[open]

[equinoctials]

WHO: Riku and various people he meets.
WHEN: Arrival, settling in (February)
WHAT: Riku's arrival, his efforts to get the lay of the land (and get accustomed to actual sunshine again, wow).
WHERE: Gazin
WARNINGS: depending on the thread there might be mention of depression or grief.



Arrival

They were sitting around the table when it happened. Riku had a mug of hot coffee in the cradle of his hands when he looked into it, watching their combined lantern light reflected on the surface of that dark liquid. His hair was still damp and the scent of what he'd washed with fought back against the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Something felt different, in the moment when he drew in a breath, preparing to speak. Something electric in the air.

"If I could ask for one thing, I'd wish..."

I could regain something precious that I lost, he thinks.

"That we could leave."

Someone else at the table said something. Already it had sounded distant, warbling like a voice heard from underwater. He thought it was an observation about the paw having moved. He'd forgotten all about that thing; a peculiar monkey's paw he got from the riddle-dispensing machine, that macabre example of taxidermy had occupied a shelf in the kitchen for months, sitting right next to two other keepsakes he had leaned against each other. A wood carving of a key, a plush charm in the shape of a star. Knickknacks, like it was a home.

Quickly, Riku had looked up in alarm, his hands knocking over his mug as he reached out blindly for the others, like his heart somehow knew something his mind didn't. The room where he'd been sitting receded far away, a dim scene on the end of a long, black tunnel he was falling through. It receded until it was but a speck in the distance, a solitary star that winked out of sight. He raised his head and saw it.

Stained glass that bathed his face in soft blue and violet...

When he came back into himself, it was with a hard landing, thudding into the ground on his back. Everything was a bright, diffuse white, like shining a flashlight through cotton cloth and he instantly threw his hands up to shield his eyes.

He's ended up on a patch of land between two roads which diverge from the nearby city of Gazin. It's just an overcast midday. Still, over half a year in total darkness has made his eyes unaccustomed to this much light, so for a few long moments, all Riku can do is lie there with his hands over his watering, stinging eyes, catching his breath. Trying to make sense of what just happened. Even without seeing, Riku can tell he's somewhere else. It isn't the first time he's suddenly found himself on another world... he just typically has more control over the circumstances leading to it.

Around Town

A new world. A new set of challenges.

Information could be just as useful as tools or weapons, armor. Food, water, and shelter are immediate needs that Riku sought to satisfy by whatever means. His clothes make him stand out too much, so the black bomber jacket was stuffed away and a worn (and reeking) cloak was stolen off a peg near a carelessly open door. He took whatever work he could to earn enough to buy food and something to drink, whether it was mucking stables or hauling goods. Strong, able-bodied, and not too proud for ugly, dirty labor, he prefers to have something to occupy his hands rather than let his thoughts run wild.

Being here changes so much. Far from home, far from the world he'd been taken to when he was lost to the Darkness, far from everything and many of the people he ever knew...

He's still deciding on the way forward. In the meantime, he does what he can to survive day by day. When he isn't working or seeking out more work or resources, it's possible to encounter him in the marketplace or in a tavern, trying to engage others in conversation to learn more about current events.

The city isn't the type he's seen on some worlds where the action continues on well after the sun sets. That means if he's to get an understanding of where he's ended up, Riku can't wait around for it to get dark. Until his eyes re-adjust to sunshine, he shields them by tying a strip of cloth around like a blindfold. It's threadbare enough to still see a gauzy image while dimming the light, though it likely draws stares and perhaps incorrect assumptions about his ability to see.

Nevertheless, the presence of a blindfold doesn't seem to stop him from navigating around objects and people as if he could see just fine. It is, however, quite the conversation starter.

Comments

around town

[dualikey]

It both is and isn't what he's used to. Sora has spent lots of time traveling to new worlds, places that have different scenery and people and customs- he's had a lot of practice being thrown into the middle of a story and figuring it out as he goes along. But this is the first time he's had to do that all on his own, and it's the first time he hasn't been able to leave. There's no familiar gummiship parked nearby that he can retreat to. There are no friendly voices to buoy him along and no enemies giving him a direction to run towards.

All of this started because he'd wanted to find Kairi- and he'd been so sure he could do it too. Sora had reached out and thought with all of his heart that he wanted to be somewhere else. That wherever he was trying to go would reach back for him.

That place wasn't supposed to be a long winding road flanked by endless forest. It wasn't supposed to have a wooden sign that read Gazin.

The days pass and Sora buys things to eat with the munny that's still in his pocket, grateful that even though it earns him a few strange looks, it gets him some bread and a few pieces of fruit in exchange. But he can't just live like that forever. Sora might not have a real plan yet, but he knows he can't make one if he ends up hungry and cold- something that'll definitely happen once his pockets are empty. Man, it's like all those after school talks all over again. One day you have to get a job Sora, and start making your way in the world.

Fishing feels not just like a natural choice, it's almost the only choice. There's a river that runs along Gazin's side and his hauls will be best if he goes out either early or late. And while Sora definitely isn't happy about that he knows he's low on a lot of his other options. He rolls his pants up around his knees and works barefoot so that his shoes are still dry once he pushes them back on- he carries his catch in a net over one shoulder and makes the long walk in before the sun is up, stopping at the tavern and the market stalls to sell it off and then- when it's finally over and his arms are empty, his stomach full, Sora finds a patch of shade in one of Gazin's alcoves and sinks back against a wall with a big, exaggerated sigh. He's pretty sure he can get away with a little nap.

[equinoctials]

There are ways to make his own life easier and run the gamut between the benign and unwise to the monstrously wicked. Instead of working the sorts of jobs that pay little and demand much, just barely scraping by, Riku could probably put both his literacy and magic to good and potentially lucrative use. But he's trying to feel people out, trying to get a read on their situation and the local culture without drawing too much attention to himself as an outsider.

He still remembers, after all, that slumbering city of bells, that hateful old man with the dark heart who violently despised people who were different from his own sort. Riku wouldn't put it past anyone to try dragging him into a city square to burn him alive for getting caught casting Cure. He doesn't yet know how receptive people around here might be to magic, or the existence of other worlds for that matter.

Riku still has munny and hasn't tried spending it yet, saving it in case he needs it for something he can't just work off the way he can a meal or permission to sleep in the stable. He's got several reasons for being so thrifty. He doesn't plan to stay long. And if he's to go anywhere, he'll need a means of transportation and portable shelter, tools and, ideally, a reliable map of the area.

But his plans, such as they are, are nebulous, barely formed ideas. He hasn't decided on any concrete path but the one that sees him through another day, and perhaps slowly adds to the weight in his pocket.

The street is less bustling than it will be later, when the market will close up in time for a sunset ride back to homesteads and workshops, when laborers and wanderers will file into the taverns until they're bursting with noise. Riku has been offered a paltry sum to unload a cart of barrels reeking of hops into the nearby tavern, a task he's dubiously trusted to perform in a blindfold.

It takes time. He's sweating in his "borrowed" cloak, he hasn't been able to procure clothing that would draw fewer stares just yet, and once he's finished, he takes his pay and searches for shade. There's a good spot around here, he recalls, just around the corner...

Except there's someone there already. He can sense their presence, even if the blindfold conceals them, but there's something else, too. Something that wraps tight around his chest like an iron band, that summons his heartbeat into his throat and shortens his breath. He overdid it, he thinks.

"Hey," he says, "You're in my--"

Riku's head snaps up. No, that light... it's too familiar, too dazzling. But that's not possible, because--

"S..."

Because he lost him, he lost both of them.

"Sora..?"

[dualikey]

He's beat. His feet are sore and his arms are tired, and while this isn't the most worn out Sora's been, while it isn't the hardest he's ever been pushed- he hasn't ever really been the type to need an excuse in order to take a break. Sure it's one thing if there's a fight looming, or if there's something important on the line. But the last few days are all starting to blend into one another. Because there's no point staying in town just to hike out to the river first thing in the morning, Sora's gotten extra netting and made a hammock for himself up in the trees- a temporary solution that's only really going to work if the weather doesn't turn. His clothes hadn't changed when he got here but necessity has stripped him down to his undershirt and the pants that he keeps rolled up around his knees.

It means that he doesn't look like he belongs, but he doesn't look strange enough that he draws the eye either. He's learned which vendors have taken a shine to him and who's most likely to give him an extra bread roll or a little cheese. He's found the narrow lanes and alcoves that are out of the way enough that no body gets too mad about him being underfoot.

Between the angle of the building and a nearby tree, if he gets up ontop of an old barrel it's the perfect spot to lean back and cool off- to sneak a little midday sleep. Sora might not think of himself as a person while a whole lot of innate gifts- but being able to doze off just about anywhere sure is one of them. And like the same fairy tale princesses they've met in other worlds before, Sora doesn't stir when someone closes the distance carefully. When someone says his name.

His head rolls to one side just a little- his mouth opens.
And he lets out a noisy snore.

[equinoctials]

Sora's head lolls and he lets out a loud snore.

Just like that, all gravitas shatters. It's so quintessentially Sora that he can't help the sound that Riku makes, somewhere between an amused snort and a choke on the relieved sigh in his lungs. It's him. It's really him. It's Sora, he's here, after all the fruitless searching, the too-brief reunion in that lightless world, and then...

Riku yanks on the reins on his own hope, his enthusiasm. He's been in a place where hallucinations weren't just routine, they were incredibly convincing. He's come to expect that anything that seems too good to be true surely can't be, and skepticism drives him to reach out.

Once, in a castle devoid of color, he took the king's face in both hands like this, because he'd been alone for so long he could scarcely believe his own eyes that a friend was there at all. Because... before, he'd only been a kind of mirage. A message given visual shape.

The face under his palms is solid, warm. As soon as he feels it, Riku draws back his hands like he'd touched a hot stove, exhaling a hard sound of surprise. It--
It hangs up on something lodged in his throat. His heart, maybe.
And it transforms into a brief burst of laughter, disbelieving, elated, a half-dozen or more other feelings.

[dualikey]

He'd know Riku's voice anywhere. It's not a strange sound, it's been in his memories for as far back as they go- and if Riku was around that meant everything would be okay. It meant they were safe, and if they weren't home then they'd be on the way soon. Sora's name reaches him even through that gauzy cloud of sleep, inside dreams that haven't really taken shape yet- that are vague and indistinct and untroubled. It feels a little like he's floating but can't feel the water underneath him, that he doesn't feel the movement of the waves. And then, for the breeze stirring hair at the nape of his neck, maybe he's falling.

Sora doesn't feel afraid.
He's supposed to be going somewhere.

But before he can really sink into it, before he can let himself get lost in the strangeness of the journey, there's another sound. Louder than the last but just as close. Sora's leg jolts first, because his instincts even cloudy and confused, are always to leap into action- and instead of blearily opening his eyes or rubbing at his face- Sora sits straight up. "Huh?"

Wait. A laugh?
Hey he knows that sou-

His entire body pivots, shock and disbelief moving him into a tangle of limbs, onto hands and knees. "Riku?!"

The nearby barrel rocks and Sora looks like he's trying to climb to his feet and crawl forward all at the same time. Like he can't make up his mind about what's more important, getting to eye level or closing the distance. One foot meets the wall and thuds in the process. "What're you doing here?! Wait am I still-" He reaches for his chest and ends up with a fist-full of fabric.

[equinoctials]

Riku reaches for him to narrow down his choices, to grab him near one shoulder and the other elbow and pull him up onto his feet and he thinks, bewildered, that he might be taller now, or maybe it's been so long and his encounter with that other guy had messed up his recollection, or that maybe sunlight be damned, he should rip off that blindfold. That last thought's ridiculous and reckless, he knows it, because he hasn't yet adapted to proper daylight.

Riku, Sora had cried out. He's pretty sure he's never heard anything so welcome in his life.
Can this really be happening?
After all the fruitless searching, the crushing weight of grief he thought would smother him like one snuffs a candle, of all the worlds that he would suddenly, actually stumble upon him here, in this town!
He thinks it has to be a dream.

But Sora doesn't disappear, he's still there and Riku, still laughing, discovers for the first time in his adulthood what a thin border tears share with mirth. It's the blindfold that catches them, the sound pushes through his teeth in a ktch when he tries to shut his jaw before the thing snagging in his laughter turns into something embarrassing. He is not and never has been the kind of person whose strongest feelings find an outlet in crying. He can count the number of times in his teenage years that he shed tears on one hand. It's a thing very rarely done.

So is the thing he does next, when he catches up his friends with his arms and hugs him, tight. Not that hugs are unheard of between the three friends from the islands, Kairi was free with her displays of affection, and Sora was ever the exuberant hugger on his own terms, Riku didn't initiate those kinds of things, didn't tend to migrate far off well beaten paths of fist bumps, head locks and clasped shoulders.

"You're here," he manages, a sentence that's fractured right down the center, and boy does that cloak smell bad. With luck, that'll distract from the fact he's worked up enough to shake, "You're here, you're really--"

[dualikey]

Things happen so fast after that.

It's kindof like those really hot days, when he and Tidus and the others would go running off the edge of that island and plunge into the water below. He feels like he's in way over his head and that all the important details go rushing by too fast for him to make sense of. It's only now, once Riku's grabbed at him and crushed him against his chest that Sora's thinking about the stuff that he should've been thinking about from the start.

Like why is Riku's hair so long? Was he really away enough time for that to happen because it doesn't feel that way- though maybe time works differently when passing through hearts. And is Riku taller now? Why is he wearing a blindfold? Oh no is this one of those time things where it goes backwards? Is this the Riku he'd met when they were first facing off against Xemnas and the Nobodies? Wait but he's taller still- AH! Is he the Sora from when he met up with that Riku?

His cheek presses to the place just above Riku's collarbone and his arms move automatically to complete the circuit. Because the confusion isn't enough to smother what his heart knows. It isn't enough to dampen the wash of relief and elation that comes with seeing his best friend again.

Riku's hands are balled up into little fists in his clothes, and then, horribly- he begins to shake. "Riku-" Sora's eyes are huge with worry when his head tips back, when his own hands slide from Riku's shoulderblades to twin spots underneath them- just enough that he can try to look him in the face. The concern is naked there, in his eyes, in his voice. "Riku, you're shaking."

[equinoctials]

There's scarcely more sound than a subtle shudder in his breath, Riku doesn't answer because he won't risk it, a powerful enough feeling that makes him shake under the force of it might come out as something that would only make his friend worry more. It's more than the year he spent alone only to be reunited with his friends under morbid circumstances, it's the devastation of losing them again, the long half year in the dark, the endless grieving.

The way meeting that boy who had pieces of Sora's memory gutted him with the truth his existence implied - that Sora wasn't coming back any way resembling the way Riku had ever known him, a remnant shattered into pieces and scattered across a cold and uncaring multiverse, possibly never to be whole again.

Eventually the cloth is too saturated; Riku extracts one hand from Sora's back and tips his face down into his palm, like he could smother the tracks of wet that slip out from under the blindfold.

He waited. He waited so long. He'd started to lose hope and even, on at least one occasion, had thought about giving up. Riku had found other friends and they kept each other afloat, until a carelessly spoken wish tore them apart gain and he had found himself alone.

But he's here. Sora is here. And it takes minutes to pull it together, his voice is thick and raw behind his hand, "It's okay," damn it- there's literally nothing about this reaction that's gonna seem okay, "I'm just, happy. I thought I lost you."

[dualikey]

Kairi told him once that he was a really good shoulder to cry on, and that he was probably good at it because Sora cried so easily too. That's been true even since he was a kid. Too earnest by half and with a heart always worn on his sleeve, he'd been an easy child to pick on. He cried during sad movies and cried during happy ones, he cried at a surprise birthday party when he was seven and cried when Kairi made them all matching friendship bracelets the year after. He knows what it's like to feel like a heart is too small for everything welling up inside of it, so when Riku reaches for his own face, when his voice is thick and his cheeks are all wet, Sora doesn't doubt him. He just understands.

Maybe if circumstances were different this would be a good place to make a joke, or to default to the natural teasing and nudging they've always done. But this moment, the breathless shape of the word okay, the way he ways I thought I lost you... it's a lot like that time in The World That Never Was. When the terror of having let Riku slip through his fingers, of searching everywhere that he could competed with a refusal to accept it as a possibility. When no matter how hard he wanted to believe- he couldn't help but doubt.

It's a heavy feeling to carry all alone.

"Hey-" Sora watches him, the parts of his face that he can see anyway- and then he reaches very carefully for the fabric of the blindfold. The material is soaked, but he tugs just enough for the knot to start to give, for the fabric to slip down Riku's nose, to show Sora his eyes. "Weren't you the one who said to believe in me?"

The smile is soft but present in his voice- not an attempt at humor, but instead warm with understanding. "I'm right here, Riku."

[equinoctials]

Riku said he wore that friendship bracelet until the threads wore out and he lost it swimming, slowly eroded by the salt and sun of Destiny Islands, of the active lifestyle they led, chasing each other up and down the beach. Even the little plush charm Kairi sewed for him in Beacon was getting threadbare, its stuffing starting to get lumpy, sometimes tufting through broken seams.

That, and his missing lantern, were some of the first things Riku realized were no longer in his possession - but only after he realized he had arrived alone.

For someone who consistently teased Sora for being a complete sap, Riku was quite the sentimentalist himself, hiding it a little better while privately envying Sora's ability to wear his heart on his sleeve, to follow it without hesitation, to connect so easily and readily with so many other people.

Someone else trying to reach for that blindfold might have had their hand struck away. The list of those allowed to make the choice to strip it from his eyes is extremely short, with Sora ever at the top of that list. His eyes are wet and red-rimmed, but the way he flinches from the light is more than the sensitivity from crying. The shade here is deep but the sky is still bright, his eyes have yet to adjust to being in a world with actual sunshine.

To his credit, Riku does try to look, it hurts, it makes his eyes water worse until Sora's brown hair swims in his blurry vision, because he wants that badly to see his friend again the way he remembered him. Whole and himself. He sounds the same. Looks the same. He acts the same too, he's still that warm-hearted person who seemed to have enough room in his heart for everyone.

He still dazzles with the light that reminds him of why he did it, why he did any of it.

"Yeah," there's a little laughter in it, too, "It's really you this time," not some hallucination, not a dull echo tainted by someone else's selfish heart hailing from some distant star. His sniff is wet and bracing, he scrubs at his stinging eyes with the heel of his palm, like he's realizing something.

"Vanitas," this invites questions, ones he's not ready to answer, but Riku's relief overrides his common sense right at this moment. "He's going to lose it when he finds out you're here."

[dualikey]

It's not possible to live for so long on a sun-soaked island and not recognize it. Because Sora slowly eases the blindfold down the narrow slope of Riku's nose, takes just long enough that if Riku really wanted to stop him, he could- (because that kind of thing's important even if the only reason he's hanging on is stubbornness!) It's not the first time he's see his friend like this after all, long haired, covered eyes. But Riku doesn't catch his hand and make him hold still. The wet fabric comes away and his face is red, his eyes are bright and watery- but Sora sees him squint against the world around them. He sees that it's not just the beat of surprise when darkness turns into light because he doesn't adjust right away. It's something else. So he lifts both of his own hands up instead, creating something like a cross between a visor and a pair of binoculars- shielding Riku's face with his fingers and palms.

Everything else- the proximity that this draws them into, the way their feet shuffle into each other, the way he has to stretch to reach and the words that follow- those all start to sink in second.

It means that the confusion on Sora's face is almost comical as a result- because he's trying to stay visible and protect Riku's eyes, which means he's created a kind of visual tunnel that connects them to each other. "Huh? What d'you mean it's really me?" But if the question rolls around in his head for more than a second, he starts to put some of the pieces together. After all, hasn't he been in kinda... pieces before? Not just in the Final World when he had to chase all his reflections down- but even Xion and Roxas. Oh! And there was that time he met the king and Donald and Goofy in that dreaming world! Those had been his friends but also... not. Right?

His eyes widen. "How many other worlds did you go to?" And then- "Did you find Kairi in any of them?!"