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[tabitha-dornoc.livejournal.com]

Challenge: [067] Irony
Title: Mantra
Word Count: 258
Notes: Set between KH and CoM.



I will never be like you - a phrase, a saying, a mantra over and over in his head. It's been six weeks since they've seen anything other than shadows; an impossibility, really, because there is no light at all.

Forty-two days of walking through what feels like thick, smoggy sand and breathing the coldest, sharpest air that freezes his insides into brittle glass waiting to shatter.

It hasn't really been that long. Maybe it's been far longer. Maybe only a few hours have passed. It's just a length of time he arbitrarily chose the moment Sora closed that impossibly tall door.

"It's been six weeks. And I will never be like you," he says, aloud, when his parched tongue is able to form words. It's stronger when spoken, but he doesn't appreciate the looks his only companion sends when he says it.

He wonders if the King thinks he's mad.

But he has to say it. Has to convince himself at every turn that, No, NO, you are not like him and you never will be. He has to say it often to counteract the dank, secret voice that occasionally laughs up at him from where it's buried. Because that laugh seems to form a string of words that sound too much like yesyouwillyesyouwill.

He won't. Because he still remembers what it feels like to see himself reflected in Sora's too wide eyes. To see that madman looking back at him in terrified irises. And he will never let himself see that again.

He'd blind himself first.

Comments

[feriowind.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, I like this story a lot. Poor Riku......

[emptybackpack.livejournal.com]

. . . excellent. Lovely use of the blindfold.

[criminalize.livejournal.com]

*gapes*

*is incoherent*

[aishiteru.livejournal.com]

icon love. XD can I steal?

[criminalize.livejournal.com]

F'course! Just remember to credit ryuuseistar, since I'm not the one who made it. ^^;

[aishiteru.livejournal.com]

Wow. Very subtle, very subtle indeed. (Which, in my opinion, is a good way to go about it.) I like the setting; it's a little explored place that could use some light, in more ways than one. And I love that last line. Very bitter. Poor Riku.

♥

[ruby-shards.livejournal.com]

Amazing interpretation of the blindfold. ♥ Lovely.

[lindskaba.livejournal.com]

Fantastic interpretation of the blindfold; I was trying to think of something like this myself, but you really nailed it here. The tone is very simple and dark... I really like this :)

[syvia.livejournal.com]

Oooooh. XD

...Yeah, I think you've got this one in the bag. *two thumbs up* Lurve~ much Riku love. ^^

[jaesprite.livejournal.com]

♥ So so so much love... ♥ That's brilliant and I wish I'd thought of it. Sent the chills right up my spine. And I could sort of already see what the mantra meant just from the way you juxtaposed it with the darkness in the first paragraph, so, good job with that.

...♥

[elsabroso.livejournal.com]

Oh, I really like this!

[ray-chibikid.livejournal.com]

Wow. At first I was thinking the mantra referred to someone else.
I didn't even expect it to be the "darkness in Riku's heart."
Definite coolness in the blindfold reference.

[masakomoonshade.livejournal.com]

...Do I even have to say that this was amazing? Absolutely wonderful.