Disclaimer: I obviously do not own anything that sounds remotely like something you have seen in pop culture. This piece of fiction is purely for entertainment and there is no means of income being made from it.
Warnings: An AU dark fic dealing with the darker side of humanity, some images in later chapters might be disturbing, so read at your own risk. Boy-love will eventually rear its head, but I will not give you a definite chapter on that, as I am not sure myself. Some sexual references and scenes, but nothing graphic. Gore is most definitely in here, but like everything else, it will be later. Specific warnings per chapter to be announced.
I would be lying if I said that it had ever occurred to me that people would be interested in any part of my life. I am not a celebrity and I am not wealthy; sure, a part of my story is rooted within history, but everyone's is in some way. Even if my role in history is a bit different from some, it still does not make my life interesting. To me it was full of things that everyone experiences with age: survival, maturation, and love. Willa Cather had once said there were three themes that permeated life and literature and my life was no different. However, as my son loves to point out, my life contained something else that few can claim: deception.
Nowadays everyone knows what security and prosperity are, reap its benefits with every day, but this world had not always had such things. Before the government we know now, there was another regime in place, one that was corrupt to its very core and full of injustice. I have found that it is hard for the younger generations to grasp fully what it was like back then, especially because they only know about it through textbooks, scholars, and the occasional story of a parent or grandparent. None of these can truly transfer the emotions felt during the time, and none of these accounts provide an insight on how that old regime worked.
That is where I step in. My experience was much different than most, as I witnessed many things that your grandparents never even fathomed was there, never even thought could be possible. Firsthand experiences of the cruelty and workings of that regime plagued me every day, and as far as I know, I am the only one who has lived to tell about them. I dare even to go as far as to say that I was the only survivor left who truly knew the workings of that city, the one who was crucial to the revolution that took place. However, you readers might dispute that claim as you go through my life, so I will merely suggest this.
At the time, I was a boy, merely a child who still depended on his parents for everything. It was the summer of my sixteenth year of life, and the season everything I had once thought true would be inverted. But despite being a boy, a mere infant, it was also the summer when I grew into an adult way before my time through a series of events that involved me directly with the end of that heinous regime, the XIII Order.
If I have caught your interest, then continue and hear my story. After all, you might learn something from memories of mine that will aid you in your own life someday, though I pray the circumstances are different. You might have learned things differently in school or lectures about what I am going to tell you, and my words might sound false to those skeptical, but I promise you nothing but truth flows into these words; after all, there are many things out there that have many sides no one has discovered yet, and the XIII Order is no different. Therefore, dear reader, delve deep into my past and see a boy's struggles with survival, maturation, love, and deception. These are my memories, pure and unadulterated, with my soul bared to your eyes; do with them what you will.
Summer vacation had just started this very afternoon, and it had never tasted sweeter. I was no longer a sophomore, a "wise fool" as the word suggests, and was now a Junior. The temperature was about seventy degrees, a great start that many took to mean that the summer would be mild this year instead of terribly unbearable as it had been for the past three summers. I had just left the schoolyard with three of my friends, two boys and a girl; we were on our way to my house to celebrate with a round of my favorite treat, ice cream. Back then, people did not really stay out of their homes long unless necessary, so it was not uncommon to see the streets nearly empty as they were that afternoon.
Our town was called Dark City back then, though like the Twilight Town of now, the sky was always the colors of a salmon. Not much has changed in the layout of the town since then; there were still three districts everything fell under- the shopping district, called Market Street, the residential district, called Sunset Hill, and the professional district, a place many called Hollow Bastion, though no real name had ever been declared. Market Street and Sunset Hill were subdivided into different sections based on income, and there was no tight-knit community that exists now.
The divider of everyone was income, and it was nearly impossible to climb up the districts once someone fell, though it was common for people to fall to the lowest rank. None of us really had that much money back then, save for the members of the XIII Order and their friends, but that did not mean that we were sympathetic to our less fortunate neighbors; I would venture to say that class distinctions were more apparent than ever.
The wealthy lived closest to the professional district in very exclusive communities with the most lavish homes and the best security. Further off were the homes the majority of us lived in, being the lower middle class; they were decent, but smaller than homes you see today and very close together. My father had told me once that they were like that so more space would be available for the wealthy, and I have never forgotten that. Security was more lax here and the streets were often crowded with people trying to get to and from work and school.
Further down were the slums, and it was not uncommon for fifteen or twenty families to live in one small tenant house. Crime was rampant there and many were starving to death every day. However, no one cared for these people, not even us of the middle class; they were the dregs of society, the weak links of the chain. Most people shunned them wherever they went, as they feared that if they associated with the poor, they would become poor themselves. It was because of this that they were always blamed for everything that went wrong by both the XIII Order and the townspeople.
My friends and I were quick to reach our destination, partially in fear that some trouble might come across us in the form of the impoverished, but mostly because we did not want to cross paths with a few Dusks. No one was safe from their wrath, not even Olette, my female friend, and her father was one of them. They were the grunts of the XIII Order, the military that kept everything in order, and they were very brutal. Many a person had lost their life thanks to these people, but no Dusk had ever once gotten in trouble for it.
The tram station was a short walk from my house, and after hopping on one of the local trams and running the rest of the way to our destination, we were safe from the poverty-ridden streets and the authorities who walked them. While it was not the largest of places, it was still home to me, and to this day, I can still remember the layout like the back of my hand. I lived with my father and little sister; my mother had died long ago for reasons never divulged to me. The three of us lived a slightly cramped lifestyle in a split-level home.
The entranceway led to two sets of stairs, on leading up, the other leading down. The kitchen, a den, and a small half-bathroom were downstairs as well as a garage. The upper level housed the bedrooms, perched over the garage. The master bedroom had an attached bathroom, and the other bathroom was shared by my sister and me. A sitting room doubling as a small home-office greeted those who walked up the stairway, and everything was furnished rather sparsely.
We immediately placed our backpacks in the entranceway and descended the stairs to my kitchen. While we were happy that it was summer, we were also aware that our celebration would have to be quick, school let out at four and there was a six o' clock curfew for everyone still in school. My friends lived in three separate directions, and with the number of people coming home beginning at five, it would take them some time to get home. The only things we really had time to do were talk while eating ice cream, but that was enough.
Once the ice cream was passed around, Dark City's famous Sea-Salt flavor, we discussed what we should do together during out months off. My best friend of the group, Hayner, suggested that we plan a trip to the beach. He and I had been friends since Kindergarten, and we acted more like brothers than friends did. Hayner had sandy blond hair a shade darker than my own and doe-brown eyes. He was passionate about everything he did and had a bit of a short fuse; it was for these reasons that Struggle matches were good for him, and I and I always entered the tournament every year.
Pence, a heavy-set boy with dark brown hair swept up, away from his face with a bandana, agreed, and added that we should bring a lunch and enough money for pretzels. This would mean getting a couple odd jobs since none of us had expendable income, but not a one of us complained. Having a job meant that there was less of a chance for the Dusks to find something to punish us for, even if it was something stupid. I had once gotten in trouble as a child with a Dusk for accidentally tripping in front of him and "blocking his way," and if they would punish a small child for hurting himself, then they would obviously punish anyone for anything.
As I mentioned before, Olette's father was a Dusk, but just because he knew us did not mean he was any different. None of us ever brought it up, though, as Olette did not like to talk about him and we did not want to offend her. She and Pence were very close, and while we were all friends, the group could be divided in half, with Hayner and me closest to each other on one side, and she and Pence on the other. Olette was a pretty girl, with brown hair shinier than Pence's and sparkling green eyes; out of all of us, she was definitely the peacekeeper. I had always found this ironic, as she was the gentlest person I knew aside from my sister, but her father was a Dusk.
Of course, I had not yet learned that just because someone is connected to something diabolical, it does not make them evil; sometimes they could be quite opposite, as Olette had shown me. He was also like that, but at this time, I did not know him, so that will be left for later, when I came across him. However, I think that if I had caught on to this little nugget of information about people in the first place, it would have made things a lot easier for me in the future, and I would have been more receptive. However, as a boy on summer vacation, I had no worried about what the future held for me; my only worries were what to do with my time while staying out of trouble.
It had been agreed by the four of us that we would make a day of it once we all collected the needed money and that we would meet at the end of the week to see how our cash flow was going. Once this plan had been made, we finished our ice cream in contented silence, and soon enough it was time for my friends to be getting home lest they are caught after curfew. Terrible things happened to those out after that time, and many a child who was out after six never came home. No one knew what happened to him or her, and no one wanted to know.
I bid my friends farewell and then shut the door after them, alone in the house for a short while. My sister was in middle school, and they didn't get out until four-thirty, so she wouldn't be home for another fifteen minutes, as her school was a little further than mine, and my father didn't get home until six-thirty every night. Being alone was not that big a deal to me, though, as there was always some chore to be done around here to occupy my time. My favorite one was doing the dishes, as strange as that sounds, because I love to look into the water and see the distorted reflection peering back up at me. It reminded me of my name, Roxas, a distortion of the word "sky."
My blond hair, naturally in a constant cowlick, always looked dirtier than what it actually was, which to me seemed more natural; I had always thought that the golden blond it was seemed unnatural, but whenever I complained about it my father and sister just hummed and ignored me. The most fascinating part about my distorted reflection, though, was my eyes. They are a clear blue, inherited from my deceased mother, and my father often comments how they remind him of a clear sky. I prefer to think of them as how he once described them to me: deceptively gentle like the shadows the moon cast upon freshly fallen snow, and when I looked into the murky water, I saw what he meant.
Well, in retrospect, anyway. The first time I had heard him claim such a thing I had scoffed and pointed out that his poetic implications were annoying, but he would only smile and laugh at me, and then tell me that I had a lot to learn. Of course, his words were all true, but I would not learn the truth about their reality until it was all too late to try to learn what I was missing. Still, even at that point, I had not learned, and instead chose to ignore them, hoping like all children that everything bad would be just a dream and nothing but something my subconscious made to frighten me.
As soon as I walked into the kitchen to tidy up a bit, the door opened, and I knew right away that it was my sister Naminé. Like me, she was a blonde with blue eyes, but everything about her was lighter and softer. While I resembled our father, Naminé resembled our mother, especially with her petite build and soft features. We were very close to each other, and more often than not when something frightened the girl, as they still did at times, she would somehow end up coming to me in the middle of the night for comfort.
I greeted my sister warmly, and after stopping to share how our days went and what familiar people and names did, the girl began to take out things to prepare for dinner. We all took turns cooking, so it wasn't as if she did it all; Dad refused to make one person do one certain job every time, claiming that things ran smoother when everyone shared the work. The little system worked well for us, and it was like a little haven for us; even though the world outside was dangerous and full of uncertainty, the schedule of work was constant and certain, acting sort of as a rock to steady ourselves on if things got too crazy.
An hour later my father stepped through the door, just as I was setting the table while Naminé put the broccoli into a bowl. He greeted both of us before helping my sister put everything on the table and then all three of us sat down to begin eating. Our father was a kind man whose looks reminded me of Hayner, though instead of brown eyes like Hayner, his were hazel and his hair definitely wasn't as untamed as my friend's. He worked as an accountant, a career I had always found boring, because all he did was balance people's accounts all day. None of his clients was ever important, either, as he was nowhere near being close to being among the friends of the XIII Order, which is why we were in the lower middle class.
Naminé and I had a healthy relationship with our father, and he with us. We had certainly heard of physical abuse in families because a parent blamed a child for something or could not handle a separation, but our father had never even laid a finger on us roughly, and did not have a single personality change when our mother died. We all grieved, of course, but it was one of those things you cope with and move on, and if anything came out of that experience, it was that my father readily took on the role of both parents.
We were content like that, the three of us in that small house. I remember thinking that nothing could have made me feel more calm than that summer night as the three of us sat in the den and watched whatever was on the television together. My sister and I were curled up together on the floor while my father took the couch, and in all reality, we were not really paying attention to the television at all, and instead were content talking to each other, swapping stories or things we found particularly interesting. That was one of the last nights I'd ever felt like that, and indeed it was the last night that I'd gotten to really spend time with the two of them without one of us being to tired to do much more.
The first week of summer passed quickly, as there had been plenty of jobs a boy of sixteen could find in Dark City. This was because the XIII Order encouraged anyone and everyone to work who was of the right age, and even those who were not were encouraged to help in some way. No one really knew why they were so adamant about work, but there were rumors that occasionally floated around claiming that it was because all the income generated went to them, but those were soon silenced and the culprits killed. Not many spread, as we had all seen the exhibitions of what happened to anyone who defied the government, and it was not pretty.
At the end of the week, Hayner, Pence, Olette, and I met at our usual hangout, a small cubby in a back alley we had fixed up into a place to just mess around in and pass the time. When we put our money together, we were delighted to find that we only needed enough money to cover our train fares, and that could easily be scrounged up in a couple of days' time. We set the date for the upcoming Thursday, figuring that it would give us enough time to gather it up, and after eating ice cream again, split up who would bring what for lunch.
Little did I know that our get-together at the beach would cause my world to fall to pieces around me slowly and painfully. Perhaps if I had known, if I could have looked into the future and seen my fate, I would have told my friends to reschedule or just skipped altogether; upset friends were a lot better to deal with that a complete and total upset of life, as I knew it. Of course, if I had done such a thing, then the XIII Order would probably have been in power to this day, and life would never have gotten better for anyone.
Without that fateful day, reality would have been forever lost to me, and there would have been no way to regain it. Without that fateful day, I would have remained as just another face in a crowd of sullen and oppressed face too afraid to band together and force change. Without that fateful day, I would not have met him, the one who would change my life forever. Nevertheless, that day did come, and I did change, but to this day, I still do not know whether it was for the better or not.