CHAPTER VII

Lie Still, Close Your Eyes

(NOTE)

I just came back from a very cold football game, and I feel very comfy now. That aside, I promised a more serious chapter and here you go. Although, I must admit that Merlin will come, but probably not in this one. Enjoy.

(/NOTE)

Yawn. Stretch. What time was it? What made nights after sealing keyholes feel so short? Her brain was pounding to the same pulse that even Savior of Balance was giving off the day before. Coincidence? Possibly. Probably. She couldn't think, her vision was swimming, maybe if she just got up she could regain her consciousness.

Slip.

What just happened? Charity was falling through the floor, but somehow she kept upright. Before she could even take in what could possibly be around her, she found herself in a blank, white room. She was sitting on a chair; it was wooden and uncomfortable. Mustering all her strength to stand up, she found herself unable. Charity breathed in deeply and stayed where she sat, until she actually looked forward long enough to notice another presence in the 'room'.

"Charity." the girl stated. She was sitting on a chair opposite Charity by at least five feet. The elbow of the girl was propped on her crossed legs, leaving her hand to cradle her head by her chin in a lazy fashion. She had the same, if not redder, auburn hair as Charity and the same eyes, except it was as if there was a sheet of moonlight translucently covering them. A strange, silver Organization coat draped over the girl. Her lips curled into a smile; a smile like hers; the one that pushed out her cheeks to make her look like a little baby, and dimples dangerously close to the edges of her lips.

"Who are you?" Charity asked, rubbing her left eye. Could she believe what she was seeing? Probably only just. Surely she would be much more skeptical had she not just woken straight out of a dead sleep; another one full of memories, this girl straight in them.

"It shouldn't be that hard to figure out." she told Charity in a calm voice, "I'm over half of you."

"Over half of me?" Charity repeated. Surely enough, she was as full as she was when she woke up a minute ago; physically, anyway.

"Some would say the better, as well." the girl nodded. She stood up and out of her chair to look around the girl. "It's so sad," she admitted as she circled Charity like a vulture, "Aside from melany, I can't find one thing physically different from us." She stopped behind her chair, "Thin, weak wrists. Average body weight. Full bottom lip, thin upper. Thunder thighs, but maybe that's your fault. Big feet. Bigger smile. Wavy, medium length hair. Can you tell me what's different about us?"

Charity sighed. She wanted to say 'That I don't know who you are and somehow you know my full anatomy and name', but just the simple presence of the girl behind her told her. "You're not a Somebody."

"On the contrary," she told her quietly, "I would have had no idea, either. A Nobody and a Heartless make a Somebody. Just like you. But somehow, we're still the same person. We both can't live on this earth together. One of us has to go."

"You have me here." Charity snapped, "I don't know why I'm here at all, but I am. So why don't you try to kill me?"

Her mirror half simply laughed at her. "I plan to. It's why I destroyed the Destroyer of Balance; it wouldn't be able to touch you. But why not now? There's a simple explanation for that. Well, maybe not all that simple, because I myself don't even know why, but..." she faced her at her side, and put her hand dangerously close to her cheek. "I can't touch you, either." When her hand finally got close enough to brush against her face, some silver barrier rebound it back at least a foot away as if shot by a rubber band. Wincing from the recoil, she brought her hand back to her side.

"You're not me." Charity decided aloud, "I don't understand how you look like me, but you aren't me." Her hands shook just by saying something so strange.

"Really?" asked the girl. She took two steps to be right in front of Charity. Kneeling down right in front of Charity's feet, she brought her face closer to Charity's. "Look at me. What differences do you see?"

Charity stared into the cold eyes. Same flawless cheeks, flippy hair, and deep stare. "There's cold. You're cold. Not physically, but on the inside." She stared closer. "You're my Heartless, aren't you? But you look different... You're my Heartless and Exie, aren't you?"

The girl nodded, and stood back up. She took her seat across from her. "I'm missing my real Somebody. I'm a fake. But if I can get rid of you, I may feel completely whole. And there will be no imbalance in the world. One Charity. Balance. That's... what you've always wanted, wasn't it?" she asked her other half.

Charity shook her head violently; how could her only want in the world come to rebound against her? "Then I'll just have to kill you off." She didn't realize how this would help her in the long run; with her Heartless and her Nobody disappearing from existence totally, what would happen to her? Would she die? Or would she simply live a life of feeling empty once more.

The girl stood up and smirked. In response, Charity had stood up as well. "All's fair, then." She held out her hand; she wanted Charity to shake it.

"All's fair." Charity held out her hand as well, but the second she tried to shake Charity's hand, her whole body rebounded backwards. She was shooting backwards in a flurry of silver and white, back, back, back. Where was she going?

Slam.

Right in the wall, she fell down to the floor, and stumbled into a pile of person onto the floor.

"Charity!" exclaimed Riku, who had apparently been looking for her in her room. He ran up to her and helped her stand up. "What happened?" he asked her.

Charity opened her eyes; they seemed almost clouded over in a familiar sheet of silver.

"What happened?" he asked. He then shook his head, "Don't tell me, I won't be able to help. Let's get you to Leon, Cloud, Aerith, Cid, and Tifa." He put his arm around her shoulders to help her out of the room.

xxxxx

"That explains your eyes." Aerith nodded, after a long while of sitting and listening to Charity's exact story. Although unwanted, somehow, every Keyblade wielder, Broden, and Nessa had all joined in on listening to the story. "When you tried to make contact with your... other half, I suppose, you gained an attribute. But I wonder if you gained anything more than an appearance?"

"Anything more?" asked Charity. She looked down at her hands. "I don't feel anything different. But that's why Savior of Balance was acting up; she said she got rid of Destroyer of Balance." The mere thought scared her; if she were to ever get Exie back from this girl, what weapon would she have? Charity was not used to referring to Exie as a simple Nobody, but a sister in a sense; her better half when she only believed herself to be one of two instead of one of three.

"But why did your Heartless and your Nobody combine?" asked Sora, who seemed to bring up this question multiple times in the middle of her story. Kairi shook her head.

"They were both at the Organization, weren't they?" she asked.

"I suppose so." Charity nodded. "So does that mean that Anton plans on using my other half to get to me?" she asked nobody in general.

"Or maybe she's working with Anton." Nessa suggested, nodding her head.

"Or maybe," Riku brought up, "and this is a big 'maybe', but maybe he's working for her."

Nessa stared at him. "Do you even remember how strong Anton was? Why could he be working for somebody with Kiur gone?"

"He's easily swayed." Charity nodded, "Or else he never really would have been working for Kiur in the first place, especially against us."

"Besides," Riku said, "he wanted to be in the darkness, or else he wouldn't have saved his heart from death so he could linger in the dark realm. Your other half had to have brought him back because she needed him for something."

"But what?" asked Charity. She put a hand to her head.

"We can't worry about this right now," Sora told them, standing up, "Once we seal up more worlds and get into The World That Never Was, we'll find out for sure."

"You're right." Charity said quickly, standing up as well. "Where to next?"

"Traverse Town. I think you could use a little less excitement for one day." Sora told him.

"I don't know," Riku started, "There's usually some strangely large Heartless blocking the keyhole to that place." He would only remember because that was where he reunited with Sora for the first time on their first journey.

"And if she shows up there...?" asked Charity.

"Don't worry," Nessa, strangely cheerfully, told her as she pat her friend on the back, "she can't touch you, 'member?"

They all left outside for the Gummi Ship, Charity lingering back farther a bit, "Yet."

Anton faded back into the shadows behind him; nobody had seen him there.

xxxxx

"I've been to see her." the strawberry-blond boy told Calypso, who was synchronizing strange items. It seemed as though she was making a keychain. "She looks a lot like you."

"She looks just like me." Calypso grimaced, adding a few ether into her batch of whatever it all was. Just the smell of the room could give Anton feelings of darkness. "Where are they going next?" she asked solemnly, assuming he had stayed for a conversation.

"Traverse Town." he responded to her, although not with much enthusiasm.

"Zexion said that he's going to go destroy Charity. He must be desperate for a heart," she cooed, "I'll give him a chance. After all, I pre-made hearts for all of them so I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of making the one who destroys Charity a heart at the second. I simply dispose of the hearts of the failures."

"That's one way to be lazy." Anton suggested.

"He's ready to go," came Vexen's voice from outside the door. Naminé gave a squeak and ran out of the opposite door quietly and unnoticed, which was thankfully still open. If anyone were to catch her when she was trying to hide, it would be Vexen. The Chilly Academic stepped through with Zexion standing beside him. "Where to?"

"He'll be going to Traverse Town." Calypso told them. Finally, the keychain was done. Attached to a sapphire chain was a silvery heart that had a lightning-bolt shaped break down the center. She called upon her odd looking keyblade, and added the keychain. All that changed about it was that the keyblade now looked platinum silver. "Moonlight Radiance, I expect good things out of you." she whispered to her keyblade.

xxxxx

"There are no Heartless." Charity remarked after only a couple of minutes after getting out of the ship. It looked less like a town and more like a city; there were at least three shops already in plain view, and a town center in which they seemed to be standing at.

"Not yet. First District doesn't have any for some reason." Riku told her.

"Where is this place, anyway?" asked Nessa who had visited it before, but never bothered to ask exactly where it was or why it was there.

"It's where everybody ends up when their homes are destroyed. At least, most people."

Charity's heart dropped in her stomach. Could her parents be there? Maybe her sister? Or her friends? She glanced over at Nessa; she seemed to be thinking the same thing. They smiled at each other. "Let's get this done. If it means finding my other half again and having her restore Azure Daybreak, as fast as possible." She didn't even want to think of the possibility of her refusing. After all, it was technically her home world too, as she used to be part of Charity; so she must feel some obligation to it.

"To Third District we go!" Sora said happily, sticking his chest in the air as he led the group forward. Behind him, Quince mimicked him, earning a lot of snickers from the group. Nessa, Charity, Riku, Kairi, and Broden just followed along as always.

The second they stepped through the huge, brown doors of first district into second, they were bombarded by shadows and knights. "That's lovely." Charity remarked as Savior of Balance appeared in her hands; she was lucky that she had so much experience with minor Heartless, that it only took the smallest bit of effort from only a few members to get rid of them all.

Sure enough, after taking a couple more steps in, many more appeared.

"Forget about the Heartless for now," Sora mentioned, "Follow me!" He ran ahead, and everyone else ran as well. Broden lagged behind and was constantly being beat up by a few Heartless on the way. If Sora wasn't so generous with potions, he probably would have lost his heart to a simple Shadow soon after.

They found themselves running through a second set of doors after only a minute or two of running. This part of town was a lot prettier, but much more abandoned due to the vast amount of Heartless. "I said ignore 'em!" he shouted to Quince, who insisted on killing at least one Heartless for every ten feet they ran.

"Ignore Heartless?" he asked as though Sora was crazy.

"Just wait, you'll get to have fun with a big one in a second." Sora stopped in front of what looked like a fountain with mosaic artwork of bells on the side of it. "You all wait here," he told them, "I need Riku and Kairi to do a Trinity with me so we can ring the bell. After we ring it three times, a big Heartless will appear. Fight it, and we'll be down in a minute."

Charity, Nessa, Quince, and Broden nodded. They waited for a minute while Charity and Nessa quietly conversed about whether or not their family would be here. Quince seemed utterly confused, just looking at Nessa. Soon, he interrupted the conversation. "Nessa?" he asked.

"Yeah, Quince?" Nessa asked him, turning back around. Charity started a conversation with Broden only seconds after.

"You seem... distant. Like, you don't want to be with me. I dunno. Maybe I'm overreacting." he decided aloud.

Nessa sighed. She didn't think she could take it anymore. "Quince, you were knocked out for two years. Since then, I've been with—..."

Ring. Ring. Ring.

'Saved by the bell.' thought Nessa. Surely enough, an odd looking Heartless fell from the sky. Why from the sky? They couldn't even say. It seemed to be separated into different parts, as if it had no joints at all. It's hands, feet, head, and body were all separate parts.

"Nessa and I will get the hands and feet! You two get the body!" Charity commanded them all. What a surrogate Sora she seemed to be. Avoiding any pounding possible from the hands and feet, both Nessa and Charity slashed the hell out of the Heartless.

Sora, Riku, and Kairi jumped into the scene. As if noticing the pattern here, Riku branched off to help with the hands and feet while Kairi went to help destroy the body. Although the most inexperienced with a keybalde even in comparison to Charity, she was a definite help. Sora broke off to attack the head solo.

Meanwhile, Zexion stood in the shadow of the higher level, back against the wall, observing the battle tactics. "They aren't half bad." he admitted quietly to himself.

Both hands were the first thing to go, then the body, and then the feet. Sora finally finished off the head, with only a minor injury on his arm which he cured with a simple potion. Possibly one of the easiest 'boss' fights they had ever gone through. Charity pointed out Savior of Balance as she saw the keyhole appear on one of the mosaics on the wall. Seal. Click. Keyhole sealed.

"Great!" Nessa exclaimed, "Now let's take a look around and see if our families are here?" she asked Sora.

"That sounds okay." he said.

"Not quite." such a familiar voice stated that the group didn't even have to think to ready their weapons before they even turned around to face the cloaked schemer.

Charity's face screwed up, "Just another one here to try to kill me, I suppose?" she asked the silver-haired man.

"So that's what you got when you and Calypso connected; besides her silver-brown eyes, I mean. You got her paranoid thoughts." he smirked.

"I'm not paranoid!" She charged at him with her keyblade. Although blocked, she was excited at one hand; she now knew her other half's name.

"Of course you're not." he smirked, and ran right through her. Bam. She was knocked out, and Zexion took on the appearance of Charity. "This will make killing you so much easier." He raised the mirror Savior of Balance and pointed it down at Charity.

Riku slammed into him like a football player and knocked the other Charity right over. "You've got something about becoming girls lately, don't you?" he asked.

Zexion growled; he still had a personal score to settle with the whole group. "You have something that belongs to me, Dawn walker." he told Riku. He remembered only all too well when he had fought Riku back at 'Destiny Islands'.

Smirking, Riku patted his pocket. "It's blank. We were hoping it was a diary." Zexion's face only became more angry, although he wasn't usually very good at showing emotions. This time, he ran right through Riku. Knocking him out, Charity came back to as she had her form back.

"What...?" she asked, confused. Riku, or who seemed to be, was standing right in front of her. But there was also a Riku knocked out on the ground.

"Charity," the Riku in front of her started, "I knocked out Zexion. C'mon, let's go see if your family's here." He held out his hand. Zexion sure did have a way with acting like Riku.

Charity, although, had no idea that he was Zexion. She looked over at the other Riku lying on the floor. "I couldn't have been knocked out for more than a minute. How did you...?" Wait. She had been knocked out. And something was different about this Riku; a different scent, maybe? Not taking 'Riku''s hand, she stood up, and walked over towards the other.

Zexion shed his form as easily as a lizard shedding its skin, and Riku opened his eyes. "Charity?" he asked.

"Pathetic!" Charity growled as she spun around and charged at Zexion, careful not to go through him. Bookless and formless, he was weakening by the minute.

"How could you fight someone with no way of fighting back?" he spat at Charity.

"Don't ever pretend to be Riku!" she shouted angrily at the cloaked schemer. Within minutes, he was lying on the floor, his body decomposing into darkness, flying into the sky with no trace of returning.

"Don't think I won't be back." Zexion told her. Charity desperately wanted to think of something witty to say, but she was too blinded by fury to think of anything as the last bit of the schemer disappeared into the atmosphere around them.

"Charity?" came a voice that Charity hadn't heard in three years, "Is that you?"

Although in doubt that she even heard this voice at all, Charity turned around. Standing before her was a girl with long, brown hair with dyed in bleached streaks and hazel eyes. She was wearing a pretty eyeshadow, and a pink tank top with a red skirt and furry boots. She also donned a necklace with a pearl at the end of it. She had Charity's nose, eyebrows, and face shape.

"Amber?" asked Charity. Even the last time that she had visited Azure Daybreak she hadn't seen her. She crashed herself into the older girl's arms, and they both wrapped their arms tightly around the other.

"Okay, okay," she laughed, "No more touching." She pushed herself away slightly. Amber had a definite more feminine voice than Charity. Looking over her shoulder she looked at Nessa, "Nessa? You've changed a bit." she laughed, and looked at Charity, "Where have you been?"

"Who... is she?" Quince whispered to Nessa.

"That's Charity's sister, Amber." Nessa seemed almost as excited as Charity was; this way, she knew that their world was still able to come back from the darkness, that it hadn't just been 'blown up' like Kairi had before suggested.

"It's a long story..." she murmured.

"I know about the keyblades," Amber said, "a woman named Tifa came to town last year to tell us." Charity's eyes widened. Tifa knew that this girl was here? Well, she probably didn't know that she was related to Charity, so she couldn't be held accountable.

"My Heartless," Charity said, "she has the power to give away hearts. Somehow, she combined with my Nobody to make a Somebody. If we can seal enough worlds to get rid of the darkness surrounding The World that Never Was, where they are right now, we could get her to give our world its heart back and bring it back from the darkness." Charity managed to get this all out in just a few breaths.

Amber blinked. Charity guessed that it had been hard to persuade her that keyblades even existed in the beginning, because she never really believed in the supernatural. Obviously, she was in a good enough mood to know that her sister was alive, so she smiled. "That seems harsh. I hope you can do it. Just don't get yourself killed, okay?" she smirked.

Charity smiled and nodded. "I won't." She looked around, "Hey, are mom and dad here?" she asked her excitedly.

"No," Amber started, "They were here, but they went to go help out at a place called The Radiant Cornfield or something like that to fix up after a huge fight."

"The Radiant Garden?!" asked Charity, expectedly.

Amber nodded.

"I was there once; right before that battle happened." Something inside of Charity was set afire; her family was safe and her world really did have a chance at being restored again, after three years of living in Twilight Town. But what would she do about her friends? What would Nessa do about Hayner? Her silence was broken by Amber.

"But Nessa's mom and uncle are here." Amber said brightly, "Wanna see 'em?" she called over to Nessa.

The girl smiled giddily and Amber showed the group the way to where her mom and uncle were currently living, where Amber was right next door.

She was only showered in hugs and kisses the second she walked through the door, "You look different," her mom said in the middle of a tearful embrace, "but you're here."

Her... mom.

Nessa didn't even know what to say anymore. She was a Nobody the last time they met; they had memories of her being born with them and her father leaving her uncle to take care of her implanted; they weren't real. But were they real now that she was a Somebody?

She didn't even want to think about that. The truth was that, fake or not, she had memories of her mom and uncle and she loved them and her head was pounding and she just wanted to cry, cry, cry in her mother's arms.

"Mom..." she mumbled her story into her mom's slowly dampening shirt.

"Shh, it's okay." she told her.

"I want to stay with you." she decided, looking up at her mom from the embrace. The rest of the group had very shocking expressions on their faces.

Her mom shook her head, "I want you here." she nodded, "But you have an obligation to your task. You started it, you really should finish."

Nessa turned over to her uncle. He nodded.

"She's right, Bear." he told her. 'Bear' was an old childhood nickname of hers that she had gotten since she was little.

"I will, then." Nessa nodded, "but I'm going to come back to visit." she decided. The group smiled, and Nessa looked around the house. It almost looked exactly like their house back at Azure Daybreak.

"You know what," Sora said, "why don't we stay at Traverse Town tonight? Kairi and I can stay with Gapetto, Nessa can stay with her mom and uncle, Charity can stay with... Amber, was it? And Riku, Quince, and Parker can stay in the streets."

All three of them gave a lopsided grimace.

Charity shook her head, and grabbed onto Riku's arm, "Riku can stay with us!" she nodded. Riku laughed and kissed her on the cheek.

"Ooh," Amber started. Charity forgot that she hadn't seen her in three years over the course of ten minutes; she hadn't changed one bit, "Charity's got a boyfriend?"

Charity laughed, "Do you?" she asked.

"Several!" Amber said happily.

Everyone was silent, and Charity began to make a turtle shape with her hands, "Awkward turtle..." she trailed off.

xxxxx

"Another failed!" Calypso slammed her hand onto the arm of her high chair as the remaining Organization members sat in the room. Zexion, Xigbar, and Demyx were missing, leaving only ten occupied chairs. That would be only seven more Organization members that Charity would have left to fight, subtracting Calypso whom she couldn't even consider.

Receiving nothing from the group, she looked down at all of them. "It's an eighteen year old girl wielding a giant key. What's so hard about that?" she asked them all.

"She has at least six able-bodied companions with her, you know." Larxene interrupted.

"Number XII, that was rhetorical!" she stated angrily. The nymph shrugged lazily, and closed her eyes as she reclined in her chair. "I have brought back a very strong fighter from the darkness that I plan to go take to destroy Charity. I will give one more chance of an Organization member to go destroy Charity before I send Anton to do it himself. As for the rest of you, you will all be destroyed. Tell me, who wishes to go before Anton to destroy them right now?" she asked.

The first hand to shoot up was Larxene's. Calypso nodded. "Then I bid the rest of you good-bye." Her keyblade shot up into the air and pointed outwards; Vexen finally understood what was so important about the keychain she was making as the keyblade multiplied into seven more; apparently, she planned on keeping Vexen because he was the only really smart one left.

"No!" Roxas shouted, jumping down at least forty feet from his high-up chair. Axel followed after him. As the rest of the keyblades shot forward and stabbed the remaining members in the gut, they all disappeared into the darkness. However, Calypso was not satisfied. Growling, she jumped out of her very own seat to chase after numbers VII and XIII.

"Shit!" Roxas exclaimed as they rounded the corner. "We've gotta get to my room! Naminé's in there!" The two of them managed to round the corner and slam the door shut before Calypso made it to the door. She pounded on it, but Axel held it closed with his back; weaker or not, he still had stronger physical muscles.

"Naminé!" Roxas shouted, "We have to leave here! Calypso's destroying everybody except Larxene and Vexen, and—!" He was simple in awe of what he saw.

Naminé was holding three hearts in her hand. Taped to them were the names Axel, Roxas, and Naminé in Calypso's handwriting. "I'll explain later!" she exclaimed. She handed them both a heart.

"Here's to you, Naminé!" Roxas said, in total shock of what was happening. Without thinking, they all three willingly accepted their hearts into their bodies.

Cold room. Shaking floor. Beating door. Naminé's soft lips.

Roxas could feel.

The door burst open, and Calypso pointed her Moonlight Radiance at the group of three, now, Somebodies. Along with a heart, they must have a Heartless. They were now Somebodies with the same abilities as Calypso.

The girl growled. She knew exactly what was going on. "You really don't want to do this." she growled as Axel spun his chakrams, Roxas summoned both Oathkeeper and Oblivion, and Naminé backed up a step.

Much to her surprise, a keyblade similar to Kairi's appeared in Naminé's hand, except cherry blossoms ran up the front of it and ended in a beautiful, pink flower rendition of the key part of the keyblade. The keychain had two cherries dangling on the sides. She pointed the keyblade at Calypso. "We were born for this."

Author's Note: How very... eventful, no? So, will Naminé, Roxas, and Axel destroy Charity? What will happen with Anton? Will Larxene destroy Charity, or will they get the better of them and make it to The World That Never Was? Well, what do you think? We still have seven or so chapters to go. So! See you next chapter!