.
CHAPTER 68:
ROXAS NON LO VUOI EH COME
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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Reminiscence – Feelings Not Erased,' from the CHRONO CROSS Original Soundtrack, Disc One; and afterwards, until the end of the Chapter, 'The Harsh Truth (Piano Version),' from the XENOSAGA Episode Three Unreleased Tracks. For those who are interested in listening to the second piece, scrolling down any lower than the title of the second track will reveal a song with two of the largest spoilers in the XENOSAGA trilogy in its title. The first composition can be found on Zophar's Domain, and the second in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
Kristoff looked out, in horrified illness, at the igloos at the near, and far, corners of the boulevard of dirt coated rock Anna had just vanished into.
Though, he was solely aware of their presence at the farthest margins of his awareness.
It had all fallen apart.
All the months he'd spent striving, with everything and any way he could feel, and think of, to keep Anna at a distance without shutting her out on the other side of any doors, and to keep her from wholly recognizing just how much she'd done the same thing for him she'd done for Elsa; all the empty, concave caverns of fissured broken absence he'd known each time he'd seen Anna holding Elsa, or rocking her back and forth, or singing her a lullaby, or kissing her on the forehead, and he'd wished with anguished pulses it had ached all without and within past fathoms too much for him to even think of merely attempting to process, or not do so; had all gone wrong.
"Get up and retake Sora's hand now. You don't get to decide what will hurt Sora the least. He does."
Why hadn't Kristoff believed Anna?
Why hadn't he admitted to himself he'd been doing the same thing Kairi, and Elsa, had attempted, all along?
Kristoff had been attempting to line Anna up to jump in after him, the same way Elsa, and Kairi, and Xion, and Roxas, and so many others, had, by attempting to ensure, if Sora one day returned, and there was any possibility Sora could bring Anna happiness, Kristoff was out of the way.
Kristoff had been terrified to the most recessive distances of his self, and potentialities of memory, if he let Anna see how essentially intrinsic she was to him, he'd asphyxiate the effervescently vibrant hearth of a heart Sora could ensure beamed into a kaleidoscope measurelessly more effulgent than all the shades of the most incandescent rainbow.
"If anyone can help her, it's you."
Even before Kristoff had recognized what Anna was doing for him, he'd known Sora's words applied to what he could do for Anna, as much as what Anna could do for Elsa.
Anna had spent most of her life strangled by the yoke of needing to care for Elsa.
And when Kristoff had been willing to kiss her, Anna had made the choice of what life she wanted to live indisputable.
Kristoff had refused to put her in a position where she saw any reason to make that choice, once more.
After Anna had chosen to protect Elsa, Kristoff had been unable to justify closing a similar door in Anna's heart, and, even though Kristoff's knowledge Sora couldn't stay in Arendelle had proven true, Kristoff had convinced himself that, by refusing to wholly open that door to begin with, he wouldn't risk shutting it in her face the same way Elsa had.
What he'd pieced together about what he'd done to Elsa, and Christopher, had caused him to become inexpressibly more determined to keep from smothering Anna's vitality.
Now it had all but guttered to chalk ash.
Now it could very well be too late.
Kristoff didn't know precisely what Anna had learned, during her journey, but he knew chasing after her this time would accomplish far worse than cornering her in the same swampy quagmire of a choice he'd believed he was sparing her, for all this time.
Unless he convinced her, with all her reasons to be far rasher than the Anna he'd first met, to not confront Runeard before she traveled too far, assuming the resplendent effervescence she'd brought into Kristoff's own life imprisoned in frosted ice blocks lacking any warmth hadn't already disappeared past his reach, for good, and she hadn't already traversed too great a distance for him to catch up with her, he'd become a walking target for the Treaty of Flames, and any other dark denizens searching for a good opening to join in on the tumult.
Would Kristoff's words even mean enough to Anna, if convincing her not to do this meant at last telling her everything he'd been concealing himself, for all this time?
It didn't matter if doing so really did convince Anna to close the door of her own heart's hearth on him.
Kristoff was the one who deserved that, after everything he'd said, done, not done, and not said.
And, whatever Runeard's own wrongs in this, if Anna, to who the concept of hurting family was perhaps more anathema to anything her self presided as, or could not be, fought her own grandfather, even more so as ravaged as she'd been since Lauriam, and Elrena, had first told her the roles the Foretellers were presenting her to select from, Kristoff didn't know precisely how it would crumble her.
What Kristoff did know was it would carve Anna into shards just as much as the danger the sister she'd just brought home would be cast adrift in much more vacant cold than the blizzard Anna had spent so long bringing her home from.
There was no way remaining Kristoff could think of to stop it from occurring.
He'd had his chance, but he'd abandoned Anna, by convincing himself he was somehow any better than Elsa, and Kairi with Sora, and he could supposedly presume to know what was best for Anna better than Anna herself did.
That hadn't stopped him from riding Sven right into that blizzard, anyway.
And it wouldn't stop him now.
The odds were even worse than Kristoff had believed them to be the first time, when he'd had a good idea what Elsa could do, but no more than a general grasp of what Heartless, and other denizens of darkness, could bring about.
However, while Kristoff wouldn't let those odds keep him from, at last, wholly opening the door of the chambers of his own heart to Anna, regardless of what that might do to her, the sole way to stop Anna could very well be to strike Runeard down himself.
Kristoff wasn't even as skilled in a fight as Goofy, and Donald, were, far less Keyblade wielders.
If he saw an opening to, and a means of exploiting it, though, there was no other way.
Kristoff raised his fingers to his lips, to whistle for Sven, as he shifted to begin running after Anna.
"With all that established," Mickey's voice drifted from nearby, making it clear he was patrolling the ruins of Arendelle while he talked to Larsa, and, perhaps, one or more of whoever else had arrived with him, "What, specifically, caused you to leave Ivalice Zodiac?"
Kristoff needed to reposition his feet to stay on his legs, he was so weightless with relief.
Mickey was another royal, himself.
And a full fledged Keyblade Master.
Mickey could reach Anna.
"It's your turn to fill in the blanks," Mickey was going on.
"Was it Lucca who got in touch with you, or is there another reason, and trail, from, and for, which you're here?
"And, have you discovered anything about how to stop Xion's siphoning ability, for good?"
Larsa's polite, and refined voice, while it otherwise remained companionably glad to see a friend it hadn't spent time with in years, now held contained worry that would have sounded far less rending than Kristoff's years spending time with Elsa had taught him was light years distant from how frightened the royal really was.
"I embarked myself because Symphony of Sorcery, and all the majesty of its wonders, have now been dusted amidst the stars, as you bespoke this Hundred Acre Wood has twice endured."
Kristoff suppressed the urge to clench his teeth.
He turned in Mickey's direction.
Lucca's voice was a professional mask.
"I've developed a theory about Xion I believe is substantiated.
"I'm going to ask her, though, if she wants to hear it first, the good, and the bad, and whether she wants to hear it all by herself."
wastooexhausted
couldn't
betootiredtobreatheanylonger
erasedon'tlet
heartbeat
letitallbe
gone
don'tlether
them
near
now
I
they
remember
letitallbe
gone
the
emptiness
neverbothered
me
anyway
"Am I… the one who did this to you?"
"Who are you… again? It's weird. I feel like I'm forgetting something really important."
"It's good to know you refused to give up on a replica you could barely remember, and whether a word about frozen light was taken from a reality, and history, of data, while what was once we, and now wasn't even I, weren't even worth the trouble for you to honestly believe were still alive."
"You can stop.
"No matter your heart or its absence, no matter your self or its absence, from the very beginning, you gave Xion and Axel the most important salvation of all.
"A heart isn't something you put yourself first and gain, or regain, remember?
"By guiding Sora to us, you taught Anna that, and then she taught me.
"It's something you give.
"Just as you taught Xion, and reminded Axel, how to give you hearts they weren't even aware they had, as soon as they first met you."
"Because Axel went to Castle Oblivion, you mean.
"I've been informed long since Isa pointed out Axel didn't actually begin to change until he met Sora, and Axel is the person who first showed Xion she could lean on others with his idea for how she could regain her ability to use the Keyblade.
"You just trailed behind Sora as one of the shadows he casts, as usual."
How could Roxas do this?
How could he let any of that hope even mean as much as it did?
Or the despair?
Roxas had already resigned himself to what was required of him for his penance.
He should have just returned himself to Sora when Kairi had brought him home, once more, and it had become clear how much even Sora was now questioning himself, and his trust in the presence of light to guide him.
"Just as you taught Xion, and reminded Axel, how to give you hearts they weren't even aware they had, as soon as they first met you."
Elsa was wrong.
She needed to be.
Runeard was correct.
Sora had brought Axel back to the light.
Then Axel had done the same for Xion.
Roxas couldn't have done it by himself, for either of them.
Sora, and Namine, and the others, could claim whatever they wanted; whether or not anyone missed Roxas, and wanted him back, had mattered just as little as anything else.
It had been what mattered the least.
No one but Tidus, and Roxas, had even known Xion had been around to miss.
Dancing with deeper darkness, or the pale faded outlines of a sickly cavorting light, was as pointless as anything else.
H
Xion
Axel
Mare
Elsa
Data Hayner
Data Pence
Data Olette
Namine
Isa
Sora
needed Roxas to stop wasting even this much effort with the hollow oaths of both, or even the in between, data, dreams, and memories.
Roxas was a castaway of both light, and darkness, and that was how it went.
Aches throughout his body processed, and Roxas became aware there was snow flecking his body, but the aches were so muted, and his skin was so numb to the snow, Roxas couldn't tell how long he'd been lying in it.
He turned onto his left to push himself to his feet.
He was lying on the sparking outline of a giant crown at the center of a circular surface of moving hazes of darks and yellows, itself appearing to hover in the light blue mist swept cloudy skies of the Ocean Between, with curtains of the morphing and flowing colors of interspace flickering in and out of vision behind the blues and wisp banks.
Roxas rolled his eyes as he got to his feet, and he called Oathkeeper, and Oblivion, to his hands in corkscrewing colors.
"What is this, divide and conquer through one person colonization of the realms, and worlds, by compulsory relocation?" he queried sarcastically.
"Who wants to have a talk, this time, with me?"
don'tbeoneofVanitas'kinpleas
Roxas pushed it away.
He suppressed the urge to clench his teeth when the truest shock he'd felt since before he'd gained his new body, if weak, passed through him when a gray familiar the size of Xehanort's, but with the totally gray features of the black partition of World of Chaos, appeared before him. It lacked bandages over its maw, but flickering, transparent roughly half hoops began out of sight behind the protrusion's back to arc up and clamp over its maw at a shallower, opposite forward slope of how the similar number of gold rings of Xehanort's Heartless had risen upwards and backwards from the location of the its segment's shoulders.
Roxas assumed at neutral combat position.
When the familiar spoke, however, its words were primarily directed at itself, they caused the transparent bands over its maw to shift, but remain wholly intact, and its voice was human, and mildly self depreciating, but otherwise, all but emotionless.
"So I still don't know better, huh?"
The familiar's words were now utterly without feeling, and directed fully at Roxas.
"It appears it's now time to see how I do with one of my own contingencies."
That identified one likely possibility for who this was, from what he'd been told about what had happened in Wreck-It Ralph's world.
Or, at least, whose identity the speaker had assumed.
"Empyreal," Roxas greeted, keeping his tones level.
"Is this a courtesy call, or a combat one?"
"It will be whichever you prefer," Empyreal answered, with no evidence of whether whatever humor Roxas was still willing to convey had meant anything to him.
"Regardless, I'll get to the point right away.
"I keep hearing all these things about how you have a grand destiny if you give into the darkness. The way I see it, though, unlike even how Xehanort himself became willing to walk home to the light once he learned Eraqus was willing to reconnect with his heart, you yourself never once left the darkness."
"You wish. He'll never answer to you again."
"Am I… the on"
"Just as you taught Xio"
"No one would mis"
Roxas pushed the remembrances away.
He ignored the slight sickness that caused him to want to retch in ways that were less acute, but still more ill, than he could recall feeling since he'd regained all his memories.
"Riku couldn't reach you, so he knocked you out.
"Entering your replica by choice, with all your memories intact, doesn't count.
"A lot of the Real Organization Thirteen consisted of dark hearts, and Riku saved you from yourself the first time by calling upon his, and Xehanort's, shared darkness. Just claiming a new body doesn't constitute walking into the light for the first time.
"Xion was a replica from the beginning, someone both less, and more, than a Nobody.
"While Lea, and the others, all recompleted with their first hearts.
"You're the heart of a Nobody in the body of a replica.
"You should stop worrying about whether or not to give into the darkness.
"You never left it."
Roxas clenched his teeth together tightly, suppressing the urge to snarl at himself.
How could he have wetness in his eyes?
The sole thing that mattered any longer was his murder of Xion, and her legacy.
That was what he was here for.
That was why he wasn't supposed to even not prove he'd existed, or potentially be a self.
"I also advise you not to do so, for reasons I can honestly say I'm not supposed to be telling you, but here they are, nonetheless.
"A Nobody's heart was never meant to reside in the realm of light, or even in the realms of darkness, and the in between. Even if Xion can alter her heart itself, and stop it from siphoning you, and the others, your own heart could just as easily cause it to reactivate by shifting the slightest amount among shades of light."
couldn't tell whether
lying on the surface of the incantation or standing above it, or the difference between the black haze in
eyes and the washing night below, or the tears dribbling down
face, and the blue of the firmament surrounding
"Or you can keep that light smothered by the depths of darkness, and give her a chance at gaining the life you almost denied her from both space and time."
Roxas couldn't breathe.
The rush of desperate hope shouldn't have honestly mattered any more than anything else should have done so since Elsa had told him what he'd done for Xion, and Roxas.
But that was beside the point, for different reasons.
If his light really was a danger to Xion, as he'd never been without one, that would have been the case when his body was also that of a Nobody.
Roxas wished he could believe he was standing this time, entirely because he knew better than to fall for that snare that easily, and become terrified those were any more valid reasons to doubt himself than anything else, rather than, at least in part, because of what Elsa had said.
"That still won't lessen it," Roxas responded.
Why wasn't he relieved his voice was fissured, now?
"Don't try the light within the darkness route," Empyreal commented, his tones still lacking any feeling.
"I once believed I'd found that light within seven datascapes of future worlds, and one in the present.
"But that didn't do any good.
"I couldn't do one thing for Vanellope, or Ralph, in the present datascape.
"While almost every single light I believed I'd found within the prophecies of future darkness couldn't prevent them from coming true, in different ways, when the times projected in the datascapes arrived. Even without Xehanort's dabbling, the dark dwellers of each world were already well on their way to enacting those nightmares under different conditions, all on their own.
"Before I learned what had taken place in the future, though, it had already become apparent those lights were just candles drawing moths to nothing but an end of skeletal chalk ash.
"For all of Snow White's, and the dwarfs, beliefs hard work paid off, it was capricious fortune that defeated her stepmother. Yes, the Queen bit off more than she could chew by attempting to utilize true effort with the boulder, but even then, she would have won, and prevented the Prince from healing Snow White, if not for an accident of causality.
"I can't even say for sure I could have beaten the data Queen, with how much there was remaining for me to learn with the Keyblade when I confronted her.
"Based on how meaningless my efforts were later, I extremely highly doubt it.
"The same accidents of a merciless reality almost sentenced the dwarfs to excruciating, hopeless deaths in the mines, and they just survived because I was there.
"What the prophecy of Snow White showed me was that, no matter how much you dream, or how much effort you put into striving to actualize them, all endeavor is nothing more than whimsy in the face of haphazard indifferent causality."
Hearing that shouldn't have caused the fatiguing aches to grow worse.
The reaches of the dark chasm made no difference, themselves.
Roxas should never have let Maleficent, or Christopher, get to him.
Not when he'd murdered Xion from space, and time.
Not when he'd driven Axel to follow Xion down her path almost to his own slaughter.
Not when he'd left the data Hayner, data Pence, and data Olette to millennia of inescapable torture without sparing a single genuine thought for what could have happened to them if they'd survived.
"The prophecy of Wonderland had no light to guide me," Empyreal went on.
"It's the prophecy that demonstrated to me no matter how splendid a place reality is, attempting to partake of its marvels will just leave you stranded and broken far from home. Wonderland showed me how much of a good thing it was we weren't visiting other locations in the first world to gather Lux, and we were just traveling to datascapes.
"Aladdin, and Abu, would have starved if Aladdin hadn't exploited a loophole in the Genie's duties, and then drowned if the Genie hadn't returned the favor. Aladdin, and Abu, could have escaped the Cave of Wonders without exploiting that loophole themselves, but then Aladdin wouldn't have been able to free the Genie. Maybe he could have utilized the same loophole to point out he hadn't actually made the second wish himself, but since Jafar claimed the lamp before Aladdin had a chance to point that out, it's all but a foregone conclusion he let that chance slip by.
"Agrabah taught me we're all the same, whether we're rich, or poor, flesh, or magical, and that no one is born into a different social stratification, yes.
"Because it taught me we're all equal in that the sole way anyone, rich or poor, beggar or noble, can live is to cheat, and lie his, her, or its way through a futile life of toiling over competition for pointless scraps in a reality of detritus.
"Beast's Castle showed me sins can't be atoned for."
Roxas' insides heaved, and he was shocked to find part of him was surprised he wasn't once more retching.
It also made no difference, though, what he did, or didn't, believe.
Roxas didn't seek atonement.
He wanted Xion, and Axel, and Mare, and Elsa, and both Hayners, and both Olettes, and both Pences, and Namine, and Isa, and Sora, to be the ones better off without him.
Yozora, Xehanort, Xemnas, Isa, Ansem the Wise, and all the other dark dwellers who had walked that road, had made it blindingly obvious how self defeating vengeance was.
That was one of the reasons Roxas longed for a death of restitution.
If he avenged his sins by taking vengeance upon himself, his death would be self defeating.
"The sole reason Beast survived was the timing.
"If he, and Belle had bonded sufficiently sooner, fulfilling the terms of the enchantment wouldn't have healed him. He'd have died from Gaston's injury, and that's assuming, while he'd have had more of a reason to fight back sooner, he could have even defended himself against Gaston, and Gaston's Heartless, as long as he did in a human form.
"Benevolence, and contrition, are as much at the mercy of haphazard causality as making an effort to fulfill your dreams.
"Olympus backed that lesson up by making it clear neither life or death is enough to fill your heart with light."
That knowledge, and how scoured into certitude it was, didn't terrify Roxas.
It couldn't do that.
Ansem the Wise, and Even, and the rest of the members of both Organization Thirteens who had recovered their light, could atone.
They hadn't been the ones who had done the deed.
"The prophecy of Olympus etched that heroism or hoarding, repression or representation, cause just as much violence, and hardship, as life and death do. It cautioned staying alive isn't anything better than unending travel from battlefield to battlefield, where no matter how many people you protect, or save, it's never enough to honestly make a difference in existence for the better. And that, by the same token, death isn't any more of a solution.
"At the Castle of Dreams, I learned hope for a better reality can't overcome selfishness.
"Cinderella's animal friends needed to steal a dress for her she could wear to go to the ball, and that theft ruined her one slim, but real chance of convincing Tremaine, and perhaps even her stepsisters, of accepting her as their real family.
"Cinderella's Fairy Godmother bailed her out then, but Cinderella still traded work for expedience. This nearly cost both her, and Prince Charming, their chance at a better life; Cinderella learned from her first mistake, when she attempted to go to the ball in a stolen dress, and she kept one of the slippers herself. But, if she hadn't been careless with the one she left behind, it's practically foregone Cinderella's step family would have found the other one before Cinderella could reunite with Charming.
"The same slothful lack of care that ruined Cinderella's, and Charming's, life is what brought them happiness.
"As with Snow White's fate, striving for your dreams turned out to be pointless in the face of an uncaring, unfeeling reality that but mows you down.
"The emulation of Enchanted Dominion, and Game Central Station, taught me the most pallidly blinding lessons of all.
"Philip, and Aurora, bonded based on the brief time Philip spent with Aurora as a baby, and Aurora's early memories of him, and the rest of her family, in dreams. There was barely enough time for them to become friends, and no chance for them to become the childhood sweethearts they very possibly would have been if not for Maleficent, but the friendship was still there, reminding them both of the hearth of a true home, and working as a foundation from which they could forge a stronger connection.
"Yet, even with all the hurdles Philip, Flora, Merryweather, and Fauna turned into teaching tools about the pitfalls, and triumphs, of connections, even fairies who purport to be as loving, and giving as Merryweather, Fauna, and Flora would have attempted to stop Philip from bringing Aurora out of the darkness if their marriage hadn't been a betrothal by dint of birth.
"Philip, and Aurora, were both determined to choose to defy what they believed was an arranged marriage with someone else, and to prevent how they were born from ruling who they could, or couldn't, choose to love with an honestly heartfelt bond.
"But Enchanted Dominion showed that even Merryweather, Flora, and Fauna don't believe Kairi from choosing to live as Sora's light within the darkness, or Namine as Riku's.
"They, and both their blood parents, would have rather left Aurora in eternal sleep than let Philip, and Aurora choose for themselves who to date, and marry.
"Even the three purportedly good fairies believe destiny can be controlled.
"And that hearts aren't always free, at every, and any, time, in all, and any, way, to decide who, and what, we are; or who to bond with, and who to light the way back to a hearth for; or between light, and darkness, at all, and any, time.
"The light within the darkness of connections, and true love, themselves subsist at the whims of fickle remorseless connections."
"Now you'll see!"
"This puppet will have to play her part."
"Even if I'm not ready… I have to make this choice."
"Don't you see? This is why I was created."
nono
nowaypleaseplease
stayaway
nopleasepleaseway
there'snodeeperdarknessformetodescendinto
Ican'tdescenddeeperI'malreadyatthebottom
NamineacceptedRikuforwhohewas
notme
Rikualwayshadachoice
Ican't
whydidIenzosavemehejudgedRiku
whynopleasewhy
pleasewhynowhy
whywhy
theabyssisn'tendlessI'vebeenatthefoundationsfrom
nostaywayaway
staywaywayaway
Roxas clenched his teeth, and he suppressed the urge to grip the pommels of his Keyblades, tighter at the need to blink away the night haze dusted tears in his eyes that were once more spilling down his cheeks.
"While in Game Central Station, even though I understood Ralph wasn't my foe, all that did was drive home, as an accompanying stanza to my returning memories of the Keyblade War, there was no light within me that could establish any kind of lasting compromise, or negotiated peace.
"It taught me I'm such a wretched mote I couldn't even save one little girl who had lived a life of unbounded torment for years.
"Risking Strelitzia, Ephemer, Skuld, and my Chirithy on the flickering hope of a light within the darkness in the face of all that isn't trusting faith.
"It's self deception."
"I am me! Nobody els"
Roxas clenched his teeth once more, and he pushed that recollection away, itself.
He had no self.
His eyes widened, slightly.
Empyreal wasn't the sole person here who knew how to punch first, and ask questions later.
And, without a vessel of Empyreal's own, Roxas had a real chance.
Roxas was still coming to terms with the new chambers of darkness he'd reached up, not down, towards.
However, Roxas had learned a lot, over the months, how to function as a fulcrum for balancing currents of energies.
And, unlike the data Pence, data Hayner, and data Olette, Roxas knew better now than to even let it matter whether he was punching first to fight for combat's sake; because he was brimming with hate, and rage; because that was the sole way he knew how to live; because there was nothing better for him to do; or for any trust in a trail of light, the in between, or darkness to guide him.
As long as both, and the in between, went away, and stayed away, there was no point for second guesses.
If he captured Empyreal, Roxas would need to endure thanks from Ephemer, Strelitzia, and who knew who else, one of, if not the, very last things he wanted to hear from anyone.
But Roxas had completed spending any time with the deranged hallucinatory whimsies of light, and darkness.
Roxas didn't even need to charge it, this time.
The strings of Zettaflare were already weaving together, and no sigils were manifesting below him, as Roxas positioned Oathkeeper, and Oblivion, in front of him, and Empyreal's familiar eyes became a little wide.
Namine let herself sigh in weightless relief that drained even the fatigue from her bones as her projection beheld Roxas, his Keyblades leveled at a gray familiar resembling Xehanort's that, from what Namine was perceiving, and measuring against what she'd picked up on in what had once been Game Central Station, and its satellites, belonged to Empyreal.
After so many separations her powers had been useless in scrying, she'd been able to locate Roxas.
She could bring him back home.
Namine pushed away the familiar guilt, barely less after what she'd tone for Roxas in Twilight Town, if lighter, at all, at how better late than never that was.
There was another mess for her to clean up, and without ensorcelling any brooms in the process.
It went on almost too fast for Namine to process what was happening.
The pointed tail tendril of the familiar bent in Namine's direction, and then it shot at her.
Roxas jolted violently.
He whipped in the direction of the extending tendril, drawn and stark horrified terror on a face once more streaked with tears Namine's insides warped at seeing another time, and knowing one of the primary causes for.
Before he could initiate whatever he'd been attempting, though, the tendril wrapped around Namine's shoulders repeatedly, and clenched shut, squeezing her with leathery rubbery teeth as immovable as solid metal.
Namine's gorge heaved at the knowledge of the clearest method available to defend herself as she simultaneously pushed away the devouring rush of terror at the concept of becoming anyone's prisoner, once more.
Ripples of black rushed in at her from all directions, as the familiar's body proper rushed forward along the back of the shortening tail, and Namine opened her heart to trace the connections between the familiar, and Empyreal proper, and sever them.
The familiar rose to hover above, and in front, of her face, and its voice was the same stable human intonations without feeling Empyreal had spent much of his time talking in within the datascape, but this time, there was a totally utter, and fully absolute, sheen of drawn disbelief in them.
"I actually did it," he spoke, his whisper so quiet Namine knew no one but she could hear it.
"And no one even caught on more than a little, to my initial strategy, or any of my contingencies.
"Now, Nobody of heart and body, you will become as to Domain of Tales what Ven is to Vanitas."
Horrified, and shocked, terror flooded through Namine.
She dismissed it, however, the same way she had since Riku, and Sora had first shown her she wasn't condemned to slink behind Kairi as a shadow until she dispersed into the darkness, and she could choose to become her own person, and she solidified that removed agonized doubtful hate behind the most set wall she could think of.
It was much easier than it had been, since before she'd regained her whole self to discover the price Sora had paid to recover so many lost hearts, for so long, had been to become lost himself, to raise those walls, due to what Vanitas had said to her.
But, as usual, what truly kept them up was her recognition, if she didn't believe in herself, at least a little, and mean it, rather than just putting up a front, then Riku would lose much, if not all, of his own trust in himself.
Even all the times Namine had held him near, and tight as he cried, and rocked him back and forth, or rubbed his back, after Sora had disappeared; and all of what she'd taught him about how he could choose the light over the darkness at any time, and his decisions, not his sins, or his flaws, caused him to be what he was; had barely been enough to keep him from chasing after Sora right away by merely misusing the power of waking sufficiently himself.
Even with that, Riku had now all but become what Xemnas had claimed Nobodies were.
Now he wasn't even human, a second time.
If Namine stopped believing in herself, she could very well lose every spectrum of her capacity to beam as the light she'd become for Riku when he'd lost all other hope any torch could lead him out of the darkness.
Her guilt, and her own hatred for herself, were moot, at this time.
That was why Namine knew what her answer was, without needing to think about it.
She pushed away the pulse of guilt at the drawn terror on Roxas' face, as he gazed at them from where he stood motionless, his Keyblades raised to charge, but otherwise suspended in a ready stance.
She turned her head upward to give Empyreal a smile months, and years, of practice had taught her to no longer feel surprised she didn't need to force, in situations like this, albeit one she knew was cracked with guilt.
"If that's all you're after, I'm okay with negotiating terms under which I'll assist you in doing so, willingly."
The familiar's visage smoothed out.
"I already made that mistake."
Empyreal's voice was now loud enough for Roxas to hear, and the feeling it had gained was gone.
"I'm not leaving myself open like that a second time."
"He's the one they all miss. It's… not me."
Namine walled that away, as well.
Along with her selfish thankfulness Mare wasn't here, because Namine knew how she'd very likely react if she heard what offer for an enduring armistice Namine was about to put on the table.
"No power can defeat you – not the light, not the dark. So don't run from the light – and don't fear the darkness. Both will make you stronger."
"The darkness in your heart is vast and deep… but if you can stare into it unflinching, you'll never know fear again."
There went the hope Vanitas had given her she truly could light the way home sweet home for anyone.
"Even if I offer to keep Strelitzia, Ephemer, Skuld's selves, and your Chirithy, regardless of whose it is now, away from you?"
Roxas clenched his teeth together, and any tinges of sentiment left his own visage.
Empyreal jolted slightly, and his bound mouth opened a little, desperate terror passing through his eyes.
"Even then," a new voice interjected, determined irritation in its otherwise companionable voice.
An adult Vanitas, clad in an Organization Thirteen coat, walked forward out of bending, shimmering air.
Roxas jolted, the blood draining from a face now stark with determined and denying horror, and he whipped in the direction of Yozora's Nobody with Oathkeeper, and Oblivion grasped so tightly his knuckles were chalk white, and both his weapons shook so violently they bent large amounts in different directions.
Empyreal whirled in official military composure to raise his right claw in a sharply precise diagonal salute.
"I must regrettably inform you that negotiations have been suspended indefinitely.
"I have a court martial inquiry to conduct, here."
.
"We're just particles of dust, brushed from the palm of a God. He didn't care what happened to her. But I did. I had to keep her safe."-Lumina
LIGHTNING RETURNS: FINAL FANTASY XIII