He's never felt anything before.

Not the cool air of the night, or the caress of the wind. Not the warmth of sun or the feel of grass against bare feet. He's never felt the warmth of a mother's embrace or the solid strength of a father.

In short, he's never known what it is to be alive.

Sometimes, when he lays awake in bed, late at night, he'll stare out the window at the heart-shaped moon, wondering if this is life.

Is all existence devoid of everything I'll never know?

In the stillness, the questions plague him until he wants to kill himself just to make the voices stop. But as soon as he thinks this, they whisper something different.

Your life is already a death. And then Naminé's words rise to the front of his mind, mocking in their sorrowful sincerity.

Roxas...you were never supposed to exist.

If he had a heart, it would break into delicate shards of pain and betrayal. Instead, there is the emptiness. Dark and omnipresent, it is the void where feelings should be. And he cries out in the blackness, screaming without making a sound.

Why? Why am I here?

Naminé's face enters his thoughts, twisting into a cruel imitation of innocence.

Roxas...you were never supposed to exist.

He remembers when she said those words for the first time. It was then, in that stark white room, when he first understood what death was like. He touched it, saw it, felt it.

And then he felt nothing at all.

Every night, he prays for someone to find him in the desolation. Someone to reach through the dark, take his hand, and lead him to the light. Someone to show him what life truly is.

Every day, he waits with infinite patience for them to enter his sphere of existence.

Every evening, he dies a little bit more when no one does.

The only thing he's ever known is emptiness. Sometimes, though, he can feel fragments of something else. It is a longing for purpose.

And it is despair.

x-x-x

It is a day. A twenty-four hour fragment of time like the one before it and the one that shall come after.

It is this particular day that he learns what he truly is.

A Nobody.

Even the word sounds hollow. It is no comfort that there are twelve others like him.

He would wish his pain on no one.

With what could be considered hope, he takes up the Keyblades, wields them against Somebodies and Heartless alike. All the while, despair gnaws at the corners of his mind.

Roxas...you were never supposed to exist.

He's never really believed the words. But slowly, they invade his consciousness, rise unbidden in every waking moment. The voices grow louder each night. Still the tiny voice of Naminé overpowers them all, endlessly chanting those six words.

He's never known anything but emptiness and torment. Not love, or joy, or friendship. He's never belonged to anything but darkness and death.

This is Roxas.