Kairi stays on the beach, staring out at the place Sora had last been—though he has long since disappeared and that dark place been replaced with the expanding ocean of her home—until the search boats come. She sees them coming, worried faces illuminated by the flashlights and old lanterns they carry, and although she knows she should go to the dock to greet them, Kairi can't bring herself to move. A part of her holds out hope that if she waits long enough, they'll come back. Sora promised. He was coming back. He was bringing Riku back. They would both come back to her.

Sora had promised.

So when the boats stop at the dock and the adults come rushing down the beach, anxious voices high-pitched and demanding, Kairi waits for them to come to her. If she waits just a moment, they'll be back. Riku and Sora will be back. They will.

"Kairi? Kairi, honey!"

She manages to drag her eyes away from the ocean to meet the desperate hug of her father, and when she looks behind him she sees Riku's and Sora's parents just behind him. "I'm okay, Dad," she says, muffled against his jacket, but he just hugs her tighter (she's not his own daughter, and look how worried he is, what must Sora's and Riku's parents feel?). When he draws back, Kairi sees that his eyes are red, their protective instinct urgent and consuming.

"What happened?" He asks, smoothing the hair back from her face, his other hand warm and comforting on his shoulder. "Did the black monsters get you too?"

"The last thing we remember was those things, and then the earth was breaking," Riku's mother babbles, her wits lost as her husband surges onward, going further onto the island, Kairi sees his head whipping around in search for any other figures besides herself. She doesn't say that there won't be any.

"No, Dad, it's fine, I wasn't hurt," Kairi meets his eyes, their brown depths so different from her own. Not physically. She can't think of everything else right now. She had had time to sort it all out in Traverse Town after Sora had left her with Leon and Aerith and Cid: She remembered what had happened on the island that night, remembers getting enveloped in Sora's warm light. After that, it's a blur. A blur of memories and warmth and sleep, barely aware of a feeling of something being fundamentally wrong. Then she'd woken to try and catch the lingering lights that had been Sora, and the world—Hollow Bastion?—she'd awoken to had been unfamiliar but somehow known to her. The rest… she knew the rest. She'd been drawn back here, as the Islands came back. That was what must've happened for the rest of the Islanders too, if their disoriented looks were anything to go by.

"Honey, where's Sora and Riku?"

But they'd come here, first, because their community wasn't large, and anybody would notice the absence of three of the children. And Sora and Riku weren't here.

Kairi doesn't tell that to the other islanders who rush past her and her father, coordinating the search, flashlights sweeping across the empty paths and deserted treehouses, looking for kids they will not find. A part of her wants to, but the other part tells her to wait, wait, they might be here any moment.

So she just lets her father draw her back into a hug, and sees how Sora's mother can't stop tugging on her short hair, her deep blue eyes teary and her mouth moving in a silent plea.

What if they don't come back soon?

The thought hits her like a train as the search party's voices get further away. She doesn't know. She couldn't know. How long would it take for Sora to get to Riku, and find his way back here?

"Sora?! Riku!" The voices sound desperate. Their parents look desperate.

Riku's father has returned, comforting his wife, and Kairi pushes her way out of her father's arms to tell them, "They're not here."

The parents all freeze.

She can feel the way their focus narrows, constricts, how every one of their hearts lift in hope, in fear.

"Kairi?" Sora's mother asks, when the moment stretches and she doesn't say more. How can she explain this? Should she even explain this? Aerith had said the worlds weren't supposed to mix, or something to that effect.

"Kairi?"

But she couldn't let them be lost to despair if Sora and Riku took their good time getting home—because no matter how long it took, they were coming home.

A breath. "Those black monsters are called Heartless, and… when they came, and tore the world apart, Sora was the one who fought them." She remembers the Key, that glittering, silver thing that he'd explained came to him in his dream and after that night. "Riku…" Whatever had happened before then, she remembers Riku appearing to hold back Ansem just after Sora had given up his heart. That had been him. He was still the friend she knew. "He kept me safe."

"Kairi…?" Her dad begins, but she shakes her head, and tries to organize her thoughts.

"They're not here. I don't know when they'll be back." She makes herself pause, sees their faces crumple, and hurries to add, "They are coming back! Sora promised," she says, mostly to herself.

But their faces don't encourage her that they believe her, and she hurries on, "I know it doesn't make much sense, but…" The search party's cries are coming back. She shouldn't tell everyone about the other worlds. Aerith had told her about that. She glances back at the parents. Sora's mom has stopped looking like she's almost crying, and his father has locked his jaw so tight it must hurt, while Riku's mother wrings her hands and his father rubs her back. "Can I explain at home?" It feels cold, all of a sudden, and she's more aware than ever that she hasn't been home in what must be weeks. A part of her wants to wait here, wait until Sora and Riku come back, but she knows she can't wait out here forever. She can come back in the morning.

"Of course, honey," her father assures her, hugging her one last time, then leading her to the boat. He thinks she doesn't hear—but she does—as Riku's and Sora's parents start whispering. "We should keep searching," "Maybe they're on the other side of the island," "Where could they have gone?" "Let's check the treehouses…"

They may not believe her. She doesn't know if her father believes her either.

But she's not going to give up on them.

She tells them. She tries to explain it all. The other worlds, the Keyblade, the darkness, the light, Kingdom Hearts. Some days, they seem like they believe her. Some days, they're off with the next search party. Some days, they avoid the missing posters that spring up. Some days, she sees them close the shutters and her father ushers her away so she doesn't see the tears.

Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie show up the next morning, faces somber but voices relieved and purposefully optimistic. They talk about the upcoming school year, because apparently Destiny Islands being consumed by darkness doesn't mean that high school would be delayed any, and avoid talking about Sora and Riku or the islands or anything else important. Kairi is happy to see them, to see the familiar faces, but she hadn't slept that night, not a wink. Who should she tell, who would believe her? Would she believe this crazy story of other worlds and Keyblades and darkness, had Sora or Riku told her?

The search parties don't stop for a while. The town slowly loses hope as they come up empty, time after time. Policemen—the rural, underpaid sheriff's station sends their best officers, which means the oldest, least likeable men—show up at her porch, ask her questions under a thin veneer of kindness, then have serious, whispered discussions behind the closed door where they think she can't hear them. They're at a loss, of course. Everyone's at a loss. It seems that those people who weren't killed by the Heartless before the world collapsed fell into sleep until Sora restored Destiny Islands, and they have no idea what happened. Everyone's talking about waking up to the earthquake and seeing the monsters, then falling asleep and waking up weeks later, with Riku and Sora missing. No one has any explanations, besides Kairi.

But one week after she gets back, the first signs of hopelessness appear.

She's walking home from the store with her father—he won't leave her alone now, not for more than five minutes, and every time he leaves the room to get something he rushes back in to check in on her as if she might disappear again—when down the street, in front of the old church that no one goes to anymore, Kairi catches sight of a huddle of people, illuminated by candlelight. She stops in the twilit street, and her father takes a few steps forward before realizing she isn't keeping pace.

"Kairi—" he begins, but she has frozen.

Their neighbors, the families down the street, the people who live downtown; it's a mishmash of Islanders, heads bowed, holding lit candles in a semicircle around what she finally makes out as a bundle of cards and candles and stereotypical teddy bears, highlighting a familiar picture.

It's of Sora and Riku, shortly before she came to the island, Sora grinning toothily with a gap in his front teeth, sandy and wet from the island shore, and Riku's glancing at him, like Sora had snuck up on him, with one of his rare smiles turning the corners of his lips, arms crossed but not angrily.

Kairi runs home, ignoring her father's yells behind her.

"They're not gone, they're not gone," she's not aware of it until she slams the front door behind her, but the words have become a chant. "They're coming back, they're coming back, they're coming back."

She believes it, for now.

Her father calls Sora's and Riku's families every day. She overhears his farewell every time: "I'm sure something will turn up."

Selphie's mother hugs her tight every time she sees Kairi and whispers, "Don't give up hope, dearie." The store clerk down the street gets this pinched look on his face when she comes to buy groceries and always manages to give her and her father a discount for something or the other, and mentions that he's praying for "the boys' safe return." Wakka and Tidus don't say it, but they know that the two empty chairs in the new classroom are kept out because no one wants to rule out the possibility of their return. The island has officially been labeled "danger zone" and only the search parties, the sheriff's office, and Kairi herself go out there with any regularity.

Kairi wants to scream.

Her father treats her like a glass statuette, the teachers always pause at her name in roll call and glance at her, like they want to see if she's a sniveling mess, Selphie, Wakka, and Tidus don't know how to act around her anymore. They think she's different than before. She feels different than before. She feels older than before.

But nothing else has changed, except there's that stupid, pointless, disheartening monument in front of the church, always staffed by new, almost-grieving faces, with fresh candles and cards every morning. Nothing else has changed, except Sora and Riku aren't there to groan about schoolwork and sneak off to the island in every spare minute. She hasn't watched a sunset since before that night. She doesn't want to, not without them there.

It gets worse though, when she overhears some girls from the older class coming out of the bathroom one lunch period.

"—know it's sad, but there's something fishy about the whole thing, ya know?"

"Oh, sure, everybody knows that. Why would those kids be out at the island anyway? With a storm rising and everything. Those black monsters came from that direction."

"And their friend, Kairi—"

"She says she doesn't know anything."

"Yeah, like we believe that," the senior scoffs, flipping her hair, unaware that Kairi's just behind her. "She has to know something about what happened. She was out there that night too. And they found her there."

"Why wouldn't she say anything?"

"Who knows? But if she knows anything and hasn't said anything, how could she live with herself? Did you see Mrs. Aera the other day? Mom said she nearly burst into tears in the middle of the drugstore. She and her husband got leave from work, and everything."

The rest of their conversation is lost to the babble of the hallway, but it's enough for Kairi. She drops her lunch off in her locker—unopened—and goes straight to her next class and waits there until the teacher and the rest of the class show up thirty minutes later. A part of her feels like crying, but the rest of her is angry—furious—because how dare they suspect her, how dare they doubt Sora and Riku, how dare they…

"Hey, you doing okay?" Selphie asks, and Kairi snaps out of her internal rant to nod, distractedly, and she makes it through the rest of the period by a combination of stubbornness and fury.

That's the first day that she goes back to the island by herself.

She convinces her dad, somehow, to let her go, after he wrangles a promise not to stay after dark, but he watches from the window as she walks away. Kairi rows their little boat out by herself, the work making her arms ache but clearing her head.

Riku and Sora always did this part. She always sat back and laughed at their jokes and jabs and let Riku plan what they'd have to do to get their raft working. But this time, only the lapping of the waves against the side of the boat accompanies her to their retreat.

Combed over by too many search parties to count, the island looks ruffled. The doors to all the treehouses and huts are flung open, the paths are clearer than usual with too many imprints of shoes on the dust, and the dock stairs look more worn down than before. If she focuses on those parts, the island feels wrong now. If she focuses on the empty beach and the lonely paopu tree, it feels wrong too.

But without even thinking about it, Kairi feels her feet carry her, not to the paopu tree where it would only become more obvious that she was alone, but into the shade of the trees and past the waterfall, to the untouched secret place. The carvings across the walls slide past, familiar and comforting, as she heads in, the noises from outside fading away, memories rising. That carving, Riku had done, after a particularly bad day—it contained all the bad words he, as an eight-year-old, knew, and an unflattering caricature of their elementary teacher—and the one behind that vine, faded by time and not very distinct in the first place, had been Sora, when he'd tried to draw a tree, then messed up, and turned it into a star, then, dissatisfied, had scribbled over it and scrawled his name instead.

But her eye is drawn to something new—a carving she hasn't seen, but regardless that it's new, she knows who drew it.

It's crude, as all stone carvings inevitably are, but she knows who it's supposed to be, too. On one side, a face that could only be Sora's, and on the other, Sora's drawn her, and he's extending a star-shaped fruit to her. He's offering her the paopu fruit. He's offering her the paopu fruit, the one that by legend was supposed to tie you and the person you shared it with together forever.

There's still a rock on the ground nearby, and she can imagine that it still feels warm, from where he'd held it to scratch out the picture, however long ago he'd done this.

She carves a mirroring arm crossing his, and another paopu fruit, extended to Sora in return.

And that's where she stays, until the light outside begins to turn golden. While she's surrounded by the carved rock, by the creeping vines and childhood memories, Kairi doesn't feel so alone.

She starts a journal. What she really wants is to talk to Riku or Sora, talk about what had happened, what was revealed, what they now knew about the world—worlds—and exult that they had finally found a way off the islands, a way to the wide worlds outside their little home. What she really wants to do is to talk to Riku or Sora, talk about how those wide worlds were bigger and scarier than they'd imagined, remember the amazing things they'd seen but also remind themselves of the lessons they'd learned, and share stories and warnings about the places they'd been.

But they aren't there, so Kairi pours herself out in the old, beat up journal she'd found in her closet. What she remembers from that night. What she thinks she remembers while she was connected to Sora. How being empty had felt. What Aerith and Yuffie had told her over coffee. What Heartless looked like. How she'd felt when Sora gave himself up for her. How her heart leapt when Riku gave her, Donald, and Goofy time to escape. How she'd been woken once in the middle of the night in Traverse Town when Heartless attacked the hotel, and Leon had saved her.

Her home doesn't feel as secure as it once did. It doesn't feel as comforting. Kairi had thought that she loved the Islands because she belonged here, despite her amnesia and wherever she really came from. But now that she's back, it feels more like a cage than a home.

And the only difference is that the two people who she never thought could leave are now gone.

The search parties decrease in number and frequency. Kairi doesn't protest, though some people seem to expect her to. She knew they were useless in the first place. Sora and Riku are still coming back, soon. But the search parties weren't doing anything. They weren't going to bring her boys back any faster.

People seem to expect her to grieve. Her father still walks on eggshells around her. But Kairi doesn't grieve, because that would imply that Riku and Sora aren't coming back. And they are.

Instead, she goes to the Secret Place. She reclaims their island, from the search parties and the worried parents. She invites Tidus and Olette and Wakka back with her, but their faces change when she brings it up. Maybe they think they're too old, maybe they think it's not safe, like her father, maybe they just can't go back without Riku and Sora. Whatever the reason, it doesn't stop her. Rowing on her own, Kairi makes it all the way out every day. She comes back before sundown, but she goes. After school, on the weekends, in the mornings when she doesn't have classes. She doesn't go there to wistfully remember them, to sigh and cry and bemoan herself like a damsel in a book—No, Kairi returns to the Islands every day to wait.

And wait she does.

Sometimes she'll be in the Secret Place, examining the old carvings she already knows by heart and looking for a door—she knows there was one, she knew Sora had found one, but it doesn't seem to be there anymore—and sometimes she relaxes on the sand as the waves ebb, watching the sun glance of the sea and watching for two figures who are coming—Sora had disappeared into air and the ocean had formed where he'd stood, so it's logical to believe he'll come back the same place, right?—and sometimes she waits in the shack with the books Riku had brought in over the years, in clear view of the dock and the paopu tree—because they'll come back, that's where they'll reappear, with smiles and waves and Sora will yell "We're back!" and Riku will mumble, "Sorry for making you wait" and Kairi won't care because they'll be back—and sometimes she even stays til the sun starts to set, but she won't stay after that, because what's the point, without them there to ease the loneliness?

It stays her daily ritual, as a month slips by. Two. By the third month, school has picked up steam—the two chairs aren't left empty, anymore, she doesn't bother to ask the teacher to replace them—and it becomes a bi-weekly visit to the Island. Wakka and Tidus have taken to playing soccer in the field across from the old church, and when she visits, she sees that the candles and cards and teddy bears have slowly disappeared. The picture remains. Selphie signs Kairi up for an art class, but she's only any good with crayons, and all she can seem to draw are seashells.

Kairi looks around one day, and realizes she hasn't been to the island in two weeks. Selphie texts her seven times while she's rowing out to the Island, but Kairi ignores her phone. "Sorry, guys!" Kairi can fill the air inside the Secret Place, make it feel less lonely, if she speaks, if she pretends her boys can hear her. "You would not believe the amount of essays they assign in school."

Dumping her bag on the floor, Kairi settles into her nook, where she'd put blankets and pillows and a book or two. There's a picture she kept there too, of the three of them one day last year, and even Riku's smiling. She glances at it, and then back out at the waves. It doesn't look like anyone other than her has been out here for at least a month. The search parties have stopped.

"Wakka says there's this new game he wants to try," Kairi tells the air, and picks up her book. "But you need four people to play, and Selphie won't. From what I've heard, Riku, you'd love it." The sound of the sea fills her up, and she exhales. "It's been forever, guys. I'll be back tomorrow, though! As long as Ms. Hendrick doesn't give us another study lab."

There are four MISSING posters on Kairi's walk to school—which her father now lets her do, he's stopped hovering at her shoulder like a bee and even lets her go over to Tidus' if he invites her and the others for a game—and when she passes them, Kairi has to turn her eyes from the two familiar faces. "I miss Riku," Tidus mumbles one day, as Wakka gloats over his fifth win in a row. "At least he always gave Wakka a run for his money." He freezes a second later, as if remembering she's in the room, and he and Selphie and Wakka give her panicked looks, like they expect her to burst into tears, or something silly. She rolls her eyes. "Sora would, too," Kairi says, and Tidus blinks for a second before amending his statement, "Oh, yeah, for sure." And they go back to beating each other at the game, cursing each other and trying to drag Selphie to play with them. Kairi just glances back at the window, where she can see one of the last MISSING posters on the telephone pole. Sora's had fallen off at some point, but Riku's teal eyes still pierce her from the picture.

Kairi returns to the Island that night, without telling her father, and sits under the stars. She falls asleep there, and wakes up reaching out for warmth on either side but finding nothing but cool sand.

The MISSING posters have dwindled down to two. There's still a picture outside that church, but it had rained the other day and half the picture is blurred out, and no one drops by anymore to replace the candles. The whispers at school have slowly ebbed, and now the other grades call Kairi by her name instead of mumble something about Sora and Riku. The Island is still lonely, and Riku's parents still look drawn and older than they should.

But Kairi pulls herself together and stitches a smile on her face even as it gets harder to do so, and only lets the memories spill out when she's filling her diary or reminding the Island that she's not supposed to be there alone.

It occurs to her, one day, that she needs to glance at the picture she has of the three of them to remember that Sora's eyes were the same color as the sea. She remembers Riku's favorite book series, she remembers leaning on the paopu tree, she remembers the raft and the preparation and the storm, she remembers laughing with Riku when Sora slipped on a banana peel, but sometimes, details slip out of her fingers. Like the desperation in Riku's voice when he held Ansem back. Like the warmth of Sora's smile. Like where Sora would fall asleep. Like if Riku or she would sit on the left of the couch. Like who it was who always brought a snack to class for the other to share.

Her father asks her one day to tell him, again, about that story of Kingdom Hearts, and Kairi opens her mouth to remind him, but the words don't come.

That night, she sits in her room and pretends she doesn't think she should be at the Island. The street seems too empty. And there's a picture on her bedside table of the two of them, and there's only one MISSING poster, and it's only of Riku. That shouldn't seem wrong. But it does.

That night, she drinks her favorite tea, and thinks about writing in her journal, but dismisses the idea and tucks herself in bed. She doesn't sleep well. She hasn't, not for months.

Whenever she does, it's always of a silver-haired boy who got tangled in dark vines and sucked away behind a door that she couldn't find again, or of a voice that promised he'd be back soon. But Kairi woke up every morning, and nothing changed.

She'd made herself a good luck charm, last year, from the seashells on the beach, but she couldn't find it now.

Kairi zones out in English one day, and finds herself unable to figure out why there should be two more heads in the room, and not just Riku's studious note-taking self. She doesn't remember. "Kairi?" Selphie jerks her out of her thoughts, and Kairi looks away from the window. "Yeah?"

Selphie swallows. "I miss him too, you know?"

Kairi blinks, and nods. She gets up, and they go to Art, and she doesn't look back at the empty space where his desk should have been.

~fin~

...

A/N: It occurs to me, every once in a rare while, that I am physically capable of writing fanfic for a fandom that is not Kingdom Hearts, but then I look up at 1am in the morning after finishing ANOTHER fic about the paopu trio that no, no I'm really not, evidently, because I can't seem to finish anything else?! myself, why? i love these kids tho

So this is inspired by a wonderful post over at KH-info-block on tumblr, link: kh-info-block . tumblr (. com) post / 152332752701 / theres-a-lot-to-be-explored-in-kairis-missing (just remove the spaces)
Definitely go check it out, this morphed out of that idea and I honestly don't know what happened so? hope you enjoy this fic

I am planning on posting more this summer, though, before I head off to college where my life will be sucked away into school once again, and maybe, MAYBE, even a fic that is not KH. BUt no promises. I've got a multi-chapter I'm really excited for that i've been working on for monTHS and if any of you want to come talk to me about it, PLEASE DO! or about anything. I love getting messages and reviews, please come talk to me.

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This is also on Archive of Our Own, under My5tic_Lali, and on tumblr, under the url literally-in-too-many-fandoms! please, please come talk to me over there or scream about the Foretellers because I've been doing a lot of that...

thanks for reading! have a blessed day/night/period of time that you are currently existing in.