Chapter Five

Running always felt good.

Even after I pass Riku and he starts chasing after me, I keep going. With my heart pumping and my limbs flying, any nightmares or bad thoughts that I might have had couldn't play in my head. The sun shines down brightly at the two of us and with the sand scattering under our feet, it feels just like it did when I was a little kid and there wasn't any sign of the Heartless, the Nobodies, or the Dream-eaters.

"Sora, wait up!" Riku shouts after me but I throw my head back and give him a big grin in answer. I see his expression harden, though unlike "Master Riku's" glare, this is far more playful and amused despite the worry.

The next thing I know, he's right on my heel and tackling me to the ground, causing a chain reaction where we knock a woman off her feet, trip over a dog, and then finally crash into a store front and knock ourselves out for a few minutes.

In the laughing crowd of people who we find gathered around us a few minutes later when we finally get our wind back, we hear an angry shout from the woman we knocked over: "Sora, Riku, you two really need to be more careful!"

"Sorry, Mrs. Nomura," We bow deeply in apology… or at least how deeply we were physically able to in our current dizzy condition. After Riku helps her up and carefully walks her back to her store, he marches back to me sitting next to the door way.

He spends a good minute staring at me as I try to brush the sand off of my dad's sweatpants. Finally, he plops down next to me, leaning his head back on the wall like I was doing. "Sora?" Riku asks quietly.

"Yeah, Riku?" I respond, taking off a stubborn bit of sand from my thigh.

"You sure you're okay?"

I pause for a moment, unsure on how to explain.

"The Heartless…" I begin slowly, glancing over to Riku. "Don't they bother you?"

Riku yawns, apparently getting sleepy in the warm afternoon sun. "It's not like they're that hard to fight, Sora," He says slowly, as if suddenly understanding my words for the first time. "Are you scared of them?"

I shake my head no.

He crosses his legs, puts his hands up on the back of his head, and leans back. There's a contemplative look on his face as Riku stays quiet for a few minutes, apparently mulling things over in his head as I keep wiping sand off myself.

"I'm scared of them sometimes," He admits softly, a strange expression replacing the thoughtful one. When I turn to look at him, he's already drawn up his knees to his chest and hugging them tightly. A slight shiver goes through my friend's body, despite the intense sun. "Sometimes, I think I can still feel Ansem." Here, a determined stubbornness replaces the fear. "But I'm not going to be afraid of him anymore," His hands curl into fists and then Riku relaxes, looking at me with a gentleness that reminds me funnily enough of when he was younger and found a sick bird. He took months slowly bringing it back to life and then released it when it was strong enough to go. "I know there's light in this world, Sora, and I have reasons to keep going. Do you understand? There's no reason to be scared."

"They were people once." I murmur, though it's more to myself than to Riku. "I'm scared because I didn't save them. I don't know if I can ever save them. … The Nobodies… They were people, they were becoming whole, we found that out during the exam, right?"

He nods slowly.

I sigh and run my fingers through my hair. The King himself had explained it to me and a small selfish part of me wishes that he hadn't. That part of me wished the Nobodies and the Heartless could have remained bad guys to be destroyed, not the victims of a battle that would wage on long after I was gone. But the images of the Organization members that had faded away under my sword. I could still see Demyx, the one that insisted with everything he had that he was real and even worse that he was right, screaming as he disappeared under clouds of black smoke.

Before, I could look on without feeling guilty because I thought I was ending his pain of feeling nothing. I thought it was just a way to go to the main problem, the main person, creature, causing Darkness to spread through the worlds. One Nobody or even a million Nobodies were only steps on the ladder to get to Xemnas and end everyone's hurting. Kairi's pain of losing her family and her memories, mine of being unable to help those who'd had their worlds broken, Leon's of losing his friends, Riku's for what Ansem had done to him.

But now?

Now when I look at my hands, when I see the Keyblade, I see my little brother screaming as I break his wrist from being lost in the memories. I see Demyx, the one that no one believed but had ended up dying in trying to become whole anyway. I see Axel, sacrificing himself for a friend that had gotten what he wanted for himself and what he had all along. I see women, men, children becoming monsters that can only create more monsters in their attempts to gain what they lost.

"Can we save the people who turned into Heartless?" I ask instead of what was going through my head.

Riku thinks about for a moment before closing his eyes. "Sora... the only thing we can really do for them is make sure they don't hurt anyone else," He says calmly, his eyes heavy with the effort it took to say those words.

I thought I understood.

They were monsters.

It was okay to kill monsters, I tell myself. For the next couple minutes we sat there, I keep repeating that sentence over and over in my head. It's okay to kill monsters. It's okay to kill monsters. The Heartless are monsters. They hurt families. They kill people and make more of them and the people who created the Emblem Heartless were monsters for destroying those lives.

It's okay to kill monsters.

When Riku finally takes my hand and helps me hop back onto my feet, it almost felt better.

He smiles at me before asking me if I wanted to train today after all.

I nod eagerly and we quickly go over plans of what I was going to train Kairi in. I train her and Riku trains Lea how to fight with Keyblades. Kairi has a knack for magic and I was teaching her how to aim properly and how much magic to use. Lea on the other hand, has combat skills but difficulty in wielding a Keyblade since he's used to spinning discs around instead of a blade.

Kairi is getting lots better, lots better in physical attacks. She was a little scared at first since she was practicing with me instead of on Heartless. We used trees at first and then I ended up having to put on a hat with antenna on it so I could pretend to be a Heartless. Master Yen Sid himself also taught her regularly in spells and she was growing closer and closer to Riku's and my levels every day.

The whole time, Riku complains jokingly about Lea's constantly whacking him with fire spells and that he had to invest in an entirely new wardrobe to keep up with the burns. He slings his arm around my shoulder as we laugh and continue to make plans.

More of a filler chapter but hey, I hope you guys enjoyed this anyway.

It was more of a way to show that Nightmares-Sora's trying to rationalize what he's done so far, as in-game Sora has (so far!) not dealt with what he did to the Nobodies. Personally, the Heartless are much scarier to me as well... as Riku points out, the only thing you can do to help them is to destroy them. You can't really force them back into their old selves like the Nobodies sort of can with their pseudo-hearts. ... does that make this entire fic a spoiler for KH3DS? Hmm.

Anyway. I do hope you lovely readers are still with me and that you'll keep on reading. Please, feel free to leave comments on the writing and theories you have on where this is going or what you'd like to see further on. Thank you!