Notes: So, um, this is totally not what I meant to write today. I finally posted chapter 10 of The Other Side and was all set to finish up one of my WIPs with my free writing time... then I ended up with this. One of the most interesting aspects of Kingdom Hearts, for me, is actually what might happen after. So I wrote it. Short and stylised and a little bittersweet.
Disclaimer: I still don't own Kingdom Hearts.
Like Counting Stars
No one knows what to do with them, now, these children-not-children who they don't remember forgetting and have forgotten remembering. They were gone, and then they were back and, if two years were lost in between, sometimes there are things that oughtn't be questioned. They're home now, back where it's safe and sheltered and the sunshine is warm, and that's the part that matters. That's the part that counts.
There are things that can't quite be ignored, though, and the gleaming bright-sharp darkness in Sora's blue-blue eyes can bring grown men to silence even as they're faced only with youthful, blinding smiles.
Riku's gone still and intense and quiet in the time he's been away and his teachers find it difficult to look him in the eye. Only Sora, and Kairi who moves now with a grace that belies her age, are never startled. Only Sora never, ever looks away.
They cling to each other, Sora and Riku, in a way teenage boys don't, while Kairi looks after them both, and everyone's afraid to look too closely and no one even thinks to ask. But the question is there sometimes, not-quite-silent and carefully veiled behind mostly-polite curiosity and mostly-sincere concern.
What made you this way?
But no one says it out loud and none of them will ever answer because some things just can't be spoken, some stories just can't be told, and they wouldn't understand, anyway, the pain and the love and the sheer strength it takes to do what they've done and survive.
Their families watch and worry and wonder, as their grades falter and their attention never seems to be on the things teenagers should find important. In class, Kairi draws fantastical things in the margins of her notebook and Sora daydreams about worlds his classmates could never imagine and Riku stares out the window with eyes that have seen too much and gone too far.
Sometimes it takes two or three tries to get them to answer a question and their smiles when they finally look up might as well belong to strangers. Riku hardly smiles at all, except when Kairi's there and smiling first, or Sora's close beside him, because Sora's continued existence is all it takes.
And no one knows what to do or what to say or how to respond to three children who stopped being children one day when no one was watching. So they stand back, a little to the side, and hope that maybe, someday, it will all make sense again.
But Sora's mother, on those nights when it's half-past twelve and Sora hasn't yet come home, realises the futility of that wish. Sora and Riku and Kairi don't mean to be different, don't want to cause anyone pain, but one day, she's certain, they'll be gone again.
And when that happens, like before, no one will remember to forget.