diatu | Kingdom Hearts Catch All

Kingdom Hearts Catch All

Who: Lea and other Kingdom Hearts characters
When: Various times through May and June
Where: Various locations
What: Any random tidbits of interaction for the messed-up key-children and friends that don't fit elsewhere.
Warnings: Kingdom Hearts drama. It's inevitable. Also probably more than a little ice cream.

Discussion of dancing with Xion

Xion would find Lea sitting on a bench under a tree, sketching something on a pad of paper. He'd look at it, frown thoughtfully, then erase a bit and redo it until he was satisfied. It was still a little while til sunset, but he was always up for a little chat.

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He tugged a little when she stumbled, not to cause her to fall or cause her to be hurt, but rather to help stabilize her. He could feel her tugging on his arm, but he held her grasp. He frowned, holding her still.

"Xion, please, talk to me. What's going on?"

"I don't have a heart," she whispered. Then growing louder "I don't! And I DON'T WANT ONE!"

Roxas balked at the sudden yell, taking a step back. In his surprise, he let go of her hand, but he kept it outstretched to her.

"Xion... Why don't you want a heart?"

She bowed her head, looking down at her hands, her back still to him. She swallowed hard, then said softly. "Either Saïx is lying, or having a heart changes.... changes who you are." Her head shook. Actually, so did the rest of her, just in a different way. "Axel keeps claiming that he was different without a heart and that we only saw the parts of him that were closest to how he was when he had a heart. I don't know how much that is true..." she said softly. Not that she thought Axel was lying it was just... hard to believe. "But if it is true, and if Saïx is telling the truth...."

She swallowed again still looking down. "I was never real to begin with," she whispered. "I was created out of someone's memories of someone else. What little there is that is me... It is too small. If that changes... I'm not me anymore," she whispered, tears sliding down her face. "That last time... you couldn't even see me, Roxas, you saw Sora's head on my shoulders. That is how little of me there is. If I had a heart... it would be someone else in this failing shell. And what little there is of me... would be gone forever."

With those last words, she started to run again.

"Xion..!"

Roxas reaches out for her again, but she's running before he can stop her. He takes a few steps forward after her, but despite the ache in his chest at her words, he can't run after her. He doesn't know what to say to her to help her to see that she does have her own heart, and is her own person. And try as he might to think of what to say, he's worried that anything he does say will make things worse. And even if he could say the right thing, right now, he's not sure if she would listen to her.

So, he lets her go... for now. And a bit later on-- later that same day, or a day or two later-- he'll try to track her down, see if he can try to talk to her again.

Xion has been hiding out, away from the others, unsure what to do about sunset and ice cream. But... Axel had Roxas now. If she went...

Xion shook her head and didn't go for ice cream at the end of the day. She found a small corner for herself in a storage closet and hid there, unwilling to watch the sunset if she was watching it alone. Eventually, without meaning to, she fell asleep. Deeply enough that she didn't hear a student coming in to get a box of rulers, and was unaware that people were talking about the weird thing in the closet that might be a person, maybe? Knowing this school who knew. But whatever it was it was all in black and didn't seem to move....

Roxas didn't find Xion for the rest of that day. It worried him that he couldn't find her, but he had to try and reassure himself. He'd get through to her somehow, he was sure of it. He just had to figure out how...

Also, had to figure out where to find her. She was surprisingly difficult to find, and it was only by chance he heard about a rumour of some weird 'thing' living in the closet. Given how he had no other leads on Xion's whereabouts, Roxas figured it was worth checking out.

He approached the closet in question carefully, opening it slowly and peeking his head through the door.

"...Xion?"

While she slept through everyone else coming in or out, his voice woke her. Well mostly. She was a little groggy and stiff and disoriented. "Roxas...?" she asked, peering up from under her hood as she tried to remember where she was. And... why she was there.

Roxas let out a relieved sigh as he heard her voice, a small smile spreading on his face. He stepped into the closet, and once he spotted her, he offered a hand to her.

"I was wondering where you went."

She winced as she remembered, but she couldn't just ignore the hand, so she took it.

With her grasping his hand, he helped to pull her to her feet. Though once she was standing, he held onto her hand.

"Xion..." He paused, a frown forming on his face. He wanted to tell her that there wasn't anything to worry about, that she was worried for no reason... but seeing how she reacted last time, he knew that pushing her further would only hurt her. And he didn't want to hurt his friend.

"I'm sorry if what I said upset you. I know it probably doesn't make a lot of sense, especially since... well, since we don't remember the same things."

With his help she came to her feet and shook her head. "I don't want to be different, Roxas," she whispered. "I'm afraid to disappear." she closed her eyes fingers closing tightly around his. "The two of you finally remember me again. But if one of us has to go back to Sora to bring him home... it should be me."

Roxas’s expression turns sorrowful at her words, and his heart sinks. He gripped her hand in his, and even brought his other to rest over it.

“Xion, please... don’t talk like that. I don’t want any of my friends to disappear.” And that was the truth. He remembered when Xion had disappeared, and how angry and full of sorrow he was. But how to make her see that he was telling the truth?

“Listen to me, please. We don’t have to go back to Sora anymore. I swear, I’m not lying about that.” He paused, frowning, before looking at her.

“What can I say to prove I’m telling the truth?”

"I don't think you are lying," she said softly. "But we were wrong before. I don't want to go back, Roxas, I don't," she whispered. "But we both know I was never meant to exist in the first place. I do too much damage." To you.

Her fears are reasonable, he has to admit; after all, that was what caused them to clash in the first place, all that time ago. It's a relief that she believes him, but it's hard to see her fear keeping her from having any hope.

"...you know, I was never meant to exist in the first place, either." That was the very definition of a Nobody, after all. "But we're still here. I know it's hard to believe, since I'm the only one who remembers it, but we were able to get our own bodies, and Sora was still able to function without us in his heart. We even fought beside him in the Keyblade Graveyard." And that was a fight he remembered very well; fighting against a berserk Saix before having a tearful reunion with his friends.

"Sora wouldn't want us trapped in his heart, either. He told me so, when he dove into his heart and almost got lost in the Darkness."

"But he's missing now," she said quietly. "After that. And we don't even know if you and I..." she stopped herself and shook her head. "Riku told me last time that Sora needed me to wake up. If everything really is the way you said it is Roxas... then maybe what he needs to come back to you is this." She closed her eyes, looking down at their hands. "Me back in his heart. This time you won't have to forget me." Hopefully. "So that gives you and Axel something additional to find, another connection. A heart and a Nobody, bout of which you are connected to. That... that would help, wouldn't it?"

"...I don't think that will work this time, Xion." He frowned as he said it, the words making him turn his head and glance away.

"Back then, Sora's heart and memories were incomplete, and we were the pieces that he needed to wake up. That's why we needed to return to him. But his memories are repaired now, and his heart is whole. So he doesn't need us to fill in the pieces anymore; he's got them all already. And we're not the only connection Sora has. He's got connections to Riku and Kairi, Naminé, Axel, Donald and Goofy... even Ventus and his friends." And that's not even counting all the hearts he's come in contact with across the various worlds that Sora's traveled to.

"There are so many hearts connected to Sora's now... and even with that many connections, none of us know where he is. This is different than just a piece of his heart being missing or his memories being lost. He used a power that none of us fully understand, and King Mickey even warned him that he would have to pay a price for doing so. I know he's out there, I just... can't find him." He slowly rests his free hand over his chest as he speaks, and his tone almost sounds wistful; the rage he once felt at Sora long gone. He pauses for a moment before he turns to Xion.

"Him being gone has nothing to do with us this time. And if us being connection for Sora to return is the way to bring him back, then how can we do that if we're trapped in his heart?"

"I don't know," she said quietly. "There is so much of this that I don't understand. I just... I don't want you and Axel to be hurt anymore."

"There are parts of it I don't understand either. But I know I don't want to lose my friends if I don't have to."

He turned back to Xion, gently squeezing the hand he was holding. "And if you disappeared, I know for a fact Axel and I would both be hurting. Just like you and him would hurt if I disappeared again."

She closed her eyes. "I don't want to ever hurt either of you," she whispered. "But... what if..." She really didn't want to ask this. She was afraid of the answer. And more afraid he wouldn't care. But if her vanishing would hurt him... he and Axel needed to understand why, so it would hurt less. "What if my being here hurts you worse than my being gone?"

"It won't."

He said it with certainty, almost as if she asked if the sun would rise in the west, or if the sky would turn green.

"And you want to know how I know that? Because if it did, we wouldn't have made it out of the Keyblade Graveyard. That might not make sense right now, but maybe one day it will. You deserve to be your own person just as much as I do, Xion."

He was right that it didn't make sense to her. But it also meant that he didn't realize what she had almost said, which had her again hesitating to say it.

"Deserve?" All she had ever done was make things worse. How could she deserve anything positive?

"Yeah. Because we're the same."

He let go of her hand and turned slightly, shifting a nearby box enough so that he could take a seat on it before he continued.

"We never asked to be born, and people used us to get to goals we didn't understand. But just because we're born that way... it doesn't mean we're only tools."

A small frown graced his features and he briefly looked away, remembering DiZ's mocking words, how he should have considered himself a tool, at best. But he shook his head; it won't do him good to dwell on the past.

"We're living things, and we deserve a chance at living our own lives. That's what I fought for, back in the Keyblade Graveyard. A second chance at life, without someone dictating it for me." He looked back at Xion, the small smile returning.

"You were fighting that same fight beside me. And Sora fought for that, too. He wanted us to have our own lives... he wanted all of us to be freed from Xehanort's plans. And we accomplished that goal. So even if Sora did something stupid, we don't have to be afraid anymore. And knowing Sora, he'll find his way back to us, and probably find a way to bring another friend along with him."

She sat down beside him. "I want to believe that," she said softly. "But I wasn't born the way you are, Roxas. We may have come from the same Somebody, but we're not the same." She was broken in ways none of the others were.

"Our situations were the same, though." Roxas turned to her, frowning at her. "We were both put in the same spot by the Organization, weren't we?"

Both of them had just been kids, who both came from the same person, and happened to wield the Keyblade.

"I know it probably doesn't make sense right now, but... you've gotta trust me. You're more than just a part of Sora, just like I am."

Kingdom Hearts Catch All

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So jumping ahead to when he finds her?

Sure!

Re: Sure!

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End here or see if Tanks wants to do first sunset?