KH1 Roleswap Riku & Kairi - Oneshot
All I Needed Was Your Apology
cross posted on AO3
Summary: Two friends walk into Traverse Town’s Third District:
The boy heedless of the blood shed in the name of freedom keeps his eyes fixed on the countless stars before him.
The girl burdened by a friend on the brink fo death and dark truths only sees in the boy shadows of mistakes past.
Neither will find it funny in hindsight and yet the universe keeps on laughing.
Disclaimer: This story contains references to child abuse in the form of Kairi's trauma from whatever happened in the Radiant Garden basement. It also contains typical KH1 Riku rudeness.
URGH! What was with all these grow-ups asking him to look for stuff on his travels? Leon! Stupid dogs and now those wizards! Did Riku look like a delivery boy to them?
Their group had barely stepped back into the Third District when a large party of Heartless crawled out of the shadows to greet them as well. At first those monsters had presented a real challenge compared to the wooden swords back home. Now after three worlds of dealing with those pests they had become yet another waste of his precious time.
Luck did smile one him for a bright star crashed down on his enemies. When the light finally dimmed, he was greeted by the sight of Kairi amidst the cluster of freed hearts. In her clenched hands was a knockoff of his own Keyblade, a sinister red and black sword.
A weight he had avoided thinking about was finally lifted off his shoulders: Kairi did make it off the islands in one piece! And yet a sense of unease remained: Kairi, with no monsters left, did not let go of her weapon.
The step back he took in response to her intense stare failed to counter her heavy strides that followed. As her arms wrapped around his shoulders, he couldn’t help but shiver at the sensation of her cold blade running down the length of his back. Whatever words she said were lost to his own erratic heartbeat.
Fortunately regardless of her need for physical touch, his friend did not fight back when he pushed her off. She even dismissed that creepy blade of hers. The Keyblade master chided himself for mistaking her worry for anger while he wiped the azure hue creeping at the edges of his vision. Of course, Kairi had no reason to be mad at him! Fighting those monsters for too long had just made the both of them jumpier, that was all!
“I thought. The darkness. When it took you then Sora, I… I thought I’d never see either of you again.” His friend rambled on with a shaky voice that he hadn’t heard since they were six.
“Well that ‘darkness’ clearly wasn’t an issue for me at all”, Riku waved off, “I’m sure Sora made it off fine too and is living the dream out there just like us.”
“What are you talking about?! It’s been a nightmare!” Kairi replied in disbelief and as she continued, the world around them was slowly painted over with the golden hue of fear. “We all got scattered with no food, no water and no real weapons! Sora could be anywhere out there and we could spend years missing each other! And even if we do, we don’t have a way h-“
Faced with her good old paranoia and theatrics that came with it, Riku scoffed. She couldn't be doing that bad when she remained this talkative. And yet you’d think someone so uptight about safety wouldn’t let that tiny heartless sneak behind her. Still he was a good friend and so he threw a quick hand sign away from his coworkers’ view to warn her.
Kairi did not react and the heartless approached closer,
Closer,
And closer.
With no other option left, Riku shoved her aside and sliced through the Shadow. The distraction removed and their scores evened, he turned back to his wide-eyed friend with a smirk.
-“See? I got it all handled!”-
Tidus, Wakka and Sora couldn’t help but gape at the sheet Kairi held in front of them: an authorization slip for the incoming camping trip with both of her moms’ signatures.
Loud cheers erupted in their corner of the school yard as they realized that the biggest event of their year would not be spoiled by the absence of a friend. An entire week of fun awaited them, promising fond and wonderful memories by the dozens.
After so many trials Kairi had finally caught up, the warmth around her proof that she belonged.
Still her victory wasn’t complete for Selphie and Riku’s doubful gazes pierced through her heart. There lied the weakness of her plan: a word from them could bring it all down.
Trading her proud grin for a secretive smirk, Kairi whispered: “Convincing my moms was really hard so can you guys not bring up the trip with them? I’m sure they don’t want to hear about it again till I graduated.”
Selphie’s wide-eyed stare and Riku’s glare were their answer to her request, no plea to let her stay beside them.
-“Is this a game to you?”-
Wow. Just wow. And somehow the whole town still insisted he was the rude one.
“Oh I’m sorry! That’s just the adventure you asked for.” He quipped back a little too fast but that’s fine! He could absolutely be the mature one, unlike her. “Come on, Kairi. We’re finally going to see real pirates, places we can’t make sense of, your home town!”
“What about what we left behind?” Kairi asked while violet hues lapped around them. Her eyes, for a moment, looked the same as when they first met: churning seas that tore at the land and wailed over sunken ships.
Riku turned away. They paid a fair price. The challenge was simply to make her see that: “We did what we had to do to get out of there. The sooner you let the past go, the better you’ll feel.”
-“That’s it? Nothing else you think you oughta say?"-
Hotaru pressed with snappy gestures, almost too familiar for a mayor to be signing. The teacher beside her had lost that restrain hours ago and openly returned Kairi’s glare as he massaged an arm riddled with bite marks.
What was there to say?
Should Kairi speak of how the light through window cast prison bars over the floor? Should she explain her hands pressed over the mouth of a crying classmate to keep them quiet and safe? Should she describe the faces that overlapped with the teacher as he hauled Kairi away?
Every single time the foreigner had found the strength to tear the words out of her throat, she had only been met with pity or misplaced blame thrown at her grandmother. If she stayed silent, maybe they would at least do so behind her back.
With an exasperated handwave, Hotaru sent her daughter off to the car. Immediately Kairi sprang from her seat and rushed out of the room. However before she could fully do so, she still caught a glimpse of the mayor’s unwavering reassurances to the teacher.
-“I’ll manage. Kairi can’t stay mad forever.”-
Sure she loved to nitpick but her smart and discreet additions to the raft showed she had gotten used to Riku’s simpler plans. Maybe some more time on her own would teach her to live more day to day.
All the more reasons to defend Kairi against Donald’s criticisms: “That one Heartless? It got lucky because she trusts me to watch her back. I can’t count the number of times she sensed someone rooms away. Sora’s attention span is what you need to worry about.”
Honestly Kairi could be such a downer at times. He had seen her conquer her many, many weird childhood ghosts. By the time they had left home no one could boast being able to swim as long as her or having slept as many weeks alone in the haunted shack. It had been freaking years since she needed Sora’s verbal support or a more physical push from Riku. Yet the fact that she still had been talking was proof she wasn’t doing that bad.
No way Riku could let that nagging goof downplay her resilience: “Hey! Sora and I may be stronger but Kairi is right behind, waiting for her opponents to wear themselves out against her defenses.”
Urgh! Adults simply wouldn’t get it! Kairi and Sora would be fine! The latter would be found within the next few worlds and by then she would have gotten over her problems. After that it would be a life of adventure just the three of them!
-"How was that so hard to understand?!"-
Kairi slammed her bedroom door closed. All her school year, all her classmates, all her friends were going to that trip! It had taken so long for her to catch up on what everyone had figured out years ago: the right prayer for each holiday, the correct ways to read the rapidly changing weather, the actual meanings of flowers she knew used to mean something else.
It had taken so
Freaking
Long.
And now she was about to be left in the dust once more. All because of a past forgotten but that still haunted her heart every Leviathan darned day. First it would this trip when Riku and Sora would realize how much more fun they had without her issues dragging them down. After that it would only be a matter of time till Riku stopped looking back for her, till Sora gave up on explaining the new inside jokes, till Selphie looked for sleep over buddies who didn’t bite her parents.
Kairi could either fight for her hard-won happiness or let it wash away.
And she refused to end up alone again.