Please, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger. (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

For Whimsical Acumen.

The unofficial theme song for this entire story is Florence and the Machine's "Heavy in Your Arms," hence the title, just so you all know.

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Anyway, I have MOVED this story COMPLETELY to another site. You can find this STORY and all its subsequent UPDATES here: h*t*t*p :/ archiveofourown. o*r*g /works/833894/chapters/1587148

I have the same penname there as I do here: ParadiseAvenger

X:X:X

"Much of my life has been dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. That knowledge had guarded this world well. Not a soul doubts that. I am blessed with my people's smiles and respect. But though I am called a sage, there are things I do not understand. I believe darkness sleeps in every heart, no matter how pure. Given the chance, the smallest drop can spread and swallow the heart. I have witnessed it many times. Darkness… Darkness of the heart. How is it born? How does it come to affect us so? As ruler of this world, I must find the answers. I must find them before the world is lost to those taken by the darkness.

"It is my duty to expose what this darkness really is. I shall conduct the following experiments: 1) extract the darkness from a person's heart, 2) cultivate the darkness in a pure heart, and 3) both suppress and amplify the darkness within. The experiments caused the test subjects' hearts to collapse, including those of the most stalwart. How fragile our hearts are! My treatments produced no signs of recovery. I confined those who had completely lost their hearts beneath the castle. Some time later, I went below and was greeted by the strangest sight—creatures that seemed born of darkness… What are they? Are they truly sentient beings? Could they be shadows of those who lost their hearts in my experiments?

"The shadows that crawl beneath the castle… Are they people who lost their hearts or incarnations of darkness? Or something entirely beyond imagination? All my knowledge had provided no answer. One thing I am sure of is that they are entirely devoid of emotion. Perhaps further study will unlock the mysteries of the heart. Fortunately, there is no shortage of test samples. They are multiplying underground even as I write this report. They still need a name. Those who lack hearts… I will call them Heartless.

"The Heartless appear in groups and are multiplying rapidly. I've provided them both living and nonliving samples. They've responded only to the living. They seem to multiply after absorbing something from living creatures. Their prey vanished without a trace. I believe the Heartless are taking hearts. They are born from those who've lost their hearts and thrive on hearts seized from others. The hearts taken by the Heartless become Heartless themselves. Though I lack proof, I am confident in this hypothesis. I must also study their behavioral principles. Though they lack emotions, they do have some intelligence. How to communicate with them?

"It's just occurred to me: Could they be the darkness in people's hearts?

"To study Heartless behavior, I picked one out for observation. It wiggled its antennae and, as if sensing a target, headed deep into the castle. In the deepest part of the castle, its antennae began vibrating, as if searching for something. Suddenly, a strange door appeared. I'd never known of its existence. It had a large keyhole, but didn't seem to be locked. So I opened the door. What I saw on the other side mystified me. What was that powerful mass of energy? That night, I observed a great meteor shower in the sky. Could it be related to that door I have opened?

"A massive core of energy lay beyond the door sought by the Heartless. It may well be the ultimate goal of all Heartless. But what is that energy? I have devised a hypothesis, based upon my observations of the Heartless. The Heartless feed on other's hearts and they yearn for that energy core. That thing beyond the door must be a heart, too—the heart of this world. There is no proof, but, having felt that immense energy, I am certain. That was the heart of the world. The Heartless are trying to take hearts not only from all living creatures, but from the world itself. But what do they mean to do with the heart of the world?

"I am now studying material from the meteors that rained down that fateful night. What a find! The material is foreign to our world. It is elastic to the touch and when two pieces are combined, they bond easily. None of the records I've scoured even mention such a substance. Was it introduced to this world when I opened that door? I wonder how many other such materials drift through the atmosphere of this tiny world… I wish I could soar off and find out! Could there be other uncharted worlds up there? My curiosity never ceases to grow. But I should stop speaking of such unrealistic dreams. For now, there is no way to venture outside this world. My people and I are all but prisoners of this tiny place.

"There is no doubt that the Heartless are deeply connected to people's hearts. Further study may unravel bother their motivations and the mysteries shrouding the heart. As a start, I have built a device that artificially creates Heartless. By recreating the conditions that spawn Heartless naturally, I should be able to produce them artificially. This device is the culmination of all my research thus far. The machine's test run successfully created a Heartless. This may be a step toward creating a heart from nothing. The artificially- and naturally-created Heartless showed nearly identical traits. But the two types should remain distinct for the purposes of the experiment. So I will mark the ones that are created artificially.

"Simply astonishing! Today I had a guest from another world. He is a king and his vessel is built of the material that composed the meteors. He called the pieces "gummi-blocks." It seems that my opening that door has opened a path to interworld travel. We talked for hours, but one story in particular caught my interest: that of a key called the "Keyblade." The Keyblade is said to hold phenomenal power. One legend says its wielder saved the world while another says that he wrought chaos and ruin upon it. I must know what this Keyblade is. A key opens doors. It must be connected to the door that I have opened.

"Just as people have hearts, so do worlds. The same can be said of the stars in the night sky. And deep within each world lies a door to its heart. The Heartless desire those hearts. Born out of the darkness in people's hearts, they seek to return to a greater heart. Yes, that's it. The Heartless come from people's hearts, as does the darkness. Is the core of the world's heart the world of the Heartless? I will pursue the answer there and become all-knowing. My path is set. I shall seek out the wielder of the Keyblade and the Princesses. My body is too frail for such a journey, but I must do this. I will cast it off and plunge into the depths of darkness… (1)"

That's what was transmitted via satellite, gummi-ship, radio, television, and word of mouth the day everything happened.

It was recorded on a tape that was found in an underground lab beneath the floors of the mysterious stronghold known as Kingdom Hearts. But no one got the chance to find out any more than that because a few minutes after landing on Kingdom Hearts, that world closed up and ceased to be and all those dark creatures escaped to devour all the other worlds in the universe.

The people that had been on Kingdom Hearts at the time—sent to find out why all communications with that world had ceased with one final scream and then nothing but silence and static crackle—had never been heard from again save that desperate recorded transmission that they sent out as if it held the secrets to everything that had happened there. Sadly, no one understood what the recorded entries meant and they didn't have much spare time to think about it either.

After that, the army of darkness attacked and destroyed everything in its path.

Since the last transmission from Kingdom Hearts, the scientist's recorded entries, a full year of war has passed… Some people have survived, most have not. Some worlds have survived, most have not. Some things were the same, but most things were not. A year… a year of fighting back the darkness—inside and outside.

X:Hollow:X:Bastion:X

"Princess! We're under siege! They're at the gates!"

Princess Kairi Sinclair was woken by the doors to the throne room being hurled open and one of her guards rushed in with his eyes wild, shouting hysterically. Immediately, she was up and out of her father's heavy chair and dashing down the hall after her guard. Her skirts snagged on a table, but she yanked free to hustle after the guard. The table rattled behind her, but didn't crash over as she had half-expected. The guard brought her to the battlements and she looked down at the monsters attacking the drawbridge.

"Princess! What should we do?!" one of the soldiers asked. He was a slender, fine-faced fellow and Kairi knew he used to be a postman, forced to be a soldier by the mass of darkness beating into everyone's lives. She knew he wouldn't survive a full-fledged battle—he was no soldier.

Kairi hated this. She hated being in charge of all these lives and taking responsibility for sending people to their deaths to no avail.

The shadow monsters—the Heartless, if the transmission of the scientist was to be believed—attacked the castle day in and day out, calmed and attacked in different ways by possessing people inside the fortress, were beaten back, and attacked at the heavy gates again. During the day, they were more easily beaten, but at night… it almost wasn't worth the fight. Hollow Bastion was beginning to break apart at the seams and there seemed to be nothing Kairi could do to stop it.

"How long will the gates hold?" she asked quickly.

"A few more minutes! Tops!" the postman-turned-soldier told her.

She bit her lower lip and looked down at the black army laying siege to her kingdom's gates. "We don't have any choice but to fight," she said almost to herself and then more loudly to the others, "If they get in, it's all over!"

"We know, Princess," several of her men whispered.

She whirled back to face these countless honest faces, pale in the moonlight with panic. It was time to do what she hated—give the orders for battle. "Get the archers on it first and continue until it looks like we'll be overrun."

Unspoken: I don't want to lose more lives than we have to. Our numbers are already so few.

Several people nodded, happy that she wasn't hungry for a battle that would cost many of them their lives. The archers lifted their bows, shouldered their quivers, and sucked in strong breaths to steady themselves.

"Send some, our youngest soldiers, down to attempt to barricade the gate and get our people back behind the second wall, just in case." The princess paused, looking down again. "Some of you are to stay here and watch and be aware in case they try to scale the walls. Defend our archers if they do." She took a deep breath. "The rest of you—prepare yourselves for battle!"

The great answering roar came up abruptly. "Yes Princess!" And then everyone rushed off to do as she said.

Kairi lingered at the top of the great wall longer, looking out over the army of darkness. The cold wind kissed her cheeks and bared throat, tossed her blood-red hair across her shoulders, and prickled her flesh with goose bumps. The zing of the archers' bows and flying arrows and the cries of slaughtered dark creatures filled the night, coupled with the distant shouting of people and soldiers as they barricaded the gates and rushed for the safety of the inner walls.

These monsters had been coming for little more than a year now and they had sprung up like toadstools throughout the entire universe as if needing only shadows to appear. They were ugly, twisted creatures that had been eaten apart by something from the inside out. Some of them used to be human, she supposed, but others were simply monsters that had never been human. They had black skin and big glowing yellow eyes. Some wore twisted charred armor, some carried mangled weapons, and a few even rode giant monsters reminiscent of horses, but most of them fought with their tearing claws and sharp teeth and other animalistic weaponry.

Then, it got worse.

The creatures started taking people over from the inside out, devouring something inside them—their hearts—and breaking them apart. People that Kairi had been friends with and known all her life changed violently. They started killing and hurting at random and a few even slaughtered their own families. There was no deciding how these creatures chose their victims, chose which humans to devour from the inside, because Kairi's strong good father, King Jason Sinclair, was even swallowed up. Kairi's mother, Queen Ramona Sinclair, had been forced to kill her own husband before he murdered everyone in the palace, including his daughter. And then the creatures devoured her mother's heart.

Heartless…

The entire universe just fell apart when the monsters came. So of course, everything had to change after that.

Worlds were devoured by this darkness and its creatures. Some worlds and all its people were completely destroyed by the shadow monsters, turned into ugly possessed humans, slaughtered in cold blood, slaughtered by the possessed. In order to survive, other worlds—Traverse Town, Disney Castle, Hollow Bastion, Kingdom Hearts before it was destroyed—became strongholds and sheltered the refugees from the demolished worlds. But a lot of people had been killed, devoured, destroyed just like the countless worlds that were now lost. It seemed like a lot of things were lost now including things like happiness and hope that she thought could never really be taken away.

Kairi took a deep breath of cold night air and watched the sleek movement of her archers lined up on the battlement shooting at the dark army below. The unfortunately-natural stone overpass that led to the gates of Hollow Bastion bridged a deep chasm of deep space, into the void between worlds. A few ugly creatures fell over the bridge and dissolved into the darkness from whence they came.

As Kairi was not a warrior princess, she hurried back into Hollow Bastion's stronghold castle and lingered in the throne room where she had been sleeping earlier that night. So much time seemed to have passed since the guard had awoken her, it was almost unreal—hours! She went to her father's great chair and ran her cold hands over the thick red velvet. She wished her father's warm body was still there in his chair. She wished he was still here to help her and she missed her mother's guidance… She missed them so much.

"Princess Kairi," her most trusted guard's voice rang through the silence of the throne room. "You've got that look on your face. Are you missing them?"

The princess turned to face Riku Crossman, her most precious guard. He used to live in another world, but when it was destroyed and his family with it, he came to Hollow Bastion as a refugee. He had glimpsed Kairi on the battlements back when her parents were still alive and did everything he could to become one of her guards. He just had to know her! After intense training, he had become the most important part of the castle's defenses, strategy, and battle.

"Riku," she murmured. "I was just thinking about how everything used to be."

He shook his shaggy silver head and put his hands on her narrow shoulders. "You can't think that way and you know it."

Kairi sighed heavily and tucked her small fingers into his leather knife-belt. "I know, Riku, I know."

Hollow Bastion had always been a great thriving world, but it was much stronger and safer when Princess Kairi Sinclair was still a child. (In her teenage years—now!—it had become a battleground like every other world, but was one of the last great strongholds of the old universe.) The streets had once been alive with people, the market was bountiful, the hospitals used to be half-empty, the palace was aglow with amber light, and everything was perfect. Now, the people hid in their houses and in the castle behind locked barred doors, supplies were always low, hospitals were packed with injured and the morgue was full of dead, but the palace was still a beacon of light on the crest of the city.

"Riku…"

"Hmm?"

"Are the gummi-ships ready?"

He was quiet for a moment, staring somewhere over her head. "Has it come to that already?" he asked finally.

Kairi made a sound low in her throat. "I hope not, but if they get through the walls I want to be certain we can get everyone out in time. I don't want to lose anyone else," she said softly and stepped back to look up into Riku's honest green eyes. "Would you run to the hangar and check on everything for me?"

Riku nodded, put his hands on her bare shoulders, and tucked a strand of Kairi's red hair behind her ear. It caught on her small sapphire earrings, the ones that had once been her mother's. Some coppery blood was caught in the delicate gold-leaf, but Kairi wore them anyway. They were all she had left of her mother and all she had left of her father was his heavy cold throne. Even being a princess, she had lost everything she had loved in her life. Riku ran his hands down over her shoulders and spied the carved silver hilt of the small knife he had given her peeking out over the top of her bodice.

"Kairi?" he murmured quietly into her blood-colored hair.

"Hmm?" Her gaze was far-seeing, still thinking about things she shouldn't be thinking about.

"I'm going to check the ships in the hangar, go through the city, and then help out with the battle."

Her small fingers tightened on his knife belt and he felt it in her chest—the words to beg him, to order him, not to go and put himself in danger. He was her last living friend and she didn't want to lose him like she had everything else precious in her life, but Kairi sucked in a deep breath and nodded slowly. Her breath rattled in her chest like she was sick and he was sure she was. Sick at heart, that is…

"Be careful," was all she said after she stopped breathing like that.

Riku nodded and tried to pull away from her, but her fingers dug in, clutching him desperately though her expression remained blank. "Kairi, let go. I'll be okay," he said to her and tried to peel her fingers out of his leather vest. "Kairi, let me go," he insisted. He hated to hurt her like this and his alliance was to her first, yet it was his responsibility to defend Hollow Bastion to the death. That was an oath he had taken and couldn't break. "Princess, please…"

Finally, Kairi uncurled her white-knuckled fingers and allowed him to get away.

Riku cast one final glance at his best friend and princess and then left the cold haunted throne room. His footsteps echoed on the granite floor, heavy boots clattering, and he checked in on the gummi-ships in the hangar. All were ready to fly on a moment's notice, the mechanists assured him and continued tinkering away to be certain of that. Then, he returned to his proper place on the battlements and was relieved to see that the archers had been able to beat back the dark creatures. For now, everything was going to be alright—they would survive! Hollow Bastion would make it through the night.

…

Dear Diary,

One of the things I miss the most about the worlds as they were were the rules (and the life, I suppose, but that comes later). Not that I ever thought that all rules were absolute because I know they aren't. (I'm not a child anymore and haven't been for almost a year, since the creatures started coming.) But it was comforting to think that some things just couldn't happen, just weren't allowed, but there were still times when rules still didn't apply.

There was always at least one exception. (Like when my friend Wakka got a really, really, really bad haircut and got to wear a hat in school even though they were prohibited.) The exception to the rules, but in the old world—the worlds as they were—there were at least rules that were followed by most. Those who didn't were criminals, troublemakers, delinquents, rebels, felons, revolutionaries, creatures, monsters, and crooks—call them what you will.

Now, since the war started, the rules of the world were dust or had changed so drastically that I wasn't sure what they even were anymore. Sometimes, late at night, I missed the old world—my old world—but most of the time I didn't have the energy to miss anything—not my poor dead parents, not my precious dead friends, not even my wonderful dead dog.

The war takes up all my time.

X:X:X

And I removed the original mature content that continued from that point due to the trolls. Please join the cause to bring maturity to Fanfiction again. Or read this story and all its updates in its original version on Archive of Our Own.

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(1) This is Ansem's report, entries one through ten, straight from the first game. You have no idea how long it took me to copy it down, but I did add some creative punctuation because it was a little weird the way it was formatted on the game.

Did anyone else know that King Mickey's Castle is actually called Disney Castle? I didn't know that and had to go back and change things!

Really, really long first chapter!

SLOW UPDATES until I finish Soul Eater's Where Do We Go When We Die? You'll all be fine. Take a breath…

Questions, comments, concerns? Well, Whimsical Acumen, what do you think?