Warnings: Violence…kind of.

Chapter 13: Fade


Riku sat inside an empty crate.

Even thinking about it made Riku annoyed with himself. Why he decided to sit inside the crate as opposed to on top of it, or against it, or even draped around it would forever be beyond him—it wasn't that he really needed to hide from anything—but there he was, sitting crouched in the dark space like a shipment of contraband ready to be put on a boat.

He pulled his knees tightly into his body and pushed his head into them so that he wouldn't have to look at himself, his hollowness, his transparency. He had really messed up this time, he thought bitterly, hugging his knees and hating himself for it. This was cowardly.

He hadn't meant to stir up so much trouble that night. Things just happened, and while he knew that somewhere in the back of his mind that one day something like this would happen, he never would have guessed it would take place so soon. What had he been thinking all this time? Did he just expect to be the King of the Harbor, that his fists could carry him through any skirmish that came his way? Did he ever stop to think just once, that maybe, just maybe someone would come along with more power than he could handle, and that he would be regretting that fight for the rest of his life?

The truth was that he hadn't thought at all, and now, here he was sitting in a crate, trying to hide from the world over a mistake that he was too ashamed of to face the night air.

A horn blew somewhere in the distance, signaling the arrival of a boat. He imagined it coming into the harbor, wisps of ocean water sliding across the bow as crew members scurried to tether it to the dock. There would be a crew of one or two men at the harbor, loading or unloading the packages, then sending the ship off into the night, waiting patiently until the next arrival.

His supervisor, Riku thought bitterly, would be foaming at the mouth once he saw that Riku wasn't going to show up that evening. He would probably have a similar expression when he neglected to show up the evening after that, or the evening after that. After about a week or so, he would just assume Riku had met an unfortunate accident on the dock and had fallen into the harbor, or maybe think he'd finally lost his nerve and decided to pursue a saner occupation. It was one less pay check he'd have to shell out, one less body to account for.

Riku didn't know how he felt about being forgotten so easily, no search party, no fuss. He knew that he was partly glad, after all, mourning for others wasn't something that Riku particularly enjoyed, and he couldn't expect them to want to do the same for him. A quiet end to his career at the harbor was really for the best, not that he had the option of it any other way. If he was going to be remembered at all, he would rather it not be as 'that youngish looking kid who puts boxes on boats and punches things for fun.'

But that was how things were at his job. There was an entirely different matter with his personal life.

Riku hadn't really been one to make many friends—he wasn't comfortable in most social situations, and his relationship with his family was mutual indifference at best. His only interaction with people outside of his current circle was with people he was forced to share pleasantries with at the grocery store, or the few members of the shipping crew that he had to grunt out moving instructions with when they were loading boxes. He didn't have complaints. He had a few friends, and that was enough.

But what did all of this mean for them?

Roxas and he weren't especially close, but after a while, he was sure he would eventually start to wonder what happened to 'that guy with the hair,' and enquire about his untimely termination.

Kairi had made her stance on the matter—or rather, whatever matter Sora had explained to her—pretty clear when he was listening in on their conversation back at the café. She would probably worry the most. How would she find out? What would she say? Would she tell him that she knew this was going to happen? Would she be sad?

And then there was Sora.

Riku stared at the wooden walls that made up the crate, and concentrated on his fist. When he felt his fingers tingle, he punched the wood as hard as he could, satisfied at the cold sting that ran up his transparent arm, but disheartened with the knowledge that the moment he lost concentration, his fist would once again slide through the wood as easily as light through a window.

Sora.

Sora was where he had messed up the most, he thought bitterly. This was where he became truly sorry for the harbor, the fighting, his life, and Sora's unfortunate role in it at this point.

Sora had seen what had become of him, and unlike with the others, had the displeasure of witnessing what a man-turned-ghost really looked like, how pathetic and miserable it made a person. He remembered the look on Sora's face when he entered his apartment the other night, pale and clammy, translucent and eerie, the stuff of nightmares.

He remembered their conversation earlier, how both of them had lost a best friend over this, how being what he once was could, realistically, never happen again. It was at that moment that Riku thought of all of the things that had gone wrong in their relationship, how the two of them had steadily drifted apart over the years, nothing more than nurse and patient now. Well, he supposed nurse and patient wasn't an accurate comparison of their relationship how. That was when he was alive. Now it was a psychic and ghost connection; Riku was tied to the physical world with no more strength than a hologram on a projector, and it was just a matter of time until the power went out.

There were so many things Riku wanted to change now, he thought, feeling his eyes burn, and his stomach twist into an uncomfortable knot. He wanted to go back, back to when he and Sora had first started drifting and stop himself. Before the harbor had wedged something akin to a blunt axe between the two of them.

His mind had a terrible way of bringing up things well after it was too late, he thought angrily.

Another horn sounded in the distance, marking the arrival of another vessel. He wondered what kind of cargo it would yield. Would there be another group of seedy looking mobsters willing to start fights with the shipping crew? Would there be a load of dubiously legal cargo stowed within it to be delivered to an obscure warehouse at the back of the harbor?

He poked his head out of the crate, not surprised that he couldn't feel the cool night breeze on his skin. It was impossible to when air went right through him. The moon was high in the sky, the stars twinkling beneath a smattering of clouds. The insects were at a minimum, and from what he could tell, the only activity this evening was occurring around him; the smooth, practiced waltz of the crew loading and unloading boxes, and the gentle slide of the waves against the dock when the vessels came in. It was nights like these that he had enjoyed when he was alive.

He stood and pushed himself through the crate, stretching his arms in an interpretation of the real thing—he didn't have muscles to stretch anymore—and looked around him. His coworkers were staggered throughout the docks, unloading dollies, barking out crude commands to the ship crew, tying lines. He would give anything to be back among them, working with the body that was currently stashed in warehouse A-3, feeling the burn in his muscles, and the ache in his back. Because then, when the shift was over, and he was tucking his gloves in his back pocket and basking in the steadily rising sun, he could announce to his supervisor that he no longer intended to work there. It wouldn't make him happy of course, but Sora would be thrilled, and he could guarantee that he would live to see the next day and not be beaten to death by a host of gangsters.

He looked about the harbor a bit more, scanning the place for more memories to latch onto, when he noticed something curious on the dock a far distance away to the left.

Well, he thought, tilting his head as he squinted to get a better look. He hadn't expected to see that guy anytime soon. The blond hair and thick black coat were all the clues Riku needed to recognize Seifer. One didn't easily forget the man that killed the, he supposed.

He was trudging up the dock with his hands shoved deeply in his pockets, as though he had just accrued a massive debt that he didn't have the money to pay back.

Riku watched on with interest, and saw that Seifer wasn't heading back to a boat, but rather, headed to an area deeper into the harbor towards the warehouses. He hadn't expected Seifer to be hack into the shipping business so quickly after their skirmish the other night, but then again, Riku didn't really expect to have the skirmish in the first place. He did wonder though, what business he had back near the warehouses. Perhaps he was helping retrieve the cargo he had helped load the other night. Riku had, until now, considered the heavy shipment as nothing more than a prop used to more convincingly coax Riku into the warehouse, but if they had gone through all the trouble of making the packages heavy, he supposed it made sense for them to be of some use.

He was about to turn away and continue staring out into the night, when something else caught his eye.

A few meters behind, slinking along the crates and machinery like a poorly trained spy was a very familiar person, someone who definitely had no business being at the harbor.

Sora.

He felt his ghostly stomach sink to the ground, mind filling with questions as to why he could possibly have reason to be there, but when he saw Sora duck around the same corners as Seifer had, he realized that watching from afar was simply not an option. Sora was following him. He threw himself from the crate and headed after the two of them.


Sora had no idea what he was doing, but it didn't feel good admitting it to himself. He cursed himself half a dozen times while he had followed Seifer down the road, and was now repeating the exercise now that he was hopelessly trampling around the harbor, a place he hadn't wanted to come in the first place.

He knew though, that he couldn't just let Seifer escape. There was something about him that made him uncomfortable, and only part of it was related to the ambiguity of his relationship with Riku. He didn't like the look in his eyes, or the strange way he skirted around Sora's questions. Sora had no doubt that he knew something, and if there was enough luck left in the reserves of Sora's life, he might have some information about what had happened to Riku the other night, and could lead him to the key to getting him back to normal.

At least, that was what he hoped, as he rounded another corner, taking great care to remain hidden. If he ended up getting caught, he didn't even want to think about the amount of trouble he'd be in, and he just may end up in the same position as Riku.

Keeping that thought well in mind, he ducked behind a crate as Seifer paused to look about. He didn't think he had been spotted, but he held his breath anyway. Seemingly satisfied, Seifer pressed forward with his strange, maze-like trail through the docks, and Sora followed, hugging every obstruction as tightly as possible.

Seifer stopped again and ran a hand down his forehead, staring up at the moon in such a way as to howl at it. He growled, cursed, and stomped his foot, a clear expression of rage. At what, Sora wasn't sure.

"Hey, you're yelling, y'know?"

A voice came from Sora's immediate left, and he scrunched in between two crates just in time to see two feet walk past him. Sora had been too focused on following Seifer to even consider the possibility of more strangely hooded men, or more importantly, recognize that they could be within the area, too. He crushed himself between the crates as tightly as he could without breaking bones and listened.

"Ugh, Rai," Seifer groaned. "What are you doing here?"

"Xemnas asked me to keep an eye on the area, y'know? Just in case that guy comes back, y'know?"

"Well, hopefully you and Axel have had more luck." Seifer sat himself down on top of a nearby crate supporting a large coil of rope. "I went to his house and ran into his roommate."

"Did he know where he was?"

"Obviously not," Seifer huffed, eyes narrowed at Rai. "We'd be back on the boat home if I did. Besides, it's not like I could just ask him if he's seen any especially bratty looking ghosts today. That sounds normal."

Rai shrugged. "Better than nothing, y'know?"

Sora had to stop himself from gasping. So these two did know something about what had happened to Riku. He tried to continue to listen, but his heart was beating loudly in his chest, hammering in his hears. If he kept listening long enough, they might reveal a key to the solution, and that was more valuable than stretching out his sore limbs, or thinking about how degrading it was to be crunched between two crates like a lost battery. He tilted his head at an angle, to help his hearing, and listened further.

"I'll tell you what's better than nothing," Seifer grumbled. "Finding that idiot and going home. Did you find anything here at the dock?"

"Nope," Rai admitted. He had tried his best to do an exemplary job at patrolling, but every now and then he had to stop to watch over his shoulder and will the goose bumps from his arms. The thought of running after a ghost in the middle of the night ignited a fear within him not so unlike that which he experienced with Xemnas. He didn't particularly like things he was unable to attack by physical means. He cleared his throat at the memory of being nearly scared out of his skin by a renegade moth that had landed on his shoulder, and continued. "I haven't seen anything."

"Great." Seifer hunched his shoulders. "This is just getting better and better. If Axel doesn't produce something good, then we're all going to be in massively hot water."

"What do you think the chances are of him finding him, y'know?"

Seifer scoffed. "Do you even have to ask? This is Axel we're talking about. We might as well just throw ourselves at Xemnas's feet and beg for forgiveness now." He punctuated the hopelessness he felt by putting his head into his hands. "This day is the worst ever."

"What do you think we should do now, y'know? If we can't find the ghost, then what?"

Seifer shrugged, face still obscured by his hands. "Who knows? We can't just leave the body in there forever. We'll probably have to find some place to burn it, then pour the ashes on some deserted island. Ugh, it's going to take so much time!"

Rai trembled at the thought. "Anything but that, y'know? I could barely handle killing him in the first place. I can't burn anybody, y'know?"

"It's not like he'll be able to feel it."

Sora had to clamp his hand over his mouth to keep from gasping, which proved to be very painful given the position of his elbow against the wooden crate. More than knowing something about what had happened to Riku, they were the ones who caused it. Swallowing the fact that he was eavesdropping on murders was one thing, but fully comprehending that they were planning to make the job permanent—well, more permanent—was another. If they were planning on getting rid of Riku's body, then Riku wouldn't have a body to go back to. He couldn't let it get to that point, not after all the suffering he had gone through to make it this far. He and Riku were going to find a way to get him back to normal, and he refused to let these two ruin that possibility.

Seifer sighed heavily and peered through his fingertips at Rai. "Let's just get this over with and tell Xemnas. I'll scrounge up some matches."

"Wait," Rai interjected, his previous statement obviously having been ignored. "Why don't we just wait for Axel to get back, y'know?"

Seifer snorted. "What's the point? Besides, we both know how much he loves to set things on fire. If the only positive out of this whole experience is denying Axel of what he loves most, then I'll consider it a successful evening. Get yourself together. We're leaving." Seifer grabbed Rai's arm and shoved him forward, hopping up himself in the process.

Sora felt his feet move before his brain could signal them that it was a horrible, horrible idea.

"Stop!"

Sora's voice carried over the harbor, echoing off of nearby scraps of metal, reverberating through metal boxes and down the docks. It apparently even had the force to disturb some of the sleeping wildlife, because a disgruntled flock of gulls bolted into the sky at the outburst.

Seifer's eyes widened, the scar between them turning silver in the moonlight.

Rai's face held a similar look of shock. "Who are you, y'know?"

Sora stared at the two of them, eyes shifting between Rai and Seifer like a tennis ball bouncing between sides of the court. To his body, this seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that his mind had caught up to what it was doing, the wheels of his mental automobile were spinning in the mud.

Two breaths passed before the surprise wore off Seifer, and he made the decision for Sora. "That's the roommate! He probably heard everything!"

"What do we do, y'know?"

"Idiot! Get him!"

Rai nodded quickly, pulling the knife from his pocket, Seifer following suit. They quickly lunged after Sora, eyes red with rage.

Sora's body, just as it had before, reacted before his mind could fully grasp what was happening, and he found himself running down the docks, over crates, random scraps of metal and rope. The careful trail he had followed Seifer through had been forgotten and banished through the wind. He was leaping over obstacles and noisily knocking over random tools and debris, and only in the back of his mind did he consider that he probably could have chosen a better way to handle this.

He looked behind him, Seifer and Rai were close, knives brandished, yelling like hounds on a fox hunt. When Seifer turned to mutter something unintelligible to Rai, Sora quickly turned back around and tried not to think about it. What in the world could he have possibly been thinking? If bad people were talking about bad things, it was generally a bad idea to reveal oneself as an eaves dropper. He kind of wanted to go back in time and kick himself, but at the moment his legs were very much occupied by running.

At the very least, he felt pleased that other people clearly had experience in dealing with ghosts, which meant that maybe there was a solution after all. Unfortunately, those very people were chasing him, and appeared to have the intent to light the very body Riku needed to return to on fire. He decided to just be thankful for the small positives, and continued running.

Then something else occurred to him, as he nearly missed clearing an anchor that had been carelessly left leaning against the outside of a warehouse. He was doing a fine job running for now, but he was going to have to stop at some point. Another reluctant look backward proved that they were far from willing to give up the chase any time soon, and as athletic as he liked to think of himself, there was a reason that Riku had won all of those races when they were children…

He swallowed and continued on, forcing himself onward, hoping that he may rouse the attention of some of the nearby loading crew; although by what Riku told him, they were content staying focused on their current tasks and would only bother to look up if someone had dropped dead across their feet…maybe. He was on his own, running around a harbor he didn't trust, with the attention of people who clearly had the capability of killing him, too.

He couldn't stop his neck from rotating towards his shoulder as he looked behind him again, just to see how much distance he had gained, or, the more likely occurrence, lost. What he saw though, almost made him stop in his tracks in confusion.

Seifer was still running after him at full force, but Rai was missing.

Sora threw himself around the corner of another warehouse and tried to think of a moment during the chase when he heard Rai trip, or announce that he was going to take a break. No such event revealed itself in Sora's memory. Maybe he had just fallen behind, Sora hoped with steadily increasing dread.

The answer to all made itself known as Sora sprinted across the small alley between two smaller warehouses, and he was knocked sideways, face coming in swift, immediate contact with the hard planks of wood on the ground. He saw stars dancing behind his eyelids for a brief moment before he forced them open, wondering what had happened to so completely knock him off balance.

What he found though, was where Rai had been.

Rai was sitting on top of him, knees pinning him to the ground, panting heavily. Apparently he and Seifer had coordinated the ambush, which would explain why he had been missing.

Groaning at his own disappointment at not having seen this coming, he struggled to force Rai off of him.

He didn't budge. Instead, he shifted to sit on Sora's legs and pin his arms down with his knees.

Seifer caught up in a few seconds, panting. He stepped around Sora's shoulder, he put both hands on his knees and started deeply sucking in precious air. "Man," he wheezed. "Took you long enough."

"Sorry! He's fast, y'know?"

Seifer, having caught his breath put up a hand to silence him. "Save it." He looked down at Sora. "Well, well, well, what do we have here? A spy? I don't take kindly to people meddling in business that's not their own."

Sora looked around frantically. Pinned down like this, he was helpless. Rai felt like a bull sitting on top of his limbs. "Wait a second!" Sora tried, his own lungs still burning from the run.

They ignored him. "What do we do with him? We can't just let him get away after hearing all that, y'know?"

"It should be obvious." He eyed the knife in Rai's hand.

Rai's face paled. "Doesn't this look just the slightest bit familiar, y'know?"

"Look at the big picture here," Seifer muttered. "With the other guy, Axel squealed on us. With this kid, we have no witnesses. If Xemnas finds out that we accidentally let this," he indicated Sora with a tilt of his head, "kid find out about what we did, not only will both of us be terminated from the organization, but Axel will get the last laugh. I can't live with that."

Sora's heart started beating furiously in his chest. He thought a decision of this magnitude shouldn't be made so easily, and with such haste. "Wait!" He squirmed beneath Rai's weight. "You don't have to kill me! I won't tell anybody anything!" This was not how expected the night to end. He may be joining Riku after all.

And if he did, he was going to kill him.

Rai looked down at Sora, then hesitantly at Seifer. "I don't like this, y'know? We can't just go around murdering people."

Sora nodded in ardent agreement.

"Hopefully this is the last one for a while. Think about it, Rai: we'll just get it over with, toss him in the ocean, and tell the boss that Axel failed to find the ghost. Done."

"Seifer…" Rai whined, eyes meeting Sora's, his heart breaking at the thought at being involved in yet another slaying—even though his own personal participation in the first was arguably minimal.

The hairs on the back of Sora's neck were starting to stand on end, and his limbs felt cold; only part of that was due to Rai's knees cutting off the circulation in his legs. He couldn't be killed; not yet. He was supposed to be saving Riku, not adding to the ghost population. "Listen to me," he begged, unable to keep himself from squirming. "I won't tell anyone what I heard. We can just pretend that I didn't hear you!"

"Nice try, but no."

"I mean it," Sora whispered, eyes locking onto the knife firmly in Rai's hand. "Look, I don't want any trouble. I came here trying to help my friend. If you kill me, I won't be able to, and there's no way I'll be able to live with myself."

Seifer barked out a laugh. "Well, you won't really have to worry about that. You'll be dead."

"Only partially, y'know? Won't he wander around as a gho—"

"Shut up!" Seifer hissed, elbowing Rai in the chest. "We're not getting into that."

"Please," Sora whispered, feeling heat gather behind his eyes. He was petrified at the thought of executed, but even more than that, he was sorry that he wasn't able to get Riku back into his body, apologize for his words back at the café, and make up for so much lost time. Riku, wherever he was, was going to be stranded as a ghost, and the only person who could help him would be doomed to the same fate.

"Seifer," Rai said weakly. "I can't do it. Look at him…"

Seifer's eyes hardened, and he shoved Rai hard in the shoulder. "You're completely useless." He fished around in his pocket for his own knife and flipped out the blade. "I'll do it. Move."

"But Seifer—"

Seifer ignored Rai and lifted his hand high over his head. He offered Sora a small sheepish grin. "Sorry it had to turn out like this, kid."

Sora's eyes locked onto the cold metal, and when it moved swiftly down from its position high up in the air, he squeezed them closed. It was going to be a cruel end to a very, very hard day.

As the blade hastened towards his flesh, and Sora felt his chest tighten, two voices cut through the almost deafening sound of his pulse in his ears.

The first voice, he didn't recognize. It sounded irate and distinctly fiery.

The second was the familiar, velvety and smooth, just the right amount of cool. It was unearthly, strong, and confident. It was the voice of someone Sora had grown too far away from over the years, but could not be more perfect to comfort him in the present moment.

It was Riku.

Immediately, he felt coldness over his body, like the air at the onset of winter, and pressure not so dissimilar to having a book tossed on his chest. Sora's eyes snapped open. What he didn't find, however, was pain.

There was no pain, no blood, no knife plunged deeply into his gut.

There was only the haunting, yet familiar transparent outline that had become so much a part of his thoughts this past day; a body that had become similar in color and weightlessness to the moonlight, appearance identical to that of a best friend who had once been living.

It was Riku, and he was draped over him protectively, Seifer's hand stopping just short of Sora's sternum, the knife suspended in a transparent space that made up Riku's abdomen.

Sora's eyes widened, and he tilted his head just slightly, just enough to peer over Riku's shoulder at Seifer's face. His eyes were wide, his fingers clasped around the hilt of the knife were trembling.

Seifer released it, throwing himself backward into Rai, who shared a similar look of horror. Their jaws were hanging open, a silent scream.

The knife remained suspended in Riku's abdomen, and desperate confusion washed all over Sora's face. Riku was a ghost. He could pass through any object, and likewise, any object could pass through him. He had seen it take place many times, at his home, at the café…

Then he remembered the dancing sugar packets, the napkins Riku had used to taunt Roxas and Kairi…

"If I concentrate, I can pick things up," Riku had said in their apartment, the night Sora had discovered Riku's life was over. "Like I have a physical body."

Sora felt himself unable to form words. The knife hovered within Riku's body for a few more seconds, before it dropped harmlessly onto Sora's chest, and Riku fell through him, once again transparent.

Sora scurried backwards himself, gathering his legs underneath himself, unsure of what to do. "Riku," he said quietly, waiting for him to move. "Is that you?"

Riku remained silent for a second, then sat up, grinning at Sora, though weakly. "Huh," he said eyeing the knife. "I'm kind of surprised that worked."

"This…this is..." He shook his head, eyes not leaving the ghostly body before him. "Riku…where have you been all this time?"

Riku didn't say anything, his eyes held Sora's for a long moment, then they slowly slid downward where the knife had been. His fingers grazed over the spot, and when he moved them, a whisper of blue light trailed away from his body, disappearing into the air.

Sora followed the trail with his own eyes, then looked back at the source. More light poured away from Riku's body, disappearing into the night as though it had never been.

Alarm rang all of his senses.

Riku looked strangely tired.

"Great…" came a voice from a distance not too far away. Sora recognized it as one of the two voices that he heard earlier.

Seifer looked past Sora and Riku, and met the piercing green eyes of Axel, who looked to be so irate he could barely keep himself together. "What have you idiots done this time?!"

Seifer looked from Axel back to Sora and Riku. He too noticed the disappearing blue light, and in turn felt his own body stiffen in alarm. "Uh oh."

Axel looked as though he couldn't decide between tearing Seifer and Rai limb from limb, or running off to tattle on Xemnas.

More of the light trailed away from Riku's body, and as it did, it carried with it some of the brightness that made up his transparent form. Riku was beginning to dull, and its meaning was written all over Riku's face.