Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts belongs to Square Enix and the Disney Corporation. This work of fanfiction is for entertainment only; no profit is being made.

-- -- -- --

-

Sora has to bang on the loudly on the bar's back door for a while before anyone comes. He keeps one hand behind his back, pulling down on his shirt so hopefully the blood isn't visible. Beside him, Riku keeps shifting and glancing over Kairi's head at the car. Kairi's slumped against him; Sora doesn't think she'd be standing without Riku's help. Her shaking's gone back to being constant again.

He's about to cut through the alley to the street and find the gruff guy's shop to ask where Aerith is when the bartender finally opens the door. Riku tenses up, so Sora moves between him and her just in case.

"Uh, hi," he says. She stares at him, so he adds, "I'm trying to find Aerith."

"Her shop's not around here," the woman tells them.

". . . Oh," Sora says. "Where is it?"

The woman looks over his shoulder. "She doesn't run a detox, you know. If you want to get your friend off of her drugs, you'll have to look somewhere else."

He jerks. "Kairi isn't--! Someone else did that to her!"

"Sora," Riku hisses, but there's an odd look on the woman's face now.

"Who?" she demands, and Sora blinks.

"Some bastard doctor," he replies, "look, can you just tell me where to find her? It's really important. Please?" he adds for good measure, because it's for Kairi and the woman's starting to look more helpful. There's a creaking noise from the door she's holding open, though, which is weird.

She stares at the three of them for a few more seconds. Sora shifts on his feet, sees Riku glance at the car again, and is about to repeat the question when the woman opens the door further.

"Come in," she says, before calling over her shoulder. "Aerith! Can you come here?"

Sora blinks again, but when Aerith comes up behind her, he goes to help Riku with Kairi and thinks maybe the day is starting to suck a tiny bit less.

Riku doesn't move, though he hands Kairi over to him. She's unconscious, Sora realizes, but still shaking badly; and that kills the previous hope. "I have to deal with the car," he says lowly.

"What?" the woman asks, as Aerith moves around her. She must have good hearing.

"She threw up in it," Sora says, trying to remember everything he knows about DNA and police work. Aerith is checking Kairi's pulse; Sora doesn't like the frown on her face. "And there's--we got away from the guys that did this to her."

The woman looks at his hands, and then at Riku. When Riku shoves his deep in his pockets, Sora realizes the marks from the handcuffs and the rope are probably obvious. Plus the. . . .

"And there's blood on the wheel," Riku says, harshly, like he's making it a threat.

The woman looks unimpressed. "Aerith, do you have this?" she asks, pulling a pair of gloves out from behind her.

Aerith nods. "Bring her inside," she says to Sora. "This isn't helping."

"Hey!" Riku objects, when the bartender takes the key from his hand and heads toward the car. "What're you--"

"Don't worry," Aerith says. "Tifa's good at this. Come on, get inside."

--

Riku finally moves away from the door when they hear Tifa drive off; but his shoulders are tense and he takes a seat that lets him keep an eye on the front and back doors at the same time, so Sora ends up answering most of the questions about Kairi. Riku only speaks up if Sora doesn't know the answer, like that Vexen never said a name for what he was drugging Kairi with or what time of the day she was injected. Kairi finally wakes up around the end of the questions, but it's to throw up again, so Aerith takes her to the bathroom. Sora follows them and crouches outside the door until Aerith leans out and tells him to get a glass from the bar.

It turns out girls' restrooms aren't much nicer than guys', aside from less smell; or maybe it's just this place. Sora still feels kind of weird standing inside one, even though he's glad to have Kairi in his sight again. He tries to wedge himself into the most uncomfortable position he can in the corner between the door and a wall, because he's hungry and exhausted. Now that it looks like they might be safe and the adrenaline's drained off, he just wants to sleep.

"How about you?" Aerith asks him, while Kairi's leaning heavily against a sink and sipping the water gingerly. "Are you all right?"

He's pretty sure the dizziness is just from lack of food and sleep, and there's not much to do for his hand or wrists but wait for them to heal, and his head's feeling a little better now that it's not getting punched once an hour, so Sora nods and then winces when the headache decides to prove him a liar. Then he hesitates, and looks at Kairi again.

She doesn't look much better, but she doesn't look like Aerith's made her any worse, either. And he knows Riku will never say anything, but they're probably not going to be able to pay for a medical clinic for a long time after this, because Sora checked his pockets in the car and all his money (everything he had, wallet, house and hospital keys, coupons and the flower shop card) was gone, which is crap, because he took everything they had when he went to see Marluxia yesterday morning. All that's left is one of the twenties Axel gave him that he shoved in his sock when he stopped to breathe at a red light on the way to Fountain Park; he can feel it under his sole when he walks.

Sora sucks in a breath, and says, "I'm fine, but. I. I think there's something wrong with Riku."

Kairi raises her head to look at him, and then nearly slips off the sink. Sora dives forward, but Aerith catches her first.

"What's wrong?" Aerith asks. She was holding Kairi by the shoulders, but steps back after she's convinced that the arm Sora's wrapped around Kairi's waist is steady enough.

"He's . . . breathing weird. Like, he got out of breath when we were running, even though it shouldn't've been that big a deal for him," Sora says, getting frustrated as he tries to explain, because maybe it was totally normal--they'd never been so wired as they had been in that building; maybe he shouldn't have said anything. It feels like he's selling Riku out.

"He got tasered," Kairi adds.

Aerith makes a low noise that Sora doesn't like any more than the frown she had checking Kairi's pulse. She looks at the door leading out of the bathroom, and asks, "Is it likely he'll let me check his heartbeat?"

Sora and Kairi shake their heads at the same time.

"It never is," Aerith says to herself. She looks back at Kairi. "You've held up well, but we need to get you to a bed before the worst of the withdrawal starts."

"What's it going to be like?" Kairi asks. Sora can feel her shaking against his arm through the fabric of her shirt. No matter how tight he holds on, it doesn't stop.

"Do you know anyone who's been through this before?" Aerith asks.

"No," she says, and glances at him. He shakes his head.

"Ah," Aerith replies. "I'm sorry. I can't really say for sure, since I don't know what that drug was; but it's probably going to be bad."
-

When they leave the restroom, Riku's washing his hands in the sink behind the bar.
-

Aerith takes him and Kairi into the back room behind the bar and then up a stairwell to the second floor. The room she stops at (Sora asks why there's a bedroom in a bar, but Aerith just shrugs a shoulder and helps Kairi onto the small bed) is pretty nice, at least compared to their old apartment: a real bed, and an old chair that looks like it was repaired and then never taken back downstairs, and no cobwebs or insects. Aerith pulls the chair up to the bed, and then says she's going to get more supplies.

Sora sits by Kairi for a few moments after Aerith is gone, and then gets up and cracks the door open again. It's right by the stairs, but the stairwell's the kind that bends so there's two sets of steps instead of being the kind that goes straight up, and he can't hear much from downstairs.

Sora goes back to the chair, almost nods off, and then goes back to the door before finally returning to the bed.

"Hey, Kairi?" he says quietly. When she opens an eyelid, he goes on: "I'm gonna go get Riku. I'll be back in a sec."

Kairi starts to mumble something, then nods instead. Sora walks half-backwards to the door, and then jogs down the stairs as fast as he can without pitching over.

Riku doesn't like leaving his watch on the doors, and he really doesn't like trapping all of them on the upper floor; but Sora can tell from his face that he hasn't liked them being out of his sight, either, so he finally gets him to come upstairs.

--

After Sora almost nods off a second time and then jerks his head back up so sharply that he cracks it against the wall, Riku says they should trade off on staying awake, and since Sora obviously needs a nap, he should go first. He doesn't have his normal tone, though; and he doesn't reply to Sora's comeback except to tell him to go to sleep already so he can get some rest once his shift is over.

Sora tries sitting by the bed and resting his head on the mattress, but Kairi is shaking so much that it makes the bed shake too, and that keeps Sora awake for several reasons. Finally he just half slumps on the chair, planning to at least rest his eyes if nothing else.

He wakes up when the door opens. Riku's standing straight in front of it, one hand in his pocket; Sora almost tells him it's not cool to threaten people that are being nice to them, but then he wakes up fully and pushes himself onto his feet.

It's just Aerith, now with one of those black doctor bags that Sora's seen in old movies his parents watched but never in real life, which is kind of cool. She checks Kairi's pulse again, and then takes her temperature, and then checks her heartbeat using a stethoscope, which is when Sora and Riku leave because she has to pull Kairi's shirt up a lot to do it. They're near the stairs when Tifa comes back.

Tifa pauses when she turns the corner of the stairwell and sees them, but then continues on up. Sora was sitting, but he has to stand again because otherwise her legs are right at his eye level and he's pretty sure he's not supposed to look at strangers like that. "Hope you didn't want that car back."

"No," Riku replies. "What'd you do?"

"I left it with a guy I know who works in a salvage yard," she replies. "The steering wheel's already gone, and the car will be in tomorrow's compression group."

"And did you call the police?" Riku asks evenly. Sora blinks at him; he thought all this worry was about Ansem's guys following them here.

Tifa is giving him that unimpressed look again. "Do you know what part of town this is?" she asks. "I'd lose a lot of business if a cop car's sitting out front close to opening time."

"Thanks," Sora says, after a pause. His voice cracks when he says it, and he has to swallow a lot to work up enough saliva to soothe it. He should have drunk some water from the bathroom sink when he was there; now that he thinks about it he's annoyed that he didn't think of it then.

Tifa gives him a long look, then nods once and steps into the room. She and Aerith talk about something for a few minutes, lowly; Riku tilts his head closer to the door and half-shuts his eyes to concentrate on hearing better, so Sora stays quiet.

That turns out to be a bad idea, because with nothing immediate to focus on, his body starts reminding him how bad it feels. His throat's so dry he doesn't think he can talk again unless he gets a drink of water, and the dizziness is coming back more often since he woke up; and while he's not starving--he knows what starving feels like--it's pretty close. Riku doesn't look a lot better; he's kind of pale, and way too tense, like he's straining to keep from swaying.

Tifa gives them another look as she leaves the room and heads back down the stairs, but it's not the kind that would make Sora cautious, jittery; but it's guarded, so he's not totally sure what it is. He glances at Riku, but Riku's still looking inside the room, so finally he just slumps back, presses his head against the wall and wills the dizziness to go away.
-

Aerith comes into the hall a little later, after Sora's started jiggling his leg to keep himself awake, and shuts the door behind her. That gets both him and Riku to stand up straight.

"She's okay, right?" he asks, voice cracking again on the first word. Riku shifts his weight closer to the door.

"Mm," is all Aerith says at first. She pulls the stethoscope around her neck back up to her ears. "I think she will be, after the worst is over. She has a strong heart. Speaking of which," she adds, and then turns and presses the metal bit of the stethoscope to Riku's chest.

"--What the--?!" he demands, moving to the side. Aerith follows.

"Take a deep breath," she says.

"Stop it," Riku says shortly, and takes as much of another step away as he can without going down the stairs.

"Your friends said that you were having trouble breathing, and that you were tasered," she replies, still holding the stethoscope to his chest.

Riku glares at him.

Sora tries to explain via hand gestures that he and Kairi were worried about him and knew he would be stupid and not say anything, and then he swallows hard and tells Aerith, "Twice."

Riku ups the glare, then looks down when Aerith draws in a breath through her teeth.

"Do you know how long each time lasted?" she asks, pulling down the neck of his shirt and pressing the stethoscope to the skin above his heart.

". . . Not that long," Riku says guardedly. "Why?"

"Tasers . . ." Aerith trails off, still listening. She rummages in her jacket pocket for a moment, and pulls out a watch.

Sora looks on with a growing bad feeling as she times his heartbeat. After a while, she pulls the stethoscope away from her ears and holds it out to Riku. "Listen."

He takes it gingerly, but listens and keeps an eye on the watch after she lifts it closer to him. Sora shifts unhappily when his eyes widen slightly.

"Does it feel like you're unusually aware of your heartbeat?" Aerith asks.

Riku's silent a while longer, head tilted down slightly so Sora can't see where he's looking; but finally he says, "Yeah.

"It goes away pretty fast," he adds, pulling the stethoscope away.

"It's happened more than once since you were tasered?"

". . . Yeah."

"What wrong?" Sora demands, swallowing hard again to get the words out.

"You need to drink some water before you hurt your throat any more," Aerith tells him, and then glances at Riku again before folding up the stethoscope and putting it back in her bag. "It looks like you have a heart arrhythmia. If you've experienced palpitations and shortness of breath . . . there's no point asking about dizziness until you've eaten and slept. Come on," she says, gesturing for them to follow her downstairs.

Riku hangs back while Sora opens the door and glances in again. Kairi's under a blanket facing the wall, maybe sleeping; so he and Riku head down to the bar.
-

There's a mini-fridge in the back room with stuff for sandwiches; when Aerith asks, Tifa says they can make some from there. Aerith stops Sora after he drains a third glass of water so he won't get sick. Then she makes him wash his face, before re-bandaging it and his hand.

It hurts less to talk now, finally, so while he and Riku are downing the sandwiches over the sink behind the bar he asks, "What'd they do to his heart?"

Riku elbows him in the side. "I'm right here."

Sora elbows him back, and then moves out of range reflexively even though Riku's voice is still off, still flat. "What's an arrhythmia?"

"My heart's beating too fast sometimes," Riku answers shortly, before Aerith can.

"Basically," she says. "It isn't the life-threatening kind, or you wouldn't be with us. And you can treat it with anticoagulants and fish oil. If you take care of yourself, avoid stress and watch your heart-rate, you should be fine."

Sora glances from her back to Riku. He tears off another bite of sandwich and doesn't look up.
-

A little while later, when they've finished the sandwiches in silence, Aerith gives them a package of saltine crackers and says they're for Kairi. He and Riku take them and a new glass of cold water back upstairs.

Kairi's moved around since last time--she's kicked the blanket most of the way off, and she's gripping it really tightly in her hands; her knuckles are white. She's still shaking and sweating, but her eyes are shut and Sora's not sure if she's awake or asleep. He sets the crackers and water on the chair, and then sits down on the foot of the bed.

Riku stands by the door for a little while, but eventually comes over and pulls the blanket back over Kairi. Sora helps with the edge that's near him. His hand brushes Kairi's leg as he does, and she's freezing, even though she's sweating so much. Sora clenches his hands into fists, then loosens them and digs the heels of his palms against his eyes.

"I'm glad he's dead," he says lowly.

Riku makes a sharp noise. "--Don't say that."

Sora wrenches his hands down and jerks around to look at him. "Aerith said you could have died!" he shouts. "Kairi's sick, and they stole all our money, and they ruined our lives for some stupid personal, business crap! The only thing that sucks is that we didn't kill him and Ansem both when we had the chance!" Sora barely remembers not to punch the mattress on the off-chance he hasn't woken Kairi up already, and hits his leg instead. "He deserved it!"

Riku's standing straight, tense; Sora glares at him, because he has to agree, Saïx was in their way when they just wanted to get out of there, he was one of the people that took Kairi and Riku in the first place--

"It's not 'we,'" Riku tells him. "I did it."

The way he says it makes Sora uncurl his fists and look down at the floor.

It isn't that he forgot. He just . . . he doesn't know, it just. It stopped being so important when he learned the extent of what those bastards did to Kairi and Riku.

Kairi mutters something. Sora's about to say sorry for waking her up, when she mumbles, "I want to go home."

Riku and Sora both look at her.

"Naminé, it's late, let's go. . . ." She trails off after that into some language Sora doesn't know. He thinks he's heard it before, some time; it makes Riku start. Kairi gets quieter, and then falls back asleep, maybe--she stops talking.

"Who?" Sora asks, because he's never heard that name before; none of the kids on the islands were called that, and it doesn't sound like the kind of name people around here have. Riku shrugs.

Sora grits his teeth, and hunches over, digging his fingers into his arms. He wants to fight someone, to make this all better, make things go back to the way they were when everything made sense; but there's no one to fight and fighting wouldn't fix anything anyway, and he can't think of anything they can do besides run really, really far and hope it's far enough. He hates this.

The mattress sinks as Riku sits down as well, near the edge so he doesn't squash Kairi's knees.

". . . Do you really think. . . ." Riku hesitates and stops; and after a moment Sora looks over at him.

". . . Do you think it was-- . . . okay?" Riku asks quietly.

Sora gives him a disbelieving look. "We were just trying to get away! He was in our way!"

This time Riku stares down at the floor, hands dangling between his knees. He must have washed them in really hot water; they're still kind of chapped and red.

". . . I'd do it again," he says, voice low. "I didn't know there wasn't anyone else coming. So I'd do it again."

Sora swallows, this time not because his throat hurts but because that sick feeling from when he realized why Saïx collapsed is closer to the surface than he thought, and he has to shut his eyes for a second.

Then he opens them, and looks at Kairi's hands clenching the blanket, and thinks of Riku's shallow breathing when they were running; and he pushes it away. Sora nods.

A little bit later, he slumps again; but this time it's to the side, against Riku's shoulder. Riku's still tense despite what he said, still holding his shoulders back tightly; but eventually, he relaxes a little. Not much.

It's a start.
-

They stay that way for a while--probably not as long as it feels--until Sora remembers he's going to have to tell Aerith eventually that they can't pay for any of this. He doesn't know if just twenty dollars would cover everything she and Tifa have done so far, and anyway they need it to get food and make a start at getting out of this city.

He tells Riku about it, gesturing to his sock; and Riku agrees that they need it more, so Sora figures they should ask if they can work off the debt washing glasses or something. If that won't do, he'll offer to help clean their storeroom once his wrist heals more.

Kairi jolts awake while he's still trying to convince Riku that they have to offer to do something; she tries to eat a cracker and drinks some of the water, but more of it spills on the blanket because her hand keeps shaking.

Aerith knocks on the door while he and Riku are trying to flap the blanket dry again.

"Could you help me?" she asks, pushing the door open with her hip while juggling a sleeping bag and another blanket.

"These are for us?" Sora asks disbelievingly as he takes them, because it's a really nice sleeping bag--flannel-lined, the kind for camping in the winter.

"While you're here," Aerith replies. "You can't just sleep on the floor."

"Where'd you get it?" Riku says, eying the bag as Sora rolls it out. He catches the blanket when Sora tosses it at him.

"I never know who I might be treating," Aerith answers breezily. "It's good to have a few practical things on hand."

". . . Uh," Sora says. "About that. . . ."

Aerith looks at him.

"We were robbed," Riku says, tossing the blanket onto the bag.

"Do you barter?" Sora asks. "We can do stuff to pay everything off."

Aerith props her elbow in one hand and rests her chin on the other, giving them a long look. "Weeeeell," she says consideringly. "I'd have to ask Tifa, but I'm sure she has some work to do around the bar."

"We can do it!" Sora replies.

"All right!" Aerith claps her hands together decisively and smiles. "She'll wake you up after closing, then."
-

Once they hear her go down the stairs, Riku looks at him and says, "Only you would find the one doctor in the city who's a conwoman."

"Hey!" Sora replies. "She's helping us out even though we can't pay. We're the ones doing the conning."

Riku gives him a 'you're an idiot' look, which is why they wind up arm wrestling over who gets to sleep in the sleeping bag and who has to take first watch.

--

The noise in the bar below is loud, but not really loud; it's mainly the sound of TVs and people talking and one guy swearing loudly occasionally, and after he gets used to it--and memorizes some of the swearing guy's phrases that he's never heard before--Sora finds it kind of soothing. It's a constant sort of lull, and when he's sitting wrapped in a blanket by the door in a dark room, it's nice to have something block out the rattling of the bed from Kairi's tremors and the sound of her nightmares, and the low, muffled noise of Riku's fake-sleep breathing, half buried in the sleeping bag.

At least, it's nice until he starts to think about it; and then Sora decides he'd rather have the nightmares. He opens the door a little more, until there's enough light to see Riku by, and moves over to Kairi's bed so he can listen to her and keep an eye on him.

Kairi finally stops shaking at some point, though she's still mumbling occasionally in that other language; and the need for more sleep eventually catches up to Sora after that.

--

He wakes back up when he notices that the noise is gone. Tifa hasn't knocked on the door, like Aerith said she would--at least, Sora figures she hasn't, since Riku is finally asleep and Kairi is still something resembling it--but it's quiet enough below that it must be after closing time.

At first Sora thinks that if Tifa forgot to call them in on their debt, then awesome, more sleep for them; but then he shakes off the blanket and, with one last look at Kairi and Riku, heads out of the room to the stairs. They're lucky that Aerith is letting them work instead of pay--he doesn't want to get thrown out until Kairi's okay, at the least, and it'd be really nice if they could stay long enough to make sure nothing's going to happen with Riku. So he has to at least ask if there's anything he can do now, no matter how much a drag it is.

(The majority of Sora's knowledge of bars came from old Westerns, which left him with the vague assumption that they all had sawed-off shotguns under the counter and a majority of the customers knew how to fight; so he's a little less worried about Ansem finding them than he was the previous day.)

When he looks out the storage room door, he almost thinks he was wrong and the place is still open--there's a guy sitting at the end of the bar. But he's the only one in there, and Tifa's ignoring him, washing glasses at the sink until she sees Sora.

"What is it?" she asks, setting the towel down with a quick snap to get the excess water off.

". . . Aerith said you'd get me and Riku to help after closing," he replies, coming around the door since she hasn't shooed him off. "Doing . . . stuff. Closing stuff. Since we can't pay her money for Kairi."

Tifa raises an eyebrow, like this is all news to her; but then she shrugs.

"I don't need any help now. Wait 'til morning," she says, before changing her mind. "But get that guy's glass."

The guy gives a little half-smile at that.

"Yo," he says as Sora comes up, and now the not-smile's changed to a grin. "So you're Aerith's customers."

"You know Aerith?" he asks, since there's still some beer in the guy's mug.

"Yep. Name's Zack," he says, holding out a hand. Sora shakes; Zack's hand is really calloused.

Zack is awesome. He's done lots of traveling too, even further than the three of them imagined--to countries with names Sora barely remembers from Social Studies.

"It's nothing," he says, when Zack says it looks like the rope burns on his wrists must've hurt, because he wants to be cool too, "you should've seen this one time when we were hauling logs for the raft, and the rope slipped--my hands looked awful!"

"Ouch," Zack commiserates. Sora shrugs nonchalantly, even though it really had hurt at the time.

Zack checks his watch, and Sora finally remembers about the glass. Tifa's stacking chairs on the other end of the bar, so he should probably just leave it in the sink.

"I don't want to keep you up," Zack says, attracting his attention again. "Aerith said you guys had been through a lot. I just wanted to ask a question."

"Yeah?"

"Can you tell me about the scientist?" he asks. In the corner, Tifa pauses over the chair she was flipping onto the table top.

Sora frowns. "Huh?"

"Like, what he looks like, where he was working," Zack explains.

"Why do you want to know?" comes a voice from the storage room, startling him.

Sora turns to look. "Riku!"

Riku's glaring past him at Zack, who holds up a hand in a peace-making gesture.

"It's okay," he says. "I just want to verify something Aerith was worried about. It's a private inquiry only."

Riku snorts derisively. "There's no such thing as 'private inquires' when the army's involved."

Sora's eyes widen. "Whoa," he says, turning back to face Zack. "You're a soldier?"

There's a smack of wood on wood; Sora glances over and sees that Tifa's set a chair heavily on the table and is watching them now. Zack seems a little surprised; but then there's an odd look on his face and then he smiles again.

"I was," he says. "I left.

"How'd you know?" he adds, giving Riku an impressed look.

"Your stance," Riku says tightly. "Why are you asking?"

"Just checking," Zack answers. "Did he have long, dark hair?"

Sora glances at Riku, who's still standing tight-lipped in the doorway, and then back at Zack. ". . . It was long, but he was blond."

There's a different odd look on Zack's face for a second, and he leans forward slightly. "Did he have a ponytail? Or glasses?"

"Who're you wanting it to be?" Riku demands, before Sora can answer.

"I'm just checking," Zack says again, "that it's not someone I don't want around here."

Sora can get behind that sentiment.

"He never had a ponytail when I saw him," he says. "And I don't think he wore glasses. . . ." He glances at Riku, who stays still for another moment before shaking his head once in confirmation.

"Contacts and hair dye," Tifa says negatively. She's given up on the chairs and is standing nearby now, one fist propped on her hip.

Zack makes an agreeing noise. "What about his voice? How did he talk?"

Sora shakes his head and looks over at Riku again. "He almost never talked to me."

Riku folds his arms. "He had a low voice. And he talked a lot. He had a facial tic," he adds grudgingly.

Zack and Tifa glance at each other, but then she shrugs once and turns away, back to the chairs. Zack gives them another grin.

"Thanks," he tells them.

"So is it the same guy?" Sora asks.

Zack frowns. ". . . I dunno. The tic sounds wrong, but the rest. . . ." He shrugs a shoulder in Tifa's direction. "Like she said, it could all be superficial changes."

"It's after closing," Tifa calls without looking back, and Zack stands.

She shoos him and Riku upstairs after Zack's gone, saying that she doesn't need their help until the afternoon. Sora's glad to go, even if Riku's frowning; with both of them down here, there's no one to make sure Kairi's nightmares aren't too bad.

Once they're on the stairs, and the noise of Tifa setting chairs is muffled by the back room door, Riku says lowly, "Don't let people ask you questions when you're tired."

Sora gives him a confused look. Then he thinks of Demyx and that storage room, and shakes his head sharply.

"Zack's cool," he says. "He's not like those guys."

Riku gives him that 'you're an idiot' look again, but now it's harder; it makes him hunch his shoulders defensively and glare back, because he's not so dumb that he's going to do anything to lose them again. "He's not," Sora repeats.

Riku doesn't reply; and they climb the rest of the stairs in silence.

--

Kairi gets sort of better over the rest of the night and the morning--the shaking's stopped and her eyes aren't as glassy, but now she's burning up and sweating worse. He and Riku have to keep refilling her glass with water. She keeps her eyes closed almost all the time, and just shakes her head when they ask what's wrong.

When she learns that there's a tiny shower in the bathroom next door, the kind with no curtains and a concrete lip like in the janitor's closet back at school, she says she wants to clean up. Sora helps her walk to it, and feels awkward and helpless when he has to leave her inside and she shuts the door. Riku sits outside it with him for a little while, and then leaves to make them more sandwiches since the saltines are long gone.

He comes back quickly, and gestures for Sora to follow him silently.

"--and you checked?" he hears Zack ask, when he and Riku pause behind the half-open back room door.

"Yes," Aerith replies. "No abnormal strength, no increases in vision or lung capacity or anything. . . . I don't think it was him."

Another person exhales gratefully somewhere closer to the door; probably Tifa.

"Of course, that means now there's someone else out there like that," Aerith continues. "But from what they've said, it seems to be an independent venture, not an army one."

"Poor kids," Zack says. One of them murmurs in agreement.

"Well," he continues, and there's the scraping noise of a stool on the concrete, "I'll leave these with them and then--"

Sora misses the rest of what he says, because Riku's jerked on his arm. They rush for the stairs.
-

Zack's a lot faster than they thought. He looks as surprised as Sora and Riku when he finds them heading up the steps.

"--Hey," he says, with a half-wave. He's holding a duffle bag.

"What the hell did you people do to Kairi?" Riku demands, turning around fully to stare him down. Sora follows, because at this point offense clearly is the best defense.

"Nothing," Zack says, setting the bag down on the bottom stair. "Aerith was checking that what she was drugged with wasn't the same stuff the guy I was worried about shot up other people with."

"Uh-huh," Riku replies.

"Are you a soldier?" Zack asks him.

That was really the wrong thing to say, Sora thinks, as Riku pulls back--not that Zack could have known.

"No," Riku says sharply.

"One of your parents, then," Zack replies, like it's fact. And it is; so even though Riku's face is blank now, Sora figures his own confirms it, because how'd he know?

"Stance," Zack says with a quick nod at Riku's shoulders and another not-smile that soon fades. "But I'm guessing they weren't a commissioned officer."

"Why?" Sora asks, because Riku will never answer and he doesn't really want to pick a fight on the stairs; they're blocked from the exits like this and Kairi isn't with them anyway, so it's not like escape is possible.

Zack frowns for a moment, and then says, ". . . It's easier if I just show you."
-

Aerith and Tifa look over when he and Riku follow Zack out of the storage room. Then Zack either gives them some really subtle signal, or else the fact that he's still carrying the duffle bag means more to them than it does Sora, because Tifa looks away and Aerith props her chin on her hand and watches them leave.

Riku stops on the top of the back steps and folds his arms. Zack heads further down the alley, rummaging around in the assorted debris against the walls.

"What are you doing?" Sora asks, because he's starting to think Zack might be less cool and more lame.

"Trying to find a--ah!" Zack holds up a short, rusting, ribbed iron bar, the kind Sora saw littered around construction sites when he used to work on them. He brings his arms up in a defensive position reflexively; he can hear Riku moving behind him. But Zack doesn't attack--he just wraps his hands around both ends.

Zack folds the bar in half like it's a pipe cleaner.

Sora stares, because even if life has gotten really insane this last week, that's just--creepy and awesome.

". . . Nice trick," Riku says.

Zack keeps pulling the ends of the bar, until they curve away from the point in the center, and then brings them back together to make a rough, upside-down heart. He tosses it to Sora a second later; he catches it with both hands, and has to bend his knees to keep from dropping it because it weighs just as much as he knew but couldn't believe with how easily Zack twisted it.

"Real iron," Zack says, wiping flakes of rust off on his pants.

"Yeah," Sora confirms, voice only a little awed.

Riku is silent for a moment while Sora turns the heart around and then tosses and catches it a couple times, because--that is just really awesome and creepy.

Riku's voice is thicker when he speaks again. "And you thought Kairi was drugged with the same stuff as that?"

Sora's eyes widen, and the hand holding the heart drops to his side as he stares at Zack.

Zack rubs the back of his neck. "That's what Aerith was worried about. A lot of the . . . circumstances sounded the same."

"What is it?" Sora demands.

Zack makes a 'sorry' hand gesture. "I only know the classified name, and I finally got away from getting shot at."

"Which army were you in?" Riku asks, lower.

Zack gives him a rueful little half-smile. "A different one than I thought."

Then he shrugs a shoulder. "But you guys don't need to worry. It looks like whatever happened with your friend, it was something and someone different. She'll be okay."

Sora looks down at the iron heart again.

There's silence for a little while; and then Zack claps him on the shoulder.

"It'll be okay," he says again. Then he picks the duffle up off the back steps. "Anyway, these are for you guys."
-

After they eat (Aerith gives Riku a bunch of purple grapes, telling him that they're a natural anticoagulant and should help with his heart, and it's a little harder for Sora to finish his sandwich after that) Sora learns the duffle has a change of clothes for him and Riku. They're big enough that it's pretty obvious they have to be Zack's, though they're kind of musty; when Sora asks, Zack says he's traveling around, trying to find a friend of his and Aerith and Tifa's, so he hasn't been back to use them in a while.

"So you came here because Aerith thought that bad guy was back?" Sora asks. He almost feels like he should apologize; he's done enough searching for lost friends recently that he knows how he'd feel at being distracted for a false reason.

Zack just shrugs it off and smiles. "I check in with them once in a while, anyway," he says.

Sora almost asks if he's sure about giving them the clothes, but then catches himself, because even if the new jacket is way too big it's still really warm. He hasn't had such a nice coat since leaving home; there wasn't room on the raft, and they left in warm weather, so he hadn't thought about it at the time.

It's not until he changes shirts that Sora remembers he's been wearing one stained with blood all this time. Riku balls his old shirt up tight, hiding the stains, and then zips his jacket up all the way even though it's pretty warm inside the bar.

Kairi says to come in when Sora knocks on the bathroom door. She's sitting on the concrete rim of the shower, combing her hair with her fingers; and her clothes have damp spots. At first Sora thinks the sweating's gotten even worse and almost freaks, but then he realizes that there aren't any towels in the room and she probably had to get dressed without drying off. He tells her about Zack and the new clothes.

"There wasn't anything girly in there," Sora adds, holding out a sleeveless turtleneck and the second pair of pants. Riku took the other pair since the scalpel got blood inside the pocket of his old ones, but Sora kept his since they still fit well enough and he doesn't want Kairi to catch a cold in her skirt on top of everything else. "But it's still really nice stuff."

"Wow," Kairi replies, looking over the clothes. She still looks kind of sick, and she's moving as little as possible. "That was nice."

Sora nods, and then fidgets with the edge of his jacket. "Riku thinks we're getting conned," he adds, and then sits beside her on the rim and tells her about the stuff Zack said. He gets the iron bar heart from their room to prove it, even though Riku--leaning against the wall by the stairs--looks at him odd when Sora darts into the room to grab it and then out again. Kairi stares at it and says, "They thought I could do this?"

"Yeah," Sora replies. "Go figure that we ran into them out of everyone. . . ."

Kairi's still staring down at the heart with a weird look, and it takes Sora a moment to realize she's not blinking. At all.

"Kairi?"

"Mm?" she replies, without moving. When he waves a hand hear her face, she doesn't do more than purse her mouth slightly.

Sora fishes for something to get her full attention, and asks, "Who's Naminé?"

Kairi blinks, once, at that, and then looks up at him. "What?"

"You were talking about her last night," he explains. "Or, you were acting like you were talking to her. You said some other stuff, too, but it was in another language."

Kairi stares down at the heart again, for a long time.

". . . I don't know," she finally says. When Sora frowns and tilts his head, she shakes hers slightly. "I could . . . I can tell you what she looked like, and . . . how she dressed, what she liked to do, how we played . . . but I don't know who she is. It's like there's nothing behind her. No place. You and Riku have the islands are behind you, behind everything we did, but with her. . . . It's like with Xeha--Anse--no, not Mr. Ansem. Why didn't I notice it the first time?" she murmurs, mostly to herself at this point.

Sora shifts uncomfortably on the concrete, because this doesn't make any more sense now than it did yesterday. "So he's not really called Ansem?"

"No," Kairi answers. "He's someone else."

She hands him the heart back suddenly, and asks, "How's Riku?"

"Aerith said he has an . . . arrhythmia, and his heart beats too fast," Sora says, turning the heart around distractedly in his hands. "She said he'll be okay, as long as he eats fish oil and doesn't get stressed, but. . . ."

Kairi hugs her arms around her legs. "Is that what you were talking about?"

"Huh?"

"When you were talking about that man before."

That sick, twisting feeling is back, because it's Kairi asking this time and he doesn't know how he feels about knowing she heard him say all that; but it's not as bad. Sora shrugs once, hard, pushing it away. He sets the heart on the floor. ". . . Yeah. She said--she said it was the non-fatal kind, 'cause otherwise he wouldn't even be here, because of those bastards--!"

Kairi is silent. Sora knots his fingers in the fabric of his pants.

"I wish I'd gotten it uncapped faster," is all she finally says, and it takes him a second to realize she's probably talking about the scalpel. "Before they grabbed my arms." Then she tilts slightly, touching his face. "How are you?"

"I'm okay," Sora replies. "What about you?"

Kairi half-smiles. "I'll be okay. I want to sleep a little longer, though."

Sora nods and pushes onto his feet, then reaches out to help Kairi when she wobbles as she stands herself.

This time, her half-smile is unhappy and frustrated, caused by the way she's biting down on her lip. "I must look pretty useless," she says. "I can't even stand up, I can't walk, I've been sick and unconscious while all these bad things are happening--"

"It's not your fault," Sora interrupts.

Kairi exhales. "That doesn't change how I feel."

He squeezes her hand tightly, making her look up at him. "It's not true. If--if anything is telling you different, it's wrong."

Kairi gazes at his face for a long moment; and then she chuckles faintly and squeezes back.
-

Sora pushes open the door to see Riku and Tifa talking in the hall. He lets go of Kairi's hand, suddenly awkward at the thought of being seen by a stranger but even more by Riku--he still remembers how weird and unhappy he felt when he noticed him and Kairi spending time together, and he doesn't know if Riku feels the same way, but if he doesn't, Sora doesn't want him to start. He doesn't want Kairi to feel like that about him and Riku, either, even though he's not sure if that really works--mostly he just doesn't. . . .

. . . Mostly he doesn't know what he wants, except maybe for life to be less complicated again like it used to be.

He takes Kairi's hand once more though when he remembers that he was helping her to the bedroom.

"How are you feeling?" Tifa asks her, as Riku pushes the door open with his foot.

"A lot better," Kairi says, pausing in the hall to face her. "Thank you all for all your help."

Tifa looks a little surprised--maybe she expected Kairi to be blunt like him and Riku, Kairi's gotten that reaction sometimes--but then nods. ". . . You're welcome. Speaking of which," she says, focusing on Sora, "you can come help me get ready for opening."

--

Tifa has him and Riku sweep and mop the floor before taking down all the chairs. It's not fun--his wrist still hurts and the scabs keep ripping--but it's paying off their debt, and it's a chance to do something that makes sense, no undercurrents or secrets or ulterior motives involved. Just brooms and furniture.

Repetitive work doesn't take much concentration, though, and once Sora gets bored of listening to the news on a TV and starts thinking about the stuff Riku said about Vexen's drug--about it making a person into someone else by erasing their soul--he keeps thinking about it, and about the distant, far-away look in Kairi's eyes as she stared down at the iron heart.

So by the time they're done, he's come up with a plan. He catches Riku by the arm and half-pulls him out the back door when Tifa's in the storage room, and then tells it to him.

-- -- --

It's cold enough that it looks normal for them to be walking around with their hoods half over their faces, which is the only reason Riku agrees to Sora's 'plan.'

"You . . . want to get her a seashell necklace to help her remember who she is," Riku says slowly, because it sounds insane. Ansem's men are undoubtedly still after them, and he doesn't want to leave Kairi alone with these strangers that are just a little too helpful. And Sora wants to get a necklace.

But, insane as it sounds, it also sounds like the kind of thing that might work, if only because it's Sora and it's Kairi. So Riku makes him swear that if they don't find a store selling shell necklaces on this block, they'll come back. It's going to be hard enough to sneak back into the bar without trying to do it after it's opened for the night.
-

He forgot what a lucky twerp Sora is. On the opposite side of the block is one of those little souvenir shops. And visible through the door is a seaside display. Riku refuses to look at Sora's grin as they enter.

He also tries not to think about how Sora and Kairi were holding hands when they left the bathroom; or how most of the time they were talking low enough that he doesn't know what they were saying. That last one has been ongoing since they started. Riku shoves his hands deeper in his pockets as they enter. He frowns at the bell that rings overhead and announces their presence to the man behind the counter.

"Hi!" Sora says to the guy, before bee-lining to the display. He makes a face as soon as he gets there; Riku soon sees why. Everything on it, necklaces included, is over-priced.

"Maaaan," Sora mutters, before turning away and looking around the rest of the shop. Riku eyes the display, calculating which necklace would fit in his pocket and be least missed. But he has to abandon the idea; the store clerk is watching him and Sora closely, but mostly him. At least, it feels like he's mostly watching him.

It feels like everyone who looks at him now knows, about Saïx and what he did. Riku keeps his hands deep in his pockets and deliberately stays in the middle of the aisle, in view. This was a stupid idea.

. . . Okay, it wasn't stupid, but it wasn't likely to work, either. Riku glares at the display's price tags one last time, and then looks out the front window. It's starting to get dark. Tifa has to be opening soon, if she hasn't already.

Sora catches on when Riku clears his throat. He pauses by the display one last time, while the clerk is still watching Riku, and then comes over. They leave.

That was a waste, Riku thinks but doesn't say. He didn't think getting Kairi the necklace would do much good, but now that the chance was so close, he hates missing it.

He's watching the sidewalks and the road as they turn the corner, not Sora; so at first what he says doesn't make sense.

"It looks ridiculous," Sora says out of the blue. "She'll have to take it apart and make a real one."

"What?" Riku replies, glancing at him for a second as they come to the alley that leads to the bar's back door. Then he stops and looks again, longer.

Sora's holding a shell necklace in his hands, scrutinizing it. It does look silly, like the kind of thing tourists buy because they don't know better. But that's not the point.

"You stole that?" Riku says in disbelief. Then he steps into the alley, because it gets them off the sidewalk and out of the city's normal life.

Sora follows. "Yeah," he replies, looking over. "I mean, they were too expensive to buy, and it's for Kairi."

Sora's voice is matter-of-fact, and his eyes are bright in the slant of dusky light illuminating the alley. Everything about him makes something twist in Riku's chest, in a way he half-understands and isn't comfortable with. He has to fight down the sudden urge to push Sora back out onto the sidewalk, into the last of the light, because Sora will just ask what the hell he's doing.

And he doesn't really want to, anyway. He wants to pull Sora further into the dark alley, away from their problems, away from all the strangers, somewhere out of sight.

Riku clenches his fists in his pockets so tight that they're probably cutting the skin. Who cares; what's a little more blood?

He's really glad Sora interrupts that thought.

Sora's been hesitating while Riku was fighting his thoughts, and now he scratches the back of his head sheepishly.

"It's okay, right?" he asks. "I would've paid for it, but we need the money more, and I want to help her. . . ."

"--Yeah," Riku tells him, after swallowing. Then he adds, "I was going to do it, but that guy kept watching me. I think it's fine," because he isn't going to push the reason off on Kairi. He's not going to make excuses anymore; he did that about the money and working with Ansem, and look where that got them. Whatever he does from now on, he's going to be honest.

At least to himself and Sora and Kairi.

"I noticed," Sora says, grinning. "Good job."

". . . It wasn't on purpose," he replies, and then shoves him in the shoulder, toward the bar's back steps. It might be Sora's luck, but Riku doesn't want to push it.

--

The bar must have opened because three customers are inside. Riku goes up to the counter and asks Tifa, "Where do you want the delivery?" If he's right about this place, that's the kind of question everyone will ignore hearing, no matter what he and Sora look like.

"Back there," Tifa says, keeping a straight face and jerking a thumb at the door to the storage area. With that excuse, they slide around the counter and leave the bar.
-

Sora rips the price tag off the necklace while Riku raids the mini-fridge for more sandwich stuff. "Did you see anyone following us?" Sora asks him. Riku shakes his head.

"Me either," Sora says. Riku shouldn't have assumed he wasn't paying attention. "I guess they don't know where we are . . . heh." Sora gives him a side-long grin. "I almost thought a guy like An--no," he interrupts himself and shakes his head. "Kairi said he's really named Xehanort, even though that doesn't make--"

The sound of shattering glass comes through the marginally open door.

A moment later, a guy laughs at Tifa for being clumsy, and she snaps back at him. There's the noise of glass being picked up rapidly. The broom is in here, by the door.

Sora and Riku look at each other.

Riku jerks his head toward the stairs, and Sora nods. As he heads up them, toward Kairi, Riku turns back to the fridge. He starts going through it again, pulling out everything that the three of them can carry without being noticed, and keeps an eye on the door as he does. He almost leaves the grapes, distrusting everything Aerith said; but then he changes his mind. He knows from experience that Ansem is good at dividing people from their friends. Aerith, and even that guy Zack, might not know. And the more food they can take off with, the better.

If Tifa is one of Ansem's people, he has no problem robbing her.

-- -- --

Kairi isn't in the bedroom, or the bathroom, and for a second Sora feels that choking panic again, fist clenching around the necklace as he gets ready to run back down the stairs to Riku and beat the truth about where she is out of everyone if they have to--and then he sees the note.

It's sitting on the mattress, which--now that he notices--is missing the blanket she was sleeping with. It says she's on the roof, and that he and Riku should go up the fire escape that's attached to the room across the hall, the one looking out onto the alley.

Sora still wants to hit someone for apparently driving her up there, but now the feeling's less panicked. He wedges the slip of paper between the bedroom door and the frame, so Riku will see it faster, and heads for the third door in the hall.

It's another storage room, and an old one; there's boxes and dust everywhere. The window that the fire escape is attached to is slightly open, letting a cold draft in.

The metal rattles under his feet as he climbs the steps to the third floor landing--wondering vaguely what's there, since the stairs they've been using stopped at the floor below, before pushing it away as unimportant--and then the short ladder from there to the roof. "Kairi!"

In the dim orange light coming up from the streets below, he sees an arm wave from the middle of a crowd of flower pots on the roof. Kairi pushes herself into a sitting position as he jumps over the ledge onto the roof. "Are you okay?" Sora demands.

Kairi nods as she pulls the blanket tighter around herself. She does look a little better, or at least less pale, which Sora's willing to take at this point. ". . . Yeah. I'm going to be okay from now on. Sorry if I scared you," she adds, as Sora crouches by her among the flowers. "I was trying really hard to hold on to myself, so I was probably acting weird."

Despite everything, he frowns. "'Hold on to yourself'?"

"It's hard to explain," Kairi finally says. "But, what happened?"

Sora tells her in a rush about Tifa and Xehanort's name and the broken glasses. Kairi looks doubtful when he concludes by saying they're probably going to have to run again.

"Are you sure she's working for him?" she asks.

"Why else would she act like that?" Sora responds.

Kairi pauses, and then looks at one of the pots beside her.

"I know this smell," she tells him.

"I don't know why," Kairi adds, shrugging the blanket closer over her shoulders again as the wind cuts across the roof. "But it's familiar. Like I knew it as a child."

Sora looks around at the flowers. They're spread out all over the roof, lots of them, and the scent is pretty clear; but there's nothing like it on the islands. He looks back at her.

"Is it one of those no-background things?" he asks. Kairi nods.

Sora rubs a hand hard against his temple. "Then, these guys, Aerith and Tifa and Zack and that other guy--they just wound up here like you did at home?"

"Maybe," Kairi says. "It's a pretty big port city. . . ."

It's a world of crazy coincidences is what it is. But on the other hand, he only met them because of Yuffie, and he only met Yuffie because of the fights; and he really doesn't feel like they're bad people, or at least he didn't until a couple minutes ago. Kairi might be right.

Sora wants her to be, at least. Tifa's been really nice even if she pretends not to be, and Aerith's helped them a lot, and Zack was pretty cool. And it's not like he'd be surprised to find Ansem/Xehanort/whoever ruined their lives for stupid reasons the same way he did his and Kairi and Riku's.

He shakes his head, and pulls a pot closer to smell the flowers in it. They smell crisp and sweet, almost bright, even though that's a weird description for a smell. Sora hopes most of Kairi's life before she showed up on their island was like this, even if Ansem was somewhere in it.

"We should probably go anyway," she says a moment later. "Either way."

Sora nods. "We need to figure out where, though."

Kairi looks out over the roof's ledge. ". . . There's home."

Sora blinks.

He didn't even realize he called the islands 'home' earlier until now; it was a default reaction. He pulls his legs up to his chest, folding his arms on top of his knees. ". . . I guess."

Kairi pauses, and then gives him a quick smile. ". . . Not that it matters if there's an extradition treaty between here and there," she continues. "What we really need to do is find somewhere that doesn't have any of those." She looks over his shoulder then; and a moment later, Sora turns around too.

Riku's standing by the fire escape ladder, one foot still on the ledge, looking almost hesitant--like he's afraid of something.

Sora shakes his head again. That's a ridiculous thought.

Riku steps down completely a moment later, coming over to sit by them. He's carrying his new jacket in a lumpy bundle under his arm instead of wearing it.

"We can go home," he says, quietly. "We might be safer there."

None of them speak for a moment.

Sora tries to imagine it: going back to the island, returning to helping his dad dive for shellfish on non-school mornings, going back to hanging out with Wakka and Tidus and Selphie, walking on the same sand and grass again now--now, after so much has changed, in a lot of big and small ways.

He tries to imagine Kairi and Riku back there, too; Kairi with her curfews that her father keeps enforcing more sternly each year they get older, Riku back in that big house where most of the furniture's been sold to pay the bills from his parents' younger days and everything that's left is way too clean and impersonal. He remembers Kairi trudging down the sand with her shoes in hand while it's still bright out because her mother is standing on the road tapping her foot; and all those times Riku knocked on his window late at night because he snuck out of his house to come sleep secretly at Sora's for a few hours before having to leave again before all the fishermen were out on the streets.

He remembers that summer years ago that he and almost all the islanders spent building the fish hatcheries off the shore. The year they left was supposed to be the first one that they would be really profitable for outside selling as well as for feeding themselves; it'd been one of the mayor's best ideas, and helped almost everyone worry a little less about the immediate future.

"Nah," Kairi says, making him and Riku look over. "Think how much homework we would have to catch up on. Maybe after we're adults and school isn't compulsory anymore. . . ."

Eventually, Sora chuckles. "Yeah, that sounds good."

Riku nods.

He reaches out for the flowerpot Sora pulled over after a little bit, pushing it a little closer to Kairi. "We could find out where these are from."

Kairi stares down at the flowers for a really, really long time.

But finally she shakes her head.

". . . I used to wonder," she tells them, softly. "About where I came from. It was all so blank, who wouldn't? But. . . ." She smiles, giving the flowers one last look before gazing up at him and Riku. "It's not important anymore. I know where home is; where these are from is just a place."

Sora grins widely without being able to put a finger on why exactly he feels so happy. After a second, Riku laughs once under his breath.

"So where should we go?" Sora asks, because they still haven't solved that question.

Riku stands up, looking out over the rooftop. The view is interrupted by the skyscrapers further downtown, but he has that look on his face like he's seeing past them anyway.

"We should just take the first thing out of here," he says. "No planning. We've hidden long enough that Ansem will waste time checking the stuff that went out that day, and . . . I don't know how much he knows about all of us. So we shouldn't choose anything deliberately, because he might figure it out."

Sora scowls at the reminder of Ansem's intrusion into their lives, not at the logic of Riku's statement, and nods. Kairi agrees.

"We still have to figure out what we can get," Riku adds. "Sora has twenty dollars, but that's not enough for tickets."

"We could stow away," Sora suggests.

"We'll have to," Kairi says pragmatically. "So no buses."

"No boats, either," Sora adds. "In case we are followed." He doesn't want to imagine what might have to happen if one of Ansem's guys catches them trapped on a ship.

"Guess it's a train, then," Riku sums up, and glances at the bundle of his jacket. "At least until we get further inland." He keeps staring at something out in the city, so Sora rocks onto his feet to check it out. Kairi pushes herself up as well a moment later; she's still wobbling a little, but she's a lot steadier than before, even if she's still moving slowly and carefully.

Way down the streets to the left, half-hidden by a skyscraper, there's a lot of flashing lights around a muddy-bricked building. The direction looks familiar, but so does a good chunk of downtown thanks to the last couple months. "What's all that?" Sora asks, peering out over the ledge.

"It was in the news," Riku says, and then when Sora looks at him, "on the TV, while we were setting up?"

Sora shrugs--he wasn't paying attention--and Riku shakes his head. "Someone blew up the holding cells of the police station down there yesterday."

Suddenly Sora recognizes the area.

It's not hard; he was there only two nights ago, when he was arrested for attacking Ansem and then that other teenager was brought in to take his--

Roxas. Was arrested there two nights ago.

("I have an errand to run," Axel said yesterday afternoon.)

Sora's knees give out suddenly, and he has to brace his hands on the ledge to keep from falling over. He hears Kairi and Riku ask what's wrong, feels Riku's hand on his shoulder pulling him back, but all he can see is the way Roxas looked at him when he denied saying he attacked Ansem. He didn't mean--he knew that he was doing a shitty thing to Roxas, leaving him to take the fall and go to prison, and even though he doesn't know him, even though he was a member of those guys' organization, he never--he never wanted this to happen, for Roxas to just be gone because of something he did--

Oh, Sora thinks, staring down at the black tar of the roof. This is what Riku feels like.

He wants to throw up. He wants to apologize to Riku for what he said last night.

He wants Roxas and Saïx to be alive again.

"Sora?" Kairi says, kneeling next to him. The blanket around her shoulders has spilled half over the ledge, half onto the ground. Riku's moved between him and the ledge, crouching in front of him. "Sora, what's wrong?"

The story comes out disjointed, starting with Axel and going back to Roxas. He already told them what he did, that Ansem had someone else brought into the police station and he escaped, but he didn't tell them that it was Roxas, or how they looked the same, or what Axel said about it and how he looked at him like Hayner and the others did.

Kairi's gripping his hand tightly by the time he gets it all out in reasonable coherency. Riku runs a hand through his hair, and exhales.

"It was a controlled blast," he says, and Sora looks up at him.

"That's why they were talking about it so much," Riku continues. "It only took out the wall of one cell, and it wasn't big enough to be lethal. The person in it just disappeared."

"Who?" he has to ask.

"They didn't release the name," Riku replies, sitting on the ledge. "So it must have been a minor. A teenager."

Sora just stares.

"I bet that Axel bastard is good enough to make it look like he was never even there," Riku adds, looking out at the station again.

". . . Huh?"

Riku looks back at him. "Hayner and them liked Roxas," he says. "That was the problem. If Axel looked the same as them, why are you worried?"

("So it'd be great if they're too busy to notice I'm gone," Axel added.)

Kairi squeezes his hand after a moment, and Sora tightens his fingers around hers.

He wants to believe him. It makes sense; it makes plenty of sense, didn't that Demyx guy like Roxas too? It could be true.

But he doesn't know.

This is how Riku feels.

Except it's not, because Riku knows for certain. He doesn't get to hope.

Sora swallows, and Kairi's grip tightens. Sora glances over at her, and then at Riku--and he realizes suddenly how far away Riku is. He's still on the roof's ledge, within arm's length; but when the three of them were sitting in the flowers, he was further away than him and Kairi. Sora didn't notice because it's always been that way; Riku's always stood off, always been a world within himself, while Sora's always stuck closer to Kairi. It's been like that in almost everything he can remember them doing together.

He reaches out abruptly, grabbing Riku's hand and pulling him closer. Riku was looking away again, and the action startles him, makes him half fall to the rooftop beside Sora and Kairi. He stares at Sora.

Riku's hand feels completely different from Kairi's, and he's sure this is kind of weird, but Sora doesn't want to let go. He doesn't really understand, and he knows that he doesn't; and what he feels for Kairi isn't the same as what he feels about Riku, and what he feels about Riku isn't the same as what he feels for Kairi. But that just means it takes both of them to be right. He's not letting go of either of them.

Sora notices that Kairi's taken Riku's hand at some point, or he took hers--it matters a little bit, whether Riku's coming back himself or if they still need to reach out to him first; but not that much, not in the long run--and with the way they're sitting, it looks kind of like a heart. It's a little lopsided and lumpy, more like a real one than the kind on cards and stickers or the shape Zack made with the iron bar; but it's definitely a heart.

And that feeling he had in front of the pet shop, the feeling that everything was going out-of-control wrong, washes away.

This is right, Sora thinks, and squeezes until Riku says to stop trying to break their hands. This is right.

". . . Okay," he says quietly.

"What?" Riku replies. He's glancing at Sora's hand around his while pretending not to; but he isn't pulling away. Sora's not sure what he'd do if Riku tried that--tackle him, probably. Riku's not going to get away with running off and not explaining things anymore.

Sora can't see the police station from here, but he looks in its direction anyway. "It's okay."

Kairi tilts her head to look him in the face. "Sora."

"I wouldn't have found you guys if I'd been stuck there," Sora says, even though the words still come out tight in his throat. "I . . . I wouldn't change it. So it's okay. I'd do it again," he finishes, looking at Kairi and then at Riku.

Riku stares down at the rooftop, and finally nods. Kairi closes her eyes for a long time, and then squeezes his hand again.

She shivers violently when another gust of wind blows across the rooftop, and Sora finally lets go of them so she can grab the blanket. Riku goes back to the bundle of his jacket, and then they return to making plans.
-

Sora thinks he has a good idea of how to get to the train station from here, so they decide to spend a few more hours inside the warm building and wait until late at night, after most people are off the streets but before the bars close and the night cops are out in force, to head there. They go back down the fire escape as quietly as possible.

Sora and Riku both take showers, since the opportunity may not come around again for a while, but they have to use the blanket to dry off. They stretch it out between the foot of the bed and the chair to dry while Kairi gets dressed in the extras of Zack's clothes, pulling the sleeveless turtleneck on over her shirt and tucking her skirt into one of the pants' cargo pockets. Riku scavenges through the storage room across the hall for some rope that both he and she can use as belts, since Zack's bigger than even he is. Sora gives her the seashell necklace while Riku's over there, because the explanation of why they ditched her to go get it sounded really lame in his head and doesn't come out a lot better and so he doesn't want Riku to overhear; but Kairi looks at the necklace with widened eyes, and then smiles and asks him to help her put it on.

She thanks him after he finally gets it fastened, and thanks Riku as well when he comes back with the rope.

Later, when Riku considers taking the sleeping bag, she tells him they shouldn't; it may be warm, but it'll be bulky to carry and hard to explain. Plus, it's Aerith's.

It kind of sucks to leave, Sora thinks, as he starts down the fire escape with Kairi following and Riku in the rear; partly because they aren't saying goodbye and partly because they haven't really paid Aerith or Tifa or Zack back for all the nice stuff they did, but also because it was nice to be somewhere warm and with lots of food.

Still, they can't afford to stay. As Sora hits the ground of the alley, he spares a wish that they'll find the friend Zack's looking for; and then he focuses on Kairi and Riku.

--

It's almost dawn when they finally manage to hitch onto a train. They skipped heading all the way to the station, and instead staked out a crossing on a steep hill, where the trains slowed down enough that all three of them could get on. The plan was for a boxcar, but those are all shut at this hour, so they finally grabbed a tanker that had a small platform at the back for the ladder to the top of it.

The car is near the end, but not at it; so they have some concealment. The metal of the platform and the tanker is freezing, but Riku and Sora rig their jackets so they wrap around all three of them, with the food spilled across their laps; and it's livable. They're going to have to get off the first time the train slows down after dawn breaks so that no one spots and reports them and gets the police on their trail; but that's a couple hours away, and they'll be out of Ansem's city by then, and maybe even near the border.

Sora huddles close to Kairi and Riku under the scratchy fabric of the jackets, trying not to squash the grapes; and he thinks that this isn't so bad. Things suck right now, but this is only a stop on their journey--there's still so far to go, so much to see and do. He has Riku and Kairi with him, and that's the most important thing. That's always been the most important thing--it just took him until now to figure it out.

As long as they're together, Sora thinks, he can make anything else the world throws at them work out in the end.