Axel: Oh, so you're alive.
Mars: At this point, I don't know what you want me to say. "I had writer's block." "My job was eating away at my soul." "Someone I really care about wasn't interested in reading this."
Link: That last one seemed specific.
Mars: It's the ambiguous story of my life.

Disclaimers: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or its characters. Believe it or not the rights to the characters belong to Disney...I think.

Winter Cabin Conundrum
Part IV – Chapter 3

I stared Sora down. How could Vanitas know what's going on? Then again, I didn't really know exactly what he was capable of. I had to talk to Xion to find out more about him. But in order for me to do that, I had to distract Sora so that Vanitas won't have him kill me, or worse, kill Kairi. The question was, how was I going to do it? I looked down at my lunch and I began thinking.

What would Vanitas expect me to do?

Protect Kairi.

Of course, I wasn't about to let him kill her just to get to me. Then what do I do to get around it?

Do the opposite.

That was it, I had to make it look like Vanitas had Kairi so that he wouldn't think that I would do anything rash. It was very risky but it was the only chance that I had. But that meant that I had to be careful, since Vanitas would have Kairi.

When we were finished with lunch, we had some time to kill before the afternoon workshops. I told Sora and Kairi to go to the game room and play pool or something.

Kairi asked, "Why won't you come with us?"

Sora agreed, "Yeah, we're on this trip together, aren't we?"

I could almost hear Vanitas taunting me through Sora.

I had to think of something, "I have to have a talk with Roxas about Xion."

Sora seemed a little confused, "What about her?"

I decided to tell him, "I noticed she was upset on the bus, and he hasn't been herself lately. It must have something to do with him."

Hopefully, that story would be good enough so that Vanitas would not get suspicious. Sora seemed to accept it and he and Kairi went upstairs. I was off the hook, for now. I went to look for Xion, she was still in the dining room, talking to Ienzo.

When Ienzo saw me approached them, he asked, "Riku, is what Xion is saying true?"

I nodded, "If it's about time looping, it is."

He narrowed his eyes, "I knew it."

Xion was surprised, "What do you mean?"

He explained, "I've had this terrible feeling, like the darkness is bearing down on us. Have either of you felt it?"

Now that he mentioned it, there was this feeling of darkness that was coupled with the déjà vu I was feeling.

But then I thought, "What does darkness have to do with time looping?"

As if it was obvious he said, "It's the only real way to create a time loop."

He went on to explain everything about time looping, how the spell is cast, how it affected the people involved and the side effects—memory loss and heart corruption.

Xion spoke up, "In the last cycle, you figured out that heart corruption was the real goal of the time looping."

He was not surprised, "Of course, with this much darkness—how many cycles has it been again?"

"Four cycles."

"Yes, that makes sense. Did I have any other findings Xion?"

She looked down, "I was killed before you could find out anything else."

I was trying to piece together what happened at the end of the last cycle. Xion was dead, Sora was possessed. The only two people who could carry information from one cycle to other were either dead or compromised.

Just then, the strangest thing happened to me. I had a vision, or a flashback.

I was in my room with Sora, Kairi, Roxas and Axel during a heavy snowstorm.

Axel was in the middle of talking, "…didn't react to her dying in the last cycle, that means I was affected…but I don't feel that way at all now."

Sora tried to explain, "Roxas just died. Maybe the corruption got to you because you were upset."

I agreed, "Negative emotions can strengthen the darkness."

He nodded. "Yeah, that's probably it."

Then, without warning, the power went out, mostly likely knocked out by the blizzard. Sora suddenly ran out of the room. We all tried calling out to him, but there was nothing stopping him. He was probably stopping someone else from getting killed, after all blackouts are a good opportunity for a murderer.

Roxas spoke up, "Do any of you remember anything from the last cycle?"

I didn't, and it seemed that Kairi and Axel didn't either.

He muttered, "Then I was the only one."

Kairi was concerned, "What are you talking about Roxas?"

He became indignant, "Don't you get it? If we die, we take memories onto the next cycle. We might not remember them, but they're there!"

Axel rolled his eyes, "Great, but what're we going to do with a sense of déjà vu?"

Roxas scoured at him, "A lot if we can concentrate it! Like a thought!"

I saw where he was going with this, "Like a message, just in case we find out something that Sora and Xion don't know?"

Kairi smiled, "That's a great idea! If we have messages for them, then we can actually help them!"

Axel groaned, "If you're planning on doing something like that, it'd have to be condensed to a single sentence. You can't recite a whole paragraph from a book unless you study it and if you probably learn some valuable information, you'd probably be dead pretty time soon."

I got annoyed, "Is there a point to this."

He seemed offended, "I'm trying to help you out. Judging by how little Roxas remembers, you'd have to repeat the message a couple of times in order for it to get received."

Roxas agreed, "He's right. If we find out something we need to repeat it to ourselves to make sure we remember it."

I pointed out a flaw in the logic, "But if we wake up at the beginning of all of this, with no memory, a single sentence doesn't make sense."

Kairi assured me, "That's where Sora and Xion remind us."

Roxas frowned, "But Sora and Xion aren't here right now. And we might not get a chance to tell them about sending messages."

I was about to go find Sora, when Axel spoke up, "Why should we leave it up to them anyway? We're part of this too."

I grimaced at him, "Are you saying they can't handle it?"

He glowered right back at me, "They shouldn't be handling it alone. You're Sora's 'best friend' you ever think about how he has to relive the same three days, worried about who's going to kill or be killed and feeling like he's the only one who can stop this?"

His words stung, mostly because they were true. I wasn't thinking about how Sora was dealing with all this. I wondered he felt like he was alone for all this.

Axel continued, "And Xion, she has to remember dying with the person she loves staring blankly at her."

When he started to leave, Kairi stopped him, "Just where are you going?"

"I'm going to find her, and I'm going to tell her that she's not alone."

He left with Roxas going after him, leaving me and Kairi alone. I could not shake the guilt, had I become someone who Sora could not depend on? What kind of friend was I?

Kairi got my attention, "Riku, let's go find him."

Xion's voice brought me back to the present, "Riku? Are you all right?"

I began to tell her, "The thoughts, they were messages to ourselves.

Ienzo was surprised, "You figured out how to send thoughts from one cycle to the next?"

I told them all about the flashback and what I learned from it. The more I talked about it, the more impressed Ienzo seemed.

When I was finished he said, "That's remarkable, an intact memory must mean that it cut through the darkness—" He cut himself off, realizing something, "Or it traveled through."

I didn't feel like explaining, so I didn't say anything.

Xion spoke up instead, "Ienzo, what does this mean?"

He smiled, "It means we have a chance to pick up where we left off."

Riku: It's been three chapter and we haven't gotten past the first day?
Mars: Let's be honest, there's two days to cover in each part while the third day is an epilogue.
Axel: So are we getting to the third day in this part or are you not telling?
Link: I think you can guess by now.
Axel: Can you at least tell us what made you continue? Was it another playthrough of Kingdom Hearts 2?
Mars: Actually it was watching videos of Yandere Simulator. And I'm happy to report that this story is nowhere near as messed up as that game.
Riku: Wait, why were you looking it up?
Mars: It's really interesting to follow a game AS it's being developed.