As always (oopsie daisy), my utmost apologies for the tardiness! Though I suppose it's nifty that this particular chapter ended up coming out close to valentine's day ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Thanks to selenity136 for beta reading!

RIKU

Day ?

If someone had told him a year ago that faeries were real, he would have laughed.

And if someone had told him a year ago that faeries were real and very dangerous, and sometimes could turn into dragons, he would have laughed again.

And if someone had told him a year ago what would come to transpire within the span of a month and some days—that he would succeed in finding a way off of Destiny Islands, but only by helping to destroy it, that Kairi would lose her Heart in the process and that Sora would kill herself just to give it back, that Riku would lose his Heart and his body and any hopes of gaining the keyblade he'd thought was rightfully his in the face of what he'd done, and that his journey of helping to kidnap people and inadvertently trying to destroy other worlds would end with him holding hands with a talking mouse and some lady he'd met for ten minutes as a little kid—he would have thought whoever told him such things was insane.

But if there was one thing Riku had learned on his journey, it was that the impossible had a way of being all too possible. And that the unlikely had a way of being far more likely than he'd ever bargained for.

And so it was that he held hands with that talking mouse and the last person he'd ever expected to encounter again in his life, Mickey and Aqua, and spoke along as their voices echoed in tandem in the middle of what was undoubtedly one of the Darkest depths of the universe.

"May your Heart be your guiding key."

Call forth your Light in your Heart as best you can, Aqua had instructed them. That task was thankfully far easier for Riku now than it would have been even three days ago, by his perception (as time in the Realm of Darkness had a way of both marching by and staying still), back when he had been keeping sleepless vigil over Kairi's body in Hollow Bastion. Still brainwashed then with the idea that the keyblade was his, and that Sora had stolen what was promised to him merely to use as a toy.

Ugh. It probably wasn't a good idea to keep going with that line of thought. Thinking about what he'd become would only call forth the opposite of Light, and he really didn't want to accidentally screw up the spell and somehow call forth a door to even more Darkness.

Yet it was ironic that in Hollow Bastion, the setting for a number of the Darkest moments of his life, had also set the stage for what was so far the Lightest.

Sora's fight against him when Ansem had possessed his body.

Or, more accurately, the moment where she'd won.

Without a doubt, Ansem played for keeps.

There was no opening that he did not take, no mistake he didn't take advantage of, and there was even one point where he'd snatched the Kingdom Key that Sora had hurled at him before it thankfully reappeared in her hands, in a move Riku did not recognize from their spars back home. If Riku didn't think before that she had learned something new from her travels, that toss was proof. Not to mention that somewhere along the way she'd learned to plant her feet properly as well.

But it didn't change the fact that Riku's body, possessed as it was, was stronger. And that he was faster, and with a farther reach. Yet Sora was inventive, one quality that hadn't changed a bit from their time on Destiny Islands, and she had enough tricks up her sleeves to make up for the disadvantages.

And it helped that the necklace was beginning to be quite the burden.

It had begun when Riku woke up from that dream of his false Awakening—an inexplicable weight around his neck that only grew worse as the fateful day of Hollow Bastion dragged on. If it had been a minor nuisance when he was still around Donald and Goofy, and a hindrance when Riku had made that deal with Ansem, now it was as though he were carrying a boulder tied to his neck. Though to be accurate, it was Ansem who was bearing it now.

He barely dodged in time after Sora volleyed a vicious swipe with the keyblade aimed right at his throat—the latest unusually ruthless move on her part that Riku would have never expected her to be capable of. But the maneuver did its trick; Ansem stumbled as the necklace's weight pulled on him when he leaned away.

And for a single moment that felt as though it stretched on forever, a terrifying and breathtaking moment where Riku was certain now that the duel would finally be decided, Ansem lost his balance. And so he began to fall.

Until he didn't.

Riku could feel Ansem's leg hit the floor roughly when he barely caught himself in time to bring the Dark keyblade up above his head to guard, followed by a shrieking CLANG! His ears rang with the clamor, the aftershock of the noise settling into a slowly dimming hum in his eardrums that drowned out the ever-present rumbling of the rest of the fighting in the chamber, and Riku was blinded as sparks rained down around the two from their fight.

The necklace felt as though it were beginning to choke Ansem. And Riku could feel how Ansem was itching to grab it, undoubtedly to try and rip it off, but Sora bared down her keyblade and it was all Ansem could do to push back her keyblade and keep it where it was, lest he falter and have it slide down onto his side and leave what would be the worst wound yet.

Sora leaned closer, the steely look in her eyes now tinged with something between hope and fear as she tried to speak to him. The deafening ringing left over from the collision had finally subsided enough for Riku to hear.

"—The keyblade," He had never heard Sora sound so desperate as she did right then. "It never mattered, Riku."

If the worlds weren't ending in that moment, if Riku hadn't finally learned the truth of the Dark, he would have felt so envious. Oh, to be someone who never needed fantasy except as a plaything. What he would have given to have had that kind of luxury, to have daydreams that were only toys and not means of escape.

But so many of Riku's daydreams had become real, far, far too real, and so they transformed into nightmares.

Sora leaned in closer, and said, "It never mattered to me what sort of worlds it helped me see. It never mattered how many friends it helped me make. Because in the end I never forgot you guys."

She leaned in once more, and Riku couldn't help but glance down at her lips. Ansem continued to push back to no avail.

"That's all that ever mattered in the end to me," Sora finished. "You were my favorite."

Her favorite.

Riku had never known how badly he needed to hear those words until she said them.

Not just to hear Sora say them, though that was certainly a bonus after being mistakenly resigned to their lifelong friendship having ended, but to hear anyone say that he mattered to them. He'd ran away from home after realizing he didn't matter to his own mother, and ran straight into the arms of Maleficent and Ansem thinking he'd matter to them. Glory, power, Darkness, even the keyblade…he didn't just want those things because he was a power-hungry idiot. Though that was certainly a not-so-insignificant part of it.

Riku had wanted those things because it would mean that he mattered to people one way or another. The Dark mattered to the Light in the same way that two halves made a whole. The glorious mattered by virtue of being heroes—those who mattered to many. And those with the keyblade mattered to everything.

But in the end, all Riku had wanted was to matter to someone. Anyone. And finally he did.

And it turned out to be the one person he thought had abandoned him from the beginning.

Riku had come to know the feeling of Darkness well over his time away from Destiny Islands: Sometimes it was like the seeping coldness of a Dark portal washing over you, or the ice that crawled in your veins after a betrayal. And sometimes it was like the brutal white-hot rage that erupted in an instant. But it always, always felt corrosive.

And Riku had become so used to the Darkness eating away at him, so convinced that the sickly gnawing at his Heart was good for him, that he'd always thought the Light would feel so much worse. So on that day in Hollow Bastion, in the aftermath of Sora saying those words, so steeped was Riku still in the midst of both his own and Ansem's Darkness that he didn't realize the foreign feeling of completeness was not from the Dark at all. But rather, from the Light.

He'd only gotten a taste of it in those spare moments before the duel was decided for certain and Sora had won, hooking the tooth of her keyblade against Ansem's own to toss it aside before getting the horrible idea to stab herself with the damned thing to return Kairi's Heart—and Sora calling him her favorite would not have been anywhere near a positive memory if she hadn't managed to literally come back from the dead somehow after that particular stunt—but that Light had felt…good.

It was not the kind of 'good' that wasn't good enough to be considered 'great', and was therefore mediocre. It was anything but. The quiet profundity of that Light was so easy to miss that one could be too caught up in the cause to notice its unfurling; The feeling of a missing puzzle piece sliding into place, or the sun finally coming out from behind storm clouds. The feeling of being together.

That Light had lifted a weight from Riku that he didn't even know he had been carrying for so long.

Sora had died, and then Sora had lived. And all along, he was still her favorite, favorite, favorite—

"It's working!" Mickey cried, and Riku opened his eyes to look before quickly closing them again. Whatever was happening was blinding.

It took a moment, but as soon as it dimmed enough he could see that their work had resulted in a beaming shape hanging in midair. A vaguely rectangular opening that pierced the Darkness all around them and Lit up the trio's surroundings as far as Riku could see, enough to make even the mist that crowded around the rocks retreat just slightly.

A door to the Light. It had to be.

"It…worked?" Riku looked back from the opened door towards Aqua, who was wiping her brow. "Where will it take us?"

"I'm not sure," She confessed, "This magic was a lot less precise than I'd prefer, since having all three of us working to cast it gave the spell enough power to work, but at the cost of focus. I was mostly concentrating on making sure it would take you somewhere that would keep you safe."

"That's alright," Mickey replied, "Me and Riku will stick together! Wherever this door takes us doesn't matter, so long as we can find our way back to Sora and the guys to help 'em out!"

He smiled at Riku, then, and Riku couldn't help but smile back. Mickey's optimism was unshakable, even as occasionally oblivious as it was, and in a place like this Riku was thankful for it.

And maybe, he thought, it wasn't just blind optimism. Maybe it was something not too far from realism. After all, their success in opening a door out of the Realm of Darkness was now the latest in how many impossibilities coming to pass? Riku had lost count. The only two things he knew for sure right now was that one, things were finally looking up, and two, he would make damn sure not to screw them up again.

Well, there was also one last thing he was sure of: Neither he nor Mickey could be seeing Aqua again for what could be quite a while, unless the worlds got screwed up enough to where they would start falling to the Darkness again.

"Last chance," Riku offered to Aqua. "You're absolutely sure about staying here? Wherever we go, I'm sure there's room for one more."

She chuckled. "You're very sweet, but yes. I'm absolutely sure."

Riku and Mickey shared another look, and this time it was significantly less happy.

"Okay. Well," Riku wasn't sure what more he could say. "Bye for now, then," He finished awkwardly as he began to follow Mickey towards the doorway.

"See ya later, Aqua," Mickey chimed in, "We'll make our way back to get you out as soon as we can! Without either of us or any worlds falling to the Darkness required," He promised.

At that, Aqua pursed her lips. "Riku?"

"Yeah?"

"Is it okay if I just…cast a quick little spell on you before you go? Just something to reassure me, if you don't mind. It's okay if you say no."

"Sure, what is it?"

"It'll be just like earlier, when I helped connect yours and Sora's Hearts to see if she—if she was okay," The lapse in her words was not lost on either of them. "Only this time I'm going to reinforce that connection."

"Aqua?" Mickey, if possible, sounded even less sure of this idea than he had towards Aqua's request to be left behind in the Realm of Darkness. "What are you going to do?"

"Just something to give myself a little peace of mind," She reassured him. "And protect both Riku and Sora from falling to the Darkness again."

When Mickey didn't look too confident, Aqua continued, "It's something that I wish I could have had the chance to do with Terra before everything happened. Before I learned that he ended up falling to the Darkness. I know now that he's okay, or at least as much as he can be in his circumstances, but until you found me I kept thinking: What if he had help in resisting Xehanort's manipulation? If Terra didn't have to shoulder the burden of his Darkness alone, what could have changed for the bettter? Could he have passed his mark of mastery exam like he should've and taken Riku as his apprentice, and everything would have been avoided?"

Now that was a compelling argument, but Mickey didn't appear as convinced as Riku felt.

"Master Yen Sid taught me that magic isn't always the solution to your problems," Mickey replied, "I'm sure that's especially for stuff like Darkness. Terra might have fallen anyway no matter what you tried to do to prevent it."

"But we don't know that for sure," She protested. "And we do know that even with Xehanort's latest attempt to overrun the worlds with Darkness being stopped, and you two returning to the Realm of Light, then there would be only two keyblades to help protect countless worlds from the threat of heartless and whatever happens next. Riku hasn't had his formal awakening yet, or successfully summoned his own keyblade. When he does, then that will at least make three of you, but if something happens to either him or Sora again—"

"I'll do it," Riku said hastily, and they both turned with varying degrees of surprise. "If it means Sora won't die again, I'll do anything."

"But Riku," Mickey said, "You don't even know what she's going to do!"

"She said she was going to reinforce mine and Sora's connection," Riku reminded him. "And that it would keep Sora from dying again, right?" He turned to Aqua with a spark of desperate hope at this. Riku had meant every word of what he said—the worlds deserved Sora more. The worlds needed Sora more. He had screwed up enough already, hadn't he?

Now it was Aqua's turn to hesitate. "I'm not sure that it will interrupt death itself," She clarified. "But I think it could interrupt death-like states such as falling to the Darkness. A tethering charm should only be able to do so much. It's experimental, and I would normally never try it on anyone since there's so little literature about charms' effects on people aside from a few kinds, but these are desperate times. I wouldn't even suggest it otherwise."

"That's fine," Riku confirmed. "Please, do it."

"Are you really sure?" Mickey asked.

"Yes."

This time it was Riku that reached for Aqua's hand. She stared down at it with an unreadable expression, and Riku could only imagine the kind of past memories she was mired in then: Her friends. Terra. Missed opportunities and what could have been.

Riku's own journey had gone on for merely a month by now, not counting his time here, and he understood that speculative nostalgia all too well already—Far, far more than once or twice had he fantasized about how things could have turned out different. Had he said this instead of that, or that instead of this, would everything still have gone so terribly wrong? Would he and Sora have been able to work together on defeating Ansem and Maleficent? Would they have figured out a way to return Kairi's Heart back without Sora dying for it?

Those questions were only the beginning of an ever-growing list of what-ifs, and he knew they wouldn't be the last. But if there was a way to keep the worst from happening ever again, he didn't care about the cost. He didn't care about whatever danger or great unknown would arise. Because in Riku's opinion, they had already faced it.

And not only had they faced it, but they defeated it. Sora had come back from the dead once, and he was not willing to take those kinds of chances twice.

Aqua waited only momentarily to spare a glance at the still-open doorway before saying, "Alright. But make sure that you ask Sora if this is okay with her when you manage to connect. Though this was my idea, and while it's for hers and your own good, I'd feel awful doing it without permission."

"I will."

Nothing more was said as Aqua raised her remaining hand towards his chest, towards his Heart, and Riku closed his eyes.

SORA

Day Twenty-Four

The dream she had that night was an old one.

It always started the same—An evening from a time when things were so simple. Before the Light and the Dark, before the keyblade, and even before Kairi. When all that mattered were endless days spent playing on the shores of home.

She would be fighting with Riku, the good kind of fighting where the only prizes at stake were sandcastles and forts and other mock-prizes they came up with to duel over as future knights. Not the fate of worlds and countless lives, and the turning of friend to foe.

But then the blue-black night came as it always did in the dream, as silent and sure as the rising sun that would soon end it, and the beginning of many lit streetlamps dawned for the evening to mark the end of their time together for the day. Until that first long star glided down the horizon.

No matter the countless number of times over the years she had dreamed of this night, the feeling had never changed; An excitement, at first. For a shooting star always meant a wish, and little dream-Sora would always say so to little dream-Riku—Make a wish, make a wish! She'd insist. And the dream would go black, then, just for a moment, as they both would scrunch their little eyes shut with boundless hope.

Over the years, what Sora would wish for in that dream would change. Before all of this had happened, before even the raft, she'd just go ahead and wish for whatever it was she had wanted in the moment, like passing a test or whatever new toy was popular with her friends at the time. Then she'd wish for a new bike, or to get over the seasonal flus that kids would pass around like trading cards. And then with the advent of adolescence Sora started wishing for things like having hair like the other girls, that was pretty and not a boring brown that refused to be tamed with a brush. Sometimes she wished she had silver hair like Riku's, hair like starlight, or maybe a beautiful red like Kairi's.

And then when Riku came to them with the idea of making a raft, of leaving the islands for a place no one had ever seen before, Sora would wish I hope we make it there. As the construction of the raft went on and summer came closer, she would wish for other things.

I wish we could find enough spare wood to complete the raft.

I wish I could take that egg from the seagull's nest without it noticing.

I wish I could win one—no, two more spars against Riku tomorrow.

Those first few nights on the gummi ship at the start of her journey with Donald and Goofy, Sora would wish for things like learning how to use the keyblade better, or to find Alice again. And then she'd wish to be reunited with her friends, to save the worlds, or to find a way to stop Maleficent. And then she'd wish for Kairi to get her Heart back. For Riku to stop being mad at her and stop using the Darkness. To find her mother in wherever the gummi ship reached next.

Then finally, in a stark departure from the beginning of their journey, for her and her friends to just go back home again and have everything go back to normal.

Sometimes her wishes came true, and sometimes they didn't. But tonight, all Sora wished for was I want to be with my friends again.

And now she waited until the inevitable moment when little dream-Riku would tell her to look at the downpour of shooting stars. Cue the age-old terror, that first feeling of the fear of death (that never had lost its edge with time or experience unlike all the other fears she'd faced), the timeless script of a promise made to protect on a necklace and wooden swords.

So when she heard dream-Riku say "Sora," she opened her eyes solely on routine.

Except Sora hadn't realized that this time, dream-Riku hadn't said the entire line: Sora, look.

Within her sight, nothing had changed. The dream-sky was still striped with dream-stars falling. Everything was still basked in that unnatural glow of their light. And around the dream-streetlamp above them, dream-moths still fulfilled their tireless routine.

"Riku?" She heard her dream-self say, and then stopped. Dream-Sora hadn't said the rest of the line. It hadn't run on automatic.

This had never happened before.

She turned towards dream-Riku, who still wore the necklace in this memory a decade later, and saw that he was different this time too.

Because this time, he was not looking towards the sky like he always did. He was looking at her.

"What's going on?" She asked.

"Magic," was all dream-Riku offered in the way of an explanation, though something about the way he said that felt as though he barely understood either. "Sora," He tried again, "If there was a way for us to stay together with magic, for…probably forever until it wore off or something, and it would keep you from dying again…would you do it?"

She blinked. This part absolutely had never happened before.

"Well, yeah," She finally replied, "Of course I would. Death wasn't really fun," Sora shuddered. To be entirely accurate, she inwardly amended, it wasn't truly death she had experienced. It was being turned into a heartless. But that was no fun at all either. "But I would do it a million times over again for you and Kairi. But why are you asking?"

Dream-Riku's face softened. "I would too. Aqua had an idea."

Now this dream was beginning to get really off-script.

"She called it a 'tethering charm'," He shrugged his tiny dream-shoulders, still five years old in the memory just as she was four, "And that it would be an experiment of some sort—not the bad mad-scientist kind! Aqua mentioned wanting to do it on herself and Terra or something, but that she didn't get the chance to—but it would keep us together no matter what."

"How?"

"Magic," He explained again with a shrug. Dream-Riku was clearly an insider on the details, apparently. "I think it'll interrupt fate or something. She definitely mentioned that it would protect both of us from falling to the Darkness again—"

"I'll do it."

"Wait, really?"

She nodded. Sora had meant it when she said she would do anything to protect her friends from falling to the Darkness again, even if it meant herself falling and becoming a heartless once more. She had already watched both of them lose their Hearts, and watched Riku lose his body and become possessed as well. So if there was anything, anything she could do to prevent that from happening ever again, no matter the cost, Sora would do it. She would do it a hundred times over.

("You can't set yourself on fire trying to keep other people warm. You can't try to fix people who don't want to be fixed. And you can not keep people from falling to the Darkness when that's precisely what they want to do. Do you get what I'm tryin' to say, kid?")

All words of Cid's warning were far from her mind. Not that she had ever really cared for that lesson in the first place.

After Agrabah, she'd had a number of sleepless nights after the reveal that Riku had chosen the path of Darkness. Of course, it hadn't been officially confirmed from Riku himself until Neverland with him setting the heartless on her and her friends, but how else was Sora supposed to register that command from Kairi that night? The implication that Riku and Maleficent were on the same side? Or what about that attempt to kidnap Pinocchio not long thereafter?

By the time Cid gave her his warning, the Darkness had already changed Sora's life. It took away her home, it took away her friends, and it took away any semblance of a normal existence she'd ever have again. All within the span of only a month. So sure, maybe his words were relevant in an ordinary world where bad people made bad decisions without any Darkness involved and that was that, you couldn't really stop them, but neither this place nor anywhere else she had come across was an ordinary world.

And it helped that now, neither this dream-Riku nor the real Riku seemed to have any interest in falling to the Darkness ever again. So technically it wasn't as if she was keeping him from making a mistake he wanted to make right this second, right?

Right?

Besides, this was all just a dream anyway. Even if she meant every word she said in it.

"I will," Sora promised. Compared to running from world to world and fighting countless heartless, and Maleficent, and Ansem, this was nothing. Compared to stabbing herself with a keyblade and turning into a heartless, this was hardly a blip. She would keep every promise she ever made to make sure Riku's eyes never turned that terrifying gold again.

"She said she didn't know what it would do," He cautioned. "So we don't know if there's any crazy side effects or curses or anything—"

"I don't care."

At that, dream-Riku stopped outright. He searched her face. But she knew he would find only the truth; That Sora really, truly did not care one bit about what may come.

After a long moment, his surprise gave away to a grin. "I didn't care, either," dream-Riku replied as he took her hand.

She grinned back, and felt her hand prickle just slightly where it held his. Like a milder version of the feeling of your fingertips warming back up after a cold day, or faint static electricity. But she said nothing of it, nor did she mention it when the feeling began to climb up her arm, and if he felt the same then he said nothing of it as well.

Around them both, the script rolled on unchanged: Dream-shooting stars continued their waltz across the night, as the dream-wooden swords still sat in the children's hands like unused props. No promise was made upon them this time, for this time it was not needed. Just as the dream-necklace still sat upon dream-Riku's throat, not removed, no dream-promise made upon it, for in the waking world it was where it belonged. A promise made, but as of yet it was not a promise kept. At least, not in whole.

But that was okay. Now, the children would make sure the promise was kept. Fate be damned, and damn any consequences of thwarting its path.

Fate was only ever a four-letter word that the weak used to convince themselves of the inevitable. For in truth it was the Heart that was the playwright of the great script of life, with (love) as its pen.

NAMINE

Day Twenty-Four

The atmosphere with her friends had changed since that day Axel had led her back to her room.

It wasn't necessarily a bad change, though there were moments that Namine felt less comfortable with. Moments where anything and everything in reference to her friends' 'plans' were sharply cut off at any nearby sounds. What few jokes and praises her friends would give her were now gone, for any and all of them were in reference to those 'plans', and how good they said Namine would be for completing them.

It made for much less fun. And Namine was much less sure of when she was doing a good job and being a good friend now—all she had to go on was when her friends gave her a mostly neutral reaction to any successes she had in training. The best she'd gotten was a fleeting smile from Marluxia and Larxene on the day she had finally managed to summon a Dark portal, though that might have been because it disappeared faster than she had called it forth. She would have to try harder next time.

But at least, if nothing else, it didn't hurt so much to fail now. And that was why the new atmosphere wasn't all bad.

Because with Axel around, along with the other members assigned here who had trickled in shortly thereafter, Larxene didn't make her lightning hurt so badly. Not to the point where it left any more flowering wounds down Namine's skin. And Marluxia's thorns didn't leave too bad of marks beyond dark pink indents that faded not long thereafter. But Namine didn't like to think of these changes as being related to the other Organization members arriving—something about that idea left a bad taste in her mouth. But perhaps it was like Larxene said, that Namine wasn't doing such a terrible job of being a good friend anymore.

She had felt happier than she had ever felt before upon hearing that compliment.

And it helped that Axel didn't seem to mind being around Namine much. He always had something funny to say and didn't get mad when she messed up. Instead, he told her about all the times when he messed up too. That was her favorite part. She felt better about that knowing that she wasn't so alone. And what's more, that he messed up and nothing bad usually happened afterward.

Namine hoped that one day she might be like that too.

But really, she likely wouldn't ever be. She was just too much of a mistake. Namine wasn't good at things like Axel or her friends were. She wasn't good at much of anything beyond just staying in her room, but that was boring. Though it was fitting, wasn't it? That such a boring girl was only good at boring things. Not like the people in her memories, who were so special even when they did boring things. People with stories that made them so important, so interesting, and had friends who liked them so much. Friends who didn't leave marks on each other.

Namine was embarrassed to admit it, even in her own thoughts, but she couldn't resist exploring more and more into those memories no matter how badly her friends in the real world needed her. It was just that the memories were so good.

In those memories, she had friends who were happy just to see her and laughed at her jokes. She had friends, plural, that made jokes right back—not only Axel like right now. Friends that didn't get quiet afterwards or make barbed remarks that left you feeling like you did something wrong. Friends that didn't laugh in the way that made you feel like the joke instead.

But in those memories, Namine didn't just have friends. She had something that was somehow even better than that. A 'family'. Even if it was made of only one person she called 'mom'.

From what Namine figured, 'family' was like an incredibly close-knit tiny circle of best-best friends that you could relax in front of or make mistakes in front of. People who wouldn't use against you the things you trusted them with. People who loved you in the way that didn't make you feel so small.

Was this normal for nobodies? To think so much on memories?

Namine wasn't sure. Larxene and Marluxia had explained a little bit of what a nobody was in her first few days: Someone who lacked something called a Heart that made them who they were. Someone that used to be someone else before losing that Heart.

It made sense, certainly. From what little she'd seen of herself in those memories, Namine had looked quite different: Brown hair instead of blonde. Bright yellow shoes instead of pale blue sandals. And bright red clothes instead of a colorless dress.

Namine wondered if there was ever a way to be that version of herself again.

Maybe if she got better at the Dark portals, one day she could make one that took her back to that home with tanned sand and such blue skies. Where a rainbow of shells dotted the shores and brilliant green palms waved hello in the breeze, and her thoughts went so blissfully quiet from the world making enough noise to drown them out.

It was hard to dwell on whatever Namine had botched that day when she receded back into the pleasant cacophony of wildlife calls and the crashing of waves on the beach.

"—ne! Namine!" Larxene barked, and Namine was forcibly pulled back into the present at her friend snapping her fingers in front of her face. "Damn it, not again!"

"S-sorry."

"'S-sorry' doesn't cut it," She imitated. "Stop apologizing and start paying attention. Don't you want a Heart?"

"Yes—"

"And don't you want to do cool stuff like your friends can? Stuff like this?"

She was referring, of course, to herself and Marluxia. And to punctuate her statement, Larxene called forth just the smallest spark held between two fingertips. Namine couldn't look away from the tiny, sustained light as its crackling made something in her chest start sinking and pinpricks of remembered pain dance down her arms. For a moment, she lost the ability to speak.

But Larxene was kind enough right now to take her silence as an answer this time. And she dismissed the lightning as she lowered her hand. "Then get back to practicing. You're going to get it eventually if you just focus for longer than five minutes."

Right. Magic. Her friends had said this was supposed to be easy. Magic was one of the first things a nobody learned because everyone and everything supposedly had magic of some kind; It was like the glue that held everything in existence together. Using it was just like learning how to walk and talk. So easy a toddler could do it, except the only difference was which muscles were used—Instead of arms and legs, you used your own thoughts. You had to convince yourself to use magic, and that was precisely what made this so frustrating. It caused Namine to retreat into her memories more than once while trying and failing to learn; it was so much easier to be there instead of here.

Namine tried to hold two fingers up, just like Larxene had done moments ago, and did her best to imagine a small spark appearing between them just the same. It didn't even have to be a spark, she begged inwardly, it could be anything at all. Namine didn't care. She just wanted to be able to do it.

But nothing happened.

The seconds ticked on, and she could feel herself go hot from embarrassment.

"Fine," Larxene heaved a sigh. "Whatever. I'm sick of playing preschool, anyway."

Namine winced as Larxene pushed her chair back and stomped her way towards the door, before throwing it open and passing through. The sound of her heels clicking dimmed more and more as she got farther away, and Namine's wince did not leave her as she understood that she had screwed up yet again.

Way to go, Namine, she thought. Way to go.

It was supposed to be so easy. Anyone could do it. So why couldn't she?

Namine barely lifted her head to look up as Axel appeared in the doorway.

"Having trouble again?" He leaned against the wall and waved his hand in an uncertain gesture. "Larxene was kinda…yeah."

"It's okay," She replied faster than she could think. The words had become a kind of reflex at this point. "It's not her fault."

Axel didn't respond to that, and she kept her head down to avoid his eyes.

"It's just," Namine had a bad habit of making excuses, her friends had told her so. And they were right. But when she didn't know why this was so difficult, when she didn't have the truth, what else did she have? Excuses were so easy. They had a wonderful way of taking up the space that she felt too ashamed to and helped made her feel a little less like a failure. But sometimes imagination and rationale ran out and excuses disappeared with them. "I don't know. Do I have to talk about it?"

"Do you want to?"

"Not really," She replied uncertainly.

"Then don't."

Namine glared down at her hands and inspected them. They were so different now than what she remembered; No tan, no calluses. No fingerless gloves. Even her hands' shape changed. Was that what was causing this? Did her trouble with magic stem from essentially becoming a whole other person, who required a different way of doing things?

She remembered the feeling of magic just fine—like a pleasant fizzy feeling brimming in her veins when she was excited, dimming down to a hum that lingered in the background of everything otherwise. And when the magic ran out, when fire and frost had been slung back and forth until not even specks remained, came a gnawing hollow feeling in her stomach. But that never lingered long before the hum started up again.

Namine tried flicking a hand, same as how she saw herself do it countless times before, and murmured to herself, "Maybe if I had a key."

Then it would be so much easier, wouldn't it? Namine remembered how that odd giant key she used to swing around practically shot off spells on its own from time to time. And how, without that key, in one memory of a Dark day where it had left her behind along with her other friends from before, the magic had been noticeably more sluggish when she tried to cast it with a rickety wooden sword. But even then Namine had still been able to cast magic.

Did she just need to be holding something?

"What kind of key?"

Axel's tone was casual enough on the surface, but there was something less than casual about it in that question that nagged at her. She finally looked up at him properly to be certain and found that her gut instinct was right. His eyes were focused in a slight squint.

Was that anger? Was he mad at her for something? What was that look?

"J-just remembering dumb s-stuff again," Namine clutched at her arms and tried to swallow back her stutter in vain. "I-I-I could do magic before with it."

"A key?"

"Yes—" She hoped desperately that she hadn't done something wrong again. Would Axel use lightning on her like Larxene? Or thorns, like Marluxia? "A-a big one I could s-s-swing around like a s-sword where f-fire could come out, o-or—"

"Wait, hold on," Axel pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes and sighed. "Nami, I'm not mad."

"You're…not?"

"No! No, not at all," He replied, and now his squint was gone in exchange for visible shock when he let go. "Hey, this is just a surprise, okay? I thought you'd start to remember your past by now, I just," Axel didn't seem to be able to find the words for a moment. "I didn't think it would have something like that."

Oh. So she hadn't messed up, thank goodness.

Namine felt her shoulders drop slightly as relief set in. She glanced down at her hands again and thought of the key, and of Larxene's frustration earlier. It had been far from the first time Namine had daydreamed when she was supposed to be doing something important. "The memories keep distracting me. Every time I try to do magic, I just end up watching them over and over again instead."

"Have you told them that it's the reason why you're struggling?"

She shook her head. "I haven't told them much of anything about them," Namine said, "Whenever I tried asked them about memories at all, th-they would get angry and I didn't dare risk saying anything."

At that, Axel hesitated.

"That might be because they don't have a past like you and I do," He explained. "Not one that they can remember, anyway."

Now that was a surprise to her. "Really?"

"Yeah," Now he turned his head to stare at the empty doorway that Larxene had left through, and Namine turned to do the same. "They're not the only ones: Luxord, Demyx, and Roxas, too. None of them can remember anything from before becoming nobodies. But it's especially been a sore spot for Larxene and Marluxia."

"Why's that?"

Axel shrugged. "They feel like they forgot something really important. That's all I've ever gotten out of them about it. Have you told them about your memories of that key?"

Namine shook her head. "Should I?"

At that, Axel did not respond. There was a long pause as Axel seemed to be deciding on his answer, and Namine was trying her best not to go back to daydreaming in the meanwhile. And then he finally spoke.

"Maybe," He answered, "It could be useful."

His chair gave a dulled squeak against the floor as it was pushed back, and he still was lost in thought as his fingertips glided along the edge of the Dark portal he called forth. "Stay here for a minute," Axel called over his shoulder before stepping through and disappearing.

Namine was more than happy then to do the one thing she did best. Sitting quietly in her room.

But it wasn't long before she had to do something that Namine was far, far from the best at; Explaining what had been going on to her friends. Or to be accurate, explaining anything to them. Or to anyone, really.

"—A-and usually I'd have this…this key," She felt as though her throat were trying to constrict while her stomach climbed out her mouth at knowing they were paying more attention to her now than they ever had before. "I used it t-to fight all kinds of things, s-s-sometimes people," She swallowed hard at recalling an encounter with a deeply tanned man with white hair at the same shore she'd seen so many times before. There was an unimaginable amount of fear that came along with that memory whether Namine wanted to feel it or not, a fear that was frayed around the edges but no less reduced. She dug her nails into her palms to stave off the urge to cry. "But the creatures—me and my friends called them 'heartless'—came in so many shapes but always had glowing yellow eyes. They were absolutely horrible. And I became one of them once!"

"Tell me about the key you used," Marluxia ordered.

Why didn't they care about her having become a heartless?

Namine wasn't sure what sort of reaction she was expecting for that, but she somehow felt disappointed anyway. It must not have mattered. She was probably just being silly again.

"The key," She unconsciously flicked her hand out in the same way she'd seen countless times in the memories. "I-It was this giant key I held like a s-s-sword, with a gold handle and a s-silver blade—"

"Stop stuttering!"

Namine flinched at Larxene's outburst. "S-sorry—" She cut herself off at her friend's dangerous look, and dug her nails into her palms as much as she could withstand. Namine decided to stare at the floor in hopes that it would help. "It was important. I felt like everyone wanted it, even some of the friends I had before," The pointed remarks of the boy with silver hair quickly came to mind. "But there were times I didn't even really want the thing, though it was rare. I—I felt like it brought me more grief sometimes than it brought me joy. It made me lose my friends. It made me lose my home. But without it, I felt like I would lose everything, and that everyone else would lose everything too. So I kept it, and in the end it didn't even want me."

"He was asking the keyblade, dummy, not what you felt about it."

"Sorry! Sorry," She hastily replied, "The keyblade could do so much. I could do magic with it, I even managed to freeze a ship solid with it once with the help of the duck friend I mentioned, Donald, and I used it to heal or lock doors. Or unlock them. But mostly I—"

"Used it to lock keyholes," Marluxia finished. "And free Hearts."

"Y-yes, for the heartless," Namine continued, "B-but at the end, I got it to transform! This Fairy Godmother gave me some magic charm to use to fight that really bad guy at my home island, she said something about it giving me inspiration, and I tied it to the keychain ring when everything I tried before was useless against him. It turned into this," She still recalled the design as clearly as anything. It was so lovely that Namine had fallen in love with it immediately. "This beautiful keyblade with two blades that came together, ending in a star-like tooth with a Heart just beside it. Its handles looked like wings, and it was all ivory and yellow with the most perfect touch of blue. It was breathtaking. And the fight went a lot better after that."

"Better how?" Axel asked.

Namine shrugged. "My magic was a lot more powerful with it like that," She recalled the way spells had shot out from the end of the keyblade so much easier than they ever had before, to the point where it felt a though the magic was casting itself from time to time. "Faster, too. But I didn't feel so alone while holding the keyblade then. I felt like…well, i-it's a little hard to describe, but I felt like my friends weren't so far away while wielding the keyblade anymore. And that gave me the strength to keep fighting."

She stopped talking when she heard Marluxia sigh.

Namine cautiously glanced up to see that he and Larxene were visibly annoyed. Axel, meanwhile, had the same carefully neutral expression he'd held for the entirety of the conversation. "W-what?" She asked.

"Don't you think it's a little useless to describe your feelings on something, even if it's something as important as the keyblade?" Marluxia chided. "We need something we can use, Namine. We need concrete statements, or numbers."

Oh, right. That was true.

But it was Larxene this time, surprisingly, who spoke up for her. "Still, though," She snuck a sly grin towards Marluxia, "Can you imagine our luck?"

Larxene had only ever said that phrase before in reference to bad things. Usually about Namine. But the tone of her voice while saying it this time was unexpectedly positive.

"What do you mean?" Namine ventured.

Larxene's gaze was as sharp as her lightning. But this time, when she gazed at Namine, it was not with displeasure. Rather, it was with the most glee that she had ever seen from her. And by far more glee than she had ever imagined Larxene to be capable of.

"It's just that we didn't imagine w—the organization would be so fortunate as to have another keyblade wielder in their numbers," She replied with a quick glance at Axel. "Especially one as special as you!"

Special? Namine was special?

Namine was speechless as Larxene stalked over and swept her up in a hug. Her friends had never acted like this before, certainly not Larxene. Namine felt her knees go weak at the affection, and when she finally pulled away Namine found herself holding onto Larxene's wrist from where it held her shoulders a little too tightly.

But Namine couldn't care less about that. Her friends had never, ever been this overjoyed with her before. So what if it hurt somewhat? That was normal.

"Now," Larxene beamed down at her. "Tell us your latest memory."

SORA

Day Twenty-Four

"I still mean it," Dream-Riku said eventually, quietly enough that the words felt more as though they were intended for himself than her. "All of it."

"Huh?"

"I promised to protect you from the Dark, back then," She followed his gaze to see that he was watching one errant shooting star skew across its fellows' paths in the dream-sky. Dream-Riku grimaced. "I…broke that promise. But when we're together again, I'll make a new one. I swear. And this time I'll keep it."

Th-THUMP!

She was forced awake at the feeling of her Heart giving one great, violent squeeze.

Sora clutched a hand to her chest as she flung herself up, and went still as she felt her Heart beat relentlessly for several seconds. She absently ran her other hand through her hair to shake out the grass as her pulse slowly settled back into its ordinary rhythm.

All was quiet. Not even the field made a sound as the breeze glided over.

Yet the dream had left her unsettled somehow—by all accounts it was ordinary, or as ordinary as she could expect aside from that weird pulse just now. And even that wasn't abnormal, for she'd been awoken with her Heart racing just as badly whenever she dreamed of sharp black claws and glowing yellow eyes, and the keyblade gone from her hand.

At least it was just a dream.

A raspy, pitched snore from Donald made her look over to find her friends still deep in sleep, and Sora couldn't help but crack a smile at the sight of him using Goofy as a makeshift pillow. Even Jiminy had joined in, using Goofy's hat as a sleeping bag while he rested his head on the velvet of Goofy's ear. His miniature journal was left open in front of him, and Jiminy had clearly been writing until the last few moments of consciousness as the last line trailed into a scrawl. Only Jiminy slept quietly, as Donald and Goofy seemed to be in an unconscious contest as to who could snore louder.

She and her friends had made camp in the field once the stars came out that evening, and their days spent in this field so far had been pleasant. None of them were sure where they were going—once they landed on the path they simply followed it without a word, and followed it still—but Sora didn't mind at all. And neither Jiminy, Goofy, nor even Donald had objections of any kind.

It was nice to have nothing to fight for once.

Nobody to save, nobody to stop. No worlds ending. Sora hadn't realized the stress she had been under until it was done.

She decided to wander off back towards the dirt path to enjoy the quiet. Being alone like this, with the night sky above and the grass fields rippling like the ocean, and finally being able to just stay in the moment without thinking of what came next, made it so easy for Sora to pretend like she was back on the islands again.

Her Heart squeezed again at a sharp pang of homesickness. It had been the start of summer vacation when her world had ended, with Riku opening the door to Destiny Islands' Heart to let Darkness in.

What was happening back home right now? Was it night-time for them too, and everyone was asleep as though nothing had happened? Did they go to bed, sleep through the apocalypse, and somehow miraculously remain unaware that they and everyone they loved had been trapped for weeks in the Realm of Darkness with all the other fallen worlds? Or were they awake and suffered for it?

Sora dearly hoped that wasn't the case. But somehow it hurt just as much to imagine that all her friends back home were waking up on another day with so much freedom and having fun as they should. They hadn't watched their best friends lose their Hearts or become possessed. They hadn't had to watch their home be corrupted into a battlefield for a fight to the death to save the worlds. They hadn't lost everything and very nearly lost it all again. She could cast magic now, sure, but all the healing spells she could muster couldn't erase the kinds of marks left behind by survival.

Maybe Wakka and Selphie were practicing blitzball with Tidus right now. Maybe Zell was off on some escapade again. Or maybe they were wondering where Riku and her were, and had by now noticed the remainders of their raft still sitting at the play island, completely unused. Assuming the raft was still there, that is. Sora hadn't recalled seeing any trace of it during that final fight against Ansem. But she had been a little distracted at the time.

Was Kairi there too? Or had she ended up back in her true home, Radiant Garden?

And then came a thought: Was her mother back home now? She had to be, there was no other option Sora was willing to consider.

But then again, if she was home, she would very soon notice that her daughter wasn't.

Sora would be in an awful lot of trouble once this was all over. She might even be grounded for the rest of her life. And if there was an afterlife, Sora would probably be grounded for the entirety of that one too.

Sigh.

"So she was right."

Sora practically jumped out of her own skin at the unexpected voice from behind. A man's, but nobody she recognized.

She turned, and nobody was there. Only thin air.

"What the—?"

"Do you know of what you've lost?" Sora was very quickly getting sick of this. She turned again to see the man blocking the path ahead, and just like Xemnas, he was wearing the exact same anonymous black leather coat. The hood was pulled over him to obscure his features further. "Do you know what little you have left? It must be terrifying to not even have the words for that absence. All you are anymore is what you hold in your hand."

"I have plenty!" She bit back. The keyblade came to her with a flash of Light as she readied for battle. "Stop screwing with me!"

"Riku," The man countered, and Sora went still. "Kairi. Mina. We can name every hole in your life. Can you?"

What?

Her mind whirled with countless questions, but the only one she could speak aloud was, "What are you saying?"

"Along the road ahead lies something you need," The man gestured behind him towards the endless horizon of the dirt path. "However, in order to claim it, you must lose something dear to you. Are you ready to pay that price?"

"I—wait—!"

"We shall await you at Castle Oblivion," The man bowed, and his hand reached out to summon a Dark portal. Seeing it prompted her to move before he could escape.

She raced towards the open portal just as the man stepped into it, and Sora leapt to try and catch him. He couldn't get away like that. Not when he even had so much as an idea of where her friends might be, or her mother. A dust cloud kicked up from the force of her jump and dirt mixed with Dark tendrils to block out the already meagre visibility from the night. Sora wrenched her eyes shut to keep grit from getting in them, and she reached as far as she could.

But it was of no use. Sora hit the ground with nothing but lingering curls of Darkness wrapped around her fingers and the all-too-familiar gnaw of worry in her gut. She jerked her head up only to catch the last of the Dark portal swirling out of existence.

The man was gone.

Again. It was happening again. Her loved ones could be in danger yet again and Sora had no choice but to take the bait.

Sora thought this part was over already. She had defeated Ansem, Maleficent, and had helped close the door to Darkness and saved the worlds. And yet she had gone right back to being that scared little kid chasing after the bad guys to save her loved ones like nothing had changed!

Sora dismissed the keyblade to ball her hands into fists as the impotent frustration came to be too much to bear. "Damn it," she cursed, and pounded her fist on the ground. "Damn it!"

"Sora?" She could hear Goofy's ambling footsteps approach. Sora got up to see him yawning while holding his shield halfway at the ready, while Donald was rubbing his eyes as a few lazy tendrils of flame disappeared from the head of his staff. Jiminy must have been in one of their pockets. "I heard a commotion, what happened?"

"You guys remember Xemnas?" At their nods, she went on dejectedly, "He's got friends. I think I just met one."

"What?" Donald squawked and spun around, his path marked by trails of flame as his staff roared right back to life. "Where are they? Lemme at 'em!"

He clearly still held a grudge from losing a few tailfeathers in that terrible fight.

"He's not here!" Sora answered quickly before Donald unwittingly burned off another pinion or two. "Not anymore, anyway."

"What did he say?" Goofy wondered. "I thought I heard him talkin' about your friends."

"And my mom," She shivered. Sora turned back to look at the expanse of the path the man had gestured at. "He asked me if I knew what I've lost."

"Well that sure don't sound good."

"Yeah. And he also said that 'along the road ahead lies something you need', but that I'd have to lose something to get it back," Sora recalled the ominous statement. "I was hoping we could at least have a bit more of a break before something like this happened again."

The trio sighed.

"Well, what are we gonna do?" Goofy asked.

"I guess all we can do is follow him," Sora looked to the end of the path where the man had disappeared, "To Castle Oblivion."

RIKU

Day Twenty-Four

He couldn't stifle his wince as he stepped through, and he reflexively clutched at his Heart.

It was beating so hard that it felt as though it would tear itself right out of his chest, and Riku guessed that it must have been the effects of the tethering charm that were responsible. It still felt a little too fast even as it was just starting to calm back down now. But Riku didn't care. If the charm worked, the benefit far outweighed such a small cost.

Because, well, Riku really had meant every word he'd said. Both then, and now. He would protect Sora from the Dark whether it came from within or without. They both had already fallen to it once and somehow, miraculously, lived to tell the tale. But Riku knew that kind of luck was so improbable as to be the stuff of fate. He did not trust it to work out on its own again. Not against those kinds of odds.

But all thoughts of the tethering charm were forced aside once the doorway's Light ceased to blind him, and Riku saw at last where it had taken him and Mickey.

The place hadn't changed a bit, with the unmade bed and the smell of old books from the dusty bookshelves standing along the wall. And that horribly familiar thorned vine motif snaking its way around the crown molding only confirmed the sight that Riku wished dearly was only in his imagination.

For they had landed right back in the middle of Riku's old bedroom in Hollow Bastion.

"What…?" Every detail was the same. The desk and chair remained untouched. Even the small glittering motes of dust still traced circles in the weary sunset light.

Wait a minute. Why was it still sunset? Hollow Bastion should have been returned to a normal schedule with Maleficent's death, wouldn't it? Or had they happened to come in at the right time of day?

Riku checked the clock on the far wall, and saw that it was at five minutes past midnight. He stared at it with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

But Mickey was only confused.

"Where is this place?" He asked as he walked towards the closest window, "I don't remember ever being here before."

"It's Hollow Bastion," Riku replied as he began to look back and forth between the clock and the windows. He really hoped the clock was broken. "In the old bedroom Maleficent gave me. Why did we end up here?"

"Aqua said the spell was supposed to take us somewhere safe," Mickey said doubtfully as he continued studying the courtyard outside, until he froze.

"Mickey? Is something wrong?"

He nearly recoiled from the window. "I recognize that symbol in the pavement!" He gasped, "The buildings out there—! Riku!" Mickey spun back towards him. "This is Radiant Garden!"

"Wait, what? You mean King Ansem's Radiant Garden?"

Riku did a double take at the view out the window, then. But even the view outside was exactly as he had remembered it. The copper veins that exhaled Dark smoke, the broken concrete of the courtyard's central platform that Sora and her friends had once landed their gummi ship upon, with the old washed out emblem of a four-pointed star over two leaves in the middle of the concrete. The long-dead flower beds overwrought with browned weeds. It had been in this state for so long that Riku had a hard time imagining it any other way.

After all, it had been his home for a short while. And for far longer than that, it had been Maleficent's seat of power.

In his time in the Realm of Darkness with Mickey and Aqua, between encounters with the heartless, Mickey had sometimes told them of his meetings with King Ansem the Wise aside from tales of his exploits with Donald and Goofy. The meetings were typically just brief interludes between Mickey's work on staving the spread of Darkness amongst the worlds, where the two of them could come together for tea and a decent conversation. Welcome respites from fighting against the heartless and doing the work of a keyblade wielder, neither of which felt as though it would ever end.

He had told them of a kingdom that teemed with life, color, joy. Where there had been smiles on the people's faces and hope in their Hearts. Yet what Riku had seen of Hollow Bastion—if it truly was once the Radiant Garden Mickey had spoken of—was about as far from such descriptions as it could possibly get.

One little line that Mickey had spoken earlier echoed in Riku's head in that moment: "I knew King Ansem the Wise from before Radiant Garden fell."

"The same one," Mickey furrowed his brow as he resumed inspecting the courtyard outside. "But he would have never let it get to this kind of state."

"I guess he didn't have a choice in the matter," He couldn't help but point out the obvious. King Ansem had been gone from Radiant Garden for over a decade before Riku ever set foot in this room, hadn't he?

Maleficent had never spoken much on the matter of how she'd came to reside in Hollow Bastion. And Riku had never asked. He had certainly had his moments of curiosity, all right, but as his work with her dragged on and Riku discovered the horrible truth about what he was helping her do, Riku found that he had all the answers he needed to figure out the rest.

Yet Maleficent, on the final day of their time together—that day where Riku's own hand was guided by Xehanort towards stabbing her in the back with the same wretched keyblade that Sora would take her own life with shortly thereafter—had mentioned that the heartless were already present in Hollow Bastion when she took over.

So who had put them there in the first place?

Once Riku recalled her statement aloud, Mickey's confusion only became more evident. "If it wasn't all Maleficent, then who could it be? Unless," Mickey faltered.

"Unless what?"

Mickey was reluctant to say his next words. "Y'know how I told you before on some of the stuff me and King Ansem talked about? Like theories and the gummi blocks?" At Riku's nod he went on, "I'm not sure we were always the only ones there."

"What do you mean?"

He gave no response to Riku's question but a squirm, and another guilt-ridden peek out the window.

This couldn't be good.

"Mickey," He said slowly, "What did you do?"

"Nothing! Nothing on purpose, I swear!"

But Riku only squinted at him, and Mickey soon gave up.

"I really didn't mean to do anything," He fretted. "I didn't think of how Radiant Garden ended up falling to the Darkness at all until I saw this," Mickey waved a hand towards the window, and the haunted sprawl of destruction that lay beyond. "It's hard to explain. I knew Radiant Garden had been lost by hearing word of it around the worlds, but the stories never felt real to me before seeing it for myself now. Though I couldn't help but wonder sometimes if maybe, well, maybe what happened was because of what I did. When you told us of Hollow Bastion back in the Realm of Darkness, I thought you were telling us about some other world that had been lost to Darkness too. Not Radiant Garden!"

Riku's shoulders fell as he scrubbed a hand down his face. Unwittingly making worlds fall to the Darkness was a story that sounded far too familiar. But Mickey, in the short time Riku had known him, seemed like the kind of person who should have known far better than to ever fall prey to such a thing. Far, far better.

Unless he wasn't.

Riku couldn't help but steal a momentary view out the window and around his old room as well. Too many sleepless twilit nights here alone, being woken up by heartless to ready for another day of spreading destruction across the worlds. Too many days spent thinking he had been abandoned by everyone but Maleficent and Ansem, and only finding out the truth when it was far too late.

Not again. Never again.

"Tell me the truth, Mickey," Riku demanded. "The entire truth. Now."

Mickey sighed. "It started before I discovered Radiant Garden all those years ago; Something happened to make the barriers that used to exist between the worlds shatter, and that made a huge meteor shower for the world I was on at the time. I'd discovered that the shooting stars left behind these odd block-like things, gummi blocks, that were a whole lot like this star shard I'd used to use to get around. And from there I eventually figured out that I could make a whole ship with the things!"

He went on, "I thought the biggest threat of Darkness around the worlds then had ended with the conclusion of my mark of mastery exam; My friend Ventus had gotten overwhelmed with his fight, and me and Master Aqua tried to help him out. But it turned out Master Xehanort had planned to use Ventus to forge that same Dark keyblade he would later use you and the Princesses of Heart to make halfway, except Xehanort had gotten a whole lot closer to his goal with Ventus and that masked partner of his. Close enough to make this distorted version of it."

Riku wondered if it resembled anything like that Dark keyblade. Did it have the same barbed tip? The same colors? Or did its nigh-completion make for a whole new design?

"And something must have happened, 'cause not long later that keyblade went all haywire and me, Aqua, and Ventus were all swallowed up by this explosion of energy from the thing. Everything was swallowed up! In the aftermath I could only find the two of them knocked out in the lanes between. Terra had been busy with his own fight against Xehanort during our fight and, well, I couldn't find either him or Terra no matter how hard I searched. No word of them, no nothing. And from there until I ran into Aqua in the Realm of Darkness ten years later, me and Master Yen Sid could only assume Terra and Master Xehanort were dead."

"But after the worlds' barriers fell, I knew there had to be another threat underway," Mickey continued, "So I traveled from world to world to figure out what was going on and to try and stop it. But for years, even with the worlds left wide open by the lack of barriers, there was nothing outside of the occasional heartless or maybe someone a little too friendly with Darkness. It was nowhere near what me or Sora and the guys have faced lately. Most of the time it was peaceful, or as peaceful as you can expect with no barriers to keep troublemakers out."

"The broken-down barriers and your gummi ship," Riku surmised, "Was that how you reached Radiant Garden?"

"I reached it before then with the help of the star shard my master let me use," He answered, "That was how I met Aqua, when we worked together to save someone from some unversed. But I did use the gummi ship to go back to Radiant Garden a month after that last fight, to search for any clues for what happened to the barriers. That was how I met King Ansem."

"And helped cause all this?"

"I didn't mean to!" Mickey insisted. His ears drooped. "Master Yen Sid always warned me about disrupting the world order all the time when I was his student, and I tried to take that lesson to Heart. I've never been much good at any transformation magic, Donald was always better at it, but when Donald wasn't around then I would try to keep to worlds with animals instead. I still do. But," He sighed, "The star shard took me wherever it thought I needed to be, and sometimes that was on the riskier worlds. And later when I needed to piece together what might have happened to Terra, I decided to try retracing my steps. That took me back to Radiant Garden. Now, it might take another moment to explain how me and King Ansem met."

With that, Mickey recounted it as best he could.

"I'm sure you're aware of how fortunate it was for you to have been found by me," The man remarked as he poured out a cup of tea and passed it to Mickey, who took it gratefully. "And not the guards."

Mickey distracted himself with his tea in lieu of giving a response. The man lifted a brow at him from behind the curling steam from his own cup.

"You may as well state your business. If you're not another one of those wretched creatures like you say, then you shall not be in danger here. I will make certain of it. But silence will only condemn you."

He finally met the man's eyes. Whoever he was, Mickey thought to himself, he was smart. And the man had already navigated through the Radiant Garden castle with enough ease to suggest that he either lived here or came by often enough to practically live here, while the way people behaved towards him implied he had remarkable authority. Enough authority for them to not outright question the small shuffling figure that followed him; Mickey, hidden under a blanket the man hurriedly procured. Though Mickey could tell they had been curious.

At least the two of them had made it to the man's office without any trouble.

"I'm here because of those things," Mickey admitted. "If, uh, if we're talking about the same creatures. Were they all sharp with red eyes?"

"Usually, yes. They have become a grave threat to the people, I've been working day and night to figure out how to stop them since they first arrived. What do you know about those beasts?"

"I know enough to know what causes them, but," Mickey hesitated. "How can I be sure that I can trust you?"

"And how can I be sure that I can trust you in turn?" The man countered.

He had a point.

"I guess you can't."

"Indeed. But lack of trust doesn't have to mean lack of cooperation," He replied. The man pointed towards the door and relaxed his stern expression into something far more exhausted. "Outside the walls of this office is an entire kingdom of people who have been affected by those creatures in some way. Whether they or their loved ones have been victimized by them, or worse. My people have known uncertainty. My people have known suffering. And I have worked to find a solution to every problem they ever faced so that they would never know such hardships again, for I love them more than life itself," He shook his head sadly. "But this…I cannot find a solution to this."

"Please, my friend," The man begged, "My people are my greatest weakness, just as they are my greatest strength. Take this confession as collateral, if need be, so long as you tell me the truth of this scourge."

My people.

Those words spoke directly to Mickey's own Heart. He remembered the people of his own homeworld. He remembered Minnie. And he remembered his friends. It was part of the reason why he had sought to learn the keyblade and master it in the first place—because he loved his home. He loved his people. And he sought to defend both from anything he could.

When Mickey had become Master Mickey, he had sworn a vow to fight for the Light, and to defend all who resided in its Realm from any forces that sought to destroy it. But Yen Sid had taught him well that not all fights were won with a keyblade, nor did some of them ever require a keyblade or any weapon of any kind in the first place.

Instead, it was knowledge—and the wisdom to know what kind of knowledge to use and when to use it—that was by far the most important tool at a master's disposal.

The man had proven his need, and so it was that Mickey decided to help. They had common ground, didn't they?

"You said 'my people'," Mickey recalled with a smile. "I'm a king, too."

"You're observant, aren't you?" The man smiled back and bowed his head just slightly in greeting. "In that case, I may as well introduce myself. I am King Ansem the Wise, of this land Radiant Garden. But you may address me merely as Ansem if you prefer. I'd order the proper proceedings for court etiquette to greet you formally, but I don't suppose I'm correct in assuming you're no fan of the old pomp and circumstance? Judging by our rather, ah, haphazard start?"

Mickey laughed. "You're right. My friends insist on calling me King Mickey and all, but I've never been a fan of that. I'm King Mickey of Disney Castle, but please, just call me Mickey!"

"Woah, wait, what the heck?" Riku outstretched a hand for him to stop. "You're really a king? Donald and Goofy were serious about that?"

"Well, yeah," Mickey—no, wait, King Mickey—confirmed uncertainly, "Technically. But I sure haven't done much ruling, what with being away from home so much."

"What do you mean that you're only technically a king? How does that work?" Riku stopped himself as a thought occurred to him. "I don't have to curtsy to you or something, do I? Or is that something only girls do?"

He hoped not. Riku really didn't want to curtsy to anyone.

"No! No, no, please," King Mickey pleaded, "I'm just a king by marriage, I've never had any court training like Minnie has! She's the one who does most of the real work of ruling—I don't see myself as a king at all!"

"But you are a king, aren't you?"

"That's why I said technically!" He cried, "She was the princess, I was just a boat boy before all this happened and me and my pals became musketeers!"

This was getting crazier by the minute. Riku's first impulse was to call the story fake, but King Mickey's reaction to the questions felt unusually sincere. It was easy to fake a story, but it was harder to fake the tone that story was told in.

"So you were a deckhand, who became a musketeer, who became a king," He summarized, "Who became a keyblade master."

This, of course, wasn't counting the increasingly absurd odd jobs Goofy and Donald had claimed to work alongside King Mickey during the short time they'd followed Riku around.

"Something like that," King Mickey said. He must have seen the lingering doubt on Riku's face, for he then said, "I'll tell you all about how I ended up here, Riku, but in return ya gotta promise me you won't call me king too. Okay?"

"Okay, I promise. But only if you tell me why you never so much as mentioned something that important."

"It's just like Ansem said back then, courtly stuff has too many frills!" Mickey shook his head. "I hate feeling like people can't treat me like anyone else. My friends still insist on calling me by my title, but I've given up on getting them to stop. I couldn't stand it if everyone called me that!"

"I guess that makes sense."

"Thank you. Now, I should probably skip to the important stuff," Mickey resumed.

"Before I get started with discussing the unversed, you should probably know ahead of time that I might not be the last visitor you get," Mickey gave a nervous chuckle. He still felt afraid to reveal much more of what lay beyond this world to its inhabitants, even if Ansem was their king. But if Mickey didn't, then he could risk the world order even worse by not letting Ansem know ahead of time to take precautionary measures to maintain normalcy. This keyblade master stuff could be awfully complicated sometimes. "The worlds used to be perfectly separate from each other, apart from the occasional guest with the know-how to get around like me. But for some reason the barriers between the worlds broke down just a while ago, and that's one of the things I'm runnin' around trying to figure out how to fix!"

But to Mickey's surprise, Ansem only gave a knowing nod.

"Oh yes, I'm certain of that possibility. In fact, I've already had one arrival that may become quite permanent."

"Really? What do ya mean?"

"A young man who couldn't remember a single thing save for his name woke up in my courtyard a month ago. Am I correct in assuming the timing corresponds with the barriers you mentioned breaking down?" At Mickey's confirmation, Ansem continued on, "I took him in. He turned out to be a fast learner, uncannily so. I proposed one day that he join my apprentices in our work, to see if he could fit in, and it was as if he'd always belonged. His calculating nature has come in quite useful for a number of breakthroughs we've had recently. I was even thinking of making him the leader of my apprentices under me," Ansem sipped his tea.

"After only a month?"

"Certainly. He's either assisted in or led more experiments and drawn more positively correlated conclusions in that time than any of my other apprentices have in a year, proportionally speaking. It feels as though it would be a waste of his talent if I didn't give him the opportunity in a time like this. But his numbers may also be because of our newly opened inquiries into the—unversed, you called them?—the unversed's nature."

"What have you found out so far?"

"Very little aside from deductions of their capabilities. Which are of course quite useful for our guardsmen to better assess defense strategies, and to teach our citizens ways to fortify their homes and how to navigate any encounters, but frustratingly little on how we could take care of the problem at its source."

And that brought Mickey right back to that familiar quandary of how much to tell: He was already threatening the world order just by being here, with his unusual appearance compared to most inhabitants of this world. And he was threatening it again by letting Ansem in on his mission.

But if he were to tell him all he knew of the unversed's true nature, and Mickey had a feeling that soon he would need to tell him even more than that with the worlds' barriers opened to all kinds of visitors' impending arrivals, then Mickey would be committing something unthinkable; He would be telling Ansem the path to power. Even if indirectly.

And Mickey knew well what the power of the Dark could lead to for whoever wielded it, for he saw it unfold right in front of him time and time again. And every single time, it had always ended the same.

In tragedy.

It certainly didn't help that whatever he told Ansem, Ansem would tell his apprentices. And who knew how much they might tell anyone else they worked with in turn? And who knew what those people would tell anyone else? This would be the biggest gamble Mickey ever made.

But on the other hand, if Ansem could solve the problem of the unversed, could he solve the eternal problem of the heartless? Could he solve any other mystery Mickey brought to him?

Could he solve the puzzle of where Terra went, and how to wake up Ventus?

The wounds from that last great fight against Master Xehanort were still so fresh. And never before now could Mickey recall the Light ever being in as much danger, not even Master Yen Sid knew of a Darker time than now. For all Mickey knew, he and Master Aqua were the only two keyblade wielders left across the universe. The Light needed every ally it could get.

Mickey inspected the walls of the office, where every spare inch was covered in charts and graphs and notes of all kinds. The desk was piled high with orderly stacks of memorandums, forms, and all manner of papers related to ruling and research. An outline for new construction on some sort of a power generator was sat right beside an incident report detailing increased unversed activity right in the same area. Mickey's initial assessment of King Ansem, now that he had some time to interact with him and take inventory of their surroundings, still held up. The man was among the smartest Mickey had seen in his travels.

And it made the decision easier to have it be so plainly obvious that Radiant Garden was, well, radiant.

In his very short time here, one thing became quite apparent to him about this world—the Light of its people. Though Mickey was a master now, he was still rather mediocre at the skill to sense the contents of a person's Heart. Though frankly even the best at it weren't much to write home about, for the most one could accomplish with it was telling whether a person was good or bad. Whether their Hearts were comprised of more Light than Darkness, or the opposite, and no more. But even just the short walk to Ansem's office let Mickey know that this was a good world, with good people. More Light than anywhere else he had ever seen. And that made him think that these people would make good choices with whatever Mickey dared to reveal to them of the worlds beyond their own to their leader, whose Heart was certainly amongst the brightest.

"The source of the unversed is the same as anything else I've fought," Mickey revealed at last. "The Darkness of the Heart."

Ansem leaned back in his chair and gave Mickey his full attention. "Does this Heart of which you speak have any relation to the organ of the same name?"

"No. They're only felt from the same place."

"Very well, then. Please, friend, tell me more of this 'Heart' and what may reside within it. The safety of my people is at stake."

NAMINE

End of Day Twenty-Four

"She's definitely coming here, right? The keyblade wielder?" Larxene demanded Marluxia as she paced back and forth around Namine's room. Her heels clicked with every step.

"Yes, I talked to her. I'm certain I gave her enough incentive to come straight here as soon as possible," Marluxia answered, as unflappable as always. But Larxene's agitation persisted.

"Why the hell didn't they tell us she was this close by?!" She snapped. "I'd think it'd be pretty damn pertinent to at least say 'Oh, by the way, that one girl we chatted about? Yeah, that one, the one strong enough to destroy the superior's freakin' heartless? She'll be passing by, just thought you should know.' Ugh!"

"Withholding information like that is no way to run an organization, isn't it?" A rare smirk toyed around the corners of Marluxia's mouth as he glanced towards her, and Larxene fleetingly smiled back before her face fell back into a scowl upon seeing Axel. Instead of watching them closely, a habit of his that Namine couldn't help but notice whenever he was within sight of her friends, he was now just standing there looking off into space. Like he was mulling something over.

"Well, what? What is it?" Larxene spat.

The way Axel raised his head at her question made the whole action look like an afterthought. Like he almost hadn't noticed her speaking to him at all. "Nothing, nothing. I was just thinking."

"Thinking of what? Spit it out."

"Don't you guys think it's a little odd how Namine's most recent memory from her time as a somebody is from after she became a nobody?"

"So what? Is that not normal or something?"

"No, it's not."

Marluxia didn't say a word to Axel's answer, and Namine vaguely wondered if she should be worried. Was it wrong to be able to do such a thing? Her friends sure liked that she could do it. It didn't feel wrong if it made them happy.

But Larxene was less than pleased. "Like you'd know. This whole stupid memories thing is a total crapshoot anyway," She muttered with a kick at the table leg. Namine remembered Axel's reveal of her friends' lack of memories, and she felt guilty.

"I'd know better than you," Axel countered.

"'I'd know better than you'," Larxene mimicked him, and immediately he opened his mouth to retort.

But Marluxia but in before either of them could begin another argument. "Whether or not it's normal has no bearing on how useful it could be."

They both stopped, and Namine could practically feel the electricity Larxene put off in the air. An uncomfortable fizz that settled on the surface of her skin. Her fingertips felt as though they were being pricked with pins from the inside out in remembered pain.

It took a moment more before Axel slowly closed his mouth and settled back against the wall.

But it was obvious that his apathy was only feigned now when he asked, "Why? You got anything in mind?"

"Wouldn't you?" Marluxia missed the way Axel's eyes narrowed when he turned back towards Namine. She straightened without a thought. "What can you see now? Where is she going next?"

Namine knew she wasn't to speak, only act. She found herself preferring that. She wasn't so good with words anyways.

She closed her eyes as she tried her best to remember again. Now that she had gotten a little more experienced, Namine had found that there were what could only be described as stages to the process of remembering; The first stage was the easiest to get lost in by far. An initial swirl of Light and so much color, where voices trailed in and out and practically begged for you to follow them. She wanted to, so badly. But this was important.

She reached a little farther, a little further. And then came the second stage—"There's no way they could have gotten Riku, right? Or Kairi?" Sora turned to her friends for assurance. "Riku is Riku. There's no way they have him. Kairi, well," She hesitated.

But Goofy only smiled. "Don't worry, Sora. Kairi can fend for herself now, you don't need to worry."

"I know, but I can't help it."

"Wherever she went, she's with friends!" Donald added. "They won't let her get kidnapped so easily."

"Okay, you're right! You're right," She conceded with a laugh at Donald's pretend-punching at the air to punctuate his statement. "I guess I'm really just worried about my mom. I never did find her during that whole adventure 'round the worlds last time. And I had to trust that she ended up back on Destiny Islands at the end okay, too. She really didn't get any fighting experience like Kairi got—d'you guys think she's okay?"

"Well, uh," Goofy and Donald exchanged a glance that was far more worried than optimistic, and Sora only felt her fear grow. But then Goofy caught her looking and grinned as best he could. It didn't help. "She's still with friends too, isn't she?"

"I hope so," Sora conceded. She might not have been back home in a while herself, but Sora distinctly remembered their elderly neighbor Esuna wouldn't hesitate to say something. And if anyone came to their door looking remotely like Xemnas and his friends—Sora had no idea who they thought they were fooling with those full-length black leather coats, they weren't subtle at all—Esuna would have raised a ruckus for sure. She laughed at the thought.

Namine was getting caught up in the memory again. She had to concentrate. What was that far off building later on?

A storm was building up around the end of the dirt path. The sky had slowly transformed from that starred velvet into an ugly bile-green, swirling with foreboding grey rainclouds over the course of their walk.

It was an odd thing, Sora decided, that distant silhouette that lied beneath the green twilight; A crooked mountain that somehow managed to be both too tall and too short, too narrow and too wide. A peculiar shape that looked not unlike a pile of road-signs pointing in any direction one could imagine. To the past, or to the future? To what could have been, or what should have been? Nothing felt right, and everything felt wrong. Sora sighed.

She bit her lip as she left came to and found all three of them watching her intently. Namine decided to stare at the tabletop instead. "I-I can't see much. She's, um. She's still in that field with her friends."

"Are they walking?"

"Yes. There might have been a building in the distance."

"Describe it."

Namine hesitated. The chaotic shape of that place was difficult to put into words in a way that would be useful. "L-Like, um, like a bunch of other buildings put together?" She tried, "Pointy. I couldn't see much detail. Th-there wasn't much light I could see it with."

"The building was pointed?" Marluxia confirmed. She gave a nod, and he crossed his arms. "Surely it wasn't near Twilight Town, then. The sky would be wrong along with the architecture."

"You think they're going the right way, then?" Axel asked.

"Or they could be strolling towards headquarters," Larxene replied. "Imagine if the superior and the rest of those idiots got to her first."

The pause that followed thereafter did not belie any good will from Namine's friends towards the possibility.

"We will simply have to assume that the keyblade wielder shall arrive here," Marluxia concluded as he made his way towards the door. "Without delay. I had given her good reason to, did I not?"

"Of course you did," Axel replied as he watched him with a frown, "But where are you going now?"

"Downstairs. It would be good to greet our honored guests."

As Marluxia threw a lofty smile at Axel from over his shoulder, he put a gloved hand on the doorknob and opened the door.

SORA

End of Day Twenty-Four

She wasn't sure when the twinge in her Heart had begun. For all she knew, it had been leftover from the end of that dream. A quiet tugging feeling that pulled her forward whether Sora wanted it or not, and in turn pulled her towards the jagged Dark mass that could only be Castle Oblivion at the end of the path.

The trio did not speak much as they walked. The only sound around aside from the breeze was the muttered bickering here and there between Donald and Goofy, though Sora didn't bother to listen to whatever it was they were going on about. Not when her thoughts were cluttered with Riku Kairi Mom. That man was wrong—they weren't holes. Just because they weren't right in front of Sora didn't mean that they were gone. If Sora had to pick a word, she would have said absence, like teachers would say in school. A classmate being absent was only ever temporary, they would be back in a day or two.

Yeah, that felt better. Absent. Sora could happily name every absence in her life right now.

Kairi, of course, was the first. But just like a friend missing school for something small like a doctor's appointment, she'd be back in her life soon. Sora was certain of that. Even if the worlds were separate again and it was a question as to which world Kairi had ended up at, there was still that lucky charm that had brought her to Destiny Islands in the first place and made her Heart go into Sora's own that night when it all started. Ansem had said so. And sure, he was the bad guy and couldn't be trusted, but it had turned out that at least he was telling the truth about the serendipity charm Kairi had.

And speaking of lucky charms, Sora thought as she reached into her pocket and pulled out the thalassa shell charm. Its painted face stared back at her.

"For the charm to work, you gotta promise me you'll come back after whatever happens over there so we can all be together in the end."

Not only had Sora promised she would, but The Fairy Godmother had even imbued the charm with magic of her own. Magic powerful enough to help take down Ansem once and for all. And, hopefully, powerful enough for her and her friends to be together again even despite the barriers between the worlds.

And maybe even the barriers between Realms. Because Riku was definitely still trapped with King Mickey on the other side of that stupid door somewhere in the Realm of Darkness.

Riku. That was the next absence.

At least it wasn't as if Sora had no practice for losing Riku, as messed up as that sounded. She had already experienced it with that final day of Hollow Bastion and part of the time leading up to then beforehand with their journeys across the worlds. Sora had, dare she think of it, gotten used to not having Riku there the way he had always been when they were kids—what had started off as adapting from necessity (for Riku hadn't been seen at all until that fateful reunion in Traverse Town) had become an adaptation by choice. Specifically, his choice. Because he had wanted nothing to do with her but to take the keyblade she wielded.

And at that point, it had been Riku. Not Ansem possessing him. There was no mistaking the normal voice and appearance.

And knowing it was truly Riku that wanted nothing to do with her hurt. A lot. Losing someone whose presence had formed such an integral part of her life with such consistency felt not unlike being the last speaker of a language nobody else knew. A language formed of inside jokes and references that became the wallpaper to her days, a comfortably familiar backdrop to a home that stood with the pillar of knowing the one person who got it, who always understood even if you couldn't figure out how to say it, would always be there to hold up the other half. Until they weren't there. And the entire thing came crumbling down.

And sure, there had been The Beast and the little heartless there to soften the blow when Riku had left her behind that day, but it didn't change the fact that losing him to the Darkness over the course of that month had been a blow in the first place. And, well, if she had to continue the analogy some more, none of the friends she had made on this journey at all spoke the same language that she and Riku did no matter how close they got. It was just a different dialect at best. But at least that made the absence not hurt so bad, especially in that short time of being alone in Hollow Bastion.

She and her friends were coming up on Castle Oblivion now. They had to be. The jumbled design of the place at the end of the path here was the only thing around that warranted such a name, and it helped that even the path itself was now barren of any fields or life of any kind except for them. The dirt path had become little more than a strange floating platform, now, with an increasingly tenuous connection to the fields they had walked before. Sora looked back. She saw only the floating path and the swirling green sky.

She resisted the urge to regret following that man down the path.

He could have mom, Sora reminded herself. He had even mentioned her by name, along with both of her friends. And maybe knowing her friends' names wasn't so out of the ordinary, considering that he clearly had a connection to Xemnas with the uniform—and Xemnas had encountered the Princesses of Heart before, which therefore could have led to knowing about Kairi—and it wasn't far-fetched to think that more than a few people knew Riku by now. But knowing her mother's name was something else entirely.

When all Sora had to go on at this point was just belief that her mother had made it back home okay, especially knowing that her mother couldn't have had any experience with protecting herself like even Kairi did now, it didn't bode well that anyone other than her friends would have that kind of information. Or any information on her, really.

Sora called the keyblade to her hand for a moment to look down at it. For better or worse, she and the keyblade were stuck with each other now. Not that Sora truly resented it, as that short time in Hollow Bastion when it had abandoned her for Riku's hand taught her that perhaps it was better that the keyblade was with her instead, but…it was dangerous. Maybe not for Sora herself, beyond getting her into fights (and then thankfully helping get her out of them, or through them), but for the people she cared about.

Yet the keybade had chosen her for a reason. And with that thought in mind, Sora dismissed it from her hand and stared up at the towering doors of Castle Oblivion.

RIKU

End of Day Twenty-Four

"Okay, so if I've got this right," Riku could feel a headache coming on, "You told King Ansem about Hearts and Darkness, but mostly only of heartless and how Darkness was dangerous to limit any liability. And he decided to research Hearts and their Darkness as a result. Which didn't exactly go over well."

"Yup," Mickey said. "He said he didn't like the direction his apprentices were talking about taking the experiments in."

"Which all King Ansem knew about that was what they were willing to discuss in front of him," Riku reminded him, "Remember how he mentioned that anyone else in the castle didn't really tell him what the apprentices were up to by the end if your visits there, either? Like they were afraid or thought King Ansem already knew?"

"Well, yeah," Mickey nervously scratched his head.

"So King Ansem ended the experiments because they weren't finding out anything about how to stop Darkness at its source, and he got spooked enough to end all research on Hearts. Cue your later meeting, where King Ansem expressed concern about the apprentices and that their experiments may have been doing more harm than good, and at the exact same time that he was talking about that an apprentice barged in to argue in favor of continuing the experiments."

Riku continued, "And that wasn't just any apprentice, but Apprentice Xehanort. The one King Ansem promoted to lead those experiments he later ordered to end. Xehanort saw you, when you look absolutely nothing like the people of Radiant Garden, and I'm pretty sure there's a good chance that he may have been listening at the door or something because that timing is just too perfect. And if he listened at the door once, what's stopping him from doing it again?"

Mickey opened his mouth to talk, and Riku raised a finger. Mickey stayed quiet. "By the way, interesting name there. 'Xehanort'? Some guy that showed up in Radiant Garden not long after Terra disappeared alongside Master Xehanort after that big fight, who had a resemblance to Terra, who went by the name of Terra's opponent, inexplicably showed up in Radiant Garden without remembering anything other than the name 'Xehanort'. Seriously?"

"I couldn't be sure! Only the general stature and the way he styled his hair was the same, everything else was different right down to the eyes," Mickey insisted. "I've never heard of eyes changing color before outside of transforming into a heartless until I got a close look at Aqua in the Realm of Darkness when there was enough light to see by. Apprentice Xehanort wasn't anywhere near a heartless at that point and his eyes were brown. I could only afford to be suspicious without telling Ansem everything that happened, and that would be telling too much. So I told Ansem to keep an eye out for him," He turned towards the window with palpable sadness, "And to check everything he could think of to make sure Apprentice Xehanort wasn't still going with the experiments anyway. That was the last time I saw Ansem."

The silence now was somehow both depressing and more than a little bit awkward.

It was depressing for obvious reasons. And it was awkward because of the simple fact that Mickey was a keyblade master. He was the best of the best, Riku had seen him fight. And Riku knew the contents of the vow that one took to be a keyblade master—to uphold the Light and fight for it. To defend the Realm of Light from any who sought to threaten it. Yet in the attempt to do both, Mickey had accomplished neither. In fact, he had accomplished the opposite.

Riku would admit that after closing the door to Darkness, he had had a bit of an idealized view of Masters Mickey and Aqua. Maybe it was because they were keyblade masters, or maybe it was because they were the first two people outside of Sora and Kairi that truly cared about him. But even when he had been annoyed by their efforts to keep him from fighting alongside them, they had felt larger than life. Half myth and half people.

But with this, Riku was starkly reminded that both of them were all people. No myth.

Aqua was visibly tainted by Darkness. Mickey was currently staring out the window onto a land whose fall to the Darkness he all-too-likely helped usher by accident.

Yet it wasn't as if Riku himself had room to judge.

Falling to the Darkness or helping a world fall to it were both things that he knew all too well. But unlike Mickey and Aqua, Riku had done both on purpose. He had chosen that. And no matter what Aqua said about it not entirely being Riku's own fault, that he was led astray by Xehanort and Maleficent, Riku knew that wasn't correct.

It was Riku that chose glory. And glory came to Riku in the form of the apocalypse. Glory came to Riku in the form of being trapped within his own body. And glory had almost come to everyone in the form of a monster that wore his face.

Riku had chosen that.

And Mickey, in comparison, had only ever been trying to do the best he could. Riku couldn't blame him for that. If they had traded places, what would Riku have done?

He would never know. But what Riku did know was that right now, he and Mickey needed to stay together. And he also knew that Mickey was wrong about one thing.

"Radiant Garden wasn't completely destroyed by Xehanort and Maleficent," Riku tried for a smile when Mickey turned back towards him. "There's at least one thing I know Maleficent kept in good condition."

"What's that?"

"The library," He remembered its unusually good condition compared to the rest of the citadel, aside from the chamber that once held the Princesses of Heart. Speaking of which, he never knew if they had gotten out okay or not. They must have, if Sora won. "It's got a few scratches, but she preserved its original condition. She never even put her personal touch on it like she did with the rest of the place," Riku gestured toward the vine motif along the top of the bedroom walls.

"It's really still the same from how Ansem had it?"

"I'd say so. The rest of the citadel was always Dark and half-destroyed or crawling with vine carvings and that green fire of hers. But the library was a completely different tone. Want to go see it?"

Mickey straightened with excitement. "Gosh, would I!"

Really, Riku was just trying to return the favor in his own small way for Mickey's help in the Realm of Darkness. There wasn't much one could do in exchange for more or less saving your life, of course, aside from saving their life in turn. But it didn't hurt to try and cheer Mickey up as he had done for Riku. And Riku had a feeling that Mickey knew he was trying to do just that.

Riku turned to his bedroom door and reached for the knob. And as he turned it, he thought back to that day in the library where he had asked Maleficent on where to find the puppet Pinocchio. Back then, he hadn't known barely anything about how Kairi had lost her Heart, or how to fix it properly. Then, he had thought that Maleficent could perhaps make a new Heart for her. How naïve he had been. But at least Kairi hadn't lost her Heart forever. Mostly because of that whole thing where Sora stabbed herself with the Dark keyblade to free Kairi's Heart.

He really did have a lot to make up for.

What were Sora's last words to Kairi back on that last day of Hollow Bastion? Riku could scarcely hear them over the turmoil of desperately trying to throw off Xehanort's control in time. "Highwind runs on happy faces."

He still couldn't believe that she had named her gummi ship Highwind.

Riku plastered on the happiest face he could for Mickey as he threw open the door, fully aware of how crazy he probably looked while doing so, before that happy face quickly slid off.

Because outside of Riku's old bedroom door was not the hallway like it should have been.

And it was certainly not the library of Hollow Bastion.

No. The sight that greeted them both beyond Riku's door was a dreadfully familiar one. Replete with broken stained glass windows and smears of light pouring down from a half-dead sun, where the ghosts of tapestries and fights long past left imprints and scars up and down the walls. Where once laid the entrance to the chamber to where the Princesses of Heart had been imprisoned, and the great dragon of Maleficent had turned to rubble. The place where Riku could remember so many meetings between Maleficent and her minions had taken place.

The chapel of Hollow Bastion. And standing in its shadows, wreathed in black, was someone Riku had been certain he would never see again.

Maleficent.

NOTES

HELLO! Hello, hello, hello! I suppose after so long away that I should cut to the chase and get right to it, shall we?

So just for the record, certain stuff in this fic like serendipity charms and tethering charms don't even remotely exist as part of canon lol. Anytime in the fics you see magic come up in any capacity other than battle spells like Firaga or Blizzaga and the odd FF spell, that's me! That's all me. Not Nomura!

I do this for various reasons like setting up for future installments/plot points (like so), mostly, but also because sometimes ya just gotta cover your ass as a writer lol. Nomura's propensity towards 'the power of friendship' as a catch-all explanation has to be reined in sometimes to keep things spicy and also internally consistent with certain variables. Even if Disney's whole schtick is the power of friendship! You can probably already guess correctly that the tethering charm is going to come up later on. Partially with Days, to explain a few plot points that come up in the game with Riku and Sora, but also to help make DDD even slightly more understandable as to WTF happens there. And, especially, with what I've got in mind for KH3. (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)

NOTES:
1. So maybe you're wondering where my line of reasoning came from that it was kinda-sorta-maybe Mickey Mouse that inadvertently started the fall of RG and therefore the plot of KH1 (which in turn at least influenced the events of all that happened post-BBS). Here it is:

Looking at the relevant secret reports and that one cutscene in KH2, we know that Mickey met with King Ansem at least once (though I'm willing to bet that it was a few times, considering the tone of the conversation in that cutscene). We know that they discussed a variety of topics, and that Mickey absolutely must have discussed Darkness with him, because he discussed heartless and the doors to worlds' Hearts. And if he discussed heartless, he had to have mentioned that they came from Hearts fallen to Darkness. Ansem the Wise just so happened to have begun experiments researching Hearts and their Darkness around that time, purely by coincidence. Hmm!

Anyway, that same KH2 cutscene, we see Apprentice Xehanort interrupt the meeting, at the exact same damn time that King Ansem mentions worrying that his experiments may have caused the heartless problem, to argue that he wanted to proceed with an experiment regarding what we can safely presume to be the door to the Heart of RG (as Ansem mentions doors and "the heart of all worlds")! The timing is impeccable! And not only that, but we see that Apprentice Xehanort was clearly unsatisfied with King Ansem's ban on the subject and he absolutely saw King Mickey, who looks nothing like a human being or anybody else Apprentice Xehanort may have ever seen on Radiant Garden. This is confirmed with Ansem's Report 9, which we know Apprentice Xehanort/Ansem SoD wrote, also discussing King Mickey's reveal that he used the gummi blocks to reach Radiant Garden (which in turn must mean that either A, King Mickey met with the apprentices to discuss this stuff…or B, that Apprentice Xehanort was eavesdropping on the conversation, and therefore could have been listening in on any other meetings between Mickey and King Ansem. He was kinda writing under King Ansem's identity then, after all, and could've changed what happened to match King Ansem's POV). Also note that Ansem Reports 9 + 11 are directly connected.

But it also mentioned that Mickey discussed the keyblade, which I can't imagine is a good idea considering you can tell the idea of the keyblade's power tempted the hell out of Apprentice Xehanort in Ansem Report 9. I've written too much already here for room for other notes, so I'll leave it at that, but hopefully you can see the gist where I'm going with this thought. Donald talks about the world order, doesn't he? And Mickey doing these kinds of things totally had to have broken it for RG.

2) Okay so Mickey totally looks like the bad guy here, and he does think he's the bad guy in a way because he blames himself for RG's fall by disrupting the world order. But really, RG in-fic (not in canon, we barely have a clue of how the cookie crumbled in canon) was marked for death the moment Terranort woke up in King Ansem's courtyard where there had been a persistent issue with Vanitas' unversed in that world. If anything, Mickey revealing the nature of Hearts and their Darkness just hastened the inevitable. King Ansem's experiments would have eventually led in that direction regardless because of the unversed's nature, and Terranort would have taken it to extremes from there once he got a sense of what Darkness can do.

3) Lightning leaves unique wounds called Lichtenberg Figures! They kinda look like trees and flowers. It's really neat! Since Larxene absolutely physically abused Namine at least once in CoM that we see onscreen, IMO it's not unthinkable to consider that at least Larxene may have hurt her in other ways as well to get Namine to obey, if not Marluxia as well. They won't get away with it, I promise. Though Namine's truly happy ending (since DiZ is a turd in Days/KH2 as well ಥ_ಥ) doesn't come about until KH3's fic.

4) Old lady Esuna isn't an FF character at all, but instead an FF healing spell. I was trying to come up with some crotchety old person character from FF/KH/Disney that would fit in Sora's DI neighborhood I imagined and I was having trouble, so then I just started throwing any names around to see what felt right. It's ironic that the esuna spell was used to cure the 'old' status ailment back in FFV, and that it's a light-based spell.