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The sun is setting, and Sora’s eyes feel puffy. The taste of the paopu fruit in his mouth is tangy, with a citrus aftertaste that feels like he bit into an orange rind, but tasted like strawberries. It tasted like the colour yellow, he decides, as Kairi smiles at him past her own watery smile, the weight of the world finally off her shoulders.
‘I know I’m not the center of your world anymore, Sora,’ she’d said, tearing up. ‘And I know at the end of the day, you’ll always go home to someone else in your heart.’
She was lonely, she wished she could be more for Sora the way he was to her. She wished she was more involved, tied to her friends in whatever way destiny had already bound Sora to all the hearts he touched.
The paopu they shared between them was a promise. A promise that they would always find their way back to each other, a promise that Kairi will always have a place in Sora’s heart the way Sora had a place in hers. She laughed past the tears rolling down her face, smiled as Sora wiped them away, sighed when he kissed her forehead, and now, they sat there in companionable silence, watching the sun set. Sora had been crying, too. It had been a while, and he never realised how lonely Kairi felt.
It hurt. Still hurts. He’d apologised to her, after that. After the shared paopu fruits, the comforting touches between them.
“It’s time for us to go back, I think.” Kairi says, three tips of paopu fruit and leaves in her hands, and Sora nods, watching the waves crash into the shore, turning to look at Riku, who was huddled into a ball by himself on the shore. The water crashes into his boots without him caring, and Kairi’s smile softened at the sight of him. “Let’s go get Riku.”
Sora nods, and helps Kairi down from the tree. The both of them make their way over to Riku—their designated Gummi Ship driver, the only one who was allowed to pilot that thing alone, embarrassing as it was—and the eldest of the three looks up at them with his own pair of watery eyes.
Sora feels his heart clench. Riku hurt, too.
“Riku?” Kairi says softly, “It’s time to head back.”
“R-right.” He nods, and Sora feels like he missed something in the way Kairi stepped past him to help Riku up onto his feet. It’s so obvious that they’d grown—the way Riku towered over Kairi was solid proof that they’d all changed, on the outside, on the inside.
Sora presses his hand to his heart, and wishes he could ask himself if the change inside him made him unrecognisable, as Kairi and Riku share quiet words between them, hushed and drowned under the sound of white horses thundering over to the beach. Kairi turns to smile at him after a while, and Sora nods, turning around as she walks past him, when he feels a minute tug at his shirt. He turns around to look at Riku, index finger and thumb pinching the cloth of Sora’s jacket, gaze turned away from him. In the amber light of the dusk around them, Riku’s eyes, normally the colour of the sea after a storm, were muted, almost golden in the lighting around them, and the vermillion flush of the light made his cheeks look pink.
Maybe they are pink.
“Can I… have a moment?”
Sora smiles, because of course Riku will always have a portion of his time. He tells Riku as much, and the older teen seems more nervous at his agreement. The Keyblade Master shuffles uneasily on his feet, and Sora spots the shadow of a paopu fruit behind him, a little star in his large, hidden hand behind him that reflected in the shadows they cast against their play island’s white sand beach.
He plays along, and says nothing of it.
“Let’s, uh… get Kairi back, first.” He says, to break the silence between them, and Sora nods. Together they walk after Kairi towards the Gummi Ship they’d parked on the other side of the island, near the trees where Sora and Riku used to race past as children.
(They were children, still, but somehow, the halcyon days of their youth spent blissfully unaware of the worlds, and the Keyblade, and Darkness around them felt like decades ago.)
Sora watched as Riku and Kairi strode into the ship, secret smiles that felt so raw and open like gaping wounds shared between them, and Sora contented himself with sitting down behind the two of them as Kairi took Sora’s seat next to Riku in the front. He drifts off to sleep, as was his wont when he wasn’t driving and wasn’t the center of attention in the Gummi Ship, and the sound of Riku and Kairi’s conversation drones as the soothing, kind backdrop of his dreamless snooze on their way back to the Mysterious Tower.
When Sora wakes again, Kairi is gone, though there is a ghost of a kiss on his forehead, and Riku is leaning over him, draping his jacket over Sora’s form, surprise clear on his face.
“Oh, did we wake you up?” He asks, “Kairi’s already back at the Tower.”
“It’s okay.” Sora smiles, and sits up to press his forehead with Kairi’s kiss on it to Riku’s forehead. The older teen shuts his eyes with a sigh, sharing in the soft, tender moment, before he pulled away, smiling.
“Let’s go back.” He says, resolved in something that Sora misses the first time he hears Riku speak, but Riku takes a soft, shuddering breath, and repeats himself. “Let’s… go home.”
Home, he thinks. Home was such a wonderful thing, but in the time he spent apart from Destiny Islands, he knows home isn’t a place. Not quite what people believe it is.
Home could be more than just a place. A point in time. The sound of comfort and reassurance in a familiar, kind space. A person, crystalline pink heart beating and warm in your hands.
“Let’s go home,” Sora agrees, and doesn’t think he means a place.
They head back to Destiny Islands and Riku proposes they make their own food to chew on, so Sora teaches him how he dove around in the Caribbean, which fishes to catch and how, until they come back to the shore with laughter on their lips, cods and mussels in their hands. Sora starts a fire with the logs Riku finds after a long moment of stumbling around with flopping fish and forgotten foresight, laughter and comfort between them long-missed and leaving a sweet ache in their hearts as they settled down to elbow each other and snicker about the littlest things as they waited for their fish to cook.
It was wonderful. Everything Sora wishes to have, after all this. This easy, warm companionable air between him and Riku, it feels like coming home, like the end of a long, arduous journey that felt so difficult, so lonely. They were laughing and smiling like they’re not about to fight for the lives and the rest of the worlds, and it feels like a tipping point.
Victory, or oblivion, Sora didn’t know, but he knows that it would all depend on the choices he makes.
The sun sets, and night blankets over them, almost comforting as they chew on roasted cod, and they settle into a companionable silence, laughter not quite dying on their lips as it did settle down for the night, restful, calm.
The stars begin to twinkle above them when Riku suddenly speaks up.
“Tomorrow... it ends.” He says, and Sora could only nod. “Tomorrow, we face the dark.”
“Are you scared?” It’s not teasing, not judgemental. Sora’s voice is soft with concern, and Riku laughs into the fishbones he’s holding.
“Aren’t you?”
“Terrified.” Sora replies, and they lean against each other in comfortable silence. “I think everyone is.”
Riku’s silent for a long moment, and Sora’s content with waiting, but eventually the older teen speaks up.
“You know I’ll always be there for you, right?” He asks, as if they had never thrown their lives at each other time and time again, and Sora smiles.
“I know.” He says, “Me too.”
Now or never, Riku supposes. “I know it’s just a story, but...” he takes out the paopu Sora’s been waiting for since that late afternoon, and the brunet smiles. It reaches his eyes, and he’s so beautiful. “I want to make it permanent.”
Sora considers him for a moment, and Riku wonders if he read the air wrong. He back-pedals.
“O-only if you want to, of course!”
But his fears are unfounded, and Sora takes his wrist, leaning down to take a bite of the fruit. “Did you really think I could say no?” Sora laughs, and Riku feels invincible.
He can beat Xehanort. They can beat Xehanort, together.
Just like with Xemnas before. They could do it.
He smiles, and bites the fruit as well.
“Sorry,” He says, “Got cold feet for a second there.”
“Mm, didn’t think you were a chicken.” Sora teases, and the tenderness is still there, in the laughter they share after. “I’m counting on you, Riku.”
“I’ve got you, Sora.” He always has, even as children. “I’ll always be there for you.”
It wasn’t a promise—it was a vow. An oath that lasted longer than forever.
It wasn’t much. If anything, it was a little sliver of hope. Hopefullys, in a world of nevers, and while hopefully could never compare to definitely, Riku likes the idea that the world was a little less set in stone, light a little stronger than before.
He would be by Sora’s side until the very end. However and wherever that may be.
“Alone, I’m worthless.” Sora’s voice was something Riku would never hate to hear, but hearing those words come out of his mouth felt like his heart shattering, the thousands of shards that made it digging into his throat, his lungs. His heart bled for the brunet on the floor, sobbing quietly. “We’ve lost… it’s over.”
The tipping point feels so far away, and yet so close by. Sora had been keeping all that inside himself, the fear and anxiety building higher and higher, as hope upon hope piled onto him, all expectations weighing down on him the way Atlas bore the world on his shoulders.
Atlas had no respite, no support.
But Sora—
Riku promised.
“Sora, you don’t believe that.” His voice, firm, his heart set. The paopu would bind them, and he had nothing to be afraid of. Long ago, he’d faced his fears, because of Sora by his side.
Now, Sora can face his, because Riku was by his side.
“I know you don’t.”
He would give him the world on a silver plate, his resolve building with every step he took ahead of Sora, dedicating it all to the boy behind him. His life, he would give, his heart he would break, if it meant Sora would be saved. He could extinguish all the demon tides in the sky, in the land, in the sea, if it meant Sora wouldn’t have to.
Because he knew—somehow, because of destiny—they would meet again.
His heart clashed against the darkness, the overwhelming, overpowering force that he knew would overtake him, but he was not afraid. Braveheart shone brighter than ever before as the darkness surrounded him.
For Sora, he thinks, as his light begins to fade. The reason he keeps fighting for the strength to protect what matters.
His most important person.