Chapter Eight Point Five
He was falling.
He could tell he was because of the wind screaming at his face.
Yet he could hear nothing, see nothing, taste nothing, and sense nothing else. His entire body felt numbed and drugged. This scared him. All of his sense seemed to have been relieved of him. How was this possible?
With a remarkable amount of effort, he forced his fatigue-leaden eyelids open. Instantly, he concluded that he had gone blind. There was no other possible explanation for the complete blackness the surrounded him. No walls could be seen. He twisted his neck to look upward. The pinpoint of light that should have signified the opening he had evidently fallen in to was not present. The darkness engulfed him. Even if he wasn't, he may as well have been blind.
He closed his eyes for a second, immediately felt dizzy, and re-opened them to the blackness around him. Slightly panicked, he tried to recall how he had gotten there and found he could not even remember his own name. He searched his broken mind for a way out of the situation, finding none. How long had he been falling before he had noticed?
Why had he lost the ability to even scream?
His thin body was spread out as it endlessly fell, as if he was flying. He flailed slightly, twisting and turning in the vain hope that it would somehow stop this. His pale hands stretched out uselessly, trying to grasp anything to stop the downward momentum.
He found nothing.
Furthermore, why had he only now become aware of his surroundings? His breath caught in his throat. He couldn't remember anything before this.
The pressure of his problem pushing it's way in to his brain, he began to feel his mind beginning to work once more, his thoughts spinning off in every direction.
No. He stopped for a second, thinking hard. He could remembersomething. A vague voice, speaking calmly, in resignation. He had no memory of the words, but maybe it had been his voice speaking. It must have something to do with this whole situation.
Think.
Straining to recall anything else, he found himself distracted by the apparent endlessness of the pit around him. Although really, there was nothing to indicate that it was a pit. He could have been falling in outer space, but the lack of stars or other heavenly bodies told him that was not so.
The silence pressed around his useless ears, unnerving him. The boy could feel his accelerated heartbeat pressing against his chest. Yet, he could not hear the heavy breaths that should have accompanied it. Despite having no memory of a life before this, he knew that he had never been in such a complete silence. The sensation of knowing, but not remembering, or knowing why he had this knowledge, was mind numbing.
Was he deaf as well as blind?
So dimly that he could not be sure it wasn't his imagination, he thought he heard the wind in his ears, flapping his coat as it flew up behind him.
As if on cue, the sound of his labored breathing rushed to his ears, simultaneous with two harsh choked words. The speaker of the short sentence had a muted, genderless voice. The cause could have been the obvious pain the speaker was in. It broke up the short words, as if the effort of communicating was fatal.
"I'm… de-dead"
The sudden re-appearance of one of his sense caused him to look around rather more wildly then he would have in another situation. Who had said that? Someone was with him! Vainly, his eyes combed the darkness, trying to find the outline of the figure that had to be there. His small ears, believing there was someone accompanying his fall, invented the faint sound of struggled breathing.
Then he realized, quite suddenly, that he himself had spoken. That pathetic voice had been his. His hopes crashed to the ground. In the state he was in, he would have welcomed anyone, even if they were ill intentioned. He was truly alone in this featureless place.
Inside his head, his brain was working rapidly to reinstate the sense that it had temporarily shut down. The pain sensors in his body flicked back on, causing him to nearly double over, mid-air, with the sudden injuries it brought back. The utter defeat he felt shut down every other thought for a moment. Once again, he was aware that he had never felt so worn out, so beaten up before. He had exhausted ever muscle in his build, strained them all to the point where they could no longer support him.
If he hadn't been falling, he would have crumpled to the ground in a dead faint.
As it was, the air around him supporting his over-used body, he stayed agonizingly aware.
The sharp smell of ashes and something unidentifiable assaulted his re-awakening sense next. The aroma was so vivid that he caught himself looking around calmly for a fire. Something about the smell brought back memories, telling him that there was no fire here, that it was simply a thing of the past.
Probably the last thing I ever smelt… The depressing notion was in his head before he could shake it away.
"That's just stupid." His voice was monotonous, edged with sharp disbelief.
Stubbornly, he convinced himself he wasn't dead. There were several reasons he couldn't be. There was someone he had set out to find. He hadn't succeeded yet. Until he did, he would never die. His mind was made up, and until he learned of what had happened to this person- whoever he or she was-, he damn well better be immortal. There was no way he would leave this earth without saying at least goodbye.
Besides, what kind of after life was this? As far as he had seen, it was just a constant, endless fall.
There was no way that this was all that was on the other side. No one in there right mind would be comforted if this were all that lay in the great beyond.
He nodded reassuringly. He wasn't dead, not by a long shot.
So why was he still slicing through the air? There was ground below him, masked by the gloom. He groaned at that. No doubt, if he weren't already dead, the end of this free fall would fix that. What a pathetic way to go.
There were Heartless. An overwhelming, awe-inspiring number of them. There was no possible way of stopping their oncoming swarm. As one, the black mass pressed forward, sensing the living soul in front of them. Hungrily, the dark shadows advanced. He could see it in the others eyes, knew they shared the same thought. They were both going to die here, him and the brunette youth beside him. There was no way out… unless he took drastic measures.
The plummeting boy halted mid-thought, surprised at the sudden recollection. Then, scared that he would forget again, he desperately clung to it, struggling to evoke the rest, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.
He swung around wildly, feeling his energy dropping with every blow. Sweat formed on his brow, inhaling in short, gasping breathes. All at once, his weapons stopped making contact, slicing through the air lamely. He ceased, surprised to find he had destroyed the entire army of Heartless. His eyes fell on the shoes of the younger boy, followed them up to the stunned look that now covered his face. Seeing this, he smiled before looking at his own hand.
His entire limb was gradually becoming translucent. Just as he had expected it to. After all, when one put their whole being in to a single attack, anything better would be wishful, foolish thinking. Unable to support himself anymore, he allowed his legs to fail beneath him, and he fell to the ground.
'At least he'll live….'
He smiled up at the now sobbing boy above him, wanting to assure him that everything would work out in the end, but no longer able to open his mouth.
His slim form shimmered as it faded to nothing. He closed his eyes; glad that he would be nothing before the tears forming in his eyes had found their way down his cheeks. Rapidly, the tears began to form. He would never get a chance to confess his innermost thoughts to him. He would never get to say he forgave him. He would never know.
In his last moments, drowsy and overcome with sadness, the brunette about him was transformed. His dark hair lightened, his facial features rearranged themselves ever so slightly. The pain in his eyes was magnified a million times with the sudden change. The blonde above him was someone different then the boy he had fought with. It was him. He understood then, that he had been right about the brunette boy. The reasonless attachment he had felt was made clear.
Even if he never said goodbye, he had gotten to see him one last time.
And that was all he had ever really wanted.
He remembered. Slightly amused at the clichéd way the holes had filled, the boy sighed forlornly.
Eyes flying open, he looked downward. He blinked once, twice, sure that he was seeing things. The darkness was getting lighter below him. A small patch of grey had appeared, sticking out like a stain. It was almost as if…
His breath caught his throat as he choked on panic.
His fall was about to end.
Trying to stop it, he did the only thing he could and snapped his eyes shut once more. Willing his inability to see the ground to somehow perform a miracle.
The wind stopped howling in his ears, he flapping coat fell suddenly down, wrapping itself around his body, the wind taken out of it's sails.
Had he gotten his miracle?
Cautiously, hardly daring to believe that he had somehow been transported away from certain death, he pried one eye open just enough to see a sliver of his surroundings. He let out a surprised, unbridled gasp of astonishment. Instead of the wall of gloom he had previously found himself looking at, there were features to his surroundings. There were colours!
He laughed triumphantly has he pushed himself up off the dirt with gloved hands.
He had regained consciousness. He wasn't dead. He didn't quite know where he was, but he had a good idea. He knew his name. It took every once of will in his body, aching and pained as it was, to stop himself from breaking into a dance on the spot. He was still weak, and it would be a step in the wrong direction to break a leg now.
He wiped a tear away as it rolled from the corner of his green eye. He had another chance. Another chance…
Without knowing so, he spoke the name that had popped in to his head the second he had awoken.
"Roxas…"
A/N: Okay, so I bet you're wondering –8.5? What the hell? - I kind of am to. I meant for this to be a full-length chapter, but it's barely 4 pages, so it's not long enough for me to pass of as a chapter. It's not even 2,000 words. It's 1:00 in the morning. I just want to post something to get things moving. I figured we needed a change of scenery. Was this terrible? I'm sorry if it was…
But I promise you a real chapter soon enough, now that things are starting to move and I'm past a difficult part… I've been busy writing something else as well, to take my mind of the angst of this…
Still trying to decide on a new name…I've got a vague-ish idea... but I'm still open to suggestions. 3
Anyway, hope you enjoyed the show, and I'll see you next chapter, hopefully!
