Chapter 5: The ending of a dream

Sora had a distinct feeling of being watched as he and Riku entered his single room apartment on Merchant Street in the second district. The feeling had appeared somewhere around the third district, when they'd gotten onto the monorail train, and it had been growing pretty intense by now.

He closed the door firmly after Riku had entered and made sure to lock it.

Riku noticed this and gave him a somewhat amused smile.

"Are you afraid we'll get jumped at in our sleep or something?"

Sora snorted at the comment.

"No! I just..." but when he couldn't come up with a good reason to lock them in, he just shook his shoulders. "Look, we're in the second district, OK? My neighbours have warned me about not locking the door, so I lock it."

At least it was part of the truth, Sora thought and hung up his jacket on one of the hooks on the hanger next to the door.

Riku looked around himself in silence for a moment, then let out a low whistle.

"I know," Sora said as he sat himself down on the bed, which unusually enough was made up. "It's way smaller than your place. But it's cosy enough for me."

Riku smiled and slowly shook his head at him.

"Yeah, I guess I understand your reaction a bit better now. I mean, my bedroom is probably twice the size of this place... but I agree on the cosy part. It must be good to have your own place."

Sora thought about it for a moment before he answered.

"Yep. This is my haven", he said with emphasis on the first word.

"Great haven," Riku said honestly and sat himself down in the worn greyish blue couch that Sora explained was going to be his bed for the night.

"Have you noticed something funny?" Riku suddenly said and turned to face Sora. "We've got the same posters on our walls.

Sora blinked, took a look around his small apartment and nodded. He'd noticed this back at Riku's place, but now he also noticed that they were paced in the exact same pattern.

A chill moved down his spine as he tried to figure out the odds of such a thing happening. The feeling of remembering something from a past life came over him and he looked over at Riku. For the moment the silver haired teen was sitting bent over Sora's collection of videogames stacked in piles over by the TV.

There was a tingling in the back of his mind, telling him there was something he should know about this guy, something from before: a memory untouchable, something that was just about one inch too far away for him to reach it.

Just like with Naminé, Sora now got a distinct feeling of something being a bit messed up with the image of Riku that he was seeing in front of him at the moment. Riku was his friend: that he knew. Naminé was a bit trickier, as if she'd done something to him in the past that he couldn't remember as anything but a feeling of insecurity whenever being around her. And then there was Riku's twin, Ansem.

Ansem was straight through bad. Period. But he wasn't showing his true face, instead he was hiding behind Riku's appearance. Or at least that was what it felt like to Sora. And so he was back to Riku: his friend... Or was he?

Suddenly it was as if a switch had been flicked to "on" in Sora's mind and he got a very clear image of the silverhaired guy in his room.

Riku... was dangerous.

The thought flashed by in an instant, almost as if someone else had said it out loud.

Riku was his friend, but he was also dangerous, more dangerous than he appeared to be, but Sora really couldn't figure out why he felt like that, no matter how hard he tried.

"Earth to Sora, something wrong?" Riku was suddenly sitting not more than an arm's length away from Sora, waving his hand in front of his face to get his attention.

Sora blinked and focused his eyes on Riku,realizing he'd been staring out into the empty space for quite some time.

"What? Uhm...no, I'm fine. I just spaced out for a moment," he said apologetically and rubbed his hand at the back of his neck in an embarrassed manner. "I guess I'm a bit tired, that's all."

Riku seemed to relax for a moment, but in the next minute, he moved swiftly from his crouched down position on the floor to sit right next to Sora on the bed, a cool hand suddenly put on Sora's forehead.

"Well, you don't seem to have a fever, so I guess that could be the case," he said and pulled back the hand.

"What?"

"You being tired," Riku clarified and Sora nodded without knowing what to say next.

Sora could feel a surge of heat rising to his cheeks. How could he ever have thought of this guy to be dangerous? He was just...

...sitting uncomfortably close to him on his bed...

Sora nervously nudged himself a bit away from him.

"Am I making you uncomfortable?" Riku asked in a low voice and discretely moved in closer again, making Sora want to get up from the bed, staying put only because he didn't want to look silly.

"Wh-what? N-no, not really," he stuttered and felt the blush of embarrassment on his cheeks grow. "It's just that I'm not used to having someone other than me myself here, that's all."

Riku softly put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Well, we could change that, right?" hesaid and smiled, eyes glittering as he moved his face closer to Sora's.

Sora almost fell off the bed when a knock on the door unexpectedly broke the silence.

"Expecting someone?" Riku asked curiously with an lifted eyebrow.

Sora shook his head in response, but still scrambled quickly to his feet in order to answer the door.

"Who ever it is, he'll most definitely leave us alone if you just don't open the door. Come back here and sit with me," Riku said and patted the bed on the spot where Sora had been sitting right before he tumbled to the floor.

"What? I can't do that, he must have heard us by now and know we're in here," Sora objected and reached for the door handle, but was stopped by Riku, who in an instant had gotten up to stand behind him and now grabbed a hold on his wrist, turning Sora around to face him.

Standing like that, close up and almost nose to nose, Sora could feel his heart beat pick up the pace.

"What are you d..." Sora started to ask, but Riku put a finger to his lips to hush him.

"Don't open the door. Please?" he said in a whisper, his eyes glittering with fear mixed emotions and his voice so pregnant with sadness it put Sora a bit off guard.

"What's the matter with you?" Sora asked him as another knock was heard from the other side of the door.

Sora turned his eyes away from Rikus, managed to twist his upper body around and turned the lock open.

"I tried to warn you," Riku said behind him. "I liked what we had, Sora. I thought you liked it too. I guess I was wrong."

Sora turned to face him again and looked at him with the confusion clear in his expression.

"What are you talking about?"

As Riku didn't answer him right away, Sora turned back around and pulled down the handle.

"You're acting really strange right now, Riku, you know that?"

When the door swung open, Sora took a step back in surprise and couldn't help but dropping his chin.

On the other side of the door stood a tall, slender guy with bright red hair and intense eyes of emerald green.

Sora knew that face.

He'd seen it in his dreams.

For a moment everything was still.

"Hi, Rox. Time to get home."

Sora backed away as the red haired man stepped into the apartment.

Suddenly Riku had stepped in front of Sora.

"Don't take him away," Riku said. It was sounding more like an order than a plea.

The sentence was simple and the meaning of the words absolute, his voice putting strength behind every syllable.

"Oh, don't start on me with that crap," the familiar stranger said in a grimace of dislike. "You've had your fun, now let him get back to the real world, all right?" he added and threw Sora a look over Riku's shoulder.

"Roxas, come on, you've got to remember me!"

Sora was shaking.

Too much was happening too fast.

Riku, Ansem, Naminé... and now this guy. All of them faces that had appeared in his dreams before he'd met them. If this part of the dream were turning into reality, did that mean that the other things in the dream would follow and become real as well?

The image of the living shadows slowly engulfing him filled his mind for a moment and he backed further away from the redhead in fear.

"This can't be happening..." he mumbled slowly, shaking his head in doubt while his eyes stayed focused on the strange man, unable to stop staring.

The tall redhead rolled his eyes upwards.

"Oh, come on!" he let out in an exasperated moan. "Give me a break, will ya'? I'm not going to hurt you; I'm trying to save you! Get it?"

He made a move to get closer to Sora, but Riku cut him off.

"Leave him alone!" he spat at the stranger furiously. "He's doing fine where he is, so just leave him! Get out!" Riku's voice was growing in strength and Sora could almost swear he saw rage seeping out of him, making the air around him vibrate with energy.

"Oh, just great," the redhead mumbled, sounding more annoyed than alarmed by Riku's protective act. Then he turned towards Sora again. "Look, have you seen this guy's true form yet? Because I'd hate to be the one bursting your bubble man, but I've spent two years looking for you and I'm not gonna' leave you here because of an stupid Trojan anti-virus system telling me to do so. I'm not going to let you disappear again! No way, no how!"

"Why are you doing this?" Sora suddenly asked him with a broken voice. "Who the hell are you?"

The redhead was taken aback for the moment as he discovered the tears tracing down the cheeks of the blue eyed guy in front of him. Then he sighed heavily.

"You really don't remember anything, do you?" He made another try to get closer, but once more Riku stopped him, effectively placing himself in front of Sora, protective to the point of possessive.

"This guy here," the redhead said and made an inclination at Riku, "he isn't real. At least not in this world, right here, right now. This is a protective system put in to keep you hidden from anyone that would want to find you, like me. He looks like this because of an implanted memory you've got, connected to a guy looking just like this. It's to make you trust him so that he can stay close."

Riku gave off a low murmuring growl in response to this, but stayed in his place, his eyes having taken a shade of piercingly sharp turquoise.

"But guess what?" the redhead continued. "He messed up. He messed up big time, and that's how I found you."

At the last words the man turned back his emerald eyes to Sora.

"I have to get you out of here before your real self dies, OK?"

Sora blinked and looked from the redhead to Riku and back again.

"My what? He's what?" he screamed out in confusion as images of his dream kept flashing by his eyes. Images of a younger Riku on a beach, laughing and fencing with a wooden sword. Images of Kairi as a teenager, smiling at him across a classroom. And the darkness that swallowed him up, while Riku, in another form, stood there laughing at him. A Riku who'd been deformed and used by the shadows that swallowed him up.

"NO!"

Sora screamed from the bottom of his heart.

"You're lying! You're lying! It can't be like that! I can't be... It never happened, 'cuase I'm here, right? I'm me, I'm Sora!"

Sora was down on his knees, his entire body shaking from the shock of having all the facts thrown in his face, fighting the possibility of this to be true, not wanting it to settle.

The green eyes glittered with compassion and sadness as the red-haired man slowly shook his head.

"No, you're not, buddy," he said softly. "You're an image of him. Sora was the one before you. You, are Roxas. You're my friend and I want to save your life while there is still time, if you'll just let me try.

A threatfull growl from Riku turned the redhead's attention back to Riku.

"You're not getting him! You're not taking him away from me again!"

This made the redhead flinch.

"What did you say?"

Riku suddenly started to actually ooze of rage, and black smoke appeared around him.

"You're not taking him away from me again!" he repeated himself as his body was suddenly enclosed by armour of dark tissue and a strange sword of sorts, shaped as a dark bat wing, appeared in his hand.

The wing-blade.

Sora tried his best to ignore the sudden surge of memories that came with the sight of this weapon. His inner sense of reality was in turmoil, making him unsure of whether or not he was actually awake.

"So this is what happened to you?" the strange man asked Riku. "This is what's left of you?" he said, pity apparent in his voice.

Sora finally managed to take his eyes off the scene and looked down on the floor, closing his eyes in a try to focus his thoughts.

"What's happening?" he mumbled at the same time as he wished not to get an answer to the question.

That's when Riku attacked.

Seemingly without effort, the redhead dodged the attack, stepping to the side and in an instant he was next to Sora, holding him in his arms.

"Everything will be OK in just a moment, trust me," he whispered into Sora's ear.

"Why should I trust you? I don't know you!" Sora yelped in panic as he tried to escape the tight grip.

"I won't let you take him from me!" Riku yelled from the other side of the room, the voice thundering in the small space.

"Close your eyes," the redhead whispered again, taking no notice of the raging teen behind his back.

Sora did as he was told, all too happy to escape the mess his world had turned into. He had no strength left to keep fighting back.

The red-haired man then put out his hand towards Riku and a sudden surge of energy made a ring of fire appear around himself and Sora, separating them from Riku.

Frustration and agony mixed in his face as Sora opened his eyes to see what had happened.

"Let go, Riku, and you'll be free from this fake world too!" the redhead called out to his opponent, but Riku didn't seem to listen.

Instead, he looked at Sora with an unmistakable pain showing in his eyes.

Slowly he reached out his hand towards Sora.

"Sora, don't listen to him! Stay with me. Please."

Before Sora was able to answer him, the redhead tightened his grip on him.

"I hate to tell you this, Riku, but this isn't your guy, and deep down you know that too, don't you?" he said slowly. "I know it hurts to admit it, but this isn't your Sora; it's my Roxas in a disguise. And I need him to come with me.

Riku suddenly changed his form again, taking the shape of his younger self, the one Sora knew from his dream.

"Take my hand, Sora! Stay with me!" he called out, his hand still outstretched towards his friend.

But the flames separating them suddenly grew higher and more intense as he tried to get closer.

"I thought you liked me!" Riku said in one last desperate try to make Sora move towards him.

Sora looked at him in wonder and disbelief.

Slowly, he came to realize that he really didn't know the guy in front of him. And he couldn't remember anything important about his own life before the last two years that had passed, only short glimpses without connection.

He looked at the face of the man holding him in his arms, the sharp green eyes at the moment focused on Riku, and something suddenly clicked inside him, something closer to a real memory; a feeling of deep going and unquestionable trust.

This guy was real.

The image of Riku wasn't.

And in that moment, Sora decided to trust the redhead.

"Riku, I'm sorry," Sora said, weighing every word, "but I don't think I know you."

With this, Riku suddenly lost all colour in his face and Sora almost thought he heard his fictive heart breaking.

Without another word, Riku stepped into the fire, his eyes steady on Sora's face.

"Goodbye then. Forgive me," he whispered as the fire caught on to him, making his appearance shift and flicker as the program that he was made up by was slowly decoded and disposed of in the fire created by the redhead's programming.

Sora didn't want to see it, but he watched anyway. He had to see for himself that this wasn't a real person that was slowly burning to cinders in front of him.

A heavy sigh escaped the redhead and Sora looked up at him.

"You seem awfully sad to be the one who won," he noted, his own voice shaking and raspy from the screaming and crying.

"I feel for him. It's an unfair destiny for one like him. He used to be one of the greatest blade wielders in history. He fell for the temptations of the darkness, was saved by his best friend only to watch him being devoured by the very shadows that he'd been freed of through the intervention of this friend. And now, this sliver of a soul, detached from its body and weaved into a coded program, being tricked into protecting someone in the appearance of his lost friend, only to die losing him again."

Sora thought this through and tried to make sense of it, but couldn't.

"I know now that I didn't really know him, but I don't know you either," he said slowly.

The redhead looked down and his green eyes met with Sora's blue.

"So you really don't remember me?"

Sora shook his head.

"Just your face. I've seen you in my dreams. But I don't know why. Who are you?"

"My name is Axel. Got it memorized?"

Sora slowly nodded.

"It fits."

He looked at the spot where Riku had been standing as the flames consumed him. Now there was only fire.

"So now what?"

"I'lltake you home," Axel said with a slight smirk.

"How?"

"Close your eyes and count down from thirteen. You'll wake up right where you should be and I'll do what i can to help you remember who you are. I owe you that."

"Why?"

Axel giggled.

"Because you've always been there for me before. It's my turn to help you now."

Sora closed his eyes and wished for the dream to end.

He missed not knowing anything about the world in general, to be spending all his days on a beach on a far away island together with his friends. He missed Kairi.

"Will it hurt?" he asked, without opening his eyes.

"No," Axel replied, patting his head and soothing his confused mind at the same time as he took a firmer grip on him. "Start counting."

Sora obliged. As he closed his eyes pictures stated to dance before his eyes, like glimpses of memories lost.

"13..." Riku's face in front of him, full of life and love.

"12..." An image of an island tree house flashed before his eyes.

"11..." Kairi laughing at him and Riku doing something. All the memories made no sense to him. He'd never experienced any of them as far as he knew, and still the images brought forth a flood of emotion and nostalgia.

"10..." He saw Riku, still smiling, but in a different way, with darkness enclosing him.

"9..." A city laid in darkness a rain filled night, neon lights and thunder composing the background for a fight between men and shadows. The place seemed real, but something told him it didn't really exist.

"8..." Traverse Town at dusk. He'd been there one time, but he couldn't remember why.

"7..." Naminé; a pale girl in a pale room. Lonely, sad and more powerful than anyone could ever believe.

"6..." A clock tower at dawn, a view overlooking a town he couldn't find a name for, golden in the sunshine...

"5..." A name flashed by before the image of the town disappeared. Twilight Town.

"4..." Friends he'd spent his younger years with...

"3..." Hayner, Pence, Olette...

"2..." Shadows with glowing eyes moving towards him. Heartless.

"1..." A red-haired man smiling softly at him. Axel.

"0..." My name is...