Chapter Text
It starts with the race.
"Deal? The winner gets to share a paopu with Kairi."
And Sora stands there, one foot toeing the sand, feeling nervousness fight it out with uncertainty in his chest. His hesitation is long enough for Riku to cock his head to the side, his smug act of arrogance smoothing away into confusion, and the older boy furrows silver brows in reaction to Sora's expression.
"What, you don't want to share a paopu with Kairi? Seriously?"
Sora kicks sand in his direction, defiant and uncomfortable but unable to backtrack now.
"Well, I just, I'd rather share it with you." He pauses, watches as Riku's eyebrows raise so quickly they nearly fly off his face, and back peddles. "No, not like that! Well, I suppose it is like that, but I don't want to share it with you because I love you or anything, that'd be weird!"
Except he does love Riku, as much as he can considering his total lack of experience in such things, but it lies below the surface of his heart, uncertain even in this. Sora has spent years believing he should love Kairi, and he does, but he loves his best friends in different ways. Those years, he had believed his love for Kairi to be the romantic one, as his mother had told him it was supposed to be, but it had taken even longer to realise that the feelings Riku stirred in his chest were not jealousy and rivalry, but the urge to impress. His dreams of first kisses and gentle touches never involved flashes of red hair and hands smaller than his own. They involved toned biceps and a smirk arrogant enough to set his blood on fire.
Riku stares at Sora as his internal monologue sends him spinning into a crisis, and the wooden sword in his hand skims across the sand as it hangs loosely from his fingers.
"Let me get this straight, Sora. You want to share a paopu with, and tie yourself forever to, me?" His words are slow, as though he is not quite believing them, and Sora's blush goes from gentle pink to scarlet.
"Not like that!" Definitely like that. "Kind of? I just, remember that woman from years and years ago, who said we should stick together? What if something happens to us out there, when we leave? Kairi is probably never going to be separated from one of us, but we could be, and you're my best friend and if we get separated then who knows what will happen! She told me never to leave your side!"
Sora's speech quickens with each word as his panic rises, and Riku whacks him on the arm with the sword to calm him down.
“Oi, can it.”
"Ow!"
"So you're doing it out of duty to me? Or to the woman we met when we were kids?"
Sora stamps his foot into the sand, frustrated.
"No! I just don't want to lose you. And I just... just do the stupid race okay? If I win, we share it, if you win, you can share it with whoever you want to." Sora trails off in a series of mumbled words, tone more of a rant than any indication of discomfort, but Riku smirks again, feeling lighter than he has in weeks.
Kairi appears then, in a flurry of sandals hitting the wooden decking and the jangle of bracelets as she jogs to meet them. Her smile is wide, and nothing in her expression makes them think she has heard their conversation, or noticed the atmosphere fizzing between them.
"Are you guys ready? On my count!"
Sora loses the race.
He's not sure if he throws it on purpose, unwilling to face the balloon of emotion growing in his chest with each flutter of Riku's hair in the wind, or the way his stomach jumps when the scent of sun cream and sweat is carried to his nose on the sea breeze.
But Riku reaches the finish line first, longer legs carrying him faster, and Sora reaches it to see that damned smirk stretched wide on his face, as always. Kairi whoops, clapping her hands for Riku's victory, and Sora stands there nearly stock still. The only movement is his chest, rising and falling from the exertion.
Kairi beams at him, and moves forward to place her hands on their shoulders.
"Selphie and I are gonna head over to the mainland to grab some ice cream. Do you guys want anything?"
Both boys shake their heads, and Riku briefly leans forwards to grab his knees and catch his breath before he straightens. There is a sheen of sweat on his forehead: Sora may have thrown the race, but Riku looks as though he's worked for it.
"Well, I'll be back in a bit! You two play nice: we can't leave tomorrow if one of you breaks an arm with those swords!"
Kairi leaves with another smile and a goodbye, promising to return within the hour, and both boys are left alone on the outcropping. Silence reigns between them, as Sora stares at the ground and Riku moves away, but when Sora looks up he realises he has to keep going up, because Riku is halfway up the tree with his pocket knife between his teeth.
"Wh-what are you doing?" The tree sways with Riku's weight and a particularly strong gust of wind, and Riku's words are lost around the wooden handle between his teeth. He removes it, one hand still wrapped around the trunk of the tree. Even below, Sora can see him roll his eyes.
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
"Climbing a tree? Attempting to break your legs?"
The response is an exaggerated sigh, and Riku leans out along a thin branch with the knife in his hand.
"I know there's a brain somewhere underneath that mess of hair, Sora." He pauses, frozen in the air for a second as the tree sways. "Catch!"
Sora opens his hands without hesitation, and Riku reaches over as far as he can before he swipes the knife out: he hears it slice through a stem and something soft and weighty falls into his outstretched palms. Riku drops a second later, knees bent and grunting as the sand kicks up around him with the weight of his fall.
Sora stares: the paopu in his hands is perfectly shaped, and the orange colouring around the stem means it's ripe and ready to eat. In his periphery, Riku is there, smirking and proud at his own unpredictability.
"Well? I won, so I get to share it with who I want."
Sora grins, feels his cheeks flare up with a raging blush red enough to put Kairi's hair to shame, and leans forward impulsively to press his lips to Riku's.
Their kiss is an innocent one; Sora's teeth clack against Riku's with the force of his movement, but before he can pull back Riku snakes his free hand around Sora's neck and pulls. It is hard, their lips pressed tightly together, and Sora is as inexperienced in this as Riku is. The older boy may act smooth and certain, but Sora has spent nearly every waking moment of his life with Riku. Unless Riku found a girl to practice with that week he was supposed to be resting with chicken pox, or the weekend they were barred from seeing each other after fighting with an older guy in school, neither of them have any precedent for this. They are scared and uncertain to open their mouths to deepen it, and it ends up being as chaste as if they were kissing the hand of a king.
But it is a kiss, and when Riku pulls away to cut the fruit in half his cheeks are dusted pink beneath the tan, and Sora's knees feel weak with giddiness. His grin is so wide it nearly splits his cheeks, and Riku hands him half of the fruit with a gentle shove to his shoulders.
"Don't be such a total sap. I'm just making sure you can't get yourself lost."
They eat the fruit in silence, sitting on the edge of the decking and dangling their legs with their bare shoulders touching. The wind blows Riku's hair into his face, making it stick to the juice on his lips, and Sora laughs so hard at his expression that he is nearly shoved off the side in response. They kiss again, a sweeter and gentler one that has none of the impulsive urgency of the first, and Sora finds he enjoys the pressure of Riku's hand on the back of his scalp, and the feel of silver strands sliding through his fingers. He feels a pull inside his chest, a tug towards the other boy, and he wonders if the legend of the paopu is really true.
Kairi returns within the hour and offers some fruit she picked up from the store, missing the sly look that passes between the two boys when they tell her they've already eaten.
But Kairi knows them better than they think she does, and she is far more observant than they give her credit for. She does not miss how the atmosphere between them has changed, the relaxed curve of Sora's shoulders and how Riku's smirks are softer, less defensive than they were that morning. Kairi sees how Sora looks as though he is walking in a sea of revelations, facing truths he had not seen before.
And Riku? Well, Riku looks to her as though he has had every wish he ever asked for handed to him on a plate, and she knows he has held a torch for Sora for as long as she has known him. Her own, short-lived torch had been doused and thrown in the sea the moment she saw that Riku's flame burned brighter than hers ever could, and Kairi has often wondered if Riku has loved Sora for longer than even he knows. She has despaired at Sora's obliviousness, has cringed when Sora's affections landed on her briefly, and has suffered through them both moaning at her about the other for silly reasons. Riku's competitiveness, Sora's inability to think straight, etcetera, etcetera.
She levels them both with a smirk to rival the smarmiest of Riku's, and takes two apples from the shopping bag and throws them into their laps.
"A paopu isn't that filling, you guys. Now, eat!"
No, Kairi may not have seen the sly grin they had given each other, but she sees their twin looks of horror at her words and giggles loudly. She shrieks with laughter when they get up to chase her, and together they run up the ramp towards their tree, their worries and fears dissipating into the breeze.
Their peace from the evening does not last. Sora and Riku stay on the island overnight, unintentionally, when they have stayed too long in the shack and the tide has come in. Sora does not wake when Riku slips out of the shack; he wakens only when the darkness has eclipsed the island, and he runs to the shoreline to find Riku almost rambling about freedom.
“Come with me, Sora. We can be together, and we can be free. We may never see our parents again, and there is no turning back, but isn’t it worth it?”
Sora’s heart hammers in his chest as the insatiable urge to follow rises in his heart, pushing forwards to follow the other boy, to ensure they are never separated. He pushes forwards to Riku’s outstretched hand, but the darkness pulls at his legs and drags him back. Sora keeps pushing, forcing his feet to move even though it feels as though he is knee deep in sand.
And nothing matters to him more than the boy on the other side of the outstretched hand: Sora will follow him to the end of the universe if he has to. Their fingertips graze, grab on and clutch desperately, but whatever is pulling at Sora keeps dragging him down and away. Indents of Riku’s fingernails remain in the pads of his fingers, but Sora falls to his knees as the darkness wraps around Riku’s body like a cocoon. Tendrils of smoke and matter weave under Riku’s arms and along his chest, and Sora can only watch as the darkness overtakes them both.
When he opens his eyes he is carrying a key, and Riku is nowhere to be found.
They are in Traverse Town when he finally, finally feels it. That pit in his stomach that he has learned to ignore disappears, replaced by a powerful tug in his chest that leads him towards the square. They fight the heartless that appears, Donald and Goofy following him eagerly but unsure why he is so desperate to reach it.
And then there, in the middle of the battle, a flash of yellow and blue and a keyblade that is all black and red, and Sora feels whole again. Riku steps closer, a smirk on his face but fear and worry in his eyes, and the keyblade slung over his shoulder is all sharp edges and glinting lights.
If there were ever a blade to match Riku’s wit, it is this one.
“There you are. What’s going on?”
And Sora steps forwards, feeling as though his legs will give out under him, and he all but launches himself at the other boy. The hug is desperate, lean arms around skinny torsos, and as Sora buries his face into Riku’s shirt he notices that the boy no longer smells of sun cream and the sea breeze.
Sora pulls back and releases him, and before Riku can say anything he tugs at the older boy’s cheeks playfully, pinching them and showing his teeth. Riku’s hands fall from Sora’s waist, and come up to bat him away.
“Hey, cut it out!”
“I’m not dreaming this time, am I?” Because Sora has had many dreams of this reunion. He has dreamt that he caught Riku’s hand that night on Destiny Island: he has dreamt of bumping into the boy in other worlds, of a reunion of gentle kisses with his heart bursting, the paopu reuniting them. Riku laughs, putting a hand out to squeeze the tip of Sora’s nose. It’s cold.
“I sure hope not. Took forever to find you.” The hand moves to ruffle through Sora’s hair affectionately, and Sora’s body moves closer in reaction. He hugs again, clinging to the silver-haired boy without dragging him down, and one of Riku’s hands rests on his back in reaction.
Sora lets go when he hears Goofy shuffling behind him, remembering that they are actually here with him.
“Have you seen Kairi, Riku?”
Riku blanches.
“You mean she isn’t with you?” He shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose with slender fingers. “Don’t worry too much about it, Sora. I’m sure she made it off the island too. Who knows, she might even be looking for us now. We’ll be together again soon.” There’s something in his voice that seems off, too cheerful considering the third member of their trio is missing, but Sora is so relieved at seeing Riku that he pays it no heed.
Sora smiles, simply happy to see Riku again, and neither of them notice the heartless that is hovering to their left. Riku steps closer, one hand on Sora’s neck, but Sora is utterly oblivious to the oncoming kiss even as he leans in to Riku.
The heartless disappears in a clap of lightning, Donald’s stave raised high, and Sora’s eyes brighten. He grabs Riku’s wrist, still oblivious, and pulls Riku over to them.
“Oh, you’ve got to meet my news friends! This is Donald, and this is Goofy. I’ve been travelling with them, trying to find you and Kairi.” They nod, with Goofy giving a wave, but Riku’s mood sours with what he interprets as a brushed off kiss. Sora’s hand is tight on his wrist, but he tugs it away.
“Uh, who are they?”
“They’ve been helping me! We visited so many places, looking for you.”
The smirk is back, but there’s a defensive edge to it that Sora has not seen in many, many years.
“Really? Well, what do you know? We must have just been missing each other.” Sora’s eyebrows furrow at the hostility, but he is distracted by Goofy placing large hands onto his shoulders and squeezing gently.
“And guess what? Sora’s the keyblade master!” Said keyblade wielder cringes: that is probably not the right thing to say. Riku retaliates to the imagined slight by holding up Sora’s keyblade, and Sora’s eyes widen: when had he picked that up?
“So that’s what this is.” He holds it up, high, examining it. Sora lunges forwards, eyes narrowed, and frowns.
“Hey, give that back!”
But Riku holds it up higher, much higher than Sora’s shorter arms can reach, and Sora ends up pressed against him as he tries to reach his keyblade. They are close enough that their breaths mingle in the cool air, but it is not an intimate closeness. It is a spark of cruelty that Sora has not known Riku to possess before, far different to his usual taunting.
Riku throws it to the side, the sound of metal clattering across concrete, and shouts “catch!”
Sora summons it back to his hand, and shakes his head to be rid of the memory of the look in Riku’s eyes.
“So, you’re coming with us now, right? We said we’d stick together, and we’ve got this awesome rocket. Oh wait till you see it, Riku, you’ll love it!”
Something in Riku relaxes at the words, but whatever guard he has lowered flares right back up when Donald stamps his foot hard on the ground.
“No, he can’t come with us!”
“What?!” Sora’s head whips around so quickly that his hair smacks Riku in the face.
“Forget it, Sora!”
“Oh come on. He’s my friend.”
Sora stares down Donald with the best glare he can muster, determined to have his way in this of all things. He feels a tug in his chest, an echo of that emptiness, and then cold rushes over him before Goofy puts a hand back on his shoulder. Sora looks up, confused.
The space where Riku was stood is empty; the hairs on his arms raise at the loss of the warmth and familiarity of Riku standing beside him. He has spent so long with Riku by his side, belonging there in the space beside him, that he feels the loss keenly.
“He’s gone.” Goofy’s voice cuts through the loneliness, the jarring reality, and Sora feels his shoulder’s slump.
Elsewhere, Maleficent twists and turns the entire encounter until Riku tastes the bitterness like ash in his mouth.
“It is as I warned you. While you toiled away, trying to find the boy you love, he simply moved on and replaced you with new companions. And you were so certain that your little fruit would bind you. You’re better off without that wretched boy and the imagined bond a sweet treat has given you.”
Riku shakes his head almost imperceptibly, but Maleficent catches it and swiftly moves her staff in an arc. The surroundings change, and then he is watching Sora through a window. Something in his chest lodges at seeing Sora so carefree and happy, despite Riku disappearing minutes earlier.
Something sour takes root, works its way into his heart and poisons the glow forged there by the paopu. Sora frowns, feeling the emptiness inside him flare once more, but when he turns to look out of the window the street is empty, and he knows within his heart that Riku is long gone.
Monstro is an ill-fated mess waiting to happen.
Sora is tired, and Sora is sick of trying to navigate himself around the damned whale. Even his cheerful, sunny disposition is being beaten down by trying three different exits and ending up in the same room, and then trying to get to the mouth by going up and ending up in a stomach. It’s confusing, and his patience is running low. So, when that emptiness he has forgotten is there disappears, and Riku’s voice cuts through his impatience like a knife, Sora is ready to lose it.
“I thought you liked games, Sora? Or are you too cool to play them, now that you have the keyblade?” Riku speaks from the ledge above, the one Sora has been trying to reach for hours now, but the lightness in his chest improves his mood, and he smiles up at boy whose eyes still make his heart skip a beat.
“Riku? Wh-what are you doing here?”
“Just playing with Pinocchio.” His words are light, too light, and Sora sees the attempt at brevity when it comes.
“You know what I mean. You, you just left in Traverse town. Did you find Kairi?”
“Yeah well… catch me, and maybe I’ll tell you what I know.”
Sora stamps his foot, frustrated enough without having to traipse after Riku in this damned giant beast, but Riku only smirks.
“Come on! Don’t make me chase you!”
Riku laughs, but it echoes through the chamber, and before Sora can stop him he grabs Pinocchio by the wrist and drags the boy off in a clatter of wooden limbs.
But Maleficent lurks in the chamber beyond, and Riku huffs a breath at her appearance. He is tired of seeing her at the end of his interactions with Sora; is he not allowed privacy?
“Why do you still care about that boy? He has deserted you.”
Riku clenches his fists, sick of her prattling on already, and shakes his head.
“I’m bound to him, now. It might have been a mistake, but I am.” And there is a part of him that aches with every word, that remembers stolen kisses that final day on the beach, the fulfilment of all he had ever really wanted on that island. He had torn down a wall that had existed the moment he realised he loved Sora, only for Sora to all but forget about him in the aftermath.
“I was just messing with him.”
“Of course you were.” Maleficent arches one delicate, unimpressed brow, before she disappears into the darkness of a tunnel. Riku watches her go, and feels his fingers scrape at his chest of their own volition. His nails have not been trimmed, and the skin breaks with the strength of his scratch. He is trying to pull out whatever it is that causes the feeling of emptiness, the ache and the pain whenever he thinks of Sora, but nothing works, and he sees spots of blood through the yellow shirt.
With a disgusted sigh, Riku throws the puppet to the floor, no longer interested. Sora runs through the cavern entrance as Riku opens the dark portal, and the last thing he sees in the chamber is Sora’s eyes locking with his own.
There is betrayal in those sky blue depths, and it makes him sick.
Sora wakes up vomiting on the way to Neverland, and it feels as though the heart in his chest is tainted with corruption.
He crawls his way to the bathroom, the gummi ship sailing smoothly for once, and rests his head against the white plastic seat until another wave rolls over him. He lunges to place his head in the bowl, knowing he will not appreciate cleaning it up in the morning if he misses, and expunges the contents of his stomach with a groan so loud that it wakes up Donald.
The duck has the light on in seconds, though his stave rests by his hip, and knowing he can do little else he sits on the floor beside Sora as he recoils against the waves of darkness. A feathered hand gently rubs circles on his back, green cura magic seeping into him, but it cannot fight the darkness that is not really inside of him.
Sora knows immediately why this is happening. The storm inside his dreams has increased over the last few days, and he knows it is because Riku is slipping further into the darkness. He has done something, accepted some kind of deal, or perhaps he has simply given in to that which has always been in his heart.
Sora sends a prayer to any and all deities out there, to Hades or Zeus or Triton, to the god Aladdin had worshipped or the one Jane had mentioned in the Jungle, for any of them to please save his friend. He does not know what a life without Riku entails, and he does not intend to start now.
If Monstro was the veritable mess, Neverland is where their worlds come crashing down.
The wind is whipping their hair around their faces, and Sora feels the cold on his skin too acutely without a proper coat, but Riku’s voice cuts through it all with its sheer coldness.
“I didn’t think you’d come, Sora. It’s good to see you again.” Except, Sora feels that Riku’s voice hardly reflects that: it is harder than a steel blade cutting through his ribs, and as Riku stares down at him from above his eyes glint in the low light, and there is a darkness there that has never been present before.
The breath escapes him in a gasp, and he is suddenly terrified for Donald and Goofy, because whatever stands up on the second level of the ship’s bridge, it is not Riku.
“Where are Donald and Goofy?”
Except what is up on the bridge is Riku, overcome by jealousy and darkness, and those words are the wrong ones to come out of Sora’s mouth. He sneers.
“Are they that important to you? More important than old friends? Instead of worrying about them, you should be asking about her.” Riku steps aside, and Sora nearly falls to his knees.
Because her behind Riku is Kairi. But instead of looking like Kairi, who would inevitably be a flurry of indignation and rage at how her two best friends are acting like total assholes, she simply is. Her legs are crossed, her arms folded delicately in her lap, but there is no life in her pointed face. Her brow is relaxed, her mouth open slightly, and her eyes stare at the floor without focus. She is a shell of red and purple and too-pale skin, and Sora panics.
“Kairi! Wh-what happened to her?”
“While you were off goofing around, I finally found her.”
Sora bolts forwards, ready to jump up the railing if he has to, but he is caught around the waist by a heartless that flings him to the floor like a sack of flour, and realisation hits him harder than a punch to the gut.
“Riku, no. You can’t do this; you can’t let them in!” The older boy scoffs, confident in the way that had always attracted Sora, but the dark undertone sends chills along his spine.
“I have nothing to fear, Sora. They obey me now.”
“At what cost, Riku! You’re being stupid! Sooner or later, they’ll swallow your heart!”
Another scoff, and Sora bolts forwards again, but the sword-wielding heartless holds him back at the tiniest tilt of Riku’s head. He wants to jump up there and hit him, beat his chest with his fists until Riku comes back. But with Smee and Hook watching on, Sora cannot move without fear of a blade to the chest.
“Not a chance, Sora. My heart is too strong.”
“You idiot! This is proof that it isn’t! Riku, please. You promised me I wouldn’t lose you, that the paopu fruit would bind us so we would always come back to each other. Please, come back.”
If there is something that flickers in Riku’s eyes at those words, Sora cannot see it from where he stands. He cannot see Riku’s brief hesitation, cannot feel the surge of darkness at Riku’s back as Maleficent watches on though she is not visible. And Riku cannot give in, cannot prove the witch right when Sora has not bothered to care before now. He will not surrender when Sora has been gallivanting around the worlds without a care for him or Kairi.
Their gaze does not break, the tension between them does not swell, when Riku raises a hand in command. Sora is forced to look away first as a dark and wicked figure rises from the ground beside him, and Sora can feel the corruption of himself as it forms and stares down at him.
Not a word passes between them, when the ground beneath Sora’s feet disappears, and the younger boy falls down into the underbelly of the ship.
A chill passes over Riku as his heart hammers in his chest, but it is soothed by soft waves of darkness cooing at him, making him feel stronger for the sacrifice. He stares at the trap door for what feels like hours, and feels as though his heart has leapt into the hole with Sora. His chest aches, the power of the paopu urging him after it, but Riku clamps it down.
And whatever bond the paopu has set up between them, the strong string that binds them and thrums with every step the other takes, it all but snaps the moment that Riku steps into the portal with Kairi hours later. It twists and aches and burns when one betrays the other, setting the anti-Sora on the boy he is supposed to love.
He will not yield to pleading eyes, when those eyes have passed over him for far too long.
Sora feels the moment that Maleficent releases the untapped power inside Riku, releases Ansem from the protected shell inside Riku’s heart. He feels it, because whatever bond has been living between them since they shared the paopu flares to life in a shock of gold and silver that makes Sora nearly fall out of his bed on the gummi ship. It reaches out with an urgency that has Sora at the ship controls before he is even fully awake, increasing the acceleration towards Hollow Bastion.
And when they land it eggs him on further, pushes him until he reaches the top of the ice and the waterfall to find Riku trying to kill someone, a beast thrice his size but easily beaten when Riku is using the darkness so easily. He stops at the sight of Sora, lowering the keyblade he is wielding until it disappears. Sora can only walk towards him in silence, his expression almost broken at the sight of his friend.
“I was wondering when you’d show up. We’ve always been rivals, haven’t we?” And standing opposite each other on the ledge, it certainly feels true. But Sora stares him down with sadness in his eyes, and something inside Riku’s heart yields. He pulls himself together, to keep the fight going, because he will not give in to sky blue eyes and a bond forged by a damned fruit.
“You’ve always pushed me, as I’ve always pushed you.”
Sora shakes his head, and in that moment he seems older. He is weary and tired, and his heart tries to cocoon what is left of Riku in the man before him. The darkness is stronger, however, and Sora cannot save it.
“No, Riku. We’re not rivals. We’re best friends. You’ve always been my best friend, and I’ve always been yours.”
Riku scoffs at him derisively.
“We were rivals, Sora.”
“We were friends. And somewhere down the line, you loved me. And I think I loved you too.”
Riku moves his hand violently as he stamps a foot, and the keyblade reappears. Sora cannot look at it, cannot make himself face the embodiment of all the darkness inside Riku.
“No. It ends here, Sora. There can’t be two Keyblade masters.”
“What are you talking about?” Something in Sora still seems defeated, still does not believe that the Riku before him is entirely gone.
“No? You soon will. Let the Keyblade choose its true master.” And then Riku raises a hand to try and take the keyblade for himself, but the part of Sora that loves Riku will not give it up. The Keyblade shakes and vibrates in Sora’s hand, but it does not yield to the power Riku holds until Riku himself can summon the darkness required to take it. It will not come, because a part of Riku's heart still yields to Sora, is still weakened at the sight of eyes the colour of the sky.
The part of him that hesitates, the part that loves Sora and does not wish to hurt him: that is the part that Riku clamps down as he shouts the cruellest words that will ever leave his lips.
“As if I would ever love you. Sharing that paopu with you was a mistake! I should never have tied myself to something so weak!” The words lance through both of their hearts. The last bit of light in Riku is smothered by the darkness as Sora’s heart breaks with the blow of those words, and the keyblade soars across the distance between them to land firmly in Riku’s outstretched hand.
Riku throws the wooden sword at Sora’s feet with an arrogant smirk that is not Riku’s, and Sora watches him go helplessly.
"Oh will you just give up already?”
“No, not without Kairi.”
“Then the darkness will destroy you.” And when Riku’s outfit changes, Sora belatedly thinks that if the moment were not so serious he would start laughing, because if there was any indication that it was not truly Riku before him, it would be Riku wearing a fucking skirt.
So Sora stands there, unwilling to defend himself when Riku gets angrier. He is certain, absolutely certain, that if there is a shred of light inside Riku then he will not attack him. But Sora’s test fails when Goofy blocks the attack long before the darkness reaches Sora, and so Sora is forced to reach the conclusion that Riku is gone.
“How do you really think you’re going to fight me?”
“With my heart.” Sora doesn’t even flinch at Riku’s laugh.
“What good will that weak little thing do for you?”
“My heart may be weak, Riku, but it’s not alone. It’s become a part of your heart, as yours has become a part of mine. And it’s the same with all the new friends that I have made. I don’t need the keyblade: my friends are my power!”
Miraculously, the keyblade in Riku’s hand flies back into Sora’s as Riku's heart hesitates at his words, and the young boy nearly falls backwards with the force of the light emitting from the metal weapon. It is warm to the touch.
“Now, give me back my friend!”
The battle is rough and taxing. Sora does not wish to hurt Riku, whilst Riku is consumed with enough rage that killing Sora is a definite possibility. But above all, Kairi must be saved. They had all promised, as children, to never let anyone else come between them, but they are disjointed and broken from one another. In the face of the boy he loves versus the girl who is almost a sister, Sora is forced to make a decision. And despite the paopu, and the ache for Riku that thrums in his chest, Sora chooses Kairi. She is the innocent party, the one who does not deserve to be pulled between the two boys she loves most in the world.
Sora finally gets the upper hand: he hooks the edge of his keyblade under the hooked arch of Riku’s, halfway down the blade, and yanks it towards him with all of his strength. The blade flies out of Riku’s hand and, before he can summon it back, Sora smacks him viciously in the throat with the flat of his own keyblade. Riku stumbles at the sudden pain, and Sora kicks his legs out from under him before following him to topple down to the floor.
The battle ends with Sora straddled over Riku, keyblade pressed to his throat to keep him on the floor. He releases it carefully, as the shadows in Riku’s eyes begin to clear, and grabs two fistfuls of the sinewy fabric on his chest. Sora lifts him briefly before slamming him back to the floor, and the desperation that seeps into his voice is almost embarrassing.
“There! Are you done now? Can you be normal again? Can you-“ Sora trails off for a moment, before he lifts and slams Riku back again. His voice cracks, and a tear falls down his cheek. “Can you come home? I want you back, I want Riku back again. Give him back!”
Sora collapses, his head resting on Riku’s chest as he sobs, and so he does not see Riku in those aquamarine depths. He does not see Riku’s face of despair as the weight of all he has done falls down onto him, nor does he see how Riku’s hand briefly lifts to press onto his back in comfort.
The part of Riku that panics manages to summon the strength to push Sora off of him, and that terrible skirt is gone and he looks normal again. But Riku stares at him in horror, before he turns on his heel and flees.
Sora starts, to go after him and make sure he is him, but by the time he realises which direction the silver haired boy has gone, Riku is nowhere to be seen.
“You are weak.”
Riku turns to face the hooded figure behind him, a sheen of sweat on his face and bile dribbling down to his chin, and the figure laughs.
“I cannot kill him.”
“Because his heart was stronger than yours.”
“No, because he-“
Riku is cut off by the waving of one hand, and he clenches his fists tightly.
“Your heart is a liability, for all that it yields to pleading eyes. However, you can become stronger. You showed no fear in stepping through the door to darkness. Why should this be different? Plunge deeper into darkness, and your heart will grow stronger. You will not yield.”
“What should I do?” There is resignation in his voice, a desperation to save Kairi and prove himself the stronger beating out the indignant hammering of his heart at the thought of Sora.
“It’s really quite simple. Open yourself to the darkness.” And the figure says it as if it should be so easy, so simple to do something so terrifying. “Let your heart, your being, become darkness itself. A dark heart will not surrender so easily.”
And he does it.
Sora feels the moment that Riku opens up his heart to darkness. He feels it keenly in his chest when the last barrier of light around Riku’s heart buckles under the weight of the dark creature trying to take over him. He can detect the short and brief struggle before Riku is swallowed up by Ansem’s impatience.
The pulling of the paopu to the rooms beyond disappears entirely, and Sora’s breath catches in his throat at the absence of the tug that has lived in his heart for so long. He starts to hyperventilate, panic setting in to his bones as Donald places a hand on his arm in worry.
“He’s… he’s gone.”
He has no problem with plunging the keyblade into his chest, an hour later, if it means he can save at least one of his friends.
Lost somewhere in the between, a blond boy awakens with a curious sensation in his chest. His skin is pallid, and there is no pulse in his wrist: he is dimly aware that this should not be possible.
He stares out across the darkness, flashes of silver and blue and brown and red running across his mind. Something echoes inside of him, a weak and dim pull in a direction he cannot ascertain due to the total darkness surrounding him. It is an echo of something he is vaguely aware should be much stronger, and he presses a hand to his chest to try to grab at it. He touches nothing but a chest that does not vibrate with a heartbeat, and his cold fingers trail a line across where his heart should be before they fall to his side.
The boy tries to rise, only to find his knees buckle beneath him. He becomes aware of his body aching, and his breathing does not quite feel right. It should not come out in a grating sound, but he is not sure how to stop it.
Slowly, he pushes himself to his knees, and begins to crawl.
The waterway is dark and dreary, but it is also the only place in Traverse Town that Sora feels comfortable leaving Kairi. The girl, adaptable and eternally optimistic, feels right at home in the tunnels that are barely one step above sewers, and Sora has seen her frequently taking tea with Merlin and giggling enthusiastically at his stories.
His chest aches. Kairi seems so happy despite their circumstances, and it almost makes him wish he'd been able to love her. Riku's words from their battle still cut deeper than anything the keyblade had inflicted, and if he closes his eyes he can still hear that awful "sharing that paopu with you was a mistake! I should never have tied myself to someone so weak!"
It rings between his ears every hour. His eyes ache and burn with every moment he thinks back to Hollow Bastion, to the sad reality that his best friend is gone. Taken, possessed by the man who called himself Ansem.
Sora is haphazardly, and aggressively, throwing stones into the water from an embankment when Kairi approaches, an hour before they are due to chase after Ansem.
"Are you okay?"
"-should never have tied myself to something so weak!"
Sora shakes his head. No, he feels half-whole in a way he did not before, and his best friend has just tried to kill him.
"No. I miss him, and he... he might never be coming back." Kairi's hand falls to his shoulder, a gentle weight that grounds him, and Sora leans into her touch. Her arm moves to wrap across his shoulders, and the comforting gesture chases away some of the fear in his heart. It doesn't chase away the tears, however, the ones that fall silently when he remembers all that has come before.
"C'mon Sora, you know Riku is stronger than him. Riku stopped him from attacking us; he’s in there somewhere. And he's fighting to come back to you."
"How can you know that?" And Sora looks at her, with those big blue eyes of his all filled with unshed tears, and Kairi feels her heart break for them. These are her boys, her best friends, and it kills her to see them so disconnected from one another.
"Because you are the single most important thing in Riku's world. You might not love him yet, not as deeply as you can, but he loves you. He would do anything not to see you hurt."
Sora scowls.
"I think him trying to kill me to steal your heart kinda shows that might not be true."
Kairi wants to smack him upside his head, so frustrated she is at seeing her cheerful Sora looking so down. She'd expect this from Riku, but never Sora.
"That wasn't him. He gave in to the darkness, and that's sad, but that witch took his love for you and twisted it, Sora. And he- he is going to regret it for the rest of his life, I know it. No matter how deep the darkness, a light shines within." Kairi's words are sad as her hands run soothing circles across his back, and Sora tightens his fists, realisation dawning in his face.
"You're right, Kairi. I have to save him. I won't lose him to the darkness! If he's in there, I'll save him!" The change is rapid: Sora straightens, full of conviction and certainty, and Kairi giggles. “Our hearts are always connected!”
"There we go. Now, I came out here to give you this." She hands him the charm she has made, in the shape of a paopu fruit, and Sora looks at it quizzically.
"What is it?" Sora double takes when he realises Kairi has drawn all of their faces on it. Kairi is on the top most point, the center, with Riku and Sora on her left and right respectively. He wonders if that was intentional symbolism.
"It's my lucky charm! So be sure to bring it back to me!" She points at his chest, giving him a playful push with her forefinger. "As long as you have it, we're linked like the paopu. So you have to bring it back."
"I will, I promise!"
Sora holds it gently between his fingers, as though it were made of fragile paper. Kairi holds her hands out to take Sora's own, holding the charm and his hand between her palms. She looks at him sincerely, her eyes wide with fear and hope lurking in them, and her hands are warm around his own.
"Bring him home, Sora. Preferably in one piece, but bring him home."
"Sora, Kairi… I’m sorry.”
He hears it in a dream, so vividly that he jolts awake as though the words were spoken in his ear. Sora sits upright in the uncomfortable bed on the gummi ship, red blankets pinned to his hips, and looks around the cabin.
“Riku?”
Something kindles inside of his heart, a soft glow-worm that wedges its way under a flap and burrows in deep. Several minutes pass before somewhere out there, wherever he is, Riku searches inside his own heart for a hint of Sora, and Sora feels it. His body warms with a hope that is not his own, a relief that is so palpable it fills the cabin, and Sora pushes back gently in the hope that Riku can respond.
He does not, but Sora feels his body come alive with determination that is both his own and Riku’s, and he lays his head back to the pillow with a glow he has not felt in a long time.
He has done this before.
Stood on the opposite side of Riku, hand outstretched and desperate to reach the boy on the other side. But this time, Sora’s hand cannot physically pass through the door, just as Riku’s cannot either. Sora stares at Riku with tears in his eyes even as Riku smiles hopefully at him, an encouraging grin on his face that is so out of place considering recent events.
“Come on, Sora. Together we can do this!”
“Are you insane? With you on the other side?!”
And then the king is there, and Sora can hardly disobey a king, but his heart all but claws its way out his chest in desperation at seeing Riku on the other side of the door. And it is Riku, the one he’d sat on a beach with and kissed until the sun was setting and the tide was sweeping in, the one who has loved him for half his life. And Sora is expected to let him be locked in the darkness?
“Don’t worry! There will always be a door to the light.”
“Sora, you can trust King Mickey!” Goofy says it with all earnestness, but Sora still looks helplessly at Riku, whose fingertips are inches away from his own.
“Sora, now. They’re coming!”
Sora is once again forced to choose between Riku and everyone else. One hand drops from the door as he stares into aquamarine eyes, and Riku shakes his head vehemently.
“Don’t you dare, Sora. Close the door.”
Sora refuses to look at him, squeezes his eyes shut tightly as he pushes against the door half-heartedly with his shoulder. It rather feels as though most of the work is being done by Riku, but Sora is ultimately good underneath the grief, and so he forces himself to close the door. Riku looks down at him one more time, and Sora opens his eyes to get one last glimpse of his friend through the crack in the door.
“I’ll find you again. I promise.”
Sora nods, and then the door is sealed.
Sora will remember nothing of Castle Oblivion. But somewhere in there, when faced with the Riku Replica, there was a part of him that knew it wasn’t the real Riku. A part of him felt intricately connected to a Riku who was present somewhere else in the castle, but Sora will never understand why when he’d shared the paopu with Namine.
Didn’t he?
And Riku will remember bursting into a room only to be faced with the gutting sight of Sora floating in a white pod, doomed to sleep until Namine can undo the mess she has made.
He remembers everything, but not for long.
Three months pass, and Riku tears at the raggedy mess that he dares to call his hair as he paces back and forth in the underground laboratory. Namine sits at the computer, her fingers tapping away at the keys, providing the only sound in the room outside of the dim hum that Sora’s pod emits.
There are tears in his eyes, both from the pain of his emotions and the grip he has on his hair, but Namine ignores them. She has learned that Riku himself is the only one who can work through his emotions when he is like this, and sooner or later he will finish pacing and leave the room with his leather coat flapping behind him.
She will admit, sometimes, that she is impressed with how much Riku has managed to retain, despite her having to break apart the memory of Sora and put it back together again. Unlike others, Riku has never truly forgotten what Sora looks like, has not forgotten the sound of laughter on a summer breeze like so many others have. There are still significant holes in his memory, but Riku remembers more than anyone. Whether it is because of his physical proximity to Sora’s body, or because of the paopu they had shared so long ago, Namine does not know.
Then, out of nowhere, Riku collapses against the pod. His legs splay out on the floor as his back sags against the pod, and gloveless hands claw at his face in sadness and fury. Namine looks up from the computer, curious.
His hands move up his face to grab at his hair strands, his palms covering his eyes, and Riku lets out a groan that is half a frustrated scream. Namine watches, alarmed but unwilling to disturb him.
Riku can remember everything and nothing. He knows that he spent an afternoon kissing Sora on a beach, but he cannot remember doing so. He knows they shared a paopu, but cannot remember the act of sharing. Riku is certain without a shadow of a doubt that he loves Sora, and he can feel that, but he cannot remember ever coming to the realisation. Riku knows that Sora’s smile is bright enough to vanquish darkness, that his laugh is infectious and his eternal optimism amazing and frustrating in equal measures, but he cannot remember it.
Riku knows he is in love with sky-blue eyes and tanned skin, with hair so brown and wild it could not be tamed, but he can barely remember what Sora looks like. He knows that his dark heart surrendered to sky-blue eyes and a paopu fruit, but he cannot remember anything not shrouded in darkness. It is like a flicker of something in his periphery: he remembers it all when he does not think if it all. Sora is there in all of his glory, until Riku tries to look, and then the boy disappears through his fingers like sand and water.
Even worse, whilst his heart drags him desperately towards the pod in the centre of the room with a bond he cannot remember forging, to a boy he cannot remember loving, there is another corner that yearns to drag him to someone else. Sora’s nobody, the boy he has not seen but could find in an instant if he followed the tiny echo at the back of his heart. On the rare nights that he dreams, he either dreams memories of Sora that are long gone by morning, or he sees flashes of blond and black and silver.
And to add to it all, one thing he knows for certain is that he had tried, and nearly succeeded, in killing the boy he loves. That he can recall in spectacular detail: Namine need not worry about any gaps in his memory there. He remembers telling Sora that sharing the paopu was a mistake, the he could never love a heart as weak as the brunet's. It is this memory above all else that summons the tears to his eyes, and the regret in his chest is a gaping maw that will not close for as long as he lives.
But still he cannot see it.
Namine comes into view, having left her seat the moment she realises that Riku’s chest is wracked with sobs, and the young girl bends her knees to be at his level with one hand pressed gently on his shoulder. She is painfully aware of the fact that she is one of only two people who will ever get to see Riku fall apart like this: the other lies asleep behind them, ignorant to it all.
“Why? Why can’t I remember? Why do I know these things, but I can’t remember?” Riku looks at his hands desperately, hoping to find an answer somewhere, but Namine shakes her head.
“You remember more than most. And that is enough to save him.” Her voice is gentle, soft, but Riku finds no comfort in it. Namine squeezes his shoulder tenderly, before she stands to her full height and leaves the room. She has no part in this grief, and her role in causing it is enough to make her feel unwelcome to witness Riku’s heartache. Only one boy ever had the right to see it.
Without her there, the room is almost utterly silent. The hum of the pod echoes around the room, and the small vibration it produces runs along Riku’s spine and through his fingertips. It is clean and white, not too dissimilar to the sound he expects there to be in a hospital at night. Sterile silence and the hum of a machine. He can hear his own breathing, and the sound of his own heart hammering in his chest. He does not try to stop the tears from falling, when he thinks of his friend behind the opaque pod.
And there, back pressed against the glass that separates him from the boy he loves, Riku breaks.