RATED M: I will forewarn you that Riku has a dirty mouth and gets sort of drunk once. There are implied threesome bedroom antics in a sleazy hotel. There is also a war going on, and it is described in far more graphic detail than an E-rated videogame would get into.
This is roughly in the same timeline as Poison, which can be found all the way the heck down the list because it was my first fic—cue modest blush. Reading it is not required, but it helps to know that Sora, Riku, and Kairi moved to Radiant Garden and ended up together. Yes, that kind of together. OT3, baybee. A Covenant with a Star takes place about three years after the end of KHII—Riku is nineteen and Kairi & Sora eighteen.
Bon Appetít!
Riku sat paging through a fat tome entitled Propulsion Systems of the Arcadian Aerial Navy and savoring his Sunday, which had so far been spent parked on his butt in a chair in front of the fire. Most of his week had been spent on construction detail, helping to put the finishing touches on another house at the edge of the rapidly expanding city of Radiant Garden. It was—although he felt a twinge of shame for thinking it—actually enjoyable to curl up in a squishy chair and do his homework come the weekend. There was a lot more advanced mathematics involved in his informal apprenticeship with Cid than he was prepared for at first, but the equations he muddled through in school took on an entirely new dimension when they could, say, aid in propelling you and your very own gummi ship through the Multiverse at absurdly awesome speeds.
Sora, by contrast, was in his customary spot on Riku's bed engrossed in a little blue plastic box that went 'beep-beep-boop-kerching' with irritating regularity, his homework assignment from Merlin on dragon identification conspicuously untouched at his feet. It wasn't that Sora was lazy, because no one who went through what he did could by any definition be called lazy, but sitting down with a book and pencil made his eyes cross. Sora was very definitely a hands-on sort of learner. He would have been much more interested in the assignment if he'd been allowed to find a few helpful dragons and get their opinion on what they considered an optimal diet and habitat.
Riku, however, had developed something of a liking for books, at least the ones that had lots of schematics and neon orange warning labels and 'CAUTION: ATTEMPT ONLY UNDER QUALIFIED SUPERVISION' splattered all over the pages, and the 'kerching-kerching-kerching' was significantly disrupting his learning experience. He peered over at Sora from behind the back of the chair. "Some of us have reading on thaumaturgic antigravity to do before Monday. Can't you play with that somewhere else?"
"Nope. Not wearing pants," Sora replied, as the box tweetered his victory over whatever he had just annihilated.
Riku shut the book, stood up, and stretched. "I think Kairi was in a similar situation this morning. She remedied it without much trouble." Sora wiggled deeper under the covers in response and didn't look at him. His stack of worksheets fluttered unnoticed to the floor. "It is my bed," Riku insisted, moving to stand over him and tapping the book against the bedside table in a display of exaggerated irritation.
"So? I sleep in it almost as much as you do," he countered, thumbs still flying. Riku really had no defense against this, since it was true, and Sora's bed had long since been lost in a tragic avalanche of laundry. Of course Riku's room had become the default location for sleeping, sex, and just about every other activity that had a bed on the recommended equipment list. He had the biggest one, an oaken monstrosity fit for a prince that had been pulled out (in pieces) from the storerooms under the Bastion Castle proper. It was the only one on the whole town they'd dug up that he could sleep on and not have his feet stick off the end, so he got it.
Riku glanced over at the clock and tried a different eviction tactic. "It's almost eleven. If you want any breakfast, you'll have to get it now." The mention of food spurred Sora to finally pause the game and think. The bed was warm and the floor very cold, but Sunday meant fresh donuts from the bakery down the street often appeared, as if by magic, on the kitchen table. Their pink-clad, curly-haired benefactor was a very early riser, however, so the catch was that they seldom hung around long. Sora looked hard at the door, at Riku, and at his game. It was a tough call.
At that moment the door creaked open—not preceded by a knock, which meant it was Kairi, since her claim to this room was about as strong as Sora's (she put her clothes away in the closet, but her bed had been taken over by Dalmatians and she didn't have the heart to boot them out). She had a waxed paper bag in one of her hands and an impatient expression on her face. Riku guiltily started skimming the to-do list in his head for all unchecked items, but stopped once he realized her glare was directed about two feet down and to the right. "Sora, it's Sunday at a quarter to eleven. That means you should be…" she prompted, gesturing in circles with her free hand.
He blinked at her twice, and then pulled the appropriate activity from his mental files with a wince. "Wearing pants," he supplied sheepishly, "and on my way to the Chapel with you for the naming ceremony."
She gave him a questioning look. "Very good. They won't let you in without them. And I brought you some donuts." She held up the bag.
"Anything I should be involved in?" Riku asked nonchalantly, out of politeness, and also in the hope he would be given a cut of the breakfast pastry alottment.
"It's the welcoming ceremony for the newest of Radiant Garden's citizens," said Kairi, who had gone abruptly dreamy-eyed. "Their chubby little legs and red noses and teeeeeeeny-weeny wings..." she cooed.
"Wings?" Riku choked.
"Of course baby Moogles have wings. One of the gem specialists at the shop had her litter last week. She asked me to name them all—as a Princess of Heart. Isn't that adorable beyond words?"
That cleared something up, at least. Riku still wasn't quite used to all the strange shapes 'people' came in the Garden. "They're walking, talking plush toys," he said. "How do they even reproduce?"
Sora snorted from inside the sweater he was pulling over his head. Kairi pinched her lips together and glared at him for even daring to think the thought. "I don't know and I'm not going to ask, but there's absolutely nothing in the Multiverse more precious than a pile of newborn Moogle cubs. Do you want to come? I'm sure the proud parents would be happy to have you there."
"They're pretty darn cute, Riku. And fuzzy. Super fuzzy," Sora said over his shoulder, now moving on to pulling on his socks.
"It was only idle curiousity. You two go on, really," he said, and gently prodded the now-clothed Sora in the direction of the door. Riku's interest in infants, human or otherwise, only extended as far as it took to keep them from drooling on his shoes. He usually found it best to smile vacantly and nod at appropriate moments whenever Kairi's maternal instincts came to the fore. They tended to make her giggle and coo a lot and generally behave in what he considered a very uninteresting fashion. It didn't help that small children and adorable woodland creatures stuck around her with an almost magnetic force. It was apparently a side effect of Princesshood, lingering on despite the fact that she'd spent most of her formative years living in a rickety mansion in dire need of a paint job and playing with two boys whose idea of impeccable manners was refraining from putting noodles up their noses at the dinner table.
"Whatever you want," she said, shrugging, and began moving toward the door. "We'll see you later."
Riku cleared his throat. "Do I still get donuts?" he asked.
Kairi sighed (but smiled through it), fished around in the bag for something with gooshy lemony stuff in it, and placed her findings in his mouth.
"I uv ou," he declared.
-ooo-
Sora and Kairi sloshed their way through town and its spring-shower puddles to the rope bridge that spanned the chasm separating the residential areas from the Bastion Castle on its island of stone, which, to this day, no one actually wanted to live in. The bridge was the quickest way to reach the upper levels of the improbable structure, and crossing it was either terribly fun or simply terrible, depending on the wind speed and one's personal opinion on heights. Sora and Kairi always ran across for maximum bounciness.
Once on the opposite side, they picked their way around hibernating cranes and bulldozers wrapped in sheets of heavy plastic and slipped into the castle through an inconspicuous servants' door. The warmth and damp inside rolled over them like a wave, and as soon as the door clicked shut, coats, hats, and gloves were gratefully peeled off and tossed onto the rack hung from the wall. The upper stories had become Aerith's domain once they had been declared officially Heartless-free, and were, without a doubt, the most peaceful places in the world. The enormous generator in the basement kept the whole building warm, even in the winter, and the spring that bubbled up from the foundations flowed clear and clean. It had taken her years of scavenging old windows, planks, pots, trays, and seed to take full advantage of those resources, but she had succeeded in reclaiming at least a little of the planet's namesake. The glass-roofed hallway was bursting with tender young vegetables, herbs for the kitchen and the sickroom, and seedling trees destined for the orchard once they were sturdy enough to root in the unforgiving soil outdoors. Kairi and Sora crossed over to the last of these and squatted down next to the smallest of them, a stubby, chubby tree with a spray of five-pointed leaves on top no larger than a baby's hands.
"How's it doing?" Sora asked, leaning over to inspect the newest Destiny Islands transplantee.
Kairi poked at the soil, which was nice and wet, and ran her hand gently over the leaves, which weren't the least bit wilted or spotty. "Still pretty titchy, but very alive," she answered, standing and rubbing the mud off her fingers on a convenient tabletop.
"So how long before we can eat 'em?" Sora asked.
Kairi laughed. "I keep telling you and you never remember—it takes a good ten years for paopu trees to get big enough to bear fruit. Now come on, I don't want to be late."
They exited the makeshift greenhouse to take one of the lifts higher still, pushed open the exterior doors, and walked briskly around the bend, but once they reached the Chapel it turned out Kairi's concern about their tardiness was unfounded. Last-minute preparations for the ceremony were still very much underway, and in the middle of it all was Aerith, clutching an armful of her signature white and yellow lilies and trying to play air-traffic controller to the flock of Moogles hanging ribbons from the rafters. "You sort of look like you need help," Kairi said, by way of greeting.
"Hello Kairi, Sora, and ah…yes, thanks. No, no, that side already has pink!" she called up at the ceiling, gesturing clumsily with a finger and trying not to drop the bouquets. Kairi and Sora relieved her of the flowers and brought them over to the altar, where the guests of honor were sleeping in a fuzzy and overwhelmingly adorable pile in their bassinet. Sora couldn't resist burying his face in the petals for a good whiff before joining Kairi in arranging them in the urns at the base and in a protective circle around the Moglets. The delicate blossoms were deceptively hardy, popping up in patches of dirt all over the town, and according to Aerith were said to purify the air and earth as they grew. Sora believed it. They filled the room with the smell of honey and buttery sunshine.
Sora looked up at the fluttering of wings above his head, and a male Moogle alighted on the altar, did a quick check to make sure all babies were well and accounted for, and waved hello. "Hey Monty," said Sora, who always remembered peoples' names, "How's being a dad?"
"Great!" he exclaimed. "Exhausting! Still great!"
"They are the cutest things ever," Kairi said, gazing fondly at them as their pom-poms bobbled gently in rhythm with their breathing. "I could fit one in the palm of my hand with room to spare."
"Aren't they though?" he agreed with pride, but his face pinched with an unpleasant thought. "Neither of you have seen Cid around this morning, have you?" he asked, and rubbed the back of one ear with a paw whose tip was stained permanently engine-grease black. "He said he'd be here for the Naming, but I sort of flubbed the Highwind-Z injection efficiency tests on Friday and…I'm afraid he's still mad at me."
"Aw, I doubt it, no matter how much he yelled at you," Sora assured him. "Funny he's not here yet," he said, turning back to inspect the rapidly filling room, "but I doubt it's cause of you. He wouldn't be a jerk to you and Opal over something this important."
"You're probably right," the Moogle replied, perking up. "Better take our places. Looks like everything is just about ready to go." He waved to his wife, a smaller Moogle with a purple pompom, who was consulting with Aerith over some small detail. "Opal! Come on, come on, it all looks fine!"
Kairi and Sora stepped aside to let her pass them, and took up their places on the side of the altar to give the attendees room to see the babies. Most of the crowd was Moogles, but there were a few humans here and there too, and regardless of species everybody was beaming for the proud parents. They said a few words of thanks to the assembled guests, short, sweet, and to the point, including to Sora personally for making their world a safe place for children grow up in, and lifted the three Moglets one after another to Kairi, who called each by his or her name for the very first time and bestowed a delicate kiss on each tiny forehead. The reverent quiet in the Chapel was sustained until the very last moment, when one baby—being, after all, a baby—began to fuss, and the others joined in, so Opal took them back for restorative cuddling and declared it was officially time to eat. This was fine with everyone, especially Sora, who had been watching with keen interest during the ceremony as the buffet tables were unobtrusively set up in the back. It was nothing fancy, but in keeping with the rest of the ceremony, the refreshments were generous and prepared with love.
Sora and Kairi were halfway through a plate of cheese sandwiches and marbled brownies when the double doors of the Chapel were thrown open with a bang. "Monty? Sorry I missed the show. I'll make it up to ya," Cid said. "But I need those two," he gestured at Sora and Kairi with the smoldering end of his cigarette, "and Aerith. Now."
Kairi set their plate down on the floor and stood up. "What's going on?" The sour smell of the smoke that came in with him made her nose wrinkle. He'd been trying valiantly to quit since Kairi had first met him, and only lapsed when he was either very drunk or very worried.
"What's going on is something's going down. We've had huge spikes in Heartless activity at the perimeter of the Known Worlds; I was up researching the penetration point since before dawn. Where's Riku?" he asked, scanning fruitlessly through the room for a mane of silver hair. "His lazy ass'd better not still be lying around the house in his underwear."
Aerith politely jostled her way to the front of the room, shooing hovering Moogles out of her path. "Do we know who's behind it? Has Leon called a cabinet meeting?" she asked, tensing. She hadn't raised it, but her voice carried through the sudden and uncomfortable silence to every corner of the room.
"No, we don't, and yeah, he did, that's why I'm here. The usual suspects are all accounted for, this is somebody new. Yuffie and Riku are the only ones missing before we can start the briefing. Anybody seen 'em?" he called out to the assembled guest. There were negative mumbles from the crowd, until somebody at the back shouted that he'd seen Riku heading out of the apartment towards the center of town.
Aerith turned to Monty, who had been perched on a stool near the dessert table with one of the babies in his lap. "I'm sorry we had to bring bad news to such a happy occasion. We'll have to see you and the babies later."
"Don't apologize," he said, with some authority, and others nodded in agreement. "I'm just happy any of you could attend, even for only a little while."
"Thanks," Kairi said to him, and walked over to put her hand on the heavy doors. "I'll find Riku and meet you down there," she said, addressing the other committee members. "I really hope this isn't as bad as it sounds."
-ooo-
Riku stuck with the book for another hour after they left, but his neck began to complain, and sensing a weakening of the battle lines between mind and matter, his stomach joined in. A donut wasn't very filling. There was food in the kitchen to be made, but that was not in keeping with the theme of this Sunday, which had begun at a gloriously tardy ten o'clock in the morning and was continuing with him still in his pajamas two hours later. The novelty of this was wearing somewhat thin, however, and it was probably time to wash, possibly to shave, and if he was feeling really, really motivated, find some pants that weren't fuzzy and plaid. The sunlight flowing into the room was really too enticing to resist for long, considering how rarely it deigned to peek through the cold, misty rain that was the Garden early in springtime.
Riku set the book aside and got up to make himself presentable to the rest of humanity (and various other sentient creatures too numerous to list). Once properly attired to face the day, he stepped into the sunshine. The day had become unseasonably warm and the streets were bustling. Greetings were tossed his way in the form of words, waves, or simple smiles; he returned every one he caught. It was hard to believe that less than five years ago this place had been a barren ruin.
The survivors of Radiant Garden had trickled back slowly from every corner of the worlds, wearied to the bone. There were many small knots of people who had believed themselves to be the last, ready to give up hope, until they returned to find others, many others, who had mistakenly believed the same. Almost everything they remembered was gone, but still, they had the memories, and each other. The rows of brightly painted houses had been leveled, the sculpted fountains smashed, the libraries and museums burned, and even the rich black loam around the castle blasted away to leave the bedrock naked to the sky. That had been the ultimate violation; it was destruction so total as to prevent even a single blade of grass from sprouting where once there had been greenery so lush and well-kept it had given the entire world its name.
It was the only world not fully restored when the doorway to Kingdom Hearts had been locked. Some said it was penance, others a warning. Rebuilding the Garden to its former glory would take lifetimes upon lifetimes, but it would be done, one seedling at a time, for all those who had fallen and those yet to be born. The mourning for the loss would never really end, as long as that day was still held in living memory, but it had been almost fifteen years since the fall and even the most grievous wounds had healed, though leaving behind their scars on survivors inside and out.
Not all citizens of the rebuilt Garden town were natives. Some who had fled settled into new lives on other worlds, and a few of those who chose to return to their homeland brought back husbands, wives, or children. King Mickey had sent many mages, architects, and other tradespeople on permanent assignment to help with the reconstruction. There were some (like Sora, Riku, and Kairi) who had escaped when their own stars had been snuffed out and found that home, once restored, wasn't quite the same. There were wanderers, sages, explorers, and traders, who were welcomed. Not all were human. It was a delicate balance, but somehow, it worked. Radiant Garden was a living, breathing city again, growing more vital every day. Having three Keyblade Masters, one of who was, coincidently enough, their own Princess of Heart, gave the people a feeling of hope and security.
Riku found that people he'd never met knew his name and what he'd done; that they looked up to him as an example to be followed, as a hero, no matter how inadequate he personally felt he was in this capacity. The naming ceremony was only the tip of it. They got piles of invitations to those sorts of events, all three of them, many issued by individuals they'd never even met. People he passed on the street would ask for his autograph and refuse to let him pay for things. It was, at times, very unsettling.
Fortunately, there were some people who could be trusted to treat him like a normal human being, and he spotted one of them sitting at a lantern-bedecked lunch counter stuffing her face with noodles. "Hi, Yuffie. Enjoying that?" asked Riku, and sat down on one of the stools next to her. She paused with a mouthful of halfway in and halfway out, looking like nothing so much as a surprised cuttlefish.
"Not enough pepper," she said, after noisily sucking in the strays. "I can still feel my tongue. Man, Land of Dragons my ass. If I'm not breathing fire halfway through…" she mumbled, and licked the gravy off her lips. The aromas rising from the open kitchen at the back were overpoweringly good, Yuffie's masochistic tastes in seasoning nonwithstanding. Riku ordered himself a bowl and dug in after it was set down in front of him. "How's it going with you?" she asked, precisely at the moment Riku's mouth was otherwise occupied with chewing a piece of chicken. She didn't wait for him to finish and answer, but plowed ahead in standard Yuffie fashion. "Because it's not going so great with me. See this?" she said, pointing with her chopsticks to a bruise on the back of her arm. "Cid threw a wrench at me! The shocking injustice of it all just wiped out my ninja reflexes. And I mean…yeah, it was a pretty dinky wrench, but come on, can you believe that? Yuna and I were minding our own business, and he just—"
"Interesting you would mention that," Riku said, once his mouth was no longer full of noodles. "Cid was screaming about somebody lifting his silver lighter yesterday. From a locked drawer. That only a Keyblade Master or somebody eight inches tall with the power to teleport could possibly have gotten hold of."
"Really?"
"Did you ever notice that Kairi, Sora and I don't smoke?"
"Good for you. It's terrible for your lungs," she said brightly, and went back to shoveling noodles into her mouth with single-minded purpose. Riku didn't feel like pressing the point, and returned his attention to his own lunch. The Gullwings simply liked shiny things and Yuffie liked watching Cid's face turn progressively deeper shades of red, and if the four of them were cornered and threatened creatively enough the vanished items tended to reappear in short order. They tended not to hassle him much, in any case, since the only pretty baubles he owned were the ones that snapped onto the end of his Keyblade. No matter how itchy their fingers, those were tacitly understood to be totally off limits.
"Yanno, you never answered my question," Yuffie said abruptly.
"Question?" Riku asked. For Yuffie, the thread of a conversation frequently unraveled, or found itself in knots. Riku chose a loose end and yanked. "You mean 'how's it going?'"
"Yeah, how is it going? You know how people say that and don't actually want to know? I want to know, because whenever I ask you it's practically guaranteed to be interesting, not 'I'm having trouble balancing the reconstruction budget this quarter', or 'I can't find any hen's teeth for a decent price these days' or—hey, isn't that Kairi?" Yuffie said, standing up on the crossbar of the stool and squinting over Riku's head.
"She was supposed to be down at the Bastion Chapel for a while cuddling Moglets…I don't—"
Yuffie cut him off, sure in her identification of the figure pushing through the crowd. "Thaaaaaat's Kairi, alright. She looks kinda pissed. If you need a quick out, I'm your ninja."
"No thanks, Yuffie. As a mature adult I prefer to face the consequences of my actions. And I'm ninety-nine percent sure I didn't do anything this time."
"Yeah, shooooore, " she huffed, and plopped back down on the seat.
Yuffie was right—it was Kairi, slightly breathless from dashing through the square and shouting Riku's name. Hollow Bastion's infrastructure still had a definite patchwork quality to it, and things tended to break down, leak, crack, collapse, or (rarely) explode on a semi-regular basis. As a now-official member of the Restoration Committee, he was technically on call to help deal with it, but…it was Sunday. "I'm off duty, Kairi," Riku said lightly, when she arrived at the noodle counter, chest heaving. "Hours for Saving the World are 8am to 6pm Monday through Friday."
She didn't smile. Not even a little. A small red warning flag popped up in his head. "Keyblade Masters are never off duty," she said flatly, without any hint that she was acknowledging the joke. Yuffie paused with a pile of noodles en route to her mouth as the atmosphere in front of the stand chilled. Pop. Second flag. Kairi had seen a lot of strange, dangerous, terrifying things since that night on the beach four years ago, and if something had managed to shake loose her sense of humor, the situation was dire indeed.
"That bad?" Riku said, with a sinking feeling that his day off was going to be over within the next ten minutes.
"Possibly 'like a new Maleficent' level of bad. Meeting in the War Room as soon as everybody gets up there. "
"Me too?" Yuffie asked, forlornly eyeing her unfinished noodles.
"All senior board members. Chairman's orders," Kairi replied.
Yuffie looked at her, then at Riku, then in the direction of the ramshackle castle on the hill.
"Well…fuck," she said, summing up the situation with uncharacteristic brevity.
Author's Note: This fic is unbetaed, so please, for the love of muffins, point out any stoopid tYpoez or inconsistencies you may have found if you're going to leave a review. I hate posting stories with errors in them. It's like coming to a party with your fly unzipped! :B