At the moment I am on a computer at my university's library and for whatever reason it doesn't have Word on it... I'm not the best at spelling and grammar but I'll check and fix it up when I get home a little later. One more final exam today, wahoo! :/ Anyway, you all enjoy. Been a pleasure writing this. Ode to the House (teehee!).]]

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[ Chapter 4: End of Night ]

The black behind eyelids hide many things. If he had fallen asleep, he had no recollection of it: above black, beneath black, all around… black. Beneath his hands he felt something soft, that realization spreading out to his back, as well as the whole of his body. Fingers groped about, feeling the slight tucks and folds of sheets and blankets far too crisp to have been worn in, but their presence was still comforting. He wondered what time it was before opening his eyes.

The stain still hung on the ceiling. Recollection rushed into his mind: he wasn't home, the place that held him was not real. The bed was just a complex illusion, a mirror image of the real world that looked right until you took the details into consideration.

Tsukasa bolted upright as if waking from a nightmare, a notion that didn't strike him as too far from the truth. Around him was a room; Sora's room, he remembered. It had all four walls now, closed in from the bleakness that was Morganna's domain once before. Everything looked as it did when he last saw it: a desk still slumped against a wall, dejected and unused… or almost unused. The drawer that had been only slightly open before had been pulled clear out of the desk, and it sat on the mock-carpeted floor. Tsukasa rose from the bed on wobbly legs, and peeked inside. Shards of glass glinted up at him, tiny specks of stardust.

A breeze tickled at him, licking at his drab Wavemaster attire. Upon one of the new walls was a door. A closed, Tsukasa presumed, but it had been left partially open. Cautiously he approached it and pulled it open all the way, taking note of the painful chill the metal of the doorknob sent into his fingers.

It was not a closet door in the truest sense after all. What should have been a small enclosed space stretched out into a hallway of questionable length. The walls were all matte black, coated with the same ashen substance that the stain upon the ceiling was made of. The breeze picked up, billowing out into the room like invisible frosted smoke. Along with it came faint sounds: a voice, sing-song, distorted by echoes.

"Sora?" he calls out. No response comes, no interruption to the indistinct mumbles that snaked through the hallway.

Tsukasa crossed his arms tight, bracing himself for the chill, and began to walk. His feet made no sound, and the pale light that dared dwindle into the hall didn't get far before being consumed by the darkness. Only whispers and the flicker of some stray speck lingered there, the voice growing louder as he ventured deeper in, the lights becoming harder to spot. Somewhere ahead a sphere of warm orange comes into view, and the hallway opens up into a great hall of sorts: a huge expanse of room that, as the hall did, stretched out beyond his range of view. Near the opening was a lantern tipped onto its side. Oil had pooled beneath it and the flame within floated on air, perilously close to the liquid that never caught fire. The voice silences itself when Tsukasa steps into the small halo of light it casts.

At the edge of the ring something sparkled. It was a picture frame half swallowed by shadow, with a few chips of glass scattered nearby.

"Tsukasa-kun," called the voice. Sora's. It came from all around him, from the deepest expanses of the giant room, from right beside his ears.

"My name is An."

"Tsukasa-kun," it echoed, more forcefully. Tsukasa thought he saw coils of smoke swirling beside the picture frame, apparitions that disappeared as soon as he walked beside the fallen item and picked it up.

"Hiroshi," he said.

"My name is Sora."

The frame in his hands was plain, elegant in its simplicity. Light colored fine-grained wood carved into simple arches and straight lines wrapped about a picture of three people. A family, Tsukasa-presumed, certain even with the presence of the frame's greatest flaw. A shorter person, a child, was flanked on both sides by two individuals… A mother and a father, who knelt by their son who wore his sober school uniform like it was a size too big for him. His face was hidden away within a nest of cracks: it looked as if someone had smashed a hammer into it right where Hiroshi's face would have been. Subsequent cracks and faults lanced out in all directions, two of which went on to cross over each parent's throat, severing the heads at their necks. Their faces had disappeared, eaten away by smears of greasy white.

"What happened?" Tsukasa asked. A pale thumb brushed across the glass' face: jagged and all too real.

Something moved at the edges of his eyes, or so he thought, but it was near impossible to be certain. He knew that he felt something dry whisk across his shoulders. "Nothing. Always nothing. Left to my own devices, I… grew."

"She's done something horrible."

"Who?"

"Mother." No, that wasn't right; it never had been. Tsukasa shook his head and reiterated, "The woman's voice. We met her before."

Again something light touched his shoulders, tips of invisible fingers crawling along the drab brown of his clothing. "It doesn't matter."

"But it does!" Tsukasa found himself saying much louder than he would have liked. When he spoke again he was quiet once more, eyes glued to the faceless trio in his hands. "You're not Sora anymore. Sora was strong and he never let anyone hold him down. She's keeping you here and you're just letting her."

"And who's keeping you here?" snarls Sora. The touch moves from his shoulder to against his cheek, something feather-light and dreadfully cold. "I am stronger than I ever was before. Don't you see? I control reality here. That is my strength. I shape things with my will, and my will is absolute."

"And what does that mean? This isn't reality, it's all illusion."

"Illusion, then, I control illusion. An even greater strength in that: to create that which is false but will be taken without question as truth and fact. Think of what I could do..."

The lantern still burned. It was the kind people took on camping trips, tall and cylindrical with a round flat cone top. There was no fuel within it but the flame didn't mind: it still hovered within the glass body, the wick unscathed as well as untouched. Then he began to walk, frame in one hand and lantern in the other. The circle of light that was pulled along with him did not reveal much of what was ahead, if there was anything to begin with. Tsukasa walked anyway.

He was never alone, he knew. Always he would catch stray glimpses of something dark shifting, shred of grey amid the black, but nothing that sat still long enough for him to truly see. Minutes that felt stretched out into hours passed before Sora spoke again. "Where are you going, Tsukasa-kun?"

"To find Sora," said Tsukasa matter-of-factly.

"But you already have. I am here."

"No."

Abruptly something ahead moved. A wall rose up in front of her, followed by three more at her sides and back. She glanced up in time to catch a stray twinkle of crimson that quickly hid itself away. "You have changed, Tsukasa. I am not sure if I like who you are now."

"Ditto to you," he said humorlessly.

The twinkle returned, flashing brighter with irritation; they linger there long enough for Tsukasa to see that they are eyes indeed, almond-shaped ghosts that hung in pairs. As if hesitant, the structures changed again. The walls dropped out of sight, returning to the flat featureless floor with nothing but a single stray mark, any single detail, giving any hints of there having been any change.

He didn't have a chance to see Sora approach; Tsukasa simply blinked and the Twin Blade was there before him, his hip stuck out slightly to one side, a braced against it. He was watching Tsukasa, as always, silent and expressionless. That was how Tsukasa knew immediately that something else was wrong.

Sora's face was growing indistinct. Beige static jolted across his visage as if he were wearing a mask that was quickly losing its composition, an oval ring of fuzz marking out its loosening hold. Tsukasa cautiously reached out to Sora, shaky fingers stretched to brush upon Sora's cheek. He felt not a thing, and apparently neither did Sora: the fingertip found nothing solid to halt upon. It stuck straight through Sora's face, which immediately dissapeared; it had no reason to linger, since its single function had already been lost. Instead, Tsukasa found himself staring into nothing. It as as if someone had taken an ice cream scoop and dug out everything that constituted a human face and left in its wake a darkness that seemed to stretch far beyond the expanses of his skull. If he looked too deepy he could lose himself, Tsukasa knew."You've forgotten what what you look like...?"

"What I look like doesn't matter," said the faceless Sora. "You look like a boy but we all know that's not true. I don't need to think of appearances anymore."

The picture, he still had the picture. Quickly he set the lantern down and began picking away at the glass, ignoring the pricks of pain that flared through his fingertips. Glass fell, splintering, shattering. The face beneath it all was the same one that she saw lying on the bed but in the picture, he is smiling the smile of knowing that he is there in that moment, in that place, with the people who love him the most-

Sora barked out bitter laughter. "Love? Love?! More like tolerance. I'm the result of a careless night. They don't love me just as I don't love them."

"That's not true," said Tsukasa, trying not to feel revolted by Sora's words. He was so young but... "Your mother is in the next room. She's been worried sick about you, literally!"

"Then let her worry. Let her rot and fall apart for all I care," grumbled Sora with his arms crossed. Indignation personified.

"The nurse told me about her. She's been sitting in the chair I'm in now, watching you, holding your hand, praying that her son will wake up. How can you say something so horrible?"

He laughed again, deeper, louder. "Should I find gentler words to give to that woman? They would all mean the asme thing. Leave it to her to be brainless enough to interpret it all as flowers and sunshine." His head shook and a hand reached out to Tsukasa, beckoning. "She's irrelevant here, don't worry. Come on... Let's go have some fun!"

"I didn't come here for that," Tsukasa said flatly, ignoring thte offered hand. He was looking straight into the darkness within Sora's face, searching for signs of anything at all.

Flicker of red; Sora reluctantly withdrew his hand and turned around. "Suit yourself," he said as he retreated into the shadows. "If you don't want to, that's fine. You forget who has the power here. I intend to enjoy it."

A growl, a shift - mighty creaks rippled through the world around him and walls rose up, erratic and chipped and broken. This time there was no enclosure keeping him contained, at least not in the spot he was in. Tsukasa picked up the lantern and began walking, the path angling around incomplete walls and twisting hallways. A maze...?

Tsukasa remembered hearing about experiments scientists would do with rats, where a rat would be placed at the starting point and a piece of cheese or other treat would be placed at the end, and they would time how long it took for the rat to figure the way out. He never did understand what that proved: it seemed just a matter randomly picking out the correct turns to take. To him, the way seemed straight forward. The walls turned and turned, and he walked along side, trailing a hand against it; no extraneous pathways revealed themselves to him.

Something whispered at his ear, indistinct words that were gone just as soon as he realized he had heard them. He spun about, swinging the lantern, but nobody was there. Sora was toying with him. Another sound came from just ahead of him, the creak of a knife against wood, but again there was nothing to be seen. Illusions... Nothing more... right?

The Wavemaster took a breath and resumed walking. The noises did not cease: on occasion there was something crashing behind him, and many times he heard ghostly whispers (ayaveyoo, ayaveyoo, ayaveyoo) from all around him. More than once he caught sight of sharp silver glints just beyond the turn of a wall, and felt cold ragged breath upon his cheeks.

He cannot be afraid. Doggedly he pushes himself on, holding the light out infront of him, fixing his eyes on nothing but the path straight ahead... A turn takes him into a wider open area, a small section squared off to a size similar to the room he woke up in. There was no furniture there, but it was distinctly different from the rest of the black. On the floor there was an iridescent shape, a Q with an I laying directly on top of it, diving it into two incongruent halves. He shivered fiercely at the stifling sense of fear that seemed to emanate from the shape. He hardly took a step into the room when it hit him like like a foul odor that had been boxed up for too long.

Above the pierced Q floated a transparent avatar, one that Tsukasa would not have noticed if it were not for the bright white waves of energy that washed down it. It was small, perhaps the height of a child, but it took filled Tsukasa with panic. The thing looked like a stone golem, its body segmented off into rounded parts. Small eye like shapes were scattered on one side of what was probably its head, and clawed hands hung at its sides.

"You remember him, don't you?" something else whispers from directly behind Tsukasa. Sora's voice, he recognizes, quiet and grim. "Oh wait, I forgot... You never did get to meet him properly."

Tsukasa didn't bother glancing over his shoulder for he knew Sora wouldn't be there. "That monster... We saw it at the Net Slum. Helba did something before anyone attacked."

"I know. I was there."

A moment of uncertainty... Tsukasa blinked. "You were?"

"Your mommy dearest called that thing up on me right after you left. You see, there's this technique called Data Drain... It pulls apart and rewrites character data into something more... hmm, proper."

Pieces fit together. No wonder Sora was different now... Even when Tsukasa was under Morganna's hand he could only do so much. He couldn't manipulate his avatar as Sora did, much less the scenery...

"It took a lot of work but I figured out how to get around it," Sora continued, sounding very bored. "That's how I got out. But I was waiting for you to come back... It should have been weird that I never came back to you after so long. Didn't you notice...?"

"I did, but-"

"But you never did come," he finished with cold finality. "Well, that doesn't matter much now."

The eyes on the figure glimmered as if waking, and it lifted slightly higher from the ground. Silently it hovered towards Tsukasa, colors pulsing down it amid the white static: first white, then purple intermittent, and finally black, all of it mixed into a marbleized pattern that throbbed along a bloodless pulse. With each pulse it came closer, and Tsukasa could hear a noise that grows louder: screaming.

He faltered, clutching at his hears. Staggered back away from the thing - Skeith, it cries - with a cringe upon his face, but he could only go so far until he hit a wall. The apparition only came so close before it dissapeared entirely; Sora took its place instead, this time with his face intact. Sympathy was lacking in his eyes as well as his stance: arms crossed, hate brewing... "It's simple enough a technique to execute. Do you want to see? I could show you what she did to me, and maybe then you'll undertand why I'm upset with you, Tsukasa-kun."

The wall is painfully real, frighteningly cold. He watched Sora lift a hand up, palm down with his fingers dangling limply. Sparks of light fired up about his wrist, and the light coalesced into thin propeller-like sheets folded into sharply geometric petals, shining yellow and white and blue. They began to spin, gathering momentum, and arcs of electricity grow outwards, coiled like a serpent ready to strike. Tsukasa trembled, helpless little mouse.

The black around them is broken by a harsh stab of white, bright as lightning and lasting just as long. Sora turned sharply away, the panels about his wrist slowing down and the power running over them shrinking away from Tsukasa. Standing behind the Twin Blade was another Twin Blade in orange, crouched with one hand sticking straight out and another braced upon it at the elbow. Around his wrist lights are aglow as well, the true bracelet shining...

Eyes meet and there is recognition. The boy hesitates, glancing between Sora and the wavemaster frozen against a wall. "You... You were there with that staff!"

"Uninvited," Sora hissed angrily, "Yet again."

There is something in Sora's voice that is easily picked up on: malice, hatred, the voice of ill intent that was only amplified by a viscious glare. "Helba sent me," says the orange Twin Blade. "She said she was picking up a surge of data..."

Sora laughed like a madman. It was then that Kite knew he had stumbled into something worse than he could have imagined. Data surges usually translated into Phases, but he most certainly did not look like a Phase... "And here you are, blind hero to save the day!" snarled Sora. "You really should learn to mind your own business. Oh, well!"

Tsukasa does not see Sora move, and neither does the stranger. A shape flickers, dissapears, and then Sora is not where he was any longer, but behind the newcomer. A free fist, unbound by the Data Drain device, rose up and slammed hard into the nape of his neck, sending him down to the ground with a sharp outcry. Sora's sharp heel dug into the small of his back, pinning him down. Threads of black shapeless tendrils rose from the ground and envelop the hapless boy's body like spidersilk, rendering him immobile.

"You're Orca's friend," Sora said thoughtfully, leering down at his captive. "I'm afraid you just missed him. Maybe you can make it to his funeral... Oh, that's right, you're not going to leave this place. Curiosity killed the Kite, ha ha! But first..."

Against the wall Tsukasa was still trembling. Sora lifted his arm again, the self-made bracelet lightning back up like flames: the arch rose, coiled, tensed... He could hear Kite screaming for him to run, to get out of there as fast as he could. All Tsukasa could see, though, was the mad flashin Sora's eyes. Lightning danced across his orbs, shackles to a pained sorrow that was more than evident then. Tsukasa saw, and began to walk forward.

Sora was caught off guard. He dared approach him now? Such was not the proper way for Tsukasa to behave. He should have been frozen to the spot, shaking, begging forgiveness. Instead he was looking at Sora strangely, a shade of something that frightened him much more than enraged him. Stupidly, the wavemaster reached out a hand to grasp his. Lightning waited to spearhead him, devour his soul, bind him to The World forever. "Why don't you run?" Sora snaps, gritting teeth. "I didn't have the chance but you know you do."

"I won't," said Tsukasa. Fingers brushed against the energy and there was a sharp crackle: bits of his hand began to dissapear, pixellating and fading out in broken chunks of data. Pain took shape on Tsukasa's face for an instant before it was forced away by a calm demeanor, even as the Data Drain began to crawl up along his wrist, devouring bits of his arm...

"Why don't you run?" Sora asked again, screaming. The light became more than light: impossibly it brightened, subjecting the black maze top a near blinding white, though it only stretched so far. The darkness swallowed up the light that ventured out too far. Shapelessness dominateed, walls dissapeared: no one to register their presence, no need for them. They dissapeared, leaving the three even more alone.

"Because you're my friend."

Breath caught in Sora's throat. The Data Drain slowed, shrank, and died away into nothingness; appendages of thin lightning pulled away from Tsukasa's arm, returning to the bracelet that disapeared as well. Scraps of brown robe missing squares of data was all that remained of the arm: the hand had been taken clean off, eaten away. Tsukasa didn't seem to notice. He was watching Sora, who had become motionless... Almost motionless. His shoulders shuddered. He had forgotten how cold it was there in all the despair...

The black bindings around Kite dissapeared as well, and with it the field in its entirety melted away into mellowed light, like dawn but without all the colors. Crimson stared at the back of his head. "Go."

Kite squirmed in an attempt to look up at Sora but he caught Tsukasa looking straight at him then. The Wavemaster was smiling, violet eyes telling him that everything was going to be allright. Without a word, Kite dissapeared. Sora's foot thumped hollowly on the not-ground that was beneath him.

Tsukasa waited patiently, neigher retreating nor persuing any course of action. It took time but Sora's shoulders shudder again, and his head rose just enough to barely meet the other's eyes. In them he saw warmth, forgiveness... "I want to go home," he whispered.

With the only hand he had left, Tsukasa took Sora's. "Let's go home, Hiroshi-kun. Everyone's waiting to meet you."

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"It's changing again," muttered Isshin. He had been camped out at the ECG since An collapsed, being the first to notice that the patterns that flashed across the screen were changing.

Mariko and Kazuhiro were parked at An's sides, both visibly worried for obvious reasons. She had been propped up against Kazuhiro, gathered up from where she had fallen like a precious doll. She was still limp but momentary flashes of some inner strain crossed her face from time to time, concentration knitting her brow. It was an uncanny look that eased Kazuhiro's suspicions if only by a little bit. "Something's happening," he said, giving An's hand a squeeze. "She's doing something." Which was the sole reason why he had not sent for a nurse or doctor. It had only been a few minutes, twenty at themost, since An had gone unconscious, yet they could see changes in both An and Hiroshi's states of being.

Their patience was rewarded when An, snugged tight against the crook of Kazuhiro's arm, stirred. Quietly she moaned, squinting her eyes before opening them to look up into the faces of a very worried group.

"An!" Mariko breathed, nearly slumping over with relief. Megumi's face towered over her, bright and chipper but still deeply concerned. "Oh gosh, we were so worried..."

An, however, apparently had other concerns on her mind. Readily she squirmed out of Kazuhiro's grip, much to his chagrin, and scrambled to the bedside. Hiroshi's breathing seemed to have gotten stronger, as well as his pulse; the line bounced along at a steady, healthy pace. Carefully she reached down, taking hold of his hand again. At her touch he stirred, eyelids trembling as they were forced open. A fuzzy white ceiling hung above him. A collective gasp ran through the room and then fuzzy dark lumps dotted his peripheral vision. He had the same eyes in The World, An noted, but... brighter. The eyes of a child indeed, still charmed by wonder, however tainted.

Hiroshi blinked several times to force his eyes to focus, testing his vision out on what he realized were faces that watched him. Men, women, older and younger... None of them the one he sought. Weakly he turned his head to look off to the side. Waiting there was the gentle face of a young woman who smiled at him. He felt his hand recieve a squeeze to confirm that he was looking at who he thought he was looking at.

"Welcome home, Hiroshi."

His tongue ran over dry lips, which parted to release words that never came. Moisture gathered at his eyes, pooling at their corners. Knowingly, An bent down and tenderly wrapped her free arm around the boy's frail shoulders... He pulled himself up, in turn wrapping his arms around her. His head rested against her shoulder where Hiroshi Yanaka, a lost child no longer, wept in silence.

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[[ Cookies to anyone who can Name That Source of Inspiration! As blatant as it is. :) MZD rocks.]]