Hey everybody! Hope you like this one!
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Where am I? I asked myself as the dream started to fade away from my mind.
Demyx? I'm not in love with him? Right? Right.I opened my eyes and looked around. I was in a room that reminded me of an infirmary room. The walls were all white with matching white tile floors. Completed with the off-white ceiling.
A large, bright light was directly above me, shining in my eyes. I tried to cover my eyes with my hand but my hand wouldn't move for two reasons. One, I was bound to a table by dark, leather straps around my wrists and ankles. Two, I couldn't feel anything besides my head and face.
I shut my eyes and tried to teleport but no black mist surrounded me. I laid there quietly going over my options—unfortunately—I didn't have any.
All of a sudden, there was a sharp pain shooting through the side of my head. I winced as I remembered how I got here. I remembered sitting on the ledge looking at that castle. Then I was knocked out.
I sighed as the pain went away. A few minutes later a black mist appeared at the other end of the room and someone appeared. The man was dressed in black robes and had his hood up. I didn't recognize him as any of the other Organization members.
"Good. You're awake," he said. I recognized that voice. But I couldn't place voice with face. Darn.
I sat still glaring as he came closer to me. He was right in front of the table near my feet. He held up his hand and the table slowly began to tilt so I was sort of up-right.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Who are YOU?" I asked. I was really ticked off.
He smiled. "I've heard that I'm a good friend of yours," he said. I raised an eyebrow. "DiZ told me that you know me and that I know you. He said that you're a lost memory of mine. Who are you?"
"You're DiZ's assistant, aren't you? You're the guy that I saw in Twilight Town." I said noticing him.
"Do you recognize me from anywhere else?" he asked. I could see barely any of his face under his hood, but I could tell that he didn't really know the answer to the question he just asked himself.
"Maybe if you removed your hood I could," I said nicely.
He smiled and then slowly pulled the hood off his head. I immediately knew who he was. He had silver white hair like Superior's and dark orange eyes. "You're Ansem. I've seen you in—dreams of mine." I didn't want to tell him anything just yet. "You're supposed to be dead."
He smiled. "Ansem took my body once. I thought that by letting him do so I could save the one I loved. I thought I got rid of him but then I obtained his form trying to save my best friend. But, now he is gone."
"Ansem—Superior's true name—" I said to myself but aloud.
"You're with the Organization," he said.
"Don't you recognize me from Twilight Town?" I asked.
"I still want to know who you are. Your name's Raene, right?"
I nodded. "Who are you really?" I asked.
"Before I answer that, tell me—what do you remember of your King?" he said stepping a foot closer to me.
"My King. He—he disappeared nine years ago," I said.
"Do you remember his name?" he asked.
"I…I…" but the truth was that I didn't remember. That was the one thing I didn't remember from my life before living with the Organization. I never remembered my King's name. "No."
"Hmmm—I figured as much. So—Raene, tell me your life story," he said.
My eyes widened. "My whole life! Yeah, as if I'm gonna tell you all about myself and the Organization. You're working with DiZ and DiZ is out to destroy the Organization. I'm not gonna give the information he needs to destroy my family!" I said in an angry but slightly quiet voice.
His expression changed. "Your family?" he said.
I nodded. "They're the only people left. I mean my real family doesn't even know who I am," I said.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing that you would understand. Whoever you really are has a family that remembers them, I don't." I spoke harshly and turned my head to the side.
He walked around so I was once again facing him. "Tell me. I don't wanna hurt you in anyway or the ones you love. I just have to know the truth. If what DiZ says is true, about us knowing each other, then I should know about you. You tell me and then I'll tell you everything, I promise," he said.
I smiled. "Fine." I suddenly felt like I could trust him. I knew who he was, this Ansem guy. I knew that I had seen him before. But I guess that I was forgetting things, just like I should, since I was disappearing. "Could you let me go, though? I wanna sit down," I said.
He got this look that showed that he wasn't very sure he should trust me.
"Look I can't exactly go anywhere. I have no feeling in anything but my head and face, I'll probably just fall to the ground."
He kept that same look.
"If you don't believe me, then stab me or something. I won't be able to feel it."
He tilted his head to the side then summoned a long blade. I didn't get to look at it enough before he had slammed it in my stomach. I gasped but relaxed when I didn't feel anything.
He pulled it out and summoned it away. "That didn't hurt?" he asked.
I shook my head and looked down at myself. I wasn't bleeding or wounded in anyway, which made me happy.
"Fine," he said walking up to me and taking off the leather ties. I fell to the ground with a 'thump.'
"Owww," I moaned. I had hit my head right on the cold floor.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me up to a sitting position. "Let's get started then," he said summoning a chair and sitting down on it.
"Ok. Where do I begin?" I asked.
"From the beginning," he replied.
I sighed and began to tell him my life story. "It all started with my hometown. I was royalty, by the way. My dad was King and my mother was Queen. My twin sister and I were the only children."
"You were royalty?" he said.
I nodded and continued. "There's a thing that says that every few generations, a set of twin girls are born into the royal family. My father had two younger sisters who were twins. In my hometown, there are twin stones. A necklace was made for each twin. A black stone and a white one. They are diamond-cut hearts. The necklaces are past from twin to twin. When my father's sisters died they were put in my mother's possession until the next set of twins came along."
I paused and looked up at him. I had been staring at the floor while speaking. I smiled and continued. "My mother died when my sister and I were born. Now the thing with these necklaces, is to give the daughter who is more mischief the black stone and the less mischief one the white. The one who is more mischief is believed to be born with a Dark spirit and the other with a Light spirit. Even though they are both in the light realm, one is said to be Darkness is a Light being's form."
"Were you the one of Darkness?" he asked me.
I nodded. "My dad died when my sister and I were just five years old. I saw Heartless kill him." I paused. "My sister and I weren't old enough to rule so our father's best friend became King. He grew up like a price ever since his parents died when he was a kid. A year later, on our sixth birthday, the Darkness came, once again, to our world. This time, they succeeded in taking over. The King told my sister and I to leave even though he knew we wanted to stay with our people. We felt like we should stay with our people who couldn't get out. Just like a captain goes down with the ship."
"So you left," he said.
I nodded again. "He sent us to a place he said would be the safest place in the universe. He said that the Darkness couldn't come back if we went there. He said that He couldn't return if we went there." I stopped talking. I thought about what I had just said. "That's it!"
"What's it?" he said.
"Somehow Superior and the King were connected. They were acquainted somehow. If I had stayed where he sent us, the Darkness couldn't reach there and the Keyblade wouldn't be needed so soon. If I went there, Superior wouldn't be who he is right now."
He just tilted his head to the side in confusion. "Come back to that later. So, you and your sister left. Where did you go?" he said.
"We were taken to a beautiful, secluded world. It was a chain of tropical islands in the middle of the ocean."
He widened his eyes but I didn't see; I was, once again, looking at the floor.
"When we arrived, it had been a few weeks since we left. It took a while to get there. We stayed in the Governor's mansion. It was stormy that night and I couldn't sleep. Before I knew it someone was pulling me into the Darkness. It was a member of the Organization, Saïx."
I looked up at him. He was listening very carefully and patiently waiting for me to continue.
"Before I could be taken away though, the two necklaces that my sister and I carried collided. They became a part of each other. The right side of mine was switched with the right side of hers. This represented our real hearts. Now I had half of her living inside of me, just like she had some of me living inside of her."
I looked up. His eyes were wide open as if he had just seen a ghost. "You. I know you. Your necklace—you're…Kairi?" he said, his voice changing to a questionable tone as he said her name. "Kairi?"
I nodded.
"I knew it! You ARE her sister. The necklace! Kairi has the same necklace as you. She never took it off. She—she never told me she had a sister—" he said.
"How do you know her?" I asked.
"I'll tell you in a minute. Keep telling me more!" he persisted.
"Okay—well, the thing is—she doesn't remember me," I said.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Naminé was told to wipe out every moment of me in all the memories of people. If anyone had me in their past, I was no longer there. She couldn't replace them because she was only six years old at the time and wasn't as gifted as she is now, but she could erase them."
"She took all the memories of you from Kairi, right?"
I nodded. "I went to live with the Organization. They became a family to me and I made friends. I slowly became a Nobody just like them as the years went by. I only recently became a FULL Nobody. All these years, I've been able to see Kairi in visions. In these visions, I can see, feel, think, hear, smell, taste, and know everything she can. To me, it's like I AM her."
"Because you are her, you live inside of her, right?" he said.
"You understand this better than anybody us who I've told this to before," I said. He smiled. "There is one other thing though, she can't see me," I said.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Kairi was born in the realm of light and was born of Light; remember, I was born of Darkness. She doesn't see the part of her heart that is me. I see her because I see light, she doesn't see Darkness. That is why she is so pure. I think that is one of the reasons that she was one of the Princesses of Heart."
"So she doesn't accept the Darkness at all even though she knows it's inside her?"
"That just shows how pure she is," I replied. "Now—will you please tell me who YOU are?" I asked.
"Wait. Why didn't you go and try to find Kairi if she was your sister? Wouldn't you want to tell her who you are?" he said.
"I—I wasn't allowed to. Superior forbid it," I replied.
"Why did the Organization kidnap you?" he asked.
"They are after hearts, as I'm sure you know. They needed the Keyblade to get themselves hearts."
"What does that have to do with you?"
"Kairi—if she were to have stayed the way she was and I would have stayed on the island, the Keyblade wouldn't have been needed."
"Why not?"
"The amount of Light in Kairi would have affected me. All the light of that island and her would have caused me to lose the Darkness that is myself. Together, she and I would have destroyed all the Darkness from reaching the island. If the Darkness couldn't get there, then the Keyblade wouldn't be needed, because the Darkness' power would have been lost. The Organization needed the Keyblade, so if they had let me stay on that island, their goal would be impossible."
"Oh…" he said.
"Now will you tell me who you are?" I asked.
"You wouldn't believe me if I did," he said.
"Oh really?" I answered.
"I'm surprised you don't know who I am by now." I tilted my head to the side. "If you can see Kairi's thoughts in visions, you should know who I am. Remember, I took this form to save her and my best friend. Does it ring a bell now?" he said.
I sat there for a moment, thinking. While I sat, puzzled, I tried to move my hand or arm or anything for that matter, but I still couldn't move. I thought about all the visions I had seen of Ansem through Kairi. Then—it hit me. "Riku…" I said quietly.
"Took you long enough," he said.
"I don't know why I didn't see it right away." I once again, tried to move. My fingers slowly closed and opened into a fist. I did the same to the other hand. "Maleficent told you that you could save Kairi if you got the Keyblade. While he went around sealing the keyholes to the worlds, you were strengthening your heart so you could beat him and gain the Keyblade."
"I ended up being beaten by Sora. I was scared—ashamed. I thought I couldn't save Kairi. Ansem then said that I just needed the right kind of power. He told me to give way to the darkness and I could save her. I did but he took over."
"How did you end up like this then?" I asked.
"When Sora chose to remember his old memories and forget about what he had seen at Castle Oblivion, it wasn't just enough for Naminé to put them back. He needed his other to take his place." He looked down at the ground.
I sat there for a minute tightening and loosening my fist over and over again. I then started moving. I could feel the rest of my body now. "It was you," I said quietly.
He looked up.
"You! You're the one who made it so Roxas went away!" I said harshly but quiet, still looking at the ground.
"Roxas left the Organization on his own. I had to take this form to beat him so I could save my friend," he said.
"What about my friend, huh?" I asked. He just sat there. After a moment he stood and summoned away the chair he had been sitting on.
I spoke again. "Roxas, my best friend is no longer here because of YOU!" I said in the same tone.
"It was to save my friend, ok? I had to!" he said.
I looked up. "So what? You think you can just go around ruining everybody's lives just to make yours better?" I made an effort to get up.
He didn't answer me.
"What? So you think you're the only people worth saving! You think you're the only one with friends!"
"Nobodies don't have friends!" he said.
I stood up all the way now. "You have no right to just go around OUR world and take away innocent people!" I yelled.
"Nobodies AREN'T people!" he yelled back.
"You still have no right!"
"I can do what I want!"
"How would you feel if it were backwards, huh? What if Roxas was the one needing his memories back? What if I just came to your island and just took Sora away, huh? I made it so he could never come back, is that what you would want!" I said.
He came up to me. He was a good foot and a half taller than me. Standing there with him up in my face made me feel as though it were Superior about to kick my butt instead of Riku.
"It's war," he said calmly.
"You're an outsider, Riku! You can't just go around messing up our lives! It's our lives and you're just going around thinking that you can just step all over us!"
"Nobodies don't have lives!"
"Stop telling me what we do and do not have, ok! I know that! I've known that for nine years!" I screamed so loud I though he would back off or close his eyes from the volume of my anger. But he just stood there, didn't even blink. I lowered my voice a little to a quiet yell. "You don't know anything about us—not like we do."
He pulled back a little bit and stood there stiff as a board.
I spoke again, now in an even quieter voice. "You humans are all the same. You have no idea how difficult our not-lives are. Think about it—no home, no family, no friends, no one. We aren't real."
I sat down on the ground, I was breaking down again. He sat down in front of me and waited for me to speak again.
"Think about it, the older members could have been married. They could have had wives and maybe even children. But now—" I paused and took a deep breath. "—if they did have kids, they're at least nine by now. That's a long time with no dad to raise them. Their wives had to move on, do you know what that must be like?" I paused again. I was gonna start crying soon; there was no doubt about it. "They had friends and family. But then if you think about it—all those people, it's not theirs anymore."
He looked at me with the most unexplainable look I had ever seen.
"It's not their memories that they can see and remember, it's their other's. It's not their name that makes up their new name; it's their other's. If they had a wife, she wasn't his, she was their other's. Same with the kids if they had any." I took a deep breath. "Their homes aren't theirs anymore, they never were. Us Nobodies are completely different people from the ones we remember being."
I completely lost it then. I was really crying. I was a very emotional person. Any sensitive subject broke me with tears. I calmly spoke as tears continued to slowly fall down my face. "We Nobodies don't have homes that we can go home to when there is no place left to go. We have no parents to raise us correctly or be there for us when we need someone. We have no older brother or sister to stand up for us when we're being picked on. We have no friends to tell our secrets to. Because—like you said, Riku—Nobodies aren't real people—and if we're not people, then we can't have anybody—we don't exist."
He got up and sat back down next to me on the ground. Unconsciously, I leaned onto his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders awkwardly. "I guess it's kinda weird for me to be comforting you, huh?" he said sort of chuckling.
"Why?" I spoke in the quietest voice. I even had difficult saying that because I was still hyperventilating from crying.
"I guess it wouldn't be so weird if I actually looked the same. I guess it's kinda weird with me looking this way." I chuckled a little too. "I'm sorry for all the things I said," he said quietly.
I picked my head up off his shoulder. "No—no I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gotten so mad at you," I said.
He looked at me as I stood up and turned to face him. "I—I just—" I stopped and took a deep sighing breath. "I just don't know what to do anymore. I'm disappearing slowly and I don't know how to handle it. My best friend is just trying to save me. I should accept the fact that he cares—but—I don't. I just—for some reason I don't wanna be saved. I wanna disappear. I guess I'm just one of those kinda people who don't question fate. What am I supposed to do?"
"You gotta understand that your friend has lost the only other people he could ever care for. He just wants to do everything he can to save you," he answered following me with his eyes as I paced the room.
"Do you know why I'm disappearing, Riku?" I asked. He shook his head slightly. "It's because I just recently became a true Nobody. In short words, the Darkness in her heart is me. Since I don't need a heart anymore, she can get rid of that half of her heart. It will be replaced with Light—the Light left in my heart. As I start to give her the Light in my heart and she gives me the Darkness in her heart, I slowly start to fade away. Since I'm already a Nobody getting a heart full of Darkness will be like becoming a Nobody all over again. By doing so, I'll go away."
He didn't say anything, just nodded.
"What should I do?" I asked once more.
"If you truly don't wanna be saved like he wants, you need to explain that to him," he said.
"I tried," I answered.
"Well—try again. More calmly this time. Explain to him why you just want fate to take its coarse."
"How am I supposed to do that?" I asked.
"Well just tell him, I'm sure—"
"No! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THAT? I'm trapped here and I can't teleport," I said.
"I'll let you go—if you tell me why you were in Hollow Bastion earlier," he said. "I thought you were forbidden to go to your home again.
"Axel and I had gotten in an argument about him saving me and I needed somewhere to go. One, Xemnas doesn't control me like he used to. And two, it's not my home anymore. I'm a Nobody now; I'm allowed to go here." I sat there waiting for him to say something.
"I saw you there and you were in the Organization uniform so I knocked you out—sorry," he said quietly. "I'm sorry that I criticized Nobodies so much. I never knew how bad it was for you guys."
"I don't want anyone to feel pity for us. I just want you all to know that you can't just go around thinking that we're a bad group, 'cause we're not. We are neither. We are only jealous of humans," I said quietly.
He didn't answer that but instead stood up and summoned a portal behind me. "In there is a path to your world, you should get going," he said summoning another portal and beginning to step into it.
"Wait!" I said. He turned around. "Will I see you again, Riku?" I asked.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"I sure hope so," I said quietly.
"Then we will. Destiny wants us to meet again before the final battle," he said before turning and disappearing into the portal, it closing behind him.
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Hope you all liked this one! Sorry that it took soooo long to get this out, guys. I'll try to work on chapter 17 and have it done by next Monday the 21st. That's next week ok? It should be kinda short, but my friends and I have been planning for weeks to go Homecoming Dance dress shopping so I don't know when I'll get it done. Thanks for reading! Love you all! R&R!
PS I'll be putting some more pics on my profile when I get chapter 17 out so look forward to those too.
