xion wakes up but it's still dark.
it always starts the same, this way: dark and unfeeling, she tries to move through the sludge, but the sound of water splashes and calls and threatens to pull her under. if she doesn't fight, she finds she can't breathe.
axel brought her back, but for how long?
she can still see the firm lines of riku's face, still feel the sharp pain of her mind.
"none of this is yours.": she trips, falls, chokes / the black falls down and expands inside her throat, fills a weight in her lungs, and the tide pulls her under, kicking and screaming.
xion wakes up but it's still dark. she feels the wet a little more acutely this time. she opens her mouth: finds she doesn't have a voice. instead, the only sound is the sound of waves breaking on stone walls, and her hands, trying to find placeholders in a world that threatens to swallow her, unforgiving and unkind.
"give it back.": she turns, almost sure she can hear a voice – but it's a wave instead, and it presses her down into a depthless and endless underbelly, her mouth clamped and overflowing with the taste of sea-salt.
she's not sure how many times she's woken up again to see nothing, but she's tired, and scared, and her mouth rounds out roxas' name.
please help. her shoulder collides with something hard, and when she falls to her knees, she doesn't feel the water, instead, she feels the welcome touch of sand. she clutches at it, even when it falls through the webbing of her fingers, and cries. safe, but for how long? the tide will come in and wash her away, like a shell she forgets on the crest of the beach, and she'll wake up to see nothing – only the dark, only the sound of waves, only memories that threaten to spill out of her barely contained seams.
where's the needle to stitch her back up again? maybe she is broken.
she figures she'll wait, wait until she wakes up for real or underneath the water, breathing broken, when something pulls her forward. hands, gentle, on her arms, pull her up and forward and as she stands, walks, xion starts to see splinters of light. roxas came for me after all, her chest swells, her hand reaches out towards his face – and only finds hers.
her face contorts, twists, no its – it's a boy, smiling and back-lit with a light xion finds too blinding – sora.
"i need you." he says, and he wraps his arms around her but xion is trapped, scrambling / screaming / squirming / unwilling, tired arms pushing at him to get far away, to leave her alone.
"i don't want to be a part of you," she begs, and she finds she has her voice again, hoarse and rough but growing, "i want to stay with my friends. i want to stay with them!"
xion wakes up, and even though she's no longer in the dark, she thinks she can still hear the sound of rushing water.