Chapter Text
You wake up with a splitting headache.
Everything about your waking is wrong. You shift, drawing in a breath of stale air, and feel gravel biting into the soft skin of your cheek. The pain of the headache is there, throbbing red in the back of your eyes, but it feels… hollow. Your whole body feels hollow. Your eyes are glued shut by grit, peeling apart slowly and painfully when you force them open. You have no idea how long you’ve been asleep, but it feels like days.
You see a broken cobblestone road stretch out before you. You’re lying on your side, one arm pinned beneath you, cheek to the stone. The ground feels piercingly cold when you shift your hand, and it’s beginning to seep into your skin through your thin clothing. You may have been asleep for a while, but something, or someone, put you here recently.
Grimacing, you force your arms under you and push up into a sitting position. The world spins in a painful circle around you as the blood shifts away from your head. You freeze, breathing shallowly until the ache ebbs back to a dull throb. There’s nothing but broken stone and decrepit buildings around you—empty, with no sound but the wind and your own pained breathing.
I should be afraid.
The thought occurs to you suddenly. You should be afraid, waking up in a strange place, with no memory of how you got here. With no memory of anything that came before this awakening, you realize. A particularly vicious throb in your temple nearly sends you back to the ground. You grit your teeth and ride it out, focused on taking in shuddering breaths. You should be afraid, but you’re not. You should remember what came before, but you don’t. There should be someone here with you, you feel, but there isn’t.
There’s just you, alone, and you’ve got to move.
It isn’t fear that drives you to stand, slowly and painfully, and stagger away. It’s instinct, cold and raw. Something put you here, unconscious, and recently too. Your clothing is ripped and stained in ways that make you wonder how the skin beneath isn’t torn to shreds. It feels as if it should be torn, a phantom pain sitting on the top of your numb flesh. Something terrible happened to you. Something bad put you there, and it could come back at any second.
Your legs strengthen as you move through the winding streets, taking turns randomly in the hopes that whatever—whoever—hurt you won’t be able to follow. As your legs stabilize, your steps also become quieter, until you’re moving as soundlessly as you can. There’s…something in the back of your head, beyond the pain of the headache. It feels almost like fear, but it’s so quiet and distant that you can barely tell its there at all. It feels like you’re… you’re…
Dissociated.
The word comes to you in a flash, and suddenly everything makes sense: why your emotions are so hollow, why your body feels like you’re puppeteering it from a distance, why your chest feels so empty. You’re dissociated. The feeling of wrongness and danger only intensifies with your understanding. What did this to you? What was so bad that it drove your spirit from your body?
It is a mistake to wonder.
Darkness and yellow eyes and pain. Someone is screaming and you’re running, and your hands are full but then they’re empty and it feels so wrong, wrong, wrong. A surge of fear so strong that you’re choking on it. Pain raking down your back, head slamming hard into stone, and—
This time the pain in your head does send you staggering, nearly falling to your knees until your shoulder hits the cold stone of a crumbling wall. You gasp raggedly, pained noises escaping the back of your throat as you press hard on your temples. The pain consumes you until, like a wave rolling back to sea, it’s no longer blinding. You reel, staggering backward, disoriented by the pain and your conspicuous lack of emotional response to it. Everything is so wrong.
You force yourself to continue onwards, because what else is there to do? The cold is starting to settle into your bones, sending shivers rattling up and down your spine. You wrap your arms around yourself, eyelids drooping with exhaustion and cold and emptiness, but it hardly helps. Even if your clothes weren’t shredded, they’re not built to withstand this chill. You pass beneath an arch and into a courtyard of some kind, as hollow and decrepit as everything else you’ve seen so far, painted in dim greyish light and deep purple shadows. You head for the exit on the opposite side.
When you’re halfway there, a deep male voice speaks from behind you: “Well now, what have we here?”
You react automatically, spinning to face the speaker, weight shifted onto the balls of your feet, body angled to fight or to run. Your hands move too, one rising into a guard position level with your chest, the other back and slightly away from your body, elbow bent at a shallow angle and fingers curled to grasp… something. Something important, that you’re missing. You can’t remember.
But you don’t have time to think about it, because a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a smile just a few shades short of predatory is leaning against the arch you just passed under. In a moment of mutual stillness, you take each other in.
His one yellow eye is piercing, and you feel like a rabbit pinned beneath the gaze of a hawk. The other is hidden behind a black patch. His face is scarred, but if his body is too then you can’t see it beneath the sleek black greatcoat he’s wearing. Even his hands are concealed by black gloves. He has no visible weapons, but you feel, deep in your gut, that he’s dangerous.
No, not just dangerous—that he’s deadly.
But is he deadly to you?
Whatever he sees in his own perusal of you, he seems to approve of. The edge of his smirk climbs a little higher, into something like anticipation. He’s still leaning against the wall, posture utterly relaxed, but you’re not fooled. This man is ready to do… something. You can’t tell what. Attack? Defend, if you attack? Or perhaps he’s prepared to catch you if you bolt.
Despite the hollow feeling of dissociation, which you know from experience must be reflected in your expression, he seems to be able to read you like a book.
“Woah, easy there, doll,” he says, pushing upright and holding his hands out in a gesture of peace. You tense at the movement, taut as a bowstring, but stay where you are. At least, until he takes a slow step forward. You can’t stop the two steps you take back, away from him. “Hey, hey, I’m not here to hurt you,” he croons, watching your retreat with a predatory eye.
You don’t know this man, but you can hear the condescension in his voice. He continues to approach, slow and steady. Even if he doesn’t mean you harm, he knows he could hurt you as much as he wants. He’s dangerous. Beyond dangerous. This is a game to him. You feel like a little girl staring into the eyes of a wolf.
You desperately wish there was something separating the two of you. A barrier? No, that’s not it. Something else. Something important. Your headache spikes again, and you have to squint against the pain to keep your vision from blurring. He’s still watching you, reading every minute shift in your expression, every tensed line in your body, as you match his approach with your retreat.
A thought from earlier suddenly returns to you, amidst the throbbing pain. He doesn’t have a visible weapon.
A weapon! That’s what you want. Your hand is curled at your side, still ready, but there’s nothing there. There should be something there.
“You one of those silent types, or is it just me?” he asks, wolfish smile fixed in place. Everything about him is beginning to read as insincere. “C’mon, I promise I don’t bite.”
Something about that phrase sends a thrill of adrenaline surging through your veins. Weapon, weapon, I need a weapon, you think, suddenly consumed by the need to feel weight in your palm. The headache surges again, worse than before. With a strangled shout you fall to your knees, but only one hand goes to your temple.
The other is busy holding a blade.
The man freezes mid-step, though you barely realize it over your strangled breathing. The pain in your head—it was because of this. This is what you needed. You stand back to your feet, shivering, and the stance you retake feels much more natural with the weight of the blade to counterbalance. He’s stopped staring at you, to busy gazing with a strange expression at the weapon in your hand. You see his hands twitch, his own feet shifting automatically into a combat-ready stance. The tension ratchets up a notch.
Your breath has calmed back into a steady rhythm by the time his gaze returns to your face. It’s so openly hungry that you scramble a few steps back on reflex. Your grip tightens on the hilt of the blade that has put such a horrible expression on his face.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he breathes out, “you are exactly what we’ve been looking for.”
It’s too much. Your instincts scream at you to move. Your body is in motion without you directing it, like a coiled spring suddenly released. You turn and bolt for the nearest exit.
The man howls with laughter, loud enough to reach you over the roaring in your ears. Suddenly, impossibly, he’s in front of you, and even as you scramble to stop or dodge you can’t keep yourself from slamming directly into him. The impact drives the breath from your lungs. A hand wraps tightly around your wrist, keeping your blade to a harmless angle, and then suddenly there’s a force beneath your chest and the world is turned upside-down.
Too quick for thought, you find yourself facing the ground, sword arm trapped by his hand on your wrist, one leg pinned by a distressingly strong arm. You realize that he has you slung over his shoulder like a prize catch. In the space of a breath, there’s freezing darkness around you, followed immediately by a white light so blinding that you squeeze your eyes shut.
Survival instincts kick back in and you struggle, gritting your teeth as you pull against the iron grip on your sword arm. Your free leg scrabbles for any purchase it can find, but the black coat is so slick that your bare foot slides right off. It’s like being trapped in the hold of a marble statue, for all the progress you make. Worse, this feels like something you should easily be able to escape, if you had your memories.
“Settle down there, dollface,” he croons, mocking your struggle. You try to open your eyes to glare at him, only to wince and quickly shut them again.
In a louder, sing-song voice, he calls out “look what I found~!”
There comes a series of strange sounds, almost like the rushing of the wind, but you’re distracted from it when the man bends down and sets your bare feet on the blindingly white floor. The stone is surprisingly warm against your toes, or perhaps you’re just that cold. He keeps ahold of your sword arm, not even bothering to dodge when you aim a frustrated kick at him, and suddenly spins you around and pins you to his chest. He holds your sword arm aloft, almost triumphantly, and no amount of squirming gets you even an inch toward freedom.
A strange kind of tension is starting to build in your skull when a different voice, much deeper than your captor’s, speaks from in front of you. “Be still,” he says, not quite cold so much as utterly impassive. “You are in no danger here, girl.”
There’s something compelling about the sheer calm in his command. You find yourself settling down instinctively, breathing hard, eyes opened to narrow slits and directed to the floor. Your captor’s chest is warm against your back. You can feel the slick material of his coat in the places where your shirt is ripped.
“Good girl,” your captor says into your ear, and the sheer condescension makes you try and stomp his foot on principal. Of course, your bare foot does nothing against his boot, and he snorts derisively at your attempt.
“Xigbar,” the other man says, a hint of censure creeping into his tone. You look up, but your eyes still haven’t adjusted. The man just looks like a black-coated blob haloed in white: a blob that’s a whole lot closer than you expected. Gloved fingers brush the bottom of your jaw and you jerk back, startled, hitting your head on the silver accents of your captor’s coat.
“Be still,” he commands again, taking hold of your chin. Your stinging eyes finally adjust, and a tanned face with startling amber eyes comes into focus. One look tells you that you’re not leaving this place unless he says so. Paradoxically, this does more to calm you than any reassuring phrases ever could. You’re trapped. What will come, will come, and you had best be level-headed in dealing with it.
The man keeping you pinned, Xigbar, chuckles as he feels the tension leave your body. “You’ve got a real way with kids, boss-man,” he says in amusement.
The amber-eyed man shoots Xigbar a quelling look before releasing your jaw and turning his attention to the sword that’s still being held aloft by your captor’s grip on your wrist. “A Keyblade,” he says contemplatively.
The word instantly brings you to your knees. Pain explodes behind your eyes and you choke on a breath, going limp. It’s only Xigbar’s arm across your chest that keeps you from falling to the ground. “Woah!” he exclaims, but you can only feel it through the rumbling of his chest. All other noise is drowned out by the ringing in your ears.
Keyblade. Keyblade. Keyblade.
The word pounds through your skull with the subtle force of a sledgehammer. It’s important. You know it’s important. But you still can’t remember. It’s like the pain you felt back in the courtyard, trying to remember that a weapon even belonged in your hand in the first place. There’s something you’re meant to know about your Keyblade and the things that came before this moment. Something close.
But whatever it is, it slips away from you, and the pain does too. As the ringing in your ears dies down, you realized that someone is talking. No, that several people are talking: Xigbar, the amber-eyed man, and a waspish-sounding voice. Your hand is empty, Keyblade gone, but now that you know where to look, you can feel its presence in your spirit. It would come if you called. Exhaustion crashes over you. You realize that your eyes closed at some point, and that you’ve been shifted into a bridal carry with your chin tucked to your chest.
Cold hands suddenly grab your face, turning your head to the left.
“Come now, open your eyes. I know you’re still awake,” says the waspish voice. You force them open obediently, marveling at how leaden they feel. A man with green eyes and stringy blond hair is peering closely at you with an analytical, searching gaze. “Hmph,” he says, releasing your face. “She’s fine. I’ll have to look deeper to see why the—why that word triggered a pain response, but otherwise this is just the torpor of a newborn Nobody. Leave her somewhere to sleep for a day or two and no doubt she’ll have recovered fully.”
Your head drifts back to your chest, then sideways to rest on the shoulder of the person carrying you when they shift their grip.
“Put her in a room and bring her to me when she awakes,” says the amber-eyed man from somewhere to your right.
“Sure thing, Xemnas,” the person carrying you says agreeably. Xigbar, of course. Then the cold is back, briefly, before it vanishes into warmth.
“You know, doll,” Xigbar says conversationally, as if you aren’t half unconscious and utterly unresponsive already, “I’m not sure you’re supposed to be here.”
You’re set on something soft-ish and a blanket is tossed carelessly over you. Gloved fingers ghost briefly against your forehead.
“Rest while you can. I have a feeling this is the last time you’ll have a chance for quite a while.”