Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts is the property of Disney and Square Enix.

Even the Lost

Every night, it was a different dream.

There was the little star, from long, long ago.

He wanted to stay connected with his friends, wanted to protect the only thing precious to him in the whole entire universe.

But when the time came, the other stars chose to go their separate ways and although he tried to follow, he just couldn't keep up; he kept falling further and further behind, until one day, he lost his way.

In the end, he was surrounded by Darkness, the cruel laughter bouncing all around him. And he slept.

In the floating castle, there was an empty shell.

It had no past and no future, only the present, and it fought hard to keep it.

Under the moon's brilliance, it travelled to other worlds, and met people and monster-but mostly monsters.

Sometimes, it watched quietly, with the Shadows.

Sometimes, it brought down worlds.

Sometimes, there was a sun.

There was another castle, that used to be a different castle back before it was abandoned.

In this one, there were endless hallways and stairs that led everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Sora dreamt of getting lost there, of throwing away everything he'd ever known in order to find a witch that never really existed.

And there were others too, but that was another story.

Some nights, he didn't dream at all.

(No, that wasn't true. He did dream, he just couldn't remember.

There was the clocktower, again. And the sunset. And the ice-cream.

Before that, though, there was a cold, cold room, filled with beeping machines and digital screens. In the shadows stood a man; on his lips, sat a Heartless smile, as his fingers tapped the edge of a clipboard.

And once, a laugh)

On those nights, Sora would wake shivering. He'd check the windows and pull on a few extra layers of clothes, but no matter what he did, he just couldn't get warm.

The cold stayed with him until morning.

There was the boy who wanted to live forever, who tried to burn his existence into the memory of every person he met because he was afraid of becoming Nobody.

But one day, he lost his friend,

And when the world exploded, he lost himself,

And when he woke, he lost his new friend(s)

And finally, he fell into the flames once more, and burned away into Nothing.

There were others, too.

'You know, when we first met, I really, really hated you.'

Sora winced at that, but kept his tone cheerful. "Which means you hate me less now, right?" he asked, fingering the wet ice-cream stick in his hand.

'I guess there's no point in hating you, is there? It's not like you made things this way.'

"Roxas," he said. "Come on."

The voice in his head sighed. 'You're really lucky, you know,' he said, the words fading as Roxas retreated for the day. 'Not all of us get what we want.'