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Roxas     THE WORLD THAT NEVER WAS

The World That Never Was is a sprawling urban landscape that stretches on into infinity. It has no particular set place, existing geographically in deep darkness and being reachable through the pockets of it that exist almost everywhere on the planet Earth. This, of course, makes it fairly easily accessed for the beings that cause it to spring into existence. It also cuts off access to anything else that happened to linger in that segment of the UG, previously.

It is always night in The World That Never Was, with the great 'moon' of Kingdom Hearts hovering overhead. It is also, usually, chilly. There's more than one reason that the Nobody's protection against darkness takes the form of coats.

There is, precisely, one exception to this chilliness. A sole holdout of natural warmth.

The arrangement of rooms within the Castle That Never Was is ordered by number, and the warmest rooms are directly adjacent to #13. 12 and 14 get the best of it. 15 is occupied by Terra, and 16 is jointly occupied by Namine and Rikuto.

Today--

Nothing is going on and no missions have occurred, so Roxas has lounged around in fluffy pajamas until he woke up enough to start Thinking, and once he started Thinking he decided that he wanted to go ask Xion about something.

And so...

A quick knocking comes at Xion's door.

"Xion? Are you awake?" Roxas asks, as he knocks.
Xion     THE WORLD THAT NEVER WAS

14th Room.

Stark white corridors of chilled indeterminant material lead to white doors in white doorframes etched with roman numerals. And Roxas knocks on one of the few locked (in a more mundane sense) with a privacy lock doors.

As opposed to one which was simply locked by magical force or authoritarial might over the World That Never Was, three of the doors had simple doorknob locks - and the pattern was obvious.

Larxene had insisted on it, and Namine had heartily agreed. Xion just went along with it, in the end. When Roxas knocks on the door, there's a loud 'tunk', before Xion calls "coming!" towards the door.

Moments later the handle jiggles a bit, and the door cracks open. Inside Xion's room is... well, it's a mess.

Bits and bobs are strew around not unlike a child having upended a bin of hot wheels and lego bricks months ago - the chief difference being that there's not actually any 'toys' about. Mostly it's scraps and bits of machinery, breadboards for circuitry, tools all about of every make and shape, and a mussed bed in the rear in white, with white sheets, and white pillows, a white nightstand, and a white lamp shedding dull white light. Xion stands just inside the door in a set of her own pajamas, these black with various 'hot topic' designs on them.

"Hey Roxas! Sorry, my room's a bit of a mess. What's up?"

Xion uses her socked foot to heelkick some of the detritus out of the way by the door, while smiling emptily at her neighbor.
Roxas Roxas immediately wonders what the noise was prior to Xion's answer. He doesn't really think that it's likely to be anything 'bad', but he knows that Xion is pretty inclined towards getting into all sorts of interesting situations. So whatever it is, he assumes that it must not be /boring/.

He glances through the crack in the door towards the mess inside, tilting his head slightly.

"Uh... well, I don't mind the mess, but do you want to come sit in my room for a bit, then?" He offers, more out of logistical practicality than anything else. His room is clean because he doesn't really do much of anything in it. At the very least, he doesn't have the giant assortment of hobbies that Xion does.

"I just wanted to talk about..." He gives a little shrug, "You know, what happened at Lilian's world. You seemed kind of... I don't know. Bothered when I offered to let you try again? And... what do you think she meant by, 'closer'?"
Xion The thump was, most likey (from the state of the room) Xion simply falling out of bed. There's an extra layer of disarray around the sheets sliding off the bed, and a pile of bits and bobs layered atop another where no commonality was to be found.

Really, it's the light impression of pointy bits in her cheeks, as if she had dozed off in a pile of junk (or fallen atop it) that gives away the true story.

"Uhm, your room?"
Xion's eyes widen, bright blues slooowly going 'oooooooOOOOOOH' before nodding once. "Yeah, sure, sounds great!"

The pajama pair leave Xion's room to go to THE ONLY WARM ROOM IN THE ENTIRE CASTLE.

Traversing the short hall jaunt, the Fourteenth answers the question posed.

"Oh, that? I just... I didn't want to do it again. If I took from you to pass a test about me... It'd just be saying there's no 'me', wouldn't it? I couldn't..."

Xion frowns in discomfort. Her voice drops in volume. "... 'admit' that. It's not true."
Roxas Roxas finds himself staring at the marks on Xion's cheeks until she finally reacts. He looks confused at the sudden... wonder? He's not certain what to register her reaction as, exactly. Was it a strange thing to suggest? He strides the few steps to his room, which has a NORMAL DOOR that slides open as they approach. Unlike the others, if he /really/ wants privacy he has a specific tool to do that exact job without needing a hardware lock. Accordingly, he is okay with the easy come-and-go of its normal operations.

Despite the relative warmth (the rest of the castle is naturally 'cold', but it is heated -- AC and Heat do exist here, somehow) of the room, there's not really much to it inside. The bed is set midway between the window and the wall.

The closet lies open. It is filled with the same outfit, over and over, except for a few sets of comfortable pajamas. One has a checkerboard pattern.

There is a computer desk, and accompanying computer, along with a small reading lamp. There are a few books, but they're not Roxas's. They came from the Castle's library. A glance at them would tell Xion, at least, that it's all random stuff Xion brought up or did at some point-- and occasionally somebody else.

There's a book on plumbing laid out next to a book on fashion.

Once they're through the door, Roxas plops down on the window seat and looks at Xion, frowning a little.

"I think..."

"I think that it's natural for people to exchange bits of themselves, and make the parts they receive their own. But if it's important to you to accomplish something like that without needing that sort of help to do it, that's okay too."

"But," Roxas grinned and leaned back in his windowsill, "you know, if it was a little while before I met you, I probably wouldn't have gotten any farther. If it was before Axel started partnering up with me, I probably wouldn't have gotten past the jewel."

"And of course it isn't true. If it was, you couldn't be here. Remember?"
Xion Roxas your door isn't normal, that's fake, your door is a weird future door, don't believe the lies of Xemnas!

Xion falls upon the book on fashion, opening it up with a whisk of her hand to a random page to flop upon the floor and begin browsing at random while Roxas leas against the windowsill. The conversation turns back to the tests, and so Xion's slow kicking back and forth behind her with her feet while browsing on her belly slows. "I don't think I disagree." Xion finally decides, after thoughtfully canting her head back and forth over the book, as if a picture example on fashion was extremely iteresting. "But it took you time to do all that, right? If I used my power to just 'take' from you, then..."

Xion rolls to her side, propping up her head with her palm - bracing elbow against the ground. "I'd just be getting your results, not mine. It wouldn't be me. It wouldn't have meant anything about me."
Roxas "I guess not." Roxas grants. He raises his hand and summons his Keyblade with a sharp ringing noise, "But... these sort of mean that's a part of what we do, doesn't it? Maybe that's why I stopped at the Chalice. Then again, I'm not sure I entirely get what it meant by questing, either."

"Anyway," He twitches the tip of the keyblade towards Xion, "you came into being a lot more coherent than I did to start with. You weren't here when I first showed up. You're not really much different than I am right now, are you?"

"Maybe... maybe she expected us to have firmer ideas about ourselves." He folds the Keyblade across his lap, "They did a lot of arguing with me in the back room... and a lot of it was about what we want, and..."

"I don't think I really know what I want, mostly. It's all... moment-to-moment, stupid things that nobody really takes seriously."
Xion Xion is familiar with Roxas' keyblade - the entire Organization is - and is unsurprised when he 'draws' it, though her eyes betray confusion as he points it at her. "Leaning on others for help, and even... starting a trial based on 'yourself' aren't the same. Are they? They could be."

Xion pushes off the floor, bringing her legs up to sit crosslegged on Roxas' room's floor. "I came into being with a lot of... me, you know? I'm not... normal. Well, Nobody-normal. My head's full of ideas, full of voices, full of things to do. And I may have..."

Xion's eyes lower, her cheeks flashing in an odd, unreflected showing of shame. "... Taken things from you, before I was me, and that's why you took so long to get started yourself. Maybe I took your desires, too."

Xion looks up, despite her apparent 'shame', her eyes tracking up to Roxas' with a slow pan. "Well, I take them seriously. I take everything seriously."
Roxas "If a big part of you is 'how you connect with others', then I don't think there's that much of a difference. But maybe I just don't get it." Roxas replies, banishing his Keyblade with another ringing and display of light. He slides down off of the window-seat onto the floor, sitting across from Xion in a similar posture.

But his response to her claims of abnormality, he issues a breathy little laugh and replies, "We're Nobodies. None of us are normal, really. I guess you do have a reason to have it more together at the beginning than I did, though. I was just..."

He droops a little, "You know. Empty."

Roxas regards Xion's expression of shame with a thin, slightly disbelieving smile. He shakes his head, "Take what you need. Just leave enough that I don't turn back into a zombie, okay? Anyway, meeting you was sort of... what jarred me awake to start with, so I'm pretty sure you didn't slow me down back at the start."

"U-um," Roxas breaks eye contact a little embarrassedly, "Yeah, I know. I know I don't really have to worry about you thinking I'm just being stupid, or silly. I guess that's sort of something we have in common. There's not really anything that 'just doesn't matter' to us, I guess?"
Xion "Roxas, I..."

Xion brings her hands together in her lap, thumb and forefinger rubbing just above the first knuckle of her right ring finger. "I don't think I connect, though. I can 'hear' it, 'see' it, and even 'feel' it - physically. And it feels good! But I'm not connecting, not sharing. It's something else. When I was doing it to all the people in the field, it felt great, but also a little bad? I didn't... understand."

Xion shrugs. "I don't think I could take much more from you, Roxas. I mean, I'm mostly you! Mostly."

Her eyes droop. "I guess because I'm the second with a Keyblade, it's not as important? Everyone treats you different. Well, except Larxene. And... Namine?"

Finally, Xion's eyes rise back up, and she nods with a brief smile. "Well, I dunno... Popsicle sticks when we're done with the ice cream, maybe?"
Roxas "Hmm. Well..."

"No matter how much you take from me, I'm not you, and you're not me. But still..." Roxas reaches over to poke Xion lightly, "/This/ is sharing and connecting. If it doesn't 'feel' right, or finished, that's okay. If it's doing some kind of good, does it matter if it doesn't seem to be what you think it should be, or what other people say it is? And if it is doing some kind of good, you should keep doing it."

"And you don't have to," He says, regarding 'taking from him', "just... you know. If you need it for some reason, I'm here."

On the subject of the Keyblade, Roxas adopts a truly comically quizzical expression. He nods firmly, "Yeah, I know. It's really strange. But the ability you /do/ have is really special in its own way. Are you... worried about that?"

He considers the matter of popsicle sticks and says, "Nah. You can get a prize, remember? But I guess there's not much to do with the other ones. Do you suppose we could make something with them?"
Xion "Well, yeah, this is sharing and connecting! Ugh, understand what I mean, not what I say!" Xion complains with an empty laugh as she's poked and prodded. "It's alright, Roxas. I guess I just feel... guilty? I think it may be guilty, that I'm taking what makes other people special. That it's not me. But I want it - I want everything so badly. I want to feel it for myself, and one of those questions on the test made me think, even as I answered."

"The ship of Theseus, the one that asked about the ship where every part had been changed from the original. If it was still itself. And I thought to myself, of course not. I know I'm me. But if I changed out pieces of me, bit by bit, I'd be entirely different and I wouldn't even know."

Xion's hands stop, frozen for a few moments as she sighs - halfway in exasperation, halfway in relief. "But it's fine. I'll have you around, won't I? And... Well, I guess I'm not worried... I just feel bad sometimes, and I don't know why."

She scoffs into a laugh, hiding her mouth with her hand as she breaks down into a bright giggling fit. "Sure. Like making houses with glue and paper and popsickle sticks?"
Roxas "Um, but I'm not that good at talking to people, and I can't read minds..." Roxas objects, a little apologetically. He can't actually tell how serious Xion is being about this. He adds, "I don't think /I'd/ want to know everything somebody thinks about a situation, though... I have so many thoughts that are kinda garbage. It'd be embarrassing for somebody to just 'hear' all of them."

The subject of the ship of Theseus brightens him up a little. Roxas shuffles forward on his hands and knees, settling crosslegged next to Xion. He leans slightly towards her, "Well... I think that maybe, it only matters if you think it matters."

"So the only way that it matters is," He goes on, "if it happens to you, and it bothers you that it happened. I guess you can argue that that sort of happened to us, but..."

"But I don't get the impression that it's the same, exactly. In the end, if you can't tell and you still feel like you're you, does it matter that it's a little strange? If you wouldn't know, are you really all that different?"

"Anyway... don't feel guilty about taking things from me. I want to help you experience the things that you want. And all /I/ want is... this, really."

Roxas straightens up a little, blinking owlishly at Xion's giggling fit. His mouth falls open a little at the suggestion of /what/ to do with their non-winning popsicle sticks.

"B-but..."

"Even if I ate a whole box a day every day for a year, I don't think I could make a /house/ with the sticks..."
Xion There's a lot that's said. A lot that two stupid kids sort of halfways fumble into answers for. But it's hard to hurt someone's feelings who doesn't fully have them.

So at least the drama is more steady.

"Well I think it matters! I'm going to be the me-est me, and do whatever I want!" Xion puffs up, affecting a boisterous tone before deflating with a pleased sigh. "Well, when i'm not on mission, at least. You can't be selfish all the time."

"No, no, it's... you make a little house. Like a model! I'll show you."

Xion points her finger at Roxas' computer which turns off as if the power stud had been depressed, Xion immediately spinning around in Roxas's chair as she set up to show off a world of arts and crafts projects that the pair could do, could decorate, do whatever - almost certainly never to happen in any of the ways described.

But it didn't feel bad at all to waste time doing so.