Sora's Shadow with A Heart
by KC
Disclaimer: I don't own Disney or Square Enix. Damn.
Summary: The darkness has begun to act strangely, affecting Riku's balance. Sora and Riku look for the answer, but they quickly discover that even though Riku helped save the world, few people are willing to trust a keyblade master who gave himself to the darkness. Most of all Riku himself.
Pairings: Sora/Riku
Other Info: takes place after KH2
*
Sora found Riku in the same place he usually did, sitting on a lonely stretch of beach throwing stones into the water and watching the sun sink into the horizon. His school jacket lay in a heap on the sand. It felt strange to Sora, going to class and living like a regular kid, but Riku looked even more out of place in school now than before. When they ate lunch together with Kairi on the roof, Riku paid more attention to the waves lapping at the island. He daydreamed in class, and when the final bell rang and everyone left, Riku walked with slow steps as if he had nowhere to go.
He attended more to accompany Sora than anything else. He'd learned plenty in Maleficent's library, and more of life than he cared to remember. School dances, break ups and make ups, and club fund raisers meant nothing to him. Sora wasn't the only one who'd noticed, but he was the only one who knew why. It was impossible to forgot everything he'd done.
On days when he ditched his classes, Riku would row out to the island and practice his swordplay and magic, but today he'd actually attended school. Sora wished he hadn't. Then Riku wouldn't have been pulled out of class and sent to hear a lecture from the counselors, or caught a glimpse of the administrators warning Sora about--
"What'd they call me this time?" Riku asked, not bothering to turn as he hurled another stone. "Disturbed delinquent? An attitude problem?"
"Troubled young man," Sora answered, sitting down beside him and dropping his books in the sand. The school uniform pulled at his neck so he unbuttoned the dark blue top shirt. "They won't listen to me. They keep saying you're the reason my grades went down so bad."
"Tch."
Sora winced. Despite the cool facade Riku put up, he knew his friend was self-conscious about how others saw him. That Riku refused to speak civily to his teachers only made them dislike him, which made him act even more dismissive. He didn't even bother listening to them anymore. So why wouldn't the school blame Sora's low grades on his best friend's bad influence?
"Doesn't matter," Riku said, shrugging it off. He glanced over at Sora's bookbag. "Did you get your test back?"
"Oh yeah." Sora grabbed one of his books and opened it, flipping to the middle. A long sheet of paper lay folded in half between the pages and he took it out, presenting it to Riku with a puff of pride. "I passed."
Glancing at the score and then at the missed questions, Riku tilted his head with a wry smile. "Barely."
"Aw come on!" Sora said. "It's better than last time."
"Mm, true." Riku let the paper slide out of his hand as he turned towards Sora. "I think your scores would be higher if you stopped distracting your tutor all the time."
Sora's smile widened and he leaned in for a kiss. As their lips met, he couldn't help but scoot closer and closer, slowly pushing Riku down on the sand. He loved pressing up against him. Riku smelled like a sea breeze and Sora crawled on top of him, fingers tangling with Riku's just to make sure he didn't disappear with the wind.
"Reading's boring," Sora murmured. "I'd rather study something real."
"You've gotta pass literature..." Riku said half-heartedly, loathe to stop Sora from unbuttoning his shirt. Almost all of their time together ended up like this. Sora so easily distracted him that they never finished half of what Sora needed to study.
"I'll worry about it later," Sora said, tugging the last button free and pulling Riku's shirt open. "I'll study with you when exams come around."
Riku didn't have a comeback for that. Worse, he tilted his head and stared at the distant island, unable to meet Sora's eyes. His silence and sudden unresponsiveness drew Sora's attention and the keyblade master sat up a little.
"Riku? What's wrong?" He tried to look into Riku's eyes, no easy task when he refused to look up. "You are gonna take your exams, right?"
Breathing out a sigh, Riku closed his eyes. "I was going to tell you. I just couldn't find the right time."
Feeling a twinge of panic, Sora grabbed Riku's head and forced him to look at him. "You have to take them! I know you hate school but you gotta take those exams."
"Ow! Ease up!" Riku winced and put his hands on Sora's to ease his grip. "It's not that. I already took them."
Sora sat back, his brow furrowing. "I don't get it."
"I took them early." Riku couldn't sit up with Sora sitting on him, but he could at least rise up on his elbows. "The school doesn't know because the scores haven't been mailed yet, but I'm done."
"Oh."
Sora's head dipped. They had never talked about going to a university together, unlikely with Sora's grades anyway, but if Riku was all set to move on without him...
"I'm not leaving," Riku rushed to reassure him as if he could read his thoughts. It wasn't hard to tell what Sora was thinking about anyway, not after all this time together. "I've decided not to go to a university. I'm staying here."
"No!" Sora's outburst surprised both of them, but he forced himself to talk over Riku's confused look. "You have to go. You're smart. And besides, even if I can't get in, I can still go with you--"
"Sora, relax. I don't want to go."
Riku gave him a small smile and half-shrug. Few things made him happy anymore, but the thought of staying with Sora forever made him smile every time.
"Huh?" Sora tilted his head. "But I thought--"
"I thought of something different. We're not kids with wooden swords anymore. We're both really good swordsmen." Now that the subject was broached, the explanation spilled from him in a rush. "We could open a school here. We'd be the only ones in this part of the country. We have our own style. We'd just need to name it."
"A sword school?" Sora blinked. It was true there wasn't one for hundreds of miles. They'd been forced to practice all by themselves before. To teach what he was good at, better yet, to make a living off something he enjoyed, sounded a lot better than studying stupid literature. "You and me?"
Riku nodded. "We've both got plenty of munny leftover. It'd be more than enough to start a school."
"You really think we could?"
"Are you kidding?" Riku smiled. "We're the best fighters ever. Keyblade masters, guardians of the door to light--"
A deep rumble cut his words off. The ground shook, and they both looked out toward the ocean. Half a mile out, water exploded up towards the sky in a brilliant flash of light. A moment later, the familiar glitter of a stolen heart spiralled into the air and disappeared.
"What the...?"
Sora scrambled off of Riku and they both rose to their feet, but the water turned calm again with only a few strong waves lapping at the sand at their feet to show that something had happened.
"You saw it too, right?" Sora asked.
Riku nodded. "I don't understand. I thought--"
He broke off as the air around him changed and turned heavy with a scent he'd hoped never to catch again. His shoulders squared and his mouth firmed into a thin line.
"Riku, what is it?"
"Darkness."
A few seconds of calm passed, and they waded into the surf trying to get a better look. Riku shielded his eyes from the afternoon sun, straining to see the slightest ripple. Then the water's surface bubbled and rolled violently, and the spot of churning froth slowly came towards the beach. A dark blue and green blob pushed up and finally broke free of the water, revealing the round head and sharp fangs of a sea serpent slithering onto the sand. The red outline of a heart flashed on its chest.
"A heartless?" Sora breathed.
Although it had no legs, the serpent came out of the ocean quickly, gathering its long body into dozens of coils that twisted like wheels around it. Once free of the water, the serpent reared up and roared loud enough that the sound vibrated in the boys' chests, then lowered itself again and slithered over the beach.
"It's heading for town," Riku said, holding out his hand and summoning his keyblade.
Beside him, Sora summoned his own keyblade. Side by side they ran after the heartless serpent, their things forgotten on the beach.
tbc...