A/N: Hey, this is me, I decided that after reading about a bazillion Sora Riku fics, I decided to pick up the pen again and write one of my own. Well, read it and please R&R. Its really good, and SoraxRiku. Plus I'll give you lemons later okay? Promise. Well, hope you enjoy.
Promise Me Mortality
"Promise me"
"What?"
"Promise you'll be with me forever""Forever is a really long time."
"Just promise me"
"Okay, I'll be there for you forever"
Chapter 1: House of Sorrow
The metal clashed to the floor and a short thud from the wooden handle came soon after. It didn't work, he still couldn't get over it. He looked up to the medicine cabinet mirror and faced the youth before him.
His skin was a bluish pale, his veins showing in blues and reds all over his face. Pressing his palm against the glass, he smiled waveringly.
"See, this was how much you meant to me. How much you…" he said before cried, leaning his head against the blood spot he made on the cool glass.
"Why can't you leave me alone! Why can't you go away!" he yelled, beating his fist against the wall next to him as he cried. "Why does forever hurt so much? I don't want forever."
He could see her warm violet eyes looking at him with pity. She always was there. Since that day, she always stood there, when he broke down, and would just stand there, silent.
"Leave me!" he yelled as he swung the cabinet open. The door hit the wall with a loud thud as he searched through the numerous bottles of medicine that he had for depression and his mother's anemia pills and supplements.
Happiness. He found his lifeline and shakily popped the top open. The cloudy white pills spilled all over the floor, leaving few in the bottle. His third bottle in four months. He eyed the last two clean pills in the vessel pleadingly. He put the mouth of the bottle over his head and, with a quick jolt, downed the pair quickly. Closing his eyes, he smiled sickly as he tried to swallow them down his dry throat and choked for a few minutes.
Turning on the faucet, he filled the powder filled bottle with cold water and shook it, his flaky white cotton ball thumb keeping the concoction from escaping. Licking his lips, he smelled the bottle and sighed at the glorious smell of chemicals and rank plastic. The eyes were starting to fade, becoming more worried as it began to falter.
It was ambrosia, beautiful and sweet on his unfeeling tongue. Licking the rest of the liquid in the bottle neck, he closed his eyes and sat in the tub. With its cold comfort around him, the draining sensation from his still bleeding palm which smeared more red along the blue white porcelain, and the effects of the drugs he had taken, he hummed to himself a song. Her favorite song.
He fell asleep.
"Sora! Open this door! Sora!"The hell is that?
Bam, Bam, Bam!
"Sora! Honey? If you don't open this door, I'll have to break it down myself!"
Not like you can mother. You're too weak to do that. Not like you'd hurt a fly anyway.
"Here I come," he said groggily as he looked up to the ceiling above. He had no idea of how long he had been out, nor did he really care.
He had skipped school again for the second time this week. All of his assignments had been mailed to him and he had been receiving at home lessons from his history teacher. He also had the 'opportunity' to take his science labs way before school opened so he could have all of the privacy he needed.
He didn't want to face anyone at school. Three weeks after the accident, he had to be helped by his friend Wakka with his crutches. The school, that was once so carefree and loud, had become silent when he made his way through the halls. Some of the underclassmen would run up to the crowds just to get a view at him. The freak show. Wakka would assure him that nothing was wrong and to just ignore them. Tidus would just yell at them to mid their own business. They were good friends.
He was Lazarus. They all viewed him as a dead man, walking once more in life. A wonder. A spectacle. And they were right. He was supposed to die.
They all were supposed to die that night when the rains had come so early. But he guessed God had different plans for him. He was pulled out before the final hit.
A flock of girls, Kairi's best friends, all wore lavender shirts with her picture in the front. She was always wearing a sweet and playful smile, her eyes glistening happily. Below that picture said 'Kinoyami Kairi, our candle in the wind.' They all looked to him with tear-filled eyes, how she would look at him since that accident.
He went through his day with his faithful brawny assistant. They had most of the same classes anyway, and when they didn't, he would be turned over to Tidus. He always gave him smiles and told him jokes that he had seen on the comedy shows he had watched recently. They always used to go to Riku's house, the five of them, to watch TV every Saturday evening.
Riku…
It was the thing that hurt him the most. He was his closest friend, the one who he had shared baths with when they were infants till when they were six when it was 'uncool' to do. He was the one who 'he' taught how to rollerblade the day before his roller rink birthday party. It was Riku who he shared every crush that he had and vice versa. The friend who he had always leaned on when he had been rejected or just had a bad day wasn't there for him.
As the chemistry class went on, it hurt even more to see Riku simply sit there, leaning over his notes which he had initially assumed were on the lecture on balancing acids. His face looked worn, not as youthful and handsome as he had always been. With looks like that, Riku had always been one of the school favorites, girls alwys cooing against their lockers as he walked coolly by. He always just shrugged it off and kept his cool. But Sora and Wakka had always known him inside.
Growing up together, they had been there when his first girlfriend had dumped him, Riku's 'love of his life' at twelve. Then, when his sister fell ill and died, Riku had run away. He hid in Wakka's house since Wakka only lived with his elder sister Pima and if he ran to Sora's house, it wouldn't be long until Sora's mother would find him and have his father take him home.
The death of his sister was the hardest thing Riku had ever gone through that Sora had known. Sira was a beautiful girl, long black hair like her mother Tifa and the dominant blue eyes like her father Sephiroth. She was just like the both of them, stern yet fair and very loving with those close to her. When they were five, Sira was always their babysitter, sitting them in front of the TV and playing with them. She was their second mother.
During college, she decided to go on a research and humanity trip to Africa. She had always dreamed of going to different places and learning about people and their lifestyles. She was doing fine until soon after the rains when the mosquitoes came out. At first, it was only a fever but then it got worse. Riku assured his parents that she would be fine, that she was strong and would be back to normal.
She seemed a ghost. Her once warm skin was pale and covered in sweat, making her hair stick weakly around her face. Two days later, she died. It was the morning when she was to go to the hospital for treatment and she passed on in Riku's arms on the window seat. It was her last wish to see the sunset with her little brother.
After that, all he would do was cry softly in Wakka's closet, huddled under his mass of coats and winter blankets. It was a continual sob until he cried himself to sleep each time.
"Sora," began his mother softly. She had a soft worrying face when she spoke to her son across the family room. It was the start of another talk.
"I know it has been hard for you to lose Kairi and your father, its been hard on me too. Do you want to leave here?" she asked, bringing the attention of her son.
Leave her? Did she not love him? Did she blame him for what had happened, for being the only one to survive when everyone else had died so suddenly?
"Do you not want me anymore?" he asked sadly. His eyes focused on the now dried yellow flowers his father had given his mother the day before he died. She never moved anything that he had touched since then, trying to preserve his memory forever. The vase began to smell again, his mother needed to add whatever she does to keep down the stink of rancid ooze and rotten stems.
"Of course I do honey. You're all that I have left. But I just thought that maybe it would be best for you if you were to stay with your uncle Zack. I know you'd be happy in Midgard with him."
He thought about it for a while. His 'uncle' Zack lived alone in a huge condo in a ritzy side of Sector 3, home to the ShinRa Military. He remembered visiting as a little boy on the summers to watch the fighter jets perform their tests and men and women in uniform marching along. If he went there, then he could be away from Destiny Islands, the memories, and all of the people who he couldn't be around just yet. Also, he could actually go to a school with interesting new people so he could actually get a good education rather than graduate on Cliff Notes.
"I guess that would be good. I mean, I miss being around people normally. Sure," he said nonchalantly, hiding his sudden eagerness to go. A new life! New people! He could be normal again and forget about the horrible accident. Life could be the same again.
Sora looked up at the dully lit window of a colonial style lemon yellow house. He could see Riku walk around thoughtfully, as if trying to figure out some kind of mystery. This was his last stop. Soon after deciding to leave, Sora picked up the phone and called Wakka. They had spent a whole day reminiscing with Tidus about their friendship and how much they would miss him when he left. Then they, being the big boys that they were, huddled together crying. It almost made Sora rethink his decision and stay there with them but the memories were too painful to bear.
It was a week since that day and tomorrow Sora had to board the plane. He had tried to call Riku for the whole week but he either had a busy signal or he didn't want to talk right then. He was probably still mourning the death of Kairi like the rest of the school was. But tonight was the night to say goodbye to his childhood friend, like it or not.
Sighing deeply, he rang the doorbell, letting it chime elegantly through the house.
"I'm coming!" called who he presumed to be Riku's mother Tifa. The large white paneled door opened to a tall and rather busty woman wearing red Everlast shorts and a thick black workout tank. Tae Bo was Tifa's newest addiction after her kickboxing class was held off due to the instructor's pregnancy. She wiped off the sweat on her forehead and grinned.
"Why hello Sora! Nice to see you out and about! I'm sorry I'm all sweaty, just in the middle of a new Tae Bo tape," she laughed. Waving him in, the tired woman led him to the family room, kicking over her various exercise equipment. Patting on the couch, he sat down next to her, looking around the room.
It was very nice with a soft cream color on the walls and strip molding along the lower middle of the walls in a paneling fashion. The Samsung flat screen that Riku's dad Sephiroth received from the family friend Rufus as a birthday present sat proudly against the wall, glistening in it's new condition. Billy Blanks was paused in a yell kicking artfully to the left of him, high in the air. Too bad Tifa was better in her form by far.
"So, how are you Sora? We haven't heard from you in so long we were worried about you," she said as she turned on a fan with the remote next to her. He looked into his lap nervously, shifting his feet. He couldn't tell Tifa, the one who had helped raise him and loved him just like a son that she might not see him again.
"You know, Riku has made himself sick over you too," she said, her cheery demeanor graying a little. 'Riku? Worried with me?' he thought confusedly. With all of the avoidance maneuvers and cold stares, he was worried about him? It was a little too hard to believe for him so he simply kept silent.
"Ever since the loss of Sira, he has clung to you guys more than ever. But I guess with the accident and all, he was afraid he had lost you too," She then gave a smirk. "He almost walked all the way to the hospital to see you when he knew."
He was really that worried? Why didn't he say anything about it? These thoughts circled through his mind as he sat puzzledly staring at the aggression in Billy Blank's concentrating face.
"Yeah, I'm sorry I worried you all," he said in a monotone fashion.
"It's okay Sora. You're here for him now so nothing else really matters," she said as she leaned farther back into the chair, crossing her legs.
"I'm going to be leaving tomorrow," Sora said abruptly. There was no other way he could figure out to say it. Tifa sat up and gave him a look of concern.
"Why? Where are you going?"
"To Midgard. With uncle Zack. I'll be living there for a while until I feel ready to come back home again."
"But how long will that be Sora? And why didn't you tell us sooner?"
"I-I don't know… maybe it could be a semester, a year, or…" he swallowed this fact hard. "…or I might not come back at all."
Tifa's eyes watered as she held back her tears. Sora, the little boy she watched grow up with her son and become a smart and wonderful young adult, was going to leave forever and this was their last goodbye. She leaned forward and hugged him gently.
"You are such a wonderful boy Sora. No matter where you go, everyone will love you for who you are. Just don't forget us," she said soothingly. He could feel the tears coming up as well and he held onto her, crying into her sticky shoulder.
He remembered the time when Tifa had picked up the two from kindergarten after her workout in the gym. Riku, or 'Kiku' as Sora had called him since when he was too young to say it correctly, had been always the one to ride on her shoulders while Sora was contented to simply hold onto her hand on their walks to Riku's house. However, that day, Sora was crying at the pickup area while Riku just sat there, arms crossed.
"Sora? What's wrong honey?" she cooed as she kneeled down in front of the weeping boy. He opened his large blue eyes, looked over to his angry friend and cried again.
"We were playing…. and I made you…. a sand castle…. and I was gonna show you… but Kiku kicked it…" he mumbled before he broke out into a long wail yet again. Tifa looked at her son crossly while he simply looked away like nothing had happened. 'Just like his father,' she groaned mentally.
Then, ceremoniously, she picked Sora up and put him on her shoulders. He looked around a little bit, wiped his snot and tears on his sleeve and nervously help onto her head. Riku however was taken aback.
"Hey! No fair!" he yelled and tried to climb up his mother to his rightful seat. She simply grabbed his hand forcefully and walked out of the school, a cross little Riku tagging behind.
After about a block of silence, the silver haired child stopped in the middle of their walk. "I'm sorry," he said sincerely, himself about to cry for hurting his friend. The little brunette looked down curiously, then tried to get down. When he was set down, little Sora toddled over to Riku who was hunched down on bent knees, looking at the ground as a few crystalline teardrops fell. The crying boy however was surprised when he was suddenly hugged and his tears roughly wiped away by his friend's tiny hands.
"Its okay Kiku. I forgive you," he said with a gentle smile, one like his mother Aeris'. Grabbing his hand, Sora led his recovering friend ahead of the very touched Tifa and they happily walked the rest of the way home.
Suddenly, Tifa caught the sight of her son standing there in shock and then charging up the staircase. "Riku!" she exclaimed as she suddenly let go of Sora and stood up, chasing him. Sora soon snapped out of the shock as well and chased closely after her. He had heard, everything. He heard that he was leaving and maybe never coming back. It made him panic. Would he shut me out now? Now that he knows that I'm leaving?
His door slammed infront of them, locked and all.
"Riku honey? Open the door," his mother started calmly. Though she was good at times, Tifa had a very terrible temper that was not to be messed with. Sephiroth sadly understood that too well after Tifa's two pregnancies.
"No! Leave me alone!" yelled an obviously angry and hurt Riku. Tifa grit her teeth and forced a smile.
"Sora came all this way to see you. Why don't you let him in? I'll stay outside," she tried again. Silence.
"Riku if you don't open this door right now I'll…!" she began, fist reared for the punch when they heard the soft clicking of the lock. They both watched puzzled as the gold colored doorknob turned and the door open with a lazy creak.
He stood behind the door meekly and looked over to Sora. His face was worn so much that it looked like years had been added to him, in a bad way. But his once bright ultramarine eyes were now a dull cyan. Nodding to him, Sora cautiously approached the door and entered.
"Sora, do you really want to leave me?"
He sat on Riku's bed confusedly as he watched his friend's back quiver.
"I don't understand you Riku. I don't want to leave you. You're my best friend."
"Then why are you leaving?" Riku turned around, filled with betrayal. "If I'm your best friend, why are you going away? And why didn't you tell me when I could have done something about it?"
Sora backed up a little on the bed and eyed him nervously. There were few times when he was even remotely scared of Riku. This time, he was terrified.
"I… I tried to call you, over and over again this week." He stood up with more confidence. "I wanted to tell you, but you shut me out!"
Good, Riku was weakening. His shoulders slumped and he looked at the ground deflated.
"Ever since I heard about the accident, I thought you died," he started in a wavering voice. "Do you know how it feels, to lose something you can't imagine life without?"
Sora looked at him suspiciously. 'Okay, that was weird.'
"I mean, I've known you since our mothers put their stomachs together. You kicked me remember?" he said with a chuckle as he settled himself on the floor against his dresser. "But since then, we've always been together, talking, crying, laughing. I can't remember a time when you haven't been there for me, when I wasn't at least around you. Its like you're a part of me."
"I know, I feel that way too Riku," he said hesitantly. It was true. Wherever there was one, there was the other close by. They were like Castor and Pollux, they were always affected by what that the other felt. Right now, he was hurt. He was going to have to leave his best friend behind, to go to a place with complete strangers, to a school that he didn't know.
Warm arms circled around him as he began to cry. He didn't want to go, he wanted to stay with Riku and lay out on the beach with his friends, talking of the summer and college and the future. Destiny Islands was his home, his heart would always be there no matter how much he could possibly like Midgard.
"I need you Sora," he cried as he held fiercely onto him, sobbing into his shoulder. It surprised him. The Riku who, on outside appearances looked like the more collected on of the group, was truly apart at the seams without him. He gave Riku strength while Riku protected him when he needed it. Riku was his Samson, could he truly betray him?
That whole night, he never left his side as laid there with Riku, holding himuntil they fell asleep.
"Sora?"
"Mmmmmm….."
"Sora!"
"What?"
"Come here with me."
"Why?"
"I want to show you eternity."
Sora rubbed his eyes as he sat up in the bed. His t-shirt and shorts that he wore to the house were now all wrinkled and shifted awkwardly. He had practically forgot that he had slept there the whole night. His mother must be worried.
Riku took his hand and led him out the door. Walking down the hall, they reached another door and opened it.
It was Sira's room. The single ceiling light was turned on to illuminate the bedroom. It seemed like a dollhouse, everything was placed exactly how it was everyday that she lived there. Even the tea tray that she always drank her morning tea on sat comfortably on the bed, her favorite teacup still showing its brown residue of use.
"This way," said the silver crowned boy as he led him up to the window seat. Pulling away the meringue colored drapes, clear blue eyes widened. The view was beautiful, more beautiful than he remembered. He could see the road stretch out to the other beautiful houses in the gated neighborhood. At the end was the pure white belt of the beach. And then the endless pristine blue of the ocean. It seemed endless, beautiful as the small white waves caressed the shore.
"Its beautiful huh?" said Riku with a proud smile. He nodded and sat at the window.
"Oh look! It's the sunrise! Beautiful!" exclaimed Sora as he pressed his nose against the glass, watching eagerly. The midnight blue sky slowly was giving way to lighter hues and then orange. Like an explosion of light, the sun sent its first ray across the land, telling the land to wake up for the new day.
Riku watched him with soft eyes, remembering the last time he enjoyed the sunset with his dying sister. That day, he swore he would never look at another sunrise with anyone else again. He sat himself behind Sora and watched his delight in the spectacle.
"Wow! Look at that color! Its so awesome!"
"Yeah."
Sora continued to watch until the sun was a good amount out of the horizon and smiled, the warm golden light bathing his skin in warmth.
"Sora? I…"
The blue eyed teenlooked back to his friend glowing gold and red, waiting for him to continue.
"I… I'll miss you."
"Me too Riku."
A/N: Hello, I know you're probably thinking "MAN! WHAT THE HELL KIND OF ENDING IT THIS?" But, its all for reason. The next chapter should come out soon since it only took me about half a day to whip this out. Well, hope you like and please review! No reviews, no chapters! Nada, Zip, Zero!
Hehe. Well, this will be a SoraxRiku fic but it will take time ne? So bear with me. It'll be good, I swear! Well, see you later. Bye!
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