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karriezaiFinally decided to post this. I don't know when I'll add to it, so for now it's just the prelude and first chapter. Maybe once I beat KH2 again. We'll see.
For this one I'll just post one summary thing.
Post-KH2, this story assumes that Axel is Riku's Nobody. This story concerns Wraiths, the beings that arise when a Nobody is defeated but still has an existing Heartless. Zexion, or rather Ienzo, is one such. His experimenting in an attempt to understand Keyblades leads to a new set of problems, causing a ripple through the worlds that, among other things, separates Sora from Roxas and Kairi from Namine again.
Title: Horizon / Prelude
Genre: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: PG
Word Count: 829(ish)
prelude
post castle oblivion »
There was a sudden snapping feeling, like some stretched part of Ienzo’s being had finally broken and returned to himself. Just the sensation for an instant; then flashes of memory, foreign but still his, burst starbright into his thoughts, pounding sharply at his temples.
There had been another part of him all along, linked only by the thinnest strand of the soul they still shared. The shell, Zexion…. They were alike, but different. Ienzo had become a Heartless, but Zexion was without a heart, not even a whole person, a Nobody.
Suddenly he was Ienzo, but with Zexion present inside him, in memories and in a cold voice curling at the back of his mind.
Zexion was curious. An image coalesced mist-like in Ienzo’s thoughts: a white-stone room filled with thirteen markers, all glowing blue. And because Ienzo was curious, as well, he obliged. Darkness pooled beneath his feet, icy black tendrils climbing his legs, and in a moment the portal swallowed him. He traveled through the suffocating black in-between (the journey as uncomfortable as always, but something he was used to) until Zexion rang with the familiar resonance of the room in the vision he had given Ienzo.
The darkness loosed him into the stark white contrast of Proof of Existence. Thirteen stone markers stood melancholy testimony to the Organization that never should have existed.
They weren’t all blue now, though. The markers of Vexen, Lexaeus, Larxene, and Marluxia were a dull red. Ienzo knew the names because Zexion knew them; he also recognized Vexen and Lexaeus as being to Even and Elaeus what Zexion was to him. Zexion’s marker, however… it had turned purple.
Destroy it, Zexion whispered.
Ienzo nodded grimly and raised his weapon.
post door to the light »
“I’ve seen him destroyed twice,” Ienzo mused. Axel stood in the alley below, lit harshly in neon glow and clearly struggling to regain his senses. The other three Wraiths were with him; Lourd and Vane lounged against the stone wall of the building while Braig stood rigid and thoughtful, watching Axel with the same intense curiosity Ienzo displayed.
“He isn’t like us,” Braig said. “Nor like the others.”
“We still existed when our shells were destroyed,” Vane pointed out. Dry laughter perpetually tainted his voice. He was so like Saïx, and yet so different; he was like a Saïx who only possessed the berserk half of his nature, not the reserved, serious part the Nobody had nearly always displayed. “The others’ Heartless were destroyed long before their shells were.”
Ienzo nodded. He had been thinking the same thing: for Axel there must exist somewhere another half, but it wasn’t a Heartless. And if it wasn’t heartless and it wasn’t nothing at all, then it must be… whole. “He must be as Roxas was,” he said. “But Roxas met his other half. Axel… hasn’t.”
Shadows began pooling around Axel, growing and forming into solid shapes. The effect was subtle, and Ienzo had to watch closely to be sure he wasn’t imagining things; the blazing neon lighting of the city fluctuated, which made the shadows that were born where the light ended deceptive. But the darkness bloomed, and glowing golden eyes punctuated it, all of them fixed on Axel. He sensed it, and he knew instinctively that it was wrong.
The heartless did not come after nobodies. The only nobody that had ever interested them was Roxas. And that had been because Roxas bore a—
Axel readied himself to fight, but when he reached to summon his weapons—the chakrams, Zexion whispered, he had borne as the Flurry of Dancing Flames—he brought a keyblade to his hands instead. It looked like his chakrams joined together into one weapon, so much so that someone who knew less about keyblades than Ienzo wouldn’t have been able to tell its true nature… but the heartless knew what it was. Their movement was jerky and erratic. They focused on Axel, completely intent but also hesitant. The keyblade was both alluring and repulsive to them. It had the power to destroy them, but with the keyblade came a powerful heart, one that might finally satiate them.
But Axel had no heart. He was a Nobody. The keyblade was a weapon of the heart, so how could it be wielded by a Nobody? Roxas had tormented Xemnas with that question, but the Superior never found the answer. Ienzo, though, was beginning to suspect what it might be.
There was more to keyblades than anyone had ever guessed. Ienzo had been playing with the hearts left behind from Xemnas’ machinations, sure that they would help him figure out what he was missing. This encounter with Axel just brought him one step closer. He could feel that he was so near to understanding—it was the feeling of a word at the tip of one’s tongue, so close, but just out of reach.
Today, he felt, he would find the answer.
Title: Horizon / One : Rupture
Genre: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,353
rupture
“He… was the only one I liked…. He made me feel… like I had a heart.”
That familiar lost, floating feeling. It wasn’t dark… but it wasn’t light. Just… gray. Was this nonexistence? He remembered this.
“It’s kind of… funny…. You make me feel… the same…”
Feeling returned to his limbs so slowly it hardly registered. One moment he was floating… and then he felt hard ground against his side, trapping his arm beneath him, and stone against his back. Cold seeped into his bones. And the… scent. He knew it. Too well.
I’m back.
With a groan, he opened his eyes and pushed himself upright. Silly me, I thought maybe this time I would be gone for good. It was dark, and darker for the hood drawn over his head; when he reached up to pull it back, he felt a sharp pain in his arm and the tingling of feeling returning. A mist of rain pressed in against his face, softening the harsh neon glare of the empty city into a hazy glow. The World That Never Was—it was as dark as he remembered. His eyes found their way up to the sky, to the odd moon that hung there.
Clearly he had been—dead?—for longer than he’d realized. Last he’d been here, the heart-shaped moon had been all but complete, but something had happened in his absence; now the center had gone dark and empty, only the hearts forming the outer edges of the moon still remaining. What could have happened?
Sora. Naturally. Axel smirked to himself—clearly Sora had raised hell for the Organization. A boy after his own heart. Well… if he’d had one.
The icy, invasive feeling of darkness creeping toward him brought his gaze snapping down from the sky to the pools of shadow forming around him in the alley. Heartless. Clearly his arrival had not gone unnoticed; Axel could only guess that someone had sent the heartless after him. They rose from the rain-slick alley floor, leering at him, their movement disjointed and their golden gaze penetrating. He felt the tendrils of darkness creeping in, their whispered reminders of all his evils and faults, and felt the familiar fire rising to his defense from his core. It burned away their icy black murmurs.
For a long moment none of them approached, but then the first one took a hesitant step, and then they were all preparing to leap. Axel felt fire burn down the nerves in his arms, almost painful, as he summoned his chakrams to the fight—
But it wasn’t quite chakrams that answered his call. It looked like his chakrams, but it was a single weapon, as if they had been welded together. And it felt stronger, lighter… as if it was a part of something bigger, not just a part of himself as the chakrams had been.
The precious seconds he spent staring incredulously at the weapon in his hands almost cost him his life—But what would it matter? Apparently I would just come back again—before he came to his senses and swung the blade in a flaming arc at the heartless springing toward him. The first one caught in the blade’s path dissolved into shadow; the others gave an agonized screech he only heard in his head and fell back, but already the next wave was on him.
He swung again and again, getting a feel for the blade. It was different from using the chakrams, but felt nearly as natural. And it was more powerful against these creatures, cutting through them like light through darkness.
But despite the weapon’s power, the waves of heartless kept coming one after another, until Axel felt fatigue in every joint and muscle. I must’ve pissed someone off pretty bad, he thought.
If he could just clear a space wide enough to…. He kept slashing at the shadow creatures, in his mind calling on that in-between power of travel. The dark portal formed a pace ahead of him. He used the blade to clear the way, and then he dove forward, letting the darkness envelope him.
- xxx -
Sometimes, watching Sora like this, Riku wished he’d been braver back in the beginning, when he still had a chance. Sora was light and alive, splashing through the water as he tried to catch a fish with his bare hands. He used to be so good at it, but he was out of practice, and the fish were wise to his intentions. But the waves of water droplets he sent up glistened in the sunlight, haloing his body in a way that made Riku ache. He was all darkness where Sora was light. They could never meet; they only existed in contrast, and where one went the other retreated.
No, they didn’t belong together. Sora wanted Kairi, and their light shone brightly together. Sometimes he was afraid they would blot him and his darkness out altogether.
Sora straightened and began wading back to shore. At first Riku thought he’d simply grown bored of the fish outsmarting him, but the strange expression on his face brought Riku to his feet. Sora put a fist to his heart, his brow furrowed with—discomfort? Confusion? Pain?
“What’s going on?” Riku asked, meeting Sora at the edge of the water just as the tide receded from around the boy’s feet. Riku grabbed Sora’s shoulders when it looked like he might fall, but Sora just shook his head as if to say he was alright and pulled away from Riku to move further up the beach and sit in the sand. “You okay?”
“I feel something weird,” Sora explained. “I dunno. Something here.” He tapped his fist against his chest. He closed his eyes, his expression tightening. “It’s getting worse.”
Riku noticed a dull throbbing at the base of his skull and deep in his chest—barely there, but he was sure it was related to what Sora felt. But he didn’t have time to say anything before Sora convulsed in the sand with a low moan—
And a breath later, stretched out opposite Sora in the sand was… Roxas. Riku stared for just a moment before moving to Sora’s side and helping him to his feet. Sora was breathless but unharmed; he stared at Roxas, stunned, and Roxas stared back.
Roxas recovered first. Sand flew to the sides as he shoved himself to his feet, and then he turned and summoned a dark portal. Before he could step through, though, Sora murmured, “Roxas…”
Roxas met his clear blue eyes, his expression almost apologetic. “It’s a second chance.”
With that, he stepped through the portal and was gone.
- xxx -
It was over an hour before Axel was finally sure he’d shaken heartless pursuit, and he could only conclude that someone was extraordinarily anxious to see him dead.
Curiosity drew him to Proof of Existence the moment he was able. He had to see how much damage Sora had done. But when he arrived, he suddenly realized that he had never given Sora the credit he deserved—because whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t this. Only two markers remained active: Axel’s and Roxas’. Zexion’s had been demolished since Castle Oblivion, but now three others were, as well. The rest were red. Dead.
For a moment Axel wondered if his own marker had been red while he was in oblivion… but then he was making his way to Roxas’ marker. Number XIII. The Key of Destiny. Sora’s shell. He’d found Roxas in Sora’s eyes. He’d suspected, but he couldn’t believe it until he saw it. Roxas was whole. He supposed he should be happier—it was what every Nobody wanted, to be whole. But Axel had always been content with Roxas, almost as if he was complete, a Somebody. What was left for him now?
He stood close to the marker, his boots touching the twin keyblades, and started to reach for the stone, but thought twice. Skin, he thought, and he removed a glove, pressing his palm flat against the blue glow. Roxas.
A dark portal formed… and then Roxas was there.
For this one I'll just post one summary thing.
Post-KH2, this story assumes that Axel is Riku's Nobody. This story concerns Wraiths, the beings that arise when a Nobody is defeated but still has an existing Heartless. Zexion, or rather Ienzo, is one such. His experimenting in an attempt to understand Keyblades leads to a new set of problems, causing a ripple through the worlds that, among other things, separates Sora from Roxas and Kairi from Namine again.
Title: Horizon / Prelude
Genre: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: PG
Word Count: 829(ish)
post castle oblivion »
There was a sudden snapping feeling, like some stretched part of Ienzo’s being had finally broken and returned to himself. Just the sensation for an instant; then flashes of memory, foreign but still his, burst starbright into his thoughts, pounding sharply at his temples.
There had been another part of him all along, linked only by the thinnest strand of the soul they still shared. The shell, Zexion…. They were alike, but different. Ienzo had become a Heartless, but Zexion was without a heart, not even a whole person, a Nobody.
Suddenly he was Ienzo, but with Zexion present inside him, in memories and in a cold voice curling at the back of his mind.
Zexion was curious. An image coalesced mist-like in Ienzo’s thoughts: a white-stone room filled with thirteen markers, all glowing blue. And because Ienzo was curious, as well, he obliged. Darkness pooled beneath his feet, icy black tendrils climbing his legs, and in a moment the portal swallowed him. He traveled through the suffocating black in-between (the journey as uncomfortable as always, but something he was used to) until Zexion rang with the familiar resonance of the room in the vision he had given Ienzo.
The darkness loosed him into the stark white contrast of Proof of Existence. Thirteen stone markers stood melancholy testimony to the Organization that never should have existed.
They weren’t all blue now, though. The markers of Vexen, Lexaeus, Larxene, and Marluxia were a dull red. Ienzo knew the names because Zexion knew them; he also recognized Vexen and Lexaeus as being to Even and Elaeus what Zexion was to him. Zexion’s marker, however… it had turned purple.
Destroy it, Zexion whispered.
Ienzo nodded grimly and raised his weapon.
post door to the light »
“I’ve seen him destroyed twice,” Ienzo mused. Axel stood in the alley below, lit harshly in neon glow and clearly struggling to regain his senses. The other three Wraiths were with him; Lourd and Vane lounged against the stone wall of the building while Braig stood rigid and thoughtful, watching Axel with the same intense curiosity Ienzo displayed.
“He isn’t like us,” Braig said. “Nor like the others.”
“We still existed when our shells were destroyed,” Vane pointed out. Dry laughter perpetually tainted his voice. He was so like Saïx, and yet so different; he was like a Saïx who only possessed the berserk half of his nature, not the reserved, serious part the Nobody had nearly always displayed. “The others’ Heartless were destroyed long before their shells were.”
Ienzo nodded. He had been thinking the same thing: for Axel there must exist somewhere another half, but it wasn’t a Heartless. And if it wasn’t heartless and it wasn’t nothing at all, then it must be… whole. “He must be as Roxas was,” he said. “But Roxas met his other half. Axel… hasn’t.”
Shadows began pooling around Axel, growing and forming into solid shapes. The effect was subtle, and Ienzo had to watch closely to be sure he wasn’t imagining things; the blazing neon lighting of the city fluctuated, which made the shadows that were born where the light ended deceptive. But the darkness bloomed, and glowing golden eyes punctuated it, all of them fixed on Axel. He sensed it, and he knew instinctively that it was wrong.
The heartless did not come after nobodies. The only nobody that had ever interested them was Roxas. And that had been because Roxas bore a—
Axel readied himself to fight, but when he reached to summon his weapons—the chakrams, Zexion whispered, he had borne as the Flurry of Dancing Flames—he brought a keyblade to his hands instead. It looked like his chakrams joined together into one weapon, so much so that someone who knew less about keyblades than Ienzo wouldn’t have been able to tell its true nature… but the heartless knew what it was. Their movement was jerky and erratic. They focused on Axel, completely intent but also hesitant. The keyblade was both alluring and repulsive to them. It had the power to destroy them, but with the keyblade came a powerful heart, one that might finally satiate them.
But Axel had no heart. He was a Nobody. The keyblade was a weapon of the heart, so how could it be wielded by a Nobody? Roxas had tormented Xemnas with that question, but the Superior never found the answer. Ienzo, though, was beginning to suspect what it might be.
There was more to keyblades than anyone had ever guessed. Ienzo had been playing with the hearts left behind from Xemnas’ machinations, sure that they would help him figure out what he was missing. This encounter with Axel just brought him one step closer. He could feel that he was so near to understanding—it was the feeling of a word at the tip of one’s tongue, so close, but just out of reach.
Today, he felt, he would find the answer.
Title: Horizon / One : Rupture
Genre: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,353
“He… was the only one I liked…. He made me feel… like I had a heart.”
That familiar lost, floating feeling. It wasn’t dark… but it wasn’t light. Just… gray. Was this nonexistence? He remembered this.
“It’s kind of… funny…. You make me feel… the same…”
Feeling returned to his limbs so slowly it hardly registered. One moment he was floating… and then he felt hard ground against his side, trapping his arm beneath him, and stone against his back. Cold seeped into his bones. And the… scent. He knew it. Too well.
I’m back.
With a groan, he opened his eyes and pushed himself upright. Silly me, I thought maybe this time I would be gone for good. It was dark, and darker for the hood drawn over his head; when he reached up to pull it back, he felt a sharp pain in his arm and the tingling of feeling returning. A mist of rain pressed in against his face, softening the harsh neon glare of the empty city into a hazy glow. The World That Never Was—it was as dark as he remembered. His eyes found their way up to the sky, to the odd moon that hung there.
Clearly he had been—dead?—for longer than he’d realized. Last he’d been here, the heart-shaped moon had been all but complete, but something had happened in his absence; now the center had gone dark and empty, only the hearts forming the outer edges of the moon still remaining. What could have happened?
Sora. Naturally. Axel smirked to himself—clearly Sora had raised hell for the Organization. A boy after his own heart. Well… if he’d had one.
The icy, invasive feeling of darkness creeping toward him brought his gaze snapping down from the sky to the pools of shadow forming around him in the alley. Heartless. Clearly his arrival had not gone unnoticed; Axel could only guess that someone had sent the heartless after him. They rose from the rain-slick alley floor, leering at him, their movement disjointed and their golden gaze penetrating. He felt the tendrils of darkness creeping in, their whispered reminders of all his evils and faults, and felt the familiar fire rising to his defense from his core. It burned away their icy black murmurs.
For a long moment none of them approached, but then the first one took a hesitant step, and then they were all preparing to leap. Axel felt fire burn down the nerves in his arms, almost painful, as he summoned his chakrams to the fight—
But it wasn’t quite chakrams that answered his call. It looked like his chakrams, but it was a single weapon, as if they had been welded together. And it felt stronger, lighter… as if it was a part of something bigger, not just a part of himself as the chakrams had been.
The precious seconds he spent staring incredulously at the weapon in his hands almost cost him his life—But what would it matter? Apparently I would just come back again—before he came to his senses and swung the blade in a flaming arc at the heartless springing toward him. The first one caught in the blade’s path dissolved into shadow; the others gave an agonized screech he only heard in his head and fell back, but already the next wave was on him.
He swung again and again, getting a feel for the blade. It was different from using the chakrams, but felt nearly as natural. And it was more powerful against these creatures, cutting through them like light through darkness.
But despite the weapon’s power, the waves of heartless kept coming one after another, until Axel felt fatigue in every joint and muscle. I must’ve pissed someone off pretty bad, he thought.
If he could just clear a space wide enough to…. He kept slashing at the shadow creatures, in his mind calling on that in-between power of travel. The dark portal formed a pace ahead of him. He used the blade to clear the way, and then he dove forward, letting the darkness envelope him.
Sometimes, watching Sora like this, Riku wished he’d been braver back in the beginning, when he still had a chance. Sora was light and alive, splashing through the water as he tried to catch a fish with his bare hands. He used to be so good at it, but he was out of practice, and the fish were wise to his intentions. But the waves of water droplets he sent up glistened in the sunlight, haloing his body in a way that made Riku ache. He was all darkness where Sora was light. They could never meet; they only existed in contrast, and where one went the other retreated.
No, they didn’t belong together. Sora wanted Kairi, and their light shone brightly together. Sometimes he was afraid they would blot him and his darkness out altogether.
Sora straightened and began wading back to shore. At first Riku thought he’d simply grown bored of the fish outsmarting him, but the strange expression on his face brought Riku to his feet. Sora put a fist to his heart, his brow furrowed with—discomfort? Confusion? Pain?
“What’s going on?” Riku asked, meeting Sora at the edge of the water just as the tide receded from around the boy’s feet. Riku grabbed Sora’s shoulders when it looked like he might fall, but Sora just shook his head as if to say he was alright and pulled away from Riku to move further up the beach and sit in the sand. “You okay?”
“I feel something weird,” Sora explained. “I dunno. Something here.” He tapped his fist against his chest. He closed his eyes, his expression tightening. “It’s getting worse.”
Riku noticed a dull throbbing at the base of his skull and deep in his chest—barely there, but he was sure it was related to what Sora felt. But he didn’t have time to say anything before Sora convulsed in the sand with a low moan—
And a breath later, stretched out opposite Sora in the sand was… Roxas. Riku stared for just a moment before moving to Sora’s side and helping him to his feet. Sora was breathless but unharmed; he stared at Roxas, stunned, and Roxas stared back.
Roxas recovered first. Sand flew to the sides as he shoved himself to his feet, and then he turned and summoned a dark portal. Before he could step through, though, Sora murmured, “Roxas…”
Roxas met his clear blue eyes, his expression almost apologetic. “It’s a second chance.”
With that, he stepped through the portal and was gone.
It was over an hour before Axel was finally sure he’d shaken heartless pursuit, and he could only conclude that someone was extraordinarily anxious to see him dead.
Curiosity drew him to Proof of Existence the moment he was able. He had to see how much damage Sora had done. But when he arrived, he suddenly realized that he had never given Sora the credit he deserved—because whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t this. Only two markers remained active: Axel’s and Roxas’. Zexion’s had been demolished since Castle Oblivion, but now three others were, as well. The rest were red. Dead.
For a moment Axel wondered if his own marker had been red while he was in oblivion… but then he was making his way to Roxas’ marker. Number XIII. The Key of Destiny. Sora’s shell. He’d found Roxas in Sora’s eyes. He’d suspected, but he couldn’t believe it until he saw it. Roxas was whole. He supposed he should be happier—it was what every Nobody wanted, to be whole. But Axel had always been content with Roxas, almost as if he was complete, a Somebody. What was left for him now?
He stood close to the marker, his boots touching the twin keyblades, and started to reach for the stone, but thought twice. Skin, he thought, and he removed a glove, pressing his palm flat against the blue glow. Roxas.
A dark portal formed… and then Roxas was there.
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10/9/08 02:00 (UTC)(no subject)
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