II.

Dust and Memories

Location: Castle Oblivion

Most of the rooms were dead- their memory-worlds collapsing into nothingness as the power of their cards ran out. If opened, the doors led to nothing but a yawning black hole with no sense of being. A void. Axel supposed it was what Oblivion had originally been: a void and a handful of fragmented memories.

It was just as well. No point in one of them getting trapped in someone else's memories.

Except, of course, that was exactly what Roxas was looking for.

"I don't feel any different," Roxas said uncertainly, warily walking through the threshold. He waited a few seconds and shrugged. No head-splitting, image-bombarding migraines this time around.

Axel let out a little breath he hadn't thought he'd been holding. It was kind of different, almost nostalgic, to feel almost like he cared again, just a bit.

Riku didn't seem to notice. He was facing the entire entrance hall with a blankness that suggested he was either in the grip of unwanted remembrance or fighting it. But then, he had fought his way up the Castle, met a replica of himself, and seen his best childhood buddy recuperate broken memories in a pod. Things like that changed you.

The entrance hall in question was vast, empty, and white. The hall was faintly luminescent, like the polished floors of a deathly quiet hospital ward. Tall, imposing columns that wouldn't have looked too out of place in the Coliseum marched down the hall. A set of wide-stepped stairs spiraled down from a tall door set high in the wall, continuing all the way into the darkness of the lower floors.

"Huh, looks like we're lucky today."

"Lucky?" Riku frowned. The set of his mouth suggested that he'd had far better 'bad' days.

"Stairs," Axel indicated with a hand. "Not always there, you know."

"Won't they…disappear on us?" Roxas said uncertainly, spotting the stairs.

"Not while we're on it," Axel said stridently. "Probably."

Roxas was less than impressed- Axel's record on tricky things like the truth wasn't exactly stellar. But then, he didn't exactly have much of a choice. "Up or down?"

"There's not a lot left, either way," Axel commented. "Some of the rooms got destroyed and I wouldn't go into the basement, if I were you, but most of it is still fine."

"The basement?"

"The Upper Ups set up a cloning lab." Mistakes included. Axel hadn't been interested in finding out exactly what had remained of Vexen's experiments.

Riku frowned, but refrained from commenting, too guarded for idle chatter.

"Why don't we go down and work our way up?" Roxas suggested.

"I hear ya." Axel swung a shoulder around briefly, stretching out muscles. "Down we go."

---

They made their way down the Castle, endless floor upon endless floor. Some levels seemed entirely empty, devoid of even the rows of rooms that seemed to populate the rest of the castle. Until finally, the stairs ran out, coming to an abrupt end like the Castle couldn't believe that anything so mundane as a floor could halt its descent.

The entire party came to a complete stop at the bottom.

"What are they?" Roxas breathed, wide blue eyes staring.

"I told you it wasn't pretty," Axel said, tone too light. "Welcome to the basement."

The basement was a floor with no walls. Only dull gray marble floors as far as the eye could see, white tables, and a massive, glowing glass tank. Inside of which, were small, dark, incomplete forms curled around themselves, pale hair drifting in the water like the fronds of Sea anemones. Some had no skin. Some were faceless. Some lacked limbs. A few stared out, bodies twisted, and with the vacant eyes of a doll.

Riku turned pale, faintly green around the edges. Several of the bodies looked vaguely like him. Mutilated versions of corpses curled into themselves.

It wasn't until Roxas saw an androgynous thing with a single cloudy deep blue eye that he realized some of them looked vaguely like him, too.

"This was where Vexen made puppets using his research. One of his pet projects. Dark only knows what the Superior thought he'd find out."

Roxas nodded mutely, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end as his eyes swept through the room. There was one tank that was made out of metal with a bar of glass embedded in the front. Three mismatched eyes stared at him from the glass. And he thought he just saw one blink.

Backing up a step, Roxas forced his eyes elsewhere.

"Nobody's been here in a while," Riku said, voice calm but tight. He gestured towards the stacks of neat papers and printed out formulas and numbers on the table, the computer that Vexen had used. All of them were covered in a thin layer of dust.

"No kidding," Axel snorted, but he, Roxas noticed, wasn't looking at the tanks, either.

"Why… was Vexen making these things?" Roxas asked carefully, trying not to be sick. Some of the cadavers were rotting in whatever filled the tanks, pieces of flesh melting off from the bone.

"Hell if I know," Axel snorted. "Orders. Science. Sick fantasies- they've always had all sorts of deep, dark secrets."

"Sounds like you fit right in," Roxas said bluntly, his voice cool.

Axel didn't move, but he didn't look at Roxas, either. "Ever thought that maybe some of those were for your own good?"

Roxas' scowl was unchanged. "Ever thought that maybe I can decide for myself?"

Axel chose not to reply. He'd learned how to pick his battles a long time ago, thanks. With someone pricklier than a grumpy teenage-angsting blonde, even. Besides, he'd already conceded the point and they were here in this mess, weren't they? All nice and deserter-like, yessir. Just waiting to go Dusk.

He'd seen enough Dusks get made. He wasn't planning on joining the roster. Or he hadn't been, anyway.

Now it was just a matter of whether or not he ever met his other former best friend ever again.

In hindsight, Axel kind of had crap luck at this whole friendship thing.

But he was kind of hoping that he could still salvage this one.

It's a stretch, maybe, to go this far for a few days of laughter. But for just another ghostly pulse of a heart he no longer had—what was sacrificing an existence he couldn't live?

Ignoring the fight that spoke untold volumes into the silence, Riku walked further into the basement, keeping well away from the tanks, but covering the perimeter of the floor. His footsteps kicked up tiny clouds of dust in the air. "There's nothing here," he said, finally.

Axel, who was busying himself examining the largest white table in the center of the room and finding nothing but old reports and diagrams; hypothetical formulas chalked onto drawings, looked up. "Color me surprised."

"Probably," Roxas said carefully, hoping he was imagining the way those eyes seemed to follow them around the room. All three of them. "I don't think anyone's been here in a long, long time, anyway."

Something groaned, the sound unearthly and jarring.

Instantly on alert, all three of them turned, eyes searching for the source of the noise. But each and every thing in the laboratory was just as it had been when they came in.

"This place is as creaky as Vexen's bones," Axel muttered. "Creepy like him, too."

"He wasn't that bad," Roxas frowned, just to be disagreeable. He hadn't liked Vexen's condescending tone any more than he had the others, but he was annoyed enough with Axel to want to refute anything he said and nervous enough to be a little snippy.

"You'd be surprised what's 'bad'," Axel said, none too gently, his eyes elsewhere.

"There's a lot of Darkness here," Riku said before another fight could break out. "Especially from… that." His eyes flicked to the metal tank. "But it doesn't look like DiZ is using any of it. Let's check the other floors."

Roxas did not think he had ever been so relieved to leave a room before. He had only teamed up with Vexen once, but he did think… that it was a little sad, to think of a room that had no owner.

As they left, he half-thought he heard something creak.

----

Retracing their steps up the Castle took surprisingly fast. Most of the lower floors turned out to be hallways with collapsed doors to other worlds. Inspecting the blank, dusty halls for any sign of disturbance was a task quickly finished. If anybody thought to put as much distance between them and the thing down in the basement, nobody brought it up.

It had just been floor after floor of nothing but white floors, white rooms, white staircases, and the occasional lost Heartless, skulking alone through the shadows like a beaten orphan. But then they hit the top floor above ground and still nothing was turning up, much to Riku's frustration.

"What did you guys do around here?" Roxas asked, finally, breaking the silence that had lingered since the basement. He wasn't sure where he stood with Axel, anymore. On one hand, he was angry at him. But there was a lot of confusion mixed in with that. And just enough loneliness and shame at bringing up old hurts to be hesitant. Not enough to apologize, though. Not enough to forgive him. Not by a long shot.

As for the blindfolded teen walking just a little to his left and apart, the blonde couldn't even imagine what Riku wanted with him. He could only very vaguely recall a few of the words Riku had tossed at him during their fight. And just that had been enough to tell that Riku knew who Sora was. But the silence and the tension were getting oppressive. It bothered him for a reason he couldn't even begin to name.

"I mean, you didn't have missions, right?"

"Whole Castle was a mission," Axel retorted, voice neutral. "Just me, pinky, lightning bitch, and the Upper Up geeks downstairs enjoying each other's company and keeping ourselves from going batshit insane with it." He opened a door.

Roxas looked inside. Fast food litter was piled high in one corner, an unfinished chess game with pawns askew in the other. There were kunai on a much-abused dartboard, crayon drawings left by bored mocking gloved hands, a tiny, relatively spotless kitchenette, and withered rose petals everywhere, the black stem of a decaying blossom left on a couch.

Riku stepped inside, walking across the hall and opening a door at random.

"You don't wanna go in there," Axel said casually.

Riku stopped. "It's just a bedroom. Yours?"

"Not my style. I don't see pink looking good on me, do you?"

Riku rolled his eyes. "The woman, then- Larxene?" He vaguely remembered Namine telling him about her.

The redhead snorted. "Not hers, either. That one's Marluxia all the way through. Silk sheets, rose petals, the works."

"Nice sheets," Riku said dryly as Roxas came up for a look.

"Silk... sheets?" Roxas wasn't quite sure what to make of beds that weren't the standard issue Organization clinic-beds with token emblem headboard.

Axel didn't bother looking. He remembered that particular bed more than he cared to. From nights stretched across those sheets, pale thin body naked and thighs spread with Marluxia's fingers curled around the hair at his nape as he asked how loyal he was. Axel would limp back to his quarters afterwards, giving back every shiteating smirk Larxene tossed him sweetly with mocking eyes over the breakfast table when she asked if he wanted to sit.

"What else is in it?"

"Giant man-eating garden plants," Axel replied, pushing the memory back, deep, as far as it could go, for reasons that he didn't care to examine.

"What?! Why?" Roxas asked, bewildered and pulling back the foot that had been about to step inside.

"Personal hobby. Right up there with roses and feather boas."

Roxas frowned. "He didn't seem... feather boas?"

Axel grinned faintly, taking the opportunity for distraction. "Yeah, big, pink, fluffy ones. He makes them into wigs."

Brow furrowing, Roxas looked dubious. "Really?"

"Nope."

Riku glanced at him, then seemed to think better of it. Taking one last look inside the room and deciding that the scientist had not set up shop there, he walked to the next one.

Roxas seemed to get bored of Marluxia's room as well, following Riku to the next closest door.

Axel wondered if he should help look. His part in this little investigation had been minimal at best. But the thought quickly slipped from his mind when a Heartless oozed out of the shadow under one of the couches, heading straight for Roxas' back.

"Behind-" Axel started.

Roxas didn't need help.

Riku got there first.

Soul Eater in hand, Riku fluidly cut through the patch of Darkness, slicing clean through. Swinging it back, he twisted the blade viciously, banishing it. Leftover Darkness ran down his blade for a moment, oozing onto the floor, and then it vanished, collapsing back into something even less than a shadow.

Roxas scowled. "I could've taken that. And you don't have a Keyblade."

Riku paused. Then, very deliberately, he held his hand out, palm down, fingers closed into a fist.

Oblivion burst into being in his hand, silver-black sparks in its wake.

Roxas stared. "That's- give it back!" he said, almost childishly. "It's not your Keyblade."

Riku shrugged, banishing Oblivion with a thought. "Doesn't matter. There are a lot of Keyblades and a lot of masters."

"Well, why didn't you use yours, then?"

"...Mine?"

Roxas folded his arms. "If you can use it, then you must have one, too, right?"

Hesitating, Riku looked away. "Maybe. Once." He'd never really thought about it. Not after being so thoroughly... Not after Sora showed him how wrong he was...

"There isn't any point to it. The shadow Heartless... they don't have anything to release anymore." Riku walked away, checking Larxene's room across the lounge.

"That was helpful," Roxas muttered, pushing back the strange chill that settled in the pit of his stomach at Riku's words. In the end, he was the same, wasn't he? Him and Axel. It seemed pretty clear that Riku didn't think much of them. But then, he didn't seem to think much of anything.

So why had Riku decided to… do that?

It was probably pointless to think about it. Roxas went to the next door, Axel meandering in the same direction- no point getting too worked up about searching their rooms, after all.

"That's a closet," Axel observed.

"…What's in it?"

"Storage. Larxene's dirty pocketbooks."

"Oh." Roxas moved on.

Axel smirked. "Not interested?"

Confused, Roxas frowned slightly. "What's so interesting about that?"

Shaking his head, Axel snorted. "Guess this is what happens when you get turned before puberty."

Roxas swung the door to Axel's room open. The redhead hadn't actually spent that much time in it. There was always too much going on. Loyalties to test. Schemes to overthrow. Promises on promises on broken promises. The place was almost as barren as his room back in the fortress, devoid of any personality from his life as Lea. Just your little spot to crash, plot, and be heartless in.

After all, a professional didn't leave evidence behind.

"Nothing here," Roxas noted. "Could use a cleaning, though."

"Who has time for housework?" Axel retorted dismissively.

"Are you two coming?" Riku's voice drifted towards the two Nobodies. He stood in front of a door that led to Namine's room- a canary cage with four white walls, waiting for both of them to finish inspecting Axel's room. Riku had, Axel noticed, been particularly careful to keep an eye on them both, never letting them leave his sight- almost as if he was afraid Axel would take Roxas back to the Organization.

Axel supposed he couldn't really blame him. Given half the chance, he kind of thought he would. But Roxas had made it abundantly clear that he wasn't going back. That he wasn't safe there, any more.

Axel had never felt safe in the Organization. But then, he had never swallowed that particular lie.
---

The room was empty.

Riku's fist clenched tightly, the last trickle of faint hope of finding them here vanishing instantly. It would have been too soon, perhaps.

Roxas looked around the polished white room, his hands trailing over the large crystal ball in the middle like it could tell him the secrets of this world. Namine had left a stack of old drawings, ripped apart just as the false memories had been. Roxas sifted through the papers, lining the pieces up like a series of 2-piece jigsaw puzzles.

"Who did these?" he asked, tracing the childish scrawl of two boys fighting with wooden swords. Looking at them made something stir at the back of his mind, like an itch he couldn't scratch or a long-buried thought. There was something significant about these drawings, but he couldn't tell why.

His black-gloved fingertip traced the waxy color trail of messy brown hair.

Striding in from the adjoining room, Riku looked at the papers . "Those are Namine's…"

"The girl you were talking about?" Roxas asked.

"More talent than a chimpanzee with a paintbox," Axel snorted, picking up half of a scrawled drawing and holding it up next to Riku.

Riku looked like he was trying to decide between jabbing his elbow below Axel's ribs or just getting away from the sudden invasion in his personal space. In the end, he did both.

Axel stepped back in the nick of time, dropping the piece of paper as Riku walked over to the other side of the table- Roxas' side. Evidently preferable.

"It's like a story… But what for?" Roxas asked.

"Namine's … she can do things with memories. Change them. Destroy them. Make new ones. Heal them." Riku frowned. It felt strange, talking about it.

"She made those when the Organization forced her to…" Riku trailed off. He wasn't the one with all the details to that little venture. Axel, on the other hand, didn't seem like he was about to tell his partner all the wonderful gory details of his systematic destruction of Oblivion.

"It just seems… kind of like I've seen them before, though." Roxas looked through the rest of the pictures before finally moving from the table.

Riku blinked after him, wondering why it seemed like Roxas knew what it was to be sad.

"Hey, look at this..." Roxas called suddenly.

Walking over, Riku examined the door. "I… don't remember this being here…"

"It... feels different."

Different? Riku frowned. "It might be unstable--"

Roxas reached out and touched the door. Riku turned, realizing too late that he was close enough to get sucked inside with him.

---

There was a moment of disorienting darkness before they suddenly emerged into hot, unyielding sunlight.

"Where...?" Roxas asked, dazed. That hadn't felt like any portals he'd ever used before. "The door…!"

Riku turned. The portal they had exited seconds ago was gone, the Darkness rapidly collapsing onto itself, like it had never existed. Unstable Darkness. There had been pockets of it all over the Castle.

"We'll have to find a new one," Riku said. Or possibly make one. Riku wasn't entirely sure if he could make a portal inside a memory, but it couldn't hurt to try…

"We're at the beach?!" Roxas asked suddenly.

Riku looked up, catching sight of a familiar bent tree- and beyond it.

The sky was a heart-wrenching deep blue, the brightly shining sun beating down on the lush vegetation and white sand- the shifting sea. Destiny Islands as it should be, with no storm and no shadows, the fresh scent of coconuts and Paopu on the sea breeze; the faint breath of flowers further in land. He could almost hear the lively voices of the fishermen hauling up fish at sea; the laughter of carefree souls playing in the shallows.

Ironic, how hard he had kept trying to leave it, only to keep coming back. To miss it once it was gone.

Roxas knelt, picking up a sea shell the exact same color pattern as Oathkeeper's tip.

"… It feels bright. Brighter than usual."

"We can't all be born from Darkness."

…And Riku hadn't really thought about how he was technically sort of partially responsible for Roxas' birth, what with the have fallen in Darkness. Got new soulsucking Keyblade. Will lend to self-sacrificing best friends. Not that he'd really had a choice... not that either of them had, to get Kairi's heart back.

Unaware, Roxas simply shot him an annoyed glance. He stuck out his fist, palm up in an almost perfect parody of what Riku had done earlier. Then he slowly opened his fingers to show a pearly blossom of light cocooning the shell. Just in case anyone forgot who was the resident light elemental.

He tossed Riku the still-glowing shell and strode off in what would be a dramatic exit except he was a little too short for it to really work, even with the billowing black robes of Organization high fashion.

Riku caught the shell almost instinctively. Ten years of trying not to be hit by Wakka's Blitzball kicking in unconsciously. The light was fading quickly, now that the shell had left Roxas' hand and the Nobody could no longer sustain it.

It was a Thalassa shell, the kind Kairi liked, one tip broken like someone had stepped on the end.

Riku frowned, looking up at where Roxas was examining the edge of the island.

And then Roxas fell over the edge of the cliff.

Not a controlled, masterful dive. Not even a more cautious slide down the cliff face (the guy could run up freaking skyscrapers- what was a mid-size craggy bluff or two?). It was a full out, pinwheeling fall.

"What-!" Riku sprang from his spot, running for the edge as the tip of Roxas' black cloak flashed over it. He made a grab for the blonde's arm but his fingers missed, scooping at air.

Roxas' black and blonde shape plunged into the sea, sparkling clear water splashing up in a wide font.

Shit. Did Roxas know how to swim? Did Nobodies know how to swim if their Somebodies did?

Riku stared at the water. But Roxas didn't seem to be coming up.

And it struck Riku that Roxas had been wearing a heavy full length black leather coat complete with thick metal chain accessories.

Each second suddenly counted.

Stripping off his own coat and boots, Riku dove into the sea.

The water was cold and clear, shocking his senses for the first few seconds before his body adjusted rapidly, a lifetime of practice keeping his muscles limber.

He surfaced for air before diving back in, pushing up a corner of his blindfold and keeping his eyes open. And there— Roxas was – trust him to pick the deep end- struggling slightly against his coat and a sudden intake of seawater, slowly sinking like a doomed ship. Riku swam after him, grabbing his wrists and hauling him up, one arm around a surprisingly slender waist.

It was lucky Riku had the benefit of fifteen years swimming in these waters, or that Roxas was relatively light, even with the coat bogging him down. Either way, they broke through the surface, Roxas coughing up seawater.

"What the hell happened to your sense of balance?" Riku panted out, filling his lungs with air. Water ran down his face, clogging up his ears, so he couldn't be sure if Roxas even heard him.

"I—thought I heard—something…" Roxas struggled to get the words out, awkwardly clinging to Riku's bare, shirtless shoulders as he tried to stay afloat. He seemed to be doing a lot better at it now that he wasn't getting a faceful of sea at 15 meters per second at the same time.

"What, a seagull?" Riku asked acidly. Two of them were wheeling above them, scouting for food and squalling.

"No, your girlfriend," Roxas bit back in roughly the same tone.

Riku blinked. "Who?"

"A girl." Roxas pushed back hanks of wet blonde hair from his face, red-faced from lack of air, and glared up at Riku. Then he had to clutch at his chest as a large wave rolled in, pushing him against the taller teen. His fingers, Riku noted, were just as cold as the sea.

"Was it…Namine?" Riku asked hesitantly. Who else would call out to Roxas in a place like this?

Roxas looked at him. "Maybe. I wouldn't know, would I?"

---

"It might be residual memories," Riku said, several minutes later, as he and Roxas waded back onto the beach. Roxas was stripping off his coat and boots, shedding water like a particularly grumpy golden retriever.

Not that Roxas was really paying him any attention. He was busy getting a piece of kelp out of his pants, his smooth, untanned back quickly drying in the heat of the sun. His shoulders seemed so small, out of the uniform, but the clean lines of it were strong.

"Namine did something around here before… you could just be picking up on that." Memory echoes in memory worlds. It wasn't all that much of a stretch, really.

The blonde watched a crab scuttle away from his bare feet. "Let's just find the exit and RT- and get back. Can we use a Corridor?"

Riku shrugged, wringing out his hair and letting it slap back against his neck in slightly tangled silver twists. Water beaded on his throat, down to his chest and arms. His pants were too soaked to even bother mentioning. He hoped the material didn't take to the salt water too badly.

Concentrating for a moment, he tried to focus and bring a Corridor to life, steeling himself against the suction-stick feeling of the Darkness creeping lovingly across his skin. But there wasn't any to call on. The entire island was suspended in a void like a dream.

A dream they could very well be stuck in forever, castaways.

"Looks like a 'no'," Riku said grimly. "And I didn't see any normal exits, last time I was here. "

"You've been here before?"

Riku turned away, wringing water from the ends of the black cloth he used to blindfold himself. "I grew up here." The water pooled in the cup of his palm for a moment, dripping down slender fingers into the sand. "Or the real thing, anyway."

"You… grew up at the beach?" Roxas said incredulously.

"This 'beach' is only a part of Destiny Islands." Riku said cooly, his gaze just as icy. And that made Roxas notice something he hadn't ever had the chance to see before.

"Your eyes—were they always that color?" Roxas stared. Riku's blindfold was still askew, revealing one intense sea-green eye flecked with molten gold and long, impossibly dark gunmetal lashes. And that wasn't right. That wasn't- suddenly the shock hit him. Unconsciously, he stepped forward. "So it was you I saw in my dreams-! The memories… you were in them!" It had only been a guess, at first. There could have been other 'Riku's. And there hadn't been time to really ask.

Riku abruptly drew the cloth back over his eyes. "Those are Sora's memories."

"Who are you? To Sora," Roxas added. Not 'who I was'. 'Sora'. Because Sora was someone different. As alien to Roxas as the boy before him.

"I was… a friend."

Roxas frowned. It wasn't a lot to go on. But a 'friend'. So even Sora had had them. "Did he… have a lot?" There had been other faces. He was sure of it.

Riku's lips curved into a thin smile. The first Roxas had ever seen that hadn't been a smirk. "Everywhere."

"Then… you weren't… special?"

Riku's face shuttered off, as cleanly as though a window had been closed. "No."

"But… I saw you! You were… laughing together." Roxas head started to hurt, desperately trying to remember the little snatches of images.

"It doesn't mean anything."

"Like hell it doesn't!" Roxas burst out.

Riku said nothing.

Trying to recover, Roxas looked up at him. "If they're his… and I'm his Nobody… then why don't I have all of it? All the memories?"

"Because somewhere, Sora has the rest. And Namine… might still be trying to fix his memories." He turned to go. Roxas wasn't ready for this. Hell, Riku wasn't ready for this. Not anywhere near ready enough.

"Wait! What else are you not telling me?"

"You're not ready," Riku said bluntly.

"Then you aren't any different from them," Roxas said harshly.

The cold edge of a Kingdom Key slammed into Riku's chest, abruptly knocking him off balance. Roxas swiftly pushed his shoulders down, sitting on top of Riku's waist, dark blonde hair still dripping with seawater.

Riku fought back instinctively, twisting in the sand. Fine grit covered them both, clouding up beneath their bodies with each harsh movement. Roxas was light, but he also knew enough about his sense of balance to know where to throw his weight. He leaned over Riku and grabbed his wrists.

The next moment, Riku kicked Roxas off and pinned him face-first into the sand, his breathing harsh, one arm barred on the blonde's neck and his knees planted firmly on either side of Roxas' waist.

"I'm not like you. I'm not like any of you. I still have my heart, for all that it's worth now." Riku's voice comes out more feverish than he'd like, edged with the subtle self-deprecation that seems to creep into everything he says, these days.

"What's the difference?" Roxas spat, too angry to even put up too much of a fight.

"What I say and what I don't say- it's not all about you. "

"I'm not -! I have a right to know the things that are about me!"

"You'll know. I just won't tell you until you prove you're more than a brat throwing a tantrum," Riku added cockily.

Roxas spluttered, half-known memories colliding with a year's experience of being the deadliest weapon of the Organization. Just like Riku thought they would. Even as his gut twists with the knowledge.

Getting off of the Nobody, Riku strode off, ignoring all the sand that insisted on sticking to his boots and skin. He didn't even know why he was being so truthful, except that it had been the right thing to do- and he had done enough of what wasn't the right thing to do to last a lifetime.

---

Riku had stripped his pants off to dry over a tree trunk when he saw Roxas again. He was standing in the shallows of the water, possibly sulking, his pants rolled up and holding a seashell up against the light. It looked familiar-- his mother had told him a story about it, once. The fishermen called it a 'shooting star'. The bright, colorful slug-like shape that ended in a star, almost like a medal. Or, turned on its side, a shooting star streaking across the sand.

It was one of the shells that Kairi and Sora used to love collecting, lining up their daily haul in straight lines on the sand to see who had a better find.

But… the colors were wrong. Gold where there had been brown. The expression wasn't quite right, either. His mind kept picking out the little differences in a face he had known all his life, desperate to keep one from bleeding into another.

Roxas wasn't Sora. Namine wasn't Kairi, either. But Roxas' presence was a lot stronger than shrinking, captive Namine's had ever been. The interplay of anger and sadness on his face so intense it seemed real. Maybe it was. Roxas was trying so hard to be someone. More than an accident of shared hearts and a Keyblade that unlocked souls.

He hadn't expected that.

But he hadn't expected to save the other boy twice in one day, either. Not that the ungrateful Nobody seemed to notice.

Turning his back towards the sight, Riku walked into the secret cave. Everything was perfectly reproduced here, too. Everything from the patches of moss on the walls to the scratched white drawings near the bottom. And…

Yeah. That was there, too, wasn't it?

Kneeling on the cool stone floor, Riku traced his fingertips over two childishly scrawled arms feeding Paopu fruit to each other. There were only two faces scrawled in that part of the wall. And only one promise etched into it.

It still… It still sort of hurt. But the ache was so old. So faded. What did it matter if he was left behind now? When he wasn't planning on ever making it back.

Sometimes you were so frightened of something that you ended up making it come true.

So afraid of being left behind that he tried to leave first. And so afraid of losing them that he lost them first. He'd never even really 'had' Kairi, had he? Everything seemed so stupid. So stupid and yet so irrefutably there.

And now he'd lost them again. Sora and Kairi's Nobody: Namine.

But he'd find them. Definitely. He just couldn't let all these mistakes pile up like this and not do anything. He'd find Sora. Wake him up. Send him back home to Kairi. To the real Islands. "Count on it, guys," Riku murmured to the caricatures on the cave wall.

Finally, he stood and walked to the portal that had started everything. The keyhole that had changed the fate of the Worlds.

But… the atmosphere around it was completely different. It had always been different, but not like this… It felt sort of like… a hole. In a perfectly crafted illusion.

The exit.

---

Axel had been waiting for two hours.

Not the longest time he'd ever waited, but then, he hadn't really had to worry about the fact that his best friend and a Somebody were trapped in some sort of warphole room-world before.

Whatever had sucked Roxas and Riku inside wasn't letting anybody else in, either. Maybe it sensed who Axel was. Or who he wasn't- someone with a connection to that world.

So here he was, uselessly fidgeting with his chakrams and throwing them into the drawings still stuck on the wall to pass the time (five points if it hits a head, ten points if its pink-haired). There wasn't much else he could do. There weren't any decisions to make anymore. It was stay or go. And he'd already gone rolling down the left road. No brakes; no stops- not anymore.

And he'd lost his friends once already, hadn't he? Woken up to find that the guy he'd grown up with-- wasn't the same anymore. Not the boy he'd laughed with, not the boy he'd messed around with- not Isa. Looking at Saix had been like finding a stranger in Isa's room. But then, he'd figured, maybe that was how people were. They grew up. Changed. Distant. And there had never been anything else to be loyal to. Not until now. It had been... Well, he'd never claim he'd never had any ulterior motives. It had been curiosity to start with- new guy born from ex-savior of worlds, looked like Ven, possible useful Heartless-killing ally-- Axel guessed he'd always been pretty stupid that way, making friends with squirts who didn't know their way around a viper.

He had the damndest hierarchy of loyalties, too, but then, was it really loyalty when you were only really being loyal to yourself? To the slightest ghost of a being able to 'feel' again. To be an existence rather than to exist. Granted, he really could've done without going on a harebrained search for the little-boy savior of worlds.

Axel snorted, folding his lanky frame into a nearby sofa and amusing himself with creating pyrotechnic creations in the air-- a sickle moon, a castle, a city razed to the ground.

As for Riku... Axel wasn't sure what to make of him. It was fairly easy to find out how his mind worked, give or take the self-loathing. But someone so martyred couldn't possibly be real, right? And yet realer than any of them living in that dark, rainy world of Nothing.

At least Axel could count on him to make sure to kill himself before Roxas. Wouldn't do to kill any part of his best friend.

"He better not," Axel muttered faintly, banishing flame-wrought monsters from the air.

In the meantime, he might as well see what it'd take to get a nice reaction from the prettyboy martyr.

He had just about gotten bored enough to wonder if he could get one of Larxene's dirty pocketbooks out of the closet when the door opened.

"-ey!!" Roxas stumbled backwards into the room, catching himself with one knee on the floor as he turned to glare at the silver-haired teen behind him.

Considering he was still blindfolded, Riku did a very good impression of conveying 'see?' without speaking a word as he stepped out of the doorway.

Roxas' cheeks pinked.

Riku sidestepped Roxas' kneeling form and looked at Axel almost warily.

"About time," Axel snorted. He looked at both of them carefully and noticing the strong scent of seawater and the fine layer of sand on their clothes. "What, did you have sex on the beach or something?"

Riku glared. "Roxas fell off a cliff." The way he said it, you'd think it was Axel's fault.

"I didn't fall off! Someone talked to me! In my head!" Roxas insisted.

"You might not want to advertise that too much," Axel said dryly, one brow raised.

"We should take another look through the rooms and see if there are any supplies left," Riku broke in suddenly, changing the subject.

"Leave them alone, Riku," Axel said sharply.

"It's funny," Riku said, tilting his head towards the taller man. "I didn't think you had a conscience."

"I don't," Axel replied flippantly. "But only Dark knows what Larxene puts in her things."

Leaving any items they could use behind seemed wasteful, but then Riku hadn't been sure he wanted any of the left-behind goods anyway, even if they could use them.

Axel stretched. "Let's go. There's nothing left here that we can't leave behind."

---

They passed the trip back down in silence, walking in a loose, wandering single file. Axel took the lead, Roxas kept to the back- he didn't seem to want to talk to Riku, either, funnily enough.

Some feet between Axel and Roxas, Riku wracked his brain for another lead, refusing to give up.

Where else could they have gone? He didn't know how Diz got around, but there were no signs of any Corridors being opened back at the base. The only other way to travel was by gummi ship, and in that case, there weren't many who had them. Diz would have had to get it from somewhere…like say a port world.

"Guess this one's a bust, huh? Can't say your detective skills are anything worth sneezing at, Ri-ku."

"You-" Something tugged at the edge of his senses, insistent, like a too-large shadow over a book being read.

Riku turned around, and everything in his mind abruptly derailed.

In front of him was the large mass of pure Darkness, like a black tsunami stretching out to fill the entire entrance hall, grotesque limbs as pale as a corpse poking out at random intervals. Mismatched eyes blinked from its open maw and the shifting colors of its skin dripped like thick tar-black oil. It had tiny, broken-fingered hands, each one clawing forward, scuttling with inhuman speed and leaving a trail of smoking acidic sludge behind. It was easily larger than any Heartless he'd ever seen. Not a Heartless. Not a Nobody. A mindless manufactured monster. Like the biggest mistake science had ever made.

Suddenly he knew with dead on clarity what exactly had been inside that metal tank. The leftovers of other mistakes.

And Roxas was dead center of the creature's path.

"Run!" Axel yelled. A wall of fire burst into being in front of the monster.

It passed right through it like it was smoke.

"Graaaaaaaahhhh…" it moaned in a cacophony of voices. Only twisted. Bent so much out of shape that it only retained the stripped bones of the originals. Riku's blood ran cold.

"Don't just stand there!" the redhead shouted, running past him and reaching for Roxas. He threw one of his chakrams at the thing. It hit the mass with a sick thunk and was quickly gobbled up in the void. Axel cursed and was still running. He grabbed Roxas by his shoulder and tugged him back.

The Key of Destiny had both Keyblades out.

Axel was not impressed. "Are you crazy? This isn't a mission! Just run!"

Something in Axel's tone must have gotten through, because Roxas hesitated for just one more second before he turned and started running, too.

"Move your pale ass before they decide to absorb it off your dead body!" Axel roared at Riku.

Startled out of his shock, Riku leapt forward and grabbed both Nobodies' forearms. "Down here!" He tumbled them all through one of the narrow alley-sideways in the hall, pushing them both forward even as they half-stumbled, shoulders and coats scraping noisily against the narrow walls.

Not a yard behind them, the monster stopped and clawed at the sides of the corridor entrance. Whatever it was, it was made out of dense stuff. The massive body bulged around the alley corner, trying to go in after them, but it was stuck, three bloodless hands scrabbling at the light-colored metal which made up so much of Oblivion.

One of the hands grabbed at Riku's hair and he snapped Soul Eater upward, lopping the limb cleanly off.

A mistake. The hand flopped into the alley and skittered towards them, still groping hungrily for whatever had motivated the monster to break out of its tank.

Light flashed and Roxas stabbed his Keyblade down, the sharp tip of Oblivion piercing the hand straight through its palm.

"Summon it back later, " Riku said instantly, "we have to get out of here."

"Hope you've got a plan, Riku, because this looks like a really dead end to me." Axel pointed at the solid wall in front of them.

"There's a hidden pocket of Darkness here somewhere- I sensed it when we came in!"

Riku squeezed past Roxas, the chains of their coats scraping together. He was about to tug past when he realized something was dragging him back. By the throat.

Riku panicked, grabbing for his throat. But it was just Roxas' zipper and chains, tangled in his.

Riku pulled, trying to dislodge his coat from its clingy romance with Roxas', but that just seemed to knot it tighter.

"Dammit, why now?!" His hips ground roughly against Roxas, pressing tightly together the more he struggled to free his collar.

The groaning from the monster was unpromisingly loud and near. It definitely had no intention of going anywhere else. Why would it? Fresh meat and the original blue print of its DNA were just three feet away.

Riku tugged one last time, yanking Roxas towards him to relax the knot in the chains.

All that did was bump their heads together.

The smell of rancid Nothing-Darkness and decomposing meat was invading the alley, almost suffocating them all.

Fuck. Calm down. Right. Riku took a careful breath. There was no way he could see the coat chains at the awkward angle they were in.

"Axel, cut these off, quick."

Axel, for once, didn't argue. He just reached over and started working on the knot. It was probably a good thing Axel was as thin as he was. Squeezed together as they were, he could still wiggle his fingers onto the chains and… melt right through it.

Riku jerked sideways as soon as he saw the metal go cherry red, knocking right into Axel's chest.

"Heat?!" Riku demanded as he tried to not touch the metal. It was pressing up against Axel's ribs- something that didn't seem to bother Axel one bit.

"Less talking, more finding," Axel snapped back.

Riku was already pressing a hand against the wall, searching for that trickle of Darkness.

But every inch of the wall felt and looked exactly the same, his palm pressing up against unyielding, concrete hardness. The walls seemed to close in, squeezing together like a death trap.

But it had to be here! He had been so sure… he had been so sure he'd felt it!

"I- It's coming!" Roxas shouted. From the entrance, the blob was slowly but surely changing shape, narrowing its bulk down, becoming smaller and denser. Enough to fit in the alley.

It reached three oozing, stitched-up hands towards Roxas' face.

Roxas yelled, thrusting his Keyblade out in the narrow space. It missed.

"Here!" Finding a thin crack of Darkness running up one panel, Riku's hand sank into the wall. The crack ballooned into an oval portal, the Corridor just beyond.

The hand swiped at Roxas' face, missing his nose by a hair, and grabbed his left shoulder.

"Gah!" Roxas brought his Keyblade up, knocking the hand away.

"Come on!" Riku reached out and yanked both Nobodies towards him, barreling into the Corridor sideways.

They ended up tumbled on the grass somewhere, the collapsing remains of the portal collapsing into its primordial soup around them.

"Ugh…"

Roxas was first to pick himself up, pulling out most of his left thigh from somewhere underneath Riku's back and an elbow from the vicinity of Axel's collarbone.

Looking up, he frowned. "Where…?"

To be continued…

Author's notes:

RTC – This is Organization lingo for 'let's hightail back to the fortress That Never Was before Saix gets suspicious and chews our asses off'. Roxas is prolly used to saying it because of that.

CHECK OUT CHAPTER 1 NOTES if you haven't yet- I've got some DAYS SPOILERY INFO related to fic if you want it. Otherwise, feel free to ignore.

Uh, so I started a full-time internship and my extracurriculars suddenly blew up, so I sadly, I don't know when the next chapter will be up and I'm not sure which of my half-made chapters will go. On the bright side, this turned out much longer than I thought! 3000 words more and with no padding.

Please feed the muses and review! :D