Kingdom Hearts - Resuming, Returning 10
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts is the property of Disney and Square Enix. No profit is being made from this work.
Destiny Trio; those dark secrets beneath the Islands' light just keep coming.
Riku ate breakfast with his parents the next morning, so he met up with Kairi on the way to school instead of waiting down the bend from her house like usual.
"Hey," she said with a smile, swinging her bag at her side.
"Hey," Riku replied, falling into step beside her. "Can I come over today?"
"Of course," Kairi said, raising an eyebrow. "Why're you asking?"
"I want to look up something in the library," Riku answered. "Is your dad going to kick me out?"
"Oh," she replied. "No. I mean, he can't, it's the island's library. You should be fine." She tilted her head to look at him. "What're you looking for?"
"I wanted to go through some of the histories," Riku replied, trying not to sound evasive. "I wanted to look up something my parents mentioned."
Kairi continued to give him a curious look, and Riku figured he should have invented a better story last night. But he didn't want to lie, not outright. So he'd just...hoped that it wouldn't come up.
Which had been a pretty moronic plan. Great, he was channeling Sora.
"Wait up!"
Riku and Kairi turned around, and watched Sora struggle through the rest of the bushes to reach them.
"Don't you ever take the path?" Kairi called. "Your uniform's gonna get torn up."
"Takes too long," Sora replied, falling into step beside them.
"Why don't you jump off the boat and swim back when you start to run late?" Riku asked. "Then you might be on time."
Sora eyed him, trying to figure out if he was serious. Kairi snorted.
"Hey," someone called from ahead. "Nice timing."
"Hey, Tidus!" Sora greeted. "What's up?"
Tidus waited until they'd caught up to him, and then started walking alongside Riku. "Can you ask your dad to come over this afternoon? We've finally got the money together, so we want him to start planning out the addition as soon as possible."
"Sure," Riku agreed, not knowing what he was talking about.
"What're you building?" Sora asked curiously, folding his arms behind his head.
"The downstairs bed and bath for Mom," Tidus replied.
"Why?"
Tidus looked at him strangely, and then glanced at Kairi. "You didn't mention it?"
She didn't reply.
Tidus shrugged. "Mom's legs got injured in that big storm a couple years ago. The doctors said she's never gonna be able to get up the stairs anymore, so she needs a room on the ground floor. That's why Dad's been on the mainland for so long," he explained. "He's been teaching off-season so we could get it built."
Sora's arms dropped to his sides. "...Oh."
"Whatever," Tidus muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Like it's really hard for him to spend all his time being praised by his fans."
Riku looked over his shoulder at Kairi; but she stared straight ahead.
"I'll tell Dad as soon as I get home," Riku said a moment later.
Tidus grinned. "Thanks a lot," he replied. "This is really gonna help."
Riku made a wordless noise, and Kairi tucked her hair behind her ear.
"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked a few minutes later, when Tidus had run ahead to catch up to Selphie.
"I didn't think it . . . you needed to know," she replied.
"That's not for you to decide," Riku said. "What else have you been hiding?"
"Don't say it like that," Sora told him, and then looked at her. "...We've been lied to a lot. By people that meant well, sometimes, but...." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I want to know the truth."
"...Sorry," Kairi said, quietly. "I thought I was protecting you."
Riku exhaled.
"Would you want us to do that for you?" he asked.
"No," Kairi said decisively. "I don't need to be protected any more."
"Okay, then."
She nodded.
Sora fidgeted with his bag, and then slung it over his shoulder. Kairi twisted the handle of hers; Riku slid a hand into his pocket, and looked at Sora.
"Who meant well by lying?" he asked.
"The king and you," Sora said, low.
Riku pulled his hand free--but before he could reply, the school bell rang, and they had to run for the gates.
Riku didn't make it to Kairi's house that afternoon, because he went with his father to Tidus's house to look at the grounds and draw up a preliminary blueprint for the addition. He didn't speak much with Tidus's mother; she remained sitting in the living room throughout events, a blanket over her legs. Tidus took charge of the plan-making. Jecht was still out of town.
But he went over after dinner.
It was kind of nice of him, in a way; at least no one had to deal with the ensuing fallout on an empty stomach.
Kind of borked his plans to go over to Sora's after that and talk about what he'd said, though, so that became a conversation for another day.
***
"Hey," Riku called, from outside her window.
Kairi, who was getting inured to her boyfriends' habit of showing up on the roof instead of the porch, pushed away from her desk and said "Hey."
"I'm sorry," Riku continued, climbing in through the window. "Sora was right."
Kairi half-smiled. "So were you, you know."
Riku made a face and leaned against the desk. "I could have phrased it better."
She shrugged a shoulder and interlaced her fingers. ". . . It just bugs me, that I'm not up to you guys' level yet. I thought...." She glanced out the window, though the ocean--and therefore the play island--wasn't visible in this direction. "...I thought I was at least doing something."
Riku slumped further against the desk and slid his hand into his pocket. "We've got two years training on you," he reminded. "And more teachers."
"It's still frustrating."
"...I know," Riku agreed, and avoided looking at the hand he used to use to summon dark corridors.
"You wanted into the library?" Kairi asked, a couple moments later.
"Yeah," Riku agreed. "It probably won't take long."
"Okay." Kairi left her math homework on the desk and stood.
She showed him where the histories and genealogy tables were, and then went back upstairs to grab her homework. Kairi figured that finishing it in the library would add some extra respectability to Riku's presence, so her dad hopefully wouldn't skulk around the hall once he found out he was there, waiting for an excuse to throw him out.
Riku was buried in a set of books, flipping through some and double-checking in others, so Kairi set up her homework on the coffee table and settled down on the couch.
Then she stared at the equations for a few minutes, realized that homework was incredibly boring in comparison to training, wondered--not for the first time--how the guys were surviving their return to and resumption of island life as well as they were, and then went to the kitchen to make some sweet tea. Maybe she could bribe her dad into staying in his office; and at the least, it'd wake her up enough to finish up the assignment.
She was still waiting for the kettle to boil when she heard the thump from the library. Kairi glanced over her shoulder, wondering if Riku had dropped a book. She'd have to blackmail him and claim she'd tell Sora he wasn't as graceful as they thought if he didn't give her...hm, maybe a set amount of kisses. Twenty?
Seems kinda low, Kairi thought; and then she felt a chill run down her spine.
Darkness was here.
Kairi just barely managed to keep from summoning her keyblade. She twisted toward the kitchen door, and then turned back to the stove to shut off the heat.
"What the hell are you doing?!" she heard her father yell, and Kairi abandoned the kitchen and ran for the library.
She stopped short at the doorway, still fighting the urge to call her keyblade. She could see shadows creeping up from the corners of the room, crawling along the floor and building as they passed under furniture, accruing, multiplying. She didn't want to set foot in there; she didn't want to let them touch her.
"What happened?!" Kairi demanded, because Riku would never do this without a good reason.
Her father was standing almost toe-to-toe with Riku, glaring him...not down, not with Riku's height, but glaring. He was cradling a book; Riku had a crumpled piece of paper clenched his fist and a blank expression that left Kairi's chest cold.
She thought of other times Riku had been frustrated, how the shadows seemed to drip from his fingers; how Sora always edged up closer to him those times, responding unconsciously to a call she didn't hear.
How he'd told her it's getting worse, the darkness in her father's heart.
A shield, she thought; she needed to pull up a shield, needed to wrap it around her father and block the pull on him before this got any worse. She'd practiced with Riku, studied the way he grabbed darkness out of thin air and working until she could grasp the light and turn it to her purpose. She had to protect her father.
Then Kairi realized that summoning a shield would be the second worst thing she could do in this situation, short of calling her keyblade. It would freak out her father, who hated all this magic; it would hurt Riku, emotionally if not physically; and it would do no good.
What would she be shielding? She couldn't separate the strands of her father's anger from Riku's; she had no heart for darkness. She didn't know how to defend like this, against unintentional poison instead of a deliberate attack.
"Do you have no respect for these islands!?" her father snarled. "Do you understand what these histories represent?!"
Riku didn't speak.
Kairi glanced at his face again, and stretched a hand out to her father. "Dad--"
"How dare you!"
"Dad!" Kairi pressed a hand against his arm, and looked back at Riku. "What happened?" she asked again. "What did you find?"
He shook his head once, curt, and the darkness drifted up further from the corners. Kairi tensed her hand.
Her father tightened his grip on the book, and then snorted derisively.
"But why am I surprised?" he spit out, and his tone had shifted from loud to something cold and bitter, though still enraged. Kairi pulled her hand away and stared at him in shock. "Why would I ever be surprised at what a boy like you would do? Something was wrong with you since the day you were born."
"Dad!"
Hiromasu continued. "Why would someone who consorts with witches to keep their 'friends' locked up and strips away memories and who disappears just when the worst storm in decades hits this--"
"Stop hurting them!" Kairi yelled. She shoved herself in front of Riku. "Stop it!!"
Hiromasu blinked at her in astonishment, and then glared at Riku over her shoulder. "Get out of my house."
When Riku turned aside, Kairi swiveled around and caught him by the arm before he could disappear. She brushed his bangs away from his eyes, and then hopped up long enough to brush a quick kiss on his temple.
Riku tolerated her and Sora pushing his bangs from his eyes--a style they knew he wore to distinguish the present from those long months he'd spent looking out from Ansem's body--like he would no one else. Even if they couldn't read each others' hearts, she trusted that he knew what she was saying.
Riku nodded once, barely, and then pulled away and brushed past her. He was gone before Hiromasu could turn to look at him.
When the door--front or back, she wasn't sure--clicked shut, Kairi looked at her father. He slumped down onto the sofa.
"How could you say that?" she asked quietly. "What got into you?"
She knew the answer, but still. It was one thing to know, to have seen it in action in a lesser form, but this....
"It's only a book," she said gently.
Her father looked up sharply. "This is my life's work," he snapped. "I won't have it ruined by a boy like that."
"Dad--"
He shook his head violently. "You don't understand. I--I didn't want to bring it up, but that boy--that family...."
Hiromasu set the book down on his lap. "You probably never heard, but his grandmother--"
"If this is about those stupid rumors, they're just rumors," Kairi insisted, and that wasn't a lie exactly, because Riku didn't know what the truth was either.
Her father blinked at her in surprise.
Kairi crouched down in front of him. "Dad," she said carefully, trying pull light into the room without being too obvious and having no idea whether it was working or not. "Think. This isn't like you. At all. You don't hurt people like that."
Her father looked down for a long, long time, staring at his hands, silent.
Then he tightened them around the book. "Go to your room."
Kairi stood slowly, and left without a word.
In her room, she started to summon her keyblade, stopped to determine whether she could cast Light without ripping a hole through the floor and if it would even work like that, and then clenched her fists and willed the shadows to leave her home.
She had to hope that would work, at least until she was able to talk to the queen.
I don't hate you, she thought. You're a part of Riku. You're a part of Sora. But that doesn't mean I'll let you hurt anyone.
Kairi concentrated with her whole heart for several more moments, and then scrambled out of her window and took off to find Riku.
Sora had caught him first, which didn't surprise her. Kairi followed the echo of their keyblades until she came to the dormant volcano.
She had to cross over ropes of twisted white paper to climb up it. For the first time, it occurred to her that the area they'd been using as a training field was holy ground; she really hoped they weren't screwing up the islands by doing that. And that Wakka never found out. Ever.
But the rain hadn't started until a while after they'd begun practicing there....
But the weather was supposed to be the world protecting itself from the darkness outside. Right?
There was no way to know the answer to that, not from this side of the Door, so Kairi shook the thought aside and made her way to the lip of the volcano.
Sora and Riku were sparring inside, except 'sparring' was an understatement. Kairi sat on the lip of the volcano for a while, waiting, watching their attacks and looking for an opening break. She'd noticed something flung to the one side of the area that they weren't getting too near.
It was crumpled and dusty from the fighting and looked like he'd torn it, too, but she was pretty sure it was the page that would explain what on earth had happened.
Kairi kept watching, and was glad to see that they were holding back--not as much as they did with her, which she was going to have to yell at them for in better days--but still. The volcano wasn't likely to implode.
Considering who they'd been two years ago, that was a pretty significant improvement.
When Riku unleashed a barrage of dark firagas that had Sora dodging and running alongside the edge of the pit, Kairi raced across the interior wall and skidded down to where the paper lay. She snatched it up, and then tore halfway back up the inside, just before Sora let loose a Thundaga that crackled the air underneath her and backed Riku up and into a defensive stance.
Kairi carefully uncrumpled the page, trying not to tear it further as she did, and then smoothed it out on her thigh as she kept a wary eye on the magic below. She was pretty sure she was in the clear, but that wasn't the same thing as certain.
It was just a piece of paper.
It wasn't a genealogical table, or a proper family history; it was an excerpt of significant events from a particular year. She flipped it to the other side, but it didn't say which year there, either--it must have been on the preceding page. Food rationing had occurred and consequently trade with other islands increased due to an early monsoon season; several people had gone missing in the worst of the storm; some lawsuits over property had occurred; new tariffs, from all the islands and the mainland, had been introduced into various treaties; and at the bottom, there was a brief, annotated list of the missing who had not been found and were presumed dead. Kairi stared at the page, trying to understand how this, of all things, had--
Xehanort. Missing in storm; pres. deceased.
Kairi's hands tightened around the page until it shook.
She glanced down into the bottom of the volcano again, in time to see Sora force Riku back in the middle of a strike.
"C'mon, Riku!" Sora crowed, crouching in a defensive position with a sharp grin. "I thought you were stronger than that!"
Kairi watched the corner of Riku's mouth curl back in a darker version of a grin, looked at the piece of paper again, and came to a decision.
She folded it up, quickly, and shoved it into her skirt pocket before leaving the volcano. Sora and Riku would manage to work this out, or at least calm down a little, by fighting each other; she had faith that they could do it without hurting each other. They had all grown up from who they were.
And there was something more useful she could do than sit around watching them, or even getting involved.
Kairi snuck back into her home, made sure that her father had barricaded himself back into his office, and reentered the library.
There, she made quick work of the shelves, pulling off histories, family charts, directories, laws and code books--anything that was likely to mention of the storm. It didn't take long for her to amass an armful of books and pamphlets that were the most likely to have any mention of Xehanort.
She was the mayor's daughter; she knew the system of Destiny Islands' library.
Once she'd gathered everything, Kairi quietly made her way out of her house, dashing through the gate and taking off down the road, running as fast as she could and not paying attention to whether it was too fast for a normal teenage girl laden with books.
She arrived at Selphie's house before she knew it.
"What the heck," Selphie asked, opening her window. Kairi shifted the precarious hold she'd had on the books in order to knock into something more reasonable, and said, "Can I come in?"
"Uh, yeah," Selphie agreed, pushing the sash up fully. "Why didn't you go to front door?"
I've been hanging around the guys too long, Kairi thought. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't want your parents to know I'm here. I...think I might be grounded."
"Wow," Selphie replied, taking several of the books off her hands and moving aside. "What'd you do now? "
"Hey," Kairi said mildly, resting the remainder of the books on the sill and climbing over.
"It's a valid question," Selphie breezed. "I mean, this is the second time now you've run away from home."
Kairi froze with one knee on the sill, and turned to stare down the road to her house.
That was right. If her dad went to her room and didn't find her there, that was what he was going to think of. How could she have forgotten?
...Because this was more important. Kairi glanced back at the books, and set her feet determinedly on Selphie's floor.
"I just need some time to go through these," she explained, pulling the books off the sill. "Where I can read in peace. It's not like I'm leaving again."
Selphie looked at her for a long time, and then at the books, and then sat down on her bed.
"I guess that's okay," she finally said. "I'll deter anyone who comes asking. But," she added, as Kairi set the materials down on her desk chair. "You totally owe me for this."
"Okay," Kairi agreed, settling on the floor and opening the top one, a directory from the year of the storm. It ought to list all the agencies and households that had aided victims, which would let her narrow down what neighborhood Xehanort's family had lived in, which would let her know which section of the histories to look in for his past mentions and records.
Unless the whole family had died.
And it was Xehanort, so....
"Where did you guys really go?" Selphie asked quietly. "We all know you remember."
Kairi jolted and stared up at her. Selphie had leaned forward slightly, fingers curled around the edge of the mattress.
When she didn't answer at first, Selphie glanced out the window, and then sighed and looked back at her again.
"Why don't you trust us?" she asked. "We're your friends."
I don't want to tell you how you died, Kairi thought.
Maybe that was running away, too? Or was it normal?
Kairi bit her lip hard, and stared down at the pages of the book. There wasn't time for this; she had to find the answers before her dad noticed she was gone, before Riku got worse, the knowledge festering inside him.
She let a breath out through her teeth, and then decided.
Kairi shut the book, keeping a hand inside to mark where she'd been. "It's not that," she said. "We were told we had to protect the world borders, so we couldn't say anything. But from the way Sora and Riku talk, it seems like people living near the heart of the worlds already know," she added with a half-frown, "so maybe you'd find out anyway, or maybe you just have to know to be able to handle the Heartless."
". . . Uh-huh," Selphie said. "Run that by me one more time."
"Okay," Kairi said, and pulled her hand free and set the book aside. "Uh, I guess to start: there are these things called keyblades," she explained, and summoned hers.
Less than three minutes later, the guys were at Selphie's window, weapons at the ready.
In hindsight, Kairi realized that yes, duh, of course pulling her keyblade alone when they couldn't see her was going to bring them running. It wouldn't be until much later that it would occur to her how hypersensitive to the potential of entering darkness Riku was at the time.
"...Is everything okay?" Sora asked, having stopped halfway in the midst of barreling straight through Selphie's window.
"What is going on," Selphie demanded.
They had the story laid out for their parents, with all the necessary cuts and omissions and distractions; but they didn't have one for their friends yet. After ten minutes of explanation punctuated with frequent glances at each other to figure out what could be said, Selphie was exasperated, Sora looked ready to throw his hands in the air, Kairi was thinking that they should probably just go get Wakka and Tidus now and get it all over with, and Riku seemed to have relaxed. A little. Fractionally. But it was still something.
"You know," he said, during another lull, "I would've bet munny that it'd be Sora who spilled everything."
"Hey!"
"Well, I have to keep you guys on your toes," Kairi deadpanned, and Selphie stopped tapping her foot long enough to snicker.
"Maybe we should get Tidus and Wakka," she added. "You know, tell everyone at once."
"Wakka's still in quarantine, remember?" Selphie pointed out. "Because of the ritual purity."
"Oh, right," Kairi murmured. "So...tomorrow? Would we be able to see him in the afternoon?"
Selphie counted off on her fingers, and then nodded. "I think so." She raised an eyebrow. "But you're not getting away with not telling me tonight," she added. "I am so not letting you go off and create a pretty story."
"It's not pretty," Riku said. "We should at least get Tidus."
Kairi and Sora looked at him. "...Are you sure?" Sora asked.
"He deserves to know," Riku said tersely.
"Some things we're not saying," Kairi replied, folding her arms on the keyblade resting in her lap. "To protect the world."
Riku looked at her for a long time. Kairi gazed back, head tilted slightly in a way that she knew was probably kind of obnoxious but if they could do it to make a point so could she.
Selphie glanced between the two of them for a moment, and then looked at Sora. "So, wanna go get Tidus?"
"Uh, yeah," he replied, pushing onto his feet. "I can do that."
After he'd swung out of the window and taken off down the road, Selphie shook her head. "Do you guys just hate doors now?"
"What'd you find?" Riku asked, ignoring the question and picking up a book. Selphie rolled her eyes.
Kairi shifted and tucked her feet under her. "Not much," she answered. "I haven't had enough time to look yet." She pushed her bangs away from her face, and added, quieter, "If you'd told me, I could have helped."
"I didn't know it was him," Riku replied. "I was just looking for rumors on that kid who left, a long time ago." The corner of his mouth curled down. "I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise."
"It is a little," Kairi muttered. "Destiny Islands is supposed to be...."
She didn't know how to finish. Safe? Full of light? Not a place a man--a monster--like that would come from?
Those weren't things to say to Riku.
"Even if you'd told me that, I could have helped," she said instead. "We could have...narrowed it down, or...something. Started with who you heard it from and gone from there, and...." Would it have changed anything? It might at least have kept him from wrecking the book, and setting her dad off.
Kairi slumped her shoulders and leaned back against Selphie's desk, feeling tired. "I don't know," she said. "Something. Didn't we just agree that secrets were a bad idea?" she added with a half-grin, glancing over at him.
Riku was staring out the window, but he forced a chuckle at that. Kairi frowned and straightened up; but then she decided maybe it would be better to ask him what was wrong when they were alone.
After a few more beats of silence, Selphie cleared her throat.
"Fun as it is to listen to you guys talk in code," she said, and looked at Kairi, "maybe you should go home? Your dad really was upset last time. He almost abdicated the mayorhood."
Kairi blinked--no one had told her that before--and Riku quirked an eyebrow. "I thought we weren't getting out of here without telling you everything?" he pointed out.
Selphie tugged on the edge of her skirt.
"...This is really serious, isn't it?" she said, not looking up. "If you need time to figure out what you can tell us, then go ahead. We don't need to hear everything. Yet," Selphie added meaningfully, tilting her head up and eying them.
Kairi bit the inside of her lip, and then nodded and stood. "Thanks.
"What about Tidus?" she added, gathering up the books.
Selphie waved negligently. "I'll take care of it."
"Thanks," Kairi said again.
"I'll go find them," Riku replied. He started to turn toward the window, and then Kairi shoved the load of books at him and linked an arm through his when he was distracted with trying to catch them.
Riku looked down at her through his bangs.
"I don't understand you," he muttered.
"I know," Kairi replied. "But that's not going to stop us."
He was silent for a moment, and then blew his bangs away from his eyes briefly. "How am I supposed to get out like this?" he asked, giving her arm a meaningful look.
"The door," Selphie replied, which was buried under Kairi's cheerful "You'll find a way!"
"Uh-huh," he said, and sized up the window. "...Ladies first."
Riku managed to exit via the window, without dropping any of the books or pulling her arm loose, because he was Riku. Inside the room, Selphie clapped in approval.
"Where do you want me to send Sora?" she asked a moment later, leaning out the window.
"My house," Kairi called over her shoulder. "Thanks again, Selphie. Let's all head over to Wakka's after school tomorrow, okay?"
"I'm holding you to that," Selphie nodded, and waved them off.
When Sora arrived at Kairi's house, climbing in through her bedroom window because he'd picked up enough to figure Hiromasu would throw him out the gate if he tried the front door, she and Riku had spread out the books on the floor and were struggling to find any further mention of Xehanort. Her father still had the book the page was torn from, and so far checking the neighborhood directories hadn't revealed anything. And Riku wasn't helping matters.
"Do you remember anything about that rumor?" Kairi asked, flipping through the pages of another book in frustration. "Or you, Sora?"
"What rumor?" he replied, plopping down on the floor.
"The one about the kid who left for good," Riku said.
Sora scratched the back of his head. "I...kinda remember hearing about that? Not much, though. It's bad luck for sailors to discuss that stuff." He looked at Riku. "I think it was mostly from you and Tidus."
Kairi sighed.
"Do you remember anything about it?" she asked.
Riku shook his head. "Just that I thought he must've had to be strong to get out."
"How did that come up?" she wondered, coming to the last few pages of the directory.
Riku was silent.
After a few moments, Kairi glanced up. Sora, who'd been poking at a nearby stack of pamphlets and trying not to mess anything up until he was told what to do, looked over.
Kairi finished skimming the last page of the directory, and set the book down in the 'useless' pile.
"I can't tell you," Riku said quietly. "This one I really can't."
Neither Sora nor Kairi said anything.
"I wouldn't say that if it weren't important," Riku muttered.
Kairi and Sora glanced at each other.
"...Yeah, we know," Sora said a moment later.
"So what can you tell us?" Kairi asked, picking up the next book.
He shook his head, looking as frustrated as she felt. "I don't remember much about it. I think Tidus is the one who first told me, and I think I remember some adults discussing it at a party once--before you came here," he added to Kairi, "--but that's it."
"I guess we can ask Tidus tomorrow if he remembers anything," Kairi considered. "What book were you looking in that had this?" she added, holding up the torn, crinkled page. "That might help."
"The...." As he tried to recall which ones he'd pulled, there was a knock on her door.
Riku and Sora fled through the window, proving yet again that fathers were more terrifying than the entire Organization combined. Kairi, having a thought, left everything where it lay on the floor and went to open the door.
"Have you--" her father stopped whatever he was about to say and frowned at the mess on her floor. "What on earth are you doing?"
"Researching," Kairi said. "Can you help?"
"What?" He stepped into the room and immediately started tidying up, removing old, delicate books from the carpet and placing them on the relative safety of the desk. "What are you looking for?"
"Do you remember what I said about the man who threw me into this world?" Kairi asked.
Her father flinched.
She pulled her desk chair out and offered it to him. "His Heartless was Ansem," she went on. "The one who hurt Riku so badly. And I'm pretty sure he was this man," Kairi said, and held out the torn page, pointing to Xehanort's name near the bottom.
Her father took the page gently, anger coloring his expression again as he saw the condition it was in; but Kairi watched him force it down. "Xehanort? He was...Ansem, too?"
"Yes," Kairi said, sitting on her bed. "We know Xehanort's Heartless was Ansem, and his Nobody was Xemnas." She half-smiled. "And it's a pretty strange name for two people to share."
"The Heartless are the black things, right?" her father mumbled, eying the page.
"Uh-huh, the ones that are just hearts. The Nobodies are rarer--they're what happens when really strong hearts turn into Heartless. They leave a piece of their body behind, in a different form."
Her father was silent for a long, long time.
"...That's very confusing, you know," he finally said.
She nodded. "We didn't name them. That was the real Ansem. I think, unless those were the fake reports that Xeh--"
Hiromasu held up a hand. "Let's...sort that out later. You think young Xehanort was the same person who Sora and--Riku were fighting all that time?"
"Yes," Kairi said, "in one way or another. It was always him behind the destruction." She shifted. "Do you know about him?"
"A bit," her father replied.
"Where're the records on him?" Kairi asked. "I couldn't find anything in any of the neighborhood directories or the genealogy tables or anywhere."
"No," her father agreed. "The death record would be it. Any other information will be with the priestly family." He placed the page on the desk and began trying to smooth it out further. "Xehanort came from there."
". . . oh," Kairi said quietly.
***
"He came with me to Jecht's house to plan out the new addition," Riku's father told his wife that night.
"Tidus is a friend of his," Chihoko replied, flipping her pillow over to the cooler side.
"A friend ranking far below Sora and Kairi," Yasuhiro pointed out. "But he came anyway. There's hope yet."
"Mm," Chihoko murmured, settling back. "Maybe."
Yasuhiro squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. "We'll get through this marriage mess," he said. "If he loves them enough to go through with it despite everything, he'll care for the island where they live. There's hope yet."
Chihoko thought of the way her son always hedged around the issue of the storm the night he'd left, the way Sora or Kairi always seemed to answer questions of what exactly it meant for a storm to 'break' a world for him, the way he was silent on the issue to the point of saying much; and she suspected his new interest in their family's responsibilities had less to do with growing up and more to do with guilt.
But she didn't share those thoughts, and only nodded in response to Yasuhiro's smile and curled up against his side.
Some truths were best kept to oneself.
***
She couldn't find her grandmother.
Kairi wandered through the castle's library, feeling more and more uncomfortable, but not wanting to call out for fear of being disruptive. They were guests, of Ansem the Wise himself, and the invitation had come on paper that was thick and creamy and some of the fanciest she'd ever seen. Her grandmother had mended up the tear on one of the flowers of her dress and washed it so it was snowy white, and had told Kairi that since she didn't know what they were being invited for, she needed to be on her very best behavior. Kairi was pretty sure that meant no yelling.
She'd been in here earlier with her grandmother, before she'd had to leave; but now it was different. The bookshelves had moved around, and the more she wandered the harder it was to remember how she'd gotten there in the first place, and how to get back. She thought she'd found the way twice already, but each time there was a shelf in the way. Kairi could see the staircase way up above them, and thought she could probably climb up the shelves and walk over them to it if she really had to, but she was pretty sure that that was also bad behavior.
"There you are," someone said behind her.
Kairi turned around and found a man with a neckerchief grinning at her.
She curtseyed, because he didn't look very nice, but there were supposed to be a lot of scientists in the castle now, and scientists were strange. She'd seen one a couple times in the town square, dragging a boy along with him, and he was definitely strange. "Hi, I'm lost."
"No you're not," the man said, still smiling. "I found you, didn't I? Someone asked me to."
"Oh." Kairi straightened up. "My grandma?"
"No, but maybe he'll take you to her," the man replied. "Come on, let's get out of here."
"I'm Kairi," she said, taking his hand.
"I'm Braig."
He walked fast, in long strides, and she had to trot to keep up. He also was walking down one of the aisles she'd already tried, but before Kairi could warn him that it was blocked off, they'd turned the corner.
She blinked when she saw it was wide open, and wondered if she'd been thinking about the wrong path. Maybe she should have pulled books out of the shelves to mark where she'd been.
Two turns later, and she could see the staircase on their left. Kairi was certain that it had been blocked off before. She bit her lip, and touched her pendant.
She hadn't seen Aqua again, and now there were new monsters running around the town; they clawed at their door a lot, and her grandmother always made her hide in the closet when she poured boiling oil out the window on them, 'in case they learn to climb.' Kairi hoped she was okay.
"Here you go!" Braig said, and Kairi was about to ask where they were when she realized he wasn't talking to her. There was another man sitting at a table, writing in a large black book. He didn't look familiar, but something about him made Kairi feel sick in her stomach. She tried to press a hand against it, but when she started to tug away Braig tightened his grip.
The man made a few more marks, and then set down his pen and shut the book. He looked over at her with a smile. He had the same gold-colored eyes as Braig.
"Hello, Kairi," he said.
"...Hi," she replied, and yanked her hand again. The man waved absently, and Braig let go. Kairi stumbled forward, grabbing the end of the table to catch her balance.
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you," the man said.
"Thank you," she replied, even though she knew that wasn't the right response, but she didn't remember it right now. "Who are you? How do you know me? Where's my grandma?"
"We've known about you for a while," he said, standing up and starting to come around the desk toward her. "And I'm afraid your grandmother isn't here."
Kairi moved further along the table, backing away as he came closer. "Who are you?"
"That's not necessary," he replied, and held out a hand. "Now, let's see if this works...."
She woke up gasping for air.
Kairi gripped her pendant tightly, enough so that the links of the necklace cut into her hand. She was sweating, and the stone quickly turned slippery.
She clenched her eyes shut and thought Don't run away. You need to remember.
...I don't know if you need to, Naminé said softly. Not if it hurts too much.
Kairi could tell she was thinking of Riku.
I want to remember, she replied, even though it was harder to say that when it was actually happening, and not just in theory.
Naminé didn't respond in words, but Kairi could feel the concern there, just a bit to the side of her heart.
Thank you, she murmured. I'm okay. It was just a dream. Well, a memory. But it was the past.
Memories are extremely powerful, Naminé replied. Don't underestimate them.
Kairi loosened her grip on her pendant, and then let go and dried it off with the edge of her sheet.
'Out of the darkness and into the light,' she reminded herself.
I'll be okay, she thought. We'll be okay.
...All right, Naminé agreed.
Kairi finished drying the stone, and then rolled over and sat up. She left her room a moment later, and began walking slowly through the house.
The shadows were still there, harder to spot in the natural darkness of the night, but curling at the edge of her senses all the same. Kairi pushed back at them, summoning handfuls of light and forcing them away.
Though that wasn't the right term. She couldn't do it the way she knew Riku could; he could actually send them away, send them elsewhere, make them leave a place. She couldn't make them depart; she could only burn them away.
Kairi recalled, vaguely, a time when they were kids and Wakka had been explaining possession to her; she hadn't heard of the term before. He'd said there were two ways of dealing with it: one, by talking with the spirit until it had worked through its tie to the earth and left; and the other, by eradicating it.
Wakka had called it murder, though. Something to do with a schism between how their island handled it and how the family members that had relocated to the mainland worked.
Kairi stood in the library, dissolving the shadows that lingered there, and thought The light can be frightening.
Yes, Naminé said. Extremes always are.
Kairi let her hand drop to the side, not sure any more if she'd done the right thing; but she didn't want to send the shadows out into any other home, and she wanted her father to rest easy.
This is really hard, she thought, rubbing the heel of her palm against her eye. I wish I could talk to the queen, or the other princesses.
I do too, Naminé replied. I still have questions.
Like what? Kairi asked curiously, as she made her way back to her bedroom.
...I don't understand how you do some of the things you do, Naminé replied. And information on the princesses is hard to find.
Figures, Kairi said ruefully. Then she thought back to her dream, with Xehanort writing in the codex, and huffed. ...If there was anything in there, I am going to be so annoyed.
Naminé laughed faintly.
In her room, Kairi flopped onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. She wanted a shower, but she knew that would wake her dad up. She'd been lucky he'd slept through her walkthrough.
I'll tell them tomorrow, she decided, after we talk to Tidus and Wakka and I see if I can get more information about Xehanort from Wakka's family.
Kairi draped an arm over her eyes, and then a few minutes later asked Do you want to draw? I think I'm up for good.
If you're sure, Naminé said; and when Kairi assented, she added Thank you.
You won't need a home anymore where you're going.
Destiny Trio; those dark secrets beneath the Islands' light just keep coming.
Riku ate breakfast with his parents the next morning, so he met up with Kairi on the way to school instead of waiting down the bend from her house like usual.
"Hey," she said with a smile, swinging her bag at her side.
"Hey," Riku replied, falling into step beside her. "Can I come over today?"
"Of course," Kairi said, raising an eyebrow. "Why're you asking?"
"I want to look up something in the library," Riku answered. "Is your dad going to kick me out?"
"Oh," she replied. "No. I mean, he can't, it's the island's library. You should be fine." She tilted her head to look at him. "What're you looking for?"
"I wanted to go through some of the histories," Riku replied, trying not to sound evasive. "I wanted to look up something my parents mentioned."
Kairi continued to give him a curious look, and Riku figured he should have invented a better story last night. But he didn't want to lie, not outright. So he'd just...hoped that it wouldn't come up.
Which had been a pretty moronic plan. Great, he was channeling Sora.
"Wait up!"
Riku and Kairi turned around, and watched Sora struggle through the rest of the bushes to reach them.
"Don't you ever take the path?" Kairi called. "Your uniform's gonna get torn up."
"Takes too long," Sora replied, falling into step beside them.
"Why don't you jump off the boat and swim back when you start to run late?" Riku asked. "Then you might be on time."
Sora eyed him, trying to figure out if he was serious. Kairi snorted.
"Hey," someone called from ahead. "Nice timing."
"Hey, Tidus!" Sora greeted. "What's up?"
Tidus waited until they'd caught up to him, and then started walking alongside Riku. "Can you ask your dad to come over this afternoon? We've finally got the money together, so we want him to start planning out the addition as soon as possible."
"Sure," Riku agreed, not knowing what he was talking about.
"What're you building?" Sora asked curiously, folding his arms behind his head.
"The downstairs bed and bath for Mom," Tidus replied.
"Why?"
Tidus looked at him strangely, and then glanced at Kairi. "You didn't mention it?"
She didn't reply.
Tidus shrugged. "Mom's legs got injured in that big storm a couple years ago. The doctors said she's never gonna be able to get up the stairs anymore, so she needs a room on the ground floor. That's why Dad's been on the mainland for so long," he explained. "He's been teaching off-season so we could get it built."
Sora's arms dropped to his sides. "...Oh."
"Whatever," Tidus muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Like it's really hard for him to spend all his time being praised by his fans."
Riku looked over his shoulder at Kairi; but she stared straight ahead.
"I'll tell Dad as soon as I get home," Riku said a moment later.
Tidus grinned. "Thanks a lot," he replied. "This is really gonna help."
Riku made a wordless noise, and Kairi tucked her hair behind her ear.
"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked a few minutes later, when Tidus had run ahead to catch up to Selphie.
"I didn't think it . . . you needed to know," she replied.
"That's not for you to decide," Riku said. "What else have you been hiding?"
"Don't say it like that," Sora told him, and then looked at her. "...We've been lied to a lot. By people that meant well, sometimes, but...." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I want to know the truth."
"...Sorry," Kairi said, quietly. "I thought I was protecting you."
Riku exhaled.
"Would you want us to do that for you?" he asked.
"No," Kairi said decisively. "I don't need to be protected any more."
"Okay, then."
She nodded.
Sora fidgeted with his bag, and then slung it over his shoulder. Kairi twisted the handle of hers; Riku slid a hand into his pocket, and looked at Sora.
"Who meant well by lying?" he asked.
"The king and you," Sora said, low.
Riku pulled his hand free--but before he could reply, the school bell rang, and they had to run for the gates.
Riku didn't make it to Kairi's house that afternoon, because he went with his father to Tidus's house to look at the grounds and draw up a preliminary blueprint for the addition. He didn't speak much with Tidus's mother; she remained sitting in the living room throughout events, a blanket over her legs. Tidus took charge of the plan-making. Jecht was still out of town.
But he went over after dinner.
It was kind of nice of him, in a way; at least no one had to deal with the ensuing fallout on an empty stomach.
Kind of borked his plans to go over to Sora's after that and talk about what he'd said, though, so that became a conversation for another day.
***
"Hey," Riku called, from outside her window.
Kairi, who was getting inured to her boyfriends' habit of showing up on the roof instead of the porch, pushed away from her desk and said "Hey."
"I'm sorry," Riku continued, climbing in through the window. "Sora was right."
Kairi half-smiled. "So were you, you know."
Riku made a face and leaned against the desk. "I could have phrased it better."
She shrugged a shoulder and interlaced her fingers. ". . . It just bugs me, that I'm not up to you guys' level yet. I thought...." She glanced out the window, though the ocean--and therefore the play island--wasn't visible in this direction. "...I thought I was at least doing something."
Riku slumped further against the desk and slid his hand into his pocket. "We've got two years training on you," he reminded. "And more teachers."
"It's still frustrating."
"...I know," Riku agreed, and avoided looking at the hand he used to use to summon dark corridors.
"You wanted into the library?" Kairi asked, a couple moments later.
"Yeah," Riku agreed. "It probably won't take long."
"Okay." Kairi left her math homework on the desk and stood.
She showed him where the histories and genealogy tables were, and then went back upstairs to grab her homework. Kairi figured that finishing it in the library would add some extra respectability to Riku's presence, so her dad hopefully wouldn't skulk around the hall once he found out he was there, waiting for an excuse to throw him out.
Riku was buried in a set of books, flipping through some and double-checking in others, so Kairi set up her homework on the coffee table and settled down on the couch.
Then she stared at the equations for a few minutes, realized that homework was incredibly boring in comparison to training, wondered--not for the first time--how the guys were surviving their return to and resumption of island life as well as they were, and then went to the kitchen to make some sweet tea. Maybe she could bribe her dad into staying in his office; and at the least, it'd wake her up enough to finish up the assignment.
She was still waiting for the kettle to boil when she heard the thump from the library. Kairi glanced over her shoulder, wondering if Riku had dropped a book. She'd have to blackmail him and claim she'd tell Sora he wasn't as graceful as they thought if he didn't give her...hm, maybe a set amount of kisses. Twenty?
Seems kinda low, Kairi thought; and then she felt a chill run down her spine.
Darkness was here.
Kairi just barely managed to keep from summoning her keyblade. She twisted toward the kitchen door, and then turned back to the stove to shut off the heat.
"What the hell are you doing?!" she heard her father yell, and Kairi abandoned the kitchen and ran for the library.
She stopped short at the doorway, still fighting the urge to call her keyblade. She could see shadows creeping up from the corners of the room, crawling along the floor and building as they passed under furniture, accruing, multiplying. She didn't want to set foot in there; she didn't want to let them touch her.
"What happened?!" Kairi demanded, because Riku would never do this without a good reason.
Her father was standing almost toe-to-toe with Riku, glaring him...not down, not with Riku's height, but glaring. He was cradling a book; Riku had a crumpled piece of paper clenched his fist and a blank expression that left Kairi's chest cold.
She thought of other times Riku had been frustrated, how the shadows seemed to drip from his fingers; how Sora always edged up closer to him those times, responding unconsciously to a call she didn't hear.
How he'd told her it's getting worse, the darkness in her father's heart.
A shield, she thought; she needed to pull up a shield, needed to wrap it around her father and block the pull on him before this got any worse. She'd practiced with Riku, studied the way he grabbed darkness out of thin air and working until she could grasp the light and turn it to her purpose. She had to protect her father.
Then Kairi realized that summoning a shield would be the second worst thing she could do in this situation, short of calling her keyblade. It would freak out her father, who hated all this magic; it would hurt Riku, emotionally if not physically; and it would do no good.
What would she be shielding? She couldn't separate the strands of her father's anger from Riku's; she had no heart for darkness. She didn't know how to defend like this, against unintentional poison instead of a deliberate attack.
"Do you have no respect for these islands!?" her father snarled. "Do you understand what these histories represent?!"
Riku didn't speak.
Kairi glanced at his face again, and stretched a hand out to her father. "Dad--"
"How dare you!"
"Dad!" Kairi pressed a hand against his arm, and looked back at Riku. "What happened?" she asked again. "What did you find?"
He shook his head once, curt, and the darkness drifted up further from the corners. Kairi tensed her hand.
Her father tightened his grip on the book, and then snorted derisively.
"But why am I surprised?" he spit out, and his tone had shifted from loud to something cold and bitter, though still enraged. Kairi pulled her hand away and stared at him in shock. "Why would I ever be surprised at what a boy like you would do? Something was wrong with you since the day you were born."
"Dad!"
Hiromasu continued. "Why would someone who consorts with witches to keep their 'friends' locked up and strips away memories and who disappears just when the worst storm in decades hits this--"
"Stop hurting them!" Kairi yelled. She shoved herself in front of Riku. "Stop it!!"
Hiromasu blinked at her in astonishment, and then glared at Riku over her shoulder. "Get out of my house."
When Riku turned aside, Kairi swiveled around and caught him by the arm before he could disappear. She brushed his bangs away from his eyes, and then hopped up long enough to brush a quick kiss on his temple.
Riku tolerated her and Sora pushing his bangs from his eyes--a style they knew he wore to distinguish the present from those long months he'd spent looking out from Ansem's body--like he would no one else. Even if they couldn't read each others' hearts, she trusted that he knew what she was saying.
Riku nodded once, barely, and then pulled away and brushed past her. He was gone before Hiromasu could turn to look at him.
When the door--front or back, she wasn't sure--clicked shut, Kairi looked at her father. He slumped down onto the sofa.
"How could you say that?" she asked quietly. "What got into you?"
She knew the answer, but still. It was one thing to know, to have seen it in action in a lesser form, but this....
"It's only a book," she said gently.
Her father looked up sharply. "This is my life's work," he snapped. "I won't have it ruined by a boy like that."
"Dad--"
He shook his head violently. "You don't understand. I--I didn't want to bring it up, but that boy--that family...."
Hiromasu set the book down on his lap. "You probably never heard, but his grandmother--"
"If this is about those stupid rumors, they're just rumors," Kairi insisted, and that wasn't a lie exactly, because Riku didn't know what the truth was either.
Her father blinked at her in surprise.
Kairi crouched down in front of him. "Dad," she said carefully, trying pull light into the room without being too obvious and having no idea whether it was working or not. "Think. This isn't like you. At all. You don't hurt people like that."
Her father looked down for a long, long time, staring at his hands, silent.
Then he tightened them around the book. "Go to your room."
Kairi stood slowly, and left without a word.
In her room, she started to summon her keyblade, stopped to determine whether she could cast Light without ripping a hole through the floor and if it would even work like that, and then clenched her fists and willed the shadows to leave her home.
She had to hope that would work, at least until she was able to talk to the queen.
I don't hate you, she thought. You're a part of Riku. You're a part of Sora. But that doesn't mean I'll let you hurt anyone.
Kairi concentrated with her whole heart for several more moments, and then scrambled out of her window and took off to find Riku.
Sora had caught him first, which didn't surprise her. Kairi followed the echo of their keyblades until she came to the dormant volcano.
She had to cross over ropes of twisted white paper to climb up it. For the first time, it occurred to her that the area they'd been using as a training field was holy ground; she really hoped they weren't screwing up the islands by doing that. And that Wakka never found out. Ever.
But the rain hadn't started until a while after they'd begun practicing there....
But the weather was supposed to be the world protecting itself from the darkness outside. Right?
There was no way to know the answer to that, not from this side of the Door, so Kairi shook the thought aside and made her way to the lip of the volcano.
Sora and Riku were sparring inside, except 'sparring' was an understatement. Kairi sat on the lip of the volcano for a while, waiting, watching their attacks and looking for an opening break. She'd noticed something flung to the one side of the area that they weren't getting too near.
It was crumpled and dusty from the fighting and looked like he'd torn it, too, but she was pretty sure it was the page that would explain what on earth had happened.
Kairi kept watching, and was glad to see that they were holding back--not as much as they did with her, which she was going to have to yell at them for in better days--but still. The volcano wasn't likely to implode.
Considering who they'd been two years ago, that was a pretty significant improvement.
When Riku unleashed a barrage of dark firagas that had Sora dodging and running alongside the edge of the pit, Kairi raced across the interior wall and skidded down to where the paper lay. She snatched it up, and then tore halfway back up the inside, just before Sora let loose a Thundaga that crackled the air underneath her and backed Riku up and into a defensive stance.
Kairi carefully uncrumpled the page, trying not to tear it further as she did, and then smoothed it out on her thigh as she kept a wary eye on the magic below. She was pretty sure she was in the clear, but that wasn't the same thing as certain.
It was just a piece of paper.
It wasn't a genealogical table, or a proper family history; it was an excerpt of significant events from a particular year. She flipped it to the other side, but it didn't say which year there, either--it must have been on the preceding page. Food rationing had occurred and consequently trade with other islands increased due to an early monsoon season; several people had gone missing in the worst of the storm; some lawsuits over property had occurred; new tariffs, from all the islands and the mainland, had been introduced into various treaties; and at the bottom, there was a brief, annotated list of the missing who had not been found and were presumed dead. Kairi stared at the page, trying to understand how this, of all things, had--
Xehanort. Missing in storm; pres. deceased.
Kairi's hands tightened around the page until it shook.
She glanced down into the bottom of the volcano again, in time to see Sora force Riku back in the middle of a strike.
"C'mon, Riku!" Sora crowed, crouching in a defensive position with a sharp grin. "I thought you were stronger than that!"
Kairi watched the corner of Riku's mouth curl back in a darker version of a grin, looked at the piece of paper again, and came to a decision.
She folded it up, quickly, and shoved it into her skirt pocket before leaving the volcano. Sora and Riku would manage to work this out, or at least calm down a little, by fighting each other; she had faith that they could do it without hurting each other. They had all grown up from who they were.
And there was something more useful she could do than sit around watching them, or even getting involved.
Kairi snuck back into her home, made sure that her father had barricaded himself back into his office, and reentered the library.
There, she made quick work of the shelves, pulling off histories, family charts, directories, laws and code books--anything that was likely to mention of the storm. It didn't take long for her to amass an armful of books and pamphlets that were the most likely to have any mention of Xehanort.
She was the mayor's daughter; she knew the system of Destiny Islands' library.
Once she'd gathered everything, Kairi quietly made her way out of her house, dashing through the gate and taking off down the road, running as fast as she could and not paying attention to whether it was too fast for a normal teenage girl laden with books.
She arrived at Selphie's house before she knew it.
"What the heck," Selphie asked, opening her window. Kairi shifted the precarious hold she'd had on the books in order to knock into something more reasonable, and said, "Can I come in?"
"Uh, yeah," Selphie agreed, pushing the sash up fully. "Why didn't you go to front door?"
I've been hanging around the guys too long, Kairi thought. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't want your parents to know I'm here. I...think I might be grounded."
"Wow," Selphie replied, taking several of the books off her hands and moving aside. "What'd you do now? "
"Hey," Kairi said mildly, resting the remainder of the books on the sill and climbing over.
"It's a valid question," Selphie breezed. "I mean, this is the second time now you've run away from home."
Kairi froze with one knee on the sill, and turned to stare down the road to her house.
That was right. If her dad went to her room and didn't find her there, that was what he was going to think of. How could she have forgotten?
...Because this was more important. Kairi glanced back at the books, and set her feet determinedly on Selphie's floor.
"I just need some time to go through these," she explained, pulling the books off the sill. "Where I can read in peace. It's not like I'm leaving again."
Selphie looked at her for a long time, and then at the books, and then sat down on her bed.
"I guess that's okay," she finally said. "I'll deter anyone who comes asking. But," she added, as Kairi set the materials down on her desk chair. "You totally owe me for this."
"Okay," Kairi agreed, settling on the floor and opening the top one, a directory from the year of the storm. It ought to list all the agencies and households that had aided victims, which would let her narrow down what neighborhood Xehanort's family had lived in, which would let her know which section of the histories to look in for his past mentions and records.
Unless the whole family had died.
And it was Xehanort, so....
"Where did you guys really go?" Selphie asked quietly. "We all know you remember."
Kairi jolted and stared up at her. Selphie had leaned forward slightly, fingers curled around the edge of the mattress.
When she didn't answer at first, Selphie glanced out the window, and then sighed and looked back at her again.
"Why don't you trust us?" she asked. "We're your friends."
I don't want to tell you how you died, Kairi thought.
Maybe that was running away, too? Or was it normal?
Kairi bit her lip hard, and stared down at the pages of the book. There wasn't time for this; she had to find the answers before her dad noticed she was gone, before Riku got worse, the knowledge festering inside him.
She let a breath out through her teeth, and then decided.
Kairi shut the book, keeping a hand inside to mark where she'd been. "It's not that," she said. "We were told we had to protect the world borders, so we couldn't say anything. But from the way Sora and Riku talk, it seems like people living near the heart of the worlds already know," she added with a half-frown, "so maybe you'd find out anyway, or maybe you just have to know to be able to handle the Heartless."
". . . Uh-huh," Selphie said. "Run that by me one more time."
"Okay," Kairi said, and pulled her hand free and set the book aside. "Uh, I guess to start: there are these things called keyblades," she explained, and summoned hers.
Less than three minutes later, the guys were at Selphie's window, weapons at the ready.
In hindsight, Kairi realized that yes, duh, of course pulling her keyblade alone when they couldn't see her was going to bring them running. It wouldn't be until much later that it would occur to her how hypersensitive to the potential of entering darkness Riku was at the time.
"...Is everything okay?" Sora asked, having stopped halfway in the midst of barreling straight through Selphie's window.
"What is going on," Selphie demanded.
They had the story laid out for their parents, with all the necessary cuts and omissions and distractions; but they didn't have one for their friends yet. After ten minutes of explanation punctuated with frequent glances at each other to figure out what could be said, Selphie was exasperated, Sora looked ready to throw his hands in the air, Kairi was thinking that they should probably just go get Wakka and Tidus now and get it all over with, and Riku seemed to have relaxed. A little. Fractionally. But it was still something.
"You know," he said, during another lull, "I would've bet munny that it'd be Sora who spilled everything."
"Hey!"
"Well, I have to keep you guys on your toes," Kairi deadpanned, and Selphie stopped tapping her foot long enough to snicker.
"Maybe we should get Tidus and Wakka," she added. "You know, tell everyone at once."
"Wakka's still in quarantine, remember?" Selphie pointed out. "Because of the ritual purity."
"Oh, right," Kairi murmured. "So...tomorrow? Would we be able to see him in the afternoon?"
Selphie counted off on her fingers, and then nodded. "I think so." She raised an eyebrow. "But you're not getting away with not telling me tonight," she added. "I am so not letting you go off and create a pretty story."
"It's not pretty," Riku said. "We should at least get Tidus."
Kairi and Sora looked at him. "...Are you sure?" Sora asked.
"He deserves to know," Riku said tersely.
"Some things we're not saying," Kairi replied, folding her arms on the keyblade resting in her lap. "To protect the world."
Riku looked at her for a long time. Kairi gazed back, head tilted slightly in a way that she knew was probably kind of obnoxious but if they could do it to make a point so could she.
Selphie glanced between the two of them for a moment, and then looked at Sora. "So, wanna go get Tidus?"
"Uh, yeah," he replied, pushing onto his feet. "I can do that."
After he'd swung out of the window and taken off down the road, Selphie shook her head. "Do you guys just hate doors now?"
"What'd you find?" Riku asked, ignoring the question and picking up a book. Selphie rolled her eyes.
Kairi shifted and tucked her feet under her. "Not much," she answered. "I haven't had enough time to look yet." She pushed her bangs away from her face, and added, quieter, "If you'd told me, I could have helped."
"I didn't know it was him," Riku replied. "I was just looking for rumors on that kid who left, a long time ago." The corner of his mouth curled down. "I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise."
"It is a little," Kairi muttered. "Destiny Islands is supposed to be...."
She didn't know how to finish. Safe? Full of light? Not a place a man--a monster--like that would come from?
Those weren't things to say to Riku.
"Even if you'd told me that, I could have helped," she said instead. "We could have...narrowed it down, or...something. Started with who you heard it from and gone from there, and...." Would it have changed anything? It might at least have kept him from wrecking the book, and setting her dad off.
Kairi slumped her shoulders and leaned back against Selphie's desk, feeling tired. "I don't know," she said. "Something. Didn't we just agree that secrets were a bad idea?" she added with a half-grin, glancing over at him.
Riku was staring out the window, but he forced a chuckle at that. Kairi frowned and straightened up; but then she decided maybe it would be better to ask him what was wrong when they were alone.
After a few more beats of silence, Selphie cleared her throat.
"Fun as it is to listen to you guys talk in code," she said, and looked at Kairi, "maybe you should go home? Your dad really was upset last time. He almost abdicated the mayorhood."
Kairi blinked--no one had told her that before--and Riku quirked an eyebrow. "I thought we weren't getting out of here without telling you everything?" he pointed out.
Selphie tugged on the edge of her skirt.
"...This is really serious, isn't it?" she said, not looking up. "If you need time to figure out what you can tell us, then go ahead. We don't need to hear everything. Yet," Selphie added meaningfully, tilting her head up and eying them.
Kairi bit the inside of her lip, and then nodded and stood. "Thanks.
"What about Tidus?" she added, gathering up the books.
Selphie waved negligently. "I'll take care of it."
"Thanks," Kairi said again.
"I'll go find them," Riku replied. He started to turn toward the window, and then Kairi shoved the load of books at him and linked an arm through his when he was distracted with trying to catch them.
Riku looked down at her through his bangs.
"I don't understand you," he muttered.
"I know," Kairi replied. "But that's not going to stop us."
He was silent for a moment, and then blew his bangs away from his eyes briefly. "How am I supposed to get out like this?" he asked, giving her arm a meaningful look.
"The door," Selphie replied, which was buried under Kairi's cheerful "You'll find a way!"
"Uh-huh," he said, and sized up the window. "...Ladies first."
Riku managed to exit via the window, without dropping any of the books or pulling her arm loose, because he was Riku. Inside the room, Selphie clapped in approval.
"Where do you want me to send Sora?" she asked a moment later, leaning out the window.
"My house," Kairi called over her shoulder. "Thanks again, Selphie. Let's all head over to Wakka's after school tomorrow, okay?"
"I'm holding you to that," Selphie nodded, and waved them off.
When Sora arrived at Kairi's house, climbing in through her bedroom window because he'd picked up enough to figure Hiromasu would throw him out the gate if he tried the front door, she and Riku had spread out the books on the floor and were struggling to find any further mention of Xehanort. Her father still had the book the page was torn from, and so far checking the neighborhood directories hadn't revealed anything. And Riku wasn't helping matters.
"Do you remember anything about that rumor?" Kairi asked, flipping through the pages of another book in frustration. "Or you, Sora?"
"What rumor?" he replied, plopping down on the floor.
"The one about the kid who left for good," Riku said.
Sora scratched the back of his head. "I...kinda remember hearing about that? Not much, though. It's bad luck for sailors to discuss that stuff." He looked at Riku. "I think it was mostly from you and Tidus."
Kairi sighed.
"Do you remember anything about it?" she asked.
Riku shook his head. "Just that I thought he must've had to be strong to get out."
"How did that come up?" she wondered, coming to the last few pages of the directory.
Riku was silent.
After a few moments, Kairi glanced up. Sora, who'd been poking at a nearby stack of pamphlets and trying not to mess anything up until he was told what to do, looked over.
Kairi finished skimming the last page of the directory, and set the book down in the 'useless' pile.
"I can't tell you," Riku said quietly. "This one I really can't."
Neither Sora nor Kairi said anything.
"I wouldn't say that if it weren't important," Riku muttered.
Kairi and Sora glanced at each other.
"...Yeah, we know," Sora said a moment later.
"So what can you tell us?" Kairi asked, picking up the next book.
He shook his head, looking as frustrated as she felt. "I don't remember much about it. I think Tidus is the one who first told me, and I think I remember some adults discussing it at a party once--before you came here," he added to Kairi, "--but that's it."
"I guess we can ask Tidus tomorrow if he remembers anything," Kairi considered. "What book were you looking in that had this?" she added, holding up the torn, crinkled page. "That might help."
"The...." As he tried to recall which ones he'd pulled, there was a knock on her door.
Riku and Sora fled through the window, proving yet again that fathers were more terrifying than the entire Organization combined. Kairi, having a thought, left everything where it lay on the floor and went to open the door.
"Have you--" her father stopped whatever he was about to say and frowned at the mess on her floor. "What on earth are you doing?"
"Researching," Kairi said. "Can you help?"
"What?" He stepped into the room and immediately started tidying up, removing old, delicate books from the carpet and placing them on the relative safety of the desk. "What are you looking for?"
"Do you remember what I said about the man who threw me into this world?" Kairi asked.
Her father flinched.
She pulled her desk chair out and offered it to him. "His Heartless was Ansem," she went on. "The one who hurt Riku so badly. And I'm pretty sure he was this man," Kairi said, and held out the torn page, pointing to Xehanort's name near the bottom.
Her father took the page gently, anger coloring his expression again as he saw the condition it was in; but Kairi watched him force it down. "Xehanort? He was...Ansem, too?"
"Yes," Kairi said, sitting on her bed. "We know Xehanort's Heartless was Ansem, and his Nobody was Xemnas." She half-smiled. "And it's a pretty strange name for two people to share."
"The Heartless are the black things, right?" her father mumbled, eying the page.
"Uh-huh, the ones that are just hearts. The Nobodies are rarer--they're what happens when really strong hearts turn into Heartless. They leave a piece of their body behind, in a different form."
Her father was silent for a long, long time.
"...That's very confusing, you know," he finally said.
She nodded. "We didn't name them. That was the real Ansem. I think, unless those were the fake reports that Xeh--"
Hiromasu held up a hand. "Let's...sort that out later. You think young Xehanort was the same person who Sora and--Riku were fighting all that time?"
"Yes," Kairi said, "in one way or another. It was always him behind the destruction." She shifted. "Do you know about him?"
"A bit," her father replied.
"Where're the records on him?" Kairi asked. "I couldn't find anything in any of the neighborhood directories or the genealogy tables or anywhere."
"No," her father agreed. "The death record would be it. Any other information will be with the priestly family." He placed the page on the desk and began trying to smooth it out further. "Xehanort came from there."
". . . oh," Kairi said quietly.
***
"He came with me to Jecht's house to plan out the new addition," Riku's father told his wife that night.
"Tidus is a friend of his," Chihoko replied, flipping her pillow over to the cooler side.
"A friend ranking far below Sora and Kairi," Yasuhiro pointed out. "But he came anyway. There's hope yet."
"Mm," Chihoko murmured, settling back. "Maybe."
Yasuhiro squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. "We'll get through this marriage mess," he said. "If he loves them enough to go through with it despite everything, he'll care for the island where they live. There's hope yet."
Chihoko thought of the way her son always hedged around the issue of the storm the night he'd left, the way Sora or Kairi always seemed to answer questions of what exactly it meant for a storm to 'break' a world for him, the way he was silent on the issue to the point of saying much; and she suspected his new interest in their family's responsibilities had less to do with growing up and more to do with guilt.
But she didn't share those thoughts, and only nodded in response to Yasuhiro's smile and curled up against his side.
Some truths were best kept to oneself.
***
She couldn't find her grandmother.
Kairi wandered through the castle's library, feeling more and more uncomfortable, but not wanting to call out for fear of being disruptive. They were guests, of Ansem the Wise himself, and the invitation had come on paper that was thick and creamy and some of the fanciest she'd ever seen. Her grandmother had mended up the tear on one of the flowers of her dress and washed it so it was snowy white, and had told Kairi that since she didn't know what they were being invited for, she needed to be on her very best behavior. Kairi was pretty sure that meant no yelling.
She'd been in here earlier with her grandmother, before she'd had to leave; but now it was different. The bookshelves had moved around, and the more she wandered the harder it was to remember how she'd gotten there in the first place, and how to get back. She thought she'd found the way twice already, but each time there was a shelf in the way. Kairi could see the staircase way up above them, and thought she could probably climb up the shelves and walk over them to it if she really had to, but she was pretty sure that that was also bad behavior.
"There you are," someone said behind her.
Kairi turned around and found a man with a neckerchief grinning at her.
She curtseyed, because he didn't look very nice, but there were supposed to be a lot of scientists in the castle now, and scientists were strange. She'd seen one a couple times in the town square, dragging a boy along with him, and he was definitely strange. "Hi, I'm lost."
"No you're not," the man said, still smiling. "I found you, didn't I? Someone asked me to."
"Oh." Kairi straightened up. "My grandma?"
"No, but maybe he'll take you to her," the man replied. "Come on, let's get out of here."
"I'm Kairi," she said, taking his hand.
"I'm Braig."
He walked fast, in long strides, and she had to trot to keep up. He also was walking down one of the aisles she'd already tried, but before Kairi could warn him that it was blocked off, they'd turned the corner.
She blinked when she saw it was wide open, and wondered if she'd been thinking about the wrong path. Maybe she should have pulled books out of the shelves to mark where she'd been.
Two turns later, and she could see the staircase on their left. Kairi was certain that it had been blocked off before. She bit her lip, and touched her pendant.
She hadn't seen Aqua again, and now there were new monsters running around the town; they clawed at their door a lot, and her grandmother always made her hide in the closet when she poured boiling oil out the window on them, 'in case they learn to climb.' Kairi hoped she was okay.
"Here you go!" Braig said, and Kairi was about to ask where they were when she realized he wasn't talking to her. There was another man sitting at a table, writing in a large black book. He didn't look familiar, but something about him made Kairi feel sick in her stomach. She tried to press a hand against it, but when she started to tug away Braig tightened his grip.
The man made a few more marks, and then set down his pen and shut the book. He looked over at her with a smile. He had the same gold-colored eyes as Braig.
"Hello, Kairi," he said.
"...Hi," she replied, and yanked her hand again. The man waved absently, and Braig let go. Kairi stumbled forward, grabbing the end of the table to catch her balance.
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you," the man said.
"Thank you," she replied, even though she knew that wasn't the right response, but she didn't remember it right now. "Who are you? How do you know me? Where's my grandma?"
"We've known about you for a while," he said, standing up and starting to come around the desk toward her. "And I'm afraid your grandmother isn't here."
Kairi moved further along the table, backing away as he came closer. "Who are you?"
"That's not necessary," he replied, and held out a hand. "Now, let's see if this works...."
She woke up gasping for air.
Kairi gripped her pendant tightly, enough so that the links of the necklace cut into her hand. She was sweating, and the stone quickly turned slippery.
She clenched her eyes shut and thought Don't run away. You need to remember.
...I don't know if you need to, Naminé said softly. Not if it hurts too much.
Kairi could tell she was thinking of Riku.
I want to remember, she replied, even though it was harder to say that when it was actually happening, and not just in theory.
Naminé didn't respond in words, but Kairi could feel the concern there, just a bit to the side of her heart.
Thank you, she murmured. I'm okay. It was just a dream. Well, a memory. But it was the past.
Memories are extremely powerful, Naminé replied. Don't underestimate them.
Kairi loosened her grip on her pendant, and then let go and dried it off with the edge of her sheet.
'Out of the darkness and into the light,' she reminded herself.
I'll be okay, she thought. We'll be okay.
...All right, Naminé agreed.
Kairi finished drying the stone, and then rolled over and sat up. She left her room a moment later, and began walking slowly through the house.
The shadows were still there, harder to spot in the natural darkness of the night, but curling at the edge of her senses all the same. Kairi pushed back at them, summoning handfuls of light and forcing them away.
Though that wasn't the right term. She couldn't do it the way she knew Riku could; he could actually send them away, send them elsewhere, make them leave a place. She couldn't make them depart; she could only burn them away.
Kairi recalled, vaguely, a time when they were kids and Wakka had been explaining possession to her; she hadn't heard of the term before. He'd said there were two ways of dealing with it: one, by talking with the spirit until it had worked through its tie to the earth and left; and the other, by eradicating it.
Wakka had called it murder, though. Something to do with a schism between how their island handled it and how the family members that had relocated to the mainland worked.
Kairi stood in the library, dissolving the shadows that lingered there, and thought The light can be frightening.
Yes, Naminé said. Extremes always are.
Kairi let her hand drop to the side, not sure any more if she'd done the right thing; but she didn't want to send the shadows out into any other home, and she wanted her father to rest easy.
This is really hard, she thought, rubbing the heel of her palm against her eye. I wish I could talk to the queen, or the other princesses.
I do too, Naminé replied. I still have questions.
Like what? Kairi asked curiously, as she made her way back to her bedroom.
...I don't understand how you do some of the things you do, Naminé replied. And information on the princesses is hard to find.
Figures, Kairi said ruefully. Then she thought back to her dream, with Xehanort writing in the codex, and huffed. ...If there was anything in there, I am going to be so annoyed.
Naminé laughed faintly.
In her room, Kairi flopped onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. She wanted a shower, but she knew that would wake her dad up. She'd been lucky he'd slept through her walkthrough.
I'll tell them tomorrow, she decided, after we talk to Tidus and Wakka and I see if I can get more information about Xehanort from Wakka's family.
Kairi draped an arm over her eyes, and then a few minutes later asked Do you want to draw? I think I'm up for good.
If you're sure, Naminé said; and when Kairi assented, she added Thank you.
You won't need a home anymore where you're going.