Archive of Our Own

She walks around with a hole where her chest should be.

She doesn't know when she started feeling this way, so hollow, like a shadow, like the edges of her are blurred out and she's not completely there. She doesn't know when she started feeling not like herself, or if she's never been herself but she knows on the day those figures in white come to her Twilight Town that whatever she does know is ending.

Still, Olette presses a cold bar of ice cream into her hands.

"Xion!" She says.

Still, Hayner makes them race, laughing to the clock tower.

"Xion!" He says.

Still, they follow Pence around, sleuthing the dark corners of the town.

"Xion!" They say.

She can only hear the rounded R's and soft S's that don't exist in her person, but should.

Her own name is static in her ears. Not really a name, just a sound. Not even a sound. Not even an idea.

She crosses her arms, presses her hands to her biceps and pretends she doesn't notice how her friend's seem to look right through her.

She dreams of a beach that is her home and a boy who is her friend.

She races him, watches the sunset with him, pines for him the way she pines for the red-haired girl who's face she can never make out.

She swims in salt water and climbs trees with large, domed leaves.

She eats sticky-sweet fruit and sits in the hot island sun until she feels her skin prickle.

She wakes up to glowing stars on her ceiling and her eyes wet with unshed tears.

Sometimes when she looks in the mirror, she'll see the face of a boy instead of her own.

Sometimes he has blond hair, short and messy. Sometimes it's brown, longer.

She stares at the image, stares, until the edges of it ripple -- as if she's watching water and not solid glass -- until she sees her own face staring back at her.

Her own eyes.

His eyes.

Their eyes.

There's a girl in white who she sees only in the corners of her eye, who stands with her arms outstretched like she's waiting to catch her when she falls.

She stands in the street looking up at the empty balcony.

She shakes her head when Pence holds her by the arm and asks if she's seen a ghost.

"Maybe." She says, and he laughs at her words.

She dreams of sunsets redder than her own blood.

She dreams of evenings spent not unlike the one's she spends in her waking life.

But these evenings smell like rust and lightning and taste sweet and heavy at the back of her throat.

She dreams of herself. Sees herself, eyes closed against the red heat.

She dreams of a young man with love in his eyes and the sun in his smile.

She falls into dark spaces with her hands clasped in his and wishes on stars that don't exist.

She laughs with him.

She laughs with him.

She laughs  until she laughs herself awake in the morning.

His hair is just as red as the fire he wields in his hands and his eyes have a precarious hardness to them.

"I know you." She breaths, and he drops his arms a fraction.

His mouth is still pulled in a tight line, but when he turns his eyes to her again they are sad.

"I know you!" She says, louder, "I've seen you," she drops her hands so the strange blade in her grasp no longer points at his chest.

He looks at her like he's struggling with what to say.

"I know you." She says again, and he looks at her torn between grief and bitterness. "Axel."

"I don't know you though." He says, softly, and although she doesn't know why, the words strike like a sword in her belly. "Not really. Just like you don't know who you are, not really."

She's silent as she lets her arms drop away, the blade clattering at her feet before vanishing.

"Xion." And the way he says her name, he makes it seem almost real, almost like she's not just a shadow of human being. "Come with me." He says with his arm outstretched.

She takes a step. Then another. And then she stops.

"You know I can't go back with you" She says the words even if she doesn't quite know what they mean. She takes a step back, and another, and another.

"Xion!" His voice is broken glass and it makes her eyes squeeze shut and her body turn away from him.

"Xion I'll come back!" He yells, yells, as she feels the air hum around her. "I'll bring you back!" The anger in his voice crackles and blisters and her throat clogs at hearing it again, at causing it again. "I will always bring you back."

And then he's gone, like he was never there in the first place.

She dreams of promises and warm hands clasped in her own.

She dreams of a girl who has her face but is not her and  a shadow of a boy who keeps his heart locked in a cage.

She dreams of white walls and echoing footsteps and choices that blur into each other.

When she wakes, the paths still cross in her mind. 

Kairi's face is the same as hers but her voice holds a firmness that her own does not carry.

"Have we met?" She asks her and she can't bring herself to reply.

She falls from the clock tower, trying to form her own questions.

Finally she asks, "Do you miss him?"

Kairi's voice is soft, "I miss him very much."

Kairi asks for a name and when she gives her own she responds, "Xion," like her name is something fragile, something to cherish, "that's a nice name. But, what's his name"

She feels his presence buzz in the forefront of her mind.

She never hits the ground.

She dreams of a dark city she knows as home, of cold wetness and salt in her mouth.

She dreams of fire, so bright and hot she sees it even with her eyes closed.

She dreams angry and she dreams lost.

She dreams of hallow hope.

She dreams of sadness.

She dreams of what was, but when she wakes,  still, she dreams of what could have been.

There's a girl in white facing her in a room that does not exist.

 "We've met." She says, although it's more of a question because she can't seem to remember if they really have met. "Naminé."

The girls in white nods at her.

She doesn't scream when she tells her, "You aren't supposed to exist, Xion." because, somehow, she already knew.

Still, she swallows the words like a stone that then sits heavily in her gut.

"I already know what I have to do." She says, slowly, like the words are molasses in her mouth. "I've already told you. Before."

Naminé looks at her with something that is not quite pity, she knows too, the consequences of her actions.

"You know what will happen." She says.

"Yes."

In her mind she begs her not to say the words out loud. Naminé does not.

Axel's anger has always been a forest fire, burning deep and hot and engulfing everything else in its wake.

They've done this before, she remembers now, but this time there is no buffer between them.

"You never listen to me!" He snarls, and she doesn't flinch at the words even though his anger makes her ache. "Why don't you ever listen to me!" She wants to cradle him to her and tell him she'll fix everything, even it is a lie.

Even if it'll hurt them both.

She shifts the weight of the blades in her hands, feels his power more than she feels her own.

"We can't go back." She says, only raising her voice enough to be heard over his fire.

"Why not?" The anger in his eye is maniac. "Why not." When he throws her back against the wall she thinks it's well deserved.

"I don't want to hurt anymore, Xion!"

She's always felt meek in the face of his anger, in the face of his emotion. But she grips her blade and his in her hands and sees things through to the end.

Because this is the only thing she can do to save him.

To save them.

When he's on his knees at her feet, she doesn't show him pity. She watches as shadows ebb and flow around him, an extension of himself, what remains of his faltering feelings.

"I'll come back to you." He says, and she nods.

"I know you will." She replies, not waiting to see what becomes of him before moving forward.

She walks around with a hole where his heart should be.

But, not for much longer.

She dreams of a beach that is not her home and a sunset that never truly sets.

She watches her own feet in the ebb and flow of the tides and waits with a thalassa shell clutched in her hand.