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All around was black, and it chilled Locke to the bone, despite the warmth in the room. The corners of the darkened room danced and weaved in darkness and a young man’s form sat upright in bed, looking to each corner of his four cornered room, his back pressed into his own dark corner, knees tucked securely up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them, keeping them in place. The fabric of his pyjama pants was a little itchy on his bare arms and beads of sweat rolled haltingly down the centre of his back, soaking through the sleeveless sleeping shirt, but he didn’t dare move anything more than his eyes. They flickered, like a flame on a windy night, to each of the three corners that he didn’t occupy, trying to catch the movement that he could see out of the corner of his vision that told him that something was there when it certainly shouldn’t be. There had been nothing there when they had turned out the lights, but now… he had to stay alert. If not, he didn’t even want to think about what would happen.

--rip open your chest and take a peek at your heart--

Sleep wouldn’t come to him tonight, and he’d have big circles under his eyes in the morning since this would be the third night in a row that he hadn’t slept at night, but there wasn’t much that he could do. If he fell asleep, what if those things he could only just barely see attack him? He wouldn’t be doing Yuna any good where he was now, so that’s all he could do. Stay awake and hope that they wouldn’t decide to attack him, and hope that Yuna was going to find him soon.

She’d come for him. His Yuna was a good girl, and she was smart and strong and she had wicked aim with a gun, so she’d be alright. Piloting the Strahl, she’d come barrelling into this world one day and find him in this stupid little prison with people that thought it better to keep him locked up and they’d get away from all of this. They’d get away from this island that was almost like home and they’d all go home together and figure out how to bring Destiny Islands back to the world of the living--then Locke would have to go back out into the universe and help those other worlds that were plagued with the black shadows because that was the duty of a Keyblade Warrior. Ashe had told him that--it was his duty to do this and running away would never change that. He could fight them, out there, with the blade that looked like a humorously large key; here, though, on this weird world that hadn’t heard of magic… it was very rare that he could bring it to him. It was weird… was it broken? Were the people here hiding it from him? Sometimes he’d find it, but then the people of this prison would take it away from him and put him back in his room after filling his veins with something that made him feel woozy and nauseous and pathetic, stating that he was growing more violent; too violent.

They couldn’t see the Heartless, you see. They thought that he was crazy and that he needed to be helped with their medicine and they wouldn’t let him leave. Locke had escaped a few times, but each and every time he was caught and brought back, shot full of drugs and shoved back in his room. They’d given him his own room now, so as ‘not to hurt anyone’, and Locke hated it so much. The Heartless kept on trying to push against the shadows and they were going to get into the room one of these days.

Widened eyes looked to the right and he felt panic grip his chest, stealing his breath away just as surely as he could steal all the sugar packets at the school cafeteria on Destiny Islands, and stared towards the corner straight across the room from him. A pair of glowing yellow eyes blinked open, looking lazily around the room in a sleepy sort of numbness that made his form shiver with revolution. Moving his hand slightly, he tried to pull his Keyblade to him, staring at the eyes that hadn’t seen him yet, but it didn’t come.

It never came anymore. Was it him? Was it something he’d done? Was he no longer worthy of it?

A slight sound of dismay pressed through his throat as the glowing yellow eyes locked on him, growing… hungry? More and more eyes blinked open from the corner, spreading up the walls from the shadows, forming bodies that rose sickingly silent out of the woodwork, their long antenna zigzagging away from their heads as they started to approach, darker then the shadows about them, eyes all locked on him. No use hiding… it he was going to get his heart eaten, then he was going to go down fighting.

Unfurling himself from his position, he started to push himself up, watching the eyes cover the ceilings and fall down the other wall, and moved into the centre of the room so that he’d have enough fighting space. He found he was breathing painfully fast, now that he had pushed himself into action, and he fell into a fighting stance, incredibly uneasy since he knew that this wasn’t right; the Heartless were just staring at him, turning their heads this way and that, trying to size him up or something and they weren’t… they weren’t attacking. Nearly every surface of the room was covered with the eyes; including his bed, and only the space around where he stood was free of the eyes.

One of the pairs of eyes seemed a little different and, as he looked back towards his bed, he could only watch in horror as a long clawed arm reached out from the sheets, reaching towards him. Reaching, reaching, reaching--the arm seemed never ending, and Locke had to trample over the eyes to get away from its reaching, and he fell heavily into the far wall. The arm stopped, unable to reach out to grab him, and gripped the side of the bed, heaving its head and shoulders out of the shadows with great effort. It was coming out of the shadows; the damn heartless had found him, and now it was time for them to kill him. They’d had their fun, Locke supposed, torturing him these past few weeks with their search for him, but now Locke was done for.

“********,” Locke chanted as his eyes fell on the doorknob and the soft light that filtered in from the window that was in the door, running to it, his fists pounding on it as he was hollering at the top of his lungs. “Help!! Somebody! Anybody, get me the hell out of here!” There were many swears and oaths falling between his lips as he looked back, trying to get someone’s attention that could get him out of this room; and fast. The hulking beast watched him almost serenely as it slowly (which was deliberately, Locke was sure) crawled from the bed on all fours, the form more human than Heartless, and Locke wondered what kind of Heartless this thing would make out of him--and would he hurt Yuna if he ever came to see her?

“Stay where you are,” Locke whispered hoarsely, his back pressed to the wall just beside the door, his blond hair plastered to the back of his neck from the sweltering heat in the room and his own terror filling him; he didn’t have anything he could protect himself with. That thing--it was going to kill him and take his heart.

--lift the crystalline form and open its maw wide, consuming it whole--

The thing tilted its head, as if it was thinking about obeying his words, and then it leapt forward and Locke let out a scream as he felt claws ripping through the sweaty fabric of his sleeping shirt, the thing’s body pinning him against the wall with much more strength then he had in his form. Looking down with wide, honeyed eyes, he saw the hand had disappeared into his chest, gripping something that just shouldn’t be touched, and his breathing hitched in his throat. Locke began clawing at it, trying to pull the limb from his chest, to throw the thing from his form, but it held him fast and it wouldn’t budge. Locke just kept on screaming, swearing, kicking and generally trying to free himself before--before--

Locke could feel himself getting woozy and his vision was starting to go a little funny. Was this the end? His head tilted back, against the wall, and he closed his eyes a little and a bit of the pressure on his form released, and it didn’t hurt so bad now; just a dull ache and it was going away, just like everything else. He needed to open his eyes, to face his death like a man--otherwise he’d never be able to face Yuna when he met her in the afterlife.

Opening his eyes, he found that the room was empty of the eyes, that the lights were on and there was a familiar face swimming before him, and his face, pale in the washed out florescent lights, broke into a huge smile. “Snow,” he mumbled, his voice sounding muddled, like he was talking through water. “When’d you get here?”

“Just a minute ago, kiddo. You alright?” the man asked, real concern in his eyes. Well, why wouldn’t he be concerned? He had broken into the room and Locke had had a Heartless’ hand in his chest--who wouldn’t be concerned for said person? A crazy person, that’s who.

Nodding blurrily, Locke felt Snow pick him up in those big arms of his. “Feel funny,” Locke was able to mumble, and Snow chuckled as he laid him down on something soft. Were they on the Strahl? “Where’s Yuna? I wanna see her.” A look of uncertainty fluttered over Snow’s face, and Locke’s brows drew together. What was wrong? What the hell was wrong? Was she okay? “Where is she?” Locke demanded when the silence spread too long.

“You’ll see her in the morning,” he said, a smile replacing the uncertainty, and Locke’s shoulders slumped with relief. Yuna was here and she was fine. Snow wouldn’t be smiling if anything bad had happened to her. With that thought in mind and, knowing that Snow was near and pulling a sheet to cover him, his eyes drooped and before he knew it, he was drifting off into a weird sort of half-conscious state, one that didn’t agree too well with his stomach. One that made him feel weak.

Voices around him followed him to his dreams as he drifted off to sleep.

“You shouldn’t encourage him, Snow. You know we’re supposed to tell him that Yuna’s gone if he asks about her.”

“I know.” Locke felt a large hand pat his arm, and he tried to murmur questions. Where had Yuna gone? How could he find her? “I don’t have the heart for it just yet.”

“You’re new, so we can let you off for a little while. But the kid needs to understand it if he’s ever going to get better; Doctor Dalmasca’s told all of us that.”

“I’ll start tomorrow. Just--just let him have a good night sleep tonight, huh? He won’t be able to sleep if we get him worked up again.”

Snow saw the disapproving nurse from the room, and he closed the door softly behind him, looking in at the artificially stable sleep that Locke had been drugged into, and he frowned heavily. The poor kid… in the months after his little lady’s death, he’d just cracked, and had become far too much for his mom to take care of. He’d become violent, delusional, prone to fits of hysteria… They were hoping that with a stable environment and the best doctors on the island that they could help him… He wasn’t getting any better. Hell, it seemed like he was getting worse the longer that he stayed here.

Turning off the lights from the switch outside of the room, he noted that Locke flinched in his drugged sleep, and swore that he was going to get the kid a night light or something. He always had his hysterical fits in the dark, and they were becoming much more frequent. Doctor Dalmaska had mentioned that it was going to get worse before he could get better, but--well, he just wished that he could do something about it, do something to help.

Shaking his head, he turned, nursing the split lip that Locke had given him in the struggle to get him still enough to get him injected, Snow walked back towards the orderlies desk to get back to watching the monitors, and to come running to any of the other patients that might panic in their sleep. Adjusting his nametag that proclaimed him a worker for the Honolulu Retreat, a hospital for those with issues of the mind, Snow unlocked the door to the security monitors on his floor and flopped down in the quasi comfortable chair in the room, eying the glowing monitors with a watchful eye. His gaze lingered on the one that held Locke’s sleeping form, and then carried on to the rest of his flock, another sigh on his lips.

It was one of the hard things about working here, Snow supposed; the inability to really help much with the fractured minds that came through here. Honestly, he shouldn’t be working on this floor… he knew Locke, had grown up beside the kid. When he had heard that he was going to be transferred here? He had quietly asked for a change of workspace, and had gone from doing day work on the floor with the adults to working nights with the stay-in kids. It was the least that he could do for all those lunches that Olivia had let Hope stay for.

Snow smiled at the monitors. “Sleep well, kiddies.”