Chapter Text
“Man, doesn’t that tick you off?”
Hayner folded his arms behind his head and leaned back against the battered green sofa of the Usual Spot, swinging his legs. Pence, sitting on a crate beside him, paused in his tinkering with a digital watch to scooch out of the way of Hayner’s kicking sneakers.
“I mean, seriously, who assigns this much homework over summer break? Where’s the break supposed to come in, huh?”
“You wouldn’t be so mad if you’d started on it earlier,” Olette couldn’t help but point out. She had been trying to thread a needle to finish sewing a patch onto the jacket in her lap, and closed one eye as she held both needle and thread up to the light. “The rest of us did.”
“The rest of you who have any.” Hayner scowled, though not with any real ill will. “You knuckleheads got off easy. No homework for incoming transfer students, right?”
“We already said we’d help you guys with yours,” Roxas reminded him.
“Yeah, but still. You two have gotten to goof around all summer without any stupid essays hanging over your head. No fair.”
Out of all of them, only Roxas had not completely finished his bar of sea salt ice cream. The last few bites had started to melt before he could get to them, and now he was stuck holding the stick out over the ground, letting the rest drip onto the threadbare old rug that had been rescued from the curb to brighten up the Usual Spot. He shook off the last drops and spun the stick between his thumb and forefinger, as though by so doing, he might cause writing to appear on it, but of course nothing happened. They’d had rotten luck with the ice cream all summer; despite grabbing a few bars from the shop nearly every day, none of them had gotten a WINNER even once. Pence was sure it had to be some kind of record.
“We’ll have just as much homework to do as you guys soon,” said Roxas, “but we can handle it. We’re pros. Right, Xion?”
Sitting beside him on the edge of the battered table with her feet dangling just off the ground, Xion did not reply. She had leaned back on the heels of her hands and was frowning off at some invisible point in the distance, or where the distance would be if the wall hadn’t been in the way.
“Hey, Xion, what's wrong?”
Roxas poking her bare knee with the sticky end of his ice cream stick finally got her attention. She started, then looked guilty, smoothing down the front of her pleated skirt.
“Sorry, Roxas. It’s nothing.”
“Hey, you can tell us.” Olette set down her sewing, the better to lean forward and peer at Xion from around the other side of Pence. “What’s up?”
Xion hesitated, looking around the hideout at the rest of them. Roxas nudged her shoulder with his own.
“C’mon, spill the beans,” said Hayner. “What’s got you so up in your head today? You’ve been spacey all afternoon.”
The rest of the little group patiently waited for her answer, and after a long look at all of them, she relented.
“I saw that guy again,” she admitted. Roxas could tell she was trying not to sound bothered. “The one in the hooded coat that I told you about. He was staring at me in the park for a really long time yesterday. At least, I think he was. I couldn’t see his face…”
“Really?” said Olette. “That’s so spooky!”
Pence gave a theatrical shiver.
“Spooky is right. Sounds like we’ve got a creeper in the neighborhood.”
“Not for long,” said Hayner, hitting his palm with a fist. “If he tries anything funny, I’ll run him out of town.”
“You and what army?” Roxas couldn’t help but ask. Hayner chucked a hackey sack at his head, which he easily avoided. “Have any of you guys seen him too?”
“I don’t think so,” said Pence. “You have, though, right?”
“Maybe.” It was hard to be sure. Roxas had had the impression more than once lately that someone was watching him, but only twice had he been certain there was a silhouette there in the corner of his eye. Somehow the shadows always swallowed them up before he could get a good look. “Usually, whenever I think someone’s there, it’s like they disappear right when I turn around.”
“You’re making it spookier!” said Olette. Pence and Hayner both nodded, but Xion shook her head.
“I’m not scared of him,” she said, as if to reassure them all. “He’s never tried to talk to me or anything, so I don’t think he’s dangerous.”
“Still creepy,” said Hayner. “Whoever he is, he better not go messing with us. We’re Twilight Town’s number one defense squad!”
“I thought that was Seifer’s thing?” Pence asked.
“Well, look what a lousy job he’s doing! Someone’s gotta pick up the slack.” Hayner huffed and kicked back against the sofa so hard that the dirty upholstery coughed a cloud of dust. “Don’t worry, Xion, we’ll all be on the lookout for that bozo.”
“I can take care of myself,” Xion said, a bit defensively. “Roxas and I are tougher than you guys.”
Which was quite true; Xion and Roxas both won handily any time their little clique decided to spend the afternoon playing Struggle with other kids. The final bout always came down to a showdown between the two of them, and it was a coin toss every time. Roxas held the lead for the summer, but only by one match.
“Tough or not,” said Hayner, “we still oughta keep an eye on that creep. Maybe we should start tailing him if he pops up again, huh?”
“What good would that do?” asked Pence. Olette finally threaded her needle and laid the arm of the jacket across her lap, carefully adding more stitches.
“Get real, Hayner,” she said. “You just want something exciting to happen so you have an excuse to keep putting off your homework.”
Hayner’s annoyed groan confirmed her accusation, making the rest of them laugh. Roxas gave his blank ice cream stick a last glance, then tossed it into the box on the floor that by now had nearly filled up with them. Olette had started collecting them, supposedly for an art project, though when pressed she’d admitted she didn’t know what it would be yet.
“Don’t you have to get going soon, Roxas?” Hayner asked him, in an effort to change the subject. Roxas had just been thinking this himself, having caught a glimpse of the time on the watch Pence was fiddling with. He sighed and slid off the edge of the table.
“Why’d you remind me?” He looked over. “You coming too, Xion?”
“She’s not until I’m through,” said Olette at once. To Xion, she added, “Don’t run off before you finally get to try this on. I wanna make sure it looks how you want.”
She plucked at the jacket in her lap.
“Sorry, Roxas,” said Xion, watching Olette’s work with interest. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Outside in the alleyway, Roxas had to shield his eyes for a bit to let them adjust to the sun, then headed for the center of town, cutting through first the sandlot and then across a succession of winding side streets dotted with various posters and advertisements. He was halfway to the tram commons when he spotted a familiar lanky figure leaning against the corner of a cafe with one leg kicked back against the brickwork, arms folded across his stomach, staring up at the sunset sky whose color matched his unruly mane of fiery red hair.
“Well, well, about time, pal! Were you planning on keeping me waiting all afternoon, or what?”
“Axel!” Roxas hurried forward. “I didn’t know you were here! I thought you had work today.”
“I do. But I’ve been busting my butt all week, they can’t complain if I’m a little late once in awhile.”
He rummaged in the pockets of his stylish but rather scuffed leather jacket, pulling out two bars of sea salt ice cream that had begun to sweat in their wrappers.
“How about a little icing on the cake, huh? Before I head out.”
“I just had an ice cream.”
“Like you can’t eat two? Come on.” Axel tossed him one, and Roxas caught it, smiling. “That’s more like it.”
They both tore into their wrappers as they set off together down the alleyway, Axel chomping into his first bite with exaggerated relish. As always, their conversation flowed as easily as if they’d never been apart.
“Don’t you realize?” Roxas was saying. “We still haven’t gone to the clock tower this summer. Not even once.”
“What are you talking about, Roxas? We were just there this weekend.”
“No, I mean all three of us. You and me and Xion.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess not, huh?” Axel shrugged helplessly, spreading his arms. The motion flung droplets from the end of his ice cream onto a nearby mail bin. “Well hey, don’t go blaming me. I told you I’d be picking up extra shifts, didn’t I? My schedule’s a mess.”
“Yeah, but still.” Roxas kicked a pebble that clattered away down the sloping street, disappearing between the cobblestones. “I wanted all of us to hang out a lot this summer. Once school starts, me and Xion will be really busy too. Then who knows when we'll be able to get together?”
“Back to the daily grind, huh? Don’t sweat it, Roxas. We’ll squeeze a clock tower session in soon.”
“You mean it?”
“‘Course I do. You, me, Xion, and a whole barrel of ice cream. How’s that sound?”
“Like you’re pulling my leg.”
Axel reached out to try and jab at Roxas’s head with his ice cream bar. Roxas ducked, but some of it dripped into his hair, making him balk and ruffle it with one hand.
“Hey, cut it out!”
“I’ll cut it out when you quit mouthin’ off.”
“Look who’s talking.”
But Roxas was grinning, and Axel grinned back, finishing the last of his ice cream in a few big bites as they rounded another zigzag in the winding street. When they did, Roxas paused to check out a flyer advertising the upcoming Struggle tournament that had been inexpertly pasted to the brick wall, already peeling away on the bottom. It wasn’t one of the ones he’d been paid put up, of course; he would have done a much better job.
“Are you worried about the tournament, Axel?” he asked, as they kept walking. “It’s almost here.”
“Worried? Me? You know that’s not my style.”
“But what if Setzer beats you? He’s been bragging to the whole town about knocking you out of the running this year.”
“Not a chance. That trophy’s mine again, no sweat.” Axel hit his chest with a thumb. “Nobody can take me down, Roxas. I’m a real tough cookie. Got it memorized?”
Roxas had to laugh.
“You’d better be right,” he warned. “‘Cuz if not, we’ll never let you forget it.”
“Have a little faith in your old friend, all right? I’ve got a handle on it. You half-pints just wait and see.”
Together the two of them meandered along the brick-lined streets that wound their way up the side of the hill from the sandlot. They didn’t talk about much, really—they never did—but Roxas still found himself laughing more than he expected to at one of Axel’s stories, and it was only when Axel mentioned he needed to head off soon that Roxas remembered his own errand as well. Roxas tried to get Axel to tag along, to no avail.
“Nah, can’t,” Axel admitted. “There’s late to work, and then there’s late-late. Can’t be late-late if I wanna stay gainfully employed.”
“Since when are you so responsible? I thought all you did was nap.”
Axel made a fist and gently knocked Roxas on the top of the head.
“A guy’s gotta make munny somehow, Roxas. What, you think all those movie tickets have been free? And all the ice cream? How about that fancy new skateboard I got you for your birthday, huh?”
“I guess not…”
“That’s more like it. Show some appreciation, why don’t ya?”
They reached a fork in the road, where the winding street split off into three separate streets headed to different parts of the hillside. Axel halted.
“Well, this is my stop.” He pointed with his empty ice cream stick down one of the streets, the one that led furthest uphill. “But if you wanna hang out tomorrow, I should be free in the morning for awhile. Sound good?”
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
“Same meeting spot as always?”
“Sure thing.”
Axel tossed his ice cream stick towards a distant trash bin, but missed, the stick bouncing off the rim and clattering onto the ground. He didn’t go pick it up, instead shrugging off the failure and turning to stroll away after a parting wave, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket, his gait confident as always as he headed up the hill. Roxas watched him go with a smile, then turned and headed the opposite direction, back downhill, checking his pace to keep from stumbling on the steepest parts of the path.
He hadn’t really paid attention to where they were going as they’d walked, and discovered that they’d more or less made a loop through the winding maze of streets up in the hills, so that when the path he was on finally leveled out he found himself back in the tram commons well beyond the sandlot, on the opposite side of where he’d started. In the current lull between lunchtime and the dinner rush the plaza seemed unusually empty, though there were still people milling between the shops, running errands. Roxas paused to savor the delicious smell wafting out of the window of a nearby bakery.
It took a moment for the shadow to catch his attention, but there it was: a dark figure on the other side of the plaza, lurking in the alleyway beside a shop. The figure’s black coat fell to the ground, their hood pulled up to completely hide their face.
As soon as Roxas spotted the figure out of the corner of his eye, he glanced away. Then he steadied himself and looked back over, slowly, hoping that there would be nothing there upon closer inspection, as had always happened before. But this time the figure remained visible.
Roxas stared. The figure stared back. Or at least, Roxas had to assume they were staring, from the way their shrouded face was pointed at him. He wondered whether he was simply imagining it, but decided that he couldn’t be. It had appeared one too many times before.
The hooded figure suddenly hurried forward, straight towards him.
Roxas’s stomach lurched, but running away was never his first instinct, and his unease kindled into defiance as the figure closed the distance across the tram common. He braced himself and faced them head-on as they drew near, the figure finally stopping a few feet in front of him to reach up with both hands and pull off their hood. Roxas stared.
The man before him was tall and thin in an offputting way; something about his hollow, sharp cheeks and large green eyes looked cadaverous. The long hair that fell into his sallow face was the color of straw, and the sleeves of the fitted black coat he wore were a little too long, half-covering his gloved hands.
“It’s time to go, Roxas.” The man spoke with urgency, as if worried he might be overheard, though no one was close enough to do so. “I know you’ve been enjoying yourself here, but circumstances have changed. I believe he doesn’t intend to release you.”
How the man knew his name, Roxas couldn’t guess. He took a step backwards, then, annoyed with himself, stepped forward again, his hands at his sides lightly clenching into fists.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “Who even are you?”
“Ahh…He’s tampered with your memory, hasn’t he?” The stranger exhaled through his nose. “I should have suspected. But it can’t have been anything permanent, the chain is far too delicate—Naminé wouldn’t dare. A simple digital overlay…” He reached out with a gloved hand. “Come, Roxas. Before he discovers that I’ve gone.”
Roxas yanked himself out of the man’s grasp the moment fingers closed around his shoulder, stepping back a few paces to move out of reach.
“Don’t touch me.” He scowled, looking the tall man up and down. “You’re that weirdo who’s been following Xion all week, aren’t you? What do you want with her?”
“What do I want?” The man seemed surprised by the question. He considered it, then sighed heavily. “Only to watch, a little. To remember.”
He looked strangely sad. Roxas hesitated, unsure what to make of this, but before he could decide, the man pulled himself out of his reverie, shaking his head.
“We don’t have time for discussion,” he said. “Roxas, you must come with me to the mansion.”
“The…mansion?” Roxas’s mind went at once to the abandoned mansion in the woods on the outskirts of town, the one everyone swore was haunted. “Why should I? What’s out there?”
“The truth.” The tall man made a sweeping motion to indicate the buildings all around them. “This is a simulation, Roxas. A facsimile created by combining fragments of your memories with generalized data from Twilight Town. The safest way out is through the digital gateway in the mansion’s basement. You’ll remember everything the moment you leave.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will shortly. But you need to come with me.” When Roxas made no move to obey, his expression turned grim. “Please don't make this difficult, Roxas. You know that I'm no match for you.”
The longer Roxas looked at the stranger’s face, the more something about it bothered him. It wasn’t familiar, exactly, but he still had the feeling that he recognized it somehow—like this was a face he’d seen before, maybe on a television show barely remembered from childhood, or an old movie half-watched at odd hours on a black-and-white TV. The man turned to leave, but when Roxas still did not move, he turned back, looking nearly as uneasy as Roxas felt.
“Well?” the man pressed. “Are you coming?”
“Why should I?”
The stranger grimaced. He made as if to do something—reach out again, perhaps—but stopped halfway through the motion, instead looking around the tram common as if searching for something, or someone. To Roxas’s confusion, he ended by tilting his head and gazing up into the afternoon sky, as if there were something written in the clouds that wandered across the slanting sun far above.
“It will alert him,” he muttered to himself, “but evidently I have no choice.”
The man raised a gloved hand and snapped his fingers.
Instantly the world went silent. Idle chatter, the rumble and clatter of the tram car, and music drifting from an open window all stopped without echo, and the silence was like nothing Roxas had ever experienced before, so complete that his own heartbeat roared in his ears like a drum. But worse than the silence was the stillness. All around him, the world had frozen: shoppers poised mid-stride, diners with forks halfway to their mouths, a ball someone had tossed into the air hovering there as if pinned in place.
“This is a simulation,” the man said again. “Only data. Does this convince you?”
It was not that everyone had decided to stop moving all of a sudden, Roxas noticed queasily, but that they had been suspended mid-action, encased in amber. The only sound, the only movement in all the wide world, came from the strange man in the black coat standing before him—as if the man were an actor, and all of Twilight Town reduced to set dressing behind him.
“What’s…what’s going on?” Roxas managed. “Who are you?”
“You know, even if you can’t recall it at the moment. What does your heart tell you?”
My heart?
The bizarre question took Roxas aback, yet he found that he could answer it, somehow. Beneath the thrum of blood in his ears he felt a nameless something prodding his insides, gently but firmly, sure of itself.
“That I’m supposed to be able to trust you,” he said slowly, “but I can’t.”
The man sighed again.
“So it is.” He gave Roxas a keen look. “And my name? You must still have that. It would have been difficult to obscure something that important with a simple data overlay.”
This guy’s crazy, Roxas thought, and opened his mouth to tell him so.
“You’re Vexen.”
Roxas heard the words with as much surprise as if someone else had said them. His eyes widened, and he reached up to touch his throat with one hand as his insides jolted.
“What the…Where did that come from?”
“From the part of you that knows,” said the stranger—said Vexen. “You simply can’t access it consciously.”
Roxas looked around, willing the world to mend itself, for life and motion to return. All was still.
“This is…All this is impossible.”
“I suppose it must seem so, in your current state. You’ll need more proof.” The man called Vexen seemed to consider something, then held his chin with one hand. “Tell me, Roxas, have you noticed anything strange lately about your friends? Your two closest.”
“Axel and Xion?” What did they have to do with anything? “No, of course not.”
“You don't think it's odd that they've never been with you at the same time?”
“What do you mean? Of course we've all been together.”
“When?”
And with growing discomfort, Roxas realized that he couldn’t recall. Xion hadn’t been able to attend his birthday party, and Axel had gotten sick just before the big trip to the beach, and every time Roxas had been up on the clock tower, it had only ever been one or the other of them laughing at his side, sometimes with Hayner, Pence, and Olette but never both Axel and Xion, never just the three of them like he’d been wanting…
“We haven't hung out this summer,” he admitted uneasily. “But that's not anybody's fault. We're all just busy.”
“They were both coded based on your memories. In life, your two friends never met, so the program has no data to predict how they would interact closely with one another. To save processing power, it defaults to keeping them apart. An inelegant solution, but sufficient.”
Roxas felt the beginnings of a headache. He winced and touched his temple.
“Does it hurt?” To Roxas’s surprise, Vexen looked concerned. “Naturally…If I explain everything here, the conflict with the data overlay could cause you pain. Better to return to the real world and have your mind correct itself of its own accord.”
“You're nuts. This is the real world.” Roxas hesitated. A few feet away, a pigeon had frozen just after takeoff, impossibly fixed with half-extended wings a couple of feet above the cobblestones. Its beady eye stared emptily back at him. “I mean—isn’t it?”
“Look around you, Roxas. Use your powers of deduction. What do you think?”
Though it gave him a sinking feeling in his stomach, Roxas couldn't help but obey. Everything that he could see remained arrested in place: people poised in unstable poses they could not have held so long naturally, the tram glued to its tracks, the motionless smoke from a chimney painted against the orange sky. He studied the flags outside a nearby restaurant, once waving in the wind but now frozen, contorted into impossible shapes. The utter silence was deafening.
“I think…that I'm dreaming, maybe.”
“A logical conclusion. And as close to the truth as you could be expected to come, given the circumstances. But it's time for this dream to end. You're no longer safe here...if indeed you ever were. We must go.”
“I don't want to go anywhere.”
“Of course you don't. I insisted that this place be comfortable for you, once you’d made up your mind to participate. But if I’d known he was going to tamper with your memory…”
A flash of light and a strange crackling noise made both of them look over.
On the other end of the plaza, a figure had appeared out of thin air, this one garbed not in black but in belts and bandages and robes all red, the old red of blood that had started to dry. Only one of the man’s yellow eyes was visible, and only half his face, but despite it Roxas could discern at once the intensity of his scowling expression.
“Roxas!” he boomed. “This man speaks nonsense.”
Roxas had no time even to process the statement, or to wonder what was happening; Vexen stepped in front of him, putting himself between Roxas and the man in red, though the latter stood far away.
“No more of this!” said Vexen to the newcomer, much more sharply than anything he’d said to Roxas. “I’m bringing him back at once. This is over.”
“Why? He agreed to it himself.”
“Under false pretenses!” Vexen gestured animatedly, the long sleeve of his coat flapping. “You’ve no intention of releasing him. I see that now.”
“And what do you intend to do about it?”
“Whatever I must.”
“Would you dare?”
“For the boy’s sake.”
Vexen raised his arm, and in a flash of light a huge blue shield appeared in his grasp, but this only made the man in red laugh. Roxas looked between the two of them, then reached down and pinched his inner arm below his wristcuff, hard. It hurt, and his stomach lurched. Weren’t you not supposed to be able to feel pain in dreams? Or was it the other way around, that the pain in dreams was somehow worse?
“You agreed this would only be exploratory,” Vexen insisted. “That it wouldn’t harm him in any way.”
“And you believed it? Dear me.”
Roxas watched as the black-coated man squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full height. He was even taller than Axel.
“My master,” Vexen said stiffly, “was always a man of his word.”
This apparent non sequitur produced an effect. The man in red scowled deeply, his one visible eye narrowing, what little of the rest of his features that Roxas could see twisting into a grimace.
“So he was. The more fool him.” But he shook his bandaged head and turned away, folding his hands behind his back. “I’m hardly going to duel you, inside of here or out, so have it your way. Retrieve him—if you can.”
The unbuckled ends of the man’s many belts fluttered as he strode away, and in only a few paces another flash of light claimed him as swiftly as it had brought him.
The instant the red man vanished, the world returned to life. After the uncanny silence of the last few minutes, the ambient noise of a sleepy summer afternoon hit Roxas like a wave knocking him down at the beach: the tram car’s rumbling, the whistle of a distant train, music, footsteps, laughter. The shock of it set his heart racing.
The shield Vexen had summoned disappeared in a flurry of snowflakes. Roxas stepped back a few paces.
“What—what was that about?”
“Come with me if you want to know.”
“And what if I don’t?” Roxas took another step backward. “What if I stay right here?”
“Stay here? No. He’s willing to hurt you, Roxas—I see that now. He’d rather have Sora.”
“Who’s—”
Even thinking the word Sora sent a horrific stab of pain through his head, blinding him, making him cry out.
Sora.
Sora was…
The strange pain ebbed almost as swiftly as it had struck him, though it did not vanish, only grew dull. When Roxas could see again, he discovered he was kneeling on the cobblestones, bent forward, clutching at his scalp. He forced himself to let go, gasping, and did not resist when Vexen bent and helped him to his feet. He took a moment to catch his breath, passing a shaking hand over his face.
“Roxas,” said Vexen, “listen carefully. I need you to trust me—briefly, just this once. Will you do that?”
“Why should I?”
“Because none of this is real, no matter how much we both might wish it. The only way to make progress is to return. Here we can only gaze at shadows on the wall.”
Vexen looked beyond Roxas across the plaza, and Roxas turned to see what had caught his attention. He’d expected something else new and strange and horrible, but a rush of joy hit him instead—it was Axel and Xion, their outlines unmistakeable, standing a few feet apart on the other side of the tram commons as if he had summoned them both with his desperation. Beneath his relief, Roxas had the uncomfortable feeling that somehow, he had.
He ran to them at once.
“Axel! Xion!”
He had to bend double to ease a stitch in his side once he’d caught up, panting.
“Hey, Roxas,” said Axel. “Who’s that guy you were talking to over there?”
“Did that guy want something?” Xion asked, sounding uneasy. Roxas took a deep breath.
“Something really weird is going on,” he said. “You guys saw it too, right?”
“Saw what?”
“Saw what?”
It felt like someone had hit him in the gut. They way they’d asked at the exact same time, in the exact same tone, had sounded uncanny in a way that chilled him. But that didn’t mean anything, did it? It was just a stupid coincidence.
Xion wasn’t wearing the jacket Olette had been working on all day, he realized. Wasn’t she supposed to have finished it just now?
Wasn’t Axel supposed to have gone to work?
“How come you two are ignoring each other?” Roxas asked aloud, realization dawning.
“Ignoring each other?” Axel echoed—but he did not look to Xion, not even on reflex. His attention stayed firmly fixed on Roxas. “Roxas, what are you talking about?”
“Is something wrong, Roxas?” Xion asked. “You look really freaked out.”
“I am freaked out. Didn’t you guys notice just now when everything stopped moving, and then…” He trailed off, looking back and forth between them, willing them to acknowledge one another’s presence. A nod, a glance. Anything. His fear spilled out as anger. “Axel, why won’t you look at her?”
“You’re not making any sense, buddy.”
“She’s right there!” Roxas barked. “Right beside you! This isn’t a dream, right?”
“Dream?” Xion asked hesitantly. “Roxas…are you feeling okay?”
“No, I’m not!” He whirled on her. “Xion, you’re friends with Axel, right? All three of us—we’re best friends. We’re up on the clock tower all the time, hanging out and having ice cream together. That’s how it’s always been. Right?”
Axel scratched at his temple, looking concerned.
“You get hit in the head with a Struggle bat today, or what? You’re actin’ way off.”
“Look at her!” Roxas demanded, turning back to him. His voice had cracked; it felt like there was something alive inside him trying to crawl out. “Do it. Prove you can do it. Just—just look at her!”
He pushed Axel—hard, harder than he’d intended to—and to his horror Axel stumbled into Xion and then froze mid-fall, exactly as the whole world had frozen earlier. Xion froze too, and there was an odd noise before both of them rippled like reflections on pondwater, vanishing.
“What the—”
“I told you,” came Vexen’s voice from behind him. “It's too much processing power. The system will need to recalibrate.”
Both of them watched as Axel and Xion reappeared side-by-side in neutral poses, Vexen impassively, Roxas with visible discomfort. Axel and Xion’s expressions both looked distant and glassy, their eyes unfocused. Roxas felt sick.
“What’s going on?” he asked weakly. Vexen stepped up beside him.
“The longer we stay, Roxas, the more precarious our position. In here I’m nearly as vulnerable as you. If you want answers, you’ll have to come along with me.”
“To the mansion?”
“Yes. There is another way back, but with your mind as it is, I’d rather be safe. What he did to you will be undone if we follow the normal procedure.”
Axel and Xion remained still. Roxas hesitated, then reached out and waved a hand in front of Xion’s face. She did not blink, or breathe.
The headache was starting to return. Roxas drew a deep breath, trying to slow his pulse.
“If I go with you…” he began, slowly. “Before I go—if I go—I still wanna talk it over with them. With—with my friends.”
“They won’t have much to say. A question like this is beyond the scope of their sample data. They’ll only insist you do whatever you feel is right.”
There was another crackling noise, and abruptly Axel and Xion both stirred, not like people waking from sleep but like images in a video that had been unpaused. Axel took in the sudden sight of Vexen before him, seeming only mildly surprised by it.
“Hey, Roxas. You make a new friend?” He frowned and scratched his cheek, a tilt of the head rustling his hair as he sized up Vexen. “It's funny...you look kinda familiar. Have we run into each other somewhere before?”
“Not in a long while.” Vexen waved his own answer aside, turning away from Axel, who looked nonplussed.
“Well, geez. Way to be friendly…”
Vexen’s attention had gone to Xion. He bent to be eye level with her, and though she looked nervous, she didn’t back away. His expression sobered.
“I’m so sorry, girl. I hope someday you’ll know it.”
“Sorry for what?” Xion frowned, puzzled. “Who are you?”
Instead of answering, Vexen sighed gently, then straightened up and turned away.
“This place is an illusion,” he said with his back to them. “An analgesic, and no more.”
Yet he could not resist another glance over his shoulder down at her, and Roxas had the impression that if he himself were not here, Vexen might have stood there staring at her for as long as the light would allow. It was only with visible effort that he again tore his gaze away, and he hurried off a few paces, as if putting distance between himself and something too hot to touch. Roxas hesitated, then took a single step after him.
“You goin’ somewhere, Roxas?” Axel asked.
“No, I just…I’ve gotta go check on something.” It felt like the right thing to say. “It’s no big deal. I’ll see you guys later.”
Axel didn’t look convinced, grimacing over Roxas’s head at the waiting Vexen, but said nothing. Xion was staring over at him too, though her concerned expression had a different tinge to it than Axel’s. Axel looked skeptical, but Xion’s concentration was merely intense, as if she were focusing intently on a difficult math quiz.
“Roxas, who is that?” she asked. “Do you know him?”
“I don’t know,” Roxas admitted. “But I think so, maybe.”
“I think I know him too.” Xion bit her lip. “But I can’t say for sure. It’s the strangest feeling…”
“Don’t worry about it.” He caught her wrist and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll go figure it out. You two stay here, okay?”
“You sure?”
“No. But I just—I have to do this real quick.”
It would madden him if he didn’t, if he simply ran home and tried to pretend the last quarter of an hour hadn’t happened. He would stare at his bedroom ceiling tonight and for every night hereafter, replaying it all in sleepless agitation. The frozen world would haunt his nightmares.
“Yeah, okay. If you say so.” Axel gave a slight shrug, resigning himself to Roxas’s impulse. “We’ll be waiting for you, all right?”
Roxas took a deep, steadying breath, looking between them. Tall, lanky, carefree Axel with teardrops tattooed under his eyes; Xion in her favorite sleeveless top and pleated skirt, with a hairclip in her dark hair.
“Xion, be safe.” He wasn’t sure why he’d said it, but knew once he had that it was what he wanted to say. She smiled.
“You too, Roxas. Don’t go do anything crazy.”
“Crazier than usual,” Axel clarified.
For no reason that he could tell, Roxas felt a lump form in his throat. He swallowed hard, forcing it down.
“Axel…Take care, okay?”
Axel grinned and flicked two fingers off his temple in a mocking salute.
“Right back at ya, buddy.”
The lump came back. Roxas wrestled with it, then turned away, heading for where Vexen stood waiting for him halfway across the plaza. But almost at once he couldn’t help himself, and after only a few yards, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder.
Though there had been no time for either of them to make it out of sight up the nearest street or further down the plaza, both Axel and Xion had vanished. Roxas stared at the spot where they should have been, trying to gather his thoughts. Soon Vexen joined him.
“Let’s pretend that I believe you,” Roxas said at last, “even though I don’t. If this isn’t real, then—what the heck is going on? How did I get—wherever this is?”
“You took an offer from our host. Against my advice, I would add.”
“Our host?” Roxas took a stab in the dark. “The…guy in red?”
“He calls himself DiZ.” Vexen shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s all too much to delve into. There's no use going into detail when you'll remember everything so soon.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Roxas frowned up at him.
“I don’t know if this is a—a dream, or if I’m losing my mind all of a sudden, or what. But whatever this is, it’s definitely happening, so…I wanna know why. You seem to know. Or think you do. So tell me.”
“It won’t make any difference.”
“Even if it doesn't, I wanna know. I have the right to know.”
He glared, expecting a rebuttal, but there was none. Vexen only stifled a sigh.
“Yes, Roxas. Of course you do.”
Roxas followed him warily when he started walking again. For the first few seconds, Vexen was silent, looking pensive, as if working out where to begin. Then he started to explain.