A/N: Thank you Top Gear for your useless (or not, in this case) and seemingly pointless experiments! I now know how to escape a sinking car. Written to Orchard of Mines by Globus, which is a very good song. XD THANK YOU FOR THE AMAZING AMOUNT OF REVIEWS! I love you all, and I wipe away a little tear in my eye…

Thanks to becoafamu, CloudyMorning, darknecromancer666, 1-Love-Me-Deadly-2, Pandas Forever Yeah, High Elf, iShiznitch, XxXmaximuM-RideRXxX, sad kuroneko, Chronos Mephistopheles, Midnight Hell, ChrisCa (your e-mail didn't show up, so I couldn't reply. Sorry. :[ Thank you very much for reviewing, though), Yunie Tatlin, OceanFae, Ninny-na, Dust to Dusk and PhinMaginONLY. Special thanks goes to NightmareFairy for her long and insightful reviews that make my ego grow fatter. Love ya'(V).

Disclaimer: I own naddaa. Head butting belongs to Pat Barker. Extra thanks to Mare! UNBETA-ED, UNCHECKED, AND TERRIBLY LATE.

ALSO comes from every group's perspective in turn, so prepare to be thrown around a bit. I did it to increase tension but I'm not sure it worked and I'm too lazy to rewrite it XD Plus I got bored writing some scenes and literally just jumped to another one…sorry about that.

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Sora and Cloud have just plunged out of oncoming traffic, off the side of a bridge and into a river. Leon, Demyx and Kairi can only watch in horror as the car hits the surface of the water, and quickly vanishes from sight…

Remains

Chapter 8 – And She's Coming After You

They sank faster than the car filled up, but not by much.

Cloud's airbag exploded outward, knocking him back into his chair and giving him a bloody nose. Beside him Sora cried out in dismay to find his seat belt refusing to unfasten. Water gushed in through all the car's tiny holes, and Cloud struggled past the air bag and growing pain to work furiously at the boy's belt. His own had snapped open well enough, but Sora's was stuck and the water was already at waist level, obscuring his view.

"There isn't enough time. Keep trying the belt, but hold on. I'm going to have to open the window!" Cloud ordered, forcing himself to stay as calm as he could while adrenalin took a joy-ride through his veins. Sora's frantic eyes flicked from him to the belt, and his clumsy fingers began to prod and tug at the abused mechanism.

Thanking the stars his car was old enough to have wind-down windows, Cloud took hold of the handle and began to crank it.

Immediately water gushed in, freezing cold and buffeting like a barrage of rocks. It was all Cloud could do to take a final breath and carry on winding, until the weight of the water's onslaught ripped it from his grasp and began to drag him out of his seat towards the back of the car. The pain in his leg intensified as the trapped limb was slowly wrenched a few agonising inches from its prison. Not good, not good…if he came free and couldn't reach the front of the car again they'd both be trapped and there wasn't enough time, damnit!

A warm hand grabbed his arm, and with effort he saw his little brother pulling him back against the ebbing flow.

The car was full. Sora had wasted valuable time saving him. His lungs burned.

The rush of water had slowed to a muted current, but the last of the air bubbles were escaping through the open window in Cloud's desperate effort to get the water pressure to even out. Sora's eyes were wider than he'd ever seen them, even despite the sting of being underwater. The belt still held him in place like a black, nylon serpent and outside the windows the world was turning from blue to black.

Gripping the steering wheel, he braced himself hastily and tried the door. The handle clicked, but when he pushed it was as effective as pushing a brick wall. He tried again, shoving against it with all his strength, but it still wouldn't move.

The light of the suddenly surface seemed so far away.

X

Demyx was off before anyone could form a plan. He sprinted towards the nearest exit from the bridge and skidded down the dirt slope next to it, stopping himself at the bank of the gaping river. Pulling off his shoes and jacket, he dived into the swell without looking back.

With strong strokes he propelled himself through the endless deep towards the spot under the broken area of bridge. Taking a deep breath, he plunged downwards and looked around franticly for any signs of life. There were none.

Around him were only ripped bits of weed and misty blue. The surface was shining and the sun had finally managed to come out, burning even through the water to sear his retinas when he looked up. When he looked down again, spots danced in front of his vision in purple and gold. He blinked. No, not sun spots, headlights! But too far down to swim on the breath he had, and still sinking. They'd never get the doors open while the car was still falling, and god only knew how deep the river really was…too deep to see the riverbed at any rate.

Kicking upwards, Demyx ripped the surface open in a sparkling shower of droplets. Leon was shouting anxiously from the shore, waving at him, but he couldn't hear what the brunette was saying because of the water rushing in his ears. Kairi slid down behind him in a cloud of dust, hands gripping the hem of her skirt.

"Here!" He yelled back. "I see the headlamps!" Leon stopped waving with a frown, and the last Demyx saw of them before diving in was him discarding his beloved leather jacket and taking to the water himself.

X

Alone, for once. Riku was no longer being tormented by his appointed spectre, but was instead tormenting himself. His fingers were bloodied and slipping on the shining glass window as he scratched and pounded on it, driven by the screams and the shrieks of wailing metal that were his only indication of what had happened to Sora and Kairi on the other side. Beyond the window was as dark as the watery world around him, but it was still there. If it hadn't disappeared, there was still the chance he could go through it. Please, God, let him get through it.

She wasn't there with him, and it made him feel sick. She could be anywhere else, anywhere at all, but his rolling gut told him She was with Sora.

The skin over his knuckles was bleeding, but still he punched, throwing his whole weight behind it. He took it by the corners and wrenched, but his ministrations hardly even made a noise against the unbreakable glass.

"Damn, damn, fuck…" He groaned, arms tensing with pent-up frustration and fear. Without warning, the glittering square toppled backwards into the water like a culled tree. Riku groped after it, heart missing a beat at the chance he had of losing his one link to Sora. But it didn't break on the stream's little bed, instead it lay there, and began to suck the water in.

The current tugged him towards his window, going against its usual direction. One foot on the square and he was falling, falling into wonderland.

X

Sora was finding it hard not to breathe in water, hard to resist that final, fatal blue breath. He knew the moment he took water into his lungs his life was gone.

But the belt was still wrapped around him and Cloud still couldn't open the door. The blond was winding down the rest of the window frantically and trying to pull himself out from the car's ruined driving seat. His leg finally came loose with a sickening blossoming of blood, but he didn't seem to feel it. Instead of tending to it, the moment he was free Cloud went to move in front of him to free his brother.

Sora began to twist himself out of his belt without unbuckling it, but it was hard as the nylon didn't feed out well in the water around them. His muscles were aching so badly, the lactic acid in them screaming for want of more oxygen. Lilac eyelids were drooping and he had to fight to keep the darkness from creeping over his vision. Fingers suddenly too big to use refused to grip the belt.

An explosion of bubbles and Cloud was shoved backwards, half out of the open window. A further crack and the airbag was free, letting loose a belch of air and catching the struggling blond under the ribs, pushing Cloud completely out of the car and whisking him away into the blue. All that was left of his brother was a trail of red. Sora reached weakly after him, mind screaming and defiant but body unable to react at all. The air pockets caught on the roof were achingly close.

But too far to reach.

A sudden thump and he was surrounded by green jellied weeds, rising up around him as though he was already pushing up daisies. They took the car into their embrace and found their way into hub-caps and radiators, accepting the vehicle into the floor of the river.

Total silence, with his vision going blank.

Then a gentle touch on his face. A flash of silver. Pressure on his lips and blessed air filtering into his lungs. The stagnant air from above the surface fled him, rising up, only to be replenished when that kiss touched his lips again and let him breathe in life.

X

Cloud was only halfway to the surface when he finally got free of the air bag. He began to swim back down, painfully slowly, weakly despite the adrenalin still circulating. He had to get back to Sora. The boy was still in the car, facing death all alone. Alone.

But an arm was round his waist and he was rising again. He had no strength to fight against his saviour, although he tried, struggling and pulling until they finally broke the surface and he was dragged to shore.

Leon laid the blond on the ground in front of Kairi, who was breathing so erratically he thought she might hyperventilate at any second. Coughing pervaded the air, Cloud's lungs finding it hard to return to their normal function after so much liquid, and Leon tried to help him as he struggled to push himself up. Water bled across the ground as it dripped off their clothes.

"S-Sora-"

"It's okay," Leon soothed. "Demyx will get him. Stay still."

"Doesn't know where he is…There's no time…!" Coughs once again robbed Cloud of speech and Leon rubbed his back. Looking away from the blond and across the river he saw a wilted mullet emerge from the waves. Demyx shook his head sadly. Pulling away, Cloud tried to drag himself back to the swell against the grip of the brunet.

"You're not going back in there Strife!"

"You would!" Silence followed Cloud's thickly-voiced accusation, both men knowing he was right. Leon didn't relinquish the blond's arm, however. He knew that letting Cloud go meant handing him over to death.

"I'm not going to be responsible for another tragedy." Leon told him quietly. "Let Demyx find him. He'll get there quicker than you in the state you're in." Cloud felt a small hand on his shoulder; Kairi. It was shaking but the grip was strong.

"Cloud…" Was all she managed before she broke into tears, falling down to hug him tightly. The knuckles of Cloud's hands were white, and Leon watched almost palpable thoughts chase each other across his blue eyes.

"I can't sit and do nothing." Movement across the river caught Leon's eye.

"Then maybe you can help them do something instead." Machinery and police cars lined the other river bank, and behind them paramedics slid down the abused ridge; they had come quickly, but only time could tell if it was quick enough.

X

When Riku touched his lips to those of the fading boy before him, an almost painful bolt of life shot through his body, searing his lips and welding his hand to the back of Sora's neck. He breathed into the collapsing lungs through the pain, repeating a mantra of 'I won't lose him' and 'I won't lose to Her'.

The water of the real world couldn't even touch him. He didn't feel the windscreen of the car, despite the fact his waist appeared to go clean through it, and he didn't notice the gear stick that passed right through his kidney. All he could feel was fiery skin under his fingertips and white-hot lips against his own.

Sora's chest heaved as the oxygen revived his gelling blood.

Blue eyes opened to aqua green.

Riku was almost glad that the water rendered them unable to discuss their compromising position. He pulled away from the brunet, heartbeat thundering from more than just fear, and tried to pull off the belt. His fingers couldn't touch it, still not tangible enough for him to grip.

Sora had begun to panic the moment the ghostly boy had moved away, and when Riku felt a crushing grip on his forearm he immediately pressed him mouth to Sora's again for further transfusion of air. The second time he pulled away he held the sides of Sora's face in each hand, trying to will calm into the boy, and then motioned for him to work on the belt himself.

Sora nodded shakily, partly from the revived fear of death that soared through him and the rest from the small smile of reassurance that came from the ethereal boy holding him. Reminding himself not to breathe, he pulled the belt over his head and began to work his legs from under the rest. With the panic dampened, it didn't seem too impossible to escape the feeble clutches of his seatbelt. And then Riku's cold hand caught Sora's warm one, and the window was open and the river was wide and free.

X

Police officers and paramedics swarmed Cloud, who had been forced into the back of an ambulance with a blanket over his shoulders and too many questions hovering around his head like gnats. Was he dizzy? Could he breathe? Where did he come from, Son? Who else was in the car? Any nausea? Cloud? Cloud?

Between the dark bodies around him Cloud peered anxiously at the crane and the divers that were working on lifting his now crushed car from the depths. He just wanted one glimpse of soggy brown hair, one quick flash of a sheepish grin. Then he would answer their questions and accept their disbelief as Leon had accepted his.

He could hear Kairi's mobile ringing again. Roxas, calling for the fifteenth time without getting any answers while the redhead told the police everything they could wring out of her. That meant the blond was at home pacing. That meant he could feel Sora suffering.

Cloud's fears only heightened at each shrill ring.

Then up popped a diver's head, signalling to the crane operator to start lifting. Cloud sprang onto his feet and barrelled through the people around him like skittles, ignoring Leon's cries and the shouts of the paramedics. The silver chord kept feeding out from the waves, endlessly winding until finally the contorted bonnet of the car came into view. Water cascaded from the bent framework and Cloud strained his eyes for any sign of Sora's form inside the passenger seat. Hands caught him from behind.

"You shouldn't see this Son, please come sit back-"

"No!" And he tore from the grasp down to the very edge of the bank, blanket flying from his shoulders like an abandoned plastic bag on the breeze. The car was too high up to see inside. He sprinted down the bank alongside it as they pulled the battered vehicle in. When it finally thumped onto the soggy ground, there was nothing visible inside.

A police officer stepped forward, opening the door with a grim expression. Residue water spilled out onto the grass, but the body they expected to follow was absent, and the constables were left scratching their heads. Cloud fell to his knees.

"Cloud!" He heard far behind him. Leon, or Kairi maybe. The mud squelched between his clenching fingers. "Cloud. Damnit, damnit." Leon then. Hands on his arms. Eyes on his face. Brother lost to the contortionist under his steering wheel.

His muddied hands came up to clutch Leon's biceps, leaving brown, sludgy handprints on his skin.

"I did nothing." He whispered hoarsely. "Sora was dying, and all I could do was…was, nothing." Leon didn't reply. There was nothing he could say. And then the hands on his arms were vice-like in their grip, and Cloud was head butting him in the chest; too much self-hatred within himself to embrace the older man in grief but needing contact, any contact, to try and stop the pain that welled in his chest.
Leon didn't try to stop the blond, despite the dull ache that was forming over his breastbone. Instead he tried to communicate his sympathy through the chaste grip he had on Cloud's arms, occasionally allowing himself to rub circles onto pale skin with the pads of his thumbs. They stayed that way for a longer time than either would ever admit, but Leon waited until Cloud tired himself out and hung his head, refusing to meet eyes or faces or even the sky. One dry sob escaped him, but no tears and no noises. Just a quick hitch of the shoulders and an inhalation of breath. A shudder of platinum strands.

Leon could hear Kairi in tears on the phone somewhere behind them. He could pick out the muffled whimpers and high-pitched panic still lacing her voice as she finally began explaining to Roxas. The phone was crackling with the sheer volume of Roxas' panicked replies and questions, the speaker buzzing, the little blond's voice thick with tears.

And Leon hated himself for being dulled to it all, having been through the whole thing before.

X

It was the subtle quickening of the river's current that roused Riku's suspicions. He hadn't gone through to Sora's world completely, like he had hoped. Instead he'd managed to form a tenuous link with Sora as his safety rope. He couldn't see the water he was leading the brunet through, rather he walked the cold ground of his now familiar ghostly realm as the other paddled.

Irony laughed at them as Sora floated behind him, a translucent, glowing spectre of a boy, anchored only by Riku's freezing fingers to the ground. From Riku's point of view, it looked almost as though he were the living leading lost dead Sora to the light, instead of the other way around.

Around him all he could see was black, as he seemed to most days. He didn't see the divers that were making their way to the wreckage, and he could only guess at where the edge of the river was, but he could certainly feel the pull of the eerie little brook of the dead. And that flow had changed.

A pressure made itself known on his fingers, and he turned to once again breathe air he himself did not need into the mouth of the living teen before him. The stream was starting to get violent; white froth spraying as it smashed on little pebbles and swirled angrily around his shoes.

Suddenly it was bunching at his feet and was no longer a froth, but instead a knot of inky black.

"One…"

"Run!" Riku ordered, starting to sprint. He almost ripped his own hand from Sora's grip before he realised that the river-bound brunet wouldn't be able to run underwater. Instead he just pulled, hoping that they were moving fast enough.

X

Cloud didn't look up from the ground until the screams started. Following Leon's stricken gaze, he found himself looking once again at his demolished car.

The doors had shut themselves and the window rolled itself back up, but then the glass exploded outwards in a deadly sharded rain. Dark, matted hair rolled out of the weave of the seats like sweat, and several people found themselves thrown backwards onto the soggy ground as further hair shot, rope-like, from the choppy waters of the river. Each rope coiled around the newly exposed metal, and with an inhuman shriek that came from both everywhere and nowhere, it began to drag the little car back to its watery grave.

People were running as it sank once more in a churning froth of white horses. A few detectives tried to keep their men in position but panic had caught them in its grip, and they slipped and slid across the muddy ground. Another shriek shook the world around them before Leon was hauling him up again, pulling Cloud's dead weight away from the slowly receding vehicle. He was shocked when Cloud stood up straight and turned sharply. The blond was almost snarling as he looked back to the wreckage.

"What are you so angry about?" He screamed back at the roiling mass. It seemed to calm, considering the angry acid spat by the young man who'd escaped its grip. "You got what you fucking wanted! Right?" The calm was replaced with sudden movement, a petulant lashing out in phantom fury. Hair cracked like whips on the grass, before flying at Leon and Cloud and thrashing round them in a storm of strands.

They threw up their arms to shield their eyes, but couldn't stop the tiny cuts that appeared on every inch of exposed skin. Arms were nothing when faced against a maelstrom that abused their eardrums to the point of breaking.

Then as quickly as it came it was gone, and the sounds of life seemed fat in their ears.

Cloud's frustrated grief only grew. Why didn't She come out? Why didn't She come and stand in front of him so he could fight Her like he'd fought bullies and parents and every threat that had come before?

Instead he was left clutching black strands that slipped from his fingers, without closure and without answers. Without Sora.

Well fuck that.

"I'm going to the well." He announced decisively, and Leon was left to stumble after him in confusion. Cloud focussed and clenched his teeth. Strifes didn't give up, and they didn't cry; they worked and fought for what they wanted until they had it. With this in mind, he changed all his grief to hot hatred and stormed towards the bridge. "And I'm getting him back."

X

"Two…" Riku was almost bowled over when Sora shot past him, having caught an undercurrent that pulled him at speed. It was all Riku could do to grasp desperately at the hand he was holding. Together they sped blind, colours whirling past in a diluted blue-tinged parade, and it was sheer luck that Riku tried to pull Sora back when he did. Even though it didn't stop their mad rush through the water, it changed their course enough that Sora avoiding having his body smashed against the upcoming rocks.

Sora realised they must have been pulled from the original river down a tributary, a rocky tributary, and with difficulty began to manoeuvre himself around the rocks that loomed out from the froth and foam. He hadn't heard any more ghostly numbers called, but he still paddled with the water's rapid current to get as far from Her voice as he could.

Finally he hit something, hard. It seemed too large to go round, and so, with his free hand, Sora sank his fingertips into it and began to pull himself up and out of the choppy waters.

Riku watched from his dark world as Sora's glowing form struggled to return to land. It was like darkness was taking bites out of the boy, a chunk at a time, as his image disappeared once he left the water. Riku was going to be alone again. He didn't want to be alone, he hated being alone. But he couldn't ask Sora to stay. Rabbits don't swim.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and hooked his hands beneath one of Sora's feet, propping him up and propelling him out. No ceremony, no goodbye, not even a thought. Just up, out, and suddenly there was no light in Riku's world anymore. He couldn't think about it, if he thought about it, he thought he might die.

"Riku?" A muffled voice.

Then a golden arm was groping through the water once more, fingers outstretched in invitation.

"Riku, come on!" And he took the shining digits in his own, and felt a breeze caress his sodden skin as it rose once again into the world of the living.

X

Sora had plunged his shaking hand back into the current as soon as he realised Riku wasn't crawling out with him, and he couldn't help the stupid skip that came in his heartbeat at the thought he might have left the other boy behind. The moment his fingers curled around a cold limb he wrenched, further abusing muscles that had become lax with exhaustion and the after-effects of fear.

When the surface was broken by the silvery-white of sun-deprived hair, Sora allowed the tense muscles in his back to relax.

Riku's free arm was grasping at rock and coarse grass to pull himself over the rocks and onto the riverbank, blindly aiming for somewhere dry. Out of nowhere arms wound themselves around him and a thundering heartbeat was aligned with his own. For a moment he could only revel in the blissful warmth of the living, but then he managed to reawaken his arms and lift them to rest around the curve of Sora's hips. It was a long while before either moved, and when Sora spoke it was with an ironically dry voice.

"Thank you." Riku only smiled and pulled him closer, despite the ache that was forming in the wake of adrenalin and fear.

Neither could pin-point the moment the embrace became awkward, or when the tension suddenly rose up around them. All Riku knew was that something in the air was telling him something had to happen, now, in this moment. Pressure was building and the world held its breath. All events had come together to form this.

Faint spray speckled his arms from the raging water flowing past them, marking the passage of time, and with a grace so perfectly timed Sora lifted his arms and loosened the dark strip of cloth around Riku's eyes.

It fell and slipped, tumbling over Riku's shoulders and sliding down his shirt, propelled by Sora as he pulled Riku forward and let the cloth fall from his fingers. It was trapped between them as Riku tightened his hold around Sora's waist, moulding them together. It swayed desolately when he trembled at the sensation of Sora's breath ghosting over his lips.

"Riku?" The slither of black finally fell to the ground as he jolted violently, Sora's shoe slipping in the mud and forcing him to grip Riku's shoulders to stop himself from sliding back into the water. The grass swallowed the cloth up, but neither of them noticed. "Is that…is it truly you?"

Above them was a face they both recognised. Blue eyes framed by fine blonde hair and a distinctive white dress, with one too-big coat hung haphazardly over slender shoulders.

"N-Namine…" Suddenly she was skidding down the bank, feet tearing through brittle vines and weeds to stop by throwing herself onto the silver-haired boy. Sora found himself with an armful of stranger and tried to untangle himself as she crushed the breath out of Riku beside him. He watched as Riku regained his bearings and scooped her into a loose hug, and then noticed how fragile she was. Each arm looked as if it could crack off, like a Greek statue in life, and the bags under her eyes weren't quite hidden enough by her porcelain complexion.

"Oh Riku, Riku thank goodness you're here! There's so much to tell you, so much I want to ask. Why are you here? How did you escape?" Riku simply tried to stop her spilling out of his arms, gathering her up and trying to summarise saving a boy after he'd plummeted from a bridge in a way that would invite the least amount of questions.

"Sora's, uh, car…it…wait, escape what?" Namine blinked at him and then shook her head.

"A woman in a white kimono, with long black hair and wide doe-eyes. The woman that's been stalking me for the past nine weeks; how did you escape Her?"

Riku's mouth hung open, and Sora wondered at seeing surprise on the silver-haired boy's face for once, instead of his own.

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AN: So then, sorry about the repetitive adjectives and scenery. And for the random quickness. And general crap-assery of this chapter XD However, if you want to take a peek, I've managed to cook up a couple of pieces of art for it, despite its utter failing. If you want to check them out, check my profile. Thanks for reading, and thanks for such an amazing response last chapter! I love you guys, I really do.

Sorry for the long time it took to update exams and then Expo and then I got slurped up by the Bleach fandom. It's let go of me before, I'm sure it will again. I'll be back soon!