Ch 4: Back to School
Riku was back on the porch swing, and Nara had to wonder if it was healthy for him to spend so much time just staring at the ocean. Sometimes, she didn't understand how Riku and Sora fit together. The two of them had always baffled her. Riku could be quiet and still for hours at a time, while Sora couldn't sit still long enough to tie his shoes.
"Riku?"
"Hmm?" Riku looked up at her, his eyes vivid behind the fringe of his hair.
"Riku, school is starting in a few weeks," Nara couldn't understand why talking to her son made her so nervous now. "Are you planning on going back?"
"I can if you want me to," Riku shrugged, his gaze straying back to the frothy waves.
"I think you should," Nara ventured. "School is important. It would be good if you finished it. I know you'll be behind, but I'm sure you'll catch up fast. You've always been a quick study."
Riku realized a bit belatedly that she was expecting an argument from him. He didn't have one. School was an insubstantial memory. It held no weight in his past, and it held no weight in his future, but if it was important to his mother he would go.
"It'll be fine," he reassured her.
"They want me to go to school!" Sora stocked across the sand, kicking at shells, a pout on his face that made him look like he was twelve again.
"Just be glad they aren't making you go back to the grade you left," Kairi said unsympathetically.
"But I don't want to go to school," Sora sent a rock skidding out into the waves.
"You've got other pressing plans?" Riku asked dryly.
"Well… I…" Sora paused in his pacing to glance at Riku. "That's not the point."
"Sora just suck it up," Riku rolled his eyes. "It's only a year."
"A year is forever," Sora complained.
"Yeah, no kidding," Riku murmured under his breath.
Sora stopped, foot drawn back to kick another stone, and gave him a questioning look.
"It's not going to kill you," Riku ignored the question he already knew Sora wouldn't ask. "Anyway, you always liked school."
"But it just seems so…" Sora pondered for a moment, "not useful. I've done fine without it for the last two years."
"Three," Kairi and Riku corrected.
"Although, I don't think you can count the year you slept through." Kairi added. "You really weren't doing anything, so of course you didn't need school."
"I really slept through a whole year?" Sora looked between them doubtfully.
"A little over a year, I think," Kairi studied him thoughtfully. "As far as I can tell, it was a little over a year when everyone started remembering you again."
"Thirteen months," Riku supplied without looking at either of them.
"I still can't believe everyone forgot me," Sora flopped down on the sand.
"Riku didn't forget you," Kairi said.
Something in Kairi's voice didn't sound quite like Kairi, and Riku studied her quietly for a moment before turning back to Sora.
"Namine did it to protect you while you were sleeping," Riku explained. "If no one remembered you, then no one would come after you while you were vulnerable."
"Why couldn't she make just the bad guys forget?" Sora pouted.
"It was sort of all or nothing," Riku looked away.
"But you remembered?" Sora tipped his head back, but all he could see was the line of Riku's jaw.
"That's just the way it worked."
"Why?" Sora didn't look away.
"Because," Riku said with finality.
"Fine, be that way," Sora pouted, folding his arms over his chest. "If I have to go to school, the least you can do is spar with me." He kicked at Riku's shoe, but Riku simply shifted his foot out of the way.
"No."
"Sora, I just don't see the connection between sparring and school," Kairi rolled her eyes.
"There doesn't have to be," Sora tried again for Riku's shoe and missed by a wide margin. "I just want to spar. Your side's all better, isn't it? You've been practicing with your dad."
"I said no," Riku hedged off another attempt at his foot by hooking his shoe behind Sora's ankle and kicking out.
Caught off guard, Sora fell sideways into the sand, just barely catching himself before he ended up eating it.
"I'll see you two tomorrow," Riku stood and brushed sand from his pants, then walked away.
Sora righted himself and kicked sullenly at the sand in front of him, sending it spraying in all directions.
"He'll come around when he's ready," Kairi squeezed Sora's shoulder reassuringly. "You just have to be patient."
"But I have been patient," Sora flopped back in the sand. "I've been patient for three years."
"Two," Kairi corrected.
"So you won't spar, but will you teach me?" Kairi sat down on the porch swing beside Riku, sending it swinging. "Sora's great and all, but he doesn't know how he does half the things he does, and I know you do."
"You think I have any clue how Sora does anything?" Riku smirked.
"That's not what I meant," Kairi punched him in the arm not so lightly.
"I know," Riku brushed the hair from his face. "You don't really need a teacher though. A keyblade isn't like a sword. It's an instinctive weapon. It will tell you how to use it, and the more you use it, the more you'll know. Sparring with Sora is probably the best way to learn."
"But it's good to know the other stuff," Kairi insisted. "Just in case."
"In case of what?" Riku's gaze slide away from her.
"In case of anything," Kairi shrugged. "Just… in case, because if we ever do leave the islands again, we'll all go together, and I want to be able to help."
Riku was very still, his hair sliding back to curtain his face again. Kairi reached out and took his hand, lacing their fingers together.
"Please?" She asked softly.
"You have to go to Sora for magic," Riku still wasn't looking at her, but his hand tightened slightly in hers. "Donald and Merlin taught him really well. I can't even work healing magic. Mickey tried to teach me, and I couldn't do it, and Maleficent just tossed battle magic at me, and I picked up what I could and made the rest up as I went. I can't teach you magic."
"But you can teach me to use a sword," Kairi said firmly.
"I can teach you that," Riku agreed.
"Thanks," Kairi leaned her head against his shoulder and set the swing to rocking again.
Riku was disinterested in school. History in third period held a small amount of his attention with an account of how their islands had been settled. Math in fifth period might have held his attention, if it had been a little more intricate and a little less irrelevant. Mostly though, Sora and Kairi held his attention.
Sora had done some bargaining, something it would never have occurred to him to do before, and arranged for all three of them to have the same schedule. So Riku watched Kairi pay attention to the lessons while slipping quiet glances at he and Sora, as if she couldn't quite believe they were there, and he watched Sora feign boredom for the first ten minutes of class, then get bored with that and start paying attention.
Sora liked school. He always had. It wasn't that he was particularly good at it, because Sora had never been anything but an average student, but he liked being at school. He liked being around people, and he liked learning new things. Riku had been surprised he had put up such a fuss over going back.
Riku had always been bored with school. It had never been a challenge for him. He got top marks with minimum effort, and probably would have gotten poor marks with no effort if grades hadn't been turned into yet another competition between he and Sora. Even after having missed three years there was still nothing there to challenge him. Some of the information was new, but the underlying patterns were all the same. Algebra was really no different than arithmetic and literature barely a step up from English.
Riku stared down at the math book in front of him, where tidy columns of numbers and variables came out to a simple neat answer. It never worked that way. There was never just one unknown, and hardly ever enough equations to solve for the number of unknowns that existed. And no constants.
Except that wasn't true. M was a constant. M for Mickey, and he had never expected that, just like he had never expected Sora and Kairi to be variables. Or himself. He had never expected himself to be a variable.
"Riku, would you like to try solving the equation on the board?" the teacher's tone was as bland as the class.
Riku studied the equation for only a moment. "Seven."
"Pardon?" the teacher blinked at him, having obviously expected him to come up to the board and write out the process.
"X equals seven," Riku clarified; there was only one variable.
"How do you know?" the teacher looked mystified.
"Simplify, factor, solve for the variable." The pattern was easy when the first two steps could be dropped because the equation was simple to start with.
"Can you show the class how you did it?" the teacher motioned him up to the chalk board.
If she was hoping Riku would reveal some secret that would turn her class into mathematical geniuses she was sadly mistaken. Riku drew the equation in a neat little column with all the equal signs lined up just like the book, and never once hinted that that had had nothing to do with how he had actually found the answer.