"I'm going to save the world!"

"Yeah, and then what?"

I. the hardest button to button

The problem isn't that he feels like something's missing in the place below his heart, or that summer is ending. It isn't that Hayner's strings of meaningless words and jabs have become less endearing and more irritating, or that Olette's face remains worried to the point that he wants nothing more than to edge away the concern with the tip of his fingernail. It isn't that Pence looks at him with something like fear and apprehension, as if he's some wild animal that could bite at any second.

It isn't that he's been distracted lately by thoughts of some other boy, some boy who isn't Hayner or Pence. Some boy with a mouth like the open sky and eyes filled to the pupil with righteousness.

It's that he's been slogging through it all for fifteen years (fifteen years), only to be told by some little half-girl stepping sideways through daylight and shadows to inform him that no, this isn't his story, and no, he doesn't get to be the hero.

II. you've got no faith in medicine

Sora's at the point where he feels that maybe, maybe (just maybe) his efforts aren't good enough. He's stuck in the middle of god knows where (and a place that god doesn't touch) and he can't feel Donald or Goofy or anyone near by. Riku and Kairi aren't by his side and this little pale half-girl isn't helping with her useless pictures and calm girls. She's telling him that he needs to sleep, that's the only way he can truly save the world, but—

"That's ridiculous."

And this girl, this little half-girl who looks a bit like Kairi (but not quite), smiles at him and says, "Is it, Sora? Is it really?"

III. black math

The world has been turned upside down.

Roxas sees things that aren't there, sees people crawling out of shadows to ask if he can feel some kid named S—

(Sorrel? Solomon?)

It doesn't really matter.

He mentions this to Olette and Hayner and (inevitably) Pence, and they give him sideways looks full of concern and disbelief, coated with an underlying sigh of He's gone and cracked, then.

"No, come on—you guys aren't listening, he's right there! Right there!"

But they can't see and Hayner turns away and Olette starts to cry and it's Pence, Pence, who gets up and palms his shoulder. Looks downwards and says, "Sorry, Roxas. Sorry."

But what's really terrifying—what's so disgusting—is that they're surrounding him and loving him and pitying him; that poor, poor Roxas boy who's gotten tricked by a mesh of fantasy and half-baked reality.

IV. icky thump

It's all this little half-girl's fault—her fault that Riku was stolen and Kairi was broken and that Roxas can't come outside without flinching. That Sora dodges every dark corner with his eyes going wide in his face, that there are moments when his mouth flops open and nothing pure or true or honest comes out of it.

It's her fault that Roxas only exists within Sora's veins and arteries, taking up residence in his skin and sulking because he never got to save anyone, or rescue the world from certain destruction, or be greeted with a hearty applause and a "Well done, Roxas! Well done! We couldn't have done it without you!"

In Kairi's voice, she smirks and says, "Don't be ridiculous. I helped you, remember?"

"Not by much."

She pokes Kairi's tongue in Kairi's cheek and swipes bitterly, "I did what I could, alright? I did everything in my power."

"Liar." Roxas spits (because, really, it's all Roxas in Sora's flesh and Sora himself has gone away to hide behind tattered dreams and bloodlines). "You are such a liar—god, Namine, you make me sick."

And Namine smiles with Kairi's teeth and lips and gums and breathes, "I did everything that I could."

"But you didn't do anything." Roxas shouts. That's what angers him the most; it's that she never, ever, did "anything! You just went with it!"

V. as ugly as i seem

At the marble chair opposite from a table that feels like winter, Namine draws with cheap pastels and says to the back of Roxas's head, "I've been lonely."

She draws deaths with ink and pencils and says, "I've been lonely for a long, long time."

VI. forever for her (is over for me)

The problem at hand isn't that Roxas is taking up energy and space within Sora. It isn't that everything seems a bit too right and content, or that Riku's always, always followed by Kairi, who doesn't seem to have much patience for the boy who saved their skins from not-existing, or something worse. It's not that people seem to be confused whenever he opens his mouth, or that he's constantly being asked what he's trying to explain.

It's that he can't look past Kairi's irises and see the half-girl lurking there with her art and her pain. He can't see Namine at all anymore, and is all the more surprised when her nails scrape against his forearm and she whispers, "I feel a bit lonely, all alone inside her head."

VII. the boy done wrong again

Sora prides himself on being able to sense pretty much anything, but when he hunts for Roxas, he can't feel him there. He sits on the floor in his room and digs behind his eyelids for Roxas. But he can't feel him there and Sora feels like he might cry, which he hasn't done since he was eight and Riku hit him in the head with his toy sword.

On the telephone, he says thoughtlessly, "Remember when I saved the world?"

And across a few swaths of land and space and energy, Riku says, "What?" Bites his lips and says to Kairi, "What's he talking about? Since when did he save the world?"

He hangs up before Kairi can add in her input and goes to the beach, where everything seems to make a bit more sense. Sora stands ankle-deep in algae and seawater and screams, "What are you playing at? What do you want?" But he never gets any answers, and why would he? The world's turned upside down with no way of righting itself.

Sora screams until he's all but croaking out whatever he can, and he thinks (he's pretty sure he did hear it, but lately, lately, Sora's been a bit less sure of everything and anything this upside down world has been throwing at him) he can hear Namine hissing, "I've been lonely. I've been lonely, and I'm still lonely, Sora."

And he thinks he can hear Roxas, fuming and beautiful with rage as he protests, "I want to be the hero, I want to be the hero! It isn't fair; why am I just the part that hasn't been written?"

And Riku and Kairi are there too, singing friendship songs and says gently, "This is never gonna change. This is never gonna change."

It's splashes of color and sound and the feeling after he first killed someone (or no one) and Kairi's tears at being separated and Riku's eyes, cold and unforgiving, and Roxas's scowl and Namine's loneliness and onslaughts of ugly words: "I'm lonely—I wanna be the hero—What do you want?"

All over this wrecked world, people are dying at his hands or by his jurisdiction and being denied what they want and, "This is never gonna change."

He wades into the water and floats, to carry himself way to somewhere that's brighter and beautiful and thinks, "I'm the hero and I saved the world and I will never be lonely, and this, someday, this awful ugly thing is gonna change."

But against the jugular stems, Namine is curled up and howling, "But I'm lonely."

There's water filling his mouth and turning his throat red and raw, but Sora stretches out his arms and grins, "You're not. You're not."

VIII. effect & cause

And at the very end, at the very end of everything—after he saved this world and brought Riku and Kairi back home and made a place for Roxas within his veins, Sora dies.

He does not die beautifully. There is no rising of strings and percussion to magnify his death.

He dies face-first in the tide, with all his silly dreams filling up his eyes.

(and the world is still turned the wrong way up)

A/N: Lyrical credit to The White Stripes, character credit to Square Enix and I own nothing, but that's not terribly strange. Review, friends? You might as well--being at the bottom and all.