author's note

Teen Titans / Kingdom Hearts crossover. Set during Kingdom Hearts 1, and in the first season or two of Teen Titans. Due to the involvement of time travel, this branches off into an alternate timeline where the Titans meet Sora and the others, making it semi-AU.

Prologue
World Connected, Time Shattered

The feeling the timestream gave her was indescribable. She felt superior—she felt like a goddess. When time could not touch her, she was all-powerful, supreme.

She was a time thief. One of many. The time thieves watched for openings in history—something gone missing, never to be found—and they pounced on them. They sent a thief to retrieve it and bring it to the future. It always brought a small fortune. Time thieves were some of the richest people alive in her time period—and the most secretive.

She felt the years flash by so fast that she couldn't see them. She was sheltered in her timestreaming suit—the years flashing past could not harm her. She remained aloof, young, invincible against time in her close-fitting black armor with its chronotrigger over her chest. Time could not touch her; she was immortal.

Timestreaming was tricky business, but she was well-versed in what to do. Timestreams ran in the cracks between worlds, between universes, in the folds where reality wasn't quite real. Navigating the touchy timestreams was delicate work. It was foolhardy to pay more attention to the beauty of the stream than she had to in order to keep herself from missing her year. She was going far back into days that were ancient to the people of her time. Still, she couldn't help but marvel at the years streaming past; the timestream looked like liquid blackness, the years merely reflections off of the inky black stuff of the stream.

She had at least a century to go before she reached her year. She itched to reach her prize, her destination, but she longed to remain in the timestream forever—here, she was invincible. Here, she was ageless.

She gave a start and nearly veered off course when she felt something colder than death touch her leg. She could feel it even through her suit. She steadied herself immediately; veering off course was dangerous. She might be lucky and merely veer into the current time of some world or another, or she might end up in space, crushed by the black oblivion—or even in a hole between universes, frozen into nonexistence. She took a look ahead, measuring far enough that she could spare a brief look down at her leg without falling out of the timestream; panic was descending on her, but she fought it, retreating into the sanctuary of her mindless training.

A look at the creature on her leg nearly stopped her heart. It was blacker than night, blacker than the deepest darkness, with wicked-sharp claws and glowing yellow orbs that peered straight into her soul. She knew without a doubt that it was pure evil. It clawed at her leg, not giving her flesh wounds, but tearing into the very fabric of her soul. She could feel the warmth of her life seeping out into the creature, yet its touch on her leg grew no warmer. If anything, it grew colder with the intense bitterness of longing for something, being so close, and yet being unable to touch it.

She felt as if she was being ripped apart. She screamed, but no sound came from her throat in the timestream. This was a path that ran in the folds of the universe where reality was but a shadow; there was no sound here.

She felt the warmth of life leaving. She lost control. She veered from the timestream, but by the time she fell from it, she had no consciousness left to register where she had ended up.

#

Maleficent felt a change—a subtle change—and she gave a small start. The gathered villains stared at her, thinking her mad but unsure whether they had the bravery to say so, for she had cut herself off in the middle of a sentence. She ignored their puzzled, questioning stares and closed her eyes, feeling out the alteration in the flow of darkness she was connected to.

There. There it was. Another world had been connected, but in an unusual way. It didn't feel quite right. The darkness was there… But the world's heart had not been opened. She could not imagine how the heartless had reached the world without the call of its unlocked heart to guide them, but they had.

She would not waste her good fortune.

"You know what to do with the girl," she said to the four gathered around an ordinary table she had enchanted with a spell of Sight. She spoke in her normal tone—a slow, paced, and aloof voice—but her urgency was unmistakable by the glitter of sudden pleasure in her eyes. "I am needed elsewhere." She gestured out widely with her staff, indicating the desert princess lying on the carpet not ten feet from their meeting table, her expression troubled and fearful even in unconsciousness. Her cheek rested on the back of one hand as she lay half on her side and half on her belly; the golden chain in her hair was cockeyed and dark strands of the thick hair fell over her face in disarray.

"That brat's up to no good, isn't he?" Hades asked, irritable as ever, as he smoothed back his flaming 'hair' with one hand. "Just about as useful as that Cloud was… Can't get anything right…"

Maleficent cast a sharp glance Hades' way. Anyone else would have been cowed by the presence of the lord of the dead; the witch was far from afraid of him, however, and left no doubt in his mind about her ability to crush him on a whim. He was immortal, but she could seal him in his underworld for a good long time if she needed to. "Riku is just where he needs to be," she said evenly, gripping her staff tightly. Had her skin not already been as pale as death, her knuckles would have whitened with the force of her grip. "Don't worry about him."

"You don't know where he is!" Ursula surmised correctly, laughing wickedly. The sea witch's apparent need to cackle constantly grated on Maleficent's nerves, but she ignored it. She also ignored the truth behind the witch's words.

"The boy's whereabouts are of no concern to you. That I know them is all you need hear." She turned from the gathering of villains, her jaw clenched tightly. Her power was all that kept her at the head of this band of villains; they had no respect for her other than fear of her magic and her power over the heartless. She didn't let that irritate her, though; she knew that, without her guidance, these four would be nowhere. Like Jafar; he had been weak. The darkness had consumed him.

"I think Ursula is right," Oogie Boogie said in that smooth voice of his—it was a voice that never failed to make Maleficent's spine stiffen with loathsome irritation. The mockery of it… She shook it off, ignoring the shared laugh that met Oogie Boogie's words. With a grim half-smile, she reminded herself that the smooth-talking villain was no more than a sack of filth.

"Concern yourselves with the princess," Maleficent said, her voice even and free of emotion. She cast a pointed glance over at Jasmine, taking in the woman's scanty blue desert clothes. She didn't try to hide her disgust at the Arabian princess wearing such skimpy attire, but she hid even from herself the twinge of jealousy. Beneath her heavy robes, she was little more than pale, stretched skin and bones. She could never wear the things that the beautiful young princess could. "I will deal with the boy… After I have taken care of this."

She didn't wait to hear their reactions. She turned her attention inward, traveling across her link with the darkness. She loved the darkness. It washed over her in waves, trying to draw her in, trying to drown her in its beautiful cold majesty, but she coaxed it down. No, no, my child, she told it. How will I bring you more light to devour if I am consumed? The darkness subsided at her command, her will, though it responded to her emotion and rough concepts on a baser level than her actual thought. She followed its tide as it led her obediently toward the slight change she'd noticed earlier. It was infinitesimally small, just a single heartless, but it was enough.

It felt as if minutes had passed before she found the single tiny link to the new world, but she knew it to be mere seconds. She focused upon the heartless, drawing herself to it, willing herself away. Within, she felt slowly, tantalizingly drawn to the single seed of darkness planted in a fresh new world. Without, the other villains watched as she simply disappeared in a swirl of darkness that seemed to suck the light from the room, taking all her spells with her; they could not be sustained outside her presence.

Without her spells, the villains suddenly had something to contend with. The spell of Sight on their meeting table faded out of existence; the spells keeping the princesses deeply asleep lost their potency, and the four of them had to deal with a loud little girl struggling against her physical bonds and a beautiful, noble young woman from the desert who knew how to fight and was not yet bound. Maleficent was right; they had the princesses to concern themselves with. They had no time to worry about Riku, a wandering teen who had somehow made his way off their radar.

#

He sensed the disturbance immediately, and he turned from the lifeless body on the ground of his lair—a body that had appeared only moments ago, accompanied by one dark being that quickly multiplied to two. Both dark creatures eyed him hungrily with huge, glowing yellow orbs that would have been comical set in their small, shadowy heads had they not been so clearly… evil. There was nothing funny about these creatures.

He felt a connection to both. They obeyed when he commanded them to stay back, though they still watched him with hunger burning in their eerie yellow eyes, swaying back and forth in motions that varied erratically between smoothly rhythmic dips and jumpy, jerky bobs.

He turned as he sensed a new disturbance. He was certain that nothing else could surprise him today. He was wrong.

Standing in the middle of the secretive lair he kept tucked firmly beneath his adversaries' radar was a tall woman clad in dark robes that covered all but her white, bony hands and her pale, sharp-angled face. She held herself with a regal air as she stood. She had a staff topped with a green orb in one hand, the dark sleeves of her robe falling from that raised hand to reveal a purple underside to the cloth. She clearly had a lot of pride and, if he wasn't much mistaken, power to match it. She fairly crackled with power to his keen eye. Topping her head was a black cap with two horn-like projections extending from it; such a thing would have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but she wore it as well as a king wore his crown.

She looked around with alert eyes filled with intelligence, searching the chamber she found herself in. Apparently she found it to her liking, because she turned her intense, powerful gaze on the owner of the lair, giving a grim smile. "You must be this world's representative of darkness," she murmured in a voice that carried perfectly despite its low volume. "I am Maleficent, guardian of darkness."

He matched her gaze without faltering or flinching. "Darkness. I live in darkness," he replied, his voice carrying a hint of dark humor. "It represents me more than I represent it."

She inclined her head approvingly. "Something has changed," she told him. He didn't know precisely what she meant, but he caught the hint of something great, dark, and important—something he had to be part of. Such was his nature. "This world wasn't supposed to be connected. But the change can be a good one. If only I could understand what caused it…"

He stepped aside with a dark smirk that she couldn't see beneath his two-toned mask, revealing the soulless timestreamer with the two dark creatures standing at her side. "This time thief had something to do with it, I imagine," he said calmly.

"Ah," Maleficent murmured, and she smiled darkly, highly pleased about something. She moved her staff forward as she eyed the dead time thief, letting it click against the floor. "Time has been altered by the heartless. Only chaos can follow." She returned her gaze to him, her smile widening. "Chaos is the greatest darkness."

"There is one thing darker," the man said evenly, watching the witch woman as she grew curious. "Manipulating chaos into an order you can control."

She nodded, satisfied by his response. "Yes, you are certainly this world's representative of darkness. What is your name?"

"You can call me Slade," he replied coolly, inclining his head in introduction. He kept his hands crossed behind his back as he watched her, patiently waiting for events to unfold, carrying with them the answers to the curiosity he burned with.

"Slade, then," Maleficent agreed. She strode up to him, her robes whispering over the cold, dark floor of his lair, and she offered a thin arm. "Come with me. I will explain everything to you."

He regarded the offered arm a moment, keeping his thoughts hidden beneath a cool exterior and, further, the mask he wore, and then he took her arm in his. "Yes. I'd like to know what is going on."

He let the witch lead him into darkness. He took it all in calmly. He would find a way to make this new development work to his advantage—he always did. He was something of an enigma. The darkness longed for him, hungered for him, but warily kept away, afraid of what it didn't understand about him.

He was Slade.

author's note

This chapter is hopelessly old. I wrote it ages ago. I have one more chapter equally as old already written. I do have a plot for this story, but I don't intend to continue it past the first two chapters unless there is interest in it. So if you want to read more, please review. And please keep in mind that my writing style will change somewhat after the second chapter, as it will go from 6-year-old writing to current.