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CHAPTER 7:
MEDLEY OF TOMORROW
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Author's Notes: The compositions for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'U-DO ~ Febronia,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Two Movie Scene Soundtrack, Disc Two; 'Maybe Tomorrow ~ Ending Medley,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Original Sound Best Tracks, Disc Two; 'Faraway Promise,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack; and lastly 'Shion ~Emotion~,' from the XENOSAGA Episode One Original Soundtrack, Disc Two. All of these MP3s can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
Sora gazed at the spot where Riku had faded and vanished, unable to feel any relief at the black beams spreading out all over the ruined landscape.
He should have been the one to die and vanish.
He shouldn't have been restored in the first place.
Sora wished that he could believe that Namine was close enough to Riku now that she'd be able to use the power of spectral on him herself if she could learn to wield a Keyblade like Roxas had been able to, but Sora trusted Riku's judgment. Riku would have brought up Namine, or not abused the power of waking, if there was another way for him to be freed from The Final World other than Kairi and Sora working together.
And that meant Sora needed to spend a lot of time with Kairi for the next few weeks.
"Given the amount of hearts Riku needed to restore, it could take a while until any of your people regain their bodies," Mickey was informing Elsa, but Sora barely heard it. Mickey's words weren't infinitely distant or further far away than that, they weren't even there or not there.
They were just something that he was registering, neither of infinite zero presence nor of a negation of infinite zero absence.
"Additionally," Mickey was continuing. "The two times that Sora used the power of waking to revive the dead, he altered time as well as space. So you can take plenty of time to think of what you need to say to your people in this hour of need. I don't know how this is going to work; I wasn't able to figure out this process when Sora used it on everyone but Kairi, then Kairi herself."
Sora heard Anna inhale behind him, and then her hand was on his back once more, rubbing it again, and the worst part was that it was soothing, and he felt himself relax a small amount into her strokes once again.
He wanted to take a step forward and away, but that would mean tattering another connection.
He was too much of a delusional baby to understand connections, but that didn't mean that it was okay to damage them even more.
Perhaps the sole thing that Sora could still believe that he was capable of accomplishing was to shred people's heart and connections.
He sure as heck couldn't love anyone with them.
If he learned from Kairi, he'd abandon and betray her and Donald and Goofy once more. If he didn't learn from Kairi and abandon and betray Donald and Goofy in the process, he'd abandon and betray Riku once. If Kairi accepted his heart again, he'd abandon and betray Anna once more, and he'd already been doing so since the day he'd met Anna. If he did as Kairi wanted him to and accepted Anna's heart, he'd abandon and betray Kairi once more, and he'd already been doing so since the instant he'd met Kairi.
There was no answer.
No paths lay closed or open before him, his own or the worlds' or the World's, and not life, not death; not breathing, not sacrificing his life; not pumping blood, not suicide; not electrical impulses, not convincing Kairi or Riku or Anna or Donald or Goofy or all five of them to murder him with their own hand or hands in as savage and brutal and excruciating and lingering a fashion as possible; not his ethereal self, not being uncreated from all existence, life or afterlife, with all memories he'd been here in reality and the pain of their lack obliterated, would create the most minuscule particle of an open road to a solution.
All that his existence was not what was not, for never hadn't been, and for never wouldn't be, was a Station of Awakening that hadn't not been, wasn't not, and never wouldn't be a heart of black glass sand so shot through with unendingly labyrinthine and endlessly expanding glass crystalline fractures that asphyxiated anyone and anything and everyone and everything around him in a cascading insane unrestrained wild chaotic cacophony of eternally recurring shatterpoints and breaking singularities.
He wasn't a piece of something much greater.
He was the hand and the jackhammer and the nail and the breaking point that shattered anyone and anything and everyone and everything outside himself.
"What then?" Donald questioned. He looked up at Sora. "Should we take Radical Dreamers, Unstolen Jewel to Toy Box, or would you prefer to practice with Kairi for a few days?"
Sora looked at Mickey and Elsa. "What do you two believe that I should do?"
Mickey opened his mouth, but Elsa's eyes widened slightly and filled with a mixture of understanding, empathy, sympathy, and anguish. She held up a hand and Mickey closed his mouth.
"First and foremost, you need to refuse to let the power of your connections wield you as I let my ice magic wield me," Anna inhaled again as she and Sora saw the truth of Elsa's words at the same time, and her circular strokes became firmer and more reassuring, and Sora hated himself for his unwillingness to keep himself from feeling even more soothed by them.
Make that unendingly inverted and endlessly extending and going through switchbacks glass crystalline fractures.
"You know what that will do to the people around you."
So he had been seeking a way out when it was blindingly scouring white obvious that there was none.
So be it, then.
There was no point not committing suicide or not convincing someone he loved to murder him, because he'd abandon and betray one or more hearts and people no matter what he did.
Goofy needed to do it. He had less issues with Sora than Donald, so it would hurt Sora more if Goofy did it.
Furthermore, Sora couldn't ask Goofy to do it a specific way, savagely and brutally and excruciatingly and lingeringly or not. He didn't have the most microscopically infinitesimal vacuum of a point of an outline of a flicker of a silhouette of a ghost of a phantom of a shade of a shadow amount of justification to even ask Goofy to murder him a particular way, and every instant he remained alive was another instant he asphyxiated Kairi and his friends and everyone and anyone and everything and anything else.
He'd prefer to wait until he investigated if it was possible to be eradicated from reality wholly, as Riku had told Sora Riku Replica had been afraid would happen to him if he died, so Sora could ensure Goofy unmade Sora from existence fully when Goofy murdered him, but that would take instants Sora couldn't afford.
He'd look into it himself, and find a way to commit a second suicide and wipe himself from all reality completely, if Kingdom Hearts totally idiotically judged him worthy of an afterlife and didn't uncreate him from existence itself.
He wished with all his black glass sand Station of Awakening that he could find a way obliterate his memories and the pain of their lacuna from reality, too, before or after Goofy murdered him, but he couldn't do that because then no one would remember the happiness they'd for a fully unknown reason had obtained when they were around him.
"Not if Donald or Goofy puts an end to me like you wanted me to do to you," Sora responded.
Anna's hand went slack on his back, Goofy's eyes filled with the closest emotions to true anger Sora had seen in them since Goofy had first fallen on his back in Traverse Town, and Donald's beak separated so widely it looked as though he had a second neck.
Sora winced, but he finished.
"And not if Kingdom Hearts wipes me out from an afterlife, or I unmake myself from creation on my own if I arrive in an afterlife."
Now Elsa's eyes flew wide in horror and her jaw dropped in similar horror, but Sora didn't understand why.
"Goodness gracious," Anna sighed while rubbing Sora's back even more firmly and soothingly, though her voice was cracking and breaking and Sora knew that she was crying now, "Elsa, come here. Sora, I don't mean anything romantic with any of this, so come here, too. Kristoff, do you need to come here as well?"
Kristoff grimaced, but he gave Anna an assuring smile. "I'll make it. And Sven will get cranky if he comes to and I'm otherwise occupied."
"That's good to know," Anna replied.
"Elsa, Sora, come on. I've got you. It's okay. I've got you."
Elsa gave a tired, but extremely grateful, smile and walked in Anna's direction, and Sora saw Anna's right arm and hand open in Elsa's direction.
That meant that Anna wanted to hold him too.
Sora didn't deserve it. He'd for never deserve anything for as long as he existed in creation, but if he refused to let her hold him he'd hurt her even more.
So he let himself sag
his legs and body weren't there entirely and he was nothing but boneless complete and total exhaustion and broken tears that he should no longer, should never for, have possessed the capacity to shed; and he knew for a fact that he would have fallen if Anna's other arm hadn't stopped rubbing his back, wrapped around it, and turned him in her direction before pulling his head to rest on her shoulder
his eyes were closed almost before he realized that they were.
He felt Anna's weight shift a number of times, and knew Elsa's head was resting on Anna's other shoulder with Anna's other arm around her.
Sora heard Anna's voice begin to sing in a voice that was no longer broken and cracked and that he couldn't tell held tears, but that was quiet, gentle, calming, soothing voice. And she began to rock back and forth from side to side, rocking their heads and bodies along with her.
.
Mirror glass shines our hearts
Radiating millions of beams of light
Fractals soaring and cascading
Their stardust warmer than an ember
.
Sora couldn't tell if he hadn't just dropped off to sleep then and there because Anna's lullaby was exhausting him too much for even that, or if he was being selfish yet still further and wanted to stay awake to hear Anna's song.
Suddenly, however, he was too weary to even care about that, or the tears that were now flooding the backs of his eyelids unrestrainedly.
.
Within my love and our serenity
Sleep safe and sound upon the shimmering ocean
Let sand and grass reflect our dreams
Let Sun and Moon allow you to remember
.
He was running down the beach of the Destiny Islands play island, the breeze blowing through his hair and the surf spraying on his skin, Kairi and Riku at his side, the three of them laughing under the cerulean sky.
Without intending to, though the flood of tears didn't lessen, Sora found himself smiling tiredly.
.
Our single wings become two when our hands touch and clasp
Our hearts are joined when our lungs meet and our breaths in twine gasp
Together we can alight from our house and the lawn
And glide home through illumination from the dusk 'til the dawn
.
That was right.
A light still burned bright in the deepest darkness.
No less exhausted and broken but lulled and, surprisingly, content, Sora gave Donald and Goofy a rapid series of hand signals with his right hand that they'd developed to coordinate in combat better, telling them that he wouldn't let the Keyblade wield him and that he'd continue to wield the Keyblade.
.
So let your eyes drift closed and slumber
For our paned heartbeats glimmer without number
Through banks of snow and winter and summer and trees
Glass pulses silver, recalls in my arms as you please
.
Maybe Anna was right.
Maybe he wasn't a shatterpoint who broke hearts apart.
Maybe he was the thread that connected them.
Each time he'd been on the verge of giving up before, he'd found a way to persevere and surmount the hardships Kairi and his friends and he had been faced with.
Was there really any reason this time was different, other than the amount of hurt that they needed to take away and the amount of hardship that they needed to overcome?
For the first time, Sora was aware that he ached everywhere, because the empty emptiness was fully gone once again, and he felt lighter.
.
Not space's rippling currents
Nor time's wavering tides
Can douse the warmth our veins of glass strides
And the close embrace of a dream
.
Sora gave Donald and Goofy another quick series of hand signals with his right hand, telling them what the best idea he could think of now for hurting Kairi and Riku and Anna and Elsa the least when he woke up was.
They'd take Radical Dreamers, Unstolen Jewel to Toy Box first, because none of them would want him to value them over people in general. He believed that Riku should be left to investigate the realm past The Final World since he was already in The Final World and Sora knew that someone who had vanished could enter the realm beyond it. He felt that Kairi ought to go to Olympus with the other guardians, though he agreed that Roxas, Xion, and Lea should distance themselves from Ven and Namine and he felt that they should do as Kairi believed and research the realm past The Final World. If Anna was willing to come with Donald and Goofy and Sora, she could do so, at least for now, regardless of Donald's feelings about it, because Kairi would feel better if he at least formed a stronger friendship with Anna. He believed that Elsa, Larsa, and Ivalice Zodiac were matters best left to Mickey for the time being. Lastly, he'd start training with Kairi after they were done investigating Toy Box.
Donald didn't say anything or make a sound, but Sora knew that he'd acquiesced.
Sora let himself relax further into Anna's shoulder and felt the blackness of sleep reach out and surround him.
.
Mirror glass shines our hearts
Radiating millions of ray arrows bright
Kaleidoscopes brilliant, echoing, soaring, and cascading
Welcoming star flares warmer than a beam
.
Blessed dark sleep enfolded him.
Anna sighed and let her own eyes slide closed as Elsa's breathing evened out shortly after Sora's, tears spilling out from under her eyelids and streaking down her face.
Carefully, she lowered herself to her knees and placed Elsa, then Sora, on the ground.
She couldn't do it.
First Elsa, then Sora, had stopped sagging as exhaustedly against her before she'd finished 'Mirror Glass Shines Our Hearts,' so Anna knew, to relief so powerful it left her own legs weak and caused her difficulty breathing, that she'd succeeded in raising their spirits, if just a small amount.
But even if she hadn't, feeling Elsa and Sora resting against her, trusting her to love them and to keep them safe, had caused all of her will to seek Kingdom Hearts and the Kye-Blade to drain out of her.
Even if she didn't lie to Elsa or Sora or Kristoff directly, a lie of omission was still a lie.
No matter how much she wanted to take away their pain as quickly and effectively as she could, if she sought Kingdom Hearts and the Kye-Blade, she would discount their feelings and abandon them and betray them.
To say nothing of the rest of Elsa's and Sora's and Kristoff's loved ones and friends, Elsa's and her people, and countless other people.
Elsa hadn't given up because Anna loved her.
So long as Elsa and Sora and Kristoff and Olaf and Sven and Marshmallow loved Anna, she could keep going herself.
You're still a naïve little girl chasing rainbows and butterflies. What will you do when they, and you, 'can't just cut their and your strings?'
What will you do when Elsa's and Sora's strings force them to turn on each other and Kristoff and you as Elsa's magic forced her to turn on you around a year ago?
What will you do when Elsa runs away again?
What will you do when Kairi refuses to return to Sora?
What will you do when Sora's crazy eternal darkness everywhere becomes worse?
Anna refused to think about the answers to those questions.
The past was history, the future was tomorrow, today was a gift.
That was why it was called the present.
Anna took a deep breath, stood up, and turned to Mickey. She didn't trust herself not to show evidence of how upset she was with Donald and Goofy for how they'd treated Sora, so she avoided looking at them.
"Do you have any idea how the Foretellers want to hurt Elsa?" she asked the humanoid mouse.
"She declared war on them," Mickey replied.
Anna winced.
She should have known.
If the Foretellers had infuriated her enough to cause her to believe that she wouldn't be betraying Elsa and Sora and Kristoff by seeking the Kye-Blade or Kingdom Hearts, Elsa would almost certainly have been willing to do something stupid herself and much more direct.
Anna forced a smile that she by no means truly felt, even though she was feeling a slight bit better now.
"It can't be that bad," Anna assured the humanoid mouse. "I'm sure the seven or eight of them are formidable adversaries for Arendelle's military forces even though Arendelle hugely outnumbers them, but that doesn't constitute a real war."
"Do you remember the Heartless who attacked Arendelle last year?" Mickey asked back.
"I don't need to 'remember' them," Anna responded. "There's still a large number of them around. Elsa had to rearrange Arendelle's knights and form a number of specialized battalions to patrol the countryside and contain them, and we still haven't fully driven them off."
Then Anna thinned her lips together.
"Lauriam and Elrena talked about the Foretellers summoning the Demon Tide," she said. "Is the problem that the Foretellers are capable of combining the Heartless into a military force of their own?"
"I'm afraid so," Mickey confirmed. "The Heartless, another type of entity Sora told me that he also ran into here, named Nobodies, and maybe far less dangerous kinds of the entity that Kairi formed." Anna forced herself not to wince. "According to Luxu, the Foreteller who told Kairi and Sora what Yozora wants them to do, those entities can form naturally and are a kind of Dream Eater, not a Heartless. The Foretellers might be capable of directing them as soldiers, too, as well as other predator Dream Eaters known as Nightmares."
"I'll talk to Elsa," Anna reassured Mickey. "I doubt she'll listen to me about this, but maybe I can at least convince her to launch a limited war, not a full-scale one."
"My people and I,"
Mickey was a ruler himself?
She should have picked up on that.
She wasn't a naive little girl with her head stuck in the clouds anymore?
Yeah, right.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
Anna pushed it away.
"And the people of a large number of other worlds, will be grateful for that."
"Then Anna s–"
"Donald!" Mickey snapped firmly.
Donald closed his beak and nodded officially.
Anna needed to figure out what that exchange had been about without anyone telling her.
Feel don't conceal
The answer wasn't difficult to see, and Anna pushed down on the conflagration of cacophonous emotions that erupted inside her and swallowed her whole being.
Elsa would have Marshmallow back, and there was less of a chance of Sora being used against them if she wasn't near Elsa. Kristoff would have Sven back, and Kristoff was taking things a lot better than Elsa and Sora. And both of them would have Olaf back.
Anna wouldn't be abandoning or betraying or leaving or deserting Elsa if she went with Sora.
Right?
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
Anna took a deep breath, and then another, and then another and another until she could trust herself to speak with confidence that she didn't feel in any way whatsoever.
She wasn't actually eager at the concept of spending a lot of time with Sora.
She wasn't.
"So long as Marshmallow, Olaf, and Sven are up to looking after Elsa and Kristoff, I'll come," Anna agreed.
"But, since I do have an amount of political power myself, I'd like to attempt to serve as an ambassador between Arendelle and…" she trailed off.
"The Disney Kingdom," Mickey supplied. "I'm the King, and my wife, Minnie, is the Queen. We rule jointly, sharing power equally, and neither of us are consorts."
"The Disney Kingdom," Anna repeated, nodding, "And endeavor to work with you to convince Elsa to form a one-sided truce on hers and Arendelle's ends."
"That's a good idea," Mi–
Should she think of him as, 'Your Majesty?'
Sora would probably prefer that she thought of him as Mickey, and Mickey didn't strike her as the kind of person who cared about formalities or titles.
–ckey nodded in acknowledgment, acceptance, and a reassuring approval of his own.
Anna wasn't sure if Mickey's approval meant anything to her. He wasn't treating her as though she was getting in the way of the monarchical process like her parents had, but he wasn't as open to other people's emotions and thoughts as Sora was. She couldn't tell if he understood enough about how whimsical she was to be in a position to praise her.
Anna knew that it wasn't her place to pry, but she ho–
Trusted and believed
–That if she was out of line by asking this, Donald or Goofy would tell her so so she'd know to drop the topic.
"If it's okay to question," Anna spoke, "What did Sora do for Kairi and Riku and Donald and Goofy before that trapped him in this 'Final World?'"
"Around a year and a month ago, one of the Demon Tides Kairi created, and a Heartless known as a Lich," Mickey answered, "Took the hearts of everyone traveling with Sora but Kairi's and Sora's himself, and killed all of us but the two of them in the process."
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
Anna suppressed the urge to clench a hand into a fist.
She should have been able to put those pieces together herself.
"To undo this," Mickey was continuing, "Sora used a Keyblade ability that he'd recently learned, named the power of waking, to restore our hearts and reverse space time, returning us to life. It damaged the memories all of us had of what happened save for Sora's and Kairi's, though over time we regained most or all of our memories of our initial defeat.
"But this broke the laws of nature, and that comes with a cost.
"During the final battle of our last journey, Kairi's father, not knowing that she was his daughter, killed her, as well."
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
Would she abandon and betray Elsa and Sora and Kristoff if she sought Kingdom Hearts and the Kye-Blade?
Because there was no question that she would be abandoning and betraying them if she didn't, and there was no question that she already had.
It was Kairi's father who had murdered her with his own hands?
She should have asked Sora to wait until she was sure Elsa was better after she'd reached Elsa, and then left with him.
She pushed it away.
Both options betrayed Elsa and Sora and Kristoff and their feelings and thoughts and dreams and memories.
"So Sora used the power of waking one more time and restored Kairi, and the laws of nature caused him to die"
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
"I can't!"
can'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan't
Anna pushed the shrieking screaming wild giddy hysteria spiraling and twisting and whirling and tumbling end over end up inside of her to the side with all her might.
This. Was. Not. The. Time!
And Kingdom Hearts and the Kye-Blade were. Not. Options!
If she sought them, she'd betray Elsa and Sora and Kristoff and their feelings.
That was what was simple.
And complex.
And final.
"and vanish.
"We spent the next around a year and a month looking for a way to restore Sora. We couldn't find any leads for around a year, even though Kairi let herself be put to sleep for most of that time so her memories of Sora could be examined for clues to his whereabouts."
And Kairi believed Anna could take care of Sora better than she could?
When Anna had turned her back on him, stayed behind, and left him to die?
"However, my former Keyblade Master, Yen Sid, realized that we were overlooking searching dreams for clues. So he and a friend of ours, a Fairy Godmother of one of the previous Seven Hearts, sent her to us, and with Riku's and her assistance, we looked through Kairi's dreams while she was sleeping and, because she'd been to The Final World with Sora after he revived her, we discovered that Sora was in The Final World.
"That was one of the first places we'd looked for him, but we hadn't found him because, for reasons we haven't been able to uncover, he was in a Sleeping World version of it within The Final World, and not the genuine Final World. Sleeping Worlds are worlds trapped between the realm of light and the realm of darkness, locked in an unending dream.
"This wasn't the end of it, though. We still didn't know how to get there ourselves, or revive Sora from there.
"But Yen Sid and the Fairy Godmother had sensed that there were two other keys, who were people, tied to Sora's dreams. So we woke Kairi up and Riku, Kairi, Donald, Goofy, Sora's other friends, and I went on a journey to learn which two of us were those people or who one or both of those people were if they weren't among us, hoping that these people would provide us with the means of restoring Sora.
"When we did, Kairi asked Riku to teach her to become a harmless Dream Eater known as a Spirit, as he had once become to protect Sora, when they traveled through other Sleeping Worlds before they set out to defeat Kairi's father. Kairi believed that this would speed up how quickly they could discover who else was tied to Sora's dreams. Riku had no means of teaching this to her, though, since she needed direct access to Sora's dreams to become one. But Kairi was determined to do this, and one of Sora's other friends, Ven, is friends with a Dream Eater with a lot of experience with dreams, named Chirithy, so the two of them figured out that Kairi could still become a Spirit if she gave up her human form without losing her heart in the process.
"So she convinced another of Sora's friends, Roxas, to send her heart into the Keyblade Armor of still one more of Sora's friends, Aqua."
Anna could take care of Sora better than Kairi.
Sure.
"That turned out to be an enormous mistake. Dream Eaters aren't supposed to dwell outside of dreams, so Kairi spent the next few weeks until she learned how to utilize the power of spectral suspended in continually recycling dreams of her most cherished memories with Sora, and nightmares of the worst suffering Sora had been through.
"We attempted to convince Kairi to let Roxas return her to her body, but she refused to stop living as a Dream Eater until Sora was alive once again."
If any doubt had remained that Kairi truly did love Sora after hearing that Kairi had put herself to sleep for around a year for his sake, this eradicated it.
Anna wasn't certain that she could trust Riku or Donald or Goofy to take care of Sora, but it was unarguable that she could trust Kairi to.
She had to return Kairi to Sora, at any cost save abandoning and betraying Elsa's and Sora's and Kristoff and their feelings.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
"We went through a lot on the worlds we traveled through during the following weeks, and met the rest of the Foretellers save Yozora and Luxu for the first time – we'd had dealings with Luxu before under two different assumed identities. We assumed that they were attempting to keep us from reviving Sora because they believed he'd be a major threat to them and their goals, but it's clear now that they just wanted us to know that the realm of light was still in danger so that when Sora returned, Kairi and Sora would be in even worse straits than we already were.
"From things the Foretellers said and Chirithy was aware about, we linked together a small but significant picture regarding Yozora, Luxu, and the Foretellers.
"In large part due to Kairi, and to a lesser degree, Riku, we eventually learned that one of the other keys was Roxas, and the third was an old enemy of ours, named Luxord, who has a connection to Sora's friend, Ven, that I'll explain another time.
"With Kairi's, and to a lesser extent, Roxas' and Riku's, aid, we researched the nature of the Sleeping Worlds enough to learn about the power of spectral, though not what it was; to learn about Luxord's connection to Ven; and to find Luxord himself.
"When we did, we told Luxord about this connection and convinced him to stop being our enemy. He told us that he'd already sensed the strain Sora was under before he'd revived Kairi and, as a means of thanks for Sora connecting with Luxord even when they'd been enemies, he had given him a talisman that would protect him if he misused the power of waking another time.
"We're still not sure why he knew how to do this, and had the capacity to, but I assume it's related to the connection he has with Ven and Ven's connection to Chirithy.
"With Luxord's help, we were able to research the Sleeping Worlds to discover what the power of spectral was.
"It enables its wielder to give hearts that have lost their bodies physical form as real people, so long as the hearts themselves are intact; and so long as the wielder's feelings for the heart, and dream of giving the person physical form, are strong enough.
"We still had no idea how to reach the Sleeping The Final World, but Riku, Kairi, Roxas, and Luxord chased their dreams enough to learn that the power of spectral could lock onto Luxord's talisman from a different, real, world.
"So, shortly before Sora came here, Kairi returned to her human form, we went back to Sora's home, and she harnessed the power of spectral to revive Sora."
"How much of what Kairi did for Sora when he was gone, and how much of what she accomplished to love him, does Sora know?" Anna asked.
"Just that Kairi was the one to call to the power of spectral to revive him," Mickey answered.
Anna sighed in relief.
The less Sora knew about what Kairi had done for him at this time, the better.
Anna wasn't sure that Sora would approve of what Anna needed to do now, but it wouldn't betray Sora's feelings, so she could do it.
Assuming it wasn't too late and Kairi hadn't already left on her own journey.
"You kind of set off an eternal winter… everywhere. Well, it's okay. You can just unfreeze it."
"I can't!"
Anna pushed the memories and feelings and thoughts away far enough that she was reasonably sure that they wouldn't come back this time.
"I'll follow Kairi and talk to her," Anna said. "I'll remind her of what she has accomplished for Sora, and see if I can convince her not to leave Sora that way.
"Or do you believe that she's already departed?"
"Given the rate at which we usually move, probably not until tomorrow morning," Mickey answered, and Anna's knees weakened from how measureless her relief was. "She should still be on Destiny Islands, and you'll have plenty of time to get through to her."
"Then I'll do that."
Anna took a step forward–
An ebony ray struck the light brown dirt under her foot, and Anna jerked it back, and then staggered back as the ebony flared into a human form and then faded to reveal an armored castle guard in his or her armor.
Anna almost refused to stabilize her steps and keep from falling onto her back, and tears pushed into the fronts of her eyes and fell down her cheeks.
Riku's power of waking was nearly done restoring the hearts of Elsa's and her people.
She couldn't talk to Kairi now, or she'd be abandoning them.
By the time Elsa and she had calmed their subjects down from the fear and unease they'd no doubt go through when they discovered that Arendelle had been leveled, Kairi would be gone, and it would be too late.
She could still talk to Kairi as soon as Sora started training under her, but Sora would still go through one or more days of torment with his connection with her terribly severed.
Anna had still been a hopelessly optimistic and idealistic lunatic.
"Yo–"
Anna pushed the memory away, but the tears wouldn't stop coming.
"You caught Hans' sword, didn't you?" Kristoff reminded her with a reassuring smile, and Anna forced herself to smile back at him gratefully. "If you can catch a sword, you can catch Kairi's guilt and Sora's tears. This is just a delay, like getting blasted by Elsa delayed you ending the crazy winter. You reached Elsa and you stopped the winter.
"You can reach Kairi and protect Sora. I grew up like you did, remember. I know what kind of person you truly are now.
"I believe in you."
"Thanks," Anna replied, forcing another smile back. She turned to wake up Elsa so Elsa could serve her people.
"If anyone can help her, it's you."
If that was true, why had she let Sora lose Kairi to death at her father's hands, and then die himself, after protecting and reaching Elsa?
Kairi finished relating everything that had happened but what Xion might be doing to Ven, Roxas, and Namine, and what she might do to Sora and Kairi herself if she returned to Sora's heart a second time.
Maybe she should have told them that, as well, while they were all here with Xion and had a better chance of convincing her not to do something foolish if she took those revelations too hard, or, failing that, restrain her until someone could get through to her.
If Xion didn't find out now, and what Luxu had revealed about Xion was true, Kairi knew that the Foretellers would ensure that Xion learned all of this later in one of the worst possible ways at one of the worst possible times.
But Kairi refused to say it.
Leaving Sora had been too much.
She'd look at her darkness, accept it, and wield it, but she was not going to hurt someone else who she loved once more.
Maybe she was hurting Xion this way anyway, but she was Xehanort's daughter, wasn't she? Hurting people if it helped them in the end was how she lived, wasn't it?
Lea had a black scowl on his face, and Roxas was holding one of Lea's hands, Xion was holding the other, all three of them giving and receiving comfort and support to and from each other. Xion, however, was looking at Kairi with empathy, sympathy, and understanding.
Namine had her hand intertwined with Isa's, the two of them supporting each other similarly.
Aqua, Ven, and Terra were standing nearby, though not touching, their faces composed masks; and Luxord had placed himself between the former Nobodies and Xion, and Pence, Hayner, and Olette, reminding them that if they attempted to support the Nobodies and Xion themselves they might end up crowding them and causing them to feel worse. Hayner had a scowl of his own on his face at this and his arms were crossed, and Olette was frowning, but Pence's look was understanding.
"First things first," Lea, predictably, broke the silence.
"We're the sum of our deeds, not our names."
Kairi's eyes widened, and she wanted to believe Lea, but if he was right she wouldn't have left Sora or kept the truth from Xion.
"You're Kairi, not Xehanort, and that's all there is to it."
"What Lea said," Ven put in. "Hakuna Metete. No worries."
"Hakuna Matata," Lea corrected him.
Kairi refused to respond, though, so Lea grasped Roxas' and Xion's hands tighter.
Another way that Kairi had hurt someone else who she loved.
"Given how wide and how tightly the Foretellers' strings stretch," Isa said to Lea, changing the subject, "You do know that the girl we met in Ansem's laboratory is probably a puppet of the Foretellers as well, correct?"
"Hakuna Matata means, 'No worries for the rest of your days,'" Lea spoke by way of answer. "Not, 'Today is the day I was born.'"
He turned back to Kairi. "If you believe that I should keep you company in The Final World, I'm all for it. Roxas, Xion?"
Roxas nodded, and Xion did as well.
"I'm not leaving your side," Xion said to Kairi. "I know what you're going through. If I can cry in your place in any way, I won't let you suffer the same way I did."
Kairi felt a little lighter at hearing that, and she forced a smile, but it didn't make anything better or change anything.
"We both will," Roxas corrected Xion, but Kairi didn't feel any lighter when the thankful smile Xion gave Roxas in response wasn't at all forced.
If Luxu had spoken the truth, when Xion learned about it her smile wouldn't be genuine any more, if it even continued to appear on her face at all.
"I'd like to go to Riku's side," Namine said, "But he has Mickey, so it might be better if I stay with my fellow Nobodies and Xion.
"If you see him when he comes back before I do, can you please tell him that I'm sorry?"
"Okay," Kairi answered.
"If we're going with Riku to Olympus, we need to watch out for Hades," Aqua interjected, to Ven and Terra and to the rest of them. "We've humiliated him four times by now, and the last time he came close to succeeding in his goal. He's no doubt livid with us, as well as Hercules and Megara and Hercules' other loved ones and friends, at this point, and more dangerous than at any time in the past."
"I agree," Terra added. "Not just from my own experience with him, but from what I remember of Xehanort's impressions of him. Xehanort saw him as a loose cannon, and loose cannons are the most ready to fire when they're being blocked by their cannonballs."
"What puppets does he have to fall back on, though?" Ven questioned.
"Xehanort knew of a fifth Titan, named the Cyclops," Terra replied. "Hades should have sent the Cyclops after the other Gods, or, at best, after Thebes. But he didn't. And Hades once told Xehanort that he was the one who kidnapped Hercules from Olympus and turned him into a human; though he wasn't able to complete the process, which is why Hercules is inhumanly strong. There are deities on Olympus who can see potential futures," that didn't reassure Kairi, as well, "And they warned Hades that if Hercules fought the Titans, he'd beat them. So Hades attempted to turn Hercules into a human and then kill him to prevent Hercules from thwarting him in the future.
"But Hades didn't make any effort to keep Hercules from becoming involved when he loosed the Titans. And Aqua and I can both attest that he does not give up without a fight when he becomes angry. He was outmatched once Sora, Hercules, and Zeus beat the Titans, but he's so temperamental this shouldn't have convinced him not to attempt to take on Sora and Hercules himself unless he wasn't as upset as he pretended to be.
"I'm certain he's more furious than at any time before because he's been beaten four times by now, and he was on the verge of winning the last time, but he wasn't truly counting on winning the last time, and he was likely surprised that he nearly did. He has an even worse trick up his sleeve than we've seen him unleash yet. Otherwise he would have made an effort to keep Hercules away from Olympus.
"His true plan at that point was to convince us and Hercules that we had defeated him for good, so we'd drop our guards and wouldn't be ready when he deployed his real greatest weapon or weapons.
Aqua's eyes widened. "Zack," she breathed.
Ven whirled in her direction. "What do you mean?"
"I saw Phil myself a few months ago to find out what had happened to him," Aqua answered. She looked uncomfortable. "I didn't like how he asked me out on a date," Ven's eyes widened, "But I felt bad for turning him down, so I wanted to apologize. But I wasn't able to find him. The YRP fairies Mickey needs to get in touch with were hanging around Olympus, though I don't know why." That was good news. "I asked Phil about it and all he would tell me was that they know Auron, and that they'd be remaining on Olympus for the foreseeable future. But when I asked Phil about Zack, he said Zack had vanished one day, and a black angelic feather was the sole evidence that something bad had happened to him.
"I assumed that meant a one-winged angel like Sora or Kairi had abducted him, perhaps Sephiroth or Cloud, or both of them. But what if that was because they did so for Hades? Or, worse, what if it wasn't them at all, but Hades did something to Zack worse than what Terra knows that he did? Hades wasn't as angry with Zack for breaking free of Hades' darkness as he was with Terra and I for humiliating him, and that means that he wasn't done with Zack."
She looked at Terra. "Did Xehanort know what the Cyclops can do?"
"From what Xehanort was aware of, its strength is its size, limbs, and flabbiness. It doesn't have any special abilities like the four elemental Titans, and it's even stupider than them."
Aqua went white. "Flabbiness…" she breathed in horror. "It eats a lot.
"Oh, no."
"What do you mean?" Ven sounded terrified now. "What does Hades want with Zack?"
"I've wondered why Hades created a Colossus of the Ice Titan when the Tornado Titan and the Lava Titan are the deadliest of the four elemental Titans," she replied. "It makes sense now. He created a Colossus of the Ice Titan because, even if it turned out to be an ineffective puppet, he could employ it for another purpose. Sora said that the Ice Titan shrank when he beat it, so the Ice Colossus most likely did the same thing and survived, and I didn't notice.
"Hades knows Hercules' battle tactics and strength better than anyone save for Phil. He knew Hercules would toss the Titans into space while they were stuck together. He wanted Hercules to do that. Then the Cyclops was supposed to eat them while they were clumped together and in no condition to defend themselves well. And then the Ice Colossus, an entity capable of reflecting connections like glass as the Station of Awakening does, yet not a Titan itself so it could bind with all five Titans without being fully neutralized by the Lava Titan, was supposed to fuse them into a single, new, Titan."
"Fusing entities comparable to Gods?" Terra sounded skeptical. "I doubt even Hades can do that, especially with an entity inferior to the Titans."
"That's where Zack comes in," Aqua elaborated. "Hades knows about Cloud's and Sephiroth's angelic abilities. He knows that they, and perhaps Tifa, are components of a single heart, even though they're not Unversed, Heartless, Nobodies, or sleeping hearts. He must have studied them and learned how to give Zack the capability of fusing hearts into one.
"Zack has, or will, fuse with the Titans, and perhaps the Ice Colossus, himself. He will, or already has, combined them all into a one-winged Angel of Sin with every capability the Titans possess, perhaps the Ice Colossus' abilities as well, and similar capacities to whatever Cloud, Sephiroth, and maybe Tifa, can accomplish when they've rejoined into a single person.
"From what Sora told me about his encounters with Cloud and Sephiroth, Hades might not even need to get Hercules out of the way to win now. Especially because Hades knows what Terra and Sora and I achieved when Zack, the Ice Colossus, Cloud, the Titans, Auron, and Sephiroth confronted us, and everything that Hercules has accomplished whenever Hades sent a puppet after him. Whatever Zack and the Titans have or will become, it has, or will be, a one-winged sin much more lethal than anyone or anything we, or Hercules and the hearts connected to him, have been faced with before.
"Hades probably won't stop with Olympus with an entity like this under his control, as well. He wanted to dominate all of the realm of light as much as Maleficent when he was colluding with her.
"And this is if he hasn't already won there and begun to strive beyond it.
"Lastly, Maleficent and Pete have a role in Yozora's plan. So the Foretellers must know about Hades and Hades must have a role, too."
"We can't wait for Riku. We need to go to Olympus right away!"
Then Kairi most likely wouldn't even see Sora or Riku once again today, if not for a long time afterwards.
To her surprise, tears were actually stinging her eyes at that knowledge.
"I'm coming with you, then," Kairi said. "You'll need all the help that you can get against what Zack and the Titans are." She thought for a few seconds. "Let's call it 'Sin' for now. Additionally, I told you that Goofy's plan is to give the Foretellers what they want. They're used to us jumping to people's defense, not investigating other realms, so I need to assist you in confronting Sin."
"That's a better name for Hades' trump card than you're aware of," Terra said.
"You don't know why Hades gave into the darkness.
"Xehanort did. Hades told Maleficent once, and he nearly stabbed her in the back when she ridiculed his reasons for doing so, but in part because Maleficent derided his reasons for giving into the darkness partially by telling him the reason she'd given into the darkness, and partially because he was aware that the enemy of his enemy was his friend, he remained with her for the time being.
"Though I'm certain that Maleficent's reaction to the driving force behind Hades' darkness was one of the reasons that he told her to get lost when she showed up on Olympus after he'd freed the Lava Titan and the Tornado Titan."
"What were those reasons?" Ven sounded extremely terrified now, but genuinely curious.
"Initially, when Zeus and the other Gods imprisoned the Titans," Terra replied, "Zeus and his younger brother, Poseidon, wanted Hades to oversee the dead although Hades, himself Zeus' youngest brother," Kairi felt nothing at that revelation, "Wanted to oversee the oceans from which life on Olympus had sprung. The Parliamentary Congress of Gods, however, including Zeus and Poseidon, outvoted Hades and his supporters, including Hades' love, Persephone, so, even though Hades was angry and jealous, he accepted the will of the democratical Congress of Gods and became the God of the Dead.
"However, right after this, Zeus and Poseidon let Demeter, Goddess of the Land and Persephone's mother, get away with something that Hades saw as a dereliction of their duties and responsibilities and that Hades refused to tolerate.
"When Hades accepted Zeus' and Poseidon's vote, Persephone proposed marriage to him so he wouldn't need to take a position he didn't want to alone, and because one of the reasons Hades had fallen in love with her was because of Persephone's love of life, so Persephone wanted Hades to retain a connection to the life he loved so much. One of the vital reasons Hades had sought the position of the God of the Oceans was due to his love of Persephone.
"Hades accepted her offer, and Zeus and Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, performed the ceremony joining them in matrimony.
"Demeter, however, was jealous herself, of how life had originated on Olympus from the oceans and not from the lands, so she disliked both Poseidon and Hades and despised Persephone and Hades' relationship. So when Persephone married Hades, Demeter played upon one of Zeus' weaknesses; before he'd married Hera, he'd been an unscrupulous flirt with female deities and mortal females, though once he met Hera he learned what love was and grew up. Yet Zeus still felt very guilty about how he'd lived before he'd met Hera, so Demeter flirted with Zeus in front of Hera and Poseidon to guilt trip Zeus and send him into his family quarters with Poseidon and Hera so they could cheer him up, even though all three of them hadn't yet finished establishing their system of divine democracy for Olympus and Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon should have remained in the Parliament.
"This irritated Hades, because he saw this as his family abandoning the responsibilities they'd just assumed, but he didn't believe any harm would come of it.
"He was wrong. The Prime Minister of the Parliamentary Congress, Cupid, the son of Aphrodite, didn't take after his mother, who understood connections well and saw them as sacrosanct. As opposed to Aphrodite, he was a lot like Zeus had once been before Zeus had met Hera and, though Hades didn't know it, his current girlfriend was Demeter. Demeter had talked to him surreptitiously during Hades' and Persephone's wedding, and Cupid now set up a number of filibusters that dragged the initial assembly of the Parliament on when it should have suspended its session until Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon returned, preventing Persephone from leaving with Hades.
"This further irritated Hades, because one of the central reasons the Parliament fell for Cupid's tactics was because the numerous members of the Parliament who knew better refused to try too hard to persuade its fellow assembly participants into ceasing to make mistakes; the numerous members of the Parliament just accepted that, if their fellow participants wanted to make fools of themselves, they had no justification to be voices overriding differences of opinion. Hades believed that guiding voices should put an end to this kind of folly, but he also understood that too heavy-handed guiding voices would undo the democracy they were establishing, so he held his tongue, once more believing that no harm would come of this.
"As a result of his silence, Demeter used this delay to trick Persephone into eating a pomegranate she'd cursed; if Persephone went to the Underworld with Hades, she'd be drained of her immortality, turned into a human, and then drained by the Underworld itself and die.
"As soon as Persephone discovered what eating the fruit had done to her, she revealed it. Aphrodite went to Zeus, Hera, and Poseidon straight away, and the full Parliamentary Congress save Demeter and Cupid themselves voted that Demeter and Cupid should be stripped of their positions and all of their powers, though not their nature as deities, and be imprisoned as disembodied hearts inside Hades' watch dog Cerberus for eleven millennia, at the cost of giving Cerberus two additional heads.
"Aphrodite was able to use Hades' connection to Persephone to lessen Demeter's curse enough that Persephone could spend around one season's length of time with Hades in the Underworld each year, but otherwise, if she entered the Underworld, she'd die.
"Hades hid how he felt about what had happened to Persephone, and, to a lesser extent, to Cerberus, but he was furious.
"To Hades, this wouldn't have happened if Zeus and Hera and Poseidon hadn't forsaken their responsibilities for their own selfish problems, and if one or more guiding voices had convinced the members of the Parliamentary assembly who didn't know better to stop making laughingstocks of themselves. To Hades, the divine democracy that they'd overthrown the Titans to establish had now proven itself irrecoverably flawed, and worthy of being overthrown itself by a divine monarchy. In addition, Hades now hated the other Gods and Goddesses for having let this occur, and himself for not having prevented it, that he was determined to accomplish this by any means required, including using Demeter's and Cupid's methods of deception and treachery and the Titans' methods of mass murder and massive bloodshed.
"He left Mount Olympus for the Underworld with Persephone and told her his intentions. She believed that Hades intended to go too far and disapproved, but she believed that the other Gods and Goddesses were wrong as well and she saw that Hades was in a lot of pain, so she sided with Hades even though she refused to participate in his intended revolution or get her hands dirty. She made two contributions; she separated Demeter's and Cupid's hearts from Cerberus, though she couldn't remove Cerberus' additional heads, locked Demeter's and Cupid's memories away, and harnessed their hearts to give life to two demons who Hades could employ as his servants, named Pain and Panic. And she told Hades that if she wasn't with him in the Underworld when he launched his coup, she wanted him to go through her rather than around her if she unintentionally got in the way of the revolt; an offer that Hades rejected. But that was all that she was willing to do.
"So naming Hades' trump card 'Sin' suits Hades and Sin well. Hades sees all of the other Gods and Goddesses save for Persephone as sinners worthy of condemnation. All of the mortals of Olympus and all of the life in the rest of the realm of light, deity or mortal, too; for accepting Zeus' system of divine democracy on Olympus and living by it and not throwing it down themselves, or not intervening on Olympus' behalf and accepting the freedom of the world of Olympus to see to its own problems."
Ven winced. "Ouch," he spoke back. "Doubly so because the only person Hades is connected to lost sight of the light when he did, so Hades has no light in his darkness."
Kairi couldn't even feel anything more than a small amount of sickness at this.
"You're right," Ven finished. "For Hades' and Persephone's sake, too, we need to head to Olympus. Force might be the only way left to keep Hades and Persephone from betraying most or all of what they stood for before they fell into darkness."
That sickened Kairi, and she refused to believe that.
No matter how deep the darkness, there was always a light to guide you.
That was one of the few things that Kairi had left that she was unwilling to let go of.
There had to be a way to keep Hades and Persephone safe from themselves without using dark violence, and she was determined to find it.
"Why did…" Ven trailed off, clearly unsure that he wanted to know any more, but then he took a deep breath and restarted, "Why did Maleficent give into the darkness?"
"A military force from an unknown world with unusually lethal weapons and large robots," Terra continued, "That I'm certain are connected to Yozora because they were named Gigases, invaded the Enchanted Dominion. Maleficent fought them off at Flora's, Fauna's, Merriweather's, and her husband's side, giving all her heart to cherishing and protecting her husband, her friends, the people of her world, and her world itself, but she was badly injured in the final battle when they defeated the military and the Gigases and discovered that her wounds had murdered her unborn daughter, who she hadn't been aware that she was carrying."
Kairi winced at that one.
"Maleficent believed that she was responsible for her daughter's death, because if she hadn't fought for her husband and friends and others and the Enchanted Dominion, her daughter would still be alive. So she became determined never to live for others or for anything outside of herself anymore for the rest of her life, and from that instant on to think solely about herself and what she wanted. She turned her eyes from the light, divorced her husband, and left Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather to take up a life of solitude and greed.
"Her husband made a number of attempts to get through to her, but she continually turned him away, so he at last gave up, remarried, and had a daughter with his new wife; Aurora, who we met. Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather also attempted to get through to her repeatedly, but when her former husband and his new wife didn't invite Maleficent to the celebration of Aurora's birth but they did invite the other fairies, and Maleficent cursed Aurora to die in response, Maleficent's fairy friends believed there was no reaching her and gave up on her, too."
But Hades hadn't betrayed Maleficent when she'd ridiculed his love for Persephone and for Cerberus because he'd seen how much pain she was in.
As far as Kairi was concerned, that was proof that Hades and Persephone could be reached.
Ven cringed. "Maleficent and her daughter were no doubt this military's target from the start, then," he put into words what they all knew.
Terra nodded. "There's no question of that.
"Do you have any other questions for me?"
"Not now," Ven replied, sounding a mixture of disappointed and relieved.
That meant that this was it, then.
She had no intention of having a change of heart, no matter how unimaginably fathomlessly sick and empty and guilty and alone she felt from leaving him, particularly because they'd finally become together just hours earlier today.
But after she departed with the others, she might not even be able to return to Sora even if she did have a change of heart.
That was inconsequential, however.
She couldn't take away Sora's pain, and all she did was cause it.
Nor could she take away Riku's pain, and all she did was cause Riku pain, as well.
For all she knew, she'd done the same to Tidus, Selphie, and Wakka as well, and they had roles of their own to play in Yozora's tapestry.
That reminded her.
Tidus, Selphie, and Wakka had been unusually willing to leave Riku and her and the others alone when they'd restored Sora. Riku and she had kept a lot of what was going on, and why Sora was gone, secret from them, and they'd been becoming more and more frustrated with this, so Kairi was pretty sure that they'd pretended to acquiesce to attempt to trick Riku and her into believing that they were becoming okay with being left out so Riku and she would lower their guards and the three of them could sneak after Riku and she the next time that they left.
Sora had set off too soon for Selphie, Tidus, and Wakka to have the chance to do so earlier, but that probably wouldn't be the case when they left to face Sin.
Kairi needed to pay attention.
Wakka, Tidus, and Selphie were not following her off of Destiny Islands, to say nothing of anywhere near Sin or Hades.
Hercules and Meg and Phil and Pegasus and Zack and Zeus needed her.
It was time to set out on another journey.
"When will the rest of you be ready to leave?" Kairi questioned.
.
"The Moon is gone
And the night is still so dark
I'm a little bit afraid of tomorrow
.
"For this day
Was so long and hard for me
And I've lost some of the things
So far I have trusted
.
"Now I will close my heart and sleep a while
Bless my dream with gentle darkness
Until I could have my strength
To wait for the light
Maybe tomorrow
.
"I've come through
Some betrayal, some old pains
Some addiction to the love
And some goodbyes
.
"Like you did
Like my mother, father did
I will cry a little while
And wait for tomorrow
.
"There's no way to be free from the loneliness
It took so long for me to notice
But now I'm on my way to find my light
Maybe this day
Maybe tomorrow
.
"I will sleep a while, until the dawn wakes me up again
I still believe
Come what may
.
"There is no way to be free from love
Deeper we sink in the darkness
Brighter it shines in our hearts
The lights of love
.
"The Moon is gone
And the night is still so dark
I'm a little bit afraid of tomorrow
But I will go
I'll go over
I will go"
'Maybe Tomorrow'
XENOSAGA: Episode 3:
ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA