“Hey!”
The wisecrack lightened the mood, which had been veering toward dismal. And yet…Xion had no memories, either.
“I’m like you, Roxas,” Xion told him. “I don’t remember the beginning. Or before that.”
“Well, look how much you two have in common,” said Axel.
“I wonder what I was like before…,” Roxas mused, and Xion wondered the same about herself.
What was I like when I was human?
Why can’t we remember?
From their perch on the clock tower, they squinted into the sunset.
As the daylight faded, two figures stood outside the haunted mansion on the outskirts of Twilight Town.
The man called DiZ had his face swathed in red bandages. With him was a flaxen-haired girl in a white dress—Naminé.
They both gazed quietly up at the mansion.
Riku shivered in the biting wind. It had only been a few days since his farewell to King Mickey.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he murmured again, gazing down from the cliff.
Even now, he was so far from finding answers that he couldn’t say why they had parted ways at all. But here he was, in the wild wasteland outside the town of Hollow Bastion. He still had no way to control the darkness within him—to contain Ansem.
What could he do to be free?
Maybe he never would be.
“If you can truly gaze into that darkness and never try to look away, you won’t be afraid of anything.”
But how was he supposed to keep the fear at bay?
With the light always shining on him, it was hard to tell where it came from. But if he let darkness fall over his world, he would be able to follow the light.
If everything was cloaked in darkness…
There was a length of black fabric in his hand, and he wrapped it around his eyes.
It would take some time to get around effectively like this. But if he could just hold back the darkness within, he would feel a little more like himself.
Riku leaped down from the cliff, his sword at the ready.
She had been dreaming.
It happened every night, but she could never quite remember what the dreams were about.
Shaking her heavy head, she climbed out of bed, and after her morning routine, it was time to go to the lobby.
Roxas was already there today. She told him good morning.
“Hi,” he managed with a huge yawn.
“Um, Roxas, do you dream at night?” Xion wondered.
“Huh?”
But before he could field the unexpected question, Saïx appeared beside them.
“Xion, Roxas. I need you on separate missions today.”
She felt something clench in her chest. Separate missions? Now what?
“Two major Heartless targets have surfaced in two different worlds,” Saïx explained. “Roxas, you take the Beast’s castle, and Xion, you’ll go to Agrabah.”
“But…” Xion trailed off and looked helplessly at Roxas, but he was no better off than her.
What do we do…?
As they wavered, Axel inserted himself between them. “Whoa, you’re gonna send Roxas to the Beast’s castle? I dunno…”
Xion looked to him for salvation. He glanced her way with a tiny nod.
“I mean, I was just there yesterday for recon,” Axel went on. “I saw that Heartless you’re talking about. You don’t want to pit Roxas against that. Not by himself.”
“And?” Saïx turned to him, irritated. “If I send them both, who’s going to take care of Agrabah?”
“I will.” Axel’s voice dropped ever so slightly.
“You, handle Agrabah’s Heartless?”
“Sure. I’m a big boy.”
“You can’t collect hearts,” Saïx said bluntly. “Which is why—”
“Why I’ll keep the Heartless out of trouble, and they can hit it another day,” Axel finished for him.
Roxas jumped in before Saïx could find any fault with the idea. “That should be okay, right, Saïx?”
He scowled as if he couldn’t think of anything more unpleasant than this conversation. The scar between his eyebrows furrowed. “Fine. But today is the last day. Starting tomorrow, you both work solo.”
“Got it.” Relieved, Roxas nodded and turned to Xion. She nodded in response. “Okay, Xion. Let’s go.”
“Right.”
She followed him into the Corridors of Darkness.
After watching them go, Axel stretched and turned to Saïx, expecting to see a scowl. But the expression had left Saïx’s face, leaving him as dispassionate as usual.
Of course, he had been faking it in the first place. Nobodies had no hearts; they only imitated what emotions they remembered. The very proof of their emptiness showed how desperately they each longed for a heart. Axel probably did the same thing himself without noticing, and yet, for some reason, when Saïx did it—or actually, any of the others—it seemed so out of place.
Maybe because it makes me realize how much effort we put into acting like we’re still human, Axel thought. It’s pointless.
“Don’t think for a minute I believed that,” Saïx muttered, finally meeting his stare.
Axel cricked his neck. “Believed what?”
“That pathetic performance.”
“Yeah, well, I’d better get to Agrabah.” Axel started walking before Saïx could launch into a diatribe and vanished into the corridors.
The Beast’s castle seemed deserted except for Heartless. And Xion had an unpleasant memory of this world, she recalled, absently looking around as she and Roxas stepped from the corridors into the gloomy entrance hall.
This was where she had discovered that she could no longer use the Keyblade.
And now… Xion stared down at her empty hands.
Roxas paused. “You okay?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do after today.”
She tried again to summon the Keyblade, hoping with all her might, but nothing came beyond a faint glow near her hand. Not even a hint of a shape. “It’s no use.” She sighed.
“What about mine?” Roxas called his own Keyblade to his hand and held it out to her. “Do you think it would work?”
The members of the Organization each had their own distinctive weapons that didn’t exactly cooperate if someone else tried to use them, but Keyblades were even more particular. If someone else so much as tried to pick it up, a Keyblade would simply return to its wielder’s hand. Or so Xion had heard.
But when she grasped it, Roxas’s Keyblade stayed in her hands. It didn’t disappear.
“I guess…it does,” she murmured. After so long, the weight of it was somehow strange in her grip. She thought she could feel the warmth from his hand lingering in the metal.
“Then you can go ahead and use it for the day,” said Roxas.
Considering the offer, she gazed on the gleaming, borrowed Keyblade. “But, Roxas—”
“Maybe it’ll help you remember,” he added before she finished her sentence.
“But what are you going to use?”
“Well…” A hint of a grin came to his face, and he picked up a makeshift weapon near his feet. “I can improvise.”
“Roxas…that’s a stick.” It couldn’t possibly do any damage to Heartless, Xion thought.
“Hey, you managed without the Keyblade. So can I,” he reassured her. “Just use it for today.”
“Okay… Thanks.” She smiled at him. “Today, I’ll work hard enough for both of us.”
She had barely gotten the words out when a deep snarl echoed through the castle.
“What was that?” Roxas nervously scanned the passage.
“…A Heartless?” Xion guessed.
“We’d better go find out.”
They headed toward the frightful roar.
At the end of a hallway, Roxas suddenly skidded to a halt. He could sense some kind of presence.
“…Do you think anyone—?” Xion murmured, b
ut Roxas hushed her and crept into the shadow of a pillar to spy down the corridor.
Someone sighed miserably. “If only the master would leave his chambers…”
The figure speaking was…not what Roxas would have expected. He ducked behind the pillar again.
“What did you see?” whispered Xion.
“Would you believe a walking, talking candelabra?”
It was hard to believe, but he knew what he’d seen—an autonomous candelabra, with a face in its top candle, grumbling to itself.
Xion peeked out for a moment and hid herself again. “Wow, it really is! But…how…?”
She trailed off, her head tilted in astonishment.
“Not sure,” said Roxas, thinking aloud. “But it did say something about a master…”
“So you figure the candelabra is one of the castle’s servants or something?”
“Yeah, maybe… I wonder who else is here?”
“It said the master won’t come out of his chambers. So maybe whoever that is has a room at the end of the hall.” Xion peered down the corridor again.
“Wanna go find out…?” Roxas suggested.
She blinked at him. “Huh?”
“We’ll just slip by and take a peek in the master’s chambers.”
“You think we can…?”
“He won’t see us if we’re careful.” Roxas leaned out from behind the pillar and made a run for it as soon as the candelabra turned.
“Wh—? Roxas!” Xion scolded, keeping her voice low. “How is that being careful?!”
But she darted after him anyway.
“Hmm…?” The candelabra, facing away from them, paused as Xion and Roxas rushed past. “How strange. I thought someone was there… The light must be playing tricks on me.”
Just as it turned again, they dove around the corner, out of sight.
“Whew…” Xion exhaled. “I’d rather not do that again…”
Roxas didn’t seem to mind at all.
They had made it past the talking candelabra into another vast hallway, at the end of which they could see a staircase.
Another roar shook the walls.
“Sounds like it’s coming from up there.” Roxas started toward the staircase only to find a cluster of Shadows—small, creeping Heartless of pure black. “…We’re not the only uninvited guests.”
“These are too small to be the target, aren’t they?” she concluded, already brandishing the Keyblade, as Roxas backed her up with magic.
It was the perfect inverse of how they’d been working. His Keyblade felt familiar in her hands, just as if she’d been using it all along.
A Heartless knocked Roxas aside, but Xion finished it off—and that was the last one.
“Are you okay, Roxas?” She ran to him where he was sprawled on the floor.
Dusting himself off, he got to his feet with no help. “I’m fine.”
“Sorry. I’m not making things easy for you, taking your Keyblade…”
“Not any harder than it’s been for you,” said Roxas. “Don’t worry about me. What about you? Any luck?”
“Nothing yet… I’m sorry.” Xion shook her head. Fighting with Roxas’s Keyblade was perfectly comfortable for her, and yet, she couldn’t recall the sensation of wielding her own.
“Well, don’t be,” he told her with an encouraging grin. “I bet it’ll come back to you soon. Don’t sweat it.”
She smiled back. “Yeah. Thanks, Roxas.”
But just as she spoke, a patch of Shadow trembled behind her on the floor.
“Xion!” He grabbed her arm and ducked into an alcove with her, out of sight from the staircase.
As the Shadow spread like an inky stain, more Heartless rose out of it. The terrible roar shuddered through the castle again—a colossal beast with bristling fur and sharp fangs.
He stormed down the stairs and tore through the Heartless in the blink of an eye, scattering them into nothing. “Heartless have no place in my castle!” he growled with a swipe of claws that destroyed the last Shadow.
Then the creature left, stomping back up the stairs to what had to be his chambers.
“Whoa…,” Xion murmured.
Roxas crossed his arms. “He called this place his castle. So does that mean he’s the master…?”
“Oh. The Beast’s castle,” Xion realized. “That would make sense. But a talking candelabra servant? And now the ruler is an actual beast? This is one strange place.”
Roxas was quiet, thinking.
“What is it?”
“The rules are different here,” he mused.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“That beast is the master here, right?”
“Right.”
“And Xemnas is our master, right?”
“I guess so.” Xion wasn’t following.
“But if Heartless showed up in our castle, we’d be the ones to get rid of them, not Xemnas. He wouldn’t lift a finger.”
“Well, sure, that’s our job,” she said, her fingers still tight around the Keyblade.
Their role was to carry out their missions. And if they didn’t, they would be terminated.
“I figured it worked that way everywhere… I mean, the master here has servants.” Roxas looked up the stairs to the door where the Beast had retreated. “He shouldn’t have to fight.”
“I don’t know that I’d call us Xemnas’s servants, exactly… But you’re right. If he’s taking on the Heartless himself, he must have a reason to fight.”
Xion stared down at the Keyblade. What’s my reason?
“A reason?” Roxas blinked at her, mystified. “Like what?”
“Like…maybe he has something he wants to protect,” she said softly.
Xion, in turn, was mystified that Roxas found the idea so strange. As if he had never thought to ask why.
Another creeping blotch of darkness interrupted her thoughts. But this wasn’t a Shadow. It was much bigger.
“Roxas! Look out!” she cried.
The Heartless seeped out of the floor and took a canine shape, big and mean—the Bully Dog, the target of today’s mission.
“There it is! Let’s get it, Xion!” said Roxas, and they nodded to each other. He started in with magic. “Fire!”
A ball of flame struck the Heartless square in the emblem. Now they had its attention.
Xion charged and leaped up high to smash the Keyblade down on it. She’d missed this—the solid impact on small Heartless just didn’t cut it.
She kicked off the Bully Dog’s back, regaining her balance in the air, and touched down to rush it again without even catching her breath. I can fight like this with the Keyblade.
Another spell from Roxas had the creature stunned.
Now! Xion thought, thrusting the Keyblade at it. There was no mistaking that sensation of a heart being released. The Bully Dog howled, and Roxas shouted in victory as its form turned to fading light. The huge heart floated up and away through the ceiling.
As she watched it rise, Roxas ran to her, and she turned to hand him the Keyblade. “Thanks, Roxas. Now you can have this back.”
“Did it help? Do you think you remember how it works?”
“I don’t know…but I might as well give it another try.”
Xion closed her empty fist. Please, Keyblade, please come back to me…
There was a brief flash of light. And…
“You did it!” Roxas cheered.
Xion stared agape at the Keyblade in her hand. Her Keyblade. It came back to me…
She closed her hand around her weapon. Her own weapon.
“Roxas, it worked! Thank you so much!” she exclaimed.
He waved their joined hands around with the Keyblade. “I can’t wait to tell Axel. C’mon!”
“Okay!”
They couldn’t stop grinning at each other.
Atop the clock tower, Axel absently watched the sunset.
He let out a long sigh. Being sent to Agrabah alone was all well and good, ex
cept for the part when he’d been slammed into the ground.
Looking out for other people when I can’t even take care of myself—this isn’t like me at all.
A dark portal yawned open behind him. “Hey, Axel!”
“Whoa! Don’t scare me like that.”
Roxas popped out, fresh from the corridors, with Xion right behind him. “How was your mission?”
Axel scrunched up his face. “It would’ve gone better if the Heartless would just sit still. Threw me flat on my butt,” he complained, dramatically rubbing a sore spot to emphasize his point.
Roxas had to laugh. “Oh yeah? Didn’t you tell Saïx you’re a big boy?”
“Not the point!” But Axel gave him a wink. “What about you?”
Roxas turned to Xion. “Ta-daa!” he sang, as the Keyblade appeared in her hand.
“Well, what d’you know!”
“I’d like to dedicate this Keyblade summoning to my friends Axel and Roxas,” Xion declared, beaming, and let the Keyblade wink out again.
“Me? I didn’t do anything,” Axel protested with a wry laugh.
“Sure you did! You spoke up for us this morning so Roxas and I could stay together.”
Axel knew she meant it, but he looked away. It felt uncomfortable somehow to have anyone grinning at him with such uncomplicated joy.
“If it weren’t for you, she might not have remembered how to use the Keyblade,” Roxas added. Then he and Xion both spoke at once: “Thanks, Axel.”
That, right there—it just felt so awkward. Axel scratched his head and turned away. “Well…how about buying me an ice cream, then?”
“Huh?” Roxas blurted, confused by the request when Axel couldn’t even meet their eyes.
But that was the only concession he could give them. If they showered him with any more effusive gratitude, he didn’t think he could stand it. “Then we can call it even.”
Xion and Roxas exchanged a glance.
She jumped to her feet. “It’s on me! I’ll be right back!”
The sun sank lower and lower as Axel watched, his mind wandering.
If he stared for too long, the image would burn itself into his eyes, visible even after his eyes were closed.
A phantom sun.
Someone had once told him why sunsets were red… Who was that?
Kingdom Hearts 358-2 Days Page 13
