A/N: I apologize. Health issues combined with...everything else. Life. My outlines are still wonky, but I have most of it in order. Hopefully, this story will move on more smoothly now.
Thank you LunaEtSidera (Ship, ship, hooray!), sleezygazelle11 (I'll try to put out more. Thank you.), Hollarious969 (My outlines do! Unfortuantely I've had trouble, but it's sorting out.), digibladelover1 (Don't worry, I'm awkward all the time. I'm getting back on track.), non of ur business sorry (Today. ^_^' Sorry for the wait.), kalamiah (That's what I was striving for. Thank you. I'll try to keep it up.), Guest (Thank you for saying so.), Elise142(I don't know. It's everywhere in KH, isn't it? We'll see the end though, KH3 is coming, and hopefully it is a happy one!), Numinous Scribe (Pressure me. I need the kick in the rear. XD Thank you.) , La (Wow, thank you for all those kind words! I'm glad you think this story is good. I will try to keep it up.), Opuria (Shhh. No guessing. Okay, fine. Guessing.), LoserTrash (Thank you for saying so. I'm sorry about the updates. I will try to get better at that.), and Anon (Yes, but...it's coming along. I'm happy you like it so. I won't abandon it.) for your reviews and I apologize for being off the face of the planet.
Your words mean a lot.
::XVIII::
little girl lost
Her memories went up in smoke.
He burned them. Burned them so they could not reach her.
Why?
Don't remember, he'd said in the dream. If they hurt you so badly, I don't want you to remember.
Something twisted in her chest. So tightly. So painfully.
I won't let them hurt you, he'd said.
Lying upon the cold floor of her dim room in the Castle That Never Was, Dexné writhed, the tangle of the long black coat trapping her, suffocating her. But she could not get away from it. It pulled at her, wrapped around her, and somehow it was both pain and comfort, constriction and embrace.
Just like the Black Void.
The black hole she…
The wind howled past her. Her long hair and dress whipped wildly, the tendrils reaching up as if to grasp something, anything. But she had already fallen, and gravity would not be denied.
…jumped into.
She looked at her reflection, at the blank black eyes, dark circles beneath them, the ashen skin of her face, and she thought: I did this to me.
I did this to me.
Fear.
She remembered fear.
She remembered grief.
She remembered the twisting, choking pain of them.
Yes, I…remember that feeling.
So painful I'd die to get away from it.
Dexné gasped, sucked in air like it was the last she would ever receive. Falling. The water felt like falling. She was going to be pulled under. The breath would be torn from her lungs. She would be pulled, down, down, down—
Her gloved hand slapped the stark floor of her room. Again. Again. To remind herself she was here, here in the castle. Here in a world in-between. Here, in a body and soul that no longer had a spiritual heart, could no longer feel those feelings that drove her to…
She was remembering why she didn't want a heart back.
Remembering the sunlight in her life shined between the clouds for only a short time, somewhere in the middle of her life, sometime when Mirron and Wilam found her, when Lea and Isa found her…
While before and after, there was only gray clouds, and shade that spanned forever and ever.
Where she wandered. Lost.
The forest was dark, everything having blended into the shadows until that's all there was.
She spent a long time there. Or so it seemed. In the early days of her life. She could not have been more than seven years of age.
She wandered there, looking, waiting, watching.
Trying to survive.
Thoughts were fragmented. She was hungry always. She was cold always. She was dirty and tired and sick. Always.
She saw light out in the distance. Sparkling gold from the City of Light. The Bastion of Hope. Radiant and blooming.
She only went there when she had to. It was not safe to be seen. The people would try to catch her—for what reason she didn't know at that time. But, looking back, Dexné knew they wanted to feed her. To put her somewhere where she would be taken care of. She was young and afraid, however, and fear taught her to never trust. To never hope that people's intentions were good.
How she had become to be in the forest was vague. Vague and frightening and beyond the understanding of her young mind. But she had glimpses, knew by instinct something was horribly wrong.
Her earliest memories were of sunshine and horses, of a small but sturdy barn, of colts and fillies whinnying back to her delighted mimicking cries. In her mind's eye she could sometimes recall the shape and bright hue of a white house sitting on a hilled slope, two-storied and rectangular, with green shutters and cotton curtains fluttering in loving breezes.
Those fleeting memories were followed by ashes falling from the sky.
Fire.
Brimstone.
Her birth mother was anxious, back hunched, pacing from wall to wall, while a man on a television spoke in an urgent, frantic voice. Pictures of melted metal and falling towers flashed next to him.
Fire and ashes.
Everywhere.
Everywhere.
The sky is falling.
The ground is burning.
Her father came into the house angry. Black eyes smoldering, dark hair peppered with ashes.
They packed next to nothing—there was no time. They ran, sitting upon the backs of two strong horses.
Dexné sat in front of her mother in the saddle, who hunched over her, becoming like a second cloak. They all wore cloaks of some kind. It protected them from the ashes. Her father rode next to them, his stallion blowing hard from wide nostrils, eyes stretched open to the whites. Wild. Afraid.
They were all afraid.
In the final hour of their world, fear overtook all.
Her father was like a shadow beside them, barking orders, thick brows drawn tight together. He led them far, kept them on the paths strewn with less fire. But there was always ash. No escaping it—it was everywhere, falling from the sky like snow. It stung to breathe.
Her mother was like light, pale hair stark in the clouded rays of what little sun was left, whispering in the harsh-smelling breeze—so strange that it was a breeze; it seemed to go against everything terrible that was happening; soft in the face of violence, like the stillness before a tornado—and her mother's panicked breathing came stronger than the next to nothing wind.
Her mother, though slight of build and panicky as a deer during hunting season, had power her father did not have. Only some had it, Dexné remembered, and it was a good thing her mother was one of those people.
But it was her father that gave her the backbone to use it. Her father that gave her mother the courage.
Dexné's mother extended her arm, light pouring down the length of it. It came out of her, shot forward, and their horses ran into it. Into a tunnel of brightness that took them somewhere far, far away from fire and ashes.
But Dexné, sitting in the saddle, protected by her hunched-over mother, twisted around and looked back.
Far in the distance, cities were still burning.
The hills were burning.
The mountains were burning.
The tunnel of light shut behind them, and that was the last Dexné saw of that world.
But it was not the end.
A shadow of death had followed them.
It was a transient beast of ashes and smoke and blackness. Its eyes were holes of black. Its fur was gray as ashes. It breathed smoke, rent the air with it.
It chased them.
And chased them.
From place to place, world to world.
They ran for so long.
Until they landed in the Garden of Radiance…
…where Dexné's mother and father left her.
Was it her fault? Dexné wondered. Was it because she looked back that last time? Or was it because, while they were surviving as nomads, gathering food off the land in the short time they could stay still, Dexné strayed too far and came face to face with the beast known as Death?
It came from nowhere. Eyes holes of black. Fur ashes. Smoke wisping between its bared, ghostly white teeth. The plants withered and died at its feet, where its blacker than black claws sunk into the earth.
It stared at her with its nonexistent eyes.
She started back, guilelessly, uncomprehendingly, with the ignorance and innocence of a child.
Perhaps that was what saved her.
Her mother came screaming through the trees, flung a torch at the creature's feet, and whisked Dexné away. The fire caught the dead, dried plants at its feet, roared to life, built a wall between them and it.
It stared and stared at Dexné as she was carried away. Dexné stared back.
Her parents left her on the streets of Radiant Garden shortly after that.
And they kept running.
While she was left like a baby rabbit, buried and hidden among the grasses. And the beast gave chase to the larger prey.
She was not left in the forest, however. No. They came through the forest and dropped her off on the most outer lying street of the city, under a steady but faint lamppost. The street was made of reddish cobblestone. It was old and had grass growing between the cracks.
They had no time to take her deeper. Or to make sure she had shelter or someone to take care of her.
Her mother kissed her.
Her father held her for the longest time.
And that was it.
She stood under the lamplight, watched them walk hurriedly away. Until they were but shadowed specks in the distance.
Dexné waited for them to come back.
They didn't.
The sun set and Dexné grew scared. She did not know this place, did not know its people. She went back into the forest and tried to live by copying what she had seen her mother do. What roots to forage. What bark could be eaten. Shelter was harder to find. A hollowed trunk of a dead tree. The lip of an overhanging boulder. But the days grew shorter, the air colder. Fire was hard to make. Rubbing sticks together as she'd seen her father do was far from easy. She couldn't get it to light. Her boney hands became blistered and riddle with splinters. Her dirty face became streaked with tears born from both frustration and fear.
Cold.
It was so cold.
And she was so hungry.
She traveled into the city when hunger became too great. She would scour the alleys. Find trash bins. Eat the food others had so carelessly wasted.
Hunger was solved.
But the cold was not.
One night was particularly bad. She dug a little trench for herself and laid in it, covered herself with leaves, pine needles, dirt, anything to break the chilling wind. Anything to insulate. Anything for warmth.
Her little mind, though young, knew what death was. And, somewhere in the back of her head, as she dug the trench, she knew she could have very well been digging her grave. Knew as she covered her body with dirt and leaves she could be burying herself.
She didn't sleep.
She just tried to hold on.
She didn't know what else to do.
Sometimes she would think of the world of ash and smoke. Of the fire that destroyed everything.
To think, what destroyed her home world was what her survival now depended on.
She needed fire.
She wouldn't last much longer without it.
The memories tapered out.
Dexné laid on the floor of her room in the castle, remembering vestiges of what happened.
She had somehow obtained fire. She had taken it from the city, found it like she found food in the bins. A lighter, left out in a large home's yard by the boy who lived there.
She had heard an angry, yelling mother. The boy's exasperated response before he put down the lighter he'd been playing with. Saw the flash of his red hair just before he disappeared behind closed doors.
She darted in and took the lighter. She stole it. She was sorry, but she had no choice.
The fire saved her life that night. And the nights after that, subsidizing the meager shelter she could find.
She thought of the boy every now and then, wondering, not knowing who he was after that one fleeting glimpse. She didn't think she'd ever see him again…
She always returned to the city for food. During the cold months, the forest did not provide as it had during the time of warmth.
Eventually people noticed her, though she did her best to stick to shadows. She made too many mistakes, too many slips into the light. They regarded her with confusion at first. Many stared in dumbfounded disbelief. Then when her existence finally sunk in, they chased her. Yelled at her. Tried to coax her closer like she was a stray dog.
At one point they sent out a guard from the castle.
He was young, had most likely just started his work as guard. Dexné clearly remembered the dark, dreadlocked hair. He was big and wide, very fit. She was little and slender. She slipped away from him in the thicket, where his large body could not pass through.
Dexné doubted Xaldin remembered her. Doubted that he would remember, if he could see her face.
Many tried to capture her. Many failed.
One almost killed her in the pursuit.
Dexné stumbled upon her while scurrying through the alleys. A tall woman with red hair and red eyes and red lips.
"You," she said in an accented voice. "You are they child they speak of. Look at you. Barely a stick of a thing."
Skin and bones, she had meant. Sunken eyes and hollowed cheeks. But the red woman did not sound pitying or comforting. She sounded angry.
That was all she said. There was a moment of stretched silence where neither of them moved save for the sudden, determined smirk on the woman's lips.
Then the chase exploded into action, and Dexné managed to get away only due to a broken fence that only she could fit under. The sharp metal links cut her, however. And she was dirty, and it was too cold to wash.
The cut slowly became infected.
Thinking back on it, the woman looked familiar. Same red hair. Pushed back from the forehead in a way that accentuated a slight widow's peak. Wild tresses in the back. Similar facial structure. Same cruel look that overcame Axel's face in Castle Oblivion when he disposed of Vexen and Zexion.
It was his mother. Angry. Cruel. Careless. Her name was apt. It meant crimson. Ros… What was it? Ros…
Rosso.
Lea… How could he be so kind with a mother like that? And now that Dexné remembered, she could see where that sudden cruelty at Castle Oblivion had come from. It had seemed so unlike him at the time. But he must have had it in him, somewhere deep inside.
Dexné had become sick after the cut from the metal fence.
Though slowed by infection, she was still elusive, hard to find, and nimble. Still no one could catch her.
No one except one woman. An old woman at that.
The old woman did not chase. She did not yell. Did not coax. This woman sat on a wooden bench close by the lamppost Dexné stood under every now and then. Waiting. Dexné would always make time to stand under the faint but steady light she was left under, at various times. Sometimes at night. Sometimes noon. And anytime in-between.
Waiting.
She had yet to get it through her mind they weren't coming back.
The calm old woman would sit, and it almost seemed as if she were waiting with Dexné. She would not speak with her or make eye contact. She simply sat and waited as Dexné waited. Then when Dexné would start to leave, the woman would stand and depart in the opposite direction. Often, she would "forget" things from the woven basket she carried. Things left on the bench for Dexné to discover. Like a bag of apples. Or a loaf of bread. A blanket. A child's coat.
It became the norm. The woman would sit and stare straight ahead, or read, or even knit. Dexné would stand under the lamppost. Waiting. Then the woman would leave and Dexné would backtrack to find a goody.
Once there was medicine.
It was too late to make much of a difference on the infection.
Fever took over.
Food. All she needed was food, Dexné told herself. Then she would get better. It was a child's hope, a folly. Food would not have helped her at that point.
While searching the alleys, she collapsed at last. No more could her body take.
Staring up at a clear blue sky, she waited. This time not for her parents.
A shadow came over her. The old woman. She knelt over Dexné.
Then suddenly it was raining. Rain was falling from a clear blue sky. Specks of it. Warm rain.
The old woman wiggled her arms under Dexne's body. Lifted her without trouble, though a woman of her age should have had problems lifting a seven-to-eight-year-old.
"It's all right," the old woman said. "It's okay." Her voice was hushed and wobbly with emotion.
And then Dexné looked into her eyes.
Clear blue, like the sky. The winter sky that snow, not ash, fell from. The eyes were wet and dripping with tears. There on her lined face in one moment, fallen in the next.
Mirron's face.
Mirron's tears.
Falling from a clear blue sky.
They healed her. Took her to doctors. Nursed her back to health. The man called Wilam and the woman named Mirron.
She had hidden and run and fought for survival for what seemed like forever. And so, she had trouble letting go of how life was. She would leave Mirron's house, return to the darkened woods. Wilam would come out and retrieve her. He was a tall man, but his footsteps were gentle, and his presence spoke of silent patience and kindness. His salt-and-pepper hair reminded her of another man with dark hair, peppered with ashes. She did not run from him. He would carry her back to the house that, after a while, she would come to see as home.
Back to the home of the old man and woman she would come to call Mom and Dad.
In the present, Dexné shivered on the floor of her room. Something strange was happening. Water. Warm. Not cold.
Water was falling from her face. From her eyes. Hot. Stinging. Closing her throat with…something. A scream that wanted to erupt? Whatever it was, she kept it down. Or rather it stayed there, in her throat. Hiding, refusing to be forced out, even if it wanted to depart.
It felt like…
It felt…
Tears were pulled down by gravity. Absorbed by the black of her coat.
She did not…want…to feel.
The dark woods. All the trees watching her. All the shadows winning over her. It was both her prison and her sanctuary.
She waited. She survived. She watched the sparkling lights from the city in the distance. It called to her, though she was too scared to answer.
She had run for so long. Had been lost for so long. Her dreams were scattered with ashes and fire and smoke.
Mirron and Wilam had saved her.
For a time.
She knew, deep down, that the sun would not shine on her for long.
And it didn't.
She was cursed, perhaps.
Dexné in the present stood from the cold metal floor. She gritted her teeth and willed her wobbling legs to still.
How appropriate, she thought, that a Voidling would be spawned from a world of ashes. Of ashes falling like snow and smoke and fire and melted metal. She remembered glimpses of trees burning on the mountainside.
Dexné walked to the window, looked out at the black expansiveness beyond. The faint reflection of her face stared dully back at her. She had thought Radiant Garden—for that was what it was called—was her home world. The place of fountains and flowers and sunshine. She thought she had remembered where she had originally come from.
No, she hadn't.
Not until today.
It was not Radiant Garden that saw her into existence. Not the world where she was wrapped in swaddling cloth and placed in a crib.
The world of ashes.
"The world that destroyed itself," Dexné remembered her birth father saying.
Armageddon.
Missions became irrelevant. Dexné's memories were converging, her life coming together piece by piece. The picture was becoming whole.
It took precedence.
She knew to think such was a slap in the face of the Organization, but she didn't care. Horribly, she did not care. Why should she? The Superior obviously did not care, if he could wave away the important information she brought to him concerning the imposter. Riku. Wearing the Organization's coat. He was hiding out in Twilight Town, in an abandoned mansion.
And Xemnas would not do anything about it.
Feelings that should not exist stirred inside Dexné. A restlessness. An unyielding sense of urgency. The kind that plagued her and her birth parents as they fled the burning world. It made her want to scream until her throat bled. It made her want to hit something, tear things down. Shout curses at the unfairness of it all. It reminded her of her birth father. His angry face. His stormy presence consuming. But now Dexné knew he was only so because he was afraid. Afraid and hurt and distressed at what happened to their home. And to what would happen to them, if he did not get them away from the shadow of death that pursued them.
Dexné contained herself, as she had always done.
But it was getting hard to do so. So much more difficult. She could barely stand it.
Do this, her inane missions said. Do that. She did. She scouted. She fetched things. She spied. She did, but she did not care. It extended into her reports. Short and to the point as usual. But becoming sloppy. Omitting details she did not want to bother with.
How dare you forsake me, something inside Dexné said as the days dragged on. How dare you forget me.
Those thoughts were not necessarily devoted to the Superior, but he was the only outlet she had.
Or one of her outlets.
She shadowed Lea and Isa—Axel and Saïx—relentlessly, throwing herself back into their on-goings. They were all she had left of the life she once knew.
They were all that connected her to that brief period of sunlight amongst the shadow and shade.
Did they ever return to Radiant Garden? she wondered. After their jobs were complete, did they ever wander back there? She followed them, but not once did they go anywhere not connected to missions or work.
Please, please, she begged silently. Please return there just once. Let me see that home again. Let me see Wilam and Mirron again.
She needed to see her adopted parents more than ever. The pit in her chest demanded it, cried for it. And it manifested physically. She did not think Nobodies could cry. Yet she did. Almost every night now, just by thinking of them, yearning for them.
Then there were times she would wake in fear for reality. Was any of it real? She could not have fabricated all those memories, could she? No, she reminded herself. Axel would not have blanched at her reflection in the glass that night she wandered out without her hooded coat on. There was recognition in his face.
Or did she fabricate that as well?
At night she would fling off the starched white sheets and pace her room, mind racing, what-ifs churning.
Anxiousness. Worry.
Something she inherited from her birth mother.
She was driving herself to insanity!
Here she was, drowning in her own memories, and all everyone else was concerned for was the puppet. Who had still not awoken.
Dexné recalled Axel approaching Saïx, demanding to know what was going on, because he knew Number VII was hiding something from him.
"Just be straight with me for once, will you?"
"Xion has no right to be among our number. It's plain to see. I have nothing more to say."
And thinking of it now, Dexné wished she had burst from the shadows and made her own demands. Where is home? Where has everything gone?
"Please," Dexné whispered when no one was around, "please tell me Radiant Garden did not follow in the steps of Armageddon."
Fear kept her back from asking. Fear kept her to the shadows.
It was the ball and chain no one could see, and only she could feel.
But then, like starvation had driven her to search for food in the city despite her fearfulness, desperation drove her out of the shadows.
She approached Axel as he was retiring to his room.
"Where is it?" she rasped. "Where. Is. It."
He stared at her, his face a mask of vacancy. Only the tiniest hint in his eyes attested to his concern. Not for her, of course, but at being approach by a demanding Voidling. "Where's what?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it. She did not know how to word it without outing herself.
"Well"—Axel put his hand out to his door, activated the sliding mechanism—"if you think of it, you let me know. Until then…"
"Wait!" She reached for him as he was about to close the door in her face. He stopped and glared—a glare of warning, a glare saying don't touch me, Voidling. "I… The world," she tried, moving her hand in obscure shapes. "Where is the world with—with…water."
Axel raised a brow. "Wow. Very descriptive, Nulla." He sent her an unimpressed look. "You're gonna have to be more specific than that."
She moved her hands and arms in what she thought was a sign for fountain.
"Nulla," he mumbled, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck, "you're kinda freaking me out here."
"Fountains," she blurted, voice ever whispery.
"What?"
"The world with…many fountains. Where is it?"
Silence spanned between them.
"I don't know any world like that," he replied at last. But something was wrong. An expression of stone had come over his face. "Goodnight."
The door shut.
Dexné stood there, shaking under her thick coat.
A/N: Rosso is from Final Fantasy: Dirge of Cerberus. Don't ask why I connected her with Axel. They just seemed similar to each other...in small ways.
I listened to a song called 'Lost' by Tim Schaufert. It matched this chapter well.
Thank you for reading, and I'm sorry for the ridiculous wait.