Disclaimer: i do not own kingdom hearts. just lynn and "quest for a cure." you'll see what i mean shortly.

sorry, sorry. work and school and grr. well, here it is! enjoy!

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Chapter 5

Time was a blur. Memory was not. Lynn remembered everything of that day until the day she dies; how time in that present moment crawled by, but looking back one realized that such moments were indeed very short ones.

Lynn leapt from rock to rock with a kind of careful abandonment- guaging the distance between the rocks, but not actually caring whether or not she made it across. It made no difference to her if she fell to her rocky death below. It was only after she had stumbled to her knees for the sixth time that she thought to observe her surroundings. She brushed off her khakis and glanced around. This rock was bigger than the others; there was a shallow pool of water in the center of it, a lone arch standing guard facing the direction of the landing place below.

Alone. Her insides shrieked in agony. She took a running start to the next rock.

After pulling herself up from the edge- a heart-stopping incident in which she almost fell- Lynn stood on the top-most rock. She climbed a few of the steps leading to the very top and looked into the horizon. She paused, stymied; it never occured to her how far away the castle was. There was a whole ocean of sky between her and her destination. How am I going to get there? Unsure, she stepped onto the next stair.

Something materialized out of the air before her: a platform with bars circumventing the perimeter, held in place by vertical bars curving upward to meet in a point above the center of the floor. It was at this joining that a light gathered, growing brighter until it blinked-

- and Lynn found herself on the platform as instantaneously as she had been fused with the bubble. She cried out in shock; the platform was moving towards the castle in a perfectly straight line, though there was nothing visible propelling it forward. A glimmer in her periphreal vision caught her attention, and she glanced up. The light that had glowed before taking her onto the platform still shone. That must be what makes it move, she thought before the light gathered brightness again, and she was spirited off the platform.

Lynn craned her neck up, leaning back slightly to take in the castle. It was huge, much bigger than it had looked on the first rock where the gummi ship landed. She supposed she would have been impressed, even awed with its size, if the nothing inside her had allowed room for such feelings.

She saw an open door ahead. She walked towards it, back straight, head up. Whatever her destiny, Lynn was willing to embrace it. After all, she thought, I have nothing left to lose.

The room- or, rather, entryway- Lynn entered was circular. The carpet was a rich blue, as was the enormous chandelier that hung from the unseen seiling. In the middle of the double staircase was a fountain, the water cascading from the mouth of a snarling beast. The landing the stairs led to were open to the floor Lynn was standing on, and was supporting a third story with pillars, though no means to reach the third story could be seen.

Again, Lynn felt nothing at its strange, dark beauty.

She climbed the stairs, noticing a door through an arch directly in front of her. The same symbol that was on the face of the castle was on this door. Lynn stepped forward to investigate.

The symbol resembled a heart, but it looked wrong. The bottom was elongated into a sort of upside-down clover-leaf shape. There was an X through the heart half, with triangles placed on the X; they reminded Lynn of thorns. Lynn suddenly had a shadow of a feeling: not fear exactly, but a sense that this thing, whatever it was, was bad. She turned and fled to another door that she had seen while climbing the staircase.

A gasp escaped Lynns lips as she opened the door. Books. Shelves of them. This place had water you could walk on, platforms that moved seemingly of their own accord, and a library? There seemed to be no end to its magnificence. Lynn closed the door behind her, mouth still open.

She stayed in the library for an immeasurable amount of time, browsing slowly, taking her time. Occasionally she would select an interesting-looking one from the shelf and read a passage. She devoured books; reading had provided an escape from the chaos around her. This time is no different, she thought, placing an old volume back on the shelf.

As she wandered deeper into the library, Lynn came across a whole wall of windows. Hugging this wall was a flight of stairs leading to a second, much smaller, story. Under the stairs was a table and a high-backed chair bathed in golden light. Lynn, who had just selected a book, went and sat in the chair. She opened the book titled "Quest for a Cure," and began to read.

What a thrilling tale! Lynn thought. The story was about a girl who set out to find a remedy for her mothers disease. She flew on eagle-back to a far-away land to search for knowledge of the cure. Along the way, she met a boy who turned out to be her long-lost brother. Together they race against time to save their mother, the one thing most precious to them...

It was at this point in the story that Lynn finally drew the parallels. Horrified, she slammed the book shut and threw it as hard as she could at the back of the staircase in front of her. She laid her forehead on her knees and howled with shame, rocking back and forth in the fetal position with the force of her emotion.

What was she doing here? She had left her mother to die in Traverse Town, alone and without any hope of her only daughter coming home. Instead of running away to who knows where, Lynn should have stayed, tried to get her mother out as well as herself, and tried to find help. Instead of the healing she was looking for, Lynn had only crippled herself, and even worse, her mother. Self-loathing, guilt, regret, and utter helplessness ripped at Lynn, so raw and painful that she was gasping for air as tears streamed down her cheeks.

At length, Lynn managed to calm down. She stayed curled up in the chair, resting her right cheek on her knees so she stared at the bookshelves. It was as if all her feeling had been released as tears; she felt as hollow as before.

I'm sorry, Mom, Lynn thought, I was so selfish... Another tear rolled down her cheek. She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to pull herself back before she lost it again.

Slowly, she uncurled herself and stood up from the chair. She didn't want to stay here any longer. Books had been an escape, in a former life perhaps, but now they trapped her within her shame, reminding her mercilessly of what she had lost. She fled for the door through which she had entered.

Touring the castle, Lynn knew not where she was going, nor did she care. Sometimes she rode more of the platforms like that one that had initially brought her to the castle. Often she ended up in the same room shose sole purpose seemed to be for those lifts. Other times she found herself on the outside of the castle, always at the front, deduced from the fact that the strange heart-like symbol was always in view. It seemed that she moved generally upwards, the castle's tattoo moving closer every time she stepped outside.

Once, she rode a large platform across the face of the castle, the mark in full view. Looking at it, whole and divided all at once, ripped in places so that cogs were seen turning inside, made a shiver shoot down Lynn's spine.

Other than that instant, she was numb.

On her wanderings, Lynn stumbled upon what appeared to be a chapel. The room was shaped like a keyhole, in that there was a rectangular portion, where Lynn was standing, that curved out into a circle. Along the walls were torches blazing with a green fire, and in the middle of the circular part of the room there was a ring of light. Looking up, Lynn saw a blue stained-glass window, glowing brilliantly in the sun shining through it. Other than that, the room was dark.

Lynn stepped forward, treading quietly on the forest-green carpet. This room was hushed, but tit was a different sort of silence. In the library, the quiet was relazed, lazy, beckoning to stay for a while and soak up the words on the innumberable pages. Here, the silence was forbidding, almost condescending, like it was sacrelige to utter a single syllable.

Again, she saw the symbol. She stopped in the dead center of the room. There it was, above the alter in an alcove in the wall. What was this place? It seemed this image was constantly following her. What did it mean if it was even in their chapel? Lynn was beginning to feel something: prickles of suspicion and horror.

She turned and, seeing an exit to her right, hurried greatfully towards it.

This door led her to the lift room, to the very top where light was filtered golden through yellow stained-glass windows. It was here, suddenly, that Lynn was caught off-guard by a memory of Sora's voice, "What could be so bad here that you're running away to a place overrun by Heartless for?"

Overrun? She hadn't even seen one. Not only of Heartless, but of anything. Lynn couldn't possibly be the only thing in a castle this big. I should have run into something by now... right?

As if called by her thoughts, something emerged from the entryway at the other end of the landing. Lynn gasped. The thing- whatever it was- was small, black as the shadows from whence it came, except for it's eyes: pale yellow orbs that made Lynn's skin crawl. It wouldn't- or couldn't- stay still: standing in one spot, it constantly moved it's head, as if looking for somthing, it's arms swinging at it's sides. A Heartless.

It stepped forward. Lynn jumped back against the wall, revolted by the twitchy, jerky way it moved. Don't they prey on people's hearts? Her own beat more voilently in her chest, betraying her to the hideous creature moving ever closer. Her eyes got wide, bracing herself for the end.

It ran right past her, into the chapel.

Lynn sagged against the wall, breathing heavily, relieved that the danger had passed, but confused as to why it didn't just jump her and devour her heart. And why was it alone? she wondered. The refugees in Traverse Town had talked about the Heartless as a plural, a swarm of chaos and destruction. Why was this one a renegade? Lynn cautiosly made her way into the room the lone Heartless had left.

Lynn's first impression of this room was fire. Two gargoyle statues holding candles stood sentry at this entryway, and at the foot of the stairs across from her. There were large cauldrons of blue flames lining the way to the staircase. Turning her head to look at one of these, Lynn gasped again.

There was a girl in the wall.

Lynn gravitated to her with a sick sense of intrigue. The girl in the wall was beautiful: tan, with long black hair, dressed in teal clothes the style of which Lynn had never seen before. She seemed to be asleep, yet she was encased from the waist down in a jagged, rock-like substance. Looking around, Lynn saw that there were five more trapped like this girl, all different looking and wearing different styles of clothing. Lynn's breath quickened, new tears flooded her eyes. Was this what they did to girls who had trespassed in this castle? Lynn was truly afraid now.

As if on cue, half a dozen Heartless like the one Lynn had encountered in the lift room appeared out of thin air, forming a half-circle around her and the girl in the wall behind her. They stood for a moment, never ceasing to twitch in their horrible way, looking at her. She stepped to her left.

They leapt at her. Lynn jumped to the right at the last second. Even so, one brushed her hand. She screamed; touching one of those things was like touching ice that sapped all warmth from her body and left her chest feeling terribly empty. The Heartless, now alerted to her new position, turned towards her.

Lynn ran for her life, up the stairs to an ovan-shaped landing in the middle of the room, the Heartless on her heels. She tripped on the last stair and went flying, her velocity carrying her far and landing her hard on the floor. There she lay, sprawled and breathless with fright and sobbing, waiting again for her death.

Again, it didn't come. She heard grunts and exclaimations, like someone was fighting, the whoosh of a weapon through the air, the sound like the dissipation of a solid. Then everything was still, save for the sound of Lynn's panting. There she lay for a long while, her heart never ceasing to pound. Finally, she raised herself up from the floor into a cheerleader-sit position. She slowly turned her head and flinched.

She was not alone in the room.

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there you go! i'm sorry to say i haven't even started writing chapter 6 yet, and since i'm so busy lately it might not be coming for a while. thank you for being so patient. thanks for reading! please review!