Family Fears

by ZScalantian

Summary:

Sora has missed a lot of his mom’s birthdays so he’s off to get her something special.

Notes:

• For Serie11.

Chapter 1

The familiar perpetual golden glow bathed Twilight Town’s brick streets and buildings, but the air held a crisp bite Sora hadn’t expected to find here.  After freezing his butt off in Arendelle, he’d started keeping a long-sleeved jacket on the gummi ship.  Good thing he’d brought it today.  The pedestrians he watched from his backwards perch on the gently rocking, clacking trolley were equally bundled up in jackets, coats, fuzzy hats, even gloves.  Lots of them were carrying bright bags and parcels from the shopping district stores.

As the trolley passed Le Grand Bistro, Sora hopped down and ran across the square.  He passed the handful of diners sitting outside under the radiating heat lamps.  By their expressions, they were enjoying their late lunches.  The delicious aromas of fresh coffee, warm bread, and sautéing vegetables filled the dining room.  Sora inhaled deeply, savoring them, as he made his way back to the kitchen.  A crew of white-uniformed chefs were hard at work inside.  

“Hi, everybody!” he greeted, and they all looked over and smile, calling welcomes back. There was a high-pitched squeak and Little Chef came running along the counter.  With a leap, the head chef landed on Sora’s shoulder.

“Hey, Little Chef!” Sora laughed as the rat climbed into his hair.  When he felt the little guy settle in, he relayed the reason for his visit.  “So my mom’s birthday’s coming up and, uh…” He laughed softly and ducked his head, “…I’ve kinda missed a lot of them.  I wanna make up for it, so I thought it’d be nice to make her something special.  Maybe that fruit pastry thing, um… tarte aux fruits?”

He held up a heavy bag of mixed fruits.   He’d brought enough to make one for him to take home while still leaving a bunch for the restaurant.  With an excited squeak, Little Chef pulled at his hair, directing him to put the bag on an open station.  As he set it down, some blood oranges spilled onto the counter.  He lunged to prevent them from rolling off and onto the floor, and Little Chef squeaked again at the unexpected motion.

For the next hour he followed Little Chef’s instructions.  He made six pastry shells, cutting together flour and cold butter, then blind baking the crusts.  While they chilled in the industrial-size refrigerator, he whisked together whole milk, egg yolks, cornstarch, sugar, and vanilla.  He heated it over the stove until it thickened into a nice crème pâtissière, then put in a clean bowl in the fridge beside the pastry shells to cool.  He chopped apricots that were so ripe they burst at a touch and cooked them with butter and jam into a glaze.

After that, it was time to get the main attraction: the fruit.  He chopped and sliced away, the blood oranges and sour cherries staining his fingers red.  He wondered as he worked, Little Chef tugging on his hair now and again, why he always worked on a tart recipe different from the one the restaurant normally put out.  This was the recipe he’d learned, so he’d brought the fruit for it, but the tart Le Grand Bistro typically served featured kiwis instead of blood oranges, blueberries, and raspberries instead of grapes and sour cherries.  They did both have strawberries, though!  Too bad he didn’t speak rat or he’d ask why the switch.  Maybe he could ask Donald for some sort of translator spell.  A translation spell couldn’t possibly be harder than the transformation spells the wizard used, right?

Once the crème pat and pies had cooled, he piped the filling into the shells and arranged the glazed fruit on top in artistic patterns: alternating melon and banana for the outer ring, then strawberry and blood orange, with the sour cherry and grapes in the center.  A sprig of mint finished off each tart.  Just as he placed the last green garnish, Donald’s Uncle Scrooge came in.  

Little Chef chittered, calling Scrooge’s attention to them.  

“Ah, my boy, it’s good to see you.  My, don’t those look good!  They’ll be todays specials,” he chortled.

Sora grinned at the praise.  “Thanks, I think I’m getting the hang of it.  Little Chef doesn’t have to yank on my hair so much anymore.”

“Glad to hear it, laddie.  Any chance I can convince you to come by more often?”

At first, Sora swelled with pride; Scrooge thought he was good enough to hire!  His bubble popped when Scrooge continued, “Free help is hard to come by.”

“Is that all I am!?  Free labor?”

“Noo, not at all, you’re a prized asset.  Why, you bring us all these great ingredients no other restaurant in town has,” Scrooge said, mollifying him.  “Actually I was talkin’ to Little Chef and thought it might be nice to have some more seasonal options on the menu.  Something special for people to buy during a special time of year.”

“You want me to go get some new ingredients?”

“Ach, that would be splendid.  It’s so nice of you to volunteer to do that for Little Chef and meself.  I’ve got this special holiday movie playing at the theater this weekend, starring yours truly.  If you could get the ingredients before then…”

The weekend started tomorrow.  Sora scratched his head, wincing.  “But…”  His mom’s birthday was tomorrow.

Little Chef’s eyes were sparkling with anticipation.  Sora didn’t want to let the little guy down.  “Okay, leave it to me!”

“That’s my boy!  I knew I could count on you.” Scrooge clapped him on the back.

Sora grinned at the praise.  He loved helping his friends and hearing them say they could count on him filled him with warmth.  Right then, the back door of the restaurant opened and a familiar face came in.  

“Roxas!”  Sora ran over and wrapped him in a big hug.  Roxas went as stiff as a board and didn’t return the hug, so Sora let him go and rubbed at the back of his neck with a self-conscious laugh. “So… It’s good to see you.  What’re you doing here?”

Roxas gave him a dubious look.  “I work here.”

“As a chef!?”

“No, as a waiter out in the dining room.”

“Cool.  Oh, hey!  Scrooge just asked me to go find some new ingredients.  You want to come with me?”  He didn’t get to hang out with Roxas very often.  Ever since Sora had brought up the idea of introducing him to their parents, he felt like Roxas had been avoiding him.  Xion too.  He didn’t know why; they were great people and great parents, and they both really deserved a family.  Determination poured through Sora like a deep breath.  His family was their family.  Maybe he could get Roxas and Xion to come for the party tomorrow as surprise guests.  Hey mom, ta-da!  I brought home my surprise brother and sister.

Frowning, Roxas shook his head.  “Didn’t you hear me?  My shift’s about to start.”

“Wait, you’re working now?  As in, right now?”

“Yeah?  Why else would I be here?”

Sora’s shoulders slumped.  Too bad.  Would’ve been fun to hang out, and he really wanted a chance to try again at persuading Roxas to visit more of Destiny Islands than just the play island.  Maybe find Xion and convince her.

“Go ahead and go with him, Roxas,” Scrooge said, examining a caprese salad and directing the chef to add more basil.

Sora immediately perked up.  “Really?  You’ll let him have the day off!?”

Scrooge cackled.  “It’s nae really a day off.  Two out looking means twice as many ingredients brought back.”

Sora looked hopefully at Roxas, who crossed his arms skeptically.  “Do I get paid for this?”

“I’ll give you the same bonus Sora gets.”*  

“Come on, Roxas, it’ll be fun,” Sora wheedled.  He didn’t want to push too hard, but he also really, really wanted this.

With a put-upon sigh, Roxas muttered.  “Fine.  Where we headed?”

 

 

Chapter 2

With a roar, a whoosh, and a gust of superheated air that sent ruby rose petals blowing, Sora set the gummi-ship down gently among the flowering bushes and manicured hedges of the Château des Roses.  Sora chattered as he flicked switches and pulled knobs, filling in the grumpy silence by narrating the ship’s shutdown process.  “And that one powers down the boosters I put on the engines, and that one puts the internal power stuff, like the lights and stuff, on standby, ‘cause we’re not gonna be in here, using them, so it’s a waste of power to leave them on…”  He glanced sideways.  Roxas had been grumpily quiet the whole trip over, mainly answering Sora’s questions about Twilight Town and Xion and Lea and Isa with sentence fragments and grunts.  Sora hadn’t worked his way around to asking him to come over to the Islands for the party yet.

His scowl seemed lighter now, though, as he watched Sora’s busy hands.  Sora grinned.  That was progress, getting back to how they’d been before.  “Alright, all done!  Let’s go!”  They took only a few steps away from the ship and a single turn around a hedge before the floral growth hid its bright colors and bulky shape. 

Ever since the curse had been lifted from the Beast - no, Sora corrected himself, Adam, - major changes had come over the castle and its grounds.  The castle’s stones had brightened to fresh, pristine white instead of their former dreary lilac-gray.  Snarled, dead-looking trees had leafed out in emerald and peridot tones; small birds and butterflies flitted among the abundant flowers.  The droning buzz of bees as they went about their business made him think of Pooh Bear and everybody in the Hundred Acre Woods.

“It’s changed a lot around here,” Roxas said, craning his neck back to take in the whole of the castle.

“The curse has been lifted for over a year now.  Wait!” Sora whipped around to stare at his brother.  He was glad he was talking under his own initiative now, but what he’d said…  “You’ve been here before?”

Roxas shrugged.  “A few times.  Xaldin mostly managed this place, but Xion and I got sent here on Heartless-killing missions once in a while, ‘cause of our keyblades.” He stared up at some smiling stone cherubs that used to be snarling gargoyles.  “Xaldin had said he set something in motion here, but I guess everything worked out alright.”

“Yeah,” Sora said, sniffing happily as a breeze blew a sweet, heavy gust of perfume from a nodding pink rose bush along the garden path.  “I remember that.  He tried to trick Beast into not trusting Belle, but Donald, Goofy, and I couldn’t let that happen.”  He grinned over his shoulder.   “He tried to take Belle and the rose, but she hit him and got the rose back.  I wish I’d had my gummi-phone back then, the look on his face was hilarious.”

Roxas snorted.  “I bet.”  Then, after a minute, “I’m glad people fought back against the Organization.”

“Yeah, Belle fought ‘em, Beast fought ‘em, I made a lot of friends who helped me fight them.”  They were almost to the castle steps when a thought struck him.  “You know, Dilan should come back and apologize.”

He didn’t think the Beast - Adam, Adam, he was gonna get it right - would forgive the guardsman right away.  Belle probably would though, once she knew the situation.  Sora was sure they could all be friends eventually.

“Like that’ll ever happen,” Roxas muttered.

“I think he might.”  He caught his skeptical look.  “You guys don’t get along, huh?”

Roxas screwed up his mouth and trudged up the steps.  “It’s not so much that I don’t get along with Dilan, so much as I don’t have anything to do with him or most of the former Organization members.”

Sora took the steps two at a time to catch up.  “Why not?”

He gave him a flat look.  “We were coworkers, not friends.  And they were all lying to me and using me.”

“Yeah, but -”  He scratched the back of his head, thinking of what to say, but all he could come up with was the simple and honest truth, “- but they’re not like that anymore.”

Stopping at the top of the stairs, Roxas shook his head.  “Sora, you forgive people too easily.”

That took Sora aback.  If people were sorry for what they’d done and were trying to be better, then of course he’d forgive them.  He opened his mouth to say so, but Roxas cut him off, turning toward the heavy oaken doors.

“Do we just go in?”

“Huh?  Oh yeah, it’s fine.  They’re my friends.”  He reached for one of the double doors and swung it open.  It didn’t even creak, another reminder of the castle’s changed fortunes.  “See?”

Roxas sighed.  “Of course they are.”

Inside the ornate entry hall, Sora heard a frantic scratching of claws against marble, and a bundle of light brown fur came bouncing and barking towards them.  “Sultan!”. He scooped the dog up, trying to look it in the eyes and only seeing floofy fur and pink tongue.  “Hey, boy.  Where is everybody?”

---

 

Roxas watched Sora laughing as the dog excitedly licked at his face.  He’d snuck through these halls plenty of times with Xion and Xaldin; they’d never encountered so much as a guard dog’s whisker.  (A real dog, not a dog-shaped Heartless, that was.  They’d fought plenty of that bad sort of dog.)

On the other hand, he’d found that stick in a basement hallway.  A real branch with twigs sticking off it had seemed a weird thing to find in a castle.  Even one as falling-apart and unkempt as this one had been at the time.  Maybe the dog had brought it in?  He couldn’t remember whether the stick had been gnawed on or not.  Despite Xion’s concern, it’d been a good, solid stick, reasonable as a weapon. 

He trailed after Sora, noting how the castle really had changed.  The cobwebs had vanished from the corners.  So had the random piles of rubble.  Even the paintings lining the walls seemed brighter, as though years of grime had been scrubbed off them.  Light poured through the tall windows. 

It made his skin prickle.  Habit made him want to hug the walls, stick to the shadows.  It was weird to walk around without worrying about being seen. 

He’d chatted about it with Lea, but problems seemed to roll off Lea like water off oil.  His personality was loud - he never had trouble taking up space.  He didn’t understand what Roxas was getting at, so he’d gone to Xion about it, and Naminé too.  They understood.

He didn’t have quite the same issue they confessed to, feeling unreal, barely tangible.  Like they weren’t supposed to exist.  Roxas was real.  He was himself, and no one else.  The feeling was coiled up right at the core of him, a surety like a defiant, throat-splitting shout.  But that didn’t mean he always felt like he belonged in the worlds.  Twilight Town was the easiest, but even there he sometimes felt dislocated, disconnected.  Like there was no place left open for him, and the world might close up against him and spit him out adrift.

Sora was luckier.  He always fit in, always belonged, no matter the environment.  If it somehow seemed like he didn’t, he just made room for himself.  He slid into place so naturally, Roxas didn’t even think Sora knew that he did it.  “How do you fit in in places you don’t belong?”

“Hum?”  Sora turned to him, face scrunched up due to the wiggling dog still trying to lick his cheek.  “You say something?”

Clearing his throat, Roxas spoke more loudly.  “Where do you think everybody’s gone?”

“Not sure.”  Sora set the dog down and it bounced around their feet, play-growling.  “Let’s go find ‘em.”

The plush red carpet muffled their footsteps, but not Sora’s voice.  “Belle!  Adam!  Lumière!  Cogsworth!  Mrs. Potts!”

“Hush!  Hush!  Keep it down, shouting indoors is very rude.  Now, who…?”  A stout, brown-suited man with a thin mustache came out of a side door.  He blinked with haughty distance at Roxas, who stared back with a confused crease to his brow.

Wasn’t everyone here except the Beast and Belle an animated object?  Furniture and stuff?

The portly man’s expression changed, breaking into a pleased smile as soon as he caught sight of Sora.   “Ah, Sora, you’ve come to visit.  The master will be pleased.”  He peered about for a moment.  “Where are Donald and Goofy?”

“Oh, they’re back in their own wor-, uh, kingdom.  Back in their own kingdom, but I brought another friend with me.  Cogsworth, this is Roxas.”

Cogsworth beamed and bowed.  “My pleasure, I’m sure.”

A lanky figure in yellow stepped into the hall and brightened as soon as he saw them.  “Sora!  How delightful!”  He whipped to the side and scolded, “Cogsworth!  Your manners are atrocious, to leave guests waiting in the hall.”  With lightning speed, he turned back to the boys, smiling brightly.  “Shall I go and tell the master you’re here?”

Sora seemed unphased by the rapid mode-switching.  “Lumière, good to see you!  This is Roxas.” Sora dragged him forward, presenting him to another of the locals.

Lumière’s bow was more sweeping than Cogsworth’s, with many ornamental hand flourishes.   “Our pleasure, monsieur.”

Recognition dawned.   “You’re the candlestick?”

Sora elbowed him.  “I told you, the curse got lifted.”

The lanky man’s eyes widened in surprise and Roxas swore to himself.  To them, he wasn’t supposed to know that.  Or rather, they weren’t supposed to know that he knew.  Well, they’d probably just assume Sora told him.

“I was, but I am fortunately human again.  Though I have not lost my skill at lighting up a room!”

“Really?”

“Indeed!  With my smile and personality, c’est facile!”

This guy had a lot of energy, Roxas thought.  No wonder he and Sora were friends.  “I mean, how was the curse lifted?”

“Ahh,” Lumiere sighed, putting a hand over his heart.  “The power of true love given and returned.  Just in time too, or we would have become furniture for good.”

Huh.  Xaldin had told Roxas that the power of love was weak, easily exploited, and soured.  He was glad to see more evidence of how wrong that was. 

It wasn’t like love was easy.  Or painless.  He still remembered how awful he’d felt when he watched Xion and Axel come to blows.  When he fought them himself.  How betrayal and loss had stung the worse because of the love behind it. 

But even with all the pain, it was his love and attachment that had helped his heart find the replica body Even had made for him; that had guided him like a shooting star to the side of his friends when they needed him.  “Love’s pretty powerful, huh?  No matter what sort it is.”

“It really is!” said a light, sweet voice, and they all turned toward it.  A young woman Roxas recognized as Belle walked down the high-ceiling hall, smiling.  An old man, even shorter than Cogsworth and with eyes the same color as Belle’s, came right behind her.

“Hey, Belle!  This is Roxas.”

Roxas nodded.  He was getting a little tired of being introduced, but Belle’s answering smile was radiantly sweet.  For no reason he could see, she reminded him of Kairi.

“It’s nice to meet you, Roxas.  Let me introduce you both to my father, Maurice.”

The older man nodded genially, his eyes sparkling.

“Hello!”  Sora, loud and exuberant, drowned out Roxas’s much quieter, “Hey there.”

“I didn’t know you had a father,” Sora went on.

Belle’s eyes crinkled as she laughed.  “Everybody has a father.”

Well, thought Roxas, feeling abruptly sour again, not everybody.  

Sora craned around, peering down the hall as if expecting to see somebody else coming.  “Your mom around?”

Both Belle and Maurice looked suddenly more somber.  “No,” Maurice said softly.  “She died a long time ago.”

Sora’s eyes widened and Lumiere and Cogsworth gave him chastising looks.  “Sorry!  I didn’t mean to -”

“It’s alright,” Belle hastened, holding up a hand to forestall further apologies.  “She passed away when I was very small.  It’s not a bad thing, now, to be reminded of her - she was a very lovely person.”

“Oh.  Well, that’s good.”  Sora clearly still felt like he’d put a very large foot wrong, and Belle must have seen that because she set a comforting hand on his shoulder.  “I was very lucky to have her, even for a short time.  How about you?  How are your parents?”

Something constricted in Roxas’s chest.  His eyes darted to Sora and away again.

“They’re great!  Actually, they’re kinda why we’re here.  See, a friend of mine is a chef and I went to their restaurant to make my mom a dessert, and they asked me to go look for some new ingredients but they’ve gotta be seasonal.  I was wondering if you could help us out?”  His eyebrows rose hopefully.

“Ingredients!” Lumiere beamed.  “Why, there is no finer cuisine than that found here in France.  The best ingredients, and the very best food.  Mwah!”  He kissed his fingers expressively.

“I certainly can vouch for the food here,” Belle commented.  “I’ve never eaten so well in my life.”

Cogworth nodded self-importantly.  “Quite right, quite right.  Chef Bouche would be glad to help you.  Lumière, take them to the kitchen.”

“I was just about to!” he sniffed, then turned to the boys, his expression alight again with anticipatory pride.  “Follow me, si vous plait.”

As he led them into an only slightly less elegant section of the castle, Roxas leaned over to Sora and whispered, “Hey, isn’t Little Chef from France?”

“What!?  He is?”

“I think so.”

Sora’s grin was impressed and delighted.  “This same world, you think?”

Roxas shrugged.  “Maybe?”  He glanced down at the dog, which had followed them as though glued to Sora’s shins.  It stopped to briefly sit, chewing on an itch on its butt.  One small brown paw waved in the air, moving in time with the ‘gronf, gronf’ noises.  “But the animals here don’t seem quite as smart as him, so probably a different one.”

Lumiere led them through a maze of halls until they reached a modest pair of double doors.  Roxas could already pick up a heady aroma similar to Little Chef’s kitchen. 

Lumière pushed open the doors with a flourish.  “Our kitchen!”

The appetizing aromas flooded out from the open doors, increasing ten-fold in strength.  It was definitely the same style as Little Chef’s cooking.

“Chef Bouche, let me introduce to you Sora and Roxas.”

A tall graying-blond man in a floppy chef’s hat and apron turned to them, his knife still busily chopping white onions.  A nearly foot-tall cone of his finished work sat in a bowl beside the cutting board.  Roxas’ own experience being around fresh-cut onions made him stop well back from the eye-stinging vapors, but the chef’s steely eyes remained clear.

“How are you not tearing up?” Sora blurted beside him, echoing Roxas’s thought.

“A sharp, cold knife,” came the gruff response.  “You are the one who helped fight off the Heartless.”

The one.  Roxas bristled a little, both at the man’s harsh tone and that he was addressing only to Sora.  Roxas had stopped some pretty major Heartless attacks around here!  But he tamped down the bitterness.  They didn’t know he’d been here before.  And from what he knew of the trouble Xaldin had caused them, he didn’t want them to know he’d also been part of Organization XIII. 

His time as a Nobody made up the larger portion of his existence; he was proud of all the Heartless he’d defeated, and he’d been kept in the dark about the Organization’s real goals - he didn’t feel guilty or ashamed about it, because it wasn’t on him.  But it was all weird and complicated, and explaining it was hard.  He felt awkward enough already, so he’d rather say nothing.

From the corner of his eye, he watched Sora.  Hands behind his head, smile easy as he chatted with the chef.  Roxas’s hands curled into fists, nails digging into his palms, and he made himself look away.  

Everything was so simple for Sora.

Roxas had known how that was for a little while.  When DiZ and Naminé between them had wiped his memories away and plunked him down in the data Twilight Town with a made-up identity, past, friend group, and family.  All the shadows and grief and fury from his short life had been repressed, and he’d fit in.  He’d belonged.

With a rage that made his clenched teeth creak, he wished that he’d ever managed to land one solid hit on DiZ.  He hated what the scientist had left him with - the memories of what it had been like to be a proper somebody, a natural part of a world.  It made the fact that he wasn’t all the more stinging.

“Seasonal ingredients, hm.”  Bouche smoothed his thin mustache and Roxas dragged his mind back on track.

“André!”  The chef snapped his fingers and one of the kitchen attendants came rushing over. “Grab some rose water, lavender, small potatoes, artichokes,  and a few wheels of gruyere cheese from the larder.”

Everything was packed into a large hamper that needed both of them to carry it, one on each end.  Once they had gotten it on board the gummi-ship Roxas voiced something he probably should have mentioned back in the kitchen.

“Umm, Sora?  You realize all of these are seasonal for spring right.”

“So?”

“So it’s winter in Twilight Town.”

“You think that’ll matter?”

“Yeah, I think Mr. McDuck was pretty clear on what he wanted.”

Chapter 3

They tried Agrabah next.  Sora talked the whole flight, almost absent-mindedly piloting his gummi-ship around and through meteor fields, space warps, and occasional Heartless, all the time telling him silly stories about the different worlds he and Donald and Goofy had been to.  Roxas listened to the stories, but his attention was on how Sora controlled the ship: when he turned the steering column and how far.  When he accelerated or slowed.  When he chose to use the blasters and when he dodged.  

It didn’t seem that hard.  When the world of desert sands came into view, he decided that he’d ask Sora for a turn piloting when they left.

The dunes slumping against the high city wall were lower than Roxas remembered, which made sense - he and Xion and Axel had destroyed the Heartless causing the massive sandstorms that made those dunes.  Sora tilted his head back, looking at the tower roofs visible over the wall, then checked something on his gummi-phone.  “Okay, still doing good on time.  So we head to the market, find some ingredients, and get them back to Little Chef, then gotta get home for Mom’s birthday party.”

Roxas frowned.  Birthday party?  He hadn’t agreed to go to that.  Hadn’t even known it was happening.  “Sora, I’m not -”  Sora had already run off towards the city.

“She’s not my mom,” Roxas muttered to himself, setting off at a jog after him.  “And you don’t get to decide what I do.”  

Now that the Heartless problem had been taken care of, the markets of Agrabah were bustling with merchants hawking their wares and buyers passing between stalls.  They walked past booths selling various household goods like pots, pans, lamps, rugs, and knives.  Displays of multi-colored ceramics stood between stalls offering vibrant silks and embossed silver jewelry.  The further they went the more they saw: saddles, swords, raucous and colorful birds.  Eventually, food and produce stalls started to appear among the other goods.  

A swift brown blur leaping across stall canopies caught Roxas’s attention.  With plenty of experience scanning for quick-moving Heartless, it didn’t take him long to identify the small monkey as it leaped to the ground, crouched beside a stall selling fruits.  “Hey, isn’t that…?”  Roxas pointed the monkey out.

Sora followed his finger. “Oh, yeah, that’s… wait, no !  Abu, don’t touch that!”

It was too late.  Abu grabbed a large ruby-red pomegranate from the bottom of a precariously heaped pile of fruit.  With its base disturbed, the entire pile began to tumble down.  It was like watching an avalanche.  The produce spilled from the stall and into the crowded street.  Dozens rolled underfoot, making people trip and crash into each other.  The street transformed from a bustling stream into a chaotic mess.

Sora sprang up a wall, rushed over the crowd’s heads to snatch up Abu and flip onto one of the nearby roofs.  With a grunt, Roxas leaped over a pair of men arguing over dropped and cracked dishware and landed on a wall.  Magic enabled his feet to stick to the yellow plaster, and he ran up and leapt a flat roof in one bound to land near Sora.  He was holding the pomegranate high above the monkey’s grasping hands, and lecturing.

“You gotta pay more attention, Abu!  I’m sure Aladdin can get you anything you want these days, you don’t have to steal it!”

The monkey crossed its arms and pouted, chittering what sounded like a complaint.

Sora turned to Roxas.  “I dunno why, but it feels like every time I come here, Abu tries to steal something he shouldn’t.”

The red fruit glistened in the light.  “Maybe he thought it was a ruby,” Roxas said, thinking of Abu’s mishap in the Cave of Wonders.

Sora wrinkled his face skeptically.  “He lives in the palace these days, I’m sure he knows what a -  Hey!”  Abu, seeing his chance, grabbed the pomegranate and ran for it.

“ Abu !”  Sora took off after him.

“Sora!  Don’t you have -?”  It was too late, they were both off and away, leaping across roofs.   With a bitten-off swear, Roxas gave chase.  If Sora wanted to get back to the islands in time for the birthday party, he needed to be careful.  Time didn’t match perfectly between worlds, flowing faster in one and slower in another.  Roxas dreaded the idea of going to the party, of meeting the people Sora insisted were Roxas’ and Xion’s parents as much as his own, but he didn’t want Sora to miss it either.  

The garments of the pedestrians thronging the streets and all the textiles draped out of windows and hanging between buildings were uniformly earthy or bright colors, so he followed the flash of Sora’s black clothing around corners and through narrow alleys until he caught up to with him in a small courtyard that held two other people.  Abu was perched on a familiar young man’s shoulder, trying to hide the fruit behind his back.  It took Roxas a second to remember the man’s name - Aladdin.

Sora looked Aladdin up and down, taking in his scruffy clothes.  “I thought you were a prince now?  Did something go wrong?”

“No, I am.  We -”  Aladdin gestured to the woman standing beside him.  With her headscarf pulled low, obscuring her face, Roxas couldn’t place whether he’d seen her before or not.  “- Just like to get out of the palace sometimes without a whole entourage traipsing around with us.”

When she lowered the scarf, Roxas recognized her as the city’s princess, Jasmine.  He gave her a polite nod.  He remembered following these people, eavesdropping on their concerns.

“This way, we can listen to the people without rank and formality getting in the way,” Jasmine said.  (Roxas suppressed a start at her inadvertent echo of his thoughts.)  “And we’re free to just be ourselves for a little bit.  How about you?  We haven’t seen you around lately.”

“I’ve been really busy, but I wanted to come visit.”  Sora looked around, scanning the courtyard walls, floor, and the sky above. “Where’s Genie?”

Jasmine answered, “He’s left on a trip.”

“There haven’t been any Heartless around, and things’ve been peaceful.  He said he was going to meet up with an old friend in Bermuda… wherever that is,” Aladdin shrugged.  “What about you, where are Donald and Goofy?”

“And who’s your new friend?” Jasmine was peering at him.  Her frank curiosity made him a bit uncomfortable.

“Oh, right.  This is Roxas, he’s kinda like my brother.”

“I’m not his brother,” Roxas corrected, dead-pan.

“Wha-!?  Roxas!”

“We’re not brothers, Sora.”  He stared Sora in the eyes, trying and probably failing to communicate that just because Roxas had been his Nobody, that didn’t make them brothers.  You didn’t just get to pick your family.  Roxas was a born outsider.

“But…”

He ignored the hurt look Sora gave him, the kicked-puppy tone in his voice.  So what?  No matter how much Sora insisted, they weren’t family.  He was just trying to save them both from pain and awkwardness.  Instead, he turned his attention to the princess and prince.  “We came to pick up some ingredients for a friend.”

Jasmine moved the conversation along with grace, though her expression still looked curious.  “Ingredients, hm?  You’ve come to the right place; the markets of Agrabah are famous.”

“Oh yeah, the market.” Sora rubbed at the back of his head sheepishly.  (It made Roxas roll his eyes a little - Sora had forgotten the whole reason they were here.)  “We were actually in the marketplace when we spotted Abu.  He stole that -” he pointed to the cracked-apart pomegranate, and Abu looked up with wide eyes and bulging cheeks - “and kinda made a big mess.”

“What!  Abu! ” Aladdin scolded.  “What have I told you?  We’ve got the money to pay now, so we gotta pay.”

Abu only chewed faster.

Aladdin snatched the pomegranate from the monkey’s hands, Abu squawking in protest then pouting when he didn’t get it back.  “Come on, we need to go find whoever you got this from.”

“We’ll show you where,” Sora said and turned to go.

Back at the market, the crowds seemed less chaotic.  It seemed the commotion Abu had caused had cleared up, or maybe they were in a part of the market unaffected by the pomegranate spill.

As they walked, Jasmine tapped Sora on the shoulder and pointed out a stall cluttered with colorful miniature mountains.  No, Roxas blinked and refocused, selling ground spices heaped into tall piles on plates.  “The caravans bring spices from all over the world to the market.  Your friend can’t go wrong with them, if that’s what they’re looking for.”

“Oh!  That should work great.”  Sora hightailed it over.

Roxas stared at the powders and tapped a finger against his elbow, less certain than Sora.  Thankful for the keyblade and the ability it gave him to understand other languages, he read the small signs in front of each plate: cinnamon, cassia, turmeric, frankincense, cardamom, saffron, ginger, black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, mace, star anise, and fennel.  There was dried lime, chili peppers of all sorts, sumac, and more types of powdered herbs than anyone could ever need.  He could only identify a handful of them for sure, but he was reasonably certain he’d seen a lot of the same names on Le Grand Bistro’s pantry shelves already.  Sora didn’t seem to have any reservations, though, and began haggling with the seller. 

Jasmine spoke to Roxas.  “We’re going to go find where Abu took this from.”  She held up the offending pomegranate.

He didn’t know why she’d bothered talking to him.  Maybe she just didn’t want to interrupt the bargaining?  “Sora,” he called, “your friends are leaving.”

The other boy spun around.  “Huh?  Already?” 

“Yeah,” Aladdin nodded.  “Got a lot to do.  But come back by any time.  We’re always happy to see you.”

Sora’s face lit up.  “Thanks!  See ya - oh, yeah!  You guys are gonna look for a stall with a red and green striped awning, alright?  Okay, see ya!”

They waved as the royal couple walked away: Sora, exuberantly with both hands, and Roxas with a simple one-handed gesture.

On the way back to the gummi-ship, arms full of small cloth bags (some of those spices had been very expensive), Sora asked, “Do you think Little Chef will like everything we got?”

He shrugged.  “Maybe.  I dunno.  Does any of it scream winter holiday to you?”

“Cardamon, ginger, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, allspice.  Those all go in winter spice mixes, right?”

“Sure.  I guess.  You’re the cook here, Sora, shouldn’t you know this stuff?”

“Little Chef normally has all the spice mixes ready to go when I get there.”  As they reached the gummi-ship, Sora jerked to a halt, head up and an excited smile splitting his face. “I know!  We could go to Christmas Town!”

“Christmas Town?”

“Yeah, you know, where Santa lives?”

Wait.  Santa?  Like the one Hayner, Pence, and Olette chortled about, who little kids thought brought presents at the end of the year?  “You’ve met Santa?  He’s real?”  Roxas felt like his jaw had hit the floor.

Stepping into the ship, Sora set the bags in a storage bin, then posed with a flourish. “Yep!  I’m officially one of Santa’s helpers.”

Honestly, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.  “Of course you are.”

“Hey!”  Sora’s eyes lit up in excitement.  “Maybe we can pick up a gift for our mom while we’re there!”

There he went again.  “She isn’t my mom.”  He put one hand on the headrest of the copilot chair, fingers curling and digging into the soft foam.  He wanted to ask Sora to teach him how to pilot the gummi ship, not have this same pointless argument.

“Sure she is,” Sora said.  “She didn’t give birth to you or anything, but -.”

“I am not your sibling.”  How many times did he have to say it?  “They’re not my parents.”

“But they wanna be!  For both you and Xion, they wanna be there for you.”

“You told them about us?”

“Huh?” When Sora tilted his head like that, he looked like a little kid.  “Of course I have.  Why wouldn’t I?”  

Roxas ran his hands into his hair, clenching and pulling at the strands.  How was it possible for Sora to be this frustrating?  He was like a dog with a bone about this family thing.  “If they still wanna see us, you must not’ve explained us very well.  Because I’m not their son.  I’m not…”  Real?  I am real, damn it!   “I’m not part of your family.”

First, he’d had the Organization, and while you couldn’t call that a family even by the most generous terms, he’d lost them all the same.  Chose to leave them, after they’d betrayed him and lied to him and used him and twisted him in twenty different directions.  Then in the fake Twilight Town, he’d had the fake family Diz had programmed in for him.  To make him think he was a normal kid, with a home life like his fake friends’.  A futile attempt to keep him calm and quiet while they stripped the last of the memories out of him to give back to Sora.  Roxas saw the couple Diz had assigned the roles of his parents to walking around in the Twilight Town on a daily basis.  They didn’t know who the hell he was, and besides, they had a real baby of their own now.  There was no place for him.

A flush was creeping up Sora’s neck.  Roxas was actually ticking him off.  “Yeah, you are!” he shouted, growing animated. “You - you were part of me!  We shared a body !”

“Well, I have my own body now!  It’s not like I’m blood-related,” he growled back.

Sora shook his head. “Family’s more than just blood, Roxas.”

Roxas crossed his arms, belligerent.  “Well, I wouldn’t know.”

“Then come find out!”

“No.”

“Why not?!”

Roxas turned away and sat, pulling out his gummi-phone.  “I’m done talking about this.”  He felt like attacking something.  Honestly, he’d welcome some Heartless right about now, but since none appeared, he settled for his pixilated games.

Sora sat down in a huff, in the seat next to him but facing away.   They stayed like that for an uncomfortable amount of time, the silence broken only by the beeps and chirps of Roxas beating back a giant-sized octopus in Classic Kingdom’s ‘Beach Party’.  It didn’t matter that he’d hurt Sora’s feelings; what he’d said was true.   

Cloth rustled as Sora pulled out his phone to check something.  “Okay,” he sighed.  “Just so you know, if you ever change your mind, you’re always welcome.”

“Just drop it already.”

Sora said nothing back, just smiled, and hummed a peppy tune as he went over the ship's controls.

Roxas missed an easy target in the game, and then another.  That was how little it mattered?  He’d brought it up that many times, then went back to smiling so easily when Roxas shot it down?  Like being rejected didn’t even matter to him...  

He clenched his teeth.  Fine, then.  He shouldn’t have expected anything else.  He’d already known how little he mattered.

Sora toggled a few switches back and forth, yanked a few levers that were already pulled.  The engine made a whining sound, sputtered, and died back into silence.

“Uh…Roxas?”

“What?” he snapped.

Sora’s grin held steady.  “Umm, you need to smile.  The gummi ship runs on happy faces.”

Chapter 4

It seemed ridiculous to Roxas.  He wasn’t happy, he was just acting like it, but that was apparently enough for the ship.  Mostly.  It died a couple more times as they flew to the Holiday world, Roxas realizing as they arrived that this was another world he’d visited before.  Sora didn’t say anything on the trip, just made silly faces while Roxas forced a grin back on.  (And laughed.  Once.  Sora had made a really silly face.)

They landed in an over-grown gully and hacked their way out through thorny brambles.  Hacking and slicing with two keyblades was a better outlet for his frustration than the game.  Oathkeeper and Oblivion left pearlescent and amethyst sparks in the air behind them, a bright glitter in the dim undergrowth.

“Don’t you have any other keyblades?” Sora asked.  He was using a long, club-like one wrapped with cloth bandages, and though he only sounded curious, Roxas struck the tough brambles harder.  Oathkeeper and Oblivion represented Sora’s friends.  Roxas was just… an acquaintance, at best.  He didn’t delude himself that he mattered to them the same way Sora did. 

But he wasn’t going to stop using these keyblades.  They’d carried him through the worst moments of his life.  “Nah,” he answered.  “These and the Kingdom Key.  I left all my Organization gear behind.”

Oblivion thudded into stone instead of wood.  A gravestone, almost swallowed whole by the thorny vines.  More and more of them appeared, the thicket thinned, and Roxas and Sora stepped out into a graveyard.  Halloweentown.  The place was as silent and eerie as he remembered.  Really weird for Santa to live in a place like this.
He turned toward the gate, but only went a few steps before Sora said to wait.

“We don’t have our disguises.”

“Our what?”

“Disguises.  To help us blend in.  I totally forgot.  Without Donald, we can’t transform.”

Did it matter?  He’d been here plenty of times before without any fancy disguise.  On the other hand, he’d worn his black Organization coat then.  It had looked pretty natural in this creepy world.  He frowned.  “Is it going to be a problem?”  It’s not like they had fit in all that well back in the Château or Agrabah.

“I dunno!  Hang on a sec, I’m gonna call Donald.”

“If it’s important, could he teach you the spell over the ph- AAAAAAAA!”

One of the graves split open, releasing a blood-curdling wail and a long pair of skeletal arms grasping toward their throats.  In the blink of an eye Roxas leaped back next to Sora, heart rate going a mile a minute, both of them clutching each other and screaming.

A skeletal face popped up from the ground, laughing.  Sora quickly let go of Roxas and yelled.  “Jack!”

“Oh, that was delightful!” the Pumpkin King chortled, clambering out of the grave and setting aside a prop pair of overly-long arms.  The bones rattled in a way that made it very clear they were real, not painted wood or something.  “You both scream so well.  Your clothes aren’t in the spirit of things, but your hearts are.”  Jack’s bony fingers ruffled their hair, leaving Sora’s spikes worse than before.  Roxas couldn’t imagine his were any better.“Did you just come from beyond the woods?”  Jack asked, playfully flipping Roxas’s collar up.

“Uh, no,” he answered, flipping it back down.

“That is where we’re headed, though!  To the portal tree leading to Christmas Town.”

“Splendid!  I’ve been meaning to go talk to Sandy Claws.  This gives me the perfect opportunity.  With you there, Sora, I’ll surely be allowed back in.”  Jack started to stride away and both boys had to run to keep up.  …Sandy Claws? Roxas thought.  Haven’t heard of that one before.

“Why do you want to go, Jack?” Sora asked.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about Christmas again lately, and how to liven things up.  Of course, I am the Pumpkin King and I’ve had to think about Halloween and the people who live here in Halloweentown!  I haven’t been slacking off!  But all the same, I’ve made a list and gotten resumes from some of the folks who I think might do well in Christmas Town..”

Jack handed an old stained folder to Sora.  Roxas peered over his shoulder as he flipped it open.  Pages of spidery handwriting and blurry monochrome photos filled it.  The first page was headed ‘Krampus’, and a photo of a hairy creature with spiraling goat horns and a frightening fanged smile was clipped to it.  Behind that one, came a page titled ‘Frau Perchta & Sons’, and after that was one with an ink sketch of a horse skull shrouded in white.  This one was labeled ‘Mari Lwyd’.

Sora paused and glanced up at Jack.  “Uh, aren’t all of these monsters?”

“Yes!  A bit of surprise and fear makes the comfort and cheer of Christmas much sweeter, more appreciated.”  Jack took the folder back.  “And a cross-hiring project like this will help bring our two holidays closer together!”

“And you’ll be allowed back into Christmas town more often, huh?”

“Precisely,” Jack nodded.

That didn’t make a lot of sense to Roxas.  Jack clearly had a thing about Christmas - fine, none of his business anyway.  But… “How can fear go well with comfort?  Fear’s a bad thing.”

“Of course it isn’t!” Jack exclaimed.  “Fear is what makes life interesting!  Without fear, there would be no reason to savor the good things!  Without fear, risks would be no fun!  Without fear, there would be no surprise, and who would want to live like that?”

Ahead of them was a circular grove of bare trees, growing too orderly to be natural.  The nippy air started warming, turning to an unnoticeable non-temperature. 

“So, what, people should live in fear?”

Jack frowned thoughtfully down at him.  “Well, without fear, what would you call bravery?”

Sora answered that.  “Recklessness?  Showing off?”

“That’s right.  You can’t value winning unless you fear losing.”

“I don’t care about winning.”  I pretty much always win anyway.

Face uncharacteristically concerned, Sora asked, “What if you’re afraid of… uh, gaining something?” 

That stung.  Who the heck did Sora think he was, Roxas’s therapist or something?  He leaned back so Jack wouldn’t see and glowered at Sora.

The trees loomed overhead, an outer ring of younger, skinnier ones, than an inner ring of wide-trunked ancients.  Someone had carved and painted symbols on them.  A heart, a clover, a red box with yellow stars.  A green tree decorated with lights - a christmas tree.  Roxas recognized it from the ones going up around Twilight Town.

Jack stopped in front of it.

“Then you stagnate.  If you do nothing, life becomes dull and the world moves on without you.”

His neck and shoulders felt stiff as stone, and his clenched jaw twinged.  “And if you mess everything up and lose what you already have?”

“Ahh, a relatable worry.  Listen.  Some years ago, my life had grown dull and meaningless.  The fear and suspense had leaked away, every day seemed the same as the one before.  I yearned for something new.  Then I found it: Christmas!  Everything about it was fresh and exciting!  I tried to take it over, make it mine.  But it… went badly.”  Jack drooped like a wilted plant, then stood bolt upright again, flinging his hands open in excitement.  “But I made new friends and gained a greater appreciation for what I do!  I am better off having done what I did than if I’d just continued in my rut and done nothing at all.”

Above them, a breeze rattled the bare branches with a sound like hollow bones clicking together.  Jack and Sora both peered at him expectantly.  Roxas looked away.  He was getting pretty good at putting names to his feelings, but he didn’t know what to call this one.  He knew he didn’t like it.

Sora’s impatience saved him from having to say anything.  “So, Jack?  Where do these other portals lead to?”

“I haven’t checked yet.  I’m savoring the suspense, saving them for when I need something new.  Even for the dead, time isn’t stagnant unless you make it so.”  He pushed on the carved christmas tree, and it swung open like a door.  “So, shall we be on our way?”

On the other side was a snowy winter wonderland.  The smell of gingerbread and peppermint filled the air, and carols rang out crisp and clear.  Sora shot off like a rocket, using flowmotion again as he raced along a string of lights towards a rambling building like a giant gingerbread house.  Roxas grit his teeth and ran after him.  If he was going to run any more errands with Sora, he was going to have to start seriously practicing just to keep up.

Sora was waiting for them at the peppermint-framed doors with an excited grin on his face.  If Axel had got ahead on a mission like this, Roxas would have expected a snarky comment like, “‘Bout time, slowpoke,” or something similar.  Instead, Sora exclaimed, “I’m really excited for you to meet Santa Claus, Roxas.  Come on!” and pushed the doors open.

A clamor of happy voices, song, whistles, clanks, chugs, and whirrs met them.  It was a cavernous factory hall inside, bustling with small people in green, red, and white clothes climbing ladders, sliding down poles, busy-handed in long lines beside conveyor belts.  Toys of all sorts were everywhere, and ribbons and paper in dizzying colors whizzed in all directions.  A short, extremely round man in red sat in a high seat, directing the action in a booming, jolly voice.  Wood shavings drifted down in a steady fall from his black-gloved hands as he carved a figure - humanoid, but more specific than that, it was too soon to tell.

Roxas had never experienced Christmas, not yet, but the excitement surrounding it made him want to experience it.  The lights, the food, the songs, the presents.  The cheer, the love and happiness.  Spending special time with friends and…

…With family.  His bubble of excitement popped.  The knot in his stomach, growing steadily since Sora had mentioned his, their, no, his mother’s birthday, tightened further.

Sora must have misread his anxiety.  Knocking his shoulder against Roxas’s, he murmured, “Don’t worry, he’s super nice.”  In a louder voice, he called out, “Hey, Santa!  I’m back!”

The round old man saw them, and his already bright expression cheered further.  He clambered down, but his face turned sour as he reached the ground.  “Jack Skellington.  I thought we agreed that you’d finally stick to your own holiday.”

“We did.  But I’ve thought up this wonderful idea -”  Jack brandished the folder.

“Oh no, you and your ideas can march right back to Halloween Town.”

“But you see, I -”

“Jack, I’m busy.”  Santa Claus turned away from the Pumpkin King.  Joy returned to his face and voice.  “Now it is good to see you, Sora.  And Roxas here, why, I’ve been looking forward to delivering your present.”

“You know me?”

“I know all the good boys and girls.”  He dropped his voice and leaned towards them.  “The naughty one too.”  He leaned back again and gave a full belly laugh.  “Now, what can I do for you boys?”

“A friend asked me to find some seasonal holiday ingredients and Christmas Town seems like the best place to find them!”
Roxas wondered if Sora had dragged him to those other worlds just so they could hang out longer.  He dismissed the idea as soon as it came to him.  Sora didn’t think ahead like that.  He must have just forgotten that Christmas Town was an option.

“Oh, and I was hoping that I might be able to pick up a special present for our -” Sora paused, sending a sad look towards Roxas, “my mom’s birthday tomorrow.”
Santa’s eyes twinkled, and with a nod he said, “Of course you can pick up some ingredients.  Go through that door and follow your nose.  You’ll find the kitchens.  Have anything you like.  As for a present, I'll see if I can find some surplus.  I remember what your mother liked as a girl…”

Sora leapt forward to hug the man. “You're the best!  Come on, Roxas!”

He grabbed hold of his wrist, dragging him through the door Santa Claus had indicated.  Roxas had only a quick glimpse of the portly man rounding on Jack.  “Now, listen you,” before the doors closed behind them.

Santa had been right: they were able to follow their noses right to the kitchens, or rather the room where all the edible goodies were kept.  On the far side of the room elves pushed their way through a swinging door carrying bags and trays of confections to empty shelves.  There were bags of chocolate, caramel toffees, gumdrops, saltwater taffy, mints, and ribbon candy.  Candy-canes hung racks while cakes and cookies filled shelves upon shelves.  Sora, eyes shining, peered at all the different sweets, running around to point at different delectables and generally getting in the way of the elves stocking the room.

His delight bounced off Roxas like a bird hitting a window.  The cheery environment couldn't chase off the storm of thoughts swirling around his head.  He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the spiced air.  It didn’t help.  He took another, then stalked over and grabbed Sora’s arm, yanking him to a halt.

“Roxas, what’s wrong?”

“Why do you want me to be part of your family?”  It came out flat and barren.

Sora's surprise snapped into determination.  “Because you are.”

“Not that.  Why do you want me?  What do you want from me?”

He wanted to trust Sora, he did.  Sora was good.  A good person down to his bones.  Roxas would know.  But he was gullible, and too impulsive to think ahead.  Easy to trick.  In Roxas’ short existence, the only people who had wanted him had wanted to use him.  Organization XIII, DiZ.  Even Axel and Xion, who mattered most to him, the first people he’d call family if he had any trust for the term, had used him and manipulated him, out of the best of intentions.  Xion, as close to him as she was, as alike to him as she was, had fought him without explaining, tricked him into killing her…!

What made Sora’s family different?  What did they want from him?

“I… nothing?  Just…”  Sora pursed his lips, thinking hard.  “It’s…”  His eyes cleared and brightened, and he met Roxas' gaze head-on.  “We want you to be happy.  And our family’s happy, so we want you to be part of it.  To share that with you.  We want you to have someplace, someone to go to when you need anything.  Stitch - he’s a friend I made - told me something.  Family means no one gets left behind.”  His eyes drifted away again.  “I… I’ve left my parents behind a lot.  But even when we’re not on the same world, I’ve never forgotten them.  Just like my friends, they’re here in my heart.  We want the -”

“You might not have forgotten them, but they sure forgot you.”  He said it to make Sora stop talking.  Something coiled up inside him, hot and painful as snakebite, with every word out of Sora’s mouth.  The hurt look on Sora’s face made his gut twist, but guilt only made him belligerent.  “Everyone forgot that you existed.”  Even as he said it though, he wondered.  Kairi had remembered, a little bit.  Not Sora himself, but she’d seen and recognized the hole he’d left behind.  Had Sora’s parents felt the same?

“Yeah.  Yeah, I know.  That wasn’t their fault though, there was weird magic and stuff -”

“Because of Xion and me.”

“What!?  No!  No, you guys were the ones hurt most, it wasn’t your fault either -”

They were in the elves’ way, a sea of fluffy hats and annoyed, upturned faces washing around them, but he didn’t care.  Right now, he wanted to fight.  Since no Heartless were around, he needed Sora angry too.  He couldn’t fix how he felt, so he had to find another outlet. 

“Then whose fault is it then?  Namine’s?”  He deliberately prodded at the hurt places.  C’mon, Sora.  Get mad at me.

Sora shook his head wildly.  “No.  Organization XIII was using her, it’s their fault -”

Roxas snorted.  “And Xion and I were Organization members.”  Come on.  Come on.  Lash out.  Say you blame me.  Don’t let me be the only asshole here.

How did you fix things once there were no monsters left to beat? 

“That’s not…!  That’s got nothing to do with it.”

“It doesn’t?  Nothing Xion or I did caused any harm?  We didn’t hurt anybody?  No one suffered because of stuff we did?  You’re lying to yourself.” 

“And me,” Sora choked out.  His hand clutched his chest, fabric wrinkling in his grasp.  His blue eyes were very wide.  “You think I don’t know that?  That I hurt a lot of people as I blundered along?”  He hung his head for a moment, taking deep breaths.  When he looked back up, his eyes were calm again.  “I made mistakes, but I only did what I thought was right at the time.  I can’t blame anybody else for doing the same thing.” 

Determination came back into him, straightening all his lines.  Roxas watched, love and admiration warm in his chest, frustration and envy sour in his gut.  How did Sora always manage that?

“I didn’t know, back then, there was a safer way of getting Kairi’s heart out.  So you could call it a mistake.  But I’m really glad I did it that way, or I wouldn’t have gotten to meet you, or Naminé, or Xion.  It’s like if Xehanort hadn’t started all of this, a lot of bad things would never have happened, but neither would a lot of good things.”
If empathy was electricity, Sora probably had enough inside him to power a small country.  Once again, warmly and gently, it defeated Roxas.   His anger ebbed away, leaving only anxiety behind, like grey scum on the tide line.  “How come you never stay upset?  How come you’re never afraid?”

“I am.  Sometimes, but then I think of my friends and everybody who’s counting on me.  I need to keep moving forward for them.  I need to focus on what I can do.  It’s like Jack said, you gotta try.”

“But what if it all goes wrong?  What if they don’t like me or Xion?”  Sora’s parents had one son.  They hadn’t signed up for another, or a daughter.  And Sora was a nice kid, and so was Xion, but Roxas knew he was kind of a jerk.  Hadn’t he proved that again by trying to pick a fight?  Even if they thought they’d love him, once they met him, wouldn’t they reject him?

“They’ll love you guys.  Promise.”

Roxas balled his hands into fists at his sides.  Predicting what other people would do, making promises for them, was impossible.  He trusted Sora, but he couldn’t trust his parents.  Isn’t that why he wants me to meet them?  So I can get to know them, and decide if I trust them?

This wasn’t like meeting Sora’s friends in the different worlds.  If they didn’t like him, so what?  There wasn’t anything riding on those meetings.  His parents… that was a whole different story.

“Come on, Roxas, please?”

“I… I’ll think about it.”  Strategic retreat.  Give Sora something and maybe he’d leave it alone.  It left a bitter taste in his mouth, though, reminding him too much of how the Organization strung him along.  “Come on, we’re not done here yet.” 

He moved through the flood of elves carrying bags of candy and trays of cakes and cookies toward the perpetually swinging double doors.  “This is all pre-made stuff.  We need to find the raw ingredients, right?”

Sora watched him somberly for a moment longer, then snapped back to his usual cheerful self and running ahead, beating him to the doors and throwing them open.
The kitchen beyond was controlled chaos.  Assembly lines of elves added, mixed, and stirred, measuring out flour, sugar, spices, flavors, and essences.  They turned out vats of boiling sugar onto cooling tables, and colored, pulled, and shaped it into hard candies and candy canes.  They piped icing and tempered chocolate.  Everywhere Roxas looked, he saw some tasty creation mid-assembly.

An elf in a tall green cap marched up to them.  “Santa sent you?”

“Yeah, we’re here to -”

“Pick up ingredients.  Yes, I know.”  He removed his cap with a pop to show a large ruby-colored bag, perfectly balanced on his head.  It was tied at the neck with a green and gold bow and much too large to have fit under his hat.  He shoved it into Sora’s hands.  “Here you are.  Now off with you, we’re busy in here.  Merry Christmas, be of good cheer.”  With that, he pushed them back out the door.

“What’s in there?” Roxas asked, trying to be casual.  His muscles ached with tension, springs with no release for their stored energy.  He shouldn’t have brought any of that up.  Shouldn’t have agreed to come.

Sora’s brows pinched together, but Roxas ignored his worried look.  He quirked an eyebrow and nodded at the bag.

Sora opened his mouth, closed it, then let out a deep sigh.  “Yeah, alright.  Let’s see.”  he opened it up and started to rummage inside “Some nuts.  Chestnuts and hazelnuts maybe?  Marzipan, sugar stars, little oranges, and chocolate.  Lots of chocolate.”

“Sounds good.  Let’s head back.”  They’d taken so long that, even with the time difference between worlds, he’d probably missed the entirety of his shift.  Mr. McDuck had said he’d get the same bonus as Sora, so it wasn’t a total wash, but he didn’t really care.  Sometimes he missed his early days in the Organization, or the fake memories and confidence he’d had in the data Twilight Town.  The times in his life when things had been simpler, when he hadn’t known how much baggage he was carrying.  But he was a real person, and the real world was a lot more complicated.

“Did you have any fun, Roxas?”  Sora had stopped, eyes downcast.

“Huh?”  What did that have to do with anything?

“There you are, two special boys.” Roxas jumped when a warm hand gently landed on his shoulder.  Santa Claus stood beside him, smiling kindly at them both. “I heard you were arguing.  Maybe old Santa Claus can help, if you feel like talking about it.”

“It’s…” Sora glanced at him, but Roxas refused to meet his eyes.  His shoulders slumped and he sighed.  “It’s okay.  We’re okay now.”

“Hmm, if you say so.”  An overstuffed red velvet chair appeared behind the large man and he sank back into its cushions..  “You know I’ve got my own brothers.  Kris Kringle, Pelznickel, and Saint Nick.  Then there are cousins, first, second, third, and so on.  I come from a very large family, and there are over a hundred and twenty four of us. Plus our spouses and kids.”

“Whoa!” Sora exclaimed.  “That’s a lot.”

Sounded terrifying to Roxas.  How could anyone cope with a family that size?

Santa laughed, his dark eyes twinkling.  “Yes, and we all have the same job.  Just different ways of doing it.”

“You all deliver presents?!”

“More or less.  How do you think we cover every world out there?”

“Huh?  Never thought of that.”  Sora crossed his arms, leaning back.

It made sense though, if every star was a world.  How could Santa realistically know everyone and be everywhere, the way Pence said he could?  Thinking about it was a welcome distraction.  His anxiety slowly faded as he considered the logistics.

“Most don’t, which means we’re doing our job right.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t family disagreements from time to time.”

“But we’re not brothers.”  Roxas’s voice was flat and dead, even to his own ears.  That was reality.

“Is that what you believe in your heart?”

“It’s…”  What was with people today and asking him questions too complicated to answer?  Sora was his Somebody, but since Roxas was a Somebody now too, what did that make Sora?  Family echoed in his heart, but how could Santa know that?

“Or is that just what your mind tells you?”  Santa tapped the side of his round nose.  “I know what everyone wants, deep down.  But giving those gifts… Well, very few of them can be made in a workshop.”

Roxas hung his head.  “But what if it just blows up in my face?”

“I can’t say for sure if everything will work out but,” Santa dropped his voice to a stage whisper and leaned forward, “your parents are on the nice list.”

He leaned back again, arms resting gently on the arms of the chair.  “A good family is a gift, but no one should force you to accept it.”  He leveled a look at Sora, who squirmed a little bit, then pushed himself up.  “Now try to get along, you two.”  He pointed a gloved finger at Roxas.  “Christmas in your world is right around the corner.”

Santa seemed to have successfully kept Jack at bay, because they didn’t see him on the way back to the gummi ship.  Sora was mostly quiet, so Roxas had time to think.  Was it worth it?  Could he trust them?  Santa Claus, of all people, had vouched for them.  Could he and Xion really have a family?  Would their parents open up their home, want them to move away from Twilight Town and Lea?  So many questions swirled though his mind that he felt dizzy.

“Hey, Roxas?”

“Hm?”

“You wanna to pilot the gummi-ship?”

The words went through the clouds in his mind with the same electrifying effect as a bolt of lightning.  “What?”

“You were watching me earlier, right?  So, do you want to pilot?”

“Yes!”