Alright, I promise that the next chapters will get the story moving along a little better. This is the last... come on, people, you know this one!

"FIIIILLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER~! Filler nights! Come on, one more chapter and then the story'll be alright! Cause this is -!"

*bricked*

Ahem. Disclaimers still apply: KH and Thriller do not belong to me. Story's mine though.

Part Twenty-Five: Hiding

I could feel him.

He was sitting next to me… sitting next to me, his hand on my mouth. Even with my friends sleeping beside me, I could feel him there. His soft breath tickled against my neck as that little body bent down over mine, whispered deep into my ear.

"I'm in your bedroom," He sang softly and the noise buzzed in my head like they had suddenly broadcasted static right into my skull. "I'm in your bedroom, you can go ahead and hide…! But if you're not fast enough, I'll catch you and I'll win…!"

He was daring me. He was challenging me to a game, some game that had rules I couldn't understand.

My breath hitched in my chest as I felt him moving beside me, right where Xion was.

… P… please… Xion… wake up… he's…!

"I'm in your bedroom, wanna see what else I can do?" The ghost demanded and then I felt something being pressed against my lips. A hard sphere, like a marble. I resisted the gentle insistence, moving against it. No! I won't eat it, I won't eat it, whatever it is, that thing was not going into my mouth! You can go to hell!

When I opened my eyes, I could see these gentle blue eyes staring back at me. Blue. Not gold. Not that harsh and vicious gold that broke my heart. Blue, blue like the sky. Blue like Xion and Roxas. Blue like the ocean. This time, I watched as the little boy popped a brightly colored – a red one, for some reason could distinctly see that it was a bright red one, like the color my hair was, even though it was dark – candy into his own mouth, unwrap a second from its sticky brown paper, and then press it again to my lips.

This time, for some reason, I let him slip it onto my tongue. It was… it tasted like…

… Damn, it was cold…

I burrowed closer to the nearest source of heat, pulling it towards my cold, cold skinny little body. Okay, maybe not little but I was definitely cold. Nuzzling into it, I found out that somehow, my crappy pillows got about, like a hundred times softer when I was asleep.

Voodoo witchcraft or was it…?

"A…xel…." A voice hissed in my ear just as I was curling up and hugging the source of heat. Wow, that sounded really close. Like I was… like, not even five inches away from the voice. "If you don't get out of there in five. Seconds. I'm going to murder you!"

Ah… it was the latter.

I finally got a girl into my bed.

Jerking up, I looked down just in time to see a very pissed off Xion glaring at me and covering up her… um… assets…? Aw hell. I got to second base… in my sleep?

"Well you're obviously feeling better, you pervert!" She snarled before my eyes automatically – I swear it was automatic, like the little bastards wanted to see just what I had been laying on – darted back down to her er, chest.

The next thing I felt was her hand slapping upside my head and sending my ass flying backwards into Roxas.

Spluttering awake and yelping as he tumbled out of bed, Roxas and I cracked our skulls on the bedframe and he slammed onto the floor. "Sis, what the hell?!" He growled back before jumping back to his feet and snatching a pillow from the bed. Before either of us could stop him, he flung it as hard as he could at her and sent her flying off the bed.

Okay, people needed to stop fucking with my bed!

I grabbed Xion just as she got up and started to throw herself at her brother, picked her up, and tossed her over my shoulder. "Alright, you two, enough!" I yelled and immediately, they turned to glare at me.

Geez, the respect I get from these brats. You would never say that I wasn't the oldest from the way they acted.

But sure enough, Roxas sat down quietly on the bed and nursed his aching backside while Xion fumed silently on my shoulder.

"You're touching my butt," was her only complaint but even that was subdued from her usual rage.

Let's just say that it wasn't the first time I had accidentally … er… well, to be blunt about it, groped her, asleep or otherwise. She had learned to put up with my clumsiness. And frankly, I had learned to take the punches. The only thing that was weird was that Roxas usually leapt to her defense and went after me, too. When I glanced over at him, all he was doing was sitting there and looking up at me.

There was a dark look in his eyes, like he was afraid to come any closer.

"I am not," I said automatically to Xion before bending down, crouching next to the bed, and letting her off. She slid off my shoulder and flopped onto the bed with a quiet 'oof' and a kick to my thigh. I'd say it hurt but really, she didn't put any muscle into it. I rubbed my hair hard, staring at the two subdued kids in confusion. What the hell was wrong with them?

"Hey, did someone kick your puppy or something?" I demanded, folding my arms across my chest.

Roxas and Xion blinked before looking at each other in what was obviously shock. Okay, they were doing that twin thing again. I hated that twin thing. In unison, their jaws dropped and then Xion covered her mouth while Roxas openly gaped at me.

"What?!" I demanded but they just shook their heads at me.

"Axel, don't you remember what happened last night?" Roxas whispered quietly as if he was worried he would startle me or something. I stared at him and then thought for a moment.

Okay, let's see… We went to go get pizza. As good as it was, I didn't think that the freaked out looks that the twins kept sharing were because we had that awesome of a pie. Only Roxas was the food nut, not Xion. Xion was more of the fairy tale kinda kook… Er… so it wasn't the pizza. Okay. Then we went to Riku's house! Now I remembered!

"Did something happen at Riku's?" I asked but Xion shook her head at me and then sat up, taking my hand gently. Okay, that was not normal. She never tried to comfort me like that, I just didn't like it. What was wrong with her?

"Try again," was all that she would tell me.

But my mind was a blank. All I remembered after going to Riku's house and eating the pizza was…

A shrill laugh emerged in my ears, making me freeze and turn around to the corner. Wh… what was that? All I saw was this huge, black shadow curled around the door. But the lights were on. There shouldn't have been any shadows in the room, it was broad freakin' daylight.

Why was there a…?

I reached up and touched one of my ears, closing my eyes for a second as a memory started ghosting back into my head. A… a little boy… a little boy with Xion's eyes and Roxas' smile… looking at me… His… no… gold eyes… not blue… but… the eyes had been blue, hadn't… they? I knew that they were blue! They had to be blue, his siblings' eyes were all-!

"My head hurts…" I said in a soft voice; I barely recognized it as mine. After a few moments of the twins just staring at me and waiting for me to react, Xion reached up and pulled me into her, letting me drop down and put my head on her shoulder.

Why didn't I remember? Why didn't… My hands tightened around her waist as I fought to remember what I had seen last night. I knew that I saw something strange. Something bizarre and that it had… broken me. But I didn't remember it, I couldn't remember anything at all except…

I…

Pressing my hand to my mouth, I could taste this strange sweet-bitter flavor on my tongue. Like I'd been eating fruit or something but forgot to brush my teeth before going to bed. But it wasn't like anything I'd ever tasted before. It reminded me of a lot of things though. Mint, strawberry, sea salt ice cream, even the smell of a paopu blossom perfume that Xion sometimes wore when she had to go do something fancy…

Why… why couldn't I… remember…?

'Hide and seek, let's play hide and seek; if you win, you get to stay with your friends. If Iwinyougettocomewithme!'

That voice… that voice in the back of my head… why… did I know that voice…?

"My head hurts…"