A/N: This will make your teeth rot, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Dedication: To Sandra, because she is awesome. Her existence owns my life. The end.
Disclaimer: I wouldn't be putting a disclaimer here if I didn't need one.
one.
Kairi realizes she might love Sora when she is fifteen years old. He is lying in the sand, next to her, dozing peacefully. A crab is meandering around his head. In amusement, she watches as it pinches his ear and he jumps up, running around the beach. Riku, from his perch in the paopu tree, yells that he's an idiot. She laughs, the sea breeze tangling knots in her hair, the sunlight burning her shoulders and the water lapping at her feet and decides that: yes, this is love.
two.
Sora has always known he loves Kairi, in some hidden part of him. He's known he's loved her since he was seven and she scraped her arm on seashells when a wave overtook her and she cried, and he sat with her and held her hand. He knew he loved her when there was nothing else for him to lose beside her, and he held her in his arms for the first time. He knew it when he lost her, and felt like his heart had been ripped out of his chest.
But he never actually admitted it to himself.
It takes a year after his first adventure for him to, when he sees Wakka talking to her and she giggles. She does that thing where she tucks a wayward strand behind her ear, shutting her eyes and smiling brightly, and something ugly in his chest stirs.
He tells him not to touch her, later.
A week after, Wakka asks her out on a date. She says yes, blue eyes wide with surprise.
Sora follows them on their date. They go to the carnival and she gets tufts of cotton candy stuck to her fingertips, and the boy gives her a flower and a box of chocolates. She screams with delight on the roller-coaster and says at the end that she had lots of fun, and yes! she would like to do it again!
The next day, the chocolates have made her sick. Wakka bails out on her. Instead, it's Sora sitting on the floor of her bathroom holding back her hair while she vomits. She leans her head against the pristine porcelain seat and breathes raggedly in and out.
"He kissed me," she murmurs, with a grin on her face. Sora nearly squawks in indignation before she raises a finger to silence him. "His breath smelled and he tasted terrible. He told me all these corny jokes and terrible stories, and made fun of this old lady who tripped and fell. I don't think I'm going to go out with him again."
"Whatever makes you happy," Sora responds, splaying his fingers against his kneecap. Someone else may have said she'd seen better days, but Kairi looked just as beautiful as always to him. Her hair had been done up in loose, long curls last night, and the slightly bouncy remnants stick to her forehead with sweat from her fever. One hand is gripped in his, his own patterned with red half-moons where her fingernails dug in. She would apologize for that, when she saw the tiny scab one left, and he would say that if it had made her pain easier, it didn't bother him.
"Whatever makes me happy, huh?" she looked at him, eyes hazy on the surface but clear underneath. Then she smiled, soft and sweet, and threw herself across the floor at him. She ended up with her face buried in his shoulder, arms around his neck and his hands awkwardly placed at her waist, to catch her. Her voice is muffled but he hears her clearly when she says: "You make me happy, Sora."
It's then that he realizes that he loves her, more than anything in any world.
three.
At twenty, with a golden crown on her head, she is the official Princess of Hollow Bastion. The castle is redecorated. Every other princess comes, Cinderella and Snow White insisting they clean until everything sparkles— literally. Mickey and Minnie are staying in the Mouse Suite. Alice has insisted on planting new rows of roses, red and white and just a little bit of pink, to add color. Aurora avoids the gardens because of that reason, and Jasmine refuses to touch a lamp. Belle has made herself a cot in the library, where she spends the entire day with the Beast, reading lines from gilded pages.
Meanwhile, her two best friends stick by her side. Even though she asked them not to, they fight over who gets the mattress closest to her door, a fight which Sora wins. She can hear them bickering, late at night, and it lulls her to sleep like a mother's lullaby.
Kairi is glad, because everything is all right for the first time in a long time. At least, this is what she thinks.
And with such thoughts in her head, she's surprised to find Sora crying in the empty ballroom.
"Sora!" she cries, and runs over to him. She looks at him, searching for a wound, before she acknowledges that there isn't a scratch on him. "What's wrong?"
His breath hitches a little bit, and he wipes at his eyes. "I'm not crying," he says raggedly, and keeps his arm over his face.
"Don't be silly," she responds, gently guiding him to a seat on the floor. Kairi looks at him in concern. She fists one hand in her skirt and lets the other run through his hair. "Why are you crying? You know you can tell me."
She places her gloved hand on his shoulder and squeezes. He places his own over hers and grips it tightly, almost painfully, but not quite.
"It's just..." He's calmed down. His voice is still raw, yet he's stopped crying, and she thinks that's good. "I... don't want to lose you."
It hurts to say those words, she can tell. They sound like an open wound, stinging and bleeding out every emotion: anger and sorrow.
"Why would you think that, silly?" she says, and pokes him in the side. "I'd never let you happen. I may be the princess, now, but that doesn't change a thing. You'll always be my Sora. I'd... I'd be lost, without you and Riku. Who would save me when I'm in the middle of, I don't know— tea or something like that, and the Heartless comes? Certainly not anyone but you. You're like one of my bones: irremovable."
"You're like my heart," he responds, bangs shadowing his eyes and looking anywhere, at anything, besides her. "Unable to live without."
"Oh," is all she can force out, small and breathy and squeaky. She repeats it, once or twice, before she wraps her arms around him and kisses him, desperate and loving and sharp-edged all at once. She says all she needs to in that kiss: that she'll do anything to stay with him. She would cast away her crown, live in the gutters and slums, dolled-up in rags, and glow because she was happy. He was her happiness. He always had been.
Afterward, when his lip is bleeding and she's flushed, joyous and embarrassed, they decide to elope. Their wedding isn't normal, but it's enough for both of them. Riku is the best man and the chipmunks serve as the ring-bearer and the flower girl. Kairi has six bridesmaids. Donald sniffles and Goofy all-out bawls, and Minnie and Mickey give them their blessings. Leon stands in as the preacher and Yuffie corrects him, every so often, when she thinks he's made a mistake.
Everyone is there. It couldn't be better.
And their happily-ever-after begins.
four.
They wake up the next morning in their rumpled clothes, and laugh just because there is nothing not to laugh about.
And they both know that: yes, this is most certainly love.
the end.
Feedback much appreciated!