Note: In my personal fanon, Yuushi is, actually, Riku's last name. Because I refuse to believe that the people of Destiny Islands only run around with given names.

Chapter 29: Fire and Sky

Kaito opened his eyes, taking in the scene in an instant. The Shadows didn't crowd as close or clinging here, pale and swirling behind invisible bounds that stretched out to a horizonless distance. It could almost have been friendly, if not for the occasional sparkles of Nobody-crystals on the indiscernible ground, scattered about as far as the eye could see. Axel's firestorm had apparently wiped out an innumerable mob.

Contrasting sharply with the pastel, a splash of red and black not far away immediately drew his attention to where the Nobody in question lay supine on the ground, a boy with spiky brown hair who could only be Sora kneeling beside him. A duck and hound anthropomorphic in a way reminiscent of King Mickey flanked Sora, all standing with their backs to Kaito and the others. Donald and Goofy, Kaito recalled, dredging up the memory of when he first met DiZ from what felt like years ago.

All attention was on Axel—and the black wisps that rose from his wiry frame.

Like smoke without fire.

"You're... fading away..." Sora's voice, aged beyond his years with regret.

NO!

Kaito didn't know if he yelled it aloud, couldn't hear anything; couldn't see Sora or the others, was just there, dropping to his knees near Axel's head; couldn't see anything but red and black and pained green, fading into gray...

He didn't know what he was trying to do. There were no cards for this. There probably weren't words for it. There was no time.

There was only the Shadows, and reaching, twilight and moonshadow unfurling between an instant and the next in echo-extension of his will, with and through the heartbeat between possibility to -grasp-and -hold- and -pull—mine!-, a voiceless snarl at the hungry Dark trying to steal the fading smoke in gloved mental fingers as everything in the depths of his soul raged:

Not again; Not another one; Not on my watch; Not letting go when I can catch this one...

The whirlwind surge suddenly dove, vanishing into its own swirling coil, and Kaito found himself toppling forward through ringing, dizzyingly sudden absence into the empty space where Axel had just been. He managed to twist sideways as he fell, but then suede gloves caught him before his shoulder took the brunt of the impact against unseen ground and Hakuba hauled him back upright.

"Kuroba, you idiot..." Again without the honorific, Kaito noted absently as vertigo and the feeling of having just been inside a thunderclap drained away into simple, utter exhaustion, and he listed dangerously against Hakuba's side. The blond had them facing Sora, and gave a more-or-less pleasant smile to their three staring observers before switching to English. "Hello, you must be Sora. I'm Saguru Hakuba, this is Kaito Kuroba, and behind you are Kairi and Yuushi."

Sora recovered from jaw-droppingly stunned with impressive speed, and whirled around to face Riku and Kairi just before the red-haired girl nearly tackled him with a fierce hug.

"Kairi! You're okay!"

"So are you," Kairi replied as he wrapped his arms around her. "This is real... I missed you."

"You too. You look different. A good different!" He added hastily as she pulled back, and was rewarded with a smile. "Does Ri—" He looked beyond her to where Riku still stood a few paces away, and froze. "…Riku?"

"What!" Donald demanded as he and Goofy turned and saw Riku, gripping his staff dangerously. "What is he doing here?"

Kaito squinted in Riku's direction, attempting to bolt upright and make his eyes focus and mostly failing.

"Don't you dare think about running, because I swear I will drag you back," he tried to demand, only for it to emerge as a mostly incoherent mumble. Hakuba snorted very, very softly from his position of keeping Kaito from keeling into a puddle, so the tone must have gotten at least some of the sentiment across.

And hey, Riku's head had turned in his direction! Ridiculously cheered, Kaito decided to count this as a success as Goofy interjected, "Gawrsh, fellas...We saw Riku's heart behind the door, but didn't Ansem change his body somehow?"

Holding one of Sora's hands tightly, Kairi beckoned with her other to Riku, who slowly approached them with not-quite-wariness in his posture. Once he was close enough, Kairi snagged one of his hands and turned to Sora, who still seemed shell-shocked, staring at Riku with wide eyes.

"Can't you see him, Sora? Look with your heart."

"Um..." Unbidden, Sora's eyes closed for a moment, then abruptly shot back open. "RIKU!"

He grabbed Riku's free hand, making a loose triangle. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know, we thought you were Ansem, and you were fighting, I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was your sword, I should have, I thought you'd get your real body back—"

Finally giving up on trying to answer over Sora's rush of apologies, Riku let go of Kairi's hand and lightly cuffed Sora on the head to make him stop talking. Kaito was pleased to find that his triumphant "Tol'ja" emerged only slightly distorted.

"You didn't know." The sound of Riku's real voice coming from Ansem's body seemed enough to convince Donald and Goofy as well, because they both visibly relaxed. "You thought you were protecting that world. It was an accident, so stop apologizing."

Sora stopped, but only in order to step forward and grab Riku in a tight hug. Kaito snickered quietly at the utter shock on Riku's face. Sora, it looked like, had a lot in common with Yugi.

Kairi giggled as well, and threw her arms around both of her friends.

"I looked for you..." Sora's voice was slightly muffled against Riku's torso, but intelligible. "I looked everywhere for you. The King wouldn't even tell me anything about you, before he went on ahead of us. Why didn't you find me earlier, before... then?"

"...I didn't want you to find me. Not like this, anyway." Riku looked down and away. "I didn't think you'd want to see me like this. Kaito and Saguru... eventually convinced me otherwise—" Riku ignored Kaito's muffled "Hah!" and continued without pause, "but we've been running into complications ever since then, until now."

The arm keeping Kaito nominally upright tightened, just a little. Kaito glanced over to see Hakuba looking very startled at Riku's use of his first name, even in English... but not unhappy.

Sora pulled back far enough to look up at Riku's face. "Of course I've wanted to see you! I didn't go back home, just to look for you..."

"I know." A wry smile. "I haven't been thinking straight when it comes to you two for a long time." Blithely disregarding the snort from the listing peanut gallery, he continued, "I defeated Ansem — Xehanort's Heartless, but his ghost was still locked away in my heart until..." Riku blinked. "Today. When someone else we met got rid of him completely. You and Goofy were both right. I got my body back at Castle Oblivion... but then I wasn't strong enough to fight without the Darkness, and I had to become him again myself."

Kairi reached up to rest a hand on Riku's face. "But if — um, Xehanort's Heartless? — is gone, and you're still like this, does that mean you can't change back?"

"Until this is over, I still need the Darkness. This is the way I have to access it, now. After..." He trailed off.

Kaito decided that it was worth fully interrupting the reunion to comment now, and he'd finally gotten his speech articulators back in working order. "After, if he's not already back to normal, I'll figure something out." Sora and Kairi both turned to face him as Riku looked up, and Kaito grinned at all three of them, tiredly. "I make a habit of the mostly-impossible, just ask Hakuba-kun and Riku-kun."

...No, wait. Dangit, English. No honorifics. Great. Not only do I feel like I don't want to move for the next year, I'm not thinking clearly, either.

"Oh, is that what you were trying to do earlier?" Sora gave Kaito a curious look. "What exactly did you do?"

"I..." Kaito paused, words failing him, one hand unconsciously reaching out in a little grasping motion.

Riku crouched down between Kairi and Sora in front of Kaito, and frowned a little. "You're nearly gray, Kaito." He reached into a pocket and pulled out one of the vials of green liquid. "Drink this."

"...You sure?" He was just bone-deep exhausted with a lingering tinge of a feeling that something had taken a scouring pad to the inside of his skull, nothing life-threatening.

"I can get more if absolutely necessary," Riku replied, a hint of almost-fond exasperation creeping into the words. "Drink it before I force it down your throat."

Kaito snorted faintly, half at the words and half at the huge grin that spread across Sora's face when Riku said them. He took the potion and tried to remove the sealing cork, only to find that exhaustion had also wreaked havoc on the strength of his grip. Without a word, Hakuba plucked the vial out of his hands, uncorked it, and handed it back in one smooth motion, arm slipping neatly back around him before he could start falling over again.

"I have a mother," Kaito groused, without ire. "How'd I pick up two more?"

"By one obviously not being enough," Hakuba responded dryly.

"Don't start, Hakuba-kun."

"You asked."

Kaito tossed back the vial in one go, making a face at the bitter aftertaste. "Why can't they make them taste like chocolate, or something?"

"My theory is so that you'll only use them when absolutely necessary," Riku replied. "Feel better?"

Kaito considered this. "...Yeah." He sat up straight, Hakuba letting go as Kaito supported his own weight again. "Cool. Not quite an adrenaline rush, but close."

"Good. You should be fine until the next time you attempt the 'mostly-impossible', and don't even think about trying to use the ones I gave you as a substitute for sleep."

Right, because it's like an energy drink times ten — adrenaline without actual rest. Too bad. ...I wonder if you tried it, back before we met.

Kaito smirked faintly. "Darn. So much for Yamada's pool back home over whether I can beat my old record."

Curiosity proved too much for Sora. "How long is your old record?"

"Thirty-eight hours. It was a bet with Nanasawa-kun in class 2-C, over who could stay awake the longest." Kaito grinned. "I made 15,000 yen from my cut of the school-wide betting pool when it was all over."

Hakuba shook his head. "Only you, Kuroba-kun."

"Wow. But what about Axel?"

Kaito blinked at Sora's half-anxious question, and tried to trace the shape of what had happened to find out. "I... kept him? I think?"

He cocked his head, considering. "I... think I caught him. Mostly. Somewhere? Not sure how to find him, yet, but..." he gestured absently. "He's there. I can feel it, sort of. Not gone, completely. Gimme… a few days, and I'll figure out… how to unburn smoke." Kaito gave Riku a sideways look, sagging in place a little. "Is the energy boost… supposed to fade this fast?"

Riku cursed under his breath. "No. Whatever you did, it must be taking energy to maintain."

Kaito laughed a little weakly. The Shadows here had always blurred and shifted colors like that, right? "I don't think I'm going to be very useful if I'm stuck playing rechargeable battery."

"You may not have to." Naminé's quiet voice off to the side caused everyone to turn, and she returned the sudden attention with a shy smile. "Hello, again. I think I might be able to help…"

Sora fairly lit up. "Great!" He waved her closer, then paused. "Um, who are you?"

Amidst chuckles from the others, Naminé smiled again. "I'm Naminé."

"Naminé!" Kaito had thought he'd already seen just about everything when it came to anthropomorphism, but the hand-sized cricket that jumped onto Sora's shoulder from apparently riding in the other boy's hood took the cake. "My journal says we're supposed to thank you, but we can't remember why."

Naminé shook her head. "It's too long of a story for right now. Later, okay?"

"Okay…" Sora acquiesced. "But, um… thanks. For whatever it was."

"You're welcome." She returned her attention to Kaito. "I can see the patterns, a little… It's like a cord, or a net holding him somewhere, but... it's in flux, not solid. You can't just leave it alone to sit, or it'll fall apart."

Kaito cocked his head thoughtfully. "So, I… set up the connection, and I can't stop pinging it?"

"Hardly surprising," Hakuba commented blandly. "You seem to be utterly incapable of leaving well enough alone."

Kaito looked up at Naminé with a perfectly wounded expression. "It's not fair. I try to help, and this is the thanks I get."

Both girls giggled a little as Riku and Hakuba snorted, and Riku added, "You walk a very fine line between helping, and pushing yourself to the point of collapse."

"Everyone's a critic." Kaito abandoned the hurt look — it wasn't worth keeping when he could feel himself already slipping back into the fringes of gray fatigue. "I don't know if I can anchor it any other way."

"It pulls at you. I don't think you can, either. But..." Namine hesitated, as though having to feel her way through the words. "It's Shadow, and you're holding it through Shadow. But there's someone else with a connection to Axel who isn't Shadow, who might be able to hold it safely…"

Her head turned to Sora, followed by the others turning as well. The brunet responded to being the center of attention with a 'Who, me?' expression of surprise, pointing to himself with faint disbelief.

Kaito leaned forward some, narrowing his eyes, and –looked-. "Hn." There... was something there. Some sort of connection. And as far as he could tell, it was indeed headed in the right direction. It was... hard to see, in a way, like trying to follow a flashlight beam in a lit room with night-adjusted eyes. But it was there, and he couldn't think of any reason why it shouldn't work, and there was no one to tell him he couldn't…

:It seems a sensible course of action,: Méraud murmured. :I'm sorry I can't offer any advice, but you're very good at doing things with which I have no familiarity.:

It's not on purpose, I swear.

Sora stepped a little closer and held out his hand. "Can we try it? You still don't look so good, and if there's something I can do to help you and Axel both…"

"… Yeah, okay." Better to do it before things get any worse.

Since instinct had been a decent guide so far in this, Kaito staggered to his feet and let his mind go mostly blank. Hands reached slowly, and strands of moonlit midnight curved in manyfold echo, coaxing unseen flux to unwind and then twine delicately about that bright shimmer like young vines following a guidewire. It grew easier as the tendrils of Shadow veiled the brightness, the core lending them strength to braid stronger and surer as they followed it, back, back—

Until they were winding around and doubling back, weaving seamlessly back up the connection after wrapping a turn around what he realized after a belated, surprised blink was Sora, the threads curling around his shoulders and across his back before rebraiding into the cord affixed over his heart, now solid and steady and secure.

He let his empty hands fall, the feel of energy drain gone, though he still felt only marginally better than when he'd arrived at Casper High. Standing without swaying by dint of sheer stubbornness, Kaito looked down at the wide-eyed Keybearer with a critical eye, checking for any apparent changes. "How do you feel?"

"I can tell he's there, but I think that's all…" Sora smiled, tentatively at first and then stronger, a hand rising to cover his heart. "Thanks."

Kaito nodded, returning the boy's infectious smile. "Once Xemnas and cronies are taken care of, I'll figure out how to bring Axel back." I hope.

"Good," Sora declared. "I wish he hadn't kidnapped Kairi, but I didn't want to lose him… especially not like that, not after he helped us, even if I don't really get the whole thing about Roxas..."

"Roxas is…" Naminé paused, looking at Riku, who nodded before she continued. "He's your Nobody."

"What? But I never—Oh."

"Yes." She smiled at Sora, eyes seeming to look through him. "We meet again, like we promised."

"You said we'd meet again, but when we did, we might not recognize each other." A second boy suddenly faded into sight, image superimposing over Sora before he took a few steps towards her, styled blond hair and white clothes where Sora was messy brown and black-with-gold.

AN: Given what we know about Kaito's character it's not too surprising that he'd do everything he could to save Axel, I hope. The time dilation and adrenaline rush that Kaito experienced in the process meant that he missed Axel and Sora's conversation, but most of it still occurred as Axel continued to fade and Kaito caught him—Kaito was so deep in the Shadows, his presence wasn't noticeable except as an odd rush of wind until he nearly fell over in front of Sora.

In KH2, King Mickey became The Amazing Disappearing Mouse between Twilight Town and The World That Never Was. The above is a partial answer to the in-game plothole. Le Sigh.

Also, Kaito made about $130 by collaborating with Yamada for the school bet. Since he doesn't work, he has to make money somehow.

Please review! Reviews encourage the plotbunnies, and I plan to finish this before May 30th smashes current KH canon with a mallet.

Oci

5/09