Difference between revisions of "Reflections"

Latest revision as of 01:35, 9 November 2012

The sounds of the city were muffled. Manhattan droned away in the background, yielding occasionally to an ear-ringing silence that filled the dark room. Riku sat up against the bed, one knee pulled up and head resting on the side of the mattress while a discarded comforter pooled around him. Diablo perched on a lamp that sat on a nearby dresser, head tucked away in sleep while Riku stared at the painting propped up against the opposite wall. It was a black square of canvas. To the casual observer that was the sum total of the painting. There was a faint glare of light leaking around the edges of the drawn curtains, but it should have been impossible to make it out from the rest of the gloom.

He’d had to redraw the lines around what was impossible so many times he barely knew what the word meant anymore. Maybe it was time to deal with facts rather than words like impossible. Riku took in a long breath and let it out very slowly as he recounted to himself a few facts.

His name was Riku and he came from Destiny Islands.

There was a moment of doubt then, but he had to start from somewhere. If neither of these things were true then ---

Riku shakes his head.

It was the name he responded to and the memories he had of that place were unbroken. He remembered growing up there. He remembered his parents and his friends.

He remembered that he, and Kairi, and Sora, were the only survivors.

Riku carefully disentangles himself from that line of thought. They were the only survivors that he knew of, just as Riku was the name he knew and Destiny Islands was the home he remembered. That would have to be good enough for now. He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. Diablo mumbled in his sleep blearily, preening a few feathers with eyes barely open before shuffling into a more comfortable position and falling back asleep. After five minutes of staring at the ceiling Riku gathered up the courage to start again.

He was sitting in a dark hotel room in a city of lights and machines. A city clinging to life and yet one he could barely have imagined sitting under the stars and wondering what was out there to be found. He was sitting in a dark hotel room because except for places like Traverse Town, his eyes hurt when it became too bright outside. Occasionally it caused him terrible headaches. Another of several reasons he didn’t stay with the Shard Seekers. He didn’t really belong with them, or the TDA.. And Maleficent might hurt them as an object lesson.

“Probably going to do that anyways...” Riku digs out the journal, flipping past the torn pages to stare at the four lines of text he had engraved on the back of one of LEXUS’s data printouts and stuck inside the journal.

He had to get away from her. He had to get /Kairi/ away from her.

And then what.

Sail into the horizon and a happy future on a raft?

Riku snorts softly, shifting on the floor to get more comfortable as he stares sullenly at the painting. There was a distinct impression of eyes down on the lower left corner of the picture, little flecks in a storm of dark colors that should have been unsettling. Riku sat there and found staring at the painting very soothing, almost hypnotic in the way the darkness seemed to fold around the square frame. It was as if the painting were a window into a dark place where nothing could reach him. It was a similar and just as eerie feeling of safety that came from visiting Hollow Bastion.

Riku allowed his eyes to close, head starting to droop as the bone-deep calm started to wear through the layers of confusion, anxiety and frustration. Distantly he could perceive other smears of light in the occupied rooms of the hotel nearby. Another fact to chew over as well as the one he had been ignoring.

He was about to give in to the promise of dreamless sleep when he heard something. It was crisp and unmuffled, commanding his attention as he teetered on the brink of sleep. It was the hollow click of footsteps against stone in a dark, carpeted hotel room.

Riku opened his eyes to find the footsteps matched the surroundings. Manhattan and the hotel room had gone away. In its stead was a place he had never wanted to see again, even in nightmare. Dark water no longer bounded the perimeter of the circular platforms. The stone and crystal architecture simply fell away into a darkness much more realized than anything the painting could show him.

He picked himself up, attempting and failing to call a sword to hand. He concentrated but only grasped at nothing. No matter what he tried, whatever Maleficent had taught him had abandoned him here. It was then that he heard the sound of footsteps again without an owner. The clicks were slow and measured as if he were being studied, examined with mild interest like an animal in a zoo. “You again.” Riku narrows his eyes trying to track the sound of footsteps and backing away towards the middle of the platform in case they start to collapse again. A stairway wound upwards and downwards, spiraling into the vanishing distance in both directions. More platforms dotted the path.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

“Shut up.” Riku tries again to muscle through whatever block was keeping him from his abilities to no avail. There was no wall there to fight. It was as if he never possessed them in the first place. “You think I’m going to listen to anything you have to say? Give me a break.” The sound of footsteps stopped, leaving Riku with his anger and the ringing silence as he began to pace across the platform himself. The choice not mattering to him, he went down the nearby stairs if only to do something other than stand and let the guiding voice talk at him.

There were no heartless this time but something more disturbing had taken their place. The platforms were no longer empty. Instead, each one of them held a perfect image of frozen time. A slice of activity ragged torn away from the world and held perfectly still for Riku to examine like a scene from a diorama.

The first one was of himself facing off against Maleficent at the peak of her fury. They were in the cavern where Kairi lay and Diablo had been turned to stone, the bird hovering in the air caught in the instant he had begun to crack apart and fall towards the ground. The bird had been in between Riku and the Sorceress.

She will never let you go, Riku.

Riku stares at the familiar and at himself in his frozen moment, wondering if Dee had tried to help him or if he had simply gotten in the way and been struck down by his own mistress. Either way it was a lie. Just another illusion. He turns away, not bothering to acknowledge the voice as he returns to the stairwell.

He goes upwards this time which should have put him back where he started. Instead there was another image of frozen time in the place he had just vacated a minute before. Riku immediately frowned as the image registered, lashing out instinctively to shred and destroy it.

The image of Terra kneeling in the sand beside a silver haired youth wavered, and then came apart in a flurry of dark trailing wisps. A slow, cruel chuckle sounded behind him. When Riku whipped around with fists raised there was nobody there.

Tell me again about this grand destiny, Riku. The one he promised. The one that went to Sora instead. The one you gave up on without a whimper.

“Shut up.”

Or perhaps you simply put it away. After all, such lies are for children and fools.

Riku turns away, entire body rigid with tension as he fights for control over himself. He breathes in several harsh, hissing breaths as he struggles to find some way to fight free of this nightmare. It was like the dreams though. They only seemed to end when the voice was done with him.

Or perhaps there was always a grain of truth to it, despite the lies of a stranger, but you were simply not the one who was chosen. The one who was strong enough. Maybe this is why you are where you are, a servant trapped in service. When you could be so much more, you are a pawn in a game you haven’t learned the rules to. A shadow stuck to the service of its master.

The anger and the helplessness were almost painful. Riku felt his legs start to collapse but he wills himself to keep standing. He would not kneel again to a malicious bastard like the voice, he would not crumple like he did at the feet of the sorceress. He threw all of his energy into willing himself away, into putting as much distance between himself and the voice as he could. To simply not be here anymore. The voice chuckles again quietly while the entire world seems to shudder and pulse. It can still be heard, calm and implacable, as the world starts to crack away.

Remember Riku, it does not have to be this way. Come back when you tire of being the servant.

The nightmare shatters.

Twilight in Traverse town. Go figure.

The environment has a soothing activity to it, people wandering up and down the streets. There are people on the benches, including the one that holds Riku. He stares vacantly into the distance before reanimating with a slow blink.

The teenager finds himself staring into space again. More aptly, he finds himself staring at a space without knowing exactly how he got there. He swallows, looking down at himself first. The journal is open on his lap, occupied only by four lines of text. He rereads them and gingerly closes the journal, sliding it onto the bench he was occupying.

Riku looks up at the sky and around at the familiar surroundings of Traverse Town, slumping into the bench for a few moments to gather his thoughts. He lets out a sigh, springing back onto his feet and taking a few agitated steps around in a circle to reorient himself.

Finally he scoops up the journal and packs it away into the pockets of his jacket, starting to wander away down one of the district streets.