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Summary: The only thing Riku's parents have ever valued him for is his potential as an artist. But when he starts drawing the figures and places from his dreams, they don't approve, wanting him to focus on something more prestigious. As his home life deteriorates, Riku continues to dream of the autumn lands. Soon the place he dreams of, and Kairi and Sora within it, start to feel more like home than his 'real life' ever did.
Happy Halloween! This is my favorite holiday and season (which may be obvious in this fic.)
This was written for the SoRiKai discord server's Halloween event. It fits the following prompts from the list: Ink, Witch, Trick or Treat, Candy, (and at least incidentally: ghost, and maybe gothic.)
”Trick, or treat?”
The dream started to fade as soon as Riku opened his eyes. Still, he reached for the bedside lamp and his sketchbook. The light was dim, just enough for him to get a quick series of outlines onto the page.
Sleep pulled him back down, and the pen fell from his fingers. In the morning he’d see if there was anything there worth cleaning up.
The next morning revealed that some of the sketches were usable. They even jogged his memory of the dreams that inspired them. Not in incredible detail, but scattered images, impressions of the place and the people. It was at least enough to help turn the sketches into more complete works.
He was working on some thumbnail layouts for a larger piece when his father came into the kitchen. He crossed behind Riku’s seat and paused. Riku didn’t look up, but could perfectly picture the little disapproving frown on his father’s face. Further confirmed when he heard the soft “Hmph,” that somehow conveyed disappointment, annoyance, and resignation all at once.
Riku ignored it as his father kept walking toward the coffee machine.
He wanted to get the right sense of motion for both the figures on the page. He thought that he might have seen them both before, but they weren’t common characters in the dreams. Even as hazy as his recollection of the last dream was, it was the strongest impression he’d had for either of these two.
The first girl was a ghost, ethereal. She floated, tragic, yet at peace, like she’d once been heartbreakingly lonely, and wasn’t any longer. Her pale color palette, the white dress and blonde hair, emphasized her own lightness in multiple regards. Incorporeal, but also unbothered.
The other figure both coordinated and contrasted. She had darker hair and clothes, but also a solidity the first girl didn’t have. Not a ghost. A marionette, or at least once she had been. A puppet who’d cut her own strings and defied control.
Riku didn’t know why the two were together; they seemed like characters from different worlds, but both belonged seamlessly in the place he kept dreaming of.
“You could try applying your skills to something… more.” His father sat down with his coffee and stared at Riku’s open sketchbook.
Riku didn’t look up. “I am applying my skills to exactly what I want to.”
“I hope that for your interview tomorrow you’ll unearth something more impressive. More worthy of being shown.”
Shit, that was tomorrow?
Instead of admitting that he’d forgotten, he said, “Maybe you should do the interview, then. That way everyone could be suitably impressed.”
“You could at least feign interest in your future. I have done everything I can—more than anyone could expect—to set you up with a career. And you can’t even pretend to take it seriously.”
Yes, a career as a professional offspring. Proof that your own incalculable talent is so intrinsically part of you that you passed it on genetically. Wonderful for you.
He knew better than to say any of that out loud. Again.
His father made another “Hmph” sound, and finished his coffee. “I’ll be at the gallery until late. I really would appreciate it if you would find something a bit more portfolio-worthy to feature tomorrow.”
“I’ll look.” That was as much as he’d promise.
He flipped to a new page once he heard the front door close.
This time in the dream, he was sitting in a kitchen very different from his own. Despite the autumn leaves visible outside, and the cooler air, it felt warmer than his ever did.
Kairi was standing at the stove, dressed in what he thought of as “classic cute witch” attire—a dress with a layered, fluffy knee-length skirt, tall striped socks and boots, a pointed hat—all in black and pale purple.
A relieved sigh forced its way out; Kairi was familiar at this point, one of the two people he “met” in his dreams the most often.
She looked over her shoulder and smiled, but didn’t stop stirring something on the stove. “Welcome back.”
“Happy to be here.” An almost painfully honest statement.
She made a small sound, an encouraging one.
He kept talking. “My parents remain unimpressed with my artistic endeavors. My father in particular.”
“I thought he wanted you to be an artist?”
“Partially. He wants me to be an artist like him. That’s all he’s ever wanted me to be, and my mother has always backed him up. He wants me to be doing abstract, high-brow art, which bores me to death. Especially when I know that anything I do in that style comes off as painfully hollow, since it’s obvious to me there’s nothing real behind it. It would just be going through the motions.”
“Mn, I see why you visited Xion and Naminé last night. They both have plenty of feelings about going through motions they didn’t choose.”
He perked up at that. “Xion and Naminé? Are those their names? I couldn’t remember when I woke up.”
“The once-puppet and the ghost. But really, he’s upset that you’re doing what he asked of you, but he doesn’t care for how you’re doing it?”
“It feels like a cruel joke,” he confessed. “I’ve never wanted to be an artist. I like art, but never wanted to make it. And now, I feel more… inspired, I suppose, than I ever have before. Finally, I’m enjoying creating it, and that’s still not good enough.”
“‘Inspired?’ Are you calling us your muses?” she teased.
“I guess I am. You, and Sora, and Naminé and Xion… This whole place.” He gestured to the window, and the endless patchwork of autumn outside. Yellow, orange, and red leaves drifted on the breeze, and in the distance were pumpkin patches and tall, dry cornstalks. Beyond that, a dark tangled forest obscured the horizon, promising the darker sides of the season when night fell.
“It’s the principle of trick or treat, I suppose. Sometimes it’s both. Like Sora, who seems made of pure sunshine, but can’t stand its touch. I’m a summer-flower girl, trapped in a forever-autumn world, yet I love it just the same. You’re given the treat of artistic inspiration, with the trick that it’s not quite what you’d asked for.”
This autumnal world revolved around Halloween, the words “Trick or Treat” like holy scripture.
“So which is it for now?” Kairi asked. She held out a tray of candies, the result of what she’d been working on when he showed up. “Trick, or treat?”
He picked one up off the tray, a smooth, round confection that looked like a miniature pumpkin. He lifted it to his lips and bit down.
Instead of any of the flavors he expected—caramel, chocolate, pumpkin—thick, cloying darkness filled his mouth.
The ink bled from the candy in his hand, impossibly infinite as it ran down his arm and continued to work into his throat, choking him. It covered everything, splashing to the floor, pulling him into its own darkness where he couldn’t breathe.
His last glimpse was of Kairi. She didn’t look alarmed, more… resigned. “Not yet,” she said.
“So, what’s inspired your… recent works?”
The interviewer’s voice was polite, but Riku still caught the hesitation, so similar to his parents’. Maybe hers could generously be considered skeptical, instead of completely disapproving.
“Dreams, mostly,” he answered, opting for at least a bit of honesty.
“‘Dreams?’” she questioned. “That’s interesting. Though clearly you grew up in a very artistic home, between your father’s unparalleled career, and your mother’s more understated, but steady successes. Do you think that growing up surrounded by so much talent guided your own?”
The interviewer probably also wished his father were her subject. She couldn’t quite contain her gushing enthusiasm for his father’s work. And why would she? Everyone knew his father’s art, and the record prices it commanded, and his featured exhibits in museums around the world as a ‘modern master’…
“Well, my father certainly likes to think his genius must be inheritable. I think he and my mother might consider me their ultimate collaborative work.” That was maybe a touch unnecessarily snide, but it still rang true. “Whether I turned out to be a masterpiece may be up to more debate.” He softened it with a self-deprecating laugh.
“The portfolio you have with you today is certainly not in the style of either of your parents. But do you have artists that you consider an influence on your style or subject matter?”
He shrugged. The question was a softball, giving him an easy chance to contextualize his work by mentioning some expected and acceptable artists. He could say he was influenced by Dalí, or maybe Edward Gorey. His work wasn’t actually surrealist, and lacked the macabre satire of Gorey, but those would at least be respectable comparisons to make.
Instead: “Not really. As I said, my inspiration mainly comes from things I dream about. I’m not attempting photo-realism, but I don’t intend for things to be overwhelmingly stylized either. I just want to capture the things I’ve seen.”
“So, these works. Witches, vampires, ghosts… these are just an expression of something in this dream world?”
“Well, they are seasonally appropriate right now,” he said.
“Halloween is just a couple days from now,” the interviewer agreed. “Though you seem to be evoking a very classic idea of the holiday, and of the season. An interesting choice, for someone living on an island that experiences very little in the way of seasonal change.”
“Maybe it’s wishful thinking.” Being homesick for somewhere I’ve never really lived.
“Just that? Nothing more allegorical?”
Riku thought back to some of what Kairi had said in his last dream. Allowing one dream manifestation to analyze another was probably not really how it was supposed to work, no matter how real he honestly felt they were. Or maybe it was just proof that he was more self-aware than he realized.
“I’ll allow there’s some symbolism, I suppose. Subversion of expectation, maybe. None of the figures are evil or even particularly frightening, despite being potentially monstrous. Some are even clearer than that. A marionette whose strings have been cut? I suppose that could have something to do with the desire to escape external control.”
“External control? Like the expectations of your parents?”
He smiled. “I’ll leave that for others to interpret.”
“Kairi says that we’re your muses,” Sora laughed.
Riku gave him a crooked smile in return, before reaching out to pull him into a teasing sideways hug. “Sure, if you want to put it that way.”
Sora grinned, showing off too-sharp canine teeth. “I do.”
“Well, then I’ll keep drawing the two of you, and some of the other people from this place, no matter what anyone says.”
Sora’s grin vanished like a switch had been flipped. “Kairi mentioned that too. That your parents don’t really like it.”
“Kairi says it’s a kind of trick or treat. A mix of both: finally enjoying art, but not satisfying everyone else.”
“Does it have to satisfy them?”
“My parents? They’ve made it clear that it’s the only thing that will. They’ve as much as said it to my face. Without artistic talent—defined by their measure—I am not worthy of being their child.”
“You could have a family here, with us,” Sora said, throwing his own arms around Riku’s shoulders. “Me and Kairi can be your family. You don’t have to prove anything to us, we just want you as you are.”
Riku reached up to grip Sora’s arm, holding him close. The thought he’d had mid-interview occurred to him again. “Sora? Do you think you can be homesick for a place you haven’t ever lived?”
“There are places you belong. Sometimes your heart knows it. Like the pull toward a person can be.”
“I think this place, the autumn lands, might be that for me. Like you and Kairi. I feel like I belong here more than in my own life.”
“Trick and treat,” Sora said, like a recitation. “A treat to know where you belong, with the trick that you aren’t there yet.”
“Does everything have to be both?”
“Sometimes it settles to one or the other.”
Riku hoped Sora was right. That somehow this would settle in a way that didn’t leave him… bereft.
“Which is it for now?” Sora asked. “Trick, or treat?”
Sora pressed his lips to Riku’s wrist, a gentle kiss. Then he pressed a little harder, until his fangs just barely broke the skin. Riku gasped, though not in pain.
But instead of blood, ink welled from the pinprick wounds. Despite how tiny the cuts were, the ink kept coming, in drips and then gushes, pouring down his arm and to the floor.
Sora sighed. “Not yet.”
“You what?” Riku asked, barely able to keep his voice under control. It still broke a little on the second word. He’d just been looking for some of his completed paintings and ink drawings of Kairi and Sora. They weren’t stored where he thought they’d been, and he asked his father if he’d moved them.
His father huffed out an annoyed breath. “You could at least pretend to be grateful. It’s astounding that any of those works would appeal to a buyer. But because I am invested in your career—more so than you are—I displayed some of it in the gallery. Astonishingly, some of it has been purchased.”
“It wasn’t for sale!”
“Please, it’s hardly the kind of irreplaceable masterwork that an artist can’t bear to part with. If you aren’t going to push the boundaries of the artform, you can at least take what minor commercial success you can.”
His father spat the word, like it was something shameful and dirty. Like his own fortune and lifestyle hadn’t been made on five- and six-figure art sales.
“I didn’t even give you permission to display them, much less sell them. Tell the buyer that you’re sorry, but the pieces were already spoken for.”
“The pieces have already changed hands.” His father’s voice was growing clipped, now, truly annoyed. “And even if they had not, I would not damage my reputation by backing out of a deal. The proceeds from the sale can help to offset the expense of the gallery space the work was displayed in. Or the art classes that were wasted on you.”
Riku’s father walked away, ending the discussion.
The air was cold and crisp in a way that Riku had never experienced in the real world. The sky was a clear blue, the sun sharply golden from its low angle. The air smelled faintly of distant bonfires, and the sweet hint of decay from fallen leaves.
“Where are we going?” Riku asked. He never remembered arriving in these dreams, just that suddenly he was there, doing whatever they were doing.
Kairi smiled up at him from one side and shifted the basket she was carrying to her other hip so she could take his hand. Sora, protected by the shade of an umbrella, reached out for his other.
“Halloween is tomorrow,” Kairi said.
“The high holy day of the autumn lands,” Riku said. His tone could have sounded teasing, but he knew it was true.
She nodded. “We go to meet the King of Halloween. To celebrate. For our next year to be the best of everything it can be.”
He nodded. He was starting to understand which parts of this world were just the fact of its single season, and which parts were related to the holiday it built itself around. A perpetual liminal space.
Sora swung his hand a bit more enthusiastically. “And you get to come with us, at least part of the way!”
“Better than where I came from.” Riku didn’t even care how bitter it sounded.
Kairi squeezed his hand sympathetically. “Halloween is about change. The balance between tricks and treats, fear and fun.”
“And if your life has been giving you too many tricks, maybe now is when you get some more treats,” Sora added.
“Never all one or the other. The best treats still have a trick to them,” said Kairi.
Riku shrugged. “If I get to spend more time with both of you, that’s a pretty good treat. Even if I have to wake up after some sort of trick.” He sighed. Someday he’d grasp the logic of it all.
As they walked, the light around them dimmed. The sun never seemed to set so much as they’d moved into the twilight. Fields of pumpkins still stretched along the sides of the path, faintly rustling corn beyond it. But the pumpkins themselves had changed. Now they were all jack-o’-lanterns, still on the vine, but lit from within. Bright smiles, scowls, screams, and snarls stared up at them on the path, the light of glowing candles behind them. Riku didn’t even find it strange.
Sora’s umbrella was put away, and bats swooped by overhead.
As they reached the forest of skeletal trees, even the vague indigo of twilight faded, and a full moon provided just enough light to make the shadows so much darker. Wisps of cloud chased each other across the face of the moon, and the air took on a perfect chill.
Kairi uncovered her basket and handed them each a piece of candy. Riku was reluctant to take it, but also couldn’t turn it down. This time there was no ink, just the sweet-tart bite of candied apple.
The path took them through the forest, past a graveyard sprawling into the distance. Beyond that were more fields of jack-o’-lanterns, and then slowly the signs of a town. Houses, the kind of Victorian architecture that looked made for hauntings, and other buildings that were just the right kind of crooked.
Others joined them on the pathway, spirits from the graveyard, creatures more than half-animal, vampires taller and more brooding than Sora, girls carrying their own heads, and on and on. If Riku wanted, he could fill every page of a sketchbook and more without drawing the same person twice.
Finally, they reached a gateway. It was made of twisted wrought iron, spiderwebs twined around and through it.
Here Kairi and Sora both stopped, forcing Riku to stop with them.
“Through here is Halloween proper. I don’t want to risk bringing you through too soon,” Kairi said.
Riku was about to protest that he wouldn’t care, that there would never be a ‘too soon’ with them. Then Kairi leaned up and pressed a kiss to his cheek, and another to the corner of his lips. He turned his head so he could return the next, and her mouth tasted like sugar and cinnamon.
“I know what I’m asking my treat to be,” she murmured in his ear. “But it’s not Halloween just yet.”
Then Sora was leaning up into his other side, pressing a kiss of his own to Riku’s lips. This time there were no fangs lurking behind it, just a hint of metallic salt beneath Sora’s own sweetness. “Remember what Kairi said,” Sora whispered. “The best treats have a trick to them.”
Riku wanted to ask what this trick was, what he could do to earn this.
“Not yet,” said Kairi.
“But almost,” added Sora.
This time there was no unwanted ink, but he still fell away.
On Halloween, Riku didn’t speak to his parents, and they didn’t speak to him. More of his paintings had gone missing while he was asleep, and he was sure he knew where to, now.
He could have spent the day in a countdown to dark, just wanting to go to sleep.
But no, he tried to appreciate the day, even if he had to do it in solitude. His world didn’t revolve around the principles of trick and treat, or the rites of Halloween, but the world he dreamed of did.
And that one had felt more and more like the one he truly belonged to.
So he carved a jack-o’-lantern, a smiling, welcoming face to place outside the door. His parents were gone, who knew where to, but he could still wait by the door with candy. He didn’t have a costume, but settled for artistically applied makeup, like ink running down his cheeks. And if he could have any small part in letting a child feel for a night what his dreams let him feel, that call of autumn, despite the lack of chill, and the fact that palm trees didn’t shed their leaves… that would be worthwhile.
There were more children than he thought who braved the long driveway to the door. The jack-o’-lantern was the sacred beacon, the lighthouse for trick-or-treaters. He tried to ensure that all of them felt it worthwhile, in compliments and candy.
By 9:00, no one else was coming to the door. His parents hadn’t returned, which he tried not to feel was a gift. By 10:00, he knew that even the last straggling trick-or-treaters had to be done. Still he waited.
He caught himself slipping into a doze, just before midnight, and roused himself from the couch. He could go properly to bed now, and dream of Kairi and Sora.
There was a knock on the door. He cocked his head, staring at it for a moment. It was far too late for anyone to still be coming by.
But it was not his door.
The smooth, white paneled thing had been replaced by carved wood. A pumpkin in the center, spiderwebs and skulls ornately arranged around the sides.
The knock came again.
He reached for the handle.
“Trick or treat!” came the call from the other side, in a pair of familiar, beloved voices.
“The best treats have a trick to them,” Riku said, as he pulled the door open.
The door opened onto a crisp, autumn night, scented with distant bonfire smoke. The full moon warred with fields of jack-o’-lanterns to provide the most light.
Kairi and Sora each reached up a hand, and Riku took them. They pulled him through the door, into the world he belonged in.
