Fic! Baku Tracks
Aug. 10th, 2012 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
letterblade...or whatever. Title is provisional. Fic is unfinished. But I guess I'll post the first chunk of it because it's been ages since I attention-whored with fic, IDK.
Title: Baku Tracks, or maybe something less dorky someday
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: no keybrat kissing...yet...
Summary: I am too lazy to write a proper summary. This is the cute Sora/Riku fic that I needed in my soul after finishing DDD, but couldn't find on Archive of Our Own, so I had to write it instead. Only it wound up sprawling into Roxas and Kairi and probably some other people when I write more of it.
Notes: Unfinished! This is maybe the first 1/3 or 1/4 of it, idk.
Riku finds him in Traverse Town, in the middle of a pile of squeaking and chittering pastels so large he doesn't even recognize what he's seeing for a moment. Then cracks a soft smile as velvety soft wings fold around his shoulders as a bat lands and chirps. Sora's pillowed on a panda, arms and legs wrapped around his favorite meow vow like it's a giant teddy bear--which, to be fair, it might be, Riku's never quite figured out what species that one was a dream of. Maybe just the combined chimera of maximum cuteness, like a subconscious science experiment in making people gooey.
Sora's half asleep, stirring and mumbling, like he's dreaming. Whimpers, hugs the meow vow tighter, croaks Axel's name, and gets a sticky slurp of concern for his trouble.
Riku does the dignified thing and pokes his cheek.
Sora mumbles and rubs his eyes and yawns, and grins up at Riku dazzlingly bright like he wasn't having a nightmare at all.
"Didn't think you were running off to take a nap again, sleepyhead."
"Nnnn." He sticks out his tongue at him. "Didn't mean to. They're cuddly. What, you've never fallen asleep petting your spirits?"
"Had better things to do." No, with his luck he'd usually pass out in the middle of a fight and get jumped by the same damn dream eaters when he woke up again. Riku crouches; the panda gives him an almost crushing pat on the back. And hesitates for a moment, staring into Sora's bright open face. What the hell did they do to him, to plunge his heart into darkness like that? How much damage did it leave behind? Would Sora, too, need to learn to seal away the darkness inside him? At least he had a small army in there to help out, Riku thought wryly. "Sora, are you...okay?"
"Wasn't gonna sleep forever, if that's what you mean," Sora says, and then rolls over to stick the meow vow into Riku's face.
Well, maybe he did need some washing, Ansem had actually made him break a sweat.
-----
The keyhole's already open, diamonds of light winking down upon them, and Sora's hesitating before diving between the worlds, looking over at him.
"I...gotta think about some stuff, I think. Try to figure things out."
Riku raises his eyebrows in moderate alarm. "Sora, you've never said that in your life."
Sora pouts at him--and then leans against him. Not quite reaching for his hand, but arm twitching like he wants to. He's never been this clingy in his life either, and Riku unflinchingly stabs any thoughts other than concern, the fact that Sora is pressed warm and entangling up against him is none of his pants' business. That, at least, doesn't leave him worried that there was some sort of odd personality corruption going on--Roxas might mumble Axel's name in his sleep and actually think about things, but he never stuck Riku as a cuddly sort.
Then again, what did he know about Roxas' unexpected clone, or--who?
"Do you have to go think about some stuff alone, seriously? Kairi's going to smack you for turning into me."
Sora hesitates, tensing a little--he's so close that Riku can feel it, feel the floppy bundle of his limbs tightening, his shoulders cranking up a notch or two, so close that Riku could reach out and rub it away in that spot between his shoulderblades that you can never quite reach--
"I...guess not?"
He doesn't close the keyhole, though, and Riku gives him a gentle shove. "Get on with it, then, can't follow you if I don't know where you're going."
Five minutes later, they're diving down together through whirling sunset clouds and a ghostly tumble of struggle bats and posters and ice cream, and Riku's never felt his stomach drop to his toes in freefall before.
-----
It stays in his toes when Sora beelines for the old mansion.
He went here to break through to the World that Never Was, Riku tells himself. But Sora doesn't go for that portal, but for a side door, down a painfully familiar hallway, into the round white room with the open pod gathering dust. He walks in front, head bowed, Riku can catch glimpses of the curve of his cheek behind the scruff of hair, nothing more.
He stands in front of the pod and looks up at it, and Riku puts his back to the wall and stills the roiling terror inside him and waits. He waited for Sora for a year in here, he can wait a few more minutes. Didn't dare push him. What had he learned?
There's a tear staining Sora's cheek when he finally turns around and looks at him, and he looks poleaxed, face starting to crumple. Riku fumbles for words and forces them out.
"Did they give you Roxas' memories somehow? Is that what hurt you so badly that you couldn't wake up?"
Sora bites his lip and shakes his head violently. "No, Roxas did, he didn't want to hurt me. I still. Don't know why. I thought maybe...so that I'd want to fight the Organization more, after everything they did to him..."
Riku swallows hard and looks at the ground.
"Probably to...prove his existence."
Sora makes a startled little noise, and Riku looks up to find him folding one hand over his heart, still rather damp about the eyes, and wants to crush him to his chest and never let him go but--if he'd remembered being Roxas battered to the pavement with his Darkness, thrown like a rag into the machine, rewritten and taken to pieces like faulty code--
"Sora, there's. There's a lot I didn't tell you. And I'm sorry. I." He takes a deep breath. "The Darkness...still had me in a way. Maybe right up until you and Kairi pulled me out of it. I used it for my own sake, and destroyed our world. And then. I used it for yours, and destroyed Roxas."
"Your body--changed--" Sora croaks out.
Riku can feel himself closing down. Face crumpling, blood running cold. If this loses him Sora's trust--if Roxas drives them apart--
It would only be fair. It wouldn't matter. He's locked away his darkness, and no matter how much it hurts, he'll keep going. Protect the light, eat the nightmares. Sora deserves the truth.
So he tells him. He tells him everything. Even the parts where his memories of Naminé cut off in the middle of a sentence because something was missing, why had Sora's memories suddenly started leaking into Roxas faster, what was the piece he couldn't remember--
But his mind skims over it, like it isn't important, as soon as the words leave his mouth, and Sora makes a brow-furrowed pout of confusion that passes like a cloud a moment later.
"I'm sorry," Riku says at the end, bare and humble. "DiZ too, though. I don't think he realized it until much later. And I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier, too. You deserved to know."
Sora makes a strangled sort of noise and looks up at him with a slew of emotions Riku can't even begin to name, not even after all his life reading Sora's face like a book--and then practically bum-rushes him, clutching handfuls of his shirt, pressing himself against him, shaking. "Riku why are you dumb."
Hesitantly, expecting to get punched any moment, Riku folds his arms gently around him, and can't even argue back.
"I could've made new memories," Sora chokes out. "Roxas...Roxas might have...helped you, if you'd asked. He wasn--he isn't a mean guy."
Riku screws his eyes shut tight. "There was. Nothing else in the world for me except saving you. The Darkness...was part of my strength. My dedication to protect my friends. But it also closed my heart to anyone else. I'm sorry."
Sora boffs him on the chest with one hand, still clutching his shirt, sobbing openly now. "Dumb."
-----
He's not as strong as Roxas--because Roxas, he's realized, is terrifyingly strong, enduring, bright, he deserved so much better than this, nothing was fair. Can't think about all this hurt without his face crumpling and a lot of crying like a little kid, and Riku's face blurs with it until he doesn't know whether he's looking as his best friend or Roxas' enemy. He can't think straight and everything hurts.
Riku holds him curled to his chest, crumpled to the floor against the wall with the pod towering over him, as he cries himself dry. Maybe that's why Roxas did it, he thinks dimly. So that somebody would cry for him, like a testament to how awful everything had gotten, because he was too much of a tough kid to do it himself.
He's glad Riku followed him though, because crying alone kind of sucks.
Even though--he's not really alone, is he? Not ever. Almost as if he can feel gentle hands on his shoulders, cradling him. More than Riku's and even Roxas'.
-----
"Do you think," Sora asked after a long while, voice weak, eyes red, wrung dry. "Do you think we could get him out again?"
"I don't know." Riku lapses into hoarse silence for a moment, rearranges the limp and worn-out bundle of Sora a little more comfortably in his lap; Sora loops one arm around his shoulders, floppy. "But..."
The power to awaken a sleeping heart. The Dream Eater crest on his back. A whole new realm of possibility. The least he could do would be to chew up any nightmares that came for Roxas in his helpless sleep.
"We can try," he says, quiet, determined. He'd fallen to the Darkness and destroyed the islands; Sora had fixed it while he mired in useless guilt. He'd fallen to the Darkness and destroyed Roxas; and he'd be damned if he let Sora be the only one to clean up after his mistakes.
"Bet Lea could help," Sora says after a moment, rubbing his eyes and looking up at him with a thin but blinding smile.
"Yeah. Don't count me out either."
Sora's quiet for a moment, then closes his eyes and folds his over hand over his heart, and murmurs to himself, "He's alive again. Don't you forget it."
-----
Riku finally coaxes Sora home, and when his parents ground him for disappearing again do you WANT us to die young of a heart attack Riku then where will you be, he claims going-out-the-window sleepover privileges and lightly hops up Sora's wall in the middle of the night.
Sora's wrapped around a pillow like it's a meow vow and snoring with his mouth open. Drooling.
Riku props himself up against a wall and closes his eyes.
-----
Sora's dreaming of falling, and Riku falls beside him, swatting away globs of darkness with his keyblade.
Sora's dreaming of landing, and Riku drops gently to the stained glass as Sora's body settles.
And with a flash of light, it's wrapped in armor. Riku tenses, frowns, remembering that inky armored figure--but this is clean of darkness, steely greenish gray, dinged up and well-loved. He reaches out and runs fingertips over the slick visor, and it feels almost like touching the magic-thick leather of a black coat, but far stronger and brighter. Armor against the darkness.
He draws the Dream Eater's crest with his fingertip. He's already defeated the Nightmare; let this be the Spirit.
-----
He dives deeper, manifests his own Spirits to guide him as he loses his way in interminable darkness. Not the black goo of corruption, simple emptiness. He remembers science class, the enormous gulfs in space between the protons and electrons of an atom. Do such gaps exist in the heart, such vast space? Perhaps only Sora's. He could hold whole worlds in here, after all.
He falls tumbling up a clocktower, lands with Axel on one side and Hayner on the other, nibbling ice cream in synch, and Roxas looks up at him, brow furrowing slightly. The world warps; back alleys, struggle pit, in front of the train station. A man in a black coat grabs Roxas' arm, wrenches away an embroidered bag that smells like freedom. Despair and rage on Roxas' face, echoing in Riku's heart as he walks his dream.
Riku grits his teeth, summons Way to the Dawn, and eats the nightmare of himself.
When that clears, he stands with Roxas on a circle of stained glass, deep in the heart and peaceful. A girl in a black coat woven into the design, sleeping, holding the fragments of a keyblade across her lap. Roxas turns to him and frowns, wary, keyblades in hand.
"Why help me now? Seems pretty late to develop a hero complex."
"We do what we can," Riku says quietly.
"If you're doing it because I'm a piece of Sora--"
"I'm doing it because I messed up. And, well...hero complex." He swallows. "You don't. Have to accept my help. That would be pretty ridiculous to ask. But I'm here."
Roxas snorts and throws himself at him, and the fight is swift and fierce and sends jolts of light rocketing across the glass, and ends in a draw, Oathkeeper and Oblivion framing Riku's throat, Way to the Dawn nudging Roxas' chest. Riku's Spirits had hung back the whole time, chirping and unconcerned, and it's because of that more than anything else that Riku breaths easy with the cold magical steel digging into his adam's apple and lets his own keyblade drop, closing his eyes in surrender.
Roxas stands there with Riku's life in his hands and doesn't move.
"We both have the same goal," he says at least, and his keyblades vanish, and as Riku opens his eyes he sees Roxas sliding down the zipper of his coat and for a moment thinks this is about to get incredibly weird--
--and then he sees the familiar whorls of the Dream Eater crest, stamped on Roxas' chest.
"...oh," Riku says, and swallows.
"I've become his dream," Roxas says quietly. "But I might as well be a good one. He's...a nice guy. He's got a lot of people depending on him, and what happened to me wasn't his fault at all. Would be a dick move to blame him."
"...thanks."
Roxas zips his coat back up and shrugs. "Why are you here?"
Riku takes a moment to figure out how to even start answering that. "How aware are you of...of Sora's life? What he sees and hears?"
"Not much, these days. I went to sleep after he wrapped things up with the Org. I spoke to him recently, but I think that was him getting sent down to me than the other way around, and I've been more awake since, but." He's quiet for a moment. "How's he doing?"
"He'll...be all right. He got pretty messed up by Xehanort, but he's tougher than he looks." He wants to ask why he did it, shared his memories, but he doesn't want to push him. "There's. Probably some things you should know then. Sora wants to try to get you back out again, because he's like that. I...was granted the power to awaken a sleeping heart, so I'll be helping him."
Roxas frowns slightly. "He's got better things to do with himself than rescuing me. I went to sleep because I don't have anybody left to live for, there's no point. Also I don't have a heart, remember?"
Riku swallows. "Xemnas was lying to the Organization. About a whole lot of things, but that--a Nobody doesn't have a heart to start with, but it's possible to grow one. Nourish it, with friendship and all those things that help hearts out."
"Even if that's true," Roxas said flatly, "my friends are dead or never knew me in the first place. Like I said, there's no--"
"That's the other thing. Xehanort, Xemnas' Somebody...well, a few steps removed, he gets complicated. He had a plan that needed the entire Organization, every fallen member. And hearts...don't disappear. Axel's alive. With a heart."
Roxas' eyes go wide with shock, a strangled little noise, and then his face resets to blankness, as if feelings were a weakness not to be shown. "Why should I trust a word you say?"
Riku opens his mouth, closes it, and nods. "Do you trust Sora?"
A slight huff, a softening of expression. "He wouldn't know how to lie to save his life."
"Then ask him." Riku's quiet for a moment, then softer. "I know words...are just words. I'm sorry."
Roxas huffs softly. "I heard that much, even if it was blurry. Going back to the mansion...stirred me up a bit. Still. It means more when you say it to my face."
Riku bites back an indignant huff of his own--how much had Roxas already known? But he hadn't known about Axel, or been sure enough to have hope. That much he'd still needed. "Can I ask you something?"
"Nothing's stopping you." Roxas is watching him carefully. Expecting Riku to rip into him for giving Sora that kind of pain, perhaps.
"Before I found you, I saw a dream, Sora's dream, of when he was falling into the abyss, and this light came to him and protected him, wrapped him in armor so there was some part of him safe from the darkness. Was that...you?"
Roxas blinks, taken aback. Not the question he expected at all. "No...if I could have, I would, but. I'm no good at protecting people."
Riku just nods. "Figured I'd ask. I'm...starting to think you're not the only person in here." Knew for a fact in one case--but telling Roxas about DiZ--Ansem--was a can of worms he'd open later.
"Wouldn't surprise me," Roxas says quietly.
Riku doesn't press him; he can find the rest with time.
-----
Riku wakes to a painful cramp in his back and a weight on his legs, and it takes him a disorienting amount of time to realize that he's slid down the wall--and that Sora has rolled out of bed and across the floor of his small room to sprawl on Riku, cast the pillow aside to wrap his arms around one thigh instead. Face buried in his leg, still snoring.
For a few moments, he can't do anything but freeze painfully still and ache with how much he loves him.
-----
It's summer vacation--fortunately, what with having to pull yet another disappearing act--and Kairi's made huge puppy eyes at Sora and Riku's parents to let them out of hock to come hang out with her. And for all the sunlight pouring down around them, Riku knows, in his gut, that this is brief. A spare day or two, gathering their wits, precious moments with Kairi, until they need to start running again. Gathering their seven lights. Just how many, he wonders, would be hiding inside Sora?
Sora who's grabbing Kairi to tug her over to her usual seat on the paopu tree and telling her adventures. A hunchback rescuing a gypsy. Walking through a world of living music. The princess and her musketeers. That one time one of his spirits decided to try to chew on another's tail. "An' then I kicked its butt" is a frequent refrain.
Kairi listens patiently with a smile that manages to be both genuinely intrigued and patiently indulgent, and when Sora rockets off to catch some fish, she looks over at Riku.
"All right, what's he leaving out?"
Riku blinks back in vague alarm. "Lots, but how did you--"
"Maybe I'm a psychic princess," Kairi says, light and teasing. "I've kept it a secret, all this time."
"Don't say that, I might have to start avoiding you."
"To cunningly conceal your inherent hidden emo?" Kairi huffs a laugh and flops along the trunk on her belly, legs and arms dangling on either side of it. And then reaches out and touches his mouth very lightly, almost a shushing gesture, and Riku feels his spine tingle. "You've both changed. You more than him, maybe. Not that I'm complaining, but I'm feeling left out and I might need to break out the big guns and pout."
"Yed Sid named me the Keyblade Master, not Sora," Riku says after a moment, after she takes her finger off his lips, humble. "I've got a lot to live up to."
"Mmm." There's a glint of genuine, sparkling pride in her. "I suppose that explains some. But you're also...hiding less of yourself."
"I. Don't want to hide anything from you, I don't think."
"Then what's he leaving out?"
Riku laughs weakly. "The part where he started napping on the job again." And he tells her, and she grows very serious for a long while as he talks, and then smacks him upside the head as he starts counting keyblade wielders.
"--what?"
She summons a golden key wrapped with flowers and smacks him upside the head with that, a soft chime of metal and light ringing out.
Riku buries his face in his hands.
-----
They build a fire on the beach, roast marshmallows, and Kairi breaks out the graham crackers and chocolate. Sora's boisterous, like Xehanort had never gotten his hands on him. Kairi piles the crackers in her skirt to keep them out of the sand, and Riku gets stuck roasting for all three of them, since he's the only one with the patience to get them properly golden and melty. Turns them slowly in the flame with his face hot from the fire, and barely startles when Sora catches his free hand.
Kairi finds Sora's other hand, and Riku feels a strange satisfaction, like something had finally clicked properly into place. One on each side, so the darkness could never get through to him again. Sora hums the incredibly stupid song about fishing he learned at a daycamp one year and sways between them, and makes hungry fish faces as Riku passes Kairi a few marshmallows, both his hands caught up with theirs. Riku rolls his eyes and pops it into his mouth, and the golden shell cracks, and Sora scrapes goo off his thumb with his teeth.
"Jeez, Sora," Riku says, and wipes his hand on his pants, and Sora makes a muffled innocent noise around the marshmallow, and if Riku's face is flushed pink, well, he's the one stuck staring into the fire.
Title: Baku Tracks, or maybe something less dorky someday
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: no keybrat kissing...yet...
Summary: I am too lazy to write a proper summary. This is the cute Sora/Riku fic that I needed in my soul after finishing DDD, but couldn't find on Archive of Our Own, so I had to write it instead. Only it wound up sprawling into Roxas and Kairi and probably some other people when I write more of it.
Notes: Unfinished! This is maybe the first 1/3 or 1/4 of it, idk.
Riku finds him in Traverse Town, in the middle of a pile of squeaking and chittering pastels so large he doesn't even recognize what he's seeing for a moment. Then cracks a soft smile as velvety soft wings fold around his shoulders as a bat lands and chirps. Sora's pillowed on a panda, arms and legs wrapped around his favorite meow vow like it's a giant teddy bear--which, to be fair, it might be, Riku's never quite figured out what species that one was a dream of. Maybe just the combined chimera of maximum cuteness, like a subconscious science experiment in making people gooey.
Sora's half asleep, stirring and mumbling, like he's dreaming. Whimpers, hugs the meow vow tighter, croaks Axel's name, and gets a sticky slurp of concern for his trouble.
Riku does the dignified thing and pokes his cheek.
Sora mumbles and rubs his eyes and yawns, and grins up at Riku dazzlingly bright like he wasn't having a nightmare at all.
"Didn't think you were running off to take a nap again, sleepyhead."
"Nnnn." He sticks out his tongue at him. "Didn't mean to. They're cuddly. What, you've never fallen asleep petting your spirits?"
"Had better things to do." No, with his luck he'd usually pass out in the middle of a fight and get jumped by the same damn dream eaters when he woke up again. Riku crouches; the panda gives him an almost crushing pat on the back. And hesitates for a moment, staring into Sora's bright open face. What the hell did they do to him, to plunge his heart into darkness like that? How much damage did it leave behind? Would Sora, too, need to learn to seal away the darkness inside him? At least he had a small army in there to help out, Riku thought wryly. "Sora, are you...okay?"
"Wasn't gonna sleep forever, if that's what you mean," Sora says, and then rolls over to stick the meow vow into Riku's face.
Well, maybe he did need some washing, Ansem had actually made him break a sweat.
-----
The keyhole's already open, diamonds of light winking down upon them, and Sora's hesitating before diving between the worlds, looking over at him.
"I...gotta think about some stuff, I think. Try to figure things out."
Riku raises his eyebrows in moderate alarm. "Sora, you've never said that in your life."
Sora pouts at him--and then leans against him. Not quite reaching for his hand, but arm twitching like he wants to. He's never been this clingy in his life either, and Riku unflinchingly stabs any thoughts other than concern, the fact that Sora is pressed warm and entangling up against him is none of his pants' business. That, at least, doesn't leave him worried that there was some sort of odd personality corruption going on--Roxas might mumble Axel's name in his sleep and actually think about things, but he never stuck Riku as a cuddly sort.
Then again, what did he know about Roxas' unexpected clone, or--who?
"Do you have to go think about some stuff alone, seriously? Kairi's going to smack you for turning into me."
Sora hesitates, tensing a little--he's so close that Riku can feel it, feel the floppy bundle of his limbs tightening, his shoulders cranking up a notch or two, so close that Riku could reach out and rub it away in that spot between his shoulderblades that you can never quite reach--
"I...guess not?"
He doesn't close the keyhole, though, and Riku gives him a gentle shove. "Get on with it, then, can't follow you if I don't know where you're going."
Five minutes later, they're diving down together through whirling sunset clouds and a ghostly tumble of struggle bats and posters and ice cream, and Riku's never felt his stomach drop to his toes in freefall before.
-----
It stays in his toes when Sora beelines for the old mansion.
He went here to break through to the World that Never Was, Riku tells himself. But Sora doesn't go for that portal, but for a side door, down a painfully familiar hallway, into the round white room with the open pod gathering dust. He walks in front, head bowed, Riku can catch glimpses of the curve of his cheek behind the scruff of hair, nothing more.
He stands in front of the pod and looks up at it, and Riku puts his back to the wall and stills the roiling terror inside him and waits. He waited for Sora for a year in here, he can wait a few more minutes. Didn't dare push him. What had he learned?
There's a tear staining Sora's cheek when he finally turns around and looks at him, and he looks poleaxed, face starting to crumple. Riku fumbles for words and forces them out.
"Did they give you Roxas' memories somehow? Is that what hurt you so badly that you couldn't wake up?"
Sora bites his lip and shakes his head violently. "No, Roxas did, he didn't want to hurt me. I still. Don't know why. I thought maybe...so that I'd want to fight the Organization more, after everything they did to him..."
Riku swallows hard and looks at the ground.
"Probably to...prove his existence."
Sora makes a startled little noise, and Riku looks up to find him folding one hand over his heart, still rather damp about the eyes, and wants to crush him to his chest and never let him go but--if he'd remembered being Roxas battered to the pavement with his Darkness, thrown like a rag into the machine, rewritten and taken to pieces like faulty code--
"Sora, there's. There's a lot I didn't tell you. And I'm sorry. I." He takes a deep breath. "The Darkness...still had me in a way. Maybe right up until you and Kairi pulled me out of it. I used it for my own sake, and destroyed our world. And then. I used it for yours, and destroyed Roxas."
"Your body--changed--" Sora croaks out.
Riku can feel himself closing down. Face crumpling, blood running cold. If this loses him Sora's trust--if Roxas drives them apart--
It would only be fair. It wouldn't matter. He's locked away his darkness, and no matter how much it hurts, he'll keep going. Protect the light, eat the nightmares. Sora deserves the truth.
So he tells him. He tells him everything. Even the parts where his memories of Naminé cut off in the middle of a sentence because something was missing, why had Sora's memories suddenly started leaking into Roxas faster, what was the piece he couldn't remember--
But his mind skims over it, like it isn't important, as soon as the words leave his mouth, and Sora makes a brow-furrowed pout of confusion that passes like a cloud a moment later.
"I'm sorry," Riku says at the end, bare and humble. "DiZ too, though. I don't think he realized it until much later. And I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier, too. You deserved to know."
Sora makes a strangled sort of noise and looks up at him with a slew of emotions Riku can't even begin to name, not even after all his life reading Sora's face like a book--and then practically bum-rushes him, clutching handfuls of his shirt, pressing himself against him, shaking. "Riku why are you dumb."
Hesitantly, expecting to get punched any moment, Riku folds his arms gently around him, and can't even argue back.
"I could've made new memories," Sora chokes out. "Roxas...Roxas might have...helped you, if you'd asked. He wasn--he isn't a mean guy."
Riku screws his eyes shut tight. "There was. Nothing else in the world for me except saving you. The Darkness...was part of my strength. My dedication to protect my friends. But it also closed my heart to anyone else. I'm sorry."
Sora boffs him on the chest with one hand, still clutching his shirt, sobbing openly now. "Dumb."
-----
He's not as strong as Roxas--because Roxas, he's realized, is terrifyingly strong, enduring, bright, he deserved so much better than this, nothing was fair. Can't think about all this hurt without his face crumpling and a lot of crying like a little kid, and Riku's face blurs with it until he doesn't know whether he's looking as his best friend or Roxas' enemy. He can't think straight and everything hurts.
Riku holds him curled to his chest, crumpled to the floor against the wall with the pod towering over him, as he cries himself dry. Maybe that's why Roxas did it, he thinks dimly. So that somebody would cry for him, like a testament to how awful everything had gotten, because he was too much of a tough kid to do it himself.
He's glad Riku followed him though, because crying alone kind of sucks.
Even though--he's not really alone, is he? Not ever. Almost as if he can feel gentle hands on his shoulders, cradling him. More than Riku's and even Roxas'.
-----
"Do you think," Sora asked after a long while, voice weak, eyes red, wrung dry. "Do you think we could get him out again?"
"I don't know." Riku lapses into hoarse silence for a moment, rearranges the limp and worn-out bundle of Sora a little more comfortably in his lap; Sora loops one arm around his shoulders, floppy. "But..."
The power to awaken a sleeping heart. The Dream Eater crest on his back. A whole new realm of possibility. The least he could do would be to chew up any nightmares that came for Roxas in his helpless sleep.
"We can try," he says, quiet, determined. He'd fallen to the Darkness and destroyed the islands; Sora had fixed it while he mired in useless guilt. He'd fallen to the Darkness and destroyed Roxas; and he'd be damned if he let Sora be the only one to clean up after his mistakes.
"Bet Lea could help," Sora says after a moment, rubbing his eyes and looking up at him with a thin but blinding smile.
"Yeah. Don't count me out either."
Sora's quiet for a moment, then closes his eyes and folds his over hand over his heart, and murmurs to himself, "He's alive again. Don't you forget it."
-----
Riku finally coaxes Sora home, and when his parents ground him for disappearing again do you WANT us to die young of a heart attack Riku then where will you be, he claims going-out-the-window sleepover privileges and lightly hops up Sora's wall in the middle of the night.
Sora's wrapped around a pillow like it's a meow vow and snoring with his mouth open. Drooling.
Riku props himself up against a wall and closes his eyes.
-----
Sora's dreaming of falling, and Riku falls beside him, swatting away globs of darkness with his keyblade.
Sora's dreaming of landing, and Riku drops gently to the stained glass as Sora's body settles.
And with a flash of light, it's wrapped in armor. Riku tenses, frowns, remembering that inky armored figure--but this is clean of darkness, steely greenish gray, dinged up and well-loved. He reaches out and runs fingertips over the slick visor, and it feels almost like touching the magic-thick leather of a black coat, but far stronger and brighter. Armor against the darkness.
He draws the Dream Eater's crest with his fingertip. He's already defeated the Nightmare; let this be the Spirit.
-----
He dives deeper, manifests his own Spirits to guide him as he loses his way in interminable darkness. Not the black goo of corruption, simple emptiness. He remembers science class, the enormous gulfs in space between the protons and electrons of an atom. Do such gaps exist in the heart, such vast space? Perhaps only Sora's. He could hold whole worlds in here, after all.
He falls tumbling up a clocktower, lands with Axel on one side and Hayner on the other, nibbling ice cream in synch, and Roxas looks up at him, brow furrowing slightly. The world warps; back alleys, struggle pit, in front of the train station. A man in a black coat grabs Roxas' arm, wrenches away an embroidered bag that smells like freedom. Despair and rage on Roxas' face, echoing in Riku's heart as he walks his dream.
Riku grits his teeth, summons Way to the Dawn, and eats the nightmare of himself.
When that clears, he stands with Roxas on a circle of stained glass, deep in the heart and peaceful. A girl in a black coat woven into the design, sleeping, holding the fragments of a keyblade across her lap. Roxas turns to him and frowns, wary, keyblades in hand.
"Why help me now? Seems pretty late to develop a hero complex."
"We do what we can," Riku says quietly.
"If you're doing it because I'm a piece of Sora--"
"I'm doing it because I messed up. And, well...hero complex." He swallows. "You don't. Have to accept my help. That would be pretty ridiculous to ask. But I'm here."
Roxas snorts and throws himself at him, and the fight is swift and fierce and sends jolts of light rocketing across the glass, and ends in a draw, Oathkeeper and Oblivion framing Riku's throat, Way to the Dawn nudging Roxas' chest. Riku's Spirits had hung back the whole time, chirping and unconcerned, and it's because of that more than anything else that Riku breaths easy with the cold magical steel digging into his adam's apple and lets his own keyblade drop, closing his eyes in surrender.
Roxas stands there with Riku's life in his hands and doesn't move.
"We both have the same goal," he says at least, and his keyblades vanish, and as Riku opens his eyes he sees Roxas sliding down the zipper of his coat and for a moment thinks this is about to get incredibly weird--
--and then he sees the familiar whorls of the Dream Eater crest, stamped on Roxas' chest.
"...oh," Riku says, and swallows.
"I've become his dream," Roxas says quietly. "But I might as well be a good one. He's...a nice guy. He's got a lot of people depending on him, and what happened to me wasn't his fault at all. Would be a dick move to blame him."
"...thanks."
Roxas zips his coat back up and shrugs. "Why are you here?"
Riku takes a moment to figure out how to even start answering that. "How aware are you of...of Sora's life? What he sees and hears?"
"Not much, these days. I went to sleep after he wrapped things up with the Org. I spoke to him recently, but I think that was him getting sent down to me than the other way around, and I've been more awake since, but." He's quiet for a moment. "How's he doing?"
"He'll...be all right. He got pretty messed up by Xehanort, but he's tougher than he looks." He wants to ask why he did it, shared his memories, but he doesn't want to push him. "There's. Probably some things you should know then. Sora wants to try to get you back out again, because he's like that. I...was granted the power to awaken a sleeping heart, so I'll be helping him."
Roxas frowns slightly. "He's got better things to do with himself than rescuing me. I went to sleep because I don't have anybody left to live for, there's no point. Also I don't have a heart, remember?"
Riku swallows. "Xemnas was lying to the Organization. About a whole lot of things, but that--a Nobody doesn't have a heart to start with, but it's possible to grow one. Nourish it, with friendship and all those things that help hearts out."
"Even if that's true," Roxas said flatly, "my friends are dead or never knew me in the first place. Like I said, there's no--"
"That's the other thing. Xehanort, Xemnas' Somebody...well, a few steps removed, he gets complicated. He had a plan that needed the entire Organization, every fallen member. And hearts...don't disappear. Axel's alive. With a heart."
Roxas' eyes go wide with shock, a strangled little noise, and then his face resets to blankness, as if feelings were a weakness not to be shown. "Why should I trust a word you say?"
Riku opens his mouth, closes it, and nods. "Do you trust Sora?"
A slight huff, a softening of expression. "He wouldn't know how to lie to save his life."
"Then ask him." Riku's quiet for a moment, then softer. "I know words...are just words. I'm sorry."
Roxas huffs softly. "I heard that much, even if it was blurry. Going back to the mansion...stirred me up a bit. Still. It means more when you say it to my face."
Riku bites back an indignant huff of his own--how much had Roxas already known? But he hadn't known about Axel, or been sure enough to have hope. That much he'd still needed. "Can I ask you something?"
"Nothing's stopping you." Roxas is watching him carefully. Expecting Riku to rip into him for giving Sora that kind of pain, perhaps.
"Before I found you, I saw a dream, Sora's dream, of when he was falling into the abyss, and this light came to him and protected him, wrapped him in armor so there was some part of him safe from the darkness. Was that...you?"
Roxas blinks, taken aback. Not the question he expected at all. "No...if I could have, I would, but. I'm no good at protecting people."
Riku just nods. "Figured I'd ask. I'm...starting to think you're not the only person in here." Knew for a fact in one case--but telling Roxas about DiZ--Ansem--was a can of worms he'd open later.
"Wouldn't surprise me," Roxas says quietly.
Riku doesn't press him; he can find the rest with time.
-----
Riku wakes to a painful cramp in his back and a weight on his legs, and it takes him a disorienting amount of time to realize that he's slid down the wall--and that Sora has rolled out of bed and across the floor of his small room to sprawl on Riku, cast the pillow aside to wrap his arms around one thigh instead. Face buried in his leg, still snoring.
For a few moments, he can't do anything but freeze painfully still and ache with how much he loves him.
-----
It's summer vacation--fortunately, what with having to pull yet another disappearing act--and Kairi's made huge puppy eyes at Sora and Riku's parents to let them out of hock to come hang out with her. And for all the sunlight pouring down around them, Riku knows, in his gut, that this is brief. A spare day or two, gathering their wits, precious moments with Kairi, until they need to start running again. Gathering their seven lights. Just how many, he wonders, would be hiding inside Sora?
Sora who's grabbing Kairi to tug her over to her usual seat on the paopu tree and telling her adventures. A hunchback rescuing a gypsy. Walking through a world of living music. The princess and her musketeers. That one time one of his spirits decided to try to chew on another's tail. "An' then I kicked its butt" is a frequent refrain.
Kairi listens patiently with a smile that manages to be both genuinely intrigued and patiently indulgent, and when Sora rockets off to catch some fish, she looks over at Riku.
"All right, what's he leaving out?"
Riku blinks back in vague alarm. "Lots, but how did you--"
"Maybe I'm a psychic princess," Kairi says, light and teasing. "I've kept it a secret, all this time."
"Don't say that, I might have to start avoiding you."
"To cunningly conceal your inherent hidden emo?" Kairi huffs a laugh and flops along the trunk on her belly, legs and arms dangling on either side of it. And then reaches out and touches his mouth very lightly, almost a shushing gesture, and Riku feels his spine tingle. "You've both changed. You more than him, maybe. Not that I'm complaining, but I'm feeling left out and I might need to break out the big guns and pout."
"Yed Sid named me the Keyblade Master, not Sora," Riku says after a moment, after she takes her finger off his lips, humble. "I've got a lot to live up to."
"Mmm." There's a glint of genuine, sparkling pride in her. "I suppose that explains some. But you're also...hiding less of yourself."
"I. Don't want to hide anything from you, I don't think."
"Then what's he leaving out?"
Riku laughs weakly. "The part where he started napping on the job again." And he tells her, and she grows very serious for a long while as he talks, and then smacks him upside the head as he starts counting keyblade wielders.
"--what?"
She summons a golden key wrapped with flowers and smacks him upside the head with that, a soft chime of metal and light ringing out.
Riku buries his face in his hands.
-----
They build a fire on the beach, roast marshmallows, and Kairi breaks out the graham crackers and chocolate. Sora's boisterous, like Xehanort had never gotten his hands on him. Kairi piles the crackers in her skirt to keep them out of the sand, and Riku gets stuck roasting for all three of them, since he's the only one with the patience to get them properly golden and melty. Turns them slowly in the flame with his face hot from the fire, and barely startles when Sora catches his free hand.
Kairi finds Sora's other hand, and Riku feels a strange satisfaction, like something had finally clicked properly into place. One on each side, so the darkness could never get through to him again. Sora hums the incredibly stupid song about fishing he learned at a daycamp one year and sways between them, and makes hungry fish faces as Riku passes Kairi a few marshmallows, both his hands caught up with theirs. Riku rolls his eyes and pops it into his mouth, and the golden shell cracks, and Sora scrapes goo off his thumb with his teeth.
"Jeez, Sora," Riku says, and wipes his hand on his pants, and Sora makes a muffled innocent noise around the marshmallow, and if Riku's face is flushed pink, well, he's the one stuck staring into the fire.
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Date: Aug. 12th, 2012 03:04 pm (UTC)That is all. Hi.