AN: A quick note before we begin. I'd like to dedicate this first chapter to ObsessdOne, since it was a concept in her fanfic "Everyday" that inspired me to start this story. Woot!
It was too bright. It hurt sensitive eyes long accustomed to the darkness. It was harsh and abused skin used to the comforting embrace of shadows. It exposed everything, leaving nowhere to disappear. Riku glared at the sun from his hiding spot in one of the play trees, as though it had done him some personal offense.
Now it was sinking into the sea, becoming a blazing orange ball and staining everything with red and pink and orange, heralding the arrival of night. Night was the time Riku lived for these days, when shadows finally overtook the world, and he could slip into them and disappear. The moon would be full tonight, but that was all right. Its light was cool and silver and unintrusive. It didn't invade and expose; it simply was. Riku liked moonlight. It was like himself.
Riku folded his arms across his broad chest and continued to glare at the evening sky. Eventually his eyes drifted down to the dock, where five small shapes stood watching the sunset, and he glared at them too without really realizing it. They were perfectly happy out in the sun. They reveled in it, and it was their home, in a way it had never been for him, not even before the initial destruction of the islands that started everything. He was jealous of them, though he would have sliced his stomach with his own sword before he would have admitted it out loud.
At the thought of his blade, Riku tensed his jaw, reaching a hand out in front of him and curling his fingers as he imagined the familiar feel of the hilt in his grip. His sword, like himself, was a thing of darkness, even once it had changed from Soul Eater to Way to the Dawn. It wouldn't survive here, and he missed it. It had been a constant in his life, like the darkness, and now both had been stolen away from him… just like all his constants had.
Aqua eyes drifted back down towards the dock, where the little cluster of shapes still lingered. As he surveyed the scene, one detached itself from the group and began heading up the docks. Recognition made Riku straighten and watch intently, and he even stepped out of his little shelter. The last of the sunlight glinted off his silver hair, drawing the approaching boy's attention. At least the sun was good for something, Riku thought wryly.
Once Sora was climbing the ladder to the tree hollow, Riku retreated again, further into the shade this time. When his friend eventually joined him, he finally spoke. "Aren't you going home with the others?"
Sora's first answer was a shrug, followed by, "It's not like they can't get back to the main island without me. And you weren't there, so I figured I'd come look for you. Hiding again?" A subtle lift and drop of one of Riku's powerful shoulders was the answer to that. The brunette sighed and went to sit on a ragged pallet near where his older friend was leaning. There was a long, companionable silence; the pair of them understood each other in a way that not even they quite comprehended, and there was no real need for words. Finally, Sora broke the quiet with a soft announcement that not even Riku expected.
"I know how you feel, you know," he began, running a hand through his hopelessly unruly brown hair. "I feel weird too, being here. I do all the stuff I used to do because they expect me to, but… I don't belong anymore." Here he looked up at his companion, blue eyes serious. "We don't belong here anymore."
Riku didn't answer at first, simply moving to sit beside Sora, back braced against the wall, one knee bent with his arm resting on it. "I never expected to hear that from you," he finally replied, his quiet tone matching Sora's. "You always seemed so upbeat and happy. I thought you were thrilled to be back."
Sora pulled both knees against his chest and hugged them. "I was. I am. I mean, how could I not be? This is home." They both knew he was trying to convince himself of that fact more than anything. Trying and failing.
"We took different paths," Riku said.
"But they were still both paths in darkness," Sora finished with a slight nod. "It was… all we knew, even if we were fighting for the light."
The sun had finally set and darkness taken over most of the sky. Riku pushed himself to his feet, finally venturing into open air, and a soft shuffle behind him told him Sora was following, so he continued the conversation. "But we weren't fighting for it for our own sakes. We were doing it for everyone else, so… I guess it isn't so surprising if we don't feel like we belong." He turned halfway to look at his partner with one pale eye. "Real heroes aren't the ones who get happy, fluffy endings. They're the ones that come, do their thing, then fade away again while someone else gets the glory." He felt surprisingly sad as he said this, but not for his own sake. Somehow he'd always known it was his destiny to live in darkness, and it felt right. But it shouldn't be that way for Sora. Not Sora, who was so bright and cheerful and full of light. If anyone deserved one of those cliché happy endings, where the hero got the girl and lived happily ever after, it was him.
Either he had let slip those thoughts out loud, or Sora was starting to read minds, because the brunette stepped to his side and entwined their hands. "My happy ending is anything that involves you being with me, Riku, even if it means staying here."
The other teenager quirked a brow. "'Even'?" he echoed. "You make it sound like you don't want to stay."
"I don't," Sora answered bluntly. "This… We don't belong here. Ever since we got back, I've been going through the motions and all the time wishing I had stayed in the darkness. I knew what I was doing there, I knew I had a purpose." His grip on Riku's hand tightened as his tone grew more impassioned. "And maybe Kairi can go back to the way she was like nothing ever happened, like she didn't know there was a whole universe out there, but I can't! Maybe that one little glimpse she got was enough, but not for me. Not now."
"So let's go home."
"Huh?"
Riku spun Sora around and gripped his shoulders, staring at him intently. "Let's go home, Sora. Let's go back to where we belong now, to the darkness. They don't need us here anymore. Hell, maybe they'll even forget us when we go, like before. So let's just go."
Sora gripped Riku's biceps, unable to contain the glimmer of hope that leapt up in his eyes. "But how do we get there? The paths are closed, and we don't have any way of making new ones." Questions of Kairi, of family, of being missed didn't even occur to him yet.
The silver-haired young man released his friend and swept out his arm, somehow totally unsurprised when Way to the Dawn appeared in his hand, just as it always had before when he'd called it. "People like us, Sora… We can make our own paths."
