Entry tags:

halloween town 1

AS: Halloween Town, iii
Another Side, Another Story
Halloween Town: In Which A Heart Is Much Sought-After



It was lonely and maybe a little discomfiting, wandering around Halloween Town by herself. The silence, broken solely by eerie sounds that only failed to be alarming because they seemed so gleeful, was starting to get to Namine when she unexpectedly heard a voice calling her name.

"Namine!"

She looked up from the doorway of the abandoned house she had been considering. It was Sally, hurrying down the road on her narrow legs, and she seemed upset.

"Is everything all right?" Namine asked her, her spectral hand unconsciously tensing at her side to summon her spear in case the doll woman was being chased. She had only had a few days to get used to the sensation of having a weapon at her command, but she was getting so quickly accustomed to the totally new idea of being a combatant-- someone who could help others if they needed it, defend herself if she were in trouble.

It felt good.

Sally stumbled up and clutched at her chest, although she didn't seem out of breath, if in fact she did breathe at all. "Jack went to see Sandy Claws, didn't he? Ohh, I just knew something like this would happen... He just can't control himself," she said in a rush, sounding like she might cry.

Namine hurried to say, "Well, yes, he did come with us, but. Nothing happened. We just got what we went for and came back."

The meeting hadn't gone as well as it could have, but they had certainly managed to avoid anything Namine would have considered worth crying over. For other Nobodies, it wouldn't be much of a claim, but Namine had found that tears and despair came to her more easily than other emotions ever since Sora's arrival in Castle Oblivion -- as if they were stronger, more real, instead of something intangible like pleasure or joy.

"Everything you went for?" Sally asked, her gaze liquid and dismal.

"Well." Namine hesitated a beat, then confessed, "Roxas wanted two more of everything, so that he could make hearts for me and Axel, but--"

Sally was not reassured at all, and she wound herself up still tighter, wringing her hands. "That must be why they went back. Sandy Claws is furious."

"No one went back," she said.

That caught Sally's attention, but she looked around, clearly searching for the others. "Then where are they?"

"We split up," Namine explained. "There's a lot of ingredients on the list, and -- we all want to go back to Hollow Bastion as soon as we can."

No need to tell her about the danger they're in. She'd only worry, and we're hurrying as much as we can. Besides, the Assassin they had left behind would be able to cross between worlds and pull them away the moment the Organization made their move. Even though Axel was the only one they would speak to, the three Assassins who had accompanied them had split up, one to follow each of them.

Somewhere, invisible, one of them was following Namine right now, ready to pass on the message the moment he or she received word of an attack. It made her a little nervous, but she kept reminding herself that Axel only pretended not to like her. And hoping that it was true.

"Oh," Sally said, unwinding a little and frowning to herself. "Then who attacked Sandy Claws's workshop?"

"Attacked?" Namine repeated, alarmed.

Sally nodded, her features still concerned. "Sandy Claws found me in the forest -- he said that someone had broken into his factory while he was out, and stole one of the presents. They left a giant hole in the wall!"

The red-suited man had certainly made a good show of it, but Namine mentally docked him a few points for not knowing as much as he claimed he did. She explained, "Everyone is closer to town than I am. I'd have seen them if they'd gone past me into the forest. Anyway, we'd need two presents, not just one."

Finally it seemed to sink in that they were innocent, and the tension in Sally's shoulders eased up. "Oh my," she murmured. "Then who would have done that?"

Namine made herself turn back to the house, running transparent fingers over the broken windows. Everything here was so lonely, outside of the town. "I don't know, but after Roxas has his new heart, maybe we'll help you look," she assured the doll woman. She wasn't sure the others would appreciate her promising their assistance, but once the top priority was out of the way, they would be able to decide whether or not to clear their names.

Sally nodded and moved unsteadily closer. "I have the memory you need," she said, and held out a bouquet of small blue flowers, bound by the stems with a pale ribbon.

"Aren't these..." Namine took them, curling fingers uncertainly around them. "...forget-me-nots?"

Memory. In a way, she supposed that was the essence of everything. So many significant events, small and large, were driven by people wanting to make a difference, wanting not to be forgotten... That was all Namine had ever wanted.

"Thank you," she said softly. "This will help a lot."

"What are you searching for?"

After a long moment, Namine reached into the pocket of her sweater and drew out a small hand mirror. "I found this, for one thing..." she offered. "Reflection, see? Pretty straight-forward." Her lips turned up at the edges in a rueful smile.

"Oh! Yes, I see," Sally said, her eyes wide. It was like it never would have occurred to her to get a mirror. "I would have thought maybe a pair of scissors, or a dagger..."

A dagger? Namine gave her an awkward smile and tucked the mirror away again. "I'm also supposed to find something that could be emotion, but -- I don't have much time left before we were supposed to meet up, and 'emotion' is so unspecific."

She'd run the gamut in her mind, but everything felt so one-sided. Happiness? That wasn't representative of all emotions. Sorrow? That was representative of the worst part of emotions. In the end, she wasn't sure she was really qualified to decide what represented emotion.

Although perhaps she was still better than either of the others.

Sally brought her stitched fingers to her lips. "Emotion can only be one thing."

Namine's head jerked up. "Really?"

"Everyone here knows about it," Sally assured her. "I'm sure the Doctor wouldn't have put it that way if he didn't mean the comet."

"Comet?"

Sally smiled, for once seeming to be comfortable -- in her element. She knew what she was talking about. "If that's all you're looking for, let's go ahead and find the others. I know exactly where the comet will be."

She turned without waiting for an answer, heading back toward the road. Namine smiled and hurried to catch up with her. The doll woman reminded her of herself: the sort of hushed, tense person who wanted to be useful, accepted.

"Thanks for your help," Namine said shyly, and was rewarded with a more flustered smile.

They found Axel and Jack already waiting at the graveyard, and were joined quickly by Roxas as well, leaping down the hill into their midst on his hooved haunches with a quick, edged grin. This place suited him, in a way -- as if the half-demonic appearance matched the half-wild part of him.

"So what've we got?" he asked, swinging his own finds down for them to see. A pocket watch, a firefly in a jar, and a scrap of cloth. He pointed a clawed finger to each in turn, saying, "Pulse, spark, courage."

Axel lifted his eyebrows and said politely, "I've seen better sparks. And how is that courage?"

Roxas folded his arms. "It's a blindfold. And we already told you, you aren't allowed an opinion on the spark."

Namine snickered a little into her hand, almost drowned out by Jack eagerly saying, "Here! I have surprise from the mayor -- and terror!"

"Having to collect both surprise and terror seems redundant," Axel observed, reaching out to drop a broken heart pendant with the others. Pain.

Roxas's gaze flicked up to Axel's poison-green eyes. "What about desire?" he asked, tone neutral.

Axel set his furred hands on his hips and smirked, very slightly. "Don't worry. I know what it looks like when I see it."

Namine flushed slightly, unsure how to interpret that jab, but Roxas was as calm as Jack and Sally were oblivious. "Oh yeah?" was his only response.

There was a pause, and then Axel sighed, and told Jack, "Take your clothes off."

Namine's hands flew to her eyes, and Roxas said flatly, "Okay, I am definitely not feeling the desire here," barely audible over Sally's indignant, "Don't listen to him, Jack!"

Axel said dryly, "Calm down. He has clothes on under it."

In spite of herself, Namine peeked out between her fingers. She couldn't tell herself, but she supposed he wouldn't have said something like that if he weren't sure, right? He didn't want to see Jack naked any more than they did, right?

"I don't understand," Jack said, now puzzled, for the first time something other than pleasant. "What's so important about my clothes?" He picked with bony fingers at the red coat, disconsolate.

"It's his suit," Axel explained, not talking directly to him. "He wants to be Santa that bad..."

"Desire," Namine murmured, finally getting it.

"But!" Jack protested immediately.

Sally stepped closer to him and turned her face up, catching his attention. "I'll make you another one, Jack."

It took a moment for that to fully percolate, and then reluctantly Jack smiled at her, and glanced down at his clothes. With one last sigh, he started shedding the costume; beneath it he was wearing a black and gray pinstriped suit. Namine watched them as Sally moved to help him, wistful.

"What about you, Namine?"

She looked at Roxas, eyes going briefly wide. "Oh... Ah, I found this, for reflection." She drew out the mirror and handed it over. "Sally said that emotion was a specific thing..."

"Oh, yes!" Some of Jack's enthusiasm returned, even as he was still peeling off his red pants. "The shooting star!"

The words alone took her back; months ago, most of her lifetime ago, to memories of a night that had never happened, and Sora smiling at her. They were so real, so strong, even though there was no one left who could remember them now except for her.

Namine glanced aside, trying not to show her reaction, but she could still feel Axel's eyes piercing her. Roxas didn't notice, just saying, "A shooting star represents emotion?"

Jack hopped a few steps before finally getting the last leg of his pants off and starting a quick stride out of the field. "Yes! Come on, we need to get back to Christmas Town! There's only one shooting star, you know."

Roxas hurriedly gathered their things and they all raced after him. The blond boy asked irritably, "How precisely does the shooting star represent emotion?"

"Everyone sees a shooting star." It was Sally who answered; walking alongside Jack with her hands clasped together, and a small smile on her stitched face. Her quick, stilted walk managed somehow to keep even with Jack's long-legged pace. "And everyone knows that if you wish on a shooting star, your wish will come true. So everyone who sees it makes a wish. Wishes out of anger, out of grief, out of happiness, out of longing, out of love, out of jealousy... The comet accumulates all sorts of wishes."

"And how do you get a shooting star?" Axel asked blithely.

Sally said, "Once every hundred years, a star falls to earth in Christmas Town. It happened hardly a week ago -- so it's almost certainly still there."

Once every hundred years? Namine had grown increasingly certain that they wouldn't be able to make more than one heart, but for some reason it still made her feel numb and disappointed to have that proof that there was no way it could happen -- not only right now, but ever. She could see from Roxas's taut expression and Axel's blank one that they felt the same way.

Jack led them into the glade and to Christmas Town, apparently without noticing the gloom that had suddenly fallen over his party. Sally, perhaps more sensitive, looked back at them anxiously as they stumbled out into the snow. "What's wrong?" she murmured.

"That means there's no way for us to get three of them," Roxas said grimly.

Namine drew close to him, setting her hand on his arm. He seemed to angry, so frustrated. She wanted to tell him that it didn't matter -- that his fighting hard for them meant more than all the mechanical hearts they could carry. He looked at her, blue eyes so much like what she saw in the mirror, only sincere, tangled with feelings she couldn't compare to.

Before she could find words, Jack said, "Why, of course there is! Just come back in a hundred years, and you could get a second star! And then a hundred years after that, you can come back and get a third one!"

They were all staring at him then; Axel said, deadpan, "Wow. The answer was right in front of our faces all along."

We'll all be dead by then. Namine wondered how long people from Halloween Town lived.

To their surprise, Roxas said, "That sounds good." He was smiling, just a little, illuminated oddly by the glimmer of his halo.

"Excellent." Jack turned back to grin broadly at him. "Then we'll meet back here in a hundred years for the next one!"

Roxas laughed a little, the unexpected sound of it shocking. "Okay! We'll be here." He smiled warmly, first at Namine and then at Axel. "Right, guys?"

And she finally got it, a smile spreading involuntarily over her own lips. It was ridiculous, of course. In a hundred years they'd be ancient, even if they were still alive. There would be no point in getting hearts. But for some reason... the idea that after a hundred years, they might still be together, friends or something like it, and working together towards their common goals...

That made her feel warm inside, despite the chill in the air.

"Right," she said softly.

They crested the hill past Santa's workshop, and talked in quiet voices about its busted wall and the army of elves outside, hurriedly patching it up. Beyond the valley of Christmas Town was a vast expanse of white, broken only by a cluster of trees much like the forest surrounding Halloween Town, and a gray crater, dusted with white but still visibly different from its surroundings.

Roxas broke into a run, the others following close behind him. "You'll be less cold if you run!" Namine called over her shoulder to Axel, the only one who seemed reluctant to move any faster.

They pulled up to the edge of the crater, where Axel was already waiting and looking rather smug as the darkness evaporated behind him. He lifted his eyebrows at Namine, and she dared to stick her tongue out at him briefly before turning away, flushed, and pretending not to have noticed.

"I think Namine should go down and get it," Axel suggested when Roxas took a step in. Namine froze. Was this some sort of punishment for her brief moment of brattiness? "Shooting stars have special meaning for her."

He wasn't looking at her. It was moments like this when she remembered, really remembered, that she didn't know if Axel was a friend of hers, or if he was a friend of Roxas's who endured her presence with resentment for sharing in his best friend's attention. Was he showing her cruelty or kindness?

Silence reigned for a long moment, and Roxas didn't say anything, although he shrugged when she looked to him.

Finally, Namine unwound and moved carefully down into the crater. Every step down was like reliving the memories that she had carefully layered onto Sora's mind. Remember me? Well, remember. - I was always there, wasn't I? - How could you ever have forgotten that night, when the stars fell like snow...

Like the snow all around her now, like the surprisingly small rock covered in white at the center of the crater.

Remember how you swore you would protect me from the meteor shower, batting them back into the stars with that little wooden sword...?

She reached down and dusted off the freezing snow. It was probably just the frost, but the gray rock glittered like a diamond in her hands. It was a little too large to wrap her hands around it.

"Namine!"

The cry came to her ears as if they were padded with cotton, and she only slowly managed to lift her head; the cold wind struck her cheeks and froze a tear she hadn't even realized had slipped out. Looming above her was a metal monstrosity -- a lopsided, mismatched creature, reaching out with one heavy hand for her shooting star.

Isn't that...? she thought numbly, and she heard Sally cry, "The Doctor's experiment!"

An Assassin spun up out of the ground between her and the machine, knocking its hand away, and then Roxas was there, flying over her head with both keyblades coming down hard on the experiment's metal casing. Axel zipped behind it and let out a torrent of flame. The experiment lurched around, silently outraged, and flung out one heavy arm, knocking the redhead back into the snow. Jack hurried up alongside them, throwing himself at the creation's back.

Namine watched blankly, the Assassin swirling restlessly in the air around her, small eyes focused on the combat warily. She knew she'd remembered seeing it before -- slung lifelessly over the Doctor's operating table back in Halloween Town. What was it doing here in Christmas Town? Was this the creature that had broken into Santa's workshop?

It was fighting one-armed, she noticed; flinging out the bigger arm to toss its opponents aside or attack them. The other arm was occupied with incongruous objects -- a wrapped gift, a tree ornament, a dagger...

A dagger?

Something clicked into her mind and Namine felt her paralysis fade away. She rushed past the Nobody guarding her and plunged into the fray, grabbing Roxas's elbow. "Wait!" she cried. "Stop! Don't hurt it!"

"What?!" the blond snapped, annoyed as he glanced back at her, fixing his balance.

"Because it's like us!" she said desperately.

Axel paused, and simultaneously so did the two Assassins in their sharklike circling of the experiment; it batted them away and they scattered quickly before the slow creature could hit them, but didn't retaliate. The experiment lumbered back slightly, watching them all cautiously, but it didn't resume the attack.

Namine felt her breath coming quick. She said urgently, "It wants a heart, Roxas. Look!"

She jabbed a finger at the things in its protective embrace. After a few beats, Roxas slowly relaxed, a frown twisting his features. "But," he said hesitantly, "we can't let it have the comet."

Namine deliberated a moment longer before stumbling up closer to the experiment. She could see the others tensing from the edges of her vision, but she looked up to the metal creature and murmured, "I understand that you want a heart. I... I don't have one either. A lot of us don't."

The experiment turned its disproprtionately small head, looking around at the assembled Nobodies. She nodded, and added, "I want you to have a heart. I wish I could help. But... we can't let you have it. Roxas needs it more than we do." She pointed at him, and the experiment leaned in, considering him. "You and I, we can function without hearts, but he can't fight."

It was already visible in his face and in his body, trembling and bright with sweat even in the freezing air. The experiment looked back at Namine, and then at Roxas again.

"Part of having a heart is making sacrifices for the good of others," she said softly.

After a long moment of stillness, a sudden gust of steam released from the experiment's back, and it seemed to deflate with the hot air, slowly settling down onto the ground. Its left arm relented its tight grip on the ingredients, and it gathered the tree ornament on one pipe finger, holding it out in offering to Namine.

It was a tiny brass trumpet.

Namine looked up at the experiment and smiled warmly. "Thank you," she murmured, fingers curling tightly around it.

---

The thing that Dr. Finkelstein dropped unceremoniously on his table was not very impressive. It was about the size of Roxas's head, with flyaway wires in all directions and it was covered in metal plating and had a strange lever on the front that Namine eyed dubiously -- it seemed like it would be easy to open and accidentally spill the contents.

"This is a surrogate heart?" Roxas asked suspiciously, and then, "Ow!"

The doctor wheeled away from him, a needle in hand. Roxas rubbed his arm sullenly, watching him as he tipped a drop of blood into a vial on the device. "There," he said, contented. "That's the last of it. Now try to use your keyblades."

Roxas grimaced and then lifted his arms, calling Traveler's Charm into his hands. Namine watched expectantly. There was no instantaneous reaction from Roxas -- he didn't go pale, he didn't flinch, he didn't seem upset at all -- but the 'heart' started making strange noises on the table.

"Perfect!" The doctor nodded to himself, dusting off his hands.

"Do we have to carry it around, or can I leave it somewhere safe?" Roxas asked, already seeming cheered. He took a few swings with the keyblades, spinning to attack an imaginary enemy and narrowly avoiding smacking into a tower of machinery.

Finkelstein shook his head. "That sort of thing doesn't matter. My device is connected directly to the heart. Distance doesn't matter." He opened his skull and rubbed at his brain, scowling around the room. "Now where did I put that confounded experiment..."

So it wouldn't have worked on those of us without hearts anyway, Namine thought wryly. It's definitely the wrong kind of heart. She was still smiling, though, her fingers tight around the ornament in her hands.

"Thank you," Roxas said, watching the little man wheel around the room, peering into corners as if the giant lumbering creation might have been stowed behind a cart. "I really appreciate all your hard work..."

He trailed off as it became clear that the doctor wasn't interested in his gratitude, and then shrugged. He obviously wasn't very interested in being grateful either. Roxas turned and waved them to follow him out the door.

They descended the tower in good spirits, Roxas carrying the surrogate heart somewhat awkwardly until Axel sighed and plucked it from his arms. They'd managed to make the whole trip in barely a day, and even if they hadn't gotten any sleep, at least they would be able to unwind for a while once they returned to Hollow Bastion. Even the Assassins seemed somehow upbeat, spinning in artistically playful patterns out of the side of the tower and playing twirly games of tag.

Jack and Sally were waiting for them in the courtyard, Sally's hand firmly held in Jack's. Namine felt her gaze linger on the intimate touch for a moment before making herself look up at their smiling faces.

"Good luck with your fighting!" Jack said cheerfully.

He had no idea what they were fighting for, Namine couldn't help thinking, but she laughed anyway. Roxas told him, "We'll win," with more confidence than she remembered seeing in him. Axel's green gaze was lingering on his face, the same way that Namine's had lingered in Jack and Sally's clasped hands.

When Roxas glanced at her, Namine stretched out a hand and conjured up a corridor to lead them back to Hollow Bastion. They each stepped through, the Assassins diving past their human companions.

"Goodbye, everyone! And don't forget!" she heard Jack's voice behind her. "In a hundred years, we'll meet you right here...!"