Suburbia
'Oh Woe!'
There was a thick smudge of red somewhere in his vision-- a bloodstain, he thought. Some weird kind of leftovers of myself. And this whole thing is just some out-of-body experience, maybe. A prelude to death. But rather than blurring and shrinking away as the image well should have in Riku's mind, it merely sharpened. Intensified. As the picture grew in definition, so did Riku's awareness of the one prevailing fact: I'm not dead. I'm not dead.
There was a pulse between his ears that wouldn't quite go away, a dull and heavy throb in his left arm-- broken, like he'd thought. Just figures.
"Morning, sleepyhead." The red blur-- as Riku should have guessed, turned out to be Kairi, her hair a vibrant shock and smear within the sterile white walls of the hospital room. She looked like hell, Riku couldn't help but note. Stick-skinny with hollowed, sunken eyes and an unbrushed plait hanging limply over one shoulder. She was smiling, though. Relieved. It was something Riku could only think about with some amount of shock, for he could still remember the things he'd told her, the words he'd spat in some sort of severely misplaced anger-- "He's not a slut like you."
"You've been out for over a day," Kairi told him. She was rummaging around in her purse while she spoke, a hair elastic around her bony wrist catching the light, shining it back into Riku's eyes. "May and her husband were here all night, but he had to go into work this morning and May was falling asleep on her feet, so I told them I'd be happy to come in." She finally pulled something out of her purse, a jar of some sort, from what Riku could tell. "Are you hungry? You should be starving."
It took Riku a moment to coordinate his mouth, and even when he managed to get it opened and producing words, it still felt as thought his brain was giving orders miles and miles away from the rest of him, his speech slow and sluggish. "Not... really."
"You should eat something." With a pop, the lid of the jar Kairi had brought was easily removed, and she reached over towards the bedside table, snagging a spoon that sat forgotten amongst a cold hospital meal of a questionable something-or-other.
"What is that?" Riku asked, obviously meaning the sludge that Kairi spooned out of the jar a moment later. Pink in color and slightly lumpy in texture, Riku was almost tempted to think it was--
"Applesauce," Kairi said.
"Why's it pink?"
"It has candy in it."
Riku blinked.
"I made it myself," Kairi insisted, as though that were explanation enough for everything. "It's a family recipe. Sort of. My grandma used to make it all the time and she put red-hots in it to make it cinnamony and sweet." She pushed the spoon closer to Riku's mouth while she spoke, and-- still feeling groggy and confused as all hell-- well, there really wasn't much Riku could do aside from opening his mouth and allowing the girl to spoon the applesauce right on in.
As far as mushed up apples went, those mushed up apples seemed exceptionally good.
"I made applesauce all day yesterday after the ambulance took you to the hospital," Kairi said with a tiny fraction of a smile. "May went with you over there. They were really worried because... normally when people have heart attacks, they use--"
"Sorry," Riku cut in. "But, uh... is... Sora here?" As much as he appreciated Kairi's presence, Kairi's applesauce, and Kairi's apparent forgiveness of their argument from the day before, Riku still couldn't help but feel a bit put off knowing that it was still only Kairi there with him and not Sora. Come to think of it, Kairi hadn't even mentioned Sora once when explaining what all had happened-- who had come to visit him and stay with him when he was out like that.
Yet no sooner had the words left Riku's mouth did he know something was wrong. That much alone was obvious in the way Kairi froze, eyes wide and worried, mouth partially opened in preparation for some response which she still hadn't quite figured out how to word properly. "Sora..." she tried, trailed off, then tried again. Softer this time, her words sounding almost in time with the steady beep of the heart monitor at the foot of the bed. "I called Sora yesterday... after you were taken to the hospital. He told me. Everything. About the medicine, about how... he told you to stop taking it. And you did...?"
Riku waited for Kairi to continue and Kairi waited for Riku to object. To say something-- anything in his own defense. But his mouth remained sealed, shut tight in a firm line while he waited her out.
"He feels awful, you know," she finally said. "Well, worse than awful."
"But it wasn't his fault."
"Would you really have stopped taking the pills if Sora hadn't told you to?"
"But it wasn't his fault," Riku repeated.
He thought for a moment that Kairi had just gone and thrown in the towel with her head bent like it was. Or maybe all the hours she'd spend hovering over his hospital bed were catching up with her and she'd up and gone to sleep on him.
But that was before he noticed the shake of her shoulders and before he heard the tremor in her voice when she managed to croak out: "Riku... what are we gonna do if you die, huh?" She was sobbing openly-- flat out weeping into her open palms with so much force that it looked as though she was making an effort to drown herself in her own tears. But she wouldn't stop asking, stop pressing for guidance. "What're we gonna do Riku?" she pleaded. "What're we gonna do...?"
"Kairi..."
"Please, please..." And here I was thinking she was the only stable one. Well. Damn. "Don't die on us, Riku. Don't die, Riku."
One arm-- the one not then punctured with IV drip-tubes and the like-- snaked its way out from the starched sheets draped across Riku, coming to rest rather awkwardly on Kairi's shoulder. He almost considered patting her, but that would've just shot the entire situation up to even greater levels of... well, awkwardness.
So he just kept it there, that hand of his, a little startled by how heavy it felt, how much effort it took not to let it tumble off and away and think nothing of it. "I'm not going to die, Kairi," he said. "At least, not soon or anything. It's okay."
"Don't die..."
"Look, I'm telling you I'm not going to die, okay? What more do you want me to say?"
"I want you to promise me-- swear you're going to try living, okay?"
"What?"
"Okay? Swear it!" While Riku's face remained relatively confused and disturbingly distant, Kairi's face took on a sort of desperate scowl as she grappled with the hand on her shoulder, digging in her nails and fingertips, drawing his attention back towards her viciously. She meant business. That much was for sure.
"Swear it, Riku. Swear you won't give up. Swear you'll keep living."
"Kai--" This is stupid. Scratch that. This is worse than stupid. This is just... pathetic?
"Swear it!"
"I swear, I swear."
"Say it, Riku. All of it."
"I swear I'll live?"
"Even if you don't want to."
"Even if I don't want to."
"Even if you want to die. Even if you don't love us-- any of us. Even if you just want to let your heart break. Because that's what it is, right? What you've got?"
Riku winced as Kairi's nails bit further into his skin, but he took it in stride. If Kairi wanted to beat the living shit out of him, that'd be perfectly okay. Hell knows that if anyone called Riku a fucking slut, they would be pissing blood for weeks. So he figured Kairi's wrath was well-endured right about then.
'Even if you just want to let your heart break...'
Stress cardiomyopathy. Broken heart syndrome. You can now die of a broken heart-- no strings attached, no down payment if you act now and destroy some valuable part of your life. Riku probably would've found it a bit funny if he hadn't been a cool observer of the catch. Of the 'death not guarenteed' subscript. Now he was stuck putting up with it all over again, people looking at him sideways, watching their words and their ways, trying not to say or do anything that might throw him into some never-ending black hole of teenage angst and hell.
And yet Kairi was oblivious to his thoughts. Perhaps her own distress somehow distorted that womanly intuition of hers. She was still there in that room, tearing up over what Riku considered to be the broad side of nothing, clutching his hand and willing life into him, saying, "We need you even if you don't need us."
For lack of a better thing to say, Riku said the only thing he could. The patented two-word system to get him out of any trouble, even when he hadn't the foggiest idea as to what the trouble was in the first place.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled.
To Riku's dissapointment, Kairi took it. She took it with a smile and didn't suspect him in the least-- never doubted his word or sincerity. In her mind, Riku really was sorry. In her mind, Riku had learned his lesson. He'd understood he'd acted foolishly and would certainly never do it again.
Such was not the case, but Kairi didn't have to know. Kairi needn't know.
But Riku was still strangely put-off by her blind faith in him. He wanted that angry, clawing girl from moments ago, the one forcing swears of this and that out of his mouth. Not the sweet, well-meaning girl he had here. Not the one he didn't want to hurt.
"Do you need anything, Riku?" she asked him, all forgiveness, all understanding. A small, tepid sort of smile was on her face like a peace offering when she spoke then. Riku cringed inwardly-- wondered why he could be so mean to her, why he felt like he had to lie and stab her innocence in the back.
"No. Thanks." He was still tired. Still only half there, really. Still reeling from the fact that he was still capable of even being anything at all-- other than a corpse. Kairi had her mouth open just slightly, most likely ready to blunder on with an 'Are you sure, Riku? You need to eat more, you need to get your strength back, you need to get better!' Before she could get rolling, he cut her off with a well-placed smile.
He'd been practicing at it. The smile was almost up to its old standard, and if no one looked too closely, they wouldn't see the duct tape lines running over jagged edges. Alright, so it wasn't as beautiful and charming and captivating as Sora's smile. Few things probably were. Riku wasn't trying to compete. He was just trying to throw Kairi off a trail he knew she was bound to pick up on eventually.
"Really," he told her, "I'm fine."
She gave him a small nod, told him she was going to call up Mayako and see about getting Riku out of 'this crummy old white room' and back into the comfort of his own home. Riku almost objected to the own-home bit-- he hardly considered Mayako's house any sort of home to him. But rather than that, he was suddenly reminded of a very pressing issue he'd pushed to the side. A very pressing issue having to do with a certain aunt and a certain paper bird.
"Wait, Kairi." Obediently, the girl paused in the doorway, head turned to look back at Riku, hand outstretched to rest on the doorknob. Riku licked his lips, swallowed and asked, "Does this hospital keep medical records...?"
"Yeah, a lot do. They are hospitals after all. Why?"
"I have... I need for you to do something for me."
x x x
According to Kairi, getting the papers had been no problem. "No really, Riku. It was a cinch. No big." She had simply walked up to the nearest male receptionist and posed her question.
"Uh, hey there! Listen, I have a question. Let's say I have a patient here who wants to check up on his med file for some information. I mean, like, see..." A little hair-twirling here, stretching, leaning forward, down, elbows on the desk before her, lips puckered into a thoughtful frown.
The receptionist gulped.
"He broke his foot this one time, yanno? And he broke his arm this time. He just wanted to look and see his list of injuries. You know, just to humor himself while he's stuck in that bed... All... alone... in that bed." A sage nod, blue eyes hidden beneath thick, black lashes. Even in her tired, haggard sort of state, the world had to hand it to Kairi. She had her way when she so demanded it.
Within five minutes, she'd managed to get herself a shaky, pimply-faced escort towards the back room-- a hellhole of files and folders and who knew what else. Kairi thought to wonder how many dead trees that one room alone contained. The number dizzied her, made her want to sit down or scream or do both, but she simply smiled and followed alongside her poor victim, finally coming to the end of a row. The W's. Mayako had kept her maiden name.
"W-wataya, was it?"
"Yep! This is it!" Kairi's hand shot out and grabbed the file labeled "Wataya, Mayako Rin" and waved it around with a delighted little smile, giggle, and a distracting-as-all-hell bend forward, giving the boy quite the view before she uttered a chipper little "Thankyousomuch!" and zipped out of view. The kid never had time to glimpse the file. He was too busy trying to dig around in his pockets for an inhaler he suddenly, desperately needed.
Again, there was a similar process to get the papers scanned. Kairi was thankful for the hospital's bounty of male workers that day. And yet while she studied the vending machines and listened to Mayako's papers being scanned and copied and printed away, Kairi couldn't help but laugh a little.
A little sadly, even.
It wouldn't really have mattered if all the workers in the entire building were female. Kairi would've gotten what she wanted in the end, no matter what it took. It was for Riku, she told herself. It was for a friend who needed something. Who was Kairi to ever deny a friend in need?
She busied herself by mentally tallying all the calories that existed inside the vending machine before her. The waiting room was a drab sort of grey with a sick-colored lavender-and-sage complimenting pattern. Hideous, as far as Kairi was concerned. The place should have been made with primaries. With real modern art, if they had to go that way. Blues and yellows and reds. If not primaries, than bold shades nonetheless. Oranges, purples, greens, magentas. If it was bright, it would have been better. It should have been better. People came to hospitals to watch people die. They didn't need lavender and sage. They didn't need sedatives. They needed optimism.
She listened to the whirr and buzz of the copier in the other room. By the time the calories had reached up into the hundreds of thousands, Kairi felt sick and ducked into the ladies' restroom.
She emerged looking more withered and stretched than before. But the copies were made. That was something.
x x x
Half an hour later, Riku was safely tucked into the passenger's side of Kairi's car-- rather, Kairi's parents' car, as the girl had so dutifully pointed out. Her license was still relatively fresh in her wallet and she was obviously nervous about driving Riku around, her fingers strangling the steering wheel as they rolled slowly, cautiously out of the parking lot. She was apt to forget to turn right on red, was likely to never know when she had the right of way, and all too generous in allowing anyone and everyone to cut in front of her as they pleased.
Still, Riku was glad it was Kairi driving him home and not Mayako. Being alone with Mayako was going to be agony whenever it was that it happened. That much he was sure of. His fingers traced the copied files Kairi had gotten him. She'd never even asked why he'd wanted them in the first place.
Just blindly obeyed his command. No second thoughts. No nothing.
Kairi had a CD playing quietly for the duration of the drive-- a mix, she told him. Most of it was pop, not the pasturized bubble-gum version, but a harder, louder, more eager breed of the stuff, as though the artists had tried so hard to break out of the mold but had just created a more twisted version of it instead. It wasn't enjoyable, but it wasn't unenjoyable either. Riku couldn't complain. Kairi was giving him everything he wanted, but something still felt off in the atmosphere.
Lingering side-effects of a near death experienced?
Riku didn't think so.
"Oh, uh, before I forget, Riku..." A red light had just gone green and it was good excuse for Kairi to not make eye contact with the guy next to her. "I kinda... made a phone call on your cell."
...O-kaaay. Unless you called someone in China or something, I really don't give a shit. Riku blinked, raised an eyebrow, shrugged his shoulders, and readied himself to say just that. "It's okay, I really don't--" 'I kinda made a phone call on your cell.' There could only have been one reason for Kairi to use Riku's cell phone. "...Wait a minute..."
"Yeah..."
"Kai-ri."
"I'm sorry, I know it was the wrong thing to do, okay?"
"Please tell me you're lying."
"I'm not." The girl pressed her bottom lip between her teeth, biting gently and focusing, focusing on the road ahead. Her profile gave the impression of a scared little kid about to set the kitchen on fire. Riku should've opted for resentment or hostility of some sort, but he held it back. After all, she hadn't yet come out and said that-- "I... sort of called Roxas." Well, never mind that idea. Goddamnit. "I figured he should know, Riku. Even if you don't care about him, he obviously worries about you and--"
"He doesn't worry about me, Kairi. Okay? Roxas doesn't worry about anyone but Roxas. The person who's worried is Naminé."
Kairi tilted her head thoughtfully to one side, the motion of the car seeming to follow the tilt and make a gentle left turn. The question was obviously right there just dying to be asked-- "Who's Naminé, Riku?"-- but Kairi held her tongue. Whether it was for Riku's benefit or her own, he was never quite sure. He just shrugged it off, just as he'd done with so many things that day. Heart attack? Pssh. Kairi crying her eyes out? No big deal. Probably breaking some law by swiping Mayako's medical info? Hardly an issue.
Riku silently figured that he was either still high on some drug or there had been some divine grace bestowed upon him in which he was reverted to his old reckless self of Destiny Islands, but the recklessness had been reverted tenfold and he had been transformed into some heartless baboon in the making.
Heartless baboon, huh? Clearly it's the drugs. Well, that's something of a relief, I guess. Back to the same old same.
A thick and heavy silence enveloped the car then as Kairi made her way through the denser part of town. Were they in some downtown kind of place? Riku didn't know. Riku didn't know there even was a downtown to the town he'd found himself flung into. It had seemed as though the green grass and automated sprinkling systems had stretched on in all directions, encompassing every part of the mainland country, right up to the shore. And across the shore? A sunken ferris wheel and a boardwalk city sitting on the water. All very abstract. All very disturbing.
As it was, the 'downtown' wasn't much of one. No towering office buildings, no nothing really. Just a shabbier brick, a dirtier concrete, a smoggier air. A billboard poised on giant stilts reading: 'There is no greater measure of your character than the size of your--'
"Cock," Riku muttered, filling in the blank of the word unread. He laughed at his own joke and Kairi made a face, glancing away from the traffic for a split second to try and figure out just what the heck had spurred that on.
"Riku, don't be crude."
A moment's silence. The shuffling of papers as Riku peered into the file clasped in his arms. And then a followup-- "...Riku?"
"Mm?"
"What are... What're you going to do with yourself?"
"...Well first I'm going to start looking through these an--"
"No, I mean-- really. What are you going to do? Do you know yet?"
Now, for all of a moment here, Riku was thrown back to a day in March, a day spent contemplating shoelaces and corndogs on a beachside bench. There had been a moment of thoughtlessness-- just a brief moment, really. Not much of one. Not much of anything. It occurred immediately after he looked up from his shoes and towards the corndog in his hand. Mom and Dad will be here soon. Naminé said she'd try and swing by. Life's alright. But how long will it be like this?
How long do I left to spend thinking about absolutely nothing but this meaningless bullshit? Weird.
"Hot outside today," Riku said.
"Great job changing the subject, Riku. You can't use my own line against me, you goof."
"Sure I can. Just did."
"Don't be such a smart-alec, would you? Honestly, I should just leave you crippled and helpless on the side of the road. Maybe a band of gypsies would be stupid enough to pick you up. Wouldn't that be exciting?"
"Terribly so. A band of gypsies or a pimp, take your pick."
"The band of gypsies, of course. But they're welcome to have a traveling pimp in their caravan. They're not his harem, though. They're self-respecting gypsies of a sort-- you know the kind, Riku Wataya."
"Well, do these self-respecting gypsies have names?"
"Only the proper ones. And as you know, virutally all self-respecting gypsies who carry on with traveling pimps are very, very proper."
"Are you going anywhere with this or what?"
"Of course I am! Don't be silly, Riku. Now then. Let's just suppose you were picked up by this herd of gypsies and their pimp companion. The gypsies would be running from the law, maybe-- no, wait, better yet, running from society itself, because all the gypsies want to do is exist as free spirits and society could hardly let them get away with a thing like that, you know what I mean? You let some gypsies into the country, let them live as free and unburdened as they want-- next thing you know they're happy as clams, never better, even. Society would never stand for it.
"The pimp, on the other hand, is riddled with problems all his own-- alone in the world, not a single prostitute to his very name-- yes, completely alone, save for his pack of friendly gypsies. And then you come in, half-dead and stupid like you are-- oh, don't look at me like that, Riku-- you don't take your medicine and what do you honestly expect to get? Stupid. Anyway, so in you come to the picture, dying and stupid, like I said. And the pimp relays a message from his gypsy companions-- 'cause gypsies are timid people and would much rather the pimp speak for them rather than having them speak themselves. He sits you down by their outdoor, portable, electric stove an--"
"How can the stove be outdoor, portable, and electric?"
"Do you wanna hear what happens to you or not?"
"Sorry. Go right on ahead."
"Right. Anyway. The pimp sits you down at their non-functional, outdoor, portable, electric stove-- happy now?-- and he says to you, 'Riku Wataya, what--'"
"How does the pimp know my name?"
"You told him, your name, okay? Now shush. Anyway. So the pimp says to you, 'Riku Wataya, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' And you don't say anything for a good long while, but when you finally do, you tell him you've got nothing, no plans, no clue. And he smiles and welcomes you into the caravan. Well. Okay, right? That brings about a question. The big H.C. How come? Because none of them have a clue either."
"Good story."
"Wanna hear another?" Rather than await a response, Kairi launched into what Riku thought would be another monologue of sorts, leaving him to tag along behind, to pick up the pieces and put it together as best he could. "Normal-kinda-boy woke up one day at 9:47 and put on his shoes, went to work, lived a normal morning and prepaired himself for another normal day during his normal lunch break spent on the downside of a school-bus."
Kairi's profile gave him half a smile. She was still focused on the traffic ahead like the dutiful new driver she was, but Riku knew that in some bizarre, abstract kind of sense, she was still looking right at him. "We might get a lot of summer showers around here, Riku," she said. "They might turn this place into a suburban steam-bath, but Sora sees the sun every day. You really think it was the sun that blinded him that time? You forget you were standing over him. He couldn't see the sun from that angle. It was you."
Sora grinned, holding one hand over his eyes, looking up at Riku and wincing from the sunlight. Though Riku didn't know it then, that one split second in time, that one perfect picture sitting right there in front of him on the burning asphalt-- it would stay with him forever as his one lasting impression of Sora.
"You can understand why he's upset, can't you? He feels like he betrayed you somehow."
"But he didn't. That's bullshit!"
"Yeah, well, you don't know everything about it, okay, Riku?"
"Then why don't you fucking tell me, huh? I mean-- Jesus, is no one open around here? Everyone acts like they've got some big goddamn secret to hide when--"
"Don't patronize us, Riku. Not your aunt. Not Sora. Not me. We all have our secrets to hide, okay? You, too, Riku. What would you call Roxas?"
"You know about Roxas."
Kairi sighed. "That's not the point, Riku. Not everyone does. And I don't know everything. And I'm not nearly stupid enough to press the issue."
Riku went silent after that. His fingers itched to toy with the button on the armrest, to move the window up and down. A nervous habit, he figured. Or maybe he was just completely going insane and a little bit of ADD was perfectly alright thrown into the medley of brain-puke he had sloshing around in there. Finally he swallowed, folded his fingers into his palm. He didn't roll down the window. He just glared at the glass.
"You all just expect me to know how to act. I don't, okay?"
The only sound in the car was the turn signal's steady click-click-click as the mix CD silently skipped back to the beginning, ready and eager to play again. As the first notes of some pretty-boy hotshot filled the car-- as the light turned green-- as the car moved right-- Kairi said, "Sora and Hayner had a falling out. It had to do with the mistake Hayner made-- I told you about it."
"And yet I still don't know what it is that happened. How informative."
"You don't need to know aboslutely everything, okay? Look. All you need to know is that inside, Sora's an unstable little boy with a massive guilt complex. He wants to do everything and be so amazing. You and I know he's amazing as-is, you know? But he doesn't. He sees flaws with himself that no one else does and he pins the blame of things on himself when no one else would."
'But what fucking teenager doesn't do that?' Riku wanted to howl. Every goddamn one of us is exactly the same. Aren't we? Aren't we all just emotional bombs waiting to go off? There's no fucking difference! But Kairi's tone maintained there was. There was a fine line drawn between teenage angst and true inner turmoil, and certainly-- certainly-- Sora and his problems were well apart from the norm. Certainly Sora was special. Certainly Riku was special.
He wanted to light into her. He wanted to go all high and mighty on her. Wanted to act like he knew when he didn't know-- never knew. Who can really tell who's fucked up and who's just faking? And if you're desperate enough to fake it, doesn't that make you fucked up anyway?
"You know, Riku," Kairi said softly, "sometimes I look at you and I think something like-- my god, there goes one poor, tragic, hopeless kind of a guy. And then other times I look at you and I figure out that maybe you're not so hopeless, I guess. You're not so powerless after all. You don't have to choose to become like... another Hayner to Sora. That's all I'm saying. Hayner let it slide. You don't have to."
The car had come to a halt. It was with a fair amount of surprise that Riku took in their surroundings-- there they were, back in one piece, more or less. Mayako's house sat squat in front of him, just one in a sea of many identical floorplans and single-family homes. But it was special, he'd thought. Like him. Like Sora. Everything personal was special. That was what made it special. The fact that Riku, in his own little bubble of being, had touched and interacted with it. Riku was a demi-god transplanted and misplaced.
We all think the same stupid jumbled things. We're all fucked up. We're all self-centered.
He moved to level himself out of the car, clutching the stack of copied papers in one arm-- the casted, broken arm-- his free hand straying closer to the window button. But to open it now would be dumb. We're already he--
"Oh, and Riku?"
"What?"
"If you're going to use those papers I copied for you, I have one condition."
"What is it, Kairi?"
Kairi smiled. She patted him on the shoulder and the tips of her fingers curled just slightly into the shirt, just slightly into the skin. "You don't mess with me," she said. "You don't mess with my head. And you sure don't mess with my feelings towards you as a friend. Maybe it's just because you're still a little dazed right now or something. But if you ever pull anything like this again? Yeah. I won't forgive you. And you will miss me. Face it. You're not actively killing yourself, but you're not actively working to prevent it from happening, either. So cut it out. Right now."
Riku... gaped. And he felt like an idiot for gaping so he forced his eyes into blinking action and forced his mouth into closing motion. Gaping turned to staring and Riku looked nothing short of dumbfounded in yesterday's clothes and a hospital haze.
"...Well then! See ya later, Riku Wataya!"
And Kairi left Riku then-- left him in a state just slightly above hopelessness, perhaps, but still a state in which it was all he could do to focus every stockpiled ounce of energy into not worrying about Sora, about Roxas, about Kairi, and about how possibly disasterous it could all so easily become. Oddly enough, he willingly sought out what little refuge the guest bedroom had to offer-- he sat at the desk, spread the copied med file out before him, and began to search.
A broken rib, collarbone, and wrist-- a benign growth in the back of the throat-- various painkillers, antibiotics, estrogen suppliments, sleep-aids, and-- anti-depressants?
Curious, Riku's eyes wandered towards the right had margin of the page where the date of perscription was neatly inscribed. 'February 10th, 1989.' There appeared a list of dates following this initial one, indicating refill after refill for almost two years. A gap started then-- time flew by with no more happy meds, clear and natural until 'July 2, 2006' came into view. Around the time Riku was finally sent to live in the custody of his aunt and uncle.
Huh. I must really bother her after all.
He didn't think much of it. He knew his aunt's dislike for him and he knew he probably drove her crazy, whether or not he meant to. But finally Riku reached the information he'd been searching for. 'February 6th, 1989. Entered labour: 0443 AM.'
Riku's birthday.
And yet there was an asterisk mark just beside the delivery time, just above the gender of the child and the blank space for the name. The smooth, black-specked space for the name. No, not blank, then. Just whited out. A white-out name and an asterisk that didn't seem to lead to much of anywhere else on that page.
"Riku?" Jolting upright, Riku nearly sliced his tongue in two with the force he slammed his teeth into it. Halved or not, there was definitely blood. Crap. Eww. Yuck. Shit. Mayako was in the doorway, and Riku had turned at an angle he hoped blocked the appearance of most of the papers on his desk. She was staring he was just... distant.
My birthday.
"Did Kairi drop you off?" Mayako asked. Riku noticed that, like Kairi, Mayako looked unhealthy. He didn't know if this sudden unhealthiness in everyone had popped up overnight or if it had been there al along and he'd just been too stupid, too wound up in himself to pick up on it. Mayako's hair-- which had once looked pleasantly peppered with gray threads-- now looked blotchy and aged and unkempt in a bun that Riku had once thought stern and intimidating.
She wasn't intimidating, he realized. She was pathetic. Just like Kairi. Why does every woman I know look like that to me? Why can't they just punch me or hit me or knock some-- if mental giggles were allowed, Riku would've had a field day. That's it. I'm insane.
'Did Kairi drop you off?' Respond, fucktard.
"Yeah," Riku muttered. He had that feeling that his body was about to be split into several parts. One, he figured, would leap to its feet and start waving fists, raving about how Mayako was his crazy psycho-bitch mother who didn't tell him or love him or do anything for him. One would pull his knees to his chin and laugh and laugh and laugh. And one would get up, walk to the nearest bus station, and leave.
But the true, one and only Riku remained seated, unmoving, unblinking.
"I didn't hear you come in..." Her words were tired, her grip on the door frame rather pitiful as she inched further into the room, eyeing her nephew and toeing the line. "Are you feeling alright?" she asked.
"Never better."
"Dr. Jones was at the hospital earlier. You know, the psyc--"
"The shrink."
She ignored it. "You were asleep," she said. "We need to call and schedule an appointment for you... So let me know a day that would be good for you. It should be soon, though." And Riku wasn't quite sure of exactly how many minutes passed between the time Mayako said that and the time she then uttered-- "...How could you be so selfish?"
"...Excuse me?"
"You go around not taking your medicine, acting like a damn child, a damn fool. Half the neighborhood thinks you're suicidal, the other half thinks you're just crazy."
The desk chair nearly toppled over as Riku lurched to his feet, the movement not half as forceful as he meant it to be because his legs felt wobbly and his tongue felt numb and nothing-- nothing felt quite like it was supposed to. So what if the entire neighborhood thought he was crazy? With the way they acted, the way they made Riku act towards himself-- of course he was bound to be fucking crazy. And try as he might to get these words out, all he could settle for was a lesser version, a more immature version that left him in that hopeless state he'd been in not so very long ago, watching Kairi leave.
"Well I might as well be, right? Hell knows you make me take the fucking medication for it!"
Why did she pull into Mayako's driveway? She could've just pulled into hers. I live next door to her. Does she not trust me to walk across a lawn? I'm overreacting. Overreacting. And now Mayako's pissed.
But Mayako wasn't 'pissed.' She was biting her lip and clutching the wall and shaking her head. "Don't talk to me like that," she said.
"Well it's true, isn't it? So what, Mayako? Is it genetic?"
"...What did you say?"
"You act like I'm such a nut-job-- you've been on this shit for years! And as for the blood-thinner-- or whatever else they fucking give me, why the hell should you care anyway? You'd be happier and saner if I just fucking died already!"
Crack.
There was a silence, a thick, angry, and absolute kind of silence that swallowed them whole right about then. When had Mayako crossed the room like that? One moment she'd been at the door, the next she was standing directly across from Riku, her vein-spun hand still trembling from the impact against the side of Riku's face. And her voice-- her entire damn body-- was shaking. "Don't you ever say that, you hear me? Never."
In a way, Riku felt morbidly ecstatic. Mayako had hit him. His aunt had struck him flat across the face and he hadn't even seen it coming. Where the hell had she gotten the strength or the nerve? The pushover, the pathetic woman he'd seen just minutes ago was gone and Riku was so damn happy. So damn happy he started laughing, but when he realized that laughing would probably only make him seem more insane, he shut up good and fast and did the only thing he figured was appropriate to do in that situation. He glared.
"What happened to your baby, May?" he asked. "Did you throw him out the day he was born or did you give him a week just out of your fucking saintly courtesy? Did you even bother to name the stupid kid or did you just pass him off as another problem for your brother to deal with?"
"My son is dead," Mayako spat. Her hand looked ready to fly again and Riku almost had it in him to will the thing back against his face once more. But the hand stayed.
"He's standing right in front of you, isn't he?"
"Don't be an idiot, Riku. You are not my son. Thank God you are not my son. And thank God my boy died before--"
"I saw the papers, Mayako, don't bother lying, okay?"
Riku knew he was wrong the very second after the words left his mouth. Any normal mother would've broken down right about then. That was what Riku had been counting on, that was the one thing that could've proven him right. It could've accounted for so many things, it could've been this one divinely messed-up fact about himself that could've contributed to absolutely everything.
Failed at math? Well, my mother denied I was her son.
Clinically depressed? Bad mothering.
Dreadful social skills? See above.
But Mayako didn't break down. She just looked tired and frustrated and thirty years older than she was. She looked like Kairi in the car, like Roxas on a bad day, like Naminé at the end of all things. She looked fed up.
"That's just it about you, Riku. You're self-centered. You're self-obsessed." She shook her head, crossed her arms, and forced Riku back into his seat with her gaze. Whipped and trained. Riku had to fight the impulse to hang his head a little. But she wasn't done, she was talking all the while and he sucked it up and listened because taking a verbal lashing was what he needed and the more it was drilled into him the worse he felt about himself and that was exactly what he wanted.
He had a plan and he needed words like Kairi's-- like Mayako's-- to carry it through.
"Like every stupid child your age who thinks they mean something. Many people are born in a day, Riku. Just as many die. And almost all of them will never have anything to do with you."
"I saw the papers, Mayako!" It was a last ditch effort at breaking through and it fell completely flat. Mayako remained intact and Riku remained horribly, painfully wrong. I saw the papers.
"And I saw the body." Mayako shook her head and turned to leave. "Just this once. Please don't argue with me. Just this once."
x x x
It was late that evening when Riku heard the voices coming from his aunt's bedroom.
"How did he find out? Why does he--?"
"It's not his fault, Maya. It hasn't been easy..."
"I've been trying..."
"And I know you have-- I know you have..."
"He... died."
"No, no, he's fine, he's fine."
"He's dead and he's dying and..."
"He's not dying. He's not going to die, May."
"He wants to! You've heard him, he--"
"Shh..."
"...on purpose, he..."
"Shhh..."
Riku backed silently into the darker recesses of the hallway and there he stayed for several minutes, just waiting, just watching. There was a small gap where the door hadn't closed entirely, giving him a three inch wide view of the room inside. His aunt wasn't crying-- at least, no type of crying Riku was used to. When most people cried, there was a shaky sort of breath, some gasp for air, some hint somewhere of an imbalance and the body's desperate attempt to cope, cope, cope and regain that stability it strived for. Yet Mayako made no sound. No jerky motions, no twitching limbs. She simply collapsed like a ragdoll shot in the head and spread out on the bed.
How... morbid.
If he hadn't told himself to hate her, he might have told himself to love her right about then. Or if not to love her, to at least forgive her, to accept her, to embrace her as a part of his family, if nothing else. But, as is usually the case, acceptance was the road less travelled and Riku didn't feel up to navigating his way through anything he didn't know or understand. Hate was easy. Hate won out.
Riku backed down the hallway, eased into the guest room, and closed the door behind him, alone in the dark. Outside the window the streetlights were shining, a moth or two occasionally swinging beneath the yellow beams, towards their blinding, artificial sun. The cardboard boxes were still stacked solemnly in the corners. They still cast their shadows on the wall and still effectively blocked out the closet and its army of cheerful stick figures Sora had...
Sora...
Riku crawled over towards the desk where his cell phone lay, innocent and dumb as all electronics are. And somewhere, Sora's cell phone rang. ...And rang... and rang again. Yet if Riku was nothing else, he was at least persistant. He knew Sora was avoiding him. He somehow knew the kid was probably sitting just within hand's reach of the damn thing, watching the name pop up on the screen: 'Riku,' 'Riku,' 'Riku.' Over and over again. But Riku could outdo Sora. He knew he could.
And somewhere around the eleventh unanswered call, he did. The ringing ceased-- all noise ceased-- and Riku's call was answered with a very audible silence on the other end.
"Sora? ...Sora, if you're there, say something."
"...Sorry, Riku." Riku didn't know exactly what the sorry was for, really. Sorry for not answering? Sorry for not being at the hospital with him? Sorry for what? But he didn't ask. Didn't have to ask. His first concern was keeping Sora on the line now that he had him.
"Okay. Okay, don't hang up. Please, just don't hang up."
"Why?"
"Why? Why? Because I..." Because I need to hear your voice so I can feel mentally stable again. That's fucking why. "I want to-- I need to talk to you."
"Look, Riku, it's my fault th--"
"Just shut up, okay? Don't go pinning the blame of this on yourself, alright?" There was no response for a moment and Riku feared the worst-- feared Sora turning away in frustration, disgust. Anything. Turning away and not turning back. Turning the phone off and not turning it back on. "Alright?" Riku pressed. There was a sigh of static through the phone and Riku slouched in relief. Sora was still there.
"No, it's not alright, Riku. You could be dead. Don't you even get that? You were this close, man. And it's my--"
"It's my fault, Sora. For the love of God. Let me be responsible for my own fucked-up actions, okay?"
Sora was silent again, but Riku no longer feared the other boy leaving. If what Kairi said had any sort of merit to it whatsoever, leaving what was Sora was apt to do in a situation like that. And whoever it was he was leaving was just expected to take it and let go, just like that. But Riku flat out refused.
"Riku, you wouldn't have done it if I hadn't suggested it," Sora murmured.
That's what Kairi said. That it was Sora's fault there. That he put the idea into my head. "...Did Kairi tell you that?" Riku asked. He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but it crept in anyway. Whatever control he had over the situation clearly just didn't extend to his own vocal cords.
"No, Riku! I told her that, okay? If anyone doesn't deserve blame here, it's Kairi. She didn't even know."
"I'm sorry."
"I thought you liked her..."
"I do. Kairi's a good kid, just..." She's always perfect and I'm always just fucked up. She's always smart and I'm always a moron. She can do no wrong by you, Sora. Can she? "I don't know."
"You're on edge. I get it."
"I really don't think you do."
"...No. Guess not."
"Sora..."
Riku thought he could hear a squeak of bedsprings through the phone, though it may very well have been his imagination. His imagination... He imagined Sora right there, in a dark room much like Riku was at that moment. Sora would be standing up from the bed, one hand buried in his hair, the other one holding the phone to his ear. Maybe he would pause to look towards the window. Maybe he would stop to think about Riku and what Riku was doing right then, completely unaware that it was so similar to the picture he himself was standing in the middle of.
"I'm tired, so I'm gonna go to bed, okay?"
"Uh, no, not okay. Are you mad at me or something?"
"No, Riku, I'm not... I'm not mad at you."
"Well then what is it? I'm trying to convince you you're guilt-free and you're kicking me in the face for it."
"I don't mean to."
"Well then don't. That easy." Riku sighed. "People are responsible for their own actions, Sora. Okay? I skipped out on the pills. That was my decision. Not yours."
There was not pause then. Sora either imploded or exploded-- which it was, Riku wasn't quite sure. But the words ripped out of Sora's mouth and across into Riku's ear with a vengeance, Sora's tone some sort of a plea, a hiss, and a roar all rolled into one. "Well if that's the case," he said, "then why the hell did you do it, Riku? Do you know how much trouble you almost walked into? How much trouble you did walk into, even-- May flipped, Riku! We all did. I mean... Do you really want to die so bad?"
"Would everyone just stop saying that, already? No, I don't want to die, okay?"
"Then what are you doing with yourself, Riku? Huh?"
"'Riku Wataya, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' And you don't say anything for a good long while, but when you finally do, you tell him you've got nothing, no plans, no--"
"...I dunno."
"Well figure it out. Because I don't want to care this much about someone who's just going to die on me."
"Jesus, Sora! We're all going to die, okay?"
"But not now! Not when you're seventeen! Not when you can prevent it!"
"Look, Sora. You wanted to take all the blame earlier-- I wouldn't let you. Well now I need you to at least take some of it, okay? Yeah, it was your idea. Yeah, I was the one who purposely ditched the pills. But it was something we screwed up together, okay? Me more than you, but you were there and you knew..."
"Then maybe I don't want to help you screw up your life anymore."
"Sora, you're--" --one of the few things that makes me want to keep my life from being more screwed up in the first place? You're the thing that makes my life seem not so screwed up? Riku couldn't get it out. Whatever it was was stuck in his throat, and stuck in his throat it remained. The phone clicked off into silence and Riku was left sitting on the guest room floor, trying to get past the fact that sweet and beautiful little Sora had just hung up on him.
And now all he felt like doing was curling up and crying like a sick little baby. Or if the tears wouldn't come, dry heaving. He'd take what he could get, just as long as it was some sort of pathetic physical expression of his own self-pity.
"...Fuck. Just... fuck."
His hands were rifling through boxes, throwing their contents down and out, moving in and out, stopping and starting and pulling and grabbing and pinching and twisting. Seeking quite shamelessly and turning the entire room into some sort of twisted minefield, all under the watchful eyes of the the girls and boys in their annorexic stick figure bodies pinned up to the closet door.
On the desk were the medical papers. The photo album. And then, with a slam, a bang, and a skid-- a yearbook. Sophomore year. The last yearbook he received. One year old. There was no junior yearbook.
Breathing heavily, Riku allowed himself to stop. He let himself take it in, let himself think it-- think Good God, have I sunk this low? Gotta look back through... gotta... just to...
Look back through something that doesn't even apply. Reaffirm your own existence by tracing pen and reading words. Just to believe that somewhere along the line of time, there was a knot for you, for someone cared enough to write you. To write you this-- the eccentric red-headed wonder with the overactive lighter-- write:
Well, jeepers, babe, I really can't put it into words the way I feel, but I'm sure you know by now. Enough deepness. Hope you...
The crazy guitarist boy with his off-key lilt and his string-calloused fingertips-- to write--
--sure happy I got ranked up there in the "major league" of your heart, because you just got put in the hall of fame in mine! Note: To the next 'major leaguer,' whoever you may be, take care of my darlin' or I will be hurtin' somebody!
How weird, then, to have the home-running boy come up short. Yes indeed, when Riku's mad, mad search and read came to a close, it was not at the end of the yearbook. It was in the middle. It was in the dead center, over a message scrawled across a picture of the blitzball team. Two faces were circled in the team of twelve-- two little shadowed faces Sharpied up and tailed with dotted lines towards the message...
Riku-- Keep your shit together this summer and let's screw the people who don't like you for you. All the things I should have said, I probably haven't said. Sorry. Keep it good. Stay gold...
The rest was scratched out.
That night, Riku dreamt for the first time in what honestly felt like ages. Since the death of his parents, his sleep had been shallow and nearly endless, the mental shore of a mental beach-- making up a mentality not his own. But after hearing his aunt's hysterics in the other room, something had clicked, something had switched, and Riku was thrown headlong into the deep end of dreams and slumber without a surface.
Riku stood on the branch of a tall tree, distorted by his sleeping mind and stretched to the size of a small skyscraper, standing strong in the middle of an ocean. Encircling the tree and bobbing up and down in the water was a chain of wooden carts, each covered with a brightly patterned tarp of some sort-- caravans, it seemed. They were pushed around in a circle at a sluggish rate, propelled on only by the current of the ocean they sat and swung in.
Then, from somewhere beyond the circle and beneath the water came a shadow. It slithered around beneath the water's surface a moment, Riku still peering curiously down at it from the safety of his one-tree-haven. The shadow vanished for a split second, only to reemerge above water as a very curious looking creature indeed, sporting fins and claws and scales-- some sort of demented sea monster that was then scrambling up the side of a caravan only to perch on the top.
And it was then that Riku picked up on them. The features. The green eyes. The silver hair.
Riku smiled up at himself and cocked his narrow, scale-fleck face to one side.
"'What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'" he asked. "Gonna become a rock star? A big shot? A nobody? Gonna take it or let it roll-- your head or your life? Cut if off a little bit? What do you plan to do, Riku? Do, do, what do you plan, plan to do?"
Riku never did hear his own response. If he gave one, it was lost somewhere between the two fogs of slumber and wakefulness and it would never be recovered.
Riku didn't care. The Riku on the tree, at least. But the Riku of fins and fishes cared very much and slunk back into the watery depths of some subconscious as a troubled little figment of someone's imagination. That and nothing more.
x x x
There was a thick smudge of red somewhere in his vision-- a bloodstain, he thought. Some weird kind of leftovers of myself. And this whole thing is just some out-of-body experience, maybe. A prelude to death. But rather than blurring and shrinking away as the image well should have in Riku's mind, it merely sharpened. Intensified. As the picture grew in definition, so did Riku's awareness of the one prevailing fact: I'm not dead. I'm not dead.
He was aware of the flimsy cast encasing his arm. Aware of the light filtering through the open window. And, as he came around in that groggy way which every teenage boy comes around in the morning, he was aware of the voice ringing between in ears and around his brain.
"G'morning, sleepyhead." ...Kairi.
"This feels familiar."
"You've got company, Riku."
"I don't think you count as company anymore. You basically live here anyway."
"It's not me, silly."
He was aware of the sudden jolt, the sudden silence, and finally, the sudden appearance of the sullen little blonde in the doorway. Arms crossed, back against the frame, one knee bent, the other locked in place.
"Hey, Riku."
"...Roxas."
(x) (x) (x)
If you think this story is going to be nothing but angst in light of this recent chapter, I would urge you to pay closer attention to Riku's reactions to things. XD
I'll be out of town for a few days, but I wanted to get this up before I leave. Hope you enjoyed!