Chain of Memories

The Forgetting

The road went nowhere. Then the ways they might have taken stopped being several and became one way, and the one way ended at a castle.

Goofy stopped short of the doors. "You sure we should just barge in like this?"

They went in, and the castle took what they knew at the threshold. Donald had his spells on one side of the door and did not have them on the other, and none of the three noticed, because losing a thing makes less noise than having it. "Looks like nobody's home," said Donald.

"Okay, but we should shut the door behind us. Sora!"

What went was not only the spells. The further in they walked the less they were carrying, and the book Jiminy kept emptied itself as they climbed, a line at a time, without anybody watching it happen.

There was a figure in a hood standing in the first room, and it did not speak, then or ever.

Donald went at it the way he had always gone at things, and found out in public what the door had done to him. "It must be a Heartless! Let's see how it handles my magic! THUNDER! Huh? That's odd. THUNDER! THUNDER! Umm. FIRE! Blizzard? I don't get it. Why isn't my magic working?"

They got through it anyway. Afterwards they stood taking stock, and it was Goofy who noticed that something had changed which was not inside them. "Hey, wait a second. Donald, where'd you get the new duds?"

"You tell us! When you opened the door, there was this weird light, and the rest is a big blank."

A man in a black coat was standing where nobody had been standing.

He explained the house rules without being asked for them. "I should think it's obvious. The moment you set foot in this castle, you forgot every spell and ability you knew. Though the forgetting does not end there. In this place, to find is to lose and to lose is to find. That is the way of things in Castle Oblivion."

"Yes. Here you will meet people you know. People you miss."

Riku's name came into it, and the man in the coat picked the name up and made an offer out of it.

"Do you want to find him? If you do."

Then he had a card in his hand. He held it out and waited, and Sora took it, because of what had been said just before it.

"I sampled your memories. And from them, I made this. This is the key to reuniting with those you hold dear."

"A promise," he said. "Use that card and press on. You will find your friend. Hold the card before you. The door will open, and beyond it a new world."

"Yes. Go, Sora. To lose and claim anew, or to claim anew only to lose."

Then he was not there.

Beyond the door was Traverse Town, and it was the wrong Traverse Town in a way Sora could not immediately name. The man in the coat was there ahead of him to name it for him.

"It isn't reality that you see. This town is an illusion conceived by your memories ingrained in that card."

Then he taught him the castle.

The rule was that his friends were cards now, and that he would have to pick them up off the ground to have them at all, and that spending one spent it. Spent cards came back when he wanted them back badly enough. Each time they took longer coming. "Cards are the hearts of your friends," the man said. "Everything in this castle is ruled by cards."

"The strength of your heart brought back the lost cards. You can recall spent cards at any time, you need only wish it. But each time you do, the cards will take longer to return. The cards are by no means unlimited. Use them wisely."

Sora asked him something. Whatever it was, he did not get it answered. "That is for you to ponder. Master the cards and make your way through the castle. From here on, you walk alone."

"Boo."

There was a second man in the same coat, and he had come in behind all of them.

"I got bored, what with you hogging the hero."

"Looks like it's my show now, Keyblade master. My name is Axel. Commit it to memory."

Donald put himself in front of Sora, which was the first thing anybody had done in that castle without being told to. "He won't! We won't let him!"

"Good, you learn quick. So, Sora, now that we're on a first-name basis, don't go dying on me!"

They fought, and Sora won it, and the man got up off the floor of his own defeat as though winning had not been the object.

"After an introduction like that, you don't think I'd just give up the ghost?"

"Congratulations, Sora. You passed! You're ready to take on Castle Oblivion. Follow your memories. Trust what you remember, seek what you forget, and you will find someone very special."

Sora asked who. The answer went around the question and came back out the other side of it without touching it. "Well, I don't know. You'll just have to give some more thought to who's most important to you. Our most precious memories lie deep in our hearts, out of reach. But you can find yours, Sora."

"The light within the darkness. You've lost sight of it, Sora. You've forgotten forgetting."

"Would you like a hint?"

Sora said no. "That's my kind of answer. Just what I'd expect from the Keyblade master. But be forewarned. When your sleeping memories awaken, you may no longer be you."

Then he was gone as well, and the stairs went up.

What the Cards Remember

He climbed five floors and every one of them was a place he had been before. Wonderland. The Coliseum. Agrabah. Halloween Town. The inside of the whale.

None of them was the place itself. Each was built out of what he remembered of it, and he came out of every one of them carrying less than he had carried in.

Somewhere out of his hearing, two of them were talking about him.

"Wow, Axel, you seem pretty intrigued by this Sora kid."

He did not trouble to deny it, so she went at it from the other end.

"I haven't made up my mind, but I'd like to know what's on yours."

He had been thinking about a thing that had happened to the boy once and had not taken. She laid out the ordinary case first, the way a person does when they are working toward the exception.

"People who lose their hearts also lose their minds, their feelings. They're consumed by the darkness."

"So it's the strength of his heart that intrigues you, the heart chosen by the Keyblade."

She said the last of it lightly, and left it standing.

"The heart is a mysterious thing, Axel."

A fourth coat arrived among them and opened with the fight she had just lost.

"Axel is right. That was an ungainly performance, Larxene. Humbled by someone of such limited significance. You shame yourself and the Organization."

"I came to lend a hand. I remain unconvinced of any potential in this 'hero' you've been coddling. Perhaps an experiment would put my doubts to rest."

Somebody asked him what he thought he was going to do to the boy. "I'm a scientist. Experimentation is what I do."

"Follower? I'll have you know he's the product of much research."

"Hmph. I see I'm wasting my time."

He did not leave on that, because she said something to his back.

"Hold your tongue!"

"You're hardly one to talk, you conniving little."

When he had gone she rolled her shoulders and put a better face on the fight than the fight had earned.

"Whew. Throwing the battle back there really wore me out."

"Throwing the battle? Looks to me like you plain old lost the battle."

"H-How dare you! You just don't appreciate the finer nuances of."

By the fifth floor the thing they had been doing to him from underneath had begun to take, and she reported it as a gardener reports a planting.

"It looks like Sora's memories have taken root, just as we planned."

Whose turn it was to go up next became an argument, conducted in the tone of people dividing something that could not be divided twice.

"Only if it's my turn to play. You had your fun on the first floor."

"Fine. But who says I can't have my way with him first?"

He said something that gave him away, and she caught it.

"Do I detect a soft spot?"

"I'm not going to break the toy, Axel, just play with it. I'm not dumb."

Then she said the other thing, the one that had nothing to do with the boy, and she said it as though it were already settled between them.

"So you're in on it, too? Well, keep it under your hood until the time is right."

Somewhere in those five floors Sora started remembering a girl.

He had not mentioned her before. Jiminy, who had been keeping the book and watching it empty, noticed that this one had gone the other way.

"Hey, Sora! Did you remember anything else about that girl?"

"Well, I'll be! I think that's the first time you've ever mentioned her."

Then he worked out which way the traffic was going, and said so to all of them.

"Anyone noticed something odd? Sora's remembering things, instead of forgetting them. Hmm. Maybe forgetting things is the only way to reach the memories buried deeper down."

"Tell us about her! Talking about it might help you remember."

Her name was Naminé. While it was arriving, something else was going, and nobody in the room had the equipment to notice a subtraction.

After the sixth floor she came up to meet him herself.

"Ooh, aren't you clever. The name's Larxene. Are you enjoying your stay in Castle Oblivion? I bet it's nice to peel all the worthless memories away, and awaken the true memories that lie deep in your heart."

"But you're still forgetting something, aren't you, Sora? The most important thing. When that poor girl hears you've forgotten her name, she'll be heartbroken."

He worked out from that that the girl was in trouble. That was the working out she had come up six floors to arrange. "Uh-huuuuh. The bad guys are holding her deep within the castle. And you, the hero, have to go save her. Sadly, there's a catch. I'M a bad guy, so you have to go through me!"

Then she took something small out of the air and held it where he could see it, and it was his, and he had been wearing it the whole way up.

"Tsk, tsk. You've been wearing it all this time, and you forgot? No, you couldn't have. The memory is engraved in your heart. Now think, Sora. What oh what could it be? Who gave it to you?"

"That's right! Free the memory from your heart!"

He got most of the way to it and stopped, and she finished it for him, which was not a kindness.

"Well, it's about time. That's right. Naminé. She's the one that gave you the cheesy good luck charm. Not that you remembered. No surprise, seeing as you forgot her NAME. Talk about heartless! It'd serve you right if I smashed this piece of junk!"

He said it was precious to him.

"Precious? Spare me! Ten seconds ago you didn't even know what it was!"

He beat her, and she took it about as well as she took anything.

"Hey, you're not half bad. Guess you really are a hero. A heartless hero!"

"Does it hurt 'cause it's true? Grow up, Sora. If you're going to be a baby, then here, play with these. They're more cards made from your memories. Say 'thank you' like a good boy. Ta-ta!"

Somewhere in that stretch he met her.

She was standing in a place he half knew, and she spoke to him as though the two of them had a long history behind them, and he could not find the history but could not find the absence of it either.

"Sora. You came for me."

"I could say the same. But I messed up. I really wanted to see you, but not like this."

"I was alone for so long. I couldn't bear it anymore. So I beckoned your heart to lead you here. And I'm so glad you found me. But your heart, I had to."

She stopped there and did not go back to it. Then she said a stranger thing, and said it as an apology.

"Thank you. Oh, Sora, forgive me. I'm not supposed to be in this picture."

"That's not me. I'm not in your heart. I'm not in anyone's heart. I never have been."

"Was it really me you came for?"

The voice that said the next thing was hers and was coming from somewhere else, and it was arguing with the girl in front of him.

"No, Sora! Don't believe me!"

"Think, Sora. Think of the person who's most special to you. See that faint glimmer way in the back of your heart? That's a piece of your memory, Sora. Call out to it! No matter how far away the light gets, your heart's voice will always reach it."

"No. The girl you care about, the one who was always with you. It's not me. It's her."

Sora took one thing away from all of it. She was being held somewhere above him, and he went at that hard enough that the other two started watching him instead of the stairs.

"Can you blame him? After all this time, he finally remembers Naminé, only to find out she's being held prisoner!"

Later, when it had gone on longer, Donald said the other half of it. "Before we came to this castle, you didn't even know her name. Now she's all you think about."

"Sora. What's happening to you?"

Goofy asked the question the way he asked everything, without any edge on it at all, and it went in further than the edge would have.

"You always get real touchy when it comes to Naminé. Did you ever ask yourself why?"

The Replica and the Traitors Beneath

Four more floors went by the same way. Atlantica. Neverland. Hollow Bastion. The wood with the hundred acres in it.

In the one that was Hollow Bastion, Goofy stopped and named it, and got it right, out of a memory of his own that the castle had not taken yet.

"It's that castle I mentioned earlier. I'm sure I didn't make it up. That was the castle where Sora used the Keyblade to free Kairi's heart. Then he disappeared for a while, remember? I'll never forget how worried I was."

Later, with nothing leading up to it, Goofy asked the other question about that time. "Sora, when you turned into a Heartless, did you forget about us?"

Donald, meaning to be encouraging, went for the three names and came up with two of them. "Have a little faith, Sora! You guys used to be inseparable, right? You, Riku, and Kai. Kai. And, um, what's-her-name."

"The tenth floor already. We've come a long way."

The charm came out again somewhere around there, and this time it was Donald holding it and Goofy looking over at it, and neither of them was in any doubt about whose it was.

"This is. Naminé's good luck charm, isn't it?"

"Naminé's good luck charm!"

Separately, and with more alarm in it, Goofy found the other one. "Riku's good luck charm turned into a card?!"

The trouble that came next was that two people had the same memory, and Donald was the one who could not let it alone. "Of."

"So you and Riku had the same memory? Umm."

Sora took that badly, and Goofy stepped in between the two of them without moving.

"That's not what Donald meant. We're just worried."

"Ahh, somebody tell me what's going on here."

"Of course it matters! Don't you think it's weird that you and Riku have the same memory? You can't both be right."

Riku was standing in front of him.

He was the right height and he had the right voice and he used it the way Riku used it, and what he said with it was that Sora had stopped thinking about him some time ago.

"Don't sound so happy to see me, Sora. Let me know if I'm getting in the way of something more important."

"Spare me. I bet you'd all but forgotten about me."

Sora said something about Naminé, which was the wrong thing, and it opened the rest of it. "But not anymore, right? Now it's Naminé this, Naminé that. You don't care about me any more than you care about how Naminé feels."

"Never even gave it a thought, did you? Just 'cause you want to see Naminé doesn't mean it goes both ways."

Sora took it for a joke and was told it was not one. "Who's joking? Naminé doesn't even want to look at you."

"Ask your memories. If you bothered to remember why Naminé left the islands."

Sora asked what that was supposed to mean, and got an instruction rather than an answer. "Go home, Sora. I can take care of Naminé. Anyone who goes near her, goes through me!"

"Since when have you cared about me? Naminé's not the only one who's sick of you."

Sora did not leave. "Can't take a hint, can you? Leave, Sora."

Sora said he had come to get him out, and that landed worst of all. "Hah! What makes you think I need rescuing?"

They fought. Sora fought him the way you fight somebody you are trying not to hurt, and it went on longer than it needed to for that reason.

"Sora, are you okay?"

"He sure was acting strange. It's almost as if the Heartless were controlling him again."

She stopped it before it got any further, and this time she was in the room, and the difference between this and the other time was audible.

"It's because I went into your memories and."

"Stop! Riku, no!"

He did not stop, so she said it again with everything she had behind it, and that turned out to be enough. "I said, STOP!"

Afterwards Jiminy found the reading of it that let everybody keep walking. "Hey, Riku is still your friend, and that's no mistake."

"I know he said some awful things to you back there. But don't forget, we're in Castle Oblivion. People lose their memory here a little bit at a time. Riku's probably forgotten that he and you were friends. That's all."

"That'd be my guess. So instead of being sad, let's figure out a way to make Riku remember. It's not like you to mope. Let's work together and get through this."

Sora said something in the right tone, and Jiminy took it and ran with it.

"That's it, that's the spirit! Good, good! Now you're sounding heroic!"

Then he looked down at the book, and that was the part of his job he was worse at being cheerful about.

"This is awful. Our memories are fading fast. We'd better hurry, Sora. I'm sure you and Riku can talk things out."

Ten floors up, he did the sum out loud.

"And we've lost ten floors' worth of memories. Sora, it's not too late. We should turn back."

Nobody turned back. Donald said the thing underneath it, and it was not about the ten floors behind them. "So. The higher we go, the more we forget? What if we forget everything and can't get it back?"

Underneath all of that the coats had begun to come apart.

Marluxia found Vexen and closed his project for him.

"That will do. Your project has failed, Vexen. Do not disappoint us again."

"Disappoint YOU? You presume too much, No. 11. I am No. 4, and I will not stand for your snide remarks!"

The numbers were the wrong ground to fight it on, and Marluxia moved off them onto the ground he had prepared. "Yes, you will. This castle and the girl Naminé have been entrusted to ME. Defy me, and you defy the Organization."

"In the name of the Organization, I pronounce your project a failure. This lapse must be reported to the Superior."

Something went out of Vexen at the last word of that, and what he said next he said in a voice nobody in the castle had heard him use.

"No. Please, don't! I beg of you! Leave him out of this!"

The price of the lapse was set immediately and it was not a punishment, it was an errand.

"You must eliminate Sora personally."

"No. I mean. But. Why would you want that?"

He did not get an answer to that either.

In another room the two who were planning something else were taking the boy's measure again, and the thing Axel kept coming back to was the thing that had happened to him once and had not held.

"He became a Heartless, Larxene, and you know what happens to people who do."

"Right. But that didn't happen to Sora. He held on to his feelings, even as a Heartless. Only one other man ever managed to do that."

"What makes his heart shine like that? What sleeps in its most secret depths?"

She said something dismissive about hearts, and he agreed with her and turned it into the reason all of them existed.

"Maybe so. But unlocking its secrets is the whole reason we, the Organization, exist."

"Let's see how far our boy will go, then. Think it's time for another round?"

She was already leaving when he put the conditions on it.

"Remember, Larxene. Our job is to deliver him in one piece."

"Don't break him."

She wanted to know what that was worth.

"He's partly one of us."

"Then you won't mind the warning. Remember, Sora is the key. We need him if we're going to take the Organization."

Then she was gone, and he said the last of it to the room, which was a habit of his.

"You would have been wise to do the same, Larxene."

Vexen came up again, and he did not come up alone, and Axel counted the company before he said anything to any of them.

"Can we help you, Vexen? It's not very often we see you topside."

"Whatever, Vexen. Do what you want. But cut the act. Testing Sora is just an excuse to test your little follower."

Then he gave him something, with both hands, the way a man gives a gift he expects to be opened somewhere he will not have to watch.

"Have your fun. But take this with you. A wild card to keep the game fresh. Now don't tell me I don't respect my elders."

Larxene had an opinion about the follower and Axel spoke up for it. That surprised her and was meant to.

"Now Larxene. Shouldn't we give Vexen the benefit of the doubt? Riku could be hiding as part of some elaborate plan to lure Sora deeper into the castle."

The follower had stopped doing what it was told, and she came to say so.

"I knew this would happen. Everything's an experiment with you."

"What he is is a toy."

"Now what, Vexen? Looks like your little toy isn't taking orders anymore."

Vexen said something back. She took it for an excuse. "Oh, of course! Why didn't I see it before? Terribly sorry, Vexie. I guess I'm just used to you and your research being more funny than formidable."

"Aww, are you sulking? Ha ha, you are so half-baked."

Then she stopped enjoying it long enough to name the thing she had been circling, and she left it in the room with him.

"Unless I'm mistaken, treason is a CAPITAL crime."

The Other Side of the Heart

The one who came up to meet him on the eleventh floor came as a creditor.

"That's no way to greet a stranger, Sora. I am Vexen. I've come to collect your debt."

"Do you owe him something?"

Nobody answered Goofy. The man answered Sora instead, and the answer was worse than the question.

"Oh, but you do. You owe me for reuniting you with your former friend."

"Yes. I am the one who brought Riku to you."

Sora asked him what that meant. "I see no need to tell you. Why trouble you in your final moments?"

Sora beat him, and it did not appear to cost him anything he minded losing. He got up in the manner of a man whose experiment had run to completion.

"Splendid! As expected, you don't die so easily."

Then he had a card, and it had been made out of Sora while the two of them were fighting. "You'll yet have your chance. As we fought, I delved deep into your memory, and look what I found. This is a card crafted from memories locked in the other side of your heart. If you want to fight me for real, then step into the world within this card!"

The card opened onto a town at evening, and the town was Twilight Town, and Sora had never been there.

Jiminy said so out loud, because it broke the only rule the castle had kept so far. "But that can't be right! Up until now we've only been to places in Sora's memory."

The man in the coat let him stand in it a while before he asked the question he had built the place to ask.

"Does it, now? A question, then, Sora. Which is more real to you: your memories of Naminé, or the familiarity you feel here?"

Sora did not treat it as a question. "That's enough! YOU'RE the one who changed Riku! Every word you've said is a lie! I'd never throw away my heart! I'm gonna take you down and save Riku and Naminé. That's what's in my heart!"

"Ha ha ha. The memory's wiles are cruel. In its silence, we forget. And in its perversion, it binds our hearts firmly."

"Then recall that this place was made from another side of your memory. Yes, the other side of your heart knows this place. The other side remembers."

"If you remain bound by the chains of memory, and refuse to believe your heart, then you may as well throw your heart away. You're no Keyblade master, no master of anything, just a slave to twisted memories. Just like my Riku. You're not fit to exist."

They fought again, and this one Sora had to work for, and when it ended the man was on the floor of a town nobody had been to.

"Urrgh. Such strength, even at the mercy of your memory. You ARE dangerous! You must be exterminated!"

Sora said something about putting Riku back the way he had been. That was the wrong offer to make to this particular man, and it produced the only useful thing he said all day.

"Put him back? Fool of a boy! Even now you understand nothing. The Riku you speak of has but one fate, to sink into the emptiness of darkness. And you will share that fate, Sora! If you continue to seek the girl Naminé, the shackles will tighten. You'll lose your heart and become Marluxia's pawn!"

"Marluxia? What does Naminé have to do with."

Below, the card he had handed over was read for what it was. It was a man losing his nerve in public.

"Is it just me, or has Vexen finally lost it? Now he's done something REALLY rash. What now, Axel? The show's over if Sora finds out about the other side."

Axel answered it by coming in from behind while Vexen was still talking, and putting an end to the sentence rather than to the argument.

"Hey, Sora. Sorry to cut in right when he was getting to the juicy bits."

The question Vexen got out was not a whole one. "Unnngh. Axel, wh. why?"

"You sure love to talk. It's about time you shut up, forever."

"No. Don't do it!"

Axel explained it to him first. He took his time over it, and what he said was not about Vexen at all.

"We're nobodies, Vexen. We've got no one to be, but we still 'are.' So look on the bright side. You're off the hook. Now you can be nothing instead of just being nobody."

"M-Mercy, Axel! I don't want to. go yet."

"NOW you can tell me I don't respect my elders."

Then there was no Vexen. "Nice work, Axel. Good riddance to that blabbermouth."

She said the rest of it as an admission, which was rarer with her than the killing had been with him.

"Not just Sora's. Yours too, Axel. We weren't sure if you had it in you to take out a fellow member of the Organization. Well, I guess you did. You can join the big leagues now. With the three of us, taking over the Organization will be child's play."

"Right. He wants to see Naminé, so we give him what he wants."

The Promise That Wasn't

On the twelfth floor the two of them tried to slow him down and got the first of it in the face.

"Think ahead? What is the matter with you guys? Do you want me to abandon her?!"

"Then do whatever you want! You can lay back and take a nap for all I care! I'M going to find Naminé!"

Jiminy started to say something about that. "Sora, you shouldn't talk to Donald and Goofy like."

"That's not what Donald meant. We're just worried."

Somewhere below him she was being spoken to as well, and the warning she got was dressed as manners.

"Are you, now? Well, in your fits of happiness, try not to do anything to hurt Sora's feelings. Am I clear?"

Then Larxene came up and told Sora a true thing she had been saving.

"She broke his heart. More like smashed it, really."

"Ah ha ha! You're so much fun to watch. If it's Riku you're worried about, then worry no longer. Riku was never here."

He asked what she meant by that. That was the point of saying it that way.

"You want me to tell you? Gee, I don't know. I just HATE spoilers."

Riku was in front of him again, and this time he had an argument ready. "You're the one forgetting. I told YOU to take care of her. At Kingdom Hearts, when we closed the door to darkness. Give it up, Sora. I'm not going back to the islands, and you're not changing my mind."

Sora said the names of the people at home. "You can have them. I forgot about those losers ages ago."

"What about you, Sora? Do you even remember what they all look like?"

Sora tried to and could not, and the answer came back to him from a face he trusted, in a voice that had gone gentle for it.

"Don't feel bad. That's what this castle does to you if you stay too long. You forget all the useless stuff and remember for the first time what really matters. I remembered it, Sora. The one thing most important to me. I'm staying here to protect Naminé. Nothing else matters!"

"Go ahead and try."

They fought a second time. Sora hit him and nothing came back the way it was supposed to, and the thing standing in front of him took that as a joke at Sora's expense.

"Grrr. Too bad, Sora. Nothing's coming back to me. Maybe you should try hitting a little harder."

Sora offered to go up the rest of the way together. It was the only offer he had. "What, together? That is so like you. You're always trying to worm your way into my heart!"

"Hmph, you probably forgot. It never mattered to you how I felt!"

"Enough, Sora! You'll just hurt Naminé if you go any further."

Sora asked him what he thought he was protecting her from, and got the reason instead of the answer. "Free? I'm protecting Naminé from you because it's what MY heart tells me to do. I promised her. I promised Naminé I'd keep her safe."

Then he told him what the promise was, and it was the same night, the same sky, and the same words that Sora had been carrying up twelve floors as his own. "There was a meteor shower one night when she and I were little. Naminé got scared and said, 'What if a shooting star hits the islands?' So I told her, 'If a shooting star comes this way, I'll protect you!' And then."

Sora finished it for him. "Y-Yeah. How do you know about that?"

"Liar! It was just me and her!"

Sora held out what he had been carrying since the sixth floor, and the other one went into his own pocket and produced its twin. "But. Where did you get that? Oh, I know what you're trying to pull. That's a fake. I've got the real one right here!"

"I'll teach YOU to make stuff up!"

They fought a third time and it went the way the first two had gone, and afterwards he came up off the floor still arguing, because the argument was the part of him that would not stop.

"Let ME explain this. Plain and simple. Your memory is a train wreck. You're not the one who's meant to protect Naminé, I AM. But you and your messed up memories always get in the way!"

Sora got up again. "Want some more?"

"Looks like I win."

"You're through, you fake!"

She stopped him again.

Below all of that, Axel had gone to see the girl.

"Heh heh. I know exactly how you feel. Don't get your hopes up. Nobodies can't be somebodies. But think, Naminé. I'm sure there's SOMETHING you could do."

"You're all he's got left. If you don't stop this, no one will."

She said she could not, or that it was not allowed, and he answered that by looking round the room.

"Oh, I don't think you should give up just yet. By the way, Naminé. I don't see Marluxia around. Do you?"

"There's no one here to stop you. Do it right."

Then she was gone out of the room she had been kept in, and he stood in it by himself.

"Hm hmm. Ha ha haaa! Now THIS should be good. All the actors are in place. Now, Sora! Naminé! Riku! Marluxia! Larxene! It's about time you gave me one hell of a show!"

Larxene had been waiting a long time to say the next part and she said it slowly. "All right, have it your way. It'll kill you to hear this, but I can live with that. That thing lying there is a puppet Vexen made. Nothing more than a toy. It's laughable, really. It called you a fake, but IT was the fabrication all along."

"Fake in every way. It was only finished recently. And without any past, how could it remember anything? Its memories with Naminé were planted, not real. All this time it's been picking fights with you over bogus memories. Isn't that right, Naminé? Behind that cute little face you do some awful things."

Sora said it was not true. He said it the way people say it when the arithmetic has already been done somewhere behind their eyes. "You are so STUPID. Don't you get it? Messing with people's memories is about all she's good at. She steps into people's hearts and rearranges their memory. If she wants, she can even draw new memories of things that never happened. The girl you've been dying to protect is a manipulative witch who shackles people's hearts with phony memories!"

"Lies, lies. All lies! An illusion Naminé made. Binding you in the chains of your own memory was central to our trap. It makes me tingle to think how easily you were duped. This was our chance to make the Keyblade master our puppet! We nearly had you. But that jerk Axel used Naminé to wreck everything! He betrayed us!"

Naminé said something on his behalf, and Larxene stopped bothering with Sora and turned round on her.

"Excuse me? It's a little late to grow a conscience, witch. Last I checked, YOU'RE the one who got him into this mess."

"I should tell you that I am in an EXTREMELY foul mood. Thanks to you, all our plans are toast!"

Sora said the promise still stood. He had been told inside of two minutes that the girl was a stranger, that the night had not happened and that the promise had been drawn for him like a picture, and he said it still stood.

"What what what? Do I detect DISTRESS? You don't even know her!"

"What an idiot! There is no promise, there never was! YOU ARE DELUSIONAL. Must you insist on playing the hero? Oh, whatever. It's your funeral. Nighty-night, you sham!"

Donald and Goofy came in at the top of the stairs, which settled the arithmetic.

"Right! It's always been the three of us."

"Have it your way. Thrice the pain for you means thrice the fun for me!"

The three of them put her down. She went the way the older one had gone, except that she was still talking.

"No. Nooooo!! I refuse to lose to a bunch of losers! I. I'm fading?! NO. this isn't. the way I. I won't. ALLOW."

Somewhere else in the castle a man who had not been told anything worked out most of it from an absence.

"First Vexen, and now Lexaeus is gone as well. What's to become of the Organization?"

Then she came out and stood where all of them could see her, and did the thing she had been unable to do for as long as she had been in the castle. She spoke first.

"Gawrsh, you must be Naminé! We're friends of Sora, I'm."

"Goofy, I know. And this is Donald."

Donald said something about what she had done to them, and she agreed with him before he had finished. "I don't mind. It's my fault, after all."

"I took the people and memories in Sora's heart, and little by little replaced them with false memories that I made."

Then she said the part that was for Sora, and she said it looking at him. "It was all a lie. Sora never promised me anything. Me being on the islands, that was a lie, too. This is our first meeting. I was never Sora's friend."

"I'm sorry. In your true memories, I was never there."

What she wanted was to put it back, and the obstacle she named was upstairs.

"Not right away. If we go to the thirteenth floor I can fix everything. But Marluxia."

"He said he'd keep me locked away in this castle forever if I didn't obey. I've been alone for so long."

"I'm. I'm so sorry."

Sora told her it was all right. She would not take it. "I know. I don't have the right."

So he explained why she did, and it took him a while, and he got there in the end by a route that had nothing clever in it. "It's like this. I'm really not happy about you messing with my memories. But you know, I can't really get mad at you for it, either. These memories you gave me. In my head, I know they're lies, but they still feel right. Like the promise I made. I said I would protect you and that I wouldn't make you cry, not ever. Naminé, if you cry now, I'll feel guilty, like I let you down."

"You're sweet, Sora."

"Okay. Be careful, Sora."

What Remains

Marluxia found Axel before Sora found either of them.

"You're a fool among fools to show your face here, traitor!"

"Why did you let her go? You and your cursed meddling! He was ours!"

Axel let him finish. "Traitor? I don't know what you're talking about."

"But you eliminated Vexen!"

Marluxia worked it out while he was still speaking, and did not enjoy the working out. "I see. A double agent. You've been investigating our conspiracy from the start."

Axel did not deny that either. He laid the whole of the other man's plan out on the table between them, in order, the way you read a list back to somebody to show them you have had it for a while.

"Right, your big plan. You use Naminé to rewrite Sora's memory piece by piece. He becomes her puppet. Then, using Naminé and Sora, you and Larxene overthrow the Organization. Did I get it right? 'Cause that would make YOU the traitor, Marluxia. Not me."

"Go ahead, then, strike!"

Marluxia came back to the killing. "Yeah, come to think of it. So what? All I did was weed the garden. And I had to be sure you two trusted me."

"Moving on. I believe you ordered me to 'rid us of our traitors.' I always follow orders, Marluxia."

Then he said the last of it.

"Larxene paid the price for disloyalty. You're next, Marluxia. In the name of the Organization you betrayed, I will annihilate you!"

Marluxia put the girl between them and stood behind her, and Axel looked at that for a moment and then put his hands down.

"What kind of game is this? You think cowering behind Naminé will stop me? Think again. Your little mascot can keep you company in the void. Farewell, Marluxia."

Marluxia did the rest of it by handing the fight to somebody who had been told for twelve floors that his job was to protect her.

"Oh, I think not. Are you listening, Sora? Axel is willing to harm Naminé just to get at me! Destroy him!"

Sora went at him, and Axel let it happen and remarked on it while it was happening.

"Well, well, Sora. Marluxia made you his puppet after all."

"Hmm. Listen, Sora. We've got more in common than you think. I'd rather not fight you, but I do have a reputation to think of!"

They fought, and Sora won that one as well. "You're not half bad! Looks like it was worth saving your hide after all."

"Sorry. I'd hate to kill the suspense."

Then he was not there either.

The room at the top was the last one, and the man who had given Sora the first card was standing in it.

"So you've destroyed Axel. You have my thanks, Sora. Or perhaps I should thank the power of the Keyblade. How I long to make it my own, and have the Organization at my mercy!"

Then he gave the order, and he gave it to her rather than to Sora, because she was the part of the machine that had never been meant to answer back.

"You cannot win as long as she is in my hands. Naminé. Erase Sora's memory!"

"No. Sora forgave me even though I deceived him. I could never break his heart! I don't care what you do to me. I won't hurt Sora!"

She was asked, then, whether she understood what she was refusing to do, and the answer was that she did.

"Yes. If you uproot the memories you planted, then Sora's heart will collapse and all his memories will be torn asunder."

"I'd prefer the Keyblade master unmarred, but even a riven heart can be rebuilt with time. Sora will yet be my slave. Do it, Naminé! Obliterate his memory!"

"Then you'll pay the price."

Sora said something in front of her, and got told what he had been standing in front of. "Ignorant fool! If Naminé destroys your memory, you'll be naught but a lifeless shell. Your heart will be unable to feel, to care! Just like that pathetic imitation of Riku."

"Guess again."

He had come in at the other end of the room and he had come in for Marluxia, and he was standing in front of the girl.

"But. you're an empty shell! You've been stripped of all you had!"

Sora said his name. "No, not Riku. Just someone's pet project."

"What did I ever have? My body and heart are fake. But there's one thing you can't take from me anyway, even if it is a lie! I will protect Naminé. Phantom promise or not, it's MY promise!"

"I'm not Riku. I'm fake. I can't remember when I was created, or why. All I've got left is you and Naminé. But those memories aren't real."

Somebody started to say something and he stopped them.

"It's all right. Don't worry about me."

"Sora, you're a good person. I don't have to be real to see how real your feelings are. That's good enough for me."

Then he was gone, and he had been the only one of them who left saying something kind.

"This is it, Sora! The final battle!"

"Know your place! You would chain your heart with false memories? Cast your heart's freedom aside? You turn from the truth because your heart is weak. You cannot defeat me!"

Sora beat him. What went down was not him. "You could say that. But what you destroyed was just an image of me. No more than a petty imitation."

"Drown in the heart-lorn world of nothingness! I shall scatter your heart to the empty winds!"

The second time it was him. He put a hand out toward Sora as he went, and what he went into was flower petals, and there was nothing standing there afterwards.

"We. we got him?!"

Sora locked the door behind them.

Then she told them what she had actually done, and it was not what any of them had thought.

"Hmm, where to begin. Naminé, I know it's not easy, but could you tell us what's going on?"

"So you're the reason the rest of us lost our memories, too. Can we ever get them back?"

"It. It doesn't work that way."

Jiminy asked the next one. "Is that the person who made you tamper with our memories?"

"Yes. Just because you can't remember something doesn't mean it's gone."

That was the first good news anybody had had in thirteen floors.

"So you can put them back together?"

She explained the shape of it then, and it was the first plain description anybody in that castle had given of what the castle was doing.

"Remembering one thing leads to remembering another, and then another. Your memories are connected, like links in a chain. Those same chains are what anchor us all together. I don't destroy memories. I just take apart the links and rearrange them. You still have all your memories."

Jiminy got to the end of that faster than the others did, and stopped in the middle of getting there. "Hey. Wait just a second! You said you'd have to undo the links you made. But that means."

"So the promise Sora made to keep you safe."

"I'm sorry. It's the only way. You have to choose, Sora. You can lose your memories of this castle and reclaim your own memories, or keep your memories here and give up the memories that you've lost."

He chose without going away to think about it.

"Okay, I understand! Who needs false memories, right? Especially when you have real memories of people who are really important to you. Anyone would say the same."

Then she told him what it would take.

"Yes, but first I have to undo the links I made. Then I have to gather up the memories scattered in your hearts and reconnect them. It will take time. But I think it will work. No, I'll MAKE it work. It's my turn to help you out."

"Yes, Jiminy. You won't be able to recall what happened in this castle."

"Naminé, can you put Riku's memory back to normal?"

Goofy had been quiet for a while and had been working on something, and what he had been working on was the one thing in the castle that nobody had thought to try.

"Then let's make a promise!"

"What you said back there got me thinking. It's easier to face the scary stuff when you've got a promise to keep!"

"That's easy. No matter what happens, even if we end up far apart or forget each other."

"Whatever happens, we're friends!"

Donald came in on the end of it, late and loud. "Of course! Why didn't I think of that!"

"But when we wake up, we won't remember you anymore."

She answered Goofy rather than the room. "You'll be fine. It might take a little time, but I'll take care of you."

"Good night. You too, Sora."

There were pods for them to sleep in while she worked, and she had got them from the one member of the Organization nobody in the castle had ever seen.

"It may have started with a lie, but I'm really glad I met you, Sora."

He said they should make one too, and she agreed to it as though she had been asked for something enormous.

"I guess you're right. Let's promise, then."

Then he was lying down in it and she was talking to him through the front of it, and she told him where to look for the rest of himself.

"Sora. The loose links will sink into the darkness in your heart. You won't be able to just reach in and pick the one you want. But there's another promise you made, a promise to someone you could never replace. She's your light. The light within the darkness. If you can remember her, all the memories lost in the shadows of your heart will come into the light."

She had the charm in her hand by then, and she turned it over where he could see it, so that he would know what had happened to it while he was not looking.

"Look at the good luck charm. I changed its shape when I changed your memory. But when you thought of her, it went back to the way it was. You're remembering."

"Don't worry. You'll forget me, but we have our promise, so I can come back to you."

"One day it'll be our light, the light that brings us together. I'll be in your heart until that time comes."

Then the front of it closed, and he went to sleep in a castle he would not remember, having been promised twice by two people, one of whom he had known all his life and could not name.

The Offer

He woke up in the dark, and the dark had no floor and no direction in it.

"Ungh. Where. where am I."

Something came back to him then, most of a thing, a door and somebody standing on the other side of it with him, and it stopped short of being a memory.

"The king! Where's the king?! Together we closed the door to darkness, and after that. Grr, why can't I remember?"

"Sleep. Here, between light and dark."

There was somebody talking to him who was not there to be looked at.

"Your king is far away. Sleep, and leave the war with darkness in his hands."

The offer was made twice, once as the dark and once as the way out of it, and the second one had a card in it.

"Can you face the truth? Here, blanketed by the darkness, sleep is safety."

"It is a door to the truth. Take it, and your sleep ends."

Riku took it, and said what he said about it, and it was the first thing he had said in the dark that sounded like himself.

"This seemed like a boring place to take a nap anyway."

"That was very well said, Riku."

"A door to the truth, huh?"

Everything the voice had said had been about the dark, and Riku had heard talk like that before from somebody who had meant it about him personally, and he put a name to it out loud.

"I thought it was you, Ansem."

"All you have been talking about is the darkness. I can only assume you wanna pull me back in, so you can play Puppet Master."

The Lowest Basement

Where the card put him down was a castle he knew, at the bottom of a building he did not.

"This is Maleficent's castle! How'd I end up HERE? Someone must have brought me here while I was sleeping. But who?"

"What you see is not real. It's the world of your memory."

Riku looked around at it, and it was the right castle in every particular. "The things you remember from your time at Maleficent's castle became a card, and that card made this world. You've seen everything here before, haven't you?"

"Ordinarily. yes. You would meet the people in your memories."

Higher up, two of them noticed the door at the bottom had been used.

"What is going on here, Zexion? I want an explanation."

He got a line of reasoning instead, and he did not care for where it went.

"You're only number 6! How dare you."

"Don't be absurd. The witch is gone. She cannot return from the realm of darkness of her own volition."

"We wait, see what develops."

Lexaeus said the other thing last, the way a man mentions weather he expects to have to walk through. "And then there is Axel. Who knows what that one is thinking."

She was waiting for him in the room she had always waited in, and she was made of what he remembered of her.

"Of all the people I could run into, it had to be you."

He did not argue with her about her. He put the whole of it on himself instead, in front of her, and that was not what she had come for.

"There was a time I did want you around. I surrendered my heart to the dark. But never again. You and your darkness have nothing to offer. All I did was lose myself. Empty myself! I'm finished with all that. If I'm stuck seeing people like you, people of the dark, I'll take you out one by one."

"That's fine with me. I turned to darkness because my heart was weak. I hate that weakness. It's like I'm my own enemy. And seeing people like you embrace the darkness just makes it worse! Enough talk, Maleficent."

Then she was a dragon, and then she was not anything.

Something happened to him during the fight that had not happened before, and it took him a moment to work out that it was a sense he had not had before.

"Something smells. funny. What's that scent? It's so familiar. Darkness. It's the smell of darkness. I can't believe this is happening. The darkness even seeped into my skin."

The voice that answered that was not the hooded one. It came from further in and it wanted something specific.

"You called out my name. You have been thinking about me. You're afraid of the darkness I command. Good. The more you think of me, the closer my return draws. And when I have awoken, I will take hold. Your heart will be mine!"

"That's not gonna happen!"

"I won't lose to darkness. Not today."

He went up four more floors and every one of them was somewhere he had been. Traverse Town. Agrabah. The whale. Neverland.

On the first of the four, light came into the room that had not come from anything in it.

"Your Majesty!"

"You betcha! Riku, you're not alone. Listen careful now, Riku. The light'll never give up on you. You'll always find it, even in the deepest darkness! But you have to believe!"

"I can only send a little bit of my power here. But I have a request."

Riku went to take hold of him and did not take hold of anything. "You're. an illusion? My hand passes right through you."

"This card showed me the way. I was lookin' for the way out of the realm of darkness, and then this card came along. As soon as I picked it up, it showed me your heart, waaay out beyond the darkness. And that's how I tracked you down. I guess the card thought it belonged with you."

Riku asked him the only thing about any of it he wanted answered. "You're with me, aren't you?"

"But we shook hands, in our hearts. We're connected, you and me."

"And I'll try to find a way to reach you. I'll come, I promise."

Something in Riku objected to all of it, and it objected in a voice. "You meddlesome king!"

The one who came down to look at him came with a question rather than a fight, at first.

"Are you with Ansem?!"

"You are half correct. Let us say that it's not the Ansem you know. He is Ansem and he is not, which is to say he is nobody."

The man went on.

"He belongs to neither the light nor the dark, but walks the twilight between. As do I. And for that matter. Ha ha, that's right. We have much in common."

"Riddles were never my thing. Try again."

"Oh ho, so it's a fight you want. Very well, a fight you shall get!"

Riku fought him for the reason he had just been given. The man smelled of the thing Riku had found in himself in the lowest basement. "Like you said, there really is darkness left inside of me. But so what?! Darkness is my enemy! And so are you for reeking of that awful smell!"

The man came out of it and said what the fight had been for.

"Ha ha ha. This battle has made it clear. The darkness coursing through you is a tremendous power. All you needed was the right provocation."

"Precisely. Your fiery reaction provided just the data I needed. You have my thanks, Riku!"

Somewhere he could not be seen, the same man was talking to something he had built.

"How did it feel to fight the real Riku?"

"Before that, wouldn't you like to meet another hero?"

It answered him.

"Nothing's definite, but yes, it may come to that. I intend to make good use of you."

"Didn't I say I intended to make good use of you?"

What was standing in his way when he came back out was Riku. "Huh? What are you supposed to be?"

"Surprised? I guess you should be. After all, I look just like you."

Riku said nothing to that, so it went on without being asked. "I'll tell you what I am. I'm an exact replica of you that Vexen made from your data."

"So you're a fake me."

It objected to the word, and the objection went straight to the one difference it had been built to be pleased about.

"Not a fake! I don't care if you're 'real', you're not better! We share the same body and the same talents, but there is one easy way to tell us apart though. Unlike you, I fear nothing."

"Are you. calling me a coward?"

It had not used the word. It used the next thing instead, which came to the same.

"It's nice having darkness on my side. You are SO missing out. How can you be scared of something that can be so thrilling?"

"Hey, Fake! I thought I heard you say you were gonna wipe the floor with me."

Riku had heard as much of it as he intended to. "Then let's fight now!"

They fought, and it stopped before either of them had finished it, because the one who had said he feared nothing decided to go.

"No way. I'm not a coward."

"Come out! Show yourself, Fake!"

"So now the coward is playing tough guy. That's cute. See you next time, Real Thing. Try not to miss me."

When it came back they discussed it in front of it.

"This is your chance to get your hands on the real Riku's memories. All you need is that card and a little help from Naminé. Maybe we'll get her to make you forget you're fake. Better yet, we could remake your heart so you can be just like the real Riku."

"Any objections, Vexen? Do you or don't you want to test Sora?"

It had an objection of its own, and made it, and that was not in the specification.

"Hey, hold on! What do you mean, remake my heart?! The real Riku's a wimp who can't deal with the darkness inside him. What do I want with the heart of a loser?"

"I'll show YOU hurt!"

She put it on the floor without much effort and explained the arrangement to it while it was down there.

"Stupid little toy! What made you think you could even SCRATCH me? But look on the bright side. Naminé will erase the memory of me knocking you flat along with everything else. She'll implant the loveliest little memories you could ever hope for. So what if they're lies?"

It got up and said something, and the something was not to her.

"Knock it off, Larxene. Naminé wants to forget about Sora."

"Don't worry, Naminé. I'll make whatever's hurting you go away. I swear it on the good luck charm you gave me. I'll be back."

Larxene stayed behind with the girl and went through the work item by item.

"Why so glum, Naminé? Is something on your mind? Feeling bad about tinkering with Sora's memory? Or maybe you."

"Simply amazing. It's like you completely rebuilt his heart. The good luck charm was an especially nice touch. I didn't know you could use memories to transform objects like cards into keepsakes. Just like you changed Kairi's good luck charm. It won't be long before Sora forgets her completely! And then he'll be yours to."

"So what? There's your incentive not to screw up. Rewrite Sora's heart, and you can be somebody, not just the shadow of somebody. In Sora's heart, you can be real."

Vexen came back to Riku wanting to talk about the thing he had made, and got nowhere with it.

"What are you saying? Isn't he just a copy of me?"

"When have I been afraid of the dark?"

"Be quiet!"

He had been counting the cards the whole way down, and there was one of them left.

"Just one card left. If I get through this, will I be free of the darkness?"

Lexaeus, Zexion, and the Replica's End

Four more floors, and every one of them somewhere he had been. Wonderland. The Coliseum. Halloween Town. Atlantica.

The big one was waiting in one of them, and Riku knew what he was before he had finished turning round. "That scent. You're another one of those Nobodies."

"You've done well thus far. But to possess your powers, and yet fear the darkness. What a waste."

Riku denied it before the man had finished putting it to him.

"I sense that you do. You're also capable of controlling the darkness. Cast away your useless fear. Open your heart. Embrace the darkness."

"I do not. fear it!"

"Then you lose both light and darkness, and disappear! I, Lexaeus, will not yield to the frail-heart of an infantile coward! Now, stop resisting, and let the darkness in!"

They fought, and it was the hardest thing Riku had been given so far, and he won it and could not stand up afterwards. "You're finished!"

"Too slow."

"You were too much trouble."

The answer came out of Riku's mouth. It was two words Riku had used himself a little earlier, and the rest of it was done with his hands.

"Too slow."

Lexaeus understood what had hold of the boy only at the end, and what he said then he said to somebody who was not in the room.

"You are the Superior's? Forgive me, Zexion. This was a fight I should not have started."

Riku came round to an empty floor and a name he could not account for. "Lexeaus?!"

It stayed in him after that, and it was patient about it.

"I see you now. clearly."

"Riku. I can see your heart."

"That's it, remember me. Let me drift into your heart."

Higher in the castle something large went out, and Riku, who could smell such things now, felt the room change. "One of the scents has died, a really strong one."

The one who came to tell him whose it had been came to tell him something else as well.

"That was Marluxia, keeper of this castle. Ex-keeper, I should say. The Keyblade master just finished him off."

"Keyblade. You mean Sora. Sora is here?"

He did not get back a yes or a no.

"Would you like to see him? Or should I say, can you face him?"

"What's that mean?"

He was told it in the order that would do the most damage, and that was not the order the facts came in.

"Darkness and Ansem's shadow nest within your heart. Aren't you ashamed to face Sora in that state? Sora's fate is to battle the darkness. As the hero of light, he must oppose hosts of the dark, in other words, you. If you don't believe me, then you had best see the truth for yourself."

"You've been to a number of worlds in your memory before this one. And in those worlds, you met only dark beings. That's all that's left in your heart: dark memories. Your memories of home are gone, each and every one."

Riku said something about his friends, and that was the door the other one had been waiting at. "And who threw away those friends? Maybe it's your own actions that you forgot. You destroyed your home!"

"The islands you grew up on were sundered, scattered. Many hearts were lost to the darkness. Because of what YOU did!"

"You hated being an islander, cut off from other worlds. So you opened the door to darkness and destroyed the islands. YOU did that! And now you belong to the darkness. Look at what you are!"

Then the floor was sand and the air was moving and it was warm, and the place had a shape he did not have to think about to walk in.

"I never thought I'd miss the island winds so much. Funny, there was a time I couldn't wait to get off this rock. And now I'm acting all relieved. Is that? Hey! What's with you guys? I don't think I've EVER seen the three of you so quiet. What, is there something on my face? Guys?!"

They went without answering him. Then there was one more of them standing further down the beach, and she went the same way while he was still crossing the sand toward her.

"Kairi. Hey, Kairi. Don't tell me you. Ah. No, no, NO!"

Sora was standing where Kairi had been.

"Yeah, I recognize you. I can see exactly what you've become! Look at you, shrinking away from the light. You're not Riku anymore. You're just a pawn of the darkness. So be it. It's time for you to face the light!"

"That's a lie! I remember everyone from the islands! Tidus and Selphie and Wakka. Kairi and Sora, too! They're my. my. They're my friends."

"Stop it, Sora! Don't you recognize me?!"

The light came up around him and it was not a light he could stand in.

"I'm. fading. Consumed by the light."

Then the light let go of him, and the girl was the reason it did.

He came out of the light knowing exactly who had put him in it, and he had not needed to see anything to know it.

"You reek of darkness. Even the light can't block the smell."

"I guess I followed the darkness right to you."

He said the rest of it while the light was still going out around him.

"I know who I am."

"Can't move."

The one who had made the light did not understand how it had failed.

"Im. Impossible! How did you find me in the light!"

"Heh. After all your protests you're still just another darkling."

Riku did not answer that either. "Since when? You were terrified of the dark before."

"This is absurd. Then I shall make you see. That your hopes are nothing. Nothing but a mere illusion!"

Riku hit him, and what came out of him was not an argument any more. "Ngaah. Hypocrite!"

"What, what IS he?! No one's ever worn the darkness the way he does. It's NOT POSSIBLE!"

"What is he? No one has ever worn the darkness the same way he does! That's impossible!"

He got himself as far as a room where the rest of them met, and there were two people in it already.

"Vexen, Larxene, Lexaeus. I wonder who will be next in line."

"Me? No way. I already took my pounding from Sora. He thinks I'm done for good. Nope, I think it'll be Marluxia next. For defying the Organization and targeting Sora. I hope he moves exactly as his heart commands him to. So, what about you? I thought you guys had plans for Riku."

Then he turned to the copy, which had been standing there the whole time being talked over, and offered it the one thing nobody else had offered it.

"All you need is the kind of power that the real Riku doesn't have. If you can get that, you can be a new person, not Riku, nor anybody else. You won't just be a copy of someone. You will be unique, your OWN self."

"What are you saying to him?"

Zexion saw where it was going about a second and a half before it went there. "Waaah! Riku?! Oh. Oh, yes, of course. Vexen's replica. Good thinking. We can use this Riku to defeat the real one. Axel?"

"You can't do this!"

"No. STOP!!!"

It took him.

"So sorry, Zexion. You just found out way too much."

It came for Riku with what it had taken, and it had stopped arguing about which of them was real. "Hold it, Real Thing. Well, well. You've changed. Last time we met you were afraid of the darkness, but not anymore."

"'I'm me,' he says. It must be nice, being real. A fake like me could never get away with saying that. That's right, I'm a phony! The way I look, the way I feel, everything!"

"I thought by finding some new strength, I could finally be someone. Someone who is not at all you! But nothing changes. I'm still just empty! Everything about me is borrowed. As long as you're around, I'll never be more than a shadow!"

Riku put him down. "So. this is the end. Figures. But I'm not afraid. Good riddance to an artificial life. I never had a real heart. Even what I'm feeling now is probably fake."

"What happens when someone who's not real dies? Where will my heart go? That is, if it doesn't disappear completely."

Riku answered him, and did not hedge it, and it was the only answer anybody gave that thing in either half of the castle. "It'll go somewhere. Probably the same place my heart will go."

"A faithful replica until the very end. That's. okay."

Twilight Town and Naminé's Choice

The next floor was a town at evening that he had never been to.

"Where am I now? I don't remember this place. Your Majesty, do you know where we are? Your Majesty?"

The King was there, and this time when Riku got to him there was something there to get to. "Your Majesty, it that you?"

"This time, you're not an illusion. I'm so glad that you could make it here."

"But how did you get here? I thought it was too far."

Kairi was in the town as well, and Riku looked at her for a while before he said anything, and what he said was not her name.

"Are you Naminé?"

She did not argue. What she said instead was about somebody else entirely.

"He won't forget. No matter how much I change his memory, Sora will never forget Kairi. Memories of me will just make his feelings for Kairi stronger. Because. Because I'm her shadow."

Sora was further in, lying down, with something closed over him. "Sora! What have you done to Sora?"

"Nothing, he's just sleeping. He has to, to get his memory back."

Then she told him the thing she had come to tell him, and it ran against everything he had been telling himself since the lowest basement.

"You won't fade. You can't fade. No power can defeat you, not the light, not the dark. So don't run from the light, and don't fear the darkness. Both will make you stronger."

"Especially darkness. Because that power is yours alone. The darkness in your heart is vast and deep, but if you can stare into it unflinching, you'll never know fear again."

"Just be brave. Know that the darkness is there and don't give in. Do that, and you'll gain strength unlike any other. You'll be able to escape the deepest darkness."

She did not get to the end of it. He got to the end of it for her, without being asked and without stopping to think about it.

"And I'll be able to see through the brightest light."

"Follow the darkness, Riku. It'll show you the way to the friends you miss."

"You know I do. And I will! The darkness, MY darkness, will show me the way! Darkness, awaken!"

She told him about Sora then. "So Sora chose to forget about this castle, and get his old memories back?"

She said the same choice was on the table for him, and he could not see why.

"Why me, too? No one's messed with my memories."

"It's not about your memories. It's about your darkness. In your heart is darkness, and in that darkness is Ansem. Right now, he's at bay, but eventually he'll awaken, and he'll conquer you when he does. Before that happens, let me lock your heart tight. I can make it so Ansem never escapes."

"The darkness in your heart will be sealed along with your memory. You'll stop remembering the darkness. You can go back to the way you used to be. It's your choice, Riku. So. choose."

He went somewhere else with it first. That was his way of taking a moment. "That's it. When this slacker wakes up, I'll tell him off. I told him to take care of Kairi, and here he is just taking a nap! But I can't chew him out like he deserves, if I've been asleep."

Then he turned it down.

"I don't need my heart locked. I'm ready, I'm gonna fight Ansem."

He told her at the door that she had never fooled him, and gave the reason, and the reason was not one anybody else in the castle could have given.

"I knew when I met you. You and Kairi smell the same. Look after Sora."

"I didn't know. I hoped. I want you to face the darkness, because you're the one who can."

The hooded man gave him a coat, and it was the coat the rest of them wore.

"The Organization will pursue you. Like a pack of hunting dogs, they will sneak up on you if they sense your presence. However, this cloak that is worn by Nobodies will render their eyes and their noses useless. The ears, not so. They wear this to give themselves protection from being devoured by darkness. Is it clear? Even the Organization cannot rule the darkness."

"The card will draw out your heart's darkness. Finish your business with Ansem."

The Road to Dawn

At the bottom of the last flight he asked the King for something and could not get to the end of asking it. "I'm glad you said that, but I have to face Ansem alone."

"There's no point in doing this if I can't do it on my own. But I have a favor to ask. If Ansem wins, he's going to enslave me. If that happens, I want you to destr."

"Huh? You're not listening. I want you to destroy Ansem and me with."

He did not get to the end of that one either.

"No can do! I already made my choice. No matter what happens, I'm going to be there to help you. I'm not backing down. Unless you don't believe I'll come through for you."

"It's my choice to believe or not. I know you'd never let me down, Your Majesty."

He found the last room by smell, which was the only sense he had left that he trusted.

"Ansem! Where are you? Show yourself!"

"I smell you Ansem. Show yourself!"

The answer came from where it had been the whole time.

"Riku. Riku."

"I know you can feel it. The grip that I have on your heart. You have let in the darkness, Riku. That means very soon your heart shall become an all-consuming darkness."

Riku said he was not what he had been. "Yes, you are."

"The deeper the darkness runs inside you, the stronger I become. Controlling you is effortless. Must you interfere again!?"

Then it made its case, and the case was that the two of them were the same thing and that Riku's objection was cowardice. "I have watched you fight. I know your strength. Your skill with darkness has grown. It has become more mature. And yet, why. Why do you accept the darkness, but still refuse me? You know you and I are similar. We both follow where the darkness leads. Indeed, we are the same, so why? Does some part of your heart still have a fear of the dark?"

Riku drew. "You are a fool. You should know my powers well by now."

"Yeah, I know. Or did you forget? I used all the power you had to give-and Sora still beat me. I'm not at all impressed with your power."

That ended the talking.

"Very well. In that case. You shall sink into the abyss!"

"Insolent brat!"

"Ansem! You're finished!"

He finished it. What was left of the voice used the last of itself on a schedule rather than on a plea. "This. is hardly. the end. Your darkness, I gave it. all to you. My dark shadow. lingers. Someday. Someday. I will return!"

Something came loose in Riku when the other thing went, and what stopped it was the King, who had said he would be there and was.

"Unnh. The king. protected me? Your Majesty, where are you? Please answer! You're with me. aren't you."

In the entrance hall he said the thing he had been carrying since the fight ended. It had not entirely worked.

"I don't know if I can. It's still there. His scent. it's faint, but not gone. I can't go home until it is. His darkness may still have a hold on me."

The King had been thinking about it the whole way up and had arrived somewhere he had not expected to arrive.

"Your darkness belongs to you. Just like your light. Until now, I thought darkness was nothing but bad. But my time with you made me change my mind. You've chosen a road I never thought of. Light and dark, back to back. With you, they mingle in a way no one's ever seen before. I want to see where that road leads. And if it's okay, I want to walk the road with you."

"Wow, Your Majesty, I don't know what to say. Thanks."

Outside, the hooded man put it to him one more time, as two things.

"Will you take the road to light, or the road to darkness?"

"What are you making me choose now?"

He did not take long over it.

"Neither. I'm taking the middle road."

"You mean the twilit road to nightfall?"

"No. The road to dawn."

They went out of the castle together in the coats they had been given, and Riku thanked him again on the way, and got laughed at for the title.

"Oh, you don't have to call me that, heh heh!"