A/N: Hello. It's been a while, hasn't it, Kingdom Hearts fans? I've certainly missed you, but I've been wallowing in Project Diva 2nd land, and just recently popped in a Kingdom Hearts game. And now I'm in the mood.

I present to you the third and (maybe?) final part of The Boy in the Mirror series. It is advised you read both parts prior to this before reading. Chronologically, Vanity comes first, but The Boy in the Mirror was written first.

The Boy in the Mirror: You

Part 1: Dive into the Heart

I already know what they're thinking. My sister and I have lived with the looks for a long time. They're the looks that say, "Those two aren't normal."

That's not exactly right. Naminé and I are perfectly normal kids. We can read and write and we don't make any trouble. I guess the fact that we're twins can be weird, but no, that's not why we get those looks. It's because of our mom.

It happened a long time ago, when Naminé and I were very small. Something happened and Mom broke inside, somewhere, and while I can't remember asking Dad a million times why Mom had to leave, I'm certain I did. I've always been impulsively curious; Dad says it's something I got from my mother.

Mom went crazy. That's why she left. That's why we get those looks. That's why we've become "Roxas and Naminé, the children of that lady who got sent away because she's a loon".

I say left like she was gone forever. That's also not right. Mom's home now. She's better. She came back a while ago, but there is an absence in my past that tells of troubled times. And during that absence, the neighbors took the reigns and ran with it.

All of their kids know. All of their friends know. And there is absolutely no way that Naminé and I don't know.

If a stranger were to look at us, my family would look normal. However, this town knows. They know about Mom, they know she's recovered, and they know Dad, Naminé, and I are completely unrelated. Still, they stare and whisper. Then, the whispers reach the ears of the stranger, and the stares and whispers carry on to the next stranger in an endless cycle that won't stop until years after we're all dead and gone.

So I always, always know what they're thinking when they look at me. My classmates try to be polite and look away when I catch them, but I know. This town is too small for such things to be forgotten by the sands of time, so I know.

I see one of them, the one with the dark hair and the tiny stud in his nose. I wonder if he knows it's against the school policy. He breaks the rules, and nobody stares at him. Is body art not as worthy of frightened reproach as being the son of the woman who lost it? I'd tell him to stop staring, but it's just a waste of breath.

I can always tell. I always know.

Walking home from school with Naminé is part of my normal routine. Waiting for her at the school gates and watching groups of friends pass by, chattering excitedly about their plans to hang out at the mall or to go behind the old, abandoned factory to smoke, is also part of my routine. Naminé takes her time to collect her things (and quite possibly her bearings; I have never asked), so the wait is always longer than most people have the patience for. I've seen how other people waiting at these very gates get red-faced and indignant, but I don't mind.

There she is. She smiles when she catches my eyes and waves the hand that isn't holding a few textbooks, wrapped in brown paper bags from the supermarket, to her chest. We walk together down the cracked sidewalks, bracing ourselves against the same autumn winds that are really beginning to get cold, as we go. We take an obscure route back home, having long since realized that if we travel a more public path, we get stared at or harassed.

It's never escalated into anything, but Naminé and I really do prefer the solitude of our own friendly conversations, even if the walk is just a little bit longer than it has to be.

The silence upon returning home is also nothing new. Dad works during the day and always comes home exhausted. Cloudy memories of my mom come to mind, back before she brought this whole storm around our family, and were full of laughter and smiles. I know Mom's home now, as she always is, but I can't recall any time after she came home that she was quite like the vibrant woman she used to be.

I find Mom in the kitchen. She must not have heard me come in because she nearly drops her mug of coffee, cinnamon roll flavored if the smell is any indication, when she turns around. Her smile is small as she greets me, briefly asking about Naminé. I point her to the den and she breezes by me, silent as a ghost.

Next to the coffee pot is a small framed picture of when we were happy. I wonder if that's what held Mom's attention for so long. My eyes trace my younger self's features, round and babyish, and God, my eyes were so big. Naminé is my twin, so she was also just as freakishly cute as I was. Even though we've grown up and our lips aren't always pulled into those bright, carefree smiles, we've barely changed. The baby fat is gone, but I can still find traces of myself in the photograph.

It's Mom and Dad that have changed a lot. Whatever dream of a life they'd had when this photograph was taken has been stamped out. Dad's hair has grown longer and I believe it's because he's too stressed out to even bother to care about its length. His eyes don't light up like they did anymore, but sometimes I fool myself into thinking I see sparks of it, lost in the sorrow. He's also lost his cheerful disposition and has become almost as quiet as Mom.

And Mom, her hair is always cut short. In the picture it looked like she was working on its length, ribbons tied into it like a gypsy. Her smiles are like glass and her eyes are always looking through me, like she's trying to find something. I don't understand it, and it kind of creeps me out, but I allow it. It's much better than Mom not being here at all, or even going off the deep end again.

Maybe.

Sometimes I think life would be a little better if she'd just gone away and stayed. It's cruel and heartless, and I'd never express this secret thought to anyone, because her suffering isn't a joke or a chore.

I think Naminé knows. She makes an effort not to talk about Mom with me. I'm grateful for it.

I give the picture one more furtive glance before I place it face down next to the pot.

The homework spread over my desk is simple, annoyingly so, but what is even more annoying is the fact that I'm not getting any of the problems done. I'm too busy listening to sobs.

My room is across the hall from my parents'. I'm always quiet in my room, always playing music at low volumes or through headphones, and the television is rarely on, so I wonder if they know how easy it is to hear sounds through the distance between us. I know, though, because their conversations keep me up at night.

"Kairi, please," I hear Dad's deep, rumbling voice try to soothe. I want to yell at him, to tell him it's not working, but I stay quiet and I listen with a deadened heart to my mother's crying. There is no greater way to make yourself feel like a nobody than to quietly observe another's suffering and allow yourself to do nothing about it. "What's wrong?"

Mom blubbers something through her tears that doesn't make a whole lot of sense through the walls, but her voice is shaky enough to know that even if I was in the room with her I'd still be grasping at straws.

"H-hey! Kairi, what is that?" There is evident shock in Dad's voice overlaying his concern. Mom goes panicky for a moment before she quiets down. It's silent for a moment more before I hear Dad practically bellow, "Give that to me! Where did you even find that?"

Mom shrieks for him to return whatever he's taken from her, words flying from her mouth unaccounted for and even a little bit angry. My eyes go wide at her volume; it's been years since I've heard mom actually hold up a conversation that didn't have to do with school or dinner, and her outrage is something foreign and frightening.

The only warning I have that someone is coming my way is the sudden crash of their door smacking into the wall before my bedroom door opens. Without the barriers between us Mom's distress is ever louder, but I can't see into the other room passed my father's ominous form in my doorway.

"Dad?" I ask, not quite able to shake the wariness from my voice. I'm up from the wrinkled sheets of my bed in an instant to meet him at the door. Before another word can be said, he holds a shard of glass out towards me, as long as my hand from palm to the tip of my middle finger and about as wide as two of my fingers pressed close together. It takes me a moment to realize this fragment is a mirror, but I can barely see my face in its surface, clouded with fingerprints and what looks like rust.

"Roxas, do me a favor," Dad says as I look back up at him. I'm surprised by the conviction in his face. It's almost like the shattered man I know has been replaced by something strong and protective, like a bear. "and keep that away from your mother."

He doesn't say anything more and I have no words to say to him, at least none that are able to force themselves out of my suddenly swollen throat. Mom's screaming doesn't die down, but it does muffle once Dad shuts the door, and I wonder if this will be when he notices their privacy has always been compromised.

After a moment, my door cracks open again and Naminé pokes her head in, eyes wide like a scared deer and lips curled down in a frown. "Roxas...?"

"Yeah?"

"...Are Mom and Dad gonna be okay?"

I don't know. It's been so long since something happened that I could not find an answer to. I can't even think of anything to placate her. She takes my silence as an answer, however, and dips her head away a little, a gesture I'm used to seeing at school when people stare and whisper, always staring and whispering, and I don't like it.

I send her away with a shaky smile I've pulled from somewhere deep inside, not quite heartfelt but definitely necessary. The door clicks shut and I collapse onto my bed again, gaze settling onto the glass shard.

I tap the touch-light on my side table and inspect it further. Using my shirt like a dishrag, I begin to rub at the dirty surface, approving of the fingerprints smoothing away, but I am unnerved by the rust. I know steel-backed mirrors definitely needed polishing, but I'm not an expert in mirrors, and have no idea what the backing is made out of. Also, the rust is on the glass side of the mirror, so I'm confused even further.

The rust comes off too easily.

It's too red.

It's not rust, is it?

I drop the mirror shard so suddenly that I can't care when it bounces off the sheets and onto the carpet. My shirt is off before I even register that I'm moving and it falls on top of the shard, the red flakes caught in the fabric challenging me from the floor.

It's blood.

The whimpering I hear is my own and I take a deep breath before I clamp my lips down shut. It's flaking, dry, red-as-hell blood, and I need to calm down. Knowing doesn't change the fact that it can't hurt me. I don't know why the macabre sight disturbs me so much, but a faint memory, hidden behind a veil of bright, washed out light, of a yellow room covered in blood and glass and whyismommycrying assaults my head.

I remember. That was the day mom went crazy. But what had happened?

It was about a mirror. The little, white mirror from Mom's parents' house had been shattered all over the floor of Naminé's room and...

And there was blood on the mirror.

Was this shard from back then?

I don't want to think about it. I don't want to know.

The mirror can stay right there on the floor tonight. I'm tired and shaken and Mom's shrieks have finally fallen into quiet sobs. I want to sleep and I'm resigning myself to it.

I tap the light off and sink my head into the pillow. Just as I feel myself falling into the depths of sleep, I hear Mom's voice rise again, just once, to bark, "Riku, he looks just like him!", but I'm too far gone to care.

Wow.

It feels like I'm falling, falling forever down the rabbit hole. It feels like cool ocean waves are lapping at my skin and that I'm painlessly drowning.

When my eyes open, all I see is dark space, blacker than night, but it feels natural and calming. I left my head up to look down to where I'm falling to, but the same featureless expanse meets my eyes. Maybe I'm blind. In this place, I don't think I could care if I wanted to.

It's peaceful. My heart doesn't ache and the darkness feels like it wants me. It doesn't feel like my home at all, with a sad sister and a broken mother and a father who loses more of himself every day. No, this darkness is accepting.

A light breeches the darkness, soft and far off and doesn't hurt my eyes with its suddenness. I'm falling towards it, headfirst, and I feel weightless enough that I think I'll drop to it as light as a feather. As I draw closer to the light I see shapes in it; it looks like the stained glass windows of the church around the street corner, or the lamps at the restaurant twenty minutes down the road in Dad's old Accord.

My feet are getting heavier and I feel myself flip until I'm no longer slowly careening towards the light headfirst. My stomach comes back to me with a sickening lurch as the weightlessness departs and my blood freezes in its veins at the thought of slamming my full weight against anything from this long a fall. I'm no longer a feather. I am a bowling ball.

The light no longer looks like a light. It looks solid as glass and the church windows I know would shatter under my weight. If the pace speeds up, the platform will crack beneath my feet that feel way too heavy.

I almost don't notice when my feet touched down without a sound on the glass platform. Not a single blemish appears beneath me.

The glass is flawless, but what really pulls me into the platform is the image made out of the varying-colored glasses. From my position now, it's hard to see, but in my fall I'd noticed two boys, similar in appearance and close to my age, eyes closed as if in sleep, almost like they are frozen there. The image was finely detailed and I struggle to figure out where I had landed on it.

I back up towards the edge of the platform and pedal my arms furiously when my heel dips off the edge in order to throw my balance away from falling. Gravity is in full effect now and I don't want to risk falling anymore.

"Hey!"

I jump and look back up sharply. Something is racing towards me at an alarming rate, falling to the platform faster than I could have ever hoped to. As it nears I can make out a humanoid shape, four limbs and a head and something else, something in it's hand, but I don't know what it is.

My mind finally supplies me with the knowledge I couldn't access, tells me that the shape is another person, another boy, and what's in his hand is something that looks blunt and potentially very painful. Then, it reminds me that I am going to get my head smashed in by that blunt and potentially very painful weapon if I don't move out of the way.

I duck out of the way in a clumsy roll to have the boy just barely miss me, his weapon clanging down on the platform. I'm astounded that this time, just like before, the glass doesn't shatter, but I have little time to think on it when the stranger raises his weapon to me.

It's an intricate, yet shockingly simple thing. It almost looks like a sword, but it also looks like a key. The hilt is large, gold and blue, and from there the length of the weapon expands out. It's rounded like a bat, thick as my arm, and at the end there are teeth. They jut outward to look like a crown. A key chain dangles from the hilt, silver and round, made up of circles that make a symbol I don't know.

I focus on the hilt again, on the hand wrapped around its center, and trace along the attached arm until I am looking at the boy's face. It is eerily familiar, and I feel like I should definitely know his face, but my memory won't let me solve this puzzle. I glance down at my feet, desperately thinking the platform should have an answer, but all I see are golden planes.

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" the boy demands and I feel my eyes rocket back to his face with such speed the world blurs for a moment and I feel lightheaded.

He doesn't look like the kind of person to hurt others, a sincerity burning in his blue eyes, but there is a furrow in his brow and a grimace on his lips. The strange key-bat he is holding is leveled at my chest. My eyes are drawn to the brown spikes of his hair for a moment, wondering at their peculiarity, but he subtly shifts his weight in a way I barely catch, so I focus on him again.

I guess I must have taken too long to answer, because the boy moves with lightning speed, key thrust forward in a way that would surely knock my head straight off my shoulders. I duck to the side and feel the force of his blow brush by my face like a powerful gust of wind and my heart stops.

He's fast. He's strong. He doesn't like me.

"W-wait!" I plead as I back pedal further away, towards the center of the platform. He does as I ask, legs held in a stance that I'm certain will let him propel himself at me again if he chooses to, but he pauses. "M-my name is Roxas. I don't know where I am or how I got here, so please, stop attacking me!"

"R-Roxas?" In a flash of glimmering lights, the key-weapon is gone, and the boy has rushed up to me. "You're Roxas?"

"Y-yes?"

He looks astounded. "But how? There's no reason for you to be here! There's no way you could be here!"

I don't understand him, but before I can ask for any clarification, cold, strong fingers grip my right leg. Something like horror washed over me in an instant and the boy in front of me looks confused for a moment. The fingers on my leg pull with impossible strength and I collide to the platform, banging my chin on the glass.

Something whispers into my ear, "You look just like that boy," and the fingers pull me again, swinging me around the glass until they let go and I'm flying. I hit the platform again and bounce. I barely manage to stop myself from falling off the edge of the platform.

I look back to where the boy is standing, no longer stunned, but in the same battle-ready stance as before. The key has reappeared from elsewhere. This doesn't surprise me as much as the other boy suddenly standing there, wrapped in sinewy black material with dark, dark hair, a weapon that looks something like the blue-eyed boy's, but it is made of angry red, black, and gray gears clenched in his hand. His back is to me, but I can still see clearly that he is formidable. The new boy moves fluidly to take on the same stance as the other.

Quickly, before my eyes, they clash weapons. When the two bizarre key and gear weapons touch, a metallic ringing echoes through the space, like two blades parrying. They move like spitting vipers, lashing out and evading like they have rubber spines and enforced bones. I can barely keep up with the movements until the dark-haired one swings his gearblade up and swipes the key from the other boy's hands.

It swings into an arch and flies behind him, closer to me. I crawl on my hands and knees until my fingers fit around the strange hilt before climbing to my feet. Neither notice me, as the armed boy continues swiping at the other, who just barely manages to dodge the swift strikes.

It's an unfair fight now and everyone knows it.

I don't know why I decide to do this, but I run straight for the boy in black's back and bring the key down hard on his shoulder.

The fighting stops for a moment, the blue-eyed boy's eyes going wide with surprise, but he smiles slowly, approvingly. The boy I'd hit is breathing heavily and his shoulders tremble. The one I'd hit with the key is set lower than the other and I think I might have dislocated it. I let my brief stint with adrenaline fade away and relax my grip on the hilt of the weapon as I think the battle's finished.

It takes less than three seconds for the dark-haired boy to prove me wrong. In a whirlwind of speed and motion I am flat on my back on the platform staring into the scariest, most malicious yellow eyes ever on a person.

The dark-haired boy's face is an exact copy of the blue-haired boy's, but I am quick to realize that my loyalties lie with the other boy, and not this one, not when he looks so threatening and—

Oh, God. The dislocated shoulder pops back into its socket and the boy above me doesn't flinch. Instead, he sneers, "I hate your face, kid."

I might not have felt myself touch the platform earlier, but I will never forget the feeling of my ribs and insides being punctured by that boy's gear sword. Blood gurgles in my mouth as it rushes up my throat and I can only croak and gasp.

The boy's weight is lifted off of me, but I hardly notice it. The weapon is ripped right back out and I might have screamed.

The blue-eyed boy's face is suddenly all I can see. "Hey, hold on!" he cries. "Don't die on me, Roxas! You can't do this to me!"

I can only see black again. The boy's words sound far away and I can't see him, so I'm not sure what to do with them. For a second I feel like I'm falling again. Another light in the darkness, another platform? No, it's not.

It's too fast. It's too bright. As it approaches I feel like I have to squint, but I can't. It's a green light, shaped like a star, and it lands on my chest with a clinking sound.

I see a vision of three teenagers like myself, one who could be my spitting image, a girl laughing behind her hand, and a tall boy who looks a little too stern. Despite this, I feel like I'm seeing some friends of mine that I haven't seen in a long, long time.

"Roxas, wake up!"

I jump up in bed, knocking my cocoon of sheets away and gasping. Sweat rolls down my face.

I'm alive.

"Roxas!"

I look up and Naminé is standing in my doorway, frowning at me. It's not the same forlorn expression as last night, but there's something of a pout in it. She's exasperated.

"Get up, we've got school. Get ready!"

School? Really?

My chest hurts. It must have been a dream. This must be a phantom pain kind of thing.

Because I am alive.

I step out of bed to heed my sister's not-quite-advice, and I step on something sharp. I cry out and fall back onto the disheveled bed. My shirt from last night is still on the ground, and I lift it up. The mirror shard is still there. I examine my foot a second after and a thin, red line of blood is beading up from the cut. It corresponds to the edge of the fragment.

A/N: Chapter 1 is finished. Tell me how you like it, all right?

There are two more chapters left to write for this thing. I don't know when the next one is coming out, but it shouldn't be too long. I need to update Joker first!