(Disclaimer: I do not own the character presented in this story. I also fully realize that a disclaimer holds no legal weight in court whatsoever, but hey-it's tradition!)

"They say the memories all fade out…"

The Ones You Left Behind

By Agent S7

Chapter One:

Another Side

It was only for a second.

Of course, the two boys had gone off to take the Mark of Mastery, leaving Kairi behind—once again—with nothing to do but wait. Well, wait and practice with her newfound Keyblade. Yeah, there wasn't anyone to practice with, but you could find anything on the Internet—dueling lessons included.

Right now, though, Kairi just felt like lying in bed. It wasn't even relaxing—she had no doubt that Sora and Riku had somehow gotten themselves stuck in some horrible trouble, because they were always stuck in some kind of horrible trouble. Usually trouble that involved hitting something with a giant key until it stopped being troublesome.

Kairi's room was dim in the blue twilight, and even in the dark, she could tell how messy it was getting. Sometime a few months ago she'd stopped being her normal, neat old self and begun worrying about her memories. Everyone called her silly for that, but at least she'd been proven sane: Sora hadn't been the delusions of someone who worried a little too much about grades, but an actual, real person.

Unfortunately, he was the kind of person who disappeared again right after coming back home, taking Riku with him. And Kairi still hadn't gathered up the will to clean her damn room. Her laundry was scattered all over the place, along with half-finished fantasy and classical literature, some half-open and almost all badly beaten and frayed. There were a few drawings scattered on her desk, but she didn't seem to have that knack for art she once possessed.

She sighed and glanced at the book by her desk. Frankenstein. The next reading for her English class. Sighing again—she was doing a lot of that today—Kairi opened up to the first page and—

—and then she saw it. It was only for a second.

A few feet from her bed, on her desk, Kairi's computer monitor had flashed a single image. It was so brief and so bright in the dark room that it overwhelmed Kairi, leaving a trailing afterimage when she tried to blink away the blinding LCD light.

It was a boy. A boy with deep, ocean-blue eyes and familiar spiky hair. His hands had been grabbing the sides of the screen (or the camera?) and he had been wearing a look of desperation and…a deep sadness.

Kairi jerked up out of her bed and stared at the screen, wide-eyed. "Sora?" she whispered, then looked around in embarrassment. "I said that out loud, didn't I?" she said aloud. When she looked back, the image was gone.

Alright, she thought, her head swimming. Okay. I imagined it. That's it.

No, she thought bitterly, flopping down onto her bed. I didn't imagine it. No point in pretending otherwise. Not these days. Kairi gulped and logged onto her computer. First step: virus scan. Second step…well, huh. Good question.

How, exactly, were you supposed to check for supernatural occurrences on your computer? As far as she knew, there wasn't a program for that.

As if to answer her, Kairi's favorite browser suddenly popped up to life. She could only watch as it navigated to some strange site—the address bar was merely a series of numbers, letters and symbols that didn't make a lick of sense…and she got the feeling that it wouldn't make sense even if she understood computers.

The window was perfectly, blindingly white. Kairi tried to blink away the agony in her eyes, but it only made her eyes water.

And then something began to type in the whiteness. The text showed up red and bolded.

Hello?

Kairi stared. Her stomach somersaulted.

Who is this? Can anyone hear me? Anyone at all?

Kairi did the only thing that she could think of: she typed back.

I can hear you.

You can?

Who are you? What are you doing to my computer?

Kairi? Is that you?

She froze. Whoever he was, he knew her. Had he been going through her documents? You know that's not it, Kairi, she thought. Nothing's that simple anymore.

Who the hell is this?

You know who it is.

She typed the word out letter by letter, slowly, as if afraid that it would become fully true when she finished the word.

S

So

Sor

Sora

Yep. That's my name, don't wear it out!

I don't believe you.

Why not?

Tell me something that only Sora would know.

Um…uh…hm…er…

Kairi tilted her head. Who would type all that on a keyboard? As if things weren't weird enough!

Okay, I've got one. Me and you and Riku shared cookie dough sea salt ice cream every day after school in the fourth grade. But you got sick of cookie dough one day and started getting peanut butter chocolate chip, and I started eating it too so I could impress you. Only Riku kept eating the cookie dough, and eventually he joined us. He said "Peanut butter's healthy. And a man's gotta eat healthy." But we all knew what it was really about, and he didn't really try to hide that he just felt left out.

Kairi hadn't even remembered it until now. The moment the bold text mentioned ice cream, though, the rest of it instantly came back. The sweet smell of the ice cream parlor, the eternally-sticky tables, the tabloids that Riku was always reading through (saying that "reading the news was what all the big kids did"). The sudden rush of memory and the uncanniness of the situation almost made her dizzy.

Sora…what are you doing chatting with me? Aren't you taking the Mark of Mastery?

The text took a while to show up now. No "ums," "ers," or "hms." Then:

No.

Why not?

I'm stuck.

Where?

Here. In the code. On the hard drive. In the endless pages (here he paused very briefly, almost imperceptibly) of the Internet.

Kairi read the sentences several times, trying to understand. It was like a nightmare. She remembered that brief image of Sora that had invaded her monitor and stolen her attention, and shivered.

How?

What?

How did you get stuck?

There was no answer for some time. Kairi almost logged off before she got the next message:

I'm out of time. He's onto me.

Who is?

You've got to help me. Stay near your computer, Kairi.

Tell me what's going on!

I don't want to die.

The window closed.

It took a long time for Kairi to fall asleep that night.

Corridors of Darkness. Kairi remembered her mad dash through them, away from the Heartless and towards…well, anywhere. Now she was running through them again, this time searching.

"Come back!" she cried out into the void, but neither Sora nor Riku answered her. It echoed (Come back! Come back!) and the only answer was the horrible, bubbling sound of Heartless rising up from the black behind her.

Kairi ran tirelessly, but as she ran, she felt something eating away at her heart. The Corridors, she thought. Corrupting me. But when she looked down, she saw that Sora and Riku were still with her, right inside of her heart.

They were clutching forks and knives, staring hungrily at it, ready to eat their way out.

As Kairi slept fitfully, her computer's screen flashed white, then blue. The boy from before—Sora, with spiky brown hair and sad blue eyes—looked out through the monitor as if it was a window. Sora winced as Kairi tossed and turned, and reached out a gloved hand as if to caress her cheek. The hand touched the screen, as if it was a window.

Tell me, said the text that flashed on the screen beside his face, did you feel that?

Then the screen went dark, and both Kairi and Sora—the one behind the screen, trapped in the endless pages—slept.

Author's Note:

Okay, so this story has been in the making since at least last year, when Re:Coded was unleashed on us poor, unsuspecting fans. It's good to finally get this one on the page!

Special thanks to GreenGirlBlue, my beta reader (and my first beta reader at that). She was a huge help in revising this, and she helped ground my sometimes-floaty writing style.

I hope to hear from you, readers! And have a great day!