Disclaimer: Honest, I don't own Kingdom Hearts. Just this story, people, that's all…(And I wish I could say Roxas was mine too.) But I hold myself liable for the town Ecstasy; that was all my idea. Obviously.

Chain of Hearts, Chapter 6:

The Black District (part 1)

By Nagori Kirashi

This one gets a little more gory, I think, but not too much. It's amazing how much I've managed not to "favor" too many characters…I like to include everyone. Well, anyway, Hayner's knife is going to get in a bit more trouble later in the chapter…

-,-,-,-

Pence was sitting inside the Usual Spot, fixing his small laptop carefully after something on the monitor had become slightly loose, when he heard a familiar voice call his name.

"Oh my god, Pence!"

He looked up as Olette ran into the Usual Spot, gasping for breath. The first thing she did was run up to her childhood friend and hug him, so glad to be safe with people who she was sure knew her.

"What's wrong—Olette?!" he cried suddenly, the realization hitting him at last. "How'd you get here?!"

"I escaped, an-and this guy took Naminé and Kairi, and…Oh, Pence!"

The frightened girl looked as if she were about to cry.

"Calm down," he told her, now positioning her in front of himself with one hand on each of her shoulders. "Listen, really, what happened after you escaped? How did you get…here?"

"The mansion—there's two Twilight Towns!" she gasped.

"Two?!" He looked at her oddly. "But…how?"

"I don't know, I don't know!" Olette flapped her hands slightly as she nearly began to hyperventilate. Pence flinched backwards, then tried desperately to calm her down.

"Listen, let's just go get ice cream," he said to her finally. "We're going to have to talk to Sora about this one."

As soon as Pence said ice cream, tears began to well up in Olette's eyes as she realized how lucky she was.

"…It's alright," he said, smiling at her softly. "We can talk about it later, alright? You can tell me all about it then."

She nodded solemnly, and with Pence leading her along gently by one shoulder, they both began to walk out of the small, familiar base together.

-,-,-

Fear…

It came to them like a hawk in the night.

"What is this place?" Sora said quietly. They looked behind them and could still see the dreary darkness that made up the Serenity District, but in front of them, it was night. Not a single star shone, giving everything there a darker feel to it.

Once more, as they walked along, they noticed some people passing through wearily in their tinted clothing, while others, dressed in what looked to be casual clothing that was also black as the night, laughed and walked together, unphased by the unnerving atmosphere.

Tifa was one of them. All sadness she had been feeling had disappeared, and she inhaled deeply as if she were glad to be home.

Sora and Hayner moved more closely together, each one positioning their hands as if ready to bear their weapons in an instant if necessary.

"See, that's what I meant about you boys not being scared," Tifa said, turning and smiling at them. "Look at those people; all they do is cower. You guys are ready to fight."

Roxas couldn't agree with her more; finally, the change of location had affected him.

Yet now, it seemed as if it were feeding him. He couldn't help but feel stronger, more confident in the area they were in. If they all were to put one and one together, they would come up with the fact that the only thing Sora had to be afraid of at the moment was Roxas' overconfidence and tempting need for control.

What was wrong with him? Roxas thought suddenly. He pushed aside his thoughts about his sudden advantage and went back to following the others.

Street lights were lit here and there close to the ground, but they were white, forbidding any unprotected eyes to stare at them without injuring themselves. Yet still, somehow the orbs of pure white were not quite bright enough to illuminate the area to their taste. They did, however, feel that they could see just fine after several moments of deeper examination of the area. The outlines of other people were vivid, the walkways clear.

Yet the most fearful thing to them about being able to see in the dark was that they could see what was hiding in it, too. At the moment, Sora couldn't find anything, no matter which direction he turned his petrified gaze to, but every instinct in his brain was going haywire as if he were surrounded by legions of never-ending Heartless. Every step caused him to flinch, and he swore to himself that there were hoards of Shadow Heartless around him, somehow disappearing from sight the moment he looked their way.

The Kingdom Keyblade appeared in his hand, and Tifa turned.

"Be careful," she said. "When you sense fear that has no face, your mind fills in the blanks. Don't let yourself trick you into thinking there's something there."

Sora tried to take her advice, breathing inward deeply and looking straight ahead.

Yet suddenly Sora felt a cold chill crawl up his back, and of all the instincts he had, this one told him to turn.

When he did, he saw Roxas walking behind him with a look on his face that doubled Sora's uneasiness. Roxas didn't even seem to notice Sora looking right away, but when he did, he spat out imprudently; "What's your problem, kid?"

"Kid…?" Sora felt the same uneasy emotion inside, but it had subdued back to the level it was when he had first entered the Black District. He wasn't about to go home crying because his own darker side shook him up a little. "You know, why don't you cool down…?"

Roxas bit his lip. He knew he had lost it, but the same feeling of blind power still continued to seep into him when he wasn't looking, and he decided to just "Hmp" quietly at Sora rather than apologize.

"Tifa, are we there yet?" Hayner asked meekly from behind her. When she turned and looked at him with an expression of surprise that he could even make his voice sound that frightened, Hayner suddenly forced a more manly appearance, fueled by his want not to look like a child.

Then she looked around at them all, noticing that each one of them was beginning to look frustrated or angry in their own ways.

"Typical men," Tifa said. "I had better hurry, or there won't be any of you left by the time we get there!"

She laughed, but she was the only one.

"Tifa?" Sora asked her. "Is this still Ecstasy?"

"Yeah," she said, and when they looked at her as if this made no sense whatsoever, she replied with a smile, "You can't appreciate happiness if you're never afraid, can you? The Ecstasy District is just the climax of our town."

They nodded and shrugged in their own ways, yet continued to look miserably frustrated with eachother.

At last they arrived a dark building that sunk in with the night like the rest of the buildings did, and she stopped. The area was strangely geometric, and the lights that shone through the frameless windows were a strong contrast to the rest of the night. It was attached to a much larger building that was designed in the same manner, most likely another Hotel. This was a big town, and it seemed each district had its own uniquely-themed inn.

When they walked in, all of them (except for Tifa, who didn't mind the Black District in the first place) were relieved to find that the gnawing sensation didn't affect them inside as much. The colors inside the room were like that of any other café that they might have walked into in Traverse Town, dull yet refreshing and welcoming.

"Ms. Lockhart!" A tall, pudgy man at the counter, most likely older than even Cid, was standing as if ready to take orders from them as Tifa led them inside. He smiled at them with twinkling eyes, and his short, thick auburn mustache seemed to make up for the missing patch of hair on his head. Other people from every district sat around inside, and for once, the three boys didn't feel as if they were in some completely foreign world by the way everyone dressed in the same color code. It was like the cultural mixing pot of the town Ecstasy.

"Hey, are there any rooms open yet in the Hotel next door?" she asked him. Her older friend, it seemed, had some connections to the building attached to where he worked.

"You bet, for a lass like you," the man replied. He and Tifa went to setting up how much it'd cost and how long they might stay.

"We're staying here?" Sora asked her. No longer having the strange emotions that varied from district to district there to affect him, Sora realized they had wasted way too much time there. "Don't we still have to look for…?"

"I'll help you guys out," Tifa said. "But I can only do it here. That friend of yours needs training, I can tell already."

Hayner clenched his fists, taking her comment as an offensive remark.

Tifa laughed, however.

"Don't lose your temper, scout," she said to him. "I just think you need touching up."

Hayner didn't look reassured.

In the meantime, Roxas was staring out the window, standing apart from the group altogether. His expression was calm, and his hands were in his pocket while he leaned against the windowframe itself, gazing into the blackness.

He wanted to go back out. Something was calling to him.

"Hey, Rox," Hayner said to him at last, noticing the blonde several paces away. "You spacing out or something?"

"Hm," Roxas replied, not even paying attention.

Hayner turned to say something to Sora, who in turn tried to get Roxas' attention as well.

"You guys, I'm going outside," Roxas said at last, turning just as his two friends were giving up.

"What, are you crazy?!" Hayner gave Roxas the look of his life.

"Hayner, shh." Sora nudged him. "Maybe it's because, eh…"

"What is it?" Hayner turned, looking at Sora. He didn't bother to lower his voice, however, and Sora just shook his head at him.

Roxas took this as a sign that he could, and in an instant, he was gone, the door to the café slowly swinging itself shut while carrying in a draft. Several people sitting around the diner turned to stare at the door for a moment as it edged its way shut, unsure why someone who was so obviously a foreigner would want to go outside at all, not to mention as much as Roxas had. They must have decided he was slightly insane and were therefore just glad that he was gone by the way they all went back to their quiet chatter.

"…Maybe it's because he's…" Sora had turned back to Hayner to finish telling him what he had begun to say, but he felt embarrassed to say it.

Hayner stared at him inquisitively.

'Aw, what's my problem?' Sora asked himself in his head. 'What'm I thinking? Roxas is just like another part of me; why should I feel embarrassed saying this about him when I'm talking about…myself?'

"Yeah…?" Hayner asked Sora, edging his partner on. "C'mon, what's up?"

"…Nothing," Sora said at last.

Suddenly Tifa came over, and putting a hand on both of their shoulders—this causing Hayner to blush—she said casually, "Hey, Sora, what'd you tell me Roxas was earlier? I think that might explain why he likes it outside so much."

"A Nobody, that's right…" Hayner said quietly to himself while turning away and rubbing his chin. Sora could see in the blonde's eyes that he no longer needed to explain his thoughts, and while he felt relieved for not having to say it, he also felt guilty for not denying the truth.

Finally Sora turned away from them, forcing Tifa to let go of his shoulder. He looked at the man at the counter for a moment, then asked him quietly, "…What do you have here for ice cream?"

He frowned at the answers he got.

-,-,-

Outside, in the blackness of the darkest District, a figure could be seen moving along the narrow rooftops of some flat, vacant buildings. This far away from the streetlights that glowed far below, a normal person would have been rendered nearly blind in the darkness.

But at the moment, Roxas felt as limber as the Samurai Nobodies that he once had the power to control.

Not sure why he felt the way he did, he darted along, taking a slight turn as one roof made an angle to the left to match the curved street below. He continued along, and a huge, bulbous and pale vastly moon finally revealed itself in the sky.

Against the light of the moon, had anyone been watching, Roxas could be seen jumping from one roof to the next; not an incredibly far jump, but just far enough to make most sane people nervous. The moon was hidden for a moment by clouds, as was he in the pitch blackness of the roof tops.

When the moon reappeared once more, his clothes had changed, and he was suddenly camouflaged with the night as he wore a deep black leather coat that trailed behind him like a set of broken wings. His hood was down, and suddenly, just as he caught a glimpse of something on the ground below, the moon disappeared again for good, and he was hidden in the darkness once more. By the time Roxas had leapt from the multi-leveled building and landed on the ground, he was already back in the clothes that he was familiar with from Twilight Town.

"Axel," Roxas said. "What are you doing here?"

"I saw you," the red headed pyromaniac said to him with a grin on his face. He wasn't looking at Roxas right now; he had his arms crossed and was walking past Roxas slowly. The blonde version of Sora realized he was in a narrow back street, no wider than a sidewalk, and from the way it curved away from him before connecting with another wider street, he felt almost trapped, despite still having the option of the other direction.

"What's it to you?" Roxas asked darkly. "Why do you care? Where's Naminé?!"

Suddenly Axel's face took on an appearance of regret, and he looked over at Roxas sadly. "I'm afraid I can't help you there anymore," he replied. "Not unless I turn on the Organization, too."

"So why don't you?" Roxas asked, allowing his voice to sound threatening.

"It's not that easy," Axel said while shrugging with one hand casually. "Not the second time, anyway. I think that Kairi is being kept in Twilight Town, if the rumors are true…But we're not sure where Olette is yet. We don't need her anyway, though."

"How could you say that?" Roxas demanded. He was officially becoming irritated with Axel. "Why don't you just go?!"

"Aww, how could you say something like that?" Axel replied casually. "We were once friends, you know. It'd be nice if we could be again."

"Not in your life or whatever's left of it," Roxas shot back. The Keyblades Oblivion and Oathkeeper appeared in his hands, and he took a daring step forward.

"Oh well," Axel said with a sigh. "I can tell that's no sign of peace, so you know what? I'm outa here."

"No, wait—!" Roxas started to take another step forward as Axel began to disappear. He was too late; Axel was too far away, and nothing that Roxas could much less would do would be of any use in trying to stop him.

The last thing he heard his former ally say was, "You just say the word, Roxas…I'm a forgiving guy. I'm ready to help. But either way, one of us is going to cross sides, and if you don't let me join your side, They're going to get to you first."

"What're you talking about?" Roxas asked, an angry look of confusion on his face. He had experienced this before, as Sora…The second Keyblade bearer didn't know what to think of Axel's remark. Was Axel, like so many of Roxas' kind had once done to him as Sora, just trying to confuse him with something he didn't know? Or was it even true? But Axel was gone before he could ask.

"R-rgh…"

Cussing to himself quietly, the Keyblades disappeared from Roxas' hands in a flash of light, and soon he was walking back towards the Hotel with his hands in his pockets.

Then he stopped, and glancing both directions as if to make sure no one was watching, Roxas defied gravity itself and the next instant he was enjoying the freedom of running secretively atop the many black buildings in the district once more, grinning as he let the excitement of breaking free take over his body.

When he walked back into the cheerfully home-style café, he looked as if he had just gotten back from an afternoon stroll through Traverse Town.

-,-,-

The next morning Sora woke up to the sound of Hayner's battle sounds as he and Roxas practiced against eachother. When Sora looked up, he saw that they were each using dowels of equal length that had most likely been provided by Tifa.

Click! Click! Oof—!

Sora rolled over just in time to dodge being body-slammed by his other side, who apparently had taken a hard hit from Hayner while he was off-guard.

"Ow," Roxas groaned, lying flat on the bed. "At least it wasn't the wall this time…"

"Heh, I figured out Roxas' secret," Hayner said, grinning almost proudly. "I just hit him, then hit him again right away, and he gets knocked off guard so I can move in for the final blow!" He emphasized "final blow" as he swung his weapon at an invisible object in front of him, and Roxas sat up in the bed, rubbing his side sensitively.

"Isn't that true with all Nobodies…?" Sora mumbled plainly, not fully awake yet as he wriggled his way out of the cocoon he had rolled himself in. He didn't care much about anything then except for the soft covers that Roxas had basically stolen when he'd landed on Sora's side of the bed.

"Aw, shush, you!" Roxas said, hearing what Sora had said. He ruffled Sora's already vandalized-looking hair as hard as he could, making sure to apply enough pressure that Sora fought back.

Hayner stood aside awkwardly at first as the two sides of Sora wrestled and fought together playfully, until suddenly Hayner became distracted by another invisible object and became intent on destroying it with his thick dowel. After a while, as Sora and Roxas could still be heard laughing and tussling together in the background, Hayner decided a stick was no longer a worthy enough weapon, and he pulled out his rare knife and began to dice the air expertly.

Just then, Tifa came back in gripping the lower half of a glass of orange juice. It was the kind of clear cup that was made to look like glass but was actually one of the cheapest kinds of plastic, one where if it were to be stepped on, it would warp just slightly before giving in and snapping into many pieces. Tifa sipped from it casually, still wearing her black skirt from the morning before. She looked as if she had been awake for almost an hour and seemed to be in a Sunday morning mood.

Suddenly she gasped as Hayner swiveled around, not seeing her right away, and the knife he gripped in his hands cut the cup she was holding clean in half. Everyone froze and held their breath as orange juice fell to the carpet, and Tifa caught her breath as she stared down at what was now only half a cup. Orange juice still filled it just below the new brim of the light plastic cup, and most of her arm was now drenched.

At last, having stood there long enough to come back to most of her senses and take the leftover orange juice as a sign, she went over to sit on a chair on the far side of the room, longing to take a sip of what looked like a small, nearly overflowing cup of juice. However, she had no idea what Hayner had hunted down with his knife, nor did she want to know, so she wasn't going to even bother asking to make sure it was okay. She set the contaminated drink next to her on the dresser, and they could hear the bottom of it tap the dresser multiple times as if her hand were shaking. It most likely was.

"I…I'm sorry!" Hayner said at last. He reached down and grabbed the upper half of the cup, then stared at it. There were no white, paint-like bends or cracks in the clear plastic that would have normally suggested that it had been broken; it was still entirely transparent, and upon feeling the part of the cup where it had been severed from its lower half, he pulled his hand away as a small papercut-like incision appeared on the tip of his finger. The cup was now a circular weapon, though he had no inspiration for actually using it.

Suddenly he turned to apologize to Tifa again when he saw her slowly beginning to hold the drink to her mouth. Already able to just imagine her lips being cut in two by the sharpness of the plastic, he yelled, "STOP!!"

Tifa froze, and the cup froze with her. Inertia got the best of her drink, and she sat motionlessly glaring up at Hayner after orange juice sloshed over the new rim and drenched the front of her shirt, pooling on her lap before it absorbed into it at a slow pace. She flinched as the liquid covered her clothes, then just continued to glare at Hayner.

"Um…Good morning?" he asked her, smiling almost sheepishly.

Tifa stood, still holding her orange juice in one hand. Even more orange liquid dripped onto the floor from her lap as she stood, and she walked silently over to Hayner. Then, walking past him as she did, Tifa held up what remained of the cup of liquid and dumped it directly on top of Hayner. He gasped and shut his eyes tightly as what was left of the still-cold liquid poured on top of him.

"FINE, then!" he yelled at her. Shoving his knife back into its sheath so hard that Sora was sure it was going to cut right through the bottom of it and land on Hayner's foot, the younger boy stormed into the bathroom while muttering and pouting about what had just happened. There he planned to take a shower, and after that he vowed he'd find a way to get back at Tifa, who without him knowing it already had similar thoughts rushing through her head at the time.

"…Anyway, where were we?" Roxas said, turning back to Sora with a mischievous grin as he pushed Sora backwards onto the bed. Sora grinned too as he shoved Roxas right back, and soon it became a pillow fight.

-,-,-

"Kairi," a voice said.

Kairi stopped in her tracks. She was still lost. After finding the Usual Spot empty, she had gone out to find a missing Pence, Sora, Roxas, and Hayner. Not wanting to lose hope or think that they had been taken too, she had wandered as far as the underground structure that ran beneath Twilight Town in a long tunnel system.

Now she was being followed.

"What do you want?" she ordered bravely, looking around as she argued with herself whether to run or to stand her ground.

"Kairi, I'm sorry I have to do this again," Axel said, appearing before her. To her surprise he genuinely did look somewhat apologetic. "I know how much you don't like this, but you know what I mean when I say I gotta…"

She winced as he grabbed onto the same spot as her last captor had, and he pulled her towards a capsule.

"Seeing as I'm on your side this time," she heard him say, "I'll let ladies go first. We gotta get you out of here."

Kairi, now officially confused, was let off guard, and Axel forced her into the portal.

-,-,-

Tifa was now sitting in the room once more, this time holding her new drink much closer to herself as she sipped from it. Roxas and Sora were deep in a conversation, both taking turns as the other spoke while using deep voices as if they were debating some sort of serious political affair. Hayner continued to practice with his knife by himself, and suddenly Tifa stood.

"That doesn't reach very far, does it?" she asked him without any threat in her voice.

Hayner thought she was testing him. "It works fine for me," he replied.

"No, of course it does," she said. "But you can throw it, too, and by the looks of how close you are to it, I'm sure it'll come back."

Hayner broke into a huge grin. "Can you really? Like…wait, close to it?"

Tifa just smiled. "It chose you, Soldier. It'll do what you tell it to, and nothing less. If you feel like throwing it, you can assume it has the ability to come back. But God, be careful when you catch it."

"I will," Hayner said, becoming a little too confident with himself. All too soon he decided to try the new technique, and holding his right arm back in a way that even looked uncomfortable, he gripped the knife firmly, then threw it forward.

Unfortunately, Tifa was right. Hayner had wanted it to come back, and as awkwardly as he had thrown it out, he watched it spin around the room, demolishing an expensive obsidian vase loudly in the process, and eventually beginning back towards Hayner.

He panicked.

"Hayner, look out!" He heard what was most likely Tifa's voice yell, and he ducked.

Suddenly he heard a gasp behind him, and he turned to see Roxas sitting on the bed with only the handle of the knife exposed in his upper right arm. Roxas, who had been talking to Sora, had not seen the attack coming until it was right in front of him, at which point he had already been unable to do anything more than watch.

It had all happened so fast.

Hayner slowly stood, his eyes wide. A panicked feeling was rushing through him, twisting his spine sickly.

"It's…not fatal, at least," Tifa managed. Despite having seen worse, she bit her lip, and so did Roxas as he slowly removed the bloodstained weapon.

"Roxas…" Hayner couldn't have looked more ashamed as he stared at Roxas, petrified. He then hung his head and stared at the ground lifelessly. "I'm…"

The injured party member didn't say anything, only let the knife drop onto the bed before it hurt him any more. He moved his hand to his arm, slowly at first as he stared at it, then suddenly grasping his arm while wincing and clenching his teeth as the pain struck.

"Does someone have a potion or something?" Sora looked around at the others as he patted his pockets. He refused to believe that he might've been so irresponsible as to leave them back on the Gummi Ship.

"Even if we do, I think we're going to have to heal this one the old way," Tifa said, already over there next to the bed where they sat. "Sure potions are good, but mostly when you're in the midst of combat."

"I…still don't see why we can't…" Roxas spoke through clenched teeth as he stared at his arm. "Damn it, why's it hurt so bad…?"

"Just don't start crying on me," the older girl said. Roxas only glared up at her. His breath was coming in steady gasps as he tried to hold it and breathe sharply out at the same time.

Tifa left the room at a quickened pace and entered the bathroom to search for something that might be able to help their friend. When she came back, she had a long strip of cloth to wrap around his arm, and it took her quite awhile to get Roxas to let go of his arm so that she could take a look at it.

"Say, does anyone else here think this needs stitches—?" She began, but Roxas tore his arm away, clung to his injury with his left hand, and stared at her with a look of utter horror.

"No way! Are you insane?!" he yelled at her, and she laughed.

Sora and Hayner couldn't help it; they laughed too, though it was half-hearted; both still felt bad for Roxas.

"Will I still be able to fight?" Roxas asked at last. Hayner felt a wave of hot guilt spread to his face as he awaited Tifa's answer as well.

"Yeah, but maybe not right away," she said. "You can fight with both hands, though, can't you?"

Roxas didn't look reassured. He winced and inhaled sharply as another wave of pain struck.

Just then Sora noticed a black suitcase sitting by the door.

"Going somewhere?" he asked her casually as she carefully treated Roxas.

"Yeah, I'm going to visit Cloud in Hallow Bastion soon," she replied, still concentrating on her task. Then she asked, "How're things looking there right now?"

"Uh, Radiant Garden? Pretty good," Sora said. "It looks a bit nicer than last time I went there already."

"That's good," she said, emphasizing her sentence by tightening the final knot on Roxas' bandage. Apparently she pulled it a bit too tight by the way he winced again and pulled away. "But don't think you're getting out that easily, Hayner. We still have work to do, now more than ever."

Hayner nodded silently while clenching his fists.

-,-,-

"Now," Tifa said to them, and they all made sure to listen. "In order to show Junior Scout how to fight, we're going to have to find something for him to practice on in person. Hayner, get your potions together so we can go out and look around outside for something you can destroy."

The look Hayner got on his face from the downgraded nickname was almost priceless.

"Not more Heartless, though…?" Sora asked nervously. An image came into his mind of a large, heart-shaped moon in the sky as hearts rained down from it after its initial destruction. In the image, Dusks danced and reached towards the hearts almost joyously, and every heart that touched the ground was reborn as a Heartless. Troops of uncountable numbers moved like a pulsating wave of black, sinking in and out of the ground as they escaped to and from different worlds.

Roxas, unable to move his right arm, placed his left hand on Sora's shoulder gently, sensing the same image as it appeared in his own mind.

"Sora, it's one or the other," he said. "Kingdom Hearts or more Heartless. You know we can't just stand by as Heartless prance around wherever they want, so we're just going to have to get rid of not only them, but anyone who tries to actually enter the door to light."

"Guardians of Kingdom Hearts," Sora said softly, looking into the distance with a thoughtful expression.

"And we have the Keys to prove it," Roxas added with a smile.

"Yeah," Sora agreed at last. Now he felt more sure of himself than ever, especially with Roxas at his side, and he couldn't wait until Hayner got even better at fighting so he could join him as well.

Hayner was standing nearby, cleaning off his knife with his shirt after the accident earlier.

Roxas shuddered and touched his arm.

"Okay," Tifa said to Hayner at last. "Rule one, don't be afraid. Now, let's go."

Hayner followed her somewhat nervously, and they left the two Keyblade bearers to sit in the room alone.

"Well," Sora said at last, moving so his feet were on the floor. He stood, then added, "We might as well go train as well."

"Yeah!" Roxas yelled excitedly, jumping up. He clenched his left fist in excitement, yet he still let his right arm hang on his side while it healed.

As they walked out together, Sora couldn't help but steal a glance at Roxas' injury and wonder if the knife had actually been drawn to him because Roxas was a…

"Is something wrong?" Roxas asked, noticing Sora's look.

"No, just tired, that's all," Sora replied.

They smiled at eachother.

-,-,-

"Okay," Kairi said finally. "What does everyone want with me?"

Axel sighed. They were standing on a half-lit beach that he had brought her to after taking her from Twilight Town. Everything seemed a little tinted as the sun set in the distance, and the salty blue waves rolled along the seashore in a rhythmic pattern. Axel stood studying the distant blue sea as it continued on for countless miles, staring at the horizon as if deep in his own thoughts. Kairi knew it wasn't Destiny Islands, or at least not the islands she had been on before, though it did make her feel more relaxed.

"I'm trying to please two people at once, and it's not working," he said to her finally, standing nearby on the shoreline.

Kairi was sure she wasn't one of them.

"Really," she asked again, her voice sincere as she actually dared to take a small step in his direction. "What're you looking for?"

She hated to admit it, but she thought she was starting to begin to understand this person.

"I'm trying to bring Roxas back to the Organization," he said, still studying the horizon.

'Never mind,' Kairi thought, but she decided to keep doing her best to talk to him so she could figure out what he meant. She didn't need to.

"I'm worried," the fiery red-head said to her. "Or at least I think I am…If he doesn't join up with us again, then I don't know what Saïx'll do to him."

He sighed.

"Do you…really have feelings?" she asked him quietly, taking another half a step towards him, yet this time more cautiously.

"I don't know," he replied, unsure. "I told Sora once that I used to know someone who made me think so…"

"You know Sora, then?" She spoke the question somewhat suspiciously, almost daring him to tell her they had been enemies.

Axel smiled indifferently as he studied the distance and said, "Yeah, I know him."

She didn't say anything, just waited almost desperately for him to say something else about Sora.

Kairi needed to hear his name from someone else, some kind of confirmation that her hero still existed and would be coming for her.

Axel continued, but only to answer several other questions instead. "Our return started when Malificent was terrorizing and taking over our castle. She had come to the room we called Proof of Existence"— an image came into Kairi's memory of a place that had once reminded her of a graveyard—"and when she tried to destroy each of our plaques, I guess we were each ressurected. All except for one.

"Xemnas, our previous leader and the strongest of us, was still left. Saïx plans to bring him back and challenge him after our former Superior finishes rebuilding Kingdom Hearts, and Saïx thinks that by gathering the other twelve remaining Organization members including himself, he'll be able to summon up enough power to bring him back."

Kairi figured that this must have been what started Roxas' return as well, something that none of them had previously been able to explain. As for Naminé, maybe she had been affected when Roxas had been. After all, the two Nobodies had been created at the same time—when Sora had released both of their hearts at Hallow Bastion.

Then again, Kairi wondered if it was as simple as her and Sora's hearts being so connected.

"Why're you telling me this?" she asked him suddenly. Not that she wasn't glad to know, but she was growing more nervous every moment, feeling like a hostage who got to hear the secret master plan right before being killed.

"Well, since you just got dragged into the middle of this all," Axel said, "you might as well know what's going on now."

"Are you really going to use me to bring Sora and Roxas to this…Saïx?" she asked him.

Axel paused. This girl really didn't miss a thing…

"Just Roxas," he said. "And I'm trying to keep you safe. If those boys get to me first, then maybe I won't have to…"

This last statement spooked Kairi, who yelled, "You're not doing anything to Sora!"

"That's it," Axel said, apparently over his kind mood. He took her wrist and said, "It won't be me who does, trust me. Now let's get out of here."

Then they were gone.

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