TRUTHS VENTURE
~Riku
To keep it short and simple, I was always bad at admitting when I was wrong, let alone when I had any feelings.
I drew an "x" through the sand with a small leafed stick I'd plucked from one of the trees on Destiny Islands, a glint in my thoughtful cyan eyes.
I had been terrified when I'd lost my best friend Sora. After I'd discovered he was trapped in Sleep for so long, I honestly didn't know what to do with myself. In the end I'd sacrificed myself for him, because what point was there to a friend with no other?
The darkness I'd always fought with consumed my heart, and I became something else entirely. But I really didn't mind... as long as he was happy, maybe someday we could find a way past the veil between us.
All of that is over and done with now though. It was really time to move on.
Right now, Sora was resting up after a long journey to the King's Castle. So here we were, stuck on the island again... sort of felt claustorphobic now that I was back to square one. But at the same time, it felt nice not to worry about anything.
Life was different now. The King depended on Sora and I along with his royal guard Donald and Goofy, and it was nice to feel needed to every world. At any time we could recieve another letter. It just all depended on when that would be, and what I would do during this boredom that kept stretching on.
"Riku!"
I turned around without starting and saw the wind gusting through the auburn hair my other best friend, Kairi. Protecting her as well as saving Sora had put a heavy deal on my shoulders after all these battles. At least now she was safe at home. It surprised me to see a small white bird flutter around her head.
"Hey," I said, lifting a hand to greet her.
"Something came," she said urgently, pressing a bottle into my hands. I felt excited, but didn't show it as I popped the cap off.
The cap fell on the sand next to me and she stood back with her hands behind her hips, waiting patiently for my response to whatever it said. The tiny bird made a loud peep! and landed next to me curiously.
And I fell silent, unable to think of what to say to tell her. Was this more my business or should I share it? At last, after several moments of contemplating, I spoke up.
'Riku,
I wanted to tell you something I found on my journeys. I'm real sorry for not mentioning it any earlier, but the time just wasn't right to get your hopes up.
I found news of where your mom may be. I'm not too sure if you want to know, but I thought it may spark your interest since you never met her before and maybe now that you can travel to other worlds you can find a relationship with her hidden where you'd never have expected just as you have with everyone else.
Thing is, back before Sora was locked in Castle Oblivion, he defeated her. She was a member of Organization XIII, and the only girl at that. I didn't meet her myself, but I don't think she was very good news.
Everyone has a chance at redemption, so maybe now that all of the Organization members are restored to their original selves, I was thinking you could find her original self and try to talk some kindness into her.
Maybe I'm just being naive, but I wish you luck. Enclosed are the Gummi coordinances to the corrider of darkness I believe she may be in.
- King Mickey
I didn't know what to think of the idea of what I'd just read. She was a part of Organization XIII? I strained my brain in attempt to recall whether I'd met her before in my disguise... No. I'd only met males in the Organization.
I looked up to see Kairi's reaction to what I'd read aloud, but quickly darted my eyes back to the shadowy ground. The tiny bird flipped into the air excitedly and peeped loudly again.
"Riku... You don't have to do this alone," she said softly, touching my shoulder.
"I don't have to do this at all," I said. "She was Sora's enemy, I don't care what becomes of her now."
"You can always change someone for the better," Kairi told me. "You don't have to if you don't want to. Why don't you go talk to Sora before deciding?"
She stood up and was leaving to give me space, but I saw the tiny bird vanish as she did and I remained there a moment. At last I hoisted myself to my feet and took off for the village.
I knocked on the door to Sora's house not long after.
The reason I felt the need to do this was simple. So many times before I had caused more trouble than good by hiding my feelings from my friends. It was right to confide in Sora first, to put his opinion into account. It was right for me to admit how I felt to someone.
"Heya Riku," Sora said unsurely, opening the door and stepping out into the sun. "What's up?"
"I have to show you something I just got," I told him. "It was never right for me to hide things from you... so that's why I'm doing this now."
I held the slightly rolled paper out to him, and he grabbed it.
"A letter from the King?" he said automatically, reading quickly and eagerly. His eyes slowly got wider with each word halfway down. "Wooooahh..."
"I'm sorry, Sora... I really don't know what to-"
"The King found your mom?" Sora said ecstatically. "That is so cool! You always wondered who your mom was, Riku!"
He hit me on the chest with his fist, positively beaming.
"Aren't you angry?" I spluttered.
"Of course not! Come on, Riku, you know me better than that," he said, grinning. "I'm happy for you, but I see where you're coming from. Organization XIII... I wonder why she ended up joining it when she had you to take care of all along?"
I looked away into the town.
"Maybe... she just didn't want me," I said. Sora lost his smile, but it returned in a moment's notice.
"Riku, don't feel bad, I'm sure that's not it. And even if not, your dad raised you up to be a great guy."
"Thanks, Sora," I smiled back. "So what am I supposed to do about her though? I can't go find her. She's your enemy."
Sora just laughed a bit. "What's done is done, man. I once fought Leon, that doesn't mean we aren't friends right now. It was just a misunderstanding."
"So... you really think I should go and try to become her friend?" I asked slowly.
"I do," Sora said. "As much as she made me angry, maybe you can change her. I know you can, if you put your heart in it."
He flicked my sternum.
"Then I'll do it," I said after a moment. "But would you come with me? I think I've gotten myself into enough trouble alone."
"Didn't even have to ask," Sora said, summoning his Keyblade in the air before us. "I'm ready when you are."
It didn't take very long for me to get ready for the journey. I'd kept my bag packed and next to the front door for weeks hoping for the next journey to start. I was at the rendevzous point quickly and we were off.
Our destination was a corrider between Radiant Garden and two or three other twinkling stars. But they weren't our target. This member was inside of the corrider itself.
"Sora, what's her name?" I asked after a long silence in the cockpit of the Gummi Ship.
"Larxene, I would guess," Sora said, then tugged at a strand of his own hair and pointed at his eyes. "She had real pale hair and green eyes. Guess we know where your eye color comes from now."
"Is she like me at all?" I asked, nervous for the reply.
"Hm..." Sora thought, tapping his foot and crossing his arms. "Nope, not a bit. Though she did seem really into herself."
I punched his arm playfully and we laughed a bit.
It wasn't long before we arrived to our destination: A large mansion that seemed to be drifting in the darkness, dettached from its actual location.
"Are we in a corridor or the realm of darkness?" Sora asked, looking confused.
"Could be either, maybe it was a corrider to the realm of darkness?" I squinted to make out the building. The castle was light blue and very pointed...
It was good that we were so well trained for this, hopping from floating block of earth to cloud with much strength, and finally landing inside of the castle where a broken foyer was exposed.
A feeling overcame me as we began to climb the grand staircase. What was I walking into? Was this woman going to make me ashamed of myself? What would I do then? Fall into depression and lose my luster? I could only cling to the idea of Sora and Kairi back at home to give me strength, something I'd learned to do long ago from Sora himself.
"Don't be nervous, Riku," Sora said, seeming to sense my worry as we walked and slapping a chest open to his right with his Key. "You're you no matter what Larxene is like."
I felt gratitude for him and Kairi for a moment. I'd been so consumed the last day in this worry that I had barely noticed how supportive they were being.
"Thanks, Sora. Let's go."
We explored the castle for a long time, finding multiple cracks and empty spaces that were plain evidence that the castle had been ripped apart. I hoped that the residents who lived here were safe at least.
"Well well well," came a voice from above us. Startled, I summoned my Way to Dawn on instinct. "Look who's here. Took you long enough."
A blond haired woman leapt down from one of the high balconies and landed several steps ahead of us.
"Oh, and don't ask me how I knew you were coming," she said tartly.
"How did you know we were coming?" Sora asked anyways.
She pursed her lips. "Soraaa!" she drawled. "Long time no see. "
Sora looked over at me and I nodded.
"You're Larxene," I said confidently. She seemed to match the description and it didn't make me very relieved.
"Look who passed his quiz! Let me guess, you're the little baby? Well guess what, I'm not hanging around to mommy you. Frankly you're a mistake and it would only be right if I ended you."
Larxene snapped her fingers into the air and summoned her blue and yellow knives in a flurry of lightning.
"We don't want to fight you!" I said loudly. "We just want to try to figure out why you're so bitter!"
She laughed a cruel laugh. "Bitter? Ha! Probably only because of you. I'm fine on my own time, it's only when I'm forced to endure idiots that I'm 'bitter'."
"You're my mother," I said defiantly, watching her malicious expression with upset rising in my stomach. "You wouldn't fight your own son."
Her expression threw me off. Her brows heightened and lips parted in evident confusion.
"Ew!" she said loudly, obnoxiously. "That's a cruel joke. Didn't think you had that in you."
"What do you mean 'joke'?" Sora exclaimed. "We got the King's letter and everything."
"Don't play games with me," she snapped. "I hate games!"
Suddenly she lashed out at us, slicing quickly through the air with her knives. I blocked her with one hand and flipped away lithely.
"What's going on?" said Sora angrily, and it upset me to see him that way, as rarely as I had ever seen it before.
Jets of lightning struck at me as I recovered from her latest attack and I jumped up onto a hovering tower above us with Sora.
"It was a trick!" I growled. "Someone forged the King's writing!"
"But how could Larxene have known we were coming?"
"Are you stupid?" Larxene said exasperatedly. "I've been looking for you for ages. Obviously I'd run into you eventually. You babies always did like to wander in and out of random worlds."
"But-" Sora cast a reflect around us as she struck out again.
"Sora, let's just go!"
He nodded and we spun on the spot and leaped down into the darkness through a crack in the floor.
"You're not getting away!" Larxene shouted. I turned around and cast a shield of blackness around us with a bit more energy than I would've preferred to use to block her next account.
"Ready Riku?"
"Ready!"
I grabbed my hand onto his Keyblade as he slapped his own palm onto mine and we vanished in a beam of ebony light.
We landed heavily in the Gummi ship a split second later.
"What was that all about?" Sora said, adjusting his hair and looking positively cross-eyed and flustered as he shook his head.
"It was a fake-out," I said bitterly. "How could we have known?"
"Give me that letter again," Sora demanded, ripping it from the dashboard in front of me before I could hand it to him.
I peered over his shoulder.
"Where did you get this from?" he asked.
"Kairi gave it to me..." I said, thinking back and trying to recall anything unusual about the scene I was remembering in my head. Then it hit me... "There was a tiny white bird with her. It seemed to absorb into her when she left. Do you think that Kairi was a fake-out too?"
Sora thought hard for a moment, arms crossed. Then he started excitedly and clenched his fists. "I know who it was!" he beamed. To my demise, it began to fade very fast and not reappear.
"What's wrong? Who was it, Sora?"
Sora sighed. "Namine."
"Namine?" I choked. "Why would she try to trick us? She's a part of Kairi..."
"Namine had a tiny birdcage," Sora explained. "I just remember seeing it..."
We sat there a moment in thought.
"You guys ready to go?" came a high-pitched, squeaky voice that was alarming in the silence. Dale had appeared on the transmission screen before us.
"Where to, Sora?" I asked, leaning back and obviously disappointed.
"That's up to you, Riku."
"I have an idea! Why don't you fellahs head over to Twilight Town with Kairi?" Chip sniped in.
"Good idea, Chippers! Maybe taking Kairi back to where Namine always hung around would bring her out long enough to talk to about this!"
I looked up at Sora, who was smiling at them, then glanced at me.
"Sounds like a plan to me," he shrugged in an upbeat way.
I looked down a moment.
"Should I really put us in more danger by pursuing this?" I asked them.
"Oh Riku, don't seem so down. I'm pretty sure danger's our middle names at this point."
I laughed. "True. Fine. Let's go find Kairi then."
Kairi agreed to come with us immediately. We re-boarded the ship and took off quickly after restocking some snacks for the ride. Kairi was very surprised by the news.
"White bird? I didn't see any bird, Riku," she said, bewildered.
Sora and I exchanged glances. We really couldn't answer it. We weren't critical thinkers, we were more linear than that.
Twilight Town was as brilliant as ever, the sky a great warm pumpkin color and the cobbled streets cinnamon. We led the way shoulder-to-shoulder past the shopping block and into the crack in the city wall that led into the woods and out to a great aging mansion.
"You ready, Kairi?" Sora asked with his hand on the mansion's large door.
"Yes, I'm ready," she replied, and helped him open it.
Sora led the familiar path across the foyer and up the grand staircase, then made a right and set his hand on one more door.
"Here we go," he said, then shoved it open.
Kairi walked into the bright white room. Everything was coated in the color, the floor, the walls, the furniture barely had any shading to it for the light enunciating around was too strong. She drifted her hand across the tabletop surface that sat in the middle and then touched a flower from the vase in the middle.
Sora and I watched anxiously until she stopped at a mantelpiece on the other side.
"Do you feel anything?" I asked.
She didn't respond. I took a step ahead and tried to see her face but suddenly she turned around with her head looking down at her hands.
"I'm glad you've come to find me," she said in a strangely different voice.
In a small whirl of feathers, Kairi's pink attire transformed into a plain, laced white dress and her hair bleached out into a blond.
"Kairi!" Sora said, but I held him back with one hand.
"This is what we wanted, Sora, she'll be okay."
Sora nodded, biting his lip.
"Namine?" I asked cautiously.
"I'm sorry, Riku," Namine said quietly, still looking down. "I was mistaken."
"You sent me a letter," I said.
"I was being silly," she said, covering her face with her hands.
"How did you think Larxene was my mother?"
"I sent you to Elrena's home world, because I thought that she was your mother. It wasn't until I was absorbed back into Kairi that everything hit me properly. I was sent back through my life and I saw everything I'd already lived through... even things I'd supposedly missed. I can show you, if you'd like."
I nodded, feeling a bit discomposed.
Suddenly, the scene around us voided out in a strange mirage-like blur. I shut my eyes until I felt myself fall into the newly arranged scene. It felt so fast that I was dizzy upon arrival.
Larxene stood before us in her usual black cloak, her hood lowered and yellow-blond hair tucked between the hood. Ahead of her was a man with long rose-colored hair...
"That's Marluxia," Sora told me to my right.
"I can't believe he's here too," Larxene was saying.
I saw a door behind them cracked a bit and what looked like a piece of blond hair hovering back and forth... Namine was eavesdropping.
"I never thought I'd have to deal with him again. Ever since he was born he annoyed me, and it was the best day of my life that I finally got away. I'll deal with the Replica, but will somebody else handle the actual little mut?"
Namine's tiny head appeared fully around the corner for a split second, her mouth formed into a perfect 'o'. She turned and ran off back into the room from which she'd came.
"So..." I started a bit when I saw that the Namine from our time was standing to my left. "It turns out that after I left, Larxene continued."
Larxene flipped one of her bangs out of her eyes. "I always hated having a sister. Always forcing her problems on me. Do I look like a babysitter?"
The scene around us faded into a great light until we swirled back in place where we'd started... in the white room of the old mansion.
I stared straight ahead for a moment.
"I'm sorry for putting you in so much danger, Riku," Namine said gently. "I'm sorry for getting your hopes up... I didn't mean to trick you."
I blinked a few times before looking up and actually seeing. "That's alright, Namine. Thank you for caring enough to try to tell me."
Namine bowed her head once to Sora and I.
"I'll see you around... Sora. Riku."
She let go, and the feathering returned around her and in a flurry of activity, Kairi's normal face and attire returned.
For a moment she was dazed, holding her head. Then she looked up.
"Was it helpful?" she asked desperately.
"Yeah," I said simply. "Let's go home, guys. I'll tell you on the way."
Once we arrived back at the Islands, I was at my own home in no time.
"Riku, are you back?" came my father's voice from the other room.
"Yeah dad," I said, smiling to myself. "I'm just going to write a letter and I'll be right in."
I grabbed a pen from the drawing room desk and slipped a paper underneath.
Dear Mickey,
Sometimes things aren't as they first appear. Sometimes a lie turns out to just be a misguided lead... while other times, the truth can come from just a misguided lie.
I understand when people are trying to help me, even if it hurts me. I guess that's what comes out of journeys, is the experience to handle rougher roads in the next journeys. I may have had my hopes up and had them broken, but it wasn't anyone's fault.
What happened was that Namine forged a letter from you while inside Castle Oblivion, telling me that a woman from Organization XIII was my mother. It turns out that it was Larxene's sister who was my mother. All I can wonder now is whether she is at least okay. I'm not sure why she didn't want to raise me, but if she's anything like her sister I think I have an idea.
Hoping you are well and expecting your newest summon,
~ Riku
I read over it once before sealing it and heading out to the beach. I leaned down and dropped the letter into the water.
For a moment, I exhaled. The red sunset was hypnotising.
Finally I went to have dinner with dad after that. I was quiet a lot of the time and didn't want to ask him anything about her, because all of my life when I'd asked him he'd merely said that she only disappeared shortly after having me, leaving him with me.
What mattered was that dad wasn't put out whatsoever in having me. Maybe my mother had reasons for leaving, but at least my dad never did.
Still, I felt disappointed in the efforts of my small journey. After supper I decided to go somewhere I hadn't gone in a while:
The Secret Cave.
I ran my hand across the multiple doodles that Sora, Kairi and I had done in all the time we'd spent in here. I found a tiny chocobo, and the usual Sora/Kairi with the paopu fruit between, even a moogle.
I picked up a stone from the ground and got comfortable in front of a blank space. I was there drawing for a long time.
When I stepped back, I had doodled a small shrine for my mother, whoever she was, and father, all of us looking out at the sea from the paopu tree. I felt satisfied.
Riku.
I just got your letter. I think it's very important to value lessons in every journey, and I am very happy that you were able to learn that.
In regards to your mother, I have some news. While in the realm of darkness, I did come across a woman similar to Larxene who was searching for a way out who'd only been caught in the darkness because of her sister's openness to it. However, I do not advise you go after her.
Your mother made her choices, just as you have. Once your mother finds her way and proves that you truly are the most important, then that should be enough to redeem for her mistakes.
Still, don't hold anything against anyone. It's a taint to the heart to be bitter, and I wouldn't want you to fall into that limbo.
A new journey will be awaiting any time. I hope that you have lots of rest.
See you soon!
~ Mickey