"Riku, seriously, I'm fine!" The moon shone down brilliantly on Destiny Islands that night, illuminating even the darkest corners of the sandy place, and showing figures in it's radiant gleam. One was a boy with long, silver locks of hair cascading sharply down to the middle of his back, while his sea-green eyes shone with worry.

The reason for the expression on the silver-haired boy's face was being led along by his arm: the boy's medium-length brown hair seemed to renounce the very concept of gravity, yet did so softly, naturally, giving him a gentle look that was only accentuated by his twinkling blue eyes.

The point connecting these two, the latter boy's arm, had so slight a wound on it that, at first glance, no passerby would ever notice. However, the first boy, Riku, managed to notice right away, and was in a fit of panic because of it.

"Sora, please, we have to—" He was suddenly jerked back towards Sora and given a good stare in the eyes. God, what those eyes did to Riku. Their expression didn't matter, not usually; it was just those eyes that melted him. This time, however, something was wrong. Those eyes, they seemed…angry. As Riku noticed this, his eyes snapped even wider open, even more possessed with worry. "Sora, what's the matter? Did I do something wrong?"

Sora tilted his head to the side as Riku asked this question. "Something wrong…?" What kind of a question was that? "Riku, you're acting…different…" Suddenly, Sora noticed a strange feeling along his arm: Riku's hand was sliding ever so slowly down it, toward his hand…Did Riku know? Sora couldn't help but wonder, quite honestly…There was another thing that he couldn't help but do, too: pull away. "Heheh, Riku, we were almost holding—" Sora looked at his hand again to see Riku's covering it perfectly.

Riku did everything he could to take in the moment: he ran his thumb over Sora's hand, taking in every inch of skin, all the bones, all of it. The texture, the form, all of it was so perfect. "Sora…" Riku grinned at him as widely as he could, overcome with joy. He was actually holding his beloved's hand. "There's…something I've been wanting to ask you."

With a sudden recoil, Sora broke out of the older boy's grip and looked at him a moment, one eyebrow raised as high as it would reach. "Riku, what are you doing!" Riku was still grinning at him, and it was getting scary.

"Sora, would you share a Paopu with me?"

Sora's jaw dropped. Had he heard that right? There wasn't a joking tone to it, no expression to give away its falseness, nothing…Did he mean it? "R-riku…I can't…I mean, we can't be…boyfriends." Sora seemed to have finalized this conclusion. "We just can't. I've got Kairi, and you've got…" Sora paused in mid-sentence to think when Riku cut in suddenly.

"You." Short, simple, and to the point, exactly what one could expect from Riku…except what precisely he had said. Sora leapt back in surprise, and a noticeable amount more than reluctance.

"Riku, I'm going to be honest with you. Are you ready?" With a nod from his old friend, Sora said every bit as bluntly, "I'm not going out with you. It's just not…right, I guess…I don't feel like that for you."

Riku's expression was very hard to describe, but it was unmistakable when actually seen. It was shock, despair, the look one attains when their world has crumbled. Still, Riku tried to keep false hope breathing. "B-but Sora, you can grow to love me, right? I'll do anything…Whatever you want, really!" He took off his jacket in a flash, the light brown fabric a gift to the winds. After this, he reached inside his shirt, getting ready to remove it, looking expectantly at Sora.

"Ew, Riku, don't!" Those were the finishing words. As sudden as a shot, Riku's eyes went wide once more, and remained so for several moments. It was as though his life was flashing before his eyes, only instead, Riku was viewing a different show: images, not simply from his life, but from his moments with Sora. Every last moment with his brown-haired miracle love, all of them, from their earliest childhood to their swordfight only moments ago…and they all shattered. Each image burst into tiny pieces and settled on the proverbial bottom of his mind.

"Sora…" His eyes slowly narrowed, and his eyebrows began to angle, to knit together. Droplets rolled swiftly down his cheeks, and were carried off to any part of the Destiny Islands with the wind. "Y-you don't…?" He looked at Sora a moment longer before dropping to his knees, staring straight at the ground. "Please, let me make you happy…"

Sora's recoil of disgust was immediate. He started back, one of his eyebrows raised, his mouth in a sort of frown. "Riku, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but that's just not something we do, you and me…" Riku didn't look up in the slightest. "I mean, we're just supposed to be friends, I can't be anything more to you…"

Riku's tears had already begun making a rather large stain on the path, and would have continued had Riku left them be. Smashing his fist just once into the ground, he said in a voice just under a yell, "And why not? Because you love Kairi, right! You'll give yourself to her, but you wouldn't even take me for yourself…I can't even make you happy, can I! No, it's Kairi this, Kairi that, Kairi Kairi Kairi! Dammit, just get it over with and marry her, if you want her so badly!" Riku's eyes were practically gushing tears, and with how violently he said each word, his hair was flying every which way. "Like it matters anymore…"

Riku slowly cooled down and reached slowly into his pocket, trembling uncontrollably as he went for whatever it was within. There was a moment of silence as he felt around, staining the ground further as he wept, as Sora looked on, unsure of how to respond. Eventually, Riku produced a bright orange, star-shaped little item, roughly as big as his hand, with a leaf at the end of it. He got slowly, unsteadily to his feet and walked in a way best described as a limp towards Sora. He handed his old friend the ripe Paopu fruit, stood a moment longer, and, out of nowhere, wrapped his arms around Sora's shoulders. Holding him close, he rested his head on Sora's shoulder for the very first time, took a moment to take in this entire situation, and slowly whispered just two words. "Good luck…"

Sora simply stood for a moment, stunned beyond all action, his blue eyes as wide as they would go, when he finally accepted the little fruit. Slowly feeling the icy tears permeate the fabric on his shoulder, he began truly thinking how Riku must have felt. Slowly, Riku lifted his head from Sora's shoulder, and said, seemingly as parting words, "I would have loved…to really hold your hand…For you to hold mine back…for you to smile at me again…" With that, he turned to walk off, leaving a trail of moist tears with each step. His face stung with the cold and his eyes burned with how much he had cried, but there was infinitely more pain that these. Somewhere inside his heart, Riku wondered if he'd find a scar. As he dwelled on this, he suddenly felt something stop his exit.

Warmth, joy, safety, he felt these form themselves in the two long objects wrapping around him. He came to recognize them as arms, and then knew exactly what the moist weight against his back was. Sora was holding him tight, crying every bit as much as he himself was, not allowing him to go. "Riku, promise me something…" He was sobbing uncontrollably, but made sure that this, at least, came off understandably.

"Anything, Sora." Riku's words had a sort of emptiness to them. Sincere though he was, there was a spark once present in his voice that he had lost for this moment. "I'd promise you every star in the sky, you know that."

Choking through sobs, staining the back of Riku's shirt much more thoroughly than Riku had his, and holding progressively tighter onto his old friend, he began to plead, "Riku, please, don't let this beat you. Don't…don't give up. Don't lose your light again. I'll always be right here, and I love you…I love you like a brother, isn't that enough?"

There they stood a moment as the silence returned once more to establish rule over this place. With a sigh, tears rolling down all parts of his face, Riku once again banished the silence with his quiet words. "…We've been through a lot, you and me…There were some times where I wondered if I'd make it back…Others where I wasn't so sure that I wanted to…I was possessed by the ultimate darkness, and used as a puppet to hurt you, to hurt everybody, myself included…And here I am." He began to smile as his face grew more and more moist with tears. "This is probably my greatest challenge yet, but, as long as I can make you happy, even as a…'brother,' I'll make it through." Sora snuck his hand to Riku's and grasped it gently, causing his friend to jump again in surprise. Riku looked down to see the two interlocked hands, and smiled even wider as he looked slowly back up.

"I promise."