Kingdom Hearts {Reader Insert}

26. A Long Walk into Darkness

Carefully, your group picked their way through this strange place. You passed by little broken islands of the gardens of Wonderland, or the cemeteries in Halloween Town, or the desert dunes of Agrabah. You were surrounded by pieces of other places.

You approached a little chunk of land with a palm tree and stopped.

"Oof!" Sora bumped into you. "Hey, keep walking."

"Look," you pointed at the tree in front of you. Star shaped fruit hung from it and its palm leaves swayed in a slight breeze that you couldn't feel. Closing your eyes, you could imagine the sun on your skin and smell the salty ocean air.

"Oh, wow!" Sora ran ahead and you opened your eyes. He started to climb the tree.

"Hey, be careful!" Yuffie shouted at him.

He was already halfway up. You smiled and walked forward to catch up. "Don't worry, he's a tree-climbing expert."

"Here!" From the top of the tree Sora held out a handful of paopu fruit.

You moved to stand underneath him and he threw them down to you. They looked perfectly ripe. Sora climbed back down with his own in his hand, a bite already missing from a corner. You rolled your eyes and passed out the rest to the group.

"Mmm," Yuffie hummed in contentment, wiping off some of the juice that had dribbled onto her face from her first bite. "It's so sweet."

You smiled as you bit into your own.

"The paopu fruit is the fruit of Destiny Islands," Sora told everyone. "That's the only place it grows."

Tifa glanced back at the island as you all kept walking. "You mean that was a piece of Destiny Islands?"

"It must've been." When she responded with a sad frown you added, "But don't worry about it, we're here to fix all of this. Right?"

"Right!" Yuffie cheered. "The delicious paopu fruit will not be lost to the darkness!"

You laughed.

The group continued to move ahead. After what seemed like hours of walking your legs began to get tired. Yuffie started to whine, complaining that if she had known it was going to turn into a hike she would've started the gummi ship back up herself and moved it closer. Cid argued that she had no idea how to do that because she had never paid attention to him when he was showing her how it worked.

"The gummi ship driving and maintenance is your job, Cid," she told him, trudging forward.

"Yeah? What happens when I'm not around, or if something happens to me?"

"It's my job to make sure that doesn't happen," Yuffie told him.

This seemed to appease Cid, because his only response was a lifted eyebrow.

"Besides," Tifa added. "Cloud is basically a second Cid. We'd be fine." She nudged Cloud playfully.

Cloud sighed.

"Look," Leon stopped walking and everyone behind him stopped in their tracks to avoid running into him. Yuffie failed, colliding into Tifa, who bumped into Sora. Sora managed to catch himself, planting his feet.

"What the heck, Yuffie!?" Sora called back angrily.

After everyone had regained balance you looked ahead and found a small purple-stoned mountain. A black cave stood open at the bottom of it.

"Do you think that's where we need to go?" Tifa asked.

"I didn't mean it! I didn't know everyone stopped!" Yuffie shouted back at Sora.