Chapter 240: Hopeless
Sora, Riku, and Kairi all sat and chatted and laughed for a while. They talked about various inconsequential things, and spent a little time catching up, like Vexen had predicted they'd do. They didn't talk about Namine. The unspoken thought of her hung between the three of them like a cloud. None of them wanted to bring it up. None of them wanted to think about the position she was in right now—not when they were all quite certain she'd eventually get better.
Then there was a knock on the door.
Kairi hadn't been looking to see if Vexen—who'd knocked—had knocked on the open door or on the doorframe, but there he was standing, with Alpha slightly behind him. Alpha had a somber expression that Kairi couldn't quite read past. Vexen looked distressed. Kairi felt her stomach bunch up at the sight.
"I hate to interrupt…" Vexen began, casting a nervous glance between the three of them.
"Is something wrong?" Riku asked. He didn't sound worried, but his face was all scrunched up.
Vexen looked away. Riku tensed quite visibly.
"I'm… not so sure if we can fix Namine," Alpha explained, slowly. "37 took extra care when Rewriting her to include protocols that would make it near impossible to undo the damage."
Kairi's breath caught in her lungs. Her blood churned.
"And there's nothing you can do about it?" Sora asked, reaching over to squeeze Kairi's shoulder.
Kairi was grateful for it—it grounded her, a little. Reminded her that it wasn't just her who the news upset, it was all of them. Sora was upset, too, but hiding it well for the moment, and Riku…
Riku'd hung his head, and Kairi didn't want to think too hard about the expression she could still slightly see on his face.
"There's nothing we can do short of a full Rewrite," Alpha replied. "And without her file to reference… I can remove the protocols telling her to kill Riku. That is all I can do. It doesn't look like there's a way to salvage her personality."
Riku cried out, and then turned and drove his fist into the wall. There was a sharp cracking sound. At first, Kairi feared it was the wall, but when Riku pulled his hand away she noted it didn't even have a dent. Obviously Riku'd broken bones.
"Whoa there Riku!" Sora exclaimed. He quickly tossed up a Cure—or maybe it was Cura—for Riku, but there was no telling how much good that did.
Vexen looked startled, and a little surprised. He'd taken a step forward, and stood there uncertainly, like he was going to comfort Riku, only to second guess himself mid-step. Kairi didn't blame him, knowing Riku. He wasn't a fun person to deal with when injured. He never had been.
"I'm fine," Riku snapped. He pulled his hand away from the wall, cradled it to his chest, lowered his head. "I expected…" He paused, looked up, eyes gleaming. "What… what about my memories?" he asked, looking up at Alpha. "Can they fix her?"
"They were deleted from the database," Alpha said, by way of response.
"Not those memories," Riku said. "I mean, I guess those memories? But like, all of my memories, and Kairi's, and Sora's… Couldn't we…?"
"I already suggested that," Vexen said. "But 7 says it wouldn't work, seeing as it didn't really work for Roxas."
"And Roxas had all of his memories, and his original file, on top of Axel's memories of him," Alpha added. "We wouldn't even come close if we tried with Namine."
Kairi's hands clenched into fists. His smug and matter-of-fact attitude made her want to punch him in the face. Was he always like this? Had Riku ever punched him before? That was a fun thought to consider… But! How could he be so casual about the situation Namine was in? It was just plain rude!
"So, what! Namine's really just a lost cause!?" Kairi demanded.
In her opinion, if it was possible—even the slightest glimmer of chance—then why weren't they all trying to do something about fixing Namine?
"Kairi, whatever," Riku mumbled. "Never mind. It wouldn't—"
"How many times do I have to tell you that she's my friend too?" Kairi interrupted, shooting a glare at Riku. Maybe she'd punch him in the face, instead. "I don't care if you've given up on her, there's gotta be a way!"
"Is there a way?" Sora looked up at Alpha and Vexen.
Vexen shifted a little. "Short of Rewriting her from scratch, which is very, very, very risky business… no…" He cleared his throat, nervously. "And even then, we still have to crack 37's failsafes…"
"And at that point, it's not really worth it." Alpha folded his arms over his chest and shrugged.
Sora had to restrain Kairi, this time. Otherwise she would've punched Alpha square in the jaw. That was too far.
"Kairi, no! You cannot punch him," Sora hissed, in her ear. Kairi stopped struggling. Sora was right. It stunk, but he was right.
"…I think 37's still alive," Riku said, quietly. His voice was deadpan, though, not a single shred of hope in it.
"Can he tell us how to crack the failsafes?" Kairi asked. Seeing as she was calmer now, Sora let go of her.
"He'd sooner die than do that!" Alpha laughed.
Kairi sent a glare at him.
"That's fine," Riku said. He sounded surprisingly calm, and the darkness around him was building. Kairi could feel it. It wasn't quite visible, but it was flowing around him, concentrating itself to be channeled through his body. It sent shivers down Kairi's spine. The hunger in his tone when he continued only made it worse.
"I don't think I mind killing him anyway."
Kairi turned away. Clenched her teeth. Bit back tears.
"You're really all giving up on her?" she asked. Her voice caught in her throat.
She scanned each of their faces, but that only made her feel worse. Vexen's face was scrunched with distress, and he kept wringing his hands together. Alpha had that same passive—almost smug—look on his face. Of course he didn't care. Sora looked worried, but he also wasn't speaking up in protest with her. And Riku…
"Kairi," he said. The darkness vanished from him very abruptly. "You can't exactly go back from being Rewritten."
The look on his face was horrible. There was no hope in his eyes. It was the same look he'd gotten earlier, when they were fighting Namine. The same look he'd had when he'd asked her to kill Namine.
And it was now that Kairi realized…
…he'd given up a long time ago.
Kairi got up and ran, tears streaming from her eyes. She shoved past Alpha to get into the hall, and only stopped running when Sora caught her by the arm.
"Kairi, hold on," he said.
"We can't just give up on her!" Kairi shouted. It hurt her throat, but she didn't care. She'd scream until she had no voice if she had to, as long as it meant getting Namine back. "I don't care if she's not who she used to be! She's still Namine! And yes! She was horrible but- but we're her friends we can't give up on her."
"Kairi, I think—"
"She's still in there!"
"Kairi, that's enough," Sora said, firmly, grabbing her by the shoulders.
Kairi clenched her jaw, and wrenched herself away from Sora. "So you're giving up too?" she demanded, fingers curling into fists.
"No, I just think they know more about this than we do," Sora replied. His own voice rose.
"But she's still in there!" Kairi yelled. Why wouldn't anyone understand that? Why wouldn't—
"Is she?" Sora asked.
Kairi nodded, fervently. "When you were taken by the darkness—"
"Darkness is something completely different!" Sora snapped. "That was something controlling me—she's been Rewritten entirely. Had her brain messed with until she became someone else. That's how Replicas are."
"No. No!" Kairi scrambled away from Sora, shaking her head and wiping her eyes so she could at least see. It hurt a little to touch her left eye. It hadn't healed up all the way, yet—and that just brought bitter thoughts. Namine'd given her the black eye. Namine'd—
No.
"Namine's still in there, somewhere. I know she is. She's not lost! I refuse to believe she's lost!"
"Kairi—"
"D- don't you believe me?" she asked Sora, desperately.
He didn't say anything for a long while. He just stood there, looking like he wanted to say no but was still trying to figure out how to put it in a way that wouldn't hurt her feelings. He should've known better. She didn't need to hear him say it to know what he was thinking.
"Fine."
"Kairi, I only think they know more about this than we do, as much as it sucks," Sora said, slowly. "I don't like it either. She's my friend just as much as she is yours and I don't want to lose her… but… what can we do? What can you and I do to fix her?"
Kairi shrugged. "We'll figure something out. So long as we do it together—"
Sora cut her off with a shake of his head.
"Come find me when you've got a better idea than storming around and yelling at everything. I'm gonna go find Joseph and see if he knows where to get me another star shard."
Sora pushed past her, and was gone.
Kairi stood there for a long moment, tears rolling down her cheeks. She eventually started moving—there was no using hanging around in that hallway—but Sora was right. What could just the two of them do?
xxx
The three of them—Vexen, Alpha, and Riku—waited in silence for a moment. It wasn't like they couldn't hear Kairi and Sora yelling out in the hall. Riku did his best not to listen too much. It wasn't like he blamed Kairi for being upset. She didn't understand. Didn't understand why he'd given up…
Riku rubbed his knuckles, wishing they didn't hurt so much. Sora's Cure had helped, but… only by so much. He tried to cast Cure himself, only to have it fizzle out on him halfway through. Just like in Hollow Bastion.
"Any of you know where Joseph is?" Sora asked, poking his head in.
Alpha and Vexen exchanged glances, then both shook their heads.
"You're better off asking 7," Vexen said.
"Where's he?"
"Just down the hall. Opposite wall. Fourth door down from where we are," Alpha replied.
"Which direction?"
Alpha rolled his eyes and pointed for Sora. Sora nodded, said his thanks, and left. Alpha sighed. Turned to Riku.
"What are we going to do with Namine?" he asked. "If we can't fix her?"
Riku shrugged.
"I dunno."
"…maybe you should go see her," Vexen suggested.
"Think I'll pass," Riku said. He clenched his teeth. Facing her right now was the last thing he wanted to do.
"We have to do something about her, Riku." Alpha's voice was stern. Angry. For once he was showing a shred of emotion during this conversation. "We may not be able to fix her," he continued. "But we also can't keep her locked up forever."
"I don't know," Riku repeated, firmer now.
He didn't care if Alpha kept yelling at him. In fact, he'd be quite glad of it.
"And if you're so worried about her, why don't you figure out how to fix her!?" Riku continued, drawing his lips back in a threatening snarl. He was only saying it to get a rise out of Alpha.
"If I could've, I would've already! I wouldn't have stopped until she was fixed!" Alpha said. It was a quiet fury he spoke with, but it was a fury, and it made Riku's blood sing.
"And yet, you don't want to try using everyone's memories?" Vexen asked, straightening to his full height.
Alpha shot a glare at Vexen. "You heard what 7 said!"
"I did, but—if we had any shot of piecing her personality back together…!"
"You said it yourself, it's too risky!"
Vexen stared at Alpha for a moment, and then huffed. "Look, just go figure out how to remove the protocols that tell Namine to target Riku. That's a good place to start."
Alpha looked like he desperately wanted to protest, but he apparently thought better of it. He nodded. Left.
Vexen waited until he was sure Alpha was gone—or out of earshot—and then closed the door, slowly, so it hardly made a sound. The thrill left Riku's veins. His heart seized in his chest. The shut door was supposed to allow them privacy. It just made Riku feel vulnerable.
That is, until Vexen made the mistake of sitting on the end of Riku's cot. Riku burst into a laugh, a short bitter thing.
"What are you gunna do?" he demanded. His mouth drew into an involuntary smirk. "Huh? Talk me into going to see her? Make me do it? She's a monster!" He shuddered at the mere fact of saying it, but it was true. The smirk became a grimace. "She- she's Larxene in Namine's body. You cannot ask me to go near her!"
"What do you want us to do with her, then?" Vexen asked. "You can't expect us to kill her."
"Then make her stop trying to kill me and send her off to some distant world that she can survive on," Riku replied, shifting so he wasn't facing Vexen.
"That's a little cruel…"
The disapproving tone of Vexen's voice was nearly too much to handle. Riku found himself trembling, just slightly, and dug his fingernails into his palms to calm it.
"Wh- whatever's done with her, it needs to involve me being as far away from her as possible," he told Vexen. His voice wavered. He felt sick to have to say it.
Vexen's brow furrowed with confusion.
"But if she doesn't want to kill you…" he began.
"What good does putting us near each other do?" Riku interrupted. "You know just as well as I do that once you've been Rewritten you can't go back. Me being near her isn't going to spark anything." He'd tell Vexen this, first, and then maybe Vexen'd drop the issue. If not…
"The Heart is a curious thing…" Vexen mused.
So he wasn't going to drop the issue so easily. No surprise. None at all. This was Vexen.
"I wanted to kill her," Riku said. The words left his throat in gasps.
Vexen stopped short. Stared for a long moment. Riku didn't wait for him to process and just kept talking. If he didn't stop, he wouldn't have nearly as much time to feel horrible about it.
"Whether or not she wants to kill me is irrelevant. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to strangle the life out of her. I wanted to end her. She- she reminded me so much of Larxene that once I got over the shock of it all I wanted her dead so I didn't have to hear her taunts come out of Namine's mouth."
Vexen's mouth worked to respond, but Riku didn't let him.
"The only thing that stopped me from killing her was the fact that she was Namine and I couldn't bear the thought of raising my blade against her, let alone slitting her throat with it." His whole body was shaking, so he crossed his legs under him and folded his arms together. It wouldn't stop it, but it'd make it less noticeable. "But how long- how long is that gonna last?" he asked. "How long is it gonna be before I get so fed up with her that I shove my blade through her chest? You can't let me kill her, Vexen! You can't."
Vexen regarded him carefully, for a long moment. Riku tried to tell himself it looked like a scientist considering an experiment or some difficult question that research posed. It didn't.
"Riku, I do not think you would actually—"
"Why don't you talk to her for about five minutes, and then tell me whether or not I wouldn't kill her."
Vexen swallowed the rest of his sentence. Pursed his lips together. Opened them to speak, only to reconsider. Riku still couldn't quite peg the look he was getting from Vexen, either. He'd never seen it before—at least not on Vexen's face. Not that he could remember.
Vexen took a deep breath. In. Out. "I can fix her, Riku," he said, very slowly. "It will take me a very long time, but I can. If I can get everyone's memories…"
"She won't be her," Riku countered. "And you know it. You can make her as much like she used to be as possible, but it won't be quite right."
Vexen sighed.
"I suppose you and 7 are right. The same way Roxas isn't quite the same, she wouldn't be either…"
There was a strange gentleness to his voice that Riku didn't understand. Had Kairi really been onto something…? No.
"Glad we're on the same page." Riku swallowed. Swallowed again. "'Cuz then you- you understand how cruel it would be to either of us—to both of us—to make me spend time with her, even if she is 'fixed'. Because no matter how well you- how well you put her back together, it won't be quite right. And I'll look at her like… like she's broken, whether I want to or not."
"Then you'll have to learn how to accept her," Vexen told him, with a small shrug. "And accept that she's not the same Namine—"
Just the suggestion brought tears to Riku's eyes. He took a second to try and hold them back.
"I've- I've already had to make myself stop- stop loving one Namine," he choked. "I- I don't want to have to make myself stop l-loving a second, and then- and then have to find it in me to love a third. A third! Even- even if you do 'fix' her, I can't be a part of her life. I can't… I can't make myself…"
He trailed off, shaking his head.
Vexen squeezed his eyes shut.
"Riku. I am so sorry."
Riku shook his head.
"It's not your fault. I was the one who wasn't fast enough to save her."