Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts is the property of Square Enix and The Walt Disney Corporation. No profit is being made from this fanfiction.
-- -- --

-

When Riku comes home with a handful of cash and a new blanket, Sora knows he's been street fighting again.

Not like he has a problem with it--and the blanket looks clean, it might even be new-new, Kairi would like that he figures--other than Riku doesn't always tell him where all the fights are; but Sora's got a job already this week, promoting a new store that's opened, and they'd probably fire him if he shows up with bruises. Which he would, because if he and Riku are in the same bouts, they always wind up in the finals together, and Sora's still working on that 'win more times than Riku' thing.

Kairi's the only one of them with a steady job, doing some kind of clerk work at some business that seems to involve lots of paper; she comes home with toner on her knuckles and paper cuts on her fingers at least one day out of the week.

--

Sometimes Sora wishes they'd thought to pack extra clothes when they'd taken off on the raft. Sure, there was a weight issue, and if they'd had any less water they probably wouldn't have made it to the shore (he shoves the thought away as soon as he has it; he doesn't like thinking of the circles under Riku's eyes those last couple days, the sharpness of Kairi's cheekbones), and they'd all have just outgrown those too; but maybe they could have used one set as spare parts for the other or something. He wants a new pair of pants. His old ones, the ones that used to be fine except for the briny smell never really went away, are way too short now, and it's starting to cause problems when he's out on the street at certain hours. They gave him a pair of overalls at this one job tarring a roof; he wishes sometimes he'd just taken them when it was over and seen if he could cut them down into something normal-looking. Normalish. He's not picky. He'll take anything at this point, so long as it doesn't look like hot pants.

Kairi didn't get her job until after her skirt was really kind of . . . kinda . . . noticeable. And the clerk position was supposed to require a high school degree or equivalent.

After the first week, she told Riku he had to stop 'happening to pass by,' because his scowling was making her boss touchy and they sort of needed enough money to make next month's rent and not starve. (The 'landlord' demands cash, and even if he's cheating them--it's not an apartment, it's just one room, and they share a bathroom with the whole floor--there's not a lot of places that will sell a roof to a few teenagers without demanding paperwork and proof of citizenship.)

The next day Sora showed up on her lunch break with a couple convenience store sandwiches. Most of the people in her office seemed to like him, and he's pretty sure none of them know he followed that one guy who was taking pictures of her with his phone into the bathroom--including the guy, Sora tried really hard not to be seen. He remembered to break the guy's phone with his foot, because of fingerprints and stuff.

Even if the guy did know it was him, Kairi's never said anything, so Sora figures he got the message and they don't have anything to worry about.

That was a good thing, because he can't visit Kairi much at work; about the third time he went to see her, somebody started yelling this other guy's name when he was on his way back.

He didn't think about it--it wasn't his name, why would he?--until the next time he was in the area, in the evening. This weird-looking guy had given him a ten and a letter and said if he took it to a guy in the bookstore off the square, he'd get another twenty there, and Sora figured why not? He could grab Kairi on the way back and they could get burgers (Riku told him later he was an idiot for not looking inside before delivering it). That time, someone grabbed him from behind and asked why he'd dyed his hair.

He didn't start the fight--there was thirty bucks at stake, enough for dinner and the next day's groceries--and it all just seemed like some silly mistake; they had a friend that looked a lot like him, but he'd gone missing around the last winter. But then the first guy shoved him in the chest, and Sora started to think if the letter got damaged he might not get the twenty, and he was mostly just trying to push the two guys off enough to get the room to leave, but then Riku showed up out of nowhere with that metal pole; and after that there wasn't much else to do but win.

Turned out later that Kairi had met them all before, and made friends with Olette and then plans with her for the six of them to hang out one day when there was a fair downtown. That was awkward.
-

It'd probably be easier to get money if he could go anywhere in the city to look for work, but now he tries to avoid that area. Even if Kairi and Olette made them work out a truce--after they separated Hayner and Riku--he doesn't like the way the three of them look at him, like he's somehow responsible for the guy still being gone. Or like they want him to stop reminding them of it.

--

He doesn't notice until Kairi mentions it, but Riku's coming back later and later nights.

"Hey," she says, when he rolls over on the floor and blinks enough times to realize she's sitting against the wall, legs pulled up to her chest and arms loosely around them.

"Why're you up?" he mumbles, or a close approximation thereof. She understands.

Kairi raises an eyebrow and gives him that quirked, you-are-such-a-dweeb-sometimes smile. "Riku's not back yet."

Sora props himself up on an elbow and looks around the room. "Huh. Guess the fight ran long."

"Yeah," Kairi agrees. "They've been doing that."

"Don't worry," Sora says, flopping back down and folding his arms under his head. "No one can beat Riku."

"Yeah," Kairi says quietly, resting her chin on her knees.

Riku's back when he wakes up that morning, sun streaming through the window they don't have blinds for; but Sora looks a little harder now because Kairi's doing the same, and maybe there are a couple more bruises than usual, but it doesn't seem that noticeable.
-

If Kairi's worried, something has to be wrong; but Sora looks when he remembers to and Riku is still Riku. He still looks out at the world with those eyes that convinced Sora getting on a raft to cross the ocean was a totally great idea, like he's seeing past whatever's in front of him to places Sora wants to go.

Riku does it more, now, maybe; that's all. He glares out their window, making Sora wonder what he's seeing instead of the flickering neon sign of the ramen restaurant across the street below . . . but not that much. They'll all see it; this place is just a sandbar. The world's waiting past it.

--

There's nothing in the apartment but their bags and the hotplate Kairi got from a flea market along with a pot and some dishes, packets of chopsticks he and Riku sneak from the restaurant whenever they're low, a few blankets bunched up on the floor and whatever groceries they have for the day, and a couple wooden boxes Sora swiped from an alley. There's another piece of cloth Riku nailed to the ceiling in the corner for Kairi to change behind; she used to get dressed in the bathroom, but then she noticed the holes in the wall, so Riku won this guy's trench coat in a fight and cut it up until it would hang wide enough.

None of them really bother to do more with the place; there's not much money, and anything extra would probably get stolen eventually, and they're not in it much, and when they are in it they're all there which is enough; and anyway, they're not staying here forever.

--

Girls are luckier, Sora thinks once, after Riku's stolen one of his shirts and given it to Kairi to make her skirt longer and then given Sora his over-shirt to make him shut up. Kairi manages to make her skirt longer and fit better over her hips and add strips of fabric to the side of her shirt so it's not so tight over her--chest, though now she has to wash everything in the bathroom's sink since she can't throw her clothes in the washers in the laundromat down the street or the stitches rip out. Sora has no idea how to go about making his pants less tight; he doubts he could do the add-strips-of-fabric thing without ruining them.

Riku puts him in a headlock when Sora says they should probably at least share the shirt until it's closer to summer, so he quits and enjoys wearing something that isn't as tight around his arms and figures Riku will come around eventually after he's frozen in that tank top a few more days. The thing's so worn it can't be much use anymore except to avoid public indecency laws. Or maybe not; Sora's shorts are pretty bad, but even they're not as tight as Riku's shirt has gotten.

It's his own fault for growing so much taller, Sora thinks sourly one morning when he notices Riku has gained another inch on him again.
-

Riku doesn't spar with him as much lately. They'll go days without practicing sometimes, which is weird, and makes Sora restless and over-energized. Even if he prods at Riku, he'll just shrug him off unless Sora flat-out attacks.

This night, he's having a good day; he's managed to get Riku's arm behind his back, which is about halfway to winning, while Kairi has her blanket pulled up over her head and is occasionally kicking a leg in their general direction and telling them to let her sleep or she'll go get addicted to coffee and that'll show them. Or something like that; the blanket's muffling her words and she's kind of slurring them anyway.

Riku has to shift his footing to avoid her leg coming close to his calf, and Sora sees his chance and knocks his feet out from under him.

"Ha!" he says, because he didn't really think that would work, and throws his weight forward while keeping Riku's arm twisted back to force him to the floor. He has to grab Riku's upper arm by his elbow to hold him down, but hey, he's winning.

"Give in?" Sora asks, and suddenly Riku tenses up underneath him; and next thing Sora knows, he's been hit in the face hard enough that he skids across the floor and slams against the wall.

Should have pinned his forearm, Sora thinks as he pinches his nose and ducks his head between his knees, trying to stop the bleeding before it really starts.

His thoughts are mostly jumbled around the whooshing in his ears and the grossness of blood dripping between his fingers and the different ways he screwed up, so he's not sure exactly how much time has passed before he hears Riku say, "Sorry."

Sora blinks and lifts his head to look up at him. Riku's standing in the middle of the room, looking like he doesn't know what to do with his arms, and Kairi's sitting up and watching the both of them.

"What for?" Sora replies, confused. "It's not broken."

Riku looks like he can't find an answer for a while, and then says "Oh." A while after that, he shrugs; but it looks more like an imitation of what he used to do than the real thing.

Sora wonders if the hit affected his eyes, too.
-

He has to soak his shirt in cold water for a couple hours if he wants to hope to get the blood out, which means he has to sit in the bathroom and haul the shirt in and out any time one of their neighbors wants to use it. It's probably close to three a.m. by the time he returns to their room, since the ramen restaurant has finally turned off its sign.

Riku's curled up in a corner, back to the room, the blanket covering most of him from view. Kairi's in a different corner of the same wall, looking like she tried to stay awake; but she's half-slumped over and asleep too. Sora leaves the shirt on the floor by the door and prods her in the shoulder until she wakes up enough to lie on the floor, before collapsing on his own blanket.

--

Riku's coming back even later these days. He doesn't look much different, and he definitely doesn't look like he's been losing, but Kairi says it's like his heart's bruised and Sora believes her.

He's tried to talk to Riku a couple times, but Riku always acts like Sora's questioning his ability to fight when that's not what Sora is saying at all, and then they end up sparring and Sora forgets to keep harassing him because he's busy trying not to lose.

Riku's also coming back with more money. Enough that one day, even with groceries and rent and their Get-Out-Of-Here savings (Kairi keeps track of everything on a piece of scrap paper she brought home from work one day; the opposite side is some half-finished research report, and Sora keeps planning to ask what exactly the place where she works does), there's enough left over to go clothes shopping. Kairi hugs Riku for like a whole minute she's so happy, and Sora thinks he could have earned that much too if Riku would just stop being so secretive about where he's fighting these days.

But it's nice to have pants again. And to not have to try not to look whenever Kairi has to yank her skirt back down because it's riding up. They all buy flip-flops because you can't grow out of those as fast as regular shoes, even though it's still pretty cold out in the mornings and evenings.

--

It's the shoes that finally make Riku start waiting for Sora whenever a new fight's been organized. Kairi got in trouble because her job wouldn't allow her to wear the flip-flops and now she has blisters where her old shoes are too tight; and Sora keeps courting frostbite because he can't wear socks with his sandals and still run fast enough to make people figure it was worth paying him to be a messenger.

(The store-opening job is long gone, and he still picks up occasional temporary work like it--he gets a lot of tips from people he's worked for about new jobs--but the best semi-permanent work he's got is being an unofficial delivery boy around town.

Okay, so it's mainly for this one group of people downtown, but they pay ridiculously well for just carrying letters around. And Sora's figured out that the reason they keep flagging him is because he doesn't read them, so that shows Riku who's an idiot.)

--

It's at the third street fight they attend that Sora meets the Bastard (he doesn't know his name, he doesn't want to know his name, he just wants him away from Riku and Kairi and out of his world). The first fight Riku was really twitchy, acting distant in a way that was weird even if Sora was bouncing on his feet a lot--it had been a while, he was justified; and if it were anyone but Riku, Sora would have sworn that he threw the second to last fight so that he didn't wind up fighting him at the end.

The second one wasn't as bad. Riku wasn't acting like he was expecting someone to stab him, and Sora managed to hold his own against him for several minutes before eventually losing in the final round. It was the third one where everything went to hell.

The fight's pretty early in the night, all things considered, so Kairi goes with them and rolls her eyes when Riku says it's too dangerous.

"I'm not on you guys' team," she replies, "I'm staying in the sidelines."

"That's dangerous too," Riku mutters.

"I won't take my wallet and I'll kick anyone who tries to grope me," Kairi says, setting her hands on her hips.

"It's still not safe."

"Then maybe you shouldn't be going there either."

That pretty much ends it; Riku tries to argue a couple more times, but Kairi sticks to that one statement and finally he gives up. Sora's not sure why he's so angry; it's not like Kairi hasn't watched them before, at times when the police are busy doing something else and she doesn't have to get up early for work the next morning, and it's fun to have someone else to show off for. But Riku walks the whole way to the parking garage like he's just daring anybody to take a swing at him.

They're there for only a few minutes, long enough for everyone to recognize who they are and to get their place in the informal chart, when Riku's shoulders stiffen.

Sora looks over at him, and then notices this tall man standing next to him that he hadn't seen around earlier. He must have just arrived.

He's not doing anything, or saying anything, and no one in the group is looking at him like he's one of the fighters; but Riku is getting tenser and tenser and there's just something about the man that Sora doesn't like. He doesn't like the casual way he's standing next to Riku, or how it kind of looks like he's staring out at the part of the crowd that Kairi's in. He doesn't want him near them.

The feeling is cemented when the man turns to look at him over Riku's head and says politely, "I hope the both of you make it to the finals again this time. I'm looking forward to seeing tonight's outcome."

Riku's hands are fisted in his pockets, and his shoulders are shaking as he glares straight ahead. Sora just kind of looks at the man for a second, because he's not doing anything but he really, really wants him to go not do it somewhere else; and then the man leaves, mingling into the ring that's slowly starting to form as the first guys up get ready.

Riku loses his first fight, and goes and sits on the wall next to Kairi with one hand curled around something in his pocket and the other one braced on the concrete behind her. Sora tries to stick it out through the rounds, because they can always use more money; but he's keeping an eye on Riku and Kairi and the man, and eventually the loss of concentration means a guy he normally would have beat takes him out.

That's when the Bastard gets his nickname.

--

It's like the threat of losing Riku and Kairi make him look at them differently. He's known Riku for all he can remember of his life, grown up with Kairi, been with them when they were living in separate houses and together on that raft Sora privately nicknamed "Deathtrap" after the first squall and in this huge city. They're the touchstones of his life; anything particularly worth remembering, one or both of them are in it, at the periphery or in the center or else in his thoughts as he imagines This would be cooler with Riku here or Kairi would probably like this.

But now, it's like they're in sharper focus than anything else in the city; now he notices them before he notices the rest.

It gets awkward when he starts to notice how different they look now from when the three of them began building the raft.

Some of it was always obvious--Kairi has, like, girl-parts now, and Riku's always had more muscles than him no matter how many pushups Sora does--but most of it wasn't. He's not sure if Kairi's always played with her hair like that, and he's only mostly sure that Riku didn't used to slouch the way he does once in a while.

He is sure, though, that he didn't used to feel jealous sometimes when he sees the two of them together. The feeling makes him doubly aggravated, because it makes no sense; they're his friends, and if they're together when he's not around he doesn't have to worry as much, because Riku can protect Kairi and Kairi can make sure Riku doesn't do anything too dumb or dangerous without Sora's backup. It's not like they're less his friends for being each others'; and it's not like they've gone anywhere. It's weird and stupid.

But it exists.

But then Kairi smiles at him or Riku rolls his eyes at him over something someone else is saying, and he forgets it for awhile.
-

. . . The dream doesn't really help, though.

Sora doesn't usually remember his dreams, because he doesn't usually sleep much at a time; he prefers naps, because doing all the sleeping in some big chunk feels like it's wasting part of the day when something cool might be happening. He vaguely feels like he's had this one before, or maybe started to have it and then woke up before it got far. He knows it's a dream because Kairi's wearing that dress he saw her looking at in a store window once when he was walking back with her from work. He's wanted to buy it for her for a while, even though she's never mentioned it; but the fact it was in a store window and not a thrift shop rack kind of precludes that idea (he doesn't think any more about how he could make enough if Riku would tell him about fights; Riku does tell him these days, but they never manage to make it through all the rounds before the Bastard shows up and Riku drops out and Sora follows because he can't give all his attention to two things at once).

Kairi's wearing that dress and Riku's kissing her against the wall.

Sora's not sure why he's standing in the room and not saying something, or leaving, or doing anything really but staring; he's pretty sure he's not supposed to stare, even though it just . . . it looks good, the way Kairi's fingers are tangled in the ends of Riku's hair and how Riku's hand is splayed over her hip, rucking the hem of her skirt up slightly. He can see the muscles in her thigh flex when she stretches a little higher up on her toes, and see Riku's shoulder blades shift underneath his tank top when he leans closer and it. It looks good.

It looks good, and it makes Sora nauseous in the back of his throat, because he doesn't want to be on the outside. He doesn't want to lose, to Riku, to Kairi; he doesn't want to be left behind.

They break apart to breathe, and he's about to back out of the room before they see him, stomp on the floorboards like he's been in the bathroom or something--and then Kairi tilts her head and smiles at him past Riku's shoulder. Riku's still leaning down, forearm braced hard against the wall, but he turns his head too and looks right at Sora.

And Sora realizes he's not on the outside; he's just standing a little further away at the moment. He can see there's still space for him there, between Kairi's smile and Riku's gaze; they've kept it there for him, no matter how close they got.

All in all, it's a really weird dream.

--

One night, Riku doesn't come back.

When they wake up and realize he hasn't been there, Kairi and Sora go through the building and then the street and then the neighborhood, looking; and then Kairi uses the convenience store's phone to call in sick to work and she and Sora come up with a plan: she'll look through the nearby hospitals and doctors, and he'll go to all the places they usually fight at to see if anyone knows what happened.

In hindsight, Sora thinks, splitting up was a really stupid idea.

--

Nobody at any of the hospitals he goes to say they saw someone like Kairi, even when he hunts down that one creepy guy in a side hall who he's delivered letters to before. That one shouldn't have been surprising; he's not even sure the guy knows what he looks like, he barely looks up from his papers except to pay Sora whenever he's come in.

Sora goes through all the hospitals he even thinks Kairi would have gone to, and then goes through them again, and then goes back around all the fight spots and then to see if Hayner or Olette have heard anything. Then he buys a hot dog off a street vendor because he's starting to see spots at the corner of his eyes, and sits on a curb and tries to figure out where to go next.

He hasn't thought of anything by the time he finishes eating, so he decides to head back to the area around their apartment and go through there once more before maybe trying the fight areas again.

"Hey, kid," he hears when he's waiting on a stoplight.

"Sorry," Sora tells the man, bouncing on his feet because it feels like every second he's not doing something he's wasting time. It's one of the letters guys. "I'm busy."

The man raises an eyebrow at him. ". . . You look like you've lost someone."

Sora stills.

"What?" he replies, finally turning to fully face the guy. In the corner of his eye, he can see the light change and people start crossing, and it makes him more agitated.

"You've got that look," the guy replies, shrugging casually. "You've been a real useful kid, you know. If you want help with something, I know a guy."

Sora just kind of looks at him, because he's not sure how to answer. He could use help, but he suddenly doesn't know if he trusts these people; with Kairi and Riku missing, he's not sure he trusts anyone right now.

It doesn't seem to stop the man, which is normal for him. He tosses a business card at him; Sora catches it reflexively and wonders if he had it up his sleeve or something, because he didn't reach into his pocket. "If you're looking for someone," he tells Sora, "just head there. Got it memorized?"

"Yeah," Sora says guardedly.

The guy gives him that look that he does sometimes, the one that makes Sora think of Hayner and his gang even though it's not the same; and then he turns and leaves. Sora wants to demand more from him, answers or something--but he has to run across the street before the light goes from yellow to red, because he can't just stand there any longer.
-

The neighborhood and the fight areas and the hospitals turn up nothing again, and at this point Sora thinks there has to be somewhere else to go. But he doesn't know where that is, so he wanders through the area where Kairi works and hopes he'll turn a corner and they'll just be there. He doesn't even care if they're kissing.

He finds himself staring through the barred window of a pet store, and realizes he's not sure how long he's been there. The dog in the display is lying on a mat, watching him with blank curiosity, and Sora has a feeling deep inside that something is completely and totally wrong.

The card is crumpled in his fist. Sora flattens it on the glass until it's readable, ignoring the way the dog's come up to where he's standing, and tries to make out the writing in the orange street light.

It's the flower shop. He's delivered a lot of letters to the owner there, but not many from him; but he knows how to get there easy. Sora stares at the card.

It's probably closed by now. I'll look a little longer, he thinks, and shoves the card into his pocket. The dog paws at the glass when he leaves.

There's a duck painted on the design of the shop's door, and the wrong feeling twists deeper into Sora's heart and guts. He throws up the hot dog in the gutter, and then has to make his way to the nearest gas station to wash out his mouth.

He asks the guy working at the station counter if he's seen anyone like Riku or Kairi, but the answer's no.

-