Yet another KH one-shot that takes place between KH2 and Dream Drop Distance. I mentioned during my last drabbles that I just find that time in their lives fascinating. This turned into a bit of a monster, but it literally stemmed from something so simple… I was replaying the first game, reading some of the Ansem reports, and I came across the line, "I've provided them both living and nonliving samples." And it struck me for the first time how horrifying that was. My mind just took it and ran with it. Here's what spawned from that.

Beneath the Surface

She jerked up in her seat a bit, hands clenching into fists in anticipation, at Sora's final shout. Riku managed to dodge his lunge… but just barely. The sun was starting to set, and they were both staggering on their feet.

Sensing the end, Kairi was already getting to her feet when Riku called, "All right! I'm done for the day… Jeez, don't you ever get tired?"

Sora was panting but smiling. "Who, me? I could do this all day."

"You already have," Kairi cut in with a smile of her own. It had been a training day. The trio had arrived at their old play island early that morning, and the boys had been going at it ever since. Kairi had done some exercises of her own, of course, but she left the real sparring to Sora and Riku. It wasn't as if she hadn't been in the thick of it herself… there in The World That Never Was… But back here on this peaceful island where she'd gotten to take refuge after the first adventure, it was almost too easy for her to forget there was still danger out there. She supposed the boys didn't have that luxury.

"What about you, Kairi?" Sora wasn't giving up just yet. "You wanna go?"

"Careful, Sora," Riku cautioned with a tiny laugh. "She could probably take you in your state."

They didn't wait to hear her answer. They didn't really have to. In all the time they'd been home, Kairi had never once taken them up on this offer to train. They never questioned this or tried to pressure her to accept some of the responsibility for stopping this threat, now that she had a Keyblade of her own… It was all very lighthearted.

But it had been lighthearted before, too. Right up until the Heartless had descended upon this island and swallowed the world whole.

They all knew there was something left out there. That this peace wouldn't last.

And there was a part of her that was horrified at the thought of being the girl who simply waited on the beach, praying for her friends' safe return, the next time danger found them.

But another part of her… A part of her she couldn't as easily explain… almost couldn't bear to even summon her Keyblade.

Kairi may not have been a fighter, but she'd never considered herself terribly squeamish about violence. (Sometimes she was a little skeptical about this whole 'princess of heart' thing. She didn't always feel… pure enough.) Whenever she wanted to summon her Keyblade, it appeared for her easily. And holding that elegant gold blade in her grasp just felt… right. Almost too right. It brought a sort of clarity to her mind. A clarity that gave her an awful sense of foreboding… There was still something just out of reach, she could tell. And she wasn't sure she wanted it to come any closer.

"Fine, I can see I'm outnumbered." Sora's easygoing bravado brought her back to the present. He went to stretch his arms over his head, but his muscles finally betrayed his exhaustion—he overbalanced and fell on his butt in the sand. Sora groaned dramatically and lay back fully, letting his eyes slide shut.

"You dork," Riku muttered fondly. Rather than haul him up, however, the other two plopped down on either side of him on the beach. Sora reopened his eyes at their familiar presence and pushed himself back up. They sat there together, watching the sun sink lower and lower… just like old times.

Unlike old times, this time passed in silence. Once upon a time, they would have speculated about far-off worlds.

Beside her, she heard Riku breathe out the softest of sighs as the sunset switched over to dusk. On impulse, Kairi held out her arm and called forth her Keyblade. It glinted a bit in the remaining dim light, giving it a mystical sort of glow. She admired the flowers at the end for what was left of the moment, appreciating the warmth against her palm, until the day faded fully to darkness.

…

She did her best to suppress her giggles and soften the sound of her sandals slapping against the tiles as she ran down the secret passage she'd stumbled across the day before. The castle was full of hidden corridors like this one, and Kairi knew it would take years to discover them all.

She could hear the maids calling for her, but she paid them no mind. She wasn't sure why there was always such an uproar when she slipped away to explore… She always found her way back. That was what mattered, right?

This was a very curious passage. It went on long enough for her curiosity to move on to impatience. There were no other entrances—no passages connecting to this one. All she noticed was a gradual downward slope.

Until the floor abruptly changed from the tile found in all the castle's common areas to coarse concrete. She didn't really notice the change until she tripped over it—it was just ever so slightly uneven. Equally abrupt was the dampness, the sudden chill to the air. For another little girl, this may have led to the first pricks of doubt. But there was not much in Princess Kairi's life that she'd felt the need to fear, and it simply stirred up her sense of adventure again.

The slope became more pronounced, the further she got, until she was sure she must be deep under the castle somewhere. Kairi had never been allowed below the ground floor. She'd been told there was nothing but the dungeons down here—sparsely populated, of course. Radiant Garden was too peaceful for her to even imagine serious criminal finding their way here.

But that couldn't be true. She could hear something now… Something else was moving on the other side of the passage wall. She quickened her steps, putting her arms out to the sides so she didn't overbalance and tumble the rest of the way down.

The secret passage ended with a sharp turn. A small round opening letting a dim glow through from beyond. But as she reached the end, Kairi saw bars blocking that opening. She couldn't deny the split second of disappointment… but she could at least see the rest of the adventure.

The sounds were clearer now, but she couldn't quite make sense of them. There was a lot of shuffling steps, some knocks and bumps, some distinctly human sounds that weren't coherent words, even this close. She crept right up to the end, hands on the bars…

And on the other side…

Shadowy creatures… just a little smaller than her… were stumbling around the big room beyond. The creatures alone weren't cause for immediate alarm. They were odd, sure… but kind of cute, too.

Then she saw the rest of the room.

It was a laboratory of sorts, with low, flat tables. And on those tables…

There were people. At first she thought they were asleep. But they were totally immobile. And pale in an odd, unsettling way…

The first chill began to creep into her bones as she realized what she was seeing. But the shadow creatures moved around the corpses as if they weren't even there.

But the other tables…

The source of the sounds became apparent then.

The people on these exam tables were clearly drugged with something… but also clearly conscious. Nothing was restraining them from the outside, but they couldn't seem to get their muscles to obey them. They were shuddering, struggling to get away, their faces contorted into horrible, terrified expressions…

Kairi felt like she'd been injected with whatever they were afflicted with, because she couldn't move either. Her legs had melted into jelly beneath her; her fingers were trembling against the bars. The awful sounds they were making… not quite screams—they couldn't open their mouths or tense their throats enough to produce true screams. But they had the same effect.

The first of the shadows made the leap up onto the table, and there was no going back. Suddenly, it was like the cute little shuffling creatures were sharks, and there was blood in the water. Seeing how it was done, the rest of the herd perked up their antennae. For a brief, blissful second, Kairi couldn't see anything around all the jumping creatures…

And then it truly began.

The creatures descended upon the human subjects, whose sounds became more panicked. The shadows had claws but no obvious teeth, so their intention was not immediately clear when they lowered their faces to the captives' flesh. But the fearful moans slowly began to die out as the humans grew paler, their cheeks more sunken, their eyes bulging in their faces. The life was literally being sucked out of them until—before her eyes—the people began to disappear, fading out of existence like they'd never been there at all.

She was startled to hear clear voices from somewhere beyond her line of sight—an observation deck?—but couldn't get her mind to translate what they were saying. The sudden calm now that the living subjects were gone was jarring. But it didn't last for long.

The nearest shadow twitched, turning in her direction, and her muscles suddenly unstuck. A fearful sound tried to escape her own throat, but she clamped down on it and whirled around, scrambling back up the long passage as fast as she was able.

…

That scream remained in her throat until she shot up on the beach, finally escaping the secret passage in her dream. The boys were also shocked upwards by the sound. They were disoriented for just a second before sliding into action.

With a grace she couldn't fully appreciate right now, Riku moved from Sora's side to her own, placing a hand on her back.

"Kairi," Sora prodded softly, grabbing and squeezing her hand. She inhaled sharply, cutting off the nightmarish sound she was making. She couldn't quite catch her breath, though, and her attempts quickly devolved into sobbing before she could stop herself.

She curled forward with the force, but her forehead found a bridge formed by her friends' shoulders as they moved into a better position to hold her. At some point, her sobs turned to snuffles—and then stilted little chuckles as she came back to the present enough to consider how awkward they must look. The boys weren't saying anything as she rode out this storm. They were kind of just huddled together on the beach. But there was something perfect about it too, the way they fit together.

She pushed them away—gently—when it had gone on long enough. It startled her a little to see the sun was starting to rise. They must have all dozed off and slept the entire night. Still, no one said a thing. She couldn't remember the last time they'd been quiet for so long.

Sora finally broke it, groaning a little as he stretched his arms over his head. "Man, you'd think my body would be used to sleeping in weird places by now."

They both laughed a little in agreement. And then Kairi laughed again, when she realized that nearly all of her experience "roughing it" came from the time her heart had taken refuge in Sora's body. The laughter was refreshing. Her throat actually hurt a bit from the screaming.

None of them were strangers to the nightmares. It was something they all acknowledged but never talked about. She felt an extra burst of fondness for the boys, knowing they were trying to be kind, giving her a chance to sweep this little episode away… But maybe that wasn't what any of them needed.

So she cleared her throat.

"Ever since we got back to the islands, I've been remembering things… Through dreams mostly. Old things, I think. Like, back when I was a princess. It's hard to believe some of it's real…"

There was another moment of silence as the boys waited to see if she would go on. When she didn't, Riku said, "Did you ever wonder… why you lost your memories?"

She exhaled slowly, knowing what he was getting at. "No. But I'm starting to. I don't know if I want to know, though."

"But just because you don't remember it… That doesn't mean it never happened, right?"

It took an extra moment for her to realize this came from Sora. The voice was oddly restrained, almost lifeless. Stiff. Her more exuberant friend had turned to face the waves with a troubled look on his face. He turned back to try and give her a reassuring grin, but it was a shadow of his usual smiles.

"You know, even though Riku's explained it all to me… I still can't remember anything about Castle Oblivion. At the end there… when we saw Naminé and Roxas… I mean, she wasn't even a little familiar. You know that feeling when there's a word on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't remember it? It wasn't even like that. There was just nothing. But I know it was real. I mean, my own body is the proof of it. I lost a year of my life to that place. I didn't even realize at first that the reason I kept tripping over my own feet was because I was so much taller. Donald and Goofy had to point it out to me."

She'd never heard Sora sound so serious for such a long stretch. Riku was always kind of quiet, but she suspected they were both taken aback.

"You're right…" was all she managed at the end of it. "Is that what you dream about?"

It felt almost taboo to ask outright, but Sora didn't appear put-off by it. "No… There's something else. This weird scene of this girl I don't recognize slowly turning to ice and disappearing… I can't make sense of it. I just feel so panicked and… sad whenever I see it."

Riku and Kairi shared a questioning glance, but they could offer no answers, only sympathy.

"I doubt I need to tell you what I dream about," Riku said at last.

Sora abruptly jumped to his feet, stretching again. "It's too early to be this gloomy! Let's go find something for breakfast."

"Literally find?" Riku asked, getting up as well. "'Cause your mom loves cooking for you now that you're back."

"Oh yeah," Sora said sheepishly. "It's been so long, I just forget sometimes, you know?"

Kairi finally got up too, stretching as well. "They're probably all freaking out after we disappeared last night."

Parental relationships were another semi-taboo subject. But they could talk about this another day. And maybe they would. Kairi felt… lighter after opening up about the nightmares. She hadn't expected to. They hadn't uncovered anything she hadn't already known. But it had helped. She hoped the boys felt the same way.

Maybe tomorrow she would join in their training for real. The future was coming. She might as well do what she could to prepare herself for it. Maybe she would get concrete answers someday. Maybe they all would. And maybe those answers wouldn't be pretty. But the maybes weren't quite so scary anymore.

Review please!

I don't own Kingdom Hearts.

I considered italicizing the whole dream sequence but ultimately decided against it… That's something I've kind of grown out of as I've gotten older. These days, I don't like to have long passages all in italics like that. I just hope the time change wasn't confusing for anyone.