love. / accepting. / @fstclench
She waves, head above her head, calling his name with open delight. Long legs take her quickly towards him as he stops in his steps, turning to look at her. His smile is affectionate and soft, and she reaches him and grins.
He grasps her shoulders, still smiling, and pushes her to the ground. Her eyes go wide, hands pressing at his chest on instinct, terror welling bright the way it always does. “Get — get off of me —— stop it!!” He doesn’t. The smile is still there. One hand holds her down — he’s too strong, she can’t force him off of her — while the other presses hard against her chest, on the scar that Xemnas left her.
Her sternum cracks and she screams, blood spattering from her mouth as she does. Her head falls back, eyes staring up and up and at nothing at all. His hand leaves her shoulder, the pain too cacophonous to fight against; no need to hold her down like this. It joins his other where it digs through her opened chest. She feels ribs cracking, organs shifting. Like Xemnas reprogramming her. Like Xemnas.
“W - Why —— ?” she chokes out, tasting copper.
“Sora needs this more than you do.”
She manages to lift her head; to look over her collarbone and the gore of her opened body. She catches a glimpse of him pale hands wrapped around her heart, lifting it from her body. She screams.
She keeps screaming when he wakes her up.
She wakes like hands flying to her chest searching for blood and fractured bones and instead finding only the smooth expanse of the too - large shirt she’d borrowed. She looks at him as he leans over where she’d rested, and his bleached face in the moonlight, and he is not smiling like he had been in the dream. But she still shouts and pulls away from him, holding tight to her chest. Protective. Her eyes are wild and fever - bright.
“Don’t touch me!” The shout is desperate and accompanied with tears — she hadn’t been aware of them — pouring down her cheeks. She realizes, slowly, that it had been a dream. Just a bad dream. Just — a bad dream ——
Her shoulders crumple, and she pulls her legs closer to her chest. That’s right. She was staying with Riku because she needed to be in Destiny Islands. His couch. Not the empty expanse of her dream. He is looking at her with tortured concern, aching for her sake, not smiling as her rips her body open. Her heart races. SHE IS AFRAID OF HIM.
She whispers, “S - Sorry.”
He’s silent; body tense as though he isn’t sure if he should leave her be or stay with her. She isn’t sure, either. Her eyes lower to her knees. Finally, he asks, “bad dream?”
Her silence must be answer enough. He sighs, and she looks down at her knees.
She says, “It’s…not your fault. I have nightmares about everybody.” It’s not as mollifying as she’d expected it to be; if anything, it seems to make him sadder. He sighs, a low, unhappy sound.
“Do you…want me to go?” He asks finally. She doesn’t know. But her head shakes.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she whispers, and that is true. “Could you stay with me…just for a little while?”
She feels the couch shift beneath her and looks up to see Riku sitting down. “Yeah, Xion. Of course.” She watches him, half - grateful and half - terrified. Imagines his fingers covered in her blood and then tries not to. It’s not fair to him. It’s not fair that she can’t trust; it’s selfish and ugly that the world taught her to be afraid of the world and everything in it. IT’S HER FAULT, NOT HIS. “And — I’m sorry.”