sora was not a liar. riku knew this for a fact— he would try, sometimes, but he was never very successful. once, when they were younger and they played games instead of fighting wars, sora tried his damndest to convince him that there was a monster living deep in the jungle of their play island. it hid among the shadows, he said, with gnarling teeth and hidden claws and a taste for bratty eight year olds who always bragged about being bigger.
"it never sleeps! and it'll get you, riku, it hates mean people." sora wiped his nose and dried his eyes, giving his best friend the harshest pout he'd pulled in a while. he plopped in the sand, looking up against the midday sun. "my mom said so," he added, thinking that would add depth. riku thought this was hilarious and, being the bratty eight year old he was, decided to call his bluff. "really?" he asked. he crouched down beside sora, his eyes suddenly wide and his mouth parted. "wait, really, really? what does it look like? you're pretty bratty, you've seen it!"
sora blushed hard and, without saying anything, ran off to their boats. that's when riku lost it, laughing so hard he collapsed in the sand while the waves pulsed against his toes. that's when riku knew he knew sora. see, it wasn't that his best friend didn't lie. it's that he was literally incapable of telling a decent one.
nine years later, sora talks to donald and goofy after the mark of mastery and riku can tell by the timbre of his voice that he's lying when he says that he's just a little tired.
two months after the mark of mastery, lea bangs pots and pans in the kitchen, trying to find one goddamn strainer for the pasta that had definitely been boiling for two minutes too long, and damn it if his noodles were gonna look and taste like floppy shit. from somewhere in the rec room, kairi yells at him to not burn the tower down. he makes no promises.
"woah! uh, lea, you know you can move the pot off the eye, right?" roxas laughs at him from behind, and oh man is that a voice he missed. he grins a bit and starts, his voice catching, just a little. "oh yeah, smartass? well, how 'bout you get your blonde ass in here and show me how it's done—"
he turns around. roxas isn't there. sora is staring at him expectantly, one eyebrow cocked and a comeback of his own tickling his tongue. lea drops a cast iron skillet, obnoxiously heavy, and the marbled tile underneath it cracks. he fishes for words, anything to say, anything to cover his tracks, but sora's face changes so rapidly and he knows he's done it again, gone and fucked up a perfectly decent evening for them both, and god, the way the kid looks so fucking sad all of a sudden kills him inside.
sora clears his throat and scratches his nose, avoiding lea's eyes entirely. he's not even trying to be stealthy about it. "it's okay," he offers after a moment, but his voice is low and he looks so hurt that lea doesn't know what to do, really. there's a heavy air between them now, so thick that it's suffocating, and they both know he's lying.
lea swallows hard. "i know you're not him. i swear. it's just..."
they both settle their gaze on the cracked tile at their feet. it's not the only injury present; it's not the first time this has happened.
"i know."
unfortunately for the hero of light, dissociation was not an uncommon occurrence. it happened once or twice before, back when he was still fighting organization xiii and hadn't had the slightest clue as to who roxas was. he would slide into what felt like a daydream, honestly, until goofy would tug at his sleeve or donald would yell at him to wake up and "pay attention!" none of the three really understood why he would nod off like that, but they weren't particularly worried. sora chalked it up to exhaustion and crammed an extra hour of sleep into his schedule whenever he found himself drifting during the day. when the day finally came that he washed up on the shores of his island, the phenomena seemed to foam away into the waves that carried him. he was home.
except he wasn't, really. not all of him. there were pieces of him that belonged on worlds hundreds of thousands of miles away, and every now and then on beautifully star-filled nights they would call from within his heart. he'd feel their sadness bubble up and become his own, manifesting in tears that were not his own, and even though sora knew logically that roxas had become a part of him, they still felt separate in some ways.
one year passed, youthful and hot in the summer sun, until the trio received the king's calling. on that day, sora hadn't dissociated at all in six months. a week passed and that counter reset.
the mark of mastery definitely left a mark.
now, two months later, lea stands in front of him with open arms and guilty eyes and a three-time-winning apology hanging in the thick, heavy air. he thinks he wants to forgive him, but the only thing sora knows definitively is that he feels hauntingly sick. he's dizzy looking at axel, sunsets flashing through his mind's eye, sea salt sitting in his mouth. he knows lea. he misses axel. they feel sick.
"i know," sora manages, staring at the cracked tile. the broken pieces stare back at him, and he flinches.
some days are better than others.
kairi, come to find out, is a powerhouse. she packs every bit of her power behind every swing, throws all of her light into every spell, and unlike sora or riku, she can keep coming. she's fury and tact and grace, moving with the heat of the fight, and she doesn't stop to breathe. fighting by her side is so incredibly different than fighting with donald and goofy: her light burns.
there's a part of him (much, much bigger than he'll ever admit) that loves this about her. he loves to worry about her, lives to protect her, but sora always finds himself in awe of her blinding light. it's a fearful respect, he thinks, because he knows that she's legends more powerful than he ever once dreamed she could be. in battle, kairi is raw and unstoppable light, tingling on his skin, singeing shadows in ways he's never seen a keyblade accomplish on its own. (it's worth mentioning that their limit is his favorite, by far.)
with the last of the nobodies dissipating into the vermillion of twilight town's sunset, hacked apart by destiny's embrace, kairi collapses to her knees. she chuckles a little, banishing her blade before pulling two potions from her bag. "that was somethin, huh? what were those?" sora falls beside her, exhausted.
"isa," he says. dusks meant little, more or less debris in the grand scheme of darkness. berserkers meant they were being watched. kairi's eyes turn grim but she nods, understanding. "we should go back soon," she murmurs, downing her own elixir and handing the other to her partner. sora takes it, brushing his fingers against her's. she's still radiating. light pours off her like sweat does him, except that she's blissfully warm and bright. he'll never stop loving that.
"i think we have a little time," he says, lost in her hair and eyes and skin. but luckily she's not giving him the time of day, far too engrossed in the twilight above the clocktower, captured by the reds, purples, and blues. she only hums in agreement.
somewhere, someone with amber eyes is watching two keyblade wielders sit on the sunset terrace, having just dispatched over two dozen berserkers. somewhere, someone is planning not for today, not even for tomorrow— but for some day very, very soon. they were content now, even happy if just to be together, but the day would come when they wouldn't be.
some days are better than others. today was a good day.
in the last month, the impossible had been proved possible. actually, the impossible had been happening repeatedly and unfailingly, like clockwork. the impossible event that occurred? sora was feeling like himself again. it wasn't just that, either. he slept through the night like he used to, a deep, hypnotic sleep that actually left him feeling refreshed come dawn. when he smiled, he meant it; when he laughed, it hurt in the best possible way. he felt the light again. it wasn't just a good day, it was twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three good days all in a row, making him think that maybe he should start counting bad days, instead.
the night after the berserkers on sunset terrace, he and kairi retreated back to yen sid's tower to regroup. it was riku's turn to cook dinner, so naturally, the group gave him absolute hell the entire time. sora reset timers, lea played with the stove temperature, and kairi even went so far as to hide every stick of butter and every salt shaker that old coot might have ever had in the castle, and then some. "don't mess up don't mess up don't mess up" was the mantra of the evening, but at the end of the night, riku threw together a pretty decent ramen.
that was saying something, too. riku's a terrible chef.
the island trio eventually left the rec room, leaving lea to his own devices. where they went, the firestarter will never know for certain. he thinks he knows, because only people desperately in love looked at each other the way they do, but hey, he's only had a heart for so long. how's he supposed to know what love looks like?
(he knows. he just lets them think he doesn't.)
so, it's entirely possible that his best friends had a little something to do with his drastically improved mood, but sora wasn't thinking on it too hard. that's another thing that returned: sora never thought about anything too hard. it's when he got lost in his head that he dissociated the most.
"you've got to be shitting me," riku huffs, and sora crumbles to laughter before he can get a word in edgewise. "you're actually shitting me right now," and suddenly riku's succumbed to the chuckling, too. they're laughing at their dumb teenage scoreboard, tallying up 99 to 99. neck in neck. "all this time, are you serious? sora?" riku has the most beautiful laugh, the kind that vibrates deep in his chest, throaty and real. if sora can make him laugh that way, then everything is right in the world.
sora catches his breath after a minute, his stomach cramping. "wanna race?" he asks, clapping his best friend on the shoulder. "we could rebuild that racetrack somewhere, the one you totally and completely rigged to win at every time. remember that? huh, buddy?" riku loses it then, laughing so hard he's practically wheezing. on his other side, kairi shakes her head, giggling over her boys. they're bruised and scarred and downright tired, but these boys, bright fireflies in her night, are undoubtedly her's. "i missed this," she whispers; they don't hear her, but that's okay. they don't need to.
for thirty days, everything was right in their world. on the thirty-first, the floodgates opened and twilight town disappeared from the world map, snuffed out like the light of a candle.
sora watched the brilliant, burgundy afternoon suffocate until nothing was left of it but heartless and nobodies. lea had a hand on his shoulder, pulling him back to the safety of the gummi ship, but his feet were one with the ground. somewhere inside, two hearts wept with rage, screaming and pushing against his chest, bubbling up through his throat, his eyes. his hands trembled, his vision swallowed reds and purples, and the warrior of light fell to his knees on the sunset terrace. on the clock tower looming overhead, the darkness laughed.
lea grabs him by the collar of his shirt and drags them both away, and although sora knows he felt tears hitting his shoulders, he doesn't ever ask.
"gosh, ya know ya can talk about it, right?" goofy later asks him, dopey and kind in that way he always is. it's comforting, familiar. "we're worried about ya, sora." donald wacks in agreement, and after a beat of silence from their friend, he offers, "that's what we're here for." there's a latent plea in their words: please don't shut us out.
sora's locked eyes with the empty spot where twilight town used to be. it stares back at him, cruel and taunting in ways he never knew blank space could be. he carries a heavy heart (heavy hearts, actually) and in all honesty, he thinks he'd love to unload all his stress and anger and fear. donald and goofy are more than his friends, they're brothers in arms, and sora knows that they want nothing but the best for him. he thinks he wants to fall, thinks he wants to break down in the quiet space they share, knows they won't tell. he almost does, too. his lips part, but sora loves his friends far too much to ask them them bear the same pain he does. so when goofy reminds him that he can talk about what happened, he doesn't hear the latent plea that comes with it. instead, he offers up a smile, however weak it might be, and says simply, "thanks, guys."
maybe one day he'll tell them. he wants to, but not yet. he's not ready to break that wall, for fear of what more could be crawling behind it.
"it means a lot to me."
in the following weeks, sora acts oddly and undeniably not himself. he reminds kairi of a stained glass window in that it's him, the beautiful boy standing right in front of her, but with different filters of somebody else's light. he's touchy and prickly sometimes, quick to anger and hard to pacify, and other times he's alarmingly unresponsive. but every now and then she catches a glimpse of the boy she grew up with, sunshine and smiles in the sweltering summer, and those moments are the ones that keep her hoping.
riku and lea noticed the change, too. lea treads carefully now, making triple sure to bite his tongue whenever he hears roxas laughing instead of sora. there's friction between them now, odd and uncomfortable where a friendship once bloomed, but awkward silence is better than inciting another breakdown. riku has the short end of the stick, though, because sometimes it's like his best friend has become an entirely different person and nothing, not even the darkness cuts deeper than having sora forget which life you're living.
after the fall of twilight town, there was a surprising lull in the organization's activity. the thirteen seekers seemed to slink away member by member, and soon enough xehanort dropped off the grid entirely. in his anxiousness, yen sid called the guardians back to his tower while he and mickey did what they could to track down the seekers. he gave them one, simple task: breathe.
sora and riku were told to relax. so naturally, they fashioned the largest sparring room they could and went at it.
riku realized with a quickness that sora was nothing to sneeze at. he was significantly shorter than riku and a fair bit weaker, physically, but shit he was fast on his feet and when he made a swing, he made it count for something. sparring with him now was nothing like sparring as children: sora had grown. but he doesn't think of the one other time they've fought, between childhood and now. thinking of that fight makes him sick to his stomach, makes him crawl into himself again, and that's the last place he wants to be. he belongs in the light now, with them and never against them. never again.
sora glides out from under his swing again, and riku grumbles some odd combination of curse words that neither of them have heard before.
"language!" sora chides, grinning, and riku doesn't care about anything else in that moment because that is the sora he recognizes. "sure thing, assface," he counters, hiding a laugh with a deep, worn-out huff. then he's coming again, light as air, moving like water, tougher than earth. riku knew how to fight, and he knew far too well. he'd come at sora from above, fully expecting a block. at that point, riku would rely on his magic. however, from the sidelines, kairi and lea have bated breath. they can sense something isn't right here: sora looks terrified.
sora moves, but not soon enough. nowhere near soon enough, and it's far too soon for riku to stop himself. momentum carries him forward, there's a sickening thwack, and sora hits the ground like a doll.
some days are better than others.
the first thing sora remembers is not waking up. it isn't riku's horrified face or kairi's soothing voice, it isn't the throbbing agony in his head, it isn't the chill he got when he realized blood was trickling down from his forehead. the first thing sora remembers is ansem.
no, not ansem, actually. riku. riku is the first thing he remembers, but it's not the riku he loves dearly. it's the riku attacking him in hollow bastion, trying to tear his heart out, trying to hurt him. it's the riku possessed by darkness, consumed by it, rewritten by it. it's not even riku. there was a moment that night where sora almost froze, fear rooting him to the ground before he tore himself away. it was the moment that stranger came down on him from the keyhole, carrying the weight of all his hatred and betrayal into one heaving swing that sora almost froze.
today, sora didn't see the riku he loves. he saw the stranger, and down he came with all the cold, cruel darkness he had the first time except that this time, sora froze.
"i'm sorry," he sputters, his chest heaving with effort and pain and choking sobs. someone picks him gently off the ground— lea, he thinks— and he can hear riku panicking somewhere behind them. kairi shushes him, comforts him, but he can tell that she's panicking, too. it isn't another moment before lea sets him down again, this time on something soft and pliable, and although his eyes are fluttering closed he can feel the warmth of curaga pulsing from kairi's palms. she's whispering gentle kindnesses, but they fall on deaf ears. riku's holding his hand. looking for something, anything to ground him, sora squeezes it. there's a tense silence for a minute, two, three, until kairi finally breaks it, and although she speaks in undertones, her question is loaded. "sora... what happened?"
sora squints against the lights above them, looking first to kairi, lea, and finally riku. they bear no walls, no barriers, no masks that hide what they really feel; their eyes are soft, their lips parted, their faces wrought with worry, and then sora realizes what exactly is hiding behind that wall in his head he was so afraid of breaking.
kairi's fingers are in his hair, waves of magic still pulsing little by little. lea has a hand on his shoulder, a warm and heavy comfort. and although he stays silent, riku squeezes his hand, too. it's a wordless assurance, something riku had always been good at, and it spoke volumes more than his best friend could ever put into words.
the floodgates opened. sora leaned his head back and wept, but there was a sad, silly smile on his face.
it took a couple of hours for sora be completely honest about the past four months. after kairi's magic was spent, the guardians bandaged up what was left of his injury and snuck into the rec room, finding privacy enough for what was going to be a very intimate conversation. he was tempted to shrink back into himself, write off the accident as exactly that, and slap on a grin until the day was over. riku fixed him with that look, though, and sora knew his lying streak was over.
"i haven't doing so hot, i guess. since the mark of mastery," he starts, voice shaking. he turns to riku then, so quickly that his vision spins for a moment. "i was really happy for you! i swear," he exclaims, as though that statement even needs reassurance, "that was real. i'm so glad you passed, riku, you deserve it more than anything." riku flushes, and that makes all of them smile just a little.
sora draws a breath, continuing. "but i think it really messed me up. i think xehanort really messed me up. and i was too afraid to tell any of you because i didn't want you to worry." now that he's hearing it out loud, that statement sounds ridiculous, especially coming from him. lea snorts and gives him his incredulous look and yeah, it's a little uncalled for, but sora doesn't mind. it's actually kind of funny. the proponent for "lean on your friends because they're the best thing you've got" lied to his friends for a third of a year. sora himself would have laughed too if it didn't make his head whirl.
riku strokes the back of his hand and he takes that as a sign to keep going. sora pauses though, the words caught in his throat, because the next part is something he never wanted to divulge. the moment he says it out loud is the moment it becomes real, and he spent the last four months pretending, wishing, praying that it wasn't.
it was time to be real.
"there are a lot of people i'm protecting," he starts, a hand to his heart, "and i don't know who all's in here, to be honest. but i know they're hurting. i can feel it." he says it tenderly, quietly, and feels suddenly selfish for keeping it hidden so long. "and i'm afraid. i'm scared that i don't know who i am anymore."
make sure the box's contents match what's on the label. that's what xemnas told him, what xemnas still tells him every time he dreams. that's what he thinks every time foreign feelings tear up his throat and water his eyes. that's what he hears every time he dissociates the way he does, in that deep, mocking voice: make sure the box's contents match what's on the label.
"i'm scared, guys."
riku's lips fall open now, guilt filling up his lungs and threatening to spill into his mouth. he dove into sora's heart. he saw those people, those hearts that sora carried in his own, and he never connected the dots. hearts other than his own were separate, conscious beings only taking refuge, and riku sees that now. roxas isn't lost, and that boy isn't sleeping, and that girl isn't forgotten.
he almost tells them, right then and there, but sora finally looks some kind of content and riku isn't sure he's ready to break that spell. instead, riku squeezes his hand and when sora turns from kairi to him, he speaks soft, warm words. "don't be. you have us, and we're not gonna let you go."
that makes sora smile. it's weary and weak and trembling at the edges, but it's his, unfiltered and unforced.
the four guardians share blissful silence for awhile before lea's stomach garishly suggests dinner. kairi snorts and swats at him, telling him to hush up and quit ruining the moment, which lea objects to quite obnoxiously. she rolls her eyes and turns to sora, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, red hair in utter and complete disarray. she's never been more beautiful, he thinks. "how are you feeling?" she asks, and that's a loaded question too, but this time he isn't so afraid of answering.
their future is dark and unclear, littered with things to be wary of, but suddenly he isn't fearful. there's a war on the horizon and yet, he'll march. there are hearts who call to him, people who need him, and regardless of warnings, the future doesn't scare him at all.
some days are better than others. today was a good day.
"i'm okay."
a/n: bet you thought you'd seen the last of me
hey guys! it's megan, and i'm back with my kingdom hearts trash and lowercase aesthetic. this is a story i've had sitting in my head for months, and i'm not sure exactly what got me moving, but i suddenly had the inspiration to whip it up. thank you so much for reading, and i sincerely hope you enjoyed it! please feel free to leave a review, they keep me going, haha. thanks guys. xoxo
(ps: the title is a song by beach house, and it's what i was listening to while writing the last section. you're welcome.)