Child No Longer
Alrighties, I was watching my brother play KH2, and I saw the secret ending. Needless to say I started thinking about a lot of things in the games. Things like how Riku and Sora are supposed to go back to their lives after everything that's happened. Thanks to my brother hogging the game I haven't had a chance to play it yet, so forgive me now if I make mistakes.
Disclaimer: If I owned Kingdom Hearts, Riku and Sora would never have gone back to the Islands.
Chapter One: Thoughts left unsaid
When everything started, I wasn't anything special. I was a short, scrawny, clumsy little kid. So really, it shouldn't have been any surprise that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Eventually though, like everything else in this world, time changed all of that.
I learned how to sleep so lightly that the faintest of sounds could wake me. My fight or flight response became so screwed up that fight now seems to be the natural response. Knowing of all this now, I can't see how anyone thought that I would be able to return my old life like nothing had happened.
Every day that I spend here pretending to be a person that I no longer am kills me slowly. I wonder if this is meant to be part of my burden as the Key Bearer. It seems as though I gave everything up that made me, in order to save the light of the worlds, and in return I got a lollipop and a pat on the head.
I understand that I sound bitter, maybe too bitter than the hero I'm supposed to be, but what else can I say other than the truth? I left home as a child, and returned here a seasoned warrior. I don't really remember what it was like to once have someone worry about where I was or what I was doing anymore.
How am I supposed to react to all of that now? I've gotten so used to taking care of myself that I don't think that I can really step back and let someone else do it now. The only person on this island that understands me is Riku, and that's only because he's going through the same thing.
I don't think Kairi knows what to say to us anymore. At first she kept telling us that it would get easier as time passed, but it hasn't. The one time that we tried to explain to her what was wrong with us, she just brushed it off and said we needed to forget it ever happened.
Forget?
How does one forget events that still give you nightmares in the middle of the night? I'm not really angry with her for thinking like that, because her experiences were different than ours were. She was basically asleep the entire time we were fighting for our lives, and learning how to cope with being kids thrust into an adult situation.
The longer I sit here writing the words that refuse to leave my lips, my decision becomes clearer and clearer. A few days ago Riku and I received a letter from the King. Someone had obviously gone to him worried about our ability to integrate ourselves back into a normal setting.
Because of these concerns of the 'nameless person', he's offering something that practically invaluable to us. He's offering us a chance to start over. Our souls would be hidden away and kept safe until it was time for us to return. We would be reborn with our memories intact, and we would in essence be given a second chance in a world that would be better for us.
Riku and I talked it over, and we decided that we give our final answers tomorrow, but I already know the answer.
I can't handle the look of sadness that seems permanently etched into the eyes of my family. When I first came back, they were overjoyed that they had finally gotten back 'their Sora'. Imagine how they felt when they realized that the boy they knew and loved never really came back at all.
Stranger.
That what I am to nearly everyone, and what nearly everyone is to me. I can't handle this farce of a life anymore. I've seen too much and done too much to ever fit in again. How am I supposed to explain that the reasons for my constant awareness is that I'm used to little shadow things attacking me out of nowhere?
I think that my choice was made a long time ago, and I'm only just now realizing it. The worlds will always need their Key Bearer, and rather than let another go through this again, I'll let myself sleep.
Sleep.
That sounds like such a good idea.
This is it then.
My choice is made, and there is no return from it.
No good byes are needed…because they've already happened.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow I'll tell Riku and the King and finally I'll have some peace before the next time.
TBC…Chapter 2:
Meetings, Decisions, and Dreams