So maybe calling this just an Ansem/Riku fic was sort of false advertising. Back to them next chapter. But here's a character who damn well deserves to show up in KH, and an attempt at a plot and unexplained happenings and similar necessities. It's lame, I know. It will improve, hopefully.

Consequentially

first interlude.

Logic dictated that Traverse Town should have faded away once the darkness was defeated and the worlds restored, its purpose fulfilled, its continued existence unnecessary.

And it was true that it wasn't on such a prominent junction of the interspace currents as it had been once, but wherever it was, there were just as many garish neon lights as ever, and the town was anything but dead.

Some things can't be rebuilt and remade just like that, whatever heroics have gone on elsewhere, and not all the destruction in the worlds can be comfortably attributed to the dark and one (or two) amber-eyed enemies that could be dispatched with something as simple as a keyblade to the face.

Human nature makes more than enough messes without any outside help. Things happen. Worlds fall to pieces. People get lost.

So Traverse Town remained, inhabited by the handful of its original citizens who hadn't long since found a way to go somewhere else, and an endless stream of people with nowhere else to go who sooner or later found themselves washed up there.

Case in point. Tifa Lockheart, lately of Radiant Garden, currently of no fixed address, bartending at the Cheap Prayer in the first district. Looking for someone, but wasn't everyone?

And currently taking note of the stranger in the corner who kept sneaking looks at her when he thought she wouldn't notice. Which she was used to, considering she had plenty to look at, but it had been two hours and he wasn't drunk and hitting on her yet, and wasn't a tavern such a classic place to meet a mysterious stranger in black.

…admittedly, the black was more of a faded dirty gray that might even have started out as blue, and it was more or less impossible to look appropriately enigmatic when your hair was that ridiculous. If it was any spikier it would have looked like a completely separate creature that might vacate his scalp at any moment.

And now she was staring at him, damn it, and he seemed to take it as an invitation to amble over and grin at her across the bar. "Long time no see, Tifa."

"…how do you know me?"

A smile that was probably intended to be rakish. "Call it a lucky guess?"

Tifa wasn't in the mood for whatever game he thought he was playing. "I asked you a question. Tell me who you are." And why did she feel like she should know that already?

"Zachariah Knightblade," he said, with a contorted motion that might have been an attempt at a gentlemanly bow. "But call me Zack or I won't know who you're talking to."

"That's nice, Zack." She put on a long-practiced expression of disinterest. "You planning on ordering a drink or just sitting here all night?"

"You planning on getting out of here or just rotting in Traverse Town forever?" he tossed back, and blurted out "I have a ship," before she could answer. His smile only widened at her indrawn breath. "Fenris. Used to be the Hollow Bastion's finest, before some entertaining hijinks I don't need to go into now."

She didn't know him. She damn well didn't trust him. But this might be the best – the only – chance she'd get for a long time. "Really, mister. You take passengers?"

"When they're drop-dead gorgeous ladies like you?" he said, grinning like an idiot now. "Definitely."

"If you think I'm going to pay for my passage with—"

"I wouldn't dream of such a thing. I'm hurt, Tifa. What kind of guy do you think I am?" He slumped on the bar with a ridiculous pouting sigh. "Just take a look, huh? Can't hurt."

Well. It couldn't.

"…is that thing even fit to fly?" she asked, eyes narrowed, when she'd followed him out to where his ship was docked. "I don't think it was meant to carry humans."

"Eh-heh, well." Zack gave the… whatever-it-was that had been badly painted over the old Heartless sigil a pat. "She's kind of got a jury-rigged atmospheric recycler and the propulsion system could use a little work, but she hasn't fallen apart on me yet, and we've been together for years."

Tifa couldn't help laughing. "You sound like you're married to a gummi ship."

"Best friend I've got," said Zack, mock-solemn. "Only friend I've seen in a hell of a long time. Haven't been home for a while."

"You're from the Garden?" she asked. There was something familiar about him, anyway. Might be someone she'd forgotten from before, who'd been tossed up on some other world and been looking for friends and family as long she had. One of the string of boys who'd trailed after her like Cloud had, before he'd gone away to Midg--

What?

Before their false king opened a door he shouldn't have and the Heartless came, of course.

"Sort of,'" Zack said over his shoulder, interrupting her thoughts. He set about prying the hatch open and gave Fenris a kick and a curse when it stuck. "I think."

It was more than a little damaging to your big tough manly image, getting caught making your wife scrambled eggs while humming cheerfully and off-tune under your breath, but then coaching a bunch of schoolkids wasn't all that damn manly, either.

"Jecht?"

"What? I'm fixing breakfast for you, what else do you want?"

She laughed and slipped an arm around his waist. "Where'd you learn that song? It's pretty."

"…eh. Just some dream, I guess."

This was displaying an embarrassingly lack of sense, even if Tifa was more than reasonably sure she could kick Zack's ass if he tried anything.

But he obviously wasn't all there, and she was seriously considering spending gods knew how long in a debately spaceworthy gummi ship with someone who could be a serial killer, for all she knew. Or just plain suicidal.

She hadn't followed him into the ship, only leaned on the door while he bustled around the single cramped cabin, but she stepped inside now, glancing around suspiciously. The inevitably brightly-colored surroundings offered no hint at their owner's personality. "You act like you know me and you act like you don't and you won't give me a straight answer to anything. Give me a reason to trust you."

Zack shoved a fall of tangled black hair out of his face, shrugged. "Sometimes you remember things that aren't true. You have a scar here-" he gestured sharply in the air in front of her, a line from breast to hip- "and you don't know why."

Tifa blinked. "Ahaha. Very funny. What have you been doing, spying on me in the shower?"

He snorted. "Dreaming, mostly. A word of advice – don't ever volunteer for some little science experiment right before some other experiment goes boom. You end up stuck in stasis for years, and when you wake up the place is full of shadows and a crazy sorceress." The gummi ship's console lit up at his touch, and he went into a frenzy of button-pushing and lever-switching that was the most unreassuring launch sequence she'd ever seen.

"Do you ever make any sense?"

"Aw, some people find insanity endearing." His expression turned serious. "You want the ride or not? Take it or leave it."

Traverse Town lulled you into routine while weeks and months slipped by and you barely noticed, and you forgot how much you hated your job and the customers and got used to being almost but not really content, like you couldn't hope for anything better. And not many people came here with their mode of transportation anything resembling intact. It was easy to stumble into town, but harder than you might expect to find your way out again, and if she didn't get out now, she was starting to think she never would.

What the hell. There were a million worlds out there waiting, and she wasn't helping anyone by sitting around here.

"You only live once, right?" she said, taking a purposeful step forwards and turning away from the open door, and Zack laughed like she'd been trying to be funny.

"I wonder about that sometimes."

"Hey, Seifer? You ever have these weird dreams? With you except not you, and some creepy old lady and people we don't know?"

…there was the predictable silence at the predictable example of Rai being… Rai.

"IRRELEVANT."

Raijin put up his hands up protest. "Don't get mad, I was just asking. Cause some of them are pretty damn weird, ya know?"

"They're just dreams," snapped Seifer. "You get philosophical when you're hungry, or what? Vivi needs to hurry his ass up with the ice cream."

They'd left Traverse Town behind them an hour ago and she still wasn't sure what her freshly-acquired companion was going on about.

"Guess I'm not making much sense, am I?" he finally admitted, sheepishly. "Hell, maybe all of you are right and I'm just crazy. I'm a soldier, not a metaphysicist. I need to find someone who can figure this out."

"Is that what you're looking for?" asked Tifa, from the corner of the cabin she'd curled up in. She was inclined to wonder whether she should be concerned that she'd fallen in with a madman, except, well, Cloud. She didn't know many people who were all there when it came to sanity, herself included.

"I guess," said Zack, his feet propped on the console. "That's one thing, anyway."