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CHAPTER 69:
FACT TALE
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Author's Notes: The pieces for this Chapter are, in order of scene: 'Junior Two,' from the XENOSAGA Episode Two Movie Scene Soundtrack, Disc One; and afterwards, 'Burning Orphanage – The Girl Who Stole the Star Medley,' from the CHRONO CROSS Twentieth Anniversary Live Tour 2019 Radical Dreamers Yasunori Mitsuda and Millennial Fair, Disc One. Both compositions can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section.
"but I must have gazed very far, because I fell down, down, down"
voices
piercingtheblackness
Kairi
Riku
Donald
Goofy
Anna
whywon'ttheystayaway
whywon'ttheystopreaching
"the gentleduck and the spry dog tried so very much"
A surging torrent of air robbing terror drenched Sora with reality once again.
Yozora
justlaythereunmovingwhileChristophermurderedJiminy
Donald
Goofy
"They're Darkballs.
"I can afford to be careless."
"Who says that I want you overly taking care of me?"
"All right, I'm sorry."
"We're all a lot tougher than Jiminy.
"We're not so easily sl"
Sora practically wasn't aware he'd chosen to open his eyes.
"But we still fell off of the castle."
He was sitting on a couch, near its left corner, with a light on inside a lampshade over a light blue lamp on a table to his left. A floor length window was behind it, and around him were the surroundings of an unremarkable apartment living room.
An adult male with short black hair in a light brown raincoat, clearly Robert, was standing near a green apartment door, his hand on the knob as though he'd just closed it. To his own left was a woman with brown, almost orange hair in a ponytail who was clad in a wedding dress. She must be the woman who had interrupted his confrontation with Yozora's Heartless.
That, though, meant she was, in all likelihood, a lot more than just a woman in a wedding dress.
"One…"
"And your meaningless existence along with it."
"Zero.
"Your time has run out."
"Well, it's okay.
"You don't need to have just questioned what had happened to Ven.
"After all, you don't know how Ven died at Xion's hands.
"And you can't know that by sending that much of his light into Boo's, you just killed her, while you forced Kairi and Riku against their intention to participate in the murder of the innocent, helpless little girl you just committed."
Standing between them and the couch was the girl child he'd seen before, wearing a raincoat in light reds, pinks, and other colors over a karate gi.
Sora barely remembered to keep his eyes open.
He barely registered he was about to retch violently at thinking of leaving Donald and Goofy to their fate in time to settle his stomach.
"Is this a big habit of yours?" Robert
this was what Anna wanted for him?
For him to protect the child daughter of an agent of the law?
there'smoretoit
Annadoesn'tletpeopledown
youmurderedBoo
youmadeKairidoit
youmadeRikudoit
evenAnnacan'tforgivethat
shedidn'tmeanherwords
Annawouldn'tdothat
ShelitElsa'spathhome
Annakeepsherpromises
Forevermoreandalways
"Sending birds and dogs to find a place to stay, then falling off stuff while you wait for them to return?"
they'reokay
I'mtheonewhochooseswhatcastawaystofind
"They're Darkballs.
"I can afford to be careless."
"Who says that I want you overly taking care of me?"
"Well, it's okay.
"You don't need to have just questioned what had happened to Ven.
"After all, you don't know how Ven died at Xion's hands.
"And you can't know that by sending that much of his light into Boo's, you just killed her, while you forced Kairi and Riku against their intention to participate in the murder of the innocent, helpless little girl you just committed."
"Zero.
"Your time has run out.
"And your meaningless existence along with it."
"All right, I'm sorry."
"Well, usually a chipmunk I'm already staying with knocks me off."
"Why do you believe in yourself with all your heart so much that you trust that, no matter how bad things become for Kairi or your friends or the world, you won't need to use the Kye-Blade to open the door to Kingdom Hearts?"
"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."
"Why do you believe in yourself with all your heart so much that you trust that, no matter how bad things become for Kairi or your friends or the world, you won't need to use the Kye-Blade to open the door to Kingdom Hearts?"
"By the time that you find that terminal and stop the video, you'll have long since become world famous."
reality was still at the margins of
perception
couldn't tell if there were any delineations
"But, not to worry, I'm certain Edward is already searching hither and yon for me. This poor boy just needs a place to rest his head for the night. No doubt by morning Edward will come and bestow you your knighthood, and your resplendent sword. You can save this young man, as Edward takes me home for the two of us to share in true love's kiss."
"No matter how deep the darkness, a light shines within. I guess it's more than just a fairy tale."
"No. I never left home sweet home. I never stopped keeping you and Riku and everyone else in my heart and in my thoughts and in my dreams, so we remained connected and I never left home sweet home."
"Sora, don't chase the dreams. They'll lead you nowhere, just to an abyss you'll never be able to wake up from."
"And you can't know that by sending that much of his light into Boo's, you just killed her, while you forced Kairi and Riku against their intention to participate in the murder of the innocent, helpless little girl you just committed."
tearsobfuscating
"If he's a client, I'm going to lay down my ground rules, at the start."
"Conceal, don't feel
"Don't let them know
"Well, now they know"
nonowaynonononononononoway
thatwasnotbeneathRobert'scomposedprofessionalism
thatwasnotawarenessunderstanding
Anna
did
not
send
here
to
do
what
she
nooneAnna
did
can'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan'tcan't
no
Anna
notnonowascan't
won'thad
Anna
"First of all, I'm willing to arrange for a wide manner of benefits, under my programs. But none of them include room, and board.
"Secondly, I ask that the people who represent, or sponsor, my clients refrain from both making sarcastic remarks about them, and their case, as well as from exploitative theatrical advertising."
"When you met Namine for the first time in Castle Oblivion, you left Kairi, Riku, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy for her; even though Riku was in Castle Oblivion along with you the whole time that you were there and he needed you to feel his presence and run to his side to cherish him during all the time that he was suffering."
"By the time that you find that terminal and stop the video, you'll have long since become world famous."
There was just reality, now.
Reality, and the order of another world he couldn't let disintegrate into char.
Sora drew himself up.
Robert looked over at the girl, very likely his daughter, and he nodded his head once.
"By the time that you find that t"
Sora pushed all the hotness pressing against the backs of his eyes away.
They didn't return.
The girl, clearly used to dealing with this kind of situation, turned without delay. She strode through a doorway across from them and to the right, closing the double windowed door behind her.
Sora suppressed an urge to feel relieved.
He kept his own voice professional.
"She's telling you what she sees as the truth," Sora spoke.
"She just misses home, and the people there. She doesn't want to adjust.
"I can't reveal anything more until," what was the term? That was it. "I have enough of an idea how to arrange our client confidentiality."
Robert pressed his lips together. He sighed, with irritated, and slightly tight, resignation.
"This isn't my preference, but that's a tough break," he said.
Sora couldn't place the memory.
But, there was something Sora recognized, from recently, in Robert's ability to refer to hardship, and darkness, in such innocuous ways.
Robert's voice hadn't gained much, if any, of the emotional remove in Xemnas', Young Xehanort's, Yozora's Heartless', Leon's, Christopher's, Cloud's, or Empyreal's inflections, and that of the other reserved people Sora had encountered on his travels.
From when they'd met, until now, Robert kept referring to adversity not even as though it was something he didn't care about one way, or the other. He spoke of darkness as though it wasn't anything worse than an innocuous conversation someone could have with a passing stranger on a sidewalk about how he, she, or it had spilled a soft drink, or he, she, or it had lost a coin.
This couldn't be why Anna had tasked Sora with finding R
Anna didn't want Sora to prosecute R
"I don't have long," Robert said.
"But, please, have a seat."
Robert walked over to a wooden chair with a cushion on the seat, and back, each one shaded in light browns, tans, and similar colors. He sat down, and faced Sora, while he kept his gaze on the woman as she took her seat in a large cushion chair a little across from the couch to Sora's left of primarily reds and browns in its shades.
It was facing slightly away from Sora, so she turned it to account for both of them in her field of vision, a smile of anticipation on her face that was far more peacefully content than Rapunzel's eager ones had been after she'd first left her tower, but perhaps even more unfettered than Rapunzel's most unadorned one had been at that time.
Robert drew himself up, and his expression became a mask of studied professionalism.
He fished a small notebook out of his left pants pocket, along with a black pen, to open it to a blank page near the back of it.
"Before we begin, I'm not sure who referred you to me," he commented.
Blessedly, there were no tears to keep from Sora's eyes, this time.
"But, based on your belief I'm some kind of errant knight out to save clients, there's something else I'll establish at the beginning.
"There may have been a misunderstanding, with whoever gave you the referral.
"I work in separations, and divorces."
"No matter how deep the darkness, a li"
With the chiseled indelible knowledge of how, not reclaiming, or reverberating, but commonplace, darkness was now scored into him lower than any amount of water could erode, Sora didn't see any reason to pay attention to how reality and the absence of possible existences were present.
He couldn't tell if there was any new water in his eyes.
Anna had done it.
She honestly believed he could
"There's your simple and clean sanctuary.
"Don't s"
Away no.
She hadn't meant it.
Or, she had, when she'd said those things.
But, by the time she'd perceived Robert, she'd given up on him.
She'd condemned him.
She must have condemned him.
She must have torn their connection to fragments.
Because he'd given up, and he'd forged the Note Blade, when he should have striven to the end, no matter how many contingencies Kairi, Riku, Roxas, Anna, Donald, Goofy, and he would have needed to surmount over.
She didn't trust his ability to keep the Note Blade locked away, permanently and unfailingly, with the Kye-Blade.
Or, she'd recognized how h
Anna could not believe he could do what she had.
Way away no.
A frail but thankful smile curled up Anna's lips, but it was so broken it was as though she was having an incredibly hard time even remembering smiling, and frowning, weren't just the same thing, there was no such thing as any differences in the heart or reality at all to make distinctions, or comparisons.
"You're hanging by a thread."
Awaywayno
ThisiswhatAnnaisfightingwithallherheartandself
EvenafterwhatElsajustdidevenwhenAnnahasn'tlearnedhowdistancemakesnodifferenceshe'sstillfightingagainstit
But Sora wasn't Anna.
He could never be her.
There was no make believe to have faith in this time, even without any proof there was something to trust in, or to dream in.
Anna wanted Sora to believe he could be the intangible lantern in the darkness, without any proof he could trust in himself, or in his dreams.
Either that, or Anna's light had faded to such a flickering wisp now, she was wrong about more than just Sora.
Sora had no concept of how willing he perceive reality, but he could feel himself sag as though he was a punctured balloon, so parched shriveled out he didn't have enough left to even fall backwards against the back of the couch.
Just forget it all.
He'd locked away the Note Blade beyond recovery.
Even if anyone could forge another intact Kye-Blade while his own was present, as long as he could cry, Sora could at least trust he could hold onto his heart enough to keep that from shattering his own Kye-Blade.
He couldn't harness the reservoir of the Kye-Blade without calling Kingdom Hearts, and imperiling it.
But, now Sora knew there weren't any hearts left for he himself to find, even Robert, or Riku Replica, or Elsa. So, his doubts weren't obscuring his ability to trust he could, at the least, stymy any attempts by any other Kye-Blades to utilize Kingdom Hearts to unseal the Note Blade by limiting how much light, and darkness, other Kye-Blades could wield similarly to how Sora restricted how much he harnessed his own.
Nothing else could open that lock.
The Note Blade was, as a certainty, unreachable.
Yozora, and the Foretellers, had been defeated.
Kairi, and Riku, and Roxas, and Mickey, and Anna, and Elsa, and the others could address what remained.
They'd have a lot better chance at finishing off Yozora, and the Foretellers, and Maleficent, and the others, and preventing, or arbitrating, the forthcoming war, without a washout like him crippling their most infinitesimal motes of effort, as well.
They'd beyond even the absence of any potentials of belief, or doubt, do unbounded lacks of numbered ends better than Sora had, one single sole time, through all his journeys, at discovering, and finding, any remaining cast off hearts, and bringing them home.
Sora would ensure he didn't damage this world's order any more than he already had.
Then he'd do what he should have, the first time, in the Keyblade Graveyard, when it had all gone wrong.
He'd discover a way to keep Kairi safe from Kingdom Hearts, give Riku a whole self back, and protect Elsa from her own ice curse, without sacrificing Anna, or anyone else.
"I heard this boy call for you to save him when discussing some kind of nastiness with two other ill mannered young men about unpleasantness they referred to as, what was it?" the woman put in.
The content and eager intonations stabbed more serrated thrusts into Sora than the never lasting infinite winding labyrinth of inverted concave abyssal vacant night Riku Replica had claimed darkness could descend to.
"Oh, yes.
"Among other terms:
"Stratification, mutiny, suppression, and obliteration."
The woman's voice had lost none of its vibrant and content cheer.
"Something tells me this could be her f"
"How did you do it?
"How did you hold onto h"
Robert winced slightly, and he turned his face a little from the woman's, as though seeing it was now painful.
"You didn't take Kristof"
Sora couldn't tell if anything was stabbing him, any longer.
Robert's voice was the same, in its tones, but it was now simultaneously a little unsteady, and hard without any of Xemnas', or Empyreal's, lack of feeling.
"I'll tell you what," Robert said.
"If you watch over my daughter, Morgan, while I'm talk with my client, the two of you can stay here until I've made some calls, or your friends get back."
The woman sprang to her feet, a delighted grin on her face.
"You have my most heartfelt thanks."
She walked swiftly out through the doorway, Morgan, had left through. She closed the two doors behind her, once she was past them, herself.
Robert looked back at Sora, the corners of his lips twitching up slightly, as though he wanted to smile, and his head shifted slightly as though he wanted to shake it.
"How else? Basking in Anna's blin"
That made no difference.
What mattered was how the woman should now be safe.
When Robert opened his mouth, his inflections were once more composed, and no nonsense, without an emotional remove from reality.
"In the event the woman," so that was her name, "heard you correctly, I should also inform you I don't do criminal cases."
Sora had no problem keeping his own voice levelly conversational.
"I doubt law enforcement would be a better choice," he disagreed.
Robert clearly believed the woman, and Morgan, were out of earshot. So there was no reason to delay.
AnnaI'msoverysorry
I'msorry
Then there was just the fatigue, and perhaps numbness.
"How hard is it for you to believe, among other things, my case involves a religious tenet that all of what the two of us know as the universe is the product of the nightmares of a woman drugged up by a military so she can hallucinate new weapons, and armaments, for them?"
Robert just gave Sora a mildly sardonic look, and his inflections didn't lose their ordinary kinds of feeling.
"Try me," was all Robert spoke, in response.
"I cannot feel – sorrow… No matter what m"
Sora pushed the reminiscence away.
"Okay, your source did his, or her, homework."
"Love… will th"
Sora pushed it to the side.
"I'm not sure how much more that qualifies me than the average person, though," Robert continued, his words still those of a common conversation.
Sora almost wasn't aware his eyes had begun to widen quickly enough to stop them from doing so, even more than they did.
Kair
Robert thinned his lips.
"I don't know how you learned it, from your teachers, if not your Professors, or what your source, or our other guest, told you," Robert continued. "But, if you're going to treat misdemeanors such as misuse of power, or even extermination, as some kind of exceptional wrongdoing, you really shouldn't be coming to me."
Kairi.
Riku.
Donald.
Goofy.
Roxas.
Anna.
Why won't it leave me be?
Sora wanted to open his mouth.
He didn't understand why, however.
Whether the likely last Princess had brought them into Lacuna, or somewhere else, he'd been standing right there on its edge.
How could it be surprising to have ended up in a world where people like Yozora, and Xehanort, were the norm, and not the exception?
What other kind of world could turn Robert into someone even more jaded than Empyreal, Leon, Sephiroth, and Xemnas?
Robert's face shifted, as though he was holding back annoyance at a day to day nuisance.
"So you are different from your sponsor, and you're taking this kind of thing too hard," Robert commented, his voice betraying nothing of what his visage had shown.
That was too far.
Sora wasn't the inexperienced child who had been angry enough with the Queen of Hearts he'd endangered the sovereignty of an entire domain.
But, Sora couldn't think of a single thing he'd encountered, in all of his journeys, more knotted than to hear all the nightmares he'd drowned in since he'd returned to a realm he'd believed had been brimming with light dismissed as something he was taking too hard by a self, and heart who wouldn't even make the effort to assume apathy towards that darkness.
Sora crossed his arms.
"If this neighborhood is primarily populated by remorseless mass murdering warmongers, then yes, I must have come to the wrong person," Sora answered, a challenge in his voice he saw no reason to keep his fatigue out of, and he almost didn't keep his voice steady when he used the word 'neighborhood.'
Robert compressed his lips together tightly.
"No," he responded. "I'm not saying you're not going to find anyone who can do a good job with your case.
"I'm saying these imaginary creatures are the kinds of people who populate anywhere you go, at all.
"Don't fall into the widespread trap of seeing unconcern, or any other kind of wrongdoing, as something just perpetrated by government, or military, officials with a fondness for screeching rhetoric, or entitled upperclass people, or business moguls, reclining on a couch waving off the starving poor.
"There are a sizeable number of people like that, yes.
"As much harm as they do to others, though, they're not the main problem, and they're not displaying real apathy, or rage, or sadism, or self interest."
K
Sora was too upset, and too tired of all this, to even need to push it away.
Sora had believed the abyss was endless, before Xehanort's Heartless first fell back closer to the Door to Darkness, but was this even the great abyss, or Lacuna, any longer?
Or, was Robert talking about something even worse than both of them, now?
"When an oppressive government ships off a minority to an institution put in place to suppress, or exterminate, that minority, those institutions are established in public, and in the vicinity of residential locations, and farms," Robert spoke further. "The ordinary civilians of these countries thus find out about what's going on, sooner, or later, no matter how hard the government attempts to keep it concealed.
"But, while those minorities are buckling under an oxyoke, or they're dying in droves, the populaces don't spend their time crowding up at the walls around these institutions to spew hateful flecks at the destitute inside them. Nor do they acknowledge the victims of these establishments by referring to them with arrogance, or distance. Likewise, when civilians see someone begging for scraps of garbage, or a single penny, or a traveler with one, or more mangled legs who fell off an automobile, they don't even make the effort to slouch on their cushions while splurging on a confection and waving the afflicted person off.
"Day to day citizens, no different than I am, do nothing more than go on joking, and smiling, with the people close to them, and their fellows, within hearing range of the shifting gears of suppression, and genocide."
whatha
bee
fe
th
"People drop entire uneaten meals that could feed someone starving in a plastic trash pail near a couch with as little thought as they then change a channel on a television remote, and they drive by an old person with a broken ankle on a sidewalk without even changing lanes, or even sparing the downtrodden elderly enough effort to lift an emotionless chin at him, or her, or throw rocks at him, or her with angry jeers.
"If that had been someone else there, at that balcony, when your representative fell, he, or she, would have just continued driving, and let the two of you fall to, snap your necks, and drown in the blood from your carotid arteries on the rainy pavement if you didn't die right away from the fall.
"I'm not going to be able to do much for you, as my client, if you're willing to treat any, and I do mean any, kind of wrong in the world as a scary thing that goes bump in the night."
Any energy remaining within Sora to shut away feeling, and memory, and perception, and thought was gone, itself.
There may have been numbness.
That may have just been whatever was left within Sora that hadn't endlessly didn't imagine, however.
Anna believed this was the light that could guide Sora home?
Anna trusted Sora could light Robert's way home, from this?
What home?
Sora wasn't sure even the woman, even if she was a Princess of Heart, could do that.
"If this is what the world really is… just this, then maybe I should fade back into darkness."
The fatigue draped over him lifted enough Sora could tell he was aching, tiredly and weakly, and there was a little fresh wetness in his eyes.
It wasn't just Anna, who was causing the familiarity.
Whether he'd returned to Lacuna, or not, these were the kinds of connections, and sentiments, he'd been drenched with on the fringes of his perspective, during the year he'd been imprisoned on top of the Station of Awakening tower that had been the crossroads between The Final World, and Gaes.
Sora suppressed the urge, for the sake of the world order, to confirm he was still intact, in heart, and body.
Robert was correct.
There was no reason Sora shouldn't have recognized this, long since.
This, itself, had been there all along.
This was the price paid for overusing the power of waking to cause dreams to come true.
Was the last Princess in this world, whatever it was, because she'd done the same thing?
Was she a Keyblade wielder?
Or, had she misused the power of waking through some other means?
"Zero.
"Your time has run out.
"And your meaningless existence along with it."
It wasn't a promise.
Sora could still stay true to what he'd said to Empyreal, and wait for him here, when this might not be Lacuna, and not the homeworld of the last New Seven Heart.
"If this is what the world really is… just this, then maybe I should fade back into darkness."
There was no darkness to fade into, however.
Hearts didn't return to them.
Nor did they revisit them in spiraling travels.
"Sora can find the brightest part of anything, and pull off miracles like there's nothing to it. It's pretty hard not to s"
Shadows didn't become deeper the closer the light was, night and day were indistinguishable.
But the light of Kingdom Hearts resided in the deepest darkness.
Robert was a divorce lawyer.
Goofy's initial plan had been exposed, but his style of strategy had been the sole pr
method Sora could genuinely trust had a chance of outwitting Yozora, and the Foretellers.
Sora couldn't think of a better way to spend the rest of his life, or however many unstopping eternities there were, guarding the Note Blade all by himself.
"There's at least a beginning and an end, a first and a last. But when you don't even have that lack, there isn't even the knowledge that you're missing something. There's the absence of no beginning and no end. Time doesn't have a starting point and a stopping point, but it's not just eclipsed. It's blinked out. And you can't even dream of what you're missing because you don't know that you're missing something so not even dreams can save you. You're just entirely a"
Sora pushed it aside as the common inconvenience it was.
His stomach warped a little.
Though, for the first time since he'd returned to Destiny Islands to give his first kiss to a caked over, chapped shell of the vibrant Kairi she'd once been, the pain, and terror, were nothing but there, no differently, at all, than how Boo, and Jiminy, weren't there.
Even the receding aches, and fatigue, didn't require Sora to exert any effort to keep his voice as steady, and commonplace, as Robert.
"I'm sorry for my rudeness.
"My reference did know what she was talking about, then.
"I'm not asking you to settle a case, though.
"Would you, please, be willing to take me on, on a volunteer trial basis, as your legal assistant?"
.
"It's time you stopped pretending, Cloud."-Sephiroth
"Jessie…"-Tifa Lockhart
"Your friend died in your arms. And you didn't shed a tear. Why is that?"-Sephiroth
"Sephiroth."-Cloud Strife
"Sorrow. Anger. Guilt. Regret. Nothing but empty words to you."-Sephiroth
FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH