Epilogue

"Sora! Wake up, you lazy bum!"

Sora lazily opened his eyes. He felt like he'd been sleeping forever and a day. "Kairi? What's up?" He sat up and brushed the sand out of his hair. He'd been sleeping on the beach once again.

His girlfriend smiled down at him. "What do think is up?"

He noticed she was hiding something behind her back and that Riku was standing next to her, his characteristic frown on his face. "Uh..." This wasn't the first time Kairi had asked him sch a bizarre question. "You guys had weird dreams about funny little cartoony monsters running around eating people's hearts?1"

"Well, besides that," Riku said.

"Dude!" Sora jumped up, lost his balance in the soft, shifty sand, and fell in the shallow water of high tide. "I was joking! You guys really dreamt all that too?"

Riku rolled his eyes. "That's not important now, Sora. What is important is what we got via message in a bottle."

Sora raised an eyebrow and looked at Kairi, who revealed the glass bottle behind her back. "Take a look!" she said, grinning.

He took the bottle and dumped out the rolled note within. He scanned through its contents quickly and grinned. "So it wasn't a dream.""Nope. And if we want a ride, we'd better hurry." Kairi grabbed Sora's hand, hauled him out of the tide, and the three ran off together.

"Hayner!" Olette put her hands on her hips. "Aren't you forgetting what today is?"

The leader of the little gang tilted his head. "What are you going on about now?"

Pence rolled his eyes. Sometimes, Hayner could be so forgetful. "The party? At the train station? We were going to meet everyone there?"

Hayner still was confused."Men," Olette grumbled, smacking her friend on the head and half-dragging him behind her.

There was something strangely familiar about this situation. Roxas was half-asleep on a train, wondering where in the universe he was and where he was going. Twilight Town was his destination. He was adopted by the Yoakes. Wait a minute... That was Hayner's last name. Hadn't they already adopted him once before?

"Roxas, time to wake up."

The boy in question rubbed his eyes sleepily. "Naminé? What's going on?" He looked around the empty train car. "Wasn't I fighting Xemnas?"

"You won."

Roxas frowned. "Then shouldn't we not exist? The Heartless don't exist, so Sora never became a Nobody."

Naminé smiled. "It seems a lot of people paid Varan a great price to keep their memories."

"A lot of people?" Roxas repeated stupidly. "Like who?"

"Me, you, Sora, Riku, Kairi... Everyone."

"But what did we pay?"

Naminé shrugged. "No idea. Maybe part of the price was not remembering what it was we paid."

"This is hurting my brain."

Naminé laughed. "I don't understand it either." She reached above their heads and pulled down two duffel bags. One she threw at Roxas, the other she held on to. "Come on, it's almost our stop."

Roxas blinked. "Wait, so where are you going?"

"Some rich family adopted me. I'm living in that creepy old mansion." Her smile widened. "Except it's not as creepy, since the Ansem never messed with it."

The train slowed to a stop, and Roxas had to laugh at what he saw out the window. Everybody, witch, Keybearer, former Nobody, and other worlder, were standing on the platform, waving around signs that read, "Welcome back!""I think I'm gonna like it here even more," he said, stepping off the train into the crazy party his friends had put together.

1 Kingdom Hearts in a nutshell.

Somehow, I'm sad that I finally finished this. After... what... four years of writing this? It's strange to finally get to the end. I've sworn to myself not to do a sequel though. I've had enough experience with sequels to know they're irritating.

Anywho, I'd like to thank everyone who stuck with me for this long. And for those who are curious, the story ended up being 245 pages in word. Again, I'd like to thank you all for reading all this and giving me your honest critique. I really appreciated all your comments, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. Thankfully, I didn't get many of the last kind. XD