Hello everyone! If you're looking in on my work for the first time, welcome to "Shadowy Light" series: 4 stories taking place at the same time, following different characters on different worlds, stemming from my previous fanfic, "Nothing, Nobody, No Matter". I highly recommend you read it—it'll help you understand a bit of this story, and a lot of the other 3. If you're one of my devoted followers, then I'm sorry I haven't updated Ienzo/Kairi yet, but I got the motivation to start this fic and I want to at least put one chapter up before it goes away!

So, here we go—bear with me folks, you know I know where I'm going…mostly!

The dream always started the same way—with the stranger. In that time of quiet and waiting, the stranger would pull him aside, speak to him in a strange tongue, offer comfort despite the confusion…so much confusion, so much swirling. He would latch on to every arcane syllable, lock his eyes on to the large metal hands, the only things with edges in all these mists. The angles would bend and twitch to fight off the chaos around…until the grabbed on.

They would grab on, and they would dig in, and they would force him down to the ground, on his back. The metal claws, and the misty chaos, and the chaotic mist—they would become one and hold him down, and one would pull back for a respite—then shoot back into his chest for him.

The waiting would leave, and the pain would fill the space left behind, spiking and tumbling and thrashing, making him thrash to an unsynchronized sort of synch. Thoughts and images would appear, then twist, then split, then dive back in, and there would be nowhere to run. The many-colored mists that go on forever and ever would form a swirling backdrop to the hurting and the breaking…and somewhere above, a voice would propose:

"The heart is malleable, resistant…is the soul?

"Will it survive?

"Will it even be his?"

"NO!"

Roxas pulled out of the nightmare and threw himself up to the foot of the bed. No pain, no claws—it was just a dream. The boy took a deep breath, rubbed the back of his spiky blond head of hair, and collapsed to one side of the bed. Trying to catch a moment of peace, he closed his eyes for only a moment…then shot them open.

"Axel!"

His hand raced along the white sheets of the bed before his mind even told it too. No good—the sheets were empty. He was alone.

Great, just great. Sure, the pain was gone…now he only felt disappointment. Where was that alarm clock, anyway? Roxas had set it especially early the night before—so that he could at least see the lovable pyromaniac before he left. Now he was just left alone…though apparently not forgotten—a weary glance at the bedside table caught a scrap of paper next to the lamp. Roxas crawled across the bed to snatch the note off the table and, knowing full well he was the only one listening, read its scribbles out loud:

"Hey Roxy…" The nickname, Axel had known, was sure to get Roxas to smile, and he had been right—the disappointment lightened just enough to let Roxas grin a bit.

"Sorry you couldn't see me off. I didn't wake up 'til your alarm went off—thanks a lot, by the way, I barely got out the door in time, it was set so late. Anyway, I thought I'd let you catch up on all the sleep you've lost from those bad dreams…Hope you're not mad. You're way too cute to have those bags under your eyes.

"Odds are I'm already getting ready for today's matinee gig right about now, so just meet me when you get off, ok?

"Axel"

Crazy redhead…now how could Roxas stay mad at that? His heart had melted at every word. He looked over the note several more times before finally sighing dreamily and folding it in half so he could stuff it in his pant pocket. Granted, it took a bit of searching for him to find the pants—he had push himself out of bed and scrounge through layers of clothes on the floor just to find a pair suitable for another day of wearing—so by the time he did, he was already too far gone to go back to bed. Looking around, he saw he was in the middle of his and Axel's wreck of a bedroom…with only the one bedside lamp for light. At night, the single light felt warm, safe…but this was the morning. The one light in a dark room felt too creepy.

"Hmm…we need some sun. Fresh air too."

Of course, that's what the windows were for—the tall, rectangular rooms which lined the wall opposite the bed. For Roxas, it was only a matter of stepping over the mess and the pulling the shutters open…to let the warm, orange sunlight spill in to fill the entire room in a hazy warmth. And the warmth made Roxas smile wide.

"Awww yeah…good morning, Twilight Town!"

Barely an hour later, Roxas stepped out of the ground floor of the Twilight Train Station, dressed and groomed and ready to go. He brought nothing with him except the clothing on his back and a brown skateboard for transportation—work in Twilight Town didn't require much more than that. At the bottom of the steps, he looked up to the clock tower and chuckled—he still couldn't believe he lived up there now. The place had changed so much, and in such a short time…

When he and Axel had returned to Twilight Town for good and started looking for a place, most of the top floor of the tower was storage space. They had both gone to visit it, for old time's sake, but it was Axel's brilliant idea to convert it into a loft. It hadn't been easy—the other residents of the town had been uneasy about having new residents suddenly changing what had become a historical site—but between Roxas' eagerness towards odd jobs and Axel's steady income from his new fire breathing business, the town really couldn't do much to stand in their way, and they had set up their dream home by the end of the week. Well, sure, it wasn't entirely perfect, what with the unfinished floors and the occasional bird-roosting problems, but it certainly supplied the necessities. It didn't even get cold at night—though having a living furnace living there probably had more to do with that than anything else.

DONGGGGGGG…DONGGGGGGG…

No more time to reminisce—Roxas' boss would kill him if he was late again. He made one last check that he had everything…skateboard, check, Axel's note, check, Keyblade—he summoned the weapon to his hand in a flash of light, then sent it back to wherever it went—check. He was all set, nothing left to do, and he tossed the skateboard to the ground and hopped on, rolling down the hill towards downtown Twilight Town. Today was going to be good—he knew it.