A/N: I regret to inform you that this is the final chapter of "Whisper." The rest of the story will be continued in whatever Kingdom Hearts fanfic I post up next. The reason for stopping already: I ran out of chapter ideas that don't involve huge time lapses. XP This is not to frustrate or annoy anyone, this is simply so that the files on my computer don't get too large with one long friggin' story. I am currently arranging/rewriting most of my previous fics into one long story in and of itself, which I am titling "Hikari," and I'll post that up as soon as I'm done with working on these. Think of "Hikari" as my version of an omnibus. You know, those 5-to-10 inch thick books you see random idiotic book-a-holics like me carrying around with three or more books in them. So, yeah, either look for "Hikari," or another KH fic by a different title. I'll tell you in the description if it's the next fic or the compilation, okay? Until then, though, please read, review, and enjoy (or don't) the last chapter of "Whisper," I had a lot of fun writing it.


Riku rolled over, fighting against his covers, though barely aware of the fact that he was moving until his head hit the floor with a loud thump. He managed to untangle himself from the bedsheets, propped himself up from the floor with both hands and...

Puked his guts out.

Wh-what the...? What was that all about? Riku thought, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. He looked at it, half expecting to see blood instead of bile. That dream... Mizu had that dream... Oh, no... Riku tried to climb to his feet, but his legs were shaking too badly to support him, and he fell flat on his rump. There was a light knock on the door, and Riku almost jumped out of his skin.

"Wh-who is it?" he called, barely even noticing that he had stuttered, or how frightened he sounded. Right now, he was more concerned with why Mizu would have had a dream like that. The door opened, and a man with long silver hair, tan skin, and golden eyes walked in, shutting the door quietly behind him. He looked over at Riku, and seemed mildly surprised to see him sitting next to a puddle of barf, hair tousled all over the place and hopelessly tangled in his blankets.

"Oh, Ansem!" Riku exclaimed, quickly getting to his feet and clutching the covers tighter around him. "I, uh, I didn't expect you to be here this late."

"Late?" Ansem asked, raising an eyebrow and looking over to the window, where sunlight was flooding into the room. "It's just past dawn, Riku."

Riku sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window too, and sighed, running his hands through his tangled hair in a hopeless attempt to straighten it. For some reason, being around this man always made him overly concious of his appearance. And, unfortunatelly, Riku slept in the nude (A/N: Wonderful mental image, is it not? That, and I can't picture Riku in any sort of pajamas except maybe boxers... ;P), so at the moment he was even more uncomfortable than usual. Ansem looked back at the stinking puddle on the floor, and raised his eyebrow questioningly.

"J-just a nightmare," Riku explained hastilly, then immediatelly felt stupid for saying it. Only children threw up after bad dreams, and Riku was no child.

"I see," was all Ansem said concerining the puke. "Are you alright?"

"F-fine," Riku said, even though he was obviously out of breath and sweating, his head hurt where he had hit it, and he still felt sick to his stomach at the thought of the dream. An image of the rotting flesh of Mizu's hand danced before his eyes again, and he had to take several deep breaths to keep the bile down.

"Indeed. Well, if you are ready, Captain Hook is waiting for you."

"R-right..."

Ansem turned to leave, and Riku sighed, allowing his head to sink into his hands, pressing his palms against his eyes. To his dismay, Riku heard Ansem's soft footsteps as the man approached him, even felt Ansem sit next to him on the bed.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" Ansem asked, gently rubbing Riku's back. Riku sighed, and relaxed, something that was strangely easy to do in this man's presence.

"Not really," he admitted, dropping his hands between his knees. He closed his eyes and sighed again as Ansem began rubbing his shoulders.

"You're too tense," Ansem admonished after a moment. "You're going to wear yourself into nothing if you continue at this pace."

Riku opened his eyes a little.

"I don't have much choice. Kairi might not have time for me to relax. She means so much to me, I can't let her down just because I need a break."

"She would understand, I'm sure. A true friend would not want you to sacrifice yourself for her."

"But a true friend would sacrifice himself anyway. Sorry, Ansem, but I'm a true friend to her. I'd give my life to save her, or Sora, or Mizu. Especially Mizu..."

"She means that much to you?" Ansem asked, stopping the massage he had been giving Riku. Riku looked up into his golden eyes.

"More than anything," Riku admitted. "Don't you have someone you care about like that? Someone you would do absolutelly anything for, even if it meant giving up your own life?"

"I do not," Ansem said. "But I do have a question: Would Mizu do the same for you?"

"Of course she would," Riku said without hesitation.

"Really? What do you suppose she's doing right now?"

Riku closed his eyes, not really knowing why he did it, and searched his own heart, looking for that part that screamed "Mizu" at him. He smiled when he learned what was going on with her.

"She's sleeping," he admitted, still with a slight smile on his face. "She's exhausted, too. She'll probably be out like a light for a couple days."

"And in that time, she won't be doing anything for you," Ansem pointed out.

"It's not her fault she's sleeping," Riku said. "Her brother drugged her after about an hour of yelling at her to get some sleep." Riku sighed, and put his head back in his hands. "She's the reason I had the nightmare. It was hers, and she somehow dragged me into it. I don't think she meant to, but..."

"What was this nightmare?" Ansem asked. "What happened in it to give you such a violent reaction?"

"It was..." Riku said, trying to find the right words to describe it without going into any gruesome details, but with every word he spoke, the images kept coming back. "I think it was a reflection of her heart. Or maybe all of her worst fears rolled into one, I don't know... There was so much pain, and death, and..." Riku swallowed, trying not to puke again. "And there was blood everywhere. I've never seen anything so disgusting in my entire life... And I was in it. I think I caused some of it. Maleficent was there, too, laughing. She used me like a puppet, and I... I fought Mizu. She had a sword, and I had a Keyblade, but they were both twisted, evil... I slammed the Keyblade through her stomach, and she... She died in my arms. Only, since this was Mizu's dream, it was more like I was killing her and myself. I laid her out on the ground with the others--there were so many of them--and she sank into a pool of blood. Or, we were both sinking... Then I fell in with her, held on to her, and we continued to sink. Then I woke up, and, well..."Riku gestured helplessly at the quickly drying puddle by the bed, and shrugged.

"I can understand now why you would react that way," Ansem said. "You, who all your life have been so sheltered from the cruelties of the wider worlds, would not know how to react to such a graphic image, and so your body sought to purge itself."

"Mizu did the same thing," Riku pointed out, not really knowing how he knew, but knowing he was right in any case.

"Perhaps because she understood the implications of the dream far better than you did," Ansem reasoned. "No matter the situation, though, you both had the same violent, and perhaps necessary, reaction to the dream." Ansem stood up, placed both hands on Riku's shoulders, and amazingly pushed the boy back down into the bed. What was amazing about it was not so much the act itself, but the fact that Riku didn't protest, or struggle. Riku had a fleeting thought that he was perhaps too submissive to this man, but immediatelly dismissed it as irrational.

When Riku was laying flat on his back, Ansem displayed another rare act of kindness and drew the covers up to the boy's shoulders. This surprised Riku, as he had half expected him to do something else, though what that was he didn't know. With a wave of his hand and a muttered word, Ansem used his powers to clean up the bile. He then lightly brushed his fingers over Riku's cheek and neck, resting for a brief moment over the boy's heart, then turned to leave.

"I will tell Hook to delay the voyage," Ansem said from the doorway. "For another day, at least."

Riku's eyes snapped open, though he was unaware that he had shut them, and he started to get out of the bed.

"Kairi may not have one more day," he protested, throwing back the covers and managing to get one foot on the floor before Ansem pushed him back down.

"But you need one more day," Ansem reminded him. "Rest. Replenish your strength, then go to Kairi. I'm sure she can wait long enough for that."

"I'll hold you responsible if she can't," Riku warned. Ansem merely smiled and left, leaving Riku alone with his thoughts, and memories of that horrible dream...


A/N: I am very well aware that I got Ansem OOC in this chapter. I did that on purpose. I mean, come on, how can you get anyone's personality that fXXXed up without actually trying to?