Promises
A/N: This is set somewhere right before Kingdom Hearts II. I haven't played all of it (actually, I've only played through the third day with Roxas), but I wanted to see Kairi's side. Please review, and if you do, please don't curse!
Kairi sat in the sand before the ocean, watching the waves roll in and out. The moonlight turned the sand beneath her to white and silver and scattered the surface of the roiling ocean with shards of light. It was almost ethereal, and unequivocally beautiful, but it seemed wrong. So wrong. Everything was out of place. Her world was like a shattered stained-glass window, and every time she tried to pick up the pieces, she cut her hands.
At least, that was how it felt. Everything she loved had been ripped away, and she was left standing there in the smoke with a ridiculous mask of the way she used to be.
She felt guilty for admiring the night and the sea. She didn't think anything should be beautiful if they were gone. Nothing deserved to be beautiful, and she was a traitor for thinking anything was. There was a gaping hole in her heart where Sora and Riku should have been, and she could never be complete without them.
The worst part was that she didn't understand, that she couldn't understand. Her best friends were gone, just gone, and she didn't know why. She wanted an explanation. It wasn't fair that she had been left behind and in the dark.
It wasn't fair that she had been left alone.
She desperately needed something to hold onto, to anchor herself with, because she felt like she was falling, falling rapidly away from reality and herself. Her fingers dug deep into the sand and gripped handfuls of it, as if the rough grains could keep her there.
I'll come back for you.
Wasn't that what Sora had said? He had promised to return, right? So where was he? It had been a year, and she hadn't seen him since.
A whole year.
They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but she knew that if she had to wait much longer, her heart would break. If it hadn't already.
She pulled her hands from the sand and covered her face with them as tears began to roll gently, slowly down her cheeks. She knew that there was only one thing she could do: wait. A promise is a promise. That's what they always told each other. And Sora always kept his promises.
She trusted him.
So she sat in the sand, and wept, and waited.