Title: Momentarily Defective
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts II
Summary: Why does Riku hide the wrist of his left arm? He doesn't want them to see that scar.
Rain was a curious thing in the World That Never Was, independent of apparent weather conditions, coming and going as it pleased.
The rain, as it often was in the Dark City, was coming down lightly, in sprinkling sheets. Light as it was, it was nevertheless enough to hinder sight and movement, doggedly determined to discourage people from venturing outdoors.
Riku detested the rain. Living on a tropical island, he'd experienced more than his fair share of it, but rain meant his overprotective and far-too-paranoid mother locked him in the house with nothing to do. In that house, wishing fervently that he could go out and get Sora and Kairi drenched in a water fight, the boredom had almost been enough to drive him insane.
Maybe I did, he thought with a sardonic smile, I managed to escape it, didn't I? Gaining darkness instead. No, it wasn't worth it. Sometimes thinking about his experiences, his darkness, made him a little insane, too.
The self-derision faded as he continued to plod through the Dark City, once in a while stopping to brush his soggy hair from his eyes.
He'd left the King not long before. He missed the presence of a friend, but he couldn't let His Majesty endanger himself. Not when Riku himself was the danger.
Riku remembered, with a shudder, the insane impulse to destroy the small king before him. With horror, he realized his arm was raised, the darkness was rising, forming itself into the pattern his magic knew as Dark Firaga. With effort had he suppressed it, biting his lip until it had nearly bled.
But the darkness hadn't stopped there. It would be so easy, the fire-and-ice presence had whispered, he's right in front of you. His hand had reached for the plain knife he'd hidden underneath his coat. Just one strike, and….
"No!"
Riku took his breath in gasps. The incident had made him realize exactly how much sway the darkness still held over him, over his body. His left arm was still weak from fighting against itself.
And that was why he was currently wandering through the World That Never Was in the rain, dispiritedly searching for DiZ. He had a vague notion that DiZ had holed himself up in Twilight Town, but he couldn't remember where that was. And that was dangerous, not knowing your destination when warping. Especially as he'd forgotten to ask King Mickey if he had another Gummi Ship stashed away in a corner somewhere.
The World That Never Was was a Nobody stronghold. Riku felt sure that DiZ was bound to show up sometime.
A burning pain in his left arm interrupted his rainy-day musings, and he clutched at it, wondering when he'd become so weak since resolving to walk the road of twilight. The darkness shouldn't be able to manifest itself like this, shouldn't have been able to manifest at all. In the back of his mind, this felt familiar.
Belatedly, he realized that his darkness must resonate with the Dark City, some power of this world that stole the light and strengthened darkness, and the cruel presence he harbored in his heart.
Ansem.
Riku found himself finally acknowledging it, that Ansem still had this power to control Riku, had regained himself so quickly after their last fight in Castle Oblivion.
Wincing in pain, he fell to his knees, desperately clutching at his left arm, the pressure almost making him mad with despair.
He almost won the last time. He almost killed the King. He almost made me kill the King. But it. will. not. happen. again.
Riku risked letting go of his arm long enough to reach into his coat and grab the hidden knife, and, before he fully realized what he was doing, plunged the knife into his arm, below his palm and just barely missing the artery.
Riku didn't hear himself scream. Something was ringing in his ears, everything was suddenly too bright, there was a foul taste in his mouth, a thousand needles were pricking his hands, and there was the smell of something sour.
Distantly, in some part of his mind that was still sane, he'd realized what he'd done and was berating himself for it—what if he'd permanently damaged his arm?!—but the larger part of his mind was screaming with joy, that he couldn't feel the pressure on his arm anymore, that Ansem's whispering voice had finally gone away.
Riku woke up disoriented, the rain a steady, annoying pressure on his face, and his arm in dulled pain. When he lifted and saw the knife still embedded in his arm, everything came back in a rush.
His fingers twitched.
He smiled tiredly. That the knife was there, and he could still control his body, meant that his body was still his own.
He reached over and, gripping the handle of the knife tightly, pulled it out in one swift movement. He winced at the pain and dropped the knife. For a moment, he didn't move.
After a while, he forced himself to, laboriously getting up and gripping his arm to stop the bleeding.
He looked at the knife for a moment, before picking it up and sliding back into its sheath.
And then, despite his injury, continued to plod on through the still-light drizzle.
He couldn't afford to stop. It was dangerous to stay in one place for long in the Dark City, especially injured and in a far too open space. He didn't know how long he'd been lying there (the rain hadn't stopped, but weather was never a good indicator of time in the World That Never Was, anyway), but he knew each moment wasted meant greater risk of detection.
The rain had stopped, finally. That was almost all he was aware of since he'd started walking.
He was feeling dizzy and light-headed. His grasp on his arm had turned into a loose grip, and not a blood-inhibiting clutch. His gait had gotten slower. His breathing had become labored.
Riku acknowledged the need to stop, to tend to his wound and his health before he got any worse. If he was feeling light-headed, that meant he'd probably lost a bit of blood. If he'd lost blood, then he'd probably left a trail behind him. A trail any sober Organization member would follow.
His brain knew this but his feet continued to carry him on. As if, in his state, signals from his brain took ten times the time to reach their destination.
Suddenly, and quite without warning, darkness materialized, and then melded itself into a dark portal. Riku's brain registered a moment of panic. Riku's feet finally stopped.
But what stepped out of the darkness was not cloaked in black, not an enemy. No, the figure who stepped from the portal was clad in red.
It took Riku's brain another moment to register the familiar figure.
"DiZ."
Hadn't he been looking for DiZ?
The portal closed with a slight whisper against Riku's senses, dark and sour.
"Riku." DiZ stared at the sorry state Riku was in, to his damp and messy hair, to his disheveled cloak, to what was probably a gash Riku was nursing on his left arm. "You've left the king."
"Yea." Riku's feet carried him forward, his cloak making a slight whishing noise as he plodded past DiZ.
The man wondered, briefly, what Riku was doing here, and had just turned to ask, when—
Thump.
DiZ hurried over to the unconscious teen, and noted that Riku indeed sported a deep gash near his wrist. But, looking closer, he found that it was not so much a gash as it was a wound—
He was just reaching out to inspect further when he spotted the trail of blood.
Cursing, DiZ lifted Riku, doing his best to ignore his creaking bones—he was getting too old for this, had, in fact, been too old for a number of years now—and, forming another portal, which to him smelled of fire and betrayal and hate, stepped through it.
"Namine."
Startled out of her reverie by that rough, urgent voice, Namine ran out of her room to see DiZ charging down the hall past her door, carrying something in his arms.
"Riku!" Recognizing him instantly by his shock of white hair and the rough, sensuous feel of his memories—something between jagged ice and lightning—Namine left her doorway and hurried after DiZ.
DiZ glanced briefly over his shoulder at her. "Get the first-aid kit."
Namine obligingly ducked into a nearby room and retrieved one, carrying it into the room where DiZ was gingerly setting Riku onto the sofa.
She ran to his side and hurriedly opened the kit.