358/2 Days

The Round Room

He came into the world in a town, and there was nobody in it who knew him.

A man in a black coat found him there and gave him a name. The name was Roxas. The man did not give his own.

There was a second man in the same coat, and this one talked.

"Heya, Roxas."

Three children went past below them on their way somewhere, and neither of the two in coats had anything to do with them.

Then they were up on the clock tower with the town underneath and the sun going down on it, and the man in the coat had brought ice cream.

"What. what do you mean?"

"Y. yeah, I think so."

"Something I can help you with there, chatterbox?"

Six days went by. On the sixth or the seventh of them the first man came and found him again, somewhere dark with water in it, and the two of them stood there and the man did the talking.

"You have been with us for six days now. The time has come. Sora."

Roxas asked him his name and did not get it. He got the question back instead, and then the man went away saying the other name to himself.

On the seventh day there was a meeting.

"Ah, I remember now. We were supposed to convene in the Round Room today. Blegh, meetings."

Roxas said the two words back to him, turning them into a question. "Round. Room?"

"Yup. Apparently the boss man's got some big news. Wanna head over there now?"

"Alrighty then. Follow me."

The room was round and every chair in it had somebody in it.

"Good tidings, friends. Today is a momentous day. I am pleased to announce that a new comrade has been chosen to wear the coat. Number XIV. Let us all welcome one of the Keyblade's chosen."

"Let us all welcome one of the Keyblade's chosen."

Below the chairs there was a girl standing in a coat of her own with the hood up.

"Eww. You're awake?"

Saïx gave the boy to the second man to look after, and said so in front of everybody. "Oh boy. What, are you making me the kid's mentor now?"

"Well, you heard the man. Starting today, I'm your babysitter."

Roxas was looking at the girl and not at him.

"Hey, what's wrong? You worried about the new kid? What was that name again."

"Right. I knew that."

"A name defines an object. Describes the span of it. Gives it purpose."

He had a number and a name and seven days, and nothing else, and he said so himself afterwards, twice, in two different places.

"You gotta figure, everything starts someplace. The closest thing for me is when I was just seven days old, and I met her."

"After seven days of clinging to a number and a name, I had trouble processing anything else. I couldn't have told you who the people in black coats were, or what they wanted with me."

He was also required to keep a record, and had nothing to put in it.

"What am I supposed to write about?"

They passed him round for the next week. Each of them taught him one thing and none of them taught him anything about himself.

"Roxas, was it? I never properly introduced myself. I am Marluxia, Number XI."

"A Keyblade wielder. This could prove quite enlightening."

"Hey, Roxas. Welcome to the program, as they say."

"Because I said so, that's why! Saïx told you to practice magic today, didn't he?"

Axel taught him the names, all of them, one after another, and made him say them back until he had them. It became a thing he said.

On the eighth day he was given work, and did it, and did not understand what he had done. "That was my first day working for the Organization. They gave me missions, and I carried them out. But if you asked me what my job was. I would've just stared at you."

"I said. I could have done that blindfolded."

Afterwards they went up the tower again, and this time he was given one of the ice creams to hold and nobody told him what it was going to taste like.

"It's really salty. but sweet, too."

"Axel called it the 'icing on the cake' after a successful mission."

"Hey, Roxas. Let's meet up for ice cream again after your next mission. I mean, who wants to spend their days just bouncing between work, and the castle, right?"

"Once you finish your ice cream bar, check the stick. It might say WINNER."

Somebody else spent the day thinking about the number rather than the boy. "Number XIV's name. I wonder if it bears some significance."

"He's not a bad kid, but he's spacey. Good fighter, though."

Over the next few days they told him what the work was for, and then what he was.

"So that's what the Organization does? Collect hearts?"

"If I collect enough hearts, I can complete Kingdom Hearts. Then I'll be whole."

"I don't have a heart?"

He wrote it down later in his own words, and the writing has a question in it that nobody in that castle would answer.

"I found out I was a Nobody, that I was incomplete. Just like the rest of them, I came into the world without a heart. Would it have made a difference? If I had a heart. would that make me somebody?"

"Roxas, you and I and all the Organization's members are what we call Nobodies."

"The Keyblade wielder's power. How fascinating."

The next day it was Vexen who spoke. "Hee hee. Interesting. So much to inspect. To dissect."

"They taught me that my Keyblade releases hearts."

The next day it was Vexen again. "Hee hee. It appears my conclusions were, once again, flawless."

"Later on, I discovered the job was more than just a commute between the castle and that town."

"What do you want? I'm busy. Go hit your head against the glass or something."

The next day he wrote about the people around him.

"Our group had its good apples, just like it has its bad."

"Yes, what is it? Don't waste my time with idle chatter."

"Numbers XIII and XIV."

By the fourteenth day he had started asking himself a question about the two people he saw most.

"So does that mean me and him are friends?"

"Still, this kid's supposed to be the Keyblade master's Nobody? I don't see it."

Marluxia gave him an order. "Your task is clear. Strike down the Heartless and collect hearts."

"What are you looking at? Oh, dream on. It's not gonna happen, pipsqueak."

"Get lost. You're blocking my light."

The next day he wrote again.

"Every day after work, I've been meeting Axel at the clock tower to have sea-salt ice cream."

"We all need a little break every now and again."

"Your work has been improving by leaps and bounds."

Marluxia had something to say to him as well. "If only we'd met sooner, Roxas. You would have made a fine addition."

Larxene wrote something on the fifteenth day that was not for Roxas, and he never saw it.

"Ugh! How DARE they shut me out of monitoring the Keyblade master! And then to send me off to teach that half-baked Nobody basic magic!? I should've had him light ME on fire. It won't be long now, though. Once I'm over at C.O., our plan goes into action. No more playing nanny. Ever."

She very nearly said some of it out loud to him a few days later, and caught herself in the middle of the word.

"Is it true you're almost semi-competent now? Maybe we should've let you in on. Nothing."

"The Organization's got a second castle situated in the world between worlds. It's called Castle Oblivion. Got it memorized?"

"So, you got the number memorized, do you?"

"Right, that first week you could barely form a sentence. But come on, you're still kind of a zombie."

Somewhere in that stretch the girl came with them up the tower for the first time, and Roxas was the one who asked her.

"I've got someplace to be. You go ahead and RTC without me."

"You did great. In fact, you deserve a little something extra."

"Yeah, the icing on the cake. C'mon. There's this place."

Six Gone to Castle Oblivion

On the twenty-second day Axel was sent away, and the only reason he gave for telling Roxas about it at all was the one he gave. "He told me because we're friends."

"Me and his Nobody have been meeting up for ice cream the last few days."

Six of them went. That was half the coats in the building, and the building noticed.

"It's nice in here with the loudmouths gone."

"We sent a total of six members over to Castle Oblivion. That's about half our number."

"What shall I do without half the poker league?"

Luxord kept talking after that. "No use fretting the absence of others. They simply lose this round by no-show."

"Have you been customizing your weapons? A smart player knows how to adapt his game to suit the house rules. Axel's whereabouts? I have no clue."

With Axel gone the two of them were put together every day, and having nobody else to talk to she began talking. "Afterwards I went and had ice cream by myself."

"The lady at the shop said you can trade the WINNER stick for an extra bar."

By the twenty-fifth day he had three facts about her and put all three in the record in one sentence, in the order he had got them.

"That's right, she's a girl, with black hair, and she can use the Keyblade just like me!"

In rooms he was not in, other people were writing about her too.

"No. i, my finest Replica, has proven an even greater success than anticipated."

"Marluxia has succeeded in leading the Keyblade master to the castle."

"They hug their truths close and leave the rest of us to speculate."

On the twenty-sixth day the news came back that one of the six was gone, and it did not come with a name attached.

"Word has it at least one of the folks we sent to Castle Oblivion has been terminated."

Roxas asked what happened to a Nobody who was destroyed, and got an answer with nothing in it to hold. "Xigbar said nothing's left of Nobodies once we're gone, because we have no hearts to leave behind."

"You ready or what?"

"I guess we're not working together today."

He went down some time after that and did not get up.

"Why else eliminate Vexen? He simply wanted to do research."

Somewhere else entirely, and at no day anybody wrote down, a man in red bandages was working on a boy's memory with a girl's help, and neither of them was getting anywhere.

"You seem to be struggling."

"A Nobody?"

"Oh, I think he can do without a memory or two."

She said something he did not like, and he put the question to her straight.

"Naminé. You are a witch who has power over Sora's memories and those connected to him. Are you seeing something I cannot?"

"Then so be it. The gloves must come off."

Nobody answered him.

"Those Nobodies had no business existing in the first place, as you know fully well, Naminé."

"It appears we've come to a standstill."

He woke on the fiftieth day with things on the table beside him that had not been there when he went down. "You were sleeping, a long, long time. Saïx told us not to get our hopes up. That you might not. Well, you're awake now. That's what counts."

She had been coming the whole time and talking to him while he was under.

"I went to a new world today. Roxas, you should've seen it. It was so beautiful. Well, I'll visit you tomorrow, okay? Bye, Roxas."

"Here, I brought you this. It's a seashell. I've been picking one up every time I go out on a mission. Hold it up to your ear."

He did what he was told with it.

"I held it up to my ear, and I could hear the ocean. Why did it sound so familiar?"

"Being with him feels strange. Familiar. Like listening to the waves crash up against the shore."

While he was under he had seen somebody. He could not say who, and what he wrote down about it was a description of clothes and an age and a voice that belonged to a girl he had never met.

"I'm fine. Thanks. It's just."

"Will he wake from this?"

The rest of the news about the six arrived on the fifty-first day, all at once, with one exception in it that was not named.

"It's hard to come to grips with the idea that Axel is gone. I feel. choked up?"

The next day he wrote something else.

"I sit up on the clock tower, but no one comes. Not Axel, not even Xion."

"Correction: the weaklings were annihilated."

"My orders were to end the traitors, but I think by this point, I fit that bill better than anybody."

Axel came back on the seventy-first day without any warning that he was going to. "After work, Axel turned up. Just like that, out of nowhere. I didn't know what to say."

"Saïx had a hand in what went down at Castle Oblivion, well, more like a whole arm."

He declined to go into what had happened to the other five, then or later, and he put the reason in his own record.

"When it comes to what befell our late comrades at Castle Oblivion, ambiguity suits me just fine."

"Come on, I would have told you that much. I gotta hand it to you. You were right. About Marluxia, the traitors. You knew exactly what was up."

"I wonder when me and Axel and Xion will all get to have ice cream together."

The next day he wrote about ice cream again.

"After I finished my mission I wanted all three of us to have ice cream, but I couldn't find Xion."

She was somewhere else working out what she was worth.

"If I can't collect hearts anymore, the Organization has no use for me."

They found her, and on the seventy-fourth day the three of them sat on the tower together for the first time, which Roxas recorded as the good half of the day.

"We finally got to all have ice cream together, which was nice, but Xion can't use her Keyblade anymore."

Xion explained it herself. "I can't. I can't use the Keyblade anymore. And without it, I can't do my job."

"I don't know. But if I don't defeat Heartless with the Keyblade. the hearts they release just find their way into other Heartless instead."

"It's no use."

She had worked out what that made her, by the only arithmetic anybody in that building used.

"I'm supposed to be collecting hearts. Those are my orders. Without the Keyblade. I'm useless."

"They're gonna turn me into a Dusk once they find out they don't need me."

Roxas offered to do both jobs. Axel was asked whether there was anything to be done about it and said there was not. "Wish there was. But. it's just like Xion said. No Keyblade, no can do."

"You don't mind?"

"I guess. I can. But Roxas. What are you gonna use?"

He picked something up off the ground and she told him what it was.

"Roxas, that's a stick."

"I dunno about this."

She had not asked him that before.

"Thanks. So. Axel, does that mean you and I can be friends?"

"Thank you. Roxas, Axel, thank you!"

Axel wrote something down that evening and showed it to neither of them. "Xion is a girl, and she looks just like Naminé."

"But what am I going to do if I never get the Keyblade back?"

"The Genie we met in Agrabah said he and his friend Al are 'inseparable.'"

They were sent to the same few places over and over that season, a city of sand with a cave outside it, and a castle with long corridors and servants in it who talked.

"Psst! Roxas, change the subject!"

"Mission accomplished. Ready to head back? We can stop for ice cream and."

On the ninety-fourth day they were all called up to the top of the castle to be shown something.

"He showed us Kingdom Hearts, a big heart-shaped moon floating up there in the night sky."

"Good luck today."

"The time has arrived. Look to the skies! There hangs the heart of all hearts, Kingdom Hearts, shining down on us at last. See the countless hearts that have gathered? Hearts full of rage. hate. sadness. and bliss. There, in the sky, hangs the promise of a new world. My friends! Remember why we have organized, all the things we hope to achieve. The strength of the human heart is vast. Soon, though. we will have gained power over it! Never again will it. have power over us."

Axel had something to say about it too. "Exactly. It's because of you two and the Keyblade that we're finally making some progress. We might finally get hearts of our own."

"Once Kingdom Hearts is complete, you'll be able to do all kinds of things."

"Kingdom Hearts will complete us. That's the Organization's goal."

Roxas heard the last part of that and could not get it to sit with the first part, and nobody ever put the two together for him.

"The ones who make it into the Organization are powerful enough to keep their memories. But me and Xion can't remember our pasts."

"Ready for another day?"

"Neither Roxas or I have any memory of our human lives."

For that stretch she used his and he used whatever was to hand, and she apologised for it about once a day.

"Okay, if you're sure. Thanks, Roxas."

"I'm sorry, Roxas. My taking your Keyblade must make things harder for you."

"Thanks, Roxas. You can have this back."

Then on the ninety-sixth day it came back to her, and the arithmetic went the other way for a while.

"I don't know. Let me give it another try."

"I don't believe it! Roxas, it worked! Thank you so much!"

"I'd like to dedicate this Keyblade summoning to my good friends Roxas and Axel."

She kept talking about it.

"Yeah, everything's fine now. I owe it all to you and Axel."

"Afterwards Xion remembered how to summon her own Keyblade, so I guess we're out of trouble."

"This has to have been what it was like, friendship."

Saïx split them onto separate missions the same day.

"What? Why? But how can. Never mind."

Three for Ice Cream

For a long stretch after that nothing happened, which is to say the work went on and the three of them went up the tower afterwards and the days had numbers on them and nothing else.

"I wonder if Axel and Xion feel the same way."

"Every day it's work, work, work. I'm dead bored, and I'd kill for some vacay."

On the hundred and seventeenth day somebody told him a thing about himself that he wrote down in quotation marks because he did not know what to do with it. "Xigbar told me that Xion and me are 'exceptional,' you know, like, special Nobodies."

"The worlds seem so divided and alone, but there's always that steady thread there to connect them."

He told her about it and she had already worked out what the word meant when it was applied to her.

"Special just means different. Because I'm a mistake."

"Well, we may both be exceptional, Roxas. But I don't think we're the same."

The next day came.

"All I like is having ice cream with my friends, so that's what I ended up doing."

"I'm not the one who changed. You did."

Somewhere in there Axel told him why the sunset was the colour it was, unasked, while they were sitting in it. "Hey, Roxas. Bet you don't know why the sun sets red. You see, light is made up of lots of colors. And out of all those colors, red is the one that travels the farthest."

Roxas asked him something else. "What does it mean to care about something that much?"

"Why would caring about something be a weakness?"

"Couldn't tell ya. I don't have one."

Roxas asked him whether memories were the same as a heart, and got most of an answer. "Hmm, true, but. I don't think that's quite the same."

"Because you're not so complicated. But don't take it personal."

She said the other part of it to Axel, on her own, when Roxas was not there.

"You know how you were talking the other day about how we all have pasts? When I sit here with you guys, it's weird. I get the strangest feeling I used to watch the sun set with somebody else. Or when I'm by the sea. When I look at the water, and hear the waves lapping against the shore. it's almost like I can hear another voice."

"No. It's not quite like that. Well, I dunno. Maybe these ARE memories. It just seems weird that they're mine."

"I guess I'm more like Roxas. Neither one of us remembers much. I wonder if he and I had this much in common before we were nobodies."

On the hundred and forty-ninth day she was sent to the castle with the long corridors and somebody in a coat like hers was waiting in it.

"Your face. Who are you really? And why do you have a Keyblade?"

"Tell me first. why you are dressed as one of us."

"Fair enough. You could say I am. the biggest nobody of them all."

She fought him and lost, and what he said while she was down was the thing she carried for the rest of the year.

"To make sure my best friend. sleeps in peace. I don't know who you're supposed to be. But. you can't fight fire with sparks. This Keyblade, it's a sham, worthless."

"My Keyblade is not a sham! What gives you the right to say that?"

Riku answered her. "Find a new crowd. Trust me. Those guys are bad news."

"Why? You're the real sham."

She said the rest of it to herself afterwards, twice, in the same words both times, which is how the source has it.

"How could he say that. He's wrong. It's not a sham. and neither am I."

"How could he say that. He's wrong. It's not a sham. and neither am I."

"And I'm not a sham. I'M NOT. He is."

Roxas wrote about something else. "I was gonna give Axel that WINNER stick, but I should wait until I get another one."

The next day Saïx dealt with the failure the way Saïx dealt with things.

"Just give me another chance!"

She told Roxas about it afterwards and put the worst word last. "I was upset. I messed up a mission really bad. I don't suppose you heard about the guy pretending to be one of us? The Organization impostor? I was ordered to take him out. but I couldn't beat him. Saix was so mad, he called me a "mistake"."

"Don't be. That jerk can say whatever he wants. I can take it."

"Roxas, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have run off like that yesterday."

"the idea of losing the present, Axel or Xion, scares me."

After that something was wrong between the two of them and neither could say what. "She said me and her are different, which is pretty obvious if you look at us, but I don't think that's what she meant."

"Last night I dreamt of the ocean. I was drowning."

"What this game needs is a few thrills. Don't you agree?"

"Axel says girls are complicated. You can't press the wrong buttons."

Axel was watching both of them by then and wrote down what it was doing to him. "Watching them, it's like they're human. It's messing with my head."

"I've been having ice cream alone, but it's just not the same."

"X-face is always barking at me to work, but what's he expect me to do against a monster like that?"

She had started asking a question that nobody in that building had a use for, and she kept asking it.

"Sorry. My mind's on other things. Roxas, why are we doing all this? Working for the Organization?"

"Why? What do we need hearts for?"

She kept asking.

"Maybe. I just wish I knew what I was doing here. How I got here."

"I started having the strangest dreams. I can never remember what they're about. I just wake up feeling like. like something is really wrong."

On the hundred and seventy-first day she went down the way he had gone down, and stayed down for three weeks.

"Every time I ask him about this kind of thing, he tells me I need a heart to understand."

He did for her what she had done for him, and wrote down why.

"I left a seashell by her pillow, just like she did for me."

"It would please me to see her smile when she finds them."

"I've decided to work harder while Xion is asleep to pick up some of the slack."

Luxord spoke next. "Ready to begin? We can leave whenever you're ready."

"Another day, another game, eh?"

"The longer you have lived, the more you are positioned to lose with such a gamble."

Axel spent those weeks on a question he did not put to anybody. "Xion and Naminé must be connected. Whose Nobody is Xion, anyway?"

While she was under she said a name once.

"Sora."

She woke on the hundred and ninety-third day with the shells beside her.

"You brought me seashells."

"Yeah, the sound of the waves. How long was I asleep?"

He told her, and she did the sum on herself.

"That long!? I'm sorry. I feel bad. Kind of. weird that we can feel anything at all, huh? Without hearts to feel with."

"Heh heh. Thanks, Axel. You're sweet."

She kept talking.

"I just got a little dizzy. Sorry to worry you guys."

"I think I'll be okay now."

She wanted to go back to work the same morning and went to argue about it.

"Hey, don't you have work?"

"Can I come, too?"

"After sleeping for three weeks? I'll be fine. C'mon, take me with you."

She said the same thing to Saïx.

"Saix, I want to go with Roxas today on his mission."

"Don't keep me pent up in here. I need the exercise."

She got her way.

"A three-man team? That's a first."

"All I can remember is the sound of waves, gentle, in the distance."

That evening Axel said the word that the rest of the year is measured against. "He said the three of us were best friends, inseparable."

"You wanna know why I do? Because you're my best friends."

"This should be fun, huh? Tripling up like this."

"Yeah, yeah. It sure is nice to be back on my feet."

Roxas wrote about it afterward. "But even if they're not there, at least now it seems like we're together again."

"Sorry I worried you. Hey. You want this?"

She went on.

"I'm fine. really."

"How will this round play out?"

Axel was still on his question and had got no further with it. "But my questions remain unanswered. Who is she a Replica of?"

"It's getting late. I don't think he's coming."

She kept talking while she waited.

"Okay. You and him are always there for me."

"Well, I'm just glad the two of you are in the Organization with me."

"What's wrong? You look pale."

By the two hundred and twenty-fourth day Axel had an answer to his own question and kept it. "Even if Xion is a replica, a puppet, she's still Xion."

"Axel said we should all go to the beach next time we get a vacation."

He said the spoken half of it to her and not to Roxas. "I can't make that decision for you. You're no puppet in my book. You're my best friend. Mine and Roxas's. Got it memorized?"

"So what, now I've gotta rat on my friends to you? Get out of my room, man."

"Ha ha, relax, would ya? I'm kidding. I just gotta keep my mouth shut about it."

The next day came.

"He knows something is wrong. I bet he's just telling me that to put my mind at ease."

"It must be in Castle Oblivion. That's where I was born."

The Replica

On the two hundred and fifty-fifth day she went to the castle she had decided she came from, and Axel was sent after her. "Axel said she got sent on an important mission, but he wouldn't look at me when he said it."

"Then how 'bout I tag along? I know Castle Oblivion better than anybody else in this outfit."

"You're sure things are better this way?"

She was already remembering by the time he got there, and she would not be talked out of the building.

"Don't lie to me! I know this is where I come from! The answers are here."

"Axel, I'm remembering things. About who I was."

"You can't fool me. We've met before, Axel, right here in this castle!"

He left. She stayed and got the rest of it on her own, and what she worked out she said out loud to an empty room in four pieces.

"No. Then. I'm not. The person I was before. wasn't me."

The man who ordered her made a report that same day about what she was and what he had made her out of.

"Xion's appearance should vary based on the relation of the viewer to her. Saïx sees her simply as a puppet. The Program approaches completion. Through Roxas, Xion is assembling a copy of the hero of the Keyblade. As proof, she sometimes appears to take on his form to my eyes."

The Organization decided not to go and get her.

"Xion is gone."

"On the contrary. No one is to go looking for Xion without my express permission."

"Xemnas told us not to go after her. The way Saïx explained it, it's almost like they don't think she's worth getting back."

Roxas went and asked about it and was answered in the voice used for children.

"Put your mind at ease. Xion is a valued member of the Organization, but she needs her rest."

"All will be revealed when the time comes."

He said something different about her when Roxas was not in the room. "Take steps? How can you not see how perfect this is? Xion is marching right into the arms of destiny. The only steps we need take are two: watch. and wait."

"I see her as. him, though I suspect that Xemnas sees entirely something else in her."

The next day came.

"I want to talk to Axel about Xion, but I can't seem to get ten seconds with the guy."

"You go out on a big gamble at a time like this, and you're going to lose big."

Where she went was an island, and somebody found her on it who had been looking for her since the castle with the long corridors.

"Who am I? What am I. here for?"

"Is it that I'm not supposed to exist?"

She kept talking.

"I want. I want to be with you two. But. what would it take for me to be like you?"

"I can't. Not the way I am now."

This time he gave her his name with a second thing attached to it, and the second thing was the part she had not had.

"Riku. Sora's friend."

"Sora? You know Sora?"

"Thank you. You saved me, but I don't know why. you did."

He answered her.

"I guess. I just felt like it."

"Riku, please. Tell me more, about Sora and that girl he's always with."

"You mean Kairi."

She repeated the name back to him.

"Kairi. That's right. She's the one who looks so much like me."

"To Sora, she's someone very special."

She put her own case to him and asked the question at the end of it.

"It's just. I remember things about the two of them. But I'm nothing more than a puppet, something that somebody created. So why would I have. their memories? Do you know where Sora is now?"

"That secret stays with me."

"Xion. your memories. they really belong to Sora."

She asked him something else.

"So you mean. I'm like a part of him?"

"You can't, because part of it is inside of me. That means. he can't wake up."

"So, do you hate me for taking your friend away from you?"

He did not, and he did not tell her what to do about it either. He asked her for one thing and gave her the time to do it in.

"I'm sorry, but. I can't go with you. It's my friends, they need me. And I need them, too."

"How will I know where I belong, truly? I'm not sure I can promise you I'll come up with the right answer."

She said more.

"I'll try. Thank you, Riku."

"Riku, what should I do?"

He had his own arrangement running underneath all of it, with the girl and with somebody a long way off. "You made me a promise."

"You can't get the memories back out?"

"So what's the solution?"

He was talking to somebody else now.

"Searching, for a way to conquer the darkness within me, while we wait for Sora to awaken."

"Promise me, Mickey. You have to be there for our friends."

Roxas looked for her in every world he was sent to and did not find her once. "Me and Axel agreed to start looking for Xion tomorrow."

"But something far more important lies behind that truth."

"I've looked everywhere for Xion, in every world, but there's just no sign of her."

Luxord noticed something too. "Up to something? You have a terrible poker face."

"Xion's whereabouts? Shall I ask the cards for you?"

"C.O. is where Xion comes from. I guess he just found out himself."

Xigbar said something about it too. "None of us really know everything that's going on in Castle Oblivion."

"Our plans remain unchanged. Axel, Roxas, and Xion will play the roles Kingdom Hearts has chosen for them."

"That gadfly? See that he stays away from Roxas. He only poses a threat if his buzzing reaches Xion's ears."

There was also a place with a maze in it that he was sent to more than once that season.

"A 'new shadow,' is it? Hmm. Let's check the maze for those switches, Roxas."

On the two hundred and ninety-seventh day he woke up in the town and she was sitting there.

"I woke up in Twilight Town, and incredibly enough, Xion was there."

"You have? Sorry."

He told her to come home. She would not, and she gave no reason for it.

"I really can't."

"I wasn't aware she had returned."

Luxord said it again, differently. "That is generally what 'wasn't aware she had returned' means, yes."

"It's Riku. Roxas could very well remember that, somewhere deep in his memories."

Axel had been given an order about her some time before, and it was the kind of order that names the condition the goods must arrive in.

"Axel. Seeing as how she escaped on your watch, the onus is on you to capture her and return her here. I am willing to overlook any nicks or scratches. Just ensure she still functions on arrival."

"Axel, you have your orders. Dismissed."

He carried it out the next day, with Roxas standing there. "Well, hello there. Xion."

"I don't believe it. Axel attacked Xion. There had to have been some other way."

The day after that Roxas went and asked the only question he had left, and got a name back and nothing to put with it. "And what would that be?"

Roxas said the name he had been hearing since the sixth day. What came back was not an answer and not a refusal; it was a length of silence, and the source sets it down as one.

"He's the connection. He is what makes you and Xion a part of each other's lives. Just as he is the reason I placed Xion among our number. And if you want her to stay that way, I must insist you get your mind off these needless distractions. I will have Xion return to her duties tomorrow. Today, you must focus on yours."

"Xemnas told me that 'Sora' is the connection between me and Xion. But just who exactly is Sora?"

"So why does it still sting, just a little, when I lie to him?"

After that the three of them stopped going up the tower together, and it stopped without anybody deciding it had.

"So much has happened lately that I've been forgetting to write about those pictures in my head."

"The three of us. I didn't think we'd ever be able to do that again."

The next day came.

"Xion and Axel don't come to the clock tower anymore."

"I'm fine. I'm. I'm sorry, Roxas. Here, this is for you."

She gave him the thing and then sat down with him anyway.

"I guess he's not coming today."

"What, did you two have a fight?"

Roxas said what he thought of Axel now, and she would not have it.

"So he's a jerk now? Roxas, I wouldn't be sitting here with you if Axel hadn't done that. He's your best friend."

"It's just not the same without all three of us."

"Even without my orders from Saïx, I'd do anything to stop Roxas from being erased."

She went to Axel about it, because there was something happening to Roxas that she had started noticing in herself.

"What? No. I just. Something's wrong with Roxas. I thought you might know what's up. He says the Keyblade wears him out now when he goes to use it. And suddenly I find myself fighting the same way he does."

"Why. why would you say that?"

Then she asked him the other thing, which she had been carrying since the two hundred and ninety-ninth day.

"Can I ask you one other thing? I saw a boy today who looks just like Roxas. Is he who I think he is?"

The Leash Shortened

By the three hundred and twenty-first day it had turned into something that could be measured, and what it measured was Roxas going down while she came up.

"I feel so tired, almost disconnected from my body."

"Roxas, are you okay? You don't look so good."

"H-how. How did I just do that? Where did that power come from?"

She kept asking.

"Roxas? Hey, are you all right?"

"You sure you're okay?"

"You're really, really okay?"

He answered her the third time in a way she did not care for.

"Well, excuse me!"

"Well, for your information. I worry about you all the time, Roxas."

The next day he was no better.

"I had another dream. My head feels heavy."

Xion had more to say to him. "Please be careful, Roxas. Here. This is for you."

"Please, Roxas, don't. Don't do anything crazy."

"Roxas, try not to. Just. don't push yourself too hard."

Somebody else was watching him too.

"So, sleep has taken you yet again."

She had decided something by then and she put it down in one sentence.

"But before I'm gone, I want to help Roxas and Axel."

"I'm going to wreck everything. What's the right thing to do? Riku would know."

She had more to say.

"I have to make the most of the time he's given me."

"You look so much like him."

The men at the top discussed all of it among themselves, in their own words, at length.

"I will admit, Xion has strayed from our original designs. But this unpredictable behavior is proving to have an interesting side effect."

"We wanted the Key. Xion's exposure to Roxas effected a transfer of its power, just as we had hoped. Had things stopped there, Xion would have been an unequivocal success. But then, through Roxas, Sora himself began to shape 'it' into 'her,' giving Xion a sense of identity."

"I was ready to scrap the whole project. Then, it occurred to me: Xion is keeping Sora's memories trapped by claiming them as her own. Keeping her close to Roxas will prevent Sora from ever waking."

He kept talking.

"Indeed, perhaps we ought never allow Sora to awaken."

"Yes, it was not supposed to gain a mind of its own, nor become the person we see. But in the end, it only proves the puppet is the more worthy vessel."

"Replica whatza?"

On the three hundred and fifty-second day the two of them were sent to the same place and each was shown something that was not there.

"It was rigged so you two would battle each other."

"Roxas? Wh. what are you doing here? The Heartless I was fighting, it was you?"

Xion asked something else. "They would do that?"

"I never would've guessed about Xion. That's some puppet!"

They had ice cream together that evening, the three of them, and it was the last time.

"Brain freeze, ha ha."

"Heh heh heh. Wow. The sun sure is beautiful. I know we've seen a lot of sunsets, but today's puts them all to shame. If only things stayed like this."

Roxas said they should go somewhere, all three of them, and not come back. "We don't have any place to run."

Axel started on the speech he had made before. "As long as we remember each other. right? Don't worry, Axel, we got your hokey speech memorized."

"I'll have these moments memorized for a long time. Forever, I hope."

Xion wrote about it too. "I wish the three of us could stay together, just like this, forever."

"I don't have to write anything else down, because I'll never forget this day."

She left the next day and somebody was sent after her, and what happened in the place with the maze is that he looked at her in the middle of the fight and stopped, because of what he saw.

"Shut up!"

"So now we just sweep it all up? Heh. As if."

He went down. Axel came into it at the end and she took the hood off in front of him. "Axel, I'm sorry."

"Please. let me go. I have to do this, or else. Look."

She kept talking.

"Yeah. I did. I'm on the verge of losing everything I ever cared about. I can't let that happen. Tell me what I need to do."

"Please, Axel. You have to take care of Roxas."

He let her go and then said he had not.

"I didn't let her go. The old man needs to get his eyes checked."

The Organization was told the same evening, and this time it was told what she was.

"Xion has vanished again."

Somebody used the wrong pronoun and was corrected.

"It, not 'she.' Xion is just a Replica. a puppet."

"The goal was to duplicate the Keyblade wielder's memories, and through them, his powers, thus making them our own. Vexen oversaw the project at Castle Oblivion. However, our efforts were severely derailed by his unexpected demise. And this particular Replica, the one we called Xion, came to form an identity of her own."

"Fortunately, the puppet has no means of dashing our plans now, even if she has learned to pull her own strings. Still, she knows our secrets. We need to shorten her leash. And perhaps tighten it."

Roxas found Axel that same day and asked him why he had let her go, and got a different answer from the one he was braced for.

"The Organization made her to duplicate your powers. She's a puppet."

"She's a puppet? A mirror that reflects me?"

He did not believe it, and he said so, and Axel did not argue. "You really think the truth is going to make you feel better? It won't."

The Puppet and the Girl

He went to Axel one more time and asked him to explain it properly, and was told to trust him instead. So he asked him who he was.

Then he walked out of the building. Saïx tried to stop him at the way out and did not manage it.

Axel caught up with him in the city underneath and told him what the Organization would do to him for it. He kept walking. "If Kingdom Hearts can be said to possess a mind of its own, it is surely rejecting Xemnas, no, rejecting Xehanort."

She went to the old house on the hill outside the town, where the girl who could do things to memory was waiting for her.

She was told what would happen to her, and she had worked most of it out before she arrived.

"I know. I'm ready. Otherwise I wouldn't be here. Roxas belongs with Sora, too. But. I don't think he would understand. Not yet."

She said it again a moment later, the same words in the same order, the way a person repeats something until it holds still.

"I know. I'm ready. Otherwise I wouldn't be here. Roxas belongs with Sora, too. But. I don't think he would understand. Not yet."

She had asked about her before ever meeting her.

"Naminé? What's she like?"

"Naminé, you can see my face?"

The girl asked her what she had wanted.

"I thought I knew at first. I wanted me and Roxas and Axel to be together forever. But then I started to realize these memories don't belong to me."

Then she asked for the one thing she wanted out of it, and it was not for herself. "Naminé, will you watch over Roxas once I'm gone? You won't be alone. I asked somebody else to look after him, too. It's just. there isn't anything else I can do for him."

The man in the bandages came in with news of who was outside.

"Naminé, they've found us! They are on their way! That blasted puppet led them right to our doorstep! See what you get for trusting it?"

"I've decided that I have to go back to where I belong."

"I'll get rid of them!"

What was outside was Axel. "Why do I always get stuck with the icky jobs?"

"It's for the good of everyone."

"Well, to be honest, I always felt that was best, right from the very beginning. But you know, it still really bugs me. Something about this just stinks."

Xion answered him. "This is right."

"But how do you know that? Everybody thinks they're right."

"They're gonna destroy you!"

She asked him for the thing she had asked Riku for, in different words. "Please don't hold back, Axel. Promise."

"What's your problem? You both. think you can do whatever you want. Well, I'm sick of it. Go on, you just keep running. But I'll always be there to bring you back!"

He beat her and stood over it afterwards saying something to nobody.

"Man. Why you always gotta. cause me. trouble."

They took her back and the man at the top of the building took her body from there.

On the three hundred and fifty-seventh day Roxas was sitting on the tower by himself and somebody came up who was wearing a face. "At last, the time has come. Saïx, are the devices ready?"

"Good."

Xemnas kept talking. "Both of them have connections to Sora, but we only need one of them under our thumb. Let Xion take from Roxas the rest of what he has to give. Or, let him destroy her first and get it all back. It makes no difference to me. Either way, Sora's power will be ours."

"Roxas. I'm out of time. Even if I'm not ready. I have to make this choice. You have poured so many memories into me, given me so much, that I feel like I'm about to overflow. Look at me, Roxas. Who do you see? If you see somebody else's face. a boy's face. then that means I'm almost ready. This puppet will have to play her part. Roxas. This is him. It's Sora. You're next, Roxas. I have to make you a part of me, too. Don't you see? This is why I was created."

They fought across places that were not there and then back to the one that was.

Somewhere in the middle of it he stopped knowing who he was fighting.

"Who are you. again? It's weird. I feel like I'm forgetting something really important."

He won. She came apart out of the face she had been wearing and back into her own, and he caught her.

"You'll be. better off now. Roxas."

"Am I. the one who did this to you?"

"No. It was my choice. to go away now. Better that, than to do nothing. and let Xemnas have his way. I belong with Sora. And now, I am going back. to be with him. Roxas. I need you. to do me a favor. All those hearts that I've captured. Kingdom Hearts. Set them free."

Roxas asked her something else. "Kingdom Hearts. Free them?"

"It's too late. for me to undo my mistakes. But you can't let Xemnas. have Kingdom Hearts. You can't. Good-bye, Roxas. See you again. I'm glad. I got to meet you. Oh. and of course, Axel, too. You're both my best friends. Never forget. That's the truth."

It came back to him at the end.

"No! Xion. Who else will I have ice cream with?"

Then she was gone and there was a shell on the ground where she had been.

"It is probably for the best. Get me back my Keyblade wielder. Fetch me Roxas."

Axel went up the tower that evening and found what had been left on it. "How did this happen?"

"Roxas left. It's so like him to just leave that WINNER ice cream stick behind. Come tomorrow, I'll probably get the order to hunt him down, but leaving that here makes it feel so permanent. I wish the three of us, three? No. That the two of us could share some ice cream again someday. That's what it is to be friends."

Memory's Skyscraper

He went back to the city to do the thing she had asked him to do, and part of what he wanted out of it was her.

"I must become one with Kingdom Hearts. I will become a higher existence."

They came up out of the ground at him in the street under the tall building with the screens on it, more of them than he could deal with, and somebody arrived who had been looking for him.

What Roxas did then he did not decide to do. He threw the black one across the street to him instead of at him; the two of them cleared the street together, then turned round.

"Why are you trying to stop me?"

The answer had a name in it that Roxas had been hearing for three hundred and fifty days without being told what it meant. "Sora, Sora, Sora! Enough about Sora!"

"I'm going to set Kingdom Hearts free! Then everything can go back to the way it was! Me, and Axel, and. and her can go on having ice cream together."

He kept talking.

"I have to find this Sora person, and freeing Kingdom Hearts is the only way! I want Xion back. I want my life back!"

"Shut up!"

The other one fought him and could not put him down, and started using the name as a weapon.

"Sora."

"stronger than this"

"Get real. Look which one of us is winning!"

He could not win it as he was, so he stopped being as he was. What he became is a shape already known in this account.

Roxas went down under it. "Roxas, don't be sad. I came from you and Sora. I am you. the same way that I am Sora. You'll forget me, but the memories themselves will never go away. Memories of you and me will always be together. forever, inside him."

Then everything he had of her went, and so did everybody else's, and a few people kept theirs and were not told why.

The man in the bandages came and looked at what was lying there and was sorry for it, and said in the same breath that it could not feel anything.

"When Riku brought Roxas back to me, he was introducing himself. as Ansem. If that was what it took to awaken his friend, he was ready to live in darkness. Riku was the victim of my revenge. Oh, how my heart ached. I could only laugh to hide my shame."

Then he put him somewhere he would not be found, which was a town built to look exactly like the one Roxas had been having ice cream in all year, and set it running.

He woke up in it with a summer to get through and three friends waiting for him, and he had a plan for the day.

"Maybe. today we'll finally hit the beach!"

"Only seven days to go, and then my summer vacation's over."

Some while after that, in the basement of a house on a hill outside the town, he met a boy his own age in red.