Kingdom Hearts fic: Fractured Moments - Day 4 - "Freeze"
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museficSummary: Riku despairs.
[Set late in the fic-yet-to-be-written, Riku believes he's lost the people he loves.]
Warning for implied character death
I let her die. She would be alive if she hadn’t been chasing me.
Riku’s eyes burned, and not from unshed tears. He did not deserve tears. This was like sand, sharp and cutting every time he blinked. He remembered the mirror shattering after showing him that last, awful moment. The tiny shards, small as dust, blowing into his face, his eyes… Such an insignificant thing, compared to the enormity of loss. And already, the physical pain was fading.
“You’ve been given the gift of seeing things as they truly are.”
Was that what the glass shards did? Revealed the truth? He looked up at the twisted, evil thing before him. No illusions now. No lovely, terrifying, tempting faces.
“Clarity. Truth, without the pretty lies we use to soften it.”
“What truth do you expect me to see?” Riku choked out. What worse thing could there be?
“The worlds, all of them, are ugly things. People are ugly things. Self-interested, petty, cruel. Any glimpse of light, like your Kairi, will be snuffed out by the vicious. That kind of light is not meant to survive. And the light that is not destroyed quickly will gutter and die, extinguishing itself as it discovers the futility of its fight. Your Sora.”
“My fault…”
“They were seeking you. But surely, you did everything within your power to dissuade them...“ A pause, letting the condemnation bloom. “Oh. Of course. Because you didn’t have the same kind of light they did. You liked that they would seek you, that they loved you. And so no matter what you said, you enjoyed having their attention.”
Riku folded in on himself.
“I have one more gift for you.”
There was nothing to say.
“The gift of a cold heart. You see the world as it is, but I can also grant you an even better boon. For your heart to freeze over.”
Riku hated the treacherous flicker of hope. But anything would be better than this. To not feel the weight of the grief that he hadn’t even mapped the edges of yet.
“Look at me.”
Riku did, his dry eyes feeling like another layer of condemnation. The advisor, the shape-shifting thing that had been tormenting him, now looked like… nothing. And everything. Twisted, awful, and yet like nothing had changed. The whatever-he-was knelt down, and pressed his fingers to Riku’s chest.
Riku didn’t resist as he felt the shard of glass break the skin, and then keep going into his chest. The sharp, real kind of pain became a burning cold, still painful but oddly unreal. He glanced down and saw a few drops of blood welling from the wound, but that already seemed to be closing. His heart felt like a stone in his chest, its beat suddenly slow, pushing the cold through his veins, until his whole body felt distant.
The man leaned close, and murmured in Riku’s ear, “A frozen heart will let you travel to the very depth of winter, where the Snow Queen dwells. With our glass in her ice, we can grant these gifts to everyone.”
To freeze his heart had been a promise of peace, at least of a sort.
Contentment, love, joy, those were out of reach, but at least numbness should have been attainable.
It was far, far later, surrounded by the mirrors replaying the worst things he had ever seen or thought, reflecting back his twisted, evil, true self, that he learned frozen did not mean unfeeling.
[previous chapter] [next chapter]
[Set late in the fic-yet-to-be-written, Riku believes he's lost the people he loves.]
Warning for implied character death
I let her die. She would be alive if she hadn’t been chasing me.
Riku’s eyes burned, and not from unshed tears. He did not deserve tears. This was like sand, sharp and cutting every time he blinked. He remembered the mirror shattering after showing him that last, awful moment. The tiny shards, small as dust, blowing into his face, his eyes… Such an insignificant thing, compared to the enormity of loss. And already, the physical pain was fading.
“You’ve been given the gift of seeing things as they truly are.”
Was that what the glass shards did? Revealed the truth? He looked up at the twisted, evil thing before him. No illusions now. No lovely, terrifying, tempting faces.
“Clarity. Truth, without the pretty lies we use to soften it.”
“What truth do you expect me to see?” Riku choked out. What worse thing could there be?
“The worlds, all of them, are ugly things. People are ugly things. Self-interested, petty, cruel. Any glimpse of light, like your Kairi, will be snuffed out by the vicious. That kind of light is not meant to survive. And the light that is not destroyed quickly will gutter and die, extinguishing itself as it discovers the futility of its fight. Your Sora.”
“My fault…”
“They were seeking you. But surely, you did everything within your power to dissuade them...“ A pause, letting the condemnation bloom. “Oh. Of course. Because you didn’t have the same kind of light they did. You liked that they would seek you, that they loved you. And so no matter what you said, you enjoyed having their attention.”
Riku folded in on himself.
“I have one more gift for you.”
There was nothing to say.
“The gift of a cold heart. You see the world as it is, but I can also grant you an even better boon. For your heart to freeze over.”
Riku hated the treacherous flicker of hope. But anything would be better than this. To not feel the weight of the grief that he hadn’t even mapped the edges of yet.
“Look at me.”
Riku did, his dry eyes feeling like another layer of condemnation. The advisor, the shape-shifting thing that had been tormenting him, now looked like… nothing. And everything. Twisted, awful, and yet like nothing had changed. The whatever-he-was knelt down, and pressed his fingers to Riku’s chest.
Riku didn’t resist as he felt the shard of glass break the skin, and then keep going into his chest. The sharp, real kind of pain became a burning cold, still painful but oddly unreal. He glanced down and saw a few drops of blood welling from the wound, but that already seemed to be closing. His heart felt like a stone in his chest, its beat suddenly slow, pushing the cold through his veins, until his whole body felt distant.
The man leaned close, and murmured in Riku’s ear, “A frozen heart will let you travel to the very depth of winter, where the Snow Queen dwells. With our glass in her ice, we can grant these gifts to everyone.”
To freeze his heart had been a promise of peace, at least of a sort.
Contentment, love, joy, those were out of reach, but at least numbness should have been attainable.
It was far, far later, surrounded by the mirrors replaying the worst things he had ever seen or thought, reflecting back his twisted, evil, true self, that he learned frozen did not mean unfeeling.
[previous chapter] [next chapter]
