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[Fic] Naught's Requiem
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laylah's fault... though I'm not sure "fault" is really the right word here. She inadvertantly bunnied me for moral-quandary fic regarding Sora and the Nobodies, and... then, apparently, I could not resist the siren call of the woob.
Title: Naught's Requiem
Words: 2,980
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Spoilers like whoa. Also, this was meant to be gen, but if you turn your head and squint you can see some Axel/Roxas and Sora/Riku. Maybe some SoRiKai too.
Summary: It's not always as simple as black and white. After the battle, the fairy-tale hero confronts his doubts, and the ones who didn't get a "happily ever after".
The sea rolled in around his ankles, shifting the sand around his feet. Sora could feel the current tugging at him. It was weak now, he was still at the very edge of the tide, but if he waited too much longer it'd be coming much higher and stronger.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Sora sighed to himself, frowning out at the ocean. It seemed like half a lifetime ago that it had just been an obstacle; something that three children, a handmade raft, and a shared dream could conquer. Like something out of a storybook. Once upon a time, on a tiny island, there lived a boy named Sora and his friends, Riku and Kairi...
And then had come the darkness. And the key. And the quest.
Just like a fairy tale.
One of Sora's pant legs was starting to fall down. Making sure his school jacket was securely draped over his shoulder, he bent down to roll the cuff to his knee again.
Everything had turned out all right. Xehanort's marauding Heartless had been defeated, and the ruined worlds restored. He was standing on the very proof of that victory. The continuing threat of Heartless had been beaten back, Kingdom Hearts had been secured, and the realm of light was safe. Sora had been allowed to go home - him, the Keyblade bearer, the hero at the center at it all, had been able to come home. That meant it was over, right? Once upon a time, Sora and his friends saved all the worlds, and they lived happily ever after.
And he had been happy. Just being here again, after all that time, had been amazing. Scrambling with Riku out of the sea, onto the beach where Kairi had been waiting, her and Donald and Goofy and the King himself, the fulfillment of his oath and just being home... For weeks afterwards, just the memory of that feeling could tighten Sora's throat and bring tears to his eyes. They'd been able to return to their island. They'd all come home. He and Riku had been able to lay down their blades and return to an ordinary life. If Riku slouched more than he used to, if Sora sometimes got a weariness in his eyes, if they both had swordsman's calluses now and took inordinate amounts of pleasure in simple home luxuries, they never mentioned it. They'd told their story to those who asked, and Sora in particular found himself having to recount many of the same details several times over.
"You get the feeling they don't believe us?" Riku had asked Sora one day, with a faint grin.
"Yeah," Sora had said, and laughed. "But that's fine, isn't it? I'm just glad we're home."
Going back to school had been surprisingly enjoyable, even if Sora was having trouble getting used to wearing the uniform. He could sense it in Riku, too, that profound relief, when their biggest worry became whether they'd passed an algebra test or whether that history report got in on time. Finally, the fate of worlds did not hinge on their every action; they were free.
Happily ever after.
"There you are!"
"Sora!"
Startled, Sora turned around quickly, stumbling a bit in the water. Riku and Kairi came down the beach towards him, both smiling faintly. Sora grinned a little bit back at them and trudged back up the beach, bending to grab his shoes as he did.
"Hey, daydreamer," Riku teased, hitting Sora playfully in the arm. "We gonna have to put a leash on you to keep you from running off?"
Kairi nudged Riku with an elbow and raised one eyebrow meaningfully at him, but she didn't say anything and was still smiling when she turned back to Sora. "Seriously, it seems like every time we turn our backs, you're gone."
Sora laughed sheepishly, lifting a hand to rub the back of his neck. "Sorry, guys. I've just had a lot on my mind lately. There's still a lot to think about, you know?"
It wasn't lost on him, the seriousness that shadowed their faces for a split second before Riku nodded in sympathy, and Kairi gave a forgiving smile.
"Just don't think so much your head falls off," Riku said with a smirk, and Kairi giggled.
"Knowing you, Sora, that's a real danger," she agreed, poking his cheek.
"Oh, thanks!"
Even as he put on a show of mock offense, and the three of them began to laugh, Sora was grateful for the joking. It lightened things, just a little.
"So, come on!" Kairi reached out to grab Sora's arm. "Let's go home before it gets dark, okay?"
"Yeah." Sora cast one brief, backward glance over the sea, and the smaller island aglow with sunset, and then followed his friends.
-
"Are you feeling okay?"
Sora blinked, his hand stopping in mid-wave as Kairi disappeared into her house. He turned to face Riku, his face the very picture of innocent confusion. "I'm feeling fine. Why?"
Riku shrugged hurriedly, seeming a little embarrassed as they turned from Kairi's gate and resumed their progress down the road. He didn't quite meet Sora's eyes as he spoke. "You just seem a little off these days."
"Is this about that beach thing?" Sora laughed with deceptive ease while his heart gave a jump in his chest. If that was what Riku was driving at...
"Sort of." Riku tilted his head to peer at Sora through his bangs. "...It's just not like you, Sora."
The hero of the Keyblade shrugged nervously. "So I changed a little," he said, maybe a touch defensively. "I told you, there's just... still a lot to think about. Don't you feel that way too?"
He looked up at Riku for confirmation, and right then he knew that he was doomed.
Riku was frowning slightly, his eyes soft and brows furrowed in a look of earnest concern. There was no getting away from that look. Riku had never worn his emotions on his sleeve as much as Sora did, and when he looked that worried...
"Okay, Sora? If you're feeling like me, there might be a problem," Riku said, with an effort to keep his voice light. It only partly succeeded.
Sora swallowed and looked forward, away from his best friend's suddenly too-honest face. "It's just... stuff. Things I've been wondering. Don't worry about me. Seriously."
"Anything you wanna talk about?"
Sora hesitated.
They were coming up on his house, now. If he said 'no' now, Riku would respect his wishes, he knew. He could easily escape this whole conversation, right now.
He thought of the twilight over their island.
"... Maybe," he said finally, and felt like Atlas shifting under his burden.
When he looked up and met Riku's eyes, Riku didn't say anything. He seemed to be waiting for Sora's word, yes or no. Sora gave him a tired smile and unlatched his gate.
"Yeah. C'mon in. I've just just been chasing myself in circles anyway."
-
The sun finished setting some time before any significant talking actually occurred.
Sora had made some popcorn for them, half out of friendly hospitality and half out of a desire to delay this as much as possible, and between the two of them they'd finished the entire batch. Now a silence had come over them, Sora lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling fan while Riku sat on the floor with his back against the mattress. Sora brushed some loose salt off his shirt and sighed, looking out the window at the emerging stars.
"So," Riku prompted quietly. "What's eating you?"
Sora closed his eyes for a few moments, silently organizing his thoughts.
"I was the Keyblade's chosen one," he said softly. "Right?"
Riku was silent for a little while before he answered, possibly trying to find the most diplomatic way of putting it. "Yeah, that... was kinda the general idea, I think..."
Sora laughed, shaking his head at himself. "I mean... I was supposed to be the big hero for the light, right? 'Go forth, Sora, and battle evil! The light has chosen you', and all that."
"Well, yeah. So?" Riku glanced curiously over his shoulder. "That's not what's bugging you, is it? I mean, that's not even... Are you thinking about what might've happened if you failed? Is that it?"
"No, not really. Well, I mean, that might've crossed my mind a couple times, but in the end we didn't fail, so why worry about it? No, it's..." He sat up and crossed his legs beneath him. Studying the bedspread, he forced the rest of it out, slow and barely audible. "It's just... I wonder if everything I did was... right."
Riku half-turned, propping his elbow on top of the bed. "What do you mean?"
Sora made an idle fist, staring at the curled fingers. "Was it... was it really okay to treat the Nobodies like that? Like they were all just... just..."
"...nobody?" Riku supplied, his voice terribly soft.
"Worse than nobody," Sora said, his face tight. "Like... trash. Like they were bad just because of what they were. I mean, the Heartless... they are bad, but the Nobodies... I could have been friends with some of them," he said, desperately. "Hell - I was friends with Axel... or a part of me was, at least."
Riku looked away for a moment, frowning. "Sora... Organization XIII was... you did the right thing in shutting them down."
"I know," Sora said helplessly. "I know Organization XIII was bad and they needed to be stopped. I'm not worried about that! I'm worried about... look, they were doing horrible things, and a lot of them were real jerks. Xemnas, Saix, Xaldin... But they weren't all like that!"
Riku was silent, but he hadn't taken his eyes off Sora; taking this as a sign to continue, Sora took a breath and stumbled on.
"Yen Sid told us that Nobodies only pretend to have feelings. But that... he was wrong, Riku. Either he was wrong or - or he lied to me, because they do, Riku, they do have feelings. Maybe they're not as strong as ours, maybe it's stunted in some of them, and I think some of them really did forget how... but they have feelings. Or they had feelings, I guess..."
Riku heaved himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. He tilted his head curiously at Sora. "... Where's this coming from all of a sudden?" he asked, a little puzzled. "Xemnas said it himself... he couldn't feel sorrow, he didn't even remember feelings that weren't rage... and he was kind of like the Nobody, right? I mean, he was a total jerk, but..."
Sora laughed hollowly, and something in it sounded a little lost and broken. Coming from him, it was a deeply disturbing thing to hear. "And I believed him. Yen Sid practically told me not to feel bad for them anyway, and they'd all been fighting us, so it was easy to just not think about it, until it was all over..."
"So what's happened since then?" Riku reached out and laid a hand on Sora's shoulder tentatively. "What made you change your mind?"
The brunet stared down at his hands then, and didn't say anything. Riku found himself counting the ticks of Sora's clock as the seconds dragged on. It had been nearly half a minute before Sora finally spoke again, his voice thin and brittle.
"Roxas," said Sora.
Riku's breath caught.
"I remember him now, Riku," Sora said in a hushed voice. "Ever since I found out who he was, why he was important... I've started remembering. It's like there's a part of me that was always Roxas, like a locked room in a house, and I couldn't find him because I didn't know he was there to find... and then you told me who he was, and I met him, and the door opened. And now I remember him. His memories of the Organization, his memories of Twilight Town... everything. It's all there for me now. And he felt things. Enough that, when he forgot he was a Nobody and thought he was just a kid, it just didn't even occur to him he didn't have a heart!
"And I know," he stumbled on helplessly, "that Roxas was weird as Nobodies went, but he felt things. And Naminé, she did too. And Axel, god, why didn't I think of Axel, he was Roxas's friend - he told me, he - he told me Roxas made him feel like he had a heart, and that I... made him feel the same..."
"Sora..."
"Demyx! Xigbar! Luxord! They weren't all bad! They were enemies, but they weren't monsters! They weren't like the Heartless, they could think, they had to choose, and they just made the wrong choices - why wouldn't any of them tell me?!" Sora punched the mattress, his voice beginning to break. "Why couldn't they just tell me about Roxas?! If I'd known about him, maybe I would've remembered sooner - maybe it could've gone differently, I would've thought of them differently, I could've found a way and shut down the Organization without - without --"
"Hey," Riku said gently, wrapping his arm around Sora's shoulders and pulling him a little closer. "Hey, Sora, come on, try and pull it together..."
"Riku, they were people!" Sora howled. "They were all sad, broken people, and I... I k-killed--"
He'd been fighting a losing battle to keep from crying, and he finally surrendered, falling forward against Riku's shoulder with a desperate, cracked sob.
-
I'm sorry, Roxas. I'm sorry I treated them all like that. I'm sorry I didn't feel sorry then. I'm sorry I was too much in the dark to see another way. I'm sorry for everything, Roxas.
Apology accepted.
What? That easily?
It was all you could do, right? Besides, Axel and I made a promise, remember? Nobodies may not have hearts, but we do have souls.
Right... "Let's see each other in the next life."
Exactly. Hey, if there's anything I've learned from being you, it's that we should keep faith in promises like that.
You think you'll see him again, then?
I know it.
-
Sora lounged back against one of the palm trees, gazing peacefully out at the endless ocean as the sun set, the whole sea shining in the fading light. The little fire they'd made blazed merrily in its shallow pit, almost seeming to take the twilight into itself as the sun sank away. Kairi was seated in front of the fire, Riku balanced in his favorite spot on the paopu tree. Sora was unspeakably grateful to them both for helping him do this.
It was kind of a silly thing, really, but nobody ever said the heart was logical.
"You can't play that thing worth crap, just so you know," he said lightly, smirking across the fire to Riku.
"Look, it could be worse. He could've played a flute or something and then we'd really be screwed."
Riku wasn't doing too badly, truth be told; the sound he was producing bore no resemblance to anything like a tune, but it was innocuous enough. You couldn't go too far wrong from just plucking strings, it seemed. Sora was just in high spirits, and felt like teasing. It had been a stroke of luck that Riku's dad had had an old acoustic guitar tucked away in the attic, really.
("Sitar, Riku," Sora had joked. "Not guitar."
"Sora, if you think you can find a sitar anywhere on this rock, be my guest.")
"Here," Kairi said, tearing a page off her notebook and holding it out to Sora. "Does it look like one of hers?"
The line style was different, the coloring not quite what the demure little witch would have chosen, but it was close enough. More than close enough. Sora smiled, nodded, and handed it back.
"It's a good picture," he said. "I recognized her right away."
Kairi beamed and got to her feet. Slowly, almost reverently, she folded the page into a small, thick square, and gazed into the little fire. Riku's aimless guitar playing mingled with the crackling of the flames and underlined Kairi's voice as she said, tenderly, "Thank you again, Naminé."
Sora's throat tightened as she threw the little paper square into the fire, where it was instantly consumed. The guitar rambled on.
Tightening his grip, Sora heaved himself up onto his feet as well and took a step towards the fire. He shook the two out-of-date house keys in his hand, and nodded to himself.
"Thank you, Roxas," he said quietly, throwing the keys into the fire. Someone laughed.
Riku strummed his fingers over the guitar strings one last time and looked up to meet Sora's eyes with a grin, before turning his gaze to the fire. "See you, Demyx. Sorry, but my dad'd kill me if I burned this."
"He'd probably rather you didn't anyway," Sora said, grinning.
"Well, good."
"And the last one, Sora?" Kairi reminded. Sora nodded, and picked up the small bucket of sand they'd prepared, hefting it in his hands as he looked one last time to the fire.
"Goodbye, Axel," he said. "We'll keep our promise, all right?"
And with that, he extinguished the fire.
He had the strangest, warmest feeling as they made their way back home, navigating by flashlight and the sound of each others' oars as they rowed; like someone was smiling at him.
-
Why me and Naminé? We didn't die.
No, but you can't really be yourselves either... you have to be us.
Man, DiZ was right. You are too nice.
What's that supposed to mean?
Hey, she and I are already lucky. Living as you is something, you know. And something is better than nothing.
laylah's fault... though I'm not sure "fault" is really the right word here. She inadvertantly bunnied me for moral-quandary fic regarding Sora and the Nobodies, and... then, apparently, I could not resist the siren call of the woob.Title: Naught's Requiem
Words: 2,980
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Spoilers like whoa. Also, this was meant to be gen, but if you turn your head and squint you can see some Axel/Roxas and Sora/Riku. Maybe some SoRiKai too.
Summary: It's not always as simple as black and white. After the battle, the fairy-tale hero confronts his doubts, and the ones who didn't get a "happily ever after".
The sea rolled in around his ankles, shifting the sand around his feet. Sora could feel the current tugging at him. It was weak now, he was still at the very edge of the tide, but if he waited too much longer it'd be coming much higher and stronger.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Sora sighed to himself, frowning out at the ocean. It seemed like half a lifetime ago that it had just been an obstacle; something that three children, a handmade raft, and a shared dream could conquer. Like something out of a storybook. Once upon a time, on a tiny island, there lived a boy named Sora and his friends, Riku and Kairi...
And then had come the darkness. And the key. And the quest.
Just like a fairy tale.
One of Sora's pant legs was starting to fall down. Making sure his school jacket was securely draped over his shoulder, he bent down to roll the cuff to his knee again.
Everything had turned out all right. Xehanort's marauding Heartless had been defeated, and the ruined worlds restored. He was standing on the very proof of that victory. The continuing threat of Heartless had been beaten back, Kingdom Hearts had been secured, and the realm of light was safe. Sora had been allowed to go home - him, the Keyblade bearer, the hero at the center at it all, had been able to come home. That meant it was over, right? Once upon a time, Sora and his friends saved all the worlds, and they lived happily ever after.
And he had been happy. Just being here again, after all that time, had been amazing. Scrambling with Riku out of the sea, onto the beach where Kairi had been waiting, her and Donald and Goofy and the King himself, the fulfillment of his oath and just being home... For weeks afterwards, just the memory of that feeling could tighten Sora's throat and bring tears to his eyes. They'd been able to return to their island. They'd all come home. He and Riku had been able to lay down their blades and return to an ordinary life. If Riku slouched more than he used to, if Sora sometimes got a weariness in his eyes, if they both had swordsman's calluses now and took inordinate amounts of pleasure in simple home luxuries, they never mentioned it. They'd told their story to those who asked, and Sora in particular found himself having to recount many of the same details several times over.
"You get the feeling they don't believe us?" Riku had asked Sora one day, with a faint grin.
"Yeah," Sora had said, and laughed. "But that's fine, isn't it? I'm just glad we're home."
Going back to school had been surprisingly enjoyable, even if Sora was having trouble getting used to wearing the uniform. He could sense it in Riku, too, that profound relief, when their biggest worry became whether they'd passed an algebra test or whether that history report got in on time. Finally, the fate of worlds did not hinge on their every action; they were free.
Happily ever after.
"There you are!"
"Sora!"
Startled, Sora turned around quickly, stumbling a bit in the water. Riku and Kairi came down the beach towards him, both smiling faintly. Sora grinned a little bit back at them and trudged back up the beach, bending to grab his shoes as he did.
"Hey, daydreamer," Riku teased, hitting Sora playfully in the arm. "We gonna have to put a leash on you to keep you from running off?"
Kairi nudged Riku with an elbow and raised one eyebrow meaningfully at him, but she didn't say anything and was still smiling when she turned back to Sora. "Seriously, it seems like every time we turn our backs, you're gone."
Sora laughed sheepishly, lifting a hand to rub the back of his neck. "Sorry, guys. I've just had a lot on my mind lately. There's still a lot to think about, you know?"
It wasn't lost on him, the seriousness that shadowed their faces for a split second before Riku nodded in sympathy, and Kairi gave a forgiving smile.
"Just don't think so much your head falls off," Riku said with a smirk, and Kairi giggled.
"Knowing you, Sora, that's a real danger," she agreed, poking his cheek.
"Oh, thanks!"
Even as he put on a show of mock offense, and the three of them began to laugh, Sora was grateful for the joking. It lightened things, just a little.
"So, come on!" Kairi reached out to grab Sora's arm. "Let's go home before it gets dark, okay?"
"Yeah." Sora cast one brief, backward glance over the sea, and the smaller island aglow with sunset, and then followed his friends.
"Are you feeling okay?"
Sora blinked, his hand stopping in mid-wave as Kairi disappeared into her house. He turned to face Riku, his face the very picture of innocent confusion. "I'm feeling fine. Why?"
Riku shrugged hurriedly, seeming a little embarrassed as they turned from Kairi's gate and resumed their progress down the road. He didn't quite meet Sora's eyes as he spoke. "You just seem a little off these days."
"Is this about that beach thing?" Sora laughed with deceptive ease while his heart gave a jump in his chest. If that was what Riku was driving at...
"Sort of." Riku tilted his head to peer at Sora through his bangs. "...It's just not like you, Sora."
The hero of the Keyblade shrugged nervously. "So I changed a little," he said, maybe a touch defensively. "I told you, there's just... still a lot to think about. Don't you feel that way too?"
He looked up at Riku for confirmation, and right then he knew that he was doomed.
Riku was frowning slightly, his eyes soft and brows furrowed in a look of earnest concern. There was no getting away from that look. Riku had never worn his emotions on his sleeve as much as Sora did, and when he looked that worried...
"Okay, Sora? If you're feeling like me, there might be a problem," Riku said, with an effort to keep his voice light. It only partly succeeded.
Sora swallowed and looked forward, away from his best friend's suddenly too-honest face. "It's just... stuff. Things I've been wondering. Don't worry about me. Seriously."
"Anything you wanna talk about?"
Sora hesitated.
They were coming up on his house, now. If he said 'no' now, Riku would respect his wishes, he knew. He could easily escape this whole conversation, right now.
He thought of the twilight over their island.
"... Maybe," he said finally, and felt like Atlas shifting under his burden.
When he looked up and met Riku's eyes, Riku didn't say anything. He seemed to be waiting for Sora's word, yes or no. Sora gave him a tired smile and unlatched his gate.
"Yeah. C'mon in. I've just just been chasing myself in circles anyway."
The sun finished setting some time before any significant talking actually occurred.
Sora had made some popcorn for them, half out of friendly hospitality and half out of a desire to delay this as much as possible, and between the two of them they'd finished the entire batch. Now a silence had come over them, Sora lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling fan while Riku sat on the floor with his back against the mattress. Sora brushed some loose salt off his shirt and sighed, looking out the window at the emerging stars.
"So," Riku prompted quietly. "What's eating you?"
Sora closed his eyes for a few moments, silently organizing his thoughts.
"I was the Keyblade's chosen one," he said softly. "Right?"
Riku was silent for a little while before he answered, possibly trying to find the most diplomatic way of putting it. "Yeah, that... was kinda the general idea, I think..."
Sora laughed, shaking his head at himself. "I mean... I was supposed to be the big hero for the light, right? 'Go forth, Sora, and battle evil! The light has chosen you', and all that."
"Well, yeah. So?" Riku glanced curiously over his shoulder. "That's not what's bugging you, is it? I mean, that's not even... Are you thinking about what might've happened if you failed? Is that it?"
"No, not really. Well, I mean, that might've crossed my mind a couple times, but in the end we didn't fail, so why worry about it? No, it's..." He sat up and crossed his legs beneath him. Studying the bedspread, he forced the rest of it out, slow and barely audible. "It's just... I wonder if everything I did was... right."
Riku half-turned, propping his elbow on top of the bed. "What do you mean?"
Sora made an idle fist, staring at the curled fingers. "Was it... was it really okay to treat the Nobodies like that? Like they were all just... just..."
"...nobody?" Riku supplied, his voice terribly soft.
"Worse than nobody," Sora said, his face tight. "Like... trash. Like they were bad just because of what they were. I mean, the Heartless... they are bad, but the Nobodies... I could have been friends with some of them," he said, desperately. "Hell - I was friends with Axel... or a part of me was, at least."
Riku looked away for a moment, frowning. "Sora... Organization XIII was... you did the right thing in shutting them down."
"I know," Sora said helplessly. "I know Organization XIII was bad and they needed to be stopped. I'm not worried about that! I'm worried about... look, they were doing horrible things, and a lot of them were real jerks. Xemnas, Saix, Xaldin... But they weren't all like that!"
Riku was silent, but he hadn't taken his eyes off Sora; taking this as a sign to continue, Sora took a breath and stumbled on.
"Yen Sid told us that Nobodies only pretend to have feelings. But that... he was wrong, Riku. Either he was wrong or - or he lied to me, because they do, Riku, they do have feelings. Maybe they're not as strong as ours, maybe it's stunted in some of them, and I think some of them really did forget how... but they have feelings. Or they had feelings, I guess..."
Riku heaved himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. He tilted his head curiously at Sora. "... Where's this coming from all of a sudden?" he asked, a little puzzled. "Xemnas said it himself... he couldn't feel sorrow, he didn't even remember feelings that weren't rage... and he was kind of like the Nobody, right? I mean, he was a total jerk, but..."
Sora laughed hollowly, and something in it sounded a little lost and broken. Coming from him, it was a deeply disturbing thing to hear. "And I believed him. Yen Sid practically told me not to feel bad for them anyway, and they'd all been fighting us, so it was easy to just not think about it, until it was all over..."
"So what's happened since then?" Riku reached out and laid a hand on Sora's shoulder tentatively. "What made you change your mind?"
The brunet stared down at his hands then, and didn't say anything. Riku found himself counting the ticks of Sora's clock as the seconds dragged on. It had been nearly half a minute before Sora finally spoke again, his voice thin and brittle.
"Roxas," said Sora.
Riku's breath caught.
"I remember him now, Riku," Sora said in a hushed voice. "Ever since I found out who he was, why he was important... I've started remembering. It's like there's a part of me that was always Roxas, like a locked room in a house, and I couldn't find him because I didn't know he was there to find... and then you told me who he was, and I met him, and the door opened. And now I remember him. His memories of the Organization, his memories of Twilight Town... everything. It's all there for me now. And he felt things. Enough that, when he forgot he was a Nobody and thought he was just a kid, it just didn't even occur to him he didn't have a heart!
"And I know," he stumbled on helplessly, "that Roxas was weird as Nobodies went, but he felt things. And Naminé, she did too. And Axel, god, why didn't I think of Axel, he was Roxas's friend - he told me, he - he told me Roxas made him feel like he had a heart, and that I... made him feel the same..."
"Sora..."
"Demyx! Xigbar! Luxord! They weren't all bad! They were enemies, but they weren't monsters! They weren't like the Heartless, they could think, they had to choose, and they just made the wrong choices - why wouldn't any of them tell me?!" Sora punched the mattress, his voice beginning to break. "Why couldn't they just tell me about Roxas?! If I'd known about him, maybe I would've remembered sooner - maybe it could've gone differently, I would've thought of them differently, I could've found a way and shut down the Organization without - without --"
"Hey," Riku said gently, wrapping his arm around Sora's shoulders and pulling him a little closer. "Hey, Sora, come on, try and pull it together..."
"Riku, they were people!" Sora howled. "They were all sad, broken people, and I... I k-killed--"
He'd been fighting a losing battle to keep from crying, and he finally surrendered, falling forward against Riku's shoulder with a desperate, cracked sob.
I'm sorry, Roxas. I'm sorry I treated them all like that. I'm sorry I didn't feel sorry then. I'm sorry I was too much in the dark to see another way. I'm sorry for everything, Roxas.
Apology accepted.
What? That easily?
It was all you could do, right? Besides, Axel and I made a promise, remember? Nobodies may not have hearts, but we do have souls.
Right... "Let's see each other in the next life."
Exactly. Hey, if there's anything I've learned from being you, it's that we should keep faith in promises like that.
You think you'll see him again, then?
I know it.
Sora lounged back against one of the palm trees, gazing peacefully out at the endless ocean as the sun set, the whole sea shining in the fading light. The little fire they'd made blazed merrily in its shallow pit, almost seeming to take the twilight into itself as the sun sank away. Kairi was seated in front of the fire, Riku balanced in his favorite spot on the paopu tree. Sora was unspeakably grateful to them both for helping him do this.
It was kind of a silly thing, really, but nobody ever said the heart was logical.
"You can't play that thing worth crap, just so you know," he said lightly, smirking across the fire to Riku.
"Look, it could be worse. He could've played a flute or something and then we'd really be screwed."
Riku wasn't doing too badly, truth be told; the sound he was producing bore no resemblance to anything like a tune, but it was innocuous enough. You couldn't go too far wrong from just plucking strings, it seemed. Sora was just in high spirits, and felt like teasing. It had been a stroke of luck that Riku's dad had had an old acoustic guitar tucked away in the attic, really.
("Sitar, Riku," Sora had joked. "Not guitar."
"Sora, if you think you can find a sitar anywhere on this rock, be my guest.")
"Here," Kairi said, tearing a page off her notebook and holding it out to Sora. "Does it look like one of hers?"
The line style was different, the coloring not quite what the demure little witch would have chosen, but it was close enough. More than close enough. Sora smiled, nodded, and handed it back.
"It's a good picture," he said. "I recognized her right away."
Kairi beamed and got to her feet. Slowly, almost reverently, she folded the page into a small, thick square, and gazed into the little fire. Riku's aimless guitar playing mingled with the crackling of the flames and underlined Kairi's voice as she said, tenderly, "Thank you again, Naminé."
Sora's throat tightened as she threw the little paper square into the fire, where it was instantly consumed. The guitar rambled on.
Tightening his grip, Sora heaved himself up onto his feet as well and took a step towards the fire. He shook the two out-of-date house keys in his hand, and nodded to himself.
"Thank you, Roxas," he said quietly, throwing the keys into the fire. Someone laughed.
Riku strummed his fingers over the guitar strings one last time and looked up to meet Sora's eyes with a grin, before turning his gaze to the fire. "See you, Demyx. Sorry, but my dad'd kill me if I burned this."
"He'd probably rather you didn't anyway," Sora said, grinning.
"Well, good."
"And the last one, Sora?" Kairi reminded. Sora nodded, and picked up the small bucket of sand they'd prepared, hefting it in his hands as he looked one last time to the fire.
"Goodbye, Axel," he said. "We'll keep our promise, all right?"
And with that, he extinguished the fire.
He had the strangest, warmest feeling as they made their way back home, navigating by flashlight and the sound of each others' oars as they rowed; like someone was smiling at him.
Why me and Naminé? We didn't die.
No, but you can't really be yourselves either... you have to be us.
Man, DiZ was right. You are too nice.
What's that supposed to mean?
Hey, she and I are already lucky. Living as you is something, you know. And something is better than nothing.