title:
Happily Ever After
series: Kingdom
Hearts
challenge / words: blame / 367
warnings:
boys love, Sora/Riku, AU, Old!Riku
notes: none
"It's your f-fault."
The sentence is squeezed brokenly from ruby lips. His words are staccato and thick like the blood that splutters through syllables, crimson accent marks within a dying language.
He isn't sure how things like this are supposed to end, but surely this isn't the proper resolution to a lifelong fairytale. No sweet kiss; no white knight; and although he can hear a distant pounding thrum within his ears, it's only his own fading heartbeat and not the resounding hoof beats of the fabled white steed.
Even after sixty-seven years, he is still waiting for the climax.
"Everything... is your fault."
His story, a novel that should be full of unbelievable adventures and brandished conquests, feels like nothing but blank pages. Sheet after sheet of dirty white, the edges frayed and coarse from too much turning. As if the person reading had refused to believe that the book was bereft; that even after one thousand empty chapters he was expecting to finally find something scripted just beyond the next leaf.
But Riku had stopped writing his story on the day he asked himself, "What more?"
There is no more. There never will be again.
"You're... you're to blame."
Heroes aren't supposed to die alone; even villains never fade without the presence of the antagonist.
But Riku will.
Riku never met that special woman. Riku never settled down within the limits of white picket. Riku never had children, nor did he have the privilege of becoming a Grandfather. All things "normal" were always just beyond his reach.
Riku was too busy searching. He had spent his entire life looking, hoping, so that he could finally pick up where his story last left off- so he could finally begin writing again.
If mortal hands could finger through the early chapters of his life, they would find that the last page Riku had written contained only one word:
Sora.
It's Sora's fault that he had never stopped searching. It's Sora's fault that he never had a family. It's Sora's fault that he's dying alone and old.
It's Sora's fault that he's lying to himself.
"It's your fault... I fell in love."
