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. He gave him a name, Roxas, and a number, thirteen, and brought him to a white castle in a city where it was always night.

For six days he did what he was told and said almost nothing. On the sixth the man in the coat found him somewhere dark, beside the water. He stood next to Roxas and spoke to him as if to someone else. "You have been with us for six days now. The time has come. Sora." Roxas asked him what that meant and got nothing back.

Later he would tell it himself, the way a person tells where they come from. "You gotta figure, everything starts someplace. The closest thing for me is when I was just seven days old, and I met her." He had not had much to go on. "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."

On the seventh day another of the coats sat down beside him. He was tall and thin, with red hair swept back in spikes and a purple mark under each eye, and he was the kind who talked. "Heya, Roxas." Roxas said nothing at all. "Something I can help you with there, chatterbox?" Then the red-haired one remembered something. "Ah, I remember now. We were supposed to convene in the Round Room today. Blegh, meetings."

Roxas said the two words back, turning them over, and they were the first thing he said to anyone. "Round. Room?" The red-haired one grinned. "Yup. Apparently the boss man's got some big news. Wanna head over there now?" Roxas got up. "Alrighty then. Follow me."

The room was round and white. Its chairs stood around the walls at different heights, and every chair had somebody in it. The man who had named Roxas sat in the highest. He was tall, with silver hair and amber eyes, and he was the Superior of them all. His name was Xemnas. "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."

Below the chairs a girl was standing in a coat of her own with the hood up, and she did not move. A woman in one of the chairs, fair-haired, with two strands standing up from her head like antennae, looked down at Roxas instead. "Eww. You're awake?"

A man with long blue hair and an X-shaped scar across his face gave Roxas to the red-haired one to look after, in front of everyone. The red-haired one was not pleased. "Oh boy. What, are you making me the kid's mentor now?" Then he shrugged. "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." Somebody told him: Xion. "Right. I knew that." Roxas said the name to himself, and the red-haired one approved. "Got it memorized, Roxas?"

The Superior had views about names. "A name defines an object. Describes the span of it. Gives it purpose."

Roxas was told to keep a journal, and had nothing to put in it. "What am I supposed to write about?"

After that they passed him around. Each of them taught him one thing, but none of them taught him anything about himself. A man with long rose-coloured hair introduced himself with care. "Roxas, was it? I never properly introduced myself. I am Marluxia, Number XI." A thin man with pale hair looked at the Keyblade as though he wanted to take it apart. "A Keyblade wielder. This could prove quite enlightening." A man with an eyepatch, a scar down his cheek and grey-streaked hair tied back was amused by everything. "Hey, Roxas. Welcome to the program, as they say."

The red-haired one was Axel, and he taught Roxas all their names, one after another, and made him say them back until he had them. On the eighth day Roxas was given work. He did it without understanding what he had done. He wrote about it later. "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."

The work was easy, and he said so, flatly. "I said. I could have done that blindfolded."

Afterwards Axel took him to the top of a clock tower in the town where Roxas had first opened his eyes, with the town underneath them and the sun going down on it, and gave him an ice cream on a stick, pale blue. Roxas tasted it. "It's really salty. but sweet, too." Axel called it the icing on the cake, after a job well done, and Roxas wrote that down. "Axel called it the 'icing on the cake' after a successful mission."

Axel had a suggestion. "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?" And he wrote something down about Roxas that evening that he showed nobody. "He's not a bad kid, but he's spacey. Good fighter, though."

The Clock Tower

Over the next days they told him what the work was for, and then what he was. Marluxia told him the first part. Roxas repeated it back to be sure. "So that's what the Organization does? Collect hearts?" He wrote it down that night. "If I collect enough hearts, I can complete Kingdom Hearts. Then I'll be whole."

The second part came the next day. The Organization's members had no hearts at all, and neither did he. Roxas stared. "I don't have a heart?" The young man with grey hair falling over one eye explained it as if reading from a card. "Roxas, you and I and all the Organization's members are what we call Nobodies."

Roxas put the question into his journal, which was the only place anyone would let him ask it. "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?"

They taught him that the Keyblade set hearts free from the Heartless it struck, and that the hearts went to make something called Kingdom Hearts, which would make the Organization whole. Zexion put it simply. "Kingdom Hearts will complete us. That's the Organization's goal." Roxas wrote that down, along with what it did not tell him. "They taught me that my Keyblade releases hearts. But why do I have it? How did I learn to use it? The more I learned, the less I seemed to know."

Vexen watched him fight as if he were an experiment, and said so. "Hee hee. Interesting. So much to inspect. To dissect." And the next day, satisfied: "Hee hee. It appears my conclusions were, once again, flawless." Zexion wondered about the girl instead. "Number XIV's name. I wonder if it bears some significance."

Not all of them wanted anything to do with him, and Larxene wanted it least of all. "What do you want? I'm busy. Go hit your head against the glass or something." Zexion was brisk. "Yes, what is it? Don't waste my time with idle chatter." Marluxia was courteous and cold. "Your task is clear. Strike down the Heartless and collect hearts."

By the fourteenth day he had started asking himself a question about the one person who was not like that. "So does that mean me and him are friends?" Axel was writing about him the same day, and was less sure. "Still, this kid's supposed to be the Keyblade master's Nobody? I don't see it."

But they kept going up the tower. Roxas wrote it down as if it were the most important thing that happened to him, and perhaps it was. "Every day after work, I've been meeting Axel at the clock tower to have sea-salt ice cream." Luxord, a fair-haired man with a short beard who played cards with anyone who would sit down, approved of that. "We all need a little break every now and again." Even Zexion had a good word for him by then. "Your work has been improving by leaps and bounds." And Marluxia, strangely: "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." A few days later she very nearly said some of it to his face, and caught herself in the middle. "Is it true you're almost semi-competent now? Maybe we should've let you in on. Nothing."

Axel told him where she was going. "The Organization's got a second castle situated in the world between worlds. It's called Castle Oblivion. Got it memorized?" He teased Roxas about how far he had come. "Right, that first week you could barely form a sentence. But come on, you're still kind of a zombie."

Somewhere in those weeks the girl came up the tower with them for the first time, and it was Roxas who asked her. She had done well that day, he told her. "You did great. In fact, you deserve a little something extra." She had no idea what he meant. "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. He told Roxas before he went, and Roxas wrote down the only reason he could think of for being told. "He told me because we're friends." Axel was writing the same night about what he had been doing with his days. "Me and his Nobody have been meeting up for ice cream the last few days."

Six of them went. That was half the Organization, and the castle felt emptier for it. Xigbar liked the quiet. "It's nice in here with the loudmouths gone." He counted them off on his fingers. "We sent a total of six members over to Castle Oblivion. That's about half our number." Luxord missed his card games. "What shall I do without half the poker league?" He shuffled his cards anyway. "No use fretting the absence of others. They simply lose this round by no-show."

With Axel gone, Roxas was sent out with the girl every day. She had nobody else to talk to, so she began talking to him. One morning she pushed her hood back, and he saw that she was a girl about his own age, with black hair and blue eyes. "Roxas. Good luck today." He went up the tower alone at first. "Afterwards I went and had ice cream by myself." The woman at the shop had told him something useful. "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 Xion, and he put them in the journal 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 never in, other people were writing about her too. Vexen, at Castle Oblivion, was proud of his work. "No. i, my finest Replica, has proven an even greater success than anticipated." Zexion reported to nobody in particular. "Marluxia has succeeded in leading the Keyblade master to the castle." And Lexaeus, who seldom wrote anything, wrote about the others. "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 came without a name. Xigbar told them. "Okay? As if. Word has it at least one of the folks we sent to Castle Oblivion has been terminated." Roxas asked what was left of a Nobody when it was destroyed, and Xigbar told him: nothing. Roxas wrote it down. "Xigbar said nothing's left of Nobodies once we're gone, because we have no hearts to leave behind." At Castle Oblivion Zexion was asking the other question. "Why else eliminate Vexen? He simply wanted to do research."

Xion looked for Roxas that morning and did not find him. "I guess we're not working together today."

Some time that day Roxas had collapsed, and he did not wake up. The Superior asked Saïx one thing about it. "Will he wake from this?" He was told it depended on what was being done to somebody's memory a long way off, and he understood. "Then much hinges on Castle Oblivion."

Somewhere else, on no day anyone wrote down, the man in red robes and bandages stood over a girl who was trying to put a boy's memory back together, and neither of them was getting anywhere. "You seem to be struggling." She said something about Roxas, and he was puzzled. "A Nobody?" He was not worried for him. "Oh, I think he can do without a memory or two."

She said something he did not like, and he put it 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?" She would not answer. "Then so be it. The gloves must come off." She said something about the boy in the black coat, and he was cold about it. "Those Nobodies had no business existing in the first place, as you know fully well, Naminé." He looked at the work in front of them. "It appears we've come to a standstill."

Xion came to see Roxas every day while he slept. She sat by his bed and told him about her day, as if he could hear. "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." And she left something on his bed each time.

He woke on the fiftieth day, and she was there. "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." There were shells on the table by the bed. She had brought them, one from every world she had been sent to. "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, and wrote about it that night. "I held it up to my ear, and I could hear the ocean. Why did it sound so familiar?" Xion was writing about him the same night. "Being with him feels strange. Familiar. Like listening to the waves crash up against the shore." When he asked if she was all right, she did not quite answer. "I'm fine. Thanks. It's just."

The rest of the news from Castle Oblivion came on the fifty-first day, all at once. Roxas was told Axel was gone with the others. "It's hard to come to grips with the idea that Axel is gone. I feel. choked up?" He went up the tower the next day anyway. "I sit up on the clock tower, but no one comes. Not Axel, not even Xion."

But Axel was not gone. He was writing, the same day, somewhere nobody could see. "My orders were to end the traitors, but I think by this point, I fit that bill better than anybody."

He came back on the seventy-first day without warning, and Roxas was lost for words. "After work, Axel turned up. Just like that, out of nowhere. I didn't know what to say." Axel told him how it had ended at Castle Oblivion, in one word. "Correction: the weaklings were annihilated."

Xigbar was writing about it too. "Saïx had a hand in what went down at Castle Oblivion, well, more like a whole arm." And Axel, reporting to Saïx, was almost admiring. "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." To everyone else he said nothing about the other five, then or later, and he put the reason in his report. "When it comes to what befell our late comrades at Castle Oblivion, ambiguity suits me just fine."

Roxas only wanted one thing. "I wonder when me and Axel and Xion will all get to have ice cream together." The next day he tried, and could not find her. "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 in the only way anyone in the Organization measured it. "If I can't collect hearts anymore, the Organization has no use for me."

They found her the next day, and told her they had been looking. She could not look at them. "I can't. I can't use the Keyblade anymore. And without it, I can't do my job." Roxas asked her what had happened. "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. I swat them in one place and they just pop up in another."

"I'm supposed to be collecting hearts. Those are my orders. Without the Keyblade. I'm useless." And the thing she was really afraid of: "They're gonna turn me into a Dusk once they find out they don't need me." A Dusk was the lowest kind of Nobody, a pale grey thing with no eyes and a zipped-shut mouth, that moved as if it had no bones. Roxas asked Axel if anything could be done, and Axel could not lie to him. "Wish there was. But. it's just like Xion said. No Keyblade, no can do."

So Roxas said he would do the work for both of them, and not tell anyone. She could hardly believe it. "You don't mind?" He did not. She turned to Axel, shyly. "Thanks. So. Axel, does that mean you and I can be friends?" Axel said it did. "Thank you. Roxas, Axel, thank you!"

The three of them sat on the tower together for the first time that evening, and Roxas wrote it down 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." Axel wrote something else, which he showed neither of them. "Xion is a girl, and she looks just like Naminé."

A Stick for a Keyblade

Xion wrote down the fear she would not say aloud. "But what am I going to do if I never get the Keyblade back?"

Roxas had an idea. On the missions they shared, he gave her his Keyblade to fight with, so the hearts would still be set free and counted to her, and nobody would know. She was reluctant to take it. "I dunno about this." He insisted. "I guess. I can. But Roxas. What are you gonna use?" He picked something up off the ground and swung it. She stared at it. "Roxas, that's a stick."

He meant it, and she gave in. "Okay, if you're sure. Thanks, Roxas." For a stretch of weeks she used his Keyblade and he used whatever was to hand, and she apologised for it about once a day. "I'm sorry, Roxas. My taking your Keyblade must make things harder for you." And every evening, handing it back: "Thanks, Roxas. You can have this back."

They were sent to the same few places that season: a city of sand with a cave outside it, and a castle with long corridors. In the city a big blue genie asked who they were, and Xion hissed at Roxas. "Psst! Roxas, change the subject!" Roxas wrote down what the genie had said about himself and his friend. "The Genie we met in Agrabah said he and his friend Al are 'inseparable.'"

On the ninety-fourth day the Superior called them all up to the top of the castle to show them something. Xion saw Roxas off in the morning. "Good luck today." That evening, over the city that was always dark, a great heart-shaped moon hung in the sky, and the Superior spread his arms to it. "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."

Roxas wrote it down that night. "He showed us Kingdom Hearts, a big heart-shaped moon floating up there in the night sky." Axel told Xion what it meant for them. "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." And later, easily: "Once Kingdom Hearts is complete, you'll be able to do all kinds of things."

Roxas wrote down something else the next day that nobody explained to 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." Xion wrote the same thing in different words. "Neither Roxas or I have any memory of our human lives."

On the ninety-sixth day it came back to her. She held out her hand and nothing happened, and then she tried again. "I don't know. Let me give it another try." And the Keyblade was there. "I don't believe it! Roxas, it worked! Thank you so much!" She showed Axel on the tower that evening, like a trick. "I'd like to dedicate this Keyblade summoning to my good friends Roxas and Axel."

When Roxas asked about it later, she was cheerful. "Yeah, everything's fine now. I owe it all to you and Axel." Roxas wrote it down plainly. "Afterwards Xion remembered how to summon her own Keyblade, so I guess we're out of trouble." And Axel, in his report that night, wrote something he had not written before. "This has to have been what it was like, friendship."

The next morning Saïx split them onto separate missions. Xion started to argue and stopped herself. "What? Why? But how can. Never mind."

Roxas wondered about the other two while he worked. "I wonder if Axel and Xion feel the same way." Demyx, a lanky young man with sandy hair who avoided work whenever he could, wrote a complaint that day. "Every day it's work, work, work. I'm dead bored, and I'd kill for some vacay."

Exceptional

For a long stretch after that, nothing changed. The work went on, the three of them went up the tower afterwards, and the days had numbers and nothing else. On the hundred and seventeenth day Xigbar told Roxas something about himself, and Roxas wrote it 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."

He told Xion, and she had already worked out what the word meant when it was used about her. "Special just means different. Because I'm a mistake." And then, more quietly: "Well, we may both be exceptional, Roxas. But I don't think we're the same."

Axel told Roxas why the sunset was red, 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 had a harder question, one that Xaldin, a big man with long black dreadlocks, had put into his head, about caring for something and whether it made you weak. Xion took it up. "Why would caring about something be a weakness?" Axel shrugged, because the question was really about having a heart. "Couldn't tell ya. I don't have one."

Roxas asked 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. I guess the closest thing we Nobodies have got is our past. You know, memories of the stuff we couldn't bear to lose, back when we couldn't bear to lose it." Roxas said he did not feel that way about anything. "Because you're not so complicated. But don't take it personal. Most Nobodies aren't."

Xion said the other part of it to Axel alone, one evening when Roxas was working late. "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." Axel asked if she remembered something. "No. It's not quite like that. Well, I dunno. Maybe these ARE memories. It just seems weird that they're mine."

Then she compared herself with Roxas. "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 someone in a coat like hers was waiting in it. He was a young man with silver hair, and when he saw her face he stopped. "Your face. Who are you really? And why do you have a Keyblade?" She would not answer first. "Tell me first. why you are dressed as one of us." He almost laughed. "Fair enough. You could say I am. the biggest nobody of them all." It was Riku.

She fought him and lost. What he said to her while she was down stayed with her 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." She would not have it. "My Keyblade is not a sham! What gives you the right to say that?" He told her to get away from the Organization. "Find a new crowd. Trust me. Those guys are bad news." She threw it back at him. "Why? You're the real sham."

She said it to herself afterwards, over and over. "How could he say that. He's wrong. It's not a sham. and neither am I." And in her journal, harder: "And I'm not a sham. I'M NOT. He is."

The next day Saïx dealt with her failure the way Saïx dealt with things, and she begged him. "Just give me another chance!" She told Roxas about it afterwards, and she 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.'" Roxas said he was sorry. "Don't be. That jerk can say whatever he wants. I can take it."

She came to find him the day after that. "Roxas, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have run off like that yesterday." Something was wrong between the two of them after that, and neither could say what. Roxas wrote it down. "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." Xion wrote down a dream. "Last night I dreamt of the ocean. I was drowning." And Axel, watching both of them, wrote down what it was doing to him. "Watching them, it's like they're human. It's messing with my head."

She had started asking a question nobody in that building had any 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?" He said for Kingdom Hearts, for hearts. "Why? What do we need hearts for?" He did not know. "Maybe. I just wish I knew what I was doing here. How I got here." And then: "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 collapsed, as he once had, and she did not wake for three weeks. 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." Axel spent those weeks on a question he kept to himself. "Xion and Naminé must be connected. Whose Nobody is Xion, anyway?"

She woke on the hundred and ninety-third day with the shells beside her, and held one to her ear. "Yeah, the sound of the waves. How long was I asleep?" He told her, and she worked out how long that was. "That long!? I'm sorry. I feel bad. Kind of. weird that we can feel anything at all, huh? Without hearts to feel with."

She had heard Axel, before she was properly awake, telling Roxas that the three of them were best friends. "Heh heh. Thanks, Axel. You're sweet." Roxas wrote it down that night. "He said the three of us were best friends, inseparable."

She wanted to go back to work the same morning, and argued about it. "Hey, don't you have work?" He did. "Can I come, too?" Roxas said she should rest. "After sleeping for three weeks? I'll be fine. C'mon, take me with you." She went to Saïx. "Saix, I want to go with Roxas today on his mission." He refused, and she did not give up. "Don't keep me pent up in here. I need the exercise." She got her way. "A three-man team? That's a first."

Then Axel said something that the rest of the year would be measured against. "You wanna know why I do? Because you're my best friends. The three of us. we're inseparable." Xion was delighted. "This should be fun, huh? Tripling up like this."

But Axel was still turning his question over, and had got no further with it. "But my questions remain unanswered. Who is she a Replica of?" By the two hundred and twenty-fourth day he had an answer of his own, and he kept it. "Even if Xion is a replica, a puppet, she's still Xion."

He said part of it aloud, to her and not to Roxas. She had asked him what she should do, and he would not decide it for her. "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?" When Saïx asked him to report on his friends, he threw him out. "So what, now I've gotta rat on my friends to you? Get out of my room, man."

Roxas noticed that Axel had secrets, and Axel laughed it off. "Ha ha, relax, would ya? I'm kidding. I just gotta keep my mouth shut about it, or else Saïx will get on my case. You know how he gets." Roxas wrote down what he thought of that. "He knows something is wrong. I bet he's just telling me that to put my mind at ease." And Xion wrote down where she had decided the answers were. "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. Roxas was told nothing useful. "Axel said she got sent on an important mission, but he wouldn't look at me when he said it." Axel had asked Saïx if things were really better this way, and then offered to go himself. "Then how 'bout I tag along? I know Castle Oblivion better than anybody else in this outfit."

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." She came closer to him. "Axel, I'm remembering things. About who I was." And then she remembered him. "You can't fool me. We've met before, Axel, right here in this castle!" He left her there.

The Superior wrote down what she was that same day, 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."

He told the others that she had gone, and that no one was to go after her. "Xion is gone." Then he told them what they were to do about it. "On the contrary. No one is to go looking for Xion without my express permission." To the rest of their questions he gave one answer. "All will be revealed when the time comes." Roxas wrote down what he made of that. "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, and the Superior answered him as if he were a child. "Put your mind at ease. Xion is a valued member of the Organization, but she needs her rest." When Roxas had gone, Saïx asked whether steps should be taken, and the Superior was almost pleased. "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."

Xigbar wrote something that nobody explained, then or later. "I see her as. him, though I suspect that Xemnas sees entirely something else in her."

She went to the islands, or what was left of them. Someone who had been looking for her since the castle with the long corridors found her there. He took her with him, and while she slept he went to see the girl who worked on memory. He was short with her. "You made me a promise." Naminé had not forgotten it. "To look after Sora. I remember. I'm sorry. I'm not sure I've kept that promise very well." She told him the difficulty, a little at a time. "Some of Sora's memories are missing." And then where they had gone. "They're escaping through Sora's Nobody into a third person, and now they're starting to become a part of her." Riku frowned. "You can't get the memories back out?" She said it might be done, if the memories were still separate, though if they had joined with the girl's it might take years. "So what's the solution?"

Xion dreamed, and in the dream she was talking to Roxas and Axel. "Is it that I'm not supposed to exist?" They were not answering. "I want. I want to be with you two. But. what would it take for me to be like you?" Nobody in the dream could tell her. "I can't. Not the way I am now." When she woke she did not know where she was, or what. "Who am I? What am I. here for?"

Naminé's answer to Riku was a long one, and she gave it quietly. "If I try to just jump in and rearrange her memory. then I risk Sora waking up to find out that nobody remembers him anymore. I can't do that to him. It's too late either way. His awakening will have to be delayed. I never imagined Sora's Nobody and the other one would fight so hard to be their own people. Unfortunately, the only real solution. is for them both to go away. Did you know her face was blank at first? Only now can you see someone. That proves some of Sora's memories are inside her. Some inside her, some inside Sora. others inside Sora's Nobody. I can't sort it out anymore. All I can do is pick up the pieces once what has to be done, is done."

This time the young man in the coat told her his name, and something more about himself that she had not known. "Riku. Sora's friend." She knew the name he said. "Sora? You know Sora?" He made no sense to her at all. "Thank you. You saved me, but I don't know why. you did." He only shrugged. "I guess. I just felt like it."

She asked him for more. "Riku, please. Tell me more, about Sora and that girl he's always with." He told her the name. "You mean Kairi." She knew it the moment she heard it. "Kairi. That's right. She's the one who looks so much like me." Riku was quiet a moment. "To Sora, she's someone very special."

She put her 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?" He would not tell her that. "That secret stays with me." But he told her the rest. "Xion. your memories. they really belong to Sora."

She worked it out, with her hands in her lap. "So you mean. I'm like a part of him?" Sora was asleep, Riku told her, and could not wake until his memories were whole. "You can't, because part of it is inside of me. That means. he can't wake up." She looked up at him. "So, do you hate me for taking your friend away from you?" He shook his head. "Nah. I guess. I'm just sad."

He did not hate her, and he did not tell her what to do about it either. He asked her to come with him. She could not. "I'm sorry, but. I can't go with you. It's my friends, they need me. And I need them, too." He asked her to think about it instead. "Maybe. you should take some time and think about it. Figure out who really needs you more. And where you belong." She had no idea how. "How will I know where I belong, truly? I'm not sure I can promise you I'll come up with the right answer." He gave her the only rule he had. "Well, the answer you come up with can't just be right for you. It has to be one that works best for everybody. You and your friends and everyone else." She would try. "I'll try. Thank you, Riku."

All this while, Riku was also keeping in touch with the king, far away. Mickey asked what he was doing. "Searching, for a way to conquer the darkness within me, while we wait for Sora to awaken." And he asked the king for one thing. "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. "I've looked everywhere for Xion, in every world, but there's just no sign of her." Luxord offered to ask his cards. "Xion's whereabouts? Shall I ask the cards for you?" Roxas worked out by himself where she had come from. "C.O. is where Xion comes from. I guess he just found out himself."

At the top of the castle the Superior's plans had not changed. "Our plans remain unchanged. Axel, Roxas, and Xion will play the roles Kingdom Hearts has chosen for them." He was asked about the boy in the coat who went about the worlds as though he were one of them. "That gadfly? See that he stays away from Roxas. He only poses a threat if his buzzing reaches Xion's ears."

On the two hundred and ninety-seventh day Roxas woke up in the town, and she was sitting there. "I woke up in Twilight Town, and incredibly enough, Xion was there." He told her he had been looking for her everywhere, and she was sorry. "You have? Sorry." He asked her to come home, and said he would be there for her. She would not, and gave no reason. "I really can't." Axel was writing about it the same day. "It's Riku. Roxas could very well remember that, somewhere deep in his memories."

The Superior gave Axel his orders in front of everyone, and he spoke of Xion as if she were a parcel to be delivered. "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." And then: "Axel, you have your orders. Dismissed."

Axel carried it out the next day, with Roxas standing there. "Well, hello there. Xion." Roxas could not believe it. "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 Superior the only question he had left. "And what would that be?" Roxas said the name he had been hearing since the sixth day. "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."

Axel was writing about Roxas that night. "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. Nobody decided it. It simply stopped. "Xion and Axel don't come to the clock tower anymore." Xion came, once, and sat with Roxas. "I'm fine. I'm. I'm sorry, Roxas. Here, this is for you." She waited. "I guess he's not coming today." She asked what had happened. "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." She looked out at the sunset. "It's just not the same without all three of us."

Axel had a reason too, and he wrote it down. "Even without my orders from Saïx, I'd do anything to stop Roxas from being erased."

Xion went to Axel, because something was happening to Roxas that she had started to notice 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." He told her she knew Roxas better than he did. "Why. why would you say that?" And she asked him the other thing she had been carrying. "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

By the three hundred and twenty-first day the change was plain. Roxas was growing weaker while Xion grew stronger. He put it in the journal plainly. "I feel so tired, almost disconnected from my body." Xion saw it on his face before he said anything. "Roxas, are you okay? You don't look so good."

On the same mission she struck a Heartless once and it was gone, and she stood looking at her hands. "H-how. How did I just do that? Where did that power come from?" Then she turned round and he was leaning on a wall. "Roxas? Hey, are you all right?" He said he was. "You sure you're okay?" He said it again. "You're really, really okay?"

He told her it was strange, being the one worried about, when he was usually the one doing the worrying. She was stung. "Well, excuse me!" And then, more quietly, looking away from him: "Well, for your information. I worry about you all the time, Roxas." Later that day, looking at his face, she said something he did not understand and she did not explain. "You look so much like him."

She wrote down that night what she had decided, and it read like a goodbye. "But before I'm gone, I want to help Roxas and Axel."

Roxas was no better the next day. "I had another dream. My head feels heavy." She gave him something she had found, and could not stop telling him to be careful. "Please be careful, Roxas. Here. This is for you." And again, as he went: "Please, Roxas, don't. Don't do anything crazy." For days after that she said it every morning in one form or another. "Roxas, try not to. Just. don't push yourself too hard."

At the top of the castle the others talked about her as an experiment that had turned out better than planned. Xigbar was cheerful about it. "Sora is having a powerful effect on her." He said it again in the grey room where everyone could hear, grinning. "Ain't Xion just a peach now? The face of an angel. Just gotta be careful, girls her age have many faces."

The Superior explained it to Xigbar and Saïx. "I will admit, Xion has strayed from our original designs. But this unpredictable behavior is proving to have an interesting side effect." He laid out what the side effect was. "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."

He had nearly thrown it away, he said. "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." In his report that day he went one step further. "Indeed, perhaps we ought never allow Sora to awaken." And to the other two, as if it pleased him: "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."

In the house on the hill outside the town, the girl who worked on memory had seen the same thing from the other side, and told the man in the red bandages. "A Nobody is interfering, I think." She told him what it meant. "I keep trying to piece his memory back together, but what if some of the pieces got lost? There would be no way for me to finish. If that happened, and they found their way into someone else, he'd never get them back." She pressed him. "But what, what if he needs those memories in order to wake up? What if they're the key?" Then she said what she feared most. "If his memories become her memories. she will never survive it."

Some while later she looked up from the work and told him it had stopped. "It's Sora. His memory has stopped." She said what that meant. "Unless something is done, he'll never wake from his slumber." And then she started to ask about someone else, and did not finish. "But. what'll happen to."

Xion was working it out by herself, in the evenings, with the shell to her ear. "I'm going to wreck everything. What's the right thing to do? Riku would know." And later, with her mind made up: "I have to make the most of the time he's given me."

On the three hundred and fifty-second day they were sent to the same place without knowing it, each told there was a Heartless there, each shown one. Roxas's came at him from nowhere. "Wh-what!? How could it get this close without me noticing?" It was stronger than anything he had fought, and he was already tired. "It's. it's too powerful. I've gotta finish this now, before it wears me down any further. It's all or nothing."

Axel came between them at the last moment, and they saw that each of them had been fighting the other. Xion stared at him. "Roxas? Wh. what are you doing here? The Heartless I was fighting." She broke off, and started again. "It was you?" Axel told them. "It was rigged so you two would battle each other." Roxas could not take it in. "Me and Xion? But." Xion could. "They would do that?"

They went up the tower that evening, all three of them, and it was the last time. She took too big a bite. "Brain freeze, ha ha." Roxas looked from one of them to the other. "Been a while since we all hung out like this, huh?" Xion was looking at the sun. "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 it out loud, the thing nobody in that building said. "What if we all ran off? The three of us. Then we could always be together." Xion answered him gently. "We don't have any place to run." He let it go at once. "I know. Heh, I was just thinking out loud."

Axel started on his speech about remembering, and she finished it for him. "As long as we remember each other. right? Don't worry, Axel, we got your hokey speech memorized." She sat with her ice cream going soft. "I'll have these moments memorized for a long time. Forever, I hope." Roxas said it with her. "Me too. Forever."

They both wrote it down that night. Xion wrote what she wished. "I wish the three of us could stay together, just like this, forever." Roxas wrote that he did not need to write anything. "I don't have to write anything else down, because I'll never forget this day."

The next morning Saïx sent Axel and Xion out with Xigbar, and sent Roxas somewhere else. He hated it. "Hey, you three are teamed up for the day? I can't trade with Xigbar or something?" He could not. Xigbar grinned at Axel on the way out. "Worried I'll slow you down?"

Out in the field Xigbar turned on Xion, and laughed while he did it. "Ha ha! Talk about a blast from the past." Then he stopped laughing, because of what he saw when he looked at her. "Of all the faces. Why do I look at her and see yours? Do you always have to stare at me like I just drowned your goldfish?" She went for him. "Shut up!"

She knocked him to the ground. He was still talking as he went down. "So now we just sweep it all up? Heh. As if." Axel had come up behind her, and she turned to him with the hood still up. "Axel, I'm sorry." She put the hood back. "Please. let me go. I have to do this, or else." She stopped, and made him look at her. "Look." And the last thing, the thing she had come to ask: "Please, Axel. You have to take care of Roxas." Then she was gone.

Roxas found them when they came back. "What was that about? Where's Xion?" Xigbar was glad to tell him. "She flew the coop. Flamesilocks here couldn't trouble himself to clip her wings." Roxas turned to Axel. "Axel, he's kidding, right? What happened out there?" Xigbar answered for him. "As if. Your friend sat there sucking his thumb while Xion walked right off." He had had enough of both of them. "I'm going back to my room."

Axel said nothing had happened. Roxas would not have that. "Xion's gone! How is that nothing?" Axel said he could not have stopped her. "Don't give me that! Why not?" And Axel told him what she was. "The Organization made her to duplicate your powers. She's a puppet."

Roxas stared at him. "Have you gone nuts? Xion's a person, not a puppet." Axel tried to explain the rest of it, about the copy and the one it copied. "I don't know what you're talking about, but Xion is Xion. You can't expect her to be me." Axel said that someone would have to break the mirror. "You mean destroy her. Answer me!" Axel said that if nobody did, Roxas would stop being himself. "I'll always be me! Your best friend, just like Xion!" Then Roxas left him standing there. "Ugh, forget this."

To Saïx, afterwards, Axel told it differently. "I didn't let her go. The old man needs to get his eyes checked. Anyway, she wasn't taking no for an answer." Xigbar, for once, backed him. "I'll give him that. Can't toss the blame around when I couldn't stop her either."

That evening the Superior told all of them. "Xion has vanished again." Someone called her she, and he corrected them. "It, not 'she.' Xion is just a Replica. a puppet." Demyx did not know the word. "Replica whatza?" Xigbar supplied it. "The Replica Program was one of our little pet projects."

The Superior told the rest of it as if giving a report. "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." Demyx was impressed. "I never would've guessed about Xion. That's some puppet!"

Then the Superior said what would be done. "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 heard the second half of that. "You don't mean." He said the only thing he had. "Xion is one of us." Saïx dismissed it. "One of us? Don't be absurd. Count the seats. When have we ever been more than thirteen?"

Roxas wrote down Axel's word that night with a question mark after it. "She's a puppet? A mirror that reflects me?"

He went to Axel anyway, because there was no one else. "Axel! I don't think Xion's safe here anymore. You're not really gonna do what Xemnas says?" Axel had his orders. "Well. could you at least try not to hurt her this time?" And the question he had been turning over since the morning: "How long have you known about her? You knew all this time, and kept it from me?"

The Puppet and the Girl

She went back to the one person who had told her the truth. Riku was waiting, as if he had known she would come. "Did you find the right answer?" She had. "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." He sent her to the town. "Go to Twilight Town. You'll find a girl there by the name of Naminé."

She had heard the name, and had wondered about her. "Naminé? What's she like?" Riku would not say. "You'll find out. I don't think you'll have much trouble tracking her down." She wrote in her journal that night as though it were already settled. "I know Naminé will tell me how to get back where I belong."

Roxas was writing on the same night, one line, underneath all the others. "I don't know what I am."

The house on the hill outside the town was old and shut up, and the girl in white was waiting in it. She knew who Xion was. "Nice to meet you. Xion." Xion stopped in the doorway. "Naminé, you can see my face?" Naminé told her whose face it was. "That's because you're Kairi. At least, the Kairi Sora remembers."

Naminé asked her what she wanted. "What do you want to do?" Xion told her the whole of it. "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."

She said she wanted to go back to Sora, and Naminé told her the price, without softening it. "Back to Sora? If you return your memories to him, you'll disappear. And since everything about you was built on those memories. no one will remember you when you're gone. There won't be any 'you' to remember. I can't save you, Xion, even a memory of you."

Xion had already known. "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." Naminé agreed with her. "He can't feel Sora. But he will." Xion asked her for one thing. "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."

Naminé held out her hand. "If you're ready, let's go see Sora." Then the man in the red bandages came in, furious. "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?" Xion was already at the door. "I'll get rid of them!" Naminé called after her. "No! Xion."

Saïx had talked to Axel before sending him, and he had spoken to him as an old friend, not as an officer. "I never expected you to question it. If you could save one of them. why would you choose the puppet? Or put it this way. Which would you rather suffer the loss of: some make-believe friendship, or a real one? Things are finally right again. Of course we're better off this way. Xemnas is exasperated from all the 'fixing' we've had to do. We have to set things right. There is simply too much on the line. Lea."

So it was Axel waiting outside the house when she came out, and he said it as though he were tired. "Why do I always get stuck with the icky jobs?" She told him she was going. "I've decided that I have to go back to where I belong." She said why. "It's for the good of everyone."

Axel did not argue with the reason. "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." She was sure. "This is right." He was not. "But how do you know that? Everybody thinks they're right." And then, because she was not listening: "They're gonna destroy you!"

She asked him for one more thing. "Please don't hold back, Axel. Promise." He lost his temper, which he almost never did. "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!"

They fought in front of the house, and he beat her, and stood over her afterwards, breathing hard. "Man. Why you always gotta. cause me. trouble." He carried her back.

Roxas wrote a single line on the three hundred and fifty-fifth day, in capitals. "I am DONE WITH THIS!" Xigbar, in his report that day, wrote a sentence nobody else would see, and corrected a name in the middle of it. "If Kingdom Hearts can be said to possess a mind of its own, it is surely rejecting Xemnas, no, rejecting Xehanort."

Saïx wrote on the next day, about Axel and himself. "We joined the Organization at the same time, and formulated our plan. At this point, it's just an idle fantasy."

On the three hundred and fifty-seventh day the Superior was ready. "At last, the time has come. Saïx, are the devices ready?" He was told they were. "Good." And he said what the devices were for, as though it did not matter how it went. "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 was sent out to set one of the devices down, and did it, and wondered. "Wonder what this thing even does." Heartless came up out of the ground around it at once. "Heartless! They must be after the device." He fought them off and stood there afterwards, out of breath and angry with himself. "Huff. Huff. What am I doing? Getting worked up over some device. Like I've got any clue what the Organization even uses it for."

It spilled over. "Everything's a mystery. They didn't even tell me about Xion. Hmph, the biggest mystery is me, the idiot who keeps doing everything he's told." He went back towards the castle and stopped halfway. "Why am I doing this? Why am I going back to the castle? There's nothing there for me. How can I keep working for them if they're gonna leave me in the dark? What am I saying. This isn't about them, or Xion. It's about me. Whatever 'me' is. I feel like I'm the only person who doesn't know. Have I got anything left? Any place I really belong? Any friends. I still belong with?" And then he was crying, which he had not known he could do.

He went over it again, and it came out as a list. "It's all just too much. Xion was part of that Replica Program. Made to copy my Keyblade. And when she left us, Axel helped her. Like he wanted her to go. If he knew, why did he wait so long to tell me? Is it because I'm the same thing? Xion and I are both special Nobodies. What if they made me, too? Xemnas said. Sora was what connects her and me. But who's Sora? And who am I to him? Axel knows. I'll bet he's been sitting on all kinds of secrets this whole time. He doesn't even have the guts to tell me the truth about me."

He found Axel. "Have you been keeping the truth about her from me this whole time?" Axel denied nothing. "When did you find out?" Axel said he did not remember. "Didn't get it memorized, huh?"

Roxas asked him the real question. "Axel. Who am I, really? I'm special, like Xion. I know that. But the Organization wanted me out of the picture. Is it because Xion copied my Keyblade and they didn't need me anymore? And you feel the same way." He was shouting by the end of it. "Best friends are honest with each other! Who am I, Axel? Xemnas said me and Xion are connected to Sora. Who is that? Tell me! Am I a puppet like Xion?"

Axel said he was not a puppet. "What, then?" Axel did not answer. "Are you gonna tell me or not? Axel. Who am I?" Axel would not tell him, and said why. "You really think the truth is going to make you feel better? It won't." Roxas would not accept it. "What makes you so sure? I have a right to know who I am! How did I get here? Why am I special? Where did I learn to use the Keyblade? I deserve those answers!"

Axel asked him to trust him. Roxas could not. "I don't. If I can't get answers here, I'll get them somewhere else. Somebody knows where I came from. That'll be the person I trust." He had the WINNER stick in his hand, the one he had never cashed in, and he looked at it. "I tried, but. there's nothing left for me here. The answers are out there." He wrote one last line in the journal. "I'm going to set Kingdom Hearts free and find my way to Sora."

Saïx was standing in the way out. Roxas kept walking. "I've got nothing to say to you." Saïx did not need him to. "Then let's make this short and sweet." It was not short. At the end of it Saïx was down, and looking past him at the heart-shaped moon. "Kingdom. Hearts. Will your strength never be mine?" Roxas walked on.

He went to the town, because it was the only place he knew that was not the castle. Three children ran past him to buy ice cream, arguing, and he watched them go. "I guess. not all friendships fall apart." He thought of the tower. "Maybe I'll stop by the clock tower. Seems a good a place as any." At the station doors he hesitated. "The clock tower. I wonder if anybody's up there. I guess I could go take a look." Nobody was. "Where did I think I could go? What a joke."

Then she was there, and she was not the Xion he knew. "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 the town, then high above it, then in places that were not really there. Somewhere in the middle of it he stopped knowing who she was. When it was over and he had won, he looked down at her. "Who are you. again? It's weird. I feel like I'm forgetting something really important." She was coming apart, and she was smiling at him. "You'll be. better off now. Roxas."

He held her up. "Am I. the one who did this to you?" She would not let him have it. "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." It made no sense to him. "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." Xion touched his face while she said it. Then she was gone, and all at once he remembered her. "No! Xion. Who else will I have ice cream with?"

The Superior took the news without much interest. "It is probably for the best. Get me back my Keyblade wielder. Fetch me Roxas."

Axel found a letter with the WINNER stick in it. He stood holding it before he opened it. "How did this happen?"

He wrote that night, and it was the last report he filed that year. "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." He stopped. "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

The man in the red bandages had given Riku his instructions, and they were short. "This has gone on long enough. Riku. I think you know what needs to be done."

At the top of the castle the Superior was writing what he meant to be, and it was not a Nobody. "I must become one with Kingdom Hearts. I will become a higher existence."

Roxas went back to the dark city to do what she had asked of him, and part of him hoped it would bring her back. The Heartless came up out of the street under the tall building with the screens on it, more of them than he could deal with. Someone appeared at the top of the building and came down to him. Roxas threw him one of his two Keyblades without deciding to. Riku caught it. The two of them cleared the street together, and then they turned round and faced each other.

"Why are you trying to stop me?" Riku brushed it aside. "What does it matter? I'm here for you." He said what he wanted. "Because I want back the rest of Sora's memories." Roxas had heard that name for three hundred and fifty days without anyone telling him what it meant. "Sora, Sora, Sora! Enough about Sora!"

Riku asked him if he had a plan. "Do you have some kind of plan?" Roxas did. "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 could not get to her name. Riku noticed. "Her? You mean Xion? It's a struggle just to remember the name now, isn't it? Either way, I can't let you go doing anything crazy."

Roxas shouted him down. "I have to find this Sora person, and freeing Kingdom Hearts is the only way! I want Xion back. I want my life back!" Riku told him what he would get instead. "If you try and make contact with Kingdom Hearts, the last thing you'll get is your life back. The Organization will destroy you." Roxas would not hear it. "Shut up!"

They fought, and Roxas was winning. Riku called him Sora, and told him he should be stronger than this, and Roxas answered him without thinking. "Get real. Look which one of us is winning!"

Somewhere in it Riku saw her, and heard her. "Riku, please! You have to stop him!"

Riku could not beat him as he was. So he let the darkness in his heart take over, and when it had, he was wearing the shape of Ansem, who had once possessed him. Roxas fell under it.

The last thing he heard was her, from very close. "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 every memory he had of her was gone, and so was everyone else's.

Riku carried him to the man in the red bandages. The man looked down at him for a long time, and then put him somewhere he would not be found.

Roxas woke up in Twilight Town 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!" He was already counting the days. "Only seven days to go, and then my summer vacation's over."