Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts is not mine. I just toy around with the characters.
A/N: Well, kiddies, this story is officially over. It took a damn long time, and I almost didn't want to upload this, i didn't want it to be 'official'. And let me apologize for the excessive lateness of this, I had to switch colleges and that was a pain, but I'm in happy-land now, so that's all right.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy this. I'm planning on still continuing onto sequels, but we'll see, considering I need to get working on my own stories. Otherwise, my characters might kill me in my sleep. See if they don't!
Enjoy!
Epilogue
Riko groaned, twisting a little on the ground. Gritty sand rubbed painfully agains the exposed skin of his arms, and he grimaced at the slight pain. The world around him seemed to be tilting, but slower now than a few moments earlier. Actually, he could almost feel it starting to settle, to shudder to a rolling stop. He blinked, the ground a hazy, blurring image in front of his eyes, then shook his head. Bracing his arms, he lifted himself up off the sand and stood unsteadily, blinking in a bright light that came from nowhere and everywhere, all at once.
Grimacing again, he spit a mouthfull of sand out onto the ground, then looked around, shading his eyes with one hand. Everywhere he looked he could see sand, fading into every direction, meeting an artificially blue-white expanse of sky on either side of him. He turned slowly, trying to see what lay behind him, and a sound came rolling in. It was something like a quiet rustle, a bubbling, a deep roar that one didn't so much hear as feel. He recognized it, recognized the soft sigh of the retreating ocean waves, the resonating undertone of the roar of the oncoming ones. The sound was hollow, as if it were only half real, half there, but the waves sounded close. Close and hollow, everywhere around him and nowhere.
He glanced back down at the sand where he had found himself, and noticed another imprint not far off. Smaller imprints, footprints, led away from it in a staggering sort of bee-line. Squinting uncertainly into the distance, and taking one last look around him, Riku started off following the footprints.
It seemed a while had passed since he started, and more than once he had turned back to find that the spot he had started from could no longer be seen. Moments more passed, and suddenly a shape appeared, shimmering in a haze, in front of him. A black shape, embedded partially in the sand, pieces of it sticking out in odd angles. Riku frowned as he headed towards it, realizin the footprints he followed led directly to it. It wasn't until he was a few steps away that he noticed the copper stain around it on the sand, and even then he didn't really know what it was. It wasn't until he actually reached it, stood over it and saw the splatter of copper in the sand, the half-hidden black feathers dotting the sand around him. His eyes widened as his breath caught. It didn't make sense, it didn't. He didn't want to be seeing this.
A wind picked up, flowing around him and making feathers dance drunkenly around on the sand. His eyes, following a few rivulets of shifting sand, noticed more footsteps leading away from where he stood, leading towards a place only a little farther ahead of him. He didn't move, didn't follow those imprints, but the sound of waves suddenly grew louder, no, more real, as his eyes followed the footprints, and the light softened until he no longer had to squint to see what was in front of him.
A hill rose slightly, just twenty feet ahead of him, and beyond it he could see the green-blue of the ocean, flickering white here and there as another wave made its way to shore. A figure stood on that hill, facing the ocean and the waves. Long hair fluttering lightly, darkly in the wind, she had her one remaining wing bent forward slightly so her right hand could come to rest upon it.
"Sasha?" Riku spoke softly, almost fearfully.
There was a momentary pause, and then she turned, slowly, to face him. She looked at him, but he had the strange impression that she still looked out at the waves.
"Riku," She began, but he couldn't be sure her lips moved at all, and although her eyes flashed, lightly, brightly, darkly, he couldn't be sure they saw him. "Life... it's not about hate or... or love... it's... it's about death."
She turned back to the waves, or maybe, just maybe, she hadn't been looking at him at all, maybe she'd always been looking at the waves. But her words hung in the air between them, refusing to settle, refusing to fade in the wind, refusing to let him forget them. The ocean grew, suddenly, then recoiled, a quiet hiss of water leaving sand.
Her arms shot out, suddenly, stretching them out to the sky as if she meant to catch it and drag it down to her. Her one wing stretched out, feathers flickering in the wind, giving the odd impression of balance without balance, of asymmetrical symmetry. She strained even more, wing flaring, and it came.
The wave drew dark, large, hovering over her outstretched arms like a coiled serpent. It flickered and held, a dark, deep roar of longing filling its watery expanses. And she laughed, a sound like silver bells, and laughed again, her voice echoing against the dark wall in front of her.
"That's all it ever was."
And it fell.
The wave, like rolling velvet, enveloped her, pulling her in like a mother embracing a long lost child. She disappeared under its watchful weight, and Riku found himself running forward, running to what, he didn't know. But suddenly the wave, the darkness, was rushing towards him, seeking him out, sending wave after wave of velvet after him along the sand. And he backed away, slowly first, then faster, fearful of its cold touch, fearful of getting lost in its depths once more.
It nearly had him, suddenly, nearly touch the soles of his shoes, and then pulled away. With hissing, with moaning and sounds of boulders on boulders, it receded further and further. Another wild thought, and he was rushing after it, rushing and running to catch it, too late.
It was gone.
He was left with nothing; nothing but a bleeding, dismembered wing and an island of sand, lost adrift a sea no boat could ever sail.
He turned back around, turned to that heap of broken bones and feathers, and took it up. Smoothing the feathers as best he could, he could feel the wind around him picking up. Holding the wing, tighter, tighter until he could feel the unbroken bones shift in his grasp, he sank into the sand. Tears wouldn't come, no matter how bitter, and he closed his eyes, and in the resounding silence woke, and realized it was all a dream.
Awake, awake now, Riku found himself in an unfamiliar land, a bumpy, hilly world that was filled with a suspiciously familar lighted darkness. He shook his head to clear it, reaching up to brush back his hair. Stopped.
It was all a dream.
Looking down, numbly, he wiped the trails of red off his pants, peeling bloody, broken feathers off his chest.
All a dream.
His gaze moved to the ground, littered with scattered sand and half-dry, curling feathers.
But, it was all a dream, wasn't it?
He looked to the sky, to the dark around him.
It was a dream!
He began to shake.
Tell me!
But no answer came
Endnotes:
Thank you to all the reviewers I have ever had!
In no specific order:
Thank you very much to Ari Powwel, who had been the first reviewer of this story and whose own stories were an inspiration to me. (I wish I could write that well! And with that much feeling! )
Thank you to Magic Blue Fire Kitsune, who has been an endless supply of good feeling for me, whenever I needed to be cheered up, all I had to do was read one of your reviews and I felt better.
Thank you to Doomboy2000, who read through the entire story in one night, and probably one sitting. There I was, sitting for a few hours, and every few minutes I'd get a review from him. Thank you, it made me feel special that someone would want to read my story all at once like that.
Thank you very much to Sugarhigh Strawberry, who had been another energy-support and good-feeling giver, and whose reviews always made me feel better.
And thank you to Slinkster Sunshine, my second-ever reviewer, who was also a great inspiration.
I hope you all enjoyed reading this story, and that you enjoyed this Epilogue too.
Signing out,
Zoshi