into, find. They had to have his brother in some place he could find.

“Because he’s our brother—I’ll never give up on looking for him. Never ever. I love him.” Pence was unsure if his words were meant to comfort her or to reassure himself in his own lack of answers. He’d never stop looking because if he did, that meant Frankie would be lost forever. Even if the unthinkable happened, Frankie deserved to be found. He deserved to be back home with his family.

Chapter Text

<How does it feel?> Zexion asked, a lingering shadow on the wall. Roxas had his coat pooled around his waist, thick scar tissue like mangled roots running from his collarbone to his hip.

<There's still a hollow ache,> Roxas admitted. <But it doesn't hurt to move anymore. I think I won't compromise anything for the Organization if I went on missions again.> Roxas knew that ultimately, no matter how he worded it, the final decision to be let back out in the field was up to Xemnas.

<Good to hear the original problem involving your lack of thought seems to have been corrected.> Zexion's whisper leaked out from him like smog, lingering long after he said it. Roxas quietly clutched the edge of the bed, but said nothing. He'd done it to himself with his own carelessness and an all-consuming desire for answers. In the end, he found nothing, not even a single twist of his overgrowth that would have contributed to an echo like the one he was searching for. Axel had been the one to find him, Zexion stuck with rehabilitating him. Roxas' eyes flickered over to Xemnas for an answer, careful to keep any sort of eagerness from his face.

Every time Xemnas had entered the room for one of his assessments, Roxas wondered if he had decided that day it would finally time for him to be put down. The silence from him had scared Roxas the most—Xemnas always had something to say. But every time he just watched, observing Roxas struggle with his own inability, then would ask Zexion for a written report before leaving. Roxas owed him an apology.

<…It won't happen again.> He kept eye contact with him as he said it, but kept his head lowered. Xemnas didn't blink.

<I should hope not, considering it almost made you into nothing the first time around.> Roxas understood Zexion's digging to be his way of acknowledgement, a way to ease the tension if Xemnas kept up with his silence. But this time, it was different.

<Zexion, I require a moment to speak with Number XIII alone.> Number XIII, a way to address him without title—undesirables, lackluster—Zexion gave a nod, then melted away into the floor like dry ice.

Xemnas said nothing for an excruciatingly long moment. He approached, placing a hand on Roxas' head, who couldn't stop himself from flinching in anticipation. Roxas hadn't been touched anywhere aside from his injury since Pence had put a hand on his shoulder weeks ago. He didn't realize how badly he missed the contact, eager to lean into it. Xemnas let him, his hand tailing down to rest against the back of his neck. He was going to strangle him—Roxas decided if he was going to turn into nothing, he'd prefer it with physical contact.

<What were you searching for so desperately that you almost tore yourself asunder?> His voice reverberated under Roxas' ribs, a delightful sensation.

<Answers. I messed up…I didn't find them.>

<Then revise your methods and reexamine the data you already have. Everyone here has an important role to play. Do not think you are excluded from this destiny, Roxas.> Roxas. His name. The last person to call his name had been Axel when he found him with his overgrowth sprawled all over a corridor. He caught himself relaxing, forehead pressed to Xemnas' side.

<I won't. I'm sorry.>

<If you feel you need special care or assistance, I've already informed you that you need to just ask. This,> Xemnas bent down, catching Roxas' eyes in a way that forced him to be unable to take in any light in the room aside from the glow of Xemnas' eyes. He placed his hand along the scarring on his chest, a threat to dig into it held in how he poised his hand. <Is never allowed to happen again. You are too important to lose.>

Important. Roxas nodded fervently, grateful for his boundless understanding and patience.

 Names were precarious things, terrible things. He'd heard his own called countless times since he'd left Hayner, Pence, and Olette in the safety of their hideout. He'd never heard so many different inflections used on one word before.

Boundless desperation; the way his name echoed off of alleyways and reverberated against lamplight glass. They called for him, over and over in an attempt to find him, long after the insects had crawled their way into the intoxicating electric heat and died.

Volatile anger; the way Hayner swore and mashed his teeth, a heavy hit to a punching bag that didn’t stifle his rage. Humans thought they could become their caretakers, their parents—but Roxas wasn’t human and he didn’t have a dad, so he didn’t understand why Hayner seemed so interested in telling Roxas he wasn’t going to be like him.

Bottomless despair; it was amazing how thoroughly humans could scour in the right place for what they wanted and yet still find nothing, blindsided by the glaringly obvious distractions of their own hunt. Pence was looking for Visitors, was looking for answers, was looking for his brother and Roxas, failing because he didn’t realize he was searching for one thing rather than multiple things.

Vast hopelessness; a familiarity that was inescapable, a consuming feeling that lingered deep into their porous bodies. Repetition could only do so much before it could be considered idle background noise, the call of his name in her every exhale.

There was longing in every call of his name and Roxas had to remember every time he’d heard someone’s name before then. Was there always a desire tied to a name when it was used—or just when they called his?

Roxas; we want you.

Roxas; we miss you.

“Roxas…”

“Roxas,”

“Roxas.”

—He wished they’d stop calling for him. The world was real and Roxas wasn’t. How could they miss the concept of something so intensely? How could they miss something they never really had?

His overgrowth still had the phantom sensation of being tangled in on itself.

 Roxas quietly stared at the body before him. The Heartless had gotten to it first with their recklessness and selfishness, leaving a fading husk behind. Sometimes in their endeavors, they were so quick about it the body didn’t have time to process. Sometimes it lingered, trying to suffer through its final moments in existence.

It was rare to see a body without a heart that wasn’t a Nobody, but not impossible.

Roxas crouched down in front of it, watching it crack into ether and void, slowly falling apart in the twilight. Its vacant eyes lacked even the haze of a dead fish, the air around it tasting of ozone and the vacuum of the universe like a stopga spell.

If there was no consciousness in the body, did it still process pain? If there was no pain to process, was there no desire to avoid it? Without a desire to exist, was this all that was left? Even if Nobodies could only be compared to Heartless in their desire to avoid injury, didn’t that still mean to some degree, they wanted to live, to aspire to better conditions?

Roxas understood he may not have had a deep desire to exist, but he knew he didn’t want to be like this remnant before him. He quietly pressed his finger to its face, watching its visage crumble before him. How…sad. So that’s what pity felt like. He’d been around his humans’ echoes of it enough to recognize it.

Footsteps.

He stood up, pressing himself into a corridor of darkness where the corners of the wall met. He could hear them so long as he lingered close enough to the entrance. Their hissing, their fear, their familiarity. Hayner, Pence, and Olette couldn’t stop poking around, refusing to go home at a decent hour lately.

<You’re going to get into trouble…> he grumbled, just wanting them to be safe. He’d considered sending samurai, but if Hayner tried to put up a fight, he wouldn’t be able to order them to harm him.

“…eft of him…What if Frankie or Roxas—” A tang in the air, a sour gut churning taste.

“Pence, don’t do that to yourself. Don’t, okay…?” Hayner, struggling with fear like a bruise pressed to wet ice.

“But they’re gone! Vanished like they never existed in the first place! This is the first real clue we got and—and he’s literally falling apart right before our eyes! How do you look for someone when there’s nothing left to find, Hayner?!” Pence’s voice broke, then it was a struggle to breathe.

The air around them was heavy, miasmic. He hadn’t heard from Olette, but he could tell she was there. Go home. It was getting late. Heartless came out more in the dark. Who cared about a husk? They were alive. They were okay. Didn’t they want to survive? Didn’t they? Go home, go home, be safe, go home.

<Go home.> He couldn’t help the whisper, the annoyance ripping from him.

Something among the three of them choked.

“…Did you hear that?” Pence, struggling not to gag on his own words.

“We should go—I don’t like this.” Olette, likely already trying to pull her boys back. If that was the case, maybe he should scare her. Even Hayner would be forced to run away if it meant keeping her and Pence safe. Roxas swallowed, squaring his shoulders and letting his whispers echo in their heads with intent rather than by accident.

He could say whatever he wanted and they wouldn’t understand him anyway. He could be terrible, he could be kind, it wouldn’t make a difference.

<Day 56.> They were poised to listen, tensing like crystal before it hit the ground. <They’re still looking around. They’re still in danger. They’re still…> Roxas quietly pressed his fingers to the thick scaring by his collar bone, the hollow ache remaining.

“Hypnotic whispers.” Olette sounded like she couldn’t breathe, like she was going to choke on the swelling of her own heart. “The rumors said—”

<…humans who are able to hurt me if I don’t hurt them first. You’re just as cunning as Nobodies without even realizing it. At best, you’re something I’m supposed to eat. Go home.>

“Did you do this?!” Pence’s desire to understand was testing the boundaries of his desire to exist.

“Fuck this—no, we’re leaving. Now.” Thankfully, Hayner was being rational.

“But what if the Visitor can tell us what happened to Roxas or Frankie?”

“That thing sound like it really wants to sit down and have an ice cream with us, man!? Move!”

Their footsteps receded, Roxas letting out a sigh. He didn’t need to breathe, yet there was tension in his chest, a noxious build up of monoxide. There was relief in their retreat, in knowing they would be safely cowering in their beds. There was relief in knowing he couldn’t hurt them, guilt in knowing he easily could have. Guilt and sadness were harder for him to discern, but Roxas was pretty sure right now, the echo he was feeling was just…sad.

He missed them. He wanted them too. He also wanted to call their names and feel the desire they did when they called for him. But his desire for their company wasn’t equivalent to their expectations. He wanted too much from them and he didn’t know at what point it was no longer reasonable.

 Roxas wasn’t allowed into their usual place without them. That was the rule, but if Roxas didn’t exist, if he was merely a concept, did it matter if he broke that rule, especially at an hour where they weren’t around to prove it? He sat down on the couch, conscious of how heavy a body, his body, was. He would go back to the castle after this, but he wanted, just for a moment, to just desire something involving them without guilt.

This was a safe desire painted in hues of nostalgia and longing. There was no clicking of fingers on phones, no cold ice cream or condensation covered soda cans, no laughter muffled by overhead trains. But he could pretend light filtered through him like a fine morning mist as they sat there, going about their usual days. He could pretend he and the couch had collected a cocoon of dust and were ready to collapse in on themselves like a fragile cicada shell. He could pretend, for just a moment, that whatever made him terrifying to them didn't exist and yet let him occupy the same space as people he so desperately wanted to be his friends without hurting them. He could pretend existing didn't force him to look for answers explaining it. He could pretend to just exist now and never at all.

The gate squeaked.

"Roxas…?"

A blinding light from a phone caught his eyes, his pupils narrowing. He barely had time to stand, yet alone escape before Olette had thrown herself at him.

"Where were you!? Do you know how worried we were?!" He hadn't expected her out of the three of them to be the one to grip his jacket so tightly her knuckles lost color. "Do you know how selfish that was of you?!"

"Olette—" Hayner grabbed for her hands, trying to separate her from Roxas. Pence lingered in the doorway, Roxas could smell his cavernous anticipation with weighted dread lingering just above it.

"To just—just, just run off like that?!"

"Olette, let him go—"

She shrieked, thrusting him away so hard she hit herself and forced him back down onto the couch. She let out another shriek, her voice bursting like a frozen pipe. Hayner grabbed for her hands, but his eyes hadn't left Roxas, wide and wild like an animal caught in a trap.

"It's…It's you right? Really you?" Pence asked, taking a hesitant step forward.

Roxas looked between the three of them, their reactions not at all anything he'd have anticipated. He expected a flurry of eager questions from Pence, the anger to be from Hayner and not Olette, and for her to be almost happy to see him. He wondered if he knew them just as little as they knew him, despite all of his watching.

He just stared.

"…Say something." Hayner begged, making Roxas flinch. His voice had been small, shaken like a blooded pelt in a storm. Hayner never sounded like that. He—Hayner was their leader, their protector, their guardian. Hayner wasn't supposed to get upset, not around them. Hayner wasn't supposed to be vulnerable because if he was, that meant Roxas couldn't be sure of their safety. Hayner was supposed to be the one to keep them safe from Roxas. Hayner couldn't be the first one to break like that, not over him.

What was Roxas supposed to say to that?

Pence abandoned his place in the doorway, tossing his phone onto the couch to wrap his arms around him. "Don't run away like that ever again…We were so scared something happened to you." Pence was warm, his grip a comfort Roxas kept forgetting he craved. The couch dipped next to him, Hayner locking an arm around his head and pressing him to his shoulder.

"Don't think I'm not still mad at you." Olette's voice trembled, but she leaned over Pence to lock her arms around him all the same.

Why? Why were they scared for him? He was one of the things that could hurt them. Roxas was going to suffocate. Could he suffocate if he didn't need to breathe? Then what was the awful swelling in his chest? He exhaled, hoping to relieve the pressure, but it stuck to his ribs like tar. He inhaled, exhaled again, a worse result with a shorter breath. They squeezed him and Roxas was sure he was going to vanish from existence forever. He exhaled, struggling to ask why. Why care, why worry, why keep looking? All airy noises, all gasping.

His eyes welled up.

"It's okay…it's okay, Roxas. We're right here, it's okay." Hayner mumbled against his temple. Roxas wanted to shrivel up on himself and hide away forever. He tried to make himself small, tried to hide against Pence and underneath Olette and against Hayner. He lied—if he was going to vanish, he wanted it to be like this instead. They were here, right here in such a dangerous place. He was like their clocktower and they didn't even know it. One misstep, one flicker of fear too delectable to deny, and it would be over.

"I don't wanna hurt you." He choked, sure his voice warbled between whispers and words.

"Roxas you're not gonna hurt us, it's okay." Pence reassured, rubbing at his back. Something about the pressure, the contact, made Roxas choke, his face oozing water everywhere like a human. He felt absurd. He tried to hide his face as far against Hayner's side as best as he could.

"You did hurt us though." Olette reminded.

Roxas jerked at the accusation.

"Olette—!" Hayner tried to stop her. 

"He did!" she insisted. "We're your friends, Roxas! You don't scare us like that by letting us think something happened to you! We thought you got taken away!" Her voice was shrill, the light from Pence's phone casting long shadows.

She thought he had ended up like she almost did. Did she think about it often—how she was almost taken away from her friends and how lonely that would have been? Was she worried he was lonely? It must have been jarring to think of how it felt to be the one left behind, not knowing. Pence already knew what it was like to be left behind, which is why he seemed to not want to stop her from speaking like Hayner did. Roxas was so worried about being the person who took them away he hadn't considered the alternative—he'd abandoned them.

That was why she was angry. That was why Pence was quiet. Hayner had likely never been in a position with them where he didn't already know how they were going to react, so it left him with damage control. Roxas was so interested in their feelings, but hadn't really bothered to consider that he could affect them. Was that what it was to exist—to affect the hearts around you? Was how he interacted with hearts what set Nobodies apart from husks and Heartless and humans?

"…But you said you can't be friends with someone you can't trust." He reminded, using his coat sleeve to wipe at his eyes. "I can't be your friend, Olette. So you don't have to worry about me. So if you don't have to worry, you'll be okay now—right?" He didn't want to affect them, not like this. If that was the case, he should have just left them alone. 

"That's not how that works…" Hayner grumbled, trying to pry Roxas out from underneath him, Roxas trying to bury himself further. "…You promised. You're our friend, no going back on your word." Pence nodded in agreement, moving back just enough to be able to look at Roxas when he spoke.

"But I—"

"No. You don't get to try to pick how we feel. We like you and because we like you—that's why we were worried about you." Hayner gave up, his arm wrapped around Roxas' middle instead.

"So then stop liking me." Roxas demanded, but understood sometimes requests worked better. "…Please."

"You don't just stop liking someone, feelings don't work like that."

"Well why not?" Roxas snapped, exacerbated. "Why can't you just take them out and make them go away like I'm supposed to be able to?" Supposed to. So far he was failing miserably. 

Olette recoiled, just for a moment. "Roxas—who told you that?"

"Xemnas and Marluxia." He yanked on the sides of his hood, tugging his legs up underneath himself, Pence shifting to sit next to him.

Hayner gave a bitter, hissing scoff. "Let's get one thing straight—look at me. Roxas." He grabbed for his hands, holding them down by his lap. "Nobody can just make feelings go away."

"I'm a Nobody, I can!" he admitted in his frustration.

"You're not a nobody, you're important to us you idiot, so shut up and listen!" Hayner snapped.

Important. The world drowned out how Hayner ignored him telling them the truth. Roxas locked his jaw.

"Whatever dumb crap you got put in your head is bull, okay? Do you want to be friends with us?"

Roxas paused. He nodded.

"Do you want to hurt us?"

Roxas paused. "What if I can't help it?"

"That's not what I asked you. Do you want to hurt us?"

 He shook his head.

"Do you want us to trust you?"

He nodded so quickly his neck hurt.

"Okay then. Unless we have a reason, a real reason we decide on for ourselves…we trust you, okay? Sometimes you hurt people you care about and you don't mean to, that doesn't mean we stop liking you altogether. If you wanna be friends with us, be our friend, dummy. We'll figure out the rest later."

Roxas felt the tension in his jaw ease. But they didn't know what he was. It couldn't be that simple. It couldn't…but human hearts could affect things. That was how they lived. They could even affect Nobodies and it wasn't just to retaliate against them like Larxene had said. Roxas reached up and pressed his fingers to Hayner's mouth.

"What are you—?"

"Words…why do people say they come from the heart when they come through the mouth?" His heart. His precious, enigmatic heart. He wanted to protect all of them so badly.

Hayner swatted Roxas' hand away in embarrassment, Pence gave him a heavy pat on the thigh. "You think too much, Roxas."

"But don't run off again like that, we mean it." Olette quipped, reaching over to push back his hood. She brushed his hair out of his face, knuckles brushing his cheek, thumb brushing away tears he'd missed. Roxas unsure why she was being so gentle with him if she was still angry. Did being an important friend mean she had to treat him as if he were precious too, or was he precious because they wanted him as their friend?

"…Why are you even here?" he blurted out, grasping her hand in his. "It's late, you should be home where it's safe."

Olette quietly pulled her hand away, shrinking in on herself. She was quiet for a moment, holding her own arms. "Sometimes it…sometimes it's safer to be out in the dark with friends than at home."

"Sleepover." Hayner grunted, as if it were obvious.

"Sleepover?" Roxas parroted.

"Yeah. It's when you spend a night at a friend's place instead of your own. Instead of going to someone's house though, we decided to come here, which is like all of our places'." Pence nodded towards the bags in the doorway, stuffed with clothes and snacks. "You can sleepover too." he added.

"You just sleep?"

"You can. Or talk, play games—I brought the projector. We were gonna watch a movie."

Roxas didn't know what a projector or a movie was, but he didn't want to leave yet. If they didn't know anything, they wouldn't compromise the Organization. If they didn't compromise the Organization, they could be friends. Important friends. He could still be with them, even if he wasn't real.

"Am I in trouble because I came in here without any of you? If I'm not in trouble, can I stay?" He deferred to Hayner.

They all exchanged a look, an understanding Roxas was still having trouble with.

"Help me lay out some blankets on the floor?" Olette asked, grabbing for his hand to tug him up.

"I'm gonna set up the projector." Pence announced, slipping off of the couch.

"Dude, you're not in—just forget what I said. You can come in whenever. It's our hangout spot." He gestured between them with his fingers. Ours. Including him. The mice still insisted on letting the monster into their den, but this felt like less of an intrusion and more of acceptance, of placing a warning for anything outside. Roxas couldn't take his eyes off of Hayner as Olette handed him an end of a large blanket.

Ours. To share. Roxas tried to think of any time he'd ever had something to share. The only thing that came to mind was food and memories with them. He wanted to share more things, but wasn't sure if he had anything to give them just yet. 

Chapter Text

Roxas decided he liked sleepovers.

He liked the sleeping the best because they'd eventually all collected around him, pressed up against him, were so ensured in their friendship that they let themselves become unconscious around him. Pence was pressed to his back, spine to sternum. Olette had locked her fingers in his, forehead to collarbone. Hayner had thrown his arm around the both of them, arm buried underneath her. If Roxas could have gotten any closer at all, he would have. He'd have taken roost up in their ribs, stolen places away in their soft marrow. They were warm and the weight from their bodies was a comfort, a relief.

He wanted to hook his tail around Pence, but that would require he adjust his body, which might wake them up between the shifting and snapping of changing his form. But he wanted to be completely encompassed by them, swallowed from his existence into theirs. If only human forms had more limbs to—

"I have legs…!" He whispered in awed realization. He hooked his leg behind him, locking it around Pence's waist, then shoved his other out to be between Hayner's. Olette hummed in her sleep, fingers twitching around his. He nestled closer to her, burying his nose in her hair.

He hadn't gone back to the castle yet, but he didn't want to go report in—he wanted to stay like this. The best thing that would happen was Xemnas would never come after him and he'd be able to hide amongst his sleeping humans forever. The worst was that they'd be killed because of how much of a distraction they'd grown into. The most realistic is that he'd have someone get sent after him and he'd be scolded, but if it kept up they might threaten Hayner, Pence, and Olette.

He gently pried himself out of Olette's hand, pulled his legs back from the boys. He sat up, coat clinking, disturbing their comfort of dreams. What if they thought he ran away again because he didn't tell them he was leaving? They'd be so upset with him.

"…Hayner," he whispered, reaching over to shake his shoulder. Hayner grunted, eyes moving beneath their lids. "Hayner, I have to go." Roxas told him.

"Where ya goin'?" Hayner slurred, drunk on dreamscapes.

"I have to go back or I'll get in trouble, but I'm not running away again. So don't let Olette or Pence get angry, please?" Hayner rubbed at his eye, forcing the other open to stare at Roxas. "…Please?" He requested again.

"Come back, okay? Don't make us miss you." Hayner mumbled.

"When will you start to miss me? How will I know when to come back?" Roxas couldn't help but hover, the chain from his coat brushing Hayner's shoulder.

"Jeeze, man, I dunno. Didn't you miss us at all when you were gone? Come back when you start to miss us too."

"But I missed you all the second I left." Roxas would never be able to go back if that was the case. Hayner snorted, throwing his arm over his eyes to hide. Olette turned over in her sleep to press up against him.

"Then do whatever you gotta do then come back." He peered out from underneath his arm, Roxas giving him a nod.

"Okay." Roxas stared at him, taking in the respite of his existence. Did the three of them know how much he wanted to protect them? How badly he craved their company and comfort? He wanted to lay back down and watch another movie, to listen to their breathing and blood and hearts and words.

Hayner reached a hand up, fingers brushing his cheek. "You okay? What cha thinkin' about?"

"How I don't want to leave," he admitted softly.

"You can always come back, Roxas—always."

"Do you promise?"

"I promise."

 Roxas found kinship in the fact he heard Luxord more than saw him. It was a way to make himself known without requiring worldly amenities like communication. He tended to say his cryptic piece, then be on his way, but Roxas enjoyed his forewarning of a conversation more than how the majority of the Organization went about it.

<They’re rather interesting, but only in the regard that you find them as such,> he mused, slipping between the cracks of the cobblestone walkway next to him, thin as a playing card.

<They’re mine,> Roxas reminded.

<Oh, I’m plenty aware. It’s everyone else who is also becoming rather aware as well. It doesn’t go unnoticed when one of us who is a creature of habit doesn’t stick to those habits—you never reported in, little one.> Luxord tutted, waving a finger at him—he turned sideways and vanished into the shadow of a lampost.

<Is Xemnas going to punish me for it—or Saix?>

<Who’s to say but those who make the rules? I’ve simply come to intercept your return with an offer of a wager. You see I hear some things are true and I hear some aren’t, but it’s rather important to see them for yourself rather than just listening to others, don’t you think?> Luxord slipped out from between a crack in a barrel, looming like a second shadow behind Roxas.

<I guess so.> Roxas paused at a familiar corridor, a shadowed place the rays of twilight could never seem to reach because of the set of the building.

<You are in a unique position here in this town, Roxas. I would like to see how much they come to welcome you and if that relationship can be maintained—it would do well in other worlds if it can. Do you think it’s possible for us to blend in more thoroughly, more naturally than skulking around corridors and avoiding them if we interact with their world using their rules, or would it pose too much of a risk?>

<So I’m your project?> Roxas asked, turning to face his whisper better.

<You? Oh no, you thoroughly belong to Xemnas and I in no way mean to intercede. I just need to know where the cards fall in the end. What do you say?> Luxord offered his hand with a flickering noise of a coin being tossed.

<So you just want to know if I get caught or get in trouble? Not even as a Nobody, but as someone not from here?> Roxas squared his shoulders and didn’t look down at Luxord’s hand.

<Precisely. Toe the line in the sand and see how far you can go for me, won’t you?>

Roxas glanced down at his hand, considering. He was already doing it anyway, but agreeing to this would mean he’d have to tell someone about it. That in and of itself could pose a risk because it meant others might get involved. His friends were too precious to him to make silly bets with Luxord over. Luxord didn’t care about them, he cared about how the rules of each world affected their inhabitants.

<…No thanks.>

<No, but you’ll continue to see them?>

<They’re mine, why wouldn’t I?>

Luxord’s hand coiled back in itself like origami. <Sometimes the winning bet requires a fold, doesn’t it? I look forward to seeing your hand in the end.>

 “Dude, it’s an orange. Are you serious?” Hayner asked, Roxas staring down at the fruit, then up at him.

“Am I allowed to blast Mr. Brightside every time something like this happens?” Pence asked, tossing the rind of his into the trash, then tossing the piece of fruit up into the air to catch it in his mouth.

“Legally.” Olette chirped, an implication behind the word, the hose filling the bucket at her feet.

Roxas quietly opened his mouth over his hand, letting the peel of chunk of fruit fall into it. “You eat it, right?” He clarified, unsure of what he’d done wrong.

“Not the peel! You take that off and eat the stuff on the inside. What the hell, man. I don’t even want to know why you’ve never eaten an orange, it’s just gonna give me an ulcer.” Hayner groaned. “Take off your gloves and peel it—hell, take your whole coat off. Just looking at you is giving me a heat rash.”

“I don’t feel warm though.” Roxas stared at his gloves, then glanced over at Olette’s hand. Five fingers, a nail bed, a gradient of color because of blood flow, four—no, three knuckles per finger, two on the thumb.

“You anemic?” Pence asked around a mouthful of fruit.

Roxas took his glove off, carefully placing it on his lap, then the other. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s where your body doesn’t have enough red blood cells, so your body doesn’t get the oxygen you need.” Roxas watched Hayner tear into his orange, then looked down at his, then back at Hayner. “It can make you tired all of the time and you’re cold. There’s other stuff, but those are the main ones. You know, after saying it out loud, you might be anemic Rox.”

“Here, like this,” Olette held another one of hers oranges out in front of him, pressing her nail into the fruit closer to where the stem had been. Roxas copied her, humming in interest at how easily it peeled back. “You can eat the vein-y looking stuff if you want, but you don’t have to. You do have to take the seeds out though.” She explained, pulling a piece out and pressing the seeds out of it and into the trash.

Roxas copied her, then popped the piece of fruit into his mouth. It was acidic, but not bitter like the rind had been. “S’good,” he decided.

He had noticed humans liked to share food—would it be weird to get them food from another world? Were there foods in this world that were harder to get, but would be easier to come by in another world? He wanted to give them things, to share things with them the way they kept doing for him and that seemed easy enough to look into. Oranges seemed pretty common and he didn’t know about those, so it might be harder than he thought. He’d seen some humans also getting sick after eating certain foods, so maybe not.

“Baby’s first orange.” Pence cheered, Hayner snorting and snatching the hose to spray him with.

“Aw, Hayner!”

Olette laughed at them, Roxas aware of how the corners of his mouth pulled up, but unable to stop the smile even if he wanted to. He put another piece of fruit into his mouth, wondering if he was allowed to mock their expressions like that. It was fake, he wasn’t real, yet he affected them anyway. Was it fair to make them genuinely feel things when they weren’t able to do the same for him, when all he did was take from their echoes?

“Gimme the—!”

Roxas dropped off of the couch, down on the floor and head tipped back to watch it arc across the spot where he’d been. Olette yelped as she got sprayed with water.

“Duuude! Ninja moves!” Pence cheered, the water pooling at Hayner’s feet. There was something there, unease, but it seemed to writhe around pity like a snake with a bird.

“I don’t have ninja,” Roxas reminded, sitting up and putting himself back on the couch next to Olette.

“You’re right—sleeper agent.” Hayner decided.

“You’re wet.” Roxas told Olette, brushing a water droplet from her cheek. She jerked, then let out a laugh as she grabbed for his hands.

“Oh my gosh, your hands are freezing…! Are you always this cold? No wonder you keep your coat on on all the time.” She held his hand between hers, Roxas feeling an unusual flood in his overgrowth.

Hands were sensitive with lots of nerve endings, but he’d never really touched anything. He’d held things, moved things, but touch, tactile touch from another living thing—she was so warm, the light from her heart reaching even her fingertips. Were Pence and Hayner like that too? Were there traces of their hearts all over their bodies, not just in their chests? Did it flood and linger like his overgrowth?

Roxas reached over, grabbing for Hayner’s hand and almost sliding off of the couch in his eagerness. Light from their hearts, warmth from that light! He took his hand from Olette’s, grabbing for Pence’s, the same delightful sensation greeting him. Their hearts left traces all over their bodies! That was amazing! They were full of vitality and life! He’d never realized that before!

“You’re warm!” he noted in delight.

The three of them shared another look, another conversation he wasn’t privy to, but Hayner and Pence didn’t pull their hands away.

“Yeah, Rox. Kind of why we’re trying to sit in some ice water.” Pence reminded, gesturing to the small flood.

“No, no! I mean like—like you’re you, I can feel it! The thing that makes you you!” The combination of light, of their heart, of their auras, all a sensory delight he couldn’t put into words. He couldn’t help but squeeze their hands, pressing them to his mouth the way he had with Olette’s laugh. “I didn’t realize I could feel that.”

Hayner looked at Olette, who just shrugged. “Roxas, bud, we’ve got no idea what you’re going on about,” he explained with a chuckle.

“But you’re happy to hold our hands, right? That’s just what it is?” Olette asked, putting her chin on his shoulder. He felt like he was going to burst all over the room! Helium and hydrogen, gone into the ceiling! He gave a nod, trying to keep his overgrowth from sprawling out inside of him in a way they’d see.

It collected in his throat, Roxas letting out an exhale to try to relieve some of the sprawling. He couldn’t stop the noise that had welled up in his chest from settling in his throat, from escaping him.

“Dude!” Olette threw her hands around his front, pressing them to his chest. “Are you purring?”

“Get the hell out, how are you doing that?” Pence asked, using his free hand to also place it on Roxas’ chest. Was the noise that unusual for humans?

“No way, he’s pranking us.” Hayner insisted, but he had tensed up and desire had stuck to his aura while he stared at Roxas’ chest.

“Can you not do that?” he asked the three of them, unsure if it was unusual enough to be stopped, but they had been curious rather than scared.

“You say it like you’ve got more weird stuff you can do we should know about.” Pence teased, giving him a smile so wide it made his eyes narrow.

Roxas stopped purring. The hose still trickled water onto the floor. Olette’s hands pressed to his chest, so close to his scar, felt like a threat.

Hayner gave his hand a squeeze. “He’s kidding, ignore him. Even if you could, you don’t have to tell us or show us.” It wasn’t a requirement of their friendship. Roxas relaxed his shoulders.

“Yeah, it’s okay. I’ve just never heard someone imitate a cat so well! That was really good, Roxas!” She praised, folding her hands over his chest. “Oh—Hayner, show Roxas the weird thing you can do with your elbow!”

“I’m not showing him the elbow thing! Besides, Pence is the one who made him embarrassed, he should show him the tongue thing if anyone’s gonna be showing off obscure talents!” Hayner gestured to Pence with the hand he still had locked in Roxas’.

“Fiiine!” Pence groaned. He opened his mouth, tongue somehow folded like a half open clam held sideways. Roxas immediately caught himself sticking his tongue out to try to copy him, not understanding what part of his tongue went where to do that. He could feel Olette’s laughter press against his spine, reverberating up to his cheekbones.

They just thought it was a quirk, an unusual thing only certain humans could do just because. That made him feel relieved, made him feel guilty. They wanted answers so badly that sometimes they went out of their way to make their own. A lack of truth could hurt them the same as a lie, but humans were content with any sort of answer. Roxas was leaving them with whatever scraps they could rationalize, but maybe that made it easier to deal with the unknown. There was so much of it compared to what they knew it might make them despair otherwise. Roxas decided if what they felt because of him was a lie anyway, it may as well have been a good feeling.

He decided if his feelings weren’t real either, if it didn’t matter, then he’d much rather experience echoes of their happiness too.

Chapter Text

When Roxas was told his friends were going to go into the sewers, he had preemptively cleared it of all Heartless and then still had a handful of dusks on standby. They told him they were looking for clues—clues to Shadows, Silver Devils, Visitors. He didn’t understand what the point of them going into the sewers to look for clues was. There was nothing much of note down there—he’d know.

Pence insisted he knew the way, but Roxas found his memory had served him better than Pence’s makeshift map. That gate was closed, that was a deadend, that entrance came out closer to the market than the clocktower. Still, he let Pence lead, unsure of what it was they would have even hoped to find.

“I know what Shadows are, but what are Silver Devils and Visitors?” Roxas asked, knowing they were going to walk in a circle if they followed Pence this way, but he didn’t stop him.

“You’ve really never seen them around or heard the creepy nursery rhymes and all that?” Pence paused, glancing down at his notebook, looking up at a wall, then down at his notebook.

“This part loops back into here.” Roxas pointed to a spot on his drawing, then another part he’d drawn too far over. “How do I know if I’ve seen them if I don’t know what they are?”

“Fair point. Hayner, sing the song!” Pence bellowed, Hayner’s loud groan echoing off of the walls.

“Why do I gotta do it? Can’t I just say it?”

“No, you gotta sing it! It’s not the same if you don’t sing it!” Olette insisted, Roxas glancing back and forth between them. Pence had paused to redraw part of his map, Roxas still hovering over his shoulder.

“But it’s so dorky! Who even let Seifer’s gang come up with that, anyway? It’s gonna give me the heebies singing it down here…” Hayner grumbled, glaring at a floodlight.

“Hey man, it makes Penny get home on time, I’ll take it.” Pence wiped eraser shavings onto the ground, sketching new lines. Hayner sucked in a breath, exhaling with defeat.

“Wearing cloaks of shadow

Eyes that shine like moon-glow

Whisper words with siren song

They'll lure you where you don't belong

Wear the faces of your kin

Then rip apart your bones and skin

Cover your eyes believe their lies

They'll see you on the other side

Beg them your soul to keep

But no one hear to hear you weep.”

His voice had a vibrato to it that wasn’t controlled and he sounded like he was singing in a higher register than was comfortable. Roxas wondered if it was hard to sing—he never tried.

“...Okay but, what do they look like? What do they even do?” Roxas asked, still as lost as before. Perhaps this was what it was like for them when he started talking about things they didn’t understand. They carried on following Pence.

“Well you’ve seen the Shadows. Silver Devils are narrow and, well, silver—kind of like walking knives. Visitors are harder, but that’s because the only time anyone has ever seen them and not gotten caught is at night—we think they’re nocturnal.” Pence explained, looking up at an exit before glancing down at his map. He started erasing again.

“People have said they’ve seen weird eyes glowing in the dark.” Olette added, Hayner glancing over his shoulder just as a dusk slipped out of view. Roxas hissed a whisper at the dusk, a threat only it could hear.

<Apologies, my liege. It won’t happen again.>

“But we’re trying to figure out what’s what.” Pence continued to explain. “Like, we know there’s three separate entities in town, but no one seems to know any more than that. The Shadows and Visitors both have glowing eyes, but Silver Devils and Visitors also have that weird hypnotic thing going on. We think they’re all working together, but we can’t be sure without more information.”

“Hypnotic?”

“You know how people have been going missing?” Olette reminded softly, Pence unfinished with his correction, but already set on walking away from her leading question. Roxas nodded. “We think the Shadows, Silver Devils, and Visitors are all taking them away or…Or there was this person we saw one time…”

“Was practically turning to dust right before our eyes…” Hayner mumbled, rubbing at the gooseflesh on his arms.

“Then, we heard a Visitor.” Pence’s aura rolled and coiled with longing and loss, pencil gripped in his hand.

“You heard one?” Roxas asked in confusion. If this was about the husk, then that had been him—but he wasn’t a Visitor, he was a Nobody.

“Yeah! One of the ways they take people away is by hypnotizing them with their weird voices!” Olette explained, hands clenched for her eager explanation. Knowing what to expect with their reactions to whispers wasn’t that sort of manipulation. He couldn’t tell them that, but he was quite sure the drawn face he was making was enough to voice his objections.

“So the Shadows, Silver Devils, and Visitors are all different parts of the same group taking people away?” But if he was a Visitor, then they didn’t know they were enemies with the Shadows. But then what were Silver De—oh. Dusks. Right. To humans, to the people who were all hurt by different things, the us versus them mentality was understandable. They could categorize, but they still understood there was a gaping divide between them.

“Exactly. If we can find out why, maybe…maybe not everyone is really gone forever like that person we saw. Maybe they keep some people—”

Roxas had to press his hand to his chest to keep his overgrowth still.

“—who we can still find.”

“What if they don’t keep people? What happens when you find a Visitor and they tell you the people you’re looking for aren’t coming back?” Once the heart was gone, it was gone. Pence had lost someone important to him, which made it hard to stop looking. Roxas couldn’t get them to stop looking for him and they hadn’t even known him that long, yet alone however long he’d known his brother.

“Then we make ‘em pay.” Hayner cut in, punching his fist into his hand.

“But no one has seen them ever again.” Roxas reminded, desperate to try to make them see reason without telling on himself.

“Yeah, individually like cowards! That means they can’t get a group of people at once they’re weak.”

“And what if they’re not? What if they’re just being smart to avoid being caught, Hayner? What do you do then—when you’ve got a Visitor all alone and no one is there to help you? What happens if I can’t get to you? ” Roxas snarled, the lights flickering as his aura plastered up against the walls, wanting them to be scared. If they were scared, they’d find a place that was safe.

“Roxas, hey relax…” Olette gently placed a hand on his shoulder, worry whittled into her features to hide the chipping from unease. They weren’t scared enough. They’d gotten too close to the edge of another clocktower to realize it. All he needed to do was give a small push, but he didn’t need to let them hit the ground.

“No, I want to know!” He snapped, yanking away from her, Olette pressing her hand to her chest as if he’d burned her. “What happens if something happens to you three because you can’t just let it go? What happens when you find something that doesn’t want to be found?”

“So you want us to sit here and do nothing while more people disappear?” Pence snapped, voice echoing on the tail end of Roxas’, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off of the lights and he had taken a step back from him.

“I want you to be safe! You snooping around in sewers all alone isn’t safe and it’s not helping! It’s—it’s—!” It was just like when he abandoned them, selfish, self serving. “You’re going to get hurt over nothing!” There had been nothing in his overgrowth. There had been nothing wrong with him. He gripped at the front of his coat, a hand in his hair. “Do you want to be hurt over nothing!? Because that’s what this is!”

There was trembling among their hearts, soft and pallid as his aura strained against theirs.

<My liege, are we to remain on standby?> The dusks whispered, practically salivating in wait.

<Stick to your orders!> They were his. They were his humans, he’d turn the dusks to nothing first.

<Understood.>

“…Roxas?” Hayner, hesitantly reaching for him. His hand paused, hovering over thick, gnarled skin by his collarbone that’d he’d exposed in his distress. Roxas watched his eyes study the scar, felt his aura twist in on itself like draining an acidic rag threatening to tear.

“…You get hurt when you try to get involved with things that aren’t yours to know about. Xemnas said so.” Roxas adjusted his coat, pulling away before Hayner could decide if he wanted to touch him or not, his aura less palpable and receding away from the lights. Roxas wanted to tell them, wanted to explain. The only thing he could do was tell them to stop, make them scared to pursue that idea any further. “You’re important to me. Please don’t be reckless…”

“People going missing isn’t nothing…” Pence grumbled, but there was undeniable defeat in his voice. His eyes flickered back over to the lights.

“You’re just worried about us, right?” Olette clarified, voice barely reaching any of them. She reached for his hand, taking it in hers and squeezing it. She studied it as if looking for a script, the right thing to say, the perfect phrase to wrap this up and make them alright again.

“Of course I’m worried…” The air in the sewer felt dank, felt like mold had left its spores everywhere and he was rotting away with it. The lights gave an electrum hum of desperation, one push from bursting their bulbs.

None of them said anything for a long time, but Roxas could feel each of them working through different arrays of emotions. Olette was easy to scare, desperate to try to calm herself down using any anchor she could. Hayner was rattled, trying to work through his confusion and realism. But Pence…Pence still wasn’t scared enough. Pence was angry, Pence wanted to know what it felt like to fall off that clocktower more than he realized that at some point he would need to land.

Roxas felt guilty that his immediate thought for a solution was to try to scare Pence. But what then when he tried and Pence didn’t back down? What then, if he had to keep up the charade and hurt him to get him to stop? What then, when he finally got answers he wanted but kept looking, when he wasn’t satisfied?

The answer then wasn’t to scare him, but to satisfy whatever desire it was his heart had. 

“…Let’s just go back for today—it’s getting late.” Hayner mumbled, placing a hand on Pence’s back. Pence heaved a sigh through his nose, biting his bottom lip. “Please? Just for now?” Roxas didn’t want just for now, he wanted Pence to stop completely—but Hayner knew how to handle this better than he did. Maybe handling them was a collection of just for now moments.

“Fine.” Pence bit out, but he let Hayner hold his hand until they reached an exit.

<Objective complete, my liege?> The dusks whispered at his receding back. Hayner glanced over his shoulder, watching Roxas walk out with Olette. He’d been perceptive the entire time, aware the dusks were present, even if he didn’t outright see anything.

<No, new objective. I don’t want them back down here. Figure out a way to keep the shutters locked at all times and report back.> Hayner lingered, placing a hand on Olette’s back to signal for her to walk ahead while he put an arm out in front of Roxas.

<Understood.>

“I want to get them home first, but I wanna talk before you go about what happened back there—alone.”

Roxas gave him a simple nod. “Okay.” Hayner lowered his arm, allowing them both to catch up.

 A hazy purple bruising colored the sky, the station riddled with the sound of crickets. Hayner bought them two sodas out of a vending machine, hoisting himself up onto the ledge Roxas leaned against. The can hissed, Hayner pressing it to his mouth, but not sipping it. Roxas opened his own, folding his hands around it.

“So,” Hayner started, Roxas letting his gaze shift up to him. “I’ve been thinking about how to say this for a while now—since before you left and scared the hell out of us, actually. So…” He swallowed, pressing his teeth to the rim of the can. Roxas gave him a moment, feeling his aura shift and subside, flitting in and out of one emotion and the next.

“…One of the reasons Pence is so hung up on finding these things is because of me. When I was a kid,” Hayner hadn’t realized the way he tensed up, the way his grip tightened around the can, the way his shoulders pulled in, but Roxas had. “My mom was taken away the same way Pence’s brother was—by those things.” Hayner paused, sipping his soda, stifling feelings under carbonation.

Roxas realized he was often put in the precarious situation of comforting his friends, but was still horrendous at it. He scooted closer, arm pressed to Hayner’s. There was a swelling in his aura like a tide, commiserated shorelines before the fear came back.

“I told everyone I don’t remember what happened…but I lied, Roxas. Not even Pence and Olette know that. I saw those things and what they did to my mom and he’s out there looking for answers for us that I already have.”

Hayner had seen the way people vanish like thin shards of crystal glass into the ether, never to be seen again. Worse, he’d seen the way their bodies seize up, the way they flood with desperation and adrenaline and the squelch as their hearts were swallowed while still throbbing in their chest. He saw the way their bodies still moved, marionettes for their own desire to continue to exist.

“Why are you telling me that—why not tell Pence? He might stop looking once he knows.” Hearing it from Hayner would be different than hearing it from Roxas.

“I’m telling you because…because when that thing happened with Olette and you said you fought those Shadows…you meant that, didn’t you?” Hayner put his soda down next to him, looking at Roxas with a kind of desperate expectation that made him want to shrink away.

Roxas nodded.

“Is that how you got that?” Hayner tapped on his own collarbone, Roxas pressing a hand to his coat, but it was still covered, unseen.

“No that’s…that wasn’t them.” He didn’t need to tell Hayner he’d done that to himself, but Hayner was looking for answers and he’d find them even if he had to cobble them together himself.

“But it’s related, right? Like all the other weird stuff you don’t want to talk about?”

“Other stuff?” Roxas asked, overgrowth tensing in anticipation.

“Yeah, other stuff…” Hayner mumbled.

Roxas didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to indict himself.

“Okay, well, I’m gonna sound like an idiot, but like…I swear when I found you with Olette, your eyes were glowing in the dark and I told myself I was just hyped up on Pence’s rumors. And then there’s the way you come out of nowhere when we call. And the freaky reflexes and the cat noises and how you zone out sometimes like you’re tapping into a hive mind or whatever and then…then earlier, the way you freaked out about the Shadows and Silver Devils and Visitors and the lights…”

They were such little things, but Hayner had collected all of them together so carefully and constructed a truth from it without Roxas realizing it until he’d already done it. “…You still want to be my friend?”

Hayner sighed and picked up his soda. “You still on that?”

Roxas quietly clenched his hand against his thigh, scared that Hayner would suddenly change his mind, go back on his word now that he knew.

“…That day on the train, when you told me to protect Pence and Olette from yo—”

“Please don’t. Don’t make me talk about it—”

“—What I said then. I meant it. If you don’t want to hurt us, then don’t. We’re not gonna push you away because of whatever is going on. It can suck when you can’t tell your friends stuff—especially when you want to—but I also get just wanting to be around people that don’t make you feel like crap or like you gotta do anything big. But I want you to know, as someone who’s lost important people to those things…you’re different, okay? There’s an exception to every rule out there—I trust you, Roxas. I trust you’re not lying to us or trying to hurt us or manipulate us to get us alone or whatever else it is you said Visitors do.”

How enigmatic a trusting heart was. How precarious, how precious. Roxas was overcome, desire for closeness and more. He wanted this to continue, he didn’t want to have to constantly anticipate an end to their friendship.

“…Can I hold your hand?”

Hayner offered Roxas his hand, palm up. Roxas immediately took his glove off and laced his fingers with Hayner’s, feeling his light, his pulse. If he held his hand tight enough, it almost felt like it was his own.

“Pence is really stubborn…He’s the kind of person you just have to keep an eye on until he can feel comfortable moving on. If I can’t talk him out of it, the least I can do is make sure he’s not doing it alone. You can agree with that at least, right?”

Roxas could because that was exactly what he’d done for them today. He nodded, pressing the back of Hayner’s hand to his cheek. He felt the throb of his heart against his palm, a rhythmic comfort of life. Forever, forever, forever.

<You called, my liege?>

<This is an order that will be in effect regardless of any other orders given by any other members of the Organization. If it’s ignored or contradicted, it will result in immediate eradication. The three humans I’ve been around, Hayner, Pence, and Olette are to be protected at all costs from Heartless, other Nobodies, and any sort of outside factors that could harm them. Do I make myself clear?>

<Quite, my liege.>

“Roxas?” Hayner called, leaning forward to try to look at his face.

“Hm?” Roxas raised his eyes up to him, pulling his hand away from his face.

“You go somewhere in your head for a sec? You zoned out really hard just now, I could see it.”

“Really?” Roxas asked, putting his chin on Hayner’s thigh. He wasn’t denying anything. He hadn’t admitted to anything. He wasn’t breaking any rules the Organization had set. So long as they were safe, there was no risk his orders would contradict any of Xenmas’, nor did Roxas see a situation where a handful of dusk or samurai couldn’t be spared to ensure their safety.

“Yeah, really. Making plans without me over there?” Hayner pinched the back of his hood, tugging it off and putting his hand in his hair.

“Not really.” Just taking a precautionary measure. “Were we supposed to make plans to do something else after we talked about this?”

“I mean we could. Maybe see if we can go somewhere on the weekend and get everyone’s mind off of this stuff for a little bit—you could use a break too, you know Mr. Shadow Slayer.” Roxas grinned at the dorky nickname. It was terrible—he liked it. “You ever been to a beach?”

Chapter Text

Roxas had never been formally invited into Hayner’s home. He’d been inside of it when he was doing quick surveys of their rooms for when he’d considered taking them away, but that was different. Hayner was now aware of his presence in his home as well as the older woman who lived with him.

He stood in the kitchen, keeping out of the way as Hayner stuffed food into a cooler, Pence calling, “Check!” once he confirmed items Olette was listing. The kitchen was full of ceramics, small little useless nicknacks Roxas’ eyes kept catching on. These must have been her mementos, her precious, useless little memorabilia.

“Towels?”

“Check!”

The old woman handed Hayner a sandwich, catching Roxas’ eyes as she did. He looked away, decidedly more interested in the crack in the blue fruit bowl. “Very quiet, isn’t he?” She spoke softly to Hayner, who somehow managed to hear her over Olette and Pence.

“Beach chairs?”

“Check, check, check!”

“Kinda, yeah.” Hayner agreed, glancing over at Roxas like a pet when he desperately wanted to play with but was told to give space to so it could adjust to its new surroundings. Roxas listened to the sink drip, studied the flecks on the countertop. He wasn’t used to being the one scrutinized just out of curiosity.

“It’s going to be rather warm for a coat like that. Is that what he’s going in? Does he have swim trunks? You should bring an extra pair just in case.” She handed Hayner the last sandwich, Hayer closing the cooler.

“Sun screen?”

“Check!”

“He’s anemic. I did. Actually, you know that beach jacket with the hood I wore last year? I couldn’t find it, do you know where I put it?” Roxas liked listening to Hayner speak with her. He spoke from his chest, all conciseness and room reverb that reminded Roxas of Xaldin's whispers.

“Let me look.” She squeezed past Olette, who immediately hopped out of her way while not looking up from the paper. Roxas had come to realize he was woefully underprepared for whatever it was humans did at the beach. He’d been, but they were only going for a day and they already had so many things he didn’t know what to do with.

“Plastic starfish?”

“Mermaid bra and castle making, check and check!” Roxas had officially decided he had no idea what to do at a beach anymore.

The old woman came back in with a cream, zip-up, short sleeved jacket that was made out of the same material as their beach towels. “This one?”

“Yeah, thanks! Where was it?” Hayner abandoned the cooler to take it from her.

“Castle molds?” Roxas’ eyes lingered on the stain on the fridge’s door handle.

“In the drawer.”

“Check!”

“I could've sworn I looked there—Roxas, come ‘ere a sec.” Hayner called for him, leaving the room and ducking into the hallway. Roxas followed him, actively avoiding eye contact from the older woman. Hayner stood outside of his bathroom, offering the jacket to Roxas. “See if this fits.”

“Fits what?”

“Check!” Pence called from down the hall.

“You, ya nut. Put it on.” Hayner explained, rolling his eyes.

“Over my coat?”

“No—dude, seriously? Go in the bathroom, take the coat off, put that on, don’t put your coat back on. I got swim trunks you can try too if you need ‘em. I get not wanting to show off the…you know.” Hayner tapped his collarbone. “So, beach jacket.”

“Why do I need to change my clothes?”

“To get in the water.”

“Check!”

“Why would I do that?”

“Roxas, holy crap dude just try the jacket on. You’re gonna have more fun if you get in the water with us, trust me.” Hayner pressed his knuckles to Roxas’ shoulder, Roxas eyes catching the glint of dawn on a drawer handle.

“I trust you.”

“Then go change, I’ll go get the swim trunks.” Hayner gave a pat to his shoulder, then thudded down the hallway back to his room. Roxas closed the bathroom door behind himself, a breeze blowing in through the open window that rustled the spider plant on the back of the toilet. He stared down at the jacket.

It was a simple enough switch, but he’d never worn anything else. Fabric like this couldn’t be manipulated to hide him. What if he didn’t look right? What if by pure reaction, his body did something or shifted in a way a human’s wasn’t supposed to? What if his overgrowth pulsed and they saw it? What if he didn’t get his body to turn the proper colors around where veins should be? What if he got hit playing around and his body couldn’t keep form? What if he fell apart, opened up right in front of them? What if they tried to help him, tried to touch him, and while he attempted to correct his mistake they got caught between his ribs and overgrowth, snapping and bloody and screaming and dying? What if he killed them because he took his coat off? What if—

Roxas turned and dry heaved into the sink, stomach seizing while his overgrowth clotted in his throat, sticking out just past his tongue. He tried to swallow it back down, Hayner’s jacket clutched in his hand as he used the sink for support.

He’d gagged like this when he had looked for the tangle in his overgrowth too. He could practically feel his own fingers pressing into his throat, the hollow ache pulsing along his chest, making its own self circulating echo of memories and sensation. He gagged again, a wet retching noise as he fought to keep himself together.

A knock on the door. “Roxas?”

Again, the smell tart like sap and stomach acid. He angled his body away from the door as it opened.

“Jeezus, dude—you okay?” Hayner fumbled with the door, sliding in through it and then closing it behind himself, swim trunks abandoned on the floor.

Roxas shook his head, trying to swallow overgrowth kindling. Hayner pressed his hand to his back, Roxas curling over the sink to hide his sprawling overgrowth the best he could.

“Nn…my coat, don’t…can’t…” He tried to explain before gagging, a thick collection of drool pooling around the sink drain. Hayner rubbed at his back, Roxas trying to focus on the weight and warmth from his hand.

“Hey, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Look we can go another time if we gott—”

Roxas desperately gripped the front of Hayner’s shirt, shaking his head. They’d clearly put in a lot of effort into this and Roxas wasn’t going to spoil that. He wanted to go. This was supposed to be something that made them happy, to get their mind off of everything that didn't.

“I’ll be fine.” Roxas choked out, swallowing, overgrowth receding. “I just…my coat. I have to stay in my coat. I can’t.” He couldn’t hurt them. He couldn’t scare them away. He couldn't lose them, yet alone in a spray of viscera and gore like that.

“Did you just work yourself up over that?” Hayner squeezed his way around to the other side of Roxas, taking his hand in his as he sat on the toilet seat. He tried to get Roxas to look at him, but he was adamant about hiding. “Roxas, buddy it’s okay. This is supposed to be fun. If you’re not comfortable, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You know yourself better than I would, it’s okay to tell me no.”

Roxas swallowed, a noise of distress leaving him. He wanted, needed something. Drool collected in his mouth, clung to the overgrowth in the back of his throat, the taste making him wince. He spit it into the sink, glancing back at Hayner, eyes catching on his arm. When he'd first touched them, the sensation had been a good one. Their skin, their warmth, their light, their hearts. He wanted their hearts but didn't want to hurt them and that had been a tantalizing second.

Roxas yanked his gloves off, tossing them on the floor and gripping both of Hayner’s arms. There was a jerk, a thrum, a pause—he’d scared Hayner just now.

Roxas' stomach tensed, churned. He turned his head and used his tongue to spit more drool into the sink, brows furrowed. He'd scared Hayner. Did he look different? Did he look like something that would tear him apart just then?

Hayner took Roxas' hands off of his arms and wrapped them around his middle. “Come here,” he mumbled before wrapping his own arms around him.

Roxas immediately took the refuge offered between the soft skin of Hayner’s neck and shoulder, clinging to his back.

Hayner ran his hand up and down his spine, fingers splayed with deliberate pacing. “Take a minute, just breathe.” Roxas didn’t need to breathe, but he did what Hayner said to anyway, not even sure if he was doing it correctly.

…Inhale.

…Exhale.

…Inhale.

…Exhale.

He found it was best to mock the pace of Hayner's hands. It had worked his body into a lull, calming him down from the panicked frenzy of anxiety he’d worked himself into. It let him focus on how Hayner’s pulse echoed his heartbeat. Hayner's light and warmth was typically muffled by Roxas' coat, but Roxas found he could easily imaging it echoing through the rest of him so long as he was touching him directly.

“You’re okay, you’re right here, in my tiny little bathroom.” Roxas closed his eyes, burying his nose against his neck. This was safe. If Roxas felt safe, he wouldn’t panic, and if he didn’t panic he was less likely to hurt them. “It smells like a stale vanilla airwick, but that’s totally okay. It’s stupid early and everything still looks forever orange because golden hour sunlight is the best.” Hayner was casually reiterating their surroundings, reminding Roxas of the moment he was in over the one he’d been thinking about.

He was practiced with this.

“…Who else have you had to do this for?” Inhale.

“Sit,” Hayner requested, patting the spot between his legs. Exhale. Roxas did as he was told, legs tossed over Hayner's, the toilet seat creaking in protest. “Sometimes Pence or Olette. Myself, mostly.”

Roxas hummed in acknowledgement, clinging to Hayner's shoulder. How magnificently resilient his human was; how upsetting it was to hear there had been a moment Roxas hadn't existed to protect him.

“You want me to distract you or do you wanna talk about it—or do you just wanna sit here a sec?” Hayner asked, Roxas surprised at all of his options.

“I'm just…I'm scared if I take my coat off, I'll scare one of you or hurt you or that I won't look right or…or that something will go wrong that I can't fix.” he admitted, wanting to shrink away, curling in on himself.

“Gimme your hand?” Roxas hesitantly pried it from his shoulder, offering it palm up to him. Hayner studied it, turning it over, turning it back, giving his palm a squeeze. “Well this part isn't in your coat and it seems fine to me. You don't look weird, you feel just like Pence or Olette. What about your wrist?”

“My wrist?”

“Yeah, lemme see.”

Roxas glanced at Hayner's wrist for reference before tugging his sleeve back. Hayner hummed, turning it this way and that.

“You look fine to me. If I kept going all the way up your arm, what do you think I'd find?”

“Um…I dunno. Something weird.” Roxas mumbled, face buried against his shirt in a way that made it hard to breathe and hard to hear his own reply.

“Weird like what?”

“Like a mark or one I'm supposed to have that I don't or something…”

“Like a birthmark? Like a scar? Everyone has weird marks, man. There are some people out there who have this thing that makes them look like they have patches of two different people's skin on one body. Some people can be born with extra limbs or even stuck to a whole other person! People can look freaky and be totally normal man, it's okay.”

“Really?” Roxas had never seen a human like the ones Hayner was describing before.

“Really, really. Want me to show you on my phone?” Roxas gave an eager nod, Hayner digging it out of his pocket.

Photo after photo, weird, unusual human after human. Humans who could bend in a way that made them look broken, humans with extra faces, humans with too many parts and not enough, humans who lived with their insides on the outside, humans with horns, humans covered in ink and hair and scales. Humans. Some of them even wanted to look less human on purpose.

Roxas was in awe. He'd taken Hayner's phone, scrolling and staring and scrolling, amazed at them all. His overgrowth twisted around inside of him, readjusting in his delight. The bathroom flooded with the scent of lotus flowers.

“Feeling a little better?” Hayner asked, still giving a rub to his back. Hair and makeup was amazing too—and whatever prosthetics were made of. Humans could fake anything, but because they could, did that make it easier to doubt the validity of some things?

“…Yeah.” Roxas handed Hayner his phone back.

“Even though you're feeling better, you can still keep your coat on if you want, okay? You don't have to get in the water—there'll be other trips where you can do that and if you decide you never want to get in the water, that's cool too. We're going to hang out and have a good time, that's it.”

Roxas pressed his fingertips to Hayner's mouth, Hayner flushing red. He was still amazed that the source of words was the heart. How magnificent to be given a piece of it in a way that didn't harm him, in a way that made him feel such a strong echo of comforting joy.

“Thank you.”

“Uh, sure don't mention it. There a reason you keep touching my lips, though?” Hayner asked, removing Roxas' hand from his mouth, but not letting it go.

“It's a good mouth. I like the words out of it.” Roxas praised, a wide grin overtaking his features.

“Are…are you teasing me? Like on purpose? Who taught you that!” Hayner gawfed, putting Roxas in a headlock.

“I'm not teasing!” he insisted, giving him a tap to the chest in an attempt to get him to stop, but he didn't mind the roughhousing.

“You totally were! I'm suing whoever taught you that! Giving me sassy mouth!”

“I was not! If anyone has a sassy mouth it's you!” he whined, Hayner swinging them back and forth as if he expected the toilet to swivel with them.

“Lies! Here I am, being a completely fantastic friend of the ages with the grace, goodwill, and humility of a saint and you're teasing me!” He was being abssurdly dramatic. Roxas let out a laugh, a sound that bounced off the walls like refractive light.

"Holy shit—GUYS!” Hayner struggled to open the bathroom door, refusing to let Roxas go. He ripped it open, screaming out into the hall, “GUYS I GOT ROXAS TO LAUGH! I WIN AT LIFE!”

Roxas was smiling so wide his face hurt, but there was something embarrassing about Hayner's boisterous call to get everyone's attention on him. Roxas buried himself against his side, adamant about not being seeing. Pence and Olette wasted no time to press themselves into the doorway, trying to see what the commotion was over.

“What the heck were you guys even doing in there?” Pence asked, Roxas wondering if he could fit out of such a small window and escape. He wouldn't really, but the thought had still presented itself.

“Making out without you, duh. But no, seriously! I want a trophy or something—oh, oh! It's a holiday now. Put it in your phones, do it.” he demanded, Pence rolling his eyes but taking out his phone anyway.

“What did he laugh about?” Olette asked, having to take off her sun hat to stand properly in the doorway.

“Honestly I totally forgot, it wasn't even anything serious.” Hayner admitted.

“You said I had a sassy mouth!” Roxas accused, the word sassy being said so many times it was starting to sound ridiculous. “Then you wouldn't stop talking about how great you were!”

“Oh, so this holiday is about laughing at Hayner. I can get behind that.” Pence teased.

“Pence!”

Olette giggled, Pence already ducking away with a wide grin. Hayner pushed his hips forward, trying to force Roxas onto the floor. Instead, Roxas curled around him, half relying on the tub to keep himself off of the floor.

“Dude, you're like a cat, what the hell. Just get on the floor so I can strangle you properly.”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“You can't make me.” Roxas hadn't realized the challenge he issued until he saw the glint in Hayner's eye.

“Oh boy.” Olette ducked out of the way, a wide grin on her face. “Pence, should we bring everything downstairs?”

“It'll make things easier if it turns into a race. Also I love you Hayner but if it does, my money is on Roxas.”

“Ninja parkour isn't speed or endurance, Pence.” Hayner bit back, eyes locked on Roxas, who was standing on the edges of the tub. Sink, shelves in the hallway, kitchen table or dining room table, couch or counters. Roxas decided he should go through the living room because then he could get outside. If he got high up enough, Hayner would have to give up or admit he'd lost.

“He's already doing the room survey thing Hayner, it's over.” Pence warned, Olette's hat back on as she fixed the back of her sandal.

“Don't break anything,” she warned.

“No it's not—!” Hayner dove, Roxas jumped up onto the sink, then vaulted himself out of the bathroom. He scaled the hallway shelves, then threw himself onto the couch, foot grazing the table.

“Jeezus!” Hayner ran out of the bathroom, rubbing at his chin before trying to tackle Roxas on the couch. Roxas shoved himself to the other side of it, then hopped up on the back. Entertainment center—television was breakable, he couldn't break things. Table, doorframe, railing?

Roxas made the jump before Hayner could lunge again, but slipped on a doily. He fumbled to catch himself, heels clattering noisily on the table before he decided it would be easier to just press off of the table with one hand and catch the doorframe with the other.

Pence let out a whistle, Roxas' knees pulled up to his chest to avoid touching the ground.

“Can you carry this out?” Olette asked, offering Roxas a large striped beach bag. He took it from her, pressing his feet to either side of the doorway to hold himself up.

“Show off!” Hayner snapped from the couch.

“Do I win yet?”

“No way!”

Roxas gave Hayner a nod before swinging himself outside and onto the railing. He listened to Hayner call goodbye, scrambling around inside still before rushing out with the cooler in tow. Roxas immediately vaulted himself off of the railing and up onto a ledge.

“Get down!”

“Weren't you gonna make me?”

“Ooooh, sassy mouth Roxaaaasss!” Pence teased, Hayner swatting at him. Roxas couldn't help but give a wide grin, the joke he was privy to and the teasing making him happy.

“We missed the 9:15 train, but we can probably still make the 9:45.” Olette offered.

“Roxas! Train station by 9:45, bud!” Pence called up in case he hadn't heard her.

“Okay!”

“No fair, this cooler weighs a ton, even on wheels—Pence switch with me! Make it fair!” Hayner complained.

“No way! Roxas is the one who's gotta get all the way to the train station without touching the ground. The whole plaza before it is nothing but open area, so you already have two handicaps.” Pence pointed out.

“I'll take it.” Roxas offered. He didn't mind the extra weight.

“What so you can show off some more? No thanks,” Hayner scoffed. Roxas shrugged, letting Hayner keep the cooler then.

“We got everything? One, two, three…” Olette started counting the bags everyone had and the beach chairs, then nodded to the cooler. “Okay, we're good to go. On your mark, get set, go!”

Hayner took off like a shot, even with the extra weight of the cooler. Olette and Pence rushed off behind, Pence calling to Roxas, “Don't fall behind!”

Roxas' eyes had immediately narrowed and he caught himself grumbling from his chest, overly excited. He shook his head, a reminder this wasn't a hunt, it was a game with an objective—like a mission. The only goal was to get to the station before the train left and before Hayner. He knew the town well enough to mentally map a route, familiar enough with keeping off of the ground from when he'd first arrived.

Pence had been right to point out the inconvenience of the train station's entrance. He could physically get there, but a regular human wouldn't have been able to make that sort of jump without an outside force of momentum. He could try to scale the clocktower, then take the long way down once inside. There were enough rafters, but that might take too long. Or—

Roxas watched Hayner tap his foot outside of the clocktower doors, arms crossed. Olette stood inside, glancing down at her phone, then up to the ticket booth.

“Did we seriously lose him?” Pence asked, casting a glance down the hill. “I don't mind going back to look, but if—”

“Hayner! Pence! Olette! Come on, we'll miss the train with you guys standing over there!” Roxas called out, Hayner whirling around towards the glass doors.

“How the hell did you get up there?!” he called, dragging the cooler in after him as he rushed over.

Roxas sat on top of the train, bag clutched to his chest with a wide grin on his face. —Or he could just use a corridor.

Chapter Text

Roxas had decided it would be alright to take his shoes off. He watched Hayner and Pence toss all of their clothes off aside from their swim trunks, Olette taking off her shirt but leaving her wrap-around skirt on. It made him want to take something off to, made him want to feel included.

 It would be easy to hide his feet in the sand until he was sure they looked alright and it couldn’t have been any worse than removing his gloves. The moment he did, he had become so surprised by the heat and the texture that he was practically rooted to the spot. It was different than desert sand, softer and cooler underneath because of the ocean.

He liked beach sand.

“What’s that face for? I thought you said you’ve been to the beach.” Hayner teased while trying to uncrank their beach umbrella, Roxas wide-eyed as he buried his toes deeper into the sand.

“I have.” For missions, in passing, to fight Heartless. Never for fun, never to experience the wonders it had to offer. But it felt like he’d been to the beach for more than that before, like some sort of echo only with a memory. Something that wasn’t his told him the beach was fun and he was inclined to believe it.

“Did we wanna go get pretzels from the boardwalk before we did anything?” Olette chirped. “Roxas has probably never had their pretzels.”

“We brought food.” Hayner reminded, nodding to the cooler Pence had sat himself on.

“Yeah, lunch food. And come on, you really gonna deny Roxas a boardwalk pretzel?”

“Olette a pretzel isn’t breakfast food,” Pence protested.

“It is if you haven’t eaten yet. Come on Roxas, let’s go get pretzels!” She grabbed for his hands, uprooting him and tugging him over to the bridge. “The boys can be lame on their own!”

“Tell me if they have those seasonal soda floats yet!” Pence called after them.

“Kay! Roxas have you ever had a pretzel?” Olette asked, swinging his hand in hers, her aura bobbing in excitement like glittering sunlight on the sea. His head turned to follow a couple walk past, unease wiggling into their delight like a leech trying to bury itself because of his gaze.

“I don’t think so.” He tried to recall all of the food they’ve offered him before, nothing coming to mind for that word. Shopkeepers, a kid on a skateboard, little boys leaning over the railing to yell at little girls, a girl twirling a hula hoop around her arm, matching polka dots and sunglasses bigger than their faces.

“Well you’re about to have the best pretzel! They’re warm and covered in butter and are really soft! You can get them in all kinds of flavors, but the original really is the best even though Hayner will tell you it’s the almond one. Their pizza pretzels are really good too, but they’re better as pizza bites.” She explained, Roxas stumbling for just a second as he watched her speak instead of where he was walking.

There were a lot of people here—it was distracting. They all felt different, reacted differently to him either staring or getting closer as Olette lead him along. A kid screamed with cotton candy streaming behind her, her dad stopping his phone call to tell her to stop running.

“…There’s a lot of people here.” He was aware all worlds were full of them, but he was so used to lurking in shadows and keeping his distance. The most he’d ever been around were on the train, but he’d somehow managed to avoid being on full cars so far. They were clustered like grapes, thin-skinned things he wanted to tear into.

Olette’s grip on his hand tightened. “Does that scare you?”

“I dunno,” he admitted, watching the kaleidoscope of lights coming from the arcade. “Does it scare you?”

“Sometimes—but it’s okay to not know if it scares you. If it does, you’ve got us and we’ll make sure you’re okay.” Roxas’ feet dragged along the boardwalk as he came to a stop. He hadn’t had Olette try to protect him yet. He tried to bite back a smile, unable to for more than just a moment. His silly little humans, keeping their monster safe—he adored them.

“Thank you, Olette.”

“Of course!” She mirrored the smile, Roxas wondering if pressing their smiles together would give him the same buzzing sensation from when he’d pressed her laugh to his mouth.

He didn’t have a moment to ask or even consider just doing it before she carried on dragging him towards the pretzel stand to get a place in line. It smelled good, for human food. He stared at the display case, chocolate dipped fruit displayed on top like a bouquet.

“Can I get one of those too?” Roxas asked, pointing to a chocolate covered mango covered in shredded coconut.

“Oh those are really good! I like their strawberries too, but if you want a banana, you have to go to the place with the cheesecake on a stick instead. Something about theirs just tastes better, I swear.” A woman slid past, Olette stepping closer to Roxas to get out of her way. Roxas folded his hands around her lower back, keeping the woman’s elbow from brushing against Olette. She jerked, glancing down at her elbow as if she’d been shocked before scurrying off.

“You eat cakes made of cheese? Don’t you bake cakes? Wouldn’t that melt?” He unfolded his hands, letting them rest on her waist.

“It’s cream cheese, silly! Now we totally gotta get you cheesecake too. Hayner is gonna be so mad,” she giggled, pressing her forehead against his shoulder.

“Why would he be mad?”

Olette shuffled Roxas closer to the register with scuttling little side steps, preferring to make them look ridiculous over pulling away from him. “Because we brought food and we’re still spending money on food when we could be spending it on other things.”

“But I wanna I want to eat whatever a cheesecake is.”

“Me too—guess he’ll have to be mad.” She gave him a wide grin, the person in front of them done with their order.

 “Holy shit, are you guys for real? Olette, how much did you spend on all this!” Hayner asked in dismay. The boys had abandoned the beach front to come find them, Olette and Roxas holed up in a snack shack with a variety of different boardwalk food.

“I dunno—Roxas started to pay for it after we got the smoothies.” She leaned over and took a sip out of a curly straw, a hot dog in her hand that was dripping relish into her chicken wings.

“Roxas!”

“I have more money than Olette,” he explained around a steaming mouthful of deep fried oreo.

“He’s never had half of this stuff, Hayner! He had to get it! It’s mandatory!” Olette insisted, waving a curly fry at Hayner.

“He’s gonna be put in a food coma before we even actually do anything at the beach!”

“Or get a sugar high,” Pence offered, picking a donut covered in cereal marshmallows and taking a huge bite out of it. Roxas scooted over, making room for Pence. Pence hopped himself up onto the bench, asking, “Hey did they have the soda float in season yet?”

“No, not yet—they’ve still got the twister one, though. Roxas got one, but he chugged it all already.” Olette explained as Roxas took a noisy sip from his jello soda.

“Damn.”

“I can buy you one.” Roxas offered eagerly. He had still wanted to try the purple one from that place too.

“Oh my god…” Hayner groaned.

“Come on, Hayner. I got the nacho fries with jalapenos.” Olette patted the spot next to her, Hayner’s mouth drawing into a long pout. They all stared at him expectantly.

“Ugh, fine!”

 “I’m gonna puke,” Roxas decided, a hand resting on his stomach as he stared up at their beach umbrella, coat sprawled beneath him on the beach blanket. Would he explode if he ate too much? He felt like he was going to explode, rip right along his scar in a muted mushy mess of food.

“Told you not to eat so much. I don’t even know where you put half of that.” Hayner shook his head, digging out a moat next to him. He handed Olette the bucket of sand, who poured it onto a massive pile she and Pence were working into a castle door. Pence swapped the empty bucket for one with water, then made his way back down to the water to collect more for both projects.

Roxas belched. “Second stomach.”

“Cool—you gonna dig or die?” Hayner asked, Pence pouring water into the hole Hayner was excavating and swapping the buckets again.

“Die.” Roxas decided. He rolled over onto his side, watching Hayner work as the sun cast rather flattering highlights along his arms. He’d never seen this much of them and he wondered at what point did humans get embarrassed about showing themselves to each other.

It had to have been different for each human because Olette’s middle was covered while the girl a few feet down was practically naked. But Olette was showing all of the skin on her legs while Pence and Hayner were covered down to their knees. Was it a comfort thing the way he didn’t want to take his coat off? Did they feel safer, less exposed in their unique preferences?

“Roxas drink a water, bud. You look like you’re gonna stroke out in that coat.” Pence reminded.

“No room for water.” Roxas groaned, forcing himself to roll back over onto his back to look at Pence as he dug a bottle out of the cooler. “Why did you bring water to drink when there’s all that water?”

“Roxas, dude, did no one ever tell you that you can’t drink ocean water?” Hayner asked, pausing in his digging, sand coating his arms up to his elbows, sweat collecting on his brow. 

“Why not? It’s water, isn’t it?” Roxas asked. Pence chugged half of the bottle, then offered the rest to Olette.

“Yeah, with salt in it. It’ll actually dehydrate you, not to mention kids pee in the ocean. Don’t drink the ocean water.” Hayner pointed a finger at him, then went back to digging, Roxas watching the muscles in his arms flex. He was distraught some part of him felt hungry even though he was this painfully full.

“But you eat salt on food.”

“Little bits and for taste, not like that.” Pence explained, taking the bottle back from Olette and putting it in their trash bag.

“Just don’t drink the damn ocean water!” Hayner groaned, pouring his bucket of sand onto Roxas’ leg as if to punish him.

“Hayner! Don’t get sand all over the blanket like that!” Pence whined.

 “…ke little babies.”

Roxas peered an eye open, his coat sticking to his back and Pence to his sleeve. Pence’s breathing was heavy and rhythmic, a comfort to be pressed against and watch.

“Oh, sorry. Did we wake you?” Olette whispered, reaching over to brush his hair from his face. She was crouched down with her knees to her chest, Hayner digging around in the cooler, phone pressed to his ear. Roxas hummed, leaning into her touch.

“Sip some water before going back to sleep?” Hayner pressed a bottle to his cheek, the condensation rolling down onto the blanket. He took it from him, uncapping it and chugging it before holding up the empty water bottle.

“Yeah, we’ll probably take the 10 home so Roxas can see the lights, but I’ll text you and wake you up when I’m home.” The weight of the bottle was relieved from his hand, Roxas closing his eyes again.

 “Get the glasses!” Olette insisted, pointing to these atrocious neon things with built in straws in the glass case.

“No, no! You totally gotta get the big bear! Look, 20 more tickets, it’s over!” Pence gestured behind the counter, an absurdly large amount of zeros labeled under the bear.

“You guys nuts? Clean them out of marbles! Can you imagine letting all of those loose on Seifer’s gang? He’d knock over like he’s in a cartoon!” Hayner tapped at the bags full of them, Roxas listening to them debate while buried underneath rolls and rolls and rolls of tickets from ski ball. He didn’t see what was so hard about tossing a ball into a target practically right in front of him, but his humans had went nuts over it, so he kept getting more for them.

They’d of course played lots of other games with him, but he liked their reactions to that one the best.

“Why don’t you guys just buy that stuff? Isn’t it cheaper?” He asked, watching Pence fish around for more arcade coins.

“It’s the thrill of victory, man! Its when you earn it! It’s different than just buying stuff!” Hayner griped.

“We didn’t earn jack, that’s all Roxas.” Pence reminded, Olette giggling.

“Roxas, come on—we all gotta get ugly matching glasses.” She tried to find his hands underneath the rolls of tickets, Roxas deciding to just drop them all at her feet. She stepped over them, finally getting his hand in hers.

“I can get more, but I need more coins.” He fished out his munny pouch, offering it to Pence.

“Rich ninja cult.” Pence purred, rushing off to the coin machine with it.

“I don’t have ninja.” Roxas could not remember how many times he’d corrected him by now. Hayner attempted to hunt for the end of a ticket roll, deciding to just rip an end instead. He started feeding it into the counter machine, watching the numbers tick up while Roxas watched his delight in his eyes work in the same way.

 Roxas was accustomed to night. He was familiar with its impending dread, its heavy blanket cover, its suffocating surety. He was familiar with the abyssal blackness that other worlds were shrouded from by the flickering of lights from other worlds. He was used to lights being used as a desperate attempt at understanding, an illumination on the blithe human psyche.

He’d never seen lights as comforts the way humans had before.

The neon ones adoring the shop fronts were riant and left juvenile optimism in their wake. The ones his friends were playing with left the taste of magnesium and energetic delight in the air. The ones lining the boardwalk let serenity and requiem direct everyone home.

“Here.” Pence offered Roxas a sparkler. He took it, quietly watching it work it’s way down the wick—how transient. “You can try to spell stuff out—see the light trail? Isn’t it cool?” Pence made an example with his own sparkler to show him. How magnificent and fleeting—how terrifying that it would end so quickly. What was it about light that made it so susceptible to be swallowed by darkness?

Roxas grabbed for Pence’s hand, scared for him. “Pence, do you…do you feel better?” 

“What do you mean?”

“About what happened with your brother…Do you feel better now?” The sparkler died out in Roxas’ hand. Pence stood there for a moment, watching Olette chase Hayner around. He turned around at the last second, snatching her up as she let out a wild scream. He spun her around, tossing her over his shoulder while she demanded to be put down.

“Roxas, I don’t think I’m ever going to feel better over losing Frankie, even if I do find out what happened.”

Roxas hadn’t been expecting that answer at all. He thought he’d eventually get over it and move on or whatever it was Hayner had said. He just needed something new to focus on instead, didn’t he? “Why not?”

“Because it hurts to lose someone you care about. Right now, it’s still a lot to deal with…I can have moments like this with you guys where it’s easier to forget how much that hurts, but that feeling doesn’t ever go away, even if they get easier to handle.”

Some feelings didn’t ever go away? That was the first he’d heard of that. Were some echoes the same or could humans have their own echoes? But if humans could have echoes, did that make a Nobody’s echoes real? Or did that mean any sort of echo a Nobody had was from when they used to be someone else? Didn’t that mean then that their feelings had been real at one point?

“…You ever see any of my siblings?”

Roxas shook his head. Pence fished his phone out of the beach bag, unlocking it to show Roxas his background. “That’s Penny, she’s ten and she’s the baby.” Pence pointed to a little girl with wild hair, covered in face paint. “These two are Tonnie and Lonnie, they’re twins and two years older than Penny.” They had their hair spray painted purple and pink. “That’s Frankie.” Frankie was covered in paintball ink and was wearing the bandana Pence always wore around his head—

But the one around his neck Roxas recognized.

He had siblings who needed him.

Roxas was grateful for the dark, for the cover it gave his visceral reaction to the photo, the way his hand had violently seized up into a claw before he forced it back down. He had that bandana in his room, in his collection of mission mementos. That was the mission where Larxene had warned him that humans could hurt him if they didn’t hurt them first.

Roxas had hurt Pence before he’d even met him. Roxas had hurt him first. Larxene would have found that hilarious. She would have been so proud. She would have had to be scrubbed off of the castle floor if she wasn’t off in Castle Oblivion because he would have killed her.

“Would…would knowing what happened…Even if it was bad, would you want to know?” Whatever hurt Pence less. Roxas didn’t want to hurt him more than he already had. Roxas was flooded with shame at how even his voice came out, at how well controlled he was being. Shouldn’t he be more scared? Shouldn’t he vomit, cry, panic, something more? Why was it this easy to prepare to hurt his friend?

“I’d wanna know because if I didn’t, if I gave up just because I didn’t have answers knowing he was out there and might need me…Roxas, I’d never be able to forgive myself.” Today was supposed to be a day to distract everyone from what was wrong. Roxas couldn’t do this today. Not today. Hayner lit another sparkler for Olette.

He laced Pence’s fingers with his, wondering if it was cruel to be the one to comfort him when he’d been the one to hurt him. Or, was it ironic justice, a punishment for having desires a Nobody like him was already told not to harbor? “I’m sorry I don’t know how to make some feelings go away forever to make it hurt less…I tried and they keep coming back for me too. It makes me wonder if I’m just supposed to keep them, sometimes.”

Pence gave his hand a squeeze, letting out a soft laugh. “Yeah, it can suck for sure. Being with you guys like this makes it easier though. Thanks.”

“Olette said the same thing earlier. I’m sure Hayner feels the same way. I know I’d be with you guys forever, if I could.” The words left Roxas before he realized their implications, before he realized how earnestly he meant them. He hadn’t had time to mull it over the way he had with everything else, but it was a heavy truth he’d let go of so easily.

“How are you always able to say such mushy stuff and mean it?” Pence asked with a laugh of embarrassment. Roxas didn't understand how it was mushy, but it was an easy answer to give considering the more painful one he had waiting for him.

“Because it's true and doesn't hurt anyone to say. I've been to a beach before, but I've never experienced it the way I did today. It makes me wonder what else I'm missing out on, even with whole worlds right in front of me. I want more of this…I want more of you and Olette and Hayner. Every time I'm with you guys something happens that makes…that makes me feel…” That made him feel like soda fizz and spring loaded confetti. “I feel happy with you guys, Pence.” Roxas gaped in realization, turning to grab for his other hand. “I don't feel that with anyone else. I just want to protect things that make me happy, so I don't want you to be sad about Frankie. I want you to be happy too, Pence."

“Aw, Roxas…” Pence's eyes welled up. Had Roxas held his hand too hard? Had his words hurt him or had Pence just had a thought that hurt him? What hurt? Why was he crying?

“Please don't cry. If I made you cry I didn't mean it, I take it back.” Roxas fumbled, struggling to correct what he'd done. He was already going to hurt Pence later about Frankie, he couldn't also do it now about them. He wrapped his arms around him, desperate to not have him cry.

“No dude, that's really sweet. I'm not crying because I'm sad or you said something wrong. Sometimes being super honest and nice and mushy can be a little overwhelming is all.” Pence reassured, wrapping his arms around Roxas. “But I'm okay, you didn't do anything bad. These are good tears.”

“Good tears? There's good tears? What the heck!” Roxas had just started to feel he had a decent grasp on human emotions, but this news had distressed him.

Pence let out a laugh, tipping his head back, still a sound Roxas wanted to carry forever. “Yes, there's good tears. Wait till you laugh so hard you cry, that's always good.”

“You think I can do that?” Pence believed he had the capacity for it? They had such lofty expectations for someone with no heart.

“Oh totally. Just wait till your over-tired and someone says something dumb, it'll be all over.”

True to form, Hayner called out to them, “You two making out over there or what? Olette and I are burning through the sparklers without you!”

Pence squeezed his arms around Roxas, forcing him closer. He could have just asked. “Yeah, be jealous! Heart to hearts get me Roxas make outs!” Making an out? Like an exit? They were leaving? Hayner had said the same thing in the bathroom earlier. Wait, what was a heart to heart? If Roxas didn't have a heart, was it a heart to overgrowth?

“What's a make out? And a heart to heart?”

“Super intense and sexy kissing. Heart to heart is where you get all soft and mushy and honest without pretense.” Pence explained.

“What's a kiss?”

“GUYS ROXAS DOESN'T KNOW WHAT A KISS IS!” Pence screamed out into the beach.

“WHAT?!” Olette shrieked back, Hayner dropping all of the sparklers out of the box and onto the sand.

“No way! Pence now you gotta kiss him!”

“Its gotta be a good kiss! Here we can make a heart in sparklers around your heads, totally romantic.” Olette egged them on, grabbing four out of the sand.

“What's a kiss?” Roxas repeated, not understanding the dramaticized despair.

“It’s where you pucker your mouth and put it on someone.” Olette held the sparklers out to Hayner as he fumbled with the lighter.

“it's super gross—it's great,” Hayner agreed, Pence turning to face him with his arm still wrapped around Roxas’ waist. “You don't have to actually kiss him if you don't want to though. Some people feel first kisses are really important and to be shared with someone special.”

“Do you only get one first kiss because there’s only one of you? Or do you get one first kiss for different people because you’ve never kissed them before? What do I do if it’s the first one—all three of you are special.” Roxas immediately became distressed at the thought of having one of their kisses mean more than the other’s, glancing between the three of them with wide eyes.

“Duuuude, super mushy,” Pence whined, finally getting a sparkler to light.

“Don’t pick on him, he’s being serious! It’s totally the second one, Roxas—don’t worry about it,” Olette decided. The tension uncoiled in his overgrowth, Roxas loosening his grip on Pence’s hand. Hayner took another sparkler from Olette to offer to Pence.

“You don’t have to kiss us, we’re kidding,” Hayner reminded, offering Roxas a sparkler as the reflection of the light danced in his eyes.

“Have you kissed anyone?” Roxas took it from him, listening to Hayner’s heart attempt a prison break against his ribs. He watched his eyes flicker to Olette, then dance around Pence, then down to his shoes. He could feel Pence’s hand grow warmer in his, practically taste Olette’s aura it was so thick with embarrassment. But there was a flittering sensation between them like butterfly wings against flower petals.

“I mean there’s different kinds, so they don’t have to be romantic! Like, I kiss my siblings on their heads and cheeks and stuff.” Pence offered, Roxas feeling and watching the embarrassment ease off of them.

“Where do you kiss your friends then?”

“I mean, there isn’t really a set spot. People just feel like the mouth is romantic, so they feel that’s special like Hayner said. You could probably just pick a spot you like so long as it’s like…you know, not weird.”

“How do I know it’s not weird?”

“Assume if the place is usually covered by clothes, it’s weird.” Hayner offered, shoving his hands into his pockets and turning his head out to the sea. For a moment, it was just the sound of ocean waves. For a moment, Roxas knew this beach smelled different than what he was used to. Pence ran his thumb along his hand and Roxas struggled to remember exactly what mission it was where he’d been to the beach. He could look it up in his journal later.

He turned to Pence, studying him and trying to discern a proper place to kiss him while he felt him flood with anticipation. First kisses were special. His humans were special. Pence tended to put his nose where it didn’t belong, but that meant he was also the first person to put it in places it did. Roxas liked the way it would scrunch up when he smiled, the way he’d quietly rub at it while looking through his photos.

Roxas leaned over and kissed his nose.

“Did I do it right?” he asked softly. Pence put his hand to his nose, awash with soft bashfulness and airy delight. He gave a nod, a squeeze to Roxas’ hand, then let it go.

Roxas glanced over at Olette, who tensed with expectation. He always loved how she was the first one to turn to face him, ever eager to whirl around and call his name. He loved the way her hair framed her face, the way she’d twirl it in her fingers when she was feeling shy, but wanted to tell him something anyway.

He took a lock of hair between his fingers, bending down to press it to his mouth.

He listened to her breath catch, her heart forcing the blood to her face as he locked eyes with her. She let out a soft laugh, Roxas glancing at her lips. He wondered if he’d already kissed Olette given how he’d press that sound of hers to his mouth.

Hayner still had his head turned out to the sea, shoulders tense. Roxas studied him for a moment, trying to gauge the tangle of his aura. It was anxious, excited, tense, full of dread, full of expectation, full of desire. Roxas couldn’t tell if Hayner wanted him to kiss him or not.

“Hayner?”

Hayner’s eyes flickered over to him, locking eyes with him in a challenge for him to move first, waiting. He had always been a bit wary of him from the moment they’d met. Some part of him always had known something was wrong, but Roxas was gradually watching him redirect those feelings into something he couldn’t see. But even then, Hayner had gleaned more than Roxas had given him credit for. Hayner had seen right through him from the moment they’d met and maybe this was no different.

Roxas kissed the soft spot between his eyes, his own eyes half lidded.

He lingered, Hayner slowly relaxing and no longer squeezing his eyes shut as if he’d expected to be eaten. It was so easy to forget that underneath his boisterous bravado that Hayner was surprisingly gentle. Pence and Olette had melted into satisfied bliss like morning fog, where as Hayner had condensed like heavy dew. There was so much more longing coming off of him than Pence and Olette and it made it hard for Roxas not to want to take more.

“…So was it super gross and great?” Roxas asked with a wide grin. Hayner scoffed, licking his lips and rolling his eyes with a wide smile.

He gave a playful punch to his shoulder, grumbling, “Shut uuup…”

Chapter Text

Roxas returned to the castle, a seashell held in his claw. It was his memento for the memory of the beach, of thee first kisses. It was relieving to be in a space where he didn’t have to be conscious of his body, allowing it to unfurl and flourish at his leisure, the scent of lotus flowers encompassing him. He made his way to his room, passing Number XIV. They stopped, turning to stare at him. He’d never spoken with them and quite honestly, he forgot they were there half of the time.

“You,” they started, speaking to him over whispering. It caught him off guard, Roxas coming to a complete stop. “Smell like the sea. I miss the sea. From before. I was always at the sea, I think.” Before, when they were someone else, when they had a heart. Sometimes Roxas forgot he was supposed to have a before, that he was supposed to know who he was rather than create someone to be.

Roxas didn’t know what he was supposed to say to them, burying his mouth against his russet scarf. His tail, highly indiscernible from the tendril like hanging of his scarf if not for the fact it sprouted from his lower back, coiled around the material as he shifted his weight.

“…You normally don’t wear that form.” XIV noted. Roxas normally preferred to hide, which was easier to do in the smaller guise of a human. But he’d been unable to contain himself in his joy any longer, letting himself relax for once.

His coat looked more like the bodysuit the samurai he commanded wore, but its silver faded into a deep gray at the sleeves and cuffs. His claws were larger and more set like a dragon’s than fingers, peeking out from the bell sleeves with Nobody brands. His legs were all jackrabbit set haunches and tiptoes, his hair more translucent like flower petals. Roxas was all charming prince shoulders and sharp angles that were moments from lunging, limbs too long and able to bend at third joints he shouldn’t have.

He bared his fangs, XIV unfazed. “I wasn’t trying to provoke you, I was just saying. Was it a good day off?”

He couldn’t relate to their memories of before and he didn’t want to tell them how he’d spent his time at the beach. He’d asked Xemnas for the day, alluding it was for his project involving his humans. If he didn’t say it outright, if Xemnas still assumed he was using them to gain something, he wasn’t going to correct him. It wasn’t a lie, but he found he didn’t care if a lack of truth hurt Xemnas. He wasn’t going to endanger Hayner, Pence, and Olette because XIV wouldn’t mind their own business.

<Hey, Xion! You coming or what?> Axel. He'd been the only one to return from Castle Oblivion. Roxas had been allowed the day he asked for while the higher ups worked on reorganizing everything after their losses. After that, he wouldn’t be allowed much more if any time off like that at all.

Number XIV stared at him for just a moment longer, as if still giving him a moment to talk if he wanted. When he didn’t, they turned and left. Roxas stared until they were out of sight, untensing his shoulders and unlocking his jaw.

Roxas was grateful he didn’t happen upon anyone else on his way back to his room. He placed the seashell on one of his shelves, dread in his periphery. He gave himself just a moment more, just one more moment, before he addressed the bandana on another shelf.

This was part of Pence’s before Roxas.

Did Roxas have people from his before who missed him? Were they looking for him, wondering what happened to him? Had they known? How had Roxas lost his heart? Had it been painful? Had he put up a fight? Was he like who he was now or would he not be able to recognize himself? His before…he hadn’t realized how much that affected people because his own seemed to have no bearing on him.

Would who he was before feel the way he did now toward Hayner, Pence, and Olette? Would the person he was when he had a heart have stopped Larxene and saved Pence's brother? Roxas quietly pressed the bandana to his mouth. Maybe he should ask Xemnas. Maybe it would explain the weird feelings of longing he kept getting at the beach when he'd never been more content in his existence.

“Hey, Hayner?”

“MOTHER—” Hayner lobbed the trash bag at Roxas, who ducked, catching it as it sailed overhead. He offered it back to Hayner. The back door to the restaurant closed behind him. “Roxas! What the hell, man!” 

“Sorry. I wanted to know if I could talk to you—alone.” He did his best to mock the way Hayner had said it to him when they’d come out of the sewers. Roxas had never been into a restaurant, but when people went in they sat down and talked to someone who brought them food, and Hayner didn’t bring people food, so he wasn’t sure if he’d get to talk to him if he had gone inside. So, he had waited until Hayner came outside.

“Oh. Sure, yeah. Can it wait till after my shift or did you need to talk to me right now?” Hayner took the garbage bag from him, opening the dumpster and tossing it in.

Roxas quietly clutched the bandana in his pocket. “…It can wait a little longer.”

“Okay. I’m doing all my side work, so I should be done in a half hour. That cool?” The dumpster slammed close, Hayner putting his hands on his hips as he turned to face him.

Roxas nodded.

Hayner glanced at the back door, then looked back to Roxas. “You uh, haven’t been creeping around back here waiting for me, have you?”

Roxas didn’t answer. Hayner sighed.

“Come on. You hungry?” He held the back door open, Roxas ducking his head as he walked inside.

“I can eat.” Roxas didn’t get hungry for people food, but he would never deny any sort of food they’d give him. Hayner lead him down a hallway, knocking on an office door. A man with a large nose and ginger hair opened it.

“Hey do you mind if my friend hangs out in the back and if I order him something to eat?” Hayner thumbed over his shoulder to Roxas. “He won’t touch anything or bug anybody.”

“Oh, uh…I mean, I don’t see why not? Just make sure you give Colette your meal ticket for today, she’s been upset people have been losing them after they use them.” The man nodded behind his shoulder, giving an awkward, apologetic smile.

“Yeah, no problem. You have a menu back there or should I steal one from the hostess desk?” The man turned back into the office, foot shoved in the door. He opened it back up again, offering Hayner the menu. “Thanks, Linguini!” Hayner whirled around to face Roxas, throwing an arm around his shoulders and offering him the menu. “Pick something you wanna eat, I’ll be back in a bit.”

Roxas looked down at the menu, opening open the few pages and skimming it as Hayner directed him through the back of the restaurant. “I have no idea what any of this says.” Roxas admitted, not being versed enough in written language outside of a few worlds. He thought he’d understood this one’s well enough, but apparently not.

“Yeah, French is like that. I can always recommend stuff.” Hayner offered, opening the door to the staff break room. High ceiling, open space, warm lighting left for shadows he could make corridors with, not many makeshift weapons, but there might be something in the lockers, but there were too many to risk opening them to search in a pinch.

“Please?” Roxas requested, offering the menu back. Hayner tucked it under his arm, nodding for Roxas to sit.

“The place is practically known for its ratatouille, so that’s always good. Soup wise I like our carrot potage a lot, but the gazpacho is also really good. Both of the sea bass options are good, and so’s the fillet mignon. Dessert wise, tart is the best hands down, but after watching you wolf down all that crap at the beach you’d probably like ‘em all. You can get one main dish and I’ll buy you some dessert.”

Roxas stared up at him as he rattled off weird words for food, not expecting so many suggestions, but he would try anything once. “Um…can I try the first one?”

“Ratatouille, coming right up.” Hayner left the room, Roxas sitting quietly until he returned. Two others came in while he waited and tried to say hello, Roxas giving a nod before shuffling down into his coat. The restaurant itself was quiet for the most part, most of the commotion coming from the kitchen.

He heard Hayner coming back before he saw him, his laugh echoing down the hall. He had a plate of food held with a towel in one hand, a bucket of cloth napkins tucked under his other arm. He set the plate down in front of Roxas, offering him a fork.

“Bone apple teeth.”

“ What? ”

“It's a joke. Bon appetit is French for like, dig in, so saying it like that is the joke.”

“Oh.” Roxas looked down at the vegetables, picking up the fork. Hayner watched him take the first bite, waiting for his reaction. “S'hot.” Roxas opened his mouth, steam escaping it. Hayner laugh, putting him in a light headlock and ruffling his hair.

Hayner sat down in the chair next to him, grabbing his tub of cloth napkins and started folding them. Roxas watched him, blowing on his food this time. Roxas tugged his chair closer, it scraping across the floor. Hayner moved his foot over so it bumped against Roxas' boot, their thighs touching.

Roxas was happy, despite the oncoming conversation that weighed heavy in his overgrowth like a marble statue of dread.

“So what did you wanna talk about?” Hayner asked, hopping himself up onto the ledge. Roxas stood in front of him, taking the soda offered to him. He held it in his hands, staring at a crack in the cobblestone.

“I have to hurt Pence,” Roxas started. “I don't want to, but I think it would hurt him more if I don't do this…”

“Yeah, I'm gonna need more context than that, Roxas.” Hayner's can opened with a hiss, Roxas' overgrowth twining around itself. He swore it had caught on his stomach and was squeezing it. He set the soda down next to Hayner and pulled the bandana out of his pocket, offering it to Hayner. “What's this?”

“Frankie's.” He heard Hayner's heart skyrocket, crash like a jackhammer, his grip tightening on the bandana. Roxas let it go. “I was there when… I didn't know, Hayner. I didn't stop her and I didn't know what a family was and I didn't…I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Roxas—”

“And because I didn't know, I have to hurt Pence again and tell him Frankie is gone forever and it's my fault because I could have done something—”

“ Roxas.” Hayner dropped off of the ledge, grabbing for his hands. “Stop. Don't do that. Don't.”

“But I—” Hayner locked his arms around him, pressing Roxas' forehead to his shoulder.

“No. Don't. You didn't hurt his brother, right?”

Roxas shook his head, Hayner a lifeline he wanted to wind around his neck and use to strangle the feeling that kept swelling in his chest before it got into his head even more.

“Then don't. You just said it yourself, you didn't know. It's really obvious there's a lot of stuff you didn't know before hanging out with us, Roxas. Don't blame yourself for something you had no control over. What you have control over right now is how you tell Pence you know what happened to his brother. He's not going to blame you because it wasn't your fault.”

Roxas' grip tightened on Hayner's shoulder, listening to him breathe and trying to mock it.

“What do I say? Hayner, I don't know what to tell him…”

“You tell him the truth—you saw what happened and couldn't stop it.”

Roxas pulled back to look at Hayner, to protest. “But I—”

“You couldn't because you didn't know any better. You don't have to explain why you couldn't, Roxas, okay?” Hayner threaded his hands through his hair, inhale, exhale.

He nodded.

“You said you couldn’t stop ‘her’ earlier. Who were you talking about?”

“Larxene.” Roxas had already mentioned her. Was it too much to tell him this? At what point was it crossing the line? At what point had his loyalties to them allowed him to answer questions involving the Organization without hesitating?

“Wait, isn't that one you keep saying has the ninjas?”

0Roxas nodded.

Hayner went stiff in his hands, heart hiccuping, fumbling in his ribs. “Roxas, can I ask you something…?”

Roxas patiently waited for his question.

Hayner's brow furrowed, his fingers spreading against Roxas' back and gently adding pressure. Something in Hayner's aura creep like ivy through him, an anxiety Roxas wasn't used to from him. “Do you live with her? And that Xemnas guy?”

He nodded, then caught himself. “I mean I used to live with Larxene. She and a few others aren’t here anymore because they failed.”

“Pence's brother…he vanished, right? Nothing left to find of him?”

He nodded. Hayner exhaled.

“Okay. It's okay.” He curled himself around Roxas, clinging to him as if he'd fall through his fingers and vanish into the dark corners of his memories. Why had he suddenly gotten so scared? All he'd done is told him he lived wi—

Larxene was a stealer of hearts, someone who made people vanish. Larxene was was a Nobody, a Nobody like who had taken Hayner's parents. And they had vanished because someone out there was stronger than they had been. Hayner was scared for him.

“They won't hurt me,” Roxas reassured. “I'm important.” He had a keyblade, they needed him.

“Don't go back. Please?” Hayner whispered, Roxas running his hands up and down his back. A transference of anxieties, of being unable to help. Could humans feel echoes from Nobodies and mirror that?

“If I don't, they'll come looking for me.”

“That's why you got so mad. You know—you've always known who they are and what they can do…God, I'm so stupid.” He was shaking. Roxas had to stop breathing, the smell thick and tantalizing.

“Can we not talk about this?” Roxas didn't want to get in trouble, to have Hayner be hunted for sport because he knew too much. He didn't want Hayner to be scared either. Hayner's fear of Nobodies had marinated over years, Roxas sure it would make his heart flake apart in his hands, melt in his mouth. Hayner would be utterly irresistible and Roxas found his jaw locking as if he were going to vomit.

“You're right, I'm sorry. You wanted to talk about Pence.” Hayner relinquished his grip on him, pulling away and rubbing underneath his nose.

“Please.” Roxas let him go, reaching for the soda on the ledge. He opened it, downed the whole thing while focusing on the fizzing burn from the carbonation. Hayner grabbed for his own soda, but didn't drink from it. Roxas kept the can to his mouth, nibbling at the rim. His eyes flickered over past the ledge and his pupils immediately narrowed, a yellow glow of eyes not too far off in the distance.

Roxas reared up onto his tiptoes, joints snapping as his legs shifted into place to attack. Hayner jerked his head over his shoulder, Roxas already pressed up against him so his coat took up most of his vision.

 “Don't,” he warned. Don't look at him, don't move, don’t turn back around. <Kill it. He's mine.> Roxas demanded, his samurai pulling from ether and thorn to dispatch the Heartless. It had smelled Hayner and came crawling. His human, his Hayner, his heart. He was already so scared of losing Pence's friendship because he hadn't protected his brother. He wasn't going to let Hayner's worries about him draw Heartless like flies to honey. <Mine, mine, mine mine, “mine, mine, mine…”>

Something recoiled violently inside Hayner as he shoved Roxas away, back slamming into the ledge. Roxas hadn't budged, but stopped whispering, stopped accidentally doing it outloud, and flicked his eyes down to Hayner, pupils widening out to appear more human. Hayner swallowed, stopped breathing, shoulders trembling. Roxas could smell the cold sweat drip down against the curve of his spine.

“Wha…what the fuck was that?” Hayner choked, Heartless, Heartless, Heartless pulling from the dark behind him. <I SAID GET RID OF THEM!> More samurai answered his call.

“Hayner…” He reached for him, Hayner jerking back, arm up to block himself. “Please move away from the ledge.” Dripping, dripping, marinated in it, dripping, drooling. Roxas pulled his hand away and sighed, a delighted, disgusted sort of contentment at his decision. “I want you to be safe. Don't move.”

Hayner tensed as Roxas hopped up on the ledge and strode past him. Hayner hadn't taken his eyes off of him, but they widened when he saw—

“Shadows and Silver Devils?! Roxas!” He scrambled up on the ledge after him, redirecting his fear of Roxas to a fear for Roxas.

“I told you already, I fight these things. You can't even touch them without special weapons, so back up.” Roxas gripped his keyblade in his hand, weighted and familiar, yet he felt like everything was tipped upside down. Was this breaking the rules? Was protecting Hayner, showing him the keyblade, letting him watch him fight, breaking the rules? “I just…want you to be safe.” Roxas glanced over his shoulder at him, Hayner's wide eyes searching him for answers.

Roxas would have to keep himself human looking, which would limit physical ability, but that was safer than drawing more Heartless because of Hayner. The quicker he dispatched them, the less Hayner would worry, the less he'd draw more Heartless.

<Should we move your human away, my liege?>

<No, don't touch him or get near him. Just keep the Heartless away from him.>

<Understood.>

“They're… fighting ? But I thought…” Roxas could hear him mumbling, even at this distance, even under the hissing and hollow shrieking of Heartless. “Roxas what…who are you…?”

“I'm your friend, Hayner.”

Hayner jerked, taking a step back. Roxas shouldn't have been able to hear him. Roxas shouldn't have glanced over at him with eyes glowed yellow in the dark like an animals. Roxas shouldn't have scared the hell out of him because he hesitated for just a second, just a moment, remembering how he'd decided he'd swallow their hearts at the first excuse he was given.

He didn't. He behaved.

He turned his attention back to the Heartless only after it lunged for his face, narrowly avoiding it. He tried not to listen to how Hayner took another step back, then another, then bolted. He tried not to hold it against him.

He tried.

He really tried.

All he could think of was Luxord's wager, his questions, how Roxas had had so much faith in them. They were kind to him, they wanted to protect him, but Roxas had never given them reason to doubt him. Maybe he'd let too many hints collect like atoms, split and explode.

<Please…keep an eye on him.>

<Yes, my liege.>

They were friends. Roxas found himself already distraught at the thought of losing him, already deciding if Hayner didn't want to be friends anymore, he'd have to eat him. He'd have to. He couldn't be without them, so he'd have to keep them all together. Then he'd have to eat Pence and Olette's hearts so they wouldn’t be alone. It would save Pence the pain of having to hear what happened to his brother. He'd have to now, all because Hayner ran away.

<Keep him safe. No matter what, keep him safe.> Roxas would rather tear through dusks and samurai than his friend.

END OF DEATH CAP ARC

Chapter Text

Roxas tore through dusk after dusk, samurai after samurai, the Nobodies leaving nothing in their wake. They didn't understand why they had to stop him from getting something he wanted. They didn't grasp the concept of regret. It was a heart, a single heart that would be so easy for Roxas to take—he tore through another dusk with his claws, keyblade long since put away.

They piled on top of him, Roxas screaming in a way that was all whispers, deep bass and reverb.

Something clattered to the ground.

<Should we move the human?> Roxas was asked again.

Hayner picked up the piece of plywood, holding it like a bat. “Get away from him!” His fear was thick and vibrant like spilled gasoline. The plywood went right through a dusk, who awaited direction. Hayner couldn't stop shaking, jaw locked to keep it from trembling, eyes unable to focus.

<…You heard him.> The dusks and samurai removed themselves from Roxas, taking their leave.

Hayner dropped the plywood, immediately falling to his knees and throwing his arms around Roxas. The pressure from dusks and samurai holding him down was different than the pressure of Hayner holding him close because he was scared he'd vanish right in front of him.

Roxas struggled to keep his fangs in his mouth while Hayner struggled to breathe. He'd watched Nobodies take his parents and probably just thought he was going to watch them take his friend. He'd heard sometimes memories were so strong that humans could feel like they were experiencing them for the first time all over again. Hayner had to have felt small and helpless, not at all like the person he was now. Roxas wondered if it was worse to have him this terrified and this close or having him run away and leave Roxas feeling betrayed instead.

“I'm okay. They won't hurt me,” Roxas reassured. Hayner's phone rang in his pocket, a ringtone he had set for Olette.

“But they were all over you! They—” Hayner had yanked back, clinging to him as if he'd crumble to dust in front of him. Hayner choked, a high noise in his throat as he stared at Roxas. His fear was heavy, suffocating, and serene like compacted snow. Roxas turned his head away from him. Hayner's grip loosened on his coat. “…What did they do to you?”

“No one did anything to me, Hayner.”

Hayner reached up, holding his face in his hands. Roxas couldn't look at him, well aware he wasn't keeping himself together very well. He was still too angry with himself at the thought of hurting Hayner, still too distraught at the thought of him leaving him, still too hungry to be this close to him.

“But you don't…you don't…” He didn't look right. Roxas held Hayner's wrists, gently pulling him away. He tried so very hard to not put his hand to his mouth, the thick flesh of his palm enticing.

“We should get you home.” He stood up, Hanyer's wrists still in his hands. Hayner stayed on the ground ragged breathing the only thing between them.

“If I asked, would you tell me?”

Roxas didn't answer. He wasn't quite sure what his question was, but he could guess well enough. Hayner's phone vibrated with Pence’s ringtone this time.

“You know, I get so caught up in worrying about Pence being nosy that sometimes I forget about you.” it didn't help that Roxas wanted to tell him. If Hayner asked, he wasn't sure he'd be able to lie to him. But, the truth could endanger him. “It's better if you don't know…it's safer.”

“What if I ask anyway? Would you be honest with me, Roxas?” Roxas let his hands go.

“This isn't a game, Hayner.” His voice was high in his throat, strangled to a whisper. Hayner's phone vibrated again, Pence’s ringtone.

“You don't think we get that? This is affecting us, we're not bystanders! Let us help you!” Us. Why drag Pence and Olette into it? Maybe if Hayner could keep it to himself, maybe it would be easier to tell him. It would hurt less to lose one of them rather than all three of them, but Roxas knew it was just an excuse. With them, it was all or nothing.

“There's nothing to help with! It's just putting you three in a position that's dangerous!”

“Then at least tell us what's going on so we know what we can do to support you! What are we supposed to do when you show up beat to hell or vanish for weeks?!”

“You can support me by keeping out of it!”

Footsteps, Olette’s ringtone.

“Little late for that! I just watched you whip a giant key out of nowhere and beat the hell out of things that—those monsters that ruined our lives!”

<“I'm one of those monsters, Hayner!”>

Pence and Olette skidded to a stop as they rounded the corner, Hayner violently jerking away from Roxas. He hadn't meant to whisper. He hadn't meant to scare him. He hadn't meant to tell them. He hadn't meant to hurt them. He hadn't meant it. He hadn't meant it.

He fell apart, all teeth and claws and extra joints and narrow pupils and the smell of a rotting garden. Monsters were always a conception, a thing lingering on periphery and almost happenings. Monsters weren’t real and monsters didn’t wear the face of a friend. All three of them swelled with fear like a sewer, disgust and leftover feelings from other memories that terrified them.

Roxas quietly picked up Frankie's bandana and set it on the ledge closer to Pence, careful not to get too close. He was twice their size, yet he felt so small with them watching.

“I didn't stop her…I'm sorry. He's gone, Pence.”

Pence didn't blink, his eyes glazing over with tears. Roxas turned away, unable to look at him.

“I don't want to hurt any of you…but I'm scared sometimes I will. I'm not different from the Heartless or dusks you've seen, I just…I like you. You're all important to me.”

None of them said anything, shaking, fawn-skin delicacies.

Roxas left.

Roxas didn't realize he'd cried before until he was doing it all alone. The first time he'd cried, he'd been wrapped between all of them and comforted despite not knowing what he was feeling. Alone, he didn't realize how that had kept him feeling like he was falling apart. Holding himself was different than being held by someone else.

His wailing echoed down the halls, his overgrowth crawling all over his room and nesting him inside of his misery. He didn't realize how large it was until it was outside of him, twisted and knotted and covering his entire room in thorns.

<I don't want to be alone…!> He wailed, three samurai coming to his call.

<What would you have us do, my liege?>

<Hold me. Please just hold me, I don't want to be alone…!> They wrapped their arms around him, let him bury himself against their shoulders, their joints, their limbs twining around him. Nobodies were cold, no need to regulate a temperature of an empty body. No warmth, no light, no hearts.

This somehow made it worse, Roxas unable to stop sobbing, to stop his overgrowth from working its way out of his throat with its cancerous clump of feelings. It throbbed, swollen, his aura coiled around it in a warm pink like thin flesh under sunlight. Roxas had never cared much one way or another if he existed or not, but now, he was quite sure he was dying and just wanted to get it over with already. He hadn't known better with Pence's brother, but he knew better now; after how they reacted, it was best to never see them ever again.

“Roxas,” XIV called for him. “Saix says you need to go on a mission now. It's been too many days since you've last been on one.”

The overgrowth crawled around his door, pulsing and pulling in on itself.

<…He said if you don't go, I'm supposed to burn this down and take you out to see Xemnas.> Axel.

His overgrowth pulsed. Pulsed. Throbbed. Receded, slowly, like a curse. Silence. His door clicked, unlocked. Roxas opened it, blue eyes vacant from a lack of sleep and the overexertion of keeping his overgrowth outside of himself for so long. It felt more accurate to have his insides outside with his world tipped upside down the way it was. He'd done it to himself, but it still didn't make the loss hurt any less.

“I asked if we could go with you on the mission. You don't even have to do anything, you just have to come with us and I'll take out enough Heartless for the two of us.”

<…Why?>

“You just seemed like you could use a friend.”

Roxas felt his eyes well up.

<Don't let anyone see you doing that.> Axel whispered to Roxas and Roxas alone.

He wiped at his eyes, hissing back, <Then why make me leave my room?>

<So you don't get turned into a dusk, Roxas. I happen to like you more than the other guys—but not as much as Xion, of course.>

“Axel, stop teasing him. Come on Roxas, we can go to Wonderland.” XIV offered, leaning towards him to gauge his approval. Roxas didn't care where they went so long as it wasn't Twilight Town.

True to their word, XIV took out enough Heartless to make it look like they'd both done the work. For whatever reason, they did this for the next mission, and the next, and the next.

<When are you going to stop?> Roxas asked, crouched down with his mouth to knees. His spine hurt, felt like the discs weren't in their proper places.

“Stop what?” Xion asked, the warm glow of hearts twisting up and away, going home to kingdom hearts.

<Taking out Heartless for me. Why not just let me get turned into a dusk? I don't matter.>

“That's not true. You may not feel like you matter to yourself, but I've seen you with those humans. You matter to them at least.” If XIV knew, who else did?

<Not anymore.>

“Well then you matter to me.” XIV hadn't asked him if he was sure, they just took him at his word.

<Why?> Roxas snapped. <You don't even know me.>

“Not yet, but if I want you to matter to me, you will. That's all it takes to start something, isn't it? A desire, then taking the steps towards getting what you want?” XIV walked over to him, sitting down with their keyblade still in hand. “Is there anything you want right now, Roxas?”

He wanted his friends. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to curl up and stop existing. He wanted to be held. <…I want sea salt ice cream.>

“We can go get some.”

Roxas' spine popped, a disc bursting open, pollen suffocating the air.

“Is that good or bad?”

Roxas' eyes welled up. <I dunno…>

“It's okay, you don't have to know.” Xion rubbed above his disc, exploding everywhere like a cattail. “Let's go get you ice cream.”

Roxas had taken to accompanying Xion around, which meant he'd taken to spending more time with Axel. Axel didn't seem to mind his miserable company, but it did appear his pride was hurt when Roxas didn't exactly find him amusing.

<Ice cream again? Do you eat anything else?> He asked, coiling around his shoulder with a snap, but not touching him.

<Don't wanna.> Roxas whispered around the bar.

“Do you want one, Axel?” Xion offered. Roxas had never seen Xion. Even when looking right at them, his memory forgot, blocked them out and censored them. It made it easy for Xion to interact with humans because they couldn't observe a monster they couldn't see. Roxas was jealous.

<Nah, I'm good. It looks gross.> Axel was on edge, the way Roxas should have been. He should have been straining to listen, careful to avoid them, but he wasn't. He wasn't considerate enough of the future to allow himself the concept of interacting with them again, even at a distance.

“It's not too bad and it's nice to do something together after missions again. We haven't since you've come back from Castle Oblivion.” Roxas sometimes felt like an intruding bystander Xion had roped into their performance of echoes.

<I guess you're right. Sorry about that.> Axel rubbed at the back of his neck. It reminded Roxas of Hayner. 

“It's okay, I know we've both been busy—Roxas what's wrong?” Xion fumbled with their ice cream, fumbled with how to react to Roxas crying again. “Hey…” His ice cream melted, dripping right next to his tears on the ground.

<Oh boy…>

He missed them so much.

“Do you want to go back?”

He shrugged, a tense movement that hurt his shoulder blades.

“Do you want to stay here?”

He shrugged again. Xion cast a look of desperation to Axel while Roxas helplessly wiped at his tears.

<We could always go see a movie.> Roxas had only ever seen a movie with the projector Pence had brought to their hangout spot. <It'll be dark to give us some cover, but will give us a time limit so we're not aimlessly wandering.>

“Do you wanna go see a movie, Roxas?” Xion grabbed for his hand, holding it in theirs. “Let's go see a movie.” Roxas trailed tears and ice cream all the way to the pavilion.

They sat as far back from the humans as they could, Xion not letting go of his hand. He didn't remember the movie. He didn't remember finishing his ice cream. He didn't remember when Xion had let go of his hand. He just remembered feeling like a tight bud had gotten stuck in his chest and then had frozen over. It was heavy. Why was his chest this heavy?

<Xion says we can go back without them.>

Roxas jerked at Axel's voice, pulling off of the wall, claw clutching his chest. The movie was over, humans shuffling out.

<Oh…> He glanced around, expecting to see Xion somewhere among the crowd, but they were gone. Axel started off ahead, Roxas following behind him, not bothering to attempt to make sound as he walked.

Axel tried to whisper to him the whole way back, but Roxas couldn't bring himself to focus on anything he was saying. His chest felt heavy. Why did it feel heavy?

<Axel, can I have you check something for me? I'm scared if I do it myself I might hurt myself again.> Roxas pressed his hand to his collarbone, wondering when he'd become so accustomed to hollow ache that ran along his body.

<…aid he—oh, uh sure Roxas. Right now?> Axel stopped walking, turning to face him.

<I can wait till we're back in the castle. Normally Marluxia would look, but he doesn't exist anymore.> Roxas wondered if it was cruel to bring up his demise so casually, without a fleeting thought. Would it be like that when he vanished? <…Should I care more that so many of the Organization is gone?>

<I mean…> Axel rubbed at the back of his neck. Hayner. Roxas wouldn't cry. <You don't have to. Working with people and liking them are two separate things.>

<You said you liked me,> Roxas reminded.

<I do, even if whatever you're doing right now keeps bumming me out.>

Roxas furrowed his brow, studying him hard. Was that Axel’s way of saying he wanted to be friends? What about Xion? Was Roxas allowed to be friends with people who didn’t have hearts, who wouldn’t affect him the way Hayner, Pence, and Olette had? Or would their echoes affect him with the same harrowing surety?

<I can’t have any more friends…if I lose anymore, I don’t know what I’d do. I already feel like I’m dying.> Roxas admitted, gripping the front of his jacket with both hands.

<The point of friends isn’t to worry about if you lose them or not, Roxas. Losing them hurts because you cared so much about them. The point of friends is to have people you can rely on and trust with those sort of feelings.>

<But we don't have feelings—not really. Xemnas said so… everyone says so.>

<Well I mean I can't tell the difference.> Axel gave a shrug, head tipped back to look at the moon.

<Huh?> Roxas tipped his head back to look up at Axel.

<From before when I was a somebody to now as a Nobody…feels the same to me, even if it is fake.>

<It…it does?> Roxas didn't have a before. What was his before like? Would he have felt differently now if he had something to compare his feeling to?

<Yeah. So, you know, if you're experiencing those feelings the same way, does it matter if they're fake?>

Roxas had never thought about it like that before. <But Xemnas says—>

<Xemnas says a lot of stuff and so do I. Take it however you want,> Axel quipped back, finally looking down at Roxas. He was implying Xemnas had lied to them? But why? Maybe it hadn't been on purpose, maybe Xemnas just didn't have reason to believe otherwise.

“You're still here?” Xion asked, hand tucked behind their back. Roxas was glad for the interruption.

<And where did you go off to?> Axel asked, giving a teasing, chiding shake of his head.

“I hear you like souvenirs, Roxas. Me too! I decided on something, so I went and got something to commemorate today, that's all.” They explained, removing their hood to tuck a lock of hair behind their ear. Roxas had never seen Xion without their hood before—they were pretty in an unusually familiar way.

<Oh? And what did you decide on?>

“That I won't let my friends be sad anymore, no matter what.” Xion opened a corridor, still keeping their hand from Axel and Roxas, a secret memento. Roxas was curious, but he didn't ask. He'd had secret spoils before too—but that was when he'd taken things from humans.

Roxas…!

Roxas!

Roxas—!

He paused, looking over his shoulder. He wasn't trying to listen for them, but that sounded too close to be ignored.

<Are they safe?>

<Scared, but they are unharmed my liege.>

Why call for him, the monster that lurked in their safe places, when they were scared? What was the point of admitting you were being terrorized by one monster just to call for another? Was it because he was their monster? Had they believed him when he said he didn't want to hurt them? But what if he was wrong and they were terrified of him and never wanted to see him again?

Roxas followed Xion back, Axel following behind him. They'd be okay. Roxas would be okay. After all, he had new friends now, didn't he?

Friends he could quite literally open himself up to. Axel said he didn't find anything in his chest when he looked through Roxas' overgrowth.

<…There's nothing, really. You don't need anyone else to go digging around inside of you.> Axel didn't look at him as he spoke. He'd hesitated—he'd lied.

<You're lying.>

<There's nothing there. Nobodies don't have hearts, so you can't find something that isn't there.>

Roxas' chest still felt heavy. Was light heavy? Were hearts heavy? Roxas hated that Axel tended to imply things over being outright with him. He just wanted someone to not lie to him for once.

<You're saying that I…You can't say that.> He couldn't. Because if he did, it meant vivarium echoes were actually remnants like dandelion seeds, floating and useless and left to grow as they pleased wherever they landed.

<I didn't. Not to you or to Xion.> It meant everything Xemnas, the oldest of all of them who had time to cultivate a heart even if he didn't realize it, was lying about what they were collecting hearts for. If they didn't need to collect them to have their own by forming kingdom hearts, then what was Roxas doing this whole time?

Chapter Text

It wasn’t fair. Roxas had been isolated from people who were supposed to have been his comrade, his teammates. He’d been forced to rely on the comfort of humans who had abandoned him, who had let him become this broken. This was their fault, the humans. Humans were only bundles of cancerous memories and succulent hearts. Humans were lesser than, ignorant things and Xion had the memories to prove it.

Humans had hurt Xion’s friend. They weren’t ever going to forgive the humans, especially if Xion couldn’t stop Roxas from echoing this kind of pain and misery. Xion didn’t have any memories of that kind of sorrow, be it made or from Sora. Maybe those kind of memories had been left within Roxas. Roxas didn’t even know he was apart of Sora and Xion couldn’t bring themself to tell him.

It was a can of worms from a rotting corpse and Xion didn’t want to leave that in Roxas’ hands. Roxas was already hurt and he didn’t deserve that from Xion too. They wanted to help. They wanted to be his friend. They wanted to ensure he’d never be hurt again.

They’d seen the humans during the movie, together and holding hands and laughing. Xion didn’t care if the movie was a distraction or if they were really enjoying themselves. The fact that the humans could laugh while their friends was in such agony wasn’t fair. Xion was going to make it fair.

Xion let their bones clack as they walked, but there was no sound of their footsteps. They were sure to make their aura coil around them like dancing ribbon, make it burn with their resentment. Xion followed the humans, keeping out of sight, but ensuring the humans felt them the way Xion had felt Roxas’ grief.

The humans cowered together as they walked, sheep to be sheared and slaughtered for the minuscule amount were worth. Xion ignored their soft murmuring. They forced impending dread down certain alleyways and street corners, shattered light bulbs, forcing them where they wanted the humans.

Alone. Isolated. The way Roxas felt.

He didn’t know it, but Roxas was apart of Xion—he was important to them than the humans. Roxas was precious and deserved to be treated as such. Roxas was a piece of their heart and Xion was so tired of letting those pieces suffer, of both of them being fragmented.

Never again. So long as Roxas was by their side, never again.

<My liege, we should inform you before you take another step that we are obligated to keep these humans safe. We are under order from Number XIII.>

<What?> Xion faltered, aura ribbons going slack as they were taken aback by the samurai’s sudden presence.

<We are under orders to ensure their safety. We have been told to fight you if necessary.> To fight them? To stop them? Why?! These humans had hurt him! Why didn't they deserve to be hurt too?!

<Am I allowed to get near them if I don't attack them?> Humans could die from enough fear, couldn't they? Didn't their knees give out? Didn't their bladders give out? Didn't their meager little hearts give out? Couldn't they kill the humans without touching them or casting magic? The humans deserved to be punished.

<We see no need for you to get close to them with such hostility. Perhaps it can be redirected to something else.>

<So you're saying you don't trust me?> Xion snapped. They were little smartasses, feigning politeness when they were more than willing to attack them if provided with the opportunity.

<We are just trying to ensure their safety, to follow our orders.>

<Then surround me, restrain me, but let me closer. They need to know how I'm feeling.> If Roxas was apart of Xion, then Xion was apart of him. They needed to know Roxas was hurt, but they needed to know another part of him was furious. The Nobodies pressed themselves around them, Xion wondering if more would come if they slaughtered these three Nobodies.

They likely would, but if Xion was quick enough, would they be able to stop them? If Xion got close enough, even with the Nobodies flanking them, they could probably do it. What would the Nobodies do after they killed them? Their mission would have been failed, over. They'd vanish, report back to Roxas. But if Roxas was still protecting them, would it be a breach of trust by killing them? But they still deserved to be punished, to suffer and it was easier to suffer while alive.

Xion could compromise.

They let the humans go into a small gated area, radiator, couch, one exit, weak overhead structure. A lack of hiding places, but sufficient makeshift weapons if need be. Perching places, but nothing too far off of the ground.

Trapped.

<“Why did you hurt my friend?”> Xion asked, their voice hollow and echoing off of the walls. The three humans before them clung to each other, trembling, holding their breath. <“He liked you...now he won't stop crying. Why did you hurt my friend?”>

“We don’t…Who is…?” One of them fumbled, choking on sound, on questions. Xion didn’t care which it was. The humans were all the same to them, one massive heart in three pieces to be wrought for kingdom hearts.

<Roxas!> they hissed, the sound sharp and hissing, eldritch and violent. <“ His name is Roxas …and you hurt him…!”> Xion felt themselves unfurling, their body creaking and groaning as they grew, new casting for their hollow body. Larger, taking up the doorway, even with samurai flanking them.

“R-Roxas—!” Xion snatched the sound from the air, clasping the gem of terror in their hand. Roxas. His name. How dare they hurt him then call for him when they think they’re going to be hurt! How dare they. They had no right! The samurai hadn’t stopped Xion since Xion hadn’t attacked them.

<“Call his name again! Do it!”> Do it so they could take it the way the way they took away his echoes of happiness.

Silence.

<“I said CALL FOR ROXAS!”>

“Roxas…! ” They snatched another bead, another marble of sound that echoed in her hand. That human put a hand to her throat, choking, squeaking, as if she was trying to call for him, as if she knew the sound was missing.

Xion stared down the third one. He was trying to glare, trying to keep the other two behind him. He was shaking the hardest out of the three of them. He was fighting Xion with his silence. Intimidation wasn’t working, whispering wasn’t working. Why wasn’t this one reacting like the other two?

He was certainly scared, but his fear was familiar, carved repeatedly in the same space until it was cavernous, buried deep down. Xion focused their aura around that human, tight, tense rage, burning away the rotted shell around the canyon of his familiar fear.

The two behind him were scared of being hurt; he wasn’t. He was more scared of either them being hurt of being the only one left alive if something did happen. Xion didn’t touch him—Xion flooded the area with darkness.

<I don’t care if you just move the two humans in the back to the other side of the room or even take them outside, just don’t let the one in the front touch them or I will attack all of them. If I cast firaga, this place will catch fire so quick you won’t even have time to call for reinforcements to save them.>

The samurai decided it was a safer bet to just separate the humans, to listen to the implication of safety.

“Pence, Olette!” Hayner called for them as their touch vanished from beneath his hands. Xion could see the dusks press them into the corners of the ceiling, both of them struggling to get away.

They both called for him, but Xion’s darkness swallowed the sound of their calls and their struggles before it could reach him. One more. They just needed one more of them to call for Roxas and then they’d be satisfied for now. Xion could convince Roxas later that they were safe—that it was alright to recall his samurai. Xion would be careful to make it look like an accident.

<Call his name and you’ll get them back. Otherwise…> Xion made their joints pop, hollow bone sounds that made the human’s terrified aura flood to the ceiling like smog. <Call him. Now.>

Xion let the sound of the human’s call for him resound through the darkness.

“Hayner! ”

“Hayner—!”

“Give them…they’re my friends , give them back! Roxas! ” His voice broke he called for him so loudly, helplessness seeping into the crack. Xion snatched up the sound and the darkness receded, Pence and Olette dropping to the floor.

Xion made their way back to the pavilion, twirling the marbles around in their hand, the samurai having retreated when they did.

“You're still here?” Xion asked, taken aback and quickly tucking their hand behind their back, marbles gripped tight.

<And where did you go off to?> Axel asked, giving a teasing, chiding shake of his head.

“I hear you like souvenirs, Roxas. Me too! I decided on something, so I went and got something to commemorate today, that's all.” They explained, removing their hood to tuck a lock of hair behind their ear. The grand gesture and excitement in their voice distracted from Xion slipping the marbles into their pocket.

Xion wouldn’t ever let Roxas feel this kind of sorrow from three meager hearts ever again. So long as Roxas was by their side, never again. Never again.

Chapter Text

Roxas was having a hard time summoning his keyblade. He didn't even want to think about the weight in his chest or what that implied about Xemnas. On top of that, he was quite sure he was losing his mind because he kept hearing his friends call for him.

Roxas…! Olette.

Roxas—! Pence.

Roxas! Hayner.

Summoning his keyblade had always been such a natural thing, a tug with the silver lining of the universe. Now, he had to find the thread and be careful it didn't snap when he pulled. 

He held his hand out, calling for it, calling, calling Hayner, Pence, and Olette wouldn't stop calling. Snap. No keyblade.

“We can just do what we've been doing,” Xion offered, legs tucked up underneath them as they sat on his bed. Xion looked like a doll, very pretty, unmoving except for when they spoke. They had no idle motions of life.

<But what happens when we have to get put on different missions? Xion, I can't summon my keyblade and if I can't do that, what good am I to the Organization?>

“It's probably just because you're stressed out still. Axel says stress can manifest in different ways. I wouldn't worry too much about it.” Was his stress manifesting in the phantom call of his friends in the castle? He'd had his samurai check and they weren't calling for him. They hadn't said his name at all apparently, like a plague summoned by words. He'd come when they called before, so it made sense to not call for him, to want to avoid him.

<But I am worried.> Roxas threw himself sideways onto his bed. Xion crawled over to him, lifting his head and putting it in their lap. They rubbed a lock of hair between their fingers, thinning petals he'd been trailing all over his room.

“What would make you less worried? What can I do to make you feel better, Roxas?” They leaned over his face, their coat clinking. Roxas reached up to hold the metal piece in his hand.

<I don't know. That's the whole problem, I don't know anything. I don't know if Hayner, Pence, and Olette would still want to be my friend, I don't know what's wrong with my keyblade, I don't know who I was before, and I don't know how to make myself feel any better.>

“So you want answers?” They asked, rubbing at a new petal. He let go of their coat, turning over to bury his face against their stomach. “What answer do you think would be easiest to get and then what one do you want the most?” He wanted to know if his friends still cared, but that answer also scared him the most. The easiest would probably be who he was before, he just needed to start looking.

<Your before…what was it like?>

“Honestly, I feel like my before is different than everyone else's. Axel said his feels like a break, a clear difference. Mine feels jumbled, like it doesn't really belong to me…it comes back in huge pieces and sometimes it's dizzying.” Xion admitted, brow furrowed.

<I'd trade, you if you wanted.> Roxas offered as he turned over onto his back, wanting to ease her pain despite his own.

Xion let out a laugh, hand to his cheek. “You'd bear all of the confusing memories instead? Let me start from scratch?”

<If you wanted to.>

“I think it would be nice…a lot less confusing to be my own person.” Xion decided, voice soft even though it would have been more interpersonal if they just whispered to him.

<But I have nothing to go on. I have to rely on everyone a lot and it's frustrating. Would you be okay with that? You do tend to go off on your own a lot.>

“You do that too. When I first got here, I actually felt you were harder to approach than Xemnas. He's are least our boss and we can ask him things. I wanted to be friends, but I wasn't sure how to start a conversation with you.”

“I come off as unapproachable?” Roxas couldn't help but ask out loud, the last time he talked being to Hayner, Pence, and Olette. Him, when all he wanted was to be smothered under people he cared about. He couldn't help but laugh, Xion's body clicking and snapping in reply.

“You laughed!” Guys I got Roxas to laugh!

“…You win at life, then,” he informed her.

“What's my prize?” they asked, body clicking in delight.

“Oh what, my laugh wasn't enough?” he teased, sitting up and snatching his pillow up. He wasn't sure if he wanted to hit them with it or smother them with it, so he ended up just holding it.

“If I win, that makes it the finish line, doesn't it? What's my prize?”

Roxas rolled his eyes. He took her hand in his, kissing the back of it. “There. Your prize.”

“What is it?” they asked, inspecting their hand as if they expected something to show up the way he had.

“A human display of affection.”

“Cool.”

“Right?”

Xion pressed the back of his hand to their mouth and Roxas realized he'd kissed them, but they hadn't kissed him. Xion hadn't hesitated to return the gesture, to show him they cared. Roxas slouched back down into their lap, wrapping their arms around their middle and abandoning the pillow between them.

But there had been an intensity with his humans that there wasn't with Xion. But he'd enjoyed sharing that with them, the knowledge, the sensation. He enjoyed Xion's enthusiasm for it as well, their reaction the same to the ice cream.

<…Can I show you some other stuff, too?>

“I like being shown stuff!”

Roxas pulled away from Xion, sliding off of his bed and going over to his shelf of mementos. Xion slid over to the edge of his bed, pillow hitting the floor. Roxas had never explained what each thing was or why he'd kept it. He'd never shown his collection of precious baubles to someone else before.

Xion didn't just let him talk, Xion engaged him, asked for detail, asked to touch or smell or asked if he'd seen something similar. Xion made Roxas' overgrowth coil like when he was with his humans, joy familiar. He missed it. He missed being happy.

When he was done showing off his mementos, Xion took him down to their room. They'd made him wait at first, standing outside of their room while they adjusted something inside, then let him in. Mementos versus souvenirs, memories versus spoils, sensation versus victories.

<Your seashell is way bigger than mine. Where did you go to get it?>

“This world that's actually really quiet. There's practically only shadows there if anything. I'm just…I'm drawn to it. I keep going back to that island. It makes me…I feel something there, from my before. It keeps calling to me.” Xion looked distant, as if they were living in a different moment than the one in their room with Roxas.

<Calling to you?>

“I can bring you, if you want. It's a really pretty place. The trees are vibrant green and purples, the beach sand is white, the ocean is this gorgeous teal…”

“There's a dock and a shack.” Roxas added, confused as to why he knew that, why he could see it so clearly. The beach, it wasn't the beach with Hayner, Pence, and Olette. It was a different beach.

“And a cave.” With drawings.

“And a door.” He could never open. But he'd wanted to open it. Who was—Roxas winced, a heavy throbbing behind his eye. He had to press a hand to it, pressure to relieve the pain. His head hurt.

“You've been?” Xion asked excitedly.

<No… Never.>

“But then…that means you've been there when you weren't you now.”

<I thought I didn't have memories from my before…> Roxas carefully pulled his hand from his head, tail lashing behind him.

“Then we should go! Maybe if you find out who you were, you'll feel better about who you are now.”

A beach. Memories of a beach. There was something there, some mystery beyond the ocean, some desire to leave, someone precious he couldn't leave. He glanced at Xion. Someone precious. Why did they look like someone precious, but…him. Xion looked like him. The shape of his mouth, the set of his jaw. But the slant of her nose, the way her ears sat belonged to someone else.

“Roxas?”

Roxas forgot what Xion looked like as he was studying them.

“I want to go to the beach. I want to know what I was like when I had a heart. That's the easiest question to answer.”

“We can start with your name. Do you remember what it was before you were given a new one?”

<I don't—>

Xemnas had taken his name from him, had rearranged and used him how he saw fit. His name, his only link to his before was—

“Sora. My name was Sora…I think.”

“Sora…?” Something flickered inside Xion, unfurled, unwavering in its viciousness. They calmed down, curling it back up. “I've got memories of someone named Sora. Maybe our befores are connected.”

If they were connected, was that why Xion had wanted to talk with him? Was that why Roxas seemed to get along so well with them in such a short amount of time?

<Do you think we were friends then?>

“It would be nice if we were. If not it doesn't mean I'd like you any less,” Xion reassured, grabbing for his hand.

Roxas bent forward, overgrowth crawling out of his mouth and curling around Xion's arm as his face burned.

They laughed, giving his hand a squeeze. It twisted, searching, hunting for another sensation than the one that had so easily overwhelmed him. “It's okay to be embarrassed.” Roxas was grateful he could just let it escape him with Xion rather than choking it back like he'd had to at Hayner's.

<Sorry.> He relaxed, swallowing it back down.

“It's okay, it happens. You don't get weirded out when my body clacks, so I don't see why I should when you sprawl all over,” they reminded. Roxas was glad it was that simple. He'd been so confused by the simplicity of moments like this for such a long time, but with Xion he genuinely understood them for once. I'm a monster, you're a monster; we don't scare each other.

Roxas—! Pence.

Roxas! Hayner.

Roxas…! Olette.

He ignored them and the way it made his insides jerk in delight and longing at the sound of them fearfully calling for him. He was just stressed out and just missed them. He would be okay. He'd get over them. He had Xion now and Xion wouldn't be scared of him.

<You two are going to get in trouble,> Axel scolded.

“Then come with us and get in trouble too!” Xion offered, grabbing for Axel's hand.

<Or just don't tell.> Roxas offered, burying his mouth against his scarf. Xion had asked him if he wanted to come to the island with them, where their memories were.

<It's one thing to go on your off time, another to go during missions. You shouldn't have told me because now if I get asked, I have to tell them where you two are.>

<No you don't. You can lie.> Roxas narrowed his eyes at him, playing with the left tassel of his coat, by his heartspace.

<Don't.> That whisper was just for him, Xion unable to hear it.

“Come on, Axel.” Xion tried again.

<Xion, please don't. Be responsible—I don't want anything to happen to you.>

“I am being responsi—” Xion stood stock still, staring at Axel. Axel's eyes flickered over to Roxas, shock, but Roxas barely caught it. Axel narrowed his eyes at her, Xion unmoving. They stood like that for a long time, having an argument Roxas wasn't privy to.

<…If it's that much of a big deal, I can just go on my own,> Roxas offered, pulling himself away from the wall.

“No, this is important. You shouldn't have to be alone for it,” Xion insisted.

<Which you should be doing on your off time!>

<“Axel!”>

Roxas realized he hadn't heard Xion whisper yet. It sounded hollow, like they were speaking through a filter. It made Roxas' chest ache, scar and heartspace both. His hand jerked up, Roxas clutching his coat.

“Please…this is important…he doesn't know. He deserves to know.”

“Not at the cost of you, he doesn't.” Axel speaking out loud to Xion was a gentle gesture, something he was using to bargain with them. Axel cared a lot for Xion—they were friends, precious friends, the way Roxas felt about Hayner, Pence, and Olette.

<I'll go on my own then,> Roxas decided. <I'll be fine and can meet you where our mission is. We don't even know if it'll trigger any memories and right now I'm only getting in the way without being able to summon my keyblade anyway.> It wouldn't make sense to get his friend in trouble for his sake.

<Wait, you can't summon your keyblade?> Axel asked, Xion's eyes flicking over to Roxas.

<It's…been harder to,> he admitted, unsure of how much he was supposed to keep to himself and how much he considered Axel a friend.

Axel pulled back, adjusted his shoulders, looked away. <Fine then. You're going to do whatever you want anyway. Don't come crying to me when it doesn't turn out how you expected it to.>

Roxas had been to the beach before. He'd been with Hayner, Pence, and Olette. He'd gone and made sand castles and didn't have to take off his coat and ate so much he felt like he was going to puke and had kissed them. He'd been to the beach before, but that beach wasn't this beach.

He'd been to this beach before. He'd lost races too many times to count and had twisted his ankle falling off of that ledge and had preferred to nap right there. Before. His before was right here.

“Sora…” Roxas felt a tingling sensation wrap around the space between his ribs and work down his spine. He'd been here. Sora had been here his whole life. But Roxas didn't feel like Sora, even with those memories.

Would Sora have been devastated at having been turned into a monster? Would he have missed this place? Would his friends—friends, two not three. He had accidentally hit him in the face and gave Sora a bloody nose, she had drawn all over him with washable marker for hours while talking about their homework—were they looking for Sora? 

But if Roxas didn't feel like Sora, did that mean Sora didn't exist anymore? Was he gone forever, only to exist in jarring interferences he and Xion had? Roxas couldn't bring himself to mourn who he'd been, a person he didn't know well enough to miss. If he got his heart back, would he go back to being Sora or would he stay Roxas?

It was selfish to everyone in his before, but Roxas hoped he'd stay himself. Even with the agony and misery of missing his friends, he didn't want to be someone else. He'd worked so hard to get to the point where he could say he wanted to exist outside of his basic desire to consume hearts.

Roxas! Hayner.

Roxas…! Olette.

Roxas—! Pence.

“I'm sorry, Sora…I can't bring myself to care about you. Is that selfish of me? Does that mean I don't care about me or…or am I someone completely different? What happens then…when you lose all the memories you have of someone?” Roxas crouched down over the shoreline, watching the waves.

Would Hayner, Pence, and Olette eventually forget him? Would Sora no longer exist with no one around to remember him? If he didn't have any memories of Sora, did that still make him Sora? Would he become more like Sora the more memories of him he had? Since Sora had existed for longer, if he collected those memories and at some point made more memories of being Roxas, would he stop being Sora then?

“I've got too many questions…it would be easier if you could just answer them all away for me rather than having to do it myself…What would you say if I asked you if you'd be alright with me existing instead of you?” he quietly memorialized Sora's name in the sand, letting the waves take it as far as they could.

“I can see as many other worlds as I want…did you ever get to get off of this island and see any? Would you have liked Twilight Town?” Roxas rested his arms over his knees, resting his cheek on them.

He felt at ease by the sea, a familiar lull promising him sleep. He hadn't slept well if at all. But the warm memory of sleeping by the shore was getting to him.

“Hey—you shouldn't sleep there. It'll be high tide soon and you'll drown.”

“You don't need to remind me, Kairi.” The words left him, lazy and familiar with a bite of sarcasm that wasn't normally there. He only realized his mistake once he saw her face, wide eyed at how he knew her name. “Oh—I'm sorry, I…” He stumbled to his feet, immediately reaching for the sides of his hood, but she'd already seen his face.

“Do I know you?” she asked, removing her hands from her knees to stand upright.

“Um…no.” He took Hayner's advice. He didn't need to explain his because, he just had to say it.

“Oh. Well, what's your name?” She held her hands behind her back, but kept her distance. Familiar. Kairi was familiar, he knew her. He missed her. He'd never met her and he missed her, but he didn't miss Sora. Why was that? Was it harder to miss yourself?

“Nn. Mm…Roxas…I, um—!” An idea engraved itself in his thoughts. “I was actually wondering if you could tell me about Sora?”

“Sora?” Hearing her call his name made Roxas feel like he was home. It was familiar, exactly as he'd left it.

Roxas nodded.

“I'm sorry…I don't know a Sora.” But this was Kairi. Roxas knew that the way he knew he moved with his right side first, instinctually. She had been close with him their whole lives. Sora had—for Kairi he'd—what had he done? Where was that memory? Where it should have been there was just an ache, an apologetic sorrow, a buoyant wish. A promise. They'd promised and friends don't break promises.

Did Sora keep his promise to come back if Roxas didn't feel like he was Sora? Could he keep a promise he didn't remember?

“Have you been in that cave?” Roxas asked, pointing to the waterfall. “You made a promise with Sora there. He told me about it. You're not supposed to forget your promises with your friends.” Roxas didn't know why Kairi had forgotten Sora, but he wondered if it was related to him not having any memories of Sora when he'd come into existence. Would Sora be erased with no memories of him? Who would want to erase Sora, what had he done?

Kairi stared at him, studying him for a detail she couldn't place, a difference she couldn't catch. Her heart knew he was telling the truth, but her head had no proof.

“Go look.” Roxas urged, heading towards the shack. Kairi didn't stop him or call out to him, she just watched him leave. Roxas realized despite knowing her name and saying unusual things to her, she hadn't once been afraid of him. Not even so much as unnerved. Was that because she was a princess or because she was Kairi?

Roxas just hoped she did what he asked because hearing how she didn't know Sora had wounded him deeply, but the pain wasn't his. Some part of him knew her, some part of him had missed her. Some part of him swelled up and made his eyes water.

“Why doesn't she remember me…?” He only realized what he said after he'd walked several paces from his anguish into a corridor. <I'm not Sora,> he hissed, angrily wiping his tears away. <Not anymore.> Who cares what happened to him? Who cares why no one could remember him?

Roxas hated that he cared.

Roxas—! Pence.

Roxas…! Olette.

Roxas! Hayner.

<STOP CALLING FOR ME!> he hissed, the whisper making the halls of the castle tremble.

<Roxas? What was that? Are you okay?> Xion, calling for him in what felt like universes away despite being right down the hall. He felt like his whole body was dislocated.

<They won't stop calling for me! There's nothing wrong, why won't they stop calling for me?! I want them to stop!> Overgrowth crawled around his room, suffocating anything it could coil around.

<Roxas—>

<Make them stop!> He sounded hysterical, even to himself. He couldn't sit there with his hands over his ears when they called because he was never sure when they'd call.

<Roxas just whisper to me, I'm coming. It's gonna be okay.>

A knock on his door. His overgrowth pressed against it, forcing it to swell. The handle turned, the door opening.

Roxas had never spoken to Xaldin. He'd spoken to Xemnas more than he'd even seen Xaldin and he'd only spoken to Xemnas a handful of times. Xaldin smelled of crisp winds and reptile scales left to rot in the water. He was also a dragon, heavy set wings disguised as broad shoulders and muscle.

<If the fledgling is having a meltdown over the concept of his fall, perhaps he needs a push to get it over with.> Xaldin grabbed Roxas by the throat, his claw twice the size of his head—he threw Roxas down the hall, his back slamming into the wall. Roxas felt his spine elongate, tail lashing as it formed. His ribs expanded, joints snapping. The hallway flooded with the smell of a rotting garden, Roxas hissing and bearing his fangs as he dropped from the wall into a crouch.

<Come on, then,> Xaldin taunted, fangs bared, claws poised to tear Roxas apart, but he didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking any less than human, any more on guard.

Roxas lunged, a feral scream that was all Nobody whispers and threatening horrors. Xaldin returned the noise, snatching Roxas up and slamming him into the ground.

Roxas twisted out from underneath his foot as it slammed down onto where his chest had been. His tail coiled around Xaldin's leg, all bone-thorns and frustration as he yanked him down onto the ground.

A lance shot through Roxas' shoulder, pinning him to the wall with a scream. He'd expected grappling, not this. He didn't have his keyblade.

Snap. Snap. Snap. No keyblade.

<Your weakness for a heart you don't have is unwelcomed, fledgling!>

Roxas yanked the lance from his shoulder, sap and despair oozing from him. He ducked as Xaldin left a crater in the wall where his skull had been.

Roxas twisted his spear up, Xaldin ducking back just enough to avoid being grazed. He grabbed his lance, using Roxas' iron grip on it to throw him again, but Roxas refused to end up against a wall again.

He hadn't needed to ever unfurl his wings before. He'd never used them—he'd never felt them tear.

Roxas let out a blood curdling scream, clots and seizure inducing and oxygen bubbles from boiling blood. He crashed into the castle floor so hard he shattered tile, a second lance having gone through his wing.

<If you can't hold your own, we have no use for you.>

The sound of silver slicing through air.

<Move, poppet.>

“I won't.” Xion. Roxas could barely see them through bleary eyed pain, and it was like they didn't exist before him when he couldn't remember, couldn't focus on what they looked like.

<This isn't your fight.>

“It is. He's my friend. If Roxas can't fight, I'll fight for him.” Something sparked, a declaration Roxas could feel in a deep orange of a dawning realization. My friends are my power.

<So you wish to be tested as well?> Xion crouched low to the ground, gripping their keyblade. What good was he to the Organization without his keyblade? Was he less like Sora without that link between him? Without that common link, did this put distance between him and Xion?

Roxas struggled to stand, pain shooting to his spine, wrapping around his waist and skull. Roxas blinked, the world spinning and twisting under water.

Stained glass.

Xion had forced Xaldin a few feet away from him.

He blinked, time twisting like in a dream.

Xaldin was holding them by their ankle like a rag doll.

He blinked, heavy eyelids flying open at the heavy sound of weapons clashing.

<Roxas, you're in the way! Get up! Move!> Xion begged. When had he become this weak? Roxas tried to move, his shoulder unresponsive. He reached behind himself with his left hand, gripping the Lance. The pain extended to his grip, eyes glazing over.

<Xion…the lance…> he begged, hand slipping from it, covered in sap. Xion jerked back away from Xaldin.

They threw their keyblade, which he blocked easily. It was the just enough time to rip the lance from his wing, his spine, his shoulder.

Roxas screamed. Blinked and Xion was halfway across the hall, keyblade back in her hand.

“ Roxas!” Xion called again. Roxas struggled to stand, but it was easier without the lance in his wing. He pressed his hand to the wall, slipping and smashing his chin into the ground.

He tried again, tears and sap and helplessness welling in his eyes. He was exhausted and this had nothing to do with missing his friends or losing to Xaldin. Something was wrong, really wrong, and he hadn't realized it in his wallowing. He struggled to get away, out of the way, to get to Xion's room.

He had never felt so heavy, so cumbersome in his own body. <Help…> a samurai came to his aid, dragging him along without a word.

Roxas blinked.

His eye wouldn't open, sap sealing it shut, the other laiden with exhaustion. He was on the floor. Xion's room.

Roxas…! Olette.

Roxas! Hayner.

Roxas—! Pence.

“Stop…” he croaked, desperate and flooded with sorrow. He couldn't help them, so why did they keep calling for him? Why did he still want to be with them when he was sure to only hurt them?

Roxas! Roxas…! Roxas—!

“Please…” His vision blurred. They sounded like they were right there.

Roxas…! Roxas—! Roxas!

There was a box shoved under Xion's bed.

Roxas Roxas Roxas Roxas Roxas Roxas—

He dragged himself across the floor, reaching, reaching, desire overwhelming. <Get me the damn box!> a dusk slid under the bed and out in one fluid motion, handing it off to him.

Roxas struggled to undo the clasp, to open it. His name. They'd called his name. Souvenirs, victories, implied a fight.

Roxas Roxas Roxas.

His name. Xion had taken his name from them. They'd called for him. They'd been scared and called for him. Roxas opened his chest, taking the amber-setting voices and burying them in his overgrowth. He wasn't thinking about what it meant that Xion had hunted them down and taken from them. All he could think of was that they'd wanted him, despite how illogical it was. The heart didn't care what it desired, it just did so fully and honestly.

<…Twilight Town…I have to…>

Snap. Snap. Snap.

No keyblade, no corridor.

Stained glass.

He couldn't get his ribs to close around his overgrowth.

<Please, I have to…I have to see my friends…Twilight…>

He blinked, but couldn't open his eyes.

<As you wish, my liege.>

A twilight thorn lifted him from the ground, Roxas' body completely slack with disobedience to his desires. He'd never summoned anything as big as a twilight thorn before, but he'd also never wanted anything this badly.

Chapter Text

The sky was golden hour perfect, the clouds still, static. The birds couldn’t be heard through the closed window. The electrum hum of the refrigerator had stopped. Nothing felt like it was awake yet except for Hayner. If he never slept, it was still yesterday and tomorrow hadn’t come yet. It was only tomorrow when he finally went to bed—that was always the joke between the three of them during sleepovers.

If it wasn’t tomorrow, that meant it was one less day without them missing Roxas. He pressed the palm of his hand to his eye, rubbing so violently he saw stars, he saw the night before, and the night before that, and the night Roxas ran off. If he pressed hard enough, maybe he’d be able to go back in time.

Hayner opened his mouth, vocal cords pressed together, a heavy and strangled rasp of air leaving him, but no sound. He hadn’t called out for him. He’d let Roxas leave. He let him leave and had only called for him when he needed something from him. He tried to remember when he’d said his name before that, during the yelling, during the vomit-inducing fear.

When was the last time he’d said Roxas’ name? When was the last time he called for him as their friend? Did he speak his name when he was asking about Pence’s brother? What about the beach? On the train ride home? When was the last time he called for Roxas?

He yanked his hands away from his eyes and threw his pillow over his face, then threw it at a window. He felt around for his phone that he hadn’t plugged in properly, it reading a surly 22%. He sighed, then stared at his bedroom door as he weighed his options. He glanced back down at his phone, sending a text message to Pence and Olette.

Hayner: Meet me at the usual place when you’re up. If I’m asleep, wake me?

He took his charger, then crawled out of bed and made his way to the kitchen. He wrote on a sticky note for his grandma, even if he could already hear her TV blasting the morning news. He put it on the fridge, then shoved his feet into his shoes and left. He hadn’t changed. He’d told himself he’d change in a minute, he just needed a minute. He’d laid there all night.

The day hadn’t changed yet if he hadn’t slept, so wearing the same outfit was fine.

Olette: Be there in 5.

Olette had probably sent it before her second shoe was even on. Between her brother having moved out last weekend and Roxas being gone, she was using any excuse she could to avoid being home or alone, but there wasn’t much of a difference in those two things really. She practically lived at Hayner's anyway.

Pence: Anyone eat breakfast? What time does that bagel place open again?

Hayner had to stifle a laugh as he rounded a corner, eyes glazing over. This was so stupid. He blinked away tears and guilt, getting up and closing the front door behind himself. Roxas was their friend. He’d been their friend and was good to them and they hadn’t been good to him. What did they know about him, really?

He liked ice cream, but only because they did. He was scared to take his coat off and had a huge scar. He always surveyed an area as if something was going to jump out and attack them. He was a Visitor.

They didn’t know anything about him. Some friends.

What was his favorite color? What kind of music did he like? Fork or chopsticks? What side did he prefer to sleep on? What size shoe did he wear? Could he whistle or belch on command? What side of his mouth moved first when he smiled? Hayner knew all of that about Pence and Olette, but didn’t know any of that about Roxas. He still had so many things he needed to learn about him. He still needed him here. He still wanted him here.

He hated that.

How dare he consider one of the things that had taken his mother away precious, endearing, gentle. How dare he want a monster in their lives that was the same as the ones that had ruined his life, Pence’s life, Olette’s life. How dare he want to act like he’d never told him, to go back to how it was. How dare he want his ignorance when all he did was hunt for answers.

Olette grabbed him by his arm, tugging him back into the real world, into the back alley before their hangout spot. He clutched his phone, ready to chuck it long after he would have been dead. Olette slapped his wrist away, then put a finger to her mouth. She pointed, around the corner, eyes wide with terror. Hayner stared at her, then nodded. Her fingers flew along her keypad as he peered around the corner.

A massive Silver Devil had stationed itself outside of their hangout place, a guardian barring entry. When the sun caught it, it looked transparent like morning mist. If that thing could become invisible in direct light, it was no wonder a thing of that size could hide for so long. Olette grabbed for Hayner's arm before furiously typing into her phone.

Olette: Silver Devil at the hideout, Pence. Typing so it doesn't hear us and so you know what's going on. What do we do? There’s no way we can sneak past it. Should we go back?

Hayner typed a message out in his own phone.

Hayner: What if it hurts someone? We can’t just leave it.

Olette read it before her eyes went wide. She typed furiously, Hayner leaning over her shoulder to read it.

Olette: Are you NUTS? How are we supposed to fight something like that?

He rolled his eyes and started typing back, pausing as he watched Pence type, then stop.

Hayner: I didn’t say fight it, we just need to lure it away.

Pence: omw, coming around the long way

Olette: Isn’t it safer to just ignore it? From this side, anywhere we’d lure it is into the market. Up on the hill the sewer is locked. Past that is the sandlot and then too many different ways it could rush off to on it’s own. We’re really the only ones ever in this alleyway.

Hayner read the message, then pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes again. Go back, go back. He wanted to go back when they’d found Roxas there the first time after he’d run away. He wanted to hold him tighter, tell him something more reassuring so even that news wouldn’t make him feel he needed to be alone.

He wanted to push him away sooner, tell him to stay gone if he was going to do something like that, something that would hurt them. He wanted to pry more, make him uncomfortable, make him regret it. He wanted to hurt him.

He hated that he felt guilty for either way his thoughts seemed to sway. Maybe there would be a middle ground; he would find out Roxas was okay and get to kill him himself. He heard her phone buzz, heard her nails click along the screen as she talked to Pence.

Hayner pulled his hands away, then peered around the corner once more, the guardian Silver Devil still at its post. What if it moved around during the day? What if they were all over and no one knew? What if the only thing saving everyone was their ignorance? What if now that they knew what to look for, they’d find it?

Olette gently pressed her hand to his arm, Hayner pulling himself out of his theoretical terrors. He glanced at her, then the wall with the monster behind it. He hoped he wouldn’t lose anymore friends. He hoped Roxas would show up, fight that thing and bleed out after killing it. He hoped they could find him so he could stop thinking about him. He was too distracted by Roxas’ absence and the inability to address the information he’d given them. He couldn’t focus on the problem. He didn’t know what to do, but he’d have to make a choice anyway. He hoped by the time Pence arrived, it would be the choice that didn’t hurt anyone.

Hayner crouched down, pressing his forehead to his knees.

"I want you to be safe. Don't move.” The memory of Roxas’ order bounced around in his head.

Was the best course of action no action? Should they just leave it? He pulled his head away from his knees as he heard Pence approach, Pence slowing his jog the closer he got.

Hayner: Traffic cones—people won’t get near our hangout if we put traffic cones down to block it off. Hayner showed them both his phone rather than hitting send.

“You’re a genius—!” Pence exclaimed, Hayner slapping his hand over his mouth.

“Shh!” Pence nodded, Hayner slowly removing his hand from his mouth, eyes locked with his. Pence didn’t utter another word. The three of them exchanged looks and nodded. Hayner held up two fingers, then the three of them separated to meet back up in twenty minutes with stolen traffic cones.

“It’s still there.” Pence spoke softly, sitting on the ground several yards away from their hangout as Hayner passed. Hayner heard the yearning in his voice, trying not to project his own into whatever it was Pence was feeling. He put the traffic cone stack down for a moment, sitting next to him.

“You wanna talk?” he offered.

Pence shook his head, holding his camera, the screen black. There was nothing else to discuss, nothing new to share. They all felt just as confused, just as worried, just as frustrated. The only thing talking would do would reiterate that fact. There would be nothing cathartic about talking about a situation they had all experienced in the exact same way.

“Wanna see how well I can test the zoom of this old thing?” Pence let out an almost self deprecating laugh. It was right there. It was still there. Proof Hayner wasn’t crazy, proof Pence was right, proof Olette was right to worry—proof. Right outside their doorstep.

Hayner stood up, brushing dirt and sand off of his backside before offering a hand to Pence. He took it, hand lingering in Hayner’s. Hayner squeezed it, waiting patiently for him to decide when he was alright. If Pence decided that was never, then Hayner would just have to learn to be left handed.

Pence let go, holding his camera with both hands again. He turned it on, let it load, let it adjust. He aimed the lens, looking at the camera’s screen, then passed it to the monster. His finger hovered over the button, ready to take the shot, Hayner understanding his desperation to kill something.

He clicked the button—

They both screamed, scrambling backwards, Pence fumbling to not drop his camera. It had been yards away—so damn far away—and then it had twisted, a gesture of long noon hours passed in silence, then it stood before them and blocked out the sun and bringing shadows. It hadn’t made a sound.

Hayner yanked Pence back the back of his shirt collar behind him, hands trembling violently, breath snagging with every inhale, every exhale. He couldn’t fight that thing—its size, its movement despite its size. He didn’t even have a weapon. It could swat at them like insects, leave them inky pools on the ground. Hayner’s vision blurred.

<Friends of my liege?>

The voice echoed around inside of their heads, shattering any semblance of coherent thought. Pence let out sounds, helpless fumblings like when they were babes, new to the world. Hayner wouldn’t have been surprised if either of them pissed themselves.

They were going to die—Hayner was sure of it. He was going to see his mom. He missed her. His eyes welled up. Damn he missed her, but he didn’t want to see her just yet. He didn’t want to see his mommy just yet even though he missed her. He choked, this wet sounding thing from the back of his throat.

<Are you friends of my liege?> it repeated. <He is inside. He requested your presence in that location. You have been lingering by the location for some time.> It pointed behind itself, to their hangout. The lack of sound its body made forced Hayner’s brain to produce static, to come up with something to counter the improbability of it.

It wanted them to go into their hangout. It was looking for someone’s friends. This monster was looking for friends. Roxas, that fucking monster, was still calling them his friends. It hadn’t touched them, yet it had wounded him so deeply he felt a wave of cold wash over him, as if he was bleeding out.

The giant Silver Devil took a step back, turning to the side and gesturing up the hill. The scarf that hung down to its legs coiled as if there was wind, Hayner’s legs locked, marrow gone from between his joints. He couldn’t move. Pence was behind him, Pence was safer behind him, but he couldn’t move. They’d turn to ink, to static, to dust.

Olette made her way down the road to the front of their hangout, twirling around in confusion. Olette. If there was something in there, something that could hurt her—

“OLETTE!” Pence had grabbed Hayner’s arm, yanking him up the hill and past the Silver Devil. Pence was more worried about losing someone else he cared about. Pence was braver than Hayner. He bit his bottom lip, lowering his head and forcing himself to at the very least not stumble, at the very least not slow him down.

“Guys! It’s gon—”

 “Don’t go in there!” Pence cut her off, grabbing for her wrist. “You can’t go in there! The Silver Devil it—it talked to us, like in our heads, told us to go in! So we’re not! We’re going home and we’re never going in there again!” Pence tugged at both of them, Olette’s eyes darting to the gate.

“But why would—”

“Who cares!” Pence snapped, Olette stumbling away from their hangout. It smelled like something was rotting and decomposing, but also like something moist and fresh was growing like mushrooms.

Roxas! Roxas…! Roxas—!

Those were their voices. She stopped, legs cemented to the ground, unmovable. If Hayner stopped being tugged around by Pence, everything would set in and there’d be no helping him. That thing was still there and something was in their hangout. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want them to die.

“Olette—” Hayner choked out. She didn’t even look at him. He watched her fingers curl into a fist.

“I’m gonna kill ‘em—I swear I’m gonna kill ‘em. You can’t just take his name from us!” She yanked her wrist back and rushed into their hangout.

“Olette!” Pence called after her.

“He’s our friend, you son of a bit—!” Olette screamed.

They were going to die.

Pence lurched forward, faltering and stumbling back because Hayner hadn’t moved, because Pence hadn’t let go of Hayner. He opened his mouth to say something, opened his mouth to protest, to beg, to bargain—he started bawling. It was loud, unhindered.

They were going to die.

His tears were so big he couldn’t see, cries echoing off of the walls. He stumbled in after Olette, Pence trembling so badly he couldn’t keep a good grip on him. Their hangout smelled like rotting flowers. Their hangout smelled like mushrooms.

There was a copious trail of sap, the couch soaking in it. The thing laying on it had its ribs desperately outstretched towards the ceiling, the translucent flesh of the wings dangling off of the bone, off of the couch and was covered in the sticky mess. Its cheek touched its shoulder, petals falling off of its head and being left to rot on the floor. Its fangs were exposed, drooling saliva and more sap. Unfurled tail spikes dug into legs that were so long they dangled off of the couch, claws where its feet would have been, just like its hands.

Inside of its ribs sat a knot of roots like an abandoned bird’s nest, three gleaming gemstones tangled inside of it, one red, one green, one yellow. They pulsed, calling Roxas’ name exactly like the moment they were stolen from them. Roxas. This thing was Roxas. Roxas wasn’t breathing.

Hayner was already sobbing—so what if it happened to be over the sight of Roxas now? So what if it happened to be at his own guilt, at his own desire to leave him there. So what? Olette had fallen backwards, shoe and hand covered in sap—in blood of a Silver Devil, of their friend, of a monster, of a traitor, of someone precious to them. Pence hadn’t moved since he’d made it to the threshold.

<…Don't cry…> The voice in their heads was soft, rasping, like peeling tree bark. It was unsettling; it told them he was weak. It told them he was dying on their damn couch.

“What do we do? Tell us what to do!” Olette choked, forcing herself to crawl over to his side, trembling and precariously trying not to slip or kneel on any part of him. Silence. “Roxas…?” The yellow crystal melted like mercury, then dissipated.

<…Don't cry…>

“Don’t cry?” Pence huffed, eyes welling up. “You’re such a selfish jerkwad, Roxas…I can’t stand you.” The green gemstone faded into a mist, evaporating into the ether. Neither of them scolded Pence. They all felt the same. How dare he make demands of them like this. They should be demanding things from him—answers, reasons, logic. So through his tears, Hayner made a demand.

“Don’t you die, you stupid bastard…!” He choked, fumbling with words, taking steps like a fawn on new legs to get closer to him, to make sure he heard him. “I take it back—I take back what I thought, okay?” He didn’t want to kill him. Seeing him like this, he didn’t want him dead. He didn’t want Roxas to die because he didn’t know what to do. Not again. He couldn’t do that again. How dare Roxas make him go through this again. “So please, don’t die. Even if you have to lie to us like you lied about everything else, you can’t die yet…!”

Silence.

“Answer me—Roxas! ”

Silence.

The red gem glinted like sun on ocean waves, then dimmed until the stone was gone.

Chapter Text

Crying. Who was crying?

Stained glass.

Snap.

Crying.

<…Don't cry…> His voice echoed back at him as if he were in an endlessly vast space or maybe it was something small that had muffled it and he'd thought it so many times the request had echoed around in his head.

Roxas had done enough crying. No one else needed to cry.

“What do we do? Tell us what to do!”

<…Don't cry…>

Everything felt heavy. All Roxas was, all a Nobody was, was a body. Roxas felt like his very existence had betrayed him by becoming this uselessly weighted.

It took him too long to open his eyes, too long to place the orientation of his body, too long to realize where he was. He was on his side in Hayner's room, in Hayner's bed, in the dying dark of night. He felt ashamed that it took him so long to process Hayner, Pence, and Olette all asleep on the edge of the bed he was on.

He couldn't move. Everything hurt too much. He wanted to touch them, make sure they were real.

Roxas blinked.

They were gone, the room bathed in dawn. He closed his eyes.

Fear bathed the walls of the room like thick, cheap paint. There were fingers in his hair, a hand in his. He recognized it belonged to Pence and Olette. How could they be this scared, yet sit this close? How could they touch him? Roxas couldn't even take stock of his limbs, but he knew he had too many for a human. He knew. They knew. They were touching him anyway. Where was Hayner? Was he angry with him? Did he blame him?

“…You're awake!” Roxas winced at Olette's volume. She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Sorry…” Roxas had never been conscious of where his eyes sat in his skull before.

“Do you feel okay? What do you need?” Pence whispered. “We didn't know what to do so we just tried to keep you from falling apart. You were molting everywhere—is that the right word for…whatever that thing is coming out if your chest…?”

Roxas had everything he could do to keep his eyes open as he glanced down at his chest, overgrowth collected and resting next to him. It had curled in on itself, withered and dried out. Roxas closed his eyes for a moment, Olette hesitantly calling his name.

“R…Roxas…?” There was so much terror there, so much worry—his overgrowth writhed, Pence jumping back and letting go of his hand. It was so much different than the variation of his name Xion had stolen from her.

<You called my name…> She trembled until her muscles locked up, her face going pale.

“Please don't do that…” Pence struggled to breathe, to speak. He blinked away tears.

“Sorry…” Roxas croaked, his voice like leaves brushing together. Speaking hurt, his throat felt like shredded, slow cooked animal fat. He was surprised it didn't fall into his chest with a wet plop. He was surprised he was still in one piece.

The bedroom door opened, Pence and Olette jumping as Hayner came in. He had a tray of three sandwiches and drinks, the ice rattling in the glasses as he came to a halt.

“…You're up,” he noted, glaring at his dresser to the right of him. He closed his bedroom door, offering Pence and Olette their sandwiches and chips. He sat down on his floor, crossing his legs, hand on his knee. He bit into his sandwich, not looking at him. He swallowed. Olette and Pence didn't touch their food.

Roxas closed his eyes.

“…What the hell kind of wing even is that?” Hayner still wasn't looking at him. Roxas couldn't focus on detangling his aura from Pence and Olette's.

“…Dragon,” he croaked. It would be easier to whisper.

“Well, we googled how to treat a bat wing, that's what you got,” Hayner snapped. What Roxas got was unnecessarily wrapped in gauze everywhere he’d been hurt but his wing, which had been cleaned, but otherwise left in tatters.

“Hayner…” Pence grumbled.

“No I'm—!” He shot up from his spot on the floor. “I'm pissed, man! First you drop that bomb on us, then don't show up for what felt like forever, then your freaky friend shows up and steals your name from us, then we find you bleeding out or whatever the hell that is all over our hangout with this giant monster in front of our place! I'm pissed! I'm so fucking pissed! Go back to sleep so I don't have to talk to you yet!” Hayner ripped his bedroom door open, then slammed it shut behind him.

Olette winced, Pence reaching over to hold her hand.

“I'm sorry about Xion…I didn't know they did that.” Olette offered him her glass of water, not looking at the door, not looking at Roxas.

“Do you need help sitting up—or do you want me to get you a straw? I'll go get you a straw.” He was already up and opening the bedroom door before he'd officially settled on the idea. Roxas didn't blame him for wanting to get away from him. Now, he was just waiting for Olette to leave too.

Roxas closed his eyes.

“Please don't go back to sleep just yet…” she whispered. “Please…I was really scared that you were dying…just tell me you're not dying.” Roxas didn't answer her. “Please…even if you have to lie…please…?”

He opened his mouth, words swallowed by rasping air. <Why do you care if I live or not…?>

“Because you're my friend, stupid…” Her voice trembled the most with that word, her hands unable to stop shaking. “You have to stop running away like that…”

<Can you be friends with a monster?> It was a genuine question.

“You're not a monster…different—way, way, way different—but not a monster,” she insisted, shaking her head. Why lie to herself? Lies hurt people, why lie—unless that hurt less than the truth.

<Olette, I'm a creature that steals people's hearts and leaves them to die because I don't have one.>

“But you've never hurt us—” there was doubt, acidic and bitter.

<I have though, Olette…> She’d been the first to tell him that, after all. <I lied to you and I let other people get hurt. I stole from you and then let you think I was your friend.>

Olette pulled away from him, glass slipping out of her hands. It didn't shatter, just hit the ground with a heavy thud and cracked, making a mess. “If you don't want to be friends anymore, just say so! Don't try to make us scared of you or push us away because we're not going anywhere!”

<Olette…you're shaking. You haven't stopped shaking since I woke up.> Roxas pointed out. He was too tired to fight, be it her or Xaldin.

“Of course not! I'm scared, Roxas! I'm scared you'll go back to sleep and won't wake up! I'm scared of what that'll do to Hayner because he has so many things he wants to say to you and he doesn't know how! And if he never gets the chance to like wit—” she pressed her fingers to her mouth.

Like with his mom. You can talk to someone who was gone all you'd like, but you'd never hear anything back.

“…And Pence…Pence deserves to talk to you, too…about Frankie…about the Silver Devil that keeps following him and his siblings around…You can't die…what happens when you die, Roxas? We were so worried you'd just up and vanish one day and this…this is so much worse because I'm so scared of not being able to do anything. You're right here and I don't know what to do for you…! You're right here…” she choked out, reaching for him with shaking hands.

She held his face in her hands, pressing her forehead to his. Her touch was gentle, her skin soft, and her lashes holding tears like morning dew. It took so much effort for Roxas to raise his arm, for his knuckles to graze her cheek. She held his claw between her palms, holding it to her mouth.

“Don't leave us…we love you so much already…please don't leave us, Roxas…I know it's easier to run away when things get scary, but you don't have to run away from us…”

<I wasn't—> But he had been. He'd been terrified of losing them, of hurting them. He'd been so mortified at the thought of their rejection that every time he somehow ended up hurting himself. This had been less direct, but Roxas knew the rules. Roxas knew by not pulling his own weight, he'd be punished for it. He was waiting for that punishment in a hope it would ease his grief or at the very least give him something else to focus on. Recovery was easier to deal with than anticipation of the injury.

There was a knock on the door. Pence peeked his head in, Olette sniffing and wiping her nose, but not letting go of Roxas' hand. Pence glanced down at the puddle, then up at her. “Sorry…I spilled it.”

“I got it.” Pence reassured, putting the straw in his cup instead. He picked up the glass, then left the room with it.

<…I won't die, but I am really tired.> He needed to talk to Xion first. He needed to learn more about Sora. He needed to apologize to them. He needed to understand why Xemnas had lied to them about their hearts or if Roxas was just an outlier. He needed more answers and couldn't rest peacefully without them. So he couldn't die, not yet.

“Good. I'd never forgive you…” Olette reached over for Pence's cup, offering him the straw. Roxas downed the whole glass, Olette glancing down at his overgrowth. His ribs had been open so long they might have started to set that way. He did his best to at least coax his overgrowth back inside of himself, even if it wasn't in its proper place.

<…Can you push my ribs closed?>

 “Won't that hurt?”

<Probably.> He listened to her heartbeat spike. <It's worse if they're open, Olette. Please?>

She reached out to touch them, fingers twitching back. They were soft, covered in a petal thin layer of skin. He knew human bones weren't. They were porous, desperate for moisture. They weren't warm like touching an organ like his bones were. She touched her fingertips to them, giving a light push, no give from his ribs.

<Like you mean it. They'll snap back into place. If they go too far, it's not like you'll puncture anything.> Olette let out a soft whimper, but she pushed one of them—it snapped and she yanked her hand back, Roxas' mouth immediately watering at the smell of her terror.

“I can't! I'm sorry, I can't!” Pence opened the door, another glass and a towel in hand. “Pence—!” Olette looked to him for help. “Can you close his ribs? I can't do it. They snapped and I just…!” Her voice shook. Roxas swallowed. He was grateful he practically couldn't move right now. “I'm sorry, Roxas…” she whispered.

Pence set the cup down, staring at him, something scraping along his bowels. Pence wouldn't be able to either. “…I'm gonna go get Hayner.” He practically fled the room.

“I'm sorry…” Olette whispered, clinging to his claw. Roxas closed his eyes, expecting Hayner to either take a long time or not come back at all.

But Hayner was back within moments. He didn't look at him, brow furrowed as he glared at his ribs. “How do I do this?”

<You just push. They'll snap,> he warned. 

“If I roll you over is it gonna mess with your wings?” Roxas wasn't exactly aware of how much of his body was his and how much of it was drowned in the painkillers his body naturally produced like poppies.

<Probably.>

Hayner slid his hand under Roxas' side, resting the other on top of his other side, then pushed using his palm. Pence took a step back, meeting the doorway as Roxas' ribs snapped. Hayner's eye twitched, but he pressed until they fell into tandem with each other, until Roxas' flesh seamlessly settled back over his chest aside from the mangled scar.

Hayner’s hands lingered on his chest and for just a moment, Hayner looked more worried, more confused, than angry. Hayner pulled at the blanket that was around his waist, tugging it up over his shoulder. He left the room again, but didn’t slam the door this time.

Roxas pressed Olette’s hand to his mouth, eyes in the direction of the door but unfocused. He felt the bed dip, Pence sitting by his legs.

He blinked.

The room was dark, Hayner, Pence, and Olette asleep on the floor. He stared, watching them for a long moment before deciding to go back to sleep. He’d sleep forever if he could. Sleep was easy. Sleep didn’t hurt anyone. Sleep was safe.

I knew I’d find you snoozing down here.

Roxas opened his eyes, half lidded, the figure in the corner of the room not registering in his memory. <Leave them alone, Xion…>

<Why come back here? You could have just stayed in my room, Roxas. I’d have fixed you up.>

<Why did you take my name from them?> Hayner turned over in his sleep.

<Because you’re my friend. You wouldn’t stop crying, Roxas. They hurt you—they didn’t deserve to call your name anymore.> Their hand clenched at their side, frustrated, but careful for now to not wake the humans on the floor.

<You don’t just get to take things from them…people and their parts aren’t souvenirs, Xion.> Roxas lectured.

<This isn’t about me taking from humans, it’s about me taking from humans you’re still attached to. Roxas, they do nothing but get you in trouble. Do you know they sent Axel to look for you? This wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for them.>

<Why? I didn’t do anything, Xaldin started that fight.>

“That’s not the point!” Xion pressed a hand to their mouth, stepping back into their open corridor opened behind them. Roxas’ eyes jerked down to Hayner, Pence, and Olette.

Olette turned over towards him, mumbling, “Roxas? You okay…?” She sat up, rubbing at her eyes.

“Sorry…nightmare.”

“Oh.” She stood up, stepping over Hayner and sitting by the edge of the bed. She reached up under the covers and held his claw in her hand. “I’m right here, you can go back to sleep.” She rested her cheek to the bed, Roxas’ eyes locked on the corridor.

<Roxas…please come back with me. If you come back rather than having us bring you back, everything can be okay. I don’t mind having to do twice the work for us. Please don’t make them erase you…>

Olette’s hand was so small in his claw. Her hand was warm, soft, slack in his as she fell asleep trying to comfort him.

<You hid them—their voices calling my name. You either knew taking them was wrong or knew I’d be upset about it, but you did it anyway and then hid it, and then let me think I was losing it. Xion…Xion, friends don’t do that to each other.> Roxas gripped Olette’s hand in his, a lifeline through her heart’s light, a safety precaution for the darkness in the corner of the room.

<Roxas—>

<And when I went to the beach, I met Kairi. At first I thought you were Kairi’s Nobody, but…> It was hard to hold these thoughts that fell through his hands like water. It was easier to solidify them with Xion in front of him, to grasp at frozen layers instead. It was hard, just as fragile to hold the memory of what Xion looked like even with them right in front of him.

<Roxas please don’t. Just come back. Please?> They begged, taking a step out of the corridor. <We can go right now, we don’t need to wake them.>

<But you look too much like Sora. Why do you look like Sora when I’m his Nobody?>

Silence. Roxas struggled through his poppy haze of exhaustion and recovery.

<…Please just come back, Roxas? Please just stop asking questions and let me protect you…?> Xion took a step into the room.

<What happens when I go back, Xion? Something is wrong and you know what it is, don’t you?> Xion took another step forward.

<Roxas, please. You’re my friend…please…>

<Friends are supposed to be honest with each other, Xion. I know we’re both special, but if I can’t use my keyblade, where does that leave me? If I all of a sudden can’t hold my own against Xaldin when we both know I could have and you seem to be able to fight enough for the both of us, what do you think that’s telling me, Xion?>

Xion took another step closer, standing near Pence. <Roxas, don’t do this. Finding out the truth doesn’t always work out for the best…Please, just come back. We can figure it out and you can go back to how you were before.>

<I don’t even know who I am yet alone who I was before—I don’t have a before! The only thing I seem to have from my before is a name—Who’s Sora, Xion? How did I even end up as a Nobody? What makes us so special to the Organization—to Xemnas?! Where did we learn how to use the keyblade of all things? I hardly know who I am—what’s so wrong with wanting some answers and to be with people who actually are willing to give them to me?>

Xion stepped over Pence and Hayner, crouching down next to him. They kissed his forehead, Roxas closing his eyes. Human affection. <Roxas…you just have to trust me…okay?> They stroked his hair, desperate to get him to do as they wanted but without offering him any reason to do so.

<I don’t—I can’t. If I can’t get answers from you or Xemnas or Axel…then I need to get them from somewhere else. I won’t go back, Xion.> Roxas gently pulled his hand away from Olette’s, pressing his claw to Xion's cheek.

“So that’s your answer?” Xion whispered into his palm. 

<To that question, anyhow.> Roxas brushed his thumb over Xion’s cheek bone. Xion pulled away from him.

<If you don’t come back, I can’t protect you.>

<I know.> The room felt blanketed by the heavy quiet of night, an hour where even insects didn’t dare rouse attention from the dead. A silent hour of dead things and fear, of things that didn’t breathe in a room of things that held their breath.

<But Roxas, if I’m not protecting you…I might do something that hurts you.>

<I won’t hold it against you,> he promised.

Xion quietly gripped the front of their coat, a noise like something being strangled leaving them. They stumbled back just a little bit, then stood up straight. They turned their back to him, stepping over Hayner and Pence. They lingered in the corridor, Roxas waiting for them to stop searching for something to say. Nothing Xion was willing to say could change his mind at this point.

“…I hope they end up being worth it.”

Chapter Text

Hayner's room was dusted golden hour orange with long shadows stretching up the walls. If he hadn't talked with Xion, Roxas would have assumed Pence never moved from sitting on the edge of the bed. Roxas made an attempt to move his wing, the weight from the blanket startling him into thinking it was heavier than it should have been.

“Oh—here.” Pence leaned over him, moving the blanket. Roxas released the tension in his shoulders, attempting to stretch it out again. His wing blocked the window, filtering light through the thin webbing. The gash from Xaldin's lance had corrected itself, but did leave a scar.

“It looks a lot better.” Olette spoke softly from the floor, a controller in her hand, a little red man in a sewer on a silent TV screen. Roxas uncurled his spine, hesitantly testing movement. Something popped, burst all cattail pollen all over Hayner's bed.

“Woah!” Pence jumped up, Roxas wincing.

“Sorry…” he rasped.

“Wha—what do we do?!” Pence glanced back and forth between the door, Olette standing up to see what had happened. She gasped, eyes wide.

“Nothing…that's unrelated to the injury…I think.” Roxas furrowed his brow. “I've done it before. It doesn't hurt. I'm pretty sure it's closer to when humans cry and can't help it, even if you don't feel sad.”

“Oh my god, you have Visitor depression.” Pence whispered.

“Pence, that's not funny.” Olette scolded. She grabbed Hanyer's small garbage can, looked at the massive amounts of pollen, then sighed and put it back.

“I'm not trying to be funny. That's a symptom of depression.”

They stopped arguing when there was a series of sickening snapping noises from Roxas as he put his wing away. The scar from his wing ran along his shoulder blade, Roxas adjusting his bodysuit like a fog of darkness to cover his back completely again. He rolled over onto his back with a grunt, Olette reaching to help him, but he'd already moved, half buried in his own pollen.

“Everything hurts…” he whispered. He flexed his claws, trying to get them to look more human, but he only succeeded in removing an extra joint on a few fingers. He narrowed his eyes, but put them back.

“What even happened?” Pence asked, sitting himself back on the bed, pollen falling over Roxas' chest.

“Xaldin happened. And I'm not exactly doing too well either, so that didn't help…”

“What's Xaldin?” Pence asked.

“What's wrong?” Olette asked. They both spoke over each other.

Roxas opened his mouth to speak, stopping and furrowing his brow. If he was going to tell them who Xaldin was, if he was going to tell them what was wrong with him—that he might not be able to protect them—he should at the very least tell them everything. 

“Can one of you go get Hayner…?” Olette was up and out before Pence could even make a move to stand. It was quiet, Roxas staring at the shadows on the ceiling.

“Um,” Pence started softly. “I'm not mad at you, by the way. I know I said some stuff when we found you in our hangout spot, but I'm not mad.”

“I don't even remember getting here, so anything you said is null and void,” Roxas reassured, eyes flicking over to him.

“Oh…okay.”

“You can be mad at me, though…I'd get it.”

“I do have a lot of complicated feelings about what happened with Frankie…” Pence looked down at his hands resting in his lap. “But I'm not mad at you. I wanted to be—I tried so hard to be mad at you, actually. You lied to us…but I was just…sad. About Frankie, about how you were pretty much a zombie when we first met…I felt so sad for you, Roxas. You didn't know what it meant to lose someone.”

Pence looked over at him and Roxas tensed, unfamiliar with feeling like a deer in headlights, dazed and shocked by the light in front of him. He swallowed, locked his jaw, needed to move, to hide, to sink into the bed and vanish underneath down feathers. Roxas wasn't used to forgiveness. He was used to being ignored when things were done correctly and punished otherwise. Roxas didn't know how to react when Pence had decided not to punish him for what he'd done. Not a single angry word, not a slew of questions, no accusations—nothing, ultimately carrying on as if nothing happened.

“Do you still wanna be friends?”

“Yeah—I mean, look what happens when we leave you alone for a little bit. You need us.” Pence gave a weak laugh.

Roxas felt his eyes well up. The door opened—he threw his arm over his eyes, the closest thing he'd get to hiding.

“What the hell is all over my bed?”

“Pollen from Roxas' back.” Pence explained. Hayner groaned, dramatically turning around and storming out of the room. He came back with a garbage bag, shoving fistfulls of it into the bag while Roxas tried not to whimper.

It was painful how easily Pence saw right through to the core of him. Pence on some degree always seemed to have the answers to his own questions, it was just a matter of finding the proof for them.

“I'm just gonna have to wash the sheets,” Hayner groaned.

“Sorry…” Roxas' voice broke. He sounded pathetic. A monster that could tear human hearts from their bodies and devour them without a second thought was covered in his own depression pollen and was crying in a human's bed. He couldn't stop the way his bottom lip quivered, the way his shoulders shook.

“They're just sheets, it's whatever…you don't have to cry about it…hey…Roxas…” Hayner reached for his arm, Roxas' tensing every muscle in his arm to keep it in place. He didn't want to be looked at. He wanted to vanish. He wanted someone to be mad at him for being a monster and for hurting them. “Rox. Move your arm.”

He shook his head.

“Jeezus Christ…” Hayner dropped the garbage bag on the floor, straddling Roxas and pressing his hands down by either side of his head. “Move your arm, you idiot.”

“No.” Roxas croaked back, voice high like a child.

“Hayner—”

“Roxas, move your damn arm!”

<“No!”> Roxas whispered, the sound of something's dying breath and a hissing of something ancient as he ripped his arm away to sit up and bear his fangs at him. Hayner jerked back, Roxas' eyes inky black and neon blue.

Be scared. Leave him alone. Don't go away.

Hayner's shoulders wouldn't stop shaking, Olette had hit the floor and covered her ears, Pence had bolted for the door, gripping the handle.

“Don't fucking hiss at me.” Hayner snapped, voice shaking. He leaned forward again, reaching over to brush tears from Roxas' face. “Don't fucking hiss at us…” he mumbled again, trembling as he tried to comfort him.

Roxas blinked away tears, but they kept coming and Hayner kept wiping them away. Olette slowly uncovered her ears, Pence slowly let go of the door handle. The sound of Roxas' pathetic sniffling filled the room, the shadows slowly getting longer. Hayner didn't say anything else, he just kept wiping his tears and Roxas just kept crying until there was nothing left.

“What did you want me to get Hayner for?” Olette asked softly, inching closer to the bed and holding his claw in her hand. If she hadn't said anything, Roxas and Hayner would have sat there forever in their stubbornness and everyone knew it.

“You asked who Xaldin was and what was wrong with me…I wanted to tell you, but I also wanted to tell Hayner,” he mumbled, staring at the wall. Hayner removed himself from Roxas' lap, sitting by the edge of the bed. He reached over, tears dried, but brushed his thumb along Roxas' cheek bone anyway. His hands were calloused, thick-skinned, and warm.

“Xaldin is one of the members of the Organization. He's number III. We got into a fight and I lost—badly. If it weren't for Xion, I don't think I'd have made it.” he admitted, Olette squeezing his hand.

“The Organization?” Pence asked.

“We're a group of Nobodies—what you call Visitors—whose mission is to collect hearts to make Kingdom Hearts so we can have hearts of our own.”

“How can something not have a heart? You kind of need those to live.” Hayner crossed his arms.

“Exactly. When people have their hearts taken, the thing that makes you, you turn into Heartless—Shadows. Nobodies are the bodies of people who had strong hearts. Most Nobodies don't look this human, they look more like what you call Silver Devils.”

“Wait, wait—you guys are the same thing? But you look…” Pence stopped himself, pulling every memory he had of Silver Devils and what Roxas had looked like when he was falling apart.

“So the Organization is made up of Nobodies that can look human?” Hayner clarified, Roxas nodding. “So you're the Silver Devil looking one's…Boss?”

<Just one, come here. Keep your distance.> Roxas called for one of his own.

A samurai entered the room, Pence throwing himself into the dresser, Olette jumping up, clinging to Roxas' hand. Hayner's entire body tensed up, ready to snap, break.

“That's the thing that's been following me around! My siblings too!” Pence glanced at Roxas, then back at the samurai.

<Why follow his siblings?>

<This human is less likely to be found in a precarious situation if it doesn't lose any more of its 'family', my liege.>

“Those are the Nobodies I command. They're called samurai—I have a few of them keeping an eye on the three of you so you don't get hurt. This one said it's been following your siblings to keep them safe too.”

“You had them protect my siblings?”

“No, just you three. I didn't think to do that, I'm sorry…I should have.” Rarely did Nobodies take their orders anything but literally. Rarely did they go above and beyond—Roxas found it odd, but he wasn't going to worry Pence with it, especially if it wasn't causing them harm.

“You said Larxene had ninja—those are a different kind of Nobody?” Hayner recalled, Roxas nodding again. Pence hadn't taken his eyes off of the samurai, Olette's eyes flickering back and forth between Roxas and the samurai.

<You can go.> The samurai bowed, then vanished into thorns and void.

“How many of you are there in the Organization?” Olette asked, Pence looking around and trying to understand where the samurai had gone.

“There were fourteen of us…some of us went on a mission and didn't make it. It's gone Pence.”

“They can just vanish like that?” he asked in dismay. He hesitantly stepped forward, hand waving the air of the space where it had been.

“It's not so much vanishing as it is twisting a corridor around themselves.” Roxas explained.

“A what?”

“A corridor of darkness. We use them to get around, move between…places.” Telling them about other worlds would be a bit much. “Our coats keep us from being corrupted by the darkness.”

“Corrupted like…?” Olette glanced down at Roxas' chest.

“Make us more like the Heartless. They're like animals whose only desire is to seek out and take hearts from people. They're not sentient like people and don't communicate aside from aligned desires or parasitic type relationships with each other. Nobodies can talk, plan, and interact with humans. Even the lesser Nobodies communicate—I have no idea where you guys got hypnosis from, but our whispers are mostly how we communicate.”

“That hissing thing you did at us earlier?” Hayner clarified.

“The name for it translates to like…whispering, not hissing. We can make it so it's like talking out loud like this or make it so only certain Nobodies can hear it. It freaks humans out though.”

“Yeah, no duh!” Hayner snapped, but he reached out again, knuckles brushing Roxas' cheek. He wasn't mad—not really. They'd told Roxas he wasn't, but he still was having a hard time with it. Roxas nipped at his fingers, then pulled away from his hand and stared at the wall again. Hayner had froze, but he was flooded with hot embarrassment.

“So what was the big guy Nobody outside of our hangout?” Olette asked.

“Big guy?”

“Yeah! He was like—” Pence looked around for his bag. “Hold on, I got a photo—”

<“Delete it !”> Roxas snapped on reflex, reeling back at the sound of his own voice. Olette's legs gave out from under her as she yanked her hand away, Pence paling and a white-knuckle grip on the dresser.

Hayner hit him upside the head, hands trembling. “I said stop that!”

“Sorry—It just…sorry…But delete it— please.” he begged. They were breaking the rules. Otherworldly creatures, things with sentience that would retaliate. They weren't like Heartless. Pence swallowed, pulling his camera out of the bag. He showed Roxas the photo of the twilight thorn, which was blurry as it moved to stretch out, despite no other photo Pence had ever taken with that camera being blurry.

He deleted the photo.

“It's called a Twilight Thorn.”

“Honesty I thought we were gonna die. I took the photo and the thing was already moving closer to us even though we were all the way down the walkway. It like…twisted it's whole body towards us and was just there.” Pence looked uneasy, clutching his camera.

“Totally glitch in the matrix looking bullcrap.” Hayner grumbled, Olette nodding.

“But it…it asked us if we were your friends, Roxas. Like in our heads, and it…” Olette looked nauseous, holding her own arms.

“And you looked like hell, man. It took me hours to clean the weird crap you oozed all over our hangout. Like we freaked out and after that big thing let us in and it just left.” Hayner furrowed his brow, clenching his jaw. “It dropped you off like garbage and left.”

“It did what it was told to do…without any other orders, it would just go back.” Roxas explained, not wanting them to fault his twilight thorn. “If I wasn't conscious enough to give it an order, it wouldn't see a reason to stay since I'd be able to call for it if I needed it. It's still a lesser Nobody, no matter it's size. Communication doesn't mean it can think ahead.”

“So are you a lesser Nobody with your dumb decision to ditch us after dropping that bomb on us?”

“Hayner!” Olette scolded, Pence biting his mouth to hide a grin.

“I thought about that a lot, actually.” Roxas objected, furrowing his brow.

“Could have fooled us.” he rolled his eyes, glaring at his bedroom door.

“Good.” Roxas spat back.

“Then why come back? That Xaldin guy make you look bad to the Organization and you came to us with your tail between your legs?” Roxas could explain it however he liked, but that was essentially what happened.

“God, do you ever shut up?” Pence snapped at him. Olette's eyes went wide, staring at him in disbelief. “You wouldn't shut up about him running off and now he's back and you…you're blaming him when that's what you wanted! He's back! Be happy! Shut up and stop giving him a hard time! He's finally telling us everything and you're just being an ass about it!” Pence's voice broke, too high, too strained.

“Please stop fighting…” Olette whispered, a jarring softness that garnered their attention. “Please…”

“I'm sorry…” Hayner grumbled, Pence glaring at the door. Pence wasn't sorry because he felt he was right, but he couldn't say that without starting another argument.

“Roxas, you can keep explaining.” Olette reached for his hand again, trying to collect her breath in deep and even spurts. Roxas studied the rise and fall of her chest, the struggle of her trying to collect herself from a memory that their arguing had reminded her of. He gently tugged her closer, Olette sitting on the edge of the bed. He wrapped his arm around her waist, resting his chin on the top of her head.

“I just want to keep you three safe…that's all I want. Sometimes keeping you safe means I should stay away because if I stay, the members of the Organization will come looking. They've already done that and I wasn't even doing anything wrong then.” He knew there were too many implications there, but he told them anyway.

“…Roxas,” Hayner asked hesitantly. “What did you and that Xaldin guy fight over?”

“When Xion stole my name from you, sometimes I could still hear it and I thought I was losing it…I also had refused to go on missions for a while. Xaldin said I was weak and wasn’t pulling my weight and he was right. Normally I'd be able to hold my own against him, but I didn't last a minute and I haven't been able to call for my keyblade in days—so that put me at another disadvantage.” Roxas quietly clenched and unclenched his claw, looking at his empty hand. He was scared to try calling for it, he was scared to have expectations.

Olette slid her hand into his.

“What’s a keyblade?” Pence asked, finally letting himself settle closer to Roxas—to Hayner.

“My weapon that I use to fight Heartless. Hayner saw me use it,”  Roxas explained.

“Oh! The giant key-thing?” he clarified. Roxas nodded.

“When they come for me, I won’t be able to protect you…not like this. But I don’t think I’d get any better staying with the Organization. Something is wrong with me and no one wants to tell me what it is or they don’t care what it is and it’s easier if I’m out of the picture…I don’t have anyone I can trust there, not even the people I thought were my friends—so I’m not going back.”

“Can you just leave like that?” Pence asked, brow furrowed with worry.

“No. They’re either going to try to bring me back or erase me—those are my options.”

They were quiet. It was a lot of new information to process, but the worst of it was they’d spent all that time trying to patch him up only to hear he might die anyway. He lied to Olette, just like she asked. Hayner had a right to be angry at him because Roxas was finally telling them everything, giving him all the answers he’d looked for his entire life, just to tell him he’d vanish as if he was never there to give them to him in the first place. And Pence—Pence was so set on protecting his family, be it blood or found, that this was probably just as devastating to hear.

“You told me you were important to them…” Hayner mumbled, breaking the high strung tension of inevitability.

“I was important to them,” Roxas clarified, unsure if he should have sounded more bitter than defeated.

“What do you want us to do?” Pence asked softly.

“I don’t think I want you to do anything…I just want—I just want my friends to be here and not hate me and not lie to me or make me feel scared…” Roxas admitted out loud, voice breaking. “I don’t want to be alone—I can’t stand it.”

There was something familiar in his search, in his deep-seated desire to be with the people he loved. It was familiar, like the beach. It was a feeling he’d experienced before but never had until recently. Roxas pulled his hand away from Olette’s to grip his heart, an apology to Sora for his selfishness.

His friends would miss him too. His friends remembered him. His friends were right here and so was Roxas. Sora wasn’t here. Sora didn’t have a say in his choice, as much as Roxas wanted to hear from him.

“I don’t want to disappear.” Roxas whispered softly, shoulders pulling in on themselves as he bent forward. “I don’t want to leave my friends behind or have them forget me. I don’t want to end up like Sora…”

“Who’s Sora?” Hayner asked, Olette wrapping her arms around Roxas and letting him hide against her shoulder. Pence gave his leg a squeeze, running his thumb along his knee.

“He’s the person I used to be when I had a heart, like you three. Everyone in the Organization remembers who they used to be, but I didn’t start remembering any of it until recently and even then, the memories are vague or are just a familiar feeling with things I’ve never seen or done before. Those memories don’t feel like they’re mine—they feel like they belong to someone else. I don’t want to be Sora. I wanna be me…I just want to stay here with you three.” His voice wavered.

“Roxas.” Hayner called his name the way Kairi had; familiar, safe, exactly as he’d left it—home. He reached out, knuckles pressed to his cheek, thumb brushing his cheek bone and ready for his tears before Roxas even realized he wanted to cry again. He blinked them away, Hayner quietly wiping them as they came. “You’re really stupid you know that? Carrying around all that heavy stuff for that long on your own…”

“But I don’t want to hurt you—I don’t want anything I do or don’t do to hurt you. I’m so scared of being just another monster that ruins your lives.” Roxas admitted, clinging to Olette’s back. Hayner flinched.

“Rox, I didn’t…” Hayner couldn’t look at him, eyes desperately searching his room for a distraction, for something to alleviate the pain. “You’re not…” He tried again, but Pence had already stood up and moved Hayner’s unmoving hand out of the way.

“You’re not a monster, Roxas. We’ve seen monsters and you’re not it, okay? I could write a whole dissertation about how the way people perceive monsters are typically allegories for people who feel outcasted. Like, in media yeah they’re typically freaky looking but like…It’s the ones who go around hurting others either actively or don’t care that are terrible, okay? You’re not.” Pence reassured, Hayner moving himself back so Pence could sit in his spot.

“Yeah. You keep saying you don’t want to hurt us or you’re sorry, but you didn’t do anything wrong, Roxas,” Olette agreed. “And even if you feel you did, you’re trying to make it up to us by telling us everything. We forgive you for anything you think you did wrong, okay?” She gently pulled him off of her, trying to get him to look at her. He couldn’t, but she held his face in her hands.

Forgiveness wasn’t something Roxas had ever been given before. Was that really okay to not be punished? Was it really enough just to talk to them like this? Was this really okay? He didn’t feel like he’d actively done anything to avoid being punished. He had a hard time understanding forgiveness didn’t revolve around punishment.

Hayner still couldn’t look at him, nor did he agree with Pence and Olette’s sentiments.

Chapter Text

Roxas knew he was likely still exhausted and recovering, but the crying and whatever it was that was wrong with him didn’t exactly help either. The budding heart in his chest also seemed to be taking a toll on him as well, so he wasn’t surprised when he realized he’d fallen asleep for an extensive period of time again.

Roxas stretched, testing bodily range, back popping, but not making a mess. He felt heavy, but not nearly as weighed down with anxiety as before. He glanced over, Hayner laying on a mess of blankets with headphones on, tapping his fingers on the back of his hand with his eyes closed.

Roxas hesitantly slipped from the edge of the bed, staring at him. His hair was damp, tank top wrinkled, even breathing; he’d showered, pulled whatever from the laundry, and had been laying there a while. Roxas silently sniffed the air, Pence and Olette’s auras lingering in the room, recent enough to make it hard to tell if they were still here and just in another room. The sky had bruised purple, which meant Pence and Olette had gone home or were getting ready for bed outside of the bedroom. But Roxas couldn’t hear anything outside of his room aside from a TV.

He strained to listen for Pence and Olette, but if they weren’t speaking, yet alone calling for him, it made it hard to tell where they were underneath the sounds of Twilight Town. A train pulling into the station, dinner plates clattering against a table, laughter echoing down an alleyway, a skateboard lifting off of the ground, a chair scraping, gum popping, whispering followed by a soft gasp.

Hayner jerked away from Roxas, yanking his headphones off as if to throw them, but stopped himself. His heartbeat had skyrocketed, desperate to return to Kingdom Hearts instead of exist in that moment. He started, trying to collect himself, to place exactly when Roxas had gotten out of bed, to place how long he’d been staring.

Hayner looked away first, Roxas kept staring.

“You hungry…?” Hayner finally grumbled.

“I can eat,” Roxas reminded. 

“Do you even need to?” Hayner asked, finally looking back at him. “You haven’t eaten since you’ve been here—I’d be starving if I were you, man. None of that passive sounding, ‘I can eat’ stuff.”

“I eat hearts, Hayner.” Roxas couldn’t help the antagonistic tone that accompanied the exhaustion his voice. He knew Hayner cared. He knew it. He’d wiped his tears, had let him stay in his room—or was that all out of obligation because of their promise? No matter what—had Roxas forced him to let all of this happen? How did you take back a promise to no longer force someone to do something that hurt them, that scared them, that made them uncomfortable?

“Well no need to be a jerk about it,” Hayner grumbled, putting his chin in his hand and resting his elbow on his knee.

“How do you take back a promise?” Roxas blurted out, ignoring him and not offering any sort of apology. “I know you can break them, but what if you don’t want to break it?”

“You haven’t been up in over twelve hours and that’s the first thing out of your mouth?” Hayner cocked an eyebrow at him, but didn’t seem too terribly upset about Roxas’ lack of apology.

“I said other things,” Roxas reminded, furrowing his brow.

“Yeah, in reply to me.” Hayner sighed, getting up and leaving the room, but still closing the door behind him. Roxas stared at the door, a disconnect, a wall between them. He tipped his head back over the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Was it easier for Sora to talk to his friends? Sora had also had his for longer, so he was sure to have had arguments like this before—right? How had he handled them? Did he have them early on in their friendship or did he also have them later as well? Or was Sora the kind of person who understood his friends well enough to avoid arguing? What would Sora do? What advice would he offer? Roxas hated that he wanted to know.

He didn’t need to open up any more than he already had. If he did, he’d be all overgrowth and flooding floral scent and newborn heart. He didn’t need to let Hayner in anymore than this. He’d already told him everything he wanted to know. Anything left was interpersonal, was hidden away to crawl around in the skin he was in.

Anything he had left to give was fragile and he was scared. Roxas pulled his hood up, trying to hide away those parts under his skin, under his coat. He couldn’t give anything else to Hayner and he couldn’t take anything, so the only thing he could think to do was let him go to ensure he wasn’t burdened by that give and take. He would still have Pence and Olette if Hayner didn’t want to be friends anymore, if it was too much for him.

Hayner came back in with a plate of chicken and rice and a cup of apple juice, kicking the door closed behind himself, and then setting the food down in front of Roxas. “…I guess you could absolve it.”

“Huh?” Roxas looked up from the plate of food to Hayner, who sat himself down in front of him.

“You asked how you’d take back a promise. You could probably get with whoever you made the promise with and both decide to no longer keep it.” Hayner explained. Roxas picked up the plate and the fork, quietly blowing on the steaming food before taking a bite. He put the plate down, chewing and debating.

“…Can we do that?” he asked softly. “Absolve the promise we made to be friends no matter what?” Something heavy sunk inside of Hayner, helium consciousness floating away and leaving him at a loss for words for a long time.

“…Why would you want to do that?” His voice was barely there, and something that was barely there made it harder to notice the shaking state it was in.

“Because you had to do all of this for me because we’re friends…if we weren’t friends, you wouldn’t have to worry about hurting my feelings—you could tell me how you really felt about all of this…about me. Pence and Olette said they’re okay with me, even if they’re lying…but you can’t even lie about it, Hayner. It’s…if you hate me it’s…” It wouldn’t be okay. It would hurt. But he’d rather have that painful truth. He was so tired of being kept in the dark, even if it was of his own volition.

Hayner was quiet. Pence had said he hadn’t hated him, that he’d tried. But Hayner was quiet. Hayner hated him, Roxas was sure of it.

“I don’t…I don’t know how I feel towards you, Roxas. I hate you because you’re one of those things that took my mom away from me. But I know logically you’re different enough to have them try to kill you for it. But you’re still…you’re still…but you’re my friend, promise or not. But I just…for a long time I was trying to understand what you were.” Hayner ran a hand through his hair, frustration carved as easily into his features as a blade into a bar of soap.

“Hayner…” Roxas didn’t know if he should comfort him or keep his distance. Roxas didn’t know what to do in this precarious in between, their possible transition. He still cared, even if Hayner didn’t, but if Hayner didn’t want anything else to do with him, it was better to not touch him.

“I thought you were some kind of reanimated body like the guy we found falling apart. I thought you were brainwashed. I thought you were being abused and had also been locked away for your whole life. I thought all sorts of wild stuff, but you were right—I didn’t really want to know even though I said I did because anything I came up with…none of them were even close to the truth, so then it makes me wonder if I was avoiding it without realizing it. If some part of me knew and didn’t want to acknowledge it. If it was less complicated, less scary to not admit you were…” Hayner’s eyes flickered up to Roxas.

He immediately looked away and it felt like goodbye. Roxas’ chest tightened, his overgrowth tangling between his ribs. He couldn’t say anything because he still didn’t know what Hayner wanted.

“And the more you explained everything, the more I realized we didn’t understand anything. We were all totally off base and it…that’s so scary. I had said we were already in the middle of it because of everything that happened to us, but then I have to wonder if you were right again and we’re actually just on the edge of it.” Hayner clenched his fist, tightly wound, tense and to keep himself from falling apart. They were still friends. They hadn’t absolved anything yet.

Roxas moved the plate aside, it scraping along the floor. He sat himself as close to Hanyer as he could without touching him, claw open by his face, letting Hayner decide if he wanted to lean into it or shove him away.

“I want to hate you… so bad.” Hayner admitted, eyes welling up as he locked his jaw and glared at him. “And that make me feel awful because you’re my friend and friends don’t hate each other. What if that feeling never goes away? What if I don’t ever stop hating you for something that wasn’t even your fault? That’s not fair—not for you or for me. But I just keep thinking about that day we took you to the beach and I just…”

Hayner reached for Roxas’ claw with both of his hands, pulling it away from his face. He squeezed it between his hands, squeezing his eyes shut. Roxas had never been to the beach before then. Sora had been to the beach. Roxas was grateful at the very least that both of those memories, both of the sensations that came with them, were good ones.

“I just keep thinking my mom would be mad at me. That’s so stupid—I don’t even really remember her anymore and I just…!” Hayner joked back a laugh, wiping tears with the palm of his hand. “I keep expecting her ghost to show up or some other weird, unexplainable shit to go down where she’s just so upset with me! Like, ‘hey, one of those things killed me and you can’t stop replaying the time he kissed you on your head? What a great son!’ Like what the fuck is wrong with me?”

Roxas pulled his claw out of Hayner’s hands so he could hug him. Hayner didn’t shove him away, didn’t fight him. He melted into his arms, sobbing like a child. Roxas never understood why humans used the term heartbroken for their misery until now. Just listening to Hayner’s anguish made it feel like everything inside of him was being shredded into a million jagged pieces.

“I want to hate you and it’s not fair!” Hayner yelled against his shoulder, tightly wound, tightly wound, finally set to tick and explode. “Why couldn’t you have been using us or a total jerk?! Why did you have to be nothing but nice to us?!” He yanked himself away from Roxas, but didn’t shove him, didn’t touch him. Roxas let him go. Roxas was willing to let him go if it hurt Hayner less.

“Because you three were nice to me,” Roxas explained, his voice more air than words. Hayner inhaled, the breath catching on each of his ribs that had a vice grip to keep his heart together. Roxas hesitantly reached for Hayner again, brushing his tears away with his thumb, knuckles pressed to his cheek. He’d only ever echoed what was shown to him, only ever mirrored their hearts. They were all so terribly heartbroken and so terribly kind.

“I hate it so much…” Hayner croaked, pressing his forehead to Roxas’. He held the side of his face, still trying to wipe away tears. “I hate that you don’t want to be friends with me anymore…” His breath ghosted along Roxas’s skin, the last layer hiding his heart from Hayner. “I hate that I’m scared I won’t be a good friend to you anymore…”

“I still want to be your friend…I’ll always want to be your friend, but if it’s easier on you, we don’t have to be friends anymore.” Roxas spoke softly, tried to keep his voice even, tried to hide how much this hurt.

“You stayed away because you thought that would be easier on us too, didn’t you?” There was too much grief in his voice for it to sound accusational. Roxas nodded. “Have you ever even done anything you’ve wanted?”

“I made friends with you and Pence and Olette.” Any other choice he’d made after that was because of that one, solitary choice. How he noticed Heartless hunting patterns, his willingness to be friends with Xion and Axel, leaving the Organization—all because he’d become friends with them and his desire to maintain that relationship or their safety.

“Aside from that?” Hayner mumbled. Roxas shook his head, brushing away a stray tear. “What do you want? Pretend for a minute I didn’t just say any of that—what do you want? Because I apparently don’t know what I want.”

“I don’t want to hurt you or have anything I do get you hurt. I want to protect you. I want to get ice cream and go on more trips with you. I wanna be your friend…” Hayner reached up to press his palm to Roxas’ cheek, to hold his face in his hands the way Roxas was doing for him.

“Then we stay friends.”

“But—”

“If I decide I don’t want to be friends anymore, I’ll tell you—so stop asking.” There was immeasurable relief that flooded Roxas, his overgrowth untangling itself from his ribs and nestling back into its proper place inside of him. There might come a day when he said something or did something that he couldn’t take back, or Hayner might sort out his feelings and decide he hated Roxas. But for now, they were still alright. He was still worth it.

Hayner tipped his chin up, raising up on his knees to press a kiss to Roxas’ forehead. He let his mouth linger, pressed to his skin but not a kiss. Roxas closed his eyes, listening to Hayer’s heart relieve itself of its frantic pace. How fragile, how resilient a thing it was. What he wouldn’t give for them, for this closeness to be always within his reach.

“I want to protect you…” Roxas mumbled, pulling his claws away to wrap his arms around him instead.

“I know.” Hayner mumbled back, letting his fingers slide from his cheek down to his jaw, his neck, over his shoulders, and down his back. Roxas took a deep inhale before mocking Hayner’s breathing. Roxas sat there for a long time, pressed up against Hayner and letting himself fall into the rhythmic disarray of half-sleep.

“…My knees hurt.” Hayner grumbled, Roxas opening his eyes and tipping his head back to look at him.

“Tired?” Roxas asked as Hayner rubbed at his eye, then adjusted so he could sit. Hayner grunted. Roxas laid down on the mess of blankets, staring at Hayner until he did the same.

“You can sleep in the bed, you know.” Hayner reminded, whispering secrets that didn’t need to be kept between them.

“But I wanna be closer to you a little longer.” Roxas admitted, understanding only after he said it that Pence would have teased him for being mushy.

Hayner didn’t tease him. Hayner just sighed through his nose and cracked a tired, sarcastic smile and opened his arms to welcome Roxas into them. “Come here.”

Roxas pressed himself up against Hayner, wrapping his arms around him, tangling their legs together. His precious human, his Hayner. Roxas listened to his heart, consciousness fading again despite not having cried and only been up for a few moments. Maybe it was having a heart that was exhausting him, making it so he couldn’t use his keyblade. But Sora had a heart and Sora could use his own just fine. All of the other humans weren’t ever this exhausted all of the time, so it had to be something else.

“…Roxas, you awake?” Hayner had spoken so softly it had taken Roxas far too long to realize he’d actually spoken to him and not that a dream was overtaking him. It wasn’t unusual for him to dream about his friends. “You may be a monster, but you’re our monster you know. We want to protect you too.” His humans, their monster. He was overcome with soft euphoria at the thought of them acknowledging a thought he’d had since the beginning. “I’m sorry if I hurt you with what I said…”

Roxas adjusted, giving Hayner a light squeeze and pressing his mouth to his shoulder. Hayner buried his nose in his hair as the room flooded with the scent of lotus flowers and Roxas started to purr. His human, his monster. What he said had hurt, but Roxas had already buried that pain underneath his relief, underneath the memory he was making right now of how warm Hayner was and how his voice sounded raspy when he whispered.

“I’ve always called you three my humans, you know,” he whispered, tipping his head up to look at Hayner. “You can call me your monster all you’d like.” For a brief, tantalizing moment, Hayner’s nose brushed against Roxas’ and his mouth was close enough to steal breath from. He lingered, opening his mouth as if he wanted to say something, then closed it. Then Hayner adjusted, pressing his forehead to his, pulling his mouth away, and whatever unusual intensity was there left with it.

“Go to sleep, you dorky monster.”

Roxas cracked a grin, but closed his eyes as instructed.

Chapter Text

Roxas peered out of the window to Hayner’s room, a guy in a beanie yelling at some kids for breaking a neighbor's window. A girl stood silently by his side, one of the children bursting into tears. Hayner had went downstairs to yell at him, Roxas finding the exchange a curious thing.

Roxas understood where the guy in the beanie was coming from; they’d ruined something that wasn’t theirs and couldn’t replace it, so the least they could do was be scared into never doing it again. But Hayner wanted to protect people and their fragile newborn hearts, especially because they hadn’t hurt someone and things could always be replaced.

Roxas lowered his chin to the window sill, wondering which of them would win the argument. He liked Hayner’s approach of being gentle, but he understood a firm hand was needed to keep people in line. He understood without it, people would do as they pleased, which would only hurt others and ruin long standing projects. But without some sort of consideration, people would be closed off and wouldn’t work well as a group in order to preserve their own achievements.

Was Xemnas not nice enough? The question felt absurd. Xemnas offered him whatever he wanted. He could have had his cake and eat it too then licked the pan clear of frosting. But why wasn’t it enough? Was it because he was put in a position to take and only take when he wanted to be given things? To be given their hearts, their affection, their comfort, their familiarity.

“They at it again?” Pence asked, leaning over Roxas’ shoulder to look out of the window.

“Again?” His eyes trailed away from the view outside to Pence, the orange glow of twilight illuminating his features. Roxas was hungry, but he would behave. Precious hearts weren’t things he could eat.

“Yeah. That’s Seifer—guy with him is Rai. There’s also Fu and Vivi who follow him around too. We’re always getting into arguments with them. They’re total jerks who think they know everything just because they’re a little older than us.” Pence narrowed his eyes at the scene, Roxas slowly letting his eyes wander back to the view down below.

“I can eat them,” Roxas offered, Hayner clenching his fist and Seifer taking a boxing stance. Rai hadn’t moved and the kids had at some point ran off.

“Don’t eat them please,” Pence sighed as if he had to wrestle with the idea. Olette had made her way downstairs as well, Rai turning to face her. They silently approached one another, fists over open palms. The hit their hands down twice, then threw out a symbol that was exactly the same. This happened twice before Olette threw up her middle finger, Rai jerking back as if he’d been wounded.

“Who wins?” Roxas asked, watching the exchange. If Seifer hurt his human, he’d never forgive him, but he trusted Hayner to hold his own against a familiar enemy.

“Wins what?” Pence asked as he pulled away from the window.

“Their arguments.”

“Depends.” Roxas didn’t find his answer very helpful. He wanted to know; was Xemnas right or was he right? Would he lose to the Organization or would he win on principle alone? Who had the upper hand and how much did that affect him in his weakened state? “They’ll be at it for a while. Wanna come with me on a walk?” 

Roxas jerked away from the window, ducking down underneath the window sill. What if they’d seen him? What if being this close to the window had made it easier to sense his aura? Why hadn’t they found him yet? Did that have something to do with Xion? She’d found him easily enough. Were they waiting for him to do something first? Were they waiting to see if he’d try to retaliate against the Organization and wanted to trap him that way?

“No…” If they just couldn’t find him because his aura had been so weak, then did his recovery make it stronger? Or was his aura weak because he was slowly rotting into nothing? Could Nobodies rot into nothing? Is that why Xemnas had pushed him so hard to collect as many hearts as possible at all times? Was Xemnas rotting away? Was that his real reason he kept having them hunt for hearts?

Higher rank means more hearts, bud.

“Rox, you’ve been in Hayner’s room for days. Some fresh air isn’t gonna kill yo—”

“But it might. Or you three.” It sounded like a threat and he wasn’t going to correct himself. Roxas couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a heart. He’d been good. Was being good going to get those he cared about killed? Was it better to be terrible and survive to protect those he cared about or was that just the easier option? Was he dying? Is that what was wrong with him?

Were they just waiting for him to die? To starve himself to death? Is that why they hadn’t come after him? Maybe Axel had already found him and he was just waiting him out. The assassins were his for a reason. He was specialized at killing things and the most proficient way to do it sometimes was by doing nothing at all.

“Roxas, it’s just a walk. We can go around the block and come right back. Or even down the street and back.” Pence offered, voice even and gentle despite his aura spiked with fear, defensive and poisoning itself as he redirected it away from Roxas. “We can even just go sit outside of the house—it’s okay, bud.”

“It’s not.” His voice teetered on a whisper. Why was it always Pence he was trying to scare? Hunger for Nobodies was different than it was for humans. There wasn’t any sort of pain that forced them to eat every single day. There was just the desire to consume, an endless and desolate space that yearned forever.

Pence sat down next to Roxas, crossing his legs. “Is it the outside you’re scared of or something that’s outside?”

“I’m not—” Scared. Nobodies didn’t feel anything. Nobodies didn’t get scared. If the first was a lie, was the second one he just insistently told himself? Was it possible to hurt himself with his own lie? “I’m…” He pulled in on himself, shoulders tense, knees pressed together, haunches tense, tail lashing behind him. He should put that away before he broke something or hit one of them with it. His body snapped, popped, caudal vertebrae locked against his spinal discs.

Pence held his hand out to Roxas. He reached for him, hesitating as he stared at his own claws. His fingers convulsed in response to his adjustment, human shaped fingers laced with Pence’s. “It’s okay to be scared, you know. Even if you feel like it’s over nothing.”

“It’s not nothing…” Roxas mumbled, eyes locked on the thick colors of Hayner’s lava lamp.

“Then you can tell us—you told us everything else,” Pence reminded. How could Roxas tell him that he was probably dying and they were in more danger with him here than they could truly fathom? “…Can I tell you something actually?” Pence inched himself up against the wall underneath the window, hand still in Roxas’. Roxas watched him adjusted, waiting for him to talk.

“When Toonie was little, one time he got attacked by a bird because of some food he had. It scared him half to death and because birds could be anywhere, he didn’t ever want to go outside. He would scream bloody murder every time we tried to get him out of the house and would work himself up into hysterics. It was so bad that one time when we carried him outside, he passed out. He wasn’t really scared of leaving the house or birds, he was just scared of getting hurt again.”

Pence was comparing his situation to that of a child’s. To a bird. A singular bird that had attacked him over nothing. A bird that probably wouldn’t be bothered to attack him again. It was absurd and insulting quite honestly to be compared to an irrational child’s fear, but Roxas held his tongue because Pence was likely trying to help or trying to process Roxas’ worries in a way that was familiar to him.

“Our mom talked to a therapist. She said we can either do one of two things: get Toonie a pet bird or convince him to just stand on the step outside. He didn’t have to go anywhere, just stand there and readjust. Five seconds, that was it. Then the next time, make five ten. Then make it five on another step out, then ten, then three steps—we did that until we could get him to a pet store.”

The Organization wasn’t a bird. Xaldin wasn’t a bird. Roxas wasn’t a child. He kept quietly telling himself Pence was just trying to help. He shouldn’t get frustrated. He could feel himself glaring at the lava lamp, looking at it but not seeing it.

“You know what happened a week after we got Toonie that bird?” Roxas shook his head. “He killed it.”

“Oh.” Roxas hadn’t been expecting that, the word leaving him before he realized he’d vocalized his shock. He was expecting his little brother to get over his fear of birds, for Pence to imply some happy moral at the end of his story.

“Right?” Pence asked with a laugh. “Everyone handles things differently, and if you push them, they might do something they regret later or that is out of character. So I’m not gonna push you, especially when you already feel on edge. But when you want to leave Hayner’s room, if you want me there, I’m there.” Pence gave a squeeze to Roxas’ hand, who finally could bring himself to look at Pence.

How delightful he was with his tales of children murdering things that had caused them harm. How fantastic he was to quietly tell Roxas he was more than welcome to tear into his terrors. How considerate he was of the fact Roxas was naturally a terrible thing that had a natural tendency to ruin things, even with the weakness of a child.

He leaned over, rubbing his cheek against Pence’s, then his nose, then pressing a kiss to his cheek in gratitude, in a display of human affection. He felt Pence’s skin grow warm, heart alight, ablaze, blood rushing to his face.

“How did he kill it?” Roxas asked, lips brushing Pence’s cheek as he spoke.

“Uh, pretty sure he just crushed it. He actually cried because he was expecting it to fight him like the other bird did, but it just kind of chirped and…yeah. Birds are fragile, so…” Pence fumbled through the memory, Roxas humming with interest.

It would be nice to clasp Xaldin between his claws and have his bones shatter as if they were hollow. The thought made him relax, tail slipping away from his spine, fingers snapping in Pence’s grip.

“Uh…Rox?”

“Hm?” He brushed his nose against Pence’s cheek, tail flitting back and forth in delight at his revenge fantasy.

“You good? You’re kind of uh…going a little Nobody looking.” Pence’s heart gave heavy thrums against his ribs, as if fear had weighed it down.

“I’m good.” Roxas reassured. “This is actually more comfortable than looking like a human. I’m not mad or anything. The opposite,” he reassured, pressing another kiss to Pence’s cheek.

“Oh. Good to know. So does it like…take effort to look like a human? Or can you just…?” Pence made a vague gesture with his hand, but Roxas understood what he was asking all the same.

“Less effort, more focus. So, if I’m not paying attention or if I’m too focused on something else rather than how I look, I tend to slip back into this more,” he explained, listening to Pence’s heart insist on slamming itself into his ribs, in its desperate attempt to escape, to get away from Roxas.

“So is what we saw what you really look like?” Pence pulled away just enough to look at Roxas as he spoke, face cherry red. Cute—it made Roxas wanted to bite him, just once, not break the skin.

“Comfortably, yeah, give or take the wings. I haven’t had to really use my full out aggressive form, but some people in the Organization consider that what we really look like instead of the in between. I guess I could have used mine with Xaldin, but that’s like…” Roxas paused, eyes searching for a way to explain. How would Sora say it? Was it too much to tell him this—that he was more of a monster than they gave him credit for, than what they’d already seen? “…It would be like admitting I knew I wasn’t going to win that fight and would rather die. With everything that’s wrong with me right now, I don’t even know if I’d even be able to do it.”

“So question—you purr, right? Like that wasn’t you messing with us?” Pence asked, color slowly working off of his face. Roxas wanted it back—he leaned over and kissed him again, mouth to jaw.

“Yeah,” he affirmed, Pence choking on a soft noise that only half made its way to his throat. Roxas pulled back to look at him, pyrographing the memory into his brain.

“But you’ve got like…dragon wings and whatever kind of tail that is. So what are you supposed to be?” How cute it was for him to try to categorize him, to try to understand in the menial options available to him.

“I’m not a cat or a dragon or a flower—I’m a Nobody, Pence.” Roxas explained. “Zexion said our forms are related to who we were when we had hearts. Kind of like our body’s way of imprinting aspects of our past lives onto us since a body is all we have left from who we used to be. It’s why those of us that can look human are so different.” He leaned over to kiss him again, Pence press his hand to his mouth, already turning red.

“Dude! All of the kissing is really embarrassing.” Pence gave an awkward laugh, uneasy with how easily Roxas showed him intimate affection.

“I can tell. I like how you look when you’re embarrassed.” Roxas nipped at his fingers, Pence yanking his hand back. Embarrassment was close to fear, but there was a sensation like when limbs fell asleep, when stars were being ground into dust with a mortar and pestle. It was teetering on the edge of something deeper, but it wasn’t harrowing like fear was. Roxas couldn’t help but smile and chuckle at him, pupils going wide.

“If you’re going to eat me can I at least text my siblings I love them first?” Pence asked, sarcasm and a sigh in his words.

“No. I’m not nice enough to give you last requests.” Roxas pinned Pence to the floor, hands on either side of his head, tail coiling around his leg like a snake.

“Welp. Can you at least tell them I loved them?” His voice wavered, but the flush on his face told Roxas he understood he was teasing him.

“Never.” He lifted Pence’s bandana with his claw, careful to not hurt him before pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I’m gonna let you overheat, turn yourself into human goo then drink you through those curly straws we got at the beach.”

Pence let out a laugh, this jovial thing like iridescent soap bubbles and the shine from a diamond. Roxas was good—he didn’t take the sound from him, as much as he wanted it. He kissed his nose, his cheek, the other he’d kissed several times already, his eyelids—

“What the heck are you guys doing?” Hayner asked, Roxas poised over his mouth. There was a flicker there that he knew Hayner hadn’t been able to control, but it hurt to recognize all the same. He’d been left alone with Pence and now had him pinned to the floor, all sharp edges and unsaid threats.

“Turning Pence into human goo,” Roxas explained with a delighted purr, the noise rumbling in his chest. He kissed Pence’s nose again, showing Hayner he wasn’t doing anything that would warrant his somewhat irrational worry.

“It’s working,” Pence warned as he turned to Hayner, the flush of his face vanishing down his neck and into his bandana.

“Don’t turn our friends into goo,” Hayner scolded, closing the door behind himself and sitting on the edge of his bed. Roxas uncoiled himself from Pence, sitting back on his haunches again as Pence sat up.

“But I bet human goo would taste really good.” Roxas put his chin on the edge of the bed, Hayner throwing his leg up onto the bed and holding his ankle to keep it from slipping.

“What are you, an old man? Can’t be bothered to chew us?” Hayner taunted.

“I’m not even a year old yet—so if anyone here is old, it’s you.” Roxas shot back, staring at Hayner’s knuckles, now wanting to nip and tease at him as much as he’d done to Pence.

“Wait—”

“You’re kidding right?” 

“No. I thought I told you tha—wait.” Roxas pulled his chin off of the edge of the bed. “No, I didn’t. Sorry, that memory is still a bit hazy. Olette had asked if I was…what was it like sixteen or seventeen when we first met? I didn’t realize she was asking in years. So I thought I told you.”

Hayner and Pence quietly looked at one another. Roxas still wasn’t privy to the silent exchange, but he could feel their auras twine and vibrate when they touched the other. They both scrambled for the door, both calling for Olette as if the world would end if she didn’t answer them.

“Olette! Olette, we have a baby Visitor!”

“Olette he’s totally messing with us! Tell Roxas to stop messing with us!”

“What—what? What’s wrong?” Olette was dragged back into Hayner’s bedroom, Hayner tugging her along by one wrist and Pence the other. Hayner gestured to Roxas as Pence shut the door.

“Well, go on, tell her your lies,” Hayner dramatically accused.

“It’s not a lie. I’m 263 days old—I think. How many days was I asleep for, again?” Roxas asked, looking between the three of them.

“What! No way!” Olette held her hand over her mouth in shock, eyes wide.

“Okay, seriously. You guys can accept I’m a Nobody and everything else I told you, but I tell you how old I am and that’s what’s hard to believe? I am essentially a body of an entirely different person, who was probably sixteen or seventeen, which is why I look that old,” Roxas explained, leaning back against the bed. Maybe he should have just stayed in it, never gotten out of it, never woken up—not if they were going to be this exhausting.

“So you just like…do you hatch from eggs or what? You just hatch like that? Fully grown?” Pence asked, Olette’s fingers lacing with his, Hayner crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows in doubt.

“I did not hatch from an egg!” He was pretty sure he didn’t hatch from an egg, but he wasn’t going to hesitate and let them have something else to tease him over.

“Oh sure. You’re not even one and you didn’t hatch from an egg." Hayner drawled with sarcasm. "You totally hatched from an egg, fuck you.” Hayner pointed a finger at him, Roxas sighing so hard it sounded like a growl, rolling his eyes as he tipped his head back over the bed.

“Guys—guys do you know what this means?” Olette asked, squeezing Pence’s hand in hers, desperately fumbling for Hayner’s. “He’s never had a birthday! ”

“Yeah, I have. I’m right here. Kind of hard to exist without one,” Roxas reminded, Hayner’s finger still pointed at him. He swatted it away, Hayner just pointing at him again.

“No, that’s not—” Olette shook her head. Roxas swatted his hand away, Hayner grabbed for it, holding it in his own. “A birthday is a celebration of the day you were born on the same day every year! You get cake and presents and pretty much get out of doing chores and stuff!”

“So when’s your birthday? What day did you hatch from your giant gooey egg?” Hayner asked, still playing bad hand grabbing games with Roxas.

“Hayner, with 263 days that means he’s a fall baby dude. Even with the give or take of a few days.” Pence explained, Hayner deciding to use both hands to try to trap Roxas’ claw between his hands. Roxas rolled his eyes, but offered up his claw, Hayner cheering a victory he didn’t earn nor deserve.

“Woah!” Roxas yanked him close, catching Hayner with his free hand to keep him from crashing into him. He kept eye contact, kissing the back of his hand.

“Stop. Trying to goo us.” Hayner spoke through clenched teeth, red down to his shoulders. He’d only kissed him once—no wonder he’d been standoffish at the beach.

“To what you?” Olette asked with a high pitched laugh.

“Shut up!” Hayner snapped at her, glaring at her from over his shoulder. Roxas tugged him down to kiss at his cheeks, Hayner tensing and fussing as if he couldn’t decide whether to run or sit on his lap.

“Aw, I want Roxas kisses! Me next!” Olette whined, Pence giving a nervous laugh. Roxas laced his claws around Hayner’s middle, who conceded, deciding not to fight it, but still braced his hands on the bed to keep from sitting in Roxas’ lap.

“Sure,” Roxas agreed, studying the color on Hayner’s face. How cute, how easily embarrassed they both were. To desire affection and yet be so hesitant about it, to be worried it would twist in on itself like an ouroboros and hurt them; to want to be friends, but to worry one day you might have to take that back. Roxas pulled his hands away, running his thumb along Hayner’s cheek as if to brush the color from his face with his reassurance.

“But anyway, back to birthdays,” Pence decided. “Roxas we’re totally gonna have to celebrate yours because missing a birthday is a crime. Like seriously I’m already setting a tentative date in my phone.” Hayner glanced away from Roxas, gaze struggling like warm taffy to pull away.

“Yeah! What kind of cake would you want? There’s a ton of different kinds—oh! Do you think we could find like a sampler of different kinds of cake?” Olette offered, Roxas leaning up to kiss Hayner’s other cheek. He lingered, staring at his eyelashes.

“That sounds good! What kind of presents would you want?” Pence asked, Hayner conceding and sitting on Roxas lap so they could look at him when they spoke. Roxas lazily locked his arms around Hayner’s waist. He enjoyed the closeness, the careful proximity like moons and planets dancing around each other’s undeniable gravity.

“Presents?”

“Yeah, like what kind of stuff would you want? People give you stuff you want or what they think you’d want on your birthday.” Hayner explained with a flourish of his hand. The only things Roxas had ever wanted were mementos, something to memorialize the day had happened, that even without a memory there was proof of it.

“I dunno,” he admitted. “I think I’d cherish anything you three gave me, even if it was just memories.” The room flooded with a warmth, with a light that struck Roxas, even through his coat. How gentle and familiar, like ocean waves.

“I have no idea why we were even worried about you being a Visitor or Nobody or whatever—you’re still such a huge dork,” Hayner teased, leaning over to press a kiss to his cheek, the gesture dramatic and bruising against his cheekbone.

“Aww, Rox!” Pence gushed, not letting go of Olette’s hand as he knelt down next to Hayner, Olette on his other side.

“That’s so sweet!” They both pressed kisses to his cheek, Roxas closing his left eye, expecting his cheekbone to hurt from Hayner’s earlier kiss.

“We’ll make tons of great memories on your birthday, promise.” Pence offered. Promise, a promise. His overgrowth twisted in delight, desperate to be exposed once more, to bask in the light just outside of his skin.

“Yeah—we can even go eat ice cream up on the clocktower. You haven’t done that with us yet, right?” Hayner offered, Roxas shaking his head.

“No—I’d really like that though,” he admitted, the room already smelling like lotus flowers.

“Think you can wait 102 days?” Olette teased, letting go of Pence’s hand to press her back up against the bed, arm against Roxas’. She tugged her knee up against her chest, lacing her fingers around her shin.

“It’ll blow by, watch,” Hayner promised.

For a moment, just a single, solitary moment, Roxas believed that it would. It would be nothing but bad jokes and kisses and gentle reassurance. It would be nothing but ordinary days and sleepy hours and soup that would indiscernibly melt together. It would be normal; it would be full of happiness. For a moment, just a moment, that was all he saw.

He blinked; he remembered the Organization and wished for the first time in his life that he could forget something important.

Chapter Text

The sour taste of his own saliva was getting to him.

The nausea was getting to him.

The smell of their auras was getting to him.

Roxas sat up out of a dead sleep, clambered up onto the bed and threw the window open. He shoved himself half out of it and into the starry night air, jaw locking up.

Hayner had jerked awake at the noise, Pence grunting on the bed and turning over, Olette humming and slurring some sort of question from her place on the floor. The air was stagnant, pulsing around the same space like it had its own circulatory system. It was them, nothing but them, their auras, their hearts, their light. He could practically taste it, but practically wasn’t actually.

Roxas bent forward, drool that had pooled in his mouth dripping down on the pavement below, claws gripping the windowsill. Hayner got up, shuffling over to Roxas and reaching out to put a hand on his back.

“Don’t.” Roxas had all he could do to not whisper at him, threaten him. Hayner’s hand twitched, hovering over his shoulder blade. He was so frustrated with himself, with his inability to keep it together. Roxas shuddered, more drool pooling, dripping out of his mouth. Hayner pulled his hand away.

“What can I do?” he asked softly, Roxas listening to Olette sit up, her blankets tangled together.

Roxas ignored him, trying to focus on breathing. He tried not to think about her legs tangled in the blankets in nothing but her shorts. He tried not to think about Hayner’s bare arms, always exposed. He tried not to think about the heat from Pence’s body almost pressed against his leg. He tried not to think about tearing into them for fun before pulling open their heartspace.

Nobodies didn’t need to eat anything but hearts, but they could. They could eat food, they could eat flesh, they could drink blood and chew through to cartilage. They could swallow fatty tissues, they could press soft eyeballs to the roof of their mouths like chewy candy.

Roxas tried so hard to focus on breathing air that wasn’t them, that wasn’t pressed against his back like a lover. He was starving. The Organization was going to let him starve, wait for him to eat his own humans and come crawling back or lose it. They were going to kill him if he didn’t kill his friends first or just let him kill himself to avoid killing them.

“Roxas,” Hayner called him again, moving to stand next to him as close as possible without touching.

“Get away from me,” he snapped, all teeth and reflex. Hayner flinched, but didn’t move. He narrowed his eyes and Roxas realized this was going to quickly turn into an argument if he didn't do something. “The smell of you three is getting to me.” He could feel his throat closing up every time he tried to talk, could taste the stomach acid that had squeezed up into his throat. It was sweet, like water from a pitcher plant.

Roxas continued to drool out of the window.

Hayner took a step back.

“What does that even mean?” Hayner whispered, Roxas feeling Olette staring at him.

“Later. Please, later…” Roxas grunted, shaking his head before pressing his forehead to the cool window sill. It didn’t alleviate the roiling of his overgrowth, searching, starving. He tried to focus on breathing, but it only brought the phantom touch of Hayner’s fingers against his spine. He arched like a cat, aware of the sensation before a spinal disc would burst now. It was uncomfortable, like bloating, forcing him to lock up since any movement would snap it open.

“You want us to go out in the living room?” Roxas hadn’t realized Pence was awake. He was right next to him and he hadn’t been able to tell. If Pence had been a threat, Roxas could have been dead.

He nodded fervently, not an ounce of guilt at asking them to get out of their own space. That was better than the guilt that would come with saying terrible things to them, that would come from eating them. Pence turned himself around, sliding out of bed and taking the blankets with him. Olette collected hers and followed him, Hayner lingering well into them moving furniture around and setting up in the living room instead.

“…If you need us, just give a holler,” he offered, finally reaching down for his blanket and pillow before leaving, closing the door behind him. Roxas watched his own drool drop onto the pavement like acidic rain.

He’d been dreaming of the taste of them, kisses turning into biting, into tearing them open. He’d been asleep, searching them out in his sleep. In his dream, it had been Pence, covered in kisses and bite marks and heartspace opened. He’d woken up with his mouth to Hayner’s shoulder, half open and poised to bite him.

He was starving—he was going to hurt his friends.

“Roxas, let us in. Come on man, I know you hear us.” Roxas had shoved the dresser up against the bedroom door. He sat on Hayner’s bed, nose pressed to his mattress. It smelled like Hayner, like Pence, like Olette. They’d all slept in this bed. 

He hadn’t stopped drooling. The smell hadn’t left the room yet. It scared him to know they were just in the other room. It scared him to know he could leave through the window and come back in through the front door. It scared him to know the only thing keeping them out of the room was a piece of furniture.

He’d moved the dresser and tore into whatever the hell was in the fridge with his hands. Blackberries, ground beef, honey, milk, pork chops with the bones, bread, eggs, fresh basil, peaches, and avocados—pit and all. He wiped a smear of animal blood and berry juice off of his face with the palm of his hand, then licked it clean. The peaches were satisfying for their texture, meat for their taste, stating the intrusive fantasy he kept having, but it wasn’t enough.

He was still hungry. He was still so god damn hungry. 

“Roxas…?” Hayner had halted in the doorway, eyes wide, surveying him and the licked-clean mess of empty containers that surrounded him. He was supposed to be asleep, supposed to be unmoving, relenting in the call of his name. If Hayner was awake, he’d have to interact with Roxas, his aura would be thicker. He’d have to feel fear because Roxas couldn’t keep it together, and if he felt fear, Roxas might be unable to keep himself from chasing him.

There wasn’t much else in the fridge.

Roxas stood up, opening the freezer. He tore into the plastic of another pack of ground beef, using both hands to bite through it while staring at the frozen waffles and ice cream. If he ignored Hayner, maybe he’d realize it was best to go back to bed and pretend it was a dream. He knew it was too much to ask for without actually asking. His humans were too curious, too worried about him.

“Please tell me you’re sleep eating or something right now…” Hayner whispered, making it hard to pick up on his tone. Roxas swallowed, then tore another hunk off with his fangs, claws digging into the hunk of meat. The one in the fridge had been better. It had died more recently than this one and it was better without the freezerburn. He swallowed.

“Go to bed.” He bit into it again, reaching for the fish. He’d give him munny for groceries tomorrow as an apology. Right now he needed to finish making his way through everything in the freezer.

Hayner stayed in the doorway, watching as Roxas tore through everything. He watched as he popped can after can open in the cupboard with his claws. He watched his tongue with thorn like ridges twist around dry pasta. He watched him pour instant cheese mixes into a can of diced tomatoes and swallowed it without chewing, throat bulging, but he didn’t gag or vomit. He tipped his head back for a moment and made coughing noises, but got it down. He watched him tear through bags of chocolate chips, gelatin packets, powdered sugar, ranch dressing.

Hayner watched him eat everything in his kitchen but the sink. The cleaner underneath it had a slick texture that left his mouth numb.

Roxas scrubbed his face with his hands, then sat there for a long moment, hiding. He then walked over to the doorway, Hayner taking a step back. It was reflex. Roxas was glad for it. Otherwise, Hayner might have stood there, in his way.

“Roxas—” Hayner’s voice shook.

“M’hungry…” he explained, embarrassed at how desperate he sounded. “Good night, Hayner.” His voice cracked, Roxas making his way back to Hayner’s room before he could ask. He shoved the dresser in front of the door again. The birds had started calling for morning.

There was a knock on the door. Roxas could smell it was Hayner, Olette and Pence right behind him. He’d heard the rustling or grocery bags a moment ago and he wondered if he should have asked for something or if he was just going to at some point lose it and eat everything in the kitchen again.

“…So we gonna talk about last night? Or you locking me out of my room?”

“I’m hungry…” Roxas explained, voice cracking. His body felt sluggish, heavy, like it was going to burst. He was sitting against the dresser, stiff as a board and trying to keep his spine from bursting again.

“I could see that.” There was a deep bite of sarcasm in Hayner’s voice.

“I don’t want to hurt you…” Roxas mumbled, staring up at the ceiling. But he didn’t leave. How selfish to think he could protect them from the Organization like this when he was a reason to be on guard.

“Roxas what the fuck does that even mean?”

“It means I don’t want to hurt you.” Roxas snapped back at him, turning his head to yell through the door, through his own listlessness. “I don’t want to eat any of you.” His throat hurt.

Silence.

“Do…do Nobodies eat people?” Pence asked, voice barely audible through the door. 

“We eat your hearts. Heartless do to, but when you destroy a Heartless, the heart is released. They’re like containers with claws.” He couldn’t help but laugh, harshly rubbing his hand against his face. “When we eat them, we actually digest them. So, I’m hungry.” He snapped, the anger directed at Hayner when they all knew it was for himself.

“Like…straight up people’s hearts? The thing in their chests with the blood and veins and stuff? Like we’re talking about the same thing, right? Because I feel like that got lost in translation during your explanation before.” Pence asked, voice shaking.

“No, Pence…” Roxas sounded tired. “It’s the thing that makes you, you—your light. Your heart makes and is surrounded by what we call aura. Nobodies can manipulate their own aura to make you feel scared or like something is wrong. But you guys, you kind of just…leave remnants of it all over everything. So like your hangout spot, this room…” Roxas redirected his attention to this ceiling.

“So it’s like smelling food cooking all day,” Olette offered as an explanation.

“Worse. When your heart is removed from your heartspace, the aura crystallizes around it, making it look like what people normally think of when they think of hearts. Without that aura, it’s more like this orb of light.”

“So, less food smell, more like knowing there’s water particles in the air, but also knowing there’s usually water in any kind of food in one way or another.” Pence offered, Roxas grunting in confirmation.

“Do you have to eat a heart or would aura work?” Olette.

“It’d be like the human equivalent of eating fruit infused water or junk food, but yeah.”

“And you can’t eat the aura in the bedroom because…?” Hayner.

“I have no way of solidifying it. You can only solidify aura if you separate it from the heartspace. You don’t need the heart to come with it.” Roxas explained, gesturing with his hand to the room around him as if it were obvious, as if Hayner could see him.

“Heartspace is where the heart is?” Pence.

“What happens when you run out of aura?” Olette.

“Yeah. And it’s like blood—your body will make more on its own so long as there’s enough left.” Roxas’ throat was killing him. He really should have chewed more. He tormented himself with a deep inhale, salivating at their smell.

“Well, can we like…break some off for you then?” Olette asked, Roxas’ overgrowth twisting around in his body, rapturous at the idea. It would have been easier on him if they could. It would have been less tempting if they could do it themselves.

“Not without getting into your own heartspaces, which humans can’t do,” he sighed.

“So you’re essentially being a bastard because you’re hangry?”

“Shut up, Hayner.” Pence scolded before Roxas could snap back at him. He could hear the exhaustion, the eye rolling in his tone, completely over him trying to turn everything into an argument, into something he could win.

“Dude, it was like the time we watched my aunts dog and he got into everything! I’m expecting him to piss on my bed next at this rate!”

“Keep talking shit,” Roxas warned, smirking as he turned his head to the side to talk to them. He swallowed, trying to keep himself together, trying to keep the mood lighter.

“I swear, I’ll kill you.” If Hayner waited Roxas out, he could just starve anyway.

“Can’t kill me if you can’t even get in your room to stop me in the first place.”

“We could take the door off of the hinges,” Pence offered. And just like that, the conversation dissolved. Roxas was glad they couldn’t see him wince on occasion, glad they couldn’t flood the room with their auras, glad they couldn’t see the way he couldn’t keep his fangs in his mouth. He was glad he had them, glad they were good to him, but also in so much pain because of them—it wasn’t fair.

There was a soft knock on the door.

“Roxas? Are you awake? Can I talk to you?” Olette asked, practically whispering, words slipping through the crack in the door like a love letter. She’d been spending more nights over here than Pence had, but Pence also had family who missed him whereas Olette wanted to get away from hers. She’d only traded one threat for another.

He could ignore her, pretend he was asleep—she wouldn’t know the difference. He sat there, staring at the door and waiting. She called his name again, a siren song he wanted to answer, drown in.

“Roxas…?”

Didn’t they realize how dreadfully tempting they were? To sleep next to, to be surrounded by? Didn’t she know she should go away? Didn’t she know the first thing about self preservation was to avoid the threat in the first place?

“If you don’t answer I’m gonna go find a ladder and climb in through the window.” Didn’t he know his own friends were idiots?

“Olette, that’s not at all safe for a variety of reasons.” Roxas sighed, knowing regardless if he was awake or not, she’d try now that she’d said it. If he really was asleep, if she knocked on the window, he’d have to investigate then.

“Then let me in or I’ll get my shoes right now,” she threatened, stubborn as the rest of them.

The dresser dragged along the floor. The lock clicked.

She opened the door, hesitantly peering through, Roxas already sitting back on the bed. She closed it behind herself, shutting herself in with the danger. He winced, the glow of his eyes narrowing.

“If you’re gonna close it, you have to stay over there,” he warned. She glanced at the door, then back to him. She felt her way over to the bed in the dark, Roxas immediately getting up and moving away from her. “Olette, I’m serious.”

She fumbled onto the bed, grabbing for him and missing as he made his way over to the door. He opened it, pressing it to the wall, giving her a wide berth of escape. She crossed her arms, but didn’t get up to close it.

“…Well, it’s open. Sit.”

Roxas sat down next to the door, Olette sighing. She got up, trying to sit next to him, but he jolted up to his feet and moved back over to the bed. She stared at him, then got up and left the room, leaving the door open. She came back in, throwing a pillow in his face, which he caught, the second catching him off guard, but not as much as her shoving him down to pin him to the bed.

“Stop running away.” She narrowed her eyes at him, Roxas peering out from the second pillow. He could easily get out from underneath her, flip her over and pin her to the bed instead, but he didn’t. If he did, he might hurt her or scare her. Either of those things would open the floodgate of his restraint.

“I’m so tired of you running away…” Any sort of anger she had drained out of her, evaporated into nothing. “You’re right here, and you keep running away from us…” She sunk down against him, looping her arms around his middle. The only protection from his mouth, from his fangs, from her being swallowed was the pillow against it.

“Olette, please…Get off,” Roxas whispered, horrified of what would happen if he raised his voice.

“Or what? You’ll eat me?” She pulled back just enough to lock eyes with him. He swallowed. “…Eat me then.”

“Olette, that’s not—”

“Roxas, you’re so scared of hurting us that at this point I think even if you tried that you wouldn’t be able to,” she scoffed.

He flinched. He’d always hurt them unintentionally, not proactively. He was a paradox, someone who existed who shouldn’t and someone who hurt his friends when he wasn’t trying. She pressed her forehead to his, placing her hand over his. She gently tugged it up off of the bed, pressing it just below her left collarbone.

“I trust you not to hurt me, okay?” He could feel her heart in her chest. “I don’t want to see you like this, especially because of us.” He could feel her heart in her chest. “Let me help…?” He could feel her heart in her chest. 

He swallowed the saliva that had pooled in his mouth.

Olette let his hand go, removing the pillow from between them. She was so small—she was so warm. She made this so easy. If he couldn’t stop himself, there’s no way she’d be able to stop him. Would she even try to fight back or would she assume he’d stop? Hayner was out in the living room. One, two, then when Pence came over, three.

"You can do it whenever you're ready," Olette prompted gently. His human. One of his tiny humans. Fragile, delicate, precious, important, beloved.

He felt the discs in his spine tighten, jaw locking, eyes wide.

"Roxas?"

He'd stopped breathing. He could hurt her.

"Do you want me to hold your hand?" He reached up, lacing his fingers with hers. She squeezed, reassuring him before resting their hands on the bed.

He pressed his fingers up into her chest, flirting against her heartspace, Olette’s knee jerking forward as her breath caught in her chest.

“…You can always knee me,” he suggested, her leg between both of his.

“I could,” she agreed with a small laugh, trying to keep her breathing even.

He pressed his fingers farther in, a practical touch, then he pressed even farther in, her heartspace showing as much resistance as putty. She pitched forward once his fingers breached inside of her, aura tight and coiled as if to pull away, ignorantly insisting she was alright.

He studied her body, her face hidden away against his shoulder. Her heartspace wasn’t like a muscle; it didn’t matter to him if she was tense or not in regards to getting it open. But he was trying to be careful with her, with the first human he’d made friends with. She was precious to him.

“I can stop,” he lied, fingers brushing thick aura around her heart that threatened to crystallize at his touch.

She let out this soft noise and shook her head, Roxas immediately salivating. She was trying so hard not to be scared it was admirable. She was so used to being scared and so used to hiding herself that he swore he could feel her heart grow heavy against his fingers. People always thought they receded back into their heads, but it was really their hearts.

Olette was already so scared she was checking out, not wanting to remember or exist in the situation. Roxas sat there for a moment, fingers buried in her heartspace and debating if he could stop or if he should just eat something. She’d offered, she’d insisted. Did she realize she would get this scared?

He knew it scared humans, but he didn’t know if it hurt. Removing their hearts must have, the shock of it all alleviating some of that pain, but what about snapping aura away? He would try to keep her heartspace as closed as possible, even if he ended up scraping aura against it and losing it. But would it be easier to just take a huge piece out in one go and close her back up? What would scare her less, hurt her less?

Would it scare her more to have this unknown part of her open for a longer period of time? Would it scare her more to see a large part of her aura pulled from her? He should have tried to talk to her more about this, even if it was him giving in. What if she couldn't tell him no?

"Can you tell me no—to stop, just for a minute? Please...?"

"No." She choked on the word, her heart trembling with anxiety at her joke being taken as something she could get in trouble for. He exhaled, she gave his fingers a gentle pulse of reassurance.

He spread his fingers, opening her heartspace. Olette’s leg jerked out, her breath hitching as she tugged away. Roxas pulled his hand away from hers to lock his arm around her lower back. He pressed his fingers into the cavity, brushing against heartstrings that were thick like harp wire. What would her heart dying sound like? Each body always sounded different, discordant and melodic at the same time.

“Olette…?” Roxas called softly, Olette letting out a soft, shaking hum, the weight of her heart ever so slightly lifting. She’d just insist do this, she’d keep offering, even with a heavy heart. His fingers brushed along her heartstrings, Roxas feeling her whole body tense, feeling her aura condense and spill out from her, coiling around him, the bed, the sheets. He kissed the top of her head, nose buried in her hair. “Thank you. I’m sorry if this hurts.”

He pulled his fingers away from her heartstrings, brushing up against the thick aura surrounding her heart. It was flitting between solid and gas, unsure of what form it should take, what it wanted to take. It didn’t know if it should relax into his hand or become jaded armor. She clung to his shoulders, vice grip keeping him close in rebellion against everything else her body tried to do to reject him. Roxas curled his fingers into it, ring finger brushing her heart before he tugged.

She inhaled sharp, deep—he pressed his hand over her mouth, flipping her over onto the bed.

“Shh, Olette, please…?” If she woke anyone up, this would have been for nothing.

She kicked, a scream dying down into a whimper in her throat. She blinked away tears, staring at him. She hadn’t been looking at him before and he didn’t know if that was worse or not. She reached her hand up, fingers trembling as she gently tugged at the fingers over her mouth.

He removed his fingers, Olette choking on an exhale, struggling the entire time with her inhale. “Keep...keep going—talk to me…?” she begged, still blinking away tears. She was still willing to do this for him, even with all of her resistance.

“About what?” He waited, fingers still curled around her aura that threatened to melt between his fingers, go back to her, protect her heart.

“Anything,” she choked, sounding as though she were sobbing. He didn’t know what to say. Just rambling on about normal things didn’t feel right and it didn’t feel right to try to joke with her either. He didn’t know any stories—but Sora did. Something dipped and bobbed on the surface of his memories when he thought of that word. Stories.

“I know a story,” he offered, Olette nodding meekly, still trying to blink away tears. Roxas gently wiped them away with his thumb, careful not to hurt her with his claws. “Once, there was a painter who very much wished to paint something for the love of his life. He didn’t have anyone who loved him yet, but he decided the first person to fall in love with the piece he wanted to make must be them.”

His fingers gently pulled, Olette wincing, clinging to his back, her aura more solid in his grasp.

“He decided to make his paints from enchanted flowers, but there were so many and different flowers meant different things as well as different colors for the same flowers. So, he spent many years of his life learning what flowers meant what thing, practicing making paints out of their ordinary versions and honing his craft in the meanwhile.”

Roxas couldn’t remember who had told Sora this story. He tried, grasping at memories of his mother, of his friends, of his friends’ parents, anything—nothing. He didn’t know who told him this story, just that it was a memory he had. Maybe it had been a dream. Olette clung to him as he gently tugged and roiled her aura around in his hand, carefully trying not to snag heartstrings or dislocate her heart.

“He left a slew of paintings behind, giving them all away because they weren’t important to him and not what he was trying to make. But the painter’s biggest problem was the message he was trying to convey seemed to only show up in white flowers. Honesty, perfection, devotion eternal. He was frustrated because he’d spent years on this project, only to realize he’d need to paint white on a white canvas.”

He pulled gently, Olette’s back arching with his fingers, nails digging into his back.

“He felt like he’d never be able to find the love of his life now. But there had been a girl who’d been in love with all of his practice paintings, his past experiments and failures and had been trying to find the painter for a long time now, but he never signed any of his work. Her only way of finding him was when a new painting appeared and trying to get information from the person who he had given his painting to.”

He twisted, snapping her aura away from her heart, out of her chest. Olette immediately burst into tears, aura swarming to cover the exposed juncture of her heart. It wound around Roxas hand, as if to plead for it back before dipping back into Olette’s chest. Roxas kissed her forehead, Olette looping both arms around his neck and sobbing against him. Roxas just wanted to eat, to calm himself down before calming Olette down.

But he’d waited this long, a little more wouldn’t hurt.

“One day, she had happened to actually find him. She told the painter she was in love with his art, which appalled him. He hadn’t even gotten to practice with enchanted flowers, yet alone create his greatest piece for her. He asked her what she thought of the blank canvas, attempting to prove she was lying. She told him it was beautiful, a new start. She was earnest in her answer, innocent. The painter realized even if he hadn’t painted his masterpiece yet, she’d been able to see it.”

She was shaking, unable to stop. Roxas kept wiping tears, trying to comfort and apologize in the same story.

“Did they get married and have 30 painter kids?” Olette asked through a trembling voice, barely able to form words. She was trying to joke, to show she was alright. Maybe she was and this was all because he’d been in her heartspace, or maybe she was lying to herself until it became the truth.

“Absolutely.” Nowhere in that story did it say what kind of flower he’d tried to paint, but Roxas knew what kind it was.

When I finally found you, and even when I remembered your name, I was happy. The way I felt then—that was no lie.

Roxas pressed Olette’s crystallized aura to his mouth, savoring the sensation like he had with her laugh. He opened his mouth, the sound of it shattering against his teeth as he bit down. She flinched, but didn’t move or ask in any way for him to.

Forgotten, but not lost.

Who had told Sora that story? The name teetered on the edge of his memory, but threatened to fall and take the story with it any time he reached for it.

He glanced down at Olette, who was still blinking away tears and trying to even out her breathing.

“Okay?” he asked softly.

“Scared, but okay. The story helped,” she reassured, staring at her own aura. He pressed it to his mouth again, noticing that the gesture made her flush. He bit it, Olette glancing away. She threaded her fingers through his hair then let her hands come down to his cheeks as he chewed. “What about you? Is it helping?”

He swallowed. “It will.”

Chapter Text

Xion had went to see Naminé. Dust particles sparkled against the twilight, floating away into the shadows. A moth was tied in spiderwebs in the ceiling corner.

“What do you want to do?” Naminé asked, seated across from Xion at the table.

Xion wanted to be with their friends forever. That was all. But as the year wore on, it wore on them, made them feel threadbare. The memories, the pull, the feeling of Sora’s heart. Xion felt as though they were missing something, incomplete. All Nobodies felt that way, but Xion wasn’t a Nobody. Xion also felt the tug of the missing pieces. To ignore that call, to feel incomplete forever when they could state that empty, deep well—there was no way they could leave everything as it was.

“Roxas can’t feel Sora just yet…” she explained, but Xion didn’t need Naminé to tell them that. There were too many missing links in the chain for him to feel any sort of tug. All he could do was find the occasional link, a missing piece Xion didn’t have. He collected them, the same as they did; their mementos, their souvenirs. Xion acknowledged that by coming to see Naminé today that they’d no longer hide Roxas from the Organization.

Xion could see how Roxas was backed into a corner, given no real options to move forward with. The safest option, the one that he would hate, was Roxas needing to come back them—to Sora. They wondered if his humans would be sad. Xion had listened to the four of them as they joked with him, reassured him, cared for him.

Xion listened to how they offered themselves to him to keep him from withering away into nothing.

Do you hate me for taking your friend away from you?

Nah. I guess…I’m just sad.

Would they feel the way Riku had? Or would they be angry the way Roxas had been? Xion had unintentionally hurt so many people by just trying to protect one person. It was a war, us versus them, but Roxas didn’t want to be ‘us’, he wanted to be ‘Roxas’. It almost felt contradictory to try to convince him to leave and go back to Sora with how much pain would be left behind in his place.

Xion had turned these thoughts over and over and over, folding them in on themselves until they were microscopic. It would hurt Roxas’ friends to take him away, but it was wrong to do this to Sora. Sora didn’t deserve to be in pieces. Sora deserved to know who he was. Sora deserved to wake up. More than that, Xion had faith that Sora would protect Roxas the way they couldn't.

Above all, Roxas deserved answers. He deserved to know what kind of person he’d been. He’d been warm, he’d been kind, he’d been unabashedly selfless. Xion would catch glimpses of it in him—the way they smiled the same way, the way he was content to doze off anywhere when he was tired, the way he’d hold precious things close to his chest.

Roxas deserved to remember all of the happy memories Xion had. Roxas deserved to not feel as though he were falling apart because of all of the strength Xion had taken from him. Roxas deserved to be complete.

Xion could tell with the kind of person Sora was, once he found out about Roxas, even if Xion no longer existed even in anyone’s memories, Sora would do anything he could to not only bring him back, but be his friend. Xion knew because they would do the same thing for Roxas.

“I love him—I think. Roxas I mean. That’s what this is right? A willingness to give up part of yourself without hesitation to make sure someone is okay?” Xion asked, quietly holding the left side of their chest. Their body felt off kilter for a while now, the left heavier than the right.

“Wanting to help someone and do what’s best for them, especially if it’s hard for them to do it themselves…I think it is.” Naminé agreed softly, her eyebrows raised, the corners of her mouth curled, conveying her guilt.

“Some of these memories I have…they’re the ones you made, right?” Xion asked, locking eyes with her. Naminé immediately looked away, bowing her head in apology. Xion watched her fight with herself to keep her appearance closer to that of a human. But she'd been too sheltered, still looked off.

“I’m sorry…”

Xion shook their head. “Don’t be. Those memories helped me make my decision. You feel the same way once you actually met Sora, right? That he was someone you wanted to love, to protect? Roxas has that part of him, I think. From the moment I saw him, I wanted to be friends. From the moment we started talking, I would do anything for him. It’s really easy to fall in love with him and Sora.”

Naminé quietly raised her head, studying Xion as they looked at the drawings on the wall. “Yes…They’re precious people. I think everyone can feel that right away.”

“Right? That’s why I want Roxas to meet Sora. Right now I think he’s just scared of losing everything. He doesn’t realize Sora would do anything for him, even if they’ve never met.” Sora was the kind of person who would find a way to get Roxas back to his friends. “I just don’t know if I should say something to his friends first…humans can be scary when they set their mind to something and I don’t want them to try to stop me. But I’ve made my decision already, even if Roxas won’t like it. In the long run, this is what's for the best, isn't it?"

Naminé gave a soft smile, more out of apology than understanding. “Well, if you’re ready, let’s go see Sora.” Naminé slid out of her chair, Xion pushing their’s back and standing up. They met at the door way, Xion’s heart feeling heavy, as if they were abandoning everything. But if this decision made it so Roxas could be happy, so Sora could wake…Axel wouldn’t even have to worry about remembering the pain of being abandoned.

Xion had said their quiet goodbyes all week. Curled up in his bed to sleep, giving him the memento from the day they’d decided to be friends, going on missions together, eating ice cream like when Roxas had been there. Axel had asked if something was wrong and Xion had to use everything inside of them to lie, to not burst into tears. Xion left the ice cream stick that said ‘winner’ in his room. What was it any of them won, really?

Axel was their best friend. They’d miss him so much there were hardly any words for it, barely any actions for it. Axel had let Xion follow him around since day one. He was the reason Xion could be self-sufficient, why their heart had formed so quickly. The soft muscle pressed against resin ribs, lonely even though they were coming home to Sora where everything would be alright. Axel had tried to pull away, but he never tried to push. He just assumed people would leave him the more he pulled, but Xion hadn't.

“Can you…can I ask you to watch over Roxas and Axel for me? They can be pretty hopeless sometime—”

<—icky jobs. To think, he was here this whole time…>

Xion stopped, listening. They were always listening for Axel. This choice meant they’d had to stop protecting Roxas. They’d stopped masking his weakened aura with their own. They’d stopped because then his only other option would have been to go back to Sora—or it would have been so long as he was left alone for just a little longer.

“I’ll be right back.” Xion held up an index finger, glancing back towards the window. “I have to go,” They grabbed Naminé’s hands. “But I’ll be right back…!” They let go, rushing out into the hallway of the mansion, barreling into a shadow corridor.

<Axel!> They called into the darkness, fumbling to get closer, to feel for him. How close was he to that human’s house, to Xion’s missing pieces, to Roxas? Protecting your own heart was hard sometimes.

<Xion?> There was hesitance in his whisper. <Look, just between you and me, I found Roxas. This might get ugly, okay? I know you liked him, but you should go ba—>

Xion rushed out of the corridor, into the alleyway right underneath the window of the human’s house. He was here. Right here.

“I won’t let you—I won’t let you hurt Roxas. You can’t, Axel. Please? Just pretend you can’t find him for just a little longer, please?” they begged, but kept their distance. There was distance between them and Xion had to keep it that way now. Axel furrowed his brow, but it was hard to tell if it was from the sun or him trying to understand something.

<Xion, listen to me. You’re my best friend, okay? Whatever it is you’ve been doing…> Axel glanced over at the brick of the building, then back at Xion. <I don’t mind covering for you, but it gets a lot harder when it messes with our direct orders like this.>

“You’re my best friend too. Which is why I can’t…I can’t let you hurt him.” Axel knew Xion was a doll, that wasn’t a secret between them, but it wasn't exactly talked about either. He didn’t know how interwoven Xion and Roxas were. They’d kept so much from him, the Organization and Xion. He might have been able to guess, but it was easier to not discuss it.

Hurting Roxas would ensure any memories he had with him would vanish, that Sora would never wake up, that Xion would disappear for nothing. Xion couldn’t tell Axel because he’d stop them. Xion was precious to him, someone he didn’t want to lose. Why should he care for some person he’d never met who was about to take his best friend away from him? He wouldn’t understand and Xion didn’t expect him to.

But by hurting Roxas, he’d be hurting Xion and he’d be breaking his promise. Xion didn’t want him to do that, not without realizing it. If he was going to break his promise to never hurt Xion, he may as well realize he was doing it.

Xion drew their keyblade.

“Xion—” He was so startled he’d said their name out loud. Xion was going to fix this. Xion was going to be a good person because Xion was tired of lying to their friends and hurting them. Xion was going to go back to Sora. Sora would make everything okay—it had to be him because Xion and Roxas were both too selfish on their own.

“Please don’t hold back, Axel? Promise?” Xion wasn’t going to hold back. Xion was going to wear him out by any means they could. They couldn’t go back and they couldn’t lose, be it losing Roxas or losing with their fight with Axel. They couldn’t.

Sora didn’t deserve to lose anything else, yet alone the part of him that was so easy to fall in love with that was holed up away just a few feet above them.

Right and wrong were subjective. It was right for Xion to go back to Sora; it was wrong for everyone to demand Xion give up their existence for him. Axel had told Xion so many times he hated when everyone always used their own selfish reasoning to consider themselves right. It was why he implied that Roxas and Xion had hearts, even if Xemnas insisted they didn’t. So long as they had all of the information, they could see the bigger picture and were allowed to make their own decisions. It was important they grew as their own people and made their own choices.

Wasn’t that what it was like to have a heart? But then, had Axel’s choice been wrong? After all, Xion used their heart, the one that had grown because of him and his decision to tell them the truth, to attack him. Xion had spent enough time with Axel to know how he fought and to know when they’d lost. Xion was at the very least smart enough to run.

Resin pieces collapsed into the hole in their side, Xion holding the wound, trying to keep themselves together. They just needed to keep it together for just a little longer; themselves, their relationship with Axel, their lie with the Organization, their goal of getting to Sora without them knowing. Just a little longer.

Xion pressed themselves up against a corridor, listening for Axel, their own body clacking so loudly it was hard to hear over it. It was like humans trying so hard to catch their breath, something they were unable to help in that moment. It was practically a joke how quickly they’d still lost to Axel, but Xion didn’t have time to think any of it was funny.

Where was Axel? Was he going after Roxas? Going after Xion? Xion couldn’t hear him, their body was too loud. Why was their body so loud? Xion clutched their side, trying to steady themselves, ribs cracking all the way up to their armpit. The injury from protecting Roxas from Xaldin hadn’t finished sealing itself up yet and Axel had known that, had taken advantage of it.

The irony of Axel hurting Xion to try to protect them.

He’d begged for Xion to just come back, to forget about Roxas. He wasn’t worth it—he was endangering Xion. He didn’t want to hurt Xion over Roxas.

Roxas doesn’t matter—not to the Organization and not to me.

It hurt to hear him say that. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know how Xion and Roxas were connected, tied together. But it was like hearing someone say they hated a trait you hadn’t told them you posses.

“You—it is you.”

Xion had been so lost in trying to listen for Axel, in trying to silence their own suffering body that they hadn’t heard the human come up behind them.

“You’re the one who took his name from us, aren’t you? I’ve seen a few of you since then, but you…”

Xion turned around. Who was this? Brown hair, brown eyes, big mouth—humans all looked the same to Xion. But he was talking to them instead of running. Xion narrowed their eyes at him, the human tensing up, jaw locking, eye twitching, swallowing, but he didn’t move.

Right. One of Roxas’ humans—the stubborn one. It was hard to recognize him when he wasn't by Roxas' side or flanked by his other two. Xion couldn’t help the laugh that left them, a short, scoffing, choked thing. Stubborn. At least Xion understood where Roxas got that echo from, that jump start to that part of his heart.

“Something funny? ” he snapped at them. The human might have just been in the right place at the right time. Or he had followed Xion from who knows how far—the house, the market, the sewers. Xion had lead Axel as far away as they could, eventually making it back to the mansion out of habit, out of desperation. It was normal to want to go back home when you were tired, and this was where Roxas had been born, where Sora was housed. Both of them felt like home.

But with the human here, Xion couldn’t go inside, even like this. They couldn't risk Sora being found. Xion didn’t know where Axel was and didn’t trust him to ignore Roxas just yet. That meant Xion had to wait just a little longer to go back to Sora. It meant they’d have to push him in the right direction to go back to him—or take him kicking and screaming.

Roxas would die otherwise.

Xion couldn’t go back to the Organization anymore, the same as Roxas. All because they were stubborn—stubborn, stubborn, stubborn.

“He really likes you…” Xion croaked, a softness in their voice that was accompanied by weariness. “I’m so sorry…but I’m glad at least he won’t be one of the ones who have to experience what it’s like to lose a friend.” That would be Xion, Axel, and the three humans Roxas had picked. If Roxas had come back to the Organization, they could have kept on pretending. Xion would have never went to Naminé. This was the fault of those humans. It was their fault because if it wasn’t it was Roxas’, and Xion could never be mad at Roxas.

These humans were going to kill him and they didn't even realize it.

“Is that a threat?” The human narrowed his eyes at them, Xion feeling the corners of their mouth curl.

“Sure. Whatever.” It hadn’t been, it had been a genuine apology, but if that’s how the human wanted to take it, they could keep it. Xion took a step back, hand still clutching their side, resin falling into their toes.

There was something in his expression, something that flickered through his aura that made Xion’s mouth water so quickly it was nauseating. Fear, anger, resentment, guilt, regret, anticipation, dread.

“You’re not gonna hurt him—!” The human raised his fist, Xion stumbling back into the darkness. Didn’t he know what Xion was? Hadn’t he been scared enough? No, that was the problem. Xion had to threaten his friends to get him to scream for Roxas before, and Roxas was his friend.

Xion had been careless—the human stepped past the threshold of the corridor, the darkness swallowing the entrance behind them.

Chapter Text

Roxas was feeling better; Roxas felt worse because of it. Roxas had no way of knowing that taking aura would leave a human feeling less than themselves, feeling off and hazy. Olette’s reactions were delayed, her smile didn’t reach her eyes, her breathing was shallow. Roxas decided he’d rather starve, but he’d made that decision with clear head rather than one hazed with hunger.

“Olette?” Roxas called out into the hallway, voice barely above a whisper, door pulled open just a crack, a sliver of light from the living room lamp reaching him. “Can I talk to you?” He waited, giving her time to reply. Was he like this when he’d first joined the Organization? He had no heart, but he’d had aura. He was still trying to understand why the loss of it would make humans lethargic.

It left the heart more exposed than before, a thin veil that could easily be pierced without resistance. Maybe by exposing their hearts, it lead to a loss of self; because the heart was vulnerable, it could have felt the tug towards Kingdom Hearts, towards the collective. Maybe all of those hearts that had become one felt everything all at once, allowing no room for the body to process it. Maybe that left Olette like this.

Or maybe human auras held the root of their fear which is why it could be sensed and manipulated. Without it, maybe there wasn’t any sort of contradicting sensation. Without it, maybe there wasn’t any sort of gauge for humans to go by, so they didn’t realize anything was wrong with their outward behavior.

He could have been wrong, but those were the only things he could come up with.

Olette quietly knelt herself down in front of the crack in the door, eye level with Roxas. She’d normally reply to him, but she’d been so out of it sometimes she thought she’d reply but hadn’t.

“Are you okay…?” he asked softly, fingers curled around the door.

“I’m okay. Tired, but really good, actually. My mom and dad were fighting yesterday when I got home and I wasn’t scared at all. I normally kind of sit outside, but I just went in and went to my room. They were so busy fighting they didn’t even see me. I was always so scared they’d see me and yell at me too, but I was scared over nothing.” She gave him this sleepy smile that didn’t reach her unfocused eyes.

Olette never outright mentioned her parents. Roxas opened the door just a little more. Olette reached out to him, Roxas freezing, even if her motions were languid, palm open. She pressed her hand to his cheek, still giving him that hazy smile.

“Your eyes glow yellow in the dark even though they’re blue. Did you know that?” She was still trying to whisper, but it was as if she was trying too hard, as if she didn’t realize whispering came from the throat wasn’t just talking quietly from the chest.

Roxas nodded, mouth pressed to her palm. He left it there, avoiding her eyes out of guilt and embarrassment.

“Pence looked it up. It’s got something to do with how the eyes let in light and being able to see in the dark. You can only tell humans reflect red in their eyes when we take bad photos, but animals can be yellow and a lot of other fun colors.”

Roxas eased the door open just a little more, holding her wrist. “Sleep in here with me?” He was worried about her. He was scared she’d say something to someone, that she’d tell on him to Pence or Hayner. He was scared she’d say something to a complete stranger she’d regret.

“Olette? What the heck are you doing?” Hayner asked, sleep heavy in his voice and his normal speaking volume, Roxas tensing. Roxas pressed her hand to her chest and shut the door louder than he’d meant to. He shoved the dresser back in front of the door.

What was the difference between this room and the ones he’d wanted to make at the castle? It was another horrible, rotten, ambling consideration of locking his friend away. The reasoning was different, but the result was the same.

There was a knock on the door.

“Rox? You good, bud?” Hayner asked, voice having shaken off sleep in the space it took him from walking to the living room to his bedroom door.

Roxas didn’t answer. Olette answered for him, still half whispering. “I think he’s just feeling lonely but doesn’t want to come out just yet. I think you calling for me just startled him.”

Silence.

“…Rox, you can open the door, it’s okay…Can we start with that? We don’t have to come in and you don’t have to come out.”

Silence.

“Fine. I’m gonna step outside.” Hayner whispered to Olette, as if Roxas couldn’t hear him. He could always hear them—that’s the first thing they learned about him. “See if you can get him to open the door again?”

He heard the front door open, Olette knocking on the bedroom door again.

“...You gonna let me in?”

Silence. Roxas eased the dresser away from the bedroom door and unlocked it. He opened the door just a crack, Olette still crouching down in front of it. She smiled up at him, Roxas lowering himself down to his knees.

“Hi,” she greeted softly, reaching into the crack to press her hand to his cheek again.

“I’ll leave the door open,” he promised, desperate for her to understand that he didn’t want to trap her. “You can go whenever you want.” he pressed his hand over hers, Olette smiling wide, as he hid his mouth against her palm.

“I trust you,” she whispered.

“That’s the problem. You really shouldn’t.” he ran his fingers down the back of her hand, holding her wrist once more.

“Would you stop being an edge lord and open the door?” she giggled, pressing her palm to it and pushing. Roxas fell back on his butt as it swung open on him, Olette snorting and bending forward until her forehead touched her knees. She pulled back, pressing her hand to her mouth to try not to laugh to hard. “Come on, let’s go to sleep.”

Olette wandered into the room like a deer into a deeper part of the forest it wasn’t familiar with. Yes, it was all foliage, yes it was all grass, but Roxas, with his hand still holding her wrist, was a trap and she didn’t even know it. He stood up, Olette tugging him over to the mess of blankets on the floor.

“You wanted to sleep right? Or did you wanna talk—or did we already do that part?” she asked, dropping down into a cross-legged position.

“You just don’t seem like yourself and I’m just worried…” he admitted, sitting down next to her. Olette hummed, leaning her head against his shoulder.

“Pence said the same thing and Hayner just keeps staring at me—I feel fine, though. But if everyone is saying it, I must be a little funny.” She sighed, pressing her palm to his, seeing how much larger his hands were compared to hers.

“I’m sorry...I didn’t know that would happen.” He laced his fingers with hers, pressing his mouth to her temple.

“You keep apologizing.” She tipped her head up, rising up from her hips to hold either side of his face and kiss his forehead. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You said it grows back, nothing hurts. You can’t apologize for a choice I made. If anything, I should apologize for scaring you like this.”

“I’m—” He was always so quick to insist he wasn’t scared. He clenched his jaw, but furrowed his brow and stared at her. Olette pressed her forehead to his, closing her eyes.

“It’s okay to be scared, Roxas. I’m sorry for making you scared.”

“But Xemnas sa—” he stopped himself. Xemnas said they weren’t supposed to ever be scared of anything, not even dying. He was so used to considering every word out of his mouth holy, reverent. “…Xemnas had always said we didn’t feel anything, least of all fear. I’m…I’m still having a hard time with that one.” Even without Xemnas, it was something he’d learned on his own. Fear from others meant he’d won; fear from himself meant he’d lost.

“It’s okay. It’s a hard feeling, for sure.” Olette agreed, opening her eyes to kiss his forehead again. “Want me to tell you a story?” Roxas’ overgrowth pressed against his ribs, tangling itself around his bones.

“Yes, please,” he breathed.

“Wakey wakey eggs and whatever the heck Roxas eats!” Pence called into the room, making a big fuss about the door being opened. Roxas opened his eyes and stared at the wall.

“Bacon.” Olette grumbled, burying her face against his shoulder. Roxas tightened his grip around her. “And everything else in the kitchen.” He knew them joking about it was a way to normalize it, but he winced anyway.

“Fair enough. Did Hayner go on a run or something?” Pence asked, retreating back into the house. Olette sat up, rubbing at her eyes. She blinked, then looked at Roxas expectantly, as if she expected him to agree with her. She was still really out of it and must have thought she’d said something. Roxas reached up, brushing his thumb along her jaw.

“Hold on.” He listened, trying to find the familiar cadence of Hayner’s jog, of his breathing. Nothing. “He’s not in the living room?”

Did Hayner ever come back? He said he was going for a walk—Roxas hadn’t thought about it. It was late. He was trying to give Olette time to coax Roxas to open the door. It was late and he wasn’t thinking. He was worried about Olette and nothing thinking about Hayner. He’d heard the front door, he’d only heard it once, he heard the front door.

Roxas practically threw himself from the bed, hands slamming into the door frame as he looked into the living room. He would have heard him, even if he was asleep. He would have heard his even breathing, the way his heart worked. He would have heard him. He'd been too focused on Olette, on using her as a distraction.

“It’s okay, we can call him.” Olette reassured, fingers at his back before her hand went into her pocket. She paused, then looked over to Hayner’s dresser. Then she walked into the living room. Slow. She was talking forever, she was so slow and it was his fault. He squeezed his eyes shut, brow furrowing as he tried to distinguish humans in their morning routine from his human, his Hayner.

Where was he? Why was he having such a hard time finding him?

He thought of the human arm sticking up out of a grate in Halloween Town that smelled too much like rotting muscle than plastic. He thought of the flower that had closed around munny and the body of a rat in a suit in Wonderland. He thought of Pence’s brother. He thought of himself after Olette had gotten scared in the alleyway—

He exhaled, a leg twitching and falling out of his mouth with a muffled thud on desert sand as the Heartless kept their distance.

—covered in ink and manic with desire—

He could feel the gore dribbling down his chin, the bitter taste that coated his throat as he swallowed the heart encapsulated in it.

—and how he hadn’t eaten a Heartless, but had deluded himself into thinking he had.

He thought of Xion. He thought of the Organization. He thought of Xemnas. He thought of him telling Roxas that this world wasn’t for him, that he belonged to a new world now. He thought it was an anecdote, jargon, or to be taken literally with how many words existed, or even that it was more lies.

He bent over in the door frame, overgrowth knotting in his throat.

“Roxas?” Pence called from the kitchen. He quickly made his way over to him. “Hey, what’s—woah!” His overgrowth twitched, writhing and desperate to escape the squeezing in his chest. He was still hungry. What if he hadn’t gone to sleep? Would Hayner be alright? Was it his fault or had he done something had convinced himself he hadn’t again? He'd been hungry. He'd been scared. He'd been asleep.

Pence stood in front of him, glancing over his shoulder. “Buddy, you gotta get into the room. His grandma can’t see you like that, okay?” Pence whispered, but he hesitated to touch him, hand poised over his shoulder.

Olette called Hayner’s phone, then called it again. He could hear her dialing again, hear his voice on the answering machine. He shuffled back into the room, trying to listen for him. Where was Hayner? Roxas listened inside of the room, inside of his stomach. What if he—silence. He felt his eyes well up. He didn’t hear Hayner’s heart in his stomach, but he also didn’t hear it at all in Twilight Town.

 “I didn’t…I didn’t eat him,” he whispered, relief and violent disgust revolting inside of him. He felt like he was rotting from the inside. Olette lowered her phone from her ear to look at him, Pence’s eyes going wide.

“Didn’t eat who? Hayer? Roxas, why would you—Aw, hell.” Pence took a step back as Roxas turned his head and puked, the phantom smell of rotten meat and compost filling his nose. Pence’s eyes flickered over to Olette, a silent conversation before he squeezed into the room around Roxas, closing the door. He knelt down next to him, rubbing at his back. “It’s okay, bud. Get it out.”

“But I can’t hear him—I can’t hear Hayner. I can always hear Hayner, I can’t hear him…!” Roxas wiped uselessly at his eyes, but the tears just kept coming, sap clinging to his chin. “Pence I don’t know where he is…!”

“Roxas it’s okay—you’re probably just overtired and still hungry, so you’re feeling off. It’s okay,” Pence reassured. Roxas wondered if he told himself that when Frankie didn’t come home. Did he have to comfort his siblings like this? Did he have to put on a brave face for them? Did he have to tell his best, most convincing lies? Did he know Roxas could smell the fear creeping into his aura like a leech inching its way back into the swamp?

Roxas pulled away from him.

“I’m gonna find Hayner—I’m gonna…I gotta…” Roxas choked, opening his palm behind him, a corridor of darkness opening. “Pence I can’t. If he can’t come home, I can’t…I can’t ever…” He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself. He’d never be able to look at Pence and Olette again. “I won’t—it’s my fault if he—”

Maybe he was too far away. That had to be it. He was too far and that was why he couldn’t hear him—Roxas turned around as Pence called for him, the corridor sealing behind him. He stumbled, a seashell in the middle of the corridor. It was yellow and blue, perfectly in his way. He stared at it, brow furrowed in confusion at the memento from his room.

He picked it up, inspecting it. On the inside was written,

I’m so sorry.

I lost him.

He ran.

He stared at it. He stared at the seashell that had been in his room. It was from the day he’d spent with them at the beach. From the day he’d kissed all of them. The day they all had a good time. The day everything was okay. The seashell from that day. He stared until the letters stopped making sense.

His tail twitched.

Roxas didn’t know if it was possible to shatter something so small it barely existed. Was it possible to take something you couldn’t properly hold in your hands and snap it in two? Into four? Was it possible to break a heart he barely had with just a few words?

Roxas quietly raised his head, eyes drifting along the view of the corridor in front of him, studying a particular shadow too hard, neck twitching, breath hitching. He tipped his head back, a hissing that sounded like steam leaving him; a whine that sounded like a creaking door leaving him; a raise in his voice like the screeching halt of a train of thought leaving him; a scream like a human having time to process the end leaving him; a yell like an eldritch horror that had been long left in the dark, long left to rot in the pages of its abandoned scripture, leaving him.

There wasn’t any proper words to describe how he felt. Unbridled rage, fathomless anguish, intrinsic guilt—he felt them all at once and yet none of those feelings were correct in their descriptions. This was new. This was something so painful he couldn’t contain himself into a small human body or even that of a Nobody.

This struck him so deeply Roxas pressed his claw to the ground, the weight of a dragon the size of the clocktower crushing the shell. This hurt him so badly it was easier to ignore processing, to be the least human thing he could possibly be. The corridor smelled of mushrooms and lotus flowers and soured oceans.

The corridors were a maze of other worlds, of dead ends, of helpless, yearning darkness like a pitcher plant that wished to consume anything inside of it. A meek, exposed heart would be swallowed without consideration. No matter how strong Hayner considered himself, he was small and worth nothing in the face of the darkness. He wouldn’t even warrant a hint of a taste of light, yet alone anything that would appease its infinite appetite.

Hayner was dead.

Roxas just needed to find what was left of him, but Hayner was dead somewhere in here. Once he found Hayner, he was going to find Xion and the rest of the Organization, and he was going to destroy them. He yelled again, his call echoing back at him before bounding off into the darkness, listening for his human, his Hayner, a piece of his heart Xion had so carelessly lost.

Chapter Text

Roxas inhaled, bones snapping as pulled himself back into his human form as the world reminded him of how small and insignificant he was.

Fear meant he’d won.

Roxas exhaled, the body before him limp in a narrow corridor that was pressed between two worlds, the arm it was laying on curled around its middle.

Fear was good.

Roxas inhaled, trying to remember phantom fingers down his back as he reached for Hayner’s hand that was curled around his ribs.

Fear was good.

Roxas exhaled, breath catching, Roxas trying to exhale again. Again, he tried to exhale, wheezing he was trying so hard. Hayner's fingers were cold and purple.

It was good—so long as someone else was feeling it, fear was good.

Hayner was so scared. Roxas had never been overwhelmed by a human emotion before. It was so hard to untangle it from his own feelings, untangle Hayner from the darkness he was drowning in. Hayner’s other hand had also wound around his chest, trying so hard to guard his heart. He should have tried a little harder a little sooner. He should have been a little more closed off, cared about Roxas just a little less.

The darkness had set in Hayner’s features like exhaustion, like the hair on spider legs; he just needed to close his eyes and let everything drain out of him, blood and light and heart. Roxas didn’t want to say anything for fear of Hayner not replying. If he called for him, he didn’t know if he’d be alright with the darkness taking Hayner’s last words from him.

But even if Hayner turned into a Heartless, even if he had a Nobody, Hayner wouldn’t be Hayner anymore. He’d be nothing like he was now—he’d be void. Roxas’ body violently shivered, the sensation of the aura Xemnas gave off flooding him, making his overgrowth dry out. Nothing. Nothing was so much worse than Roxas had been able to comprehend. If nothing was worse, he’d much rather call for him and listen to him die in his arms. Dying now would at least mean he hadn’t died alone.

“Hay-ner…” Roxas whispered, voice hiccuping as he called for him, gently easing his human, his precious human, his precious Hayner, his precious piece of his heart, into his arms. Hayner’s heart was being crushed by his own body, a body that was drowning in the deep sea pressure of darkness. He turned Hayner’s face towards him, Hayner’s eyes open and glazing over with tears at the sight of him.

“…xas…” There was a flicker of relief, like walking into a dark room just as a candle was being blown out. “Don’…leave th’m…alon…you need th’m…They’re gon’need you…” Roxas squeezed Hayner’s hand in his, holding it to his overgrowth, to his chest, his newfound breaking heart. Leave it to Hayner to be dying and worried about his friends, about Olette and Pence.

“I’m sorry—” Roxas’ apology was nothing but a gasp, a shaking inhale. “I’ll do better…! I’ll protect them—!” Roxas choked out, swallowing as his jaw locking up as he struggled with his overgrowth, with his urge to vomit. Olette and Pence were going to need Roxas to make sure nothing like this happened to them. They were going to need him to take Hayner’s place as their protector.

“N…o, stupi’…‘ove you…m’too…Don’le’em…lose’nymore pe…ople they love…kay?” Roxas wasn’t sure at what point he hadn’t been able to distinguish the tears in Hayner’s eyes from the ones forming in his own. He wasn’t going to argue with Hanyer about love. There was no way they’d be able to forgive him enough after this to love him. Roxas regretted from the deepest recesses inside of himself that he hadn’t been able to recognize love in time to feel it properly.

Love was the emotion he had the hardest time with understanding. Humans didn’t seem to understand it either. For as long as they’d been around and in every world, they’d all sung about it, written about it, talked about it. Love. Love was here, in his arms and dying and Roxas didn’t know what to do.

“Pr’mise…?” Hayner mumbled, pupils shrinking and dilating, lids growing heavy, aura ebbing out into the darkness. Roxas couldn’t abolish a promise if Hayner was dead. He was cheating, payback for Roxas’ win during their race to the train.

Roxas couldn’t let love go—he couldn’t let Hayner go.

“Promise,” Roxas whispered, thinking of how Olette had lost part of herself, about how Pence had lost his brother, about how easy it was to sink his claws into his chest. He kissed Hayner’s forehead, tears freezing in the corners of his eyes. He eased the dying heart out of Hayner’s chest, the aura around it long having since dissipated. It was dim, losing itself in the corridor. Heartstrings hung from it like gossamer strands, glimmering and fragile.

Roxas held Hayner’s limp body in his arms as he pressed the small orb of light, his heart, onto the flat of his tongue. He swallowed—he choked, gagging for a moment, the heart refusing to go down. He paused, as still as Hayner’s body in his arms, pupils narrow, drooling all over his chest.

He was so hungry.

Light didn’t have a taste like food, but it had a sensation like the skin as it cooled from rays of sunlight, like the inhale from a laugh, like the tug of your mouth with a smile, like the brush of a hand while asking permission, like a stranger calling for you with something you were so worried about losing, like kisses on the beach, like the way his chest felt when he had walked into their usual spot and finally felt welcomed.

Roxas swallowed, heartstrings hanging out of his mouth and still attached to Hayer’s exposed heartspace. They brushed against the inside of his throat, Roxas swallowing on reflex, the wispy, hair-like texture making him gag, making him pause.

He was so damn hungry.

All he had to do was bite down, all he had to do was pull back with vigor. Pence and Olette would never know. They’d never think to ask as their friend died in his arms if Roxas had eaten what was left of him. They’d never need to know his monstrous greed outweighed his love for them.

Roxas swallowed, exhaling, inhaling, pressing his nose to Hayner’s collarbone. He hid against his cold body, just for a moment. The darkness dripped down from the heartstrings and into his heartspace like morning dew, like too much ink at the end of a quill. It tried to push past Roxas’ mouth like the comforting tide, trying to trace the path to the only light there. But between his coat and own stubborn resolve, the darkness’ only path was back down into Hayner’s heartspace, to pool in the empty cavern there.

Roxas turned his head against Hayner’s chest to stare, it swirling like oil, a myriad of muted colors, a myriad of muted light. Roxas swallowed, darkness dripping down his chin like blood as he refused its entry. Like blood when he’d lied to himself and said it was a heartless, like blood when he promised himself that as long as he forgot, it would be alright and that he’d be forgiven. That person would never come back. That person would be missed. That person would never be found, no matter how hard anyone looked.

Roxas inhaled through his nose, the darkness stifling Hayner’s smell. He sat up, pulling Hayner’s body with him. He rose to his knees, Hayner’s back bending over his arm, head lolling to the side, knees bending, knuckles brushing the ground. Roxas didn’t realize how hard he was shaking from the exertion, from the desire to swallow, from keeping himself in his transient, human body.

This was stupid. Roxas was stupid. Hayner had called him stupid. Hayner was dying and had called him stupid and Roxas couldn’t help but laugh through his nose. It was condescending, but a laugh all the same. A laugh with his friend’s body in his arms, heart in his stomach, a laugh like the first thing he’d taken from them.

Roxas burst into tears and sank back down to his knees, burying his face against Hayner’s shoulder. Hayner’s knees folded underneath him, entire arm brushing against the ground now. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t need to, but he wanted to because breathing was a human thing, was a thing Hayner had convinced him to do to calm down.

But the only thing that kept coming was short, desperate inhales and ragged, pathetic exhales. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe and the taste of Hayner’s heart had been too much and his stomach was practically empty and he could feel the weight of what was left of his heart weighing him down like an entire universe.

His heart. Roxas had his heart inside of him. He’d swallowed it. He swallowed. He swallowed the excessive amount of drool that had pooled in his mouth, he’d swallowed his heart, he swallowed around his heartstrings—he gagged. Roxas closed his mouth, pressing his hand to it.

He stopped breathing, just like Hayner.

Darkness and drool pooled behind his hand, out of his mouth. Hayner’s heart was so heavy in such a small, shriveled, starving space. It felt like he’d eaten magnets and that they were trying to connect to their polar attraction; a human and a monster, his human and his monster.

Roxas exhaled into his hand, then gave in for just a moment. He laid there, in the narrow corridor against Hayner’s body. Roxas reached across his collar bone, over his shoulder, and down his arm until his fingers locked with his. He took the hand that was drowned in darkness and pulled it up to his face, pressing his palm up against his mouth.

He inhaled through his nose, not to breathe but to take in his scent that was barely there. He inhaled again, chest swelling with air. He inhaled again, his overgrowth trying to shrink itself to alleviate the sharp pain. Roxas exhaled slowly, breath ghosting over Hayner’s cheekbone, pain and pressure abating.

Roxas closed his eyes, sitting in the darkness and silence like Hayner had. His ears had started to ring from straining to hear anything at all, but the darkness only took, so it had no reason to give him any sounds. It had no reason to give Hayner’s body warmth. It had no reason to give Roxas comfort.

Roxas kissed the inside of his palm before he gently pulled his hand away, studying his knuckles, thumb brushing over them. He held his fingertips against his own, pressing his thumb against his knuckle and watching his finger easily bend down. His hand was soft, the bone easily felt under his skin, it terrifying how easily he could break his finger. He’d tried to copy them from the first day he’d met them, but he didn’t know how he felt about being scared or fragile.

Roxas realized something about fear in the quiet of the darkness with the remnants of Hayner’s heart throbbing faintly inside of his stomach. Fear came from an inability, from  the loss of autonomy; he couldn’t stop himself, he couldn’t save them, he couldn’t protect them. Roxas was special. He was supposed to do things other members in the Organization couldn’t. By not being able to do anything, he was completely failing in the role he’d been assigned since he’d come to exist.

He collected himself, but didn’t try to breathe this time. He picked Hayner up, pressing him against his chest. Even if he failed, even if he couldn’t bring himself to spit Hayner’s heart out, Olette and Pence deserved to know what happened. They’d already been through this too many times to have to do it again, least of all with Hayner.

Chapter Text

Roxas ran his tongue along his teeth, the memory of the taste of Hayner’s heart in his mouth. He felt better; he felt worse for it.

<Xion.> Roxas called for them, staring up at the clocktower. They were sitting on the edge, legs dangling.

<Can we talk?> They whispered down to him. Their hood was up again—they were hiding. Roxas couldn’t tell if it was out of shame or guilt or to avoid having to look at him. Roxas opened a corridor along the side of the clocktower, the darkness heavy and practically volatile. He stepped out into the warm twilight sun, Xion still sitting along the edge.

Anything Roxas had to say would practically cut right to the heart of the fight he was going to start with Xion, so he remained quiet. Anything they had to say likely wouldn’t deter him. Xion had hurt his friends too many times. Roxas wondered if it was subconscious then for Xion to always find a way to hurt their relationship, to make sure all of his friends were hurt, even Xion themselves.

“Did you find him—your friend?” Xion asked, looking out over the town. It looked like a toy from here, a plaything for god-like creatures to abandon once they became bored.

Roxas nodded, standing next to Xion. Xion’s body never gave off any warmth.

“I’m glad…really.” Xion still didn’t look at him, the ray from the sun casting glimmers. “You know, Axel and I would eat ice cream up here. I always wanted to invite you, but…I was never sure how. It was the same with becoming friends with you—I told you that, right?”

Roxas nodded, jaw locked, teeth pressing down on each other with enough pressure to shatter them.

“I feel kind of silly. This whole time, I never really knew what to do when it came to you. I must seem like a big liar or like I was using you. Saying things like I want to be your friend and then hurting you…and now, now everything with Sora…”

<Who cares about Sora?> Roxas snapped, baring his teeth at them.

“I do. I know you do too, even if you don’t realize it yet. Roxas…did you know where all of your memories from before went? Did you ever wonder about th—”

<I don’t care!> He clenched his fist, fingertips going numb.

“You do care…” Xion insisted softly. “Because you went to the beach. Because it meant you got to make friends with those humans instead of having an old life to fall back on. You care because that’s just the kind of person Sora is—and we’re a part of Sora. We need to go back to him, Roxas.” 

<“No we’re not a part of him!”> Roxas slammed his fist against the clocktower, the wall caving into his blow. Everything was so fragile. Humans, their buildings, their relationships. So fragile. <“We’re our own people, we have our own hearts!”>

“We are. I can see it in the way you wanted friends, wanted to understand what it was to be happy. I can see it in the way we wanted to be friends but were scared of hurting each other.” Xion still hadn’t even stood up, barely turning their head to him.

<You can keep his memories! I don’t care! I don’t want his life! We shouldn’t have to have his life! He’s gone and he can stay gone! If it weren’t for Sora, we wouldn’t have these damn keyblades! And without these keyblades, we wouldn’t be so coveted by the Organization!>

“I know you’re not really mad at me or Sora…” Xion stood up, reaching for Roxas’ hand that was still pressed into the clocktower. He yanked it away before they could touch him, hissing, snarling, tail lashing.

<"You don’t know anything about me! And if you do, you kept it from me, Xion!”> It felt good, it felt satisfying to growl from deep in his throat while he whispered. It felt good to peel back a layer of humanity. It felt better to be a wounded monster than a wounded human. Humans were fragile. Humans could die in your arms over such a small amount of darkness. Humans could die over the loss of their friends. Humans were so terribly, terribly weak.

“I know…I’m sorry…I thought—I thought it would be easier on you. Because if you didn’t know, then you could be yourself and that I could protect you from anything you didn’t understand—all I wanted to do was protect you, Roxas. I won’t apologize for that, but I do know the way I went about it hurt you.” Xion reached for him again, reached and something snapped.

<“You don’t get to have a hand in ruining my life and manipulating me and then only apologize for part of it!”> Roxas pulled out his keyblade, holding it in a defensive position in front of himself.

Xion stared with blue eyes that glinted in the twilight, that glinted in the end of days. Those eyes didn’t belong to Xion. They pulled their hand away. “Roxas…we need to go back to Sora. It’ll all make sense then. Once you have his memories, once you understand his feelings—”

<"Fuck Sora’s feelings! What about our feelings, Xion!? Why does he deserve to exist more than us?!”>

“Because Sora is the kind of person who would do anything for people he cares about, even at the cost of himself.” Xion’s eyes trailed the length of the keyblade, up Roxas’ arm, then met his arms. That wasn’t Xion’s face.

<“So because he’s a martyr, I’m just supposed to be willing to die too!?”> Roxas’ tail slammed into the side of the clocktower, Xion unflinching.

“That’s not what I mean Roxas…Please…I don’t want to fight you if I don’t have to. Please?” Xion reached out for him once more, trying desperately to connect with him. Xion was always saying please, as if there were manners involved in trying to convince your supposed friend to practically die for someone they’d never met.

<“Don’t try to touch me while looking like him!"> While looking like Sora, while looking like a boy Roxas was nothing like. Roxas was selfish. Roxas was ignorant. Roxas wanted to live—he didn’t want to die for his friends, no matter how much he loved them. Not Hayner, not Pence, not Olette, and not Xion.

 “Roxas…if we fight, you won’t win and we both know that. You haven’t eaten anything in a long time and I have most of our power even if you had. Please don’t make me fight you. Please, we’re so close. We just need to—”

Roxas yelled, bringing his keyblade down in a wide arch towards Xion. Xion jerked backwards, magical tile underneath their feet as they stepped past the edge of the clocktower. One wrong step, one wet surface, and it was over for him—but he lunged anyway, fangs bared.

“Roxas, please—!” Xion’s body clacked, resin breaking in a kiln as they pulled out a keyblade to keep Roxas’ from shattering their face.

“I won’t go back—I won’t, Xion…! You can’t make me! I won’t let anyone make me do anything I don’t want to ever again! You can’t make me leave my friends! You won’t make me break my promise! ”

There was a moment during his struggle where Xion’s eyes reflected a memory of a shooting star, and Roxas couldn’t tell who it belonged to. The sky was falling. Childhood nostalgia. Someone needed to be protected. A precious heart. The magical tile beneath them cracked, then repaired itself as Xion regained control.

Xion let go of their keyblade with one hand, knees bending, struggling to keep Roxas at bay. They reached for something, their body trembling, their coat a familiar jacket, a comfortable zip up one piece. Xion was willing to give up being themselves and become Sora. That was terrifying.

His friend was willing to give up important parts of themselves for someone they thought had more value; a moral dilemma.

Roxas pulled back and attempted to slam his keyblade back down against Xion, who stumbled back, the charm on their kingdom key catching against Roxas’ and snapping off. Xion pulled another keyblade from the air, their body clacking, grating against itself; Xion's keyblade that shouldn't exist, Sora's keyblade that was theirs by acceptance of Sora. The ribbons on their jacket reached for Roxas, who jerked back, his own twining with Xion’s.

Xion tugged their hood down, it locking against their face like a mask, a Nobody emblem shaking away a memory that didn’t belong to either of them or Sora. Roxas rose up on his hind legs, overgrowth twisting in on itself, making it small. If it was smaller, he would be numb to Xion’s keyblades running through him; it would kill him if they struck the mass.

<I have my own life and I won’t give that up for some stranger just because you chose to!> Roxas kicked off from the ground, keyblades slamming into Xion’s, an x—a sigil, a marker—formed over their chest as they parried.

<Can you call what we did living? All of those people we hurt, all of those hearts we captured? Was that living to you, Roxas? Just because you had moments where you could pretend you didn’t?> Xion countered, shoving Roxas back as he slammed into the clocktower wall. They lunge for him, Roxas twisting out of the way as Xion’s keyblades shattered the tower where his shoulders had been.

<We didn’t know any better!> Roxas reminded, throwing his keyblade at Xion’s back. They yelled out, Roxas calling his keyblade back into his hand. Snap. Snap. Nothing. The keyblade belonged to Sora, belonged to Xion. It was his life, his keyblade. He deserved it.

He jerked back, dodging Xion’s first keyblade, but not the second, it catching his arm. He let out a yell, holding his shoulder and trying to call for his keyblade, for his damn life back, with his left hand instead, deciding on a change. <Am I supposed to give up on my chance to change and make up for all of that?>

He called his keyblade back, Xion aiming for his wrist, his keyblade clattering across the magical tile. The world below was so small. Roxas felt small, but he forced himself to stay in his Nobody form. It was better to be a monster, even if it was harder now.

He held his hand out, casting a blizzard spell. Xion twisted out of the way, casting a fire spell. Steam filled the air, Roxas rolling for his keyblade, popping up with it in his hand.

<Do you think your bad deeds will just be outweighed by good ones if you do enough of them? Do you really think that’ll make up for taking people’s hearts—for ruining people’s lives? That pain of losing someone never goes away, Roxas.> Xion reminded, pressing through the steam, it coiling around their body as Roxas bent backwards to avoid they keyblade he almost got to his face.

<Then why should we have to go away!?> He snapped as he twisted himself rightside up. <We were lied to and manipulated, Xion! That doesn’t excuse what we did, but that’s not who we are! We barely know who we are—!> His whisper broke, vocal cords pressing together as he let out what could only be described as a whine.

Xion aimed for his right shoulder again with a lightning spell, Roxas flicking his tail in front of himself, barbs spreading out and catching the electricity. This hurt less.

<Who we are, are monsters, Roxas! We’re not good at heart, even if we want to be! There’s a part of us that will always want in a way that will hurt those we care about!> Roxas aimed low, tail slashing at Xion’s legs, but they danced out of the way like a marionette on puppet strings.

<So you’re trying to make up for that by dying!?> Roxas whispered so loudly that it echoed, his own voice rattling his bones.

<It’s not dying and it's the right thing to do!> Xion shot back, keyblades raised, feet poised to dart back over to him.

“Fuck the right thing!” Roxas stopped his foot, the magical tile shattering before repairing itself, his keyblade lowered. “Fuck this fight, fuck Sora, fuck the Organization, and fuck whatever thought process you had that made you feel like we need to die! I don’t want to die—I’m scared, of dying, Xion! Aren’t you scared?!”

“Of course I’m scared! I’m terrified! But imagine how everyone else feels! Sora was the kind of person who…who made you feel less scared about anything—even dying…even dying, he…he makes it feel like coming home.” Xion lunged, their jacket—Sora's jacket—raising enough for Roxas to catch sight of the gaping hole in their side.

Roxas moved on reflex, a part of him moving in a way that hurt someone he cared about. His keyblade went into the hole in Xion’s side, shoved up through their face. Xion had both keyblades raised, tips touching both of his shoulders, blood beading underneath them.

He pulled his keyblade out, Sora’s face shattering underneath the mask. Xion’s keyblades faded into a smattering of stardust as they dropped to their knees.

“You feel like…coming home…Roxas. You always did…You have that part of him, you know…” The tile shattered, Xion’s face falling out of their mask. “You have the part of him…that feels like…love.” The tile gave out from underneath them both, Roxas’ heart doing the same.

Falling wasn’t terrible. Falling was a moment of impending freedom. Falling was like exhaling, a loss of something that withheld, could hurt you. Roxas inhaled, grabbing for Xion and holding them close to his chest, wings unfurling from his back.

The sunlight filtered through them, thin-skinned and wounded. He fumbled with getting his bearings, with the extra weight, with the feeling of Xion falling to pieces in his arms, in his head. Love was complicated. He hated how many ways people could interpret it; he hated how Xion could compare giving up their existence to feeling loved. That wasn’t fair. How dare Sora make Xion feel like that.

Roxas gently lowered Xion to the ground, the second friend he had that was dying in his arms because of Sora. If it weren’t for Sora, Xion wouldn’t have all of his memories and wouldn’t feel the need to protect him. If Xion didn’t feel the need to protect him, they wouldn’t have gone after Hayner, Pence, and Olette. If they hadn’t, Hayner wouldn’t have followed Xion into the corridor. If it weren’t for Sora, Xion wouldn’t feel the need to go back to him, wouldn’t feel the need to try to take Roxas with them.

“Stop taking away my friends!” Roxas screamed out into the open sky, to Sora.

“Roxas…” Xion reached for his face, wiping away his tears that kept welling and overflowing in his eyes. “It’s okay…”

“It’s not okay! It’s not, I hate him! I hate Sora! I just want to be with my friends…! I just…I ju…” He hiccuped, unable to help himself from sobbing.

“Shh…it’s okay…It’ll be okay…Can you…do me a favor? Since I lost…? Before you forget me, kingdom hearts…all those hearts I captured…set them free…?”

“Before I forget you, what? Xion I wouldn’t—” He stopped, a myriad of memories overtaking Xion’s and swallowing them, digesting them, repurposing them.

“You,” they started, speaking to him over whispering. It caught him off guard, Roxas coming to a complete stop. “Smell like the sea. I miss the sea—we should go to the sea again today, Sora! Come on, we can look for crabs again!” Kairi insisted, grabbing for his hand. 

“Don’t—no, that’s not fair…That’s…” Roxas choked, the memories that weren’t his, that Xion had held onto for him for so long replacing his own.

He bared his fangs, XIV unfazed. “I wasn’t trying to provoke you, I was just saying. Was it a good day to have art class outside? Think we can convince the teacher to let us go?” Riku asked, a yearning on his face as he stared out of the window.

“Promise?” Xion asked softly, their face caving in on itself, their body icing over at their feet. They gently ran their thumb along his cheek bone again, wiping away his tears. Xion knew. Xion knew this would happen and they did it anyway.

It felt more accurate to have his insides outside with his world tipped upside down the way it was. He'd done it to himself, but it still didn't make the loss hurt any less. “I asked if we could go with you on the mission. You don't even have to do anything, you just have to come with us and I'll take out enough Heartless for the three of us! Don’t worry Sora, we’ll find Riku. You just worry about feeling better, okay?” Donald reassured.

“Don’t leave…please don’t leave, Xion…?” Roxas begged, their hand slipping from his cheek. He caught it in his own, pressing it back against his face. “Please, I can’t lose anymore friends—please…!”

“Not yet, but if I want you to matter to me, you will. That's all it takes to start something, isn't it? A desire, then taking the steps towards getting what you want?” XIV walked over to him, sitting down with their keyblade still in hand. “Is there anything you want right now, Sora? It’s good to take breaks on occasion. We haven’t seen Cid in a while—want to see if he’s got any food places he recommends?” Goofy asked as they walked through Traverse Town.

Roxas pressed his hand into Xion’s chest. They had hearts. Xemnas lied to them, they had hearts! If he could just do a better job than he had with Hayner, if he could just protect Xion, keep them from vanishing forever, keep Sora from taking away his friend—! “Roxas, promise…” Xion begged.

“You know, I was a little afraid at first. But, now I’m ready!” Kairi spoke from the dock, sitting to his right, the ocean catching and casting glimmers in the sunset. “No matter where I go or what I see…I know I can always come back here. Right?”

“Yeah…of course.” His voice trembled, tears unrelenting. If he could just protect his friends, keep them from ever having to make decisions like that ever again—he stopped, hand buried in Xion’s heartspace. That was how Xion had felt. So Xion had made the choice for him.

“That’s good…” Xion whispered softly in a tone that was too familiar, closing their eyes. “Sora? Don’t ever change.” Roxas tipped his head back and screamed, vocal chords grating, heart breaking, before his yell turning into hysterics.

He only had half a heart left and he didn’t know if he could protect it properly at this rate.

Chapter Text

Sora’s Nobody was nothing like Sora. Riku could tell from the second he finally laid eyes on him on top of the tower. It was unusually elusive, rather self kept. He thought it would be easier to find something that had come from Sora, who was boisterous and couldn’t keep anything to himself like it had been with Xion.

It’s claws were so black with ink from the Neoshadows that it took Riku a moment to realize it didn’t have it’s gloves on. It’s throat bulged, the thin flesh glowing with the light of a heart. It swallowed, only giving Riku a passing glance before tearing into another Neoshadow like paper, wet from the rain.

That heart it was eating used to belong to a person.

Riku felt his throat close up, felt his rational mind abandon him, leaving his head empty in its panic. It was hard to keep himself together in front of these monsters, no matter how hard he tried. The Neoshadows had been there before Riku had even arrived, seeking out the blinding light of a heart, a heart that shouldn't belong to the Nobody on the ground below. It pulled out a keyblade, and then a second.

Charms for keyblades were typically made from magic and intent being placed into an object. Sometimes a desire was so powerful it physically manifested into a charm, pulled from magic that was in all things—as if out of thin air. The desire and expectations from the charm would give the keyblade a new form. 

Riku's desire to see other worlds had given rise to the kingdom key's charm, and Sora's blinding love and acceptance for those he met gave rise to so many more. It was also why if desires changed or were lost to time, keyblades could abandon their weilders or shatter.

There was a desire to consume from the Nobody, to leave nothingness behind, to force everything into the void all at once even if it concaved and shattered and bled. There was malice and hatred. There was black ink, darkness, on its hands that stained the crown Sora always wore around his neck, the second keyblade violent black.

It held Oathkeeper; it held Sora's promise to Kairi to come back in its claws. It held Oblivion; all of Sora's messy feelings about Riku and his darkness when they were children. Sparks of light flew off of the blades as they clashed together, ink dripping down into its sleeves.

The Nobody could create, carve fear into his bones and sculpt Riku into this unicellular organism of fear. Riku was mortified of the implications it was carrying, of such conflicting, strong emotions in either hand. It shouldn't have been able to weild two—it shouldn't have even had one right now.

It moved quickly, as if with a simple twist of its body it could shrink the space around it into something smaller, snapping itself forward with ease. Riku had thought Xion would be able to handle Roxas given how weak it had been, but he also knew Xion’s keyblade had been a fake, a copy, a wannabe. Nothing about Xion had been real, least of all its desires that let it weild a keyblade.

Roxas could have been considered the same, but Riku was doubting what he’d been told. At the very least they could lie to themselves well enough about their feelings to weild keyblades.

Maybe it was because they were involved with Sora and his memories that their keyblades were legitimate. But that still didn’t explain why Roxas had two. Roxas threw its black keyblade at Riku, its malice and hatred. The keyblade spiralled at him and would have easily caught him in the face if he wasn’t as practiced as he was.

He snatched the keyblade by the handle, wondering if that was all Roxas was capable of or if it was testing Riku. After all, if it had Sora’s memories now, then it would know how strong Riku was, but it had been over a year. A lot could be done in a year; a lot could be lost in a year, keyblades included. Maybe Roxas could infer from Sora’s memories that after everything with Ansem, Riku had lost his own keyblade. In Castle Oblivion, he’d only used the memory of his old keyblade to advance through that place.

His head spiked with pain, with a memory that faded into the ether—Xion was fading. But that had apparently affected Roxas too, who hadn’t made a move to attack him, even with such a vulnerable position mid-fall from the tower. It locked eyes with him and Riku was glad it didn’t attack first because he’d frozen at the sight of it.

He knew Nobodies weren’t human, but it was startling all the same to see one so close up—for that thing with his best friend’s face to look like that. It’s eyes were glowing with narrow slits, reminding Riku of the piercing gaze the eye on his Soul Eater keyblade had. It’s mouth was covered in ink from the Neoshadows that dripped down its neck and into its coat. It smelled like mushrooms, rotting leaves, a forest decomposing in on itself, feeding on itself. Riku locked his jaw as bile welled up in his mouth.

This was the thing that was keeping Sora from waking.

Riku landed on the ground, Sora’s Nobody taking his place on top of the tower. He winced, his head pulsing with struggling memories, a Neoshadow taking advantage of his weakness and lunging—Riku stabbed the Neoshadow with Roxas’ keyblade. It hadn't even tried to summon the keyblade back into it's own hand, to leave him vulnerable. Was it playing with him?

Sora’s Nobody shrunk the space between the tower and the ground, landing in half seconds. It gave a flick of its wrist, a twist of its keyblade, and Riku was left cleaning up the Neoshadows closer to himself. Sora’s Nobody dropped itself behind him, the Neoshadows falling into pools of ink, receding into the rain like bad tv static.

Riku jerked around, Sora’s Nobody looking over its shoulder at him, unblinking. He jolted away, Roxas mirroring him. It’s eyes were practically glass with how reflective they were, glossed over with tears. Its feelings were fake—Nobodies didn’t feel anything, but they were skilled mimicries.

Diz said as much. Riku had to believe him—he had to. Now wasn't the time for doubt.

But there was another person who had made him doubt those claims, made him believe that Nobodies had—the Nobody that had come from Sora was unrelenting.

It slashed, twisted the space around Riku, yanked itself forward, pushed itself away, dove, jabbed. Riku’s fear was the only thing keeping him alive and it was so thick it practically rolled off of him like wrinkles in a heatwave.

He was scared—fuck he was so damn scared.

For half seconds, Riku could see Sora in the Nobody before him when it held itself low to the ground, self taught. But then it would move and he saw formal training, attacks that could never be utilized by humans.

The one who made him doubt Diz was the one that looked like Kairi, the doll-like Nobody—no, it wasn’t a Nobody. Who were they again?

Roxas lunged for Riku’s chest, forcing him to back away—it feinted, grabbing for his wrist. Riku screamed as it shattered his bones with ease, voice echoing in the rain, in the dark night air. Roxas let him go as he fell on his backside.

Sora’s Nobody looked down his nose at him, eyes narrowing for just a moment, as if it didn’t really believe Riku was one to be broken that easily, as if it expected more from him. Riku was expecting Sora’s face to peel away, expose the monster underneath in an attempt to eat him and his heart.

This thing came from Sora. This thing had his keyblade, but it wasn’t Sora’s keyblade. It wasn’t bequeathed a keyblade, so where had its keyblade come from? Where had the second come from? If Roxas had a keyblade, did that mean Sora had lost his? Did both Riku and Sora lose their keyblades?

“Why?! Why do you have the keyblade?”

The Nobody held its keyblade in front of itself and Riku couldn’t tell if it had just remembered it was holding one or if it was inspecting it for an answer. There was a pause long enough for Riku to realize how it released the tension in its shoulders, inhaled as if it needed to breathe—it slashed the keyblade to the side, but didn’t attack him, as if it was fighting a memory before it.

“Shut up!”

It raised its keyblade, Riku taking the opening in its stance to deflect with the black keyblade. It hadn’t whispered, hadn’t gotten into his head. It spoke, like the other one had. Like…like—what was its name again?

The Nobody landed on the ground with a heavy thud, the back of its skull crashing into the pavement. Riku almost felt bad—almost. He turned around, its hood had fallen back, fully exposing its stolen face. Riku held the stolen keyblade over its heart.

It would take just a moment and this thing would be gone forever—but then so would Sora. But his body begged for release, to feel comforted in the death of the thing before him. He refrained. If it didn’t die after being ran through, then he’d only piss it off. Riku had learned it was harder to kill things that weren’t alive.

As much as he hated it, as much as it unsettled him, as much as this thing had taken his best friend away, this thing was a part of Sora. He slammed the keyblade next to its head in frustration. He’d had to convince someone else to go back to Sora, to return all of his stolen memories. There had been so many memories there, so much of his strength—and now, it had all congealed into this thing. This thing that refused to die, that refused to acknowledge it wasn’t supposed to exist. How had the weaker piece won the battle?

What part of Sora did it have that made it win, even when it seemed impossible? Riku thought of when Sora had nothing but a wooden sword, when he had nothing but his own determination left and the Beast at his side. The only thing he said he’d had to draw power from then was—

Roxas sat up, using the black keyblade to hoist itself to its feet. Riku gasped, fingers twitching to summon a keyblade he no longer had before his wrist reminded him of the shattered bones inside of his skin. He winced, jumping back as Roxas swung at him.

Impossible. This monster, covered in heartless ink with swallowed hearts in its belly? This Nobody, who was willing to kill its own comrade? A monster that had shattered his wrist with barely a passing thought? A thing like that having friends? It wasn’t like Naminé, who at least could feign kindness and regret with ease.

It lunged, Riku calling forth darkness to shoot at it, but it didn’t even bother to block it, using the darkness as a smokescreen to hide its attack. Riku barely moved out of the way, wrist pressed close to his chest.

All he could do was dodge, run away. It hurt to attack something that looked so much like his friend but that wasn’t. Not in the slightest and the incessant hammering of his heart was that reminder. If this kept up, Riku wasn’t going to get up the next time it got him on the ground or in its grasp.

“Why don’t you quit?!”

Riku jerked, not expecting it to talk to him again after having told him to shut up—but that was just like Sora. It was so much like him it hurt. If he quit, he’d never see him again. But this thing—Sora’s memories were new to it.

The memories must have been overwhelming, presiding over the year it had to itself. It must have been fighting with itself about who it was, struggling with its memories of its friend vanishing. It was having a hard time—it was realizing some part of it was Sora. Riku could use that.

“…Come on, Sora. I thought you were stronger than that.”

It scowled at him, aura tangible like a newborn layer of skin on the universe it was so pissed. But then it dissipated, vanished into its own confusion. “Huh? Get real—look which one of us is winning!” Its inflection was something Riku had missed so badly.

It sounded just like Sora. It realized its mistake as well, pressing a hand to its mouth, smearing ink.

“So it’s true—you really are his Nobody.” Riku knew that. Riku knew that so well it hurt his heart to feign ignorance. But Roxas didn’t know—not really. “Guess Diz was right after all.” And if it was apart of Sora, it would hate being left in the dark. Sora hated not knowing. He watched its eyes grow wide in the dark, the sepals on its arm flared.

“What are you talking about?! I am me! Nobody else!” It took the bait. Riku almost felt sorry for it. It was so easy to manipulate once you knew what riled Sora up. Sora’s Nobody called for Oathkeeper with ease, shrinking the space between them, twisting his keyblades into an x and attacking Riku with the black one.

Riku jumped behind him, hoping to get a solid hit in the back of its head, but Roxas used the white keyblade to defend, twisting around in another motion to hit him with the black keyblade. The keyblade slashed at his wrist, Roxas not pulling any punches. Riku dropped to his knees and screamed as he held his wrist, the pain pulsing all the way up to his elbow.

<“How many times do I have to beat you?!”> Roxas snarled, the whisper all teeth and hissing. A whisper from a Nobody was a deep reverb, a resounding ringing that made his teeth ache. It made his breath hitch, stop in a painful spot in his ribs. It was the feeling of inevitable despair that only left a glimmer of hope you could get away from it if you ran hard enough. Riku’s whole body tensed up—Nobody whispers made him feel so, so small.

It reminded him of Ansem looming behind him, promising him that no matter how much Riku fought he would use him to decimate the future—and that scared him most. He was trying to get over what happened, come to terms with it. But then he felt like an ignorant and jealous child all over again. It wasn’t Ansem that scared him, but the fear of being that person again and Roxas had elicited that feeling from him with his voice alone.

Roxas lunged again, the space between them shrinking, the glint of his keyblades reflecting light from the tower—Riku realized he hadn’t kept it talking long enough, hadn’t distracted it enough, that he wasn’t strong enough, and wasn’t brave enough.

A Nobody with echoes of Sora’s feelings, with friends who were his strength? Riku caught a glimpse of Kairi’s good luck charm dangling from the white keyblade—Roxas was bound to win from the start.

END OF NUMBERED DAYS ARC

Chapter Text

Roxas was awake before any of them, limbs tangled in theirs, specs of dust catching the light of the morning rays. Through hazy, half open eyelids, light blurred on his lashes, casting glimmers in his view. He watched them all breathe, the rhythmic motion between the three of them out of sync. Roxas closed his eyes again, floating on the edge of sleep, half submerged in it, half exposed to consciousness.

The analog clock read 11:11 when he opened his eyes again, his arms empty. Roxas nestled up into blankets that smelled like fabric softener and leave-in conditioner. Muffled laughter drifted through the closed bedroom door, dishes clinking against each other in the kitchen. He blinked, eyes not registering the view before him as his thoughts fell apart like wet cotton balls.

He forced himself up off of Hayner’s floor, abandoning the nest of comforts, the hardwood floor cold to the touch. Roxas passed the kitchen, a splash of milk on the counter, Hayner eagerly staring at the microwave's countdown.

The TV volume was low, muffling the screeching of tires and the randomization of an item. Pence say on the couch, uselessly steered his controller to the side, Olette’s thigh pressed up against his with her tongue sticking out of her mouth. Roxas stood in front of the TV, Olette trying to peer around his middle. He leaned down, kissing her nose, Olette’s eyes flickered over to him and lingered, face flooding with color.

The TV announced a final lap.

“Roxas—! I’m gonna lose!” She shoved him over towards Pence, Roxas fumbling to catch himself on with his hands on Pence’s thighs.

“Heya,” Pence greeted with a laugh, lifting his controller, Roxas ducking down out of his way. He crawled up onto his lap, throwing his legs up over Olette’s. He leaned up and kissed his cheek, Pence grinning as his eyes remained locked on the TV, Roxas losing himself in their warm color.

Hayner marched himself into the living room with a tin of hot chocolate mix, a can of whipped cream, two different kinds of marshmallows, setting them on the table. “It is stupid cold today. Morning Rox.”

“Fall be a comin’.” Pence agreed, turning his body with the controller. “And school, unfortunately.”

“Hayner—! Ugh, boys! ” Olette groaned as he walked in front of her. He leaned down in front of Roxas, brushing his bangs back with his warm hand and kissing Roxas’ forehead. He closed his eyes and smiled, reaching up to wind his arms around his neck.

“Can’t seeeee!” Pence groaned, but neither he nor Olette ever tried to pause their game, comfortable in their losses.

“Good. That’s what you get for talking about school. It’s illegal to discuss our prison time until we’re back in jail.” Hayner scolded, pulling away to lecture, but Roxas tugged him right back down to press a kiss to his cheek. His skin was soft and warm, Roxas giving him another kiss, and another. Hayner turned his head to give Roxas his full attention, Roxas giving him a wide smile. He watched Hayner’s sarcastic scowl melt into a runoff of affection, unable to contain his smile, even as he bit at his bottom lip.

“Well we’re gonna have more prison time if we don’t decide what we’re gonna write our essays on,” Olette reminded, Hayner pressing another kiss to Roxas’ forehead. The microwave beeped, Hayner lingering, Pence coming in fourth. Roxas let him go. Hayner left and came back with four mugs of warm milk.

“Nope. No idea what you’re talking about.” Pence set his controller down, scooting closer to the edge of the couch, but keeping Roxas’ head in his lap. Hayner poured hot chocolate mix into his mug, the tin and the cup clinking together. He handed it off to Olette, then put so many marshmallows into it once he was done stirring it that they precariously overflowed, floating on top and quickly melting into a conglomerate cloud of sugar.

Olette moved Roxas’ legs and slid off of the couch and onto the floor to make hers. She popped marshmallows into her mouth as she scooped hot chocolate mix into her mug, spoon clinking as she stirred, then she tapped the rim of it to avoid dripping all over the table. She then swirled whipped cream into her hot chocolate, then sat back against the couch, holding her mug in her hands.

Pence reached over Roxas, sipping the milk down in his and then what was left to be Roxas’ mug before pouring hot chocolate into their mugs. He stirred both of them with one spoon, then covered them both in a swirl of whip cream, rimming the mugs with marshmallows before using Roxas’ dry spoon to dust hot chocolate powder over the top.

“Bam, hot chocolate a la Pence.” He held Roxas’ mug by the rim to offer it to him, Roxas sitting up and carefully accepting it from him.

It was warm.

He pressed his cheek to Pence’s shoulder, humming in delight, content with the small comforts he was offered. Olette tapped at his leg, Roxas adjusting so she could settle comfortably between them on the floor.

“Also I’m gonna get stuff for grama for dinner and probably some snacks after this. You are welcome to stay in my house or come adventuring,” Hayner offered, tapping his fingers against his mug, eyes roaming over the three of their faces while he waited for answers.

“I’ll come.” Roxas piped up. Olette reached up, her knuckles pressed against his lips, thumb gently brushing whipped cream from the corner of his mouth. She licked the whipped cream off of her thumb, then picked up her controller and scrolled through racing maps, the light from the TV reflecting in Hayner’s eyes.

“I’m good, but I’ll give you munny if you buy me those glow in the dark bandaids.” Pence offered, setting his hot chocolate down to pick up his controller. “No no, the other one—yeaaah,” he cooed as Olette picked rainbow road.

“I hate you.” She didn’t because she picked the map, setting her mug between her criss-cross legs. Steam curled out of it, her whipped cream melting.

“Yeah, no problem.” Hayner slid into Olette’s spot on the couch, reaching for Roxas. His thumb brushed over the soft skin of the back of his hand, over his knuckles, Roxas turning his hand palm up and lacing their fingers together. “You can shower if you want before we go, I’ll wait.”

“Nah, I’ll just throw a jacket on and put the hood up. Maybe put some shades on and a sick mask, get all movie star in public.” Roxas gave a shrug, eyebrows raised and lip curled in sarcastic consideration.

Hayner snorted, leaning over to kiss his shoulder, a silent gesture that made Roxas’ heart hammer. The silence from the kiss spread over the room like a snowfall in the middle of the night, undisturbed and heavy with comfort. The volume from their game was still muffled, Roxas still laden with dreams. He let out a yawn, rubbing dream sand out of the corner of his eyes.

“I’m gonna go put real people pants on.” Hayner gave Roxas’ hand a squeeze before getting up, Roxas not realizing they’d already worked through two of the maps, time lost to half sleep.

“I thought you only had camo pants,” Olette teased, jumping up to slide herself back into her spot and forcing Hayner out of the way.

“Those are universal pants, duh.” Hayner set his mug down on the table, picking up the whipped cream and marshmallows.

“Yeah, universally dorky. ” Pence shot back, Roxas hiding his snickering against his shoulder.

“Ooooohhh! ” Olette cheered, high-fiving Pence over Roxas’ head, Olette immediately sliding on a banana peel and Pence getting shot into a wall, both losing their place in the race.

“That’s what you get,” Hayner laughed at their immediate karma, heading off into the kitchen. Roxas listened to cupboards open and close, then Hayner’s footsteps receding into his bedroom, Olette throwing a green shell, her thigh pressed up against his. The door didn’t catch on the latch as Hayner pushed it closed.

“My wallet should be in my bag, just take out whatever!” Pence called out to him.

Hayner came back out, dressed to be seen in public, bed hair still intact as he waved 500 munny at Pence to show what he’d taken. He sat himself on Olette’s lap, Olette quickly yanking him down to see around him. Hayner’s gaze trailed from the TV over to Roxas, mouth slowly curling into a wide smile. Roxas’ was less gradual, the joy overtaking him instantly. He hid against Pence’s shoulder, peering at him like a child. Hayner leaned over, pressing a kiss to his temple.

“Let’s head on out, Mr. Moviestar—and don’t even think about bringing my skateboard.”

Olette paused the game before either she or Pence’s view could be blocked. She pressed a kiss to the back of Hayner’s neck, Pence pressing a kiss to Roxas’ hair. Roxas got up and grabbed for his shoes, Hayner grabbing one of his baseball caps from the coat rack and putting it on his head.

“Be good!” Pence called as they opened the door.

“Don’t talk to strangers!” Olette added.

“Be terrible and talk to strangers, got it!” Roxas called back, making the three of them snicker and giggle. Hayner reached for his hand, the natural gravitation softening his heart. They made their way down the front stairs, Roxas swinging their hands.

“So Mr. Moviestar, tell me about your most recent film.” Hayner continued to tease him, Roxas laughing softly as they stepped out into the static twilight.

“Well, it’s an action romance. I play the lead, of course,” he informed Hayner, who gave a very serious nod.

“Oh, of course.”

“You see there are aliens that come to this sleepy little town and are taking humans. But you learn in the beginning of the movie that I’m actually an alien and have no memories of my time on my home world. They’re there to find me and take me back to the mothership because I have invaluable data embedded in my neuralink from when I was with them.” Roxas explained, his best snobby interviewee voice on.

“All I’m seeing is like an 80s sci-fi looking movie.” Hayner hopped up onto a ledge, precariously putting one foot in front of the other, balance offset by his refusal to let go of Roxas’ hand.

“It’s 80s sci-fi,” Roxas reassured with a series of nods. “But there’s a group of ragtag humans I made friends with and they’re trying to save me from the aliens and the government.”

“Aww, shit. Humans back at it again.” Hayner reached the edge of the ledge, jumping down with a heavy thud, cobblestone crunching under his shoes.

“Yes. All of my costars are really hot and easy to fall in love with.” Roxas ran his thumb over the back of Hayner’s hand.

“Well tell me all about them—don’t leave out any details.” The smell of burning wood wafted through the streets, the twilight casting flattering shadows on Hayner’s features.

“Well, I have to keep some things to myself,” Roxas teased, catching Hayner’s eyes. They lingered, overturned brown earth on morning fog blue.

“I can’t tell if you’re being chivalrous or selfish.” Hayner leaned close to Roxas, their noses brushing.

“Both.” Roxas kissed his forehead, then tugged him along to the store.

“When we get back we totally gotta watch bad 80s sci-fi movies now.” Hayner decided, Roxas laughing through his nose.

“Sure. Watch. Not make out the whole time or anything.” Roxas smirked, eyes flickering over to him, their footsteps walking in time with each other.

“Hey I dunno about you, but I can multitask. Suck on a tongue and cheer on the kid stopping the invasion.” Hayner could barely finish his sentence out before he was already laughing, Roxas snickering into his hand.

“You are such a dork, ” Roxas managed around laughter, the store coming into view at the bottom of the hill.

“And yet, I am so very loved despite all three of you constantly ragging on me.”

The conversation dissolved, a gradient of affection to nonsense. The grocery store was illuminated in numbing fluorescent lighting, no windows to warn them of the passing of hazy twilight into darkness. The shopping cart Roxas had gotten kept turning left, but it was easy enough to wrestle with, to force it forward.

The list of things they needed was quickly buried under a list of things they just wanted; chocolate baking chips, gummy worms, chips, crackers, cheetos, apples and caramel, frosting covered animal crackers, thumbprint cookies, cookie dough, ice cream, smoothie mix, cans of frozen lemonade, pudding. Roxas rode the cart down the baking aisle again, Hayner making two free throw shots of frosting cans.

“Carrying this all home is gonna suck,” Roxas noted as a store clerk narrowed their eyes at him as he barely stopped the cart from crashing into a display freezer of meat. Roxas pretended to look in the freezer as if he was interested, but something about the sight of the meat turned his stomach. There was an uncomfortable feeling that slid like heavy gasoline sludge down his throat and weighted itself just above his stomach.

“I believe in us!” Hayner gave a hard slap to his back, the uneasy feeling throwing itself out of Roxas and into the freezer. Roxas yanked his attention away from the raw meat and to his friend. “I think we’re good now. We didn’t get cake or mini muffins, but—”

“We really need mini muffins.” Roxas decided. “Like, desperately. The ones with the sprinkles,” he specified, yanking his cart towards the bakery. “Oh, and donuts! I hope they still have the ones with apple filling. I really like those.”

“If not, we can always try to make ‘em. We should have oil at home to fry ‘em and I can always look up a recipe on the computer.” Hayner offered as he slung an arm over his shoulder.

“Please imagine very intensely I just tipped you back and smooched the hell out of you, but won’t because we’re in public where other people have eyes and opinions.” Roxas eyes trailed over the donuts, Hanyer putting mini muffins in the cart but not letting him go.

“Oh. Nice. Yeah, done. Was a great kiss, thank you.” Hayner gave a very serious nod of consideration, a wide smile overtaking Roxas’ face. “You can imagine I totally messed up your hair from knotting my hands in it.”

“And then some dude stole our cart while we were making out,” Roxas added, hopping himself up on the cart, Hayner letting him go to shove the cart down another aisle.

“And he turned out to be an interdimensional space clown.” Hayner walked after Roxas, who kicked himself and the cart down to the end of the aisle, then skidded to a stop to wait for him. “Speaking of clowns, pretty sure Pence mentioned wanting this soda earlier this week.” Hayner grabbed for the two liter, inspecting it to be sure.

“He’s not even here to hear that.” Roxas snorted. “You don’t still have to be butt-hurt about earlier.”

“Oh I’m not. This is new spite, capital on the N and S. Like a band. Fuck that’d be such a cool band name. Roxas be our singer. I’ve heard you when you think we’re not listening.” Hayner put the soda in the cart, Roxas heading for the check out.

“Of course, but only if we’re a pop-metal band.”

“I don’t even want to know what the fuck that sounds like. As long as we’re not like, a witch house band, we’re cool.” Roxas settled the cart behind a woman with a handful of things, Hayner already loading things up onto the conveyor belt.

“Hey, witch house isn't that bad, Olette can be our lead singer if she wants to.” Roxas took a jab at her, even though he’d just finished telling Hayner neither she nor Pence were there to retort. “Honestly, I feel like we could make any genre cool.”

“Well that’s what happens when your band exudes sex appeal from all of its members, duh.” Roxas couldn’t help but laugh at him, Hayner returning the wide smile. “This is the part where I imagine sucking face again.”

“Oh, hot.” Roxas rolled his eyes with a wide smile, Hayner lightly shoving him into the cart, Roxas nudging him against the conveyor belt. Hayner swatted at him, Roxas grabbing for his hand to stop him, to hold it against his. If they hadn’t gotten so much stuff, they might have been able to hold hands on their way back, but that was the price for their hubris.

So Roxas held his hand until everything was bagged up, until they had to take it out of the cart and lug it all home. But once they were home, Olette’s fingers brushed over his as she took some bags from him, Pence eagerly welcoming them back, the mugs cleared from the table as if they never existed.

Things were comfortably put away in the crevices and alcoves of the kitchen or left out in the living room, all four of them already tearing into the snacks and making a mess. Hot chocolate for a dastardly late breakfast, junk for an atrociously late lunch, and dinner barely an hour and a half from now as Hayner’s grandmother set about shooing them out of the kitchen as purple bled through the twilight. The house phone rang at one point, a prank call of silence that Hayner had answered.

“You know, we never went to the usual spot today.” Roxas noted.

“Well that’s what happens when someone sleeps all day.” Olette handed her controller off to Roxas so she could lay all over him and Pence. Hayner sat himself on the arm of the couch, but kept glancing back towards the kitchen.

“I know, it just feels weird. I’ll get up tomorrow though, promise.” Roxas decided to let the game pick a map at random rather than be given the arduous task of picking one himself.

“I mean, there’s only a week left, may as well enjoy it however you want. If you want to sleep all day, then sleep all day. We won’t stop you,” Pence offered, Roxas lowering his controller.

“But I want to spend it with all of you and I can’t do that if I’m asleep.” The feeling of several eyes on Roxas came with an intensity, a realization he was being observed, of being witnessed and recognized—they all covered his face in kisses, reciprocating those feelings.

“Roxaaass!”

“Dude, that’s so gay!”

“I adore you, what the hell, man.”

He couldn’t help the smile on his face, the feeling of wanting to shy away, of embarrassment. He couldn’t really remember any time he’d been embarrassed. Hesitant maybe, but—A paopu fruit. “Come on, I know you want to try it.” —never embarrassed.

Time blurred between the different race tracks, the controller hand offs with Hayner, hand holding with Pence, and fingers in Olette’s hair. Everything melted together in the low heat of their affection, Roxas half paying attention to what he ate or when exactly he’d started to doze off.

Roxas was in love. Roxas was content. Roxas was happy. This was everything he wanted; the normalcy, the tenderness, the comfort, the lazy afternoons. He wasn’t alone and he was wanted. He wanted for nothing but for this to continue until the universe exploded into a supernova.

“I’d do this with you guys forever if I could.” Roxas mumbled softly, barely heard over the low hum of the TV. Someone squeezed his hand, barely any pressure in their grip, likely just as half asleep.

Roxas was awake before any of them, limbs tangled in theirs, specs of dust catching the light of the morning rays. Through hazy, half open eyelids, light blurred on his lashes, casting glimmers in his view. He watched them all breathe, the rhythmic motion between the three of them out of synch. Roxas closed his eyes again, floating on the edge of sleep, half submerged in it, half exposed to consciousness.

The analog clock read 12:12 when he opened his eyes again.

Chapter Text

Roxas was awake before any of them, limbs tangled in theirs, specs of dust catching the light of the morning rays. Through hazy, half open eyelids, light blurred on his lashes, casting glimmers in his view. He watched them all breathe, the rhythmic motion between the three of them out of sync. Roxas closed his eyes again, floating on the edge of sleep, half submerged in it, half exposed to consciousness.

The analog clock read 10:10 when he opened his eyes again.

There was still a week left. Roxas rubbed at his eyes, an onslaught of sleepy tears forming that he continually wiped away. A week until school was back in session. He was awash with a fleeting sensation of deja vu that worked through him like a cold chill, then was gone once his limbs regained their sensation.

It was still two hours from noon. He wanted to get up. Really he did. But the bed sheets were warm and smelled like them. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept in his own bed. He’d also stayed up late, so he was surprised he was even awake. A week left or not, they couldn’t blame him for sleeping in, could they? He was more surprised they were all awake enough to leave the room. Not once when he’d woken up had they ever stayed pressed up against his side and done something quietly they way they insisted on doing in the living room.

The blankets were warm, a maw of the creature called sleep he couldn’t escape. He closed his eyes, his body heavy with enough exhaustion for two. He had no reason to be exhausted because he hadn’t done anything that warranted exhaustion. Yet he was worn out, as if he’d been being dragged behind trains and hit every track, a song he couldn’t skip.

He should get up.

He craved their company. But the blankets, the sunken wreckage that was the bed, had craved his body, forming a comforting indent to his shape. He could sleep forever, but there was always the call, the desire to be by his friends’ sides. He needed to get up.

He needed to wake up.

Roxas sat up—his heart started racing, as if he’d suddenly fallen, nothing to catch himself on. He clutched at his sternum as if to keep his chest from exploding, gunpowder and anxiety. But he hadn’t had a dream about falling and he was more awake than he’d given himself credit for. In fact, he couldn't remember whatever it was he'd dreamt about.

Roxas tried to breathe, heart forcing blood flow, forcing oxygen to an extreme pace and leaving him to catch up. His fingers felt numb. Roxas shook his hands out, wrists popping, then harshly rubbed his fingers against his palms. He plugged his ears, closed his eyes, trying to drown out the sound of his own heart with his breathing.

He’d just woken up, barely had time to process the waking world, and yet his body had insisted something was wrong—but that was in the past. Nothing in the now could hurt him. It was just his body trying to adjust to the lack of an immediate threat being present every day by making one up. He was his own monster, his own battle, and he was quite sure he was losing.

A hand came to rest on his shoulder. “Roxas?”

He jerked back, jaw locked, hands clenched by his waist, the muffled voice unfamiliar. No, it was Pence. Maybe he should just go back to sleep if he was so panicked that he couldn’t recognize his friend’s voice. He loosened his grip, shoulders slouching.

“You good, bud?” Pence asked, brows furrowed. He dropped himself down into a cross legged position, facing him, their legs touching.

“Sorry…Yeah, just…” He shook his head, the blankets wound around his legs now slack. He was free as long as there was someone else there to pull him out. “I’m just having a hard time getting up, today.” His chest felt as if something had soured, bubbled from the fermentation of going bad.

Pence got up just to sit himself next to Roxas, legs touching, taking his hand in his. “Do you wanna talk or do you want me to distract you?” Roxas pressed his forehead against his shoulder, studying the folds and colors of the blankets.

“I don’t have anything I need to talk about…” Everything was alright. He had his friends, he had a free schedule, he could do what he wanted. He had no reason to behave like this and could only consider it a harsh adjustment period.

“But do you wanna talk about it?” Pence prompted again, thumb rubbing over the back of his hand.

Roxas shrugged.

“You know, I think you’re just anxious because school is in a week and you won’t get to see us as much. Like it’s one thing if Hayner steps out for his job or if it’s late and someone needs to go home, but you still can call us, which means you still have our attention and company.” Roxas tipped his head back to look at Pence, eyes wide with realization. “Even if your brain don’t realize it, sometimes your body already know what’s up.” Pence gave him a grin, Roxas just a few inches from kissing it off of him.

“Then we have to do stuff all week.” He was grateful Pence had come into the room for whatever reason and immediately figured out what was wrong. It felt so obvious, so simple now that he recognized what the problem was. He was just missing his friends already despite them still being here.

“Crazy stupid stuff? Not just video game stuff?” Pence asked, eyebrows raised, but he already knew the answer.

“Yes!” Roxas agreed, untangling himself from the blankets. If he only had limited time with them, he wanted to utilize as much of it as he could.

“Liiike breaking into the clocktower’s roof again or into the sewers? Orrr cryptid hunting in the haunted mansion? Or struggle tournament practice with things more violent than a struggle bat?”

“Do you know I could kiss you?”

“I’ve been told I’m very kissable, yes,” Pence agreed, turning his cheek to Roxas, who immediately peppered him in kisses like a bird, making him laugh.

“I’m gonna shower—and steal Hayner’s jacket.” Roxas stood up, untangling his ankles from the blanket before rummaging through Hayner’s closet.

“I mean once you’re in it, boyfriend jacket rules are activated so he’ll have to figure out his own outfit. I think his grandma washed all of our laundry though, so I can probably wear what I came over in like two days ago. She’s very sweet, but also it’s kind of embarrassing thinking that my underwear were in the same wash as everyone else’s.” Pence started folding up the blankets, putting them at the edge of Hayner’s bed.

“Pence, you’ve seen us in said underwear. You’ve seen us in each others underwear.” Roxas reminded, giving a sniff test to a navy blue pullover hoodie that had been in the bottom of the closet.

“That’s different! It’s like our junk touched, man!”

“Who’s touching other people’s stuff?” Hayner asked as he walked by the room and into the bathroom, the door not shutting properly behind him.

“Not stuff, junk!” Pence called out into the hallway.

“Well no need to scream about it.” Olette teased, crouching down by Pence in the doorway and folding her arms on her knees.

“I mean if we’re gonna be illegal today, may as well,” Roxas mumbled, hunting for his pants.

“Oh, we’re being illegal! On a scale of utilizing that lock picking kit we bought or throwing those firecracker things at Seifer, how illegal?” she asked, looking back and forth between them. The toilet flushed, the sink water running.

“Probably petty vandalism,” Roxas decided. “But you can bring the lock picking kit.”

“Yes!” Olette popped up like a spring, fist bumping the air, the bathroom door opened.

“Okay, now who’s junk are we talking about and why is it different than stuff?” Hayner asked, setting his hands on his hips. Roxas pressed his cheek to Olette’s as he passed her, then dropped his change of clothes at Hayner’s feet, the folded clothes landing perfectly aligned with the tile they fell on. Roxas looped his arms around his middle through the gap in his arms. Hayner's balance swaying between his feet as he knotted his fingers in Roxas’ hair.

“I was explaining to Roxas that it’s different to see someone in your underwear than it is to know they all got washed together.”

“Is it?” Olette asked, shooting Hayner a confused look. He shrugged.

“Yes! Oh my god, yes! ” Pence groaned, tossing a pillow at her. She swatted it away, then picked it up and held it to her chest. “It’s like their junk touching your junk!”

“But if their junk is already in your underwear, isn’t that the same?” Olette asked, still confused.

“No, because it’s clean!”

Hayner snapped his fingers. “Ah, so because there’s junk juices on the underwear—” 

“I’m showering now.” Roxas pulled away, kicking his clothes around Hayner into the bathroom and closing the door behind himself. His eyes caught on his reflection, snagging as if just for a moment, he didn’t recognize himself. He must still be tired. He could hear Olette’s giggles being muffled by a pillow.

“You pissed I said junk juices? Junk juices, junk juices, junk juices! ” Hayner chanted against the space where the door met the doorframe. Pence sighed, brows furrowed and mouth pulled taunt as if he couldn’t believe out of everyone in the world he’d decided that he wanted to be friends with Hayner.

“Refusing to hear you over the shower water!” Roxas called back, the shower running.

“I’ll open the door and the shower door!” Hayner threatened.

“I will kill you with a bar of soap!”

“Oh, crafty murders!” Olette giggled, Pence snorting.

“Roxas just shoving the bar of soap down Hayner’s throat isn’t exactly crafty when Hayner’s got such a big mouth.”

“All the better to suck yo—hiiii gramaaa!” Hayner cut himself off, calling to his grandma in the kitchen and leaving the scene of his almost murder. Olette shoved her face back into the pillow and wheezed, Pence throwing himself back into the room to muffle his own laughter.

“I hope she heard you!” Roxas called from the shower, voice an octave deeper than usual to display his half-hearted annoyance.

The ice cream tasted like clay.

Roxas had let at least half of it melted into droplets that littered the streets of Twilight Town. Four empty sticks sat in the trash can of their usual place, a detailed map of Twilight Town sprawled out on the floor with colored pins in it. Red string was wound around Olette’s fingers, Pence making bridges with his, a bracelet of it knotted around Hayner's wrist.

“Okay, but the sewers should be their own day. They’re stupid huge and run under all over town,” Olette reminded.

“But we can use them as a quick way to get places.” Pence let his bridge go slack then fall off of his fingers just to start a new one.

“Yeah—if we knew how to navigate them.” Hayner reminded, refusing to stick a pin in another entrance to the sewers.

“Then we do the sewers first, make a map of them, use 'em to our advantage.” Pence offered.

Roxas wasn't listening. He was trying, telling himself to pay attention, to contribute, but he was over focusing on his own scolding and then tuning them out. He was a bit frustrated he still felt so exhausted, so drained. If he was feeling drained, what sewage had he ended up in? What filter would he go through? How would he be repurposed?

“—xas! Hey!”

Roxas jolted to attention at Hayner calling him.

“Yeah, I'm listening.”

Hayner narrowed his eyes are him. “No, you weren't because I called you like four times. You seriously feeling okay?” Hayner stood up halfway through his question and placed a wrist to Roxas' forehead.

“I'm sorry…I think I'm still just tired is all.” Roxas closed his eyes, focused on Hayner's touch rather than the stinging weight of his eyelids.

“We can put this off, if we gotta. We still have a whole week to do things if you wanna go home.” Olette offered, getting up off of the floor to sit herself next to Roxas. She looped her arms around his, resting her chin on his shoulder.

“No fever.” Hayner pulled his wrist away, but stroked his cheek, Roxas opening his eyes. Pence had turned around to stare at him, trying poorly to keep the worry off of his face.

“No, it's okay. I wanna hang out with you guys.” Roxas insisted, but everything felt so foreboding, twisted with implicational warnings. Nothing was wrong, but he felt like everything was wrong. “I don't wanna sleep the day away, I wanna feel productive—like I did something.”

“Recovering is doing something.” Hayner crossed his arms, Pence's eyes flickering down to the couch, then back up to Roxas.

“But I don't have anything I need to recover from—I'm fine. Even the scab on my knee from skateboarding is gone.”

The three of them shared a look, a conversation Roxas wasn't privy to.

“Sometimes I wanna sleep a lot,” Pence pipped up. “There isn't anything physically wrong, but sometimes when you're upset, even if there isn't a reason for it, you want to sleep a lot. That's normal when you feel like that.”

“When you feel like what? Tired? ” Roxas asked, confused. He didn't understand what it was they were trying to say.

“When you're depressed, man.” Hayner mumbled, sitting next to him.

Cattail pollen, exhaustion, torn w—

“But I'm not…I'm okay. Really. I don't have any reason to be upset about anything.”

“Well yeah, sometimes there's a reason, but sometimes there isn't. Sometimes it's because of your body’s biology or because of past stuff you don't expect to be affecting you anymore.” Olette explained, brushing his hair out of his face.

“So I have no reason to be upset, but my body is committing mutiny and deciding I'm sad anyway?” he asked incredulously. “Bullshit, I want a refund!”

“No take backs!” Hayner jeered at the same as Olette.

“No refunds, no returns!”

“Then I'll just take yours!” Roxas looped an arm around her waist, throwing them both onto Hayner. He grunted, shoving them both off of him and onto the floor. Olette shrieked with giggles from Roxas kissing at her neck, Pence jumping up to catch both of them on his lap to ensure neither hit their head.

“Noooo! Roxas is a body snatcher!” she squealed, fingers pressed to his mouth to protect her neck, Roxas kissing at her regardless of her resistance.

“I knew aliens were real!” Pence jerked up to pick up his camera, snapping a photo as if this were his proof, the camera struggling and printing a polaroid. Olette shrieked as Roxas started tickling her.

“Wait, body snatchers were aliens?” Hayner asked, snatching up the photo and shaking the image out.

“Oh my god, we're breaking up,” Pence groaned, Olette trying to escape from Roxas' arms.

“Heha—haha! Help! Help! ” she begged between laughter, Roxas looping his arms around her to yank her back down onto the floor with him.

“Okay but before you break up with me, consider.” Hayner made a muscle with his arm, gesturing to it with his other hand like a showgirl to a curtain with a prize behind it.

“Fuck, you're right! How could I have been so blind?”

“I give! I g—hehehe! I give! ” Olette shrieked.

“You're mine?” Roxas purred softly, pinning his hands on either side of her, her hair splayed on the floor.

“No more! Every part of me is all yours—honest.” she insisted, knotting her fingers in his hair. She leaned up and kissed him, a smile on her mouth. 

Roxas felt his mouth go numb, like when a limb falls asleep, as if the actual sensation of the kiss was missing. Had he ever kissed any of them on the mouth bef—

The clocktower rang, chiming the hour.

Olette gave him a smile, arms looped around her knees as she sat next to Pence in front of their makeshift map. She gave his shoulder a light nudge with hers, Pence and Hayner working on the map.

“You okay? You look like you spaced out there for a second.”

“Uh…yeah, I'm…did you just kiss me?” Roxas asked, Hayner and Pence feeling like they'd sunken into the background like weight threatening to bear through layers of half-wet paint. 

“Did you want me to?” she teased with a wide grin. He felt his face heat up, forcing down the lump in his throat. She giggled, shaking her head. “You boys are such dorks.” She picked up her red string and started winding it around her fingers, starting with her pinky.

Hayner stuck a pin in the map, Roxas resting his hand on something sharp in the same moment. He yanked his hand back, a sliver in his finger. They really should sweep in here.

Roxas' home was empty, a relic of a place where people lived at one point. Dishes sat in the sink, dried laundry in the washer, video game cords sprawled the length from the TV to the couch. Roxas didn't bother with the lights as he made his way to his bedroom, fingers trailing the wall, the bouncing logo on the living room TV landing in the corner, a rare feat.

Stars littered Roxas' room, an explosion of imaginary constellations and fascination. They hung from lampshades, decorated the ceiling, were the shape of his desk chair, had stolen away into patterns on his clothes. Roxas sat on the edge of his bed, clicking on a lava lamp that gave off a faint blue glow, pastel green globs inside. He kicked off his shoes as the heat kicked on.

He flopped back onto his bed and watched the lava lamp in the silence, uncounted moments lost to his own ambling thoughts that fell apart like ashes as the house phone rang. He got up, making his way back out into the hallway, his own reflection in the mirror startling him.

"Fuck—!" he hissed, glaring at the mirror before he picked up the phone. “Hello?”

Static, dead air.

“Hello, Roxas speaking,” he tried again. The line went dead. He assumed it was a wrong number that just hung up. He put the phone back on the hook, then went back into his room to crawl into bed and sleep in the faint blue glow, as if he were drowning in the bottom of the ocean.

Chapter Text

The analog clock read 10:10 when Roxas opened his eyes again. There was a week left until Hayner, Pence, and Olette had to go back to school.

Roxas leaned over and clicked off his lava lamp, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. He sat there, caught between sleeping and waking, unsure of which side he should betray. Thoughts dissolved into forgotten dreams, which floated up to the surface of the walking world and popped. Roxas grunted, reaching out to feel for the latch on his window. He let the cool air in, then let out a wide yawn as he sat up, scratching his scalp.

He leaned over, cheek resting against the cool ledge, arm hanging out of the window at an angle that was sure to make it go numb. He peered down at the world below, always transfixed by Twilight Town. It looked like a toy from here, a plaything for god-like creatures to abando—

The clocktower rang, chiming the hour.

Roxas groaned, pulling himself out of his bed. He couldn’t remember his dreams, but they left him feeling disoriented, as if he’d left one world for another. Familiarity, nostalgia, the sorrow of a goodbye.

His body worked through the familiar motions of showering, getting dressed, eating, walking to their hangout spot, but he didn’t process any of it. There was a detachment from where his mind had gone and where his body was.

He ran his fingers against his palms, but it was as if he wasn’t registering touch. He stared at his hands, wondering if the joint in his thumb had always bent that way. He compared it to his left, a softer sloping angle. He bent his fingers forward, staring at the folds of his hands, focusing so hard on trying to feel his hands that he ended up thinking rather than acknowledging the sensation.

“—Right, Roxas?” Pence called to him.

“Oh—uh…” They all looked to him for his opinion, Roxas quickly nodding in agreement to a conversation he hadn’t even been listening to. He rarely ever disagreed with them and the closest he’d gotten was cracking sarcastic jokes. Everything felt and processed like static and cotton. He rubbed his hands against his pants, then dug his nails into his palms. The pain was blunted by the disconnect. He moved his nails farther up his palms and pressed harder as Hayner got up and started pacing.

“I mean, it’s true that stuff’s been stolen around town and we got a score to settle with Seifer and everything, so if he wants to think we did it, I can’t really blame him. But it’s bullshit that he can’t recognize the difference between what we do and what’s going on.” Hayner grumbled, chin in hand.

“Well to Seifer, everything we do is selfish. We break into the clocktower, that summer with the fire hydrants—he sees all of that as just breaking the rules. He doesn’t care about our reasons,” Olette reminded.

“Yeah, but stealing ? That’s way more harmful and direct. We’ve all known each other since we were kids, you think he’d know us better than that.” Hayner grumbled, throwing himself on Roxas’ lap. He jumped, raising his hands out of the way, then folded them around Hayner’s shoulders.

“Well someone isn’t keeping their enemies close,” Pence teased, Olette tugging Hayner’s legs up over her lap.

“That saying is so stupid. Why would I do that when that means less room to keep you guys close? I’m not gonna make myself miserable with dumb mind games with Seifer. He couldn’t even handle the mind games involved with being close to me all the time.”

“I feel like it would just turn into a stabbing.” Roxas mused, Olette covering her mouth to snicker.

“Oh, for sure. But Seifer thinking we didn’t isn’t what bugs me. See, what really bugs me is that he’s going around town telling everyone we’re the thieves!” Hayner threw his arms up, Roxas pulling back to avoid being smacked in the face. “And now the whole town and their mother’s are treating us like the Klepto Club!”

“So…the plan for today is to sort this out I’m assuming?” Olette asked, her expression giving away that she’d failed every idea she just worked through. She turned to Roxas for help, Roxas giving her a nod.

“Uh, well…” Missing. He didn’t remember people complaining about things going missing. Had Roxas lost anything lately? Had his friends lost anything? He looked at the three of them, eyes trailing along them. There was a nagging sensation as he tried to remember. Hayner and Pence had lost something similar, and Olette had lost something for the same reason—he was pretty sure. But he couldn’t remember.

He looked back down at his hands around Hayner’s shoulders. What had he lost again?

“Suggestions? Anyone? Because mine is pummeling Seifer into a pulp if we come up with nothing in the next half hour!” Hayner grumbled, Olette rubbing at his leg.

 “We could find the real thieves,” Roxas suggested.

“Sounds like a good idea—once we find the real culprit, everyone will get off of our backs and Seifer will look like an idiot if he keeps trying to pin it on us. Then if he tries anything like this again, everyone will just think of the time he accused us of being thieves,” Pence offered.

“Which’ll just look like he’s always trying to blame us for stuff, which means—” Olette pointed an excited finger at Pence.

“We can totally get away with more crap!” Hayner cheered, Olette giggling and whooping while Pence snorted.

“Oh, like actually stealing?” Roxas asked with a raised eyebrow. Hayner snickered and mushed his face, sitting up.

“What would you even steal if we were the culprits? Ice cream?” he teased Roxas right back.

“Bold of you to assume Roxas wouldn’t try to do something like steal the hands off of the clocktower,” Pence shot back.

“Oh hell yeah. I have no idea how I’d do that or where I’d even put them, but now I wanna do it—then we can totally steal ice cream to celebrate.”

“It all comes back to the ice cream. Do I know you, or do I know you?” Hayner asked with a wag of his finger at Roxas. Roxas grabbed for the finger, then held his hand.

“I mean, I’d hope so. I’d be pretty sad if you didn’t.”

“ Gross —now kiss!” Olette clenched her hands in front of her as if she was watching a sporting event, Roxas chuckling. He leaned over and kissed his cheek, then threw himself against Hayner to reach over to Olette. Hayner remained comfortably under him, Olette’s wrist in his hand as she turned his cheek to him.

“Next!” He called out, motioning for Pence to end up in their pile of couch limbs. Olette wiggled herself between the back of the couch and Hayner, who’s leg hung off of the couch and was being used to keep himself from falling off. Pence hopped off the crates, putting himself on top of the three of them, all of them immediately wrapping their arms around him to keep him from falling. Roxas kissed his cheek, grunting with contentment.

They sat there for a moment, crushed under the weight of each others affections. This was a safe desire painted in hues of nostalgia and longing. There was no clicking of fingers on phones, no cold ice cream or condensation covered soda cans, no laughter muffled by overhead trains. But he could pretend light filtered through him like a fine morning mist as they sat there, going about their usual days. He could pretend he and the couch had collected a cocoon of dust and were ready to collapse in on themselves like a fragile cicada shell. He could pretend, for just a moment, that whatever made him terrifyi—

The clocktower rang, chiming the hour. 

Pence was up first, rummaging through their things while Olette ran her fingers through Hayner’s hair to fix it.

“We should start interviewing people to see what went missing. Then we ca—”

“Guys! They’re gone! Our—” Pence spoke, Roxas wincing. There was a sound he hadn’t heard, but had processed in his head. “—are gone!” He held the camera up to them, distress in his features. He paused, adjusting his necktie and moving his tongue around in his mouth. Hayner shot up, Olette raised up on her arm.

“All of the—” Another hissing of a sound long gone. “—are missing?” He got up to help Pence look, but stopped to press a hand to his throat.

Olette gasped. “You can’t say—” There was something familiar in the way Olette was missing something she should have had. A word. Words were sounds. What had she— “Why not?” She climb up off of the couch, Roxas standing as well and pressing his fingers to his mouth. This was too familiar.

“Stolen…and not just the <photos>, but the word was stolen, too.” Roxas stopped, brow furrowing. <Photo. Photo, photo.> He could say the word photo, but he wasn’t speaking. He put his hand to his mouth. Words came from the heart. Why did he feel like that was important? Everything still felt like wet cotton and muffled static. “Hey—”

“What kind of thief is that ? Seifer could have never pulled this off.” Hayner crossed his arms, Pence and Olette nodding.

“Guys, I can still say <photo.>” Roxas showed them again.

“Uh, no. You can’t. Your mouth moves just like ours, but no sound comes out.” Hayer’s brow creased with worry.

“You don’t hear that?” Roxas asked in dismay. Pence and Olette looked at each other, then to Roxas. <Photo.> he snarled in annoyance. They still didn’t hear it, even though Roxas listening to himself made his ribs rattle.

“It could be a psychological thing. You expect to say it and you’re focusing so hard on the word and all…” Pence offered, Olette nodding.

“Look, forget the psych stuff. We need to do some recon and figure out what’s going on. Maybe that’ll explain whatever Roxas thinks he's hearing.” Hayner rushed out, expecting them to follow.

“It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out.” Pence reassured, kissing Roxas on the cheek before rushing out after him, Olette following.

Roxas furrowed his brow and stared at the couch for a moment before taking a step forward—and the world spun. His knees went weak, his chest felt weighted and as if he’d had several layers of his esophagus scraped out of it and then blistered with heat. He hadn’t realized he’d stopped breathing.

He went down, knees first then head smashing into the ground.

Roxas opened his eyes and inhaled. He hadn’t been breathing—he was sure of that. His head hurt, as if something was pressing his brain into a paste against the front of his skull. He couldn’t see straight. He pushed himself up onto his knees, then closed his eyes. He focused on breathing, inhaling, exhaling.

His shadow sat in the corner of the room, watching him suffer.

He adjusted himself so he was sitting, waiting for the feeling in his head to pass, for the feeling of insects to stop broiling around in his chest like heat bubbles.

“Roxas, come o—are you okay?” Olette dropped down to her knees the second she saw him on the ground.

“Dunno…” he admitted. “Just hit the ground,” he grumbled as Olette quickly taking to inspecting him. She held his face in her hands, studying his features.

“Look at me?” His vision blurred, returned, blurred. “Follow my finger, don’t move your head.” Roxas tried to do as she asked, but he took a long time to follow her finger and his eyes kept rolling up into his head when they got too far into his peripheral vision. “Can you sit on the couch?” she asked, standing up, but keeping her hands on his shoulders.

“Probably?” The room kept spinning, but the couch wasn’t too high up or too far away.

“HAYNER! PENCE!” Olette called out into the alleyway. “Shit…” she hissed under her breath. “Okay. Hold my hands?” Roxas took her hands and she helped him sit on the couch.

“What are you yelling at us for?” Pence asked, poking his head into their hangout. Roxas’ knees didn’t hurt, but they absolutely should have. His chest still felt terrible and it was so frustrating not to be able to see straight that once he was sitting on the couch he just closed his eyes.

“Pretty sure Roxas just gave himself a concussion.” Olette explained. “Don’t go to sleep—I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to sleep after you hit your head.”

“Dude! We left you alone for five seconds! HAYNER!” Pence dipped back out into the alleyway to get him.

“Pretty sure I already passed out,” he grumbled.

“That’s different than sleeping. Where did you hit your head?”

Roxas pointed to his forehead, Olette brushing his bangs out of his face. “It doesn’t look bruised or even red yet, which is good. You don't feel warm either…”

“Dude!” Hayner called, storming back into their hangout, Pence in tow. “What the hell!”

“Tell me about it,” Roxas grumbled.

“Well I can’t, because we left you alone for five seconds !”

“That’s what I said!” Pence agreed. Roxas could feel his pulse in his ears, a heavy throbbing.

“Should we take him to a walk-in, you think?” Olette asked, thumb brushing over his forehead to see if it felt tender.

“I’m fine—I just need a second.” Silence. “…I can feel you all staring, you know. Seriously, I’m okay just…gimmie like twenty.”

“If we give you twenty and you still can’t see straight, we’re taking you to a walk-in—” The almost whisper like quality of the stolen word. “—be damned.”

“How did you even hit your head that hard?” Pence asked, sitting himself next to Roxas and holding his hand. Roxas gave it an appreciative squeeze.

“I dunno, I just got dizzy and went down.”

“Right after having an auditory hallucination,” Pence noted, the tone in his voice telling Roxas he thought he was onto something.

“Well then this must be a group hallucination, because we can’t say <photo>, apparently.” He tried to make it a joke, ease away the severity of it. 

“Ha, ha. I’d smack you in the back of you head if I didn’t think it’d kill you right now,” Hayner snapped back, but also sat himself on the other side of Roxas.

He leaned his head on his shoulder, grunting,  “What, scared to kiss my corpse?” He opened his eyes to look at Hayner—both Hayners. He closed his eyes again, tipping his head back, nose brushing Hayner’s neck.

“That the only thing I’m allowed to do with your corpse?” Roxas could see Hayner wiggling his eyebrows at him, even with his eyes closed.

“Is this going down selling organs territory or necrophilia territory?” Pence asked, sarcastic unease in his voice that made Roxas laugh.

“No, it’s totally going into human taxidermy territory.” Olette clarified.

“Sweet. Pin me to my skateboard,” Roxas requested.

“The final words of a dying man.” Pence sighed dreamily, Hayner snickering along with Roxas. “I can just see it now. We all come to meet up here and at different points catch each other blowing the Roxas body statue.”

“What the fuck. You think I’m not taking him home? Pulling a whole Pygmalion with my dead boyfriend’s corpse? Making sweet, sick love to it, skateboard still attached and all?” Hayner asked with disgust.

“Have I told you guys I really hate you? Truly, from the bottom of my heart, I hate you,” Roxas snorted, unable to stop laughing.

“I was right, this totally went into necrophilia territory,” Pence sighed.

“Death won’t stop me from loving my boyfriend and anyone who thinks otherwise is fucking stupid. If you died I’d bone your taxidermy corpse too, the fuck?”

“Coming from the guy who turns into a puddle everytime we kiss him a little too hard.” Olette purred.

“Psh. Pft. Come on Olette, you don’t gotta talk about Roxas like that.”

“No way, that’s totally you guys that get all mushy. I’m gonna let you overheat, turn yourself into human goo then drink you through those curly straws we got at the b—”

 The clocktower rang, chiming the hour.

Roxas opened his eyes.

“Feeling any better?” Olette asked, rubbing her thumb against his forehead. He didn’t wince, but it did feel tender.

“I think so. There aren’t a ton of you now.”

“Follow my finger?” she asked, Roxas doing just that and having a much easier time doing so.

“There’s a bruise, but your eyes aren’t rolling back into your head anymore. Can you stand up without getting dizzy?”

“I’m gonna drop like a sack of potatoes. Bake me into a nice stew or something.” He stood up, Pence still holding his hand while Hayner let go, but he didn't go down like a sack of potatoes. “Think I’m mostly good. Should we go talk to people about the <photos> now?”

“If you say you’re up for it, that's enough for me, but I’m gonna keep an eye on you.” Pence gave a squeeze to his hand, Roxas giving him a nod.

“Please.” He gave Pence a soft smile, watching his face flush with color. He gave Roxas a nod, then stood up, Roxas squeezing his hand back.

“Alright then. Let’s do this. You go down again, I’m calling it, fuck the—” Hayner’s mouth moved and Roxas was so sure it wasn’t an auditory hallucination. The noise was consistent every time they tried to say photo, like a pinch in the nerve at the back of his neck.

“Agreed.” Olette nodded, the four of them making their way out. “You take it easy, okay?”

They found Seifer’s gang in the sandlot, but without Seifer. They were easier to talk to without him there the same way Roxas, Pence, and Olette were more willing to talk without Hayner there. Something about the tension Seifer or Hayner would bring would always make it turn into a brawl.

Vivi spotted them first, pointing, which made Fuu and Rai immediately stop their conversation. They turned around, Rai clenching his fists and Fuu narrowing her eyes.

“Thieves!” she accused.

“That was low, y’know?” Rai added, Roxas quickly realizing that even without Seifer, they were upset enough about this to want to fight anyway. Vivi held onto their hat, violently shaking their head back and forth in a way that made Roxas’ head hurt just by watching.

“Oh yeah?” Hayner snapped back. He didn’t even know what had gone missing, so it didn’t exactly give him much to work with. But his pride wasn’t going to outright let him ask either and it also might come off as him playing dumb.

“Nice come back there, blondie. ” Seifer snapped as he made his way into the sandlot, a plastic bag full of snacks in his hands. Vivi quickly took it from him, then scurried back behind Fuu and Rai. “You can give us back the—” the noise again. “—now.” 

“Yeah! You’re the only ones who would take it, y’know?” Rai agreed. Seifer was unusually collected, which meant he was genuinely upset.

“That was undeniable proof we totally owned your lame asses.” He pointed a finger at them, Roxas narrowing his eyes. Pence gave his hand a squeeze.

“No fighting,” he whispered in warning as Seifer circled them once, a wolf on the prowl.

“So what did you do? Burn them? Not that we need some—” Roxas really wished people would stop saying photo. It was making his head hurt and he could tell it had nothing to do with his concussion. “—to prove that you’re losers .”

“Replay.” Fuu suggested with a smirk, Olette cocking her head back in forth in silent mockery of her. Seifer let out a laugh that was all from his belly, unwound like a spring. He likely wasn’t just missing photos from their fights. Memories were precious things people didn’t want to lose and photos were snapshots of that. Roxas almost felt sorry for him—almost.

“Now you’re talking!” Seifer and his crew took up fighting stances, Vivi setting the bag down and clinging to their hat. “I guess if you get on your knees and beg, maybe I’ll let it slide.”

“You already told everyone we’re the ones who’ve been stealing stuff,” Hayner snapped, taking up a boxing stance.

“I could tell them I was wrong.” Seifer gave him a condescending grin, Roxas watching Hayner’s anger boil over. They didn’t need the photos. They wanted the memories and Roxas wanted everyone to stop being cruel to his friends, to the people he loved more than anything. He quickly let go of Pence’s hand and stepped out in front of Hayner.

He knelt inhaled deeply as Seifer and his gang started to laugh, then got down on one knee.

“ Roxas! ” Hayner was dismayed, was frustrated. If Seifer took it back, it would make people be honest with them, which would make finding their own photos easier. “Dude, get off the damn ground, he isn’t gonna take it back!”

“You’re right—I’m not. But nice to know one of you at least ha—”

Roxas shot up, elbowing Seifer right in the nose. He heard a crunch, Seifer yelling and yanking back. Blood gushed everywhere, Roxas glaring at him.

“Nice to know what, Seifer? That you can still lose to me even while I’ve got a concussion? That you’d prefer this over talking? Yeah, real nice to know,” he snapped, tension in his spine as if something was caught between each disc and under his shoulder blades.

“Cheat!” Fuu hissed, Rai taking a step back, but both covered Seifer. “Tournament decides!”

“Roxas!” Olette jogged up to his side, yanking him back.

“That’s what he gets!” Hayner snapped at Fuu and Rai, Vivi desperately trying to vanish into their hat.

Pence held his camera up, snapping a photo. “If you guys are so tough, I don’t see what would be so hard about getting more of them.” Pence shook out the photo, Seifer and his gang glaring at him. “Must suck to lose like four whole—” Again, the ringing—

Something silver shot out from around the corner, twisted around Pence, and bounded down another alleyway with the photo and the camera.

Everyone stared after it. Seifer’s blood dripped onto the ground.

“…Um, what was that ?” Hayner asked, finally looking away from where it had gone to gauge everyone else's reactions. Seifer looked disturbed, but Pence and Olette shared a look, then looked back out into the alleyway. Fuu and Rai glanced at each other, then looked to Seifer for orders while Vivi peered out from under their hat.

“The thief?” Olette asked. Pence grabbed for Roxas’ hand and they all ran off after it.

“Not sorry about your nose, don’t lie about my friends, bye!” Roxas called behind his shoulder, giving a wave as he vanished around the corner.

They followed the thing into the woods, but it was too fast to keep track of. “Should we split up? It couldn't have gotten far.” Olette asked, eyes darting between the trees.

“Not leaving Roxas.” Pence reminded, holding up their hands.

“But Hayner and I are the fastest and if we sit here and debate, the further away it'll get.” And that thing wasn’t going to sit and wait for them to catch up.

“I’ll keep an eye on him.” Hayner reassured, both kissing Pence’s cheek before he reluctantly let go of Roxas. “Keep it from going back into town.” Hayner looked back and forth between Olette and Pence, Roxas already taking off into the woods.

“Roxas, wait for Hayner!” Olette called after him, but Roxas already had eyes on the thieving creature.

It jumped, twisting around in the air as if it were swimming through water like an eel before landing on the side of a tree, which it used to catapult itself back to the ground with a triple lutz. It darted between through the woods with ease, not pausing in movements that took absurd amounts of stamina and practice. If Roxas wasn’t already running after it, body working without his head, he would have been rooted to the ground, mesmerized.

He caught up to it as it reached the gates of the old mansion, a place that was off limits because abandoned, even by time. The grass didn’t seem to grow, the gate didn’t seem to rust, the statues remained in pieces. Unfortunately ever eternal.

“I got’cha now!” Roxas called out as he cornered the thief. It stopped at the gate, turning to face him, posture lax.

<We have come for you my liege.> The thief corrected.

“Huh?” Roxas came to a stop a few feet away from it, something about the thief making him uneasy. The silver monster unzipped its hood without touching it, a seal cracked, an endless void inside ripping it open.

Roxas took a step back, the thief taking a step forward. Roxas immediately surveyed the area. Gate was too high to jump, ground was level, tree branch that could be used as a switch. Roxas dove for it, holding the branch out in front of himself with both hands. The thief took another step forward and Roxas lunged.

It’s shoulders pulled back, but it didn’t retreat. It almost appeared shocked he had tried to hit it. It took a step forward that put it’s stance at a disadvantage—or at least he assumed it would have been. But he swung and the creature simply dropped into a split, rearing up between the gap in his arms, nose to nose with him.

<Come back, my liege.> The creature reached for his shoulders, slowly, gently. Roxas couldn’t bring himself to move—there was nothing inside the suit. His hands started to tremble and he stopped breathing. The suit the thief was in was empty. Void. Void that came before the few hours when Roxas had met him and whatever was to come after; a vast, endless, indescribable nothingne—

The clocktower rang, chiming the hour off in the distance.

Roxas let go of the stick, keeping it in his right hand as he jerked back, putting distance between himself and the monster. It wasn’t any use against whatever that thing was.

But he knew that. He knew he couldn’t hurt these things.

“You can't hurt them without special weapons…” Roxas gripped his stick in his hand, weighted and familiar, yet he felt like everything was tipped upside down. Was this breaking the rules?

The clocktower still rang, continuing to chime the hour off in the distance.

Zeroes and ones collected like an infestation around his stick, transforming it into a keyblade. It tugged at his arm, aiming itself at the creature before him.

<My liege?>

Roxas lowered the keyblade, staring at it, the weight of it making his arm tense. The clocktower stopped chiming—Roxas took up a fighting stance that came naturally to him.

“Give back what you stole! I want it back!” he demanded, lunging at the creature. It jolted back, Roxas unrelenting. He swung, it ducked, he swung, it dived. It was quick, but it would lock up before it would lunge to move or change its position. That was enough for Roxas as he sliced through the creature with his keyblade.

It burst into nothing, pictures scattering all over the field before the abandoned mansion. Pictures that each had his face, a memory of him.

“…as! Roxas!” The keyblade in his hand vanished as Roxas turned to face Hayner who came barreling into the field. “There you are! I got worried you got lost out here! Don’t scare me like that!” He stepped on a photo as he tugged Roxas into his arms.

“Hayner…” Roxas whispered, voice hiccuping as he called for him, gently easing his human, his precious human, his precious Hayner, his precious piece of his heart, into his arms. Hayner wasn’t warm. Hayner wasn’t weighted. Hayner just was. Roxas closed his eyes.

Roxas couldn’t let love go—he couldn’t let Hayner go.

“Just let me sit here for a minute, please…I’m really tired…I’m so tired, Hayner…” His voice broke.

“Hey…Hey, it’s okay. I’m right here, don’t cry.”

“I’m so tired…” Roxas repeated as Hayner pulled back to wipe at his tears, as the clocktower rang, chiming the hour in the distance.

It was broken.

Chapter Text

“So, what was the picture thief like? They say anything?” Hayner asked, hopping himself up onto the radiator. Hayner had given him more than enough time to collect himself and between collecting the photos and the walk back through the woods, then back into town to their hangout—Pence and Olette had no reason to think he’d cried about anything.

“Not really…There wasn’t anything distinct about them either. They were just weird,” Roxas explained as Pence looked through all of the photos.

“Weird how?” Pence asked, furrowing his brow at the photos. “Because not to freak you guys out, but Roxas is in all of these photos—meaning even if Seifer did say we took them, people would have reason to believe him.”

“The pictures were all of Roxas…?” Olette asked, her voice trembling, eyes wide as she looked at Roxas. Pence hesitated, looking between all of them before he showed them photos at random.

Olette grabbed for his hand, Roxas giving it a light squeeze, but he couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes. He couldn’t reassure her when he wouldn’t believe anything he said to her.

“I dunno, like…like they were really fit. They could twist around like it was nothing, like they weren’t even tired after making their way through the woods like that and I’ve never seen anyone in town in a silver jumper like that.”

“You don’t think…?” Pence asked softly.

“No way. The odds are way too fucking low for that, same guy or not.” Hayner waved a hand in front of his face, but hopped off of the radiator.

“But they watched people enough to know where everyone kept their photos and only took the ones of Roxas.” Olette reminded. “When did people start saying their stuff was going missing?” They all knew it had been mumbled about at least three weeks before. They were quiet, Hayner shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Some people kept them in obvious places like cork boards or in vanity mirrors. Some kept them in photo albums or boxes. But no one would keep all of their photos in the same place. The one of the four of them was a precious thing that they traded off to each other once a week. Hayner kept it in his notebook. Olette kept it in her wallet. Pence kept it on the top of any photos he’d taken that week. Roxas kept it on his desk. Roxas had the photo last.

“It was in my house…” he whispered, Olette squeezing his hand so hard his knuckles turned white.

“I won’t leave you alone.” she promised, Roxas watching her eyes well up. “I won’t.” She shook her head, blinking tears away. “I won’t let you get taken away, Roxas…”

Roxas wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on her head. He felt Pence wrap his arms around him from the back, Hayner wrapping his arms around all of them. He didn’t want to think about why anything would want to come for him. He didn’t want to think about losing his friends. He didn’t want to think about being alone.

<I have to apologize…! Let me out, I have to say I’m sorry!>

"Apologies imply compassion, remorse. Nobodies feel no such thing. If you’re going to attempt a ruse, try something less pathetic.”

The clocktower rang, chiming the hour.

“We should go home, its late…” Hayner mumbled softly. “I’ll walk everyone home. Tomorrow we should get new locks for your place. Do you wanna stay with me till then?” He asked Roxas, threading his hand in the back of his hair, pressing their foreheads together.

“Please…” he mumbled, Olette wiping at her eyes.

“We can return the photos tomorrow. That’ll also give us time to figure out a different way to convince everyone it wasn’t us.” Pence suggested, collecting all of the photos and putting them in a CD case that had the plastic holders removed from it.

“Pretty sure if I show up scared and crying they’ll believe us.” Olette suggested with a wet laugh, tears still on her lashes. Pence put the photos down and kissed her forehead, wiping her tears.

“That’s a problem for tomorrow. Let’s get everyone home.” Hayner reminded. They quietly shuffled through their hangout, picking up their things and anything else they were worried might be taken. Roxas studying the door of their hangout without processing it.

<Please! Please, I have to talk to them!>

“Begging is unbecoming for anyone with a heart, let alone you.”

“Roxas?” Hayner called for him softly, Roxas jerking his attention to him.

“Sorry, I just…”

“It’s okay—we’re not expecting you to act like everything is alright. It’s a lot…” He gripped the strap of his backpack, glaring at the ground. He adjusted it, then stood by the doorway, waiting for the rest of them.

Olette offered Roxas his bag, which he took from her and started digging through. Everything he owned was there. Didn’t people who wanted whatever that thing had usually take something more personal? Things he used often? He would have to check when he got home for anything else that might be out of place or missing.

He headed for the doorway, Pence and Olette following.

“Once you two are home, call me?” Olette asked softly as they all made their way out of their hangout.

“Yeah of course.” Hayner agreed, Pence the last one out.

A brilliant, blinding light caught Roxas’ view, forcing him to close his eyes—then everything went black.

Where...am I?

“Who’s there?” Roxas called out into the darkness.

Who are you?

Roxas shot up out of bed, punching Hayner in the face.

“OW! Dude, what the fuck! Good morning to you too! Ah, hell…!” Hayner grunted, holding his nose as he stumbled out of bed and made his way to his bathroom. “Save it for the struggle tournament, would ya?”

“I…G’morning—sorry,” Roxas called out into the hall. “It wasn’t on purpose—I was having weird dreams.” He slipped out of bed, making his way out into the hallway and lingering outside of the small bathroom.

Hayner inspected his nose in the mirror, sniffing. “Well I hope you won whatever you just tried to punch out.” Hayner grumbled, leaning the door closed, it not catching on the latch. The toilet seat hit the toilet’s tank. The paint on the door was chipping and needed to be redone.

“…I did,” he whispered softly. Roxas went back into Hayner’s bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed. He stared at his palms, clenching and unclenching his hands. They felt empty. He was missing something important.

The phone rang in the living room.

“Roxas?” Hayner called from the bathroom.

“I got it!” he called back, picking the phone up off of the hook. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?” Roxas called again. Dead air. There must have been something wrong with the phones or someone was making prank calls. He went to put the phone back when he heard crackling on the other end. “…Hello?” he called again, softly, thinking about how something had been in his house.

“¿s̸͢͢ɐx̸̴o̢͟͜ꓤ͞͞ ̶̵ʻ̧͝n͢͠o̵͘ʎ ǝ̴̨ɹ͡ɐ̶̡ ͞͝ǝ͢͡ɹ̶ǝ̸̕ɥ̶̢͜M”

Roxas threw the phone against the wall and shoved himself so hard into the living room wall that his teeth clattered. Hayner ripped open the bathroom door.

“What? What happened?”

“The…the phone.” Roxas explained, forcing himself to breathe, but it felt like his lungs were made of thick wool. Hayner marched over to it and picked it up, then put it to his ear. He narrowed his eyes.

“Hello?” The phone let out a screeching ring so loud Roxas could hear it from across the room. The world went hazy, green and zeros and white light. Roxas felt his knees go weak as he immediately grabbed for something to catch himself on.

“FUCKIN’—!” Hayner yanking it away from his ear and slamming it down on the hook. The screech stopped. The world went back to normal as Roxas sat on the ground. “Jeezus that was loud!” He scowled, teeth bared as he turned to Roxas—his expression immediately shifted to one of worry. “You okay?” he asked, kneeling down in front of him.

“I’m—” The word was barely audible as it left him. He swallowed and tried again. “I’m okay.” He looked around the room, expecting something to have lingered from the horrid screeching frequency.

Hayner held his face in his hands and Roxas looked at him. His eyelashes, his cheekbones, his mouth, his warm brown eyes.

He felt his eyes well up.

“I can’t…” he whispered. Hayner kissed his forehead without asking him what he meant. His mouth lingered, thumb brushing his cheek. “Hayner, I…” He pulled away just enough to stare at his pores, his hairline, the flecks in his eyes, the tan on his skin, the way his nose sat, the way his mouth dipped, his jawline’s curve.

 Hayner studied him back, Roxas’ focus lingering on his mouth. It was easier than his eyes. He could just lean forward. He could hold him. Hayner wouldn’t stop him. He could touch all over him and Hayner would reciprocate the affection. He would kiss him back just as intensely, want him just as feverishly. He would let Roxas do whatever he wanted—

Roxas pulled away.

“I’m okay,” he repeated, standing up. Hayner studied him for a moment more, then stood up after him. “I’m gonna shower.” He slid down the hallway and away from Hayner. He grabbed some clothes that he brought and went into the bathroom, making sure the door closed properly. He turned the shower on, staring at it swirl down the drain.

He pulled his shirt off over his head, it twisted around his arms as he stared down at his chest. His shirt hit the floor, fingers brushing along the the thick scar. He took his pants off and didn’t bother testing the water as he got into the shower.

Hayner chatted away as they walked back to their hangout to meet with Pence and Olette, Roxas knowing it was for his sake. Olette and Pence were already there, digging through a bag of snacks.

“Well you guys sure slept in. This was our second store run.” Olette teased, offering them both ice cream. Hayner took both of them, putting one between his teeth and opening the second before offering it to Roxas.

Roxas took it from him, taking up residence on the couch, tucking his legs up under himself. Olette angled her back towards him, leaning her spine against his arm. It was such a natural thing for her to do, a salve for his anxieties as well as hers, a love language of comfort through touch.

“Do you guys think we’ll always be together like this?” Pence asked, holding his ice cream in his hands, it still too cold to melt. Roxas shoved half of the bar in his mouth, never bothered by the freezing sensation to his teeth.

“I sure hope so.” Olette whispered softly.

“Where did that come from?” Hayner grunted, finally ripping his own ice cream open.

“I just…um…you know, thinking out loud…” Pence mumbled softly, glancing at Roxas, who watched him out of his peripheral, but insistently kept his gaze on the ground. No one needed to know what he was thinking with everything that happened. They were all still thinking about it, all still worried.

“Well I doubt we could be together forever, it’s just not realistic…” Hayner mumbled, taking a moment of reprieve to let his ice cream melt in his mouth before continuing. “But isn’t that what growing up is all about? What’s important isn’t how often we see each other, but how often we think of each other…right?”

“Well that’s good news for you then.” Olette teased Roxas, lighting nudging him with her arm.

“You probably got that off of a fortune cookie,” Pence gave Hayner a wide, teasing grin, Hayner sticking his tongue out at him.

“Longest fortune cookie paper ever—it was like gum tape.” Hayner gave an approving nod of his own quick wittedness, Pence snickering, Roxas smiling softly and resting his cheek on her shoulder.

“Ya okay?” she asked softly, brushing his bangs back out of his face.

“Dunno,” he admitted. “I like this though. Us.” Olette gave him a soft smile, Roxas closing his eyes.

“You look tired. You wanna nap?” she offered, pulling away to turn to face him better.

“I keep having weird dreams.” he admitted, pulling his cheek away from her shoulder just for her to wrap her arms around him and let him go right back to cuddling up against her.

“Yeah, he punched the shit out of me this morning.”

“I apologized—I think,” Roxas grunted, chin bobbing up and down on Olette’s shoulder as he spoke.

“He thinks.” Hayner made a grand gesture to Roxas with his hand while rolling his eyes.

“He does that?” Pence teased, Roxas snorting and rubbing his forehead against Olette’s shoulder.

“He does when he holds the brain cell. That’s kind of what happens when you have it, duh,” Olette shot back, Roxas laughing against her collarbone before shoving his ice cream into his mouth before it dripped all over them.

 “He knocked it right out of my head this morning, it was my turn to use it.” Hayner reminded, ice cream already gone as he put the stick behind his ear.

“Does anyone here ever really use the braincell or do we just covet braincell holding status? To be worshiped and revered—”

“Okay, that’s enough out of you.” Hayner cut Pence off by sitting himself on his lap, grabbing for his wrist and raising it up to bite his ice cream.

“—like gods amongst our sacrilegious culthood of friends?” Pence continued, letting Hayner eat his ice cream. “Do we not wish to be like kings, who do not need the brain cell but must simply keep it out of populaces hands for their own sake? Do we—!” Hayner held either side of Pence’s face, kissing the stupid words off of his mouth.

Olette giggled against Roxas, chin pressed to her own shoulder to watch them. “They’re such dorks.”

“Mhm.” Roxas hummed in agreement, pressing his cheek to hers. Her skin was soft and supple—he wanted to bite her, playfully, but he refrained. He watched the way they kissed, the way Pence couldn’t stop smiling, which made Hayner smile. Then Hayner would collect himself first, jaw adjusting as he turned his head a bit more—and Roxas felt a pang of jealousy.

He’d kissed them, but not like that. This was juvenile, teasing, sweet, but with a clear yearning. Had he told them he’d wanted them, and his kisses had come with a gentleness, a hesitance, that made him wonder if he’d ever really kissed them. Had he shown them with a simple act of pressing his mouth to theirs that he wanted them? That he loved them?

“You drooling in that head of yours?” Olette teased, Roxas yanking his gaze away from them and down to her.

He shoved his ice cream back in his mouth, shaking his head again. She giggled at him, breaking off a piece of her own ice cream with her lips acting as a safeguard for her teeth before she let it melt in her mouth.

“Just thinking. You know, in my head,” he clarified, glancing at Pence, who either hadn’t heard him or chose to ignore him.

“What about?” Olette prompted, 

“The beach…can we go to the beach?” Roxas asked, awash with desire. He wanted that moment again, to replicate and recreate and add onto it.

“You just watched us kiss and thought about the beach? You’re hilarious, Rox,” Hayner snorted, making himself comfortable on Pence’s lap, Pence looping his arms around his middle.

“Listen, when you hold the brain cell, you’ll be able to have cognitive thoughts that aren’t just surface level and parroting.”

“Kiss, kiss!” Olette chirped in her best parrot voice.

“Kiss! Kiiiiss!” Pence chimed in.

“You sound like a skeksi.” Hayner snorted.

“Gelfling!” Olette croaked in their direction, wiggling her fingers at them.

“Hmmmm, Gelfling!” Pence agreed. “Gelfling want go to beach? Yeeeess?” he asked Roxas, Olette on the verge of inconsolable giggles.

“Gelfling want go to beach.” Roxas agreed despite not knowing what a Gelfling was.

Hayner bursting out into laughter so hard he had to lean on Pence for support. “Dude! You just—you said that so straight faced, oh my god…!” he managed around his own wheezing.

“What the hell is a Gelfling?” Roxas demanded. It might have been an insult for all he knew.

“Duuude! Noooo!”

“Oh come on, Rox.”

“We have to show you everything cool around here?”

The three of them groaned, making Roxas smile.

“We’ll have to set up a movie night again.” Pence suggested. “We got him to see the Goonies last time, so we’re slowly but surely making you cultured my darling friend. But I’d be down for going to the beach. We should have a good few hours even with getting ready if we go now.”

“Okay but does anyone have beach money?” Hayner asked, taking his ice cream stick from behind his ear and pointing it at all of them.

“Some of us are responsible,” Olette shot back.

“Hey, hey. Just askin’, just askin’.” Hayner held up his hands in defeat, then tossed his stick and Pence’s in the trash.

“Okay, well if we wanna go now, eat lunch there, train tickets, blah blah blah…” Pence started counting on his fingers. “…Like 1,200 each give or take? Make it 5,000 just to be safe if we end up wanting more food or something?”

“I can spot everyone.” Roxas offered, odds and ends jobs and errands for everyone always giving him more than enough pocket change.

“You sure?” Hayner asked with a raised brow, Roxas nodding.

“Yeah, I’m not worried. If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t offer.”

“Okay, so meet back at the train station in like—” Pence leaned around Hayner’s waist, checking the clock for the time. “An hour? That’ll give me a minute to check train times and stuff for the beach too.”

“You okay to go home on your own?” Hayner asked Roxas, confusion settling into his features before he was slammed with the unsettling realization of why he was asking.

“Uh…yeah. I mean assume if I don’t show up in a half hour I di—” He cut himself off as he saw the worry flash in Olette’s eyes. “...Takes like ten, fifteen if I’m not paying attention to get home. I can call you when I’m there, stay on the phone ‘till I walk right out the door,” he offered instead.

The tension left her, but the worry didn’t.

“I’ll be okay, Olette, really. Nothing could ever keep me from you guys,” Roxas reassured, pressing his forehead to hers. He closed his eyes, and for a moment there was no sensation of her touch, there was no must smell of their hang out; there was a pull in his chest, a desire to open his eyes.

He opened his eyes and everything came back. He smiled at her, Olette reluctant to let him go.

“He’ll be okay.” Hayner reassured. “He handled the photo thief last time and we’re on guard now.” Hayner placed a hand on her shoulder, Olette untangling herself from him.

“Right,” Roxas agreed with a nod. “I’ll call you in ten, watch.” He got up, Pence already lingering by the doorway. Her eyes followed him as they made their way out, Hayner reaching for her hand and giving it a squeeze.

He leaned over and whispered to her, then squeezed her hand once more and let go. Roxas gave her a wave, then jogged back to his house. He’d handled the picture thief already, the thing that had been inside of his room. But he’d handled it with a weapon that had practically come out of nowhere.

A barrel of kindling, dead twigs and plywood, caught his eye. Roxas staring at it longer than he should have before he tugged a stick out. A swung it, held it out before him, lowered himself down to the ground and held it the way he had before—nothing.

“Weird…” he grumbled, turning around and tossing the stick back into the barrel. The stick would have landed in the barrel if it hadn’t hit someone in a black coat that was too warm for this weather. “Oh—sorry, uh…”

The man side stepped him, avoiding touching him as he continued on. Roxas lowered his head, feeling guilty, but if the man wasn’t angry, there wasn’t anything to dwell on.

Roxas had called Olette as he promised, and nothing was out of place or missing when he surveyed his room. But something about the mirrors in his house made him uneasy, Roxas ducking to avoid his reflection. He collected his things and money for the beach, then only hung up with her once he was half out the door.

The phone cackled, Roxas slamming it down onto the hook.

“No. No. Nope. No.” He shook his head, then slammed the door and headed out, leaving the phone behind. He practically ran to the station, a desire to get away and a yearning to be by their sides. He got there before any of them, sighing as he wiped the sweat off of his brow. He’d get to go to the beach with his friends and he’d kiss them because he wanted to. He really should have kissed them sooner, kissed them properly.

“Heya,” Pence greeted, patting the back of his shoulder. Roxas turned to him, giving him a smile. “Everything go okay?”

“Actually I was murdered and this is my ghost. I came to give you final words.” Roxas teased, dropping his bag to give a deep dramatic bow from his waist.

“Oh? Which are?” Pence asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I love you all with my whole heart and always will. And though we are apart,” Roxas crooned dramatically. “I shall forever be apart of you!”

“Dude, gay,” Pence reminded with a snort.

“Oh, very.” Roxas agreed, giving a wave to Hayner as he walked up the hill with Olette.

“Guys Roxas is dead, but his ghost says he loves us.” Pence called out to them.

“Welp, someone go get the skateboard and I’ll look up a taxidermist.” Hayner called back, Olette pressing a hand to her mouth to hide her laughter as they finished their trek up the hill.

“Come on, let’s go get tickets you dorks.” Olette reached for Pence’s hand, the bag slung over her shoulder dropping down into the crook of her elbow.

Hayner quietly put his arm out in front of Roxas to stop him, watching Pence and Olette go off ahead. “We can’t be together forever…so we need to make the time we do have something to remember.”

“What? Where did that come from?” Roxas asked, it hard to make it sound like he was joking with Hayner. Hayner rubbed underneath his nose, sniffing with a far off look in his eyes.

“Gotcha!” He gave a punch to Roxas’ arm and ran off ahead, but Roxas knew he wasn’t kidding. He stared at his back, as the three of them left him behind. He exhaled, the air suddenly heavy like dripping wax.

He took a step forward as they opened the glass doors—then he was on the ground, jaw into cobblestone. His world blurred and spun, the taste of blood in his mouth. He pulled his face off of the ground, spitting out blood with a groan. He couldn’t tell if it was from his cheek or tongue or even gums, gingerly pressing his fingers to his face.

Before he could figure out what had started bleeding in his mouth, he was jacked up by a man in a black coat—the same as before. His had a vice grip around Roxas’ upper arm as he tugged him in front of him, shielding his view of his friends. Had he followed him? Had this person been in his house? Roxas glared at him, about to ask what his problem was, but he was cut off by his question.

“Can you feel Sora?” His voice was deep and subtle, like the first wispy storm clouds rolling over the sun. This wasn’t the voice of the person on the phone.

“What? ”

“Roxas, you good?” Hayner called to him.

“I’m—” The grip on his arm was gone and so was the man. His eyes roamed the open area, but the only trace of him was a stick—the one from the barrel he’d accidentally thrown at him. Was he pissed he’d been hit with it?

He could worry about it on the train ride. He jogged to catch up with his friends, the taste of blood still flooding his mouth.

“Dude! What the hell! Every time we leave you alone you mess your head up.” Hayner groaned, jogging down the stairs to meet him.

“Oh yikes, that’s gonna bruise.” Pence winced as Hayner took to inspecting Roxas’ jaw.

“We can catch the next train if we need to, it’s okay.” Olette reassured, making her way back down the stairs to also stand with Roxas.

“No, here you can at leas—” Roxas reached into his pocket, then back pocket, then patted himself down. He looked behind himself, Hayner’s fingers grazing his bruised jaw making him wince. He patted himself down once more, pissed off. “It’s gone—he took it, it’s gone!”

“Who took it?”

“The guy just now! The one who jacked me up! He must have took it! He couldn’t have gotten too…far…” Roxas tailed off as all three of them traded looks.

“Whaaat are you talking about? You got another concussion, bud?” Pence asked, making his way down the stairs to reach for Roxas’ hand.

“There was no one there. If someone was jacking you up, you know I’d have come down there swinging.” Hayner reminded, which was true as Olette glancing back towards the train station.

“You know, we can always go another day. We can watch movies instead and make sure you’re okay—that your jaw’s okay. And head with bruising. And stuff,” she corrected quickly, not wanting to upset him. Someone had been there. If he checked his arm, there was no way it hadn’t bruised. Roxas turned his head and spit blood onto the ground again, brow furrowed.

Blood.

“Thaaaat’s…probably a good idea, Olette.” Hayner agreed. “You’re not spitting teeth, right?”

Roxas shook his head, watching the train pull into the station behind them. “Sorry…I mess everything up, don’t I?”

“What, no you don’t. It’s okay, we just said we’d go another time.” Pence rubbed at Roxas’ back, but something inside of him insisted on sinking, heavy land coarse like wet sand.

“Yeah, it’s no big deal.” Hayner agreed.

“We’re more worried about you. That’s the second time you’ve hit your head like that.” She reached up, gently brushing his bangs out of his face. “Did you feel dizzy like last time?”

“No, I tripped…” Roxas explained, glancing back at the stick, but now that was gone too. Everything was falling apart—or maybe everything was fine and he was falling apart; the world was real and Roxas wasn’t. Or maybe Roxas was real and the whole world was fake, designed by a cruel being with ulterior motives.

The clocktower rang, chiming the hour.

Chapter Text

Colors were overwhelming for Naminé, flooded with connotations and connections. White wasn't a color, it was a shade. White was safe; white was comfortable, white didn’t smell like anything. White was easiest to work in. White was a cage she was scared to leave.

It had taken her so long to see colors the way Sora did—to understand how his mind worked enough to lie to him in Castle Oblivion. Roxas was simpler. He saw in black and white, only given flashes of color when he was with a trio of humans from Twilight Town. He hadn't even realized the difference himself until it was too late. She pitied him. It made pulling his memories apart from Sora's absurdly easy as long as she had the pieces.

There was a knock on the door, it only giving Naminé enough time to look up from her work before it opened. Riku stepped through. 

Riku was silver. He was off, slightly uncomfortable, but familiar. She wasn't sure if the familiarity was from her time spent with his replica or if it was just who he was as a person. Even with his current appearance cloaked in void black, she'd be able to smell his silver heart anywhere.

Naminé was quick to tuck herself away, to hide in the guise of a human. She was terrifyingly seraphic—that was how Diz described her anyhow. Riku could never look at her outright, so she knew Diz, who smelled rust orange like something outdated falling apart, must have been right. It didn't help that even while pretending to look human, she still appeared to look like both of Riku's best friends. No matter what she did, she was revolting, so she kept her head down.

She missed the company of the replica.

“Just checking in.”

Naminé got up, scrambling out of his way and away from the pod. She pressed herself to the wall, a sketchbook of layers of her own flesh held to her chest. The layers of skin were thin, almost transparent. The completed pieces littered the floor like stained glass, inked with her blood and Sora's memories. Her blood took the color of the details of Sora's memories: the deep bruise-purple of when his home was taken, the limestone green of new friendships made with Donald and Goofy, the blood-red relief at finding Riku and knowing he was safe. She'd carefully sniffed all of them out, coloring according to how Sora had interpreted those moments and putting them back where they belonged.

Riku avoided all of the pieces on the ground and she'd have thought him respectful of her work if she didn't know it was only because of how precious Sora was to him. He gently placed a hand on the pod, Naminé always unsure if she should continue working or wait for them to speak whenever they'd come to see Sora.

“I've been watching The Garden with Diz.” Riku pulled his hand away from the pod, and only when he faced her did Naminé realize she was being spoken to.

She raised her head, blinking once, a wet squish of her single set of her most human looking eyes sounding louder to her than actuality or Riku.

“The Garden was built to reciprocate whatever Roxas put into it.” An echo of an echo, something to sate him, no matter his mood. “Part of me expected it to be violent.” Riku rubbed at his wrist absentmindedly. Naminé chewed on her bottom lip. “Especially after you said according to its memories that its only job was to collect hearts.”

Naminé started biting at a hangnail, skin coming out in her teeth. She pulled, a strip ripping down her finger, her arm. She tugged it off, shoving it into the other flesh pages.

“But the closest thing it had come to fighting is a local bully with a foam bat. It's…really easy to see how Roxas is from Sora while watching it.” Riku turned his head back to the pod, fingers brushing at the frosted glass as if he'd be able to see inside of it. “They're just echoes, but then…what's the difference between how babies learn and how Nobodies learn?”

Diz would ask lots of rhetorical questions. She had learned rhetorical meant she didn't need to answer because they were obvious. It wasn't like Marluxia, who asked her simple things because he thought she was stupid for her silence. But she didn't know what kind of questions Riku liked to ask.

His favorite one was asking Sora when he was going to wake up. She found it silly. If he really wanted an answer, he could either ask her or require she tell him like Diz did. She thought Riku liked to ask empty questions, but she wasn't sure.

“If you’re faking your feelings, you have to constantly put in effort to maintain that appearance. But Roxas is in a place where it doesn’t need to do any of that, but it’s still…it craves a gentleness that makes me feel guilty, no matter what Diz says. It's a part of Sora and I hurt it. How many times am I going to hurt my best friend?”

She couldn't answer that for him. 

“I—” she paused, thinking through several ways to correct what she almost said, all while gauging Riku's reaction to her, waiting to speak.

He waited for her to continue. 

“I've noticed Roxas is protecting himself with the data of his friends. He's buried underneath them every time I go to collect memories from him which makes it take longer than it should, but he's also very protective of them. The Garden may give him what he wants, and he may want to be coddled and loved for the most part, but deep down, he wants them to behave the way they always have with him, even if it's contradictory to his own desires. In the real world, are those humans—”

“Don't.” Riku's voice was weary with exhaustion. “If you ask, then I'll have to look. I'll use your curiosity to sate my own, Naminé. And if I do that now…”

“If those humans really do miss him, it will be harder for you to use Roxas to make sure Sora wakes up.” she finished for him. She was toeing a line with Riku. She'd intentionally chosen the word "use", a cruel detachment that she wouldn't have chosen herself. She twisted the knife, watching how a real human body bled.

“…I'll leave you to your work.”

“Once this is over, will you at least tell me if we sacrificed a heart for another? When he finds out who Roxas is, Sora would want to know, wouldn't he?” She knew Riku would go looking now. She knew he would because she'd asked. He'd need to prepare an answer for her, for Sora.

His heart was delicate like worn fabric. Overused, in need of gentle care. Riku was tired, but manipulation was familiar to him in a way that was practically a comfort. She didn't do it to hurt him—she was just very tired of Riku calling her and Roxas an it because he didn't have the mentor of experience, but instead Diz.

He didn't know any better. She wanted him to know better. Riku wanted to know better too—he'd just told her as much. So, she'd let him use her like everyone else did. If it was something as harmless and ultimately as beneficial as an excuse, she wouldn't mind.

Riku didn't answer. He quietly left the room, his silence implicating him. He was always the type to outright refuse something if he didn't like it, even if it was to someone like Maleficent or Ansem.

Naminé had seen in Roxas' memories how delicately he handled those humans. She'd seen how distraught they were from his absence. Naminé asked questions she knew the answers to—she just wanted someone else to know them too.

The only question she had was for a chunk of Sora's heart she still wasn't quite sure what to do with and hadn't known since Castle Oblivion. It was a piece that may as well have been from a different puzzle, but when Sora's heart grew, so did this piece. When Sora's heart found new strength, so did this piece. It was grafted from someone else.

Naminé would occasionally stare at it, unsure if she should throw it out or if it was something Sora needed. It hadn't hurt him, so she assumed it was alright to put it back. The last thing she wanted was to remove it and it was a piece that would keep him from waking.

But she'd finally realized Roxas looked nothing like Sora. She looked nothing like Sora. They were Nobodies from two different hearts; her from Kairi and Sora, Roxas from Sora and this grafted piece.

“He's like me…” she whispered as her human form fell away. She stepped around her work, getting closer to Sora's pod. Her body sang in delight like a crystallophone, body stealing color away and making it light, a reverse prism.

<Sora, would you be mad at me for using Riku today?> She was so delighted she needed to tell someone, anyone, even if they were asleep couldn't reply—even if they would have no memories of her. Riku would step out to check on those humans and Diz was so preoccupied that if she went missing for just a little bit, he'd never know.

<Sora, he's like me—they told me that even for a Nobody that I was a freak and that I was all alone, but I'm not alone. You made me a friend and didn't even know it.> Naminé's fountain pen nails clicked against his pod, all of her eyes trained on it. They spiraled like an iridescent Fibonacci kaleidoscope in her delight, Naminé pulling away, not making a sound as she moved.

<Sora, I want to meet him. The part of you that's so much like me—I want to meet Roxas.> Naminé halted violently outside of her door, all of her eyes closing at once.

The colors.

There were so many colors. She'd never be able to reach him—at least not like this. But she'd planned for this the moment she'd made her decision to meet Roxas.

She opened her eyes, all of them rolling back into place. Once she was in the data world, she could manipulate things to make it easier on herself. She could saturate the colors, freeze everything so no colors would move. This wasn't like Castle Oblivion. She wouldn't wait for someone else to grant her wish. She just felt guilty she couldn't grant Roxas his.

She thought of a memory of Sora’s, where he’d found a small cat.

It had been drenched, had hidden itself away in an inescapable corner it had put itself in. It had warmed up to Sora’s affection, his light, rather quickly, but it had still been scared at first. She couldn’t help but feel Roxas was the same.

He was easy enough to find buried amongst the data, but something about him skittered away, buried itself in the underbrush of zeros and ones like the cat. Even with the simulation having him wake in his room, something rejected her, forcing Naminé out of his room, out of his snowglobe world.

It must have hurt to leave his dream every time he closed his eyes.

“Here kitty, kitty…” She mirrored the way he’d called for it under her breath. It had been soft and gentle as Sora had offered his fingers as an olive branch for the cat to sniff at and familiarize itself with.

She tried again, pausing everything, flooding the orange twilight world with an overcast sky and a gray scale tone. She could sense his unease, which he had desperately contorted itself into a semblance of a human one in an attempt to lie to himself. But the thin-skinned veil it had encased itself in was tight, bound to snap at the slightest touch.

She was gentle in her approach, doing her best to look human, to keep her aura from touching his, but let it linger just close enough to let him know she was there before he saw her. Just like Sora with the cat. But she still caught him off guard, appearing in front of him. She’d always been there, but the world had yet to process her until he’d almost run into her.

He’d lied to himself too well and was ignoring all of the usual signs. How desperately he wanted to be human, to be loved. She could understand that well enough. She also had loved playing pretend with Sora in Castle Oblivion, even if had ultimately left her alone; even if it had ultimately hurt her.

Because they had both come from Sora, did that desire come from him as well or was it coincidence or circumstance? They’d both been used by the Organization, both been lied to and put in precarious situations with no one to rely on.

“Hello, Roxas,” she greeted, taking in his soft features, the way he was better at appearing human than she ever would be. She knew, no matter how much she practiced, something always looked off about her.

“Uh, hi…” He greeted softly, mumbling, shoulders pulled up as he watched her look around his simulated world through his lashes. He was a lot shyer than Sora was. “And you are—?” She held her hand up to stop him. She just wanted this moment, captured forever in stillness like a photograph.

“I wanted to meet you, at least once.” Even if she got in trouble for it, even if it would hurt her. But she doubted, be it physical or emotional, nothing could hurt her worse than losing Sora. It had been a lie, but he’d been gentle with her anyway. He’d carefully held her hands in her paper mache world. He was kind, even when he could have easily rejected her. Those feelings…he’d told her that her feelings weren’t a lie just the way his own weren’t.

They’d been forged yes, crafted with intent, but they were experienced all the same. She’d have believed the Organization and Diz’s words forever if it wasn’t for Sora. Roxas should get to feel the same way.

“Me?” He was hesitant, unsure. Part of him knew, but he wanted to lie to himself for a little longer. Naminé felt terrible. She was going to have to tear apart his world the way she’d done to her own. They weren’t allowed these things, these precious falsities.

“Yes, you.” She could feel something in him roil around, coil in on itself as it attempted to search for a reason. He rubbed at the back of his neck while trying to think.

“Have we…met before?” he asked, Naminé smiling softly. Sora was close to waking, but there were still some memories that lingered within Roxas.

“No.” She’d never met Roxas, but she was glad Sora still recognized her, even though someone else’s eyes, even without proper memories. She felt Roxas well with anxiety and she immediately felt guilt. Sora was practiced with handling his feelings, where Roxas wasn’t. She didn’t want him to feel bad. Roxas deserved to be happy in his lie, just for a little longer.

Naminé took her leave, content with their brief encounter.

But Roxas was too curious for his own sake. Sora wasn’t like that. He was the kind of person to take everything at face value, assume a sort of honesty was involved with everything he was presented with. So it was a habit Roxas had developed on his own. He followed after her, even after she toyed with the data to escape him completely to go back before she was caught.

Given she was messing with the data, she had been careful in her attempt to ensure she understood it. The best artist knew to sketch before starting their linework; she knew if she was going to attempt something, she needed to be able to remove traces of failed or messy attempts. But no matter how skilled she was, she’d still made lines.

Naminé could feel silver entering the datascape, forcing themselves out of void—the Nobodies that were looking for Roxas were back. He didn’t know any better. He didn’t know they were trying to save him from the false world he’d been allowed in. She kept her distance from him, feeling the way his heart and aura reacted, coiled in on itself and desperately pulled away as he took off.

But the dusks had one mission and they would die trying to complete it. Roxas couldn’t land a hit on them with anything but a keyblade. It was a helpless endeavor and they’d take Roxas to the Organization if he lost. The dusks halted the data of a few humans, removing them as obstacles before returning their attention back to Roxas. They’d lose Sora to the Organization if Roxas lost.

He looked indescribably lost. She could feel the deep well that was his heart and how it desperately tried to hold its weight in water, but it fell through his open fingers. He wasn’t used to his own feelings, yet alone Sora’s. This was her fault, it had to be. If she’d left the data alone, maybe they wouldn’t have found a way in. If something happened to Sora, if something happened to Roxas, it would be all her fault.

The sky grew overcast, Naminé keeping her distance from the fight as she forced her way back through the data to call out to him.

“Roxas, use the keyblade!”

She watched him survey the sandlot, she watched him locate her, watched him continue to panic. The dusk lunged, Roxas blocked and closed his eyes—then, everything went a familiar, blinding white light.

Chapter Text

The voice stepped into the room, white swallowing the drab colors of the room, consuming the life in them. <I’ll tell you a secret. When you close your eyes to the lie, you’ll see the reality of that place for what it is.>

Roxas hesitantly opened his eyes to stained glass that felt vaguely familiar. Something about just looking at it made his heart ache, made him feel guilty, made him feel like he was dying—made him feel serene. The Silver Devils sat outside of the glass, floating in air, suspended in time.

Pedestals before him held ideals, offered choices. They all felt familiar. Roxas approached the one in front of him first, reading the inscription:

The power of the warrior. Invincible courage. A sword of terrible destruction; is strength important?

Of course it was—what kind of idiotic question was that? Without power, everything would get taken by those who were stronger. It was easy to be left to constantly rely on others for everything, to become a burden. His fingers ran along the word “strength”.

Roxas stared at the engraving, thinking of how he’d done nothing but sleep in their beds and rely on his friends from the start. But relying on them let him know he was loved. They easily welcomed him into their open arms, comforted him in his weakness. Even █̨͝ ͝͏█̵͟͡ ̛█̷͢͝ ̧͏̷̸█͞ and Axel had been there for him, reminded Roxas he wasn’t alone. He pulled his hand away and inspected the next one.

The power of the mystic. Inner strength. A staff of wonder and ruin; is wisdom important?

He anxiously rubbed his fingers against the exposed scar on his collar bone. That was all Roxas ever wanted—answers, his curiosities stated. He was tired of being left in the dark, of being lied to, of waiting for others to include him because he didn’t know any better. His own ignorance had caused him so much pain, had caused him to end up here.

But then the delight of experiencing things, of his friends showing him things he was unfamiliar with outweighed all of that. How charming they had found his questions, his earnesty because he hadn’t known any better. How easily he’d fallen in love with them because of that. There would be so many things he’d never know the answer to, no matter how hard he searched—no matter how many questions he asked Sora. But if his silence was the price to pay for earning their love, he didn’t mind. 

The power of the guardian. Kindness to aid friends. A shield to repel all; is protection important?

Roxas studied his own reflection in the shield. He’d been distraught at the thought of them being hurt because of him. Because he wasn’t strong enough. Because he didn’t know how to fight back against the Organization. But it was just a way to say he was scared of not being able to protect them wasn’t it? It was this. This was what mattered.

Roxas picked up the shield with resolve that was familiar, but had never been his before. Part of him anticipated having to give something up, but the stained glass that showed him a familiar sleeping face didn’t demand anything of him—it only gave. The shield melted into a warm light, scattering before collecting in his hand in the form of a keyblade.

The Dusks were drawn in, no longer in stasis. Roxas readied his keyblade, wanting to protect his realized dream—his friends. And the Dusks, even with their calling, scattered to nothing easily under his resolve and keyblade.

Roxas had expected more of a fight, but there was relief in this sort of task coming easily to him. He found his eyes wandering up to the light that filtered down to him through heavy dark waters of the heart. He’d been here. This was as close as they’d ever be for now. He wouldn’t go back.

He wouldn’t go back to Sora.

The feeling echoed out into the sea of consciousness above him. It shook the glass, a glimpse of black before he turned around.

<My liege,> came the call from a massive monster that welcomed itself onto the platform. <You called?> Roxas took a step back, the voice of the monster ringing in the back of his head. Its claw reached for him; his hand by his side twitching in anticipation and fear. It’s large jack rabbit feet; his desire to turn tail and flee on his own two feet. He inhaled, not wanting to face this.

He ran as far as he could, barely catching himself as he fumbled along the edge of the glass and into the depths below.

<My liege, shall we return?> it asked, the tendrils of it scarf feeling the air as if to taste it.

“No! I won’t go back and you can’t make me!” Roxas snarled back, a heavy feeling from the back of his throat that resounded in his chest. It scared him—he pulled out his keyblade, aiming it at the Silver Devil.

<My liege? Am I being disposed of? Am I no longer useful to you?>

“Shut up! Stop asking questions, shut up!” Questions meant answers. Roxas knew that better than anyone. He couldn’t stand looking at this thing—it reminded him too much of—of—his head hurt. His heart hurt. “Go away! Vanish, disappear!” he demanded, then attacked his pitiful Twilight Thorn.

It had no choice but to fight back, to try to restrain him, but Roxas didn’t want to listen. He broke free with ease that forced the Twilight Thorn back, forced it to submit, forced it to tremble, quiver, then fall to its knees.

Despite its size, it went down easily at his hands.

Roxas’ keyblade vanished from his hand, his eyes going wide. He tried to run, but the Twilight Thorn was too massive, even in death. Roxas closed his eyes, held his arms up as he braced himself.

Darkness encapsulated him.

He felt his heart seize up in his chest. His body tensed, his breathing stopped. Everything was being crushed by the weight of his own body and he feared his ribs would cave inwards and pierce right through him.

He flailed, trying to find purchase, something to hold onto, something to save him. Roxas had failed to save him. The darkness had already taken so much from him, yet it desired more and that scared him.

Fear came from an inability, from the loss of autonomy; he couldn’t stop himself, he couldn’t save them, he couldn’t protect them. Roxas was special. He was supposed to do things other members in the Organization couldn’t. By not being able to do anything, he was completely faili—

A hand reached for him, gently grasping at his wrist. Light. Roxas felt his body become awash with exhaustion once more. What had he done to deserve this? The dark flickered, deep green zeroes and ones, before it vanished into the light, which dimmed into a muted white, his wrist released.

Roxas looked around in confusion, then looked to the girl from earlier for answers. She quietly pressed a finger to her lips, then smiled softly at him, as if she’d known him his entire life. She gently pressed her fingers to her chest, introducing herself.

“My name is Naminé,” she whispered. “Roxas…do you remember your true name?” Roxas furrowed his brow at her, a familiarity resting on the tip of his tongue. He knew. He knew and yet—she was pulled up by her arm by a man in a black coat. She was so light she bounced as he lowered her back down to the ground.

“Say no more, Naminé,” he warned her. But there was no anger in his voice, not even a scolding as if she were a child. He simply said it as if it were only a reminder, as if saying the room they were in was white. Roxas narrowed his eyes at the vaguely familiar man.

“But if no one tells him, Roxas will—”

He knew the man in the coat. How did he know him?

“It’s best he doesn’t know the truth.” More people to keep him in the dark, to let him suffocate there.

“Hey! You’re that pickpocket!” He was more than that though, wasn’t he? Who was he? Before he could ask, the man held out his hand, darkness appearing behind Roxas. He jerked back, arm held up in front of himself, ready to defend from whatever was thrown at him. But it wasn’t an attack—Roxas was shoved inside of it.

“Seifer, strike a pose, you know!”

His jaw hurt.

“How’s this?”

His head hurt.

“That’s totally perfect, you know!”

Roxas forced his face off of the ground, rolling his jaw around to make sure it was still attached. There was a flash of light as he took in his surroundings.

“How about one more, you know?”

Roxas shot up to his feet, glaring at Fuu and Rai. “What’s that for?!”

“Keepsake,” she snarked back with a cocky smile. This was likely because the old photos still hadn’t been returned yet.

“Those freaks in the white jumpsuits are gone, ya know?”

“Cakewalk,” she purred. 

“And if they don’t wise up to the rule around here, I might have to take disciplinary measures.” Seifer warned as he cut his eyes over to Roxas, a far from subtle warning.

“Yeah, so long as they don’t get caught,” Roxas shot back with a roll of his eyes. He stopped, catching sight of Hayner, Pence, and Olette off by the stairs. He raised a hand to wave at them, the world a nauseous green as his hand went slack. He pressed his palm to his eye, Seifer moving to stand next to him.

“If you die, that’s on me.”

“M’not gonna give you the pleasure of seeing my corpse.” Roxas snapped back, Hayner, Pence, and Olette’s footsteps approaching.

“What’d you do?” Hayner snapped at Seifer, grabbing for Roxas’ elbows to tug him closer. Roxas would have melted in his arms if Seifer and his goons weren’t right there.

“I didn’t do anything. There were Silver Devils that knocked him out.” Seifer explained with a lilt in his voice that told Hayner he should get lost.

“You lying?” Hayner bared his teeth at him, Olette giving them all weary looks as Pence rubbed at Roxas’ back.

“He’s not…” Roxas grumbled. At the very least he wasn’t lying on purpose. To Seifer, that was likely what happened.

“Roxas,” Olette’s voice pitched.

“I know.” That was the third time he’d hit his head in a week.

“Let’s go back,” Pence whispered softly, Roxas pulling his palm away from his eye, the throbbing behind his head returning.

Seifer glowered at all of them as they left, only calling out once they got to the stairs, “Take him to a walk-in! I don’t want him ruining the tournament tomorrow!”

Hayner flipped him off, even though they all knew Seifer was really telling them just to take care of Roxas. But a rivalry that had gone on for their entire lives wouldn’t suddenly just dissolve because of a minor common enemy or a singular worry.

The crowd for the struggle tournaments were always a good one, even without the champion’s involvement. Pence didn’t like the thought of his younger siblings seeing his teeth get knocked out more than twice, and Olette was banned from struggle tournaments the year she knocked a boy off of the edge so hard he ended up in the hospital after the match was called.

But they both still practiced with Hayner and Roxas, even if the fights did dissolve into floor cuddling more than was necessary. At the very least, they learned to hide their cheating better and knew to watch their opponents.

The mayor continued to ramble on, Hayner shaking out his wrists and jumping on the tips of his toes. “You sure you’re okay? If you’re not, no one would hold it against you. You did get hit in the head four times this week.”

“Three.” Roxas corrected. “And I’m fine, seriously. If I was worried, you guys would know, even if I didn’t want you to.” Hayner stopped his bouncing, giving Roxas a small grin.

The crowd started cheering Setzer’s name, a local college student who had the title for far too long. Even if they both lost, Hayer and Roxas would even dare to cheer Seifer on to take it from him.

Hayner leaned over and kissed the bruise on Roxas’ jaw. “For good luck before our matches.” Roxas felt his face heat up, Hayner already catching him off guard. He smiled, leaning over and kissing his cheek in return. “Man, I hope I get to wipe Seifer in my bracket match.”

“That would leave me with Vivi.”

“Best bros against each other for the prelims? How dramatic,” Hayner crooned, Roxas snickering and nudging him.

“Don’t go throwing the match now.” Roxas teased, the mayor stepping down with Setzer and letting the announcer up on stage.

“You kidding? I should be the one telling you that Mr. Concussion. This my first year getting into the finals, I’m not gonna blow that straight shot to victory on you —besides, you need to learn some humility.”

“Oh, we’re smack talking, now?” Roxas purred as the announcer introduced everyone. “Just tell me you wanted to make out directly, I wouldn’t have been mad,” Roxas whispered, Hayner covering his wide smile and muffling his laugh with his hand.

“…official struggle rules, before we begin! No low blows, no hair pulling, no tackling, no pinning, no fighting after the match has been called! If you’re on the ground for more than five seconds, its match! If you end up off of the stage, it’s match! And if you wish to stop for whatever reason during a match that doesn’t include injury or emergency, you understand that’s a forfeit! Now, leeett’s…?”

“Struggle!” The crowd cheered, Roxas and Hayner included.

“Aw, maaan! I can’t believe I lost!” Hayner groaned, outstretched on the stage like a starfish. Roxas couldn’t help but laugh, even as he waved to the crowd.

“Well, that’s what happens when you get upset over stuff not related to the match,” Roxas teased, jogging over to kneel down next to him. Hayner sat, pouting.

“But I got introduced as your best friend!” Hayner whined as he stood up, using Roxas as purchase.

“Well, everyone does think you’re dating Olette.” Roxas reminded as he removed his head gear.

“Which is correct, but I’m also dating you—and Pence! We’re gaaay!” he reminded, making punching motions in Roxas’ direction until Roxas held his hand up for him to catch his fist while he laughed at him. “Seriously though, I’m mad you pulled my own kickboxing moves on me.”

“What can I say? When you’re mesmerized by something, you try to learn it.” Roxas gave him a wide smile as he pulled the velcro strap off of his glove.

“Dude.” Hayner flushed a deep red, giving an awkward laugh, taking off his own headgear to avoid looking at Roxas for a moment. “That’s really gay.”

“Just dudes being bros.” Roxas reminded with a wink, Hayner snickering before throwing an arm around his shoulders as they made their way off stage to watch Seifer and Vivi’s match while still stripping out of their padding.

“You guys were both great!” Pence praised.

“Totally awesome! Also was that kick gonna bruise, you think? It looked like it hurt!” Olette grabbed at Hayner’s waist, pulling him close to get a look at his leg.

“Dunno, probably.” Hayner shrugged, dangling his leg up for her to look at. She hummed, letting go of his waist and crouching down to inspect it.

“Oh totally. Probably about as much as the punch to Roxas’ arm.”

“I was really glad your reaction was late—otherwise that would have been right to your head and Hayner would have probably immediately dropped down to the ground and gave up.” Pence gave Roxas a light nudge in that same arm, Roxas smiling, but wincing.

“Would not!”

“Oh you totally would have. Otherwise the guilt would have eaten you alive like a flesh eating bacteria.” Olette gave his leg a light tap and stood up, winding her arms around his waist.

“Ew.” Hayner scrunched his nose up in disgust, but locked his arms around her lower back all the same.

“And yet people keep asking why you hang out with nothing but boys.” Pence shook his head, Roxas leaning his own on Pence’s shoulder.

The crowd gave a loud cheer, everyone turning their attention to the stage. “I’m gonna feel bad for Vivi.” Hayner sighed.

“I know right…? Seifer’s totally gonna thrash them.” Pence mumbled in agreement. The match started—and then was over. They expected as much, but that was because they expected Seifer not to go easy on Vivi.

Hayner and Roxas exchanged looks, then looked back to the stage, Seifer sprawled out on his back.

“Should…should we see if he’s okay?” Pence asked, teetering back and forth on his feet.

“No way, dude. His pride’s already gotta be a wreck right now…” Hayner grumbled as he watched him sit up, then storm off stage.

“Vivi hit him so hard he was down for the whole five seconds…” Roxas mumbled in awe. Olette was giving him a look of worry that hadn’t taken long to well up inside of her.

“Roxas—”

“I’ll be careful,” he reassured.

“No, I mean maybe—”

“He’s got headgear on, he’ll be okay.” Hayner insisted, eyes on the trophy on the display table. They didn’t have time. They needed to make these memories, claim these victories of youth.

“Okay, but so did Seifer! He’s also way bigger than both of you and was out cold for a minute…!” she reminded, voice just an exhale from being shrill.

Hayner shushed her, a harsh hissing noise as Seifer walked by, Rai and Fuu in tow. He glared at Roxas and Hayner, then almost reluctantly glared at the stage. “That’s not Vivi.”

“Huh?” Roxas glanced over at the empty stage, then back to Seifer.

“You know that—thrash ‘em,” Seifer whispered as he walked by, Roxas able to feel the heat from his words on his neck he’d leaned in so close. Roxas watched him leave, the hair on his arms standing up.

“What was that about?” Hayner hissed.

Why would Roxas know that wasn’t Vivi? Why had Seifer even expected him to know that? Or had he expected Roxas to know what Vivi was? He had too many questions and he was worried Seifer wouldn’t answer any of them or that he could even bring himself to ask them in the first place. Or maybe he did know and was just scared of acknowledging the answer.

He’d left the wand behind in favor of the shield after all.

But it didn’t matter. He would win because he wanted to give them things, to share things with them the way they kept doing for him. He wanted to share everything with them, even his victories. Regardless of what Vivi was, he was going to win for their sake.

“…You guys give me strength—there’s no way I’ll lose to Vivi, no matter what’s going on. That trophy is as good as ours,” Roxas promised. He kissed Hayner’s forehead, Pence’s nose, Olette’s hair.

“Aren’t we the ones who are supposed to kiss you before the match?” Pence asked with a bashful smile. Roxas gave him a warm smile, wanting to kiss him again.

“If you wanna.” He closed his eyes and offered his face to them. Hayner kissed his right cheek, Olette his left, and Pence his nose. He snickered, pulling away with delight as he looked at the three of them, a swelling in his chest like blooming flowers.

A woman walked by with a perfume that smelled like lotus blossoms.

Roxas made his way up onto the stage, adjusting the velcro on his glove, unsure of what he should say to Vivi. “Um…good match with Seifer, earlier. You really surprised everyone.” 

Vivi laughed, a noise that echoed around in Roxas’ head like when he’d listened to himself speak the stolen word. He winced, his grip on his struggle bat tightening.

“And now, for the semi-final match, Roxas versus Vivi!”

The crowd went wild, Vivi drifting from foot to foot, all of their weight in their hips.

Roxas felt his heart hammer in his chest, unnerved by Vivi’s lack of a response and Seifer’s warning. His lungs felt congested, as if they’d congealed in a sudden heat that had come out of nowhere.

He swallowed, lowering his stance and waiting for Vivi to move first. The crowd whooped and hollered, sounding ages and eons away, an auditory hallucination from the past.

Roxas waited.

Vivi waited.

Roxas lunged, foam bat raised over his head, elbows drawn in to protect his chest—

The whole world stopped. Vivi stopped swaying, the crowd stopped their noisy anticipation, his friends stopped cheering for him. Roxas lowered his bat, glancing around in panic, the heat burning his throat. White fog overtook Vivi and in a blinding display of white, Roxas jolting back. The fog hissed like steam, curling into the air until it dissipated, Vivi gone and replaced with another narrow bodied, silver hooded monster.

“Picture thief…” Roxas growled, narrowing his eyes.

<My liege. We’ve come to take you back,> it informed him.

“Again?!” he snapped, one more sliding in behind him and two more on either side of him, blocking off all routes of escape. His bat gave a blinding display of light, the foam weight in his hand heavy with responsibility. He stared at it, a ringing in the back of his head. “Again…” He held his keyblade up, despondent face reflected in its blade.

<My liege, please return with us.>

Roxas scowled, lowering himself into a crouch as he gripped his keyblade with both hands. He didn’t want to think about the implications of their request, of their willingness to fight him to accomplish that goal. They were following orders; their resolve was weaker than his.

“You’ll have to kill me to bring me back!” he snapped at them, lunging, keyblade taking on the excess weight of a body without a heart, without a mind to disobey. The Silver Devil burst into nothing, the others doing their best to pin him, to take away his autonomy.

But Roxas wouldn’t yield. He tipped his head back and yelled, a feral noise that was foreign to him, but the rage was familiar like muscle memory. He twisted and struck another with a keyblade, it bursting into darkness and nothing.

Two more remained, both acting as a mind-numbing unit, their moves far too easy to read as long as he focused on both of them at the same time. They were overly complimentary, as if it was one thought split between them.

Roxas shoved his keyblade through the chest of one as it lunged, dancing on a ceiling of air, the second low to the ground. Roxas dragged his keyblade down with another guttural yell, its head smearing along the stage before it fell to nothing.

He struggled to breathe, the fight and the heat of his own blood making the sandlot spin. But everyone was still unmoving, stuck forever in a picture perfect imaging. Picture thieves.

There was applause, Roxas whirling around as a man in a black coat stepped up onto the stage. <Roxaaas, alriiight. Fight. Fight. Fight.> His voice was sarcastic and twisted around in Roxas’ head like a snake whisper, making him wince as he attempted to glare at him. His build was too narrow to be the pickpocket. Not to mention his body was far too long, as if his spine had been given extra discs. How many of them were there? How many more insisted on trying to ruin his life?

“I heard they messed with your head, but you really don’t remember. It’s me—you know? Axel.” He spoke out loud this time, removing his hood and giving him a wide grin. He was too much; too many ribs, too many joints, too many teeth.

“Axel?” Wasn’t that a car part?

“This whole thing is gonna be like pulling teeth, isn’t it?” Roxas reflexively ran his tongue along his teeth on the side where his jaw was bruised, the memory of blood on his tongue. “I don’t know why they even bothered sending Dusks. They should have sent me first, regardless.” Axel shook his head, holding his hands on either side of himself. Flames danced at his sides, cooling into forged chakrams.

“Wait a second—tell me what’s going on.” Roxas demanded, narrowing his eyes at his weapon. The sandlot was too open for any sort of maneuvering or escape attempts. There was no where he could get lost and if everything was frozen like this, any sign of life would give him away. Not to mention Hayner, Pence, and Olette could be in danger if he left.

“This town is his creation, right? Which means we don’t have time for questions. My orders are that you’re coming with me, conscious or not—and you don’t have to be in one piece either. So it’s your choice how this goes, Rox.” Rox. As if they were friends.

Roxas took a step back, swallowing his heart back down into place. Everything looked like it was being viewed in a melting magnifying glass. Everything kept shifting in focus, distorted and inconsistent.

<Uh-oh…>

Wasn’t that Axel doing that? If he was worried, that meant there was another person or monster coming? Was it the other man in the hooded coat? Or was it someone else ? Everything had been fine until that silver thing showed up—until the key in his hand showed up.

If it weren’t for that damn key—!

<“What’s going on?! ”> Roxas snarled, slamming the keyblade into the stage. It clattered loudly, spinning towards Axel.

But then, a light like an apologetic warmth encompassed his hand, and then he was holding his keyblade again. Roxas felt his eyes well up, felt his heart hammer in fear, felt his face flush with anger and embarrassment.

There was a noise, soft as a keyboard spring, Roxas expecting Axel to have brought company. He clutched his keyblade, whirling around as a man with a wrapped face stood behind him.

“So it was you.” Axel confirmed with a sarcastic sigh as he jumped back, spinning his chakrams until they caught fire, then launched them at the man. They slammed into a honeycomb barrier, a clinking like glass breaking as they collided, but nothing broke.

“Roxas!” The man called for him, as if stumbling through sounds, as his name was incomprehensible word salad, mind garble. A third unknown party who knew him. Was there a fourth? A fifth? How many more? How many people were coming for him? How many until he was left alone? “This man speaks nonsense!” They were all speaking nonsense!

“Roxas! Don’t let him deceive you!” Axel warned.

“Roxas!” The man scolded, flooding him with guilt.

“Roxas!” Axel argued, appalled he’d even consider siding with the man who hid his face.

“Roxas!” Roxas didn’t know who he should listen to.

“Roxas!” Roxas just wanted his friends.

“Roxas!” Roxas pressed his hands to his ears.

“Roxas!” “…I feel something there, from my before. It keeps calling to me.” █̨͝ ͝͏█̵͟͡ ̛█̷͢͝ ̧͏̷̸█͞ looked distant, as if they were living in a different moment than the one in their room with Roxas.

“Roxas!” He ignored them and the way it made his insides jerk in delight and longing at the sound of them fearfully calling for him.

“Roxas!” He couldn't help them, so why did they keep calling for him? Why did he still want to be with them when he was sure to only hurt them?

Roxas! <“Hayner…”>

Roxas—! <“Pence…”>

Roxas…! <“Olette…”>

“Hayner! Pence! Olette!”

The clocktower rang, chiming the hour.

Chapter Text

Hi. I'm putting this IN the fic so people don't miss it, skim over it or ignore it. You know that "creator chose not to use archive archive warnings" tag?

WATER TORTURE AND GORE WARNING

The height from the clocktower was awe-striking. Everything melted together like heated gold in the brilliant orange of twilight, a priceless commodity they got to preside over. Roxas couldn’t help but smile, biting at his mouth before he turned his attention to the glittering trophy. He paused for a moment, fingers lingering over the first crystal.

He couldn’t remember why, but he was trying to place why he wasn’t supposed to be up here. The yellow crystal reflected the light like liquid mercury, Roxas shoving away the feeling and tugging it out. He gave the crystal a gentle underhand toss to Olette, which she caught in her hand, quickly slapping the second over it as not to drop it. She opened her hands like a prized oyster, smiling softly at it.

The red gem glinted like sun on ocean waves as Roxas tossed it to Hayner, who caught it without so much as blinking. The green gemstone was murky like a grass in morning mist, Pence fumbling to catch it so it wouldn’t shatter down below. He gave Roxas a wide smile, Hayner smirking.

Roxas plucked his remaining blue crystal from the trophy, it breaking away with a snap. He discarded the trophy by his side, watching how the crystal caught the light and gave him a sorrowful nostalgia of a far away home he’d never been to. He held it up to the light, watching the colors dazzle him like a kaleidoscope.

“As promised.” The word promise made the back of his skull tingle, a memory desperate to wade through the hazy fog and rise to the surface.

“Thanks a ton, Roxas!” Pence copied him, holding the crystal out to the sunlight.

“One more treasure for us to share.” Hayner gave a wide smile as he followed suit, Olette joining in.

“I have a present too—for all of us!” Olette excitedly pocketed her crystal, reaching into the bag she’d brought with her and had insisted to hide the contents of. She pulled out four ice creams in perfectly clear wrapping, Roxas shooting up in surprise.

That was it—they promised to take him up to the clocktower to eat ice cream on his birthday. They’d never been up on the clocktower together like this before. Roxas shouldn’t be up here yet. They promised. They promised when they took him that it would be special—

Roxas slipped.

His body felt like wax in water, floating to the surface when he was angry, then being weighted to the bottom once he cooled down. He felt like he was drowning in a vast sea with no purchase, no support.

The glass of the tank was cold, his wings weighted by the water, his tail uselessly lashing around and forming bubbles. He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t need to breathe, but breathing calmed him down.

Roxas had lunged again, the space between them shrinking, the glint of his keyblades reflecting light from the tower. Riku hadn’t kept Roxas talking long enough, hadn’t distracted him enough, wasn’t strong enough, and wasn’t brave enough.

A Nobody with echoes of Sora’s feelings, with friends who were his strength—Roxas was bound to win from the start.

But Roxas had lost a piece of his heart, leaving him to bleed out in his own chest. He allowed himself to be taken by surprise by his own untimely anguish. Riku hadn’t been able to win without relying on a ravaged part of his past, without putting on a blindfold and shutting out the light.

Roxas had expected Riku to kill him. Roxas had selfishly decided for just a moment to leave Pence and Olette on their own. He couldn’t protect them, so he knew he’d only end up hurting them more. But that moment was all it took for Riku to seize victory. But Riku hadn’t killed him. He’d left him in a tank where the water froze him in one second, burned him the next.

It was torture.

He lashed his tail again, screaming, forced out of his human shell by the shock to his system, by the bloating in his head.

“Come now. There’s no need for all of that. We both know what you are.” The man with the wrapped face stood in front of the tank, arms behind his back and legs spread as if he belonged to the military, looking down his nose at him.

Roxas was an unfortunate necessity.

The freezing water forced his wings down, Roxas clawing at the tank, desperate to come up for air, to calm himself down, to find a moment to think. He swallowed, spitting and retching into the water, just to choke it down again.

“Air isn’t a necessity for a Nobody, ” he reminded, the water scalding his throat, Roxas unable to force the world into focus. “No need to try so hard. You’ll find where you’re going is more to your abhorrent tastes.”

Roxas screamed, large air bubbles floating up, the ice water making his overgrowth curl in on itself, dry out. Roxas choked, the broiling water forcing him to flail like a marionette as he scratched at the surface of the tank, slamming shoving, sobbing.

“Be complacent, would you?” The man sounded bored, barely annoyed. “Naminé!” he barked, barely turning his head over his shoulder. The room was dark, the glow of several monitors behind him.

He was met with silence.

He turned his back to Roxas, a creature with a capacity for violence that could tear whole worlds asunder, before striding out of the room.

Roxas’ lungs burned while the water froze. Maybe he wouldn’t have lost to Riku if Hayner had been alright. Maybe Hayner would have been alright if he’d went out looking sooner. Maybe Hayner would have been alright if he’d run faster. Maybe he’d have been alright if Roxas had just immediately dragged him out of the corridor. Maybe he’d have been alright if Roxas hadn’t swallowed his heart. Maybe he’d have been alright if Roxas had killed █̨͝ ͝͏█̵͟͡ ̛█̷͢͝ ̧͏̷̸█͞ that night. Maybe Hayner would have been okay if Roxas bled out in their hideout. Maybe Hayner would have been okay if Roxas had just sucked it the fuck up and taken off his coat and let his friends wear his clothes on occasion. Maybe Hayner would have been okay if Roxas wasn’t so goddamn useless.

Maybe Hayner would be alive if Roxas hadn’t fucked up everything he decided to touch like the disgusting monster he was.

The man strode back into the room with the grace of royalty, Roxas struggling, sobbing as his wings were weighted down, threatening to tear.

< I have to apologize…! Let me out, I have to say I’m sorry! >

“Apologies imply compassion, remorse. Nobodies feel no such thing. If you’re going to attempt a ruse, try something less pathetic.”

Maybe if Roxas kept up with his pruning. Maybe if Roxas locked them all away in the castle. Maybe if Roxas had eaten their delicate hearts. Maybe if Roxas had learned echoes of cruelty rather than kindness, this wouldn’t hurt. Maybe if he’d learned savagery rather than benevolence, he’d be strong enough to break out of here. Maybe he’d have torn Riku to fucking pieces over leaving him alive, even with Sora’s memories because Sora wouldn’t have meant anything.

< Please! Please, I have to talk to them! >

“Begging is unbecoming for anyone with a heart, yet alone you.”

Maybe if he’d given up sooner, agreed to go back to Sora. Maybe if he’d been more careless, gotten himself caught while his friends still were wary of him and the kind of monster he was. Maybe if he’d been more obedient and done exactly what Xemnas asked whenever he wanted and never desired anything in return. Maybe if he’d felt more guilt over the human hearts he’d eaten and gotten rid of himself first.

All of these maybes, and not a single one of them had come about in reality. All it would have taken was the slightest deviance, either to make him holy and hellfire, and things would have been different. Roxas was indecisive. Roxas was so stuck in the middle he resulted in neither. Roxas was nothing.

“Diz, he’s been in that tank for days with no sign of relenting to Naminé’s powers.” The voice was distant, Roxas stationary, practically an embalmed curiosity in a jar.

“Then she needs to try harder. ” The water heated up—he writhed, all sparks to his nerves that ignored his own bodily autonomy.

“What if Naminé isn’t the problem? You know how strong Sora’s heart is.” His lungs were full of water, forcing him to the bottom of the tank. He’d curled up to avoid putting weight on his hands or feet, both blistered from the heat of the water and overexposure.

“Are you implying these things have hearts? ” His cheek brushed the tank—he winced, bleached skin peeling away from his face and floating up into the top of the tank with several others. 

“No I’m—I’m just saying, Sora was strong. I wouldn’t be surprised that this part of him is too. We might accidentally kill him if this keeps up, then we won’t ever be able to wake up Sora.”  The water heated, Roxas twitching and trying to keep his body still, a water flooded blister bursting on his thigh.

“Are you speaking just to listen to yourself or are you offering an alternative?” The typing on the keyboard stopped.

“Even if we know it doesn’t really have feelings, I know what it’s like to lie to yourself so thoroughly you believe in the lie you made. So, if it thinks it has feelings, let's use those to our advantage.”

“What dreams did you have for the future, I wonder?” The voice was soft, a hazy, sanitary white just in the doorway. “Did you even feel like you could see your future…? I can’t…After you…I don’t know what’ll happen to me.”

The voice stepped into the room, white swallowing the drab colors inside of it, consuming the life in them. < I’ll tell you a secret. When you close your eyes to the lie, you’ll see the reality of that place for what it is. When you awaken from the dream you’ve made for yourself, will you still be you or will you have given up and become Sora? >

“What are you doing?”

The white violently recoiled in on itself.

There was movement, green zeroes and ones, then silence and darkness. He wanted his friends.

“That’s…that’s Roxas…?”

“Roxas…!”

Pence. Olette. His friends.

He peered his eyes open, the water soaking into his skull and bloating them, ruining his vision. But he’d know them anywhere, know their voices, the inflection of how they called for him, the way they stood from outline alone.

“What did you do to him!” Olette.

“Nothing he wouldn’t have done to you. Look at it—really look. This is the thing that was parading around under the guise of being your friend.” Roxas would have winced if movement wouldn’t hurt him.

“We know what he looks like already! Let him out!” Olette.

The man in red was silent for a moment, then laughed from his belly. “So you knew! I see. But you, you’re quiet.”

Pence. He was talking about Pence.

“Has this creature wronged you?”

“Piss off!” Olette. He could hear her footsteps, barely see her through blurry eyes as she stood between the man in red and her boys. She was always angrier than he gave her credit for.

“No need to tremble like a frightened rabbit while pretending to be a wolf, my dear.”

“Don’t call me that and don’t touch me, you creep! It wasn’t Roxas’ fault!” Roxas could barely make out his hand reaching for her and Olette yanking back. He wanted to tell him to get away from his friends, but not even the whispers would come.

“Wasn’t it?”

“I’m gonna—!” Her hair whipped around her face as she looked around for something to beat him senseless with.

“Olette…” Pence called for her, stopping her as she grabbed for a pipe.

“He’s wrong! ” she insisted, being met with silence. “ …Pence…! ” Olette’s voice broke with desperation. “You…you two talked about it, right…? We were all okay, right…?”

“But what about Hayner…?” Pence reminded.

“I literally can’t believe you right now—you’re always such a coward! Move!”

The glass shattered, Roxas spilling from the tank like an embryo. He coughed, gagged and vomited water as Olette dropped the pipe and reached for him, Roxas pulling back and wincing.

He missed them. All he wanted was them.

“I’m sorry—oh my gosh, I’m so sorry…Roxas—hey, no, no, come on, wake up…pleas—”

Roxas was awake before any of them, limbs tangled in theirs, specs of dust catching the light of the morning rays. Through hazy, half open eyelids, light blurred on his lashes, casting glimmers in his view. He watched them all breathe, the rhythmic motion between the three of them out of sync. Roxas closed his eyes again, floating on the edge of sleep, half submerged in it, half exposed to consciousness.

The analog clock read 11:11 when he opened his eyes again, his arms empty. Roxas nestled up into blankets that smelled like fabric softener and leave-in conditioner. Muffled laughter drifted through the closed bedroom door, dishes clinking against each other in the kitchen. He blinked, eyes not registering the view before him as his thoughts fell apart like wet cotton balls.

He’d known they’d transferred the tank he was in into a simulated world and that simulated version of his friends had saved him.

He had known from the start none of it was real.

He knew and he wanted it so badly. He wanted to believe Hayner was alright. That Pence didn’t hold anything against him. That Olette didn’t have a reason to be angry.

But he knew. He knew everything was fake and he insisted it wasn’t. He persistently told himself, through all of the hapstance and coincidence, that this world was real. In turn, the world would stop him in the moments when he couldn’t keep up his own act.

This world gave him everything he wanted and all he wanted was for his friends to be happy and safe and for them to love him.

Roxas had dreamt about a boy he’d never met, but who he knew everything about since he’d been in his wish granting fantasy world. He had dreams about Sora, but when he woke up this time, it was flailing and in a cold sweat. He’d been alone, falling through a void with no light, no stained glass.

“I’m dreaming…” he insisted. He sunk back down into his bed, a shadow in the corner of his room behind his door. He jerked up, staring at it for a long moment as it remained soaked in darkness, unmoving.

He wasn’t sure how long he stared at it, but at some point, his room was bathed in a familiar orange glow and the shadow had vanished. He reminded himself to breathe. He got up out of bed, knowing he’d be unable to go back to sleep despite how early it still was.

Maybe he could go have Hayner unlock his front door for him and crawl into bed with him, let him go back to sleep and just listen to him breathe, just listen to him be alright, even if it was fake. His head hurt.

Chapter Text

Roxas could barely bring himself to pay attention. The clocktower had stopped ringing and he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d ever heard it chime in the real world—he wouldn’t be surprised if it was broken. If it got regular maintenance, it would be harder for Hayner, Pence, and Olette to constantly break and enter onto the roof of it.

But when Olette glared at him, Roxas couldn’t tell if she was waiting for him to agree or was angry with him because he hadn’t been listening to her.

“Uh…” He shrunk under her gaze, Olette sighing in annoyance.

“Come on Olette, Roxas clearly doesn’t wanna talk about the assignment. We only have three days left of summer break and we gotta spend it writing papers? Booorrriiing!” Hayner groaned, tossing a dart at the board. He offered one to Roxas, who tossed it while barely looking, making dead center like he always did.

“We talked about this at the beginning of summer break! You said you’d do it at least three days before our break ended with no arguing.” Three days left, then what? Were there really three days left? He’d never been to school, what would happen then? Would they just keep saying there were more days until school the way they had been? An endless, eternal week?

“Did I?” Hayner asked, looking at Roxas, who shrugged, before he tossed another dark, missing the board completely.

Olette narrowed her eyes at him.

“Okay, already. Fine—you win. We’ll do the stupid independent study. So, anyone got any bright ideas?” Hayner asked, flopping down next to Roxas, who again, didn’t miss his target on the dart board.

“Well…actually, I’ve heard a ton of weird rumors about places over by Sunset Station.” Pence offered. “Like how the steps by the train count different going up and down, a strange bag that moves all on its own, stuff like that. We can investigate the rumors and write about how we collected evidence and investigated.” Pence glanced at Olette for approval as Hayner tossed all the darts in Roxas’ lap.

“Dude, seriously?! Let’s do it, these sounds awesome!”

“Sounds good to me!” Olette agreed, content so long as Hayner was actively participating.

“I’ll do whatever you guys want.” Roxas agreed, haphazardly tossing all of the darts, each one hitting a different target, but hitting a target all the same. Hayner gaped in disbelief at him.

“I hate that you’ve always been really good at that,” Pence sighed.

“What—the target is literally just a few feet in front of me.”

“Great cool, the wonder of the hang out, Roxas never misses—save it for the arcade! Come on, we should get a move on!” Hayner grabbed for Olette’s hand, rushing out with her in tow. None of them could tell if Hayner was excited or if he just wanted to get the project over with, but either way, he was leading the charge now.

Pence snorted, getting up and offering Roxas his hand. “Come on—lets go before he decided to try to carry Olette on a skateboard again.”

“That was me,” Roxas reminded, taking his hand as they headed out into the alleyway.

“Was it? I distinctly remember him screaming.”

“Yeah, because he was on my back. You were mad you slept in and didn’t get it on video.”

“Oh yeaaaah!” Pence snapped his fingers, pointing them at Roxas. “Yeah, you’re right! Well, we should probably stop him from repeating it because I don’t have my camera.”

“But when you do, it’s fair game for us to crash into stuff?” Roxas raised a teasing eyebrow, Pence giving him a wide grin.

“Totally.”

Roxas snorted, still feeling like he was in a fog, but glad Pence was there to try to work him out of it. He leaned over, resting his head on his shoulder.

“Thanks for walking with me and not leaving me behind.”

“Of course. I’d miss you too much.” Pence teased, but Roxas felt his chest tighten, ribs constricting his overgrowth. It hurt to hear that. Did the real Pence miss him this much? Or did he blame him and wish he’d stay away forever? Roxas closed his eyes for just a moment while they walked and tried not to think about it.

For the most part, the train cars were empty. The only people who seemed to be going to Sunset Station were a few couples for the local eateries. Everyone else was going to Market Place to get school supplies, weekend dinner plans, and so on.

Roxas watched as a pair in another car whispered to each other, the girl giggling before she kissed his cheek. He could read her lips, but it didn’t take a genius to know what she’d said. He felt a pang of jealousy.

A glimmer caught his eye, Olette’s yellow crystal glimmering and reflecting light. Roxas realized Hayner and Pence had theirs out as well, a moment of before, a new safety net instead of the tower. Roxas gave a grin as he watched the three of them, wanting to watch the world kaleidoscope into blue distorted fragments.

But when he reached into his pocket, his trophy crystal was nowhere to be found. Not his side pocket, back pocket, nothing. He’d fallen off of the clocktower and who knows where this world had taken his precious memento.

He couldn’t help but feel his overgrowth squeeze and for just a moment, he wondered what would happen to the fragile world he’d let himself into if he let everything shatter. But he didn’t. He kept himself together, forcing himself to breathe.

“You okay, Rox?” Pence asked, reaching over to hold his hand. Roxas gave it a squeeze.

“Yeah…I just misplaced my crystal from the trophy is all…Feeling a little left out watching you guys.” He gave a smile that was more guilt than apology.

“Oh, what?” Hayner asked incredulously. “Dude, it’s been a day!”

“I know, I know. It’s gotta be in my room somewhere…I mean after the clocktower…” He had to have gone home because that’s where he’d woken up, or so the narrative would be.

“I can help you look for it after we go home for the day if you want.” Pence offered.

“It’s fine, it’s probably just in my other pants or rolled out into my laundry somewhere,” Roxas reassured, unsure if it was for himself or the rest of them. He was still with them. He was still included.

The train pulled up to the station.

“Did we wanna start with the stairs since they’re right here?” Pence offered, Hayner starting his count as Roxas started his decent.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

He reached the step before the bottom—

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

This was his own fault.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

He'd wanted this repetition, to linger in a memory.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

Now he just wanted it to end.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

He didn't want to do this anymore.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

He was tired of the same safe thing, over and over.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

A stair.

"Roxas, what are you—"

"Screw the stairs!" he yelled, jumping over the ledge, landing so hard he felt the weight of his body ricochet from the ground back up into his legs.

"Hell yeah, anarchy!" Hanyer cheered.

"I dunno, I'd call it more civil disobedience," Olette countered.

"Both of you really need to pay attention in history class more," Pence scolded as he grabbed a map for tourists. The three of them made their way down the stairs, unaffected, as if everything was fine.

Of course setting wouldn't effect itself.

Roxas shoved the thought aside and met them at the bottom.

“Olette and I are gonna go and talk to people about some of the rumors so we can investigate them,” Hayner declared.

“We are?” Olette asked, this as much news to her as it was to the rest of them.

“Yeah, come on! It’ll make this go quicker, won’t it? We’ll be like, super sexy investigative journalists!” Hayner explained as he was already making his way ahead and expecting her to follow. Olette gave Pence and Roxas a nod and a smile before rushing off after him, locking her arms around one of his once she caught up.

“Welp, there they go.” Pence shook his head, reaching for Roxas’ hand. “I’m gonna mark everything on a copy of the map here—maybe with stickers. I can get another copy before we go and we can use it as part of our presentation.”

“Holy crap you’re gonna use your stickers?”

“Duh, you sticker hoarder,” Pence teased with a wide grin as they made their way past a cafe. Roxas paused, glancing inside, their bake case visible from the window. “…Did you eat?” Pence asked.

“I can eat.”

Pence sighed. “I’ll take that as a no—wait here,” he scolded, shoving the map into his backpack before making his way inside. Roxas smiled, watching him go inside.

Something brushed against his leg, Roxas turning around to watch a ball vanish as it bounced away from his foot. It was rather big, like the kind of beach ball the kids would play with in the square.

But it vanishing gave him pause for unease. He glanced around, the world feeling static, stationary. Everyone inside the cafe was still moving, but the outside felt empty, as if it had been hollowed out.

Another ball flew out from an alleyway, Roxas jumping back as he realized what it was, mouth going dry. He rushed over to the alleyway as another flew out, Roxas ducking it and confirming his suspicions.

They weren't beach balls—they were bundles of flesh. Matted bits of hair stuck out from the clumps, thick blue veins pulsing along their form. Worst of all, they smelled terrified, of aura and hearts.

Roxas didn't entertain the idea that they'd been human. He didn't entertain the idea that they were still human. But the flesh bulbs put on a show anyway, throwing themselves at him, as if to run away from the wall, the dead end.

"I didn't know…" Roxas croaked. The flesh bulbs threw themselves at him, practically begging for salvation, for help. The alleyway was a dead end with a live-wire of electricity, the flesh bulbs meeting the edge of the alleyway before vanishing, as if being swallowed back to where they'd come from just to be sent running again, an endless loop.

The meat casings for the hearts inside kept coming, and the closer Roxas got to the wall, the louder they got. Muffled words, things that Roxas didn't understand the way they hadn't then. He covered his ears, but the guilt ate away at him as more came rushing out, trying to escape.

He jumped, ankle catching on one as he fell face first, nose crunching into the ground. He pressed a hand to his face, blood gushing from his nose. The flesh bulbs groaned as they rushed past him, incomprehensible.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know…" Roxas ducked to avoid a flesh bulb, the familiar smell punching him in the gut. He stumbled up onto his feet, blood dripping down onto his shirt, knowing he had to stop the electricity.

"Please—I have a family who needs me…!" The fleshbulb begged, Roxas twisting out of the way, finally close enough to understand it. He'd gotten close enough to his friends to understand what it meant to lose someone.

"I have two twin siblings Toonie and Loonie who always get into trouble and need someone to look out for them…!" There wasn't a pattern to how they came out of the wall, they just came, frantic and desperate. Roxas was unable to stop himself from mirroring that same feeling, unable to focus.

"I've got a brother named Pence who wants help with his college applications next year…!" A fleshbulb slammed square into Roxas gut, warm and heavy, sending him flying onto his back. He turned onto his side and dry heaved, trying to ignore the smell of a delicious heart.

Another one came flying by and avoided him while begging, "And I got another baby sis, Penny who barely knows me yet…!"

Hayner had made excuses for him, but that didn't mean Roxas had been forgiven or that he hadn't been wrong. Roxas fumbled to stand up again, wiping at his nose, his mouth. He had to stop this. He had to stop the electricity. He had to stop her. He had to stop Larxene—

"Please…! Please, I wont tell anyone—!"

Frankie wasn't just a clump of meat with a heart to eat, he'd mattered. Roxas slammed himself into the electric wall, nauseous and covered in blood.

Everything went hazy.

“Woah!”

Roxas whirled around as Pence came running down into the alleyway.

“Oh—it’s just you! You’ve got a good arm to throw a ball that far. You know, I hear baseball season is ending soon—maybe someone back here was practicing for a match or something? This is a pretty decent distance.” Pence pulled a bagel with egg, cheese, avocado, and sun-dried tomatoes out of a bag and offered it to Roxas.

 Roxas took it, but glanced back at the wall. He couldn’t bring himself to ask if Frankie liked baseball as he followed Pence out of the alleyway.

They sat down at a bench as Pence made notes in his phone that he texted to Hayner and Olette, who sent a selfie back of them with smoothies.

Hayner: No info at the smoothie shack about anything nearby, but we did hear about weird noises in the tunnel from one of the customers that came in

Pence: Cool, we’ll go there after we eat brunch!

Pence sent a photo of their bagels in reply, Roxas already accustomed to the taste of clay.

Once they’d finished eating, Pence insisted they split up in the tunnels, but stay in a call with each other, which would make it easier to give play by plays of where the other was or if they found anything.

They’d cover more ground and get it over with rather quickly, meeting in the center and leaving together. Roxas could tell Pence had offered because he'd been reluctant to let go of his hand once they reached the entrance.

They wouldn’t be apart—that was a lie. Roxas was desperately clinging to these lies he’d told himself. He was scared to know it was all unraveling.

He put headphones in as he called Pence, refusing to happen upon whatever was causing the noises. He wanted there to be nothing here.

Nothing. Nobody.

Pence started talking the second Roxas called him. He was grateful for his voice, but the thought of being unable to see him, of something mocking a person he loved?

But he didn’t know of a Nobody or a Heartless that could do that.

But why did that concept feel familiar?

<Haven’t you forgotten something important?>

“Huh?” Roxas turned around as the voice echoed in his head, as if he had no headphones on, as if it was coming from all around the service tunnels.

“I said that then Pen thought it was so funny that she did it again, but had Lonnie get their phone out and record it as if it just happened to be something that was caught on camera.” Pence repeated.

“No, not—nevermind.” Roxas didn’t want to listen for it, didn’t want it to repeat itself.

“Did you hear something? Should I stop talking?” Pence offered, Roxas shaking his head.

“No, no it’s fine. I didn’t hear anything, it’s fine…” Roxas trailed off as he made his way into a big opening and saw a small porcelain doll sitting in the corner.

<Do you abandon all of your friends like this?> Someone had taken a black marker to its face, scribbling out any distinguishable features. It was naked, missing its wig, its body was marked like a surgery for the removal of everything inside.

“What the…?” Roxas took one headphone out, the voice echoing around his head, around the tunnel.

Had it been left here by someone? It didn’t look familiar, so it couldn’t have been him, but the voice was coming from the doll, that much he was sure of.

“Roxas? You find something?” Pence asked, Roxas afraid to speak, to look down at his phone and take his eyes off of the doll. They should have video called.

He approached it, dread pulsing in his stomach, relief, dread, relief, dread. He was glad it was here, but he didn’t know why, or why the doll terrified him in the same breath.

<Why do you always have to give up on us?>

He picked up the doll, trying to see past the marker on its face, trying to see anything distinct. He turned it around, no drawstring on the back, no indication it had anything inside of it like a motion sensor or anything else that would let it talk.

“Roxas?”

<Roxas.>

He dropped the doll and his phone, the doll's side shattering as it hit the ground and his headphone getting yanked out of his ears.

<It was hard for me too, you know…You think you’re the only one suffering?> it asked as its head turned to look at him through an inky gaze, Roxas taking a step back.

“This is different…That was different too,” he tried to argue, but his voice felt weak, strangled by his own unsurity. Who was this? What was this? It felt familiar, but it was clearly ruined, left here to rot.

His head hurt.

<What do you think it’s like having to befriend someone like you? Someone who pushes everyone he held close so far away? Won’t you hold me so tight that you strangle me once more?> The doll asked, struggling to get up. It failed, its leg giving out, face smashing into the floor.

“I didn’t do that!” His own voice echoed back at him, making him wince at his own volume.

<You’re right, at least not with me. How did he taste? How were you any better than I was? You took pieces of them too. Don’t you want pieces of me? Aren’t I also your friend?> it asked, struggling to stand, to reach him as he took another step back.

“Stop it…” Roxas begged, mouth dry, the phantom taste of a heart in the back of his throat, the pain of loss in his chest.

His head hurt.

<Don’t you want to consume all of us, make us one with you? Won’t that make you feel more complete, more at ease? Just two more, right?>

Roxas gripped at his shoulder as the marrow between his bones struggled, desperate to expand, to expose him for the monster he was. He held it back. “Stop it! Shut up! I didn’t want to hurt you or Hayner!”

<But you did, Roxas. You don’t get to decide if your actions hurt us or not, we do. We ended up like this because of you and you can’t even be bothered to apologize can you?> it asked, turning over onto its back, trying to sit up. It’s body was too heavy, falling back onto the ground, a large crack spreading along its torso where his scar was.

“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…! I didn’t want to hurt anyone, I just—”

<But you’re still here…You know where you should be and it isn’t here. Even if I was wrong, you abandoned the choice you made, just like you abandoned me and Axel. You left him and your other friends all alone…> The doll sat up, its head smashed back into the ground. It sat up, smashed, smashed, smashed its head into the ground.

“Stop it…Stop it, I’m sorry…”

<We love you, and you left us.> Its head was leaving pieces all over the floor, it was breaking itself trying to reach him.

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry, I’m sorry—I’m so sorry…” Smash. Smash. He sat next to it, head pressed against the wall, palm pressed over his eye in an attempt to alleviate the pressure in his skull.

His head hurt.

<Didn’t you promise…?>

Smash.

Smash.

“I’m sorry…”

Smash.

Smash.

He picked the doll up and held it close to his chest, over his heart.

Smash.

Smash.

He felt blood dripping down the back of his skull.

Smash.

Smash.

His head hurt.

Smash.

Smash.

Someone was far away, calling for him.

Smash.

Smash.

Everything went hazy.

“Roxas? Roxas, hey! Jeeze, Vivi…you gotta be careful swinging that thing around, he got knocked out cold.” Pence turned his back to Roxas to scold Vivi. Roxas’ vision was bleary as he struggled to open his eyes.

Vivi stood there, holding a struggle bat, Roxas still propped up against the wall in the corner, taking the doll’s place. Roxas looked around for the doll, but it was nowhere to be found.

“You okay?” Pence asked, crouching down in front of him, Roxas still looking around for the…what was he looking for? Pence offered him his phone, a crack in the screen from when he’d dropped it.

“Uh, yeah. My head just hurts, is all…Can we get out of here?” Roxas asked, voice cracking.

Pence offered him his hand, helping him up, and then not letting it go. “Let’s go up to Sunset Hill. I already told Hayner and Olette to meet us there. Then they can keep an eye on you while I go get you something to drink and a pain killer,” Pence offered, Roxas’ vision swimming.

“Yeah…Thanks.” Roxas grumbled, deciding to let Pence lead him rather than focus on the walk.

Roxas wanted to ask Pence what he’d heard, if he’d heard anything at all. He wanted to know what happened, if Pence had seen anything. But setting didn’t effect setting, so even if Pence had seen anything, he would have ignored it or acted as if nothing was wrong.

Pence acting as if nothing was wrong was enough to make him smile bitterly at the thought. Pence was always quick to look for something being wrong. The fact that Pence wasn’t the one asking more questions just reminded Roxas that this was all fake.

Pence had learned by now that appearances weren’t everything. He wouldn’t have taken the first simple explanation. He wouldn’t have checked with Roxas to see if it was Vivi who’d knocked him out. He wouldn’t have—

“Looks like they’re not here yet…Want me to wait?” Pence offered as Roxas sat down on the ground by the railing.

“No, please drown me in ibuprofen and soda. I’m not going anywhere and I’m sure they’ll be here soon.” Roxas groaned, tipping his head back and closing his eyes.

“You know, as much as you get hit in the head and hit your head, it’s amazing you’re not a total idiot,” Pence joked, making Roxas smile.

“Ah, but I’m close,” Roxas reminded as he peered an eye open to look at him. “But yeah, it’s fine. I’m just gonna not sleep and try not to die, it’s cool.” He closed his eyes again, Pence running a hand through his hair.

“Call if you need me?”

“Always.”

Roxas listened to Pence make his way down the hill again before opening his eyes again. He scrubbed his face with his hands, head still pounding. He looked around, taking in his surroundings.

It was a decent vantage point of the train, an empty space with a clock, some bushes, and a collection of trash bins with a large burlap sack sitting amongst the collection. It was big enough to practically be used as a beanbag chair and the contents didn’t give themselves away by pressing against the bag, which meant it wouldn’t fit in any of the trash cans.

He vaguely remembered Pence talking about an unusual bag. Would this huge sack count as a bag? Was it a backpack? A purse? Travel luggage?

Roxas used the rail to help himself up, frowning with resignation as unease collected in his stomach. Always when he was alone with his own thoughts did the world start to fall apart. What was he outside of being around his friends, outside of the Organization?

“Come on, Sora. I thought you were stronger than that.”

“I am,” he spat at the memory of Riku’s goading. His face flushed with embarrassment. He wasn’t Sora. He approached the bag, as if to prove a point to nobody, to prove a point to himself.

Only when Roxas was close enough to smell the mold on it did it start to move. It rustled, adjusted, then barreled towards him, Roxas jumping out of the way to avoid it. He caught a glimpse of a tear in the bottom of the bag as something fell out.

A chunk of brick.

Humans made beautiful things. Social constructs, verbal languages, shows of affection, music—but Roxas couldn't hold those. But he could hold a piece of their homes, a piece of their falsified security and familiarity.

Roxas rushed off after the bag, snatching up the brick. It had his things—it had his mementos. There were teeth cemented in the brick piece that weren't there before.

A dead insect with a glimmering body.

Roxas was told he couldn't keep human bodies or they'd rot. Even their bones would go bad, even their blood would evaporate eventually. Humans collected dead things too. Insects, animals, glass jars and glass parts. Roxas was human in the regard for wanting to maintain the beauty of life in his hands for eternity.

Roxas reached for the bag, it roughly throwing itself away from his grasp, escaping him, trying to take his early memories with it. Live insects, ants and maggots, clung to and tried to eat away at the beetle's corpse.

A piece of jewelry.

Humans adorned themselves in colors and gems, longing to be content with themselves by modification. They changed their appearance as often as the tide came in, glorious in their need for validation from themselves and their peers. Unnatural plumage and hazardous colors always made Roxas interested.

The jewelry was clutched in a severed hand. It’s fingers twitched. Roxas fumbled, slipping on it in his shock and windmilling to catch himself. He snatched up the hand with the jewelry, cradling it in his arm with his other treasures before throwing himself onto the bag.

"Stop it! Those are mine! Stop ruining them!"

A scab he wasn’t sure was his.

Humans were also very self sustaining in regards to their recovery. Their body would fasten itself up, collect at the wound and seal over it with their very flesh. Roxas had to make conscious efforts to keep his insides contained or use potions on any severe injuries, but potions did leave the healed spot feeling numb for various lengths of time depending on the severity. Healing hurt.

The scab was attached to a block of warm flesh, blood collecting underneath the sickening shade of purple. The bag tried to buck him off, Roxas clinging to it, to his familiar semblance of repetitive normalcy he'd collected.

The empty head of a dandelion.

Small humans were so fragile. Swaddled in blankets, held close. One wrong move, one wrong twist—the Organization had kept a close eye on him, swaddled him in shadows and lies and coats to hold off the darkness while telling him the skin he was in was a lie. But if he blew everything away, made a wish on a dandelion, the seeds of his desires would plant themselves in the earth and be given shape.

The dandelion head was stuck into eye socket of a particularly small skull with its jaw missing. The bag was desperate to lose him, leave him empty handed as he struggled to keep his things and hold on. He'd have to sacrifice his past corrupted collections for the potentially preserved contents of later mementos if this kept up.

A copper wire.

It had been used to make a tree sculpture, but it had lost a lot of stones and was covered in dried glue. It was a stolen and repurposed things, like everything else in his life, even his name. But he thought it was beautiful, even though it had been thrown away.

The wire was twined around a knee as if to cut off circulation or stop the spread of an infection, the bones exposed and carelessly fractured at both ends of the severed leg. He was going to lose everything. He'd already lost so much and couldn't bear to see his treasures ruined and scattered all over in the trash.

Roxas closed his eyes as he let go of everything to cling to the bag. If it was going in order of his days, of his collection, he couldn't let it get too far. He'd been given so many things by his friends, after all.

The thought of the things they'd given him looking like that made him sick.

Everything went hazy.

Chapter Text

Roxas opened his eyes to a dog licking him. A whole dog. A living, complete, dog. Roxas exhaled, accepting the lie. He scratched at the dog’s head as it wagged its tail. No real dog would have ever gotten this close to him. Animals always avoided him, cowering and growling, hair raised.

“Oh hey! You made a friend!” Olette called as she made her way up the hill, Hayner in tow. The trash was missing, along with his malformed treasures.

“Aww, are you getting into trash? Are you making a huge mess and scaring the shit outta people? D’awww,” Hayner cooed, looking at Roxas with a shit eating grin on his face.

Roxas shoved at his hip, Hayner snorting and dropping down into cross-legged position to pet the dog. “Is it just me, or has everything’s answer been lame so far?” Hayner complained as the dog licked at his hands.

Olette sat on the other side of Roxas, reaching for his hand. “How’s your head?” she asked as Roxas leaned his head down onto her shoulder.

Hayner took out his phone, glancing from the collar on the dog down to his phone, then back up at the collar before pressing it to his ear. It rang, Hayner getting up to talk to the owner of the dog.

“Hurts,” he mumbled. “Pence is getting me some pain killers. Hopefully some soda.” Olette kissed his head, Roxas humming. They listened to Hayner talk to the owner of the dog, scratching its head on occasion as he spoke. 

Pence came back by the time Hayner hung up, a twelve pack of soda and meds in hand.

“Yoink!” Hayner snatched up the sodas, taking one for himself before setting the rest carefully in Roxas’ lap. “I’m gonna take the dog to its owner. Olette if you wanna stick with these two and then we can meet back here to look for the ghost train when it's around the time it's been known to be seen, we can do that.”

“Sure.”

“Ghost train?” Roxas asked, cracking open a soda, Olette tugging her own out of the plastic ring.

“Yeah. We heard that there’s a ghost train that shows up sometimes. No one’s ever been seen getting on or off of it. Olette can probably explain it better, she took notes while we interviewed people. Be back, call if you need me.” Hayner whistled for the dog, as he started to jog, the dog following after him.

Roxas swallowed the ibuprofen, Olette pulling out her phone as Pence sat down next to them. “Yeah. It tends to show up a bit before the last train, but if people are waiting by the station, it won’t show.”

“So how are we gonna keep people from waiting for the last train?” Pence asked, opening his own soda.

“Actually…we ran into Fu and Rai,” Olette winced, as if she was expecting them to be angry. “We asked if they would have people wait at the bottom of the stairs for us and they agreed to corral traffic. We have to take a photo of the train if we see it and then we have to pay for their tickets home, but they agreed.”

“I was about to say it sounds too good to be true,” Pence snorted, laying down on his back, holding his soda on his stomach.

“Right? But if that’s all it takes and if we really do get to see the ghost train because of it, how cool would that be?” Olette gushed.

“Vivi was in the tunnels, right? Does that mean Seifer is around here somewhere too?” Roxas asked, biting at the rim of his soda can. He could probably eat it right in front of them and they’d act as if nothing was wrong.

“Probably. We haven’t seen him though.”

“Same.” Pence added, knowing he and Roxas had been split up enough for it to be a plausibility. Olette tapped away at her phone, organizing and expanding on the notes they had so far as they let Roxas rest for a bit longer.

“We’ve done, what, four so far?” Roxas asked, looking over her shoulder. “Then we have the train we have to wait for and then what else?” He wanted to get this over with. They were mostly done already.

“A doppelganger supposedly somewhere back over by Sunset Terrace. The other one is back over in town by the haunted mansion. We’re probably gonna have to wait till tomorrow since we’re waiting for the last train anyway.”

“What, scared to investigate in the dark?” Olette teased with a light nudge to Pence, but Roxas found that idea immediately made him anxious.

“Yes,” he interrupted, brows furrowed.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“It’s okay. You were kidding.” Maybe he’d remembered Olette as the strong kind of person she tried hard to present herself as, but then she didn’t come off as considerate as she usually was. He felt like he should apologize to her. “Sorry…”

“No, it’s my fault. You’ve gone through a lot lately, of course you’d be feeling some sort of way about that idea.” Olette held his hand in hers, giving it a squeeze.

“I’m feeling better. Let’s go look for the doppelganger.” Roxas pulled his hand away from hers and stood up. Hayner was missing, Pence wasn’t asking questions, and Olette was being insensitive. These were wrong. This wasn’t right.

Roxas put his soda on top of the trash can and made his way down the hill, Pence and Olette scrambling up to follow after him.

What was he when he was left alone with his thoughts, when he was left all alone? 

“Here, go play hero with this.”

“Why…why did you come here? I came to fight for Belle…And though I am on my own, I will fight. That’s why I’m here.”

“Me too…I’m not…I’m not going to give up now…I came here…to find someone very important to me,” Roxas whispered softly, remembering how he hadn’t let himself become overtaken with the sweet sorrow of a solid defeat—how Sora hadn’t let himself. 

He’d been abandoned. His friends, companions, had left him all alone, done their jobs and what they thought was right at the time. But he knew what Sora’s pain in that moment had been. Wasn’t he doing the same thing? Forcing others to feel that sort of anguish?

Just one more day here, and then he’d leave and set everything straight, no matter how much the truth hurt. He owed it to them. They’d told him over and over, even in their doubt and fear, that ultimately they wanted him by their side.

They’d told him not to run away again. He gave himself a moment as he walked to try to remember a time when he, when Sora , had ever run away.

He couldn’t recall one.

Roxas quietly worried his palm against his chest.

“Sunset terrace is pretty big, did we wanna split up and look?” he called over his shoulder, not really looking at either of them.

“If you wanna.” Pence agreed.

“Yeah, we can meet back up on the hill if we don’t find anything in a half hour. If we do find anything, we call per usual.”

“Of course,” Olette agreed, Roxas putting more distance between them. He would be okay. He’d lied to himself long enough. He’d ask for just one more day for far too long.

He didn’t plan to look for anything. He planned to find a place to hide for a half hour and then go back to the hill. He found a small corner of Sunset Avenue with a waterfall, deciding this was a good a place as any.

But then there was that feel of being watched. He’d felt it in small spurts, at varying intervals the entire time he’d been in this simulated world. He didn’t know what it was and he didn’t want to. Usually, it would go away on its own, but this time it didn’t seem to be leaving him alone.

He sat down on the marble ledge in front of the waterfall, the back of his neck tingling. He’d been being watched. Was that what had been calling him? Or had that been the Nobodies? Axel? Diz? He turned away from the edge of the alcove, his own reflection catching his eye in the waterfall.

“And what is it you want? ” he snapped at it.

<Heart.> his reflection replied, Roxas jerking away from the waterfall, falling on his backside as he scrambled away. He stood up, his reflection cocking its head at him, still standing. Its eyes were glowing—yellow, animal—as if it were dark.

Roxas reminded himself to breathe, to remember the sensation of Hayner’s hand at his back. He needed to breathe in a calm, paced manner, not the erratic breathing that came from him and not the lack of as his reflection crawled out of the waterfall.

<Heart? Human heart?> it asked, resting like a gargoyle on the edge of the waterfall’s ledge, head still cocked.

“I…I don’t—” Roxas choked, stumbling to his feet. The shadow from the imaginary dark overtook his reflection, his own shadow being pulled into it until there was nothing left.

He should run—it would follow.

It would attack his friends—he’d be the one to hurt his friends.

He couldn’t do that again.

<Human heart? Want. Want human heart. Want. Hungry!> the reflection snapped at him, teeth, blood as dark as ink dripping from its maw as it crawled forward.

"I'm not human!" Roxas screamed, fingertips and toes numb, blood curdling in his heartspace. He wasn't. He was a monster, always had been. But he wanted them to love him regardless of that.

He tried so hard to blend in, to make them comfortable, but his skin always felt like it was too tight, too small. They loved a lie if they'd ever loved him at all.

<Human heart!> it insistently shrieked, lunging.

Roxas' spine snapped like the clipping of flower stems as he reared up on his hind legs, the joints in his fingers extending, nails as hard as the fangs he bared. His tail lashed, slamming into the ground so hard it left a small crater.

<" I'm gonna tear you apart—shut up! "> Roxas ducked its claw, the reflection dripping shadows that had formed into heartless ink onto his shoulder. Roxas jerked up, holding its face in his hands before he twisted.

The reflection's neck snapped in his claws easily—but that didn't stop it. It jumped back, fingers twitching where the front of its face used to be.

Roxas swallowed, blood ice cold, sludge in his veins. It wouldn't move, wouldn't flow right. That thing wasn't right either.

It seemed to panic for a moment, touching its throat, its shoulders. It stomped a foot, then screamed, the noise echoing around the open space in the tri-tones of a verbal whisper.

Roxas felt his knees go weak, his overgrowth tighten in on itself.

Small. Hide. Run, hide, danger, his body was telling him.

Human heart. A fragile human heart sat in his chest, terrified of exactly the kind of monster he was. How ironic. Maybe if he ate his own heart and regrew it, he could be considered self-sustainable.

The reflection dropped down onto all fours, its spine rising up out of its sternum as its ribs collapsed inwards. Wings snapped out of its chest, its claws tearing at the ground—its wing had a tear in it, the hole meshed with static data. Roxas' own wing ached with the memory just by looking at it.

Roxas waited for it to move, but it had gone still long enough for him to entertain the idea of it having died.

Then there was a sound. Or not. He couldn't tell. Roxas thought he was hearing things, straining so hard his ears were ringing as he sat there with adrenaline and anticipating clouding his senses.

<Nno…nooo…nnno…> A quiet whisper. Whispers didn't have volume the same way thoughts didn't. But it was quiet, barely audible, a little voice in the back of his head. Its vocal chord had been twisted, straining to press together enough to make noise.

Roxas knew everything was wrong. He knew it and yet he'd kept going, kept playing in the world he'd been given that just leeched off of him.

<Wa…nnnt…Jusss…t wa…nntt…> it croaked in his voice, a little louder. <Hu…nngr…yy, so hun…grrry…fff…eed…emmm…ptyyy w…orlll…dd, fff…eed hee…artt?> It raised up onto its feet, wings slack, neck still twisted the other way. It hasn't even tried to fix it, it had just accepted it. Roxas had just accepted it.

<Giiive? Uuup? Heaaart? >

Roxas laughed. He ran a claw through his hair and laughed so hard his eyes welled up and he couldn't breathe.

He was starving here and he knew it.

<Hunn…gg…rrryy…> it whined, begged as it took a step forward.

"Why not go eat Sora's heart? How pissed would they be, doing all of this for him, just to have some barely related manifestation off him?" Roxas was just talking to himself.

<Ss…ssooorrr…aaaaaa…aaaaaahhaaaa…Yooou…Sso…raaa…?>

Roxas grabbed the reflection by the skull and squeezed. His eyes were wide, manic, ink splattering everywhere and covering him.

<Just die already…!>

It reached up, fingers brushing against his wrist once, twice, then grabbed at him. Roxas' shoulder blades popped, wings shrouding them both.

<I said die ! No one wants something as worthless as you!!> He dragged the headless body up, up, up, until it felt like ice coated his lungs—then he dropped the reflection, letting it twist around in a freefall until he saw it splatter on the ground.

He made his descent, standing next to it. It was dead. It had to be. It had no head, its legs were twisted backwards, its ribs were poking out from between the soft marrow of its spine. It had to be dead now. It wouldn't haunt him anymore.

Its fingers twitched.

Rage strangled the relief that had welled up inside of him, Roxas slamming his foot down onto his fingers and breaking them with a guttural yell. He slammed on it again, and again, then its elbow, kneecaps, shoulders, collarbone, soaking himself in ink while screaming—

Everything went hazy.

"Hey Roxa—woah! Wow, my reflection just scared the beejeezers out of me!"

Roxas blinked at Pence. "…What?" he croaked, voice shaking, straining.

"From the waterfall! See, it—hey are you okay? You look really pale…" Pence placed a hand on his shoulder, Roxas' overgrowth thrumming along the course of his body.

“I wanna go home,” Roxas explained, voice quiet as he blinked away tears. The gentle hold of the simulation was never warm with comfort. The only thing it held was familiarity in distorted memories.

The tantalizing thought of what a simulated heart would taste like taunted him as Pence reached out to rub at his back.

“Okay. We can just save the ghost train stuff for tomorrow. Lemme just text Hayner and Olette, okay?”

Roxas nodded, sniffing, angrily wiping with his palm at his eyes that refused to stop welling up. Pence pulled out his phone, hesitating as he looked at Roxas. He put the phone to his ear, rubbing at his back.

“Hey. I think we might wanna call it a day for now.”

“What, why? Something happen?” Roxas could hear Hayner ask.

“Um…” Pence glanced over at Roxas, who pretended not to notice.

“Okay. We’ll meet you at the station then. Should we get anything before we go?” Hayner had asked.

“Did something happen?” Roxas could barely hear Olette, knew he shouldn’t have been able to hear Olette if he was human.

“Need anything?” Pence asked Roxas, who shook his head. “No, unless you two want something, we’re good stuff and food wise.” His hand wasn’t warm. The hand on his back should have been warm.

“Okay, see you there then.”

“See you.” Pence hung up, putting his phone back into his back pocket before turning to Roxas. He stood up, glancing at Pence before he started making his way back.

He needed to go home. Real home, not this hollowed out space in his chest where he decided he was alright with nesting.

He glared at the stairs, closing his eyes in defiance as he made his way up each one without counting, without focusing. He only opened them once he was sure he should be on the final platform, being met with a vibrant purple train. He blinked in surprise, listening to three pairs of feet rush up behind him.

No one was on board. The door was open, welcoming new passengers, the windows wishing stars.

What had she said about closing his eyes again?

He’d never seen this train before. Sora had never seen this train before. This wasn’t a memory or on purpose. The data world felt empty, hollow, nothing beneath the surface. But this train didn’t feel like that. It smelled like an old carpet, made the air taste like ozone after a magic spell was cast.

Whatever this was, it was real.

It was part of the real world.

It was granting his wish to go back.

Roxas took a step forward—and Hayner grabbed for his wrist. 

“What?” He snapped at the simulation, Roxas trying to yank his wrist back, but Hayner not letting go.

"Um…you would get hurt." He offered a lame excuse, a poor attempt at the world keeping him in check. Roxas narrowed his eyes at him, a slow, deliberate movement.

Would. Not could. It was playing on his fear of what he was expecting when he returned.

"Let's just go back," Hayner suggested, loosening his grip on his arm to let his fingers drift down to Roxas' hand. He  laced their fingers together as Roxas stared at his warm brown eyes and the way the light caught on his lashes.

His heart hurt.

He turned away, heart sinking as the train had vanished. But he knew, as much as he hated himself for it, that he’d already made his choice.

Just one more day with Hayner. Just one more. One more like everything was okay, like it was just yesterday before everything went to hell and not however long he'd been in here. Just one more, then one more, until he had a collection of a thousand yesterdays to look back on.

That's all he wanted because when tomorrow came, he wasn't sure he'd be able to face it. A tomorrow without Hayner would hurt too much. A tomorrow where he'd abandoned Pence and Olette again, even if it wasn't completely by choice. They'd put him here, but he'd been stated enough by it to not fight back.

How simple was he? How ignorant still? How placated? Where was all of his fight, all of his desperation from before? Where had it gone? Had he left it behind or had the real Hayner taken it with him?

Roxas squeezed his hand and nodded. "Yeah…let's go back." Back to when everything was alright, back one more day.

Just one more. He glanced over at the stairs before the train pulled in, Hayner tugging him on with Pence and Olette in tow.

What pathetic resolve he had.

Roxas watched as Pence adjusted his bandana in the mirror. The mirror was solid matte black, no reflection to be had, but Pence was acting as if it was fine. The store windows, glass, water—all matte black.

All so Roxas wouldn’t have to look at himself.

He couldn’t help the way the corner of his mouth quirked up, the slow drip like drying tar of his sanity vanishing. This place wasn’t good for him. It would fall apart and he wouldn’t be able to stop it because deep down he knew that’s what he’d eventually want.

How fickle was the heart to constantly seek out new comforts?

“Roxas?”

Roxas didn’t say goodbye as he got up to leave them because it didn’t matter. They weren’t real. They didn’t make him hungry, didn’t make him crave their presence, their laughter, their joy, their touch.

He couldn’t think of what else there could be that could possibly scare him in a seventh place except for maybe Sora. But even then, he knew he wasn’t scared of Sora, but losing himself to him.

<Did you mean to come out here, all on your own?>

Her voice flitted down to him from the mansion window, curtains in the breeze. Roxas closed his eyes, he was tired. He was also tired of wearing this skin.

<You told me, when they still had me in that tank…> Roxas slowly opened his eyes, the room a sterilized, unmoving white. <That if I wanted out, closing my eyes would help. >

Naminé smiled at him, her brows furrowed in apology. <Are you still unresolved?>

<I don’t know you well enough to feel comfortable putting all of my worries onto you…But you know that already, don’t you?> Roxas sighed, looking away from her and to the curtains. Her flesh decorated the walls, inked with memories. <These are mine…right?>

Roxas stood up, approaching the wall to look at one of him and Axel, his claws clicking along the floor.

<Does it scare you to know you don’t have any idea of who you are or who you should be?> she asked, Roxas looking at a drawing of a memory that didn’t belong to him. This one belonged to Sora. He hated how familiar it felt.

<Did it scare you?>

Naminé didn’t answer. Neither of them seemed to be comfortable answering each other. They were a lot alike in the regard they knew the answers to their questions, but how they also were scared of them.

<Over a year ago, some things happened…and I had to take apart the memories chained together in Sora’s heart. But now, I’m putting them all back exactly the way they were. It’s taken me a long time, but pretty soon, Sora will be his old self again. The process has been affecting you too, Roxas…>

<Why are you telling me that?> Roxas asked, turning to look at her.

<You hold half of what he is.>  Naminé still looked apologetic, still looked as though she was trying to explain how his murder was justified because everyone else wanted it.

<You miss him too…I can hear it in your voice.> Roxas couldn’t help but laugh, blinking away tears as his smile quickly turned into a grimace, into a frown, into him wiping away tears again. He looked at a drawing of Sora with Donald and Goofy.

 <I…>

<I don’t care about Sora!> Roxas yelled, Naminé clenching her hands in her lap, tensing up, unmoving. Roxas listened to the silence, how she’d attempt to be still enough to pretend she didn’t exist in that room with him.

Roxas tried to make himself smaller, tried to hide. “I…” His voice broke, faded. He swallowed, tried again. “I just want to be with my friends. I didn’t ask for any of this. But I’m here. I have feelings about all of it and the only people who seem to care are people who can’t do anything to help me, even if they wanted to.”

<I’m sorry…I’m so sorry, Roxas…>

“You’re not sorry it’s happening, you’re just sorry you got stuck being the one who has to clean up the mess.”

<That’s not true!> Naminé shot up out of her chair, holding a clenched fist over her heart, fountain pen nails digging into her palm.

“It is though, isn’t it? You’re so scared about what’ll happen to you that…” Roxas trailed off, staring at her hand. He’d heard the physical heart was the size of a fist. How long had she been alive? How big was her heart? How much was this hurting her? How much did she miss Sora?

He walked over to her, offering his hand palm up. She hesitated, not understanding. He reached for the hand over her heart, holding her hand in his. “No one’s ever been nice to you but him, huh…? Everyone either wants to use you…” The Organization. “Or dispose of you.” Diz, maybe Riku—he couldn’t tell.

<He…even with the lies, he accepted me,> Naminé explained. 

<He’s precious to you,> Roxas whispered with the pang of realization.

<I’m so sorry…Please believe me…> she begged, her nails clinging to his claw with her feathers and tattered skin layers.

<I believe you…> He wanted to blame her, to be angry with her, but she was so similar it hurt. <Is Kairi alright without you?>

She didn’t answer. She knew his question was leading. If Kairi was alright without her, then Naminé was welcomed to live on without her so long as she was allowed to live. But it also brought the question why wouldn't Sora be alright without him?

<If I try to leave, would you try to stop me?>

<Are you going to try to leave…?> She looked up at him with all of her eyes, but nothing about her gaze made him feel uneasy. In fact he felt relieved, as if he were being witnessed for what he was.

<I think I want to.> 

She was quiet.

<Would you blame me if Sora never comes back?> Roxas asked, lowering himself down by his haunches to be the same height as her.

<I don’t think it’s fair to blame you for wanting to live.> Naminé closed her eyes, clinging to his hand, desperate for something he was sure he was a surrogate for. <I don’t know why I have this power out of everything I could have come into existence with…I’m not even sure if there’s a right way…for me to use it. At this point, even if there was, I don’t know if I would be trusted to try or even have the time to figure out what that would be. >

<I can’t help you there.> Roxas apologized, Naminé’s feathers ruffled, eyes squinting in a smile.

<You didn’t even have to think about that reply. You just wanted to help…>

<Is that weird?> Roxas asked, unsure of what his reply should have been otherwise. Naminé’s feathers rustled, as if she shook her head.

<Diz scolded me for the first time we met, you know. He said you had a tendency to be violent and angry and that I should keep my distance from you if I wanted to help Sora. But every time we’ve met, you’ve been polite and gentle. Even just now when you were frustrated with what I said…>

She pulled away from his claws, as if it took all the strength in the world to. <But what I was trying to say…was that maybe if I’d had different powers, even something like what you have, things would have been different. We could have been friends and helped each other. Maybe…Maybe we wouldn’t…> She was struggling to finish.

<End up dead?>

<Feel so lonely.> She had been given more courage to speak because her answer had been less brutal than his. Hers had been in hope, his had been in despair.

“Oh. Well now I’m going to feel bad if I try to leave and do it without you.”

She immediately started to molt feathers all over the floor, eyes shining like stained glass in sunlight. <I’m going to say something mean…in hopes that it will deter you from trying.>

<Why would—>

<Sora said the same thing.>

Roxas stared at her, unsure of what would motivate her to push him away. But he could see the similarities in them both, in their desperation, in their immeasurable desire for affection. He wanted to take her out of here, but how many hands had she passed through like sand by now?

<If you could do anything at all, what would it be? >

<What?> She’d clearly been taken aback by his question, not expecting it.

<Come up with an answer soon, okay? Compare me to Sora all you want, but I’m different and I’ll prove it. He couldn’t help you, right? I will.> Roxas made it as simple as that.

<That…That memory—>

<You’re planning to take it anyway, right? It’s the last one, isn’t it? Everything else makes sense, but that one.> Sora had promised her something Roxas could barely piece together. She was scared, suffering, and Sora wanted to help. He’d promised. Roxas was going to make good on that promise and it had nothing to do with his connection to Sora.

Roxas opened his eyes, staring up at the window of the mansion. He turned away from it, desperate to keep the flames of his newfound resolve alive in his chest.

Chapter Text

Roxas didn’t want to be here anymore.

He watched Hayner, Pence, and Olette chat away, disregard him. He watched the way his hands went through Hayner’s chest, the way the simulation made him hazy, made a hole where his heart would be.

Roxas pulled his hand away, the guise of his human skin falling away into a claw. He looked up from his claw to his friends, then sat himself down on the couch, the facade of humanity falling away as their hideout smelled like a rotting garden.

“If Nobodies didn’t have it in their bodies to scare humans, would it have been easier on you three? If it was something I could have helped, would it not have been a problem?” Roxas asked the holograms as they laughed soundlessly, glitched so the laugh looped, then glitched so they were half way out of the door.

He stared at the doorway for a moment, then forced his heavy body up off of the couch. He was a ghost in his own scenario. His tail trailed behind him as he made his way outside, Dusks pulling themselves out of thorn and ether to block his path.

He smelled and heard Axel before he saw him, cinder char and footsteps. He was making noise for show, unnecessary.

<Well now. I’ve been given these icky orders to destroy you if you don’t come back with me. Last chance, you know.> Axel warned. <So, correct me if I’m wrong, but you look like you’re done playing house.>

Roxas stared at him, resigned. This was his life and it was from the moment he came into being.

“Axel…what’s it like? Being the only survivor of a tragedy—of knowing everyone is gone and it's just you? Did it make you feel anything?”

Axel’s eyes went wide before he blinked, then laughed <Hey now, what’s all that about? You know the boss said us Nobodies don’t feel anything.>

“How long have you had those orders to get rid of me?”

Axel narrowed his eyes at Roxas, who gave a lazy flick of his tail in response, unfazed. He had clarity now—he was a valuable pet who’d run away. Instead of letting him be run over or sold or taken for parts, it was best to kill him if they couldn’t goad him home. He’d been coddled with the guise of affection under the implication of touch.

<Let’s just go back before we’re noticed.>

<No.>

<No?>

<I need to get a friend first.> Roxas turned his back to him and started heading towards the mansion.

Axel’s neck jerked back, eyebrow raised as he followed, the Dusk letting them pass. <Roxas, anyone here is fake. You know that right?>

<Naminé isn’t.>

<Naminé—?> Axel stopped, eyes wide with concern. He quickly corrected that once Roxas’ eyes flickered over to him.

<I told her I’d help. The only reason she’s so willing to do this is because Sora was the only one who was ever nice to her. The world is bigger than just one person and she deserves to see that.>

Axel snorted, but nodded. <Alright, we can go get Naminé. What’s the plan after we have her?>

<That’s up to her. Xemnas doesn’t need to know we made a pit stop so long as I’m back and doing whatever it is he wants, right?> Roxas was unable to hold his bite of angry sarcasm.

<Get it out now or else when we go back, you might have more than some pruning done to just your overgrowth.> Axel warned as he loomed over Roxas’ shoulder. Roxas’ tail smashed into the ground, forcing him to keep his distance.

<…Would you have killed me?> Roxas asked, holding his hand up for a corridor. He didn’t know if she was in the data world mansion or the real one, but he could check both.

<We may be friends, but I’m not getting turned into a Dusk for you, Rox.> Axel genuinely did sound remorseful in his decision. Roxas couldn’t help but smile as he stepped into the darkness, but it was a singular muscle tick from being one of distress.

<I’m sorry we didn’t hang out more.>

Axel didn’t reply, following after Roxas into the corridor. They both stepped out inside of the mansion foyer, Roxas surveying the area. Two rooms on the main floor, right barricaded, glass doors along the back wall leading out into a courtyard, marble statues, broken but heavy and weighted display cases, two sets of stairs leading to the same landing, railings, high ceiling, chandeliers. 

<Naminé!>

<Company,> Axel warned as the air behind them smelled of darkness. <I’ll handle it. You find her so we can get out of here.>

<He’s no joke, even with his fragility,> Roxas warned as he made his way up the stairs.

He could already smell the carpet catching fire as Axel summoned his weapons. <So I’ve heard.>

<Naminé!> Roxas called again as he threw open the door to what had to have been her room from the view outside. He glanced around the room, but she was nowhere to be found. Then she was in the real world and he would come for her, as simple as that.

Roxas went to turn to leave, the space before him static, copious numbers, then Diz. Roxas hated the way his body went feverish with phantom pains at the sight of him. He hated how his overgrowth shriveled in on itself, tried to curl up and hide.

“Your fate is inescapable, no matter what path you choose or what you try to do.”

Roxas’ mouth quirked up, laughter bubbling up out of him the way the air bubbles did when he was in that tank. He heard Axel and Riku clash weapons in the foyer, Axel hissing, then something shattering.

“Nothing here is amusing, or is that too much for something with falsified emotions to grasp?”

He choked, a chuckle leaving him, his knees weak. He couldn’t move. He was a monster, a creature that could tear whole worlds asunder, derive people of their hearts, induce fear by his presence alone, and he was terrified of a bunch of data.

This wasn’t even really him and he was petrified to the spot.

How funny. How hilarious. How comical. Of course it was amusing.

<I hate you so much,> Roxas managed to spit, knowing if he’d spoken out loud, his voice would have failed him.

“You should share some of that hate with Sora—he’s far too nice for his own good.” Diz kept his hands behind his back, but he took a step forward—Roxas took a step back.

<No! My heart belongs to me!> It was his. He’d worked so hard to keep it safe, to entrust it to people he loved. It was his and he was terrified of losing it.

<Roxas! I’m here!> Roxas could smell the darkness open up behind him as Naminé stepped out from the corridor, grabbing for his hand. She subtly slid a piece of paper into it.

The data Diz reeled back at the sight of her, Roxas gripping her hand for support.

<The basement is how we get out of here and back into the real world, but he’s waiting on the other side. All we have to do is get there, okay? Once we’re there, I can just make us a portal and we’re okay.> Naminé reassured, Roxas finding it ironic that he’d come to help her and she’d come to help him.

“Diz! There’s too many Nobodies down here!” Riku called. “We’re out of ti—Naminé?!”

<Pay attention to what’s in front of you!> Axel whispered, his voice booming like an explosive as he relentlessly attacked Riku. Roxas glanced over the railing at their fight—and that was all it took.

Diz grabbed for Naminé, yanking her away from Roxas.

<“No!”> Data was unaffected by Nobody whispers.

All of Naminé’s eyes looked back to Roxas and he hated the resignation in them as she was yanked into the very corridor she’d made. He hated it. She had to be at most a year older than him and she had given up completely. They’d taken the life out of her, gutted it, and hung the carcass out to try. She had small hands, she had such a small heart.

<Axel!>

<Do you want me to win the fight or get the girl! Can’t do both, hero!>

<Switch with me then!> Roxas snarled, vaulting himself over the railing. <You have to save Naminé!>

Axel opened his mouth to object, but he took one look at Roxas, the fire in his eyes, and he immediately pulled back to go after Diz. <Promise you’ll save her?> Roxas called up to him as he lunged at Riku.

<I’m not gonn—> His claws clashed with Riku’s keyblade. He’d gotten it back since he last saw him.

<“PROMISE!”> Roxas snarled so hard that Riku’s knees gave out.

“Fine!” Axel’s reply was ripped from him unwillingly from his throat, forcing him to pause in realization, in fear of his friend. <Jeez man, no need to yell at me like that!> He snapped in an attempt to save face, even if it was bright red, before he made a corridor of his own to rush off after Diz.

Roxas turned his attention back to Riku, who’d gotten back up to his feet. “…Really wanna do this again? You only got one good wrist left.”

“Funny,” Riku bit back. “Before we get into this again, answer something for me.”

“Sure, big guy.” Roxas flashed his teeth, bitter sarcasm in his smile, but he waited for his question.

“Do you really not have hearts?” Riku asked, poised and ready to defend if Roxas’ attack came. But Roxas was lazy in his stance, full of openings and had no weapon but his own body. Even his wings were put away.

“That’s what everyone keeps saying.” Roxas looked down at the broken glass by his feet, likely what Axel and Riku had shattered earlier.

“But is it true?”

“I dunno. There are some people out there who supposedly have hearts who do terrible things to others, aren’t there?” His eyes flickered up to Riku, but his gaze wasn’t accusatory, it was apologetic. Riku had been used by terrible people his entire life, with and without hearts.

Roxas knew what it was like for him growing up, knew why he wanted to get off of the island so badly. He knew he’d listened to Maleficent, he knew he’d listened to Ansem. He was now listening to Diz. He knew Riku tried to protect Kairi, tried to protect Sora. He knew his friend—Sora’s friend was desperately trying to unlearn everything he’d been taught as a kid.

He knew he wanted to be a kinder person, like Sora.

But he also knew Riku was willing to do terrible things so his friend wouldn’t have to. He was willing to drag the weight of those choices around with him for the rest of his life. Riku’s kindness was unfortunate and always had been.

“Just answer the question.” Riku raised his keyblade up to Roxas, an offensive taunt instead.

Roxas sighed. He pressed his fingers into his sternum, a sticky suction noise coming from him as he opened his ribs. Riku took a step back and guarded, expecting Roxas to attack him—but he stopped.

The inside of Roxas’ chest was dyed in the hazy pink glow of a heart, so new to the world it didn’t generate its own aura or have a hardened layer to protect it. 

“Look familiar, Heartless slayer?” Roxas asked, his heart exposed to someone he now remembered well enough to know wouldn’t attack him like this.

Riku lowered his weapon, it vanishing into starlight. Roxas could smell the fear, but it was the kind of fear that was left to marinate in regret.

Roxas gently closed his chest, sealing away the newfound muscle.

“Naminé has one too…What was he planning to do with her after Sora was complete again?”

Riku didn’t answer. Riku's fear had grown so much Roxas could taste it in the air. They were going to kill her.

“Where’s the way out of here?”

“Library,” Riku choked out, voice breaking.

Roxas made his way up the stairs, made his way down the hallway, but paused to speak to Riku once more. He leaned against the railing, arms crossed over it, tail flicked behind him. “I’m not Sora. I absolutely hold what you did and what you let happen to me against you.”

Riku didn’t reply. It was different to kill terrible monsters, evil mindless things, to defeat villains. What was there for him to say to someone who wasn’t one of those?

Roxas made his way into the library.

He didn’t recognize the drawing on the table, but he pulled out the paper Naminé had given him. He filled in the missing piece, a crown, the magic seal lighting up the floor. Roxas unfurled his wings, vaulting himself to the ceiling in case something came out to try to attack him—but nothing came. The floor had just opened to an entrance way.

Roxas wondered how Axel had gotten in if this was sealed. What glitches had he found entrances in? Roxas lowered himself down to the basement floor, folding his wings on his back. Maybe he could convince Axel and Naminé to come with him.

They could ditch what was left of the Organization, maybe even take them out. Maybe Naminé could manipulate more than Sora’s memories. Maybe they could make Xemnas forget all about them and either leave it at that or take him by surprise. Then, maybe they could do whatever they wanted.

The thought made him smile as he pressed further inside. Nothing would stop them from exploring worlds for more than hearts. Nothing was stopping him from making a gummi ship and taking his friends with him if they wanted to go. If they didn’t, Roxas would never hold that against them. But Roxas would always love them, regardless of how they felt towards him.

But the guillotine that was held over his neck was the fact that he didn’t know if Hayner was alive.

He made his way into the computer room, no remnants of the tank he’d been in. But he felt sick being in the room, proof of his trauma wiped away as if it never happened. His hands felt numb, as if there was no blood flow to them. His bones felt as though they’d disintegrated into his marrow and he was nothing but soft tissue and overgrowth on the inside.

He had been happy in that simulation. He had been happy to be lied to. He had been happy to be in a position where they could play in his head, toy with his feelings. He had been happy to be manipulated by people who watched everything and still felt he didn’t really have feelings. He had been happy.

Project Garden

flashed on the computer screen. He would never forgive them. He’d never forgive Sora for refusing to die the way he should have. If Sora had just died, then Roxas wouldn’t have been put through all of this. If Sora had just died, then Roxas wouldn’t have lost his friends or hurt them. If Sora had just died the way he was supposed to—!

Roxas pulled out his keyblade, bringing the weight of it down, shattering a screen. He slammed into another, his keyblade as heavy as his heart, hammering in time with each swing. Everything was heavy. Everything hurt. He’d been happy. He loved them and they’d used that.

Roxas panted, unable to raise his keyblade anymore. There was nothing left to destroy—they’d ruined everything already. His eyes welled up, but tears didn’t fall. They sat in the corner of his eyes, but he blinked them away.

This ship runs on happy faces!

Roxas stood up, keyblade vanishing into stardust. He was so tired. He was defeated. Sora won. He’d never met him and yet he’d won. Sora had so many friends who were willing to hurt other people so long as he was alright. He had so many friends willing to do such awful things for him. How cruel to task them with that while he slept through it all. How selfish, how insensitive, how merciless.

Roxas hated Sora.

He would never forgive him. He felt so stupid, he felt so embarrassed. How easily he’d been lied to, how easily he’d been manipulated, even after all of this time. He’d left the Organization just to fall into someone else’s grasp with the same goal of using him.

They’d even used the same bait, the same promise of validation, affection, companionship.

Roxas knew the reality of what would happen. He would go back to the Organization and do whatever Xemnas wanted. Even if Hayner, Pence, and Olette had been alright, they were clear targets, a way to force Roxas to do what was asked of him.

If he slipped up even once, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were brought to the castle. Naminé was welcome to try to run away, but she had the same terrible luck as him. Maybe it would be best to bring her to Kairi—that was if Axel didn’t bring her back to the Organization.

She was as useful as he was, after all.

But would Diz give up? He had no idea who he was or why he was working with Riku. He could convince Riku to stop as long as he was alright with not being a murderer, but Diz wouldn’t be convinced. He’d probably insist his heart was a trick and he wouldn’t be surprised if he even so much as pulled it out of Roxas’ chest.

Roxas didn’t feel he’d ever asked for much. He’d asked for something reasonable, a basic requirement of being alive even. He’d even so much as found it, but he couldn’t hold onto it.

He clutched his chest, the space over his heart, feeling it throb, feeling it throw itself forward, even if he wanted it to stop. It was pressing him forward, heading a call he desperately wanted to ignore.

He stood underneath the teleporter, pressing the button on the side wall. When he came out on the other side, he glanced over at the door. His heartbeat had flooded his ears, drowning out almost everything else.

“Stop it, I know…I already know he’s in there…I don’t care.”

“I do. I know you do too, even if you don’t realize it yet.”

The memory of someone’s voice vanished as quickly as it came, but it made his eyes well up. “I don’t wanna care. He took everything from me, why should I care about him?” he asked, desperate to cauterize his bleeding heart.

He had no reason to, and yet he did and he hated it.

“You care because that’s just the kind of person Sora is—and we’re a part of Sora.”

His head hurt.

He opened the door. He could leave. He could go upstairs right now.

He walked past Donald.

He needed to make sure Axel found Naminé.

He walked past Goofy.

He needed to see if Hayner, Pence, and Olette were alright.

He stood in front of the door at the end of the corridor that was drained of its color.

He needed to do so many things but go into that room.

He stood there for a long moment, listening to his heart, his own heart, nothing that belonged to Sora but the thing everyone insisted was stolen or forged, beat in his ears.

He wondered if he was cried out. He expected to be more hysterical. He expected to fight more. He expected that regardless of the end he met, he’d meet it as himself. He didn’t really think he’d go back to Sora, not really.

But Roxas also knew he was very good at lying to himself.

He walked up to the pod, the lotus flower, Roxas pressing his claw against it. It bloomed, his tail brushing against the ground. He looked so content, suspended in sleep. Roxas was almost jealous.

“I guess my summer vacation is…” His moments, his lies, his fulfilled wish to love and be loved, his one more day. “…Over.” But looking at Sora, he couldn’t bring himself to be angry anymore—just contented, and it made him sad.

He hated that this felt like coming home. He hated that he didn’t feel scared.

There was nothing else he could want and that wasn’t fair. His life had come and gone in barely a year and he suddenly felt alright with that when he’d fought so hard for it. It was the last day of his life, and Sora wouldn’t even be able to answer any of the questions he’d had for him.

It was like Roxas was dying alone. He at least wanted to hear Sora say one thing to him. He wanted his acknowledgement, some sort of affirmation that he wasn’t wrong for wanting to live, that he was allowed to want to be loved.

There was exhaustion that had always weighed down his heart, that had always felt familiar. If Roxas was made from Sora, if he was cruelly carved from his basic desires like a knife to soft soap, then—Roxas stepped into the lotus flower, watching his other sleep. He cradled his face in his hands, pressing his forehead to his.

He spoke, the words sinking until they drowned in Sora’s sleepy consciousness. For the first time, he addressed him without curiosity or malice.

<“Good morning, Sora.”>

Chapter Text

The machines in the hospital mimicked life with their incessant beeping. With every beep, Olette felt her heart try to leave her one more time.

Thump. Thump. Thump; Beep. Beep. Beep. Hayner remained asleep in the hospital bed.

She thought about talking to Hayner, about reading to him, but anything she had to say would make her cry and anything she found to read made her brain throb.

She already hadn't been going home. She'd already been living on his couch, on his bedroom floor, in his bed. She didn't have a home, she had a place she visited with people she knew the names of. When her brother asked her how she was, she said she was worried about her friend of course, but fine.

She was angry he couldn't see through her cellophane lie.

She'd went from sleeping on floors of her friends' places to hospital chairs. Pence had to go home, he had a reasonable life that didn't revolve around Hayner's sleeping body. She knew that, yet part of herself hated him for it. How dare he have a life that carries on? She knew she was being unreasonable and it frustrated her.

There was a nurse who'd pretend not to see her hiding under the bed after visiting hours when they came to note Hayner's vitals. There was a doctor who'd always toss her fruit in the halls. There was a janitor who'd leave a pillow in the room.

They'd seen her in the same clothes for at least a week before she'd been brought something by Hayner's grandmother. She'd begged not to be sent home, to be taken away from her friend. Hayner's grandmother said she was her guardian, which was half true. The staff who'd been turning a blind eye didn't do a follow up into the lie. His grandmother offered for her to come over for as long as she needed every time she came to visit Hayner, but Olette couldn't bring herself to leave. What if something happened because she took her eyes off of him again?

Roxas had brought his limp body home, had apologized, had puked, had left with the unreflective eyes of a dead fish and a locked jaw.

He'd been gone for at least a month now.

He hadn't told them where he was going, hadn't said when he'd be back. He'd just apologized in a way that made her eyes well up. It was the same apology from her brother when he'd truly left, that was poorly translated into words. She didn't want to know what it had meant.

She told herself she just needed to stay by Hayner's side, check in on Pence when he wasn't in the hospital with her, eat, sleep, repeat. She didn't ask if Pence had seen Roxas. She knew what he was doing when he wasn't home or in the hospital. He looked exhausted, looked over his shoulder, and looked worn out.

"The Silv—the Nobody that's watching my family is still there." he'd told her, unprompted. It was his hope Roxas was alright, that he was findable, that he had answers for why Hayner wasn't waking up.

She didn't reply to him. Anything she had to say would be unnecessarily nasty. Roxas was a coward who kept running away. It was his fault. Why bother looking for someone like that?

She didn't mean any of it, but she could feel the words coming all the same. She was just angry, just sad. Always so damn angry and sad. Why would her friends be willing to be around that all of the time? She was exhausting.

She put her head down by Hayner's side, closed her eyes, told herself she wouldn't cry. She couldn't lose two friends and then a third because of her own behavior.

She couldn't.

Pence sat closer to her, rubbed at her back. She pressed her face against his shoulder. "Sorry…"

"You don't have any reason to be sorry," Pence reassured, still rubbing at her back.

"Right. Sorry…"

When Hayner woke up, Olette had been half asleep, curled up uncomfortably in a chair, a hospital blanket as thin as a sheet over her.

She hadn't realized he'd been awake if not for the sensation of being watched that made her feel like she was on pins and needles.

"…Hayner…?"

There was a barely audible hum from his throat, voice faded from being unused.

"Nurse! Doctor! Whoever! " Olette screamed, throwing herself to his bedside, blanket wound around her waist as she slipped, barely catching herself on the bed.

Hayner made the faded rasp again, unable to open his mouth before his eyes started to close again, heavy lidded.

"No, no—don't go to sleep, you jerk! Pence isn't even here, stay up!" she demanded, Hanyer clearly struggling to keep himself awake.

A doctor came into the room, Olette grabbing for her phone off of the side table.

By the time Pence got there from Sunset Hill, Hayner was asleep again.

Olette was too tired to start a fight with the group in front of her.

"What's that look for?" Seifer sneered, shoving past her, Rai following.

"Visiting hours," Fuu reminded, staying in the doorway with Vivi.

"He's asleep, what do you want?" Olette asked, knowing they were either there to confirm he really was still asleep after two months or, more obviously, to talk to her.

"We uh, just came to check in, ya know? Local ring leader of our trouble makers being out for so long makes our jobs a cakewalk, ya know?" Rai explained, trying to sound defiant, but his body language contradicted itself. Head raised high and shoulders pulled in on themselves, arms crossed and brows furrowed.

She felt crowded in this small room with all of them, but she'd be damned if they started a fight that got her taken away from Hayner.

But Rai would never rough around with her like Seifer did with Hayner. If she started it, he'd try to pin her to the ground. They never hit her and she hated that they never wanted to fight. She wanted to break teeth, draw blood, and they always told her no without saying it.

Hayner got away with it because he and Seifer had been at each other's throats since they could talk. But they were territorial about their rivalry, ensuring no one else felt it was appropriate to treat them how they treated each other.

"Rumors," Fuu added.

"What rumors?" Olette had no idea how Pence put up with her all of the time. Pence and Fuu's rivalry was mostly in classwork and hobbies, in a collection of awards and sibling duties. Even if Fuu's family was all found, she didn't use that as an excuse to slack off.

"The ones about what happened the day when he went missing." Seifer didn't look at her, staring at Hayner.

Olette bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood. 

"You're the ones who were putting your noses where they didn't belong, ya kn—"

Olette shot Rai a glare, which shut him up.

"Is it true?" Seifer asked, finally bothering to look at her. He was worried. About Hayner, about other nosy kids, about the town. He meant well, even if he was suffocating and haughty about it.

"You know how rumors get," Olette bit back.

"Which is why I'm asking, pipsqueak," Seifer snapped back. "Is it true he was brought back by a Silver Devil?"

Roxas had brought his limp body home, had apologized, had puked, had looked like the monster he'd always been, had left with the unreflective eyes of a dead fish and a locked jaw and a collection of sharp edges.

"They're just rumors, Seifer."

"There's always a bit of truth in a rumor," he looked down at her, Olette wanting to punch him in his nose.

"Don't bring your daddy issues into this." Olette knew that was a low blow, knew his dad had been one of the people to go missing. She knew he'd never get to see him again. She knew his dad always put his nose in places it didn't belong because he was trying to do the right thing.

Seifer grabbed her up by her wrist, glaring so intensely Olette was hoping she might finally get to hit something, to scream, to break something even if it was herself. But his grip wasn't enough to hurt her, wasn't enough to hold her in place.

He pointed to Hayner. "Keep your noses out of crap like that. When he wakes up, he's gonna hear it from me too. Rumors or not…" He took his hand back. "Stop being little assholes or you'll get hurt. You're lucky he came home." Seifer bit, resentment and grief there before he shoved passed her to leave.

She glared so hard at them it was a wonder their blood didn't boil from the inside and cook them alive. She glared for a long time, unable to turn around just yet. She'd felt pins and needles the moment they'd all left the room. 

Olette finally exhaled, her lung no longer able to hold in the breath she held, shaking with rage once they were all out of sight.

"…How long were you awake for?" she asked, looking for something to pick up, to straighten. She finally had to look at him.

Hayner rasped something barely resembling the word water. Olette called for a nurse and called Pence. Pence got there just in time for Hayner to smile at him, hold his hand, then fall back to sleep.

"Roxas…?" Hanyer croaked.

Pence glanced at Olette, who adamantly stared at the linoleum floor. She needed to be nice. She needed to be polite. He'd been through enough. He didn't need to hear her theory about how he was probably dead in a ditch somewhere. About how his cult probably sacrificed him. About how no matter how you sliced it he was gone .

"He's…I dunno, Hayner…" Pence answered for both of them. "I, um…I even asked the Samurai who's been guarding my family. It said it hasn't heard from him since…"

Hayner stared at his hands resting in his lap.

He actually couldn't be dead in a ditch because that required a body. Wouldn't Roxas turn to dust like those husks they found? It took less than a year for him to invade their lives, deeply and thoroughly. He'd grown roots inside of them and then ripped out their veins with his departure every time. Didn't he know that hurt?

"I'm still looking…I'm still trying."

How dare he make them love him and then vanish like this. Olette blinked and wiped away large tears, the room silent aside from her occasional sniffle.

She missed him—the bastard.

"He's not coming back…is he?" Hayner asked softly. He sounded better. He was still asleep more than he was awake. He was still physically exhausted from everything. Over two months of this small hospital room. Anymore and she'd lose it.

Neither of them had been able to ask Hayner what happened that day.

"I don't know, Hayner…" She pressed her heels of her hands to her eyes.

"You're not really mad at him…are you?" Hayner rasped. He sounded like he'd been put through a garbage disposal then dumped in a blender of testosterone for fun.

"Of course I'm mad at him. I was mad then, I'm mad now—even more mad now because he knows how we feel. He knows we wanted him here after he ran away the last time with the Nobody stuff." Olette pulled her hands away, frustrated. 

Hayner was quiet, brow furrowed.

"Hayner…?"

"I might…I might not have said that, exactly."

"What do you mean? He practically curled up to you every night until he ate your whole kitchen. How would he not think—"

"I dunno, I was upset…! It was a lot to take in, okay?" Hayner defended.

"Then what the hell did you say to him?" Olette knew she sounded accusatory. She knew it wasn't fair. She knew she was being unreasonable.

"I told him I was angry, but that if he still wanted to be friends we could be friends," Hayner grumbled, glaring at his hands.

"Oh, cool—so you let him think he was forcing whatever it was he wanted onto you. That's just great, Hayner," she snapped, throwing her hands up before angrily throwing them back down into her lap.

"Piss off, Olette." Hayner slumped back into his pillows.

"Why, so you can bitch and moan about how someone else left you?" She was hitting too low. She wanted to hit something. She wanted something to hit her back. She deserved to be hit, didn't she?

Hayner didn't reply.

" Well? You gonna say something?"

"…Lette, I'm tired. I'm really, really tired…and I just miss my friend. I'm worried about him and I'm worried about you."

"Well you don't need to because I'm just fine ! You're not our savior or caretaker," Too low. "You're not some hero either! You failed!" Too low. "You didn't save us, didn't save Roxas, didn't save your mom—"

Pence yanked Olette out into the hallway.

"…Take a walk. Don't come back until you can apologize." His voice was unnaturally even. He shut the door in her face. Olette wanted to scream. She wanted to yank her hair out.

By the time she'd calmed down enough to feel she could muster an apology, fake or otherwise, Hayner had started crying. She stood outside of the door and listened.

He sounded so small, like the universe had swallowed whatever cosmic dust their lifespan was and spat it back into his face.

"—feel guilty. I'm more scared at the thought of waking up alone than I am at the thought of where Roxas could be."

"I don't think that's selfish. I think Roxas comes off as someone who can handle himself. He's the monster under the bed. But whatever it was that happened to you, Hayner that's…That's different."

Olette pressed her forehead to the cold door.

"It isn't. He—you saw what he looked like, Pence. They tore him open and left him to die. Olette's right, even if she's being a bitch about it. I'm the one who ran off to go fight monsters when I couldn't even get close enough to touch them…"

It was quiet. Olette wondered if she should do another lap around the hospital floor.

"I think about my mom dying a lot…so much that sometimes it feels fake. Oh no, monsters in white jumpsuits killed her—like how cartoonish does that sound? So then for the longest time, I wondered if I made it up as a way to cope. I know it happened forever ago and that I should be over it or whatever…but when I'm going through that fake feeling memory every single day, it almost makes me feel like I imagined the whole thing. I desensitize myself to it. Then I can think that she'll show up like everything is fine. Then something will happen or remind me that she's really, really gone and it hits me that she's not ever coming back and I fall apart all over again. And right now, I'm doing that with Roxas and I hate it and I hate myself for it."

"Hayner…"

"How surreal was our time with him? How batshit crazy, unrealistic? Doesn't he sound like he could be an imaginary friend? I'm just some asshole kid who likes breaking and entering and I got to have my whole world turned upside down with the water still in it over a single summer. I got to hold him in my arms and watch him smile—"

Hayner's voice broke.

"Its okay…you don't have to force yourself."

Olette wiped at her eyes. She should really get over herself. Get a therapist or whatever the more put together crazy kids did these days.

"I thought I was dying and he held my heart in his hands like I was his whole world and told me he'd never let that happen…! He got me home and what did I do for him? I said sure, I guess we can still be friends or whatever cuz I chickened out when it came to my own feelings! I should have meant it more…! I should have been more decisive…!"

Hayner sounded hysterical. She should get a nurse. Olette crouched down outside of the door, sniffling and wiping away at her tears.

"I should have told him I loved him, cuz I do…!"

He'd brought Hayner home, laid him out on his bed like a flower on a coffin. He'd kissed his forehead, apologizing, tears staining his cheeks.

He'd shoved his fingers down his own throat so far it hurt to watch. He puked darkness and shadows all over the floor until he was gingerly holding a small marble in his hand. He'd wiped it clean with his thumb, gently brushing the gossamer strands attached to it and inside of Hayner clean. He kissed it while mumbling apologizes, then put it in Hayner's chest.

His mouth moved, but they hadn't heard anything; a whisper just for Hayner in between it all. He had barely started breathing before Roxas was already trying to leave, holding his breath the entire time.

He'd been scared and Olette and Pence had let him leave. They hadn't tried to stop him, too scared of him to be scared for him. He was willing to go off and die if it kept them safe. He'd already told them the Organization would kill him.

She'd been unreasonably scared.

"I'm such an idiot, Pence…!" There was sniffling from all three of them.

Whenever anyone went missing from Twilight Town, there was nothing to find. There was nothing left of them, no trace, no memories aside from the painful ones left behind.

Roxas was the last person to vanish that year from Twilight Town.

END OF GARDEN ARC

Chapter Text

Sora wasn’t sure who had spoken, but there was familiarity like the warmth of sunlight. The room smelled like lotus flowers and everything hurt.

"Morning…?" he asked, words sticking together like his eyelids.

"Sora!" Donald called, practically chiding him.

"G'mornin', sleepy head!" Goofy greeted, Sora yawning. He stretched, blinked his bleary eyes, then looked around, unsure of where he was. The room was white, all imperfections removed or hidden deep, deep away.

White light. End of the tunnel. The end.

His heart chanted.

"Where…are we?" Sora asked, taking a step forward only to stumble. Goofy caught him before he could fall, Sora giving a brilliant, apologetic smile. "Sorry about that. My legs feel like jelly!"

"What flavor?" Donald asked, narrowing his eyes before grinning, Goofy and Sora laughing at his joke.

"Dunno! Lick my leg and find out!" Sora offered, wiggling his foot in Donald's direction while leaning on Goofy for support. His jumper stretched, yanking on muscle and ligaments that made it uncomfortable to move in. "Woah—! My clothes feel really small—I can barely move in these!"

"Well you certainly do look taller," Goofy agreed.

"But, why? The last thing I remember is…well, Kairi." Sora admitted. "Kairi," he repeated, her name familiar in his mouth, but not the sound of it.

"Yeah. You saw Kairi and we were gonna look for Riku and the King," Goofy added, Sora pressing his fingers to his throat, messing with his Adam's apple.

"…I sound like I've been eating dirt for twenty years, holy cow! Listen to me! Mama made me mash my m&ms with red leather yellow leather for the imaginary menagerie manager who imagining managing an imaginary menagerie—I sound so different!"

"Show off," Donald accused, Sora giving him a wide grin as Goofy chuckled. He was always good with tongue twisters and they were the one thing Riku could never beat him at.

"Gosh, fellas," Jiminy exclaimed as he pulled himself up onto Sora's shoulder. "Looks like we should check the journal. Boys don't sprout over night!"

"Did you drink something funny?" Donald asked, Sora looking up to the left corner to think.

"I mean, nothing I haven't already had before. I didn't take anything from Wonderland on the ship either." That was the only world he’d been in where the food did more than taste good and he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been there.

"Well that's funny! The last thing in my journal is a note saying, thank Naminé. Wonder who that could be!" Donald and Goofy crowded Sora to try to read the memo, squeezing him between them.

Naminé.

Sora's heart ached at the name, regret and stardust, before the sensation settled like a snowglobe in his gut.

"Wh—hey, come on!" he complained while trying to wiggle away, doing his best to ignore the feeling.

"Its really empty? Gawrsh, wonder what happened to everything! That's gotta be real frustrating, Jiminy." Goofy offered him his hand, Jiminy's brow furrowing. Donald and Goofy had finally pulled back enough for Sora to breathe once Jiminy was in Goofy’s hands.

"Well I'm sure I can rewrite it, it's just the curious case of where it went off to in the first place!"

"We should take a look around then!" Donald offered, already making his way to the door.

"Hey, wait up!" Sora jogged after him, causing him to wince. Everything felt stiff, felt tense and tender.

Goofy followed after, chatting away with Jiminy about if he'd need a new journal to fill out the old one and would he be working double time to rewrite it and their old adventures or should they try to find the old journal first but oh this was the same journal—

Sora felt tired just listening to him. He had no idea why, given he'd just woken up. But then again, part of him was always like that. Go, go, go until he ran himself into the ground and crashed just to get up and go, go, go, go, go, go, go again.

He pushed his bangs up with his hand, annoyed with how it kept falling into his eyes by the time he made it through the hallway. His knees felt like they jerked out farther than he meant for them to with every step and he had to wonder if Donald had really always been that short.

There was a computer with several monitors, but Sora didn't know how to use it so he didn't bother touching it. Donald and Goofy quickly realized it wasn't turning on anyway, so they left it and decided to keep going.

Change was meant to be gradual, an assimilation. Sora's had happened all at once and was jarring, made him feel out of place in his own body. But if he wasn't meant for his own body, then surely no one else could be. So he decided then and there he'd suck it up and not complain.

But then he saw the stairs.

"Oh come on!" he groaned, out of breath from the short walk and ready to give up.

"Want me to carry ya?" Goofy offered. Goofy had to have been tired too, so that wasn't fair to him.

"No, I'm just…gonna take it slow," Sora mumbled. Donald forced his way to the top of the stairs, but he was panting and had to rest once he reached the top.

Sora went about it more gingerly with Goofy behind him to make sure he didn't fall. The second he reached the top step he flopped onto his back trying to collect his breathing.

"I hate. Stairs. So much," he panted, Goofy laughing from his spot on a lower step.

"This isn't a good sign, fellas. To be this exhausted from such a short walk? I'm really worried about what happened now." Jiminy looked forlorn, Sora sitting up to speak to him better.

"We'll be okay! We just gotta get used to it again! I'm sure it'll take no time at all!" Because if it didn't, how was he ever going to beat Riku in a race once he got him home? If it didn't, how was he ever going to show his face to Kairi without her teasing him about needing to sleep even more than he usually did? If it didn't, how was he going to protect his friends?

Sora shoved the worries away because it would get better. It had to. He'd make that the truth.

Sora forced himself up, knees and hips popping. " Ugh, I feel like I'm eighty. Where's my beard?" he asked, feeling at his chin. Peach fuzz, baby hairs, but he doubted that it looked like much if anything at all. Would Riku have more facial hair by now? Lucky bastard. Maybe he should shave his armpit hair off and glue it to his face.

Getting older wasn't what scared him—after all, getting older seemed fun! It meant he'd had more time to explore, see and experience new things! It was the not knowing where the time went that scared him. But he'd find it and then the loss wouldn't scare him anymore.

"You're never gonna grow a beard. You'll be a million years old and still have a baby face!" Donald teased.

Sora counted with the smartest comeback he had in his arsenal, "Will not!"

"Will too!" Darn—Donald was still good at this. Sora stuck his tongue out at him, Donald doing the same thing right back. Goofy covered his mouth to hide a laugh.

"Well, at least none of this is a damper on anyone's spirits." Jiminy sighed with a smile, then pulled out his journal, taking to his lengthy task of rewriting everything in between writing about their current adventures.

The house they were in was large, but the castle in Hollow Bastion had been larger. Their goal wasn't even to explore, but to find out where they were. After that, then they could gallivant around in between looking for Riku and the King.

The outside of the mansion was in ruins, given over to disrepair and abandonment. The forest at its entrance was deep and dark, a hideaway that held secrets and never let them go.

Sunlight filtered through places where the trees weren't as dense, warmth dancing on Sora's skin and making him smile. He took a moment to close his eyes and revel in it while Donald and Goofy pressed ahead.

"Sora!" Donald quacked.

"Coming!" He jogged to catch up, a habit, and immediately regretted it. "Uuuggghh, I'm so tirreeddd!" he complained, overly dramatic about it on purpose as he gave a wide smile.

"Do we have any munny? We should try to find something to eat." Jiminy offered as a suggestion.

"Oh man food sounds soooo good right now!" Sora agreed, Donald practically dooling beside him. Goofy felt around in his pockets, then shook his head.

"I don't have any munny."

"You don't!?" Donald and Sora both gaped at him at the same time. Goofy always had munny! Goofy always said Sora was a growing boy, yadda yadda heres 50 munny to buy some fruit or something. But Goofy having no munny meant—Donald and Sora looked at each other. They furiously patted themselves down, coming up empty handed.

"You think it's a world where they trade?" Sora asked hopefully.

"Should we look in the forest for something to eat?" Donald offered, both already furiously swapping their shared braincell back and forth to generate new ideas.

"Uh, guys?" Goofy called. "There's a big wall here with a hole in it. It looks like it leads to a town. Maybe we can—"

"Food!" Donald and Sora yelled, both rushing past Goofy to get to the wall.

"Ow!" Donald yelled.

"Bad idea…!" Sora grunted as they collided, effectively gluing themselves into the hole. Sora pulled back, Donald shoving himself through. They grunted, Sora heaving a sigh.

"I'm too tired to scavenge! Man, I really hope they'll let us do weird errands for food or something!" Sora followed Donald out, Goofy following Sora.

"Or just give us food," Donald looked over his shoulder with a sly grin that made Sora snort.

"Yeah, sure. That too."

The town was warm in color and temperature and had the comforting familiarity of home. He had somewhere he needed to be, didn't he?

"Sora?" Goofy called softly, Sora staring at everything as if he was seeing a new color for the first time.

"This way." Sora was moving with his memory, like all the times he'd walk home. He didn't have to think about where he was going, he didn't have to give direction his attention.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Donald called after him, both him and Goofy following after him.

He was exhausted. His knees hurt. His back hurt. His eyes felt heavy.

He had to check something.

"Sora, wait up!" Goofy called after him, Sora forcing himself up the hill, forcing himself to keep going. He could rest later, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

There was a fire in his heart with endless fuel, blocking out the pain, the exhaustion.

The gate.

It was open. Sora wanted to pass out. He shoved himself through the gate, clinging to either side of it.

"You're okay." Sora found the words leaving him before he could process what they meant. They had bubbled up like sea foam from his heart, just as quick to be washed away with his clarity.

The boy with his leg slung over the wheelchair he was in raised an eyebrow at him. "Can we help you?" He bit out.

The boy on the couch looked up from his camera, the girl inched closer to him, using him to hide the way her fingers deftly slid between the couch cushions.

"I—uh, I'm sorry. I'm actually—"

"Hey!" Donald snapped at him, panting, exhausted.

"We…" Goofy heaved. "We told ya to wait."

Sora's legs gave out.

Relief.

"Woah—I gotcha. I gotcha," Goofy repeated, grabbing for Sora's arm and easing him to the ground.

"You look like you got hit by the tram. You good?" The kid in the wheelchair asked, adjusting himself to sit properly.

"Sorry about that," Sora apologized with a laugh from the floor.

"With the way you ran off we thought you might have smelled food!" Donald scolded.

"Nope, no food. Sorry."

"D'ooohh…" Donald sighed, crossing his arms.

"There's a diner down on Main Street that has a good garbage plate." The boy with the camera offered.

"A…a what plate?" Sora asked with a laugh.

"Garbage plate. Looks like trash, gets scrambled, tastes amazing. The one I like has like sausage, potatoes, veggies, eggs, cheese," the girl explained.

"Why come in here if you were looking for a place to eat?" The boy asked, wheeling himself over to knock his foot against Sora's. The girl hadn't stopped staring at him, but her weary look was turning into one of worry.

Hungry.  

"Uh…dunno! Where's uh…Main Street? We're not from here." Sora asked, glancing at Donald and Goofy.

"Where you from?" The kid with the camera asked, going to stand before the girl grabbed at his sleeve and kept him in place.

"Super far away. So uh, you know. Trying to find fun new stuff to eat!" Sora lied very, very poorly.

"Buddy, you look like crap and this is coming from someone who was in a coma for two months. Sit tight, I'll be back soon as you get out of the doorway."

"By yourself?" The camera boy asked, the girl’s eyes locking onto him with the intensity of a bear trap.

"It's Main Street, not the moon. I might just even go into the bistro since that's closer. I'll text you if I need help," The wheelchair boy grumbled before shoving past Sora, Donald, and Goofy. Sora shoved himself up against a wall with his legs like a kid on a floor scooter while Donald and Goofy both jumped to either side of the doorway.

"Uh…Sorry about that. He's not usually…Well I mean he kinda is but we're also kind of dealing with some stuff." The boy with the camera explained without saying a word.

"He's stupid," she sighed. "Sorry."

"Oh no, it's okay! It's really nice of him to do that. We uh…don't have any munny to pay him back though. Should I go stop him?"

"Nah, he likes to mother," Camera boy waved his hand in front of his face.

"Yeah, but I'd feel bad. Can we like, run errands or something for you?" Sora offered, Goofy giving him a warm smile. Sora didn't let kindness go ignored and always tried to return it.

"I think he'd be upset knowing we let strangers do stuff for us, especially when you look like you've been through the ringer," the girl explained, hands on her lap and not reaching for whatever had been in the couch.

"More like a square-er. Ringers I can usually handle, so this is new!" Sora explained, making light of the fact that he could have fallen asleep right there if he blinked for too long.

"Pfthaha! Square-er." The camera boy laughed, making Sora's chest swell with pride.

"Stop making up words," Donald scolded.

"Aren't all languages just made up words?" Goofy countered.

"Yeah, stop being such a flembalabem!" Sora leaned over towards him, a wide grin on his face as he held his ankles together.

"What did you just call me?" Donald quacked, the boy and girl laughing at them.

But the girl's laughter quickly turned into crying, the camera boy panicking.

“Lette—”

“M'okay,” she insisted, wiping her eyes. “Sorry, I just…I haven't laughed in a while and…and you know he…ugh, he always likes to take that with him, doesn't he?” she asked, pressing a hand to her throat, camera boy pressing a hand to her leg.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy looked at each other. Sora forced himself up, wincing as he used the wall for support. "Um…I don't really get what happened, but is there anything I can do to help? Like get tissues or tell bad jokes to get you to laugh again? I know its surface level stuff, but I don't wanna pry."

She choked on a laugh, condescending and humiliated, furiously wiping at her tears. "We lost someone. It's not nice to laugh when you lost someone…"

"I don't think that's true," Sora walked over to her, sitting down in front of her with great difficulty. "For a really long time, I lost someone precious to me I thought I was never going to get back…and in finding her, I lost another friend and I have no idea if he's okay. But I don't think either of them are the kind of people who'd want me to be sad forever. Is the person you lost someone who would want you to be sad all the time?"

"I—no, actually…this feels like mega deja vu, but when we first met, he kind of said something similar. Less words because it was awkward for him, but…he liked when we laughed—it made him happy," she mumbled, Sora giving her a warm smile.

"Jeeze, yeah…" Pence agreed in realization. "When we first met I thought everything out of his mouth was a joke…he was constantly asking if we'd laugh then, which in and of itself was funny. I'd lost Frankie then too…so it does really feel like deja vu…"

"Well there you go! You don't get anywhere being sad! Our ship runs on happy faces," Sora gave them a wide smile as Donald quacked at him, not liking how Sora was using literal metaphors in front of strangers. Sora shot him a grin, not bothered by him in the slightest while Goofy stifled a laugh.

"Earlier you said you weren't from here—is that why you're in Twilight Town? Looking for your friend?" Camera boy asked, Sora biting at his bottom lip while still trying to smile.

"Um…kind of. I have no idea where I'd even start looking for him." Sora admitted, rubbing at the back of his neck.

"Tell me about it…" the girl mumbled. "He could be right here or whole worlds away and we'd never know it…"

"Well, here's to finding new friends and old ones." Sora offered.

"Friends already?" Camera boy asked with a grin.

"He makes annoyingly fast friend with anyone," Donald complained, Sora chuckling.

"M'back—hey, outta the doorway. You're blocking traffic here." The boy in the wheelchair gestured for Donald and Goofy to move, food situated on his lap.

"That smells so good!" Sora groaned, voice grating so hard he made himself laugh. "Oh my gosh, I sound like Riku."

"Thanks a ton!" Goofy stood up as Hayner handed him his food, Goofy handing it off to Donald, then Sora, then taking the last bag for himself.

"Good to see no one died in my absence," The boy snarked.

"I was close," Sora spoke around a mouthful of food, barely understandable.

"You were nooot!" Donald snapped, Goofy slurping at his drink.

"How would you know, hm?" Sora tossed a fry at him, Donald catching it in his mouth. Camera boy snorted.

"Look when you're done, if you don't mind, we got stuff to do and physical therapy to get to," wheelchair boy interrupted. "Name's Hayner, by the way." he grumbled, trying to keep his manners in an attempt to lessen the blow.

"I'm Pence." Camera boy introduced.

"Olette," the girl added.

"I'm Goofy. This is Donald—" Goofy gestured to both of them.

Sora swallowed. "And I'm Sora! Nice to meet you."

The blood drained from their faces. The girl whispered something.

“Huh?”

“I said GET OUT! ” she screamed, jumping up to her feet, making Sora jerk back. Hayner pressed a hand to his mouth, wide eyes welling up.

“Lette…” Pence mumbled softly, but he sounded defeated. He didn't take his eyes off of Sora. “…You…you should really go. Please.”

“He's gone,” Hayner choked. “If you're here, then he's gone.”

Goofy was already up, helping Donald up while Sora stared at them.

“I said GO!” Olette threw herself over the couch, reaching behind it.

“Olette, no! Stop it! ” Pence grabbed her by around her waist and yanked her back, but she already had a grip on a spiked bat. She swung it around in Sora's direction, Sora scrambling to get to the doorway.

She screamed, feral and violent, feet kicking in the air. It was loud enough to echo into the alleyway, Sora ducking as she threw it at him.

“Our friend is dead and it's all your fault!” Dead? Sora had never killed anyone…right? But he had a huge gap in his memory, time unaccounted for. Had he hurt someone in that time without knowing?

“Olette, stop it! Get it together!” Pence yelled over her screaming. Sora had hurt her.

“I want him gone! Do you hear me!”

“He's going!”

“I'm not talking to you, Pence! Lemme go!!”

Sora stared at the doorway, Hayner unmoving in his wheelchair.

He was leaving them again.

Goofy placed a hand on his shoulder, startling him. He opened his mouth to say something, but he wasn't sure what to say. Donald looked apologetic.

“Come on,” Goofy gestured, nodding up the hill. “Let's go.”

Sora nodded, his chest tight, overcrowded with feelings he wasn't sure how to deal with. 

They made their way far up the hill, far away, wandering while Donald and Goofy offered Sora part of their food since his had been left behind. He ate it, knowing he should eat, but he couldn't bring himself to taste it.

He'd hurt someone he hadn't even met. Three of them, actually. They were devastated —they'd lost someone.

“Sora!” Goofy called for his attention, jumping to his side, food hitting the floor. Donald groaned at the loss, but let it go as he jumped to Sora's other side.

<We must follow our orders to protect them, body, heart, mind. You are causing her distress. You must be removed. She wishes it so intensely, we must make it so or she will harm herself.> the silver monster before him spoke, Sora cocking his head to the side.

It wasn't like any Heartless he'd ever seen before—now wasn't the time. He called for his keyblade, heavy and familiar, muscle memory magics.

It lunged for him, an easy dodge—but Sora's reactions were sluggish, out of practice. It hit him in the face so hard his head whipped to the side, twisting between Donald and Goofy to stand behind them. Sora winced, blinking away the tears that welled up in his eye in an attempt to see clearly.

Goofy took two steps forward to shove one of the creatures back, just for it to throw itself at his shield and try to tug it from his hands. He yanked it back, slamming into Donald and Sora’s backs.

“Hey! Watch it!” Donald scolded.

“Ow!”

“Sorry!”

Donald aimed spell after spell—ice, fire, lightning—but his aim was off and they were too fast and some spells weren't even coming to him.

Sora swung, the creature twisting around his keyblade in time. By the time Sora had finished his singular swing, it had twisted up his body, wrapping around his throat.

Sora stumbled back, Donald swinging at the creature before it danced away. Sora coughed, eye from earlier still blurring and probably bruising.

“Ya okay?” Goofy called over his shoulder, blocking an attack from two of them, arms shaking as he did so.

“Hanging in there,” Sora croaked, eyes darting around to find a pattern to their movements. Heartless had patterns, habits—these things did whatever they wanted. They were way more synchronized in their attacks, more intentional, more organized. They weren’t mindless.

He hadn’t even landed one hit on these things. What if he hit them and they weren’t fazed by his keyblade? Sora had no idea what they were and didn’t have time to ponder it before another one twisted through their defenses and kicked Donald out between two more.

They attacked high and low at the same time, Donald ducking one but getting sent flying back into Goofy and Sora with the next. Goofy hit the ground, Sora’s leg jerking out from under him as he struggled to keep himself upright. He didn’t hear Goofy or Donald get up behind him.

This is who I gave up living for?

Sora felt pathetic—Sora felt angry. He was better than this. He was stronger than this. So why did he feel so worn, inside and out? His keyblade was so heavy. His responsibilities were so heavy.

His other eye started to blur from exhaustion while the other kept welling up with tears, probably swelling up from the hit. Two, five—how many were there again? How was he supposed to protect Donald and Goofy and take them all out on his own?

Sora felt the impact from the floor, unsure of when he’d fell.

<You have caused her pain.>

<Pain…>

<Pain!>

<She suffers!>

I know. I’m sorry…

The monster twisted in on itself, trembling in a faux rage before lunging—all Sora could do was hold up his keyblade to defend himself and squeeze his eyes shut. 

There was a sound of glass breaking, silver, and chains clinking together.

Sora peered his good eye open and lowered his keyblade as one with a golden blade glinted back at him, the creatures gone. Sora let his keyblade vanish into stardust, dropping forward on his hands—just to be pushed down onto the ground by Donald and Goofy.

“Your majesty?!” Donald quaked loudly. Sora shrugged him off, standing up to brush his knees off.

“Shh. You gotta board the train and leave town. The train knows the way. Here,” Mickey held out a hand sew orange pouch, weighted with munny. Donald and Goofy looked at it, then back at the King—who had already taken off.

“Your majesty!” Donald called after him, but stayed by Sora’s side.

“The King? Was that really him?” Sora asked. They hadn’t seen his face. He’d handled those monsters with ease—Sora seemed to always make a fool of himself in front of the King.  

“I know it was!” Goofy enthusiastically agreed.

“Now we know he’s okay!” Donald cheered, Sora crossing his arms and furrowing his brow.

“The king was locked in the realm of darkness, right? But we just saw him—and if the King is here…That means Riku’s here!”  Riku was alright. He could find him and take him home! They could finally all be together again.

“He’s gotta be!” Donald agreed.

“Well, I’m gonna go look for Riku! I have to hurry up and drag him home—Kairi is there waiting for us! Um…what about you two? Are you going to go after the King or…?” Sora’s eyes flickered behind them to where he’d run off to.

They could follow him, they could go home. They could leave him all alo—

“Gwarsh Sora—do you have to ask?” Goofy teased, giving him a wide grin that soothed Sora’s worries. Right. They’d come back after he’d lost his keyblade. They’d protected him. They were his friends.

Sora couldn’t help the wide, bashful smile that took over his face. He pressed his cheek to his shoulder, Donald shaking his head and casting a small cure spell on his eye—but he couldn’t help but smile too.

“Better?” The magic was cool like a gel pack, comforting like a sunspot. He blinked away the last of his tears of pain, the start of the swelling under his eye gone.

“Yes! Thank you! Come on—let’s get on the train!” Sora dashed off ahead, eagerly opening the large glass doors. He’d never been on a train before. Boats and buses sure, so he was already off to an exciting start if he ignored how badly he’d lost earlier.

He would just need to practice, get back into the swing of things.

“Hey!”

“Wait up!”

Sora jogged to a stop, Donald and Goofy right behind him doing the same. His legs hurt—he should really stop running everywhere for now. He turned around, Pence and Hayner trying to catch up to him. They were both out of breath, Hayner sweating and scowling.

“Can’t exactly run after you, ya know!”

Pence glanced over at him, but didn’t say anything.

“Oh—sorry,” Sora mumbled, Hayner ramming his knees into Sora’s. He glanced behind them, looking for Olette. She’d been really angry, devastated. He had no idea what he’d done, no idea what was going on.

She wasn’t there.

“I take it you’re leaving? Going to Sunset Hill or…?” Pence asked, looking between the three of them.

“Uh…probably not,” Sora admitted softly, unsure of how to behave around them. Hayner wasn’t looking at him, scowling at the ticket booth instead. “Did I leave something behind or…something?” Sora asked awkwardly.

“No,” Hayner bit back. “We…we came to say goodbye. Olette’s not coming,” he added bitterly, brows furrowing and lip upturned as his eyes welled up.

Pence awkwardly shifted his weight from one leg to the other, then back, glancing around to look anywhere but at Sora.

“Oh. That’s, um…nice of you,” Sora mumbled softly, Donald and Goofy looking at him to study for cues to pick up on. They couldn’t tell how he was feeling and neither could Sora. His chest felt like it was a mess—like someone had come in and wrecked everything. They hadn’t taken anything, giving him the ruin in their wake.

He had no idea why he felt like this.

“It just…” Pence inhaled softly, breath shaking. “It just felt like the right thing to do. I didn’t get to say goodbye to the last person I lost before, so we…”

“So we’re saying goodbye and if we never see you again, it’ll still be too soon,” Hayner snapped, angrily wiping at tears. Sora had no idea how to comfort him. He had no idea if he was mad at him or about something else.

Sora stared at both of them, really took them in.

The way neither of them would look at him. The way they seemed exhausted. The way they seemed heavy-hearted and helpless. The way they had trouble breathing. The way they seemed broken down. The way their shoulders were relaxed in defeat, welcoming what awful thing was to come.

Sora threw his arms around both of them, tugging Pence down to Hayner’s level.

“Woah!”

They were warm. They were alive. They were hurt, but would carry on. They weren’t okay right now, but they would be.

Sora pulled away, holding his hands together over his heart. “Sorry…I’m so sorry…” Sora didn’t feel like he was apologizing for the hug.

I’m sorry…

Hayner looked at him, wide brown eyes frozen with tears, Pence just as bewildered.

“I just…I don’t want to hurt you or have anything I do get you hurt—and I don’t want you to be sad,” he admitted, a laugh that shouldn’t have been there. It was out of place, painful, and awkward.

Confusion overtook Hayner’s features, stifling his sorrow for just a moment as he studied Sora.

“G’bye…” Pence mumbled, forcing himself to keep eye contact with Sora.

This hurt too much for people he’d just met.

This was awful.

This was terrible.

This was goodbye.

“Goodbye, Pence. Goodbye Hayner. Goodbye, Olette.”

Sora didn’t remember buying the tickets. He couldn’t feel his legs as he made his way to the train. He didn’t feel like himself as he boarded, Donald and Goofy boarding first. He took one last glance over his shoulder, Pence and Hayner talking quietly to each other, Olette nowhere to be seen.

He’d been hit in the face earlier. The cure spell must have not healed everything. That had to be why his eyes welled up so much and why the tears fell without him having to do so much as blink.

He felt the tears on his cheek, sniffing and wiping them away. “Pull it together…” he mumbled, giving a light tap to his cheeks with his palms. He stood by the door as it closed, noticing how Donald and Goofy sat far enough away to give him some space. Once it started pulling out of the station, Hayner and Pence had stopped talking to watch.

Goodbye, hello Sora.

The train rattled as it chugged along, Donald and Goofy staring out of the window to watch the passing scenery. Sora couldn’t bring himself to move away from the door, trying the only way he reasonably could to stay closer to them.

He pulled out the munny pouch, deciding he could count how much they had as a distraction—a blue gemstone rested on top. Part of him expected it to vanish, but it remained solid in his hand as he pulled it out.

“You know…” Sora finally spoke up, holding them gemstone up to the light. Donald and Goofy looked at him, giving him their rapt attention. It had a hairline crack in it, breaking the view of the world into two. Sora quietly lowered them gemstone, staring at it in his hand.

“…I’m sad.”

This wasn’t his—the gemstone or these feelings.

But they felt like his feelings. If they weren’t his feelings, then who else’s would they be? Of course they were his feelings, he was being silly. He just wasn’t used to feeling that way so intensely was all.

Goodbye…

Chapter Text

Pence stared at the notification reminder that had popped up on his phone. He stared, trying to remember why it was there. He tried to remember when he made it.

Roxas had been gone for over three months. He didn't know if dead was the right word because it didn't encapsulate the smaller nuances that were almost lost even on him. He was a creature that had come from another living being's heart. He was once again apart of that being.

Pence had thought over how it was even possible to separate them. Could you? Or could one not exist without the other giving something up? If they could separate them, what kind of tools and equipment would be needed? But if Roxas was the body, what would happen to Sora's body? Or because Roxas was Sora's body—his head hurt.

Pence didn't have enough information.

He was scared of drawing conclusions on his own, fitting answers in wherever it sounded convenient. He wanted real answers, wanted to be able to test their validity. Hayner had been scared away from answers a long time ago. Olette was content to take everything at face value, scared of looking deeper. He wasn't sure when exactly that had changed.

Olette was always eager to tag along and peel the layers of the town away until its core remained. Hayner was always first to lead the charge into the unknown, willing to scower the world for impracticalities to expose and learn more about. Pence was always willing to follow along and document all of their excavations, their finds, their hard won shiny victories.

They'd gotten scared. He wasn't sure when, but they'd been scared. Scared of losing people, scared of each other, scared of being hurt. It had shown in their hesitance, then in their inability to move forward. Pence had wanted answers to move forward, to find the ability to take a step forward into the unknowable arms of the future.

But Pence felt he was reaching his limit too. He was worried their friendship would fall apart and he wouldn't be able to keep them together. They were meeting out of habit, but Olette was pushing them away and Hayner was quick to pull into himself. Pence worried if he wasn't there to ease the tension, they'd break into themselves and then blame each other. He felt like when it came down to it, he was being passive. He didn't want to address their feelings for fear of losing them. It was selfish, but he figured if that was the worst of him, he'd take whatever they had to say about it.

As they were, he could see them drifting away from each other, stars on the vast sea to be separated by time and only appearing to each other under the guise of proximity. One of them would burn out and, as he stared at the notification, he wondered if it would be him.

🎉🎂 Roxas' birthday!! 🎂🎉

He hadn't cried. He expected to cry, then, now, at all. He hadn't cried about Frankie. He hadn't cried about Hayner being hurt. He hadn't cried about Roxas vanishing back into the magical nonsense he'd come from, twilight foam and glittering affection.

Was he a bad friend for not crying? A bad person? The world had clearly broken him down, left its mark, but he hadn't reacted to it.

"Pence?"

"Pence?"

The twins asked, both in his doorway. Pence dismissed the notification, putting his phone back on his dresser.

"Yeah, what's up?" He wasn't putting on a brave face. He'd been alone until just then. He'd had so many moments he'd been alone enough to cry it out. It had nothing to do with being an older brother, a role model. He couldn't put the blame on any of his siblings for his inability to grieve.

"It's back in Frankie's room," Loonie mumbled softly, Toonie looking over his shoulder.

"Oh." Pence took a moment to understand what they'd meant. "Oh—okay, I'll talk to him." Pence got off of the edge of his bed, the twins moving out of his way.

They'd learned to tell when it was in the house. There was a looming dread, a creeping shadow of unease and anticipation. Frankie's bedroom door was always shut, it being too painful for their parents to leave it open. Pence had noticed at first how Penny would refuse to go by his room and had even burst into tears when she'd had to pass by in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

The twins would watch it like leary dogs, and his parents would fumble, glance at it before quickly shuffling along. Pence always felt like he was going to die. Like he'd open the door and Frankie would be there like the husk of the person they’d found, dead. A ghost, haunting his memories, their house, their hearts.

But the first time he'd worked up the courage to open the door, he found the Nobody standing in the center of the room, stock-still. Pence couldn't tell where its eyes were—if it had eyes to begin with. But he'd stared it down so long he had to wonder if it had fallen asleep.

He'd called out to it softly, a generalized, "Hey…" It had startled, then vanished into thorn and void. Every time Pence approached the door the feeling didn't ease. It was familiar, a motion to go through, but still riddled with the terror that overtook him every single time.

He didn't know what to tell his siblings. He couldn't tell them there was a Silver Devil in their brother's room because they'd either have nightmares or tell everyone and their mother—and their own mother. So, he'd sat them down and decided to be a bit more honest about it.

He told them they couldn't tell their parents because they wouldn't believe them, then he told them it was a monster. He told them the monster had a magical power to make you feel terrified, like a boogeyman. But the monster was there to protect them so what happened with Frankie would never happen with them. It couldn't make the scary feeling go away, but that also scared away bad guys.

They took it better than he expected, understanding the monster in their dead brother's bedroom wasn't out to get them. He'd even heard Toonie on the phone with one of his friends, saying the weird feeling when they walked home was from his boogy-monster. It would have been cute if Pence wasn't so heartbroken by it. He missed his monster more than he could bear.

Pence stood outside of Frankie's door, struggling to breathe, mind generating excuses to do anything but open the door. He should pee first. When was the last time he ate? He should go for a walk. He should check up on Hayner. Didn't he have homework?

Pence gripped the doorknob. He turned it, quick, getting it over with. But he struggled to actually open the door, even knowing it was just a push, a simple shove.

He felt a trickle of sweat work it's way down his back.

He opened the door. Every time, without fail, he felt like he should have announced himself, like he was interrupting something. But the Nobody stood inside, unimpeded by his entrance, face directed towards a wall full of posters next to an armoire. Pence sighed, reacquainting himself with the fear coursing through him. Maybe his sadness was the same. Just when he felt it was going to overwhelm him, he would become familiar with it.

Pence closed the door behind himself, the thought of the Nobody tearing him apart as they were finally alone flood his thoughts. Run, run, run his paranoid pulse chanted.

Pence sat in the chair by Frankie's desk. It was old, a hand-me-down with the word empanana carved into it, but solid wood. Pence couldn't remember if it was him or Frankie who'd done it, but it was there forever now. He quietly traced the fading, but harsh cut letters with his finger, trying to even his breathing.

Their nana had been making empanadas and had snuck them each one before dinner was done. It was something she'd always done, a way to spoil them and keep them quiet and out of trouble. They thought they were so clever calling her that, even more so by eating the secret food under the desk they sometimes made into a fort. So they'd marked the desk with her funny title, the place they'd always rush off to.

"You know you're freaking them out again," Pence finally got himself to speak up to the samurai, mouth dry.

The Nobody didn't respond.

"I get you're trying to protect us, but you don't need to be in here that often, do you?" He felt like he was being rude. He was going to get in trouble for it, scolded then flayed open, left for his siblings to see. If he died he really hoped they wouldn't ever have to see his dead body, ribs broken open and cooked like a pig at the summer fair. He hated how his thoughts would get away from him like this.

<I know…>

"You…know what?" Pence tried to keep his voice from shaking, but it was always harder to control than he realized. Even with nerves of steel, there was always some sort of heat that could melt it.

<I don't know. But I know. I know. I know. Why do I know?>

"I…I don't get what you're saying, buddy," Pence admitted.

The samurai turned its head to him, then back to the poster wall. <I know. This is the newest.> the samurai pointed a claw at a poster, then lowered it. <This is unclean.> It pointed to Pence's feet, a t-shirt shoved up into the corner under the desk he hadn't noticed. It approached him, claws pointing to his neck. <I know this is not yours.>

Pence put a hand to his neck, to cling to the bandana. That was Frankie's.

<I know,> it repeated, solemnly. The samurai slowly lowered its hand, turning back towards the wall as Pence swallowed. <I know when you or they are sad. I know you are sad.>

Pence stared at the samurai's back, trying to form thoughts in his head, trying to filter those into words. "But I'm not sad. I haven't cried or gotten upset or changed how I eat and I still shower…I'm not sad," Pence repeated, staring at his hands as if the lines on them would point him to the answers he wanted.

<You are sad. You hide in solitude. You feel as though you deserve a punishment for not expressing your feelings the way everyone else does. I know you were always like this. I know you don't deserve it.> The samurai didn't turn to him as it whispered in his head.

Pence felt his jaw lock, mouth quirk up. He'd always come to Frankie with his problems. He was his big brother—he trusted him with the world and any beyond it. He didn't realize he did that until Frankie had told him one day. Pence would hide in his room, he wouldn't engage with Hayner and Olette, even if he'd spend time with them.

"I just…Olette is full of rage and Hayner is full of sadness and I don't feel any of that. I feel tired and empty," Pence admitted, brow furrowed, lowering his head to press the heels of his hands into his eyes.

<You feel sad. My job is to protect you. I know this has been for always. Your heart needs protecting too. I will protect you for always.>

Pence was scared to look up, scared to ask, scared to acknowledge the familiarity of the conversation he was having. A Nobody was just the body left behind when the heart was removed. But it cultivated feelings, a heart. Pence had seen that first hand with Roxas. But he didn't know how much it was like their old heart. He didn't have enough information.

"I miss you too…" Pence mumbled softly, pulling his hands away, a shadow looming over him. "But please don't keep scaring them…I don't know how to tell them that you…" He furrowed his brow. "That you're…"

<I know. You don't need to—I know.>

"I don't need to know or I don't need to tell them?" Pence asked, finally looking up at him. He tried to see past its face mask to no avail. He studied it, the texture of its body, the way it didn't move and when it did the movement was premeditated and intentional.

It raised its claw, slow, deliberate.

<I know…> it put a hand on his head. It didn’t have any warmth. It was cold, like Roxas had always been. What did it know that Pence didn’t?

What made a samurai a samurai and not a ninja? What made a Nobody look human? What made a human looking Nobody worthy of the horrible ranks of the Organization? What did it take for a Nobody to grow a heart?

Pence didn't have enough information—not yet at least.

Pence quietly untied the bandana around his neck as the samurai pulled its hand away. “Roxas had this…he gave it back to me once he realized who it belonged to. Do you know…” Pence’s voice faded. “Do you know who this belongs to?”

The samurai tipped its head down towards the banana, starring. It was quiet, another remnant in the room of a dead man. It reached down, claws gingerly touching the thick flesh of Pence’s palm as it took it from him.

<… I know.>

Pence dug his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a vocal recorder app and a notepad app he mostly used for his journalism class. “What else do you know?”

Chapter Text

I don't want to wake up.

It's okay to feel that way.

Everything hurts.

I know. It'll heal.

You don't get to comfort me when this is your fault—my fault. His fault. We're all the same, aren't we?

Why do you hate yourself so much?

All I do is hurt people and ruin things. Hayner, Pence, Olette, the Organization—you. Me. Us.

Do you do it on purpose?

I don't think so…

So you're mean to yourself because you made a mistake?

I'm a mistake, aren't I? Aren't we?

Because we weren't planned? Doesn't that make numerous other living things, discoveries, and wonders a mistake?

I dunno…I just want all of the mistakes to go away. I want to sleep forever. This hurts too much. I miss them too much.

I don't think you want that—not really. You care too much.

You don't know anything.

But you said that we're the same. I know you care. I know I love you. I know you really don't want to hate yourself. I know this conversation scares you.

Then why do you insist on having it?

Isn't the silence lonely?

I can sleep in the silence.

But you don't really want to sleep.

I do. For once, I want to be like Sora. I want to forget. I wish I'd never met them. I wish I'd never hurt them. Do you think there's a version of my wish out there? Where they never knew me?

Who knows. I think that world sounds painful and lonely.

Like this one isn't?

I think, despite everything, this one is less so. I think you got to hold their hands knowing they'd always reach out to you. I think you got to be held when you were sad instead of being abandoned to figure it out yourself. I think you got to kiss them knowing they wouldn't pull away. I think they wanted to try to understand what you were and not shy away from the truth.

…

…I'm sorry I didn't understand better then.

It's not your fault. We were blank slates and you didn't have any examples to go by. I left you to the Organization. You knew I was hurt. You knew if it hurts, you should stay away from it. You knew I'd keep going back. You were right. I stayed in a fake place that leeched off of me because of them. If I'd have just gone back, just listened—

We'd still be here. I was always going to go back to Sora and I was always scared to go back alone. You had so many friends here that would miss you. Part of me was jealous you found your own happy world outside of the one we were supposed to have.

I missed you.

You didn't remember me to miss me. The only reason you remember me now is because I’m right here, but you’ll eventually forget again. And it's okay, I'm not trying to blame you or make you feel guilty about it.

But I missed you. I could feel it, even if I didn't know what I was missing. You're my friend—I love you.

I love you too. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry too. I don't blame you for anything either, just so you know.

It's okay.

I mean it. I did the same exact thing and hurt them with how I tried to protect them too. I don't think I was ever angry with you, even then when you took my name from them. Hurt, but not angry. Besides…turning sorrow into rage is practically Xaldin's forte.

I think I was angry enough for the both of us. You not being angry just tells me they really do love you. I was just…so tired. Tired of Axel pulling away, tired of Riku calling me out for what I was, tired of not being a substitute while still not being enough…I get why you want to sleep. But I know I also want to wake up. I want to hear about your friends. I want to spend more time with you, even if it's only here. I love you so, so much.

I love you too.

So if you love me, you can't hate yourself since we're supposed to be the same. Please…be nicer to yourself? Be nicer to Sora? Neither of you deserve that. You've been through enough.

…

Please, be nicer to my friend. He's really sweet and tries his hardest at everything. He's genuine and sincere and heartfelt. The entire time I've known him, all he's ever wanted is to be loved and held. He's gentle and scared of breaking things. Please, please be good and kind to my friend.

…Is he worth that kindness? I've heard he's a selfish coward.

I hear that isn't true. I hear it's terrifying to do some things by yourself that require you to expose vulnerable parts of yourself. He's very brave for having to do them over and over again. He just wants the people he cares about to be happy.

Does he though? Isn't that just him wishing for their complicity? People are allowed to be angry and blame him.

There's always going to be someone who thinks you did something wrong. There's too many people with too many different views and experiences of their world to try to have them all think the same way. But I want for just a moment for you to see him how I do. My friend is precious to me.

Precious?

More than anything in any world and beyond.

…

Is something wrong?

No…can you call me that again?

Roxas is precious to me. He's so very precious and important.

One more time…please, Xion…?

Roxas is dear and precious to me.

From the start…I think that's all I ever wanted to be to someone.

Did they make you feel precious?

…Yes. I miss them, dearly.

Beloved little humans of yours.

Yeah…There’s just one thing I don’t understand. If we’re supposed to be Sora…why do I still feel so much like myself? Why does my consciousness, my feelings still belong to me, but are now just locked away inside of him?

I don’t know—I wish I did. I think maybe, eventually, we’ll fade away into Sora’s heart and become a part of him again.

Well that fucking sucks.

Pfthaha! I’m sorry.

It’s alright. Even if that isn’t the case, at least I’m here with you rather than being alone. I think being alone is the worst possible thing in the whole universe. So…thank you—for not leaving me alone, Xion. I just…

You feel guilty you left them alone.

Yeah…

But…you know…don’t you? That I was here first, so if I’m right…

I’ll be all alone with whatever is asleep in here.

…

Chapter Text

Olette had never been needed before. She'd been welcomed, but never needed. She was reminded of this when Hayner would pull away to marinate in his own misery and when Pence would seem like he'd rather be anywhere else but with them.

His tapping and constantly glancing at the clock was getting on her nerves. She swallowed past what felt like a peach pit trapped in her throat. She watched Hayner try not to fall asleep from his pain meds, which just frustrated him every time he jerked awake.

None of them had said anything for over a half hour. She picked up her backpack, her stomach tied in knots. She tried to remember where she heard that her intestines could wrap around the world at least once as a kid. She wondered if they'd tied themselves around every part of Roxas that was left in Twilight Town.

"I'm leaving." Not going home, just leaving there.

"Huh? Why?" Pence asked, Hayner angrily rubbing at his eye with his palm.

"Because." Because she felt like it. Because she seemed to feel more upset about things than they did. Because she felt she was being unreasonable. Because she didn't want to be mean to her friends.

"Oh…Uh, okay then. Get home safe." Pence gave her a nod, Olette slinging her bag over her shoulder.

Hayner gave her a wave that didn't even have his fingers straighten properly. He shouldn't have come if he was that exhausted.

Her glance at them was her goodbye as she made her way out, through the sandlot and down into Market Street by the alcove of trash.

She dropped her bag in a corner, digging out her headphones. She wanted something angry, something loud, something how she felt but couldn't vocalize to her friends.

Olette had never been needed before, but Roxas had needed her. It was genuine, even as he could make his way to other worlds, even as he showed them he was a monster beyond their comprehension. He'd needed her from the start, had used her as a tether for his humanity. Roxas had come to rely on her, even if it had scared him.

She didn't realize how badly she wanted to be needed until he was gone. Even with Hayner, he refused to earnestly rely on her and Pence for anything. They were struggling, painfully self sufficient. She wanted to help, she wanted to rebel with her kindness in a selfish world full of selfish people. But she was also a selfish person and knew that wasn't something she could easily change.

She hit play, taking the baseball bat out of her bag. She twisted it around in her hand, then aimed it at the trash as if to challenge it.

Metal fixtures, broken plates, broken push carts missing wheels, unwanted food, broken fencing, beer bottles and ash trays.

Roxas was gone and the nothingness that took his place was too painful. So Olette shoved something else in its place, shoved her anger and her pain into the shape of her missing friend—and she swung.

She was scared of losing him, scared he wouldn't want them as friends anymore, scared he'd be killed by the Organization, scared ▇▇▇▇ would do something. She was so damn tired of being scared of monsters, of being left alone to fend for herself, of beer bottles and ash trays!

Glass soundlessly crunched under her sneakers, her bat catching between planks of fencing. She ripped it out and fell back onto a pile of trash bags.

Trash.

She was sitting in trash.

Her house. Her life. Her feelings—trash.

She screamed and scrambled to her feet to swing again, haphazardly, violently, mindlessly. He left her alone, broke his promises. He was a liar, just like everyone else. But she was the mean one for being a realist. The mean one for not running away with her brother and hurting his feelings. She was the mean one because she wanted them to talk to her, even if it would hurt because the silence was stifling.

She wished she'd taken the nail bat because then it would rip the bags rather than just pulverize what was inside.

She was giving up, giving into it then if that's how everyone saw her. She knew about the whispers, about the things she pretended she didn't hear—she wasn't stupid. Trash, just like her parents. Useless, good-for-nothing, hooligan.

She just missed the people in her life who didn't let those whispers and cruel expectations define her or her future. She missed them and two of them were still right there in front of her.

Selfish, all of them, leaving her alone with those.

A bottle smashed against the wall, shattering as the bat flew out of her hands. No matter how much anger and sadness she put into the shape of her missing friend, of the piece of her heart that was taken because of him, he wasn't coming back. With a piece of her aura missing her heart had been vulnerable, then he'd hurt her in the worst way possible.

He was gone, irreplaceable.

She punched a pile of trash, knuckles immediately dripping blood all over the ground. Adrenaline was a hell of a numbing drug because she punched again with the same hand.

Her breathing was heavy, as if there wasn't proper oxygen, as if the darkness in her world had viscosity that she was choking on. Dark. Everything was going dark—she'd never blacked out before. Was that what this was?

But then, her view was filled with silver thorns and void, a samurai in front of her. It aimed it's sword at her, Olette tripping over her own feet, headphones catching on her hands and getting yanked out of her ears as she yelped.

<Your stance is poor, which is why you lost your weapon. Rise,> it demanded, blood on her headphone cord.

Olette stared, chest heaving.

<Rise,> it repeated. Olette scrambled to her feet, eyes on the sword aimed at her. The samurai flipped the sword, offering her the hilt. A sword, a blade she'd bleed on. This wasn't a blunt bruise from a bat if she hit herself with this. She'd really get hurt. She was being offered the chance to hurt herself, properly. To fight something without it going easy on her.

She took the hilt of the sword.

<Your emotions can be valuable as well as a crutch. Learn to make them useful to you and not a hindrance. Do not hesitate. Follow through with every decision you make. Understood?>

"Understood," she gave a heavy nod, the Samurai taking out its second blade.

She didn't want to be angry with Pence and Hayner, but part of her always wanted to be angry. She hadn't followed through with her swing and lost her bat.

Follow through; make a choice and commit to it.

<When you cannot wield your emotions well or with a clear head, the darkness will take you.>

"Darkness…?"

The samurai didn't bother explaining anymore—and didn't bother going easy on her. Her bloody knuckles were just the start of the injuries she got, but at least these ones were given constructively, rather than from cowering or being restrained.

These felt well earned, well deserved. She deserved to be hurt and she deserved to learn from it. She deserved to learn how to hurt the world back. She deserved to experience her anger rather than hold it back and let it overtake her. She deserved all parts of her heart, not just the gentle ones.

She had fought with herself for so long about it, and she deserved to win a fight for once.

Chapter Text

Hayner was tired. The painkillers made him tired. Losing someone else he loved made him tired. The physical therapy made him tired. Getting dressed, eating, made him tired. He couldn't go to school, so his school work had to be brought to him with lesson plans. The numbers made him tired. He wanted to graduate with Pence and Olette, but thought of the year ahead made him tired.

The doctors had no idea why he appeared to be recovering from a heart surgery and a car accident. There were no scars, no proof he'd been hit by a semi-truck to his emotional state, but it was undeniable that something had happened.

He said he couldn't remember when they asked, when his grandmother asked. Which wasn't completely a lie, but the truth would probably have them saying he handled a traumatic event by making up memories just like with his mother.

He remembered swinging at the Nobody, at ▇▇▇▇, missing and fumbling into the darkness with them. He remembered taking one look at ▇▇▇▇ and realizing he was alone in unfamiliar territory. He remembered darting off, even after they told him to stop. Even after they spoke in his head to try to coax him back, feelers in his brain that only spurred him on further. Even after he no longer could hear them or feel them in his head, he ran until he collapsed. He remembered Roxas. He remembered being held.

But they'd think once again, he was just making up monsters he could fight. But the fight was drained out of him. The life was drained out of him. What little was left was spread thin in an attempt to give him the long years he would have had if his life would have been normal. If his life hadn't been a mystery of circumstance and shadows since he was a kid. But his life wasn't normal. It had been magical, and magic came at a price.

It cost his mother. Cost his body. Cost his friendships. Every single day was a blur and he had stopped taking his pain meds because of it. His missed the sharp distinction of each day, but it was replaced with a sharp distinction in his heart, in his muscles instead. Some days he gave up and took them, other days he'd fight tooth and nail to not rely on them.

Everything still felt blurry, indistinct. He didn't know if that was from his loss or from his pain. His body was too much of a burden to bear, but he couldn't throw it away. Roxas had worked so hard to save it, afterall.

"Hayner?" His grandmother called softly, Hayner jerking his head up. He was passing out at the table again.

"Hm? Sorry…" he mumbled, trying not to sound angry. She got up, rubbing at his back gently, but he still winced. She then brushed her thumb between his brows to get him to stop scowling. He exhaled, trying not to sound annoyed with her. He wasn't, but he didn't want her thinking he was.

"Are you going to see your friends today?" she asked, Hayner trying his best not to lower his eyebrows again, to look angry.

"No…" He scrubbed his face with his hands. "Think being around me is just making them more upset." He was a reminder of why Roxas had been separated from them in the first place, horror movie cliches that cost them their monster.

"I think you should get out," She gave a gentle nudge, patient as ever.

"They don't…want me there. I'm cranky an' miserable all the time." He did his best to deflect, to not bring up Roxas and use him as an excuse.

"Well I can see that."

Hayner flushed in embarrassment.

"If you think they don't want you around since you're a Debbie Downer, then don't be one—even if it's just for a little bit. They need you as much as you need them right now. Friends are the exact people you’re supposed to go to when you feel like this." She sat next to him, giving his thigh a pat of reassurance.

"Grama…"

"I know it's hard…I know." Her voice was soft, gentle with reassurance of her years. "I know the stairs are awful and I know the hills are too and I know your pride is the worst of it. But I need you to fake your smiles till you remember how to make them real, okay? You see how they're falling apart without you just like you are without them?"

Hayner's jaw clenched, threatened to shatter his teeth in his mouth.

They hadn't been over at all. When they'd seen him out with his grandma they'd given polite nods, but never abandoned their prior engagements to be with him like they used to. She didn't see how Pence was quick to rush off, how Olette looked like she was an alley cat that got into fights for scraps. She didn't see how they were starting to keep secrets from each other.

Hayner clenched his hand, unclenched it and exhaled. "I'm not their leader, I’m their friend—so why should I have to keep everything together? They can come see me too, you know. That's not fair…"

"If you want to make the world your enemy and not take responsibility that's okay." Hyuna shrugged, passive.

"I didn't—"

"But I know you don't let your enemies sucker punch you and then leave it at that."

He stopped his objections, studying her eyes. He wondered if she became this strong after losing both his parents or if she was always like this. Would his parents have been like that? He used to be like that.

"I…I just miss him. I was too little to miss mom or dad right and I miss him so much . And he left me something," Hayner choked out with a laugh. "I don't know how to bring it up to Olette and Pence without them getting mad that I hid it in the first place. But I…I don't feel like I deserve it…"

"From your friend, Roxas?" she clarified. Hayner had implied his home situation was bad more than once. Hayner told her he was shy and awkward and really just needed sleep when they’d hauled him into his house and hid him from her, which wasn’t a lie. Hayner implied he might have gone missing like so many others.

"Yeah…" Hayner wiped angrily at his eyes. "I hate how much I liked him. I didn't even know him as long as Pence and Olette and I'm all broken up about it like I did…"

"Time doesn't usually matter too much. If it did, marriages wouldn't fall apart and you wouldn't fall in love with newborns the minute they're in your arms either." Hyuna snorted, a soft smile on her face. "The heart is silly like that. It's too earnest, even if it's embarrassing. But we're going to invite your friends over tomorrow for lunch and you're going to smile, even if it's only to thank them for coming—even if it hurts."

Smile through the pain. Hayner didn't know if he was that kind of person, if he was strong enough to lie that well. But pain was supposed to only be temporary.

"Grama, I don't…" Hayner searched for excuses, for something to contradict her. She gently put her fingers under his chin, tipping his head up to look at her, away from the ground.

"Just for a second, that's all I'm asking. Then a second longer next time." She brushed his hair out of his face and he felt he didn't deserve to meet her eyes.

That second was going to feel like eternity and break him. Why should he smile when no one was happy, when everything was falling apart? Why should he smile when he was losing precious thing after precious thing? It must have shown on his face because Hyuna gave him a look of apology, but a smile all the same.

"You know, people were always drawn to you Hayner, like it or not. So it's important that you're good to them. You have to be gentle and kind with people—they're vulnerable and scared off easier than you think. You're always happier with your friends by your side," she reminded, but all Hanyer could think of was how they would have never been together forever. Not really.

They'd go to different colleges or get trade jobs, move away, have families. He’d expected them to fall away from each other, just not this violently, not this abruptly.

"But I'm…" he objected meekly. He didn't want to be a leader. He didn't want people to gather under his banner. He just wanted his friends to be okay, but because of him they never would be. "…I'm tired. M'gonna nap." He wheeled himself away from the table before she could object, but she was always good about giving him his space.

He was running away, when before he'd been so eager to run headlong into danger. He was an idiot. It wasn't fair for her to call him a leader when he couldn't even keep his friends together. When he couldn't keep the endearing monster they loved full heartedly from constantly running away from them.

He would come back, over and over he'd come back, but this time was different. Hayner got second chance after second chance with Roxas, but he had squandered them all.

He was tired.

There was only Sora now and Hayner would never know if he'd ever see him again either. He couldn't ask him questions, didn't know how much he could trust him. Even then, what good would it be? He couldn't even beat Seifer in a struggle tournament on a good day. What good would it do him to ask Sora? It would just make him angry and jealous.

Hayner closed his bedroom door, tipping his head back over his wheelchair. He closed his eyes, falling asleep when he didn't mean to. Only the pain in his neck told him he'd nodded out. He shook it off, listened to the hum of the house and the kids outside and the birds.

"What am I supposed to even do with it, you asshole? I can't even keep us together, let alone protect them. I can't even move right…" Hayner spoke softly, as if trying to keep his words from prying walls, from himself. Maybe if he was quiet enough, he'd vanish along with all of his worries and fears.

He stared at his palm, then exhaled and closed his eyes.

"With this key to any kingdom, if you desire it, I give you that which is mine. It will serve you in the ways you require and I pledge to be a shield to your back if you're mine. This is a gift to a beloved equal, an unbreakable oath."

Stardust collected in his hand, then Hayner held the weight of Roxas' gift, struggling to hold it properly. The keychain hit his knee, a red gemstone like the physical manifestation of his stolen call of Roxas' name. The name Golden Hour came to him when he first laid eyes on the weapon.

His keyblade was too much of a burden to bear, but he couldn't throw it away. Not when Roxas had given it to him, after all. But the expectation weighed heavy all the same.

Chapter Text

Frankie told Pence things Roxas had already told him, reiterating them slowly, as if he was trying to think in another language. Maybe he was translating everything from zeroes and ones, his base code to sound, to speech, to whatever Nobody whispers could be considered. But Pence let him, even if it frustrated him, deciding to use the reiteration as time to write it down and organize the information.

The Nobody that was now his brother still had the basic understanding that anything he couldn’t tell Pence he could look up on the right network. He understood answers could always be found for those who looked.

Then he told Pence their leader had a computer. Their leader was to be undisturbed when he went there, but Pence realized that by telling him, Frankie was already willing to take him. If Pence couldn’t get to it on his own, he’d search and dig the way he had with Frankie until he got answers.

Pence was good with computers. Building his own rig with Frankie was a summer project left unfinished, but one that took understanding and research to even start. It had been Frankie’s hobby first and he’d given it away with kindness. It was ironic now that their bond was still being shared over data.

<Protection.> The Samurai interrupted, startling Pence so hard he slammed his back into the desk. They’d been nose to nose, the darkness behind the slits of it’s mask a suffocation blackhole. <You need protection from the dark. We cannot go until you have protection.>

“The…the dark…? Like what happened to Hayner…?”

<Correct.>

Pence hated that he talked so informally. If it weren’t for the fragments of memories he had, he would have doubted this was his brother. Even then, doubt was a cruel, persistent thing he had to constantly shake off his heels.

“How do I get protection from the dark?”

<Light. It reflects.>

Pence started, waiting for him to elaborate.

Pence waited some more.

“…Riiight. Light. Sure. Because that’s not like…weirdly vague or anything, Frankie.” Pence sighed, sitting himself back down into the desk chair.

<The cloaks the Organization wears are woven with fragments of light that reflect the darkness away from the body.>

“Ooooh, like a mirror! That’s why they’re black, isn’t it?”

There was a knock on the bedroom door, Frankie vanishing into thorn and nothing, Pence wincing.

“Pence?” His mom. Frankie only vanished when it was one of his parents at the door, he’d hide when it was just one of their siblings. Pence opened Frankie’s bedroom door, his mom standing there with a frown on her face.

“Yeah, ma?”

“Come talk with me in the kitchen while I make dinner.” She stood there, waiting for him to make moves to follow before she even took her eyes off of him.

“Yeah, sure,” Pence agreed, leaving his brother’s room. His mother lingered, closing the door behind them.

“I thought we could make some extra so you could bring it to Hayner and his grandmother,” she explained, Pence washing his hands at the sink. “And one of your teachers called me.”

He dried his hands, waiting for her to continue, anxiety bubbling in his stomach.

“She told me your grades have dropped and that you’ve been skipping classes,” she continued, handing him vegetables and the peeler. “I know that losing Frankie...I know it’s hard. I know your friend’s accident didn’t help. I was thinking about looking into some family therapists.”

Pence swallowed, vegetable skin collecting into a pile in the garbage. Could they afford a therapist? What if one of the kids said something like oh hey our brother is a monster now but don’t worry, he won’t hurt us, just scare the living daylights out of us—but not on purpose!

“I figured having someone to talk to about this, getting everyone on the same page about how they’re feeling might help.”

“…I’m sorry about my grades, I’ll get them back up.” Pence kept peeling potatoes, putting them in the sink once he was done.

“No, Pence that’s—” She pressed her hands against the counter, biting at her bottom lip and exhaling. “You keep looking…” 

He didn’t like where this was going. He knew his mom. He knew how much she cared.

“And I’m so, so proud of you that you haven’t given up on your brother—”

 He knew losing Frankie broke her heart into a million pieces. Frankie was everyone’s favorite.

“But it’s okay to stop.”

Pence dropped the potato in the trash.

“I’m not—! Mom, I can’t…” Pence wiped at his eyes. “I’m not giving up on Frankie, I’m not giving up on Hayner, or Olette or Roxas, or…! Or anyone else! I care about them—!”

“I know, I know, honey.” She interrupted, holding his face in her wet hands, water dripping down to the collar of his shirt. “I’m not saying you don’t care, but what I am saying is that I need you to care about yourself, too. I need you to not lose yourself in trying to find answers that we may not ever get, Pence.”

But Frankie was there. He’d found those answers. He found his brother, he found out what happened to him. Why should he give up when searching had given him what he wanted? Why shouldn’t he try to help Roxas so Hayner and Olette would stop beating themselves up? Why was he the only one who seemed to be trying?

He wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell his mother everything, every awful thing, every wonderful thing, every horrifyingly compassionate thing. Her son was right there in his room, like the last time they’d seen him. He wasn’t the same, but Pence didn’t feel like after all this that he was the same either.

“But if there’s even the slimmest chance, that’s more than I’d have if I stopped looking mom. I’m not a quitter—”

“No, no I didn’t say you’re a quitter, I know…” She held him close to her chest, kissing his head while he wrapped his arms around her, fingers barely touching. “But you have to take a break, okay? If you don’t take a break you’re gonna run yourself into the ground or worse and I can’t lose you too…”

“I’m not going anywhere, mom.” This was his home and this town had been Roxas’ too. He wasn’t going to abandon anyone—he wanted to do the opposite. He wanted to bring them home. He loved them.

Even if he hadn’t known Roxas as long as Hayner and Olette, time didn’t equate to a connection. It was easier to fall in love with things just for the miraculous reason of existing. People did it with strangers all the time—their eyes, their hair, their voice.

Pence just got to make friends with one of those fantastical strangers and fell more deeply in love with him every time they spoke. He wanted his friend back—he wanted a second chance. He wanted to cherish him more, comfort him more. He wanted to tell Roxas more stories and explain human things he didn’t understand.

He wanted his monster back—he loved him.

Fiction made it seem so easy to live a double life. But real people needed sleep, real people needed to be doing well enough in their normal lives for them not to be questioned about what happened outside of that. Real people needed help.

“I’ll do better. I promise, I’ll do better.”

He’d have to do better at hiding.

Pence kept checking his phone for the time. He’d wasted enough time at school, he’d wasted enough time studying, he’d wasted enough time with extracurriculars, he’d wasted enough time here. He needed to talk to Frankie, he needed to get Roxas back to them.

Olette looked like she’d been fighting sleep for days, but her fighting everything was turning into her new normal. Hayner looked like he was giving up, like the life was drained out of him. Pence wondered if Darkness was infectious, if it lingered in the wound of a bleeding heart.

Olette grumbled something under her breath.

“Huh?”

“I said go. You keep checking the phone so what, for the time or for a message? Got new friends to be with?” she snapped, snarling at him.

“Olette—” Hayner started, wincing at her volume.

 “What, no. Why are you acting like that?” Pence furrowed his brow, never knowing what to say to her anymore. He felt like he was always trying to diffuse a bomb with her, but the wires were never color coded to know which one to pull.

“Because apparently I’m the only one here not pretending that everything is all hunky-dory!” She threw her hands up, then yanked them back down, fists balled at her sides.

“No one said that.” Pence found himself leaning away from her, giving her a once over as if he’d be able to see what was wrong.

“You don’t need to! You wanna ditch us, that’s fine! Just stop pretending that you—”

“Olette, shut up!” Hayner snapped, slamming his fist against his wheelchair. “Shut. Up.” 

“Maybe you’re the one who needs therapy…” Pence grumbled, glaring at a wall.

“What did—”

“Pence! Olette! ” Hayner snapped, using the baritone in his voice in a way that almost reminded them of Roxas’ whispers—almost. “Just…both of you shut up. Go home…”

Neither of them moved.

“…Fine. I’m not gonna sit here while you two act like this.” Hayner shoved himself forward, getting away from whatever suffocating air the three of them seemed to create now when they were together.

Pence sighed, snatching up his bag and heading out after Hayner. Whatever. They’d feel better and stop bitching once he got Roxas back. Olette sat there, unmoving as the gate slammed behind him. Pence made his way into the underground concourse, having it practically memorized by now they’d spent so much time in here.

“…Frankie,” Pence called out, hearing the familiar heavy exhale of a tear in the fabric of reality. The Samurai stepped out from the darkness, bowing to his brother’s call. “Tell me everything I need to know, do, and get in order to get to that computer as soon as possible.”

He was going to save Roxas. He was going to save his friends from their grief by bringing him back.

<Understood.>

Chapter Text

<Center yourself.>

“I am centered,” Olette replied through gritted teeth, legs shoulder length apart, sweat dripping down her back.

<Incorrect. Center yourself. You’ve already steeled yourself,> The Samurai explained, it’s body position lax even though it could lunge to resume their training at any time. Their training was more or less her just getting the crap beaten out of her while being scolded about everything.

“Is there a difference?” Olette bit sarcastically.

The Samurai didn’t reply. It was unmoving, an ornate obstacle she was desperately trying to surpass. Or perhaps she was looking for its approval, some sort of validation rather than blunt words that made her feel small.

<…This will kill you.> The Samurai put its sword away, then held its hand out for the one she had. Olette was taken aback, posture going slack with shock, grip loosening.

“What? No, I’m fine. I want to keep going,” she insisted, tightening her grip, steeling herself—no, centering or whatever it wanted. Why couldn’t it just tell her what the difference was so she could do it already? It wasn’t hand holding, it was following a direction. There was a difference—why didn’t it see that?

<If you are learning nothing from the pain, then it is simply a form of self torture.>

“Torture?” She found the word leaving her in disgust and dismay. Torture was stretching someone’s limbs until they ripped off of them or putting them into an iron maiden or taking someone’s fingernails off. Things like in the movies, things far removed from her life that would never even touch her.

<A desire to harm yourself over and over. You may not die from a single small cut, but you can die from one thousand cuts. Do not let the little things kill you or my liege will never forgive me.> Torture. Self harm. She wasn’t like that. How dare it say that to her! It kept saying it didn’t know anything about human feelings, but then it said things like this to her.

She gripped the sword so hard her knuckles went white, the conscious decision to lunge having a split second difference that intuition or pure reaction wouldn’t have had.

"He doesn't care, he's gone…!" The Samurai blocked her sword easily, face to muted face with her.

<Our liege simply sleeps, undisturbed.> It sounded like every adult ever trying to explain death to a child. He was simply asleep, he went far away, he would be waiting for her elsewhere. All lame excuses to try to ease the blow.

She was going to land a damn blow today.

Olette leaned into her sword, putting her weight into trying to force the Samurai back. It pushed back against her, which was what she wanted. She used the pressure the Samurai was exerting to keep itself standing to vault herself backwards.

She then kept herself low to the ground, running with yell from her stomach, her stomach full of butterflies and fire and knots, before swinging again.

She forgot to keep her elbows in.

The Samurai kicked her square in the chest, sending her flying into unknown trash. Something broke underneath her, Olette wincing as she sat up.

The Samurai held itself over her, sword poised over her heart.

<Concede.>

“Never,” she spat.

<There is a difference between resilience and knowing when to withdraw.>

“What shitty Samurai book do they have you read? This advice is crap.” Her chest heaved, the tip of the sword threatening to pierce through her.

<This advice is from my liege.>

Second hand knowledge from Roxas.

She’d never seen him fight. She’d barely seen the monster contained under his skin, barely seen who he really was. Sure, part of him really was kind and desperate and naive, but there was a huge part of him she didn’t see either.

There was a part of him that easily tore through monsters that could drag entire worlds asunder. There was a part of him that always surveyed a room for good reason. There was a part of him that always made his mark on the dart board with precision. There was a part of him that taught the monster she could barely keep up with, yet alone best.

Roxas was stronger than this thing, than legions of them. Roxas was strong—Olette just wasn’t.

Her eyes welled with frustration as she blinked away tears. “Oh yeah? When did he say that?”

<During a fight that would have drastically reduced our numbers. It was easier to pull back, to wait until the Heartless separated rather than using all of our resources in an attempt to take them then and there. There is no winning if either side can no longer fight future battles. That is simply a loss for both sides.>

“So he did it to save you,” she found herself whispering in realization. That sounded like Roxas.

<No. He did it to obtain his goal, to win.> the Samurai corrected, pulling the sword away from her chest. <Victory is more than taking out your enemy. There will always be an enemy as long as there is human life to be had.>

“Because humans make Heartless…” The Samurai took the sword from her and she didn’t fight it. Something by her right hip was digging into her and it was sure to leave a bruise. “But we also make Nobodies.” 

The goal was to decrease the one to one ratio, to have the upper hand. It was practically a fight of self. Olette could understand that, knew it felt like something inside of herself was tearing her apart.

<Do you know what a cure spell does?> it asked her, sheathing its swords.

“Heals you up, right?” Olette sat up, wincing as she got out of the trash.

<No, it heals nothing. It numbs you to further pain, does not let the flesh bleed for a time. It simply gives you the will to keep fighting. You need no such thing, but you will exhaust yourself if you continue to use your stamina in situations where you do not need it. You must understand not everything is a battle and not everything has a victory.>

“But it is,” Olette countered. “At least…for me.” Olette held her arms, wanted to make herself small.

<Not all battles rage forever. Even your enemies will get tired.>

“There’s more of them than there are of me…” Both of her parents, her grades, her brother, Seifer’s gang, Pence and Hayner’s struggles, her residual fear of being alone in crowds. She couldn’t juggle all of that by herself. It was impossible.

<Then you must utilize your allies.>

Olette scoffed, looking off at a wall, the sunset making the wall glisten. “They’re…they’re kind of down for the count right now. Besides, some of these fights I can’t get them involved in…”

<Then you should focus on their recovery until they are able to be utilized for fights they can be apart of,>

“But I can’t—”

<Otherwise, you are simply looking for more excuses to continue to torture yourself.>

Olette felt her breath catch between her lowest rib and a healing bruise that wasn’t from training. The world was still for a moment. Twilight, where magical things could touch the borders of the word. Where her entire town was full of magic all of the time and barely anyone saw it.

“Why…do you keep using that word?”

<Because that is what it is. I just cannot understand why you continue to do so if you are not deriving any pleasure from it, which implies you are doing it for the relief that comes from the punishment.>

Punishment. Like she was a child who’d done something wrong. Olette felt her face grow hot. Was she that easy to read? Or maybe it was just because the Samurai was more objective, so its thoughts about her weren't convoluted by its own feelings. Maybe that was why Hayner or Pence never noticed. But there was the chance that they had and decided to not address it. She didn’t want to think about that, but that was in part because then she’d have to address how she was also ignoring their problems in favor of her own.

<Some people enjoy torturing their enemies. You are not your own enemy, you are the only consistent ally you have.> Its words were a warning rather than encouragement. <We will resume another time.> The Samurai disappeared into thorn and nothing, leaving Olette in the alley alone.

She sighed heavily through her nose, her side throbbing with each pulse of blood to the swelling bruise. She picked up her bag, put her headphones in, and started home. Her entire walk there was just a replay of her failures of the day, of the Samurai’s advice and warnings. Little cuts or whatever over and over—wasn’t the definition of lunacy doing the same thing over and over without a change in result? Her head hurt. Her side hurt. She missed Roxas, she missed Pence, she missed Hayner.

She didn’t bother to sit outside and listen through the front door to see if they were home. She didn’t take her headphones out as she came inside. Her parents were on the couch, laughing and cuddled up to each other. That wasn’t unusual, it was just part of the cycle. Everything is good, we should try again, then it was why are you being insensitive, then it was you’re a fucking bastard and something being thrown or broken, then it was blamed on the alcohol, then they all had a sit down and promised to try to do better, then it started all over again.

She felt her dad grab her arm. She stared at him for a moment, trying to understand them and their lunacy. She took her headphone out.

“Your mother was talking to you.” Her dad let her arm go, relaxing back into the couch.

“Hi.” Olette greeted, staring at his shoes on the couch. He got pissed whenever her shoes were on the couch.

“Hi!” her mom greeted. “How was your day? Were you out with your friends again? You got home pretty late, you should come back sooner so we don’t worry.”

They never worried, they were just upset she didn’t ask how high when they said jump. She thought about how they said she was lazy any time she was home, how they wanted her home the second she was out.

She hated this.

“Sorry…” She shouldn’t argue. They were in a good mood. It was easier when they were in a good mood. She just wanted to go to her room.

Her mom started talking, bubbling away as if there was nothing to be worried about ever. She was giving Olette a headache. Why couldn’t they be some of the people that the Nobodies or Heartless took? Why did they have to take good people?

Olette could hear her pulse flooding her ears, heavy, as if her body was trying to put her to sleep.

Why take Frankie? Why take Seifer’s dad? Why the shopkeeper at the candy shop who always gave them extra bubblegum? Why not them? Why didn’t bad things happen to bad people? It wasn’t fair.

They hadn’t even caught him. He was out there, probably stalking some other poor girl and scaring her shitless. Why hadn’t he been punished either? Why hadn’t any of these terrible people with rotting hearts been punished? Why did good people have to sacrifice and suffer? Why did Hayner have to suffer? Why did they have to lose Roxas?

Her dad laughed, deep from his beer belly, snapping her out of her thoughts.

She couldn’t get her heart to stop flooding her ears. She felt like something was wrong.

“Can I um…I wanna go shower, we were playing around in the sandlot with struggle bats and I feel kind of gross,” she interrupted.

“Oh sure, hun! I think we need more shampoo though so you’re gonna have to wash your hair with the bar soap again.”

Olette nodded, practically running away from them and the smell on them from the table full of at least a thousand munny’s worth of alcohol.

Olette couldn’t catch her breath. She closed the bathroom door, the lock still broken from the time her mom hid in the tub and her dad broke in. She’d forgotten she had one headphone in still, the music drowned out by the sound of her blood. She yanked her headphones out, pressing her hands to either side of the sink.

Breathe. There was no air in the room. Breathe. Breathe, breathe, breathe in the toxic fumes from their toxic relationship.

She wasn’t even dry heaving—she wished she was dry heaving. There was relief from vomiting when her stomach felt like this.

How much of her was made up of those fumes, of their behaviors, of these awful thoughts she kept having? How much of her was predisposed to her DNA and how much of her was learned environmental behaviors?

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, wide-eyed and terrified. She swallowed. She didn’t look like herself. She looked like when she’d been horrified to go anywhere, when she was caught between one bad place and another. Not even Hayner or Pence had been able to let her feel safe then.

This time was no different. She was tired of feeling threatened. She wanted to be the threat. She wanted to be the monster in someone’s head for once. She wanted to be the creature that made children cower under covers and adults piss themselves. That’s what she wanted to be, right? Didn’t she want to be like Roxas? Something horrifying and—

"You stopped.”

“So I didn’t run into you, yeah! You don’t have to stand that close when you’re waiting, you know.”

“Not that, this.”

“Why did you stop because one went missing? You have more, don’t you?”

“I…What? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Use another one. Why’d you stop?”

“Use another what, Roxas?”

“Laugh. You three haven’t done that again every time I see you.” 

No…that wasn’t Roxas. Even from the start, that wasn’t Roxas.

“I get rid of the shadows. You’re safer if I get rid of them. When you’re safe, you’re happy right? So, make the noise again. Can you make the noise again?”

From the start, he’d talked to them because he liked them. From the start, he wanted them to be happy. From the start, he wanted to protect them. From the start, Roxas had been kind and in her distress she was warping that memory.

Olette held her hand over her heart, as if to soothe it. She lowered herself to her knees, her other hand still clinging to the sink. “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry, Roxas…” The world seemed to ease its grip on her, no longer tar blood and toxic air. “I’m sorry…I’ll do better. I’ll fight…” She sniffed, wiping her eyes. “I’ll fight so I won’t end up like the bad person everyone is expecting me to be. I’ll fight it tooth and nail to be kind like you, okay? So you have to come back…okay?”

She stood up, again catching sight of her reflection. It looked like the dark circles and shadows that had hidden in her features was gone, the light back in her eyes even if it was the glossy reflection from her tears. What had the Samurai said? That the Darkness might take her if she wasn’t careful?

She sniffed, turning the shower on. She looked up the difference between centering herself and steeling herself as the water ran cold, always taking far too long to warm up. She wiped her nose with her knuckles, hearing her mom hoot with laughter from the living room.

The bruise on her side was killing her, but it wouldn’t be the only thing if she wasn’t careful.

Chapter Text

The maintenance stairwell to reach the top of the clocktower was never locked anymore. The city wasted money replacing locks that Hayner kept breaking open with the same cheap bolt cutters from the garage. Hayner was sure Pence's parents and his grandmother might sue if they ever fell and got hurt, but it was their own fault for always having this absurd desire for something death defying. Life had so much more to offer and their sleepy town withheld so much from them. The same small shops, the same restaurants, the same schools, the same people. Nothing new ever happened.

Almost dying was new, but familiar. At the top of those stairs lay melted memories and sunburned nostalgia. Breaking into the clocktower was the first real thing they'd done to solidify their friendship. Blood pacts were dumb and unhealthy. Being almost sent to juvie together was different. It was willing to take the consequences of their actions together, a choice they made as a crowd of three. If three was a crowd, was four a rebellion? A war?

Hayner barely made it up the first flight of stairs before he had to give up, had to sit down and rest. He was exhausted. He'd still have to make his way back down. His chair pressed up against the stairs and he didn't remember if he locked the wheels or not to get back in it.

His hips hurt. His knees hurt. His pelvis hurt. His ankles hurt. His ribs hurt. His heart hurt.

He was tired of being tired. There were still so many stairs before him, each one a challenge, an obscene obstacle to overcome. He'd taken the ease of everything for granted. The way he'd been able to go through his day to day without suffering, suffering he only attributed to people he'd never know.

But then now that he was one of those people, it made him question how little he knew about himself. He hadn't been bigger than his childhood traumas, he hadn't outgrown them and left them behind as if they couldn't touch him anymore. They'd shaped him, given him the lens that he saw the world through, no matter how much distance time put between them. He wasn't this brave imagining of himself that he'd conjured up in theoretical daydreams.

Hayner looked at his raw and calloused hands with vision that kept blurring. His grandma kept telling him to wear the gloves. He clenched and unclenched his hands, feeling anxiety congeal inside of him, swell and choke the arteries in his heart. He bent forward, pressing his head into his trembling hands and started to cry. Humans were fragile.

Roxas had implied as much.

But to truly know that their friendship was just as fragile hurt more. There had been disbelief, ignorant insistence that it was stronger—that they were stronger. But the more Hayner watched them, the more he realized he was wrong. The more he wondered if Pence and Olette were also people he'd never know.

He didn't know Olette's fear and how it had consumed her under the guise of rage. He didn't know Pence's anguish and how it blinded him, shielding him from his own feelings. He didn't know his own helplessness, even when it stared him neon blue in the face.

"What the hell are you doing?" Came the call from the bottom of the stairs, unlocked wheelchair accidentally getting kicked against the wall.

"Piss off, Seifer," Hayner bit back, but Seifer didn't leave, instead climbing those few stairs as if they were nothing, as if Hayner's struggles to get to where he was hadn't meant anything.

"…Are you crying?" Seifer asked, having climbed enough steps to be eye level with Hayner.

"I said fuck off!"

A pause, Hayner's ragged inhale, then Seifer sat down, back to Hayner with his elbows propped up on the step behind him.

"You were always like this, even when we were kids. You'd run off and hide in the bushes to cry and scare the shit out of the adults when they couldn't find you." Seifer sounded like he was scolding him, lecturing him for bad habits he never grew out of.

"Oh, like they cared. They just didn't want to be responsible if something happened because they weren't paying attention," Hayner scoffed, sniffing loudly and wiping at his nose with his palm.

Seifer tipped his head back to look at him. "You really think people are that selfish?"

Hayner didn't need to dignify him with an answer. Seifer tipped his head back down.

"I can see you thinking that—it's probably how you think after all, right? So why not assume everyone else is like that too?" Seifer gestured with an awkward, jerky hand flourish to the stairs below. "When did you start turning into a calloused little hard ass?"

"Wasn't I always one to you?" Hayner bit back as Seifer lowered his elbow back onto the step.

"Who knows? I don't really bother to think of you on my down time. How you view the world is none of my business, I'm just here to keep you in line." Seifer waved him off, Hayner resisting the urge to kick him in the back of the head.

Seifer always thought the proper way to correct a problem was by changing the rules and regulations that were already in place. Hayner thought rules and regulations that hurt people should be broken as often as possible. They both wanted people to be safe and happy, they just always abhorred how the other went about it. It had been little things here, a few more there, until they couldn't stand each other anymore.

"So, what? You here to drag me down the stairs since I'm not supposed to be up here?"

"An already injured kid up on the clocktower where he's so exhausted and can't keep himself upright and slips and falls? I don't need that on my conscience." Seifer shook his head, but didn't move to grab at Hayner. Hayner narrowed his eyes at him, trying to burn holes in the back of his head until he could see his brain, pick at it.

"…Riiight. What's the real reason?"

Seifer scoffed. "Wouldn't you like for there to be one?" He turned his head to look at Hayner with a condescending sneer.

Hayner was used to being so desperate for clues that he made things up. He did it with Roxas, did it with his parents, was doing it with Seifer. Maybe there really wasn't anything. Maybe he was making things up again, trying to place blame and answers where they didn't fit.

He yanked his gaze away from him, staring at the stairwell wall. Maybe it was as simple as Seifer giving him the dignity of drying his tears first. Maybe he just wanted someone to act like they cared rather than try to offer advice or treat him like a secondary thought. He didn't know anymore. He thought he knew the world, knew the people in it. He'd been wrong.

"…They took away my friend," Hayner admitted softly. "I wanted to stop them. That's how I got hurt."

Seifer exhaled through his nose, turning away from Hayner while shaking his head, but he didn't say anything.

"Does…does missing your dad get any easier? Do you…where are you at with that?" Hayner asked, kicking Seifer's arm out of the way so he could slide down the steps and sit next to him.

"He's not coming back. It's that simple. Anyone who vanished into thin air like he did rarely does. It's the same as dying." His response was curt, not involving any emotional charge.

"Did he ever find anything…?" About the Silver Devils, about the missing people, about the Visitors.

"No. He didn't. He wasted his life."

Hayner winced. "You think it was a waste…?"

"I think giving people false hope that someone can find their missing loved ones is absolutely a waste. They need grief counsellors, not lies and fallacy."

"But not everyone is willing to let someone they love go that easily. Isn't that better to let them go on your own time than jump right to grieving the second they go missing?" Hayner shouldn't even be arguing this with him. He knew what happened to those missing people. He knew they died and turned into those husks or Heartless or Nobodies. He knew.

"And those who don't let go? Who drag it on forever?" Like Olette. Like Pence. "What is it you think happens to them? It doesn't matter if they ran away, if they were taken by humans or monsters, or if they were melted into sludge and used to power the damn city. They're not coming back and people need to learn to cope with that fact. Even if you box up everything that they ever owned and burn it and then move away, there will always be little reminders all over their lives. People can't escape their memories, so they need to learn how to deal with it rather than climbing clock towers where they could get killed. If you fall up there, at least you have a body. It'll be a wreck, but it'll still be a body to bring back to your grandmother, Hayner."

Hayner gritted his teeth, disgusted he'd thrown such a low blow, but Seifer didn't let him get a word in.

"There isn't anything like that for people who go missing. Learn how to get over your friend—how to deal with a loss for what it is. Go home. Stop scaring the shit out of your grandmother so she'll stop calling me."

Seifer stood up, marching himself down the stairs and throwing the door open, it squealing in protest before slamming behind him.

Hayner sat in the hallway, heart hammering in rhythmic time; thump thump, thump thump, tick tock, tick tock. He felt stagnant, like the air around him. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't move, be it to get up the stairs or to get over Roxas. One option would probably be easier than he gave it credit for, more realistically obtainable given his past, and he hated that one the most.

He hadn't taken his painkillers. He was scared of being numb, scared of getting over Roxas. He was scared of how intensely he fell in love with him in a little under a year and he was scared of turning into someone he didn't know who might not love Roxas anymore. He was scared that he couldn't function without his painkillers, without being just a little numb each day until it would gradually hurt less and less on its own.

He was so scared of losing someone else again. He was scared he was now losing Pence and Olette on top of that. Hayner pressed his forehead to his knees and screamed.

Chapter Text

Memories and experience shaped the way the world was viewed, why comparing so many lives was like looking through a kaleidoscope of endless possibilities. Those possibilities spiraled, twisted in on themselves without ever touching, only mirroring similar sequences. Naminé assumed that was why she looked the way she did—to be able to see all of those possibilities.

Roxas had kept his promise. She'd expected the same from him, the familiar, painfully bitter taste of despair and loneliness. But to Roxas, his word, his promises were precious. His memories, associated with the physical forms of the mementos that decorated his room, were precious. The overlap between her, Roxas, and Sora were overwhelming, but the differences were also jarring in contrast.

The castle in the World That Never Was had shifting rooms, hidden spaces. Naminé used her abilities to manipulate memories into convincing the Organization members that Roxas' room had been further down, that it was this peculiar and abandoned room that was adorned in sea shells. She let all of them think his room was a wall—except Axel.

He'd helped make good on Roxas' promise and saved her, letting her do what she wanted once Riku had let them go, but she could tell something was wrong. The pruning of his heart that always rose from the ashes in his chest was being dug out more and more often, sometimes even when there was nothing at all.

She knew Axel had been the one to finish his comrades in the castle if Sora hadn't. She knew he was actively always trying to put distance between himself and Saix. She knew he swallowed his charcoal heart every time it started to form.

She knew he was scared of it.

She knew the pain of missing someone he cared about was getting to him. She knew he missed Roxas and had other violently gaping holes in his memory that he couldn't soothe, couldn't place. She knew he thought part of that was her fault, and it might have been, but she couldn't remember what could have possibly have gone there either.

She knew he was spiraling and she knew she could trace the path he was on with her eyes before he reached his end. She didn't want him to die. This had been Roxas' friend and she knew all of his friends were precious to him.

She'd seen all of Roxas' memories, the real ones and the ones with data. Even if Roxas was never supposed to exist, even if he was more different than anyone could have dreamed, she believed he had a true, genuine, fully bloomed heart at the end. Even if he was an outlier amongst Nobodies, she wanted to meet the humans who cultivated it.

Maybe if she understood them, she could understand Roxas better, she could understand what words would motivate Axel to stop swallowing his newborn heart every time it rose from cinders. She'd been so focused on Sora, so desperate for his approval and acceptance, that when handling Roxas in the data world she'd overlooked how he'd had the exact same trait. His boundless love and affection always drew everyone in.

She didn't have anything like that. She knew what people said about her and the heart she'd came from. Useless witch; useless Princess. Just in the way, a synthesized manipulative bitch; a stepping stone for real goals and real relationships. But that wasn't true. Just because she couldn't find the right voice to express her thoughts and feelings and just because no one was around to listen to Kairi's didn't mean they were secondary. 

Roxas had been like her. Roxas had a heart. So if he had a heart, didn't she? Didn't she warrant kindness? Didn't she warrant love and patience? Didn't she warrant the same thing he'd gotten from those humans that had been given so freely?

She at least wanted to know what those three humans who'd loved the boy who saved her were like. She wanted to try to save someone else this time rather than be the one to hurt them. But going to Twilight Town was like asking for a death sentence. With Diz still looking for her as well as the Organization and that being both her and Roxas' last known locations, she knew she shouldn't set foot there.

Meeting them wouldn't even ensure she'd accomplish anything. Even worse, the real world was a bright place, flooded with lividity. But, meeting Roxas just once had changed everything. Because of that, she was here when she could have been disposed of. Because of one singular decision they'd each made on their own, things were drastically more different than they could have been.

<Axel?> Naminé called softly. <I'd like to ask a favor…I know what you're trying to do for Roxas, and I know why you want to use Kairi. Can I ask for just one favor before you try that? Please?>

She was met with silence.

She knew he was reaching his limit with Sora, knew everyone else was failing, knew his desperation. She knew he'd come up with this plan all on his own. He knew she'd been in his head. She knew, with the way he kept eating his own heart, that he didn't have the capacity to be angry with her for it.

<…Axel?> She called again, hesitant. When was the last time he'd eaten his own heart? Once he stopped, how much would he be disgusted with her? Hate her?

<Fine. What is it?>

<Let her go to Twilight Town? Kairi and I are connected and…I need to see something.>

<And if your something doesn't do much?>

<…You can use her to try to get Roxas back, but I won't stop Riku if he shows up.> To threaten Kairi was a big risk and to let him was even worse. Naminé had no idea what the future would hold for her, only what she could surmise from the past, so she could guess there was no winning for her in this plan.

It was safer to stay away from Kairi rather than go back to her heart with what Axel intended. Someone was going to die, be it Kairi, Sora, Axel, or Riku. Naminé couldn't think of a way to save any of them—except for this. Except for the one that involved Roxas' precious humans that weren't scared of him. If she couldn't bring herself to them, she'd have to bring them to her.

Chapter Text

<What are you observing?>

Pence wished he could have been startled by the question, but Frankie’s presence always came before his brother’s body did. It was never subtle, but rather overtook him all at once. Seized nerves and thick blooded that made it hard to move and hard to breathe.

“…Some photos I took.” Pence told him, tipping the stack in his hand for Frankie to see.

<That is my liege.>

“Roxas, yeah…He was always really weird about getting his picture taken. Getting a photo of him was like taking a photo of a cryptid. The time we went to the beach was the only time it came out okay…where he looked like himself.”

Even if he’d been stock still, by the time Pence put the camera or his phone up, Roxas had actively moved behind him to avoid being photographed. Pence had to learn to be subtle rather than asking out right, taking candids that ended up with motion blur, something off he couldn’t place until he’d looked at them for long periods of time, an unnatural glow to his eyes, a distortion or haze around him. It was practically impossible to photograph him. Even despite his giant Nobody’s size, he hadn’t gotten a good photo of it.

But there was one moment, one, singular candid moment he’d gotten of Roxas out of the entire year he’d been trying to sneak photos of him. He’d been talking with Olette, Hayner’s arm slung around his shoulders and a finger pointed at him. His mouth had been open, prizes from the arcade decorating them and more food in their hands more for the taste than to actually eat. The light from the sunset cast glimmers in his eyes, his teeth a bit too sharp in the same light…but he looked happy.

Their monster had delighted in their time spent together, delighted in sugar and their smiles. Pence doubted he’d ever get a photo without something appearing unnatural about Roxas because of a theory about cameras Frankie had shared with him once that he’d come to firmly believe.

Frankie had said the lens was like an eye, and the eyes were a window to the soul. There was also a theory he liked where when someone died, the last thing they saw while alive left a reflection in the eye. So a photo was an earnest snapshot of the soul in that moment, eternally caught in the dying light of an artificial eye. You couldn’t hide the truth from a camera. So Roxas, their monster, in that moment, had been happy and no one would take that away from him.

Pence turned the photo back to himself, chest aching. He set them down on his desk before he got up before he was overcome with regrets. Regrets would just keep him from doing something right in this very moment.

“Alright, I’m ready. I told mom I was going to Hayner’s for dinner, so if I’m late she won’t be suspicious.” Pence adjusted the bag on his shoulder, his brother cocking his head at him, then vanishing into thorn and void. Pence gave a stern nod of understanding, then made his way downstairs.

Frankie had to still be nearby—he wouldn’t be trembling this bad on his own, would he? Because of what he was about to do? Because if something went wrong no one could help him? Because he was lying? When had he started lying? Not little lies either—these massive, world shaping lies about his brother, about where he was, about his feelings.

He hugged his siblings a little longer than he needed to, even when they squirmed to get back to playing on their tablets. He hugged his mom, always being welcomed with warm, open arms as long as he wanted.

“I’ll be back,” he promised softly against her. She stroked his hair and it made him feel guilty. He was lying to her. All she wanted to do was keep him safe and then disrespecting her by willingly throwing himself into a position that did the exact opposite over and over.

“Be good—be safe.” She was still worried after what happened to Frankie that she’d lose another one of them. What if she lost him? What if he messed up?

“I know, mom.” He knew, but that wasn’t him promising her he would be. He pulled away, thinking in that very moment he could never love his mother as much as he did right then before leaving his house.

He headed towards Hayner’s house, but once he was far enough away he turned down a side alley, then stood there and waited for Frankie.

<Are you certain?> he asked, not showing himself.

No, not at all. He was terrified. What if this was a mistake? What if what happened to Hayner happened to him? What if he didn’t make it back? What if he did—what would he tell them, not counting if he got hurt? If he did get hurt, he’d have to tell them everything, wouldn’t he? But Frankie could just think his current fear was because of him, not what he had to do. Pence was already lying to his family and even if Frankie was different now, he was still a part of his family.

“Yes.”

Frankie stepped out from thorn and void. <Then I have protection for your heart. I have more aura.> Pence had all he could do to not take a step back away from his brother as he reached for him.

“That’s the stuff that surrounds people’s hearts, right? Where…Frankie, where did you get that?” Had he hurt someone else? Had he taken it from someone else? Were they alive? 

<Hearts taken back from Heartless. Holding them without eating them is stressful, painful. They grow very little aura before escaping. That is why this has taken so long. It is one trip, but I do not wish to risk your safety due to not being cautious enough.>

Pence’s eyes grew wide. “You…you did that for me?” Had he starved? Had it hurt the way it had clearly hurt Roxas?

<This will hurt.>

“Wait, what—!?”

Frankie shoved his hand into Pence’s chest, Pence’s body going cold as a corpse and tensing up. It felt like every nerve ending had been lit, an electrical fire that melted sensory reactions and short circuited his brain. His heart. His brother had a hand around his heart.

A Nobody had a hand around his heart; he was going to die.

Frankie pulled his chest open, a dry crack like broken twigs snapping in a fire. His grip was firm, like when they squeezed his arm to take blood pressure at the doctor’s and his arm went numb and he could feel the throbbing of it—only it was in his chest. It was in his ears. It was in his head. He was going to die, to die, to die, to die it throbbed.

But then there was a faint glow from Frankie’s chest, like a flickering firefly and it was distracting enough for Pence to be able to focus on what was happening rather than how he felt. Frankie’s chest swirled with a thick pink mist that was like a watered down dawn cloud, maybe cotton candy like.

He pulled it from his chest, using his other hand to press it inside of Pence. It felt like his head was being filled with cotton. He felt like everything was fine. He had a Nobody with its hand in his chest and it was fine. It was Frankie. Why worry? Why worry about anything, actually? Nothing could hurt him—he was on cloud nine. Is that where the expression came from?

Frankie finished stuffing him like a child’s toy and pulled his hand out of his chest, leaving not so much as a scratch. Pence felt light, safe, defended. Huh.

“Was…was that hard for you? I know Nobodies eat hearts and all.” he asked, voice higher than he meant for it to be. Funny, but he wasn’t laughing about it. Could he laugh about it? He didn’t feel like he could laugh about it. Everything felt muffled like cotton to soothe an ear infection.

Frankie paused. <…You are my baby brother. Of course not.>

“What…did this do, exactly? I feel like the time Hayner snuck us a pack of beer but not…dizzy. I can feel my mouth. Is that normal? I don’t feel normal right now, Frankie…”

<Aura is intended to protect your heart. Your heart houses your emotions. Too much can stifle them, but offers better protection, but at a risk of hypersensitivity for other bodily senses. The Darkness will eat away at your aura. There should be enough for our trip and our trip only. No side trips.>

“Oooh…okay.” He should have questioned this more, should have asked more questions. But right now, he wasn’t curious. He just knew he needed to follow Frankie, to get to the computer. This was for Roxas. Oh. He didn’t like how thinking about Roxas didn’t make him feel much of anything. It was there, like a light buried under too many blankets. Muffled, hidden away.

Roxas. Roxas, Roxas, Roxas.

Yeah. He didn’t like that. He didn’t feel sorrow, joy, anything from thinking his name—not really.

<You are to hold onto me at all times while we are in the corridor. If you get lost, I cannot guarantee your safety. I wish to guarantee your safety, Pence.>

He didn’t like that he didn’t feel his heart swell from what was clearly a more human indication that Frankie wanted to protect him. This really was his brother and he couldn’t even be happy about it.

He held onto his hand as instructed, feeling like the meat in his fingers was swollen against his skin, ready to burst like overstuffed sausages. Frankie opened a portal in front of them, stepping inside with Pence. The moment it closed behind them, any and all light vanished. The only thing he could hear was his own breathing, ears ringing from straining to hear anything else. He wiggled his fingers, not sure if he’d let go of Frankie.

What if he had and hadn’t felt it?

<I am here.> Frankie reassured, squeezing Pence’s hand in his own. Oh good. If his hand burst into a million meaty pieces, at least Frankie could catch them. That was good. No, that was bad. That was panic, wasn’t it? It felt weird to not be able to place his own emotions. Frankie led him along, a light tug, his footsteps not making a sound.

Hayner had been in here.

This must have been terrifying. Pence knew he should have been terrified but just…wasn’t. Too much aura, everything fuzzy like an animal pelt. Had his cheekbone always been in that part of his face?

<Would you like me to talk to you?> Frankie asked, the voice in his head making Pence feel less like he was floating in nothingness and more grounded in a strange reality instead.

“I think so,” Pence admitted, unsure if he were being truthful.

<What would you like me to speak to you about?>

“Roxas.” Pence decided without having to think about it. All he wanted to do was talk about Roxas or the Organization or Hearts or Nobodies or Heartless or a way to help. But that was all because of Roxas. So everything else was attached to his name, was attached to the piece of his heart he was searching around in the dark for.

<What about him would you like to discuss?>

“Everything.” His words were muffled, not at all echoing back at him like he’d expected. The Darkness was everywhere, making desperate attempts on the light in his chest.

Frankie paused. <…Then I assume I should start from the beginning.>

“Sure.”

<All lesser Nobodies are given form based on who was present when our Hearts were taken. If our hearts were taken by Heartless, Darkness, our worlds disappearing and us along with them, we simply turn to Dusks. We can be demoted to Dusks, who are more fragile and expendable.>

“That one Nobody was there—Larxene? Did you get to pick?” Pence asked, inhaling so deeply it hurt as much as it could given circumstances to make sure he was still breathing.

<No. But I should have gone to her. I am not sure why I did not. Perhaps my liege simply wanted me more.> Roxas was always full of questions, always looking for answers. Perhaps he’d wanted Frankie because he felt he could have given him those answers, even without realizing it.

“Did he scare you?” His tongue felt heavy in his mouth.

<Terrified me. But when my heart was free of its heartstrings, I no longer felt fear.>

“What about now?”

He paused, zeros and ones, zeros and ones, translating to something comprehensible. <I pity him, but less so because he has you to wake him from his sleep.>

“Sleep?”

<We have arrived.>

The Darkness pulled apart like a wound, Frankie leading Pence out into a room with cold lighting. His body no longer felt heavy. He hadn’t realized how much exhausting pressure had been put on him, knees buckling, but Frankie caught him. Pence winced from the pain and the light, squeezing his eyes shut. He peered one open, then the other, a massive computer in front of him.

“I’m okay,” Pence reassured, forcing himself up onto his feet. “Let’s do this.”

The air in this room tasted different, more metallic and clear. The computer before him was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. A massive desktop, a glass window behind it with what looked like a hanger of some sort. Behind him stood an unusual machine, a corridor to his left.

“Where…are we?”

<The computer room of my liege’s superior. The room itself is located in Hollow Bastion, hidden in Ansem the Wise’s study.>

“Who? Wait, where the heck is Hollow Bastion?” Pence couldn’t remember reading that name on any map, so they had to be really far out from Twilight Town or Sunset Hill. Still, for it to not even be vaguely recognizable was—

<In another world.>

“Ano—I’m in another world!? Frankie,” Pence started with much more emotion than he probably should have had given all of the aura cushioning his heart. “You never said this place was in another world! Oh my god, mom is going to kill me! She’s gonna kill you! Do you think at any point you should have brought this up at all?!”

<I…> Frankie stopped, clearly thinking to himself about his answer. <…Initially I assumed it to be irrelevant. But given your reaction, I have decided that was an incorrect conclusion to arrive at. I should have mentioned it.>

“Holy crap, no duh!” Pence huffed, dropping his bag on the ground and pulling a flash drive out of it. “Like seriously! What if something happens! What if I ran out of heart aura or something! Or like if there were Heartless here? Or worse your boss! ” Pence rambled, inspecting the computer to find a place to put it. Frankie had said he’d at least taken a long enough look to see that it—ah, there it was. He shoved the flash drive into the computer, turning it on.

<I apologize.> Frankie put in a password, then stepped out of Pence’s way.

“Like that’s kind of a big deal, Frankie! Like it’s cool, but also not cool!” There was a massive amount of data on the hard drive—that could take hours to transfer, let alone sort through.

<I…hm.> Frankie stopped, unsure of how to address the contradiction. Pence also seemed less as though he were genuinely more upset and more as though he was talking just to focus, so he let him.

“I mean seriously what if this world didn’t have oxygen or something? You guys don’t need to breathe right?” He should start with smaller files, like documents and photos, and videos and audio could come after.

“Like what if I tried to eat something and it killed me? Would it kill me? Oh my god Roxas brought us weird snacks before, what if they could have killed us?” He had no idea what he should take and what wasn’t relevant.

<Highly unlikely given the worlds my liege frequented had beings with hearts, the same as yours. It was a discussion we had once.>

“Wait he talked about that with you guys?” Pence asked, glancing away from the computer to look at Frankie, the start of a transfer of all of the documents on the computer being copied over.

<After eating an orange, yes. He made quite a big note of the orange, so it was memorable.>

“He…oh.” Pence turned his attention back to the computer, glancing over file names. Everything they’d shown him, given to him, let him try, was always such a shiny and new experience for him. So many of his firsts had been with them.

<He spoke of you three often. I wondered for a long time if he did not have the capacity to speak of anything else but work and your friendship.>

Pence was silent for a moment, the computer humming and quietly clicking away as it worked.

“Earlier…you said he was asleep. What did you mean by that?”

<Just as it is implied. He is asleep.> 

“But he went back to Sora, right? The heart is where what makes you you is, right? But can a body hold more than one heart? If it can, that can’t be too common, can it? So if he’s asleep, do you mean consciousness or his heart is asleep inside Sora’s? Is that heart cannibalism—is that a thing? But, wait, no—you said he was asleep, not being digested. If he’s asleep, what does it take to wake him up? If Sora goes to sleep, does Roxas wake up then? Or is it more of a coma situation? Or is it because Roxas is in Sora’s body that he can’t wake up in the first place since the body doesn’t belong to him? What happened to Roxas’ old body? It didn’t turn to dust like that guy we saw in Twilight Town, did it?”

<…Pence—>

“But if Roxas came from Sora, did that mean there was something wrong with Sora’s body without Roxas? Because Roxas was his body, right? But everyone was talking like Sora wasn’t dead, just off far away somewhere—so did he have his own body? Can you give a heart it’s own body without needing the original? How would you even get someone an entirely new bo—”

<Company is approaching. We need to leave.>

“What? But I’m not done—!”

<Now.> Frankie yanked the flash drive out, then picked up Pence and his bag as something scuttled on the ceiling. There was an influx of Nobodies outside of the room, Pence only aware of them because their presence made him so anxious he wanted to vomit.

“Move it already! You guys are seriously annoying!”

Was that…Sora?

“…It’s corrupted. All of it—everything on the flash drive is trash.” Pence looked helplessly at his computer, then up to Frankie. “I didn’t get anything because you yanked the flash drive out. The computer data is probably trashed now too. Frankie…”

His chest hurt. His heart hurt—it felt sore, actually. Like he’d overused it and his emotional capacity. He wanted to cry, but the tears weren’t coming. Pence put his head in his hands. The only thing he’d gotten out of this was a short lived trip to another world, the name Ansem the Wise, and glimpses of what he’d read while copying data over.

<…Your safety…was my priority. You are my brother. You are here. You are alive. I apologize for ruining the data, but I will not apologize for making you a priority.> Frankie placed a hand on his shoulder. He hadn’t initiated physical contact before this, always actively avoiding touching him.

His brother had been scared to touch him—or maybe he worried he’d scare Pence. A thought occurred to Pence, pulling his head up. “…Your boss is going to find out someone used the computer. If he finds out it was you—” Frankie spoke over Pence the moment his voice started getting shrill with panic.

< I am not concerned. There was soon to be someone else who also was going to have access to the computer. They can be blamed for our shortcomings. For now, you should rest and recover the aura of your heart. A small bit was taken, but Darkness does not need a large crack to seep into a heart and rot it from the inside. >

“It…it can do that…?” Pence asked in terrified awe.

<Yes, it can.>

Pence furrowed his brow, too many questions, too exhausted to hold onto them for long periods of time. The only thing he could think about was how Olette had told him she’d offered Roxas some of her aura and then how ever since then, she’d been acting strangely.

Chapter Text

Olette hadn’t realized how intently she’d been nibbling at her nails until she yanked her thumb out of her mouth, it starting to bleed. For a while now, all of the lights in Twilight Town seemed to be dimmer, like there was a heavy drain on the power. But then she realized the same could be said of the sun. The shadows seemed heavier and the ones in her features weren’t leaving this time.

She wanted to fight. She was too tired.

“Hey…what’s wrong with me?” Olette asked the air, having stood in an alleyway instead of heading home for a long while now, but time wasn’t making sense to her anymore. She got no reply. “Are you just…waiting to cut me down now? You haven’t answered me in days…why not just eat my heart right out of my chest while it’s still good, huh?”

She wanted to sound angry—she just sounded tired.

She squatted down, pressing her knees to her forehead, her bag sliding down her arm and hitting the ground with a heavy thud. She felt like if a strong enough breeze blew through town, it would take her trembling away with it like a leaf from a tree in autumn.

The world felt so much darker lately. She felt so much darker lately. What was the point? Who was she even fighting for? Hayner didn’t care. Pence didn’t care. Roxas wasn’t ever coming back.

No one would miss her if she turned into dust or if she was taken by a Heartless or Nobody. Maybe if she sat here long enough, her body would fall away and turn into a pile of goo. Human goo. Had she ever told him she wanted to kiss him? Had she ever told him she’d never been more comfortable than she had in his arms after he’d eaten a piece of her and then fallen asleep?

Being eaten was more intimate than anything she’d ever experienced before. A part of her was used to keep him alive—what could have been possibly any more romantic? Maybe sitting here and feeling like she was ready to die while thinking of him. Dying was an eternal commitment, one that couldn’t be taken back.

She was never going to get him back. He’d died to keep them safe. She wanted to cry about how much she missed him, but the tears wouldn’t come. She felt tired. She inhaled, her lungs feeling like they were full of water, viscus molecules. Her eyes wouldn’t focus. She felt like the darkness in the back of her head had situated itself like the roots of a fungus inside of her. It was eating her alive, but she didn’t feel like she’d been alive for a few weeks now. Maybe that was why.

The shadows felt heavy, like a blanket. Like Roxas’ arms had been. Maybe Roxas had made the right choice. Maybe dying wasn’t as bad as everyone made it out to be. She felt her heart squeeze, an inhale that was so painful she’d decided it would hurt so much less if she stopped breathing, if she just let the Darkness take her.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

Olette’s head whipped up, tears in her eyes as a girl with red hair stood before her, hands resting on her knees as she crouched forward with a dog at her side that kept it’s distance from her. Olette had never seen her before.

“Did you hurt yourself?” She offered Olette a hand, earnest and genuine in her desire to help. The roots in the back of her head shriveled, the blanket falling off of her shoulders, the water in her lungs evaporating.

She reached up and took the girl’s hand, being tugged up to her feet. Olette squeezed her hand. She didn’t want to let go. If she let go, they’d come back. They’d come back and take her and she didn’t want to be taken away like everyone else. She wanted to live. She hated how badly she wanted to live, even if she felt she didn’t deserve it.

“I don’t see any cuts or bruises. Does your stomach hurt? Can I get you something?” She didn’t pull away and she didn’t find Olette’s silence off putting. She was being unusually kind to a stranger.

“I could knife you.” Olette felt the thought leave her like it was being pulled out of her with string, making her want to vomit from the sensation.

“Well, I mean I guess you could,” she mused, looking around the alley as if realizing this would be a decent place to try to stab someone. But she didn’t pull away and her dog still kept it’s distance.

“That doesn’t scare you?” Olette asked, her voice sounding like she’d been yelling. But she hadn’t said anything in—what time was it? What day was it? When’s the last time she’d said something out loud? What if she hadn’t been talking to the Samurai and had just been thinking it?

“About as much as knowing a plane could fall from the sky and crush me right now. It’s terrifying and I hope it doesn’t happen, but if it does there’s nothing I could really do about it.” She shrugged.

“You could if you ignored me,” Olette reminded.

“But you looked like you needed help.” she said it as if there was no room for her to think otherwise, as if helping a complete stranger was exactly what other people were supposed to do for each other.

Olette stared at the strange girl who smelled of ocean salt, her heart making weak throbs against the jaded shell she’d put it in. Why be nice? Why bother? Why did she feel like an anchor in a storm? Is that why she smelled like sea salt—from being an anchor on the ocean floor?

“My name is Kairi,” she introduced. “What’s yours?”

“…Olette.”

“Okay, Olette,” she nodded. “Why don’t we go sit down somewhere. That’s got to be more comfortable, right? Is there a cafe or park nearby?” Both were nearby, even the Sandlot with the benches. What kind of weird question was that?

“…You’re not from here,” she noted, narrowing her eyes at Kairi, but more like she was just waking up and couldn’t see properly.

“You got me!” she admitted with a laugh. Her laugh like wind chimes on a perfect summer day—like the ones Hayner’s grandmother hung up at her house. They made sitting on the step relaxing whenever they’d stay over for dinner but want to stay outside just a bit longer. Just a little more, just a few more precious moments together.

Olette furrowed her brow like she wasn’t sure whether to cry or get angry with her. But she led her out of the alley and to the sandlot, looking to her once a bench was within view. “Oh, wow! The buildings around here are really neat! Does the sun show up in the center of them all? I bet that view is amazing!”

What a weird, but simple question.

“…It makes it hot. Makes you want to stop roughhousing and go get ice cream,” she mumbled softly. Stop practicing for struggle tournaments, stop harassing Seifer and his gang of friends, stop making patterns in the sand.

“What kind of ice cream do you like?” Kairi led her over to a bench, taking a seat with her, the dog still following at her heels. It rested its head in her lap, Kairi petting his head with her spare hand as she continued to hold Olette’s.

“…Sea salt. You smell like the sea.”

“Do I?” Kairi asked, leaning down to sniff at her sleeve. “Huh. I guess I do. You smell liike,” she leaned over, sniffing at Olette, Olette raising a brow at her. She was being overly familiar, like they were old friends. She was so weird—so earnest. Like Roxas had been. “Amber! I think that’s amber. Is it amber?”

Olette felt tired, like she’d ran a marathon and was overdue for a nap. She could rest her head on top of Kairi’s and fall asleep and nothing bad would ever happen to her. She firmly believed that, despite having no idea who she was. She might even wake up feeling well-rested for once.

“I dunno,” Olette mumbled softly, looking back over the sandlot. “But…I do know the ocean is a ways away from here. You have to get on the train to see it.”

“Oh? Do you?” Kairi asked with interest and a smile, genuinely wanting Olette to continue.

“…It’s one thing to not know where anything is and it’s another to go somewhere like that and not have planned for it at all. You’re not even going to try to hide it or lie?”

“Should I?” Kairi asked, tipping her head. “You seem really suspicious about it, so…that tells me you know there’s other worlds out there.”

Olette inhaled and it hurt, like an exacerbated muscle. Kairi just smiled at her, giving her hand a squeeze.

“I’m honestly not sure how I got here. One minute I was home, then I was following Pluto to get away from someone, then I was here.” She ran away—just like that. Left her entire home, her friends, her whole life. Just left.

“Can you go back?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I don’t think I’d want to—at least not yet. I have two friends that haven’t come home yet that I know they’re out there somewhere. I may as well go look for them.”

 “How do you know? I mean…how do you know that they’re not actually gone?” Roxas wasn’t coming back, she knew that. She knew he was dead because the boy with his face wasn’t.

“I don’t,” she chirped. “So I either need to find them or find out what happened with them. But not knowing…I think that’s a lot harder the longer I wait. Not that I minded waiting. I like knowing that I’ll be there to welcome them with open arms when they can finally come back, rather than it feeling like coming back to an empty house, you know? It’s too lonely otherwise.”

She was painfully optimistic about something that would ruin Olette. Bated breath, anticipation—she hated those things. It just felt like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe that’s why she was always unfortunately too quick with her sword rather than reading her opponent.

If she’d said something, if she’d paid more attention to Hayner, if she’d done anything more than just wait. Waiting was the same as hiding. It was just expecting the fight outside of her door to be over, for Roxas to come back on his own.

She was so tired of waiting and this girl had no idea what that was like.

“I lost someone too…but he’s never coming back and I feel like it’s my fault and like it’s ruining my friends and I can’t even apologize for it because I’m a big coward and they’re too nice to blame me for it,” Olette let the words fly out of her, let the guilt take a moment to chew and swallow between its gnawing at her.

“I…actually know what that’s like,” Kairi admitted, the guilt on her face taking Olette by surprise. “The two that I was just talking about—I feel like that about them.” Kairi looked down at her hand, Pluto moving to sit between Olette’s legs as if to comfort her. “But if they’re not going to blame me for it, the least I can do is be better and try to make sure that never happens again. I don’t want to be helpless anymore. So something has to change about me to do that.”

“What if you change the wrong thing?” Olette asked, calluses on her hand a violent contrast to Kairi’s hand.

“I think change is gradual, but I don’t think it’s permanent. If you don’t like what you changed or feel like it’s wrong, you can change again. People are amazing like that.” Kairi gave Olette a warm smile that made something inside of her shrivel up and die. But in killing whatever had been inside of her, she felt relief, like she could think clearly for once in a long time.

“What are their names—the friends you’re looking for?” Olette asked, turning to face her better. If she couldn’t bring Roxas back, maybe she could help Kairi.

“Riku and Sora,” Kairi happily told her.

Sora—the boy who’d taken Roxas’ life. Why was everything connected back to Sora? Why Sora, why not Roxas? Olette wanted to be angry—or at least that was what she was comfortable feeling. But she was so tired of being angry and sad and lonely. She was so, so tired.

“What…what are they like?” Olette asked, having hated someone she had only met once for just a moment. She hated what he’d taken from her, but every time someone who wasn’t Roxas had mentioned him, they did it with a smile. 

“Riku was always trying to act more mature than he was—big ego, big muscles.” Kairi puffed her cheeks out, making muscles with her own arms without letting go of Olette’s hand. She laughed, lowering it. “But he was always looking out for us, pushing us to do better. He had these big ideas and always wanted to follow through with them and if we had a goal we wanted to reach, he’d help us with those too without ever trying to talk us out of them. He was always really good to me…” Kairi lowered her gaze, thinking about a moment in the past that she was fond of.

“…And Sora?” Olette prompted, her throat feeling like sandpaper.

“Sora is… Sora,” Kairi explained with a laugh. “He’s always putting everyone else first, is a total goofball, and says what he thinks without holding back. He can be a bit oblivious, but he’s sweet and means well.”

Olette hated how much they sounded alike, how she had a specific memory for Roxas for each trait Kairi described. Why Sora? If they were so alike, why not just let them have Roxas? Why take him away from them?

“The friend that I lost…he’s a lot like that too. He’s a bit more scared, but that’s because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone.” He was always so scared of hurting them—his precious humans.

“What’s his name?” Kairi asked, oblivious to the way how someone so sweet in her mind could hurt someone without realizing it.

“Roxas…His name is Roxas.”

“Well that’s a fun name!” Kairi praised.

“Yeah…” Should she tell her she’d seen Sora? What if it wasn’t her Sora? She could ask—she’d have to tell her she tried to kill him. She knew about other worlds, but did she know about Nobodies and Heartless? Did she know who Roxas was to Sora?

“Um…Kairi?” Olette asked, giving Kairi her full attention. “I…” She was scared. She was a coward still. She couldn’t leave her home and go with her brother, couldn’t be bothered to fight properly, couldn’t tell the girl in front of her what she’d done wrong. Coward. “…Do you wanna get an ice cream? My treat,” she offered, swallowing down words of admittance.

“Sure! Ice cream sounds great!”

Pluto barked in agreement, Kairi giving him a big smile.

“Yeah? You want some too?”

He ran around in a circle, wagging his tail before barking again, making her laugh. Olette stood up, Kairi following her lead as she took them down into Market Street. She was quiet, unsure if she should try to tell her or apologize or—

“Your other friends—the ones who don’t blame you…what are their names? My friends who are like that are Wakka, Selphie, and Tidus.” So she had people like that too. The similarities were striking, enough to make Olette wonder for just a moment if she wasn’t real—if she was a trick of her imagination and if she was still blacking out in the alley.

“Hayner and Pence,” Olette mumbled softly, Pluto rushing off ahead before darting back to jog around them, then rushing back off and waiting. “They don’t say it outright, but they also haven’t said anything outright in a while…but I guess I haven’t either.”

“Yeeaah…it can be really hard,” Kairi agreed. Olette quietly squeezed her hand, Kairi squeezing back. “Do you want to talk to them about it?”

Olette nodded, biting at her bottom lip. She wouldn’t cry. She was stronger than that. She—Kairi stopped walking, wrapping her arms around Olette.

“It’s okay to cry—I won’t judge you for it. If anything, I think it’s really brave of you to do something that honest in front of a stranger.”

Olette’s shoulders trembled, breath hitching in her chest. She buried her face against Kairi’s shoulder, squeezing her tightly. She was warm, she was small, she was a big comfort. Olette liked her a lot. She was so needlessly kind. She wanted to be like her. How can she have gone through the exact same thing and then still been so kind? How had she not turned into someone cruel and jaded like Olette was becoming?

“I don’t want to be mean—! I want to be a better person…! I…I—!” Olette choked.

“Breathe,” Kairi reminded gently, rubbing at her back, Pluto sitting behind Olette’s legs, whining softly because he couldn’t help.

“I want Roxas back! I want him back and I want my friends to not hate me and I don’t want to be mad at them because I’m not mad at them…! I’m mad at me and I don’t want to be mad at me anymore! I want someone to like me the way Roxas did because I’m tired of people being mad at me or not liking me!”

Kairi squeezed her tight, like a light in the dark enveloping her. It was so easy to talk to her, a total stranger. A stranger who was needlessly kind. A stranger who she wanted to be like. A stranger who liked her. She let Olette cry all over her until she had exhausted herself. Then she just gave her a warm smile, wiping her tears and giving her another hug.

“Why don’t we get two extra ice creams and go find your friends?” she offered, running a hand through her hair.

Olette nodded against her, not wanting to let Kairi go. But Kairi pulled away, holding her hands in hers.

“Come on—let’s tell them how you feel. I’m sure you’ll feel a lot better after, and maybe they’ll tell you how they’re feeling too.” Friends were the kind of people you were supposed to be able to be honest with and she’d just been lying to them.

Olette quietly led her down to the store that sold their favorite sea salt ice cream, mumbling an order for five of them while Kairi squeezed her hand in reassurance, silently telling her she was doing good.

“Okay! Let’s go find your friends before these bad boys melt!” Kairi pumped a fist in the air, Pluto barking in agreement. Olette felt the weakest, faintest laugh bubble up, it sounding more like a sigh than anything. But she nodded in agreement.

“They could be in our hangout spot…or they could be home. Or at least Hayner would be home—I’m not sure about Pence, actually…” He’d been going off and doing his own thing and she had no idea what that entailed.

“Then let’s go check your hangout spot. If we’re lucky, at least one of them will be there,” Kairi offered, Olette nodding in agreement. She felt a small fire of resolve, of determination to make things better. She wanted things to be better, even if it was little things. Little things added up—and it didn’t have to be bad little things either. That had been what the Samurai had been trying to tell her and it was embarrassing how it took her this long to understand it.

She led Kairi to their hangout spot, hesitating once she got to the doorway.

“You can do it—Behind you all the way,” Kairi reassured with a nod.

Olette gave a hesitant look to the gate, then back to Kairi. She gave her another nod, Olette nodding back. They may not even have been inside. She could be getting all worked up for nothing. She might still have to find them. The ice cream could melt. She’d have to give them liquid ice cream, sloshing around in the clear plastic pouches they came in.

Olette took a step forward, then another, Kairi having held her hand the entire time. She just needed someone to hold her hand, be with her. She always felt like she was dealing with everything alone—no, that wasn’t right. Pence and Hayner had been there for her when she’d been stalked. They made her feel like it was okay to go back out into the world rather than hole up and hide away forever.

Her friends made her feel like it was okay. She wanted to feel okay. She wanted her friends back.

They were both there, actually. Pence speaking quietly to Hayner, who looked exhausted. But the second they saw her come in, he looked more awake and Pence had stopped talking. Olette froze, feeling like she shouldn’t be there, like she was intruding.

Kairi squeezed her hand.

“Um…” Olette swallowed, then floundered as she looked around like she’d forgotten the ice cream was in her free hand and the rest in Kairi’s. “I—I got ice cream—and a new friend,” she added, glancing at Kairi, who gave her a reassuring nod and a smile.

“Hello! I’m Kairi,” she introduced.

“Uh, hi…” Pence greeted awkwardly.

“Hey,” Hayner gave her a nod, but hadn’t taken his eyes off of Olette. Did he think she was replacing them? She wasn’t replacing them. Hayner and Pence were her boys and had always been her boys—she loved them.

“Kairi is from another world,” Olette explained, awkwardly offering them both an ice cream.

“Woah! For real?” Pence asked, eyes wide as he gave her proper attention, ice cream in hand. Hayner actually took his eyes off of Olette to look at Kairi, mid reach for his ice cream.

“Does everyone know other worlds exist here or just you guys?” Kairi asked, Pluto barking as if to echo her question. He nudged the hand that had the ice cream in them, Kairi pulling away from Olette to open one for Pluto.

“Just us,” Olette explained. Would it be wrong of her to sit down? Was she allowed to do that? Was it acting too much like everything was normal?

“You guys are like me and my friends. How did you find out? My friends found out because I’d came from another world and washed up on their beach,” Kairi explained, reaching for Olette’s hand and tugging her onto the couch.

“Roxas,” Olette mumbled softly, taking a seat next to her. She could feel Hayner’s stare burning a hole into her.

“Oh. You guys talked about Roxas…?” Pence asked, making Olette feel guilty. She’d talked about him to a stranger, but not to them.

“A few different things, but…um…I want to…” To talk to them about Roxas. To talk to them about how she’d been feeling. To tell them she was a friend of Sora’s. To talk to her about Sora and Roxas. To say so many things.

“…I’ve been having one of the Samurai train me with how to use a sword,” Olette blurted out.

“Wait, what?” Pence asked in shock.

“A Samurai?” Kairi asked, tipping her head.

Hayner was quiet. She wanted Hayner to say something. She shrunk into herself. Kairi took the ice cream out of Olette’s hand and opened it, handing it back to her.

“Um…yeah. Kairi do you, uh…In your world, do you have like…monsters…?” Olette asked hesitantly.

“Heartless monsters or other monster?” Kairi asked, forthcoming in a way that made this so much easier.

“Well, yeah those—but we also have Nobodies. The silver guys?” Olette explained.

“No I n—wait, do they wear jumpsuits?”

“Yeah,” Pence agreed with a nod. Kairi looked to Pluto, then to them.

“I met them just before I ended up here. There was a guy with them who said he knew where Sora was…but I didn’t trust him.”

“Sora?” Hayner asked, voice barely registering as he narrowed his eyes at her. Pence quickly dove behind the couch and yanked the bat away from Olette to hide behind his back, but she hadn’t moved. Kairi looked between them, then looked to Olette.

 “…We met Sora. Brown spiky hair, wide smile…right?” Olette mumbled softly, then shoved the ice cream in her mouth.

“Yeah! That’s Sora!” Kairi agreed, chest swelling with excitement. “Was he okay? Do you know where he went?”

“Olette chased him out of here with that bat,” Hayner explained bitterly, nodding towards it. Olette winced, shrinking into herself. Kairi’s eyes went wide in confusion, but she didn’t look upset.

“Uh-oh. What happened?” She didn’t get angry with her, didn’t pull away from her. She just wanted to know why Olette had been upset. Given how she described Sora, someone sweet, Olette’s reaction must have been unusual.

“Nobodies are…you know how Heartless are creatures that used to be a part of someone? Their heart?” Olette started, Kairi nodding. “Nobodies are the bodies they leave behind. But they’re not like Heartless. They can talk, they can look like people, they…they can make friends and…and they can be really kind…”

“Roxas was Sora’s Nobody,” Hayner interjected. “And if Sora is wandering around, that means Roxas isn’t. So Roxas is dead because your friend isn’t.”

“Hayner—dude!” Pence interjected, voice breaking, Olette wincing but not stopping him.

“Oh…I had no idea. I’m so, so sorry…I can’t even imagine what you’re going through right now…” But she could. She knew what it was like to lose people—she was just a step away from knowing if it was forever or not. Kairi set her ice cream down on the plastic and hugged Olette.

“You’re not mad at me?” Olette asked, feeling her eyes well up again. Her heart felt like an overflowing well in the middle of a monsoon.

“You just lost someone special to you—why would I be mad at you for being hurt by that? Why would I be mad at any of you? Did he know?” Kairi asked, pulling away from Olette.

She shook her head. “I doubt it…”

“But I don’t know if he’s dead,” Pence interjected. “Frankie keeps saying he’s asleep. Frankie is my brother and he got turned into a Nobody,” he explained to Kairi.

“The Samurai who’s been training me kept saying the same thing,” Olette furrowed her brow, not sure what that meant if they both kept saying it. Frankie maybe if Nobodies could feel denial, her Samurai if it was just trying to keep her from doing something stupid, but both? Sure they coordinated, but that was such an unusual lie to concoct.

“This isn’t a fairytale,” Hayner reminded. “Even if he is just asleep we have no way of getting to him—to Sora.” He narrowed his eyes at the dart board, as if blaming it for their loss.

“But what if we could?” Kairi asked. “What if there was a way to wake him up or whatever your Nobodies are talking about and still have Sora be here?”

“That’s a bit too optimistic if you ask me,” Hayner mumbled.

“But what if we could! Don’t you want to try?” Kairi asked, dropping to the floor and grabbing his hands. Hayner turned cherry red, Kairi looking up at him with an earnestness that was unusual for someone who she didn’t know if she could trust or not. “What if we can get your friend back? You deserve to have your friend back.”

<Well said, Kairi,> came a voice that echoed off of the walls, a slow clap as a portal of darkness opened up. She shot up to her feet, Hayner throwing an arm out in front of her after he turned his chair around. Pence gripped the nail bat in front of himself, Olette reaching into the couch and yanking out a huge kitchen knife.

<Hey now, that’s a bit of a hostile welcome for someone trying to help you out here. You sure went a pretty far ways away from home—made it hard to find you.> A man stepped out from the darkness, but the moment they could see his body was the moment they all realized he wasn’t a man.

The three of them immediately could feel their bodies tremble, but Olette steeled herself, then centered herself. She held her knife the way she would have one of her borrowed swords, the redheaded Nobody barely giving her a glance.

<Oh come on now, I’m just trying to help. I told you before, I’m a friend,> he insisted, putting his fingers to his chest.

“Yeah right,” Kairi scoffed—and Olette realized she wasn’t afraid. She hadn’t so much as flinched when he’d come out of the portal. There was something different about her—she’d thought maybe she was just desperate before for someone, anyone to reach out to her, but seeing Kairi unafraid? That told Olette she’d been right.

<Fine,> he sighed. <and here I was, trying to do this politely.>

He took a step forward, Hayner standing up and holding his hand by his side—he twitched, hesitating, but the Nobody shoved him out of the way and then kicked his wheelchair on top of him. Pence let out a loud yell, the Nobody grabbing the bat and using Pence’s death grip on it to send him flying into the crates.

Olette stood in front of Kairi, knife still in hand. The Nobody narrowed his eyes at her, his mouth curling into a smile. <“Roxas talked about you first.”>

“Roxas?” Olette had loosened her grip on the knife, her body going too slack. Axel reached around her, yanking Kairi out from behind her.

“Kairi!” Olette swung the knife—the Nobody stepping back into the darkness with her, thigh being nicked by the knife but unfazed.

“Give her back!” Olette yelled, rushing into the darkness—but Hayner grabbed her, full body, the portal closing.

“Don’t—! Don’t, ‘Lette…” he was shaking. Olette exhaled, tipping her head back and resting it on his shoulder.

Pence groaned, rolling his shoulder and wincing. He got up, crates and nail bat falling off of him. He offered Olette a hand, her being careful not to step all over Hayner. They then both offered him a hand, Hayner taking both and stumbling, both of them catching him.

"I don't know what I'm doing…why didn't I just…?" Hayner mumbled softly.

“Huh?” Pence asked, Hayner shaking his head and pulling away sitting himself on the couch.

“We need to find her—we can’t just…” Olette winced, clenching her hands at her side.

“We don’t know where he took her. We don’t know how many worlds are out there and even if we ended up on the right one, all it takes is overlooking one closet, one hidden space…” Pence sighed heavily, sitting himself down on the ground.

Again. Again, she failed to protect someone. Roxas would have been ashamed of her. “I’m sorry, Sora…” Olette mumbled softly. She had attacked him for something that wasn’t his fault. He had no idea what happened to Roxas. Then to make it worse, she hadn’t been able to keep Kairi, one of his friends, from being taken while she was right in front of her.

“We need to talk,” Olette decided, turning to the two of them. Hayner and Pence nodded in agreement.

Chapter Text

“Thank you so much for helping us get everything inside.” Hayner watched his grandmother offer the delivery man a cup of water. He and Olette sat on the mattress that rested on the floor, the dresser instructions between them while Pence messed with the bed frame.

“Yeah, any time. It’s what we’re here for,” he replied after finishing the water she’d given him, handing back the empty glass. “I swear those kids are always up to something, so this almost made me a bit worried,” he gave them a nod as if they couldn’t hear him, Hayner’s grandmother laughing.

“Oh you know those three, they’re like the heart of the town. It’d be sleepy and quiet forever if it weren’t for them—downright ignorable if you ask me.” Hayner’s grandmother glanced over at him with a smile.

She’d gone to Olette’s parents and spoken with them, offering for her to stay in what was basically their storage room. It took a while to go through everything, lots of old memories, useless things covered in dust and spiderwebs, and holiday decorations, but they got most of it out.

They found out Olette had barely been home anyway. Hayner assumed she was either sleeping in their hang out spot once he and Pence had long since gone home, or was either wandering around if she wasn’t training at night until she could fall asleep at her desk at school during the day. Hayner didn’t know what his grandmother had said to her parents, but after three hours, she was told to pack a bag of what was important to her and leave everything else.

She’d been sleeping on the couch and on his bedroom floor, but she’d actually been sleeping, getting to shower, getting to have her clothes washed. It was unusually nice and she’d doubted if she deserved it, but Hayner had reassured her that she did.

He got up, wincing as he closed the door, hand clinging to his leg that was starting to go numb. He turned his attention to both of them, Olette putting the paper down and Pence still working on the bed frame.

“Frankie,” Pence called, the Nobody coming out of thorn and void at his call.

“I feel like I should name my Samurai,” Olette mumbled softly.

“It was a whole human person at one time—shouldn’t it already have a name?” Hayner asked, eying Frankie, still weary of the proximity of the Nobody unlike Olette and Pence, who outwardly weren’t at all bothered.

“Yeah, but whenever I ask it like…changes the subject,” Olette sighed. “Anyway,” she prompted, Hayner nodding in agreement.

He held his hand out in front of himself, calling a keyblade from stardust and wishes.

“Don’t think I’ll ever get over that,” Pence admitted with a longing sigh.

“Right?” Olette agreed, setting a timer on her new phone. She’d had one of those awful little minute phones that died the moment it wasn’t on the charger. But they’d gotten her a new one with a proper touch screen and she’d insisted on a blood red case for it.

They’d told each other everything. Pence with his data, the other worlds, the information about light and darkness Frankie had given him. Hayner owned up to the gift Roxas had left him, showing them his keyblade. Olette showed off her cuts and bruises from her training, proud of those rather than embarrassed by the rest.

The irony was that ultimately, it all came down to them wanting the same, impossible thing—they all wanted Roxas back. They were waffling between mourning and attempting to get him back, not really set on either.

But once they talked about it, after what Kairi had said, they agreed—they were going to find Sora and find a way to save Roxas. They were going to wake him up. But there was still an awkward distance there now, like they could only talk about their goals rather than being as laid back with each other as they had before.

“So Frankie said he found something in the old mansion—a weird computer. It’s got a similar setup to the one from the other world we went to, but it’s not being used like the Organization’s Number One’s computer was. It’s got some sort of teleporter attached to it.”

“What, like to another world?” Hayner asked, feeling Olette’s eyes on him as he started to sweat. Between standing and having his keyblade out, it was a real strain on his body. His current goal was to have his keyblade in his hand for at least fifteen minutes now since that was as long as she could hold her own against her Samurai before she needed a break.

“That’s the freaky part—he said the teleporter could take you to a world made completely of data that’s almost exactly like ours,” Pence explained, reaching over for the last piece of the bed frame.

<There were traces of my liege inside, but no longer.>

“A data world…?” Olette asked, narrowing her brow in confusion.

“Wait—Roxas was in a data world?”

<From my understanding, it was shortly after rescuing you from the Darkness. Axel had been tasked with his retrieval,> Frankie explained. Axel, the one who’d taken Kairi last week.

“Wait—so he…” Hayner’s keyblade vanished from his hand, making him wince and exhale heavily.

Olette stopped the timer, mumbling softly, “He was right there…”    

“But retrieval implies he got put there,” Pence reminded, Olette and Hayner looking up at him. “So someone put him there.”

“Someone who’s not the Organization? Who the heck else is involved in this?” Hayner asked, going to sit on the bed, but Pence gestured for him to move.

“Nope, almost done. Don’t sit on the bed,” Pence scolded.

Hayner groaned, sitting on the floor instead. His leg was killing him today and his arms were going to hurt tomorrow from holding his keyblade up that long.

“But I thought if that’s the kind of stuff in the mansion, we should check it out and see if we can find anything there about where Axel took Kairi. The fact her whereabouts are being kept that secret to where not even Frankie knows is just sketchy…I don’t think Axel did this because the Organization wanted him to, I think he did that all on his own.”

“What kind of a jackass forms a heart and then decides he’s gonna use it to be evil?” Hayner grumbled.

“That guy,” Pence replied with a shrug.

“Me,” Olette said at the same time. Hayner and Pence looked at her, Olette squaring her shoulders but keeping her expression flat, almost in warning. “…It’s a joke.” It didn’t sound like a joke. “Guys, it’s a joke,” she reiterated with annoyance.

Hayner let it go. He was still worried about the both of them for different reasons. None of them had talked about their feelings at all, about how much it hurt to lose Roxas. He wanted to, but it never seemed like the right time when both of them were desperately trying to keep going, trying to keep up with their tasks, trying to keep setting new goals.

He had no idea how to tell them to slow down and he felt guilty because he didn’t want them to slow down. He was just upset he couldn’t keep up anymore. He felt like he hadn’t had time to do much of anything while they were both actively showing progress in what they were doing.

The only thing he’d manage to do is add seconds. A second longer of a faked smile, a second longer to hold his keyblade, a second longer standing on his own, a second longer without Roxas and learning to deal with it, a second longer with his grandma and Seifer’s words clashing with his own ideals in his head.

Healing didn’t have tangible goals.

“Help me move the mattress?” Pence asked, finished with the bed frame. Hayner got up to move to get it, but Olette shoved herself in front of him and grabbed it instead, not glancing back at him. Hayner narrowed his eyes at her, but quickly let it go, eyebrows raised. He looked over at the wall, rolling his shoulder and kneading at the muscle.

He could feel Pence’s eyes on him, feel Frankie still focused on all of them without having moved a muscle from the corner of the room.

He hopped himself up on the dresser instead, desperate to get off his feet if they wouldn’t let him help. He held out his non-dominant hand, calling for his keyblade again. The weight of it, the expectations, the unachievable desire to be on the same page as them, was going to force Hayner face first into the rug.

“I didn’t start the timer,” Olette reminded, having heard him call for it as they forced the mattress up.

“I’m a big boy, I can count in my head,” Hayner countered. Olette looked over her shoulder at him, but didn’t say what she was clearly thinking. He was exhausted and that might mess with his counting. Hayner didn’t call her out and neither did Pence.

They just put the mattress up on the frame, then took the sheets out of the box and put them on the bed. The top sheet. He was sweating by the blanket, breath shaking. He was grimacing, brows furrowed, the corner of his mouth quipped up. This sucked.

He let it go, keyblade vanishing as Hayner exhaled.

“Any pointers over there?” he asked Frankie, stomach in knots as he looked at the Nobody.

Frankie was silent.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Hayner mumbled, Olette flopping herself down on her bed once she’d finished with the throw pillows. Her legs dangled off of the edge as she stared up at the ceiling, looking like she was relaxing for once. He watched her quietly rub at the space over her heart, watch her zone out into a memory she was probably clinging to.

Pence sat in front of the bed, looking at Hayner before his eyes darted over to Frankie—almost like he was guilty for their eyes meeting.

He should try to bring it up now—have them talk about how they were feeling, even if it was all the same. Now was perfect. They were alone, no one was saying anything anyway. He was their friend—

“They need you as much as you need them right now.”

—not their leader. He’d rejected the title, but he’d always acted like one anyway. He’d just discarded it the moment it was too heavy a title to bear. He didn’t know if he was strong enough to pick it up on his own again. He’d relied on Roxas to carry it with him long enough to forget how heavy it was on his own.

Having this conversation might have hurt them and it might bring up feelings they’d prefer were shoved away in deep corners of their hearts. But he was also tired of having to keep it together all of the time to make sure they were okay—that they didn’t have to worry about him. At least worrying came with emotional honesty.

“Um—”

“So I was thinking about picking us up lunch,” Olette started as she sat up, not realizing she’d spoken over him. “Anything specific? My treat, Hyuna too,” she added, glancing at Hayner.

The moment had passed. He’d waited a second too long. It would be nice if he could actually use those collected seconds to make them a moment of emotional honesty.

“I would kill for one of the sandwiches from the bakery with the honey nut bread,” Pence groaned, tipping his head over the edge of the bed to look up at her.

<Who do you intend to kill for a sandwich?>

“No—no Frankie, it's an expression, remember?” Pence snorted.

“It’s been a while since we’ve been in there, huh? I could do with one of these spicy stuffed breads. Hayner?” she asked, grabbing her phone to make note so she wouldn’t forget.

“Get me a pizza stuffed one. Grama likes their tomato bread with the chive cream cheese,” he told her, watching her tap away.

“Want help carrying it?” Pence asked, already standing up.

“I can manage, but if you wanna come I can’t stop you,” she shrugged.

“I’ll stay here. I can hang Pence’s big ass photos up for you,” Hayner offered, the photos from a competition Pence forgot he entered having been framed and the size of their torsos.

“Don’t hurt yourself. Also I’m getting us cookies because I want the ones with the dry icing,” Olette decided.

“Get me the little rainbow layered ones?” Hayner asked, Olette adding them to her list.

“Hyuunnaaa! I’m going to the bakery to get us lunch, do you want cookies?” Olette opened the door and called out into the hallway, following after her voice to find her. Pence glanced at Hayner, giving him a nod before Frankie vanished.

He listened to them romp around his house with noisy footsteps, heard the front door open and close. He could spare a few seconds to hold his keyblade for just a bit longer.

“Alright Golden Hour…Just a little longer this time.” He was getting left behind.

Chapter Text

“So what did you want to talk about?” Olette was straight to the point, not bothering to hide the fact she could tell Pence wanted to tell her something. Pence let out a nervous laugh, looking away from her. He could feel Frankie was following them in the shadows, even if he couldn’t see him.

“You could tell huh?”

She shrugged. “Lately you’ve been staying back with Hayner, especially when he looks tired like that.”

They walked in silence for a moment, cobblestone crunching under their shoes. Pence wasn’t sure how he wanted to bring it up, but he didn’t want to do it in front of Hayner. He had always been on edge about Nobodies and Heartless. Pence didn’t want him looking at Roxas any differently if what he assumed happened with Olette was correct. He didn’t even know if Olette would own up to it and if having Hayner there would make her more or less likely to tell him.

“So…when I went to that other word and I said Frankie protected me in the darkness, I kind of skimped on some details,” he admitted.

Olette hummed, it hard to tell if she was just acknowledging that she was listening or if she had been able to tell.

“He did it by cushioning my heart with excess aura from hearts he took from Heartless. But when we came back, he mentioned that if you don’t have enough aura, Darkness can seep into your heart—and he said you don’t even need to be missing a lot for that to happen.” He paused, glancing to Olette and waiting to see if she had something to say. She didn’t, keeping her eyes ahead as they walked.

“So what I’m trying to say is ‘Lette,” he stopped walking, Olette also stopping and turning to him. “There was a night back when Roxas was here…where you went to sleep out in the living room with me and Hayner, but then when we woke up you were knocked out in Hayner’s room with Roxas.”

“Jealous?” she asked, expression this annoyingly numb, flat thing.

“What—no! That’s not…are you being serious right now?” he asked in disbelief. She turned away from him, holding her arm. 

“It was a joke…” she mumbled softly. “I’m…I offered. He was starving, Pence…I didn’t want him to die. So he ate some of my aura and it was terrifying and intimate and I felt like I was dying. But I was fine—kind of hazy, but fine. I just felt like I hadn’t gotten enough sleep but was being forced awake…” she winced, Pence pressing a hand to her back. She had to physically swallow down what else she wanted to say, but he knew what it was anyway.

“Until we got Hayner back…”

“Yeah…”

He didn’t want to have this conversation in front of him because if it did happen, he didn’t want Hayner feeling guilty. She probably would have been fine, but Hayner coming back with Darkness clinging to him like that had probably seeped into her heart. Everyone was so worried about him, about getting it off, about where Roxas had went, that it was something easy to overlook. It was even easier if you could blame it on her home life, on her holding back all of the time.

“Don’t tell him…please? He already feels so guilty…Like losing Roxas is his fault,” Olette begged, grabbing for Pence’s hands.

“I won’t,” he promised. “But…how are you right now?”

“Better—kind of? I feel weird and hazy again, but I don’t feel like I’m being swallowed up anymore. Something about meeting Kairi helped, I think…But I can differentiate what thoughts are mine and just plain mean in my head now.” She lowered her forehead down to his shoulder, Pence wrapping his arms around her.

“You could have told me, you know…” Pence mumbled, Olette squeezing him tightly.

“I know…but I just…I felt like you didn’t care. That you wanted to get away from me and Hayner already…that we were more trouble than we were worth and were going to ruin your life…and I know that’s now true, but…” her voice broke, Pence gently rubbing at her back.

“That’s dumb. What am I supposed to do, grow up and make other friends who aren’t as cool as you two? I’ve seen your underwear—I’ve been in your underwear,” Pence reminded, making Olette choke on a laugh. “I know what kind of gum you like and that any time you get a new pair of sneakers you like to get different colored laces. I know you can belch the alphabet backwards in under ten seconds. I don’t need to know it, but I like to know those things. I care, even if its about stupid stuff. Yeah, you’re trouble—but so am I. I like, broke into another world and ruined an evil cult crime boss’ computer. Give me a little credit here.”

Olette pulled away to wipe at her eyes with her palms, Pence rubbing at her back still. “You said it was an accident,” she reminded.

“Yeah, but I still ruined it, no matter how you look at it,” Pence cooed back. “Listen, I don’t know anyone else in the whole world—or any other world—who would let me call them at 2am to talk about starting a bug orchestra. Even if I did, they’d probably be lame and couldn’t come up with our conductor being a praying mantis. No one would ever be as cool as you two and no one can replace you. Never ever. Roxas doesn’t count by the way, he’s probably part praying mantis.”

Olette choked on a laugh, wiping at her nose, Pence smiling at her. “I love you,” she said softly, holding her hands in his.

“I love you too.” Pence ran his thumbs along her hands, Olette pressing her forehead to his. “Tell me if you start feeling like that again, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“I mean it. Even if you have to cuss me out and say terrible things to get it out, tell me. I don’t want you to feel like I’m ever going to ditch you because I won’t.” He pulled back just enough to look her in the eyes.

“Never ever?” she asked softly.

“Never ever,” he promised with a heavy nod. “Come on—let’s go get lunch. We should get Hayner one of those hazelnut lattes, too. I can see it on his face, he’s tired but feels bad.” Pence didn’t let go of her hand as he started towards the cafe again.

“I don’t even know what to say to him…Telling him to take it easy is just gonna make him mad, but I’m worried he’ll over do it and hurt himself,” she admitted, the words clearly coming easier to her now, even if her expression was still flat.

“I dunno…we gotta say something though. I’d be pissed if he lived through going into the Darkness all on his own and then ended up keeling over because of his own stubbornness,” Pence sighed.

“…We should get him a decaf latte,” Olette decided, Pence snorting. He needed to sleep, as much as he hated it.

“We have to tell him it’s decaf though or he’ll be mad when he’s not buzzing like he normally does,” Pence reminded, thinking about how now he wanted a drink. Nobodies could eat human food, right? He should see if Frankie wanted something.

“I’ll text him,” Olette offered, digging her phone out of her pocket.

“I forgot to ask earlier, but Frankie, do you want anything?” Pence asked, unsure of where to direct his question to.

<Cheese melt.>

“Holy—that was quick, oh my god,” Pence laughed, his brother nowhere to be seen.

“Hm? What’d he say? I didn’t hear him.” Olette didn’t look up from her phone, it buzzing in reply as she kept tapping away.

“He wants a cheese melt. If you wanted something you could have told me earlier. You want a drink?”

<Hot chocolate.>

“Add hot chocolate to the list?”

“I want a macchiato now…” Olette mumbled in soft longing, pulling up their list to add it. “I think Hayner fell asleep again, he stopped replying. Still, I guess it’s a good thing you came. Carrying food and drinks back on my own would suck.”

“It’s still gonna suck when we gotta do it single handedly because I’m not letting go of you.” Pence squeezed her hand, Olette giving a soft laugh as she sniffed.

<I will help.>

“Frankie says he’ll help.”

“Frankie will help!” Olette yelled out, swinging their arms.

“Frankie will heeellp!” Pence copied her echo, watching her smile. She leaned over, pressing her head to his shoulder. “We have to look nuts to the neighborhood. Hey my dead brother is gonna help carry back bread and coffee, don’t worry us yelling about it is normal.”

“Weird is normal for us—it’s how we landed a hot monster boyfriend,” Olette shrugged.

“So hot.”

“Stupid hot,” Olette added. They walked for a moment, the conversation dying out as they both receded into thoughts, both thinking about the same thing.

“…I miss him,” Pence admitted softly. “I keep thinking that if I can find a way to get him back, I won’t have to miss him…I keep…trying not to really think about him, even when I can’t stop thinking about him—if that makes sense.”

“Kinda, yeah. Hey, um…with Frankie, did you ever…did you ever accept that he was gone or did you go right into Silver Devil hunting? I know you get private with stuff like that but I was never sure how to ask…” Olette admitted, the shop in sight. Pence gently guided her over to a bench instead. He sat down, sighing as he stared down at his shoes.

“I don’t even remember the funeral, honestly. I remember thinking I needed it to hurry up and finish so I could go back to investigating the tunnels. I don’t even remember what I said when it was my turn to talk,” Pence admitted, face flushed with embarrassment.

“That’s gonna bite you in the ass you know…even with him right here,” Olette mumbled softly. “Because you did lose him and he isn’t the same anymore…and we did lose Roxas and he might not be the same when we get him back either. There’s gonna be a point where there’s nothing for you to jump to or focus your feelings on. Everyone and everything is gonna be okay and you’re gonna break and not know why.” She was speaking from experience—he’d seen her do it.

“I know,” he whispered. “I don’t want to though…it just feels like it’s gonna be all of the time and I feel guilty when I’m not being productive. So then that’s gonna eat at me and make me more upset and then I’m never gonna get out of that cycle. But if I never get in it, then I don’t have to worry about getting out of it.” Pence had clearly decided that a long time ago, even if he was just now finding words for it. He stared off into the sunset, jaw locked.

“Pence…” Olette mumbled softly, brow furrowing. “…I’ll be honest, I don’t have some magical catch all that’ll make you realize how messed up that sounds…but I want you to know when it does happen—and it’s gonna and it will totally, totally fucking suck—I got your back, okay? Same way you’ve always had mine.” She gave his hand a squeeze, Pence smiling softly.

“Thanks, ‘Lette. Can we, um…can we sit here for an extra minute?” he asked softly. He’d come out here to comfort her, not the other way around, so it had thrown him a little bit.

“Of course.” She leaned over, pressing her head to his shoulder and he rested his on top of hers. The sun set was warm, the way it always was. Her hand was warm, the way it always was. Now they just had to figure out how to get Hayner to open up without him getting defensive, but that could wait just a little bit longer. Their bonds would never be the same, but they could at least start on refurbishing them.

Chapter Text

Olette could always tell when there were eyes on her. Always. She could tell what direction they were coming from, knew which way to startle off to like a frightened deer. She'd learned how to be prey a long time ago and had never been able to stop.

Ever since they'd come out of the cafe, someone had been watching them and it wasn't Frankie. Frankie made her uneasy like anticipating a cheap jump scare in a movie. She knew the set up, had expected it because she knew it was a horror movie. But someone else was watching and it made her feel like she was alone in a sea of people.

She squeezed Pence's hand, the smallest gesture to the left as they rounded a corner that wasn't towards Hayner's house. Pence's eyes widened, but he didn't look around.

"Frankie is someone following us…?" Pence asked ever do softly, barely auditable. Frankie heard him anyway.

<A superior.>

Olette heard him too this time, no longer a private conversation between brothers. Someone from The Organization was following them.

<Do not get cornered.> Frankie's warning wasn't intended to be harsh to hear, but it made both of them wince all the same. He'd been cornered. He'd been caught and killed. He didn't want that to happen to them.

"What do we do…?" Pence mumbled softly, looking up to Olette.

They had to ditch the food and not go to Hayner's. She loved him, but he was hurt and would be the first to be targeted. Then they'd all crumble because they wouldn't just leave him.

She considered going to Rai's, but if he wasn't home that would make it awkward and she also shouldn't get outsiders involved. Olette let go of Pence's hand and turned around.

"What do you want?" She called out, her voice echoing along the cobblestone streets.

"'Lette!" Pence's voice broke in a panic.

"Trust me, I'm the first one to know when I'm being followed," she continued, ignoring him. She didn't need to mention anything more than that, didn't need to throw Roxas into the equation either. She didn't know if the whole Organization knew he'd been with them or just some of them.

<"Shamefully letting fear rule you is no reason for there to be pride in your voice."> This Nobody took his time as he spoke, nuanced and with purpose. He stepped out from the shadows, his hood up.

"There's a difference between using what you have to your advantage and then letting it control you." Be aware of her surroundings. Ground herself. This was her home, her friends, her fear. Fuck this guy.

The Nobody walked up to her, Pence squeezing the blood out of her hand as he backed up, stumbling to hide behind her. He was inches away from her.

"If you want to scare me you're gonna have to do a better job. I've met humans worse than you," she snarled, anger for a little girl who no one had protected back then. She'd protect her. She wouldn't let herself ever feel like that again.

<"…Interesting. I can see why Number Thirteen had a fondness for you at least."> Yellow eyes like a full moon flickered over to Pence, who was shaking behind her. She squared her shoulders, quietly popping the lid on one of the drinks while making it look like she was anxiously playing with the cup.

Use what she had. There wouldn't always conveniently be a sword or lead pipe around. Know where her weapons were.

"What do you want?"

<"We require him back. I want more collateral if our original plan does not go as intended."> His posture was formal, like he had a brace on his spine. He hadn't even so much as turned his head.

"More collateral…?" Pence choked out softly behind her. Why was he wasting time speaking to them? What had that—

Olette threw the coffee in his face, making him growl like an animal in pain. She dropped the food and started running with Pence.

"He means us!" He'd talked to her to get close enough to grab her. She was so busy trying to prove she wasn't scared she put herself and Pence in a bad position. That scared her.

"Frankie, help!" Pence called out, both of them screaming as they ran right into thorn and void.

Four arms were wrapped around them, vaulting them through darkness so quickly they both felt nauseous, had to close their eyes from the force of it. Then there was the purple of dusk, then it opened up into twilight once more. They were outside of the mansion. Olette's legs gave out while Pence dry heaving.

<Inside in the basement is a computer that can take you to a simulated world. The world is intended to make it hard to find heart.> Frankie explained as a second Samurai pulled out its blades and aimed them into the trees.

"Got it, going!" Pence choked as he tugged at Olette's hands towards the mansion, Olette pulling him back, still not off of the ground.

"Wait, wait, wait—!"

The Nobody stepped out from thorn and void in front of the doors, Pence tripping over his feet as he stumbled backwards.

"Shit what do we—" she cut herself off, Hayner fumbling forward and landing on his face.

Hayner had stopped texting her back earlier. She thought he'd fallen asleep but this Nobody had just gotten to him first.

<"Enough games. You two will be turned into dusks for your insubordination."> Hayner turned over onto his back and kicked himself away, but the Nobody simply kept pace with a few steps.

<We are following the order Thirteen has given to us. There is no insubordination, only loyalty to our number,> Olette's Nobody defended.

<"Then when he returns he will be put on a shorter leash."> the Nobody replied, Hayner glancing back at Olette and Pence, who hadn't moved from the gateway.

She knew that look in his eyes. She felt her own body tense up, wanting to scream at him…but Hayner being reckless right now was probably their only shot at avoiding whatever fate they were about to find themselves in.

Hayner let out a yell as he shot up to his feet, hands shaking as he called for his keyblade.

<"What!?"> the Nobody stumbled back, Hayner barely grazing him. He collected himself after the shock, looking down at him.

"Get away from my friends!"

<"…I see.">

Both samurai positioned themselves in front of Pence and Olette, Olette standing up and looking around for something, anything she could use. Nothing. The crumbling pillars were too heavy, any tree branches too far away into the woods, the gate still solid.

<"Fighting is just a waste of time.">

"Says you!" Hayner spat.

<"Do you intend to leave Kairi all by herself for even longer?" >

"Kairi?" Olette found herself taking a step forward. "You have Kairi?"

<"Indeed. Who's to say what will happen if she's left unattended for too long." >

"Asshole," Olette spat with venom.

"He could be lying," Pence reminded, not letting go of Olette's hand. "It's really easy just to name drop without proof."

<"The proof is the fact that her name holds sway over you. To Sora it would be understandable, but you should have never met her. She spoke of you." >

"Or you're just saying that. Your buddy took her and it's real easy to connect those dots," Pence defended. He was always good at debating.

<"…From here…?"> The Nobody had spoken softly, musing to itself. Hayner had his keyblade out for a while now. He was going to reach his limit soon if they weren't careful.

"You didn't know…?" Pence mumbled softly, eyes studying him. "…The Organization is fighting—or at the very least not all on the same page."

<"No matter. If you do not come willingly then as much of a nuisance as it is, you will get the fight you so crave .">

"Or they just don't give a shit," Olette countered as she grabbed for one of her Samurai's swords, the Nobody easily picking Hayner up and tossing him at the gate.

Pence dove in front of it, cushioning the blow for Hayner with his own body. Hayner's keyblade vanished, Olette flanked by two Samurai as she charged with a yell.

<"Foolish human girl."> the Nobody pulled out a claymore, one horizontal swing to send the three of them flying into the ground.

"'Lette…!" Pence choked, sounding like he was a moment from having a coughing fit.

Olette could feel the skin of her arms breaking against the ground, the weight of the hit to her gut making the bile in her stomach swell.

<Escape. We must escape.>

<Fight to the death. There will be no escaping Number Seven.>

<The humans do not wish us to die, there is an attachment.>

<Yes, your own.>

Olette's Samurai dove back at the Nobody, swift and graceful—but taken down with brutal ease.

"No! " Olette screamed, the Nobody falling to its knees, middle split open, its body peeling away like flaking paint.

<"Did you learn to be so needlessly self sacrificing for others from Thirteen?">

The Nobody walked around the Samurai, Olette's hands shaking. The Samurai were their best shot. The Nobodies were their best shot at fighting a Nobody.

"R…Roxas…! " She screamed, wanting her Nobody.

Chapter Text

Hearts were misguided, selfish things. Hearts made decisions overly complicated. Hearts compelled. Hearts, with all of their throbbing, no matter the pace, were habitually repetitive. Axel refused to be compelled any longer. He refused to let guilt dictate his decisions any longer. At the very least, hearts did not dictate desire.

Even after charcoal cinders fell apart in his mouth and choked him on the way down, he still missed Roxas. Even after carving into the ashes of his chest cavity, he found his absence noticeable. Memories of feelings were just as lethal as the actual thing. He had grown distant with Isa, and that had started to happen long before they had become a part of the Organization. The loss of a friend had created a wedge that had only put further strain on their relationship, birthing a realization that at this point of their lives, they were no longer friends who could rely on each other.

So, alone, Axel felt justified in any decision he made. He felt no remorse as he cut down familiar faces, leaving them to oblivion in their castle. So then why was Roxas’ absence once that seemed to matter? Why did it come with familiarity and guilt?

He had gone out of his way to be distant, unobtainable. He hadn’t invited the hollow little nothing that made up Roxas for ice cream. He wasn’t there to make friends. So why, why did he feel so compelled by his own hollow little nothing that took up residence in his head to save him? Why did a nothingness motivate him? Why did it hurt? Why, with an empty collection of memories and empty chest cavity, did it hurt so much?

Naminé knew something, but either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell him. He wanted to be angry at her for it, but with a mouth smeared with ash, he didn’t have the capacity. But he also didn’t have the capacity to be kind to her either, just like he didn’t with Kairi. She was bait, she was what would make Sora once again relieve his heart of his body and give Roxas back. Sora would die for Kairi—or at least that had been the plan.

But he hadn’t been able to do it. Something about the fire in her eyes, fire he was familiar with and knew the travesty of it being snuffed out, made him hesitate. He had instead just stared at her, making her uncomfortable.

Why? Why, why, why?

Why was he unable to follow through, even without a heart? Why did he feel hurting her would hurt him? What was it about her that was familiar? Her smell? Her face? How she carried herself—small and proud? Nothing registered, nothing made sense.

He couldn’t understand why he wanted to be friends with her instead of using her as bait. Roxas had said it best, he couldn’t have any more friends. If he lost anymore, Axel didn’t know what he’d do. So he couldn’t understand why he wanted her to matter to him. But that's all it takes to start something, isn't it? A desire, then taking the steps towards getting what you want? Someone else had said that and it wasn’t him and it wasn’t Roxas. But it was someone close. Someone shaped like the hole in his head.

Maybe if Kairi reacted normally, scared and cowered, he would have let it go—but she didn’t. Even with Axel practically nose to nose with her, smelling of burning, rotting flesh and cinders illuminating his bones, she didn’t flinch.

He didn’t know what he wanted to say to her. What did he say to someone who could never possibly understand him?

“I met him once.”

He expected Kairi to be defiant, angry even, but after being caught she seemed…resigned wasn’t the right word. Resigned was associated with giving up. She wasn’t resigned because she had faith, even without knowing much of anything. Perhaps there was a kinship among them at least.

<Who?>

“Roxas.”

The name made his chest ache, a wound that refused to heal. He pulled away from her, turned his back to the girl who could hurt him with words alone.

“I was found on the beach when I was little, and there he was, on the exact same beach. He looked lost and lonely and I remembered how that felt and wanted to help him. But the first thing he asked me about was Sora. Knowing who he is now, I feel like I understand him better.”

<And what could you possibly understand about a Nobody?> About someone who was a funeral pyre, lost adrift in an endless sea and unable to ever burn brightly.

“What it’s like to have no idea who you are. When everything seems so confusing and everyone keeps telling you what you should do and how you should act. That’s why I really love Riku—when I was little, he took me out to the islands where everyone used to play and told me I didn’t have to do any of that. I could be as terrible as I wanted and he’d never make me feel bad for it.”

<Poor little Kairi on an island of misfit toys.> Axel tried to sound sarcastic, but he just sounded like he pitied her. Like he was tired of becoming this terrible person all of the time for the sake of someone else.

“Yeah, I was really pathetic,” she agreed with a laugh. “But I was a kid. It takes a long time to learn who you are and what’s important to you and it can be really hard to reassess when you’re so comfortable with how familiar some things are. I think it’s great that it only took you a year for Roxas to become someone special to you.”

“I want to kill you. Shut up. Stop talking.” There was no venom in his voice, only a dead angst he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Axel was always destined to lose things and people he cared for. If that was fate, it felt futile to keep fighting it like this.

“I’m sorry.”

Kairi, tiny little human Kairi, was so warm. The light emanating off of her was almost painful to be around, a silent threat on his empty vessel left adrift. His heart felt like a bomb in his chest as she hugged him. He turned around, yanking away from her, absolutely terrified of this girl.

<“Don’t touch me,”> he whispered, the overwhelming horror of his heart suffocating him. Slow exposure to light from the hearts heartless took were what slowly gave them new hearts. But Kairi in all of her pure light made it happen so quickly, made Axel burn brightly. He reflexively placed a hand over his chest, to hide and protect the muscle that kept desperately insisting on being alive. Light, for all his self imposed shadow, was of course going to be jarring after his eyes had adjusted to the dark.

“I don’t blame you for missing him,” Kairi reassured, Axel’s view of her waving, drowning in the sound of his heart in his ears and the well of his eyes. The endless, bottomless well he couldn’t evaporate.

<“I said shut up!”> The room caught fire, Kairi pulling in on herself, but not shrinking at all. She wasn’t any smaller, she wasn’t any quieter.

“Sora’s the kind of person who has a hard time not hurting himself so others can be okay. If Roxas is anything like Sora—”

<You don’t know anything about Roxas!>

“—I know he’s loved.” The flames in the room suffocated, died out as Axel held his breath. Fire needed oxygen to thrive, even the ones in Axe’s chest. “And I know love makes people do really weird and ridiculous things—especially when they’re hurt.”

The pain was so familiar and she was so earnest, so clear in her view of the world she was like a mirror. Axel couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t be around her. At least Naminé had the decency to keep her damn mouth shut about the things she saw.

He left her without another word, without another desperate plea that he tried to make into a malformed command for her to stop talking. He left while not locking the door behind him.

But that was all it took for Kairi to vanish and not the way he had intended to let her go. A bright light in the dark was hard to hide, least of all from someone like Isa. He was the only remnant left in the charred room when Axel had calmed down enough to come back.

<…Where is she?>

<Enough games. Xemnas wants Roxas back and it was implied you should find yourself getting back in line as well or meeting the fate you’ve wrought on so many others.> Isa wanted to tell him that he had her. He could have just as easily left this place empty and Axel would have been none the wiser.

<I said where. is. Kairi.> Where was the girl who reminded him of something precious that sat on his peripheral memory?

<She is no longer any of your concern.> It was the same. The mind your own business. The you’re getting in my way. The assumption Axel had given up on looking for their friend. Isa and his assumptions and deductions like a perfect little toy soldier. No wonder he was Xemnas’ favorite. It was Axel’s own fault for trying to hide her in a place Isa knew about, in a place in their home world.

But Axel at least recognized that Isa was right. She wasn’t any of his concern. But, if anyone could find her worlds over, it would be someone who had already done it before.

It was funny how much could change in a year. How quickly someone could grow and how quickly others could vanish as if they’d never existed in the first place. It was amazing how some would stagnate and not change a single thing about themselves.

It was clear in the course of a year that the keyblade wielder had grown. It was clear, Roxas was starting to become more than just asleep within him, half the petrified marble of a headstone. He was losing his friend again and there was nothing he could do about it.

His heart ached, but he let it. Axel was tired of fighting.

“Don’t stop moving or the darkness will overtake you!” To be stagnant, to no longer change. Maybe that was why he’d become so empty, all of his light gone as he insisted on being his own shadow of his former self.

The dusk stepped closer to Sora, but Axel took it out in one swing, knowing that spelled the beginning of the end as they whispered a violent call of, < Traitor! > He took out more, a bitter smile on his face he bit down before turning to the remnant of his former friend.

“Get going!”

“Why?” Sora, ignorant and confused but always so well meaning.

“Don’t ask, just do it!” Axel didn’t want to explain. He didn’t want to talk about the depth of his heart or how brightly it burned any time he felt anything. A dusk caught him by surprise, all of his focus on Sora, on trying to sense Roxas.

He knew Sora wouldn’t leave him there, even if it was opportune for getting away. He knew because Roxas wouldn’t have left him.

“You okay?” His kindness hurt. Everything hurt so much more with a heart.

“I kidnapped Kairi, but Saïx caught her and brought her to the castle dungeon.” Axel knew where Isa liked to keep his things too. “He’s a member of Organization XIII, Saïx. ” He needed to know who had her. Even if Axel couldn’t place why, she was important. “Got it memorized? Now go save her!” Go save his friend, something Axel couldn’t ever seem to do.

Sora seemed to hesitate, staring at Axel for longer than he should have. It was familiarity, soaked in confusion. Axel couldn’t tell if it was water or gasoline, Sora or Roxas. Axel opened his mouth to warn him about a dusk that came from thorn and nothingness, but Sora turned around and hit it so hard with it’s keyblade it didn’t even make it to the floor before vanishing into stardust.

“Leave us alone!”

Us. Not me, us. What a funny little kid, with how he held his keyblade, with how he trusted Axel at his back and took everything he said at face value. Maybe Sora was just special enough to experience vivarium echo’s from Roxas.

But the more dusks that came and the longer the fight went on, the more Axel started to doubt it was an echo at all. Sora stopped with his usual battle calls, silence and gnashing his teeth in annoyance, hyper focused and with a violence that didn’t suit him. Axel was so distracted, so worn from the weight in his narrow chest. There was an endless toll on his body that he couldn’t seem to pay.

To have to constantly address matters of the heart was so much worse than having none at all.

“I think I liked it better when they were on my side,” he laughed bitterly. His throat hurt. He hadn’t talked with his real voice in a long while. Is that what he sounded like without all of the monstrous undertones?

“Feeling a little… regret? ” There was a sarcastic lilt in his voice as Sora pressed his back to Axel’s, the dusk surrounding them with a stifling desire to overtake them. An endless chorus of <Traitor!> Continued to echo in only Axel’s head.

Maybe he did feel regret. Maybe part of him wished he’d been a better friend to Roxas, to ▇▇▇▇. That he’d tried harder to protect them, that he’d lied a little better. But with his back to him, Axel couldn’t tell who was asking—an echo of his friend, or Sora.

But if Sora died, so would Roxas. So would Kairi and whatever preciousness came with her. So he didn’t want anymore maybes. He wanted to commit. He wanted to ensure his friend would be alright. No more regrets.

He turned to Sora, his spine snapping as he twisted his upper half around to face him. He gave him a wide grin with all of his teeth and a burning desire he knew he’d have to be quick with. “Nah, I can handle these punks—watch this!”

Axel set himself in the middle of the dusks, away from Sora. Traitor, traitor, traitor. That was what he’d been to Isa, to the members in Castle Oblivion, but he wouldn’t be a traitor to Roxas.

Forest fires were quick. They overtook everything, leaving blinding decimation in their wake. They left chalk ash and took lives. Axel hadn’t burned this brightly in a long, long time. What a difference a year could make—even if it was only at the very end. Even if it was only to own up to his mistakes, even if at the time he felt he was right in his choices.

It was an exhausting. He was tired and wanted to rest. He had always wanted to rest. How many times had Roxas come to see him and he’d been trying to sleep? How many times had Roxas waited in his room for him to wake up? How many times had he laid there, dreading the day? Laying in the darkness like this didn’t feel any different. It would just be a little longer and then sleep would come for him.

But there was a light at his side, comforting and familiar. “You’re…fading away.”

Poor, ignorant Sora. He deserved to know. “Well…that’s what happens when you put your whole being into an attack. You know what I mean?” He scoffed. “Not that…Nobodies have beings…right?” A lie. A lie he’d told them, a lie he’d circumvented. A lie he didn’t ever want Roxas or ▇▇▇▇ to believe.

Her. Her. What was her name? Why couldn’t he think of a name? He looked at Sora, at the boy who had their faces. He knew that they had his, but Axel had met them first. He loved them first.

“Anyway…Go. Find Kairi.” Make sure she was okay. “Oh—almost forgot. Sorry, for what I did to her.”

“When we find her, you can tell her that yourself! ” Sora insisted, Axel studying him, so intently. The set of his eyebrows, the color in his eyes, the curve of his nose, the width of his mouth. Naive in his optimism. Perhaps the nativity was just who they were, those two.

“Think I’ll pass.” He couldn’t look at her without being overwhelmed. She was a spark, that one. So was ▇▇▇▇. Maybe, if it weren’t for ▇▇▇▇, he wouldn’t have ever bothered to care this much ever again. But she wasn’t here to tell anything to. “My heart just wouldn’t be in it, you know? Haven’t got one.” A lie. A hilarious lie he couldn’t help but laugh at.

“Axel…what were you trying to do?” There was a hesitance in Sora’s voice, a familiar one. Roxas had come to him with it so many times. It wouldn’t hurt anymore than dying to be honest.

“I wanted to see Roxas.”

Sora looked shocked, then confused, then full of guilt. It was so clearly written on his face, so loudly thudding in his ears. Yes, you. Axel wanted to see him and even if Sora and Roxas were so much more far removed than Axel would have been with himself when he was alive, he felt like he was getting to. There was a stirring in his chest.

That made sense.

That made so much sense and he felt so stupid, laying there. He was trying to use Kairi, to hurt one of Sora’s friends. But here he was, hurting on of Roxas’, himself. Forest fires ravaged everything, but it left so much room for new plant growth.

“He…was the only one I liked.” The only one he wanted to be honest with and let his heart grow. He had so many regrets, but that day he lied to Roxas and told him there was nothing in his chest wasn’t one of them.

“He made me feel…like I had a heart.” He had torn it out so many times when Roxas was gone. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t keep doing it. So he’d gotten rid of it over and over and over and over. He’d done the same thing he’d watch Roxas do when he was hurt. “It’s kind of funny…”

“Lying to yourself is funny…?” Sora asked, a soft, confused rasp in his voice. There. There he was. Axel couldn’t help but smile. He cared. Of course Roxas cared about him. The things he had collected that he treasured most were his friends.

“Sometimes it makes things easier to deal with.”

“That was different.” The data world was different.

“Felt real enough, didn’t it?”

“That’s different,” he insisted again, delicately pressing his palms to the floor as he watched Axel’s charcoal ribs collapse in on themselves, smoldering embers around his heart.

“It isn’t. Seeing people you care about before the end…it doesn’t matter how, just the fact you got to see them.”

“That’s different!” Roxas insisted, eyes welling up. He was always so honest about how he was feeling, even when he didn’t know they were feelings. Axel felt bad that he couldn’t even lift his arms to hug him.

“It’s not your fault—none of this is your fault. You’re a good person…I’m really glad I got to know you. I’m also sorry we couldn’t hang out more.”

Roxas had such big tears for someone who looked so small.

Chapter Text

Death was an awful, tragic thing Sora never properly understood. It felt fantastical, so far removed from his life that it wasn’t real. People didn’t die. Worlds vanished into darkness, people’s bodies were turned into monsters, but that wasn’t dying. Dying was different. 

Watching Axel die, really truly die, had been horrifying. His inhuman form didn’t equate him to a monster to Sora the way the other Organization members had. There wasn’t anything he could do about it. There was no saving Axel. His body felt the aftershocks of the earth shattering tremors from how hard he had cried. Donald and Goofy hadn’t been able to calm him down for a while, only convincing him to leave the corridor so the darkness wouldn’t take advantage of his grief.

He had been acting odd ever since he’d woken up and just when he thought he was getting a handle on it, he fell apart. Perhaps it was in collecting himself that the weight of his own pieces finally crushed him. He was inconsolable, even if he was collected enough to walk again.

He kept turning thoughts over in his head that weren’t his, unearthing and tilling soil. It was raining, encouraging whatever rage was growing within him. It left Sora disoriented, unable to notice until it was too late when a type of Nobody he had never seen separated Donald and Goofy from him.

“Sora!” Donald called over a clap of thunder. It was loud, everything in his head and in his heart and around him was loud.

“Donald, Goofy!” Sora rushed over to them, but then the world seemed to twist and dip like a warped mirror, spooling around him until it formed a corridor of darkness behind him. Another Organization member stepped out from between its folds, bringing with them a keyblade and the smell of rotting wood.

“A keyblade?!”

They were quick, a violent gnashing of their blades slamming together. They strained so hard their muscles trembled, forcing Sora to focus all of his attention on them and not even realize the way the world around him was overtaken by a blinding, white hot rage.

He felt it clear enough as if it were his own. They pulled back, but only to pull out another keyblade with a charm, Kairi’s charm. He knew that keyblade—it was oathkeeper.

The familiarity of this Nobody terrified him, genuine and to his core. It wasn’t superficial or imposed the way any of the other Nobodies were. This was true, genuine terror in front of him and it intended to take him down and bury him.

Their coat, black and a tugging void, shifted to silver, melting into their skin. Their tail of thorn violently slammed into the glass below them, a shattered heart threatening to break into pieces so small they could be inhaled.

Sora felt his knees go weak, barely able to keep him upright. His own resilience persisted, had shown itself in parts of him that he didn't recognize. He could bounce back from anything; cuts, sprains, breaks—a fantastical death. Some part of Sora had died, and this is what had come from him. This had used his corpse as nourishment for its consciousness.

His heart raced, blood flooding his ears with ringing at the inescapable threat that harbored implications of his demise. But, all he could think was how beautiful the creature before him was. Eyes glowing in the dark like a neon sign, welcome, here, open. They called to him, welcomed him into claws set calm and sweet, like a venus fly trap.

"You're…we met before—didn't we?"

Sora hadn't recognized him, had thought he was a figment of a dream he was having. He'd asked who he was then, and now he knew.

This was Roxas.

<All this time that I've been sitting here…watching, feeling your feelings…I still don't understand it. You're nothing special. I don't want to disappear. Give it back…>

Roxas' voice was like wet mud, fertilizer for terrors Sora couldn't fend off. He took a step closer, Sora overwhelmed with nausea.

"Give…what back?"

<You don't even care that you're alive. You'd still die just because someone asked you too. I want to live. So…give it back. Give me my life back!> Roxas lunged, uprooting himself, topsoil overturned.

Roxas attacked him with grief and rage, with his own terror. Sora knew nothing of death and Roxas only existed because of it. Sora was ignorant, encased in gossamer fantasy. Roxas had been taught first and foremost that if he did not kill and eat, the world would eat him instead.

Sora was overtaken every time their keyblades clashed, be it by Roxas’ memories and feelings or by his own strength. His claws clicked loudly on the stained glass, a ticking, a warning that he was done waiting.

Wish were desires. Wants. He wanted what he was missing and those before him didn’t have it. Therefore, they were undesirables. Lackluster. —Lust. Desire. Want. They didn’t have it. Wants. Wishes? Roxas had been born with desire, so he knew it well. It was primal.

<...It hurts.> Pressure alleviated pain; pressure to do well or be turned into a dusk, pressure to collect hearts to feel the sensation of being alive. The first thing he’d ever felt, ever been able to recognize was pain. He didn’t blame anyone for not wanting to be in pain.

Did Roxas want to exist the way this human had? Would it have mattered if he did? Would he have tried anything to continue to exist if he was cornered like he had been? He wanted to, more than anything. It mattered—he was made to feel he mattered. He was trying everything, had tried everything when he had been cornered, but he had been worn down.

Why did they want to exist? What was their reason? The swelling in his head had been alleviated. His reasons were safely tucked away in twilight, and he had lost the other two. They were precious, wonderful reasons.

What made a heart precious? The way he cherished them, adored them and wanted them to be full of happiness and joy. The way he wanted to protect them.

He could perform as many vivisections on himself as he wanted, stuff it with as many things as he could accumulate in his room, and yet why did he still feel so empty? What was he missing? He was trying to force hearts that weren’t his inside of himself, hurting himself on stolen, malformed pieces in the process. Missing a heart caused pain and grief, a phantom pain.

Why did those three pick each other? They were chosen, they wanted to be together. To grieve together, to hold each other, to love each other. Who you were with was always a choice and one they had made every single day.

Did hearts have desire? They had so many, boundless desires. Roxas had witnessed and shared in so many of them and even had his own.

But what if he did take their hearts and then they were gone forever? What if no other humans would teach him as much as these three had so far? He had taken their hearts, just not in the way that left them beating in his hands. He had taken them and held them gently and adored them and he had learned more from those three than anyone else in his entire year of being alive.

Was like the right word? Like hadn’t been the right word because he loved them. 

“Do you want to be friends? Is that why you’ve been following us?” the human Olette asked, her voice soft, but the gentleness of it was being used to soothe her own fear, to lie to herself. Roxas didn't answer. He didn't know what a friend was. “What’s your name?” He wanted to be friends. He wanted to hold them and never let them go. His name was Roxas, something they had cherished.

Olette offered him her hand. He looked at her, unsure of what to do with it. “…You shake it.” Why touch him? What was the point? Touch, the warmth of another person was important. Touch, being held made him feel safe. 

<What is it you plan to do with that?> He planned to learn from her laugh, to replicate it and then create his own. He wanted to make them happy and he wanted to be happy. She made so many different kinds of laughs and he’d cherished them all.

“Why did you stop because one went missing? You have more, don’t you?” Humans had different kinds of laughs, so why didn’t she just use one of those? She had stopped laughing because she had been hurt. Being safe didn’t mean they would be happy, but it was more likely. 

How would he even go about giving a human their laugh back? By making them happy. By being with them as much as he could.

“You’re quiet. What are you thinking about?” He was always thinking about them. Hayner, Pence, Olette, it was always them. He loved them so much he couldn’t stand it.

“Is that why you just follow us around? Because it’s hard for you to talk to us?” It was so hard. He didn’t want to scare them away, but he had wanted to hold them so close from the moment he found them. He loved them from the moment he saw them.

“You still feel worried about us?” Olette asked, tipping her head back against Hayner’s shoulder to look at him. Always.

“Are you going to hang out with us today?” He wanted to, even when he had been apart from them. He wanted to be with them every day for the rest of his life.

Could humans share emotions just by looking at each other? They could and it was so wonderful to learn what each look meant. A shared thought, an inside joke, adoration. He wanted to spend more time with them so he could understand their feelings better.

“Roxas, if I say your name three times in the mirror in the dark will you show up?” the human Pence asked him, Roxas on his heels as he bought ice cream. Yes. Yes and he should have shown up when he kept hearing them call for him. Yes, always, yes. He loved when they called for him and he loved calling for them.

He wondered if he opened her heartspace what her heart would look like. Would it be smaller, dented, or missing pieces? Would it have patches of darkness that might overtake her? Her heart had been beautiful. It was perfect and the taste of it had literally saved his life.

“Promising something? You’ve never made a promise to anyone? Like no locked pinkies or anything?” Promises had become so important to him. He had broken so many and kept so many more and made them over silly and serious things alike. Promises were special to Roxas.

“Then can I have you three promise to be my friends no matter what?” They’d kept that promise, even through all of his worries that they wouldn’t.

A human wanted to protect a Nobody. Did that mean he was their monster they way they were his humans? Yes. Yes it had been a crystalized memory of kindness, shining and brilliant. Claws and teeth meant nothing when it came to injuries to the heart and they had protected his in a way he would have never been able to do alone.

When had fear ever been bad? Fear was good, fear meant he won—! Fear was such a human emotion. It was meant to keep people from approaching things that could hurt them, to protect them. He had been so scared at the thought of losing them. Fear was good.

Why did they always think he was joking? He was always so serious when he told them about the reality of his world. It was so outlandish, so ridiculous, that they could only laugh.

“Your shoulder just now…You don’t seriously fight those shadows, right?” Roxas couldn’t recall a time when Hayner had addressed him with such a soft unease in his voice—or was it worry? Why was Hayner worried about him? Of course he had worried. Hayner was his friend and Hayner always worried about everyone. He wanted people to feel safe. He wanted exactly what Roxas wanted.

“You can…you can talk to us, you know?” he mumbled. “Like I get you can’t tell us some stuff or might be scared to but like…we’re your friends. If you need to tell us something, we’re here to listen and do what we can to help, okay? You don’t have to deal with everything yourself.” He did, but he was so scared of telling them things that would hurt them or be too much for them. They were human. Humans were so fragile and he was so terrified of breaking them.

Pence was angry because he cared? That didn’t make any sense. Caring tended to make the heart feel weightless, full of light. Anger was heavy like oil on fire. How could such conflicting states of emotion reside in one place at the same time? Roxas was so angry. He was so angry and full of rage because he loved them so much and it was his own love for them that kept making them targets. He just wanted them to be safe. He echoed Pence’s sentiment.

But they were friends, right? They’d agreed, called him that and everything. But Xemnas had misused the word too, hadn’t he? Were they friends when Roxas was keeping so much from them? Could they trust him, when days before, he had wanted so badly just to think about nothing but swallowing their hearts and watching the light fade out of their eyes? Yes, they were friends. They were friends and they trusted him even if he didn’t trust himself. His friends sometimes understood him better than he did. He got into his own head while they saw his final decisions, the way he always took care of them no matter what.

Where was the lie that he was telling himself? It had been staring him right in the face. It had been one Axel tried to help him see—he had a heart. These feelings, complicated as they may be, were normal.

<What were you searching for so desperately that you almost tore yourself asunder?> Answers, always looking for answers. He just didn’t realize he already had them or how to process them. He didn’t realize he had what he needed because he had been so scared to go to someone and talk about what they meant. He had been terrified to acknowledge what it meant to have a heart and every implication that had come with it.

The world was real and Roxas wasn’t. How could they miss the concept of something so intensely? How could they miss something they never really had? Roxas was real, but they had been the ones to make him really feel that. He’d been real and they saw him. Being told over and over again he wasn’t supposed to be seen, he wasn’t allowed to be known, made him think otherwise. They saw him, and even when they saw him as a monster, they still loved him.

"Where were you!? Do you know how worried we were?!" He hadn't expected her out of the three of them to be the one to grip his jacket so tightly her knuckles lost color. "Do you know how selfish that was of you?!" He hadn’t, not then. He didn’t know what it was to be precious to someone else, to be loved by someone else. He had hurt them so many times with his selfishness, with his inability to just talk honestly to them until it was too late. 

Why? Why were they scared for him? He was one of the things that could hurt them. Roxas was going to suffocate. Could he suffocate if he didn't need to breathe? Then what was the awful swelling in his chest? He exhaled, hoping to relieve the pressure, but it stuck to his ribs like tar. He inhaled, exhaled again, a worse result with a shorter breath. They squeezed him and Roxas was sure he was going to vanish from existence forever. He exhaled, struggling to ask why. Why care, why worry, why keep looking? Because they loved him. Because they cared. Because they didn’t want their friend to be hurt or vanish.

Was that what it was to exist—to affect the hearts around you? Was how he interacted with hearts what set Nobodies apart from husks and Heartless and humans? Yes, yes, yes. He had hurt them and in their worry, in their terror they had shown him love and graced him with understanding.

Did the three of them know how much he wanted to protect them? How badly he craved their company and comfort? He wanted to be with them always. To love them until the defining line between them blurred. Until their traded looks and smiles were all the same, until there were no secrets between them.

“But you’re happy to hold our hands, right? That’s just what it is?” Holding them, being held, made him feel safe and made him feel like he was able to protect them. Touch, how precious a thing it was to touch another living being. Protecting and being protected felt safe.

“What if they don’t keep people? What happens when you find a Visitor and they tell you the people you’re looking for aren’t coming back?” They grieve. They grieve the way they had to have been doing for him, with their anger and shock and sorrow. They grieve any way they can and all of those ways were alright.

What if he didn’t look right? What if by pure reaction, his body did something or shifted in a way a human’s wasn’t supposed to? What if his overgrowth pulsed and they saw it? What if he didn’t get his body to turn the proper colors around where veins should be? What if he got hit playing around and his body couldn’t keep form? What if he fell apart, opened up right in front of them? What if they tried to help him, tried to touch him, and while he attempted to correct his mistake they got caught between his ribs and overgrowth, snapping and bloody and screaming and dying? They would love him anyway. They would be patient with him and hold him. They would make him feel comfortable and safe.

Some feelings didn’t ever go away? That was the first he’d heard of that. Were some echoes the same or could humans have their own echoes? But if humans could have echoes, did that make a Nobody’s echoes real? Or did that mean any sort of echo a Nobody had was from when they used to be someone else? Didn’t that mean then that their feelings had been real at one point? Feelings were so complicated. Feelings were intrinsic and looped in on themselves, a spirograph of familiarity. Echos or not, they remained.

Did Roxas have people from his before who missed him? Were they looking for him, wondering what happened to him? Had they known? How had Roxas lost his heart? Had it been painful? Had he put up a fight? Was he like who he was now or would he not be able to recognize himself? His mother, Kairi, Riku, Tidus, Selphie, Wakka, Donald, Goofy, so on and so forth to the moon and back. So many people loved Sora, but he had been forgotten about by almost everyone while he slept, while Naminé put him back together. Roxas knew he had a scar on his chest in the shape of a star from where the keyblade had pierced his chest.

Would who he was before feel the way he did now toward Hayner, Pence, and Olette? Would the person he was when he had a heart have stopped Larxene and saved Pence's brother? If Sora had been around, he certainly would have tried. But Roxas knew now better than ever that not even he could save everyone, let alone whatever Sora was capable of.

Was it too much to tell him this? At what point was it crossing the line? At what point had his loyalties to them allowed him to answer questions involving the Organization without hesitating? It had been too much. It had been the start of another shift in their relationship and it had crossed a line he’d set for himself. But it had only made them fiercer in their love for him, more desperate to protect him.

“What if I ask anyway? Would you be honest with me, Roxas?” The painful truth of it was that he loved them so much that he always wanted to be honest with them. He wanted to give them any answer they desired. Even if he had to seek it out himself, he wanted them to have everything. But most importantly, he wanted them to be happy more than he wanted to be honest with them.

Why call for him, the monster that lurked in their safe places, when they were scared? What was the point of admitting you were being terrorized by one monster just to call for another? Was it because he was their monster? Had they believed him when he said he didn't want to hurt them? But what if he was wrong and they were terrified of him and never wanted to see him again? Because he was their monster. He belonged to them, body, heart, and soul and they held him gently. They did believe him, they had always believed him just like they believed him to be kind and gentle.

Were hearts heavy? Hearts carried the weight of an entire world inside of them. His friends were inside of his and they were his whole world, ▇▇▇▇ and Axel too.