The voices above him had started to gain distinct qualities - two boys and two girls, all somewhat familiar - but Roxas couldn't quite understand what they were saying. His head hurt. His chest hurt. He rolled over slowly, with a groan, and opened his eyes to stare up at a familiar pink-and-orange sky beyond the limbs of the trees.

A head leaned into his view, with crinkled blond hair, and then another, with dark pink hair hanging around her face. "Roxas?" the girl said. "Are you okay?"

Kairi. That was her name. How had he forgotten? Roxas slowly sat up, rubbing at his head as he tried to place the rest of the faces around him. Hayner, Pence, and Olette. Right. He remembered them, in the data town, but these weren't the same people.

Somehow, he didn't feel any disappointment in that. He didn't feel much of anything about the idea at all. He dropped his hand away from his head and looked up at Kairi. "I don't know," he said. "Everything's fuzzy."

Her expression was still very concerned. "Can you stand?" she asked, reaching out a hand to help him up. Roxas took it, and found himself hauled to his feet with unexpected strength. He wobbled a little before catching his balance, not exactly helped by the way Hayner clapped him on the shoulder as soon as he was on his feet.

"In the flesh! Nice to finally meet you, man," Hayner said, and Roxas just kind of nodded absently. Right. They didn't know what it represented, that he was here, that he existed without Sora...

Kairi did. Kairi, Roxas thought, looked scared. "Is Sora..." Her question trailed off, but Roxas grasped at her meaning anyway.

His nod was firmer, this time. "He's gone," he answered, seeing Kairi flinch but unable to attach it to any kind of reaction. "Xigbar and Saix..." He pressed a hand to his chest, remembering the pain of the separation, the urgency of Sora's thoughts. Even if things were kind of disjointed in his head, Roxas knew how important it was. "Xigbar has a Keyblade now. He was the one who did it."

"What's going on?" Hayner asked, as Kairi nodded and closed her eyes, her face tilting towards the ground.

"Did something happen to Sora?" Olette added, right on the tail of her friend's question. Roxas guessed that no one had really explained to them what it meant, when a Nobody existed.

"He's lost his heart," Kairi answered quietly, and that put the other three to silence. She looked back up at Roxas. "We need to go back to Yen Sid's. Right now."

"But how are you going to get there?" Olette asked, looking between Kairi and Roxas. "I mean, it's not like either of you can just go to another world whenever you want, right? You need a ship, or one of those portal things..."

"I might be able to manage a dark corridor," Roxas said quietly. "But it's been a long time, and I've never been to the Tower myself before..." Sora's memories of it were fuzzy at best in his head, and unlike most of the others in the Organization, Roxas had never quite gotten the hang of directing a corridor to somewhere he'd only heard about.

Kairi looked surprised (they all looked surprised), but then shook her head. "Maybe as a last resort," she said.

"What about the train?" Pence said. "You know, the weird purple one?"

"Hey, yeah!" Hayner grinned. "That's how Sora left the first time we met - it's worth a try, right?"

"The ghost train," Roxas said, remembering. Why had it appeared in the data town in the first place? Something to wonder about later. "Let's go to the station."

"Right." Kairi seemed to draw herself up a bit, determination all over her face. She looked at Roxas then, as though to comfort him, and took his hand in hers. Roxas let her. "We'll make this better."

Roxas didn't know how to answer that. Being whole was pleasant, but he couldn't affect the world that way. It was that that made him not exist, more than anything about being a Nobody.

But the world needed Sora, not him. So he nodded and let Kairi tug him along towards the station anyway, the others following along behind them.

Roxas knew the town better than Kairi, almost better than the three friends who had lived their entire lives there - one of the first things the Organization had impressed on him during missions was don't be seen, and so he knew all the back corners and hiding place in the town, and even just how to not be notable in his surroundings. Getting pulled along by Kairi - who had no concerns for such things, and wouldn't let go of his hand, as though afraid he was going to disappear the same way Sora had - was almost a completely different experience.

There were a few places that had no hiding places, though, and the plaza in front of the train station was one of them. Roxas stopped long enough there to look up at the clock tower balcony, almost expecting to see... What? Not Axel, certainly.

Lea, Roxas reminded himself faintly as Kairi turned to look at where he was stopped. It's Lea now. He's whole. He had been there, sort of, because Sora had been there, but it was like knowing a fact someone had told him while he was half-asleep. It didn't fit into the world quite yet.

(He should have been happy. His best friend had finally gotten what he wanted after so long. But Roxas couldn't feel glad about it. Maybe it was because Axel had had to die for it to happen, and even if "Axel" and "Lea" weren't as different as he and Sora were, surely there had to be some difference.)

"Roxas? Are you okay?" That was Olette, leaning towards him with some concern and a hand in front of her mouth.

"I'm fine," he said. "Just... No, nevermind." How could he explain it? There was something important that had happened here, in a fuzzy gap in his memory. Unlike Sora's, Roxas' locked away memories had returned on their own; there must still have been pieces missing, ones that wouldn't return without Namine's gentle, sketching hands.

Maybe he could talk to Kairi about that, later.

"Then don't just stand there!" Kairi was impatient, now, a worried look on her face as she followed Roxas' glance up at the top of the clock tower.

"Right. Sorry."

They went inside, bypassing the ticket stands to odd looks from the people manning the counters, and - "Look, there it is!" Hayner said loudly, pointing unnecessarily at the single violet train car pulled up at the first set of tracks, the ones intended for train maintenance that didn't actually go anywhere, under normal circumstances.

The door of it slid open as they approached. The only other person in the train station, a young woman in a brown coat with a bag over her shoulder, didn't even glance in their direction. Roxas wondered absently if she could see the train at all.

"Someday," Hayner said, looking at the train with something like longing. "Someday I'm going to ride that thing as far as it'll go."

"Not without us, you aren't!" Olette protested, Pence echoing agreement. Kairi, about to step onto the train, turned and smiled at them. Roxas couldn't bring himself to look.

"Someday," she said to them, a promise in her voice, and Roxas shouldered past her into the train, taking a seat under one window. He was the outsider there, and weren't Keybearers supposed to protect the barriers between worlds? (Not that he had any room to talk about that, but he hadn't known anything but what Xemnas and the others in the Organization told him...)

His thoughts kept racing in that direction until the train started to move. Kairi stood waving at the window for a moment before coming over and sitting next to him. Roxas looked up when she took his hand in hers. "We'll work this out," she said brightly, and he could tell the good cheer in her voice was covering her real worry. "So cheer up."

Roxas couldn't.

"Good to have you back, kid."

Beneath his mask, Vanitas narrowed his eyes at Xigbar, not at all entertained by the man's antics. Silver hair seemed to be the only sign of the passage of time, and Vanitas couldn't be sure that it was due to age. Becoming his master's vessel had lightened Terra's hair from its hopelessly generic brown, after all, and though Xigbar wasn't a complete vessel the way Terra was, he was further along than any of the others.

As Braig, the man had gotten on Vanitas' nerves frequently. As Xigbar, it was no different. The masked boy slid out from under the arm that had been thrown over his shoulders. This didn't dissuade Xigbar's cheerful friendliness in the slightest.

"Geez, lighten up! Your face is going to get stuck like that someday, you know." Only the brief encounter with the fragment of his master earlier - Xemnas, the man was calling himself, the one who had Terra's body - kept Vanitas from striking out with Unversed or Keyblade. "Or maybe it already has?" Xigbar leaned in close, his one yellow eye peering into the black reflection of the mask as though he could see something.

Vanitas growled. "Shut up." Short and to the point. He could work with Xigbar if the man kept his mouth shut. "And don't touch me."

Xigbar at least stepped back, though his arms were held up and wide in a gesture of dismay. "Hmph, kids these days. You could at least pretend to be grateful to me for waking you up."

Why should he be grateful? It wasn't as though it had actually been the man's own idea. (And it had hurt, almost as much as getting split the first time, like a bone re-breaking along the same crack. A little pain escaped him then, but since this time, his master wasn't interested in the Unversed, Vanitas didn't pay attention to where it went.) Vanitas didn't express any of these thoughts, staying safely behind the mask that kept the world away from him.

Silence hung for a moment, before another voice interrupted - "Are you quite done?"

Vanitas turned his head towards the voice as Xigbar dropped his arms. Long blue hair and a scarred face... This must be Saïx, then. One of the younger and, apparently, less willing vessels. Like Xigbar, he was wearing that almost-familiar black coat, and had a second one hung over his arm, which he held out to Vanitas as he approached.

"Here." His voice was as close to emotionless as it was possible to get, Vanitas noted as he took the held-out coat and held it up. It wasn't brand new, but a little worn at the cuffs and lower hem.

It was the first time he'd actually been given clothes by his master, even by proxy, since the split. Always before, the suit of wrapping Darkness had been adequate. Vanitas wasn't sure what it said that he was now being given the uniform of his master's vessels, but he knew better than to complain.

He shrugged it on, the long bottom coming to rest around his ankles as he zipped it up. The weight on his shoulders was a novel sensation, at least, though as in the whole of this castle outside of normal existence, there was something nostalgic about it. The magic of the coat gave him the rest of the uniform, high black boots and flexible leather gloves.

"Gonna take that helmet off?" Xigbar asked him, clearly prodding for a reaction. Vanitas considered a moment, then pulled the hood up before dismissing the helmet and what was left of his suit. "Oh, come on," Xigbar started to complain, but was cut off by Saïx clearing his throat.

It was small satisfaction, but it was potent, given how many irritations Xigbar had caused Vanitas to release into the world. The depths of the hood weren't quite as good as hiding him as the mask, but they would do well enough.

"Now, then," Saïx began, once Vanitas had fully settled into the coat. "You've been given a new mission." Vanitas tensed, immediately all-too-aware of the failure of his last mission, the reason he had existed in the first place. But as Saix continued to speak, that tension bled off into the darkness between worlds, and a kind of confidence took its place.

It was a simple mission, really, and straightforward after the experience he had with Eraqus' apprentices. Vanitas allowed himself a small smirk, under the folds of his hood. Perhaps redeeming himself to his master wouldn't be so difficult after all.

All Yen Sid was willing to say was that something had happened, and they needed to remain at the Tower until Kairi returned. Lea paced, with agitation too new to quash down, around the room off to the side of the wizard's study. Riku - leaning against the wall where he could look out the window at the tracks that had appeared when Yen Sid sent off his magical train to fetch Kairi - didn't seem much less inclined to take off and investigate.

Things were probably fine, Lea tried to remind himself, as he crossed in front of Riku again. He was just reacting too strongly to the anxiety after not feeling anything for years; it had happened with several other emotions in the last few days. But it was small comfort when Riku was just as obviously worried.

"Train's here," the teenager said, quite suddenly, and Lea immediately sprinted across the room to all but hang his head out the window for a better look. Sure enough, the purple train was just pulling to a stop at the edge of the grass in front of the tower. Riku, coming to the window at a more sedate pace, elbowed him in the ribs until he scooted over enough that they could both see.

Kairi was the first to step out of the train, obvious by her hair color. She got a few steps out and then turned to stop and look back at the train, apparently awaiting for someone else, who dragged his feet a bit more exiting the train car.

Lea saw the blond hair and white jacket, and felt that his heart would yank itself out of his chest if he looked much longer. He turned away from the window, a hand on his chest as he tried to calm his breathing.

Roxas. There was no way that Lea could have not recognized him, even if he was as identical to Ventus as Mickey had said. (There was a vague, fuzzy memory there, as there always was, one of a deep nostalgia that predated Roxas' very existence.) He knew Roxas, as nobody else did. They were best friends, regardless of the fact that Nobodies shouldn't have been able to form friendships.

All of the emotions of those times, the things that he had almost-felt and should have felt, crashed over him like a waterfall. Lea leaned against the wall, vaguely nodding to Riku's "Are you okay?" and trying not to sag onto the floor. He was aware of Riku stepping out into the main room - giving him some privacy Lea was certainly glad of - at about the same time the tears started to fall.

Roxas was here. That couldn't mean anything good for Sora, he knew with the part of his brain that wasn't too wrapped up in feeling, but Lea couldn't care for the moment. He slid down and sat until he could breathe regularly and the tears were under control. He was supposed to be the grown-up, he couldn't look like a mess in front of the kids.

He cracked the door open and listened to the explanations that were already happening in Yen Sid's study; Roxas describing his disjointed memories of what had happened to Sora, Kairi talking about finding him in the front of the Twilight Town mansion. Just like the last time, Lea thought to himself. At least Roxas seemed way less out of it than he had been immediately after being "born." His expression was a little blank, but his eyes looked alert, as much as Lea could see through the crack in the door without giving himself away before he was ready.

The discussion slowed - Kairi started glancing around to the sides. Lea realized that she was probably looking for him, and figured that was as much a cue to make his entrance as anything. "Looking for me?" he said, swinging the door open with what he hoped was a confident grin on his face.

Kairi looked like she was thinking about hitting him, which was roughly the effect he'd intended (cheering her up to get her mind off Sora was the least he could do). Roxas didn't look like he was thinking at all, his eyes briefly going wide and his posture going still. He reached up a hand towards his chest, as though in pain.

"Axel?" His voice seemed uncertain.

"It's Lea, now," Lea corrected, stepping around Yen Sid's desk and past Riku to swing an arm over Roxas' shoulder. The body under the jacket was firm and real, easing a worry Lea hadn't even realized he had, that his hand would go right through Roxas if he tried to touch the boy. "But just this once, I'll let it slide."

"I..." Roxas looked up at him and blinked, before sliding out from under Lea's arm in order to face him in front of the desk. He took a step back, and Lea felt like something in his heart could crunch. Maybe Roxas hadn't entirely forgiven him, for the things that had caused him to leave the Organization in the first place. Lea had thought he had, in that half-dream encounter where they'd said goodbye, but he of all people knew that death could erase a lot of hurts that the living wouldn't forgive.

"I should be happy, right?" Roxas' voice was quiet, and the hand in front of his chest opened slightly before closing tightly into a fist. His eyes were the same blue as Sora's and they had the same look of questioning, begging answers that Lea had seen so many times before. "You're here. So why do I just feel... blank?"

The words snapped like a rubber band in Lea's head, with a sickening familiarity. He'd said almost the same thing, once, to a Saïx who wasn't yet called Saïx, because neither of them had understood what had happened to them. Why do I feel so empty?

Xemnas had found them, and Xemnas had told them. He'd told Roxas, too, but Roxas never seemed to absorb it in the same way that the rest of the Organization did. Lea had always thought that it was because Roxas didn't have any memories, so he couldn't understand the difference between feeling and not feeling.

But, it seemed, that hadn't been the case at all. And compared to this, Lea would have preferred, infinitely, that Roxas hadn't forgiven him, that his best friend was still angry at him.

Roxas was still looking at him, blankly, as though Lea had the answer. Behind him, Kairi seemed to have come to the same realization Lea had, one hand half-over her mouth in shock and horror. The mouse king was on that side, too, his eyes wide for a moment before he closed them, his ears drooping downwards.

But it was nothing like how Lea felt, because he was the only one in the room who knew, really knew, the gaping emptiness that the world held for Roxas right now. This time, he didn't bother trying to stop the tears once they started, or even wipe them away.

That was what he got, he supposed, for thinking that for once, he'd gotten lucky.