This is a litte fic, using two canon-setting pictures of RikuRoku art by illbewaiting - the first in a series in tribute to her awesomeness.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything Squeenix except my costumes and my Sephiroth plushie... and the art my fic is based on belongs to illbewaiting on DeviantArt.

Tribute to Illbewaiting

Darkest Before Dawn

Oneshot

\\\\\\\

If you asked either one of them, they couldn't give you a reason why. "Why?" seemed to be such a trivial question, usually answered by "I don't know" or "Just because." The explanation for this event, in their words, would be the first.

A horrible storm pelted the abandoned streets of the World that Never Was, collecting in gutters and sloshing through cracks in the streets to the flood-preventing drains every half block or so. It was cold, the wind as strong as it had ever been, blowing the rainwater in every direction ever known to Somebody and Nobody alike.

So if you asked them "Why were you wandering the streets, alone, in the middle of a torrential downpour?" They would just answer "I don't know."

The truth was, they really didn't know. Niether could convice themselves that they really had a reason to venture out into the streets and get themselves drenched from head to toe, nor could they truly say that there was no reason at all. Something, some unseen force, had convinced - posessed - both of them to be at the same place, at the same time.

If they had been strangers on a street, they would have passed without a word. But the blindfold covering the other boy's eyes was intriguing to the blonde; and though his own couldn't be seen, the blindfolded boy, only a year older, was interested in the boy whose eyes he'd known on someone else.

"Those eyes aren't yours," Riku called, nodding in the direction of the other boy. Dirty thief, he thought, stealing a pair of sparkling sapphires from the boy he knew the best and wearing them in public - if the rain-soaked, empty street could really be called 'public.'

"I know," said the blonde, his coat matching the one on Riku. "But yours could very well be stolen, too. Who's to know, with that black scrap covering it up?"

"They are mine and mine alone, not stolen, not shared. I was born with them." He took a few steps forward to examine the boy's face. "But yours are unnaturally in place."

The blonde gave a weak smile. "And if they are?" he questioned. "We all have something that belongs to someone else, our other half, our doppelganger. These eyes have seen a lot," he muttered, "and they are what tie me back to Him, my Somebody."

Riku nodded. "So that's where I know them from. Sora - the boy with eyes the shade of a cloudless sky." He shook his head, liquid silver clinging desperately to his face. "I supposed you are Roxas."

"Yes," Roxas affirmed.

"Do you know who I am, Roxas?"

"No," he denied.

"Then I suppose I couldn't help but to jog your memory." And with that, Riku took this 'Roxas' character by the hand, pulling him into the closest alley he could see. His own back brushed against the slick brick, arms snaking around the confused boy's neck, pulling him against his own leather-clad form. Lips met briefly, giving only a small bit of insight of Roxas' other half's pervious actions. Inwardly Roxas was scared - the first emotion he'd felt in a long time - at a sudden flood of memory, of blushes and hands being held, of sweet kisses and long embraces, of flesh-to-flesh contact and the smell of sweat and sex. Roxas knew for sure that he'd never known any of these things, but apparently with Sora, they were commonplace.

So Roxas chose to forget his merable existance as a Nobody, at least for a little while, planting his hands against the coarse texture of the wall behind the other half of his other half, in this alley that technically didn't even exist. Roxas' lips pressed again to the paler one's, and although he honestly didn't know what to do by himself, that fleeting other part of himself knew what it was doing. The kiss was long and torrid, lasting as long as they could without having to break off for air.

Good god, they even kissed the same, Riku thought.

That night they took refuge in the shelter of a (unsuprisingly) deserted house, stripping each other of their leather coverings, Roxas remembering more and more every second, Riku forgetting everything around them. The World that Never Was actually ceased to be, the only things there being the labored breath of two boys desperately trying to remind each other what they had known and the bedsheets Roxas was digging his hands into.

Riku woke hours later, holding a blonde that was just like the one he was used to waking up with except for their hair, a white bedsheet haphazardly strewn over both of their bodies. As much as he didn't want to admit it, the difference between the Sora he knew and the half he never did was a welcome change. It was this side that could be serious, could keep up to him, wouldn't blush with every miniscule movement. The side that he'd never seen had turned out to be the one that he preferred.

But he knew that the people of Castle Oblivion would drive themselves into a wall if they found that their precious Key of Destiny was missing first thing in the morning, and as content as he would be just holding the boy in his arms in this mistake of space-time, he had to let him go. Reluctantly, without even waking the dreamlessly sleeping blonde, he slipped back into his own clothing, fumbling around in the dark. Years of waking up before the sun even contemplated leaving its own bed on the horizon to go running had him trained - he knew full well from experience that the adage was right. It was always darkest before dawn.

Just as slowly as he'd dressed himself, he redid the zipper on the front of his junior's coat, slipping boxers, pants, shoes on beforehand. The last thing he'd done was replace the blindfold on his head, which had pulled off during their performance the night before.

The offensive chunk of black pooled around Riku's neck, and momntarily Roxas stopped. "If your eyes were so gorgeous, why cover them?"

"So that I don't see what I don't want to see."

"But there are some things that you have to see that you don't necessarily want to," Roxas reminded him. "Why do you need it here, anyway, if it's just us?"

"You're right, I don't," Riku agreed, undoing the knot keeping it on him and flinging it to the floor, joining every other piece of black material.

So out the door he went, traveling in the eye of the storm from the night prior, Roxas still asleep in Riku's arms as he carried him to the foreboding castle in the distance. The sun greeted them ahead, shining its warm light on their bodies while it still could, before the rain continued its relentless attack on the world.

The heart-shaped moon that had stood sentinel that night, unable to see their actions but fully able to hear them, bid them farewell, now going to its rightful resting place on the horizon behind them.

\\\\\\\

The pictures are one that is unlabeled, it depicts Roxas pinning Riku to a wall in an alley, and the other is "Way to the Dawn." Tribute to Illbewaiting. Check out her art!