Come Home
Description: Inspired by the Ashika Sakura story of the same name. A single night's mistake separated them for six years. When chance throws them back together, it will take more than love to heal the wounds and bring them home. Cleon, Soriku, AkuRoku, Zemyx, and Yuffietine.
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts belongs to Square-Enix. This should be nothing new to anyone.
A/N: Ugh, writer's block sucks. Thanks for being patient!
37. Kairi
She slowly rolls to a stop and puts one foot down on the sidewalk so she won't fall over. The house in front of her is huge. It almost looks like two houses put together. The driveway is long and has one of those circle-things at the end so the cars can turn around and come out front-first. The yard is big, too, and perfectly trimmed without a single toy or ball in sight in spite of the fact that four boys live here, the youngest only a year older than she is. She swallows heavily and fights away her trembles. She is a brave girl and will not be scared of a house.
Carefully, she pedals her bike -- hot pink with streamers from the handles, a basket in front, and a little bell by her hand -- up the long driveway and parks it near the front sidewalk. Her hands shake a little as she walks up to the door, but she shoves them in her pockets, only pulling one out to ring the doorbell. While she waits, she bounces on her toes and tries to count the number of small purple flowers on one of the bushes beside the door.
She is in the mid-thirties when a small blond boy opens the door. She smiles automatically, but then realizes that he is not the one she wants.
"Who are you?" he demands of her, his voice harsh and cold.
"Um …" she falters for a moment. "Is … is Riku here?"
"Maybe," he shoots back, eyes narrowing. "Why?"
His meanness makes her bristle and gives her back her courage. "I'm his friend," she informs the nasty boy before her. "I want to know if he wants to come ride bikes with me."
The boy's green eyes widen at her words, but in the next moment, they are narrowed again, even more tightly than before. "Riku doesn't have any friends!" he shouts at her. "None of us do! Go away!"
"No!" she shouts right back, stomping her foot and fisting her little hands on her hips. "I'm not going away! Riku does have a friend, and it's me!"
"No!" her opponent nearly screams. "No, you're not his friend! You can't be!"
"What is going on here?" a new voice demands, and suddenly another blond boy is there in the doorway. This one is taller and bulkier, and his hair is cut close to his head. He grabs the door with one hand and yanks it open further so that he can see out without trouble.
Sensing that this boy is nicer and more reasonable than the first, she turns her attention to him and repeats, "I'm Riku's friend. I want to know if he can come out and play."
The bigger boy blinks at her. "Oh," he replies. "Oh, I see. Well, I think 'Ku is upstairs. Wait here and I'll go check."
"No!" the smaller one screeches, yanking on the door with both hands in an attempt to close it on her. "No, he can't have a friend! He's not allowed to have a friend! It isn't fair!"
The bigger boy just looks at him for a long minute. Then, he turns back to her, repeats, "Wait here," and shuts the door. Muffled screams filter through the cracks around the wood for a minute or so more before finally falling quiet.
Left by herself on the front step, she shifts her weight from one foot to the other and bites her lip. She thinks of Riku and the way she first met him. His solitary walk across the playground and his surprised face when she talked to him. The joy in his eyes when he realized she meant what she said. Slowly, she realizes that she is not just Riku's newest friend. She is his only friend.
The house in front of her is no longer scary; instead it is terribly, horribly sad and lonely.
The door opens again, and this time the boy she wants is standing there, smiling at her. "Hi, Kairi!" he greets her happily.
"Hi," she returns with a smile of her own. "Do you want to ride bikes with me?"
"Sure!" He steps through the door onto the front step, allowing her to see that the smaller of his brothers is still there in the hall, arms folded over his chest and face glowering. Following her gaze, Riku turns to her and says, "Sorry about Kadaj. He can be a total butthead sometimes."
"Shut up!" Kadaj snaps.
"Make me!" Riku shoots back.
Kadaj's fists fall to his sides, and for a moment, it looks like he is going to step forward. But then, his shoulders sag a little and he turns away. Before he can go, however, Kairi takes a step closer to the door, moving as close to him as she can without actually going inside the house.
"Kadaj?"
Surprised, he turns to her, and when those green eyes fall on her, she smiles.
"I can be your friend, too," she tells him. "If you want."
Beside her, Riku makes a small sound of protest, but she is watching Kadaj's reactions instead. At first, she thinks she sees the same emotions that were in Riku's face before, a kind of surprised happiness and hesitant hope. However, instead of the joy that Riku showed her, Kadaj's eyes shift to anger, and he scowls at her fiercely.
"Ha!" he cries. "No way I'd be friends with a stupid girl!" He turns sharply and strides away, not looking back.
"Kairi isn't stupid!" Riku shouts after him, but she lays a hand on his arm and smiles.
"It's okay," she assures him. "I don't mind." Her eyes find and follow the other boy as he disappears around a corner inside the house. She feels a little sad to see the lonely boy walk away, but at least, she thinks to herself, she managed to save one of them.
Smiling brightly, she takes Riku's hand and pulls. "Let's go!"
"Yeah!" he cries with a smile of his own, and together, they jump off the front step and run down the sidewalk towards the driveway.
xXx
The day after the disaster in the auditorium, neither Sora nor Roxas came to school. Kairi had been surprised, but their absence had worked in her favor. By the time the twins returned the following day, she and Kadaj had successfully spread the rumor that the whole thing had been a fight between Sora and Riku over her. Only a word or two in the right ear, and suddenly the entire school believed that Sora had taken Riku aside to ask permission to date his best friend, Riku had had a sudden revelation that he also had feelings for her and refused, and they had fought over it, driving Sora to tears and sending Riku into depression. The false rumor had explained away the confrontation in the hall, and no one knew or suspected that both boys would much rather kiss each other than her.
With the rumor mill appeased for now, Kairi felt comfortable concentrating instead on understanding exactly what had happened between her two friends and figuring out how best to get them back together. Riku's side she finally understood. She still wanted to strangle him for being such an idiot, but at least she could relate to his feelings of fear and inadequacy. Sora, however, she didn't get at all. While she could understand him feeling hurt and betrayed to find out that the one he trusted had lied to him, she couldn't wrap her mind around the sheer magnitude of pain the boy seemed to be experiencing. He did a pretty good job of hiding it at school, but his smiles weren't the same and the joy that he seemed to radiate all the time was just gone. It didn't make sense to her, and she knew that, since Sora was the one who had to forgive Riku, if she didn't understand him and his side, nothing that she did to help them would work.
She gave him a couple of days of peace to recover by himself, but once Friday morning homeroom rolled around, she decided he had had enough time. Leaving her things at her own desk, she slipped into the seat in front of him and twisted around to face him with a friendly smile. He lowered his script of Our Town which he had been reading and offered her a smile back, but those impossibly blue eyes of his held no warmth whatsoever. Instead, they were blank and cold.
"Hi, Sora," she started, determined to try no matter what.
"Hey, Kairi," he returned, his tone even but dull.
"How are you doing this morning?"
"Fine."
"That's good." She crossed her arms upon his desk and lowered her head a bit to speak more privately to him. "We need to talk."
His fake smile never faltered, telling her that he had been expecting this. "I'm sorry, Kairi," he replied steadily, as if reciting from the pages in his hands, "but I don't really feel like talking right now. Maybe later, okay?" He lifted the script and pretended to read again, but such feeble attempts to dissuade her were not about to work.
"No," she stated with firm resolve, "it's not okay. I stayed away for a couple of days because I figured you'd appreciate it, but now I want to hear your side." When he did not respond, she grabbed the top of the script and pushed it back down to the desk, suddenly irritated. "Sora."
Sora just looked at her. Those empty eyes stared at her, and, as she stared back, she gradually began to feel her annoyance and frustration melt into an aching sympathy. The boy she had grown to love in such a short time, the boy of sunshine and smiles, was nowhere to be found. This figure who sat in front of her was just his shell, a being who looked like him but had no soul inside. All of Sora's light had been stolen away.
Kairi's chest hurt with the power of his sadness. More than ever she wanted to help, to do something to just fix this. Gently, she detached his fingers from the script and held his hands in her own. "Sora," she murmured, "please. Talk to me." When his gaze fell away, she pressed, "Tell me what you're thinking, what you're feeling. I want to understand."
A small, unexpected laugh escaped through his lips, startling her. "I'm sorry, Kairi," he replied, his voice only just loud enough to be heard. "I appreciate you worrying about me, but even if I told you, you wouldn't understand."
His soft statement smacked into her like a punch in the gut. Groaning in disbelief and frustration, she dropped her head onto the desk with a mild thud. "Not you, too," she whined. "That's all Riku ever says to me. 'I can't tell you, Kairi. You wouldn't understand.'" A fresh wave of anger and determination rose up within her, and she lifted her head again, eyes flashing. "Well, I say try me!" she demanded in a low hiss. "How do you know I won't understand? I'm not some kind of sheltered princess, you know. I've had my share of pain in life. I've been disappointed, betrayed, lied to. I've had my heart broken. What makes you so sure that I won't understand?"
A small smile, reminiscent of his old one, had crept onto Sora's face at Kairi's moment of melodrama, but with her words it faded away. His steady gaze held her fast, covering her with a deep sadness, as he told her, "You won't understand, Kairi, because there's no way you can. You may think you've had your heart broken, but really you haven't, not the way I have." When she tried to protest, he shook his head sharply and continued, "You don't know what it's like not to have a family. You don't know what it's like to be in foster care, bouncing around from one house to another, never truly having a home. And you don't know what it's like to finally have that home only to bury your beautiful, perfect mother a mere three years after you finally found her."
Kairi gaped at him, stunned. "But …" she faltered. "But what does that have to do with … ?"
"With Riku?" he finished for her. "Everything. Because that's who I am. Those are the heartbreaks that this last one was built on. And there's no way I can explain any of them to you so that they'll make sense to you. You just can't understand, Kairi." He smiled at her, a small, lonely gesture that made her want to cry. "And I don't ever want you to."
"Sora …"
"The bell's about to ring," he interrupted her, taking back his hands and reaching for his script again. "You should get back to your desk before Miss Trepe yells at you."
Subdued, Kairi hung her head for a moment to collect herself. She had no proper rebuttal for Sora's argument, nothing at all, yet even knowing that she wouldn't understand him didn't stop her from wanting to try. She cared for him, deeply; she couldn't just sit by and do nothing. Unfortunately, she was beginning to accept that she wouldn't be getting any information from Sora himself.
Rising to her feet, she took the few steps she needed to stand next to Sora, leaned down, and, not caring about what the rest of the room thought, hugged the brunet boy tightly to her chest. "I'm not giving up on you," she whispered to him. "I don't care what you say. I'm not giving up on either of you. I love you both too much to do that."
Sora did not respond, not that she expected him to, and a moment later she straightened and returned to her own seat. Her resolve had not wavered. She would simply have to find another strategy. Now, however, she had responsibilities to take care of in the form of yet another long and boring day of school. Real life and all its heartaches would have to wait.
xXx
"All those in favor of locking them in a closet until they work it out themselves say 'Aye'!"
Setting down her cup of tea in annoyance, Kairi turned to Kadaj who had his hand up and gave him a pointed glare. "Would you shut up?" she snapped. "This is supposed to be a serious discussion."
The obnoxious blond next to her huffed and lowered his hand. Picking up his coffee, he sipped it imperiously and protested, "I'm being serious. Neither of them are cooperating, so I say throw 'em together and let them either fuck or kill each other." He flicked a lock of hair over his ear and leaned back in his chair to gaze out the giant window of the donut shop. "Either way," he added, half to himself, "at least we'll have done something."
"Ugh." Disgusted with the boy beside her, she turned instead to the one seated across from her. "Ignore him, please," she said. "He's an ass."
Roxas looked up from picking at his muffin and gave her a half-hearted smile. "Sure, no problem. Although," he added, "I'm still not entirely sure why I'm here. Technically, we're on opposite sides."
"No," she assured him immediately. "No, we're not. All of us want the same thing. You two want your brothers to be happy, and I …" She sighed and looked down into her drink. "I want them both to be happy."
"You want them to be happy or you want them to get back together? They're not necessarily the same thing."
Roxas's observant question surprised her, but before she could think of a proper response, Kadaj had leaned forward again, saying, "We want them to be happy. However, at this point, it looks like the fastest and easiest way for that to happen is to get them back together." He dipped his chin a bit, giving his gaze a sharp, pointed quality to it as he looked over at the brother of his brother's ex-boyfriend. "What do you think, Roxas?" he asked. "Do you think Riku can make Sora happy?"
Kairi held her breath as the two boys stared at each other. The question of what Roxas thought of Riku had been the big unknown when she had first considered this meeting. Her conversation with Sora the previous morning in homeroom had convinced her that they would not be able to get anywhere with the brunet boy without the help of his twin, but neither she nor Kadaj had the slightest clue what Roxas thought of this whole situation. She had wanted to work up to the question a little more subtly, but trust Kadaj to jump right in without any warning or preparations.
Roxas had held Kadaj's gaze for a minute or so, but then he dipped his chin and stared at the table instead. Very slowly, he replied, "I think that Sora has never been happier than he was during the time he was with Riku. I also think that, whoever Riku used to be and whatever it was he used to do with himself, he is now wholly devoted to my brother." His blue eyes lifted and locked with first Kadaj's, then Kairi's as he stated, "I agree with you. We need to get them back together."
"Awesome," Kairi breathed, letting the relief wash over her. Next to her, Kadaj only smirked, but she could tell that he was happy as well. "So," she continued, feeling much more confident in herself, "it seems that we have two tasks here: get Sora to forgive Riku --"
"Easier said than done," Roxas murmured.
"-- and get Riku to forgive himself."
"Also easier said than done," Kadaj frowned.
"I'm sure we can do it if we work together," she insisted. Her companions seemed less than convinced, but she refused to give in to their pessimism. Leaning forward and folding her hands on the table, she attacked the first problem by saying, "Roxas, what can you tell us about Sora's side? He flat-out refused to tell me anything yesterday, saying that I wouldn't understand because I didn't grow up in the foster care system like you two did. While I can agree with him somewhat, I don't believe it's as completely hopeless as he thinks it is. What do you think? Can you explain it to me, at least a little?"
For a long moment, Roxas did not respond. He simply stared at his half-eaten muffin with a blank expression on his face. Then, he shifted slightly in his seat and replied, "No. I don't think I can. But it's not because you won't understand it. It's because I don't want to." When Kairi began to protest, he lifted a hand to stop her and, after a breath, continued, "You don't grow up in the foster care system. You survive it. There's a lot of that part of my life that I want to forget. Even so, I think I can explain what Sora is feeling right now without having to give you the details."
Satisfied, Kairi leaned back in her seat to listen while Roxas lifted his head to speak. "An orphan," he began, "learns early on never to get his hopes up. All it takes is one or two possible adoptions that fall through, and you learn. I've been a cynical bastard for years, and it's only recently that I've been able to appreciate the good things in my life without expecting them to be ripped right out from under me. Sora, however, has always had that little seed of optimism in him that just won't die. Even when he knew that we weren't going to get adopted this time or that this foster home wasn't going to work out, he couldn't help from feeling disappointed."
Kairi sighed and tipped her head to the side. "I can see that," she confessed. "Sora's a living sunbeam. I can just see him trying desperately to push his way through the rainclouds and failing."
Roxas smiled at her, a hesitant, slightly guarded smile. "He was allowed to shine for a little bit after we actually got adopted, but we only had a few years before the clouds returned. And this time it didn't just rain; it flooded the world."
"Your Mom died," Kadaj commented quietly. He had leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest, chin down and eyes half-closed.
"Yeah," Roxas returned in a similar tone. "It was like some divine power was reminding us that we shouldn't bother to get our hopes up. That happiness just wasn't for us. There was even a brief period of time -- extremely brief, thank God -- when Sora wondered if her death was our fault, if we were somehow cursed." When Kairi made a little whimpering noise of sympathy, he smiled and her and assured her, "I convinced him otherwise pretty quickly, don't worry. But my point is that those thoughts were there. We had learned yet again not to expect anything good or happy in our lives to last."
"It's a wonder," Kadaj said pointedly, "that Sora ever agreed to go out with Riku at all."
"I'm getting to that," Roxas told him. He took a drink of water from the bottle beside him, then continued, "Losing our Mom was a terrible blow to both of us, but truthfully, it could have been worse. We were both very happy living with our adopted parents, and we had both opened ourselves up and lost some of our previous cynicism -- Sora more than me, of course -- but there was a bit of it that we held on to in spite of everything. Our home life was great and we thrived in it, but there was something …" He paused, struggling for the right wording. "Something … not right about it."
To Kairi's surprise, Kadaj snickered. "Something perhaps to do with the fact that your father is gay?" he asked teasingly.
"He's bi, actually," Roxas replied with a small smirk of his own. "But yeah."
Dozens of thoughts, all of them questions, rushed through Kairi's head. "W-what … ?" she stammered. "Your dad's … ? How … ?" Suddenly irritated, she turned on Kadaj and demanded, "How did you know that?"
Kadaj's smirk had turned into a full grin, aimed directly at her. "I'll tell you later," he replied with an evasive wave, and when she opened her mouth to gripe at him some more, he took her by the shoulders and turned her body back to Roxas again. "Later," he laughed. "It's not important. Listen."
She harrumphed at him but let it go. As much as it annoyed her to be kept out of the loop, she knew he was right. It wasn't as important as learning about Sora.
Across from her, Roxas waited with a smile on his face until she had resettled herself. Then, he continued, "So like I said, we always knew that there was something wrong with our parents' marriage. We loved them and trusted them, but there was always that small doubt that we couldn't get rid of, that tiny expectation that it wouldn't last. We were thinking divorce rather than death, but the bottom line is that when it happened, we were devastated but not completely surprised. It could have been worse.
"But with Riku …" Roxas trailed off again and shook his head in a kind of sad resignation. "Riku brought out the absolute best in Sora in a way that no one else ever has. He gave himself to Riku completely, no hesitations, no doubts. Never had he shone so brightly. I … I don't …" He leaned back in his chair and looked out the window to the street, his expression tender and just a tiny bit afraid. "I don't know where he got the courage."
"It was the same with 'Ku," Kadaj interjected. He also turned his gaze beyond the window, as if by talking to the same thing Roxas watched could bring them closer. "My brothers and I have lived our entire lives hiding ourselves behind masks. We've done it so much that we don't even have to think about it anymore. It's a natural reflex." A little grin flickered over his face as he said, "Kairi hates it. But that's the way we are. With Sora, though …" He shook his head lightly in wonder. "Whenever 'Ku talked about Sora, all his masks faded away. I don't think he even knew he was doing it. He just connected so deeply with Sora on that personal level that he couldn't help but show all of himself."
Kairi dropped her eyes to her tea. The memory of Riku's face during that first lunch returned to her in full detail. He had tried to hide it from her, but she had seen the vulnerability in his expression and the fear in his eyes. She had seen his true face, the real Riku, the Riku who had given his heart entirely to Sora.
"That's love," she said softly, her lips curving up into a smile that she couldn't hold back. "Isn't it?"
"Guess so," Kadaj replied. He turned to her then, and she watched as one of his favorite masks slipped into place. "A Gast in love!" he commented brightly. "Who'da thunk it?"
Faced with that manic personality that she knew so well, Kairi found herself wondering what the true Kadaj was like. She had seen that crazy energy in action so many times over the years, watched him throw countless tantrums, and listened to that cruel tongue slice others into ribbons so often that she had grown used to it. But they were all disguises, a way to hide the fear and insecurity that she knew lurked somewhere behind that smile.
"You're a Gast, too, Kadaj," she heard herself saying, not entirely knowing the reason why.
Stunned, he blinked at her, and for the slightest second, she thought she saw a hint of something different flicker in those green eyes. A heartbeat later, it was gone, leaving her to wonder what she had seen as he returned his attention to Roxas.
"So, it sounds like both of our brothers gave themselves completely to the other, no restrictions, and had their entire selves at risk when the whole thing came crashing down around them."
"Exactly," Roxas answered. He spared Kairi a quick glance but immediately returned his attention to Kadaj. If he had noticed what had passed between them, he made no indication of it. "For Sora, it was like returning to that very first heartbreak. Once you experience a couple of them, the lingering scars tend to make the fresh wounds hurt less. But that first one is deep and raw and indescribably painful. He learned all over again never to expect happiness for himself from anywhere or anyone. Never to trust. Never to believe."
"Shit," Kadaj commented, turning his gaze back outside.
Kairi agreed with him but kept it to herself. Instead, she asked Roxas, "Is that why Sora shut the door on Riku when he was apologizing? Because Sora didn't trust or believe him?"
"No," Roxas replied with a sudden sadness that surprised her. "No, that's not why." He took another sip of water, eyes unfocusing with thought, and when he spoke again, the words came out slowly as if difficult to say. "He never really told me why he did that. He doesn't want to talk about it. But I think I know why. It wasn't Riku's apology or his explanations that hurt Sora so badly that he couldn't stand it anymore. It was Riku saying that he loved him."
"He shut the door when Riku said he loved him?" At Roxas's nod of confirmation, she shook her head in disbelief and asked, "Why? Wouldn't that, you know, make him happier? To know that Riku wasn't just using him?"
"Perhaps with someone else it would have," Roxas conceded, "but not with Sora. I think that for Sora, knowing that Riku loves him just made everything worse. As long as he thought that Riku was just using him, that he didn't mean anything special to Riku, he could have walked away and known that it never would have worked out. That somewhere down the line it would have fallen apart anyway. That there wasn't even a chance for them. But when Riku said he loved him, that last defense got blasted away, and suddenly they could have had their happy ending. There had been a chance. But he lost it. He wasn't just walking away from a bad relationship anymore; he was walking away from everything he ever dreamed of and yet still couldn't have."
For several minutes, no one said anything. Then, Kadaj repeated in a harsh whisper, "Shit."
"Yeah," Roxas responded, just as quietly.
"This is never going to work."
"Yes, it is!" Kairi insisted, hotly. She reached out and snagged one of their hands in each of her own. "It's going to work. It has to."
"Kairi …"
"When Riku apologized," she interrupted, turning to Roxas, "he remembered to mention he hasn't had sex with anyone since October, right? Did that help at all?"
"I don't know," Roxas told her, "but that wasn't really the problem. I mean, yeah, no one wants to find out his boyfriend has been sleeping around, but what upset Sora so much wasn't the sex. It was the lies."
"The lies?"
"Yeah. The fact that Riku lied to him. That's what made Sora break up with Riku and that's why he has no intention of ever taking him back. Sora can't forgive anyone who lies, and, to a lesser degree, neither can I."
Kairi sat back in shock and confusion. "But …" she protested. "But everyone lies." She released the boys' hands and waved one between herself and Kadaj. "We lied to the whole school to protect Sora's and Riku's reputations. Does that mean he can't forgive us either?" When Roxas refused to look at her, she pressed, "Are you telling me that if someone lies to protect someone else or to protect himself, if someone panics or makes a mistake or makes an error in judgment, then that person is forever blacklisted in Sora's book no matter how much he apologizes for it or how much remorse he feels? That's just stupid!"
For a moment, Roxas said nothing. Then, very softly and in a dead voice, he intoned, "I promise you, Sora, that we will never try to separate you from your brother. … We'll find a home for the both of you together. Trust me. … No, Sora, there's no bullying at this orphanage. You two are completely safe. I promise you. … Now, Sora, all you have to do is be a good boy and you'll never have to endure that again. I swear to you. … Trust me. … I promise."
Something in her stomach clenched, and she had to inhale slowly through her nose. "All right," she said when she had recovered herself. "I get it. However, I still maintain that it's stupid. If Sora refuses to distinguish between a lie that should be forgiven and one that shouldn't, if he refuses to allow other people to be human, he is going to live a very lonely and unhappy life."
Across from her, Roxas lifted his head, and the blue eyes that met hers were strong and clear. "I agree," he said with a smile. "Completely."
Kairi's heart soared. She had been so scared for a moment that all her hopes and plans were going to fall apart right in front of her, but then Roxas's smile had cleared her doubts and eased all her worries. "All right!" she cried happily, feeling all at once like she wanted to giggle or sing or both. "Let's make some plans!"
Eyes twinkling, she leaned forward over the table and grinned at him. Roxas grinned back and joined her in a little conspiratorial huddle in the middle of the table. Sitting calmly in his chair, Kadaj sipped his coffee and just watched them with a small smirk on his face.
A good twenty minutes later, Kairi's head was buzzing with ideas and strategies as she said good-bye to Roxas and left the donut shop towards the parking lot. She was so distracted that she walked right past Kadaj's car, only stopping when she heard him clear his throat loudly. Ignoring his grin, she apologized and quickly backtracked to the passenger side.
"Thanks again for the ride," she said when he had slipped into the driver's seat.
"Not a problem," he replied, turning the ignition and sliding the shift into reverse. "I said I would help you with 'Ku, and that includes acting as a taxi service if necessary."
She laughed a little but made no other comment as they exited the parking lot and pulled out onto the main road. The rest of the ride passed in silence, but Kairi noted with confusion that it was not a comfortable one. She and Kadaj had never been close, but she knew him well enough to know that his silences were few and rarely innocuous. Concerned, she periodically stole sideways glances at him as he drove. They told her little, although he didn't seem to be angry or worried. If anything, he looked pensive which was a very strange expression to see on the older boy's face.
"All right," he said lightly when they pulled into her driveway. "Everybody out."
Coming to a decision, Kairi unbuckled her belt and turned her body to him so that she could examine his face openly. "Kadaj," she said, "what's on your mind?" Instantly, a grin began to slide into place, but she shot out her hands and slapped him lightly on both cheeks. "Quit it!" she said to his shocked, wide eyes. "I don't want to talk to your insane-person mask. I want to talk to you, so get rid of this thing." With one hand, she pretended to wipe his face away, not touching his skin but staying close enough to get her point across. "You don't need this," she insisted. "Not with me. You said yourself that you'd trust me with your secrets. I'm not asking for those, just what's on your mind." Sighing, she returned her hands to her own side of the car and finished, "There's nobody else here. Just me. So come on."
Kadaj swallowed. His face was completely blank, another mask but this one she could deal with. It at least wasn't a false personality planted on top of a real one. "I was just …" he started, eyes skirted to the side so as to avoid hers. "I was just thinking that 'Ku is very lucky. To have a friend like you." He paused, waiting for Kairi to respond, but when she didn't, he added, so lowly that she had to strain to hear, "And I was sort of wishing that I had one, too."
Kairi bit her lip as a wave of tender sympathy swept over her. She hadn't been expecting that. For some reason, it reminded her of that split-second moment in the donut shop when something unknown had flickered through his eyes. Had it been jealousy that she had seen? Or longing? Or something else entirely?
"But you do have one," she replied to his last statement. "I'm your friend, too, you know." When he refused to react, she teased, "Unless you still don't want to be friends with a stupid girl."
Finally, he smiled, and the simplicity of it kindled a warmth in her chest. "You're not stupid," he told her. "You're amazing." And then he moved, turning back to the steering wheel and lowering his head so that his hair hid his face, although not before she caught a glimpse of what looked like a pink flush rising in his cheeks. "Now get out," he snapped, and his voice was laced with the petulant anger of a mask she knew very well.
Biting her tongue and fighting down her own mild blush, Kairi did as she was told. She had barely closed the door before the car began to back out of her driveway again, but once he had reached the street, Kadaj waited for her to walk to her front door. As she opened it, she looked back over her shoulder for one final look at those guarded green eyes. They held hers for only a second, and then they were gone as he put the car in gear and drove away.