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sirenspull_logs2012-02-01 08:55 pm
lockandkeyblade) wrote in sirenspull_logs2012-02-01 08:55 pm
Day 357
Who: Sora (lockandkeyblade ) and Roxas ( pullsheavendown )
When: Late night
Where: Sora's House, Roxas' apartment
Summary: Roxas gives Sora his diary. Sora reads it. And finally understands.
Warnings: BIG BLOCKS OF TEXTO. Possibly heart punching and bro-times.
lockandkeyblade ) and Roxas ( pullsheavendown )When: Late night
Where: Sora's House, Roxas' apartment
Summary: Roxas gives Sora his diary. Sora reads it. And finally understands.
Warnings: BIG BLOCKS OF TEXTO. Possibly heart punching and bro-times.
Sora is holding Roxas' life in his hands, bound and written in 56 pages, brief and rife with conflict... but probably filled with just as much friendship and meaning.
The first thing that Sora notices as he settles down at the end of the day to read the diary is that the first page is written in neat scrawl, two words at the very center of the page, 'Day 7', as if Day 6 and all the days prior were just lost somewhere along the way. There aren't any identifying marks in his writing, just generic lettering and consistent spacing.
'Axel' and 'Ice cream:' These words show up in the first few entries, and Sora starts to understand why they're so important (They're one of the first things that Roxas knows). A few pages in, Xion makes an appearance too, a curiosity and a friend-to-be. For someone who's only come into existence a few days prior, it's an uneventful, humble start.
But somewhere between seasalt ice cream and daily visits to the clocktower, it's all too easy for Sora to be a part of the story too. It's like those books his mom used to read when he was little: Roxas is the protagonist, Xion and Axel his ensemble. Whether it's just his fondness for stories, or if it's because Roxas used to be a part of him that he ends up feeling so attached, he can't be sure. It might be because Xion and Axel have become a part of his life here in Siren's Port. But either way, he feels like he's really there when Roxas meets Xion. He's there when Roxas discovers what a Winner stick means, and learns that ice cream means friendship; it's meant to be shared.
The best stories are good at making people care about what happens the characters. This isn't any different.
Some things stand out to him more than most. He has a mind to protest at anything the Organization claims or teaches him (Truth be told, he's grateful when Roxas says only reason he's with them is to be whole, to understand and maybe even have his heart back. )
He also feels more connected: (Does Sora like ice cream because of Roxas? Does Roxas know the sound of the ocean because of Sora? A part of him hopes so, even if in the scope of things, it really shouldn't matter as much as it does.)
Page by page, Roxas grows and changes. The diary does too. When he turns the page on Day 26, there's a short but telling title scrawled just underneath the day: "How Long?" (The question mark is leaning to the right, like it's about to fall over. Sora's question marks are like that too.)
In a way, these entries are the only way he can really understand the Roxas from before, the person he used to be. He feels what Roxas does, is there when he collapses, when Roxas falls asleep. He's there when Axel and Xion fail to meet him at the clocktower for the first time, and when Roxas finds out about the Organization members being wiped out (though he's hard pressed to be sorry about that. The fewer Organization members there are, the less they can use or hurt his friends). He's also there when Roxas dreams of the 'boy in red,' time and time again (Who is this guy? How come Roxas keeps seeing him?)
Sometimes the lessons that Roxas learns eerily parallel his own. Roxas and Sora both know that terrible ache in their heart at a missing friend, feel that cloying worry when another friend is acting... different. He's experienced that sigh of relief when they find each other again. Other times, he wants to jump right in and teach him things he's already learned, himself: Despite Roxas' doubts, friends can be inseparable when they're not together. They can be a part of each other. He can be with and there for a friend even if they're far away.
As he reads, it strikes him as more than a little ironic: Roxas and Xion are the youngest of the organization, the ones who should know the least of the inner workings of the heart. They ask questions that Sora already inherently knows, and experience wonder in things that Sora finds typical. But for all the memories and inexperience they lack, Roxas and Xion are the ones Sora thinks understand the most what a heart is supposed to be. The others could have learned something from them, from Axel too. Despite his monlogues, Xemnas never really understood the heart. He mistook it for a weakness, instead of a strength. He and his flunkies couldn't understand that having someone to protect made you strong. Not weak.
Like a ghost, the boy in read appears again. First on Day 117, and then again in 174. He flips between entries, as if comparing them will gleam some sort of insight. It doesn't dawn on him all at once, but in a slow, gradual realization. The boy in red. Someone he's never met, but probably someone important.
Could it be? The boy in red is...?
Now that he thinks about it, it wouldn't be that far of a stretch that they'd be connected in sleep, right? Could Roxas have dreamed of him while he slept? He's not sure what it means, or why he even finds it so important. But he does.
Of course, it's an issue that takes a backseat as he turns another page, because that's when everything starts to fall apart. Xion goes missing, the first in a series of events that shift and change Roxas' world. Even small comforts (Xion wakes, they acknowledge each other as best friends. Inseparable.) are tempered with disappointment and fear. It's like watching something precariously built, something that isn't meant to last (not when they're surrounded by the Organization) and then feeling sad anyway when it topples. Xion collapses. And with both his friends acting strange, all he and Roxas can do is wish things could go back to normal. He wishes it were as easy to change things back to normal, as it is to turn the pages back to the beginning; it was only about ice cream and learning and friendship.
Xemnas and Saix forbid Roxas to go looking for her, a notion which Sora finds ridiculous. Maybe she left because she realized her true purpose. Maybe she realized what she's doing to Roxas. It could even be she's figured out the Organization is bad news. He can't really know. Times like this, he wishes he were reading the Hundred Acre Wood, so intervening would be as simple as stepping onto a page. He would tell Roxas he should go look for her anyway. To hell with what they think! Roxas shouldn't trust them. The only one worth trusting is Axel. Hang onto what's important, especially when both his memory and his friendships are on shaky ground.
Only, that's not how things unfold. Roxas continues on with his missions, even as misfortune follows closely on Roxas' heels. He collapses at Castle Oblivion, the very same place Sora never remembers being.
Every entry he reads makes him feel more and more like they're brothers, wandering in the dark. They've always just missed each other by that much. Maybe things might have been different if they'd brushed shoulders or crossed paths. Just reached each other somehow. Maybe they could have been a part of each others lives instead of just stumbling upon each others' footsteps. What he could've told Roxas about the Organization, how he might've changed things-- it's just a bottomless well of possibilities of what might have happened. But it's just another drop in the bucket of things that could have been, but never came to pass for one reason or another.
From here, Sora doesn't leave his room. It's strangely quiet, with Kairi and Riku and Ritsuka asleep. It's just him, the diary and the darkness creeping outside, though near the end, a Quelk clambers up to his window and stays there. It's an extra bit of light he's glad is there, even if it doesn't change a thing.
There's a spike of familiarity: Axel's 'attacked' Xion. Best friends fighting. It leaves an awful taste in his mouth.
Day 299, is a landmark entry. The culmination of a question long in coming for both him and Roxas. Day 299 is the day Roxas finds Sora. And even if he's just a name to the other, a vague, formless idea that arbitrarily connects him and his best friend, Roxas knows him. Sora can't help but think finally.
It's an answer that comes little too late. The events of the months prior have finally started to take its toll. He watches as Roxas is slowly worn away, ground down by things he has no control over.
Day 352 is the last entry he reads with the Quelk at his window. It's a good entry, distinctly happy. There's an energy, a vibrant life that's returned to his writing that's been absent since it all fell apart. There's also a feeling of reluctance, like if he turns the page, this is the last entry they'll ever be together.
In a way, he's right.
At the time he moves on, the Quelk has wandered away. It takes its light with it, allowing the creeping darkness to come pressing against his window again. The entries that follow are shorter and succinct, drained of personality. It's like Roxas doesn't have the energy, worn down, day by day, memory by memory.
That's probably why Xion ends up leaving for good. Despite Roxas' distress, he can't help but cheer for her. It's the culmination of everything Sora's wanted since the beginning of the journal: for the three of them to just cut ties with the Organization and run. If they'd just lived long enough, gotten far away enough from the Organization, they would've figured something out. She could have escaped, and Roxas and Axel could have followed. Everything worth protecting, they would take with them as they left.
He sees, with no small amount of apprehension, that he's very close to the end of the diary. There's a sliver of pages left with text, which leaves him uneasy. He has to squash the urge to go back to the sunset entry, the last of the days when the three of them were together.
The final page shows more feeling, more emotion than most of his other entries combined: His words are angry, slashes of thick black lines that bite into the paper and leave marks on the other side. There's a furious sort of finality, a decision he'll never go back on. A determination to right what's been wrong, to fix things, to forge his own destiny.
And then, without warning,... the diary ends.
Page after page following its final, climactic entry, there is simply... nothing. Empty white space where an ending was supposed to be, but was never written. It's a little... haunting. Eerie.
His mother used to read stories like this when he was younger. Books with endings that weren't really endings at all, and it's left up to the reader to determine the fate of each character involved. Sora's always chosen the more hopeful outlook, because if he has the power to granting all the characters he's learned about and grown to love all the happiness he could give, then why wouldn't he give them the best ending?
But... he really doesn't have the power at all. This isn't one of those stories. Xion and Roxas and Axel aren't characters in a book. They're real. And they're long gone.
One's his other half, the writer in a life unfinished, spirited away to write someone else's. Another is dead, ending his own story in a self sacrifice that was meant to perpetuate someone else'. The last isn't even a memory, pages ripped out by the person she cared about most. He can't wish them a happy ending any more than he can wish them back to life.
His heart is so, so very heavy.
He lays on the bed for some time, lingering on that final entry, or on the blank pages that lead to nothing but the inside of a blank cover. It's with a sad sort of finality that he closes the diary. He fishes his NV out sometime afterwards, scrolling through the contact list, past people whose lives he understands a little bit more, and then finally finds the owner of the Diary.
He could probably say a hundred things about the entries, ask just as many questions about its ending, its beginning, and everything in between.
But by the time the NV starts to ring, he's really just glad that all endings considered, Roxas is there to answer his call at all.
The first thing that Sora notices as he settles down at the end of the day to read the diary is that the first page is written in neat scrawl, two words at the very center of the page, 'Day 7', as if Day 6 and all the days prior were just lost somewhere along the way. There aren't any identifying marks in his writing, just generic lettering and consistent spacing.
'Axel' and 'Ice cream:' These words show up in the first few entries, and Sora starts to understand why they're so important (They're one of the first things that Roxas knows). A few pages in, Xion makes an appearance too, a curiosity and a friend-to-be. For someone who's only come into existence a few days prior, it's an uneventful, humble start.
But somewhere between seasalt ice cream and daily visits to the clocktower, it's all too easy for Sora to be a part of the story too. It's like those books his mom used to read when he was little: Roxas is the protagonist, Xion and Axel his ensemble. Whether it's just his fondness for stories, or if it's because Roxas used to be a part of him that he ends up feeling so attached, he can't be sure. It might be because Xion and Axel have become a part of his life here in Siren's Port. But either way, he feels like he's really there when Roxas meets Xion. He's there when Roxas discovers what a Winner stick means, and learns that ice cream means friendship; it's meant to be shared.
The best stories are good at making people care about what happens the characters. This isn't any different.
Some things stand out to him more than most. He has a mind to protest at anything the Organization claims or teaches him (Truth be told, he's grateful when Roxas says only reason he's with them is to be whole, to understand and maybe even have his heart back. )
He also feels more connected: (Does Sora like ice cream because of Roxas? Does Roxas know the sound of the ocean because of Sora? A part of him hopes so, even if in the scope of things, it really shouldn't matter as much as it does.)
Page by page, Roxas grows and changes. The diary does too. When he turns the page on Day 26, there's a short but telling title scrawled just underneath the day: "How Long?" (The question mark is leaning to the right, like it's about to fall over. Sora's question marks are like that too.)
In a way, these entries are the only way he can really understand the Roxas from before, the person he used to be. He feels what Roxas does, is there when he collapses, when Roxas falls asleep. He's there when Axel and Xion fail to meet him at the clocktower for the first time, and when Roxas finds out about the Organization members being wiped out (though he's hard pressed to be sorry about that. The fewer Organization members there are, the less they can use or hurt his friends). He's also there when Roxas dreams of the 'boy in red,' time and time again (Who is this guy? How come Roxas keeps seeing him?)
Sometimes the lessons that Roxas learns eerily parallel his own. Roxas and Sora both know that terrible ache in their heart at a missing friend, feel that cloying worry when another friend is acting... different. He's experienced that sigh of relief when they find each other again. Other times, he wants to jump right in and teach him things he's already learned, himself: Despite Roxas' doubts, friends can be inseparable when they're not together. They can be a part of each other. He can be with and there for a friend even if they're far away.
As he reads, it strikes him as more than a little ironic: Roxas and Xion are the youngest of the organization, the ones who should know the least of the inner workings of the heart. They ask questions that Sora already inherently knows, and experience wonder in things that Sora finds typical. But for all the memories and inexperience they lack, Roxas and Xion are the ones Sora thinks understand the most what a heart is supposed to be. The others could have learned something from them, from Axel too. Despite his monlogues, Xemnas never really understood the heart. He mistook it for a weakness, instead of a strength. He and his flunkies couldn't understand that having someone to protect made you strong. Not weak.
Like a ghost, the boy in read appears again. First on Day 117, and then again in 174. He flips between entries, as if comparing them will gleam some sort of insight. It doesn't dawn on him all at once, but in a slow, gradual realization. The boy in red. Someone he's never met, but probably someone important.
Could it be? The boy in red is...?
Now that he thinks about it, it wouldn't be that far of a stretch that they'd be connected in sleep, right? Could Roxas have dreamed of him while he slept? He's not sure what it means, or why he even finds it so important. But he does.
Of course, it's an issue that takes a backseat as he turns another page, because that's when everything starts to fall apart. Xion goes missing, the first in a series of events that shift and change Roxas' world. Even small comforts (Xion wakes, they acknowledge each other as best friends. Inseparable.) are tempered with disappointment and fear. It's like watching something precariously built, something that isn't meant to last (not when they're surrounded by the Organization) and then feeling sad anyway when it topples. Xion collapses. And with both his friends acting strange, all he and Roxas can do is wish things could go back to normal. He wishes it were as easy to change things back to normal, as it is to turn the pages back to the beginning; it was only about ice cream and learning and friendship.
Xemnas and Saix forbid Roxas to go looking for her, a notion which Sora finds ridiculous. Maybe she left because she realized her true purpose. Maybe she realized what she's doing to Roxas. It could even be she's figured out the Organization is bad news. He can't really know. Times like this, he wishes he were reading the Hundred Acre Wood, so intervening would be as simple as stepping onto a page. He would tell Roxas he should go look for her anyway. To hell with what they think! Roxas shouldn't trust them. The only one worth trusting is Axel. Hang onto what's important, especially when both his memory and his friendships are on shaky ground.
Only, that's not how things unfold. Roxas continues on with his missions, even as misfortune follows closely on Roxas' heels. He collapses at Castle Oblivion, the very same place Sora never remembers being.
Every entry he reads makes him feel more and more like they're brothers, wandering in the dark. They've always just missed each other by that much. Maybe things might have been different if they'd brushed shoulders or crossed paths. Just reached each other somehow. Maybe they could have been a part of each others lives instead of just stumbling upon each others' footsteps. What he could've told Roxas about the Organization, how he might've changed things-- it's just a bottomless well of possibilities of what might have happened. But it's just another drop in the bucket of things that could have been, but never came to pass for one reason or another.
From here, Sora doesn't leave his room. It's strangely quiet, with Kairi and Riku and Ritsuka asleep. It's just him, the diary and the darkness creeping outside, though near the end, a Quelk clambers up to his window and stays there. It's an extra bit of light he's glad is there, even if it doesn't change a thing.
There's a spike of familiarity: Axel's 'attacked' Xion. Best friends fighting. It leaves an awful taste in his mouth.
Day 299, is a landmark entry. The culmination of a question long in coming for both him and Roxas. Day 299 is the day Roxas finds Sora. And even if he's just a name to the other, a vague, formless idea that arbitrarily connects him and his best friend, Roxas knows him. Sora can't help but think finally.
It's an answer that comes little too late. The events of the months prior have finally started to take its toll. He watches as Roxas is slowly worn away, ground down by things he has no control over.
Day 352 is the last entry he reads with the Quelk at his window. It's a good entry, distinctly happy. There's an energy, a vibrant life that's returned to his writing that's been absent since it all fell apart. There's also a feeling of reluctance, like if he turns the page, this is the last entry they'll ever be together.
In a way, he's right.
At the time he moves on, the Quelk has wandered away. It takes its light with it, allowing the creeping darkness to come pressing against his window again. The entries that follow are shorter and succinct, drained of personality. It's like Roxas doesn't have the energy, worn down, day by day, memory by memory.
That's probably why Xion ends up leaving for good. Despite Roxas' distress, he can't help but cheer for her. It's the culmination of everything Sora's wanted since the beginning of the journal: for the three of them to just cut ties with the Organization and run. If they'd just lived long enough, gotten far away enough from the Organization, they would've figured something out. She could have escaped, and Roxas and Axel could have followed. Everything worth protecting, they would take with them as they left.
He sees, with no small amount of apprehension, that he's very close to the end of the diary. There's a sliver of pages left with text, which leaves him uneasy. He has to squash the urge to go back to the sunset entry, the last of the days when the three of them were together.
The final page shows more feeling, more emotion than most of his other entries combined: His words are angry, slashes of thick black lines that bite into the paper and leave marks on the other side. There's a furious sort of finality, a decision he'll never go back on. A determination to right what's been wrong, to fix things, to forge his own destiny.
And then, without warning,... the diary ends.
Page after page following its final, climactic entry, there is simply... nothing. Empty white space where an ending was supposed to be, but was never written. It's a little... haunting. Eerie.
His mother used to read stories like this when he was younger. Books with endings that weren't really endings at all, and it's left up to the reader to determine the fate of each character involved. Sora's always chosen the more hopeful outlook, because if he has the power to granting all the characters he's learned about and grown to love all the happiness he could give, then why wouldn't he give them the best ending?
But... he really doesn't have the power at all. This isn't one of those stories. Xion and Roxas and Axel aren't characters in a book. They're real. And they're long gone.
One's his other half, the writer in a life unfinished, spirited away to write someone else's. Another is dead, ending his own story in a self sacrifice that was meant to perpetuate someone else'. The last isn't even a memory, pages ripped out by the person she cared about most. He can't wish them a happy ending any more than he can wish them back to life.
His heart is so, so very heavy.
He lays on the bed for some time, lingering on that final entry, or on the blank pages that lead to nothing but the inside of a blank cover. It's with a sad sort of finality that he closes the diary. He fishes his NV out sometime afterwards, scrolling through the contact list, past people whose lives he understands a little bit more, and then finally finds the owner of the Diary.
He could probably say a hundred things about the entries, ask just as many questions about its ending, its beginning, and everything in between.
But by the time the NV starts to ring, he's really just glad that all endings considered, Roxas is there to answer his call at all.
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I was thinking about how you guys had ice cream all the time?
I think I get why it's so important now.
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[He probably does. After reading the diary, it should be obvious. But he'd like to hear Sora say it himself.]
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[The first splash of color on a blank canvas. Sky blue... and a little red and black too.]
But it's also because it was yours and Axel's and Xion's. It brought you guys together.
[Sora, Riku and Kairi grew up together. They were each the pillars that held up the others' world. It just didn't work if they didn't have each other. In a way that's what Axel and Xion and Roxas had too. They met in the beginning, forged something special, and everything was history from there.]
Ice cream... meant being friends. Really good ones.
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[It's a small, simple fact, no less significant for that.]
I didn't know much when I learned that. So I made sure to memorize it.
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[Some things Roxas might have gotten from him. But this time, Sora thinks it might've been the other way around.]
I tried sea-salt ice cream for the first time just a little while ago. It's been my favorite ever since.
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I'm glad.
[Even if he still can't believe that he isn't gone in Sora's time, it's nice to know he leaves something behind. Something they have in common now. Not every part of him will be forgotten.]
It's the best kind.
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Did you really think the sound of the ocean was familiar?
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[A piece of his past, lost with the rest of his memories. But not completely gone.]
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[He tenses a little as he remembers that mission, that trip to the Destiny Islands. Visions of Sora and Kairi together on the beach had already begun swirling through his mind as he picked up a shell that matched the ones Xion had left on his bed.
Then he'd spotted her on the little mini-island and everything had turned upside down.]
Something happened that day. Afterward, it was like a dream. I wasn't sure if I'd even really gone.
But for a minute there...it felt like I was where I was supposed to be. Or that it had been, once.
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Sounds... confusing.
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[Confusing and worrying. And things had only gotten worse.]
I think it would have been a nice place to visit for real, on a vacation day. If we'd had a chance.
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[He bites his lip, as if hesitating to ask a question. A heavy one at that.]
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After a moment, he looks sidelong at Sora and catches the unsure look on his face.]
What?
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But I don't really know how.
What happened... after the diary ends?
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I left the castle. There wasn't anything there for me. I didn't tell Axel...I was too angry at him. But he knew, somehow.
I could have opened a dark corridor out, I suppose, but I wanted to walk. It made it more real. Saix was waiting for me. The Organization 'didn't accept resignations.' I didn't want to fight anybody, but he wasn't going to just let me go, so I made him.
[He could tell him about Axel now, about what they'd said to each other. But it wasn't really relevant to what Sora wanted to know, and part of him wanted it to stay private.
Someone had missed him, after all.]
After that, I went back to Twilight Town.
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I really hate that guy.
[A quiet side comment as he waits for Roxas to continue. He wonders where Xion fits into all of this.]
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[It's a little thing, a small moment. But part of him is glad they feel the same way.
The rest of him just hates the memory.]
It was a big joke, though. I left the Organization, but I didn't have anywhere to go. Hardly anyone in the worlds even knew my name. I guess I could have found somewhere, tried to blend in so they wouldn't find me, but I didn't know how normal people lived. Sometimes I think I still don't. Besides...I just wanted things to go back to how they used to be.
So I went up to the clock tower. That's where Xion found me. I didn't know then...that Xemnas had done something to her.
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What is it? What did he do to her?
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[If you see somebody else's face...a boy's face...then that means I'm almost ready. This puppet will have to play her part.]
I've always, always seen her as herself, ever since she first took off her hood. Except that day. That was the only time I looked at her and didn't recognize who I was seeing.
[This is him. It's Sora.]
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If we didn't have a truce... [His clenched fists are clear enough of his intentions.]
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But they can't.]
If we didn't have a truce, Xemnas would be dead. [He'd make sure of that. And now, he thinks maybe could do it with Sora by his side. It's not a bad thought.]
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But at least, knowing Roxas feels even stronger than he does-- and has every reason to-- makes him feel a little vindicated. But it's no consolation. He spends another moment with clenched fits, just feeling furious. Then he's settling back down in the chair with a huff.]
He's had it coming for a long time.
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[He reaches for his mug on the table and nudges Sora's mug a little closer to him. A calming drink might help. Or not.]
You know, it wasn't completely true when I said I never met you before I came here.
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Curiosity also evens out his temper a bit.]
... It wasn't?
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