A/N: Hmm. No reviews. And yet I update. Oh, well. Someday, someone will appreciate my artistic genius! (is hit with many rotten tomatoes) Or not . . .

Disclaimer: Back to basics. I do not own Kingdom Hearts or any of the wonderful characters that Disney or Square created. I do own my original character Amaya. That's it. Nothing clever. Just read the darn story.

I Gotta Get Out Of This Place

I bit back a yawn as I poured over another shelf of books. How long before she decided to call it a night?

Dong.

Dong.

It felt like I'd spent my whole life in this library, running a hand over worn spines, flipping through dusty pages, bent over to look at a bottom shelf, scaling ladders to see a higher one. And, judging by the size of the library, I would be spending the rest of my pathetic life here.

"Find anything?"

I glanced up, "No," I sighed. How could she be so awake at a time like this? I resisted the urge to rub my eyes.

"Oh! You're tired! Go to bed, I can keep looking,"

"No, that's okay . . ."

"Come on, if I haven't found it in nine years, we don't have to find it tonight! I just thought that an extra brain, privy to information that I am not privy to, might help, that's all."

"Privy?" I raised an eyebrow, "Did you just say 'privy'?"

She tilted her head to one side and put her fists on her hips, "And what, pray tell, is wrong with the word 'privy'?"

I snickered, looking back toward the shelf, "Nothing, 'milady'."

"Ooh, yooouuu! What is wrong with my speech?"

"Nothing is wrong with your "speech", milady, except for it sounds like a middle school play of King Arthur! Maybe these clothes are rubbing off on you."

"I do not sound like that!"

"Whatever your ladyship says."

Without warning, I was flat on the floor, and . . . "Aah! Please . . .Amaya. . ."

"Oooh," Amaya cackled, "Someone's ticklish!"

"Noo! Not fair!" I cried as her fingers mercilessly danced over my stomach and then up to my neck. I threw my head to one side, trapping her hand there, caught her wrist in one of my hands. She fought to escape, but I wasn't going to let her tickle me again. I squirmed helplessly, laughing and reaching for the other hand, always leaping just out of my reach. It hesitated between another assault of my side and one under my arm. Got it!

"Ah! Noo!" She wailed her defeat, hands trapped.

"Hahahaha! Riku is victorious!" I crowed, holding her hands like trophies. She was still leaning over me, her face flushed, laughing for all she was worth. Her arms started shaking, holding almost all of her body weight on hands that I was keeping suspended in the air. Her arms bent at the same moment I rested my elbows on the floor, resulting in her suddenly being a lot closer. Our noses almost bumped. We stopped laughing.

She looked startled. I hoped I looked cool. I probably looked startled. It probably only lasted for a second, but it felt like hours of her deep blue eyes staring at me. I knew those eyes. I knew I knew those eyes. At the moment, it didn't matter, though. I was more concerned with her soft pink lips, still slightly open from her gasping laughter. I don't know what I thought, or if I was even thinking. It was like brain static, just repeating meaningless thoughts over and over; completely incapable of making the jump to what was happening. It felt like I waited for days trying to decide before I finally closed my eyes and lifted my head off the floor to close the distance between us. And then, I felt her push herself up and away, laughing again.

"Okay, you win this time, but you better watch your back!"

I tried to laugh. It sounded hollow and false in my own ears, "Yeah, whatever. Bring it on, I'm always the champ!"

She snorted in derision, "We'll see about that."

The clock chimed a short melody, marking the quarter of an hour. She looked up in surprise.

"Oh! It's a quarter after two! No wonder you're tired! You really should go to bed; get some sleep."

I searched the lines desperately for some sort of veiled come-on, but came up with nothing. Damn.

"Really, I'm not—" I yawned, "Tired."

She just rolled her eyes and laughed at me again, waving me away. "I'll probably be going to bed soon myself."

I was tired. The brief adrenaline rush had quickly burned itself out, leaving me feeling almost too lazy to make it up the stairs to my room. When I did make it to the stairs, I just stood for a minute, looking at them. Stairs. Those require effort. Ug.

12,723 stairs later . . .or maybe just one floor, who can keep track . . .I finally flopped on the bed, not bothering to look around the room for any medieval pajamas. I lay there, sideways with everything knees down hanging off the bed, before I toed off my shoes and crawled under the covers. I didn't even have time to snuggle into the pillow before I was asleep.

"Good morrow, fair knight!"

Ug. Only one person that could be. I pulled the blankets over my head. "Amaya. I just went to sleep. It's the middle of the night. And you're still talking like some Round Table reject."

She giggled. Giggled. At this ungodly hour of the morning. "That one was in jest, silly. Who would say 'Good morrow'? And you did not just go to sleep—it's almost eleven o'clock!"

In jest? Oh God, she really is beyond help. "What's so important that I can't sleep?"

"I think I might have found out way out of here."

My eyes opened wide.

I raised my eyebrows as she pointed at our "solution."

"'Mind-Bonding for Idiots'? I don't know, Amaya . . ."

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, "What exactly is 'Mind-Bonding'?"

Her face grew serious, "It's when two or more minds become bound together. It's only temporary . . .but if I can get inside your head, I can see what this other world looks like, so I can transport us there."

Inside my head? She couldn't! She couldn't know what was in there. There were things I definitely didn't want her seeing. She wouldn't understand. She would never trust me again. "I don't want you inside my head!"

She rolled her eyes, "It's not like I'm going to look through all your deepest darkest secrets. I couldn't even if I wanted to. Just because we're mind-bonded doesn't mean that we hear all of each other's thoughts. It just opens up another mode of communication, so you can send me the picture. Besides, like I said, it's only temporary."

I had a bad feeling about this. And not bad like "Hmm, this might be a bad idea" bad. Bad like the kind of disasters that only the cockroaches survive. I had to protest. I opened my mouth, "Okay."

Okay? Okay!? Where the hell did that come from!?

"Alright then let's—"

"Wait," I put a finger on her forehead, "What happens if this goes wrong?"

"Nothing. Well," she thought, "We'll have one heck of a headache—especially if we hit the barrier. But it should be easier for the two of us to break free than it would be if I were doing this alone."

I moved back, "What? I don't know any magic, you'll be carrying me!"

"That's where the mind-bond comes in. You won't be able to work magic, exactly, but for a short time, we're going to be connected. We'll both be thinking about the same place, and that helps. And," she looked a little sheepish, "I was thinking I'd be able to borrow some power from you."

"From me?"

Before I could finish my protest, she said, "You don't have to know magic to have it. It exists in all living things. The only difference between mages and everyone else is that a mage can manipulate the power. But we don't have enough power to do things by ourselves—no being has that much power inside them. You have to borrow it from the environment around you. But, when you approach the barrier of this world, and when you're in the space in-between, there's not enough energy to keep yourself going, so you fall back to square one."

Well, that made sense. In the way the nuclear physics make sense, I guess.

"So, seeing as you're the only living thing that will be close enough, I'm going to need to draw some energy from you."

I just nodded. Okay. Sure. Whatever.

"Do you honestly think this is going to work?"

"Sh," Amaya soothed, "I need to concentrate."

I felt like a complete idiot. We were sitting across from each other on the floor, our open palms touching. We'd been sitting there for almost five full minutes and it felt like, you know, something should be happening.

"Is there something I should be doing?"

An irritated sigh escaped her mouth, "You can start by being quiet, and then, if you could just relax? You don't need to be nervous."

"Who said I was nervous?"

"Well, for one thing, your hands are shaking. For another, you have your mind completely closed off from mine. I told you, it's not like I'm gonna go poking around in there. And," she opened her eyes, adjusting her pose so she could put her hand on my shoulder, "even if some images bleed over, I've lost my world, too. I know the sort of things you see. I can deal with it, so don't worry about hiding it from me."

Yeah, right. My world disappearing. That's what I was afraid of her seeing. How about the fact that I'd allowed some guy, barely more than a Heartless himself, to possess my body and use it to try and kill my friends? Nah, I'm worried she'll see the night my island disappeared.

She resumed her previous posture, legs crossed, hands out in front of her. I tried to breathe. She won't see it. She won't see it. I held out my hands, our palms touching, fingers spread, touching. Her hands were so small. The ends of her fingers barely passed my first knuckle.

"Think of the place we're going. Make the picture as clear as you can."

A wooden gate. Stone streets, neon signs. Shops, restaurants, cafes, street lamps. A few small trees. Balconies overhead. People everywhere.

Traverse Town.

I started, my eyes snapped open. I heard her voice, but I didn't.

"Don't be so jumpy! Now I lost it. Think about it again."

I reconstructed the street, and I heard her again, there in my head.

Okay, I see it.

It was like the feeling before your ears popped, only all over my entire body. Everything was pushing down, and when I opened my eyes, all I saw was a blur—black stone, wilted trees, stormy skies with gray clouds rushing steadily toward us. Too fast!

Don't stop thinking of Traverse Town! Keep that picture in your head! We're coming close to the barrier!

I tried. Stone streets, street lamps, buildings, balconies, Traverse Town. The pressure was building. It was going to kill me, leave me a flat bloody mess, plummeting back to earth.

Then my ears popped.

It was cold. Bone-aching, teeth-cracking cold. That, at least, was familiar.

We've passed the barrier! Hold on, hold on!

I couldn't breathe. I saw things flashing in front of my eyes. That first time in that Secret Cave, when I'd first discovered the door. Years later, when I'd found Ansem there. Sora's face as he struggled to reach my hand without stepping into the shadows pooling at my feet. Maleficent. Hollow Bastion. Kairi laughing. Kairi still. Ansem offering me the power to take the Keyblade. Ansem, in the library. Ansem staring out the window, thinking. Ansem, offering me the new Keyblade. Fighting Sora. Ansem smiling at something. Ansem opening the door.

Then everything was dark.