Darkness. His life began in it, and it was present in every moment of his extremely short life—truthfully, he was basically darkness given form. Darkness and data combined into a shell of a teenage boy. It only made sense that darkness would be omnipresent in death. But it was HIS darkness, where he could finally be away from anyone and everyone who wanted to screw with his head or heart, with no obligations, promises…or the overwhelming urge to kill a certain lightning bug of a Nobody whenever she entered his field of vision.

Unfortunately, he was also very much alone with his own memories. Memories of a blonde girl in white he sought to protect, even after she repeatedly lied to him, after she had rearranged his thoughts and personality so that he lost sight of himself and became the guy EVERYONE ELSE thought he should be. Memories of a boy (and his odd friends) who might have been his best friend in a different world.

Except not all his memories were completely clear. Sure, he could remember just about everything, but events before he, well, broke were blurry and hard to remember. It's a strange thing, really, to suddenly realize that you do, in fact exist but don't know exactly how or why. The more he tried to remember exact details, the more the memories continued to slip away until he eventually decided that they weren’t really all that worth keeping anyway and gave up. Who needs memories when one’s dead?

What started bugging him next wasn’t mental, but physical, and came in the form of itching. Like he was on or against something that was tickling him and it was more than a bit strange to look around and see nothing but darkness. That is, until something clicked in his brain and he realized that his eyes were closed, which explained the darkness. He opened them.

He was right, he had been lying on what turned out to be grass, on his side, which caused his left arm to pop and cramp up when he tried to lean on it. He blinked and squinted around at the world around him, trying to bring it into proper focus, wincing when he pushed himself up and his wrist responded with a loud pop. The landscape was fairly bland, consisting mostly of grass and short shrubby trees with a pale bluish-grey sky and absolutely no sign of any life whatsoever—humans, animals, or otherwise. The sun even seemed dull, casting little light on the landscape and giving the sky an overcast look.

He himself, aside from various aches and pains due to sleeping directly on the ground and sleeping for who-knows-how-long, was not too bad off. Even though the last thing he did was participate in a fight to the death, he didn't seem to be wounded at all. His hair was much longer than he remembered it being; his bangs were almost long enough to tuck behind his ears and it fell well past his shoulders in the back. What disturbed him was how he seemed to know all of these facts, yet he couldn’t see for himself to prove them—although he could feel his body, he couldn’t see it. He could feel gloves on his hands, but when he held his hands up in front of him, he couldn't see them at all.

“Glad to see you’re finally awake.”

He heard a voice suddenly, though he couldn’t tell if it came from somewhere nearby or in his head, but immediately scanned the area to find the source. Whoever it was sounded female and young—he searched for anyone fitting that description, but unless she was hiding in one of the trees a couple hundred yards away, there was no one there except for him.

“Who’s there?” he asked, voice cracking slightly. He paused to clear his throat. “Come out. I know you’re there somewhere.”

“Too bad, guess you’ll have to deal with it," the voice teased.

He scowled and glared down at the grass, since it was the only living thing nearby. Death was just as bad as life, if he was stuck in a place like this with nothing but a nameless, faceless voice to keep him company. Then again, it could've well been the grass itself talking for all he knew. He sighed and pushed himself up off the ground, intending on exploring whatever the place was he was in. He quickly found out there wasn’t much to it that he hadn’t already seen—just grass and trees.

“You’re boring to watch, I hope you know that.”

He rolled his eyes at the voice and concentrated on trying to climb a nearby tree. It was harder than it sounded. Since he couldn’t see where his hands were going, it was hard to coordinate them and after ending up on the ground for the fifth time, he flopped back on the ground, staring up at the dim sky. Maybe he would go back to sleep…

“Come on, get up. There’s a reason I woke you up, after all!”

He felt someone shaking his shoulder, and swatted at them a few times, but they kept shaking him. It went like this for a few minutes, him being shaken and trying to shoo the person away, until he finally got fed up and rolled out of the way. The girl—he assumed it was a girl—had been behind him, so he turned that direction before scrambling to his feet.

Unfortunately, as much as he wanted to yell at girl-voice, he really couldn’t bring himself to, apparently opting instead for staring stupidly and uttering partial words before giving up and shutting up altogether. And continuing to stare, of course, as the girl standing in front of him wasn’t someone he could easily yell at. His eyes told him it was Naminé, but his brain told him it most likely wasn’t, and both decided to battle it out, putting his mouth in the crossfire. Not-Naminé laughed a little bit and smiled in a way that was unlike the girl she was imitating; it was creepier, if nothing else.

“I picked this form because you’re less likely to try to destroy me if I look like this. Am I correct?” she asked, tilting her head slightly. He stared at her for a few more seconds, before frowning and turning his head away. “I’ll take that as a yes. I had assumed you would be curious to know what I had to say. It does pertain to you, after all.”

“I don’t care. Nothing pertains to me," he muttered, scowling. "I died, the world doesn’t have anything for me anymore. Not that it ever really did.” He shrugged and chanced a look at not-Naminé, who to his surprise was still smiling and had started bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet.

“Not exactly. Yes, you did die, but you’ve been given a second chance at life.” She calmed down slightly, but continued rocking back and forth on her feet, hands clasped behind her back, waiting for his answer.

“Second chance? Why? My first life, if you can even call it that, wasn’t that great,” he replied, trying to decide which was more disturbing, Naminé grinning like she was or Naminé acting like she was on a sugar high. He settled for the latter, and gently put his hands on her shoulders to get her to stop bouncing. “Besides, there’s got to be a catch. I want to know what it is first.”

Naminé bit her lip. “There is…see, when you, ah, died, your body and soul ended up here, but your heart didn’t. I wasn’t sure if it fizzled out of existence entirely or if it was out there somewhere, floating around by itself or...” She glanced at his chest, and he automatically put his hand over it, as if to protect the heart he figured was still there. People's hearts usually only separated from their bodies if they were killed by Heartless.

He tapped his fingers against his chest. “You’re saying I can’t come back to life without a heart?” That didn’t make sense to him—how else had all those Nobodies lived without their hearts? What made him a special case?

She shook her head. “That’s not it. It's just procedure...anyway, I found it, after a year of searching. It wasn’t easy to find, as it had attached itself to someone else’s heart. Or rather, a piece of it had. A big piece, but still only a piece.” She bit her lip again and started fidgeting with the hem of her dress, and for a few seconds, he was convinced he was actually dealing with the real Naminé and not an anonymous entity in her form. “But I couldn’t separate it. I tried, but it stuck like glue." She hooked her index fingers together and tugged them to demonstrate. "Really long story short, if you want to live, I’ll have to split that person’s heart in two and transfer half of it to you. How does that sound?”

He didn’t answer at first. Weighing the pros and cons was tough; on one hand, this would be the best chance to live his own life, out of anyone’s shadow and he could do what he wanted, but on the other hand, he could just be playing into Destiny's hands and end up in a repeat of his previous life. It was a fifty-fifty chance, but he decided to take the risk, if it would get him out of this world. He nodded.

“I'll take you up on that offer. If anything goes wrong, I’m blaming you for it.” He managed a grin before adopting a more serious expression. “But next time I meet you, I won’t care what form you take. Keep that in mind, too.”

Naminé smiled her slightly creepy smile again and stepped forward, closer to him. “I’ll remember that. But I doubt you’ll be back here any time soon. Now, I need you to go back to sleep for a little bit, and when you wake up again…well, you’ll see.” She reached out and touched his forehead lightly, and he started to question why she did that when he suddenly felt himself falling and the world went dark again.