A/N: Yay! You made it to my first Kingdom Hearts ficcy! It starts where Kingdom Hearts left off, completely ignoring any events that may take place in Kingdom Hearts 2. Hope to see ya'll on that review page!

Disclaimer: If I had a nickel for every time someone said I owned Kingdom Hearts, I would be nickel-less.

Prisoners

He'd been there for a while, lying on the ground. A boy. I couldn't help but stare. After all, it wasn't often that boys, or any living things for that matter, fell out of the sky. Definitely not normal weather patterns.

He moved his head a little to one side. Good, he wasn't dead. I didn't really want to deal with a dead person. It would have been strange burying someone without even knowing his name, or anything about him. That would make an interesting eulogy, "I'll miss you Bob. I loved you ever since your fatal fall from the sky."

He opened bleary eyes. They were bright blue, shockingly so. They were beautiful.

"Can you get up?"

It took him a while to focus on where the voice was coming from. When he finally found my face, he mumbled an indistinct, "Huh?"

"Well, if you can't walk, I'll either have to drag you, or I'll have to try to fix something out here to keep the rain off."

He lifted up his head, and propped himself up on his elbows, "Oww . . ."

I felt one of my eyebrows raise. It was a habit I'd had since I was a little girl, "No kidding. You just fell from . . .well, pretty high up."

"How did I get here?" He shook his head, then quickly grimaced and stopped.

"That's what I wanted to ask you—I didn't think anyone could get through the barrier."

"Barrier?"

"Come on, it's going to start raining soon. You need to get inside. Look," I pointed at the building behind me, "We just need to get you in there. Can you make it?"

He moved his head to nod, then seemed to think better of it, and said, "Yeah." He seemed to almost roll to his feet. Despite what must be a lot of pain, he was so graceful. That didn't last though.

"Whoa!" I cried, and barely caught the boy's wobbling frame before he went tumbling back to the ground. I adjusted, swinging one of his arms over my shoulders, and wrapping one of mine around his waist. It ended up taking a lot more time than I would have thought possible just to coordinate our movements so that we actually continued moving toward the door. I clumsily propped him up against the wall, "Sorry, the door's kind of heavy," I explained, using both hands on the stubborn door. Because of the damp, the wooden door now drug along the stone floor instead of easily floating over it. Thank you, door, for being so difficult. When I finally got it far enough open so I could drag the boy in without too much difficulty, I wrapped my arm back around him and guided him to a couch close to the fireplace.

"Wait here, I'll be right back," I muttered a few words at the grate, and a snapping fire began burning. I nearly ran up to one of the guest rooms, pulling spare blankets and pillows out of a cedar chest in the corner. Thank heaven something in this castle wasn't moldy! When I went back downstairs, he had curled onto one side, resting his head on one loosely balled fist, his white hair falling and obscuring his face. I laid the blanket over him, and settled into a large chair just across, holding the pillow against my chest, watching. I wondered what his name was. How old was he? Where did he come from? And how did he get through the barrier?

I kicked my shoes off, and tucked one of my feet under me, letting the other dangle just off the floor, and hugged the pillow tighter. I breathed in the cedar smell. Well, watching him wouldn't make him wake up any faster. Might as well get something to eat. I walked past the boy on the couch toward the kitchen, then stopped in the doorway. I turned back around and brushed the hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear. He didn't stir, but I could hear his breath, steady and soft. I walked back to the kitchen.

I was back to sitting in the chair. Soup was simmering in the kitchen, just staying warm until he woke up. I'd been trying to keep busy, getting one of the few habitable bedrooms ready, trying to keep rain from coming in the gaping holes that passed for windows in most of the rooms. I'd picked up a book from the library, but once I sat back down in the front room, I lost all interest in reading it. For appearance's sake—for who, I wondered—I flipped through the pages half-heartedly, but the character's lines escaped me. I could no longer remember why the young hero was going on the quest, and which woman was the princess and which one was the sorceress. So I'd settled back on the chair, watching him sleep.

I hoped he didn't hit his head so hard that he messed up his brain or something. I didn't know enough about medicine to help him if that was the case. And then we're back to Bob's eulogy.

Then he opened his eyes, "What's goin' on?"

"Are you feeling better now?" I asked, getting up and crouching beside the couch, holding one finger up, a few inches away from his face, "Can you follow this?" His eyes traced my hand's movements to my satisfaction. I didn't know exactly what this proved, or what I would have done if he couldn't have done that, but I remember Grandma doing that after I fell out of a tree once.

"What's your name?"

"Riku."

I smiled, that sounded much better than Bob, "I'm Amaya."

"Where am I?"

"You're in my castle. Are you feeling well enough to sit up?"

He nodded and moved to a sitting position on the couch, his sleep-tousled hair forming a sort of halo around his head.

"Do you want something to eat?" I said, suddenly feeling nervous. It was different when he was awake. It felt so weird to finally see someone, to finally talk to someone.

"Uh, yeah, if you got anything."

I nodded and got him a bowl of the soup from the kitchen, "Have as much as you like. There's plenty. I'm sorry I had to set you up here on a couch; I couldn't carry you up the stairs to the guestrooms."

"That's fine. Uh," he looked around, "I guess it must be late at night, huh?"

"Not really," I turned at looked at the clock, "Just past 8 o'clock."

"Then where is everybody?"

"I'm the only one here. Well, and now you. But you got in through the barrier, so that means you can get back out, right? Will you take me with you?" It all kind of came out in a rush, and I must have looked absolutely desperate, but I didn't care. I needed out of this place.

"Uh," he said, leaning a little away, "I'm sorry. I don't know how I got here."

"Oh," I whispered, sitting back on me feet, I realized I'd risen up to my knees as I was talking to him.

"I'm sorry."

"It's alright," I murmured, biting me lip to keep from crying right there. I thought . . .

"How long have you been here? I mean, by yourself."

I stared at the carpet, tracing a design with my finger, "I've probably missed a couple days, it's hard to keep track. But it's close to nine years, I think. Maybe it's already been nine years." I felt the shocked silence, and hurried to explain, "Well, my father used to come a lot. But he came less and less often, and now it's been a year since he was here last."

"You don't know where he is?"

"No. The Heartless invaded our world in the middle of the night, and he brought me here. To be safe, he said. He said when everything was over he would come back. But our world was destroyed, completely, our people scattered. He said he was looking for my little sister, and when he found her, we could all be together again. But he hasn't found her."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"So . . .there's no one else? On this entire world?"

"No one. There's enough here for plenty though. That's what weird. I mean, there's this castle here, with enough rooms for dozens of people, but everything's starting to get on the worn side. There's never any shortage of food around here, strangely enough. I mean, not too much variety, or anything, but plenty to eat. I'm kind of a forced vegetarian, as it were. Sorry about that."

"That's fine."

"So . . .you came from another world, right?"

He hesitated, then nodded.

"What's it like?"

"Gone, now. It was just a little island, in the middle of an ocean. I mean, I guess there was nothing wrong with it, but it was suffocating after a while. All the same things, the same people, all the time. Nothing new, ever. That's why I tried to leave, because I wanted to see other places."

"It was just as much a prison as this place."

He stared at me a long time. Shockingly blue eyes and white hair.

"I guess it was."

A/N: You like? Go push the pretty purple button and review. Constructive criticism welcome, flames will be used to make s'mores! Yum!