Disclaimer: I don't now, and never will own KH or its characters.

So, here's the first chapter. Hopefully you like the prologue and are reading this. I looked at the hit counter thing and people were at least giving the story a try. A good start if you ask me. Hopefully you'll enjoy this chapter. It's a bit slow to begin with, but gets rolling soon enough. I hope no one's too out of character, it's been a while since I played the game. Hope you like.


Never Look Back

Chapter One

It's a strange feeling being awake but not able to open your eyes. It's almost like dreaming, but more painful. He couldn't feel yet, or hear or smell. But he could see the flashing red on the back of his eyelids. Slowly more of his senses started to respond. He was lying on something that jolted him from time to time. His muscles still ached, and there was a throbbing pain emanating from his left ankle. He could feel restraints on his wrists, just above his ankles and across his chest so tight that they were adding to the background level of pain.

As another jolt rocked his body he found the energy to open his eyes only to be momentarily blinded by the florescent lights on what must have been the ceiling. He blinked a few times until his vision cleared of the dancing dots and saw that he was lying in what appeared to be a thin mattress that offered little comfort.

He groaned as the bed, for lack of a better word, was jerked to a halt. Tilting his head to the side slowly he saw that he was at a door, but his muddled brain couldn't make sense of the words on the door or the thoughts of the man who was now turning the handle and opening the door. Somewhere, in the haze of his half drugged mind, he could feel frustration building and felt his fingers twitch slightly.

His frustration only increased when he recognised the scent that wafted out of the room, a strange mixture of smoke and disinfectant that made the backs of his eyes sting. He heard the faint, incomprehensible mumble of words being spoken before he saw a glint on the edge of his vision. He could barely register what was happening before he felt the prick of a needle in his upper arm. This time it took a little longer for the black to completely cloud his vision, and before he lost consciousness again he saw the florescent lights above him start to move.

-

The first thing he noticed was the way he knees seemed to press against his ears in the small space, the skin slightly sticky with old dirt and sweat. His ankle still hurt, the injury not helped by the strange angle his foot was in to keep it away from the electrified bars that criss-crossed the front of his cage. He remembered trying, in one of his more lucid moments, how it was possible for his captors to generate the electricity when he had been told as a small child that all methods of pre-Fall electricity production had been lost when It happened. He cared no more for the answer now than he did then other than how it might help him reach the surface again.

A small smile crossed his at the thought of what he had felt during his attempt to escape. Thick clogging smog and the putrid smell of dead animals had held no revulsion for him. Not when it was a sign that he was actually free, running across the surface for the first time in what may have been years. He had kept his promise if only for a short while. And one day, somehow he would reach the surface and never be dragged back down.

He started and pushed himself as close as possible to the back of the cage as someone entered the room. At first all he could see was black shoes and trousers under an off white lab coat, the bottom hem fraying from overuse. Then the person crouched down and he was confronted with those green eyes and the greasy blond hair that hung around the man's pointed face.

"Aww, little pet, don't be scared," the man said with a smile that didn't reach his cold eyes. "It's play time. You missed playtime, didn't you pet? Ah well, you're almost better now so it time to play with the other boys and girls, don't you think?"

The man's ability to speak in that sickly sweet voice while his eyes promised excruciating pain never ceased to make him quake with fear, his thoughts of promises and freedom dissolving in an instant as the cage door was opened.

He scratched at the man's arms as he bared his teeth and hissed like a wildcat. His inability to hear the man's thoughts only served to increase his fright and he started to claw at his right wrist where a tight band had been wrapped. The sharp needles on the underside of the band dug into his skin, injecting a strange gold liquid that created a strange numbness in his mind. Even his ability to sense the man's disgust and self-importance had started to fade and his thoughts began to slow.

He shook his head wildly. He didn't want to play. Play always made his head hurt and white lights dance before his eyes with each flash of pain.

Long, cool fingers curled around his left wrist and he was dragged out of his cage as the man let out an annoyed growl. His feet scrabbled against the tiles as he tried to stand upright and lessen the pain in his wrist and shoulder. But he wasn't given the time to right himself as the man started to drag him out of the room. He earned himself a sharp smack round the side of head that made his vision swim for grabbing the doorframe on the way out. He yelped and let go to try to shield his head from the second blow to the head.

"Behave pet, or your play time will be lengthened." The man's voice was now cold and flat, devoid of even the fake joviality it had held before.

The boy stilled immediately, whimpering.

The man's lips twitched in what may have been a smile, or possibly an amused smirk.

-

"Professor Vexen?"

"What?" Vexen responded angrily, turning on the shorter man beside him.

"The subject is unconscious but the level of detectable brain activity has increased significantly," the shorter man replied, handing his superior the clipboard he had brought with him.

Vexen scanned the read out, quickly noting figures and the listed levels of various neurochemicals. "Has there been any indication of the cause of these levels of dopamine?"

"No, sir," the short man replied as he followed dutifully behind Vexen as he returned to the laboratory.

Upon entering, Vexen shoved a blonde woman away from a computer screen as he muttered furiously under his breath.

"Zexion!" Vexen shouted, making the shorter man flinch. "Run the usual tests. Once every fifteen minutes."

"Sir," Zexion said as he bowed his head, not at all surprised when his superior left without a word, taking the smirking blonde woman with him.

Zexion turned to the subject, his gaze impassive as he watched a frown form on the specimen's face. He jotted the observation down on a piece of paper on the work desk, noting also how the frown coincided with a twitching of the fingers and slight downward turn of the mouth.

Zexion worked methodically, taking three phials of blood and storing them in the cooler on the desk for later examination. He then proceeded to check the subject's vital signs for any fluctuations. Negative.

He stepped back from the examination table to the desk. He ran a breakdown on each blood sample. There were slightly different reading for each, but the results still enabled him to make a sufficient average for levels of iron, glucose, platelets and half a dozen other things. He made a note on the first page of results to send them to the Green Lab for more detailed analysis.

He set his pen down and walked back to the examination table, his gaze now slightly less objective. The subject, the boy, had similar colouring to the specimen who insisted on being called Demyx. This specimen's hair was slightly darker, a dirty blonde with the occasional strand of brown. If he remembered correctly, his eyes lacked the green tint that made Demyx's so interesting to Vexen. They looked to be roughly the same age under all the muck. Mid to late teens he suspected, the harder planes of adulthood beginning to show in their faces.

He couldn't help but wonder why, out of all the hundreds of specimens they held, these two moved him to feel something even if it was merely pity. It would require further investigation. And he might consider suggesting putting the two together. This specimen never spoke, hardly making a sound at all. Demyx, on the other hand, was only silent while sedated. Maybe the forced interaction would make this specimen start to speak, to make him answer the questions that no amount of tests could answer. How did the subject gain his abilities? How did they work? For all that power of science, he and the other scientists had never been able to answer those two questions.

-

When he started to come to his senses the first thing he noticed was that he was no longer cold, despite being back in his usually freezing cage. Being warm was a pleasant feeling, and one he hadn't felt in a long time. Yet it also sent a shiver of apprehension down his spine. After all, he didn't know where the warmth was coming from.

His answer came as he picked up the sound of humming near his right ear. It was tuneful, not the kind of sound that made him wish he was deaf. Looking round, the motion slowed by his stiff neck, he realised that he was leaning against another body, and flinched back.

"Hey! You're awake. That's good." The other person spoke in a tone that was cheerful and a near whisper at the same time.

The other person seemed unfazed by his reaction to his presence. "I'm Demyx. But you can call me Dem, 'cause I like you already. We both got moved cells. Ain't this one great? It's so big and the bars aren't electrified. But don't stick your feet out, they hate that. See?"

He pointed to his feet. They were covered in angry, red welts where they had been struck by something. One was still bleeding slowly, the thick blood oozing out of the cut.

"Steer clear of the one with the metal ruler. She's the worst," Demyx prattled on, still oblivious to the wary gaze of the other boy in the cell, who was left dumbstruck by his vitality.

"Oh, sorry! What's your name?" Dem asked, fixing the other boy with the sheer enthusiasm of his gaze. He looked slightly hurt when he noticed the other boy trying to move even further from him. "Hey, I ain't going ta hurt you. They hurt us enough. So what's your name?"

Demyx watched as the other boy opened him mouth and closed it a few times as a look of frustration crossing his face.

"You can't talk?" Demyx asked, catching on to the other boy's problem and was answered with an unsteady nod the head. "Can you spell it?"

The other boy paused for a minute as he tried to remember the answer. Yes he could spell his name. So he did, still unsure of how trustworthy his new companion was, but wanting to prove to himself that he could still write his name.

"Are. Oh. Ex. Ay. Ess. Rox... Roxas? Your name's Roxas?" Demyx looked at the boy, who nodded hesitantly. "Cool. I'll call you Rox, then." Demyx laughed quietly as he noticed the other boy's chest puff out in indignation. He was going to have so much fun with his new friend.

Roxas felt himself deflate and took a few moments to actually look at the boy next to him. He looked skinny, his t-shirt and shorts ratty and riddled with holes much like his own. His hair was untidy, short at the top and long at the back like someone had stopped half way through cutting it. His eager eyes were blue tinged with green. There were faint scars dotted over his pale skin. The most obvious stretched from the bridge of his nose, across the left side of his face to disappear in his hair, only just healed if the pinkness was any indication. He was just as skinny as Roxas, but his body seemed larger and more substantial somehow. Maybe it was the impact of his personality giving the rest of him a weight that his bones couldn't carry as flesh.

"Did you know, Rox," Demyx started, giggling almost silently at his cellmate's scowl. "I've been here five years. Haven't seen the ocean in seven. Got caught when I was ten, you see Rox. How old are you?"

Roxas didn't know what Demyx meant by 'ocean' so he just ignored the comment. At the talk of age he just shrugged. He didn't know how old he was. All he knew was that he was taken at the age of seven and had been attempting to reach freedom ever since.

"You don't know? Hm. How old were you when you got caught?" Roxas held up seven fingers and Demyx just stared at him shocked for a few seconds. "Seven? Hmm. You look a bit younger than me. So we'll say you're fifteen. That fine by you?" Demyx paused in his rambling to look at the smaller blond.

Roxas nodded, slightly perplexed by the sheer level of energy the other possessed. At the rate Demyx was going, Roxas would barely have managed it for five minutes. Did he never get tired?

"Okay then. That's sorted. Means you been here about eight years," Demyx seemed to droop as a thought came to him. "I heard one of the lab people say we the longest surviving Turns they ever had. Rox, you don't thi-"

Demyx was cut off by the sound of the door to their cage opening and someone in a light blue lab coat laying two bowls of food down by their feet. After closing the cell door they practically ran out of the room, leaving the two on their own again.

As Roxas sat hunch up and slurping from the bowl in his hands, he turned his mind back to his promise to get free. He thought that maybe, just maybe, if he had Demyx's energy then keeping that promise would be so much easier. He glanced at the other boy, who was drinking the contents of the bowl with relish and utterly distracted from their conversation, and sighed. No matter how bad it tasted, even after all this time, he wouldn't be going anywhere if he didn't eat. He gulped the watery substance down without tasting a single mouthful.