Illusion

…This world is just illusion, trying to change you…


He’s sick of orange. Sick of mutilated blue, and sick of watching the sun die gloriously each day.

How regularly the days end. His life used to be like the sun, so regular, so normal and so right. He knew he belonged. But now…

A slight shuffling of feet, and then a small body lowers itself carefully to sit next to him. He breaks his gaze from the sunset to look at her, feels no surprise, although he knows he should. Still, his face contorts into the appropriate reaction from habit. She sees the face and smiles, swinging her feet slightly, looks at the sunset.

“You always come back here when you want to think. And you looked like you needed some company.”

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t need to. He doesn’t look at the remnants of the sun anymore, stares at his feet, hanging listlessly, forty feet from the ground. She doesn’t want to say anything. Neither does he. But he needs to.

“…There’s something wrong with me.”

She looks up, surprised. Surprised that he spoke, surprised by what he said.

“What?” her voice is so painfully full of concern and emotion.

A pause. Uncomfortable silence as he tries to find the words.

“…I think I’m going insane.”

Hayner would have laughed, would have punched him on the arm, would have told him to stop being a depressing little shit. Pence would have become too serious, too passively excited at the prospect of an actual, real case study to analyse. She just sits. Just let the words sink in.

“Oh.” The ‘why?’ was there, ready to be spoken, ,but she’s learnt that questions made him defensive. He hated being asked ‘why’, because half of the time it seemed like he doesn’t know either.

He fidgets, so unusual for someone so still, “I keep seeing things…like the train…and…there’ve been other times,” other times when I was alone. Where I wasn’t stupid enough to make a fuss, “monsters…there’ve been dreams...” he looks up at her sharply, desperately hopeful. “You don’t know anyone called Sora, do you?”

She shakes her head, her eyes so sad, trying not to look at him in pity, because it makes him angry when people make him feel weak.

He slumps, crushed, looks at his feet, at the distant ground “I dream about him. A lot. And I don’t even know who he is, but I know his whole damn life. I even know what his favourite socks are for fuck’s sake!” He pounds the ledge angrily, and a small piece crumbles, falls, smashes. They both watch it, mesmerised, slightly scared.

“I dreamt that I fell off here. I slipped. Just stood up and fell.” He sounds confused. She knows she feels it. For him to do something as trite as trip was unthinkable. Every movement was calculated and deliberate, but executed so beautifully that it was so nearly natural.

But she doesn’t speak. Her voice would break this trance he had lulled himself into.

“I remember killing people…and having sex…and being so damn important to someone. A group of people.”

“You’re important to us,” she whispers, carefully avoiding what else he says. He notices.

“Not as a friend. As a tool.” Notices but doesn’t comment, because he doesn’t know what to say. “I remember not caring that I was being used, ‘cause I was good at what I did. It didn’t matter because I had a purpose…for a while…”

There’s no colour left, the sky is rich dark blue promising eternity and emptiness.

“Hey, Olette?” She looks, questioningly. She’s in over her head, knew she would be, knew as soon as she decided to follow him back. She doesn’t know what he’ll ask, but she does know she won’t be able to answer, or to help.

“What did we do last week?”

She blinks, doesn’t understand where the conversation is going, “What we always do, of course.”

“Yeah, but what exactly did we do?”

It’s such a stupid, simple little question, but she’s thrown,  “I don’t know. Probably just hung out and stuff.”

He gives a sceptical look, “you don’t know.” He looks away again, at the tiny stars, all lost and alone, “I can’t remember either.” He doesn’t seem happy at the news, but satisfied.

“I’m remembering things that haven’t happened, and forgetting things that have…and you know what’s worse?”

Once again, he fixes her in those eyes. She shivers. It’s gotten cold. And there’s something about his stare. It’s so fierce, but it’s so chilling. Later, she’ll look back and think ‘if fire could freeze…’ but now she’s hypnotised by the blue, empty eyes.

“I don’t care.”

He’s like a snake, and she’s his prey, and she sits there knowing this, not running. Because when the monster is your friend, there’s nowhere to run.

“Have you ever been inside the old mansion?”

She’s confused. How did he link those two thoughts? She shakes her head once, still mesmerised by his eyes. In her periphery, she can see his hair blowing softly in the breeze, tickling skin that’s just slightly the wrong complexion to be local. There’s something too fresh about this face she’s seen all her life, too new. Like she’d only first seen it recently. She’s not breathing right.

“I’ve been there. There’s a girl there, like me.”

“Like you?” her voice isn’t even a whisper, she’s forming the words and breathing the sounds. He hears, or sees. It doesn’t matter, he answers.

“She doesn’t belong here. She’s not meant to exist.”

She’s almost shocked, almost. It’s a cruel thing to say, and out of character for her Roxas, who never insults, just ignores. Or hits.

She’s beginning to think that maybe this isn’t the Roxas she knows anymore.

Then it clicks.

“We’re mistakes,” he continues, doesn’t care if she’s following, or even listening, “the toxic by-products of hatred and war.”

Olette’s smart, and she knows history better than anyone. “We’ve never been at war.” They lived in the middle of nowhere, a small town with nothing special enough to be worth fighting for.

“I’m not from here.”

“Yes you a-” she begins, desperate to reassure her friend, but she can’t. There’s no Roxas in her memories. He’s not at the beach trip last year, he’s not at any of the birthday parties…he’s nowhere before this summer. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Finally, finally he breaks eye contact and looks at the black sky, and she tries so hard not to sigh in relief, “But tomorrow I am going to die.”

The small, tiny fragment of hope and normalcy and common sense holding her together shatters.

“What?”

He looks sad, so alone and lost, and she thinks it looks weird on him. Then she thinks it looks weird for him to have any emotion at all on his face.

“Tomorrow I cease to exist. I’ll be erased. I’ll have served my purpose.” He breaks off for a second as he hears Olette sob, “please don’t be sad. Tomorrow you won’t remember me.”

Tears stream now, and she’s scared and confused, her heart in agony “How can you say that?”

“I told you I didn’t care.”

“Yes, but-”

“But nothing. Tomorrow, you’ll wake up, and my existence will be meticulously removed. So don’t cry. I’m nothing to you.”

She doesn’t have the words to say, so she sits at their spot crying. He doesn’t stop her, just watches her, feels the déjà vu as tears glisten and fall from the edge of a clock tower, luminous against shiny black leather. There’s so much he wants to do, and so much more he knows he’s done, but can’t remember. But he does remember warmth and fire. He tries so hard to feel, so he can hope that maybe he’ll find that missing red.

“I never meant to lose your purse.” For some reason, it’s his main regret of this fake life.

“I know,” she whispers. He thinks that maybe she’s starting to understand, even if she’ll forget so soon. “Are you going to tell Hayner and Pence?”

He stands “No,” he offers no explanation, “and Olette?”

She twists in her position so she can look up at him. He’s not looking at her, he’s staring at the sky he hates, trying to memorise every detail. Finally, he stops stalling and turns towards the stairs. At the door he pauses.

“I’m sorry.”

~

It’s not until hours later, in the final seconds before sleep takes her, that she realises she never said goodbye.

~

The sun warmed her face and she curled tighter under her duvet in a futile attempt to delay the inevitable. The last day of summer. School tomorrow.

Urgh.

She didn’t hurry herself in getting up. Even at her laziest, she’s always awake hours before the boys. Hayner was usually groggy until lunchtime anyway. She didn’t feel that great today, actually. More down than ill to be honest, depressed at the end of the holiday most likely.

The Usual Spot was its usual hive of energy, mostly due to Hayner, who proclaimed that, money be damned, they were going to the beach today! Pence laughed, whilst rolling his eyes and went off to beg his parents for a loan, and she herself scurried home for a hunt for her purse. She knew that there was at least 5000 munny in it that she’d been saving, but like every girl everywhere, she’d put it somewhere safe so she wouldn’t lose it (or spend it) and couldn’t remember where that place was. Hmm.

She stuck her hand under her bed and felt around for anything roughly purse-shaped. A minute of sifting and…success. Huh. Could’ve sworn she’d checked there a hundred times before.

She could think about that later - if she spent too long here, there’d be no time at the beach! Olette sprinted back to their Spot to find her two best friends waiting outside.

“Bow down and worship me, guys,” she proclaimed, waving the pouch, “for I have munny!”

“You found your purse! Excellent!” Pence grinned, “Where was it?”

“Under my bed, actually.”

Pence frowned, “I swear that was the first place you checked. Four times.”

“Who cares?” Hayner interrupted, “She’s got it now and we’re forever in her debt, can we go now?”

They laughed and began to walk to the station. At the door, Olette stopped, shivered, suddenly cold and apprehensive . Like a cross between déjà vu and someone staring at her. She turned, looked around. No one there. Weird.

“Hey, Olette!” Hayner shouted back to her, “What’s up?”

“Nothing, coming!” she called back, and ran to catch up, wondering why she suddenly felt so sad.

~

Roxas watches from the rooftop. He’s given up hoping, but a small part of him wishes that maybe she…they… would remember. A bitter laugh. He’s pathetic. He was never really there anyway.

He takes one last look at the world he used to love. Used to call home. And turns away to die.

~

It should be painless. Really, it should. It’s not as though he was alive in the first place. But it’s agony. And though he no longer has lungs, he screams, and he no longer has eyes, but he cries. And he wishes, wishes he’d never wanted a heart.

And he remembers, remembers the instant when he first woke in his new fake world.
Tender (possessive) arms hold him and the hair tickles (slices) his face, and he remembers the whispers that the warm (burning) breath hissed in his ear.

               


                               …Remember that it’s all in your head.