Volume

By Miyamashi

Miya's Note: I literally woke up with this idea a couple of mornings ago. It came out of nowhere, and poked and prodded me until I wrote it (despite the fact that I still have other fics to work on, thus the little…challenge I'm presenting below.)

Also, while I was trying to remember a specific line that I used in the work, I found a lovely AMV that gave me the song that really made a lot of the atmosphere of the fic at youtube(dot)com(backslash)watch?vClPETDvhPZo

Try listening to Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" on repeat while reading to get the full effect of what I had when I wrote most of this.

Because I don't have the time to turn this into another epic, like I surely would have if I weren't already writing an epic that I still want to finish, I'm presenting this as an introduction to an unfinished work. It purposely has no ending, but acts more as a beginning. I will never, personally, finish this piece, but I leave it open to anybody who wants to continue it, or you can take it as a standalone piece to let your imagination run wild.

If you wish to write something based on this, all that I ask is that you 1.) notify me (most effective way to do this is at my e-mail at miyamashi(at)msn(dot)com ), so that I can read it and see what you came up with, 2.) Give me credit and link back to the original work, and 3.) Refrain from any needless character bashing or weird things that don't make sense, like MPreg for no apparent reason. This is not an excuse to take out any frustrations on Sora or Kairi. You can make it yaoi, het, or have no romance at all (or even get some yuri in there, somehow, if you so desire). You can make it end happily, sadly, or somewhere in between. I'm deliberately leaving it open to interpretation.

Enjoy!

PS: Should I make this an official contest? If so, how should I regulate it (This leaves room for fics of various lengths, so it may be hard to get the entries in by a specific time), and what should prizes be?

Disclaimer: Squesney owns KH2 and the characters and all that, and I'm not profiting off of them in the least, just having a little bit of fun.

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What if the volume of your words could change everything? I don't mean "volume", like the deeper meaning or anything, but "volume" like in the literal sense. Like the difference between if someone heard you or not.

I woke up with this question one morning, and for a while, had really no one to ask it to except for the white walls and white ceilings of Castle Oblivion. I got so consumed in that little thought that the walls started to seem to get even more white, and the thought grew stronger in my head until I reached this kind of strange euphoria like I'd never felt…yeah, felt (and how?)…before.

Change…yeah, change everything…

And then I blacked out, when I realized that I didn't remember a point in time when saying something a little louder or a little softer could have stopped me from becoming a Nobody, because I didn't remember anything before I'd--well, before I'd un-become, really--and the sorrow was such a strong change from the wonder that it brought me down back into the darkness.

When I woke up, I had forgotten the thought, and it wasn't until Sora came for the second time that I started remembering it again; not until after we had moved to The World That Never Was, and most of the Organization was already gone.

There may not have been a time when I could have saved myself from losing my heart, I realized in seeing him, but there may have been a way to get it back.

I asked Luxord once whether there was a way to change time. The first thing he asked me back, the snarky British…"git", as he probably would have called me, was if I was trying to find a way to stop myself from losing my heart, and then he told me to give it up, because shouldn't I have already realized that he'd have thought of that first?

I found it necessary to correct him, and I explained that all I wanted to know was if there was a way to go back to a moment so that you could say something just a little bit louder and with enough confidence to get someone to turn around.

That's all I needed.

He laughed at me for that. He said that, yeah, there was a way, but why would I want to go through the trouble to just get someone to turn around?

"It doesn't matter, okay?" was all I said. "Just tell me how."

And he told me that I'd have to disappear. Time is made of paths. You just happen to be on this one. Every choice is a different path. Different choice, different path. They all already exist, the paths. It's just a matter of following them a different way.

But when you disappear, you normally get kind of…stuck in the darkness between the paths, unless you know exactly where you want to go. The Somebodies: Their hearts keep them from getting stuck, and they can find a completely different place, in the light. You get one split second, as a Nobody, to choose, or you'll just end up lost forever. He told me he'd been trying to think of where he wanted his new path to be for years, but he couldn't.

I knew.

After that, I became reckless. Sora found the path to where we were. He found the spot Betwixt and Between the real world and our world, and the smaller Nobodies came to stop him. I fought them, with Sora at my side, until it got so bad that I knew that there was one way I could take them out, but I'd have to take myself out, too.

So I did.

It didn't hurt, "dying". For the first time in my cursed half-life, I felt free. I felt…hope.

I told Sora everything I thought he needed to know. I'm sorry for everything, and all that jazz. I reminded myself of why I was doing this…"I wanted to see Roxas," I said.

I could see my best friend in his eyes as I went, and as I started to slip into the space between paths, I thought of my moment, and let myself fade.

When I opened my own eyes, I expected to see darkness, but, instead, I saw the back of a cloak and a spiky blond head.

"Nobody would miss me," he said.

So, as loud as I could yell, and with as much confidence as I could muster, I screamed out, "I would, you idiot! You got it memorized?"

And Roxas turned around, and he looked at me with his head cocked slightly to the side, with that same confused, sad look Sora had given me when I had committed suicide what was but wasn't moments before.

In that space of a moment, I took the opportunity to make sure that he couldn't leave by forcefully picking him up and carrying him the other way. Sadness turned to annoyance on Roxas' part and a strange, white euphoria that I had only felt once before on mine.

"Axel, put me down! I'm not three!"

I had to laugh at that. "We're going to see Namine, whether you like it or not. I have an idea."

Roxas let out a breath, and collapsed onto my shoulder. "You're crazy," he said simply, but with a small hint of amusement in his voice.

Minutes later, Namine looked up at us, the sorrow and loneliness that was always in her eyes only partly masked by her confusion at my having walked in with Roxas still slumped over my shoulder but now leaning on his hands, his elbows propped up on my chest.

Roxas was the first to say anything. "He has an idea," he grumbled sarcastically. Namine nodded knowingly.

I gathered up my breath and my courage and I put Roxas down. At that moment, you could say that I was the most sure and the most afraid I'd ever been. What if I failed? What if they turned against me?

"Listen," I said slowly, but surely as I could. "None of us, as Nobodies, are satisfied. We're sick of it, right, being empty? Feeling, but not? Most of us don't even know where we came from. Well, we all know that Roxas is Sora's Nobody, right?"

Roxas looked at the floor, away from me. I could tell the words hurt him. He hated them, being nothing but a discarded piece of someone else.

Namine looked at me, pleading for me to stop. This was not a subject we brought up. None of us, after all, were quite sure what was worse; having an undetermined fate or knowing that, one day, you'd just be absorbed into Somebody else.

Roxas refused to look at me, my having broken the most primal rule of being a Nobody: To remind us of the truth. "Yeah, we know," hissed my best friend. "Why don't you just go and remind us what Namine is, too?"

"Fine, I will," I hissed back, not caring anymore about rules and sensitivities, those being what was keeping us all from moving past this. "She's the messed-up Nobody that came when Kairi's heart was taken in Sora's."

Namine looked like she was about to cry for a moment, and then she tried to hold a tear back, but it slipped down her nose and smudged something on her sketchpad. I had to grab Roxas' arm as he tried to walk past me.

"But, you know what?" I yelled, grasping Roxas tighter as he tried to fight me. "Neither of you are complete, but neither of them are, either. Not without the parts of them that they're missing, and that's you."

Two pairs of bright blue eyes tried to lock with mine at once, the both of them wide in confusion and fear. I had to switch between them, but my voice was growing stronger and a smile was starting to spread on my face.

"Xemnas wants to make Kingdom Hearts using Sora, but I can't let that happen. My friend, Roxas, you're the keyblade master just as much as Sora is. Why don't you do it instead? Make Sora a part of you…" Roxas' confused expression began to change, but into what I couldn't quite tell.

I turned to the other blond. "…and make Kairi a part of you, Namine! Why do you guys have to be the ones that are wrong? Why can't they be? Who knows if it's them who have the hearts, or if it's you? Somebodies or Nobodies?"

"But…we can't do that! It's not right!" yelled Namine. "That would be like killing them!"

"Namine, if you believe that becoming a part of Kairi is like dying, then that's fine," said Roxas suddenly, his voice growing slowly stronger to match mine, "but I know that becoming part of Sora makes me complete, so how can doing it the other way be any different?"

Namine looked at Roxas. She looked at me.

"We need you," I pleaded to her. I was sure to keep my voice as strong as I could, so she could hear. "You're the key to their minds. You're the key to making things different. Sora's vulnerable right now. Kairi's not. I know you want to be complete as much as any of us. Help us."

"What are you getting out of this?" she asked me.

"Maybe I'll get a heart if Roxas succeeds, and maybe I won't, but all that matters is that I get to keep someone I care about. Sora is Roxas, but he's not. I want Roxas, not Sora! I want Roxas!"

Namine stood. Roxas turned again to look at me. I couldn't move. I even think I stopped breathing for a moment. The silence became deafening, and my eyes lit up with a fire from behind. I could feel my body weakening as my resolve broke.

And I couldn't stop from dropping to my knees, my arms shaking as I held myself up, and I started crying. Both of the others dropped next to me, placing hands on my back.

"Tell me," I said, and I could barely keep my voice strong enough to not crack and fade away, but they heard me, because they were close. "How is this possible? How can I cry, if I'm not anybody?"