KH fic piece - Kairi in the Bastion

[yukie]

Comes from my big fat cracky AU of crack! Not quite finished but I felt like posting.

Marin is sort of equivalent to Aqua, though unlike Aqua, Marin is the paladin/tank. XD I was thinking of Celes and then it just sort of happened.

***

When Kairi woke up, there was sand between her toes. And her fingers. And in her hair. She smelled salt, and kelp, and that strange soft scent sand has when it's cooling in the evening. She was a bit soggy; the tide was coming in. It'd been out when she ended up here. She coudn't say she'd washed up on shore, she knew what that felt like and this wasn't it.

She felt like she'd fallen, actually, from a couple too many feet, and just plonked into the sand like a rock someone hadn't thrown far enough, like when Sora -

- Sora. Riku -

Kairi yanked herself to her feet, winced and staggered a bit, then righted herself and looked up and down the beach.

It was silent. Empty. A few funny little ghost crabs sidewaysed along, popping in and out of their burrows, their eyes pearly in the moonlight. Further along, a little shorebird called out plaintively.

No one except her was even -

She stomped on the panicky little flutter in her stomach, took a deep breath, and yelled down the beach. "SORA! RIKU!"

The bird got scared, but there was no reply.

"IF YOU TWO DON'T ANSWER I SWEAR I'M GOING TO KICK YOU OVER THE MOON---"

A ghost crab ran over her foot and made her jump (its ridiculous little pointy cold feet reminded her of the feet of less harmless things).

"If you're GONE again I'm going to - "

You are not going to cry about this, Kairi, she thought at herself. You are not going to start sniffling like a kindergarten kid. They didn't leave you on purpose. They'll probably turn up -

She jumped about two feet when someone tapped her shoulder. She yowled, grabbed some driftwood, and brandished it at the newcomer.

"If you think I'm gonna be a good little princess and surrender you have another think coming."

The newcomer - a woman with hair about the colour of Sora's favorite ice cream, that tealy-ocean-blue - held up her hands. "I wasn't going to ask, and if I was the kind of person who'd drag someone along I think you'd knock the stuffing out of me before I could get you anywhere."

Kairi relaxed. A little. Sort of. "You're not with..."

She couldn't really make herself NAME him, which made her feel stupid. It wasn't like he was a summon, that you'd mention his name and he'd just pop up in front of you out of nowhere.

She still didn't feel like taking that risk. "Who're you?" she asked instead.

The woman offered her hand. "Marin," she replied. "Keybearer Knight of the Hallowed Bastion. Nice to meet you - uh, do you wanna shake lefty and keep holding the stick? I'm fine with that - "

Kairi blushed. The woman didn't feel like Ansem at all, or like anyone from the Dark. She was being stupid. Switching the stick to her other hand, she said, "No - I'm okay. I'm sorry. I just - I thought my friends would be here. I was supposed to arrive with then in Traverse Town, not way out here - at least this is the Bastion - wait. Did you - "

"Did I what?" Marin looked curious.

"You said Hallowed Bastion and I thought it was - "

"For a while it was," Marin said. "it wasn't always Hollow, though, and it's getting better again...uh, look, I don't mean to be a mom hen at you, but it's chilly out here and you're kind of damp. Did you want to keep talking back at the guardpost?"

"Okay." Kairi looked again up and down the beach. "I - I'll do that, but can you send some people to look up and down the beach for Sora and for Riku, because I don't want them to just lie out all night and get a cold."

Or drown when the tide comes in.

Ugh, don't think that, come on.

Marin looked kind of troubled. "I'll certainly look, and I'll bring people with me, but I don't know if they're here."

Kairi simultaneously bristled and felt her heart sink. Oh no, come on - "What do you mean you don't know?"

Marin looked down, then up at Kairi, and said, "I don't know because the Magister only felt one person come though this world's Door. That was you."

"Magister?" Kairi took a deep breath. That'd come out really squeaky. She was not going to freak. "So - they never got here? How did that - they were right beside me. We were all together - "

Marin was chewing on her thumbnail. For some reason that comforted Kairi a bit. Marin was worried about them too.

"That sounds - more than strange...when we get back to the guardpost I'm going to ask the Magister about what might've caused that. I'm no specialist about interworld travel, it was pretty heavily regulated even when I was starting out, but something like that...I don't like it."

When Marin put her jacket around Kairi's shoulders, Kairi wanted to lean on her. "I don't either. It happened before, and so much plain bad junk happened after."

"That was two years ago or so, right?" Merin asked. "When the walls fell."

Kairi nodded once. "Yes. They disappeared, and I was basically comatose because of where my heart went. Riku went kind of crazy looking for it. He ended up here, and found this - " Kairi would not swear. "...Witch. She's dead now either way. She died when she tried to use more magic than she could handle. I'd feel bad about her being used if she hadn't set Riku up to be hurt like he was."

Riku still totally loathed himself for fighting with Sora. And for being a willing vessel for a creepy ghost prince, up to a point. Kairi wasn't sure when he was ever going to stop that. Thanks a lot, Ansem, you made Riku have even more problems. It seemed like no matter how much Kairi and Sora said they cared for him and forgave him, he couldn't forgive himself.

"She chased the dark," Marin said, "and lost herself in it. It happens. People who go after it and try to control it never can."

That made perfect sense to Kairi as well as sounding really familiar. Maybe she'd heard it a long time ago, before she woke up in the little row-boat on the island shore. Maybe her grandmother said it to her once? Her memory of that time was still. Well. Sketchy. At best. Sora had this ridiculous photographic memory and he could summon up these picture perfect, accurate recollections of the tiniest stupidest things. Even after losing his heart and running around looking like one of the world's biggest crickets.

...Where WAS he? What happened there, what went wrong that she ended up here and they were - some - other place, Kairi had no idea where. She had a feeling that they weren't dead and she clung to that for dear life. Her capital-F Feelings about things like that weren't ever wrong. She'd hold onto that. It'd Keep her from freaking out and crying all over the place.

The look of the lights on the guardhouse snapped her right out of her reverie, and she blinked. Worked into the iron basket holding the globe was that heart-and-thorn symbol that the manufacted heartless all wore. It made Kairi pause even though Marin didn't feel in the least like a Heartless.

The lamps weren't lit normally, either. (Were ANY of the ones in this place? Even the 'candles' in the palace weren't real; they were cylinders of something that wasn't wax with a little firefly-like orb hovering over them.) When Marin went near them, they flickered a bit, then steadied, casting purply-orange light over the steps up to the guardpost.

Marin beckoned her. "Come on up? It's just a failsafe. If someone's mimicking me or another using a glamour, the light changes colour."

Kairi nodded, and ascended the steps. The lamps flickered again, this time crazily, and started to burn this alarming blue-white for a moment. Kairi skittered.

"Why - are they doing that? I can't use magic like that and even if I could I wouldn't - "

"No, no - whoa hang on don't - " Marin shepherded Kairi away from the edge of the steps; she'd almost gone right down them backpedaling. "It's the wrong colour, impostors turn it red. I don' t know what white means, I've never seen them do that before."

"The meaning of white light," said someone behind them, "is that the guest in question happens to possess a certain kind of a Heart."

Kairi froze, knowing she was clinging to Marin like those little snails did to rocks and not caring. Something about the voice of this person - this guy - was too familiar. Maybe his accent, maybe just the tone. Either way when she turned around and looked at him, for a second she thought she'd seriously walked into a nightmare. White gloves amber eyes elaborate grey coat and that dense of his shadow being way too big -

Kairi then realized she was screaming her head off and trying to hide behind Marin at the same moment she realized the guy wasn't coming any closer. In fact he was standing exactly where he was, in a posture she didn't recognize: hands out, palms up.

She looked at him again, and while those were the same eyes, they weren't in a young face. No, this guy was like. Old. Riku's-grandparents old. He had the same kind of bone structure as Ansem, but the shape of his nose wasn't totally the same. He had a bump at the top of it. Maybe he'd broken it when he was younger?

"You're not him."

"Ah, no," said the old man. "I'm not my grandson, whom I'm quite certain you've seen the bad side of given your reaction to me. I won't blame you for it and I'm not at all offended."

"I'm sorry," Kairi said anyway. Then, "You're his grandfather?" Something about the idea of Ansem having parents, never mind grandparents, was very weird. Of course he hadn't just piffled into existence out of the clear blue sky one day, but still.

'I am." He bowed very formally. "I am Magister Thaeron of the Hallowed Bastion. it's an honour to meet you, young lady."

"I'm. Uh. Kairi." ...Durr. "Likewise?" Should she curtsey? She attempted to, remembered she was still hiding behind Marin, and blushed. "I just didn't expect. Um. Yes I'm sorry, sir."

"There's no need to be. Were I in your shoes I'd have probably made a lot more noise and looked for a sharp stick."

Okay that was funny. Kairi snerked a bit. "If you'd gone any closer, I might have. "

Marin looked amused. "That would have been hilarious. I'm sorry. Just - stick beating for the Magister."

***

insert flail!