Chapter Text
The journey through the dream portal is so much smoother than the struggle through the corridors of darkness had ever been, it’s something that Lea noticed but didn’t really have time to think about when he was sent to save Sora.
Instead of a walk weighed down by the pull of darkness in every direction with only the thin layer of the Organization’s coat to protect you from the almost gravitational forces, with the dream portals its actual gravity pulling you towards your destination as you fall between dream realms.
Lea imagines it must be quite terrifying for anyone that comes here with a fear of heights built in, but for him it’s a thrilling ride that gets his blood pumping before he lands. After all, he has full control over the speed of his fall and instead of the boring pathway that hardly changes colour depending on which world you were travelling to, the dream drop reflects the worlds you travel between.
As he falls, though to him it feels more like the flight Roxas introduced him to in Neverland, he has to navigate around floating replicas of the Twilight Clocktower and the crumbling pillars of the Old Mansion that sit amongst the watercolour hues of red, amber, and rose painted across the clouds that he falls through.
Out of the corner of his eye he even sees the track for the train, though he only hears its distant trademark whistle and never actually spots the engine. He doesn’t have time to search for it, not when the portal that separates this worlds corridor from the next is coming up fast.
Passing through it feels like standing in a bright sunbeam after hiding in the shade, the warmth that flows across his whole body is welcoming even as the sight of the markers of the approaching world make his stomach plummet to the bottom of his boots.
He’s been to the Olympus Coliseum so many times, but never for long, he couldn’t stand it, not when the memory of a young hero with a brilliant smile lurked around every corner. Saix had cottoned on to the fact pretty quickly and had stopped sending him on missions to that world when he could avoid it, but he couldn’t always avoid it, not when Xigbar found out and started poking.
Trying to shove down the unease that rises at every familiar landmark, the bronze statues, the lightning bolt emblems, and the columns that line the gold dusted clouds, Lea can’t help but sigh in relief when Carbuncle makes a noise beside him, offering an easy distraction which he immediately takes.
“Urah!”
Carbuncle>>You know, nightmares aren’t all bad, I understand they seem like it at the time, but they’re meant to be a safe way for you to process your negative emotions and trauma.
“Easy for you to say,” Lea chuckles, “not all of us can change the dream world with a mere flick of their tail or a glow from their horn,” while saying this he reaches out and flicks the ruby horn that decorates Carbuncle’s forehead, uncaring for the way that Carbuncle playfully snaps at him in response for it.
“Yip!”
Carbuncle>>You can learn, though only when my realm isn’t being corrupted by a powerful Nobody that also has the Scourge.
“Oh?” Lea questions with interest, “you willing to teach me?”
“Uyah!”
Carbuncle>>You might have to wait a while, I’ll have a lot of clean up to do, plus Noct comes first.
Lea shrugs. “I can be patient, but as you say, we all have our priorities.”
His current priority comes up on him faster than he would have liked, the clouds parting to reveal the portal that will lead them straight to the entrance of the Olympus Coliseum. He can see it all laid out beneath him, the mighty arena surrounded by the eerily silent town, all of it shrouded in shadows making the exchange in the central ring a beacon in the darkness.
Twisting in the air, Lea tries to aim for the arena, determined to put a stop to all this as soon as possible, but the moment he gets close he finds his flight interrupted by glitching sky and buffeting winds that swarm up out of nowhere.
The flicker of a dark figure in the corner of his eye is the only thing that warns him about the incoming attack.
Raising his Keyblade, he manages to catch the sword that was aimed at his neck in the teeth of his blade’s flames. With a sharp twist of his wrist, he deflects the sword and comes face to face with his new opponent as the man is forced back.
His heart freezes the moment he sees black spikey hair, clear blue eyes, and a brilliant smile that lights up the space around him.
“Long time no see,” chirps Zack as he spins his sword and brings it to rest on his shoulder, looking casual as the two of them continue to fall.
Lea grits his teeth as he tries to correct course, aiming for the battle playing out below them, but Zack catches the movement and closes the distance before Lea can slow himself enough to change his trajectory.
Lea catches the next incoming strike, but this time Zack doesn’t allow him to deflect, he rotates his blade at the exact moment Lea moves to disengage. Wedging his sword into the thin space where the flames curl back in on themselves, Zack locks the blades together and forces his way into Lea’s space, so he can move in for a grapple.
Sparks burst to life across Lea’s left arm and shoulder the moment Zack reaches for his neck, disrupting the move, but there’s little he can do about their interlocked weapons, unless he wants to dismiss his own, but the few seconds he would need to resummon it would be all the time Zack needed.
Left with no choice, he can only brace himself for the incoming impact with the ground, but the hard crash with the earth he’s prepared for never comes.
His fall slows, gradually at first and then all at once as specks of ruby light form around him, floating in the air like the blown fuzz of thousands of dandelions.
He feels Zack’s weight being thrown off of him, and without the leverage he was applying to his sword there is nothing to keep Lea from dislodging the blade with a violent swing that has the weapon burying itself in the sand next to where Zack has been laid out.
Not Zack, Lea quickly reminds himself, it can’t be, not when it’s his fault that the hero is gone. This shadow of his friend is just a product of this nightmare, an amalgamation of memories that have been twisted, not just by his own mind this time, but also by Somnus’ corruption.
“You’re not real,” Lea snarls as he plants his feet, drawing a line in the sand with his Keyblade and all but daring the illusion of his friend to cross it. “I got that memorized a long time ago.”
“Ouch, right in the feels,” the imposter croons, placing a hand over his chest as though wounded but smiling all the while.
Fire comes easily in response to the taunt and Lea has no intention of holding it back. He knows how these nightmares go, and he doesn’t have time for it, not today.
His near blind charge forward is only stopped by the sudden fluffy weight that lands on his shoulder.
Digging his heels into the sand, he shifts his body to the left and dances to the side, completely avoiding the overhead swing that Zack aims at his head, but he has to put up a hand to keep Carbuncle steady on his shoulder, leaving him stumbling for a second as he fights to regain his centre of balance.
The little Dream Lord digs his claws into the meat of Lea’s shoulder but still manages to give a commanding, “yip!” that makes it clear that he wants Lea to check his phone this instant.
Having learned that being turned into jewellery is an option if he refuses, Lea tries to play for the time he will need to glance at the new message.
Creating a simple wall of fire would be pointless, Lea knows this from experience, every time he has tried that tactic in his dreams, the figment based off of Zack had simply appeared behind him instead. The only real option is to keep moving and to be veiled by flames.
Luckily, he has a move that does just that.
A little something he’s been working on for a while after watching Roxas use light to flit about the battlefield as though the laws of physics don’t apply, not that they have to any of them since they learned how to use magic.
Anyway, yeah, he’s been struggling with this new technique a little, but hey, this is a nightmare dream, what better place to pull off the previously impossible. Besides, after seeing that Noctis kid warp across the battlefield like space is no denser than burnt ash, he’s feeling a little inspired.
Taking a deep breath, Lea allows a little spark to catch upon one of his chakrams as he summons it to his free hand.
In an obvious move that even a blind man could read, Lea hurls the chakram straight at Zack’s head, the resounding ring of orichalcum on tempered steel sounds too close to the screech of nails on a chalkboard, but even that discordant sound isn’t enough to break Lea’s concentration as he tracks the new path of his weapon.
Normally, this would be the part where he manipulated the little spark he ignited upon the chakram to guide it smoothly back to him, but this time is different.
Taking a breath, he concentrates on the trace of flames clinging to his weapon, setting them as an anchor as he allows air to flow around him as he exhales a super-heated breath of oxygen that’s just on the cusp of flaring into a blaze, but he doesn’t let it, not yet.
Not until the air around him is fully saturated with it.
In the time this has taken, Zack has seized the chance to close the distance. He swings, aiming for Lea’s neck in the clear hope of decapitating him and slicing through Carbuncle at the same time as he crows, “you’re mine!”
He isn’t, not when the air around him ignites upon command and he feels the flames consume him.
He falters for a moment as he remembers the last time he had allowed his own flames to eat away at his being, but he focuses again on the fact that this is different, he’s not a Nobody, and he’s not sporting a wound in his chest that’s already given the Darkness the chance it was always looking for to sneak past his defences.
With one last push, he falls forward into his flames, feels the world around him burn away, and emerges on the other side, his hand gripping his chakram like a lifeline as he desperately tries to catch his breath.
He blinks out at the battlefield to see that Zack has been left in the middle, alone and confused as he searches the arena for any trace of where Lea could have gone.
Not wasting his chance, Lea wrenches his chakram from the pillar it had embedded itself into while at the same time sending off a blast of Fira to knock down one of the fire pits placed along the looming walls of the Colosseum.
The distraction works just as he plans, Zacks’s head whips in the direction of the explosion as brass stone and ashes comes crashing down on the sand of the arena, leaving a trail of soot and fire that at this point in his life, could pass for Lea’s signature.
“Oh, no you don’!” Zack shouts as he takes off towards the wall, giving Lea the chance he needs to crouch behind the pillar and pull out his phone.
He scrolls to the latest message and reads as fast as he can.
Carbuncle>> Oh, didn’t expect a teaching moment to gift wrap itself, but it would be a waste to just let it pass us by.
“What?” Lea questions quietly, not understanding the message at all.
Instead of the loud ‘yip’ that Carbuncle has been using to communicate with thus far, the little dream fox gives a gentle humming trill, which is mirrored by the next notifications that appears on Lea’s phone.
Carbuncle>> Him, he’s your nightmare, he may be running on Somnus’ power, but he still comes from your memories, so with that Keyblade of yours of course you can change him.
“Change him? How?” Carbuncle is making this sound way too easy. “You’re making sound like all I have to do is point at him with my Keyblade and bam! Bad dream be gone.”
Another rumbling purr, this one decidedly more annoyed.
Carbuncle>> Well, when you put it like that it just sounds silly.
“You are the one who is putting it like that. Got it memorized.” Lea rebuffs and earning himself a bat to the side of his head from Carbuncle’s gorgeously fluffy tail.
Carbuncle>> Just try it, what do you have to lose? You’re a Keyblade Wielder, and he’s a reflexion of a memory you hold close to your heart, so let the real memory be your guiding key.
Lea is still completely lost on what his is meant to do, but Carbuncle is the lord of this realm, and like he said, what does he really have to lose?
With a sigh and a slowly catching determination, he stands and steps out from the pillar.
Taking a stance that he’s seen both Roxas and Sora use, back straight, arms shoulder width apart, and both hands wrapped firmly around the handle of his Keyblade, he for once allows his memories of Zack to flow freely as he grits his teeth and calls out to the nightmare with his friend’s face.
“Zack!”
The faker reacts immediately, his head whipping round with uncanny speed and his eyes lighting up with an unchecked rage that doesn’t suit his kind face. “Done hiding? Big mistake!” the shout is accompanied by a leap from the wall that is meant to close the distance between them in a single move.
Instead, it provides Lea with the target he was hoping for.
“Here goes.”
Light and flame mix in coils of power as the ground beneath Lea’s feet is painted over with starlight, as the sigil of his keychain projects itself onto the floor, but Lea does not have time to study it. His gaze too focused on the thin line of ember lit light that streams across the field, striking the nightmare directly in the chest.
For a brief, horrifying moment, nothing happens, but then, everything happens at once.
With a howl that barely sounds human, the imposter falls to the ground as light and shadow split, making Lea see double for a moment.
Or so he thought.
He blinks, first to clear his eyes of the mirage left behind by his Keyblade’s lightshow, then again in disbelief as he looks between the two bodies lying prone at the centre of the arena.
Two bodies that are already starting to move, beginning to stand.
With fear chaining his heart, Lea looks between the two men, one made of shadow and darkness, the other a perfect reflection of his own memory.
All he sees is his true nightmare finally unlocked.