Back and Forth and Back
They're home again, back to everything again. They return to the same houses, face the same ocean, breath the same air, and yet they know they've irrevocably changed. Riku sums up their feeling of disquiet the best, "The life we had won't be ours again." They were the same, and yet not.
Sora's iridescent personality is tempered, a shining silver gold now instead of the impossible blazing sun it was before. It's not that he is less; it's that his experiences are more. He still laughs the same note, still smiles the same degree, but his heart beats a different tempo.
Riku has tasted the word 'humility' and learned it is not all sour. The thorns and burrs that once lined his heart have been plucked, the bleeding has stemmed, and the sharp edges of his mouth have been smoothed into hard-won smiles.
Princess is a loaded term, Kairi hardly ever feels like royalty when she's grounded in a world schoolhomeschool and the power of darkness only exists in fairytales. Nobody really notices how she holds her breath, dashes around gardens and refuses to look at white-washed roses anymore. She stays tight-lipped about the shudder that creeps along her spine when she's the last one in a classroom, chanting all the while to herself (to her other, never her nobody because to her Naminè was always more than that) that it's okay, it's okay thorns are only lifeless things in this world, nothing will hurt her anymore.
At night, when she's safe from her boys' prying eyes, Kairi huddles into the middle of her room. Away from the window, into the place where the moonlight is a pale thing and the shadows are still clawing shapes unable to touch her. It's in this grey area that Naminè comes to her, a pulse beneath her own, it's okay, her other (the pale light version of herself) whispers, it's okay the moon is a heartless thing in this world and its content to stay that way.
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End Note: This drabble was written just for fun, several pieces came together on their own, mainly the bits about Kairi/Naminè, and the boys just kid of followed. This drabble tops out at 340 words.