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CHAPTER 39:
THE GREAT WIDE WHORL
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Author's Notes: The music for this Chapter is, in order of scene: 'The Girl Who Stole the Star,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three; and then 'Frozen Flame,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc Three. Both of these compositions can be found on Zophar's Domain.
"Sora, are you awake now?"
The voice was familiar, but
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"You're safe now.
"The Xehanorts don't know I'm here.
"And you didn't appear to be injured when Young Xehanort brought you in; and even if you were, I cast my healing spell from my tears on you."
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"All seven of you have gradually begun to wither away as Roxas once did, and Namine and Ventus as well as Roxas are now, and after a few more months, the seven of you will begin to feel this yourself, after which all seven of you will die as they are and be unmade from all existence and memory."
"You are what all life, all existence, all reality, all of the World, all of the cosmos, all stars, all worlds, all people, all hearts, of light and darkness, most yearn and reach and fight brutally and ruthlessly and remorselessly and cruelly and strive and dream and long for.
"You are the Kye-Blade."
Someone took his hand and squeezed it.
"Thank goodness.
"I saw your face move.
"You're awake.
"But we need to get out of here.
"Don't worry.
"I know what you're doing to us as the Kye-Blade."
There was nothing but not.
didn't understand how
was still aware of even the not.
But he knew he needed to hear this.
"Roxas has given us a fighting chance, as long as I can keep myself alive and with my heart and body in one piece.
"After you recompleted Lauriam and Elrena, Lauriam regained all of his memories and Elrena regained most of hers.
"Lauriam felt too guilty for what he'd done to Namine to face her; but he came to see me to apologize for assisting Gothel in finding me when I left the tower, and then altering her into a Heartless when she almost killed Eugene to place him in even worse danger.
"But when he apologized, he said he treated Namine and I as bad as he did partially because we reminded him of his younger sister, Strelitzia; who either died or vanished a long time ago. He hasn't told me the specifics, but he said he split into a Heartless and Nobody partially to attempt to find out what happened to her, and to regain his memory about why she was so important to him.
"Once I found that out; I told him I'd arrest him for working with Gothel as a foreign provocateur to abduct and imprison a member of the royal family of the Kingdom of Corona if he tried to run from me like he was from Namine, and he didn't take the chance to see if we could be friends now that he had his memory back.
"We were able to become friends, and good ones.
"I wanted him to take me to see other worlds once I found out about them, but I dropped the idea as soon as he told me the potential costs of violating what you call the world order. They told me other Princesses have traveled off of their planets without disrupting any cultures, but I didn't want to take any risks until recently.
"But, more than once, I needed to keep Eugene from sneaking off with them when they left the Kingdom of Corona.
"It looks like some old habits really do die hard.
"Once I found out about the Foretellers, though, I refused to just let them do as they pleased throughout the cosmos and threaten you; to say nothing of Mom and Dad and Eugene and Pascal and Maximus and Lauriam and Elrena.
"So Eugene figured out they were hiding something in the Keyblade Graveyard, and he and Lauriam developed a plan to steal it.
"That's why they went to Arendelle.
"Luxu caught them in the attempt.
"Then he took the opportunity at his disposal to force them to provoke Kairi, so he wouldn't need to take the risk of losing his heart or life to the Demon Tide himself; nor would any of the Foretellers.
"But they got away when the Foretellers were occupied watching the Demon Tide, and since then I've been traveling with them investigating their goals.
"As well as catching Eugene trying to stow away so many times I honestly believe by this point I'll lose count before he gives up.
"Eugene developed the idea of a combination spell I cast in conjunction with Lauriam and Elrena.
"Elrena uses my tears to create an electrical network within the water out of her electricity. Then Lauriam damages one or more blades of grass and alters its composition to record data in the same way that its cells store information, after which Elrena and Lauriam combine the electricity and information storage abilities of the cells into a biological computer network. Lauriam then positions the grass blade somewhere he can spy on the Foretellers or the Summation Organization Thirteen. Afterwards, he runs a recording program by altering the grass blade's photosynthesis capabilities, and thus he stores recordings of what it spies on.
"It's very effective.
"So we learned about what you were doing to the Princesses; and I want you to know you did the right thing by fighting for Namine, merely because you refused to let someone suffer when you had the ability to feel her pain even if your reasons for being able to do so were fake.
"If you'd just left her in despair to piece your memories back together yourself, all the work she did linking your memories with Roxas was recorded in Ansem's records.
"This gave me the chance to learn a lot about how the powers of the Princesses of Heart and Keyblades can intertwine, through studying the records of how your chain of memories went through its last phases of repair.
"It has a heavy cost, but I'm pretty sure I can cast a spell with my healing tears that can keep us; or at least every Princess but me; alive long enough we'll be able to live mostly full lives, give or take a small to large number of years when we're very old."
Sora could now register a distant ache everywhere in his body at the farthest edges of his perception.
But, whatever the cost was, it might be better than Kairi and Anna and Elsa and Rapunzel and Jessie and whoever the last two Princesses were dying and ceasing to exist.
He opened eyes that felt heavier than the weight of all the masses in all the universes summed together.
Rapunzel was sitting at his side, her hair still cut short and dark brown, looking down at him with a worried but reassuring smile.
"And that cost is?"
Was that his voice, so chapped and broken?
"I can slow down the rate our material selves decay by replenishing the physical weaknesses of your bodies, but I can't replenish the ethereal energy of our selves leaking out of our hearts.
"However; I can keep our bodies alive long enough that, once all that energy is gone, our bodies themselves will survive.
"That will cause the loss of the light and darkness in our hearts to destroy them just as they break when hearts give into the darkness, and this will turn us into Heartless and Nobodies.
"If we pass on our powers fast enough before we're altered; our bodies will rebuild themselves once we're recompleted in the same way Xehanort's body did when he was recompleted, at full physical and ethereal health, and we would need to be Princesses of Heart for the process to resume from the beginning.
"However, once I lose my powers, I won't be able to protect the next New Seven Hearts the same way.
"With one exception; for Kairi and the rest of us to live, each of us will need to sacrifice another girl to death even from reality."
Now that his eyes were open, Sora couldn't just close them and abandon Kairi and Anna and Rapunzel and the other Princesses.
But he might as well have, because he couldn't see anything but ivory jet night everywhere he looked.
And he knew without even needing to query who the one exception was.
"Elsa is the sole Princess who won't need to, because she has natural ice magic while you have natural water magic, even though both aren't directly part of your powers as Princesses of Heart.
"That's one of the main reasons the Foretellers want Anna to choose between her losing her memories of Anna and dying, as opposed to Elsa making that choice for Anna's sake."
Rapunzel squeezed his hand with tight comfort.
"That's right," she confirmed.
But even though this meant Kairi and Anna and Elsa and Rapunzel and Jessie and whoever the last two Princesses were wouldn't die, this meant every single one of them but Elsa would need to sacrifice someone else to entire and irrevocable death in order to do so.
Yet there was now nothing more than a numb resignation.
"I see," was all he could think of to say.
Rapunzel started slightly, and her squeeze became tighter and more reassuring, while her face altered into a contained mask of understanding and worry.
The white ceiling above them looked familiar, but that wasn't what Sora wanted to ask now.
"How did you do it?" he questioned.
"How did you hold onto hope when you left your tower into the great wide world you longed for outside, brimming with laughter and loves and dreams and hope?
"Just to discover your strongest connection, and almost everything you knew and believed in, was all a lie?"
Rapunzel's brow furrowed as she searched for a way to answer him.
"I suppose I haven't thought about it much," she replied.
"But, at this time; the best answer I may be able to give you is that I found better things to trust.
"Not the abstract dreams and words someone else told me caused everything to happen for a reason; but the ability to understand people, and reality, for what they were.
"And to understand the love of people, such as Eugene and Maximus and you and Goofy and Donald, who trusted in me to create my own dreams to keep cherished and believe in."
Sora had no way to perceive why he felt a minute amount lighter at hearing that.
"One who knows nothing can understand nothing."
"Pain is being human, Xemnas."
"And because the pain of being here in existence is so harmful, there's no end to the people who reject and dismiss each other and give into the darkness in order to cling to what scraps of happiness they can keep or acquire, for others or for themselves, and refuse to support each other and one another, or understand each other and one another and other people's feelings and thoughts, or even their own. They thus perpetuate the pain, and spread it further, and the hearts around them and elsewhere and in future generations react the same way to the pain and perpetuate it and spread it themselves, and the cycle continues.
"No matter how sweet, all dreams must eventually fade into the remorseless, relentless light of day.
"But you're different.
"Because your loved ones and friends and other people need you, you refuse to let anything keep you from trying to cherish and support others, or trying to understand them; you won't reject anyone, no matter how determined the other person is to reject others and how deeply he or she or it has given into the darkness to do so; you refuse to allow any pain or ruthless lesson about how painful existence is to cripple you and prevent you from trying to care for people; and you never fail to find a light in the night, even when it's so faint and distant it can barely be discerned.
"If anyone can break the never ending spiral of death and hatred and pain and rejection that Lauriam and Elrena talked about, and light the World's way to a realm where connections and hearts are simple and clean sanctuaries where facing your fears without thinking twice will enable people to realize their dreams of a better tomorrow together with each other and one another more often than not; and where people can learn not to reject each other and one another, and understand and support each other and one another and their feelings and thoughts and hearts and minds and overcome hardship and attain love and hope and warmth and laughter that aren't fairy fantasies and that will last; it's you.
"Just by being yourself, you enable people, and their hearts, to receive or fulfill their dreams.
"Can you please believe that yourself?"
"Do you know what the simply complex reason for that is?
"It's because understanding the pain that gives us valid reasons to kill, or hurt, others also means understanding more about what the pain is that we want to inflict upon others, or let others be hurt by; so that pain thus hurts us more."
All there was was the numb resignation.
Or why there was still a small amount of vitality in his voice when he asked, "And what do you do when you learn that even love and hope and understanding and warmth can't give you the capacity to give love or warmth to anyone or cry in their place and carry their hurt for them, or bring about all dreams for a purpose?"
Rapunzel's face shifted slightly.
A number of seconds passed, but she didn't respond.
Because Sora knew there was nothing to say in response.
"At any rate, I can't leave," he said.
"I promised the Xehanorts I'd let them study me if they came to see Kairi.
"Whether I can give anyone love or not, I can't break a promise.
"Particularly not one I made for Kairi, to try to cry in her place."
Rapunzel's eyes opened wide.
"Now I see what the Foretellers' plot is," she breathed in contained horror and terror.
Something weak and sick warped within Sora.
"What have you figured out?" he queried with resignation that was companionable and harsh, but exhausted nevertheless.
"You didn't ask where we are," Rapunzel replied.
"This isn't Scala ad Caelum; this is the chamber of the basement of the Old Mansion in the real Twilight Town, where Riku hid you when Namine was forging your memory back together.
Cold filled all of Sora at the knowledge there was solely one set of reasons Young Xehanort would have lied that they'd holed up in Scala ad Caelum when their new base of operations was located somewhere else.
"Anna didn't go for the kill and then pull her strike when you woke up as the Foretellers believed she would, even after everything Lauriam and Elrena and Luxu and Christopher did to her; so Maleficent's trap for Luxu was successful because Luxu discovered he couldn't defeat an uninjured Station of Awakening in material form while contending with the rest of the conditions of Maleficent's ambush."
Sora had no awareness of whether to take Luxu's successful capture by Maleficent as good news or bad news.
"Anna is truly beginning to bug the Foretellers.
"Every time they'd believed she should have been crippled or broken in a vital way, she's continued to hold onto more hope than Yozora and Luxu believes someone who has spent most of her life alone without even a friend such as Pascal can."
"Yozora doesn't testify to anything.
"He doesn't want to unlock doors or connect anyone, he just wants to seal them shut forever and sever everyone's bonds so they're trapped in eternal lonely cold."
Sora barely felt the slightest amount sick to his stomach at the revelation of what the New World of Synchronicity Perceptual was.
"The New World that he believes in is made up of nothing but the same empty halls and rooms and castle and corridors that I've lived in for most of my life because Mom and Dad didn't want the rest of Arendelle to know about Elsa's magic."
So many tears were in Sora's eyes now he couldn't tell whether he was remembering, or beholding, the white ceiling above him.
"Maleficent, on the other hand, is wondering if this means Anna has the potential to become the Princess of F–
"Never mind that for a bit."
Why were Sora's insides warping a little once more?
"But otherwise, everything has unfurled in accordance with the will and testament etched in Yozora's script.
"The Foretellers operate out of Scala ad Caelum.
"As do innumerable legions of dark entities known as Darklings, Dream Eaters such as Nightmare Chirithies and Dreamreapers, and top grade Heartless and Nobodies and Unversed brought into inception when a datascape of their hometown fell into darkness.
"Roxas and Anna have already traveled there and fallen into Yozora's trap.
"While Riku is currently en route there with her, through a corridor of darkness he has strained his heart to create before she wakes up to travel there on her own. He sees this as his best chance of keeping her from doing something rash all by herself at the cost of risking becoming a Heartless and Nobody or his heart falling asleep.
"You've been lured out of position here; while jaws of ensnaring hail that will drag them into the deepest darkness yet are about to snap closed around all four of the people you once most wished to find when they were lost in the night, and who you once fought so hard and long to call home.
"And to protect them this time, you'll need to break an oath you promised to Kairi to cry in her place."
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BOOK FOUR: SYMPHONY OF THE STARS
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Fin
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Begin
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BOOK FIVE: THE ETCHED JUNCTURE
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"You came. Even though you're about to break. Hm? That's a good sign. So, why did you come?"-Aerith Gainsborough
FINAL FANTASY VII: ADVENT CHILDREN: COMPLETE