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They'd come to an agreement that spending too much time on midway games would be a waste of a perfectly good fair. Sure, they'd reached that conclusion after Sora and Riku had fiercely competed against each other in every game that held even a fleeting interest, right up until the point that Kairi started competing and winning her own prizes. They'd kind of been passing off the spoils of their victories to her as gifts, and now she was so laden down with inflatable toys and stuffed animals that she didn't have a single free finger.
Sora was compensating by feeding every other piece of his cotton candy to Kairi, even though Riku had claimed it was way too early to eat. It was getting kind of difficult with sticky fingers and a moving target, all three of them walking in search of what they wanted to do next.
“Ah...” regardless of difficulty, though, Kairi opened wide and stuck her dyed-purple tongue out for another piece. Sora snorted and popped a fluffy bit of spun sugar in her mouth.
“The lines are still pretty long for rides...” he observed, glancing to Riku. He was still surprised (but glad) that he'd come along; Sora was never sure what Riku would think of as 'too childish' to do with them, and had been fully prepared to wheedle him when the idea of going to the fair had been brought up. It was the first year the Islands had ever had one, and Sora had been so eager to go he thought he might explode.
Plus, a fair was a pretty decent place for a first date, right? Not that he and Riku were on a date – certainly not with Kairi there, although... Maybe he was on a date with Kairi, too? Or the three of them were? The lines had never really been clear and Sora didn't know one way or another where Riku stood on the idea. Specifically the prospect of dating Sora, not Kairi. He was pretty sure Riku would date Kairi, if she asked. But he hoped she wouldn't because he was still figuring out how to go about what he wanted.
He just adored them both. It was confusing. But what could clear up confusion better than a friendly outing with maybe some romantic undertones?
“I'm not sure how safe those are when you're carrying a bunch of toys, anyway,” Riku craned his neck to properly appraise the crowds around the roller coasters and Ferris Wheel.
Kairi gave her prizes a slightly accusing look. “I don't want to miss out on rides, though... Maybe I could drop them off somewhere...”
“I bet the lines will be better after dark and all the little kids go home,” Sora pondered. “We could do something else 'til then.”
“As long as it isn't just getting more cotton candy. One of you's gonna start feeling sick, and there's no way you're going on rides after that.”
Not far ahead, familiar loud laughter followed the clatter of a wooden door being thrown open; still hand-in-hand with each other, Tidus, Selphie, and Wakka emerged from a winding sort of shack, flimsy walls aged with paint and moss hanging from the low gabled roof. There were handprints climbing the outside, 'KEEP OUT' gouged into the wood, but the fake blood was a little too red and the paint that filled in the words looked too deliberate.
“Wasn't even scary, ya?”
“Says you! I thought it was awesome,” Tidus almost doubled over, exhilarated. Selphie had fallen victim to her giggles, quite flushed.
“I heard you scream more than anyone, Wakka,” she tittered.
“Just sound effects, ya?” Wakka laughed nervously. “Definitely wasn't me.”
“Hey!” Spotting their friends, Sora waved his sugar-stained fingers, and Wakka immediately waved back.
“You guys look shaken up,” Riku smirked, approaching them.
“Have you been through the haunted house?! You would be, too!” Tidus exclaimed.
“I didn't know you liked haunted houses,” Kairi looked to Selphie, eyebrows raised.
“I've never been in one before, but this was fun! Well, scary-fun,” Selphie amended, and lifted her still-joined hands to draw attention to them. “And I made them promise not to let go of my hands.”
As though reminded, Tidus and Wakka let her go as though scalded. She was a little too giddy to be offended.
“You guys should go in,” Tidus grinned and gestured to the sign around the front, where the ticket-taker was letting in the next chortling group. The sign proclaimed the obvious; 'Haunted House', in that same red that was a little too vivid to be bloody. Under it was the rest of the description, in black;
'Test Your Friendships With Fear! Terror Brings Out The Worst In Us; Are YOU Ready To See What Kind Of Person You Are?'
Cheesy. A little too wordy.
“It's really not that scary,” Wakka chimed in. Tidus snorted.
“Don't listen to him,” Selphie shook her head. “He almost let me go and ran away. I felt it.”
“Hey, I wouldn't've abandoned you even if that was true!”
Sora laughed. “It'd be even more scary to go through on your own, wouldn't it?” In putting the idea into his own head, Sora was kind of tempted to try.
“As if you'd last,” Riku nudged him.
He made a dismissive sound, immediately rising to the challenge. “I bet you'd freak out first.”
Leaning in towards Kairi, Selphie stage-whispered, “You should go. You get to snuggle up close if you get scared.”
Kairi reddened, but grinned. “Oh, no.”
“Will there even be time for me to freak out?” Riku raised his eyebrows, still posturing at Sora. “Or will you turn tail and run the second you're in there?”
Tidus snickered.
“Aw, it's really not that scary,” Selphie coaxed, disappointed. “Not if you're safe between the two of them.”
“Unlike these two, I haven't got anything to prove. I know I don't like being scared, like a normal person,” Kairi jibed, though Sora was oblivious to it.
“I could make it farther than you can,” he boasted, “but you can hide behind me if you want.”
“Pass. I'll lead.” Riku looked to Kairi. “Are you sure you don't want to come?”
“I can think of about a million things I'd rather do. But I don't mind if you two go.”
“Hey, you should wait at the end for us. You can give a prize to the first person who makes it out,” Sora suggested brightly. “I mean, if one of us doesn't chicken out and run away.”
“A kiss?!” Selphie perked up excitedly.
Flushing faintly, Riku crossed his arms and tried resolutely not to look at either Kairi or Sora. “Don't be ridiculous.”
“I wouldn't turn that down, if I were you,” Tidus grinned, making Wakka shake his head.
“Have some class, ya?”
Getting caught up in the spirit, anyway, Sora puffed up his chest and smiled wider. “Sure! Kairi?”
She'd gone bright red, privately a touch uncomfortable. “I'm not promising any kisses, but I can give something to the winner.” She smirked, recovering. “Maybe a blanket to wrap up in after.”
“Deal,” Riku snorted, slanting his gaze towards Sora. For a fraction of a second, his gaze caught on his lips, and then he was facing forward. “Let's go.”
“It's really dark in there,” Tidus cautioned. “Don't let each other go and get lost!”
“Good point. I wouldn't want you to get scared, Riku,” Sora ribbed him snidely, though in all honestly, he had no idea what frightened Riku. As far as he knew, he wasn't afraid of anything – he'd always been the tough one, rolling his eyes when they were really little and Sora flinched at thunderstorms, or keeping a cool head when the two of them lost their way exploring.
But Riku had felt something inside his stomach freeze.
He wouldn't show any reservations in front of Sora... And besides, he'd be fine with him there. It had always been easier for Riku to play at bravery when Sora was around to impress.
It was just the dark. It wasn't even a big deal.
“Don't worry about me. If you wind up needing to hide behind me, I won't tell anyone,” Riku gave Kairi the quickest of smiles before marching over towards the velvet rope, line utterly devoid of people.
Needing to one-up him, Sora immediately countered, “Well, I won't tell if you scream.”
“Have fun!” Wakka called after them, and the two of them paused to hand over their tickets.
“Welcome to the Haunted House, where fear will show you the worst parts of yourself reflected, assuming you can see at all,” the teller launched into the spiel with a warbling voice, but it was hasty, obviously just wanting to get through the rules. “Follow the tiny lights on the ceiling, those will lead you through the house. Flashlights and phones are not permitted, and we do not allow flash photography. For your own safety and to keep you moving through the house, do not let go of each other, and have fun – if you're not too terrified!”
Riku nodded throughout the quick rundown and handed over his ticket, walking through the door when it was opened for him.
It was pitch-black inside. Riku tried to appreciate the visibility he had, while he still had it, and bolstered his own confidence by challenging Sora some more.
“Will you leap into my arms if something jumps out at us?”
“No way, but if you want to run all the way through, I'm getting on your back.”
Maybe the darkness was a good thing. Riku was pretty sure Sora couldn't see him blush. “I'll take my time. Let's see...” he scanned for the light – just a flashing pinprick of red, nothing that would illuminate anything once the door was closed.
Then it shut, and Riku couldn't see a single other thing. Unconsciously, his heartbeat picked up. All sense of the space was lost; he couldn't identify the size of the room, where the walls were, if there was anything else around...
There was just Sora's hand in his, still a tiny bit sticky.
“I see it!” With his other hand, Sora pointed at the red light, before realizing the gesture couldn't be seen either.
“Yeah, got it...” Riku began to lead the way, hyper-aware of himself, the tightness in his throat and the unnerving thrum against his eardrum. The hand in his, warm and not unpleasant even with the coating of sugar and spit around the fingertips. The air around them, strangely musty.
“I guess this is just the entrance still, huh? I don't see anything yet,” he held on a little tighter, and laughed. “I'm more worried about running into the walls than anything.”
Despite his tension over the same – he obviously found that a lot more disorienting than Sora did – Riku grinned. “I'll keep my other hand out. If I find a wall, I probably won't run you into it.”
“Maybe we should both feel along the wall, just in case,” Sora said dubiously.
“I wouldn't actually -”
Something leapt out audibly, cutting Riku off; there was a brush of something like fur against his prickling skin, followed by a deep mechanical growl. Sora hoped that it hadn't been noticeable when he'd tensed, and laughed louder to make up for it.
The red light's course was a little harder to track, but Riku found it fast, his shoulders tensed. “Was that the worst they have? All this darkness, and that's it?”
The growling noise seemed to be following them, as though they were being hunted by the animatronic creature.
“It might be scary if it wasn't so obviously fake.”
“Doesn't even sound like a real animal...”
“Right?” Sora agreed. “What's the point unless you're scared of animal robots?”
“You talk big, but I think you jumped.”
“I so did not!”
Riku was wary of even extending his arm in front of him, imagining what could happen – he could be grabbed, wrist broken, debilitated before he could even blink -
So he teased Sora all the more to cover up his caution. “Sure you didn't, So -”
Again he was interrupted as the 'creature' seemed to lunge over their heads with a deafening snarl, something ruffling their hair on the way. Startled, Sora reflexively ducked with a forceful laugh, but Riku almost backed into him. He needed a second, so tense it almost hurt, hand locked like a vice around Sora's.
All of which opened an opportunity for Sora to build himself back up. “Aw, are you okay?”
“Just startled,” Riku rolled his eyes. “And I thought you might need protecting.”
If something was actually in here, it could have charged them both and ripped Sora to pieces before Riku even knew what was happening. He didn't know if he liked the idea of him being in the back, anymore; the only position that felt 'safe', in Riku's head, was to wrap Sora up in his arms and just carry him the rest of the way.
But that'd disable him in other ways. His arms wouldn't be free, he wouldn't be able to move as fast...
Oblivious to Riku's racing thought process, Sora smirked, tension and adrenaline boosting recklessness. “Sure you don't need me to take the lead for a bit?”
“I'm fine,” he snapped, a bit more annoyed.
“Come on!” Sora snorted, tugging his hand as he tried to whirl around him, bumping them into walls.
“Sora -” Alarmed, Riku's shoulder met the wall and he nearly jumped. Sora got in front, nearly losing his grip in the process, but he clung on and settled down.
“Hey, it's alright.”
“Just don't rush ahead...” Riku scowled.
“I'm not going anywhere,” he grinned. “And I won't let go, so don't worry about it.”
“I'm not worried. Will you even be able to keep track of the light, if you're in front?”
The passage was becoming narrow. Riku could feel it constricting.
“I'll be fine, thanks. I see one there,” Sora turned around, impatiently tugging him forward.
“Your funeral...”
Riku was still faltering, but walked with him, the two of them coming up on something new. A wet, rustling sound, feral snorts interspersed with some kind of dull ripping. Sora slowed down, trying to predict where the source was to keep from stumbling on it and getting startled.
The noise was more grating than frightening, Riku's ears keen to compensate for the lack of light. He was sure it was a dozen times louder than it truly was, and again, he was tempted to draw Sora against him.
And then Sora's steps faltered directly under the little red light, looking around for the next one to follow. “Uh...”
“Agh-”
Riku collided with his back.
“Oops. Sorry,” Sora charged ahead, not wanting to seem like he was hesitating, and took them right in the direction of the sound. With just a few steps they tripped a motion sensor, and a horrible inhuman scream came amidst the noises.
Riku yanked Sora backwards. He yelped, only because of the unexpected pull, and irritation flared out of embarrassment.
“Riku!”
“Sorry -” the apology came off terse. “I told you, I should lead...”
“What does my leading have to do with this?!” Sora defended.
“You're just charging into things!”
“You ran into me!”
“Only when you stopped!”
“I was trying to look for the other light!” Sora almost huffed, confusion only adding to his temper, “So what is it, am I going too slow or too fast?”
“You're just not thinking. And it's too dark for me to see what you're doing!”
Sora drew himself up. “I'm not afraid of the dark. I'll find my way just fine.”
“You think I am?” Riku snapped defensively.
“I dunno, are you? You're way tense.”
“I'm not,” he denied immediately, face warm. “I think you're projecting on me.”
“Am not,” Sora frowned. They were both standing still, now, hands locked together but otherwise well apart from each other.
“Then let me lead.” He just wanted some semblance of control.
“And be walking into you all the time? No, thanks.”
“You won't be! I'm more careful than that!” Riku scowled, and was nearly drowned out by the scream going off again. They hadn't moved on; the sensor was probably rigged to go off after a certain amount of time as well.
“And what if you take off and leave me behind, huh?!”
“What?!” Riku gaped. “I wouldn't do that!”
“I don't want you dragging me around, either, just because you're freaked out!” Sora argued.
“I'm not freaked out!”
“I'm not scared, even if I have to go on by myself,” he challenged, giving Riku a stubborn look that he was obviously blind to. The tone got it all across, regardless.
“I'm not scared either-!”
“Then you wouldn't be afraid to let go, would you?”
Riku scowled. “We're not supposed to...”
“Why does it matter, if you're so sure you won't get lost?”
“I wouldn't,” his eyes narrowed. “And I'm not afraid to let go.”
He had no intention of doing so, regardless. If he did and fell behind... Or if he did, and Sora fell behind... He'd just feel like an asshole.
“Me neither.” Sora hesitated, his hand feeling slippery around Riku's. Was his palm clammy, or was it both of theirs?
Neither of them moved, and the expectant silence was starting to drag on.
Riku interrupted it first. “Good, we established that. Let's just go.”
“Fine,” Sora turned away sharply, and the grip broke. His hand slipped away.
Riku stiffened. “I didn't mean separately-...” he reached out for his arm.
Nothing.
It had gone utterly quiet. The snuffling wet sound had stopped, and there were no footsteps, no indication that Sora had moved on. But he was gone.
“... Sora?”
Silence. Riku heard nothing, tried to make out anything. But even the little red light was gone, and there was no trace of him. “... Sora?”
There was no way he would have just... left. Sora had pulled his hand away as a joke, maybe, but he wouldn't abandon him. That wasn't the kind of person he was. Riku took a step backwards, hand seeking the narrow corridor again. If he could just orient himself, pinpoint his own location...
“Sora, if you're hiding...” he swallowed hard, hand meeting air once more. “... Sora, just... Just say something...”
He couldn't find the wall.
And still, no one replied.
Riku's fists clenched and he drew them back towards himself, looking around pointlessly as he went stock-still.
“... Don't do this...”
The moment he felt an absence behind him, Sora turned and squinted, though it was impossible to make out even a vague outline of Riku. “Just stay right behind me, okay?
“Okay, Riku?” Sora repeated after a beat of silence, a little unsettled. He'd never known him to just not speak to him, even if he was really angry... But after another moment, he realized he couldn't even hear Riku breathing.
“... Riku, where-?” Backtracking a few steps, Sora felt into the darkness, starting to frown. “D-don't just run on ahead because you're mad!”
He stood still to listen, but there was no sound. Riku couldn't have gone back, in that case, so... He must have gone ahead, or maybe he was lingering in the dark to follow and freak Sora out.
Sora bristled, a little. That was playing dirty, and there was no way he'd fall for that.
“... Fine. Hide then. I'll race you to the end!” he declared, and turned in what he thought was the direction he'd started walking in before. Immediately he spotted light; not the tiny specks they'd been following, but a wash of reddish glow slanting across the passage ahead. Like a door had been opened to an adjoining corridor.
Had Riku opened that?
Well, whether he had or not, it was clearly the only way to go forward. Turning back would only take him to the entrance – if Riku was trying to trick him to make it look like he’d wussed out, he wasn’t falling for it – and searching around for the tiny path of lights might just get him lost. That light in front of him was much more obvious to follow.
If Riku had gone on ahead, he had to catch up to him quickly. If he was lingering behind somewhere, then he’d just have to follow Sora’s lead. Sora wasn’t about to get tripped up because Riku was being stubborn. He totally would have apologized for letting go, until Riku decided to take it a step further, and now it was too late to take it back.
Through his frustration, a spitefully pleasing image floated into his mind’s eye. He pictured the look on Riku’s face when he emerged from the exit, none the worse for the wear, and he grinned.
Sora made up his mind, and though he kept his pace steady and careful towards the glow (he still didn’t want to run into any walls), he didn’t hesitate.
The dark didn’t scare him, and neither did cheesy special effects.
… Still, he couldn't help a little nagging feeling of disappointment. This wouldn’t be nearly as much fun on his own.
Preoccupied as he was with the lack of someone nearby, Sora nearly jerked back in surprise as he suddenly became aware that there was something up ahead. The shape seemed to just appear at the very edge lighted passage, but obviously he’d just missed it among all the other shadows.
Too small to be Riku, it must have been the silhouette of another animatronic, ready to strike out and make him jump the moment he got too close.
Heh, it could try. Too bad he was so observant, or that actually might have gotten him.
Confidence back in place, Sora strode forward into the light, and the shadow turned to face him. It-… no, she, stared right at him, and Sora stared back, because what he was seeing should definitely not have been there.
“Kairi?” In his bafflement, that had sounded more accusing than he meant. “What are you doing here? Why are you by yourself?”
More importantly, why did she pretend she didn’t want to go in, if she was going to do it anyway? And why not just go together with him and Riku? Geez, if she was just trying to prove she wasn’t scared, she didn’t need to go through on her own to do it.
Unless… “You’re not looking for me, are you?”
Could Riku have gone back out and told everyone he’d lost Sora inside? It didn’t seem like something he’d do, but now that he’d thought of it, a trickle of hot anger slid into his stomach and convinced him that was the only explanation for Kairi’s appearance.
He didn’t need rescuing, and even if he had been lost, someone from the fair could have guided him out. How could Riku make Kairi go in after him, when she hadn’t wanted to go in the first place?!
But Kairi didn’t answer him. The second the pieces had clicked into place, she took a step back. When Sora’s blood started to boil and his fists clenched at his sides, she turned and ran, disappearing instantly into darkness.
“Wait, Kairi-…!” He bolted the last few steps into the haze and almost collided headlong with the wall. Now he could see that the passage hit a dead end, and forked off sharply in either direction. The red glow filled the path to the left, but the air that filled it was so thick there it was impossible to see anything more down that way. And anyway, Kairi had turned away from the light, and he had to follow her.
Sora took the right, and found it wasn’t as pitch-black here as he thought. There was a kind of fog hanging around eye level, and something blue reflected off the walls, shimmering and shifting constantly. If he’d stopped and thought at all, he would have recognized it in an instant, but he’d spotted Kairi’s retreating form, colored as if by moonlight, and that was all he needed to know.
He called out again, and Kairi slowed down. She came to a halt not too far ahead, and Sora eased his pace as well. She might run away again if he came charging at her full-tilt, and even if he was honestly a little peeved about having to chase her now, Sora didn’t want to frighten her.
“It’s just me,” he tried, and took a step forward. She didn’t flinch. “I’m right here – see, you found me!”
If she let him get close enough to grab her hand… well, he didn’t like it, but maybe she was in such a panic she needed to be held still before she could understand there wasn’t any real danger.
Sora was shortening the distance between them gradually, still soothing, “We can go back out where we started, and find Riku, too… I’ll hold your hand the whole time, I promise.”
He’d never make the mistake of letting go of Kairi.
She still wasn’t speaking. Just standing, perfectly still and watching his progress with wide, haunted eyes. It heartened him anyway, that she must have decided to let him come near. She was almost within arm’s reach, now…
Sora put his foot through empty air, and then all at once his stomach was in his throat and the world was flying up in front of his eyes. It wasn’t actually, of course, because he was falling, but his mind was a split second behind his body, and by the time he realized this he was already too late to save himself. Kairi was gone, beyond his reach, and all around him was black, rushing nothingness.
It took time before Riku was willing to move, becoming acquainted with the idea that Sora had, indeed, left him behind. He thought his eyes might adjust, after a while, and continuously looked over his shoulders for movement.
There was none ahead, nothing behind. There was only impenetrable emptiness, and it was beginning to close in on him. Ridiculous as he felt, Riku started to think he could feel the dark like a tangible thing, advancing on him like a predator. Entwining him like a mother.
Just standing around was starting to mess with his head. He had to move, but that was a struggle in and of itself.
This was exactly why he hated the dark. It was worse than not knowing – the dark couldn't be thought out, rationalized. There was endless opportunity for something terrible to be lurking within it, and Riku wouldn't even know until it was too late. He was well beyond monsters or nightmares; that had been the case when he was a child, but getting older hadn't helped. It'd just thrown reality into the mix.
He could trip, fall wrong, break something. He could find something sharp with his hand rather than his sight, and know it was there by the pain. There could be someone, not something, that meant him harm, because a monster might not know the tactical difference between night and day but a person who wanted to hurt someone did.
Riku took three slow breaths, and told himself he'd move on the count of five. He took a step on 'one'.
If he picked a direction and stuck with it, he'd find a wall in no time. From there, he could head back out and inform the teller that his friend had run off, they'd meet with Kairi, and Riku would undoubtedly be mocked for having any difficulty at all. They'd mean it good-naturedly. He'd pretend to take it that way and he wouldn't mention that the light had just gone, because it would sound like an excuse.
Carefully, he turned a little and walked straight forward, making a conscious decision to avoid the place where he was pretty sure the animatronic was. It wasn't active anymore, but he couldn't know for sure that it wasn't still there, and he didn't want to wind up face-first on the floor. Or breaking something, and having to pay for the repairs.
With every step, though, the air felt... thicker. It was like walking through fog, something pressing down against his skin from all sides. A little humid, a little cool.
His hand found a flat surface. Slick.
In revulsion, Riku jerked back, shaking his hand to flick the feeling of wet away. It'd been imagined, though; going so far as to touch his other arm to make sure, Riku found that it was completely dry save for that little bit of residue Sora had left behind.
... Maybe his paranoia was making him think...
Riku shook his hand again before grazing the wall once more. It was – there was something about the texture, and it wasn't something on the wall, it was the surface itself.
It tickled his palm. Riku grimaced.
He just needed to follow it out. His other hand met the wall, wanting to go back the way he came; he turned around, started to walk, and the sensation of his hand running over the cold wasn't unlike skimming it over water. There was just a solidity to it, and it felt like it was clinging to his nerves... Just a little.
Riku stopped. Something brushed his wrist. Like a couple of fingers, touching very lightly.
And, now that Riku was still once more, it – whatever it was – didn't stop. The sensation smoothed out and went up his arm, skated over his bicep and rested against his shoulder. Compulsively, Riku tried to shrug it off, clutching with his free hand like he was expecting to catch someone's hand.
Nothing there. He found his own shoulder with his hand, and the touch flitted up.
It stroked his neck, and Riku broke contact with the wall, staggering back.
“Leave me alone,” he snapped, wrapping both hands around his throat – loose, but better his own, he didn't know if whatever was happening was about to choke him – and it wasn't gone, he hadn't escaped it, it just went even higher. Brushing his jawline, tracing the shell of his ear as it pushed his hair back -
It was almost tender. Riku grimaced, the sound that left him only really a panicked breath, and he bolted.
He couldn't get it to go away. Cool fingers running through his hair, gliding down his back and chest all at once; he was being petted by something unseen, something that didn't even feel real, and Riku couldn't shake it.
“Stop it!” he whirled around, staggering, his back pressing to the wall. The sensation intensified, or maybe just his perception of it; things were wrapping around his arms, trying to hold him still, and then...
Whatever it was brushed his lower lip, parting them, and he thought he could feel fog against his tongue. Sliding down his throat.
Riku coughed, spat, jerked again and ran – had he swallowed it, whatever it was? He tasted nothing but at same time there was a foulness, like a flavor at the very back of his tongue that he wanted to hack up. For a merciful second, it seemed like running had left it behind... But then it was running up his legs, unfettered even when Riku ran faster. It was crawling up his calves like his jeans weren't even in the way.
He stumbled to a stop, kicked, and found the endeavor pointless.
All he could do was keep running – and he found where the wall sharply ended, and turned.
Sora hadn’t been falling for long, but already it had been longer than could have been possible.
He was falling headfirst, now. Had he been able to think beyond panicking about what could be below him, and how far he had still to drop, he would have wondered how all this could be hidden below the tiny, flimsy attraction. Even if he had fallen through a trapdoor, the shack was level with the ground; there was nowhere to fall to. There shouldn’t have been anywhere this deep and endless on an island.
The darkness around him, which had been featureless until now, was becoming broken up by pinpricks of light. Not the red ones he’d been supposed to follow, but bright, gleaming white, on all sides and below him.
The exact image of the sky above the islands, on a cloudless night…
He gasped, and air rushed into him painfully. Where it should have been stuffy and dry, it had become crisp, even as it pressed on his lungs so hard he thought they might burst.
It couldn’t have been real, but he was outside, it was nighttime, he was falling through the sky, to -
He never finished that thought. The perfect reflection of the starry sky broke as his head plunged through icy water, and he was plummeting, down into greenish depths, as deep as only an impossibly long drop could have taken him.
His nose burned as it filled with water. Still reeling with disbelief, and deeper underwater than he’d been in his life, the shock actually sharpened Sora’s mind a little.
He didn’t know how he’d gotten outside, if he had. If any of this was even real anymore. Whether or not it was a dream or a trick his mind was playing on him, he didn’t have time to find out.
Sora knew where he was, and he knew where he had to go. The surface had to be a long way overhead, maybe even a mile, but he’d been swimming almost since he could walk, and he could hold his breath for a really, really long time.
He regained control himself at last. He spun in the water to right himself, propelling himself upwards as fast as he could. It was too dark to see which way was up – even the stars were blocked from view this far below – but he could feel the pressure weighing at his feet, and knew if he swam against it, he’d have to come up sooner or later.
Hopefully sooner. He was a great swimmer, but he wasn’t superhuman.
Sora shut his eyes, arms and legs pulling at the water with all their strength. He was rising fast, faster than he’d ever done, ignoring the burn of his muscles as he forced them to work without a new supply of oxygen.
The water pressed in on his ears, making them throb. His brain felt like it was floating, his ribs ached and seemed to contract in on his lungs. He was slowing down, in spite of himself.
But he could see the stars now.
Technique and sense abandoned, Sora gave into instinct, climbing and clawing his way up that last distance.
It couldn’t be that far, he couldn’t swim for this long and not make it. How pathetic would it be to drown just short of the air he needed? And islander, beaten by the ocean he lived half his life in?
He could almost hear mocking laughter in his own ears. He’d lost again.
As suddenly as he’d fallen in, Sora burst over the surface. He’d been kicking so hard his shoulders and chest erupted out of the water for a half second, and he breathed in air like knives, over and over. He felt dizzy, and sick, and achy, and wonderful.
There wasn’t time to relish it. With no chance to react, something had wrapped around one of his ankles and tugged hard, submerging him again. For one frenzied second, he thought he’d been overcome with weakness and slipped under, but as he tried to tread water, the thing held even tighter.
Salt water filled his wide-open mouth, and Sora was being dragged deeper, back into the crushing maw he’d only just escaped.
Kicking wildly at his captor accomplished no more than trying to swim out of its grasp had done. He wasn’t caught in flotsam or tangled up in an underwater plant. Whatever had him was pulling with intent to drown him. He had to know what -…
Like most islanders, Sora could open his under the ocean. That didn’t mean he liked to. He squinted against the sting, pinpointing the swaying shape of his attacker at once.
Had he not already been choking on a huge mouthful of water, Sora would have done the most incredibly stupid thing possible and gasped.
The thing was person-shaped - its unmistakably human hands wrapped around his lower leg – muscular, and certainly bigger than Sora was. What looked like long, pale hair floated out from its head in all directions, obscuring its face and making it seem to glow with an eerie halo.
But, it couldn't be-
It was moving higher. One of the hands unclasped from his ankle, finding a better grip on his thigh, and it showed its eyes to him.
Brilliant aqua eyes.
Riku blinked rapidly, adjusting to the sudden light. The touches, whatever they were, had stopped. He'd found a hallway, and whatever room it opened to at the end was giving off a stark white glow. Riku couldn't make out the source, but he honestly didn't care. He ran to it, and when he was halfway there, something appeared on the far wall.
His reflection, warped at an angle; it was a mirror. Riku slowed, jog tapering off to a cautious walk, and he peered into the room.
Mirror after mirror, creating a wild maze; Riku could see himself reflected back dozens of times, at dozens of angles.
But he could see, and the lack of anything on or around him put him at ease.
A maze; basic. He could get through this no problem; the little red lights probably started up again at the end of it, and then he'd just follow them straight out. In the light, it was difficult to even think of why he'd let everything get to him, back there.
With a slow exhale, Riku ruffled his hair aggressively and started into the mirror maze. His eyes flickered to the one beside him – he'd thought for a second that there had been a delay; a flicker, like his reflection was a half-step behind – but he was wrong, it was just another case of his mind playing tricks on him.
Credit where it was due. It was a good haunted house, even if Riku's own psyche was doing most of the work. Actually, that was a mark of a really good haunted house.
Eyes flicking to every bit of movement, Riku tried not to get too bogged down by his own alertness and developed a formula for himself; he'd turn left at every opportunity, and just keep going forward.
But he was hesitant to put his hand against anything as a guide, this time. He'd pay attention. This would be fine...
Right ahead, the Riku reflected back at him smirked.
He halted.
Every reflection echoed him, with just a second of a delay. The one ahead of him laughed.
Riku turned around – he'd go back, he'd try to find another way out, because even if it was an illusion his brain was telling him wrong and danger – but the mirrors were arranged in such a way that he didn't think he could even work out what was an open path and what was another mirror. Riku bit back his frustration, whipped back towards the smirking reflection -
Was he losing his mind?
His own face, completely unremarkable, gazed back at him. Like seeing himself in any other mirror.
Riku looked to the nearest ones, not convinced something hadn't been done to set him off. He didn't notice that, even as the reflection ahead copied his motions and shook his head side to side, its eyes never left Riku.
By the time he looked forward again, the reflection was merely that. The sense that he was being watched crept up on Riku, though, and he stared at the mirror ahead with the more distrust than the others. The hallway split at the end, one way left and one way right. Turning to follow his preset plan, he started left and caught a glimpse of something new – on one of the mirrors lining the wall, a flash of chestnut brown.
“Sora?”
Riku approached the mirror, thinking it had to be across from another pathway – it was hard to tell from afar – but he'd catch up, he'd insist they rejoin instead. It didn't matter what he had to say to convince Sora, or if he had to grab his hand and simply refuse to let go. This was better, if anything, he could stop being unnerved and be annoyed instead.
As he came up on the reflection of Sora, Riku saw himself enter the mirror frame, and grab Sora by the hair.
There was no sound, but he could tell Sora had cried out. Like a silent movie, Sora kicked at him, pushed, but Riku's reflection was shoving him to the ground, climbing over him and drawing his fist back to relentlessly hit him across the face -
Riku collided with another mirror, tearing his gaze away, too stunned to say anything. It was a trick, he'd never do that -
But looking at another mirror just started another reel, and his reflection had Sora pinned to the wall by the throat, throttling him until Sora's face purpled and the capillaries in his eyes were visible, his mouth hanging open as he choked, tried to breathe, a thin string of saliva hanging off his lip.
It was sick. Riku felt sick. He shut his eyes, not knowing where to look; he had been wrong, darkness was better, even though he knew what he watched wasn't happening.
He'd never hurt Sora. Whatever mechanic they'd employed to create those images, it was fucked up but it wasn't real.
Riku opened his eyes and almost shouted. The mirror right in front of him had changed.
His reflection was pressed against it, leering, and drew back only once it'd startled him. Then it reached out, hand extended invitingly. Beckoning him closer to the mirror.
“Go to hell.”
Whatever sick bastard created this place, Riku wasn't going to give in to their game. Even as the reflection waved one finger as though telling him off, and hauled another image of Sora in from the edge of the frame. Even as it twisted Sora's arm until it visibly broke, bone breaking through skin and Sora was struggling, crying in pain.
Riku fled, logic barely holding; keep going left, take the next turn, don't backtrack. If he let sense abandon him now -
Abandon him like Sora had -
He almost slammed into a mirror, not realizing the corridor had ended, and he turned. Left.
His reflection was on Sora's back, determinedly forcing the broken arm to bend until he'd split the limb right in half, only connected by flimsy flesh. Sora was writhing in pain, face-down, but he could practically hear him begging Riku to stop, please, why are you doing this?
An unexpected dry sob ripped from Riku's throat and he bowed his head, looking around as sharply as he was able for the next turn.
There were so many mirrors, and they were all displaying the same thing... Even if he only let himself glimpse the bottom of each, there was so much blood...
Something was being dragged, in one of the mirrors. Without permission from himself, Riku found himself looking anyway. The reflection of himself had forcibly pulled Sora out of the frame, streaking blood across the inside of the glass in the process, and returned to lean against it. It locked eyes with Riku, lip curling hatefully.
Then it disappeared out of the frame, as well, and Riku could see. Sora, intact and far away at the end of a hallway, running off.
He knew to doubt what he was seeing. Riku wouldn't fall prey to that, he didn't get any closer to the mirror -
But, no, it was reflecting a hallway. Quickly, he felt the air before him, making sure he wasn't just being deceived by another mirror, but the blood-streaked glass was showing him and the hallway properly.
And if Sora really was there, he couldn't hesitate. Riku couldn't risk losing him.
He tore after him, calling his name, and the mirrors showed what they were meant to.
All except the one a half-step behind.
It wasn't him.
It couldn't be Riku. Even to save himself, he wouldn't do this -
Sora shut his eyes against the watery sting as it became too much, saving him from having to look at whatever was doing this any longer – his lungs ached like they were on the verge of combustion, and he'd been under long enough to stop knowing which way was up. Sora's head was spinning, a numbness overtaking his extremities.
He was going to die in a matter of seconds.
Fighting with the help of a shot of adrenaline, Sora began to kick and shove at what-was-not-Riku as he pulled down; not-Riku was using his body as leverage to climb higher, until he'd wrapped his waist in cold, slippery arms.
Sora tried frantically to squirm upwards even as he was dragged down, but the water made his grappling sluggish and clumsy. Tiny lights burst behind his eyelids – a hand was slowly cupping his cheek. He refused to open his eyes, acknowledge that something like his friend was going to kill him.
The only way to survive was to hurt this thing.
Bracing his feet against its stomach, Sora pushed mightily as hands clawed and caught ghostly hair in his grip. The thing's hold was broken, and it scratched and grasped right back. It wasn't enough to keep Sora still, the fight to live singular and strong.
He shoved it down and off of him with the leverage he had, eyes straining to reopen and watch for its pale hands... But it was no good, his lungs had released in an involuntary need to breathe, and a cloud of bubbles obscured everything. Sora couldn't tell if it was still there. He didn't have time to find out.
Legs kicked hard, flailing up to the surface.
With a roar like the loudest thunder, water rushed down towards him, against all logic. Sora was being sucked down again – not by an attacker, but the full weight of the water bearing down on his breakable body like a plug had been pulled at the bottom of the ocean, and it was useless to resist.
Sora's knees hit hard floor, and the water hammered down over him with crushing force. In the split second he had to think, to feel the fear of his impending death, the cascade exhausted itself and flooded the ground, rushing off in two directions – the red-lit one he'd come from, the one he'd been running towards – and then...
It vanished. The floor was bone-dry, only a choking and heaving Sora still sopping wet and creating a puddle under his body.
Hacking salt water up from his constricted chest, Sora waited until the worst of his vertigo had passed before lifting his head up, wild-eyed.
The glow on the walls was gone... Kairi was gone.
Belatedly, it hit him that Riku – if that was Riku – must have been caught in that current, too... He had to be nearby. Bracing himself on the ground, Sora staggered to his feet, a hank of hair still clutched in one hand. The strands tangled around his fingers sliced into them like wire, but he lifted them right to his eyes.
It was hard to see the silver gleam. Hard... not impossible. Sora's stomach twisted painfully.
Riku...
The determination to find both of his friends redoubled as he shook off the cutting sense of betrayal, seeking a wall to lean against while he got his bearings back.
“Riku?” he called out raggedly, relieved to find he still had a voice. “Kairi?”
No answer.
He'd move on, through to the unlit passage. He didn't want to believe that had been Riku... Which meant Kairi was the only one he'd seen, and she more likely continued on that way rather than double back.
Sora attempted to shake some the water out of his ears, taking some slow breaths to prove to himself that he could, before calling out, “I'm here! I'm coming, just hang on!”
Taking a few heavy, assisted steps, he noticed at last that the only water around was coming from him. His footprints, the shallow puddle where he'd landed. Sora tried not to linger on it, or wonder where the trap door had gone, or think at all about how he'd almost drowned to begin with.
The dry air settled on his skin with an unkind chill. Sora wrapped his arms around his shivering body, but first shook Riku's hair off of his fingers before he could admit it couldn't belong to anyone else.
The further Riku got into the maze, the dizzier he felt.
It sometimes felt like he was going around in a perfect square, until he would hit a dead-end or a corridor that zigzagged. More often, there wasn't a consistent way to turn; fewer options, stranger passages. Riku wondered if he was just missing something, but without horrific images to torment him, he was taking his time, not daring to overlook anything. Just in case.
Sora, if he'd ever been there, was long gone. Riku had shouted for him several times, with varying amounts of worry and frustration, until he'd determined that it was no use. If he was going to find him, it'd be after he was free of the mirrors, and not before.
No maze should be this complex, though. If he didn't know better, he'd swear it was bigger than the dinky bungalow itself... But, honestly, he'd started to think the same thing when he was in the dark room, when he hadn't been able to find the wall. He'd started to rationalize it, thinking that somehow he'd been directed in circles without even realizing.
It made more sense than being in an entirely different place. Than the walls just falling away impossibly.
Riku sighed, steps slowing to nothing. Maybe he just had to... reassess, get another feel for his surroundings...
The echo of his footsteps didn't stop.
“Sora?” he turned his head quickly, naming the only person that he could possibly think would follow him. There wasn't an answer, but the steps went on, no louder or closer.
Whoever was walking kept a completely even pace. The hairs at the back of Riku's neck stood on end.
Was he actually being followed, or... There was that paranoid sense scaling up his back on little hooks, climbing higher. The mirrors had already messed with his head once, so it wasn't uncalled for... The feeling of being watched. Every time he looked up, there were dozens of eyes on him. His own.
It was fine.
“... You won't beat me,” he muttered, more assured than he felt, and continued on.
The footsteps behind him picked up, a little. Riku's own pace hastened.
Maybe he was overthinking it, and that was the problem. If it were Sora, he probably wouldn't have thought about it at all, just walked into the maze and right through, somehow. He had a weird gift for that, for just waltzing through trouble when it should have been more complicated than that. It just didn't seem to touch him.
Riku envied that now more than ever. Damn it, what if it had been Sora he saw earlier, and he'd just gotten through the maze so quickly that calling out had been pointless?
He thought he heard someone laugh.
Starting, Riku glanced back, trying to locate the source. Still, only his reflection, everywhere he looked...
Except at the end of the hall. An empty mirror.
The footsteps were closer, and from the corner Riku'd just come round, his copy stepped into sight. Not in the mirror, not his real reflection, but solid. Whole.
The replica sneered at him, and sprang forward at a run.
Riku bolted – he didn't have enough time to think about it, he was being chased and that thing wasn't real, couldn't be, it wasn't him but it had his face.
It had his face.
What the hell was going on -
Riku weaved, nearly colliding with a mirror, and it laughed at him. Riku hadn't evaded it, he didn't even know if he could outrun it when surrounded by twists and turns, but he had a chance; for the first time in ages, a fork in the path.
He bolted right.
It twisted sharply, almost immediately after the turn. Riku didn't dare look behind him to check where the replica was, but the multiple images of himself were confusing, made his heart stutter over its hastened beat.
Was this really his plan? Run until that thing caught him, or he found a way out?
Cursing himself, Riku dove around another corner, and found himself boxed in. It hadn't been a passage, just a shallow dead end... But the only way to go was back and he couldn't tell where the replica was.
Riku caught his breath and held it.
Maybe he could hide. Long enough to regain his bearings, and then... He'd fight it off.
There were only four reflections, from the little nook he'd found, and only one of them would be visible if that thing came down this way. He kept his gaze sharp, watching, listening.
All the while, he was aware of his heartbeat. It was so much louder, shocked with adrenaline. This was different than tricks, this was real danger – how could that replica even exist? It wasn't a projection. If it was, it shouldn't have been so vivid in the mirrors... And it had had a reflection. Right? Suddenly he was second-guessing himself, he couldn't remember...
But the footsteps were real, those couldn't just be a recording. Unless it had been.
Was he stupid, was he falling for a really elaborate trick?
He'd started to breathe again when he glimpsed it. Movement, from the farthest mirror in his peripherals; Riku went completely still, the air in his lungs trapped against the walls of his throat and building explosive pressure. He needed to let it out. Silently. But he didn't dare, he could try to fight that thing but he wasn't ready, his legs felt a little numb and he didn't honestly know how to fight it. It'd just been a horror show in a mirror, but what if... What if it was really strong enough to snap someone's arm in two?
Intrusively, the idea of confronting his replica only to have his throat literally crushed in his grip popped into his head. Riku bit down on the inside of his cheek, like he was punishing himself.
“You realize you can't hide in here.”
His eyes widened. The replica was speaking, taunting, and he knew that voice in that uncanny way. Riku had heard himself in videos, recorded through voicemail or similar means; the voice was his, familiar in its unfamiliarity, and any last thoughts of it being a trick were dispelled.
They couldn't have gotten a sample of his voice. He hadn't said anything like that, since he'd entered.
“The fact that you're trying is pathetic. I guess even you know that you're inferior...” the replica continued, looking around keenly for him. Step. “And weak...” Step. “And a coward.”
Riku's eyes narrowed.
“You tell yourself you can't be second-best to anyone, don't you?” he jeered venomously. “Truth is, you shouldn't. You don't even come that close.”
He – no, it, Riku didn't dare think of it as a person – was trying to get a rise out of him. Get Riku to give himself away... But it was a transparent attempt, and Riku responded to nothing better than a challenge. He forced himself quiet, and waited, seething. If the replica came towards him, then he'd face it... He'd beat it down, do whatever it took to get it off his back, and then run until he was free of this fucking house.
But it didn't approach him. At least, Riku couldn't see it.
He couldn't tell where it'd gone at all. No more taunts, no more footsteps. It was chillingly quiet, and there wasn't even that subtle glimpse of it anymore, in the far mirror.
A new tactic to draw him out? Wait until he got curious, then ambush him?
Riku shut his eyes briefly, squeezing them until he saw red, and then opened them again. That breath he'd been holding seeped out of him like a poison, leaving his lungs aching and urging him to gasp. Mustering all the self-control he had, he barely breathed, and didn't move.
His heart counted the seconds like they were minutes. It was beating too fast, and even if the stillness didn't affect his perception of time, his pulse would. It felt like it was going a thousand times per minute, which couldn't be true or else Riku thought he'd probably be dead. Dying, if nothing else.
But there was just... There was nothing, and Riku thought maybe this was a whole new tactic, that it wasn't even trying to smoke him out through silence. Maybe it thought Riku would kill himself with trepidation.
He wouldn't. He'd wait... As long as it took, he wouldn't walk right into a trap -
Footsteps.
Footsteps leading away, soft, and becoming more distant. A tremor went through one of Riku's balled fists; he knew it, he fucking knew it... But he wouldn't let himself get complacent yet, he listened hard, and didn't even blink too hard until the steps were inaudible.
Riku ducked out from the tiny dead-end, briefly unable to remember which direction he'd even come from. Getting his bearings, he walked as lightly on his feet as possible, picking them up to avoid the sound of a scuff or the squeak of a rubber sole.
And, miraculously... there was darkness at the turn of a few more corners, the maze leading out into a narrow, blackened passageway. Riku had never been relieved to see darkness in his life; this made for the first and hopefully only time. Creeping out into it, he tentatively touched the wall – solid, regular wood, thank god – and Riku led himself through the cramped hall.
It didn't take long to find a turn. Riku followed it, already lifting his head up in hopes of spotting a tiny red light.
But it was the maze. Before him, the mirrors were illuminated, splitting off into different directions – at least three of them – and Riku turned, looking back the way he came while something squeezed his stomach.
He hadn't gone around in a circle, somehow. The maze was behind him, too.
The unlit corridor had just been another illusion. He'd thought he'd escaped it and he hadn't.
Riku could have yelled, swore, hurt something in his anger, but there was no way to vent without giving himself away. All he could do was clench his fists until his blunt nails threatened to cut through his palms, and then he moved on.
Back into the maze. Riku walked back into the austere light, surrounded by his own face; he'd never been so sick of himself, and that wasn't even an uncommon thought for him to have. He could do this, he had to do this...
The replica, distantly, laughed again.
A hand shot out of the mirror closest, and seized his forearm.
“Shit-” Riku jerked, trying to wrench himself out of the replica's grasp, laughter close now, right against his ear. It was coming right out of the mirror, emerging like it was nothing but a doorway, but the surface was there; Riku could see the imperfections, the shine.
“I told you there's nowhere to hide,” it almost purred, voice too silky to be natural.
Riku punched it across the jaw, hard.
It barely flinched.
“That's the best you can do, isn't it?” it accused, grappling for his other wrist as Riku struggled against it, tooth and nail, knee colliding with it with all the effectiveness of trying to break through steel.
The replica was wrestling him backwards, towards a mirror.
Riku's singular thought was that he did not want to get close to that mirror.
He didn't know what would happen, but he couldn't fight it off, couldn't let it happen -
“Sora, help!”
The replica stumbled back with the force of his shove, and Riku didn't think twice. He bolted, right down the center path, a straight shot through the rest of the maze that he hadn't seen before.
He didn't hear it follow.
The hallway that took Sora away from the drowning chamber was so narrow he wouldn't have been able to walk side-by-side with someone, and didn't seem to have an end. It felt like he'd been walking straight the whole time, but that couldn't be the case... A corridor this long couldn't fit inside the shack they were in. At some point, he had to have turned, but Sora couldn't figure out when or how, and he'd been trying to puzzle it out despite the significantly more baffling situation he'd just escaped.
It was better than fixating on the knowledge that Riku may have tried to drown him.
He had one hand on either wall at all times to guide himself, dripping as he went, but the water had been siphoning off him steadily. Apart from his hair, he was nearly dry; even his clothes were hardly damp, anymore. It was getting easier to think that maybe he'd imagined the whole event.
Maybe he should turn back. It seemed more and more evident that Kairi didn't come this way. Sora didn't think he'd find an end to this nothingness...
“Help!”
Sora froze.
Riku – that had been his scream, from no discernible direction, but it was close. Way too near to have come from the passage behind -
“Riku! Riku, where are you?” Sora didn't wait for an answer and didn't get one, pace picking up to a sprint; he let go of the walls, shoulders glancing off of them in his recklessness, but what did that matter?
He had to get to Riku, he was somewhere nearby, he was in trouble.
The ground gradually sloped down, which he took as encouragement, because at least it was something different. The momentum moved him faster, he had to be getting close...
His footsteps stopped clattering and Sora was forcibly slowed when the surface became soft and uneven. Momentarily, he was convinced he was back on the beach – He could see a hazy sort of light at the end, almost ghostly like moonlight through clouds - maybe he'd found his way out. When he crouched, though, there was soft earth and grass. Not sand.
“What the...” Shaking off the creepy feeling he'd entered another unreal world, Sora tried calling out again, “Riku?”
Not even an echo. The words were swallowed by the oppressive air he was wandering into, the musty fog having the opposite effect of wind. Sora needed to gasp for air a little, even when he was already breathing it in.
The path opened up around him into another wide room with little hills in the near distance – he thought it was a room, at least, though now he could make out the plot of land under his feet. No sky ahead, no horizon in the distance... Everything beyond the little glade disappeared into utter darkness. He hadn't really noticed the depth of the silence behind him until a breeze fluttered by his ear, rustling the grass.
In contrast, any sound his footsteps might've made was absorbed into the ground. Without really knowing why, Sora's volume dropped to a whisper as he walked towards the mounds. “Riku? Are you here? ... Kairi?”
There were shapes... Sora almost laughed when he figured out what they were, though it was more out of relief than he'd admit. Graves; at least those were something he'd expect to be in a haunted house. He was compelled to reach out and feel one, certain that he'd feel foam or plastic. Something obviously fake.
Even though they were, of course, fake... He just wanted to touch them, for that assurance.
Sora came up to the nearest one, near enough to read the inscription, and if his hand hadn't been outstretched already he wouldn't have brushed the cold stone. He'd frozen altogether, staring at the words.
'Riku Misaki; Died Alone.'
Chilled, Sora almost jumped back, mind clicking back into activity and trying to justify this. There had to be a way the fairground workers had... figured out their names, done this ahead of time...
“It's a set-up. A joke,” he told himself aloud, lump already rising to his throat as his attention was drawn to the headstones beyond it, almost magnetically.
He'd adjusted to the dark a little, and the fog seemed to have lifted off the graveyard. It was enough to make out names.
Tidus. Selphie. Wakka.
He wasn't close enough to read the epitaphs on them, but as he took a step towards them, it ceased to matter. Sora didn't make it all the way over to them before a closer tombstone demanded his gaze.
'Kairi Uchida; Died Suffering.'
Sora's legs buckled, and nearly gave out. The intrusive image of someone – something – torturing Kairi popped into his head, somewhere beyond him that he couldn't see but where he needed to be, right now -
“Please, no...” he closed his eyes tightly. The nightmarish visions were only more vivid.
“You're not real,” Sora shook his head, forcing himself not to tear up, and murmured reassurances to himself as they came to him. It took him all too long to put together that this couldn't be real, that there was no way that Riku or Kairi could be buried here when he just saw them.
Steeling himself with that thought, he made himself stand upright again. He'd muscle through to the end of the graveyard; there was an end, somewhere. There had to be.
He just wouldn't look at any more. They still felt horribly like a prediction of the future.
Before he could properly tear his eyes away, Sora's plan failed instantly in execution as he spotted the names of his parents just beyond Kairi's. Their monument was combined, grass grown over the plot rather than freshly upturned like those of his friends.
“... Don't look...” he whispered, and closed his eyes. He'd slowed to a stop, and had to force his limbs into lumbering motion again. “Just don't look...”
It was a terrible curiosity, one that gave him a little tug with every step.
... He needed to know.
Sora gave in, turning sharply to run to them, and couldn't breathe when he was confronted by the words:
'Waiting to be Saved.'
He wanted to deny it. To cry out in despair. But it was one blow too many to combat with logic, and it overwhelmed him with unchallenged certainty. He forgot that he saw his parents only hours ago, that they'd been home all day.
They were gone. This was singularly his fault. He was going to fail to prevent Kairi and Riku's graves from coming true, too...
Trembling, Sora slowly turned his head to the single grave just next to theirs. The fresh plot was easily the most recent of them all, topped by a headstone so small and plain it could've been easily overlooked. He needed to hunch right in front of it to even make out the inscription, and somehow he knew, almost accepted what he saw.
'Sora Hikari; Died for Nothing.'
He lost the strength to stand. Sora dropped to hands and knees, and both sank right through the first few inches of loose earth. His chest contracted as though hyperventilating, every breath in and out too short and not frequent enough, his eyes went wide. The wetness that'd gathered before his parents' graves dried up in panic, and he stared down at the nearly-buried patches of skin, pale in contrast to the dark earth.
Couldn't save his parents. Couldn't save his friends. If he'd drowned, back there, forcing Riku away to save himself... of course, his death would mean nothing.
Worse than nothing.
How did this place know?
Less of his arm was visible than even a second before – his hands were completely under the ground and his wrists were following. His knees were sinking into the plot like a trap, and Sora jerked back, pulling hard to free them.
The dirt... Maybe the dirt was just too new...
But as he tried to roll himself off it, the soil became looser and started to funnel inwards as though into an empty space beneath. Sora couldn't feel the support of it under him, anymore.
He started to fall.
Scrambling over the edge of the grave, nothingness opened up where he'd been kneeling, impossibly deep. There was no time to recover, the world shuddering just before the ground started to give way again. Sora sped forward on his knees, head darting around in every direction and searching for a safe place to crawl to – but the ground was splitting open on all sides, dirt crumbling and rolling into the void, taking even the headstones with it.
He got to his feet in sprinting stages, ground shaking and unstable everywhere he stepped. He kept sinking several inches into the dirt as easily as if it was snow, but he didn't stop, in such a panic that he simply wrenched it free and kept moving -
There. A square of light from the corner of his eye. Sora turned sharply towards it, something like a squat stone building suddenly in view on his left and somehow escaping being sucked into pits. The ground rapidly became black with them, and he had no time to think.
Sora vaulted over empty space just as the ground disappeared under his feet. He kept running. He didn't look back, but by the time he'd thrown himself into the mausoleum, he was sure the entire graveyard was gone.
The floor was solid, and whole. Sora landed, and all the tremors stopped at once.
Breathing hard, he chanced a look behind him to find nothing but a solid wall of stone. He swallowed, allowing himself one moment of weakness. His stomach was somewhere back there, or so it felt, but... But he couldn't stay here.
Riku had shouted out for help. Kairi was still missing, unguarded from who knew what danger.
Died alone... Died suffering... Died for nothing...
The words, horribly real and final in their stone beds, passed again and again before his mind's eye.
Sora wouldn't, wouldn't let it happen.
Resolutely, he turned to stare ahead into the mausoleum, and a familiar red glow filling the only path left to take.
He didn't know how the graveyard had lead him back here, when he'd walked only away from it. He didn't know how the fork in the passage had disappeared, either.
He didn't need to know. Dusting the clumps of dirt off himself, Sora charged on into the haze.
The blackness that had welcomed Riku hadn't been a deception, but that was the most he could say for it. The maze was behind him, and for a long moment, that was all he cared. He didn't think he was being pursued, but...
Riku couldn't tell, really.
If the replica was quiet enough, he wouldn't know at all. His anxiety from before was nothing, compared to this; the danger was palpable, because this time he knew something was after him and there was damn near nothing he could do.
Getting the upper hand had been a fluke. Riku recognized that. This was worse, so much so...
And he couldn't find the walls, but he couldn't stop moving, either. He just kept going forward, hands out in front despite his fear of being snatched again. If he stopped moving he'd be caught. He couldn't even fathom what would come next.
The layout, or discernible lack thereof... Had Riku somehow doubled back, stumbled on the way he'd first come in? He couldn't figure out how he would have, but... He'd lost track so easily... It was conceivable that he'd gone in a circle because no way was there another chamber like this. Vast, simultaneously empty and... oppressively full.
As he put more and more distance between himself and the mirrors, the atmosphere became obstructive and cool again. The darkness was a tangible thing, and it wasn't long before Riku could feel it again.
But it didn't stroke or graze him, this time. It didn't brush, but clung, sticking onto him like the sucking mud that sometimes formed in the rainy season. Riku could feel it clumping onto his skin, groping and pulling downwards with dead weight. He grimaced in disgust, illogically trying to rub it off or tear it away. He knew from experience that it was useless so he didn't even know why he'd tried; the only thing he thought he might have some control over was whether it not it gagged him again.
He kept his lips firmly sealed. The darkness wrapped around one ankle like a clammy hand.
Far off, the replica laughed. Riku's lungs constricted.
At last, it was following – he knew it would, he'd been stupid to hope, though he hadn't even realized there had been any delusional part of him thinking it might not.
And he had to run.
Riku tried to take off at a sprint, but the thing caught around his ankle slowed him like a shackle – he would have pitched forward if he hadn't anticipated it, thrown his weight back as well as forward.
A heavy glob fell on his shoulder, sluggishly descending down his back. He felt so much heavier, badly encumbered by the incorporeal substance leeching onto him.
He didn't stop moving regardless. The replica was still taunting him – he could get away, the words weren't even clear yet – but it was taking so much stamina just to resist the darkness's pull. Another thick, congealed lump seemed to grab him by the forehead, sliding between his eyes and down very deliberately; it wasn't merely fluid, it knew where it was going, and Riku bit down on his lips to keep the substance from slipping through them. All the same, it was sticking there, waiting for the first sign of an opening to slide down his throat like a mucus -
“Are you even trying to get away?”
Riku forced down a shout, and closed his eyes, trying to collect himself – but it was no good, he was being bogged down. His arms were so weighted down, legs steadily more and more wrapped up -
Heavy steps scarpered by. Riku's eyes shot open again.
He wouldn't see the replica. It just felt more dignified, to die facing him down as much as he could. If he was going to die.
The steps went right by him, though, and he could see light – just ahead, from out of nowhere, cracks shining through the outline of a door.
It was wrenched open, the dark scantly flooded, and a figure slipped through the door and shut it with a condemning thud.
Too slight to be him – to be the replica.
Riku opened his mouth to shout at Sora, trying to call him back without thinking. The darkness gleefully plunged in.
The ground under him gave, that thick something swallowing him from below at the first sign that he'd stopped struggling, and Riku didn't have time to start again. The reeling apprehension that he'd been well and truly deserted had struck him dumb, and he couldn't even scream as the abyss went over his head and pulled him through the floor.
Without warning, the path turned right.
Sora would have been prepared for it, would have slowed and prevented his second near-collision with a dead end today, had there been a solid wall there.
But it was a mirror.
He'd seen only the same red-tinged fog almost until it was too late. What had actually tripped him up was the sudden appearance of a figure out of the gloom in front of him. His breath caught.
Only his reflection.
Sora turned, expecting more darkness, more aimless halls, but the light on the mirrored walls was shockingly stark. Another step forward, and dozens of him repeated the motion.
... Okay. A little freaky, but at least he could see.
If Sora stopped to think about the maze he was walking into, perhaps he would have faltered and found it confusing, but instead he fixated – another mirror finished the path, and partially reflected the turns it took. In that tiny corner of visibility, something was moving. Something that wasn't him. A little flitting motion of burgundy red.
“Kairi?”
Jogging a few steps ahead, Sora was sure he caught a glimpse of her ashen face, before she turned and hurried away... again.
At least mindful enough not to charge into a mirror, Sora followed, mostly going by instinct and almost losing her once or twice. Every time he thought he had, he spotted her back, or her hair trailing behind her, and he'd shout again for her and walk faster.
She never responded. Sora tried not to let that frustrate him.
Refusing to let her disappear on him again, he kept his eyes fixed on her, and didn't look back. Didn't spare a glance for his own reflections.
Kairi never hit a barrier, or had to turn back. Actually, she was navigating the maze with absolute ease - she seemed to know the way perfectly. Was she leading him out?
Just ahead – the hallway went on, but the mirrors stopped lining the walls. It was a safe bet that the twists, turns, and forks would end there as well, and Sora would be out of the maze. He'd be at less of a risk of losing sight of her, but it didn't come as much comfort.
The mirrors actually felt kind of... safer. He didn't think there were as many opportunities to fall into a trap, back there. After two very real brushes with death, he was becoming attached to the idea that at least his own reflection couldn't hurt him.
His pace picked up to a quick walk, eyes still trained on Kairi's back. As long as he didn't run or scare her off, he'd catch up in no time, before they ran into some other horrible thing.
It was weird – he didn't know what Kairi had run into, to freak her out so badly that she'd even run away from her friends...
“Hey... Maybe you're driving her away.”
Sora's breath caught and he whipped around, for a split-second thinking of Riku. That whisper, right against his ear... It'd come so close that whoever spoke had to be looming over his shoulder, but there was nothing behind him. Only mirrors.
He stared at himself, baffled. No sign of Riku anywhere, if that had been him...
And if it was ... There was a private, guilty part of him that had been on the track to blaming Riku for Kairi running away, wondering if she could have run into him in the water, too. But she hadn't fallen with him... Had she?
The familiar voice became lighter, almost too innocent to be cruel. “Why else would she run, unless she can't stand you?”
Just his reflection. That voice was right in front of him, now -
“And because you're so annoying... She's all alone.” A laugh, bubbly but cold. “And vulnerable.”
His hair fluttered as something rushed through him, making Sora stumble and pivot – Kairi was gone, but a shape took after her, the familiar outline of someone's body. Cold rammed into him harder than that presence.
He'd figured out why he knew that voice, it was his own.
And it'd threatened Kairi.
Heart pounding, Sora tore after it without another thought.
The first thing he heard from Kairi since she'd appeared in the haunted house was her echoing scream. His feet pounded against the ground until they were sore, all of his prior experience in track failing him and leaving him with a stitch in his side and protesting lungs.
He powered through it, navigating only a straight shot much like that endless corridor from before – how long had it been, had he somehow found his way back? - but that couldn't be, and it wasn't, because it was winding. Several times, he almost plowed into a turn.
But Kairi was still screaming, and Sora couldn't stop running. Didn't stop running, until he slipped.
The consistency of the ground had changed abruptly, and even if Sora couldn't have placed it from years of familiarity, the dim light caught the rolling texture of sand. Had he not been so out of breath, he might have groaned. How many times could he be lead outdoors but never really be there?
The illumination was silvery and subtle, like moonlight shining into a cavern, and the wall he caught himself on was rough. Stone.
Sora inhaled, made to pause, and then lost his breath entirely. There were whitish patches, deliberate scratches out of the rock. They were barely visible but he knew them. Sora knelt down, feeling quickly over the carvings.
The two of them, he and Kairi... They'd scratched these into the walls of their Secret Place, the spot they'd made their own when they were kids. They still hid out there, whenever they wanted some time away from the rest of the world. Just walking in always made Sora feel at least ten years younger in the best way... There was something magical about a childhood memory. Comforting.
Another scream reverberated all around him, strangely muffled, and Sora disregarded how he'd got here. He jumped to his feet and sprinted, used to running on sand with bare feet more readily than shoes but it didn't matter. She was in pain.
The cave was less recognizable, the farther in he went, deeper than the Secret Place truly was. Lit lamps were on the ground, some toppled but still aflame, and they cast strange shadows over the things on the walls – arrays of wide bladed things, hatchets and saws and knives. The vines stopped looking like plant life, and became heavy lengths of chain ending in sharp hooks.
And Kairi, tethered to the stone wall by one of those hooks shoved through a puckered wound in her palm. Her mouth was covered by her torturer, his hand clamped tightly over it, as he yanked her other wrist up.
Sora stared, horror-stricken. A perfect copy of him was doing this to her, and Kairi was fighting him more weakly than she ever would have in real life. There was nothing but fear and pain in her eyes, and all her attempts to scream were futile.
“Let her go!”
The copy ignored Kairi's howl and tilted his head back. He smiled. As though nothing was wrong. “Huh? Why would I?”
He split her hand and worked the hook through the cartilage. Kairi threw her head back and shrieked, and Sora heard himself scream in tandem as he rushed at them, intending on ripping him away and beating him until he couldn't hurt her anymore -
“Do you really think you can save her?”
They weren't there a moment later. Just the cave wall. Sora turned sharply, in time to see the copy finishing shackling Kairi to a stone slab, and remove a sharp corkscrew implement from a rack on the wall. His eyes didn't look right – they had shadows in them as he inspected the long, sharp thing, and he went on disapprovingly, “Why would you leave her in the first place, if you didn't want something bad to happen?”
“I never left -... What are you?”
“Can't you tell?” The copy jeered. “I'm you.”
He shoved the corkscrew into her stomach and twisted it in. Kairi's cry turned into a weak gargle, blood oozing from the deep puncture, and Sora barreled forward again with no thought for the failure of his last attempt.
“You're not me!”
The wall met his charge, the two of them simply gone and Sora's head cracking off the rock. He practically bounced off it in his haste to locate them again.
Sora found them, saw the copy holding Kairi tightly as though hugging her from behind as he dragged a serrated knife through the side of her neck. The skin was tearing away, blood spraying over the sand, and it was all she could do to crane away, chalky pale.
Sora couldn't have been expected to notice details that were... off. Kairi was smaller than she should have been, her height several inches below the copy's, and her limbs more frail. The mirror-Sora was his size exactly, but he could have crushed her. Kairi's skin, too, colorless as it was becoming, was as flawless as porcelain. Her eyes were larger but more empty for it. All her imperfections were wiped away, cloaked by a haunting sort of beauty.
“Actually... Maybe you're right,” the copy pondered, loudly, over Kairi's pained whimpers, and met Sora's eyes intently. “Maybe you're not Sora.”
“Sora, please...” Kairi rasped, and it wasn't clear which one she was speaking to.
“I wouldn't do this!” He searched for a weapon with narrow eyes but threw aside the idea of grabbing one of the torture devices – instead, he lunged for the copy's knife.
“Wouldn't I?”
Kairi was shoved at him, but she dissolved just before falling into Sora's arms. He almost stumbled but had no other time to react, grabbing for the weapon as the copy wrestled with him for it.
“You hurt Kairi!” The copy accused, glaring. “You left her behind. And you abandoned Riku in here.”
“I didn't abandon anyone! I wouldn't... I-I didn't mean to-...”
“You did!” He was yelling at Sora, real hate in his voice, and pushing him backwards. “You were a jerk, and you left them both to suffer... Is that something Sora would do?!”
Heart racing, he tried to resist. “No, I-... I'll get them back!”
“No. Sora will.”
The copy threw the knife aside and grappled Sora under his arm, turning them around. Another mirror materialized in the wall, and Sora's attempts to fight were useless – he struggled and kicked, but every move was predictable to a version of himself.
Huffing, the copy wrenched him forward and shoved him right through the mirror.
“No!”
Sora recovered, charged back at the copy but hit a solid glass barrier. The copy stepped back, face becoming shadowed.
“I'll start with Riku,” he grinned, and walked backwards into darkness as the cave faded to black. Sora's heart almost stopped and he threw himself at the slick surface, panicked.
“Riku-...”
If that copy wasn't real, what about the Riku that'd pulled him under? Even if that had really been him, who cared, that thing was going after Riku and there was no telling what he'd do -
Would he torture him like he'd been torturing Kairi?
Had that been Kairi? She'd just... vanished, like she was never there at all.
Or had he been tricked? What if Kairi had never come into the house? What if she'd been safe outside this whole time, and whatever he'd been following had only lead him off course?
Lead him farther from Riku.
He could barely remember the last time he'd thought about tracking Riku down, and now...
Sora threw his body against the glass again and again to no avail, looking around wildly at black nothingness until, completely separate from his own doing, something started to come into view.
A place Sora had seen destroyed, restored as if nothing had happened, but he didn't even think to find that strange now.
The graveyard, and a body on the ground.
Riku was in a heap before his own gravestone, still shaky. The cold was still clinging to his skin like clay, but it didn't feel like the darkness itself was... And, if seeing was believing, there was nothing on his skin. There probably never had been.
Still, he prayed that what he saw wasn't true. He'd glimpsed the names of his birth parents – 'Never Knew Their Son', and just the reminder was enough to hit him in the gut and rattle him for several stretching seconds – but the three in front of them, they couldn't be real.
His wasn't. 'Riku Misaki; Died Alone.'
But he wasn't dead.
He couldn't confidently say the same of Sora, or of Kairi, and the soil had recently been turned. Riku forced himself up to his knees with a hiss of pain, grief having made him forget how hard he'd landed when he'd fallen through a ceiling that no longer existed.
Kairi's grave was closest. Feeling sick with dread but refusing to accept it, he started to claw through the soft dirt, growing more frantic by the moment.
“... Can't be...” he breathed, telling himself that, that it really couldn't be. He'd only just seen Kairi, hadn't he? It felt like he'd spent half his life in this hell, but it hadn't honestly been that long. Nothing could have happened to her.
He had to find the coffin, he had to see her. And then Sora.
Unbeknownst to him, Sora was banging his fists frantically against glass as hard as he could, shouting as he watched a replica of himself approach soundlessly from behind.
The copy stopped right behind him, all the malice in him gone. “Riku...?”
Jolted, Riku scrambled aside, filthy hands almost about to curl into protective fists. But – he looked quickly from the copy to the grave, and stared at him like he was the dawn after the longest night of Riku's life.
“Sora-?” he exhaled. “You're-...”
From his glass prison, Sora took in the way Riku looked at what he thought was him from a perspective he'd never been able to before. It would have warmed him throughout, except... it wasn't him. Riku's eyes shouldn't have softened, his posture shouldn't have relaxed just-slightly, not for that thing that had stolen his face, that had tortured even the specter of Kairi, and trapped him here to watch.
What was it going to do?
Riku's relief passed. Of course Sora hadn't somehow perished – he'd seen him only moments ago. Fleeing to safety.
“I thought you left,” his eyes narrowed slightly. “I saw you...”
Rather than defend himself, the copy threw himself down and hugged Riku around his neck. Without thinking, Riku's arm twitched to go to his waist.
“Don't touch him!” Sora drove his fist into the glass again, but he was drowned out by his own voice.
“I thought I lost you! Your hand slipped out of mine and you were just gone.”
“... But I saw you get out of here. Right before I-...” Riku stopped himself mid-accusation, slowly letting himself hold onto him.
It didn't matter. It was stupid, condemning him for any reason at all – a second ago, logic be damned, Riku had thought he'd died. He'd looked at that gravestone with the chilling certainty that Sora has escaped, only to be killed.
His nausea just wouldn't settle. Even with Sora right in front of him, he couldn't get past it.
“This place is playing tricks on us,” the copy shook his head. “I thought I saw you, too...”
Riku tried to believe him and doubt him, at the same time. “... Tricks,” he muttered, reminding himself that this was Sora. He wouldn't lie.
“Please don't believe him...” Sora moaned, beatings weaker with the futility of it all, “He's the fake, he's tricking you.”
Nothing could be worse than this. Watching it touch Riku with his body, lie with his voice, and knowing Riku would trust it. If the copy convinced him it was the real Sora, what would happen if he managed to get out of here? Would Riku be so brainwashed, he'd attack Sora, believing he was the illusion?
He remembered cold arms around him – Riku's arms, Riku's eyes glowing underwater, Riku's hair ripped out and clinging to his hands...
Starting to unwind his arm from around him, Riku closed his eyes, tried to calm his queasiness. “If we stick together... We can second-guess this place. We'll find a way out...”
Rather than get up, though, the copy held on tighter. “I thought you were gone forever...”
Unpleasantly, Riku was thrown back to the feeling of the darkness wrapping around him. “... I'm fine...”
Even clingier, he was starting to push himself over top of Riku, catching him off guard. “I'd never see you again... I'd never get to tell you...”
Sora's palms pressed to the glass, alert again despite his doubts, and glaring at the back of his own head. “What are you doing?”
“Sora – get off, we need to get out of here...”
“I wanted you to know,” the copy persisted. “I wanted to tell you just once...”
Riku's eyes widened uncertainly. “... Sora...”
“What are you doing?!”
The copy crawled on top of him and kissed him soundly.
Tense with shock, Riku froze, mind racing through too many things at a time. How long he'd wanted this. The fresh grave. The darkness adhering itself to his skin. Being trapped.
“Mm-...” he tilted his face to break the kiss, speaking stiffly. “Not here-... Sora, we've got to get out, we can talk about this later...”
The copy was kissing every part of him available, almost pouting. “You don't want to...?”
“That's not-...” Riku bit back a denial. His thoughts were still darting around too quick to tame. To Kairi, to Sora, to the headstones again and this place. “We're in danger, you said it yourself.”
Unheard as ever, Sora was back to pounding desperately on the unyielding pane.
This was wrong. He'd wanted to kiss Riku so badly, so many times, but now that desire had been stolen, twisted into something so disgusting he couldn't even be jealous of it. Sora never would have done it this way. Not while they were still in danger, not on the graves of their friends. And never if Riku said no.
But now, as far as Riku knew, that was him. Sora couldn't stop it. All he could do was watch himself become a monster in his best friend's eyes.
“What if we never get out of here... what if this is our only chance?”
The copy slid over his lap, and Riku felt inexplicably smaller. He was tempted to hit him, heart racing; Riku needed him to understand, this wasn't a permanent no. But accepting being trapped, letting 'Sora' do this when he couldn't predict how long they'd be safe for if they were out of danger at all -
And, besides... Kairi... Maybe it was selfish, or wasn't fair, but he hadn't made up his mind yet, he didn't want the choice forced on him...
“Stop. Okay? We're gonna get out of here.”
The copy didn't reply. Instead he stroked Riku's hair and kissed him, his tongue smooth and invading, tasting cool and sweet. A too-strong, sickly sweet. Riku's stomach lurched, shocked that he wouldn't listen to 'stop'.
It was like that sensation from before, when that something had shoved itself through his lips and wormed its way down his throat to Riku's core. He pushed at the copy, trying to scramble back in blind panic.
“No-...”
Powerless and exhausted with the effort to free himself, Sora could feel tears sliding down his cheeks, streaking on the barrier he'd pressed his forehead to. Crying was all he had left. Crying and pleading that somehow Riku would hear his voice, or understand his thoughts.
“Don't let him do this. Push me away. Hurt me if you have to, just get away...”
Sora had held his fantasies in for so long, fearing Riku's reaction, but now all he wanted in the world was for Riku to reject him. If he just did that, Sora would never breathe a word of his feelings for him as long as he lived. He'd never know what could have happened, whether Riku might have once felt the same way... because after this, there was no way Riku would ever forgive him. Sora wouldn't want him to.
The copy crawled to keep up with him until he had Riku pinned against Kairi's headstone, something predatory in his body language. But not his face... His expression was sweet, wanting. His lips shone.
“Why are you saying this?” The copy looked hurt. “I love you... I want to be with you badly...”
“Don't say that to him,” Sora sobbed, and knew what it was like to hate something for the first time.
“After, we can talk about this after,” Riku tried to bargain, eyes as narrow as his last thread of conviction. “But not here – not like this...”
“I want it to be now...” the copy leaned in, kissing up his throat.
“Riku, no-...”
“And I told you to stop!”
Riku shoved him, and the copy fell back hard. He crumbled to the ground, light in his eyes fading and becoming glassy. Tense, Riku stared, feeling strangely incapable of breathing.
“... Sora?”
Unnerved when the copy didn't move, Riku sat up to get a good look at him, terrified by the blank look on his face. In shoving him... Oh god, had he hurt him? Maybe he'd landed on something -
“Sora?” Scared that he'd hurt Sora, Riku lurched forward and tried to lift him, looking for something he could've hit his head on. There was nothing but soft dirt, no sign of injury... And, although it was hard to tell, Riku didn't think he'd died.
But there was no sign of life. The copy of Sora looked like a heavy puppet with its strings cut.
“Sora, say something,” Riku urged, acid crawling up his tight throat. He'd done this to Sora, somehow...
“Move-... Say anything, come on...” Hauling the copy up against him, Riku held him against his chest and tried to breathe. Tried to listen for his breath. Attempted to prompt him into movement, any kind – if he went back to his relentless kisses, that would be better.
“I-... I'm sorry, okay? I take it back, we'll do whatever you want if you just look at me-...”
The copy's head rolled limply onto Riku's shoulder, staring up with empty, unblinking eyes.
Unreality clouded around Riku, terrified. He lifted the copy's heavy head, swallowing hard and begging, “Please? You're okay... We can get out of here and we'll be together however you want... Kairi... We need to see her, we need...”
The copy was nothing but dead weight in his arms, and only one sensible thought pierced the nightmarish veil. Medical attention; he had to get Sora to a doctor, immediately.
“You're okay,” he repeated, trying to sound strong as he struggled to arrange the copy in his arms. “It's fine, I'll get us out.”
It was absurdly hard to pry him off the ground, and Riku's mind had nowhere to go but to the various things that might be wrong with Sora. A coma; he was catatonic at the very least, but it seemed worse than that, and so sudden. Not head trauma – an aneurysm. A heart attack.
His best friend could be dying and the last thing Riku had done was push him away.
“Riku! Riku!”
The last thing Sora heard before everything went dark was him, telling that clone to stop, to leave him alone. Then he'd blinked, and the graveyard was gone; he'd opened his eyes to see mirrors again, reflecting back the image of himself, trapped.
He was stuck inside this mirror, totally unable to pry the copy off and protect Riku.
The only thing worse than seeing whatever it did to him was not seeing; not knowing...
How far was the copy going to go...?
“Oh, god... Riku...” Despairing, Sora slammed into the mirror once more, expecting a solid wall of glass again.
His attempts so far had earned him nothing but bruises. His arms were a patchwork of purplish splotches, his knees practically blackened. All his knuckles were bloody and he thought he might have broken a toe, but he wouldn't stop. He'd crack his skull open breaking this mirror, if he had to.
To his shock, it gave. It didn't shatter, or behave as glass should at all, bending like a taut screen of something thick and semi-solid. But it moved.
Reeling for a second before disregarding the strangeness of this transformation, Sora pushed into it again, encouraged through his disbelief. It was still hard and unbroken, but as he dropped his weight to press into it with all he had, it began to curve outwards. It resisted like thick rubber, but it was something.
Okay. He could do this. With enough pressure, it was bound to break eventually. Sora spat into his palms, dug in his heels, and pushed with all the power he could muster.
The surface of the mirror stretched, became distorted, maintaining that rubbery surface until it became as thin as latex over his shoulders. Sora screwed his eyes shut and pressed even his forehead to it, exertion manifesting as noise – and he knew it would take just a little more pressure for it to tear.
Sora's foot found the place where the glass was thinnest and shoved.
It didn't split or rip open as it should have. It just... gave, opening up wide enough for his leg to slip out up to the knee. Sora buckled, nearly losing his balance, but finding he could fall no further. His eyes sprang open again in shock.
He broke through the mirror.
He could see in the mirror across from him, his own stretched image, the strangeness. But more than that, there was a mighty pressure cinched around him. The mirror had closed back around his leg like a powerful vacuum, sealing his leg on one side, and the rest of him on the other. It wasn't solid glass again, but it was clamping harder, as though trying to reform right around his knee, or else suck it back in.
Sora's breath caught, barely managing to maintain his push, and he started to work his shoulder through the cool interior. It clung so tight it hurt, but he could get through if he kept at this. It was uncomfortable, but he'd suffered worse even outside this place. He could do this. Riku was counting on him.
The rest of his leg squeezed through, the bone shifting as though it might give before the mirror did, and it was no more forgiving than the first breach he'd made. The surface was like powerful elastic, closing in exclusively on the part he was trying to shove through, and it was felt that much harder when there was less surface area to resist.
Sora cried out in panic, the mirror clenching his thigh so tight it was starting to go numb, cutting off circulation. It was slicing into him, it could take the leg right off -
Bracing with his other foot, he fought the mirror and inadvertently broke the surface with his forehead. It clamped tight, like it might cave in his skull; he only froze for a second, heart pounding. He feared for his eyes, his nose, he thought they might break somehow (if eyes could break) under the force.
Then he got to his neck, the mirror tight around his windpipe and making him gasp desperately. A gruesome image entered his mind – his neck severed, his head hitting the ground, rolling into the mirror across and staring at his crumpling body in the seconds it took for his brain to shut down... Assuming he wasn't strangled, first .
Harder, he had to push harder, this would kill him...
Sora threw his shoulders out, the squeeze no less deadly but he breathed, spat on the floor expecting it to be tinged red. Then he found himself stuck. As frantically as he'd struggled, the mirror had been faster, sealing him in until nothing could move.
“Oh god... Oh god, oh god...”
Shutting his eyes, he whimpered and tried to dislodge, still trying to get his hip out before the leg wound up damaged somehow. And, if he could get it through, he could get both feet on the ground... He could get a better stance, pull himself as well as push...
When he opened his eyes again, he could see in his reflection his bulging blue veins, blood trapped.
Sora yanked.
His leg unstuck, and his hips managed to come through – no less easily, but the fear-shot force he'd made himself capable of took him farther than he'd even hoped. Sora was only half-trapped, but he was starting to fear that he'd rip himself in half before he got any further.
It was so solid, why had he thought he could do this, his skin was so much more easy to tear through than glass... He could feel it, he could feel the tightness of his flesh and the drag of impossible pressure scraping it apart.
When he got stuck again, he sobbed. He was so close to having his entire torso out, the other leg. But it just wouldn't. It wouldn't move. Sora tried to wriggle his shoulders, found it fruitless, wrenched his left leg against the surface and thought he felt something dislocate below his knee.
But it was worthwhile, his shoulders parted from it completely, then his chest, and finally his leg came free, dragging a long, clinging tendril of the mirror several feet out before it gave and sank back into its frame. The glass was shifting, the stretched pieces snapping back and solidifying, but he was almost there, he could get out of this-
His progress came to a dead halt when his body was almost entirely out, both arms all that was left stuck in the mirror, trapped from the bicep down.
Sora pulled. He got both feet planted and yanked. Sora struggled, heaved, and there was no movement at all. No slow stretch, not the slightest indication it would bend.
... What if he stayed like this, stuck, forever?
“Oh no, please no...” Sora moaned, fearful, and he stopped thinking so much. He started to kick at the mirror, finding it as solid as the glass had been from the other side, and found purchase against it with one foot. He couldn't stay up easily, the surface too slick, but he could brace enough to lean back and drag, drag his arms out to the elbow, to the wrist -
It was rending the muscle, tendons parting, he thought his bones extended and it was agonizing -
He wrenched at his wrists, and both hands came out all the way to the knuckles in the rush. But the mirror had found the smallest, most breakable parts, the amount of pressure unbelievably painful around his fingers, and the joints forcibly separated with a gut-wrenching pop.
Sora's scream was trapped in his throat. The fingers were broken, and the mirror was getting tighter, cutting into the skin – blood began to stream down the glass, inside and out.
Either he had to free them, or let the mirror slice them off.
At least broken fingers could heal.
He bit down on the insides of his cheek, and resumed pulling.
They were ripping, nerves screaming as they were pinched with every increment Sora could wrestle them out, he didn't let the feeling hold him back because he couldn't. The bone itself was stretching out, pulled into grotesque shapes of clinched raw tissue and they weren't all making it, severing at the ends; the blood had made it to the bottom of the mirror and there was so much more Sora would have thought -
He flew backwards into the mirror behind him, having jerked the last of himself free with a crack.
Sora couldn't stop shaking, twitching with all the pain he'd been trying to resist, fresh tears spilling over.
He wasn't bleeding much, anymore. He would have, had they been cut off cleanly, and though that probably saved his life, this was a worse sight. The mirror had fused the twisted flesh and muscle to the snapped, gnarled ends of bone.
Deformed beyond saving, most of his fingers were gone. The ones that were left, half-gone.
Sora shook like he was convulsing and screamed into his arms.
There was only one place Riku could think to go, and he didn't know if he could even make it. His arms were starting to ache, all his muscle apparently useless – it was worse than just Sora's weight getting to him, it was the exhaustion. Riku felt weak.
Encumbered as he was, there was no way he could protect either of them, anyway. He was going back into the darkness to find the doorway out, but he was going in defenseless.
If he hadn't thought it was for Sora's sake, he wouldn't have sought it out for anything in the world, dreading its touch the way he'd fear his deathbed. He'd come to know it as a personalized torture.
But it wasn't like he had a choice.
Lumbering the copy of Sora through the pitch black, Riku could only hope that he'd happened upon the right place; he'd found a staircase, seemingly endless and winding, and there had been several instances in which he thought he'd fall. He hadn't found the top step so much as eventually stopped needing to climb, and by that point the light had faded to nothing. He'd been convinced again of his defeat, but walked on.
All he could do was walk on, increasingly tired, and all the more afraid because the darkness hadn't touched him yet.
It was only a matter of time. Either it would come for him, or he'd collapse, unable to go on... The darkness was endless.
Riku had no sooner thought it when he stopped, turned, and saw it. The thin cracks of light. The frame of a door.
His heart leapt. It was far off, but he could make it.
He could save them.
Invigorated, Riku adjusted his grip, bringing the copy up from where he'd started to slip.
“I've got you... It's right there, Sora, can you see it?”
No response, but he didn't expect one. Riku trudged on as fast as his sore legs could carry them, wishing he could transfer the copy to his back to bear the brunt instead, but this was fine, it wasn't for much longer -
Something wrapped around his eyes from behind, blocking his view. Riku nearly dropped the copy, distress escaping him audibly – not now, he couldn't take this again. The tangible dark was like a pair of hands covering the upper part of his face, merging in the middle to make a band of impenetrable black.
He was blindfolded. And, so much like fingers, the blindfold started to dig.
Riku dropped to his knees, only conscious of Sora for as long as it took to hit the floor. Then he'd slipped out of his arms, hitting the floor loud – Riku feared for him, he didn't know how he'd landed or if he'd been even more badly hurt in the process, but the band was digging into his eyes, the pressure already painful, and scrambling to tear the blindfold off was doing nothing.
The ache became blistering, and then he felt the flimsy skin of his eyelid rip and his eye implode against the nerve.
He didn't hear himself scream. The world fell out from under him and became unbearable agony, fluid gushing hot and thick against his cheeks, the darkness an instant-long wash of indescribable color before becoming nothing, and the blindfold dug, it pierced, it tunneled right through to his brain like the blunt end of something sharp.
His stomach upended itself, the floor spun him and he swam through pain, and Riku hit the floor, incapable of recognizing unconsciousness for what it was until he'd already passed out.
Sora took shaky breaths to keep from sobbing, useless hands clutched to his chest. The unfamiliar passage – yet another one – was disorienting, all the more so since he hadn't yet stopped reeling with horror, but he couldn't let himself slow down. Not for a second.
He had to find the graveyard. For all he knew, his copy was still there, with Riku...
Forcing himself on Riku...
If it would've done him any good to cry, he might have. There was a horrible, selfish part of him that was scared of the repercussions – he could almost see it play out, Riku's hate and hurt, all directed at Sora – but it was overshadowed by fear for him. He'd spent too long in pain, mourning his mangled fingers, and they still hurt but that danger was over. Riku's wasn't.
The copy might not even stop there. Even if he did, what he was doing was monstrous, and he couldn't let it happen. Sora couldn't believe it was too late, he had to try.
But he was so lost, how was he supposed to save him?
Watching Sora's every step from the shadowed wall, Riku's perfect replica waited until Sora looked a step away from pitching forward. A mere foot behind him, it emerged from the wall as though it were a corridor and asked, “What happened to you?”
Sora turned so sharply that his head spun, and he nearly collapsed. “Riku!”
He was too glad to see him to wonder why Riku had sounded almost disdainful, why he'd angled his body away from Sora as though he didn't trust him.
“What happened with-... How did you get away?!”
“You were there,” the replica replied coolly. “Did it slip your empty head already?”
For a second, Sora was stunned, until it dawned on him – Riku didn't know the copy wasn't him. “I'm really sorry...” he took a step forward, understanding now. “But I swear that wasn't me. It was just a... I don't know, a trick, or... or something.”
The replica scowled. “You expect me to believe that?” Its eyes flickered to his hands, and it sneered, “But it looks like you won't be getting grabby with those anymore...”
Sora's jaw went a bit slack. Riku... Riku had never mocked him if he was really hurt.
“No, just listen to me-... That thing put me in the mirror where it was, and...” trying to explain himself, Sora cautiously held out his mutilated fingers. “This is what I had to do to get free, to come and save you!”
There was still a hint of a derisive glower on the replica's face. “And you did a great job of that, huh.”
“Riku...” he backed off a step. “Come on, you know I wouldn't ever do that...”
“Actions speak louder than words, Sora,” it crossed its arms, eyeing his fingers again. “Which is why I'm actually kind of relieved. You're pretty useless, now... There's not much you can do, anymore.”
Heart rife with ache, he quickly pulled them back in against his chest, shielding them. “Don't say that...”
“Would you rather I lie to you?” The replica turned towards him, and seemed to take some degree of satisfaction in the hurt in Sora's watering eyes.
“Please, Riku...” he shrunk a little, trying to figure out what he could say to make the replica stop lashing out.
“While I'm at it, should I tell you that I believe that it wasn't you, before?” It stepped towards him. “Like I haven't always known you want me?”
The sudden change of subject could've given Sora whiplash, confused. “What...?”
The replica snorted mockingly. “You were never very subtle. I could tell whenever you were thinking anything really messed up, about me... You blush. It made me sick to even be around you, knowing how twisted you are, but I put up with you anyway. I've been lying to you all this time about wanting to be friends, so what's another lie?” Its tone became patronizing. “Sure, Sora. Your hands'll be fine. I bet you won't be pathetic and broken for long.”
The more he spoke, the more Sora felt his heart break, until he'd started to fear the Riku in front of him.
Somehow, though, he drew some resolve from it, refusing to let himself be defeated by the vicious things it said.
“... It doesn't matter what you think about me. You can be mad at me or hate me or whatever all you want, once we get out of here, so come on.” Sora tried to turn away, sure that he could make him understand later if he could just make the replica follow him now.
But it didn't move, and sounded even colder. “I'll get out on my own. You'll only slow me down.”
“No,” Sora protested loudly. “I'm not going to lose you in here again!”
Foolishly, he tried to reach for the replica's arm. He was smacked away, hard.
“Don't touch me with those, you're disgusting.”
Stumbling back, Sora stared, and found himself strongly reminded of watching his own copy.
And it clicked.
“... You're not Riku.”
Its eyes narrowed. “What?”
He was more sure of it by the second. Sora found his ground, stepping forward. “You're just a fake, like the thing that looks like me. And the thing that tried to drown me,” he stared. “You just look like Riku, but he'd never say things like that.”
The replica, unfazed, started to sneer. “... Are you sure about that?”
“Me and Riku joke around, but he'd never call me useless and mean it. And if-... even if he doesn't feel the same way about me, he'd never make fun of me, especially after-... when he just-...” Unable to put words to what he thought the copy might have done to Riku, could still be doing, Sora's voice raised until he was almost yelling. “You – and that other thing – you're trying to trick us into fighting each other, but you're not even a good trick!”
Sora leveled his shoulder at it and charged forward, but stumbled through the replica as though it was mere empty space. It turned to face him again, clapping slowly.
“Had you going for a moment, though,” it tossed its hair over one shoulder. “If I'm not a good trick, I guess that means you're not very smart.”
Scowling, and beyond being insulted by the fake Riku now, Sora shouted, “I'm not going to doubt Riku again, you hear me?! Never, never, ever!”
“Assuming you find him,” the replica held up a hand, shadows forming a large ball in his palm. “I'll bet you could use some help with that.”
Alarmed, Sora tried to figure out a way of defending himself – whatever it was doing, he figured it had to be an attack of some kind. “What are you talking about?”
“Take a look.”
The shadows slunk off and left a clear, almost luminous orb in the replica's hand. Sora's breath caught, trying to reach out towards it – he could see Riku, within it.
And he was sprawled on the floor.
There was a band of black around his eyes, thick gory garnet streaked heavily down his cheeks... There was so much blood...
“Where is he?!”
Sora hadn't noticed shadows seeping up from the floor. The replica snickered.
“Good luck finding him when you can't move.”
It dissipated into darkness, and the floor swallowed up his feet, encapsulating them totally. Sora tried to rush forward after the replica and was held fast by the darkness, almost pitching forward. “No-...”
All traces of him were gone, and he was being held fast – it pinched, and Sora was reminded of the mirror, terror seizing him.
It was already snaking around his ankles, twisting and cutting in. Skin ripped, the bones were breaking already under the pressure, and he couldn't wait for it to crawl higher and crush him piece by piece.
There wasn't time to take this slow or come to terms. He already knew exactly what he had to do.
There was a nauseating snap and he tore one leg out fast, falling straight to the floor as he yanked the other with the audible rupture of everything below the ankle. Sora smashed the side of his face against the ground, in throes of agony, but the bleeding wasn't much – like the mirror, the darkness had pinched off the wound, cleaving him in a way that wouldn't kill him.
He'd live with the pain. He'd live with the throbbing stumps that were now his ankles, utterly useless.
Sora wouldn't be able to walk.
He'd crawl to Riku, then.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Riku. He'd been covered in blood.
Briefly he tried crawling, wrangling himself up to knees and elbows, but barely went a foot before his chest met the floor. Too uncomfortable, he'd never go fast enough... With strain, Sora dropped down to an army crawl, almost slithering over the floor as fast as he was able.
It was slow. Too slow, and Sora's neck became stiff within minutes in trying to see where he was going.
He couldn't keep track of where he was going, he couldn't even stand...
When he found Riku, what would he even do? He was useless to him.
He was totally useless to everybody.
'Died for nothing' ...
Rather than let that drag him into miserable defeat, Sora repeated it in his head, over and over, like a marching chant. He wouldn't let himself forget, the fate he had to prevent, no matter how badly he had broken.
He dragged himself on, hands and ankles pulsing unbearably. All he could do was find Riku.
He had to find him.
Rousing was an ordeal, and it started with tiny pinches of pain all down Riku's body. It worsened when Riku tried to open his eyes, not even able to think about why that wasn't possible, and a hoarse cry was stifled by his clenched jaw.
There was too much. Too much happening, too much his body was awakened to. One thing at a time, with more determination than Riku should have been capable of, he identified the worst of it.
His arm. He was crushing one of them under the rest of his body – he had to have fallen on top of it – but the other, somewhere in the soft flesh around his tricep, there was this horrible, unending pain. Paroxysms shuddered up through his shoulder, and there was more pain like it, gnawing at his sides like a violent stitch.
And his ankle, on the same side. Right above his shoe, and he could feel wetness soaking the cuff of his jeans.
His eyes. The pressure hadn't gone away, and even though there was numbness where there should have been something, there was more. Riku could still tell. The blindfold had caved in his sockets, leaving a gruesome throb behind and bloody collagen soaked into the fake fibers.
Riku was blind.
And, once he'd parsed through all the pain, he thought of Sora. Catatonic, hurt, and now his only potential rescuer had been rendered fucking useless – Riku wanted to cry, thought he might be, everything hurt so badly and if Sora died now, it was because he'd failed him.
Something chittered and bit through his earlobe.
With a sharp yell, Riku spasmed and tried to throw it off – some kind of creature, that wasn't the darkness, that had teeth.
There were a few little whump noises but... But there were more. Little scratching things, clambering all over him in a swarm, and Riku had been suffering too much to register feeling anything else – the pain was identifiable, the things were chewing, chewing holes right into him, his own blood had pooled against the floor and something was pulling at a wound in his stomach. It was burrowing.
Adrenaline coursed through Riku fast, getting him on his feet and frantically grabbing at the one in him – wet, matted fur, the lash of a bald tail, was it a rat? Tiny bodies hit the floor, Riku throwing the one in his hand forcibly and running his hands over himself – they were scurrying off.
Sora, he was still on the floor somewhere -
“Oh, fuck – oh fuck, god, fuck...”
He couldn't find him. He didn't know how he'd find him.
Riku fell to his knees, torn ankle seconds away from giving out regardless, and he wildly flung out his hands to sweep around him with one arm. No matter how he tried, he couldn't make the other move – he was sure he was telling it to but it just wouldn't respond, nerves deadened and raw and exposed.
There was... There was nothing, he couldn't feel another person nearby. He couldn't find anything.
“Sora!” he choked, helpless. “Sora...!”
Silence. Oppressive, enclosing silence.
He had to keep moving. Crawling along on his elbows was slow going, and Sora couldn't keep his head up for long periods of time, which meant that he was stuck endlessly moving forward until something blocked his path. Then he'd struggle to turn himself, the process taking several minutes, and drag himself on.
Sora couldn't really guess how long he'd been doing this, but it felt like hours. It would have been easier to lay down, take at least a break to recover... but he didn't dare.
He didn't know whether or not the darkness would get a grip on him faster, if he held still.
The worst part about dragging himself like this wasn't the grating friction against his hypersensitive stumps. It was being so close to the greedy floor, constantly creeping up and threatening to fuse him to it.
And to keep moving, Sora had no choice but to crawl on, and pull himself free. He had to bite down on high-pitched whimpers, eyes stinging as he pushed through the pain. Even when the first layer of skin was torn off. Then the next. Even when he started feeling pieces of tissue ripping away and being left behind, leaving his chest a mangle of exposed muscle and bone.
If he just kept moving. If he went on, he'd find Riku in here, somewhere, eventually. And every time he thought the pain was too much, like the mutilation was going to overcome him, he pictured Riku. On the floor, face caked with blood.
And then his mind would go to the graveyard. Sora couldn't give up.
He couldn't let Riku think he was going to die here, alone.
Sora crawled on ceaselessly, until he heard a groan – a bit faraway, but it was something new to inspire hope. He lifted his head as much as he was able... but, at first, only saw another mirror not far ahead, and he moaned in despair.
On the other side, Riku hadn't heard him. He was gripping his hair, muttering, “Focus,” to himself like a mantra, and trying to calm his racing heart. The faster his heart beat, the more blood he lost... And, with a cold spike of fear, he'd realized he'd been losing a lot of blood. There was a trail of it in his wake, and he couldn't remember ever feeling so frozen. Like there was ice in his veins.
He could only limp when he walked, but he tried not to as much as possible. Riku couldn't look for Sora without the use of his arm, on his shaky knees more often and feeling for a body. He hadn't called out again; he didn't think there was any point.
But he had made a sound of disgust when he skimmed his own blood with his hand, and placed what it was. Normally, Riku wasn't the type to be so easily revolted... But he felt already felt sick enough to retch, if he had anything left to throw up. And there was so fucking much of it.
It was the hole in his side bleeding the most, it just didn't seem to stop...
He just had to calm down. Riku couldn't bleed out, he needed to find Sora. He didn't know how he'd get them out, if it was even possible now that he couldn't see, but giving up simply wasn't an option.
Sora thought his heart stopped when he saw movement in the mirror, thinking something must be coming up behind him until he made out his own reflection as a mere suggestion against the glass. Whatever was moving was beyond it.
Propping himself up on one elbow, he pressed a palm to the cold, solid glass before what he was watching came into focus.
“... Riku?”
On the other side, Riku stopped, head jerking wildly until he'd narrowed down where the sound had come from.
He almost whispered, throat suddenly dry. “Sora?”
Sora couldn't see the state of him from the floor, yet, but relief flooded him – Riku was alive. “Can you hear me?”
“... Yeah...” Unable to help himself, Riku was wracked with tremors, almost not believing that he could let go of this one fear. “You're conscious – you're okay?”
“Um... sort of,” he weakly struggled up onto his knees. “I'm right here, but...”
Sora tilted his face and glimpsed his face. The image wasn't clear through the mirror, yet, Riku wasn't yet close enough... But he could make out the black band around his eyes and the blood.
The image the replica had shown him – that was real.
“S-...” Riku cleared his throat, trying to get to the mirror and approaching slowly. “Something's happened, I can't see. Just... Just keep talking.”
“There's something in the way. I think it's one of the mirrors, but I can see you... and hear you...”
Sora stared through the glass, watching Riku reach out. Why was that thing on his face, why hadn't he taken it off -?
Bloody fingertips streaked down the glass, and Sora choked.
“Riku, your arm...”
He only had one that looked normal, intact. The left arm looked so ruined that it could be tugged and snap right off, in bloody tatters from the bicep right down to his elbow – there were tiny bite marks littering his jaw, entire side bloodsoaked and his shirt destroyed, tiny holes torn out of his stomach... Except one, one of them was so wide and deep that it looked like a void, a black hole leaking red.
“Forget it,” Riku let himself collapse against the mirror, sounding strained. “What happened to you?”
“It-... I...” Having no idea how to explain what happened to him, a creeping fear started to take hold of his thoughts. “... Are you really Riku this time? I mean, how do I know?”
Part of him didn't want to believe it was. He was in pieces...
Riku tried to figure out what level Sora was at, hearing his voice from somewhere below even though he was on his knees. “What are you talking about?” he cringed, hand firmly against the glass to help himself get lower.
Sora floundered for a second. He would've been eye-to-eye with Riku, if it weren't for... “This place is doing really weird things to my head. I saw you, but... it wasn't you. Not at all.”
“... Are you sure?” Riku swallowed hard. “I saw you, but...”
“I saw it, too,” Sora interjected quickly, desperate to make sure Riku knew he'd never act like that, “but that wasn't me. I wanted to stop it, I really, really did, but I was trapped, and then it disappeared... What happened?”
He was scared to know. Briefly, Riku found himself unable to speak, able to picture Sora so clearly when he spoke... But only with that blank expression, that half-lidded emptiness in his eyes.
Sora's stomach clenched. “... Riku?”
He shook his head stiffly. “You weren't-... I had to get you out of here. I still have to-... Is there a way around this mirror?”
“I can't see one...” Sora had to drop down onto his elbows to try moving in either direction, craning his neck. “There's just this one mirror, everything else is dark...”
Riku was quiet for another second, then started to drag himself upright with a shudder and hiss. Standing was painful, not for his leg but for his ankle; the skin along the tendon was raw and bitten clean off, and even abandoning his shoes hadn't helped. His jeans were still rubbing against the wound, and some nerve had been damaged. It hurt, a weakening hurt.
“Hey, don't-...” Anxiously, Sora almost stammered. “You're hurt really bad...”
“It's fine... Get back.”
“What are you doing?” Sora breathed hard and grunted as he crawled to be in front of the mirror again, shifting back as best he could despite fearing what he was about to do.
Riku tried not to tremble. “I'm gonna break through the mirror.”
“Wait -...” Eyes widening in panic, Sora shook his head frantically. “I don't know if you should. Or... if you can, even.”
“I have to get to you, I can't lose you... There's no other way.”
With more urgency, he elaborated, “I went through one of the mirrors before. It doesn't break, it just rips you apart.”
Heart pounding, Riku hesitated. “... Ripped apart? Are you okay?”
Weakness was all the worse to admit to when it was like this. He didn't know how to explain that his skin was literally coming apart, couldn't make it sound any less horrifying than it was.
“... I can't walk anymore... I can't really do anything. But I can still see you...”
“... Sora...” Riku choked, trying to picture the damage.
His voice had been so small. Quiet, unnaturally withdrawn. Sora couldn't sound strong when he had to face the reality of his injuries.
Every breath expanded his rib cage, and he could feel it. He could feel it shift against open air.
“Please,” he whispered, “I don't want that to happen to you.”
“... But I have to try something,” Riku's insistence was toneless, carefully constructed. It was a fact neither of them could fight, and Sora had no other option but to admit he was right, and a lot more capable of doing something than he was.
“... Okay. Try to break it,” he bit his lip. “I'll watch, and tell you how you're doing. But if you feel it try to grab you, you have to stop. Get away and try to find another way out.”
“I will...” In better times, that may have been a lie, but there was nothing else Riku could risk. The stubborn part of him had been crushed by the need to survive.
Even if there was no other way out, Riku couldn't be further destroyed by a mirror.
He backed up a little, trying to maintain just enough distance to get some force. He couldn't move too far, he already felt like he'd lost track of the mirror just by losing contact with it. Ideally, he could have stayed close and pounded on it until it gave, but he doubted that would really do him any good.
Riku tucked his head and rammed into the glass with a short groan of exertion, feeling like it'd shattered – the vibration wracked his shoulder, and didn't stop for several seconds. Sora flinched.
“Are you okay?”
Hissing, he staggered back a step. “Yeah... Did it break?”
Sora hated to have to tell him, “No. I think it vibrated a bit?”
Fuck. “... Didn't grab me, though... I'll try it again...”
Biting down on the urge to tell him 'be careful', Sora just swallowed down worry. “Okay.”
Riku took a couple of bracing breaths before he launched at the mirror with more force, accidentally biting through his bottom lip as he slammed into it and made the entire glass plate shake.
Sora felt sick. “I-it definitely rattled...”
Blood trickling down his chin, Riku ignored it and didn't wait this time. He drove himself against it repeatedly, feeling the mirror waver and tricking himself into thinking it'd splintered, again, and again.
Every vibration crashed against Sora's skin, making him wince and want to cry out for Riku to stop – this was becoming pointless, he was hurt and there were flecks hitting the glass -
A reflective white fracture split Riku in two.
“It cracked!” Sora almost yelped. “Riku, it's working!”
Halting, he took a second to collect himself, panting. “... It's working?”
“Yeah! There's-... right where your arm is there, but a little higher. It's weak there.”
Carefully, he felt for it where Sora directed, predicting the piercing of his skin by slivers. None came, mercifully.
“... Weird...” Riku was still breathing hard. “You'd think...glass wouldn't be this hard to break...”
Steeling himself, he turned slightly and slammed his elbow against the fissure. Sora felt cold, hearing the shatter but only seeing the web of cracks grow bigger.
“Keep going, Riku, you almost got it-!”
“Agh...” skin splitting, Riku threw all his weight into it, and Sora barely had time to throw himself flat to the floor before glass was raining down on top of him. Nearly pitched through it, Riku managed to find some purchase before falling right into glass, but only just enough.
He nearly sliced his good palm in the process, as the frame was the only thing he could catch himself on before sprawling.
Sora didn't come away so lucky, gasping with pain as the tiny shards cut around his already dangerously-exposed ribs. Riku stepped over the glass as best he could, cringing when it crunched underfoot regardless of his best efforts.
What was more pain, anyway. The blindfold was still squeezing his brain, pressed against broken sclera like it thought there was more damage it could do. Glass was pedestrian.
“Hold still...”
“I'm down here...” Sora moaned, eyes squeezed shut while he tried to shut out the feeling of cutting. Riku kept standing long enough to make sure he wasn't directly on top of him, sinking down and seeking him out.
He found Sora's arm, and gingerly slid his hand down to cup his cheek. “... God, Sora...”
All of his doubts that this Riku might not be the real one were gone. Now all Sora could think about were his injuries, particularly the blood on his face. “You're real...” he tried to sit up, but coughed, the sound so weak it was more of a wheeze.
“Careful, don't move if you're hurt...” Riku's hand fell, and his fingers just barely ghosted past something on Sora's body that didn't feel like skin or cloth.
The touch to his exposed collarbone sliced through him.
“Ah -”
Riku recoiled as Sora flinched violently back. “I'm sorry-... What did I do?”
Little shuddering sounds clogged up Sora's throat as he recovered, taking some time to answer. “... I might be more hurt than I said...”
“... You said... you can't stand?”
“Yeah... I can crawl around, sort of, but...”
Maybe... It'd be easier to show him, and there was only one way how. Sora put his own disfigured hands into Riku's, and he almost pulled back again, freezing.
Only one of his hands were capable of feeling properly or moving – Sora quickly pulled back from the deadened hand, wanting to cry – but Riku's good one was figuring out what was wrong, and he could think of no other way to comfort Sora than to gently wrap it around his wrist.
“I'm gonna get you help... Alright? I'll carry you out of here.”
Sora's voice was unexpectedly heavy. “... I don't think you can.”
“I will,” Riku insisted strongly. “Come on... You're the positive one...” he drew back, gingerly prodding the floor in search for a shard of glass. He found one, at least the size of his fist. “Give me one second. And then we're going.”
Sora eyed Riku's hand, and the makeshift blade he was holding. “What are you going to do with that?”
“I haven't been able to get this thing off...”
Perhaps the blindfold was fucking with his brain, digging in so steadily – Riku couldn't stand it much longer, not if he didn't have to. There was only one thing he hadn't tried.
Before Sora had a chance to figure out what he was about to do, Riku tried to cut through the black band on his face and hissed when the glass went right through it. It sliced a short line near his temple, instead.
“Stop it!” Startled enough to forget the state he was in, Sora reflexively tried to grab it away from him.
Riku let it drop with agonized sound of frustration, digging his nails into the blindfold and tearing at nothing but skin. “Fuck! It won't-... I can't even cut it off?!”
“Riku!” Panicked now, Sora thought he could feel those nails pulling at his muscles like they were trying to dig the heart right out of him. “You can't take it off, just stop! You're hurting yourself -”
With a terrible shudder, Riku barely managed to brace himself against the floor in time, slumping.
“... It won't...stop digging in...” he choked weakly. “Digging into my eyes...”
Sora swallowed, feeling sick around the words. “I know... but I think fighting it makes it worse. If you got out of here, someone could look at it...”
'Get out of here'. Riku zeroed in on 'get out of here', and let himself think of nothing else.
His voice shook. “I'm gonna help you up.”
Sora didn't want to be left alone in the dark. He was doubtful that he had any chance of escaping and he couldn't stand the thought of dragging Riku down with him, but...
“... Okay, grab here...”
He needed to prod, paw-like, at Riku's hands to direct the good one onto his belt. There wasn't anywhere else safe for him to touch. Sora flung his own arm around Riku's neck, and it took them a second to ensure the positioning would work.
“Good... Alright, hng...”
Having brief trouble on his wounded leg, Riku heaved them both up. Sora's vision blacked out for a split second, the swam while he got his bearings; every small movement of his core was agony and he wasn't able to support any of his own weight, the stumps of his ankles dragging on the floor.
Riku was so cold. And shaky. But it wouldn't do either of them any good for Sora to fret about it out loud.
“... I've got you...” Determined to keep him upright, Riku ignored the feeling of something sliding down his good arm – 'better' arm. “I need you to lead me, I can't...”
Raising his head, Sora tried to find any indication of a passage they could try. His breath caught.
“Sora...?”
“... I can see a door, Riku. There's light all around it...”
Riku straightened up just a little, not enough to pull at Sora. “... Forward? Which way?”
“Yeah, straight ahead, just keep moving,” he confirmed breathlessly.
“Alright, tell me if I hurt you...”
No matter what, he was in pain. Sora chose not to tell him so. “I will... Let me know if you need to rest...”
Likewise, Riku didn't intend to stop. He needed to get Sora out. “Yeah...”
Riku dragged them forward, the extra pressure he put on himself making the holes in his stomach start bleeding again. Sora could feel it soaking into his clothes, mingling with his own.
“Don't push yourself...”
“I'll be fine... I promise...”
Sora had made an oath not to doubt Riku; it was the only reason he let himself believe him. “It... It's not far now, I think.”
Despite himself, Riku slowed a little. His whole body ached brutally, and in an attempt to take some of the weight off of him, Sora tried to put the end of his legs down. He wondered if he could balance on them, even a little.
He was wrong. Pain shot through him right to the crown of his head, stumbling and making Riku buckle.
“Sora-!”
They fell, Riku's other arm unable to brace them, and none of Sora's scrambling kept them upright.
“Ngh-...!”
Riku's head cracked against the ground and he was sure, for a second, that he could see pain, but then he couldn't see at all again.
Sora was sobbing.
“... Sora...” he wheezed. “Alright...?”
What a stupid fucking question. Why had he even asked?
The pain was ceaseless. Sora had landed on his side, but he was sure his unprotected ribs had cracked or broken, dry-heaving on every too-hard breath.
“I'm sorry...”
“No...” Riku coughed, struggling to get up. “Don't be... We're so close, we'll be okay...”
The floor was already slick. Riku pretended not to notice and took his time hauling Sora back up.
The ground felt unsteady.
“Okay...” Sora's breathing was noticeably short, struggling with each one. “You're still... going the right way... it's just ahead...”
“Breathe slow,” he instructed, determined not to panic. “It's gonna be okay...”
Loping forward as fast as Riku could make himself go, they approached the direction of the door. Intent as Riku was, dazed as Sora was, neither of them remembered why a familiar stale breeze should have filled them with dread.
Riku was starting to wonder how they'd even open the door, in their shared condition, when Sora's legs started to drag across the dirt. “Riku-...”
“What?” he faltered, immediately having to struggle to stay upright. Sora mouthed silently, horrified, before he could summon up words.
“I-... I can't see it anymore.”
Heart leaping to his throat, Riku shuddered with the tension that gripped him. “What? How-... Where are we?”
“I'm not sure... the door was right there... we were in a hallway, but now...” The earthy, stagnant smell stole the air out of Sora's lungs. Riku felt like his insides were turning themselves inside out.
“... We'll keep moving forward...” He wasn't even sure how much longer he could.
“Right...” Looking straight ahead, Sora didn't notice the obstacles around their feet until Riku had started lurching forward again.
Sora's knee collided with stone and he cried out, strain ripping at Riku – he buckled, and Sora collapsed over the broken tombstone.
It gouged into him, and they both heard the crack this time. It should have hurt. Somehow, it didn't.
Understanding hurt more.
Softly, Sora's voice escaped him. “Oh, no...”
“I heard something break-...” Riku's voice was edged in panic. “What's happening, where are we?”
In a whisper, Sora trembled, “It's the graveyard...”
Immediately, Riku went quiet. “... That... We can't be here.”
“... Was the door... another trick?”
In the time Riku thought, Sora was starting to feel the pain, but in a strange, detached sort of way. Like the capability was just slipping out of his grasp. Like there was just too much for his body to comprehend, anymore.
“... Maybe it wasn't,” Riku muttered numbly. “Maybe this is the only way out.”
Sora lifted his head, looking around blankly. “What do you mean? There's no way to leave from here...”
“No. I didn't think so.”
“I don't-...” Sora wheezed suddenly as it felt like all the air was let out of his lungs, struggling to breathe. Riku gripped onto him as hard as he could.
“... Sora-...” his voice broke. “... I don't think we're getting out.”
Riku never gave up. Not for anything.
But he was giving in.
“Then why...” Sora tried to ask, through failing breath, why they had to go through all of that just to die. He wanted to protest. He wanted to deny it.
Except, he already felt like he was dying.
“What should we do...?”
“I... I don't know,” Riku mumbled, stunned, defeated. “... I'm so sorry...”
“It's...” he sucked in air, and it was an awful feeling. “... Not your fault... I let go...”
He should have held onto him. Nothing else was clear to him, nothing but the fact that this could have been avoided. This was all his fault.
Finally, he pulled himself off the stone, glancing down at the damage to see his rib cage broken open in several places. The inside of his chest was almost completely bared... His heart was visibly beating, beneath it all.
He should have been dead. And he was going to die.
“I'm s-...sorry, Riku...”
“... I don't think I can stand, anymore...”
“You don't have to...” Sora had noticed something. “There's... an open one... I don't know who... can't read the name...”
Deliriously, Riku almost laughed. It was a fragile sound. “... Seems appropriate... Can you guide me...?”
“Yeah... Can you help me stand again?”
“I will... Wouldn't leave you...” His legs were shaking pretty badly. Riku wondered how close he was to bleeding out; it was a miracle that he hadn't, already. He wondered if he would die before Sora.
He grit his teeth as he hauled Sora to him, as carefully as he could manage. “... I need to tell you something...”
If only he could tell Kairi, too, but... She wasn't here. He was so fucking thankful that she wasn't here.
“Tell me... when we get there, okay?” Sora tugged him very gently with the arm around his neck. “This way... it's just a few feet... nothing in the way...”
“... Okay...”
He couldn't shake the dreadful sense of certainty that Sora was going to die in his arms at any moment, without ever knowing. Riku took it one step at a time, putting the last shred of will into every step, waiting until he had no reserves of it left.
A minute later, Sora murmured, “Here. You can put me down...”
He'd stopped Riku only a step away from the open grave. He didn't want them to just fall in.
Shaking like a leaf with weakness, Riku used all of his strength into lowering Sora, making sure he didn't just drop him. He made no attempt to get up, from there. “... How deep is the grave?”
Head swimming badly, Sora rested on his knees and kept the arm around Riku to direct him, every word a gasp. “Not very... I can't see the bottom. Can you feel where the edge is...?”
Soil caved under Riku's fingers. “Yeah... Yeah. I'll go first... I don't want to fall on top of you, you're...” he hesitated. “You broke something, didn't you?”
Hysteria was catching. Sora almost laughed, himself. “It's a little more than that... but don't worry... about me...”
He was kind of trying to rush Riku. He was worried about his breathing and his blinking vision, not wanting to keel over on the edge of the grave.
Died For Nothing. The gravestone was right.
... But Riku wouldn't die alone... If he could die with him, save Riku from that fate, maybe it wasn't totally for nothing.
Taking a shaky, shallow breath, Riku climbed over the side of the grave and landed hard – he'd had no concept of what to brace for and crushed his immobile arm, agony rocketing through the exposed nerves and crying out as his whole body twitched, curling into himself. Sora flinched, feeling himself start to cry as though it was someone else doing it.
There was no way to lower himself down with hands or feet... Sora just dragged himself to the other side of the grave and let himself fall in, not caring that the impact would shatter what was left of his ribs.
Sora's name escaped Riku's lips as a raspy sob, hearing him drop and something else break. He couldn't even feel the tangle their limbs became.
Vaguely, Sora was aware of bone stabbing through him and felt a fuzzy sense of surprise that he was still alive. He forced his eyes open.
“... S-still here... not... going anywhere...”
Riku couldn't tell if his eyes were bleeding again, or if the blindfold was soaking up something else. His throat was dry, barely audible. “... I never told you... I was afraid-... Seems stupid, now...”
“You don't have to...” Whatever Riku had to say was okay. The grave was still. Nothing else would come for them, now.
“I do... Never gonna have another chance...” Shakily lifting his arm, Riku tried to find Sora's face and only briefly managed to keep his hand up before it slid down. “... Been in love with you...”
Sora's eyes opened a little wider, but he was too weak for shock to affect him properly. “Riku...”
“Should have told you ages ago...” he mumbled. “I dunno what I was so afraid of...”
Riku loved him. In spite of everything, and even though it couldn't be seen, Sora smiled.
“I'm glad you told me...” Sora sounded calmer.
“Couldn't die without you knowing... Couldn't regret that...” The pain didn't bother Riku so much, now, and he started to relax. He was just... He was glad he'd had a chance to tell him.
Death could come at any time. It'd be a welcome relief.
Closing his eyes, Sora let himself picture Riku whole and handsome and the way he'd always known him. “I was afraid, too... I thought you wouldn't... feel the same...”
Riku had started to feel kind of dream-like, becoming aware of the cold and just... sinking into it.
Still smiling, Sora murmured, “Not so bad to die... knowing that...”
He felt the ground opening up to swallow him. Accepted it without further regret.
It gave way completely, and Riku burst through it and out the door. He stumbled, almost straight into the grass, and Sora – likewise unprepared for the impact – hit the ground hard. It sent a fresh pain up his back but the terrible burning and weakness had vanished, and Sora's eyes popped open.
He breathed in as though surfacing from underwater.
Riku's mind was blank as he took in the night sky, the sand, the fairground lights. Saw them, with perfect clarity.
He quivered and collapsed to one knee, uncomprehending, and didn't realize his body was intact until both hands were on the ground. He brought the one that should have been dead up, practically slapping it over his eyes – everything was too bright, it stung, but it was more than that, he was checking for blood. There was none.
“... What...?” Riku croaked, blinking rapidly and trying to adjust to his vision. Sora sat up, startled by the ease of it and almost tumbling over again – he threw out his hands to catch himself and shouted in surprise.
“What are you two doing?” Kairi laughed as she rose from a nearby bench, too far away to see their obvious panic yet.
Hastily, Riku wiped at his prickling eyes, voice breaking before it was out of his mouth. He sat up at looked to Sora, reaching for him – he needed confirmation, he couldn't trust his eyes, he didn't even know if they were real or if Sora was, he wanted to know he was there.
Sora almost leapt away from the touch, looking over at him sharply.
He thought he might've gone to heaven. Sora had no other explanation for Riku looking perfect and intact. “You're...”
“You were in there forever, did you get lost?” Kairi's approach slowed, growing concerned. “You look awful...”
Riku pulled Sora shakily against him and was nearly bowled over, the two of them squeezing and hugging as hard as they could – Riku's eyes were wide, stricken, not knowing how to speak to Kairi when he was still parsing through his surroundings.
Kairi stared, stunned. “... Was it really that bad?”
Sora started to cry, shamelessly hard and loud, and his hands started to roam fast to feel every flawless part of him. Riku just shut his eyes. Vision was too overwhelming. Too much, until he could think again.
“... Riku? Sora?” Worried that something was genuinely wrong, now, Kairi could only look at them helplessly, having no idea what to do about it.
Squeezing Sora, Riku choked before finding his voice. “... We're fine...” He was disbelieving, lying but not lying, still shocked that they were unharmed. “... We'll be fine...”
Finally lifting his head, Sora was unable to make out Kairi's features through his tears but he knew she was there, and he grabbed her arm to pull her down to her level. She was rattled, feeling her knees bruise, but she recovered quickly and Sora's arms had wrapped around them both.
“O-okay...” she hugged them in return, far more gentle, and calming hands rubbed both their backs. Riku buried his face in her hair.
He'd just been hit with the realization that he'd accepted, at some point, that he'd never see her again.
If not for Sora, he would have cried. If Riku let himself cry, Sora would never be able to stop. He just wrestled his arm around Kairi, too, hold tight.
Nuzzling her cheek, then Riku's, Sora choked out through sobs, “I love you... I love both of you so much...”
“I know...” Kairi soothed, deciding not to wonder anymore until they were ready to tell her. “I love you both, too...”
Riku wasn't able to speak. He started to fear that he actually couldn't, that this was just some fever dream right before death and that he wouldn't really be able to say goodbye to either of them – he started to tremble, trying, but his own anxiety was getting in the way and making his throat tight.
Sora pressed his forehead to Riku's, tears dripping from his chin and onto him, and he wordlessly tried to assure him that he didn't need to say anything. Riku forced himself to calm down, and reminded himself that there were other ways to get the message across.
He kissed Sora's tear-stained cheek, and he smiled shakily at Riku. Sora's arms finally lost some of the strength to hug them so hard.
Riku breathed out, and kissed Kairi's cheek. To his blatant relief, it seemed to be the key to finding his voice. “... We'll be okay. Sorry.”
She was more relieved than she'd admit. “Maybe no more haunted houses for a while, though, huh?”
Sora wanted to laugh. He only cried harder. “N-never...”
“... Let's go home...” Riku suggested quietly. “Or, your place? Could I-?”
“We can go to my house,” Kairi agreed at once. “... Sora?”
He forced himself to breathe and nodded. “Okay...”
“Thanks...” Riku found Sora's hand, and grasped it firmly. The two of them helped him up when Sora had trouble standing, Kairi taking his arm.
Just pulling him up sent phantom pain through Riku's arm and legs but he pushed past it, telling himself it wasn't real on repeat.
“... Won't let go, alright?” Honestly, he needed to know that Sora wouldn't, either. Riku felt nauseous, paranoid.
“Yeah...” He was shaky on his feet. It felt like he was standing on something dead. Sora swayed on the spot, and Kairi held him tighter but tried to aim him a bit more in Riku's direction in case he fell. She wouldn't be able to catch him properly.
Riku didn't mind, only wishing he could hold onto Kairi too.
Faintly, Sora mumbled, “I think I'm gonna throw up...”
“This way,” Kairi thought quickly and urged himself towards a nearby trashcan, alarmed. Sora arrived there just in time, pitching forward into it while she stroked his back sympathetically.
Riku just held onto his hand. “... We're right here...”
It didn't take him long to recover. Sora wiped his mouth, pulling back. “I'm okay now...”
“You are. You're okay.”
It felt like a foolish thing to say, again.
“Let's get you home...” Kairi rubbed his arm up and down, trying to keep him warm. Riku almost buckled when Sora turned, but managed to only stumble.
It still felt unnatural for both of them to walk steadily.
Riku led them from the fairground, and Kairi slowed them to a stop in order to get between them, wrapping both her hands around their joined ones. Visibly, Riku relaxed, and Sora found a frail smile in him.
She started humming something over the sound of carnival music – a lullaby that her grandmother had taught her – and Riku thought of nothing but the two of them.
He refused to reflect on anything else.
Kairi finally couldn't keep her eyes open any longer just as the sun began to rise. She'd stayed up all night, talking about meaningless things, and offered them dinner several times. They'd refused. Kairi dropped it, kept them distracted right up until the point she'd started spacing out mid-word, and fallen asleep almost instantly upon settling between the two of them on her bed.
Neither Sora nor Riku were so lucky, despite their exhaustion.
Almost frozen with fear, Sora kept his fingers curled tightly into fists and held protectively against his chest. He kept thinking they hurt, phantom pain especially strong every time one of his injuries leapt back to mind as scenes replayed on torturous loop. Still, he didn't open his eyes, even when he heard someone move.
Riku didn't dare stay in bed any longer. He couldn't breathe, he needed to get out – although he desperately didn't want to be alone, needed the closeness... He also needed to hide.
Just until he could be strong again.
Carefully, he drew himself away from Kairi's side with an ache of regret, creeping across the room to go downstairs.
Sora resolved to wait a couple of minutes before peeking. He didn't want to panic in front of Riku if it turned out he was just going to the bathroom, or something...
But he couldn't convince himself that he wouldn't lose Riku forever, if he left.
Riku stopping halfway down the stairs and held onto the rail, taking in everything that was familiar with a desperate focus. He knew Kairi's house as well as his own, or Sora's... Kairi's house was safe, and warm. He knew where he was. That was... That was good.
He made his way down to the living room, and stopped, staring at the sunrise.
Then he slumped to the floor, elbows on the coffee table and dropping his head to his hands.
Sora slid out of bed, in danger of hyperventilating. It hadn't been minutes, he couldn't wait that long. He crossed the room as quickly as possible and gingerly opened the door; Riku hadn't shut it properly, to his relief. He only hesitated to stare briefly at Kairi, eyeing the windows and dark corners.
... She'd be alright. She was fast asleep, peaceful. And he'd only be gone a little while.
Sora slipped out onto the landing, and picked up on soft, muffled sounds from downstairs. His heart seized with fear, scurrying down the stairs – he crouched on the bottom steps, peering through the rails.
He couldn't see him. He wanted to call out, but couldn't bring himself to, in the near-silence.
Riku's shoulders shook with poorly suppressed sobs, unable to stop crying once the first tears had fallen and weeping harder than he ever had in his life. He felt like a child.
Following the noises to the living room with soft steps, Sora stared, momentarily convinced something was wrong with Riku until he understood what he was seeing.
Crying. It was the first time he'd ever seen Riku cry, he was pretty sure. He couldn't remember seeing him like this before.
Trying not to startle him, he whispered, “... Um, Riku...”
He jumped, regardless. Riku swallowed, mucus slipping down the back of his throat unpleasantly – this was one of the reasons he loathed crying... At least the flow of tears had started to slow.
“... I should've guessed you can't sleep, either,” he muttered.
Cautiously, Sora stared, equal parts fascinated and unsettled by his tears. He covered it over with a small smile, his best attempt at the over-sized one he'd normally put on at a time like this. “I don't think I'll sleep again 'til I'm fifty.”
“Yeah... Me, too.” Riku tried to subtly wipe his face, like he thought Sora might not have noticed. Sora approached carefully, sinking down next to him.
“... It's okay.”
Riku looked away.
Sora bit his lip awkwardly. “I mean, only if you want to...”
“I hate looking weak.”
“... I know.” Sora scratched at the tabletop with an idle finger, finally able to uncurl them with Riku present. He was staring at the window, fixated on the sunrise, warring with himself.
“... I'm afraid of the dark,” Riku finally came to a conclusion, but nonetheless hesitated over every word. “... Have been since I was a kid.”
Taken aback, Sora raised his eyebrows. “You never said...”
“I know I didn't.” Riku's eyes were starting to hurt, from looking into the orange sun, unblinking. “It was a dumb fear. I thought it made me look-...” he broke off with a shudder.
His throat... He still thought he could feel the darkness pressing down his throat.
Sora struggled with himself to say what he was thinking, without diluting it with teasing. He'd never managed to be particularly forthright with Riku before, not about stuff like this. “You don't look weak to me.”
Riku didn't believe him for a second. Leaning against the table, he took a slow breath and confessed, “I'm still afraid.”
“Of the dark? Why wouldn't you be, now?” Sora shivered a little, himself.
“Not just-... Of everything.”
“Everything?”
Riku went even quieter. “What if we aren't out? What if this is just another room, and it'll change?”
Sora's eyes went wide – that hadn't occurred to him. “Do you really think it is?”
“I don't know...” he tried not to sound as tense as he was. “How do we know?”
There was something about the edge in Riku's demeanor that made Sora quickly take his hand, perhaps more alarmed than he needed to be, but he'd pictured him clawing at his face and it made his heart skip nervously.
“I know how.”
Riku looked at him sharply, inwardly pleading for proof.
“Kairi,” Sora said simply.
Riku let out a slow breath, not sure he followed. In light of his silence, Sora elaborated, “Back in-... Back there, there was a fake you, a fake me, and a fake Kairi... but all of them disappeared, and there was only ever the real you and the real me in there. Kairi could never have been in there with us because if she had been, she'd never have let our hands go. And she held our hands all the way home, and almost all night, so... that makes sense, right? Kairi's real, so we must be real, so... this is real.”
He followed the logic better in his own head. Regardless, Riku was nodding, just slightly.
“Yeah...” he murmured, and squeezed Sora's hand carefully. He felt like he could break them.
“I don't... I don't know why those things happened, but I think it was supposed to end,” Sora at least sounded convinced of that. “We were supposed to get out after everything, or stay stuck inside.”
“... And we got out.”
Shutting his eyes tightly, Sora remembered dying. He was certain he couldn't have, but he remembered it.
But this was real, he'd just explained it to himself, and Riku...
He opened his eyes again. “Yeah, we did.”
It took Riku a few moments to summon the courage to lean forward and kiss him. He just wanted something tactile, and real, and his choice. Sora was nearly surprised enough to shrink back – he could still see his own body forcing itself on Riku – but he was able to relax, with him initiating.
He tasted like tears.
Riku pulled back after a moment, glancing away. “... That was stupid, I shouldn't have-...”
“Don't say that,” Sora grabbed his arm reflexively. Riku twitched.
“... I told you I love you when we were dying, that doesn't justify-... I didn't even ask-...”
Suddenly worried, he asked, “Do you still mean it, if we're not dying?”
Riku looked startled. “Yeah... Of course I do.”
“Then it's fine. I...” Sora relaxed and inhaled deeply once agains, steadying himself to say something that could potentially leave him embarrassed. “I never would've got a chance to kiss you, if it had ended. I want to make up for that now, as many times as I can.”
Riku's eyes flickered to the window, sunlight streaming in confidently now.
The light... The light helped him think this was real. So much horror and pain, and then this...
Moving closer, he kissed Sora again and thought about Kairi, and the sun, and he was sure they were out of that place. Sora returned it tenderly, letting Riku have more control as he still shied away from taking too much, being too forward.
Slowly, he wrapped a hand around Riku's nearest one.
Riku only kissed him until he had to blink, having the thought that needing to reopen his eyes would show him something other than Sora.
Sora let the kiss end without breaking away or doing anything too sudden, sure he could spook Riku if he did anything 'too fast'. Riku was unaware, but no less grateful; he wasn't wrong. Sora gave his hand a squeeze that meant to be gentler than it was – he was sort of used to being a bit rougher with Riku, and he didn't mind because it was just a Sora thing to do.
Leaning into him, Riku rested his head against Sora's shoulder and muttered, “We should go back upstairs... Kairi...”
He wished he hadn't gone off alone, now. He wanted to see her, make sure she was still okay.
“You're right. But,” Sora went a little pink, “before we do anything else...”
Riku brought his head up.
There was no other time; he needed to put into words what he'd been dancing around for ages. There was no point in worrying, anymore. “It's just... I love you. And I love Kairi, too. I don't know if it's exactly the same way, but it's the same amount...” Sora made a gesture with both hands wavering past each other, then hovered evenly as though trying to mime a graph. “If it's okay, I want to be allowed to love you both at the same time...”
Riku stared. “I-...”
He'd known Sora loved Kairi, and he knew that he did too. Just... up until now, he'd thought he had to choose.
The house had effectively made him decide. Sora had been there, Riku had needed him to know before it was too late. Kairi... He had no way of ever telling her, and he'd made himself be okay with that. The knowledge that she was safe had been enough.
“Is that... Can we do that?”
“I don't know,” Sora shrugged helplessly. “I've never heard of it, but if you say yes, and Kairi says yes, then... why not?”
Riku reddened. Reality was starting to feel unreal, again. “... Would we all be, or... Just you and Kairi, while we're also-?”
Sora blinked. “You don't want to date Kairi?”
“... I think she'd rather just be with you,” he hesitated, voicing one of the fears that'd kept him silent for years. Sora tilted his head.
“But then it wouldn't be the three of us. It's like... it's like at school, when they're giving out partner projects, and there's an uneven number. You don't put one person in two different groups, then they'd be doing double the work. You make a group of three instead, and everyone shares the work.”
The analogy almost managed to make Riku smile.
“... If...” he cleared his throat, “If Kairi wants to. I love you both... But even if I'm not in the picture, I want you to be-... You both should be happy.”
Sora squeezed his hand again. The thought of dating just Kairi hadn't really occurred to him since dreaming up the scenario of all three of them just being together... And he was completely unwilling to go back to the way things were before the haunted house, no matter what happened. “We'll ask when she wakes up. If she doesn't want to, I'm not any less happy to be just with you.”
“... Okay,” Riku nodded, a little stunned that Sora wouldn't simply leave him for Kairi if that was the case.
'Died Alone' was still at the back of his mind.
“... We should... try to sleep. If we can.”
“Could I maybe take the middle this time?” Sora requested. “I think... maybe I could sleep, then.”
“I don't mind.”
“Thanks,” Sora gazed at him, a little worried. “If you need to do anything to relax, you don't have to worry about what I think.”
“... Maybe crying helped. I dunno...” If nothing else, Riku had thoroughly exhausted himself. The light was helping him feel less... vigilant. It was worth trying.
“It does, sometimes,” Sora helped him up, and climbed the stairs a little awkwardly with his hand still in Riku's.
They were outside the bedroom door when Sora lowered his voice, “Oh, almost forgot.”
Riku responded with a soft sound, not wanting to wake Kairi. Sora turned and pecked his cheek.
“If she says yes... dibs on kissing Kairi first.”
He almost laughed. “... You'll have to fight me for it.”
“Hey,” Sora frowned a tiny bit, “respect my dibs.”
“That's up to her. Maybe I can convince her that I should get the first one.”
“But, dibs...”
“Tell Kairi that.”
The small pout became a minute smile. “... Alright, alright.”
Riku kissed his cheek. “... Let's try to sleep.”
“Yeah,” Sora nodded, quietly pushing the door open. Not once did he let go of Riku's hand, and he only let go when Riku had taken the other; Kairi had rolled over to Sora's empty spot, still quite deeply asleep, and Riku needed to be on his other side to let him settle down in the middle.
Lying down, their heavy tiredness was that much more insistent with a comfortable bed beneath them. Riku shifted to lie on his side, facing Sora to stare over the wild brown hair to Kairi's red.
He wished he didn't have to close his eyes. Riku reached out his other arm, draping it over them both as Sora settled on his back. Not wanting to disturb her, Sora brushed his fingers over one of Kairi's loosely splayed hands, and she shifted to cuddle up against his side with an unconscious sigh.
Riku watched them. Within moments, he knew he wouldn't be able to drift off, or do anything but keep watch over them...
But he felt a little more... okay.
Sora was thinking again of their graves, of Riku remaining beyond that mirror, of Kairi being mutilated until her body couldn't take it, but it was more distant. It was starting to feel like a bad dream.
As long as he was like this, able to feel both of them against him... He could keep them safe.
Kairi wouldn't have to suffer, Riku would never be alone, and nothing Sora did would be in vain.