A/N:Trigger warning for suicidal ideation. Definitely for suicidal thoughts. And ableist language, again. And mention of panic attacks.


Chapter Ten

One last text, Kai. Riku wrote. Oh, how she wished this time it would be the truth. That this time his self-imposed detachment would stick. One last text before I enter the Corner House. Willingly. For you.

Have you noticed I always do the shittiest things for you? Because I noticed. I noticed a lot and I really hate you and myself both for this.

(I don't really hate you, though. I just miss you so much. Hating you comes easier, lately. I think Nami thinks the same, but you should probably ask her for confirmation. I renounced my Naminé Expert badge, after all)

I wish you had waited for me. Aren't we supposed to be best friends? Why would you go in there alone? As if that wasn't the question Kairi asked herself day after day. Or, well, minute after minute. It was hard to comprehend how time flowed in the Corner House, if it moved at all, if she wasn't stuck in some kind of static piece of impossibility.

You made me break my promise. The blame is on you, I hope you understand this, because when I finally find you I will be very pissed.

I told you you didn't have to go if you didn't want to. I am left to guess that you did want to. That you purposefully got away from us. You're a dipshit and I will personally bury your corpse someday.

With a shovel.

Kairi muffled a wet laugh in the collar of her pink shirt. Riku's anger burned and hurt, but she could understand it perfectly well. She was angry at herself too. She hated herself too, for not being strong enough, sane enough, normal enough.

She hated herself for leaving and for making him break his promise and for making him promise her anything in the first place.

They didn't do promises and oaths. They took care of each other in different ways, in subtle glances, in fairly timed touches, in whispers and jokes too heavy on the heart and not heavy enough on the throat.

She hated everything about the situation, everyone involved, too.

She didn't want to do anything to change it, though. She needed to help Xion. She needed to be in the Corner House.

She needed to do this – whatever this was – and only after that she could go back home.


"Can you keep people outside these parts of the House?" Kairi asked Thirteen.

He had recovered without a hitch, as if he had never been hurt and bleeding at all, and Kairi didn't really want to think about it, or about Thirteen's still living relatives.

"Maybe Xi can," he mumbled. He was staring hard, harder than Kairi deemed necessary, to his brother and Xion talking, just at the opposite end of the hallway.

She could almost hear his thoughts, so loud as they were. "Who do you want to keep out?"

"My friends. I care about them too much to let them come in here."

"If the House wants them…" Thirteen said, waving a hand in what should have been a meaningful gesture. Kairi knew he meant it as a meaningful gesture. Sadly, though, the meaning part escaped her altogether.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she told him. Except, Thirteen wasn't talking at all. He was gesturing and she lacked the means to understand that vague language, that half-assed non-explanation.
She wondered if, maybe, Thirteen purposefully ignored the fact that she had not been spending a lot of time in the House. She had been there for maybe three days. Barely over a month, if she were to believe Riku's texts.

Still not enough to know how the place worked.

"If the House wants them, the House will have them," Sunshine finished for his brother, plopping down on the floor next to Kairi, breath just the littlest bit short and puffy, hair a mess and clothes rumpled. His shoulder was bleeding through and past his short sleeve. She guessed he wouldn't ask to get that healed. Not via magic, anyway. "You can't keep them out, you can't get them out if they get in."

"Is there a way to try?"

Sunshine stopped his obnoxious playing with his necklace and looked at her from under his lashes.
She could have called his eyes soulful, maybe, in another world where shitty things didn't happen to young people like them.
They were big and adorably round and shiny like stars and blue like the purest seawater.

They were dark, too.

Sunshine cracked a smile so big his cheeks had to hurt. "You're even more mental than Xi if you think you can do anything the House doesn't want you to do," he said, and it might have been offensive, if it had come from another's mouth, it might have been a blow on Kairi's already sensitive nerves, but it actually wasn't.
He was probably just disillusioned, after spending who even knew how long in this fucking place.
He wasn't trying to rile her up – Sunshine wasn't Riku – but merely hiding his failures and hopelessness under a scathing mask. Kairi could respect that as a coping mechanism. She was prone to use it too, more often than not.

"I'm a fucking nutcase," she told him, letting her shoulders straighten and then slump again as she realized she didn't have to put so much effort in her own facade. "Tell me if I can try."

"You can do what you want, Princess!" Sunshine beamed, almost shouted, his voice echoing in the hallway. Xion looked at them and shook her head, briskly walking away.
Kairi knew she wouldn't go far. She had the distinct impression Xion was never too far.

"The House is awful but it's also freedom in a lot of ways," Thirteen grumbled. Kairi wondered if it hurt him more saying those words or the wounds of the night before.

"Not that we wouldn't trade it for the outside world in a heartbeat," Sunshine added, while his brother slowly nodded, even before he heard the words. Kairi really envied their synchronicity.

She thought of Aqua.

Would they have been like them? Would they have been able to finish each other's sentences?

Know what the other would say even before hearing her talk?

Kairi craved to know, she needed to know, how she would have loved her sister, how they would have interacted, in later years.

"How were your lives?" Kairi asked in a small voice. She had gathered names were important and to keep secret, but was the same with everything else?

Where the people in the House not supposed to know one another? "Before you came here…" she specified, even if she wasn't sure it was necessary.

"What lives?" Sunshine asked, throwing his hands in the air and following that jerky move with a much more fluid gesture, bringing his hands behind his head and laying down on the floor with a huffing breath.

Kairi could smell the blood pouring from his wound.

"We have been here forever," Thirteen said, not quite morose about it, but surely not happy. Kairi supposed there wasn't much to be happy about. The only people happy inside the Corner House were those too unhinged to understand how fucked up everything was.


Riku stepped inside first.

He put a hand on Terra's shoulder and kept him still with a glare before crossing the doorway into the Corner House.

It was obviously warmer, his chilled skin languishing in the reprieve from the biting wind.

He didn't expect to find her there, of course not.

He wasn't even a hopeful person in his day to day life, let alone in dire situations, and he wasn't naif enough to think it would have been so easy as step in, get Kairi, step out.

A heavy, disappointed sigh escaped his lips anyway and he was a fucking idiot. He told himself as much, wanting to get a punch in the arm for his silly wishes and not getting it, because the only person who touched him was Kairi and she. Was. Not. There.

His next breath, when it came, was wet with barely restrained tears. He didn't even know what stung more, the frustration or the tiredness, he just wanted everything to be over.

'Suicide over or normal over?' the Therapist would have asked, because of course she would have asked that, if he had bothered to tell her such an ill-born thing.

Therapists, he had rediscovered, were not the gentle kind of people, when it came to picking apart every statement their patients made.

They could never let it pass, unnoticed and heavy, they could never forgive a bitter, inappropriate word.

And Riku really wouldn't have know how to respond to a question like that because he didn't know.

God, he didn't even know.

Suicide wasn't an option, there were too many things to do, too many plans, a promise too much to set right.

But he wasn't talking – he wasn't asking himself with someone else's voice – of options. He was talking of wishes, impossible and unreal and never-doable wishes that he could do nothing with.

Suicide wasn't an option, not in his book, not in this moment, but he had though it would be much easier if he could just take his life away, say goodbye and let someone else deal with all the shit that was his life.

Normal over was stupid. It was just as impossible as the other option, but it was also indulgent in such a fantastical way that Riku hated himself even for daring just thinking about it.

Normal wasn't for him.

Normal had not been for him since 2006 had rolled around.

"Fucking winter," Naminé spat out, bristling at his left, and Riku jumped out of his skin at the sound of her voice.

"What the fuck?" he said, glaring at her so hard he could have probably born holes through her infinite layers of sweaters and shirts. "I told you to wait outside."

"It was fucking cold and it doesn't even matter. I'm as much at risk outside with your killer brother as I am in here with the killer house."

"You don't have to pretend you think him guilty anymore, you know? I won't hold it against your pride if you fucking change your mind after three fucking years," he hissed at her, wanting to shake her by the shoulders, to make her see the truth, the easiest path, the road to fix their friendship once and for all.

And, who knew, they could have even come back together stronger than ever.

They could have even become inseparable.

"Who says I'm pretending?" she asked, raising a perfectly trimmed eyebrow. It was almost invisible against her pale skin.

"As you wish, then," Riku said, waving a hand at her dismissively.

He didn't have the strength to care, right now. He didn't have the strength to do much of anything that wasn't sleeping his ass off for at least twelve hours straight. What a pity, that he could not even blink his eyes willingly, while stuck inside the Corner House.

"So we wait?" Terra asked as soon as the silence had stretched enough to surpass the awkward stage and ventured into tension.

"You want to explore it?" Naminé retorted, as if it was a challenge and she had no intention to step down.

Except, Terra wasn't challenging anyone, let alone her.

"Chill," Riku told her, glaring into her eyes and making sure all his displeasure was plenty clear despite how soft his voice sounded.

She was free to hate Terra in her own time, when neither him nor his brother were around to hear it.

He turned to look at Terra and, just as softly, he continued talking, "We wait, yes. See if something happens."

"Something has already happened," Terra murmured, casting a closed off look at Riku, his fists clenching and unclenching almost mechanically, hard and possibly painful. "What if nothing comes?" he asked after a beat, and his voice sounded a lot clearer, which made Riku think that probably his brother didn't mean for them to hear his first sentence.

"If nothing comes, we search the first floor. If there's nothing there either, we go to sleep."

"And where do you plan to do that? I forbid you to sleep in here," Naminé spat out, unconsciously gripping his forearm, nails sinking in the sleeve of his coat. Riku could taste the worry in her voice, in her widened eyes, in the stiffness of her small shoulders.

Naminé had always been a bruiser caretaker. If she loved you, you had bruises and scratches and possibly a headache from her screaming.
Naminé was cold, had been for ten years, but she was a burning kind of cold.
Her concern was rough, and raw, and painful; her love was terrifying.

Those whom were hers were usually safe only until the moment she started to be afraid for them.

And Riku, apparently, still were counted amongst those ranks.
Glad warmth spread in his chest.

"Naoki's house," he told her, trading lightly and carefully as his hand slipped on top of hers, dwarfing it and covering it completely. He gave a little squeeze and she relented her death grip, their eyes locked, chained to the other's ones, unblinking.
Naminé took too long to calm down and Terra was glaring and growling quietly in his throat by the time Riku approached him.

His brother took the last step separating them, forcing Riku to stop in his track, and his hands were on his arm, pushing up the sleeve with manic quickness, almost bordering on hysterical.
"She didn't hurt me," Riku murmured, letting out a slow breath and gracelessly flopping against his brother's chest.
Terra wasn't even taken aback. He was ready for it as if he had seen it coming, and he wrapped Riku in a suffocating – perfectly tight – hug.

"What if I had? Would you have killed me?" Naminé asked. Illness and tiredness making her confrontational. Or maybe it was the tension. The longing for Kairi to be there, to complete their triad, to offer her peculiar brand of comfort and optimism.

"Yes," Terra answered without missing a beat. Riku wounded around him tighter.


Naoki stared at them without saying a word.
She was so tired, even more so than Riku felt. So much more he couldn't possibly get his mind around how she managed to be awake or even alive.
She tried to smile at them and her face failed her, her muscles betrayed her weariness, her anger, her pain and fears.

"I'm glad you're okay," she said, low and small and almost unreal.

Riku didn't want to sound cliche or anything, but damn, she was a ghost of herself.

Naoki had been strong after Aqua's disappearance. She had been a monster of strength, even. The pillar every other adult that had been dragged into the Situation of 2006 had relied on.

But maybe she wasn't strong enough to bear the disappearance of Kairi too.

Riku wanted to be the one to keep her up, if anything, only to give back some of the support Naoki had given to his father, but he was too broken to help himself.

"Can we spend the night?" he asked the woman, disentangling from Terra's arms only to replace them with Naoki's.

Her hug was feeble and barely warm, but it was more than he deserved, after letting her now-only daughter go.

"Yes." Her hands fisted in the back of his coat and she sobbed quietly, but she didn't cry.


Riku accepted the cup Naoki was offering.

There was not much else he could have done, not when she was looking at him as if a refusal might have been what actually killed her.

"We should be sleeping," she murmured in the empty room.

Naoki's house had never been large, quite the opposite actually, but now it surely felt empty.

It didn't make any sense.
They were awake. They were purposefully awake.
Riku was so tired and every time he closed his eyes he could see Kairi dying, Kairi hurting, Kairi being held inside the Corner House, screaming for help, Kairi inside her own mind begging for someone to save her. Begging for him to save her and he had been too late and she was gone and he couldn't do anything and he wanted to sleep but she was gone she was goneshe was gone.

"We should," he agreed, sipping from his cup. He couldn't even say if it was decaf or hot chocolate or maybe chamomile?
Was Naoki a chamomile person?
He didn't know. He looked inside the cup, the liquid was steaming and sweet and clear. Maybe it was chamomile, after all.
Theine wasn't good for people that should have been asleep.

"Do you see her too?" Naoki asked. Or maybe it had been him? He wasn't sure he could recognize what his own voice sounded like, in that moment.
He stayed silent, in fear of responding to himself and worrying the woman more than necessary, and when she just as quietly nodded, he couldn't tell if she was answering to his question or accepting that he wasn't going to answer hers.

"I'll find her," Riku said. He forced himself to make his voice come out as strong as it could. He forced himself to realize he was speaking. It was important. It was the most important thing he had ever done in his life.
His decaf was cold.
Or–
No, no it was chamomile. He had already established–
Had he?
Hadn't he?

"What is this?" he asked Naoki, looking at her.
She was asleep.
Her cup was empty, on the coffee table, and she was curled up on the couch. Sleeping like it was nothing and Riku wanted to know how much time he had lost. How long it had been since her – his? – first question?
Shock didn't suit him.

"You should come to bed," Terra whispered to him.
He hadn't seen his brother come into the living room but Terra was there and he was real and he wasn't going away, not again, never again.

Riku would keep him. He had decided he would keep him forever. He didn't care what Naminé thought. What his father thought. What the townspeople thought. He was going to keep Terra close and he wasn't going to give him up ever again. "Riku," his brother called him, and he was closer now, he was so very close and Riku raised a shaky hand to touch his cheek. The bones were hard and for a moment he could have broken them all. He could have. He didn't. "You should come to bed and sleep a little," his brother murmured, gripping his wrist tight but not painfully.
Riku sighed and he cried and laughed. All together maybe, or maybe one at a time in a longer span of time that he hadn't realized had passed.

But when he noticed himself again, Terra was still kneeling in front of him, still caressing the inside of his wrist.

He couldn't breathe properly.
Now, for the sake of not being excessively cliche, Riku didn't want to have a panic attack.
Goddammit but he hadn't had a panic attack in over two years. He was cool. His mind was pretty cool. He was better. Not okay. Never okay again, possibly.

But he was.

Better.

Still, he couldn't breathe properly. His lungs, his mouth, his throat, his instincts all were on board to facilitate a correct and normal inhale-exhale routine.
His mind, though, it wasn't.
It wasn't a matter of managing it. He did manage it quite perfectly. It was more of a focus thing, he supposed. He was losing snapshots of time and he was losing snapshots of breaths. He was losing a sense of direction.
"Riku, please," Terra said, his voice so low, so pained and tired and scared and…
And were those tears, on his face? Slipping down Riku's fingers?

"Don't cry," he said, making a soft fist against his brother's cheek, scraping the skin with his nails. He didn't harm him, though. He would never. Not while shocked, not while calm. "Don't cry, I'm okay," he said, slipping down the couch he was sitting on and kneeling to the floor, crushing against Terra and hugging him.

Naoki was nowhere in sight, maybe she had woken up and gone to bed, maybe she had never been there at all.
It was possible they weren't even in her house. Riku wasn't sure of anything. The last clear thing in his mind was Kairi's empty bedroom and his breathing going shallow and out of rhythm, out of tune.

Out of control.

"Stay with me now. Don't go again," Terra pleaded, hugging back tight, no trace of tears in his voice but a whole fucking lot of pained terror.

"You too. I can't take anyone else leaving me," Riku told him, or maybe he only thought of telling him. But it was important, just as important as I'll find her, so he repeated, clearer this time "I can't lose anyone else," and he hoped his brother heard him.