Holding Up the River

Part 5

All That Was Stated in Part 1 Remains True In Part 5. Thank you!

The skateboard sailed over the wet pavement, kicking up a fine spray. Its rider crouched and then jumped. For a moment they were both air born, the skateboard held firmly by black-and-white taped fingers as strong legs pulled up almost to the rider's chin. They landed together with expert ease and ground past Sora, close enough to ruffle his hair.

"What're you so upset about?" Roxas called over his shoulder as he began another circuit of Tram Commons.

Sora shook his head. Water droplets flew in all directions. Except for the sound of Roxas's skateboard, Tram Commons was eerily silent and abandoned. The trains stood still and dark, the shops closed and barred. Heavy gray clouds roiled across the sky, blocking even Twilight Town's normally dim sunlight.

"What's going on?" Sora asked. He reached up to rub his arms. "Why's it so dark here?" He wondered if this was some memory of Roxas's; Sora had never seen Twilight Town in the middle of a storm like this.

"You can't tell?" Roxas shouted from somewhere behind a building.

Sora opened his mouth to ask what Roxas meant and swung his Keyblade through the dark mass, feeling a surge of satisfaction as yet another Heartless vanished. They surrounded him, the familiar seething mob with hungry claws, hateful yellow eyes. He spun around, using the force of his momentum to power his next strike. The Shadow Heartless before him turned seconds before the blow connected.

Except it wasn't a Shadow, it was his mother. Her wispy brown hair that always smelled of mango was wild about her round face, her blue eyes wide were going wide with shock. She lifted her hands, soft from the lotion she used daily, with uneven nails she always complained she didn't have the time to tend, in a desperate attempt at self-defensive. It was no good. The blunt end of his Keyblade slammed into her face with a horrible crunch and she was gone, her screaming heart twisting up into the sky. Xemnas would have it in a moment, delivered straight to him as if Sora had gift wrapped it.

Stop, Sora told himself. Stop!

Claws grazed his arm. He pivoted on his heel, brought the Keyblade around one-handed into the Heartless beside him. Oblivion shimmered like the moon on the night sea as it slashed into his father's side, cutting him apart at the waist.

More were still coming. He was going to kill them all.

No, they aren't Heartless! Sora screamed as Tidus fell and then Selphie behind him, and one of Sora's cousins after that. Can't you see, they're your family, your friends, you have to stop!

"Stop!"

His shout echoed against the brick buildings. His only answer was the clack-clack-clack of skateboard wheels over the cobblestones.

Sora shivered and rubbed his arms again. For the first time, he noticed that he was completely soaked. Dripping wet, as if he'd just climbed out of the ocean after a swim. "I'm having a bad dream," he said.

Roxas appeared around the side of a building and came to a stop a few feet from Sora. "You should be safe here," he said. He looked up at the dark sky and frowned. "For now, I guess. I'm not entirely sure how this works. You woke up fine last time, so..."

"Did you call me here?" Sora wiped the water off his face and started to walk toward his Nobody. After a couple steps, something crackled under his shoe. He stopped and moved his foot out of the way. The picture of Hayner, Pence, and Olette smiled up at him. Sora squatted down and picked it up, before the damp could ruin it.

Roxas stepped on the tail end of his skateboard, flipping the front up into his hand.

"I think I did," Roxas said, "Your heart was troubled, so I thought hard of something I enjoyed doing and..." He glanced around at the Commons and shrugged. No noise penetrated the silence, not even from the rest of the town. Twilight Town was a quiet place, sure, but there had always been this bustling sense of life all the times Sora visited. This was like a graveyard.

"Whatever's bothering you has to be pretty bad. Where did you get that?" Roxas asked.

"Huh?" Sora looked over at Roxas and then, following Roxas's gaze, at the picture in his hand. "It was on the ground. Why aren't you in it?"

"I'm not supposed to be," Roxas said. There was some emotion in his voice Sora couldn't name. It rose in Sora's chest like a tired, gentle sigh, a sad ache that was as treasured as it was painful. "Even in the virtual world Ansem created, I wasn't real. As soon as he was ready to put us back together, everything about me there was erased."

Sora cocked his head in confusion. "Then how come you're in the picture I have? I know Riku got it from the copy Twilight Town. Unless he took the picture while you were still...you know, apart of it."

"Oh," Roxas said, snapping his fingers, "That's why it's been bugging me. Riku couldn't have stolen it from before I was erased, or it wouldn't have been there like that -- " he waved at the picture Sora held, "-- the day I joined with you. Besides, the others and I would have noticed if it got snatched again." He smiled and that same feeling from before made Sora feel like his chest was being rung out. "That picture meant a lot to us."

In the thin gray light, Roxas's figure was strangely inconsistent. One moment an ordinary boy dressed in black and white, a skateboard resting against his leg, the next an Organization XIII member, a Keyblade held loosely at each hip and the occasional flash of ruddy sunlight between the clouds glinting off the metal adornments on his cloak. He shook himself and settled down into the boy again.

"Ask Riku," Roxas said decisively, "If anybody knows, it's him." He dropped the skateboard and slid it over to Sora. "Lets ride some before you wake up."

Sora stopped the board with his foot. He was tempted to protest, to ask more questions while he had the chance, but a chill wind whistled through the Commons and tugged at his wet clothes. Roxas had already acquired another skateboard and the surrounding emptiness yawned even wider as Sora's only company rode off. Seeing nothing else to do, Sora mounted his own board and went after him.

The two raced down Twilight Town's dead streets. Overhead, the clouds continued to seethe.

Sora woke that morning with a headache, sore, swollen eyes, and only a vague memory of having dreamed. He laid in bed for a while, trying to figure out why he felt so exhausted, but could only come up with the feeling that he needed to ask Riku about something. He gave up. It would come to him eventually.

Later at breakfast, without really knowing why, he hugged his mother so tight she protested.

His sixth day back on the islands, Sora's parents took him shopping. It required a ferry ride over to the next island and was exciting as it sounded. Everyone who recognized him wanted to stop for a chat, to exclaim over how much he'd grown, to inquire, in an eager, hushed way, where he'd been for the past two years. His father expertly deflected these questions by pretending they'd never asked them. A store clerk would get overly curious and Sora's father would interrupt to engage in an elaborate fishing story, only to interrupt himself five minutes in to ask about the size of a pair of shorts or if that hoodie came in a different shade of red. The clerk would jump on the question and escape as soon as it was answered. Sora wasn't sure why. His father told the best stories.

There was one thing that stuck with him from the trip; a snippet of overheard conversation while he was getting his new shoes fitted.

"...third attack this month," the woman on the other side of the potted plant behind him had said. Sora curled his bare toes against the carpet and listened closer. "It's always been so safe here, it's why my family moved away from the industries in the first place. I just don't know what to do now."

"Don't the police have any leads?" a man's voice answered her.

"That's the thing," she said. Their voices started to fade as the pair walked off. "None of the witnesses could recall seeing the assailant's face. Strangest of all -- "

That was all he caught before they went out of earshot and the sales clerk returned with a stack of boxes. He tried to put the incident out of his mind. It wasn't his business.

All in all, at the end of the excursion, he was equipped with two new outfits, PJ's, underwear, fingerless-gloves, and a pair of shoes.

"We can get you more later," his mother said, "Things are a little tight right now." The creases in her cheeks deepened when she admitted this. At his questioning look, she explained, "I couldn't work for a while and when I came back, they moved me to part time. Then the fishing turned bad and... well." She ran her fingers through his hair, smiling fondly when the spikes determinedly sprung back up again. "You're home safe. Everything else will work out eventually."

Guilt squirmed in his stomach. Before, Sora had never noticed or cared how clothes ended up on his back or food on his plate or munny for snacks in his pockets. He knew his stuff was a little nicer than what Wakka and Tidus got, not quite as nice as what Kairi had, but that was about it. Then his journey had given him an unexpected crash course in finances. There's something about having to decide between eating that day and the bottle of potion that may end up being the only thing standing between you and death that really makes you appreciate where your munny is coming from.

Which reminded him of the pouch of said funds tucked away in the bottom drawer of his dresser. Not that there was much left after he'd outfitted himself, Donald, Goofy, and Riku before going through the door into Kingdom Hearts.

"Don't worry," she said while he hesitated over the idea of sharing that munny with his family, "They told me I could have all the time I needed to get you settled in again."

'All the time needed' ended up being a week later.

By then, Sora was ready to chew on the walls.

They wouldn't let him leave the house alone. He could invite friends over if he wanted; he could sit on the phone all day; he could play out in the yard as long as he didn't go beyond the property line. He just couldn't go off by himself. His father even offered to take him to the play island, if he wanted to see it so badly, except the idea of letting an adult poke around out there was just unheard of. All in all, threw a big wrench in his original plans to track down and talk to the people in the newspaper, the ones that sounded like they remembered the Darkness.

Though after what happened with Tidus, he couldn't say he was particularly unhappy about that part.

His parents had never restricted him like this before. Ever since he was old enough to row a dinghy on his own, he'd been allowed to run off when and wherever he pleased, as long as he got his chores done and was back home in time for dinner. He was seldom even grounded for more than a couple days. It was like suddenly being put in a cage.

And Sora understood why, really he did.

If he forgot, Kairi would remind him whenever he complained about it to her. Which was pretty often; she was dutiful in her promise to their Nobodies to see him everyday, even if it was only for a couple minutes. Sora had mixed feelings about this. He was happy to see her, but every time she smiled at him or titled her head a certain way, the words "ask her out" flashed across his mind and he got so tongue-tied and nervous it was embarrassing. It was easier when Riku was over too, because then it was just like old times.

Except for the whole being trapped in the house part.

"Sora," Kairi said during one such visit, "Why don't you just relax and enjoy it? This has to be a lot nicer than -- than tracking Riku and me across a dozen of worlds or fighting all those villains."

"It is. I am." Sora had struggled helplessly to express himself. He wanted to tell her how he got ready to attack every time a noise caught him off-guard, that he almost took out the neighbor's cat because it ran at him from under some bushes. About how he woke up sometimes in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep until he convinced himself that Donald and Goofy weren't nearby because they weren't supposed to be, that he could wait a few hours to call her and Riku to hear their voices. That everything was okay.

In the end, he didn't say anything, because it was Kairi. The last thing he wanted was to look bad in her eyes.

So the next evening, when Sora's parents sat him down to announce that they had to return to their respective jobs in two days and lay down the rules for while they were gone, it was all he could do to keep from cheering.

The diesel fumes from the bus his mother rode to the ferry were still drifting on the air when Sora tore out of his house. The chain clipped to his new shorts beat a steady rhythm against his hip as he ran.

He swung by Riku's house first, even though it was further out.

"Why don't you take Kairi instead?" Riku said by way of greeting.

"Duh, we're going to be pick her up next," Sora said.

Riku didn't respond right away. He stood in the doorway of the two bedroom house he shared with his mother, one hand holding open the bent screen door. Like Sora, he was wearing new clothes; loose pants, a gray tank top edged in yellow, and a carved bone fishhook on a cord around his neck. He'd worn the same the last time he'd visited and it was as distracting now as it was then.

The problem, Sora had decided the night before when he lay in bed half-asleep and musing, was Riku's shoulders. Riku had always had big shoulders and a broad chest. They'd started bulking up when he was around twelve because of the amount of sword practice he did, and by fifteen, they were almost as broad as a grown man's. Sora had always thought it made Riku look weird and top-heavy. He even said so out loud once and got his face rubbed in the sand for it.

But now that Riku was taller and broader all over, his big shoulders didn't stand out as much. In fact, the tank top made it so obvious how well they fit with his long torso and arms that Sora kept noticing. The way he'd stared noticing that particular smile Riku got whenever they met up. It made him feel weird, but Sora figured he'd get used to it when Riku's new appearance stopped being such a surprise.

"You saw me yesterday," Riku said at last, "You should spend more time with Kairi."

Sora's insides squirmed. "Technically, I saw you both yesterday. Come on Riku, we haven't all been to the island once since we got back. We should all go!"

Riku sighed and rolled his eyes. "I forget how dumb you are sometimes." He shoved the screen open wider and headed back into the house.

"Hey!" Sora shouted. He grabbed the screen before it could close and charged in after Riku, barely remembering to toe his shoes off on the way in.

Once beyond the entrance way, curiosity dimmed his anger. It had been years since he'd been inside Riku's house. Riku seldom invited anyone over to his place, always prefering to go out or stay at his friend's houses.

It was a small house and simply decorated The living room had a low table and a backless couch, with some decorative candles scattered around. The stark cleanliness was marred only by a book laying upside down on the couch and a plate of half-eaten melon on the table. All the furniture looked new. It wasn't somewhere you came to get comfortable.

"I'm meeting my mother for lunch, so I could only stay for a few hours anyway," Riku said. He sat on the couch, his long legs stretched out before him.

It was strange to hear about Riku spending time with his mother. He'd never really talked about her while they were growing up and the rare occasion that Sora had seen them together, they usually acted like the other person wasn't there.

"How are things with her?" Sora asked. He looked around, but he didn't want to sit anywhere for fear of messing it up.

"I... I'm not sure," Riku said. He slouched, resting his weight on his thighs. "It's... I'm not used to it. Do you remember what I was saying on the beach the day we came home? About not missing my mother, not looking forward to being a kid again?"

Sora nodded.

"We never really got along. I used to think she didn't want me here any more than I wanted to be here."

"She's your mom!" Sora protested automatically. He thought of the way she had cried over the radio on the ship taking them into port. "Of course she wanted you!"

Riku gave him a look. "I said 'used to'. Pay attention for once."

Sora subsided with a frown, but he was still upset. He couldn't really describe what the idea of a mother who didn't want her son made him feel. It wasn't what mothers did.

Riku continued to eye him. He started to talk and stopped, his mouth twisting. "This is stupid," he muttered. "Look, forget about my mother. I'm giving you the opportunity to spend time alone with Kairi. You should be grateful."

"Don't change the subject!"

"You're the one who changed it in the first place."

"I asked about how you're doing. That's called 'friendship', you jerk."

"Sora," Riku said. He stood up and walked over to take Sora's shoulders. "Go get Kairi." He turned Sora around. "And take her to the island." He pushed Sora toward the front door. "I'll head out there with you two tomorrow."

Sora slammed his hands into the door frame to keep from getting shoved further.

"If you really think that's going to keep me from throwing you out -- "

"What's it to you how much time I spend with Kairi?" Sora demanded. He frowned over his shoulder, but Riku didn't meet his eyes.

Sora's mind worked furiously. What he had told Tidus, that Riku wouldn't go after Kairi just to be competitive, was true. If Riku went after Kairi, it would be because he liked her.

It wasn't something Sora had really thought about before. But when Kairi's heart was lost, her body an empty shell, Riku had fought just as hard as Sora to save her. More, because even if Riku had been in the wrong, he'd put everything into saving Kairi while Sora hadn't been able to. It wasn't like when Riku switched from stuffing crabs down the back of Sora's shirt to fish because the slimy feeling made Sora yell more; it was because it was Kairi. She was important.

So if Riku liked Kairi -- too, added the little voice in the back of his head -- then why was he trying to push her and Sora together?

Riku's hand vanished from Sora's shoulders as he stepped back. "It's pretty obvious when you're avoiding something."

"I'm not avoiding anything!" Sora said furiously.

"You've been avoiding Kairi," Riku said. His voice wasn't accusatory, even if Riku did have a talent for making even the mildest statements comes off as rude, but Sora bristled anyway. Probably because it was a lot closer to the truth than he was willing to admit.

"Riiight, 'cause it's not like she was at my house yesterday, clearly I"m just --"

Sora made the mistake of dropping his arms and relaxing his stance. A moment later he was propelled out past the door jam, his back stinging from the impact of Riku's push. He checked his forward momentum with his right foot and twisted around just in time to catch his shoes before they slammed into his face.

"Riku! Come on!"

"Whine, whine," Riku said. He used his big frame to -- unfairly! -- take over the entire doorway so Sora couldn't bully his was back inside. "I'll see you later." His voice softened. "I promise I'm not going to vanish before then, Sora."

The protest that Sora had been building up to lodged in his throat. He had to swallow twice to get rid of it. "Cheater," he muttered thickly.

He couldn't tell if Riku heard the accusation. All his friend did was flick his hand in a shooing motion and close the door between them.

When Sora went to pick up Kairi, her father's secretary chased him off. Kairi and her father, she explained tartly, were meeting with a private tutor to see about making up for the months of school work Kairi had missed. Only a couple weeks since returning and Kairi already was falling back into step with the life she'd briefly interrupted.

Sora stood for a while on the walkway leading up to her house, not sure what to do with himself. He got the strange feeling he was the only one trying to live a moment that everyone else had long since finished with.

He continued on to the docks alone.

The little boat was still tied to the pier like it always had been. The rope holding it in place was slightly more frayed than before, the hull slick with algae below the waterline and weathered to a silvery brown above. Some water sloshed around in the bottom as it rocked back and forth. When he climbed in and took up the ores, they felt small in his hands.

But it was still there.

The play island was empty when Sora reached it. Waves and wind had smoothed away the marks of previous visitors, leaving behind tangles of kelp and seashells in place of footsteps. A muggy heat was settling in and Sora walked among the wreckage of the tide with his arms and fingers spread, feeling the heavy air move against his skin.

For a while, he just poked around. Frowned at the wooden shack with it's recently acquired radio tower. Ran the obstacle course he and Riku had always challenged each other on. Laughed over how easy and simple it was, how it used to be such a big deal when he was younger. Mourned over the remains of their raft, now little more than a few logs held together by disintegrating rope. Climbed to the highest platform on the island to look down on it.

He went into the Secret Place last. It was drastically cooler inside than out, the earth-scented chill closing around his shoulder when he stepped inside.

The Secret Place had always carried an expectant hush, like a crowd of people holding their breath before a big event. The first time they had dared to enter it, sticky with sand and sweat, barely able to breathe through the clench of fearful excitement in their chests, the weight of that hush had sent them running out again moments later. But repeat visits had dulled it's intensity, until not even the potential of monsters hidden in the shadows could make the place more interesting than somewhere to draw on the walls and get out of the heat.

Sora felt it again now, rushing lightly over his bare arms and calling up an answering tingle in his right hand. He stretched out his fingers from their instinctive clench. The Keyhole was here, he knew now, and the door that protected his home world.

Quiet and hidden from all, save Riku.

He ran his fingers along the pictures carved into the surrounding rock and wondered. How long had Riku felt the Keyhole's presence? Had it pulled at him the way the other Keyholes had yanked at Sora? Calling the Keyblade to them so strongly that he'd stumbled? Maybe the bigger question; was it the Keyhole that called to Riku, or the Darkness beyond it asking to be let in?

With a shiver, Sora shut off that line of thought and focused on the carving nearest him. It was one of his, he if he remembered right. All of them had left their marks on the cave over the years and it was pretty common to start a drawing and come back later to find someone else had added to it. This particular set of carvings featured a tall, gangly person with a long snout and tall hat. Next to it was another figure, shorter and rounder and even more ridiculous. It flailed it's sketchy arms around as if in a fit of temper.

Sora blinked. He took a few steps back to get a better look at them.

"Donald," he said quietly, pointing to the shorter figure. He moved his hand over to indicate the taller one. "Goofy? No way!" He spun around and scrutinized the collage of drawings with greater interest.

Most of them he knew the story behind, like the one rock completely covered in Tidus's sloppy and grinning self-portrait, or the Chocobo Kairi had carved after the school trip to the zoo, that Selphie later crossed out angrily because she'd been stuck home with a fever that day. But some of the others...

A blob-like mass with slit eyes and a jagged, gap-toothed grin stretched out ominously over a row of graves. He pressed his finger-tips against it, feeling the uneven lines scratched deep into the stone. "Oogie-boogie?"

It certainly reminded him of the gambling obsessed, bug infested villain. The graves, too...if Halloween Town had lacked anything, these grim headstones with their messages of final rest hadn't been it. Sora remembered making this particular drawing and the memory pulled up an involuntary smile.

"That's creepy," Kairi said from the entrance way. She ground the toe of her sandal into the ground uneasily.

Sora dragged his carving stone over the rock a couple more times to fill the main shape and stepped back, wiping streaks of white dust off on his shorts. "Really? I think he's funny looking." He stretched his lips to their limits in mimicry of the creature's manic grin.

Kairi giggled and Sora quickly broke down into answering laughter.

Still smiling, Sora continued on. As his gaze panned past the door, he was distracted by a drawing not mysterious, but unexpected. There was a new addition to the portraits of himself and Kairi they'd drawn so many years ago. Now two arms stretched between them, a mutual exchange of paopu fruit.

He knelt down next to it. The arm from Kairi to him and its burden had been there long enough that the grit from craving it had blown or been brushed away. He traced it lightly, a feeling he couldn't name making his chest swell until it escaped him in a soundless huff of laughter.

Tidus was right. She liked him.

And he liked her back. More than just friends and handholding and occasional hugs. Even though it made his heart pound and his skin tingle with nervous excitement, he could admit he wanted more.

He winced a little. And Riku was right, too. Sora had been avoiding Kairi rather than confront his feelings or share them with her. "Sorry for making you wait, Kairi," he said quietly, "First thing tomorrow, okay?"

He traced over the drawing one more time, the new parts standing bright-white against the faded gray of the old, and stood.

On the other side of the cave, he found a carving of a many-towered castle - Disney Castle? Maybe. It wasn't like any other buildings on the islands, so where had he gotten the idea for it? There were a couple underwater scenes that made him think of Alantica, but considering where they lived, it'd be weirder if no one thought to draw sea life. The moon and star pictures were just as easily explained, even if they did make him think of Twilight Town for some reason.

Back in a high corner was a drawing of Riku, Kairi, and himself facing off against a winged dragon. The dragon had Maleficent's frilled head and bowed legs. Sora remembered drawing himself and Kairi, and had watched Riku add his own image, but he had no idea who drew the dragon. It was just there one day. The scene depicted was completely different from what had really happened against Maleficent, of course; in it, Sora shielded Kairi while Riku, armed with a sword, came at the dragon head on.

It reminded Sora of the dreams he kept getting the weeks before the islands fell. The ones that blended between fantasy and reality, where he was always reaching out to Riku and Kairi and never making it to them before the undertow dragged them apart. A dark warning of his destiny, too obscure to be of any use.

Had the same force that sent him those dreams guided his hand in these drawings all those years before? Did it have something to do with the Keyblade?

That time at the Rising Falls, when Radiant Garden was still Hallow Bastion, Riku had said that the Keyblade wasn't meant for Sora, but had originally chosen Riku as it's master. Sora hadn't questioned it at the time -- and it hardly mattered after the blade answered his strength of heart over Riku's -- but if that was true, why had those dreams come to Sora? Why had he drawn Donald and Goofy before ever seeing their faces?

He shook his head, hard.

"Way too many questions," Sora said aloud. He glanced at the door between this world and the Darkness. A brief flicker of golden light on the otherwise featureless surface hinted at the Keyhole concealed within.

"I guess it doesn't matter in the end, does it?" He shrugged his shoulders. Why waste time worrying about mysteries? "What happened, happened! At least we all made it home safe."

He went back to the picture of them fighting the dragon. It was a nice image. The three of them traveling and finding adventure together, just like they'd planned. Him and Riku fighting side-by-side, both protecting Kairi...

So if Riku liked Kairi too...

Sora's earlier resolve about telling Kairi his feelings wavered suddenly.

Riku. Riku who was his best friend, who maybe also liked the same girl he did. Who seemed ready to step aside despite those feelings, but wouldn't hurt it him to see Sora and Kairi as a couple? It would be terrible to know that every time he took Kairi on a date, Riku would be left alone and hurting. Sora didn't know if he could stand that, but the only other option was not being more than friends with Kairi. He didn't know if he could do that, either.

Confusion and indecision muddled up his thoughts, made his stomach churn. He pressed his palm against the cold rock face.

In the picture of Sora and Kairi together, where did Riku fit?

To be continued...