--- Shades of Grey ---
Prologue - Dive Into The Heart
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, or any of the Disney or Square Enix characters or stories featured within. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to say that I did, but that would be a blatant lie. Any song, movie, and/or book reference used throughout the course of this story is also not owned by me. In fact, the only thing that is owned by me is this story.
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All worlds begin in darkness, and all so end.
The heart is no different.
Darkness sprouts within it, it grows, consumes it.
Such is its nature.
In the end, every heart returns to the darkness from whence it came!
You see, darkness is the heart's true essence.
Sora shivered slightly, the remembered voice of Ansem - or rather, the Heartless calling himself Ansem - fading from his mind. 'It's cold. I guess... this is what dying feels like.' Hanging his head, he whispered, "I'm scared..."
"I'm scared too," came a tentative reply from somewhere to his right.
"Of course we're scared," a third voice added from somewhere to the left, "This is Hades we're talking about here. Lord of the Dead anybody? Even if we die, we're still gonna be trapped here."
Sora's eyes opened slowly. Though there came a light, feeble as it was, from somewhere below his field of vision, in all directions, all he could see was darkness. Though the light reached the veil of darkness, rather than pushing the darkness back, it was consumed entirely.
The first thought that flitted through Sora's head was 'Where am I now?' Hades' Underworld did not look like this. With that thought came a second; the chains binding his wrists to the wall were gone, as was the wall itself, leaving him standing under his own power. The third thought, however, centred around the two figures he could see on the edges of the darkness around him. 'Have I invented people to stave off loneliness or something?' "Who's out there?"
"Us of course," the figure on his right answered.
Sora turned to the speaker; where did he know that voice from? "Who are you I mean?"
"We're the parts of you that find a home in the dark places within you," the left voice remarked almost casually, a voice that sounded eerily like his own, only more arrogant.
Sora hung his head again. "So, you're here to finish me off then?"
The left voice snorted derisively, "Pfft, no."
"We exist in the dark places within you," the right voice continued, "But this darkness... This is something else. We're in just as much trouble as you are here."
Sora sighed. "I don't understand..."
"That's a first," the left voice quipped mockingly.
"You're not being particularly helpful, especially when we don't really understand it either," the right voice retorted.
The keyblade master sighed again. "Am I gonna have to ask who you guys are again?" As that question hung in the air, the two figures began walking towards the light.
The first person he noticed, the one on the left, did not do much to dissuade him from the believe he'd been inventing people to keep his mind busy; after all, he looked almost exactly like Sora himself, though his eyes were yellow instead of blue, and the entirety of his clothing were shades of black, even the crown medallion worn around his neck.
The second person however, the one on his right, caused him to do a double take; he recognised that face, so similar-yet-different to his own. "Roxas?" The meagre light glinted off the star medallion he wore, drawing Sora's attention to the outfit his Other wore, comprised of combinations of white and black in various amounts; the very same outfit he'd seen the teen wearing on the Altar of Naught.
If Roxas were here, there were only two explanations either he was hallucinating, or... Looking down, he saw something he probably should have noticed a long time ago; the ground he stood on was made of stained glass, and the light was coming from beneath the platform.
The glass, however, looked all pitted and cracked, so much so that he wondered how it hadn't fallen to pieces yet. The light beneath the glass was pulsing slightly, like a flame coming close to gutting out. Turning to examine the picture on the glass, he noticed instantly that it was of Kairi, dressed as she was the day he'd found her again after their year of separation, the light shining strongest in the centre of the picture, where her heart would be.
Sora knew where he was now. He'd been here before, what felt like so long ago, when he'd received his keyblade. This was the depths of his heart. And it was in ruin. "Why am I here again?"
"You're here because we brought you," the stranger replied.
"We're out of time," Roxas added, "This platform is your heart's last line of defence, the final barrier that keeps the darkness from consuming your heart entirely. IF we don't do something, all of us are in trouble."
Turning to the unknown mirror copy, Sora asked, "Who are you anyway?"
"Call me Aros," he replied with a bored shrug. "I'm your Heartless." When Sora gasped, he grinned, "What, you didn't think I was gone did you? You turned into me, but rather than Roxie here finding me and us rejoining into you, Kairi used the light in her heart to drive back the darkness. If you wanna get technical, before Roxas rejoined you, you were a Heartless made of light instead of darkness."
"And it's the unusual nature of our union that allows me to exist like this," Roxas supplied, "And that just may allow you to be saved."
"Why do you guys want to save me anyway?" Sora asked, without any real intent to be hurtful; he was just curious. "I mean, if my heart gets consumed by darkness, don't you guys go free again?"
"You think we want to be free?" Roxas asked incredulously. "Being a Nobody is a horrid existence. We feel nothing; no joy, no hate, no jealousy. No love. I didn't even remember what having a heart felt like, and I still hated it. I don't want to go back to that now that I've had a chance to experience emotion through sharing your heart."
Sora nodded, "Alright, I get that, but why do you," he pointed to Aros, "Want to help?"
Aros just shrugged, "Being a Heartless isn't much better than being a Nobody. I mean, as a Heartless, you're little more than a wild animal with an insatiable hunger for Hearts. I only got this form when you were reformed. I only truly live as part of you, rather than existing as some mindless beast. Hell, I even get to come out and play every now and then."
"What do you mean?" Sora quirked an eyebrow.
Aros smirked. "Your Anti-Form. Those drive forms of yours were a great boon to me, giving me the chance to take over every now and then, though things were still a little too bestial for my taste. Fortunately, Roxas here helps reign that in."
Sora nodded, satisfied with their answers. "So, what happens now?"
"We become you," Roxas replied.
"And you become us," Aros finished.
When Sora just looked more confused, Roxas explained, "We combine with you, granting you our memories and powers, and together, as one, we keep the darkness at bay. I erect a barrier of Nothing to keep the darkness away from your light-"
"-And I grant you control over the darkness, to help us out of the other predicament we're in," Aros continued. "This darkness is unnatural, and about the only thing that can stop Hades."
"You're going to sacrifice yourselves to save me?"
"Poetic isn't it?" Roxas smiled a touch sadly. "Both halves of you being noble enough to sacrifice themselves to save you."
"Don't look too deeply into this," Aros spat, "I just like existing, and I'd rather exist through you than as one of those disgusting mindless brutes."
"We just have a few requests," Roxas interjected, "First, I want you to look after Namine for me. She's part of Kairi, so that shouldn't be too hard, but..."
"Second, you kill as many of those Heartless and Nobodies as you can," Aros added, "It's a horrible existence, and they're better off. Finally, when you fight the ones that did this to us, we want you to use the new drive this'll give you; a drive combining the three of us."
"Done, gladly, and it would be my pleasure," Sora replied. As the two began fading back into darkness, Sora exclaimed, "Wait, how do I get back?!"
"How can you be so idiotic?!" Aros' disembodied voice shouted, "Look down!"
"You've always known the way," Roxas' voice added. "And if it helps, remember us to. Now go."
Looking down at the picture of Kairi's smiling face, Sora felt a smile come to his own. The light pulsed, before a door shimmered into existence directly over it. Striding over to it, Sora heaved the heavy doors open, finding a swirling mass of white and black behind, and without fear, he stepped in. He had a promise to keep.
"I promise," he spoke to his guardians in the darkness, "I will never forget, any of you."
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Author's Notes
As promised, a new story for a new year. I should be working on Disturbance, but here I am, writing a new story. Hopefully, this'll get the creative juices flowing enough to write the final seven chapters of Disturbance.
I had the first chapter of this story written in time to post on New Years Eve, as I'd hoped, but my beta said that there was something missing. I agreed, and it lead to me delaying the release of the story until this prologue could be written.
I'll be honest, I have no idea where this story is going. It started with an idea, and I'm going to see where it goes.