One exam down, two to go! I thought I’d celebrate with a story :D

Mild spoilers for KHII within!

Naminé was struggling to restore Sora’s memories in Castle Oblivion. That was when DiZ came…

Scatterings

At some point, he would realise that he didn’t know where he was. Not too long after thinking that, his mind would slip away again. From white to black, to white again and only to finally fall away. Below it all was a feeling, somewhere in his head but also in his heart. What was it? He struggled to name it. Then he gave up. He wanted to hold his head in his hands but he couldn’t. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he still had hands or a head. Wherever he was, he reluctantly consented to floating and accepted that life, at the moment, was out of his control.

Sometimes the whiteness set off thoughts, and he’d awaken to dusk, his hands holding onto theirs. He’d sit up, without letting go, but they slept on. Nothing awakened them but that was because there was nothing to awaken them – he didn’t try to and neither did anything else. He’d sit and watch the sea, listening to it coming in and pulling back, ebbing and flowing the way water always did. If he tried to remember how he got there, a pain would race behind his eyes and a blank blast of white noise washed through his ears. Nothing. He had nothing beyond this place, this moment, her, him and himself. So he would lie back down, close his eyes, return to whiteness, return to blackness, and begin the cycle anew.

It never occurred to him he was trapped inside his own mind, so deeply asleep that nothing beyond could awaken him.

“You haven’t made a lot of progress, have you?”

“I know. Part of Sora has gone beyond my reach.”

“That is why I am here. Naminé, we must move him elsewhere. His friends should come too.”

The blond girl looked between the boy and the masked man. “How? Where?”

“Twilight Town. I have a mansion there, still safely hidden from Organization XIII. We will be safe there and you will have the time to undo the mess you created.”

She blanched at DiZ’s rough words.

He grew impatient. “Naminé, you will either come with me or I will take you and them by force.”

Naminé placed her sketchbook down and stood up, meeting the man’s burnt orange gaze with a steady look. “Do you have the facilities I need?”

“Of course.”

She bowed her head. “We will come then.”

He didn’t know that his prison opened. He didn’t really feel the spell that was cast over his body. He sensed a slight stirring in the whiteness, but he soon plunged back into the darkest part of his mind and stopped noticing.

Two heavy, soulless blue eyes opened. As DiZ’s power commanded, Sora’s body stepped out of the pod and came to a standstill beside the tall man, weaving only slightly on legs that hadn’t been used in some time. The boy’s face was utterly blank. The body was moving but the life within slept on and on. DiZ nodded to Naminé, who reached out and took hold of Sora’s unresisting hand. A tentative smile passed over her. Maybe she was hoping he’d react. He didn’t of course. Sora wasn’t really looking at her.

“This way.”

He followed her, pace sedate, into the dark portal DiZ had opened. The man soon followed, Sora’s friends following him with equally blank looks on their faces. They passed through the strange not-place, the boundaries ever shifting and swirling, colours never settled. Sora never turned his head, never met Naminé’s gaze, never raised a smile and never asked a question. She had to look away to hold in the discomfort shaking through her. She tugged him on, leading him through the other portal and out into the mechanical world of DiZ’s mansion. It was cold here, the girl thought, noticing the prickles rising all over Sora’s skin. It was colder than Castle Oblivion had ever been. The light was melancholy and blue, the machines humming in preparedness to run their given programmes.

DiZ emerged a moment later and motioned for Naminé to bring Sora. Together, man and girl led the three friends to their new pods. Once Donald and Goofy were set up in theirs, DiZ pushed Sora forwards. Naminé followed DiZ and the puppet-like Sora into a huge white room. It was identical to the room in Castle Oblivion. Had DiZ created it purposefully? Naminé didn’t know and didn’t ask.

The pod stood open and ready. Naminé watched as DiZ crouched down in front of Sora, lifting the boy’s chin so his glazed eyes were on level with DiZ’s.

“All this for one boy.” He laughed, the sound too deep for mere amusement. “But I need him, and I need him complete.”

Why did the water’s rhythm suddenly change? For the first time, he let go of their hands and stood up. Why did his heart feel less peaceful? He looked around at the beach, at the beautiful sky, at the gentle sea. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly.

“Is any of this for real?”

DiZ stepped back in alarm. “He’s awakening! No, it’s far too soon!”

The strings holding the boy up were pulled away. The empty blue eyes closed, the body falling forward now that it didn’t have something to hold it up. Naminé barely made it in time, Sora falling against her body rather than collapsing to the ground. She felt it then, the tension running through his muscles as his mind struggled to escape the bonds of sleep.

“Naminé.” DiZ’s brusque use of her name was a direct command she had no intention of disobeying.

No, she wouldn’t disobey, not even as she felt Sora’s hand brushing against her arm or heard the sound of his sleepy voice as he tried to find out what was happening.

She wrapped her arms around him, holding him in an embrace. Her mouth to his ear, she breathed words laced with the power she held over him. “No,” she whispered. “No Sora, go back to sleep. It’s too soon.”

He fell back to the sand and recaptured Kairi and Riku’s hands in his own. His eyes closed. The sea rolled in and it rolled out. Everything held itself still. Then, his hands were empty. The sand fell away and he with it, falling and falling until the whiteness encircled him once again.

Sora safely installed, DiZ walked away. “Come Naminé. I’ve prepared a room for you as well. You should begin immediately. We have no time to waste.”

She looked back once before hurrying after the mysterious man. Her white room, her paper, her crayons… she recreated the memories she had unchained for Sora, days and days going by unnoticed. Naminé worked tirelessly, so rarely stopping.

Sora began finding ways off the beach, where his friends never stirred, and into fourteen years worth of memories. As his life came back to him, the whiteness and darkness stayed away for longer. Everything came back, the highs and the lows, all to be relived and felt as though the emotions were fresh. Life felt wonderful but sometimes it was a pain beyond comprehension. But he went through it all again, unable to stop his descent through his past.

Then came the times when he passed into a new place, saw it alongside that other boy… or did he see through the other’s eyes? In his memories, Sora could never feel anything other than the emotions from his heart. He just watched and watched before one piece of his life washed away and a new one replaced it. But there, with that other boy, he could feel sunlight again. Often, the words spoken passed by him in an unintelligible buzz but occasionally he connected to the world and, for the briefest of moments, he existed beyond sleep.

Then came a voice so familiar, and he called out his name.

“Sora.”

“Who’s there?”

And he finally returned to the worlds.