Returning Home

A young man disembarked from the train, weaving through the other passengers, seeking out the far wall of the platform to avoid being further jostled by the crowd of commuters. Since it was the final stop on the line, people spilled out from every train car, bustling along as if they were one chaotic yet strangely harmonious, flowing entity. He brushed some invisible dust from his sleeves and adjusted the rectangular glasses on his nose as he began to scan the platform. Conservatively wearing a dress shirt and grey slacks despite the summer heat, the man could've easily been mistaken for another office worker had it not been for the suitcase he pulled, marking him as a student rather than businessman. Others of his ilk could be found scattered among the busy station, reuniting with members of their families. He even recognized several of them from his classes, but not a single one were adorned as seriously as he was on their semester break.

After a minute or two, the crowd dispersed enough that he was able to spot a blonde gentleman, also wearing glasses, with a posture much like his own, towering over a much livelier silver-haired woman. The lady locked eyes with the young man at the same moment and excitedly waved her hands in the air, an enormous smile spreading across her rosy face. She grabbed her husband's arm and began dragging him over. The student, though embarrassed, returned her smile and rushed to meet them halfway before his mother caused any more of a scene. She immediately gobbled him up in an embrace; his father preferred a more restrained greeting, clasping him firmly on the shoulder and giving his son a nod of respect before speaking:

"Welcome home, Riku."

Riku and his parents shared a pleasant dinner together, though it felt to him that he spent more time answering their bombardment of questions about how school was progressing than actually consuming the lasagne his mother had prepared. Afterwards, he went up to his childhood bedroom and marvelled at how small it looked coming back to it after he'd been away from home for awhile. The first thing he did was lay down on his bed, ankles and feet sticking out bare from the end, like he'd put on a pair of pants that had shrunk in the laundry. He sat up and glanced at his luggage. Briefly Riku considered unloading the few possessions he'd packed, mostly clothing and the laptop he'd worked the previous summer to afford for school, but thought better of it. Surely there were exciting things to do and see, even on these quiet islands his youth had brought him an intimate familiarity with, or if not outright exciting then at least more interesting than the task at hand.

By then it was sunset. Riku found his parents in the living room and told them that he was going out for an evening walk, then stepped out the front door. Since their house faced west, Riku had to shield his eyes from the brilliant orange glow of the sinking sun until he turned and started down the footpath. He hadn't thought about where he wanted to go on the island, but his feet seemed to know where to take him anyway. Before he knew it, Riku had arrived at the beach. Despite it being the most romantic time of day, nobody was around this far part of the shore, and Riku sighed in relief at this stroke of good luck; he preferred to be alone with his thoughts. Not to mention if people had been there, he would've hesitated to strip his socks and shoes, as he now did, and walk barefoot on the beach. His feet in sunk deep with each step and grains of sand clung between his toes, but the familiar sensation brought a genuine smile to his face.

Riku approached the water's edge, where a low tide licked the darkened, wet sand, and gazed out over the ocean. For some reason he felt surprised to see the tiny island where he and his childhood friends would row over and waste their summer days right where it always used to be, undeveloped and ignored, easily visible as a not-too-distant cluster of trees and more bright yellow sand. At the small pier of this neighbouring island, he could just make out a small rowboat moored there. Of course he had no way of knowing for sure, but he couldn't help imagining that this was Sora's old rowboat, still right where he'd left it after all these years.

But he'd expected more things to have changed. Though it had only been one year since Riku was living at home, he'd stopped paying much attention to his surroundings while pushing himself through high school, shortly after the accident happened and Kairi moved away, or so he'd been told. Since he had changed so much in the past year, why hadn't everything else? Riku ran his fingers through his silver hair as a welcome breeze tousled it as well, smirking as he considered the irony of its excessive length. The fact that he preferred this over a more practical close cut was, to him, the only remnant of his reckless former self. Or perhaps not so much. Failing to feel at least somewhat alienated from his hometown at this point left him slightly unnerved, but these revelations weren't going to stop him from doing what he'd come to do.

The time was right to pay his dues. Riku left the beach and retrieved the shoes he'd placed on a rock, dragging his feet through the grass to get rid of the sand as best he could, and tried to ignore how his hands trembled as he retied them. His destination was on the other side of the main island. Riku turned back to the ocean one more time and, inclining his head towards it, silently bid his old playground farewell.

As the island was not very large, it only took Riku about a fifteen minute walk to reach the opposite side. The houses here were fewer, older, and weather-worn, but they carried a certain charm. He recognized one of them as the previous mayor's house, though the place wasn't significant to him for that reason. Riku continued down the road until it narrowed into a dirt walking path trailing away from the nearby buildings, shaded by huge leafy trees that had clearly been around for longer than anyone alive today. Along the way he saw flowers growing beside the lane and stopped to pick just one from each cluster here and there, slowly gathering up a sizable, multi-coloured bouquet.

Finally the path came to a bend which, once turned, revealed clearing containing a cemetery. The great ashes shielding the area created dark corners, but allowed enough of the evening's fading sunlight in to make most of the gravestones readable without a light of one's own. Riku stepped gingerly around these strangers' graves, flowers clutched close to his heart, mind registering some of the names on the epitaphs even though he'd never heard them uttered before. At a few of them he stopped and laid a single flower at the base of the graves' headstones, even though that wasn't what he'd intended to use them for; it just felt right. Not many people born on Destiny Islands lived their whole lives here. Riku already knew that he wouldn't want one of these empty plots to be his when that day came, but he realized such a fate wouldn't be all that bad either; dying here typically meant you died peacefully, surrounded by beauty and likely people who loved you. For some, that was all they could ask for.

Such a romantic passing wasn't the case for his friend however. Riku found the grave he came to visit, marked by a smaller tombstone than most of the others. The inscription read "SORA," the date of his birth and death recorded underneath with a short paragraph celebrating his life. A drawing of a paopu fruit could also be seen at the bottom. Riku blushed when he saw it; he'd forgotten that he and Kairi had convinced Sora's grieving parents to approve of its inclusion on the epitaph as a symbol of his everlasting connection to his loving family and friends, or something of the sort. He'd always pretended that the legend was just "silly kid stuff" when Sora was alive, but he'd fought for it even harder than Kairi had at the time.

Riku didn't really believe in a higher power and would've felt awkward about trying to "communicate" with Sora, so as he knelt by the grave, he didn't pray or talk to himself like every cliched cemetery scene found at the movies. But he did reflect on all the times the three of them had shared together. He remembered their curiosity about other worlds and how that had spiralled out of control and led Sora into foolishly taking a raft out in a thunderstorm. While everyone was soundly asleep in their beds, he drowned in the ocean. Riku didn't blame himself for Sora's death, not anymore—how anyone bear that sort of responsibility forever?-but a cold shudder of old guilt and terror ran through him as the memory of learning what had happened the next day bubbled to the surface.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but as he began to lose feeling in his knees, he lay the remaining flowers down and stood. Riku wondered how different his life would've turned out if Sora hadn't died. He realized that it was pointless to think about, but on the other hand, maybe things wouldn't have been much different regardless of that spiky-haired boy across the street. Everybody has to grow up at some point, right? When Riku closed his eyes, he could still picture Sora's face, but he couldn't recall the sound of his voice, or enough about his personality and beliefs to say what Sora would have wanted him to do.

He opened his eyes again and they lingered on the headstone of his childhood friend for a moment more, then he turned away and began the walk home.

Author's Note:

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed it or have some constructive criticism to share, please let me know by leaving a review. Garnering feedback is the main reason I share my fan fiction here. I've also written some other stories for Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, and even an inFamous/Uncharted crossover, so assuming you're interested in any of that, I'd be happy if you clicked my profile to see if any others might strike your fancy, though most of my stories are pretty old and don't conform to my current standards of quality.

Fan fiction isn't my main focus, but I'm hoping to complete and share more stories for Final Fantasy X and potentially Kingdom Hearts in the future.

Thanks again for taking the time to give this random, alternate universe short story about Riku a chance. Have a wonderful life and if you also want to be a writer, go write something. :-)