Chapter Text
Day 358
Why did Riku see her now?
The perfect recollection of eleven years ago, of a woman in blue standing on the bridge above them, smiling benevolently down on him and Sora…
And now Riku plummeted down the face of Memory’s Skyscraper, falling with the rain as a dark silhouette against giant neon screens as the black Keyblade spun up toward him. He had no idea what possessed the Nobody to do that. Maybe it was only madness. Maybe the loss of his friend only hours before had conjoined the loss of memory with a loss of sanity. Or maybe—
“So then, if something happens, and Riku is about to get lost—or say, he starts wandering down a dark path alone—you make sure to stay with him and keep him safe.”
…Or maybe the Nobody’s subconscious—a fragment of Sora somewhere inside—remembered the woman’s words as well. “Keep him safe.” So maybe he did, and maybe Roxas gave him Oblivion without knowing why.
Then Oblivion’s haft snapped into Riku’s grasp, dispersing the slick coating of rainwater against Riku’s face and blindfold, and so much happened at once.
He remembered the girl’s name—Xion’s name—and all they’d been through as he fell past the sea of neon screens and toward the street.
And he remembered, also, as he landed in a puddle beside Roxas amidst the Neoshadows, what it was to wield a Keyblade. To be accepted by a Keyblade. He hadn’t drawn Soul Eater, but he felt the unsummoned weapon…respond?
But the one thing he didn’t remember was the skirmish that followed. Only further images of Xion flooding through, and that he and Roxas stood back-to-back, each wielding a separate manifestation of Sora’s heart, and seconds later, the Heartless around them vanished as shadows in the rain.
And then there were none for the wielders to face but each other, and Riku was altogether all together again.
“Who are you?” Roxas called through the rain, his face all but concealed beneath that black hood.
Riku replied coolly, contrasting Roxas’ hostile stance with practiced ease. “What does it matter? I’m here for you.”
“Why are you trying to stop me?!”
His brow twinged under the blindfold, already dreading what he’d have to resort to. But he repressed the rising tension and said as levelly as before, “Because I want back the rest of Sora’s memories.” Sora. And here he was, in a sense. The only Keybearer that Riku had ever faced, and never bested. Even in the brief times that he held a Keyblade of his own. Why would now be any different?
Predictably, Roxas growled and flailed in the rain. “Sora?! Enough about Sora!” He leveled Oathkeeper for Riku’s heart, vast though the distance was between them. Summed up the kid’s whole modus operandi: no thoughts, only brute force.
Riku pressed it. “Do you have some kind of plan?”
Roxas’ off-hand snapped to the sky, to the heart-hewn moon overlooking the City of Nothingness, isolated from the storm in its own, celestial atmosphere. “I’ll set Kingdom Hearts free! Then everything will be the way it was! She’ll come back…”
She’ll. Not ‘Xion will.’ So, this second Keyblade—Oblivion—really was the Xion half of Sora’s weaponized memories.
“…and the three of us can be together again!”
Three? …Oh. Right. Axel. But Riku ignored the mention of the other Nobody and pressed for the Replica whose name Roxas clearly couldn’t place. “You mean Xion? It’s a struggle just to remember the name now…” Riku still hadn’t assumed the en garde stance. “Either way, I can’t let you go doing anything crazy.”
And Riku’s own, restrained composure only worsened Roxas’ manner. He slashed his pale Keyblade through the rain and screamed, “I’m going to free Kingdom Hearts, and I’m going to find Sora!”
Was that a threat?
“I want Xion back! I want my life back!”
Riku let a hint of righteous anger seep through. “If you try and make contact with Kingdom Hearts, the last thing you’ll get is your life back. The Organization will destroy you.”
“Then help me!”
…Three words that changed everything.
All DiZ’s talk of how only Sora’s power could destroy the Organization, and here was Sora’s power in front of him, manifest as something else, but Sora all the same.
But Riku had to be sure.
So he eased his posture further, slackening his shoulders, and opened his arms in a casual challenge in contrast with the raging storm. “C’mon, Sora. Not even you can storm the castle head-on.”
Roxas shot him the most indignant look, like a puppy trying to protect its ice-cream from a larger dog who’d already had its own. Just like Sora. Sounded like him, too: “Get real! We made it through Castle Oblivion—why’s this any different?”
And only then did Roxas catch himself. The posture, the voice…the memories that weren’t his.
Riku’s mouth twitched in the weakest little smile. Rain ran down the side of his mouth. “So it’s true. You really are his Nobody. Guess DiZ was right after all…but not as much as he thinks.”
“What are you talking about?! I am me! Nobody else!” The voice was his own again. Roxas reached his empty hand forward, and Riku’s own emptied at the gesture. Oblivion flashed out of Riku’s grasp and back to Roxas, and Riku found himself empty-handed while the dual-wielding Nobody rushed him at last.
The white Keyblade swung through the rain first, just missing Riku as he weaved behind—then Roxas spun on his heel and slashed with Oblivion.
The black Keyblade jolted to a halt against the bat-winged blade of Soul Eater, catching Roxas by surprise—shocking him with dread as Riku’s free hand thrust toward his face, illuminating Roxas’ terrified expression under the hood as Riku’s palm brimmed with the flames of Dark Firaga…
…and willingly faded into nothing in the rain, halting his thrust and his spell only inches away so that only steam remained.
He held the open, black-gloved hand before Roxas’ face, held Oblivion at bay with Soul Eater as well, and Riku studied Roxas intently from behind the blindfold.
“You are Sora, but without the heart. Sora would never attack anyone unarmed. But you?” Riku’s hovering, steaming hand snapped again and pulled down Roxas’ hood, jolting him back and off-balance, maintained only by Riku’s hold and the unspoken threat that he could ignite him for real if he so much as flinched wrong. “You’re a maniac on a warpath. …But you’re a maniac with a chance.”
A disembodied voice—Naminé’s—echoed through Riku’s mind, “Riku, please! You have to stop him!”
Riku ignored her. “You said it yourself. We took down Castle Oblivion. You and me. Me and Sora, anyway. And Sora only had one Keyblade.” Riku let Roxas go, watching him stumble back in confusion and shock as the heavy rain drenched his blond hair further. “Give Sora a second Keyblade, take away his conscience, and give him a reason…no telling what you’re capable of. But let’s be clear.” Riku leveled Soul Eater for Roxas’ chest. “I want my best friend back. You’re in the way.” Then he redirected Soul Eater for Kingdom Hearts. “But I also want Sora to wake up in a world worth waking in.”
Roxas stayed silent, arms trembling with two Keyblades that, at least in some sense, suddenly weighed too heavy. He asked just above a whisper in the rain, “Why… Why do you have the Keyblade?”
Riku paused. Glanced from Roxas to Soul Eat—
…Well. That’s different.
Soul Eater, the sword he’d wielded for over a year…had changed. Almost the same at a glance as the rain drizzled down, but…the weapon was longer now, double-guarded with the clashing motifs of an angel’s and demon’s wing, and the end of the bat-limbed blade was now host to a second, smaller attachment fashioned like the wing of a dove. A weapon of darkness, aimed at the apparition of light in the sky…
He heard his own words from a year back playing back to him, “It’s the Way to Dawn.”
But then another voice screamed inside.
DiZ.
“Riku! Have you gone mad?! Bring Roxas back to us! It is the only way to awaken Sora! Only he has the power to destroy Xemnas!”
As with Naminé, Riku ignored DiZ as well. He only smirked at his new Keyblade, possibly made manifest by his contact with Oblivion—the Keyblade deciding he was worthy once more—and lowered Way to Dawn by his side. His empty hand rose, palm up, catching the rain, and Roxas balked in surprise as Riku offered him his hand.
“So, how ‘bout it? You and me, Sora. Two wielders. Three Keyblades. Let’s say we storm the castle properly this time.”
Roxas tried to steady himself. Tried to maintain that glare. “You’ll turn against me in the end. You’ll do anything to get Sora back.”
“Course I will. But, whoever wins, at least we’ll get to live in a universe without the Organization.” And then he thought, knowing who could hear: Isn’t that all you want, DiZ? All your traitor apprentices gone no matter what?
A pause.
Roxas cautiously dismissed Oblivion, emptying his right hand, and reached slowly for Riku’s.
He paused again at the rift of shadows breaking the air, and both turned from each other to the dark corridor swelling at the top step of Destiny’s Skyscraper. All three Keyblades aimed for the shadows, but Riku lowered his, at least, when he saw the first hints of red cloth stepping through.
DiZ stood imperiously under the neon lights, carrying what looked like a plasma rifle in his hands, and Naminé emerged behind him in an off-white raincoat, huddled under a white umbrella that she held over them both.
DiZ stared gravely at Riku with that orange eye for only a moment, then shifted entirely to Roxas. “Do you know the castle’s layout?”
Enough to reach the Altar of Naught.
Even from here—especially from here—Riku could see the smoke rising from the destruction they’d wrought. The Castle That Never Was lay sprawled in ruins in every direction. Fire still rose from some confrontations, while other sections of castle were beyond unrecognizable, if still attached and not blown away, lost to the abyss between the castle and the city.
Another explosion burst, and Havoc’s Divide collapsed as a gargantuan husk of scattered, pale brickwork breaking apart and plummeting into the black as well. Riku smiled cautiously. Axel had turned out to be an invaluable ally. They’d needed one after DiZ…
…after DiZ took Xigbar with him.
Riku should’ve removed the blindfold then and there, before it could happen. Instead, he’d waited until ten minutes ago, and the upturned tiles and rising smoke from the Altar of Naught were all that remained of the duel between Xemnas and the likeness of his Heartless.
That, and the broken, Gazing Eye Keyblade laying at the Altar’s center.
It’s finally over, Riku mused. If nothing else, he still heard his own voice in his head. Even if everything outside was Ansem. But I don’t need to be there when Sora wakes up. And he will wake up.
Riku’s gaze—Ansem’s gaze—lifted from the once-Gazing Eye and toward the backs of Naminé and Roxas just a little ahead. She stood right beside him while he aimed his Keyblade—Two Become One—for the heart-hewn moon. It’d been minutes since the beam of light began its surge to undo the work of Xemnas’ Keyblade, and already Kingdom Hearts seemed so much the worse for wear, though Naminé had to help Roxas keep his arm raised with how long this was taking. The magic winds rushed against the two Nobodies’ coats, black and white, contrasting like the build of that amalgam Keyblade.
And Riku wanted to blame the darkness of Xehanort’s Heartless for the thought that entered his mind five minutes ago.
His back is turned.
He’s the only one stopping Sora from waking up.
The dove-wing tip of Way to Dawn hovered at Riku’s—at Ansem’s—side. Roxas was only a brief sprint away, exhausted as Riku was from his showdown with Xemnas. He could do it. Right now. And Naminé couldn’t stop him.
But is that what Sora would want?
Riku slowly raised Way to Dawn.
…Does he have to know?
Streaks of light like shooting stars—hearts breaking free—burst from the gaping, crumbling husk of Kingdom Hearts. One way or another, every heart that Roxas and…and Xion had captured would return to their rightful owners. But Sora would never wake up. Not with his heart held hostage by Roxas’ stolen memories.
It…has to be this way—
“NO!” screamed a voice from behind. No. It roared. The air itself tore under the inhuman howling, and Riku, Roxas, and Naminé all turned in panic for the source at the top of the Altar’s stairs.
Saïx was almost unrecognizable.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” the layered voice bellowed from overlarge fangs. Saïx was now a beast at least twice his size—pale-white like the lesser Nobodies, yet hulking and gangling and rancid like something else altogether. Like a werewolf that had doubled its mass, matted fur replaced with moon-white membranes surging with electricity the same color as the Nobody’s feral, golden eyes.
And the X-shaped scar burned brighter than ever.
The Greater Nobody—now something far worse—barreled for Riku, and he just barely raised a dark barrier in time to halt the crushing swing of Saïx’s gnarled, corrupted Claymore. Naminé screamed, and Roxas’ aim for the moon faltered.
Saïx roared once more, “THE MOON IS OUR LIFE! SUSTAINS US! KINGDOM HEARTS IS EVERYTHING WE’VE EVER WORKED FOR, AND NOW—” Saïx swung his gigantic mace-sword again, shattering Riku’s barrier and forcing him to evade, Keyblade at the ready. “YOU DESTROY US FOR A PUPPET?!”
Electricity surged from his ‘fur’ with every word, seemingly in sync with the shooting-star hearts bursting from the moon’s breaking form. Riku knew that Saïx drew his power from the moon, and so was stronger the nearer he drew to Kingdom Hearts, and now that Kingdom Hearts was so chaotic and deformed, so, too, was Saïx.
But…Axel said he’d deal with Saïx. Is he—?
More swings of the electric Claymore, more flailing and gnashing of the Nobody’s body, and Riku just barely parried and evaded every one. “TRAITORS! IMPOSTORS! PUPPETS, ALL! YOU ARE LESS THAN NOTHING! LESS THAN US! MOON GIVE ME STRENGTH TO DESTROY Y—AAAAAGH!”
A stray ‘meteorite,’ if stray at all, whizzed dangerously close over Riku’s—Ansem’s—shoulder and pierced Saïx’s white membrane-strewn chest, burning him from within with a light brighter still.
“MY…MY HEART?! BUT…HOW?! XEMNAS, HE…HE WOULDN’T—”
Kingdom Hearts itself seemed to howl as enough broke away so that its shape became impossible to sustain. Riku dared to look away from the monster Saïx had become and back to the sky. Everything was flooding white. He had to shield his eyes, finding Roxas and Naminé no longer able to stand upright and holding onto each other as the night sky burned and surged into something brighter than day. The winds rushed against them all like a hurricane, and Riku remembered the words of DiZ when they decided their plan to free Kingdom Hearts.
“Anything could happen.”
And so anything did.
Riku raised his arms to shield his eyes, feeling himself spirited away by the light, and he recalled Ansem’s first destruction over a year ago, when Kingdom Hearts itself smote him down for the darkness he embodied. Now it was happening again.
So the wages of darkness are death.
But Riku saw something else through the cracks of his fingers, which flaked away into embers before the light. A third form was now ahead of him, cloaked in black and huddled over Roxas and Naminé to protect them. Almost transparent at first, but taking permanent shape in perfect conjunction with Riku’s destruction.
Ansem’s lips tugged into an ironic smile.
Heh. How about that? You won, Roxas. You got her back.
The last thing Riku saw with Ansem’s eyes were Xion’s own gazing into his, too overwhelmed at his end and her revival to settle on any single emotion. And then—
Darkness.
Riku gasped for air, bursting from the saltwater’s surface and seeing nothing.
He ambled and staggered in the unseen waves, feet searching for purchase on the fragile sand until at last he reoriented himself to swim. It’d been so long, but it came back so naturally.
Am I…? Am I finally home?
He tugged down the blindfold mid-stroke, only realizing he was wearing it again—he was himself again—and felt like a fool for thinking he’d find Destiny Islands on the other side.
The water was black. The shore barely a shade lighter. And those strange rock formations—some like ordinary stones, others like alien arches sprawling from the chalcedony sand and over the sky…their surface was almost volcanic, but the veins that glowed along them were blue. And the sun—
…Yeah. A weak little sun, if it could be called that, glowed so dimly behind that only the immediate halo of the black sky was lighted to grey.
He’d…question this all when he reached the shore.
So he did. He swam like the islander he’d almost forgotten he was and allowed himself to fall and breathe on the bleak shore. Shaking on his hands and knees, he hacked out the leftover saltwater and tasted an air altogether alien to him. Heavier. Darker. Almost dizzying. Then he looked up and ahead and felt dizzier still.
There was a jungle beyond the shore, just as sprawling and spectral as the arches above. Dark trees with darker leaves and cyan veins spanned to either side of the sandy horizon, like a rainforest of living shadow towering above and almost blocking out a sky so dark that it wasn’t worth blocking.
Yeah. I don’t think so.
Riku climbed back to his feet, using one of those cyan-lined rocks for balance, and flipped a limp hand to summon a dark corridor.
Nothing happened.
His eyes widened. He stood up straighter, tenser, and thrust his hand more purposely this time. The landscape stayed the same. No dark corridor ruptured to meet him.
He looked at his gloved hand in panic, searching the black fabric for even a spark of darkness in his palm. Nothing. And then he remembered the blindfold he’d pulled down, now gathered loosely around his neck.
That’s right…I couldn’t see through it anymore. But…but how?
“Anything could happen.”
Such as the removal of all Ansem’s darkness from Riku’s heart. And his exile to…wherever this was.
But, why only him? Why not Roxas or Naminé or that thing that Saïx became?
Because Kingdom Hearts set everything right. It fixed Saïx. Brought back Xion. …And banished me. So the wages of darkness are damnation.
And all the worse because now Sora would never wake. Not unless Naminé worked something out with Roxas and Xion. Or she just woke him without his memories. …Honestly, with the way things were going, that might’ve been for the best. A whole year in that pod—Sora would’ve more than surpassed his old strength by now if he were let out early. At any rate, compared to Riku, Sora would have it better. He’d get to see the light—
—exploded in the sky, snapping Riku’s attention back to the black abyss above and beyond the dark jungle, and he saw where all those bursting lights were coming from.
Kingdom Hearts …
Or what remained. It seemed little more than a gold outline crackling with turquoise energy, a gaping hole inside that gave an all but perfect glowing, heart-shaped frame of the black sky. And that blue-green lightning dispersed further through the air, yet something at the heart outline’s lowest tip shot down like a beam toward the earth, somewhere inside those dark woodlands, and that beam stayed sustained as much as anything like it could.
So probably not for long.
With that, Riku kicked off from the grey sand, stumbled at the first few steps, and sprinted past the macabre rock formations and into the bleak foliage of the Jungle of Dusk.
He wasn’t alone.
Dozens of black shapes raced beside him or flew above him, separated always—or almost always—by the scattered thickets of cyan-veined trees or the canopies of dark leaves. In the year since Sora first freed his heart from Ansem, Riku had never come so close to the Heartless without combating them. But now here he was, racing to the light like any other creature of darkness. He doubted they recognized him as one of their own, especially after having seemingly lost his own ties to darkness; they were all just animals acting like any other force of nature, driven by their most primal instinct to chase what they thought would complete them.
Whether separated by yards or by inches, Riku and these Heartless—Pureblood all, and many unlike or otherwise larger than any he’d ever seen—scampered through the underbrush and dashed over cliffs and ravines in pursuit of that fragile beacon of light somewhere deeper still in this dark forest, though ‘dark’ hardly did it justice. If this place was the Heartless’ home, the sights and smells and sounds were much more diverse than he would’ve expected.
And maybe what he saw next was the least-expected of all.
The last canopy of bioluminescent trees gave way to a steep valley, where thousands of shadow-shapes, everything from the smallest Shadows to the largest Darksides to titans greater still, all clambered and clawed from every side at a vast, semitransparent dome of light shimmering from a white ring encircling the ruins of an ancient castle standing at the center of the valley. That castle was directly under the volatile, turquoise beam shooting out from under the hollow, golden rim of Kingdom Hearts.
But the closer Riku looked, the more that bright aura around the castle was cracking. The light’s protection, like the light itself, wouldn’t last long.
“Anything could happen.”
And the worst would if Riku did nothing.
So he ran.
He dove off the edge of the cliff, magic and talent guiding his steps and bounds down the dark mounds, evading every stampeding Heartless beside, until he reached the valley basin with the rest of the maddening army. It amazed him, when he could spare half the thought, how beautiful all the bioluminescent flowers and weeds of this realm were that were being stamped underfoot by creatures too frenzied to care what they stepped on.
Or to care that Riku stepped on them.
That was how he made it past. By leaping on the shoulders of giants, from one colossal Heartless to the next, each rising in height, until he’d passed the gnashing sea of shadow and leapt straight through the translucent wall—grateful to be let in at all—and landed in a tumble on one of several floating stone surfaces that were long since broken away from the courtyard proper.
But Riku could see the way down. He raced down the floating ruins like he had the hovering steps of Hollow Bastion many times before, and landed in a roll atop the grass-strewn stonework, not sparing a moment or a breath before he took off again, inside the castle itself.
‘Inside’ being relative, given that the roof of the main keep had cleared away either centuries or seconds ago, to ruin or to the light. But enough of the stairs remained. The flight was as wide as any multi-lane street, and the steps long enough to accommodate even the Darksides outside. And maybe they were. Riku couldn’t begin to guess the history of the Realm of Darkness, if that was in fact where he was. And now he wondered if the castle’s ravaged towers, already larger and wider than Hollow Bastion’s, were once greater still.
But he sprinted up the giant steps, up past where the walls gave way and he could again see the fracturing barrier break at last as the black giants spilled through, and every lesser beast of shadow billowed like a dark flood in the afflicted valley.
Panic surged inside. Riku picked up the pace, already panting heavily from the journey so far and dreading a confrontation with a ravenous army of darkness. He could see the end now. Saw the vast platform at the apex of the withering stairs. Saw the unstable beam of light—now clearly as wide as the stairs themselves—settling near the end as the vague shape of a titanic, turquoise portal large enough for any Heartless outside to fit through. And, as he rounded the pillars to the last tract of stairs, and the roofless ruins of the throne room came into view…
…he saw, also, a silhouette at the top step. Small and vague against the colossal door of light, almost entirely suffused from sight, and yet…the closer Riku ran, even as he found he couldn’t run anymore…
The silhouette slowed its approach. The details sharpened. His heart froze. The blue hair. The strange clothes.
…Why did Riku see her now?
He swallowed, called to the top of the stairs, “H—hey!”
She froze just moments away from passing through the wall of turquoise light. Spun around and looked down what steps remained between them, and both were surprised at the sight of the other.
Was it a trick of the light, or hadn’t she aged a day?