Redemption Frägment

Chapter Seven: The Sky’s the Limit

His hand hit the wooden door of the house and he pushed it open, his radical, trademark grin plastered on his face. He stepped through the portal, his companions following just before the door slammed shut behind them. The surprise on the faces of the occupants of the house just served to brighten his day.

He took a deep breath. “I’m ba~ack!”

“Sora!”

“Sora?”

“Shit! God dammit! You did that on purpose, you brat!”

This last comment came from Cid (you could tell from the cursing) who had, at the brown-haired teen’s entrance, spilled his tea all over his chest. Sora just gave him an impish grin and plopped himself in a chair. His eyes met Cid’s, then Aerith’s. The only two missing from the group was Yuffie, but he surmised she was out wandering Traverse Town, and Leon, who was probably at the coliseum.

“What are you doing back so soon?” asked Aerith. Her voice held a bit of worry, but she masked it well with a look of curiosity on her face.

“Chased the rumours as far as they went.” Sora sighed and looked down at his feet. “They finally led to a dead end in Bedouin and we ran out of items just outside of the town. So we came back to get some more.”

This jeer was sent toward the smallest member of his party, the duck whirling and glaring at the teenager. Just as Donald was about to open his mouth, Yuffie burst through the door, the wooden panel smacking the duck’s beak and sending him careening into the wall. She barely glanced at him, eyes bright with excitement.

“Guys! Guys! Hi, Sora!” Yuffie skidded to a stop in the middle of the room, grinning brightly. “It’s great! I’ve got great news! Something interesting finally happened and Belle wants to see us pronto!” She turned her grin to the brown-haired Keyblade Master. “S’pecially you.”

Sora perked up immediately, grinning wider than he ever had before. “Then we shouldn’t keep her waiting. Whatever it is, it’s gotta be important, right?”

“Ayuck,” Goofy was nodding, trying to peel Donald of the wall. “Whatever Belle wants to tell us, it’s gotta be important. S’pecially if she wants to see you Sora.”

The trademark radical grin spread across the boy’s face. “Then lets not keep them waiting.”

Without waiting for his friends, Sora strode out of the little house, down the short flight of stairs, and through the causeway to the bazaar. He paused, head tilting toward the sky.

“I’ll find you, Riku. I’ll never give up, so don’t you give up either. I…” Sora swallowed and blinked back the forming tears. “I just want you back.”

“Sora!”

He turned to face his two companions as they came through the causeway into the bazaar. He shot them his best grin, a pang of hurt surfacing when, unbidden, the memory of Riku grinning back surfaced in his mind. He was silent as they walked to the gummi ship, lost in thought. Would Riku smile like that at him again? He’d shut his best friend at Kingdom Hearts at his behest, and afterwards, Sora had begun relentlessly chasing any rumour that surfaced and any clue Belle and the other Princesses of Heart could find for him. The only princess that didn’t really help was Kairi.

Kairi.

She’d changed after he’d told her he was going to look for Riku. Before he’d sealed the silver-haired boy behind the Door to the Light, she’d said they’d all be together, and she smiled. What a fool he had been. He realized that as soon as he overheard her speaking to Selphie.

-“Sora’s going to look for Riku.”

“Isn’t that a good thing, though? We’d all be together again.”

“Selphie, you don’t understand. If Sora finds Riku, he’s never going to come back to me. It took me forever to win his heart and I don’t want to lose it, especially NOT to Riku! The idiot joined forces with the Heartless, with Ansem, and to what gain? Ansem stole his body, and sure, in the end he protected me and allowed himself to be sealed away. But that doesn’t change anything. I love Sora with everything I am. I want Sora’s attentions all to myself. And if he finds Riku… if he finds Riku, he won’t love me.”

“I think you’re being stupid, Kairi. Sora loves you, and he wants to find Riku because Riku is his best friend. They’ve done everything together.”

“Stupid? I’m not being stupid. I’ve seen how Riku looked at Sora. He wanted me out of the picture so he could have Sora! And when he couldn’t, when Sora said I was more important, Riku flipped and he did everything in his power to get rid of me.”

“Yet you’re still here, because he protected you.”

“It doesn’t matter in the end, Selph. I want Sora. I won’t let Riku have him like that. Not now, not ever. Sora is mine and if he brings Riku back here, IF he finds him, I’ll… I’ll kill him!”-

He’d left as quietly as he could, hand clamped over his mouth to stifle the sobs that were threatening to come out. He’d spent the evening on the gummi ship, thinking of all the things he’d done wrong. At first, he blamed himself for leading Kairi on. But the more he thought about it, the more he analyzed his own feelings, the more he realized he’d just cared more for Riku than Kairi. He wanted to be at Riku’s side the whole journey, not Kairi’s. Kairi came second; every thought he had, Riku was first, Kairi was second. He loved Riku. The feelings had been confused for a long time, perhaps because Kairi’s heart had been in him manipulating his own. Now that he was free, he knew he loved Riku. Had loved him form the beginning.

“Hey, Sora. Wake up. We’re almost to Beast’s castle.”

Sora’s eyes shot open and he stared around him in utter amazement. When had they boarded the ship? Speaking of ship, when did they start off? He rubbed his eyes and climbed up on the deck, peering out the window toward the huge castle. Here, perhaps he could get a rumour that would lead him to Riku. He desperately wanted to see his silver-haired friend. He desperately wanted to tell him how he felt.

“Riku… please. Please let me find you.”


“Ah-ah-achoo! Ah-choo! Ah-choo!”

“Bless you.”

“Shut up.”

“Hey you know what they say. Sneeze once, someone’s thinking about you. Sneeze twice, someone’s talking about you. Sneeze three times, and someone’s talking good about you.”

I watch Riku rub his nose. “And you would know this how?”

I meet his glare with an even gaze. “Back in Hollow Bastion, before I went completely nuts, the kids there always said that. First it became rumour, then legend.” I shrug.

-- Hollow Bastion? I never went insane in Hollow Bastion. Radiant Garden, that was the place. I never went insane. That wasn’t me. That was –

“You’re basing this on a bunch of children?” Riku sounds incredulous. That fact becomes true when I meet his eyes once more.

“You have a problem with that?”

“Not in the least.”

We fall to silence again. Ever since I told Riku about Emma’s true identity, we’ve been hard-pressed to find something to talk about. It’s mostly been companionable silence, but we’re both becoming annoyed. Whether at each other or something else, I won’t know until we both snap. I open my mouth to suggest a little play fighting, but he glares at me. I blink, tilting my head.

- What’s your problem? – I think to myself, eyes downcast.

- Emma, that’s what. – comes an unspoken reply.

I jump a little, turning my head to look at him. He’s stiff, walking slowly, sea-blue gaze shifting to my golden one.

- Is this little mind-talk think a by-product of our connection? – he wonders.

I shrug. – How the hell am I supposed to know? This is the first I’ve done it. But, it does come in handy. –

- That it does. – he’s silent for a moment. – What do you think the ‘gift’ is? –

I shudder. – I don’t want to know, honestly. –

He makes a soft sound and we continue to walk, silence on both ends. Emma trots happily in front of us and I can’t help but sneer a bit. Riku nudges by side, urging my sneer to vanish before Emma turns her head back to us. He shakes his head in a warning, holding up one finger and then dropping it forward a little. So, Emma was watching us. We’d come up with the signal because on one too many occasions the fuzzy furball of death had cut our conversations awkwardly short. We were given a space of five seconds to come up with a signal-language in which to speak after we left Therein. A primitive language, but useful, and now that we have the little mind-talk thing, we won’t need it anymore. What the hell. It would only make sense I finish this quest screwed up since I began that way.

Riku sneezes a gain and I utter a ‘bless you’. He grins and tackles me in a headlock, rubbing his knuckles against my scalp hard. I fight to get away, unable to keep the laughs back. He releases me and we grin at each other. We continue down the dirt road as I fix my hair back into its ponytail that Riku so generously disheveled. So far we’ve had good luck. I think we both share the same sentiment that we want it to continue.

“Ah-ah-achoo! Ah-choo! Ah-choo!”

“Bless you.”

“…I hate you…”


Electric blue eyes surveyed the area. He remembered this place all too well. This was the place he’d run into Beast for the first time, the place where he’d fought Riku. Twice. This was the place he became a Heartless. This was the place that was the final stepping-stone to finishing his quest. His first quest. Sora sighed, taking the stairs in the entrance hall two at a time. The Heartless were no longer a threat here, though a few still lingered. They weren’t powerful enough to withstand the blunt force of the Ultima Keyblade, though Sora tended to avoid them. They weren’t trying to purposefully attack anyone now and if they did attack, they were typically provoked or they were protecting a nest.

He pushed open the doors to the library, moving quickly through the bookshelves to the stairs, running up them and nearly slamming into Beast. Beast merely raised an eyebrow at him.

“Belle is waiting for you.” Sora nodded at the gruff voice. “Since you seem to have lost Donald and Goofy, I’ll keep them from following you.”

“Thanks, Beast.” Sora clapped his hand to the furry arm and pushed past him, running for the young woman dressed in an obscenely yellow dress. He grinned as he heard the indignant cries of his name behind him.

He found the princess sequestered among piles of books with titles that made his brain hurt, diligently flipping through pages. He knew she enjoyed it here, but she did get bored. He didn’t want to dwell on how she became un-bored. Before his mind could dredge up images that would give him nightmares until he was dead, he quickly changed his freight-train thought to the reason why he came here.

“You wanted to see me, Belle?”

The woman looked up at the sound of his voice and her name, a graceful smile spreading on her face. She rose from her seat, moving over to him. A gloved hand came to rest on his shoulder, drawing him toward the desk she had previously vacated.

“Yes. We received word from another world; one close to the world on which Bedouin is located. The prince who rules the neighbouring world has envoys in Bedouin and in the town across the inland sea, called Therein. They wanted to be sure before they sent the message to us here, but they also didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

Sora made a soft sound. Apparently, thanks to the princesses, every ruler of every new world that had yet to be visited by him was on the lookout for Riku. Or a boy of his description, at least. It was already too late to not get his hopes up. He’d chased millions of rumours to dead ends. He’d spent his nights crying into his pillow or the lap of the Fairy Godmother, suffered nightmares in which he’d found Riku, but he could never catch him.

“It’s a bit too late for that, Belle.” Sora muttered, bringing his hands up behind his head and lacing his fingers together. “I’ve chased all the rumours, found nothing but dead ends. I appreciate the help, but for once, couldn’t you manage a fruitful rumour?”

He watched the princess’s eyes narrow in almost anger. He was being snarky and with damn good reason, too.

“They’ve spotted a boy of Riku’s description. However, he also travels with someone very familiar to you and everyone else whom you’ve met.” Belle’s voice grew grave. “The boy who they think is Riku travels with Ansem.”