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I'm still trying to make my way through the rest of the prompt list! I'm trying something *slightly* different; rather than sticking to things solely in order, I am letting myself move on to the next prompt if I'm having a hard time with one.
That said, this is the fill for Prompt 21. The original prompt was "Coaches AU," but I'm using one of the jokers for the challenge, and instead writing a "Role Swap AU."
I am skipping 20 for now, until I get up the courage to finish and post an E-rated fic, ha.
Sora’s hand slipped out of her grip, and the water pulled her under. Kairi reached desperately for Riku in the dark of the waves. Please, let me protect them. Her fingers barely brushed Riku’s before the water forced them apart.
It was too dark and too deep for where they’d been standing, even given the storm. There was nothing she could do to get her bearings, and instead she sank.
The storm started just after sunset, lightning flickering in the clouds far offshore. Storms hadn’t been in the forecast, but that was hardly unusual. The weather had always done strange things around the islands.
I hope it doesn’t mean we can’t set sail tomorrow, Kairi thought. All she’d been able to think about that evening was their raft, the idea of setting off with Riku and Sora. They were going to find her home. Her original home. It had to be out there, some real place, not just the strange fragments of memory that unexpectedly came to her out of nowhere.
It was early for bed, yet she dozed off.
A bizarre dream. Stained glass, shadows that were more than shadows. The sensation of falling, from impossibly high, like she was falling from the sky itself. That felt familiar in a way it certainly shouldn’t have. Though hadn’t she always been told she’d appeared from a meteor shower? The island below her, then suddenly water above. She wasn’t falling from the sky after all, she was being pushed underwater by the waves. Sora and Riku were in the water with her. They both placidly reached out for her hands, but she couldn’t quite grasp them, the water pulling all three of them apart.
Kairi startled awake to a rumble of thunder. She stared out her window toward the play island. She couldn’t see it from her balcony, but she still knew exactly where it was.
The clouds had darkened, standing out even against the night sky. They blotted out every hint of stars, growing by the minute. The lightning flashes were all the brighter for it. Thunder cracked in the wake of the lightning bolts.
The raft! They’d left it on shore, above the normal tideline, but if the waves got bad it could be washed away. She couldn’t let that happen.
Without more of a plan than that, she climbed over the railing of her balcony, carefully dropping herself down to the lawn below. She set off at a run toward the beach and her rowboat.
Kairi was the last to arrive on the island. Sora and Riku’s rowboats were already tied to the dock.
She tied her own boat off, and ran up the dock.
The wind was already worse than it had been when she was rowing over. The heavy rain blew sideways, making it even more impossible to see anything in the dark, except when lit by flashes of lightning. The play island had been a home to them for years, and all three of them knew every inch of it, yet the bright flickers made everything look unfamiliar and strange. Things were too sharp, the shadows too deep.
The others had to be here, but Kairi couldn’t see them. The sand wouldn’t have held their footprints, even if it hadn’t been for the wind and the rain. She could see the shape of the raft, still pulled to safety above the waterline. The raft had been her reason for coming here, but if Sora and Riku were already here, she had to find them.
Another flash of lightning and a near-simultaneous crack of thunder. The shadows seemed to get even darker after. Then they moved. Kairi shook it away as an optical illusion, some strobing effect from the lightning in the clouds. Then the shadows looked at her. Blank, gold eyes glowing in the dark, until the shadow broke away with a twitching motion, lurching toward her.
She ran.
She ran for the clubhouse, hoping maybe the others had taken shelter there. Hoping that would somehow be safe from whatever the shadow things were. She remembered some fragment of her dream from earlier, about shadows that weren’t shadows.
One of the shadows-that-weren’t-shadows leapt at her, slashing out with claws that she already knew were going to hurt.
Kairi shut her eyes and flung up her hand in a vain attempt to ward it off, even though she knew it wouldn’t help.
Clang.
The attacking shadow bounced away from her, sending reverberations down her arm. Opening her eyes she saw she was holding… a sword? Not a sword. A key. An enormous key, gold and silver. It had clearly worked to force the shadow thing away.
“Kairi!”
She spun towards the shout. Sora was standing in the waves. He held out a hand to her, as calmly as he would have on a sunny afternoon.
“Sora! Kairi!”
Riku was running toward them both, from back the direction she’d come. He must have been near the waterfall. Shadow creatures leapt at him, though none caught him.
“Sora! Come back in!” Kairi called, the wind diminishing her shout. “It’s not safe!”
The waves were already getting higher. Even if they tried to leave the play island now, their little rowboats wouldn’t make it.
“We’ll all go!” he shouted back. “Remember? We’re going to find your home!” He held out both of his hands, pleading for her to take one. For Riku to take the other?
She ran towards him. If she could take his hand, pull him back to shore…
Riku was running at Sora with the same determination, only feet away.
They each grasped his hands at the same moment, just as a tremendous wave crested behind him. It crashed down over all three of them.
Sora’s hand slipped out of her grip, and the water pulled her under. Kairi reached desperately for Riku in the dark of the waves. Please, let me protect them. Her fingers barely brushed Riku’s before the water forced them apart.
It was too dark and too deep for where they’d been standing, even given the storm. There was nothing she could do to get her bearings, and instead she sank.
Kairi woke up in an unfamiliar alley, in an unfamiliar town.
She learned that Destiny Islands had fallen, been taken by the heartless. That was what those shadows-that-were-more-than-shadows had been. Heartless.
The key that had appeared to protect her was a Keyblade.
Sora and Riku were nowhere to be found.
She did find new friends, other people fighting against these heartless, trying to save the worlds they hadn’t yet destroyed, hoping to find a way to restore the ones that were already gone. They were traveling between the worlds on their quest, and Kairi went with. It let her see places she’d never even imagined existed. It was a chance to look for Riku and Sora.
Everyone told her it was unlikely, bordering on impossible, that they would have made it off the island the way she did. She didn’t believe that. If she’d made it, then they had too. Their hearts were just as strong. Maybe they hadn’t found their way to Traverse Town didn’t mean they hadn’t found their way somewhere else.
Sora woke up in darkness.
A woman found him. She explained to him what she was doing, how she was going to unlock the door that connected all the worlds.
Wasn’t that what the worlds deserved? she asked him. Hadn’t he and his dearest friends wanted nothing more than to find the other worlds that had been promised to them? The worlds they knew in their hearts must exist, yet had been denied to them?
Surely that was what his beloved Kairi would have wanted? To find her home?
Of course, Maleficent also told him, they never could have found her home by sailing out across the water. She was from somewhere else, somewhere they’d never have been given the opportunity to find. So wasn’t it almost a favor the heartless had done for them, allowing them to see so much more than they ever would have otherwise?
He couldn’t disagree with her, and so he helped her.
And she promised him: This was how he could find Riku and Kairi. They’d been pulled away from each other in the storm that hit the islands, but if Sora helped her to open Kingdom Hearts, that source of all hearts would surely allow him to find them.
Kairi found Sora.
Only briefly. He wanted her to come with him, and she wanted to, but…
He offered his hand again, just like in the waves. Just like nothing was wrong.
She almost took it, except…
“I can’t,” she said, with real regret. “I promised I’d help my friends—”
“We are your friends! Me and Riku!”
“I know that. Of course you are. Is Riku with you?”
Sora hesitated, then shook his head.
Kairi fought down the disappointment. Finding one of them was still a good thing. She pushed on. “But I already promised, and I have to try and protect the worlds. What happened to Destiny Islands, we’re trying to stop from happening anywhere else.”
Sora drew his hand back like it had been burned. “You wanted to see the other worlds. You wanted to find your home.”
She nodded, unsure what that had to do with this.
“Now you’ve seen the other worlds! But you don’t want anyone else to do the same? That’s what we’re doing. We’re connecting them to each other. So you wouldn’t have to sail away on a raft and pretend it was going to bring you somewhere really new. Don’t you want that?”
“I wanted to find my original home, but not to lose the one I had!” Her voice cracked on the last word.
“Well the islands are gone. But we weren’t. It’s like you haven’t even been looking for Riku!” he accused.
“That’s ridiculous. I’ve been looking everywhere for him. And for you! Just… wait here, okay? Let me get my friends, and I’m sure we can explain everything.”
But when she got back, he was gone.
Sora found Riku.
Well, Maleficent did.
But he wasn’t… Riku.
“An empty shell,” she said. “His heart is locked away.”
“Locked away?” Sora asked. “Where?”
She waved her staff, and a green-tinged illusion appeared in the air. It showed the tremendous doors that she’d told him led to Kingdom Hearts.
“Where all hearts go,” she said. “Almost certainly. If you want to rescue him, then we will have to succeed.”
Kairi found her home.
The one she’d been seeking at the very start. It was a bit of a painful irony, to find it empty, deserted, in a state of near-decay. The people who’d wanted to help her find it, who were willing to set sail on a homemade raft to do so, weren’t with her. She was starting to worry they were gone forever.
If that was the trade she had to make to find her ‘real’ home, she would have been happier never finding it.
It was beautiful, though. She’d never imagined the sort of magic that the world seemed to take for granted. Magical machines that provided transport between sections of an impossible castle. The library that she’d always had fond memories of, yet never been able to place. She already knew her way around, though in her memory it all seemed so bizarrely large compared to the reality.
The painful irony continued, when Sora did arrive to see ‘her’ world. It was anything but a happy reunion.
She’d never wanted to fight him, but he didn’t leave her a choice.
Finding Riku was worse.
Finding out that he was an empty husk because she had taken his heart wasn’t worse, but it didn’t feel much better, either.
She remembered the very last thing she’d thought, as their islands fell, and her fingers brushed against his. Let me protect them. And in a way, at least she had managed that. She’d held Riku’s heart inside of hers without realizing that was what she was doing. She’d kept it safe, but he needed it back.
The Keyblade was meant for unlocking hearts, wasn’t it?
Sora knew he’d been wrong. The realization came too late for him to help, because he’d already made his deal. He’d been offered power, power he thought would be used to save the worlds, to ultimately rescue Riku and Kairi, even if they didn’t recognize that was what he was doing.
Well they’d been right. He wasn’t rescuing them. Instead he’d traded his body away to some presence, some monster that planned to allow all of the worlds to fall. ‘Ansem, the seeker of darkness.’
Except when the doors opened… Kingdom Hearts was light. It wasn’t the endless darkness that Ansem had believed. It was the light of every possible heart. In the face of that light, the monster who’d taken him burned away.
Except there was darkness, too. Hearts themselves held immeasurable light, but also the potential for so much dark. The doors had to be closed.
“Come back!” Kairi yelled, when she saw him begin to haul on the door from the inside. “It’s not safe!”
The strangest double-vision, of this having happened before.
“No time!” He flashed the brightest grin he could. “It’ll be fine. You need to push!”
Kairi hesitated, and Sora focused on Riku instead. “Come on, Riku. Push. We have to get the doors closed before the heartless break through.”
He could feel them behind him. He didn’t know what he’d do when the door closed, and he was left alone with them. He’d figure it out then, probably.
Riku pushed against the door, and Sora felt it shift under his hands. Kairi finally lent her strength to the task, and the door began to move. Slowly, but definitively.
“Take care of him,” Sora said, glancing from Kairi to Riku.
Kairi’s eyes were full of tears, but her mouth was set in a determined line, and she gave one sharp nod of agreement.
“And take care of her,” Sora said.
“Of course,” Riku said.
And the door closed.
Sora might be trapped. If he’d learned anything from his travels between worlds, it was that anything was possible. He might be lost, but that did not mean he would never be found. He could still find his way to the light, and to the two of them.
(Back in 2020 for AUgust, I also wrote a role-swap AU. That one is titled "All You Are Heir To," and gives Kairi Riku's original role, while Riku takes on Sora's, and Sora takes Kairi's. While I like that particular swap a bit more, this one was a fun challenge to try swapping the trio the other way!)
