Hey all! After over a month of adjusting to sophomore year at college and all its time constraints, I've got a double update for you all. You're welcome. :)

(Come on, you knew I had to get this done before the fic's 5-year anniversary. You KNEW it.)

Enjoy!

It was funny, Riku reflected, how much more vivid the world became when he was tired. The day he had spent wandering around the Shadowed Desert with Falcon and Copperhead draped a film of exhaustion over his surroundings that amplified this world's little nuances, rather than muffling them: night's breeze stirring through the leaves; the trio's footsteps rustling against the brush beneath them; moonlight filtering into Riku's eyes and penetrating deeply enough to make him wince.

He was grateful that Kingdom Hearts' golden light hadn't overtaken the ordinary moon's silver – just another testament to Falcon's hard work as a Keyblade wielder – but somehow he got the feeling that Heartless claws wouldn't hurt near as much as the light did. Xehanort's Heartless influencing his sensitivity or no, on a dark night like this, any glimpse of brightness sent spots dancing across his eyelids.

Riku tore his eyes away from the moon as Copperhead, walking next to him, spoke. "Well," the blonde grumbled, "that was a waste of a day." On his next footstep, he lashed out with that foot and kicked the grass almost too vehemently.

Much as it rankled him to admit, Riku knew Copperhead was right. In hindsight, he supposed he should have known better than to expect Falcon to actually want to expand their search's circumference and graze the citadel's edges; then again, the combined force of both her and Copperhead's desperate avoidance provided a strong enough pull to keep them away from where their goal most likely was. It seemed like the only thing Falcon and Copperhead could both agree on – that terror to tread even slightly close to the past.

Frustrating, considering that with his luck, the machine was there.

And then he almost stopped in his tracks, because he could almost hear Char's voice in his head asking because Falcon and Copperhead have too much PTSD to take us to the scene of the crime?

Much as it pained him to admit, the wistfulness coursing through him told him he missed Char. She had spent the entire time complaining about having to be here and staving off her own longing for Sora, but at the very least she had served as a buffer between him and the poster children for messed up pasts.

Honestly, it made him miss the pure simplicity – the lazy afternoons he had once scorned and strived to escape – of Sora and Kairi and their island back home. Here, with Copperhead and Falcon and the leaves swaying overhead, it was much easier to believe darkness lurked close by.

Probably because, with the Nobodies they had found today, the most powerful source did.

At that moment, a breath with a higher pitch than the wind sounded behind him. The sigh from Falcon's direction shouldn't have surprised him, considering its frequency recurring throughout the day, yet with fatigue forcing contemplation and longing into his mind's forefront, it startled him into almost stopping again. As her reminding him of her presence yanked him out of his reverie, he spotted Copperhead's shoulders twitch out of the corner of his eye.

Glancing over his shoulder, he very tentatively surveyed Falcon's expression. Her head was angled down, and as a cloud slipped away from the moon the ensuing light played off a shallow set of scratches along her neck where Heartless had clawed her.

"There's always tomorrow," Falcon muttered. Riku would have asked about her sudden sense of optimism, which sounded odd given her refusal to even speak today; but her lighter tone carried falseness that forced her pitch upward and lent it a strain that made Riku give a muted wince.

Besides his secondhand embarrassment for her, though, a niggling sense of agreement with the likely frustration fueling her voice's edge made itself known: not as strong as that empathy for said frustration, but enough to furrow his brow and make him mimic his current guise's original nature more than before. With Char's departure, the search had taken two steps back. Copperhead had taken the first debilitating step by revealing his crimes, and Riku himself had completed the second by allowing Char to finish the promise she had made him a month and a million years ago. It had lent the extra helping hand back to Sora, Riku argued with himself, and gods only knew his Keyblade-wielding, dorky best friend needed all the help he could get, with just who he was fighting.

Especially with who he was fighting.

However much his sense of friendship bristled at thinking of Char as nothing more than an extra fighter to be passed between him and the boy she loved, though, Riku knew one thing above all: even though Char had treated her sojourn in this world like a delay, she had still accomplished more in three days than he had in a week. A sigh threatened to escape him, but he stifled it before it could get loose.

By now their destination had appeared before them. In the silence, Riku heard the sets of footsteps ascending the steps to Falcon's back door that much better. Threefold thuds cut through the breezy night, mingled with his own feet's impact on the surface and twined with it even as tile replaced the wood beneath him and the resonance changed.

Falcon slid into the house behind him and Copperhead and eased the door shut in her wake, effectively shattering the tiny blade of moonlight that had followed her inside. Although she remained silent, Riku could detect her breathing sharpen as she bumped into something in her quest for the light switch. Copperhead whispered out an apology, and Riku almost jumped as something brushed his arm; then he relaxed as he realized it was just the older man moving away from Falcon. He couldn't blame Copperhead for his skittishness. Falcon's current emotional state balanced on the tip of a pin and just colliding with its source could send it over that proverbial edge.

As he listened to their breaths mingling in the air, Riku's eyelids slipped shut, even though it was already dark. For the briefest of moments, dark like this, he could almost imagine he was sneaking back into his house after a late night on the island with Sora and Kairi.

Then a tock resounded – Falcon had found the light switch.

Riku's eyes opened, only for the flood of artificial light to force them into a squint. Once his senses had accommodated the abrupt brightness shift, he found himself not in his house's familiar hallway, but in Falcon's living room. It would have been a lot more difficult to sneak in here anyway, he reflected as he glanced around; at least the hallway back home had led practically right to his room, free of any possible dealings with his father's anger.

It made him wonder how many times Falcon had had to slip past her parents' room to get to her own safe haven upstairs, after nights fighting Heartless at Copperhead's side.

The thought was an unwelcome one, and besides, he knew the answer. Falcon had admitted, from her spot at the coffee table straight ahead, that even if her parents had spotted her she doubted they would have thought much of it.

In fact, she had chuckled with an extra sip of her orange juice, I think they would be worried if I wasn't out late a few nights a week.

Thinking back now, staring at the table's translucent surface and finding the ring where she had set her sweating glass down branded into it, Riku suddenly wondered why he hadn't heard the bitterness pounding through every word. With Copperhead's story – the clipped, desperately terse account of how he had taken those potentially-worried parents and indirectly robbed them of their hearts – casting an unwelcome light on the past, even the memory of Falcon's accounts drove pained sympathy into Riku's heart.

Dark fabric rustled in his periphery, and he glanced over to see Falcon sweeping past him, spinning on her heel at the last moment to head for the kitchen. Notably enough, she dodged past Copperhead with plenty of space between them: surprising, since she had expended more than enough effort on shoving and pushing and all but forcing him away from her. Except for when the trio had broken apart from their tight-knit formation to fight Heartless and Nobodies, when adrenaline had replaced her anger, that snide habit had never swayed – unlike Copperhead, who had stopped each and every time and stared after her like he had just watched her kick a puppy. Openly injured, shocked, without enough fire to muster indignation.

Copperhead had the exact same expression on his face now. Even with only glimpsing the side of his face, Riku could pick up wistfulness and regret.

And whereas he had sympathized with Falcon, he felt a furious gorge rising in his belly at how damn pathetic Copperhead looked.

You're the one who told me and Char your story, the dark boy wanted to shout. You should have expected this.

Falcon kept her stride brisk as she passed up the island dividing the kitchen from the living room and halted in front of the stove. Without turning around to face them, she asked, "Is it too late for dinner?"

As though her question had summoned it, hunger tunneled up within Riku's belly and voiced its umbrage. He fought the urge to pull a Sora and duck his head, while Copperhead looked over at him and laughed. "Amen to that, Riku's stomach," he said with a mock bow.

Riku simply rolled his eyes, unwilling to rise to the bait and justify himself. He hadn't eaten anything since their rather meager lunch at the saloon – not necessarily due to lack of hunger, but because the discomfort in the air between all three of them had all but destroyed his appetite. Since James was still recovering from the Behemoth attack two days earlier, a different waiter had served them, and as a result the task of diffusing the tension fell solely on Riku's shoulders.

A task that, he had discovered, he couldn't exactly accomplish by himself.

Before he had brought Char here, it had just been him, Falcon, and Copperhead. The three of them had never all been together in the same place, since Falcon wouldn't permit it and Copperhead had never exactly brought up how he knew her.

You wondered about it, but you never acted on it, Riku reflected ruefully. And you never expected Char to want to know as much as she did.

He shook himself out of regret toward his own willing obliviousness in time to watch Falcon place a pot on top of the stove. "Get comfortable," she called back. "I'll let you know when the food's ready."

The fact that she failed to address either or both of them was not lost on Riku. Copperhead realized it as well, for he cast an almost nervous glance in the younger's direction. Somehow, that nervousness proved contagious; Copperhead's blithe mask had suffered a fissure more easily than before.

That, and Riku got the feeling that had Falcon possessed a little less self-control and maturity, she might just poison Copperhead's share of dinner. And they would have an even bigger problem on their hands.

Almost as soon as the notion had occurred to him, Riku dismissed it. The pervert following them back to her house hadn't been his idea, certainly, but if Falcon truly disapproved as much as her open hostility indicated then she would have forced Copperhead to turn around and go home already.

Ultimately, Riku ended up wedged between the couch and the table, overly long legs drawn up to accommodate the smaller space, arms folded across his knees. Copperhead sprawled out on the floor next to him as casually as if he still lived here, one elbow resting on an upraised knee and the other braced against the other leg.

He pulled the strap of the scythe's sheathe off his shoulder gently and let it roll off his torso so the entire long weapon rested on the floor. From the almost haunted gleam in his eyes, he was remembering days when he had settled down here in the exact same way. Perhaps with Falcon's parents sitting on the couch, and Falcon herself in Riku's place, with steam rising up from freshly cooked food and laughter billowing up to wreathe about its physical companion in the air.

Only when Riku remembered Copperhead had only come here after his brother's death – and, as a result, would have had laughter in relatively short supply – did he realize the discrepancy between his ideal mental image and the truth.

Fast on the heels of that epiphany came the fact that he was recalling the times he had spent the night at Sora's house, and that he was thinking of a memory, not a fantasy.

And along with those, there came echoes and images of those memories he had created with Sora. His mother's smiles and cookies, and his father's booming voice and smoke-tinged cologne; and most of all, Sora's happy expression and eternal earnestness.

Come to think of it, Copperhead's expression looked like the beast of the past inside was tugging him between wistfulness and bitterness. Again, it reminded Riku far too much of himself, right after the darkness had come – and he didn't dare think of how he, like Copperhead, had all but beckoned that imbalance in the first place – and he had first met up with Sora again.

Wistfulness. Bitterness. Both emotions that tangled together in Riku's heart now.

He ripped his gaze away from Copperhead with a muffled sigh. They needed to find Ansem – the real one's – machine soon, because if he was comparing himself to that perverted, deeply flawed, eternally covetous murderer, something had gone horribly wrong.

No sooner had Copperhead slurped up the last bit of spaghetti on his plate did he announce, "Well, I should probably go."

Riku had leaned back with a distasteful grimace in order to dodge the sauce droplets flung his way; at Copperhead's declaration, though, he straightened, narrowly avoiding bumping his knees against the bottom of the table in the process. "Right now?" he couldn't help inquiring. Much as Copperhead's presence fed the tension between the trio enough to breed that choking silence, Riku found himself wondering why he would pick now to show some tact and leave. He had never exactly had done so in the past, after all.

Almost against his will, Riku dared turn his head to look at Falcon, who had situated herself strategically at the end of the couch farthest from him. Her desire for distance made speaking with her nearly impossible, and her continued reticence didn't help that at all. Though he should have just passed it off as a result of her wanting to eat dinner after today's vigorous yet futile searching, he just couldn't. That lack of apathy concerned him more than anything else.

She said nothing, only watching the man who had once been her best friend with narrowed green eyes. The fork speckled with red sauce from the scant few bites she had taken of her dinner trembled in her grip, though, and the light caught off a newfound sparkle in her eyes.

Seeing that glimmer, Riku realized, with the weight of a Sorcerer's force field colliding with his skull, that it was the patented mark of tears straining to escape. The sight upset him more than he would have liked.

A flicker of honey gold pulled his gaze back across the table's expanse to Copperhead again.

"Yeah," he went on, a hitch tugging at his voice as he rose to his feet and made sure to stretch his arms in the process. Riku swore he felt Falcon's eyes rolling as if into his own skull and nearly smiled, before remembering the situation's gravity.

Gods, he had to have gone and reported his lack of progress to the old man yesterday. If he had stayed with the group, he could have steered Char's fury away from Copperhead and focused them all on more important matters.

If ignorance, albeit ignorance tinged with frustration, was bliss, Riku thought he would rather have stayed in even that corrupted happiness with Falcon's past. Everything had screwed up in his absence.

Not everything, he had to remind himself, thinking of Sora and the times he had almost thought he and Kairi would have been better off without his darkness infecting their light.

"I'm tired after today," Copperhead was saying. He leaned down to pick up his scythe from the floor, an almost sheepish smile on his face as he did so, and slung the strap across his chest. "Think I'm gonna head back home and get some sleep." To Riku, not taking his eyes off him, he queried, "Same time and place tomorrow morning?"

Riku nodded. "Yeah," he answered, slowly. "See you then."

Incidentally, even touching on the more unpleasant memories of opposing Sora – of envying his Keyblade and despising his light – proved a mistake, because that thought led to the question of where his best friend was now. Char had provided a bit of insight, yes, but that information could only keep his worry at bay for so long. Sora had almost recognized him when they had crossed paths at Agrabah yesterday; he had almost dropped the candy cane-like Keyblade in his grasp when Riku had made the mistake of pulling out the Soul Eater.

He hoped that, at least, Sora had moved on from there and ended up in Hollow Bastion. That way he wouldn't have taken Char back to the main site of her own painful memories for nothing.

As Copperhead gave a single awkward jerk of a nod in Riku's direction and spun around to leave, Riku suddenly found himself wondering if Char would fulfill her promise and lead Sora to the World That Never Was.

Because if she did, and Riku was still held up in this world…

Falcon started when Riku jerked up, only to slump back a little and swear under his breath when the table halted his attempt to get to his feet and created an audible clatter. "Riku…?" she began.

He shook his head at her, pulling his legs out from underneath the table and trying not to bash his kneecaps again. Add another reason to the list of the things he loathed Xehanort's Heartless for: dragging his heart into darkness, possessing his body, and now nearly fracturing his knees. "I just… I need to talk to Copperhead about something," he managed. At least that wasn't entirely a lie.

The speed at which Falcon's bemusement twisted into darkness, toeing the glow-in-the-dark line dividing her from unabashed anger, sent a shiver along Riku's spine. "Do you," she intoned coldly.

"It's…" Riku paused, suddenly struggling with the decision whether or not to confess his newfound concern – that Sora would end up at their final destination and Riku would still be wasting his time here, running an errand for that revenge-crazed madman.

If Riku ever found his way back home, he wanted to be at Sora and Kairi's side, not lagging behind: something he had never done before.

Falcon watched him a couple of moments longer. At this point, she had stepped away from the boundary dividing anger's restraint and its release. Only after the fact did Riku realize her daring to toe that line at all marked an anomaly for her, the one who had bottled all her rage for Copperhead up inside.

But she had shoved it back down, it seemed, in favor of worry and that other emotion she always displayed when looking at him. No matter how much discomfort it caused him – that knowledge that he could never return that particular brand of warmth and affection, only a paler image of it – he found himself grasping at it with all his might now.

"I'm worried we won't find the machine in time," he confessed.

Falcon tipped her head to one side, brow wrinkling in confusion, not annoyance. "In time for what?"

Riku sighed, and all the pressure seemed to release from him in that one breath. "In time for me to go home."

Falcon's eyes widened. A paltry "oh" emitted from her direction, and she lifted one arm to rub the opposite one. "Well," she mumbled, "I guess – do what you have to."

Her expression and voice lost a significant amount of fire in that one reluctant demand, and Riku tried not to flinch at knowing that he had doused that fire, however briefly and angrily it had blazed up. I do want to see Sora and Kairi again… I just don't see why I have to make Falcon feel bad in the process.

He found himself echoing Falcon's actions and stifling his guilt. As he spun back around, seized the doorknob, pulled the door open and took that first step out into the night, he tried to focus on the white-clad figure shuffling off down the moonlit forest path instead of the burn of her stare on his own dark back.

"Copperhead!" he called after the receding man.

Copperhead stopped in his tracks, tails on the bottom of his coat cutting white streaks against the darkness with the action's suddenness. Although he had kept his pace steady enough for most of his form's details to be visible, Riku still felt himself start a little at the scythe's curved blade spinning as its carrier turned to face him. His fingers twitched, reflex to summon the Soul Eater flaring up inside and channeling its heat into his hands – at least until the weapon jutting out from Copperhead's back became invisible, shielded by his body.

A confused "hm?" drew Riku's gaze back up Copperhead's body to his face. He was regarding Riku with undisguised surprise that only intensified as he stepped closer, feet rustling lightly over the forest leaves.

"What's up, Riku?" Copperhead asked as he halted in front of Riku. Eking out a grin under his exhaustion's obvious strain, he added, "Calling dramatically after me, right in front of Falcon's house? This has to be important."

Riku ended up losing his mental battle with the urge to roll his eyes. "Actually, yes, it is."

To Copperhead's credit, he dropped the fake smile almost instantly. "All right," he said, folding his arms across his chest. "I'm listening."

"Right." Riku puffed out a sigh, rubbed his fingertips against his temples. He ended up grazing over where a Sorcerer's pink cubes bludgeoning his skull had left a jagged, shallow gash dividing his hairline and dropped his hand at once – both because of the pain at just that slight touch, and because of what the Sorcerer Nobodies represented.

If Xemnas truly was here, sending out his Nobodies, then he had to have the machine somewhere close by. Therein, Riku supposed, lay the crux of the matter: Xemnas had to know about Falcon and Copperhead's fear of the citadel and all it represented. More than likely, he was exploiting their latent emotions for all they were worth and hiding up at the citadel. Probably trying to figure out how to take apart his master's vital tool of retaliation while he was at it. Just the thought forced Riku's gloved hands into fists and his jaw into a near-painful clench.

The only problem lay in how to convince his two companions to take him up there so he could finally, finally complete Ansem's errand and reunite with Sora and Kairi.

Unbidden, the question as to what Char would do floated into his mind, born on contemplation's haze and all the seemingly-random proposals that clogged it. Ironically, though, that stray thought waved the fog aside.

Sora-induced changes aside, he knew what she would do. Even before meeting Sora, she would do the same thing he would: watch, and wait, and let the curiosity and frustration build up inside. Really, Riku had done the exact same thing with Char's past and Falcon and Copperhead's.

That streak of defiance that had borne Char back to where she belonged renewed itself in his heart then, and he spoke.

"I have a feeling I know where the machine is."

Copperhead's eyes lit up, and the smile on his face almost hurt Riku's eyes, it was so genuine. He almost didn't want to keep going.

Almost.

"Really?" the blonde gasped. "That's great! Uh, so…" He trailed off, brow furrowing. One arm lifted to brace its elbow against the opposite hand; after a moment of tapping his chin in thought, he leveled his gaze back at Riku. "Where, exactly? We've torn the entire town apart already."

This time, the sigh that tore out of Riku carried significantly more heaviness. "The citadel," he muttered.

For the second time in the last ten minutes, that bemusement as to how quickly gentle interest could lose its buoyancy and fall into darker territory entirely swiped cold claws along Riku's spine. Unlike Falcon, though, Copperhead's expression became cloaked in dread. His arms fell limply back to his sides, fingers gaining an already visible tremble; although this reaction didn't surprise Riku in the slightest, self-hatred seared across his heart at the memories condensing themselves in that newfound shadow.

He couldn't see what nighttime terrors flashed across Copperhead's mind, but he could imagine. Whenever he remembered Hollow Bastion – triumph when he had finally gained the Keyblade; mounting terror when Sora and the Beast showed up and his allies returned to his side; horror when the Keyblade had left him; desperation when Xehanort's Heartless had offered that power to him – faded echoes of those emotions' resonation felt raw inside his chest all over again. Having experienced the same emotional trauma, then, allowed Riku to easily anticipate Copperhead reliving it right in front of him.

What he did not expect, however, was for him to glance up and give a few overly emphatic nods.

"All right," Copperhead agreed.

Riku blinked. "Huh?"

His intelligent expression of confusion met a shrug of affected nonchalance. "I-I mean, do what you've gotta do and everything," Copperhead hastened to justify his acquiescence. Riku watched him turn away, arms reaching up to cushion against the back of his head, and couldn't help narrowing his eyes. Stop trying so hard to act like you're not terrified over this, he wanted to say.

Aloud, though, he only cleared his throat, making Copperhead glance over his shoulder. Even though the moonlight glanced off his scythe's protruding blade and forced Riku's eyes into a further squint, it couldn't conceal those traces of fear quickly enough for him to miss.

"Tomorrow morning, then, we'll meet up here and ask Fal about it. Right?" Copperhead spoke up before Riku could so much as open his mouth.

"Yeah," Riku said, wariness of Copperhead's feigned readiness drawing out the word. He folded his arms across his chest and appraised the other man a moment longer; only when Copperhead's smile began to falter, mask suffering fissures under Riku's scrutiny, did he continue. "Copperhead," he said, "you know Xemnas is probably going to be up there. He's the reason Char and I had to come here at all."

Copperhead's eyes widened. "And that's how Blaze knew who he was," he assumed. A sigh heaved itself out of him as he leaned on one leg, balancing his weight on that side. "Small world."

His low, rumbling tone – treading the line of self-deprecation, but never deigning to cross it entirely – sounded familiar, which puzzled Riku, at least until he remembered Copperhead's explanation of the past he and Xemnas shared. Copperhead had spoken the exact same way when he revealed how he'd deduced Char knowing of Xemnas too. Inwardly, Riku scoffed; knowing of was an understatement.

The wind picked up a little bit then, carrying with it a higher pitch. Riku jerked slightly – for a minute there, it sounded like a gasp – then dismissed it. Just an illusion brought about by his exhaustion and the wind's newfound speed, nothing more.

Copperhead shivered, rubbing his bare arms up and down in a vain attempt to assuage his sudden chill. "It's getting cold," he remarked obviously, "so I'm gonna go home."

Riku watched him turn away and trudge off down the forest path, then pivoted around and stepped up onto Falcon's porch.

Strange. Copperhead's ready agreement, false though it was, should have released the strain on his shoulders a little; the knowledge of finally, finally growing closer to accomplishing his goal should have lightened his heart – yet all he could feel was a sense of foreboding.

Xemnas.

Xemnas was in the citadel with the machine.

The latter's location didn't surprise her. She and the others had wasted the last few days running around town and almost unconsciously carving a wide arc around the site of so many nightmares and terrible memories; then again, she supposed she and Copperhead shared the blame on that one more than Riku.

But… Xemnas. That was something she hadn't realized.

Sheets sloughed off her form as she sat up and swung her legs over the side of her bed. A tree's leaves met her stare at the window, but she could imagine what lay beyond it. The citadel's imposing spires, the reflective floor where she had watched herself break down, the man who had smiled and parried every stroke of the Keyblade in his direction and just left after she had sacrificed her own heart.

Only when her knuckles began to cramp did she realize just how strongly her fingers had knotted in the sheets around her legs. Her eyes slipped shut in an attempt to calm herself, yet even that failed, as the inside of her eyelids only thrust the smug bastard who had orchestrated her parents' murder into full focus.

Copperhead had his share of the blame – had brought her parents to die in that forsaken place. And yet…

Maybe that was why she had balked at the notion of truly hating him. Incredulity leaped up inside her at the thought of actually rationalizing her twisted emotions toward him, but she forced herself to douse that disbelief.

Maybe she couldn't bring herself to cut ties with the Copperhead-shaped part of her past because Xemnas had had the bigger role in the tragedy one year ago.

Abruptly, she rose to her feet. Blood shifted to the rest of her body and left dizziness in its wake as she did so. Combined with fatigue and emotional exhaustion from today's events – Char's departure, the epiphany that she did care about the girl she had once perceived as a mere romantic rival, Riku's awkward silences added to her and Copperhead's tense refusal to speak, the sensation of something driving into her chest as she had looked at Riku and her own unrequited feelings had gleamed amber in his eyes – that dizziness all but toppled her.

But she forced herself up, and to the door where she had hung her jacket, and once she quelled the sudden tremor in her arms long enough to secure its long sleeves over them she crossed the room to the closet to secure her stockings and skirt.

Muffled, shaky cursing rasped out into the dark room as, impeded by the lack of visibility around her, Falcon shoved one boot onto the wrong foot. It occurred to her that maybe she should have turned the desk lamp on, but she had already dragged her battle garments out into the open and ended up eschewing the light.

She felt around for the closet door and grasped it with one hand; to her immense shame, she could feel the tremble return to her body, leaving the door rattling beneath her grip. Almost on instinct, the other hand groped around for her jacket pocket and finally settled on her Keychain, shaking fingertips finding purchase against its charm. Just like the first time she had summoned it – just as she had the day when, in retrospect, all of this had started, the Heartless and Copperhead's friendship and the path to his betrayal – she thought on how much it felt like one of her father's old guitar picks. Smooth, unbent beneath the pads of her fingers.

Her father, who had moved here for his job. Her mother, who had taught her how to cook. And Copperhead, the boy – man – who she had fallen for, before Dyme's death had ripped her trust for him into pieces.

Even if I don't avenge them, at least I can buy time for Riku to get there and get the machine.

If she was going to die – and Falcon's mind found itself considering the possibility, rolling it over and over with a probing curiosity that finally gave way to acceptance – she figured she might as well do it while helping the few people she still loved in the world.

Before she relinquished her grip on the closet door to head downstairs, though, her fingers slid up the edge and brushed against something soft. By this time her eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to pick out minor details, and so when she looked up her eyes widened at what she saw.

The old scarf, the one that had once belonged to Copperhead. Nighttime and all its shadows had washed the knitted material's purple in grayscale, but she would know those ragged edges anywhere.

Almost against her will, she felt her arm completing its journey up the door, all but strained her ankles rising onto her tip-toes to reach it, and clasped her fingers around the scarf. It uncoiled from its haphazard rolls and collapsed onto her hand as she withdrew it.

Staring down at it, Falcon felt a multitude of memories rush back into her. Minutes before Copperhead had first kissed her, he had unwound the scarf around his neck and extended it to her shivering form; and hours after he had betrayed her, she had thrown it into the top of her closet, wanting more than anything never to see that reminder of him again.

Her uncontainable rage from that day returned as an echo of its former self, dully aching with every staccato throb of her heartbeat. And yet she felt herself winding it about her neck before turning to the door.

It was just because night had arrived, and it would be cold outside. That was all.

"Never thought I'd see you whip out that old thing again."

Falcon's already-tense nerves snapped at that deep voice. She tried to ignore the very squeaky noise of shock that tore itself from her lips and kept her motions calm as she turned toward its source.

Copperhead stood leaning against a tree, arms folded across his chest, staring at the scarf he had given her. That stupid scythe still lay strapped across his back, even though it couldn't have been comfortable creating a barrier between his back and the tree's bark.

Above any discomfort, though, smugness rose, visible in his eyes and the smile twitching at his lips. That, and something like hope.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "It's cold tonight," she answered through clenched teeth.

Copperhead quirked one eyebrow. While she had failed to quash the hope in his eyes – the thought that maybe he meant more than just an unwelcome catalyst driving the past's thorns into her anew every time their eyes met – she did succeed in wiping that infernal grin off his face. "Not really," he rebuffed.

Much as she hated admitting it, he kind of had a point. The nighttime breeze that had once nipped through her jacket's thin material now lay somewhat stagnant, leaving his gift to her a hot, irritating presence about her throat. But like hell was she going to gratify him and take it off.

"Get to the point, Copperhead," she growled at him. "Why are you out here stalking me?"

He sighed. With the dramatic nature of that movement, the expansion of his ribcage pushed him off the tree and sent him walking toward her. "I needed a walk after today. A nice, calm, Heartless-free walk," he added with a wry smile, which Falcon didn't return. "To think about things."

Like how you're a selfish murderer? Falcon left that thought unspoken and just quirked an eyebrow at him. "You wanted to take a walk right next to my house." It was not a question.

Copperhead lifted his palms up in a placating gesture: the intention of which failed, once again, to worm its way past the resolve slitting her eyes and accelerating her heartbeat. "Hey," he pointed out, "the forest around here's a great place to think. Not like the one near the citadel."

Falcon's eyes widened. Now that – that meant something to her.

In contrast, his own violet gaze narrowed. He had hit a nerve, and both of them knew it. And in Falcon's revenge-throttled, desperation-wrought state, her nerves felt more raw than ever before.

"Which is why," Copperhead went on icily, "I find it a little strange that you're heading back there."

All of a sudden, with the chill his unspoken indictment inflicted on the air, Falcon felt grateful for the scarf's warmth around her neck. Of course, that bit of positivity sizzled into oblivion with his stare's intensity on her, and she felt her fingers moving up to clutch at the scarf's frayed ends before catching herself and dropping her hands to her sides again.

He knew she had overheard him and Riku discussing tomorrow's course of action. He had to.

"Don't look so surprised," Copperhead went on, lowering his hands. Not once did he take his eyes from hers – ironic, considering both how she had treated him today and over the last year. However, every bit of boldness and scorn that he once could have easily mustered seemed to have condensed itself into his voice then, forcing it into a low, near threatening pitch. "The minute Riku first spoke Xemnas' name, I knew you'd overheard. He forgot to close the door when he went outside. And of course you were curious."

The words you're going to face Xemnas yourself never once escaped his lips. And yet they lingered in Falcon's ears nonetheless, in as deep a rumble as the way he sounded now.

"I suppose you're here to try and stop me," she said.

She expected a vehement confirmation – that, or its polar opposite, a fervent denial as to how much concern he still had invested in her well-being, even though she had discarded her own toward him long ago. His voice rumbled too deeply to transition into the desperation in either, but he had surprised her before.

As he did now: another sigh oozed out of him, one hand rising up to press his bangs tight against his forehead. In the moonlight, the honey strands straining to light up against the black fabric of his glove were tinted whitewashed yellow.

"Weren't you listening?" he groaned. "I literally just told you I was taking a walk."

Something inside Falcon twisted and broke then, and she balled her hand into a fist, fully intending to make the other side of his jaw match the still-swollen mark of her wrath –

But then he was dropping his hand, stepping closer to her, and invoking memories of the last time he had gotten so close and stroked his bare hand up the fabric of his scarf to her cheek. Falcon's fist trembled, but did not uncoil.

Thankfully, he stopped just short of recreating that moment: not bending down to kiss her, as he had before, but simply gazing down his nose at her. Not reaching out with one hand to card it through her hair, as he had at the mayor's party two nights before, but keeping his hands at his sides.

"I'm not going to try and stop you," he murmured. Falcon's eyes widened, but he barreled on before she could interject. "Because I know your mind's made up." Tilting his head down to meet her gaze better, he added dryly, "As much as you haven't cared about anything around you in the past year, I do still remember what determination looks like on you."

Falcon blinked. She hadn't even known he had noticed. He didn't look like he was lying, though; shame blazed hot along her spine, originating from the weight around her throat, at the fact that she remembered what honesty looked like on him.

Both remembrances were ironic, considering their current situations.

Movement caught her eye, then, and she glanced down just in time to see the hand that had once covered his forehead lower from where it had lifted up. Almost as though he had considered touching her.

"But," he suddenly said – and despite his claim that he didn't want to impede her vengeance he sounded like he was choking on even that one word – "I can't guarantee… that Riku won't try and stop you."

Riku. If Copperhead's tone hadn't thrown her – if the way he ground out every word like it physically pained him to force Riku's name out didn't shock her – the way he dared to bring up her closest friend now did the job more than well enough.

And suddenly she was fighting to squeeze a defiant rebuttal past an obstacle in her throat as well. In spite of Riku not returning her feelings, in spite of him not reciprocating that l-word she had never even touched with Copperhead, he had still made it clear he regarded her as closely in his heart as any of his friends, wherever they were.

Before thoughts of who would miss her could surface and swarm about her already-quaking resolve, she forced herself to snarl back at Copperhead. "Tell him whatever you like. It won't change anything." She turned on her heel and strode past him.

He only let her get a few feet away, then called after her. "I know."

Those two words stopped her in her tracks.

Move, her mind screamed at her, he doesn't need to hold you back anymore, but his next words rooted her to the spot.

"I know you," Copperhead said, quietly. "I'm probably the only person left in the world who knows you."

Falcon thought of her parents, and somehow her hand slipped into the pocket with her Keychain in it and wrapped around its charm.

"If you want to do something," he went on, "then nothing can stop you. And if it's for someone you care about – like Riku and your parents – then you won't stop until it's done." A pause, then, "It's for all of them, right? Getting the machine for Riku, and beating Xemnas for your parents."

Falcon gave herself a few seconds to struggle with herself before resuming her trek toward the citadel's spires rising up in the distance.

Copperhead didn't follow her.

Over the last year, Falcon had trained herself to repress memories of that dark, bloody night. For the most part, both time and her conscious efforts had done the trick. The wound over her heart and cutting her ability to trust hadn't healed so much as scabbed over, and nighttime's shadows tended to usher the past forward and offer it an easy path into her subconscious, but during the day she kept everything relatively well hidden.

Avoiding Copperhead helped matters immensely, as she knew his presence would tear that barely-healed sore in her heart to ribbons and make everything raw again. It was why she had balked so much at Riku wanting Copperhead to help them; she hadn't even known the two of them had met up at all.

Despite her suppressing the past, though, she found herself tracing the path to the citadel's gates as easily as she had a year ago. Purpose tugged her forward and steadied her pace, not the panic that had driven her to a sprint, but she had returned nonetheless.

The path she walked would have been familiar to her anyway: she, Riku, and Copperhead had wandered up and down every winding path of this very forest over the last few days, searching for something that lay at the labyrinth's end. The old days running around with Copperhead and fighting Heartless had familiarized this place to her as well.

As Falcon stepped off the bridge and into the town's outskirts, she recognized the spot where, looking out over the river, she had accepted her bounty and turned to greet Riku and Char; as the grass tickling her stocking-clad calves lengthened and the forest's trees threw shadows across her every step, a rustle of the breeze through the bushes drew her gaze to the way she had walked to meet up with Riku. As the clouds withdrew a little from the moon, silver shafted down and bounced off every leaf twined above her head to illuminate dark specks scattered across the ground – the spot where, if she remembered correctly, Heartless had attacked her group just hours earlier.

Her fingers pushed beneath the scarf still tightly wrapped around her neck and rubbed the shallow scratches there. Riku had tossed her a Potion right after the Heartless had sliced her, but not even that healing elixir could spread through and eliminate the bleeding entirely.

You okay? Riku had shouted, even while batting a ball-like Heartless away with his bat-wing blade. Amber eyes had regarded her with concern, which made sense, considering those deadly claws had made contact dangerously close to her carotid artery.

Thinking of his worry now, Falcon almost gasped aloud at the pain that worked its way across her heart. She quickly pulled the scarf up, even though no one would have seen her moment of weakness anyway, and drove herself on.

Perhaps the thoughts of dinner with Sora's family and his old home in general had woven their way past wakeful reminiscence and into slumbering subconscious, for Riku's dreams contained Destiny Island's light more than Hollow Bastion's darkness. In his dream, sand sprayed up around his feet as he charged down the beach, with Sora and Kairi trailing along behind. The silver-gray hair blowing into his periphery with every step told him Xehanort's Heartless had yet to find him and exploit his weakness.

C'mon, Sora! he shouted back. You can keep up, right?

He turned back around, only to rear up, startled into stopping, as light flooded his senses, brighter than the island sun had ever seemed. It came in a muted, red-orange haze, though, almost as though something blocked the majority of it out.

Riku's eyes opened, only for the light to force them back into a squint. That tiny bit of moonlight from earlier felt like a tiny pinprick of pain compared to the daggers slicing into his vision now. A groan escaped him, and he tried to throw one arm over his face to save his eyes, only to be brought up short. Something had a vice-grip clamped about his shoulders.

Panic surged through him briefly, before he mentally pried his eyelids apart and glimpsed huge violet eyes.

"Copperhead?" he mumbled.

In response, the other man loosened his grasp on Riku, slid his fingers off his bare shoulders and stepped away from the couch. He kept a steady grip on the couch's arm, though, all but crushing it. "We've got trouble," he said breathlessly. Whether that came from having run back here or not, Riku wasn't sure; however, moonlight traced along his trembling form and showed his desperation.

Whatever had happened, it had affected him badly enough for it to deprive him of the sleep he had bemoaned losing.

That, more than anything, ejected a fresh stream of wakefulness into Riku's body, and he sat up, ignoring the way his sleep-cramped muscles protested. "All right," he agreed, swinging his legs over the side of the couch and taking care to not hit his legs on the table. "I'll go upstairs and get Falcon, and we can –"

But Copperhead was shaking his head furiously, leaning forward so far that he threatened to suspend himself on the couch's arm. "That's the trouble," he said desperately. "She… she overheard us talking about Xemnas."

Riku's eyes widened, and he stumbled to his feet. Now he was awake. "She what?"

Copperhead said nothing, just bounced up and down, as though so terrified he couldn't contain it.

Now that Riku thought about it, he had picked up something like a gasp disrupting the evening breeze's cadence. That breath, that one hint at something having gone wrong, had come and gone so quickly that he had dismissed it as the wind picking up; but it wasn't, and dread percolated in a low heat within his belly at what Falcon might have done.

It was clear that she had left, and Copperhead hadn't tried to stop her. If he had, then Falcon hadn't listened to him, a choice that didn't shock Riku in the slightest. No, if anything, that choice lent more fire to the fear for her blazing inside him and forcing his heartbeat into overtime.

Either way, though, she had left. Whether she had done it to avenge her parents or retrieve the machine, he didn't know. Riku found himself wishing for the former with a fervency that made his chest hurt even more. If she had gone off to die, gods forbid she had done it for him.

He didn't want anyone trying to die for him when he didn't deserve it.

Do what you have to. Riku bit back the bitter laugh that suddenly was clawing for purchase at the tip of his tongue. Of course she was following her own advice.

"So what are we going to do?" Copperhead's deep voice made Riku look over.

He blinked when he found the other man watching him with a mix of urgency and impatience. "You're the one who came over here," he pointed out. "We're going to save her." Already he was moving toward the door, arm darting out to yank his coat off its perch next to the door. The newfound tremble in his hands made it difficult to get the jacket on, but after a few moments he succeeded.

Turning around gave him a sight he had not expected: Copperhead staring at the ground, still holding the couch's edge by the pads of his fingers. Riku quirked one eyebrow. "I'm going even if you're not," he said, fighting to keep a growl out of his voice. You came barging in here freaking out about her, and now you're having second thoughts?

Despite that incredulous thought, though, something held him in place. Some twisted loyalty to this pathetic person, some remnant sense of friendship toward Copperhead – something grabbed hold of his anger and gently told it to hear him out.

When he said nothing, though – just staring at his shoes, as though he could find the answer to the turmoil in his heart in their dark surface – Riku couldn't hold himself back any longer.

Copperhead jumped, startled into jerking his head up to stare at Riku, at the explosive groan that tore itself out of him. Moments later, Riku had crossed the living room, shoes clacking rapidly against the tile floor and silencing at the transfer to carpet, and grabbed Copperhead's shoulders. He shook the other almost viciously, fury rasping his voice.

Somewhere in his heart, he swore Xehanort's Heartless was almost purring at his host's dark display.

"The woman you love is gonna die," he hissed into Copperhead's face, "and you're just going to sit back and let it happen?"

Copperhead stared at him a moment longer, pupils flicking briefly down to the black-clad fingers stark against his jacket's white fabric. Now that Riku had stilled him, his own hands had no real reason to continue bracing against the couch's arm; yet they remained there, and movement from close to Copperhead's hips drew Riku's gaze to those gloved fingers curling against the dull material.

He looked back up into those violet eyes and all but dropped his hands back to his side at what he found: fear and desperation having hardened into something like… resolve.

"No," Copperhead muttered, "I'm not."

Fun fact: I love cliffhangers. Because I am evil.