A/N:Because hell, writing something that's inspired by Alfred Tennyson's amazing The Lady of Shalott is something long overdue on my part, and I've always wanted/needed to write a Sora/Roxas. Also inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice sequel, Through the Looking-glass and the very overdramatically sad "Through Glass" by Stone Sour. Leave a review if you're so inclined! Muchas gracias.
Through
Glass
Sora is happy and bright and full of hope and wonder and love for the world. It's how he's always been, it's how people expect he always will be.
But lately, he's getting the feeling that life's just passing him by. He's been sick for the stars, but he doesn't know why. He can't explain it, but lately he's been feeling alone in this little world. He has everything he needs to be happy, but it's getting harder and harder to smile.
They call it an adjustment. They say that after everything he's done, he's just realizing how small he really is.
So he's a hero, but that doesn't mean he's big. He's tiny, small for his age, just a boy named Sora with a big smile and bigger shoes, but still a speck against the sky. He's still small and he's still trying not to be.
He said he'd stay home, forever, that he'd never go on another adventure again. He made that promise without thinking because Riku and Kairi made it too, and if they were going to, he'd stay along with them.
But nobody ever told him that forever felt like home, sitting all alone, inside his head. He starts preferring memories over reality, because he can always trace the chains of memories back to something familiar, something he already knows instead of reality that push-shove-crushes down on him.
---
He's taken to living in dreams lately.
In dreams you can make up whatever you want. There are no rules, no laws, no limits. It's a slice of Neverland, where any happy little thought can send you halfway off the ground. He prefers to live from dream to dream. If there's a day when dreaming's going to end, he isn't facing it at all.
---
The mirror holds the most fascination for him. It's a gift from the good fairies, guardians of the Princess of Heart, Aurora. In it he could see himself as whatever he liked, powered by valor, strengthened by wisdom, confident in mastery, content in finality, sucked up by shadows.
He sees his reflection, brown-blue-white, but he's not content with it. He dreams, lets his mind make-believe, reverses the tides on reality. It's a slow process, one that takes time and naïveté and so much believing, until he swears the sky is filled with diamonds. He dreams and dreams until he sees the blond boy, the boy that never really was.
"There you are," Sora whispers reverently with a bright, fond smile. "I've missed you."
And Roxas, Roxas only smiles.
---
It's funny, how it's so much more than enough and how it's finally complete. Sora isn't sick for the stars anymore.
He doesn't take his eyes off the mirror, and Roxas doesn't leave it. They sit in silence, hands pressed to the glass.
But nothing much else happens, not for the rest of that second night.
---
Roxas' time in the mirror is limited, as Sora discovers on the third night. It's not long before it will be impossible for Roxas to come out altogether, until he fades and becomes Sora again.
Sora protests that it's the same as dying.
"I've been dead for a long time," is all that Roxas says, apathetic and blunt, the way he always is, the way Sora never was. "You don't have to treat me like I'm real."
Sora says no, that he's not dead, that he's there and if Sora can see him, he's real. He's not dead. He's just not.
Roxas just looks away and says, "People who are only alive in memories are dead."
---
On the fourth night Sora asks him to describe the world in the looking-glass, since he can't really see anything but silver and there has to be something homelike on the other side.
Roxas says it looks nice.
Sora smiles and says there has to be more than that.
Roxas says it's like everything you could imagine and more. Tangerine trees and marmalade skies, with cellophane flowers of yellow and green towering over his head. It's like eternal sunshine, spotless minds, it's everything that could make Sora happy.
"And one day," Roxas promises, "I'll take you here."
---
On the fifth day, Sora brings Riku and Kairi to the mirror because he has to see if they can see Roxas, too.
Riku only frowns and asks if he's joking.
Kairi's eyes scan the silver, and she's surprised.
She almost sees something.
She whispers a name, a question. She's so confused.
But then she shakes her head.
"Sora, please," she says, worried, while Riku keeps his watchful distance. "There's nothing there. Come outside with us, won't you, please?"
But Sora says that he doesn't want to see them, that he's realized the mirror is all he really needs.
Kairi's eyes fill with tears and she takes Riku's hand, running out of the room.
Sora apologizes to Roxas, says that everything will be okay now.
He presses his cheek to the glass and Roxas is there, his eyes-nose-cheeks-lips all pretty and pale and reflected over and over again, and Sora feels at home.
---
He hasn't left his room since. Nobody calls for him. He does not eat, does not sleep.
All he watches is the beautiful boy in the mirror.
Then Sora learns that his mother has called a doctor.
Riku and Kairi told his mother everything.
The doctor is coming to take Sora, and the mirror, and Roxas, away, far away. The doctor is coming to separate them, to take Roxas and his diamond sky paradise away.
But Sora won't let him, won't let anyone touch Roxas.
He'll die first.
---
On the sixth day Sora's mother tells him to wait in his room; the doctor is at the door and soon everything will be fine.
"Don't you want to see it, Sora?" Roxas asks, desperately.
"See what?" Sora asks, head cocked, eyes confused.
"Looking-glass Land," Roxas says. "I'm going to take you there. Isn't that what you want?"
"Yeah," Sora admits. "I really want to see it. I want to see you."
Roxas extends a phantom hand, faint outside the mirror.
"Come away with me?"
Sora takes Roxas' hand, feels the same-but-different fingerprints that match his own, feels how warm Roxas is.
He steps to the mirror and Roxas asks if it hurts.
It does. Oh, it does. But what does Sora care?
He is going to be with Roxas, be with him now and forever.
It's what he's always wanted. It's what he's always dreamed of.
He can almost feel Roxas' beautiful lips on his, almost, as he goes through the looking-glass.
---
The doctor comes to take Sora away.
He says it's a tragedy that his mother didn't call any sooner. This sort of thing could be the sign of anything: of a psychotic breakdown, a drug addiction, a problem that could have been rooted as far back as Sora's so-called adventure two years ago.
The doctor says this all in businesslike tones; he's seen a thousand of these cases and apathy's settled in. But to Sora's mother, every possible diagnosis sounds like a disaster.
That's why she screams when he tells her something had happened.
That's why she screams when the doctor leads her, hysterical, up the stairs.
That's why she screams when Sora's door lay open.
That's why she screams when she sees the silver mirror shattered.
That's why she screams when she sees Sora's body, her only boy, her beautiful boy bled to death.
That's why she screams when she sees the glass in his eyes, the glass in his heart, the glass everywhere at once.
That's why she screams when he is gone, gone forever through the looking-glass, gone to a place she can't follow him to.
---