A/N: Okay, I know this first chapter sounds kind of stupid, but I was worried about revealing too much too quickly. It's probably already obvious, anyway. Well, R&R, please! On to Chapter 2!

Chapter 2: Getting to Know You

A/N: Okay, heeeeeeere's Riku!

Disclaimer: Feel the force, and know that own Kingdom Hearts, I do not.

I didn't get it. I mean, I was there. In the Heart of Worlds, and I shut the door. That means all the worlds should have been restored, and everything should be back to the way it was. And I should be dead. Not that I was complaining on that note.

But this girl was in this place all alone. If her home had been destroyed by the Heartless like she said, it should have returned, and she should be back there. It should be undone. Something was wrong. Not to mention the fact that the last thing I remember, I had been fighting against an unreal amount of heartless.

The door was closed. Sora and Kairi were safe. The Heartless rose in a wave. Oh God, oh God, it was gonna kill me. It was gonna kill me. I was gonna die. It crashed. I couldn't breathe; my body was thrown back and forth, a piece of driftwood caught in a gale, and then there was something. Not light, maybe, but a piece of gray in a world of black. I didn't have anything else to go by. I tried to make my way toward it. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, it could have been days, but I was there. And then I was falling, falling.

I jerked as I heard a knock on the door. "Yeah? Yeah, come in."

I was still in bed, where I'd fallen asleep the night before, when Amaya walked in. We'd spent hours talking about the worlds I'd been to. I'd skipped over a lot. Like, everything involving the reasons I was in these worlds, anything involving Ansem or the creeps working for him, the fact that I was one of these creeps. I didn't even really talk about Sora or Kairi. Amaya had this way of looking at you that gave you the feeling that she would see the lie the second it came out of your mouth. The best way to avoid lying about it was to not talk about it. She had to have noticed the huge gaping holes in the story, but she hadn't commented.

"Oh, sorry, were you still sleeping?" She brushed her mahogany hair out of her face, her blue eyes smiling. Something seemed very familiar about her, but I couldn't quite place what it was. 'Well, whatever. I'll figure it out later.'

"Uh, no. Not really. Just being lazy," I got up and stretched, wincing a little at all the sore spots. After falling out of the sky—Amaya had told me about that last night—it was just miraculous that I hadn't broken my neck or something. A few bruises were nothing to whine about.

"I just thought you might like a tour around the castle or something. And, if you want them," she held up a bundle of clothes, "They're not exactly great, as you can tell by what I'm wearing," she gestured toward her own gown, "but they are a change of clothes."

I hadn't really thought about it, but I probably did smell pretty bad by this point, considering all the things these clothes had been through. (A/N: Ewww, Heartless guts) She was right, the clothes weren't exactly designer. I could hear her holding back a snort of laughter when I kept messing with the lace on the sleeves. "Sorry," she said, trying so hard not to laugh it was ridiculous, "I think these clothes are all a couple of centuries behind the times."

Yeah, no kidding. I'm wearing a shirt with lace on the sleeves, and I'm sure it took all her willpower to hand me a decent pair of pants instead of tights. "All you need is the cape, and you'll be some medieval hero or something," she laughed, faking a sword thrust, "Have at ye, blackguards!"

"Like you're one to talk, Miss Maiden-In-Distress!"

She seemed surprised, then laughed, "Touché."

"Basically," she explained as we walked downstairs, "This hallway is all bedrooms. Some are nicer than others. Only a few of them have glass in the windows, so most of them get pretty cold, and the rain tends to come in." She winced, "Sorry about that."

"Oh, my room was fine." Truthfully, I'd been so cold I'd woken myself shivering. But I couldn't tell her that when she had obviously tried to her best. Even the weeks in Hollow Bastion hadn't acclimated me to the cold; my body wanted to be back on the tropical island I'd grown up on, even when the rest of me knew I could never go back, even if it was restored.

She smiled, "I'm glad."

She looked at me a little longer. It really should've been staring, she looked at me so long, but it didn't feel like staring. Staring felt uncomfortable, people were evaluating, judging, appraising, when they stared. She just looked at me the same way you would look at a waterfall or a sunset. Just looking. Or maybe she was judging and just good at hiding it. I don't know.

"Downstairs you saw the little living room. There's also the kitchen, the dining room, a door to the gardens, and the library." She stood at the bottom of the stairs, with her hands behind her back. The childish pose seemed at odds with her speech, but that was probably just because she spent so much time alone.

"What do you want to see?"

"Whatever you want."

She grabbed my hand. Her fingers were cold. "Then let's go to the gardens."

She led me downstairs to a glass door, delicately scrolled with a design I didn't have time to see.

The gardens were overgrown, flowers spilling over the edges of pots and planters, climbing roses completely hiding the structures they clung to, but everything was still green, a few leaves dripping with the rain from the night before. I felt goose bumps crawl over my skin as a small gust of wind blew a few fallen leaves at my feet.

I watched her walk several feet in front of me, "You've been here for nine years, right?"

She turned, "I think so."

There was something so familiar about her, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I knew some of those mannerisms. I knew those smiling eyes. But where did I know them from?

"So . . .how old are you?"

"Eighteen, if my birthday's passed already. How old are you?"

"Fifteen. Sixteen soon," I added quickly. I don't know why. Well, I mean, I know why, but why should it matter? I mean, this was some girl who'd been stranded on this planet. And I wasn't exactly a knight in shining armor to come rescue her. Still, I didn't want her thinking I was some kid or something. She was an older woman.

"Really? You look older."

Yeah, that's right. I'm mature. I'm cool.

Then we passed a low place in the hedge, and I saw to the land beyond. "What the heck happened there?"

She walked back so she was standing next to me, almost brushing against me. Close enough to make the hair on my arms stand up, tingling with the almost-touch.

"That?"

She pointed. Everything beyond the border of the garden was scorched. Gray and black, with stunted, withered trees standing in dust and broken stone. A small wind, the same one that had blown the leaves at my feet, blew dust across the cracked earth in a small spiral before leaving it to rest and teasing a few barren braches of the trees.

"That's just what all the rest of this place looks like. That's why there's nothing here. I'm not sure what happened," she shrugged, "But whatever it is must have been bad if it hasn't even begun to replenish itself in the whole time I've been here."

I looked away, feeling a cold that had nothing to do with the temperature gripping at my gut. There was something just wrong there. There was no reason for this part to be alive and that part to be dead. It didn't make sense.

"Here," she grabbed my forearm, awkwardly trying to lead me away, "If we follow this path, it leads to the back door of the library." I let her lead me, trying to figure out exactly what this place was.

When we walked in, my mouth must have dropped open. 'It's exactly like the library in Hollow Bastion . . .'

Luckily, she wasn't facing me, so I rearranged my face back to normal as she turned to explain, "It's my favorite room in the house." She ran her hands over the spines of the large tomes. She turned, "You came from another world. You went to a bunch of other worlds. You have to know the secret to traveling between them! Why won't you tell me?"

I sighed and leaned against the nearest bookshelf, "How much do you know about the other worlds?"

"Only what's here," she gestured at the books, "And what you and my father have told me. I know we don't know how many there are, and that they used to all be closed off from each other, but, in recent years, they have been opened. But this one wasn't," her eyes narrowed, "No one came here but my father, then he stopped coming. And I can't leave. I've tried."

"You tried to leave? Without any outside help?"

"You think I've just been sitting here? I've been training; I'm a fairly powerful mage. It's not that big a jump from working magic here and using magic to transport yourself, at least, theoretically it's not. But I can't make the jump. I don't know why. There's some secret that isn't mentioned here in the books, and you know what it is."

"Listen, you normally need a gummi ship to travel between worlds."

"Normally. So there's another way."

"It's not a good idea. Just leave that stuff alone. We'll find another way out of here."

"How are we supposed to find a way out, if you don't tell the whole story?"

"Okay, listen. The last time I did things that way, I ended up destroying my whole world, and almost killing my two best friends. I'm not going that way again."

Her face relaxed, softened. "What happened?"

"You know what the Heartless are, and what they do."

"Yes."

"Well, a man named Ansem came to my world, and told me he had the secret to traveling the worlds. My world was locked off from the others; all I needed to do was open the door. There would be darkness, but it could be controlled, as long as I wasn't afraid of it. Once we made it past the darkness, we could go to other worlds. We would be connected. What he didn't tell me was that the whole world would be destroyed. And he ended up being wrong about the darkness. No one can control it—it just destroys you from the inside out."

"He's—he's dead, then?" Her voice trembled. I felt bad for her; she'd been here so long, and when it finally looked like she could get out, I had to tell her that there wasn't anything I could do to help her.

"Yeah. The darkness destroyed him. I barely escaped, into this place."

"I . . .see."

"But hey," I put a hand on her shoulder, "There's got to be another way out of here, right? I didn't tell you, but back on my old world, my friends and I were to the point of building a raft just to see where it would take us. Hopefully, things won't get that desperate here, but I'm not giving up 'till I get out of here. Are you?"

She smiled, "No."