Fic
Title: See Everything
Words: about 2,200 or so?
Rating: PG at most, for death I guess
Pairing: Implied, one-sided Kairi-Sora, and implied/stated mutual Riku-Sora
Notes and Warnings: Life is weird and death is weirder and it's all very scary, I realized. Or anyways, that's my explanation for this weird, possible ending/AU one-shot, mutant thing...I've never written for this fandom before, but I was listening to MUSIC and ya, you know how that goes most likely. It always gets the fangirl all emotional and wibbling. HOW pathetic. ::coughs:: Anyways, it's got statements/implications of a boy that likes a boy, slash, or whatever you call it. That's my only OTHER warning.
He winds his hands deep down into the sand, making it run through his fingers like water, back and forth, back and forth, thinking quiet dreams that spread out across the horizon like so many clouds. It has been forever since he knew this place, and he is grateful that he has arrived, even if his arrival was a late one. Sun falls like rain here, where it never rains, and he feels a little left behind by the mechanics of the weather, because it would be nice if, just once in a while, the clouds would gather and pour down in pieces to match his mood. But maybe it’s better this way. He cannot help but reminded of hope with the morning washing over him.
During his journey back, his journey in and out of darkness, he never bothered to cut his hair. It was a way to mark the countless days, even if eventually he stopped paying attention to it altogether.
Sitting on the shore, he feels his moonlight-colored hair brush his cheek and pushes it behind his ear. He finally cut it, that day. A memory of a smile shows on his face and he closes the aquamarine of his eyes so that all he can see is darkness. It’s still there, even in the midst of all of this light. That’s how it’s supposed to be, he knows, and after breathing in the softness of a space all his own, opens his eyes again…brings them to the sky.
Here he waits for something he is well aware will never come again.
It’s unnecessary to say those words he has in his heart, because really, what can it do? What do those things, he wonders with a slight scowl, really say for him? He has long since decided that things like “I miss you” will never do.
That doesn’t change the fact that he does.
But he won’t say it.
And it’s not like he hasn’t come to terms with the brutal departure of the boy he loved…loves still. He understands. He is old enough now to understand that with or without darkness, with or without light, there will always be some events in his history or his future that are untouchable. And maybe it’s a little inappropriate, but he smiles a bit here, because that suits the boy with eyes the color of forever…untouchable.
If he had it all to do over again, he thinks he’d change some things, but then better than thinking, he knows the truth is he wouldn’t. He would still be the same messed up, jealous child who marveled at the girl who stood so clearly between him and the sky, who envied her, and yet liked her too, because she was his friend and that has not changed. She is the one he can go to now, strange as it is. It’s not that she understands him, but she did understand their mutual object of affection…maybe better than he ever did, he admits to himself and broods, because it is in his nature.
“He’s never wanted people to follow him. He’d rather watch them fly to wherever they were meant to go, by the strength of their own hearts,” she says softly to him as she sits at his left side, and it’s meant to be comforting, but it breaks him in two.
Because he knows it’s the truth.
Well I won’t follow you, he thinks and is angry with it, hands fisting in the cuffs of his pants because sand just slips through them…like water…like air…like him.
“Yeah,” is what he says and the violet-eyed girl who will be as good a friend as she can, reads him like the stars: not quite aligned, but not close to burning out…not ready to give up.
Beneath them they feel the world revolving in contradictory ways, because that is the way it has always been, one thing pushing, another pulling, one person saying yes, another saying no, and all of them not ever sure they’re doing the right thing. But they do it anyway. Riku sees this with a clarity that many will never see it, because he has been there, and done that, twice. He doesn’t fancy a third time, but a wry expression makes its way across his face as he sighs. Unexpected and involuntary adventures seem to be a part of his fate.
Truth be known, he’s not sure if he’d rather have the chance to choose between a peaceful life and an unpredictable one, or not. It occurs to him that neither is quite satisfying and that that is one of the cruelest jokes life throws at you. Never was it up to you, but you can think it is, and do your best, and maybe, maybe things will work out. This has become more and more the way he feels about things since he found himself that night, realizing his closest person would never come back.
He remembers it with unfair vividness.
How stupid, he thinks and throws a shell into the shallows harshly. How ridiculous that the boy who saved worlds, crossed unspeakable boundaries, returned hope to everyone who never thought it was theirs to begin with….how ridiculous that that boy would be undone by illness. Part of him still does not believe it. After all that time, after all that he did, accomplished, the years of managing to survive just barely…after all of that, Riku thinks it’s twisted and cold that fate would let him leave so easily when it was so hard to get there in the first place.
And it’s not like he ever told him everything.
He regrets that most, probably. The girl next to him knows that, maybe knew it all those years ago when she first showed up, could see it in his eyes. Kairi doesn’t hold back on her own awareness and she has also always known that the boy they both cared for so deeply would never see her that way. It hasn’t done a thing to dwindle her love. But love is like that, and she knows that too.
They don’t talk often. There’s still a little friction between them as neither can figure out who is luckier. Neither of them, is a thought, but they don’t say it.
“I hate him,” Riku says as the sun rises higher into the endless blue.
“Yeah…me too,” Kairi says as the tide sweeps out, far, far away.
They don’t look at each other but anyone passing by will know what they’re seeing. The terrible shaking of the shoulders, the downcast heads, the way their hands grab at anything that will bind them to the earth…anyone passing by will know.
They will say “It was such a shame” and “I wish I could do something” and “Poor children”. Only the last holds validity.
The rest shows what it is that the strangers don’t see…won’t see.
They miss out on the way Kairi’s face is wet with tears that run down across lips that curve upward.
They miss out on the way Riku’s eyes are warm even though the rest of him seems like winter.
They miss out on the secret communication between hearts that have grown up knowing each other, hearts that never had to learn each other’s idiosyncrasies, hearts that can curse each other and love each other with all that they have to offer.
The two children sit there, and they don’t speak and they don’t hold hands for reassurance, and they don’t even make another movement that might indicate they know they’re not alone. He lies on his back eventually. She does not. Both their gazes follow as the stars flicker into the night. To both of them they mean something different, but to both of them, they have similar undertones, since that boy always liked the stars.
He always liked the light.
Maybe more importantly, he admitted he feared the dark.
Either way, he’s out there, and this is something the boy and girl left behind can agree on, unspoken of course. For she has lost that youthful mirth that came with knowing the sky, and he has never been much for sharing secrets anyway.
In the lights above, Riku traces a line that curves and sweeps until he’s looking into the eyes of his best friend. He attaches himself to that gaze so that he can hold onto it as long as possible, though not forever, since forever is a myth long since dispersed. He thinks that he’s grateful that Kairi is being strong, because he has never been good around girls that cry. Well, to be more specific, he’s never been good around girls, not that they noticed. He was always with him…with Sora.
As that name works its way into the hiding places of Riku’s mind, the silver-haired boy shuts his eyes again against the sting that is inevitable. He wonders briefly how Kairi handles boys that cry, and thinks mildly amused that it must be something like handling an unruly child or a badly behaved pet. Yes, it’s probably something like that.
“Riku, don’t stay out here too long,” she says and he feels her leave. Ah, so that’s how she decides to do it, he thinks and is surprised at how keen her instinct is. Yet maybe it’s not instinct. Even in their earlier years, Riku always preferred to be alone in times of…difficulty. She most likely guesses that now is little, if any different. She is right.
Minutes or maybe hours later he drags himself up into a sitting position, brushing the sand out of his hair that looks much like it did when he and Sora first met…and less like a girl, as Sora might less tactfully put it.
He remembers his best friend fondly even if he does hate him sometimes for leaving him behind to figure the rest of life out on his own.
But that’s not fair either.
Because sometimes…sometimes…
Sometimes it’s like he’s there.
Riku stands, walks the length of the beach and pauses at the dock that looks so much smaller now than it used to. Here he hears laughter and sees a younger him pushing a younger boy with brown hair and blue eyes into the water. He sees himself get pulled in as retaliation. He blinks. It’s gone and he is alone…except that he isn’t.
“I know,” he says in a voice so soft that most who claim to know Riku, wouldn’t recognize him.
The breeze wraps around him like playful arms and the stars show that same ridiculous attitude, twinkling in a knowing fashion. He sits at the edge of the dock and his feet dip easily into the water now, taller of course. There is no one else around, most having gone to sleep at this time, or at least retired to their houses. Riku is the only one here and he revels in the outdoor privacy. Now if he cries he does not need to worry about how anyone else will see it or handle it.
He can just let go.
It’s something he will never do except in the presence of one being, and that being is near, even if he can never see him. Sometimes he thinks he hears him saying stupid things to him, or funny things, or…or sweet things. Other times he thinks he feels a yank on his hair or a tug on his sleeve. Still there are even clearer times when he thinks he feels the distinct warmth of breath by his ear or his cheek, the heat of a familiar body curled against his side. Because he never told him, but that has never meant that Sora did not know everything to begin with.
Because if words like “I love you” were everything you needed, Riku thinks the world would have settled its numberless problems centuries ago.
Now is one of those last times, he feels the presence of that best-known shape and love and he embraces it, cradles it with every piece of him that he has left. It’s a beautiful feeling and it’s an awful feeling that can’t properly be described. Whenever he’s close to speaking aloud he stops himself. He didn’t say it while he was alive. Changing now would be cowardly, he thinks.
Sora has never agreed with him on many things.
“You know I love you,” the warmth against his closed eyes whispers with all the cheer in the world.
When he opens his eyes the presence has gone and he can never figure out if it’s his insanity taking hold, warping his reality so that he can handle being alive, or if maybe…maybe it’s really him, because of course they’ve both seen far crazier things. He’s a little too afraid to analyze it and a little too in need of it to ask questions, so he just immerses himself in it when it happens…when he’s there. As he leaves the dock, hands in his pockets, not thinking anything in particular for once, an unbidden understanding comes to him about the one he never says ‘I love you’ to: it could be that he’s been there all this time…it could be that in so many of the most important ways, he has never left.
And somehow Riku finds himself scratching the back of his head with a rueful smile, because honestly, he has to admit: he wouldn’t be surprised.
That’s how it’s always been.
It’s how it always will be.