Chapter 12-Final Chapter

Riku had always believed in Murphy's Law. He'd seen too much shit in his life to believe that good things ever really prevailed over bad things. They might seem to have the upper hand, sometimes, but it was just that. An illusion. He should have known that asking for some sign from the higher power was a mistake, especially without specifying what type of sign he was willing to accept. He'd gotten his answer—God does exist. And he hated him.

The day of his mother's funeral was not rainy. This seemed fundamentally wrong to him, not only because funerals should be appropriately dreary but also because of how much his mother had loved the rain when she was alive. She loved the way it nourished her garden, and made everything sparkle. The fresh smell of rain on the ocean was one of the reasons why she'd never wanted to live anywhere other than the coast. For the last day of this life that she was awarded, Riku thought she should have been given rain. Yet, it was almost unnecessarily sunny.

Sora looked fantastic in his suit, although for once Riku didn't spend more than a few moments dwelling on it. What was the point? His mother was dead. She was never coming back. The only person who loved him unconditionally was gone without more than a moments notice, and thinking about the other person he couldn't have would have done nothing more than pour salt in his wounds. He'd never understood, not until that moment, what it was truly like to lose someone innocent. King Mickey's death, although tragic, was not brought upon frivolously. He knew what would most likely happen to him some day. Riku's mother had no idea.

Murphy, as well as the esteemed higher power, were utter bitches.

"Riku?"

"Huh?"

He looked around, snapping out of his reverie just in time to see the funeral goers begin to turn away from the thick wooden coffin in front of him. The sun streamed into his eyes, looming directly in his field of vision like some menacing presence. He idly wished he'd brought his sunglasses, even if he thought they might be inappropriate funeral attire.

"It's over, Riku."

"Oh."

Most of the people who had come to the funeral had expressed their condolences already. He received so many pats on the shoulder that he thought it might have a bruise, and there was more lemon meringue pie in his refrigerator than he knew what to do with. As they all turned away, he couldn't help but hate them, just a little. As horrible as they might have felt about his mother's passing, they could all go home to their families and move on without too much of a thought. His mother had been the only family he had left. The only thing he'd be going home to was a cold, lonely, empty house.

"Listen, Riku, you know you're more than welcome to spend some time at my house. As much as you need to," Sora said, placing his hand on Riku's arm and attempting to catch his dull, unfocused gaze.

"I just...can't. Not right now. Ok?"

And he knew he really couldn't. There was no way he could handle people fawning over him, telling him they were sorry for something they hadn't done and couldn't have helped. He couldn't sit down to dinner and eat food cooked by someone else's mom. He just couldn't.

"Then at least let me stay at your house for a few nights. I know you're going to be lonely. Please?"

Sometimes, however briefly, Riku wished that Sora were more of an asshole. There really should have been a rule against being as utterly understanding as his brunet friend was. More than anything, he wanted to scream and cry about how unfair everything was, but he couldn't. Not with Sora there. No matter how often he told himself he was alone, he really wasn't. Because Sora was there. But he could leave at any time, couldn't he? He could decide that dealing with his gay, depressed friend was something he just didn't want to worry about anymore. It would be so easy. Just like the people getting in their cars and driving away, Sora could leave Riku whenever he felt like it. If he were more of a jerk, that thought wouldn't be so unbearable.

"You've already missed too much school because of me," he countered, weakly.

"Fuck school. Do you think I care about that right now?"

"You should. It's...it's your...senior year..." Riku trailed off, almost numbly reaching up to his face where he could suddenly feel something cold and wet making tracks down his smooth, pale skin. Huh. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually cried. Somehow, when he'd decided to embrace the nothingness, he thought he'd lost the ability.

"Riku..."

Suddenly, he felt Sora's hand move from his arm to his cheek, brushing away the tears that seemed to be bursting from some sort of inner well, where they'd been hiding for years. Everything seemed to accumulate on his shoulders in that moment-everything awful that had happened to him, everything that he'd done and everything which had been done to him. All the things he'd taken and all the thing which had been taken from him. Suddenly, it seemed like everything in his life had been for nothing, except to protect the brown-haired, blue-eyed angel in front of him.

"My mom's dead, Sora. She's dead."

"I know."

Sora kissed him, then, a desperate and relatively chaste pressing of mouth on mouth, hoping to drive away some of his mental pain with physical closeness. But, as warm as his friend was, all Riku could see was the big black coffin behind him.

"She's dead, Sora."

Sora stayed with Riku that night, and five or six nights after, watching as his best friend went through the motions of existing without really living at all. Neither of them made any more mention of going back to school-if it had seemed unnecessary before, it certainly seemed even more so now. He spent more time that week thinking about the future than he ever had before, and he'd come to some unsavory conclusions.

He was the Keyblade Master, and Riku had been thought so many horrible things within that other world that neither of them would ever fit into the mundane world of Destiny Island agains. There was no way that either of them would be satisfied with a desk job, pushing papers until they were old and gray. They could barely even function in this world anymore. They both held so much anger. And now, Hana was dead, and Sora had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do. As selfish as it sounded, Riku had always been the one to take care of him, and now that the tables had turned he didn't know that he could handle the pressure.

They spent a lot of time staring at the ocean. More than anything else, that distant horizon had always seemed to hold some sort of answer for both of them. The other worlds that rested beyond it seemed just out of their reach, but simply knowing that they were there was almost enough. More often than not, Sora had his fingers entwined with Riku's mostly-unresponsive ones, and that warmth provided the rest of the comfort that they both needed.

"I don't think I can take much more of this, Riku," he said, as they both watched the sun go down.

The next morning, Sora woke to find Riku gone, with nothing more than an empty glass in the sink to show that he'd been there at all that morning. As he helped himself to a slice of one of the pies packed into the fridge, he couldn't help the thought that maybe his friend wasn't coming back, and the sliver of ice that idea sent through his heart was enough to answer whatever questions still might have lingered within his mind. The only person in the world who he couldn't to lose was Riku. It was as simple as that.

As the screen door gently slammed shut, he turned around to watch Riku take his shoes off in the entryway. As the silver-haired boy raised his head, their eyes locked for a moment, and Riku's were more alive than he'd seen them in a distressingly long time.

"Sora, where do you think Roxas and Axel went?"

"I think they died, Riku."

He nodded slowly, as though he were trying to fit that piece of information in with whatever else he'd managed to pull together.

'That's what I thought, too. At first. But now I'm wondering if that's really the case."

Riku hadn't shown much on an interest in eating lately, but he pulled an apple out of the fruit bowl to appease his stupid hunger. The slightly withered fruit was nothing more than a reminder that life went on.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I mean, Roxas disappeared before, didn't he? When he merged with you? But he wasn't really dead. He told us that there were still certain things that he experienced, even if they were technically happening to you. And Axel only died last time because he completely expended his soul-energy. This time, all they did was use the portals to bring you back to the hospital. It wouldn't make sense if that was what killed them, because they existed here just fine before."

Sora, who hadn't heard more than a sentence or two out of his best friend since he'd met him at the hospital in hysterics, had a bit of a hard time even understanding what Riku had said. Fork dangling, pie forgotten, he simply stared, squinting a little as though that might somehow help.

"So...what are you saying, exactly?"

"I'm saying that they must have found a way back."

He looked so hopeful, so desperate to prove those words true. After all, thought Sora, Riku had nothing left here. Nothing except for Sora himself. Nothing but a house and a sports car that he'd been given by his father who would probably even forget his birthday this year now that Hana wasn't around to remind him about it. Why wouldn't he want a way back? Sora should be happy his friend even wanted anything anymore with how apathetic Riku had been lately.

"How do you know they didn't just disappear, Riku? How could you possibly know?"

"Because," he said, holding out the hand not clutching onto a half-heartedly eaten apple, "I found this."

Being naturally curious, Sora couldn't help but peer forward as Riku opened his closed fist. The skip in his heartbeat when he saw what was inside it, whether real or imagined, caught him by surprise.

"Where did you find that?" he asked.

"By the cove," Riku replied. And, sitting in his palm, was a single silver pendant that looked awfully familiar.

"Mom, I'm...I'm going away for a while."

"Going away?"

Sora shuffled his feet, staring at the ground for a moment before straightening his shoulders and looking his mother in the eye with a nod.

"Yeah. Kind of far away. And I don't think I'll be able to call."

After Riku had shown him the Keyblade pendant, they'd thought about leaving right then. If the portal in the cove was still open, it meant that they could go back. Just like Roxas and Axel did. It was...an appealing thought. The idea of leaving behind Destiny High, and the lonesome existence that both of them were currently looking forward to, was something that sounded so wonderful. The people they knew in this world were either strangers who really didn't know them at all or doppelgangers of people who existed in the other world too. It was becoming unbearable. But, Sora hadn't wanted to leave without telling his parents, even if they still didn't understand much about how time worked between the two existences. For all Sora know, it might turn out to be two weeks before he saw his parents again, or twenty years.

"Where? And why, all the sudden?" his mother asked, although they both knew it wasn't really sudden at all. Ever since he had gotten out of the hospital, things had been different. Tense. Unfamiliar.

"I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," he replied, grinning lightly. He had to smile-if he didn't, his mother would know that something big was happening to him, and wouldn't let him go. Of course, she could try to stop him, but it wouldn't make a difference, and he didn't want to put her under the pressure anyway.

"This isn't really the time to be cracking jokes, Sora! You expect me to just accept the fact that my only child tells me he's leaving and hinting that he won't be coming back? Is this because of Riku?"

"Don't blame this on Riku, mom," Sora sighed, running a hand through his hair. It was so much easier to argue with his mother when he couldn't understand her side of the picture. This time, he understood it all too well. He was asking her to let go of her child without so much as a single explanation. And yet, there wasn't one that Sora was willing to give.

"I don't know how you thought I was going to take this. Really."

"I'm sorry, mom."

She closed her eyes, letting out a deep breath. Sora had interrupted her while she was cleaning up the dished from dinner, so she placed the last one in the cupboard, threw the dish towel over her shoulder, and turned to face him.

"You know, I feel absolutely awful for Riku. Hana was a wonderful woman, and I don't even know what that boy's going to do with himself now that the only parent he has left is that rich father of his. I truly feel for him. But you know what, honey? Children are meant to lose their parents. Whether it's in high school, or college, or twenty years after that, almost every child is going to go through that pain of losing their mother and father at some point. I don't care you are. When I lost your grandfather, God rest his soul, it tore me apart inside. But eventually I realized that there was nothing I could have done. Parents have a right to die before their children do."

Sora locked eyes with her as she came close and put her hand on his shoulder.

"But it's not fair for a parent to lose their child first."

It wasn't that he didn't understand. He knew that she wouldn't want to let him go. But, again, he wasn't going to let that stop him.

"I'm sorry, mama. I'm sorry."

As she pulled him into a hug, he tried to ignore the feeling of wetness where her eyes were pressed against his chest. He couldn't help but wonder when everyone around him had become so damn sad.

"Listen."

"Listen to what?"

"Can't you hear it? The sound that living things make? You know, in the dark portals, there's nothing. No light, no sound. Not a single thing, other than yourself, and most of the time you aren't even sure that you're really there. It's like you're completely blind and completely deaf for those few seconds that you're there."

"That sounds awful."

"It's not so bad. After all, everything's so dead there that you don't feel too much. It's only afterwards that you realize how beautiful the birds are."

"I never really liked birds too much."

"After using the dark portals, you end up liking everything that has a heart."

"It's so weird. I mean, before, we didn't have enough time to understand that we were supposed to be saying goodbye to this place. But this time, it's like we understand it too well."

The waves crashed gently upon the grainy, wet sand beneath their feet as they walked along the coast, each carrying nothing more than a small duffel filled with the things they didn't want to leave behind. In the distance, they could hear the sounds of civilization-cars and trucks, mostly, with the occasional foghorn sounding from the far-off harbor on the other side of the island-but they walked along the much less populated side.

"You don't think we'll be coming back?" Riku asked, kicking up a bit of sand and regretting the action almost instantly, as several grains slid into his shoe.

"I think that even if we do come back, it'll never be the same. We'll never be the same. We don't belong here anymore."

"I guess you're right."

Riku understood, as much as he was capable of understanding something so incredible, that they probably didn't belong anywhere anymore. He supposed it didn't really matter too much anyway, though, since Sora was the only thing in his life that mattered. His mother was gone, and as much as he hated that fact, he knew he had to move on or he'd never be happy again.

"This was it, right?" Sora questioned, pointing to a gap in the cliff wall, next to where one of the islands many streams joined up with the ocean in a beautiful waterfall. The gap led to a little cave they'd played in very often when they were children in order to escape from the sweltering heat of the summer, and Riku knew that Sora had taken Kairi there on more than one occasion when they had wanted privacy. Today, he was hoping it would be there doorway to another world.

"Yeah. This is where I found it." In his pocket, Riku's hand was curled around the pendant that had once been attached to the end of Roxas' keyblade. He'd been out walking, trying to clear his head, when he'd found it, almost buried underneath the white sand. It was more surprising that he'd noticed it than it would have been if he'd just passed it by. He could have thought more deeply about the implications of that, but quite frankly, he just didn't care. Coincidence, fate, destiny-none of it mattered. He'd found it, and it was going to save them both.

"Are you scared?"

The silver-haired boy turned, looking out over the glittering ocean one more time. His fingers curled around Sora's, taking warmth and giving warmth in equal measure. Pulling him close, he brushed his lips gently over those of his best friend, eyes still locked on the distant horizon.

"With you by my side, why would I be?"

"If the world is made of light and darkness, we'll be the darkness."

"Yeah..."

"At least the waves sound the same."

FIN

There you are, folks. I know it's not the greatest ending, but I just wanted to finish this thing. I'm sure most of the people who originally read this story have long since moved on, but that's ok. I certainly took my sweet ass time.

Thanks for reading, and drop a review if you have something to say!