Three weeks after their long awaited return to Destiny Islands and the best picnic ever, Riku quietly asked to see the Oblivion keychain.
Sora initially just blinked at him, startled and a little worried that the sight of it would remind his friend of darker times. A moment later, though, he realized exactly how silly that was, because nothing had ever been wrong with Riku's memory, and if his occasionally morose silences were any indication, he obviously had no qualms about reminding himself of the very worst parts of it. Still, Sora didn't want to help Riku "dwell", as Kairi put it. Then again, his friend had chosen to come back with him, and that had to count for something, right?
In the end, Sora knew he needed to trust his friends, so he pulled the keychain out of his pocket—and what did it say about his own dwelling, that he still carried the thing around?—and extended it toward Riku. His friend solemnly clasped it in his hands, his eyes falling closed as he allowed himself to feel its essense, the unique impression of thought and feeling and memory that was individual to each keychain.
"It got me through some rough times," Sora told him and saw Riku wince, although whether that was from the reminder of the difficulties Sora had faced or from Riku's own guilt at his part in them, Sora didn't know. "I meant, no matter how Dark it feels, it always kept me safe," he elaborated, in case Riku had chosen to misinterpret things again. He still did that sometimes, blaming himself for long forgiven mistakes or even for things that had never been his fault in the first place—or worse, Riku would actually get hung up about their missed school work.
Kairi claimed their friend was getting better at understanding what was really important, but much as Sora would have liked to believe that, just the night before, he had told Riku at great volume that doing one more minute of the mountain of make-up work would absolutely kill him, and Riku had made him keep going for another hour, anyway.
Either Riku was going deaf or his mind was still addled by the Darkness. Clearly, there was no other possible explanation.
Thankfully, he seemed to hear Sora alright this time, because Riku responded to his intended reassurance with a calm nod, smiling just a little, and Sora felt the corners of his own mouth turn up, with the hope that he might be able to wriggle out of doing that algebra stuff, after all.
If we just don't tell Kairi...
"Thanks, Sora," Riku said, distracting him from the fine art of scholastic escape, as he handed Oblivion back. Then, Riku dug a keychain out of his own pocket and held it out. "Here. You wanted to see it, right?"
"You're really going to let me hold it?" Riku had been unfailingly friendly since their return, but he'd also been conspicuously silent about what had happened to him before they got back. Since the keychain of Riku's Keyblade held the imprint of some essential part of that difficult journey, holding it would be like hearing a part of that story.
Riku nodded. "It's only fair, since you let me see Oblivion."
"Yeah, but that keychain was connected to you in the first place."
Riku sighed, jiggling the keychain a little bit in his still extended hand. "Just take it, Sora."
So Sora wiped his hands off on his pants (maybe he should have listened to what Kairi had said about washing them earlier) and reached out to grasp the keychain. As soon as his fingers closed around it—oh.
He could see the last of the stars twinkling in the pre-dawn sky, pale light barely spilling up from the horizon. His toes sank between fine silver sand, as the fresh, unmistakable tang of the sea filled his nostrils, his hearing swept away with the waves gently caressing the newborn sun as it slowly rose, brilliant lances of Light dispelling the mist and driving away the Darkness, until the world was filled only with the single promise: out of the Darkness, Hope; out of the Night, another chance at Day.
"It's only fair," Riku's voice carried to him on the gentle ocean breeze, "because this keychain is connected to you, in the first place. That whole year I watched you sleeping your life away, who do you think I wanted to give that new Day to?" Riku smiled, slightly lopsided. "And shame on you for lazing around, when you were supposed to be taking care of Kairi," he teased, distilling humor somehow from those lost days.
Sora smiled back.
He had seen Darkness and he had seen Light, but he had never found such a concrete way to traverse between the two of them, a path built on Dawn's pure, unadulterated Hope.
"I think I finally understand," he murmured, a nagging mystery at last resolving within his mind. "When we were trapped at the edge of existence, Kairi told me the message she sent out only had two words: 'Come home.' The bottle came to you because you were the bridge that allowed the Light to reach into the Darkness. It was addressed to me, because I was the one you hoped to send back to the Light."
Riku blinked at him, obviously surprised by his revelation.
"But we came back together, Riku," Sora told him, insistent, before abusing a little of his lingering power to add the imprint of a piece of his own Heart to the keychain in his hand, "so you better get used to having these new Days, too."
Sora thrust the keychain out confidently, and Riku reached out to accept it, Our Way to the Dawn hanging, for just a moment, comfortably between them.
Places with a thousand memories smelled and sounded and flashed around them, receding into the past and rising again in the future with the ceaseless rhythm of the ocean waves. The surf hiss-crashed in swirls around their ankles, and the sharp, salt breeze blew through their hair, the white gold sun of the Islands shining down over the glittering sand and the endless tropical sea and the lazy paopu tree Riku always loved to sit in. Even so many long days spent surrounded by creatures with no Hearts, bodies with no Souls, couldn't stand up to the force of so much life, rising and surging and glittering all around them in startlingly concrete detail: old, timeless simplicities that existed before the dark was Dark, and when the Light was still just light.
In exchange for the new beginning he'd received, Sora would remind Riku of that, of a thousand childhood adventures concluded with a mad dash out of the sparkling surf into a waiting pair of arms, the knowledge etched deep down in his bones:
Finally, finally, we are home.
They were all three home together, and it was all he could ever want.