The Way to the Dawn
00. The Way to the Dawn
"That's a beautiful Keyblade, Riku," he heard Sora say, his voice slightly muted by the crashing of the waves.
The boy named Riku looked up to his slightly gaping friend and handed his best friend The Way to the Dawn, careful not to let go part of the hilt so that the winged blade will not dissipate from Sora's careful touch. Keyblades were funny that way; once held by persons other than their owners, they disappear only to rematerialize in their rightful owner's grasp.
"It was called Soul Eater, once," Riku whispered as he leaned against a palm tree, his gaze pulled by the hypnotic ebbing of waves.
Sora let out a rueful laugh. Riku raised an eyebrow as he looked again at his younger friend, only to be met by eyes glazed with sadness. "You didn't have to, you know."
"Didn't have to what?"
"Walk in the Darkness. You didn't have to…I mean," Sora sighed and drew strange circles in the sand with his bare heel. "You let the Darkness eat your soul, little by little. That's not right…"
Riku merely shrugged, silent, and laid back to witness the most fulfilling and rewarding scene that his eyes ever beheld in his whole life: his Keyblade of Darkness—the core of his penance and hardship—being cherished by the only reason Riku proffered himself to almost eternal damnation.
♠
"So you wish to for a better way to wield the Darkness?" Darkness in Zero had asked him, his crimson cloak's shadow enveloping the prone form in front of him.
Riku, sprawled on the cold ground of the World that Never Was, nodded weakly, his hand clutching at his heart. "I can't…take it…any longer," he rasped, an errant tear flowing down his cheek like a blood from a blade-wound. "I cannot lose myself! Not yet! Sora…"
"Your friend needs you, I take it," said the Darkness in Zero coldly, as if talking to someone who was sitting with him for tea instead of with a boy whose soul would be taken over within seconds. "I am afraid that he will only use you more, like a tool for saving his beloved Princess of the Heart. Either way, you lose. You know what I mean."
Riku then spat blood. Black, shadowed blood spread all across his face soaked the tips of his silvered hair. "I don't CARE!" he hissed defiantly. "I've been a tool of darkness for so long, I won't even notice the difference."
"Give up your Keyblade, then. Give me the Soul Eater."
With the remaining ounce of his strength, Riku wordlessly summoned the Soul Eater. "What shall I do, then, without the Keyblade?" he murmured softly as the Darkness in Zero took the blade, letting his face kiss the cruelly cold ground, numbness slowly overtaking his body. Darkness slowly eating his soul. "I wish…"
"You wish to be useful to your naïve friend," Darkness in Zero finished for him. "Child, the moment I give you this other Keyblade, heed my words: This will keep the Darkness within you in check. However, it does have its price," he paused. "Do you wish to hear it?"
"What do I look like to you?" Riku managed to snipe, despite blood flowing down his chin.
"The moment someone loves you, and wills his or herheart to you, the Darkness will claim the loving heart as its own," DiZ said. "It will feed on your beloved's soul to sustain its own strength which in turn will serve you to the very best it can."