Chapter Text
For a moment, impasse: both the Heartless and the cloaked figure stayed where they were. The figure panted. Beast’s Heartless snarled, great globs of spit dripping from its crimson teeth.
“What are you doing?” The voice hissed from the other side of the clearing, opposite from Xion and Riku. Xion squinted at the speaking shadow; she recognized an Organization coat, the hood hiding the speaker’s face. “Press it! Don’t let the foul creature gain an advantage!”
Xion didn’t need to see his face, though. She knew that voice. She whispered it so Riku could hear: “Xaldin.”
Xaldin, and a new Organization member. A new Keyblade wielder. She didn’t know how, or who. At that precise moment, she didn’t care, either. Crouching behind the tree fully to hide the light of her magic, Xion summoned her Keyblades.
“Wait!” Riku whispered, predicting—correctly—that Xion was a second away from rushing out to fight literally everyone in front of her. “Let’s watch.”
Xion ground her teeth. She had made a promise to Belle. She was going to free Beast’s heart by her own hand—not let him be fodder for some new pawn of the Organization. He deserved better than that.
Meanwhile, the Keyblade wielder nodded in response to Xaldin’s command. She reared back and held her Keyblade out in front of her, a spout of flame cascading from the weapon’s tip. It struck Beast’s Heartless in the face, where it singed his fur and drew a growl from his throat. He reared back on his haunches and lunged at the wielder, horns first.
“Reflect!” A barrier of energy appeared around her in hexagonal blocks. Beast’s Heartless connected with it—and broke it, shattering the barrier, the force of which sent both the Heartless and the wielder sliding away. She caught her footing and followed the monster, jumping and swinging her Keyblade one-handed at Beast’s front. He met with flailing claw, and the two exchanged a series of blows, blade and nail parrying each other, sending sparks and bursts of power into the empty air.
Ultimately, the Beast was faster than the warrior: deflecting her Keyblade, he whipped around and struck again, catching her with a glancing blow, his right palm slamming into her ribs. She cried out as she went flying, slamming sidelong into a brittle, half-frozen tree. It broke with a thick crack, and she tumbled through it.
“Pathetic!” Xaldin shouted. “Do you plan to be so easily vanquished by this brute?”
The wielder groaned as she got up to her feet, shaking the splinters from her coat, battered but unwounded.
“Keep at it, girl!” Xaldin said.
And that was all the waiting Xion could take.
“No!” Xion shouted, springing from her hiding place. “Why don’t you stay down?” She sprinted toward the new Organization member, Oblivion and Oathkeeper held low in her hands. Reaching the strange woman, she swung her Keyblades up over her head and down again, slamming them against the wielder’s quickly rising guard. Through the shadow of the hood, Xion could see two amber eyes widened in shock.
“Ah! Xion, you return to us.” Xaldin stepped out of the shadows, appraising his former comrade. “What a fascinating turn of events. But not an unproductive one. Here, allow me to open up the battlefield.”
Xaldin lifted his hand, and the air started to move. Still holding the girl back with her Keyblades, Xion glanced over her shoulder to see a tornado gathering in the clearing. That was Xaldin’s power, she remembered, the affinity he’d gained as a Nobody. Wind. The vortex grew in size and intensity, gathering beneath Beast’s Heartless. The creature tried to advance on Xaldin, but it found, much to its surprise, that it had no ground to run on. Beast rose slowly in the air, carried by Xaldin’s typhoon. Within a moment, the Heartless was hovering above the height of the tallest trees around it. Then, Xaldin pushed his outstretched hand forward, and Beast’s Heartless, accosted with the full force of Xaldin’s power, went flying, landing with a distant crash elsewhere in the forest.
“Now then.” Xaldin turned toward Xion and his apparent pupil. “New orders: kill the traitor.”
The girl, her eyes now locked with Xion’s, nodded.
“Right,” she said, in a voice Xion had never heard before, firm and resonant.
She pushed back against Xion’s guard with all her strength, finding just enough leverage to throw Xion back. She landed a few feet away, and settled into a fighting stance, her knees bent, her blades held loose at her side.
Xaldin smirked, and settled in to watch—until a flash of darkness obscured his view. The darkness resolved into Riku, poised, the Way to Dawn readied.
In response, Xaldin lowered his hood and crossed his arms. His long, dark dreadlocks cascaded down his back, and his weapons—six lances, all capable of moving of their own accord—materialized around him.
“Fascinating indeed.”
//
The sound of clashing Keyblades reverberated through the empty woods. Xion pressed the unknown Keyblade wielder in front of her with a rapid flurry of strikes, alternating weapons, Oblivion and Oathkeeper bearing down on her and forcing her back through the trees. Like a dancer being led, the Organization member continuously gave ground, deflecting or dodging Xion’s attacks. She was fast, but she couldn’t compete with Xion’s sheer aggression. Xion knew that if she just caught her, she could tear the woman apart.
“Who are you?” Xion hissed between blows.
The Keyblade wielder leapt up and back, landing on a thin tree branch before flipping off of it and skipping backward across the ground, putting as much space between herself and Xion as possible. Xion followed, a blade’s length behind her.
“I’m Number XV,” the stranger said through gritted teeth, her thin blue Keyblade deflecting a blow from Oblivion. “And you must be XIV. The Keyblade’s chosen. The traitor.”
The Keyblade ’s chosen… That was Roxas’s title.
I guess it ’s mine now, too.
“I meant your name,” Xion spat back.
Fifteen didn’t answer, instead using the brief delay in Xion’s next attack to get in one of her own, a rough horizontal slash aimed at Xion’s midsection. She managed to block it, but the force of the blow still sent her skidding.
The fifteenth member of Organization XIII? Xion grimaced.
“They’re using you,” Xion said.
“Shut up!”
The two fell back into the rhythm of the fight, trading blows across broad swaths the forest. Fifteen’s movement was livening up, her parries and retreats nimble and acrobatic. She leapt and cartwheeled into and out of Xion’s reach, supplementing her strikes with sporadic magic attacks—missiles of fire and bludgeons of ice that forced Xion away. Their duel flowed through the chilled woods, from tree to ground to air and back again, flitting back and forth, the din of clashing Keyblades punctuated by the gunshot sounds of ice-petrified trees exploding.
Fifteen, whoever she was, was tough. And Xion was certain that the girl was getting stronger as they fought. If she didn’t do something, Xion wouldn’t be fighting Fifteen—she’d be training her.
Xion jumped, and Fifteen jumped after her. They met in midair, intersecting vectors. Xion slashed at Fifteen’s chest as the Organization’s newest warrior twisted in midair, slightly changing the trajectory of her movement to swing at Xion even as Oblivion bore down on her. Xion’s strike missed. Fifteen’s didn’t.
Both girls landed on opposite sides of a small clearing. Fifteen landed gracefully, breathing hard. Xion barely landed on her feet, her knees taking far more of the force of the landing than she had intended. She felt blood trickle down her leg. Fifteen had scored a gash through the upper edge of Xion’s left thigh, causing pain and numbness to spread from the wound and down the rest of her leg.
Xion turned to face Fifteen, pulling in a mouthful of abrasive chilled air.
The two watched each other warily. Both were winded. They both knew this would end soon. Xion took the pause to consider her next move. She could heal, but Cure magic was taxing on her. Using it would eat up magic energy that she might need. She had been trying to hold back, not wanting to unleash any of her deeper power in case she needed it later. Fifteen, after all, wasn’t the toughest target in this forest. Beast’s Heartless was still out there. And this wound, while painful, wasn’t crippling. Yet.
Fifteen walked toward Xion, launching a Fire spell in pace with her step. Xion blocked it with both blades crossed, digging her heels in even as she was forced to take a half step back. Fifteen kept moving. She sent off another round of Fire, then another. Xion blocked the second and the third, pushing them aside. The fourth knocked her off balance, breaking her guard. The fifth hit true. It exploded in Xion’s face, scorching her hair and coat, the force flinging her onto her back.
Fifteen stopped a meter from Xion’s face. She hefted her Keyblade, its thin metal twinkling against the moonlight, looming above the fallen replica. “Traitor.”
Fifteen’s lips, peeking out from beneath her hood, twisted in triumph.
Xion looked up at her and sneered.
I ’m not that easy to beat.
Xion shouted in wordless defiance, a groan that grew into a roar. She sat up and lashed out with her Keyblades, light covering them and shooting outward in all directions. “Is that all you’ve got?!”
The force of the outburst sent Fifteen backpedaling, and Xion used the magic power to propel herself back to her feet. She was glowing, her Keyblades armored in luminescence. She charged, swinging her Keyblades and sending out cascading shockwaves of light along the ground. Fifteen just kept retreating, overwhelmed by Xion’s sudden surge in power.
“It’s time to finish this!” Xion shouted. “Are you ready?!”
She spun, throwing one of her Keyblades. As it flew, it became a perfect disk of light.
Fifteen stopped retreating and knocked the Keyblade away with a contemptuous, one-handed cut. She didn’t realize that Xion had thrown the second one.
Oblivion moved through Fifteen’s chest, the light energy not breaking skin but searing in and out of it, a burn defying the law of physics. She screamed and fell to her knees as Xion’s Keyblades returned to her. Xion advanced, jumping high and landing directly in front of Fifteen.
Xion pointed Oathkeeper at her opponent, taking a little pleasure in the sudden reversal. “I’m not the traitor. It’s the Organization you should be worried about.”
Xion never got to hear Fifteen’s reply. A strangled, animal cry, pure resounding pain, tore through the forest around them. The trees parted and shattered.
Beast’s Heartless was back. It barreled toward them, teeth and claws bared.
//
Xaldin’s lances caressed the air, dancing around him in broad, lazy strokes while Riku circled him, probing his guard. A strike—Riku thrust forward with his Keyblade, toward the back of Xaldin’s neck. Xaldin didn’t move, but his lances did, almost too fast to see, filling the space between Riku’s moving blade and Xaldin’s neck with a latticework of steel. Riku’s Keyblade glanced off of the first lance, and then all six of them struck back, two by two, in sweeping airy motions. Riku blocked two and jumped away from the third. The whole time, Xaldin stood in the middle of the clearing, his arms crossed behind his back, lingering, indifferent.
Riku strafed around Xaldin, then lunged again, doggedly trying another angle. This time, it was a horizontal cut aimed for Xaldin’s shoulder—if it struck, it would take his arm clean off. The lances were there again, blocking and striking back, this time in two groups of three, each one driving after Riku tip first. Riku jumped away again and went back to strafing, his Keyblade held up in his usual high ready stance. The wind whistled.
“I know what you’re doing,” Xaldin said, sneering. He swept his arms out and his weapons came to him. He took one in each hand, balanced a third under his right arm, and the other three returned to their defensive perimeter, but closer, tighter. “Have you figured me out yet, boy? Satisfied?”
Riku frowned. He was learning things. Xaldin’s guard seemed to be impenetrable, but the lances didn’t move instantaneously. And, importantly, Xaldin didn’t seem to be able to move all six of them fully independently from one another. Either they were in some sort of formation, or they moved one at a time. Good to know. But that insight wasn’t going to be enough to win this.
“Ahhh,” Xaldin continued. “The silent treatment, I see. Well, here. Let me help you.”
Xaldin finally moved. He flew close to the ground carried by a draft of suddenly warm air. Riku took the brief moment, the gap between when Xaldin advanced and when he arrived, to draw out the darkness, taking a deep breath to center himself as he let the power flow. It tingled, like static electricity squeezing his limbs, surging up and down. He felt his body loosen, his muscles suddenly lighter, faster.
Xaldin arrived. The first thing Riku felt was the wind battering his cheeks, tugging on his hair. It was lucky, he mused, that he was wearing the blindfold. It kept the wind from getting into his eyes. The second thing he felt was the force of Xaldin’s lances against his guard—one, two, three, four, five, six—each swiping at him, each from a different angle, carried by the the movement of Xaldin’s body and the small tornado building around him. Letting his dark-enhanced senses guide him, Riku responded in kind, swinging the Way to Dawn through a frantic sequence of parries—one, two, three, four, five, six—deflecting each weapon, sometimes blocking the lances mere centimeters away from cutting Riku down. Xaldin continued to advance, hovering off the ground, a whirlwind given purpose. Between the blindfold and the combat, Riku couldn’t see Xaldin’s grin. But he could, somehow, feel it.
“I know you. You’re the one who went on a rampage through our operations at Castle Oblivion. I read the reports,” Xaldin said. “How many of our number did you kill, boy?”
“Enough to not be scared of you!” The words came out forced, as Riku was spending most of his energy and focus warding off Xaldin’s constant assault. How he seemed to be able to have a conversation as he spun around like that, Riku had no idea. Unfortunately, Riku had other problems.
For example: Now that Xaldin was using his own body to help, moving all six lances independently was, apparently, doable.
Also: He was getting faster.
Worse: the constant gusts of wind, Xaldin’s magic of choice, were getting strong enough to threaten Riku’s balance. With each move he made, he risked being bowled over.
No choice, then. Riku opened himself up to even more darkness. His power was like a sieve: on one end were all the darkest, most unlikeable parts of his heart. His jealousy, his anger, his wrenching grief at all he’d done and all he’d lost because of it. To access his darkness, he found he needed to touch those parts of himself. Not indulging—just touching. Taking their shape and their temperature, noting their texture, their taste. Then he allowed the invisible, quiet energy that lurked in those places, the magic or spirit that bound them to his heart, to move through the sieve. The power of darkness came out the other side. The wider he opened the filter, the more power flowed.
To overpower Xaldin, Riku drew in as much power as he could manage. He jumped up and backward, even faster now, getting out of reach of Xaldin’s advance long enough to summon and throw a ball of dark fire. The floating lances swirled out to meet it, the flame fizzling against their flashing steel. The lancer followed, redoubling his assault, forcing Riku back into a wild rhythm of defenses as they both drifted to the ground. It wasn’t a victory, but it was proof that Riku could slow Xaldin down—and that his magic was powerful enough for Xaldin to feel the need to block it. That was enough for him to plan his next move.
When Riku hit the ground, he jumped back again, calling darkness into his Keyblade. Since he started using it, he’d noticed that the Keyblade acted like a focus for his power, drawing in and enhancing whatever he gave it. Like a magnifier for his heart. Now, his heart screamed darkness, and when he swung his blade hungry blasts of purple and red soared out of it. Three of Xaldin’s lances came forward to meet the first pair of blasts, heading them off. Riku kept swinging, overwhelming the lances with power. Xaldin stopped his advance, and gestured, sending the other three to aid the defense. Riku kept his bursts going, building power as he went, using everything he had to break Xaldin’s guard. Eventually, it worked, the lances slowly being pushed back from the onslaught—and Riku followed them with darkness-enhanced speed, striking the lances now with his Keyblade directly. One, two, three, four, five, six: against Riku’s barrage, they all went flying.
Xaldin staggered backward, the force of Riku’s blows obviously affecting his control over his weapons. Then Riku, instead of advancing, disappeared, fading into a shadow under his feet. He reappeared a second later—right behind Xaldin. He brought his Keyblade down in one heavy swing, aimed directly at the back of Xaldin’s neck.
It stopped in midair. Riku pushed, but the blade wouldn’t move. That’s when Riku felt it: a swirling mass of air, tightly packed around Xaldin, a bubble just inches out from his skin. A hurricane compressed into a shield. And Riku, no matter how hard he pushed, just… couldn’t… break it.
This, Riku thought, was a problem.
Xaldin craned his head back as far as he could, glancing contemptuously at Riku with one eye.
“Are you frightened yet?”
Another burst of wind hit Riku in the chest, sending him tumbling back into the woods. Xaldin, his weapons re-assembled, turned and followed.
//
Xion barely managed to leap out of the way in time. Beast’s Heartless roared as it charged into the place where Xion was approximately a second ago. It reared up to its full extension and then slammed its hands into the ground, sending shockwaves of dark power out in all directions. Xion blocked and let the echoes of Beast’s strength push her deeper into the trees. When the attack was finished, she tried to push forward but stumbled, falling onto one knee, her torn tendons like dead meat beneath her.
Fine. Healing it is.
“Cure!” She lifted her Keyblades and let the magic flow. The pain in her leg and side disappeared, her flesh and clothing repaired.
(She always wondered about that—why did Cure magic fix her clothes? She had asked Axel one time, but he didn’t have a good answer. Something about their clothes being “magic compatible”—she was pretty sure he had made it up.)
The exertion of the magic still left her panting, though, even without the wound. She took a split second to look around and get the lay of the land. Beast’s Heartless stood in the tiny clearing it had created, seemingly catching its breath after that display of strength. And Fifteen… Xion had lost track of her. Xion thought she had maybe seen the woman roll out of the way of Beast’s advance at the last moment, but she couldn’t be sure. She could be dead, crushed under the behemoth’s feet, or she could have escaped. Xion didn’t have time to think about which one she’d prefer. Xion had made a promise to Belle. It was a time to keep it.
“Beast!” The Heartless jerked its head toward Xion at the sound of her voice. Xion nodded, and steeled herself. There was enough of him still in there to recognize his name, at least. Which made what she had to do all the more painful. And all the more important.
“I’m going to put an end to this,” Xion said.
She ran at Beast, and then it felt like everything started moving at once.
Before she knew it, Xion’s entire field of view was encompassed by Beast’s hulking form. She jumped constantly, trying to keep at level with his head, cutting at his shadowflesh wherever she could find it. Beast fought like something feral and furious, chitinous claws and jagged teeth seemingly everywhere at once, less like it was trying to kill Xion and more like it was trying to devour the whole damn forest. Knives of darkness shot from its claws, matching the blades of light from Xion’s swords. The Heartless roared constantly. Xion could sense Beast’s pain and fury. A raw heart turned monstrous in its grief.
Xion knew what it was like to fight monsters, and she knew what it was like to be one, too. In this very world she had fought a giant Heartless with Roxas. He had trusted her, then, with his Keyblade, unknowingly offering her more than just the means to stay in the Organization’s good graces. Roxas’s Keyblade was why she existed. And she had taken it, again, when she became the monster. That monster had consumed her and Roxas both, and by some cruel stroke of fate it had only spat her back out.
Her monster was still with her, too. You never lost the monsters inside of yourself, Xion felt; they just went to sleep. Xion’s best hope was that she could finish everything she had to do before hers decided to wake up again.
Xion jumped high, the claws of Beast’s right hand barely missing the soles of her boots. She flipped forward in the air, crossing and then swinging out her Keyblades as she fell back past Beast’s face. She raked both blades through one of his lifeless yellow eyes.
She landed crouched, and then jumped clear as Beast took two fumbling steps backward, howling in pain. It was the first time she had ever seen a Heartless react like that. Like it could feel pain. She hesitated.
“Beast!” It was her voice, but it wasn’t Xion speaking. It felt like—like a vice against her chest, like something she could vaguely recall Sora having learned about in school once. A heart attack. Everything tingled; everything hurt. She felt, suddenly, far away from her own body. Watching from somewhere above.
“Beast.” Xion watched her body step forward once, carefully. Another step. She lowered her Keyblades. “Do you recognize me? It’s okay. We don’t have to do this.”
Then Xion was there again, thrown violently back into her own head, barely able to make sense of the sudden rush of her senses snapping back into place, or the sadness in her core. She was looking at Beast, who hesitated, just for a moment. Their eyes met, Nobody to Heartless, Replica to the original’s dear friend.
“It’s me,” Xion said, truth and lie alike. “It’s Sora.”
She looked at Beast with a warmth she knew wasn’t hers, and the Heartless looked back.
For a moment, it almost seemed like it was working.
Then their gaze broke, and Beast roared again. It lifted its head, and a massive ball of energy began forming in front of its mouth. It ballooned outward, crackling with dark electricity as it grew to the size of a train car. With a final shout, Beast sent it flying, where it burst into pieces somewhere over the canopy.
Xion choked back the heat of Sora’s tears as she channeled her light into a barrier. Beast’s attack vaporized trees and charred the ground. Xion’s barrier held—barely. When it was over, her breath was short again from the exertion.
Okay, then. Sorry, Sora.
//
As Riku fought for his life against Xaldin, his thoughts drifted, as they often did, to Sora. Fighting Sora was like fighting a bludgeon—forceful, insistent, a heavy and unending burst of forward momentum. Losing to Sora was a matter of drive: Sora’s determination was just unbeatable. Fighting Xaldin was… different. He was like a perfectly smooth, round stone. Every strike just slid off of him like flowing water, leaving him pristine. Without blemish. Xaldin didn’t have to push, really. He just had to persist.
Sora and Xaldin were similar in only this one way: when it counted, Riku just. Couldn’t. Do it.
Too much had changed. Riku knew how much darkness still lived inside of him. He would never forget winning that power from Ansem, in the depths of Castle Oblivion. He had won his freedom, and learned to wield his oppressor’s chains as weapons. But his heart was different now. Everything was different, now. He knew where the power was. But he didn’t know how to touch it. Without it, he just wasn’t—wasn’t enough. Too slow, too heavy.
Too weak.
When Riku’s guard inevitably failed, and Xaldin’s lances inevitably hit, they cut deep, spattering streaks of blood against the frigid ground.
Riku’s head spun. His ears rang. He heard his feet crunch on bramble and twigs as he stumbled backward, and it was the only sound in his reality, magnified booming crackle, an earthquake at his feet. His world, torn clean apart.
Riku fell, gashes along his side and abdomen sapping all his strength away. He raised his hand, drawing healing magic to it. The showering light flowed over him, and he felt the shock subside as quickly as it came. But he had no strength left. No fight left in him. He fell against a tree and stayed there, his back to it, as Xaldin settled on the ground, the wind around him fading away. His lances hovered over Riku, aimed at his heart. Xaldin looked down at the Keyblade wielder. His eyes were still, cold as the ground beneath them.
“Any last words?” The way Xaldin said it, it was hard to tell whether it was a taunt or an offer. That’s how it was, with these Organization people. You could never tell if they were sincere. They might not have known themselves.
Riku let his eyes close. Through the haze of the blindfold, he’d seen enough.
“Sora… Sora will stop you.”
“Ah, yes,” Xaldin said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you?”
Silence.
Riku braced himself for a killing blow that never came.
“Do you feel that?” It was Xaldin. “I suppose rage can only sustain a broken heart for so long…”
Riku heard a familiar sound, a hissing ripple of wind. He lifted a hand to pull the blindfold away from one of his eyes. Xaldin was gone.
//
In the Organization, they had always called them “Limits.” A Limit was your final burst of strength, the attack you went with when you had absolutely nothing left to give. The most powerful, the most desperate, the most destructive. Your last gasp. Either victory or death.
Xion’s was a good one.
She took a deep breath, and all of her synthetic body became light. She rose from the ground, hovering in front of Beast’s Heartless, an angel from in between.
The light poured out of her, solidified, and struck. Solid cylindrical beams lifted up from the ground like geysers, each topped with the crown that had adorned her face when she became Xemnas’s monster. This was the power of the puppet, all the light that the memories of the hero of the Keyblade could muster.
The beams streamed forward and struck Beast’s Heartless, burning it, pushing it back. She could sense its weakness, and she kept going. More and more beams flowed out of her. She sent the light out until her strength was extinguished. If she had counted the beams, she would have found that there were 13 of them in toto. She would have hated the irony.
The Limit over, Xion diminished and fell back to the ground, again merely an exhausted girl with borrowed Keyblades. Her shoulders slumped, the burden of her arms’ weight nearly too much to handle.
Beast’s Heartless was still standing, too, but only just so. It seemed too wounded to move, and so the two of them stood, again at an impasse, both of them struggling to find the strength to offer the final blow.
Shinggg. The sound of whining metal cut through the detente.
Beast’s Heartless stiffened.
Fell.
Faded away.
Beast’s heart drifted past the canopy of the trees, past this world’s moon, into the starlight beyond.
When Beast’s body was nothing but smoke, Fifteen stood in the gap, one hand on her outstretched Keyblade, the other on her chest, cradling a wound.
A moment after the deed was finished, Fifteen dropped her Keyblade and fell, her strength extinguished.
//
Xion’s head buzzed with shock. Beast was defeated, his heart set free from the Heartless. But she wasn’t the one who did it.
A beat passed. Reality shivered, and Xaldin stepped through a Corridor of Darkness.
Xaldin walked past Xion, stopping over Fifteen’s unconscious body.
“So the deed is done, then? The mission is complete, though not without… complication.”
Bending over, he scooped Fifteen up in one arm. Only then did he look at Xion, who stood frozen, too tired and stunned to do anything but watch.
“Did you do this to her, or did he?” Xaldin asked. Xion didn’t answer. “No matter, I suppose. What a fascinating end to today’s work, wouldn’t you agree, Xion? This is where the heart’s folly takes you. To ruin, and to the desolation of all you hold dear.”
He smirked. “And finding you here was a bonus indeed. I look forward to trying your strength myself, when the time comes.”
Another Corridor opened, and Xaldin and Fifteen left the world.
Xion dropped to her knees and cried.
She was so lost in her own grief that she didn’t even hear, minutes later, when Riku approached her from behind, his head held low.
“Xion. Are you okay?”
She struggled to speak.“Riku… I failed. Beast’s Heartless was defeated, but I wasn’t the one who did it. I-I couldn’t keep my promise.”
Riku reached out his hand to touch her shoulder, but stopped short. He held his hand there, regarding it like he didn’t quite recognize it. “I’m sorry.”
With Riku here, Xion’s reverie was broken. She wiped her face with a gloved palm and stood. On the ground beneath her, her tears began to freeze.
“I need to go tell Belle what happened,” she said, still not turning to face her comrade. “Are you coming?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “There are some things I need to take care of.”
She heard his footsteps, and then the hiss of a portal opening. She turned.
Viewed from the back, Riku looked smaller, somehow. Beaten.
Xion felt a sudden, jarring shock of protectiveness toward her Other’s best friend. “Riku! Wait!”
If he heard her, he didn’t listen, and soon she found herself alone in the woods.