Adumbrate:

Author's Note: I'm new to Kingdom Hearts fandom, so advice would be much appreciated - as would reviews. I've tried to keep the characterisations as consistent as I can, though I can't seem to write characters who aren't broody. (Sorry, Pence! To be fair, you have a good reason to be broody!)

He wakes up one morning and can't speak.

It isn't intentional. He goes through his regular morning routine and sidles down to the Usual Spot. Today, he's the last one there.

"Hey Pence!" Olette grins at him. "Thought you were gonna be late!"

He grins. "Late for what?" he jokes – or he tries to. Nothing comes out. He blinks in surprises, puts his hands to his throat. He glances at Olette, to see if she has an explanation, but she's turned away.

"Alright!" Hayner says, standing up from where he'd been sitting looking as if he was deep in thought. "This is it! It's nearly the end of Summer, and we're wasting it away. You know why? Because we haven't graced the beach with our presence yet, so that is what we're going to do! Okay?"

He opens his mouth to answer again, but no sound comes out, and he closes it feeling more than a little panicked.

"Okay!" Olette exclaims, unknowing of his dilemma. "And then you can get your mind off Summer enough to actually do our homework."

"God, Olette," Hayner complains. "Don't mention school already. I'd rather pretend it doesn't exist. We're going to the beach!" He turns around, hands on his hips. "Right, Pence?"

He doesn't dare open his mouth. It makes a feeling of foreboding climb up his stomach, and he feels ill. He just nods.

"Great!" Hayner announces. "I'll explain the plan – meet me at Tram Common!" He takes off.

"Hayner!" Olette calls after him, then sighs and turns to Pence. "I wish he'd understand we don't need to go and meet him if we're already together."

Pence smiles unsteadily. She leans forward and scrutinises his face. "Are you alright? You look kind of pale."

He doesn't want to worry her, so he rolls his eyes at her, hoping it communicates his thoughts: you sound like my mother, Olette, I'm fine. (And he is fine. It's the teenaged definition of fine: it's an automatic answer to such a question. You don't say how you really feel. You deliver the response without thinking about it.)

She gives him a friendly shove. "Hey, don't eye roll at me!" She smiles to show that she isn't really angry. "I guess we'd better go and see what trouble Hayner's got himself into."

He nods, and they both head out of the Usual Spot, Pence breathing a sigh of relief and not really knowing why.

Hayner's crazy plan involves lots of hard work, and he suspects that Hayner manages to dodge doing most of it, but it gives him time to think among slapping up posters. It's not his favourite job – it involves too much climbing, really – but he has time to think.

His voice has completely gone. He's more than a little worried – he's lost his voice before, and his voice cracked or went quiet, but it never just disappeared. There was some semblance of sound.

But now there is nothing. The sea shells at the beach make more noise than him.

The beach isn't so removed from Twilight Town itself in that the weather is often glorious, sun sweeping over the sand. It's the type of weather that makes you hot and sticky, means that you can't be bothered actually doing anything. They should be used to it, but they still find themselves sweating.

They sidle through the sand awkwardly in their street clothes. Once, when they were younger, Hayner had decided he didn't want to wear any shoes at the beach – what was the point, he'd shouted, when sand just filled his shoes anyway – and had scalded his feet. Pence remembered the shouting, the expression on his face, and he guessed Olette did too, as they'd never tried anything similar afterwards.

"Alright, this is boring. We can do it at home, let's at least do something… beach-y!" He's tossing a white ball in the air, and suddenly Pence wonders where it's come from. Had he carried it there?

"You put that in my beg, Hayner?" Olette asks, hands on hips. "How'd you even get it?"

"I told them I'd put on a street show later." Hayner rolls his eyes. "So they lent it to me."

Olette laughs, and Pence has a grin on his face – his laughter makes no noise, either, and he tries to quell the panic. He can't think about it now. "And when's that gonna be? We have to be there!"

Hayner stares at him challengingly, waiting for his retort, but all he can manage is sticking his tongue out. He feels ridiculous, but it seems to placate Hayner somehow.

"That's reason not to tell you."

"Better us than Seifer." Olette is giggling.

"…Are you saying you'd tell him about this? Olette, that's just plain mean!" She's laughing again now, cheerful, happy, carefree.

He wonders why he can't seem to feel that way, as amused as he is with his friend's antics.

"So's depriving the crowd of a perfectly good day's entertainment for a round of… what game is this anyway?"

It's a warped version of beach volleyball, Pence thinks, but he can't express it so he just shrugs.

"What's with you today?" Hayner demands instead. "Tell her to lay off, Pence!" he jokingly demands, giving him a piercing glare.

Pence stiffens. Ah, so it's come to this then. There's a moment of silence, then:

"Maybe it's you I should be asking what's up with. You're too quiet – you're planning something."

He takes a slight step backwards, but suddenly Olette is there, peering at his face, seeming to scrutinise him even more than before. "Are you okay, Pence?" she asks worriedly. "You haven't said a word all day."

"What?" Hayner asks again.

She smiles fondly at him. "You talk enough for fifty people, Hayner, so it makes sense you wouldn't notice."

"Hey!"

His hand creeps up to his throat. He smiles apologetically. It wavers.

"You've lost your voice?" translates Olette. "Oh, Pence! Why didn't you tell us? If we knew you weren't feeling well-"

She's cut off by Hayner guffawing. "How was he supposed to do that? Sign language? He can't speak!"

For some reason, they both seem to find it half-funny, and they're laughing. Olette grabs the ball – forgotten in the camaderie – and flings it playfully at Hayner's head. He ducks.

"That was deliberate!"

And then they're fighting with the ball, an odd variety of dodgeball. Pence ducks a few stray shots, but he doesn't feel like getting further involved. He finds himself drifting – in his thoughts, on the beach. It's pretty in the sunlight, but there are scraps of rubbish around – papers blowing in the air from fast food, newspapers, stray cartons. Most of it, he knows, is best avoided.

He doesn't know how he sees it, what draws his attention to it, but his feet seem to be moving by themselves, and then he stumbles across a photograph – literally. He ends up treading on it, actually, and he's going to leave it alone, but he sees a familiar face.

He grabs it gently, trying not to damage it anymore, letting the sand tip off the photograph. The quality is damaged. Three faces grin ridiculously at a camera, and he doesn't think he's ever smiled that brightly, and he's sure Hayner and Olette would say the same. He's unsure about showing this photo, though, because he's not sure he's ever seen it before, and that scares him. It feels… out of place.

He feels even odder when his voice floods out of his mouth, suddenly back, adding to the confusion. The words fall into his brain, and they don't make any sense, he can't think of a context where they would, but they feel familiar. Familiar and yet nothing he's ever heard before.

"…and if it's not that photograph they're after… if it's the real thing… wouldn't it be funny?" he murmurs, hands clutched tightly to the photograph. The side digs into his hand. He suspects he'll end up with a paper cut.

Wouldn't it be funny…? Wouldn't it be tragic?

"Pence?" It seems the others have found him. He wonders if he was followed, or if he's just been gone a little too long now. He can barely hear her, but he detects traces of worry that he can't think of now.

He hasn't done anything, but guilt swirls in his chest and he clenches his mouth shut.

If I hadn't opened my mouth, he thinks, even though it's bizarre, as he hasn't. He hasn't until now. The photograph's addling his brain, but it didn't start with this. It started with his voice.

(Maybe we could've lived in denial, all of us, some corner of his mind whispers, and it makes as little sense as anything else has today. He's beginning to suspect he's going crazy.)

His eyes open. He doesn't know when he closed them, but Hayner's shaking him and going, "Dude, are you okay? You had us really worried." And he guesses it must have been bad, as Hayner wouldn't normally admit that.

He opens his mouth, but though his voice is back, he closes it again. He doesn't want to speak right now. He doesn't want to damn his other friends.

(As if he's damned one before.)

He doesn't release the photograph. He places it in his pocket. It makes him feel like a criminal.

"You're leaving," says a voice from behind him.

Riku turns around. "There's no longer a need for me to stay here."

"You wish to meet with Sora?" asks the other man seriously, and he can hear the implication: like that?

"I wish to make sure he's safe," Riku retorts. It's true, and he also wants Sora to get on the right track: it may have been DiZ's plan, not his, but the Organisation is dangerous. He'd already known it, but fighting Roxas and seeing Axel's attempts to undermine the whole operation had only solidified that fact in his mind.

(They were trying to keep Sora sleeping. But it was okay, he was awake now, so Riku could breathe.)

"Perhaps that would be wise," remarks the man swathed in red. "But I intend to ask after the items you took."

"What items?"

"I'm no fool." He holds up a hand to prevent any protest. "They're dangerous. They should not be taken into the real world."

"You've said it yourself. They're only data."

"Items, even photographs, pose a threat. They explain this realms' existence. The virtual town, too, is a replica of the original. The introduction of outside stimuli could cause irreparable harm to anybody susceptible-" His lecture was cut off.

"I'm more careful than that, DiZ!" Riku snaps.

"Then see to it that you remain careful." DiZ turns away and walks off, but looks back on his retreat to the door, pausing, to add, "And I'll have you know, this is against my better judgement."

Sometimes Riku really hates DiZ.

Pence puts the photograph in his bedside drawer. He doesn't want anybody else to see it. He thinks that maybe he should show Hayner or Olette, as maybe their memories will be better than his. Maybe they'll be able to recall it and the reason for their ridiculous smiles.

Maybe they'll tell him he's being silly, and seeing things, and that it's just a photograph.

But there's a small blonde smear (hair) at the top left of the photograph, and it makes him stare. It makes him think:

Wouldn't it be funny…?

Author's Note: This was not supposed to have DiZ and Riku in it, interesting as I think they are. Then I got to the end and thought: wouldn't this make a lot more sense (to me)...? I also think it helps give the fic a sort of timeline. It also provides some otherwise vague info (well, to be fair, it's still vague!)

I wanted to parallel it a bit with digital Twilight Town, but not to the degree that everything is the same - they do lack Roxas, after all, and stuff that happened revolved around Roxas.

Reviews much appreciated, I hope my characterisation was good enough. :)