Wow, this is a huge switch from writing for Harry Potter. I adore HP, but Kingdom Hearts has this beautiful ambiguity that gives me so much more freedom. I love Riku and Kairi together and I hope to do the pairing justice.

Feedback means so much to me, it is always appreciated.

The rating is listed as T, but I want to let everyone know that it is more like very high T or low M, and it may change to the latter.

Yes I did name name the story after Riku's key blade. Every chapter will also be named after a different key blade.


Way to the Dawn

Prologue: Soul Eater

It was raining. Or maybe all the water came from their tears alone.

But the sky was overcast and dark, an almost unheard of phenomena on the Destiny Islands. The scent of the storm hung heavy in the air, suffocating in it's weight. The sky knew.

Every single person gathered on a miserable looking stretch of beach was wearing black. From Wakka's shorts to Selphie's dress. Mourners, lamenting a devastating loss. No one had seen it coming, it didn't feel real, more like a bad dream, their collective consciousness was screaming to wake up.

A tall teenage boy stood amongst them with reddened eyes, he was dressed in an overlong black coat, and likely black garb underneath, even the bandages on his wrist that braced a severely injured joint had not escaped the color scheme.

His good arm was wrapped around a petite teenage girl, inky darkness was the fabric of a sleeved shift that draped her small frame. The boy's long fingers stroked very cautiously at the waist length strands of her crimson hair, as he struggled to calm her down, soothing the drenched curtain away from her face ceaselessly. He knew full well it was damn poor comfort, there was no consolation for something like this. Her hands were fisted into the front of his clothing and she was sobbing helplessly, bordering on hysterics.

He asked for the millionth time if she needed to go home. She didn't have to put herself through this, Sora would have understood, he wouldn't have wanted her to be so sad.

"Sora", she whispered, blearily, like she was waking from a bad dream. The word left her lips in company with an almost violent recoil, she folded in on herself like he had just put a knife through her chest. The name was a blade, twisting viciously in fresh wounds every time it was spoken. She clutched at her breast and, if possible, began to cry even harder.

"Riku", she whimpered and her expression was almost delirious, a mask of pain, and the grief of a woman who had lived one hundred years. It didn't belong on a seventeen year old girl with her whole life ahead of her and it frightened the young man whose name she had uttered.

"Riku", she rasped again, more urgently now, "It isn't fair. You two only just got back, it isn't enough time! Why couldn't we have more time?", it wasn't a question, it was a plea, and the boy inferred it wasn't really meant for him at all.

"I don't know Kairi", he murmured back. It was all his voice would allow for, if he tried to speak more he would cry too, and she needed him to be strong.

"But Sora, oh god Sora, he's-", her words died before she could speak those last fatal syllables. They were taboo to the two of them, not to be uttered until the pain had faded to the point that they could both live through hearing it.

"Yeah", he whispered, his throat closing over.

All around them their friends and neighbors were in shock, who expected to go to a seventeen year olds funeral? Neither Riku nor Kairi could bring themselves to look at Sora's mother, but they could hear her weeping on his father's shoulder. Cloud passed by them, to join their "extended family" from Radiant Garden, he squeezed the red head's shoulder as he edged by the pair, he understood loss all too well. A warning look and a shake of the head from the tall boy prevented him trying to console her. Any words at that moment could only have made it worse.

King Mickey was not in attendance, nor would his presence have been a welcome one, he had already done enough damage. Donald and Goofy were off in the vast reaches of the worlds somewhere, working twice as hard to carry out the mission assigned to the keyblade bearer they had lost.

There was no grave, no casket, no body to mourn over, so they took blossoms and sticks of incense down to the sea. Kairi held tight to her remaining companion so hard he stumbled as they made their way to the water, but he could not pull away. When he had tried she had let out an alarmed cry and said, "I don't want to lose you too".

So he accepted the cumbersome journey, a small price to pay for his friend's peace of mind, he was all she had now, he reminded himself.

Someone offered him the basket of hibiscus and the boy took it and wordlessly, picked out the largest and prettiest bloom and offered it to the girl clinging to his arm. She accepted it and they waded out into the surf, the waves lapped around her knees, and at his shins. They knelt there, already too drenched from the rain to be concerned with getting wet. She lowered the blossom to the shimmering surface of the ocean with shaking hands, automatically the boy took hold of them with his uninjured one and helped her place it carefully in the water. If that was all he could do to make it easier for her, he owed her that much.

The current picked up the fragile petals, effortlessly, and swept it away, it didn't need to be stated that the flower must have been Sora, or at least his heart. The boldest, the brightest, and taken away from them far too deftly.

"It's really gone", she murmured, too quietly for him to decipher emotion from her tone. She wasn't truly speaking of the hibiscus bloom, or maybe she was if it were him, he didn't know anymore.

"It's really gone", he echoed numbly.


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