(A/N: Sorry in advanced, guys. This is trash. I really just want to move on. I'm taking way too long on each aspect of the story. I didn't really want it to be more than twenty chapters long, but, at the rate I'm going, it'd be more like forty. I'm going to try and pick up the pace a little bit. Sorry for crappy writing! I can really go on and on when I'm writing the way I want to, so when I'm rushing, it all sort of sounds like shit…)

CHAPTER VI

DREAMS

I'm feeling fairly lucky.
I've been surfing shadows of success in my dreams,
And, yes, I know my guard's down,
But I don't mind if you see.

Josef Salvat, "This Life"
Night Swim

King Mickey (who insisted Silas call him "Mickey") led the three into the castle, toward where he claimed the keyhole to the world was. It seemed every few steps they took, more Heartless appeared. Aside from the plain black ones and the ones wearing armor, there was a third kind that began to pop up as soon as they entered the long hallway from which Mickey descended, which were tall, like towers, with red and purple bodies, only a head poking out from an opening near its base, and a curly yellow extension coming from the top.

Araceli called these Shadows, Soldiers, and Bolt Towers, respectively. As if there was enough for Silas to memorize, now each Heartless had its own name. He avoided the Bolt Towers entirely; Silas could barely handle a single Soldier on his own. For every few times he managed to hit a Heartless away, it managed to scrape at him. His skin was growing numb.

"Is getting to a keyhole always this hard?" he asked in half-jest after they finished off the remaining Heartless surrounding them. They only cleared out the hallway, leading to another corridor full of unreasonably tall doors. Silas didn't question the odd things he saw anymore.

"Harder, usually," said Dylan.

"Granted, nobody's had to seal off the keyholes of a world in a long time," Araceli told him.

Silas said, "Really? Why?"

She shuffled, leaning her staff against her right shoulder. "That's what Dylan and I are doing. Trying to figure that out. Because if the world's hearts are in danger again, either the End of the World has been restored and the Door to Darkness has been unsealed, somehow, or something entirely new is happening."

"Noble of you to take on this mystery," Mickey said with that goofy smile that rarely seemed to waver.

"Not nobility, so much as atonement," said Araceli. "I promised Yen Sid."

Atonement. Nico taught Silas that word once, a long time ago. He was pretty sure it meant something like "redemption." Could this have anything to do with what Dylan warned him, with his eyes, not to speak about back at Yen Sid's study?

He didn't open his mouth. Araceli would tell him when she was ready. All he had to know is that they were the good guys. They were trying to do the right thing. If that right thing, and following Yen Sid's clues, would lead him to restoring Nico, he would join them in that effort… not like they ever bothered to ask him.

The fighting continued. Silas considered himself pretty in-shape, and had dabbled with many sports in his short life, from lacrosse to water polo. He regretted never getting into fencing, as Macie from sophomore year tried to encourage him to do, because these movements were unfamiliar and intensely tiring.

His forehead was dripping with sweat by the time they reached a set of obscenely tall double-doors. How in the world, he thought, does Mickey plan on opening these doors? Is there a mouse army hiding somewhere?

No—if he was hiding any kind of army that could have been helping them reach the keyhole, Silas was sure he would murder this mouse.

Rather, King Mickey saw something he didn't—a set of smaller, more reasonable, human-sized doors hidden in the whiteness of the gigantic doors. What could possibly be the purpose of that? He tried not to dwell as they squeezed through.

Silas always thought he was a pretty emotionally stable guy. He couldn't even remember the last time he got misty-eyed, so it was long before puberty. Still, seeing that large room, empty except for a single throne at the end and countless twirling, wandering Bolt Towers filling it to the brim, he thought he might cry. He could hardly handle the Shadows and few Soldiers that Araceli, Dylan, and Mickey left for him to deal with, and was sure he wouldn't come back alive from this.

"There are too many," Mickey said, gripping his Keyblade tightly. "The world is falling fast. We need to get to the keyhole now."

"We'll distract the Heartless. We're stronger fighters," Araceli said in that blunt honesty that stung a little bit, looking at Silas. "You have to get to the keyhole. Your Majesty, where is it?" she asked the king.

"The throne," he said. "Hurry!"

Silas's eyes blurred upon scanning the expanse of the room. It was much longer than he initially thought, and there were Bolt Towers absolutely covering the place. He couldn't see more than a foot of bare wall between them. There was no way he could make it through there without thinning the crowd out a little bit.

"Hurry!" Araceli repeated in a hiss. Silas had no choice.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, and ran forth.

With every step he took, he shouldered another Heartless. By the time he made it halfway through the room, narrowly avoiding every body slam-style hit from the creatures, his shoulders were so tender that Silas was sure he'd make a very delicious dinner. It came to the point where he was swinging around his Keyblade madly, with arms burning from overuse, in every which direction just to deflect any potential attacks.

Just a few feet away from the throne, a Bolt Tower made contact.

It hit his lower back, and sent Silas flying to his left. He bit his lip hard upon impact, and a howling pain erupted in his spine. I'm going to be paralyzed for life, he thought, lying on the ground, barely gripping his weapon in shock. I'm going to roll around in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I can't fight like this. I'll never save Nico.

His leg twitched, and he found he could still move his legs, if barely. Just as he managed to pull his feet under him to stand, another Bolt Tower smacked him dead in the chest.

Silas cried out. This had to be over.

It happened again, unbidden. Thundaga. Streaks of powerful light fell from above him, and struck all the Heartless surrounding him. In an instant, they all disappeared, creating a ten-foot opening all around him. Silas, once more, felt close to tears, but didn't have time to question that ability or try to recreate it. He could only point his Keyblade, weakly, at the distant throne, and hope it would work.

Just like with the keyhole in Traverse Town, his Keyblade, apparently, did not actually need to be inserted into the keyhole. A familiar beam of light shot out and hit directly in the back of the chair. A large keyhole seemed to glow where it hit, before disappearing along with the shining beam of light.

He did it. He sealed the world.

Silas could only lie there, struggle to ignore the pain, and wait for the others to clear the room.

It wasn't until only a few Heartless remained that Silas heard Araceli scream, "Your Highness!"

The boy struggled to push himself to his feet, ignoring the throbbing pain in his limbs, and stumbled across the room to where Dylan relentlessly shot at the remaining Heartless, sweat rolling down his forehead, and Araceli kneeled next to a small Mickey, looking somehow even smaller with his mouth slightly opened and his eyes closed.

"Did you do it?" Araceli asked, looking over her shoulder as Silas approached.

He nodded and knelt down next to Mickey with her. She let out a relieved sigh and took away her fingers from where she checked his pulse on his neck. "He's alive, and breathing," Araceli said. "He's been knocked out."

"Do that thing you did for my leg," Silas suggested.

Araceli must have been desperate for an answer, because she actually took his suggestion seriously, and motioned with her staff, abnormally tall against her now that she was hunched over the King. The same beautiful greenery floated above Mickey, drawn out of nothing, with flowers, like bells, chiming above him and raining him in light over his whole body.

Silas thought he saw Mickey's nose twitched, but wrote it off as his imagination when two full minutes passed without another movement.

"He's alive, is the main thing," Silas finally said.

Once Dylan finally finished off the remaining Bolt Towers, Araceli lifted Mickey and carried him, bridal-style, out of the large throne room where Silas and Dylan followed. He didn't have any time to focus on the details of the castle itself, other than being big, white, and empty.

They reached, eventually, another white room with gold accents and thousands of books perched upon wooden shelves. The roof was made of glass, and images of what looked like King Mickey in various costumes (but were, likely, his relatives) hung in ornate portraits around the room.

Silas was sure he was seeing King Mickey in drag perusing one of the books: he wore a reddish-pink dress, flouncy and ruffled at the edges of the bell-shaped skirt, puffy sleeves, white gloves, and a golden crown with a ruby mouse silhouette in the center. He had slightly longer eyelashes.

"Queen Minnie," Araceli said. She must have thought she would find the mouse, who must have been King Mickey's wife, here.

The mouse's face turned from happy surprise to horror when she saw her husband lying in Araceli's arms.

The next hour was a blur of medics, nurses, and servants rushing in and out of the library. Minnie fretted about some people named Donald and Goofy who weren't around to protect him, but Silas knew that if Araceli couldn't have protected Mickey, nobody could have.

Eventually, they got Mickey set up in his chambers, and Minnie, with a distant voice, showed them each to individual rooms they could use to sleep the rest of the night before they continued on with their journey the next day. Araceli whispered to the boys to wait until tomorrow to tell Minnie about their deal with the King. The wounds were too fresh, and she was frantic with worry over her comatose husband.

Minnie, dropping Silas off last, gave him a small goodnight at the door and apologized for the size of the room. This room alone was probably bigger than his entire upstairs back home. He'd never seen a bed so white, so big, and so absolutely sleep-able. Before she could turn and leave, he said, "Do you think he'll be okay?"

The Queen smiled at him, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "Mickey's been through much worse," she told him in that squeaky voice of his. "I know he'll make it out of this."

Silas never really saw two people in love. He'd had plenty of hook-ups in high school, and watched, with distant scrutiny, Nico's mom shack up with a guy she had been seeing, but never really allowed himself to consider that "love."

He saw his father's gruesome divorce with his mother. He saw his sister fall in and out of relationships like a flittering bird between the trees. He saw no constants of two consenting adults together for the foreseeable future.

Silas always assumed love was something you knew when you saw it, but with each passing year, grew less and less confident in its existence in the first place, or, at the very least, his own ability to love.

But there it was. Minnie had never once, in the short hour that she fussed with her ailing husband, used the word "love," or even expressed any sort of romantic affection toward her husband. No, she doted over the stretcher, squeaking to him words of encouragement as he was lifted away to the bed. She pulled the covers just a couple of inches higher over him to cover his chest. She said he would make it out. If it wasn't love, it was the closest thing he'd ever seen.

xxx

Silas hollered at the top of his lungs, whooping with laughter as he hung up his phone.

"So you failed, huh?" Nico asked with faux-concern spreading across his features. "You failed every class."

"Asshole. Just barely skated by with government, but I passed! I'm graduating!"

Nico wanted to tell his friend that there was never a doubt in his mind, but knew that both of them would know that was a lie. Plenty of all-nighters the week leading up to finals week had prepared that boy for his tests, but he just didn't perform well under pressure (at least, not under academic pressure).

"Way to find out two days before graduation."

Silas grinned back at him. He had just received the news from his mother; though he didn't live there most of the time, for some reason, her house was still the high school's mailing address. She'd finally returned home from the late shift at the hospital where she worked as an x-ray technician and was able to open Silas's report card for him.

"Now we're definitely going."

Nico thought himself a bad person for having wished for half a second that Silas got some bad news so he didn't have to be dragged to yet another high school party. He figured, at least, he had two more days for it to not be creepy.

"Why can't we just hang out at your place and play video games or something?"

"Because Kat Saunders isn't at my place playing video games."

Nico grumbled, "If she was, you'd have a lot more problems than just your grades." He stared out of the passenger window as Silas revved up the engine to head toward Chris's party. As far as Nico knew, it was just a small get-together at the forest preserve by his house, but he was pretty sure Silas was only saying that to get him to come.

It worked. They parked outside of Chris's abnormally large house, as he had instructed them to do, and Nico counted no fewer than twelve other cars hanging out on the street alone. His face scrunched up as he and Silas made their way toward a clearing in the trees across from his front yard. A ten minute walk, and they would be deep into the forest preserve. Rangers strictly enforce a curfew at the park, otherwise, they could have parked there.

Another really good reason to stay home and play video games.

"This seems like a stupid idea," Nico finally said about five minutes into their silent walk, garnished with the scent of wet dirt and pine cones.

"'I will experience something new, at least once a day,'" Silas repeated to him in a mildly mocking tone. "'I will break the cycle of loss—'"

Nico shoved his arm. "Shut up," he muttered. "I was thirteen."

"You were onto something."

He stuffed his hands into his jeans. His curly, brown hair was starting to impede his vision; he made a mental reminder to try and get it cut before graduation day. His mom would have a fit if she couldn't see her son's eyes in his graduation pictures.

"You still owe me fifty dollars," he reminded the other one.

Silas promptly ignored him. A faint twang of metallic guitars was audible from where they were in the forest; no doubt, it was Chris's favorite rock music playing on repeat to a crowd of teenagers who really just wanted to listen to techno or dubstep, but were able to tolerate his nonsense for all the beer he provided.

Eight or nine people sat around a bonfire in the very center of the clearing, about two of which Nico vaguely recognized, and the rest of the attendees stood, mingling, dancing, screaming, singing, sipping from red cups, and otherwise messing around in the surrounding area.

Jason and Mark seemed to be attempting to climb a tree on the periphery of the clearing. Nico had no idea why Chris would invite those two assholes to the party, but didn't really care. Jason caught sight of Silas from across the party, said something to his companion, and looked away. The two continued to climb the tree. Randall was nowhere to be seen; the last few months, Nico hadn't seen the kid around the other two musketeers.

That made him happy.

"Yo Dennis," Silas said to a brunet boy sitting around the fire. He stood, and the two did that thing that all the cool guys did, where they went in to shake each other's hands, but instead pulled each other into a half-hug and hit the other one on the back. Nico wasn't sure he'd ever done it before. Silas certainly didn't do it with him. He could really become a different person around the right person.

"Silas, man, what's up?" he asked. He slurred his words slightly.

"Not much. Where's Chris?"

"Should be out here somewhere," mused Dennis, adjusting his blue checked baseball cap. "Probably messing with that ancient boom box of his."

Silas grinned, and laughed. "Thanks, man. Let's have a drink later."

"Sure."

This Dennis person sat back down next to a girl Nico knew from math class, and Silas, led the two of them through the crowd and away from the uncomfortable warmth of the roaring fire (not that the body heat made the rest of the clearing any cooler). Silas seemed to follow the volume of the music, and stopped at a small foldable table set up near the back of the party, where a big, bulky, black music player was set up and plugged into some battery pack.

Chris was an interesting-looking guy. Nico couldn't help but hate him, sometimes, because he looked like the biggest loser in high school, but had the most friends. It wasn't even because he was rich—which probably helped—but he was genuinely a really cool guy. He liked music nobody listened to, he introduced himself to everybody, and he found something in common with absolutely every man, woman, and child he met.

He had big, horn-rimmed glasses, wore a yellow and black plaid flannel shirt buttoned up to the top two buttons, slicked-down, pale blond hair, and business casual shoes. Someone like Chris was easily on the fast-track to a business fraternity and a reputable job as a middle manager in a big industry.

Nico tried to push out the negative thoughts. After all, after greeting Silas, Chris smiled at Nico and said, "Hey, dude! How's gymnastics?"

Unable to help it, he smiled back. "Season just ended. Got a 26 at the last meet."

"Sweet!" He said, "Glad you guys could make it."

"Wouldn't miss it," Silas said. "Hey, is Kat here?"

Chris scratched his head. "Kat Traeger?"

"No, Saunders. Kat Saunders."

The other boy nodded, skipping to the next song on his boom box. A bunch of people audibly groaned. "Yeah, pretty sure I saw her wandering into the woods with Caitlin. They thought they saw a rabbit. Probably back by now." His grin turned somewhat sinister. "Why do you ask?"

Silas put a hand on Nico's shoulder, and said what he really prayed he wouldn't say. "Nico's going to lose his virginity today!"

Chris stared at him for a moment, and then howled in laughter.

"What the fuck?!" Nico asked, knowing Silas would reconsider his candor if he cussed. He tried to avoid swearing unless absolutely necessary—that way, Silas would know when he was really angry. It amused and frustrated him that he moderated his swearing habits in order to better deal with his best friend.

When he bothered to look away from the other two for a moment, he saw Kat Saunders.

She was the kind of girl most guys at school overlooked, but Silas must have saw something special in her, because he insisted that the two would be perfect together. Apparently, she was a secret nerd; Kat had confessed to Silas one day during lunch that she wanted to be home watching this "really lame sci-fi show" because the holiday special was releasing that day and her friends on her favorite forum were awful about spoilers.

But Nico had seen Kat Saunders before. She was very pretty, in her own unconventional way; she had a beauty mark just below her left eye, which was brown. Her right eye was a greenish-hazel, which most people didn't see right off the bat but always baffled Nico. Her honey-blond hair hung in loose waves, tumbling over her shoulder. Kat usually pinned it back on one side of her head to mimic the shaved look. She was a very slight girl, without much of a figure to speak of, but a very cute face.

Nico was willing to give it a shot, both because he trusted Silas, and because if someone had the guts to admit something so conventionally damning to one of the most popular guys in school, she's definitely worth the time.

With a drink and a friendly shove, Silas finally convinced Nico to go over to her. Caitlin Zimmermann, who was basically attached to the other girl at the hip, hung around while he tried to strike up conversation with the girl, but left after a few minutes of the two of them diving deep into a theoretical conversation about the stars.

Nico thought they were all individual suns. Kat was pretty sure they were all enormous balls of gas. It was an interesting theory that made Nico blush and laugh. When they got to the topic of deep space exploration, she'd put a thin hand on his arm as she giggled at his joke about spaceships. He knew that was a good sign. Girls touch you when they like you, right?

He caught sight of Silas across the party. His friend was dancing close to some brunette girl—Holly, maybe? Sophie? Maria? He did always say he would reconcile with her. Silas sometimes referred to her as "the one that got away," but Nico thought that might be a bit dramatic.

Holly was his newest target. Sophie was a girl who had a thing for him throughout all of high school that he kept on the hook just in case there was ever a school dance that he couldn't find another date to (and there never was). Maria was a pretty caramel-skinned girl from Nico's physics class who he was convinced had a picture of Silas on her phone somewhere, unless he had imagined his best friend's face on the screen.

Nico's stomach turned over. There was always a new girl.

"What do you think?"

Nico turned back to Kat and realized he hadn't even been listening.

xxx

The white-haired boy was covered in a thick layer of sweat as he bolted up from bed, the intense sun shining in through the gaps of the black curtains in the room. He had to remind himself of where he was: Villain's Vale. Nissa brought him here the night before. His limbs and eyes were heavy with sleep.

"Good morning," said Nissa from the door, which must have been what woke him up. She carried a mug of some kind of steaming liquid in each of her hands. "How did you sleep?" she asked, cocking her head to the left.

"Great," he lied. He didn't want to tell her about the dreams.

"Awesome. Well, you should know something about me," she said, leaning against the door jamb. "When I'm carrying coffee, I want a favor. This is my ulterior motive coffee. Mind coming downstairs with me and drinking it and hearing me out?"

He wasn't sure he would like coffee—it certainly smelled good—but he still felt in no position to refuse Nissa anything, so he nodded, and the girl closed the door and left him to change. For what felt like an hour, he stared at the gold eyes, curly, white hair and pale skin staring back at him in the dresser mirror. He tried not to think about those odd dreams.

Day by day, he told himself. He'd take it day by day.