Heart of the Matter
A Kingdom Hearts Fanfiction by D.A.
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Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.~William Shakespeare
000
Roxas jerked awake, sitting bolt upright in bed. Blinking a couple times, he looked around and found himself in his apartment in Twilight Town. The last thing he could remember from… from Sora was laying in bed feeling so very, very tired.
Sora, he realized with a start, had just died. But… then why was he still here? Puzzled, he dressed, finding himself around eighteen again, and left his apartment for a walk around his… his home town.
Finding his wandering had taken him into the forest that lead to the old mansion, a thought suddenly struck him. If Sora was dead, could he still use the Kingdom Key? Focusing, he mentally called for the Keyblade and gasped when it obediently flashed into being in his hand.
What did it mean, that he could still wield the Keyblade though Sora was dead?
He wasn't sure he wanted to know…
Walking to the mansion, the Keyblade oddly comforting in his hand, Roxas passed unhindered through the still wide open gates and into the foyer. Broken statues still littered the floor and torn paintings hung from the walls. Dust coated everything rather thickly, showing that most likely no one had been here since before Xemnas was beaten at the very door step of Kingdom Hearts.
Carefully, he walked through the dusty chamber and up the right hand stairway. Perhaps, he thought, Diz left something in his library here.
Reaching the dusty library, he found the floor sealed once more, the blue crayon resting on the table as it waited for someone to again mark the surface. Ignoring it for now, Roxas began looking over the titles on the shelves. After surveying one entire book case, he realized his search might last longer than the afternoon, and that he would have to actually read through a good number of the books.
Slowly leaving the room, planning to get some things for an extended stay, he missed the hazy after image of a girl his age with pale blond hair, and sorrow-filled blue eyes standing next to the table.
000
It was a week and a half before he found the first clue to what might be happening with him. It was a short side note in a dusty little note book, written in Diz's own hand.
Members of Organization XIII, a commanding group of Nobodies, keep their human forms because they possessed strong hearts and thus remember their original existence, unlike weaker Nobodies who are forced to assumed malformed, inhuman shapes.
Maybe that was why he was still there? Through out almost all of Sora's time as a heartless, he had kept his normal shape. Perhaps his sense of heart and self had been so strong that Roxas regained his separate existence when Sora… stopped.
Roxas spent another four days there, searching book after book. Exhausting the library, he decided to try the computer. Drawing the missing symbol beside the other two, he watched as once again the floor and table in the center of the room faded out to reveal stairs down into the high-tech looking pit and two doors.
Moving through the door to the computer and transport room, he found it as Sora had: Perfectly undamaged.
000
Roxas spent the next week in and around the Mansion, trying to find any clue to his continued existence, but finding nothing more than that simple side note.
Until he went to his friends old hang out.
Walking into the secluded alcove, Roxas felt his eyes drawn to a faded poster hanging from the wall. He had only a moment to realize it was a poster for the Struggle Tournaments before the Kingdom Key appeared in his hand. Without any conscious decision on his part his body moved to hold the Keyblade before him, aiming the tip at the old poster before a flash of light leapt from it to the item, and the afterimage of a keyhole appeared and quickly faded from view.
Roxas blinked. Hadn't all the doors been found and dealt with?
He knew there was nothing else to find in Twilight Town. Gathering what little gear he thought he might need, he return to the hang out. Reaching back into his memory, he called up the ability to teleport from world to world. Fixing the ability firmly in his mind once more, he shouldered his small pack and called forth the Kingdom Key.
Opening a portal of black and deep purple, he set out to find his purpose.
000
Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.~William Jennings Bryan
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A/N: The supposed quote from Diz's diary was actually paraphrased from the Wiki article on Heartless and Nobodies.
This may be a oneshot, or I may turn it into a full story. We'll see, but it has been sitting on my computer for a couple of months, so I figured I'd post it.