-Shadow-

Chapter 3 – Lost and Found

His dreams that night were turbulent and fleeting. Faces of people he had never met before appeared before him. A tall man with vivid amber eyes and a cold smile, holding the reins of a dragon wreathed in green flame. There were two girls also, with blonde and ruby hair, the warm light seeming to wrap itself around them like a cloak, their hands outstretched as if to welcome him. A young man, though still very much a boy, with locks of moonlight and sea colored eyes too old for one so young, battling against enemies unseen in hissing shadows. And within those shadows, there was another boy, his shining blue eyes bright and proud even through the overwhelming darkness.

But most of all, he dreamed of light and darkness, of choice and destiny.

Then Roxas awoke, and remembered nothing.

-oOo-

Not one of them was up before noon. Olette woke first, far too used to getting up early to sleep in any later. Stretching, it took her a moment to remember what she was doing in Roxas' sister's room. Then the memories of sneaking into the mansion and subsequent encounter with the not-Heartless came back to her. Lying there on the bed, bright sunlight and city noises coming in through the window, it was hard to believe last night's events weren't just some bizarre nightmare she'd had, but Olette knew better than to doubt her own memory. Every last bit of it had been frighteningly real. Her gut told her it was just the tip of the iceberg.

And speaking of her gut, it was growling at her. Time for some breakfast.

Pence woke to the sound of someone coming down the stairs. Groaning, he burrowed deeper into the couch, perfectly content to ignore whoever it was in favor of going back to sleep and would have done just that had the tantalizing smells and sounds of food being prepared not lured him into the kitchen where Olette already had bacon and eggs going on the stove. She placed the first of them on a plate and set it on the table in front of Pence, who smiled his thanks before chowing down. Roxas and Hayner came stumbling in a few minutes later.

They ate in relative silence, each having too much on his/her mind to make conversation. Just as Pence was carrying his now empty plate to the sink, the phone rang, disrupting the tentative tranquility. Roxas answered it.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Roxas, it's Mrs. Cowden. Is Hayner there?"

"It's your mom," Roxas said, lobbing the portable phone to his friend. Had he been any other teenager, Hayner's ass would've been grounded into the next millennium for sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night. But being Hayner, his parents had long since bowed to the inevitable and usually let him off the hook so long as he checked in with them by noon the next day. Having been asleep, he hadn't yet, so they'd come calling, correctly guessing that he'd be over at one of his three best friends' houses.

"Hey, Ma," Hayner said. "…Yeah….Really? I didn't hear it go off, the battery's probably dead or something… Nah, we're gonna work on the project, so I'm going to be home late tonight… Yeah… 'Kay, love you too, Ma. Bye."

"You guys gonna call your folks, too?" Roxas asked when Hayner got off the phone.

"I left them a note last night," Olette said, digging the prongs of her fork into the back of Hayner's hand when he tried to steal the last of her bacon.

"Same," Pence replied.

Roxas nodded. "So…" he said when no one made a move to fill the awkward silence, "you guys want to start of the project?"

Hayner sighed. "Let's just get this over with."

-oOo-

They'd just finished the first draft of the paper when they decided to take a break for a while. Leaving Hayner, Pence, and Olette chilling on the couch downstairs, Roxas grabbed a change of fresh clothes from his own room and headed into the bathroom for a shower. After taking off his shirt however, he discovered something on his chest. There, written right over his heart was...

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(4/12/08 – I had had this with all dashes for spacing before, but then this site changed their stupid formatting rules so I had to do it over. But as before, just ignore the 8's and the O's.)

Well, damn... "Hey guys! Come here!" he called.

"What is it?" Olette asked, coming upstairs with Pence and Hayner in tow. Then they saw the writing.

"It happened again?" Hayner asked, tilting his head to the side a little as he observed the image.

"Mm hmm," Roxas replied.

"I'll go get my camera," Pence said, disappearing down the stairs.

See, Roxas had a strange... habit, if you will, of writing things in his sleep. On his homework, on his bedroom walls, on the dry-erase board of the fridge downstairs, and a multitude of other strange places, writing would appear where there wasn't any before he went to sleep, though his favorite canvas seemed to be his own body. He would wake up and it would just be there. And it could only be Roxas who was the writer; when it first began, Roxas thought it was Hayner or his sister or somebody trying to pull a prank on him. But as years passed and the writing continued to appear, Roxas and his family began to realize it wasn't just some prank. The writing was in Roxas' own hand and he would even wake up still clutching the pen sometimes. Concrete proof came when Roxas was in fourth grade. He woke up Christmas morning to find new writing on his arm, written in a code he and Hayner had created the summer before. But Hayner had since forgotten the code, meaning Roxas was the only person who could have possibly written the message on his arm.

Armed with this proof, his mother had taken him to see a psychiatrist who specialized in sleeping disorders. The doctor diagnosed it as an extremely rare form of sleepwalking, the manifestation of a highly developed and intelligent but suppressed subconscious mind. But even with the diagnosis, it was discovered that very little could be done to treat Roxas' condition. Medication, sleep therapy, nothing worked. One time, Roxas even tried locking all of his writing utensils in his desk drawer.

He'd woken up the next morning with a pen in one hand, his desk key in the other, and lines from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner on his ceiling.

In the end, it was decided that, as writing in his sleep didn't do any physical nor psychological harm to Roxas (other than weirding him out every so often), the behavior was left alone to run its course, abet monitored. So now Roxas kept a record of all occurrences of his sleep writing in a journal, complete with descriptions of the writing, location, events that had happened in the days preceding, and pictures, the last of those being courtesy of Pence and his Polaroid camera. Some of the writings were original, some was absolute gibberish, but sometimes he quoted others as well, William Blake, Shakespeare, and Neil Gaiman being among his favorites. He'd more or less gotten used to it over the years, but it was still kinda freaky sometimes how he'd somehow managed to write perfectly legibly in places he couldn't even see (his mother, for one, had always been bemused by the fact that he wrote more neatly on his back in his sleep than he did on his homework while fully conscious). The only discernable pattern to his sleep writing was that it happened more frequently when he was stressed out.

However, lately it seemed to be tapering off. The last occurrence was almost two months ago, and Roxas was beginning to hope that maybe it had finally stopped. But alas...

Back in the bathroom, Olette had finally figured out the latest of Roxas' unconscious midnight masterpieces.

"Alright, I think I've got it!" she said. "A scattered dream that's like a far-off memory. A far-off memory that's like a scattered dream. I want to line the pieces up, yours and mine."

"Nice poem," Hayner said," now if you could only pump out sap like that on demand for English class, you'd get an A every time."

"Not funny, Hayner," Olette chided. "As if he needs you to make him feel any stranger about it than he already does. We still don't know why this happens or even what caused them to begin with. You said it just started happening when you were five, right Roxas?"

"The morning of my birthday," the blond confirmed.

"But look at the shape of it, though," Pence said.

"What about it?" asked Hayner.

"It's a crown."

"So what? A lot of these things have been in weird shapes before."

Pence shook his head. "Remember that armor I was looking at last night? It was sentry armor from around the turn of the last century, royal armor. I'd be willing to bet that this has something to do with that mansion."

Hayner made a noise of disagreement, but Roxas was thoughtful. The others didn't know it, but there were a few times before when his writing had been... well, not prophetic, because it had been about things that had already happened, but there were details that Roxas himself couldn't have possibly known, details that were later proven to be accurate. This latest writing didn't sound like a prophecy, but it had a strange sort of resonance in his mind that he couldn't quite place...

"Whatever, my brain's fried for today," Hayner was saying. Switching topics, he added, "I was gonna order some pizza for dinner. What do you guys want on it?"

"Sausage, pepperoni, extra mozzarella, olives-"

"Only one extra topping apiece, Pence."

"Fiiine, sausage."

"Olette?"

"Just mushrooms, please," the girl replied. "And for you, Roxas?"

No answer. The boy addressed was still deep in his own thoughts. Hayner bopped his best friend on the noggin.

"Hey, what was that for?" Roxas cried, rubbing the now sore spot on his head.

"Pizza."

Finding the other blond's one-worded explanations as unhelpful as usual, Roxas turned to Olette.

"What kind of topping would you like?" she reiterated.

"Oh, uh, green peppers."

Hayner snorted. "Always with the peppers," he snickered, reaching into his vest for his cell phone to call the gang's favorite pizza place.

...Only to realize he wasn't wearing his vest anymore. And when he remembered why he wasn't wearing it, he paled. "Aww, shit!!"

Hayner bolted from the room and ran down the stairs, leaving Roxas, Pence, and Olette standing there to stare after him. They heard him cursing down in the laundry room a moment later.

"Hayner, what is it?" Roxas called. He'd seen the other blond fly off the handle before, but even for him, this was pushing it.

"That damn Heartless took my phone!!" Hayner shouted back.

"What?"

The three of them raced downstairs. They found Hayner in the laundry room, holding his vest above the sink where Roxas had put it the night before while Olette tended to the other blond's wounds. Or rather, what remained of his vest. The left side was in bloody tatters.

Hayner always kept his phone in his left pocket.

"It's not in there!" he exclaimed. "It must've fallen out when that thing attacked me!"

He had reason to be upset. Hayner had gotten one of those new iPhones for his birthday last week from his dad.

"Oh, damn," Roxas said. Not only had Hayner lost his coveted vest (it was beyond ruined), but Roxas also knew how much his best friend loved that phone. Not to mention Mr. Cowden would rip his son a new one if he ever found out that Hayner had lost the six hundred dollar device.

Hayner cursed again, dumping the vest back into the sink before grabbing one of Roxas' spare jackets hanging on the hooks by the door.

"Where are you going?" Pence asked.

"To get my phone back, where else?" the sandy blond said, shrugging on the jacket.

Olette stared at him. "Are you insane!?"

For all the times she'd said it, this was the first time she seriously considered it might be true.

"He doesn't have a choice, Olette," Roxas said, placing his hand on the girl's shoulder. "If Mr. Cowden finds out that Hayner lost that phone, he's gonna string him up by his own intestines."

Hayner gulped at the reminder. Olette shook her head. "You're not going back in there for some dumb phone!"

"You heard Roxas, I have to!" Hayner argued back. "Besides, it's my phone! Who else is going to go get it?"

"I will!" Roxas and Olette said at the exact same time. Surprised, they looked at each other.

So did Hayner. "You will?"

"Yes." Roxas' tone was firm and Olette nodded just as resolutely, though she was biting her lip, belying her nervousness.

Pence sighed. "I gotta tell you, guys. I really don't think it's worth it. Heartless or not, that thing's dangerous and going back in that mansion for something expendable like a phone is just plain stupid."

"Maybe," Roxas admitted, "but if we don't, then Hayner will have to explain how he lost his phone to his dad and why he can't get it back, and even if Mr. Cowden did believe us, I think him knowing about that thing is just not what we want right now."

Pence frowned but remained silent, conceding the point.

Taking a deep, calming breath, Roxas said, "So, it's settled then. Olette and I will go back into the mansion and get Hayner's phone while he and Pence stay outside as lookouts."

From the looks on their faces, Roxas could tell that none of them were very happy with his proposition, but for the moment, it was the best they could do.

-oOo-

It wasn't hard to find their way back through the mansion. The trail of blood and disturbed dust was all too easy to follow. The blood wasn't much, just a trickle of droplets, but it was enough to make Roxas' stomach churn, knowing they belonged to his best friend. Olette seemed to share his sentiments, clinging to his arm as they made their way through the hallways. It helped that it was still light out, but only a little.

The path ended in a small hallway, its walls splashed with crimson. There was a sole door in the hallway, a linen closet of sorts. They found the cell phone lying on the floor beside it, miraculously unscathed.

"Hayner, you ass," Roxas muttered as he bent down to pick up the phone. "Of course it attacked you, you backed it right into a dead end!"

Olette allowed herself a breath of relief. "Alright, we got it, can we go now?"

"Sure," Roxas said. Olette seemed to want to get away from the puddle of Hayner's blood as fast as possible, and he quite agreed.

They made it back to the foyer quickly. Olette began speed walking for the front door, but Roxas slowed as they passed the staircase that lead up to the white room. The dark haired boy's face came back to him.

He headed up the stairs.

"Roxas?" Olette called when she noticed he was no longer by his side.

"Hang on a sec," the blond said over his shoulder.

"Roxas, where are you going!?"Olette cried, alarmed her friend was heading deeper into the mansion. She shouted at him to come back, but he was already at the second level. Roxas knew it was foolish to stay in such a dangerous place for any longer than was absolutely necessary, but he couldn't help it. There was something about that boy that just wouldn't leave him alone...

The white room looked different in the daylight, but the strange sense of peace and calm remained the same, Roxas noted distantly when he entered, almost like a sanctuary. Shaking off his musing, Roxas headed straight for the nearest portrait of the trio.

The door opened behind him, and Olette burst in. "Roxas, what has gotten into y-"

She cut off in a terrified squeak.

Roxas turned around. And stared.

Glowing yellow eyes on a solid black face stared right back.

-oOo-

A.N. Dun dun duuun... a cliffie! Yes, I can be truly evil sometimes, can't I? Heh, you don't want to know how long it took me to make that crown. I had to redo it so many, many times to get it to look right, sheesh. Oh, and before you ask, yes, writing in your sleep is a real phenomenon. I have a friend who does it sometimes. While I consider her to be one of the smartest people I know (like almost genius smart), I know there was some event in her past that triggered it. I don't know what that event was, but I think writing in her sleep is just how her subconscious deals with it. As for the reason why Roxas writes in his sleep, well... you'll just have to stay tuned and find out. :)