Author’s Note: This is my answer to ninja-butterfliie’s contest, and my frustration with the lack of worthy fanfiction in the Kingdom Hearts sub fanfic-dom. I started reading Avatar: The Last Airbender fics because there was absolutely nothing worth reading.

You want to know what’s worth reading? Check my blogger.

Think on it.

This is a 5-part story, just like Eyes On Me. This is also a contest entry and within canon.

Copyrights: Characters and main storyline are the copyright of Square-Enix and Disney. This within-canon storyline is mine.

XXX

What’s Left of Me

«3 – The Future Shining Somewhere»

Thankfully the mansion was empty, but that didn’t make his growing doubts dissipate. As he opened the gates he kept looking back at her, still not believing that she agreed to come with him to see Sora. What was he supposed to say? Hi, I’m Roxas, and I’m Sora’s Nobody. I want to tell you my story so that someone will remember me for who I am, because everyone who does know is a Nobody, too, and they won’t live long enough for someone to remember me.

Roxas just knew Kairi would have never followed him if that was what he told her. She didn’t even know what a Nobody was; maybe she should never know.

“Where is this place?” she asked.

He felt his hand being squeezed and looked down to see her grasping his hand tightly. Her eyes were wide as she stared at the mansion.

“He’s in there?”

He nodded. This world was a mirror image of the computerized world he had been living in, and everything was where they should be; of course Sora would be in there, sleeping in the memory pod.

“Why? Why’s he here? Where is here?”

He looked up at the darkly lit sky. This was what Twilight Town looked like at night. Strangely it filled him with wonder; he had taken everything for granted when living in the digital world but now that he was back in reality… This was reality.

“Roxas?”

He sighed deeply and looked at her. “We’re just outside of Twilight Town. This is an abandoned mansion. People say it’s haunted with ghosts, but it’s not. It’s just…there’s people inside.”

“People? There’s more than just Sora? You mean-”

“Let’s go inside, Kairi. I’ll bring you to him.”

He pulled her inside the mansion, his hand holding onto hers just as tightly.

XXX

“Donald? Goofy? Roxas, what’s wrong with them? What are they doing inside those things? Are they…are they sleeping?”

She stared at the large pods lined up down the hall and she gently touched the one Donald was encased in. Kairi looked at Roxas, who had stopped several feet ahead; he was standing in the center of the hall, staring straight ahead at nothing.

“Roxas?”

Something’s bothering him.

“They’re asleep. They’re simply…waiting for the time to wake up,” he said. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully; Roxas was hiding something.

“Why? What are they waiting for? Where’s Sora?”

“Sora? He’s…I don’t…I don’t know how to explain this…”

He turned around and looked at her. Kairi shuddered as she stared at his solemn eye; she quickly turned away and glanced at Donald.

“S-so they’re waiting for Sora, a-aren’t they?” she asked. A quick peek at Roxas, and a sharp intake of breath later she looked back at Donald, then at Goofy. He was still watching her. “Why?”

She shivered again as she heard footsteps nearing her. A sixth sense warned her of a presence behind her, at the left side, and she turned to see Roxas looking at the glass pods. He had an intense expression on his face, then he closed his eyes and sighed.

Kairi opened her mouth to ask what was wrong but decided against it. Silence filled the hall as she quickly looked at Donald and Goofy but nothing had changed. She shivered; they looked dead. What horrendous thing happened to them? What happened to Sora? Riku? Where’d they go, if these two were here, in these glass pods?

Questions were still unanswered, and Roxas had the answers. She took a deep breath and turned to him but his eyes were still closed, silencing her instantly.

He looks like Sora, a different Sora.

She frowned slightly but her thoughts were right. If nothing else, Roxas looked like Sora’s identical twin brother, minus the hair, the permanent pout, and the shadows in his eyes. But they weren’t twins; she’s never heard of Roxas until a few days ago.

Why can’t I stop wondering about you? The longer I think about you, daydream about you, the more I feel like I know you. But I know nothing about you. You know me, you know Sora, you look like Sora, but you’re…you’re still a mystery. Who are you?

Kairi sighed, looked down at her feet, then back up to his face. He had turned his head and his eyes were open, again looking at something. She followed his gaze but there was nothing spectacular to see.

He was waiting.

“Roxas…can you…can you show me…”

He looked at her, still waiting.

“Can you show me…Sora?”

Show me who you are…make the questions go away.

Once the thought went through her mind she looked down at the floor. Why did she think that?

“Let me show you,” he whispered.

XXX

He had been waiting for her. He had been waiting for her forever.

It came to him while she tried to understand the circumstances Sora and his friends were in. He stood there, trying to imagine what she would say when she finally saw him. Roxas tried to think whether this really was a good idea, but as the minutes wore on, his thoughts turned increasingly to her.

“Kairi…I know you. You’re that girl he likes.”

When he lived obliviously in Twilight Town, he wondered if there was something wrong in his life. Hayner, Olette, and Pence always made him happy, accepted, but when he sat in his room or walked down the streets alone, he felt isolated from the rest of the city. He felt different. He always had.

“We have come for you, my liege.”

He wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t like Hayner, Olette, or Pence. He was a Nobody.

“It’s funny…suddenly I feel like I don’t know myself at all. I guess I would like to know…what do you know about me that I don’t?”

“You…you were never supposed to exist, Roxas.”

“What? How could you even say such a thing…even if it where true?”

Roxas wasn’t supposed to exist. The cold face of reality was a terrible adversary and he didn’t know how to defeat it.

Axel. I’ve got to find Axel.

He had been lucky. Axel had snuck back into his Twilight Town and this time Roxas able to communicate with him. They were able to talk like old friends again.

“So what is this you want to do?”

“I…I want to get out of this world…and meet someone, someone who can remember me.”

“Roxas, I’m alive. I remember you. Why can’t it be me?”

“Because we’re not supposed to exist. We’re supposed to…we’ll…disappear.”

“Don’t listen to those lies they’ve been feeding you, Roxas. People will remember us!”

“Will they? I get the feeling people hate us. Isn’t that why DiZ did this to me? Isn’t that why I’m going to disappear?”

“You-you’re not going to disappear! Stop thinking these negative thoughts, Roxas; they’re bad for you. I’ll get you out of here, Roxas. I can promise you that.”

“It’s too late, Axel. I do want to meet Sora, but before that happens…there’s someone else I want to meet.”

“Who?”

When he talked with Naminé in her room, he remembered all those drawings she had taped to the walls. There were so many of them, of him and of Sora, and of what each of them had done. But the one drawing that really caught his eye was of Kairi.

You’re that girl he likes.

And then it came to him.

All he needed was to find her. He needed to find her…because he wanted to know who she was. She seemed far removed from everything that had been happening, but, as he stared at the picture, her image, a sense of presence, suddenly filled in part of the emptiness inside him. She was a missing link in his-Sora’s chain of memories. She was part of Sora’s core, and therefore his.

He had been waiting for her forever to fill in what was left of him.

XXX

Author’s Endnote: W00t! Christmas is coming! Tomorrow!

Please review. Thoughts and opinions and suggestions are deeply appreciated.