Archive of Our Own

The first time he summons it, he tells himself it’s just for the sheer reason he can .

Creating something brings a delight to his heart he hasn’t felt in a long time, and he spends a few moments in wonder, watching the tendrils curl lazily around his hands like an old friend, almost warm where it clings to his skin in little rivulets.

It’s not that he means to make anything, really—he works up to it over a number of days, because the darkness has a mind of its own and it’s more about convincing it that taking a given form was its own idea than imposing his will upon it. For such a violent end, the process is gentler than expected, like redirecting water into alternate streams, picturing something and then breathing into it, the focus required whole-minded and meditative.

The first thing he makes—on his own, entirely, something his —is a swallow. It flutters to life between his cupped hands, bleeding little clouds of black that blot out the light between every stroke—until he opens them enough to see by, the tiny body beating its wings to get free. It feels too light to be real, but as a shadow that’s probably all he can hope for.

He lets it go, and it makes it halfway around the room before dissolving back into shadows that slither back to his hands, unhurried, sinking back under his skin where it leaves little droplets behind that disappear like soft rain on pavement. He wants to languish in it, in how good that feels.

The making takes on a new facet of exploration, of curiosity—and here, in the belly of a ship with his memories pleasantly fuzzed around the edges, he can’t remember why he’d ever thought that was a weakness.

This is the one childish thing he allows himself, in his new role of protector: he projects shadows on the ceiling by the dim light of his single lamp—sometimes, a carousel of images like a picture book, watches the forms of waves and paopu trees and stars all dancing around his head before he hears footsteps, or a knock—he clenches his fist and it all melts away, like it was never there.

His secret, childish daydreams.

He paints entire landscapes on the walls, some days—he’s realized he needs a strong grasp on the memory of what something looks like to facilitate its creation, so he sticks to things he knows, the gulls that ringed the Destiny Islands, though the ones he makes are soundless facsimiles. Sometimes, the murky shapes of Paopu trees and ships on the horizon.

They’re all stained inky dark, of course—darkness cannot change what it is—but it’s okay, because the drama, the performance —is for no one but himself, the lone audience member—and he can squint his eyes and bleed color into their silhouettes if he keeps them open long enough to burn.

But a backdrop needs its actors.

Perhaps it’s inevitable that he slips, just once—remembers folding childish hands into the shapes of beasts on the cave walls of the secret place, knocking shoulders with Sora as they tried to catch each other’s tails like a shadow game of rock-paper-scissors, thinks ‘ I miss’ --and that is enough.

It rises from behind him, then--silent as death, spools itself into something gaseous and pulsing, a shape just shorter than himself, but—solid. He tries to wave his hands through it to dispel it before it can form, because he knows, he knows, already -- his teeth clenching against the memory and the feeling of it—it knows its master, and it knows the shape its master commands, and it’s too late , now.

It eyeless face turns to his own, and the skin on his neck crawls. Two lantern-bright eyes blink to life there, where curious, cloudless blue should have been. Brown spikes faded and blackened to wicked looking points and a soft face twisted into utter blankness.

Wrongness sinks its talons into Riku’s stomach and he clutches it to remind himself to breathe, spots dancing across his vision like sparks of light in the face of what he’s made, this tangible sign of his weakness.

“No. I don’t--I don’t want to see him ,” he hisses to the shadows, as if they will heed him, his voice shaking and small. Liar, liar liar , they seem to call. Look what you’ve done.

Fighting for breath, he pushes his mind into emptiness, into the space for dispelling , and he releases it back to the dark. When he opens his eyes, it’s still right there , almost nose to nose with him in the dim light, close enough two eyes look like one spotlight in his vision.

He flies backwards into the wall. “S-stay back!” Riku says, shameful at the breathless way it comes out.

It flows to follow him, arms over legs in a scrabble--almost clawing his ankles in its haste to get to him as Riku crab-walks back out of range.

Souleater is in his hand before he knows he’s summoned it, and he brandishes it at the creature, which is inches from his legs, now, and still advancing. “I said stay back,” he says, lowly, dangerously. The wicked blade glints in the light.

The shadow-Sora sits back on its heels, message apparently received, and cocks its head.

It chitters at him.

It's such a Sora gesture that something coils around his heart and squeezes .

The shadow leans forward, one clawed hand moving towards his chest, far too close to Riku’s heart , and he swallows and wills himself not to move , wills himself to strike, to do anything --as the creature seems to pause, inspecting him. Close enough he should feel breath on his face, until he remembers it does not breathe .

That triggers his nerve.

“Get off !” he yells, and uses Souleater to heft at its shoulders—which phase out and allow him to pass through, catching himself so hard his teeth clack together suddenly and his arms catch on the splintered wood floor on the other side of the creature. He hisses, both with the failure and the feeling.

When he whips his head behind him, it’s blessedly gone.

His hand rubs slow circles into his heart for the rest of the night, trying to erase the sensation.

He tells himself to be glad that this is a marker of how far he’s come in so little time--creating shadow people , surely, is something impressive, something that will help him protect.

Instead, as he stares down at hands going ink-stained from where he had passed through the creature-- the Anti-Sora --he only feels haunted.

------

The next few times he summons it, he tells himself it’s an accident.

Another few minutes spent in reverie he can’t afford, not with Kairi’s heart weighing on him like a sword of Damocles, not with Sora and his speeches playing through his mind. But the night is painted with stars and it reminds him of a promise, and that reminds him of before and it’s rising up behind him on the deck without him even finishing the thought, the link forged enough now that it barely needs a reason to re-emerge.

It has no mind or heart and he knows that, but it seems to look at him sometimes with pity , with—something familiar in its fluorescent eyes. Like it’s looking to him for guidance on what it should be , for confirmation, for answers he wish he had.

Something sharpened like barbs wrenches through him at the thought, and he snarls and wrenches a crate across the deck--just grabs whatever is in arm’s reach—It phrases right through the shadow, which flickers for a moment, like static—and shatters against the mast, shards skittering across the floor in a loud burst of motion in the dreary, misty night.

He doesn’t know if it would have felt better if it really hit him or not, if he would have thrown it if it could. The rage surprises him enough that he turns on his heel and stalks back belowdecks, doesn’t check behind him until he’s on the other side of the cabin door, but he doesn’t need to look to know it follows, the light tap of clawed hands on the boards echoing in the creaking space.

It follows wherever he goes, he’s at least figured that part out by now.

He slams a fist into the door to keep from trying to hit it again, uses the pain to ground.

“You’re not him ,” he spits, bangs falling into his eyes until he vicious pushes them away. “Don’t—don’t try to be him.”

It only chirps at him, a series of clicks and whines more animal than anything, and it creeps closer, one hand over the other as it crawls.

“ I hate you ,” he tells it, even as he feels the telltale burn around his eyes, the need to blink, the weakness creeping up his shoulders like a cloak. He digs his ink-stained fingers into his eyes, enough to irritate. “Why won’t you just leave me alone ?”

It only moved forward, drawn to its master--flattening itself into the floorboards like an animal playing at submission, its hands dragging little pools of inky black along with it. They seep into the boards below them, dying the wood grain black as it goes.

“Get away from me!” he commands it, but it only stares on, two beacons in the dim cabin, swaying softly with the sea. “I don’t—I don’t want you here ! Get out !” he tries again, the rage ripping through him in violent waves, reaching out in his mind to compel it to obey, like he does with the smaller heartless.

It walks forwards, uncomprehending, tilting its head, one spindly arm unfurling from its body, reaching out towards him in a mockery of his own memory, and its formless lips crest around a too-human sound.

“Ri...ku...”

His mind flashes lightning-bright with the memory of the storm, of his own hand reaching across an endless divide--adrenaline erupts through his being with terror close snapping at its heels.

“S-shut up!,” Riku snaps, scrabbling backwards blindly until his knees hit the bed, then against the bedsheets, cornering himself into the far wall. The bedside table shakes with the collision, he knocks over the lamp in his haste and it shatters.

The room is plunged into full darkness.

He’s breathing hard, eyes fever-bright and straining. Souleater is in his hand, useless as it is, and he thinks perhaps this is it--the moment his own folly loses him his heart. It would be fitting, somehow, for Sora to be the one to devour it.

Instead, the shadow clings to the ceiling above his head, claws scrabbling into the wood for purchase until it finds a handhold. It hangs there limply like a horrifying insect, glowing eyes boring upside-down into his.

“Go away ,” he tells it once more, but it’s less commandment and more request, and of course it doesn’t. “You’re just--just a puppet ,” he says, but it’s less venom than a question.

Carefully, unfolding its limbs--it disengages from the ceiling, and he has to fight the shudder that rises from his spine as it crawls down the wall, and the bed dips with its weight--weight it should not have .

“ Ri-ku ,” it says again, the word breaking in the middle in a hiss.

“What do you want from me?” Riku tries in despair, pressed all the way into the wall with Souleater in his arms like a child’s comfort toy. He doesn’t expect an answer, isn’t even sure how much it really understand s.

Instead, it curls up beside him so they’re back to back on the tiny mattress, and he shivers despite the fact that it’s warm to the touch, when it wants to be--humid and incorporeal like a summer night in the places where it slots against his spine.

He permits it there only because the fear takes him by the throat and squeezes, makes everything tight until he’s set to shaking, back to back with something he cannot dispel.

Occasionally, it chitters to him softly, and he fears—he fears his name in its mouth again.

The feeling of its sightless eyes chase him through uneasy dreams.

In the morning, finally , it’s gone, but the sheets--and his back--are ink-streaked where it touched. He doesn’t dare create anything further, too afraid of his betrayer’s mind and what it will do--even though the phantom feeling of it against his spine feels scarred into his skin.

------

When the real Sora finally appears before him on the deck of the ship, he’s reminded all at once that a shadow is only ever that, something to be driven out and destroyed by the sheer force of his heart, alight with fury and life the shadow could never reach or imitate, and it rips through him in ways he did not expect, slices him to ribbons where he stands though he sustains no bodily wounds. As prepared as he is for the confrontation, it is not enough.

He wants to hurt, to devour that light, and he clenches black-stained hands into fists under his gloves around the feeling, wonders if this is how the heartless feel, wonder if he should be worried about that before it’s forced back down, beneath deep waters.

The final time, he doesn’t mean to summon it, but Sora is fixing his eyes on him and the memory flares up with his anger-betrayal-forgotten-mess of feelings and the link sings forth to meet him; he knows the feeling so well now it’s as simple as breathing.

Unbidden, it rises up--flicks its lantern-eyes once as if to search his face, and then turns back to its threat, to its own face --keyblade in hand and stance assumed as it stands between Riku and him, protective--and that alone is so much of Sora he has to turn his face away from the scene.

Both of them, formless and empty, and he wonders if they are, all of them, actors in someone else’s shadow play.

Later, he will tell himself it is a mercy. He cannot kill what he’s created, even if it was never alive--and maybe that is the real weakness of his heart, and one more thing heavy he must lay on Sora’s shoulders with the mantle of the keyblade.

Like a sudden rush of blood to the head, he feels it when Sora finishes the job. The shadows bleed back into nothingness as they rejoin his form and it burns its way back through his veins like a resentful pyre.

It’s deserved, he thinks. This is what becomes of things he can’t have.