Author's Note

This story is set to take place after Kingdom Hearts III. As such, generally all references to that as-of-now unreleased game will be vague in nature, primarily to avoid continuity conflicts with the actual story once it comes out. This is a complete revamp of a story I created on this site over a decade ago when I was eleven. While the writing itself was beyond resuscitation, I still loved the story and I hope you do as well.

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Interspace

The sky's collection of stars whirled by in a dizzying blur of light, keeping pace with his fractured and disintegrating mental capacity. His world shook, further jarring his concentration, though he knew it was not the gummi ship itself that was unstable. The ship zig-zagged through interspace, a symptom of his trembling hands and unreliable vision. If not for his wealth of experience in navigating space and the minute shred of integrity his brain maintained, avoiding the tribulations of space debris would have proved impossible.

The entire universe transfigured from one moment to the next, his heart beat thundering through every ounce of flesh and his breathing so audibly rapid it could be mistaken for the musical gasping of drowning. Then, it would all go white, his unfelt heart nonexistent and his unheard breathing inconsequential. It would all disappear into white and everything he saw, heard, smelt, felt, and knew would vanish like the stars he was leaving behind. He was light, even weightless, and unable to float back down into what he once knew to be consciousness, his memories and his loves as unimportant as what he ate for breakfast that morning. All at once, it'd come back in a passionate roar of "FIND THEM! SHOW THEM…LEAD THEM INSIDE!" They were words his brain did not think but his dry mouth said anyways, echoes of the world he was fleeing from.

In a moment of clarity, he gandered at himself in one of the gummi ship's mirrors, his glassy grey eyes an unfamiliar sight. His face was pale, his insipid lips a sure indicator of lifelessness, and most of all, the white radiating out of his hair roots stood as the final testimony to his loss of self. Looking forward again, he let out a gasp as his line of sight fell on the planet in the distance, the very one that helped give his life purpose again, Disney Castle. No no no no no no NO!

He tried to turn the ship sharply only to be met with an icy hand wrenching at his heart, squeezing until everything faded away again except for the white and the guilty pain. He might as well have been screaming and clawing his eyes out for all he knew and by the time he regained himself, he knew from his raw throat he had done at least the former. He also knew at that moment he would not land on Disney Castle but crash, and if luck was on his side, Lea would not survive.

Destiny Islands

It didn't matter how many times they had wrestled together at play in the water or huddled up together when watching a horror movie late into the night, Kairi's fingers playing with his hair made it difficult for Riku not to blush. Kairi, who stood on a stool to be at eye level with the towering youth, scrunched her face in thought as she stared at him and Riku was thankful she was too distracted by his hair to notice the redness in his cheeks. Sora stood beside them, sizing himself up in Kairi's bathroom mirror with his own hands tugging at his insane hair, his face distorted in wonder.

Kairi reached her hands behind Riku's neck and grasped his hair in a fist behind his head, her face so close to his her lips must have been no more than inch from his own. She gave a little nod, her smooth pink lips the only thing Riku could possibly stare at now, and whispered "Yeah…definitely."

Being who he was and nothing less in both the best and worst ways, Sora loudly piped up "Hey Kairi, do you really think I'll look better with my hair shorter?"

Not bothering to take her eyes or hands off Riku, Kairi addressed Sora without looking at him "Sora, you were the one who wanted the haircut, not me. Now Riku, he definitely needs a haircut."

While he'd cut his hair prior to undergoing the Mark of Mastery, Riku hadn't tended to it since and it had taken months of training and pursuit to finally conquer Xehanort. This gave time for both Riku's and Kairi's hair to get out of hand, with his reaching just past his shoulders again and hers plummeting down to her upper waist.

"Yeah, but, do YOU think it will LOOK good?!" Sora half-bellowed, turning to look at the odd arrangement his friends had put themselves in and, despite his own usual obliviousness, did not fail to notice the way Riku's face was starting to look like a Red Nocturne.

Much to his chagrin, Kairi let go of Riku's hair and turned around to face Sora, her hands on her hips in judgment. "Well…how much do you think I should whack off?" Sora looked back at the mirror and pinched a lock between his fingers, an inch of hair sticking up between his digits.

Folding her arms in disbelief, Kairi cocked an eye brow and chuckled to the challenge. Riku shook his head and let the laughter roll out of his chest, an antagonizing smirk playing on his lips once he calmed. He verbalized what he and Kairi were thinking. "That much?"

Looking up at the hunk of hair he was holding, Sora moved his fingers up to leave a mere quarter of an inch revealed and gave a wide smile. "This much. If I take too much…eh, no one will remember me! That's how everyone recognizes me!" Kairi giggled and wacked Sora on the head, balling Sora's hair into a fist to hold him still while bending down a bit to meet him at eye level. "I think…we should take this much off and then maybe, out of all the thousands of intergalactic space babes you've met, MAYBE you'll finally find a girlfriend."

Riku pat him and said "Sora, trust me when I say that out of all the things people remember you for, your cocky hair is the least of them. You'll have to do a lot more than renovate your head to actually snag a girl on any planet. Good thing for you we'll probably be visiting new places. A wider net means you might actually catch a fish, a guppy though it may be."

Turning around, Kairi huffed and leered at Riku, poking him in the chest to taunt him, although the gesture warmly amused him. "How can you say that, Riku? Any girl from here to the end of all worlds would be lucky to be Sora's girlfriend. He…just needs to not scare them off with his excitable...well, I guess excitable everything. But that's part of what makes him so charming." Sora's smile had disappeared temporarily during the exchange but after seemingly giving what Kairi said some thought, his grin returned in approval.

Beginning again, Kairi raised her voice to Riku "And YOU! You, with your mysterious sulking behind that cool silver hair of yours, I'm sure you can attract a girl but it'll be one who doesn't understand you, not with that mop in your face." Keeping his arms folded, Riku raised a brow and retorted "Oh and you know me so well, do you?" Of all the questions his brain could fish from the sea of his mind, that one was by far the dumbest, as it bore the most obvious answer.

Over what had been nearly two years, while Riku had journeyed somewhat with Sora, he hadn't seen as much of his Kairi as he would've liked. Indeed, she was his, as she had even said so with a happy smile on her face and he had felt as much ever since. When he first saw her in the World that Never Was after a year of being apart, even despite his appearance as Xehanort, Kairi had embraced him without hesitation. When he and Sora returned to the islands, she greeted Sora in the ocean with a desperate sort of happiness and Riku intended to leave them alone, only to feel her tackle him before he had a chance to walk out of the water.

They'd spent that whole day and night together telling each other the tales of their adventures and trials, not even considering the possibility of going home. That next morning, they received Mickey's message and a mere day after they were gone again in hot pursuit of the Mark of Mastery. Riku succeeded and Sora failed but it mattered little, as it had been Sora who dealt the final blow to Xehanort several months after. During their search and fight against Master Xehanort, the three of them saw each other here and there, but never under peaceful circumstances. It wasn't until their return just a week ago they had more than twenty four hours of true peace together.

That first day back had been a rainy paradise, as their arrival back home was met with raindrops and thunder intense enough to rip apart their canoes like twigs. They decided to settle into the secret place and spent the whole night huddled up while reminiscing on the past two years. They even shared an old piece of chalk to decorate their rocky sanctuary with memories of their journeys and it was now difficult to find a bare spot remaining untouched by their reminiscing. A thoughtful Pooh Bear and astonished Piglet were made a home near the entrance and served as warm happy faces to greet any newcomers to the haven. A single file line of seven princesses were made to prance along a tree root by Sora, only to have Riku modify the first princess in line, Kairi, into wearing an unrealistically gaudy dress.

Kairi snatched Riku's lengthy locks and was joined by Sora into tearing him down and tickling him until he could no longer breathe from laughter. When there was no more room on the walls, Sora lifted Kairi up to work on the ceiling, drawing the denizens of Disney Castle while the tall-enough Riku detailed his favorite Dream Eaters.

It was then while Kairi drew a rather elaborate picture of King Mickey on his throne that Riku noticed the picture Sora and Kairi had drawn together. In truth, it was sweet and if it didn't make his heart plunge and his mouth dry up, it probably would have made him smile in reverence to such devotion. You could tell the faces had been drawn years ago by their babyish simplicity while the exchanged paopu fruits were considerably recent and it was that fact more than anything that made him feel nauseous. Had he always been apart from them? He knew things would never quite be the same and had it occurred to him, even after he attained the Mark of Mastery, he may never be welcome back in the same way he once was.

Despite all that, he held onto the memories the three of them shared but seeing that image now, he wondered just how long ago it really was he became separate from them. A tear had only begun to roll down his cheek when Sora loudly proclaimed they were all a bunch of idiots and motioned to Riku to lock the keyhole with him, the one they had rather stupendously forgotten about for nearly a year.

Sora hadn't cast him off, he knew then more so than ever at that moment but they had suffered and fought together while Kairi's experiences with him belonged to a whole different category, much less a different book. The most she'd seen of him in the past two years was through the window of Sora's heart as Riku sold off pieces of himself for the darkness, for her. Without a doubt in his heart, he knew she had to have seen, to witness, to know, to feel, and to be disgusted by his deep feelings for her and horrified at how far into the darkness those feelings had dragged him. He knew she would never look at him the same and, telling himself he was at peace with that, he joined Sora in sealing the heart of their childhood home, the one he cast off so willingly.

It was only two nights later after Riku made an effort to avoid Kairi, if not both of them, that he woke to the sound of clanking at his window. He'd been sulking the past two days wherever he went, moving about the islands to places he knew Sora wouldn't go looking for him. He thought about what was to be the rest of his life now that his old one was being thrown piece by piece out the door and made the conscious effort to not think about Kairi.

Yet, that life was crawling into his bedroom window in the middle of the night and he reminded himself of Sora's never-ending persistence when it came to his friends. Only, when he sat up and looked across his second-story bedroom, it wasn't his perky comrade but his lost love, Kairi. It was hard to see in the dark but her arms were definitely crossed with her head cocked to one side, her footsteps soft and quiet as she stepped her way slowly to him. She stopped about half-way across the room and leaned against the wall with her legs crossed now as well, an odd smile splayed her lips. Now that she was closer, he could see she was just wearing pajamas, a long purple tank decorated with pink flowers and white bloomer shorts.

Riku couldn't move but even if he found the will to, he wouldn't be certain if just simply swinging his legs off the bed was right or wrong now. They stared at each other awkwardly for a few seconds, or maybe minutes, and neither gave any hint of potential movement on the horizon. Finally, after what seemed several hours or days, Kairi began talking as though they'd been in the middle of a conversation. "So, how've you been?"

Stuttering at first in shock, Riku replied "Wh-what do you mean? How've you been?" "Me? Oh, I've been ok, kinda angry at someone, might have left my house at 11:53 P.M. to go kill him in his sleep but I made too much noise climbing up the gutter to his room. No, no, I was just wondering where you've been since yesterday morning. Haven't been home and I haven't seen you on the island. You've been busy." Now she'd taken his voice, which would have been useful at this point in the event his brain might actually crank out an excuse. Instead, all he managed was "Ye-yeah." Her smile widened in such a way that made him uncomfortable but she made no other movement than to turn her head away from him.

A few more minutes, actual minutes, of silence passed with her staring at his wall while he stared at her, wondering briefly if she'd forgotten why she came. Movement finally gave him some lee-way to turn his head in the direction she was looking to and he found something he'd all but forgotten about. A picture of the three of them 'graduating' from elementary school hung on the wall, which showed Kairi hugging Riku while he reached behind her to knock off the tower of graduation caps Sora stacked on his head. The sound of her walking towards him made him look up to her, her arms no longer crossed and her face resembling that of a stern librarian.

"Riku…I need you to do something for me. Come on." She grabbed his hand and helped him up, leading him out the window down to his private family dock where his canoe waited. He didn't question her when she handed him one paddle while she took the other nor when she steered them in the direction of their child-hood paradise. Everything was so surreal and if not for the feeling of her hand gripping his own, he'd swear he was in some cruel dream of his minds own invention. He paused when he realized exactly where she was taking him but all she needed to do was turn around and gaze at him, reassuring him with her eyes better so than her mouth could.

He followed her to the secret place, the cooling night sand on their bare feet feeling unreal to him while thousands of stars in the sky looked down in judgment on him. Kairi stopped in front of the picture, the one that was slowly killing something warm inside of him, and bent down to pick up what was left of the chalk, snapping it in half and handing him a piece. "Here, take this. There's a bare spot. There's one more thing to finish."

Kairi sat down cross-legged and began working on something above the depiction of the paopu fruit exchange, taking her time without bothering to give any explanation. His knotted stomach further turned and twisted, incurring a nervous nausea within him. He wanted to leave, to run away, because he didn't want to know what it was her hand had made that would only finish off his breaking heart. Yet, he wanted to know, to see firsthand like she wanted him to and he settled himself when he realized how much he trusted her.

When she was done, she turned to look up at him, her head blocking her work, and said softly but firmly "Sit down." He complied and, finally at eye level with her design, did not quite understand what it was he was looking at but he felt his mouth dry up again. It was done awkwardly, much like the rest of the drawing, but there he was immortalized on the wall above Kairi and Sora, a paopu fruit being fed to him by Kairi.

"Sora's easy, you know? He acts oblivious and sometimes he is. But all in all, if you don't say something, he'll still know it's there. That's just him. But you, you try to do the same and it ends up all wrong. Riku…"

Riku turned to look at her and he found that soft lovely face he'd fallen in love with giving him this subtle look of desperation and hurt. "Yes Kairi?"

"You…you belong to me…" "Huh?"

"You belong to me. You always have. That first day we met back when you and Sora came to visit me, you've both been mine since then. And you…" She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently, as though telling him that it too was hers, a fact a he couldn't quite reciprocate verbally. She continued "You…you don't have my permission to leave. You can't just avoid us because of what happened. Those things happened and they happened because I'm yours too. You weren't going to lose me. And despite your anger and the stupid mistakes you made, I'm so thankful you did all that, went that far for me. Riku, thank you."

For the first time that night Riku's throat cooperated with him and his brain knew just the perfect words to say in spite of his light-headedness. "You're welcome, Kairi. And…I'm sorry…" Her finger was on his lips, protesting that what was about to escape them was not necessary, her shaking head hitting the idea home. While he may have preferred her own lips in place of her finger, her soft flesh on his lips was making him dizzy along with her words and it was then he felt his face flush and tears well up behind his eyes.

She smiled and said once again in a softer tone "Thank you Riku." He watched as she looked back at the picture but didn't notice when she moved her hand from his shoulder to his hand, sending a tingle up his arm. It was the hand holding the chalk and she lifted it up to place it on the paopu fruit she was giving him on the wall, the touch of it further nerving him.

"Will you…will you stay, Riku? With Sora and I? Be ours until every star blinks out of the sky? I promise, I'll always be with you." Without saying anything, his hand began to move in a line from his image across to hers, a cool tear traveling silently down his face. She let his hand go as he scribbled in an arm and connected it to the paopu Sora had previously drawn, creating as detailed a hand as he could muster around the star fruit. There it was, his love for her clearly depicted on the wall along with the now free-falling tears down his face but even more amazing than the drawing itself was the girl looking upon it with content on her face. In fact, she was smiling and if the light were any better in the cave, he could have told whether or not for sure those were tears collecting in her eyes.

She confirmed this when she wiped her eyes and said "Don't forget Sora or if he sees this he'll get jealous and confront me about all the attention I'm getting." She giggled and looked at him, unashamed of her wet cheeks and red eyes, her puffy lips making her all the more beautiful. He laughed with her and began working on another arm from Riku to Sora while he said "You know, he's going to look at this and think he's crazy. If he asks us about it, we just need to tell him it's always been this way and let him think he's nuts." That made her lean back in a deep laughter that lasted until she started coughing, her head nodding as she sat back up to observe his finished work.

She giggled and said "Your arms are uneven." He gawked, then laughed unexpectedly and shook his head, turning to her to say "What? My arms are uneven? Look at the size of the paopus. Sora's feeding you a small, unripe, nasty thing…" "And you with him." He continued shaking his head and held up a finger, talking through his laughter "No, no, he definitely picked that, dammit. I would have climbed to the top of the damn tree to pick the best one. And you were clearly lazy as usual and picked up the fat ultra-ripe ones that fell on the ground." If anyone else were on the island that night, they would have been scared away from the peals of laughter echoing out of the cave, two monsters dancing together in the dark.

When they finally left at some odd hour in the A.M., they didn't bother going back home but instead steered a different course to sneak up to Sora's dock. Managing to crawl through his window without letting their subdued but still hysterical laughter wake up the heavy snorer, they greeted his drooling face with a swinging pillow. He yelled in surprise and after much confused wrestling and even the appearance of Oathkeeper in his hand, they finally calmed him enough so he could assure his mother through his door that all she heard was him having a nightmare.

The next two days went by like that with the three of them never leaving one another's sides, weaving their own personal paradise between themselves. They showered at each other's houses, ate at one-another's tables, slept on their bedroom floors, and shared their happiness. Two spotlessly perfect days went by before Sora wanted to show them something from Jiminy's journal, only to have it slip from his hands and drop open to the ground.

When he picked it up it was open to the last page, which was completely blank save for two sentences they knew Jiminy would never write. The following two days were almost as perfect save for the fact they were all excitedly nervous because finally, it was happening. It was decided. They were going to see other worlds together.

It was a stupid question because the night Kairi took Riku to the secret place, she showed him just how much she saw and understood of him. She saw past what he thought was everything left of him since his journey through the darkness and grasped at things he didn't know were left. She made him feel as though he'd grown, in fact, and couldn't begin to describe just how happy he was she still wanted to share this journey with them, with him. Kairi didn't laugh at his question but smiled and held up a pair of scissors, snipping them as she said "I know you well enough to know when you need a hair-cut. You look like you're into grunge without all the hair grease."

"Uh-huh, you need one too. I can't look at you without having this impulse to move your hair out of your face." Riku said.

"Don't listen to him, Kairi." Sora cut in. "Riku just doesn't want to feel lonely when you're hacking at his head. Hey Riku, how about Kairi cuts mine and I'll do yours?"

"Just stay away from my head, Sora. In fact, stay away from me anytime you happen to find yourself with any kind of sharp object, especially one Kairi's given you. And Kairi is pretty. In fact, that's why I want her to get a haircut, so I can see her face better." Riku didn't realize quite what he said until the words already left his mouth so he decided to just roll with it, as it was the truth anyways.

"You guys are weirdly disgusting when you're complimenting a girl. You're this freak combo of 'matter-of-fact' and totally gushy. Now Riku, turn around and face the mirror. I won't go any shorter than it used to be. And besides…" She put down the scissors and slapped her hands around his cheeks, smooshing his face to give him fish lips, then let go and ran her fingers up his forehead, moving his hair from in front of his eyes. She continued, "You're pretty cute yourself, when I can see your face that is."

Her clear blue eyes met his turquoise ones and he felt his stomach cartwheel, her fingers running through his hair awakening feelings he'd rather not have so close to her. She was pretty, that was unmistakable, but she looked so soft when she was that close and it made him think back in Hollow Bastion when he'd cup the face of her lifeless body. He'd never taken his gloves off though, never actually felt her skin out of respect for her, and now he was wishing he had or rather wishing he could touch her now.

Riku smiled back at her and said, "Fine, if you think it'll make me as pretty as you, cut away. But stick to the deal, you work on me, I'll work on you. Unless…if you really don't want to, I mean. Sora is right, you are pretty either way Kairi."

"Nah, Sora's all gung-ho on it now too, so I'll be the one left out if I back out now. Besides, if we're going to be running around seeing other worlds, it'll be easier if I don't have all this hair in my face. Hmm, let's do it this way. Sora, stop picking at your head like a monkey and come here, we're going to pretty you up…"

"I'm already pretty…"

"Riku, you cut Sora's hair…"

"I thought you were going to cut my hair, Kairi!"

"…while I work on yours. Then, you can cut mine."

"Why am I the only one not handling the scissors?"

"You cool with that, Riku?"

"Mm-hmm."

"I'm not! Kairi, he's going to shave a Komory Bat into my head! "

"…that is an idea."

"SEE?! At least let me cut your hair, Kairi. I can use it as leverage."

"NO!" Riku and Kairi resounded in unison, shooting him a glare sharp enough to cut through flesh and bone, inciting a nervous chuckle out of Sora.

Eventually, they pulled themselves together enough to work out a system of Sora standing in front of the bathroom mirror, Riku, who had cut his own hair a thousand times before, standing behind him while he cut Sora's hair, and lastly Kairi placed on top of a stool behind Riku. Riku was sure Sora felt awkward but then he'd gotten himself into the predicament of his own volition, the byproduct of petty jealously at the thought of being left out of the pact.

It was nice, though, to have Kairi play with his hair, and he suppressed a giggle every time she fluffed him up in the mirror. He was actually looking forward to doing the same to hers and it made him wonder what her hair smelled like, though he'd need to be careful if he wanted to sniff it as he was sure Sora would be watching him like a hawk.

Riku was so happy. They were all so happy. It was disgusting, really, how giddily blissful they were together, how excited they were for the journey to come. Somehow, they'd taken the message in the journal as a good omen because for once they weren't making the journey for stars blinking out in the sky. They were making it for them. They would leave at sunset the next day and it would never be the same after that night, though, they knew that anyways after reading the words the page offered up to them.

'You've opened the door. Will you not step through?'

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If you've made it to this point, thank you so much for reading! I write as a hobby but I find I become overly serious about it and so I'm practicing speed-writing with this fic while trying to maintain quality. The next chapter will have a lot less thinking and much more actual action and forward story progression. If you have a moment, please do review and tell me the things I need to improve upon! The next chapter should be updated rather soon.