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Everything went dark. Darker than the night below the skyscrapers in the rain, darker than her hair in twilight, and it was only made deeper by the sudden absence of the white light of the room he’d just left.
For a moment, Roxas couldn’t remember why he’d agreed to come. And he had, hadn’t he? For someone important. Who was so important that he would pitch himself into this abyss?
A beam of light pierced the black, and it all came rushing back. Of course.
“Sora.” The word fell from his lips like a small stone dropped from one hand to another.
Sora woke, and all at once, Roxas was dragged under, tossed beneath tides of drowsiness, confusion, excitement, as Sora spotted his friends. The light had returned, but it was murky and far away, as out of reach as the sun to a rock on the seafloor.
He was about to call for help when another voice came from behind his throat. “Donald! Goofy!”
Roxas realized he could no longer move. His muscles were lashed to another will, tangled behind someone else’s flesh. Sora’s contentment and joy crashed against him in bright waves, but Roxas held fast to his own panic. He wouldn’t be taken so easily.
He struggled, but all around him was the persistent pulse of a heartbeat, thumping in soft time like a lullaby. It filled his ears, thrummed through his being as if it were coming from inside his own chest—as if he had a heart of his own. Roxas’ eyes lolled.
Sora’s heart was a sandy beach, calling him home to its sun-warmed shores. He could hear the beating of the waves, of far-off laughter. He could feel the setting sun on his skin. The last day of summer vacation, on the beach with his friends.
An ember in his chest sparked, lighting him back up with terror.
He wasn’t on the beach. He wasn’t with his friends. He was under the water, already sunken too deep to breach, but he hadn’t drowned yet. The last day of summer vacation was still out there, waiting for him.
It didn’t matter that the past six days had been a lie. Something inside Roxas’ chest had a death grip on the idea, and wouldn’t let go. The last day of summer vacation. The grand finale, the perfect bookend. The day he’d been promised, the day he deserved.
Today was supposed to be the day before the machinations of the real world took him from his friends and his freedom. Each day this week, even as minutes and hours were stolen from him by sudden sleep and lost time, Roxas had planned how he would use that final day.
Skateboarding seemed too uncreative, and doing part time work was obviously off the table. Getting sweets at the bakery could be fun, but for Roxas, there had only ever been one thing he really wanted.
The beach.
The beach.
Then the world had taken everything from him—everything that was left after it had already taken his life and his friends. But it couldn’t take away one more day at the beach. He’d buy three ice creams—one for each of them—and eat them all himself. He had to fight back, get out, before the day could end without him.
But Sora’s heart was sand all around him—soft and malleable, heavy and smothering. There were no rocks to crash and rail against, because the sand welcomed churning waters as its own.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be—not how she promised it would be. This was supposed to feel like home, the home he’d glimpsed when the flower pod bloomed before him, and he saw the boy everyone loved sleeping so soundly inside.
In that moment, Roxas had loved him too. His traitorous heart—or rather, whatever he had inside his chest—had pulled him like a magnet, drawn him in a thrall.
He’d never stood a chance.
They’d called Roxas special, but he was just a stand in for another smile.
Roxas was carried outside the cold room, through the halls, and into Twilight Town. The real one. Now that he was here, he couldn’t believe he’d ever fallen for the fake. The smell had been all wrong, the everlasting twilight hitting his face like a shadow instead of the sun. He felt it now, on distant skin that wasn’t his anymore.
Then, like sand and sea salt in a wound, Sora’s heart began to call for Riku’s, and a longing for the very person who’d damned Roxas to this hell blared over him like a siren. Waves of Where’s Riku? Where’s Riku? were matched with He cheated, he took everything— but only for so long. Roxas’ rage and despair was soon overpowered by Sora’s unbothered, uncomplicated emotions, and the heat of Roxas’ protests began to die like kindling in a storm.
Sora went on, but his feet carried them to Hayner, Pence, and Olette, like he was trying to rub in the fact that none of them recognized him—that they’d never been friends, and now they never would be.
They hadn’t been real, Roxas kept telling himself, but an ache in his chest wouldn’t listen. Hayner, Pence, and Olette were his, just like Axel, and…
And…
A fissure opened through his chest, and sorrow dragged him under. He couldn’t do this anymore. Not when he’d failed to do the one thing he’d promised he would.
More time slipped between Roxas’ fingers like a retreating tide as all at once Sora was leaving—he was going to leave. Like this place hadn’t mattered at all, like it was just another stop on the trolley, like it wasn’t his entire world. Sora wasn’t even going to spend the whole day here—a day that should have been Roxas’.
Sora entered the train station, bought his ticket.
You’re wasting it, you’re wasting it, you’re wasting it! Roxas heard himself screaming, fists pounding against the inside of Sora’s chest like a foreign pulse.
But no one heard him. No one came, and when he felt Sora’s feet turn toward the train platform, he knew it was over. Sora had stolen the sunset—everything—from him.
“…Hey, Sora? You sure we haven’t met before?” Hayner. He did know. He recognized him, and he was going to get him out of here.
“…Positive. Why do you ask?” No. No no no.
Whatever had been on Hayner’s face fell away, brushed aside by Sora’s wake. “I dunno.”
As Roxas watched Hayner, Pence, and Olette’s faces in turn through different blue eyes, he felt something in Sora’s smile crack. Then, his view blurred, and he couldn’t see them clearly anymore. Was Sora taking their faces from him too? Hadn’t he taken enough?
“You okay?”
“Y-Yeah. Don’t… know where it came from. ” Roxas could feel the lump in his throat as he wiped the tears away. The rift in Roxas’ chest had reached Sora too, but he didn’t even know who’d opened it, whose despair was leaking out of him as he said goodbye to Hayner, Pence, and Olette.
He just stepped onto the train, and left.
Roxas hadn’t gotten to watch the sun set on the sea. Instead, a sandcastle that had taken 364 days to build was dragged down with the surf, and Roxas as he’d been was gone before the sun could finish its yearly journey, and set in the same spot it had the day a Nobody was born.
Roxas knew what a birthday was. Sora’s memories were lousy with them—one day a year that shone brighter than the rest, filled with friends’ gap-toothed smiles, cake and ice cream and games on the beach, a song just for him.
Sora blew out Roxas’ candles, before they’d even been lit, leaving him stranded in sinking darkness. And as the minutes of his last day fell away, it felt like the town had broken its promise that the sun would never set on the boy who loved its sky.