Shadows of a Dream: Final Mix
Chapter Two – Never Alone
Sora never did go home to see his mother. He could already recite most of her regular speech by heart. The parts he missed Roxas would remember, and together they could give themselves the lecture that Mrs. Hikari would have waiting for them.
Instead, Sora decided to walk around on the inland of their small island. He had to admit that, when he was gone, the thing he missed most about these islands was either laying out on the beach or walking through the tropical forests.
'Here was me thinking that the thing you missed most about this place was Kairi,' Roxas joked.
"No comments from you," Sora whispered. "I feel bad enough for just wandering away from her earlier."
Roxas said nothing, but he heard him snicker.
After that conversation, he found a comfortable place to lie down to try and sort out his thoughts. That had proved to be useless as he just kept having random, and sometimes embarrassing conversations with Roxas when a certain topic breeched his mind, namely a pretty girl with deep red hair (or, when he got the chance to tease Roxas, her equally pretty blonde-haired Nobody).
Still, the warm, calm air eventually lulled Sora into a comfortable sleep.
VVVVVVV
Mrs. Hikari sat in her spotless kitchen, staring at the door with a stern expression on her face and her posture perfect as ever. Her hands grasped tightly onto the cup of lemonade she had been drinking earlier. Her eyes darted to the clock, then to the window to see the now dark sky. Her ocean blue irises, the ones her son had inherited, held an angry but worried look to them. She didn't understand what was happening to her boy, why he was turning into such a rebellious teenager. She had raised him as best as she could, hadn't she? His father, Raiden, had died when he was only a few months old, and she had taken care of her son alone ever since. She had tried to raise him as a polite, kind, gentleman that her father (Sora's grandfather) would have been proud of, but where had she gone wrong? Maybe it had to do with—
She shook her head and her dark blonde hair fell in her face. She wasn't quite sure what she was thinking before, but it didn't matter. She knew that Sora would have a hard time sinking back into normal life, but she hadn't known that it was going to be this hard for him. She had to curse herself for growling at him as much as she did. She was slowly starting to see that lecturing wasn't going to solve his problem.
Sometimes she worried that, when he left in the mornings either to go to school or lord knows where, that he would never come back. It was a terrible thought, but she could see some logic in it. She hadn't been the nicest person recently and she knew that he was annoyed with her constant nagging. She also knew that he would have to leave eventually (he had told her so several times) and she worried that he would just go and not come back.
On the days like this, when it was nightfall and he still wasn't home, was when she really began to worry. She was always scared that he would vanish just like Ventus had.
She blinked at the odd though. Ventus? She had never known anyone named Ventus. She was meant to think the name Raiden instead. Worry was doing odd things to her mind.
Slowly, Ayame Hikari stood up and walked over to the phone. Carefully she dialed the phone number of the one person that she knew who would have seen Sora today.
"Hello?" a sweet voice on the other end asked.
"Hello Kairi."
"Oh, Mrs. Hikari, what can I help you with?" Kairi asked, even though she already knew what the older lady was going to ask.
"Have you seen Sora today? He hasn't come home yet."
"I saw him earlier on the other island," Kairi replied. "He wasn't in too good a mood."
"Oh, well, if you see him walking by your place, yell at him to hurry it along."
"Yes ma'am," Kairi replied before quickly hanging up.
"Oh Sora," Ayame said as she sat down again. "Don't you see how we're all worried about you baby?"
VVVVVVV
He was falling, but was barely aware of it. His eyes that were closed slowly opened and he looked around with confusion. It was like he was falling through water. Slowly his body flipped over and he carefully landed on his feet.
For a moment Sora stood in confusion until the darkness under his feat started to rapidly vanish and doves flew off in its place. He looked down at the stained-glass floor and realized that he was looking at an image of himself. The large image of him started in the center and ended in the far right corner, around the edges of the platform lay pale blue pictures of Riku, Donald, Goofy, Kairi and in the three other open corners were images of King Mickey, Naminé and Roxas.
Confusion stood out on Sora's face as nothing happened for a moment. Carefully he walked towards the edge and looked down it and saw many other platforms below him. There was one for each Princess of Heart (his eyes lingered on the one of Kairi), then the three-heart platform, and there were many circles he could see, but their platforms weren't brightly lit like his was.
"I don't understand," Sora said after a moment. "Why am I here?" His voice echoed around him. "Roxas?" No answer.
Sora looked around, not nervously but with confusion. He was completely alone and nothing was happening. It was odd, since he had never truly been alone over the past two years, especially since Roxas had become part of him again.
"Don't be afraid," a voice whispered. Sora looked around quickly, trying to figure out where it was coming from. "Don't stop fighting Sora. The battles have yet to begin. An enemy with a darker purpose is coming."
"What does that mean? What darker purpose?" Sora called out.
"Don't stop fighting, and hold close what is dear to you," the voice whispered before completely fading out.
Sora looked around with confusion and yelled in shock as the platform shattered under him and he started falling. He crashed through the three-heart platform, Belle's, Aurora's, Snow White's, all of them. He felt the glass cut and tear at his skin as he closed his eyes tightly and kept on falling.
VVVVVVV
"Sora!"
A terrified yelp escaped Sora's lips as he shot up. His cerulean blue eyes looked around and he flinched and automatically backed away from Roxas' translucent image. He looked around, breathing in and out deeply.
"What happened?" Roxas asked, fear standing out in his voice.
"I-I don't know," Sora said after he calmed himself down. "A dream?"
Roxas shook his head and said, "No, I don't think so. We do have separate dreams, as odd as that is, but I can still always feel you there. This time though, it was like you were gone. I appeared beside you to see what was happening, and physically you were there but your mind wasn't."
"I was on the platforms," Sora said. "The stained glass ones. Someone told me that the darkness, a darkness worse than even Organization XIII was coming."
Roxas knew what platforms his Other was talking about, the same ones that they had fought on. He looked at the ground thoughtfully and said, "Was there anything else?"
"Yeah," Sora said. "The voice told me to keep what was dear to me close. I got the impression, yes from just the voice, that this was going to be a hard fight and that bad things were going to happen."
"Maybe," Roxas said. "It's easy to tell what you should keep close to you though."
"Kairi," Sora said quickly. "…and Riku too."
Roxas looked like he was about to laugh but stopped when they both heard a rustling sound. Both stood up quickly, and Roxas vanished again.
Sora carefully stepped forward then jumped backwards as a Heartless appeared in front of him. His Keyblade appeared in his hand and he was about to attack it when he noticed something odd: it wasn't attacking him.
Blinking with confusion he hesitantly took a step towards the creature and noticed that it was smaller than normal…much smaller. It's beady yellow eyes looked up at him before it wailed, in the most horrible voice Sora had ever heard, "HELP!"
Sora stared at it in surprise as it vanished into the ground and didn't come back.
"I'm going completely nuts," he said. "Heartless aren't that tiny and they don't talk. This is what I get for talking to my other self all the time."
'Your not crazy,' Roxas said in his mind. 'That little thing was real.'
Sora nodded his head and started running back towards the beach. He needed to get home to tell Riku and Kairi about this. He ran as fast as he could and yelled in shock as another tiny Heartless appeared in front of him. He jumped over it and looked back but it was gone.
He tried to keep running when he felt a clawed hand grab onto his ankle. His world flew upward as he fell and the last thing he saw before he felt a splitting pain in his head and his world went black, was a large rock quickly rising to meet his head.
VVVVVVV
Jimney's Journal
Ayame Hikari – Sora's mother and widow to Raiden Hikari. She is a proper woman, but not overly so. Her husband died when Sora was only young and she raised her son alone ever since. She does have a good sense of humor too. She's been known to mess up people's names from time to time, and has a habit of calling people by the name 'Ventus', for some odd reason.
Krystal Lily Potter
