Notes: I'm sorry for the wait. Sorry, sorry, sorry; that is all I can say. Here is my silly apology chapter that will make everything a little bit better!

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How to Wash Dishes Riku Style
December

- - -
(Do you remember? Do you remember?)

Playing games with bits of string--bright colors, fractured colors, swimming in front of his eyes. Emptiness in the pits of her face, the strange bright lights that conquered the sky when she arrived... everything was gold. She was so plain, so placid and blank, but she was happy. At least, Riku thought...

(Do you remember?)

Well. That was how it was then.

-

Now there is school, two colors: blue and white intermingling like heavy tropical rains intermingle with the sand on the beach, thick mud. White like paper, like snow. Riku has never seen snow on these islands and something in him aches for it again. If it gets cold, he hopes while reading textbooks on the subject, then maybe it will snow. What does he remember of snow from that place in the darkness? If it gets cold enough, it will snow; but it is never, never cold on the Destiny Islands.

Does Kairi remember snow?

She looks up at him when he asks her the question, gaze frizzling into the distance contemplatively. Her red hair allows for a flush to set into her cheeks, perpetual. "Snow?" Riku sets his face to the default expression--not amused, not sad, not anything--because she probably doesn't remember. "Snow is what happens when it gets cold enough. The air in the upper stratosphere gets heavy and loaded with ice--no, that's hail. Snowflakes are thin crystals of ice in fancy geometric patterns. We make them out of paper every Christmas. I'm pretty sure we learned this in school, Riku. Why?"

He shrugs.

"Well... actually I remember something. I remember looking out a window that was wider than I was tall, and taller than that, most definitely. So when I looked outside I could see it. I could see the flakes sticking to the glass and then melting from the heat of the room so it looked like rain in slow motion. I don't know why, but I remember this."

"I remember being outside," Riku says. "When I was younger. Before Sora and you and I, we three, got inseparable. I used to stand in the rain until my mom yelled at me to come in or else I'd catch pneumonia. My hair got so heavy it hurt. But--" he leans forward eagerly and he sees himself shine in her eyes. "I remember standing in it. Not rain, but snow. Snow. I remember not getting wet or heavy, just crunching through it step by step and not feeling the heaviness--just cold, cold dirt that melted against the front of my boots. Or it didn't melt, sometimes. Wow, snow! It was cold--do you remember ever standing in it?! It was not anything like rain, not like this rain. Our rain here is warm and heavy, but... I... I just remember--!"

"Maybe I'll remember if you describe it to me."

"I--!" Riku is getting so hyped up about this and he doesn't know why. Why is he so happy? That's Sora's job, to be happy, while Riku mopes about love lost and love forgotten, but now he is thinking about snow and everything is all right. Yet he has to put things in context so Kairi will understand it. He takes a deep breath and starts from the beginning.

-

Here? Here there is nothing; it is a dead place, totally lifeless, dry leaves cracking and shed like dust particles in the sun are shed from living things. Only there's no sun here--where is the sun shining straight into his eyes? Orange, brown, black. Faded colors, old colors--Riku never liked Halloween. Dead colors swarming everywhere like lethargic little bees. It scrapes against his inner ear like a bad note, like sandpaper on chalkboards and just as... as... In fact, he can't even think of an adjective, it is so irritating. Horrible.

Cold, cold, cold, but not like ice at all. Ice Riku can handle. This stuff, this air he can barely even breathe, this is full of decay. He is a hair away from screaming and portalling out because he hates it so much. Oh, Halloweentown, the world he hates already. Souls stoop languidly against themselves here, crawling and dragging from place to place. Even the tall lanky man in pinstripes, holding himself straight as a rod, Riku sees it only as lurching in fast-forward, a lightning quick torpor. Doesn't help that he has a skull for a head. Bones for arms and legs.

Really. Really. He can't stand this anymore.

By now Riku is just wandering through the forest looking for life and he has found none of it. This world is entirely unlike all the other worlds he's been to; this one makes a point of reveling in death. Even the desert place surged with life wherever people congregated, like oases. He doesn't know what he's working towards. Every step is dry and barren, crumbling. His gloves, all these layers he's wearing do not offer any protection. He paces, he snarls, he rages ahead silently trying to find a place where there is life because where there is life, there Sora will be. Sora wouldn't stay here for very long, he wouldn't--

Riku blinks.

He feels something. Something tingling and green and alive--he strides through the remaining walls of trees getting more and more excited, more eager. He feels his way through the death, around to the spider-sharp source until suddenly it blazes, surging through his eyelids and manifesting itself into a miraculous way out.

-
Riku shoulders through the door. There were three doors, or more. Possibly. Maybe? But he picked this one, the pointy green tree-on-a-tree because... well... he'd never seen it before. What kind of people put stars on top of trees?

As soon as his foot lifts from the threshold and plants on the floor, it gives into surging blackness and then swirling lights and all sorts of crazy things. Riku has only experienced this while running, going so fast that his jaw clatters and his teeth could be shaken loose. Only those colors he saw, those were normal-colored streaks and blurs, windy needles in his eyes that caused tears. Riku sees all sorts of ungodly combinations like red and green (Kairi would never wear green, it is the opposite of red and it clashes), blue and orange (orange is so jarring), and most importantly yellow, yellow, yellow like lamp-lights or sunlight in the evening.

Riku twists and thrashes against nothing in the tunnel of lights, fighting to regain control of himself until suddenly everything stops--the wind pressure, the darkness and flashes; everything. There is a great lurch like a clawed hand dropping him onto the ground, and in the split second he has to brace himself he prepares for broken bones and hard dirt, because he doesn't know how high he is (being blind as he is). Maybe, miraculously, sand that is soft and dry to insulate the pressure of his fall and then he won't have broken bones.

Instead he falls into coldness--ice shavings? It's cold--it's like winter. Nighttime in the desert--Riku's teeth are chattering so hard it's like he's running, but he's still. He has never felt this ungodly chill before, except...

The pale-haired boy allows himself to straighten his back and kneel upwards out of this cold. He slathers a gloved hand in it--white dirt, like foaming water without the water, frozen in place--and experiments a little by clenching his fist. It holds, just like wet dirt or sand. But Riku feels droplets forming on his face and neck, dripping lower into his hood until they reach his shirt like little ice-touches of someone else's hand. It melts.

Imagine that.

"What."

Riku pulls the knot out of his blindfold and is surprised he doesn't cringe. It's nighttime. But he sees expanses of blue and white all over, piling in little hills that roll all across the horizon like the whitest, coldest sand he's ever seen. As he turns around, observing all three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of this world, little flakes of the same stuff start to fall on him. Of course he can't feel it on his sleeves, but he can feel it on his face and it melts.

"Melty frozen water falling from the sky... um... Interesting." Interesting enough to cause all his anger to run away. He trudges towards the faint yellow lights on the horizon, hoping that Sora will be somewhere.

But maybe he is hoping he won't find Sora just yet.

-
"And that's what it was like."

Kairi blinks slowly, pondering. "Hmm."

"Do you remember? Huh? Anything about snow?"

"...No."

Riku's heart deflates slightly.

"Sorry."