musefic | Entries tagged with ship: sorikai

Finally! The last of the AU-gust 2023 fics! It may have taken an embarrassing number of months, but it is done!

This was my entry for Prompt 31: "Pick Two." The idea was to utilize two or more of the previous prompts in combination. I chose "Doppelganger" and "Behind the Mirror."

This continues directly from "In the Dark," and concludes the Doppelganger storyline.

The doppelganger that's been stalking Riku has escaped, taking over his life and locking the real Riku away.

Sora and Kairi are left with two questions: Where is Riku, and how can they banish the thing that's taken his place?

( The Ritual )

This is the fill for AUgust 2023, Prompt #29: Dark AU. It follows immediately from "Through the Glass."

Pulled through the mirror, Riku is trapped while his doppelganger roams free. The only thing worse than being stuck in the dark and the cold is watching the doppelganger take over his life.

( In the Dark )

This is the fill for AUgust 2023, Prompt #28: Royalty AU. It follows immediately from "A Minor Risk."

I am slowly making my way through the end of the AUgust fics!

Kairi was trying very hard not to be furious with herself, but it wasn’t easy at the moment.

They’d misjudged. Badly. Which really meant that she had misjudged, because this wasn’t Sora or Riku’s fault. They might think it was, but she was the one who thought she could play bait and not get caught.

Kairi has been kidnapped. Sora and Riku are going to find her.

( The Rescue )

This is the fill for AUgust 2023, Prompt #20: Reconnection. It follows fairly immediately from "Excavation."

It's also the first time I've posted an explicit work!

This felt right. The three of them, in a tangle. It was awkward, with too many limbs battling for space and coordination, but it was also familiar, and how had it been years, decades, since this had happened? This felt right, against an infinity of time spent disconnected, separated. Why was this the anomaly?

( Reconnection )

AUtumn continues, slowly!

This is for AUgust prompt #24: Crime AU. (It'd probably be a bit much to call this a full Crime AU, but it does hinge on them planning to commit some crime, albeit with perfectly sound reasons for it.)

This is a sequel to two fics from 2020's AU-gust, "Professional Interest" and "Long-Term Contract." It's probably a good idea to read those two first.

Sora thinks he's tracked down the culprit who stole Kairi's adoption file, if not whoever hired him. Luckily for them, the man is still on the island, providing them a chance to try and get the file back.

( A Minor Risk )

So yes, AUgust has morphed into... AUtumn, lol.

This is my fill for Prompt 23, which was originally "Plumber." I used a joker for it, replacing it with "Western AU," and then let it get a little out of hand, and went with a Fallout: New Vegas setting, which is probably only *technically* western. But here we are!

Riku met the two of them in one of the shitty little temporary drinking establishments that cropped up outside of New Vegas. Nothing so permanent as a real bar, or even a caravan post; just a tent set up over a few makeshift tables, and someone ready and willing to part with some bootleg liquor out of the crate behind them in exchange for a few caps.

...

“The thing is, they’re absolutely onto something,” Kairi said, slamming the heel of the bottle in her hand down in emphasis. “There is absolutely some research in there that would help.”
( Vault 22 )

Work on much of anything creative has ground to a halt due to work stress, but I still hope to slowly get these fics out as I can!

This one is for prompt #22: "Celebrity AU."

It's a sequel to "The Contest," a fic I wrote for 2020's AUgust. It likely does make more sense to read that one first. (And I still had the same issue I had when I wrote that first one: I kept thinking of things that could happen later on in the story, but I don't know that I'm knowledgeable enough to convincingly write this as a longer fic!)

Having won a fashion design contest, Sora and his partner Kairi face the next hurdle: meeting famed model Riku Miyano in person.

( Starstruck )

Well, clearly I did not get all the AUgust fics written during August. Alas! I'm going to do my best to finish the prompt list in September, though we'll see if I succeed.

This is the fill for Prompt 19: Shapeshifter AU

This is based off an idea from a couple years ago, when I was writing a fairy tale-inspired story for the SoRiKai discord. At the time I went with the Gold Tree and Silver Tree retelling, and this was a discarded idea. I was glad to have a chance to actually write it!
It was also pretty clearly inspired by The Decembrists Hazards of Love album, about a woman who rescues an injured white fawn that turns out to be a man adopted and enchanted by the queen of the forest. Though this story ends more happily than it turns out for them, ha.

Sora and Kairi are content to avoid the fae that live in the woods near their cottage, and the fae are content to ignore them. Until the silver deer comes to them for help. Then again. And again.

( The Silver Deer )

I haven't given up on the AUgust fics, just on being on time for them I'm afraid. (My intent is still to make it through the list of prompts... but I just can't keep up the one per day pace!)

This is the fill for Day 18: Time Travel AU

(I suppose you could argue this feels plausibly post-canon as opposed to true AU, but I think I'm playing fast and loose enough with canon rules that it counts, lol.)

The first rewind happened out of desperation.

When Radiant Garden fell, it fell fast. There was no long, slow lead-up; no quiet stirring in the shadows hinting at worse to come. No warning. The darkness overran it in mere hours, first targeting the people who would have been most able to stand against it, overwhelming them by surprise and sheer numbers before spreading out to the rest of the then-unprotected citizenry.

( Reset )

I think I'm going to have to resign myself to being behind on the prompt list. (I'll likely be missing the next two days as well, but my intent is still to finish the prompt list... just likely not by the end of the month.)

This is the fill for Day 17: Fallen Angel AU

It's set in the same (otherwise unwritten) AU as a prompt I filled in the 2020 AUgust challenge, though this scene is much later in that hypothetical fic.

An angel loved their fellow angels, and he loved Kairi.

A guardian angel loved their charge, and he loved Sora.

It had become very clear that the love he was feeling was not the angelic kind that he should have been feeling.

( The Potential to Fall )

I need to find a way to make these shorter! I kept wanting to make this one longer and needing to rein it in. It's hard to capture the weird liminal feel of a good road trip in a short fic! (Though I love road trips dearly, and am sad I haven't had a chance to go on one in several years.)

This is the fill for Day 16: Road Trip AU.

Riku, Sora, and Kairi are on a road trip. They wind up making a strange detour.

( Detour )

Even later after midnight! I'm very tired!

This is the fill for Day 15: Ancient History.

Continuing the immortality plotline from the "Immortal" and "Writer" fills, though this is a bit of a jump down the timeline.

(While this is loosely, loosely based on parts of my experience on an archaeology dig as an undergrad, I took lots of liberties on how one would be organized and such. It's an alternate universe; it can work how I want.)

Arrival on the island felt… momentous in a way that she’d fully expected, yet hadn’t been able to prepare for. It had been such a long time. Impossibly long. She’d never thought she’d be back at all.

Nothing was the same. That was a given. Nothing was as different as it could have been.

There was no village. There were no familiar trails to find where the village had been. But no new cities had been built on top of it. The trees all looked the same, just in new places. Flowers she never thought she’d see again bloomed in the undergrowth. The air felt right. It smelled like home. If someone had asked her to name those things, or even to try and remember them, she would have told them she couldn’t, that it had been too long. Now the familiarity was like a kick to the chest.

( Excavation )

And again after midnight, if barely! Ugh.

This is the fill for Day 14: Witches and Wizards AU

This is a quick post-epilogue followup to my longer fic "All Strange Wonders", which was a Howl's Moving Castle AU. I don't think you need to have read it in order to read this one - I tried to toss in enough context clues for it to make sense.

They’d all agreed that the ocean would be the first place all three of them went.

Kairi knew that choice had really been made for Sora more than for her or for Riku. Not that they were opposed, it just held a little less excitement for them. Riku had grown up on an island, and for Kairi, well… water wasn’t dangerous to her the way it had been such a short time ago, but she was still a fire spirit. Mostly.

( Fire and Water )

At least I'm before midnight this time!

This is the fill for Day 12: Book Shop AU.

I was a bit surprised that no ideas grabbed me too strongly for this one, because I *love* book shops. This was another one that I had to just sort of go for, but I think I like it.

(I haven't ever heard of this sort of event - I've heard of the "blind date with a book" thing in both libraries and used book stores, but never the additional layer of "blind date", ha.)

Kairi gets dragged out to a local "blind date with a blind date with a book" event, where participants are matched up based on the books they've selected. She doesn't have high hopes for the event, though the man who makes small talk while they pick their books - and the friend he came along with - are both quite charming.

( Blind Date With a Book )

Still a day behind! But here is the Day 6 fill for AU-gust. The prompt was "Domestic AU."
It follows directly from the Day 4 fill for "Runaway."

The title comes from another Jimmy Eat World song off the same album. The song (and the album) is "Futures."

"I always could count on futures
That things would look up, and they look up.
Why is it so hard to find a balance between
living decent and the cold and real?"

The feeling tended to creep up on him by surprise, and when it did it was overwhelming.

This would have seemed impossible for so long.

Years after they decided to leave, Riku thinks about where they are now.

( To Find a Balance Between )

I've fallen a day behind! I had unavoidable plans last night that I had to go straight to from work, so alas. I'll hopefully get caught up in another day or two.
So despite being the 6th (where I am), this is the fill for Day 5 of AU-gust: Pet Sitters AU.

This one was a little difficult, as we lost my mom and younger sibling's dog to old age earlier this week. She had 16 good years, but we are going to miss her.

Kairi and Riku are both pet-sitters, with a fairly intense rivalry after a previous falling out. So they're both understandably surprised to discover they've apparently been booked for the same pet-sitting gig...

( Double-Booked )

Day 4 of AU-gust. Today's prompt was "Runaway."The title of this fic (and the general vibe, at least to me) are taken from the song "Work" by Jimmy Eat World. That song has always given me a sense of... melancholy desperation, knowing things have to change, but wanting to be able to control how they do.

"All I can say,
I shouldn't say,
Can we take a ride?
Get out of this place while we still have time..."

Riku, Sora, and Kairi have one final night to spend together, before they go off to separate futures that none of them want. They have one enormous decision to make: do they walk onward down those paths that were chosen for them, or do they create their own?

( While We Still Have Time )

Day 2 of AU-gust. Today's AU prompt was "Writer".

This is perhaps not a terribly traditional incarnation of what's meant by a "writer AU", but here we are. :) It's an AU and someone writes!
This also turned out way longer than I meant for it to! I definitely can't keep up a fic a day at this length, lol.

It's been centuries since immortals Riku, Sora, and Kairi were forced to flee their island home. It's been at least a hundred years since they were all together. Sora and Kairi both have gotten close to finding Riku, only to find the writing he's left behind.

( Finding Pages )

It's August, somehow! That means it's time for AUgust, a challenge structured around a different Alternate Universe prompt for every day. (I last participated in 2020, and had a lot of fun with that!)
I had good intentions of trying to work ahead and get some things completed in advance, but predictably I did not end up doing so, alas. So I'll try to write a fic a day for as long as I can, but we'll see how it goes!
The prompt for Day 1 was "Sightless."

Sora and Kairi provided a sort of calibration for whatever this sense was. The brightest lights he’d ever encountered.

( Sightless )