Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Well. 

Riku had imagined vaguely in the past what the consequences for giving into Darkness might be. Only knew it would be bad. 

But never...like this. 

He lifts a single five-clawed foot and wiggles it. It’s...definitely not human. Not at all.

What’s changed? Riku runs through a mental checklist, one that’s existed ever since he realized how monstrous he had become without realizing. A state of ignorance he’ll never allow to occur again. 

His horns remain, though now attached to a much bigger inhuman skull. His body stretches out, snakelike on four legs. Ridges and lumps along his elongated spine.  

The silver-navy scales he’s been fervently plucking from his human flesh now cover him entirely. 

...Probably be a bad idea to tear them out. 

Darkness shivers and everything is so much. Louder, brighter, and smellier. 

Riku examines the still body laying on the ground. Of Sora’s Nobody. Breathing, but clearly not going to wake up any time soon. 

Good. 

Riku is definitely not adjusted enough to this body to try hunting him down again in it. 

But how to move the Nobody?

He could try to pick him up with one of his front leg-limbs-whatever. But doing that...not enough balance!

Riku squawks and flaps his...wings? Oh, that’s what those lumps are! Enough to keep him upright (?) but not enough to keep balance should he try to move the Nobody in the same way.

What he needs is hands. If he can’t have his own, well, he’ll try the Heartless he used against the Nobody, as much as Riku despises the thought of calling it back. 

Hm. Re-summoning Ansem’s puppet Heartless is...different. Not harder, not easier, just different. Where before it had been like tearing himself in two, unleashing the Dark within...now it’s like...moving a limb he didn’t have before. Wagging his new tail. 

Yellow eyes gleam in the dark as one large hand picks up the body. Riku directs it to place said body on his back. 

Where...it promptly slides off. Plop, into a particularly large puddle.  

Of course. Argh.

Should he have the Guardian continue to do the heavy lifting? 

No. No, he won’t. He won’t give in. 

Riku allows the Heartless to fade away, soulless eyes boring into his own. 

Fine. Fine, fine! One last thing he can try, as much as he hates the idea of it. Riku’s head lowers right by the body. He gently hooks his fangs into the back of the coat, lifting the Nobody up like a cat does to a stray kitten. 

He’s an animal. The monster he feared he would always become, that Maleficent wanted him to be. 

He walks. It’s only difficult if Riku thinks about it, otherwise the limbs just appear to...sort themselves out. Sliding along the dark rainy streets, Heartless fervently avoiding him for whatever reason...

Despite everything else that’s changed...still a monster, huh? Too Dark. 

At least he can still Corridor. It almost seems too easy, reality peeling itself apart to become a door with a single concentrated thought. 

Feels sickening, carrying this very still body in his mouth. Like he’s going to eat him alive. 

For Sora, Riku reminds himself. All of this, for Sora. 

The reminder doesn’t make the sick feeling digging through his long midsection go away. 

~

“I have to ask. Where’d the dragon come from?”

A rumbling growl. 

“Okay, no answer? Fine. Naminé, you coming with me?”

“No. I’ll stay with him.”

“Suit yourself.” The hissing of a Dark Corridor opening and closing. 

“...Good-bye Axel.”

~

Maleficent claws her path into her original time the same way she broke free of the egg. A messy sticky process that leaves those on the other side truly horrified. 

And on that other side...

Apparently she’s been presumed dead for over a year and her Castle at Hollow Bastion has been taken over by the Light. 

Oh, Pete’s here too. 

Reswearing his service to her, as useless it is. Better than nothing. Better than her having to put the fear of her into others on the Council all over again, because they thought she was dead. 

Maleficent paces, Diablo crooning on her shoulder. 

She needs another lair. She’s spent too long far from a place she can truly call her own, real and not data. 

But first. The boy. The boy, then the lair. She will not let her work go to nothing. Especially not with what she’s learned from the past...

“Diablo, you need to find my boy.”

“Wait, what?” Pete scrambles after her, as Diablo squawks his acceptance of her order and takes flight. 

“You have a son?”

~

Sora is waking up. 

Riku can’t let Sora see him like this. A monster, a dragon, an enemy to fight.

Inhuman. 

So he runs. The Corridors are easy enough to use like he noticed before. 

Runs and takes Naminé with him, because he won’t leave her to DiZ and she won’t leave him. 

She deserves better, than him. Always better. 

Too bad he can’t talk to her to tell her so. Just growls and hisses and snarls. Animal noises. Nothing like a language about it. 

He runs and runs, but Naminé is tired. Breathing heavily by his side. She doesn’t say anything, of course. She doesn’t need to, when he hears her breathes with his new ears and can smell her stressed exhaustion on her sweat. 

Needs to rest, but where? Not Twilight Town, DiZ might still be there. Not Hollow Bastion, it’s full of people who have no reason to welcome a monster. 

Riku shivers, his wings shaking like leaves in the wind. There is one place, one place no one will think of looking in. The place of his childhood. 

“The Secret Place,” he breathes. “There.”

No one will find them there. 

~

Her bird tracks the boy easily enough. Apparently he’s been using and leaving Darkness everywhere, making a clear trail to a particularly bright World. 

A World full of Light. And of strange, bad-tasting waters. 

Diablo rests in one of the strange trees, with only leaves on the top, as he watches them walk across the unsteady sand. Her nostrils flare at the stink of salt. 

Such a strange place to be. How could anyone live here, stay here?

Yet according to Diablo...Riku is up ahead. 

Maleficent checks the air again, straining past all of the salt...

Ah. There he is. 

She can smell him in the cave ahead. 

“The boy is in the cave,” Maleficent states. 

“You didn’t tell me ya had a kid, ” Pete’s eyes go big. Still stuck on his incorrect interpretation of why they’re here in the first place. 

Not quite right, but she’ll let his incorrect conclusion pass. There are more important matters to tend to. If she corrected him about everything, nothing would ever get done. 

“I was unaware he would continue to dig himself into holes he cannot get out of.” Leaving her unable to leave him to his own devices. Yet Riku was awfully keen on guidance before, would have sought her out. Why should she think otherwise?

Yet he’s changed from before in the year she’s been in the far off past. 

Changes that either have to be corrected or accounted for. 

“Why dontcha just become a dragon and pull him out?” Pete gesticulates in his usually useless fashion. 

Maleficent shakes her head. “The space is too small for my transformation to reach in, fool.”

That the boy fits in there is only a testament to how young he is. Barely over a tenyear. 

Throwing himself into trouble of all kinds. A hero. 

A sneer, at the thought. 

She’ll teach him better than that. 

~

Maleficent shouldn’t be here. 

She’s dead. 

A state of being that doesn’t allow for her to be making snide remarks about his lack of control, right outside his cave. 

Riku trembles. Curls up tighter.

A loud squeak comes from the middle. 

Oh no!

Right, Naminé. 

Hastily Riku unravels himself and supports himself on his front legs, looking over the Nobody anxiously. 

She’s not too squished, thank goodness. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he rumbles, knowing he won’t be understood. No one has. 

“What exactly do you have in there?” Maleficent, again. Asking about Naminé. 

No.

He won’t let her. 

Riku hisses. Naminé curls in on herself in response, which she shouldn’t because Riku is hissing at Maleficent, not her. And he has no way to tell her that because he can’t speak!

He nudges at Naminé with his snout. She shrinks even more, please don’t. “ Please don’t be sad, I didn’t mean it.”

“Pete! Go in there!”

“But Maleficent, what if he tries ta e-”

“Go. In.”

“Right!”

A large dog-person, the same kind of person as Mickey, squishes himself through the hole. Somehow. 

“Uh, Maleficent? There’s a girl in here?” he calls out, looking confused. 

“What? Move out of the way, I’m coming in.”

“Uh-”

She looks exactly as Riku remembers her, haughty and somehow making him feel small though he’s the biggest thing in the cave at the moment. Haunting him. 

Her yellow eyes look him over. Better him, than Naminé. Naminé doesn’t deserve the wrecked aftermath of Riku’s sins coming to visit. 

“You are not tending to your own health,” Maleficent says, displeased. Her fingers tap against her staff. 

Riku growls. “ Why would you care? I’m not helping you!”

Somehow, she seems to understand the sentiment behind his sounds. “You do not understand how much effort it takes to create a fully functioning changeling that will not dissolve the minute it breathes. ”

Yellow eyes narrow. 

“My work will not be put to waste, due to your current rebellion.”

“Always rebellion,” Riku rumbles. 

“You cannot run from your nature forever, no matter what those Light-obsessed fools tell you,” Maleficent replies dismissively. Her staff taps against the ground. “Darkness has woven itself into you, down to the Heart.”

“That doesn’t mean I'll work for you! Not like before!” Riku wants to roar, to claw the ground. To shred the witch to pieces. 

Maleficent stands unmoved. As always. 

“We’ll see.”

Then she turns to... Naminé. 

“Now, who are you?”

Riku growls longer than before. A rattling sound that only means back off. 

Maleficent, of course, ignores him. The dog-person, Pete, doesn’t, gives him a wide-eyed look as he quickly hides behind his mistress. 

Naminé shivers. “Nobody important.”

Maleficent breathes in deeply, a sharp hiss of a sound. 

“That scent...did you replace your precious princess, boy? After she wouldn’t wake up?”

Naminé outright flinches. Riku does too, the motion much more exaggerated on his larger inhuman body. 

“I can’t replace her.” Naminé looks down at her hands. “I’m just her Nobody.”

“Oh, like those black-coated folks!” Pete inserts into the conversation. “But yer not wearing a black coat?” He scratches his head. 

“Enough,” Maleficent says dismissively, “I will hear their explanation of ‘Nobodies.’ More on these ‘black-coats’ later.”

“Course!” Pete nods fervently. 

During this verbal exchange, Riku takes the opportunity to claw himself forward an inch or two. Just enough to be able to slide between Naminé and Maleficent. 

“It’s none of your business.” He snaps his jaws. 

“Why this girl smells exactly like that Princess of Heart you always worried about? Of course it is.”

Of course she would notice that. Riku noticed that, and his sense of smell is nowhere close to Maleficent’s ability with it. An ability that was because of...dragony stuff. 

Wait, is that why he can smell Darkness now? 

“ I won’t tell you anything.”

“I will find out the reason myself, then.”

“No!” Riku lashes out, snapping at the witch standing in front of him. 

She moves out of the way, so he’s throwing himself outside of the cave. 

Snarling, hissing, he somehow manages to turn himself towards her, as she bends over to step out after him. Her thin lips are pressed into a gloating smile.

Why is she smiling...?

Oh no. He’s so stupid. 

Now that Riku’s outside of that too-small space...the witch can take advantage of that. 

Maleficent’s transformation is a fiery thing, but still smoother than the last time he saw. Considering last time she was in the process of bleeding all over the ground because Ansem had attacked her...well, not surprising.

Maleficent’s dragon form is so much bigger than his. Which...isn’t exactly surprising, Riku remembers seeing how big she became after Ansem stabbed her. 

(With his own body.)

But it’s different when he’s gotten used to being bigger than everyone else. Towering over small, limber two-legged bodies that can fit themselves through door frames, into buildings. 

She moves. Not quickly, just in a surprising way, pinning him down with one of her front legs.  

Riku screams, “Let go!”

But she isn’t hurting him. Only keeping him from moving. Readjusting her grip whenever he squirms too much. 

It’s scary but...again, she’s not hurting him. 

Breathe, breathe. If he waits, he can find an opening. 

Riku can’t help but compare his body to hers, in that time. Searching for weaknesses, of course, why else would he be doing that? 

She’s the only other dragon he knows, after all. Real life dragon, that is. 

His proportions are longer, more snake-like. His neck seems almost merged with the rest of his body, where hers is clearly separated. His head more broad where hers narrows. 

The coloring differences are obvious, his silver and navy to her black and purple. 

Their horns are exactly alike, though. And their wings. 

Her maw opens, glowing neon yellow-green like her eyes. 

Riku trembles. 

Nononono.

~

The hatchling is small. Very small for his age. 

The realization is so much more vivid in her other-skin, where scent and color and heat are so much stronger and more. 

Maleficent pins him for a more thorough examination. 

He squeaks, squirming. A more steady grip asserts that she will not be letting go. Not any time soon. Checks him. 

Scales thin and threatening to fall out, claws weak...his health has clearly been suffering, every mark so much clearer in her other-skin. He’s not been eating. 

His wings, paper-thin. Are they supposed to be that thin at this age, he can’t even use them for flight in that condition. 

Not that Maleficent can really fly without the usage of magic on her end. But she’s a creature of Fire, not Wind. Flight is not her vocation. Not in the way destruction is. 

Her mouth opens, tongue sliding out. She needs to cover him in her scent. 

Assure him she will not allow him to come to further harm.

“Let him go!”

Hm? Her ears buzz.

There’s a human-shaped thing on the ground. Making noises at her. 

Human- shaped because it smells both like a human and not. Nobody, some part of her remembers vaguely. Called a Nobody.

Should she eat it?

No. 

The hatchling has claimed it, she won’t do that. 

Her possession is making noises at the hatchling’s possession. Trying to correct it presumably. 

“Ya shouldn’t do that, ya know! It’s dangerous!”

“But what if she hurts Riku?”

“The kid’ll be fine, he’s a dragon! You’re not!”

Hm. The hatchling has suddenly gone wild in response to the noise, throwing himself against her grip, nibbling at her claws. 

Slowly she loosens her grip, moves her head closer. 

“ Don’t hurt them,” he hisses. 

She huffs. “Of course not. They are Ours.”

His ears twitch. “ Ours?”

“Yes.”

Changing is tiring. There is no fight to justify it either, just...the hatchling. 

The hatchling is probably tired. 

Like she is. 

She curls up. With the hatchling at the center.

“What are you doing?”

“Sleep,” she hisses, closing her eyes. 

And sleep she does. 

Chapter Text

The sunlight feels good. After so much time spent in dark places, it’s good to feel the light again. 

Much better than it had before, as a human, sunlight warming his scales and making the blood in his wings feel so warm. 

Alive. 

Enough to close his eyes to take it in. Just for a moment...

“Riku...are you okay?”

One large eye slides open. To see Naminé. Looking very worried. 

He should do something about that. 

“Naminé?” The name comes out as a growl. Like everything Riku’s tried to say since he fought Roxas, to wake Sora up. 

“Sleep,” Maleficent rumbles at him again. Glares at him with one large glowing eye. 

“No,” he decides. Enough sleeping. He needs to move, stretching out his wings and legs. Swishing his entire snakey body on the warm sand. “No more.”

“Child.” Maleficent moves and whoa, she is so much bigger than him. But he won’t let that stop him. 

Naminé looks so very small. So does the Disnian, Pete. Maleficent’s minion. 

Maleficent swings her head over in the two’s direction. Pete shrinks down and Naminé hides her face. 

Scared. 

No. He won’t let Maleficent do that. 

“Mine!” Riku puffs up, making himself look bigger than usual. Which is already decently large. Not to Maleficent, but certainly to everyone else. Between her and them. 

“Yes, Yours,” Maleficent agrees. Pleased by him arguing with her? What?

His tail hits against the sand. 

He doesn’t get her. Why does she care? If something like him ( monster) is so hard to make, then why doesn’t she just force him to go along with her?

(Like Ansem did.)

Or offer a choice he can’t refuse?

(Like DiZ did.)

Instead she’s just...letting him argue with her. Curling around him but moving away once he makes it clear he doesn’t want that. 

Did she do that before? Riku wracks his memories for the answer. So many of their interactions...he didn’t really know what he wanted from her. 

(That’s a lie.)

(He wanted someone to care. To not leave him alone.)

“Why you care? You lie!” He hisses at her. 

“I have never lied to you.” She seems offended by the very thought of it. “I cannot.”

Cannot? Riku’ll come back to that later. If he has the time and if she’ll answer. 

“But you can still deceive!” He accuses her. 

“Yes, of course.” Just a state of fact. Like it’s nothing. “You do as well.”

Riku has to stop to think about that. Really think about deceiving others. Because...he hasn’t lied, not directly to DiZ or Mickey or anyone else after Hollow Bastion. 

But. 

Hasn’t he danced around with his words, when asked about how the search for the Organization has been going, not wanting to admit how much of a failure he’s been to DiZ’s and King Mickey’s faces? Didn’t he...to Roxas...

Riku shakes his horned head. 

Tries to say “I don’t” but the words refuse to come out. He chokes on them. 

Yellow-green eyes gleam with fiery satisfaction. 

“You know the truth which is why you cannot deny it. You cannot lie purposefully with words, like myself. Like any Fey.”

Riku’s body is shaking. His wings ( wings!) quiver. “Why did you do this to me?” 

Because he didn’t choose this. This isn’t like using the Darkness, picking Ansem over his friends-! 

This is Maleficent’s fault. The horns, the scales, everything monster about him. He thought it was the Darkness, but he’s wrong. 

There’s something relieving about the thought. That this isn’t his fault. For once. But everything else still is.

“You did it yourself. Weak.” 

Riku hisses. “Wrong!” 

(But she’s right, isn’t she? He did give into the Dark, after all. Weak.)

“But there’s no need to worry,” she continues, slyly sliding her tail around him once more. “We can continue where we left off, and you can truly learn what power I promised you.” 

A flash of fire and she shrinks. Back down to the two legged form that Riku’s far more familiar with. 

She still feels the same , even smaller. Just as large as before, in a different manner. 

Riku stares down at her and he feels like he’s a child lost in a supermarket instead of towering over her like the beast he is. 

(Jealous that she can become human-like again, while he cannot.)

This...he needs to decide what to do next. 

~

Returning to her Fey form, from Dragon, is much like taking off a heavy coat. A weight lifts off her shoulders, the wings fading away under her cloak. 

There’s nothing wrong with being a dragon. She is one, after all. But there’s a different feel to having hands with thumbs and being small enough to interact with most architecture in a non-destructive fashion. 

Being a dragon is being honest, being her truest self. And Maleficent has always got more out of the world with deception than pure truth. 

Most beings of other Worlds don’t like talking to dragons, after all. Not with their destructive reputation. 

She taps her fingers against her staff. “Are you ready, boy?”

Riku’s yellow eyes squint at her. “Ready for what?”

She lets out a slight breath of a huff. “You need to properly take care of yourself. Your current condition is poor. ” 

To say the least. 

“If you cannot do it as a dragon,” she continues, “At least try to do it in your human form.”

Riku...squirms. Twists his long form into a circle. “ I...can’t. Tried, and can’t.” 

Hm. Well, that explains more than enough about the situation if that is the case. Especially since he’s surrounded himself with Light-obsessed weaklings that wouldn’t know a dragon from a snake on the ground. Fools. 

She rubs at her brow.

“Very well. I will do it then.”

The boy hisses in distress. “What? What do you mean by that?”

The girl says much the same. “What are you talking about?”

Pete, the bumbling fool, for once does nothing to make this worse. Merely watching. Good. 

Maleficent turns to matter at hand. Before doing something with Riku...she wants to know more about his new female companion. 

The girl that’s so much like the Princess of Heart Riku fawned over, this Naminé... there’s something special about her. 

Something to do with these ‘Nobodies’ that Pete mentioned, perhaps. 

“Pete, you did say you would explain Nobodies to me,” Maleficent says, sickly sweet. 

The Disnian jerks. “Uh, right-o!” 

She taps her fingers harder. Louder. “Go on.”

Pete scratches at his ear, head tilting as he starts his explanation. 

“Well, er, uh, a Nobody’s a strong person who’s lost their Heart! And the body’s still moving around and talking and walking, when it’s left behind. That’s a Nobody!”

Concise, if still unclear. Not that Maleficent had been expecting a truly in-depth explanation from her minion. Not from Pete. 

“If that’s the case...” She shifts her gaze to the girl. Who looks fairly different from the Princess of Heart she’s supposed to be a ‘Nobody’ of, even if she smells the same. Pale like a ghost, glowing like one too. “Why weren’t you moving about before, when we had the Princess’ sleeping body?”

The girl glances away. “I...don’t know. Princesses of Heart aren’t supposed to be able to have Nobodies...”

“So you’re even more unnatural than the ‘usual’ Nobody,” Maleficent finishes for her, satisfied.  

“Don’t say that!” Riku hisses. Always so sensitive, that changeling of hers. 

The Nobody lowers her eyes. “She’s right.”

“Riku...” The boy, of course, instantly stiffens at the use of his name, of the power she puts into it. “Her unnatural nature does not necessarily have to be a ‘bad thing,’ as you would call it.”

A most simplified thought of bad and good, for the child he apparently still is. 

It’s been so long since she’s been around a changeling, let alone her own...is that normal? 

Maleficent narrows her eyes, reaches out with one hand. Green fire lights. 

Plunges her magics into Riku’s own. Once familiar, the boy has changed in their time apart. A natural result of growth and age, of course. 

But it’s not natural for his magic and Darkness to be as tangled up as it is. Tied to his fear ...of himself, of all people. 

Maleficent bites down the sneer threatening to take her face. Of course he’s like this. Never afraid of what he should be, only of the most ridiculous things imaginable. 

Dragons don’t fear themselves, they make others afraid.

(She’ll teach him better. She has the time now.)

Now, to break this ‘spell’...

Her magic twists and then...twists back. Away from his. 

Hm. She can’t. Not with how strong Riku has become, how insistent he is on being afraid. Should she force him into a more human form, it’s likely that he’ll just snap back into a dragon soon after. 

No need to let them know that she can’t, of course. Only a fool reveals flaws. 

Maleficent lowers her hand. Lets the green fire and shadows die away, returning to the obnoxious cheerfulness of these eternal summer islands..

“I’ve changed my mind. I much like you better this way, boy. You’ll have to find your humanity on your own time.”

Riku growls. “You-!” His wings rise up, as he attempts to overshadow her. 

Cute. 

She smirks. 

What should she do next?

Riku, of course, will want to go after his friends. The one with Keyblade especially, since Maleficent does not sense him anywhere near here.

That boy, Sora, is not a necessity for her plots. Very possible that he will attempt to intervene no matter what she does, because of his ‘heroic’ tendencies. 

Thus her plans to avoid him, until she has gathered more resources. More knowledge to back up what she learned in the ‘Age of Fairy Tales.’ Such as a certain box...

The Princess...Maleficent will deal with that as it comes. 

Like she did before. 

There’s always another option, to look at it. She’s lived long enough to know that much, even if the foolish boy is too young to realize that much. 

But then, heroes are usually always that foolish. 

And Riku has tied himself to the boy. Loves him, perhaps. And Sora clearly loves him back, to a strong enough degree to fight her dragon-shape for him. 

Truly heroic. 

Maleficent hums to herself under her breath. Considering. 

Perhaps...yes, that would be best. To take them with her. She can leave Sora be for now, when there are other enemies afoot that Riku will be more than happy to fight instead. The ‘Organization’ Pete brought up. 

“ Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

Ah. So here’s the Princess of Heart they were all just talking about. 

Right before their very eyes.

Very different from the sleeping body that Riku possessively brooded over, as she is now. 

How interesting. 

~

Naminé swallows. Her eyes can’t look away from the girl in front of her. The girl with red hair and in pink and full of life... everything that Naminé is not. 

Her Somebody. 

Kairi. 

She feels...nothing. Because she’s a Nobody. That’s why. She can’t feel anything looking at this girl with everything. Full of so much Light. 

Riku jumps. As a dragon, the movement is far too easy to notice and the trees shake in response. He growls. 

Kairi steps back. Her eyes go between all of them, trying to figure out what’s going on. 

“Ah, the last Princess of Heart. I see you’ve finally awakened,” Maleficent speaks first.

“She’s a Princess?” Pete yelps, wiggling back a bit on the sand. 

“And you’re that witch who stole Riku away.” Kairi frowns, folding her arms over her chest. Saying nothing about Naminé, of course. 

Why would she?

There’s no reason she would know of the connection between them. 

Naminé’s chest still aches anyway, in response.

“Where is he?”

Maleficent and Pete begin to laugh. As for Riku, he shrinks back to attempt hiding behind some trees. 

Naminé frowns. Steps forward, gestures at Riku. “He’s right there.”

Kairi looks over and up. And up. “But that’s a dragon! How did that happen?”

“A mistake,” Naminé answers simply. Because that’s what it was, truly.

“A mistake that wouldn’t be if the boy weren’t so stubborn,” Maleficent complains, tapping the end of her staff against the ground. Sliding in the sand. 

“Riku...” Kairi’s eyes are big and so very bright. “Is that you?”

Riku nods once. A jerking motion. 

“Oh...” One hand reaches up, to tug a strand of red hair. The exact opposite color of Naminé’s own. 

(Why are they so different? They should be the same, Somebody and Nobody? Shouldn’t they?)

“Can I...see?” She tries. Just as gentle as Naminé herself, when Riku returned with scales and claws and fangs to drop Roxas’ body on the ground from his mouth. 

Naminé had to coax him to stay and it seems her Somebody will have to do the same. 

Riku lowers his head. Kairi reaches out. 

He snorts and jerks back. 

The Somebody frowns at him. “C’mon, stop being mean. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

At that, Riku’s long neck trembles. Slowly, his head comes back into reach to allow Kairi to rub at the base of his horns. 

Naminé can’t help herself. She steps closer next to the Princess, to do the same herself on the other side. 

The girl moves to allow her more reach. It’s...nice. Unexpected. 

“Who are you?” Kairi asks her. 

Naminé stops mid-pet, breath choked in her throat. It shouldn't be a surprise, of course she would want to know who this stranger is. It still is one. 

“Naminé,” she eventually makes out. 

“Oh. Nice to meet you, I’m Kairi.” An offered hand. Naminé...doesn’t take it. 

She steps back and away. Not retreating, just enough for Maleficent to mostly be in the way. 

The witch notices, of course. Why wouldn’t she?

“I see. Girl, I have a question to ask you.”

Um? Naminé swallows. She nods. Kairi glances over and narrows her eyes at Maleficent, moving into Riku’s shadow. Opposing each other. 

Riku growls, showing his teeth. Very large teeth, the largest the size of one of Naminé’s arms. His tail hits against the sand and his wings flick. 

“Of course not!” The witch scoffs. “She’s far more interesting than the Princess. Besides, aren’t they both yours?”

Um. More interesting? Naminé glances away, feeling a warmth in her cheeks. And the both yours part seems kind of strange.

What does she mean by that?

Riku makes a grunting noise, tilting his head away from them. 

Maleficent takes that as an answer, seemingly understanding him like she’s been able to this entire time. “No need to be ashamed, child. It is what it is.”

She scoffs, shaking her head. “Only a fool turns down what they want, when it is right in front of them.”

Riku snorts. Turns away. 

As for Maleficent, she turns to Naminé. 

“Now...girl. You have potential. If you desire so, I can teach you more about how to use it. If you come with me.”

Maleficent offers a clawed long-fingered hand to her. Inhuman. 

Just as inhuman as Naminé’s own glow. Inhuman in a way DiZ and the King aren’t and never would be able to understand. Not like her and Riku. 

Potential...if this woman can turn into a dragon and back, then maybe she can teach Naminé more about her own powers in a way no one else ever has. Or has been interested in doing. 

She has potential. Apparently Kairi does not. Does that...

(For once, someone wants her and not her Somebody. That’s...perfect. She wants that.)

She accepts it, wraps her fingers just long enough to squeeze her acceptance before letting go. The hand is...warm. 

“I’ll go with you.”

~

Riku has no idea what to do. 

He shouldn’t trust Maleficent, he can’t trust her. Not after what happened the last time he did. 

(The amount of people she hurt, with his help.)

But she’s the only one that knows what’s going on. How to be a dragon. Maybe if he learns more...he can break this curse himself. 

“So, your choice? Stay with your Princess or leave her?”

Nothing about leaving Naminé, Riku notes. The witch is already too interested in the Nobody, but there’s little Riku can do about that now. Naminé’s even...chose to go with her. Like he did, the same mistake. Alone with Maleficent. 

Unless he leaves to protect her too, not just learn about being a dragon. 

But...Kairi. 

(Will you abandon her again?)

“We’re not leaving her behind,” he says firmly, tail lashing. 

Riku can’t do that to Kairi. Never again. 

Maleficent tilts her head back to look at him, looking amused. Even when she’s physically smaller than him, somehow she still towers over him. 

“Oh? And why wouldn’t we? You want her safe, don’t you?”

Kairi glares at him and Maleficent, hands on her hips. “You’re not leaving me!”

“Because...” There’s only one word that fits this, really. “Mine.”

A smile breaks out on the witch’s face. “Ah. I see.” 

Riku’s scales tremble as he narrows his eyes at her. “No you don’t.” 

“Your plan, then, little changeling?” Maleficent asks him. Asking him for once. 

What does he want to do? Help his friends, obviously. But...how?

Riku can only hope he’s not making a big mistake. 

He probably is...but if he’s around Maleficent, with Kairi and Naminé by his side, maybe they can prevent her from hurting anyone else. 

(Riku ignores the little voice inside saying you just want someone who understands you, as a dragon. )

Because that’s not all of it.

No, he can do this. For his friends. For Sora. 

“Okay. I’ll go with you. We all will.”