Chapter 10: In which Riku says something unsettling

Kairi's birthday party went well. It was the four of them (Kairi, Sora, Namine, Riku), plus Selphie. It was good to see Selphie again, Namine thought, forgiving Selphie for the spotty memory. Selphie and Sora brought presents, and Namine sketched a quick picture for Kairi—another to go on the walls in Kairi's room. Riku, not wanting to be the only one without a present, gave Kairi some munny. She seemed thankful.

The party was a sleepover, so they all stayed the night at Kairi's, before going home later in the day.

Namine didn't have the time, didn't take the chance, to tell Riku about her nightmares. She hadn't wanted to on Kairi's birthday, and couldn't find the courage to talk to him the day after, even long after they'd returned to Hollow Bastion.

Surely a day more wouldn't hurt. She'd tell him first thing in the morning.

Riku didn't even ask if they would be sharing the bed again tonight, he just flopped into Namine's bed. This was basically the fourth night they'd be doing it, though, so Namine wasn't horribly bothered. Not that she would've been bothered much anyway. She hadn't had a single nightmare since they'd started doing it, and Riku seemed to be sleeping better as well.

At least, he'd been sleeping better until now.

Namine was jolted awake with a start. Riku wasn't thrashing—yet—but his grip on her had tightened drastically, and his breaths were coming in short gasps, and he was mumbling quite a bit

"I- I didn't do anything… Please, please, please, I didn't…"

She tensed.

Larxene.

"Riku…" she said, slowly. "Riku, it's just a dream…"

She grabbed a hold of his arm, partially to be reassuring, partially just to pull it away from her before he could constrict her breathing entirely. She wanted to sit up so she could reach him better, soothe him better, but it was all she could do to keep him from accidentally suffocating her. His muscles were tight and didn't want to move, and she didn't have near enough space to shift at all, let alone sit up.

"Please! I didn't—"

The words cut off completely, not into a groan, not into a scream, just into silence. Namine swallowed, worried, but was rather thankful he wasn't screaming. They wouldn't wake the whole house, that way.

"It's alright," she whispered, hoping to calm him further, to lull him completely into sleep again. "It's just a dream…"

For a long moment, she was sure it worked. He was still very tense, but his breaths had slowed, and he stopped mumbling. His grip on her didn't lessen, though.

And then he spoke:

"I'll kill her."

The words sent chills down Namine's spine.

"I'll do it," he hissed, malice dripping from his voice. "I will. I'll kill her."

Namine tried not to shudder, though she really couldn't help it. She shifted as best as she could to look at Riku over her shoulder, though she could move very little, and couldn't see him as a result.

Just a nightmare, she told herself.

Just a nightmare?! Wake him up, you idiot! Wake him up and tell him everything. If he really means that—

But after a moment or two, his breathing had slowed completely, and his grip on her had lessened entirely. She could shift to see him, now, and he looked so peaceful, so serene, that it broke her heart to consider waking him.

The morning. It won't hurt to wait until morning.

Even so, it was a long time before Namine went back to sleep.

xxx

"Do you want to play a game?"

A shiver went down Sora's spine at the sight of Luxord, smiling over his cards. Sora didn't like that smile. He didn't know much about cards, and even less about gambling, but he'd played enough other games to know that was a smile of a man who anticipated winning. And this game wasn't a game Sora could afford to lose.

"I've had enough of your stupid game!" Sora shouted.

Shouting was all he could do, though. His limbs were limp, though they still moved, just not of his own accord. Closer examination proved why. Strings were attached to him, like he was a marionette. He followed the strings with his eyes, and found them dangling from the hands of his Shadow.

That sight sent another set of chills down his spine, especially the sad look in his Shadow's eyes.

He turned his attention back to Luxord, only to find it was Maleficent there instead. In his dream, he didn't even question where Luxord had gone, he hardly even realized anyone but Maleficent had ever stood there.

"Fool boy, you'd be better off serving me!" Maleficent called, with a sweep of her staff, preparing for battle.

Sora's own limbs moved into a battle stance, though the stance was not his own. Normally he held his Keyblade in both hands, not just one, and he never held it at his side like this.

"I'll never let that happen!" Sora shouted. The words rumbled from deeper within him, and he wasn't exactly sure they were his words.

The battle raged in ways that should've been impossible, but ways that felt completely right within a dream. Sora hardly kept track of the battle, anyway, so he couldn't quite pick out was wrong with it if you'd asked. It was just… wrong.

"I'm doing this because I love you."

The words reverberated in his skull. The words made the battle stagger, they made time slow to a halt. Sora turned to face his Shadow, and it was like moving through molasses. The strings on his limbs had vanished. His Shadow stood before him, golden eyes wide with terror, with sorrow.

"If you love me, then why are you hurting me!?" Sora shouted.

Even his words seemed to leave his mouth at a snail's pace.

"I'm doing this because I love you."

Everything snapped, and he fell. It was a short fall, only to his knees, but everything around him had shifted with it. His Shadow was gone. The nether space he'd been fighting Maleficent in had been replaced, filled with familiar images. The front room of his house. The wooden floor beneath him, scuffed by years and years of sand scraping across it on the bottom of careless shoes on careless feet.

He was before his parents, on his knees, crying, begging.

"Please, just listen to me. Please, I wouldn't lie to you."

I'm doing this because I love you.

His Shadows words still pounded in his mind, so hard he thought they might burst from his head.

"Sora, there's no such thing as other worlds!" his mother shouted.

"WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME?!"

I'm doing this because I love you.

It all clutched at his heart, tugging with an unbearable pain. He thought he would explode. What did his Shadow mean? Why wouldn't his parents listen? Why—

'You cannot hide from me.'

That was a different voice, a voice that was more felt than heard. It felt like something was pressing on his mind, like footsteps of a small animal across his skin. Every sight, every sound, every feeling around him and within him dissolved at the arrival of that voice.

Suddenly there was only mist around him, a grey mist, and he couldn't tell if he was standing, or if he was floating, or if he was even really there. The mist was thin and thick around him at the same time. He could see his hand just fine when he waved it in front of his face, but when he held it at an arm's length in front of him, it vanished. Even so, he could see something in the distance, a dark form, a familiar silhouette.

It almost looked like… a wolf.

And the shape of it, the feel of it was so familiar—familiar?—he thought he might weep.

'If you thought you could hide from me, Mahtas, you were a fool.'

The wolf vanished, then the mist, and then Sora was awake.

He sat for a long moment, at first not recognizing the sight of his own room around him, nor the feel of his own bed beneath him. Reality drifted back to him so slowly, he feared for a second he might still be a sleep.

That wolf… was it… was that real?

It seemed absurd, but the mist had felt like waking between sleeping, those few moments when you were awake but didn't dare open your eyes, didn't dare get out of bed. Did he know the wolf? Something familiar about it tugged at him, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember seeing it before. The fact it was in his dreams—along with what it had said—scared him more than any other of his nightmares had.

Sora untangled himself from his sheets and staggered to the bathroom. He had to hold onto the walls to keep himself upright.

"You cannot hide from me."

The wolf's words.

Had it been talking to me? And, and what had it called me? That word…

He couldn't summon the word to his mind again, nor a concrete meaning for it. He thought he knew what it meant, maybe, but when he couldn't remember what he word even was…

The feel of hot water on his hands brought him back to his senses. He couldn't even remember turning on the water in the sink, and with a hiss of pain he quickly turned on some cold water to balance the hot out. Normally the hot water wasn't warm enough to scald, unless it'd been left running for some time. Obviously, he had been running it for a while…

Sora shook his head and splashed the water on his face, which is what he'd come in here to do anyway.

It was just a dream… It had to be!

He turned the water off, slowly, then looked up into the mirror. It was hard not to cringe at his own features, at a face marred. He hadn't had much access to mirrors for a while after receiving the scar, and was sure it'd be a while from now before he really got used to seeing it.

He rubbed at his cheek with wet fingers. The new skin—much lighter than any of the rest of his skin—stung a little when pulled, but it didn't hurt much otherwise. He let out a long breath, lowering his hand from his face.

"I'm doing this because I love you."

Sora gripped the edge of the sink and cried.