Sora comes home to her different. He comes home with a ghost.

She sees the ghost in the sunlight and the moonlight, and knows his name is Roxas. He looks at her with sad eyes beyond Sora's face, and the contrast unnerves her. She doesn't know what to say to make things better, to make him stop looking at her like that.

"He's my nobody," Sora explains. "He's a part of me that went missing."

But Kairi doesn't think so.

She doesn't think Sora ever had Roxas within him, no matter how alike they might look.

Roxas is easiest to find at twilight, moving like a second person just below Sora's skin. He's a fraction of a second slower, so it looks like Sora's movement blur when he takes a step. Sometimes, Kairi can spot two people standing in Sora's shadow. The one time she mentions this to Riku, he gets a hard sort of look about his face, and she knows better than to go on asking.

So, instead, she looks at Sora until she can feel Roxas looking back at her, and she tries to reach him with her mind. She tries to pull out the quiet, boyish voice she'd heard before.

And when that doesn't work, she waits until Sora's too far down the beach to save her immediately, then kicks off her shoes and sprints at the ocean. She strikes out hard and fast, because Sora's a faster swimmer than she will ever be, but maybe it'll be enough, maybe…

Her legs begin to cramp and seize after the second minute, and then she's left grabbing at waves, choking as they close over her head. She catches a glimpse of Sora on shore, throwing himself into the ocean, shoes still on, shouting something at her. The water is deep, and she's stupid, and the salt hurts her eyes so she closes them, and sinks.

The ocean presses silence over her ears.

She sees Roxas swimming down to her on the back of her eyelids, the back of her mind, is she even conscious? He grips her wrists, and pulls up, mouth against her ear.

"There's a tower made out of light. She'll know where it is. Wake me up, Kairi—"

"—Kairi!"

Her eyes shoot open and she retches stomach acid and salt water onto the sand, coughing, gasping air back into her chest until she's able to look Sora in the face, and past that, to the waiting blue eyes.

"I need to go somewhere," she says.