Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts or its related characters.
I have this theory where the mechanics of Kingdom Hearts are a big analogy for existential crises. This isn't as much a fic as it is an exploration of an idea. Hope that doesn't bug you too much.
Unbetaed.
They never were two separate people.
When Sora first lost his heart, all there was was Roxas.
And what Roxas was was empty.
When passion left him, when purpose denied him, when he couldn't feel any longer, he became yearning, and a want—a desperate grasping at something other than now—that was Roxas. That was Sora, when he was Roxas.
"What am I?"
He ached for a reason to be, for anything to fill this gap of his existence—
"What do I do now?"
It wasn't so much an emotion as it was a hunger.
He wanted to be something.
And so he fought for a meaning (a heart), for an identity (his heart). Grasping the keys to his mind, he fought the oppressive nothingness—the black shadows of doubt and fear, climbing, consuming and engulfing, waving deep into his skin, blanking his mind—
"I'm doing my best!" he'd scream, "I—" determination cut through the inky black, "—I deserve to be me!"
"No," they'd say, "you're not." And the tide would push back, biting unrelenting. It was heartless.
"No- you're nothing."
Back home, some nights, a storm sometimes brews under the indigo sky.
He slides back into Roxas; feeling paler, and the warmth in his hair chilling a little.
These are the days were his heart escapes him, when it proves too much for him. It is easier, now; as easy as his breath. All he has to do is let go of it, a little. Step away from the hurt and outrage, and the joy and glee and their intensity. Put up a barrier inside him, around it. Encapsulate it and reach into himself and let it go.
As he draws it out, he begins paling in existence, and the world's points begin dulling for him. All that leaves is the nothingness—All that is left is a growing sense of Roxas in blue eyes.
Just before the heart can leave Sor—Rox-his fingers, Roxas calls back out to him—a pleading, a yearning whine, growing in volume-
"…ease, please don't let us go."
And the fingers stop. They begin to tremble.
"I—we, need—need to feel and the h-hurting and the nothingness would be too much again— please—"
And then it is Roxas who clutches the heart for all of its burning radiance and scorching heat. It hurts. It's hot. But he takes the burning ball and presses it back—Sora feels the tears, and he feels the hurt (and oh, how it hurts), so Roxas keeps at it, because he'd rather the pain of feeling than be numb again.