ŜĦÄĐĖŠ
by hikari-aozora
»So bright ... so confusing ... so everywhere«
It's not that Riku was afraid of the light. He'd just spent so long in darkness that his eyes were having trouble adjusting.
The island sunrises and sunsets, with their glares cast across water; high noon, when the sun beat down fiercely upon his face; night was the only time he could truly relax, and unfortunately for him, there was never enough of it.
They were no longer in the realm of darkness, he had to remind himself, nor were they in the realm of light. They were somewhere in between, and yet it was still too much.
"Hmph." Riku mentally scolded himself for thinking like that. Too much? Who was he to criticize the home he had fought so hard to return to? Nah, his mind would reply. It's not the island you're complaining about. It's the sunlight. There's too much of it. Can't they turn it down a notch?
The silver-haired teen shook his head to clear it and leaned backward into the trunk of the tree, his arms crossed. His brain ached, and whether it was because of stubborn conscious or this unbearable heat, he couldn't tell.
"... Riku? Hey, Riku! What's your problem?"
It was only when Sora's hand passed in front of his face, blocking the light, that he realized the boy had been standing there for quite some time, trying to get his attention. Riku snapped out of his gaze and straightened up quickly, stumbling slightly in his haste and kicking a few grains of sand out of place. Not very graceful on his part. Riku blamed it on his over-attentive side momentarily clashing with the side currently suffering from heat stroke.
His sudden movements startled Sora, and the brunet staggered back a step. "Woah ... you okay?" he asked, genuinely concerned. It wasn't like Riku to falter. It had never been like him.
"What? Oh, yeah," was Riku's monotonous reply as he slumped back down in his former position. He tilted his head back and over to stare at his best friend and, even though the younger boy winced, managed to ask cooly, "What's up?"
"Just wondering what I was doing wrong," Sora said, earning an eyebrow arch from his best friend. "Your eyes are all squinty. It looked like you were glaring at me."
"Hmm. Sorry 'bout that." Riku blinked a little too slowly, as if for a split second his eyelids had stuck together. Either that, or he was just trying to savor the darkness. "It's this ... It's the heat, and the light, and ... and the sun ..."
Sora cocked his head to one side, one eyebrow raised. "It's summer?" he offered, and Riku just shrugged his shoulders, too out of it to reply.
His head was swimming.
Everywhere he looked, the colors were blurring. Shades of teal and orange and purple from the water and sky mixed with the gold of the sand, the brown and tan and green of the trees ... then the reds and blacks and whites and yellows and browns and blues of Sora ...
And then, to top it all off, that crown chain he never left home without ... was just so damn reflective.
Riku grunted loudly, and before Sora could even say one word he had stormed down the beach, muttering something-or-other about, "Too bright, too bright."
.oOo.
It started off the same as every other dream.
Heartless lunged at him from every direction. He twirled in circles, swinging his Keyblade and cutting down his enemies in midair. They jumped and clawed at him, yearning for a taste, yearning for his blood, yearning for his heart. But they never got a chance, as he sliced them to pieces mercilessly and left them to fade on the slick pavement. The rain pounded against his back and gathered in puddles around his feet, but not once did he slip. He fought with the ferocity of the most fearsome of his opponents, feet shuffling quickly this way and that. He was untouchable, impossible to defeat, even blindfolded and clothed in a hooded floor-length black trench coat.
Not even the light could bring him down.
But then, as he was clearing a path in front of him through the swarm, he noticed the shadow of something looming over him, something bigger and darker and more dangerous than any of the foes before him. The heartless scampered away, cowering beneath the unlit street lamps and beside the tall, dark shapes that were normally set ablaze with neon signs.
Riku, though, was not afraid. He slowly stepped across with his back foot, pivoting slowly, smoothly, to face none other than Sora.
"Rise and shine, you lazy bum!"
The loud scraping sound of the drapes being drawn back awakened the sixteen-year-old. Searing light poured into the room, covering him like a blanket. He cringed, pulling his knees to his chest and shivering in the heat, eyes shut tight. One hand groping for the bed sheets that were in a mound at the end of his bed, he muttered a string of curses under his breath aimed at his best friend.
Why did all good things have to come to an end? He didn't want to wake up yet.
"You have to get up eventually, Riku," Sora told him. "Now seems good. It is half-past one, after all."
The older teen sat up, groaned, and rubbed his eyes, opening them ever so slowly. The light burned, and he squinted, shooting yet another glare in Sora's direction, though this time, it was purposeful. "Why you?" he asked in a raspy voice.
"What's that?"
"What are you doing here?"
"Oh, I came by to get you after Kairi came to get me," the brunet replied, wandering over to his friend's wooden dresser and pulling the first drawer open. "She wants to go out to the island ... to collect something ... Ah, she told me. I don't remember." Sora closed the first drawer and opened the second, rummaging through the neat stacks of clothing inside. "That was what she told Selphie, anyway. Can you believe it? Kairi made up some bogus excuse not to go to Tidus and Wakka's blitzball double-header with her. Kairi! Of all people ..." A shirt was tossed over Sora's shoulder to land directly on top of Riku's head. Riku grunted, but really, he was grateful. At least it was shade.
"It took me forever to organize that thing," Riku said as Sora moved on to the third and final drawer. "You know how unorganized I am ..."
"Heh, still more organized than me, probably." Sora crouched down. "Anyway, back to my story. So I came over here to get you, right, and your mom answers the door. 'Where's Riku?' I ask. 'Upstairs, sleeping,' she says. 'Already tried to wake him up twice.' She thinks your sick or something. I think you're sick or something. You never sleep this late."
Riku wanted to say, "I never used to sleep this late," but he decided against it. Sora was already questioning his well-being.
" ... I volunteered to drag you out of bed, and that's what I'm doing here." A pair of pants landed at Riku's feet, and Sora could be heard closing the drawer. There was a shuffle of feet, and Sora was staring at his best friend, hands on his hips. "Riku, man, that's not how you put on a shirt. Seriously, what did the realm of darkness do to you?"
The silver-haired teen sighed. More than you know.
"Well, whatever," Sora said when Riku didn't answer aloud, and he headed out, pausing once in the door frame to call back quickly, "Get dressed. I'll be downstairs." But even downstairs, a floor away, he could be heard shouting, "And they say I'm the lazy one!"
.oOo.
No matter how hard he squinted, no matter how the edge of his hand was glued to his brow to shade his eyes, it hurt. The light was everywhere. Everywhere. Even in the shade, it seemed.
But he didn't dare close his eyes and let the darkness take him. He didn't dare give in to the temptation. No, he didn't trust the darkness that much. He kept his gaze locked on his two best friends, whose fingers were laced between them innocently, a rosy blush apparent on their cheeks. It didn't matter that they hung their heads in embarrassment as they walked; their goofy, blissful smiles were all-too-apparent.
Riku smirked. He guessed he'd have to get used to that, too.
More adjusting.
It was quite inconvenient, really. Before all of this – the Keyblade, the other worlds, the darkness – he, Sora, and Kairi were independent people, even though they pretended like they were inseparable. Nowadays, the opposite was true. They'd tried to stand on their own for a while, but it was as if fate had tied them all together with elastic bands; you could only wander so far away before you were yanked backward onto the ground, your spine pressed against two others. This sort of connection between the three of them meant protection, security, but it also meant being prepared for anything. Adding to the mix Sora and Kairi's relationship, well ... Riku had to struggle to find twenty minutes of alone time during the day.
But just because he was being forced to hang out with them (when he would much rather have been sleeping in) didn't mean he had to do anything. That's why he was just standing there, after all, leaning against a once-promising palm tree whose shadow was evaporating as the sun rose higher and higher into the sky. Besides, he didn't feel like doing anything.
Maybe he was sick, after all.
All of the sudden, it felt as if his brain were on fire. He cringed in pain, and a hand shot up to his face, fingers running up along the bridge of his nose to rest between his eyes, pressing down. The pain was excruciating, and his head felt hot, so hot. Beads of sweat ran in rivers down his wrinkled forehead, and he pressed harder, begging, pleading with his mind to make it stop. His free hand balled into a fist, and he felt his feet dig holes in the dirt, but his body was working on its own now. He was fighting for the control he had so spontaneously lost, but it was no use. His knees felt week, and above everything else, he could hear rapid thumps, like four feet stomping the sand as their owners ran, or like the heartbeat of a man whose head was about to explode.
"Riku!"
That was the last thing he heard before his knees gave out and he collapsed, unconscious, in the shade.
.oOo.
He'd been careless, and two days of bed rest was his sentence.
His mother called it heat stroke, but he knew better. It wasn't the heat that had gotten to him; it was the darkness that still plagued him on the inside, eating away at his immunity to the scorching sunlight. The longer he hid from the sun, the worse it would become. This, he finally understood.
For once, he didn't want to be confined to a dark room. If he stayed like this, sooner or later he wouldn't be able to resist the light. The tiniest ray that seeped in through the drapes could kill him.
Still, he needed the rest. He was exhausted, and saw this as his opportunity to get in as many hours of sleep as possible before starting the treatment for this disease.
But sleep was fitful.
He tossed and turned in his sleep, face twisted in pain, hair damp with sweat, fingernails digging into his palms, drawing crimson blood. His legs kicked wildly at his blankets in which he was tangled, fighting them as the squeezed his sore body.
That dream, the same dream that came to him every night, had turned into a nightmare.
The heartless were still there, but they were taller, wider, bigger than him. Thousands of them lined the streets before him, their bright eyes giving everything a yellow glow. The hood had been ripped from his cloak and swallowed by a monstrous neoshadow with gleaming white fangs and six-inch nails. Nothing was stopping the rain from pounding against his scalp, completely drenching him from head to toe. He was barefoot, and his feet were wet from slipping and sliding in puddles that could just as easily have been of blood as water. His arms seemed unusually heavy and he could barely lift the Keyblade, let alone wield it in his defense. He could barely move a step in any direction before his legs began to shake from the exertion. There were cuts and bruises all over his legs and arms and back and face. The bright colors of the glowing neon lights had filtered in through the cloth over his eyes, making it harder to see than if he were blind.
The light had found a way into his dreams. Now, there was no differentiating between this reality and the next.
.oOo.
On the third day, Riku emerged from his home to find Sora and Kairi sitting on his doorstep, heads in their hands. The door creaked shut, and a wide-eyed Sora immediately turned around to face the silver haired teen.
His jaw dropped.
There was Riku, looking paler than ever, a broad smile on his face, sporting a rather large pair of sunglasses.
After a few moments of gawking, words finally found Sora. "Riku, what–"
"Let's go," Riku snapped, cutting him off as he brushed past him, walking right between him and an equally surprised Kairi to trudge down the dirt road to the docks.
Whether it was because of the shades or the attitude with which he had greeted them – seemingly oblivious to the fact that he had just passed out on them three days earlier ... or just not caring – Riku wasn't sure, but the trio sat in silence for most of the boat ride out to the island. Kairi had opened her mouth once to say, "Riku, you should really take those off. You look ridiculous." But when he'd said nothing – a silent refusal – she'd just turned to Sora and shrugged. The brunet looked as if he were still in a state of shock, but it was nothing to worry about. That was just his nature.
Finally, the small wooden boat had collided with the beach, and Riku had promptly leapt from the boat. Sora jumped up to follow him but, in his hast, tripped and fell flat on his face. By the time he'd recovered, Riku was already halfway across the bridge to the islet.
The brunet had run to catch up and found that Riku had stopped just in front of the paopu tree. He was standing perfectly still, gazing out at the water, hands clasped behind his back. Sora bent over, resting his hands on his knees, just staring in utter disbelief at his friend, who just yesterday had been deathly ill.
Riku knew there would be no avoiding the question that came out of Sora's mouth.
"Riku ... what's wrong with you?"
The silver haired teen had turned around slowly to face his best friend, flashing him a genuine smile before spreading his arms out wide.
One step at a time.
"I'm adjusting," he said, before falling backwards to bask in the sunlight.
I assure you, I'm not dead. Very much alive, in fact.
I've just been really stressed out lately, and I apologize.
I hope this tides you over 'til I can update my other story. Leave me a review as a late birthday present, why don't you :
hikari-aozora