Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Disney/Square Enix, of course.
A/N: This is the first thing I've ever publicly posted, so any comments would be most appreciated! I'm absolutely in love with the idea of the trio growing up too fast, because I think it really adds a kind of depth to their characters. Not even Sora can be happy-go-lucky all the time, after all. Enjoy and pretty please, read and review!
Seasons
SUMMER
Summer was the worst time of year for Sora. It was warm and heavy and slow. The extreme heat was oppressive as it beat down upon him. It made him feel roasted and sluggish. He could remember a time when summers had meant endless days of play and adventure with his friends on the island. When the days were filled with sparring with Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie, inevitably losing to Riku and exploring the lush green areas of the play island with Kairi. Now the days were equally endless, but Sora was restless. Always waiting to be called back at a moment's notice, Sora began to withdraw from his friends. It wasn't hard, not really. He simply sat back and let it happen. He was still close to Riku and Kairi, of course, but the others began to drift away soon after his return home. After the excitement of the (completely fate) stories he and Riku told was over, the island children settled back into their normal routines. Honestly, that was what bothered Sora the most. Routines. His old friends enjoyed simple, childish lives, and he envied them. For Sora, the endless summer days were tense. How could he waste time on a stupid sparring match when he could be called back to a war at any moment? Those wasted hours could be time stolen from his mother and father, from his uncle and cousins, or from his precious alone time with Kairi. A silly match with equally silly friends wasn't worth that loss. Besides, what good was it to play at war when you've experienced it first hand? Sora no longer felt joy at besting someone in a duel. He had been forced to fight and kill too much to enjoy the act any longer. Swordplay brought up too many painful memories to be played with now. Tidus and the others seemed to feel his irritation with them and after a while, they simply stopped asking Sora to join them in their childish games. Without any mutual activities to bond them, they began to drift apart.
Their departure left Sora with a lot of free time. He couldn't spend all of it with family or alone with Kairi and he didn't feel connected enough to spend it with his old friends. The days blurred together and Sora felt flat out lazy. How could he, a Keyblade wielder, allow himself such a dishonor? People had died for him, died waiting for his help and yet he just sat, day after day on his safe little island, away from all the pain and the death and the sorrow. It made him restless. At the same time, he felt overwhelmingly guilty for not appreciating his respite. Sora had fought hard and been given this time of relaxation and homecoming as a reward. The King had told him that he and Riku would not be called for unless it was absolutely necessary. Yet here he was, restless and wishing to return to the battlefield. Not to the fighting, not to the pain, but he wanted to return to try and end it. Sora was still foolish in that sense. Some part of him still believed that he could vanquish the darkness for good. The rest of him was slowly coming to the realization that his duty would never end, because the darkness could not be beaten. His twisted heart left him with a strong dislike of the summer months, reminding him of his lost childhood and his ungrateful feelings of restlessness during this gift of peacetime. Hope was the only thing that kept him going during the summer and his even his large reserves were beginning to dwindle. Summer was definitely the worst time of the year for Sora.
FALL
For Riku, it was the Fall that was most painful season. The beginning of the tropical autumn brought strong storms to the islands, tropical depressions and small hurricanes. And the howling and devastation of those storms was far too reminiscent of the day the world ended, Riku thought. It reminded him of everything he hated, both about himself and the world. The raw fury of the winds and rain and thrashing of the sea brought back memories of his fall to the darkness on that awful night. It made him face the reality of his weakness and the inescapable current of regret and despair in his heart. He felt responsible for the storms. Like how he was responsible for the first, the one that tore the world apart just for him, just for selfish little Riku, so desperate to see something other than his tiny peaceful home. When the bad storms hit, Riku would take his small, rickety little boat out to the old play island and face the screaming wind and rain and waves head on. Every storm reminded him that penance was due, and the only way for him to pay was to relive every terrifying moment of his island's destruction. He would wade out into the angry waves until they sloshed around his knees, the spray mixing with rain as it soaked him to the bone. Standing there, as the waves blew over him and threatened to sweep him out to see, Riku would feel every ounce as weak and beaten down as he felt he should. He hated the weakness with all of his being, but he could never escape it. Even now, though he claimed to have mastery over his darkness, the bad days would come. Xehanort's voice would fill his ears, claiming how Riku was just like him, how the darkness would swallow Riku too, it was only a matter of time. The darkness grew like a cancer and there was no escaping the despair that came with it.
Standing in the surf as the storm whips around him was what kept Riku in check. As the guilt and despair crashed over him like the salty waves he stood in, he didn't feel like a puppet of the darkness. Darkness took power to wield and it only chose the strong. Riku was anything but strong as the storm whipped waves knocked him back onto the drowned beach, sand coating his drenched body lying helpless as he sobbed in pain and fear and regret. The draining experience took the fight out of him every time, but that was why he did it. Riku was determined to never have the will to prove his strength again, never to turn to anything outside himself to make him strong. So when the waves calmed and the rain dwindled, Riku would row back to his small house on the main island. He would drag himself back, gritty and sopping wet, tears and rain and sea spray all mixed on his face, only to see the forms of his two best friends in the window. Sora and Kairi always waited for him after the storms. Waited with clinging hugs and whispers of "It's okay", "I forgive you", "It wasn't your fault", and "We love you" to shower over his broken, defeated form. It was a ritual by now, and though it didn't fix him, Sora and Kairi's presence was just enough to keep Riku together, storm after storm. The ritual was the only thing that kept the memories from destroying him in the same way that the hurricanes ravaged the island. The most frightening thought was that the ritual would begin to weaken, that it wouldn't be able to hold off the encroaching memories of the darkness and its continued hold on him. And because of this, Fall was by far the most painful season for Riku.
WINTER
Kairi feared the Winter. She knew others found it beautiful, peaceful even. The winters on the islands were slightly chilly, at best. There was rarely any snow, but the inhabitants of paradise made their own. Every window was painted with snowdrifts and flakes, paper-mache snowmen decorated the yards and a large flocked Christmas tree stood in the town square. The shops doors were hung with wreaths and the palm trees wrapped in multi-colored lights. It was clear that while the town was devoid of snow and ice, it wasn't never lacking in holiday spirit. The outer islands were a different story. While the weather during the season was mild, it was still cold enough to stop the tropical plants from blooming, and still enough to cause the leaves to droop. Without the decoration, the play island looked cold and dead. Kairi avoided the play island during the night at all costs because of this. When she had been left behind while Sora and Riku were missing, she had frequented the place, desperate to retain some kind of connection to the boys. It really had helped her get through it at the time. But now that the boys ('now young men', she often thought) were home, being alone on the tiny island during the winter brought back all kinds of painful memories.
In the cold air, the chilled place didn't look like the playpen that it had always been. With the lack of flowers and sickly looking plants, all bathed in silver moonlight, the island seemed to be dead, frozen, and indescribably lonely. But the worst part, she had decided, was the silence. Silence terrified her. She lived in a world surrounded by noise. The birds and small animals of Destiny Islands were never silent, not to mention that living around Sora made it impossible to have a quiet moment. Even Riku, man of few words that he was, would make his presence known through quiet sounds, his shoes tapping against the chair or his hand running through his silken, silver hair. It was never truly silent in Kairi's life, besides that moonlit island in winter. And though she didn't want to admit it, the silence terrified her. It wasn't comforting like quiet was, or calm. It was dead. It was suffocating. Real, complete, and total silence was deafening. It was the feeling of being completely alone and losing all hope that someone, anyone would find you. And after being left behind, being isolated on that deep level was the worst thing that Kairi could imagine. So Kairi grew to fear the Winter.
SPRING
No matter what the other seasons brought, Spring always renewed the three young heroes. It didn't matter what guilt or sadness or fear they carried in their hearts, because when the light spring rains came, the world sparkled. Grass poked up through cracks in concrete and bricks, beautiful flowers blossomed on every plant and sweet, heavy fruits hung from branches and bushes. Children screeched with delight in the sunshine, running home from school with their tiny backpacks and lunch bags, leaping into their parents' arms without a thought of the pain or sadness in the worlds. For Sora, that was the healing moment. To see the children playing, and to hear their laughter, and to know that no matter what he had to go through, those happy little voices would be safe to ring through the warm air. Sora had decided that he would go through hell and back if it meant that those sounds would never be silenced. And for the youngest and happiest children, he would give up his own simple joys, his own childhood, so that they could have theirs and never fear losing it.
The explosion of color around the island was Riku's healing. The sight of the abundant ecosystem thriving, despite the autumn storms and his terrible mistake, lightened his heart. Even after his selfish desires caused catastrophe, the island refused to show it. Nature was tenacious, and it refused to blame Riku for any harm he might have caused it. The spring still shared its blooms with him, flowers of every color bursting to life around the islands. It still shared its fruit with him, the sun beaming down on his face when he was sticky and covered in sweet juice from a plump red or yellow pick. The clear, cooling ocean winked at him in the sun, the exact color of his own jewel-like eyes. During the spring, the island accepted Riku and made it very clear that the past was the past, and he was always forgiven.
Kairi relished the spring. The tomb-like atmosphere of the play island was completely forgotten, for even at night, teenagers could be seen sitting around bonfires on the beach, laughing and sharing stories with each other. During the day, when all the children were in school, it was peaceful, but never silent like it was in the terrible winter. The birds and bugs and small animals filled the island with life, chirping and chirring, running and flying all over the small place. The sun was warm and the breeze was cool and the water glittered as if it were filled with gems. It was picturesque and wonderful and alive. It was impossible to feel lonely in a place so full of life, and so Kairi would sit, alone or with her boys and soak up the cacophony of experience in their world, never wanting to miss a second.
The part of the summer that healed the trio the most was just being together. After all, that was what they had worked so hard for. Beyond Sora's need to protect the worlds or Riku's quest for power, lay the crux of their entire adventure. Even after seeing and experiencing amazing, terrible, mind-boggling things, they had really been fighting for this. The freedom to sit on there on that beach, soaking in the sun and the smells and the noise, and know that they were all there together. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they didn't. Sometimes Sora would grab Kairi around the waist and fling both of them into the sparkling ocean while Riku roared with laughter at the sight. Sometimes Kairi would respond by pulling Riku in with them and they would all laugh, splashing each other without a care in the world. It was a nice reminder that no matter what horrors the other seasons brought or what comforts they took from the trio, the Summer could always restore their spirits. And they knew without a doubt that the Summer would always bring them the peace that they longed for.