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He tried, really he did; upon his return to the islands where he had spent summers as a child, playing on the beach without a care in the world, his only thought was towards being normal again. Riku was beside him once more, and Kairi was with them always, afraid of being left behind. In the daylight hours nothing was wrong.
No, the problem was when he slept. In his dreams, there were twining streams of fire, arching through the sky to converge in a tall pillar of the angry element that, every night, continued to flicker and shoot sparks like stars that rained bloody drops upon his skin as he stood in the middle of it, in the eye of the storm.
Fire gave way to shadows that ripped and tore and devoured. It was a feeling he knew from the single experience of his heart being torn from his body. But that had lasted only so long, and this was eternal, torturous, and the little monsters ripped through layers of his very self that had nothing to do with his heart, tearing at him until his silent screams rent the world of dreams.
Then there was nothingness, a feeling of absolute emptiness that must have been what the nobodies felt in their long years of being what they were. He, without meaning to, looked each and every night for an emotion - anger, happiness, anything - and felt the stirring of it in his stomach, just enough to taunt him, and not enough to make him stop trying.
Through all of it, he hurt.
The general consensus of everyone who knew him, from those who had fought both beside him and for him, to those he had hunted down and hurt, was that he was optimistic to the end, that he would never give up or give in, that he was always strong and brave and cheerful.
Anyone who had seen his nightmares would know the truth.
He had stood amongst the remains of a thousand monsters, destroyed more than that, and not shed a tear for the things that he had done, never once thinking that this could be wrong. He had shed more blood than any person, much less a child, had the right to even see, and thought nothing of it until he had lain beneath the stars and dreamed, not the dreamless sleep of a year, but the painful kind of a single night that stretched on forever and repeated each time he closed his eyes.
Daylight came again and he began to realize what was expected of him, as the master of a weapon that he had never wanted. Riku and Kairi were there, and it was what he owed, his payment for having them returned to him. As they approached, he knew what he would have to do each day until eternity took him or he finally broke.
Sora smiled.