A/N: This state of nirvana, this freedom is truly euphoric. I have lost the ability to feel shame for anything I post. it has opened every door. hahaha..haha.. Long live this shitty rewrite of a fanfic I wrote when I was super small. im amazing.
Leon led the group down towards the computer through a maze-like set of hallways, lined with pipes and maintenence halls for use in the far end of the city when it had been densely populated. A few scattered heartless were still lurking in the hallways, but they were nothing Leon couldn't handle with a flick of his wrist and his impressive gunblade was far more powerful than anything Eleanor had ever seen before. Sora's hand remained wrapped lightly around Eleanor's as though it was second nature almost, as he told her a quiet story about when he had first met Leon. When he had crash landed in a place called Traverse Town for people stuck between worlds. She kept her dark eyes on his face, transfixed by the way his mouth formed words and the way his face lit with a thousand little lights with every new thought that crossed his mind. She couldn't help but stare really. There was nothing else on her mind but the boy with the bright blue eyes, the choice Merlin had mentioned which she knew now had to involve him and she knew she had to cling to Sora like a lifeline for as long as she could manage.
"Are you even listening to me?" He laughed suddenly. "You're staring. There's not something on my face is there?" The hand that wasn't holding onto her fingers absentmindedly at his cheeks with a second quiet laugh. The smile fell from his face after a second of silence. "What's goin' on?" He stole a glance up at the group as he pulled her to a stop as they rounded a corner.
"Er.. No there's nothing on your face." She could barely keep her eyes off of his. Her mind was full to busting with Sora and nothing but Sora. Her heart was pounding in her ears and she couldn't move even if she wanted to. "Sora." Her voice was failing her, and she could barely say his name in more than a breath.
His expression flooded with concern. "Hey? What is it?"
"No its not… There's nothing.." The words died on her lips. She couldn't decide what she wanted to say next. She couldn't think of the words that could tell him what was running through her mind. Desperately her fingers clutched at his and tried to convey her thoughts through the hold on his hands.
"Not what?"
"I don't really know what to say. I feel strange. I just feel as though things are changing and I cannot exactly control them anymore. But I don't know if it's necessarily a bad thing?" Eleanor shook her head before her gaze dropped to their hands to avoid his probing gaze. "Do you remember that dream I told you about. The dream about you that I used to have?"
Donald and Goofy's voices still echoed through the hallways, they could still find their way back to them if they stood together for a while to straighten out her thoughts. He smiled after he sent a look over his shoulder. "Of course I do. On the deck of the Black Pearl, right before you came with us."
"Yeah that's right." She breathed.
"Why would you bring it up? What's going on with you?"
"Merlin told me I needed to hold onto my light. No matter what, and that there would be a choice. A choice I had to make and I just.. You should know because.." She trailed off as her eyes met his again. Her mouth opened and closed a few times as she struggled for words. She wanted to tell Sora that he was her light. That she couldn't imagine existing without him now, not after everything he had done for her. Without even trying he had made her brave. He had given her a reason to leave home, he had given her something to protect and he made her feel whole without even lifting a finger. He was everything.
"Because?" Sora urged softly. "C'mon please talk to me."
"I.." Her words escaped her again. Though she had managed to work up the courage to meet his bright eyes again it didn't mean much else than that. If she couldn't speak to him she could at least try and convey something of what she was feeling. The wild flutter in her heart that happened every time he said her name, or the warmth that settled in her stomach when his fingers touched hers. She let out another shaking breath and hesitated before she lifted her hand and ran the very tips of her fingers along his jaw.
Sora took a sharp breath and a half step away from her. Her hold on his hand tightened and he stopped his quick dip away from her. "What is it?" He asked with a half nervous breath.
Her hand settled on the space just under his ear on his neck, where her fingers could brush against the soft hair at the nape of his neck and she shook her head. "No I just-" When she looked up to him again his eyes were trying desperately to read her expressions. Her courage failed her and her hand slipped from his neck. The hand that still clutched his released its hold on his fingers and she managed a smile as she took a few steps away from him. She threaded her shaking fingers together with one another and let out a long breath as the adrenaline pumped slower in her veins and a lie formed on her tongue.
"I just wanted you to know that with you, Donald and Goofy with me whatever choice Merlin is speaking of won't be hard." Eleanor's voice was barely a whisper as she made up something to say that wasn't 'Sora you are everything to me, you are my light and I will follow you to the ends of the earth'. She decided that would be too dramatic. Perhaps another time, when it would be right to spill out her heart to him, and they weren't standing in a mysterious hallway. "That's all."
He narrowed his eyes at her and muttered. "You know, if it's not you can always tell me."
"Yes I know Sora."
He opened his mouth once, but no words came. He took a half step towards her, to close the space she had created between them. "I, uh-"
"Hey you guys comin' or.." Goofy's voice snapped her attention away from Sora's imploring gaze. "Leon led us to a library and you guys weren't there all the sudden. Gawrsh, is everything okay?" His eyes watched the pair curiously. "Am I interrupting or.."
"Isn't the computer important?" Donald popped around the corner beside the knight and completely shattered any calm in the hallway. Sora's hand left hers and whatever he had been about to say was completely lost. "Remember Sora? The computer? Did something more important come up?"
"Yes, yeah yes we are coming. Er, right now." Eleanor said quickly and tried to slip away from the tense situation as fast as possible.
Donald grumbled something under his breath before he waved at Goofy. "Come on, come on. We're wasting time!"
Sora rolled his eyes as the duck and the dog disappeared down the shadowy hallway. Before Eleanor could duck away from the impending comment from the brunette, he grabbed back onto her hand and turned her around in a swift spin. "Hey this isn't done yet." He met her gaze with a soft smile. "You aren't telling me everything, I can tell you know that right? We'll check the computer out and then you tell me everything okay? Promise me."
"Everything?" She squeaked. "No that's.. You don't want to do that."
He shook his head. "No I do, I really do. Everything you promise?"
She nodded shakily. "Yes okay."
"Okay." He nodded and squeezed her hands reassuringly. "It's just me El. You don't have to worry about telling me anything, okay? Trust me, its just me."
"Okay. I promise. And I trust you Sora I do."
His hand shifted in hers and she smiled nervously.
"Come on." Goofy and Donald reappeared in the hallway and rushed forward. They grabbed onto Sora's arm and pulled him forward.
Donald pushed on his legs. "It's amazing!"
"Okay, okay, okay." The brunette stole a glance over his shoulder at Eleanor as he lost his hold on her hands.
She smiled and motioned them all forward. "Right behind you. Always."
By the time they caught back up to Leon, he was waiting rather impatiently in an office that had obviously been torn through. Books and papers were scattered all across the ground. The bookshelves that had once been lining the walls of the room were all pulled and haphazardly thrown to the ground. All the drawers from the desk in the center of the room were pulled and their contents dumped onto the tile in piles. Someone had come here looking for something and by the looks of things, hadn't found it.
"Gawrsh, what happened here Leon?" Goofy asked, stealing a wary look around the small office.
"Looks like someone was lookin' for something." Donald said in a matter-of-fact tone and crossed his arms.
"Hard to say exactly." Leon opened his eyes and waved his hand vaguely at the mess around them. "We don't even know who's office this is for sure. We don't know who would have picked through it like this or why either, which is frustrating. We do know that the computer that's through here is the one that Ansem was using. But it's password protected and barred off, so we can't figure much from it. A lot of these books have his reports in them, research and notes about the Nobodies and the Heartless. So all in all, a whole lot of no idea, aside from this." He pointed behind them and they all turned. "That's sort of the only definitive proof that this place belonged to Amsem."
The group turned to a portrait hanging on the wall behind them. A man with neatly combed white hair stared out at them with a set of dark purple eyes set in a ghostly pale face. Eleanor met the man's gaze carefully before she turned to her friends. His face was eerie and calm and made her altogether uncomfortable.
"That's Ansem!" Sora exclaimed, pointing wildly at the wall. "He's the one who we beat! The one who summoned the heartless! The one who controlled Riku. There's no way I'd forget that face."
Eleanor let out a breath and crept forward after Sora. "Are you sure that's Ansem?"
Goofy and Donald nodded. "Sure is. Couldn't be anyone else."
"Come on guys. The computer is through here." Leon nodded down another hallway on the other side of the room and pulled their attention away from the painting. "We haven't even got to the good part yet."
The missing panel in the wall led them out to a metal hallway where Eleanor's boots clicked awkwardly loud against the ground. She felt Sora's hand on her elbow as they stopped at the edge of the walkway that over looked a huge metal space that the former pirate didn't fully understand. She wrapped her hands tightly around the railing and leaned out to look at the curious mess of metal in front of her. An electric buzzing echoed somewhere in the hollow space. The giant computer led out into a massive space, stretching out into what she assumed was underneath Hollow Bastion.
"Check it out." Sora whispered at her ear.
Eleanor shivered but shook it off quickly. "What do you suppose it all is?" She leaned back towards him and met his gaze.
"No idea. I'm not good with computers." He laughed with a quick shrug and peeked into the computer room where another Leon had stopped.
"Gawrsh would ya look at all that."
"I don't even know what to look at first!"
Goofy and Donald were already floating above the computer carefully, watching the screen with wide curious eyes. Numbers and letters and pictures flashed across the screen Eleanor looked to Sora when they stopped side by side behind the pair. He had a hand on his chin and was staring at it all curiously. Leon came to a stop at the brunette's side and nodded forward to the screen. Eleanor touched his elbow lightly with an encouraging smile to urge him forward. After a moment of nervous silence, he took a few steps forward and stopped between Donald and Goofy.
"You think it can find Riku? Or the King?" He held his hands out and clicked a few buttons on the keyboard in front of him with nervous fingers. "Do you think it'll tell us anything?"
"Hard to say. Remember I said the damn thing is password locked? Not even Cid can hack past it." Leon answered.
"Please careful Sora." Eleanor said quietly. "Something doesn't feel right here." She looked over her shoulder and half extended her hand to the young man.
"I'm always careful." He responded as he hit a couple more buttons, when there was no immediate response from the computer screen. "Come on you stupid thing."
Eleanor flinched at the loud noises coming from the computer and stumbled backwards to where Leon was waiting. She turned and glanced out in the direction they had come into the computer room a second time. "It feels like there's something else here. You sure we're alone?"
"I know we weren't followed." Leon stole an uninterested glance out the hallway.
The redhead shook her head. "Can't put my finger on it, it just feels like there's someone else here. Who else knows about this place-"
"Unidentified User. This is a warning. Any further misuse of the terminal will result in arrest." A deep voice cut her off along with a loud buzzing from the terminal.
"What in the world." Leon took step away from the buzzing computer.
"Sora what did you do?l!" Donald exclaimed as he and Goofy hopped towards one another.
"I didn't do anything!" He jumped and set his hand down on the keyboard to turn to the others, which caused another loud buzzing and clicking of buttons.
"Warning phase over. You are now under arrest." The voice said again.
"Arrest?" Sora asked incredulously.
"Run!" Leon shouted as a crack of electricity brought a huge terminal behind Eleanor came to life with a bright electric glow. He grabbed her arm as he scrambled to the side of and slid across the shining metal floor.
"Sora!" Eleanor tried to rush back towards him as a beam of blinding light shot out of the generator against the wall. Leon kept a tight grip on her arm to keep her in place. Sora's eyes met hers at the last second as the light hit him and Donald and Goofy. In a flash and one last loud buzzing noise they were gone in a fizz of electricity. "No! No, no, no. Give him back!" She rushed forward and banged on the keyboard with her fists as terror clenched at her chest. "Give him back, give him back now!"
"Relax, relax!" Leon grabbed her arm again and pulled her backwards to keep her from breaking anything. "There's nothing that pounding on that keyboard will do for us now, got it?"
"What now?" Eleanor stared at the screen desperately, which had defaulted back to a locked and unresponsive image. The flashes and red words had disappeared along with her friends. She looked up to Leon. "How do we get them out?"
He shook his head. "There has to be a password or.. Something."
"But you said you couldn't crack through it before. What makes you think we can crack it now. Send me in after him, how do we make it do that again? If I keep pushing buttons it'll have to get mad again right? It'll take me too."
"There's no use in that, I didn't even know it could do that to begin with. We haven't looked through the library yet. Maybe there will be something we can use in there, a hint or some information in one of those journals."
Eleanor's blood ran cold. "You want me to dig through papers and books to get Sora back? That's your plan? The chance that whoever's device this is happened wrote the password down somewhere."
Leon chuckled. "No need to get snippy. Chances are there's a password in there somewhere. And that's the only chance we've got right now. Come on."
She turned back to the computer and clutched at the edge of the keyboard with shaking fingers. She searched the screen again as if it would give her the answers as to where Sora had disappeared to. She turned to the floor where he had been standing only moments ago. A long shaking breath slipped out of her chest and she looked up to Leon again.
"Would you rather stay here until something happens? I'm capable of shuffling through books by myself."
"No I'm coming. Staring at the computer won't bring him back to me. Er.. to us." She felt her face flush. "Staring at the empty room isn't helping anything."
"Atta girl."
The piles of books were starting to make Eleanor's head hurt. Piles of what appeared to be years and years research done by someone with horribly messy handwriting. Research about the nature of the heart, as well as information about the Nobodies and the Heartless. She curled her hand into her hair as she tried to absorb all the information in the journals. The Nobodies had had hearts once upon a time and the author of the notes, the man in the portrait that hung on the wall, seemed to believe that what she had tried to convince Donald of in the Underworld. They could remember their humanity, they were worth talking to and questioning if one could manage to get close enough to a willing party. Her head was full to bursting and her mind was a whirlwind. She was beyond worried for Sora, she didn't know if there was any way to get him back out of the computer. She could hardly think of anything but seeing his bright eyes again.
"Any luck?" Leon's voice cut through the whirlwind.
"Nothing. No password, no mention of the computer, only piles of nonsense research." She motioned vaguely to the pile of books ahead of her. "Nothing that will get him back to me."
"Research." Leon muttered. "No good to us unless we want to know everything about those Nobodies."
She hesitated.
"Something you were looking for?"
"I met one, who spoke to me. Told me about his heart. And before that, Yensid's good fairies had mentioned it as well. That they remember their humanity." She looked up at him briefly. He had a thoughtful look on his face but didn't speak so she continued. "These notes confirm everything about the Organization that he told me. He was telling the truth."
"So what? Doesn't stop the pain they've caused."
"Yes I'm well aware. That's what I'm currently wrestling with."
"Hm." Leon didn't add anything else to ease her mind.
She gave him a desperate look but as she opened her mouth to say something else, the crackling and electric sounding whir that had taken Sora from them before sounded from the computer room. "It's coming back on." Eleanor scrambled to her feet, books slipping from piles all around her. She stumbled up and out of the library.
The electric buzzers and beeping rang out from the end of the metallic hallway where the computer was. Her boots slipped as she rounded the corner through the door. The computer was flashing warning lights and symbols and numbers appeared in red across the screen. The terminal against the back wall lit up after a stutter. The same beam of light that had taken the trio earlier crackled out and the forms of Sora, Donald and Goofy stumbled out of the bright light and Eleanor let out a shaking breath.
"Oh thank goodness." She rushed to him and tackled him into an almost desperate hug that he hardly managed to remain balanced and standing through. "Oh I thought I'd lost you." She buried her face in his neck and he shivered. She clutched at his back and held him closer. "Don't do that again. Promise me."
"Hey, hey relax. Jeeze El." Sora tried to laugh but a nervous chuckle was all he could manage. "I'm alright, right? Right here." He gave her a hesitant hug, winding his arms tight around her back.
"I thought you were lost forever. We were looking through those books and couldn't find anything that would bring you back. I was terrified."
He held her for a moment before he got jittery and pushed her gently away from him with his hands on her shoulders. He smiled and moved his hands up to either side of her face. "You don't need to worry anymore. I'm right here."
"Where did you go? I don't understand." She muttered quietly. Her hands took hold of his.
"There's a whole world in there. Populated by these.. well these programs right guys?" Sora tried to explain but turned to Donald and Goofy when his words failed him.
"Wait, say again?" Leon spoke before the other pair could.
"That's right!" Donald exclaimed. "And Tron told us all we have to do is find a password and he can access the database where all the information the MCP is keeping it all secret! The only one he'll open up to is his 'user' and that's Ansem and who knows what he means by that. But if we can get the password to Tron he can get us into the system and we'll have all the information we need!" As usual, the duck's words fell into unintelligible squeaking which left everyone but Goofy confused.
"Well, gawrsh Donald that is to say we just need a password." The knight laughed and explained for the master magician.
Eleanor opened her mouth to speak, but instead just shook her turned to Sora for further explanation. When none came, silence fell.
Leon let out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair. "Back to the password search I guess. Come on. We shouldn't waste more time than we have to. If the password will get us into the computer we have no choice but to keep looking."