The sun feels so good, like a weight pressing down on every inch of Sora's skin, his cheeks, his stomach, his toes, and even the sand sticking to his wet swim trunks feels good, rough and pleasant and familiar.

When the skin over his forehead starts to feel a little too tight, Sora rolls over and peels his eyes open, wincing at the glare of the sun on the water. Riku's sitting on the edge of the half-finished raft, feet in the sand and elbows resting on his knees. His swim trunks are bright green and don't match his eyes at all; his hair is flattened even more by the seawater. He's staring out across the ocean, eyes distant, and he doesn't move when Sora calls his name.

After a few more minutes, Sora climbs to his feet and trots over to the raft, rubbing sand out of his hair with a careless hand. He flops down onto the rafts to sit next to Riku, but Riku doesn't move, not even when Sora reaches over to Riku's sunburnt shoulders and pokes the skin to make the red turn white, then back again.

He tires of the game after a few more pokes and pulls his hand away to itch more at the sand against his scalp. His hair is heavy against his fingers and stiff with salt, and the heat and the dazzle of the sun are making him feel sleepy. Leaning over to pillow his cheek against Riku's shoulder, even Riku's skin feels cooler than his own.

"Where's Kairi at?" Sora asks around a yawn.

"Don't you know?" Riku finally speaks, but his voice is cool and distant too, making Sora frown. "You're the one who lost her."

"What?" Sora pulls away to look at Riku, and Riku's lips are quirked, bitter and strange. A stab of fear cuts through Sora's chest, so out of place in the warm peace of the beach.

"You're both so careless," Riku sneers, "you lost her, and she lost her heart. Maybe I'll take yours to replace it."

"No!" Sora yells when Riku reaches forward, but his hands pass right through Riku's arm, and then there's a sharp pain over his heart, no, inside his heart, and Sora tears his gaze away from Riku's eyes, bright and terrible, and when he puts his hands to his chest to press against the pain, they come away sticky and dark…

"SORA!"

Sora jerks awake, dizzy and heart pounding so hard it hurts, and he nearly screams again when he looks down to find his hands smudged with something dark, but swallows it when he realizes it's just kohl he'd rubbed off his eyes from Halloween Town.

He turns his head gingerly and finds Donald peering at him.

"Were you having a nightmare?" Donald asks, and Sora swallows again and nods. His hair feels heavy and stiff and smells of salt from Atlantica. "Well, come up front, Goofy says there's something we should see."

Sora takes another moment to himself while Donald waddles back up to the pilot's seat, to stretch his neck and shake off the last of the dream. The Gummi Ship hums around him, white noise that should be comforting but just reminds him how far away from home he is.

"Are you all right, Sora?" Goofy asks when Sora finally comes to stand next to him.

"Fine," Sora shrugs, reaching up to ruffle salt from his hair. "What's up?"

"There's a huge ship catching up to us," Goofy reports. Donald leans up on the tips of his web toes to peer out the windscreen and blathers something unintelligible.

Sora rubs at his chest absently, over his heart, and thinks that at least it wasn't that dream where the duck has all the tentacles again.