Disclaimer- I don't own Kingdom Hearts.
Author's Note- This is four chapters long, plus an epilogue. Second part is about half written, so it'll probably be posted in the next month.
This is a gen-fic. No pairings, even though I do love slash, and I'm finding SoKai more appealing everyday. Post KH2, AU after that because it totally ignores 3D
Completely unbeta'd because it's been sitting in my files for months, and I just want to get it posted.
Enjoy, and please review.
After the Dream
Part I
Kairi : Lucky
Coming home isn't quite like we thought it would be.
Being able to rest isn't as much of a relief as it should be. Seeing our friends and family again, being with the people who we had left behind, it isn't heartwarming like I thought it would be. The very first reunions, when we first saw our parents again for the first time in so long, even that wasn't as happy as I had imagined it.
Slowly, we're settling back into the lives that we lived before we left, although it's taking far longer than any of us expected it to. We thought that we would come home, and that nothing would have changed while we weren't there.
That was foolish of us, naive and unlike the way that the people who we are now would think. It would have been too easy for nothing to have changed, and nothing can ever be easy for us.
Nothing quite feels right.
It feels like we're too old for this, and at the same time it feels like we're too young to even understand. Our lives don't fit us as well as they used to, which seems impossible, but it's true. Our friends, they seem young and shockingly innocent. They're blind to everything that we now know.
All of us, we thought that things would just fall back into place the way that they were.
It's been a month now.
Nothing's the way that it used to be, and everything has changed.
Riku, he was supposed to get better when we came home. The cracks and broken pieces of him left over from the Darkness' influence were supposed to go back to the way they were before. He was supposed to be whole again, but that didn't happen. He's still broken, and sometimes I think that he's hurting even more than he did when we were still away from home.
It's almost worse with Sora. He's not the same anymore, even if he still smiles like there's nothing wrong. Even if he can't quite see it, the person he used to be is gone. He thinks that he's the same person he used to be, and he doesn't understand why all of his old friends look at him strangely when his smile doesn't quite reach his eyes.
Being away from home, away from everything that we knew, it's changed us all. We've grown up while we were away, and we aren't the same people.
We fit together - us three - but nothing else does anymore.
After Donald, Goofy and Mickey go back to their own world, the three of them are left alone again on the beach, and something changes.
Kairi starts to cry, and even she isn't quite sure that they're entirely from happiness. Sora reaches forward, pulls her into a hug, and that just makes things break a little bit more as they both notice that they don't quite fit together as well as they did, and that Sora's arms aren't nearly as skinny and boy-ish as they were when they all had first left.
Riku stands to the side nearby and looks nervous, like he wants to pinch himself to make sure that it isn't just a dream. When Kairi steps away from Sora, she hurls herself at Riku, hugs him, and then pulls Sora close with one arm, holding them both as she cries and smiles at the same time.
"You're home," she says disbelievingly, and then she starts to sob.
Sora grins at her, and she pretends that she can't see it cracking. "We are!"
Kairi looks up at Riku, and he forces a stiff smile for her. (She ignores the dark shadow it has, and just appreciates that they're with her again.)
He nods once, and the shadow is briefly swept away when he speaks, "We're back."
They can't stay on the beach forever, even if they (might) want to.
They go to Sora's home first, since it's closest, where his parents immediately start to cry, and sweep him into a crushing hug. His mother clings to him as his father calls Kairi and Riku's parents, telling them to come see all their children again.
The night runs late, filled with crying, coffee, and questions that none of them want to, or know how to answer. It's loud, boisterous, and when Kairi laughs there's a barely noticeable hint of hysteria underneath. It would have gone on until morning, more questions and more laughter, and it only ends when the children say that they're tired, which is true, but is more an excuse for them to escape the choking atmosphere of affection that overwhelms them.
Riku and Sora say goodbye to Kairi, and they agree to meet on the play island, by the paopu tree, whenever they can find a free minute. They know that they have things to discuss: What to tell (if anything), and what to keep secret (what not to). What they should say about everything that happened.
That night after everyone is sleeping soundly, by only the light of the moon and stars, Kairi slips out of bed, and unearths an empty shoebox from her dresser.
She walks back to her bed, careful not to let any floorboards creak under her feet, and she takes the small, handmade book on her night table, places it in the box, and returns the lid to keep it from being seen by curious eyes. She shoves it into the back of her closet, hides it, hides it away from prying, watching eyes.
She closes the closet door firmly, winces at the loud click of the latch, and turns away from the door and the box hidden inside.
She returns to bed, and when Kairi closes her eyes, she realizes that she feels a little lighter than she had. (A part of her itches for the familiar book that she kept on her nighttable, but she tells herself that she doesn't need it now, that everything will be alright.)
She doesn't need it anymore. Not now that they're back. She won't be alone anymore, won't allow herself to be left behind again.
She doesn't need it, she reassures herself.
Everything will be alright.
They don't get a chance to meet for a week, Sora and Riku too busy with questions, hugs and people who are unwilling to let them out of their sights.
It's late afternoon by the time she finds a free minute inbetween questions from her parents, and old friends visiting with even more questions that she sometimes doesn't know how to answer. Sora called her early that morning, told her to meet them in the afternoon on the island, by the tree. It was a short call, ended abruptly when his mother called him to breakfast, which made Kairi's lips quirk in a smile at Sora's hastled tone.
Riku's the first one to get there, already there when she arrives. He's sitting in the paopu tree looking out at the sea, deep in thought. He looks up when he hears her approach, and she pretends that the intensity of his gaze isn't unnerving at all.
He looks like he's been there for a very long time. He looks dead-tired, and nearly asleep as he sits in the tree with half closed eyes. He has dark circles under his eyes and stifles yawns almost every other minute. She comments on his exhaustion, and he reluctantly admits that he's been there since early that morning. (He doesn't tell her that he's been awake since a nightmare woke him up at an hour too early to even be considered morning after barely an hour of sleep.)
They wait, and Sora doesn't show up for a while. When he does, he's dressed in the same outfit that he left Destiny Islands in. Even if it fits a little too snug, the shorts a little too short, they all recognize it for what it is, and the memories attached hit them all with a wave of nostalgia.
It's not until she looks at her own clothing that she realizes that they're all dressed the way that they were when they left. She tugs on the edge of her shirt self consciously, suddenly feeling like her clothes are too small, the moment a little too close to the memory that's fresh in her mind.
Riku seems the most uncomfortable, his jeans are a little too short, the shirt a bit too tight, all of it looking like it should belong to someone else. They look out of place, like they're just trying on costumes that are the wrong size.
"Well this feels like deja vu," Sora quips with a brittle smile, and the tense atmosphere breaks as they all laugh nervously.
Kairi offers him a hesitant smile, and Riku offers him a hand, pulls him onto the tree with ease. He sits between them, and puts a hand on each of their shoulders, as if to hold them there in that moment.
For a while, they just sit in the paopu tree together, looking out at the ocean and feeling oddly reminiscent.
The legend of the paopu fruit must still hold some attraction, when they decide to share one, all three of them together. Sora's the one who suggests it, which isn't surprising since it's such a Sora-like thing to do.
He jumps up, scrambling onto the branch so he's standing, in a move that makes Riku flinch back in surprise, and he reaches up on his toes. Kairi giggles as he wobbles, and Riku sighs and grabs onto his legs to keep the boy from falling.
He picks a paopu fruit from the closest branch he can touch, just reaches out at random, pulls down a fruit along with a handful of leaves, and then he hands it to Kairi to keep it safe while he climbs back down with Riku's help.
She turns the fruit over in her hands, and a frown forms between her eyebrows. She'd imagined this before, imagined it with both Riku and Sora, at different times in her childhood, and the moment isn't much like she pictured.
Riku reaches over Sora, and takes it from her while she's still lost in thought. When she looks at him in confusion, he smirks and smoothly opens the blade of a tiny pocket knife. The motion makes her feel nervous for some reason, as he slices off three equal pieces of star-shaped fruit, handing them off for Sora to place on one of the leaves he pulled down with the paopu. (She wonders why he feels like he needs a weapon, now, when they're home and safe.)
He hands Sora another piece which he in turn passes to Kairi, and Sora takes another for himself off of the leaf. He grins at them both, and asks, "On three?"
Kairi grins back, finding his smile infectious, and even Riku's lips curve up at the corners in the most of a smile he'd give. "One," she says as she brings the slice close to her mouth.
Riku's next, he puts down the knife for the moment, and Kairi winces as the sun glints blindingly off the sharp blade. (She wonders why, why he can't feel safe, why he still feels nervous.) His eyes flick to her, and the shadow in them makes her shiver. It clashes with the bright, star shaped fruit, but then so does he. "Two."
Sora finishes the countdown, brings the fruit to lips as he speaks, "Three!"
Kairi bites down on her piece, and watches the others do the same. She has juice running down her fingers, and she doesn't even care how messy and impolite it is to just lick it off. Doesn't care, even though she knows that her mother would be horrified at her actions, doesn't care as she smiles happily. When Sora reaches for her hand, his own is sticky with fruit juice, and very warm. With his other, he takes Riku's hand even though the silver haired boy immediately tries to pull it away.
He smiles at them each in turn, and says, "Our destinies are intertwined now."
Riku snorts softly at that, lost faith in the legend around the same time he stopped believing in the tooth fairy or Santa. Sora shouts, and tackles him into the sand.
The hand that Sora was holding feels cold now, but her heart feels warm as she hears Sora yelp, "You're stuck with us now, you big jerk! We're never going to be away from each other again!"
They roughhouse in the sand, laughing as they playfully fight with each other just like they used to, and Kairi watches their antics with an indulging smile.
No, the moment wasn't like she had thought it would be. But she thinks that this way, it might have been better.
They sit in the sun, and watch it set until they hear Kairi's parents start to call her home that evening, and they part ways for the night, exchanging smiles and tight hugs.
The boys walk her home, and she's thankful for the extra minutes she gets to have with them. Her parents are waiting, and they tell the others to head home before their parents start to worry, and she notices that Riku's shoulders tense at the reminder, and Sora's smile cracks at the edges.
They leave, with more hugs and a few less smiles than before. The door closes behind them, and Kairi is alone.
She heads up to her room after a quick, uncomfortable dinner with more questions that she doesn't like. She goes to her window, and opens it wide to let in the cool night air and the smell of island flowers.
She gets ready for bed, and dresses in a white nightgown that makes her feel like she's still ten and dreaming of princes.
She kneels down by the open window, and stares up at the bright stars.
There are tears in Kairi's eyes that this time she knows aren't at all from happiness, and she hates that when they start to fall, they don't stop even when she thinks about all the good things in all the worlds. She rests her chin on her arms folded on the window sill, and lets the tears fall in silence.
It takes Kairi a long time to even step away from the window, and even longer to fall asleep.
Kairi dreams of when she was younger. She knows this day, this memory. It was just before they had decided that they wanted to leave, when they were still happy with their perfect world.
She watches herself, Sora, and Riku as they build sandcastles and swim, playing and laughing and smiling together. Her heart throbs in her chest, and she wants to cry.
She knows that they can't ever go back to the way that they were before, because everything changed, and the people on the beach with the innocence,and light are strangers to her now.
Kairi wakes up with her cheeks wet and her eyes stinging, the dream and her memories fresh in her mind. It's early, the sun just starting to rise. She slips out of bed, and walks to the window with quiet footsteps. She kneels down by the window, and watches the sun rise.
Her tears don't stop until long after the sun finishes rising, and she waits by the window and lets the fresh, new warmth dry the dampness on her cheeks.
When Sora and Riku were still gone, and she was alone on the islands, left behind and forgotten, Kairi spent days flipping through all of the photographs from when they were younger. (The memories were her only substitute for them.)
She picked out her favorite pictures of her favorite memories, and placed them in a photo album she put next to her bed, hoping it would make her feel a little less alone.
(It didn't work, and she didn't feel any less lonely whenever she woke up to find that it wasn't just a bad dream, and she really had been left behind.)
The album stayed by her bed the entire time they were gone, and she would flip through it from time to time, when she felt especially alone.
The pictures, bright with cheer and smiling children, made her feel cold inside, as she remembered what wasn't there.
There were two boy-sized holes in her heart, and the pictures only served to make them feel more empty.
Then she would close the book, and carefully return it to it's spot by her bed, where it would stay because she needed it.
The cold feeling always lingered long after the memories faded back to the past.
Another week passes, and she rarely sees Sora or Riku.
When she does, she sees new changes in each of them every time. Changes that she doesn't care for at all.
Sora's smile is starting to crack, just a little bit, but it's there. The cheer in his voice is more forced, less honest or real.
Riku still almost never smiles, and the circles under his eyes get worse every time she sees him. He's always the first on there when they meet at the tree, looking like he'd been there forever. Kairi sometimes wonders if he even sleeps at night, or if he just sits in the tree, or on the beach, awake all night.
She hates that whenever she sees Sora again, the cracks have grown once more. There's something sad and lost hiding underneath, and she'll only ever catch a glimpse before he pulls the edges back to close the crack, holding the pieces together carefully, knowing that if he lets go he'll fall apart.
She wants to hug them both, tell them that everything will be okay, even though as more time passes, she's not so sure that it will be.
The summer seems to pass quickly, whole days passing in the blink of an eye.
She tries to see Sora and Riku more, gets them out of their houses and away from their overbearing, always worried parents. They're just caring, and they know that, but knowing it doesn't make it any easier to put up with non-stop worrying.
Riku's pulling away from the world, even pulling away from Sora and Kairi. He's shutting himself away, talking less and less to the point that he barely says a whole sentence every day. His expression is shuttered, the emotions hiding behind a blank mask that just lets Kairi know how much he's hurting behind it.
Watching Sora is like watching a car crash in slow motion, as he smiles and smiles until it's stretched so thin that she can see the fear and confusion beneath. He laughs and jokes like nothing's changed, but it's just as much of a mask as Riku's blank face is.
It hurts to watch them try to pretend that everything is fine, and she knows that it will only get worse when they stop pretending, and they finally face the bitter truth of the changes they've made.
It makes her wonder what would have happened if they had never decided to leave.
Kairi finds herself spending hours at a time sitting by her window, especially after seeing Sora and Riku. More often than not, she finds that when she looks up at the sky, she stars to cry.
It's difficult to stop the tears, especially since she doesn't even know the reason for them. Most of the time, she'll just sit by the window until they stop of their own accord, and then she'll leave to find something to distract herself from the sadness that weighs heavily in her heart.
When Sora's mask of smiles breaks, he starts to cry. She's there for him like she knows he'd be for her. (She wants to cry with him, wants to grab him, and hug him, and sob with him as they cling to each other for the support that they both need.)
She pulls him close, arms around his shaking shoulders. She rests her chin on the top of his head, and runs a hand over his hair.
"It's so hard," he gasps out between sobs, and Kairi can feel her heart break with the words.
"I know." There's nothing else to say, nothing that she can do to make him feel better, or make any of this better, so she just holds him.
"It wasn't supposed to be this hard."
(No, Kairi thinks. It wasn't. It was supposed to be better.)
"I know," she says, and she's proud of the fact that her voice doesn't falter at all.
He takes a shaking breath, and before another round of sobbing starts he asks, "What changed?" He's not wearing a mask anymore, nothing there but honesty and openness. He's lost and confused, doesn't know where he went wrong and the world fell apart.
She doesn't answer, doesn't have one, and she doesn't think that he even expects one from her. It's not her that he's asking, just a question aimed towards the universe at large, asking why.
And then Kairi knows that she was wrong.
Kairi had thought that she hated the mask of smiles that he had worn most of all. She realizes that she was wrong then, and that she hates the Sora who is in pieces even more.
That night, she feels very cold as she watches the sky.
It's only a matter of time.
It's only a matter of when.
Kairi can see the cracks on Riku's mask, sees the way that she pulls the pieces back together when they start to break. Can see the way he holds the splinters together, the death-grip he holds on them never slipping for even a second, because that would be long enough for it to fall apart.
Sora can see it too, she knows this. When they sit in the paopu tree together, sometimes they'll watch Riku hold his mask together, and their eyes will meet, full of sorrow and helplessness.
They can't help Riku, not the way he is, still using the broken mask as a shield to keep everyone at a careful distance away. He won't let anyone in, not even them. All they can do is watch him struggle and suffer, and wait for the mask to come crumbling down when it inevitably falls to pieces.
But Kairi hates the waiting, hates watching Riku suffer and pretend with his mask. He's getting closer to breaking, the expression looking more strained everyday as it becomes harder and harder to hold his blank face.
At night, when they all go their separate ways, Kairi sits and cries by the window, and asks the sky what she should do.
When there's no reply, she shuts the window, and closes the curtains to block out any sight of the moon or stars.
She doesn't sit by the window that night.
When Riku breaks, it almost goes unnoticed.
It's been happening slowly for some time now, maybe ever since they first came home. Happening slowly, not like Sora who held himself together until he shattered. Riku has been cracking since they came home, breaking a little more every day.
He's fading away. His eyes become more and more empty all the time, and Kairi wonders why it's taken this long to see it.
He's almost completely lost himself now, burying himself in his own mind to protect from the things he doesn't want to face.
What makes Kairi realize just how far it's gone, how lost he is, is when she's sitting by the window in her room, and she sees him sitting on the beach. (Shadows, Darkness clings to him and his mask, but it's Dark enough already that she doesn't notice.)
She goes out into the night, barefoot and dressed in a white nightgown that feels absurdly out of place as she follows him to the beach.
The sand is cool beneath her feet, the feeling of her toes sinking into it as she walks makes her remember running here as a child.
Riku doesn't notice her, not even as she steps up behind him, bare feet whispering on the sand.
He doesn't notice her, not even when she's just a single foot away, standing by his shoulder. Not even when she settles onto the ground next to him, moving as quietly as she can so not to break the peaceful silence.
He does, however, notice when she places a gentle hand on his shoulder.
The reaction is instantanious, something ingrained too deeply to be anything less than instinct. He lashes out, one hand striking her shoulder with a backhand that hits the force of a punch.
(Kairi wonders why she didn't see it before, why is wasn't clear before when it's so glaringly obvious now.)
She's on the ground, in the sand, staring up at Riku as he stares down with empty, dead eyes. For a moment, neither of them move. Then Riku blinks, and some of that frightening blankness clears from his eyes as he flinches.
She reaches out with slim, pale hands, and takes Riku's between her own. "I'm sorry," Kairi says, and she's not quite sure what she's apologizing for. Her shoulder stings, but not nearly as much as knowing how much Riku had faded away without anyone knowing.
He gives her a sardonic look, one edged with bitterness.
She rubs a thumb over his hand and gives him an unconvincing, shaky smile. "It will be alright."
But when she meets Riku's eyes, she knows that he doesn't believe it either.
Kairi comes home late that night, to an empty house she's all alone i.
She goes up to her room and digs the shoe box out of her closet, buried beneath a surprising amount of clutter for just one month to have passed.
With shaking hands, she pulls the lid off and tosses it carelessly onto the floor.
The sight of the photo album makes her heart feel icy cold, bitter and full of resentment.
Her hands tremble as she flips through the pages, oddly gentle for all the anger in her eyes.
This time, the pictures don't make her feel cold. She already feels cold, and the pictures just make her numb.
Kairi's glad that her parents are out at a movie tonight, so there's no one to see her finally break down.
She tears the album in half, and pulls the carefully taped photos off the paper, rips them into pieces as she screams out her sadness in anger.
There's no tears, not tonight.
No sadness now, just anger that has been building up for a long time. Anger at nothing, because she knows that there's no one she can really blame. Anger at everything, for going wrong at every turn. She screams, and throws away the shreds of paper like they're burning, and curls her legs close to her chest as she presses her face to her knees.
She's angry at everything, and most of all she's angry with herself, for not knowing how to fix any of this.
But then the anger is gone as she takes a breath, and turns her head to the window.
The moon is bright and full, the stars twinkling knowingly. "Why?" she asks the sky, even though she's asked it enough times to know that it will never answer.
Kairi sits there for a long time, doesn't move until she hears her parents car in the driveway. Then she stands on legs that somehow manage to support her without collapsing, and she sweeps the torn bits of paper into the garbage with her hands, careful to brush away every last scrap.
She steps back to survey the room, and runs a still-shaking hand through her hair. There's nothing out of place, nothing to prove that she finally broke. She thinks, with a small smile, that maybe she can pretend that it didn't happen.
But the smile falters, and Kairi doesn't know why Sora and Riku like to pretend so much nowadays, when just one fake smile makes her feel hollow.
The next morning, they meet at the tree.
Sora isn't smiling anymore, and Riku still isn't smiling, though now he's dropped the mask.
She's the first one to voice what they all know.
"This isn't the way it was supposed to be."
Sora looks surprised for just a moment, as though he had expected some sort of warning before they all tore down their facades.
Silent tears run down her face as she glances between them. Pieces of a childhood, picked up and put back together in a way that doesn't fit.
Riku shakes his head, eyes still blank, still fading away even as she watches. "No," he confirms, voice oddly gentle for him. "It's not."
Sora looks like he wants to put the mask back on, to have something to hide behind. "It... It hasn't been, for a long time," he admits, however reluctantly, and Kairi considers it a victory that he didn't just go back to hiding.
"Then how can we fix it?" she asks, and regrets it. She doesn't want to know the answer, because that would be acknowledging that they needed fixing.
"We can't," Sora blurts out bitterly, and at the same time, Riku says, "We wait."
And that's it, all their options. Riku's eyes flicker with some strong, sad emotion. "We wait, and see what happens."
Sora nods, and reaches out to clasp one of Riku's, and one of Kairi's hands. "That's all we can do."
Kairi nods past the lump in her throat, and dismisses the helplessness she feels. "Then we'll wait."
Kairi sits in the moonlight shining in the window, and watches the stars glitter above.
She remembers the dream that she had, the one about the children they were, and realizes that it's true, that they were those children, but they aren't anymore.
Some point along their journey, they left those children behind on the beach, and became different people than they were.
Their past selves are strangers now.
Unbelieveablely naive, they didn't know anything about the way the world was, is, and the people they are now know it all too well.
Kairi sits by the window, and she realizes that she grew up. That her parents worrying feels stifling now that she knows that she can take care of herself, and she doesn't need them anymore. She's left the little girl behind with her two young princes, and she's become someone whose face in the mirror she barely recognizes.
She looks up at the stars and the heart-shaped moon, and knows that she won't be getting any sleep tonight. She rests her head on her arms on the window sill, and prepares to sit there the whole night, lost in her memories, and lost wondering why everything had to change when it was perfect the way that it was.
But then she knows that it wasn't, that it only seemed perfect on the surface. It wasn't enough for them then, and they decided they would leave to find more. It's not enough now, and nothing has changed except everything has, and this paradise world is still not what they really want.
She smiles, though it's sad and broken. They changed, she knows that now. Knows that's why Sora won't ever be able to smile as brightly as before, and knows that's why Riku will barely be able to smile at all.
This time, when she sits by the open window to watch the sky, Kairi doesn't cry at all.
to be continued...
