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“Sora, it’s pointless.”
“Don’t say that! You can’t say that! You’re gonna be fine! You have to be!”
Riku grasped onto Sora’s wrist, trying to pull it away from him. “Sora-”
“No! I’m not leaving you! As long as I keep pressure on it- and once someone comes to help you’ll be-” Sora broke out into a sob as the reality of the situation hit him. No one was coming to help. There was nothing that could be done.
They were in a barren wasteland where the only thing to see was copper red sand dunes and fire all around. The flames had been creeping in closer and closer. It was only a matter of time until it completely engulfed them. There had been screeching demonic looking creatures with batlike wings, sharp deadly fangs, and spiky talons and claws. They had never seen anything like them before.
Now that Sora thought about it, he didn’t even know how he got here in the first place. He just knew that he and Riku just kind of popped up here and began fighting off the less than welcoming creatures. Unfortunately, one of the demonic creatures had pierced Riku in the torso with one of its claws. Riku had instantly fallen to the floor in a scream of pain, blood flowing endlessly out of the wound from the chunk of flesh that had been torn off. In a fit of worry and rage, Sora had destroyed the creatures in an instant.
“Sora… you have to stop it.”
“I’m trying, Riku!” Sora cried, tears streaming down his face.
“No, I mean you have to stop the darkness from overtaking you. You can’t let it anymore.”
Sora was confused. “Riku, what are you talking about?”
“Try- t-try to remember, Sora. What really happened?”
Sora blinked as he stared at the silvernette’s cyan orbs that were slowly getting ever so pale. He tried to make sense of Riku’s words. What did he need to remember? He didn’t even realize that he had forgotten something in the first place.
He had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t realized that Riku had managed to move his hands away from the wound. He was about to apply pressure on it again when he noticed something rather strange about it. The wound was indeed deep, but it looked rather small for it to be from the demonic creatures’ claws. Now that he looked at the wound and his hand that was near it, it looked to be about the same size as his hand…
“R-Riku?”
And then like whiplash, the memories hit him all at once. He remembered running faster than he ever had been able to before, being able to go from one spot to another in the matter of a second, being able to see perfectly from miles away, feeling warm thick blood on his hands and his mouth…
He looked down at his hands and saw them to be a dark black with claws in place of his fingernails. Dark wisps secreted out of his skin and the pungent smell of darkness was heavy in the air. He knew what this was.
This was his anti-form.
As he looked around him, the bodies of the demonic creatures were gone and in their places were the bodies of his friends – Roxas, Xion, Lea, Aqua, Terra, Ventus, Kairi, and many more from various worlds he had been to.
Had he… had he done all this?
“Sora…” Riku rasped. “Put… an end… to… the m-monster.”
And then, Riku’s eyes were lifeless.
The darkness in him didn’t let him feel guilt, despair, or anything for that matter. But for some reason, it granted him the ability to listen to logic just this once. Maybe this was what it wanted to do to him this whole time.
Sora turned to the circle of fire that was slowing enclosing around him. Without a second thought, he jumped into the flames, letting out an ear-piercing, blood-curdling, animalistic scream as his flesh burned off his bones.
Riku came in running as soon as he heard his best friend’s screams. He went to Sora’s bedside, unable to do anything but watch as the boy tossed and turned violently in his bed. He could only hope that the chains attached to his wrists and legs weren’t hurting him too much.
“Sora, Sora please listen to me,” Riku pleaded.
For a split second, the boy looked at him, yellow glowing eyes piercing into his own, but then he tried to lunge at the silvernette only to be thrown back down on the bed by the chains. Riku could only sigh in disappointment and pain. He couldn’t do anything for Sora. He could only stay with him until his friend reverted back.
“Is everything alright?”
Riku turned to find Roxas, wait not Roxas but Ventus standing in the doorway. He was still wrapping his head around the fact that there was a kinder, innocent, and rather bubbly version of Roxas that existed.
“It’s just another nightmare I’m assuming. He was particularly antsy today. I should have known he was bottling everything up. Guess it just manifested itself when he fell asleep,” Riku explained.
“So Aqua’s theory was right then.” Ventus kneeled next to Riku. “Emotional… pressures she called it?”
“Yeah. Pain, distress – basically strong negative emotions.”
“But why today? What was making him feel so bad today? He hasn’t transformed for a whole nine days.”
“That might have been exactly why, Ven,” Aqua said as she came into the room. “Sora was probably trying so hard to keep everything inside these past days that it just exploded.” Aqua went up to Sora and held her keyblade over him, the tip of the blade glowing a bright white. Magic swirled around Sora’s dark form, and he slowly began to subside in his actions, eventually lying still and falling asleep while reverting back to a human in the process. “I can’t keep putting him under these sleeping spells. These ones are much stronger than the ones you know. He’ll sleep away nearly the whole day each time.”
Riku let out a weary sigh. “I know. I know.”
It had been three months since Xehanort’s defeat, three months since Kairi was destroyed in front of their very eyes. Sora had been the most affected by the loss, for once Xehanort had gotten rid of the girl, a brilliant rage filled Sora, one that touched the inner darkness of his heart and manifested it.
In the past, Sora had been able to use his anti-form for short durations in a more controlled manner. However, in that moment, when Sora had transformed, he had become completely mindless and illogical. It seemed that he only had one intent: to kill.
And kill he did.
Xehanort’s defeat was one that Riku and the others would never be proud of. He could only hope that no one else would ever want to know about the evil mastermind’s defeat. It had not been a pretty sight to see his best friend tear the man apart, quite literally.
He could still picture it as if it had just been yesterday. He could still see how Sora lunged at Xehanort, biting into his neck with his sharp teeth and piercing his claws into his chest, eventually ripping out the man’s still beating heart…
And at that point Riku could only assume Sora ate it since he didn’t see what happened next because he was throwing up. When he looked back up, the man was lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood, no heart in sight anywhere. The only ones that hadn’t been in such a state of shock – Roxas, Aqua, and Terra – were able to get Sora under control and by under control he meant knocked out cold.
Ever since then, Sora had been staying in the Land of Departure. Riku of course would stay by his side throughout the entire process of searching for some sort of answer, some sort of cure to Sora’s condition.
“But it’s not like there’s any other way of getting him to calm down,” Riku said as he placed a hand on one of Sora’s.
“Well, there might be but…” Aqua trailed off looking in Ventus’ direction.
“Riku I- I swear I’m trying. I really am but-”
Riku cut Ventus off by ruffling the blonde’s locks. “I know Ven. Don’t worry. The power of waking is not such an easy thing to learn.”
“I’ll get it though. I know I will. I just need to dig down a little deeper. Just a little more and then I’ll be able to snap Sora out of his transformations.”
The power of waking was the only other way to wake up Sora whenever he would change into his anti-form. The problem was that when both Aqua and Riku tried it on Sora, it had failed and only seemed to agitate Sora more. Aqua believed that if someone with closer ties to the brunette’s heart were to use that same power, then it would snap him out of his beastly form. Someone who had lived in Sora’s heart. Someone like Ventus.
Roxas and Xion had been candidates too but Aqua said the less darkness the person had in their heart to get in touch with Sora’s already dark heart, the better. Ventus had no darkness in his heart since it had been extracted from him so that made him the perfect choice.
“Sora will be asleep for the next twelve hours or so, so he should be fine. We should all get back to bed and get some sleep ourselves,” Aqua said, giving a pointed look to the two teens.
“She’s right,” Riku said as he stood up. “We can’t help Sora if we’re exhausted.”
“Right,” Ventus said with a nod as he got up on his feet as well.
Aqua gave them a small smile and bid them a good night as she left the room. After a few seconds, Ventus turned to the silvernette, a slight glint of mischief in his eyes. “Same routine as usual?”
“Yep,” Riku said, popping the “p.”
Ventus left the room while Riku retreated to his own and grabbed all the blankets and pillows he could find. He went back into Sora’s room to find that Ventus had beat him there with a bundle of blankets and pillows from his own bed.
“Why is it that I sleep better on the floor here better than in my own bed?” Riku asked as they began to pile blankets and pillows on the floor next to Sora’s bed.
“Maybe because we’re all together, protecting each other. We feel safe here,” Ventus said with a smile.
They spent a good portion of the night in their makeshift bed watching movies on the gummiphone and looking at what their friends had recently posted – mostly memes on Lea’s account.
Ventus was the first to succumb to sleep and then Riku followed shortly after. As Riku’s eyes began to close, he couldn’t help but think about how hard everyone was working to help Sora. The Sea Salt Trio had been tirelessly travelling through various worlds in search of any information, magic, items, anything that could be of use to Sora’s cause. Ansem, Even, and Ienzo had been doing as much research into the heart as possible and Naminé had been making frequent trips to look into Sora’s memories to see if any sort of clue could be found. Terra was currently at the Keyblade Graveyard with Elrena, Lauriam, Myde, and Rould – seeing if any memories of the keyblade war could be triggered. Perhaps something useful could come out of them. Aqua had been playing mother hen while trying to concoct different potions, remedies, and spells that could help Sora in his state. Ventus – the poor boy – had been tirelessly trying to obtain the power of waking. The blonde had been at it so much that Riku would more often than not wait in his room until he fell asleep, then stay for an hour just to make sure that the young teen wasn’t faking it.
And Riku, Riku was trying to be there for his best friend while being there for everyone else and aiding them in their tasks.
Perhaps Sora wasn’t the only one going under emotional pressure. They all were. Kairi’s death was still fresh in their minds, but they hadn’t had proper time to mourn, not with everything that had been happening with Sora.
Huh. Maybe that’s what they all needed, including Sora. Maybe they needed to mourn Kairi in order to move on. Maybe that’s what Sora needed.
Whatever the answer was, Riku knew that they all would be able to get through this. They just needed to have heart. With these thoughts running through his mind, Riku let sleep take him until the sunlight would shine through the windows, signaling a new day.