Kingdom Hearts fic: The Fated Thought of You

[mistressofmuses]

Summary: It's expected of any sufficiently serious romantic relationship: eventually, you'll share a paopu and let it reveal your soulmarks, so you'll know if you're destined for each other or not. Kairi, Riku, and Sora have been together since high school, and haven't yet shared one. Other people may not understand, may want them to find out which two "really" belong together, but they know they love each other, and what else matters? Though... maybe it would be nice to know...

3rd prompt for AU-gust: Soulmate AU.
I've never written a soulmate AU! I went with a fairly "classic" presentation of the trope, added into the canon soulmate trope fodder presented by the paopu fruit.
And this is also day one of SoRiKai Week! I had already planned on doing AU-gust with SoRiKai prompt fills (so, like, SoRiKai month), but then found out it luckily overlapped the official week! The week-long event also provided prompts, but while there's some overlap with the AU-gust list, they don't fall on the same days. So apologies that this does not fit the Day 1 prompts of "Hurt/Comfort" and "Dreams." (Though it does fit the Day 2 prompt "Soulmates".)
The title is from the song "Fair" by The Amazing Devil, which is a very emotionally vulnerable love song. I also thought the line fits well with canon lines like "Thinking of you, wherever you are."

---

“And are you and Sora and Riku still… you know?”

Kairi felt her smile stiffen. The afternoon catching up with Selphie over coffee had been so pleasant before that. “You might have to be more specific,” she answered.

Selphie rolled her eyes. “Together.”

“Yes.” She deliberately didn’t elaborate.

“All three? Together together?”

“Yes.” Hadn’t changed since high school.

Selphie was not inconspicuous about glancing at the unmarked skin on the undersides of Kairi’s wrists and forearms. “And you still haven’t… checked?”

Kairi turned her wrists upward to emphasize it. “Nope. We haven’t.”

“But… you’ll have to find out eventually, right?”

Kairi sighed and took a sip of her latte. It wasn’t like they’d never discussed it. All three of them had mentioned it at various points, the idea of sharing a paopu between the three of them, and seeing the results. “Maybe. Plenty of people never do.”

“Or do and aren’t happy with what they find out,” Selphie said.

Kairi took another sip of coffee. She couldn’t truly pretend that wasn’t a consideration. She didn’t think it would happen to them, and yet… She shrugged. “If we decide to, it’ll be in our own time.”

“It just seems like the kind of thing I would want to know,” Selphie said, “If I was in that situation, with two people. I’d definitely want to find out which one was really my soulmate.”

The bitterness lingering on her tongue had nothing to do with her coffee. Kairi knew that Selphie wasn’t even trying to be as passive aggressive as it sounded. Selphie would want to know. And it wasn’t that Kairi didn’t; it was just that neither Riku nor Sora was a more “real” soulmate than the other. Regardless of paopu fruit or soulmarks, Kairi loved them, and they loved her, and they loved each other, and all three of them were happy.

Kairi tipped her cup and drank down the last of the dregs. “I have to get going. It was nice to catch up; we should do it again soon.”

“Oh. Yeah, we should.” Selphie sounded a little perplexed at Kairi’s sudden exit, but she stood up and gave Kairi a hug before they parted ways.

Kairi tried to let the fresh sea air and the warmth of the sun chase away her frustration as she walked back to the house. She hoped it hadn’t been rude to walk away like that. But she’d been answering the same question, phrased a dozen ways, since high school.

When are you going to finally share a paopu and find out if it’s real?

Don’t you think it’s a little… odd… not to make it official with one of them?

Don’t you worry that they’re just leading you on by not wanting to find out?

Okay, you love them both, but which one do you hope is really your soulmate?

Like, if you had to pick, which one would you choose?

Even if you can’t choose, shouldn’t you share the paopu and let destiny decide?

To be honest, Kairi wondered if it was just sheer stubbornness not to. Maybe they should do it. Then at least they’d get a different set of questions to be annoyed by.

---

Later, lying in bed, her arm flung over Sora’s chest, while Riku traced aimless patterns between her shoulder blades, the subject came up again.

“My company is doing their beach day in a couple weeks,” Riku said.

Kairi made a noncommittal noise in her throat. They did it every year, a chance for spouses and kids to mingle, and for employees to see each other outside of the confines of the office.

“My boss asked if I was going to have a plus two again. I told him yes, which I hope was all right.”

Kairi nodded, and Sora murmured something agreeable on her other side.

“But then he said something else.”

She turned her head to face Riku. He sounded troubled. “What did he say?” she prompted.

“He just kind of stared down at my wrists, and said, ‘You know, you can’t keep them both hanging forever. Eventually you’re going to have to bite the bullet. Or the fruit, as it were.’ And he laughed. I don’t think he meant to be rude, but it wasn’t just a joke, you know?”

“Selphie said something similar to me today,” Kairi said. “About how we would have to find out eventually, and how she’d want to know which relationship was ‘real’.”

“Clearly we need a magic fruit to answer that question.” Sora was behind her, but she could almost hear him rolling his eyes.

Riku looked up at the smooth skin of his forearms. “I know. But does it ever bother you, not to have proof?”

Kairi rolled onto her back so that she could look at him a bit more easily. “We love you, you love us. And having a soulmark wouldn’t change that.”

“Yeah…” he was still staring at his arms.

“I know what you mean,” Sora said. “It would be nice to have that… visible proof, I guess. Everyone just sort of expects it.”

It was true. If you were in a sufficiently serious relationship, it was very much expected that eventually you’d share a paopu, and find out if you were soulmates. Sometimes it revealed that you weren’t, but even relationships between people whose marks didn’t match were given more legitimacy in some ways than relationships between people with no marks at all.

Kairi’s parents fulfilled the romantic dream: sweethearts who shared a paopu when they got engaged, revealing marks that lined up perfectly with each other’s. Part of a seashell in pale peach on her mother’s right wrist, the rest continuing onto her father’s left. His right wrist bore half of an open book, the other half open over her mother’s right.

But as Riku traced the smooth, soft skin above the underside of his wrist, she knew he was thinking more about his parents’ marks.

His parents shared a paopu at their wedding, a somewhat inescapable tradition if the couple hadn’t yet… And theirs did not match. Half of a cut diamond on his mother’s right wrist, which did not match the bird wing stretched over his father’s left. The hilt of a dagger on his father’s right, in comparison to the blank skin of his mother’s left. Whoever her soulmate was, they had never eaten a paopu, their own mark remaining unrevealed. And until they did, they wouldn’t know if they secretly bore hers. As far as any of them knew, Riku’s father had never found someone with a bird wing and a dagger’s blade.

They remained married, and they were happy together. Kairi had certainly seen the occasional pitying look tossed their way, which wasn’t uncommon for mismatched couples. But generally, the attitude was that couples who didn’t share soulmate marks had their own type of strength. That despite not being destined to be together, they persevered.

By comparison, long-term relationships between those with unrevealed marks were considered shallow or uncommitted. The assumption tended to be that they were afraid of finding out they weren’t destined soulmates, and believed that they wouldn’t have the strength to stay together if that were the case.

“Do you want to share a paopu?” Sora asked. There was no teasing or dismissiveness in his voice now.

“Goodness, that’s a pretty serious question, Sora.” Riku answered, tone artificially light. Then he sobered. “But I think I do.”

Sora reached over, taking one of Riku’s hands into his.

Kairi took the other. “Then we will.”

---

Unfortunately, paopu fruit was not as easily available as most produce. It was mostly sold in specialty shops or the same bakeries that sold wedding cakes, where they chose the most aesthetically perfect fruits, packaged them in fancy boxes, and sold them for exorbitant markups. If you were lucky, you might be able to find fresher and more reasonably priced ones at one of the smaller farmer’s markets that opened a few times a week along the beach, but that couldn’t be relied on.

And none of those places were open in the fuzzy light of pre-dawn, even on a Saturday morning.

Fortunately, Kairi, Riku, and Sora knew right where to find a paopu tree.

The play island that they’d spent countless childhood hours on was otherwise deserted as they docked their small boat. Bigger than the tiny individual rowboats they’d had as kids, but barely big enough for the three of them.

They walked across the sand, hand in hand in hand, heading toward the clubhouse and the bridge that led to the smaller island. The sky to the east was growing lighter, but above them they could still see stars.

“Are you sure?” Riku asked. “If either of you don’t want to, we won’t do it, okay? I’m fine with not, and I don’t want my stupid boss or anyone else to be bullying us into it.”

Sora sighed. “I know that you two are my soulmates, even if destiny somehow disagrees. But if destiny is right… I want the marks. I know my mom is glad every day that she has hers.”

Sora’s mom and dad had shared a paopu, and they were soulmates. There was an intricate vine and leaves that wrapped around her right wrist and had twined onto his left. And she still had his stylized wave pattern on her left, though it had faded to shades of grey after he vanished at sea.

Kairi squeezed his hand, and she saw Riku do the same on his other side.

“I don’t feel like we’re being bullied into it,” she said. “And if we let other people convince us not to do it, just because we’re too stubborn for our own good, that would be just as sad, right?”

“Right.” Riku smiled.

On the smaller island, Riku was the one who climbed up the tree’s steeply curved trunk to where a few of the star-shaped fruits were visible among the leaves.

He grasped one, which came away easily in his hand, so it was probably ripe.

All three of them sat on the horizontal part of the trunk, watching the sky lighten and the stars gently fade from view.

“Like old times,” Riku said.

“Very old times,” Kairi replied. “Though I think we were here for more sunsets than sunrises.”

Part of her wanted to get on with it, but she also didn’t push. She couldn’t honestly say she wasn’t nervous.

If the paopu revealed that she and Riku or she and Sora were soulmates, what would that mean? She loved them both so much, would a mark on her wrist suddenly make her feel more strongly for the one destiny had marked as “official?” Would the other feel left out, or believe he was unwanted?

Or what if Riku and Sora were the “real” soulmates, and she was the one left out? She knew they loved her, but would she really believe it after that?

What if none of their marks matched? How could that be?

She figured they were all having similar thoughts.

It was Sora who broke the silence. “Are you going to divide up that paopu, or not?”

“So impatient,” Riku laughed. “Though come to think of it, you were the one who officially asked, so isn’t it your job to do?”

Sora held out his hand, and Riku handed the fruit to him.

Sora stared at it for a few seconds before asking, “You peel off the rind first, right?”

“I think so?” Kairi said.

Sora’s brow furrowed as he looked at it, like this was the most serious thing he’d ever done. She loved him so much.

Finally, he dug his nail into the peel next to the stem, and pulled it down. It peeled a bit like a citrus fruit, the rind coming away in pieces, revealing the fruit beneath. The fruit itself wasn’t as bright a yellow as the peel, but a bit more between yellow and orange.

Sora finished peeling the fruit, though it wasn’t the neatest job ever. Once he’d gotten the skin off, the five segments of the “star” were easy to pull apart. He handed them each one, leaving two balanced on his knees. Traditionally the remaining pieces could be eaten, or given to the sea, and they could decide that after.

“On three?” he asked, voice cracking and coming out almost as a whisper.

“On three,” Riku agreed. “One…”

“Two,” said Sora.

I love you no matter what, Kairi thought, but did not say. It would have sounded too much like second thoughts, and no, they were doing this. “Three.”

The texture of the paopu as she bit down reminded her of ripe mango—velvety soft, but getting juice everywhere as soon as she bit down. The flavor wasn’t quite as sweet, more similar to the biting tartness of pineapple, with just a small hint of astringent tingle.

And then her wrists began to burn. It felt like holding the skin against too-hot sand, though somehow with all of the heat and none of the pain. Almost as quickly, the heat tipped into cold, like holding that burned skin under cool seawater, the relief nearly painful in its own right.

She held up her wrists, excited and terrified to see them. Her heart soared.

Most people had one mark on each wrist, each forming half of an image that would be completed by their soulmate’s marks.

Each of her wrists had two. With her wrists facing upward, the insides of her wrists each had half of a star-shaped flower in shades of pale pink and purple. The part of her wrist below her left thumb had half of a red-edged black heart, with a small ornamentation at the base. Below the thumb of her right wrist, she had half of a crown, half of a keyhole visible at the center before it faded away.

Next to her, Sora was staring at his own marks—half a crown with keyhole on each, plus half of a red-edged black heart on his right, and half of a star-shaped flower on his left.

Riku let out a surprised laugh, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was looking at. He jumped down and stepped in front of both Sora and Kairi, holding his up for inspection. Half of a red-edged black heart on each, half a star-shaped flower on his right, and half a crown on his left.

Kairi held out her wrists to both of them, twisting their arms around to match up the flowers, then the hearts, then the crowns.

She felt tears— the happiest tears she ever remembered—burning her eyes. She wrapped her arms around Riku, half-falling into his arms, as they both pulled Sora into the hug. He barely rescued the two remaining pieces of fruit from falling into the sand. She wasn’t even certain who kissed who first, just that everyone tasted like paopu, and they were all sticky with fruit juice.

And the sunrise was somehow the brightest she’d ever known.