[ Once, Riku speculated in a rare moment of vulnerable honesty that he wondered if he hadn't just imagined the last time he and Sora spoke. The promise he asked Riku to make, the thing he kept carrying with him up to this moment. Some fantasy his heart created to cushion itself against the inevitable shatter of losing everything that he worked so hard to protect.
There isn't much to glean from his eyes other than the shock that lies just on the other side of a realization that's cut him off at the knees.
He tries to reason through it. To take these pieces he's gathered over the last few minutes and the last few months and line them up into a narrative that makes some kind of sense.
Sora's gone. Now there's a boy here who looks like he could be some relative of his, older, taller, with strange eyes and a far more mature way of speaking, even if the stuff he says carries the weight of Sora's experiences. Eleven was gone. Then a slightly younger Eleven appeared, with no memory of this place. People talked about it, about alternative universes and Riku kept thinking about reimagined worlds, about how often he ran into familiar faces in the worlds that sleep, who didn't know him and still there was that pull.
Skyler says that's his name but he says it belongs to someone else, right on the same breath and uttering things so personal they might as well be a secret. Like a shove, it pushes Riku back into himself and he cuts his gaze away. His thoughts churn.
It's like when he could coax out evidence of Sora's memories living on inside his Nobody. This Skyler is holding onto pieces of Sora, but he said that was "long ago". Maybe that's not the exact explanation, but it's an assumption that Riku feels has a ring of truth to it, some whispered instinct in his chest. This guy said he forgot, like a phrase so important was something from very long ago.
The problem isn't whether Riku will catch the other end of a bond left flying like a banner - that's meant for someone else, for Dante, maybe - Riku's been hanging onto his own, and only just now is finding that the one he expected to find on the other end has been gone for a while.
No- maybe Riku was just too afraid to look and realize how alone he was.
He stares down at the black water on the end of the pier, so bereft there's a peculiar clarity to it, of seeing the enormity of his loss, the irony of a promise kept. To see the ridiculousness that anyone might expect the world to do anything less than keep flowing around the hole left.
What a fool he's been. ]
Do you know what I did to the last guy who had Sora's memories?
[ His answer is callous when he looks up with a little toss of his head, eyes slipping up and over, chasing the red beam from the Lighthouse. ]
no subject
There isn't much to glean from his eyes other than the shock that lies just on the other side of a realization that's cut him off at the knees.
He tries to reason through it. To take these pieces he's gathered over the last few minutes and the last few months and line them up into a narrative that makes some kind of sense.
Sora's gone.
Now there's a boy here who looks like he could be some relative of his, older, taller, with strange eyes and a far more mature way of speaking, even if the stuff he says carries the weight of Sora's experiences.
Eleven was gone.
Then a slightly younger Eleven appeared, with no memory of this place.
People talked about it, about alternative universes and Riku kept thinking about reimagined worlds, about how often he ran into familiar faces in the worlds that sleep, who didn't know him and still there was that pull.
Skyler says that's his name but he says it belongs to someone else, right on the same breath and uttering things so personal they might as well be a secret. Like a shove, it pushes Riku back into himself and he cuts his gaze away. His thoughts churn.
It's like when he could coax out evidence of Sora's memories living on inside his Nobody. This Skyler is holding onto pieces of Sora, but he said that was "long ago". Maybe that's not the exact explanation, but it's an assumption that Riku feels has a ring of truth to it, some whispered instinct in his chest. This guy said he forgot, like a phrase so important was something from very long ago.
The problem isn't whether Riku will catch the other end of a bond left flying like a banner - that's meant for someone else, for Dante, maybe - Riku's been hanging onto his own, and only just now is finding that the one he expected to find on the other end has been gone for a while.
No- maybe Riku was just too afraid to look and realize how alone he was.
He stares down at the black water on the end of the pier, so bereft there's a peculiar clarity to it, of seeing the enormity of his loss, the irony of a promise kept. To see the ridiculousness that anyone might expect the world to do anything less than keep flowing around the hole left.
What a fool he's been. ]
Do you know what I did to the last guy who had Sora's memories?
[ His answer is callous when he looks up with a little toss of his head, eyes slipping up and over, chasing the red beam from the Lighthouse. ]
Not that it matters.