Notes: So I've been a Kingdom Hearts fan since the first game in the series was released, but I never actually got around to writing a piece for the fandom. Well, I finally got around to it, and I can only hope that you find it as enjoyable as I enjoyed writing it.

Pairings: Riku/Sora, Riku/Kairi. Subsequent Riku/Naminé, Riku/Roxas. Some Axel/Roxas on the side.

Game: 358/2 Days - KH II

Warnings: language, violence, spoilers.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. All mistakes are my own.

shadows

It should be horrifying, playing make-believe with them. But after everything—the betrayals and giving himself over to the darkness and Ansem's hungry yellow eyes blotting his blue-green ones out, Riku thinks it's fitting. After all, his heart is so replete with putrid, poisonous darkness that it's almost as if it wasn't there at all, so it's easy to pretend that he belongs with them. Sometimes, he even forgets what they really are, and at times like those he feels guilty about what he's using them for and what awaits them once their usefulness is outlived (after all, Nobodies are meant to fade back into the nothingness whence they came).

But it's always the guilt that reminds him that he isn't like them, because Nobodies can't feel guilt, can't feel anything, and Riku always feels sick to his stomach after these realizations. He doesn't belong anywhere, he supposes, but steadfastly refuses to feel sorry for himself; he brought this upon himself, after all.

Still, he has a duty to fulfill, an obligation to right the things he'd wronged.

Until they put Sora back together again, Riku is stuck playing with shadows.

— . . . —

The mansion is musty with the smell of darkness and stifling in its antiquity, and Riku hates it even more than their last base. Castle Oblivion had been so vast that the smell of darkness diffused through its chambers, so Riku was spared the stench of his own corruption. But the mansion, finite in its normality, soon filled with their stenches so that the only room left untouched was the pod room, but Riku doesn't like going in there and coming face-to-face with the best friend he'd betrayed, asleep or otherwise.

The old man doesn't have to remind him that they are hiding to keep Sora safe, but Riku can't help feeling cramped within the tight confines of the mansion, so he relishes the occasions that the old man sends him out on missions. After all, despite the fact that Riku had renounced his previous existence as an immature little boy since he, the old man and the shadow-girl forged their alliance of convenience, his body is still that of a child of the sea, accustomed to the heat of the sun and the taste of salt on his lips. He has grown pale from staying inside, from existing in a world of eternal sunsets and hiding his face behind a black cloak.

The darkness may make him miss the sun, but it is fear that compels him to leave whenever he can, even if it is to risk himself by spying on the Organization or fighting hordes of Heartless and Nobodies, hungry for his black heart. Riku remembers what he became, what he is, and fears that he will be unable to control himself. He is painfully aware of the phantom echo of his heartbeat, the seductive whisper in the back of his mind, the dark claws that dig further and further into his body each time he has to use the darkness. Ansem is a bigger threat to Sora than the Organization ever will be, because all it takes is for his control to falter for one second for the darkness to conquer him again. The irony isn't lost on him; he is simultaneously Sora's sole defender and his greatest enemy, so Riku stays as far away as he is able while still staying much too close for his liking, if only to keep Sora safe.

But still, even knowing this, a part of Riku longs to get them back; he wants Sora and Kairi and even the fucking islands so badly sometimes that it's all he can do to bang his fist into the crumbling walls of the old mansion until his ivory skin is marred crimson and his eyes flicker orange. DiZ gives him a wide berth when his temper flares up like that, but Naminé seeks him out and finds him when he is most vulnerable.

She insists on taking his injured hand between her cold ones and bandaging it tenderly. Riku has forgotten what such kindness feels like, but he always pulls his hand back from her pale, bloodless grasp as if scalded, dismissing the hurt look in her eyes when he turns away.

Riku does not know how to feel about Naminé. She is both like Kairi and decidedly not-Kairi, so much so that she is almost her own person. But any way Riku looks at it, he cannot help being drawn to her and disgusted by her at the same time.

Parts of him still resent Kairi for intruding, for turning RikuandSora into Sora and Kairi and Riku, and stealing Sora's attention from him. It is odd, because Riku had embraced the darkness to search for her lost heart, had fought Sora because he was too weak to save her himself, had locked himself on the other side of Kingdom Hearts to keep her (and Sora) safe. Riku has done so much for Kairi that he is certain he loves her, but when he looks at her Nobody and lets himself think of his childhood friend, his emotions get too jumbled up for Riku to handle, so he just pushes her away to keep himself sane.

Yet when Riku stops looking at the girl as not-Kairi and simply as Naminé, his negative feelings toward her grow. Forced or not, it was that witch that put Sora in the state he was in now, and it was her incompetence that kept him from waking him up. He hates her so much that sometimes he just wants to summon Soul Eater and put an end to her pathetic existence, and if she wasn't the only one who could wake Sora up, Riku fears that he might just do it.

(Deep down, Riku knows that the reason Sora is broken is all his doing, but sometimes he needs someone other than himself to blame, and when DiZ denies him the freedom to find Nobodies to vent his anger out on, Naminé serves as a good substitute.)

One off day, when Riku felt particularly nostalgic, he had entered Naminé's room, and stared into her violet-blue eyes (Kairi's eyes), and accepted her invitation to sit down across the long table from her.

He feels awkward in this room, out of place, and the feeling is not dissimilar from how he used to feel when Sora and Kairi played together when they were children. Riku had been too rough to play with little girls when he was a little boy. Nothing like Sora, who could play house and beauty parlor as easily as he could sword fighting and tag. He still feels too rough, too crude, and it is lonelier for him, sitting across from this not-Kairi, than it was out in the hall, brooding on the staircase.

"I'm glad you decided to visit," Naminé says softly, and Riku is struck by how lonely she sounds, and how lonely she must be, locked up in this house with a man who despises her for existing and a boy who can't even look at her without flinching. It is this, Riku realizes, that separates her from Kairi, because Kairi's light had led her to a new home when everything she knew was destroyed, but Naminé has never had a heart, has never had anything like Kairi did.

Riku feels even more monstrous at the realization of how he has been treating her, and fumbles to make small talk. "Uh… I see you like drawing…" he says lamely, but Naminé's eyes light up, and the feeling Riku gets at the sight is both somewhat familiar and alien, but nice all the same.

The two of them talk for what feels like hours—about her art, and later, about Sora, because he's the only thing they have in common, really. It feels so natural that Riku forgets he's pretending, but then the door slams open and DiZ is standing there, regarding the two of them with a scowl.

"Riku," he says, regarding the scene with disapproving orange eyes. "Nobodies have been sighted in town." The left goes unsaid, but Riku knows what it would mean if they got too close to the mansion, so he nods and rises from his seat, walking past DiZ and out the door. He avoids looking at Naminé on his way out, partly because DiZ is watching and partly because he feels ashamed, being caught like this. When the door closes behind him, he hears DiZ's mocking words reverberating through the wood.

"Silly girl," the old man says, "Playing house with Sora's friend will not make you any more like her, nor any less unworthy of him."

Naminé's voice is quieter, barely audible through the door. "I know."

Riku doesn't know what sickens him more—DiZ's deliberate cruelty, his own inability to protect her from harm (just like Kairi), or the fact that he even feels sorry for Naminé at all.

Those turbulent emotions become his weapon as he slashes through dusk after dusk beneath the clock tower.

— . . . —

The thing is, Riku knows he loves Kairi, but he also knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that he loves Sora too, perhaps more than anything. Sora is his light, the one thing keeping him on the right path. Sora never gave up on Riku, not even when he was wholly consumed by the darkness and turned his back on everything that had once defined him. How could Riku not love Sora after all that, even despite the fact that Sora had been more preoccupied with his Keyblade and finding Kairi than he was with making sure Riku was okay?

Riku had always been the strong one, the one Kairi and Sora leaned on, but when it came time to prove his strength, he had faltered and lost his way, blinded by his own jealousy and resentment. But it was Sora, clumsy, goofy Sora that had saved (Riku and) the worlds with his unfailing faith and irresistible light. So when Riku had woken up in the basement of that godforsaken castle and heard that Sora was being manipulated into losing his way, into becoming a puppet, how could Riku not do for Sora what his best friend had done for him?

Oh, Riku knows he's fucked up. Yeah, he loves his best friend a lot more than he should, and he loves the girl his best friend loves, too. He loves them both so much that the darkness in his heart can't have all of him, because when Ansem tried to hurt Sora and Kairi, the parts of Riku's heart that his friends owned flared up in resistance (and he understood what Sora had meant when he declared that his friends were his power). At the same time, he loves them so much that the darkness was able to claim them because of his jealousy, his frustrated desires, his resentment of the bond they shared…

The darkness that fed off his own arrogance had humbled him; now he's nothing but a shadow of his former self, unsure and afraid of his own monstrous reflection. He used to love Sora and Kairi so, so, so possessively, but now he only wants to keep them safe.

So he knows, after Sora wakes up (because he has to wake up; the hero always does), and after making sure that he survives DiZ's plans and the Organization's interference and manipulations, that he'll have to disappear somewhere where he won't be able to hurt them ever again. No matter how much he wants to be with them, no matter how much his black heart yearns to touch Sora's light and feel Kairi's compassion, to touch and kiss and claim and feel, that he can't—his hands are so dirty that if he does, he'll sully them for sure.

— . . . —

Time goes on, and each time Riku pulls on the darkness' power he feels Ansem gain more control over his will. One day, while fighting a horde of Nobodies that made it as far as the forest, Riku pulls on so much of it at once that his whole body flickers into Ansem, and by the time he manages to pull himself back and push Ansem out, his eyes are orange and the forest stinks of his foul darkness.

When he gets back to the mansion, he tears a swath of cloth off an old cloak (one he outgrew months ago; he's grown so much, this past year) and folds it into a blindfold, tying it over his eyes.

This way, he won't be able to lie to himself anymore.

(This way, he won't be forced to look in the mirror and see how close Ansem is to the surface, how close he is to becoming a monster again.)

— . . . —

Riku learns of the boy through DiZ, and in spite of the old man's explicit warnings not to make contact with him, that is exactly what Riku does.

Hiding in the shadows of that empty metropolis that the Organization calls home, Riku catches his first sight of him. His hair is sandy blonde and his gait too weighed down, but he is undoubtedly the spitting image of Sora. It is only when he gets close enough to see the boy's face that Riku realizes that it is all wrong, and that this Roxas, despite being Sora's Nobody, is nothing like him. Roxas' eyes, Sora's beautiful sky blue eyes, are flat with apathy, nothing like Sora's liveliness, Riku's stomach turns in disgust at the tricks that darkness plays on its victims.

Even so, Riku finds himself following the boy more often than not.

Riku knows that the boy isn't Sora—after the incident with Naminé, he knows better than to make the same mistake twice—but Riku follows him anyway. He finds himself listing all the mannerisms that are Sora's, and all the ones that aren't, but after nearly a year of seeing Sora behind the glass of the pod, Riku has forgotten many of Sora's gestures. He becomes fascinated with the Nobody, obsessed with both his connection to Sora and his existence in of itself. He watches him use the Keyblade against the Heartless (each slash, each step, so much like Sora's), converse with the red-haired Nobody (the conversations are so similar to those that he and Sora had that it's almost funny, and Riku has to keep himself from laughing as he watches them eat sea salt ice cream on the clock tower after completing their missions).

(He was also fascinated by the black-haired girl, the second doppelganger of Sora that sometimes looked like his best friend and then like his other friend, but Riku doesn't remember her anymore, the memories slipping away with the last of his light.)

He wants to touch the boy. He wants to throw him against the wall of one of those skyscrapers and press his body against his, because it was Sora's once. Riku wants to claim this boy, because if he touches him, there would be nothing to sully. These urges surprise Riku, but they are so strong that they dominate his mind, and he can hear Ansem's shadow laughing at him mockingly. Riku is no stranger to lust, but it had always been tempered with love. Now, toward Roxas, who has nothing to love except his body that was once Sora's, it's pure lust that Riku feels, unlike with Naminé, who is enough like Kairi that Riku can't fathom being so rough and animalistic toward.

But still, Riku hangs back, watching from the shadows as Roxas becomes more and more disillusioned with the Organization, as the girl that Riku can't remember anymore soaks up Sora's memories and Roxas' power and drives the trio further and further apart. He watches how desperately Roxas reaches for her, and how his red-haired friend just as desperately tries to make things right the only way he knows how.

He's not fucked up enough to be amused by the irony of how history repeats itself like DiZ is—no, he's just so goddamn sad at seeing happen again, is all.

— . . . —

When Naminé can't link Sora's memories back together anymore, Riku knows what he has to do even before DiZ orders it.

For the brief moments that he and Roxas fight side by side against the Heartless, Riku remembers when he and Sora fought the monster within the whale's belly, and marvels at how similar this feels. But when the Heartless are vanquished and they turn on each other, the distinctions become sharp. Roxas is vicious, more vicious than Sora ever could be. His movements are erratic but deadly, and Riku doesn't doubt that Roxas is aiming to kill. Each time Riku strikes him down, he just keeps getting up, more vicious and determined each time.

"Why don't you quit?" the Nobody demands, voice mocking and arrogant and so unlike Sora that Riku nearly grimaces.

But he has to make sure, so he forces a cocky grin (the only type Sora would remember seeing from him). "Come on, Sora. I thought you were stronger than that."

It's an old jab between the two friends, often spoken when Sora lagged behind in a race or got his wooden sword knocked out of his hands too soon in the course of a duel. Riku is not sure if Roxas will rise to the occasion, but sure enough, the Nobody's features twist in confusion for a moment before shifting into the familiar sight of his friend, outraged at having his abilities insulted.

"Get real," Roxas snaps, offended, and his tone, delivery, everything, it's all Sora. "Look which one of us is winning."

Riku feels justified, then. This is a part of Sora the darkness stole; he's just retrieving it for him.

"So it's true. You really are his Nobody. Guess DiZ was right after all."

Roxas' face contorts back into fury then, confusion fading away into an outrage all his own. "What are you talking about? I am me!" Roxas' hand snaps back and Oathkeeper appears in his other hand in a flash of light (how interesting, that Sora's Nobody wields the Keyblades that are representative of Riku and Kairi… Riku wonders). "Nobody else!"

The doubt reasserts itself and plagues Riku as Roxas charges, and he barely manages to raise a barrier in time when Roxas swings. Still, he's hurt, and Riku knows then that this is a battle that he can't win. A half-remembered voice echoes in his ears, reminds him that this is for Sora, that it doesn't really matter who or what Roxas is as long as Sora regains consciousness. No price is too steep to pay.

"How many times do I have to beat you?" Roxas demands, and it is then that Riku makes up his mind.

So Riku gets to his feet, and for the second time that year, renounces his previous existence, only this time not as the boy, but as Riku completely. He casts of the blindfold and lets out a scream as the darkness consumes his body, bones snapping and growing longer and muscles expanding and his eyes turning orange for good, this time. Ansem's monstrous Heartless forms at his back, an extension of his darkness, and Riku moves so quickly that Roxas doesn't even noticed he's moved until he's hovering right inside of him, the Heartless' arm extending and fist forming around the Nobody's throat, closing like a vice.

Riku watches as the Heartless crushes the life out of the this not-Sora, and when the Keyblades fall to the ground and disappear, Riku closes his eyes for a moment, and when he reopens them, he is resolute.

"I have accepted it."

Moments later, DiZ appears, and Riku lifts the hood of his cloak to hide his face. The old man says nothing about his appearance, and Riku is grateful for that.

Still, Riku's doubts plague him, and he seeks DiZ's reassurance much like a child would an adult when he did something he was instructed to do, but knew was wrong. "DiZ," Riku begins, voice deep and transformed. "He could feel Sora."

DiZ snorts, disgust evident as he glares down at the unconscious boy. "Oh, he told you how he 'felt,' did he? Ridiculous. A Nobody can't feel anything."

Riku wonders, then, why DiZ sounds more hateful than sure, and why, even though he's secured Sora's awakening, why he still feels as if he's done something wrong.

— . . . —

With Roxas captured, Naminé finishes the restoration process within a week.

Riku, now calling himself Ansem, much to DiZ's apparent amusement, watches as Roxas comes to terms with his fate, and how savagely that Organization member—Axel, he thinks—fights to get him back. It makes him sad, and he bears the responsibility for this tragedy the same way he does all the other things he's caused.

Still, by the end of the week, Sora wakes up, and despite the fact that DiZ ordered him to eliminate Naminé, he remembers what she had been so desperate to tell Roxas, what she had gone against the plan for. So he lets her go, because she is a part of Kairi that needs, and fully intends, to return to her (and not because he cares for her and watching Roxas disappear the way he did was too much for one day, for one lifetime, even).

— . . . —

A few months later and Riku had been restored to his body, the Organization had been defeated, and it was all because of Sora, Sora and his light and his faith and belief in Riku. They return to the islands because of that same light (Sora's love for Kairi), and Riku finds that he can resume the life he'd once accepted he'd have to leave behind. It is beautiful in the ordinariness Riku had wished once to escape, even though it doesn't last long, a letter in a bottle bearing news of a new test shattering the illusion yet again.

Still, in those few short months they spend together, Riku appreciates being around Sora and Kairi again without pretense or the threat of impending doom hanging over their heads. They are just Sora and Kairi and Riku again, three best friends, and though Riku sometimes wants more from them, it is enough.

In the end, Riku got everything he never dared ask for back despite that he had brought their loss upon himself. He couldn't be any happier, or luckier.

(Yet sometimes, he wonders why he watches his friends' faces for signs of their shadows. A part of Riku will always reside in that musty old mansion and feel inadequate next to a little blonde not-Kairi who draws scenes out of his past and bandages his hands when he gets injured, and another part of him will forever lurk in the shadows of a vast city of nothingness, watching and lusting after a boy that is too empty to be Sora.

Parts of Riku will always play with shadows, and that's just a small price to pay for having his friends back, even if it does make each day with them slightly bittersweet.)

A/N: I have a thing for trios, and while I like Riku/Sora a lot more than I do Riku/Kairi or Sora/Kairi, I think that Riku/Sora/Kairi is better than any of those three. They just fit together, I suppose...

As always, my thanks go out to the readers. Thank you for taking the time to read this piece, I'm really grateful for it. Reviews are always appreciated!

I hope you enjoyed it!