Wings of Avalon: Yes, adding in the Foretellers! Honestly this story would have been so much easier to write without them lol. But I was trying to make it at least somewhat work with the hints that we've been given about what's to come.

coolmegan123: haha "ahh my brain!" pretty much sums up the entire writing process of this story for me. No, we never saw the foretellers' faces, and there was a theory going around for a while (it's not too popular anymore I don't think) that the main KH characters were reincarnations of the foretellers. This is my twist on that theory. Hopefully it will become more clear as we go, though there are some things that I purposefully don't explain for a while. Oh and thank you, I'm still fighting some sinus stuff but I have much more energy and brain juice than I did last week!

Hello everyone! Brain is working much better now than it was last week. Hope y'all are staying well and having a good weekend!

Chapter 21

Perspective – Meli

"Hello?"

I walked forward a few steps, but the darkness around me remained constant. The only indication that there was something beyond the shadows was an eerie scratching noise that echoed in my ears.

One more step, and suddenly bars materialized in front of me. A door, to some sort of cell or cage. There was someone there, but rather than being able to see them I could feel their pain, taste their fear.

"Who are you?" I called.

There was no answer. I reached forward, but my hand seemed to be blocked by some unseen force, unable to pass between the bars to find this hidden person.

Then, without warning, the door swung open, forcing me back away from it. I watched silently as the figure inside began to walk forward, becoming more and more visible the closer to me they came. Just as I was starting to be able to make out auburn hair falling around their shoulders, the door slammed shut again, except this time, there were no bars, just solid wood.

I was standing outside of a building, and the sun was shining. Running around the building, I looked for any opening, any window that I might be able to see through to find the person I knew was still inside, but eventually I found her, instead, standing under the eaves of the building and staring off into the distance. I approached her slowly, taking in her appearance. The auburn hair was less disheveled now, but still long, and the blue of her eyes was unmistakable. She looked like Kairi, only something like a decade older. Besides the maturity of her face, there was a definite weariness in her stance that Kairi didn't have.

I have to get out of here. Her lips didn't move, but I knew the words came from her. He's going to come back soon, but I won't be caged any longer.

I wanted to ask who was coming back, or where she was going, or why she had been trapped, but couldn't seem to speak. I was simply an observer here, my presence not even noticed. The next thing I knew, she was running away, disappearing into the city ahead.

My eyes opened abruptly to the blue of the frilly canopy overhead. Breathing in deeply, I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyelids, then stretched my arms up into the air. What a weird dream. Who was that girl? Normally, I wouldn't have worried about who the random characters in my dreams were, but something about this one was different. It felt more like another memory resurfacing than a regular dream. But no one had mentioned me ever meeting an older version of Kairi – or myself – before.

By the time I was up and eating breakfast – Kairi had insisted we bring back some groceries to the mansion the evening before, instead of eating out every time – I had all but forgotten the dream. Aqua and whoever else was with her had decided not to delay coming to meet their doppelgangers, so everyone was abuzz with excitement of getting together later that afternoon. The other two newcomers were supposed to be there for us to meet, too. Personally, I could not have cared less about any of it, and sat back in a corner of the white room watching with my bowl of cereal, trying to figure out what the big deal was.

"Hey." Riku materialized in front of me, a smile on his face. "You wanna go do some training?"

"Training?" I cocked one eyebrow, setting my empty bowl to the side.

He shrugged. "Yeah. For old times' sake. Not to mention the fact that I desperately need it. Sherwood proved that without a doubt."

I took the hand he offered and let him pull me up off the floor, but crossed my arms and regarded him with a tilt of my head. "You do realize I still don't remember the 'old times', right?"

He huffed what was maybe supposed to be a laugh, though there was no smile accompanying it. "Yeah. That's okay, I do. And I can tell you about them as we go, if you'd like."

We walked back out the way we had come, past the bedrooms and out a back door that led to a dirt clearing, and all the way he spoke quietly but fondly of the training that he and I had done in this very place when we first met. It sounded like it had been a lot of him kicking my butt, but I had no doubt that I owed what I could do now to him.

"Well, this time it's you that needs the training, so I guess the tables are turned."

Riku smirked over his shoulder at me. "Oh, so you think you can take me, huh?"

I shot him a dubious look. "I was the one fighting off the Heartless in Sherwood before you got there. That means I'm not as out of shape as you claim to be."

He placed one hand on his hip. "You take everything literally right now, don't you."

Ignoring him, I flexed my fingers, staring at them as if I expected something new to happen. "The only problem with this is...I don't have a Keyblade."

"What?" When I looked up, Riku's brow was heavily furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"I've tried summoning it a couple of times since I remembered its existence. Doesn't seem to be there anymore."

"Hm. Must be something to do with...oh, right." He nodded, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck. "No heart. That's where your Keyblade comes from, so..."

"Oh. That makes sense, I guess." It made me feel a little better, honestly, knowing that it probably wasn't gone forever. The inability to summon a Keyblade had somehow made me feel emptier than any of my missing memories had.

"Anyway, we don't have to use Keyblades to train. We should start with just warming up, and go from there."

Riku was just as much of a taskmaster as I had imagined him being when he was telling me about our former training sessions. Maybe I didn't need as much teaching anymore, but he had no problem putting himself in charge of our itinerary and making sure I was keeping up with all of the stretches, laps, push-ups, and whatever else he came up with. It didn't take long, though, before he was the one lagging behind me. I couldn't help rubbing that in his face at least a little, even though I wasn't sure where that urge had come from.

"You really are out of shape, aren't you?" I sat cross-legged on the ground next to him, elbow propped on my thigh and cheek resting on my fist, watching him as he slowly finished the push-ups that I had already completed a few minutes before.

"Oh...shut it," he puffed between reps, then collapsed onto the dirt. After a moment of catching his breath, he rolled over onto his back and glared at me, though I could tell there was no animosity behind the look. "I spent the last few months flying around in a Gummiship looking for you, Miss 'I've Got Even More Arm Muscles Than Before Because I Practiced Archery Every Day With an Infamous Outlaw'."

I shrugged nonchalantly. "You could have done push-ups on a Gummiship."

He opened his mouth to respond to that, but was interrupted by the arrival of Kairi, Kaj, and Sora, the latter being dragged by the former. "Hey guys!" she called without releasing her grip on his arm. "I've managed to convince these two that we needed to be out here training, too."

"Yeah, Sora looks really convinced," Riku replied.

"Why do we need to train?" whined the boy in question, his sneaker-clad feet stumbling over the ground. "There's no one to fight right now!"

"Says the guy who just got back from a Heartless mission." Riku pushed himself up and dusted off the back of his arms.

"Exactly!" Kairi deposited Sora in the middle of the training area just in time for him to wave his arms in the air. "I just finished fighting a bunch of Heartless, so I shouldn't need to keep training!"

Kairi poked him harshly in the shoulder. "We always need to keep training, just in case something happens! You should know that better than any of us."

Scowling, he rubbed the spot she had assaulted. "Yeah...I know. Doesn't mean I have to like it, though," he added under his breath.

"Well, you three have at it." Riku stood, then held out his hand to pull me up again. "Meli and I are gonna take a break." He quickly rattled off the number of each warm-up we had completed, giving them a smirk. "Just in case you guys want to try to keep up with the pros."

Sora spluttered a reply to that, but Riku and I were already walking away, still hand in hand for some reason. I didn't mind the contact, exactly, but it was definitely him that hadn't let go. He pulled me back toward the mansion, only letting go when we stopped in front of a stone bench against the back wall, and then it seemed like he had just realized he was still holding onto it and dropped it like he was embarrassed to have been caught.

"Um. We, uh...we can sit here. For a minute. To rest. I mean, if you want. I'm going to sit, so. You can join me. If you want"

Quirking an eyebrow at him, I plopped wordlessly down onto the bench. He pressed his lips together, ears red as he stared at me, then gave a little nod and sat down, too, leaving several inches of space between us.

"Are you always this awkward around me? Or is that just because I'm a Nobody?"

He ducked his head sheepishly, clearing his throat. "Uh...no, I'm not usually this awkward. I guess I...I'm having a hard time figuring out how I should act around you right now."

Twisting my lips to the side, I let out a sigh and half-watched Kairi direct Sora and Kaj through their stretches. Something gnawed at the corner of my mind, something that might have been frustration if I had actually been able to fully feel it, but I said nothing and we sat in silence for a couple of minutes.

"You, uh...I take it that you're not overly excited about this afternoon, based on what you said yesterday."

I crossed my arms with a huff and leaned back against the brick wall of the mansion, the source of my supposed frustration becoming a little clearer to me. "No. I don't like them, like I said, and I don't see...what are we doing? Why are we just wasting time like this?"

I could see Riku looking at me with a deep crease between his eyebrows out of the corner of my eye. "I don't see it as wasting time...and I don't think any of the others do, either. This is a pretty rare opportunity, meeting doppelgangers like this. And we don't really have anything else pressing –"

"Oh. So we're not trying to get my heart back, then?"

The question had been just that, a simple question, but Riku looked as if I had chastised him. "Y-yes, of course we are, we're going to get your heart back, I just... Is that why you're upset? You think we're putting off your needs for this meeting?"

"I'm not upset. I'm pretty sure I don't have that capability. And I don't 'need' my heart back; I'm perfectly fine without it." Though if that were actually true, I probably wouldn't be feeling echoes of frustration at it being kept from me. I didn't share that part, though, because it wasn't logical. I really was perfectly fine as I was.

"Okay, fine." Riku ran a hand through his hair. "But obviously you would like to have it back, otherwise...otherwise you wouldn't have a problem with this."

"I still don't like them."

"Right. Yeah, I know. But you're the one that brought up the whole 'wasting time' thing, so it must be...bothering you, in some way." He turned his whole body to face me, starting to reach out for one of my hands but stopping himself short. "We're gonna get your heart back. I promise. I'm sorry that it feels like we're wasting time...that was never my intention. I guess I was just trying to let everything settle down a little, let everybody rest a little, and then this whole thing with Invi and Gula popped up..."

Shaking his head, he dropped his gaze to his lap. I watched him closely as he drew in a deep breath through his nose, then released it through pursed lips, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Actually, I...those are just excuses. True, but not...not the real reason." He met my eyes again. "You deserve to know the truth. And that is...that I've been putting it off. Because I don't like what we're gonna have to do."

"Which is?"

His jaw tightened, and he leaned his head back against the wall, staring up at the yellow sky. "The only way any of us know to recomplete a Nobody is...for both the Heartless and the Nobody to...die."

My eyebrows scrunched together. "Oh." So he had been putting off getting my heart back because he didn't want me to die again, even though it meant getting back the real me, his me. That sorta made sense, I guess, if I tried to imagine the emotional side of it. "So someone has to kill me?"

Riku cringed. "Yeah...I guess so. Unfortunately." His hands came up to wave in the air as he spoke. "I mean, it wouldn't really be killing you, not...not for long, anyway, but...it'll still be...unpleasant. For everyone involved."

We sat in silence for a few minutes, him lost in his thoughts, I supposed, and me not really knowing what to say to make him feel better. He sat up suddenly and turned to me again. "There is still...I still haven't called the people I mentioned before. I don't know if they'll be able to offer anything else, but it's worth a shot." Standing, he brushed his hands down the front of his pants. "You know what, why don't I do that right now? You can go back and join the others, if you want."

I nodded, standing as well. "Okay. Maybe I'll go get my bow and do some target practice."

"Okay." Riku huffed a breathy chuckle. "Almost sounds like you're gonna use them as targets."

Smirking, I gave a little shrug. "Depends on how badly they're doing, I suppose."

Riku's laughter followed me into the mansion.

A/N: Somebody needs to come request some BTHB squares! I only have one KH request (Axel) so far, the rest is mostly Voltron. I need an excuse to beat up on Riku and maybe Meli some more! ;) actress4him tumblr (dotcom)/ post/658263375539798016/bad-things-happen-bingo-ive-had-this-card