title: A Hundred Days
rating: T
disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, or Disney. 'Nuff said.
notes: A Hundred Days is in essence a Kingdom Hearts 358/2 AU. Any canon introduced after Kingdom Hearts II is in danger of being kicked out of the way for plot purposes. This fic is dedicated to one DonatienValiarde, who made piteous noises until the bunny was lodged in my skull. (Ow. Poor ficbunny.) I am profoundly grateful to DigitalTart, TheSeer and Weirdly for their fantastic and thorough beta-readings. Any mistakes that remain are my own.
prologue
In the evening, the streets on the island were black and bare. The door to every house had been sealed; the only lights burned inside a temple overlooking the blood-dark sea.
Only one person was ever out at this time of night, and she was running.
Panting, she stumbled on the shore. Sand tangled her dark hair, scraped her skin raw, choked the cry in her throat. Her veins simmered with fear and her heavy limbs ached, but she couldn't stop. In the surrounding darkness she could still feel the shadows pressing closer, the throng closing in--
Inhuman footfalls crunched behind her. Terror swelled in her heart as she turned to see monster after monster bubbling out of the shadows pooling along the shore. She gasped but couldn't breathe; the air was crushed glass in her lungs.
An old memory flared to life: Above all things, I protect. But it had been a different girl who had made that promise - a girl whose veins had burned with sorcery, who had laughed and cried and lived without care because she didn't know everything that was to come: malice and worship in the corridors, the way power could turn and lash out on a careless heart, the responsibility that a sorceress bore to the people of her island.
She was older now, armored with years, and all that she had learned was how to be afraid.
Struggling to her feet, she swayed as they rose out of the rippling ground, an endless army of monsters. Blood sang in her ears. She clenched her fists at her sides to stay upright. It was hard - harder than she could have imagined. Her bones were turning to glass, were dissolving into sand. She couldn't hold on for much longer.
This was the day that she had always known would come, a voice murmured in her mind. She couldn't prevent it, so why not slip quietly into the darkness? The night was warm and welcoming. How much easier it would be to succumb to her fears, to fall, to let them lay waste to the island while she lay sleeping underneath the earth...
"No," she mouthed, but she was alone and the power that danced along her fingertips had dimmed to a bare spark. She sank to her knees again, feeling the monsters crowding around her, shadows whispering empty things into her skin.
Ground gave way underneath her to a soft, yielding void. As she let her eyes drift shut, she felt it open up to her like hands, easy as a dream. She had done the right thing. There was no heart weaker than hers on the island. If she had stayed, if she had gone on, she would have only burdened them with protecting her. Of course she had never stood a chance.
Her skin felt loose and strange. She could feel her body unraveling into nothing, bones weaving together into the shape of one of those little monsters on the beach. Memory after memory faded away until even language was breaking down andthewordswereslippingfromher--
In the distance she could hear someone screaming.
"Rinoa!"
Her eyes snapped open. Recognition rolled through every vein at the sound of her name. She was needed. Whatever else she was - afraid, friendless, alone - she had promised to protect them all to the end. She couldn't let them fall, let them die. She couldn't disappear. Each thought surfaced from her mind like a ghost torn from the underworld. She fought to hold them together in her mind, grinding teeth too sharp to be human.
No.
She wouldn't disappear.
She refused.
A last burst of power flared through her body, and she arched from the sheer force screaming up every nerve. Even through her closed eyes, she saw her sorcery sweep across the beach, tracing the outline of each crouching monster -- but only for a second.
Sorcery and darkness spiraled together and exploded.
A savage brightness rose out of the wasteland. She cried out, flinging a human arm over her eyes, and her voice rang unreal in the shimmering air. A hammering filled her ears as light drifted closer. She could almost remember what that sound was - what it meant, why it was important...
The brightness touched her. Instantly her veins surged with light. Electricity filled her hollow skin. Agony charred her mind clean of thoughts - an agony worse than death or terror. For a moment, all other sensation faded as pain expanded to fill every corner of her mind. The world was an endless stretch of white, bleak and empty.
She screamed. Light poured from her eyes, her mouth, her hands. Gathering into a radiant globe, it hovered before her burning eyes - but only for an instant. Then it raced away into a world she could no longer see.
Someone was murmuring from far away. If she concentrated, she could nearly feel it all: the brush of long hair as a familiar face leaned in, the arms that cradled her, the skittering beat of a heart not her own. "Don't-- Oh, please, you must hold on. Rinoa--"
She was fading too quickly to hear the rest. The voice slipped from her ear. She tried to reach out, to hold onto the last word, but it crumpled and splintered into broken letters. Darkness swept even the pieces of that thought from her mind.
And she was gone.
Elsewhere, the world began.
What he remembered later was not the mansion rising like a shadow to his left behind a curve of brick walls and iron bars nor the stranger before him; it was the sky. A sky that shone like heat, all oranges and transparent reds and clouds boiled thin. If he had known then what terror was like, he might have been afraid. But there was only a distant hollowness, a ghost of loss, and his mind was crowding with all the words he didn't know how to say.
He breathed in. The first question curled on his tongue, sharp and sour. He looked up, and was: a boy standing in a clearing before a gate, fire over his head and earth underneath him.
Someone spoke in a voice that was no voice at all. The words guttered and wove and the unsteady air shivered as if the world were only a mirage behind the question. Would you like to know? Certainty. Secrecy. Temptation. You feel nothing. You can feel nothing.
He stood still, blank-eyed and watching. His pulse thudded in his ears, oddly empty; no heart existed underneath its beat.
Would you like a meaning?
Ghosts whirled out of nothing. The sky was tilting a little more with each passing second, trees and dirt and jutting gates overturning as a string of letters circled him like a chain. Startled, he moved for the first time and reached out for something he couldn't hold. His grasping fingers clawed through the letters; they scattered. Before he could wonder, they snapped together again in a gleaming combination, so sharp that their shapes dimmed into solid form.
Roxas.
And he knew his name.
"A new you," the stranger said, and for the first time, Roxas saw without the whirling promise of a name to distract him. Straightening, he studied the man, filtered the thousand details and tucked each away: tall, black robes, hood pulled over his features. He moved like a fighter: soundless, grim and graceful with a controlled bearing that said danger, here lies danger--
Danger? Roxas frowned. No matter how he looked at it, there was no reason to think that the stranger was dangerous. But all his instincts recoiled against the man's very presence.
He exhaled. The name shuddered up again through his tangled thoughts, hollow and heavy on his shoulders. He stayed still, stayed tense and kept his eyes open, waiting for the stranger to speak. Again and again, his mind slipped back to his name, trying to call a memory out of the sound - but to no avail. The only memory that existed before the hooded man was darkness.
"Roxas." It slipped out and it really was that simple - just an unfamiliar hiss between his teeth. As if conjured from his voice, a swirl of shadows opened up in the world, raw as a gleaming wound. His body tightened. Automatically Roxas flung out an arm, dragging it back through a rush of air to wrap both hands around--
A hilt he didn't have, a weapon he couldn't imagine, let alone hold.
The hooded man chuckled, low; his laughter filled the clearing. "When you are ready," he said, "find us."
His own voice crackled in his throat. "Where--?"
"You will know."
The stranger stepped backwards into the pool. Black ribboned through the open space around him, weaving smokily over his form. Roxas watched him go - watched the darkness fold into itself until it disappeared.
And he was alone again.
He stood still for some time, in case the man came back. When nothing moved, Roxas stirred at last. He went to the gates, ran his fingers across the iron bars and held on as they hummed, waiting for some recognizable echo to surface. Nothing came. He might have landed in a desert or the middle of a lake for all the good it would have done. He stared at his hands, opening and closing, at the gleam of skin pulled taut and his knuckles growing white.
After a while, he took the path that led away into the woods.
"Number Eight."
Axel stopped, resting one foot on a higher step. His shoulders tightened. Behind him, Superior waited in silence. He probably thought that repeating himself would be a sign of humanity, of weakness - as if any of the first seven Nobodies could be mistaken for a creature with a heart or the slightest sense of fun.
He flicked through a list of deeds that would bring Xemnas to speak to him in person instead of the next meeting. Nothing came up - which wasn't exactly a comfort. For a scientist, Superior liked his games just a little too much, and the last thing that Axel needed was to get caught up in one of the power-plays that seemed to have gotten more and more common over time. They already had an arrangement: he did the jobs, he watched hearts like stars pour into the nightmare they were building, and then he went and slacked off, occasionally in the company of little shotglasses.
It was a good arrangement. He liked it a lot.
In the meantime, his survival instincts reminded him, as he bemoaned the tragedy of his fate, etcetera, he'd left his back to a Nobody for several unguarded seconds. Clearly all of that alcohol was doing wonders for his brain processes--
Axel spun around. Superior was standing at the foot of the stairs, arms at his sides, head tilted back, and Axel stifled the sudden urge to bind darkness into a corridor and get the hell out of there. That Xemnas had unveiled his plans for the Organization long ago didn't mean much. There'd never been a guarantee that he was telling the truth, and Axel liked to think that he could see danger when it waltzed up and did the hula, and now his mind was presenting him with the singular image of Superior trying out a tribal dance.
His brows twitched on the brink of a wince. "Boss," he said, lifting two fingers to his brow in a salute.
Having caught Axel's attention, Superior turned away. It figured. "Another Nobody has emerged in Twilight Town," he said over his shoulder. "Bring him back when he is ready."
He didn't relax. This seemed like a simple assignment, the kind that might have been given out at any meeting. The fact that Superior had decided to forego the wait implied there was something else to it – an urgency, which had to mean – something. Axel had no idea. He called after the retreating Nobody: "Number Thirteen, huh?"
For a long moment, Xemnas was silent. At length, he glanced back. "Is there truly a factor in your mission that you have failed to understand or are you only trying to delay your mission?"
Axel didn't miss a beat. "So picking up some newbie's a mission?" He folded his arms and cocked a brow. "Must be a pretty important kid..."
"All will be revealed in due course."
"Right." He paused. "So, if you knew about him, then why didn't you--"
Xemnas had turned "Do you presume to question me?"
Axel lifted his hands. Darkness spiraled up around him, draining away the sight of Superior's narrow, suspicious look. "I'm going, I'm going."
Privately he suspected that Xemnas kept ditching the newbies because he knew what a lousy tour guide he'd make. What kind of a guy named a basement 'Nothing's Call', anyway?
Roxas came into Twilight Town through a crack in the wall.
Streets ran from him in every direction. More roads curved over his head in forms of bridges and broad, flat roofs. The world was thick with paths. Roxas narrowed his eyes and started to walk. A gaggle of strangers drifted by. He cut through the crowd, letting their scattered conversations ghost about him. Only when the last voices faded did he realize that he had been holding his breath.
Stopping in the middle of the street, he stared down at himself: plain clothes, bony frame, stranger's hands with long fingers and hard-skinned palms. Everything led to memories knotted up in mysteries and a story that wouldn't yield no matter how he yanked every loose end.
You will know, the hooded man had said. In retrospect, he just sounded smug.
The buildings glowed in the sunset, warm and unknown, and every passing face belonged to a stranger. There was no connection to him: not in its plain, worn streets or the people who wove through the town. So why had he appeared here?
As another group darted by - three kids, this time - he caught himself counting them, tucking the facts of the scene away. Locking in memory how the girl in a yellow dress swung her arms, dark braids bouncing. How the bright-haired boy at her side waved a hand and crunched on his ice cream. How the shorter boy plucked wanly at the headband hanging over his eyes.
Without quite knowing why, Roxas watched them leave. None of them gave him so much as a glance.
His hands curled at his sides. Then he walked on without looking back.
He turned at the first intersection. There was a woman kneeling on the streetcorner, up to her elbows in the grease-black engine of an ice cream cart. Their eyes met. She waved to him, so cheerful and confident that he stopped. Her face was strange to him and the town had brought no memories forth, but he could have been wrong. He wanted to be wrong. "Do I know you?" he asked.
One eye swept over him. "Nope," she said. "Haven't seen you around. Hey. Want some ice cream?"
Automatically Roxas dug around in his pockets. His hands came up empty. "Ah..." he started. "I don't have any--" The word crumpled in his throat, unknown. Ice cream. He understood what it was, but the idea was unconnected to anything else. Payment, he thought, and reached after the concept. There had to be payment. How did he pay?
The woman sighed and chuckled. "Kids today. Always broke." She shook her head. "Tell you what. It's the end of the day. These are only going to go to waste if someone doesn't eat them. You stand there and pass me my tools when I need 'em and I'll give you one."
He thought about saying no, about searching again for the - memories? reasons? - things that would tie his existence together.Restlessness fluttered in his bones. He had been searching for hours, it seemed, and he was tired - tired of end after dead end. He wanted to stay - or rather, he wanted to want to stay. Wishing for a wish. The idea made his teeth clench. He ignored it.
"Sure," he answered. He crouched by her toolbox, handing her screwdrivers and hammers while she stuck her head inside and cursed the fickle nature of machines.
She emerged again after five different wrenches and a metal rod with an uncanny resemblance to a morningstar, oil-streaked but triumphant. "Done! Here." Dragging another compartment open, she pulled out two ice creams, shining pale blue through the wrapper. "It's nice to have company sometimes."
"I don't need so much--" he started, but the woman cut him off.
"Come on, take it! You never know where you might find a friend to share it with."
For an instant Roxas didn't speak. At last, carefully, he said, "Thank you," and accepted both.
Satisfied, she slammed the lid shut on the engine, leaving oily streaks across the surface. "You new around here?"
"I guess."
"Ah! Then you shouldn't miss the sunset. Find a high place to watch from. You won't regret it." Wiping off her hands with a rag, the ice-cream seller favored him with a warm smile. "There's a reason it's called Twilight Town."
Roxas nodded and turned away, one ice cream in each hand. On the way up the hill, he started to nibble one as the pale horizon unraveled into fire. Salt burned on his tongue, cold - and familiar. A memory unraveled from the taste, roaring through his ears. He closed his eyes and listened. Gradually, the sounds of an unseen sea came clear - and behind it, the ringing laughter of people he knew...
A dash of something cold and wet - ocean water? - struck his hand. He started to laugh just as his eyes flew open.
There were no people; there was no sea. Only a trace of ice cream lingered, slick on his skin. He stilled, staring down at the trace of blue sliding down his wrist, and remembered the shrieks of gulls he had never heard. Something surged in his chest like the sea - something for which he had no name. He waited. Eventually it twisted loose again into emptiness.
At last, he licked away the drip and walked on.
The clock tower gave a brilliant view of the town: buildings gleaming like new clay, painted roofs alight with the sunset, train a winding snake of steel and smoke in the distance. Roxas let his legs dangle over the ledge as he ate and watched the livid skies changing, feeling the rush of his almost-memories fade in his veins.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it: darkness too deep to be a shadow, hidden in the outline cast by the clock tower.
It moved.
He had one second to react and, before he knew it, he was in motion. A familiar weight flashed into each hand. He scrambled to his feet, leaving the two ice cream bars, and leapt, blades swinging over his head. The air sputtered and wheeled with flames, whirling into the shapes of spiked discs thrown up just in time to block his strike. Sparks jolted between blade and chakram.
Only then did Roxas register the black robes - and where he'd seen them before.
Startled, he disengaged and retreated. His heels skidded along the ledge and he hastily stepped back again. The chakrams flared once more and disappeared; the other man started to clap. "Nice," he said, and Roxas realized that he was laughing. His narrow face was alight, his ember-bright hair wild, his eyes a reckless green sharp as broken glass. "What were you gonna do? Kill me?"
Roxas opened his mouth to answer, then pressed his lips together. The instinct had been so strong - as if the memory had etched itself into his muscles, knitted the knowledge of the swing-and-slash into his very bones. In the second between sight and movement, he had known exactly what to do. But it was gone now, all his purpose turned to ash. He couldn't be certain of anything. "I don't know."
"Well, hey, don't stop on my account. You were doing so well." He grinned, eyes sharp with calculation, as if Roxas had measured up to a standard he hadn't even considered. His expression had focused like a panther's, wary and intrigued. "Second round?"
Roxas turned away. "I don't want to fight you."
"Why not?"
"You're working with him, aren't you? The other guy."
His companion was silent, but only for a little while; still, it was more than enough time to tell him a little more than the stranger probably wanted him to know. "Yeah," he said. "But if you want answers, he's not the one you need."
"And you are?"
"Nah. I dispense ass-kickings, not answers."
Roxas eyed him. From him, it sounded as much a challenge as a declaration. "Kick your own ass," he suggested.
The stranger twisted his mouth. "You really don't know much. Sorry. I've got a long list of skills, but anatomical impossibilities aren't on it. Well," –he flashed a sharp smirk— "not most anatomical impossibilities, anyway."
He was trying to be irritating. He had to be. No one drawled like that by accident. "Forget it. I'm not going to fight you."
"Sure about that? Because your Keyblades are saying something else."
He'd almost forgotten the blades. They had fitted so comfortably to his grip that the weight of them felt like nothing. Each moved like an extension of his arm. He stopped, facing the sunset, and raised one to the level of his arm. The teeth of the key gleamed in the waning light. He wondered what it unlocked. "This is a -- Key... blade?"
"What? Don't you know?"
Roxas closed his eyes. "I don't remember anything from before the-- From before." He felt the Keyblades dissolve. The sudden loss threw him off-balance, and he put a hand out to steady himself.
"That so? 'Cause from where I'm standing, you're doing a pretty good job of remembering how to string all those pesky sounds together into words. Not bad for a guy who can't remember anything."
His first instinct was to snarl, but the spark gleaming in the stranger's eyes told him that he was expecting that. After a moment, the annoyance dimmed. His arms settled at his sides. "I guess that's true."
"Huh. Full of surprises, aren't you?"
He glanced back. "I know worse things to be full of," he said, not without bite. His companion's mouth pursed into a half-smile.
"That's just what you think now, Number Thirteen."
"Thirteen?" When the stranger didn't answer, he sank back onto the ledge and picked up the remains of his ice cream, saved by the wrapper of the spare. "Whatever. And it's Roxas."
"Hn?"
"My name. It's Roxas."
His companion sprawled beside him, all limbs and bony angles. Even without looking Roxas would have felt his presence, a long line of heat at his side. "Axel." He twirled a finger. "Got it memorized?"
"Why? Does it matter?"
Axel's grin widened. He tipped his head back to look at the sky. "So what are you doing here?"
"I..." Roxas looked down. "I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know? This is where you came from, isn't it?"
"I guess." Glimpsing blue beside his hand, he remembered the other ice cream. After a moment, he offered it to Axel. It had survived the journey up the hill well - softer around the edges, but only a little had dripped into the wrapper.
"Wow!" Axel said, scratching his neck. "Half-melted ice cream. I'm simply honored."
"If you don't want it," Roxas began, piqued. Before he could finish, Axel reached out, seized the ice cream and noisily started to unwrap it.
After a taste, he made a face. "What is this?"
"Sea-salt ice cream."
"Mm." Axel pressed his wrist to his mouth, stifling a cough. "Yeah, but how much sea-salt and how much ice cream?"
"You don't have to eat it if you don't like it."
"Tch. That's what they all say."
Roxas didn't answer, only watched him.
Eventually, Axel cracked his neck and said, "Y'know, you're going to have to say it out loud if you want an answer. I don't read minds."
"You came to find me," Roxas said. "Why?"
Axel waggled a finger. "Where's the fun in just being told? Guess."
He bit down the first retort that sprang to mind and swallowed the last of the ice cream. The salt tang flared on his tongue, and he relaxed as the cold eased through his body. "I can't," Roxas said. "I told you. I don't remember."
Axel twiddled the ice cream stick. "Huh. Well, that's not right."
"So you know something about this."
"Yeah, but—" He paused, weaving the stick between his fingers. "I'd explain, but Superior'd kill me. He has this whole thing where he breaks out the diagrams and speeches. There's a theory going around that he spends all his free time making up the diagrams for the next newbie, and we wouldn't want to rob him of that."
He sounded contemptuous, but there was an edge of something else mixed with the brilliant amusement. Fear, Roxas thought. He stood. "Then let's go."
Axel laughed, but he got to his feet. The last of the sun had slipped under the horizon, the world dissolved to shadows around them. In the dark his steady eyes gleamed like a cat's. "'Bout time to show you around anyway," he said.
to be continued
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