Disclaimer- I don't own Kingdom Hearts.
Author's Note- Here is the second chapter! Again, it's unbeta'd. The next chapter has barely been started, so there'll probably be a bit of a wait on that, especially since I'm going to be Very busy for a while.
Enjoy, and please review.
After the Dream
Part II
Sora: Still Not Quite Enough
It's like things... aren't the way that they're supposed to be.
Everything would be better, that's what I thought. Riku would be happier, less scared than he is, of something I can't even imagine. Kairi wouldn't be alone anymore beause we'd be together and that would make it better. We'd all go back to the way that we were.
Riku's breaking, whatever the Darkness did to him, whatever happened to him, it left it's mark. He's snapping, more and more everyday. The worst part of it all, is that I can't stop it, can't help it.
Kairi cries a lot now. She pretends that she doesn't, but I know she does. Her eyes are red a lot, and her voice is really shaky. She's not okay, not happy, and definitely not the little girl who smiled and wanted to be a princess.
We're all breaking. We changed so much, nothing fits anymore. I'm different, I wish that I wasn't, but I am. And maybe that's not such a bad thing, but it is right now, and I've changed so much that I don't fit here anymore.
Kairi doesn't, and Riku doesn't either. Our old lives, we don't fit in them anymore. We don't fit here, we don't belong here.
This isn't the way that it was supposed to be, the way that we thought that it would be.
Everything was going to be okay again.
But that's not happening. It's been a month, we've been home for month but it hasn't happened yet.
I'm starting to wonder if it ever will.
When Sora wakes up in the mornings, it's still a surprise to see familiar surroundings. Still a surprise, despite the fact that they've been home for two months now, and things have gone back to normal again.
At least, as normal as they can be, after everything that's happened.
His room hasn't changed from how he remembered, although sometimes it feel like it is too small, the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling something that should belong to someone much younger than he is.
Sora doesn't like to spend much time there, choosing to dress quickly in his old clothes which seem too small and downright alien, and he hurries out of the room that's filled with too many memories for him to bare,
His parents haven't changed, and when they smile at him as he leaves for school, a part of him wonders if he's always felt so out of place in his own life, or if it's a new addition that was added when they left.
When he gets to school, his old friends all crowd around him, asking cheerful questions and smiling these carefree smiles that something in his heart resents. (They're all still curious, still wondering, despite two months of questions and two months of carefully worded answers.)
Then Kairi arrives, giving Sora a sweet, happy grin that makes him feel warm inside, even if a tiny part of him very deep inside thinks that the smile looks odd with red hair, when for some reason it should be blonde. But he ignores the niggling feeling that something isn't right, and smiles back as Kairi is hounded by their friends, with more questions and more smiles. (Sora pretends that he isn't even a little bit envious of the way she looks so comfortable in their old life.)
Riku's the last to show up, sweeping up in a cloud of bad-feelings and resentment. The smiles and laughter dims, the questions becoming more subdued as he approaches, and he's no longer the little boy all the girls loved. (Sometimes, Sora envies Riku's ability to push people away. Sometimes, when the questions become too much, the smile is hard to keep up.)
They all seem to take a step back, even if nobody moves. The world seems to hold it's breath for a second, as he walks up to them, and gives Kairi and Sora both slight, secretive smiles.
After that everyone seems to disappear, Kairi and Sora stepping away from their old friends to be closer to Riku. (Neither of them are sure if they do it to make him feel more comfortable, or to be close enough to hold him back if he snaps.)
The teachers give Sora condescending smiles as he passes them in the hallways, and he fights not to let his happy grin falter. Fights to not scowl at them and shout, "I've seen things you can't even begin to imagine!"
Selphie sits next to him in his first class, always covering for him when he's singled out by teacher by answering the question herself, which he's greatful for. He's not focusing much, never did have the best attention span when it came to school, and now it's gotten even worse. She lets him copy her notes when he's too distracted and forgets to write them down. Always tells him what homework they have for the night, and never asks too many questions. Just smiles at him, a little confused, silently asking what happened to the boy who left, and who this imposter is.
The morning goes on like that, in a blur of mundacity. He sits with Tidus in the next class, with more of the same. He asks more questions than Selphie, questions about their time away. He doesn't comment when Sora freezes up, although the look on his face is a little odd. He does most of the talking anyways, babbling about the upcoming blitzball season and about wanting to ask Selphie to the winter dance.
Sora barely notices when the bell for lunch rings, gets swept along to the lunch room in the wave of students. For a moment, lost in the crowd, with no one singling him out, he can feel normal again.
Lunchtime is spent outside with Kairi, Riku and all their old friends. The grass is soft, such a vibrant green, and the sky is blue above them. Everything around them seems to be brighter than it used to be today, and Sora feels grey against a technicolor backdrop.
There's more questions, directed mostly at him and Kairi because no one is brave enough to ask Riku when he glares at the sky like that.
Kairi's smile fades a bit when they ask the more difficult questions, things like, "Were you ever scared?" They glance around at each other, and Sora nearly flinches at the shadow in Riku's eyes. Kairi's smile seems more like glass, on the edge of splintering.
No one notices the way that Sora's hands flex as though he expects his keyblades to be there.
They never are.
The afternoon passes in a blur, as Sora loses himself to his memories. By the time the day is over, he can hardly remember it, too much of his mind preoccupied with the past and the memories he cherishes. Even the memories he doesn't cherish, and some of the ones he'd like to push to the back of his mind so that they're not so sharp and painful, he loses himself in those too.
When they meet after school, Kairi comments on his distraction with a worried look.
"I'm just tired," he explains. "Stayed up last night, that's all," he manages to say.
Kairi just nods, and doesn't ask any more questions even though she doesn't look like she believes him.
She walks home with him, and he notices that with more clarity than anything that he had all afternoon. Riku's with them too, walking just a step or two behind, and Sora notices that too.
They leave him at his door, and Riku needs to tap his shoulder several times before he even realizes that he's home.
Kairi gives him a worried frown, and says gently, "Get some sleep," before she and Riku leave, Riku still two steps behind.
Sora hardly pays attention to closing and locking the door, the locking a new addition. No one ever locked their doors on Destiny Islands, there was no reason to. Now he can't sleep knowing that the door is unlocked, and it makes him feel safer knowing it is. (Not that something as flimsy as a lock would stop a Heartless, and definitely wouldn't stop anything that really wanted in, but he tries to not think about that.)
The walk to him room passes strangely, and he finds him laying on his bed when his eyes manage to focus again. When he thinks back, he can't remember taking his shoes off, or saying hello to his parents. It doesn't bother him, not when he's this distracted and his mind is this fuzzy.
Sora stares at his ceiling, dotted with the stars that Kairi and Riku had helped him put up when he was much younger.
The room feels too small, and it makes his skin itch and his throat squeeze. He feels trapped here, in this place that's familiar and alien at the same time.
When he's had enough of drowning in the bleak reality of the present, he closes his eyes.
And once again, Sora looses himself in his memories.
It's morning by the time Sora manages to pull himself out of his thoughts.
He has vague recollections of his parents telling him that dinner was ready, and has even hazier recollections of him telling them that he wasn't feeling well, that he was going to sleep early and didn't want anything to eat.
He can't remember their response, can't remember if his father came up at any point to tuck him in like he was still five and scared of the dark, of the monsters in the closet, under the bed. He can't remember if his mother came with a mug of that herbal tea she always made when he had the cold, can't remember if she came to kiss him on the forehead and say, "Feel better soon, baby."
Sora goes through the steps of preparing for school mindlessly, doesn't notice what clothes he carelessly throws on, doesn't comb his hair because if he's really, truly honest, he can't be bothered at all.
His parents are at the table with cups of coffee, talking quietly enough that even if he was paying attention, he wouldn't have been able to hear. They offer him breakfast, but he declines, says that he'll be late if he doesn't leave now, even though school doesn't start for an hour and is only a fifteen minute walk away.
He flees the house, and the people who are his parents, yet he can't believe that they are because he doesn't remember the parents that he left behind ever being this unbearable.
Sora wonders briefly if he hates them, wonders what hate is, such a foreign concept to him, who saved the worlds and became a hero and loved every single person he saved, regardless of whether they knew him or not. He thinks that he can't, that he can't hate him because hate isn't something that has any place here, on Destiny Islands where everything is perfect and pristine.
He's glad that he left early, because he has just enough time to run down to the beach, to the paopu tree and the sunny, happy memories it bring with it. Sora sits there for as long as he can with his fingers into fists tight enough to make his nails dig deep into his skin, a bright bloom of pain, and he relishes in the feeling.
The pain keeps him grounded, keeps him from loosing himself in his head right now, because he can't stay for long and he needs to get to school, and Riku and Kairi are probably waiting for him, but he can't pull away just yet, breathing heavily as he tightens his hands, feeling too hot and stifled.
Then there's something warm and wet on his palms, and Sora glances down to see that his hands are dripping blood, uncurls his fists to crescent-moon-shaped cuts from where his nails broke the skin. The cuts smart, but it's mild compared to some of what had happened to him on his adventures, wounds that put this one to shame.
He stares the blood with morbid fascination, and holds his hand out, sees red trickle down from the cuts and across his palm, down his fingers to coat his whole hand. An irrational impulse sparks, and he traces letters onto the pale bark of the paopu tree with his fingertips, then pulls away without a backward glance. He runs down to the water, and rinses away the blood, the sting of salt keeping him in the present.
He's lost enough time already, and he probably really is late for school now, so he takes off down the beach at a run, pressing his fingers hard against the cuts, lets it keep him anchored.
Behind him, the letters, "S. R. K." are painted on the tree in crimson.
The rest of the week passes with more of the same, more blurry distraction and fuzzy mind. (There will only be more of the same, he thinks. That's all there is now.)
Sora knows that Kairi's worried, and knows that Riku's worried too, in his own way. He can't pull himself out of the stupor that he's fallen into, too deep in memories to climb out.
The weekend can't come fast enough, and when it finally arrives, Sora feels like he can breathe again.
The play islands is where they meet, by the paopu tree. Riku always gets there first, and Sora has his suspicions about whether he ever sleeps. Sora's second to get there today, and when a piece of driftwood breaks under his foot, he startles the one who's already there. Riku sits up from where he was laying back on the sand with surprisingly quick reflexes from someone who looks more than half asleep. Startled, he's a bit like a frightened rabbit, with flashing ocean-eyes darting about in search of a threat.
After that, Sora makes sure to step loudly, and the silver-haired-head turns to him, eyes still narrowed dangerously. Neither of them say a word, and Sora sits on the sandy beach next to the taller boy, and they wait for Kairi in silence.
They don't need to wait long, she gets there not long after Riku's muscles finally uncoil from the tensed, battle-ready stance. He has his back against the tree like Sora's, sitting on the sand watching the tide, so close that their shoulders are almost pressed together.
Riku startles again when she comes into view, eyes wide, and Kairi apologizes quietly.
Now that they're away from everyone and their questions and their watching, staring eyes, they drop the too-wide grins in favor of tired, distracted expressions.
Sora doesn't notice Kairi speaking until she has to almost shouts his name to catch his attention. When he looks over, there's worry etched on her face, in the frown between her eyebrows, and he doesn't know what to say to make her feel better.
"I-" he starts hesitantly, unsure.
"Don't say you're fine," Kairi snaps, though there's a trembling edge to it. "Don't say that you're fine, because you're not." Her voice breaks, and Sora feels like the worst person in the world when tears start to run down her face. "Don't lie to me!"
"Don't cry." It works almost like reverse psychology, except the reaction he's gets isn't what he's aiming for. "Please don't cry."
Right on cue, she starts crying harder. Shoulders that have gotten thinner since their return are shaking, and when Sora reaches out to pull her close, she curls into his embrace, lets him hold most of her weight as though she can't keep standing anymore. They appreciate the closeness that they can't enjoy around everyone else, and it's not a surprise when she reaches out a hand for Riku. It's also not a surprise when Sora mirrors the movement, and they pull the other boy into them, arms wrapping around shoulders, sprawled legs tangling on the sand. It's just closeness, just being together again after being apart for a very long time while they were away, and then having been pulled apart once more after they returned home.
Sora can feel Riku trembling with his arm around his shoulders, and can feel Kairi's tears on his cheek. He has always hated when Kairi cried, and as children, he and Riku would often go out of their way to prevent it from happening.
But now Kairi cries so often, and they can't do anything to keep it from happening anymore.
Sora's eyes sting, and he knows that it's not just from the strands of silver hair covering his face and hanging in his eyes from Riku's larger body leaning over him, and Kairi as they each lean on his chest, their own cheeks pressed together.
"Don't," Riku says with shaky, unsure composure, and holds them both tighter, carefully gentle. "Don't cry."
It really does work like reverse psychology, and Sora wonders why people always feel compelled to say, "Don't cry," when it always just makes the tears fall.
Sora's cheeks are damp, not just from Kairi's tears, but his own now too.
Riku's hand comes up from his shoulder to brush his cheek, and he can feel the taller boy's chest shake with the effort of keeping from crying himself.
Kairi laughs brokenly and runs a softly hand over silver hair like she's petting a cat. "Don't cry, Riku."
He doesn't consciously let himself stop holding up the mask, but when it drops he seems to sag like a puppet that's had it's strings cut. Then his arms tighten around Kairi and Sora, holds them close to him when the tears fall, the reverse psychology working just like clockwork.
Sora says what all of them know, and if the other two want to feel angry at him for ruining the act that they are holding up, they can't when they know that it would be impossible to spend their entire lives pretending.
"We're not okay."
They don't say a word, and Sora hates that it feels like he broke something.
"This is not the way we're supposed to be."
They don't reply, because no one needs to say anything when they all know it's true, and really, there's nothing to say.
For a long time, they don't move.
For a long time, they lay on the beach and don't speak.
None of them make a move to pull away from the embrace, from the closeness, so they stay that way and watch as the tide slowly comes in.
As the sun starts to set, the crying slows, and then it stops for each of them at different points during the sun's desent. The remaining tears dry under the dying sun.
The stars come out one by one, and tonight their parents don't call them home. They all warned their mothers and fathers that they'd be out late, and not to worry. (None of them wanted to go home before it was necessary.)
They watch the heart-shaped moon rise in silence, and they all wait until it's in the center of the sky before them before breaking the moment.
Riku's mask is still down when he speaks, the words oddly raw in their utter honesty. "I think," he says carefully, "That it hasn't been alright since before we left."
They both nod, and they know that it's true.
"It's not getting better, is it." Kairi asks, doesn't say it like a question because she knows the answer, but needs to voice it. "We said that we'd wait. But we've waited, and it's not better."
"No," Sora says, wants to apologize to Kairi immediately afterward when she gives him this look like his words physically hurt her. "It's not."
He can't lie and say that it is, can't tell her that it's getting better, that it'll be perfectly alright, because it's not getting better, and it's not alright, and Sora can't lie to keep from crushing her small hopes anymore.
"I don't want to wait for it to get better," Kairi whispers this, afraid to admit that she's tired.
"I think that we could wait forever, and it wouldn't get any better." Sora swallows, forces back the tears and continues with a voice that only trembles slightly, "It's not working," he takes a breath, shuddering, and says, "It hasn't been, and it's not going to start any time soon."
"But there's nothing else that we can do but wait," Kairi says, presses a hand to his cheek and stares at him with eyes that are begging him to understand.
Riku clears his throat, something he always needs to do before talking since he rarely uses his voice at all. "Sora," he starts, then stops, frowns. "You can't just... give up."
Sora jerks, and suddenly he's on his feet again, and glaring the other boy with his cheeks flushed with anger. "I'm not giving up!" he cries, and his fingers curl, as if searching for a keyblade that isn't there.
Then Riku stands too, steps forward, something threatening in his body language and something murderous in his eyes, and says, just as passionately, "Then what do you call this? Because it looks like giving up to me."
For a second, Sora waits to feel the familiar weight of his keyblades, and when it doesn't come, he throws his hands up, exasperated. "It's called 'not wanting to spend the rest of my life this unhappy'!"
Riku opens his mouth to snip something clever and biting back, but before he can, Kairi says, "Stop," from where she's still sitting on the sand.
They both freeze, and look at her in surprise, almost like in the moment, they had forgotten that she was there. "Just stop," she whispers, and Sora feels guilty, knows that Riku feels it too even if he'd never admit it.
Riku drops to his knees, and draws her into his arms, and Kairi tugs Sora back down, onto the sand, and then pulls him into the embrace until they're wrapped up in each other again.
"Just... try, for a little while longer," Riku says tonelessly. "Maybe it'll start getting better."
Neither Kairi or Sora call him on the lie.
Sora finds himself less likely to loose himself in his mind, and finds that he doesn't experience that there are blocks of time in his recent memory that he can only vaguely remember. He's more there now, and Kairi and Riku help keep him in the present by lulling him away from his thoughts when he starts daydreaming.
They talk on the phone, now. Nightly, sometimes for hours and hours into the early morning. It helps, it's something solid and constant to keep him focused.
And now it's just before sunrise, and Sora's laying on his bed watching the sky slowly pale from an inky black to a lighter and lighter blue. He hasn't gotten stuck on a memory all night. He thinks that this might be a sign that things are changing.
The phone is cradled in the crook of his head, and he whispers, "I don't know how much longer I can wait."
On the other end, he hears Kairi let out a shaky laugh, and hears Riku on his line sigh, almost in relief.
"Keep trying," Kairi says as gently as she can, which isn't as gentle as she or Sora expects, more brusque and tired. "Please, just keep trying, Sora."
Two weeks later, and Sora doesn't lose himself more than once or twice a day, if it even happens, and when it does, it's for a few minutes at the most.
"Do you ever think that things might be better if we weren't here?" Sora asks them one day, while they're still sprawled out under the peach tree during lunchtime at school.
(He thinks that things are changing.)
Riku stares at him for a long moment, the look as expressive as words would be. It says, "Yes."
Kairi makes a frustrated sound, and gives him a sharp glance. "We are home," she says, almost coldly.
Sora waits, wonders if she's going to add anything else, but she doesn't, and her face is closed off, she won't be adding anything else, the discussion over.
The rest of the lunch hour is quiet and tense, and when the bell rings for them to go back to class, Kairi won't look at either of them.
Sora wonders if this is her way of coping; to pull away from them because they're just reminders of what happened.
Kairi walks home with Selphie after school, and Sora and Riku are left waiting outside the school for her until someone, an older boy a year or so above, them tells them that she already went home.
They don't speak until they're almost at Sora's door, and he says, "It would be better, wouldn't it?"
Riku's steps don't falter, and his face remains blank, but there's tension in his shoulders that hadn't been there before Sora spoke.
"Maybe," he says, and tilts his head to the side. "Maybe it would be."
Later that night, after Sora's parents have gone to bed, thinking that he'd been asleep long before, Riku calls him for the nightly talk.
The first thing he says is, "Kairi didn't pick up the phone," which is when Sora feels like the world has turned upside down, because Kairi always answers the phone, especially now when these night-time talks help so much, when they want to be together but can't because they have parents and school and all sorts of things stopping them from spending every night together on the beach.
He licks his lips, says faintly, "I'll try calling."
It takes three tries before he gets the number right, shaky fingers hitting all the wrong buttons. He puts the phone to his ear and listens to the ringing on the other end. Riku is silent on his line, and they listen together, and Sora counts out ten rings before there's a click and Kairi's family's voicemail message plays.
He ends the call before the recorded message is finished, stares at the stars on his ceiling, and wonders what happened, if Kairi just wasn't there, was at a friends house, maybe, and her parents were sleeping, and no one picked up the phone, or it was something else.
He wonders whether she is there, in her room, and if she listened the phone ring, and just didn't answer, didn't want to talk to them. He wonders why she doesn't want to, wonders if this is just more of her pulling away from them, from what they represent.
That they represent the fact that they all left, and they came back completely different people. That they don't fit anymore.
He hears Riku make a low noise in the back of his throat, and it brings him back to his room, not needing any other cue to stop dwelling before gers lost again. It bring him back to this night that feels so lonely. "She didn't answer," he whispers, and hears Riku moving on the other end. "Why didn't she answer?"
"I'm coming over," Riku says, and completely avoids the question that Sora asked.
Sora says, "No!" and then winces at how loud it was, freezes for a moment when he hears one of his parents move in the hall. "Hold on," he whispers into the phone, and lays his head down, pretending to be asleep with the phone hidden under his pillow.
Someone stops outside his room, and the door creaks open. Footsteps move closer, and he feels a hand smooth hair away from his face, and feels someone kiss him on the forehead. Then the footsteps retreat, and he slits open his eyes to see his mother disappearing down the hall.
When the door closes behind her, he puts the phone to his ear again, says as quietly as he can, "Stay home." He glares at the stars that are glowing merrily in the dark, and feels his free hand curl into a fist as he wishes he could destroy his whole room without anyone noticing.
Riku is silent for so long, that Sora wonders whether he hung up, and says cautiously, "Are you still there?"
"I'm here," Riku says, soundly mildly amused, which is surprising, and makes Sora muffle hysterical laughter by shoving a pillow over his face.
He hears Riku chuckle on the other end, and smiles, knows that it's almost impossible to get Riku to laugh now.
"We'll talk to Kairi tomorrow," Sora says abruptly, any trace of laughter gone from his voice.
Riku murmurs an affirmative, and for a while they're both quiet, listening to the sound of breathing on the other end to reassure them that they're both still there.
"Do you remember when we decided to leave?" Sora asks, little more that a whisper.
He hears Riku sigh, and winces slightly, remembers that them deciding to leave had been the catalyst to change what would have been a perfect world and a perfect life into something twisted and utterly imperfect, unwanted.
Riku says, "I remember," and coughs once before adding, "We weren't happy here. We never could have been."
Sora wonders on that for long while, and knows that Riku doesn't mind the extended silences from him, knows that it's enough to just be sure that there's someone on the other end who will listen if he has something that he needs to say.
"We're not happy here now." Sora hates that, hates that they're not happy because they should be, they're home, but it's not... anything, anymore, just a place where they don't belong.
"No," Riku says. "We're not happy."
Sora is so tired of waiting, because waiting is just doing nothing, and doing nothing won't help this, fix whatever's wrong with their world.
He says, "I don't know if we can be."
This time, the silence on the other end is painfully loud in the lonely night.
The next day, Kairi acts like nothing happened, and tells them that she had already been sleeping when they called, which Sora knows is a blatant lie, since there's dark circles under her eyes that completely contradict what she said. He sees her yawn just as often as he and Riku do, and knows that she lied to them, and she never used to lie.
Sora also knows for a fact that Kairi spends most nights awake the entire night, says that it's because she likes sunrises, but no one likes sunrises enough to not get any sleep for days at a time.
None of them sleep well anymore, which is why they have hours-long phone conversations in the hours when everyone else on the islands are sleeping. They keep each other company while they can't sleep, and use the time to reminisce and whisper truths that the light of day makes too awful to speak of.
She spends lunch in the lunchroom with Selphie, and Rikku, and a bunch of other girls whose names Sora can't quite remember, but remembers very clearly how they always had too many questions than he liked to answer.
"We'll talk to her after school," Sora says when he meets Riku outside, and the other boy nods.
He sits under the peach tree with Riku, and they don't talk at all.
But Kairi is clever, and it's not until three days later that they get her alone.
"You can't just step away from us and pretend that you haven't changed at all," Sora says to break the uncomfortable silence, and if he's honest really isn't what he meant to start with here, but it's what came out, and it works just as well. "We're the only ones who understand."
Kairi's eyes flash, and she yanks her hand away from him. "And what if I'm not pretending, Sora? What then?"
Sora frowns, which makes him look older. "You told me to stop lying. So why do you get to lie to us?" he asks sharply, turns to Riku for support, and the silver-haired boy nods in agreement, which doesn't seem to help them because Kairi just scowls in response.
She looks nervous for a split second, but scowls even more fiercely to cover it up. "It's not the same," she says flippantly, and turns her head so she doesn't have to look at them.
Riku says, "It's exactly the same," and Kairi flinches slightly.
Sora gives an annoyed huff, and reaches out, grabs her by the shoulders, and yanks her in for a suffocating hug. "We're your best friends," he mumbles into her ear, somewhat muffled by red hair. "You don't fool us."
He can feel her shoulders shake, and knows that they've got her back, that she's dropped the lies with them, and that maybe they'll be okay.
Riku joins in on the hug after Sora held out one arm and gave him a pointed look. They keep Kairi in the middle, and Sora strokes her hair in what he hopes is a comforting way, and murmurs reassurances in her ear.
It's not normal in any way, but it's normal for them, and they have Kairi back which makes everything seem a little bit brighter, because they have a piece of themselves back.
After they fall back into their routine, they spend the entire weekend on the beach, camped out in sleeping bags under the sky. It's peaceful and they fit right now, and Sora wishes that it could be like this always, but moments like this a few and far between. Moments where everything seems okay happen maybe once a month, usually less, and that doesn't seem right, isn't right.
They have Kairi back, but it seems a little strained, her presence in their lives less of a fixture than it used to be, and Sora gets the impression that if he says the wrong thing, it'll send her running again. Their relationship is like a broken vase, glued back together but still one wrong step from falling apart.
And it shouldn't be this hard. He doesn't want it to be this hard.
"I think that we should leave," Sora says as they stand around a tall bonfire in companionable silence. Says it calmly, like he hasn't just dropped a bomb as a conversation starter.
Immediately, Kairi laughs with no humor, and says sharply, "You have no idea what you're talking about, Sora." She crosses her arms over her chest, and glares at him. "You don't know anything."
Riku puts a calming hand on her shoulder which has the opposite effect, and she shakes it off violently, whirls around to point a finger at him. "You agree with him, don't you?" The way she says it, as though she feels like he betrayed her by not siding with her.
Riku frowns, a common expression for him, now, and says lowly, "We're not happy here, Kairi." He puts the hand back on her shoulder, and glances at Sora, who's glaring at Kairi with a furious expression.
She makes a sound caught between a sob and a scream, says, "This is our home." She pauses, collects herself slightly, and continues, "We can't expect things to go back to normal immediately."
"Things aren't going to get better," Riku says, and there's an unspoken apology in his eyes.
"It will!" Kairi raises her chin, stares at him stubbornly, waits for him to change his mind and agree with her, but he's not, silent and resigned with the knowledge that Sora is right, and it's not getting better.
"It's going to happen, and we can't leave!" she cries, eyes wide and desperate.
Sora snaps, and he's angry, so angry, all of the emotions that he's buried deep inside his heart rising to the surface. He reaches out, and grabs her arm tightly, pulls her away from Riku, and makes her look at him, like she hasn't done for days. He says with tightly wound energy, "It's been months, Kairi." He lets go then, and steps back to pace in zigzags on the sand. "I did what you said!" he cries, and pauses to look at her with anguished eyes. "I waited for things to get better, but they didn't, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life sitting on this beach and waiting for something better!"
Kairi's shivering visibly even though it's not cold, and she's backing away, carefully taking steps away from them as she stares at them, eyes wide and sad. "We can't leave. We're not leaving, Sora!"
"We're not done talking about this," he says, and reaches out to take her arm, to keep her from running away, but she skitters out of reach like a spooked animal, fight or flight instinct activating, and Kairi has chosen flee.
She continues backing away, stares at them like she doesn't recognize them, and it makes Sora ache inside, to see that look on her face, to know that she really is pulling away, and that she's running away from this, from them.
"We are done talking about this," Kairi hisses, eyes narrowing, and she's all false bravado that he can see through in a second. "You can't just expect me to leave, Sora. This is our home!"
"Is it really?" Riku asks, and the words make Kairi go very still, make her stop backing away as they sink in, a cold, horrible truth that she will deny because she can't face it yet.
"Is it really still our home?" Riku asks again, and from the firey look in her eyes, she wants to hate him for it.
Sora knows that it's not. Maybe he's known since he started wanting to destroy his old bedroom, or maybe since he wondered whether what he felt about his parent was hate. Just hasn't let himself think it.
Kairi opens her mouth to speak, but no words escape, so she shakes her head, once, and walks away. Sora wonders when it got to the point that they can't even have a single conversation without one of them running away. Wonders when they started running away, and wonders if this means anything about how she feels about them, that she can run away without looking back once.
He really wants to scream, or hit something, anything to get this frustration out. "We're not done talking about this!" he shouts after Kairi's retreating back, and watches as she continues, as she doesn't turn back, doesn't come back to them like he wants her to, needs her to. "Next time, you can't just run away when you don't like what we're saying. You need to stay, you need to listen to us."
But she doesn't give any sign that she heard his words, and eventually she disappears from sight.
Sora sighs, and slumps down with his back against the paopu tree. "This isn't over," he says softly, tired.
Riku sits down next to him, a warm presence at his side, but also a reminder that Kairi's not on his other side. He leans into the taller boy's shoulder, and shuts his eyes tight, pulls his knees to his chest to make himself smaller, and wishes that he didn't exist.
to be continued...