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“Come on, Dad, one more story!”
“Yeah, just one! Please? ”
Sora sighed, looking warily between both of his children. It was an hour after they were supposed to have been tucked into bed, and here they were, still begging for more. Perhaps it was time to get more firm with them and finally pull the plug on the night, but for some reason, he couldn’t quite do it. Maybe it was because he would have to leave tomorrow on another mission and be away from them again for longer than he’d like. Or maybe it was because, even after all these years, he simply just couldn’t tear his eyes away from the way his tawny skin combined with Kairi’s auburn hair on them both so perfectly. Either way, it didn’t take long for that signature dimpled smile to reappear on his face.
“Alright, fine. One more.” His expression then grew more stern, to really drive home the point of what he had to say next: “But after that it really is bedtime.” He then motioned them to come closer to him. As he leaned in, his voice suddenly dropped into a secretive whisper. “Otherwise, Mom will ground all of us tomorrow.”
“What was that about me?” Sora flinched when Kairi’s voice rang out from the doorway. He could feel the sweat drops forming on his forehead when he turned to see her standing there, her hands on her hips as she leaned against the doorframe, eyebrows raised.
“Uh-oh, Daddy,” the younger girl, Akari, whispered back to him with her hands cupped around her mouth, concern evident in her cerulean blue eyes.
“Dad’s in trouble,” the older boy, Hikaru, snickered, falling back onto his pillows.
“Not quite yet,” Kairi winked, finally making her way into the bedroom, the floorboards creaking underneath her slippers. “Depending on how good this last story is, I miiight let you off the hook.”
“That’s gonna depend on what these kids want to hear,” Sora pouted, preemptively absolving himself from any blame should he not meet her standards. There was shuffling about the bed as Kairi crawled on top of it to join the rest of the family. Hikaru shifted over to let his mother next to him before she pulled him back close, allowing him to use her lap as a replacement for the pillows he was previously resting on. Akari climbed over her father’s legs, happily resting her back against his chest while she clutched her stuffed Meow Wow plushie close to her own. “So, what’ll it be?” he asked once they were all settled.
“Ooh, ooh! Can you tell the one about Meow Wow meeting Meowjesty again?” Akari asked, looking up at her father as she bounced up and down excitedly in his lap, the bedsheets beginning to crinkle even more than they were before.
“We heard that one last night,” Hikaru groaned.
“Well, what do you want to listen to then?” Akari retorted, her brow furrowing.
“Something cooler than that make-believe stuff!”
“Hey, my stories are all cool!” Sora shot back, his forehead crinkling the same way his daughter’s did.
“I’m bored of the fairytales,” Hikaru elaborated, crossing his arms as his head sunk further into Kairi’s lap.
“Maybe we could hear about one of your trips then?” Akari suggested.
“O-one of my trips?” Sora was clearly taken aback by the question.
“Yeah!” Akari reiterated, nodding her head. “I wanna hear about the oceans! We’ve never been out there before!”
As Keyblade Masters, Sora and Kairi often had to go away on missions to fulfill their duties. Their children were privy to the existence of other worlds beyond the sky but were still not yet fully aware of the role their parents played in their preservation. To them, Sora’s upcoming trip was to be a trek somewhere down the vast ocean waters that surrounded the island they lived on, on some sort of obscure but local business. It wasn’t strange to them - many of their local friends’ parents held similar run-of-the-mill jobs, after all.
“Well - “
“I have a better idea,” Hikaru sat up on his elbows, now more engaged in the conversation.
“Oh?” Kairi asked, amused.
“I wanna hear about how you got that giant scar on your chest.”
“About my whuuh?” Sora’s shoulders tensed as he hunched forward, hoping Akari’s wild red curls would hide the mark his son was referring to.
“Never mind,” Hikaru sighed, slumping back onto the bed, his arms crossed on his chest.
“What’s got you so grumpy all of a sudden?” Kairi questioned, poking at his nose. She couldn’t help but chuckle when the young boy cringed at her touch, swiftly moving to shake his head.
“It’s just…” Hikaru began, after settling down once more, “whenever we ask for stories about you guys...I don’t know, it just feels like you’re never giving us a straight answer.” Though only seven years old, Sora and Kairi were still often surprised by how intuitive and curious their son could be. The couple’s eyes met, and the two shared a knowing look. “Now what are you laughing about?!” Hikaru pouted, evidently growing even more exasperated.
“You’re a lot like your Uncle Riku, you know that?” Kairi chuckled, running her fingers through his unruly auburn hair.
“Uncle Riku’s as quiet as you guys whenever we try to ask him anything,” Hikaru grumbled, not quite understanding what kinds of parallels his parents claimed to be drawing.
“Uncle Riku’s a lot cooler than Hikaru, too,” Akari added. Her brother narrowed his eyes at her, and she simply stuck her tongue out at him.
“Let’s just say he got bit pretty hard by the curiosity bug, too,” Sora explained. A large, toothy grin appeared on his face as he trailed off that sentence, as memories of simpler times played like a reel in his head. “That was back when the thought of going to other words was really just a dream.”
“Wait, are you saying…?” The bewildered expression on Hikaru’s face was all Sora needed to see to know exactly what the boy was about to ask.
“What?” Akari asked, tilting her head. “What’s Daddy saying?”
“Are you saying you’ve gone to other worlds?!”
“Whaaaat?”
With both his children now eyeing him suspiciously, there were a few ways to approach this - Sora could pretend that it was the slip of the tongue, that of course going to other worlds was still a dream. The kids were still so young, after all. Were they even mature enough to handle this kind of sensitive information?
A second glance at his son’s face brought him back to halcyon days under the tropical sun, where he, Riku, and Kairi were children lying on the sandy shores, daydreaming about adventures beyond the skies. Kairi’s existence was proof that there were other worlds out there - devising a method to actually get out there was what proved challenging. Was it even possible? They’d agonize for days on end, wondering if there ever might be a solution. Of course, one eventually did come, but…
Perhaps satiating his young children’s desires for answers now, arming them with useful knowledge wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He and Kairi were the adults in their lives, full of experience and wisdom from the many journeys they’d been on. Or, so he’d like to think anyway.
Sora looked towards Kairi. It was clear she knew exactly what he was thinking, and her approving nod confirmed that she was on the same page.
A deep breath in. A deep breath out.
“That’s right,” Sora finally said, confirming his children’s suspicions. Me, your mom, and your uncle Riku - we’ve all been to different worlds before. “And out there,” he sat up straight, the mark on his chest now visible above Akari’s unruly hair, “is where I got this scar.”
That was when the barrage of questions came.
“What world was it?”
“How do you get to other worlds?”
“How many worlds even are out there?”
“What kinds of animals did you see?”
“What color was the sky there?”
“Did you meet Meow Wows?”
“Was it dangerous? What’s the coolest thing you did?”
“Mommy, were you there, too?”
“Uncle Riku must have been there - “ It was when Kairi audibly cleared her throat that the kids finally came to a pause.
“How about we let Dad tell the story and save the questions for later?” she suggested.
“You guys have to be on your best behavior, too,” Sora added. He almost laughed again when both kids suddenly stiffened; Hikaru sat upright and scooted himself to the middle of the bed, his indigo eyes set on his father with the utmost focus. Akari was soon to follow, crawling out of Sora’s lap and seating herself right next to her brother, the two of them seeming to have come to some unspoken agreement where they would exhibit the most exemplary moments of self-discipline and good behavior two children ever could. It was inarguably time for their father to hold up his end of the bargain.
But where to even begin? That was the hardest part. The fateful night that had cast Sora, Riku, and Kairi off the islands wasn’t exactly a happy memory - some of it wasn’t even his story to tell. Perhaps those details were better kept secret from the kids for now.
“Your Dad saved me that day.” Sora was taken aback, finally noticing that Kairi had shifted over to sit next to him, her delicate fingertips grazing the back of his sturdy hand. “We were in a world very far away from here, and there was a bad guy trying to take me away.”
“Th-that’s right!” Sora turned his palm upwards to lace his fingers with Kairi’s, grateful for her quick wit in helping set up the story for him. “It was a world big, dark, scary castle!”
“Scary?” Akari’s brow furrowed as she hugged her plushie closer to her chest.
“Scary how?” Hikaru asked, a skeptical brow raised.
“No one lived in that castle.” He leaned in closer towards the children, his voice now barely a whisper. “No one except for...the monsters.”
“M-monsters?” Akari shuddered, leaning into her older brother’s shoulder.
“What kind of monsters?”
“Hey, hey, now, what did we say about questions?” Sora chided. Though not without audible grumbling, Hikaru complied and held his tongue. “Anyway, where was I?”
“You were still right at the beginning,” Kairi giggled, giving his shoulder a teasing poke. “Don’t tell me you’re losing your memory already, we’re not that old.”
“I can’t help it if I keep losing track when - “
“Now you’re stalling again!” Hikaru cut in before his parents could derail the story once again.
“Alright, alright,” Sora huffed over Kairi’s continued chortling, “No more interruptions! Here’s how it all went down.”
Sora picked the story up where he left it off. A few minutes were spent telling the kids about how their uncles Donald and Goofy had been by his side the whole time as he searched the place up and down for Riku and Kairi. He told them about the castle, about the waterfalls that didn’t fall but rose up instead, about the long hallways and dungeon depths, about finding an ally in one of the monsters who wasn’t quite a monster after all. Together they searched the castle far and wide, to find that Riku and Kairi had been captured by an evil witch and a big bad guy! The evil witch turned into a giant dragon, which he single-handedly slew with his special, magical sword. Then, it was time to take on the big bad guy. It was a hard fight, no doubt, but somehow, he’d been able to defeat him, and Riku was freed.
The one detail Sora kept one hundred percent true to the real events was the most important one: Kairi still lay sleeping.
“Why were you still sleeping, Mommy?” Akari asked. The parents shared an understanding look before Kairi answered the question.
“Well it was because...we found out the monsters had tried to take my heart away.”
“They did?”
“They did. But, they weren’t able to get it because your dad was keeping me safe the whole time in his own heart.”
“Wait, so…” Hikaru paused a moment, his brows furrowed as he placed the pieces together. “So your heart was inside Dad’s?”
“Mm-hmm.” Kairi squeezed Sora’s hand even more tightly, as if on instinct.
“So if it was inside, that means to get it out, you had to…”
“Y-Yeah…” Sora sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck.
“You had to what, Daddy?”
“He had to cut it out of himself,” Hikaru explained to his younger sister, pointing back towards the subject of the story: the scar on their father’s chest.
“Well, it was more like a stab than a cut, but details,” Sora shrugged.
“So you stabbed yourself in the heart?!” Akari exclaimed. “Did you die?!”
“Of course he didn’t die, he’s right here you du - “
“Hey! Language!” Kairi’s firm tone stopped Hikaru right in his tracks.
“You’re right, I didn’t die,” Sora continued once the kids had settled down again. “I plunged the sword into my chest, and your mom’s heart was freed. But, that didn’t come without a cost. You see, I might not have died like someone normally did if they did that, but...I ended up turning into one of those monsters myself.” He was surprised when no remarks were made; instead, he was met with the intense gazes of his children, who were soaking in every single word that he was saying. With their full attention, he continued.
“When I turned into a monster, lots of others came and tried to attack everyone. So they all ran, your mom included, to find a way out and get to safety. They didn’t know that I’d turned into one of them, or that I’d followed them the whole way.”
“Did they try to attack you?” Hikaru inquired.
“Uncle Donald bonked him on the head a couple of times,” Kairi answered, laughing as Sora instinctively began rubbing his scalp.
“They could have done a lot worse, I guess,” Sora sighed. “But, the reason they didn’t was…” That signature dimpled smile lifted his lips once more. “Well, it was because of your mom. She somehow knew it was me right away.”
“You did?” the children asked in unison.
“I did,” Kairi confirmed. “I don’t know how, but, I just had this feeling. I wanted to try and ask questions, do some more investigating to convince the others but there wasn’t much time - more monsters were coming to attack us.”
“So what did you do then?”
“Well, Uncle Donald, Uncle Goofy, and the Beast started fighting them off. As for me, well….”
“Your mom protected me.” There’d been a change in Sora’s tone - the high energy, enthusiastic vigor he normally held was replaced with a soft gentleness. He rested his head atop Kairi’s, his arm around her as he pulled her in closer. “And her protection is what brought me back.”
“All I did was believe in you.”
“You did, didn’t you?” The couple found themselves gazing in each other’s eyes, memories of the musty sewers of Traverse Town, of the letters she’d written to him when they were separated for a year, of the Keyblade Graveyard where they had to protect each other again, and of so many journeys beyond that came rushing back to both of them. And yet, after all here the two of them were, sitting atop a bed with the two children they’d been blessed enough to bring into the world.
Two children who were making nauseated faces at them.
“Can you two stop making kissy faces at each other and just get on with the story?” Hikaru’s sigh was accompanied by a nod from Akari, and the two parents couldn’t help but snicker in response.
“Well, to be honest, that’s about it,” Sora confessed.
“Yep,” Kairi confirmed. “That was the story.”
“But wait, what about - ?”
“Remember your other agreement.” Kairi’s stern tone was back. “It’s bedtime now.”
“You said we could ask questions!”
“You can ask another some other time. Come on.”
Akari, already half asleep, was easily scooped up to be taken to her bedroom by Kairi. Sora took the responsibility of leading Hikaru to his own bed. He pulled the covers back, allowing his young son to climb in before tucking him between the sheets.
“Dad, can I just ask one thing?” Hikaru pleaded after receiving his goodnight kiss. Sora sighed wearily, not wanting this to spiral into another long exchange, but decided to oblige. “So...what was the real story?”
“Huh?” Sora couldn’t stop his mouth from falling agape, unsure whether to be fearful or proud of how perceptive his son was. “What exactly do you mean?”
“Monsters, castles, magic...that didn’t really all happen, did it? That’s fairytale stuff.”
“I guess it is, isn’t it?” Sora chuckled, mussing Hikaru’s auburn hair. He could have confessed to changes he’d made to the tale, or gone into even more detail into the affairs of the other words his son yet had no knowledge of. But it was late, and his son was still so very young. He pressed his lips to the young boy’s forehead once more. “I promise that when you’re older, I’ll tell you everything.”
“But I wanna know nowww...” Hikaru’s whine was soon after followed by a yawn, and that was Sora’s queue to officially close this chapter for now.
“Goodnight, and sleep tight.”
After the kids had finally been tucked into bed, it was time for Sora and Kairi to follow suit. They lay in comfortable silence, their heads resting against their pillows as they faced one another.
“That was some story tonight,” Kairi giggled.
“Had to keep it PG for the kids,” Sora pouted.
“Well, I’d say it was a pretty good one.” Her smugness had been replaced with a warm look in her eyes, and Sora couldn’t help but shudder when her delicate fingers began to graze his chest, her forehead now touching his. “I think my favorite part was the ending.”
“Yeah?” His hand moved down towards the small of her back, pulling her in closer.
“Yeah. I think it was your best love story yet.”
“You know what the real best part is?” The tips of their noses now touched.
“What’s that?”
His lips were barely inches from hers, his voice a whisper.
“The best part is that it’s not over yet.”
Despite the trials and tribulations they’d faced throughout their lives, that night was a peaceful one, as the two fell soundly asleep in each other’s arms until the morning - or their children - would wake them.
It was their perfect love story.