musefic | Kingdom Hearts fic: Potentials

In chapter 10: The reality of Corridor's actions begins to set in...

Excerpted transcript from an op-ed video, posted over 6 months ago to “defendersofthestarlight’s” online video channel. It is filmed by webcam, the single camera framing the speaker while they talk:

Born to Betray: Corridor WILL Betray the Defenders of the Light!

So, I’m saying that Corridor will betray us again. How could I possibly see that coming?

The real question is, how couldn’t I? And how couldn’t you?

His history, for one, makes it clear that he is apparently predisposed to betrayal. At the age of 16, after having been a- a “Hero” for two short years, he joined forces with The Bad Fairy and her assortment of other villains, helping to kidnap, uh, or attempt to kidnap, a number of heroines who had long fought against those villains.

Apologists claim that his walk on the villainous side was short in duration, as if that somehow absolves him of responsibility. That Keyblade and Starchild, much less so-called “controversial” Heroes, forgave him, despite having been directly impacted by what he did. That he has publicly apologized, and maintained it was a mistake he deeply regrets. Oh, it’s been such a long time… blah blah.

Keyblade and Starchild were victims. But they were also invested in the idea of rescuing him, someone they’d been close to and worked with for years. They want to think he’s changed, and that means their opinion can’t really be trusted. It’s like, uh, motivated reasoning. Or confirmation bias, or whatever.

And apologies don’t mean a damn thing. We’d love to believe that people can apologize and learn from the bad things they’ve done, but frankly? I don’t believe it. Apologies are made in order to stop being blamed for something, to try and get people to leave you alone. I have yet to meet with a truly sincere apology, and I don’t think Corridor’s is the first.

As for the fact that he switched back to the “good guys” almost immediately? That’s actually the worst thing of all. Because he’s never been able to stay loyal to anyone! He betrayed his friends for a new set of allies, and then he betrayed them too! Why does everyone think that’s somehow a good thing? Like, yeah, wow, he came back to the Defenders of the Light, but you know what? I might actually have a little respect for him if he’d switched sides and stayed.

It’s like… when you meet some hot girl, but she has a boyfriend. And she tells you that oh, she’d leave him for you, because you’re so great and she loves you so much. That happens? You RUN. Because if she’s going to leave Joe Rando for you, then she’s going to do the same damn thing to you as soon as someone better shows up. Just by making that offer, she’s proven she can’t ever be trusted!

This is the same thing. He “cheated on” the Defenders of the Light for The Bad Fairy, and then he “cheated on” her as soon as that didn’t seem to be working out so hot, and he crawled back to his ex.

And that isn’t even going into the fact that his power is literally working with darkness. Yeah, sure, allegedly powerset has nothing to do with morality, I know they’ve drummed that into us. But really?

So basically, yeah, I’m not impressed by Corridor. Some viewers have asked for my thoughts because I said in that year-end summary how sick of him I was, so there it is. I don’t like him.

It’s been six or seven years, and I don’t think that’s enough. Now there’s all this talk about some love triangle between him and Radiance—who was Starchild, just in case anyone’s forgotten that, like, he literally tried to kidnap her—and Keyblade. And I’m just… tired. I just wish Corridor would go away, and leave the rest of the Heroes alone.

The next day, the headlines were all focused on Corridor’s betrayal.

Fool Me Twice

Yesterday’s events are sure to leave the Defenders of the Light, and indeed the entire city, reeling. The Heroes of our city have been fighting the mysterious extra-dimensional Organization for the last several weeks. The two groups have seemed mostly evenly matched, with few battles ending decisively for either side, but this time the Organization may have struck a blow that will be hard to recover from.

Corridor, the shadow-door-manipulating “Hero,” has defected. Part-way through a battle between a small group of Organization members (“Axel,” “Larxene,” and “Lexaeus”) and a Defenders patrol (Corridor, Keyblade, and Radiance), Corridor switched sides, turning his back on his compatriots and going through the shadows with their enemies.

Enemies of the Defenders of the Light; apparently no longer enemies of Corridor.

It is impossible, of course, not to view this in light of the fact that this is not the first time Corridor has betrayed the Heroes. In the massive crossover event of several years ago, he famously worked for The Bad Fairy and her league of supervillains. Their plot to capture various magical heroines to utilize their powers was ultimately thwarted, and Corridor had an apparent change of heart.

The Heroes credited in part to his return to the side of good years ago, Keyblade and Radiance (previously known by the codename Starchild), are the same two he betrayed this time. One wonders how they must feel about this turn of events.

Much has been made in recent years of the apparent emerging love triangle between the three team members, who have kept up appearances of a close friendship since their teens. This either adds a new level of hurt to Corridor’s actions, or perhaps serves as an explanation.

Time may tell. However, it certainly seems clear: once someone proves themselves willing and able to switch sides, it’s difficult to trust they won’t do so again.

That particular headline had already set the tone for the day, and the interviews that Radiance was now expected to give. Keyblade was next to her for most of them.

There had been mercenary interviews by news outlets looking for “unvarnished truth,” which really meant edgy and painful, digging for “how long had they known Corridor would do something like this?” and “how had they missed the signs?”

Then there were the softball morning talk show types who wanted the “human connection.” Those just wanted to probe for a different kind of pain, a shot of Radiance crying through deliberately tear-proof makeup, or Keyblade in uncharacteristically stoic contemplation, to tug at the heartstrings of all the fans at home.

Social media and the usual string of blogs had become entirely unbearable. Radiance had given them a glance out of long habit, and had to shut her laptop after only a couple minutes. There were fans gloating about the whole thing, bragging how they’d never trusted Corridor, sharing links to editorial videos and op-eds from months ago to “prove” that they’d known it all along. Articles about how his powerset had been enough to prove he was evil, and awful crowing about how now he was out of the way, “Bladiance” could finally happen. It was all horrible.

Radiance supposed she should watch the interviews when they aired or made it to print. She’d been given the schedule. It would at least let her know what she’d said, since she barely remembered. By this point she’d assumed the shock would wear off, but it hadn’t. If anything, it had grown more all-consuming. She knew the right platitudes, and trusted herself not to have said anything she shouldn’t.

No, we had no idea he was planning something like this.

No, he hadn’t been acting odd. Everything seemed fine. We don’t know how long he’d been considering this.

Of course we hold out hope that he’ll realize his mistake and come back to us.

Yes, it hurts, but we have to believe there’s some reason for it. No, of course there’s no good or acceptable reason, but we’ve seen how good people can be manipulated into bad things many times before.

Redemption is something the Defenders of the Light have always been passionate about.

Please, Corridor, if you’re watching this, come back to us. If they’re forcing you to do this, let us help you.

All the right things to say, each as empty as the next.

Radiance ran her finger down the assignments posted in the main lobby at Headquarters. The LED screen always showed the most up-to-date assignments and team-ups, and whether they were assigned to early or late shifts for patrol.

Since the Organization had appeared, the active Heroes had been patrolling mainly in trios instead of pairs, or at least having a few pairs with a “floating third” switching between them. Most of the roster had been forced to deal with extra shifts, but that was to be expected during a crisis, even if they didn’t outright welcome it. But there had been twelve active Heroes (not counting the research-oriented support Heroes, The Scientist and Grimoire,) covering a lot of territory.

Radiance had put off checking the reassignments after… after Corridor. She and Keyblade had been given a couple days of recovery time, since the loss of a direct teammate was covered under the leave policy. That didn’t make those days exempt from the interviews, to the point that getting back on patrol would almost be a relief. And even if they had wanted more time away, they were down to eleven Heroes, and they couldn’t knock them down to nine.

Seeing her and Keyblade’s names next to someone other than Corridor was a bright twist of agony, despite having anticipated it.

Monday:
Keyblade, Radiance, Fire Dancer
Thorn, Nymph, Lancer

Tuesday:
Keyblade, Radiance, Thorn
Lancer, Fire Dancer, Nocturne

Wednesday:
Keyblade, Radiance, Lancer
Thorn, Nymph, Nocturne

Thursday:
Keyblade, Radiance, Nocturne
Thorn, Nymph, Fire Dancer

Friday:
Keyblade, Radiance, Nymph
Fire Dancer, Nocturne, Lancer

Saturday:
Lancer, Radiance, Nocturne
Thorn, Nymph, Fire Dancer

Sunday:
Keyblade, Nocturne, Lancer
Thorn, Nymph, Fire Dancer

Radiance frowned. Each of them working six of the next seven days was fair enough, but there should have been three teams assigned to every day. Not two. This only allowed for two shifts, meaning there couldn’t be overlap, and required each team cover the entire city.

Her eyes flicked up to the top of the board. Heroes who were out of commission for injury were listed at the top. Had they missed something awful in the last couple days?

But the list at the top for “Heroes on leave” was blank. Her frown deepened: there were not twelve names on that list. Trickshot, Stalwart, Lunar Phase, and Gambler were missing.

She revised the thought. Saying they were missing sounded too serious. They were probably on some additional mission or something. Trickshot, Stalwart, and Gambler worked together often enough, so that would be plausible. Maybe Lunar Phase had gone with them for something. She’d ask Fire Dancer later; he could fill her in on anything else that had been going on. For now, she had to go, or she’d be late to meet up with her team.

Fire Dancer did not have a good answer. When she asked, he just laughed. “I don’t make the schedules.”

“I’m not upset they aren’t scheduled,” she clarified, “I just want to know why. No one got hurt in the last couple of days?”

Fire Dancer shrugged. “You said they weren’t listed as injured, right?”

“I know we’ve been… busy the last couple of days,” Keyblade hesitated around what that really meant. We’ve been in shock. We’ve been grieving. We’ve been totally useless and out of it and devastated. Any of those would have been more accurate. “But we still would have seen if someone got hurt. Especially a whole team.”

“That’s why I don’t like it,” she said. “If anything, things are worse now, so how can they just be gone with no explanation?”

Fire Dancer just shrugged again. “So we’ll just have to give those four hell for slacking off once they get back, yeah?”

Radiance nodded. She was too tired to argue.

It was later, after a patrol spent thwarting a perfectly ordinary mugger and a tiny group of Heartless, that she realized why the conversation had left her feeling even less at ease with the whole thing. Fire Dancer had always given every indication that he was good friends with Lunar Phase: the two teamed up more often than not, and seemed close. So why would he be so nonchalant about Lunar Phase being gone without notice?

Maybe she should find it comforting instead. Maybe Fire Dancer did know it was nothing to worry about, and just couldn’t tell them for some reason. She tried to convince herself that that made more sense. She didn’t succeed.

A handful of days spent patrolling and only encountering the comparatively mundane was a strange kind of relaxing. Radiance was glad she hadn’t had a day off yet, because beating up Heartless or Nobodies (someone had started calling them “Dusks”, though she had no idea who) or thwarting petty criminals gave her something to focus on. She’d had years of practice compartmentalizing.

Having a rotating third in their party was a constant sore, a continual reminder every time she reconsidered a strategy to make use of a different power—fire, or rose vines, or today, vocally controlled water—instead of shadow doors. Not that flexibility in strategy was bad, but it shouldn’t have happened this way. Having Keyblade there, one constant thing, helped. He knew better than to baby her, letting her land punches and blinding flashes, getting scraped knees and bruises in return. He understood.

Worse, as she helped formulate strategies for different powersets, she was forced to confront just how similar the Defenders of the Light’s roster was to the enemies they were fighting. It wasn’t a one-to-one, and some of it could be explained fairly easily. For example, elemental control was proportionally common among the superpowered, so two red-headed fire-manipulators wasn’t totally out of the question. Hell, for all she knew, Fire Dancer dyed his hair to match his costume. And two electricity-manipulating women on mostly-male teams was just another coincidence. Sure.

She threw herself into long hours of small skirmishes with Heartless and Nobodies, and tried not to think about it. There wasn’t anything she could do about it, especially when the Heroes were so apparently understaffed, so she just did her job, and hoped their encounters with the Organization would stay rare.

It couldn’t last.

A harsh series of beeps in her ear, and then, “Organization members reported,” the voice of their dispatch came through the earpiece. “Downtown, the banking district. Keyblade, Radiance, and Nocturne, please respond and neutralize the threat. Defend the Light.”

The others had gotten the same message. “Let’s go,” Keyblade said, more authoritative than usual.

Without Corridor, there was no instant way to get from one side of the city to the other, though fortunately they weren’t far from their destination.

They ran into a police perimeter a few blocks away. “Defenders,” an officer greeted them. “The area has been cleared of civilians, with an order to shelter in place for anyone who couldn’t get out. No direct threat to civilians, but we wanted to act with an abundance of caution.”

“Thank you,” Keyblade said. “We were told there were Organization members spotted. Any further details?”

Dispatch hadn’t elaborated beyond the basic order, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t additional information available. Someone from Headquarters should have it on camera, but the info wasn’t always instantaneously shared.

The officer shook his head. “Three to five sighted. N-not sure which ones.” His eyes cheated sideways, flicking back to both Keyblade and Radiance.

She should have known. Corridor was probably one of them. It had only been a matter of time.

A couple blocks of too-quiet streets, and they found the Organization members waiting for them, on rooftops to either side of the wide main thoroughfare. Five had been the correct number, assuming they were all in the open and visible.

Axel, again. The one with a keyblade, Roxas. Plus two that Keyblade and Radiance hadn’t faced yet, though she recognized them by description. The one with the eyepatch had to be Xigbar. The one that looked like a club promoter was Luxord. And the fifth one… she felt the knife twist. Corridor was dressed in their “uniform,” and had the same cold look as any of them.

Compartmentalize.

“You don’t belong here!” Keyblade said.

Axel waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, see, we like it here, it turns out. And we’d really like a chance to stay.”

“Maybe you should try not being bad guys, then. It’d be way easier if you just went home, called it a day…” Nocturne’s voice lilted a little. His lovely voice had never shown any genuine ability to control anything other than water, but he could be persuasive.

And a projectile of concentrated energy burned into the cement a few inches from his feet.

Xigbar grinned with too-sharp teeth. “I didn’t have to miss. How bad can we be if I give you a warning shot like that?”

That was the cue for everything to start. Nocturne hummed something under his breath, calling water from the containers he carried in his costume. The water from puddles and gutters, left over from morning irrigation or the last rainstorm, joined the water swirling around him.

Roxas made a reckless leap down from his second-story roof, keyblade drawn, and rushed at Keyblade, the nearly identical weapons clanging like swords.

Radiance made a quick hand signal for anyone on her team who was looking, a sharp gesture that told them she was going to call for backup. Of course, the signal itself was risky, since Corridor would know what it meant.

She darted into a side alley, breaking line of sight for just a moment. She brushed her finger over her earpiece, telling it to transmit. Low, hopefully low enough that none of the Organization would hear—and shit, what if Riku still had his mic and earphone? Had to risk it—Radiance said, “Nymph, Thorn, Fire Dancer. Backup to the banking district. Five Organization members. Repeat, backup to the banking district. Please hurry.”

She paused for a second to listen, but there was no reply on the channel. The other three were scheduled for the “later shift”, but they should still have started by now. “Dispatch?” she asked, after the silence had stretched too long.

“No backup available,” the dispassionate voice said.

“What?” she snapped.

“No backup available,” the dispatcher repeated.

Radiance didn’t say what she really wanted to, opting instead for, “Swell,” said with as much venom as she could pack into the syllable.

She had to try and get up above street level. Five against three was bad. Five against three, with the five mostly taking the high ground, and when one of the five was basically a sniper was even worse.

Of course the alley didn’t have any convenient fire escapes to give her easy access, or anything else she could hope to climb. She’d have to get back out to the main road, try to find a route to the roof of one of the other buildings.

Keyblade and Roxas were still keeping each other occupied. The two were evenly matched, which seemed worthy of concern.

Nocturne’s water was supporting him and lifting him up higher as he sang some wordless melody. Bits of the water surrounding him were also being diverted toward Axel, dousing his every attempt to conjure fire. Sometimes it resulted in steam, which would recondense back into water and return to Nocturne.

Searching the rooftops, Radiance saw Xigbar, aiming a stylized gun at her. She sent a flare of light along her skin and was gratified when he squinted his good eye closed in an involuntary wince.

One of the buildings about half a block down had an obvious stairway up to a higher level door. If she could make it there, she could get up to their level. She took off, letting her lights surround her, sparkling around her, breaking up her profile. Not good for hiding, but making it just a bit harder to see her clearly.

She heard a snap, and glanced up to see Luxord on the roof across the street from Xigbar, hand raised. There was no way she should have heard him snap his fingers, not from that distance, and yet…

She tripped.

She turned it into a roll, ignoring a scrape to her elbow, managing to twist so the spikes on her mask didn’t catch the ground, and got back to her feet. She made it to the stairs and bolted up them. She was hidden from view here, in between buildings, but once she reached the top of the stairs, she could jump to the neighboring roof, where Luxord, Axel, and Corridor had been the last time she’d looked.

She heard another snap, even more impossible now. She couldn’t even see any of them from here. One of the stairs was inexplicably slick, her low-heeled boot slipping. She caught herself before she pitched backwards or over the railing, but she had to set her jaw against a cry of pain. Bringing herself down from the adrenaline spike of the near fall, she tested the step, and at least found that her ankle held her weight with only the most minor of complaints.

Up the rest of the stairs, and then she was close enough to jump and grab hold of the roof edge. She climbed onto the stair railing, maybe four feet below the neighboring roofline, and about five feet away. She crouched, making sure her balance was enough to give her the best leverage, and then she jumped. There was a split second of terror after she’d pushed off the railing and before the roof was near enough to grab when she thought she’d misjudged, that she was about to plummet down into the narrow alleyway… but then her fingers caught the roof edge.

She used her feet to catch enough of her weight against the wall that she didn’t slam into it, and then she pulled herself up before anyone had a chance to try and stop her. She rolled immediately away, on a diagonal away from the edge, in case anyone had a well-aimed blow ready for her, though it turned out to be unnecessary.

Axel was still held at bay by Nocturne. The distant clang of metal on metal told her where Roxas and Keyblade were. Corridor had vanished from the rooftop, leaving her one nearby target, Luxord, and he was looking right at her.

She kept moving, not wanting to give Xigbar any easy shots. She didn’t know exactly what being hit with one of those energy bolts would do, but she was fairly sure it would suck.

Clenching her hand and then flinging it outward, she threw a shower of sparks toward Luxord’s face, though infuriatingly he seemed to have shut his eyes at just the right moment that it didn’t blind him. She ran low, intending to rush him. He was bigger and taller than she was, but he didn’t appear to be armed, and she bet she had him beat for agility.

But as she got just close enough to lunge at him, he snapped his fingers and the gravel on the roof beneath her feet seemed to shift, and she slipped again. This time she didn’t catch herself, instead falling backward and landing hard on her hip.

“Did you fall again?” Luxord asked, note of sympathy in his voice at odds with a self-satisfied smile. “What are the odds?”

Fuck. He must be playing around with probability, or something similar. His powerset was one of the ones the Defenders of the Light still listed as ‘unknown’. She gritted her teeth and got to her feet. She rushed at him again, trying to stay as mindful as she could about where her feet were landing.

She’d talked to Gambler about his powers before, one of the Heroes currently unaccounted for. He didn’t manipulate probability, per se, but he could see it. According to him, there were so many factors that went into every action that it was almost impossible to have any certain outcome, even for things just a few seconds in the future. If that held true, then even if Luxord could alter the probability of some action occurring, like making her slip and fall, he could never make it absolute. So she’d just have to be careful.

This time she didn’t mysteriously step on a loose stone or slippery spot, though the punch she tried to land missed as he ducked sideways at the last moment.

She dodged back out of range in case he struck back directly, and approached for another strike. The pattern repeated, though she did manage one glancing blow when she kicked at his side, though it wasn’t enough to do any real damage. And at this pace, she’d definitely wear out faster.

In between their engagements, she saw Luxord snap his fingers, and Nocturne’s voice faltered, his water dropping him several feet before he got it back under control. Another time he snapped his fingers and she heard Keyblade cry out. So he wasn’t just focusing on her.

Their positions had changed enough that she saw Corridor was down at street level now, supporting Roxas against Keyblade. Radiance bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, and then resolutely forced her attention back to Luxord. If she could knock him out of the fight, the rest of them would literally have better odds.

She readied for another rush forward, and heard the snap. This time she just tripped, over nothing as far as she could tell.

She barely caught herself, one knee crashing down before she pushed herself back to her feet. And then she realized her mistake. The way their positions had changed left her a perfectly wide open target for Xigbar. She tried to duck down, even knowing it was too late to get out of the way.

If it hadn’t been so familiar, she would have assumed the sudden drop in her stomach was her own realization that she was likely about to be in a lot of pain. But she knew exactly what the dark corridors felt like.

One opened, and she was immediately pulled through it, coming out another one and crashing backwards into a wall at street level. The wind was knocked out of her, and she slid down, trying to look at Corridor.

He’d just kept her from getting shot. But there was no kindness on his face as he looked down at her.

“Why can’t you just give up?”

“Never will,” she choked out, though she still hadn’t managed a full lungful of air. She hoped he knew she wasn’t talking about her mission as a Defender of the Light.

“You should.” His voice was cold.

Then he stepped back. “We have what we need!” he yelled. “Let’s go.”

Radiance tried to get her feet back under her, planning to… what, follow him?

“Figures,” Xigbar grumbled from the roof above them.

All five of the Organization members opened tears of their own and vanished.

Sora asked her to go somewhere with him afterward. After they’d made their reports, and gotten cleaned up. They’d visited Medical for treatment of their minor scrapes and bruises.

“Can we go somewhere tonight?” he asked. “I don’t know that either of us should be alone.”

She kissed him, hoping he would understand that her refusal wasn’t personal. She didn’t want to avoid him, or anything like that. But she did want to be alone.

Now, standing in “their” apartment, Kairi wished she’d agreed with him. She had wanted time alone, to think, and to try and sort through what Corridor had done. But the appeal had worn off rather quickly, leaving her feeling empty. Maybe Sora had been right; she shouldn’t be by herself.

And then the guilty feeling, knowing that Sora had been asking for himself. He was the one who didn’t want to be alone. She should have brought him with her.

This was the first time she’d been in the apartment since it had happened. It seemed wrong to be here, in the place she’d carved out for all three of them. That they’d all carved out. All of them had been here alone before, or in various pairs, but it was different now that Corridor was gone like this.

Well, if she was going to spend an ill-advised evening alone, then she was going to lean in to being miserable. She’d be back to patrolling the next day, and back to compartmentalizing all of this. So for now, she’d just let herself feel awful.

She lay down in their bed, remembering the last time they’d been here together, all the mental snapshots she’d been trying to hold onto. And for the first time, she really worried that it might have been the last.

The vertigo-dip of her stomach, even when she was lying down, could almost have been wishful thinking, but Kairi didn’t think her imagination was quite that good.

She got out of the bed and walked slowly down the short hall, moving as silently as years of training had allowed her to. She didn’t know for sure if she was hoping he was here, or hoping she’d imagined it after all.

Riku was standing across the living room from her, and she felt a rush of relief.

She couldn’t help it. She ran the last few steps between them, throwing her arms around him. “Riku!”

There were plenty of other things she wanted to say, gratitude that he’d saved her today, assurances that she believed he was still on their side…

But he didn’t hug her back. He was standing stiff, not moving at all.

She forced herself to let go, to step back. “Riku?”

“Kairi.” The look on his face was briefly conflicted, before it settled into cool disregard. And then something that looked more like anger. “You have to stop this. Give up!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt. You need to take Sora and go. Get out of here, out of the city.”

“Riku, what are you talking about?”

“What you’re doing isn’t right. What you’ve done to Naminé, to the rest of them…”

“I have no idea what you mean! What about Naminé?” Kairi felt herself sinking into a defensive posture. “We haven’t done anything. Who even is Naminé, and why do you care so much about her?”

He shook his head. “You’re the last ones,” he said. “You’re strong, I always knew that. And despite everything, I don’t want you to get hurt, which is why I’m warning you. Go get Sora and leave. We’ll forget what you’ve done.”

“What we’ve done? What about you?”

He just looked at her blankly. “I’ll still be here. But at least I’ll know the two of you are safe somewhere. Maybe the two of you will be able to find a fresh start.”

“Riku, this doesn’t make sense.”

He just shook his head. “They said you wouldn’t listen.”

“Who?”

“This is your last warning. If you don’t leave or you don’t surrender, it’s going to end badly. So please, just go.”

With that, he waved a hand, reopening his corridor, and he left.

Kairi sank to the living room floor and cried.

By the time she’d calmed down enough to even dig out her phone—the secret, private one—it was late, already after 11:00. She wanted to talk to Sora. And he had to know what Riku had said.

There was a text from Sora’s unlabeled number, from an hour before. Love you. Goodnight.

She bit her lip and texted back: Love you too.

She hesitated a moment, and then pushed the call button. He was probably already asleep.

Several rings, then: “We’re sorry. The person you are trying to reach has a voicemail box that has not been set up yet…”

Kairi hung up, and sent another text instead. Call me when you wake up. I’ll see you tomorrow. Love you.

And she climbed into a bed that was far too empty to be alone in.

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Kingdom Hearts fic: Potentials - Chapter 10