Hollow Victory
Disclaimer: I in now way, shape, or form own Sora or Riku, or any character or concept from the Kingdom Hearts video game. That is Disney and Square Enix territory.
Summary: "We said, 'there's so much to see!' and 'it must be wonderful!'. But the thing is, we were right." He looked down with that sad, distant look in his eyes that Riku had only seen a few times. "We were right. And I miss it."
Sora knew how to brood.
It was a breezy, soothing sort of day on the Islands. Dusk was approaching quietly, bringing shades of blue that accented the appearing stars. The slight wind was warm, and touched Sora's cheek like an old friend from a hard time. He stared out pensively at the seashore before him, framed in the deck rail of his little shack by the ocean.
He didn't do it often, or around other people. He didn't like bringing down his friends and acquiantances' moods, didn't like being that silent guy that inevitably found a corner at the party and stayed there. He preferred the buoyancy brought about by action, movement, speech. Anything he could do to be awake, he did.
But when there was no one else around...then, he let his thoughts travel down darker paths. And he hadn't been alone in years, not since the start of the whole grand scheme that nearly destroyed the universe-and his heart. Then it was that he dared contemplate the grave price he paid for defending those distant worlds; his childhood.
Sora had grown up abnormally fast.
That he didn't mind so much, really. It was just the thoughts that accompanied getting older, and one's body maturing. Some of those new thoughts he didn't like, disturbed him. Most especially those thoughts of Riku.
He'd worried for Riku, for his heart. And he'd chased him across a universe, trying to protect him but always one or two steps too far behind. Somewhere along the way he'd fixed him in his memory, remembering the qualities he embodied, and the darkness that threatened him.
What he had neglected to remember were those little things. The little things that made Riku human. He liked a certain kind of soft drink: cherry cola. And he hated kiwi and pork of any kind. Most disturbing of all, he'd found out something he hadn't known before, when they were all young: he was intensely attracted to the man. He almost laughed, bitterness written in his face. Sora, the light, felt the pull of Riku, and his darkness. He stopped brooding for a few moments, obliviating his thoughts of Riku with the pounding rhythm of the surf.
Sora's mind wandered again, shifting to a different topic. The blues of twilight above him reminded him of the sea at Atlantis on a sunny day; dark, but with shifting light. He recalled a hundred other landscapes, a hundred other faces of friends he hadn't seen in years. Aladdin, Beast, Mulan, King Mickey...Donald and Goofy. The worlds had been locked, and he found himself stuck here with no gummy parts, little magic, and even less to challenge himself with.
The only thing keeping him sane was the pat on the back he occasionally gave himself...job well done, Sora, he told himself once in a while. You saved them. Job well done.
He looked to the sky and watched the stars twinkling, half wishing one wouldn't relight.
A long way off, a pale, silver-haired man walked the shore in bare feet, kicking at the surf. Riku felt worn, but at peace for once on this beautiful evening. The sky was blue as Sora's eyes had always been, with stars reassuring him of their continued existence from above. He tilted his head back to them, not speaking, not thinking, just absorbing the wonderment of something he once took for granted.
There were too many things taken for granted, he decided to himself. He began walking again, barely aware that he'd stopped in the first place. He continued to head towards Sora's house, to rouse the little hermit from his self-imposed isolation and bring him news from beyond their world.
A grim look settled across his face as his mouth tightened into a line. He had a few things to say to Sora besides that, concerning this hermitage Sora had embarked on. He shouldn't be isolating himself. He should be trying to reintegrate into the world he belonged to, into the world he'd called home.
Riku, for his part, had no home.
And it was in this way that he was happy. He was free, an easy wind, a vagabond that went where he willed.He'd traveled his little Islands several times over, and started off onto the Mainland. His feet had seen many roads, and in them he'd found that peace. He was home wherever he was, by virtue of the fact that he was there.
Not to say he didn't have favorites.
Nevertheless, Riku told Sora silently as the seaside shanty came into view by starlight, you know, Sora. You feel it too.
Sora saw Riku long before he heard him, and felt him long before he saw him. His hand twitched, and he felt a ghost of magic as the Kingdom Key answered his moment of hostility towards intrusion. It dissipated as quickly as it had appeared though, as though it knew before Sora did that this man was no threat.
Riku finally made it to Sora's porch, and stopped beneath him, looking up towards him as Sora looked down. Something indecipherable passed in Sora's eyes, barely visible as he was in the shadows of the stars, and then he looked out, out, towards the ocean.
"You can't just stay here for the rest of your life," Riku said as he climbed the stairs and dropped to the deck beside Sora's rail. He gazed out at the ocean, with a thoughtful look. "You're twenty. You need to be out in the world, making your way." Sora tilted his head to the side just enough to look at Riku out of the corner of his eye.
"You should understand," Sora said.
They spent a comfortable few moments in silence.
"Yeah," Riku said, nodding finally. "Yeah, I do. But that doesn't mean you should." Sora looked back away, out to the ocean again.
"I just...we used to wonder what was out there," Sora began falteringly. "We said, 'there's so much to see!' and 'it must be wonderful!'. But the thing is, we were right." He looked down with that sad, distant look in his eyes that Riku had only seen a few times. "We were right. And I miss it. I miss the purpose, I miss the grandness of it all. I miss being the hero, and fighting, and using magic. I miss all the guys at Radiant Gardens, and all the other worlds I saw."
He touched his chest softly, as though to feel his heartbeat. "And Roxas misses it all, too. This was never home for him."
Riku listened as he spoke, and thought about what to say next. But what do you say to that? What do you tell a retired soldier, a hero when the darkness is receded?
Nothing, he realized as he sat there on the still-warm wood of Sora's home.
So he reached up and took Sora's hand, lacing his fingers with his friend's. Sora looked down sharply, wondering at implications, and questions demanded answer in his eyes. Riku gave him none, but sat there, looking out at the waves that crashed down and smoothed the sand out to perfection. He only tightened his grip momentarily, and relaxed.
A slow breath went out of Sora, and he turned and slid off the porch rail deliberately. Riku felt himself being gathered into Sora's arms and put his arms around him in return. For a long time, Sora sat there and held Riku with his eyes closed, listening to the surf.
It was a quiet night indeed on Destiny Island, meant for brooding. But tonight, Sora simply held his best friend in the worlds and tried not to think of anything. And for the first time in years, he was almost happy.
Fin.
A/N: Yes, I know. It's a little depressing, and not quite Sora/Riku. But when I was recently discharged from the military, I felt empty. I had little to do, nothing to challenge me. I was used to being a hero, a medic, someone who saved other people. And to suddenly be stripped of that purpose was very depressing. How much more so would it be for Sora, who had given so much and seen so much more, in so little an amount of time? I had to write.
But there is also hope. There is always hope. Sometimes it lies for us in unfinished business-schooling, for me-or more often it is in the people we love, even the ones we don't even know.
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