Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Realm of Darkness appears.

“The Realm of Darkness?” Riku muttered in surprise, seeing recognition pop into both Sora’s and Aqua’s eyes. “Why are we here?”

Someone cloaked steps out of a Dark Corridor.

Roxas hissed out a short breath, one hand reaching up to his head. He pressed the heel of his palm into his temple and bit down on his tongue, feeling a pulse of pain rip across his mind for a moment.

“Roxas?” Xion questioned, worried, and she leaned over to peer at him from across Axel’s lap. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he muttered after a second, shaking his head roughly once as if to try and dislodge the headache. I remember this place, I think, he decided on, raising his eyes up to gaze at the Realm on the screen. That’s… me.

A different cloaked figure says he has arrived.

At Xemnas’s voice, several people recoiled. Both Roxas and Xion couldn’t help the instinctive fear that went through them at the man who had tricked and manipulated them for a whole year. Sora and Riku both narrowed their eyes and Axel let a very familiar mask of indifference fall across his face, one of his hands curling into a fist so tight he felt his nails through his gloves. He was going to break them eventually.

“That’s…?” Ven questioned, looking around the room at the different reactions, and Roxas blew out a breath.

“Xemnas,” he answered in a growl, his lip curling up in a sneer. “The Leader of the Organization.”

Terra frowned minutely at that, something deep within him sparking with… familiarity at the name.

“What’s he doing in the Realm of Darkness?” Kairi wondered but none of them could answer.

Xemnas says he’s been to see ‘him’, saying that ‘he’ looks a lot like the other cloaked figure.

Roxas shot Sora a look out of the corner of his eye. I don’t see it, he decided on, looking back to the screen. But if Xemnas wants to believe that… He paused for a moment, before sitting up slightly. Also, when would Xemnas have seen Sora? If Sora had been under DiZ’s and Naminé’s custody that whole year, when would Xemnas have managed to see him? That was… slightly worrying. Unless… is this from that memory that Sora forgot? Of fighting him in Hollow Bastion? He tapped his fingers against his knee, resting the urge to let it bounce slightly as the thoughts swirled around his mind. That would explain why I don’t remember it that well. It would have been… right after I was born. Maybe a day or two later.

Roxas pressed his lips together, eyes darting around the room. Should I tell them?

The smaller cloaked figure asks who he is.

All of them blinked in surprise at Roxas’s voice, several of the watchers spinning to look at the Nobody. “Roxas?” Xion asked and Roxas grimaced.

“I don’t remember this that well,” he admitted, wrinkling his nose slightly. “I think this was before, when I was just born.”

“During that first week?” Axel asked and Roxas nodded. “Huh.” He had kept an eye on Roxas most of that week, due to Roxas’s inability to understand what was happening around him, but… he supposed there must have been times when he wasn’t paying attention.

Xemnas says that he’s what’s left, an empty shell, or maybe he’s all there ever was.

Kairi scrunched up her face for a moment. “That’s not an answer,” she muttered mulishly, and Roxas shrugged.

“Kind of on par for him,” Axel responded to her, and she didn’t seem too keen on that answer.

Roxas retorts that he meant Xemnas’s name.

Several people snorted at that, a grin curving up both Axel’s and Vanitas’s face while Sora, Xion, and Ven openly laughed quietly. Riku rolled his eyes, but there was humor in them.

“None of the Organization can give straight answers,” Naminé laughed slightly, holding her sketchbook to her chest slightly as she watched the screen. She didn’t feel the need to use it at the moment, but she had a feeling she would soon, once DiZ appeared. “And I’m counting you in that sentence,” she aimed at Axel, who gave her a faux hurt look. “Xion and Roxas are the only ones who ever say what they mean.”

Xemnas says his name is of no importance and asks what about Roxas, questioning if Roxas remembered his ‘true name’.

That is not my name, Roxas hissed in his head, hunching his shoulders slightly. My name is my name, my life is My. Life. Sora has no part in it. He wrapped his arms around himself for a moment before stopping, blinking in slight confusion at the urge before shaking himself out. Well, there goes that belief that seeing everything a second time won’t hurt as much.

Sora made a face. Is he talking about my name? He wondered, thinking it over. Maybe, due to him being my Nobody but… that doesn’t mean it’s Roxas’s name. It’s mine and Roxas’s is his. Just because we came from the same place doesn’t mean we’re the same person. He huffed. Obviously.

Roxas seems to struggle to remember.

Roxas and Xion both looked at each other for a moment during that before looking away. Their lack of memories of their past lives, that used to be the thing that made them ‘special’, made them ‘different’. But it had only turned out to be a sign that they were in for much more pain.

There are several flashes of memories of Sora’s time on Destiny Islands, including the night it fell.

Several people blinked in confusion. “What’s happening?” Aqua asked, rolling her shoulders back and trying to focus better. Her other mental worries and distractions had to be shelved for the time being.

“I think…” Roxas started, frowning a little as he tried to recall that week in the simulation. Were these…? “I think these are my dreams.”

“Dreams?” Xion questioned, snapping her head over to stare at Roxas. While it wasn’t that bad, there had been a few nights, especially once she learned what she was, that she dreamed of sunny beaches and friends that called her by a different name. And the dreams had never meant good things.

“You were dreaming of me?” Sora asked and Roxas pointedly wouldn’t look at Riku.

“Only in the end,” he muttered. “Once I was in the simulation.” A burst of hot anger built in his chest for a moment.

Riku’s eyes dropped to the ground. If there had been any other choice…

Roxas wakes up in his room in Twilight Town.

“Well, that answers that,” Roxas mumbled. Something tugged in his heart as he stared at the room where he had lived for a week, though he had thought he had lived there all his life. It had been fake, it had been forced upon him, and yet… there was a part of him, small, that wished it could have been real. That he could have lived a perfectly normal life, with perfectly normal friends. Never hearing about Nobodies or Heartless or Kingdom Hearts. Where Xion and Axel could live freely with him as well, eating ice cream and just… being.

But that’s not in the cards for Nobodies like us, he thought with a shake of his head, slumping back slightly. We’re always…

Axel narrowed his eyes at the screen a little, looking around the room Roxas had been given. While he hadn’t studied the virtual world too much, he didn’t know how to and he was on a time limit, he had still hoped that Roxas hadn’t had a terrible life in there, once it became clear that Roxas truly didn’t remember him. And thankfully, it seemed that he had been correct.

Roxas mutters about ‘another dream about him’ and looks out the window, revealing Twilight Town.

“That’s… Twilight Town,” Kairi realized, remembering Hayner, Pence, and Olette. “How are you there?”

“I’m not,” Roxas snarked, raising one eyebrow challengingly at the silverette in the room. “Care to explain, Riku?”

Riku sighed softly. “It’s a digital simulation,” he revealed, dropping his shoulders. “It was created to hold Roxas for the last couple of days before he Recompleted with Sora.”

“And you took away my memories!” Roxas hissed, leaning forward and glaring at the older boy.

“You did what?” Terra questioned, turning to look at Riku, and Xion winced, reaching out to grasp Roxas’s hand and hold it tight. She didn’t know much about what happened to Roxas after Riku caught him, the last vestiges of her finally disappeared after Roxas moved onto taking down Kingdom Hearts, but what must have happened… She understood Riku needing to stop him, Sora was, at that point, their best bet to stop Xemnas, no matter how powerful Roxas was, but knowing that it hurt Roxas so much…

“It was meant to keep him controlled better,” Riku admitted, feeling no need to hide it. He felt bad about it enough and he knew he shouldn’t have done it, but DiZ was his best bet to get Sora back and he needed Sora back. “If he didn’t know he needed to be somewhere else…”

Roxas scoffed derisively, lip curling up into a snarl for a second as he leaned back against the couch. “But what does it matter, right?” He spat out, eyes flashing darkly. He thought he was past this, he thought it wouldn’t hurt as much, but now that he was staring at it in the face again, all the betrayal, all the anger from those last couple of days, last couple of hours was building back up in him. And now he didn’t have the delusion that he didn’t have emotions and was able to feel it fully. “I’m just a Nobody, aren’t I?”

“No,” Riku said, softly but firmly, and wasn’t looking at Sora, who was whipping his head back and forth between Roxas and Riku. He knew that Roxas had briefly, ever so briefly, gone over what had happened to him before Sora awoke when Aqua had asked the previous day, but he hadn’t allowed himself to think about it then. He was thinking about it now. “It shouldn’t have happened to- It shouldn’t have been done to you.”

Roxas looked unconvinced by Riku’s words.

Vanitas curled his shaking hand into a fist. So that’s how some of the Light Bearers treat people on their side who aren’t ‘useful’ enough.

“What happened, exactly?” Sora asked carefully and Roxas just shook his head.

“Why don’t you just watch?” He returned, gesturing to the screen once with his head. There was no way Riku was going to reveal an unbiased account, so it was better if Sora just saw for himself. If the screen even revealed that much.

Sora looked between Riku and Roxas for a final time, before letting his attention shift back to the screen. He bit his lip slightly.

Ven and Kairi both looked uneasy. Kairi, at least, had a shallow guess to what was happening. She remembered, only a couple of weeks ago for her, connecting to a boy she had never met and remembering Sora through him. It wasn’t hard to realize that the boy had been Roxas.

Roxas heads to The Usual Spot, seeing Hayner, Pence, and Olette. Olette greets him.

“So, these people are all…?” Terra trailed off, not really knowing what to say, and Roxas blew out a sharp breath.

“Fake, yes,” he responded, grinding his teeth ever so slightly. “Based off some kids I’ve interacted with only a couple of times. They live in Twilight Town.”

“They helped me when I ended up there,” Kairi mentioned, letting her lip tick up into a smile for a moment as she remembered their easy acceptance and even the way they tried to protect her when Axel showed up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Axel wince slightly and she fixed him with a patient look. Forgiven, remember?

“And they were interested in finding out about the ‘second Twilight Town’,” Sora recalled, tapping his cheek a little. “Which is the data world, clearly.”

Roxas raised an eyebrow at that. Well, if the real versions were anything like their data counterparts, it made sense that they would be willing to just throw themselves into an adventure like that.

Xion was interested. Maybe they could be actual friends, once everything was over. Sora had already shown acceptance of trying to find a way for her, Roxas, and Naminé to have their own lives again, so if they were free someday, she would hope she and her friends would have a chance to make it back to Twilight Town. To eat ice cream on the Clocktower again.

Hayner says Roxas has got to hear this and asks if it ticks him off. Pence agrees and says it’s just wrong.

“What are they talking about?” Xion asked curiously, looking over at Roxas out of the corner of her eye as she did so. Roxas snorted.

“Someone was stealing things and Seifer was blaming it on us,” he answered and at the several blank looks he got from the watchers, his face turned into something more defensive. “Listen, it wasn’t like we did nothing for those six days.”

“Did… did DiZ program bullies into the simulation meant to hold one of the most important people in the plan?” Kairi asked, turning to Riku, who shrugged.

“They were just carbon copies of the real versions,” he said. “So Seifer’s probably just like that in real life.” Kairi scrunched up her nose in distaste at that.

Roxas blinked in surprise at Kairi describing him as important.

Olette says Seifer’s gone too far this time and Roxas nods in agreement.

“It’s… strange, seeing you like this,” Xion admitted softly and Roxas tipped his head at her in confusion. “Normal, I mean. You… just seem like another normal kid.” Roxas didn’t know what to say to that.

Hayner says he knows it’s true that stuff has been stolen around town and that they’ve never gotten along with Seifer, so if he wants to think that they did it, Hayner says he can’t blame him. He continues, saying that the thing that’s really driving him nuts is that Seifer’s going around telling everyone that they’re the ones who are the thieves.

“Is anyone else getting an extreme feeling of mood whiplash?” Ven asked, slightly rhetorically as he stared at the screen. While it might not have been that strange for say Sora, Riku, or Kairi, for him and the others who hadn’t ever had a ‘normal’ childhood, he felt like he was staring into a portal to another world. And not one of the worlds they traverse often.

A slight pang of sadness went through him as he thought that. His past was blocked from him due to his amnesia and what he could remember circled around the Keyblade and him learning it. The Keyblade Graveyard and the Land of Departure both didn’t have a lot of opportunities for him to be ‘normal’ by the most standard use of the word. Maybe he had lived a life like what he was seeing before he forgot everything, but it wasn’t like he would ever know.

Several people murmured in agreement and Roxas felt the slightest flush rise up his face, thinking about the hijinks he and the others got up to during those six days. “We thought we were normal,” he defended. “At least, I assume what we did could be classified as ‘normal teenage behavior”. He certainly wouldn’t know either, as his fake memories from before those six days had slowly been overwritten by his actual ones as he remembered them.

“It’s just… strange,” Xion replied delicately, and the three Destiny Islands kids exchanged glances before shrugging. It wasn’t too different, from what they were seeing and what Riku knew, from what they got up to in their childhoods.

Hayner says now the whole town is treating them like a bunch of criminals and asks if they’ve ever been this mad in their entire lives before saying he hasn’t and asking what to do.

“What did you end up doing?” Xion asked and Roxas shrugged.

“Found the real criminal,” he replied. “It was the Dusks.”

Riku looked over at him. “That’s what the Dusks were doing?” He asked, slightly incredulously. “We thought they were doing more. Were they just… stealing things?”

“Stealing pictures,” Roxas corrected and now both Kairi and Ven were giving him a strange look.

“Meh, mostly because of me,” Axel admitted with a wave of his hand. “The Dusks were supposed to be helping me locate Roxas. Found the pictures of him first.”

Kairi shook her head slightly, baffled.

Hayner and the others think about it and when Hayner turns to Roxas, Roxas brings up that they could find the real thieves, saying that it would set the record straight. Pence says that sounds kind of fun.

Vanitas raised an eyebrow at the boy. “Aren’t you guys debating that you want to go catch criminals?” He drawled, leaning his chin on his hand and giving Roxas a side eye. “Feels like you guys aren’t really thinking about that, if you’re saying it’s going to be ‘fun’.”

Roxas scoffed, looking away. Vanitas felt a smirk crawl up his face and Naminé giggled slightly.

Hayner asks what about Seifer and Roxas says that they have to clear their names first, then everyone will get off their backs.

Xion was finding it very difficult to see Roxas on the screen. Sure, she knew it was him and honestly, he wasn’t acting too different from their year together, but at the same time…

Seeing Roxas like that was strange.

Pence, looking down at a camera, says oh no and says that their ----- are gone.

Literally everyone blinked at that.

“What?” Aqua asked, after a moment, and Riku rubbed his temples. He remembered that glitch.

“The Dusks stole the words along with the photos,” Roxas replied, the only one in that room not too surprised and Kairi turned to him.

“You can’t steal a word,” she told him blankly and Roxas shrugged. She turned to Riku next.

“The Dusks were messing things up and neither Naminé nor I know a lot about computers,” he justified, shaking his head. “And DiZ was only ever truly a scientist.” Maybe that’s why his machine didn’t work, he thought inwardly but didn’t speak it aloud.

Kairi turned back to Roxas. “And you didn’t think a word being stolen was weird?” She questioned and Roxas blinked back at her.

“Should I have?” He asked and she clearly gave up.

Hayner repeats what he said, and the word is gone for him too. Olette realizes they can’t say ----- and questions why not.

“Speak for all of us, why don’t you?” Kairi groused, rubbing her temples slightly. Sora reached out and patted her on the back in a clear attempt at comfort and she gave him a grateful look.

Roxas simply shrugged again.

Pence checks that the rest of them do know what he’s saying and says that their ----- are gone. Roxas corrects him that they’re stolen.

Axel couldn’t help but shake his head slightly, a grin on his face. He hadn’t realized that the people in the simulation had taken the Dusks actions so seriously. To be fair, he hadn’t realized that the Dusks had done this specifically either, but the point stood. At least I helped spice up Roxas’s life a little, he thought sardonically with a half shrug to himself.

Roxas says not just the -----, but that they stole the word too. Hayner asks what kind of thief is that and that Seifer could never have pulled it off.

“How did that happen?” Ven questioned, looking over at Riku. “Not just because of the… Dusks?” He stumbled over the word slightly and wondered, briefly, what the others were talking about. Though he assumed he would see whatever they were soon.

“It was a glitch, mostly,” Riku explained, rolling his shoulders back a little. “The Dusks triggered it with their entrance, as that already destabilized the place a little, and then the code basically latched onto whatever the Dusks were doing, causing it to… spiral, a little.” He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck for a moment. “None of us were particularly adept at computers, even DiZ, so we were doing our best. We were relying on whenever you went to sleep to try and fix the bugs that showed up that day and well, it wasn’t like it was meant to hold you for long.”

Roxas gritted his teeth again at that, feeling a flash of anger go through him. No, it wasn’t getting any easier seeing it again.

Hayner says it’s time for recon and the four of them leave The Usual Spot, though Roxas staggers and falls unconscious.

Xion stiffened in shock as she watched Roxas, worry shoot through her. She wasn’t the only one, both Ven and Kairi leaning forward in worry while Sora looked between Roxas and the screen as if making sure Roxas was indeed okay, and she reached out, grabbing Roxas’s hand from where she had dropped it, holding it tightly. She could feel Axel’s arm at her back and knew the older man was holding Roxas as well. She couldn’t help it but having a tangible connection to Roxas… it made her feel better.

“Are you okay?” Kairi asked and Roxas nodded shortly.

“His heart is returning. Doubtless he’ll awaken very soon.”

Roxas’s face twisted into a snarl at DiZ’s voice, something dark in his chest sparking to life at the sound. Naminé flinched backwards, leaning into Vanitas’s chest, and Xion pressed her lips together, free hand curling into a loose fist. Vanitas caught Naminé as she moved, looking down at her in concern.

“I didn’t realize you could hear us,” Naminé mumbled, shooting Roxas a look out of the corner of her eye before sliding her gaze to Riku. How much had Roxas heard then?

“I couldn’t, not really,” Roxas replied stiffly, physically working to untense each individual muscle. “Just during moments of… lucidity.” He didn’t know how else to explain it.

Roxas awakens, confused, and stands up, looking around. Olette returns for him and tells him to come on.

“Did you not realize you had just fallen unconscious?” Kairi asked as she watched Roxas follow after Olette, seemingly not that worried about the fact that he had just passed out.

Roxas made a face. “More like I bet I wasn’t allowed to realize I had just fallen unconscious,” he responded and Riku looked away.

In a white room, Naminé was watching Sora sleep in a pod.

Naminé blinked in surprise at the screen abruptly shifting to her. She had thought they were only going to focus on Roxas…

Sora was filled with that same morbid curiosity as before as he leaned forward slightly, gazing at the sleeping version of himself. He looked… peaceful.

“Naminé.” Naminé turns to see a man in a black cloak.

Riku winced at seeing himself in Ansem’s form but didn’t turn away. It had been needed, to save Sora, and, partly, it helped him fully tell how much darkness there was within him. Something he was grateful for now.

“Who is that?” Terra asked, clocking the voice as similar to Ansem, if not almost the exact same, but they wouldn’t be working with Ansem. Also, Ansem was dead.

“That’s me,” Riku said, biting his lip ever so slightly as he tried to figure out how to explain it. “I had to release the darkness in my heart to fight Roxas, so it transformed me into Ansem’s form.”

“Can darkness do that?” Ven wondered, interested, and Aqua pressed her hands together. You shouldn’t be asking about that- no, it’s okay. We… we can.  Right?

Riku shrugged. “Mine can,” he replied. “And I assume it would be the same for everyone with darkness like that in them but it’s not like we have other examples.”

Terra wondered, briefly, if he would look different if he released the darkness fully in his heart. He had gotten pretty close to that when fighting Xehanort and he still looked the same so maybe not?

Mickey wished Riku hadn’t needed to do that, but if it ended up helping his son in the end, he wouldn’t be too mad about it.

Naminé says it won’t be much longer and Riku says Sora seems lonely somehow.

“Well, I don’t think I was,” Sora said, rubbing the back of his head with a rueful grin. “I don’t remember anything of that year, honestly.”

“I know,” Riku admitted, shrugging again. “But it was strange to see you so quiet, so still, so alone.” He looked off to the side, remembering countless nights spent sleeping against Sora’s pod, too worried that if he wasn’t there at every extra second, the few precious memories of Sora that he still had would slip away with the night.

Naminé reassures Riku that he shouldn’t worry.

When Sora looked over at Naminé in slight interest, she shrugged. “I knew you would be okay,” she replied with a smile. “You always are.”

Sora returned her smile. Yeah. I am, he thought to himself, pressing his nails into his palm hard enough that he nearly split skin. I’m always okay.

In a dark room, DiZ is looking at several computer screens.

Aqua looked out of the corner of her eyes, seeing Roxas, Xion, and Naminé all react to the man again as they had been the whole time. Worry settled in her stomach as she thought about their reactions. She knew DiZ did something horrible, not just trapping Roxas in the data world, and she was worried for what it was going to be. All the kids had been through so much and if this man added to those struggles in any way, she was going to…

He mutters that they seem to have some contaminants.

“The Dusks?” Kairi checked and both Axel and Riku nodded. She hummed in consideration. She wondered when her and Roxas’s connection was going to make an appearance. How far into the data world was Roxas when he reached out to her.

She huffed, biting the inside of her cheek slightly. She wished she could have done something to help him.

Roxas and the others arrive at the common area, looking around at the different shops. Hayner asks if they found out who got robbed and Pence says yes, rattling off several different shops.

“Just a question,” Mickey said, watching the screen consideringly. “But why photos?” He recalled Roxas having mentioned that it was photos stolen, along with the word, somehow, but why pictures?

“All the pictures had me in them,” Roxas revealed. He couldn’t remember now taking them, those fake memories overwritten with his real memories as he regained them, but he knew that back when he was trying to find the pictures, he could remember taking them with each person.

Mickey nodded in understanding. It made sense then, why the Dusks were targeting those pictures specifically, if they were trying to find Roxas.

Olette says that’s almost everyone in the town who owns a shop and Hayner says they’ll just have to go around and ask them one by one. They go to several shops, but the people believe that the kids, specifically Roxas, are the thieves.

“Well, you can’t completely blame them,” Ven muttered, very much aware to be very careful with his words. Though, he couldn’t tell how attached Roxas was to the time he had spent in the data world, so it might not actually be too bad to play devil’s advocate. “All the photos do have you in them. And other people are going around saying you did it.”

Roxas shrugged. Ven had a good point, he supposed, but he could still remember how it had felt being accused of something, back when he was ‘normal’ and this thing had hurt his brainwashed self. Now, it just seemed like a petty misunderstanding. Though, what wouldn’t he give to actually have that life that had been forced upon him.

The four of them eventually end up at the candy store, where Hayner greets ‘Auntie Elmyra’ and asks if something was stolen. Elmyra says yes, something very important, and Roxas says they didn’t do it, which Elmyra believes.

Kairi blinked. “That’s nice of her,” she murmured, and Roxas furrowed his eyebrows as he tried to remember. While he was grateful he got his original memories back, right now he couldn’t help but wish he had a little bit of those fake ones.

In the end, he simply sighed. “Guess she’s like that,” he replied.

Sora tipped his head to the side while watching the screen. “She reminds me of Aerith,” he noted and several of the teenagers gave the screen a second look. They guessed he had a point.

Olette asks what they took from her and Elmyra says she can’t say the word, but that it was ‘her precious -----’. Pence says them too and Hayner says the culprit is going around stealing ----- and also the word.

Riku rubbed his temples harder, scrubbing one of his hands down his face once he was done with that. That glitch had caused both him and DiZ so many headaches as they worried about whether or not it would break the data scape further. Thankfully, it hadn’t, but maybe that should have been an indicator of how the rest of the week was going to go.

Olette wonders if Seifer knows anything about it and Roxas says they have to go ask him.

“Geeze Roxas, don’t sound so excited about it,” Axel drawled sarcastically, looking down at his friend with a grin, and Roxas elbowed him in the side without even looking at him. Axel wheezed, doubling over slightly.

“Is Seifer really that bad?” Xion questioned and Roxas scrunched up his nose.

“Probably,” he muttered. One thing he was glad to forget.

The four of them ran off to the Sandlot, when they encountered another trio of kids. Fuu calls them thieves and Rai says it was low, with Hayner shouting that they better take that back.

“Oh, these people,” Sora said in realization and several of the watchers turned to them. “Oh, Donald, Goofy, and I encountered their real-world counterparts when we were in Twilight Town,” he explained, waving a hand dismissively. “They were… different.”

Roxas snorted.

Seifer enters, sarcastically telling Hayner nice comeback, and Hayner asks him what did he say. Seifer tells Roxas he can give back the ----- now and Roxas says that he didn’t steal it.

Kairi shook her head in befuddlement, turning to Riku again. “Honestly, why did you add the bullies?” She questioned and Riku lifted his hands in surrender.

“I didn’t do the programming,” he defended, leaning back slightly when she didn’t relent. “It was just easier, I assume, to add everyone.”

Kairi gave him a sideways look but seemed to accept it.

Rai says that they’re the only ones who would and Seifer says that it was undeniable proof that they ‘totally owned you lamers’.

Aqua pressed her head into her hands. “What?” She whispered to herself and Naminé and Vanitas both blinked in confusion, not understanding what Seifer was saying.

Axel was getting flashbacks to his own childhood and running down the streets with Isa and the other kids.

Roxas was actually interested in how his brainwashed self was going to respond to that. If he was himself, he probably would have just blinked and moved on, but he wondered…

Seifer asks if they burned it and says that they don’t need it to prove that Hayner and the others are losers.

Roxas made a note in his head. If Sora lets me be my own person at the end of this, check in with Hayner and the others about… this. He might not completely understand what’s going on, not anymore with his… less than conventional life, but he could understand insults when they were thrown. If Seifer was just as bad in real life, he wouldn’t mind chasing him off, with or without his Keyblade, if Hayner asked.

Fuu says replay and the two groups look like they’re going to start fighting. Seifer says that if they surrender now, he might let it slide, but Roxas simply picks up one of the Struggle bats lying on the ground to match Seifer.

Axel sighed, shaking his head. “You really don’t know when to walk away from a fight, do you?” He knew this wasn’t as bad as other times, this was probably the least threatening situation Roxas had ever been in, but it was the principle of it.

Roxas shrugged with a huff. Of course he couldn’t.

Roxas and Seifer fight with the bats, with Roxas eventually managing to knock the bat from Seifer’s hand and sending the other boy to the ground.

Roxas couldn’t help the pride that filled his chest as he watched himself beat Seifer. It should mean nothing to him, he had no memories of this person after all, but Seifer was a jerk. Also, he had protected Hayner and the others, something that he was glad he did, even if they weren’t really real.

Rai and Fuu rush in to protect Seifer, saying that he’s not feeling so hot and that the tournament will decide.

“Tournament?” Sora asked, interested. He remembered the tournaments from the Olympus Coliseum that he participated in while traveling the world in the past couple of weeks. They were fun.

“Struggle Tournament,” Kairi replied, having heard Hayner and the others talk about it while she was hanging with them before Axel kidnapped her. “It’s a thing there.”

Roxas nodded as well. He remembered the six days well enough and remembered the tournament he had taken part in. And everything else that had happened during that tournament as well.

The three of them and Vivi leave, and Pence moves to take a picture of Roxas.

“Well, that’s going to attract the Dusks,” Axel noted. “Do you think he did it on purpose?”

“Probably not,” Roxas replied, and Axel shrugged.

A Dusk suddenly appears out of nowhere and snatched the camera.

Axel hummed, a flash of smugness rising in him at being proven right.

“The whole camera this time, really?” Vanitas muttered, mostly to himself, but Naminé giggled as she overheard him. He chuckled as well.

“That’s a Dusk?” Ven wondered, tipping his head to the side. He didn’t know what he was expecting but… Reminds me of an Unversed. Those black ones, that always show up first. He looked over at Vanitas, wondering if his other half thought the same thing, but blinked in surprise when he saw Vanitas and Naminé laughing quietly together. …Huh.

The Dusk slinks off as Hayner yelled, asking what was that, and Olette realizes it’s the thief.

Kairi nodded. Of course it was Olette who realized what was happening first. A smile twitched on her face as she remembered the other girl. She would really need to go visit again, once they were out of here. Reassure them that she was okay.

Roxas runs after the Dusk, still holding the Struggle bat, and the other three take off after him, though they can’t keep up. The Dusk goes through a hole in the wall and Roxas follows it, wondering aloud if it was heading for the haunted mansion.

“’Haunted Mansion’?” Terra parroted and Sora perked up.

“Yeah, it’s this old ruin outside of Twilight Town,” he explained. “We found the digital Twilight Town in it.”

“We were using it as our base,” Naminé continued, exchanging glances with Riku. “It was too much of a risk staying in Castle Oblivion when the Organization knew where it was.”

“Plus, the Castle was hard to navigate,” Riku muttered to himself.

Roxas follows the Dusk through the woods, ending up by the haunted mansion.

Xion tipped her head to the side, studying the Roxas onscreen. “Are you going to attack it with the Struggle bat?” She asked, seeing the thing still in her friend’s hand, and Roxas shrugged.

“It was what I had on me,” he defended and Xion shook her head.

“That’s almost as useless as a stick,” she replied and then laughed, remembering that day in Beast’s Castle. Roxas gave her a half-hearted narrow-eyed side glance. She laughed harder.

The Dusk turns to Roxas. “We have come for you, my liege.”

Sora blinked. “Those things can talk?” He yelped, spinning to face the former Organization members. “Could they always talk?”

“I mean, yeah,” Xion said, giving Sora a blank look. “Did you not know that?”

Axel cleared his throat. “Only Nobodies can talk to Nobodies,” he explained. “At least, I think that’s right.”

“Still,” Sora muttered, looking like he was questioning everything.

“Are they… sentient, then?” Terra questioned, giving the Nobody on the screen a look. From what he could gather, the Heartless weren’t sentient, only acting on base instinct, but it seemed to be different for Nobodies…

Axel grimaced then and both Roxas and Xion made a face. If Dusks were truly sentient, it wouldn’t have been such a threat to turn them into one. “Not in the way we are,” Axel explained, waving a hand at Xion and Roxas. “They seem to get some things,” Xion smiled as she remembered the Dusks that would bring back flowers or other trinkets from their times out in other worlds. “but they don’t have any memories of their past selves or any sense of higher cognitive levels. They mostly just follow the orders given to them by the Organization.”

“Every member of the Organization has a subclass of Nobodies that follow them,” Roxas continued. “I had the subclass called the Samurais.”

“What about you?” Kairi questioned, turning to Xion. The other girl made a face.

“I didn’t have one,” she admitted. Her hands tightened in her lap for a moment. It didn’t matter, it’s okay. It doesn’t… hurt.

Sora shook his head slowly. This was news to him.

Roxas is confused but when the Dusk lunges at him, he swings at it with the Struggle bat. The bat does nothing, and Roxas tries again.

“So, they’re similar to the Heartless then,” Aqua noted. She tapped her fingers together. Neither can be destroyed unless with a Keyblade. Or magic from the Keyblade. She hummed. Suppose that makes sense, if they’re kind of the same thing. Coming from the same heart and all.

The bat suddenly transforms into a Keyblade as the world shifts just a little around Roxas.

“I suppose that was you as well,” Roxas snarked, giving Riku a look, but the older boy shook his head.

“No, that was all you,” he explained. “When DiZ figured it out, he was… not the happiest.”

Roxas made a face. “How’d that work then?” He wondered. “I didn’t remember having a Keyblade.”

“Your heart never forgets being a Keyblade Wielder,” Aqua explained carefully. “You could forget consciously, you could have no memory of it, but your heart will always remember it. Someone could go a decade without using their Keyblade, but it’s always there and will even try to be summoned. At least, that’s what the books I’ve read say.”

“Try to be summoned?” Ven asked and Aqua shrugged.

“The person might be interested in things relating to Keyblades or unconsciously try to place themselves in danger in order to initiate the inherent ability to protect themselves via Keyblade.” She tapped her finger against her cheek for a moment. “There’s not been that many cases like that though.”

Roxas blinked, pressing a hand to his chest. Another reason he should have realized he had a heart, he supposed.

Roxas attacks the Dusk again, this time managing to destroy it and sending all the stolen photos fluttering to the ground. Roxas’s Keyblade vanishes.

I do wonder why Roxas’s Keyblade is the exact same as Sora’s, Aqua thought in her head, looking between the two boys. It could be because Roxas is Sora’s Nobody, but if he has his own heart, like he’s mentioned even though they thought in the beginning they didn’t have hearts, he should have his own Keyblade. Her nose scrunched up a little. Another strange thing to add to the list of things then, related to Sora and his friends.

Hayner and the others catch up to Roxas and Pence asks if Roxas is okay, with Roxas saying he is and to look, holding up one of the pictures. Hayner asks if they’re the things that got stolen and Roxas says he thinks so.

Axel shook his head with a rueful grin as he watched the screen. He could applaud the Dusks for their attempts, even if they hadn’t ended up really doing anything. And they had allowed him his first glimpse of his best friend, ever since he had lost him, so he couldn’t get too mad at them for the failed job.

Pence says it looks like it’s all the missing stuff, picking up his camera, and Olette suggests they go back to their usual spot, with the four of them heading off. The screen shows a white void with tall thrones in it.

Roxas and Xion both recoiled. Roxas, because he hated being reminded of anything to do with the Organization that wasn’t related to Xion or Axel, and Xion, because seeing the thrones only reminded her more of the fact that she wasn’t ever supposed to exist. She had never even gotten a throne. Just a puppet, who failed at her duty.

Axel pressed his lips together and curled one of his hands into a fist. He wasn’t proud of what he had done in the past, trying to get Roxas back. And he had a feeling he wouldn’t like watching it back any more than thinking about it.

There are several black cloaked figures sitting in the thrones and the one on the tallest says that they’ve found him at last.

Everyone recognized Xemnas’s voice this time round.

Terra briefly touched the side of his head as a soft headache pulsed through him, pressing a Cure into the side of his head. The place… it looked familiar.

The one sitting on the throne next to him asks if it’s Roxas or the hero and Xemnas says both.

Aqua, Terra, and Ven all narrowed their eyes at the screen. That voice… hadn’t they all heard that voice before?

Another says finding the both of them at once is impossible and is agreed with by someone else, saying that another will is in action.

“DiZ,” Kairi muttered, and Roxas huffed.

Xemnas says it smells like ‘him’ and one of the members asks who he’s talking about. Another says it can’t be.

Axel hummed, feeling his nails bite into his palm. It made sense, in hindsight, that Xemnas was aware of DiZ’s actions, given the identity of the man that Axel hadn’t grasped until now. And that Demyx wouldn’t know who it was, but that Xaldin would.

One of the cloaked figures says the time to act is upon them and Xemnas says they have to discuss strategy, focusing on Axel.

Roxas looked away at that, remembering Axel’s attempts to get him back to the Organization. While he didn’t remember his past the first couple of times, he did that last and yet… it had been Axel then, who had stopped him from returning. Could that maybe have been on purpose? Axel was his best friend, but he wasn’t blind to the fact that Axel had a tendency to place the Organization above him.

In the Usual Spot, the four of them were looking at the pictures and Hayner picks one of them up, asking what’s going on in the photo. Olette realizes they can say the word now.

“Oh good,” Kairi breathed out, shaking her head. It had been weird to continually hear the blank where the word should be, especially because they didn’t have the inherent knowledge of the word that Roxas and the others in the simulation seemed to have.

They look through the photos and realize they’re all of Roxas in some way. Olette says that it makes sense then, why everyone thought it was them.

Ven made a face. “I mean, not really, but sure if you believe that,” he hummed with a shrug. Just because Roxas was in the photos didn’t mean he would take them, but Ven guessed there could be some merit in that logic.

Hayner says to tell them about the picture thief and Roxas says they were just lying there.

“You didn’t remember the Dusk?” Sora asked and Roxas shook his head, shooting another glance at Riku. Riku grimaced. They’d had to work quickly, to make sure that Roxas didn’t remember anything about the outside world. And the Dusks had nearly shattered that.

Hayner asks how they should prove they didn’t take them then and Pence wonders if since all the pictures were of Roxas, if the thief wanted to really steal Roxas instead.

Axel tipped his head to the side for a quick moment. Well, it wasn’t like Pence was wrong…

Roxas grimaced. More like drag me back by force, but ‘steal’ works too, I guess.

Hayner asks who would want to steal a bonehead like Roxas and Olette brings up the picture of the four of them in front of the haunted mansion.

Roxas felt a pang in his heart at that and he closed his eyes for the briefest moment. What was this burning in the back of them?

A hand landed on his and he opened his eyes to see Xion reaching for him again, a soft smile on her face. He did his best to return it. He just… really wanted to see his friends again.

The bells ring in the distance and Olette says it’s time to get going. Hayner says he’ll give all the photos back on his way and the three of them leave.

“Do you remember if people thanked him for returning the photos?” Kairi asked, leaning forward to look at Roxas, and the seemingly fifteen-year-old paused before shaking his head. Kairi shrugged then. “Okay. I hope they did.”

“They’re just data, remember?” Roxas mentioned and Kairi made a face.

“Doesn’t mean they’re not real.”

Mickey frowned at that. Was data real? He didn’t think so but maybe…

Roxas leaves the Usual Spot and closes his eyes against the sun. He hears Sora’s voice in his head. “Where am I?”

Sora blinked in surprise. “I don’t remember that,” he said and Aqua hummed.

“It might be your heart reaching out subconsciously,” she murmured, giving the screen a careful look. “Because you’re connected.”

Roxas made a face.

Roxas asks who’s there and Sora asks who Roxas is.

Ain’t that the big question, Roxas thought with a shake of his head. Am I me, as I think I am, or am I Sora, as everyone else insists me to be? He paused, looking over at Xion who was still holding his hand. I’d rather be me.

DiZ is look at a screen and says that those Organization miscreants had found them.

“’Miscreants’?” Axel parroted, sounding slightly offended, and Riku snorted. Only DiZ would describe the Organization, who had caused countless problems and nearly created Kingdom Hearts for a second time, as miscreants.

“What does that mean?” Xion wondered and Axel thought it over in his head.

“Someone who makes problems for others,” he explained after a moment and Xion nodded after a second. It wasn’t like DiZ was wrong, though she hated giving him that.

Riku asks why the Dusks would steal photos and DiZ says they’re both nothing more than data and the Nobodies couldn’t tell the difference.

Roxas snarled slightly. He wasn’t data, he was real! They had just shoved him into a data space.

Riku couldn’t look at the screen for a long time, still unused to seeing his past self in Ansem’s form, even though up to about two days ago, he had lived several weeks in Ansem’s form. And while it wasn’t as bad as before, before he accepted his own darkness, it still wasn’t the greatest to look at.

DiZ says they’re running out of time and to tell Naminé she must hurry.

Naminé looked away at that. Hurrying was why Sora’s missing memories from before, she thought with a huff. In the end, I was so stressed and worried that I was just going through the black cloaks- “Oh,” she said aloud as things clicked into place in her mind, and several of the teenagers turned to her.

Vanitas looked down at her. “Naminé?” He asked and she looked around at them.

“Sorry,” she apologized, focusing on Sora. “But I just realized why you’re missing that memory. It’s because it was Xemnas and in the end, with all the stress I was under, I probably saw that memory, saw the black cloak in it, and then didn’t have time to fully check it before I buried it like the others from Castle Oblivion.”

Sora blinked. “Oh,” he said, accidentally copying what Naminé had said earlier. “Well…”

“Were you really under that much stress?” Kairi wondered and both Riku and Naminé made faces at that.

“”Yes,”” they both answered before giving each other a surprised look. Riku might not have been doing the actual work, but he could see how stressed Naminé was. Especially with how abusive DiZ was.

Vanitas narrowed his eyes at the man on the screen at that confession. He didn’t like the man and every time Naminé revealed more about him, that hatred went up.

Riku leaves and returns to Naminé’s room.

“Why does it look so much like Castle Oblivion?” Terra asked, clocking that as strange, and Naminé grimaced.

“Ask DiZ,” she muttered, and Vanitas’s arms tightened around her ever so slightly. She leaned backwards into his chest.

She closes her sketchbook as he enters, and he asks what she was drawing. She tells him she’s drawing the castle and Riku tells her time is running out.

Telling me to go faster rarely works, Naminé thought with a shake of her head. She didn’t blame Riku, it was always DiZ pushing them, but she had taken those times to just sit and draw, to make sure she didn’t go insane. She kind of needed them.

Naminé says she promised and when Riku questions her, she doesn’t elaborate, instead picking up her sketchbook.

Naminé looked over to the cushion next to her, where the sketchbook she had now was balanced. She doubted she would be able to keep it once they finished watching all the things the Ancient Keyblade Wielder had wanted them to watch, but she kind of wished she could. She also wondered what happened to her old one. She had left it in the mansion if she remembered properly, but the past couple of weeks had been a whirlwind of crazy things, so she might be misremembering.

Roxas dreams of Sora’s adventures again, including his meeting with Donald and Goofy and learning about the Keyblade. Roxas wakes up, murmuring about a ‘Keyblade’.

Aqua nodded her head. While it probably was just Roxas getting flashes of Sora’s memories, it also lent itself to the theory she had read about and explained to the kids in the room. No one forgets about being a Keyblade Wielder. It’s an intrinsic part of you and you would do anything you could to remember being one, if, tragically, you forgot about it.

Roxas heads to the Usual Spot, stopping on the way and muttering about the ‘Keyblade’ again. He picks up a stick and waves it around, wondering what yesterday was about.

Xion snickered. “Roxas, that’s a stick,” she whispered to him and Roxas leaned over Axel’s lap, swatting at her head as she giggled louder.

“Shut,” he hissed back, a flush on his face, and she just laughed harder.

Axel looked down at the two of them, a fond smile creeping up his face despite his efforts to stop it. It was just… nice, to see them acting like the kids they were, instead of the traumatized soldiers the world had turned them into. That Axel’d had a hand in turning them into.

Roxas tosses the stick behind him, and it hits a cloaked man standing there.

Roxas swung his head around to Riku, suddenly forgetting about Xion. “That was you, wasn’t it?” He accused, able to see it now that he wasn’t drowning in false memories and mysterious dreams. How hadn’t he realized it sooner? “And later, at the train station!”

“Yes,” Riku admitted, and Roxas slumped back on the couch, throwing his arms in the air. Unbelievable. He almost wanted to bring up what happened at the train station, but how do you say, ‘you robbed me!’ without bringing up a lot of questions?

“Um, why are you standing there, Riku?” Kairi asked, clearing her throat slightly and looking between Riku and the screen.

“I… wanted to make sure nothing from the previous day had messed with Roxas too much,” Riku explained after a moment, decidedly not mentioning that he also wanted to see if Roxas was remembering anything of Sora and thus, would allow Sora to awaken sooner. “Clearly, it did, but not in a way that affected him too much.”

Roxas huffed, looking away and crossing his arms. Why wasn’t he surprised?

Roxas apologizes as the cloaked man walked away.

Roxas wrinkled his nose. If he had known who it was, he wouldn’t have apologized to him. He probably would have attacked him, honestly, either with his Keyblade or the brick against the far wall if his blade failed him.

Roxas mutters weird and hurries to the Usual Spot. The others are there, eating ice cream, and Hayner hands him an extra.

All three former Organization members perked up at the sight of Sea Salt Ice Cream, but it was tinged with a feeling of melancholy for all of them. When had been the last time the three of them had managed to eat ice cream together on the clock tower? Would they ever get to again?

Sora tipped his head to the side. That ice cream looked familiar…

Pence asks if they think they’ll always be together like this and Olette replies that she hopes so. Hayner asks where that came from, and Pence says that he was just thinking out loud.

Roxas sucked in a breath at that, seeing the sunset behind his eyes and the words exchanged with Axel and Xion, unknowing of everything that was about to come for them. From the way Xion’s breath stuttered, he could tell she probably got the same flashbacks as he did.

“Does… does the data scape take from past memories?” Xion asked after a moment, turning to look at Riku after she had managed to compose herself. “Like the floors on Castle Oblivion did?”

“Not really,” Riku explained, though he was aware he wasn’t the end all authority on the data world. “It just takes data from the real people it’s based of off. Why do you ask?”

Xion swallowed. “No reason.” She could tell she wasn’t really believed, but none of the others decided to press it, something she, and Roxas, were grateful for.

Hayner says they can’t be together forever and says isn’t that part of growing up?

Is it though? Aqua thought, looking at Ven and Terra on either side of her out of the corner of her eye. Why couldn’t we be together forever? Why couldn’t we stay together, instead of being torn apart by forces out of and within our control?

Kairi slumped her shoulders, looking over at Sora and Riku for the briefest moment. It’s true, she thought with a bittersweet smile. We won’t be able to stay together forever. Even now, we’re… distant. She rolled her shoulders back and straightened her back slightly. But that doesn’t mean we can’t reforge our bonds. Even if they’re a little… she looked at the way Sora’s and Riku’s hands were almost touching. …different.

I wish it wasn’t, Axel shook his head, memories of Isa and ‘Ri flashing through his mind, sun-stained mornings and crisp nights swirling around in a jumble of broken innocence. But sometimes… sometimes the ones we love most leave us. He remembered, or didn’t remember, his parents and the hole they left in his and ‘Ri’s life. And there’s nothing we can do about that. All we can do is… ‘Ri’s smile and Isa’s laughter drifted through his mind. … move on.

I suppose I wouldn’t know, Vanitas thought with a shake of his head. He looked down at Naminé. But I refuse to lose the one person who seems to care about me, for whatever strange reason.

Mickey couldn’t help but think about all the people he had lost in his long lifetime. More than he could count and more than he would remember.

Hayner says what’s important isn’t how much they see each other but how much they think about each other.

“You sure you haven’t met him before?” Roxas asked, directing the question at Sora. “Seems like something you sappy Somebodies would say.”

“Hey!” Sora objected though he couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be an insult. Roxas shook his head with a soft grin.

Pence asks if he got that off of a fortune cookie and Hayner tells him no more ice cream.

“Does that mean I’m a fortune cookie?” Sora grumbled, lightheartedly, to himself, and Kairi gave him a faux considering look.

“Well…” she started, and he immediately spun on her, nearly pouncing on her and making her laugh.

“Don’t you dare!” He joked and she laughed harder. Riku shook his head, long sufferingly.

Hayner notes that the day is turning out to be such a drag and Olette says it’s probably because of the memory thief from the day before. Hayner says no and that it’s because they don’t want summer vacation to be over.

Ven tipped his head to the side. “What’s summer vacation?” He asked and got six head turns in his direction.

“You don’t know what summer vacation is?” Sora questioned and Ven made a face.

“I mean, I know what summer is and I know what vacation is,” he said defensively. “So I can make a logical guess, but I’ve never heard of it before.”

“Don’t you go to school?” Kairi asked and Terra hummed.

“Well, we more lived at our school that went there,” he explained. “And it wasn’t… regulated, as I know some other schools are. It was a Keyblade school, to start.”

“You just had school… year-round?” Axel sounded baffled and at Terra’s and Aqua’s nods, shook his head. “Sounds like torture.”

“It wasn’t,” Aqua defended but she couldn’t find it in her to say more. Sure, it got overwhelming sometimes especially when most of it was dedicated to becoming Masters and preparing for the Mark of Mastery. Ever since she and Terra were twelve if she was remembering correctly, though they had gotten their Keyblades at ten. Everything had been about passing that test and proving their lives worthy of defending the light. But it wasn’t that bad. Right?

“Well, in most schools, you only go about three quarters of the year,” Riku explained to Ven specifically, though the others were listening in. “And the fourth quarter, the summer month usually, is off school.”

“What do you do then?” Ven asked and Riku shrugged.

“Hang out with friends,” he said.

“Eat ice cream,” Axel added.

“Swordfight.” Came Sora’s addition. Aqua and Terra could understand that last one but…

“Huh,” Aqua murmured. She didn’t know what she would do with three months of doing absolutely nothing. Probably just study more.

Hayner says they should go to the beach.

Xion and Roxas both flinched. Axel’s nails broke skin through his gloves.

Are you sure the data scape isn’t taking ideas from the real world? Went through all their heads.

Hayner says they haven’t gone all summer, and they should just get on the train and go. When they don’t seem enthused, Hayner asks why and Olette reminds him that they’re broke.

Sora, Kairi, and Riku all winced at that. They remembered that feeling well, though munny was less used on the Destiny Islands and they could usually find things in the foliage or scavenging if they truly needed something. But even though they could find good coconuts or strawberries in the bushes, sometimes it was nice to be able to buy a good watermelon and eat it.

Hayner says to leave it to him and says it’s time to hit Market Street. He runs out and the three of them run after him, ducking through the different alleys before ending in front of a Struggle tournament poster.

Roxas got that feeling in his chest again, the longing. He wished… he really wished his life could have been like the one he had in the data scape. No Organization messing with anything, no Somebodies and Nobodies to be forced to reconcile with, no puppets and Keyblades and everything else that had dragged him and Xion and Axel apart from each other. Just living normally, with normal problems and normal jobs… he wished he could have it but he knew he couldn’t. Even if he was allowed to live after this, he would be required to fight against whatever was coming next. That was his job as a Keyblade Wielder, after all.

Even if he didn’t want it to be.

Hayner says he and Roxas have to make the finals and then, no matter who wins, the four of them should split the prize. Roxas says Hayner’s on and the two of them tap arms.

Struggle was fun, Roxas thought with a smile. Like a less deadly version of fighting. I think Xion would like it, if we ever get to play it again.

The four of them debate together and decide they each need to get 800 munny before the train leaves that afternoon. They decide to meet back up once they have the munny and as Hayner runs off, Pence asks didn’t Hayner say he had it covered, and the others laugh.

“How were you going to get that much munny?” Kairi questioned, debating it in her head. 800 wasn’t too much in the grand scheme of things, but still, in only a few hours?

“There were always odd jobs around the town,” Roxas explained with a shrug before pausing. “At least, in the data world.”

“It’s true in the real world as well,” Sora interjected, leaning forward a little as he remembered. “We saw a ‘help wanted’ board as we travelled through the town a couple of days ago. A couple boards actually.”

Axel nodded. It made sense that there were things like that. It had been the same in Radiant Garden, especially around the summer vacation months. Shop owners and people looking for help knew that there would be teenagers free and wanting munny to do jobs that would usually cost more if they hired someone professional.

Roxas and the others split off and Roxas heads up to the help wanted board. DiZ is sitting in front of his screen.

Roxas rolled his eyes. “And we’re back to him,” he grumbled out with a shake of his head and Xion reached out and squeezed his hand again. He gave her a smile in return.

“He’s always sitting at that screen,” Kairi noted with morbid curiosity. “Did he ever go anywhere else?”

“Rarely,” Riku revealed, and Kairi hummed.

Riku comes up behind him and says DiZ called for him and DiZ tells him his reckless actions will get them in trouble.

“Hey!” Sora yelped, giving DiZ a flat look and ruffling his shoulders slightly as he sat up. “Riku wouldn’t!”

“I kind of did, seeing Roxas as I did,” Riku admitted but he could tell Sora wasn’t really listening to him.

DiZ says Riku went to the data scape and Riku says he did. Ansem says Roxas must seem like a different person and all it took was a bit of meddling with his memories.

Roxas snarled, the very air around him sparking as his anger leaked out into the real world. His eyes lit up ever so slightly and Axel had to yank his arm back from where it was wrapped around the younger boy in order to not get singed.

Xion and Naminé both had similar reactions, if more subdued and without the magic, and Kairi felt sick at DIZ’s blatant… gloating of messing with Roxas’s memories. Sora felt something dark hit him in the chest, though he did he best to suppress it. Both Terra and Aqua felt rage build in them.

Vanitas’s arms tightened around Naminé, and he hadn’t felt this much rage in him since… How dare that man even say that?! He didn’t know why he was feeling that, Roxas was barely a person he had interacted with and yet…

Mickey slumped in his seat, pressing his clasped hands to his forehead for a moment. He could feel tears burning in the back of his eyes but shoved them back down. Oh Ansem, what happened to you?

Axel, very slowly, reached back down to Roxas, placing a hand on his shoulder when the magic surrounding the boy didn’t bite back at him. “Roxas?” He questioned. “You okay?”

Roxas sat stock still for a moment before abruptly turning and pressing his face into Axel’s side. The older man made a quiet noise of surprise but didn’t move, instead changing his arm to wrap around the boy again as the air calmed around him. He thought he heard a muttered “I’m fine” but he wasn’t sure.

Riku cuts DiZ off, asking if he has an assignment for him.

Riku grimaced at that. He should have done more, for Roxas, for Naminé. But he just… he needed Sora back. Needed the boy he loved back.

DiZ says yes and that they’ve encountered a bit of a problem. He says he needs Riku to go in there again and this time, make sure their paths do cross.

Roxas was tempted to say something at that, to shoot Riku a look, to do something, but there was still lingering anger in his veins from DiZ’s comments. He still felt like he only had a hair thin control on the magic in him at the moment and beyond that… Beyond that, something about DiZ’s comments had snapped something in him and he still didn’t know what that was yet.

Roxas and the others meet back up at the train station, all compiling their money together.

“What? We don’t get to see what you had to do to get the munny?” Xion asked, trying to add some levity back into the room. She didn’t know if it worked.

Roxas peeled his face away from Axel’s side and gave her a small smile. “Guess not,” he murmured, and she swallowed slightly.

Olette says that with what they got and what they already had, they now have 5000 munny.

Sora stared at the little purse Olette was holding in her hands. Was that…? It couldn’t be and yet… Did Mickey ever tell me how he got the purse?

Olette hands the purse to Roxas and Pence says it’s time to get tickets, with Olette and Pence running ahead. Hayner tells Roxas that they can’t be together forever, so they have to make the time they do have something to remember.

All the watchers in the room felt the atmosphere shift slightly to something more melancholy. They didn’t have forever, that much was true. Most of them had already lost that precious time they had taken for granted. Axel and Xion were dead. Roxas and Naminé a part of their Somebodies again. Terra was imprisoned in his own heart while Aqua was stranded in the Realm of Darkness. Ven and Vanitas had no idea was had happened to them after the destruction of their shared heart.

And yet, was what happened to them… worth remembering?

Roxas is surprised by what Hayner said but Hayner punches him in the air with a ‘gotcha’ and runs after the others. Roxas starts to follow but trips and is caught by Riku.

Ven jumped in surprise. “When did you get there?” He questioned and Riku shrugged.

“It was a data world that we controlled,” he explained. “I could get in almost anywhere.”

And leave almost anywhere, Roxas thought, remembering the way that Riku had just vanished after this. Along with our munny.

Roxas is shocked and Riku murmurs something to him. Hayner calls for Roxas and suddenly, Riku is gone.

Several of the teenagers blinked at that. “No wonder you were so confused,” Kairi muttered. “If Riku’s just been popping in and out of your life for a while until you remember your memories.”

“Well, not just Riku,” Roxas noted, finally speaking, and Naminé ducked her head a little, a smile crossing her face. Leaving to meet Roxas was still one of the things she was most proud of doing. Especially against DiZ.

Roxas runs to meet the others and Hayner requests four tickets from the booth. When Pence asks Roxas for the munny, he attempts to grab it but finds it gone.

“You stole the munny from him?” Kairi asked blankly, turning to stare Riku down, and the older boy wilted slightly under her gaze.

“We couldn’t let them go to the beach,” he attempted to defend but Kairi clearly wasn’t that swayed by it.

Sora blinked a little. That’s where the munny came from?

Roxas says the munny is gone and moves to return outside. When his friends ask him what he’s doing, he says he had the munny before he fell and that the guy must have taken it.

“Why couldn’t they go to the beach? Specifically?” Aqua asked, looking over at Riku, and the sixteen-year-old sighed.

“There wasn’t one in the data scape,” he said. “It’s just Twilight Town and the surrounding woods. Believe me, I brought it up to DiZ as well.”

Roxas scoffed quietly. Yeah right.

Naminé rolled her eyes. Of course, DiZ wouldn’t let Roxas have that little moment of happiness.

Xion couldn’t help the way she was just the slightest bit glad Roxas didn’t go to the beach. She wanted the three of them to go to the beach together for the first time. Sure, she had been to a couple when Roxas was unconscious, but only to grab seashells and leave. And collapse into Riku’s arms that one time. The first time they all actually spent time at the beach, she kind of wanted them to be together. Maybe that made her selfish.

Roxas’s friends are confused and when Roxas says he couldn’t have gone far, Hayner asks what guy he’s talking about. Roxas is confused and Olette notes that the train is leaving.

“Could none of the data people see you?” Terra asked and Riku nodded his head. It was just easier that way and making Roxas unable to see him as well would have been difficult and slightly defeated the purpose.

The four of them leave the station and Roxas is confused, knowing that someone was there. Riku returns to the mansion, where he’s surprised to see Naminé waiting for him.

“Walking around?” Vanitas asked Naminé quietly and the girl shrugged.

“I couldn’t just stay put if I had nothing to do,” she admitted. “And I knew Riku was going to visit Roxas. I… promised someone I’d keep an eye on him.” Vanitas eyes the couch next to them, where the three former Nobodies sat. If he had to guess, it was probably the girl who extracted that promise from Naminé.

Naminé says she heard Riku was visiting Roxas and Riku says yes before walking away.

Riku winced at that. That could be seen as rude but he just… he had so much on his mind. With seeing Roxas and talking to him even though he hadn’t meant to, wanting to do anything he could to get Sora back. It had just been… a lot.

Naminé quietly tells Riku it’s all right and she can feel Sora. Roxas and his friends are eating ice cream up on the clock tower.

Roxas, Xion, and Axel all felt a spear through their hearts. What they wouldn’t give to be up there one more time…

Aqua couldn’t help the stab of anxiety that went through her as she witnessed that. There were no safety rails at all. They could get seriously hurt.

Olette tells Roxas his ice cream is melting, and Roxas apologizes. Hayner tells him to forget it already and Pence says it was weird though.

“Is it because they’re data that they’re not reacting so badly?” Kairi questioned. She realized she was asking a lot of questions about the data scape and its rules, but it was fascinating to her. A whole other world, created from computers. And real live people in there. Because they had to be alive, right?

“Yep,” Riku confirmed, and she nodded to him.

Roxas says what Riku told him “Can you feel Sora?” and is confused by it.

Sora grimaced at that. More and more, it was clear that DiZ and Riku were working to pull Roxas to Sora forcefully, no matter what it took. And that… that left a bad taste in his mouth.

Hayner says they can always try again tomorrow, and Pence agrees, saying that summer vacation isn’t over. Olette says they should probably go home and the three of them leave, with Olette telling Roxas not to worry about it.

Kairi smiled at the girl. Not for the first time, she wanted to visit Twilight Town again, see the group. Reassure them she was fine and just spend time doing normal kid things. Something she knew would be in short supply once whatever conflict they had been brought here to stop started.

Roxas looks out over the sunset for a final moment before standing and leaving.

Roxas closed his eyes. “Bet you don’t know why the sunset’s red.” Why couldn’t they just live? Why couldn’t he just live? Why did he have to die for Sora?

DiZ is watching a screen, muttering for Naminé to hurry.

Naminé felt herself roll her eyes again.

He realizes that Riku’s returned and Riku asks if it was really that hard to make a beach.

Roxas blinked in surprise at that. So, apparently Riku hadn’t been lying when he had said that earlier. Well, he guessed the stopped clock is right twice a day. Or however the saying applied to a liar.

DiZ says it would give the enemy another entry point.

Literally none of the watchers believed that sentence.

Riku asks what they should do with the pouch and DiZ remarks that they could always use it to buy some Sea Salt Ice Cream before laughing and telling Riku that objects from the data world shouldn’t be brought into the real world and to destroy it. He turns back to the screen.

“Is it… bad then, that I still have it?” Sora brought up and Roxas’s head snapped up.

“You still have it?” He questioned and Sora looked over at him. He slowly reached into one of the pockets of his jacket and pulled out the pouch. There was no more munny in it, Sora stored that in the Gummi Ship, but there was…

Tightening the strings of the pouch so it wouldn’t fall out, he gently tossed the pouch across the room to Roxas. It clearly meant more to the other boy than it did to him.

Roxas caught it easily, eyes raking across the stitches on the fabric. Truly, it shouldn’t mean anything to him, a relic of the time when he was imprisoned and brainwashed, but he couldn’t help…

He shifted it in his hands and his fingers caught on something in the pouch. Pulling open the strings, he blinked as a small, blue orb made of crystal landed in his palm.

He stared at it.

There was burning in the back of his eyes.

Why couldn’t he live that life? Why did he have to die?

With a shaky breath, he slowly curled his hand into a fist around the crystal, tucking it securely into his chest. He still… he still had to get through a couple more days and then his own…

But maybe, just maybe, he could do it.

Please let him be able to do it.