A few weeks ago, I made a joke post with the caption of "no, Owen! Who else will I be gay spies with?" and someone replied to that with wondering how many people actually get the joke and we went on a whole thing about KH and SAF and it was a great time. I've thought about that post a decent amount since then, and with my Treasured Memories edit from yesterday, it's got me thinking about the parallels between Rokushi (the ship between Roxas and Xion) and Curtwen. Roxas and Xion are in a cult Like that's just what organization 13 is. They take in stray Nobody's (which is what happens to the body of someone when they become a heartless) and tell them they if they work for them, they'll be helping create something what will get their hearts back. So, how does this relate to SAF? While I wouldn't call their governments a cult, I would say they're trapped there after they join. You can't just retire from being a spy, even if you're not going on missions, you still have all those secrets. The Organization won't just let Roxas and Xion go, especially since we know what they're using them for. Like how Curt and Owen are some of the greatest spies and are essential to their respective agencies, Roxas and Xion are the most important members of org. They're the only ones who can really help with the organizations goal because they can free hearts. Both of these duos are incredibly important, they're the ones doing all the heavy lifting. People like Barb and the Informant in SAF are important, of course, but they're not the ones out on the field. Shifting focus, Curt and Owen's nights together are literally just the clocktower trips in Days. It's where Roxas and Xion's friendships really grow, even though they do go on missions together. They talk about their days, catch up, or just sit and eat ice cream together because that's literally what friendship is to them. Of course, Curt and Owen are doing a lot more than just sitting and talking, but it's still where they probably bond the most. They work together, yes, but this is their time off, when they get to let down their guard and be with someone they trust, which I doubt happens too much to spies who are also hiding their homosexuality. As the game goes on, Roxas and Xion's time together eating ice cream gets less and less frequent, as their friendship becomes rockier and cracks in their trio start to form. I don't know whose Axel in this SAF au, which I guess is a problem with the au as a whole, but I think not having an Axel there is fine. The long and short of Axel's part in KH is that he knows the truth but can't tell Roxas and Xion because then he's at risk of danger and so are they. So, things get worse and worse with Roxas and Xion over time, Roxas falls into a coma, and Xion begins to find out she's a replica (which is basically a vessel that memories were put into to give it life). This part will be important later. For Curtwen, this is their time together starting to show the cracks in their relationship, Curt will screw something up or he'll do something stupid, and they'll get into trouble and Owen will brush it off. Curt is an amazing spy, but sometimes he's in over his own head. They're also worried about getting caught. I'd like to talk more about them getting caught, because I do think it relates to something in KH fairly well. So, Roxas is something called a Nobody, and Xion is led to believe she is one as well. They're led to believe by the organization that nobody's do not have hearts, that they aren't meant to feel anything. In SAF, this relates to the way Curt and Owen's relationship is seen. It's a relationship that shouldn't happen, that'll get them kicked out of the agency and outcasted from society if anyone were to know. Hearts to Nobody's aren't supposed to happen, and yet Roxas and Xion still feel. This relationship isn't meant to happen between Curt and Owen, and yet they're still having it. 358/2 Days, the game Roxas and Xion star in, has been called a "playable tragedy". You watch these friends form these tight bonds, you watch Roxas and Xion grow heart and memories and become one with each other, and then Xion learns the truth. She was never meant to exist. The nobody's have been told that a lot, but she's not even a nobody. She's a robot that went against her programming, so to speak. The long and short of it is that Xion is another characters memories of this girl named Kairi. Everyone sees Xion differently, Roxas sees her with black hair, Axel sees her as a girl named Namine, a guy named Xigbar sees her as a kid named Ventus who at this point in release order has never even been mentioned by name. At first Xion was this hooded figure with no face, but as she grew with the people around her, she gained a heart of her own. To me, Owen was never one to stray away from the point of the job until he met Curt. Curt made him reckless, gave the job more fun because they were getting into danger together. Before Curt, Owen thought his job was boring because he was so good at it. He wasn't meant to be able to break away from this job, but Curt gave him reason to. Curt was fun and reckless and got them into more trouble than was probably worth, but he made the job interesting. Roxas and Xion work together as a team because they were practically made for each other (and in canon are very closely tied together through heart shenanigans it's a whole thing). Ok so back to the finale of Days. Basically, Xion gets reprogrammed and needs to kill Roxas. The reason being is that she doesn't want to do the bidding of the organization anymore and has been giving a chance to get out of it by, get this, literally offing herself. So the organization captures her and remakes her the way she was intended to be. When Roxas sees Xion's face, she doesn't look like Xion anymore. She looks like the person whose memories she's stole. This is very DMA coded to me, not the whole offing herself to go back to her previous half, but the being remade to do the bidding of someone else. Xion still remembers that if she dies, she'll be dying for the sake of someone else, but her programming is telling her she needs to kill Roxas because that's what the organization needs from her. I'm rewatching their fight scene and the line "this puppet will have to play her part" is veryyyyyy Owen got brainwashed by Chimera coded. I don't personally believe Owen got brainwashed, but OUGH ow. This version of Xion, and Owen's mindset after seeing Curt again after four years, just wants to end the lives of the people they once cared so deeply for. To Curt and Roxas, the people that they love are just gone, the real Owen and Xion they can't get back. Xion appears as this armored thing of darkness to fight Roxas, and Owen is shown as someone who only sees Curt for all of the flaws he pushed away. This whole seen is very One Step Ahead to me. They're even swinging swords at each other and everything! After their battle where Roxas wins, Xion and Roxas fall from the clocktower, the place they spent so much time together, and Roxas doesn't remember her. She begins to die in his arms, and for a moment all the memories rush back to him, he holds her in his arms before she dies. He gives the iconic line of "no, xion who else will I have ice cream with?" and then she disappears into darkness. GUYS- THIS IS SO CURT AFTER HE KILLED OWEN I SWEAR- Curt has tried this entire show to get Owen out of his mind so that he can go back to being a spy and doing his job. And he keeps failing. Now Owen shows up, and not only that but he wants him dead. They fight, and Curt wins. Now he's holding Owen after all of this pain, and Owen is gone again. And all of it is his fault. Owen's gone now, there's no getting him back. We don't know what Curt does to Owen after he dies, probably holds his dead body in pure devastation that he killed not only his best friend but the person he cared about so much. And Owen simply drifts away, with no way of getting him back. Days ends with Roxas in a data version of the town he spent so much of the game in, new friends, new problems. He ends up dying as well. In SAF, this is probably whatever happened post canon to lead to Curt's death, whatever that may be. So Xion in the real organization 13 is floppy disk Owen and when Roxas comes back it's actually a clone of Curt guys trust me on this- Sorry, this is long and probably doesn't make much sense. I love 358/2 days, story wise it's one of my favorite KH games. And I obviously love Spies Are Forever, shocking absolutely no one. This was honestly just fun to write, I know this'll probably get at max like 3 notes but yknow what whatever. Also I'd like to briefly talk about the name I'm going for for this ig au? This comparison let's call it. 358/2 days is a reference to the time roxas and xion were in the organzation together. the /2 (over 2) means it's over 2 people. So missions is the 358 missions Curt has gone on, some with Owen, and some not. We don't have an exact amount of missions, but for this I'm going with 358 because idk it just works in my headSo, I know like 3 of you are also Kingdom Hearts fans, this is for you guys.
See Also
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