Riku looked around the small cavern, every inch covered in small chalk drawings that he and Sora and Kairi had made.
I'm home.
He felt the joy and relief of being somewhere he belonged. The gentle lap of waves against the sand just a few feet away steadied his breathing, the smell of the salt and moss easing the pain and tension off of him. Here, at last, he had a chance to pause, to think.
He walked to the large rock and sat down, looking back at his entrance point. The strange wooden door was there, right in the wall of the cave. Its giant open keyhole glowed with barely visible light, the light of the heart of the world.
The King was dead, probably. Riku always started with his failures. King Mickey had been a better fighter, but he had succumbed to the massive army that had assaulted them while Riku had survived. It didn't make sense; he should have been the one to perish. The King had subjects to rule. He had earned his keyblade. Riku looked down at the golden key that he couldn't force himself to put down. The last time he'd held a keyblade, he had given into the darkness, the fear of losing Kairi and the anger of losing her to Sora. The resulting black blade had been twisted by his darkness, but it was still not enough. Sora had taken it back almost comically fast.
This new keyblade had not come to him of its own accord; he had picked it up on the battlefield. He was afraid that the blade would leave him if he set it down. He didn't want to be powerless again.
The battle against those heartless—what was the point? Why did the King die? Were they after the heart of Kingdom Hearts? Perhaps that strange orb? Or were they after the keyblade? Dozens of questions, and no answers.
Riku took a deep breath of the salty sea air and damp moss, and it cleared his head.
If they were after the orb, then it might be the heart of Kingdom Hearts. But why did the heart pulse like that?
Riku's train of thought stumbled and crashed on that question. Of course the heart had a pulse—it was a heart! But what, then, was it pumping? That must have been that pressure he'd felt. That squeezing feeling, the pain, and the ideas. Ideas and pressure—whatever they were, they nourished the bonds that led to the worlds. Riku felt another Pulse, like a second slower heartbeat, and the keyhole in the door glowed brightly for a second before dimming again.
The connection to the heart of this world had also reacted to the pulse. So the hearts were connected, probably through the bonds, tying all of the worlds together through Kingdom Hearts.
But why would falling through the heart make him feel the pulses still? Was he corrupted in some way, like he had been corrupted by the darkness? They were not fading in intensity, and his connection to the bond wasn't either. No answer presented itself to him there.
He wondered if Sora and Kairi had made it back to the Islands. They didn't travel the space between worlds like he did, and he grew concerned that they might have become stuck.
He crawled through the tunnel, now a far snugger fit than it had been when he last went through it.
The dawn was just breaking as he emerged to see the beach.
Home.
The sunrise above the water of his home brought him a measure of peace. He had gone and seen the other worlds, as he had always wanted, but it had all gone wrong.
Kairi had lost her heart. Riku had been tricked first by Maleficent, and then by Ansem. And Sora, his friend, his rival, had fixed it all; locking all the worlds away, stopping the heartless, redeeming him, saving Kairi. And in doing so, Sora had won her, thoroughly and completely.
He didn't find Sora or Kairi. Selphie had said Kairi was around for a day before disappearing, a note left saying she had gone to find Sora. The odd thing was that they all thought Riku had been gone for a few weeks—he was certain it had been many months since he had left the dying world.
Sora must have done something to restore the world to how it was before Ansem had destroyed it.
Tidus and Wakka had asked him question after question about where he had been, where Sora was, what he had seen, what cool fights he had been in, and anything else they could think of. Riku didn't want to talk about his failures, his trust in the wrong people, or the damage he had done to Sora, but he couldn't be dark and brooding on the beach of his home with his friends. Not for longer than a day or two.
So Riku told them about the streets of Traverse Town, the strange living dolls with puff balls that could forge the greatest of wonders. He told them of Leon and his ship building. The perpetually dark Halloween Town, the endless desert of Agrabah, his barely won fight against Sephiroth (he downplayed the massive luck that had gone into that catastrophe) in the Coliseum. All the good highlights of his otherwise disastrous adventures. The stories continued long into the nights, and Riku felt himself falling back into his old patterns around his friends.
Of course all three wanted fighting lessons from him, Tidus especially, and Riku felt real joy from battle for the first time since he had left the island. The wooden sword was clumsy in his hand after the keyblade. He had finally put it down, confident that if it was going to leave, it would have done so already. His friends' spars were no challenge to him, and so he entertained himself by going for the fancy, flashy dodges and leaping attacks. Riku was among friends again, and it felt good.
Late at night, a few weeks after he had arrived, the soft murmurs of happiness from the bond became distorted, warbling up and down before fading into a discordant hum.
Riku, keyblade in hand, found himself before the door to the other worlds, unsure why he was so concerned. He looked into the keyhole and the bond, and some other presence, reached out to him.
"What's wrong?" he started to ask, before he felt a pull and was suddenly engulfed by a squeezing, burning sensation. Riku wrapped the darkness around himself as he was pushed along the bond. Concern hit him in waves, and he felt a second bond, bloated with ideas and pressure, sending him bursts of fear and worry. "Fine, I get it, something is wrong. Tell me what it is!"
The burdened bond gave a harsh, high-pitched vibration, but Riku couldn't make sense of it. Soon he lost contact with the bond that had taken him home, and he was left with only its heavy cousin.
It spat him out in a torchlit cavern. The stone architecture and sandy corners told Riku he was in Agrabah. The bond here was ponderous and bellowed its fear and urgency. Riku looked around, trying to find the danger. The keyhole was locked, there were no echoes of battle, and Riku did not see or hear any concealed assailants. Minutes ticked by, with the urgency growing louder.
"Shut up! I know something's wrong, but you aren't telling me what you want!"
The bond seemed to quiet, but no answer came. Riku moved briskly through the caves, finding nothing amiss. The only other place that could be of interest was the City of Agrabah itself.
Riku pulled the darkness around himself and focused on the gates of Agrabah, letting the shadows call to each other before he stepped forward, disappearing into the shadow of the cave and reappearing in the shadow of the Agrabah city gates. He walked through the empty streets toward the loud commotion coming from the palace. He emerged from the market into a packed palace square. The crowd was cheering, throwing flower petals and paper scraps in the air, while a band belted out an accompanying tune.
"Big party," Riku commented, but he was drowned out by the noise.
Looking up, he saw the sultan standing on the roof overlooking the square, the Princess of Heart and Sora's friend Aladdin dressed in white, staring at each other like they were the only two people in the world. The sultan was saying something, but Riku could hear nothing over the din of the crowd. The bond's fear melted into despondency and sorrow.
Riku wondered if the bond didn't like parties before turning his attention to the princess and Aladdin. Was the bond upset with them? The music swelled and the two bent forward to kiss each other.
Just before their lips touched, the world became a void.
The palace vanished into a great sea of whiteness. But there were no screams, no cries. The people seemed to not even see what was happening. The bond's despondency collapsed into grief and pain.
Riku was too busy to notice. He focused on staying ahead of the whiteness, but it was gaining on him. There wasn't enough time to shadow portal, and so he ran, fleeing through the city. The gates of the city were in sight before they too vanished in whiteness.
He was engulfed. All around him was white, and the bond wailed in grief.