Tidus awoke with a brutal start as his head crashed rudely onto the cold, wooden floor. Struggling to throw away the suddenly shredded curtains of sleep, he searched through his mind for something appropriate to say.
"Shit," he proclaimed. This was the fourth time in as many days.
He glanced up and around at the clock mounted above his bed and sighed heavily. Barely illuminated through a layer of dust, the hands announced that it was 3:15 in the morning. Sora must be having another nightmare. He wondered briefly if Riku was similarly dumped onto the floor every time Sora had a bad dream, but off course he already knew the answer to that.
Not for the first time he cursed Sora's ever-restless nights. The boy flung himself around his oversized bed like a fish on dry land. Tidus' bed, by contrast, was considerably smaller.
"Sora, couldn't you calm down just this once?" he wished desperately, as he climbed back into bed and, grimacing, tried to ignore the throbbing pain that engulfed his head and neck.
Halfway across the island, a sleepy Sora grumbled, turning over in his large bed, and hid his face under a pillow.
Morning came all too soon for Tidus. The sun broke through the cracked pane of his bedroom window, bringing with it a stiff morning breeze. He shifted under his thin blanket as the cold wind caressed him with shivery fingers. The dawn was, as always, a jealous lover, denying him the embrace of sleep and dreams.
Groaning and yawning at the same time, he pulled himself out of bed and cantered toward the window. Perched on a small hill, his second story room gave him a view of the entire island community and much of the ocean beyond, all the way to the neighboring atoll of St. Castile, with its natural harbor and fleet of small fishing boats. Today, though, those boats were being hauled up onto the beach and tucked into boathouses in preparation for the coming stormy season. Already the morning sky was heavily tinged with purple and red, foreshadowing bad weather to come.
"What am I going to do for two months of rain?" he asked the sun. Shaking his head Tidus turned around and fished through his belongings until he found a bright yellow towel and a bar of green soap. He trotted down the stairs and out into a grove of banana trees standing behind his house, which concealed a small, manmade spring. Fortunately, no mater how cold the weather got, the spring water always remained slightly warm. Pulling off his clothes he slipped into the pool, masked by such privacy as a cluster of trees and a few minor social taboos could afford him.
Of course, social taboos never stopped Riku. Tidus tilted his head back and gazed at the silver-haired boy who had snuck up behind him, like a thief of dreams, and who now leaned casually against one of his trees.
"I am trying to take a bath here," Tidus said. "I know that you don't care, and that you think I shouldn't care either, but can't I at least do this in peace?" Riku didn't say a word, but a slight smile curved on his lips. Upside-down it looked a little like he was pouting. A few months ago, when the strain of their new relationship was at its peak, this would have been the point where Tidus snapped. He continued, "OK. Fine. It doesn't matter at this point, does it? It's not like we have any other privacy."
"Or like you mind it all that much," Riku pointed out. Tidus had to agree, privacy or not, there were marked benefits to their relationship.
He ducked his head under the water, and continued with the business of getting clean. It had been quite a while since his last good bath, and the soapy water spilling over the edge of the pool, to drain eventually into the ocean, looked distinctly gray. When he finally surfaced for air, Riku had sat down at the water's edge and begun tracing figures in the sand with a stick. They were rows and rows of tiny, perfect circles, Tidus noticed.
"To what to I owe the pleasure of your voyeuristic visit?" he asked wryly, leaning on the rim of the pool.
"It's about Sora," Riku said, looking up.
"Isn't it always?"
Riku frowned, "Sometimes it feels like it. You recall, for instance, the time he wanted to open a banana-juice stand?" Tidus gagged at the memory. "I personally couldn't stand up straight for almost two weeks after that."
"It's not something like that again is it?" Tidus asked cautiously.
Riku chuckled, "No, not quite that bad, and yet a lot worse. This time he's entered himself in the Kecko Island Tournament."
That sounded vaguely familiar. Tidus searched his memory. "Didn't your brother do that once?"
Riku nodded, "Yah, that was one of the things Shine did," he said softly.
"So, they have a junior league?"
"No."
Tidus whistled. "He's going to get his butt kicked for certain. We'll be lucky if he only breaks half of his bones."
"You're telling me. On the upside, if he's crippled he can't try to feed us." Sora fancied himself a good cook, much to the desperation of his friends. Strangely, all the evidence to the contrary had yet to sink in. "He'll want us to practice with him every day, so that he can get into shape. He doesn't have much time, the tournament is right after the rainy season."
"Yah, well, we already do that almost everyday as it is. We won't be able to get to the practice island during the rainy season, though." Tidus paused. "I don't see why you had to interrupt my bath for this, or why this is so important you had to make sure Sora didn't hear... What aren't you telling me?"
The slight smile crept back onto Riku's lips. "He entered us into the tournament too, alongside him. As for the other, I just thought it might be nice to discuss it w—" He stopped. "Are you OK?"
Tidus had begun smashing his head over and over against the soft sand at the edge of the pool. He searched his mind for something appropriate to say.
"Shit," he proclaimed. "Why does bad news always come to me when I'm naked? You know exactly what he's thinking. None of us are ready for this kind of thing. Does he really expect us to have that much of an advantage if we fight together?"
Riku shrugged, "I would guess he's counting on it. He hasn't told me either, I happened to find out about it. Anyway, you do have to agree that together we have a pretty big advantage."
"Let's just hope it's big enough." Tidus groaned and ducked his head underwater once more.
In all of the Destiny Islands (and as far as anyone knew, the world) there was only one Paopu tree, which grew on a small rock just off of Children's Isle. Local legend held that if two people shared a Paopu fruit their destinies would be forever intertwined. Of course, local legend also held that a mermaid princess lived underneath St. Castile and that holding your breath for three minutes, while standing on one leg, cured back pain. This, however, did not stop numerous lovesick girls from dropping Paopu fragments into the drinks and sandwiches of unsuspecting boys. The fact that this never worked was only a minor setback to their infatuation.
However, none of this discouragement meant anything to the three boys who had stood at the base of the famous tree four months prior.
"I almost forgot, before we go any further, promise me that none of this will end up in any kind of juice, salad, glaze, or pastry," Tidus said, looking pointedly at Sora, who grinned back. "Sora…" he said warningly.
Sora laughed, "OK, OK, no juice, salad, or whatever else you said."
Riku ignored them both and climbed up the tree to the topmost branches. All of the low-hanging fruit had already been removed by gaggles of adolescent girls, and only the higher, smaller fruit remained on the tree. Expertly, Riku slid out along a narrow branch and pulled out his pocketknife. He cut a Paopu from its stem and tossed it down to Sora, who caught it with both hands.
"Be down in a second," Riku called.
"Oh you'll be down faster than that," Sora whispered. Passing the fruit quickly to Tidus, who nearly dropped it, Sora charged the tree just Riku passed between two branches. The entire plant shook.
"Shit. Sora!" Riku cried, as his hold slipped and he tumbled down into the ocean below. Sora laughed enthusiastically at his mischief. Tidus just watched bemusedly as a wet and none-too-happy Riku pulled himself out of the water and climbed up onto the bridge, moving toward Sora.
"Sora," he said calmly, as he arrived at the edge of the bridge, "I am going to kill you." Sora just continued to laugh.
"You'll have to catch me first," he said, jumping down off of the wooden bridge. And with that they were off, racing around the island as usual.
Tidus shook his head and took the opportunity to more closely examine the famous fruit. He had never seen a Paopu up close before. It was greenish-yellow, oblong, and vaguely star shaped. The surface was studded with little blue spots that would be very hard to see from far away. He walked across the bridge, cradling the Paopu like a baby, and sat down on the beach. Pulling out his own knife, he very carefully cut the fruit into three equal sections, and waited for his friends to come back.
He didn't have long to wait. He heard a massive crash behind him, alerting him to the return of Riku and Sora. Tidus turned around and noted that Riku now had Sora in a very painful looking headlock.
"I win," Riku proclaimed, "as usual."
"Man," Sora mumbled, as he struggled to escape the headlock.
"You should have known better than to challenge me. There can be no victory if Riku is your enemy. I have judged you guilty, now it is time for your punishment." Tidus watched as Riku lifted the struggling Sora—showing far more strength than he had thought he possessed—and dumped him unceremoniously, and head first, into the ocean waves.
Both of them dripping wet, but Sora looking considerably more annoyed for the experience, they returned to where Tidus sat and looked down at the bright orange flesh of the Paopu fruit.
Tidus shook his head. "You guys…" he started. But whatever he had been about to say suddenly escaped him, and he felt at a loss for words. Looking at his friends, Tidus felt the last vestiges of his hastily acquired courage and resolve melt into nothing. He wondered how he had ever managed to say the things that he had said last night.
"Well, this is it," Riku said, probably more cheerfully than he felt. The seriousness of the situation had drained away whatever goofiness had previously filled the pair. Riku sat down on Tidus' left and glanced up at Sora, who sat down at his right, and looked over at Tidus. An uncomfortable silence filled the beach.
Tidus closed his eyes and ran his mind over all the events that had brought them up to this point. He had come so far, but now, now he had nothing left inside to support himself. Despair threatened to take him, and he readied himself to stand and bolt. Suddenly he felt a hand on his right shoulder, and another on his left. Tidus opened his eyes and remembered what had carried him this far. He felt two tiny pieces of strength rise up inside of him. It wasn't much, but it was enough.
Tidus gazed at the soft flesh of the Paopu and spoke equally softly, trying to calm his pounding heart. "You guys are like my brothers," he said. "No, even more than that. You guys are like a part of me, and you're all that I have anymore." He looked up and gazed directly into Sora's eyes. The boy was a nut, but his eyes spoke of a depth of compassion, and something else, that his words could never convey. "I always want us to be together," he continued, "but I also don't want to force you into anything that you don't want to do. If you want to back out now, I understand. But…" He paused. "But, I just don't want anything to separate us," he finished lamely.
Tidus dropped his head. He felt warm, salty tears course down the side of his nose and he sniffed. He had wanted to make sure that he didn't cry. He had failed.
Sora's arm slipped around his back as he pulled his friend into a hug. He didn't say a word. When Sora released him Tidus pulled back, and found himself looking into the eyes of Riku. Riku—who saw more than he ever said—looked at Tidus for a moment, then smiled and nodded. "This is what we want too", he said simply. Sora echoed an agreement.
Tidus smiled for the first time that day. "Then let's do it," he whispered.
With considerably more courage then he felt, Tidus picked up the Paopu fruit and bit into it. Riku and Sora did the same. It tasted fairly odd, a little like melon and a lot like citrus. Really, it was like nothing else Tidus had tasted before. In a few bites they had all finished the fruit.
Tidus looked up and glanced at the others. "I don't feel any different," he said, not wanting disappointment to show on his face.
Sora wiped his chin, which was covered in Paopu drippings. "I feel sticky," he said, trying to be cheerful.
"Slob," Riku muttered, turning to Tidus. "I'm sure it takes a moment to kick in," he said gently, though he didn't look particularly happy himself.
Tidus stood up and turned bitterly toward the ocean. He felt his whole world threatening to melt away. Then he heard a light thud behind him, followed by another almost immediately. He spun around. "Rik—" was all he managed to say before he blacked out and fell to the ground.
Smoke rising from fire-pits in the village below Tidus' house signaled the advent of breakfast. Since Riku had interrupted his bath he elected to take Tidus to breakfast that morning, even though it was technically Sora's turn.
The two descended the hill and walked into the village, weaving their way through back streets and alleys. Tidus still tried his best not to be seen in town. Were it not that the two of them were generally much more impatient that cautious, they would have gone around the village instead of through it. Eventually they reached Riku's house, which was a little way outside of the village in a secluded cove.
Riku's parents owned a medium-sized fleet of fishing ships on St. Castile, and it afforded them enough luxury to live where and how they wished. Fortunately for Tidus, what they generally wished was to be left alone, but for some unexpected reason, they had fallen in love with him. They, along with Sora's mother, gave him both the privacy and the affection that he so desperately needed.
Together the boys strode onto the beach behind the house, where Graya, the family cook and housekeeper, was bent over a recently dug fire-pit. While the islanders were not so primitive as to lack stoves, it was generally too hot to cook indoors, and so the fire-pit had become a common convenience, so long as the weather permitted its use.
Reminded of the weather, Tidus glanced upwards. Dark streaks of cloud were moving rapidly across the morning sky. Probably only a day or two, at most, remained before the rain would start in, then it would be two months before it subsided.
Sighing, he turned to the housekeeper. "Good morning, Graya," he piped. The wrinkled old woman raised her head and smiled at Tidus. Graya rarely said anything to anyone, preferring, for reasons of her own, to keep silence. Riku's parents tolerated her eccentricities because she was undisputedly the best cook on the entire island. Graya was a very unexpected person, which was probably why Tidus liked her so much.
She reached out and brushed Tidus' hair out of his eyes, taking the opportunity to look deep into them for a moment, as if searching for something, before she turned her attention back to the fire-pit.
Tidus turned and walked into the house, where Riku had entered only a moment before. Since Riku's parents were out supervising the storage of their boats they used a little dinning room reserved for small, informal meals. It opened directly into the backyard. The instant he entered the room most of hell broke loose.
Hell, in this case, turned out to be Riku's three enormous dogs: Koro, Paopu, and Cat. The last name had been Sora's idea, though Riku's parents would have no part of it, and insisted on calling him Siph. Immediately they pounced on Tidus with violent, canine affection, knocking him to his back, and forcing the wind out of him.
"Get…off," he finally managed.
Laughing, Riku pulled his dogs off of Tidus. "They like you," he said. "You should feel lucky, they don't like most people." He opened the door, and sent the three mastiffs out into the yard to harass small mammals.
"They only like me because they smell you in me," Tidus pointed out. "In fact, they used to hate me." Tidus liked dogs well enough, especially big dogs, but he preferred them one at a time. He pulled himself back to his feet and took a seat at the table. Bread and jelly, raw fruit, juice, and cold meat were already laid out. Tidus helped himself.
A moment later Graya entered the room holding a tray of steamed roots and fruit Together with what sat on the table this constituted a typical island breakfast. She left without a word and Riku set down to join Tidus.
"Sora will be here in a moment," Riku said, picking up a piece of bread. "Let's eat everything before he gets here."
"Hey, wait!" came a far off voice. A few minutes later Sora burst into the room without so much as a hello and pulled himself up to the table. There were few things that interested Sora more than food. Tidus reckoned that the boy had the metabolism of a hummingbird.
Sora looked up from the grape-jelly-with-steamed-banana-and-ham sandwich he had started making and turned toward Tidus. "You guys, " he said, "will never guess what I did last night."
"You took the ferry over to Kecko Island, and entered the three of us into the annual tournament," said Tidus, glairing at him. "We're going to train really hard for the next two months, so that we can look good when we get killed in front of a crowd of hundreds of people."
Sora grinned. "That's basically it, except for the getting killed part."
Tidus looked with exasperation at the excitement that was radiating out of Sora, and, shaking his head, went back to his breakfast.
"You know, Tidus," Riku said through a mouthful of banana, "it might do you good to pick up a little of Sora's cheerfulness sometimes."
"Why not? I pick up everything else of his," Tidus said looked up, a sudden gleam in his eyes. "Do you have any idea what he was dreaming about the other night?"
Riku leaned forward, suddenly all ears, "No. Do tell."
Sora blushed furiously. "Hey now, that's not fair. I could bring up some of your dreams too, you know. In fact, I just have one word for you, 'hammock.'"
Riku started to snicker as Tidus' ears turned a remarkable shade of cherry. "I, ah, didn't know that you got that one," he said.
"We get pretty much all of yours, we just choose not to mention it," Riku said politely.
Tidus cleared his throat, and prepared to change the subject, but he was interrupted by Sora, who began to laugh so hard couldn't swallow his food. Within a moment they were all laughing.
"Anyway, would you change it if you could?" Sora asked, as the laughter died down. He looked at Tidus, his eyes, as usual, speaking volumes.
Tidus smiled. "No, of course not," he said.
Sprawled out on the sand, Tidus awoke with a pounding headache. He rolled over and looked up at the sun, which was distinctly closer to the horizon that it had been when they had arrived. He was no fisherman, but it was obviously well into evening. He wondered hazily what had caused him to pass out on the beach for so many hours. Oh yes, the Paopu fruit.
Tidus' eyes widened, and he rolled over onto his side, searching franticly for Riku and Sora. His gaze fell on the pair lying in a heap just a few feet away from him. Riku was draped across Sora in posture that would have been obscenely cute, had Tidus not been busy panicking.
He tried to stand up, but a wave of dizziness washed over him, and he was quickly forced back to the ground. He didn't even have the strength to crawl over to his friends, and nausea was threatening to subdue him even further.
"Sora. Riku," he called weakly, hoping they would respond. The pile of boys stirred, and Riku slowly slid off of Sora's chest.
"What the hell happened?" Riku asked, as he rolled onto his back, covering his face with both hands. He looked pale, sort of diluted, and sounded horse and weak. He pulled back his hands and allowed his face to fall in the direction of the boy he had just slipped off of. "Sora?" he said. With exacting care, Riku slid his leg over and kneed Sora in the ribs.
"Hmm?" mumbled Sora as he rolled onto his side.
"Don't tell me he's just sleeping!" said Riku angrily. With what force he could muster, he kicked Sora in the chest—it amounted to a gentle tap—and the boy opened his eyes. To his great relief, Tidus felt the pain and sickness that had consumed him slide away, as if it were being drained into the ground.
It was replaced by something else.
Sora sat bolt upright, wide-eyed and frantic, as he looked back and forth between his two friends. Riku, who had his normal color back, opened and closed his mouth like a salmon, and Tidus just sat and stuttered, not even certain what he was trying to say.
He felt different, lighter and heavier at the same time, empty and full. To be honest, he wasn't exactly sure what he felt, but it tasted very, very familiar.
Tidus remembered the legend of the Paopu and the stories he had heard. They had never once mentioned exactly how the mysterious fruit worked.
Now they knew.
"Is this it? Did we…" came Sora's voice, though no one had made a sound. The sounds that Tidus heard were within his own head.
"It worked," said Riku softly, his words a mingling of awe and fear.
Silence fell over them, inside and out, as the boys struggled to understand what had happened to them. Tidus closed his eyes and the familiar otherness inside his head began to focus. Riku and Sora were sitting right in front of him on the beach and yet, at the same time, they were sitting just inside of him. They were not quite in his mind, though he saw a part of them there, and they were not quite in his body, though he felt a part of them there as well. Somehow what he was experiencing went… deeper. There were still three of them, and Tidus was still Tidus, but a piece of him was now living in his two friends, and a piece of each of them was living inside of him.
Gently, tentatively, Tidus reached for the Sora-ness and the Riku-ness and brushed each of them with a tiny tendril of Tidus-ness. Instantly what had been a presence widened to a bond. He wasn't prepared for the violence of it. He was thrown onto his back by a wave of emotion, memory, thought, and image. For a moment he was lost in a flood beyond all control. He was Sora; he was Riku; he was something else—wholly good—that was part of each; he was something else darker that was a part of neither.
Tidus surfaced again within his own mind, fully in control, and shook off the "drops" of his friends. He opened his eyes and saw that they were staring at him. He knew, though he could not say how he knew, that they had just experienced the same rush of being that he had emerged from.
Tidus was giddy. He felt open, nakedly open, but safe at the same time, like a breeze was blowing through his heart, cleaning out old cobwebs that he desperately needed to be rid of. Tidus had always known that his friends loved him, it had kept him alive in his darker moments, but now he could actually feel it, and he knew that they could feel his love. It was intoxicating, and the shear joy of it threatened to sweep him away. He had never experienced anything like this before; he liked it.
The three boys looked into each other's eyes, yet each totally aware of what the others felt at that moment, and yet for some reason they were completely unable to find anything to say. Perhaps there were no words for times like this. Perhaps, in this moment, all they could do was be.
Riku smiled, then started to chuckle. His laughter was infectious, it spread to Sora, who made it louder and deeper, and on to Tidus, who suddenly couldn't contain himself. The laughter went round and round until the three of them started coughing for lack of breath. This set off another round of laughter. Then, unexpectedly, Sora stopped, looked at Tidus with a strange gleam in his eye, and pounced on him.
Tidus, taken by surprise, landed on his back and fought to gain the upper hand. The two of them rolled over and over across the sand, until they reached the edge of the ocean. There, Sora finally pinned Tidus down and seated himself victoriously on his chest. He looked down at the blond boy, grinning from ear to ear. "Well," he said, "at least we know that I'll still have the upper hand, no matter what." Sora looked back at Riku, and then down at Tidus again. "This is what we all wanted," came his thought.
"Yes," though Tidus happily. "Yes."
Continued in Chapter 2 of Uncommon Necessities: I Know that Promises End: Tidus' Story