solar dusk.

→ ROXAS acct. } au/canon. // ▼ ✚ verse: kingdom hearts ✚ timeline: any ✚ mode: currently inactive* // STATUS: INDEPENDENT AFFILIATION.

[acelestialwish-blog]

[dualstance]

What is it that you're so afraid of?

[dualstance]

dropping roxas from citta so feel free to unfollow yeah

[dualstance]

"Uh oh...." Nope can't do turns around and walks back from where she came from.

[swiftcyclone-deactivated2014041]

☁ — Ventus couldn’t say that he was expecting this, because it had become a bit of a surprise to hear Roxas say this. Almost made him a little sad that Roxas thought like this, but one day, maybe Ventus could change that about him. Only being able to flash a goofy grin to his look-alike. "Even if we become friends in this city and they leave, our hearts would still be connected, no matter what. Hehe… but I’ve been alright. I haven’t done much in this city. Especially after that prom event. Not one of the best nights. Other then that… well, I kind of fell asleep for a long time, so I’m not sure what happened after all that." Perhaps mentioning other specifics about that night should not be said. At least he has met some other nice people here. “What about you? Have you seen anyone you know in this city?"

[dualstance]

And in his own way, Roxas is changing. His whole life's been a rendition of melodrama a whole year in the making, but he can't remain cynical forever. Somehow, it's enough to recognize that he'll only keep drifting as long as he can't siphon off the guilt. "Hah. I'll hold you to it, then. My friends would probably say the same." The Nobody squares his shoulders, slouches back into the seat like he could choose his version of nostalgia every single time. "Sounds like you've been up to a whole lot more than me. I can't remember the last time I did anything worthwhile here." Crossing his forearms at the elbows, he inspects his sneakers, the percolating insinuation of camaraderie with crossed fingers for doppelgangers who always had the right words perched under their chin. He nitpicks with the fraying end of his shirt, discombobulating threads for the sole purpose of watching them unravel, and in a way, he figures that white lies might just be for the best, after all. "Nah. But it doesn't matter. It's better they're not here, because it means they're elsewhere That's what counts. And you?"

[warmguidinglight]

♥ Searching..

[warmguidinglight]

This guy was confusing him more and more. “But Mister I don’t know you-" Sora really began wracking his brain for any sign of this other male. Unless he was some sort of long lost cousin then he was clueless! He was sure he’d remember someone with hair as odd as his own! Sora puffed out his cheeks, a frown coming to his face again as he folded and pocketed the picture he’d worked oh-so-hard on. “I-I-" He wanted to argue the whole ‘dangerous’ thing but he found himself merely signing and his shoulders sinking a little. 

However, the offering of the blond’s name had the light coming right back to his face. “Roxas!" He nodded. “Like- Like Rock! Tough and strong!" He nodded again. His name was cool! Sora liked it a lot! He might even be as cool as Riku! But it was too early to tell, Sora knew that! 

"Roxas rocks!" Sora cheered, little hands quickly reaching up to grab the blond’s offered hand. “Memorized! Mhm! Mhm!" He then paused, tugging on the blond. “Where are we going?" Right- If here was dangerous- Where wasn’t? Was he really gonna take him home? Could he do that? If he could that would make him even more awesome! 

[dualstance]

He'd drawn out his antipathy with squirrely, zealously ardent children for his entire lifespan (roughly two years, give or take an existence in tandem with Sora); it wasn't as if he'd changed to that degree. And even encountering the Sora from his era, the one that never tolerated hearts in bottles, that held salvation out as a sentiment, never recognized him until he buckled to his knees, dissipating in every way that mattered. It'd make sense that his other's younger counterpart wouldn't be able to comprehend a shred of his insinuations, but a twinge of dismal moroseness lingered all the same. "I guess so. Maybe someday. You think we could be friends this time, though? I'd really like to be."

His profusely ambivalent accession to whisk Sora away from the metropolis, though -- that wasn't something he was in the position of offering at the time. Besides, he didn't have anything more than lingering regret and a few superfluous abilities stripped clean of their worth and actual value on the sequential cosmic spill. The adolescent's portals only took him to regions within the city, grid-locked to a small perimeter, and the lesser Samurai Nobodies he'd summon were for nothing more than show, lapsing back into the darkness as soon as it allowed. With the time limit actively sustained over his powers, it'd be a long while before he could even reclaim the full compilation of his abilities, much less rescue Sora. 

"To your place in the city, if you want. We could get your things set up there. Make it nice and homey while I figure out a way out of here for good." Every speck of derision ebbing away to neutral equivocation, he places one palm on his companion's shoulder. "Or you could come live with me. My apartment's big enough for the both of us, I think. I'm not that great of a roommate, but I'd keep you safe there. I promise." Roxas squares his expression down to solemnity. "But I won't force you to do anything you don't want to. I could never do that to you, of all people." Straightening, he allows his exhalations peter down to a monotone rise and fall of his lungs, slipping his coat back on his shoulders in tandem. "So what'll it be?"

[swiftcyclone-deactivated2014041]

☁ — "Wow. There are so many new people in this city. I feel like I’ve been asleep in my room for too long. I guess first thing’s first is getting a job and seeing if these guys will give me some of my abilities back. Maybe before all of that… I should try and make more friends."

[dualstance]

"That's sort of expected, isn't it? Seeing as how it comes with the territory and all. People come and go all the time. It's better not to get attached in the long run." Faltering off with a sudden start, his mouth twists into a conspiratorial flicker of a grin. "But knowing you, I bet you'd beg to differ, Ven. What've you been up to lately?"

[dualstance]

*of little faith. //

Sticking to the roof of his mouth is his tongue, and beyond that, the rest of his equanimity. He’s always been the sort of guy to cut straight to the chase; lying did about as much good as lunging at sashaying skeletons with the intention to give the undead left hook shiners, and with their empty eye sockets, that didn’t particularly bode — and work out — too well. But at least Halloween Town, true to it’s modus operandi, retained its normality in degrees. It was perpetually fixated on the thirty-first day of October; Heartless remained Heartless, Nobodies stayed Nobodies. Everything remained about as sane as those ultraviolet kewpie dolls he’d seen adorning Jack Skellington’s front porch, that one Tuesday.

When it comes down to it, Roxas hasn’t pinned down anything substantially about the world, much less given any distended set of flailing bones a run for its money. The best course of action would’ve been badgering the locals for tourist tips about the world like a gradual cult acclimatization, he reckoned. For the most part, the Nobody resorted to loitering around the streets, sneakers skimming asphalt, hands palmed over three kinds of gray and two kinds of nonchalant. In the midst of the housing developments, he slowed his pace, vaguely indignant without justifiable cause. It would make any sense for DiZ and Naminé to send him through another bout of seven-day twilight, especially with his memories relatively intact. It wasn’t as if he was particularly belligerent nowadays either, all notions of Riku aside. Sora’s best friend had the mentality of a goldfish in a kiddie pool.

He’s certainly not cavalier, of course. There isn’t a single notion of gallantry in him, no dauntless valor to raise hellfire or rebellion. Back when everything had a clean-cut purpose at one time, maybe — it was enough to stare up at the looming semblance of a heart in the sky and see an enemy. But with ambiguity like a cloying retch, with half-baked opinions and stupefaction pungent enough to make onions cry, his best course of action is waiting it all out. There’s no deadline, no dead girl to avenge or best friend to clap on the shoulder and grin unabashedly at anymore. Roxas is on his own. And it’s only today that the realization hits him like the tide, seeping into his skin, sticking to his palms like lead-based paint.

Straight back from his last reconnaissance, the Emblem Heartless he's currently tracking dissipates down the alleyway and veers past a man with barely a shove. “Get outta’ the way!” Roxas rebukes plaintively as he starts after the Neoseeker that merely melts back into the tedium of the city. There’s so many bystanders about, it’s hard to weave through without jostling elbows and muttering apologies like psalms. Staring intensely at the spot it dissipated from, he swerves back to face the stranger, hood yanked free. “Did you see where it went?” In the gauzy haze, he can’t make out the man’s face, but he’s pegged his own certainties that he’s jumped the shotgun into a high-risk encounter he might not exactly appreciate. 

[evanescent-doll]

An Old Friend || dualstance

"Where is he..?"

Xion wandered around what would appear to be Twilight Town to anyone else. However, it was just a digital copy of the real thing. There was little to no difference about this version compared to the real one, except for one thing.

This copy had Roxas.

When Xion had first woken up she had no idea what was going on. Her demise had been very clear, the last memory she had experienced. The others were there, but hazy. She knew that Axel and Roxas had been her best friends and that the organization was up to no good, but more specific details were slow on returning.

Xion had no idea how much time had passed, or if it had even been a day since her and Roxas’s battle that took place near the clock tower. She had woken up where she had turned to crystal shards, the place just as deserted as it had been before. She remembered wandering around until she happened upon Naminé, just as she had done before.

It took her a while, but after learning that Roxas was put into a simulated version of Twilight Town the rave-haired girl acted quickly. Apparently her friend was safer there, but she didn’t want to believe it. Feeding Roxas all these lies and making him believe he was something he wasn’t was never what she wanted.

So now Xion found herself walking through the streets, trying to find some indication that Roxas was nearby. Her first thought had been to check the clock tower, but he hadn’t been there. Naminé had given her little info, probably thinking it best not to get involved.

It probably was for the best, but Xion couldn’t help herself. She had to get Roxas out. Maybe if she did Axel would be able to help. Surely the three of them would fare better than just one or two.

"But where could he be? Surely I should have seen him by now.."

[dualstance]

There's an ambiance half-caught in the tentative shivers of his fingers just before the evening hurtles sidelong into the evening, into a dusk he has no name for. In Twilight Town, it's not only the status quo, but the norm; there's no such thing as sunup or sundown in a place where there's no stars. It's only ever unnatural in a world with placid people and nowhere else to go, and for all the time he's spent there, it never rains. Still, this comes at no great loss to Roxas, who takes his existence in stride. His life's measured in a day-to-day immutability of counting up chump change and sandcastle arguments and the content blandness of humid August tedium. School's already been out for a month, and with mandatory education out of the way, he's got six or seven extra hours in his schedule to spend at his own jurisdiction (like buying three cases of sea-salt ice cream and filling his fridge with enough frozen pops to last the winter).

It also means, of course, that he'll hang out with the Three Musketeers of everyday suburbia -- namely Hayner, Pence, and Olette. Four-cubed is a nice number, now that he considers it -- every side scalded clean and comprehensibly square, each corner on the mental compass of camaraderie mapped out. As soon as he's awoken, he's already straightening up his (aptly) disheveled hair and taking the stairs at breakneck speed to grab a snack or two. From there, it's a simple matter of swiping up the rest of his savings and changing  up his attire before hitting the boondocks and coasting through the streets on his skateboard. Roxas even manages a few flips over the metal railing adjacent to the kitschy pawn shop, which has gotta' be a new personal best.

The boy's nearly reached their Hangout for another few hours of parsing double entendres and finding out what the heck was up with Seifer's gang and their magnetic idiosyncrasy of pinning them as scapegoats-for-hire when he spots the figure of a stranger cloaked in swathing black treading down the cobbled lane with lilting footfalls. Ordinarily, he would've ignored such instances and passed them off as the nebulous anomalies of any mundane society (like when Olette's aunt took in about fifty stray cats to her two-room bungalow), but inexplicably, he makes curving beeline for the stranger, a roundabout convolution to inspecting the drifting itinerant in morbid, stalker-esque focus. His fingers nearly graze the transient's back, come to rest on the girl's shoulder, and just about reels back in mystified stupefaction. He almost would've sworn to anyone who would've listened that he knew her better than he knew himself.

"-- Hey. Pardon me if I'm wrong, but -- do I know you from somewhere? You seem really familiar."

[rakarchive-deactivated20191109]

[takes art block] [karate chops it] yea son

[timidbutstrong-deactivated20130]

♝ mate | open/intro

Hanako casts a worried glance at her designated home. It’d be nice to stay in an apartment, but she can make due with this…it may be a bit better, even. The accommodations aren’t too terribly pleasant, but she isn’t in a box, and she has the place to herself. It isn’t very big, but it’s the perfect size for Hanako. She doesn’t need a large home; just a little, simple space is enough.

As daunting as it seems, she knows she needs to get into the city sometime. She gives the transportation pod a quizzical sort of look. It’s certainly not like anything she saw back home, but it seems simple enough to use.

However, as soon as she steps into the city, she starts to think she’s made a huge mistake.

It’s so crowded, so unlike the city near Yamaku. It was a rather crowded place itself, sure, but Hive City seems so much bigger, so much busier. Sector oo2 isn’t exactly the epitome of cleanliness, either; the smog makes it harder to breathe.

Hanako keeps her gaze firmly on the ground. She doesn’t want to be asked about her scars, or speak to anyone, really. She’d just like to get to the shopping district and see what sort of cooking supplies she can afford. She doesn’t have much money at the moment, but she’ll be able to get by for a while…

Unfortunately, her plans to go unnoticed are ruined when she crashes into somebody on the street. She tenses up and her face pales.

"S…"

"S-s-sorry…!" Hanako pulls herself inward, grabbing a lock of hair and twisting it around a bit in her fingers. She turns a bit and tips her head to hide the scarred side of her face. Before the stranger can say anything, she moves to get away from them. Oh, hopefully she’ll be able to get away…

[dualstance]

It’s a slow day, in the midst of the tedium that he treks along, eyes averted and countenance filtering back to neutrality every time he embalms his life in the nuances of another slow-moving tedium. Flitting past the crowds, hands tucked into pockets and pinching the folds between, and he’s so lost at that moment, just a itinerant with nothing more than a threadbare shadow to his name. Roxas isn’t so empty nowadays, but just enough to miss the people he can’t forget and everyone he can’t remember. The sun marks out time in the sky through lapses; at its elliptical crux through the atomosphere, he's sweltering in his coat, but chiefly ignores that sequential point in stride.

He’s desensitized to the notion of death most afternoons, but that day he’s solely bent his aim on blending into the cacophony of a crowd in the midst of a melting afternoon. The air breathes in time with his exhalations, transfers of carbon dioxide and oxygen in tandem with the swish of his coat, and it’s so funny that anyone without a heart even needs lungs, anyways. Nothing to circumvent those exhalations to, and his perspective sidles down its routes, and he fleshes out insecurities in palming the back of his neck in the middle of the sea of pedestrians, feeling completely disjointed from the rest of the free-flowing traffic. 

Turning at the drop of a pin was an understatement; someone crashes straight into his back, and when he eventually gathers up the rest of his equanimity, there’s a girl standing there with fresh-cut anxiety and a slightly dazed inflection swimming in her tone, threading all the half-puzzled mysticism that marks neophytes to the city. Besides the bizarre, glossing manner she draws her hair across half of her features, she doesn't seem that different from any normal resident back in Twilight Town. A little bit more skittish than he was expecting, though; even before he's got a single word out, the stranger's already retreated several steps, eyes strained wide in fear. “H-Hey! It's alright, you didn't -- ... c'mon, just hear me out. Wait." And in a second he's planted his palms firmly on each of her shoulders, staring frank and perturbed at her complexion.

"What are you so afraid of?"

[theycallmehotheaded-deactivated]

dualstance

[theycallmehotheaded-deactivated]

Mikey would go nuts with all these crowds, giving him some attention and stuff. Making him look like a hero, but raph on the other end don’t like attention. He’s a lone wolf. Not a party dude, “Betta be some good explanation why ya here." He said with his thick brooklyn accent. 

[dualstance]

Roxas is merely minding his own business, to be honest; it's just a inevitability that he'd run into a clump of pedestrians, seeing as how a majority of the population find themselves in desperate need of motorized vehicles. He slogs to a stop, eyes the strangest anthropomorphic creature he's encountered yet with barely a bat of an eye. "Not really. I was just passing through. If you're asking why I'm in here in general, then -- I guess I don't know that either. You'd have better luck badgering the scientists."

[dualstance]

scapegoat syndrome —

[swiftcyclone-deactivated2014041]

☁ — Ventus glance to the right at the other’s answer. Perhaps it was a mistake to have his curiosity get the best of him as he tried to understand more of the other. Perhaps he might have been prying too much into the other’s life with the tone he was given. Or he probably didn’t remember, just as Roxas said. Whatever the case may have been didn’t settle well with Ventus. It was easy to see that his expression was a bit sad for the other. It must be a horrible feeling to forget about someone, even if you wouldn’t be able to call one another friends is sad enough. “Sorry for asking…” It was a short sentence to fill up for asking the other something that may have been a bit too personal, as the other try to conceal his emotions.

Why would anyone want to do that? Isn’t it strange enough for anyone to say that with that sort of tone? No, Ventus didn’t want to think more of why Roxas would say something like that in his own tone, he had his reasons, and the last thing he would want to do now is pry any more into Roxas’ own thoughts. It would be best if the other came out on his own when he wish to speak whatever was on his mind. Ventus didn’t mind waiting, and with that in mind, the chance of Roxas speaking to him freely, wiped the sadness away from his face to leaving a small smile across his lips yet again. “.. but I wouldn’t say you were a bad friend. There has to be a reason why you don’t remember. Who knows, maybe we’ll run into her again.” Best to always stay positive when anyone else felt or sounds down.

Pursing his lips together, Ventus had to take a moment to respond to the other’s comment. It seems as if this was a difficult subject for himself to grasp well. He hadn’t been out of his own home, only when he had to search for his friend. A friend that would have been a different person if he had not found him in time… could Ventus even accept that he had found Terra on time? Before giving into the darkness? Everything about that day still felt a little hazy. He hadn’t seen what had happen to Terra, but it was best to assure himself that he was fine. he and Aqua were back home, waiting for Ventus to return. That was all Ventus could wish for. The three of them to stay together as they once did before their destinies took them elsewhere.

Though a question came to his own mind. How was it like to have darkness in your heart again? Something that Ventus had recalled was how it was to have it being taken out of him. That was a painful experience, and something Ventus wouldn’t wish to go through again. “I don’t think that’s true. Everyone was created for a reason, and the universe knows it. I guess I’ll use myself as an example.” Ventus took in a deep breath, knowing how personal this topic would be for himself, but it was something he felt the need to share. “Vanitas… is someone that was created from me. His purpose was the same as mine, to create a powerful weapon. We were suppose to have a battle between one another, between light and dark, to forge a χ-blade. Even though our purpose was to create something horrible, we still had a purpose in life. I decided against that. I want to live a different kind of life, that wouldn’t have me force to hurt other people. I guess the universe around all of us is aware of what goes on with one another to guild or stop someone. You… well, I can only guess that you think that the universe doesn’t see a reason to have you, but here you are. I think that would have been better then never existing at all.”

That was what Ventus saw in all this. Roxas may say that he had nothing to give, but with how he has so far treated Ventus, it seem as if he did have a heart. “How do you know you don’t actually have a heart? I guess you wouldn’t have been able to feel anything if you didn’t, or cared about helping me around here in the first place. I think that’s what it feels like to not have a heart, but that’s not you. I just don’t see you as a heartless person, Roxas. I guess we can say it’s a special ability you’ve been granted. To be able to control those dark portals without you being consume into darkness.” 

Ventus let his smile linger a little longer as the other began to walk off. That, he was certain in that tone of his voice. He was certain he had something inside of him. Even if Roxas would not accept it, Ventus could just tell that there was something inside of the other that was… good. Ventus took a few quick steps, walking beside the other as he look around the buildings. Sector one did seem nice. At least nothing weird had happen yet. It was known to shift a lot, so that anyone walking around here would eventually get lost and confuse as to where they were going. As they continue their own journey to sector three, Roxas’ question left the other blonde surprise for a moment.

“Ah… who I was?” It was a difficult question to answer. Rubbing his head, a visible frown could have been spotted as he tried to think as far back as he could. That was just too difficult for him. Ventus couldn’t remember his past. Over a decade of his life seem to have been non-existent in Ventus’ memories. “I was… myself this whole time. I can’t remember far back. My memories have been a bit hazy. I can only remember a few things. The training I had done with Master Xehanort…” Ventus’ shoulders slump a little, feeling a bit dizzy as he tried to remember. Images of black creatures he had to fight came back, recalling how he was told to release the darkness in his heart. “… and those black creatures I had to fight…ahh…” Ventus brought a hand over his head, trying to see if he could remember anything before that, but all that brought was a throbbing pain in his head. managing to stop himself from thinking any further back, his memories went right into his last battle.

“After everything that we had gone through… my last memories were at the Keyblade Graveyard, and I had to fight Vanitas… to stop him from hurting any of my friends. I remember I manage to destroy both him and myself… and then it was just darkness.”

Ventus stopped walking for a moment, placing a hand on the wall beside him as if he realize something that he had miss this whole time. Ventus was not suppose to be here. What had happened after that battle? How could he have been here? All he could remember was hearing a child’s voice to help him. Who was that child speaking to him? What had happened after that battle… “That’s… all I can remember…”

[dualstance]

Contingency plans for doppelgangers always felled themselves somewhere around the point when the benefits of communal living came at the cost of independence. He didn’t need pity, didn’t even want someone sanctimoniously blessing the skeleton inside of his limbs, whispering an interminable amount of fibbing white lies to cover up a single, definitive veracity. He was pessimistic enough, but he didn’t fabricate his own reality for the sole reason of short-sighted jocosity. That was inane, on top of being mindless of his own volition, and he was a free-thinking individual who didn’t take kindly to being deceived. Still, Roxas is circumspect to his own moral and ethical code, and even if the other kid’s x-rayed the motivations behind every word he parses out, he’ll always have his past. He’ll always have a history to return to someone else someday, even when it’s one he never asked for. The world is what it is, what it will always be, all dimensional anomalies aside.

It’s comical, how romantically idealistic Ven can twist words like vellum, wring out manuscripts preserved in fervent impracticality. Salvation wasn’t for everyone. “What, like someone wiped my memory? You’re being quixotic. Besides, she’s better off without me, wherever she is now. I have a tendency to attract trouble wherever I go. You’d stay away from me too, if you knew what was best for you.” The accompanying laugh threading underneath his statement is briskly joyless, cold and cloying self-deprecation in one muted breath. Hands braced at his sides, he shoots his confidant a thinly wan grin. “You’re still here, though. I’m kinda’ … relieved, actually. It’s been a while since I’ve directly spoken to anyone like this.”

Living vivaciously through Sora could be compared to breathing in supernovas; an influx of emotions and disembodied entropies of sensations, all with the sole purpose of maintaining the keyblade hero's feverous gusto of dynamism. Vitality was easily draining, and for someone like him, to whom feelings fell completely under the radar, it was an implosion that he did his best to steer clear of. Transparency was a notion unheard of in Sora’s mind, and most days it came down to retreating down to the bare essence of awareness, a flicker of cognizance here and there. It was impossible to retain a sense of self, so all he’d done was his best to not completely dissolve at the seams. If he could retain an independent thought or sentiment that didn’t unswervingly correlate to Sora, then Roxas could still remain in some form.

When it came down to it, Naminé suffered the same as him (if not  worse), but he caught a glimpse of her that day on the wharf when they returned from the darkness. She was there within Kairi, smiles faint and modest and always, and she’d held out her hand to him, a bulwark against the insanity of it all. And he’d taken it in stride. As long as she’d been alright with assimilation, he knew he’d pull through the death throes of being extinguished into another state of being. It wasn’t as if Sora didn’t hold a sympathetic heart; there’d been others within him, souls resting in silent affinity. It was a dreamless period of time that he lapsed into, but it hadn’t been reluctant, at least.  For whatever reason, he’d been roused straight from there, implanted into Hive City with consciousness intact and memories bleeding through the pavement, dissipating through the gaps in his mind.

There was no Naminé there to reassure and elucidate his misunderstanding of the whole situation at hand, to rescue him from a fate worse than death. She wasn’t the witch they’d all made her out to be, but the only person who hadn’t lied to him. More than anything, it would’ve been nice if she could’ve informed him on his apparent abduction from the entirety of Sora that he knew as a complete human being. Ventus is sunnily optimistic, but his past is carved out of nightmares, if he’ll take the other’s words at face-value. Still, Roxas doesn’t interrupt, merely continues striding as they enter the hustle and bustle of the second sector, past the cacophony of people with lives shelved up as social experiment projects.

He was nothing different, and yet that’s all that honestly matters anymore, out where  lives buy their worth in the dust with the mutability of sand in the midst of a tornado. Roxas runs one hand through tousled spikes, dispelling the rest of his thoughts to entertain Ventus’s tale. There’s a lilting, elastic quality about the cadence he takes, as if it’s a memory he’s rinsed clean in his mind, dispelled from careening shipwrecks to the fossilized amber of spent recollections. It goes without saying that a migraine’s on its way (he’s suffered about five bouts of a knockout stupor, voices in earshot and the intricacies of his brain crashing all around him in the muted haze. Without being told to, Roxas slips a palm over the other boy’s shoulders, eyes at half-mast and purses his mouth thinly.

“Don’t strain yourself. I believe you.” With an impromptu shrug, he sidles up next to him on the wall, expression at once ruminating in accounts about fairytales and the lack of picturesque happy endings in reality. The only baggage they can ever carry are the ones they can never leave behind, and when it comes to penultimate truths, they’ve gone in circles attempting to understand why Lady Luck cast them bad lots every single time when it came to the wheel of fortune. Encounters with doppelgangers, he reckoned, ended up in two-bit prizefights with one established winner tacking on the spoils of victory like how their histories are collapsed galaxies, unborn stars and supernovas melding between sob stories of sad kids in the days of their lives, from sectors numbered one to three.

His breath cuts through the tandem of subterfuge and apprehension, slices clean as he tentatively lays a palm on his companion’s shoulder, expression at once contrite, even if he was chalking any wisp of emotion to his own inability to differentiate between empathy and just plain sympathy. “I’m sorry for your past.” he mutters, unable to disentangle eloquence from the slurred contagion of garbled mumbling, “Really. I’m sorry.” The space between them inhales the kindled undercurrent of inevitability, but it’s with a certain amount of self-restraint that he eventually straightens. “We’re here. Which floor is it?” His gaze quickly cuts away, staring into the inner core of the city before settling on the straggled populace of ethnic culture clash and ritzy prostitution they find themselves in now.

At the end, there’s really one last thing to do, all wistful modulations in the world coming to their end. Stifling the urge to yank up his hood, he fumbles around in his coat, fumbling through the premature notions of mementos and nostalgia next to hard-grit logic. It’s stupidly insensible, but it’s still there after all, the object he’s searching for, and he clasps one hand as a promise around it. “Here. I’d carry this around with me, to reassure myself that she was real, but – … I guess I don’t need it anymore, huh. You should keep it, though. Just in case she ever ran across you and I wasn’t here to meet her.” Voice blotching thick, he slips the seashell, like a psalm, into the other boy’s palm, discarding the last inflection of romanticism he’d held in his bones.

“Ready to go?”

[afantasybasedonreality]

[dualstance]

"Roxas! Rooooooooxaaaaaaaas!" And Sora hands him his last rose before skipping away rather proud of himself!

"Whoa -- hey, Sora." Expression suffusing from plaintive to relatively mystified, he comes to a halt as the younger boy spiritedly hops forward, presenting him a flower. The kid's demeanor is so infectious that he merely cracks a tentative grin and accepts the rose, pinching by the edge of the stem and giving it a once-over. "Thanks." By the time he's glanced up again, his other half is bounding away in strides, and he's got no choice but to take any qualms about receiving blossoms with a grain of salt.

[ars-tenebris-blog]

Severed Chains - Intro/Open

[ars-tenebris-blog]

Golden eyes had widened slightly at the mild violence displayed by this Ventus look-alike. A wide grin painted itself across his face but a moment later. Well now, this might actually be interesting. “Listen, Not-Ventus, I don’t take orders from losers. Especially ones with faces like yours.” He definitely looked like him, but he acted nothing like him. Yes, the fact this moron looked like his other half was irritating. He didn’t exactly want to deal with two blond idiots.

“Besides, I don’t exactly appreciate some imposter forcing their way into my search in an attempt to prove something that is obviously false.” Vanitas’ eyes narrowed. Why hadn’t he lashed out? Perhaps he wanted to mess with this copy-cat a bit first. “You are not Ventus, and thus you are a copy.” 

“Trying to deny that fact only serves to prove how stupid you are.” Ventus was the original, not this guy. “And who were you looking for? Some Sora person? Afraid I’ve never heard that name before, you might as well move on~” He really didn’t feel like wasting effort in a fight. No, he’d rather be looking for that idiot. Smashing his face into the cement sounded like a good idea right about now. 

[dualstance]

“Keep telling yourself that.” And his eyes gleam, taciturnly unresponsive to the barrage of pseudo-insults and half-pint cynicisms. In truth, he’d recognize Sora anywhere, whether as some pulsating heart carved clean of its cadaver or as the boy who haunts his dreams, permeates in his mind as the triumphing victor of their prizefight for top reigning spot of control. He knows how to take a loss, but he can’t exactly leave the other guy alone – coincidences didn’t happen to him. There was a rationale behind the devil on his back, just as there was behind doppelgangers with Sora’s face contorted into patterns of malevolent derision.

Roxas scoffs, cadence rapidly descending from aggravated to downright vitriolic. All he needs to do is step up the scale of blistering remarks. It’s not like Riku, who knows his best friend inside and out, with convictions to the point of utter annihilation. The individual standing before him, perplexingly enough, is even hollower than he is. “My mistake. You’re a whole lot more stupid than I thought if you can only see what’s right in front of you.” Artificial hypercriticism comes at a dollar a dozen for a Nobody with nothing to lose, and the distinct lack of emotions to warble his resolve is absent, as always. “Or I could beat the real truth out of you. Wouldn’t be that hard. I’ve faced tougher opponents than you’ll ever be.”

For all of his blackmail and jesting and double entendres, Roxas has no murderous intent inflaming his thoughts. It’s merely goading, but if the Sora duplicate’s got nothing to offer, he doesn’t see any point in continuing any kind of bravado in the first place. There’s nothing to be had from violence without motive but the sociopathic tendencies of a lunatic. He snorts, saturates his voice in callous indifference, and steeps the chagrin down to his default sullenness. “It’s too bad, though. Frankly, you’re not even worth another second of my time. Good luck, I guess. I heard idiots never last long in this place.” And he sharply turns heel and strides off, if just to have the satisfaction of winning a petty battle lying flat over moralistic inhibitions.

[corpseshell-deactivated20140912]

Sound Structure { for Roxas }

[corpseshell-deactivated20140912]

‘Watching his fall’ was a task harder achieved than uttered, for with the slight break from the branch and the grant of freedom, his weight, which was easing into its vexatious predicament with something akin to adaption, tilted in protest, pulling him down with the same ‘grace’ as it did the first time. Nearing the bottom, he did manage to steady himself somewhat on one of the careering branches, however it produced a result that yet remained to display etiquette: with a grunt, he lands on his side, not particularly caring to prioritize a rise to his feet. As an alternative, or perhaps as merely a distraction, he watched the papers with a ghastly, dull dread, knowing that she’d not let such destruction slide so easily. He seems to laugh at himself before answering the question but goes on without a hint of guilt, “No, these aren’t mine. They belong to the library,” effectively addressing both spheres of the matter. It is then that the Kresnik chooses to sit up, casting a careful, scouting look at the dissembled books. They’re everywhere. This being a rather distressful sight, the other’s indulgence in a completely different subject caught him off guard.

Wonderment or not, Ludger listened with as much heed as anything else: to observe is his specialty. Those words, lightly bristling with what seemed to be a decent amount of confinement, were not bizarre as the speaker believed them to be, and he ended up more intrigued by such an insecurity being put to light than than anything. To be diffident means that the holder had developed the ability to analyze the very reality around himself, whether he wants it or not. It’s a trait the listener too has picked up, but the mentioning of it has never made it beyond a certain checkpoint in thought and action, the apprehension seeming to restrict a particular amount of mobility. Hesitance held him not from misunderstanding, merely from a moment or two of consideration. “It’s normal,” he finally says, defining those turbulent thoughts of his and casting a smile, no more than a slight upward pull of the side of his mouth. “You miss your own world. That’s all.” Following his assurance, his gaze tilts elsewhere, that attempt at a smile vanishing under a scowl. What his company described sounded glaringly like his mind was stuck in limbo, waiting for the ‘next Hive City’ to come and claim him, or for his own land to return and collect him like a lost child.

“But thinking about it will not help.” Proceeding to lift himself to his full height once more, he folds his arms as if in extension to his sour expression, betraying a bitter, internal mull. This is a topic of which he’s really quite touchy about — Hive City, relocation, the consequences it reaps (if he’s understanding the other’s problem at all, that is) — and is among the only subjects that could draw forth lengthy replies from the otherwise observatory man who usually relied on a tacit existence. Mentioning that currently had no substance, though; he has yet to reach beyond his own cavern of choppy sentences, although, given the situation, he hasn’t known the confessor for more than a few minutes.

[dualstance]

The silence after his words is deafening. It's irrational that he's fessing up his guts like the regurgitated backwash of three hundred and sixty-five days of disjointed existence, friends and enemies plastered in his mind like peeling scabs. There's not a world for him anywhere; the only souvenirs he keeps are memories spiraled in perpetual combustion, lopsided and bent at an angle, twisted onto themselves until he can't differentiate the difference between glorified dreams and the nit-grit of reality. They're vaguely irritating in the manner that obligations are a burden, in the way that he'll never escape the things he can't control. Annoying, actually. His mouth twists into a sobering grimace, and he catches up to his flytrap tongue like a cautionary tale against loose lips and molting outcries. 

He wouldn't call himself a Nobody, per se, not in the strictest sense of the word. Roxas occupied a point of time, lived in the diaphanous falter of unironical jokes and bad ad-libs about being heartless. Still, with limbs and a personality at full-working capacity (even if it didn't match up to the alacrity of the self-entitled keyblade hero he represented, essentially), it wasn't all that terrible. The boy could've had it worse, certainly, and grasping at straws didn't bring him anything else beside sidelong glances as the Midas of cheap metals and cheap accusations. Being visceral meant that the other man could see cleanly through him, past the viscera of his organs and minute idiosyncrasies and, if he plummeted deep enough, what exactly made him tick. And more than anything, that unnerves Roxas to the point of stiffening up, mystification briefly glazing over his eyes before he retreats to a carefully planted deadpan.

"That's one way of looking at it. You seem pretty straightforward. Must be nice, seeing things through your point of view. " Fingers flexing by his sides, he absently tucks his hands into his pockets. On a more retrospective scale, Roxas couldn't survive painting the world in a veneer of black-and-white concepts, good and bad blanched transparent and lucid to prioritize. Nowadays, his cognitive reasoning chiefly depends on degrees of limpid gray. Whether or not it was fair for Sora to take him back didn't matter so much as the necessity of their circumstances; the ends justified the means. Scrutinizing his companion with a lukewarm complacency, he tentatively holds out one palm, fate lines tracing the digits of his fingers.

"The name's Roxas. Mind if I ask the same of you?" Hive City, as it turns out, has its enigmas like any other, and if he's gonna' get to the bottom of the conundrum he needs allies. At the very least, the boy's betting on the possibility that one more acquaintance won't make or break him. After a second, he scoops up the flyaway texts and novels, myriads of information hanging limp in his clutch, and hands over half the volumes, balancing the rest of the weight  by odds and ends. "Guess so. If it's not too much to ask, though -- do you think you could show me around? I'm a bit lost." The better replacement is disoriented, in every way someone could drag their carcass through sulfuric acid and still salvage the remains. He's scalded in distrust and scrupled qualms, but breathing of his own accord equivocates to quid pro quo. Honestly, that's all he can genuinely ask for, in the end.

[rokuxiii-blog]