Snatch Your Heart - Part II
Mysterious Tower
Day 01


Xion


Xion wakened slowly; it seemed a struggle to extricate herself from the murky, churning depths of dream and memory. Even as she fought to center her consciousness upon the waking world, Sora's parting words rung painfully in her ears.

'Please save me.'

"Awake at last, I see," rumbled a voice from somewhere to her right. As Xion rolled her head to the side, she noticed that she was lying upon a narrow table. Cold metal tickled her cheek as she struggled to bring the blurry figure into focus.

"Where am I?" she croaked hoarsely. "And why is it... so dark in here?"

"You are in the observatory at present," replied Yen Sid. "As for the darkness..." He seemed to hesitate. "That is... it appears that your vision has been adversely affected by the assault on your heart. Rest assured that it is a temporary affliction; already you should be able to discern-"

"The... assault?" interrupted Xion groggily. "What's..." She struggled to think of how to put words to her question; it was proving unexpectedly difficult to mold her thoughts into a coherent shape. "Actually..." she amended, "why does my brain feel like it's... been fried? It's kind of hard to think." Xion heard the creak of a chair as Yen Sid's blurry form shifted uncomfortably.

"That is a matter to be discussed once you are healthy and whole," he said after a time. "For the nonce... you need to sleep. Rest. Heal. I will explain everything that has transpired to the best of my ability once you have recovered."

Xion saw a blurry, slender figure clothed in white rummaging around at a table in the background. She watched it for some time, strangely captivated.

"But..." protested Xion weakly as the figure held something up before some indistinct light source, examining it, "I was..." Hazy memories of the night's events swam past, diving beyond her reach when she tried to grasp them. "It felt like my heart was being... taken from me. I couldn't... couldn't breathe, and... and..." She felt a familiar terror rising up in her throat as she recalled the way that the room had seemed to grow dark and hot and small just before she lost consciousness. "I can't-"

"Calm yourself," rumbled Yen Sid, not unkindly. "You have been through quite the ordeal... and though it appears to have left its mark, you yet remain. Your heart was not taken from you, though it was a close thing."

"... Oh," replied Xion dazedly. "Then the thing... in my dream, or maybe my heart, I saw Sora." The chair emitted another pained groan. "But, it wasn't... wasn't really Sora. Or I don't think it was. It attacked me, and then I- I woke up and... when I lost-"

She felt the light pressure of a fingertip being pressed to her forehead.

"Sleep," ordered Yen Sid in a voice that seemed to echo inside her head. Xion tried to muster the strength to protest, but already she felt the icy touch of magic flooding into her body and sweeping away her thoughts. "Sleep," repeated Yen Sid, his voice taking on an odd, chant-like quality. "Sleep, and dream. Fear not... specters... watch until... no place beneath..." His silhouette shifted. "Bring... thank you, it... time to..."


Lea


The scar had grown. Lea had little trouble spotting it from the windows of the old man's study; it hung over the tower like some wicked grin: an omen of terrors yet to come, or perhaps of those that had already been loosed.

"Can we see her yet?" asked Roxas for what had to be the sixteenth time. Or perhaps it was the seventeenth; Lea had lost interest in keeping count some time ago. He heard Roxas' pacing footsteps: heavy, uneven, distraught, as his friend flitted about the doorway to the staircase with ineffectual purpose. Lea certainly understood how he felt; the attack had been swift and sudden, and though the old man had thereafter assured the two of them that no such thing would happen again, the lack of any kind of explanation left him feeling strangely helpless.

"Soon," said Lea in what he thought was a reasonably good impression of offhanded confidence. "The old man didn't seem that worried. Sorta expected him to go ballistic and start firing off all sorts of spells to make sure there wasn't anything else in the tower. But he just kinda scooped Xion up without a word and carted her off to the observatory."

"... Yeah," said Roxas in a distant tone that seemed to suggest that he had only been halfway listening to Lea's words. "Soon..."

Lea turned away from the window with a frown of concern for his friend's behavior.

"Roxas," he began after taking a moment to gather the words, "Xion will be alright. She's tough." Roxas didn't reply.

"Besides," Lea continued bravely, "for all we know, she could already be awake and-"

"She didn't look all that tough to me," snapped Roxas as his pacing continued unabated. "You saw her, right?" Roxas had charged into Xion's chambers in a frenzy of stumbling dishevelment upon hearing Lea all but free the door of its hinges. "She looked terrified. Absolutely, just... I don't even know how to describe it, but I've never seen Xion look like that. Ever. After she passed out, her skin went so... so pale. I mean, she's always been pale, but that... it was like all the life had been taken from her. She looked like a... like a c- corpse." He paused to take a breath in an effort to steady himself. "What part of that is tough? What part of that makes you think that you can just say with that kind of... stupid fake certainty that she'll be alright when you don't even know what she-"

"I'm just as worried as you are," said Lea pointedly. He struggled to keep the heady mixture of anger and indignation from spilling into his voice, but he feared that he wasn't having much success. "I'm every bit as worried as you," he repeated, "but there's nothing we can do. The old man knows what he's doing. He might be a blustery old bag of wind and pride, but he knows his stuff when it comes down to it. If Xion can be helped, he'll help her."

Roxas halted his pacing and turned to look at Lea, his expression tormented.

"... And if he can't? What if he can't, Axel? What then? I don't... I don't want Xion to..."


Disappear.


AN: Well, here we are. The story should be much clearer after the removal of the simulation/time loop plot device. Every chapter from Beneath a Star Strewn Sky - II onward has either been edited or heavily rewritten. Black and White has been overhauled with additional chapters and all references to the aforementioned plot device have been removed. Pardon the turbulence.

More to come!