Disclaimer: I don't own KH.
Theme: Clocks.
They had mapped the island out in measurements of time, making the shadows of the underbrush their hideout and the sand dunes of the beach their frontlines, as they looked out at the hours of the day. Two boys playing "Spy;" reporting not of what lied to the North but of at 1 o'clock, not in the East but at 3 o'clock. The hours of their afternoon becoming their ticket to the world of war games and the super-cool secret services. Secret exploration missions would send them into dangerous enemy territory, and by dinnertime they had fended off hundreds of enemy soldiers, most of which had been inconspicuously disguised and palm trees. At the end of the day they would still be making reports about what they saw at 4 o'clock.
Riku imagined, some rare times, what would have become of their games of "War" had they not discovered "what appeared to be a pretty girl" under a meteor shower at 6 o'clock (what the grown-ups referred to as "the beach"). Now, watching with eyes that had gotten used to seeing them together, as seeing things as they were and not merely as they "appeared to be," Riku wondered if it was possibly his fault. He had always been gung-ho and ready for an adventure, but the little Kairi that had washed up out of sea foam had appeared to him to be an enemy. To Sora she had appeared to be an ally. It had been the first time they didn't see the same thing when they looked in the same direction, no matter if what they claimed to see was real or make-believe.
Over the years Riku had grown close to her as well, but at the very core of things he still wasn't as close to her as he knew she was to Sora. The split second decisions made on base instinct would always have some modicum of influence; Riku wondered if it had been his hesitance to take a step closer on that beach, to walk forward when his friend had asked it of him, had been the subtle action that had started the gears in motion, quietly, carefully, putting distance between them. Could one simple misstep have outlined an image of a Riku unable to be depended upon, or that wouldn't be there? It had of course, been that first impression, that first gut reaction that kept Riku forever an arm's distance farther from Kairi than Sora, just as it would always be that small step towards his best friend that Riku would never fully get to take.
But while he sits wondering, pondering, questioning and curious, on an island mapped out in time, Riku hasn't moved forward a day beyond when all their games went defunct, but Sora, never having pressed pause, was a few years ahead now - in distance.