I… I really don't know what to say to you guys. Umm…

Thank you…

~Epilogue~

"So it's really gone? Completely?" Axel questioned, hobbling alongside Roxas with one crutch under his arm. "You don't feel anything anymore? Not even a tiny bit?"

"No, no, no, no, for the thousandth time, no." Roxas huffed, a smile pulling through despite his mild irritation. "You can't do it, Zexion can't do it, Cloud can't do it, nobody else can do it anymore. What makes you think I can?"

Axel chuckled shortly, turning his head back out towards the golden sky. "I dunno. I thought if anyone still had it, you would. The sun's getting lower. Where's that beautiful, heart-stopping, Hollywood train station sunset you've been promising me?"

At Roxas' request, he and Axel had been transported to Twilight Town on an emergency military aircraft just as soon as they were able-bodied. The prior events were a blur to Roxas. Somebody had found him, obviously, lying face up in the maw on the brink of consciousness. They'd brought him back to the hospital unit to discover that there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. Aside from a nasty friction burn on the back of his head, and very minor chest trauma, Roxas had gotten off fairly easy that time. No organ failure, anyway. Just a hell of a massive migraine.

Zack was gone, which just about killed Roxas inside. Tidus was gone too, as was announced by a very loud and very distraught Sora. So was DiZ. Shortly after making it back to Poir, Kefka died from his wounds, but nobody seemed too keen on mourning him. Other than those four, eighteen other nameless U.S. soldiers died too. In honor of them, the remaining troops and the rest of the King's Men held a memorial service in the city.

It seemed that the Jenova cells were no more. As far as anyone could tell, those who had possessed the gifts had them no longer. Neither Sora nor Roxas could summon their Keyblades again. Although a bit shocking, this sudden lack of power didn't alarm anyone too much. There wasn't any need for ancient hocus pocus anymore. Xehanort was gone.

Roxas' dreams stopped as well. He had the entirety of Ven's life to reflect upon, if he so chose. And oftentimes he did. He could spend hours at a time watching Ventus' life like a movie, skipping the boring bits and the sad bit as he pleased. Granted, sometimes he had dreams of being Ventus, or of general hanging out in Ventus' life, but those weren't like the memories.

Reno was just fine, as Axel was delighted to find out, and he'd departed for Midgar with Rude at the same time as Axel and Roxas went for Twilight Town. Their parting was on much better terms than it had been the last time, however, and Roxas got the feeling there would be many visits in the future.

"I don't think your leg can handle the trip to the clock tower just yet," Roxas laughed. "For now, we can go to sunset hill. That's pretty much the next best thing."

"Lead the way," said Axel agreeably.

Roxas felt a rush of affection for his hometown as they walked along the winding cobblestone roads. Twilight Town was hilly, and it was full of color and life, whereas Hollow Bastion, even before recent events, was colorless and flat, with perhaps the exception of the rising falls. But Twilight Town was warm, and beautiful. Rich with tomes of orange and yellow and green, it was no wonder most of the natives didn't want to leave.

Sunset hill had the second best view in Twilight Town. It looked down on the rest of the town, and the neighboring woods. The view stretched on as far as the eye could see, following the snaking railroad track until it disappeared into the distance. No buildings, trees, or otherwise obstructions blocked the view of the sky, and that made it a very popular destination for young couples such as themselves, though Roxas didn't believe that there was another pair out there quite like them.

They sat down side by side, holding hands and staring out to the horizon.

"What now?" said Axel after perhaps a moment of silence. "What do we do?"

"I don't know," said Roxas pensively. "Whatever we want, I guess. You could model again if you wanted. I could finish school, get my degree, take pictures again. Or we could start all over. We could get involved with the restoration program, or go traveling. For now though, I really like just being home."

In a month's time, they would go back to Hollow Bastion and found the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee with Leon and the others. The Castle That Never Was was left to fall to ruin, all of its artifacts removed and donated to the City of Hollow Bastion. Poir was restored and used as the foundation for the Committee. In a year's time they would all attend Demyx and Zexion's wedding in Atlantica, where the pair had decided to fully settle down and work in marine biology with Demyx's parents.

The fall of the nobodies was disguised as a meteor, though the majority of the city knew better than to believe it. Since there was no acting police force at the time, nobody had the resources to investigate the crater. People who proclaimed the truth were written off as conspiracy theorists and over time, the story was accepted and eventually the truth was forgotten.

Introducing Axel to his parents was probably the hardest thing Roxas ever had to do. Go to war, slay a couple hundred dusks, kill a god? No problem. But to bring home a tall, intimidation looking man to his sort-of Christian parents only a few months after Naminé's passing? It was nothing short of torturous. Thankfully, Roxas' parents were very gracious and understanding about it, and even despite not knowing the whole truth about the relationship, they blessed it right away. Axel was accepted into the home with open arms.

The sun sank lower, transforming the sky around it from that soft, celadon blue to a fiery array of reds and pinks, which faded into a royal violet the farther away one looked from the sun. Axel and Roxas just talked, about everything and nothing, until one rough, adamant, all-too-familiar voice interrupted the conversation.

"Roxas!?"

Nice, Hayner. Very original.

The blonde spun around, his heart swelling to twice its normal size as he indeed saw Hayner, along with Pence and Olette, approaching the pair on the top of the hill. Olette's eyes were swimming; Pence positively beamed.

Hayner was looking a little aggressive, though. He swaggered over to Roxas, hands on his hips. "So, why didn't you tell us you were coming?" he got all up in Roxas' face; Roxas was unsure whether to laugh or run away. "You make us worry sick about you, and then you come home and don't even call? What, got no time for your friends now that you're running around at that place saving Hollow Bastion?"

Roxas and Axel caught eyes briefly and shared a secret laugh. "Oh Hayner, you don't know the half of it."

Hayner started to steam, but Olette stepped in to rescue them. "I'm sure they were going to drop in!" she scolded. Which was the honest truth. It was only their second day in Twilight Town, and the first didn't include much aside from settling in and eating enough for twenty. "Can't you see they're hurt? You didn't get caught in the meteor incident, did you? Tell me you weren't stupid enough?"

Roxas was tired of hearing the cover story. He was tired of lying to his friends, his family, and to the world. After maybe a split second's hesitation, he quietly muttered, "It wasn't a meteor…"

"Roxas," Axel warned.

"Shut up," Roxas replied, though not so harsh as to hurt Axel's feelings, but with enough conviction to carry the point across. "I won't lie to them. Naminé was their friend, and so was Xion. And most importantly, they are my friends. They have the right to know what really happened."

Axel didn't say anything, though the grimace on his face spoke his disapproval loudly enough. His eyes shifted skeptically from the three of them, then back over to Roxas. After that, he carefully, did a 360 of the area to make sure nobody was within sight or earshot. Finally, he let out an exhausted sigh. "I'll help fill in the parts you were out for."

Beginning his story at the "photo" incident, Roxas explained everything in the most extreme detail that he could recall. He stepped back and let Axel explain his perspective of the city blowing up and his adventures with Leon. Olette cried when Roxas discusses the scene of Naminé's death—even though he skipped out of the majority of the details on that one—and she sighed dreamily when Axel and Roxas explained together the conditions of the Pull. Pence was attentive and asked lots of questions about the Jenova cells and the lifestream.

It was well past nightfall by the time Roxas had even gotten to the part about Xion's betrayal. It was a hard, intense moment for all of them. Roxas had the idea that Pence was getting ready to ask if maybe there'd been a mistake or a misunderstanding, but something in Roxas' tone of voice must have silenced him. Olette looked horrified and stricken, but she did not cry again.

Hayner, to the shock of everyone, all but exploded. Red faced and furious, he wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as they knew was still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.

It took close to ten minutes to calm him down, and even then, although he had stopped shouting and cussing, his hands were balled into founds wound so tight his knuckles paled. Then Roxas saw something he hadn't seen since Kindergarten: fat, angry tears trailing glistening tracks down Hayner's reddened cheeks. Xion found Hayner first, but until then, Hayner always assumed that it was he who found her. In coaxing him into her friendship, she had the rest of the group between her little fingers. Once Hayner approved of somebody, they were in. That's just how it worked.

Knowing this, Roxas could easily deduce the amount of self-blame that the knowledge of her betrayal had implicated. He'd felt it too. "It wasn't your fault," he said, mirroring Axel's words to him, "She had us all fooled."

"It's so hard to think about her the way you describe," Olette said, "She always seemed so happy, and nice, and innocent… all that time, she wanted us dead. Through all those summer vacations, all the trips to the beach, all the nights at the clock tower, she knew she'd be leading Roxas to his death."

Roxas had known all this and accepted it, and yet hearing one of his best friends saying it so clean cut like that, it murdered him all over again.

"So, thankfully, after that Cloud came round and thumped her on the head," Axel said quickly, in a clear attempt to diffuse the tension. "We never saw her again after that."

"I hope she's dead," Hayner said bitterly. "I hope they found her in that dungeon and turned her into a dusk for what she did."

Olette put her arm tentatively around his shoulders. "You don't mean that, Hayner," she said gently, "You loved her. We all did. She doesn't deserve to die. I think… she deserves to live more than any of us. Don't you think? I'm sure that's what she really wanted. The only time she ever got the chance to be normal was with us."

"I don't want to talk about her anymore," said Roxas. "I've already had to tell you, Axel, the rest of the resistance, and, to a certain extent, my parents."

Olette shuddered. "Okay, but it's getting cold out. Why don't you finish telling us what happened at the usual spot? We have all night."

"Right," Roxas agreed, standing up and helping Olette to do the same. "So, after Cloud came for me, he busted the door open with his cells, and we starting sprinting through this labyrinth of cages filled with dusks, just trying to find the way out…"

Roxas continued his story as the five of them all walked together, hand in hand, down the dirt path off the moonlit hill. Fireflies rose from the foliage where they stepped, joining in the celestial cluster of stars adorning the deep purple twilight. Home, to Roxas, is where the heart is, and after what seemed a lifetime of searching, he could at last say he knew he was where he belonged.

~Fin~