Chapter Text
So, looks like we're doing this?
It’s mid summer. Riku almost forgot there is such a thing.
A warm breeze tugs at his collar; the scent of salt is thick in the air, even so far from the ocean. Of course “far from the ocean” means something different on Destiny Island than it might elsewhere.
But he can’t hear the waves crashing or the sound of seagulls. He can’t see it reflecting the setting sun or tinge purple for the last few hours before nightfall. But it’s still undeniably there in a way he has never experienced anywhere else.
Right now it doesn’t comfort him.
He misses instead the scent of Twilight Town with its restaurants and food stalls and the clean smells of the forest; Radiant Garden with its frigid air; even, in some small way, the realm of darkness where the ocean smells of brackish water and rust.
This, the hot humid air and the unmistakable aroma of the blue ocean and sunscreen, makes his entire childhood flash before his eye in a claustrophobic daze. As if, any moment now, the sweet peas in his mother’s garden may wind around his ankles like shackles. So much time has passed, so little has changed. As if the past four years have been nothing but an elaborate dream.
__
“You’re nervous.” It’s not a question as much as it’s an assessment. Terra sinks down next to him, a little awkward, a little too worried for someone who barely knows him. There’s not much room, so they squeeze together, legs dangling of the ledge. Riku tries to smile, but it feels stiff on his face.
“No. Yeah. Not nervous maybe. I don’t know.”
They sit in silence. Riku kicks his feet a bit, feeling restless and uncertain. The Land of Departure has very little in common with Castle Oblivion, but he still can’t seem to get comfortable. The very idea that this place was nearly Sora’s undoing does things to him he can’t quite name. If he closes his eyes, he can still hear the other Riku’s voice.
But like this, high up in the west tower, looking out into the world, that feeling is just a little bit less pressing.
Behind them, the sound of Sora and Ventus squabbling drifts through the window. He has no idea what it’s about this time, but he can hear them giggle, so it’s probably something stupid.
“Have you spoken to Aqua yet?”
He appreciates them a lot, Riku thinks almost fondly. They’re not close. Not like he and Sora and Kairi. Or even he and the king. But their bond was forged in fire and ultimately, everything that has happened to Riku, all the strange and wonderful and terrible things, are all tied to Terra and Aqua and Ven. In the end, that means something to all of them.
(“It doesn’t have to be now,” she says. “Not immediately. But we could use your help.”)
Terra shakes his head. “Are we asking too much of you? I feel like we are. You barely have him back and now …”
Somewhere behind them Ventus whoops loudly, and finally Kairi seems to have had enough. Will you both shut up? I’m trying to read. This is a library, you goons.
Riku choses his next words carefully, still unsure how to sort the mess in his head into anything coherent.
“I want to help. Of course I’ll help. Just- I’m not sure how much use I’m really going to be.”
Terra makes a vague, dismissive noise.
“You’re a master now. I know that doesn’t mean the same to you as it does to us, but I promise you it’s not a title Master Yen Sid would give out lightly. You’ve earned it.”
(“You don’t trust yourself enough.” Her lips quirk down sorrowfully as she smiles. “We all have faith in you. Why can’t you?”)
Terra claps a brotherly hand on Riku’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine. And we’re all just a phone call away.” Then, a little less certain, he adds, “Have you decided what to tell your mom yet?”
For just a split second Riku considers throwing himself off the tower. It’s the only upside on this entire scenario – it’s been four years since he’s last seen his mother, so she’ll most likely murder him before he has the chance to scout for any students.
(“Besides,” she says, “Destiny Island is the perfect place. It has birthed four remarkable keyblade wielders in a very short amount of time. Have you never wondered why?”)
__
The lights are already burning inside. He can just barely make out a silhouette in the kitchen window while he hides like a coward behind the bushes. If there’s one thing Riku hates, it’s feeling this helpless. Love and fear and heartbreak all churn in his stomach. If he were any less used to this particular cocktail, he might consider leaning over his mother’s flowers and vomiting it out.
His pocket vibrates three times in quick succession. The messages are probably form Sora, who is a lot braver than him and has likely weathered his own personal storm already.
Come on, he tells himself. You’re better than this.
He strides up the front path and knocks on the door three times in quick succession. The moment stretches as Riku’s eyes sweep over the familiar wood. There are some new scratches there, but also enough old ones to make his eyes mist over ever so slightly. The door opens abruptly. It takes Riku an embarrassingly long time to realize that he’s standing nose to nose with an unfamiliar man. They jerk apart in shock.
Well, he thinks, a surge of adrenaline urging him to turn around and run. Well, then. Looks like she moved. Why did he not know this? How should you have known, a different voice admonishes. Pull yourself together.
He makes to apologize, say something, anything to make the moment a bit less soul crushingly awkward, but the man is still staring at him with rounded eyes.
“Darling? Who is it?”
Riku’s mother gently shoves her way through the door.
She’s tiny. The idea strikes him as oddly hilarious. Even before he left, Riku was aware that his mom wasn’t exactly an imposing person. But now she stares up, up, up at him, her bony and birdlike hands rising to her mouth, eyes watery. Before he can do anything – apologize, run, faint – she reaches for him. Her cold fingers skim his cheek ever so slightly and they both flinch.
And then everything suddenly turns upside down as Riku’s back hits the grass and the wind is knocked clear out of him. He’s blinded by his mother’s hair in his face and the first instinct is to roll.
“Good gods,” he wheezes, only just catching himself before he accidentally throws his mother into the zinnias.
“Where have you been?” she yells, flat hand coming down on his chest with a smack. He winces – a mistake. She smacks him again, dissatisfied with the speed of his response.
“Ow, I’m sorry. Hey. I’m sorry!” It’s more passion than he’s seen her display in years. “Stop it already, Mom.” There’s a bruise on his chest where Kairi had kicked him last week, and she keeps finding it with eerie precision.
Only when the tears start coming, streaming down her cheeks in unflattering torrents, he dares to sit up. “I’m sorry,” he repeats uselessly as she sinks even further into herself. He considers hugging her but they’ve never been the hugging type. So instead he watches as she sobs angrily. Thankfully, the man at the door seems to have caught himself. He loops his hands around her arms and lifts her like a child.
“Now, now, Efia.” He pats her back with his shovel hands and she rocks on her feet at the force of it. “You better come in boy, before the neighbors come looking.”
Inside nothing has changed. Riku trails the both of them through the hall. Everything is still so familiar but he feels lost in his own childhood home. At second glance though, there are some things that aren’t quite right. There are more pictures now. They dot the walls in splotches of color, sometimes framed, sometimes tacked to the wall. There’s knickknacks scattered on side tables and window panes – pretty stones and sea shells. A bouquet of badly picked flowers in a water glass. It hasn’t looked like this since Riku turned thirteen and every reminder of his childhood started deeply offending his teenage sensibilities.
During the last few years, the most colorful thing in their house had often been Sora.
The kitchen, too, looks off. There’s a messy drawing taped to the fridge, half of it in screaming yellow wax crayons, the rest a mess of watercolor. It makes him feel a bit nostalgic but also as if he’s just stepped into an alternate universe ever so slightly left of reality.
His mother collapses onto a kitchen chair and resolutely wipes her face. “I’m good,” she insists. “I’m good now.” She waves the man away as he looms over her. “Leave it, Tisso. Just- can you make us some tea?”
Tisso lumbers over to the cabinets. She watches as he ducks behind the kitchen isle and starts rummaging for tea before turning back to Riku. “Ok,” she breathes. “Ok. Are you … ok? You, you’re good?”
“Yeah,” he manages, a little bit numb but mostly confused. “I’m good. I’m not hurt. I feel ok.”
She nods, eyes taking him in from his short hair to his unfamiliar clothes and his small backpack with the Twilight Town Tourist Center logo on it. She licks her lips, opens her mouth, changes her mind. Her eyes wander back towards Tisso as he fumbles with the cups. “That is Tisso. My- my husband.”
Oh wow. Ok, yes, he thinks, that makes sense. Of course she’d remarry at some point. His father’s been dead for over a decade and why yes, that explains why this man is in his house. He rubs his wrist, trying to collect his thoughts. There’d been a boyfriend, hadn’t there? He remembers that conversation. Remembers a lot of yelling and hurt and flat out ignoring all hints that she might want to introduce them to each other. After all, why would she suddenly what a boyfriend when she’d been fine for years without one? His father had been the love of her life. Supposedly.
It wasn’t the one thing that pushed him over the edge. But it had certainly not made fifteen-year-old Riku any less angry at the world. What a dumbass.
He watches as the man sneaks less than inconspicuous glances at them. Riku tries to be objective, to not judge out of a stupid knee jerk reaction. He’s a good-looking man, he admits. Very concerned for his mother. A bit- well, Riku is used to more subtlety than whatever is currently going on in the kitchen, and he’s not a great big fan of the suspicious looks thrown his way. But overall, it seems that his mother has a type.
Of course nobody could ever measure up to Riku’s memories of his father. He too had been tall and broad, just like Tisso, an imposing person with a strong personality. But there had been a clever sort of mischief about him and a certain carelessness common among the fishing folks. A scraggly beard, faded sweaters, a tendency to speak a bit too freely. Tisso is not that.
His full beard is carefully groomed, his clothes immaculate and his stance a bit too official for the occasion. Tense too, as if he’s expecting violence any minute now.
“Congratulations,” he says, unsure what else to say. His mother nods, still eying him carefully. She’s waiting for a blow up, he assumes. But despite Riku’s continued short comings, he’s at least grown out of those.
“We’ve been married for a while now. A bit over three years now.”
And that feels a bit more real now because apparently, they hadn’t even waited a full year after his disappearance. He tries not to dwell on that.
“Ok,” he says, trying not to sound like a brat. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you,” she says stiffly. “I’m so glad you’re back.” There are questions still burning in her eyes, but most prominently there’s relief. Riku doesn’t have the heart to tell her the entire truth yet, so he only nods. Xehanort is gone. For now, Aqua and Terra are happy to wait until everyone has pulled themselves together. But he’s not here to stay.
“I’m glad to be back,” he offers instead. A little white lie that hurts nobody, except for him. “I’m sorry for leaving so suddenly. That wasn’t the plan. I wanted to say goodbye.”
She stares at him, watery grey eyes intently fixed on his.
“Why didn’t you?”
And if that isn’t a loaded question. Because I didn’t think to. Because, even if I had, I wouldn’t have thought it mattered. Because I was only thinking of myself and had no idea what would happen to you, or me, or anyone after the darkness swallowed us all. The truth is too cruel. “Sorry,” he instead says again.
She rubs her face with both hands. “No,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry, that was unfair. I don’t want to fight right now. I’m so glad you’re here. It doesn’t matter where you were or why or whatever. You’re alive.”
It matters. But she sounds slightly hysterical and Riku would hate to crack whatever fragile grip she has on herself. Tisso stomps over and places two cups of tea in front of them. Riku busies himself with his while he watches his mother’s husband fuss over her.
She pats the man’s hand before giving him a significant look. “There’s someone else you should meet,” she forces out, voice wobbly, before she throws back her tea as if it were a shot of alcohol. Riku sips his own, apprehension mounting. It’s cloyingly sweet and slightly over steeped. Tisso dithers for a moment before he lumbers out of the door, maybe satisfied that nobody will be murdered in his absence.
There’s the sound of shuffling next door, suspicious squeaking, and then a grunt of exertion. When Tisso returns, slow and careful handling the extra weight, there’s a girl in his arms. She’s tiny and chubby with a serious face. Only when his mother reaches for her, she breaks out into a smile. Ah yes, of course, his brain goes again, just as shell shocked as before. This makes sense, even though it doesn’t. Or does it? He hasn’t really looked at all the new photos, hasn’t really thought too much about the drawing on the fridge because everything is already terrifying.
I miss Xehanort, he thinks absurdly. At least Xehanort was pretty straight forward. I want to call Kairi, he thinks a bit more logically. His mother smiles hesitantly at him, toddler perched on her lap.
__
Warm orange light falls through the window. Sunsets are longer here than anywhere else Riku has ever been, except maybe for Twilight Town. It’s nice. But it’s also disorienting and makes him feel perpetually sleepy.
Kairi seems largely unaffected. He’s not sure she’s even noticed the time yet, eyes fixed onto a book. She’s absentmindedly petting his head where it leans against her leg. It does nothing for the yawn Riku has been fighting for the last fifteen minutes, but at this point there’s really nothing more to do apart from dozing. Sora is already asleep, snoring quietly into Riku’s pillow.
(“He’s fragile,” Ienzo warns, tense and apprehensive. “His heart appears solid, but I can’t guarantee the same for the rest of him.”)
He still looks unnaturally pale even in the warm light. Washed out.
“This is boring,” Kairi informs him. She lets the book drop to the side. “I can’t believe how petty keyblade wielders used to be. They argued about everything and then had the audacity to go and write it down.”
Riku huffs out a laugh. “You’re surprised?”
“I shouldn’t be.” She stretches, jostling him in the process. “But it’s the last one on Master Yen Sid’s list and I wanted to be optimistic. Instead, it’s the literal worst and it just keeps going.”
“You’ll be back to essay writing and algebra II soon enough.” He reaches for the book and flips through the first few pages. “Then you’ll miss …‘Keyblade Wars: A History of Factions and their Administrative Management’. Well, maybe not.”
She tucks at his hair in retaliation, expression miserable, then graduates to lacing the strands into tiny braids.
“So have you decided what to do now?”
Riku shrugs. It’s not like there’s a real choice. He won’t leave them; not now that they’re all finally back together again. Sora needs them both now and Kairi is overdue for a crash. The very idea that her two lives may meet, that her parents will ever find out what she's been up to, has her in a tizzy. He watches her shove ‘Keyblade Wars’ off the bed with her foot. Petty, he thinks, amused.
“Don’t worry,” she finally says, eyes dragging over Sora’s prone form as he lies silent and still and then back to Riku. “At least we’re in this together now. No matter what happens.”
__
“This is Hina,” she says, stroking the little girl’s dark hair with a careful finger. Hina looks a lot like her father, Riku muses. But there are also bits of his mother in her – the stubby nose, the large ears, something about the shape of her chin.
But by far the most striking thing about her are the eyes. Their grandfather’s eyes. Riku’s eyes. ‘A small miracle’, his mother used to say. None of her siblings were lucky enough to inherit them. Not a single cousin did. He’s the only one. They are the only ones. Hina, too, seems to notice.
“Look”, she says, tugging at their mother’s sleeve and pointing at him. “Green.”
“Yes, they’re green. Say ‘hello’, Hina.”
“Hello,” she parrots obediently. “Your eyes is green.”
Behind them Tisso laughs boisterously. “One track mind. Just like her father.”
His mother knows better than to expect anything ridiculous. Like for Riku to hold her or do anything really, apart from waving at her dumbly.
“This is Riku,” she says. “He’s your brother. Like Glin.”
“Oh,” Hina says. “He stays?”
Both of her parents flinch. Riku, for his part, is more concerned with who in the worlds ‘Glin’ is supposed to be now. Surely his mother didn’t manage two kids while he was gone?
In front of him two adults are having a crisis. “I, uh. Riku, I’m so sorry. You surprised us. We-” Tisso puts an enormous hand on his mother’s shoulder and she trails off in distress.
“We ran out of space,” he explains, blunt and to the point. “I have a son and then Hina came along.”
His mother looks heartbroken as she admits, “We didn’t know where to put them, so they’re both sleeping in your old room.”
Riku nods, still not sure if this entire meeting is going well or not.
“That’s fine,” he eventually manages. “Don’t worry about me. I just wanted to check in with you. I should go now.”
They don’t seem to assuage them; rather they seem more tense than before. But there’s really not much any of them can do. He spares his half-sister another careful glance and she offers him a shy smile. Cute. He really has to get out of here.
As the front door closes behind him, Riku fumbles his phone out of his pocket. Sixteen missed messages – three of them from Kairi, one from Aqua and all the rest from Sora. The last one came four minutes ago and consists entirely of exclamation marks. A breathy chuckle escapes him as he presses the dial button.