Kingdom Hearts fic: Potentials - Chapter 16 [fic complete]

[mistressofmuses]

In chapter 16: The return home.

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Radiance regained consciousness quickly. It didn’t take any real time to reconstruct what had happened, just seconds spent gathering all the pieces into the correct order. Corridor’s hand was still gripping hers, and there was soft grass under her back. Opening her eyes revealed Sora on Corridor’s other side, all three lit by the gentle twilight of the setting sun.

She sat up more slowly, feeling every abrasion and bruise. Corridor and Sora both shifted, pulling themselves upright as well.

Radiance threw her arms around Corridor, reaching to Sora, and pulling them both close. She fought back a wave of tears. Mostly of relief, in contrast to the wild overwhelm of the past days and weeks. But she knew that if she gave in, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

“You’re okay,” she said. “We’re okay.”

Corridor clung even tighter, collapsing back into the grass of the field, pulling them down on top of him.

They lay together for a few minutes, just holding onto each other, unable to even say anything.

It was with definite reluctance that she finally pulled away. But she had to find out if everyone else had made it out, too.

She dug in the pocket under the faux skirt of her costume, fumbling out her phone. The screen had an ugly crack spiderwebbing across it, but it still lit up and responded when she turned it on. With shaky fingers, she managed to dial Yuffie’s number from memory, hoping the vigilante would be able to answer.

She answered on the first ring. “Radiance?”

“It’s me,” she answered, now almost laughing with relief. That would be as dangerous as crying right now, in terms of being unable to stop.

“Thank god. You made it out?”

“I did. With Corridor and Keyblade. I destroyed the machine.”

“We figured you must have, when the castle collapsed and it all disappeared.”

“All of you got out all right?”

“One of your boyfriends helped us get the rest of the Heroes out of their cells, and then into the dark city. He left us to get ourselves out after that, going back for you guys, because he knows his priorities. Everybody made it.”

Radiance smiled at Yuffie’s description of Corridor. “I’m glad. The memory distortions are supposed to be fixed now. I hope it worked. I don’t know what we’ll do if it didn’t.”

“I guess we’ll see. You know, even if it is fixed, there’s going to have to be a lot of explanation given. People are going to be confused, scared…”

“And we’re the Heroes who need to help protect them.” Radiance nodded, even though Yuffie couldn’t see it. “Tomorrow we’ll have to get the other Defenders of the Light together and figure out our next steps. What we’re going to do now.”

After a pause, she added, “You know, I’m pretty sure the vigilantes would be welcome, too. I know you guys have retired, but…”

“We might be available as consultants,” Yuffie said, voice gently teasing. “But let’s worry about that tomorrow, all right?”

“Tomorrow,” Radiance agreed. “Tonight I think everyone has recovering to do.”

“Absolutely,” Yuffie answered. “Let us know the plan after we all get some sleep.”

After hanging up, Radiance let Corridor and Sora know that the other Heroes were safe. She sent a text to her parents, promising she was okay and would give them more information soon. After that, she sent a mass text to the rest of the Defenders of the Light, asking them to contact her in the morning so they could plan what they were going to do next. It seemed a little strange to be taking that initiative, but she had just staged a major rescue operation. It probably wasn’t that out of line.

Briefly, she hoped no one was going to head straight to the press, try to get the jump on the spin as some sort of power-grab, but she pushed the concern away. She didn’t think any of the Heroes were interested in that.

She put the much-abused phone back in her pocket, and turned back to Corridor. “Think you have enough strength to open one more dark doorway for us?”

---

Radiance expected that stepping out of the portal into the apartment would feel like coming home. It did, in the literal sense, but there was still an emotional cloud hanging over it all.

They’d made the short journey in silence, none of them knowing what to say. But at least there was always practicality to be concerned with.

“Sora, we need to take a look at your arm.”

“Been trying not to think about it,” he said, making a face. “But probably a good idea.”

They all headed toward the bathroom, shedding bits of costume on the way. Radiance’s mask, Corridor’s Organization coat, their boots. This was certainly not the first quick patch-up session they’d had in their bathroom. Sora sat on the side of the bathtub while Riku got a washcloth and Kairi fished the first aid kit out from under the sink.

Riku gently blotted at the dried and drying blood around the wound. The bleeding itself had stopped, though the skin immediately around the gash was also burned. The cut was deep, the kind of thing that was just on the edge of needing stitches.

“Think you can do without an ER visit? And I mean honestly,” Kairi emphasized. “That may not be the way we want to spend our first night reunited, but none of us are interested in risking it. What do you think?”

Sora flexed his arm, wincing. “I don’t think it needs stitches. Probably not up to another all-out fight, so if we can keep those to a minimum for a week or so, I’d appreciate it.”

“Butterfly bandages it is,” Kairi said. She leaned close and pecked him on the lips. “And we’ll do our best not to have any more dimension-crossing battles against our ex-boss and his league of blackmailed clones.”

“Can I get cleaned up the rest of the way before we patch me up, so we don’t have to do it twice?”

“Absolutely,” Riku answered.

The next part was routine: as they undressed, they checked each other over for any unnoticed injuries. Ironically, it was a very comforting routine. Sora reached up and brushed his fingers over a closed-over cut near Riku’s hairline. Riku sucked in a sharp sympathetic breath as he counted the scrapes and bruises on Kairi’s back. She’d felt them when she woke up, but none needed more than a gentle cleaning and maybe some bandaids.

The shower was small for the three of them together, something they’d laughed about before, promising someday they’d have a mansion with one of those obscenely fancy room-sized showers. At least, they always said, they didn’t mind being close.

And when you had a deep gash keeping you from using an arm, or your back felt like a patchwork of minor pains, or any other array of injuries, it was lovely to have someone else who could help wash your hair.

Riku adjusted the water temperature, not as hot as Kairi would normally have it, but the right kind of warm for cleaning up injuries without making anything hurt more.

As Kairi helped run shampoo through Sora’s hair, and rinsed it clean, the first bits of that emotional cloud finally started to dissipate. More was chased away as Riku ran a soapy washcloth over her back, so gently she hardly felt the sting. And at that, she couldn’t hold back those threatening tears any more.

Sora was there to support her with his uninjured arm, and Riku covered her back with his chest, just holding them both. She didn’t fight the tears off this time, letting the shower wash them away as fast as they came. She also didn’t suppress the fragments of light radiating from her skin, reflecting off the falling water and the droplets clinging to all three of them.

“You have no idea how scared I was,” she finally said, when she could get the words out without sobbing.

“I was scared too,” Sora answered after a moment. “But always knew you’d come back. You’d rescue both of us. I was never scared that wouldn’t happen.”

She felt Riku nod, his cheek against her wet hair. “Even as… confused, and wrong as I was, I knew you wouldn’t give up. Even when I told you you should.”

She let out a laugh through the last of the tears. “I think you both had more faith in that than I did.”

“Never say that,” Riku said, pressing a hard kiss to the back of her neck. “You saved us and the rest of the Heroes. You found out what you had to do and you did it. And we all made it out. Because of you.”

“Thank you,” she said. She stood back up the rest of the way, before that kiss on her neck tempted any of the three of them into something distracting. The apartment had a lot of hot water, but it wasn’t infinite.

Once they were all cleaned up and dried off, they finished taking care of Sora’s arm. Antibiotic ointment, butterfly bandages placed outside the line of burned skin, and then a gauze pad to cushion it all. Riku put some of the antibiotic on the worst of the scrapes on Kairi’s back, and she applied some to the gash on his forehead, but miraculously nothing else needed immediate bandaging.

They collapsed in bed together.

Riku broke the silence this time. “I… remember the things she made me forget. And the things I suddenly misremembered. I remember the real versions, but also the false ones. I remember walking in a park with Naminé, but also that that never happened; it was Kairi I was with that day. I remember Roxas saving me from a Heartless that got the jump on me, but I know it was really Sora who did that. I remember suddenly thinking that all the terrible villainous things we ever fought against were done by the Defenders of the Light, and feeling like the Organization was standing up against them. And I remember being so torn, because I still knew that I loved you, despite everything trying to tell me that you were bad people. And I remembered that I’d been a villain before, and I knew it was important I didn’t let myself become that again.” He scrubbed tears away from his face.

Kairi bit her lip. Even ignoring everything else—the ‘alternate potentials’ and forcing them to follow orders, capturing the Heroes, turning the city against them, hurting Sora—she could never have forgiven them for putting Riku back in that position. Leveraging his fear of being seen as a villain to force him to comply, tricking him into the very thing he was afraid of. “You still helped me, you know.”

“How?” he forced the word out.

“That awful morning talk show that interviewed you, where you were talking about joining the Organization. And you said you were publically begging me and Keyblade to turn ourselves in. But you made the sign telling us to run.”

“You actually saw that?”

She nodded. “It showed that you still cared, no matter what else you said, and that I for sure wasn’t going to fix things by turning myself in and trying to talk it out with Xehanort.”

Riku laughed without humor. “We filmed that the morning after I’d told you to leave. I never thought you’d see it, but I knew they were going to come after you. I guess they’d already captured Sora, and I just didn’t know it yet. But despite everything I thought I remembered, I just couldn’t believe you were irredeemable. Even now it’s like this awful mental double exposure.”

“My memories feel the same way,” Sora said. “Like I remember Riku, Naminé, and me as childhood friends… but I also know that I never knew her. It was the three of us. I remember remembering her, if that makes sense. But it’s kind of like a dream. One of those that you think is real until you wake up the rest of the way.”

“Like a dream,” Riku repeated. “Yeah. It kind of feels like it’ll fade the way the memories of a dream would. But I can’t let myself forget.”

“Hey,” Kairi cut him off. “You do know it’s not your fault, right? Your memories were manipulated, that’s not something you did or could have resisted.”

“But if I’d let them convince me to actually hurt either of you—”

“You didn’t,” Sora said. “You just said, even when they were forcing you to remember us as bad guys, you still loved us. And Kairi saw you trying to pass on a warning to us in an interview? I can’t imagine Xehanort would have been happy if he’d noticed that, but you did it anyway.”

“And you saved me from Xigbar, in that last Organization-versus-Defenders of the Light fight,” Kairi added. “He was definitely about to shoot me, and you pushed me through a corridor. Knocked the wind out of me, but that beats getting, you know, shot. Even in the middle of a fight, you were still protecting me.”

“Yeah.” He still sounded unsure.

Sora let out an obviously exaggerated sigh. “So make it up to us, if you’re so worried.”

Riku pushed himself up on an elbow to look over at Sora. “What?”

Sora reached over with his left hand, cupping it around the back of Riku’s neck, and pulling him closer. “You heard me. Make. It. Up. To us.”

Kairi giggled as Sora hauled Riku across her and into a kiss.

Riku caught himself before he fell onto her, but didn’t pull away from Sora. When Sora finally relaxed his hand, Riku leaned back. He searched both of their faces for a moment.

He looked like he was about to object to something, so Kairi hooked her leg around his, bare skin on skin, pulling him closer above her. She claimed a kiss of her own, then spoke against his lips: “Is this an acceptable way to make it up?”

He ran one of his hands up her side, gently cupping her ribcage. “Is it?” he asked back. His voice was barely a whisper, and still broke a bit.

“Well, if you’re afraid there’s some question about how you feel about us, I bet you can clear it up.”

She felt him smile at that, which was at least a start. “Sora does sometimes come up with a decent idea.”

“Hey!” Sora protested.

Riku pressed a quick kiss to Kairi’s lips, before shifting to lean over Sora instead. “You’re right,” he said. “Rude of me, when you’ve been heroically wounded, even.”

“Damn right,” Sora said, pulling him back down.

Riku leaned over and whispered something into Sora’s ear. Even as close as they were, Kairi couldn’t hear it, but after he leaned back, Sora said, “Sounds fair.”

Then Riku was back to her, his mouth at her throat. She tipped her head back, giving him free access, trusting he’d behave himself. They always had to be careful with anything on necks, shoulders, upper chests. Accidentally leaving a hickey or other mark would be a sure way to get a reprimand and generate all the wrong tabloid headlines. That spurred a sudden hope that she hadn’t considered before: did they have to worry about that anymore? Did they have to keep hiding?

Then Riku was moving farther down her body, trailing kisses down her chest, stomach, and farther, and she wasn’t thinking about anything else.

Sora leaned close, kissing her in between the gasps and sounds Riku was drawing out of her. “Riku thought that since you were the hero who saved us all, you probably deserved some extra attention,” he murmured.

It took several moments for her to formulate a response. “You’re both full of such good ideas.”

He laughed, and the lights flickering off her skin framed his face, and reflected off of Riku’s hair. A few minutes later, and those lights were brighter and more frantic, until she cried out, and both Riku and Sora helped bring her back down.

She let her breathing return to something resembling normal, as Riku turned his attention to Sora, prowling back up to kiss him. And that certainly drew her attention, too.

Riku’s hand was still down at hip level, and something he was doing had Sora squirming very nicely. She indulged in just watching for a few minutes, enjoying the way Riku rocked forward, and Sora pushed his hips up in rhythm.

Kairi ran her fingers along Sora’s chest between them, then down Riku’s back. The touches were light, gently teasing. But really she just needed to touch them, not quite ready to say why. I was afraid. I was afraid that last time had been the last time, and I’d never have you both again.

She swept Riku’s long, still damp hair, already a bit tangled, over his opposite shoulder.

“I want to see your pretty face,” she said when he looked toward her.

He flushed, and she grinned. It wasn’t nearly as easy to fluster him as it was Sora, which made it that much more satisfying to succeed.

She curled closer to Sora, careful of his arm, kissing his shoulder while her hand roved over his chest and side, back up to Riku’s side and down his arm.

Riku caught her fingers, and kissed her hand before letting her go and bending back to Sora’s neck. Sora wrapped his legs around Riku’s hips, their rhythm changing, growing frantic, before finally slowing.

After, part of her wanted to stay awake, to revel in success and safety, in all three of them having made it through. But exhaustion won out over all of them, and they slept.

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A blog entry, by user FirePhase_LunarDancer, posted late on the same evening the “alternate dimension” collapsed:

Okay you guys, I am seriously shaking right now. And I know that’s the kind of thing that’s been said so often it doesn’t really mean much, but I mean it literally.

For the last several days, I’ve been unable to post. I tried, but the site just kept giving me errors, saying my account wasn’t recognized. Not a password issue, but like my account was just gone. I was freaking out, but I contacted support, and they said they would look into it, and maybe check some server backups, so I was trying to just be patient. Now I’ve got access again, and the site has some banner message about this having happened to a bunch of blogs, apparently.

But I was so used to posting daily, I wrote out what I’d been wanting to post longhand, because it was really bugging me. And… honest to god, this is what I wrote:

So I can’t post on my blog, but I still wanted to write…

I have kind of a weird… problem? Honestly, I thought maybe it was a prank or something, but that doesn’t seem right. My sister has pulled some pretty good ones, but nothing like this.

But I have a ton of merch that I just don’t remember buying, or even having. Which is weird to say, right? But I don’t mean that I found a box of stuff I’d forgotten about from a con, or stuff I bought online while sleep deprived and forgot until it arrived. It’s like… I have displays in my room, on my shelves, on my walls, of a bunch of Defenders of the Light stuff. Mostly Fire Dancer and Lunar Phase, but some others too.

But like… what the fuck? Why the hell would I have a bunch of villain stuff?? I’ve never been a weirdo vigilante/villain fan. A couple things, I could maybe get. Like did I get some of these figures because I wanted to customize them into Axel and Saïx? (They’ve got the right hair colors at least, and if I made Organization coats and got rid of their masks they’d be pretty similar!) But this is a bunch of stuff! Posters, action figures, a storage tin, a photo book, a DVD video compilation, themed jewelry, enamel pins… And where would I even have gotten it? Who even sells this much villain merch? It seems like this would have taken some effort to get! So how did I wind up with it?

This is so bizarre. Because while I don’t even remember having this stuff, it also doesn’t… feel out of place? Which makes even less sense. But it’s not like I woke up in a room full of things that weren’t mine… just things I don’t remember getting. But they were on my walls and my shelves, where I’d see them every day.

I think I’m just going to take everything down and put it in a box. I don’t know what the hell this all is, but it’s really freaking me out. I’m gonna talk to my sister… maybe it really was a prank or something, in which case I guess she got me.

I never asked my sister. Because once I put it all away? I completely forgot about it. Like… poof, just… didn’t think about it again. Moved some new stuff onto my shelves like nothing else had been there. Forgot about writing that journal entry, too. And I never even thought about the fact that Fire Dancer and Lunar Phase… literally are my username, so how could I claim not to be a fan of theirs? They’ve been my favorite Heroes for years.

And so why would I suddenly freak out about them being villains?

Well… whatever happened a few hours ago happened, and it was like suddenly I remembered all this stuff that I didn’t before. About the Defenders of the Light being Heroes, and about the Organization being villains… which is the “normal” thing, right? But I also still remember that up until a couple hours ago, I didn’t think of the Defenders of the Light as anything other than villains! Like, a vague sense that once they’d been good guys, but that they’d gone bad, and the Organization were bravely fighting them, and getting them locked away… And I remember that wasn’t true, but I also remember believing it, and just...

I remembered all my merch stuff, and that journal entry I’d written out.

I’ve spent the last several hours scrolling through my f-list and a couple of the news sites… and it seems like I’m not alone. A lot of people have started reporting that they suddenly remember things they didn’t, and remember things they know never happened. Almost all of it sounds like it was about the Defenders of the Light and the Organization.

Most people seem to agree that it was some kind of dimensional interference, because a couple months ago, they made a big deal about a potential dimensional collision.

I really hope someone has some answers, because this is absolutely freaking me out. Anyone else have something like this happen?

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The next morning passed in a flurry of texts and phone calls and video chats between the Heroes. Radiance was the center of it, since she’d taken the initiative to start forming some coherent plan of action. And since she was in the same place as Keyblade and Corridor, it was at least easy to keep them in the loop. Several other Heroes were in groups together, teammates and friends and partnerships.

Various media outlets had reached out to all of them, looking for comment and explanation. Radiance’s concerns from the previous day regarding any of the Heroes trying to get an early spin on the coverage proved unfounded; none of them had any interest in that, and had all refrained from saying anything specific. After they had a chance to talk, they agreed on a press conference at noon, giving them a few hours to make sure they would be a united front.

They met at the old headquarters building, despite it feeling… strange. Even hostile. But it was still their “home base” such as it was, even more than half-gutted. It offered enough space for all of them to speak face to face, even including Leon and Yuffie as representatives for the retired Heroes. And Radiance discovered that she was surprisingly proud of all of them. Even with the formal organization having largely fallen apart, they were all focused on upholding Heroic vows, to protect the city and its people.

The press conference itself was almost anti-climactic. The Scientist and Grimoire provided the background, explaining the alternate dimension, the machine, the functional cloning, and the memory alteration. It was a lot of information. There were some things they didn’t mention, like the pattern to the names.

They leaned a little heavily into Xehanort being the true culprit, the one who’d used reasonable research and experimentation to serve ulterior motives, but it was still true.

Most of the questions focused on simply understanding the event, now that everyone in the city was coping with the “double exposure” memories that Riku had described the previous night.

Finally the questions turned more to the future: how would they know it couldn’t happen again? How could citizens trust their memories weren’t being tampered with? What did this mean for the Defenders of the Light?

They took turns answering questions, and that last one fell to Radiance. It was one they’d all known was coming.

“Our goal is to create a heroic team that no longer prioritizes marketability over the actual safety of the city. The true purpose of the Defenders of the Light, even in its original incarnation, was to help people. To help the people of the city. To help people who develop powers. To help understand where they come from.

“Ironically, as Xehanort pretended the original heroes had strayed from that purpose, and then claimed the same about the current roster, he was the one who moved us away from that mission. We intend to reorient ourselves, to return to what this group was always intended to be.”

Grimoire leaned forward into his mic. “We plan to meet with each other, with some of the retired heroes who founded the group, with local law enforcement, and with city government to ensure that we are aligned with what will best serve the city.”

Before another question could be asked, Corridor also added, “It is also our intent to help provide accessible counseling services, for anyone struggling with the aftermath. This is something none of us have had to deal with on this scale before, and we want to support anyone who needs help with it.”

Radiance squeezed his hand and smiled at him. They hoped most people would recover well, once they understood what had happened. But just knowing that memories could be altered could be terrifying, even depersonalizing. For anyone like Corridor, who had done things they ordinarily wouldn’t have due to that manipulation, some type of help would absolutely be necessary.

Slowly, the questions wound down. They planned for a follow up press conference in a couple more days, after some of the promised meetings took place, to answer any new questions and provide updates.

As the heroes began to disperse, many reporters stayed to get last pictures and make their own closing statements before leaving.

One young reporter that Radiance recognized from a couple past interviews waved to her. “What about you, Radiance?” she asked. “You’ve personally been through a lot, orchestrating the rescue of your teammates. So what are you going to do right now? Have any plans for some well-deserved recovery time?”

Radiance thought for a brief second, then reached out and grabbed both Keyblade and Corridor’s hands. She flashed the brightest smile she could and said, “All three of us are going home.”

---

Speculation about romantic entanglements was certainly not front-page news, especially compared to the weightier material from the press conference. But even so, Sora gave a triumphant shout as he scrolled through one outlet’s article summarizing the event.

Toward the bottom was a slideshow, and in there was a picture of Radiance, proudly grinning at the camera, holding both Corridor and Keyblade’s hands up. It was captioned: Radiance proclaims that she and her teammates will be spending some recovery time at home. Is this tacit confirmation that they live together? Perhaps time will tell.

Kairi leaned into Sora’s shoulder to read it as he pointed it out. Riku rolled his eyes, though she thought he looked quietly pleased, perched on the armrest of the couch.

“I hope it wasn’t out of line for me to do that,” she said. “We didn’t really talk about how we’re portraying things.”

“Holding hands. The scandal. Think of the children,” Riku deadpanned. “We’re past getting called into the director’s office for a dressing down. If you’re okay with this, then I am too.”

“Same here,” Sora agreed. “We don’t need to be gross about the PDA or anything, but if we’re allowed to just not hide things anymore, I’m all for it.”

“I’d love to stop hiding things,” she said. “So let’s not. We don’t have to make a statement about it or anything. Maybe we can take bets on how long it takes someone to figure it out.”

“I doubt they’ll let you get away with not making a statement,” Riku said. “Once the serious stuff dies down a bit, everyone will be gossip-hungry and nosey again, and they’ll absolutely ask you to pick a side.”

Kairi tugged on Riku’s sleeve, pulling him down onto the couch itself, and he landed across both their laps. “Then won’t they be surprised?”

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