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Sora’s laughing, the lunatic. The magic carpet that had just upended them gracelessly into the sand floats down to settle wearily on top of them.
“Are you nuts?” Riku shouts, scrambling upward. Carpet puts on an exaggerated show of affront. “You could have been killed!”
Sora’s rolled to his back, hands under his head, one leg crossed over the other, satisfied grin the perfect picture of pride.
“Well, it’s a good thing I have you around now, isn’t it?” he says, sitting up and expectantly reaching out a hand. Riku rolls his eyes while dusting himself off and pauses mid-swipe, then reaches a sandy hand in turn to yank Sora upwards. Carpet’s abandoned them, surely to meet up with the rest of the crew back in the outskirts of the palace.
Riku sighs. It’s fond.
“You’d have been just fine on your own, probably,” he says, pulling at his glove to watch a small stream of sand escape from it.
“Hey. I’m glad I don’t have to find out.” Sora shakes the sand from his hair with little success and places his fists on his hips almost pensively.
“What are you standing around for? We still need to find the sultan’s daughter.”
“Yeah!” Sora says, then turns to break full speed towards the palace gates.
“Hey--wait!” Riku says, slowed for only a moment before overtaking him.
Aladdin’s practically in hysterics. They’re gasping for breath, doubled over and gripping onto sandstone walls. The princess has been snatched and the genie been turned. Carpet is engaged in a series of frantic twists and turns.
Not again, Riku thinks as what should objectively be way too many individuals pile onto a flying rug. It moves at breakneck speed back towards the Cave of Wonders, impossibly faster than the first time in spite of the extra weight. He realizes they’ve nearly lost Sora as he full body leans off their ride in complete astonishment all over again; Riku snatches him by the hood and it throws them off balance, nearly sending them all tumbling into the desert.
Carpet lands more gracefully this time. They sneak into the chamber just as the royal vizier has revealed the keyhole.
“I’ve got an idea,” Riku whispers. Jafar is cackling maniacally and could probably be expected to do so for another several moments. “I’ll draw him out, you get the jump on him.” Sora nods in the affirmative, already dropping into a crouch, and Riku draws his weapon.
“Hey, you creep!” he shouts. Said creep swings around, startled, and can barely let out an affected “What?” before Sora’s felled him; the lamp clatters to the ground. Sora hooks it on his blade, ready to lob it back to Aladdin, but it’s intercepted when the parrot crash lands into him and the vizier himself fights dirty by yanking Sora’s leg in retaliation.
“Jafar! No! ” Aladdin shouts, but in that instant Jafar has summoned the genie once again. The floor rumbles, shaking the group of them like so many grains of sand into the chamber’s inner depths. Jafar has taken the form of a genie himself. Aladdin yells that they need to retrieve the lamp, and it’s a mad scramble to steal it back from the bird.
“What about the keyhole?” Donald squawks, helplessly waving around his staff as he and Goofy run headlong into one another, thwarted again.
“On it!” Riku shouts in the same instant that the lamp lands directly into Sora’s hands. He scales the wall back into the chamber and locks it just as Jafar is mercilessly sucked into a literal prison of his own making and jogs up to meet them with a triumphant ha! when soon as Carpet deposits them once again on solid ground. He and Sora share a celebratory hand slap, but the mood is instantly dire again when they hear Aladdin’s panicked shouts of Jasmine’s name.
The entire room shakes now.
“I think we should probably get going,” says Goofy as the walls begin to crumble. Carpet emphatically agrees even as Aladdin is yelling in protest.
“What ?” Riku says, looking around frantically. “How could--who--”
“C’mon!” Sora yells, tugging him by the arm and breaking him from his daze so they can make their escape.
After they’ve returned safely to the city and placated a devastated Aladdin into staying behind with promises of returning Jasmine to this world the instant they find her, the group crawls back to the Gummi in resigned silence. Sora trudges back to his quarters with Riku in tow, unloading his pockets of some of the trinkets he’d collected and sprinkling them on his bunk to be dealt with later. He’d moved to the bottom one, he’d confessed to Riku with chagrin, because he’d once startled himself awake from a nightmare and fallen off the top. The noise had sent a flustered Donald in to check him for concussion and the bruise had outlasted a whole world’s worth of cure spells.
“I should be happy. We at least locked the keyhole,” Sora sighs. “But I have no idea what could have happened to the princess. I hope she’s okay.”
“Yeah. Me too,” Riku responds absently. “This isn’t over yet.”
“No. Something’s telling me all of this is connected. I just don’t know who could do something so terrible.”
“Unforgivable?”
“...I don’t know. Probably.”
“Yeah. Hey.”
“Yeah.”
“When this is all over...let’s go home. This kind of adventure might be more than I bargained for.”
“You saying you can’t handle it?”
“No, that’s not what I sa--”
“Sorry, I’m kidding. You’re right. Let’s go home. The three of us.”
“Yeah. The three of us.”
“Y’know, when I thought about seeing new worlds, I didn’t really expect more places to be mostly just hot and sandy.”
“At least ours isn’t dry.”
“Yes! How does anyone survive?” Sora says this with such vehemence that they both start giggling, which turns into a tussling argument over which one of them was going to get to use the Gummi’s compact bathing facilities first to rinse off all that sand.
Early the next morning they’re summoned for more piloting practice. It’s going pretty smoothly until it absolutely isn’t--a clear pathway is suddenly blockaded by a giant whale. It’s a scramble for the controls that makes no difference as they are swallowed whole regardless.
“Oh, gross,” Riku mutters, stumbling out of the pool of bile in which he’d been hip deep.
“You’re telling me!” Sora says through a mouthful of spit he didn’t manufacture. Donald is screaming furiously; Goofy is shielding himself from falling debris.
“Hello! Hello!” they hear a cry from deeper inside the cavern. “No, no, my boy! Don’t throw things!”
“Could it be?” Jiminy emerges from his hidey hole as another new figure starts giggling. “Gepetto?”
“Whoa, wait!” Sora says, plucking Jiminy up with two fingers and placing him into his palm before he can start scrambling towards the voices. “You’ll get nowhere like that!”
The five of them wade their way to what remains of a small shipwreck, Jiminy jumping for joy.
“You too, huh,” Donald says after being the last to wriggle his way up the wreckage.
“Oh my,” says Gepetto. “Yes, Pinocchio and I--Pinocchio? Where are you, my boy?”
“Oh no,” Riku gasps, moving quickly back down and splashing his way towards the caverns. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”
“Riku, where are you going?” Sora shouts after him.
“He’ll get lost! I’ll meet up with you later!” he shouts back before disappearing into the literal belly of the beast.
After tearing through what seems like all the squishiest bits of the whale, he eventually catches up with the puppet, who has narrowly avoided getting his wooden joints singed by acid.
“Hey. Hey, Pinocchio,” he says gently, extending a hand. Pinocchio looks back up at him confused.
“Didn’t you just--” he gestures weakly. A pocket of acid bursts and sends a neat spray upwards.
“Oh, c’mon,” Riku says, abandoning the pretense and snatching the puppet under his arm and turning tail to return from whence he came.
Predictably, he runs into the rest of the crew a few steps behind.
“What was that about?” Sora chides, doing what sounds like his best impression of Kairi’s voice every time she’d chewed him out for forgetting something he’d agreed to bring for her.
Riku just smiles, brandishing the squirming Pinocchio ahead of him in triumph.
“We gotta go,” he says, shoving Pinocchio into Goofy’s arms and starting towards the exit. The chamber vibrates.
“What is that?” Jiminy shouts, pointing at the giant creature emerging from the bowels.
“Take Pinocchio and go!” Riku shouts. “I’ve got this.”
“Not on your life!” says Sora. “We’ve got this.”
“Fine. Go for the head!” Riku side steps to avoid being eaten and catches one of the heartless’s flopping limbs, then takes the liberty of removing it before it can smack Sora into next week, allowing him the opportunity to decapitate it.
“Quick thinking,” Sora says through struggling breaths as the heartless disintegrates into nothing and he lands into a roll back on the ground. “But your weapon. It’s normally like mine, but it just looked--”
“Pinocchio!” Goofy shouts after him as he makes a break for the exit.
“What now!” Donald shouts as the chambers vibrate even more furiously this time as they struggle for purchase.
They are forcibly removed from the whale via sneeze and phlegm.
“I’m sure they made it out fine if we did,” Goofy comforts a distressed Jiminy, who is pacing atop the console on the Gummi bridge.
“You’re right,” he says. “I’ve just gotta have a little faith, is all.”
Donald and Goofy nod enthusiastically. Sora sneezes violently.
“We should probably take care of that,” Riku says, shepherding them both back to their room.
“Thanks,” says Sora, delicately removing his snotted up jacket once they’ve trudged inside their quarters. “You’re being really nice, lately.”
“Hm?”
“Oh. It’s just… I dunno. For a little bit there I thought we weren’t going to be friends anymore.”
It’s quiet for a moment.
“I’m sorry. I know that’s ridiculous, Riku, I know you wouldn’t ever--”
“No. You’re right. I’m not sure we were.”
“Oh.”
“That’s my fault. I’m sorry. I was being pretty mean. I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s good now, right?”
“Definitely. Hey.”
“What’s up?”
“Thanks. For believing in me. I needed that.”
“Of course. Always.”
“I feel like I should hug you right now, but you are so, so gross.”
This pulls a laugh out of Sora; he lunges for the phlegm jacket and lobs it over with intent to slime, starting a snotty tussle that only ends when they’ve both slipped and fallen on the floor in a puddle of mucus.
“Why aren’t they moving?” Goofy asks, gesturing at the bobbing but otherwise harmless heartless lined up eerily in the foggy town square.
“No idea. I don’t like it,” Riku says, brandishing his weapon.
“You’re always such a worrywart!” Sora shouts. “I like them better this way than when they’re attacking us.”
“Oh, is that true?” comes another voice entirely from behind them. They startle, but none so spectacularly as Donald, who has rocketed four feet up into the air with a terrific yodel of fear.
Their new visitor, an imposingly tall skeleton creature, is doubled over laughing.
“Fantastic!” he shouts. “I am absolutely delighted to meet you--or, should I say, to shriek you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t say,” Riku mutters under his breath at the same time Sora yells,
“Hey! Who are you?”
“Why, you haven’t heard of me? I am the one and only Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington! Welcome to Halloweentown!”
“Well, it’s nice to meet ya, Jack,” says Goofy, scratching his head, “but we’re here to make sure those heartless guys don’t hurt anyone.”
“Yeah!” says Donald in a brave show of recovery. “What’s the big idea with them?”
“My dance partners!” says Jack. “The good doctor is working on a way to control them! It’ll be the most spectacular show!”
“Control them?” Riku asks sharply.
“Indeed! We’ve created an artificial heart that will make them perform for us! It’s going to be the greatest Halloween yet!”
Just as soon as Jack has brandished his long arms in triumph, they hear a crash and shatter of glass followed by a chorus of giggles.
“Get back here, you imbeciles! ” cries another voice.
“Oh no--the doctor!” Jack shouts, and strides across the square in few easy motions.
“Of course,” Donald says disparagingly. “There’s no way that could have gone wrong!”
They start chasing after three screeching children playing hot potato with a metal facsimile of a chained up beating heart just as the heartless come to life.
“Is there anything out here in the worlds that’s not extremely gross?” Riku says as Jack squishes one of the myriad bugs that’s emerged from Oogie Boogie. “Anything at all?”
“I didn’t think I’d miss the ocean so much,” says Sora lamentingly. “Maybe we’ll see one of those again soon.”
They’re climbing their way out of the dungeon, any previous inklings of an interest in gambling successfully quashed, when the ground begins to rumble. It seems to be a recurring theme.
“Hey,” Sora says, grabbing on to Riku’s shoulder at the same time that Riku’s reached out to help steady him. “You’re not going to go running off on me this time, are you?”
“Had no plans to,” he says, leveling a glare at a small pustule of darkness that threatens to burst all over them. “I’d rather just get this over with.”
“You start down here, then?”
“It’s a plan.”
Hours after they’ve returned to the ship after making promises to return for the next Halloween celebration with all their friends in tow, Riku and Sora are ordered to return to quarters to snatch at least some snippets of rest in anticipation of more unpredictability.
Riku hardly knows where it comes from, this overwhelming sadness. He thinks for just a second he might be in the clear after suppressing a few pathetic sniffles when he hears movement from the bunk below. No use in lying to himself--it was more than a few. After clambering his way to the top, Sora pokes his head up to see Riku looking at him in tear-flavored chagrin.
Busted.
“Can you believe it?” Riku says, voice hushed. “I’m homesick.”
“Scoot over.”
“What--you don’t think you’re gonna--” he protests, but Sora’s already settling in.
“I’m homesick, too,” he says.
“We’ll just have to end this as fast as we can, then.”
“Well… Maybe not too fast. Traveling and seeing all of these new places and people is really fun. And I’m glad you’re here with me too. But… I miss her. I hope she’s okay.”
“Are you kidding me? Of course Kairi’s okay. She’s tougher than the both of us put together.”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll find her. Don’t worry.”
“Thanks.” Sora finagles himself into a position where he can hug him, but they’re so constrained their noses are practically pressed together. He laughs. “We used to do this all the time.”
“We used to be a lot more 9 years old.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Anyway. I really am glad you’re here. The other day I was having this weird dream, where instead of coming with us you just disappeared. It didn’t make any sense.”
“No, it really doesn’t. I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s just a dream.”
“Yeah. But what would you even do if you hadn’t come? Where would you go?”
“Not a clue. You know I’m completely lost without you,” he says sarcastically. Sora laughs softly.
“Don’t I know it. Two heads are better than one,” he says with a yawn. “I wonder what we’ll see tomorrow.”
“Me too,” Riku says after a moment, but it doesn’t matter; he’s already fast asleep. “It’ll be a little better this time around.”
It’s comforting to watch him breathe out and in. Riku’s reached out to ruffle his hair affectionately without even being conscious of it, hand lingering to push some strands away from his brow. He’s lulled to sleep with the knowledge that the more things change, the more things stay the same--Sora’s already producing faltering snores.
It starts to become a pattern, trading off on nightmares and kipping together in solace, talking softly late into the night about all of their adventures and rehearsing what they’re going to tell Kairi when they find her. But sometimes Sora looks at him warily when he shakes him awake, almost in fear, before collecting himself together.
“Something’s wrong,” he says once when this happens, pushing Riku arm’s length away as he wakes up. They had come back from Atlantica sopping wet and he had practically passed out the instant he was dry hours before. “You fought me. I haven’t seen you since.”
“Whoa, wake up. What are you talking about?”
Sora peers at him for a moment, comically serious.
“I have no idea. Another bad dream, I guess. They’re happening more and more.”
“I’ve been getting them too. You’re probably just stressed out--I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”
“You really think so?”
“Of course.” Riku makes to climb back to the top bunk.
“Wait. Could you… sit with me for a minute?” Sora calls out sheepishly, expecting to be teased. Instead, Riku smiles fondly and throws himself down right next to him. Sora dozes off with his head on Riku’s shoulder after playing a game of “remember that time when” while commiserating about all the school they’ve probably missed. Riku leans into it, sits still for a moment, heart pounding, and takes Sora’s hand in his, not having it in his heart to move.
They wake up hours later to the sound of Donald banging on the door of their quarters, severe cricks in their necks.
Riku sees the swoosh of a long cloak disappear into the captain’s stateroom the instant they hit the deck from the brig. He shakes off a sudden chill.
“You take on Hook,” he says. “I’m going to go look around and see if I can find--”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
Riku turns, gesturing at conflicted Donald and Goofy no, stay with him; they hate splitting up, the goobers. He practically bursts into the stateroom to find her standing there as if waiting for him, calm and placid with that crow perched regally as always on her shoulder.
“Where is she?”
“I’m afraid I’ve no idea of whom you speak. I could hardly know anything without knowing you.”
“Stop with the games, Maleficent! Give her back or tell me where she is!”
“Even if I knew where the girl you seek is, I could not hope to solve the problem of her missing piece.”
“You know what I’m talking about! And I know she’s useless to you now anyway, your plan will never work!”
“But you must know by now what you must do.”
“Not on your life! I’m not giving in!”
“Then Riku, my son, how else will you save your princess?”
A response sticks in his throat as the sensation of terror drops over like his brain has tipped a bucket of fear from his head to his gut, prickling, nauseating. Maleficent vanishes into the darkness and he chases after, weapon drawn, knowing that it’s futile, letting it clatter to the ground before falling on hands and knees before it.
With shaking breaths, he realizes it’s no longer the glistening gold and silver that matched Sora’s--Soul Eater lies there unbidden.
When Sora--scraped and singed and a little giddy--finds him later Riku’s clutching the edge of the ship, still shaking, having been violently sick into the ocean.
“Hey. Hook’s done. Guy really hates crocodiles. You okay?” Sora says, peering with concern over the bow.
“Seasick,” Riku lies, burned by the warmth of Sora’s arm wrapped around his shoulder.
They’re on their way back to the coliseum to tie up loose ends when the dreams happen again, Sora panics and rambles--
It’s you but it’s not, Riku. I’ve never seen you so angry--and you knew where Kairi was, and you wouldn’t let me see her! She was with you and she wouldn’t wake up and you wouldn’t let me see her--
--and Riku’s holding him tightly whispering “shh” and “chill out” and letting him gasp into his shoulder, both of them haunted by the hypothetical.
“What if...we never find her?” Sora says, and Riku can’t do anything but shake his head, because he’s wondering the same thing.
Phil, seeing the newcomer, ushers them both into different circuits of the tournament. Seeing that they’ll face each other in the end provided they both succeed, Riku throws his semifinal match. No need to provide more fodder for reinforcing the nightmares.
“You lost?” Sora crows in disbelief.
“Happens to the best of us.”
“But not to you!”
“Nobody’s perfect,” he says fondly, mouth upturned in a way that belies minor confusion.
“Yeah, but--”
Phil starts shouting, beckoning him to the final round.
“Riku, you’ve looked upset lately, what’s--”
“Never mind. Good luck.” Riku grips firmly him by the shoulder and gives him a gentle shove toward the solo match before joining Donald and Goofy in the stands.
Riku asks Donald to teach him sleep magic, and it seems the nightmares stop for a little bit, but they’re on route to Traverse Town to see Cid for repairs and to restock supplies when it gets worse. Riku hears him cry out, and slides down the ladder to see him tossing and turning. He drops to his knees and reaches out cautiously to shake him awake, getting absolutely walloped in the chest in the process and reeling backwards. Sora’s bewildered, half conscious, breathing hard and trying to focus.
“How could you?” Sora coughs out; Riku feels his chest freeze, lunges over to grab him by the arms.
“What are you talking about? What happened?”
“Y-you tried to kill me,” Sora says hoarsely, frozen in place, decidedly not looking him in the eyes. “You wanted the keyblade and you would have killed me for it. You hated me, you said we were...you said we were rivals.”
“N-no. That’s not right.” Riku says. They match their breathing, chests falling in rhythm for a measure or two. “That could never happen,” he says, taking Sora’s face in his hands, one thumb pressed under Sora’s eye to catch a rogue tear and the other grazing his ear. “Don’t be--” and here he leans in to press their lips together for a lingering moment, before, as if by afterthought, “--ridiculous.” He lets go, shoots his gaze to the floor before he can see Sora’s reaction. “I could never… I’d never… I lo--”
And here Riku stands up, turns about face, and marches out the door.
With purpose he moves to the engine room, trying to keep an even tone of breathing and failing. One hand reaches up to touch his lips in disbelief--before it’s made it, he looks to see it delicately tangled within a wisp of darkness.
If Donald and Goofy notice the gargantuan rearranging of heavens and earths the both of them take to avoid spending even a millisecond within grazing distance they politely say nothing. Riku sneaks in and out of their quarters when it’s clear in the light of artificial day and snatches the little sleep he can manage hiding in crevices all over the Gummi, choosing to spend more time on the bridge during the night shift and relieving one of their companions at a time from their posts.
Allowed to play navigator on the bridge, Riku idly plays with the gears before deciding in his sleepless haze to seek advice. He turns to Donald.
“Do you ever keep making terrible decisions that are going to end up ruining the most important thing in your whole life?” he asks, watching Donald glance over to assess the situation in light surprise.
“Aww, well,” he says, after a moment. “I guess I haven’t checked in on Daisy like I shoulda.” He’s pensive for a moment. “It’s not the first chance she gave me, either.”
“Oh.”
Donald reaches over and gives him a pat on the arm. They continue in silence for a while as the day creeps closer.
“Hey guys?” comes a voice from behind, and there arrives Sora. “I think I--”
He stops in his tracks.
“Um,” says Sora, clearly expecting an entirely different kind of goof in the passenger seat of this ride. “I forgot my...keyblade,” he finishes lamely, turns on his heel, and disappears.
Riku puts his face in his hands.
“Watch the road, silly,” Donald says, pityingly.
“If I do can I blow some stuff up?”
“Not a chance.”
Sora eventually catches him trying to detangle his hair in a storage closet and concedes, making an exaggerated noise of disdain and grabbing him by the arm to drag him all the way back to their quarters.
“I don’t wanna do this anymore,” Sora says as the doors whoosh shut.
“I know--I shouldn’t have… I’ll leave, if--”
“No!” Sora shouts. Riku looks up in surprise. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to go. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“I… I was…” he looks down, puts a hand in his hair. “I was thinking about how these last couple of days I felt as lonely as I did when we first left the islands. About how even though you were here now I thought I’d have to do this without you again. And it really stunk.”
“Oh.”
“You’re my best friend. And… I need you. If I wanna find my other best friend. And it would be stupid if we couldn’t even talk to each other.”
Riku sighs in relief. “I was beginning to think… For a little bit there I thought we weren’t going to be friends, anymore.”
“Nah,” says Sora with a small smile. “You can’t get rid of me that easy.”
“What a shame,” he says, finally finding a smile in return. “But seriously, though, I won’t be pulling any more stunts like… like that one. I’m sure that won’t help keep you around.”
“I… I didn’t say that,” Sora says sheepishly. Riku’s eyes widen. “I just… need some time to think.”
“You got it,” says Riku, smiling warmly.
_______________
“Will I sleep as long as he will?”
“I really couldn’t tell you.”
“What about this. If it’s going to be like it never happened...will he forget about me? About the things that I’ve done?”
“It’s the only way.”
“Then…I have a favor to ask.”
_______________
Their latest journey in the Gummi had been the most treacherous by far, and it landed them in the ruins of an old castle town. They haven’t even had a chance to take it in when Sora lets out a small gasp of pain. He’s clutching his chest, hand over his heart.
“I know this place,” he says. “I can’t have been here before but I know that I have.”
Riku nods gravely, then starts the climb up. Stopping would end it for the both of them--the answering pain in his heart at the sight of this terrible place threatened to envelop them all just like it had their home, just like it had him the first time he’d tried to make amends. He might not be so lucky a for a third.
The ruined courtyard, the broken entryway--he carried on, unable to shake the memory of betrayal and broken promises and unwilling to see him recognize it. The stench of desperation--the rage that compelled him to destroy what he loved most in all the worlds.
Before they enter the imposing doors to the castle, they hear a terrible roar.
“That sounds like someone’s awfully hurt,” says Goofy, looking around in concern.
“We can’t stop,” Riku says, looking tensely at Sora. “You guys go check it out,” he asks of Donald and Goofy. “We’ll meet up later.”
They look at one another, practically shaking. Sora shoots them a reassuring smile.
“It won’t be long!” he says, sending them off with a wave of his hand.
Riku pushes down shivers in the entryway, pointedly avoids a corner of the library, moving automatically through the castle’s labyrinthine passages. Deep in the corridors, bombarded by heartless stronger than they’d ever faced before, Riku realizes that the hope he’s been holding onto this entire time is about to be extinguished.
In the great hall are ornate decorations that they soon realize aren’t original to the castle--they’re people, some of them the princesses that they recognize from their journey. And there in the center--
“Kairi!” Sora shouts, running to where she’s encased, slamming his hands on the glass. “Kairi! Wake up, Kairi!”
“She will not wake. She has lost her heart,” says a voice from above, and there arrives Maleficent, standing ahead of them as if she has always been there.
“Her heart? What happened to it? How is she here?” Sora yells, palms still pressed against the barrier that separates him from Kairi.
“Perhaps you should ask your companion,” says Maleficent, gesturing at Riku. Sora looks over suddenly to find him looking ill, shaking where he stands.
“What is she talking about, Riku?” he says quietly. “Who is she?”
He can’t speak.
“It is rather inconvenient,” continues Maleficent. “We cannot complete the keyhole and release the darkness without the help of the princesses. And here so little remains in our way.”
“Stop, Maleficent,” Riku musters finally. “Leave him out of it. I’ll go, if that’s what you want. I’ll give in. Just leave him out of it for good.”
“Foolish boy! There’s nothing more I could want from you--he has everything we need, and here you have brought him right to us.”
“Riku!”
“You just make a decision soon, boy. Your time is limited--there are serious repercussions to an incomplete keyhole. It would be irresponsible for one with the power to unlock hearts not to use it.”
She smiles, then disappears as suddenly as she came.
“Riku, what’s happening? What is she talking about?”
“I--” Riku says, then holds out his hand. In it now is the key of hearts. “No! I won’t!” he says, throwing it aside only for it to return immediately.
“Cut it out and tell me what’s going on!” Sora yells, refusing to leave Kairi’s side. “If her heart’s not here, then where could it be?”
“It is here,” Riku says quietly. “Sora, I’m so sorry. It’s been with us all along. Her heart is inside of yours.”
Sora looks at him, agape.
“Inside of mine?” He puts a hand to his chest the same way he had with increasing frequency since they’d arrived at this place, especially since stepping foot inside the castle. “How do you know… How do you know this? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I… I wasn’t sure. I thought, but--”
“How could you not tell me this!” he cries out, dangerously close to tears. “How could you!”
“I’m so sorry.”
“This whole time you let me think we were on the same side! That all we had to do was find her and we’d all be together again. Do you not even care about her at all? What else have you lied about?”
“That’s not it!” he shouts. “You don’t understand! This isn’t how this was supposed to happen!” Tears are beginning to run down his face.
“And whose fault is that?” he says, reluctantly pulling his hand from where Kairi slept on and marching over--to hit him? To yell in his face? What good would it do--Riku was already in the greatest pain of his life. “What did she mean, the power to unlock hearts? Is this it?” Sora says, reaching out to touch the key in his hand.
“Sora…”
“It is, isn’t it? And we can’t lock that keyhole without completing it, right? And it won’t be completed…without all their hearts.”
“Stop. I need you to think about this for a second--” Riku says shakily.
“I’m right, aren’t I!”
“You can’t! All I’ve done is try and make sure this never happened, you can’t do this! You can’t do this to me!” he sobs.
Sora looks up at him, pained, terribly sad.
“The job is yours now. You have to finish this on your own, it looks like.”
He pulls the key from him, reverently placing one hand on the hilt and one on the blade.
“Sora. Sora! No! No, stop!” Riku lunges, but Sora casts an air spell that knocks him backwards. Before he can right himself, Sora’s plunged the key into his chest.
He’s still screaming when the princesses begin to stir.
“Riku?” he hears. Kairi now stands before him. “Where are we? Where’s Sora?”
He doesn’t need to say anything--she sees his face and gasps, hands over her mouth.
“What’s all the racket?” Donald says, running in with Goofy in tow, the Beast following close behind.
“Take her back home,” Riku shouts, suddenly breaking off into a run, not stopping when Kairi calls after him, distraught, or when he hears anguished yelling from the other two. They start after him, but they don’t catch up before he’s breached the inside of the keyhole. He stops then, fumbling with the keyblade until he’s locked himself inside, surrounded by darkness anew. It disappears from his hands, out of his reach now. Breathing heavily, he looks around in horror at the darkness rushing to close around him.
“What do I do?” he yells, falling to his knees. “It shouldn’t have been him! How do I fix it? Naminé! What do I do? Naminé!”
He’s still screaming himself raw when the darkness overtakes him entirely.
Riku’s jolted awake when he hits the floor, registering cool marble contrasting with the sickly fever heat of fear he’s breathing himself through.
“Not him,” he gasps, “it shouldn’t have been him, it shouldn’t--”
He props himself up by the arms, barely able to get on his knees. Things come into focus. Naminé sits, leg crossed, hands placed precisely on her knees, looking passively on. More importantly, behind her is the pod, and in it, sleeps Sora--intact, unharmed, only having have been made undone just the once.
“I made a mistake,” Naminé says, somber. “We could try and lock away the darkness as much as we liked, but you would still always have the key, whether you wanted it or not.”
“So that’s why,” he breathes, “that’s why I could still see it.”
“And use it. Some things are inevitable, it seems. But something else went wrong,” she says, taking leave of her seat and reaching out a hand to pull him to stand steady again--as steady as possible, at least.
“You weren’t supposed to be able to act on your own,” she continues. “What I gave you was intended to be more like dreams, nothing substantial, but where you would remember things differently this time around when you woke up. It would be more like the way it is in your fantasies--I have control over those. But somehow, you took over those dreams--you took my baseline and made it your own. You made them solid. And that was your mistake--you only knew the way it had been, and even with the image of what it could be, you couldn’t move beyond your own mistakes. You kept feeding off of yourself, and so you couldn’t change it in the end.”
“So, the dreams… I caused that?”
“Yes.”
“If you knew it had gone wrong, why didn’t you take me out sooner?”
“I’ll admit I wanted to know what would happen--and I thought you should see it out on your own. Besides, barely any time has passed in reality.”
He looks off into space for a moment, unfocused.
“I see.”
“The thing is, we can’t really control darkness. Not even put it away, not forever. We can only learn how to use it in a way that’s balanced. Too much of darkness is never a good idea, no. But... if you think about it, what purpose would the light serve without it?” she says. “They work in tandem--sometimes, we need to use the darkness to protect our lights.”
Riku looks over at the pod for a lingering moment.
“Whatever it takes.”
Naminé nods.
“So it looks like you have another decision to make. Which path will you take?”
“My own,” he says with confidence. “A new one, this time. But it looks like I have some unfinished business first.”
She nods again. “Good luck.”
“Thank you, Naminé,” he says, giving her a genuine smile. She smiles back as he turns to push his way through the doors and once again enter the unforgiving halls of Castle Oblivion.
Stepping with conviction, he summons his weapon.
“My life isn’t yours to control anymore, Ansem!” he calls out. “You can try your worst, but all you are is scum--you won’t take what’s mine ever again. I’m ready.”
And when the darkness rolls in to envelop him as it had so many times before, he found that he was.