-o- CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT -o-

a cave of wonder

"Kairi," said Axel's voice. I felt his hands clutched in mine, his touch visceral and warm, not like a memory.

I opened my eyes. Outside the confessional, the organ had stopped. I could hear a flurry of yells and footsteps coming from the castle yard. "What's…"

"It's Maleficent," he said with a sigh. "She's, uh, she's deciding to start the evening off with a little fanfare."

There was an enormous clap of thunder outside, followed by exactly what Axel meant. "Your time has come!" screamed Maleficent, as if from a loudspeaker. Her voice was everywhere, roaring like a jet engine, shaking the walls around us. "Come out, you fools," she taunted. "Come out and drop to your knees, and I just may let you live."

Axel and I hurried out of the church and back to the yard, where Scrooge's militia was readying weapons with determination on their faces. Donald Duck stood on a wooden crate like a platform, doing his best impression of Goofy's battle face. It was left to him, now, to fill the shoes of the Captain of the Guard.

"Looks like the reinforcements have arrived," said Riku, unsheathing his blade. He turned to Donald. "Do we have eyes on her?"

"All towers, do you copy?" Donald quacked into his radio. "Where's Maleficent?"

"Just outside the fairgrounds on the edge of town," answered Chip. Or possibly Dale. Not easy to discern. "Ya think you could have mentioned she can turn into a dragon?!"

"We think the barricade the villagers built will hold her for… okay, all of about twelve seconds," the other chipmunk squeaked into the radio. "She has set the barricade on fire, I repeat, the dragon has set the barricade on fire. She's flying right for you guys!"

Donald took a deep breath before firing his radio off again. "Launchpad, that's your cue, do you copy?"

"Roger that, boss, the gummi squad is live in the air, targets in sight," Launchpad answered through the static-filled speaker.

Several hundred feet in the distance I could hear the whirring of gummi engines and the shrill zaps of lasers fired. Riku lifted his weapon. "Tell him the infantry will be there in five," he called to Donald, before leading a group of soldiers toward the castle drawbridge. Everything was in motion now. This would be where it all came to an end… for better or worse.

Simba appeared at my side in an instant. "Kairi, you ready?" he said. He cracked a slight feline smile. "I think you and I would be the cavalry."

For a moment, I froze. It was happening too fast. I still needed time to work through everything I'd seen in Axel's head… there was still something missing.

I turned to Axel, who was watching me carefully. "Is everything alright?" he said softly. He tapped a gloved finger to his forehead. "Find what you were looking for in there?"

I frowned. He didn't even remember everything with Mickey, and Demona, and the torture, and the medallion…

"I need you to buy me some time," I said quickly. "Go ahead without me." I turned to the lion. "Simba, do you trust me? Can you wait five minutes for me? There's just one thing I need to do."

Simba nodded, but an emotion that looked remarkably like fear paled Axel's face.

"Don't worry," I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. "I'll be right behind you, I promise. I couldn't leave you now."

The corners of his lips curled into a grin, even though there was a sparkle of tears glimmering in his eyes. "I know you wouldn't… at least not on purpose." He choked on his words for a moment, and I felt a sick pain wrenching suddenly in my gut. He grabbed my arms and pulled me against him, lowering his mouth to where it met at the top of my forehead. My heart pounded loudly next to his soundless chest as he whispered against my skin. "What we're going into out there, there's no way of knowing how it will end… if this is the last time I see you..."

My whole body trembled as I exhaled. I hadn't even considered the possibility until he spoke it out loud. "I love you," I said immediately, my mortality flashing before my eyes. "If this is the last time you see me, then I want you to know that I love you."

I leapt onto my toes to reach my lips to his, clutching his face and kissing him fiercely. Simba cleared his throat awkwardly and padded a few feet away.

When my feet dropped back to the ground and I opened my eyes, Axel was staring down at me, his green eyes streaming tears.

"I love you, too," he said quietly. "If you can believe that, coming from a Nobody…"

"I do. Now go!"

I turned away so that I wouldn't have to watch him run into the fray. I was glad I hadn't told him what I planned to do. I was scared, of course, to use a portal all on my own, but Riku had taught me that it only took one second of hesitation to find your ass on the sand. I had to trust my instincts. Fucking heroes.

I held my breath and summoned all the strength I now knew flowed through my magic veins, stepped into Darkness, and in moments resurfaced on the bright and empty shore of our childhood play-island on Destiny Islands.

It was stunning, to one moment be in the black of night and the heat of battle, and in the next to be here. Next to the soothing blue ocean, quiet and full of endless possibilities. But I had no time to be sentimental. I had to focus. If Axel… or Cale, really, had given that medallion to me when I fled, it had to be somewhere here on Destiny Islands. I had to reach deep to find the memories that had been hidden inside me from all those years ago.

I closed my eyes. Remember, Kairi. It's in there somewhere. The end of the dream.

I was seven again, in the woods again, hungry and sore from being clutched in Grandma's arms.

"Hurry, Cale," she said harshly to the twelve-year-old boy behind us. He was crying. I was crying. We were children and we couldn't possibly understand the magnitude of what she was doing.

"Here is good," Gran said, placing me unceremoniously on the trunk of a tree while she drew a circle in the fallen leaves and dirt of the forest floor. Cale took the bundle of kindling from my tiny arms and helped her build a fire. We gazed at one another, frightened into silence, as she chanted over the flames and cast her spell.

After several minutes, I felt the burning heat of the flames shift into something cold and otherworldly. Suddenly it wasn't fire; it was the living black flames of Darkness itself. A portal to another world.

"Go into the fire, Kairi-chan," she said. I had heard her say it so many times, revisiting the vision, but now I understood. "The fire will cleanse you. Free your heart from this terrible evil."

"No!" squealed Cale, grabbing my hand and clutching it until it hurt. "She's too young. She'll never make it."

"She must. Radiant Garden is not safe for her any more."

Cale bit his lip. "Okay," he said, not letting go of my hand. "But… I think she should take this with her. So she'll remember." He released my tiny fingers and took the medallion from around his neck.

For a moment, the urgent panic in Grandma's face softened. "Yes..." she said, slowly. "That's an excellent idea."

Before he could hand it to me, she took it into her own hand and used her fingernail to scratch something into the back of it. She placed it firmly in my hands, forcing me to close both hands around it as tight as I could. "You can do this, little one. If you ever need them, the fires of solare will come to aid you. A witch's journey begins and ends in flames, Kairi. You must keep this safe in your new home. Keep it somewhere secret."

And then she pushed me.

I blinked back to life, standing on the beach. Somewhere secret. Of course. I ran across the sand, past the pond and the old tree. I could barely squeeze inside the rock crevice now that led to the Secret Place. The long lost feeling of its cool and quiet caught my breath. I gazed around in wonder at the memories of my replacement childhood etched into the stone walls.

War and death had forced my grandmother to push me all alone through that portal, but I couldn't be bitter about it. My parents had been killed and my kingdom destroyed, but this home had still been good to me. These islands made me who I was. I could never have become the person I was now, about to go against the odds, without the people here. For a final tender pause, I traced my fingers along the stone etching of Sora and I sharing a papou fruit.

And then I searched under every rock and crevice until I felt between my fingers at last Cale's novice warlock medallion, covered in over nine years of grime and dust. I wiped it off and ran my thumb over the symbols scratched into its back. A hundreds-year-old spell that had stopped a Keyblade War. A spell that King Mickey and Yen Sid were willing to torture and lie and sacrifice lives for.

"Whatever you are, you better be worth it," I said aloud, my voice echoing in the tiny cave as I shoved the medallion in my pocket. "Because you have made me late for a pretty important date."