A/N: So this fic turned out to be much more epic than I thought it was going to. The story itself is 11 pages long in Microsoft Word. This oneshot is just one of many that I had listed in archives on my computer; I hardly know what any of them are going to turn out to look like, and all I know is the basic…idea of it. I know what character it is going to be about, the title, and that's almost it. So I didn't mean to write this one yet, but a few nights ago…I want to say that it was Saturday (I think? I don't know). I was walking out of my bathroom, back into my bedroom, and exactly as I was in the doorway, Meant to Forge started writing itself in my head. And at this point, I want to know what the fuck is up with my bathroom doorway, and why it is like, my inspiration-generator. You guys, this is the third story to have started writing itself in my head, when I was in that doorway. Is it some sort of strange portal? Why do things come to me there, specifically (and it is in the same spot), and then some force grabs a hold of me, and then steers me directly to my bed and my laptop and I start writing, regardless of what I should be doing? When I have writer's block, should I just stand in my bathroom doorway? What is with this? (The other two, in case you're curious, were Racing Yellow Lights and Faith…and why are all these stories Kingdom Hearts ones?) Ahem. Moving on.

Pairings: Sora/Kairi, a little bit of Kairi/Tidus, Sora/Naminé, Kairi/Demyx, and, if you have your slash/yaoi goggles on, Axel/Roxas. And I suppose you could also consider there to bit a little Roxas/Kairi.

Surprised? Considering that most of my other pairing fics, even those of another fandom, are all slash? Well, you shouldn't be. Because you'd see, if you looked on my KH pairings list, that I do ship a little Sora/Kairi. For reals, guys. Honestly, my favorite Sora ship is Namora (Sora/Naminé)…and yeah, that's mostly followed by Riku/Sora, but the point is that I don't only ship slash stuff. And there's none of that here, really, if you don't choose to see it that way. I totes swear. For the AkuRoku, you need slash goggles. The bits that I wrote about them are totally canon, guys, and you can just read it as them being best friends. So het lovers, rejoice here! Please review and tell me what you think! I personally like how my Kairi turned out.

Warnings: None really, I don't think. The timeline may get a little fuzzy. Not much true romance going on, so don't worry overmuch about that.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. If I did, Kairi wouldn't have been so mistreated as a character, and gotten the character development she deserves. Well. At least she's not as completely useless as Aurora is in Sleeping Beauty (whom I have major issues with). Anyway, everything belongs to Square Enix and Disney. The title, I suppose, was inspired by the song "Astonishing", from Little Women the Musical. For years, I've thought that one of the lyrics went something like, "When I thought all along, that we were meant to forge frontiers", when it's actually "find frontiers". Oh well. The song is still reminiscent of Sora and Kairi's relationship, and of the arc Kairi kind of goes through in this fic, so you can take a look at it if you want. And the later interactions between Demyx and Kairi were inspired a little bit from a fic called "Songs", by Oni-Gil. I tried my hardest to steer away from plagiarism though, and I can only hope I succeeded.

Meant to Forge

Once upon a time. That was how these things started, she knew. Stories, fairy tales…that kind of thing. And that's what her life was destined to be—what it should have been.

Once upon a time, Kairi had been a little girl who knew, deep inside her heart, that she was a princess. It wasn't vanity, but merely an innate sense of knowing. Kairi could just tell, just knew that her heart was different from those around her. She had once been too young to parcel out what it was, exactly, that she was sensing, but eventually she would come to realize that she could sense the light and darkness in the hearts of others. She would come to know that she was special, just like she'd known all along, and that she was a Princess of Heart. She was a Chosen One too—a Chosen Guardian of the Door.

But Kairi wasn't thinking about that yet. Right now, Kairi was remembering once-upon-a-times, and halcyon days of white sand that soaked up the sun's rays, capturing them in multi-faceted grains, and of the dizzying expanse of cloudless blue sky that reflects in shining blue waves that rock against the shore. Shells wash up onto the sand, keeping the lullaby of the ocean in their hearts.

Destiny Islands sparkled. It was a world with hardly a hint of darkness, and it was why Kairi loved it with all her heart, and why, at the end of later adventures that Kairi wasn't remembering yet, she always wanted to come back. The lullaby of the sea sang in the hearts of shells, and so thus Destiny Islands sang to her heart. The fingers of the sea reached out to take the shells back into its embrace, and thus Destiny Islands reached for her, called out to her.

And its sparkle was reflected in his eyes. His eyes that were the exact same color as that Destiny Islands sky, a blue that was unclouded by the darkness that his light so easily burned away, and that were so bright and so blue that it almost hurt your eyes to look at, because he had eternity in them. Endless blue, and they offered her freedom as easily as the smiles that came to his lips.

In his heartbeat, Kairi was sure she could hear the sound of the sea, that unforgettable lullaby of waves washing over sand. His hands had been pressed against her back, and he had been warm and solid and there. Safe. She had known then that she would be the light that would always bring him home, as his voice spoke right in her ear: "Kairi." There had been certainty in his voice; he had known it too.

She didn't know how long she had been away from home, and she really didn't need to know, because she could feel the ache of homesickness in her heart. However long it had been, it had been too long. But she didn't have to look far. All she needed to see that Destiny Islands blue sky was to look into his eyes. They still sparkled, although he had been looking at her more seriously than she'd ever seen him before, with hardly a hint of the goofy cheer she was accustomed to.

But it was still good to know that she could depend on the sky. She couldn't trust the ground anymore, the ground that's given way so many times before, and that had then been cracking and breaking under her feet.

"Kairi!"

"Sora!" she had cried back, catching his hand in hers, holding on as tight as she could.

"Kairi! Remember what you said before? I'm always with you too. I'll come back to you. I promise!"

"I know you will," she had told him, before they had been forced to let go at last. But only their hands. She still had a string tied to his heart, and she wasn't going to let that go.

But of course she knew he was going to come back. Kairi was a princess, and she had known since those halcyon days that Sora was her prince.

Key word, Kairi supposed, being was.

Because when he finally did come back, he simply wasn't the Sora she had fallen in love with in those cradled days of golden sunshine, the one who had made her truly believe in worlds in the stars in a way that Riku had never been able to. He had changed, though it wasn't as if he'd promised that he wouldn't. He had been silent, that sunset on the dock that had bled red into the weathered wood.

And she wasn't the same Kairi either. How could she be? How could any of them be?

Perhaps they could have been. Perhaps, if Destiny Islands hadn't been consumed by the darkness it had burned away for so long, and perhaps if they hadn't been swept up in the adventures that they had claimed to have wanted. But dreams, Kairi had discovered, were only okay so long as you could wake up from them. And they couldn't wake up from this.

Destiny Islands had come back, but it wasn't the same. Something was off. Almost, though she didn't want to think the word, tainted. No one else could feel it though. No one else was as sensitive to the darkness as she was, and so they couldn't taste the faintness of its aftertaste in the air. And she rather thought that the ocean was missing some kind of heartbeat.

Memory was a funny thing, Kairi would be coming to realize.

It had been then, around the time she had slowly adjusted to the fact that no one remembered the darkness that had taken them away, that it had all really started to go wrong. Because of her.

A lonely girl in white named Naminé. A Kairi-that-could-have-been. Kairi thought that it was fitting, because she knew that she shared an equal part in the blame that Riku always wanted to keep all to himself. Kairi was always had to be Sora's bait, didn't she?

Naminé was insidious. Kairi knew this because Naminé was a part of her, and then not a part of her at the same time. If they were truly the same person, Kairi thought, then Naminé wouldn't have had to tie a string of her own to Sora. Naminé wouldn't have tried so hard to hold on to a heart that didn't belong to her.

And Sora's heart didn't belong to Kairi either, not really, not when Naminé did, after all, have a hold on it that no one else did, and knew Sora in a way that Kairi or anyone else could never imitate. Naminé was just as much a part of Sora as she was a part of Kairi. Naminé started her work in Sora's heart, could grasp, see, and shape his memories. Naminé was the link that had turned the three of them into a circle: Kairi connected to Sora connected to Naminé connected to Kairi. An inextricable chain, binding them together.

Naminé taught her that memory was so fickle, more than Kairi could ever have imagined. It was easily broken, twisted, manipulated. Memories could lie to you, and it was just like lying to yourself, and for Kairi, it was literally both.

She had forgotten Sora, during that time when he had been Naminé's in some faraway, sterile castle. Like a toy that had been taken out of her hands, without her realizing it. She had forgotten what he looked like, his name…she had been barely able to remember that there was a person-shaped hole in the picture, a gap between her and Riku that should have been filled.

That was when she had first started feeling that she was no longer in reality, but living her life trapped in a dream. Every conversation with Selphie, every shy glance and blush from Tidus that year, every sly look and laugh and meaningfully raised eyebrows from Wakka had felt surreal, as if she was suspended in that moment between sleeping and waking, and this was a dream that she couldn't shake away.

At the time, they had been sharper than any of her other memories, and yet, somehow at the same time they had blurred together, one day running into the next, everything bleeding together until Kairi thought that she was losing her mind.

She remembered Tidus approaching her one day, she couldn't remember when that day was, his hand awkwardly scratching the back of his neck, uncharacteristically shy, saying that he thought she was pretty, and that he liked her a lot. She remembered that this boy with sun-bleached hair had been her first kiss, and all she could remember thinking was that his eyes were the wrong shade of blue, weren't Destiny Islands sky-colored, and lacking that special sparkle. She couldn't hear the ocean in his heartbeat, either.

Voices named Roxas that only she had heard and urges to write a letter in a bottle that she entrusted to the sea didn't help Kairi's convictions about her sanity. And neither did standing by the shoreline, ripples of ocean foam inches away from her shoes, and waiting to hear that heartbeat in the ocean, waiting for…someone…to come back.

"Maybe waiting isn't good enough," she had muttered to herself. Nothing seemed to be in its right place anymore. Nothing clicked, the jigsaw pieces had acquired too many new uneven edges for the original puzzle to fit.

"My thoughts exactly!"

When the voice had emanated out of nowhere, for a minute Kairi had thought that her mind had truly snapped. At least with Roxas, she had been stricken by his inexplicable familiarity, and yet she was sure, knew deep in her heart that she had never met him. And just like her heart had once told her that she was a princess, it told her that Roxas was real, in a way that Destiny Islands didn't seem to be anymore. But this voice wasn't Roxas, and her heart didn't know this one at all.

"If you have a dream, don't wait. Act! One of life's little rules. Got it memorized?"

Kairi had been ridiculously relieved when the voice had revealed itself to have a face, even as she swallowed against the cold taint of the darkness he was stepping out of. He was shocking to look at, with a burst of spiky red hair, and a color of green eyes that she hadn't known could exist. They were as impossibly green as that Other Boy's were impossibly Destiny Islands sky-blue. His smile was dangerous, and Kairi knew that she could not trust him. But she had still been glad that he was there, for he was real, too.

"Who are you?"

"Axel," he told her. Axel obviously wasn't Roxas, and yet at the same time Kairi had been sure they were somehow connected. Roxas, while feeling familiar, had also felt…wrong, but not in the way that the Heartless were wrong. Axel felt wrong too. It was like…there was something missing.

"I happen to be an acquaintance of Sora's," Axel continued, with an offhand gesture of his right hand. His smirk widened, and then he held out the hand to her. "Why don't we go see him?"

He still held out his hand, like he had really expected her to take it, but Kairi had been too caught up in the name that he had so casually uttered.

"…Sora?" Yes, that was right. Sora. Naminé had unleashed the shackles she had bound, leaving one simple tie to Sora's heart, like the string to a kite.

After being stuck for so long in the dream of Destiny Islands, things suddenly seemed to have been moving so fast to Kairi. The strange dog, the even stranger creatures that were as wrong as Axel, except they felt even worse, and the disembodied whistling that summoned a new portal of darkness. The cold taint of it was pervasive in the air, licking up the back of her throat.

"We've got something in common, Kairi," Axel said to her turned back. "You and I both miss someone we care about."

And Kairi's heart couldn't help but quiver in sympathy at that statement, for she knew he was telling her the truth. Roxas, her heart had whispered to her. Her heart could tell that Axel and Roxas had shared more than mutual Sameness with each other. Axel had missed Roxas as she had missed Sora, but she had known that she couldn't help him. She hadn't known where Roxas was, or what had happened to him, but she did know, even then, that whatever Axel intended to do to get Roxas back wasn't going to be pleasant for her or for Sora.

"Hey…I feel like we're friends already." His words had been poisonous, and a promise to her, a whisper that her heart had picked up. I will save Roxas. And you're going to help me do it. I'll hunt you down if you run. You can't hide from me, Kairi.

She had understood, but Kairi had run anyway. Axel hadn't expected any less, she knew, had expected her to try to save Sora.

"You're not acting very friendly," she had spat at him, even as she had silently thanked him for waking her up.

Kairi had spent time in two prison-type things, and as far as that sort of thing went, her time spent in a cell in the Organization's stronghold wasn't as bad as it could have been. They didn't torture her, or starve her, or anything of the sort. The Organization for the most part left her alone, though there was always one guarding her cell. Most of them didn't even speak to her, though one of them (Xigbar, she had heard) delighted in mocking, one-sided riddles that she had refused to ask him about.

No, the torture for her, the nails to the chalkboard of her soul, had been the emptiness. Every creature here was wrong, and Kairi had been horrified when she had finally figured out what was missing. Nobodies, they called themselves, the beings that didn't have hearts. The ones that were barely humanoid were bad enough, but the ones that retained their human appearance, the ones worthy to be in their Organization…Kairi couldn't help but shudder, for they were hardly more than walking corpses. Horribly empty. Not even this world of theirs had a heart.

Kairi had never felt sorrier for anything in her life before. She had to—she was the Princess of Heart. She had to feel sorrow and compassion for these creatures, especially if no one else would.

And as much as they had repulsed her, she couldn't help but reach out to them, forge a bridge, a connection, into the empty spaces of where their hearts no longer existed. In a way, she had been sure that she could reach them. They hadn't given up, had they? These shells, they still clung onto life, ever-searching for their lost hearts. They just needed to be redirected, Kairi felt. They had claimed that both light and dark had turned its back to them, and Kairi believed it. But she wished that they could see that she wanted to help them, and if they would just ask, just talk to Sora and explain everything, she was sure that he would help them too.

What Sora could do to help the Nobodies, she didn't know. To really help them, to do something that didn't involve helping them complete their 'own' Kingdom Hearts. That was the other part of that world that made Kairi sick. She could feel the pain and desperation of those trapped hearts, the ones that the Organization had siphoned off to keep them from the true Kingdom Hearts, and into their own horrible facsimile, that heart-shaped moon.

Everything in that world, from the trapped hearts to the Nobodies to the Heartless, could sense the presence of a Princess of Heart in their midst. And they all cried out to her, to the beacon of pure light that emitted from her heart, and it had made answering tears spring into Kairi's eyes.

What do you want me to do, Kairi had wanted to scream at them. What could she do, trapped in a cell? Sure, she was a Princess of Heart, but what did that even mean? What kind of tangible power could she unlock from her special heart, if only she had known how? Or could she in fact not do anything at all, and all a Princess of Heart was meant to be was a glorified door warden?

The tears had come down faster. She was only fifteen, and no one had seemed to have left lying around a copy of The Idiot's Guide to being a Princess of Heart. The only time she had ever met the other six Princesses, she hadn't even thought to ask them about it; she had thought that she and Sora were going home to Destiny Islands, had naively thought that they could return to the halcyon days they had shared before. Kairi didn't remember who it had been who had first told her to believe in her dreams, that if she had wished hard enough, they would come true. Whoever that person was, Kairi had thought that now she would like to kick them. Yeah, you were right! Dreams do come true! And it sucks!

Dreams, Kairi knew now, were meant to stay dreams; once they came alive, there was no hope of suppressing them, and you gave up any control you had over them. Dreams that come true, they become true in all the ways that you didn't want them too.

Kairi had wished, just for a moment, that it could just be her and Sora on that raft, seeing the worlds, leaving Riku, their earth, behind. And to Kairi's horror, that had been exactly what had happened: Riku had been left behind to fall into darkness.

"Oh, no. Hey…hey, um…it's Kairi, right? Hey Kairi, uh…could you please stop crying? Ah man, please stop…come on, I'm just supposed to guard you, they didn't say what I'm supposed to do if you were crying…or at least, I don't think they did. Hang on a sec…"

Kairi had glanced up, reddened eyes wide, to see her newest Organization guard, fumbling around in the pockets of the typical black, zippered trench coat. To her disbelief, he pulled out of a fistful of what looked like note cards, and began flipping through them, squinting his aqua-colored eyes to examine whatever had been scribbled on them.

"Nope," he concluded, stuffing them back into his pocket, except for one, which he read out to her. "'Guard and maintain the security of the prisoner's cell. Should the subject attempt to escape, use aggression to detain and subdue her.' So yeah," he continued, replacing the card in his pocket with the others. "Nothing about you crying or anything." The Nobody finally looked back to her, meeting her eyes, still staring at him in utter mystification. "Oh hey! Are you done crying?"

Kairi had opened her mouth a little bit, and then closed it again, at a loss for her words. The Nobodies, she knew, had a myriad of personalities, as varied as the population of people they had once been. But this one…with his odd, faux-hawk, mullet hair, and something that almost looked like sincerity in his eyes…she didn't know what to make of him.

"I…I guess," she had stuttered out.

"Oh, good," the Nobody said, dropping to sit on the ground in a graceless tangle of limbs. "I'm no good at a lot of stuff, but I definitely wouldn't know what to do with crying people."

"Well…just think of whatever you would want someone to do for you if you were crying, and then just do that," Kairi had said. She had seen her chance, though she knew that the Nobody had no idea what he had opened himself too. Surely, if she could just help him like this, help him to remember his humanity…

The strange Nobody had stared at her, an odd look crossing his face and then leaving it blank again. Even the faint glimmer of life, present in his eyes but in no other Nobodies that she had seen, had dimmed, leaving his eyes as dead as any of the others.

"I can't cry," he told her quietly. "I don't know how…I don't remember crying."

The ache in her heart, that had been deadened by his unwitting bizarreness, gave a sharp twinge at this.

"Well," she had continued doggedly. "You cheer them up. People cry when they're sad. So…if you can make them happy, make them smile, they wouldn't be sad anymore."

He had considered this; she could see him turning her words over in his head, contemplating them.

"Why are you sad?" he had asked finally, tilting his head a little to the side.

"It's so empty here." The whisper had risen to her lips, unbidden, to Kairi's surprise. But then…this Nobody seemed so talkative and…different, somehow, from the others. "And…I'm afraid for Sora."

His eyes had deadened even more at her words about the emptiness, but then a spark had entered them again at Sora's name. "Oh, I know this one! You don't have to worry about Sora. We don't want to hurt him at all! We need him and his keyblade to complete Kingdom Hearts. We just…have to give him little pushes, that's all."

Kairi couldn't help but glare at him a little bit, the anguish of the trapped hearts resonating inside her own. "And you really think making your own Kingdom Hearts is going to work? What, just grab a new heart, any old heart?"

"No!" he had said defensively. "I don't need a new heart. I have a heart already. I just…it…it's not gone. It may not be here, here, but it's not gone."

The flow of pity for those creatures, Kairi reflected, would never stem.

"What's your name?" she had asked him instead, dropping their previous conversation.

"Demyx," he had told her, after an eye blink of what could have been surprise. "Number IX in the Organization. Almost the youngest neophyte left, I guess…except for Luxord, but he acts a lot older than me anyway."

"It's nice to meet you, Demyx."

"I'm sure it is," Demyx had said rather dryly, with a pointed look around the room and at the bars of her cell.

From then on, Demyx had easily become her favorite guard, not that the other Organization members were competing much for that position. Demyx was prone to be more cheerful than his fellow Nobodies, and he seemed to dislike the silence, and would fill the room with awkward, nervous chatter. He would talk at her, whether she would respond or not, but he always seemed to brighten up even more when she would talk back to him. And Kairi had soon figured out what it was about Demyx that was so different from the others.

Demyx had hope. He still believed that he would truly get his heart back, or get back in touch with it, or whatever it was that he thought he was going to do with it. The others almost seemed to be going through the motions, doing this because there was nothing else for them to do.

Her heart ached for Demyx even more than it did for the others, this Nobody who seemed closer for her to reach and save. And it was perhaps because he also reminded her of Sora; they were both unwittingly dorky, at times. And his smile was reminiscent of Sora's, which she only saw when he talked about music.

The third time he had come in to guard her, his eyes had been even brighter than usual, a light in them that she had never seen in dead Nobody eyes before.

"Kairi, I was thinking about what you said before. About how…this place makes you sad, right? And when you're sad, you cry, right?"

"Yeah…" she had said cautiously.

"And you said that to fix it, to make people stop being sad, you've got to make them happy, right?"

"Right…" Kairi had wondered where he was going with this. A possible trick?

"Well, how about I play you some music? Everyone likes music, right? And it's too quiet down here, anyway."

"Play music? With what?" Kairi had asked incredulously.

"With my sitar, of course!" And it had appeared in his lap, in a flash of bubbles and what had almost, could have been light. Kairi had been intrigued by that.

"Sure…why not, Demyx?" Kairi had said, and she had been able to summon the strength to smile at him, the first one her lips had formed in what seemed like forever. And his answering smile, especially when he got caught up in playing his music, was shockingly bright, and the closest to Sora-bright that she had ever seen in another person, even if that person was a Nobody.

Demyx didn't have a heartbeat, but she could almost hear the lullaby of the ocean in the twangs he coaxed from the sitar's strings with his fingers. And it almost made her want to cry all over again, because nothing in this dream was happening like it was supposed to.

Riku wasn't supposed to fall into darkness, perhaps never to be seen again, though Kairi didn't allow herself to dwell on that thought for too long. She was the Princess of Heart, and Kairi figured that until she found out what her true purpose was, she would be the person to keep believing, to be the guiding light for lost hearts.

And Kairi and Sora were supposed to be together forever. Maybe they should have shared a paopu fruit when they'd had the chance, so that Sora could have remained Kairi's prince.

Sora and Kairi weren't supposed to fall in love with Nobodies.

In her reflections, and remembering of the past, Kairi supposed that she had reached the part of her story that was supposed to be the happily-ever-after.

She, Riku, and Sora, had finally made it back to Destiny Islands, together, and had been back home for only a few months. Home was more real to Kairi than it had been without Sora and Riku, but the halcyon glitter, Kairi supposed, had been forever scrubbed out.

And it was hard to sit still, to think of whether your story had a happily-ever-after, when you knew the story wasn't over yet. Kairi's heart could feel a faint…resonance, through the link it had to King Mickey's heart, and she knew that he would need them again soon. And she could feel Naminé. The waifish girl was quiet, but Kairi could feel the anticipation from her. She was waiting for something. Kairi got the impression of her almost gazing out at the horizon, almost like she was looking out of a window, past gauzy, fluttering curtains, watching the approach of something that only she could see. And Kairi's fingers itched a lot nowadays, with the urge to draw.

And Sora was different. His optimism, and the sunny disposition that no one could ever beat out of him, wasn't gone. No, he was just far more quiet than she had ever known him to be. Kairi wondered how strongly he could feel Roxas, who she had learned was Sora's own Nobody. She wondered if Roxas had been a quiet sort of person, like Naminé was in comparison to her.

And that was the other thing. Sora and Naminé, and the information about Castle Oblivion that her Nobody had once divulged to her, though some such memories had been unconsciously shared in their dreams. But Naminé had made Kairi swear, just like Riku, that she would tell Sora as little about it as she could.

His heart needs to remember on its own…if that's what he wants, Naminé had told her quietly. His memories have been tampered around with so much…I've tampered around with them so much, that they're a bit…more fragile. And his mind is a little crowded right now. He doesn't need me interfering, or more stress or trauma.

But this sort of…détente, had left Kairi feeling almost more helpless than she ever had before. Because everything was so screwed up, and had become hopelessly tangled and complicated.

Kairi, Sora, and Naminé…they had become that inextricable circle. Somewhere along the way, Sora had fallen in love with her Nobody, and, well…Naminé had always been in love with Sora, Kairi knew. But, so intricately linked to both of them as she was, and with her heart so sensitive to this kind of thing, it was Kairi who could feel the brunt of both of their emotions.

Naminé, when she was contemplating that horizon, always felt horribly guilty, for what she had done to Sora in the past, and towards Kairi, who she knew could feel her yearning for Sora to call his memories of her into the light once again, and Kairi could feel the pain that Naminé felt when another day passed and Sora still didn't remember. And then her guilt again, for thinking that a Nobody had any right to want Sora.

And Kairi could also feel Sora's utter confusion. Sora had spent so long, firmly believing in the idea that he loved Kairi, only to find when they met up again that this love had apparently been displaced, and upon a girl that he thought he didn't know, and yet felt as if he should. Kairi knew how frustrating it felt, to know that you were missing a piece of the puzzle, but for the life of you, you just couldn't seem to find it. And she knew what an adjustment it must be for Sora, to be seeing the new reality that Kairi herself had still not quite gotten used to seeing. And then, of course, Kairi had to also deal with the guilt Sora felt towards her too: it was his first time falling out of love with someone too…if you could even call it that, seeing as Naminé was her Nobody, and therefore kind of a part of Kairi…

Kairi sighed. Hopeless tangle, that was her life.

And as for Kairi herself…well, the Nobody that had somehow took her pity and turned it into a kind of love, which still made her grieve for his death, was gone, wasn't he? And Kairi wasn't sure if he could ever come back.

If anything, Kairi had found a bizarre kind of comfortable companionship with Roxas. Sora's Nobody, who was grieving for the death of another, as Kairi was. Sora would sleep so that Roxas could watch the sunset, and so he and Kairi sat together, faded wooden dock under their dangling legs, and they would share in their grief of two Nobodies who had faded away, and hold on to the hope that, somewhere out there, Axel and Demyx had found their hearts again. Roxas would sometimes turn his head to the side a little bit, and give Kairi the tiniest of smiles, which she would return with a much larger one, content that someone understood.

But Kairi knew that this dream, their story wasn't over yet. And when an ocean wave had lapped over her shoe, and a bottle bearing a sealed message from the King had nudged against her foot, she had felt a double jolt of excitement, from herself and from Naminé.

It's starting, Naminé had whispered, but she had refused to elaborate.

Well, Kairi didn't know what was starting, but she had scooped up the bottle, and set off at a run for Sora and Riku.

Everything that Kairi had known in her life had been taken and twisted; into what, she didn't know. And at the moment, she didn't see how anything could ever become right again.

And yet…she remembered a Nobody who had never given up, who had never stopped trying to save the person he had cared about. And she remembered that other Nobody with fumbled note cards, who had been the only one to try to cheer her up, and who had never relinquished the hope that he could reconnect with his lost heart.

So why couldn't her story end with a happily-ever-after? She was still the Princess of Heart, after all, even if she didn't have her prince anymore. And who said that a Princess needed a prince to be happy, anyway?

Kairi was only fifteen. She didn't need to find her happily-ever-after yet. She still had some living to do.