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CHAPTER 52:
PALL OF THE FRIGID TUNDRA
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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Faraway Promise,' from the XENOGEARS Original Soundtrack, Disc One; and after it 'Sacred Moon,' from the KINGDOM HEARTS II Original Soundtrack, Disc Four; and after it 'Disappeared,' from the KINGDOM HEARTS II Original Soundtrack, Disc Four, and after this 'Another Side – Battle Version,' from the KINGDOM HEARTS: BIRTH BY SLEEP AND THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-EIGHT DAYS OVER TWO Original Soundtrack, Disc Three. All four Tracks can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
Xion sat on the couch Elsa had tasked her servants with placing to the left of her throne, her head resting back against the cushioned fabric behind her, mostly unaware of the wasteland that had once been Arendelle before her and the late night sky strewn with pinpricks of light above her.
To her own left sat Axel, reclining back against the rear of the couch himself, his own eyes warily keen and alert as they gazed out at his surroundings, while keeping much of his attention on Roxas where he rested on a cot on the other side of Elsa's throne, still a sculpture of frost, and on Xion herself.
Tidus was sitting on the ground in front of the couch far to her right, unwilling to sit between her and Elsa, currently giving instructions to guards and former castle staff on her throne, yet also unwilling to be too far from her.
On the other side of Elsa's throne, Mare sat in a folding chair at the side of the cot Roxas lay on, her face also concealed from Xion's vision at this angle.
Xion was still attempting to process what had happened to her after she'd thrown the Strike Raid.
However, Xion didn't need to look to the side at Roxas' solid statue of ice, or the empty wastes of Axel's eyes, another time, to now know that there truly was no freedom from the maelstrom of night, whether she gave up, or she kept trying.
That was one of the largest, but barely the only, reason Xion also didn't care if her vision and insides stopped distorting sickeningly, and her heart stopped pulsating with molten ice in the same way it had when Roxas had said her name with Sora's voice, and the vacant husk that was her second replica body had been given her true heart to recomplete the one already growing inside it and combating Xehanort's fragment.
This time, though, her memory wasn't rapidly filling up like it was scalding frozen water being poured into a hollow jug.
Memories kept manifesting all around her, so vivid and real, if Xion hadn't known better, she would have believed she was actually an observer in her own body witnessing them as they unraveled once more.
"Made you look!"
Even scream energy had still had a purpose to be present in Monstropolis without it upending everything Sulley and Mike now stood for, and it hadn't been a hypocritical last resort if their new ventures into laugh power hadn't been able to cause their ends to continue to meet.
However, in a reality where neither giving up or continuing to try her hardest, come what may, made any difference at all for Roxas, Axel, Mare, Elsa, and so many others, and the World itself, or enabled her to be the most infinitesimal bit less useless; where the sole dreams that came true in a way that lasted were ineffaceably inescapable endless and everlasting labyrinthine prisons of nightmares, there was no longer any question that nothing at all whatsoever in any fashion, form, shape, or way happened for a purpose.
"There's always enough time for hearts to say what's true. Sora, you know better than anyone. It only takes a moment to connect with your mates… with your hearties."
What did that matter when you'd just forget the times you shared with the people you loved, and who loved you; or your giggles and joys would be reduced to so many fragments you spent so much time putting it back together there was barely any time during which you could laugh and grin before it all came avalanching to crumbled pebbles once more, and you then needed to spend around the same amount of time, if not far longer, putting it back together just for it to occur another time, in a ceaseless spiral?
What did it matter when she was no different than the late Queen of the Dwarf Woodlands, Lady Tremaine, the dream Frollos, and Gothel, who sacrificed everyone and everything around her, and throughout much of the realm of light besides, even the people closest to her, for the sake of nothing more than improving, and sustaining, her self image?
It meant nothing that she'd fought to be recognized as a regular person and not a Nobody or replica because she'd believed she was a Nobody, and then a replica of one, so she thus didn't have a heart, and it hadn't been to keep her step children, or adopted children, from preventing her from reclining pampered and fawned over by others on a cushioned couch somewhere while the rest of reality rotted and begged for the smallest scraps of kindness or a lessening of the yoke grinding them into the mud.
Xemnas, and Lauriam, hadn't been Roxas', and Namine's, selfish step parent, who had raised them in a sheltered citadel to live as nothing but a tool for their own ends, too sheltered like Snow White, or too frightened like Quasimodo, to know they were nothing but puppets for the people they trusted, and believed in, most, or understand there was anything more to life than fear.
Nor had Isa, and Elrena, been Anastasia, and Drizella, or Diablo, or Terra when he'd been tasked with murdering Snow White and bringing her heart to the mother she had once trusted to keep her safe and raise her to stand strong on her feet.
Xion had been boundless infinities worse than Xemnas and Lauriam and Elrena and Isa and Snow White's late stepmother and Gothel and the dream Frollos and Tremaine and Drizella and Anastasia put together.
Most of all, for Nobodies and replicas, there was no such thing as happily ever after.
And the age of fairy tales had ended long ago.
At the hands of the same kind of person as the very DiZ she'd abandoned Roxas, and Axel, for, and betrayed them to, in exchange for vanity and social status.
And unlike Snow White's late stepmother, the Frollos, and Gothel, who had honestly believed they were doing what was best for their children until they dropped that pretense once their own blood, or adopted blood, crossed lines they wouldn't brook stepping over, Xion had continued to believe selling out Roxas and Axel to DiZ had been best for them even past the very end, even when she'd given up and traded her prison of a tower in a castle for the prison of Sora's heart.
She'd changed her own hair to brown, yet all she'd done with the knife that had cut it had been to accelerate the haste with which Roxas lost everything.
And when her hair had been black, she hadn't healed anyone.
Just taken everything and anyone they loved and knew as the hearth of home and believed in and trusted until they were so sucked collapsed punctured withered worn from the inside out they couldn't even recognize what the warmth and kindness of love and the hearth of home were any longer, far less have their frozen hearts melted by it.
Maybe dreams that weren't nightmares could have come true, and lasted, if she'd never even been brought into being for there to be memories of her to remove from the hearts, and histories, of others.
But, in an existing real World where Xion was present, any happily ever after could forever be nulled nil more but a fleeting mote in the empty heedless vacuum of nothingness.
"So, do you hate me for taking your friend away from you?"
If she was going to give up, why hadn't she at least done so then, when she'd first learned that, merely by being present in reality, she brought horrific pain and torment to someone?
Before it had been, not Xemnas, who she'd cast off of the roof of the clock tower, but Roxas?
If she'd given up then, maybe she at least wouldn't have thrown Riku off the precipice along with him.
And where Snow White's and Rapunzel's and Quasimodo's vain and treacherous step parents had just fallen to their deaths from one embankment, she hadn't even been content with throwing Roxas away, and casting him aside, off of the event horizon of just one precipice.
She'd thrown him off two.
First at the clock tower.
Then at Memory's Skyscraper.
And now she'd done it for the third time.
Even the dream Frollo hadn't accomplished that.
All too familiar shades of gray and ivory star bursts then erupted before her mind's eye, and this time, it wasn't something Xion herself could remember from either of her times she'd had a body of her own, such as it was, or something she'd glimpsed from inside Sora's heart.
What had Christopher done to her?
Then all awareness of Arendelle's surroundings was gone.
The dim, further fading light beneath the lanterns receding over the tree line shone down upon a slightly bearded face Xion recognized as Eugene Fitzherbert, who preferred to be known as Flynn Rider, as he picked his way along the shore of the beach, a gem studded royal tiara held in his hand.
An ellipse of impenetrable darkness fanned into the air before him, and Lauriam walked out as his Nobody, Marluxia.
Flynn recoiled back onto his feet, poised to turn and run, but then the newfound courage he'd been gaining manifested in his face, and he shifted his free hand into an uncertain, but ready, hand to hand combat stance.
Marluxia snorted in amusement.
"So this is the choice you've made, then?" he questioned mildly.
"After all your years of understanding the sole way to survive with your own identity in this World is to trust no one but yourself, and see everyone around you as nothing more than a means to an end before they themselves discard you, and the people you know,"
something that might have just been a return of the aches or emptiness passed through Xion
"you're willing to toss your practicality away merely because Rapunzel didn't ditch you and run when you became more trouble for her than you were worth?"
Flynn's features shifted repeatedly, but then he gave Marluxia a glare that was both furious and filled with knife edged fright.
"Rather than return the tiara where you took it, in order to keep Rapunzel from being targeted by the law, use how the townspeople are less attentive to who you are, and your wares, due to the festival to sell it at the nearest gullible convenience store.
"See if she doesn't literally stab you in the back, and leave you to bleed out and die, utterly alone and entirely forgotten in an abandoned warehouse somewhere begging fruitlessly and futilely for her family to come to her side and protect her before its too late, then."
Flynn's gaze became more determined.
"That's why I won't sell the tiara," he responded.
"You're the one who sent those white monsters after us, aren't you?
"So you should know yourself. No matter how hard things get, no matter how out of her league she is, Rapunzel never goes back on her word, and leaves the people who trust in her behind.
"It's time I showed her her own trust in me isn't misplaced."
Marluxia smirked a little.
"By treating connections themselves as a means of bartering for returns, you mean?"
Flynn started violently, and aged and care worn terrors moved over his features, before he then returned to glaring.
"No, to work together to fulfill our dreams," Flynn shot back.
"I'll probably lose if I take you on, but even if you kill me on my feet, as long as you continue to believe others, and the world, will always let you down, how are any of your own dreams going to come true?"
Another ellipse burgeoned behind Flynn.
Flynn spun and sprang back to a point roughly between Marluxia and the new arrival, altering the position of his hand, his guard now up even higher.
Xion realized she was about to violently retch at the amount of sheer, undiluted hatred that flooded through all of her self when Xemnas walked out.
If she'd been able to tell where her body was, Xion wasn't sure she'd have been able to stop herself from doing so.
She couldn't care whether or not her body was, back in Arendelle.
She couldn't.
"This has gone on long enough," Xemnas spoke in calm and assured, but wary, tones.
"I'll see the rest of your mission on this world through to its end."
Far more, it didn't matter to Xion that, if Xemnas had taken Marluxia's place, and Marluxia hadn't been able to knock Sora unconscious, there was a very small chance Sora had retained, and recovered, enough of his ability he'd have been able to defeat Xemnas now if Xemnas had been the one to intercept him when Gothel had shown her hand.
And that might have prevented the Xehanorts from having the chance to complete their years of experiments on the heart, so Xion might not have been given a new body, and she'd also still be forgotten, so no one would even recollect she was around to murder, or hurt, anyone.
"I have no angle this time," Marluxia responded with slightly annoyed calmness of his own.
Flynn bit off a laugh, and he rolled his eyes.
Xemnas ignored this.
Marluxia, however, stiffened very slightly.
"Not yet, you mean," Xemnas replied, still in the same calm tones.
"But you appear to have forgotten I was the foremost apprentice of Ansem the Wise, not Vexen or Zexion.
"You want Flynn alive," Flynn's stance became very slightly less guarded at the knowledge he was. "As a gesture of good faith to Rapunzel. You're willing to fulfill the duty of your task, but as you do, you seek to bring Rapunzel into your good graces, and then use the abilities she's inherited and her ties to the star hearts,"
Xion felt her eyes open slightly wider
"to forge a second Keyblade of Hearts you believe will then give you the ability to grasp the reins of this Organization Thirteen.
"The Reapers, and the Reapers' Game, you and Vexen developed from Namine's cards in Castle Oblivion, in order to lure a star heart into violating the world order, was one of your first stepping stone in implementing this own contingency, wasn't it?"
This time, Xion didn't feel enough surprise for her eyes to widen.
"Albeit by seeking access to Kairi's powers through Namine, or do I miss my mark?"
Flynn's expression had become calculating as soon as Xemnas had uttered the word 'card,' though.
"Card games, is it?" he questioned, his tone placating and conciliatory.
"I'm so good with cards, and I'm such an adaptable fellow who is so easy to make arrangements with, I'll tell you two what.
"Let me go back to Rapunzel and tell her what's going on, leaving out anything you two consider sensitive information, so she doesn't believe I've hung her out to dry, and then I'll assist you with all the card games, and anything else similar, you want."
Xemnas smirked slightly.
"So you can play both sides of our internal squabble against the middle until both are so weak you can return to Rapunzel, you mean," Xemnas responded.
The next second, a light crimson Ethereal Blade extended out of his left palm.
"These feints have gone on long enough," he spoke.
Flynn shifted to charge Xemnas, but before he could move, Marluxia threw a single card in his direction.
"Can you discern anything about a Chamber of Sleep from the shifting labyrinth on the face of that card?" he questioned.
Xemnas scowled at Marluxia in a way that told him there would be reprisals for this, but he didn't strike.
Flynn had already turned the card over, and he studied it for a long time, his visage shifting between annoyance, irritation, impressed admiration, consideration, frustration, puzzlement, and more.
"I can't discern any of the specific patterns by which this maze keeps growing and changing, or when it switches from one group of patterns to another to throw observers off, or what qualifications need to be met to determine which patterns are sifted between.
"But I do have enough of an understanding of math, and variables, to recognize these corridors and rooms keep altering in accordance with the numerous differing possible life cycles of flowers known as strelitzias."
Marluxia jolted violently into nothing but stock ramrod stiffness.
Xion felt herself wince a little at that one.
"It even looks like the entire sequence is set up to resemble a kind of coded language that adapts at the same pace brains think, but with its pace altered to reflect photosynthesis within plants."
This time, true, but dim, shock swelled inside Xion.
Strelitzia didn't just have a data self.
Like Data-Riku's Jiminy's Journal, her data self was a whole datascape.
And the Land of Departure was rewritten into Castle Oblivion based upon the partitions of that datascape.
And Lauriam must already know this.
Flynn gave Marluxia, and Xemnas, an amicable grin.
"Is that enough of a resume for me to sell myself, and my humble services, to the two of you?"
"Not one single coin," Xemnas commented, his voice still calm and unmoved.
Then he slid forward through the air, roughly vertically along a horizontal surface of air, and thrust his Ethereal Blade at Flynn's neck.
Before it could connect, Marluxia had vanished, his scythe out, and the tip of the sword of energy struck the thickest part of Marluxia's scythe, giving Marluxia sufficient room to push the Ethereal Blade up and then slide the scythe down under the sword to swing at Xemnas' lower chest.
Xemnas extended his second Ethereal Blade before his other palm and brought it up to block, but during those seconds, Marluxia held out his own free palm at Flynn, and a group of thin vines broken by thorns washed out from it to wrap around Flynn and lift him up, hurling him in the direction of a nearby boat with ropes bound to one of its masts.
Flynn gave Marluxia a resigned, but approving, smile before the same vines turned him to place him back against the mast, and then wrapped the ropes around him to put his hands on the steering wheel in front of him.
One last vine struck him on the head, he slumped, and then rearward tendrils lifted up the back of the boat and sent it into the water.
Xemnas didn't do anything to stop this, clearly believing he had worse treason to worry about now.
He leapt with practiced ease back through the air, alighting in a stance no different than one that could stand on stable ground, or a solid floor, while his feet were around a foot above the beach below them.
Then he shifted into a neutral ready stance with both Ethereal Blades, giving Marluxia a composed, but challenging gaze.
"Has the time arrived, then?" Xemnas asked, his voice still unmoved and unruffled.
"Will you actually attempt to strike me down, at last?
"Without any form of Keyblade at all as a trump card?"
"You wouldn't be the first Superior I've defied, against the odds," Marluxia snarled, genuine focused and unrestrained hate in his voice now, even though it wasn't that unmitigated.
"However, I was placed in charge of this operation, yet even when Flynn proved himself to be the best asset we've found for solving the riddle of the Chamber of Sleep, you refused to utilize it.
"As far as Xehanort will be concerned, you are the traitor, and when I demonstrate my prowess in bringing him your head even without the heritage of a Keyblade wielder your incomplete memories of draw upon to give you your own talents, I'll be promoted to an even higher rank than any of the Xehanorts outside of Master Xehanort himself."
Xemnas smirked slightly, once again.
"You'll throw away what little power, and status, you were given the mercy of retaining for a prodigious thief whose good sense has been addled by someone who is merely the sole scion in all the realm of light of the zero–"
The star bursts of ice, and gray blizzard, ripped away all comprehension once again.
"Now you'll see!"
See what?
There's nothing left for Master Yozora, and the Foretellers, to teach me.
I understand, at last.
The World of existing reality, and hearts themselves, are the true and final prison of death, pain, torment, and hurt from which there is no escape.
But there is no Door any heart can unlock to claw, gasping for breath, from out of that frozen night to bask in the light and warmth of a hearth of love and home.
"Our probability of success is–"
"You don't have to crunch the numbers, Baymax."
Because an imaginary number couldn't fit into any formula, or equation.
"It's not the sum of our parts. It's the sum of our hearts."
"So you mean – I'm like a part of him?"
"I belong with Sora. And now, I am going back… to be with him."
But an imaginary number didn't belong anywhere.
Because the age of fairy tales had ended long ago, and in a fractured realm of light, no dreams could come true but nightmares.
Returning to Sora kept no one safe and warm, or caused her to be any more useful to Roxas, Axel, Mare, Elsa, Riku, Namine, Isa, Tidus, Pence, Hayner, Olette, Sora, Kairi, Ven, or anyone else; and living a life of her own did no better.
Not when Kingdom Hearts itself was the Gray balconied loft at the top of the tower of indelible imprisonment in a remorseless, hopeless reality, and while the light still residing in that chamber of the heart, it was still entirely and wholly smothered.
"Yeah."
"Which adds up to what? Show me. Almost there."
"What?!"
"This pile of junk collected the data we needed… The terror of being attacked without warning… The despair of having no place to run… The longing for vengeance…"
"A heart's more than that!"
"It's working together!"
By parasitically siphoning warmth and effervescence from anyone, and everywhere, that existed about her?
"Smiling at something funny!"
When Axel couldn't even remember why he had the stick with WINNER written on it, and Tidus' ability to remember the name she'd scratched in the sand had morphed the memory of the Recusant's Sigil into a polar opposite of the laughter and cheer Tidus himself brimmed with?
"Trusting friends."
As she'd betrayed darkness and light with ceaseless relentlessness, never remaining on one side or the other, or even in between them with memories, while setting up Roxas and Axel in futile attempts to keep promises to them solely to hurt them even more by seeking to at least remain true to those tattered gossamer strings of oaths and hopes, even after all the times Roxas, and Axel, and everyone, and everything they'd, and she herself, had trusted, and believed in, had proven itself to be nothing more than a spun glass foundation of lies?
"In every heart, there's hope."
Where?
Where was there any hope left, save through calling upon power, and darkness, to punch a new Door in the fabric of reality, and Kingdom Hearts, itself, and compel the original light to return through death and torture and coercion and terror?
When they were running out of time to figure out who it was best to have break Roxas out of the ice curse?
When there might not even be an answer?
Nobodies, and replicas, had no arms to catch them, and hold them kept in a warm home.
"Yeah!"
"You're right."
"Huh…?"
"That's why I made sure our creation fought you. Now the data contains a complete heart."
"A heart made from conflict? That can't be real."
Xion felt her eyes widen, somewhere, or perhaps some when, as she at last realized the one final sanctuary for where hope might remain, something that, even after everything she'd discovered in the recent days, she'd still wanted to think about as little as possible.
"The being before you was recreated… from the records that were left by Vexen, and the many experiments performed by Young Xehanort."
Her new body was the culmination of all of the Xehanorts' research into the heart over the course of more than a decade, their ultimate and last puppet.
And, before Xehanort's heart fragment, and the beginnings of her second heart, had started giving it a sense of self, that was what her new replica self had been.
The ultimate Nightmare, astride both light and darkness and so much of an abomination she was an utter and absolute anathema to both, who had stained even Sora's Kingdom Key pitch onyx.
A mindless soldier of everlasting war capable of nothing more than murdering, and hurting, everyone, and everything, she came into contact without even stopping when she'd conquered, and acquired, and safeguarded in a gilded cage, and oppressed, everyone, and everything in existence.
Someone who, even when there was no war of conquest, or suppression of dissent, left to be waged, just kept on murdering, and hurting, forever, not out of selfishness, or misguided philanthropy, but for no reason other than that was all she knew, and the sole way she could live.
And, unlike the Dream Eater Riku had defeated, who had merely been a Nightmare who had been drawn to the darkness that had sought to claim Sora and that had then taken up residence in Ven's armor, the figment of imagination known as Xion was the perfect nightmare of death and hurt given reality.
"Changing sides again?"
"A true Nobody, hailing from the edge of oblivion."
And not just the Xehanorts, and their two Organization Thirteens.
"I shall do anything I please. As should you."
"Oh, I intend to."
If not for those words Maleficent had spoken, the Riku Replica might never have completed her.
She'd been Maleficent's own perfect weapon, and ultimate puppet during the tensions leading up to the Second Keyblade War, and the Second Keyblade War itself, since long before Maleficent had offered to become her Keyblade Master.
She'd been Maleficent's means of arms profiteering off the Second Keyblade War to ensure the Black Box would manifest, by playing both sides against the middle, without even retaining the glimmers of light, as the Xehanorts had, to care who won.
And that had been as much of the reason Maleficent had offered to teach her how to wield the Keyblade of Hearts now, as how its presence in her heart made her even more of that supreme weapon of darkness than the Xehanorts had believed.
What would happen if she unlocked that part of her heart with the Keyblade of Hearts, a chamber so horrific even the Xehanorts had never intended for it to be nothing but an empty artery into which Xehanort could send his last heart fragment?
What light, and hope, and warmth, and home, was present within darkness that deep, darkness more profound than even the darkness itself that the Heartless were?
If something went wrong, and something that wasn't the real her took control of her body while she was diving into that darkness in search of the sole light that might remain to be found, Riku could just beat her once more, as he had beaten both her and the Armored Ventus Nightmare.
She still wasn't sure what, precisely, had happened to him before she'd arrived at the clock tower, or why he wasn't with Sora, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy in the igloo now, but if this went wrong, she knew he could find a way.
As long as hope remains, don't give up.
Don't think twice.
Xion still wasn't sure what was happening to her, but she couldn't afford to spend any time second guessing.
"She's not an 'it!'"
"But unlike yours, this Keyblade holds the power to unlock people's hearts. Allow me to demonstrate… Behold!"
She truly was an it, however.
There was no longer any doubt about that.
Because she knew now that hope and doubt were the very same things.
And the Keyblade of Hearts wasn't that dangerous, even in the hands of onyx that was anathema to even darkness itself, even the darkness itself of the Heartless.
Nor was it even as close to entirely forged as the one Xehanort's Heartless had wielded had been.
Yes, she didn't understand what Christopher had done to her, but so what?
Nothing else mattered, so why should that?
"Dive down deep into her sound
"But not too deep or you'll be drowned"
"What did you just say?"
Was that Elsa's voice, now very alarmed, and frightened, in ways different than it had been over the past days, and hours?
How could Elsa have heard whoever had been singing those words in a memory?
The storm of starbursts and gray felt inexplicably less there, at the understanding knowledge and empathetic symphony in Elsa's voice.
"When his memories were scattered, some of them found their way inside you. Now, Sora has been put to sleep so that we can piece together his memory. Except…"
"You can't, because part of it is inside of me. That means… he can't wake up."
"Riku, please! You have to stop him!"
"How many times do I have to beat you?"
"All right. You've left me with no other choice."
"What?"
"I have to release the power in my heart – The dark power that I've been holding back. Even… if it changes me forever."
"Wait!"
"Well, hello there… Xion."
"Axel? No, wait! Stop!"
"Wh–What!? How could it get this close to me without me noticing?"
"It's… it's too powerful. I've gotta' finish this now, before it wears me down any further. It's all or nothing…"
"Stop, both of you!"
"Xion!?"
"Roxas? Wh… What are you doing here? The Heartless I was fighting – it was you?"
"This mission was a setup."
"What?"
"It was rigged so you two would battle each other."
"It's for the good of everyone."
"But how do you know that? Everybody thinks they're right…"
"This is right."
"They're gonna' destroy you!"
"Please don't hold back, Axel. Promise."
"What's your problem? You both… think you can do whatever you want. Well, I'm sick of it. Go on, you just keep running. But I'll always be there to bring you back!"
"Roxas… I'm out of time. Even if I'm not ready… I have to make this choice. You have poured so many memories into me… given me so much… that I feel like I'm about to overflow. Look at me, Roxas. Who do you see? If you see somebody else's face… a boy's face… then that means I'm almost ready. This puppet will have to play her part. Roxas… This is him. It's Sora. You're next, Roxas. I have to make you a part of me, too. Don't you see? This is why I was created."
"Now you'll see!"
"Is that all you've got? Stop holding back! Get ready, Roxas!"
"Who are you… again? It's weird. I feel like I'm forgetting something really important."
"You'll be… better off now… Roxas.
"Am I… the one who did this to you?
"No… It was my choice… to go away now. Better that, than to do nothing… and let Xemnas have his way. I belong with Sora. And now, I am going back… to be with him. Roxas… I need you… to do me a favor. All those hearts that I've captured… Kingdom Hearts… Set them free."
"I'm the reason you're siphoning Axel through the Recusant's Sigil.
"I kept it from fading, and warped the tie you three wove by directly bonding it to your hearts, because I saw faded writings of yours on the play islands beach, and though I didn't know they were yours, I didn't forget them."
"Xion can't protect me without redirecting the siphon back at Roxas through the Recusant's Sigil; she needs to choose who to abandon and betray to a gradual, excruciating death through wasting away from between the two people she loves the most."
"You figured out part of the bad news yourself, so here's the good n"
"Her destiny is to betray someone she loves the most of all in the worst way possible, thus casting enough darkness within her heart to finish the Keyblade of Hearts, and also harness her energy siphoning abilities to transition her into something known as a hollow rift, one capable of affecting all of dimensional space and time."
Roxas' face was right there, above her, and she could honestly feel her mouth moving as she spoke the next words.
"It's too late… for me to undo my mistakes."
Not if I don't give up with so much determination I don't think twice faster than time's currents ripple, so I can rocket at a different speed than time itself and return to the past before I made them.
Xion could feel the Keyblade of Hearts in her mouth.
Then all nothings were molten black chalk frost.
.
"Equivalence. Don't tell me you still believe in that naïve theory."-Dante
"It's no theory. It's the absolute law of alchemy! No, of the whole world! To obtain anything, something of equal value must be lost. People couldn't have gotten anywhere without knowing that."-Edward Elric
"A wonderful story, told to comfort the oppressed and make children learn their lessons. The truth is, the Law of Equivalent Exchange is a lie."-Dante
"Impossible!"-Edward Elric
"To gain, something of equal value must be lost. Conversely, if you give something up, you'll always gain a part of something of equal worth in return."-Dante
"Exactly. That's why people work hard at anything they do. Because it pays off."-Edward Elric
"Wrong. People work because they believe it will pay, but equal effort does not always mean equal gain."-Dante
"Like what?"-Edward Elric
"Consider the State Alchemy Exam that you passed with flying colors. How many others took the test that day, but who spent years preparing, some working much harder than you? Yet you're the only one that passed. Where were their rewards? Was it their fault that they lost to your natural talent? And what about the value of each person's life? If I just clap my hands this baby won't survive."-Dante
"Stop it!"-Edward Elric
"And if I do it, where is the word balance then? Does that mean the baby was only born so it could die? It's doing everything it can to survive. Breathing and crying for help. But what does it get in exchange? People can say there was a balance, because logic says everything happens for a reason. But the truth is far less designed. No matter how hard you work, when you die, you die. Some spend their entire lives trying to scratch their way to the top, and still die in poverty. While others are born into wealth, without ever working at all. It's a cruel and random world, yet the chaos is just so beautiful."-Dante
"That's enough, Dante!"-Edward Elric
"My baby!"-Rose Thomas
"Equivalent Exchange is a myth. A contrived order to give sense to a world that has none. Can you accept that now or do you need another demonstration?"-Dante
"Don't use that child to fuel your agenda!"-Edward Elric
FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST:
Episode 49: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GATE