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memesinthenight2019-12-14 09:42 pm
inthenightmods) wrote in memesinthenight2019-12-14 09:42 pm
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Test Drive Meme #7
TEST DRIVE MEME #7
Hello and welcome to the In the Night test drive meme for November! Thanks for your interest in our game! Reserves open on December 20, and applications open on December 22.
While you're here...
- Take a look at our rules and faq pages to familiarize yourself with the game.
- Note that we have a reserve cap of 20, and a (current) application cap of 2 apps this month for new players, as the game has a player cap of 60. An accurate count of current players will always be available on the taken page.
- TDM threads can become game canon if both players wish. If the situation isn't something that could happen in-game, you're free to chalk it up to some strange hallucination, a shared dream, or other mysterious circumstance.
- Note that this is not limited to new characters threading with characters already in-game. If current players wish to thread out the TDM prompts as canon events, they are welcome to do so. They are welcome to make posts in the main comms for TDM events as well. Please note, however, that actual plot clues or happenings will not occur in TDM prompts.
- If you plan to apply, please keep in mind that we do require at least one sample thread on the application to be from our TDM (though it doesn't need to be the current TDM).
- You're welcome to use the provided prompts or come up with something on your own, but we do ask that all threads take place in our game's setting.
Thank you again, and we hope you'll choose to join us!
log prompts
MAGIC CASTLE IN THE LAND OF SWEETS
You wake up one morning to find that The Night Market has come to Beacon, rising from the depths of the lake to set up booths and stalls all around the square. As a market, they offer a variety of goods and services typically unavailable to the good people of Beacon. Lantern charms that grant special and boosted abilities? Check. Magical potions to imbue the imbiber with fun but temporary effects? Got 'em. Specialty goods from home? Can do. Cigarettes? You bet your buns. The only catch? It all comes at a price.
Accepted currencies at the Night Market include: Building and scrap materials, old tablets, old lanterns, captured forest spirits, torches, information, and most importantly... Plutonium. Of course, attempting to barter is always an option... but these currencies are your best bet for dealing with the various vendors offered by the Night Market.
And finally, if bartering isn't your speed, The Night Market has also brought with it a host of activities akin to a street festival. Warm up with a hot toddy or gourmet latte from the pop-up coffee booth, sample a treat from the candy shop, or win your bae a stuffed forest spirit or mechanical goldfish from the carnival games. Above all? Have fun!
This prompt is a mini version of the game's Pleader event.
BATTLE WITH THE (RAT) KING
Throughout the month, the residents of Beacon will discover that a familiar and not particularly wanted visitor has returned. Strangely, the creature appears to be incised by the holiday decorations that have been put up by those so inclined. It goes after any decoration it can, intent to rip them down, tear them, sometimes even run off in a tangle of garland. In particular, the Rat King goes into a frenzy any time it spies a nutcracker, and won't stop until it sinks its teeth into the wooden soldiers. It could be worse, you suppose. The thing doesn't seem to be paying mind to people unless they get in its way. Still, there are some residents that went to a lot of trouble to put this all together. Maybe you should help?
Or maybe you're scrooge and just want to watch the Rat King do its business. That's also fair. Just expect to get some coal in the secret santa exchange.
network prompts
MARCH OF THE TOY SOLDIERS
At some point while you were out and about, minding your own business, you find yourself in quite the troubling situation. All of a sudden, you're surrounded by what appears to be a small army of tin soldiers. The reality, of course, is that they're all somewhat small forest spirits that have decked themselves out in pieces of scrap that act as army-like uniforms, and not real toys at all...but still, the effect is unsettling. They're not all that threatening, really, aside from being creepy, but there are so many of them, and they hold sharpened, bite-sized spears that they keep trying to jab into you any time you try to move out of the circle they've made to sequester you.
Ultimately, you're able to more or less make out what they want: a ransom, of which they do not have the ability to properly communicate. They won't rest or let you go until you post of your plight on the network and give them what they want. You know, just, who knows what they actually want. That's still up for debate.
CHILDREN'S GALLOP
RINGLE DANGLE JINGLE JANGLE!
This is the nosie that greets you on an endless loop from the Bonfire Square. A small group of spirits have gathered there and set up what appears to be a donation pan, which they keep smacking and rattling as they provide all of Beacon with a rousing and unending set of holiday caroling. Unfortunately for everyone who isn't a spirit, this basically just sounds like coordinated screaming. And the screaming does not stop. Maybe for some of you, this would be easy enough to ignore in one capacity or the other, but it seems the spirits have accounted for this, and are very insistent on being given the attention their cheery efforts deserve.
Which is to say: throughout the day, everyone receives what is effectively spam emails to their tablet in the form of...very loudly written words. The emails pour in, over and over:
WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME
| QUICKNAV | |||
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no subject
All Riku has done since he got here is lose. His home, his life, his friends, who he has spent almost his whole life trying to get stronger so that he can protect what's important, protect who's important. He can't even do that. For a while, he was lost. Even the Keyblade had stopped answering his call.
Until he regained his focus. Until he poured himself and his single minded desire to protect into the cracks in his heart the way an artisan mends a broken cup with molten metal.
He knows that the pain he's felt is shared by everyone else. They all know loss and danger, the Darkness that he senses all around them is as pervasive as the darkness that blankets the world.
His heart responds like it's trying to split apart and pursue two directions at once: to get as much distance from the pain of what's been lost, and to cleave to its memory, even if it's a clouded mirror.
Riku looks at his fist. ]
Whatever, it's just junk.
[ Reluctantly, his fist begins to loosen, but when Riku feels his fingers threaten to shake, he instead tosses the wad of crumpled paper up for him to catch. To distract him with the need to rescue his note, while Riku pushes his hand through the long hair falling over his eyes. ]
no subject
He doesn't have much right to ask what's going on up there, he thinks.
This isn't the first time Riku's thrown something worthless at him (he remembers the day he got that memory back, although the circumstances had been entirely different) and it's not even the first time he failed to catch it. It's kind of comical, the way it bounces off the front of his sweatshirt and falls between them. It isn't the memory that takes him away from here, though. No. The confirmation that someone dear to him had simply no idea who he was - not maliciously, nor as a matter of choice, but as a fact of the universe he was in - that's what brings on this echo. If Riku has something to hide, Sora isn't in a place to see it. Echoes are distracting in that way.
Sora does come to his senses in the second after. He shakes his head, trying to play that off as though, yes, of course, the shock of seeing someone very close to me and different in the same way you do is incredibly disarming. He bends down and picks up the little wad from the ground. He doesn't look back up at Riku, but he does puff out a snort through his nose, laughing even though he isn't smiling. This is kind of absurd. It's almost funny. In any other world, he'd be using what Riku said to pick a friendly fight. ]
It's my junk, though. Thanks for giving it back. [ He stands and straightens and makes the mistake of looking at Riku again. It's a lot. He associates so much of himself with this person, and it feels real.
It shouldn't feel real, though. None of these things happened to him. ]
Later. [ Sora finally, finally sticks the little piece of paper back in his pocket, then begins to walk past Riku to make his way back to the night market. ]
no subject
[ He'd argue that Sora's harder on himself than anyone. Trying to shoulder it all, the troubles of every heart he's ever touched, and there are so many. There was always so many. Just one more heart to save, the most important one.
Riku might have said something else, someone has won a prize on a game just a little down the way and the eruption of noise that results is too loud. He doesn't raise his voice. The truth is, he can't, not if he wants to talk for long. A spirit left him with a scar in his throat and took with it his voice until he was healed.
Maybe the boy will turn around. Riku only tracks him with his head, looking over one shoulder.
If he does, he repeats: ]
I asked your name.
...In case that guy comes in on the next ferry. The Dante guy you were expecting.
no subject
So yeah. Yes. That does stop him. If a childhood rival whom you're still trying to one up asks you if you're giving up, you tell him no.
Sora stops, then wishes he hadn't. What name does he give him? There's a name that is real and a name that feels real. What's the difference?
This is a bit of a pause. He needs to say something. He's given Riku enough of a heart attack today. ]
Tell him Skyler was looking for him. [ ... ] Thanks. [ And another pause, because this is an exchange, right? ] What's your name? Were you looking for someone too?
no subject
That maybe he's considering just giving an alias. Like how Bruce doesn't just let anyone conclude that his network handle and his public face are one and the same. There's value in secrets. ]
Skyler. You don't know what these people might do with anything you give them. The services aren't usually worth the price. [ He turns his face away. ] Be careful.
[ It is an exchange, although given Riku's track record of being impolite (the King had been a remarkably good influence in recent history as far as that went), it's possible he might have left without answering. ]
...Riku.
[ His fingers curl at his sides, the leather of his half-gloves creaking when his nails bite into the meat of his palm. It isn't that there's melancholy to extract from his voice, his tone is flat, his words are measured, heavy and slow. ]
Looking? -No.
More like waiting. You... kinda remind me of him.
[ Again his head turns, looking through the pale veil of his hair over at him. ]
Have you ever heard of a boy named Sora?
no subject
He nods but doesn’t say the name back to him out loud, even though that’s his way of committing a name to memory. He doesn’t trust his voice not to give the entire game away, even if Riku’s come around on the idea of him being related to... Well. Himself. ] I see.
[ Riku’s been waiting for Sora. That’s a little macabre, but Sora gets it. They once were the darkness, after all.
But oh, boy, was this a mistake. He should have known that hearing him saying his name for the first time would bring back something. He can’t really hide the echo, this time; he quietly slips away for one, two seconds, before coming back dazed for another.
Hey, Riku? Good at reading lips? Because his mouth is too slack and won’t form the word all the way; breath won’t even pass them. But mouth a word he will.
“Highwind.”
He refocuses smoothly. Echoes happen all the time (although he isn’t really sure why they’re still reaching him in death.) Even in Locke City, it’s best just to move on as if nothing happened. Skyler turns away as nonchalantly as he can. ]
I... maybe. If I did, it was a long time ago. [ He hopes that this half-truth is enough to cover his tracks. He starts to move away. ]
no subject
It's hard to say if that person will be Riku. He visits often but doesn't speak of the friends he had to bury up on the hill overlooking this very beach. ]
...Hey--
[ Once? Riku could pass that off as a coincidence or a trick of the scant light. But he's perceptive and this is again a moment when the other boy seems to go somewhere else, whispering something that could be I win or... something else.
He's only gone for seconds. Riku is already striding up close in the seconds following, his jaw set and a tightness in the corners of his eyes. ]
What was that? What just happened? Are you seeing things?
[ If Skyler persists in moving away, the next thing to happen is Riku's attempt to grab him by the shoulder and try to tug him back, if a little more roughly than the situation calls for. ]
no subject
Yes, the intention was to escape the conversation entirely. Sora isn't sure how much longer he can last pretending to be someone he both is and isn't. He isn't really built for ambiguity! All he knows is that who he is is complicated, and he isn't really prepared to have to look someone precious to him in the eye and try to convince them that they were friends once. After all, it's not something he'd ever seen the point in doing before. They'd be friends again given time, once their hearts were ready.
(Then again, the circumstances have never been as dire as they are now.)
So yes, that will be a particularly rough pull back. Sora will stop in his tracks, but doesn't struggle. He isn't looking to start a fight. He doesn't want to start anything. Mostly, he's regretting ever noticing that little piece of paper was gone. Riku was always like this, after all. He always wanted the truth, even if the price was getting a little lost along the way. Sora missed that about him. Or, at least, the part of him who always saw that bit of Riku in Dante missed him like a heart misses a beat. He wasn't really into lying to himself about that.
How does he get out of this? Skyler would have been gone by now. Then again, Skyler would have broken Riku's face a while back, if not his heart. Not really what he was going for.
Sora tries for Skyler's bravado, but he can't bring himself to quite bring the same sharp selfishness to his voice. The best he can manage is a strained neutrality. Maybe a hint of the fighting spirit he's always had when he's trying to best Riku at something. (He was never much good at this, though.) ] What's it to you? We've never met before. [ Which is God's honest truth. ]
no subject
His eyes unsettle him every time Riku sees them. Their pupils look like keyholes. Why? ]
That's a symptom of being in the dark too long. If you've got that already then it's one of two things-
[ The green-eyed spirits and their seeming ability to trigger panic, hallucinations, or otherwise deliver information straight into their minds and hearts. Or... something he came here with.
Another angry pull, this one means to turn the other boy around to face him. ]
The spirits aren't acting up, so I can cross off one of those two. Tell me what's really going on.
no subject
Tell the truth, but don’t tell it straight. It’s how Skyler got along. He only hopes that he has enough Skyler in him to work for him, too.
He’ll allow himself to be turned, but in the process, he’ll wrench his arm out of Riku’s grip, clutching it as though it hurt. He doesn’t know if it hurts all that much though. Or at least, he doesn’t want to let it. ]
I just got here. I don’t know what’s going on besides what the device told me and how everyone here’s dead. [ Eye contact. His pupils are contracted, but his mouth is set in a stubborn line. ] I do see things, but it’s always been out of my control, even back home. Is that what you wanted? My medical history?
[ Even taking that tone without couching it in some sort of playfight is enough to spark the start of a frown that isn’t entirely indignant anger. This is wrong. Sora knows he can tell Riku everything. He’s fighting the urge with everything he has. ]
I - [ - don’t think we’re friends like that. Bad. He knows he can’t say that without tripping on some emotion already bubbling dangerously close to the surface. He swallows. ] I can’t promise you that the answer you want is there. [ That might be a little too close to the truth, but it’s the only compromise he can make at the moment. ]
no subject
Something about seeing things, he can't help it, and it's something from wherever home was for this guy.
Is that what you wanted? challenges this stranger-who-isn't, but there's something about his expression that seems like he's warring with himself, or holding back. His instinct keeps shouting that something doesn't add up, and in the absence of any further proof, Riku finds himself growing frustrated.
What was I expecting?
They seem to recognize something in each other - a similarity to someone they know. Odd coincidence, right? So why does he feel like his heart is splitting apart? Why does it seem like this guy knows more than he's letting on? Why should Riku bother himself over a stranger who gets hallucinations? This isn't his problem, he's got enough to- ]
Then don't promise. Tell me what happened just now.
no subject
What happens if he tells him? What's the worst that could happen?
He isn't real. Riku doesn't believe that he both is and isn't who he is, calls him a liar. Riku never speaks to him again.
And if he doesn't?
The same thing, but Riku chases him for a little longer. And he'll keep on chasing him until he gets the truth. That's Riku. That's what he does. That's who he's always been.
So isn't he just putting off the inevitable?
Isn't he just afraid of hurting him?
Sora closes his eyes. Follow your heart, right?
Will that work if it's incomplete?
Does it matter?
... Hey, stupid. If you're gonna be a shitty liar, at least don't lie to yourself. You're doing this to protect you. Protect him. Idiot. ]
Oh.
[ He opens his eyes, a little unfocused from the thought, and Riku's in front of him. Riku, who's strong and tough and smart. Even if he only gets part of the truth out, even if Riku doesn't understand, even if this takes Riku away from Sora... Riku will be fine. His heart will survive the truth. Sora doesn't have to be afraid for Riku, and that means Sora doesn't have to be afraid for himself. When he thinks about it that way, it's simple. Riku deserves the truth. It's what he wanted from the start. It was that easy all along.
It's hesitant, curling up corners of his lips a little more slowly than he remembers, but the beginnings of that smile he always does when he's about to do something very stupid begins to brighten Sora's face, even as his voice crackles a bit and his eyes drop so he doesn't have to look at Riku. His hand is still holding his arm, but now it's more of a brace. An anchor. ]
Sorry to keep you waiting. [ It hurts a little, but only because he doesn't know what's about to happen next. ] "May your heart be your guiding key." That's how it went. I just forgot, is all.
no subject
It may have prepared him to make the ultimate sacrifice twice over for Sora, to defend their universe with their lives, but it didn't really prepare him for something like this, not exactly.
Riku picks up on details that others might miss, he's more ready to consider the grey areas, more willing to advocate for what isn't clearly good or bad. And the other boy is right, he is resilient. Maybe his heart being broken once means the second shatter won't devastate as much as the first.
The truth is, this time there are friends to grab his hand if he starts to topple. He isn't alone here. He's shouldered their burdens and has started to learn how to accept their attempts to return the favor.
Riku tells few stories by his expression alone, but his gaze is disturbed by the familiarity of his smile, by the words he says. Sorry to keep you waiting, when Riku said he was waiting for someone. May your heart be your guiding key, and beneath the dark leather sleeves of his bomber jacket, the skin of his arms pebble over in a chill. ]
How do you know that.
[ I just forgot, is all.
There's a minute rattle, his lantern shivering against the ring clutched in his off hand. Once, his replica stared at his end the way Riku stares at him now, like he's staggered into the path of an oncoming tram. It's because everything he says and some of how he looks and smiles points to Sora and yet there are all these differences stacked up in a monument to some other person's life.
He exhales in a puff, his breath crystallizing on the chilly air. ]
Why- No, how?
no subject
Sora catches that rattle, looks up, and sees Riku's hand shaking. The smile doesn't disappear, exactly, but it does move from fond to bittersweet. This is true. This is real. It always has been. And things that are real hurt, sometimes. If his own heart is slowly starting to rip at the sight of Riku looking at him like he's just stepped out of a nightmare, he can't help but think about Riku watching a stranger with his friend's face tell him a secret they once shared.
Maybe they just need you to open your heart and listen.
He tightens his grip on his arm, thinks of his friends, and dives. ]
Stop me when you've heard enough. [ ... He moves his eyes away from the lantern and back to Riku again. He can't really help the eyes. He hasn't needed to hide them in a long time. He wishes he could now. ] Then again, it's you, Riku. You'll stop me whenever you want. [ The smile fades a little. ] You've always been like that. [ It's familiar, but in a way that knows that they were friends, long ago, and don't know where they stand now. ]
no subject
This isn't the same. This is hearing words that don't belong in some stranger's throat, something so specialized, belonging to a particular path, a uniquely small group of people that he can't help but notice.
And he speaks like the friend he almost looks like he could be. ]
You said your name's Skyler.
[ Riku has been stunned, he's been caught flat-footed and he's been knocked flat to the ground, he's been shocked by a great clap of magical thunder, he's been burned and frozen, he's been tangled up in the euphoric power of the Darkness. This could be similar. Maybe it should be. ]
There's no way you could know all that.
[ Unless. ]
no subject
Someone should be at the other end of that bond. Only fate knows if it will catch. ]
You know it too, don't you? Someone once told you that your eyes couldn't lie. [ Sora looks at him intently, seriously. ] That's my name. But it also belongs to someone else.
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.
no subject
The smile drops a little at the statement Riku tacks on at the end, though. He sticks his arm through the loop of his lantern and puts his hands in his pockets. It's cold tonight. ]
It mattered enough to me - [ He stops himself. Redo. ] Sora wanted to make things right with him, even after everything that happened. For both of them. I can't make you feel like it matters, but it mattered enough to him to do something about it, and since it mattered to him that much, it matters to me too.
[ He doesn't want to start anything with Riku! He gets where he's coming from, although the why and how he got to be this burdened with despair is mysterious enough slowly, slowly starting to make him think that there's something else going on, but when it comes to Roxas and Xion? Riku can think whatever he likes about him - he may be right, for all he knows - but Sora draws the line at them. He did the right thing, and it was important. Sora isn't sure if he's real enough to be able to claim pride over what he did, but this Sora, as a collection of raw, disparate memories, at least feels strongly about it the decision. It was the right thing to do. ]
no subject
It's close enough. Maybe that's as good as they'll ever get. ]
That sounds like something Sora would've wanted.
[ To save every heart he ever encountered. Riku isn't looking at him, he keeps looking up at the lighthouse, its red beam slicing through the perpetual night. His tone is flat. ]
It's fine.
[ It doesn't matter because there's no way to do anything about this. There's no body sleeping in stasis, no delicate witch trying to piece together his best friend. There's no way to extract the parts of Sora needed to restore him, so...
It doesn't matter. It's over. ]
It's not your fault. I'm the one who couldn't let go.
[ He turns away, he starts to walk down along the beach, away from the docks and the market, away from Skyler. ]
no subject
Maybe this is as far as this goes.
(Sora doesn't like that. Not at all. This isn't how it ends. He's been deader than this and that didn't stop him.) ]
Wait. [ He jogs next to him, sand sliding under his shoes. If Riku doesn't stop, he'll take his own turn to try and grab him by the elbow. ] Wait. Riku. [ If Riku pulls away, Sora will let him go, but he has one last thing to say if this is how Riku's going to leave it. ]
no subject
There are traces of it here and there. Fragments of splintered wood, the occasional plank, half-submerged in sand, rotting slowly.
His elbow is grabbed and Riku doesn't look back.
He doesn't dare. Most of Riku's life he's learned to take the feelings he's judged embarrassing and buried them down deep. He scoffs. He laughs. He challenges.
He doesn't cry, even if once he took hold of a special door, and with red-rimmed eyes told the boy on the other side to take care of her, their precious friend from beyond the borders of their tiny little world.
Not a single time in his whole life has he let his friends see, he isn't about to extend that to a stranger carrying the memories of a long-dead friend, either. ]
What.
no subject
The venom in his voice is real, Sora thinks, which means that this is something that Riku's taking seriously. Which is the least he could expect of him, given the circumstances, and he knows he should just. Leave it. Go back to the town and try and calm his heart down, bolster it somehow. Even in death, where in theory he should have come here alone, he still has faint memories of friends half-remembered and stubborn roots of old friends Skyler managed to keep in his heart. Riku probably has better things to do than to spend his time on a container filled with memories. He's demonstrated his lack of interest in anything but the real thing, after all.
But. He keeps following him, up to where the beach turns to grass, turns to a little hill overlooking the shore. He doesn't know where Riku's going, but he needs to know. He selfishly, selfishly needs to know. ]
Promise you'll be okay. [ It bubbles out of his mouth - selfish, selfish, Riku considers him a stranger, this is too demanding - but he can't stop himself. ] You don't have to promise me. It's fine. Just. Wherever you're going, promise you'll go back to your friends safely. [ He swallows. He can't let his voice crack, but he does have to ask. Hold it together. ] Please.
no subject
Sora would have known, he thinks, resentment boiling up through the cracks like hot tar. Would have realized he wanted to be left alone. That's one of the things about their friendship, in all the years of pushing and pulling at each other, they learned how to navigate around each other's needs even if they didn't completely understand them.
Sometimes all Sora needed was the reassurance of contact, an encouraging word that didn't come spring-loaded with patronizing condescension. Kairi needed to know that her friends hadn't outgrown her, that things can change without breaking apart.
Once, Riku might have seen the venomous Darkness in his heart as a threat, as proof of some insufficiency or flaw that makes him unworthy. He's come to accept it - his anger, his loneliness, his jealousy and his selfishness - these things are part of him as much as his courage, his reliability, his loyalty and his selflessness. Feeling them isn't wrong or right.
It's the choices he makes when he's in the thick of it, the moment when he chooses to consume his Darkness, to transform it into Light. To make something productive instead of do something destructive.
But, damn him, Riku's tempted to smash a fist into his face for the promises he tries to push on him. He's sick of it, the promises he tried to keep, how long he hurt for nothing. It isn't fair and life isn't. Sometimes things don't happen for any good reason. They don't make you grow or change, even if Riku has, in ways he doesn't see because he's too close to it.
Sometimes they just hurt. ]
Listen to yourself.
You want to feel better, you don't care about anything else.
[ Riku doesn't blame him for that, it takes a certain kind of dark heart to want to feel like they ruined someone else's life. He isn't. Riku doesn't have to know him to tell that much. ]
You just want a clear conscience.
no subject
It's not as though what Riku's saying entirely true. But it's not entirely false, either. And, for reasons that Sora can't help, partially because of the thing he is, but also partially because of who Riku is, he can't help but believe him. Riku wouldn't lie to him, after all.
What was he even thinking? He's just chasing shadows. That's all this was. He didn't deserve an answer to that. He never did. ]
That's true. [ ... And he can't say much more than that. The spike in his brain from years ago isn't letting any other options have their say. ] I see.
[ And slowly - grudgingly, as though he's trying to hold himself here, because among the things Sora is bad at doing, it's giving up when his friends are right there -
He forces himself to turn away and find the pinpoint lights of Beacon again. ]
Good luck, Riku. [ That's about as neutral a farewell he's willing to give. He'll start walking back down the way, retracing their steps back to the night market. He won't let himself look back. ]
no subject
...
[ What is he supposed to think?
What is he supposed to feel?
He was never part of some world where he was the alien presence, a kernel of something other waiting, like a piece of unexploded materiel, inside the body of some unsuspecting person, long after his own death.
In Riku's own experiences, a person who holds a portion of another's memories has them forever - until they're extracted, poured by a witch with very specific abilities into its original, slumbering host. None of those other factors are here. Too little time remains to acquire anything close to what might be needed to get back his friend, and...
Not enough might be there to bring him back entirely anyway. Everything points to the obliteration of everything that Riku once held dearest, with Kairi buried, never to return, with Sora reduced to a distant echo in a stranger's altered body.
All of this culminates in the message, writ large: Riku protected nothing and no one, a fool who clung too tightly to a pretty hope with no substance. None of this means he can't continue, or he won't - what a poor way to carry on the memory of the two most important people to him, of Kairi and of Sora.
Just that it hurts. Just that he'll carry these scars until the World Eaters erase these and Riku both, or they'll find a way to stop the World Eaters. Bring back the light. And then he'll rejoin his friends at last.
He never makes it up the hill. He has nothing to bury, so he goes to the only place that still carries any warmth for him. ]