A/N: This has been sitting unfinished on my computer for ages but I found I had to finish it, I liked the idea too much. Despite the obvious differences (Mickey and co. as humans, almost Final Fantasy-esque) I tried very much to keep the "Disney" spirit inherent in the characters. Hopefully it turned out all right.

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You are crowned king when you are nineteen. Your father drowned in the green-glass pool six months prior and Minnie is pushing you into the thrown-room before you are sure you are ready, butterflies blowing bubbles and playing hop-scotch in your stomach. You are smiling nervously before the crowded room and Minnie gives your arm a little squeeze before letting go and suddenly you are alone. Half these people you've known all your life, but that doesn't count for biscuits when you're walking solo down the red carpet, the light in your eyes so bright its obscuring your vision. The formalities of the coronation take an eon and you are sweating under your heavy ceremonial garb; the minister's voice is a heavy drone "and so I crown thee king of this world, high sovereign of the sunlit lands, lord of Disney Castle..." and so forth and so on for what seem like three centuries.

The crown feels like one part purported blessing and three parts dead iron weight. Maybe that's why you never wear one ever after and Daisy yells at you when you refuse the gold-filigree ornament that is thrust at you. You don't care. Nineteen is too young to be a king of anything, caretaker of a freaking universe 'cause that's what you are when you are a king and wake up the morning after to find a Keyblade under your pillow. (You wonder if this is all part of the taking-over-the-kingdom package or if you are just special.)

When you look in the mirror, you don't see a powerful ruler. They sometimes call you the mouse king, you are just shy of short and make yourself seem so unobtrusive and polite-diplomatic. And then maybe it's a bit in your calm, round face and dark eyes, your chin-length black hair that tends to stick up rather when Daisy has forced you into a coronet for special audiences and dinners. But your kingdom is one of the few with knowledge of the other fragmented worlds, and sometimes that makes it feel like there is that much more weight on your shoulders to deal with, when the dreams come and you wake up gasping in the night because you've seen the darkness and it is growing.

No one knows about the Keyblade, not Minnie or Daisy, or even Goofy and Donald, your friends in court who will become captain of the royal guard and chief court mage. Goofy, who doesn't seem like a warrior in the slightest, with his butterfly brown eyes and limpid-sweet smile and Donald, who has dandelion-fluff white-blonde hair under black-mage garb, a temper set off as quickly and flamboyantly as fireworks on New Year's. There are few you trust more, but this feels like a secret you can't share quite yet.

You see things. Cities and forests, castles and paradise islands, all decaying, ash and lace. Mountains covered in snow and a deluge of black studded with gold, all claws and teeth liquid translucent nail. You see the darkness and it is growing and some nights you wake up and you can feel the worlds' hearts dying inside your chest, a crippled, stumbling beat racking hard again your ribs and lungs. You feel like your heart is dying the worlds are dying. And the Keyblade is telling you it is time to move on.

So one day you set off without telling anyone. You hijack one of those brightly mottled and frankly ridiculous "gummi" ships that the twin engineers are always tinkering with (praying fervently that the whole thing won't fall to pieces with you still inside it). It looks like a toy, pieces of plastic clumped together and glued by a child, though your engineers have sworn on the crafts' safety. Their words, thankfully, seem to hold true, despite all logical apprehension. You land, two worlds and one warp hole later, at the feet of a glittering citadel, a bastion busting with life and surrounding by crystalline rising falls and plateaus covered in spindly dark trees that will probably burst floral gorgeousness in the spring. It is evening. Glass lanterns have been lit all outside the bastion. One of the castle's warriors has ventured down to investigate your arrival and, at your request, leads you to the castle's ruler. Through the gleaming corridors, you marvel at the elaborate system of metal lifts and other magicked machinery that are woven into the halls of stone, amid columns of marble.

Lord Ansem sits at a sturdy mahogany desk littered with papers and studies and carefully drawn diagrams in the castle library-which is hugely impressive. You hear a dignified and calm voice that sounds very much like your own remark upon this. Ansem looks up. His face is weary but his smile sincere. He thanks you, inquiring of your business, and then asks with an admirable and subtle delicacy of your decidedly unorthodox method of arrival. His curiosity is patent. He is polite, yet somehow searching.

This man is four years your senior. Standing, he cuts quite the imposing figure, with copper skin and long hair the color of snow and lavender. He is much taller than you. Nonetheless, you find yourself inclined towards liking him. He is clearly intelligent and well-learned, with a deep concern for the well-being of his kingdom. His time, consumed with his research on the mysterious, all-consuming darkness-it's wear on him is obvious. His frame is thin, his cheekbones prominent. His eyes are brilliant amber, deep and haunted. Persuaded by your sympathies for this philosopher-king, you speak freely with him, and well into the night. (Nine years later you will feel bitter regret, but still have difficultly deciding what for.)

He makes jokes, unexpectedly. He is clear, logical, precise. Observant. When you find that you have begun nodding away over the top of your long-cold tea, he has already called for a servant to take you to your bedroom. You collapse on the bed, asleep, without so much as the energy to take off your clothes first. In the morning you are awoken to the noise of children thumping around in the outside corridor, giggling and whispering. By the time you have blearily stuck your head outside, the youngsters have been shooed away. It almost reminds you of home, and you think of Disney Castle with a pang of guilt. You left under false pretences and now it is time to go back if you don't want Daisy pursuing you, a blonde and tastefully dressed terror, for poking off and down yonder when one is supposed to be safely installed at home. So you are forced to take your leave of the amber-eyed king of Hollow Bastion early that afternoon. (Nine years later you will meet a stranger masked in crimson and swear to all that is Holy, you've met him before.)

The years pass. Life goes on, and you know you have failed, failed miserably, unforgivably, when you see the stars winking out like dying fireflies, and the first of the refugees have arrived.

And the Keyblade is telling you, it is time to move on.

-

You dream about a little boy and stained glass windows, princesses and dragons and shadows that loom high and block out all traces of the light. That is where you plunge headlong-the darkness has swallowed you whole and the air has frozen into stone, and the world is vanishing before your eyes. The Keyblade protects you, you think. Or your light. Whichever came first, because here you are in the worlds' womb, very much yourself (you pat yourself over, just to make sure). The Keyblade, when you summon it, is the most reassuring thing you think you have ever seen.

You don't know how long your sit there in Oblivion. Time passes too slowly here for you to believe, and you are so lonely and cold and afraid with the darkness looming all around you

except you have to believe,

in the light and the Keyblade and all that is good and just, and once upon a time, ever after because you're caretaker of the freaking universe now, lord of Disney castle, Keyblade bearer-

That's who you are, mouse king and all.

The hero comes after, a boy with chocolate colored hair flanked by your two best friends from the castle (and isn't that cute, you both wear the same kind of shoes, yellow and several sizes too big). And when you both close the door together, you are whispering the words to yourself as well as saying them to him.

You have to believe.

Don't worry. There will always be a door to the light.