Work Text:
There comes a time in one’s life when, as everyone very well knows, choices must be made.
Decisions, in their entirety, become a necessity, a requirement despite the tantrums one throws to avoid choosing which road will lead them only steps closer to a place called Ruin, 200 miles to a slow, lonely decay. Yes, choices come and go, each bearing the weight of fate’s design, everchanging.
Waning sunlight filtered in through windows, tinted slightly, falling across knuckles gripping a steering wheel so tight they’d whitened; he’d been sitting on the back road for an hour. The desolate place was laden with greenery, tendrils of spanish moss curling around lush oaks, alive and chirping with cicadas.
He’d travelled the road many times, each path leading him toward a different destination, a new beginning.
A bite of salt tinged the air after a couple miles down the left path, earthen soil giving way to the uncertain sands of the beach. Long summers echoing with the ghosts of shared laughter replayed themselves in his memory.
Chocolate hair glinting in the sunlight.
Ice pops melting so quickly that he had to catch the drops on his hand with a deft tongue-the same that collected sweet remnants from lips and cheeks tinged pink by daylight.
Long showers, sediment falling to the ground as tears whilst lips touched for the first time, gentle, trembling, afraid.
Ghosts of memories lined the path to the right.
A love long lost found once more, hazy, warbling at first.
Her heart called to his from beyond an amnesic veil, her heart telling her what her mind could not comprehend.
His eyes filled with tears as he recalled the exact shade of raven her mane glowed as hairs plastered with sweat clung to his chest, her back rising and falling beneath the palm of his hand as they lay as one.
Nights filled with nightmares, her sweet screaming voice as he consoled her, "shh, baby, It’ll be okay."
How could he have been so blind to the love he held for both?
How could he have taken such beautiful things for granted for the simple fact that he feared allowing another to get too close? How could he have abandoned the ones he held dear, the ones he had come to care for so deeply, so purely, and locked away the memories they’d given him.
His head hit the rest supporting it, once,
twice,
thrice,
hands tightening on the steering wheel before he lost all control, fist finding glass before his sense could comprehend its motion. Fluid anger surged through his veins, mingling with regret.
"Riku,"
Memories called to him, sweet voices in his already teeming mind,
"When are you coming home?"
A single tear carved its way down his twisted face.
They sounded like them, the voices.
They sounded like his Starfruit, like his Silly Girl.
He couldn’t decide in that moment, not really. All he knew for sure was that he was stuck in the same boat, clamoring for land in a storm as he knew not which to choose, who held the right path in their eyes, the one he was meant to follow forever more, til death do they part, amen.
"…………………...when I figure out where that is, baby.”