#keyofhearts

"Why is it always darkness this, darkness that— CAN'T WE TAKE ONE VACATION!?! — Daisy's gonna kill me .."

Ckxkskdnvn HELP, you’re so sweet! Thank you :)

"Well, well, if it isn't everyone's favorite Princess," came a sneering voice. So far, Kairi was the easiest to track down. Her light was so bright that Vanitas thought he might be able to feel it from across an entire world. It'd taken a bit of time to get her alone like this without Aqua hovering nearby.

Strength of heart... Vanitas had been wondering about it for some time. It was a source of power that someone with half an existence like him would never be able to attain... but he could at least sample it. Maybe it would make him feel something?

Phantom of the Opera Ask Meme

“Ephemer…” The name feels like a ghost on his lips, sucking the life from him the moment he dares to speak it. How… he looks just like the boy in his memories, barely even aged a single day. How long has it been since Lauriam has said his name, since he has seen him?

Where was he all this time? And to speak such words to him now? It kindles something in Lauriam’s gut. A quiet rage that nearly erupts from every pour in his skin. He grits his teeth, canines biting into his lip.

“How dare you ask that…!” Lauriam suddenly shouts, both of his hands tightening into fists. “How dare you, after we all promised that we would see each other again! Where was Ven, where was Skuld and Brain!? And where were you!?”

“I woke up alone, with no memory of anything, and all of you were gone. Do you know how long I spent wandering in a haze? With the sense that there was something unfinished, that I could not recall no matter how hard I tried!?”

Their promises to each other before they had boarded their lifeboats, their arcs to bring them to the next world flashed in his mind, their faces, their voices, everything that Lauriam had lost! Everything that his mind had left him bereft of!

But…it wouldn’t have mattered if they had been there, would it? Elrena—Larxene, had been at his side the whole time. His partner in crime, the one who had helped him so diligently in his search for Strelitzia, who had found him again in the Organization twice…

And he had remembered nothing.

A mirror image of Ven had been before him.

And nothing.

Lauriam’s nails were biting into the flesh of his palm now, and he heaved a large sigh. All around him, patches of healthy grass began to wither and die.

“I wanted to remember you more than anything in the entire world…” he said, his voice falling to a quiet hush again. “And now, I hardly trust my memories to stay at all.”

Ever since his memories returned, Lauriam’s thoughts had grown easily scattered. At times, it was like his heart was trapped in a fog, unable to fully connect to what was going on around him. He could barely remember these moments, important dates would escape him, tasks would be left uncompleted. Sometimes it felt as if his entire reality were a lie, and he struggled to remember which of the two lives he was supposed to be living.

Perhaps he deserved as much. After all, hadn’t he tried to strip the memories of a young boy away, layer by cruel layer? Hadn’t he tried to inflict the exact same agony onto another, at the expense of a young girl’s misery? He hadn’t had the capacity to care at the time, but even if he had, wouldn’t he have just dismissed it by saying that neither did she?

But, even if these memory issues that still plagued him were the lingering curse of a witch… didn’t Ephemer deserve remembrance? It was so difficult to untangle everything, what he deserved or other people deserved from him…

“The world has made me into a cruel man, Ephemer. I have made myself into one. I remember you now, I swear it. But… please…”

High upon one of the sky gouging towers known as Skyscrapers (almost fitting for Keybearers in a way) would they remain. New knowledge unveiled, risky gambits made, and an unavoidable truth had shifted the boundary of the collision in ways expected and not so much. One element that certainly hadn't changed was the vitriolic distaste that burns within his blood at the mere sight of that cloak.

Always drawing a face into obscurity, used less as a means of security and more to let the encroaching horror of the known steeple its metaphorical fingers upon another's chest.

Somehow, it allows for the Master above all Masters to challenge that convention through their bombastic display of life. How every pose, the sound of his voice, all these miniature factors of Charisma incarnate to be drawn free that succeeds in one thing. Raw disbelief would momentarily cross Sora's visage as one painfully annoying reality bubbled somewhere in the depths of his being.

Part of him... Wanted to laugh.

"You're kidding me.." However he'd catch that runaway emotions before they offered any clarity of how his Heart stirs. For a measure of cryptic advice was being drawn out like a comic strip instead, yet, those aware could pick up on the haunted undertones that always managed to follow him like shadowy wisps. There were too many things to be careful about when it comes to Sora, if anyone should understand this, it would be Sora.

The bottom of his soles pivot upon the concrete that's been freshly rained upon. Overhead lies dreary gray clouds that drive their phantasmal, billowy boats across the newest definition of a sky that Sora encountered yet. Brows furrowed, eyes sharpened in a not so serious way, it's clear that the intent against such lethal news was to challenge it. "And what makes those two such inspiring options?" He shoots back.

Right now was a time that the keybearer was in so many ways vulnerable, but in so many ways, free. Drawing in a fresh breath from the rustic air from humming ACs and ventilation, his pace would brazenly bring him towards the Master. Every itch to let the Keyblade roar free being brought to rest as some memories snap into semi-sleep due to this cloaked presence. In particular, that ragged, tortured sight of Ephemer who endured such a hellish extent in his name.

..Yet in a twisted way, that same name casting those chains that made flesh and Heart burn.

A soul deep refusal would remain as the dam to block any opportunity of forgetting. Let the magma like build flow within his veins, allow for the soothing light to gradually temper such lethal feelings, a new brand of backbone needs to continue it's journey of being tempered for types like this.

Those who find themselves swimming across the river of time in any bastardizing fashion they please.

"Foxes and Wolves can certainly bring in a lot for themselves, and even those within their fold-" Adventures across countless worlds had brushed and lashed such lessons onto his heart, painting perspective can be called his own.

"But isn't this leaving one important detail out?"

"There's more than enough of those roaming all over." That raised finger would ease back to an open palm as he drifts that palm across the death defying descent that awaits any who dared to jump. "Down here."

Sora would soon ascend that extremity, holding a whimsical flare as light seems to drift effortlessly from his palm. "To whatever else is waiting out there on this side."

That very hand would be resolved as it clenches down to a formidable fist. By no means prepared to listen to base instincts in the desire of wanting to clobber this particularly stubborn heart. "I'll continue to be myself, just like I'd be anywhere else."

Sora would be a force that ceaselessly weave qualities of many into a primordial pool of his liking. Aspects that are welcomed contently within his fold.

Alongside those kicked out without a care.

"Isn't it a cause for concern if a place needs you to switch up on that?"

“HYAAA~!!” 

In the midst of battle, Strelitzia thought of nothing beyond the sweet delicious lux waiting for her. Once she and Ephemer successfully took down the heartless plaguing the world they were sent to, they would be free to reap their rewards and bring them back to Daybreak Town. Together, they had been sent on a mission by the union leaders, the call being meant only for the two of them. Their talents complimented each other well, and the union leaders believed they would do well together as a duo. While Strelitzia was used to going solo on her missions, having company proved fruitful in the fact that she didn’t feel so lonely for once. It was nice to have someone to talk to in between exploration and battles. It felt never-ending, but with Ephemer at her side; one of the most powerful and talented keyblade wielders in Daybreak town, she felt she could do anything.

Her magic proved more powerful than her strength, something she relied on, as a burst of fire protruding from the tip of her keyblade was sent hurtling straight for the bat-like heartless, forcing it to take heaps of damage to its core. Then she kicked towards it, leaping up into the air to take it down the middle, her keyblade slicing through the creature until it split in two and disappeared in a burst of darkness. Lux spilled from its disappearing corpse, and she readily accepted her reward as the lux swirled around her and absorbed into her keyblade. Around her, the leftover darkness swirled around her and her keyblade in wisps of linky black as she stood there, catching her breath. 

It was then that his words captured her attention and she turned, bright teal eyes settling on the boy she had grown to respect. Those words were not something she expected to hear, not on the battlefield, so it would be foolish to not admit that she was caught off guard. She blinked, facing him head on now. He wanted something. From the way he said it, it was something he knew he shouldn’t have. Something that involved her. Why bring this up now? 

“Ephemer… What–” She started to say, but his last lingering words stopped her in her tracks, sucking the air straight out of her lungs. 

No one outside of her inner circle of friends – Elrena and Lauriam– ever told her such words before. Both had told her they cared about her, but it had never been filled with so much yearning and longing for something he believed he couldn’t have. It made her heart flutter, her stomach churning with butterflies trying to escape the cage inside her. Her gaze flickered across his for some kind of explanation, unsure if Ephemer was making a declaration of friendship, or… more.

She looked away, unsure of how to proceed. She had yet to extinguish her keyblade from her grasp, and sheepishly started to fiddle with the handle, picking at its coloring. She looked away, a subtle blush dusting her cheeks. Surely he meant it as a way of proclaiming his friendship to her. Why else would he say something like that so out of the blue when they had a mission to uphold?

“O-Oh, that’s… Uhm, thank you. I care for you, too. Y-You’re a really good friend, Ephemer.” She smiled bashfully. “ I’m happy to call you a friend! You’ve been so kind to me since the day we met…!” With her own declaration of friendship, she turned away to put her attention towards another oncoming heartless. “Uhm, we should go now.”  Just in time, too. She didn’t think she could continue such an embarrassing conversation!  

"gawrsh , i still don't understand half of what's goin' on .. but if it's got those there nobody fella's , heartless , and good oul friendship—I'm in !"