A/N: This story was written to be set in between Kingdom Hearts I and II. I was never fully satisfied with the explanation for Riku's blindfold given in the game, nor why Riku looked like Ansem when Sora first reunited with him. I know some of this was explained in Re: Chain of Memories, but since I haven't played that game, I tried to imagine what might have happened to Riku myself. This is a short piece from Riku's perspective meant to fill in some of the gaps. Only Riku is in this story, but of course Sora is never far from his mind. Please enjoy.
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Fever Dream
The door does not open from the inside. For a long time Riku sits at the base of the door, looking up at the heavy seam—but the white wood glows too brightly, and it hurts his eyes, and at last he has to look away. Then he turns and sets off through the heart of the worlds, searching for another way out.
Kingdom Hearts is light, but the light casts shadows, and the farther he gets from the door, the longer they get, until Riku steps over the threshold and suddenly there is only shadow, the darkness pressing in on him from all sides. He can see nothing, and he has no direction anyway, so he just walks, making his way slowly through the endless darkness. No matter how far he walks, his feet never get tired—but then, he isn't certain anymore that he has feet. Sometimes he can feel the darkness between his hands, trailing through his fingers like branches or seaweed or hair—sometimes he can't even feel his hands, and he wonders if the darkness is even out there, or if he is the darkness, and just doesn't know it yet.
Somewhere, somehow, he stumbles out into the light. It's so bright that at first he can't see anything, even though the place he's come out isn't bright at all—a city of tall black buildings, tiny windows gleaming in their flanks like dim, hungry eyes. It's raining but he doesn't feel it. He's too used to the darkness now to feel anything else.
By the time he gets out, it's too late—the darkness is already inside his head. He doesn't know it until he tries to turn on the lamp in his small, rundown hotel room and nothing happens. Riku reaches out to tighten the light bulb and burns his fingers on the hot glass. He turns to the window and watches the lights going out one by one in the towering skyscrapers, the city closing its eyes to him. Riku closes his eyes too. He stumbles into the shower and stands under the spray until he realizes that he is shivering, that the water has turned to ice on his skin. Later he will think that he must have already been in the grip of the fever when he caught a glimpse of sinister gold eyes in the mirror before tumbling into the sagging bed, the cracked wooden frame creaking beneath his weight.
He rides out the fever for three days, tossing and turning against the sweat-dampened sheets. In his dreams he sees Sora through the gap in the closing door, Sora on his knees, clutching his broken heart—he sees Ansem recoiling from him, in the moment when the light streams out of the heart of the worlds, clutching his head as his body collapses—Sora and Ansem, both on their knees, saying why are you doing this? Riku reaches for Sora's hand through the gap in the door but his fingers slip away, disintegrating into the folds of the sheets. He's nothing but a fever dream.
On the third day, Riku drags himself out of bed and into the bathroom, drinks out of his cupped, quivering hands. The sink water is cold as glass on his skin. He washes his face and looks into the mirror and thinks he sees, for a second, Ansem's image there instead of his own—then it's gone, and the glass holds only one reflection, his pale, sweating face, the circles dark as bruises beneath his eyes. Riku kneels in front of the sink and rests his head against the edge of the counter, and reminds himself that there is no Ansem anymore—but there is a Sora, somewhere, and Riku won't stop until he finds him again. He spends that night on the bathroom floor, his chest heaving against the freezing tiles. He wonders where he is, and where Sora is, and prays that it's somewhere warmer.
He starts to lose track of time, and of himself. The rain never stops in the black city, and sometimes Riku wakes from his dreams to find that he is out in the streets, walking under the downpour. He can't feel his feet in his soaking wet shoes. He catches another fever, wakes from it to find himself down on his knees in an alley, his white-knuckled fingers gripping Sora's hand. He stares up at Sora and presses that familiar tan palm against his face, breathing in the scent of the rain and the cement and Sora's soft skin.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry."
"You should be sorry," Sora says, and rips his hand away. Then Riku sees that it isn't Sora at all—it's a girl in a black raincoat, fear twisting her face as she hurries into the street. It takes him a long time to get up off his knees.
The next day is the day he breaks the mirror. He drinks from his cupped hands and washes his face and looks up and sees Ansem staring back at him, those cruel gold eyes, the wisp of a sneer around his mouth—and this time the image doesn't fade when he closes his eyes, only grows stronger when he digs his fingernails into his arm, willing the pain to bring him back. Ansem opens his mouth to speak and Riku slams his fist into the mirror. It's only when he looks into the shattered fragments and sees Ansem still there, staring up at him in challenge, that Riku realizes what is happening—that the darkness has gotten into his eyes, that he's seeing what the darkness sees. He staggers to the bed and pulls the pillow over his head. On the inside of his eyelids he sees Sora's face again, through the crack in the closing door—Sora on his knees, locked away with the darkness, begging him to open the door, to open his eyes—but he doesn't, because it's not Sora, because there is no Sora. But there is an Ansem, somewhere, and Riku won't stop until he finds him again.
Only on the last precipice at the edge of sleep does Riku realize he's gotten it backwards.
The darkness is a madness he cannot shake. When Ansem is still in the broken mirror in the morning, Riku ties a strip of black cloth over his eyes, closes them for good. He doesn't trust himself with Ansem's image in the mirror.
He learns to see without seeing. He feels his way down the stairs of the hotel—if it is a hotel—and out into the rain, walks for hours under the downpour. At first it drives him mad, the constant darkness. His mind is a stutter of endless images of the two of them, over and over, one after the other—Sora on his knees, Ansem against the sea, Sora's blue eyes fixed on his as the door to the light slips closed between them. There is darkness behind him, but Riku chooses to focus on the light, streaming out through the door and surrounding him like a halo, making him shine. He walks through the rain and focuses on the light, and soon that's all he can see: Sora's face shining like a beacon somewhere in the middle distance, urging him ever on. He doesn't trust his eyes, but he trusts Sora, so he holds that one pinprick of light in his mind and lets his body sort out the rest—the wail of a siren and the bitter prickle of rain in his nose and the shuffle of feet passing him on the street. He surrenders his eyes to the darkness and the darkness recedes from him, uncertain how to exert its madness now. Soon he can see everything, even through the blindfold. The puddles of rainwater. The cracks in the sidewalk. The figure on his knees at the edge of the street—but it's just a child, his hands down in the gutter, scraping up the pieces of something broken.
No one ever speaks to him. The city is empty of voices, except those inside his head.
At last the day comes when the darkness is empty. Riku stands in the bathroom and unties his blindfold, lets it fall over the shards of glass in the sink. It takes his eyes a while to adjust to the brightness of the black city. He looks into the cracked mirror and sees his fractured self staring back. Riku watches his reflection for five long minutes, searching his green eyes for any trace of gold—then he leans forward and rests his forehead against the cracked glass, lets the sharp edges slit the skin of his fingertips. He misses Sora, the image that he's held in his mind for so long, that gradually got up from his knees and began to smile at Riku again, as he had so long ago. He misses Sora, but with the darkness gone, he can at last begin to look for him. So he does—up and down the streets of the endless black city, under the eternal rain, and with every step he prays that Sora is not here, has never been in a place so cold.
His eyes stay clear until the day he hears the rumors—rumors of a keyhole, and darkness between the worlds again. A darkness that calls itself Ansem. He looks into the mirror and sees flecks of gold in his eyes. He puts the blindfold on again. Then he sets out into the rain with the blade that he has been given—a key with stunted wings, one part angel and two parts monster—to fight the demon he let out into the world.
He can't find Sora like this—not while the darkness is still inside of him. He can't trust himself with Sora when the darkness is staring back at him from the mirror. But he can find Ansem, and he can drag him back into the darkness, whatever it takes. Ansem is out there, somewhere, and Riku won't stop until he finds him again. Maybe after that there will finally be a place for him in Sora's light.
He doesn't feel it when the rain stops falling.