Remembrance
Sora was glad to be home. He was. He was utterly, deliriously happy to be someplace real, someplace unassailably his own, his home for his entire life and the place he had struggled mightily to return to despite his earlier desire to get as far away from it as he could. For the first couple days back, he could be found randomly stopping to kiss the ground or a tree or something, awash with the relief of a weary traveler on the road no more. It would wear off eventually, he knew, but for now he was content with his own house and his own trees and his own beach, his own sea and sky. There would be a time for more adventures to the end of the worlds later.
Sora was even happier to have Kairi back, and both of them safe and whole. He loved Kairi, loved her with all his heart and soul, a feeling so pure and vast words alone couldn't fully contain it. That love had sustained them both in their separation, guided and shaped everything Sora had done. Even when the memories that anchored it in his soul were twisted and used against him. Even when Kairi's memories were stolen wholesale and all she had to lead her was a nameless feeling and her own faith in it. That love had brought them together again, opened a path to the light where none should have existed, saved him from the dark. There were days when he was so full of it, and so full of Kairi, that it was all he could do to keep his feet on the ground.
Sora never wanted to draw the Keyblade again without Riku at his back, armored in shadows, Way to the Dawn in his hand. Never. In its own way, losing Riku had been even harder than losing Kairi, and harder to get him back. Darkness had come between them – dark feelings, dark thoughts, encouraged and nourished by a creature of darkness – and in darkness they had nearly gone down together, apologies and regrets on their lips. Sora was sometimes afraid that he'd wake up one morning and find Riku gone, gone to find some twilight place better suited to his twilight soul, where neither light nor darkness could overwhelm him. But on those days, Riku would smile up at him or say something in just the right way and that fear went away again.
Sora had everything back that he lost, and more. His home. The love of his heart. His best friend. There was nothing more he wanted, nothing more he could possibly ask for.
Nothing.
Some nights, Sora wakes in the early morning hours, before the skies are even paling with the first hints of dawn, staring into the dark with things he knows are not dreams dancing behind his eyes. On those nights, he rolls out of bed and makes his way through the silent house, glides to the beach and finds a place to sit, waiting for the sunrise.
On those nights, he remembers. He remembers a boy, a man, so full of feeling that calling him Heartless, calling him a Nobody, is an insult. He remembers an expressive mouth, always quirked in a smile, a smirk, a frown, whispering burning words against his ear, pressing searing kisses to his mouth, his throat, his thighs. He remembers quick, clever hands, calling the fire, clenched white-knuckled on the crosspieces of his chakrams, fisted in his hair, slipping beneath his cloak, teasing him to the edge of madness and slightly past. He remembers a blade-slender body, warmer than anything empty inside had any right to be, pressed close behind him with its arms draped possessively around his neck, curled against him in their bed face resting in his hair, quivering helplessly beneath him, sweat-slicked, back arched, demanding more and more and more.
And he remembers himself, wrists pinned above his head, legs as weak and limp as wet noodles, as his friend, his lover, returns the favor. Remembers the hungry messy kisses, remembers the precious moments of passion and comfort stolen amid the treachery and bloodshed and violence. Remembers fiery hair and vivid green eyes, painted tears and a silken voice that mocked and threatened and promised.
He remembers the despair in those eyes, the pain and anger in that voice as he walked away.
No one would miss me.
That's not true…I would.
He remembers the mortal agony, the sorrow, the regret, in those eyes, in that voice, as they faded back into the darkness.
You made me feel…like I had a heart.
On those mornings, Sora knows himself for what he is: the living heart of a man who lost his own, the focus of his life, the reason for his death, the final proof of his existence. On those mornings, Sora knows that this is the one thing he lost that he'll never have again, the memory that leaves a scar, etched forever into his heart. Axel was never real, after all – he had existed on the edge of nothingness and to nothingness he had returned, spending the last of himself to save Sora, to open the way for Sora to save Riku and Kairi and everyone else in need of salvation.
Except himself.
The Heartless, and the Nobodies born of them, do not feel. The Heartless, and the Nobodies born of them, do not know despair or anger or regret. They most certainly do not know love, or self-sacrifice. On those mornings, Sora told himself that, but couldn't make himself believe. On those mornings, he watched the sun rise in wild crimson splendor and told himself that the salt stinging his lips and dampening his cheeks was sea-spray, nothing more.
He couldn't make himself believe that, either.