Sora awakened to the familiar layout of a Hollow Bastion infirmary. He sat up slowly, feeling dizzy and numb, and looked around. No sign of Riku or Kairi, just a young medic at the desk by the door.

"Hi," Sora croaked. He cleared his throat and tried to ignore the panic rising in his gut. "Uh. Where are my friends? Did they... get here?"

"One moment." The medic took a couple of sweeps at his tablet before putting it down. Then he approached Sora with a warm smile. "Hello. I'm glad to see you recover so quickly. There's a glass of water on the bedside table, you should-"

"My friends," Sora repeated, grinding his teeth. "Are they safe?"

"You mean Riku and the girl? They're fine."

"Oh." Sora let his shoulders slump. He reached for the glass and drained it in a few gulps.

"Riku'll be stuck in a tank for another day I think," the medic continued. "And the girl we had to sedate to run tests. She was in shock."

Sora winced in sympathy. "Can I be there when she wakes up? I might be able to help."

"Of course." The medic looked pleased by the idea. "I'll call Aerith and let her know, and she can mention it to Xemnas."

Sora felt his eyebrows climb his forehead. "Why?"

"New policy. The bosses want to stay updated on everything the Relic hosts are doing. After the security breach and the incident – well."

"Oh." Sora hadn't thought about Cid much after he had learned about the man's death. It was painful, and unfair, and Sora had no time for directionless rage. "That's smart, I guess."

The medic shrugged. "Seems annoying to me, but it's probably only temporary. Until they figure out what happened."

"Yeah." Sora threw back the sheet covering his legs and was pleased to find that he was wearing trousers. He wondered if his new clothes had survived. He stood and stretched – and winced at the sharp pain in his back. He dimly remembered a Dark One's claws tearing into him. Funny that he hadn't felt the injury while splashing in salt water. "All right. I suppose I need to see someone about what happened out there?"

"Yup. I'll arrange for a meeting with the boss."

Sora noticed the singular form. "Is Leon still in Traverse Town."

"Yeah. We haven't been able to establish a connection with him. Happens sometimes, when Threshold gets stretched too thin. Now that you're back, though, things ought to work out fine."

Twenty minutes and one call later, Sora found himself in Xemnas' office, though the man himself was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Saix perched on the desk, tablet in hand, ready to take notes in case Sora managed to produce valuable information.

Sora felt a little smug when he recounted the bit about the giant tunnel. "It looked like they were moving in and out of it a lot, they stamped out an obvious path. Riku will be able to tell you how many there were inside, I couldn't see a thing. In fact, I stepped on a feeler tentacle thing of a really huge one. That almost killed us."

Saix appeared as if none of the information interested him in the slightest. But he did take notes. "Do you have any idea how deep the tunnel might be?"

"Nope. You should interview Kairi. She might have gone there in the past."

"Hmm. Can you describe the largest Dark One?"

"Yeah. Kind of like a lion with a mane of tentacles. Walked on all fours – isn't that strange for the big ones?"

"For armoured types, yes."

"I don't think this one had any armour."

Saix made a note. "Did it leave the tunnel?"

"Yes. It followed us to the Threshold spot. Almost killed us."

"Interesting. Some of Riku's internal injuries suggest that the Dark One you fought had more in its arsenal that just size and physical strength."

Sora bit his lip, tried to squash his worry. Riku was fine. "I got pretty close to it, too."

"But you weren't its main target, I assume? We can run more tests if you'd like."

"I feel fine." Sora shrugged, winced again as skin and muscle stretched across his back. Then jumped when the door flew open and banged in to the wall.

"Traverse Town is under siege," Xemnas announced as he waltzed into his office, slamming the door behind him. He didn't even blink when he spotted Sora. "Since every crisis needs to be made worse, we also can't pull Leon and Cloud back, because Threshold is malfunctioning. Slightly."

Xemnas collapsed into the chair behind his desk. Saix turned to half-face him. "What does 'slight malfunctioning' mean?"

"Nothing drastic, just that all our attempts at communication get scrambled. We haven't tried sending people, it seems too dangerous. Although..."

Saix pried Xemnas' tablet out of the man's hands. His ever-present frown deepened. "Strange."

"I know. I think it might be our killer, trying to get rid of Leon."

Realisation dawned on Sora and he almost fell off his chair. "You wanted Leon to go to Traverse Town, because you expected the killer to make a move."

Xemnas met Sora's shock with a blank stare. "Yes. Leon is competent enough to keep himself and Cloud alive, and we need to catch the killer before they strike again and frighten everyone. I can't let Hollow Bastion succumb to panic."

"Did you manage to send backup?" Saix asked.

Xemnas smiled. "No, but I contacted Merlin. He'll stay on high alert."

Saix nodded, as if that was acceptable.

"Um, excuse me?" Sora raised a hand. "If they are besieged, by Dark Ones I assume-"

"Of course."

"-then how is anyone going to have time to keep track of the possible culprits?"

Xemnas and Saix exchanged glances. Saix said, "you're young, Sora."

"Whereas Leon and Cloud are old enough to know they can't trust anyone they aren't willing to die for," Xemnas added. "You shouldn't worry. Instead, could you spend some time with Roxas? He seemed a little better after your last visit."

Sora stood, feeling tired to his bones. He didn't like it. Hollow Bastion was an organisation of heroes on the surface, but its inner workings were the stickiest business Sora had ever encountered. He would have to talk to Leon about it. Leon seemed like the one person on equal footing with Xemnas. Maybe he would be able to do something.

If he survived his trip, of course.

"I want to see Kairi first," Sora said. "She must be scared and confused. Maybe she could go with me to visit Roxas."

Xemnas shrugged. "Go ahead. She's in lab 34B."

The plan worked out surprisingly smoothly. Not all of Leonhart's projectiles hit their marks, but they irritated the fliers almost unfailingly. A Dark One would then swoop down to express its indignation, and have a net thrown over it by one of the rooftop teams.

Cloud's job was dispatching the ones on the ground. He enjoyed the practice, cataloguing the anomalies in his performance. Despite the slow burn in his muscles, all his limbs and joints listened to him without delay. It seemed like Relic was not only healing him and supplying him with extra energy; it also sped up information transfer in his nervous system. Or so Cloud theorised.

Whenever he was out of ammo and waiting for the Traverse Town folk to gather it back for him, Leonhart would make throwing gestures towards nearby Dark Ones. This resulted in the creatures bursting into flames, raising an unholy ruckus, and eventually dying. Cloud had tried to imitate it with his lightning, but he could get enough energy together to do more than sting his target. It worked as a way to disorient the Dark Ones and cause them to fly closer, though.

Leonhart came up to him just as Cloud slid his sword into a Dark One's skull, and put two fingers to Cloud's bare forearm. He had been periodically doing this throughout the fight.

"Well? Am I about to faint or explode, mom?" Cloud asked. He didn't bother putting too much feeling into his voice. He wasn't actually irritated.

"I'm not doing this only for your sake," Leonhart said.

"This speeds up the bonding process, doesn't it? I thought I was supposed to have a choice in the matter."

A sigh. "You do. I'll know if we get near the point of no return."

"Yeah? And if you're overloading at the time, I guess you'll chivalrously let me choose my fate?"

Leonhart said nothing, but when Cloud met his eyes, he didn't look away.

A Dark One fell near them, crashing into the wall of a small house. Cloud walked over unhurriedly and speared it with his sword. "These things are barely trying. I'm pretty sure the ones that attacked Midgar were smarter and more organised."

"That's very likely." Leonhart materialised at Cloud's side. "Their patterns of behaviour differ slightly from world to world. These seem to lack determination, but I couldn't tell you why. It's a low-tech world. Easy."

"Yeah." Cloud hesitated before asking the next question. "What about your world?"

"It was technologically advanced." Leonhart's eyes warned Cloud against prying.

"Aren't the two of us strangely similar."

"Yes, it's occurred to me, too. But then, we're also very different."

"True." Cloud glanced towards Leonhart's slingshot station. "They got your ammo back. Stop dawdling."

Leonhart's mouth twitched, most likely in amusement. "Don't order me around."

They returned to their task. The rest of the day was mostly uneventful. People died, of course, but Cloud thought the population of Traverse Town should count themselves lucky. Without him and Leonhart, many more would have been killed. As such, he considered every death unpreventable and the lesser evil.

They went back to Merlin's little cottage and collapsed into bed. Cloud kept his back to Leonhart. He wanted to talk, and facial expressions could be distracting.

"I don't mind becoming your partner," Cloud said. He heard Leonhart shift.

"Yeah?"

"On one condition – absolute honesty. I don't mean you need to tell me stories about yourself, but I've heard enough bullshit from you. I need to know where I stand."

Leonhart was quiet for a while. "That's quite the request."

"So is having someone hand over half their life to you."

A sigh. "I don't know where to start, Cloud."

Leonhart was lucky, because Cloud had already thought about it for him. "Tell me what you really think about the mess we're in, and who's responsible."

"I..." Leonhart shifted again. "I can't. I don't want to change your perceptions of the people back in Hollow Bastion. If I'm wrong-"

"Look." Cloud turned onto his other side and found himself disconcertingly close to Leonhart's stupidly attractive face. "I don't need to make friends. I'm not that much of a people person, really. So making sure I stay a neutral observer for as long as possible isn't actually helping me."

"I don't want to influence your opinion of people."

Cloud shrugged with one shoulder. "I trust your judgement. You've known them for a long time. And I've had enough of cluelessly stumbling about, while one of them might be a cold-blooded murderer."

Leonhart held Cloud's gaze for a long while before closing his eyes. He turned onto his back. "Let me put my thoughts in order. Matching suspicion to faces is not the full extent of your request, is it?"

Cloud nodded, though Leonhart couldn't see him. He felt as if he was making progress. "Obviously. I want an equal relationship and no secrets. If there are no military rules to follow, I'm going to make my own."

Leonhart's mouth curled into a tiny smile. "You were worth the wait," he murmured, and seemed to have more to say, but he stopped himself. "Goodnight."

"Mm." Cloud felt the comfort of the small, cosy room envelop him the moment he closed his eyes. Leonhart's presence was a point of warmth and stability. Cloud slept.

A/N:

Thank you for all the sweet and encouraging messages I received! (I'll reply to everyone individually soon.) Knowing that readers value my story really helped. I'm determined to keep writing this story for as long as I'm able. This means I can't really promise anything. I have a buffer, and I know where I want this story to go. Maybe I'll find passion for it again. Maybe not. As things stand, a hiatus is more likely than discontinuation, but I'll avoid both if I can. I really want to finish TDD and do it justice. I'll keep you all updated.