Archive of Our Own

Donald waves an expansive hand over the map he’s got spread out on Merlin’s table.

“And that,” he says, with finality, “is the plan!”

His assembled audience, arrayed around the room, propped against a variety of magical tomes and softly humming instruments, is unimpressed.

“It’s a trumped-up get-along shirt,” says Kairi.

“How much does the King owe you for this,” says Riku.

“Wait, what?” say Sora and Ven together, sending an uncomfortable twitch rippling around the room. Truthfully, Sora doesn’t see why everyone else should get freaked out by his and Ven’s sporadic bouts of unison when they were the two sharing a single heart for ten plus years, but whatever.

“The King is…” Aqua starts, then trails off, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

“The King has decided to send us on a wild goose chase around a world that’s been free and clear of guys in long black coats for well over a year, because he apparently thinks we need to get along better.” Riku kind of sneers the last three words. Sora half-expects Kairi to reprimand him for the ugly look on his face, but she’s got the same twist snarling the line of her mouth as she stares down at Donald’s map. Sora feels his expression moving to match theirs, an impulse borne of lifelong habit, but quickly tamps it down as he scans the room.

Around the former Hallow Bastion Restoration Committee’s former headquarters, Goofy looks incriminatingly apologetic, Ven looks a little confused, and Terra crosses his arms when Aqua sighs, apparently in strong agreement. Donald is attempting some argument about ability match-ups and how fun working in pairs totally is but Kairi is glaring. And glaring. And Riku is a looming echo behind her, dour and way too tall. Even Sora can feel Donald’s authority slither away under the conjoined displeasure, and Donald splutters.

“Well, maybe the King’s right!” Donald starts, voice rasping like it does when he gets really wound up (pretty often). Kairi’s triumphant a-ha! is thoroughly drowned out. “It’s been two weeks since you six all met and you haven’t said a word to each other! You’re supposed to work together to save the worlds!”

“Hey—“ Sora and Ven start, together, again, and allow a moment to high-five. Kairi rolls her eyes while Terra finds anything to look at that isn’t their matching grins.

“We talk all the time!” Sora finishes for the both of them.

“But… you guys are kinda the same person,” Goofy says, scratching at the side of his head.

Sora shrugs an unworried shoulder. Ven, he can tell by Riku’s slight jump, does the same behind him. “I get that a lot.”

“You two don’t count!” Donald snorts, smacking his staff against the tabletop. One of his makeshift paperweights, a beaker full of some hissing blue fire, wobbles worryingly. “Sora, when was the last time you talked to Aqua or Terra? And Terra! Have you said anything to anyone since you got your body back?”

Terra, the eyes of the room now upon him, shrugs. “Hasn’t been much to say,” he says, when it becomes apparent that some reply is expected. Aqua purses her lips. Donald starts stamping a foot.

“Wrong!” he says, “You’re the saviors of the world. And the King thinks you should get along better. Suck it up.”

He stares down each of them in turn as he says it, lingering on Sora, which is definitely unfair. Riku makes some comment under his breath that has Kairi laughing meanly into her palm, but it seems to Sora to be the last gasp of resistance from a beaten crowd. Terra and Aqua exchange resigned glances. Ven begins to gravitate towards them, face whitening just a shade as he starts to realize that separation and team-building and bonding are finally upon them. Kairi clamps her phone between her teeth as she does up her hair, Riku holding open his pockets so she can start a tally of his potion supply. Donald, Sora is sure, really shouldn’t look so proud of himself.

“So, who are we actually looking for again?” Sora asks as Kairi steps around and starts rifling through his pants pockets. She keeps a count under her breath, softly checking off every hi-potion and AP boost she finds stuffed in with his phone in the lining of his jacket. It’s a familiar sensation, by now.

“The little time-traveling Xehanort!” Goofy says, and Riku groans like he’s dying.

“He was really, really annoying,” Sora explains when a series of eyebrows raise in his Riku-translating direction. Kairi takes a moment to palm his ass as she replaces his wallet in his back pocket, which is another familiar and also super duper embarrassing sensation.

“He was a piece of shit!” Riku shouts, like the guttural throat-noises weren’t enough to prove his point. “Is he actually here? I’m gonna kill him if he’s actually here.”

“Well, the King thinks he might be here,” Goofy offers as Riku starts to look mutinous. “He says this world is— what was it he said again, Donald?”

“Poised on the edge between darkness and light!”

“Right, he said it’s posed on the hedge, which is why all that important stuff keeps happening here. Or, I think that’s why.”

“That’s probably why,” Kairi says, like she has any sort of expert knowledge on the subject. Goofy beams.

Aqua runs a hand over her mouth. “So Master Xehanort probably has an interest in tipping it towards the darkness.” The honorific gives Sora a start, though no one else seems to notice.

“Or something like that,” Donald says, waving a dismissive hand. “The point is, you look for the little time-travelling Xehanort, you send up a flare if you find him, and if you see a flare, you run as fast as you can without breaking down any walls.”

The last bit is aimed at Terra, who looks decidedly unapologetic, and Sora, who is pretty sure he’s never broken down a wall that a heartless hadn’t barged through first. Not that there haven’t been a lot of broken walls.

“And the teams?” Sora asks, cracking as many knuckles as he can manage. It always makes Goofy wince, but really Sora’s just ready to go. The room’s getting stuffy and he can feel the cool weight of the keyblade in the back of his mind.

“Here, here, I’ve got a list,” says Donald, sifting through papers. He finds a sheet bearing the King’s seal under the far corner of the map, and raises it triumphant.

“Sora! You’re going with Terra.”

Sora looks eagerly to his newest partner, who continues to solemnly avoid his gaze.

“Riku, you’re going with Ventus.”

Ventus attempts the same maneuver as Sora. Riku stares fixedly at the back of Kairi’s neck and full-body glowers.

Donald snaps the paper with as much melodrama as he can manage and looks to Kairi, who meets his eye evenly. The mess of the table obscures their figures, but Sora thinks she’s got her hand on Riku’s wrist.

“And finally,” Donald says, obviously drunk with power, “Kairi will be with—“

There are worse places to wander aimlessly in hopes of friendship than Radiant Gardens, Kairi decides. The city’s got flowers and fountains and always, out of the corner of her eye, the white castle spires soaring above, marking the center of the terrifying knot of an urban geography in which she and Aqua have gotten lost twice already.

As she understands it, the city’s been broken down to component parts more than once in the past decade or so, always rebuilt on some memory of the place that never quite matches the fact, which doesn't help with the street map thing. Her own memory of the Gardens is muddled at best, glazed over by a magic that no one's yet been able to explain to her, but, surprisingly, Aqua's presence seems to help. Walking side by side with the woman, her long skirts brushing occasionally against Kairi's thigh as they turn a corner, images return to Kairi, of flowers and her grandmother and Aqua herself, crouching and smiling.

It's not much, but it's more than Destiny Islands ever gave her.

"Do you remember when we met here before?" Aqua asks, oblivious (Kairi hopes) to Kairi's own thoughts. She asks it almost absently, still taking in the city and the sunshine, pouring in over the low roofs, with a hungry eye. Kairi suspects ten years in the Realm of Darkness can leave one a bit desperate for a change in scenery.

"Yeah, almost," Kairi says, her own gaze eating up the sheer sprawl of the city, stupefying compared to the Islands' isolated towns. "I don't remember anything before the Islands too well, but I'm pretty sure I remember meeting you. I think I gave you flowers?"

Aqua laughs, a bright note. "You did! It was very sweet. It made wish I could stay longer to talk with you and your grandmother, but, well, everything was a bit of a shambles at that point."

Kairi nods. She read the King’s letter, same as the boys, but still, what happened to Aqua and her friends seems too awful to really grasp, even by her own heavily weighted standards.

"Everything's different since then, though," Aqua continues, pointing to a fountain court they're approaching. "I could have sworn Merlin's house used to be just across the street there, but of course we're half the city away, now. Amazing how things can change."

She laughs a bit more, almost in relief, and Kairi finds herself smiling. Aqua always seems, among Eraqus' three former apprentices, to be the most on-edge, like she can't quite trust herself to slow down, to let anyone turn a corner out of her sight lest the unthinkable happen yet again. But here, strolling through the fountain spray with their keyblades over their shoulders, chatting about changes in scenery and neighborhoods, Kairi can feel Aqua relax a bare, unexpected inch. Perhaps even less expected, she finds herself doing the same. Aqua is observant and kind, listening with a kind of intensity to Kairi's chatter that isn't worrying, like Riku's can sometimes be, but merely gratifying, like Aqua's genuinely interested in whatever it is that Kairi has to say.

Kairi loves Sora and Riku so much that it sometimes makes her breath go shaky, but living a life in which only two people total know who you are, and who you've been, and what you can do leaves her beyond exhaustion more often than not. Aqua makes a weak joke about a sign in a nearby window, laughing mostly at herself, and Kairi beams.

That's when the Heartless appear, and Aqua throws Kairi behind her like she’s a child following a toy into the street.

Kairi gasps for breath, chest spasming around the point where Aqua’s palm met her sternum, ribs screaming where she smashed into the cobblestones. Too far ahead of her, Aqua is dancing between enemies, dark forms dissolving whenever they meet her bright whirl of her keyblade.

Kairi inhales once, twice, wills her diaphragm into submission, and surges forward.

There’s a brief moment of furious motion, where Kairi’s keyblade catches against a circling Armored Knight, her following shot of light magic blasting it to pixels, and then Aqua’s in front of her again, a hand on her bicep, shoving her out of the fight.

“Stay back!” she shouts, and Kairi’s mind blanks in shock. Disbelieving, she starts forward again, keyblade held low and ready, and Aqua hardly even turns. She shoots a hand behind her, fending off another swarm of Knights, and Kairi stops cold, blocked by a barrier wall in every direction. She’s forced to watch, shock creeping into rage, as Aqua dispatches heartless after heartless, leaping over blades as easy as breathing. Destiny’s Embrace threatens to vanish from Kairi's hand she stands so still, but she keeps it present in her grip with not much more than righteous, simmering fury.

Aqua dispatches the last heartless, crouches a moment, then stands and turns to face Kairi with a tired smile. The city seems to come into focus again around her, streets and buildings reorienting themselves in the absence of a fight.

“That was close, huh!” Aqua says warmly as she steps closer, dismissing the barrier spell with a wave of her hand. She smiles as she does it, and the motion is easy, almost unhurried.

Kairi doesn’t move or speak, only stares at Aqua with still eyes. She can’t seem to feel her extremities.

“Sorry for pushing you back so hard,” Aqua continues, apparently oblivious to the way Kairi’s get her entire lower lip between her teeth to keep from shouting, “I just didn’t want you to get hurt.”

It’s that last comment, that Aqua didn’t want her to get hurt, didn’t want her to get hurt, didn’t want her in the fight or on the gummi ship or anywhere else except the Islands because what if she got HURT?  that keeps Kairi from saying anything when the last Knights spawn behind Aqua’s back. She lets them get within slashing distance, even, before she pushes a still-beaming Aqua aside, raises her hand, and shoots them down one-two-three with magic streaming from her fist.

The first one’s sword is maybe six inches from Aqua’s neck when it bursts into a cloud of smoke.

Aqua, stumbling back, looks between the last black wisps and Kairi’s stony expression. The courtyard is quiet except for the burble of the fountain and a few birds high away in the distance, and the woman heaves a single, sharp breath before seeming to remember herself. Kairi shakes the last of her power from her fingertips and snaps her keyblade back up across her shoulder as Aqua reassembles her skirts, and neither looks away from the other’s face.

Finally, Aqua opens her mouth to say something. Kairi watches steadily, knuckles whitening at the side of her neck, but whatever it is Aqua’s got to say, it dies in her throat. Kairi turns away with a twitch of her mouth.

“We should move on,” she says. Aqua doesn’t protest.

Riku has, by this point in his life, come to terms with the fact that he’s a pretty awkward person. That he spent his formative years doing preternaturally stupid shit in either complete isolation or surrounded by jerks is his usual argument whenever Kairi teases him for saying “you too” and immediately blushing after a waiter tells him to enjoy his meal, or when Sora laughs at him for shouting “sorry!” in the middle of battle. It’s just a thing, he’ll say, playing up his scowl to make them laugh. He is aware of his interpersonal failings, thank you guys very much.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, being aware of his own failings does not actually make them any less of a goddamn problem.

Ventus pauses mid-sentence to suck in a breath and Riku reflects that yes, it has indeed been about three-quarters of a mile and more or less 15 minutes of nervous, incessant chatter and Riku still hasn't said a word, has he.

Lungs refilled, Ventus keeps talking.

“—I mean, he’s obviously the same person, he just says stuff sometimes that sounds a whole lot like Master Eraqus— he was our mentor, but I already mentioned that maybe? Or, well, he was one of our mentors, but then Terra kinda killed him, anyways Aqua gives him funny looks sometimes but I don’t know, I think she’s overreacting, because like she’s been gone this entire time and I’ve basically been gone this entire time but Terra hasn’t, not really, he was still himself underneath, so of course he’s a little different than we remember, if we even remember him right in the first place—“

Riku pauses at another door into the castle cellars, hefts his keyblade, and kicks the door in. No one in a long black coat jumps out screaming and waving their hands. Ventus’ babble flows forth.

“—because, like, sometimes I can’t tell if I’m remembering something, or if I’m remembering something that Sora remembered, or is remembering right now, because that may be happening sometimes, too? Anyways it gets all jumbled together and I can’t always tell if we’re in Radiant Garden or Hollow Bastion, ha, it gets really mixed up, especially when I start remembering the stuff about you and—“

That stops Riku.

“You remember stuff about me?” he asks, twisting to face Ventus. The kid falls back a step, mouth hanging open. He obviously stopped anticipating interruptions after the first ten minutes of unending silence.

“I mean, a little?” Ventus replies, voice rising into not-quite-a-question. “I don’t remember stuff about you from before, obviously, you were like five when we all vanished, like, ha, I’m like ten years older than you when you think about it—“

A muscle works in Riku’s jaw. Ventus stammers towards his point.

“I— I remember what Sora remembers,” he says, arms snapping straight at his sides like he’s talking to his teacher. The gesture, like just about everything else that's happened this day, makes Riku vaguely uncomfortable. “Not all of it, and not very well, but… my heart was his heart. Some stuff stuck.”

Like Hollow Bastion, Riku thinks, and feels guilt stab between his ribs. And then he remembers what else between him and Sora (and Kairi) might have stuck in Sora’s heart, and immediately flushes to the tips of his ears.

“Do you remember…” he tries, voice strangled, and Ventus looks curious as Riku spirals deep into sudden, killing mortification. “Do you remember when he and I— and Kairi…at the Tower?”

Riku trails off, wide-eyed and desperate for this not to be happening as Ventus’ face goes from confused to thoughtful to, horrifyingly, triumphant.

“Oh, yeah! When the three of you kiss—“

Ventus cuts off, maybe because Riku wants to sink into the depths of the earth, maybe because Riku tends to looks really, really scary when he wants to sink into the depths of the earth. Maybe Ventus just hardcore fucking pities him.

“I mean,” he tries again, backpedaling furiously, “It’s all pretty hazy, you know, memories of the heart aren’t like memories of the mind, and then there’s a bunch of stuff that happened at the Tower over the years, so like—“

He keeps talking. Lying. Riku accepts these blatant falsehoods with as much grace as he can possibly muster, and stalks off without another word. Ventus hurries to keep up.

The two of them are, ostensibly, checking the center of town for that little shitkicker Xehanort. Most of what they have actually done is stomp around the castle grounds, checking all the back entrances Ventus can remember for heartless. Ventus can’t actually remember many back entrances as it turns out, and also frequently forgets that Riku cannot fly when he points out some new catacombs entrance that's two hundred feet away and across a moat. Riku makes do with some very precise double-jumping and ignores Ventus’ attempts at conversation with all the force he can muster.

“—last time I was here there was this really nice duck in a top hat—“

Oh thank god! He’s changed subjects!

“—and I gave them to Aqua and Terra because, like, who else was I gonna give them to, they’re my best friends in the world, though I guess we don’t make out as much as— oh shoot I didn’t mean to—“

Wow, look at the time! Must be getting to about that hour where Riku flings himself into the fucking sun!

There’s another door, around the curve of the castle foundations, and Riku lands in a puff of weeds in front of it as Ventus glides in behind him. The door’s heavier than most of the ones they’ve seen so far, with pipes emerging from the walls around it that remind Riku of the Great Hall in the old Hollow Bastion castle, back in Maleficent’s day. Ventus peers off down the hillside, within view of the city’s central square, and he’s still talking, of course, but Riku tunes him out with prejudice.

He taps curiously at one of the pipes with the tip of his keyblade, listening to the echo, then sizes up the door. He could just unlock it, of course, he’s got a giant key right here in his hand, but kicking things is just so cathartic, and Ventus still hasn’t stopped talking. Catharsis wins out in a landslide.

Riku puts his foot through the lock, blowing the door back on its hinges. Then he has just enough time to pause, make a face, and shout “Are you fucking kidding me?” because there indeed is the little shitkicker Xehanort, surrounded by a mess of wires and disembodied hearts, staring right back at him.

And then Riku sees the heartless, the dozens of heartless, a mass of Surveillance Bots lining up their shots, and he throws himself backwards, already twisting, already catching Ventus up against his chest, and summons darkness into a barrier-sphere around them. There’s blindness, then the shuddering, aching concussions of the blasts, then light returns in a rush as Riku’s concentration fails.

He spins in an instant, left arm thrown out to cover Ventus, but the little shitkicker Xehanort is already vanishing into a bloom of darkness. Maybe two-thirds of the Bots remain, the rest destroyed by the ricochet, and Riku snarls as he bombs them out, tossing as many Dark Firagas as he has energy to cast into their midst. Magic sheets off him like steam.

It’s over in a matter of seconds, and Riku stares darkly at the smoking remains of whatever it was the little shitkicker Xehanort was fucking with as he catches his breath. The contraption’s beyond his comprehension, even with all the time he spent loitering around Ansem the Wise’s makeshift laboratories, and he turns to Ventus with a question in his face.

But Ventus is frozen. He’s staring at Riku, staring at the darkness still rolling off Riku's skin, breath shallow and harsh through his mouth. He takes one step back, then another, gaze flickering up to Riku’s face then away, and Riku’s stomach bottoms out. The kid’s fear is mesmerizing, tastes like ashes in his mouth.

He remembers Hollow Bastion, is the first desperate thought, followed by He remembers the door on the Islands, He remembers Monstro, He remembers Neverland, He remembers Ansem, He remembers Ansem and then nothing very coherent happens at all.

“It’s not like that anymore,” he tries, stammering, fingers twitching mindlessly around the hilt of his keyblade. He should put his hands out, drop his weapon, roll over and bare his fucking neck if he has to, but nothing is moving, nothing is working. “Whatever you remember, it’s not like that anymore. It’s just magic. It’s not in me, not like Xehanort. Not like the vessels.”

It doesn’t help. His desperate, pleading bullshit doesn’t help. Ventus takes another step back, already rising up off the grass, unable to look at Riku now, and says something clipped and shaky about setting off the fireworks signal. He’s gone, soaring out over the central square, before Riku can even raise a hand.

Riku watches him go and curses, silently, to himself.

Sora doesn’t know what everyone was so worried about; this team-bonding thing is going great.

Sure, he reflects, as he vaults over a Full Body and launches it towards Terra’s waiting swing, he and his partner got off to a kind of rocky start. Turns out just talking at Terra in the hopes that conversation would naturally emerge resulted in a lot of monosyllabic grunting and the occasional dismissive shrug. Kind of like how talking to Riku used to go! But now Sora is wiser.

Now Sora knows that Terra, like himself and like all of his best friends, is a jock, and Sora knows how to bond with jocks.

“Eighteen!” he hollers as the Full Body busts apart, and Terra laughs.

“You can’t count that one!” Terra shouts as Sora bounces off a wall, angling for an unobservant Surveillance Bot. “You only lined up the shot!”

“Not my fault you’re not fast enough to get them yourself!” Sora shoots back, hammering the Bot into nonexistence. A lonely heart spirals into the clouds and Sora drops to the ground with a thump, beaming. Terra’s about two feet behind him, a circle of Knights clanking into place around them, and Sora summons Oathkeeper into his off hand with a grin when, behind him, Terra shouts, leaps, and slams into the cobblestones like a rockslide on legs.

Ghostly pillars of earth magic make smoke and pixels of every heartless on the block, and the shockwave takes care of the straggling rest.

“Thirty,” Terra says, straightening up. “Maybe thirty-one.”

Sora gapes, just for a moment, then gets to freaking out.

“That was amazing!” he shouts as Terra laughs, starting off down the street again. “I’ve never seen magic like that before, I don’t think even Donald can do that, how did you do that?”

He gestures with both keyblades as he talks, which, you know, he’s probably had smarter ideas, but Terra is only amused. “Aqua and Ven have always been faster than me, I had to make it up for it somehow. But how are you doing that? Wielding two keyblades at once?”

“Oh!” Sora says, pausing as they turn a corner. He looks between the Kingdom Key and Oathkeeper, then casts the latter back into whatever weird mental void it is where keyblades wait to be used. “I don’t really know, honestly. Riku and the King say it’s got something to do with Roxas, who, well, that’s a long story, but Roxas was able to do it himself, Riku says, so they’re not completely sure. I’ve never really thought about it too much,” he grins, rubbing his free hand through his hair. “It kinda just happens when I need it to.”

Terra looks bemused at this complete failure of an explanation, but only for a moment. Sora’s starting to think he’s actually a pretty nice guy underneath all the very serious seriousness. Well, he already knew Terra was a nice guy, Ven’s heart told him that much, but he might even actually be a fun guy.

Sora could always do with more fun.

“Well, you’re the first person I’ve ever seen do it,” Terra says, leading them down another sidestreet. Sora’s pretty sure, in an absent way, that it’s one they’ve been down maybe twice already, but Terra seems to like being in front, so Sora doesn’t say anything about it. “So if you ever figure out how to—“

Terra freezes, brow creasing, and looks up. Sora follows his stare and there, high above the center of the city, are fireworks. The windows around them burst with multicolored reflections.

“I can’t believe they actually—“ Terra starts, but now it’s time to fight and Sora’s brain steps into high gear.

“Can you fly?” he shouts as the fireworks boom again, farther away now but still loud enough to echo. Terra looks deeply confused.

“No, Ven flies, I run—“

Sora barely registers the reply. He can see the city laid out in his head, a better knowledge of the streets and alleys and weird little cul-de-sacs than he’s sure even Leon’s got, because who else spent so many weeks fighting their way through every borough? and he knows where they are. He knows where the fireworks are, and where they’re headed. And if Terra can’t fly, then—

“Roofs it is!” Sora yells over his own adrenaline, and grabs Terra by the elbow. It’s two sharp wall-bounces to get them up high enough, a glide to the nearest roof, and when Sora drops Terra to the shingles the man’s already clued in and off running.

“Don’t forget to save the architecture!” Terra shouts over the rush of their own speed, and Sora laughs as they leap a thoroughfare, roll, and surge to their feet on the other side.

It takes them hardly a minute to reach the city center. Turns out Terra really can run.

“There!” Sora calls, pointing with his keyblade as they come up on a plaza some half a mile from the castle’s central square. The fireworks are still blooming overhead, rattling the weathervane Sora’s pushing off from, and the street teems with heartless. Among the morass Sora can see all of their friends; Aqua and Kairi glowing with power, Ventus overhead picking off the fliers, Donald and Goofy barreling in from a side street, and Riku closing in on the little Xehanort at the center of it all, darkness shining from them both.

Sora doesn’t wait for Terra. He knows he’s right behind.

Terra’s shockwave clears a dozen Knights when they land, Sora’s Firaga taking out another ten. Oathkeeper snaps back into his hand as they split off and spin into the fight, Terra for Ventus, Sora for Kairi and Aqua.

“Sora!” Kairi shouts when she catches sight of him through a cloud of used-to-be-heartless. There’s a weird look on her face when Aqua bumps into her, knocking them both a step off balance, but then she’s back to shouting. “Sora, fastball special! Fastball special!”

Riku, fifty feet away, doing something complicated and hard-to-look-at that seems to be keeping the snarling young Xehanort from teleporting away, risks a glance over his shoulder.

“Fastball special?” he calls back, and Kairi grabs Sora by his back pockets.

“Fastball special!” she crows, and tosses Sora into the air. Sora’s got a half second to remember oh yeah, so THAT’S what she’s talking about, and then he twists, rolls, and her angled keyblade meets his, shooting him off into the crowd.

Sora sets Oathkeeper spinning around him as he flies, tunneling through heartless after heartless, and then there’s Riku’s keyblade against his, shunting him off in another direction, then a slingshot around the fountain, then his feet against brick, and then he’s shouting Terra’s name as he shoots forward, and Terra spins, smiles, and sends him soaring up into the air.

Sora gets a couple airborne Thundagas in, hangs in his apogee just long enough to high-five a laughing Ventus, and then Ven’s keyblade rockets him back to the ground, Aqua’s magnet magic pulling him in just before he crashes and slinging him back out to Kairi’s waiting baseball swing.

There’s thirty seconds more of screaming madness, a few finals ricochets and then Sora lands on his feet, skidding off the momentum, as the last of the heartless disappears with a smoky blast.

The plaza is clear. Sora allows himself a moment of sweet, sweet victory, and then runs for the rest of the shouting.

Riku and Aqua dance around young Xehanort, Riku dismissing teleport doors as soon as they're conjured, Aqua hemming the little jerk in with seeker mines. Terra and Kairi pick off heartless and, now, nobodies as they’re summoned, Ventus getting in shots at whoever he can, and as Sora runs up, Goofy and Donald slide into place beside him.

“We’re doing great!” Donald shouts, blasting back a couple Full Bodies.

“But we’re getting tired,” Goofy adds, and Sora sees that he’s right.

The young Xehanort is angrier now, more frenzied, and Aqua’s switched to the defensive in the twenty seconds Sora’s been looking away. She sticks close to Riku, the two of them trading off barriers as the young Xehanort starts pulling energy beams from the ground, subjecting them to blast after blast of black power.

Aqua falters a moment, face pained, and then Kairi is there, throwing up her own shields as Riku darts out from behind them, slashing through another dark portal.

“You need to get in there!” Terra shouts, shouldering off a Defender, and by the time the idea occurs to Sora, Ven is already swooping down, holding out his hand.

“Hold on!” he says as they clasp hands, and then Sora’s feet are off the ground, soaring over the blinding rings of light and dark that are all he can now see of the fight around young Xehanort.

There’s a half-second of stillness in the air, where Sora can see right down into the middle of it all, see Aqua take a hit to the ribs, see Riku twist, shouting, see Kairi’s shields shudder and crack, see Terra muscling through wave after wave of heartless, and where they did all come from? when they did all come back? and then he lets go.

Ven has already released him. He drops like a stone.

Sora pulls power into himself as he falls, drawing it up from Donald and Goofy and all of the rest of them, feels it burn in his veins, and he rears up, keyblades ghosting over his fingers. He must look like a meteor bearing down, trailing fire and music behind him. He feels like one, surely, like Final Form but more, and he knows when he hits the young Xehanort’s rapidly encroaching back, no one’s gonna be getting up for a while. Not Sora, not his friends, and certainly not the little jerk in the long black coat.

It’s a nice feeling. And then the young Xehanort looks up.

And he sees Sora.

And then, the thing that wasn’t meant to happen, he stops Sora’s fall. His hand closes around Sora’s throat.

Their faces are an inch apart. “Enough,” the young Xehanort snarls. And then…

And then everything goes black.

Kairi returns to consciousness with a gasp, heaving for breath.

It’s dark, and warm, and she’s wildly disoriented until she realizes it’s Riku overtop her, penning her in with his hands on either side of her head. He blocks out the sun.

“What—“ she gasps, struggling upright. Riku is hard to push away, his eyes screwed up tight and breath hissing between his teeth. “What happened, are, Jesus, are you okay?”

She puts a hand to his contorted face, and he shudders once, then blinks, then opens his eyes. They’re glassy with exhaustion, and Kairi puts another worried hand to the side of his neck.

“It’s fine,” he grits out, rolling up into a crouch. “I’m fine. The little fucker just… did something. Before he vanished.”

They pull each other up into nearly-standing positions, and, like he said, the little fucker is well and truly vanished. Kairi scans the courtyard, Riku’s breathing steadying out beside her, and sees nothing beyond their own team helping each other up, dusting each other off. A final Shadow disappears down a sidestreet, but no one seems to feel much like going after it.

“What did he do?” she asks Riku, leading him by the hand back towards the fountain. Whatever blast it was that marked the little Xehanort’s departure, it tossed them all pretty far back. The fountain has seen better days, too.

“Something dark,” Riku says, then huffs ruefully at himself. “Obviously. It felt terrible, like being in the Realm of Darkness again. Like it was in my head.”

“And I didn’t feel a thing, except for the blast,” Kairi says softly, threading her fingers through his. He squeezes her hand. “Which must mean—“

“It was the darkness in our hearts,” Aqua concludes, limping towards them. She’s got one arm around Goofy’s shoulders, the other pressed tight to her side. She winces every time her feet hit the ground. “He tried to make it overwhelm us.”

Riku nods. He and Aqua have the same distracted look in their eyes, remembering something from the Darkness that Kairi is far from privy to. “Maybe not for very long, maybe only to distract us, but yeah. That’s what it felt like.”

“Guess he didn’t expect us to be such good-hearted people,” Ventus adds, joining the group. Riku and Aqua share quiet grimaces, but keep silent. Ventus, like Donald and Goofy, and, Kairi assumes, like her own self, doesn’t look particularly worse for wear. Shaky but not rattled, though when the kid twists to look over his shoulder, his hands curl into anxious fists. Aqua follows his gaze and sucks in a heavy breath.

Terra, Kairi sees, is still crouched on the ground, hunched over his keyblade. She and Riku linger behind as Aqua and Ventus step towards him, slow with his caution and her pain. Ventus puts a hand on his friend’s shoulder, leaning their heads together, and Kairi looks away. She doesn’t want to hear whatever it is they’re saying to each other.

“We should head back soon,” she says, mostly to Riku’s torso. He’s curved in towards her, avoiding the way Aqua’s expression shifts as she watches Terra get one leg under him, then the next. “We have to tell the King.”

Riku nods tightly. “We didn’t think this could happen. The King needs to know.”

Terra’s standing properly now, though he’s still got both hands wrapped tight around his keyblade. He shakes his head every few seconds, like he’s trying to scare away a fly.

Riku squeezes her hand then pulls away, shading his eyes from the sun as he looks up. “Did you see where Sora got to?” he asks, scanning the rooftops. “He was right at the center of it, he could be halfway across the city by now.”

Aqua’s saying something now, hand against Terra’s chest, face tight with pain and maybe something else, but Terra is shaking her off. Ventus looks worriedly between them.

Kairi shakes her head. “You woke up before me, I think he—“

She cuts off with a snap. Riku looks at her curiously.

There’s a cool feeling at the back of her legs, like a cloud made solid, crouched and twitching in her own shadow. It ghosts against her, human-shaped but not, familiar, familiar, forever too familiar, and she squeezes her eyes shut. Please, she thinks, please, god, no.

Riku shifts at her side, leaning back, and then his voice, almost too quiet to hear. “Oh, god.”

Ventus shouts, and Kairi opens her eyes.

Sora, Sora’s heartless, Sora, emerges from behind Riku and Kairi’s conjoined shadows, dancing from foot to foot in its weird animal hunch. Aqua claps a hand to her mouth. Terra straightens with a snap, expression black. Donald and Goofy exchange looks, and Riku whispers, stunned, “Those two knew. They knew about this.”

“And we didn’t,” Kairi says softly, finishing the thought. She steps around in front of the heartless-Sora, knowing something is going to happen now, and Riku joins her. Their keyblades are back in their hands. She doesn’t know if that was a conscious decision.

“What is that?”  Terra growls, stalking forwards. Ventus flutters in his wake, and Aqua, still leaning on Goofy, watches Terra with hard eyes. She’s got her keyblade out, too. Blood stains her palm.

The heartless-Sora peeks around Kairi’s legs again, and she puts a hand out to stop it. Its (his?) hair feels like heavy fog between her fingers. “This is Sora,” she tells Terra, voice more even than she is. “I believe you two have met.”

“He’s okay!” Donald says, stepping between the two groups. “This used to happen sometimes, and normally it wears off once the fight is over, but I’m sure he’s okay! Really!”

“Really?” Terra spits back. There’s something wrong with how he’s moving, like he’s fighting for control of his own limbs. Kairi watches his eyes. “This is okay? It’s a heartless!”

“It’s Sora,” Riku snarls, sword arm rising into a fight stance. “The little Xehanort was messing with our hearts. You felt it. Hurt, right?” He nods his head towards Sora, who seems unwillingly to move away from Kairi’s hand, though he still dances in place like any other Shadow. “It hurt him, too. It’ll wear off.”

Terra’s expression grows, if anything, more terrible. There’s a wind blowing through the city now, picking everyone’s hair into sharp strands.

“So he’s got enough darkness in him to turn into a heartless at the drop of a hat, and you didn’t think to tell us that?” Terra shouts, keyblade carving sparks from the paving stones as he gestures. “He’s a liability! He’s a goddamn danger!”

“Take one more fucking step,” Riku hisses, just loud enough for Kairi to hear, but Aqua’s already shouting.

“Terra, listen to yourself!” she shouts, pushing away from Goofy to stumble upright. Blood’s running freely down her thigh now, but she ignores it. “Is this you talking or Master Eraqus? Is this Xehanort talking?”

Terra spins on her, face thunderous, but Aqua isn’t done.

“Not only is Sora our ally, but he saved us. He saved all of us! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Keeping us safe from the darkness,” Terra replies, voice low with fury. “Like you wish you’d done.”

Aqua recoils, face ashen, and Terra starts forward again. Kairi’s hand clenches in Sora’s cloud of hair as Riku raises his off hand, magic curling around his knuckles. His face is still as stone.

Halfway across the square, Ventus makes an aborted movement towards his friends, obviously torn, unable to look in Sora’s direction again, but Terra merely casts a shield behind him.

“Stay back, Ven,” Terra says, shooting a glance over his shoulder, and that’s when Riku darts forward, low and fast, and rams the Way To Dawn into Terra’s ribs.

“You’re not fucking touching him,” Riku says, but Terra’s already up again, eyes shining with some unfamiliar power, and Riku leaps back.

Aqua yells as they clash again, Riku losing ground as Terra bears down, and they can all see how Riku shakes, how whatever it is that young Xehanort did hit Terra harder but left Riku weaker. Terra rears back to hit again and Aqua steps in, catching his strike with two hands on her keyblade, screaming through the pain.

“Get back, Terra, I swear to god,” she grits out as he bears down. “You’re not thinking straight.”

Terra only grimaces and shoves forward, forcing her down with a shout. He spins for Riku, advancing towards him and Kairi and Sora behind them both, jittery and hollow.

Riku and Kairi raise their keyblades, exchanging grim glances. Terra advances at a walk, almost smiling, because he knows what they all know. He’s the strongest person left on the field. His image distorts in Kairi’s vision, flickers in and out of more than one face, more than one keyblade. Her knuckles go white around the hilt of her weapon.

“We can’t beat him,” Kairi says, voice soft. Terra’s thirty feet away.

“Maybe we just kill him,” Riku replies, and doesn’t look at her. She can see him set his jaw.

“Maybe,” she whispers, Terra ten feet away, keyblade rising, and then Ventus shoots down, arms wide, and catches Terra around the neck.

“Get out of here!” he shouts as Terra roars, voice muffled by the body scrambling against his chest. “Run!”

“Fuck—“ Riku starts, eyes wide as Kairi’s, but then Aqua’s up again, trailing blood behind her, tackling Terra around the waist.

“Go now!” she screams, and Kairi grabs Riku’s hand.

“Where,” she says, willing him to have an answer, staring into his wide, wide eyes.

He stammers a moment, frozen, and her hand tightens around his. The other clasps around the back of Sora’s black neck, like trying to grab a handful of icewater.

“Where,” she says again, Donald shouting as Goofy thrusts them into the fight, and Riku says, “Safety.”

Aqua screams again, voice like stones and glass.

“Safety,” his eyes locked onto hers, and Kairi rips him and Sora and herself right out of the world.

Riku draws his knees up to his chest.

“In Hollow Bastion, when he was a heartless the first time,” he says, far beyond the ability to feel shame at his own part in that, “How did you turn him back?”

Kairi sits a moment, exhausted and silent, then says, “It wasn’t the same. It’s not like that this time. Donald says it should wear off.”

“I know, but how did you do it?”

Kairi looks up at him, finally meets his thousand-yard stare with her own. She’s still got one hand curled in heartless-Sora’s wispy mass of hair.

“I held him,” she says, and reaches out her hand.

Sora comes back to himself in a world of white.

There’s a moment of familiar disorientation, and then his memory comes back, the twisted, mottled antiform memory first, and then everything before that, too, all the sounds and colors and aches in his muscles returning at once.

He sits up. Riku and Kairi sit across from him, his head on her shoulder, their hands knotted together. Kairi watches him steadily. Riku’s eyes are closed. The warm, persistent light of whatever bright bubble it is that they’re sitting in picks out every exhausted line on their faces.

“Xehanort?” he asks, when no one says anything. His perception in antiform is limited, his memory of things beyond his direct line of sight even worse, but he knows what happened to Xehanort. He just can’t think of anything else to say.

“Gone,” Riku replies, without opening his eyes. Kairi blinks slowly, like she’s having trouble staying awake. The boundless white walls of their wherever-they-are flicker for a moment, a hint of stars and galaxies peeking through.

“And Terra?” Sora tries again, when no other reply seems forthcoming. He rubs a thumb into the meat of his palm, nervous in Riku and Kairi’s unfamiliar silence.

Kairi just shrugs though, patting Riku’s forehead when he mumbles at the disturbance.

“He thought you were a heartless and wanted to kill you. I magic’d the three of us somewhere safe while Aqua and Ventus had him distracted.”

“Oh,” Sora says, then, “What do you mean somewhere safe? Where are we?”

Riku finally opens an eye at that, pulling his head from Kairi’s shoulder. “Yeah, good question, actually.”

Kairi shrugs again, though she smiles, too, like she’s maybe just a little bit proud of herself. “It’s a space between the worlds. I remembered it from just before I washed up on Islands. When you need them to be there, they’re there.”

“Kinda like the message in a bottle you sent?” Sora asks, impressed.

“Yup,” she nods. “Little pockets of light. I can keep this one going for a little while longer, but then we’ll need to move on.”

Sora frowns. Something about Kairi’s choice of words is setting off warning bells. “You mean we’ll need to go back, right? To Radiant Garden?”

Kairi glances at Riku’s scowl, and ah, that’s what the warning bells were about.

“We’re not going back to Radiant Garden,” Riku says, tone brooking no argument.

Kairi sighs and rubs at her forehead. Sora sits up straighter, frown deepening.

“What do you mean we’re not going back? All our friends are there!”

“They are not our friends,” Riku bites out. “Not when they try and kill you for no good goddamn reason.”

There’s an obvious rebuttal there, but Sora swallows it down. “Terra wasn’t thinking straight,” he says instead, hands clenching into fists. “We were getting along fine before—that was Xehanort’s magic talking, not him!”

Riku scoffs, mouth an ugly snarl. “Yeah, right. Like we’re gonna go back and he’ll just have forgotten that he’s been possessed by Xehanort for ten years? And that he’s a crazy absolutist? And that you just sometimes turn into a heartless?”

“Which we’re gonna talk about later,” Kairi cuts in, but Sora rolls his eyes.

“It’s not a thing, guys! It’s fine, okay, we’re still discussing the bit where we’re ditching all our allies, right? That’s still going on?”

“Damn straight it is,” Riku spits back. He's standing now and Sora clambers up to meet him, their faces inches apart. Riku stares down at him like he’s gonna murder someone soon, and he’s not too picky about whom.

"You're crazy!" Sora says, voice rising, gesturing broadly. "We need them, we can't just run off without them!"

“I’ll leave all of them behind before I left anyone else lay a finger on you.”

“Oh, that’s funny!” Sora laughs without smiling, angrier than he’s felt since the last time he and Riku were staring murder at each other, when there was three hundred feet of the Grand Hall and Kairi’s motionless body between them. “Because that’s just your favorite thing in the world, isn’t it? Forget whoever might get hurt, because you’ve got another chance to run away!”

Total silence follows this remark, and then Kairi gasps. By the time Sora realizes what it is he’s just said, Riku’s face is already set.

“No,” Riku says quietly. “Not without you two. Never again.”

Fuck, Sora thinks, which he doesn’t think often, and all the anger drains out of him. Riku’s absolutely expressionless, and hideous guilt rushes to fill the anger’s place.

“Oh, hell, Riku, I’m so—“

“Save it,” Riku snaps, turning away as soon as Sora starts speaking. “We don’t have time for this. Kairi?”

Kairi’s still seated, eyes flickering between the two of them, and Sora suddenly realizes how tired she looks. More tired than Riku, even, sweating and pale in the placid warmth of the bubble she's pouring herself into. The walls of the world dim again, the universe faintly visible beyond its magic, and they don’t regain their brightness.

“Ten minutes, maybe,” she says, a nebula swirling in a pool of slow-growing darkness over her shoulder. Sora continues to feel guilty as hell.

“We can’t—“ he tries again, staring fixedly at the floor, “We can’t leave them behind, Riku. We can’t. The prophecy said seven lights and thirteen darknesses. We can’t do this without them.”

Riku looks ready to argue this idea into the goddamn dirt, but Kairi puts a hand up. “Riku,” she sighs, finally hauling herself to her feet, “he’s got a point.”

Riku looks betrayed. Sora, noticing the steely look in Kairi’s eye, doesn’t feel like he should count this as a victory just yet.

“As far as we can tell, the prophecy is the only clue we’ve got when it comes to beating Xehanort. If it says we need seven heroes of light, then, well—“

She meets Riku’s eye. A muscle pulses in his jaw, and she sighs.

“Then we’ll go back to Radiant Garden and be seven heroes of light, however much we may hate each other. We will,” she adds sternly when Riku looks like he’s about to protest. She puts a hand to his arm and Sora can tell he only barely keeps from shrugging her off.

And then she turns to Sora, and Sora feels the weight of the exhaustion pooling in her bones. It hurts.

“But,” she says, and Sora’s trapped by her soft, certain tone. “Sora, these people aren’t our friends. Aqua thinks we’re children. Ventus is terrified of us. Terra very much wanted to kill you. So when we go back—“

Riku visibly tenses.

“When we go back,” Kairi continues, unperturbed, “If Terra, if any of them so much as look at you the wrong way… Sora, I’ll kill them myself.”

Riku raises an eyebrow. Sora’s face must show his own shock, because Kairi nods and repeats herself. Great swirls of night bloom in the walls of their inbetween-place. “I mean it. If Terra doesn’t care about the prophecy, then neither do I. Neither does Riku. If they come after you again, then we hurt whoever we have to and we leave, prophecy be damned.”

The light is dim now, getting dimmer, and Kairi looks suddenly grim, the same way Riku looks grim, like she finally understands what she’s promising in Sora’s name.

Sora understands, too, and balks.

“You guys can’t be serious,” he says, looking between them in the closest thing he’s ever felt to horror in their presence.

“I’m sorry, Sora,” Kairi says, sounding like she really means it. It doesn’t help at all. “I really am. But this one isn’t up for debate. I can promise to give Aqua and Terra and Ventus another chance, but I can’t promise not to protect you.”

“We can’t choose them over you,” Riku adds quietly.

Sora swallows. It’s all quieter now, the hum of the bubble’s magic only audible when it’s failing, now that Kairi’s power is starting to run dry, now that everyone’s lowered their voice.

“We don’t hurt people…” he says, little more than a whisper, the last defense he’s got but the only one that's never failed.

Riku winces. Kairi sways lightly, running on fumes.

“Sometimes we do,” she says, and finally, finally looks away.

Sora can’t seem to look at them either, his best friends in the world, and he watches something small and bright, maybe a gummi ship, maybe a comet, pass far beneath them. The stars are clearer than ever. There's something stuck in his throat.

“We’ll… we’ll go back to Radiant Garden,” he says, at length, once it becomes clear that his is the response they’re waiting for. That his is the life that matters more than anyone else’s. “We’ll go back, and we’ll make friends, and we’ll save the world.”

He says the last part with conviction, like he can make it true through belief alone. It’s worked in the past. Kairi only bites her lower lip between her teeth.

“And if something happens… if something goes wrong, then we leave. We don’t hurt anyone, we just leave.”

Sora looks up, meeting their eyes, pleading with them. He doesn’t know what else to do. Riku inhales and wraps his arm around Kairi’s waist.

“We’ll try,” Riku says. “I promise, we’ll try.”

Kairi blinks tiredly and nods. Her head lolls a bit against Riku’s chest. The distant glimmer of the universe grows clearer.

Sora’s hands flex unconsciously at his sides, trying one last time to read into Riku and Kairi’s expressions, to know what it is they’re thinking, to know what he has to say to make this stop happening, but there’s nothing. For the first time in a long time, there’s nothing, and Sora’s eyes prickle with tears.

The light’s almost gone. Riku and Kairi may not even see.

“I don’t like this,” he says, and he can feel Riku and Kairi relax as they realize he’s giving in. He hates it, he hates it, he hates it. “They’re our friends. We should trust them.”

“They don’t trust us,” Riku replies, not with rancor, maybe pleading a bit himself.

“But it’s wrong!” Sora suddenly gasps, vision going watery. “This is— this is wrong…”

He trails off, sniffling, and Kairi makes a pained noise. It’s hard to see her face now, just the last glimmers of light in her eyes, trailing down her cheeks.

“Sora, do you remember how all this started?” she says, voice traitorously thick. There’s a rustling noise as Riku’s arm tightens around her. “It was just the three of us, across all the worlds. Maybe it’s always been just the three of us. Maybe—maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. In the end. Me and you and Riku... and no one else.”

Sora’s shoulders hitch. He’s never really been ashamed of crying before, not in front of Riku and Kairi, but he feels it now, he feels everything now, disappointment and confusion and paralysis all burning in his throat. The other two lean towards him, an unconscious reflex, and Sora feels their warmth on either side. He wishes they were touching him. He wishes they weren't.

“I don’t like it,” he says, all he can say, and Riku’s arm comes up around his shoulder, too.

“I'm sorry,” says Kairi. "I know."

She holds out her hand.

The light goes out.