Entwined Destinies
By Solange MacLeod
A/N: Whee. The lucky seventh chapter! XD This'll probably be the second to last... Or maybe the third. I dunno. We'll see? –sweatdrop- Yes. "I'm going under..." –sings and dances about- Everyone sing with me, for Evanescence owns! -Giveths Shio my autograph because he asked so nicely Oo;- Never thought that would happen...
Disclaimer: Riku, Kairi, and Sora DO NOT BELONG TO ME. Shio (AKA Solange's fanboy oO) belongs to himself and Lady Lemonade (that's her pen-name on this site). No stealing or I will come after you. Evanescence, Amy Lee, and her/their songs do not belong to me. Nickelback and "Savin' Me" are not my property, either.
Claimer: Ongereol, Ryushiimon, Yukimon, Kebekol, Adrian, Suzumi, Nanashi, Nameless, Zander, Selene, Lancer, Umeka, Solange, Sálvatien, Kanaye Segador, and Kasim are © to me, Solange MacLeod. You steal, you get sued. End of story.
Chapter Seven
Open Doors
Riku came to on the living room floor, and yawned, stretching out his limbs before turning over and inspecting Sora. He was sleeping peacefully, and Riku's mouth twitched into the semblance of a smile before the doorbell rang. His brow furrowed, and he got on his knees to answer it, but then the person who had rung it floated through the door.
Riku sat frozen on his haunches, staring at what had all the appearances of a... ghost. The tall specter had silver hair, two large ram horns jutting out from the sides of his head, and yellow eyes with a blue tint to them. He wore a simple black cloak, and had headphones around his neck – even though they were partly obscured by the ghost's clothes, Riku could hear music flowing from them. He thought he recognized the melody; Solange had played something like it on the way to the restaurant on the van's radio.
Footsteps echoed loudly, thumping down the stairway. By now knowing who it was, the Destiny Islander didn't even bother to turn around – he just kept ogling the spirit, which now had its translucent head tilted at him.
"Hey, Shio," Ongereol said, smiling, and jumped the last two steps to land on the floor. "Have you met Riku yet?"
The ghost's eyes blinked, and turned inquisitive.
"Ne? Iie, I don't think I have." He bent down a bit to study said person, and Riku fell onto his hands and crab-walked a few steps backwards. "Are you human?" this 'Shio' asked, looking even more curious.
"...Yes," Riku answered after a long pause, not sure what else to say.
"I see." The ram-horned head nodded as if that fact was very important to him, and then the... person...? turned in midair to ask Ongereol, "Have you seen Solange-san?"
"No. Riku, can you go get her?" Ongereol asked in his slight Spanish accent, accentuating the R's. Riku blinked, and glanced at Sora. He didn't want to leave him alone with this... thing... He heard a long-suffering exhale from the Spanish teenager, and glanced up at him, eyebrows raised.
"Never mind. I'll get her." Grinning, Ongereol made a detour into the garage to get a broom, and then started whacking the kitchen ceiling with the handle. That set off Tora, Solange's brown-and-cream mottled guinea pig, into a volley of squeaks, and Riku flinched in alarm.
"Oi! Shima! You up?" Ongereol hollered over the animal's piercing whistles.
He is now, Riku thought dryly, hearing someone's body hit the floor (or the kitchen ceiling) in surprise.
"Hai..." came the distant, melodious reply.
"Can you get Solange?" Ongereol yelled at the ceiling. Shio blinked, but otherwise showed no sign that this was anything but normal.
"Hai," the boy answered, and Ongereol called, "Thanks, man" and put the broom back. "Will you shut up, you nerd?" he asked the guinea pig playfully, dropping a carrot in his cage as he walked to the couch and flopped down on it. Riku soon sat back down near Sora, still watching Shio cautiously. Soon, Solange's footsteps – heavy, but not quite as loud as Ongereol's – came down the staircase, and her eyes lit up as she saw Shio.
"Shio-san!" She ran forward and glomped him. As long as he lived, Riku would never be able to figure out how she didn't go straight through him, but sure enough, they were hugging each other pretty tight. After a lot of bouncing and exclaiming, the blonde girl turned to Riku.
"Riku, this is Shio. Shio - Riku." The two exchanged pleasantries, then the ghost returned his attention to his hostess.
"Solange-san, I heard Amy Lee-sama is arriving here today," he said, his eyes becoming starry. Solange was silent for a few moments, then drool started coming out of the corner of her mouth. Suddenly running into the kitchen and hopping on the table, she thrust her fist in the air and shouted out, "WE WILL GREET HER!" She then started literally ricocheting around the room and off the walls, squealing what could best be described as happy gibberish. Seeing that Sora had woken up, she leaped over the counter that separated kitchen from living room and tackled him back to the floor. So much for standing up...
"Sora! Amy Lee is coming here today! Do you realize how important this is! It shall be a life changing—" Riku's protective instincts went into overdrive, and he hauled Solange off his crush, throwing her to the ground. She lay there, eyes vacant for a second, then seized the ankle of a Japanese boy who had been trying to scoot by without interrupting her.
"It shall be a life-changing experience for all. And you shall come with me, chickenegg." She gnawed on his ankle, then leapt up and latched onto Shio again. "Shio, we will take Shima with us, yes?" He nodded emphatically, bouncing as best he could, waving at Shima as he went upstairs again, looking a bit frazzled. Solange clung to the wall for a while, and Riku took advantage of the fact that she was distracted.
"Sora, are you all right?" He brushed the other one's clothes off, fixing them.
The boy nodded, pushing his bed-head hair back, and Riku smirked. Every time he thought the brown hair couldn't get spikier, it proved him wrong, rising to new levels of messiness. His hand lifted to move some of the more defiant strands, but caught himself – and so did Sora. Blue eyes blinked, and the length of the smaller one's feathery eyelashes almost distracted him from his words: "You can touch my hair if you want, Riku."
The silvery-haired boy swallowed. That statement, for whatever reason, touched a part of him that nothing – no one – had ever dared tap before.
"...Okay." Despite the permission, he couldn't bring himself to do more than brush his fingertips along the spikes, restoring a bit of order to the smaller one's hair. Solange then fell off the wall with a loud noise, and flipped onto her stomach, supporting herself on her arms as she stared sparkly-eyed at the two boys. It was too cute... She jumped when Sora looked over and noticed her, but she immediately started giggling, rolling over onto her back and muttering about something called 'Tobima.' Riku rolled his eyes, and gave Sora a small smile before turning quickly away and looking at his folded clothes on the nearby barstool. Who had done that...? He only remembered taking it off and putting it beside the inflatable mattress to pull on the next morning. As it was, he only had on a thin white undershirt on. As his brunette friend talked to Solange, Riku shrugged on the navy shirt with a white logo, but was stopped by the aforementioned blonde.
"Wait!" She zoomed up the stairs, narrowly dodging the teenager she had called Shima and Zander, who was scratching the back of his head and yawning.
"Where'd she go in such a hurry?" he asked no one in particular, and Sora gave a confused shrug. Satisfied with the answer, he continued into the kitchen, trailed by Shima, who went for the refrigerator. Then Riku heard Solange's footsteps hurrying down the stairs, and she thrust her arms out, a black turtleneck hanging from her right hand.
"Can you wear this?" she asked Riku, eyes lit with anticipation. He blinked, raising an eyebrow. Taking his silence for reluctance, she turned to Sora. "Wouldn't he look good in it, Sora?" The small one looked at it, then turned a bit red as he nodded.
"Yeah... he would." Riku's eyes shot open, widening a bit, and he couldn't quite understand the almost gleeful feeling rising within him. That feeling that makes you want to say 'AHAHA! MY CRUSH THINKS I LOOK GOOD!' and do a happy dance. Yeah... that one. Wordlessly, he took the shirt, and Solange started cackling and shoving him towards the bathroom.
"Now, you get dressed. Sora, you too. I have to go with Shio to watch for Amy Lee-sama, but I'll be home to take you guys somewhere. Cabin fever sucks." Riku had no time to protest before his shoes were shoved in his hands and the bathroom door was closed in his face, so he let out a small exhale and set to changing. Two minutes later, when he thought he'd heard most of the house's inhabitants besides Sora wander off, he called out,
"Sora...?"
"Yeah?"
"...Solange forgot to give me my pants."
"Oh!"
Solange had changed herself, hurriedly, and was rushing out to the van (Adrian had offered to drive again), when a voice whispered through her mind.
Three days... three days...
"This is a Kingdom Hearts fanfiction, darn you! NOT THE RING! KINGDOM HEARTS, DARN YOU! KINGDOM HEARTS FANFICTION!"
Fine, geez! The voice cleared its throat. Three chapters... three chapters...
"I don't wanna write all that!"
Sucks for you.
"Arrggh!"
Pbbth!
"I DON'T HAVE TO WRITE THAT MUCH IF I DON'T WANT TO!"
Well, screw you very much too!
"Do you thumb your nose at me, sir?" The girl sent a threatening, squinty-eyed glare at the sky, not noticing when Adrian dragged her into the van.
"Is she all right?" Sora looked worriedly out the window, watching as Adrian shoved a flailing and yelling Solange into the back of the van and quickly shut the door.
"Yeah. Sometimes she just doesn't agree with the voices in her head," Zander yawned, then stage-whispered, "You should've kept Riku's pants."
"What!"
"So he could walk out in his boxers and we could all drool over him. Unless he wanted to go commando, that i—" A sharp smack on the back of his head from the just-appeared Nanashi sent the man wailing, and the woman rolled her eyes.
"Stupid ass." She stretched her arms above her head and glanced at Riku, who had heard everything and was glowering icily at the now-crouching Zander, then to Sora, who looked torn between blushing and sweatdropping. "Where's the rest of the peanut gallery?" When no one answered, she rounded on Zander and yelled, "WHERE'RE THE REST OF THE IDIOTS, DAMMIT!"
"I-I-I don't know!" he squeaked, curling into a ball and sobbing more. Sora moved to stand between him and the demon, looking up at her with stern eyes.
"Please leave him alone. He doesn't know."
Nanashi's pupils shrunk, and she hissed in his face, "Are you disrespecting me, boy?" Sora's eyes narrowed, but the blinked to normal size again as Riku stepped in front of Nanashi, forcing her to move backwards. She hissed, and the eyes on her wings flickered open, rotating to look for the disturbance that'd woken them up as their mistress's claws slid out. Riku crouched, shifting his balance to prepare for battle – but Sora somehow slipped in front of him, Keyblade in hand.
"Sora, no!" Riku said, pulling him backward. "Let me take care of it."
"Let go of me!" Sora said, wriggling the shoulder that his friend currently had in a vise grip and glaring up at him. "This is my battle!" He turned to face the enemy, who was looking quite like a Heartless at this point, with her skeletal, bleeding wings thrown out to their full span and her skin darkening with every passing moment. Her fight instinct was triggered, and Nanashi was blindly focused on winning now, no matter who died or got wounded. Her tongue, now forked, flicked out, tasting the air and quivering a bit as she hissed again, giving a sudden lunge forward, then feigned a left.
Riku moved to intercept her, but he was again pushed out the way.
"Riku, stop it!" Sora wheeled to follow her, feet apart for balance, lifting his Keyblade to block a swipe of demon claws. "I don't need your help!" Throwing off another of her advances, he noticed while he was moving his eyes left that the eyes on Nanashi's 'wings' followed him. Glancing to her real eyes while she darted at him, he observed that they had gone black – perhaps the wings were her source of sight when she was like this? Maybe, if he attacked her—
"Riku, what are you doing!" Sora rolled to dodge the demon's power-net, and the part of floor it landed on disappeared. "Give me back my Keyblade!"
The older one ignored him, slamming the weapon into Nanashi's hand as it reached for them, coated in slime that pulsed with the power within it.
"Give—"
A wall of white slammed into their opponent, and the room shook for instant with the sound of a slammed door; then, all was perfectly, extraordinarily still. It was like time had stopped. Sora turned his head to look for the source of this incredible power, but found he couldn't move a muscle in his body.
"Nanashi Viriliqíz, I am very disappointed in you." Even Riku wanted to cringe at the tone of Nameless's voice as she stood looking down at them from her position in the air, near the ceiling. "Fighting with guests? I'd have thought you'd want to set a better example for your daughter." The child was clinging to her mother's skirts, hiding half her face in them – she didn't want Nameless's blue, cold eyes on her, but she was too worried about her father to conceal herself completely. Nanashi blinked once, and her eyes and body returned to normal, and she looked up at her wife and daughter, and her face paled.
"Come," the angel said, and with one flap of her wings, she disappeared. Nanashi didn't dare stay, and she vanished also. Zander, granted back his motor abilities, looked from Sora to Riku. Not stupid enough to stay there when Sora's face looked like that, he quietly left the kitchen and headed up to his room.
Riku silently held out his friend's Keyblade, and equally mutely, Sora took it. He went back to the living room, and Riku followed, watching him anxiously.
"Sora." The older one wanted to go find a hole to hide in at the look he received in reply. I don't need your help. Do you even need me?
"I just wanted to help you, Sora."
"If you'd've stayed out of my way, you would've!"
"Why wouldn't you let me help you?" Riku's eyes began to narrow, and he reiterated, "Why?"
"Because I didn't want you getting hurt!"
"You think I'm incompetent? Sora, I've survived much worse than her."
"That's not the POINT!" Sora brandished his blade as he talked, and Riku had to tilt his head back quickly as the brunette stomped closer. "I don't want you hurt!"
"Well, I don't want YOU hurt—that's why I tried to protect you!"
"Riku..." Sora gave a sigh, lowering his weapon and holding up a hand. "I don't..."
You don't need me.
He never had. While Riku was consorting with the enemy, trying and failing to make something of himself, Sora had gone his own way, head high and not looking back, or inside – inside where demons lurked, pulling you in with the stark truth: you are useless. You're not strong enough to protect the one you love most, and even if you were, they're strong enough to hold their own. Riku's life was controlled by those fiends inside, that made him doubt himself, and turned him to the place where light was scarce and the blood flowed readily. Sometimes, Riku wondered if the light would ever return to him, when all he really had to do was look beside him for Sora.
The taller teenager stepped closer to Sora, and said brunette bristled, his hand forming a fist as he, in turn, stepped backward.
Riku stared at his friend, feeling his heart contract, then swell, and he thought it would burst if he didn't move. His eyes flicked from Sora's to the ground, then back to the blue ones he loved so much. He clenched his lips together hard, and he put right hand on the side of the other's face, then the left.
"You don't what?" He wasn't squeezing roughly, but he had firm enough a grip that Sora wouldn't be able to move unless he put a fair amount of force into it. Right now, though, the brunette felt he couldn't move.
"I..."
"You," Riku repeated softly, almost ironically, his eyebrows rising slightly even as his green eyes narrowed. Eyes that had seen more by the age of fifteen than others his age would see in their lifetimes, and tried to hide what Sora had seen all along. Not that he had been looking. The smaller one swallowed, and he lifted his right hand to tug imperceptibly at Riku's wrist; when he saw it wasn't going to budge without a fight, he just kept his hand there, holding lightly.
"Riku, I don't... It's not that I don't want it, but... I can take care of myself, you know? You can fight with me, I want you to, but... You just act like I'm a six-year-old! Like I can't handle a Keyblade on my own!"
Feeling like the six-year-old Sora had just spoken of, scolded by their parent for not knowing enough to act appropriately (i.e., made to think they're dumber than dirt), Riku loosened his grip a bit and said softly, "You wouldn't let me help you, so I just kind of... didn't think and took the Blade."
Sora paused, brow furrowing as he looked closer into Riku's eyes. Something was there, something important.
"Riku, I—"
"Don't need my help?"
Sora hesitated again, mouth slightly open. Any other time, he would've just said 'yeah, that's it,' but Riku didn't look like he could take that at the moment. His eyes narrowed as he studied what he could see of Riku's face. Some of the icy locks had fallen over his eyes and nose, concealing them. He slowly asked, "Riku...? Are you okay?"
Riku's face shot up, and he looked at Sora, eyes shown again. A slight tension showed around his forehead, but then it broke, and the guard fell away from the sea-green gaze. The older one stumbled forward, holding his face hardly an inch, perhaps more, away from the younger's. One long, sluggish breath passed between them, and Sora perhaps gained the knowledge from the oxygen he inhaled. Seeing the understanding, Riku pulled away, his hands still on the brunette's shoulders. When his arms were extended to their full span, he bowed his head until it hung between his outstreched limbs. Sora wondered if those open doors were closed, and just as suddenly as he had recognized Riku's feelings, he knew he couldn't bear it if they were.
"Riku?" Voice oddly steady, he reached out his own hand, putting it on Riku's hair.
Another moment of silence passed by, and Riku stepped out of Sora's grasp, dropping his own hold. He gave a strange smile to the younger one, and said, "It's all right." He turned and went to the couch, flipping on the TV as Solange had taught him, then abruptly shutting it off when he heard the music channel.
Heaven's gates won't open up for me
With these broken wings I'm fallin'
And all I see is you
These city walls ain't got no love for me
I'm on the ledge of the eighteenth story
And oh, I scream for you
(Come, please, I'm callin')
And all I need from you
(Hurry, I'm fallin', I'm fallin')
Show me what it's like
To be the last one standing
And teach me wrong from right
And I'll show you what I can be
And say it for me, say it to me
And I'll leave this life behind me
Say it if it's worth savin' me
(Hurry, I'm fallin')
--Savin' Me, by Nickelback.
A/N: -deep voice- ANGST. -listens to the echoes- ...yeah, another inside joke. Sue me. The next crackfic (if there is one) will be better, I swear. xX; Yeah... here it is. I freakin' finished it, and it's horrible. –begs forgiveness- The next chapter will be better, really.
