Don't Close Your Eyes
Written by: zhakeena
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts is Disney's and Square-Enix's property.

IV: Mutation

He felt his eyes open.

He instantly sat up, feeling air rush through his lungs. I really wasn't breathing? He asked himself, grasping at his chest, feeling that his insides were very exhausted.

Then he noticed that he was in a bed.

Where… am I? He looked around the room. It wasn't anything special, he thought, just a normal guestroom with normal furnishings here and there… his nostrils picked up the scent of the sea water through the window behind him. Am I… back on my island?

He looked around again. Somehow, the homey ambiance of the room seemed foreign to him.

What did I expect to find here, anyway?

(A white room, with chemicals displayed here and there, wires coming from a big machine attached all over him, computers monitoring his every breath…

Two children staring up at him as he floated in a chamber filled with sickly, green fluid…)

His thoughts were interrupted when he heard the door open. A woman in a pink dress with her brown hair in braids, and a spiky haired blonde man wearing a red cape entered the room and approached him.

"Hi. How are you doing?" the lady asked him.

Riku tried with all his might to remember who they were… but he couldn't. "I'm… fine," he replied uneasily.

The woman giggled. "I'm guessing you don't know who we are… I'm Aerith, and this is Cloud," she said, pointing to the man, who looked at him coldly.

Riku nodded. "What happened? How did I get here?"

"3 days ago, your friend found you drowning at the sea. You almost died; you were lucky he found you in time. And during a storm too." Cloud replied.

Riku tried hard to remember. And he did remember; a storm, the water entering his lungs, lightning flashing in the sky… but he could barely remember anybody rescuing him. "Which friend are you talking about?"

The man and woman looked at each other. "Well… Sora. I guess you can't remember anything at all?"

"Sora…" as he mumbled the name, fragments of his memory formed the image of a boy with brown hair, carrying a large key. "Sora… yes, I think I remember him now," he said, finally realizing who he was.

"You should take this whole remembering thing easy, Riku… you're still a little unwell," Aerith told him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Why? Was I in a shock or something? I should still have my memory with me, since I've recovered from drowning now…" Riku said.

The way the two adults looked down on the ground, he felt like he should brace himself for the truth. "What? Is there something more?..." he asked uneasily.

Cloud pointed to something at his shoulder. As Riku followed his gaze, he felt himself choke. "Wha… wha…" he stammered, feeling the enormous black wing on his left that had somehow sprouted from his back.

"Riku… you're infected with Mako."

"What? How?" he yelled. Aerith held on to his shoulder again to calm him down.

"See for yourself, Riku…" she said slowly, taking out a mirror. Riku took it, and uneasily looked at himself. For a while, he just stared at his reflection, until he noticed it—a faint green glow from his eyes.

"That's a sign of Mako infection…" Aerith explained. "And your wing must have been a mutation of some sorts…"

"Wait… could you explain first what Mako is?"

Cloud sighed. "Well… for now, let's just say it's a very dangerous source of energy to play with…"

Riku dropped the mirror on the bed. He held his head with his hands and bowed down. What happened, anyway? Who could have done this to me..?

For the rest of the time there, nobody spoke. Afterwards, Cloud and Aerith decided to leave the boy alone for a while, perhaps to give him time to take all the facts in.

XXooOooOXoooXOooXXXXo

Aerith sighed as she closed the door behind them. Cloud looked at her with concern in his eyes.

"I wonder… how could he have gotten his hands on Riku?" she asked him.

Cloud shook his head. "I honestly don't know…" he said.

"I thought… we've made him disappear for good…"

"Yeah…" Cloud put an arm around Aerith. "I just hope he didn't do anything else to Riku… at least we know that he's in good hands right now."

Aerith forced a sad smile. "Yeah… he is…"

XXooOooOXoooXOooXXXXo

He was allowed to roam around the Island again. After all, he had proven that he could walk properly again, and parts of his memory that mattered had come back… As long as he didn't exhaust himself, he could walk around the beach area.

But he didn't do much walking like he'd planned to, after being trapped in his bedroom for a week since he had waken up from 3 days being in a coma. Instead, he found himself again at his favorite spot when he still lived there—the bent Paopu tree.

Riku sat staring at the sea. Sora had claimed that he almost died at that same sea…

But at that moment, Riku didn't believe him. The sea seemed so serene, so unthreatening… almost being friendly to him, even though he just stared at it.

His moment of peace was disturbed when the growth at his back twitched slightly.

He curiously looked at the wing. He certainly didn't make it move. He briefly thought that maybe it has a mind of its own…

But then he saw what had made it twitch; a little girl was hiding behind it. She must have been tempted to touch the black feathers all over it, since people had told him that it was beautiful for a mutation…

"Hey," he called out to the girl.

She went out from behind the wing. Her eyes almost hidden, she faced Riku and smiled. "Your wing is beautiful…" she said in almost a whisper.

XXooOooOXoooXOooXXXXo

Author's notes: Oh! I didn't realize that this was finished already… (cheesy grin)

Next chapter in the works. I might revise the plot of this story since the original one was lame by my standards…