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It's strange how Riku had suspected it was coming, yet when it comes it is such an unpleasant shock.
"I'm sorry. Your son's eyes are…"
Riku reaches up and waves his hand in his face, but that gesture means nothing, when he doesn't even know if his eyes are open or not.
Navigating the small children's island is slow, and painful. He can almost feel the hovering stares of his friends, and he hates it like anything. But whether it's because they knew how he felt about help or the look on his face, they didn't approach, and when Riku arrived at the paopu tree, they don't come to sit beside him.
He sighs and leans his head back.
At least the waves sound the same.
"Riku!"
Riku hesitates with his hand on the doorknob, but doesn't turn. There is no point in turning.
"Don't forget your cane."
Riku sighs, a sound his mother couldn't hear, but she can see the defeated slump of his shoulders as he fumbles next to the door for the offending object.
Riku still wakes up expecting to open his eyes. He stays in bed an extra minute or ten, waiting for the sunlight to blind him, because he can feel it on his face. Gradually, he realizes that his eyes are open, but color is something forever lost to him.
He gets up, fumbles for his clothes, and prepares, with not altogether a little anxiety, to face another day.
Casually walking down the street, Kairi takes his hand. Riku frowns, because both Sora and Kairi had developed a habit of taking his hand and normally he would have been pleased, but there was nothing special to this handholding than guiding their blind friend.
But Riku can't bring himself to ask them to stop, if it makes them happy, and so contents himself to his discontentment.
"Hey Riku, throw me that blue cup, will you?" Tidus asks, constructing his masterpiece of a modern art sculpture; namely, throwing all his materials together in a mish-mash, claiming it to be modern art, and hoping he'd get a good grade.
There is no answer, and Tidus looks up, to where Riku is sitting, hands still on the blitzball he'd been twirling in his hands.
"Oh shit, I'm sorry, Riku, I—"
"It's fine." There is carefully no emotion in the statement, as Riku resumes playing with the blitzball, and Tidus could have punched himself.
"Idiot," Selphie mutters under her breath.
"One round, Sora."
Sora turns around, and Riku is holding the wooden sword in his lap, with his face turned down, so that Sora can see neither his eyes nor his expression. Something inside Sora's chest twists, but he answers, "…ok."
"Sora." It is a hiss of a breath, but Riku doesn't raise his face, "I'm not an invalid. One. Round."
Kairi watches until the end, and tries not to wince as Riku goes down, hard, and Riku starts laughing without any kind of amusement in his voice, and is there by his side as his shoulders shake and his voice turns to sobs.
Reading is frustratingly slow, and he doesn't know why he has to do it, except that his mother insists, and it's one thing he can do alone, without anyone's stares.
His fingers brush against another set of dots, and suddenly, sick of it all, he fumbles for his cup and throws it against the wall.
Lucrecia has to take a minute to process what she had seen.
Riku had exited the kitchen, without touching the walls, or trailing his fingers along surfaces, or shuffling with his hands in front of him.
He walks to the door, sure it is there, with his regular gait, as if—
Lucrecia bursts out of the kitchen, and down the corridor, where Riku puts on his shoes and grabs his cane, without missing a beat, and reaches for the doorknob without any fumbling, before she can call out to him.
She stares blankly at the door a moment before excitement catches up, and she rushes out the door.
On the street, she bumps into Riku's friend, and breathlessly explains to her what has occurred.
"…Ms. Crescent," Kairi begins, and Lucrecia doesn't like the look on her face, "Riku can cross the bridge at the children's island without moving his cane from side to side, to find the edges. He's—I was next to him. He was whispering to himself. He's counting his steps…."
Lucrecia's shoulders slump. "…I see."
"No change?" Lucrecia asks softly, watching Riku fumble with a 3D puzzle in his hands, gaze straight ahead and unfocused.
"No change."
The curious sound of piano notes knocks Lucrecia out of her reverie, and she walks into the living room to see Riku sitting at the grand piano, pressing one key at a time with a look of concentration on his face.
Lucrecia swallows a giggle, and quietly creeps away.
Riku slows down when he hears Kairi (her quiet footsteps, the slight rustle of her clothes, her soft breathing) come up beside him, and he shifts his cane to his other hand so she can take his hand.
Their clasped hands rest comfortably between them as they talk, and they are soon joined by Sora, who takes the cane so he can replace it with his hand.
Sora swings their arms as they walk, and Riku almost tells Sora to give the cane to Kairi, because Sora is no doubt swinging the cane around; Sora always swings his arms, no matter what is in them save Keyblades. But he doesn't, and Riku is sure Sora is glaring at him and Kairi for laughing when he knocks something (sounds like a stack of boxes) over with the cane.
"Riku, pass me some of that clay on your left, please?" Selphie asks absently, staring at her mini sculpture, rubbing her fingers.
"Sure."
Selphie blinks at the block of clay in her hands, and looks over at Riku, nonchalantly bringing a cup to his lips, and Sora and Kairi just beyond, suppressing laughter.
"Riku! Throw me a ball! Third rack right from the door!"
"Which one?"
"Second from the left!" Wakka calls back without looking, knowing as he did that that ball was just slightly heavier, and might be their advantage to winning the game—
The ball bounces past, about four feet from where Wakka is standing, and he calls a "Thanks!" as he jogs out to get it.
"I win."
Riku stands over him, wooden practice sword held over one shoulder, a familiar smirk on his face even as his eyes stare way over his head.
"No fair! I was going easy on you!"
"Wanna go again, then?" Riku says, bringing the sword down, "Loser buys ice cream."
"Riku," Lucrecia says, and Riku freezes, because that is his mother's 'surprise' tone of voice that almost certainly meant disaster, "There's this…gathering. For—well, we should go."
Riku tries not to groan, in case his mother might be inclined to '"accidentally" whack him over the head with his cane again.
"Exactly what," Riku says, as Lucrecia guides him through the doorway, "is this gathering?"
"Well you know," Lucrecia dodges, as she sits him down.
Riku sighs, resting the cane on the floor and leaning his hands on it. He knows not to put it on the floor now because he might poke out people's ankles with it or trip people with it, as he learned from his mother's tirade after she'd whacked him over the head just to teach him. (He thinks there's still a hole in the carpet where the experiment fell when she tripped, but he hadn't yet checked to see if they'd gotten a new carpet.)
"It didn't say 'singing' on it anywhere, did it?" he asks apprehensively.
Lucrecia takes a little too long to answer, and Riku sighs.
Riku had breathed a huge sigh of relief (that Lucrecia had elbowed him for) when the people in charge only insisted on volunteers, and even though some were beyond horrible, at least he didn't have to sing. But for some reason, the people had insisted on reseating him, and now he had no one to complain to.
"They don't understand" was suddenly blurted out on his right, and he wasn't entirely sure if the statement was directed at him, so he chanced a "hmm?"
"They think it's just ok to play some crappy music and all that," the voice said, and Riku still wasn't sure if it was talking to him, "Cuz you know what? It's not ok, it's just…it's just…"
"Uh…what's your name?" Riku cautiously asks in the lull.
The petulant answer of "Mari" confirms that someone is, indeed, talking to him, and Riku is not-so-secretly relieved because he isn't an idiot who's talking to himself.
Mari prattles on on a bitter, angry tone that's worse than the horrible singing, and he shifts and fidgets in his seat, and wonders if she'd notice if he just got up and walked off.
"I can't say I do," Lucrecia answers politely. "He gets places fine on his own. I worried about the boat, at first, but he hasn't tried. He gets someone to take him."
"But think of all the trouble they could get into! They could fall into ditches, or walk into thorny bushes and…"
Lucrecia listens with polite interest as the anxious parent prattles on, and mildly says, "My Riku isn't like that," when the anxious parent pauses for a breath.
The anxious parent is staring at her with an anxious, probing stare, so Lucrecia feels compelled to answer, "I find Riku on the piano sometimes. He isn't playing anything, just pressing the keys in order. I think it's a sort of self-imposed training, teaching himself to recognize things by their sound. And yesterday," Lucrecia smiled, "he was playing 'Three Blind Mice.' It took him four tries to get it right, just those three notes put together. And when he did, he just sat back and sighed and. Smiled."
The anxious parent didn't say anything for a moment, before asking, "But…aren't you afraid that he'd walk into a wall?"
"Hmm? Oh no," Lucrecia answered, getting up, "he counts his steps, you see. And, excuse me, I think my son needs rescuing."
"But you understand, right?" Mari says softly, leaning her shoulder on his.
Fuck no I don't! Riku barely resists the urge to knock her over the head with his cane, and turns his head. "Mother." He makes what he hopes is a pleading face in the direction of her footsteps.
Thankfully, she seems to understand, as she says, "Shall we go, Riku?" and takes his upper arm, and pulls him away from Mari. Riku lets himself be pulled, and almost drags Lucrecia in the direction he hopes the door is.
Lucrecia is laughing as she says, "That bad?"
"Mother, please. Don't take me to anything like this ever again."
"Here, Riku. It's a drink. You like soda, right?"
There is condescension in that voice, almost overrun by malice, for all that his classmate wants to sound friendly and nonchalant.
"How kind." Riku keeps his hands in his lap. "What brought this on?"
"Just a friendly gesture."
"Really."
"You don't like soda?"
It is a challenge (if a rather stupid one), but Riku hears footsteps coming up behind him. Riku doesn't say anything, just waits, and a moment later, the boy says, "Wait. I think I just saw a bug in this one. Never mind."
Riku listens to the footsteps of the boy, rapidly striding away, and turns his head to listen for the softer footfalls, "Sora."
The creeping-away footsteps freeze, and then the weight of the footfalls shift into what Riku imagines is an embarrassed manner, "How did you know?"
"I always know," Riku drawls, and hears a snort as Sora walks over and sits next to him.
After a moment, Riku asks, "Was there really a bug in that drink?"
"I'm not sure," Sora admits. "But it couldn't have been anything good."
Riku doesn't dispute it, and entertains himself by imagining the glare on Sora's face that drove the other boy away, and then retrieving his cane and standing up, "Kairi's calling."
"Huh?" Sora looks around, and there she is. He smiles, because Riku really is the type who can overcome anything, and follows.
Riku exhales heavily as the kiss breaks off, a mashing of lips that was no less a kiss, and hastily removes his hand from Sora's shoulder and his other hand from Kairi's hair.
Draws in a breath when Kairi's tongue trails down his jaw and Sora gently pushes him onto the bed.
"Sora. Kairi."
He feels them draw back a little, and roughly tells himself it's stupid to be disappointed, because—
"Riku." There is something like admonishment in her words, and Riku wonders what kind of face she is making, because right now he has no. idea.
"We've been waiting forever." Sora says, close to his ear, and Riku only just manages not to jerk away, because to Sora physical rejections are telling.
Riku tries to say something, but right now his emotions, his senses, his brain is in a mush and he knows there was something he had to say but can't recall what it is.
"You let us, didn't you?" Kairi says softly, and Riku detects the disappointment in her voice and the painful feeling of Kairi not touching him, because right now the gap between them seems awkward, endless—"the handholding. And the touching. And the teasing."
"I—I thought—"
"What?"
Riku can't answer, because if he voiced what had been his doubts, there would be no taking it back. And he can't, can't let it fall from his own lips that he'd distrusted them, distrusted their feelings. Because he'd been sure it was out of pity.
He feels Kairi shifting, as if she is going to leave, and manages to croak out a "wait."
There is suddenly a very scary silence as the two of them turn back to his face and they are watching, with an intentness that Riku can no less feel than if he'd been able to see.
"Wait," Riku repeats softly, because he doesn't want them to go, and yet—
Then Kairi's lips are on his again, and she brushes his hair back from his forehead and sighs and says, "Just trust us."
"We love you." Sora adds from beside him, taking his hand. "We did before."
Then Sora kisses him, too, and mumbles into his mouth, "And we still do."
Kairi's hand is on his arm and Sora's is on his hand, and they both feel Riku force himself to relax, and they smile. "If it's too much right now, we can take it slowly," Kairi teases, and Sora laughs, and Riku blushes, and he looks so cute.
But they love him too much to drive him away with their impatience, even if he was thickheaded enough not to have gotten it, these last long months, but they are willing to wait, and to take their time convincing him.
When they kiss him again, he doesn't pull away.