"Don't worry, he probably just needed some downtime. You know how he gets."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

The train had shown up while they were washing down the deck, chugging overhead on ghostly tracks before banking left and settling down onto the real ones to roll up to the station; after they'd finished, Riku hadn't wanted to come along, so it was only Sora and Kairi going to the Tower. Somewhere along the way, Sora felt the disconnect, a sharp jangling sensation, different from the thumping racket of leaving the tracks; it took his stomach a few minutes to catch up, and then he was bored and antsy in the windowless car, waiting for the train to finally stop and open the doors. The air here was different, cold and dry, smelling of pine trees and rotting oak leaves, and the light was directionless and sourceless like they'd seen in the canal. Leaves, dried needles and gravel crunched underfoot along the way to the Tower, where the three fairies were flitting about outside.

"Oh, hello, Sora!" Merriweather said. "Flora, Fauna, look who's here!"

After a minute or two of greetings, Sora said, "Actually, we came here to ask for your help." Roxas and Naminé stepped out and to the sides of their Others, looking rather nervous. "For them, I mean," he went on, and attempted to explain about their Nobodies, DiZ and Xemnas. He'd forgotten just how hard it could be to get all three fairies to focus on the same thing at the same time; they kept interrupting with questions and digressions about completely different things, and it took all four of them to keep the conversation more or less on track, particularly since Flora and Fauna were inclined to argue about whether Nobodies counted as alive or dead for magical purposes and Merriweather was trying to figure out the logistics of two occupants in one body. Roxas' expression went from amused to deeply dubious and back again several times until they'd finally gotten the entire story out and the interruptions stopped.

"They were themselves too long to just ... stop existing," Sora said. "I don't think it was really necessary the way DiZ thought, either."

Roxas and Naminé nodded vigorously. Sora'd been recovering, just slower than DiZ (and Riku) wanted him to, and Kairi hadn't been having any problems at all. Not that Sora was really thrilled about losing even more time than an entire year, but maybe something else ... well, there wasn't anything he could do about that now. Or then, actually, since he'd been in the pod during most of it.

"We don't want them to stop existing," Kairi put in. "It's just ... um..."

"A little difficult under the circumstances, yes," Flora said thoughtfully. "Oh dear."

Merriweather snorted. "I think we should help them!"

"Well, yes, Merriweather dear, but it's been a long time since we did that kind of magic - "

"We could always ask Blue for help - "

"Oh, no, not Blue! I always want to bite her and see if sugar pours out!"

"Merriweather!" the older two said in unison.

The fairies conferred for another minute, with considerable arguing and some waving of wands; the parts of the conversation Sora overheard mostly involved someone named Blue, whether or not this involved interfering with the dead (which was not, apparently, something good fairies were supposed to do) and whether they could find cooperative trees these days anyway.

"We'll help," Merriweather announced, sounding satisfied.

Flora nodded. "But we can't do it right away," she said. "It's a very old spell, and we have to make sure everything is just right."