Author notes: I'm using lyrics of songs in this text. Those songs are not mine. One is "Simple and Clean" from the KH-soundtrack, the other is "Final destination" by Within Temptation. I just thought they'd bring a bit of feeling to the text.
Chapter two: The dawn of a new day
A chorus of birds joined forces to wake up the world in general as Sora stepped out on the street to get over to the mono-rail. One would think a big city like Traverse Town would have a very small amount of nature within its wall of concrete buildings and asphalt roads, but truth was that the only thing missing was big hunt like deer, bear or wolves. The city park was full of life in between the trees and other greenery, and every here and there the observant pedestrian could discover a stray cat or an urban fox rummaging around among the trashcans in an alley.
Sora breathed in deeply and let out the air in a sigh. For quite some time now, he'd been feeling that there was something amiss with the world he lived in. He just knew it. The problem was that for some reason he couldn't put his finger on what it was. His grades could be better, sure, but he enjoyed the studies at the university, so he couldn't really complain about that part of his life.
When it came to his home, it was, however untidy it could become every now and then, something very close to his own paradise, where he could do whatever he wanted whenever he felt like it. It sure did beat living with his parents. His parents were ok as well. His mom could get a bit testy about him not calling her often enough, but she loved him and he cared a lot about her too. Dad was the main reason he'd been able to move closer to the university once he got in, and having been the one supporting him to go on with his studies, the relationship between them was that of a fond friendship. The loan he still had to take, in order to manage his living in the big city without taking a part time job, was going to kick him hard in the butt in a few years from now, when he would have to start paying it back, but Sora didn't mind putting those thoughts on hold for the future.
All in all, there was just nothing unusual or over the top strange in his life at all, but he still couldn't shake the feeling that he was being tricked to believe a clever fake image of how he imagined a good life should be. It was as if he was somehow asleep, seeing what someone told him to see and thus missing the big picture: the ways and looks of the real reality.
The dreams were probably a part of what had started to make him think about this; he had no doubt in this. Despite the strangeness of them, the dreams' world seemed so much more real to him. Colours, smells, tastes, sound – everything in them spoke to him in a way that his everyday life never did, and that bugged him big time.
Sora snorted at the direction his thoughts had taken and pushed them aside for a while and stepped onto the train that would take him across half the city. The cart he was in was just about empty, with only an older woman sitting in the far back, looking out her window in a trance-like state. Sora felt like screaming, just to make something happen that wasn't plain everyday business. But he kept quiet.
Instead he plugged his ears shut with the in-ear headphones for his MP3-player and searched among the songs saved on the unit, until he found his favourite. As he pressed play and the music started to fill him up with all the emotions connected to the song, Sora finally felt a bit more at peace. The song always made him feel a bit sad, though. He couldn't quite figure out why, but it simply moved him like no other songs did.
"Hold me, whatever lies beyond this morning,
regardless of warnings the future doesn't scare me at all.
Nothing's like before..."
When the train stopped at his station, Sora jumped off and set off in a jog across the street in order to get to the other sidewalk before the traffic lights shifted. The morning traffic was just beginning to get on the move as the sun slowly cascaded itself over the pavement and was reflected in golden rays of light from every window it hit on its way down to the ground. Light flowed over the street as the largest city in the country started to wake up to the new day.
Any other person might have been filled up with the light around him, feeling that the world had much beauty to offer as he watched the glitter created by the sun in a glass of water left out on the table of a first floor balcony. But Sora, oddly enough, felt nothing but sad. He blamed it momentarily on the song tuning out in his ears, but he knew it wasn't all that simple. The feeling went deeper than that, and it had been going on for a while now, he'd just been getting quite good at pushing it away.
Until now, that was.
As he turned off the street to take a shortcut through the Third District Park, a new song was started that for some reason had him stopping in his steps.
"I escaped my final moment,
but it's turning back at me,
on every corner I can feel it, waiting..."
Sora breathed heavily as a feeling of being watched had him turning around to make sure he was alone.
"Just a moment, no awareness,
I coud easily slip away ..."
Suddenly he felt as if the world was tilted a bit to the side.
"And then I'll be gone, forever..."
His stomach took a quick dive, while his heart rushed in his chest and the dizziness came over him before he knew it. Sora tried his best to stay upright, his arms out to the sides as if he was balancing on a loose wire and his entire body swaying on alarmingly unsteady legs. In his ears the dramatic lyrics kept forcing themselves into his mind like a drill that was intent on getting all the way through to the other side.
"It's waiting, always trying.
I feel the hands of fate,
they're suffocating!"
For a moment it felt as if time had been forcefully slowed down. Pain rushed through Sora's chest and he realized that he had been holding his breath for some time now. He forced himself to take a deep breath and exhale slowly, in the same time doing his best to block out the song still playing in his ears.
Time rushed back into movement and Sora took a moment to steady himself.
Once he was sure on the ground being intent on staying in place beneath his feet, Sora took a look around to see what could possibly have been the cause for this interruption of the time flow, not to mention his sudden instability. As expected, he saw nothing but the trees of the park and the other inhabitants of Traverse Town that rushed ahead down the sidewalk some steps away from where he was standing.
The song ended and was followed by a short moment of silence while the shuffle function kicked in to sort out another example from the massive list of music saved in his MP3 player.
Sora pressed down the stop button with the shadow of a grimace flying across his features for a brief second. He'd somehow lost his craving for music at the moment.
"Weird..." he muttered to himself as he put down his headphones into the same pocket where he kept the music device.
Sora took another uncertain look over his shoulder, shuddered, and started to walk once more towards the university. Behind him the leaves of the trees and bushes softly swayed back and forth, without a trace of a wind in the still morning air.
"Damn it!"
A tightly closed fist hit the table a few inches away from the keyboard.
"I almost had him!" the man hissed in painful acknowledgement of his failure.
"Calm down," his colleague said softly in a try to sooth the rising frustration. "It's not that bad, dude. At least now you know the code to look for... right?"
The red haired one inhaled and exhaled as if it was a painful act not to explode right then and there and took a moment to gather himself around what the blond had said.
"You're right, Demyx, you're right. I know the code and I have a good hunch of where to look. It won't take as long as before to find him again. I'm just..." He interrupted himself in order to take another calming breath, before he continued. "I'm just so frustrated by it all. I mean, two fucking years..."
The man called Demyx dared a friendly pat on the other man's shoulder and gave him a look of true empathy for his feelings in the matter.
"I know, Axel," he said softly. "But nothing will get any better by smashing the computer to bits, ok? Just get back in there and I'll see to the other stuff being taken care of."
Axel nodded obediently and straightened his posture in the chair, putting his fingers gently on the keys once more, ready to throw himself back into the work of nestling into the myriad of numbers, letters and symbols that filled the screens in front of him.
"One thing though," Demyx said before Axel had had a chance to start up, "I hope you're aware of the risk that he might not remember a single thing..."
Axel slowly turned his head to pinpoint the other man with his sharp green eyes.
Demyx swallowed, but decided he should finish the sentence.
"...Vexen sort of told me something before... You know, it's not really him in there..."
"I know," Axel replied, a heavy sadness having sneaked into his voice and features. "But I have to get him back out of there. I just have to."
Demyx silently left the room and Axel turned back to the computer screens.
"Are you sure you're ok? You look a bit... pale."
Riku examined his friend with worried eyes and put a steady hand on his shoulder to stop him from walking away. The sun was showing up its best side today and the heat radiating from the golden disc in the clear blue sky was whispering the promise of a not too distant summer at the beach.
Sora could almost smell the warm sand and the salty breeze of the ocean. He sighed and turned his eyes upwards to meet with Riku's concerned stare.
"Hey, the world to Sora; are you listening? I'm talking to you!" Riku smiled at Sora as the shorter guy absentmindedly pushed his friend's hand off his shoulder.
"You've been spacing out a lot lately," Riku commented as he got eye contact. "Is there something bugging you?"
Sora's eyes widened in surprise over the sudden closeness in the way the other guy acted.
"What? No, not really... I mean... Nah, it's nothing," he answered lingeringly while he tried to figure out whether or not he should tell him anything about the dreams, or worse yet, the happening in the park this morning.
"Nothing? Oh, I know it's something, 'cause you really can't lie."
Sora tried to smile at the comment.
He knew it was true.
Sora had never been any good at lying; it just didn't feel right – and that obviously showed in his face as a direct negation of whatever it was he'd said.
"Alright, if you really must know, Riku, I've been having a hard time sleeping lately."
Riku's eyebrows shot upwards with interest.
"Oh? How come?"
Sora gave up on keeping it all secret, but still did what he could to leave out the actual content of the dreams.
"I've been having these weird thoughts lately, like, is any of this for real, or not? And it's been messing with my dreams!"
"Nightmares?" Riku asked and Sora felt obliged to tell the truth.
"Not really, at least not to begin with," he explained slowly.
"So what are they about then?"
Bingo.
Of course Riku just had to ask him about that.
"Well... It's the same thing over and over again. I see places I've never been to and faces of people I've never seen before. But in the dreams, I know it all as if it was a part of me, being just as real as you and me standing here right now..."
Riku looked at him with a somewhat confused expression in his face.
"Sounds really scary, dude," he said sarcastically and gave him a short smile.
Sora glared at him.
"As I said," he continued, "the dreams don't start out scary – they sort of gradually change."
Riku caught the tone of frustration in Sora's voice and straightened his features.
"I'm just fooling around," he excused himself. "Go on."
Sora sighed, wishing he hadn't met with Riku this day.
The afternoon classes would start in about fifteen minutes and he badly wished for the clock on the university's tower to speed up the pace a bit.
"It sounds stupid, I know, but it starts with moving shadows..." Sora began and glanced up at Riku from under his dark blond bangs.
When Riku didn't comment on this, Sora felt safe enough to continue.
"...Then the shadow things get eyes, I mean like big, yellow glowing eyes – the scary kind... And it gets really dark around me, like it's eating me up – the darkness, I mean..."
Riku let out a low whistle.
"And then you wake up?"
Sora nodded.
"Yeah. Screaming and sweating as if I'd been chased by all the demons of hell..."he muttered.
"...And you've never been afraid of the dark?" Riku asked after some silent pondering. There was no sign of mockery in Riku's voice, only a touch of troubled concern.
Sora almost felt a smile build up in his face as he noticed this, but remained as serious as he could, so that Riku's attitude wouldn't change.
"Nope," Sora said to answer his question and slowly shook his head. "At least not as far as I can remember."
"Well," Riku started after some thought, "whatever it is, we can't have you walking around without sleeping. You could end up fainting from exhaustion or something."
Sora finally looked up from his shoes and met with Riku's worried eyes. At the mentioning of a possible case of fainting, Sora had started to wonder whether Riku knew about what had happened earlier in the morning.
Riku suddenly put both his hands on each of Sora's shoulders. He'd seen the troubled look in his younger friend's blue eyes and got a sudden feeling of his guessing being more exact than he'd wished for.
"Don't tell me it's already happened!"
Sora's face turned a bright red and he was about to look back down again, but Riku grabbed his chin between a finger and a thumb, forcing him to keep on looking him in the eyes.
"Sora, look at me!" he commanded him with a clear tone of worry in his voice. "If you've been having black-outs or faints, you really have to get some help – now!"
When Sora looked at Riku, the older boy let go of his chin and put his hand onto his shoulder instead.
Sora was surprised. He'd known Riku to be pretty thoughtful and caring in general, but he'd never actually thought he'd cared about him this much. After all, they barely knew anything about each other and only occasionally hung out on the university grounds. For some reason Sora had completely missed out on Riku wanting to be his friend for real.
A flash of the scenery from his dream came up in his mind at the thought and he felt like burning up with embarrassment. If Riku wanted to be his friend, Sora didn't have any objections at all. In fact, he was starting to think he himself had been wishing for it as well.
"Sora?"
Sora realized he was expected to produce an answer to something Riku had said.
"Oh, well, uhm...I..." he mumbled as he tried in vain to remember what Riku had asked him.
"When did it happen?" Riku's worry had suddenly turned into a serious demand to know everything and Sora gulped down his nervousness.
"Awww, come on, it's not as serious as you think, ok? I just felt a bit dizzy for a moment this morning when I was on my way over here, that's all!" Sora hastily explained and tried to back away a step so he could get free from Riku's grip on his shoulder, but Riku kept him put.
"That does it! Today you're coming home with me and I'll see what I can do to help you sleep through the night, got it?"
Sora nodded quickly in a hope to get free.
"Yeah, ok. Got it."
"Good," Riku said and relaxed a bit, releasing Sora's shoulder, only to tousle his hair a bit.
"So, what time do your classes end?"
Sora backed away from the hand molesting his dark blond spiky hair and gave Riku an odd look.
"What? You're actually serious about that?" he asked.
"Why not?" Riku raised his silver white eyebrows a bit. "You need sleep and I wanna' make sure you get it. That's what friends are for, right?"
Sora stood dumbfounded for a moment as he considered this.
"Well... Yeah, I guess..." he finally managed to mumble.
"So, when do your classes end today?"
"At four, but..."
"Good, mine ends ten to. So I'll be waiting for you at the main entrance at four. Got it?"
"But..."
"No buts! If you dare leave me hanging there Sora, I swear I'll find out where you live and I'll come dragging you with me back to my place."
Sora almost, just almost, got a bit scared by the low voice in which this had been uttered.
Sora nodded.
Then he glanced up at the clock placed high up on the tower on the top of the university building and realized he had about two minutes to get to his class before he'd be late.
"Shit! Gotta' run!" he blurted out and turned on his heels to start running.
"Don't forget; main entrance at four!" Riku called after him and Sora managed to show him a "thumbs up" before he rushed through the big doors leading into the main building of the Traverse Town University.