Warning: I've never played Kingdom Hearts although I've read the wiki and watched the cut scenes. I became interested when I was watching AMV's on youtube. This is set after Kingdom Hearts 2. Enjoy!

Perhaps you have heard that the pen is mightier than the sword?

It is a horrible cliché. If you are confronted with a sword, it is also quite untrue. However, it does convey the concept that a sword is an immediate instrument while a story can travel all over the world. A story can have an immense impact on the world.

Now imagine, if you would, a Writer of Destiny. They are exceedingly rare, which is a very good thing. Most stories influence our minds. For a Writer of Destiny, stories influence reality directly. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

"How can this be?" You might ask. No one knows how this power is granted. It has gone to both kind and cruel hearts.

"How does this work?" You might also ask. Writers of Destiny write the past, present and future. "Write the past?" You might say. "But anyone can do that." Yes and no. When a Writer of Destiny writes of the past, it is events he or she could not have known… yet they are recalled perfectly. Some have speculated that with a flick of the wrist, a Writer of Destiny could rewrite the past. But because you would change along with your past, you would never know the difference. Frightening, no?

When a Writer of Destiny writes of the future, your feet are placed upon their path. The only way to avoid your part of the story is to convince them to change it. Of course, to do that you must be aware that the story has been written. That is the greatest surprise about Writers of Destiny… most live and die as normal men and women, completely unaware of their great power.

"How can that be?" You ask. "How could they not notice that their stories come true?" Simple. If you have ever written, ask yourself. Do you write about people you know? Of course not! They would be likely to take offense. Even if they did not, trying to portray them accurately would be nerve wracking and not particularly fun. We writers prefer our own character, or characters taken from fiction that we can interpret our own way.

Writers of Destiny typically write about people and events occurring in other worlds. It is difficult to travel between worlds, so they can go about completely unaware of their amazing power. The stories they write are always engaging and well-written, so many Writers of Destiny make their living as authors. And if travelers from another dimension encounter one of their stories, they usually assume anything they recognize is coincidence.

But sometimes, a Writer of Destiny is recognized. This usually ends most tragically, as others seek to make use of them or the Writer herself is warped by the power she or he holds.

This is the story of such a Writer. And, alas, I cannot guarantee that it will have a happy ending. For this is real life, and some things are beyond even a Writer of Destiny's power.

Even for them, happily ever after is only a phrase.

She sighed, her breath puffing out in the cold air. It was winter in Kingdom of Lost Hope. Also known as the Land of Suffering, to those with an even greater urge towards self-pity than usual.

Stories said something had gone wrong, in the far off past. There were a dozen stories about what that something might have been, but the only connecting factor was that the king and all his children had been killed in a single day. The why's and how's varied widely. And without the king, the land had sickened. No one liked to admit it, but it seemed indisputable… the welfare of the land was tied to the king's heart. And now the land was heartless.

Not literally, of course. There were very few actual Heartless in the Kingdom. A few. Also a few Nobodies… usually created by the Heartless. But neither lasted long in the frozen wastes. They fell quickly to the Kings Lancers.

But that hardly mattered. Rubbing her hands together briefly to warm them, she picked up the piece of cloth she had been embroidering. She was picking out the design of a basket of fruit. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen any fruit but apples. All the pear trees had died of grey blight, and oranges never came from the South anymore. She wondered sometimes if something had happened to them too. The king had ruled the cold Northlands and the hot Southlands, so it was to be expected that misfortunes were happening to the Southerns too. But direct contact had ended centuries ago, and no one knew why. No one really cared to know why. No one had any care to spare for anyone but friends and family. And sometimes not even that.

She glanced up as a man walked into the room. He was only perhaps a handful of years older than her twenty summers, but he seemed much older. Care lines had been carved deeply on his face, and his brown hair was already thinning. But he smiled at her… then frowned at what she held in her hands.

"Amberglas. Weren't you going to write?" He asked, concerned. He knew writing to be her greatest joy and certainly something she had planned to do today. She sighed, looking down at the embroidery in her hands.

"I can't write today." She replied quietly, her pin rising and falling, another tiny section of the design filling out. "My heart is too sad. The story will be sad too, and we don't need a sad story…"

"Why are you sad?" He put an arm around her shoulders, and she took a deep breath, staring out the window for a moment to compose herself. "What's wrong, kitten?"

"I met with Celune this morning." She said evenly, and then bit her lip for a moment. "She doesn't want to be my friend anymore." Her needle stabbed her finger, and she winced, blotting it on her coat so the blood didn't stain the cloth.

"Surely she didn't say it like that?" He asked, taken aback.

"No." Amberglas replied, her tone one of resignation. "She said she doesn't want to go snow-shoeing anymore, or talk about stories, recipes or boys. She said that she's never discussed priestess things with me because they would bore me, and trader things bore her. So we could still meet sometimes and talk about something else." She placed another stitch, then stopped. Her hand was shaking too much. "I think that leaves the weather as a topic for discussion." He was silent for a moment, and she felt bad for him. "I'm sorry, Frossan. There's nothing you can do."

"It can be hard, sometimes, when friends pull apart." He offered, and she said nothing. "But… perhaps you should write the story anyway. Suffering is part of the world, and you can always give it a happy ending."

"Maybe I will." She replied, more to get rid of him than out of any real agreement. But after he was gone, she started to think about it.

Finally she walked over to her desk and picked up her pencil. Perhaps Frossan was right, and a sad story would be fine as long as she gave it a happy ending. She could always add one on when she was feeling better. It amazed her, sometimes, that when food was dear and fuel dearer, people would still spend a penny for one of her stories in print. But she had been told many times that the stories gave people hope. Hope that there was still something better out there, somewhere…

Carefully filling her pen with ink, she looked at the little chalk board she kept by her desk. Chalked onto it were dozens of names. Who should she write about today?

She had written about Sora and Roxas many times. The stories of how he saved worlds with Daffy and Goofy were always fun… but they didn't suit her mood. Nothing did, except… her gaze settled on another name. Axel.

Her hand started moving as the plot formed in her mind.

When she was done, a tear slid down her cheek. And another. She had written the story of a friendship and its death. A death more final than she wanted.

Axel gave his life for Sora… for Roxas…he did all of this to see him again… it's so sad! No, he can't die yet. There needs to be a happy ending. Her hand shaking, she lifted the pen again and began a new chapter.

But Axel did not die then, not really. He was cast into the darkness, alone and drifting, until he washed up onto a distant shore. Pulling himself up, coughing and gasping, he found himself standing before a beachfront villa. It belonged to the Queen of Hearts. She was not a nice person… no, not nice at all. But she held the one thing Axel desired the most, although she would only give it to him for a price.

A heart.

Now, you may ask… "Did Amberglas create the Queen of Hearts, or did she always exist? Has she always had hearts she could give to others? Is she really not nice, or did Amberglas just define her that way?"

I can assure you, from my perspective, that the Queen of Hearts has always existed. She has always had hearts, and she has always been not nice. In fact, that's quite understating the case…

But that's a story for another time.