(no subject)
On arriving in Luceti, Xion met with a number of surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant. She found all of her friends - and Sora, awake and okay, even though she and Roxas weren’t with him. That was shock number one. Shock number two was having to deal with Axel and Roxas remembering her, which wasn’t supposed to happen - but they didn’t remember her completely. Shock number three was ... Riku! He wasn’t the same as the somber, stoic figure in black she’d known and traveled with back home. The shocks kept coming in the form of Xaldin and Xigbar not only showing up, but remembering her perfectly. And then, of course, there was Vexen, to reveal that he was her creator and that there was another Replica. All of these shocks to Xion’s system left her reeling, and possibly worse off than she had been.
One of Xion’s greatest fears on returning in Luceti was that everyone would hate her when they discovered what she really was. Axel was questionable at this point, but Roxas didn’t even remember she was a Replica, much less that she’d turned into a monster and made him kill her. She was convinced that he’d hate her if he found out, and thus tried to keep it a secret. Not that she was very good at it.
While this was happening, she had to find a replacement for her lost Keyblade ... another secret she kept. Cloud suggested a katana. That was probably the very first step she took to better herself of her own accord, though she saw it as a duty rather than something she was doing to become explicitly stronger.
That’s also when she met Guybrush and Hugo, two people who would become good friends to her. And how strange it was ... to discover that people were kind. Xion had never seen so many people before Luceti - had no idea that so many people could even exist. And that they were good... what a shock. After growing up in the Organization, where only Axel and Roxas were kind to her, it was amazing to know that other people existed out there who could be ... friends! It was so hard to believe, though she did her best to take it in stride. Xion let her curiosity about the world sneak out, a little bit, and found herself drawn to the kindness of others like a moth to flame. It was so wonderful to discover that not everyone was cold and cruel.
Then her birthday happened. A full 365 days since her creation, falling on November 20th. Around this time, Sora had been kidnapped by the Malnosso, and Xion, being new to Luceti and mallynapping, was frightened out of her wits for his safety. She was scared of facing Axel and Roxas, and ... well, it wouldn’t have been a very good birthday, if not for people like Luka and especially Yuzu, who took her out to get her own birthday cake. It was another introduction to the kindness of people, it was around then that something in Xion began to thaw. Began to believe, the tiniest little bit, that there might be something about this “living” thing, that it might just start to be worth it. And maybe it was OKAY to live.
It helped - sort of - that talking to Riku finally made her cry for the first time in her life. It was an emotional release she’d never used before - she never cries once in canon - but the build up of stress made “water” fall out of her eyes. It was a release she needed, and it definitely solidified Riku in his place as her emotional rock in times of turmoil. She spoke to Roxas, and he told her it would be okay. He didn’t hate her. Her relief was beyond words. Maybe things would start to be a little better. Once Axel got over trying to leave Roxas in her care, which she was very displeased about. (The two hadn’t been getting along, and Axel believed Xion was closer to Roxas.) She insisted she and Axel cut a deal - that they take care of him together, and Axel agreed. Progress was happening - slowly.
And then - well, then, Xion met Sanji. And oh, my, what a future into which that would unfold, though neither of them knew it yet. Of all the residents in Luceti, even her own canon friends, Sanji may be the one person, the one guiding light, who has most helped Xion to change and grow for the better. But that's getting a little ahead of things.
Around this time, Saix had briefly returned to Luceti, shattering Xion's slow forward progress. She was scared - to put it mildly. But he disappeared before long, and things settled once again into an uneasy calm. Not, however, for very long. Because, perhaps inevitably, she and the Riku Replica got into a huge fight. He refused to believe that he was a Replica like her, somehow "lesser" than the real thing. Xion was massively angry and offended at his claims that being a Replica was somehow being worthless.
It turned physical, and Sora came across the two as they fought. Unthinkingly, never having been told the truth, Sora offered Xion his Keyblade. Stunned beyond words, the girl took it without thinking, setting in motion a chain of events that would culminate in her second death half a year later. At the time, however, she flew into a panic and ran off.
After that, things were very mixed for Xion for a while. She bore the weight of her new Keyblade like a ten ton boulder on her shoulders, constantly afraid and trying not to show it, only slowly letting her friends in on the truth. But other things were happening, things that didn't easily accept sadness. A Valentine's Day event occurred, introducing her to Sokka, a boy who would become a very close friend, and forcing her and Riku to fall in love, starting their long and complex relationship. But when the experiment ended, Xion, upset and deeply unhappy, ran.
Only to be intercepted by Sanji. And for the first time -- before she even admitted the truth to Roxas, though he was informed soon after -- Xion truly opened up and told another person about what would happen to her. How eventually, Sora would fall asleep, and she would have to be killed in order to save his life. Since she had his Keyblade, and not Roxas's, it was his power she was drawing on -- so it was Sora, this time, instead of his Nobody, who would be slowly drained of power until he fell asleep. And Xion, having already gone through this once, already knew what would have to be done. She tried to be calm about her fate, but she couldn't help being terrified on the inside.
This feeling would not get better as the months wore on. Xion kept on meeting new people, and her circle of friends kept growing -- people like Draco and Brook came into her life, people like Kratos, who in particular was very much like a father figure to her. She even made amends with Riku's Replica, and they became close friends. It was a painful balance to maintain -- being on the one hand so constantly afraid of her ever impending death, and on the other having all these new and fun experiences that were making her happy. With no further real crises occurring, other than dealing with the few painful experiences of a friend here or there going home, Xion began to let herself feel actually okay again. It was tempered by the knowledge ofher future, but she couldn't live being constantly afraid, right?
But then disaster struck. In early June, Sora and Xion both collapsed simultaneously. Xion awoke a week later after vivid dreams and realized the worst had happened -- her programming had managed to download a great chunk of Sora's memories. Great enough that he had entirely forgotten Kairi. Bad enough to forget your own best friend, but in Luceti, the two were dating, making the blow that much heavier. Xion was painfully reminded of what she was and what she was going to become.
She was forced to confront the question of how she would tell her other friends she was going to die. Especially Sokka and Draco, the two people closest to her who didn't yet know what was happening. However, she ruminated aloud under too weak a filter, and both boys found out the truth, even as she was asking Luceti in general how they made themselves feel better when upset. Even while dealing with the very painful fallout of telling Sokka and Draco the truth, she met people like Fenimore, Usopp, and Vash. Vash was an especially painful experience for her, as he made her swear she would not give up on trying to find a way out of her fate -- an argument she'd already had numerous times with Roxas.
Things were tense as the summer rolled on. Constant arguments with Roxas and tense discussions with Riku over the inevitability of her fate were exhausting her, and it was only the blunt acceptance of people like Draco and Sanji, who acknowledged that all would not be okay, that kept her going. Finally, of course, the inevitable occurred, to Xion's deep horror and numb relief. Sora fell asleep, and for good this time. Xion knew what this meant, and immediately told Sanji what was coming. And she asked him a favor, as she asked of Sokka -- fight me. Or in Sanji's case, protect Riku from getting killed. The strain on the poor girl was just too much, and in that final week of waiting she simply broke down, devoid of any emotion except a dull and endless horror.
Then the day of her transformation came, and Xion fled into the woods, trying to get as far from the village as she could. Luceti's powercap warped her powers, and instead of changing the fabric of reality to bring her and her combatant somewhere else entirely, she brought her combatants to her, plucking up friends and strangers from all across the village from the middle of whatever they were doing to bring them to her battlefield. One by one her forms went down. Sanji, Sokka, and Riku faced off against the third, and Sanji, towards the very end, kicked her so hard he nearly killed her right then. It was the start of a bigger problem for him, one that would impact Xion even more greatly. But at the time, it was all she could do to limp off to her final round -- versus Axel and Roxas.
It went the way you might expect, and for the second time in her life, Xion died, smiling, in her best friend's arms, while Axel looked on.
One week later she returned, free for the first time in six months. Initially elated, she quickly became scared that everyone -- her friends and all those strangers she'd forced into fighting -- would hate her. She confronted Sokka especially, making him promise to tell the truth. And he told her, honestly, that no one blamed her for what she did. It marked a major turning point for Xion. This, certainly, is something she should have been blamed for. Right? Saix would have called her a failure. But not a single one of her friends thought less of her for it; if anything, they loved her just the same and more. It was a feeling like none Xion had ever experienced. For the first time in her life, she was truly forced to acknowledge and even accept her own self-worth. Xion finally had something she'd never before possessed in her short life: self-esteem.
However, something was missing, an absence Xion noticed acutely: Sanji. Sanji had not welcomed her back, and in fact did not say a word to her at all in the following days. Xion knew him well enough to know that something was wrong, and that he was avoiding her. Remembering his savage attack on her during the fight, she began to fear he hated her. However, the truth soon became terrifyingly clear, when Brook threw up a panicked post saying that a parasite had hijacked her friend and was running for it. Xion, in a panic, begged to know where Sanji had gone, and Brook grudgingly let her in on the information.
Off Xion ran, into the fight of her life. Barely could it even be called a fight, really; Sanji was miles, light years, out of her league. She'd gone alone against Brook's wishes and been the first to arrive. If not for the timely arrival of Naoki, she would have been killed. She had known, going in, that she was risking her life, but she had come to a point where she was willing to stake everything for Sanji. That was how much she'd come to love him.
Thankfully, the ultimate sacrifice was not necessary. Xion and Naoki held the parasite controlling Sanji just long enough, before he escaped them to confront his own crew. Xion and Naoki were left to lick their terrible wounds and limp back to the village. For Xion was wounded, though she hardly knew it -- Sanji had kicked her in the arm as he escaped, and so completely shattered it as to blow it into pieces without ripping the skin. Her arm practically turned black with the bleeding under her skin ... but she felt no pain. And that was when Xion discovered the loss that came with her death: she could no longer feel any pain, a dangerous loss indeed.
Finally, now, with her own death out of the way and Sanji saved, things could calm down, right? Xion tended to her broken arm and tried to believe things would finally be better. And for a while, calm there was. Xion had resolved to get much stronger after her fight with Sanji, and began to train with a bow and arrow while redoubling her efforts with the Filial spirits, trying to master their magic. However, as always, peace was transient and quickly shattered by the coming of August, when the entire village exploded.
... essentially. A massive earthquake one week was followed by a flood of monsters the next, finally topped off by what was OOCly a week of AU's, but ICly a massive disaster for Xion. She became a boy and believed he had always been one. But Sora became the Nobody and Roxas the Somebody, meaning Roxas forgot their entire friendship -- again. Sokka became the Avatar, and a huge jerk who treated him pretty poorly and partially deceived him into thinking he'd cheated on Riku during the Valentine's event. Riku became the wielder of the Keyblade, and acted like he was entitled to it, an attitude that deeply rankled Xion. He ran into Luffy, who threatened him, but not before running into Naoki, who'd become a full demon and actually did attack him, chasing him to a bridge, which he promptly fell off of in his attempt to escape.
After the week was all over and Xion was restored to being a girl, she'd finally had enough. Since the end of May and early June, one crisis after another had rocked Xion's life. She'd died, come back, been savagely attacked by one of her best friends, and had to deal with the entire village falling apart. Then came the nail in the coffin of Xion's mental stability: Riku said something accidentally over the network that simply shattered her heart. "Why? It was mine." Riku coveted the Keyblade -- the thing that had killed her not once, but twice. Hearing those words from someone she deeply cared about, maybe almost loved, was like literally being stabbed in the chest with a knife. Though robbed of physical pain, she could still feel pain emotionally. Wounded and furious, she broke up with him right then and there. Before they could even speak again, Riku seemingly vanished from Luceti, all of his possessions disappearing in the classic signature of a resident gone home.
Put simply, Xion completely fell apart. Her will simply broke in a way that was nearly irreparable. She went to Sanji and Brook and hysterically broke down, crying so hard she nearly made herself sick as her two shocked friends simply tried to support her. The girl had taken in more pain than she could bear and had snapped under the burden.
Putting herself back together was a long and deeply painful process. She even asked the village at large if it was strange to wish you could go back home -- which, for her, would have meant death and ceasing to exist, at least as herself. A deeply morbid question to ask. Xion was at the lowest point she'd ever been in Luceti, even prior to her death. It was only slightly ameliorated by the return of Riku, canon bumped to just after his ordeal in Castle Oblivion and finally in possession of strength and weapon, which he'd never before really had. More importantly, he remembered her, soothing some of the raw and burning pain created by his disappearance.
From there, Xion was simply left to slowly and painfully pick up the pieces of her shattered life, which wasn't helped by continual painful and awkward conversations between her and Riku. But slowly, with the help of her friends, Xion slowly climbed her way back up. The combined efforts of the residents helped to cheer her up, too, and slowly guide her back to the path of doing what was right, instead of what was easy. In a very short time, Xion was forced to mature a great deal in order to overcome the pain and hardhsip she had undergone -- to look past it and understand that there was more to life, even in this place which visited so many tragedies upon its people.
Now, finally, for the first time since June, things genuinely calmed down in Xion's life. There were no more crises, no more catastrophes, no more deaths or injuries or awful things. Xion practiced her archery with Longshot, learned magic with Hermione, spent time with her friends, and slowly healed, her smile gradually returning. Even things with Riku began to even out, though they remained awkward.
And then. Oh then! Then she was kidnapped by the Malnosso, at the same time as one Allen Walker. The two returned mere days later, only a bit ... smaller. Xion had become five, and Allen eight. Xion, not possessing any memories of Kairi as a child, had no mold off of which to base herself, and so began the week with no real personality to speak of. With no memories, she was an essentially blank slate with absolutely nothing, and may have floudered and even died, alone in the woods, but for Allen finding her and rescuing her. The two children made their way to the village, where Xion felt that certain people -- her close CR -- were familiar, and would attach to them. Over the course of the week, she glued herself to Allen and basically grew a personality, thanks to lingering attachments the Malnosso had allowed her. She learned to smile and laugh, even speak, eventually becoming like a normal five year old.
At the start of October, Xion returned to normal and found herself feeling truly good, truly happy, for the first time in a very long time. The grounding experience of a having a childhood, even if only for a short time, had an incredible grounding effect on her. It was somehow very comforting to her to have gotten to experience it, and it left her with a sense of true calm and contentment. There was no fear of death hanging over her head, no crisis to attend to, nothing bad happening. She and Riku remained broken up, but it had finally reached a place where they could talk without it hurting -- it could even be friendly. Finally, Xion had achieved some measure of peace.
However, a few days later, Xion stepped into her room at home and was surprised to find a strange little music box on the floor...
Again, those of you from Route 29, please remove this journal. o/