His Soul Reflects My Own: Creative Expression - Under Water (theme 41) [rough draft], a Kingdom Hearts / How to Train Your Dragon crossover fanfic written by Raberba girl

List of themes by DavisJes, Variation 3 for the 100ThemesChallenge group on deviantART

Summary: Two young boys - one forced into constant combat training, the other enslaved by a madman - have a chance encounter on Destiny Islands one afternoon. Platonic Riku / dark Bewilderbeast, with some platonic Sora/Riku/Kairi on the side.

A/N: Please read the A Small Addition to Berk's Flock chapter(s) of "The Dragon Queen of Berk," as well as His Soul Reflects My Own, before you read this. This fic is supposed to be a one-shot prequel to His Soul Reflects My Own: Freedom.

For you guys who haven't read any of my previous fics or my FFN profile, I ship platonic pairings, and I dislike slash.

Riku & Squirt are both eight years old. The Kingdom Hearts characters seem to have a knack for understanding and communicating in response to foreign languages perfectly well (Chinese in the Land of Dragons, Arabic in Agrabah, universal animal language, etc.), so it doesn't matter whether Squirt's speaking Norse or dream language to him. (And I also just didn't want to have to mess with a bunch of Latin. X'D)

WARNING for child abuse. This fic was intended to be mostly fluffy, but, I mean, Squirt is Drago Bludvist's slave, so that part killed the mood and possibly the entire fic, I dunno. :/ Your Mileage May Vary.

o.o.o

Riku was ready to cry from frustration. His parents had been right, they were so right: love weakened you; love was a liability. He understood now why they didn't care about him, why they had no interest in their own children other than shaping them into the best weapons and tools possible. Having someone to love hurt.

At the same time, he knew he could never give up Sora and Kairi. Those two, with their bright smiles and boundless energy and such incredible innocence that often amazed Riku... They were the only brightness in Riku's life, and Riku couldn't have given up his friends, even to protect them.

Which was why he was here on the beach now instead of at school, because stupid Kadaj had threatened, simultaneously playful and deadly, to hurt Sora and Kairi if Riku went to school today, even though Riku had to go to school for both the super-important standardized testing and the dress rehearsal for the class play. Kadaj knew Riku had to go to school, which was why he'd made sure Riku couldn't go.

"I HATE you, Kadaj!" Riku raged at the ocean.

Of course there was no response, so he sighed and slumped back down on the crest of the dune. A whole day with no school, which meant his parents would expect him to do something 'useful' during his abundance of free time, but he didn't want to do any of the things they would approve of. He wanted to take his stupid tests, and rehearse for the stupid play, but he was stuck here far away from school and from Sora and Kairi, wondering if Kadaj had lied yet again and hurt them anyway, wondering if he should risk sneaking to the school to check, wondering if that would actually make things worse...

A wild cry startled him. Riku straightened up and looked out at the waves, from which a small figure was emerging. He frowned, then got up and slid down the side of the dune and approached the dark-skinned boy who was now on his hands and knees, watching the water rush up around him and then retreat, over and over again.

"Hey," Riku called when he was close enough.

The boy looked up at him, his strange blue-and-red eyes shining with joy. "What is this?!" He pointed out at the horizon.

Riku eyed him warily. "...The ocean?"

"Ocean...ocean, it's the ocean, this is what an ocean is..." The boy flopped down into the next incoming wave, closing his eyes as if the sensation of seawater surging over him was blissful. "I like it very much."

"Are you here with your family on vacation?" Riku asked. That's what pretty much all strangers came to Destiny Islands for, but the boy's clothes didn't look like vacation clothes... He was dressed in a ragged, mismatched outfit that looked like someone had assembled it completely at random.

The boy looked up at him in confusion. Then he stood up and reached out wonderingly toward Riku's hair.

Riku was used to other children and even older people wanting to touch his silky silver hair, though it had been a while since a boy had done so. Riku stepped back in a practiced sort of way. "Don't touch my hair."

"I like it. It's lovely."

"Don't say stuff like that about me."

The boy cocked his head, looking confused again.

Riku sighed. "I'm Riku. What's your name?"

The boy thought about this. "I don't have a name," he said finally.

"What?"

"Master only calls me 'You' or insults, but...I don't think I have a real name."

Riku didn't know what to say to this. "...Your 'master'? Like...a sensei, or...?"

"My master. He owns me, but I don't own him." The boy lowered his head and said quietly, "I don't like that."

"Well...then why don't you run away or something?"

The boy stared at him. He slowly raised a hand to the side of his neck. "I can't do that."

Riku thought about running away himself, about how impossible it would be, and he understood. "I'm sorry," he said, with genuine sympathy.

The boy was gazing at him. "You're unhappy about something. Something that's far away."

Riku fidgeted, wondering how the boy knew that. "...My friends, Sora and Kairi. I'm really worried about them, but I'm not allowed to check on them and see if they're all right." A thought occurred to him. "Can you?"

"Maybe. Are they asleep?"

"Uh...probably not."

"Oh..."

"...Can you still try?"

"Yes." The boy reached out. "Give me your hands."

"...Okay, but let's move farther up the beach. It's too wet here."

The boy cast a longing look out at the sea, but complied. Then he sat on the sand with his eyes closed, holding Riku's hands. "Think about these people, Sora and Kairi," he murmured. "Picture them in your mind."

"Can you read my mind?" Riku said warily. He hated, hated it when his parents read his mind, it always made him feel so helpless and dirty.

"No. Only your emotions, or if your thoughts are very strong or directed toward me. I don't know your Sora or your Kairi, so I can't find them unless you help me."

"Okay..." Riku thought about his friends, about what he hoped they were doing right now, sitting safely at their desks or laughing and playing with their classmates.

"Oh, good," the boy finally murmured. "Your Sora is daydreaming, so I found him." He smiled a little. "He is dreaming about you, wishing he could play together with you and Kairi here on the beach."

"He's such a dork," Riku said, smiling widely in relief. "He's not hurt or anything, is he?"

"No. He misses you, but that is all."

"Good." Riku let go of the boy's hands. "Um...thank you."

The boy stared at him, confused yet again.

Now Riku was a little bit confused. Didn't this strange kid know what 'thank you' meant? "You know. Because you, um, did something nice for me. It made me happy."

"...Really?" The boy had such a shy, sweet smile, as if he'd never made anyone happy before.

A man's angry roar immediately wiped the expression from his face. "YOU!"

The boy set his hands on Riku's shoulders and shoved. Riku had no idea what happened in the next few seconds; he saw a flash of the nearby lifeguard ravenously starting to rip off a woman's bikini; then Riku blinked and found himself behind the little run-down cafe further up the beach. 'Did I...did I teleport...?!' He had never been able to do so before, no matter how hard he tried. He was rather inclined to think that the strange boy had teleported him instead-

-The boy who was still somewhere down on the beach, alone now and at the mercy of that huge, raging man, whose heavy clothes had been completely out of place in this summery island world.

Riku ran back to the dunes, having no plan in mind. He ducked down behind a clump of long grass and stared down at the beach. The man was shaking the boy, then flung him into the sand. The boy curled up tightly with his arms covering his head. "Master, please, I didn't know I was supposed to stay-!"

"You don't MOVE unless I give the order! You don't breathe, you don't think without my permission!"

"Yes, Master, yes, yes, please don't-!"

Riku was shaking as he watched. He knew he was no match for this man physically; if he could just think of a plan, some way to overpower the man through deception or spontaneously-devised weaponry, some way to-

"Who were you talking to?"

"A boy! Someone, only a native, we talked about his problems, I didn't-!"

Riku flinched at the sight of an adult striking a child in anger. The boy's cries were little more than resigned whimpers.

"Never speak to anyone without permission again."

"Yes, Master, yes."

The man hauled the boy up from the sand and held him still in what looked like a crushing grip, his fingers moving on the side of the boy's neck and across the strange shimmering that had appeared before the boy's face. The boy hung miserably in his grasp, quiet and helpless.

The shimmering finally disappeared and the man flung his slave back down to his knees. "I waste my time writing sequence after sequence to bring you to heel, when you should already know to obey my commands properly. You're worthless."

"Yes, Master."

"Get up."

The boy dragged himself to his feet.

"Take us home."

Head hanging, the boy took his master's hand, and they took two steps and then vanished into thin air.

Riku was crying.

o.o.o.o.o

He went straight to the school. Sora's face lit up when he saw his best friend come marching onto the playground, and then he craned his head in confusion when Riku flung his arms around him and hugged him tightly. "Riku?"

"Are you okay, Riku?" Kairi asked as she hurried up to them.

"..."

"Did you have a bad day?" Sora asked sympathetically, trying to pat his friend's back with one of his half-pinned arms. "Were you sick? Is that why you didn't come earlier?"

Riku reached out an arm to embrace Kairi as well. "You guys are really important to me," Riku whispered. "I'll kill anyone who tries to hurt you."

"Oh, Riku," Kairi said sadly.

Sora's eyes widened. "Killing people is bad, Riku, isn't it?"

Riku finally pulled back, gazing at his friends for a while before smiling a little. "You're like the sun, Sora. So are you, Kairi."

"Huh?"

He hovered close to them for the rest of the afternoon, and went home with Sora. He helped Sora with his homework, then they played video games and helped Mrs. King make dinner.

When the triplets came by later to gleefully 'punish' him for going to school when he 'wasn't allowed,' Riku was upset enough to actually beat Kadaj and Loz on his own, with help from a bottle of cleaning fluid and a corkscrew from the kitchen. Yazoo could tell that he was in a strange mood and kept aloof from the fight, which was why he wasn't rolling on the ground moaning in pain afterward like his brothers were.

"I'm spending the night with Sora," Riku informed him brusquely. "Tell Mother and Father. I'll give them a full report later."

"What exactly do you have to show for today's work?"

"That's their business and mine - not yours." Riku brandished the corkscrew.

Yazoo lifted his chin haughtily. "Fine." He opened a dark corridor, dragged Kadaj and Loz into it, and vanished.

"You've been sad all day, huh, Riku," Sora remarked.

"I couldn't protect him, but I swear I'll protect you," Riku muttered.

"Him? Who's him?"

"Just, someone...he didn't even have a name..."

o.o.o.o.o

Sora, cuddled close to him that night, fell asleep almost immediately, but Riku lay awake for a long time. When he finally did sleep, he dreamed about Sora and Kairi, and the ocean.

He was an orca, cavorting through the water alongside a dolphin who was Sora and a mermaid who was Kairi.

Sora was constantly darting this way and that, eagerly investigating every interesting nook and cranny. The three of them fought off predators together and chased fish for fun, and made their way into ever more deeper waters.

There were sea monsters down here, strange fish and creatures with no names. A great beast loomed up before them, blinking blue-and-red eyes at them.

Familiar eyes.

"You..." Riku realized.

The great sea dragon was hurting and afraid.

"It's okay!" Kairi said sweetly, "We're not gonna hurt you!"

"Me and Riku and Kairi will be your friends," Sora piped up. "Right, Riku?"

"I'm sorry I couldn't help you," Riku whispered. "I'm sorry I let him take you."

"...I am...glad to see you again."

"Whoa! You have a big voice," Sora laughed.

"Your Sora and your Kairi are lovely."

Riku gazed at him. "We're really here, aren't we. This...isn't a dream...?"

"It is a dream. He rules my body and my mind, my heart; but my dreams are still mine."

"Is 'he' the one trying to drown your heart in darkness?" Kairi asked, distressed for the great dragon.

"You're sad, too," Sora realized. "Aww. Come play with us, big sea dragon!"

"Yes. For as long as I dream...yes, please. But you will have to teach me."

"What?! Playing is easy! Come on; me and Riku and Kairi will swim really fast, and you chase us, okay?"

"Yes."

"Good! Okay; one, two, three, go~!"

Riku saw the nameless boy in his dreams only once or twice after that. Then it was more than ten years before he saw him again.

o.o.o

Author's Notes: EXPLANATION FOR THE BIKINI PART: Squirt shoved Riku into the lifeguard's daydream (of disrobing some woman in a bikini whom he'd been watching earlier) and then into the real world again, but in a different location, as a way of getting him out of Drago's sight very quickly.

Drago had made Squirt bring him to Destiny Islands for some sort of errand; Squirt had wandered off while Drago was busy.

Squirt's speaking style is deliberately more formal than most children's.

Riku's horrible childhood is hinted at in some of my Kingdom Hearts fics, but I never did finish the main fics where it's focused on. *sweatdrop*

Okay, so. I've been working on HSRMO: Freedom, and there's one chapter where Squirt travels to Destiny Islands. (Freedom is mostly a HTTYD fic, but there are a few crossover chapters.) I liked the idea of him having met Riku before, so I wrote this prequel one-shot in order to help me write the Freedom chapter, which takes place over a decade later.

I'd been intending to post it as just another "chapter" of HSRMO on AO3, but there were a few factors that made me decide to just post it separately.