(no subject)
Title: Gravity of Love
Author: courtneynus
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing: Riku/Sora
Spoilers: All of Kingdom Heart II and Kingdom Hearts I, some of Kingdom Heart Chain of Memories
Sora is rather out spoken, confined, devoted, and selfless when it comes to aiding those in need, those who stumble across his path, of finding his said light, are quickly eyed with worth of becoming a friend, even though reunions may be minimal. Many people seem to take his free sprit of kindness and goofy smiles as a sign that hovers over his bubbly head, flashing that of an imbecile. Sora trusts his heart to lead him, following the road of crumpled dreams and building evil which leads him to where he needs to go, only asking people among this mass of debris if they happened to see what or more likely whom he is seeking. Sora’s destiny of protection lies along with his personality of being the chosen Keyblade master, a welder of freeing darkened hearts from bodiless beings that churn darkness even in the purest heart. Sora had led a simple life on an island that never promised him anything except for an arrogant sense of smaller living where everyone knows the other, and the seas seem to stretch like blue-green rolling meadows and seagulls make mock butterflies, and he never questioned a better life, by himself that is. Throughout life he came to grow only to become stronger, to progress through life laughing alongside his childhood friends that he was worth the life given to him, but like many adolescence beings he fell victim to elder desires, to prove he was brave to take the plunge blindly into the murky sense of nowhere. Sora wanted to follow his idol, Riku, to a new world with their female companion Kairi, to an empty promise that escaped Riku’s lips in a wanton unseeable hope.
Riku is a person with very few emotions, they seem to repeat themselves in patterns, aloofness, amusement, desire, and self-hatred or disappointment which is later seen, but is not apathetic. Riku is often spoken highly of by many of his peers, a prodigy in fighting skills and rather intelligent yet he at a early age focuses his ever seemingly ticking mind to a sole goal, a goal that he plays over and over in a motto of insatiable travel off his fate, the place of his literal destiny, ironically named Destiny Island. Riku’s popularity may have been a source of his ego, leading him to taunt Sora offhandedly in amusement to see his flustered face or to hear the giggle peel from Kairi. Riku’s behavior toward his best friends seems that he loves shocking them, Sora into a babble of blushing denial, a game he plays ever so often and confesses as a joke when Sora beats him in a rivalry set innocent game of who is better. Riku has an unsaid authority of being the leader of the three friends, his suggestions are often picked to be the best and his rare opening of his mouth with wise words captures his companion’s ears, and yearning widened eyes ofadmiration. Riku’s discussions of fleeing the island, with serious comment of never seeing their parents again said in an offhand, aloof attitude foreshadows that his choices may not be the best in well being.
~~~Riku: Once we set through, we might not be able to come back. We may never see our parents again. There's no turning back. But this may be our only chance. We can't let fear stop us! I'm not afraid of the darkness! ! ~~~
Riku’s ignorance of planning ahead, pushes his instinct from his brain, past his growing blackened heart to his gut. This is always right because he is Riku and with that lone establishment of thought is and what makes Sora and Kairi follow him like sheep to the slaughter. Riku chooses the path for now and not for later, which leads to his demise as Riku the idol to all.
Riku and Sora have spent their childhood together, adventuring under Riku’s, even in such a young age, one year elder wisdom. They searched the dubbed hidden place where a birthplace of future jealous and darkness would be born, intoxicating the innocence that found it. Seeing the beast that roar and moaned behind the foliage out of their child’s curiosity, to find nothing more than entrapped winds that curled and bounced back and forth in the carven walls, this was the finding of the opening of doors, where Riku’s unhealthy obsession to sail past those ever ongoing blue-green hills of watery liquid blades of grass to a better place came to a full circle. Both boys work together making every inch of the island a short rowboat ride from the main island known to them, and when everything was known Riku grew to seek a new place even more, he got his wish in the form of a mysterious girl that rolled in with the tide. Kairi was the key, the knowledge of something being out there for Riku, she was also another factor to tease Sora about, to impress the outsider became a daily routine. They had been with each other for so long, probing Riku’s ego to put Sora in his place of being a follower with constant fits of rivalry, bickering that was followed by laughs commonly on Sora’s behalf or pouting. Sora fought with other peers, and could come secondary to becoming best but it was common knowledge that no one could bet Riku, Sora is the following groupie of Riku, a mini Riku never to surpass the original one. With that known Sora never had to think truly on his own. Yet, as time passed and Sora himself wanting to prove himself as an equal but with Riku’s words that wounded his pride, that he masked by pouting, but when the time came to prove to be strong to stand alone with Riku’s constant guiding hand, Sora failed.
Sora chooses to fight to grasp Riku’s hand when his idol fell into the darkness, while Riku stood there smiling as the darkness he egged on, swelled in a pool at Riku’s feet, committed to the thought of leaving his prison surrounded by water. Riku faded into darkness and Sora was left to the light, alone, this is a sickening factor played over and over through the series, Sora was forced to stand without his friends at his side, without his idol in a grasp.
The bond between the childhood friends could be lightly packaged as an idol and the person who idolizes him yet as the series thickens the overflow of words and action’s literally make the platonic box burst from the inside. Just as their home sports its title, both Sora and Riku have a destiny of staying at each other’s side, Sora to outreach his struggling hand to Riku’s once outstretched hand, now recoiled hidden in the darkness in shame and shunning guilt. Both boys have mirrored destinies yet the glass that reflects the other’s said life to the other, but the boys fight to hold the other’s hand through the hardship and the painful events that cut them, especially Riku, like shards of glass, their barrier while apart, one in light and one in darkness.
Sora is a hero that was never meant to be, a substitute, the Keyblade’s alternative user, if anything Sora is a secondary hero. Sora is an abbreviated adaptation of Riku, not in the connotation of physical features but he has the attitude to do distinguished things and unlike Riku he seems to be empathic to those who play no function in his life, strangers. Both boys have calibers of a freewheeling hero, fearless to face a monster, impregnable minded to struggle with what is believed in and the pooling amounts of courage to face the iniquity where illume doesn’t even ventures. Sora’s humility is what set him detached from Riku, Sora knows what it is to compensate and what is unethical there is a bold outline between the two, black and white, and he never questions it, while Riku oppugned the middle ground. The Keyblade selecting him to be its master was a thought Sora scarcely wanted to absorb and determine pleasing, for it would make him step out into the limelight, a distinguished persona Sora would verbally say he wouldn’t be bothered by when in circumference of Riku but internally he would be aware of this being the curbing of his potential.
His morals of assisting always seemed to rear its head in the game, while many heros would ill-advisedly burst down the door, assault the opponent, and relieve the distressed, Sora’s chains of investigation are what makes him the silver medaled hero in a sense. He is a warrior of pure amaranthine self-command and heart, crippling fits of sorrowfulness do not seem to keep the boy degraded for there is always another door, some other way. His habit of butting in and making everything his business to bushel problems could be related to him seeking an equal standard to Riku throughout his life. He is never about to oppugn the sapience of elders or even a younger input, his open-minded conduct and submissive personality to be dominated could be traced back into following Riku, Riku is Sora’s progress to a hero, he is the fuel to his heart of taking the gradation to the side and out of Riku’s overshadow, into garnering esteem by his peers that customarily say after any achievement that Riku could leisurely do it.
Sora’s concerns of the future have no play except when presented, to a thick essay of questioning there is a simple answer that most every other person would use as a detail in their answering. His naive behavior is facetious at times for him to be the knight in shining armor with a posture of a liberated emotional stated minor, but his reinforcement through aiding gives him support, a potency that would clearly overwhelm those who rather abide nonpersonal and haste headlong to the conclusion origin, an organization that would win them the gold but Sora the silver and thecheers of the crowd behind him. That is what Sora is, a lower-ranking hero hiding in the fading shade of the corrupted gold, Riku.
Riku, though he is an invariant blockading through the kickoff game for Sora, is not an individual who can be assorted as a villain. An antihero at best suits Riku as his integral thought litigates to going to fresh worlds. Even since childhood, lamentable to state, he was voiced his yearning for something out there, for him to expose.
Riku was the primary burden barer for the encumbrance that known as the Keyblade. Riku didn’t have the nonvolatilizable personality to turn away from a hope in the mold of the wickedness to get him where he required to go. Riku had a self-importance far too mature for a quest of assaying, Sora luckily never matured throughout his travel, emotionally he was a well-grounded, well-rounded soul.
Riku serves his function of being the forceful kid to look up to, with features that age handsomely with time, impertinent and quick-witted, and an endowment progression. Riku was heading to be olympian. He gains all the tending of his peers of being the unassailable, his male peers wanting to trounce him in combat senselessly. Through the warm smiles Riku incessantly brings up his goals, it becomes more apparent that the thought is engrossing him along with the darkness. Remaining aloof and imperturbable, standing casual by establishing orders, Riku plays a persona that once he gets what he wants, he will certainly turn fickle to protect it, to drive it on others to assume it, for he came up with the design and no one had yet to issue a challenge to his dominance as the island’s prodigy.
Riku could be said to be a tad emotionally evanescent by his frequent atrocious emotions that repeat later in the game, accumulative of his friends, especially Sora, obsessed on a single motto, and piercingly jealous. His superiority hinges back on Sora and Kairi listening to his ideas blindly, this security of being a distinguished power fueled the dreadful emotions of being betrayed. This maintained balance that soaked into their teenage years being disrupted was likened of sending Riku off in a egotistical merit. With Riku’s superbia raising with his confidence of total dependancy, he begins to haunt on new details of betrayal of being replaced in Sora’s world. The egging on over his shoulder by motherly demon Maleficent pushing malice thoughts, Riku grows to regenerate his pride by means of defeating Sora and finding Kairi first. Riku upon finding his new worlds, was healed with a band aid over an invariant bleeding, bubbling wound, only to be ripped off prematurely before it was healed completely by Sora’s replacement of him in his eyes. This wound, now undressed, was left to fester in the airs of whispered words of him being essential, the wound bleed with Riku’s sanity. The wound healed though, as just like he put his hand out to Sora, Sora did for him. Riku refused the hand in disgrace as Sora did in dread of the darkness, put with a force tug Riku returned to the place damn near of to that a hell, but to Riku now a heaven. He probably wishes he never left.
Kairi, Riku and Sora are in the tangles of infatuated love, twisted into a triangle, running in ever which way, Kairi giggling with tinged flirting, Sora babbling in a blushing boyish clueless fashion, and Riku putting himself in-between the two extemporaneously with nonchalant remarks ending with himself sharing a Papou fruit, the fruit rumored to interweave those who share it with together permanently and not always Kairi .
The triangle between the trio runs as Sora usually as the centerpiece. Riku presumptively has a mock puppy love on Kairi. He troubled with her well-being at best of his emotions actually. Riku and Sora were best friends scene very young age , discovering, and attached at the hip as we see in flashbacks in the game yet when a “foreigner,” in the form of a girl found at sea was found Sora’s attention to was Riku sidetracked. To have such a profound friendship of only two, bring flotsam and jetsam to the island’s villagers, and once again it can be assumed that Riku was Sora’s role model, only to be interrupted. This upset would clearly affect the person who was handled like a paragon more than the person who idolizes.
Riku is that of always receiving attention, as I talked about earlier on, to have a newcomer suddenly take away his most faithful would certainly be stymieing on Riku emotional aspect of being insecure in loyalty and bourgeois young man in the future. Riku seems to be utilizing Kairi as leverage to get what he wants, if Sora wants to focal point on Kairi he can but Riku will win her first, only to throw her aside and recollect Sora’s adoration for himself, for Kairi he cannot have. Possessiveness and jealousy are common nature for Riku, after being the aim of all Sora’s passionate emotions. It is raw thought to want to repossess that which is lost. Observed, loved and required is what Riku desires but he doesn’t incriminate Kairi however if she is going to interfere, Riku will use her to his own vantage.
With that Riku’s involvement in Kairi, even when missing is evanescing, this quote below explains the concept I am trying to explain.
Ex. 1 - “I thought she was with you,” Riku remarks upon finding Sora in Traverse Town in the 3rd district, a flippant manner of a serious topic of a friend’s whereabouts.
Riku draws attention to himself by means of rivalry, so when his endeavors to get Kairi’s attention he is attracting Sora’s as well, Riku is a being settled by his competition and friendship with Sora, this unrefined rivalry, is a major part of Riku’s personality and is what he uses to stimulate Sora. Love is complicated, ne?
Kairi passim the series seems to distribute a not-so-friendly attachment to Riku, not really concerned for his whereabouts, condition or him at all. At first Kairi is an unreflective friend to Riku as he was to her, until darkness set him back in place. Her world seems to be of that awaiting for Sora. Kairi in the game makes rather agitating jokes, ending with a just kidding giggle and sprints off. Kairi remarks that she and Sora should run off together and to leave Riku behind. Sora upon hearing this has a moderate shocked face, his eyes broadening from relaxing in the claim of the sound of a typical island soundtrack of roaring waves and swaying palm trees too closely engrossing his face. Kairi has undertones of compassion for Riku when she gets older. She comprehends his leaving and implores him not to leave in Kingdom Hearts 2. When he is shamed by his corporal form, she is not the one who puts Riku back at their side. Once agin it was Sora who pulled Riku across the glass and watched Sora from behind.
Riku and Sora’s relationship has two factors that are entreating to being a building block for a romance, rivalry and friendship.
The first building block is well instituted with the first game ands is a darker setting of a relationshi, Riku being needy and Sora being an unknown love sake due. Throughout the beginning days of pulling weight of supplies and extra furnishes for the raft the trio was building, the group gathered typically on an islet not too far from the main, looking at the set sunning, they would discuss future plans. Never once did Sora interrogate Riku when relaxing against a curved tree trunk, bathing the sun’s dying fingers of rays, Sora had excecate faith in Riku not cognizing Riku was going by wrong means.
Sora’s maneuvering of a dumb card in the beginning of the game by not making himself in-depth in the details of their escapade. This omitted Riku to presume that the path leading to the darkness was chasten. Sora in his trust didn’t agnize Riku’s passionate deliveries, he answering with a common rebuttals of moronic behavior. This idolization lead to Riku couldn’t do any impairment of their journey, that this was an adventure and fun journey. This was the last mistake of Sora’s part was the commencing of the dark themes that began to weave in their affinity.
Ex.
Riku: Well, I haven't really thought about it. It's just . . . I've always wondered why we're here on this island. If there are any other worlds out there, why did we end up on this one? And suppose there are other worlds . . . then ours is just a little piece of something much greater. So we could have just as easily ended up somewhere else, right?
Sora: I don't Know
Riku: Exactly. That's why we need to go out there and find out. Just sitting here won't change a thing. It's the same old stuff. So let's go.
The single person that seems that have Riku’s undivided attention is Sora. His questions are based on Sora’s response, Kairi being only a puppet, an unperceived fact that something is out there. Sora presence to Riku as a negative and positive impression. Even has Riku pledges himself as a servant to Maleficent and the Disney evil Sora’s effect on Riku is ever exhibiting in Riku’s demeanor, best expressed in him fleeing in Neverland. And his remarks as to Sora trying to get into his heart all the time, seemingly angered by Sora compassion.
Sora uses all his cards from scathing languages, to fights in heat clanging weaponry to get him to side away from the darkness. Sora is abrupt to tell Riku that he choice is the inaccurate path. Being cast aside by Sora, Riku’s stalker like activities and butting heads at every world it seems Riku is retaining the enduring thing he had left, the rivalry between him and Sora. Riku became incendiary to trump Sora, from finding Kairi to taking the weapon that was to be his, the Keyblade, from Sora. Riku’s playful banter with Sora upon Destiny Island turned volatile, aggressive until Riku’s psyche broke to the wrecking waves of darkness constructing in floods. This unleashes the demonic side of Riku.Riku began to be a vessel for darkness and lost to the eroding.
Sora once again sways Riku to another favorable way of thinking though. With Riku taking a backseat in his own body, Sora was left to defeat the somatic remains of his best friend. Succeeding, Sora strived to assist Riku but he was too far out of reach, Riku would begin his road to self-redemption alone. The door to the darkness was left ajar, a task that Sora would have to accomplish by closing but his strength along with his companions, Donald and Goofy, couldn’t do with their ability to push. From the other side of the door, from the inside, appears Riku postulating that they could do it together, friendship was restored by this unostentatious comment.
Riku and Sora’s bond is that of forgiving, mostly on Sora’s role and proceeding on, that through the afflicting of battles and treachery, the wounds can mend with phrases of aiding one another, being by each other’s sides. The gouge of push from Sora’s side and pull from Riku’s is the teamwork that the duo showed in flashbacks of puerility when all Riku and Sora had in friendship was each other, with that the door was varnished , Riku sealed in inside. With that door closed, the door to a deeper relationship was opened but first they had to find each other once again.
An fresh story unfolds, the name Sora is forgotten on everyone’s lips except for a young man who strives to be a hero once anew. He does this not for the glory but to help his mania in spirit. His past’s choler, covetous, and a person to struggle against is his now light, his hand to going back home. Sora is in another state of consciousness of data and sleep entrapment. His image is taken by Roxas, a half of Sora’s representing only that of corporal form. To reconstruct Sora, Roxas is needed, this is all Riku has to know. A cloaked man requests Riku to find Roxas while he is still under a black wing of an Organization of beings allegiant to regaining their hearts, the other half to make them unitary. Riku sets off without another development or request, Roxas equals Sora’s reawakening from his slumber, Riku needs no further details. The first encounter between the two boys is that of an epic struggle in the rain. Watching from the heights close to the heavens Riku watches smirking clearly, contend in his abilities. He is quickly has a metaphorical punch to the gut as Roxas’ ascends to his perch in the skies. Though blindfolded Riku can clearly see he is losing this conflict.
Riku is trounced back, appalled that this half of Sora can weald the Keyblade just as the whole being did. Riku crumpled to the street flooring brusquely shouts to the boy why can he carry the Keyblade? This planted the thought in Roxas’ head it seems to be for he would left the Organization if it came to thought earlier. Riku had set in motion the awakening of Sora and the disappearance by Roxas in its aftermath.
Riku after recognizing that the power he escaped from, the domain of darkness, he had to go back to it, requiring its exponent to salvage Sora. He was willing to go back to square one of self-redemption for that of the light in his life. Riku forfeitures everything that his heart has, even though it was all thrown away by Riku as Diz explains for his friends, and their future in his life.
Riku: Tell Me! Where are my friends from my memories?
DiZ: Are you sure you want to see them?
Riku: ...Of course I do . . .
DiZ: But you cast them aside. To reach the outside world, you passed through the door to darkness. Behind you, you left family, friends, home - everything - all in pursuit of darkness.
Riku: But I cast that aside too!
DiZ: And what do you have to show for it? First your home, then the dark. Your heart only knows how to throw things away. It's empty, like that room. Like your memories. That's why no one is in the castle with you. Your heart is hollow except for the darkness you couldn't quite shake off.
With Riku’s desolate came dabbles of a self-hatred for his past motives of trying to turn Sora to damnation, and he being the one to assume it uncoerced. Riku turns into a young man far less blase, after the laming blows to his frame of judgement at having to battle for his life, to break the steady spellbinding hands of darkness. Riku neither walks the door to light, he being to dim in an aura but not the road to darkness, too bright to do so, he walks the road of the dawn. Riku perambulating this path is steadily screening on Sora, leading him back to his best friend, his metaphorically his sun. These are the initiatory steps of reliable freedom for Riku, a freedom that Sora inspired him to go for.
Ex.
Riku: What are you making me choose now?
DiZ: Will you take the road to light- or the road to darkness?
Riku: Neither. I'm taking the middle road.
DiZ: You mean the twilight road to nightfall?
Riku: No . . . The road to dawn.
Immersing himself in darkness, the same inanity that he fought to evade, Riku surmises himself in the ability to take back Sora. As a consequence though Riku is back in bodily form of the being that overtook his embodied will and attempted to kill Sora, Xehanort’s Heartless. To repent his deeds, if on was to look at a symbolic gesture, Riku became a being that represents his foolishness. Riku remained truehearted to the eliminating of the head leader of the Organization but not as a means of retaliation. This step in maturity is a severe step out of Riku’s past persona. He remained to see the end of Sora’s metempsychosis into the world before rousing back into the darkened nooks to protectively observe for the boy. Never advancing out of the shadows, ashamed at his state physically, Riku plays a sideline hero. He aids Sora in somber times of need and giving supplies, such as the mummy pouch to pass down secretively to King Mickey to Sora. This is the bridge and end of the rivalry between the two, Riku treading down his high horse and Sora elevating up into the light..
As Sora’s journey goes on, he is a brisk force. He is totally set on finding Riku, with the same if not more vigor that he did to find Kairi in the first game when she was his macrocosm. Fond remembrances of Riku plays on Sora’s determination from Santa in the Halloween Town ark or the Land of Dragons. Sora’s exhilaration of merely hearing of his constantly fleeing friend meshes with a sorrowfulness that he is out of Sora’s roaming. The most heart murdering words are when Sora’s receives hollow words from King Mickey when Sora pleas about Riku’s whereabouts. Sora is only gratified when King Mickey alludes to Riku being in generous health. Sora has been to many incompatible worlds in search of the boy even after his treason and jumping off an emotional deep in. He even says that saving Riku is in his heart in Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories to Vexen. Even when Kairi going missing from Destiny Island hits Sora’s ear she too, is secondary next to Riku, just as Riku was to Kairi to Sora in the first game. This is the polarity of Riku and Kairi altering roles in Sora’s cosmos.
Ex.
Vexen: If you remain bound by the chains of memory, and refuse to believe your heart . . . then you may as well throw your heart away. You're no Keyblade master, no master of anything - just a slave to twisted memories. Just like my Riku. You're not fit to exist.
Sora: YOUR Riku? You're so full of it! YOU'RE the one who changed Riku, aren't you? Every word you've said is a lie! I'd never throw away my heart! I'm gonna take you down and save Riku and Naminé. THAT's what's in my heart!
And salvaging Riku Sora did, upon overcoming another opposition, Sora finds Kairi and the bodily dissembled Riku on the landing overlooking his past battlefield. Sora and Kairi distribute an accelerated conversation upon finding each other once again along with a bunglesome hug, Donald and Goofy snickering in the scope. The panorama of a fluffy reunion is an image that Riku, watching from afar, doesn’t see himself in. Riku makes way for doorway compromising of his will from the darkness, the only thing he has left. Before he can leave though surprisingly it is Kairi who stops him, imploring him not to go. Whether her motives are in kindness of affection that she never shows to Riku or an undercurrent of terminating Sora’s journey, in resulting him coming back to her, remains unknown. Sora is discouraged to approach the figure of a man that stole his friend’s body but with Kairi’s begging of him to “say something,” to Riku to make him abide, something Kairi could not do, Sora follows her directions. He finds the real Riku who is encircled in the darkness that is Sora’s eyelids. Sora closes his eyes and his journey of exploring is concluded.
At seeing Riku with his eyes closed, the authentic Riku, Sora finally breaks down. Sora sinks to his knees still clutching Riku’s hands and goes into a wasteweir of words for one fact, Riku is here with him. Sora literally begins skirting on bawling. Having his head downcast to the footing, Sora tells of how he looked for him and that it is not just a dream. This is voicing that Sora may have been stargazing of finding Riku when looking for him, then saying that he desired to see Riku for so long. Now Kairi and Riku have been gone from Sora’s life about the same amount of time, Riku being cachet behind the door and Kairi going back to Destiny Island, while the factor of Kairi known to be safe and Riku a mystery could be said to Sora’s reaction of finding Riku. Still this wave of emotions Sora has upon regarding Riku, is that can be declared as finding a person you can’t live without. Sora also shows this peculiar emotional speech during Riku’s new appearance in front of him, Sora doesn’t even question Riku’s form for he is so awe-inspired to see Riku again.
While storming through the Organization XII’s technological castle, the man, who inquired Riku’s road of choosing, Diz, causes a explosion that in a sonic boom which sends the group, (Riku, Sora, Kairi, Donald, Goofy and King Mickey) flying back. The entire group is thrown
face first into the silver flooring of the castle from the explosion. As Diz is no where to be seen,
he is presumed dead, however the shockwave had another effect other than exterminating Diz. Sora as well as the others struggle to their feet, when he spots something, Riku. Sora immediately gets to his feet and runs to the configuration of a tall, silver haired boy, blindfolded and wearing a dark garment. Riku was returned to his form. Sora gets on his hands and knees to peer down at the older boy, and a grin comes across his face as the Riku he recollected, got up on his hands and knees. The rest of the group gets back to their feet without assistance and without being checked on by Sora, even Kairi, was equally astonied by Riku’s break in his dark appearance. Riku had made it to the dawning of his own new world.
Before Sora and Riku and the gang set of for an accessorial battle, Sora asks if Riku is going to take his blindfold off and Riku compels. Gently taking off his blindfold, a effect because his eyes couldn’t lie, Riku’s eyes slowly opened to adjust to the light that he longed to be a part of. Sora edges closer in wonderment. Sora starts teasing, to whom Riku was trying to schlemiel with blindfolding his eyes, Riku rebuttal by saying himself, Sora adding on that he had no need to because he had friends and why do so much alone, Riku ending the conversation with a good humored, “Cause I’m not a total sap like you,” smirking in benevolent nature. The playful chaffing between the two had return, forgotten when they were fetched away from their home for the journey. Sora goes about the rest of the game asking Riku on what to do, going back it seems to the days where Riku’s cognition was law, Riku responses to defeating their last enemy. Riku sets the pace with Sora in zealous follow.
The beginning of the end of the groups journey dawns when Xemas is defeated the first time, only to come back after more playful back and forth comments between Sora and Riku. Sora eases Riku doubts by comical humor, Sora relying on this to get Riku to come back home with them.
Ex.
Sora (to Riku): You're coming back with us, right?
Riku: I had given in to the darkness.
Sora: Riku!
Riku: How'm I gonna face everyone?
Sora: Like this! (Sora squishes his face in and makes Riku laugh.)
Riku and Sora face of the ending evil with only with each other, as the others pass through a portal homeward that closed on Riku and Sora. They have in-between moments of high tension of finishing each other’s speeches on light.
Ex.
Riku: You're right, light and darkness are eternal. Nothing probably goes on forever, too. But guess what, Xemnas?
Sora: That doesn't mean YOU'RE eternal!
While fighting, both boys rely on each other in series of coagulated struggle tactics working wordlessly between each other, other than calling out to each other in times of emphasizing on seeing the other in a peril.
Ex.
Xemnas holds a beam sword to Sora's head. Riku looks up. Xemnas swings his arms back to hit Sora, but Riku gets up in a flash and blocks with his Keyblade. Xemnas swings around. Riku pushes Sora out of the way and gets a strong hit with the beam sword in his left side. Riku falls. Sora catches himself and leaps forward. He grabs Riku's Keyblade and slams it into Xemnas's chest. Sora smashes Xemnas with his and Riku's blades, spinning him back. Sora crosses the Keyblades and knocks Xemnas high into the air. They both spin around and Sora lands next to Riku.
Both boys endorse each other to defeat Xemas. Riku and Sora take each other’s hand around the Keyblade to kill off Xemas for the last time in a broadcast of light. As the engagement seems done a detritus of the battle comes in the form of Dusks appear. Accented with fatigue Riku wheezes that he cannot go on. This does not retire Sora’s faith in escaping, grasping hold of a barely stomaching Riku, putting Riku’s arm around him and grasp hold of Riku’s hem of pants. Riku limply leaning against Sora gives off his hold on the boy mentally, liberating his aphasic leadership in an exchange of touching words.
Ex.
Riku: Sora?
Sora: Hm?
Riku: You lead.
Sora: Got it.
Sora’s leads the boys lapse through an entree of light into a world of darkness. This land of dull sand and jagged rocks is lapped by dark waters that shines with a light to blanched to be the sun. This is where the span of unsaid rivalry between the young men ends soundly in a world much like their home but without light.
Ex.
Riku: You know . . . I always figured I was better at stuff than you.
Sora: Really?
Riku: Are you mad?
Sora: No. I kinda always thought you were better at everything, too.
Sora and Riku continue their aimless walking as the beach comes to view, it is the end of the road. Still a little away from the beach Riku requests to walk on his own now. Sora softly unwinds himself from the fitting form of Riku’s side. Sora walks to the ocean whispering that the darkness may have gotten to him as well but presumably directing his statement to Riku’s ears however he hears no response. Riku has fallen where Sora had let him go, and Sora, evident by his worry, quickly rushes to his. Riku states that he is fine but makes no attempt to walk by himself again. Riku once again uses Sora as a mock crutch as he requests help to the waterside, and Sora gladly compiles. Once again, the heavy silence of a world so much like home to both boys earns another revelation set into motion by Riku’s lips.
Ex.
Riku: What I said back there . . . about thinking I was better at stuff than you . . . To tell you the truth, Sora . . . I was jealous of you.
Sora: What for?
Riku: I wished I could live life the way you do. Just following my heart.
Sora: Yeah, well, I've got my share of problems, too.
Riku: Like what?
Sora: Like . . . wanting to be like you.
Riku: Well, there is one advantage to being me . . . Something you could never imitate.
Sora: Really? What's that?
Riku: Having you for a friend .
Sora: Then I guess . . . I'm okay the way I am. I've got something you could never imitate too.
This undertone of romance ended with Sora's comment and a light shining over the water, the door to the light has opened. Sora offering his hand to Riku, both agree on going through it together much like they have gone through every adventure together even if not by each other’s side. The boys are welcomed home by friends after swimming to the shore of Destiny Island. They are home.
Later, Riku is seen sitting at the Papou fruit tree, in the position that Sora sat in many years ago. Sora joins the boy at the tree, ironically taking the position Riku had sported as his own of leaning against the tree. Riku states the copious question of nothing altering in his absence, something that is comforting to the new young man that emerged from the detritus of the old’s over sureness. Sora goes on about asking what the door to the light was that appeared before them. Riku laughs full heartily, jumping down from his spot on the tree trunk. Riku lifts his arm, pointing his arm in the direction of Sora’s chest, and extends a sole finger and touches the clothing over Sora’s heart, “This,” he replies.
“This?”
Riku smiles continuing, “Yeah. It’s always closer than you think.” Sora smiles.
Now what Sora’s light was in the world in darkness to open the door was remains to be told yet the only relative light that could have been was the being closest to him at the time. (Riku)
Sum up!
Now here are my opinions added on as a summary of their relationship. Sora and Riku shared a past together before Kairi, this is a sign of a deep bond between the two. Sora never told why he is infatuated with Kairi. I believe he never speaks of him it because Sora is so naive. He doesn’t know what it means to be attracted to the opposite sex other than it is shown throughout the worlds he travels to. As times goes on there are signs of him giving up on this for a lesser shown romance, with a male.
Riku had a strong grip on his feelings for Sora but had a hard time expressing them. He used darker such asusing people to get recognized. The odds didn’t play in his favor and lead him to damnation. However, through this damnation he received points of view through kindness. In a sense it was the darkness that brought these two together, and made the bond needed for a undertone romance.
Multipart - My main favorites
Dying Happily, Living Lonely by Staryday
Everyday by ObessedOne
A Complete 180 by Uzumaki-sama
Broken, Hidden, Stolen by Tinkeu
Strawberry Bubbles by FrozenLioness
The Face on the Soda Bottle Label by Tala Mitena
Only You Would Know Me by RyTen NoDah
One Shots
A Few Redeeming Qualities
by Slashapalooza
Been Far Away For Far Too Long
by serenity denied
If Only You Knew Every Moment In Time
by serenity denied
Communties
Main division of the RikuxSora pairing on LJ: riku_x_sora
A subdivision of the pairing yet as Sora as seme in the relationship: sora_x_riku
A community of mainly RikuxSora but other couples included sora_riku_porn
A Fanfic Rec that houses some of the best and personal favorite fics of the RikuxSora pairing I have seen RikuXSora Sweetness
Another great Fanfic Rec Destiny Isles
Music Videos
Probably my favorite Riku x Sora video, spoilers and beautifully done Gravity of Love by Sora004
Another well established video, great song in the background to pull it all together Beautiful Things by Mikenno
like the beginning of this Song, the audio of Sora finding Riku in english. The Song basically describes the whole Sora looking for Riku in KH2 in a light heart tune to me. A Thousand Miles by YuugiYami
I love this Song, though it gets me thinking of Sakura from Naruto & SasuNaru, this is as a presume a video of Kairi’s sorrow of the viewing of the growing relationship of Riku and Sora. Malchik Gay
by Blue24601
Art Rec
This art Rec is of General Yaoi/Slash Art but most of it being Riku xSora, Warning some graphic images Rec
A lot is Gen but the are some adorable Riku xSora!Rec
Thanks for viewing, sorry for any small or major grammatical I bypassed. Hope you enjoyed - Courtneynus
Author: courtneynus
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing: Riku/Sora
Spoilers: All of Kingdom Heart II and Kingdom Hearts I, some of Kingdom Heart Chain of Memories
Sora is rather out spoken, confined, devoted, and selfless when it comes to aiding those in need, those who stumble across his path, of finding his said light, are quickly eyed with worth of becoming a friend, even though reunions may be minimal. Many people seem to take his free sprit of kindness and goofy smiles as a sign that hovers over his bubbly head, flashing that of an imbecile. Sora trusts his heart to lead him, following the road of crumpled dreams and building evil which leads him to where he needs to go, only asking people among this mass of debris if they happened to see what or more likely whom he is seeking. Sora’s destiny of protection lies along with his personality of being the chosen Keyblade master, a welder of freeing darkened hearts from bodiless beings that churn darkness even in the purest heart. Sora had led a simple life on an island that never promised him anything except for an arrogant sense of smaller living where everyone knows the other, and the seas seem to stretch like blue-green rolling meadows and seagulls make mock butterflies, and he never questioned a better life, by himself that is. Throughout life he came to grow only to become stronger, to progress through life laughing alongside his childhood friends that he was worth the life given to him, but like many adolescence beings he fell victim to elder desires, to prove he was brave to take the plunge blindly into the murky sense of nowhere. Sora wanted to follow his idol, Riku, to a new world with their female companion Kairi, to an empty promise that escaped Riku’s lips in a wanton unseeable hope.
Riku is a person with very few emotions, they seem to repeat themselves in patterns, aloofness, amusement, desire, and self-hatred or disappointment which is later seen, but is not apathetic. Riku is often spoken highly of by many of his peers, a prodigy in fighting skills and rather intelligent yet he at a early age focuses his ever seemingly ticking mind to a sole goal, a goal that he plays over and over in a motto of insatiable travel off his fate, the place of his literal destiny, ironically named Destiny Island. Riku’s popularity may have been a source of his ego, leading him to taunt Sora offhandedly in amusement to see his flustered face or to hear the giggle peel from Kairi. Riku’s behavior toward his best friends seems that he loves shocking them, Sora into a babble of blushing denial, a game he plays ever so often and confesses as a joke when Sora beats him in a rivalry set innocent game of who is better. Riku has an unsaid authority of being the leader of the three friends, his suggestions are often picked to be the best and his rare opening of his mouth with wise words captures his companion’s ears, and yearning widened eyes ofadmiration. Riku’s discussions of fleeing the island, with serious comment of never seeing their parents again said in an offhand, aloof attitude foreshadows that his choices may not be the best in well being.
~~~Riku: Once we set through, we might not be able to come back. We may never see our parents again. There's no turning back. But this may be our only chance. We can't let fear stop us! I'm not afraid of the darkness! ! ~~~
Riku’s ignorance of planning ahead, pushes his instinct from his brain, past his growing blackened heart to his gut. This is always right because he is Riku and with that lone establishment of thought is and what makes Sora and Kairi follow him like sheep to the slaughter. Riku chooses the path for now and not for later, which leads to his demise as Riku the idol to all.
Riku and Sora have spent their childhood together, adventuring under Riku’s, even in such a young age, one year elder wisdom. They searched the dubbed hidden place where a birthplace of future jealous and darkness would be born, intoxicating the innocence that found it. Seeing the beast that roar and moaned behind the foliage out of their child’s curiosity, to find nothing more than entrapped winds that curled and bounced back and forth in the carven walls, this was the finding of the opening of doors, where Riku’s unhealthy obsession to sail past those ever ongoing blue-green hills of watery liquid blades of grass to a better place came to a full circle. Both boys work together making every inch of the island a short rowboat ride from the main island known to them, and when everything was known Riku grew to seek a new place even more, he got his wish in the form of a mysterious girl that rolled in with the tide. Kairi was the key, the knowledge of something being out there for Riku, she was also another factor to tease Sora about, to impress the outsider became a daily routine. They had been with each other for so long, probing Riku’s ego to put Sora in his place of being a follower with constant fits of rivalry, bickering that was followed by laughs commonly on Sora’s behalf or pouting. Sora fought with other peers, and could come secondary to becoming best but it was common knowledge that no one could bet Riku, Sora is the following groupie of Riku, a mini Riku never to surpass the original one. With that known Sora never had to think truly on his own. Yet, as time passed and Sora himself wanting to prove himself as an equal but with Riku’s words that wounded his pride, that he masked by pouting, but when the time came to prove to be strong to stand alone with Riku’s constant guiding hand, Sora failed.
Sora chooses to fight to grasp Riku’s hand when his idol fell into the darkness, while Riku stood there smiling as the darkness he egged on, swelled in a pool at Riku’s feet, committed to the thought of leaving his prison surrounded by water. Riku faded into darkness and Sora was left to the light, alone, this is a sickening factor played over and over through the series, Sora was forced to stand without his friends at his side, without his idol in a grasp.
The bond between the childhood friends could be lightly packaged as an idol and the person who idolizes him yet as the series thickens the overflow of words and action’s literally make the platonic box burst from the inside. Just as their home sports its title, both Sora and Riku have a destiny of staying at each other’s side, Sora to outreach his struggling hand to Riku’s once outstretched hand, now recoiled hidden in the darkness in shame and shunning guilt. Both boys have mirrored destinies yet the glass that reflects the other’s said life to the other, but the boys fight to hold the other’s hand through the hardship and the painful events that cut them, especially Riku, like shards of glass, their barrier while apart, one in light and one in darkness.
Sora is a hero that was never meant to be, a substitute, the Keyblade’s alternative user, if anything Sora is a secondary hero. Sora is an abbreviated adaptation of Riku, not in the connotation of physical features but he has the attitude to do distinguished things and unlike Riku he seems to be empathic to those who play no function in his life, strangers. Both boys have calibers of a freewheeling hero, fearless to face a monster, impregnable minded to struggle with what is believed in and the pooling amounts of courage to face the iniquity where illume doesn’t even ventures. Sora’s humility is what set him detached from Riku, Sora knows what it is to compensate and what is unethical there is a bold outline between the two, black and white, and he never questions it, while Riku oppugned the middle ground. The Keyblade selecting him to be its master was a thought Sora scarcely wanted to absorb and determine pleasing, for it would make him step out into the limelight, a distinguished persona Sora would verbally say he wouldn’t be bothered by when in circumference of Riku but internally he would be aware of this being the curbing of his potential.
His morals of assisting always seemed to rear its head in the game, while many heros would ill-advisedly burst down the door, assault the opponent, and relieve the distressed, Sora’s chains of investigation are what makes him the silver medaled hero in a sense. He is a warrior of pure amaranthine self-command and heart, crippling fits of sorrowfulness do not seem to keep the boy degraded for there is always another door, some other way. His habit of butting in and making everything his business to bushel problems could be related to him seeking an equal standard to Riku throughout his life. He is never about to oppugn the sapience of elders or even a younger input, his open-minded conduct and submissive personality to be dominated could be traced back into following Riku, Riku is Sora’s progress to a hero, he is the fuel to his heart of taking the gradation to the side and out of Riku’s overshadow, into garnering esteem by his peers that customarily say after any achievement that Riku could leisurely do it.
Sora’s concerns of the future have no play except when presented, to a thick essay of questioning there is a simple answer that most every other person would use as a detail in their answering. His naive behavior is facetious at times for him to be the knight in shining armor with a posture of a liberated emotional stated minor, but his reinforcement through aiding gives him support, a potency that would clearly overwhelm those who rather abide nonpersonal and haste headlong to the conclusion origin, an organization that would win them the gold but Sora the silver and thecheers of the crowd behind him. That is what Sora is, a lower-ranking hero hiding in the fading shade of the corrupted gold, Riku.
Riku, though he is an invariant blockading through the kickoff game for Sora, is not an individual who can be assorted as a villain. An antihero at best suits Riku as his integral thought litigates to going to fresh worlds. Even since childhood, lamentable to state, he was voiced his yearning for something out there, for him to expose.
Riku was the primary burden barer for the encumbrance that known as the Keyblade. Riku didn’t have the nonvolatilizable personality to turn away from a hope in the mold of the wickedness to get him where he required to go. Riku had a self-importance far too mature for a quest of assaying, Sora luckily never matured throughout his travel, emotionally he was a well-grounded, well-rounded soul.
Riku serves his function of being the forceful kid to look up to, with features that age handsomely with time, impertinent and quick-witted, and an endowment progression. Riku was heading to be olympian. He gains all the tending of his peers of being the unassailable, his male peers wanting to trounce him in combat senselessly. Through the warm smiles Riku incessantly brings up his goals, it becomes more apparent that the thought is engrossing him along with the darkness. Remaining aloof and imperturbable, standing casual by establishing orders, Riku plays a persona that once he gets what he wants, he will certainly turn fickle to protect it, to drive it on others to assume it, for he came up with the design and no one had yet to issue a challenge to his dominance as the island’s prodigy.
Riku could be said to be a tad emotionally evanescent by his frequent atrocious emotions that repeat later in the game, accumulative of his friends, especially Sora, obsessed on a single motto, and piercingly jealous. His superiority hinges back on Sora and Kairi listening to his ideas blindly, this security of being a distinguished power fueled the dreadful emotions of being betrayed. This maintained balance that soaked into their teenage years being disrupted was likened of sending Riku off in a egotistical merit. With Riku’s superbia raising with his confidence of total dependancy, he begins to haunt on new details of betrayal of being replaced in Sora’s world. The egging on over his shoulder by motherly demon Maleficent pushing malice thoughts, Riku grows to regenerate his pride by means of defeating Sora and finding Kairi first. Riku upon finding his new worlds, was healed with a band aid over an invariant bleeding, bubbling wound, only to be ripped off prematurely before it was healed completely by Sora’s replacement of him in his eyes. This wound, now undressed, was left to fester in the airs of whispered words of him being essential, the wound bleed with Riku’s sanity. The wound healed though, as just like he put his hand out to Sora, Sora did for him. Riku refused the hand in disgrace as Sora did in dread of the darkness, put with a force tug Riku returned to the place damn near of to that a hell, but to Riku now a heaven. He probably wishes he never left.
Kairi, Riku and Sora are in the tangles of infatuated love, twisted into a triangle, running in ever which way, Kairi giggling with tinged flirting, Sora babbling in a blushing boyish clueless fashion, and Riku putting himself in-between the two extemporaneously with nonchalant remarks ending with himself sharing a Papou fruit, the fruit rumored to interweave those who share it with together permanently and not always Kairi .
The triangle between the trio runs as Sora usually as the centerpiece. Riku presumptively has a mock puppy love on Kairi. He troubled with her well-being at best of his emotions actually. Riku and Sora were best friends scene very young age , discovering, and attached at the hip as we see in flashbacks in the game yet when a “foreigner,” in the form of a girl found at sea was found Sora’s attention to was Riku sidetracked. To have such a profound friendship of only two, bring flotsam and jetsam to the island’s villagers, and once again it can be assumed that Riku was Sora’s role model, only to be interrupted. This upset would clearly affect the person who was handled like a paragon more than the person who idolizes.
Riku is that of always receiving attention, as I talked about earlier on, to have a newcomer suddenly take away his most faithful would certainly be stymieing on Riku emotional aspect of being insecure in loyalty and bourgeois young man in the future. Riku seems to be utilizing Kairi as leverage to get what he wants, if Sora wants to focal point on Kairi he can but Riku will win her first, only to throw her aside and recollect Sora’s adoration for himself, for Kairi he cannot have. Possessiveness and jealousy are common nature for Riku, after being the aim of all Sora’s passionate emotions. It is raw thought to want to repossess that which is lost. Observed, loved and required is what Riku desires but he doesn’t incriminate Kairi however if she is going to interfere, Riku will use her to his own vantage.
With that Riku’s involvement in Kairi, even when missing is evanescing, this quote below explains the concept I am trying to explain.
Ex. 1 - “I thought she was with you,” Riku remarks upon finding Sora in Traverse Town in the 3rd district, a flippant manner of a serious topic of a friend’s whereabouts.
Riku draws attention to himself by means of rivalry, so when his endeavors to get Kairi’s attention he is attracting Sora’s as well, Riku is a being settled by his competition and friendship with Sora, this unrefined rivalry, is a major part of Riku’s personality and is what he uses to stimulate Sora. Love is complicated, ne?
Kairi passim the series seems to distribute a not-so-friendly attachment to Riku, not really concerned for his whereabouts, condition or him at all. At first Kairi is an unreflective friend to Riku as he was to her, until darkness set him back in place. Her world seems to be of that awaiting for Sora. Kairi in the game makes rather agitating jokes, ending with a just kidding giggle and sprints off. Kairi remarks that she and Sora should run off together and to leave Riku behind. Sora upon hearing this has a moderate shocked face, his eyes broadening from relaxing in the claim of the sound of a typical island soundtrack of roaring waves and swaying palm trees too closely engrossing his face. Kairi has undertones of compassion for Riku when she gets older. She comprehends his leaving and implores him not to leave in Kingdom Hearts 2. When he is shamed by his corporal form, she is not the one who puts Riku back at their side. Once agin it was Sora who pulled Riku across the glass and watched Sora from behind.
Riku and Sora’s relationship has two factors that are entreating to being a building block for a romance, rivalry and friendship.
The first building block is well instituted with the first game ands is a darker setting of a relationshi, Riku being needy and Sora being an unknown love sake due. Throughout the beginning days of pulling weight of supplies and extra furnishes for the raft the trio was building, the group gathered typically on an islet not too far from the main, looking at the set sunning, they would discuss future plans. Never once did Sora interrogate Riku when relaxing against a curved tree trunk, bathing the sun’s dying fingers of rays, Sora had excecate faith in Riku not cognizing Riku was going by wrong means.
Sora’s maneuvering of a dumb card in the beginning of the game by not making himself in-depth in the details of their escapade. This omitted Riku to presume that the path leading to the darkness was chasten. Sora in his trust didn’t agnize Riku’s passionate deliveries, he answering with a common rebuttals of moronic behavior. This idolization lead to Riku couldn’t do any impairment of their journey, that this was an adventure and fun journey. This was the last mistake of Sora’s part was the commencing of the dark themes that began to weave in their affinity.
Ex.
Riku: Well, I haven't really thought about it. It's just . . . I've always wondered why we're here on this island. If there are any other worlds out there, why did we end up on this one? And suppose there are other worlds . . . then ours is just a little piece of something much greater. So we could have just as easily ended up somewhere else, right?
Sora: I don't Know
Riku: Exactly. That's why we need to go out there and find out. Just sitting here won't change a thing. It's the same old stuff. So let's go.
The single person that seems that have Riku’s undivided attention is Sora. His questions are based on Sora’s response, Kairi being only a puppet, an unperceived fact that something is out there. Sora presence to Riku as a negative and positive impression. Even has Riku pledges himself as a servant to Maleficent and the Disney evil Sora’s effect on Riku is ever exhibiting in Riku’s demeanor, best expressed in him fleeing in Neverland. And his remarks as to Sora trying to get into his heart all the time, seemingly angered by Sora compassion.
Sora uses all his cards from scathing languages, to fights in heat clanging weaponry to get him to side away from the darkness. Sora is abrupt to tell Riku that he choice is the inaccurate path. Being cast aside by Sora, Riku’s stalker like activities and butting heads at every world it seems Riku is retaining the enduring thing he had left, the rivalry between him and Sora. Riku became incendiary to trump Sora, from finding Kairi to taking the weapon that was to be his, the Keyblade, from Sora. Riku’s playful banter with Sora upon Destiny Island turned volatile, aggressive until Riku’s psyche broke to the wrecking waves of darkness constructing in floods. This unleashes the demonic side of Riku.Riku began to be a vessel for darkness and lost to the eroding.
Sora once again sways Riku to another favorable way of thinking though. With Riku taking a backseat in his own body, Sora was left to defeat the somatic remains of his best friend. Succeeding, Sora strived to assist Riku but he was too far out of reach, Riku would begin his road to self-redemption alone. The door to the darkness was left ajar, a task that Sora would have to accomplish by closing but his strength along with his companions, Donald and Goofy, couldn’t do with their ability to push. From the other side of the door, from the inside, appears Riku postulating that they could do it together, friendship was restored by this unostentatious comment.
Riku and Sora’s bond is that of forgiving, mostly on Sora’s role and proceeding on, that through the afflicting of battles and treachery, the wounds can mend with phrases of aiding one another, being by each other’s sides. The gouge of push from Sora’s side and pull from Riku’s is the teamwork that the duo showed in flashbacks of puerility when all Riku and Sora had in friendship was each other, with that the door was varnished , Riku sealed in inside. With that door closed, the door to a deeper relationship was opened but first they had to find each other once again.
An fresh story unfolds, the name Sora is forgotten on everyone’s lips except for a young man who strives to be a hero once anew. He does this not for the glory but to help his mania in spirit. His past’s choler, covetous, and a person to struggle against is his now light, his hand to going back home. Sora is in another state of consciousness of data and sleep entrapment. His image is taken by Roxas, a half of Sora’s representing only that of corporal form. To reconstruct Sora, Roxas is needed, this is all Riku has to know. A cloaked man requests Riku to find Roxas while he is still under a black wing of an Organization of beings allegiant to regaining their hearts, the other half to make them unitary. Riku sets off without another development or request, Roxas equals Sora’s reawakening from his slumber, Riku needs no further details. The first encounter between the two boys is that of an epic struggle in the rain. Watching from the heights close to the heavens Riku watches smirking clearly, contend in his abilities. He is quickly has a metaphorical punch to the gut as Roxas’ ascends to his perch in the skies. Though blindfolded Riku can clearly see he is losing this conflict.
Riku is trounced back, appalled that this half of Sora can weald the Keyblade just as the whole being did. Riku crumpled to the street flooring brusquely shouts to the boy why can he carry the Keyblade? This planted the thought in Roxas’ head it seems to be for he would left the Organization if it came to thought earlier. Riku had set in motion the awakening of Sora and the disappearance by Roxas in its aftermath.
Riku after recognizing that the power he escaped from, the domain of darkness, he had to go back to it, requiring its exponent to salvage Sora. He was willing to go back to square one of self-redemption for that of the light in his life. Riku forfeitures everything that his heart has, even though it was all thrown away by Riku as Diz explains for his friends, and their future in his life.
Riku: Tell Me! Where are my friends from my memories?
DiZ: Are you sure you want to see them?
Riku: ...Of course I do . . .
DiZ: But you cast them aside. To reach the outside world, you passed through the door to darkness. Behind you, you left family, friends, home - everything - all in pursuit of darkness.
Riku: But I cast that aside too!
DiZ: And what do you have to show for it? First your home, then the dark. Your heart only knows how to throw things away. It's empty, like that room. Like your memories. That's why no one is in the castle with you. Your heart is hollow except for the darkness you couldn't quite shake off.
With Riku’s desolate came dabbles of a self-hatred for his past motives of trying to turn Sora to damnation, and he being the one to assume it uncoerced. Riku turns into a young man far less blase, after the laming blows to his frame of judgement at having to battle for his life, to break the steady spellbinding hands of darkness. Riku neither walks the door to light, he being to dim in an aura but not the road to darkness, too bright to do so, he walks the road of the dawn. Riku perambulating this path is steadily screening on Sora, leading him back to his best friend, his metaphorically his sun. These are the initiatory steps of reliable freedom for Riku, a freedom that Sora inspired him to go for.
Ex.
Riku: What are you making me choose now?
DiZ: Will you take the road to light- or the road to darkness?
Riku: Neither. I'm taking the middle road.
DiZ: You mean the twilight road to nightfall?
Riku: No . . . The road to dawn.
Immersing himself in darkness, the same inanity that he fought to evade, Riku surmises himself in the ability to take back Sora. As a consequence though Riku is back in bodily form of the being that overtook his embodied will and attempted to kill Sora, Xehanort’s Heartless. To repent his deeds, if on was to look at a symbolic gesture, Riku became a being that represents his foolishness. Riku remained truehearted to the eliminating of the head leader of the Organization but not as a means of retaliation. This step in maturity is a severe step out of Riku’s past persona. He remained to see the end of Sora’s metempsychosis into the world before rousing back into the darkened nooks to protectively observe for the boy. Never advancing out of the shadows, ashamed at his state physically, Riku plays a sideline hero. He aids Sora in somber times of need and giving supplies, such as the mummy pouch to pass down secretively to King Mickey to Sora. This is the bridge and end of the rivalry between the two, Riku treading down his high horse and Sora elevating up into the light..
As Sora’s journey goes on, he is a brisk force. He is totally set on finding Riku, with the same if not more vigor that he did to find Kairi in the first game when she was his macrocosm. Fond remembrances of Riku plays on Sora’s determination from Santa in the Halloween Town ark or the Land of Dragons. Sora’s exhilaration of merely hearing of his constantly fleeing friend meshes with a sorrowfulness that he is out of Sora’s roaming. The most heart murdering words are when Sora’s receives hollow words from King Mickey when Sora pleas about Riku’s whereabouts. Sora is only gratified when King Mickey alludes to Riku being in generous health. Sora has been to many incompatible worlds in search of the boy even after his treason and jumping off an emotional deep in. He even says that saving Riku is in his heart in Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories to Vexen. Even when Kairi going missing from Destiny Island hits Sora’s ear she too, is secondary next to Riku, just as Riku was to Kairi to Sora in the first game. This is the polarity of Riku and Kairi altering roles in Sora’s cosmos.
Ex.
Vexen: If you remain bound by the chains of memory, and refuse to believe your heart . . . then you may as well throw your heart away. You're no Keyblade master, no master of anything - just a slave to twisted memories. Just like my Riku. You're not fit to exist.
Sora: YOUR Riku? You're so full of it! YOU'RE the one who changed Riku, aren't you? Every word you've said is a lie! I'd never throw away my heart! I'm gonna take you down and save Riku and Naminé. THAT's what's in my heart!
And salvaging Riku Sora did, upon overcoming another opposition, Sora finds Kairi and the bodily dissembled Riku on the landing overlooking his past battlefield. Sora and Kairi distribute an accelerated conversation upon finding each other once again along with a bunglesome hug, Donald and Goofy snickering in the scope. The panorama of a fluffy reunion is an image that Riku, watching from afar, doesn’t see himself in. Riku makes way for doorway compromising of his will from the darkness, the only thing he has left. Before he can leave though surprisingly it is Kairi who stops him, imploring him not to go. Whether her motives are in kindness of affection that she never shows to Riku or an undercurrent of terminating Sora’s journey, in resulting him coming back to her, remains unknown. Sora is discouraged to approach the figure of a man that stole his friend’s body but with Kairi’s begging of him to “say something,” to Riku to make him abide, something Kairi could not do, Sora follows her directions. He finds the real Riku who is encircled in the darkness that is Sora’s eyelids. Sora closes his eyes and his journey of exploring is concluded.
At seeing Riku with his eyes closed, the authentic Riku, Sora finally breaks down. Sora sinks to his knees still clutching Riku’s hands and goes into a wasteweir of words for one fact, Riku is here with him. Sora literally begins skirting on bawling. Having his head downcast to the footing, Sora tells of how he looked for him and that it is not just a dream. This is voicing that Sora may have been stargazing of finding Riku when looking for him, then saying that he desired to see Riku for so long. Now Kairi and Riku have been gone from Sora’s life about the same amount of time, Riku being cachet behind the door and Kairi going back to Destiny Island, while the factor of Kairi known to be safe and Riku a mystery could be said to Sora’s reaction of finding Riku. Still this wave of emotions Sora has upon regarding Riku, is that can be declared as finding a person you can’t live without. Sora also shows this peculiar emotional speech during Riku’s new appearance in front of him, Sora doesn’t even question Riku’s form for he is so awe-inspired to see Riku again.
While storming through the Organization XII’s technological castle, the man, who inquired Riku’s road of choosing, Diz, causes a explosion that in a sonic boom which sends the group, (Riku, Sora, Kairi, Donald, Goofy and King Mickey) flying back. The entire group is thrown
face first into the silver flooring of the castle from the explosion. As Diz is no where to be seen,
he is presumed dead, however the shockwave had another effect other than exterminating Diz. Sora as well as the others struggle to their feet, when he spots something, Riku. Sora immediately gets to his feet and runs to the configuration of a tall, silver haired boy, blindfolded and wearing a dark garment. Riku was returned to his form. Sora gets on his hands and knees to peer down at the older boy, and a grin comes across his face as the Riku he recollected, got up on his hands and knees. The rest of the group gets back to their feet without assistance and without being checked on by Sora, even Kairi, was equally astonied by Riku’s break in his dark appearance. Riku had made it to the dawning of his own new world.
Before Sora and Riku and the gang set of for an accessorial battle, Sora asks if Riku is going to take his blindfold off and Riku compels. Gently taking off his blindfold, a effect because his eyes couldn’t lie, Riku’s eyes slowly opened to adjust to the light that he longed to be a part of. Sora edges closer in wonderment. Sora starts teasing, to whom Riku was trying to schlemiel with blindfolding his eyes, Riku rebuttal by saying himself, Sora adding on that he had no need to because he had friends and why do so much alone, Riku ending the conversation with a good humored, “Cause I’m not a total sap like you,” smirking in benevolent nature. The playful chaffing between the two had return, forgotten when they were fetched away from their home for the journey. Sora goes about the rest of the game asking Riku on what to do, going back it seems to the days where Riku’s cognition was law, Riku responses to defeating their last enemy. Riku sets the pace with Sora in zealous follow.
The beginning of the end of the groups journey dawns when Xemas is defeated the first time, only to come back after more playful back and forth comments between Sora and Riku. Sora eases Riku doubts by comical humor, Sora relying on this to get Riku to come back home with them.
Ex.
Sora (to Riku): You're coming back with us, right?
Riku: I had given in to the darkness.
Sora: Riku!
Riku: How'm I gonna face everyone?
Sora: Like this! (Sora squishes his face in and makes Riku laugh.)
Riku and Sora face of the ending evil with only with each other, as the others pass through a portal homeward that closed on Riku and Sora. They have in-between moments of high tension of finishing each other’s speeches on light.
Ex.
Riku: You're right, light and darkness are eternal. Nothing probably goes on forever, too. But guess what, Xemnas?
Sora: That doesn't mean YOU'RE eternal!
While fighting, both boys rely on each other in series of coagulated struggle tactics working wordlessly between each other, other than calling out to each other in times of emphasizing on seeing the other in a peril.
Ex.
Xemnas holds a beam sword to Sora's head. Riku looks up. Xemnas swings his arms back to hit Sora, but Riku gets up in a flash and blocks with his Keyblade. Xemnas swings around. Riku pushes Sora out of the way and gets a strong hit with the beam sword in his left side. Riku falls. Sora catches himself and leaps forward. He grabs Riku's Keyblade and slams it into Xemnas's chest. Sora smashes Xemnas with his and Riku's blades, spinning him back. Sora crosses the Keyblades and knocks Xemnas high into the air. They both spin around and Sora lands next to Riku.
Both boys endorse each other to defeat Xemas. Riku and Sora take each other’s hand around the Keyblade to kill off Xemas for the last time in a broadcast of light. As the engagement seems done a detritus of the battle comes in the form of Dusks appear. Accented with fatigue Riku wheezes that he cannot go on. This does not retire Sora’s faith in escaping, grasping hold of a barely stomaching Riku, putting Riku’s arm around him and grasp hold of Riku’s hem of pants. Riku limply leaning against Sora gives off his hold on the boy mentally, liberating his aphasic leadership in an exchange of touching words.
Ex.
Riku: Sora?
Sora: Hm?
Riku: You lead.
Sora: Got it.
Sora’s leads the boys lapse through an entree of light into a world of darkness. This land of dull sand and jagged rocks is lapped by dark waters that shines with a light to blanched to be the sun. This is where the span of unsaid rivalry between the young men ends soundly in a world much like their home but without light.
Ex.
Riku: You know . . . I always figured I was better at stuff than you.
Sora: Really?
Riku: Are you mad?
Sora: No. I kinda always thought you were better at everything, too.
Sora and Riku continue their aimless walking as the beach comes to view, it is the end of the road. Still a little away from the beach Riku requests to walk on his own now. Sora softly unwinds himself from the fitting form of Riku’s side. Sora walks to the ocean whispering that the darkness may have gotten to him as well but presumably directing his statement to Riku’s ears however he hears no response. Riku has fallen where Sora had let him go, and Sora, evident by his worry, quickly rushes to his. Riku states that he is fine but makes no attempt to walk by himself again. Riku once again uses Sora as a mock crutch as he requests help to the waterside, and Sora gladly compiles. Once again, the heavy silence of a world so much like home to both boys earns another revelation set into motion by Riku’s lips.
Ex.
Riku: What I said back there . . . about thinking I was better at stuff than you . . . To tell you the truth, Sora . . . I was jealous of you.
Sora: What for?
Riku: I wished I could live life the way you do. Just following my heart.
Sora: Yeah, well, I've got my share of problems, too.
Riku: Like what?
Sora: Like . . . wanting to be like you.
Riku: Well, there is one advantage to being me . . . Something you could never imitate.
Sora: Really? What's that?
Riku: Having you for a friend .
Sora: Then I guess . . . I'm okay the way I am. I've got something you could never imitate too.
This undertone of romance ended with Sora's comment and a light shining over the water, the door to the light has opened. Sora offering his hand to Riku, both agree on going through it together much like they have gone through every adventure together even if not by each other’s side. The boys are welcomed home by friends after swimming to the shore of Destiny Island. They are home.
Later, Riku is seen sitting at the Papou fruit tree, in the position that Sora sat in many years ago. Sora joins the boy at the tree, ironically taking the position Riku had sported as his own of leaning against the tree. Riku states the copious question of nothing altering in his absence, something that is comforting to the new young man that emerged from the detritus of the old’s over sureness. Sora goes on about asking what the door to the light was that appeared before them. Riku laughs full heartily, jumping down from his spot on the tree trunk. Riku lifts his arm, pointing his arm in the direction of Sora’s chest, and extends a sole finger and touches the clothing over Sora’s heart, “This,” he replies.
“This?”
Riku smiles continuing, “Yeah. It’s always closer than you think.” Sora smiles.
Now what Sora’s light was in the world in darkness to open the door was remains to be told yet the only relative light that could have been was the being closest to him at the time. (Riku)
Sum up!
Now here are my opinions added on as a summary of their relationship. Sora and Riku shared a past together before Kairi, this is a sign of a deep bond between the two. Sora never told why he is infatuated with Kairi. I believe he never speaks of him it because Sora is so naive. He doesn’t know what it means to be attracted to the opposite sex other than it is shown throughout the worlds he travels to. As times goes on there are signs of him giving up on this for a lesser shown romance, with a male.
Riku had a strong grip on his feelings for Sora but had a hard time expressing them. He used darker such asusing people to get recognized. The odds didn’t play in his favor and lead him to damnation. However, through this damnation he received points of view through kindness. In a sense it was the darkness that brought these two together, and made the bond needed for a undertone romance.
Multipart - My main favorites
Dying Happily, Living Lonely by Staryday
Everyday by ObessedOne
A Complete 180 by Uzumaki-sama
Broken, Hidden, Stolen by Tinkeu
Strawberry Bubbles by FrozenLioness
The Face on the Soda Bottle Label by Tala Mitena
Only You Would Know Me by RyTen NoDah
One Shots
A Few Redeeming Qualities
by Slashapalooza
Been Far Away For Far Too Long
by serenity denied
If Only You Knew Every Moment In Time
by serenity denied
Communties
Main division of the RikuxSora pairing on LJ: riku_x_sora
A subdivision of the pairing yet as Sora as seme in the relationship: sora_x_riku
A community of mainly RikuxSora but other couples included sora_riku_porn
A Fanfic Rec that houses some of the best and personal favorite fics of the RikuxSora pairing I have seen RikuXSora Sweetness
Another great Fanfic Rec Destiny Isles
Music Videos
Probably my favorite Riku x Sora video, spoilers and beautifully done Gravity of Love by Sora004
Another well established video, great song in the background to pull it all together Beautiful Things by Mikenno
like the beginning of this Song, the audio of Sora finding Riku in english. The Song basically describes the whole Sora looking for Riku in KH2 in a light heart tune to me. A Thousand Miles by YuugiYami
I love this Song, though it gets me thinking of Sakura from Naruto & SasuNaru, this is as a presume a video of Kairi’s sorrow of the viewing of the growing relationship of Riku and Sora. Malchik Gay
by Blue24601
Art Rec
This art Rec is of General Yaoi/Slash Art but most of it being Riku xSora, Warning some graphic images Rec
A lot is Gen but the are some adorable Riku xSora!Rec
Thanks for viewing, sorry for any small or major grammatical I bypassed. Hope you enjoyed - Courtneynus