A/N: So...this kinda came out of nowhere. Truth is, I started this second chapter for Glassy Sky around the time I posted the first one after a reviewer mentioned how he (or she) wanted to see Sora's mindset during the course of the one-shot and perhaps even the aftermath. Seeing as I have at least...ten other incomplete ongoing stories, I can't exactly afford to add an eleventh to the list. Even so, I felt showing Sora's view of the events in the first chapter was a good idea. Unfortunately, though I started it right away...I got writer's block and then forgot about this for...a while. Oh well, better late than never I suppose. Thanks to those who reviewed the first chapter. I hope you guys will come back and share your thoughts with me again for this one.

Note: This latter half of this chapter is partially inspired by two songs. The first is an instrumental piece called Silent Moon by Jia Peng Fang. The other is a song called Sakura Nisel by Utada Hikaru. (I'm sure you guys recognize that artist's name from somewhere. *Wink, wink*)

Warnings: The angst is back again. Also...I get the feeling that Sora may be somewhat out of character here. I've never written him in first person before, but I figured since Chain of Memories does paint Sora in a more serious way that gives the guy some substantial character development, which was unfortunately tossed out a window in some of the later installments so, I took some liberties with him in terms of how serious he needed to be. Considering the subject matter, well, you could say Sora is in Roxas mode. I dunno. I'll let you be the judge of that. Figured I should warn you guys just in case though. Enjoy the story!

Silent Moon

In this castle, to find is to lose and to lose is to find.

I feel like I've been wandering in this castle for months, but when I stop and think about it, Donald, Goofy, Jiminy, and I have only been in this castle for a couple of hours or maybe one full day. I don't know. Time doesn't seem to move at all here. Maybe it's because of how everything is cloaked in white. I have a vague memory of my mom telling me that white was a timeless sort of color, calm and still throughout the ages.

Weird how I can remember that and not be able to picture her face at all.

To find is to lose and to lose is to find.

Marluxia spoke those words. He told me what I was in store for the moment I entered the caste, but...the guy spoke in endless riddles that didn't make sense to me at the time. Even now, I'm not sure if I've figured out what any of them mean.

But with those words, I can take a guess.

This castle has been messing with my head. At every turn, someone has been manipulating my thoughts, actions, even my feelings. On each floor I would lose a memory only for it to be replaced with visions of a girl I couldn't imagine forgetting now.

To lose my true memories was to find her, the person most special to me.

Anxiously I stormed through the castle, taking on enemy after enemy and even Riku to reach her.

There were so many emotions flooding through me. Anger, frustration, hope, fear...all of them centering around Naminé, the quiet girl I had once promised to protect. As more and more memories of her poured into me, the good luck charm resting in my pocket became the symbol of my resolve to finally keep my vow after all the years we had been apart. In my mind, nothing was more important than rescuing her from this terrible place, this castle of oblivion.

However, when I found Naminé, she revealed to me that she had been the manipulator all along and had taken away my true memories, replacing them with her.

I had lost myself in the feelings her false memories created...and there was no turning back.

Nearly every memory I have now is a lie, but it doesn't matter. All I can think about is how lonely she must have been, wasting away in this castle with nothing to do but think. I want to save her. I want to take her back home to the islands where we belong.

Someone else means more to me. Naminé showed me the truth, but my memories of this red-haired girl are gone. I can picture her face, but nothing more than that.

I wanted to regain my memories of her, truly I did, but at the same time, I knew getting back my true memories meant abandoning Naminé again. She'll be alone and that will cause her pain. The last thing I want to do is add to her misery. She's already been through so much here. She tried to hide it when she smiled at me, supporting my decision to reclaim the truth, but her vibrant cerulean eyes dimmed as she spoke.

Those eyes couldn't lie, not to me anyway.

She doesn't want to let me go. She wants me to stay with her, but is determined to give up any hope for her happiness to ensure that I escape this place with my real memories intact.

Normally I would be oblivious to things like this, but the memories Naminé planted have given me a clear picture of who she is, what her quirks are, the things that make her happy or sad...I know it all because my relationship with her, lie or no lie, is the only thing connecting me to my past. I've forgotten everything else. Names, faces, and even details about my recent adventures with Donald and Goofy. This castle has taken all of it.

To say I'm not angry about that would be another lie on an already tall mountain of falsehoods, but nothing within would ever allow me to direct that anger toward her.

So I directed it elsewhere. Throughout my time in this castle, I've directed my anger at everything and everyone but Naminé . Donald, Goofy, Jiminy, Riku, Larxene, Axel, Vexen, Marluxia, myself...everyone but her.

Even when I thought for a split second that she had destroyed Riku's heart, I couldn't direct any rage her way. All she wanted was to spare me from more pain. How could I be angry at that?

There was one truth to be found in the false memories Naminé gave me, a truth that makes itself clearer and clearer whenever our gazes meet.

She loves me.

But to find is to lose and to lose is to find.

Marluxia struck her with his scythe when she refused to destroy my heart. My brain fizzled out of focus, leaving me frozen as I watched him carelessly fling her across the room. Donald and Goofy both screamed out, and when Naminé landed I faintly heard Jiminy fight back a sob.

Suddenly that timeless color of purity began to transform. By slow degrees I watched small trickles of red liquid spread over the floor. Naminé lay lifeless in the center of the expanding puddle.

"I almost regret ordering Vexen's elimination," Marluxia muttered, his gaze moving to meet mine. "It would have been interesting to see his reaction to a bleeding Nobody." He started chuckling to himself, completely unaware of how the sound made my blood boil.

"How...how dare you..."

Goofy's eyes left Naminé in favor of glancing at me. "Sora..."

"I will make you pay for that."

Goofy and Donald both swallowed nervously. I barely noticed them.

Marluxia smiled. "Forgive me, I didn't quite catch that, Sora."

Clenching my fists I took a step forward, thrusting out my right hand. The keyblade materialized as I moved into a fighting stance. "For what you did to Naminé..." Once more I lifted my gaze so that it was squarely locked on my enemy. "I will make you pay!"

Leaping into battle without a second thought, I charged Marluxia with Donald and Goofy a short distance behind. The pink-haired man kept a smirk on his face the whole time as we fought and even thought it was a good idea to snicker at us once or twice in our joint effort to defeat him. Sometime during the fray, Donald and Goofy disappeared from my side. Marluxia may have knocked them unconscious or maybe they decided to simply duck out. Neither case really mattered to me at that point. With the way I was feeling, trying to protect the two of them wasn't much more than a distraction from my true goal.

"He needs to die. For what he did...he has to die!"

The thoughts in my head scared me, but my body didn't respond to the fear. I kept up a relentless onslaught with nothing but adrenaline from the rage pushing me forward.

"The darkness will consume your heart, Sora..."

I didn't pay attention to his words. I couldn't afford to listen to him at all, not while Naminé was...

Eventually, I defeated Marluxia and his body disappeared in a puff of black smoke and crimson petals drifting in the nonexistent wind circulating through the room. Once I was certain he was truly done away with, I immediately turned around, my feet carrying me toward Naminé's limp form on the floor.

Facing heartless used to scare me back when this whole mess first started. The feeling of their claws digging into my skin would creep into my dreams at night, forcing me awake at the worst possible times, usually with a jolt or a scream that Donald would immediately complain about. I used to be afraid of a lot of things, but all of those past fears-the ones I remember and the ones I don't-all of them seem like empty, meaningless worries that never should have crossed my mind in the first place.

Because now I knew what real fear felt like...what real despair felt like.

Naminé's already pale skin seemed even more ghostly, nearly matching the stark white of the floor beneath her or the bright moon I remember gazing at for hours back home on the islands.

And then there was the other color. Red.

There was more of it now. The liquid stretched on, staining everything in its path. The center of Naminé's white dress and the ends of her pale, blonde hair were practically drenched in it.

Kneeling by her, I gripped her shoulders and gently tried to shake her awake, vaguely aware of how the bright color continued to expand.

When Naminé finally opened her eyes a few seconds later, a sad smile lifted the corners of her mouth.

There wasn't anything I could say to her in that silent moment of eye contact. Staring at her face and the liquid stretching to touch the edges of my shoes, I'm reminded of how much she loved drawing and painting. Expression through art was her way of coping. It always had been. False memories or not, that was a truth no one could deny.

With a mixture of awe and horror, I realized Naminé's body resembled the stem of a flower and the crimson petals surrounding the stem flowed from the place where Marluxia struck her. In a way, she was beautiful and luminescent, like one of her masterful paintings.

That color...the pallor of her skin...

Suddenly, I couldn't remember how to breathe properly.

"Hang on," I told her quickly, talking past the lump that had formed in my throat upon realizing she was bleeding to death. "I'm sure I can heal you, just..." I couldn't continue. For a few seconds, I had to focus on something else...anything else...so I wouldn't completely break down from the shock and terror of what was unfolding right in front of me. "Donald!? Goofy!?"

Frantically I glanced around, needing backup from my friends, from the only other people I could lean on in desperate times like this, but when my gaze found them, it was clear they'd been knocked unconscious and would be out for at least another few minutes from the looks of things, but...

"Is this...blood?"

My attention immediately went back to Naminé and the look of confusion hidden away in her cerulean gaze. Her right hand was pressed against her stomach now, the place where she was bleeding out the most.

"Am I...bleeding?" she continued, sounding even more perplexed than before. "Nobodies...bleed? How can that..."

My grip tightened on her shoulders as she let out a shaky breath. "Naminé! Don't...please don't..."

I couldn't say it. She probably knew what I intended to say next, but...I couldn't bring myself to say it. How could I?

Lie or no lie, I had only just found her again after leaving her all alone for so many years...years she could have spent on Destiny Islands free and happy. She deserves that much, doesn't she?

Still fighting back tears, I try using magic to heal her, casting cures, curas, and curagas one after another in hopes of repairing the damage Marluxia had done. The magic makes the wound a little bit smaller, but the bleeding doesn't stop. I just can't get it to stop.

"Naminé...I'll save you somehow! I promise I will!"

This wasn't a promise I could keep. I knew that before making it, but...but I...

"Sora...I love you."

For a few seconds I sat motionless, her words sinking in little by little until their meaning became clear.

And then those same words tore through my heart, ripping it to shreds without a hint of mercy or regret. Agony overwhelmed me to the point where it had no choice but to escape through my eyes in the form of tears. Crying out her name, I carefully lifted Naminé's torso from off the floor, bringing her body close to mine without a thought for the blood or the increasing shallowness of her breaths. I forgot it all and simply held her close.

For a short moment, I had to pretend we were on Destiny Islands with the sun warming our skin, that her blood were streams of the ocean's waves rolling over us, threatening to pull us into its dark depths a little at a time.

But I couldn't pretend for long. She felt too cold in my arms and I got the sensation that someone else belonged in the space Naminé was occupying. The truth was that I probably loved someone else, someone this girl replaced.

However, as Marluxia continually said, to find is to lose and to lose is to find.

In this castle, I found Naminé. Now...I'm going to lose her...forever.

And through that...I'll discover the truth again.

Images are coming back now. Pieces of the past are trying to worm their way back into my heart only to be rejected by the need to keep this moment engraved on my soul.

Pressing a kiss to her head, I whispered the very few truths to be found between us.

"I love you too, Naminé. It doesn't matter that my memories of you are fake. They're the most precious memories I have now." I pulled her closer before continuing. It's true that I wanted my old memories back but...I also wanted to make new, real memories with you...so please don't..."

Once again, I couldn't finish the sentence. No power in the world could compel me to say the words aloud.

"Sora, I wish you didn't..." she breathed, smirking a bit. "...Love me that is."

And whose fault is that? "Don't say that!"

"I wish...I could change it," she continued, inhaling sharply. "I wish I could fix what I did so this...so this wouldn't hurt so much. I never wanted to hurt you."

My grip tightened again, I was probably hurting her, but there was no loosening my hold on her. To do so meant letting her go and I couldn't...no, wouldn't let her go. Not ever.

"Please stop," I begged. "Naminé...I promised to protect you and I couldn't."

The smile she gave me was brighter than any other expression I'd seen from her. "It was never your job to protect me, Sora. That...that was all a lie..."

"How I feel isn't a lie, Naminé," I argued, still inwardly praying for something miraculously save her and make everything okay again.

"Please..."

She doesn't respond. Though her eyes are still open and glassy, it's clear she can't hear me anymore.

"Naminé, you have to hang on for just a little while longer, okay?"

She still didn't respond. A sense of desperation flooded through me and I tightened my grip again, hoping that any form of physical pain could force her awake, force her to fight, to live...

"Naminé! Naminé!

But in the end, nothing answers my screaming as I embrace the flower of the silent moon.

A/N: And that's pretty much the end of this story for the time being. Perhaps one day I'll expand it and make a full-fledged story out of what we've got here, but for now I see no need to such a thing. For one, I have no idea where it would go. Ha! But I'm totally open to ideas if anyone has any. Leave them in that handy dandy review box down there. Thanks for reading! Until next time, TTY7 is out.