Author's Notes: And so springs forth the first major push towards Riku/Sora.

Here we go! The hill's starting to go up! It's like riding a rollercoaster...

Chapter 19

"The Layers of Years"

Mrs. Leigh could sense these two hadn't seen each other in a while. She adjusted her glasses again, and nudged Riku forward. Riku just let himself be pushed. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. It was his mother.

"I'll leave you two alone, then." Leigh politely excused herself and closed the door behind her, to give them privacy.

Riku stared at his mother, and Tifa stared back. She held out her arms, spread like angel's wings, and smiled.

"Don't I get a hug?"

Riku swallowed hard, and rushed up to her, hugging her tightly. Tifa wound her arms around her trembling son, rubbing his back. Riku wrenched his eyes shut, his lip quivering. He sniffled and felt his eyes watering up.

"Oh, sweetie." Tifa shushed him and stroked his long silver hair. "Sssh. Sssh. I know." He was crushing her in his grip, but Riku didn't care. Seven years—seven! He hadn't seen his mother in seven long, agonizing years. He had helped her pack her bags in that home, seven years ago when he was ten, where the carpets and walls smelled like tobacco smoke, and she never came back.

"Mom..." Riku whimpered, a tear streaking his cheek. "Mom, I've missed you so much!" He couldn't keep it up. His shield cracked further, and then it dropped. Tifa held him tight, sitting them down as Riku cried into her bosom. She hushed him and rocked him in her arms, just like she had when he was younger. Riku wept the hardest he'd ever cried in years; all the fear, the anger, the pain—it exploded when he ran to his mother's open arms.

"I'm so sorry, honey. I'm sorry I didn't win custody over you." Tifa soothed Riku's sobs as she spoke, her voice gentle and calm. "I wanted to find you after I left…after I made it in the world, I went looking for you. And here you are—oh, Riku, I've missed you, my baby." She kissed his head, getting choked up herself in the moment, salty rivers running down her face. Her son was shaking, and she breathed deep, gulping down a hard lump that had formed in her throat.

"Mom, why did you have to leave!" Riku took a shuddering breath, his eyes lined with red the more he cried. "Mom—"

"I'm here now, baby, I'm here." Tifa lifted his head up from her chest and kissed his cheek. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry. I know how your father is. I want you to hang in there. I'm going to demand custody as soon as my issues with the court are straightened out…"

Riku's teary, bright eyes widened. "C…Court?" he whimpered. "Mom, why are you going to court?"

Tifa tried to give her son her best, optimistic smile. "Well, there's this bitch at the company I work for, and she's framed me for the thousands of company dollars that she stole under the table…and now they think that her lover was involved, or that the boss was trying to sleep with me…it's such a mess. But I've got a good lawyer. I'll win the case."

"Mom…"

"It's all going to work out, Riku." Tifa stroked her son's cheek. "We'll be out of this mess soon, I promise."

Riku swallowed hard. "No…Mom…I'm not your son anymore."

It was Tifa's turn to be shocked. "What?"

"Dad…he disowned me."

Tifa coiled back. Her soft brown eyes flooded with anger and her face turned stern. "What? When!"

"A couple of years after you left…I told him I was gay, and…"

"That black-lunged, double-fisting son of a bitch!" Tifa clenched her fists, her teeth clenched. Riku continued to press up against her, breathing in the scent of her underlying perfume. Tifa never wore strong perfume, but Riku could still remember how she always smelled faintly of honey and spices. He closed his eyes, listening to his mother rant—happy just to hear her voice, and smell her familiar scent. God, he'd missed this so much.

"It's no wonder your address changed!" Tifa growled. "Who's taking care of you? Who's looking after my baby? I want to know!"

Riku suddenly drew back, and when he met with his mother's eyes, her expression didn't soften. He had a look of fear, eyes shimmering with an unexpected luster from crying. Tifa didn't like it.

"Riku?"

You can't. You won't! He'll kill you!

She'll never tell… Riku himself, at times like this, was often unaware of the schizophrenic switch between simply thinking on his own, and speaking to the Voice of Survival. Hearing the sharp conflicts in his mind between the Voice and his own thoughts, it was all he could do to keep himself from mumbling.

"Riku? Answer me, honey." Tifa put a hand on her son's shoulder. "Riku?"

He stared blankly at his mother's chest (it was the first thing he could think to focus on when speaking to the Voice), and after some moments of silence, he stood up.

"Mom," he murmured, "Mom, I…I'm, uh…" his eyes jerked nervously between left and right as he thought of how to break this to her. Even though he was sure there was nothing she could do, he had to share his pain with someone—anyone. Tidus and Roxas already knew; why not his mother, who had raised him since he had been born?

Tifa was already not liking the news. "Honey? What's the matter?"

Riku licked his lips and bit down on the bottom one, brow creased in shame as he looked down. He turned his head away, giving his mother a three-quarter view of his pained face as he slowly reached for the buttons of his polo shirt. Tifa wasn't sure what to think when her son undid the front of his shirt, button by button, nor was she sure how to ask what the hell was going on. Clearly, something had changed while she was gone—something big, that was stirring something inside her son that was making him act this way.

Riku looked up for a moment and checked the door, just to make sure nobody was spying. He thought he saw a flash of brown quills of hair, but he dismissed it as a trick of the light—no one was there.

When he was sure it was just him and his dear mother, he gulped down the frog-sized lump in his throat, his fingers nervously clutching his shirt.

You won't do this, Riku!

She'll never tell.

Tifa was ghost-white when she saw the damage to her precious son, her brown eyes wide with absolute horror. Riku dropped his shirt off his shoulders, letting it pool around his elbows before it dropped to the floor. Once again, his head turned away shamefully, his eyebrows creased down as though he were humiliated to display himself.

There were scars everywhere. His arms were generally spared, but his torso was another story. The nipples were sore and red from being clamped; there were variously-sized red dots all over his pecs and stomach from wax burns; bruises on his shoulders and neck and sides; countless jagged scars from knives and still fresh scabs from being whipped. Tifa's hand drew up to her mouth and she touched her fingers to her lips, unable to soak in the entire view of the atrocity demonstrated before her. How could anyone do this to a boy and walk free?

"Riku," she whispered, "Who…?"

Riku kept his eyes on the floor. "My…foster father…Ansem."

Tifa stood up, approaching her little boy (her poor, battered, beautiful boy), and tentatively traced one of the scars on his chest. Riku closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

"That one is from the Slave Game."

Now Tifa was angry. "The 'Slave Game'?"

Riku shrunk his shoulders in and he hugged his own arms. "Ansem, he…"

Tifa's eyes narrowed. "He rapes you," she voiced, reading his mind. Riku's bottom lip quivered and he bit it sharply, on the brink of crying again, covering his face with one hand as he sniffled. He nodded his head weakly. Tifa wrapped her arms around Riku and hugged him tightly, boring holes of a mother's scornful rage into the wall behind him.

"How long?" she murmured.

"…Since I was thirteen."

A brief string of obscenities flew out of his mother's mouth; she ended it by hissing: "Fuck!" and clutching him protectively, as if shielding him from an invisible force that was ready to beat up her son some more. "How could this happen?" she asked herself. "In seven years…how could this have happened? If only I'd come back for you sooner, I would have…"

Riku shook his head. "You…can't stop it." He choked. "There's nothing you can do…"

And Tifa knew he was right. She couldn't possibly be involved in two cases at once, and this one had only just begun a few days ago. She had yet to meet on her first court date. The subpoena was still on her kitchen counter at home, glaring at her as a blinding reminder of the crime she'd been wrongly accused of. But if she could, she would sue Ansem's ass and plainly demand sole custody of her child—disowned or not. She grit her teeth, her lips pressed thin into a hard line on her otherwise soft face.

"I'll think of something, honey." she said under her breath. "This can't go on forever. I'll get you out of this, Riku, I promise."

"You can't!" Riku cried. Tifa hushed him, reminding him there were people outside. Riku checked his voice and hissed: "You just can't!"

"And why not?" Tifa demanded, looking at her son straight in the eyes. "I'm your mother, aren't I? I don't care if you're disowned—I carried you in my belly, and I held you when I gave birth to you. You are my boy. I will never stop being your mother, Riku—do you hear me?"

All Riku could do was nod weakly in response. He didn't have the heart to tell her that two of his friends had already sworn the same thing to him, and he was somehow certain that it was destined to fail. He picked up his shirt and put it back on, buttoning it up again as Tifa cupped his face in her cheeks and gave him a kiss like a mother kisses her son.

"I want you to hold on, Riku." She brushed away the silvery bangs in front of his face. "I want you to hold on and to never let go. Keep your spirit strong—I know you have it in you. You're my child, after all." Tifa fixed her gaze on him. "Understand?"

Riku nodded dumbly, the words all blending together in his mind. It sounded no different from what he had tried to tell himself thousands of times, years ago.

"This man is doing horrible things to you, and you must feel horrible, and broken, and hurt, but you have to promise me you'll live through it. Promise me, Riku. I swear to you, this won't last forever. When that bitch gets what's coming to her, I'll come back and sue that fucker. Hear me? I'm not going to abandon you."

The part of him that had given up wanted to say, "Yeah. Right." But the other part of him knew better. Riku could still remember how hard Tifa had fought in court over custody for him—she'd had plenty of evidence to earn the sole rights as his parental guardian, and she'd argued and presented until she was blue in the face. However, his father and his father's lawyer were both the Masters of the Sleaze, and had somehow wormed their way up to the top. Tifa left shortly after the divorce became official. There was no doubt in Riku's mind that his Mom would come back for him, but court cases could take months to straighten out—he didn't have that long!

"Promise me."

Riku looked into his mother's eyes, swallowed, and nodded.

"I…I promise."

Tifa hugged Riku tightly and kept him like that for the next several minutes. This bastard would get what was coming to him—she would make sure of it. She was his mother.

Hell hath no fury…

Sora whirled around to face Mrs. Leigh with shock eminent in his face, his hand still covering his mouth. The images of the scars on Riku's body were still reverberating in the walls of his mind.

"What do you need?"

"I, uh…" Sora gulped. "I-I was coming down to talk about…um…my lesson plan for next year. They, um, they called me down for it." Sora displayed the pass he'd received from the office as proof. He swallowed, unable to speak straight.

"I'll…I'll come back later, if that's better."

"I think that would be wise," said Mrs. Leigh. Sora hung his head.

"S-Sorry…I, uh…I thought you'd be in your room…" he quickly took off into the halls before he could get himself into any more trouble.

He had expected to find Mrs. Leigh waiting to talk to him about next year's lesson plan in the school and to fix up any possible kinks in his transfer. He had found, instead, that Riku was inside, speaking with the woman who was apparently his long-lost mother. Sora felt terrible for eavesdropping, but…it was Riku. It wasn't every day you saw Riku cry. It had piqued his curiosity, and he couldn't stand to let it simmer.

Sora hadn't at all predicted that Riku would shed his shirt, hadn't predicted that there would be such a terrible number of scars marring his otherwise gorgeous body. When he thought back on it, he remembered what he'd heard—"My foster father, Ansem."—Ansem had done that to him. Sora clenched his now-useless Guidance pass in his hand, and stopped to rest against a wall. He could only guess how they had gotten there, and it made him ill with horror.

That horrible bastard!

And now Sora knew that it was possible for a boy to be raped. How wrong he'd been.

When Sora next saw Tidus on the bus after school, he pulled him aside and looked at him with stern eyes, demanding answers.

"How long has this been going on?"

"How long has what been going on?" Tidus replied.

"Riku's abuse. How long?"

Tidus stared at him in shock. "How did you know about that?"

"Never mind. I saw him in Guidance today, and—"

"Riku went to the Guidance Office?"

"It's a long story," Sora snapped, "Just tell me how long it's been happening!"

Tidus looked at Roxas, and Roxas looked at the both of them, while Riku sat a little distanced from them, off in his own little world. Tidus turned to face Sora again. Well, better now than never.

"Too long," he said simply. "And me and Roxas have a plan to get him out of there…"

Sora's ocean-blue eyes burned with a fire for justice that Tidus was fairly unfamiliar with. He'd expected that Sora would be at least a little tentative about it, maybe agree to it with some uncertainty, but this? He'd had no idea Sora felt so strongly for his friends. And he hadn't even known Riku as a friend for that long.

What a loyal guy, he thought. He's the kinda kid everyone would want for a friend.

Sora clenched his fists, his face serious and grim.

"Tell me how I can help."

Author's Notes: I'm sorry if there actually is some sort of way Tifa can help him in real life. I don't friggin' know. For plot purposes, she can't do anything right now. It'll ruin the whole story. Besides, we all like a little bit of drama, right?