A/N:

Responses to Reviews -

Andiavas: I'm starting to like the Sei and Kairi couple ^_^ but that's just me! XD it's so cute when I see them together!

::blinks:: I never saw that one coming from a reader.

Lol. Actually, I just had to comment on this since I never really thought oc/canon romances to be particularly popular these parts (or anywhere really).

To Firefly, I was referring to times that Kairi could actually remember being in Hollow Bastion (unless there was something in the game that said that she *did* remember having lived there before). Sorry for any confusion.

Comments on Chapter -

Sorry for the delay. This one has gone through several drafts before I was quite satisfied with it. And for all you people, I've resorted to posting the link to the picture I drew for Into the Light on my author's profile (still can't figure out why the link keeps disappearing). So check that out if you're interested.

###

~Is this all just a dream...?

The quiet before a storm.

A suspension in inexistence.

Words illuminated in white flickered before Kairi's eyes.

/The memory beyond...of something so natural.../

She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling completely alone in the vast space of emptiness.

~Or perhaps... a vision...?

/Maybe our journey meant nothing at all/

The silence was broken by the sound of water droplets hitting a liquid surface in glass cascades. The sound increased in volume until Kairi realized that what she was hearing was rain. Footsteps joined the showers, and a hooded figure walked into the square.

The setting was undoubtedly Traverse Town while the figure she saw to be Sei. Yet everything seemed so... unreal. Like a dream, she found herself repeating.

A flash of blinding light, followed by a crack of thunder and the scene shifted. Sei was in the same position as he had been before, only now he held Oblivion and Oathkeeper in each hand. An army of Heartless had risen and surrounded him in that time. Kairi watched as the closest of the creatures launched themselves at Sei, but were dispelled in coils of smoke and shadow in the flicker-fire movements of his keyblades. Sei's motions were like water, powerful and fluid as he jumped and struck in time to each assault, taking down several Heartless with one sweep and kick.


Then, in defiance of all laws of gravity, Sei leapt high into the air and began to destroy all those Heartless that followed him, spinning to meet his opponents and executing a double round of Strike Raid before returning to the ground. No sooner had he touched earth, he flipped up again, only to land several yards away at the base of the tallest building-there seemed no end to the ocean of Heartless.

Sei looked up, and Kairi followed the movement to make out another person on the roof of the building-Riku. Their gazes met despite the impossible distance between them. Sei bound up onto the side of the building and began to run up its side to meet the blindfolded young man at its peak. The Heartless gave chase but were overpowered with ease. Halfway up the building's length, Sei tossed Oblivion into the air and Riku leapt from the roof. Kairi tried to cry out at this, but found that her, voice if not her entire presence, had become nothing. Riku caught the keyblade as it flew towards him.

/The thirteenth order/

Several screens were placed at the top of the building. On the largest of them an image of Kairi's fourteen-year old self flickered into view. The two young men, one hooded and one blindfolded, passed each other across this screen, exchanging glances as they part ways once again...

/Is this the answer you've been looking for? /

Kairi found herself again enshrouded in darkness...

No.

An existence of nothing.

There was a brief image of King Mickey in a stylized coat and hood.

/Who is Nobody, you ask? They are the non-existent ones/

A great roar filled her ears, nulling her senses until she felt her feet touch solid earth once more.

Standing beneath a blanket of cold night sky and stars and white clouds, a fourteen-year old boy stared upwards on the branching of four paths in an endless field.

Kairi reached out towards the young boy, but the scene altered once again. This time, she was on a dark and desolate beach, eerie rock formations reaching towards the heavens. A full moon lay over the horizon, illuminating a bottle in the surf. A sound like glass chimes accompanied the words to next appear.

/A fragmented tale

A world without you

The eyes will close/

A hooded figure sat on the rocks half sunk in the sand, his or her back toward Kairi. Another hooded figure walks towards this one; a profile is visible sticking out of the hood. It was the same person that had shielded Sei. Or was it? Same, yet not the same... Kairi felt a kind of numbness spread through her body as she mouthed the name of the person she had been waiting to find for so long.

~Sora...

The person on the rocks turned to speak. Her voice was enough to take away the hopelessness that Kairi had begun to feel change it into shock.

"He looks just like you."

A fourteen-year old Sora flew across the waves in the distance. The older Sora on the beach did not reply directly to this statement. Something seemed to be on his mind.

"Everything is coming back to me, the true..."

More words of light shone through the darkness, almost too fast for her to make out, as everything faded into black.

/Light and darkness

The present world

Separation. The world in between = the forgotten world/

Then there was only Kairi and the girl of the rocks. The unknown turned. A shadow still covered the upper-half of her face, although her identity had been revealed the moment she had spoken. Kairi knew that if the hood had been drawn back, she would be facing a mirror image of herself.

/Change- the third key/

The other girl seemed sad somehow, but she spoke with a clear, unwavering voice.

"Return to this world in its true form, and accept your destiny."

/Behind the darkness...does not equal the door to the light/

No sooner had the hooded Kairi finished speaking, she felt herself being pulled away from the vision but fought desperately.

~No! Not without Sora!

The feeling of being torn back to the real world became stronger. With every ounce of the strength left in her, she screamed his name.

"Sora!!!"

...

Utter silence.

Had she failed?

~His voice...it's left me.

She closed her eyes and surrendered to the void. There was a glimmering of light in the infinite expanse but she barely heard the words that echoed faintly from them.

"I'm coming Kairi...!"

Her eyes snapped open, widened, and she held out her hand to catch the other that reached out for hers. Fingertips touched, and wove together in tight embrace. Then they disappeared, gone as if never there.

A final light blazed forth in closing.

/Paradise/

###

An hour had passed since the conflict between Sei and Ansem in the library. Sei had been moved to a room in the Healer's Ward, although he had yet to show any signs of recovery. Ansem and Kairi had also not reappeared. Riku had remained behind in the library in the case that either of them resurfaced in the area. Cloud stood to one side of the room, watching the unconscious youth with an unreadable expression.

Sei's body convulsed violently on the bed, his hands clutch tightly at the white sheets. The misty outline of a white-wing spread from his right-shoulder, flapping weakly. Simultaneously, a leathery one identical to Ansem's unfolded on his opposite side. Something flickered in Cloud's eyes at the occurrence. It wasn't until after the wings had dissolved from view that Sei finally seemed to calm, relaxing back into the bed. Aerith let out a long breath and stepped back, relieved at last at this sign of improvement. She felt her the comforting weight of Cloud's arms about her slim shoulders as he joined at her side.

"I can't believe all this." Aerith murmured. "What with the return of Ansem, and the Heartless...and now Kairi and Sei. Do you think Ansem will try to recapture Hollow Bastion?"

Aerith didn't hear any response, and for several minutes, Aerith thought he wouldn't answer. His voice woke her from her thickening sense of drowsiness.

"I don't think that is something we will have to worry about."

Aerith looked up at Cloud with soft inquiring, but abruptly turned her head when she noticed that his eyes have taken up a focus elsewhere. Two figures had materialized in a thin trail of light, barely conscious, at the foot of Sei's bed. They were clasped in each other's arms, looking as if the world would end before they would willingly let go.

Sora's head was lying on Kairi's chest, tendrils of his thick brown hair gently tickling her chin. Her mind felt sluggish, but with a sort of dream-like content and bliss. This was the moment that she had been working towards all this time; for now, he was all she needed. A tear slid down her cheek.

~This time, I'll protect you Sora

She felt something wet on her shoulder, and realized Sora was crying too. But this was for something else-an apology?

"I'm sorry Kairi..." To her dismay, he was almost sobbing now. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you...all along..."

His words were cut short as Kairi pulled him closer to her. It didn't matter; don't worry Sora. Nothing mattered, now that she knew he was all right and they were together.

"Shh...it's okay Sora. Don't cry..."

She remembered the day they had been separated at the door of Kingdom Hearts, and then later, the drawings she had come upon in their secret place. She smiled at the memory of such sweet innocence. They didn't need a poapou to prove it-their fates had already been long intertwined.

Riku had been told of the news immediately. He arrived at the room just as Kairi and Sora were being gently detached from each other and carried to more suitable sleeping quarters elsewhere. A slight smile lifted at Riku's features as he studied his old friend. Although older, Sora had still retained his boyishly cut features and unruly, brown hair. There was nothing much about his appearance that would mark considerable change from the years. Yet something had changed, something significant, although he couldn't immediately identify what it was. He wondered what exactly had happened to Sora all this time, and his gaze shifted towards Sei on the bed. He sensed something quite definite about Sei now, and wasn't altogether sure how he felt about it. At least, he hoped, a decent explanation would be offered by the enigmatic young man soon; it was about time that this mystery was cleared up.

Sei awoke early the next morning. However, if he had been hoping to avoid any confrontations about his identity, his hopes would prove quite useless. Riku was peaceably perched on a chair in the corner of the room, reading in the dappled shadows. A pair of blindfolded eyes turned to focus on the other youth as he awkwardly sat up in bed, any thoughts of further sleep now lost.

"Sleep well?" Riku asked in cool voice.

He didn't move from his seat, only waiting in silence for Sei's next words. He made it obvious that he wasn't planning on leaving quickly.

"I suppose...you're waiting for an explanation. And you're not about to wait for everyone else to hear it."

"If its not too much trouble." Riku replied sardonically.

Sei laughed slightly, but without any humor in his voice. "Fate seems to have had a strange sense of humor, to have arranged it all like this."

At length, after collecting his thoughts, he began.

Meanwhile, in another part of the castle, Kairi opened the door from her bedroom and began to walk down the sun-lit hall outside it. She had dressed in a clean new skirt with floral print splashed across the front, and wore a thalassa shell strung on a thin silver chain. A bright smile was shining on her face and there was a cheery briskness to her step could not have been said to have been evident before. She stopped a boy in the hall, and after asking for the directions, was promptly on her way again.

So it hadn't been a dream. When she had found herself again in the arms of Sora...it had all been real. In his arms... she found herself blushing at the memory but at the same time, deliriously happy. She couldn't make much sense of what had happened that night, but she couldn't bring herself to care too much about that. At last she reached the door to his room, but it was as if seeing that closed door before her very eyes brought her back to her senses.

~Goddess, what am I supposed to do? I can't just walk in there like this.

Five years had passed since they had last really been together. So how was she supposed to act now, upon meeting Sora once again? What should she say? And what were Sora's feelings about all this? She chewed her lower lip in agitation, her hand hovering just over the wood of the door. Picking up her resolve, she took a deep breath to calm rapidly fraying nerves and knocked lightly on the door. Minutes passed, but she couldn't hear anyone or anything moving inside. Uneasy thoughts began to plague her mind.

~What if he's already left? Or maybe he's still tired, and if that's the case I shouldn't bother him. Or maybe I've got the wrong room...

Kairi may have left right then and there, had not the door swung open, nearly smacking her in the nose. A rumpled looking nineteen-year old stood framed in the opening. He wasn't wearing a shirt and had obviously just yanked on a pair of pants over his boxers. Shirtless males were never an uncommon sight back at the islands, but she found herself turning a faint shade of red anyway.

~Don't stare at his chest...

He was still only half-awake from the looks of it, blearily rubbing at his eyes and trying not to squint too much in the sudden burst of light from the outside corridor.

~...Whatever you do, don't stare at his chest...

Kairi could feel her thoughts becoming more desperate.

~You *can't* have found him after all these years, to spend the first moments of it ogling his body...

Kairi wasn't allowed to finish that train of thought. Sora had, more or less, completely woken. Suddenly, she found his arms around her in an embrace that was, though tight and protective, still gentle.

"Sora..."

Something was different about him; she could tell this even as she felt his skin against hers and breathed in his clean scent. Everything was going to be all right, wouldn't it? A former euphoria that had felt so real, quickly fading away...she wasn't so sure about anything anymore. And she didn't even know why. A moment passed, and Sora let go with a look of regret.

"I'm sorry...I shouldn't have-"

"No, no, it's all right," Kairi stammered, trying to pull herself together. A trace of Sora's familiar smile tugged at his mouth as he led her inside.

"Where have you been all this time?" Kairi asked. "What have you been doing?"

She sad down on the edge of his bed while Sora pulled on a red t-shirt over his black pants. A blue and silver belt was added to the outfit, then a silver chain around his neck with a crown-shaped pendent.

"I want to hear about it all."

"All of it?" Sora fell into the bed beside her.

Kairi shoved him playfully on the shoulder. "Of course. Right from the beginning, after Goofy and Donald were sent back to Disney Castle and everyone lost track of where you were."

Then she sobered. "I'm serious. You've worried me too much for you to not at least tell me this much."

Sora sat up, putting his hands on his knees. "You're right; I'm sorry Kairi."

She scowled. "And stop apologizing!"

Sora chuckled. "Fine, fine. I'll stop apologizing, and I'll tell you everything."

"It began with that guy who offered to help us on Sperare. After that spell which was supposed to get us through the walls of the worlds, something completely unexpected happened. I became caught in this vast emptiness, a place I can't describe of being anything except, well, nothing. I was stuck between the worlds." He paused, then corrected himself. "Or, at least my heart had been."

"What do you mean, 'at least your heart'?"

"Exactly what I said. My body had become separated from my heart, while my heart was left trapped. I was stuck there for five years before anyone found me. By then, I had begun to slowly loose most of my memories. The only thing I could recall when Sei had found me-"

"Wait a minute!" Kairi interrupted. "Sei?!?"

"Yes, and if you'd let me finish, I'll explain. So, the only thing I could recall was that I had been searching for something, something that had to do with the light, and I hung onto that when I made the deal with Sei. Sei didn't have all his heart then, and really not all of his body either, and he was having trouble sticking it out in the worlds. So we made an agreement: we'd share bodies for a time. I'd be able to get out of that prison and look for whatever it was I'd been looking for, and Sei would have the advantage of another heart's strength to keep him rooted in the present worlds."

"And he never realized who you were?"

"Oh, we'd both get an idea eventually. Sei had been very confused (to say the least) when he could suddenly wield two keyblades but he never made any connections until later, when we started to show strong feelings around you. I say we, because a side effect of mixing a complete heart and a half-heart together in one body seemed to be that we merged together in certain ways. Sometimes, quite frankly, it was difficult deciding whose feelings were whose."

Kairi listened to Sora's words with increasingly mixed feelings. She found herself looking at everything that happened to them for the past several weeks in a new light. Sora had been with them all along? Right under their very noses? And what did all this say about Sei? Just as she thought things would become clearer...she put her head in her hands with a moan.

~Aii...so confusing...

"Who *is* Sei anyway?"

Sora's expression was thoughtful as her answered.

"I can't say for sure, though I have my suspicions. We didn't share memories or thoughts, so we'll just have to make sure we take a moment to clear things up with him, won't we?"

His tone was joking, but she could tell there was something else about Sei he wasn't telling.

Kairi looked up into Sora's face and her lips tightened into a frown.

"Sora, I just noticed something about your eyes..."

Sora looked at her with a blank expression, clearly in confusion.

"Your eyes used to be blue, but now there's some gold in them too."

Quite a bit, actually, and more than was good for comfort. Shifting from blue to gold...and for a moment, she was sure they had been almost glowing... perhaps only her imagination?

"Forget it. It's nothing."

Sora didn't appear convinced, but he did not pursue the subject.

He stood up from the bed and stretched lazily. "Hey; how about we head down to the dining hall for some breakfast?"

"Already thinking about your stomach?" Kairi teased, any feelings of disquiet lifted. "Okay. Let's go now."

Kairi held onto Sora's arm as they left the room, enjoying the feeling of being so close to him.

"I'm glad you're back Sora."

Sora smiled and kissed her lightly on her forehead.

"No matter where our roads take us, I promise we'll always be together in the end."

###

Not too far away from this couple in Hollow Bastion, Riku was listening to the other side of the story, the part that had been kept a mystery even to Sora.

"Ansem was a man who, in his studies of the Heartless, lost himself to the darkness. Yet he never really became a Heartless, did he? He had retained his memory, his mind, and to some extent his physical form, or at the very least some semblance of it. When Ansem gave up his body fourteen years ago to pursue in worldly pursuits, he also left behind a piece of his heart-me. Which is why he never really became a Heartless; your entire heart must be consumed before that metamorphosis of it can occur."

"So in a way, I am Ansem. I am the part of his heart that never succumbed to this power, though why is still a mystery to me. By all accounts, there should have been no reason for the separation of the heart. In any case, I am the light, and Ansem is my darkness, and although both parts of my heart have reunited and the light seems dominant, the darkness has not disappeared. Not really, anyway."

"For awhile, I drifted, unable to do very much with only half a heart. Nine years passed, and I met Sora in a tiny pocket of the worlds. We briefly sparred, then parted ways once again. Five years later, I came upon a heart caught between the webbings of the worlds. It said that it had been trapped here for quite some time, and it asked for my help. It wanted again to walk the worlds, but had lost its body to some unknown force. It was searching for something, but had lost its memories of what this was, or even who it was. Perhaps we could share bodies, it said, if only for a little while. Perhaps it'd regain its memories. In return for this favor, it would aid in strengthening me-those days, it was getting increasingly more and more difficult for me to keep a firm hold on the physical planes, and I gladly accepted the heart's offer."

Sei frowned slightly at this point.

"Then, last night, I met again with Ansem. Call it a showdown of fate, if you will, between light and darkness of the heart. However, as I said before, Ansem is still something that exists inside me. I'm sure its something that has its signs in my physical appearance; the will of the heart seem to have an effect on this."

Riku nodded, as the pieces of this puzzle slowly came together. Holes still arose in the image, but at least some things were beginning to make sense. As for Sei's appearance...studying him now, there were changes. His hair had lengthened, lost their toffee-colored shade and become more silvery in sheen. His tan had returned with a vengeance. He also seemed to have aged a few years, though nothing truly drastic.

"Cloud seemed to know something about all this." Riku commented.

"Something similar happened to him, an experiment of Ansem's." The words Sei spoke sounded bitter, even to his own ears. "His other half was called Sephiroth. The difference between our situations though, was that the break had not been nearly so clear as mine. Darkness lingered with light, and light with darkness in both halves of the heart."

Riku nodded, and took a moment to digest all this. Phil had mentioned some 'one-winged weirdoes' at the coliseum at the tournament Sora had participated in.

"I remember now, where those reports are." Sei said this almost as an afterthought, abruptly changing the subject. For a moment, Riku wasn't sure what Sei was referring to. Then he recalled what Sei had said the other day about incomplete Ansem reports.

"Ansem and I had shared a bond of sorts, but only through emotions, and not memories or thoughts. Now that we have joined, I have access to some information I would not otherwise have."

Riku felt only vague interest on this matter, but decided to go along with it.

"Where are they?"

"They'd be in the old laboratory. I should probably get them now, see what else the reports have to offer."

"I'll go with you."

Riku waited for Sei to change into fresh set of clothes, then they set off together through the halls. Sei stopped at a large crystal set into the wall. Several of these were set throughout Hollow Bastion, and could serve as a faster method of moving around the enormous grounds, although few people these days knew how to use them. Sei set about entering the correct coordinates, and they were swiftly transported to the entrance of what had once been Ansem's laboratories. The disuse and neglect of the dark chamber was obvious; a fine layer of dust had coated the floors, stone tables, and various broken instruments. The rubble and wreckage from whatever encounters had occurred in the room had been left as they were from those years past. Sei walked purposefully through the room, and began to rummage through the broken remains of what turned out to be a panel in the wall. The reports were where he had thought, weathered but intact and reasonably readable.

"That was easy," Riku remarked, a little surprised.

Sei chuckled. "If only all our own adventures were that simple."

Both of them paused to take a look around at the room, the place where it seemed that all the troubles of Heartless and the worlds had begun. Old memories began to surface in Riku's mind as he surveyed the area of where he, Sora, Kairi, and Ansem had conflicted after Maleficent's defeat. How strange, the way things had turned out. He looked sideways at Sei. What was the other youth thinking of now, gazing at what had once been the center of his life's work? He frowned; it was too strange, thinking of Sei in that way.

"Do you hate me, now that you know?"

The question seemed out of the blue; Sei's voice was clear and emotionless, in a manner that hid all his feelings about the entire issue.

Riku smiled sadly. "No, I don't hate you. I hate the darkness of your heart, and the man that called himself the champion of darkness, but I don't hate you. Besides, it'd be foolish of me, to disregard all these past weeks that you've been with us, because of Ansem. I like to think that you've proved yourself to be more than just a capable ally-it's like what I'm sure Kairi's been trying to tell you."

"Although, there has been something bothering me: you said that you began to suspect, possibly even knew, about Sora, quite recently. Why didn't you tell any of us? Tell Kairi? I'm sure you didn't *like* seeing her in that kind of pain of wondering still where Sora was, if he was even alive."

Sei looked down, at once uncomfortable and refusing to meet Riku's gaze.

"Sora wouldn't allow me. He hated to give Kairi any sense of false hope, since we didn't know if there was any way of getting Sora back his body. We didn't really know very much of how we were going to deal with this and I'm surprised myself that it worked out this way. And-"

He stopped, apparently unwilling to disclose anything else.

"And? This doesn't have anything to do with...you and Kairi? Your feelings?"

Sei had suddenly become very quiet.

"Was it that obvious?"

His voice was little above a whisper. Riku sighed, more in sympathy than anything else.

"I'd know it from experience. Give it up, Sei; I'm telling this to you as a friend. Kairi won't need anyone else, as long as she has Sora."

Like he didn't already know, Sei thought, viciously kicking aside a chunk of debris. But there was something else, too. Who was to say which feelings had been his and which had been Sora's, when their hearts had begun to intermingle? If this crush wasn't his, then why did he still feel this way about Kairi? He felt sick and afraid all at once.

Not that it mattered how he felt. As what had already been said, and something that he knew all too well: Kairi wouldn't need anyone else, as long as she had Sora.