It's hard to let it go
I felt the cold shock press in upon me.
Every time I killed one of them I was really killing a person who had lost their heart to the darkness.
Was this part of Ansem's great plan? Was it his desire to turn Riku and myself into cold-blooded killers?
All the pain that I had caused, all of the death was because the keyblade had come to me.
Every time I killed one of them I felt it pierce my heart. If it went on much longer I would have no heart left, I would be like them. Only those memories of the beach on the little island, the sun glinting off of Kairi's hair the way the ocean matched the color of Riku's eyes, only they kept me sane.
It had been happy at first, skipping through the fields with Goofy and Donald, chasing after Pluto.
The happiness had been stretched thin. The days turned into weeks, turned into months, turned into an entire year spent chasing after an idea.
The idea that there was a door in existence that lead to the light of the world.
The chasing became being chased. The darkness was spreading again. Killing Ansem had not ended the all-consuming desire of the darkness. Closing the doors had not sealed it off.
We were being followed and hunted. We were spending hours every day trying to get closer to that door, that door that we weren't even certain existed. We spent hours clearing the way, killing our way to the next town over only to find it abandoned, or the jaded people locked inside with weapons and excuses not to the answer the door.
Goofy joked a little less than he used to. His smile seemed false and reminded me of a character I had read about in a book long ago. A priest had told a lone gun that the children wouldn't speak to him because his smile was hollow. I had always liked that story because the lone gun always made it out of everything cheerfully, craving more donuts and he never wanted to kill. He only killed when there was no other choice.
I had to justify killing the Heartless in the same way. There was no other choice. If I didn't kill them they would kill me and there would be no one left to free Riku. There would be no one left to send the darkness back to its place deep within the heart, in a corner so remote no one would ever think on it again.
Maybe it was just my deluded sixteen-year-old fantasy, but I felt like the world needed me. I needed to survive, like another boy I had read about in a book. He had to pilot a giant robot and save the world. He had to kill his friend, a boy he knew, a boy who lied and pretended he was real and human. He had to take his friend's life in order to survive and his friend understood. His friend wanted him to take his life, his friend wanted him to live over his own self.
I had that kind of will power deep within me.
My existence was more important than the Heartless, even though I had probably known some of them in one existence or another. My life was the life that mattered. I had to keep telling myself that. If I doubted for even half of a moment that I was wrong…
I closed my eyes to the reality of the life I had been forced into. All because the keyblade had come to me.