- Shades of Grey -

Epilogue - Which Parts Were The Dream?

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, or any of the Disney or Square Enix characters or stories featured within. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to say that I did, but that would be a blatant lie. Any song, movie, and/or book reference used throughout the course of this story is also not owned by me. In fact, the only thing that is owned by me is this story.

Ahead lies something you hold dear — but to claim it, you must lose something first

A scattered dream that's like a far-off memory. A far-off memory that's like a scattered dream. I want to line the pieces up-yours and mine.

The memories fading from his mind again, he opened his eyes slowly; or, at least, he thought he did. Surrounded by darkness as he was, it was hard to tell whether his eyes were truly open or not. "Where... where am I?" Somehow, he suspected he had asked this question before, though he had no recollection as to when that may have been. "How long have I been here?" 'It would be so easy,' he mused to himself, 'to let everything go, to just fade away, and return to darkness. I'm so tired...'

He saw it then, the smallest point of darkness, the only feature in an otherwise featureless domain. Moving towards it felt like agony, each step painful as the darkness pressed down against him, but, after what felt like hours, he reached the light, stepping through without looking back.

'This... This feels familiar...' He thought to himself, 'I've been here before, sometime...' The sky above was dark, like night, with the tiniest pinpricks of light. The deep blue water ebbed and flowed away from the darkened sand, at the whims of the tide. Even the shadowed rocks looked familiar. The only feature, however, which jarred with how he remembered this place, was the blue-haired figure in the black bodysuit, blue half-skirt, and white sleeves, that sat on one of the rocks, overlooking the water; well, she had been watching the water, until the sound of footsteps in the sand behind her drew her attention.

Shuffling his feet nervously as she stared at him, a look on her face he couldn't describe, he started, "Um..."

He didn't get out another syllable before she leapt to her feet, rushing towards him and wrapping her arms around him with an excited cry of, "Ven! You're okay! When did you wake up?" Pulling back slightly to look him in the face, she added, "Wait, what are you doing here? How did you get here?"

"Um... I'm... I'm not Ven, miss." She pulled back further, excitement turning into shock as he watched, "My name's Roxas."

"Oh." There was an awkward pause. "OH!" The blue-haired girl jumped back, releasing him quickly like his touch had burned her. "I'm so sorry, it's just... you look so much like someone I know. I haven't seen him for some time, and... I miss him."

"It's okay," Roxas replied with a shake of his head, "It's obvious you care about him a lot."

"I do," the girl replied, nodding solemnly, "More than words can explain, but... I'm afraid... Afraid that he went to his... long sleep... hating me. Hating me for siding against Terra." The awkward silence returned, before she asked, "Do you know, you look so much like Ventus you could be his twin? I don't suppose you know why?"

Roxas shook his head. "No idea. All I know is I never looked much like my Somebody." At the confused look she cast his way, he explained, "I'm a Nobody; or, at least, I was, I think. Now, I guess I'm just... nothing..."

"Aww, cheer up, you're not nobody."

He shook his head again, "No, that's not what I mean. A Nobody is the type of being I am, or, was rather." She gave him a blank look. "Have you heard of the Heartless?" She nodded. "Well, a Heartless is formed when a person's heart is consumed by darkness. If that heart was strong enough, the body and soul it leaves behind can turn into a Nobody, and especially strong hearts can lead to Nobodies strong enough to retain their human form. A Somebody is who a Nobody used to be."

"I understand now," she replied, before suddenly remembering something, "Oh, my name's Aqua. So, who was your Somebody then?"

"Sora."

Aqua gasped in a combination of shock and horror. "Sora became a Heartless?"

"You know Sora?" Roxas asked, one eyebrow quirked, before adding to himself sourly, "Oh, right, everybody knows Sora... Right, I remember now, Sora met you when he was really young. Yeah, Sora became a Heartless - again - but it didn't stick this time either."

"Wait, again?" Aqua was more confused now than before. "You mean he's turned into a Heartless before? And what do you mean 'didn't stick'?"

"I mean that he managed to turn back into a person after falling into darkness. Twice. Once this year, once last year. This time it was because of Hades, last time because he stabbed himself with someone else's Keyblade to awaken Kairi."

"Sora knows Kairi?" One confusion cleared up, just in time for the next one. "How? They're from completely different worlds." Before Roxas could answer her latest question, Aqua added, "Maybe you should just tell me everything."

Roxas sighed, settling himself down on the sand, away from the ebbing water. "Okay then." With a dry laugh, he remarked, "It's funny. Back when I was a Nobody - both times - I had no memories about my life as Sora. Now, forcibly separated from my body, when I'm little more than a memory myself, I have so many memories, none of which, I realise, are truly mine." Sighing again, he stated, "Here, in this dark place, it would just be so easy to fade away."

As Aqua watched, Roxas' form became see-through briefly, before firming up again. Settling down again on the rock she'd sat on before, though this time turned slightly to one side to keep an eye on Roxas, she suggested, "Well, maybe, if you share those memories with me, together, we can keep you from fading away."

"Will you stay with me, until the end?"

"Of course," she replied, adding sadly, "It's been so long, since I've had some company. The only other person I've seen, he left me with a single glimmer of hope. Hope that Sora could get me out of here. And then, he simply faded away. I don't know how long ago that was, but now, here you are. Maybe together, we can gather the hope to find our own way free."

"Okay then," Roxas began, turning to face her slightly, "It all started with a dream..."

-End-

Author's Notes

And there we have it. The epilogue was never intended to be particularly long, just enough to give a teaser of things to come.

This took me a lot longer to get started than I'd originally hoped. I blame the fact I didn't want to start writing it until I knew enough about Aqua's character, and her story is, canonically, the third you're supposed to play through in Birth By Sleep, so...

What I find most amusing, is how little this story represents what the original thought that sparked it. Way back when I had the idea that I wanted to write a Kingdom Hearts story in which Sora fell into darkness, one of the original premises was the idea that, when a person falls into darkness, their form was shaped by the one or two Deadly Sins (Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, Gluttony) that most encompassed them.

Now, most people who fall into darkness would be represented by either Greed (wanting more power), Envy (wanting what someone else had), Pride (needing to be the best), or Wrath (anger and hatred). Riku's fall, for example, would have been due to Envy and Pride, i.e. coveting Kairi, and believing that he was the only one who could save her. With Sora, however, none of those four fit him. The most logical one for him would be, in fact, Sloth, the desire to do as little as possibly; after all, Kairi does refer to Sora as a 'lazy bum', and it doesn't sound like the first time she'd done so.

However, Sora's strongest emotion, as we know, is love, specifically for Kairi, but also a more general love for all things. When twisted to darkness, however, that love would turn into Lust. Sora, therefore, would have been using his heart's connection with all things, especially Kairi, along with his new darkness, to engage in acts of a more, shall we say, adult nature than this story did more than really hint at. For those who complained about the 'situations of an adult nature' actually occurring in this story, off screen though they tended to be, they were nothing if not tame than what would have occurred on screen had my original idea gone to print.

Then, however, it occurred to me that, none of the people shown to fall into darkness really acted all that much different from how they had before. Clayton, Jafar, Hades, Oogie Boogie, Captain Hook, Ursula, Maleficent, Scar; they were all decidedly evil before adding in Darkness. And Riku, he didn't act all that much different than he did before either, once you factor in how Maleficent poisoned him against Sora, and fed him lies about how he could rescue Kairi. So why then should Sora's personality drastically change?

From there came the idea of this story being an expression of 'darkness does not equal evil, light does not equal good'. And, as it turns out, I'm much more satisfied with how this story turned out than I believe I would have been with the other.

That's not to say I won't go back and revisit my old idea at some point, but then, we never know what the future may bring.

In the mean time, stay tuned for the second season, Shades of Grey: Dance of Light and Shadow (working title). Coming soon to an Internet near you!

EDIT (01/01/2011): I thought I would update this to let everyone who has story alerts know the start of second season has been posted.