Originally written June, 2007. Livejournal has a community that challenges you to write for fifty prompts using only a sentence each. So, abuse of commas abound. This is Riku-centric with a Sora/Riku/Kairi feel.

What Sunlight Felt Like

.01. walking
Despite the joy of journey's end and the ability to stand still now, Riku finds that his feet wish to keep moving forward and onward, but living on an island means he's just walking in circles.

.02. waltz
Things are different (not worse, nor better) now, and while he used to dance through life with well practiced steps, he finds that unless Sora or Kairi are at his side to guide his footing, he just stumbles.

.03. wishes
Riku always thinks, always watches, always frames his actions carefully, because looking at Sora and looking at Kairi, he realises he only has one wish left.

.04. wonder
"I wonder what would have happened if-" Sora begins, but Riku doesn't like to think of all the ways things could have gone different, could have gone spectacularly wrong, because there is only one happy ending in the library of What Could Have Been, and he's already living it.

.05. worry
"I worry about you sometimes," Kairi tells him, sitting on the tipped paopu tree and tracing its weathered bark absently for a moment before adding, "Another 'me', too."

.06. whimsy
It's not that he's impulsive, really, but there is something whimsical about the paths he walks during the witching hour at night, because Riku wants the only sure thing, the only one thing you can rely on, to simply be the steady rhythm of bare feet crossing familiar white sand.

.07. wasteland
Sora keeps that one letter (ever folded and creased now) always in his pocket, and Riku tries to swallow the unbidden envy that rises in his throat that no poem offering rescue from a frigid, barren wasteland was ever written for him.

.08. whiskey
The first package that ever makes it through to their islands is from Cid, and they all agree that drinking his (no doubt homebrewed) celebratory whiskey in one go was the single most imbecilic decision of their lives (... which, yes, is quite saying something).

.09. war
If Riku ever thought to name his favourite tangible piece of Sora, it would be the way he could tilt his head just so, smile hesitantly, and look at Riku with eyes that were still so impossibly unfazed by war that it almost makes Riku forget as well.

.10. weddings
They collect the happy tidings with smiles (Ariel, Belle, Mulan even), and while Sora loudly predicts whose wedding will come next, Riku frowns and shies away from the sudden fierce and dangerous glint in Kairi's eye.

.11. birthday
Riku spends his seventeenth birthday mostly trying to forget what he was doing on his previous two.

.12. blessing
He knows Sora sought Kairi's blessing before (lacking preamble and experience) he kissed Riku, and perhaps it's strange that Riku goes to Kairi too, not for permission from the friend he's known forever, but from the more fragile, blonde shadow underneath.

.13. bias
In a celestial contest between the sun and moon, each asking who shines the more lovely, as the ill-chosen judge, Riku would remember that one brilliant memory of Sora reaching his hand out (we'll go together), and of Kairi waving them both into shore, and would then answer: "neither".

.14. burning
For the first while, Riku hides in shadows and shaded doorways because sometimes his skin feels like it's on fire and burning quick to his bone, but then one day he realises he had simply forgotten what sunlight felt like.

.15. breathing
After so many many days of Kairi laying boneless, limp, and quiet, Riku finds every excuse to listen to Kairi breathing now, because maybe if he listens to it enough, it might drive away the knowledge that the sound of not-breathing is truly deafening.

.16. breaking
Kissing Sora is like breaking eggs by dropping them out a second floor window – fast, sure, and always fabulously messy.

.17. belief
While sometimes seeing is believing, Riku knows that (Kairi holding his gloved hand over Sora's, telling them to close their eyes) believing can be seeing as well.

.18. balloon
Riku always squints and flinches away when Sora smiles at him, because Sora is so bright and brilliant, Riku is afraid that one day that smile will break him, like a needle suddenly thrust into a tightly filled balloon.

.19. balcony
A part of him refuses the kiss because he is not Juliet, but most of him just kisses back because, hell, he's being quoted Shakespeare by Sora.

.20. bane
In the summer heat that soaks into your skin and clings to your neck, his hair quickly becomes the bane of his existence, easily remedied by the loss of patience, a quick decision, and a sharp pair of scissors.

.21. quiet
Things just move so slowly on the islands that Riku swears he can actually hear the world spinning on its axis, and as he stands along the edge of Home where sand meets rushing tide, Riku thinks how Quiet is truly overrated.

.22. quirks
It takes Riku weeks before he's finally able to say I'm Sorry to Sora, and when Sora only quirks his head to the side, pleasantly confused, and actually must ask What For, Riku's heart just sings..

.23. question
He knows, knows, knows that he loves Sora the day (ordinary and unremarkable, save for the slight chance of afternoon rain) when Riku says, "may I ask you a question?" and Sora replies, "only if my answer can be Yes".

.24. quarrel
It's gone long past a simple quarrel, quickly morphing into full-out war, but Riku will not back down because he doesn't care what Sora thinks, the king could so take on Sora any day, tch.

.25. quitting
Habits are hard to quit, which is the only rationalization he can think of when he realises that he can't sleep without a tie around his eyes.

.26. jump
If Kairi or Sora say 'jump', he knows he'd be in the air before he can even think to ask 'how high', so it's a strange and wonderful thing that the word never crosses either of their lips.

.27. jester
When he showed her Kairi, showed her who this was all for, she shook her head and said, "surely you jest", and instead of feeling righteous anger (which he does now, looking back) he was just confused, because how could anyone not think Kairi worth absolutely everything?

.28. jousting
Riku kneels on the sand, from the corner of his eye catching Sora doing the same, and when they stand to do epic battle, facing each other, jousting for the hand of their giggling lady, it's okay, because said lady kindly reminds them that she has two hands.

.29. jewel
"Don't need a diamond," she says to them one twilight evening, and Riku wakes in the morning to discover she's wrapped the worn threading from her thalassa charm around their fourth fingers.

.30. just
Sometimes the knowledge that she was just a jilted pixie is the only thing that dulls the memory of how the strings sewn into his skin were held so firmly in her long, twisted fingers.

.31. smirk
One day he catches Sora smirking at Kairi, something Sora never knew how to do, dammit, so Riku stands in front of a mirror and begins to sharpen his own.

.32. sorrow
Riku keeps his sorrows carefully bottled inside, because though people say to drown them, children on the island are born knowing how to swim..

.33. stupidity
Two boys alone in the kitchen, and one says, "Sora... if there were a prize for stupi-", quickly interrupted by, "I know, Riku, I know, just... help me destroy the evidence".

.34. serenade
On cool nights the three lay tangled together on Riku's large bed, and only the ocean wind and the steady beating of their hearts serenade them to sleep.

.35. sarcasm
"You know, when I said 'no, Sora, of course Kairi won't be angry if you eat that', I didn't quite mean... oh my god, run."

.36. sordid
His lips are on her own without permission, and then he feels so wrong and sordid, but Kairi pushes the feeling away simply by (thank you, thank you, thank you) kissing back.

.37. soliloquy
If his life were a five act play, it would be filled with soliloquy after soliloquy, but as he sips chilled tea while Sora messily writes a letter and Kairi plays with string and shell, he realises that he's tired of monologues.

.38. sojourn
When they visit the king's castle, Sora shamelessly asks for a single room for three, and Riku thinks he might just die (please and thank you) when the king simply waggles his eyebrows and almost grins.

.39. share
Kairi's breath along his spine, Sora's grin pressed to his chest, and Riku's fingers on each of their waists... no matter which way he thinks about it, it still doesn't feel like sharing.

.40. solitary
On the insides of the secret caves, there is a chalked drawing of a boy and girl sharing a paopu, and far far in the corner there's a picture of a solitary boy with no fruit and no companion, a sketch the original artists never do discover.

.41. nowhere
Sora slams a map of the islands in front of him and says, "You keep saying you're going there, but how am I supposed to follow you if I don't know where Nowhere is?"

.42. neutral
One year spent bleeding them with his bladed ambitions, one year spent stitching them whole with whispered apologies, Riku doesn't touch either Sora or Kairi for a moment, watching them from a carefully paced distance, remaining completely neutral, and the three spend the moment simply breathing.

.43. nuance
There are so many rooms in his house it hardly matters that Riku paints one completely white, opens the window so wide there's not even the slightest nuance of shadow, then passes a handful of crayons to not-Kairi, saying "there's no DiZ to stop you now", and the girl nearly breaks with happy as she destroys pale walls with colour after colour.

.44. near
There's only so much room in a soul, and Riku finds that no matter how he guards the corners and edges, he always seems to be lurking and waiting somewhere near.

.45. natural
"You're a natural," he says to her, and Kairi sticks out her tongue before bringing her keyblade up defensively, because Riku has long since forgotten how to go easy on girls.

.46. horizon
When he was younger and pieced together with pride and selfishness, he looked out to the ocean and saw his prison bars laid before him, but now he sees the truth – that it's just a single line of sunlight, bleeding into water.

.47. valiant
"Perhaps princesses do marry princes, but you're not my prince, just my valiant valiant knight," Kairi says, and when he glances at her almost darkly, almost hurt, she grins and whispers near his jaw: "And perhaps I am Guinevere."

.48. virtuous
There's a reason why Riku was destined to be shut on the shadowed (not the light) side of that Door, and the reason is because ideals are only noble and virtuous when they are framed by the right person, and Riku has never, ever, been that person.

.49. victory
The price of victory rests in the indent of every scar and burn on their bodies, and when Riku traces them with his fingers, he mostly prays that they weren't caused by him.

.50. defeat
He resists for a moment, but as Sora tugs him towards the shade of a paopu tree, and as Kairi's laugh punctuates every step they take, Riku knows that some battles are worth beginning if only for the moment of sweet, eternal defeat.