(no subject)
Title: On Words Never Spoken
Rating: PG
Pairings: Riku/Sora, slight Sora/Kairi
Word Count: About 14,000, give or take.
Summary: Oneshot, canonverse. Riku had never realized that sometimes, love could mean watching from a distance. He’d never had to, before Kairi. Sometimes, loving Sora meant pretending he didn't hate her.
Comments: Riku character study - follows him and Sora from early childhood on. Part two.
*~*~*
When Riku found out that his world had been destroyed, he pretended it hadn’t bothered him at all - this was, after all, what he’d wanted. He’d made the choice never to see them again when he walked through that door; they were dead to him now. Everyone but Sora.
And Kairi, a voice whispers, reminding him of their one perfect day.
But he had chosen to leave her behind, and had no call to her now. Sora, now - Sora had escaped. He couldn’t escape with Riku, true enough - but he was too strong not to.
The younger had tried to reach his friend. He had strained and reached for Riku’s hand, stretching himself across the distance between them - and even if, in the end, it hadn’t been enough, it still meant that he didn’t want to break them. Sora had still reached for Riku, not Kairi, even if his last words had been -
Riku wouldn’t think about it.
When the darkness offered him the ability to go look for his friend - in exchange for just a little, a reasonable amount of his soul, his allegiance - he took it. He walked through the darkness, on the dark paths, without - (I’m not a coward) - without fear.
He wouldn’t let the dark prey on him. He used it for his own purposes - he was too strong to let it control him. He had too much life, and Sora even more.
Your friend is now the Keyblade bearer, the voice from the dark whispered, and Riku did not flinch under her hand. And yet, you are the stronger.
He bit his lip and told himself that his mind didn’t boil with jealousy.
(You are the stronger.)
*~*~*
A warm window in a pathetic little Traverse Town house separated Riku from his best friend, this time - and the elder watched from the outside, stoic, as Sora laughed and joked with people he’d never met before, people he’d known for the entirety of a day. He smiled, unrestrained, uninhibited, and apparently completely unaffected by Riku’s absence. The brunette looked no different that day, with his new friends, than he had only days ago (and yet forever ago), on the islands, with Kairi.
I should have known. (He had seen it coming). That one moment as the islands broke apart was not enough to make up for the years that came before. Sora had his keyblade now. He didn’t need Riku to protect him from the world and so -
“He quite simply went and replaced you with some new companions,” her dark voice said, and Maleficent’s words dripped with honey. He didn’t trust them, didn’t trust her - but that was alright, this time. He didn’t mind - he would (he was determined) never have to patch over that same empty hole again. He would never again be left as an unpaired piece of a broken whole.
(Yes, it’s so easy to exploit insecurities that are already there.)
(It would have been so easy to walk through that door, to where they’re laughing together.)
He turned away from the window, her hand on his shoulder.
*~*~*
Since Kairi had broken Riku-and-Sora in the first place, she was the elder’s last tie to Sora. The younger boy had left Riku with no choice - he would take her from Sora, like she had done in reverse years ago. He would take her from the other, he would be with her, together, and leave Sora on the outside.
(Do you really think that?)
He would make Sora feel that same loss. If he didn’t feel it for Riku, for his best friend, maybe he would feel it for Kairi.
But this wasn’t about her, this was about them - about Riku-and-Sora.
He tried to forget that.
*~*~*
Kairi’s body lay, limp, in his arms, and he felt a strange sort of pity - not overwhelming, not unbearable, but pity and sadness just the same. Laying her down in his room, in the Castle at Hollow Bastion, he ran a hand through her silk-soft hair, and tried not to think that it was no wonder Sora lov-
“Hey,” he told her awkwardly to break his thoughts, though her eyes hadn’t opened once. Her heart was gone - she couldn’t hear him. “I’m going to make you alright again. You’ll be alright, and then the three of us will go back to the way it was,” he lied, telling himself (for the moment) that it wasn’t, trying to believe that it wasn’t her fault.
A wooden sword - Sora’s wooden sword - watched him from the wall; Riku didn’t know how it had come with him, that night when the islands were destroyed, but it had. It had no blue-marker “SORA” scribbled on its side - this one was older, more refined. It remembered, too well, a sun-browned hand on it.
“Yeah - back the way it used to be.”
He never wanted to go back, and could only stem the flow of guilt which that knowledge brought.
*~*~*
The dark voices began to sound in his ears, not just his mind, after a while - they spoke to him, told him things, and eventually coalesced into just one voice. He never named himself.
Riku knew that the voice - all of the darkness - fed on that bitterness in his heart, but that was all right because he had enough of it to go around.
“Do you want power?” the voice asked, tone deep - melodic, powerful. “I can give you power enough that no-one will ever stand against you again. I can give you power enough to defeat anyone. I can give you power greater than the Keyblade master’s.”
“And what would you want in return?” Riku asked the blue-painted unlit room, canny as always. He was alone - but that hardly mattered anymore, did it?
“Nothing but what you would give me on your own - a vessel through which my power may manifest itself. A way to have some small control over this world.”
Something about the words or the tone made the boy freeze.
“Not on your life,” he shot back into the emptiness.
“Suit yourself,” the voice responded, sounding more than a little bored - and Riku wondered if his had been the right decision.
*~*~*
At some point, he started telling Maleficent - and the voice - that he didn’t care about Sora anymore. He made himself, forced himself to believe it. (He didn’t).
*~*~*
Somewhere in the game he had been playing - hide and seek (“Or are you too cool to play games, now that you have the Keyblade?”) - with Sora and his little puppet, his puppet with a heart, he realized that he did care. He realized, watching his friend fight against the heartless in the whale’s belly, that those awkward adolescent movements had grown graceful and precise, grown powerful.
Watching Sora then, he knew that he was in love, despite everything. He was in love with a boy who had never made terrible decisions - a boy who had never destroyed his home with his own actions - and was nonetheless stronger than him.
“Heart or no heart, at least he -” at least the puppet “- still has a conscience!” Those words burned.
Sora hated him now.
But he could hate better than Sora ever could. Riku’s hatred, at least, was stronger - and if that was stronger, then he could be too.
He opened himself to it, welcomed it, let it burn everything else away.
*~*~*
The next time they met, fueled by anger, he took the keyblade from Sora at the gates of Hollow Bastion - and in mockery, he left the other’s old wooden sword (“Here, play at being hero with this”) in exchange. (He remembered, blue-marker “RIKU” clashing against blue-marker “SORA” with sand beneath their toes.)
He left Sora there, on his knees.
He, Riku, was the stronger - he had always been the stronger, and because of that the keyblade came to him, now. That power he sought - the power to win against Sora, always, the power to save Kairi and make the boy watch, helpless - came to him, validated his anger and his every hateful thought because he had won, and that power made everything alright.
*~*~*
Their blades crossed each other in earnest the next time - in earnest, for the first time in their short lives - and their indomitable wills burned away at the other’s defenses, crackling darkfire blistering the air with every crash of steel on steel, will on will, heated stares lancing at each other from across the room - too close - springing away - coming together - dancing, binding, breaking, burning.
They pretended that their bodies were the only things tearing apart.
A final clash - a look of shock in Sora’s eyes - a crack of pain through Riku’s chest, and the elder found himself on the ground, kneeling - a perfect mirror. A perfect retribution.
“Riku…” Sora’s voice said - and the sound of that pity was worse than any hatred, it brought everything Riku had ever done to dust and ashes.
He ran, and the shame of it dripped poison through his gut. He never looked back.
*~*~*
“It seems, this time, you have lost to that boy,” a satin, familiar voice noted, and Riku barely even started in surprise. The gothic-arched room around the boy was cold-dark and empty - but that hardly mattered anymore, did it? The voices could reach him anywhere.
“What, are you saying he’s stronger than me?” Riku shot back aloud, challenging the voice to give him an answer.
“Yes - he is, now. But I can give you the power to defeat him.”
This time, unlike the last, Riku hardly even hesitated.
“What do I have to do?” This time, he would win. He would prove that he was the stronger.
“Open yourself completely to the darkness. Let it fill you, every part of you - become the darkness itself.”
He felt another consciousness swirling around him, into him, felt himself filled by another mind - another mind that wanted control of him, wanted anything Riku could give him.
“Let go. Let me take your burdens from you,” the voice murmured (promised) from inside Riku’s head.
He didn’t want them anymore - so in one, swift moment, he surrendered to Ansem’s power.
Riku’s body moved without his permission, now, under another man’s control - and, strangely enough, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
*~*~*
Sora didn’t feel bad for what he had done, he didn’t - Riku was on the wrong side, even if he was trying to help Kairi - and like the other forces of darkness, he had to be defeated. He’d be beaten, again, and then Sora would bring him back to the light, where he belonged - the three of them, together. The islands were waiting for them.
The question of forgiveness never even entered his mind - he wouldn’t know how not to.
But the next time he and Riku met, only hours later, Sora couldn’t see even a hint of his best friend behind those tidal pool eyes, and he hurt for it.
Moments later, a white-haired dark-faced man - Ansem - had appeared in Riku’s place, taking over that boy’s body and shaping it for his own purposes.
This time, not even Riku’s face was left to remind him.
*~*~*
From beyond the dark veil of Ansem’s powerful consciousness, Riku heard Sora’s voice, speaking - but it wasn’t enough to hear that voice, not enough to hear the boy cry, “Let Riku go! Give him back his heart.”
(It’s your fault it’s gone. You took it, Sora. You still have it.)
“Yes, but first, you must give the princess back her heart,” Ansem intoned, and Riku didn’t care (didn’t understand what those words meant, what Sora would have to do.) The power that coursed through his adolescent body was enough.
He felt his body move, possessed, with his mind nested safely behind the man’s darkness - he didn’t have to hear anything, didn’t have to see Sora -
Before he could think it, a shattering knowledge wrested him from his safety, because suddenly he knew - he knew - that gods, Sora was dead, and that had never been the plan, that had never been what he wanted but it had happened now and it was his fault -
- Sora was dead and the Islands were dead and now everything, everything in every world was about to be swallowed because of Riku, because he had wanted power at any cost, because he wanted Sora and wasn’t content with what his best friend - the boy he was in love with - was willing to give him.
Everything was going to die, if he did nothing now. Everything.
He wasn’t afraid to die, himself. He never had been, and so he had nothing to lose by trying.
“NO! You’re NOT going to use me for this,” he cried - (he screamed, words tearing at his throat until he was hoarse) - to his possessor, and he thrust himself outwards from Ansem’s body with all the power he had left to him, all the power that his darkness hadn’t sapped away from him. His own power was all that could be left to a boy possessed by the power of dark.
“You have to run!” he yelled, and he knew that the fear of darkness had lodged itself in his voice. Kairi stood there, bewildered - (stupid girl, listen to me!) - and he tried not to feel betrayed when she nodded her head and left. He’d had enough of that already.
Sora’s heartless writhed, shifted, on the floor where the boy had died, and Riku couldn’t even take a step toward him.
*~*~*
The moment defied all logic, all possibility - but then, Sora had never let himself be bound by expectations before. He had become a heartless, and was reborn again.
Only he could ever be that strong. Finally, Riku could accept that.
*~*~*
Sora freed Riku, in the end, like he had always known would happen - and always, always hoped it wouldn’t. The last strike of the keyblade punched into Ansem’s stolen manifestation, Riku’s own body - then, the Door to Darkness opened and the blinding light of Kingdom Hearts burned away everything -
- and he was free.
He floated in the dark realm only for a moment - his body couldn’t yet move, he couldn’t even breathe - but he didn’t wait there because he couldn’t just watch as Sora and his friends strained to close that fateful Door. They forced themselves against it, that white marble door to Kingdom Hearts, the door to all the dark, the passage from which the destruction of all the worlds was coming.
He couldn’t let Sora struggle alone. Not anymore.
He forced his body to move - (one step, then another, you can do this) - and Riku reached for them - (for Sora) - pushed towards them, because this door was so similar to the one that had been his first mistake - (Gods, you have a list). It had cost Sora so much, cost Riku everything that they might have had, together.
He finally reached the door, only just ahead of the incipient darkness, and forced his hands to the white stone gate.
“Come on!” he yelled, and Sora (on the other side of the door, on the side of the light) shot his head up at the sound. “I’ll close it from this side. Together, we can do this,” he told his friend, determined never to slip again.
Sora nodded.
He pushed it shut, separating the light and dark irrevocably, and with that motion Riku pushed away everything that had ever meant anything to him, pushed away his own happiness for maybe - (you selfish bastard) - the first time in his life. He let it all (Sora, his power, his love) go - in some small penance for all that he had destroyed.
In return for opening a door, now he closed one - and still, it could never make up for what he had done.
It could never make up for the fact that Sora still loved him, now - for the first time, he could see clearly, knew that everything he had ever thought was wrong, knew that Sora not only loved him but (gods help him) forgave him.
As the door fell shut, Riku didn’t even try to step through. Through the last sliver of that path, he watched Sora and he smiled - like he hadn’t in so long, like he’d been so afraid to - and with that one look tried to say everything (I love you, and I’m sorry) that he’d never been able to.
He’d spend the rest of his life trying to pay those debts. He wouldn’t put Sora in harm’s way - wouldn’t hurt him, wouldn’t let him be hurt - ever again.
Riku could have said a million things - those words that he’d never spoken (I loved you, so much, and I haven’t stopped) and things he had never thought to (I was always so jealous of you), but those were words for his own benefit. Sora’s benefit was the only thing that mattered now, after everything. Riku wouldn’t voice any of his thoughts, not this time - this wasn’t about him anymore.
Instead, he said: “Take care of her.”
And for the first time in his life, he really meant it.
*~*~*
*~*~*
fin
*~*~*
*~*~*
This is what happens when you read James Joyce and E. E. Cummings both in one day after having played Kingdom Hearts with your little brother. Please forgive the confusion of the parentheses and italics and ellipsises and everything - they were what came of reading James Joyce. They had a purpose, and I hope they served it… Also, LJ's length requirements for one post frustrate me.
For some reason, I’m kind of nervous about this story - my quality-checker seems to have broken, so I honestly don’t know how it is. If you read this far, I would love it if you would send along a review and tell me what you thought. Just to soothe a writer’s insecurities, you see.
Thanks ever so for reading, and indulging my crazy whims.
Rating: PG
Pairings: Riku/Sora, slight Sora/Kairi
Word Count: About 14,000, give or take.
Summary: Oneshot, canonverse. Riku had never realized that sometimes, love could mean watching from a distance. He’d never had to, before Kairi. Sometimes, loving Sora meant pretending he didn't hate her.
Comments: Riku character study - follows him and Sora from early childhood on. Part two.
*~*~*
When Riku found out that his world had been destroyed, he pretended it hadn’t bothered him at all - this was, after all, what he’d wanted. He’d made the choice never to see them again when he walked through that door; they were dead to him now. Everyone but Sora.
And Kairi, a voice whispers, reminding him of their one perfect day.
But he had chosen to leave her behind, and had no call to her now. Sora, now - Sora had escaped. He couldn’t escape with Riku, true enough - but he was too strong not to.
The younger had tried to reach his friend. He had strained and reached for Riku’s hand, stretching himself across the distance between them - and even if, in the end, it hadn’t been enough, it still meant that he didn’t want to break them. Sora had still reached for Riku, not Kairi, even if his last words had been -
Riku wouldn’t think about it.
When the darkness offered him the ability to go look for his friend - in exchange for just a little, a reasonable amount of his soul, his allegiance - he took it. He walked through the darkness, on the dark paths, without - (I’m not a coward) - without fear.
He wouldn’t let the dark prey on him. He used it for his own purposes - he was too strong to let it control him. He had too much life, and Sora even more.
Your friend is now the Keyblade bearer, the voice from the dark whispered, and Riku did not flinch under her hand. And yet, you are the stronger.
He bit his lip and told himself that his mind didn’t boil with jealousy.
(You are the stronger.)
*~*~*
A warm window in a pathetic little Traverse Town house separated Riku from his best friend, this time - and the elder watched from the outside, stoic, as Sora laughed and joked with people he’d never met before, people he’d known for the entirety of a day. He smiled, unrestrained, uninhibited, and apparently completely unaffected by Riku’s absence. The brunette looked no different that day, with his new friends, than he had only days ago (and yet forever ago), on the islands, with Kairi.
I should have known. (He had seen it coming). That one moment as the islands broke apart was not enough to make up for the years that came before. Sora had his keyblade now. He didn’t need Riku to protect him from the world and so -
“He quite simply went and replaced you with some new companions,” her dark voice said, and Maleficent’s words dripped with honey. He didn’t trust them, didn’t trust her - but that was alright, this time. He didn’t mind - he would (he was determined) never have to patch over that same empty hole again. He would never again be left as an unpaired piece of a broken whole.
(Yes, it’s so easy to exploit insecurities that are already there.)
(It would have been so easy to walk through that door, to where they’re laughing together.)
He turned away from the window, her hand on his shoulder.
*~*~*
Since Kairi had broken Riku-and-Sora in the first place, she was the elder’s last tie to Sora. The younger boy had left Riku with no choice - he would take her from Sora, like she had done in reverse years ago. He would take her from the other, he would be with her, together, and leave Sora on the outside.
(Do you really think that?)
He would make Sora feel that same loss. If he didn’t feel it for Riku, for his best friend, maybe he would feel it for Kairi.
But this wasn’t about her, this was about them - about Riku-and-Sora.
He tried to forget that.
*~*~*
Kairi’s body lay, limp, in his arms, and he felt a strange sort of pity - not overwhelming, not unbearable, but pity and sadness just the same. Laying her down in his room, in the Castle at Hollow Bastion, he ran a hand through her silk-soft hair, and tried not to think that it was no wonder Sora lov-
“Hey,” he told her awkwardly to break his thoughts, though her eyes hadn’t opened once. Her heart was gone - she couldn’t hear him. “I’m going to make you alright again. You’ll be alright, and then the three of us will go back to the way it was,” he lied, telling himself (for the moment) that it wasn’t, trying to believe that it wasn’t her fault.
A wooden sword - Sora’s wooden sword - watched him from the wall; Riku didn’t know how it had come with him, that night when the islands were destroyed, but it had. It had no blue-marker “SORA” scribbled on its side - this one was older, more refined. It remembered, too well, a sun-browned hand on it.
“Yeah - back the way it used to be.”
He never wanted to go back, and could only stem the flow of guilt which that knowledge brought.
*~*~*
The dark voices began to sound in his ears, not just his mind, after a while - they spoke to him, told him things, and eventually coalesced into just one voice. He never named himself.
Riku knew that the voice - all of the darkness - fed on that bitterness in his heart, but that was all right because he had enough of it to go around.
“Do you want power?” the voice asked, tone deep - melodic, powerful. “I can give you power enough that no-one will ever stand against you again. I can give you power enough to defeat anyone. I can give you power greater than the Keyblade master’s.”
“And what would you want in return?” Riku asked the blue-painted unlit room, canny as always. He was alone - but that hardly mattered anymore, did it?
“Nothing but what you would give me on your own - a vessel through which my power may manifest itself. A way to have some small control over this world.”
Something about the words or the tone made the boy freeze.
“Not on your life,” he shot back into the emptiness.
“Suit yourself,” the voice responded, sounding more than a little bored - and Riku wondered if his had been the right decision.
*~*~*
At some point, he started telling Maleficent - and the voice - that he didn’t care about Sora anymore. He made himself, forced himself to believe it. (He didn’t).
*~*~*
Somewhere in the game he had been playing - hide and seek (“Or are you too cool to play games, now that you have the Keyblade?”) - with Sora and his little puppet, his puppet with a heart, he realized that he did care. He realized, watching his friend fight against the heartless in the whale’s belly, that those awkward adolescent movements had grown graceful and precise, grown powerful.
Watching Sora then, he knew that he was in love, despite everything. He was in love with a boy who had never made terrible decisions - a boy who had never destroyed his home with his own actions - and was nonetheless stronger than him.
“Heart or no heart, at least he -” at least the puppet “- still has a conscience!” Those words burned.
Sora hated him now.
But he could hate better than Sora ever could. Riku’s hatred, at least, was stronger - and if that was stronger, then he could be too.
He opened himself to it, welcomed it, let it burn everything else away.
*~*~*
The next time they met, fueled by anger, he took the keyblade from Sora at the gates of Hollow Bastion - and in mockery, he left the other’s old wooden sword (“Here, play at being hero with this”) in exchange. (He remembered, blue-marker “RIKU” clashing against blue-marker “SORA” with sand beneath their toes.)
He left Sora there, on his knees.
He, Riku, was the stronger - he had always been the stronger, and because of that the keyblade came to him, now. That power he sought - the power to win against Sora, always, the power to save Kairi and make the boy watch, helpless - came to him, validated his anger and his every hateful thought because he had won, and that power made everything alright.
*~*~*
Their blades crossed each other in earnest the next time - in earnest, for the first time in their short lives - and their indomitable wills burned away at the other’s defenses, crackling darkfire blistering the air with every crash of steel on steel, will on will, heated stares lancing at each other from across the room - too close - springing away - coming together - dancing, binding, breaking, burning.
They pretended that their bodies were the only things tearing apart.
A final clash - a look of shock in Sora’s eyes - a crack of pain through Riku’s chest, and the elder found himself on the ground, kneeling - a perfect mirror. A perfect retribution.
“Riku…” Sora’s voice said - and the sound of that pity was worse than any hatred, it brought everything Riku had ever done to dust and ashes.
He ran, and the shame of it dripped poison through his gut. He never looked back.
*~*~*
“It seems, this time, you have lost to that boy,” a satin, familiar voice noted, and Riku barely even started in surprise. The gothic-arched room around the boy was cold-dark and empty - but that hardly mattered anymore, did it? The voices could reach him anywhere.
“What, are you saying he’s stronger than me?” Riku shot back aloud, challenging the voice to give him an answer.
“Yes - he is, now. But I can give you the power to defeat him.”
This time, unlike the last, Riku hardly even hesitated.
“What do I have to do?” This time, he would win. He would prove that he was the stronger.
“Open yourself completely to the darkness. Let it fill you, every part of you - become the darkness itself.”
He felt another consciousness swirling around him, into him, felt himself filled by another mind - another mind that wanted control of him, wanted anything Riku could give him.
“Let go. Let me take your burdens from you,” the voice murmured (promised) from inside Riku’s head.
He didn’t want them anymore - so in one, swift moment, he surrendered to Ansem’s power.
Riku’s body moved without his permission, now, under another man’s control - and, strangely enough, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
*~*~*
Sora didn’t feel bad for what he had done, he didn’t - Riku was on the wrong side, even if he was trying to help Kairi - and like the other forces of darkness, he had to be defeated. He’d be beaten, again, and then Sora would bring him back to the light, where he belonged - the three of them, together. The islands were waiting for them.
The question of forgiveness never even entered his mind - he wouldn’t know how not to.
But the next time he and Riku met, only hours later, Sora couldn’t see even a hint of his best friend behind those tidal pool eyes, and he hurt for it.
Moments later, a white-haired dark-faced man - Ansem - had appeared in Riku’s place, taking over that boy’s body and shaping it for his own purposes.
This time, not even Riku’s face was left to remind him.
*~*~*
From beyond the dark veil of Ansem’s powerful consciousness, Riku heard Sora’s voice, speaking - but it wasn’t enough to hear that voice, not enough to hear the boy cry, “Let Riku go! Give him back his heart.”
(It’s your fault it’s gone. You took it, Sora. You still have it.)
“Yes, but first, you must give the princess back her heart,” Ansem intoned, and Riku didn’t care (didn’t understand what those words meant, what Sora would have to do.) The power that coursed through his adolescent body was enough.
He felt his body move, possessed, with his mind nested safely behind the man’s darkness - he didn’t have to hear anything, didn’t have to see Sora -
Before he could think it, a shattering knowledge wrested him from his safety, because suddenly he knew - he knew - that gods, Sora was dead, and that had never been the plan, that had never been what he wanted but it had happened now and it was his fault -
- Sora was dead and the Islands were dead and now everything, everything in every world was about to be swallowed because of Riku, because he had wanted power at any cost, because he wanted Sora and wasn’t content with what his best friend - the boy he was in love with - was willing to give him.
Everything was going to die, if he did nothing now. Everything.
He wasn’t afraid to die, himself. He never had been, and so he had nothing to lose by trying.
“NO! You’re NOT going to use me for this,” he cried - (he screamed, words tearing at his throat until he was hoarse) - to his possessor, and he thrust himself outwards from Ansem’s body with all the power he had left to him, all the power that his darkness hadn’t sapped away from him. His own power was all that could be left to a boy possessed by the power of dark.
“You have to run!” he yelled, and he knew that the fear of darkness had lodged itself in his voice. Kairi stood there, bewildered - (stupid girl, listen to me!) - and he tried not to feel betrayed when she nodded her head and left. He’d had enough of that already.
Sora’s heartless writhed, shifted, on the floor where the boy had died, and Riku couldn’t even take a step toward him.
*~*~*
The moment defied all logic, all possibility - but then, Sora had never let himself be bound by expectations before. He had become a heartless, and was reborn again.
Only he could ever be that strong. Finally, Riku could accept that.
*~*~*
Sora freed Riku, in the end, like he had always known would happen - and always, always hoped it wouldn’t. The last strike of the keyblade punched into Ansem’s stolen manifestation, Riku’s own body - then, the Door to Darkness opened and the blinding light of Kingdom Hearts burned away everything -
- and he was free.
He floated in the dark realm only for a moment - his body couldn’t yet move, he couldn’t even breathe - but he didn’t wait there because he couldn’t just watch as Sora and his friends strained to close that fateful Door. They forced themselves against it, that white marble door to Kingdom Hearts, the door to all the dark, the passage from which the destruction of all the worlds was coming.
He couldn’t let Sora struggle alone. Not anymore.
He forced his body to move - (one step, then another, you can do this) - and Riku reached for them - (for Sora) - pushed towards them, because this door was so similar to the one that had been his first mistake - (Gods, you have a list). It had cost Sora so much, cost Riku everything that they might have had, together.
He finally reached the door, only just ahead of the incipient darkness, and forced his hands to the white stone gate.
“Come on!” he yelled, and Sora (on the other side of the door, on the side of the light) shot his head up at the sound. “I’ll close it from this side. Together, we can do this,” he told his friend, determined never to slip again.
Sora nodded.
He pushed it shut, separating the light and dark irrevocably, and with that motion Riku pushed away everything that had ever meant anything to him, pushed away his own happiness for maybe - (you selfish bastard) - the first time in his life. He let it all (Sora, his power, his love) go - in some small penance for all that he had destroyed.
In return for opening a door, now he closed one - and still, it could never make up for what he had done.
It could never make up for the fact that Sora still loved him, now - for the first time, he could see clearly, knew that everything he had ever thought was wrong, knew that Sora not only loved him but (gods help him) forgave him.
As the door fell shut, Riku didn’t even try to step through. Through the last sliver of that path, he watched Sora and he smiled - like he hadn’t in so long, like he’d been so afraid to - and with that one look tried to say everything (I love you, and I’m sorry) that he’d never been able to.
He’d spend the rest of his life trying to pay those debts. He wouldn’t put Sora in harm’s way - wouldn’t hurt him, wouldn’t let him be hurt - ever again.
Riku could have said a million things - those words that he’d never spoken (I loved you, so much, and I haven’t stopped) and things he had never thought to (I was always so jealous of you), but those were words for his own benefit. Sora’s benefit was the only thing that mattered now, after everything. Riku wouldn’t voice any of his thoughts, not this time - this wasn’t about him anymore.
Instead, he said: “Take care of her.”
And for the first time in his life, he really meant it.
*~*~*
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fin
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This is what happens when you read James Joyce and E. E. Cummings both in one day after having played Kingdom Hearts with your little brother. Please forgive the confusion of the parentheses and italics and ellipsises and everything - they were what came of reading James Joyce. They had a purpose, and I hope they served it… Also, LJ's length requirements for one post frustrate me.
For some reason, I’m kind of nervous about this story - my quality-checker seems to have broken, so I honestly don’t know how it is. If you read this far, I would love it if you would send along a review and tell me what you thought. Just to soothe a writer’s insecurities, you see.
Thanks ever so for reading, and indulging my crazy whims.