Kingdom Hearts fic: All Strange Wonders - Chapter 5

[mistressofmuses]

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Sora expected that Riku would do at least a few more of the speed spells the next morning, since they’d only gotten through a tenth of them the day before.

Instead, Riku returned right back to what he apparently did every day: a lazy morning in the bathroom, followed by leaving to do whatever it was he did out on the hills.

The main room was actually almost clean, with only a few areas that Sora hadn’t yet sorted through. Once he got into a rhythm the afternoon before, it had gone more quickly than he’d anticipated, much like the kitchen. Unfortunately, he’d still come up empty on the contract.

Ignoring Riku’s off-limits bedroom, there was really only once place he hadn’t looked.

He headed into the bathroom, still scented with whatever fragrances Riku had been using as he got himself ready. The scent was lovely, but that somehow just made the rest of the room seem worse by comparison. There was a truly horrifying mixture of oils and soaps and powders caked on the fixtures, the shelves, the basin of the sink, the mirror…

Even if he’d known for sure that the contract wouldn’t be here, the room was making his spine itch with the need to clean it. And maybe it was unlikely he’d find it here, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t look.

“Are you going to spend the whole day in there, too?” Kairi called. “Riku already does that enough!”

“It’s filthy in here!” he yelled back.

“Pretty sure it’s under the same rules as his bedroom; don’t move things around in there. He likes it the way it is.”

Sora stuck his head out the door. “He didn’t tell me not to clean in here, though. I can leave the door open so we can talk, if you want.”

He had a feeling that Kairi was bored. She was confined to the hearth, which only extended a couple feet into the room, and for all that she moved the castle, that wasn’t much freedom for her. With Riku off doing whatever business he had, she must have been stuck spending a lot of time alone. And Sora hadn’t been much company either.

“If you have to spend the whole day in there. Since all I’ll be doing is wandering around the valley until Riku gets back.”

“Where does Riku go?” Sora asked, ducking back into the bathroom.

It would probably be better just to fill the bathtub, rather than bothering with the bucket. He’d need the water, and this way it could start soaking the layers of slime congealed in the tub itself.

“I told you, he’s probably off wasting our money.”

Sora returned to the doorway while the tub filled. “What could he be wasting money on going out onto the hills?”

Twilight Town was the only town even slightly close to the castle’s moving door, and it certainly didn’t have the array of high-end shops available in Radiant Garden, or even Traverse Town.

“He’s probably after someone,” Kairi said.

Sora started. So much for not stealing hearts! He switched the water off so that he could storm over and talk to Kairi without worrying about it overflowing.

“After someone?” he demanded. “How can you say that like it’s nothing?”

She just looked at him, head tilted.

“You may not be a human, so maybe you don’t have a heart”—

“I do have a heart!” she interrupted, sounding affronted.

—“but for people, they matter! And if you’ve got one too, I don’t know how you could be so calm about him hunting someone down to kill them or- or- steal their souls and hearts and things.”

“Steal their-? Oh, you must be from Twilight Town.”

“What does that have to do with anything? Riku said the same, but I don’t know what difference it makes.”

“Listen, Riku doesn’t literally take hearts, or souls, or anything like that. But when we moved the castle here, he didn’t want people coming and bothering him, so he went into Twilight Town and started some rumors. Mostly that the sorcerer who lived here was an evil, heart-stealing monster. He just wanted people to stay away.”

“But you just said that he was ‘after someone!’”

“Not hunting them, not like that. I meant more like courting.”

“You mean he’s been spending days avoiding work on a spell for the king, because he wanted to… go courting?”

“That is usually what the hours in the bathroom and the clouds of perfumed steam mean, yes. And the fact that he’s been heading out the green door, and staying away every afternoon into the evening? Seems like he’s definitely interested in someone. Though if whoever it is gives in, then it’ll be done.”

“What does that mean?” Sora asked. This wasn’t getting the bathroom clean, but maybe Kairi would give him a clue, if she kept talking about Riku.

“He’s only interested in someone until whoever it is gets interested back. Maybe it is like hunting, in a way, because he wants the chase. But he doesn’t know what to do when he catches someone. Once the feelings are reciprocated, he runs away. He may have broken some hearts, but that’s as close as he’s ever come to stealing them.”

“But that’s still heartless!” Sora exclaimed. “How can he do that to them? Making someone love him, and then abandoning them?”

Kairi sighed. She sounded… sad when she said, “That’s just how Riku is right now. He very truly can’t give his heart to anyone, even if he wanted to. It’s not really his fault. Or well, it was because of a choice he made, but I don’t think he realized what it would mean at the time.”

Sora frowned. “That sounds very unfortunate, but it still doesn’t give him an excuse for hurting innocent people.”

“Lots of people do things they shouldn’t.”

He didn’t know if that was a dig at him for the black door and for going up to Riku’s room, and he didn’t care.

“I have to get to cleaning,” he said, and went back.

He did leave the door open, though he didn’t have much more to say to Kairi at the moment. He ran more hot water in the bath, and started to pick up the tubes and jars and packets. He tried to wipe them down, just go get the dry and flaking bits of things off of them.

Some of them had vague labels on them. One said “eyes,” and another “skin.” The first one was just some fine black powder, which fortunately didn’t look like it was made of actual eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was brave enough to look closer at the little glass jar that was labeled ‘skin’; it was a smooth looking cream that was a light shade that could absolutely have been just what it said.

Other packets and bottles had no labeling at all. If Riku had a system for organizing them, Sora couldn’t discern it. At the moment, he was annoyed enough not to really care.

Sora had spent a lot of time and energy being afraid of Riku, the Heartless Sorcerer. The confrontation at the top of the stairs the previous week had definitely scared him, but now Kairi told him that he wasn’t really all those evil things Sora had believed. But knowing that Riku had started those rumors himself made Sora even more annoyed that he’d actually been frightened.

Riku’s magic was certainly real, and clearly he was skilled enough that even someone in the royal palace was willing to hire him. Yet instead of using that magic, he was off having fun, in one of the most selfish ways possible.

It felt like an affront, that Riku had so much power, and wasted his time on frivolous things. He could probably have lifted Sora’s curse with hardly a thought, but was off ‘courting.’ Of course, since Sora couldn’t tell him about it, it wasn’t like he was really choosing to do something else. But knowing that it wasn’t fair to hold it against Riku didn’t make Sora feel any better.

Even if he did know, why would he even care to help a nobody like me?

Sora channeled all of that frustration into scrubbing, and found that it actually made him a lot more effective at it.

He had to drain and refill the tub a good five times, but eventually he’d scrubbed most of the surfaces free of the coatings of slime that had accumulated. The mirror was significantly more reflective, instead of being obscured by a haze of residue. By the time he’d finished, he’d even worked through at least some of his bad mood.

That night Riku returned in a downright good mood. He hummed something to himself cheerily as he wandered around the kitchen. There was some kind of stew for dinner, which he had Kairi help him heat up.

“Things go well?” Kairi asked neutrally.

“I think so,” Riku said, though he didn’t give any more details.

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The next day could have followed the same routine, except for a knock at the door.

“Traverse Town!” Kairi said helpfully.

Riku answered the door himself, revealing a young woman waiting at the doorstep.

“Hello, sir sorcerer?”

“Can I help you?”

“I need a protection spell. My husband is going on a journey, and I want to be sure he’ll be safe.”

“Of course, wait right here.”

Sora was surprised that Riku didn’t object. Instead, he just went into the kitchen and bundled together a sachet of herbs and powders. He sketched a quick glyph, one sharper looking than the ones for the speed spells, and added that little bit of parchment to the packet.

He handed that over in exchange for a couple coins, which he quickly pocketed. “Have him carry that with him—under his clothing or something, not in a bag he might be separated from—and he’ll be protected from all manner of mishaps on the road.”

It was strange to see Riku… working. Sora had known, of course, that Riku sold spells, but other than the commission from the palace, he hadn’t seen it.

Though after the girl left, Riku rolled his eyes dramatically, and headed to the bathroom, grumbling about unfortunate delays.

Riku spent far less than his usual hour in there before he came hurtling out of the bathroom with an anguished wail.

“What did you do to the bathroom?”

Sora looked up. Riku was standing there, dripping wet, a towel around his waist. He looked somewhere between horrified and furious.

“Cleaned it?” Sora said.

“What did you do?!” he wailed again. “Nothing is where it’s supposed to be, and look what’s happened!”

Riku held out a section of his hair and pointed at it.

Sora… had no idea what he was talking about. “Your hair is… wet?”

“My hair is practically pink.”

Sora squinted at it. There was maybe a slightly warmer tint to it, rather than the cooler silver tone it usually had. “It looks… nice?”

“It’s horrible! How could you have done this? Are you trying to ruin me? My own assistant, working against me? This could end me, completely devastate my entire career, and you act as if you don’t even realize it?”

This was the dramatics of his conversation with the king’s messenger amplified by ten.

“Calm down,” Sora said, getting to his feet and holding his hands out placatingly. “Maybe take a deep breath, and take a seat. I don’t think your hair is going to ruin things.”

He flashed back to Roxas and Xion throwing tantrums about ultimately inconsequential things. He didn’t want to belittle something that was apparently upsetting, but really. Still, he should have known that telling someone to ‘calm down’ was almost never helpful.

Riku collapsed into the chair by Kairi, head in hands. “I could just die here,” he said, voice soft. “For all that it would matter.”

Sora heard running water from the bathroom and, far too quickly, water began to flood out the door. There was too much of it to just be from the taps, as it began to rise over the floor, until it was lapping like small waves at Riku’s chair.

“Riku? Riku, stop it!” Kairi yelled, voice popping and crackling like fire hitting a pocket of sap in a log.

Riku leaned forward, resting his head in his hands. “What’s the point?” he moaned.

The water crept higher, soaking into the remaining piles around the room. Sora had the inane thought that at least there was less for it to ruin, now. But the water wasn’t behaving quite like ordinary water, but instead like something thicker. It seemed to flow toward Riku and climb higher around him, instead of flowing evenly through the room. As it started to come up onto the stone of the hearth, the purple flames of Kairi’s eyes flared large, and she pushed herself back on the logs like she wanted to escape into the chimney. Of course she would—water was fairly notoriously bad for fire.

That was what finally pushed Sora to do something.

He stood up and sloshed his way through the approaching knee-deep liquid. Once he was close enough, he reached out and flicked Riku on the side of the head.

It was enough to make Riku jump and stare at him. The liquid around them seemed to thicken further, no longer flowing in waves so much as oozing sluggishly.

“Stop it,” Sora said. “You’re acting like a little kid! You’re upset enough about your hair to terrify poor Kairi? I don’t really care if you want to ruin your own things, but there’s no need to involve her.”

“She’s involved no matter what I do,” Riku said, still staring at Sora like he couldn’t believe Sora had just done that.

Sora had to admit that flicking a powerful sorcerer in the head like a disobedient cat probably wasn’t his most impressive idea.

“I am, and you could have killed us both!” Kairi snapped.

A pained sound tore its way out of Riku’s throat, and he bent even further over his knees. The oozing liquid thickened further, until it was some kind of thick slime, which blessedly stopped encroaching on everything else.

Having to slog through it to get to the kitchen was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, but Sora did it. He hunted around in the kitchen, which had been less assaulted by the waves of goo, until he found the tea he remembered tucking away in the cabinet. He got a cup of water, glad the sink was functional, then waded back through the slime.

He held the cup out to Kairi. “Will you heat this for me?”

She glared at him. “I’m not sure I want to do anything to help him right now.” But she held out a finger toward the cup, heating the water through. She also left a singe mark on the cup, but Sora didn’t think it was worth saying anything.

He added the tea bag, and held it out toward Riku. “Take this. Are you feeling any better?”

Riku slowly took the cup.

Sora had talked his siblings down from enough fights and tantrums (and had some of his own, even if he preferred not to think about them) to know that sometimes throwing a fit was just what you needed to do. And then once it was out of your system, you could deal with whatever was really wrong.

“I don’t like plain tea.”

Sora rolled his eyes. “Well, I don’t think there’s any milk.”

“Honey. Should be in the cabinet.”

Riku sounded sulky. For the first time since he’d arrived at the castle, Sora really noticed that Riku didn’t look much older than him. Maybe just a year or two, in his early twenties at most. That wasn’t necessarily accurate, since so many magic-users chose to look however they wanted, but Sora was starting to suspect that for Riku it was true.

Sora pushed back to the kitchen and found a small jar of honey, with a label covered in little white flowers. It was cute. Wading through the slime was only slightly easier now that he’d worn a path, and he was horribly aware of how much was soaking into his socks and pants.

After pouring a very generous dollop of honey into the cup—making it as much honey as tea, Sora thought—Riku finally took a sip of it.

“What’s really wrong?” Sora asked. “I don’t think it’s your hair.”

Though now that it was drying, in the heat next to Kairi, Sora realized it did look a bit pinkish.

“There’s nothing under my control anymore,” Riku said, sounding nearly broken. “I’ve tried, and I just can’t seem to make it stick. My family, the king, the deals I’ve made, the people I meet… all of them want things I can’t give. And when I try to do something that I want, it all goes wrong.”

He hunched around the cup of tea.

Part of Sora wanted to snap something about how Riku had no idea what it was like to be unable to control something happening to you, but he bit it back. It wouldn’t have been helpful. And he did understand how one more little thing, on top of everything else going wrong, could be the tipping point.

“I hate the feeling of things going wrong when you can’t stop them,” Sora said. “Believe me. But that means you just have to keep trying, right?”

Riku looked blankly around the room.

“I’m sure we can get this cleaned up before too long,” Sora said, glancing around with him. Of course, he’d probably be the one doing most of the cleaning, as the assistant.

Riku stood up. He snapped his fingers and the slime vanished. “It’s fine,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Kairi, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

She shot a spark at him. “I know. But I’m still mad.”

Riku nodded, and slouched back to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

Sora looked around. “He could really just make all of that disappear in one go.”

“Of course he could,” she said sourly. “That’s practically nothing to him. But all that water could have hurt us.”

“Fire and water-turned-slime aren’t a good combination?” Sora asked, trying to lighten the mood.

“Mn. He doesn’t think things through sometimes. Few humans seem to.”

Sora assumed that was a dig at him, and he ignored it.

He put the honey away, along with the tea. If Riku could create enough water to flood most of the room, turn that water to enough slime to put a hagfish to shame, and then vanish it with a snap of his fingers, why the hell had the castle been in the state it was?

Another thing that Riku had wanted control over, however dusty and chaotic it seemed? And Sora had come in and threw all of that off, too.

Maybe it wasn’t such a wonder that Riku had thrown a tantrum.

Riku certainly seemed to have forgotten about it when he came back out of the bathroom. This time, he was accompanied once again by clouds of fragrant steam, this time scented like some kind of exotic night-blooming flower. Most of his hair was back to exactly its usual shade of silver, with one streak left the pinkish tone. It looked deliberate.

“Well, finally I am off for the day, despite a deluge of setbacks and delays.”

“That you created,” Kairi said dryly.

Riku glanced her way, but didn’t respond.

“I’ll be out in the hills the rest of the day. Visiting some very interesting company, if you must know.”

“We didn’t ask,” Kairi said.

Riku didn’t reply directly, instead giving another deep sigh and saying, “If only all my company could be as pleasant as the lovely Xion.”

He whisked himself out the door, not looking back to see that Sora’s face had blanched completely white.

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