kh_drabble | (no subject)

Challenge: [197] second chance
Title: a song in all the voices
Word Count: 209
Notes: Not fluff, but this is probably my feel-good piece of the year. Oh, Riku.

“Welcome home,” is all they say to him for weeks. He hears it everywhere: in the sheen of tears in his mother’s eyes, the gruff pressure of his father’s palm on his head, in Sora’s bright blue laughter and Kairi’s warm arms around him.

He can’t stand it, because all he can see behind his eyelids is painted black with screams and his mistakes. He spends more time out on the island, just watching the waves and the occasional lone seabird. The waves tap out morse code on the shore. Come home.

Come home, the gentle curve of the bird’s wing begs.

This he can bear; this is his truth, that he is not yet returned.

So as the days crest and break, he spends his hours there, laying out the markers, crude stone things, badly ornamented and beautifully felt.

One for Maleficent, to whom he owes too much.

One for his other self, badly duped as the original.

One for Roxas forgotten, but not gone.

One for Diz, and Vexen, Zexion, Lexaeus, even Xehanort. One for the shadow made out of his heart, one for the islands themselves.

And one for himself.

Come home, the rising sun whispers in all the voices he has ever loved.

Riku does.