The web site of replicanon

The first thing Riku saw was his counterpart bent over an island in the middle of the kitchen. The second was Kairi's thin hands snarled in his hair. The first thing he heard was the moaning, the second his own breath.

The first thing he did was stop in the house's threshold. The second was turn and walk right back outside.

The rattle of the door banging against its hinges was so loud it penetrated the buzz between his ears. It was an alarm, to both the house's occupants and Riku himself: they know you're here. The thought had Riku running. His sneakers hit the cobblestone hard, scraping dirt off the path on the turns, the thing he called blood pounding in his head. He was almost surprised he could hear the sound of the door opening somewhere behind him, the shouted, "Riku!"

He didn't stop. His legs might be shorter—static in the face of biological time, unchanging, determined, essential—but his will to be away from this situation surpassed any desire the other might have to catch him, to talk, to have the conversation that already hung over their heads like a miserable cloud.

Of course, the conversation would have to happen. Clouds open, rain pours down. The head eats the legs eats the legs eats the legs. Riku could feel it in his throat; useless, but inevitable, seeing as they lived on the same island. But there was some little pleasure in his knowledge of the other, for he knew it would be to their collective preference if they were given three or so weeks to gather themselves for that inevitability.

As such, with a heat in his cheeks and an ache in his core that could not be attributed to jumping one fence, two fence, old fence, new fence, he threw himself through the air and down onto the packed dirt of the road. He ran, stumbled, found a quiet house he could hide behind until he heard the distant sound of footsteps stop, retreat, and then disappear behind that familiar rattle of hinges.

Another minute passed. Finally, he stood and staggered away home, his shirt pulled low enough to cover his thighs and something stuck in his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, sweaty hair swayed.

Water echoes, drips from the silenced showerhead making uneven music with the rain outside. The bathroom lights are off. He rarely turns them on. The grim afternoon leaks in through the windows and casts the room in muted shadows, a blue-green tinge.

Eyes a not so distant shade flicker in his mind, turquoise candles guttering. A memory of them; skin crinkled at the corners, neck curved in resistance, a mouth hanging open, lips parted in surrender. A pale hand in pale hair. One pulls hard, one moans harder. All that fight for a frisson of pleasure.

Riku stares at his feet, sodden against the floor. The tile's not quite scummy, even if there's grime in the grout. It's still wet, ripples in the water as all the drops surrender to the weight of the world and fall. From the shower, from the glass walls, from the ceiling, from his shoulders and the curtain of his hair.

He stares at his feet, at his toes, the raised lines of pseudo-veins, the knob of his ankle. He stares at them, and not the hair. At the tiles, but not the hair. At the circles in the puddles as they spiral down the drain, at the threatening mold, at the shadows of palm trees as they shudder in the summer storm. He stares, he stares, he stares.

The hair, the hair, the hair.

It's there, hazy at the edge of his vision, a blur bleeding into the grime of the world. It never grows longer, but it won't stay cut either, and the strands he severs crumble into dust before they touch the ground.

It's replica hair; false, a poor substitute, a pathetic imitation. Perfectly controlled, which means that it's beyond his, beyond him.

And yet there it hangs, before his eyes, wet and wanting. Swaying, swaying as he shivers.

Entombed in the gloom, the fetid humidity, the discordant harmony of a tropical storm and a sodden bathroom, he reaches out and tugs his hair. Weak, weaker, then hard, harder, and there's a stinging stab.

A frisson through the strand and down his spine.

He gasps, staggers, but there's no room in the shower. The tile meets his back, leaves it as he slides down and rocks forward into a low squat. Nearly slips.

His fingers are still in his hair. He gives it another pull, as hard as he can bear by his own hand.

There's something tangled in his throat.

The tiles are rippling. He can't see his own reflection and he is glad. Nothing about it would be unique, anyway. Not even the skin crinkling, neck curving, mouth opening, lips parting in surrender.

His hand drops and his hair sways back into place. He sweeps it out of his eyes, then covers them.

The last thing he can do is look too close.

Three weeks, and now this. Riku took in the noon bustle of an eatery in Destiny Island's town center, sweltering despite the thatched palm awning, and pretended it was more interesting than the expression his counterpart was making as he fondled his lunch. The fish in leaves held all the attention of his hands and none of his head. Riku's own steamed vegetables and mushroom-stuffed red bean bun left him feeling similarly, but he could at least manage to bring the latter to his mouth and take a bite.

He couldn't have done it with the fish. His own experience as an object that felt had left him ill-inclined to treat anyone else that way.

But there's no way that's what you're worried about.

Around them, teenagers, adults on break, parents with kids, elderly couples, adventurous seabirds, daring insects, and a local pig got on with their meals. They were, collectively, and in some cases singularly, loud enough that anything the two of them said to each other was as good as private, so long as they didn't shout or babble while one of the aunties waitressing bustled on by.

We could always not talk, though. What's there to say?

Maybe if he wished hard enough, he'd get lucky and add a third death to his somewhat unimpressive two. Maybe, maybe.

All he managed to get was another bite of his bun.

"Hey," the other said. All that pretending he didn't want to look, and now that he was being asked to, Riku had to push himself. When he did, though, his counterpart merely continued with a murmured, "Can I try one of those buns? Sora said they're pretty good. We usually get the pork ones, but lately we've..."

Riku was tempted to say no—you didn't get a lunch you could share with me so why should I share with you—just to stop the rambling, but he couldn't muster the temper or appetite to do so. He passed one over. His eyes hooked on the fish in leaves, picked and plucked, but hardly touched, braised flesh hidden beneath the deep green of their funerary shroud. Across the table, the other chewed on a mouthful of sticky bean paste, knocked back a glass of juice as if it were something much stronger, and spoke.

"Listen, about what you saw—"

"I don't care." The humidity had him sweating. What was the purpose of sweat, for a replica? Worthless body. It was hot enough that he could excuse the flush if it was noticed. "I don't care what you and Kairi do, or you and Sora, or any of the rest of you."

It was true, but the other frowned, brushed aside his too long bangs. Riku's stomached twisted, a tangle plugging his gullet. "So that stunt you pulled with the fences was just for fun?"

It's not like you don't have a history of casual gymnastics. Thinking of their similarities did not help. Riku took another bite of his bun. The mushrooms and beans had to have a flavor. He remembered them having one. It seemed to have gotten lost, crushed beneath the press of his jaw and the memory of hands in hair.

How many seconds do I have before I have to talk? …eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—

"Hey..."

—thirteen.

There was a poetry to it, which was unfortunate seeing as Riku hated poetry.

"I don't care what you and Kairi do," he repeated. Dough squeezed through the gaps between his fingers. He'd pulverize the bun if he wasn't careful. He loosened his grip, but the remnants clung. "Can you really blame me, though, for being surprised? I'd just arrived. It's not the sort of thing you expect to see when you walk through someone's front door."

There was a pause. It wasn't totally unreasonable.

"And the fences?"

Riku leaned back in his chair, sunk his teeth into the remains of his bun—and his finger—and suppressed a hiss. At who, or what, he had no idea. At the pain. Pretend you haven't had worse. It was an effort not to gag. "Because I didn't want to have this conversation?"

A sharp breath. Silver hair ruffled, strands catching the dappled noon light. Even the awning's shadows couldn't conceal their shine.

Riku's own had similar qualities—if perhaps a little lacking in lustrousness, another failure of his—and yet, for whatever reason, Vexen had programmed the abilities to sweat and blush and eat, but not to age externally or grow his hair.

He'd shaved it all off once. It had taken less than a minute for whatever mechanism inside him ensured his stasis to push it out of what passed for a skull again. It crept, slow and gentle. There was no pain, no pressure, no force. Just a biologically determined state, decided for him.

Although 'biological' might be a stretch.

He shoved his fringe out of his face with a sticky hand, all dough and sweat and plastic polymer, and looked across the table at a face still too like his own. The mouth was opening. He remembered how lips looked parted around a moan. Fingers gripping, pulling, the neck and back arching in their ecstatic curve.

Teeth cleaved through mushroom, bean, and bun into the softness of his tongue. A yelp escaped, and whatever the other had been about to say got lost in his laugh. It was grating, but he was decent enough to offer him a cool cup of water from the complimentary jug. Riku held it in his mouth to soothe that hot sting, swallowed. He wished the tangle in his throat would go down with it, but alas, all that was washed away was the metallic taste of replica blood.

"Do that again and this conversation's going to end up even more one-sided," the other said, grinning.

Riku scowled and tossed the last of his bun back on his plate. "Why would I care? I don't even know why we're having it. I'm not judging you. You and your friends"—the almost-mirror twitched, pronoun catching on the lip—"can do whatever you want with each other. I didn't expect you to be into it, but I don't care."

"And that's why you ran like there was a hoard of Heartless behind you? Because you don't care?"

"Yeah, that's about it."

He was being petulant—and why shouldn't he be, when he was stuck at fifteen—but what else was there to say? The other pursed his lips, took a sip of his drink. He wasn't gulping it now. Maybe because he was on solid ground and Riku was the one slipping. The silence drew out taut and the thing he called a heart kept tripping over it.

"You didn't expect it?" The other asked, finally.

"Hm?" It came out thick, caught on the tangle.

His counterpart glanced to the side. The gossipy aunties were off at other tables, the birds and the kids making enough racket to drown out a misplaced Firaga. Riku would have appreciated a stray one of those, although he was already so hot he doubted it would change much.

Nothing changed much.

The other's eyes returned to him. Even in shadow, they held too much light. "You didn't expect I'd be 'into it.'"

Always so many reasons to hate one's past self. "No, I didn't," he said. "But why would I? I didn't know you were into anything." Except making mistakes and stumbling through the consequences to unforeseen victories. He tried not to be jealous. It wasn't like the Real Thing was the only one with a couple of undeserved mercies tallied by his name, and he didn't particularly want to see him hurt, anyhow.

Hair in dappled light.

His counterpart huffed. "Well, I mean, I didn't either, but you live and learn. Kairi was the one who suggested it. Guess she and Axel learned a whole lot of things alone in those woods." He paused. "Guessing without Merlin."

Riku blew air out his nose. He was full of thick clumps and snarls and couldn't stand the little jumps of his chest. "Yeah, well..." No, he could hear the wheeze. He had to stop speaking. And he didn't know where he was going with the sentence, besides.

"I'm surprised you didn't pick up on it, honestly. The potential," the other clarified, at Riku's dull stare. "You were with me for a while, back when we fought Xehanort. We were close."

It sounded like a plea, and Riku didn't know why. I'm made of you, and then I was remade in the shape of others' impressions of you and their desires. But the real always had trouble acknowledging the fact of falseness. He liked to pretend Riku was his own person. It was a head eating legs sort of conversation, that one.

"We had other things on our mind," he said. He couldn't look at the other, his bangs in his eyes and his eyes made to drown him, and so instead examined the light refracting off the red bean mushroom guts of his discarded bun. A fly hovered nearby, interested. Riku scowled but did not shoo. "Your preferences weren't really my top priority." He could feel the other watching, wished those bangs would poke him in the eye. Added, "I suspected you were into...things."

You loved your friends. You never forgot Ansem's hands reaching for you, nor Mickey's protecting you. Darkness wore you as much as you wore it. A part of you liked that. You longed to submerge yourself in it. Sometimes, you do. But just as often you want to be flayed tenderly.

His mind offered more. His lips offered nothing. He wasn't going to list all the ways one comes apart.

The other snorted. "You probably suspected more than me, then. I wasn't looking all that closely."

"You don't need to look all that closely," Riku said. "You just need to look in the kitchen, of all places."

Thud. There was a throb as his counterpart's foot hit his shin. Not hard, just enough. It was probably intended jovially, judging by the embarrassed grin in the almost-mirror, but Riku could not muster up any enthusiasm. The other might reach, but the humidity weighed him down. It was hot and he'd gone off, rancid as the fish. Am I starved enough to risk the hook? Maybe he wasn't quite ready for his third death. Not this way. He kept his mouth shut.

The smile in the almost-mirror faded. Riku dropped his eyes to the banana leaf shroud and the unlucky corpse within.

"It bothers you."

Riku grit his teeth—more heads eating legs eating legs eating legs—aimed for even-tempered and got somewhere close. "It doesn't."

Maybe not close enough. His internal frustration reflected on the other's face. "Then why the mood? You're not usually this bad."

A flinch. Ignore that. "But I'm usually bad?"

An answering scowl, a stutter. "No, I didn't—mean that."

"And my running away didn't mean anything either," Riku said, throat full. "Jumping a bunch of fences because I saw a person with my face doing that isn't the stupidest or strangest thing someone in your life has done. I've done worse. You've done worse. Too many people you know have done worse." A twitch at the pronoun. We're not the same. He wiped a clammy hand across his forehead and tried not to flinch at the prickle of his hair. "I'm happy you and Kairi have something new to get off to. I didn't need to know, or mean to, but now I do." He saw the other open his mouth, spat, "Does it make you happy?"

The other rocked back.

Riku tried not to choke, changed his tone. "Does it make you happy?" Softer. He didn't even know why it came out the other way.

An unearned mercy was tallied by his name as his counterpart paused. Whatever he had been planning to say was dropped, replaced with a murmured, "Yes, it does. It really does."

A flush beyond the heat. They really were too pale, the two of them, for this island place and the humiliating farce of their lives.

"Good," Riku said, with more force than intended. Maybe that was what he needed. Who's he?

He pushed the thought away, straightened, made sure their eyes met across the table. Everything was set in order, nothing seen and nothing shared except that one word. Good.

"Do you mean it?" The other held his gaze, tried for a smile; awkward, but honest.

"Yes."

"And that really was just the world's biggest overreaction to having to talk about sex?"

"Yes." It's probably the biggest overreaction in a lot of worlds would have been a decent joke, but he couldn't bring himself to make it. He could have pointed out they looked like brothers. The other would have understood. It wouldn't have been honest, though. Or maybe it would have been, just not in a way that meant anything good. "Can't I be a teenager too?" He tried instead.

A chuckle. The other relaxed in his chair. "Yeah, I guess."

An aunty passed by and they fell silent. Riku watched as his counterpart gestured that she could dispose of the fish's remains, a small swarm of flies having gathered. They might have looked like mourners, except Riku didn't think anyone other than him mourned fish. He nodded when the aunty made to take his bun, although a hand reached over and snatched it off his plate before she could. She gave them both a look, then left. Riku made no comment as the other ate. He picked at his vegetables. His mouth was dry and sticky, tongue stinging. He took a sip of his warming water and slouched back in his chair.

His head hung, throat bare and hair like a weight, strands clingy with gluey sweat. Cached in the awning was a mausoleum of bugs, catching threads of sun. Take the darkness to light, does it reveal anything good?

The other took a sip of his juice, cleared his throat. A thump in Riku's chest. He realized he didn't want him to speak again, couldn't stand him leading the conversation. He lolled his head, took the chance from him.

"Do you suck Sora's cock?"

Why did he say that? Why did he say it like that? He already knew the answer. To which question?

The other heard him. Heard his tone, at least. Something shifted. He stopped sucking juice through his straw.

"What do you mean?"

Riku kept going. Why did he have to keep going? The flies moved to a nearby table. Maybe they'd noticed the mausoleum. "I mean, the three of you are close, right? I was just wondering if you sucked his cock while Kairi pulled your hair, or if that was a separate thing." He still wasn't saying it right. It sounded like an accusation. It sounded like judgement. But it wasn't. It was something worse. The tangle in his throat gagged him, the buzz like flies in his ears. "Do you do that in the kitchen? Could they make you?"

Scratchy strands tickled Riku's cheeks. He couldn't quite breathe. The other's jaw worked, fringe falling over his eyes like a veil. It was worse than any stare. Riku wished his eyes would come back just so he could look at them instead, didn't want to think about his hair and the way the tangle in his throat twisted, plunged into the depths of the thing he called a stomach. Maybe it might come free, though, if only someone pulled, pulled, pulled it.

He thought about dead fish and flies and not about tension and force. Not. Not.

"If I do those things," the other said, voice closed, "why would you need to know? And besides, you didn't want to have that conversation."

"But you did." He was surprised. It came out like a joke. Rather, it came out like it was trying to be a joke, and Riku was frustrated to hear how obvious the trying was. It failed. His teeth formed up, made a smile, but it wasn't returned. It felt sleazy, anyhow, scummy and gross. Rancid.

It fell and Riku let his head roll back along the top of his seat. The wicker dug into his neck through his—

"Never mind. I don't care what you're into."

"Sure..."

Silence, or as close as they could get with the noon crowd bustling about them. Riku couldn't look across the table or else he'd see the hurt. He knew the conversation would keep going, circling and circling, the head biting the legs even as it choked. He didn't want that. He just wanted it to end.

The worst part about leaving it there, though, was knowing that he'd meant what he'd said. He really didn't care what the real deal was into. That wasn't it.

He turned his head from the thatched awning to the side and then down, took in the dirt. As he did, his hair caught, just briefly on the wicker. The pull-snap shivered through his body. His pulse beat in his ears. He closed his eyes.

They said nothing else that mattered. The other ate his vegetables, then both their desserts. Riku recalled neither ordering it nor protesting its loss, although there was a hesitancy in the almost-mirror when he took it from him.

Riku hadn't cared, though. It was the way of things.

When they'd dredged his remains from the Realm of Darkness, the other had been there.

Riku remembers in pieces. The curve of magic, the edge of technology, the animal caring not uncommon among many a biological being; harsh and tender. He remembers searing lights in a blur above him, conversations like he's in deep, dark water. The splinters of him had ached whenever they weren't in agony. They still do, sometimes.

Even and Ienzo had been careful. Aeleus and Dilan had been careful. Ansem had been careful. Naminé, painfully so. He recalls other voices: Sora, often, a nervous Axel, a curious Xion.

But, mostly, he remembers him, arms a cradle for the unwanted child. Take the darkness, return it to light.

It would never be that simple. Riku wasn't sure he even wanted to be light. He wasn't sure he wanted to be anything.

He knew he didn't want to be.

No one ever got that choice, did they?

The unwilling child.

Deep, dark water.

"—happened to the other one?"

"The Riku you fought in the Graveyard was reconstituted into the whole." Ansem. "That individual was lost, even if aspects of him have likely bled into the whole. There is only this one; the one who sacrificed himself for Naminé."

He can't recall if she made a face. She had, he was sure. Sad.

She was always sad, though. Even her warmest smiles were heavy with it, joy weighed and found wanting. It wasn't even the things she'd had done to her, no matter how much she had suffered being silver to another's gold, having power but no way to protect herself, existing in the object space along with him and their fellow creatures crawling inside the walls. No, it wasn't that. It was the things she had done herself.

Dying for her had let him see that. Ripped through time and shadow, pieces of himself cutting through his pseudo-flesh, his heart of hollow sterility, faced with his own resistance, his own agony and spite, his insides, he had, somehow, been able to see her. The eyes that had made him became eyes he could see through, and for just a moment he had seen her as her. He did not have eyes of his own—a replica could only be owned, after all, built in the shape of others and living 'lives' of their design—but he had seen her for so long through what she had done to him, through what had been intended for him as replica, as tool. But then, in a second of violence, in the theft of his own life, the life of his darker self, he felt the fractures, the force of everything, and what bled in as well as out, and saw them both, them all, through eyes that could only be hers.

It felt fortunate, that force.

He still cares about Naminé. He always will. He can't help it. But he can see her more clearly now, and it changes that care.

And it's care that changes him. The other, the real, the original sitting by his bed at the strangest times of night, the middling hours of the morning, the lull in the afternoon. He had come to him in those in-between times, the blurred places hidden amongst the early rush, the lunch bustle, the bright evening. Riku recalls how odd it had been to look up into a face just like his own and see his feelings staring back, no matter how different the shape of him was now, no matter that they would only grow more so.

Well, one would grow.

What he remembers most from then isn't the eyes, although they had been warm in the cold, or the pain and the weariness, although there'd been plenty. It isn't the mechanized conversations of monitors speaking. It isn't the babbling of the apprentices, all science and soft pleas and offers of restitution that had been genuinely meant and yet changed nothing. No, what he remembers most is that curtain of silvery hair.

He remembers the faintest brush when his reflection had bent over him, just the once, and pressed his forehead against Riku's own, as if doing so would tell him something secret, something special, about his broken replica body. Broken. Replica. Perhaps using both is redundant. But he does not recall thinking that. He recalls thinking that the real had been seeking something from him, like a mother with child, like a brother, like a lover. It had hurt Riku because it hadn't.

There is the memory of a hand cupped gently around his cheek, a hand Riku had covered with his own. His hair had been trapped, caught between a false face and a real palm. It had been a barrier keeping skin from skin, and yet, somehow, had been no less intimate for it. The touch had been gentle, fingers sliding over strands. They'd pulled him back from the edge, back from the endless shadow, back from the deep water.

Riku wished he'd stayed there, although he does not know if he means in that moment, on the examination table, with Riku's hand, or in the darkness.

In the now, his fingers catch a hair and pull. His stomach twists, the tangle draws tight. If he drew it taut enough, would it come loose? Would he unfurl?

No, it can't be him, and he can't want this.

Naminé spent most of her time in Twilight Town and Radiant Garden. It was easier to go unnoticed on those worlds; the crowds of the former allowing strangers to pass unseen, or even stay and live, if they preferred. As for the latter, well, a substantial portion of the population knew about all those other stars in the sky—unlucky lives, the lot of them—and that made it relatively safe for travelers to build homes there.

Much easier, at least, than choosing to live on a series of small, unchanging islands, where it was nigh impossible to find food without fish or pig and the water pressure was so garbage it made washing in the ocean falls—or the ocean itself—preferable. Much easier than having to rely on one of Ienzo's Rumor Mills and their constant suggestions—of course you know this boy, he's always been here, how embarrassing you don't remember, don't ask about it—having to hope the magical mind filter did not fail. It didn't change any memories, only ensured that when people thought of him, or saw him, they never felt the need to wonder where he'd come from.

Explaining you're a terrible copy of someone else is exhausting even with people who know about worlds and replicas. Trying with someone who doesn't...

Yet somehow, here Riku was.

He supposed there were advantages. The eternal dusk of Twilight Town appeared a poor light show when compared with your average Destiny Islands' sunset. Riku could understand visiting for that reason alone. It was why he and Naminé went to the beach every time she visited, even if the weather was overcast and the sky dim.

It was why they were out here now, sitting under a pale afternoon sun, passing the hours with the occasional sigh of conversation as they waited for whatever limp dusk was to come.

"Maybe it's just our luck," Naminé said, eyes on the sea; mild beneath the bleached gray clouds scudding across dullest blue. Riku turned to look at her properly, caught her smile. Frail, as honest as she could manage, framed by hair thin and fragile, painted in sickly white shades. She looked as if a light breeze might blow her away.

There was a twinge. Still, he shrugged, smiled. He suspected his was weaker than her own.

Her attention returned to the sea, as did his. The vista before them was a little uncanny in its monochrome, the surf spewing its seafoam along the shore. The sand was grit against his skin. It didn't feel like home, but it was as close to one as he had ever had. He suspected it was as close to one as he could ever have.

Silence. A year ago he might have come up with something, but there was little enough to say these days. The silence wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't awkward either. It sat there with them, strange, but not totally unwelcome.

Except Naminé must have thought differently, because she asked, "Are you going to be visiting next month?"

He gave another shrug. "Probably."

"You didn't come with the others on the last visit, so I thought it might be nice if you did this time." It felt pointed. Riku ignored that.

"I'll be there. Are we staying with you?"

"You can. Some of the others might. There'll be a party at Roxas's, though."

"So Axel's."

Technically speaking, it was Roxas's old home; the real one, not the data fake. Riku always called it Axel's, though, because everyone liked to dance around that. He wasn't sure why. The two of them didn't really have a bad relationship, in large part because they barely had a relationship at all. He supposed what happened between them at Castle Oblivion stuck in the others' minds.

But if I can talk to Naminé, I can talk to him.

In the end, Riku thought it was silly. And besides, even if he were bitter Axel had found room in his non-existent heart for Naminé, Roxas, and Xion, so what? All three of them, regardless of any violence done, were nicer than Riku. He had the sharpest edges and he wasn't unaware of that.

Axel hadn't even forced him to do anything. Did anyone? He'd just said this and that thing, and Riku had molded himself to his whims, same as he'd done for everyone else he'd encountered. It was the way of things.

There was a memory of him, from Riku's time on the examination table; a pale face hovering, skeletal, brows furrowed and lips downturned. Machines had whirred and beeped, and Axel's shadow had loomed, almost as terrible as the glassy green of his eyes. Flame hair wavered.

Kairi pulls it for him. I wonder if that also makes his eyes wet.

"It's Xion's too, you know. They all live there."

Riku blinked, twitched. Irritation flared high a moment. He wasn't sure why. "I'll be there," he said. "I'll stay with you."

He didn't really want to, but it was easier talking with Naminé than anyone else with a room on offer. He should have been able to relate to Xion, but something about her seemed impossible to him.

She's happy. Do I want that?

Would I have to accept and feel things the way she does, then?

Maybe they expect that of you.

He did not shiver. Every unseen screw of him was wound too tight.

It was a good thing, he thought, that Naminé lived alone. On the edge of town, where all was quiet. She might have yearned for company in Castle Oblivion, in the Old Mansion, in Kairi's heart, in every crack between the worlds she'd misted into, but in the end, she had known emotional solitude too long. She couldn't quite stand people. The brief time she had spent in the Destiny Islands, she had struggled. Here, where everyone knew everyone and spoke to everyone and expected to be spoken to, she had been made too solid. Riku might have felt the same, if his sharp edges hadn't cut all ties he hadn't sought to keep.

Except you didn't, not really. You just fell into line.

His violence was obvious. Hers was too soft, and too cruel. People didn't see it coming, didn't know to stay away.

"You can stay however long you like. Kairi and the others are also going to be there, although they have a sleepover at Pence's planned for a night or two."

She said it like an invitation. Knowing this, it still seemed a threat. Riku didn't even dislike Pence. He hardly knew him.

He wouldn't go, but he didn't say that. He was finished with the conversation. His eyes stayed with the gray sea, the gray sky, blending together in a gray eternity. It was hard to tell where one ended and the other began, and so very easy to imagine being swallowed by it. The experience seemed like it would be a gentle one, a fading, but he knew that was a lie. It pleased him. There was something satisfying about the fact that, despite the façade, it would rip and break and choke and crush.

Pull, pull, pull me under and apart.

He shifted, set his left arm over his bent knees, his right elbow on the left hand. On the other hand he placed his head and, slowly, slid his fingers into his hair. Naminé couldn't see.

Why would it matter if she did?

"Did you talk to Riku?"

Somewhere inside, a wire sparked. What passed for a heart pounded against his chest. Everything slowed. There was that tangle in his throat. "Did I—talk to him?"

"You said you needed to talk to Riku the last time I was here. Something about a lift to Radiant Garden?" She made it a question, even though it wasn't. Sometimes, that annoyed him, but right now he was just glad that was all it was.

"I—" He stopped. "I...haven't. Not about that." That was why he'd been there, though. Riku didn't own a Gummi ship, and despite having asked about it there had been some hesitation with regard to helping him build one. Glances had been exchanged. He still wasn't sure why. Had they thought he'd drive off into the darkness and never come back?

Imagine if he made a real choice, for himself and only himself.

Having no ship, though, he had to ask Sora or his counterpart whenever he needed one. He'd expected to have a tiresome conversation that ended in approval. He'd never expected—

to see him bent over the kitchen counter, a sharp shock of red framing him, curling a hand through silvery strands, pulling the hair taut, the neck taut, the back into that perfect curve, eyes the color of truest sea bright but going hazy, lips falling open, sounds Riku had never known existed echoing inside his head—

to jump three or four fences.

"Oh..." Naminé's silence hung heavy. It had been a month and a half since her last visit. "Well, if it's important, you can come back with me. I wouldn't mind. I'd like the company."

No, you wouldn't. Riku shook his head, felt his cheek rub against both hand and hair. Soft, too soft. "I just wanted to talk to Even about something."

"You have his number, don't you?" A pause, then delicately, she added, "If you don't have it anymore, I can give it to you. I could call him, or talk to him when I get back."

"No. It's fine." He didn't know why she was talking like this. "I was just going to ask him something about replica bodies. It was a conversation I wanted to have in person."

What he actually wanted was to see if he could change, see if his pseudo-flesh could become something, someone, see if it could crawl out of another's image and into his own. He wanted to see if he could break himself and be victim to the violence of time, to see if, having a body that could not withstand an onslaught of blades, he might then have one that bowed to all of them, even the humble scissors.

But he'd wanted to talk in person. He'd wanted to plead in person. And maybe he'd wanted to talk to the Real Thing first. Maybe he'd wanted to see what he thought about Riku becoming a different sort of other. His own other, and not just othered.

Would you celebrate it? Ask me to stop? Would I lose the parts of you that are you and not me?

Would you tell me that the parts of you that are me are also mine?

Would you tell me I'd stop being me if I changed? If they took that away? If they took the me that is you away?

Or would you be gentle, so supportive, and all the while relieved to see the death of your doppelganger?

Would you get exactly what you wanted?

Would you make me do it then? Would you force me?

Force me. Drag me to my end.

"Riku?"

"Hm?" He'd gone off in his own head. She'd noticed. She couldn't notice. "Sorry, did you say something?"

"I was just asking if your Rumor Mill was holding up. Ienzo said he'd had to fix Xion's recently. For some reason her body was rejecting it."

She hadn't noticed. He curled a strand of hair around his finger and tugged, didn't turn to look at her. If he did, she might see. "No one's asked about Riku having a younger twin, so it's probably fine."

He thought she was probably smiling, even if she didn't mean it. "And no one's given you any strange looks?"

He shook his head. Then a laugh broke free. "Actually, I did have someone look at me strangely a few weeks ago. I think it was because they saw me vault over a bunch of fences."

Did he say that? Why did he say that?

A second. Two. Three and a half. "Why did you—"

"You don't want to know."

Her silence said she would, but then she always did. Everything belonged to her.

He tugged his hair again, felt something rise in his throat, sore, and then pull free as a couple of strands ripped. It wasn't quite what he wanted, but it would do. Maybe it was good for there to be things about him she didn't know.

Maybe one day there'll be enough of me that I'll have to know more about myself than she does.

But she could take that from you. You'd give it up, soft, easy. She'd decide for you, soft, easy. And with your choices, how could you complain?

With what you are—

He pulled, hissed.

"Riku?"

He wouldn't look at her. Her voice quavered. He didn't like it.

"I wanted to see if I could, Naminé." It was a lie, but he told it. "Don't you ever just want to see if you could?"

Maybe it wasn't a lie. Maybe they just weren't talking about the same thing anymore.

She was quiet. She knew. Of course she knew. She had held him too long between her hands—hands that shaped him, hands that made him—not to know. But she'd do nothing. She was too soft. She was made of paper and mist and winter sunlight and the tide's sick foam.

All that, and she could tear a heart in two.

"Sometimes." She was shivering, albeit on the inside. He could hear it in her throat. "I suppose."

He said nothing else. From the corner of his eye, he saw her wrap her thin arms around her knees and shudder. There was a breeze, but he knew it wasn't the cold.

And then he did say something.

"Hey, Naminé?"

"Yes." She sounded hopeful.

"What do you think the kindest thing you ever did for me was?"

It's a weird question. It's a cruel question. It caught like a hook, and he could hear her struggling in the silence, trying desperately to get free, get loose, to stop some part of herself being made into a corpse for him.

Why was he doing this to her? That snarled, acid something was back in his throat. Another pull, another pull, like drinking too much.

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe...when I stayed by your side after you were hurt, in Castle Oblivion. Or when...when we saved—got you back, finally, and I helped put you together again." She was already shattered. "That made me happy, you know. It felt like I'd finally done something for you."

The tangle twisted, soaked in sour. It wasn't quite rage.

Don't say it.

"The kindest thing you ever did for me was when you broke me that second time back in Castle Oblivion before I could kill Sora. When you cracked me open with all the force in you and left me on the floor, mind in pieces."

He said nothing else. She said nothing else. There was only the breeze and the sea and all that unseen violence underneath.

Riku could feel its pull.

It's not like he's never fought. The first thing he ever did was fight his other. But it's always been something he starts, or something he's been maneuvered into doing. He's a piece on a board, easy to position, to put in place.

He thinks of Vexen, designing him from what he stole from the original, a purpose already in mind. He thinks of Naminé, at the behest of others, remaking him, and then setting him down to face Sora. He thinks of Axel, seeking his skulking shape in the halls of the Castle and baiting him into killing Zexion.

He chose to face his other that second time. He chose to aid him against Aqua.

He chose to annihilate his dark self.

He still feels that last one like a betrayal, a bleeding ache. Yet it was what he chose.

But, sitting inside at his tiny kitchen table, the dingy light buzzing overhead, he thinks it's not the same; to fight and to be forced. He knows the former. The latter, though, seems denied by the very nature of his being. It is the violence of I'll do this to you, the violence of I'll make you do this.

One might think he had experienced that, but he hadn't. It's hard to see it, after all, in gentle fingers undoing a link here, replacing it there. Does it exist in plying words? Can it exist in the act of creation, your very birth?

No. If that is a violence, then it's the sort that skews when you look at it, bends in the light, ripples like the water. You can look all you like, but you'll never be sure how much of it was their fault, and how much of it was yours. Never sure if they hurt you. Never sure you're hurt.

Never sure you're allowed to be hurt.

Never sure if you were made for this.

Do this or I'll hurt you is different, though, as is I'll make you do this by hurting you. He can see it, then. It's so simple. It's agony, but it's easy. And maybe he's easy, fingers playing along the waistband line, his other hand running over his head, curling, twisting, snarling, pulling.

He wants it to be easy.

He wants it to be seen.

Axel told him once that Larxene had been violent toward him. She stays away, mostly. He's not sure it would matter if he did see her, because he still can't remember that little sliver of him from before. No one—not even Naminé—ever volunteered to retrieve those memories. He never asked about them, sure, but really? Not even an offer?

Of course, it was a given that there was nothing of value there, that who he'd become once she'd changed him was preferable. And perhaps the fact that Vexen had made him from the original's data, for his own purposes, meant there wasn't even a self there to begin with. That he's always been a blank slate.

He did see Larxene, just once, across the room at some gathering. She'd stepped outside and he'd followed, caught her in one of Ansem the Wise's little gardens. In that closed space he'd found her and asked, "What was I like?"

She'd looked at him, a gaze that slid down her nose. There was something like a sneer there, but not quite. It might have been pity. He hadn't liked it. It didn't suit her. She couldn't look kind.

"Why ask me?" She'd said. "You're friends with Naminé, aren't you? You talk to Axel. You talk to Even. Go ask them. Go ask Marluxia. He was in charge." She'd paused then. She'd left Elrena behind her, and she rarely called Marluxia Laurium. Marluxia rarely called himself Laurium. And yet, the pause had dragged. Another thing he hadn't liked. Hesitancy didn't suit her either. Then she'd huffed. "Go away." She'd shooed him with a wave of her hand.

He hadn't left. "I'm not asking them. I'm asking you. What was I like?" He'd stared up at her. "You owe me that much."

"I owe—" Thin lips had peeled back around a snarl. Had her teeth always been that sharp? But he hadn't backed down and she'd deflated rapidly. Her shoulders had slumped, snarl becoming a scowl. It had seemed like she was sulking. Worse, it had seemed like regret.

But Elrena had been Larxene for too long to go back to whoever she was before. Maybe the rest of the Organization could face what they'd been and accept what they'd returned to, but she couldn't. There simply hadn't been enough to Elrena herself. She was a slip of a thing shocked by the lightning's flash, burnt out of the world, her imprint overwritten on the back of all eyelids by a burst of forked fury. No girl could have withstood that. She'd lost to her storm, a thing more dangerous than even her own shadow.

"You were proud." She'd said, finally. "You weren't afraid of the dark like Riku was." Another pause. He'd thought she might add something; a clarification, a modifier, an acknowledgement that he was something other than singular. She hadn't. It had made him happy. Almost happy, anyway. "You were fine with that. You liked it. You enjoyed being who you were, for the most part. You had no issue with the purpose for which you were made." She'd smirked. "You thought you were better than Riku, and even when you lost to him, that only made you more determined. You were sure you could be better than he was. You were sure that was what you'd become."

Riku had listened, but he had not recognize the thing she spoke of. He couldn't.

"You weren't afraid of the dark," she'd repeated, "but I made you afraid of me." She'd smiled grimly. There'd been no joy in it. "Or, at least, you were afraid of what was waiting for you beyond me, once I'd made it clear you couldn't get away." She'd laughed, full of air and empty of anything else. "Can't say I blame you."

He could. He does. Her, or himself. He doesn't know.

She hadn't shared anymore. He hadn't thanked her. He'd opened his mouth to, but the words had died and curled on his tongue when he'd seen her face. There'd been something like him there; not the same, but similar. There were whole pieces of her beyond her knowledge, pieces that had never, would never, come back. She knew of her past, but she'd stopped grasping for it.

Larxene is a terrible person. Maybe was a terrible person. But, somehow, he appreciates her. Looking back, he doesn't know if he was going to thank her for talking to him, or for giving him that little bit of easy violence, that force he can't remember.

He'd left her in the garden, then. He leaves the memory of her, now.

He tugs at his hair, hard as he can. His breath seems loud in the quiet of his kitchen.

He tugs, he tugs, he tugs.

He wishes there was blood. He wishes he could rip his head off.

Riku slipped out the back door, music and laughter rendered into murmurs as it slid shut. There was no one in the yard—another small mercy, another tally—as he slumped down the steps and across the tiny brick court, skirting the racks of potted plants and the clothes horse and stepping into the little square garden beyond. It made the court look big in comparison, a patch of grass with an unlit brazier, bordered on three sides by low walls. Bushes and flowers made their home in the dirt behind them, a few short trees seeking to offer some semblance of privacy. There wasn't much, what with the size of the place and the fact that just over the fences on either side were the gardens belonging to the neighboring townhouses.

But there was no one outside, the brazier was cold, and the noise from the party had been strangled to near silence. It was as near to peace as he was ever going to get.

Inside, chaos.

It hadn't been so bad, at first. There'd been more guests than expected—Terra, Ven, and Aqua flying in on short notice, Chirithy in tow—while the Twilight Town 'Disciplinary Committee' had decided that party crashing was included in their job description. That hadn't been the issue, though. More guests meant lower expectations. It had been a relief, knowing he could get lost in the crowd. They all knew him, sure, but not that well, and once he'd returned their hellos with a nod or a raised cup, most had been more than happy to leave him standing by the wall.

That was fine. He preferred people watching, at least in company.

It had been noisy. There'd been board games, cards, and snacks—sometimes even ones he'd eat—in the kitchen, video games and catch-up in the lounge, dancing and singing and shouted conversations in the rumpus. There'd been darts, too, and that he'd actually played. It had been alright. Fuu had been there. He considered her good to talk to, in large part because she disliked rambling and words longer than three syllables, and was disinclined to pry where she wasn't wanted. So long as Seifer didn't ask her to, anyhow.

His other opponents—Pence, Hayner, and Seifer—had been tolerable in their way. Pence was nice, and his proclivity toward the occult interesting, if occasionally overwhelming, but he was too curious and a little snap happy with his camera. He'd endured Hayner and Seifer primarily because they'd been most interested in doing whatever the dart-throwing equivalent of dick measuring was, their constant taunting of each other nothing more than verbal teabagging.

It had been homoerotic. Such behavior typically was.

Fuu had won the game. Riku had thought she might throw to give Seifer a chance, but he and Hayner had been neck-in-neck, and behind Pence and Riku besides. Riku had thrown himself, because winning drew attention, and he preferred avoiding that. It wasn't like he'd had a perfect score, anyway. A scratchy chalkboard on the wall listed the results of several games, and his counterpart sat near or at the top of most of them.

So Fuu won, because to her that was better than Pence winning. He was Hayner's friend, after all.

More nods, more cups raised, and then the players had gone their separate ways. For Riku, that had meant he'd ended up in the rumpus room with the terrible karaoke. He had considered sticking with Fuu, but she had reattached herself to Rai in the lounge, and Rai was her opposite, in that he made Riku wish he might fade back into shadow at the heart of the Realm of Darkness.

He didn't hate him, though. He just really didn't want to be around him, ever, if possible, y'know?

So Riku had ducked into the rumpus.

And there, across the room, had been a little table. Naminé and Kairi had sat there, heads bent close, whispers coming to a stop as two pairs of too blue eyes turned onto him like a cerulean nightmare. He'd stopped. They'd stopped, then turned to each other, then back to him, then back to each other.

Then they'd leaned in close, red and gold near enough to tangle.

They'd been talking about him. Why had they been talking about him?

There'd been nothing he could do about it. He should have gone over, but he hadn't really wanted to talk to either of them. What could he have said? What could he have done? He hadn't even known if they'd been talking about him.

Except of course they had.

Fences and kitchens and improvised gymnastics and hair. Wispy seaside conversations, edged with seafoam sick.

Him. Him. Him. Tongues had slid around his name, hands had gestured, fingers had twirled and tugged. He'd shivered.

Be louder. Show me your teeth. Shut up. Stop talking about me. Talk to me. Don't. Do.

They hadn't talked to him. He hadn't talked to them. Instead, he'd settled against the wall by the door to watch Axel and Sora and his other sing. Axel and Sora, mostly.

It had been fine, at first. Axel was tall enough that you could look at most of him, even his face, and so long as you didn't raise your head you could imagine he didn't have any hair at all, that his most interesting feature next to his too long limbs and too long fingers and too long torso and too long face didn't exist.

Well, he's been doing his makeup again.

But then there'd been Sora, because of course the sky would not be contained. He'd spun and danced, hips bouncing, amateurish singing loud and exuberant. Brown hands had grabbed his counterpart's pale ones, pulled at him, his arms, his shirt, his shoulders.

His hair, just a little. A tender tug, unnecessary.

There'd been nowhere else to look, and even if there had been, Sora's voice had saturated the air, his heart singing light until it was empty, and then filling it back up with laughter, with harmonies, with the bodies around him. It had been then, as it always was, full of warmth, of pleading as he'd asked the other to sing too. Riku had known he would give in, because he remembered things that weren't his, and then more things that weren't his, and then, maybe, a few things that might have been his, if anything ever could be, and one those things was Sora's voice.

So his counterpart, his almost-mirror, had danced and sung, caught between red and golden-brown warmth, caught between Axel—Kairi was the one who suggested it...she and Axel learned a whole lot of things—and Sora—if you sucked his cock while Kairi pulled your hair—caught between and pulled, back and forth. His lips had parted, his hair, so long now, had caught the dim warm light, and the world had spun and spun and spun.

Laughter.

His eyes had shot across the room. Kairi and Naminé had been giggling, clapping, and Riku had stared, stared, stared through everything, through miles and miles of darkness that burned, and when he'd turned back to look at the other, that burning had seared real flesh and real bones and real blood and real hair.

He'd crushed his empty cup in his hand. He still didn't know why.

Everything had been too much. Naminé and Kairi whispering—sharing things, knowing things, things that didn't need to be said or told of or spoken about—and his counterpart dancing, teased by Sora, Axel bobbing along beside and between them. The laughter, the hips, the lips, the hair in the darkness and in the light.

He'd had to get away. Had bumped into—Roxas?—mumbled a sorry, heard him call out. Hadn't turned back.

There'd been a room set aside for people to rest in, but Chirithy had stolen it less than an hour after he'd arrived. He had looked exhausted. Riku'd still seethed. Aqua and Olette had also been in there, having girl talk with Vivi, who wasn't one, but had been dragged along with them all the same. He'd heard them through the walls, from their hideaway upstairs. He'd stumbled, Ven and Terra's cheers piercing as they'd lost their minds over—a board game. The lounge hadn't been any better.

So he'd found—tripped over—the bin bag, thrown his crushed cup in there, found another, filled it with whatever. It was all fruit, no bite. They never drank alcohol when he was around. Hadn't for a long while.

Why? Did they think he'd do something? Was he a tool only to hurt? To be hurt? Wasn't he allowed to have fun?

Did they think him incapable of making his own decisions?

Unchanging thing.

Always subtle, never forced.

He'd hurried out the door.

Now, he stared into the unlit brazier and wished it was something worth thinking about. No good. He looked up. The sky was interesting, right? There was no night, after all, just a moon that circled through a singular, shifting sunset, and that was how the people here told time; twilit days separated by lunar cycles.

It was getting dark, though, if only because rain was coming. The layers of cloud were arranged like fish scales or palm bark. Their gray was a dark one, edges lit with fire, mauve, deepest violet, and just a sliver of sickly green. It promised danger, violence, but Riku knew the sky could lie just as often as anyone else, even if it thought it was being true. The horizon beyond was golden, red spilling in thick strokes.

He couldn't see much of it, of course, but he doubted it looked all that different from when he'd come in, from the last time he was here. Nothing much changed anywhere, save the clouds, which only came closer.

Clouds. Think of clouds. Clouds, clouds, clouds. Cloud? He barely knew him. He knew Rai better than he knew Cloud, although, in all fairness, that was because all you needed to know about Rai could be learned in a minute spent watching him lose hard at racing games, y'know?

I don't know.

Head hanging, a hand crept up into his hair.

Clatter!

Riku straightened at the burst of sound; shouting, singing, the blare of a television, the thumping of feet and the scraping of chairs, a loud laugh. Then it was gone. He glanced over to see Xion stepping out, a cup in hand, eyes scanning the yard before they came to a stop on him. The potted plants and clothes horse did nothing, it seemed.

She hadn't dressed especially fancy, although her dark jacket and white pants seemed infinitely more put together than his shirt, undershirt, and pants, hoodie tied around his waist. He looked past it all to her face, her hair. She'd kept it short.

Did she even have a choice in that?

He remembered her Rumor Mill.

"It's busy in there, huh?" She smiled as she approached him. "Roxas said it was quiet out here, though. Guess he was right."

He nodded. She bobbed her head toward the spot beside him and he shuffled over a little. There wasn't any point in fighting her presence. This was her house, her garden, her low brick wall. She had something. She had a home.

Riku couldn't understand.

They sat side by side in silence. She did not try to start a conversation. Instead she looked at the brazier, then the clouds, then at him. He shook his head when she mimed lighting a match. No point. She shrugged, looked forward again, took a sip of her drink.

Whatever their differences, he thought they could find something to talk about. They were kin, in a way. Naminé and Roxas were Nobodies, even in their new forms, but the two of them were replicas to their very core. Their only other 'family' in all the worlds had been the Xehanort replicas, and, well, they were proof, he supposed, that it had never been anyone's intention that they become their own people; not as humans, not as animals, not even as mind-bearing machines. Their contrasting dispositions were unusual in that regard. He wasn't sure they had potentials—does anyone, really—but the fact she had both grown—and copied and drained—so well, while he could only cope—but saw, he thought, a more honest view of things—made him wonder if it were true that some replicas had been built better than others, or for different purposes.

She had offered to be there for him, back when he'd talked to Even that first time. When all his pieces had been pushed into the shape of a passable person. When he'd been able to sit up without hearing every fault line fracture of him scream. When his other had removed the hand that pressed the hair to his face and stepped aside, away, and left him shivering.

She had offered to be there, but he'd said no.

Naminé had told him she'd spent a lot of time with Even since. There were things a replica needed to know, maintenance that needed to be had, maybe comfort that could only be given by the man who'd made them. Maybe comfort only they could give him. Riku didn't think much about that. He didn't really talk to Even, but it was good to know that the man had the decency, at least, to give the replicas what they were owed.

If we could be owed.

He shivered.

Talk to her.

Why not ask Naminé, then, if he wasn't going to wait?

Because he didn't want to ask her this. Because he didn't want her to know. Because how many more thoughts could he give her?

Because maybe a near stranger was preferable to the one who shaped your soul.

Because maybe he thought Xion would just say it.

Because maybe he couldn't wait anymore.

Because of the hands, and the hair, and the noise of the party still ringing in his ears; that persistent buzz.

"Can I ask you something?"

She startled, looked at him with wide eyes. Was it that strange for him to start a conversation? He was sure he'd started plenty in his short life.

"Sure," she said, smiled, sipped away her shock. A pang; there was more warmth in the crinkled slivers of her eyes than in his loudest outbursts, his desperate pleas, his suicidal sacrifices.

Could she have figured out how to mean something?

"About our bodies."

"About replicas?"

"Yeah." Eagerness grew. "You've talked to Even about them, right?"

She had her teeth in her lip. Eagerness diminished. "Sometimes. Not recently, but we did talk a lot after—everything." She waved her hand. He didn't need an explanation. "And I go to my regular checkups. Axel makes such a fuss." She hummed, amused, then whispered, "He doesn't like to seem like he's fussing, of course, but we can always tell. He's so uncool."

She giggled, still warm, too warm. Riku snorted. Was it laughter? It felt like something else, but he wasn't sure. He knew what she was sharing in the abstract, but in the moment, he couldn't say he understood her. Not personally. He had to say something, though. "Yeah, sure."

He left it at that.

A sip. Her eyes darted to him, a flash of a frown behind her cup. Was it judging? Or just—

She cleared her throat. "Sorry," she said. "So, what was your question?"

Should he ask her? He'd started the conversation, but that didn't mean he had to see it through. But then, why not? Naminé's probably figured it all out. You haven't even asked about the trip to Radiant Garden. The worst she can tell you is that Even can't help.

He's probably already told everyone else. It's embarrassing how late to the party you are.

The first replica, the last to know.

"Can he change us?" Riku asked, words like vomit. He swallowed, slowed. "Our bodies, I mean. We can't grow, we can't age, we can't even style our hair. It's a pain, isn't it? I'd like to be different." He didn't say like the rest of you, because that wasn't quite true. Roxas still looked like Ventus, after all, and carried some of Sora with him. But did he feel the weight of that resemblance like he'd stepped into a noose? The loop of a star charm, shining in the sky while he dangled.

Quiet. The muted sounds of the gathering continued in the background. If he listened hard, he could hear the trams coming and going, coming and going. They never really stopped. There was no real shift between day and night here, people always coming and going, coming and going, doing everything the same. For those who slept, there were an equal number of those awake. Always work, always a party. No one 'o'clock in the afternoon, no one 'o'clock in the morning.

How funny, that it was the Destiny Islands that never changed, then, and not Twilight Town.

How funny.

"Riku..." He didn't want to look at her. He couldn't. "We can do all those things."

"..." It was a word. His mouth made silence and the inherent existentiality of it into a statement; more than a pause or a break or a beat. It filled his throat and stuck there with the tangle. It built behind his eyes as he stared through the brazier, beyond it and the grass and the dirt and the world. Pressure. Pressure. Soon he would implode. Too big a mercy. He fell back into himself, crawled out and clung to the back of his head. Turned it to face Xion. Told her, "No, we can't."

She sighed, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. "It has been a long time since you've seen Even, huh?" He said nothing. She shrugged, and the reverberations shook through his fault line fractures. "We can age, Riku. We can grow. We can style our hair. Changing appearance is a little more complicated for us, in some ways, but unlike humans we don't really need to do much more than manage our thoughts. Even could speed that along, I suppose?"

"No," he said. "When Even and I spoke—"

"Even didn't know, then. He had no idea what he'd made when he made us."

Xion took a drink, but her black eyes never left him. He could see them, dark swallowing pale sclera at the corner. They weren't unkind. They were worse.

She cast a stone: pity.

"He knew we could change," she continued, when silence reigned, "but he didn't know how to activate that potential. He thought age could be managed by transferring our hearts to empty replica bodies with an appropriate appearance, but that seemed a waste. Controlling, too, since he'd be the one in charge of the design." She smiled, and it was somewhere between sharing a secret and soothing someone frightened and feral. "The theories he came up with didn't quite work in practice. I let him try with me, just once. But the image he'd selected for my new body was overwritten almost instantaneously. And now I'm even having trouble with my Rumor Mill. Ienzo says I'm too at home here."

He knew she paused, but somehow, he couldn't hear it. She seemed to start talking again immediately, although her expression implied she didn't.

"Attempts to edit our bodies beyond what our hearts, and our data, say we should be are usually reversed, and we return to that which we were. It's not the same as our healing ability, of course. That's not that much greater than your average human's, or someone like the King's. And we obviously change during our 'neonate' phase, which can be swift like yours, or slow like mine." She giggled, though it sounded off. Rancid. "I spent a lot of time in my early days being seen as who, or what, other people expected me to be. But now"—she framed her face with her free hand and gave a more genuine smile—"I'm me. And maybe that 'me' will change with time, but for now? I'm stubborn."

"Stubborn..." The word—the question—spilled like slurry. The tangle in his throat twisted, sopping thick and bleeding dread into his stomach.

Xion laughed. She laughed.

"I tried to grow my hair out. Then I tried to shave it off, but still nothing. I even tried curling it! But I have this image of who I am so deep inside me, so ingrained, that it's like...a part of me doesn't want to change. Not really." Another seismic shrug. "I suppose you might say we start replicating ourselves, growing so attached to an identity that we struggle to let it go. Maybe that's because we don't want to."

No ground. No sky. The him that had crawled out the back of his skull couldn't even cling to his hair, because there was nothing. He'd died twice and both times felt more connected to the world around him and the darkness he'd fallen into.

"What do you mean?" He has to know. He doesn't want to. He has to.

"A replica is made from hearts or data of hearts. Our bodies quite literally change to meet that image; our image. We can be influenced by the people around us, but it's not like we don't exist in that exchange, and eventually, even if other people see us differently, we see ourselves as we are. What once was reflection—replication—is now just us. Whoever chose initially, in the end, we determine who we are."

What was she saying? Her words made no sense.

No, of course they made sense. They made so much sense they ceased to make sense. They showed him, without apology or mercy of any sort, the truth, and it was so fundamentally incompatible with his understanding of anything—of everything—that to look was to gouge out his mind in the same instance. That she said the words so warmly, so slowly, with such caution, only made it worse.

Determined. That was what he was. It was so subtle, so sweet, the fact that this control over him went so deep that it had ceased to be about anyone other than himself. He was a cage without a key, a castle without doors, a shadow shape he could not escape.

Given little more than a gentle push, he'd stumbled into place and there remained. He could not change. This was who he was. It was fundamental.

And he was wrong, then, about the cage, the castle, the shadow shape. They did not exist. They had never existed. They had never surrounded him. They were him. He had never been a prisoner, not even of himself, because he just was.

He listened. He learned. This is me, and there was nothing he could do or say to the contrary; his essential programming, his so-called heart, the very code of him, defied it.

The ground was further away. He'd stood. Suddenly. Xion's eyes were enormous, her body caught in the act of rocking back. He had no words for her.

Still, he nodded, threw one out anyway. "Thanks."

Then he hurried back into the noise.

He stumbles through the lounge, dodges Seifer, Rai, and Hayner as they cuss around the console. Roxas is with them. His eyes are on him. He knows. Too observant.

Too close to her. Xion's in his head, stubborn, and he flails wildly for someone, anyone who's not her, mind's fingers grasping, grasping—

There's a cheer in the kitchen, loud. His head swings to see Ven celebrating, Terra's brow in furrows, Fuu and Pence both leaning over the board in shared disbelief, as if their world has been shattered and cast upon the floor like so much glass. He drops his cup. If only it weren't plastic, it might make a proper sound. A pretty sound.

A pretty sound. There's singing. Sora. Riku's own echo.

Can't be an echo if he comes first.

Fingers close and clasp, covering the thought. Not them. Not the question of sucking and pulling spoken at a table under a thatched palm awning in the company of corpses. He turns back to a different time, a different table; the kitchen table, Ventus, and then to another in Radiant Garden.

He has no idea when he stands. Memories are present and past.

He walks slowly down a path, learning how to move again, feeling strangely distant and far too connected, bleeding in and out of the world around him, pushed as if by currents underwater. Ven's sitting at a quaint, café-style table, Aqua and Terra hemming him in. Chirithy sits by a little pool with Dilan and Aeleus a way away. The latter glances over, once. He'd looked—ashamed?

Riku had turned, but Ven's calling his name, and, somehow, he's ended up seated, surrounded.

He'd just rejected Xion's company, had faced Vexen—Even—alone. That wasn't why he'd accepted Ven's invitation, though. Was it?

He can't remember most of the conversation. It's forgotten to time, which he supposes is his preferred way of forgetting things. He does remember the dance; the way they spoke like they were circling him, never quite willing to touch.

For Aqua, he was sure it was deliberate. She made a choice and that was that. Her warmth and strength were what she gave, though she never asked if that was what he needed, what he wanted. It was amusing; she tried so hard not to be judgmental, cautious with her tongue, offering only her care, her compassion. She withheld the parts she knew could cut, the parts that rendered light as questionable as darkness in its capacity for creation and destruction both, because she feared what it had done to her—to her heart, her bonds, her life—because she wondered about her own perception. But of course she did. She was scared, fragile. She had been forced into deep water, and now its shadows lingered always behind her eyes.

So she had been able to offer him nothing. Even if he'd reached out to her, her condescension and self-criticism would have prevented any connection.

For Terra, he knew his avoidance was, in part, because he was seeing double. Riku got lost in his counterpart, at least in his mind, and Terra was ashamed of that, wished he had words relevant to the doppelganger's struggle, wished he could see it past the boy on the beach. But then, there was also his silence, his smile, disguising the fact he did not believe he had anything to offer. If Riku lived in his other's shadow, then Terra lived in his own. It was sad, because perhaps there was something relevant in his seduction by the dark, even if it had ended with the gift of force. That seduction, though—the question of light and dark, the question asked to someone who shared it, but who, in that time, that place, had not cared for Terra's wondering, had sought only to use his body as a tool—was a link between them, as was his experience of being broken into pieces and parts. It could have been, anyway. But Terra believed he'd made too great a mistake.

He had little to offer Riku's counterpart and now little to offer him. He thought that was the best, after everything, and that prevented any connection.

But between them sat Ven; lips smiling, eyes not. The judgement and shame that constrained the others was absent, or perhaps resisted, although Riku knew, in the past, in the present, that he had the capacity for both.

And then there were the things that Ven couldn't resist; light and air rising up inside him, spilling out from behind his eyes, bursting from between his teeth, dripping out of his ears and nose. He looked so ordinary, but Riku saw the uncanny beyond. He'd never said it to Ven nor Kairi, but there was something off about people without their darkness. They seemed as fragmented as he was, sometimes.

Fragments. Riku remembers fragments.

"Feels wrong, huh? Like you're still dead."

"Ven," Aqua starts, stops when Riku shrugs. It had been brief, a nothing sort of thing, but that was enough. Whatever she wants to say washes away, and she sits back, watching, wary. She'd stayed in the corner of Riku's eye. He's still not sure if she'd been trying to protect him or Ven.

On Ven's other side, the shadow that's Terra lifts a hand to his shoulder, then lets it fall back into his lap. He wanted so badly, but where had that got him, exactly?

"Don't worry about them," Ven says. "They fuss a lot. You're—Riku, right?" He puts his head in his hand, leans forward, but only for a second. He isn't as wild as Riku expected, not that he'd had much in the way of expectations—not really, not for him—but he does move a lot. His hands talk, his lips and cheeks speaking in shapes as much as in words. His hair flops and bobs.

But it's his eyes Riku is unable to look away from. They were contradictions; unapologetic, regretful, absent and full, too bright, too dull, too strange. They were sweet in the most ordinary of ways, undercut by a sour word, the spiced flare of temper, the salt of tears, the savor of agony, the bitterest of aftertastes.

He couldn't ask, then. He hadn't asked since. But there had been a pull.

"I'm Riku," he answers.

"Another one!" Ven laughs. Riku pretends not to see Aqua stiffen. Terra's head tilts, but there's nothing to it beyond mild amusement.

"Another one," Riku says.

"Eh, Sora and Kairi have plenty. Even I've got a few. There's overlap!" Ven waves, dismissive, as if a breeze could banish storms. "Don't think too hard about it. I've been wanting to meet you. Who knows, I might like you more than the other one."

"Ven—" Terra's eyes are full of things Riku doesn't want to see.

"Probably not," he says, fast. Terra stops. Ven shrugs.

"We'll see. Maybe I'll like you both." He smiles, bends his arm and gives Terra an elbow. It's not gentle, but that's probably because if it were Terra wouldn't have noticed. "We're kind of alike, you know? We're a bit broken."

There was a thrill. Riku remembers it, down his spine and in his chest. Aqua and Terra's faces fall, any joy they'd had plummeting and leaving a smear on impact. Then there's noise; flustered affirmations, cooing and comforting. Riku wonders if it's as much for themselves as Ven. He can't imagine they'd considered him, not when this was the first time any of them had met properly.

When their eyes pass over him, he wonders if they're blaming him for the things Ven says.

Ven, for his part, just stares over his cup of whatever and smiles. "You are broken, aren't you?"

"Ven, you're not—he's not—please, now's not the time to talk about this." Aqua's voice is soft, almost pleading, her eyes darting between them. Terra's enormous hand is on Ven's shoulder. Looks like he gave in.

Ven isn't bothered by any of it.

Riku realizes they've all missed something.

But he'll tell them. He'll tell me.

"They worry too much. And of course I'm broken." Ven leans across the table. Riku neither mirrors nor evades. He stays where he is and stares into eyes that, for a moment, seem to understand him better than anyone ever has. "They never really think about what it would mean if this were it. If this were the whole of you."

There's a sadness. A madness. A break in the world.

"What happened?" Riku asks. He can't quite say it's because he cares about Ven, because he doesn't really know him. But he wants to know. He has to.

"Long story. Too long, honestly, and I only remember some of it. These two have their own to share, if you want to ask them about it." He bobs his head to the left and right, and there's a feeling there Riku doesn't understand. Maybe when he was a little closer to his other's memories, maybe when he convinced himself his promise to Naminé was worth holding on to. But not anymore. Now he can't say what it is, just that it fills Ven up for a moment.

But that's before he looks down. When he does that, everything goes silent.

Riku doesn't break it. He can't. He has nothing to offer, nothing to say.

"I can tell you a little, I guess." He sticks out his tongue in thought. It should look silly. Instead, it looks like he's struggling against the storm he thought he blew away. "There was a darkness in me. Hey, if you're a Riku, you should know all about darkness, right?"

"Sort of."

"Sort of," Ven echoes, not mocking. "His name was Vanitas. Anyway, Xehanort took him out of me in order to make the χ-blade, and if I had any darkness of my own it went with him. The taking...I remember it in pieces. It goes in and out of focus. Probably for the best." He shrugs. "Vanitas...I don't know what he's doing now, and last I heard Xehanort was still..."

Ven trails off. Riku won't ask. It sounds complicated. Normal for them, then, but not what he's interested in. "Did it...hurt?"

"Yeah." There's a distance to Ven's eyes, looking through Riku rather than at him. "I was empty for a while after that."

Quiet murmurs from either side make Ven blink. Then he's elbowing Aqua and Terra. They lean closer rather than away, obvious in their desire to smother him. It's meant to be affectionate, but it really just looks like they're looming. The edge to their eyes is unsettling; a haggard intensity. Does Riku look like that, sometimes?

Ven ignores them, continues, "It was pretty forceful, probably. The taking. But it doesn't feel that way."

Something catches. "What do you mean?"

"It's like..." Blue eyes brighten, but there's nothing behind them; an empty light, a world overexposed, made less real. "It's like pushing a push door. You use force, but you're supposed to. It's how it's meant to be. It's what's meant to happen. It's the way of things."

The tangle chokes in the past, in the present. It's different than whatever's strangling Aqua and Terra as they open their mouths and vomit it out, a tide of words that spill around Ven as he sits untouched between them. He smiles, smiles, smiles away. The breeze has blown the storm away again.

He has eyes made to cry, Riku thinks, but they're dry. Too dry. They're accepting when they should rebel.

Why would he? He knew then what you do now. There's no point.

"I was someone that was meant to die," Ven says, simply. "I was a tool; a part of the χ-blade, a vessel for darkness to hide in. Putting an end to me probably would have been the right thing to do. Master Eraqus tried. But these two wouldn't let that happen and so here I am! It's pretty good."

Aqua and Terra fall quiet. He means it in the moment, Riku is sure. In other moments, though, he doesn't. In future moments, he won't. Maybe, even now, there's a part of him that wants to turn against his own cheer.

It doesn't mean anything to Riku. Not when all that's in his head are fractured memories and darkness and death and the push door, the push door, the push door—

Somewhere else, Ven continues. He talks about being saved, but also being asleep. He talks about how there wasn't anything he could do. He says he can't complain, but there's obviously something about his helplessness that upsets him. He mentions Terra in pieces and Aqua in shadow and how warm it is inside Sora's heart. He talks about not having choices, about being saved by Sora that first time, about being cradled by an infant. He says it like a joke, but his smile quivers and his eyes shine.

"Maybe I was just...where I was meant to be. Hah! How useless can one guy be?" He sniffles. Riku steps away from the memory, but not before he hears, "In the end, I am who I am, broken or whole. But, hey, at least I kept my promise to these guys!"

He'd held up Aqua and Terra's hands. Riku hadn't understood him then, not really.

What he had understood was the lesson.

"They never really think about what it would mean if this were it. If this were the whole of you."

The whole of me. In the end, I am who I am; a tool, the push door, forced as intended.

This is it. This is what I'm meant to be. This is what I'm meant for. This is the way of things.

He has never been hurt a day in any of his lives. He will never be. He can never be.

This is it. This is it. This is it.

The whole of me.

There's a finger in his hair. He pulls and the thought snaps. The action reflects his counterpart, bent over the counter and moaning, but he tolerates it for the chance to be freed, even momentarily, from the terrible thing that underlies it.

They feed each other, the thoughts; a different sort of head eating legs.

But it's all he has. It's all he can do to get away.

A cheer. Riku blinks, sees Ven and the others still at the table. He's standing in the shadow of the stairs. How long's he been there? He can't say, but there's a buzzing in his head that seems to be part rain. Either it's come quicker than expected or it's been a while.

Has anyone noticed?

If he waits long enough maybe Ven or Terra or one of the others will see him and call him over and then he'll have to pretend he's okay. Maybe that pressure will push him back into his skull—pushed, pushed as you were meant to be—and the noise that isn't rain will go. Maybe he won't need to catch his fingers in his hair and pull.

Clatter! The rain gets louder, just for a second. Someone steps inside.

Xion.

Riku turns and stumbles up the stairs.

"...Riku?" Ven's voice follows.

But he doesn't stop. He can hardly hear him over the noise, and there's no reason to talk to him, anyway. Riku's already learned the lesson.

The noise. The noise. His fingers snagged in his hair—once, twice—in time with his feet pounding against the steps before he tore them away, slammed a hand against the wall. The upper half of the stairs was enclosed, cloistered, almost claustrophobic. It bore down on him, air hazy, dim orange and pale yellow from the lights.

Sound congealed; buzz became slime, sticking in his ears, burning in his nose, thrumming down his throat around the tangle. Fingers found his hair. He dragged them away before they could catch.

Is one thought more terrible if they're the same thought? Heads and legs and legs and legs.

His head split. The noise.

This is who you are. This is what you are. This is all you'll ever be.

He can't hear anyone anymore. All the voices have assimilated into the amalgamation, sticky and snarling. It undulated under his skin, pushing up against the outer layers of his hollow shell, shifting it, shaping it. Just how I'm meant to be; a thing of another's design.

He should have stayed downstairs.

But Xion's presence. Sora's voice. His counterpart's hair. Naminé's eyes. Them. All of them.

Could they have made him better? They hadn't so far.

His neck split, and he needed it. He needed the mass inside him to split him, tear him in two, splinter and shatter and fragment and—

Both hands were in his hair, pulling out, pulling away, pulling open. Force, force, the force outside him was ripping him open for real this time. Something you can see, something you can feel. For just a moment, even the puppet's own fingers in his strings felt like it could be enough, could be the thing, could be, could be—

But then there's the other bent over the counter, the almost-mirror he can't escape, and Riku slammed his hand against the wall again and staggered up the stairs; out of sight, out of mind. No one can hear him. How could they, with the noise this loud?

If they could, it wouldn't matter. It's just like before. Every time you fall into shadow, who comes? How quick? You're an afterthought at best.

Some people can kill themselves and be gone in a day, an hour. The fish in their funerary shroud, the insect mausoleum; some violence didn't exist, some death could not be grieved or questioned.

Riku choked. His chest stung. Something like you can be gone in a moment. The world doesn't need another, and that's all you can be. Just another, just another. Some of us are just means to ends. End it, end it, end it. It can't stop, so end it.

All I'll ever be, the whole of me.

No forced needed, so none applied.

This is it.

His chest split. I need—I need—

His hands were in his hair again. He dragged them out, and the momentum sent him forward.

Voices crept past the noise. Aqua, Olette, Vivi. The room set aside for quiet. It's not quiet now. It would be worse, if he clawed his way through the door with all the noise under his skin. He thought perhaps the room would burst, or melt, or he would. He should. He should split open and reveal his emptiness, paint the walls with nothing much.

Except the tangle, sopping in bile. There would be that.

He avoided the door and another to his left: Roxas's room. He kept going, wondering if there were a window he could climb out and a ground he could greet with his head, all the weight of his body cracking down on top of it.

The door to his right was ajar. A patter. Rain. He stumbled to a stop.

There's a boy on Destiny Islands. He's not him, though. He's real. The Real Thing. He's hiding in an old wooden shed; not from a storm, but from other people. They're too much. He can't live up to what they want or need, what they see. He can't stand being around them. His heart is splitting and he doesn't understand why. His hand is in his hair.

The rain is soothing, though, despite its violence.

The beauty of force.

The rain isn't violent, though, more drizzle than downpour. Guess the clouds were liars, or maybe someone else got the green ones? Another storm Ven blew away?

He wanted to see it, the rain. He wanted to see threads of sunset red and gold, pink and peach and purple and blue at the edge of night that never bled through. He wanted a different rain, a rain for him, a rain to make his own. He wanted it to wash out the noise in his head. He wanted it to drown the other, his shape.

But that's all you are.

He turned to the door. There were fire hazard signs; stupid, silly. Axel. His fingers curled around the knob, applied the accepted force, pushed.

There's a window across the room, opened just a crack. The sunset rain hit it, rosy and sweet.

That was not what drew his eye.

There, on the bed, bodies writhed. A girl with her thin hands in red hair, pulling, pulling, pulling. Suddenly, he could hear beyond the noise, beyond the quiet patter of rain. He could hear the thrusting of muscles, the bumping of knees against the bed, the clap and slide of flesh. He could hear moans escaping parted lips.

He hadn't heard Axel downstairs. Of course, of course, of course. He should've noticed, he should've.

The room wasn't big to begin with, yet the longer he stared the smaller it got. His vision tunneled, a crevasse to fall down as he pieced things together. They were doing a scene, Axel on his hands and knees, dressed only in a shirt that swallowed his frame. Maybe one of Isa's. A part of Riku wondered if he knew what it was up to, his wayward top, clinging to a narrow shoulder while its owner was off doing an apprenticeship with Ansem the Wise. The rest of Axel's clothes were scattered on the floor or hanging off the mattress, the yellow sheets apparently eager to join them. A fiery dog-cat plush had fallen to the ground, all spiky fur and tattoos.

Kairi had her hair pulled back, was wearing one of Axel's tank tops, Roxas's pants, and her Gummi strap. She'd told him about that, for some reason, as if he hadn't already had boots of the same material. Gushed about how it wasn't skin or plastic and could be used with and without its harness; all made of Gummi, she assured. She wore it with them now, the straps highlighting the muscles she'd built in her legs, her back, sweat beading along the length of her, dripping like rain down glass.

She still wore bracelets on her wrists. They bounced, bunched, slipped apart as she pulled Axel's hair.

"—be rougher, little brother? Do you think you can handle that?" Kairi said, voice as deep as she could make it. Her fingers dug into the red, gripped hard, palm up against his scalp. Axel whined as his head was forced back, as a perfect arch formed in his neck and back. She played with him as if he were a toy.

He was a toy.

A pang in Riku's gut; longing so deep it could only have been preprogrammed, determined, the echo to the cry that preceded him, over which he had no control. The tangle was in his throat, his gut, his mouth.

He should've left. He couldn't turn away. He followed the command of those hands in Axel's hair. He could do nothing. Not him, not Axel. They were at Kairi's mercy and she had none. She made her 'little brother' cry out, yanked free every stifled groan, demanded every whimper. She denied him privacy, denied him dignity, denied him anything but what she gave. She shaped him in the roseate light, curved him as the rivulets of rain.

Riku stared and stared. A shiver began. The end of the tangle in his abdomen drew tight. His cheeks burned, and the noise, the noise. How loud could it get? Louder still, it seemed, as Kairi made Axel hers in a way no one could deny.

A perfect puppet on his perfect strings.

"I need it, I need it!" Axel wasn't quite sobbing, but it wouldn't be long. He nearly collapsed, arms reaching for his pillow to hold. Kairi dragged him back upright, without warning or apology, and gave his hair another tug. He yelped. "Big brother, p-please."

Kairi's nose twitched. Amusement. A break in character. Was she mocking Axel?

Maybe, maybe not. The wet sounds behind her strap betrayed a possible interest, although maybe that was nothing more than physiology, as determined as Riku himself. But there was something sweeter than even the rain as she got both her hands lost to the wrists in Axel's hair, running over, sliding through, stroking, twirling, snatching. She pulled it taut, leaned in as close to his ear as her tiny body could get her and used his hair to leverage him the rest of the way.

"You'll get what I give you, and you'll do as I say."

Axel moaned. Riku couldn't find the rain anymore. No, he was stuck here, and in the narrow front hall looking through to the kitchen counter, at the beach watching terrible sunsets, on a brick wall breaking in a garden.

Half-conscious on an examination table. Crouching in a shower. Sitting in his kitchen. Lying in Castle Oblivion with his mind in pieces.

Hands in his hair, he split in half.

Force. Beautiful, violent force. Undeniable, aggressive; pull, pull, pull. He'd inherited it, but for the moment he didn't care. He only longed, longed for a violence that looked like what it was.

For a violence that was true.

But if you inherited it, then it's just more of the same. It's what you do to a body. It's what you do to this body. It's what's meant to be done to you.

How could he want that? But he did.

I want it. I hate that I want it. I want it more.

"Riku—Rep—Riku?" A garbled sound.

Riku blinked. His hands were clenched in front of him. They hadn't been in his hair. Axel was scrambling on the bed; an awkward spider attempting to evade a hostile hand. Riku didn't know why. Surely the want on his face was obvious?

"Riku, what are you doing?" Kairi's cheeks were pink, but her expression was calm—too calm, something's wrong—as she turned toward him. She looked ridiculous, her Gummi cock slick and neon pink, speckled with other colors. One of her hands was in Axel's hair still, petting, soothing.

No one would do that for him. Not like that.

"Riku...?"

He looked at them both, took a breath. Another. One more. He squeezed his hands together, so tightly he was sure the knuckles were dyed bone. He had to keep them out of his hair.

Another breath. The rain returned, and, with it, his voice. It caught on the tangle and came out honest.

"I want to die."

No.

"Please pull my hair."

No.

"Actually, I have to go. Sorry."

His mind was shattering all over again. Whatever faces Kairi and Axel had made were wiped from his memory as he turned and ran down the hall, down the stairs, through the house. There weren't voices. There wasn't laughter. There weren't games. There was only the distant rain—a present drizzle, a past downpour—and the noise that tore through his skin, split him in two.

The hair on his head was crawling; itch, itch, itch.

Pull.

He pushed his way out the front door, found the rain, and was gone. If someone called his name, he did not hear it.

It's still raining. Rosy crystals dot the window, trails of wet sunset on the panes. Diffuse light slants through the drops and stains the floor with long shadows. They catch on Riku, pinning him. He peers up through the darkness and out the glass, past those crystalline spheres and the sparkling cities inside them, to the sky. He sees it. He doesn't. The muscles behind his eyes twist, strain, and fail, and his gaze falls back to the skirting board, dyed dull, dusty orange by the eternal evening.

Brown socks linger in his periphery, concealed now and then by floppy green hems. Vivi sits and works away at something, hums intermittently. He won't leave. Riku doesn't know why.

The rest of the 'Disciplinary Committee' are downstairs. Rai's voice booms, Seifer's commands, Fuu's interjects. They'd made something of a fuss over him earlier, but they hadn't kept him long. Some distant part of him respects that, respects them. No pity. They're bantering now, the noise of it accompanied by the slide of chairs and feet against linoleum tile, the occasional creak of floorboards or scrape of dishware.

It would be comforting if he were someone else. But he isn't someone else. He can't be someone else. He's stuck as this.

He can manage a little gratitude, though, so he's grateful; for an unearned mercy, another tally. They could have left him where they'd found him; crouched on a low wall half-hidden in topiary, hunched shoulders and a damp curtain between him and the world, soaked to what passed for bone.

He hadn't known he was. He hadn't known where he was either. He hadn't even realized he'd been cold until Fuu had said, "Shivering."

Three syllables. Her maximum. He should've been flattered by the effort.

There's a soggy towel caught under him. The damp curtain is almost dry. He's wearing one of Fuu's sleep shirts, large enough to swallow either of them, and a pair of pants so baggy they can only be Rai's. He knows the socks are Seifer's, because they've got pronouns printed all over. Had he planned on kicking someone in the face on the off chance they'd ignored his beanie? The thought's almost amusing.

In his fingers he holds a handkerchief; a soft cotton square, blue like faraway skies, with little golden stars embroidered around the edges. Vivi's.

"To blow your nose, if you need to. We wouldn't want you to catch a cold!"

Riku hadn't known Vivi had a nose. He also doesn't think the rain makes people sick, or at least, not him. He hasn't gotten sick once in any of his various short lives, although he has memories of fevers, of nausea, of cramps, of headaches and sore throats and sinuses so clogged you aren't quite sure you'll ever breathe again.

Will he ever breathe again? Has he ever breathed at all?

Has Vivi ever breathed? Ever been sick? Riku doesn't know what he is. He hasn't asked. Maybe they share something, a strangeness, but then again, isn't that all Riku is? Something shared, copied and pasted pieces of another, edit disabled. He wished he knew more about computers, but he hasn't got the energy to pretend they don't scare him; his kin, more objects.

His fingers twist the handkerchief. He doesn't want to use it. He doesn't want to soil it. But he won't pull back that damp curtain, and so instead he has to pull, pull, pull something else. Hands tug around the edges until it frays, a single strand coming loose.

Somewhere on the horizon, guilt.

He thinks. Not about the party, or the garden, or the bedroom. Not about much of anything; system's flooded, after all.

But the water fries his circuits and the sparks turn red. They flare, catch in a breeze, long strands flashing as one with the sunset drops on the window. Light reflects. He might not think about bedrooms and brothers and bold tugs felt through the scalp and spine, but he can't escape what lurks in his periphery.

No, he can't escape. Vivi's shadow elongates, becomes awkward, uncertain. Skin stretches over bone, concave in places, jagged. The thing lurks; too unsure to come near, too desperate to go away.

You can go away. I don't want what you have to give. I don't need it.

But the shadow does not go. It skulks around before slowly creeping toward him. Its attempt at a graceful slink better resembles the clumsiness of a long-legged spider climbing an inhospitable wall, scrambling out of a sodden sink.

You used me, but I'm a tool. You're supposed to use tools. That's just what you do.

The shape is almost upon him. One memory pours over another, the sunset world drowned by a dark room; the shadow and the tool, and their unlucky third backed against the wall.

Riku remembers killing under a green gaze.

Riku remembers, back in the sunset world, how sad that gaze could be.

Don't apologize to me. You were right about most of it, about me. You were just wrong that any amount of power could've changed me.

Don't apologize about that, either. I know you knew.

The shadow arrives and Riku lets it take him.

"Hey," Axel had said, hand on the back of his head. His voice had been gentle. Too gentle. Xion and Roxas had stood just a little way away. Two shapes so like Riku, but somehow still different. They had what he was missing, although he'd never found out what that was. "I just wanted to talk. You don't have to say anything. You don't even have to get it memorized, heh." He'd choked out the laugh. "It won't take long, promise."

I'm not them, he'd thought. There's nothing to feel guilty about.

"Oh boy, here we go." Axel's sigh in his memory is the loudest thing; exasperated. His hands had been shaking. Why? "I'm...sorry. About what happened at Castle Oblivion. It never should've happened. I just wanted you to know that."

Axel had glanced back then, eyes on his little shadows. Xion's had seemed encouraging, Roxas's—

Roxas had been watching him, eyes sharp, blunt; contradictory violence. Pierce, whack!

Why are you looking at me like that? Are you trying to open me up? Do you think there's something like you inside?

There's nothing like you inside.

There's nothing inside.

The weight of one stare had been replaced with another; Roxas's slipping, Axel's returned. It had landed on top of Riku's head, heavy, had made him glad to be so small. Axel might have been used to looking at people shorter than himself, but that hadn't changed the fact that a disparity in height could be advantageous when it came to avoiding another's eyes.

Riku hadn't spoken, so Axel had tried, "You know, I hope you've been doing alright, little guy." It had sounded ridiculous then, and it sounds ridiculous now. "Uh, and I can understand if you don't want to hang out with me, but if you're ever down, maybe we could go get ice cream or something? The sea salt's pretty good."

"I don't eat ice cream. Not the kind you eat, anyway."

Axel had balked. Maybe it had been extra embarrassing, for him to fail to have something memorized. "Right, right, of course, you don't—but that's okay! They have ones you can eat, I think. Yeah, yeah, we should—let's go try it! Olette's said they're good and she's got taste! Well, not for hair styling, but, uh, definitely for this!" An awkward pause. The pale shadow had drawn in on himself. "Did you...want to go now?"

He'd hunched; the shoulders, the neck, the limbs. Another tragedy for the mausoleum of bugs. His eyes had stayed with Riku, refused to turn back to his twin ghosts. It had been intense, but they always were, weren't they? That shade of green was made to burn, too full of fire to ever be hollow.

How had he ever survived as a Nobody? Well, I suppose you had to have a strong will to even exist as one.

Riku can't imagine it. You were never truly empty, and even if you were, your make is better. You were real.

They'd stared at each other then, until Axel had given in and glanced behind him.

Xion, Roxas; they could have been lesser too, but even in their appearances and names there is some degree of difference. Then, now, into the future.

She said she was stubborn, but could she really be stuck? She's not like me. She never has been. Riku had seen the reports; the ones that emphasized his difference. If she struggles, I have no chance.

Did I ever?

Everyone is real. Everyone but me and the fish.

Why had he gone with them, sat at that table with its still dripping umbrella? Why had they gone to some café, when he knew they preferred the Clock Tower?

You're an interloper.

His foot had scuffed at one of the few dry patches of ground. There'd been a few people wandering, dodging puddles, voices lost in that indistinct cloud that all speech became when there was too much of it. Axel and Xion had been talking in an animated fashion; the former's movements exaggerated, the latter's comfortable. Riku had spent his time ignoring Roxas, even if it meant he'd been forced to catch Axel's frantic eye now and then.

He'd preferred that, because Roxas was—is—too knowing. How could you think you know anything about me? Yet you always look like you know so much. He'd suffered and Riku would never deny that, but so had everyone else.

The weight of his gaze.

Stop looking. You can't see me.

They hadn't spoken there, then. Their half of the circle had remained almost silent, with only the occasional smile or comment from Roxas. Riku had stared at sea salt blue and wondered why it tasted like nothing. It's alright.

He hadn't been hungry, but he rarely is.

"You're different."

They'd left the café, Xion having slipped her arm through Axel's and skipping ahead. He'd glanced back occasionally, but for the most, he'd been distracted; laughing, smiling.

Xion hadn't looked back once. It's what had given her away, to Riku. She's always more aware than she lets on. Maybe she knew him, knew the limits of him, all the ways his body failed. His heart, his will, all the little things.

"From Riku," Roxas had continued, unperturbed by his silence. "The other one."

"The real one." It'd been a test. Riku's not supposed to call him the real one, the real deal, the Real Thing. He's not supposed to, but he does, sometimes. Did anyone really think the truth stopped being true if you didn't say it?

Maybe the fact he still thinks that is proof Naminé hasn't been in his head again. He's not stupid enough to think they couldn't change him there. Not anymore.

Or maybe they're clever. Maybe they change other things and leave this one.

Maybe they want him this way.

He doesn't believe that, though. They know they don't need to do anything. This is all you.

So, even if he tries to think differently sometimes, he knows the other one's real and he isn't.

Roxas had inclined his head; not yes, not no. His thumbs had been in his pockets, shoulders rising against the cold in a shiver. Riku had done the same. The breeze is a little chilly. Still, it seemed ridiculous that they'd both had goosebumps. Just more pointless programming. Xion had squeaked and tugged Axel closer.

"Do you ever feel like there's two of you?"

Riku'd turned, frowned. He'd caught a glimpse of himself in a puddle, dark and smeared; not even enough for one. Who failed to fill their reflection? Who failed the mirror?

"I mean, isn't there? Two of you."

A snort, a shake of the head. "Not what I mean. I mean, yeah, I've got Sora and Xion, and Ventus, kind of. But that's not what I'm talking about. It's like..." He'd paused. Riku hadn't thrown him a rope.

Up ahead, Xion had managed to get Axel to let her up on his back. It won't last long. Axel is a house of sticks on fire, and Xion is, at times, excitable.

Riku hadn't been able to feel much, watching. He truly must be defective. So for me, working as intended. He'd watched the two flailing about in front of him, and thought of his counterpart.

Clambering about in his heart had filled him with something like peace; working with him, being with him. He has to see me as apart, and somehow that makes it safer to feel like I'm not. He remembered feeling it the first time he'd died, too, when the other had told him their hearts would go to the same place. It was a strange thing to find comforting; does it make me more real or less, to be a replica until the end?

That peace had vanished when he'd fulfilled his promise to Naminé. Upon fading, upon being allowed to fade, upon returning to darkness, that haze he'd been in had lifted, replaced with sharpest clarity.

And sharpest clarity, it seemed, made you dull.

Xion and Axel had nearly fallen face first into a puddle. Riku's eyes had flashed to Roxas; face affectionate, but too serious for what he'd watched unfold.

The tangle had been in Riku's throat, dropped into his gut. He'd turned, hidden behind the only thing he could; that wretched curtain, not damp then. He hadn't wanted to see that dourness in so warm a place, not while knowing it was his fault it was there.

That was what he was, though. That was what he did.

Why had they brought him back when he'd been a problem solved?

"I like being here," Roxas had said, "but sometimes it feels wrong. There's another me, with memories that never really happened in a place just like this. He had a whole life with Hayner and Pence and Olette. He did odd jobs in the summer, skateboarded, struggled, fought with the Seifer's gang. I lost track of all the afternoons he spent lazing around in his secret base, how many sunsets he watched up on the Clock Tower. He wanted to go to the beach, maybe even more than he wanted to avoid his homework. And he's me."

They'd passed through a shadow, Riku saying nothing.

"I've got friends that I don't really have. Rivals that don't really know me. And yet, sometimes, they look at me like they do. I look at them like I do. It messes with me."

Silence. Riku had tugged on a strand and said nothing. Why are you telling me this?

"I'm a ghost because someone else decided I had to be," Roxas had murmured. "And the worst part is I get it. I've met Sora. I get why they did it; Ansem, Riku, even Naminé. I get it, and I hate that too."

Riku doesn't have his counterpart's later memories—the things that came after his manufacturing—but when their hearts touched for that brief span during the Keyblade War flashes of his encounter with Roxas had burst in his mind; the fight, the battering and bludgeoning, the shifting of flesh, the swallowing in darkness, the Guardian's fist as it crushed Roxas.

Is that what it's like? To lose to true violence? To know real force?

A single strand had snapped. Riku'd breathed through his nose, shook it away. He'd glanced, just once, at Roxas. Roxas had been looking at Axel and Xion, at two people who would do anything for him. It had been such a soft look.

Riku'd wanted to crush it.

And then Roxas had turned to him, eyes sharp, blunt. "Sometimes it's hard not being the real one."

Snap!

Riku looks down. A thin thread of blue is tangled in his fingers, torn free from the handkerchief. A part of him snags there too. It's not a lot, but it's something, and now it's out of place.

The guilt on the horizon, torn from its almost home.

Not his, not anymore.

"Sorry," he says.

"Hm?" Vivi's voice is too sweet; a second snag. "Oh, a loose thread! That's fine. Don't worry about it. I've got scissors...somewhere." They hop up and toddle across the room. Riku listens to their footsteps, round and round, back and forth, until—

Thump!

Vivi drops to the floor beside him. Riku starts, head jerking, but doesn't get far before a little hand pats him. "It's fine, it's fine. Can I have my hanky?"

Riku passes it over. He shouldn't have been surprised. Of course Vivi was going to need the handkerchief. Of course he was going to stop near Riku. Of course. He lies back down, tries not to fidget although his hands clearly want something to do. Maybe he could rip a finger off at the knuckle?

It's not fine, it's not fine.

Vivi hums and fusses. There's the clip of scissors.

One, two!

Two's too many for this world, for all worlds.

"You can have it back now."

Blue skies drop before him, countless little stars. He hesitates, but then the handkerchief is in his hands, scrunched violently. He clutches it tight.

Doesn't look at Vivi.

"Thanks."

"Happy to help," Vivi says. "Besides, it's not your fault. I should've taken better care of it."

"Why? I was the one messing with it. Can't blame a thread for snapping if you won't stop pulling."

There's a pause, and then, "Maybe."

Riku feels something in his throat. He wants to shove the handkerchief down there, just to see if he can dislodge it. Probably not. "You'd blame a thread for snapping, huh?"

"What? N-no! I just mean..." It almost makes him laugh, how intense they are for that moment. Why take this so seriously? It's just a hanky. "It's...well, it's not really about the thread. It's about the whole. I wish I'd taken better care of it beforehand, so it was less likely to fray. I wish I'd figured out what it needed before it broke."

"Telling me to quit it might have helped," Riku says, neither kind nor unkind.

"But then I'd need to figure out why you were playing with it." Another pause. Riku likes it less. "I'm not so good at that. I wish I was. Seifer and Fuu and Rai are all good at what they do, and yet I...ah, but complaining won't help."

"Well, no. But it might."

"How?"

Riku shrugs, shoulder dragging against the floor. "You'll figure something out, maybe."

Vivi makes a little sound—a sigh, a laugh, a sob, an ordinary breath—but says nothing. Riku starts to slip again, floating away on shadows and skirting boards and rose spheres full of sparkles and the soft patter of rain.

But then Vivi shifts, crosses his legs. Riku falls out of the stream and into the world, his fingers trying to disconnect one another from their sockets as they intertwine with cotton cloth. The damp curtain's in his throat.

For all that, he says, "What makes someone real, Vivi?"

Hesitation; the body stills, even the lungs. If Riku rolls back, if he turns his head, he'll be able to see the fear in that stiffening form, in the eyes, maybe even smell it in their born-stale sweat.

He's cruel, but it's a comfort to know he's asked someone who's wondered.

The lungs resume, the breath returns. "I don't know." Vivi's gloved fingers wrap around each other, nervous. Riku sees them distantly. He twists the handkerchief. "I'm a little different from everyone else here. You'd think that standing out so much would make me feel more alive, but it doesn't. Mostly, I wonder if I even exist at all. And when I'm with Seifer and Rai and Fuu, I can see it."

"See what?" Riku asks.

"The spark. They have a spark inside. And I....I don't. Not the same kind."

Riku flops his head so even the edge of Vivi is gone from his vision. The damp curtain tickles his neck, so very nearly dry. He wants to tear his skin off where it touches. "So you don't know. If that's the case, then you might not be real. Would the things that happen to you matter, if you weren't real?"

A swallow. Is it that hard a question? Maybe it is, since Riku keeps asking despite the fact in each of his lives he's been given the answer.

No.

"I think it would, Riku."

No.

"Seifer's always trying to teach me to fight better. I don't think he'd do that if he thought I shouldn't protect myself."

So someone else decides. "Is it for your sake? Or for others?" Why's he asking like this? "You were in the 'Disciplinary Committee,' even if the four of you have grown up since. What if he just taught you so you'd protect others?" People who matter.

"I don't think Seifer would treat me like a tool. He doesn't...think like that. He's too alive to think like that. Honestly, I think it's more likely he'd get treated like one, than treat me like one." Vivi huffs, a sad little laugh. Why sad? "He can be violent. Sometimes, he can even be cruel. I don't always agree with him. I often don't agree with him, actually. But him, Rai, Fuu, I think...I know they think I'm real. They'd be sad if I stopped moving."

The thing that isn't a heart stills.

"Stopped moving?"

"If I died."

"And would you be sad?"

"Would I be sad?"

"If you 'stopped moving' soon. Does the thought make you sad?"

"It does make me sad, Riku. Doesn't it make you..."

Quiet. The air seems delicate. There's peach hues amidst the rose in those crystalline cities, glittering dusk on the windowpane. The shadow slides over Riku. There's a crack in his stomach that wasn't there before. From where he split? From now?

"There have been times when I wanted to stop," Vivi says, "but my friends told me, in their own ways, that there's really only two choices. You can stop, or you can keep going. Do or don't. It's not fair, but that's all there is once you're started."

Riku stares into the crack. Maybe it will eat him instead of his head, and he'll collapse inward like a black hole.

The question lingers.

Can you live with it, or can't you?

No shivers. No shudders. No shakes.

I should be able to. Wasn't I created for this?

"Do you think..."

He pauses. He doesn't ask for a rope, but he gets one when Vivi whispers, "Riku?"

It's delicate. Too delicate. His head is starting to buzz again. Another fault in his wires.

"Do you think some of us are made to deserve the things that happen to us? That we're created, that we exist, just to be used? That to keep going is to accept being used, and to stop moving is to...to stop being used."

Almost, he wants to see Vivi. Not the whole of him, just his socks, his overlong pants. He could tilt his head, just a little, and have that.

Instead, he shifts so there's only the shadows and the skirting board, and that damp curtain, his hair, falling before his eyes.

His turn to swallow.

"Riku..." Vivi's voice is so soft it makes the crack bleed. It's sickening. "No, I don't. Maybe once, I might have, if only about myself. But I don't think so anymore. I don't even know what I think about the idea of deserving. But I don't think anyone exists to be used. I know they don't."

The hair seems to mock him; Vivi, himself, he isn't sure. He doesn't have the breath to blow it out of his face.

"Riku?"

You're wrong, he wants to say. But he can't be bothered. His fingers twist in the handkerchief once, then drop it and its stars. He rolls the other way.

The conversation is over. In the end, they shared nothing.

The morning was clear and gray, air still crisp from the rain. The eternal sunset was pallid, almost cool. There were no crystalline cities, just puddles and smears and mud on Riku's shoes as he trekked through them. The streets out here were silent. He'd made the right call, dodging the bustling city center and taking the long route to Naminé's home.

He was almost grateful that the lonely girl had wanted to keep being alone so bad she'd picked a house on the edge of town. It made his life that little bit easier.

He had to acknowledge that the 'Disciplinary Committee' had been good to him, though. They hadn't said much when he'd slumped down the stairs, but they hadn't been silent either. Everything had been within expectation; Seifer's soliloquies, Fuu's monosyllables, Rai's unending y'knows. He'd probably been a sight, but he hadn't felt up to brushing his hair. Mirrors, he'd avoided.

He'd ignored Vivi, even though they'd been side by side at the table. Seifer had been at the stovetop. His apron was emblazoned with the same symbol as his beanie and socks. Suppose it's reasonable to want people to get that right if they're going to be kissing the cook.

He'd slapped a pile of pancakes in front of Riku. Riku had known to accept them, so there'd been no protests, only quiet uncertainties.

"Flax." Fuu had preempted his question. "Oat milk."

"We know what you need!" Rai's grin had been huge. "It's gluten free, y'know?"

"No."

"No?" Rai had turned to Fuu, brows furrowed. "But it's got no animal stuff in it, y'know?"

"Yes. But no."

Rai's eyes had widened, gone straight to Riku's plate. "But then—"

"It's fine." Fuu had pointed to Rai's seat. "Sit. Eat."

They'd continued like that; chatting quietly over steaming mugs and syrup, ignoring Riku.

Mostly.

When he'd gone to fetch his clothes, left to dry overnight, he'd discovered Vivi's handkerchief folded carefully and tucked into one of his pockets. For just a second, the noise had come back, and the tangled mass under his skin had woken and writhed so violently that he'd torn the blue skies and all their little stars out of his pants and shoved them deep into a stack of laundry.

He didn't know why he'd done that; why it hurt, what it meant. It probably hadn't meant anything.

We didn't talk. Nothing was said. It never happened.

Don't make this real. Don't make me real.

They'd seen him off at the door once he'd dressed, and if Vivi had looked nervous—fingers around fingers, twisting as if they were trying to pop them off—no one had said anything.

Riku had too much on his mind to make room for more.

Have to stop by Naminé's. My things are there. Could leave them behind? No, I need to catch a ride with someone, anyway. Maybe Kairi was too embarrassed to tell them. Even if they knew, would it matter? It was just a weird moment. I'm not even involved in most weird moments. They won't care. They can't. Yeah, I'll just grab my things, see if Sora or Riku are around and ask them to take me back to the Islands. Could look for Ven, if I have to.

It's fine. It's fine.

He shook his hair out of his eyes, wished his hoodie wasn't too wet to wear. Why does a replica need to feel cold? Another pointless part of his farcical existence.

Footsteps. Riku's throat closed around its eternal tangle, but no one acknowledged him. Those few people he passed rushed by with backs hunched and jackets wrapped tight to ward against the gold-limned mist. His shoulders came down from his ears. The streets were empty again.

The others might not be there. They probably won't be. Most of them had planned to stay at Axel's after the party. It was just meant to be Naminé and I, last night.

Up ahead, the house. It was isolated from its neighbors; a single story, unusually shaped and arranged, flat-roofed and spread out. It wasn't huge, though, nor sprawling. The walls were pale, reflecting twilight hues. There was no noise, no lights.

Riku straightened, skipping the front path entirely as he hurried across the flat lawn around the edge of the house and onto the concrete of the patio. The glass doors and windows caught the sky's colors; mist-gold, dull orange, the edge of blue, red, silver, pink.

No, that's—

Before Riku could escape, the door opened, and out stepped three people: Axel, his counterpart, and Kairi. The latter two were in the midst of a heated conversation, voices rising rapidly, whilst the former trailed awkwardly behind. None of them were looking at him.

"—head out after the others come back with breakfast. It's been a long night and—"

"—seemed so off, Riku. He was talking about—"

"—been like this a while, Kairi. Listen, I know you think it's your fault, but—"

Riku was lying on his back, crawling away as something crept closer; a memory that wasn't a memory.

I need to get out.

He took a step. Axel looked up, stilled.

"Guys, he's here."

Riku stopped. Kairi and his counterpart stopped. Everyone was silent as they stared at each other.

Run. Act normal. Run. Act normal. It's not like it's wrong for you to stay out for a night. Why would they worry? Because you said something weird? Who cares! Why care! Why would they care?

He swallowed, said, "Hey. Just picking up my things."

Staring, staring. Maybe I can just—

Kairi stepped toward him; fast, too fast. Her eyes were so wide. Something's off. Gone rancid. His counterpart was just a little behind her, Axel skulking slow like a shadow. They looked wrong, too intense. Should've run, should've run!

"Riku!" Kairi's hand came up. He drew back. She stopped, dropped her hand. "Where have you been? We've been so worried!"

Out came the parade, the cast's faces all shades of consternation and pity and other similar grotesqueries. The tangle lowered itself into his stomach, stirred in his bile and coated his throat in acid slime; a warning premonition. Don't play along. If you play along now...

"I was with Seifer's gang." He did not address the worry. If it remained unacknowledged, perhaps it would not speak. "We hung out. I stayed the night." He searched in the shadows for a little truth and cast it out like a candle for them to cluster around. "I liked them at the party. Isn't it good that I'm spending time with more people?"

Kairi's nose wrinkled. Her eyes flashed toward the other—the real, the truth—then back to him. "Riku, you're—

Shut up! Don't speak. How could you ever understand? People have died for you!

"I'm here to get my things," he said, pushed forward, made to pass her.

He got one step before a hand closed around his arm, grip firm. A shiver ran down his pseudo-spine. The hair on his neck prickled, begged; wires pleading for that electric touch. The tangle in his throat. The tangle in his throat. The tangle in his throat.

There was a scowl there, too. He glanced up, leaned away even as he snarled, "Back off!"

His other did not. "Kairi said that yesterday you—"

So she'd blabbed. Why was he surprised? He knew how she talked. He'd seen her whispering and giggling over that table, knew they spoke about him sometimes. There was no reason why she wouldn't. She was made of light and heart and existed in that realm; a place in which you could pull a boy's hair over the kitchen counter in full view of the door, and engage in unapologetic incest roleplay at a party without shame.

A place without him.

Except as gossip.

"Who cares about last night?" He sneered, wished he hadn't. Everyone. Everyone cares about last night. You idiot. You absolute idiot. The head was sticking the legs in its mouth, and Riku wasn't sure he could take the eternal chewing. "It doesn't matter. Now, can we end the interrogation and move on with our lives so I can—"

"Interrogation?" Exasperation slipped into Kairi's voice, revealed itself in another wrinkle. Even pure light couldn't be perfect. "Riku, we just want you to talk to us! Is that so much to ask? Yesterday, you said—"

"—nothing that matters!" No, that was too loud. He shouldn't shout. Shouting made it sound like you cared, that maybe something did matter. Make it about them. "You were doing some weird roleplay"—all three flinched—good, shut up, let me go and I'll stop giving you reasons to do that—but his mouth kept moving—"and you surprised me, that's all. Not sure why, though. I know what you get up to."

Ah, wait. It was too much. Kairi's eyes glittered. She was genuinely hurt. But you were so worried about me, huh? Was there anything true about that? Axel looked like he was trying to say something, but the words kept juddering, shaking, circling. If we're going to eat legs, why are we so shocked when they kick and flail? How terrible to want something different, to want it easy at their expense. His counterpart's cheeks were redder than his own. You're the reflection now. Good. Good... Good?

No, why did I say it like that? Why did I say it like that?

The other's face hardened. Riku yanked his arm out of his grip, but there was no getting away.

"Ever since you saw me and Kairi that day, you've been—"

Too close, too close. "I told you I didn't care about—"

"Well, clearly you do, Riku!"

Riku stared up at him through a veil of hair, the tangle coiled around his guts crawling further up his throat and into his mouth, a lump of hair and gritty acid sitting on his tongue. He felt it creep further, some behind his teeth, others through his nose—breathe, breathe—and some behind his eyes. The last slipped into his brain and settled there, each manufactured fold inhabited by wiry strands, thin and thick and digging deep.

Is it a defect if it was always meant to be there? Is the machine broken if it was built that way?

"Listen, Riku—" Axel choked on a nervous titter when they both turned to him, hand stuck mid-gesture. Riku had to bite back a laugh, or maybe another snarl, when his counterpart then looked to him.

But if he was able to catch Riku's clogged eyes, that meant Riku had looked at him, too, and asked the same question.

Me, or you?

Of course he meant you. It's never me when you're here.

But then Axel said, "Little guy," and the snarl became a thick, wet choke; a grab and pull at the thing in his throat. "Buddy, listen, we just want to know what's going on with you, because it's kind of throwing us all off. If it's what we're doing, then maybe we can do something about it and—"

"It's not!" An exclamation. Maybe a shout. Stop. Doing that. "It's nothing you're doing! I don't care about what you're doing." Maybe if you cried this would be more convincing.

"Well, then what's going on, Riku!" Kairi said, chest heaving, sweat on her brow. Gritting her teeth? "Because I do think, after last night, you need to tell us. Please. We've been letting things go, but the way you've been recently—"

"Recently," he hissed, couldn't quite keep it under his breath. As if any of this is recent. As if it hasn't been there since the beginning, or near enough to it; there at the making and the breaking, over and over and over and over and—

"Riku!" More exasperation. Kairi leaned in and Riku stumbled back. The almost-mirror mimicked him; distancing, falling silent, drawing back, but his eyes, his eyes, came closer, and Riku didn't want that, couldn't handle it, couldn't face it, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't. "Riku, you said you wanted—"

"Just forget it! Stop asking me! Stop talking to me! Stop bringing it up! Just—"

She did not. "You said you wanted to"—he laughed, loud and sharp, spluttering, unsure which thing she might say would be worse—"and then you ran off. You vanished for more than twelve hours, and now you won't talk to us, and we've all been so—"

"No, you haven't!" He roared. "And if you have then what's the point?! Why now?! Why after everything?! Why bother?! It's not worth it! It's never been worth it!"

Kairi swayed back, brow furrowed, and maybe she had a tangle behind her own eyes the way they were bulging out of her head. Axel stood bent at her shoulder. His counterpart had drawn back even further, expression closing, mouth opening; knowing.

No, don't.

"So can you quit it! Or are you going to keep asking me these stupid questions? I don't know what you want me to do!"

"Don't know?" Kairi exclaimed. "The only thing I want you to do is tell me why you said what you said last night!"

"Because it's the truth!" The shout rung in his ears, the noise returning as loud as it could ever be. The tangle was everywhere, and then it was coming up, coming out, because they couldn't stop pushing, always pushing, even when they stepped away they were pushing their eyes at him, and he couldn't resist because he was the push door, he was the push door, he was the push door and it was meant to be. Nothing was his; every secret and every thought and every feeling had to be pushed into the open for the taking. All theirs, all theirs, push me open and take a look. "And who's fault is it—"

"Riku, what? It's no one's fault!" She sounded aghast, but he was aghast, because how dare she lie to him?

"N-no one's fault?" He choked, a baby bird regurgitating everything he'd been fed; inverse of the parent and child. "Of course it's someone's fault! Yours, Riku's, Axel's, everyone's, anyone's, mine, mine, my fault." It came out like so much vomit.

"Riku, you—"

"No, stop pretending! You all know I'm just him"—and he flung his hand toward Riku, wished it were a weapon, something sharp, something to cut through the noise and shut them up—"but a thing. I'm a thing, and a thing is used and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter—"

Kairi was saying his name, Axel was whispering it, and the other was forming words without opening his mouth, his eyes reaching out and pushing, more pushing, all pushing, just an endless leg in head circle of noise pushing him.

His hands flew to his hair, grabbed it, and pulled.

"This!" He screamed, and pulled again. It hurt. "This is what I want! Pull it! Pull me! Hurt me! I want you to hurt me in a way that's real! I want you to hurt me and make me real! I want it to matter! I want it to be something that isn't meant to happen to me! I want you to force me! I want you to rape me! I want you to kill me!"

"Riku!"

He didn't know or care who called his name. "You wanted to know! You wanted to know! And now you know! Kill me! Kill me for real! I want you to break me in a way that means something! My body, my mind! Break it! Pull me, drag me, yank me around, make me do things, because people don't! No one has! Everything that happens to me is just me. It's nothing! It's not real! I'm not real! I'm not!"

Well, he wasn't crying. No Riku seemed capable of it, not properly, although Riku knew deep down, deep, they could, because he wasn't real, just a fragmented copy, a voyeur gazing into the other's life.

That gaze could never be turned on him, because everyone was entitled to take.

He choked. The tangle was yanked further out of his throat, thick and clumpy and dragging against its walls; a vile display. Kairi was stumbling away from him, even as he lunged after her, after Axel, after his counterpart. His body shook, legs wobbling under the weight of him. The tangle inside him had spread under his skin again, squirming, bursting out of him, and of course there was nothing to splatter on the path under his feet, on the stone, on the faces of the object's wide-eyed audience.

"Why are you running away? You wanted to know! This is what you wanted to know! Force! I want force! Take the force in you and destroy me! Take me by the hair and make the violence real! Make it hurt! Make it mean something! Make me! Make me! Make me! Make—"

Footsteps. He spun—blurred Kairi's furrowed brows and glassy eyes, Axel's paling cheeks and unfocused pupils, the almost-mirror Riku refused to look into—and saw the others coming down the path. Xion, Sora, Naminé, Roxas.

Naminé.

He lurched toward her. The four of them were chatting away, brown paper bags full of breakfast treats cradled in their arms. Wow, and apparently they'd been worried about him! The shadows under their eyes were just as frequent friends with all-night partying as they were any sort of anxiety, and their faces were split with smiles, tender, soft, hands on arms, the length of bodies leaning in, pressing against.

And then it was gone, because they saw him.

They stopped, stilled. Wavered. They didn't look like they cared. They looked like there was something deranged in front of them, something unsightly, something rancid, something whose existence was so fundamentally loathsome and so beneath them that they could end it just for being in their presence; welcome to the mausoleum, you will not be mourned. He was a thing that could have their guts scraped across the pavement and then kicked into the shadows. He was a thing, just like all the other feeling things, and he could see it in their faces, their bodies; Xion's parted lips and wrinkled forehead, Sora's hand reaching to crush, Roxas's stepping before Naminé, his sweat, and Naminé...

Naminé.

Why won't you kill me again, Naminé, now that I want you to? Would it be too real, this time?

"Guys, he's—" Axel's voice, too desperate. Kairi made a strange high-pitched gurgle.

Riku pretended not to hear the silence, the absence lurking behind the chorus of confused sounds, pretended it wasn't louder than anything, even the noise reverberating through his skull from those wiry strands.

"Hey, Riku..." Sora began, trailed off. Riku couldn't look at him, couldn't look at someone he knew wouldn't choose him, couldn't look at the person Naminé chose, but he didn't need to.

He still had a hand in his hair, pulling him forward. The other flailed, directionless, erratic, puppeteered by the tangle.

"Do you know why?" He said, screamed; toward her, at her, he didn't know. "Do you know why I want to be forced?"

They all stared. He knew, he knew. It's not her fault. It's my fault. I know it's my fault. I am what I am. But I want it to be her fault. Why did you do this to me? How much easier was it to do to me than to him? Why didn't you just end it for me? Couldn't you take any responsibility for what happened? No, because it's my fault. I know it's my fault. You all know. You all know.

His vision narrowed. Sora stepped back, bumped Xion. Roxas had one arm up, staring, but it didn't compare to the way Naminé was looking at him.

Except it's not the way she looks at me. It's not Naminé. It's not any of them; not her, not Sora, not him, not Axel, not even Larxene or Even. It's none of them. It's just me.

Just Riku himself, all the way down, pushed into place, pushed into what he needed to be, and he went with each push because that was what he did. That was his totality.

The way of things.

Destiny.

"Do you know?" His voice cracked.

"R-Riku, I don't..."

"It's because it's better. It's better than what you did to me. If someone grabs me and drags me around like this, it's real. I can pretend it's not what I was made for, even if I got it from him"—the flailing hand waved toward that silent space, despairing—"it's still better. Being forced is better, because maybe it would matter. Would it?" He choked on the question, he choked on the truth. "But it wasn't what I was made for, right? Because I wasn't made for force. You don't force me to do anything! You just shape me! I'm a body you do things to, a mind you do things to. I hold nothing inside. I can't be hurt, I can't be raped, I can't be killed, I can't be pulled. I can't be excised because I'd have to exist for that to even be possible. But when I'm forced, I can pretend. And I like that. It feels good. It's all I want, it's all I want, it's all I want, and it's all I'll ever need because I can't change, I can't be anything other than this. I can't—I can't—I—"

Naminé was fading. He could see her veins. Roxas rocked forward and then back, as if he couldn't decide where he needed to be, as if he didn't know for once, all while Riku retched words out of his mouth and all over him. Sora's eyes were wet windows; crystalline cities in blue, this time. Xion had dropped her paper bag, hand over her mouth. She looked guilty. Why did she look guilty? There were still noises behind him; Axel making a low sound in his throat, dying, Kairi speaking a language he couldn't understand. It was gibberish, stranger even than his own words, and panicky too.

They were a blur, though. He was spinning to each of them, repeating, repeating. He was an automaton, only repeating. Everyone loved the head eating the legs eating the legs eating the legs, just more conversations that never went anywhere. And through it all, with every word, he yanked at his own hair, tugged and tore, but it never hurt enough, never hurt right, yet he couldn't stop, wouldn't, just kept going and going, around and around in flailing, staggering circles while everyone stared, and the tangle split and the noise roared and his vision narrowed until it went wide and unfocused again, and he wasn't real, he wasn't—

Pain. His vision went white. The noise ceased. The tangle was yanked out of him in one long, bile-slick slide; a single fat hair covered in guts. A wet sounded escaped. He shivered, shuddered.

There was a hand in his hair, and it pulled.

"With me. Now."

It hurt. The other Riku hadn't bothered to dig deep, had just snatched up whatever hanks of Riku's hair he could reach. He marched him across the concrete, refused to pause even as Riku whimpered, cried out. Riku could only watch as the world reeled by, hazy at the edges, obscured by the fall of his fringe. The sharp sting of hair pulled taut made all the voices vanish.

He tried to stop. He couldn't. His feet stumbled over stone at the other Riku's demand. He pulled, pulled, pulled away, struggled against his hold, but the hook was in his hair, in the thing he called a heart, and there was nothing he could do. But he was not the fish in their funerary shroud—the fish who'd sought only to ease their suffering, their starvation, and had been given only death, something Riku longed for, but for him, not for them—because though they both resisted and were thus forced, Riku felt only relief and not suffocating agony.

The wretched tangle was gone.

The push door was pulled.

The other Riku dragged him past confused faces, through the press of voices calling, footsteps chasing, hands reaching. There was confusion and horror and distress. All Riku felt was euphoria.

How terrible.

Through it all, the pull; the stabbing pain, tension applied to every rotten thought and memory and wire of his being as it was drawn directly out of his skull. He fought back, caught a glimpse of the other Riku and almost laughed. There was no pleasure—there was a reason, then, that it was Kairi who bent him over the kitchen counter—but neither was there confusion, horror, distress. Just a knowing, even stronger than Roxas's.

An almost-knowing, maybe.

His hair was in the best hands it could be. He was in the best hands he could be in. Of course, you would be the one person who could make me real.

"Riku, are you sure—" A voice called out, cut itself off as the other Riku pushed open the door to Naminé's house and dragged him inside. It was Sora, sounding panicked, but less so than expected. Riku caught a glimpse of him as he was taken. A few wrinkles, some concern. But he wasn't going to stop them. He wasn't going to stop this.

He took in the shadows under his eyes. Maybe they were from worry.

"I'm sure," the other Riku said, and then everyone and everything vanished as Riku was pulled away from the eternal twilight bleeding through the glass, and into the darkness of the house beyond.

"I miss them, you know. The memories."

I doubt it.

They're on the mainland, sitting side by side on some wooden fencing as they watch the waves. Riku avoids the play island and its islet. There are too many ghosts there, things he remembers and feels but can never own. The overhanging paopu and its vistas are repellent to him, as is the treehouse, the shack, the race course, the Secret Place. Or, maybe, he is repellent to them, his presence giving the world cause to shiver and shudder, tilt and turn. Whatever the case, he is assured there is no home for him here.

He likes to believe the Islands would drown him, if only they could get a hold. Yet even on those misty mornings when he stands in the tide, it never does.

Do you think it pays attention to every rock and shell and shoe?

In the end, the Islands leave him be, or just demand he do the deed himself, and because he can't he goes and finds new places from which he can look out to sea. Perhaps, if he tries, he can find one to make his and his alone, without a single ghost to whisper in his ear.

There will be none of that today, though, because today there is Sora, saying things he doesn't mean because he is too kind not to say them. Sora's heart is true, of course. His feelings are so painfully true. But a true heart can make a liar of a boy, especially when he doesn't mean to be, when he doesn't know he's doing it, when he thinks he really does miss those memories of Castle Oblivion and all that happened there.

Much like Riku himself, he doesn't realize how little there is to miss.

At least I know they don't matter.

Yet, still, they'd been all Sora had had. Trapped in that place, with his mind on the line, those misbegotten memories had been the only ones; precious, treasured. all-encompassing.

He'd thrown them away; Castle Oblivion and its shades, the pale halls and claustrophobic rooms, the Organization in their dark coats, Naminé.

Me.

Yes, they'd been Sora's everything, and he'd known what they were worth.

He'd known what to do.

"I mean it, you know!" Riku turns. Sora's face is sure, but there's a desperation right there at the corner of his eye. Who was he trying to convince? They both knew it was a lie. "There's a piece of me missing. The fact that I don't remember you...I can feel that absence here."

He brings a hand up to his heart; a taunt. Condescension, a convenient pity, encouraging him to protect a girl whose memory he'd swiftly abandoned. Even if it isn't that, it's mocking. Riku doesn't feel anything in that place except broken, after all. Not heartbroken, nothing nearly so dramatic as that. Just...empty. There's not enough left to consider it in pieces.

Well, maybe it was something as dramatic as heartbroken.

"There's nothing to miss, Sora," he says. "You chose right."

"No! Well, I mean, yes, I wanted my old memories back. But I didn't want to give up the ones I had. They were important to me. But...I wanted to have the real ones. I wanted to make real ones, on top of the ones we already had. I still want to make them with you. I want to spend time with you, Riku."

Riku stays silent. Sora squirms. It lasts until he opens his mouth, which is when Riku repeats, "You chose right, Sora."

"Riku..."

"Your memories there were mostly false, and violations at that. The real ones weren't that great, either. I was a terrible person, Naminé was in pain, the Organization was cruel, and most of the friends you met were just shadows of themselves made by Naminé with the support of the Castle. The good things that were real, what you had with Donald, Goofy, Jiminy, it's the sort of thing you share everywhere, always. You knew in your heart what mattered, Sora, and so did your friends. Even Pluto would agree."

Sora shook his head. "I want those memories, Riku. Even if there's hurt. I want them. They matter." The way he says matter with such emphasis almost makes Riku want to look at him properly.

Almost.

He doesn't want to see what's in his eyes, though.

"I don't blame you," he says. Now he wonders if he's the liar. Worse, he wonders if he's not. "Why wouldn't you want memories that were real, with people who were real?"

With people who mattered.

He looks out at the fishing boats and shudders, tries not to think too hard.

"Riku, you're..." Sora makes a little sound. Riku still doesn't want to look, but he pushes himself. Sora's frustration might drown the things in his eyes that Riku doesn't understand and never will. Riku's looking might drag their legs out of their mouths; the tangle pulling apart, the knot releasing. But he's kidding himself. He knows it won't. It never does. "Here, just..."

A gloved hand appears before him. It's the one Sora held to his own chest. Does that mean something? Or is it merely Sora's preferred side? It is.

But there it remains, waiting for him.

It feels, for a moment, like they're underwater, like they're in a dream.

They never quite touch in his dreams.

Riku looks at the hand, follows it up its wrist, its arm, over its shoulder and neck to Sora's face. His eyes really were such a painful blue. No wonder the other had fled. Who could stand anyone looking at them like that?

"Riku...?

It would be rude not to take his hand. He is rude, of course. But he is also capable of dishonesty. Much like his counterpart, shouting and sneering something like a truth, but always turned at an angle, obscured just so, shoved just a little to the right behind the curtain. Look at my performance, not at me.

He wants the hand, but if he were honest he would not take it. He does not believe in what Sora holds. He knows what he offers. He knows what it means.

A false thing lies by the nature of its being.

He looks away from blue, blue eyes, picks his own hand up from where it hangs, and places it in Sora's.

In his peripheral, Sora smiles. Riku won't look to see if he believes him, or if he doesn't. He's not sure which is worse. His palm presses against leather, and he wants to crawl out of his body just to get away from its agonizing corpse-feel. His cold fingers slide against warm callouses, and he wants to crawl out of his mind just to get away from the ghosts. He remembers times they wrestled together, times he was supported, times they clasped his own to help him clamber over rocks and paths and up ladders. He touches skin that belongs to neither of them and memories that aren't his.

That's not ours. You're not mine. I'm not anyone's.

Stop chasing ghosts, Sora. You already know I'm not there. You already know I'm not here.

A live hand in someone's hide squeezes a dead one. "What you feel matters, Riku, but...I want to make real memories with you. I want to a lot. And those absent ones—they're always going to hurt. There's an itch at the back of my mind, and I can't scratch it. Naminé says if I did, I'd tear myself apart. So I can't have them"—so long as he isn't willing to give up the real ones—"but I can make new ones with you. And that's what I want to do. I want to make new memories and treasure them forever."

He blushes, brown cheeks golden. Riku doesn't need to see his face to know that. He can feel the heat in his hand, but more than that, he just knows. There's nothing especially romantic about it, though. He's just being boyish; saying something a bit too big, in a moment a bit too intimate, and because he means it, he blushes.

That's the worst thing. He means it. He's so true he doesn't realize when he's lying. He holds on to Riku's hand, with that hand that held his own heart, and doesn't realize it's all him; the sky an ocean flooding into an empty cup, chipped and broken, hand shaking where it holds the handle.

Sora sees what he wants to see.

Riku never replies.

Let me go, Sora. There's nothing here. Let me go.

"We talk first, but not out there."

Riku's head ached in a pleasant sort of way. He ran his hands through his hair, felt soothed for the first time in a long time. He should be embarrassed by his outburst, devastated by all the pain it brought forth, that he set up and displayed with his own idiot hands and idiot mouth. He should want to die.

He doesn't, though, because the other—Riku, he's Riku too—standing across the room from him had grabbed his hair and pulled each strand taut, and that pain was clarity; a knife into numbness. He'd dragged him through the house without a care for his tripping and stumbling, entirely irresistible.

Later, he'll regret this. Now, though, he could only be grateful.

"Alright," he said. "Let's talk."

Riku had taken him to a bedroom. Naminé had a few. Most of their houses were huge, ownership maintained by the munny they earned on their adventures, the support of strange and powerful people, and a little magical obfuscation. They sometimes seemed silly to Riku, but he supposed the rest of them needed the space for all the people they knew, even lonesome Naminé.

His house wasn't big. A shack, almost. There weren't that many sizeable properties on the Islands, and Riku didn't want one, anyhow. He wanted to be alone.

And you don't earn much in the way of munny, and you won't ask for it, because in the end, you won't be there forever.

You didn't even think you'd be there for long.

He thought it, but the pain of it wasn't present. It'd be back, but for now...

"I know you didn't have much control, but you probably shouldn't do that again if you can help it."

Riku blinked, hand still stroking his own head. "I was..."

"I know." Riku sighed. "I suppose we're not saying or doing what we need to be, if that's happening."

"I thought it was no one's fault," Riku said, knew he was being rude. Even with the soothing, he couldn't help but be an ass.

He wasn't quite so snippy, though, not the way he'd been lately, or for a while. Maybe that was a good sign. After the break, his mind seemed to have swung up on a high. It couldn't last. The pendulum had to swing down. But for the moment? It was the best it'd been in a long time.

Low bar, but better than jumping fences.

Riku huffed, put his hands on his hips. "It's more complicated than that. You know, I know, they know. We've all had a part to play in this. Even's in Radiant Garden, if you want to take it up with him."

"I should. Not violently," he added, at Riku's expression. "I just meant we need to talk. I've been wanting to ask him some things, although I might not need to anymore."

A head tilt. "What do you mean?"

Riku looked at him. With age, there'd come a tenderness. Not quite the bruised, volatile vulnerability of his youth, all obvious anger and obscured longings, so demanding of his friends, but unwilling to share the shape of his desires, the depths of them. Nor was it the self-loathing of his middle years, with their veil of hair and blindfolded eyes. It wasn't even the boy who'd fought in the Keyblade War, who'd journeyed to Quadratum, who'd stumbled back with the others to drag Riku out of the depths of the Dark Realm. No, it was new, or maybe just something matured; a softness, and a strength, built from all his experiences. The weaknesses were still there, of course, but maybe the fact they were all known meant they could be held with care, attended to.

Even now, I can't imagine that.

But he remembered the pulling, its connection to that tenderness, the hands of a mother, a brother, a lover, and so said, "Xion told me I can't change. That the reason I'm like this is because I...want to be."

A tilt in the opposite direction. Riku watched as Riku moved around the room, fiddled with the dimmer of the light on the closest side table, then rounded the overlarge bed to do the same to the other. They were quiet as he worked. Riku sat on the mattress, waited until Riku returned to his previous position. He stood in front of the door, kept space between them. He'd really meant it, when he said they'd need to talk before touching.

What if it takes too long? What if I break again? The sharp shocks had faded to dull aches. Would he start spilling out through the cracks left behind once they vanished in their entirety?

"We don't say things as clearly as we should."

Riku blinked, stared at Riku. "Is this an example?"

"Hah." He didn't quite pull a face. "I just meant that we don't think about how our words and actions contradict, or how you'll take them. Not that you're a good listener."

Riku frowned. "I—"

"You can only comprehend what you can understand. 'One who knows nothing...'" He snorted, and Riku understood that much, at least. "You've got reasons for what you hear, I'm not denying that. But the point is Xion probably didn't say what you think she said." Riku opened his mouth, but was given no chance to speak. "I'm right. I don't need to have been there to be right. You might be a replica, but I know her better than you do."

"We're still rude, huh?" He scowled.

"Yeah." He laughed. It was only a little mean. For whatever reason, that made Riku feel better. It made it easier to continue.

"Even if...she didn't mean it the way I heard it, I don't know what else she could have meant." He paused. "You heard what I said outside. You know I meant it."

"I know you meant it." There was a heaviness. He sounded nauseous. Riku didn't know how exactly his words had made the other ill, but a cruel part of him was, deep down in the pit he pretended was a gut, happy. "I don't agree, but I know."

They paused. This conversation could go on for a long time. A life time, even. Maybe two or three. It would go in circles, head eating legs eating legs eating legs. The two of them might never agree, certainly never fully. It would be far too easy to get caught in the trap of one Riku trying to convince the other that he was loved the way others were, as fully as anyone else, that he had a life that could be respected, that he was more than an object that feels. He could talk and talk, round and round, and Riku would never quite be able to see it, to know it, to feel it in his pseudo-bones.

And thus, in conversation, they would lose their chance to reach the actions that could convey what was being said, even just a little; the distortion of violence into play, the comfort that came from immersion in the obscene, the taking seriously of wishes and desires, and the soothing that just might be able to seep into all those cracks; the real from his life, and the almost-real from their game. They could lose their chance to pull the push door; one or both, his or theirs.

Already, Riku felt his strength waning, his ability to experience fading as the tide came in with all the anguish over what he'd said and done, maybe even over what's been done to him.

The numbing fog came, too, offering itself as an alternative.

But they both knew that. Perhaps that was something Riku loved about his counterpart. Perhaps he didn't hate sharing every piece of himself with him. Perhaps there was something pleasurable, even sweet, in the eternal contradiction of his existence; wanting to be him while also wanting to be himself, wanting to be close while also wanting to be apart. Perhaps he was just trying to convince himself, and perhaps he meant it.

Whatever the case, they both knew, and so they both moved on.

"I prefer force," Riku said, looking at the floor and not at Riku, "because then it doesn't feel like my fault." Similar, but not the same. It made Riku's hollow insides warm. They remained that way even when Riku lifted his head, held his gaze. "But you have to know it's just pretend."

He snorted. "I know." He did. It was the counterpoint, after all. He still couldn't say if what had happened to him mattered, but their make believe might provide an answer; if this is play disguised as violence, then what were all those other things? Another thought occurred, then, emerging amidst barely recollected rearrangements of his mind, looming figures, and a fist in his hair; Riku's expression as he'd dragged him; the contrast between acts of tyranny, and the absence of desire for it. "And you know I don't expect you to be dominant, right? You'd be terrible at it."

"I could dominate you, if you need me to." Neither his voice nor his expression were especially ecstatic. Riku nearly laughed.

"I don't need you to. I just need you to pull my hair, and..." Why was it so hard to say? "Hold me. And everything else."

"Everything else?"

It was Riku's turn to look at the floor. He tried not to scowl. "You're me, aren't you? You know what I want, even if we want it for different reasons. You'd have to, or you wouldn't have done all that, right? The others...I guess they wouldn't know, but since it's me, they probably figured they wouldn't need to check if I actually..."

Footsteps; bare feet rapid against carpet. Then there were hands on his shoulders, squeezing tight. Riku looked up, didn't quite startle. He was too distracted by how the touch disrupted a pain in his chest he hadn't realized was there, hadn't realized was building.

"They heard what you said, Riku. And if any one of them—if Sora—thought you didn't want this, they—he—would have stopped me outside. He would have broken down that door."

That earned a scoff, no matter how good Riku's mood was. But then Riku was looming closer, and Riku's skin prickled, hair on end. No, leaned. Not looming. He's leaning. Why was it so hard to tell the difference?

"I mean it, Riku," Riku said. "They love you. We love you. You know that, right?"

There it was. Once again, the head ate the legs ate the legs ate the legs. He felt like the fish in their funerary shroud; unobserved, unable to be acknowledged. The memory of pleasure faltered as the beginnings of another tangle built in his throat. He choked and choked, but he knew there was no way to get it out without revealing what it was.

He had to speak, as true as he could, even knowing he might not be understood.

"I believe you believe what you're saying," he said, without looking up. "I believe that. Maybe I even believe you a little, sometimes. But it's not enough. It's just not enough." He shook his head. The shock of shame burned a hole in the thing he called a gut, left the pit deeper. Love isn't enough. It's never going to be enough. How could it be enough, when it was used against me? How could it be enough, when I can never know if it's real? How could it be enough, when it doesn't matter if it's real? When it can be used regardless, and how can it be enough when I might not even be able to...

A hand cupped his cheek, the other his head, his hair. Fingers gently pulled, lifted until their eyes met. It felt like someone carrying him out of deep, dark water.

"That's okay."

He couldn't believe it. He couldn't. And yet Riku's words severed the legs in their collective mouth, slowed the chewing to a stop. You can say more. You can say what you need to say. "You never chose me. No one ever chose me. I don't even hate you for that. And I don't even know if I can, or if that's been taken from me too. If anything I feel is mine."

Riku hesitated, just a moment. "I don't...know how to deal with that. I've lost my body, and I've not known things, and I've been manipulated, but not in the same way." Still, his eyes were bright when he pushed his forehead against Riku's own. "But I know this; I'm choosing you now. But none of us chooses another forever. I choose Sora. I choose Kairi. I choose Naminé. I choose Terra. I choose Roxas. I choose Mickey. I'm always choosing. We're all always choosing. I choose everyone and no one and me. But here, now? I choose you, first and foremost." There was the flicker of a smile.

"B-but..."

"I'm not going to promise you what I won't give. This matters too much. I won't lie to you. But I do choose you, Riku." The smile was more than a flicker now. It was a little sad. "I won't blame you for being reluctant to take the hands you're offered."

"So it is my fault."

A shake, still forehead against forehead. The fingers pulled just slightly. The smile fell. "No, it isn't. Not always. Not back then. Probably not even most of the time. It wasn't your fault. No matter how you were made, either. And I don't know where you stand, not fully. We could swap shoes and I still wouldn't; Naminé would have to make me you, and you me, and I don't think that'd help anything except cause another identity crisis. I think we've had enough of those. But the feeling of not being picked over others even when you needed to be, the feeling of needing someone or something more than anything, of being trapped, of—hating yourself for who you are and what you've done, and even feeling like you can't get mad, or be hurt, because of something, even if it's not the same thing..."

Riku's lip twitched. "You almost-know."

Had the smile returned? Or was the face before him a mirror?

"I almost-know."

The words felt like fingers down his throat, drawing out the hook, the tangle; a gentle sort of catch, a careful release. "There's more."

"Then tell me."

"I..." He swallowed. The hand in his hair pulled. The knot came loose. "I have trouble...feeling. You talk a lot about love, and I'm not sure I can. Not at all. I think I loved Naminé because that was how she made me, when she—broke me. And she let me go, I know. She never asked me for anything, once I knew what had happened, what she'd done. And then when I finally let it go, when I let me go, I...stopped feeling that. I don't know if I can, don't know if I want to, don't know if I matter less because of it. Maybe that's why I can't understand what people say to me. It's all..."

The words snagged. Could he love, or was he too much of an object to be able to? Was not loving what made one an object? Was it safe to admit being unable to, that the feelings he had for others might be built out of different things—replica things—and that the acts he performed might not take the same shape as the acts of those he shared them with? That they'd know when he used their words, their language, it was because it was the language that had won, that he had none that could be understood, and that he couldn't hear the feeling beneath the words they said?

That even if he cared in his way, or if he was unable to at all, they would still know the rightness of their world, and the wrongness of his. He was not real. It was not real.

It couldn't be.

Right?

"You're here, and I want you here." Riku blinked, felt a pang as the hand in its hair squeezed. "I pulled you into this room. I had some idea of what I was doing when I did that, and knowing how you feel or don't feel doesn't change what I'm willing to do. What I want to do. I may not be all that dominant, and you're right, although apparently I make a decent brat. I've been told so, anyway. But none of that matters. Just this once, I'll be whatever you need. I might even be it again. I might even be it a lot. Can you believe that, at least?"

Again, the hand in its hair tightened. Riku shut his eyes. He pushed back into the hold, then leaned forward. Tension waned and waxed.

"I can," he said. "I even believe you about the others." That hurt, but he did. He believed they believed they loved him. That almost hurt more than believing they didn't. The spaces in him ached with how he couldn't comprehend that that was what they were feeling, how he couldn't feel that they were feeling it, how it didn't seem like they could ever feel such a thing for him. How he only understood the emotion because he'd been broken.

Maybe that was no one's fault. Maybe it belonged to all of them, or just them, or him alone. Maybe different faults belonged to different people, at different times, in different places. But, sitting with Riku, it didn't seem so important. It mattered even less than he did, in fact.

It'd told him something of the truth of it, and Riku had said he still wanted to be here. The throat remained clear. The fish escaped the hook and the shroud. The legs dropped to the floor. The mouth was empty, save for speech.

"I don't need you to be dominant. I just need..."

"What do you need?" Riku said, and knew.

"Just pull my hair. And hold me. Don't ask me to feel what I can't. If I try to push away, pull me back. You can be as submissive or bratty as you want. I want that, even. I know we're alike."

"We are," Riku said, soft in the dim light. "We'll have to get closer, look closer, so we can see how we're different. And then, after, we'll see how we're the same again, and it doesn't matter. It can all be true. It can all be real, even when it doesn't feel that way. I'll show you."

While playing pretend, you'll show me a truth.

Riku almost-believed him.

Riku did believe him.

"Show me, then."

Something secret, something special.

There was a lump that wasn't a tangle. He hummed—a response, an emotion—and Riku pulled on its hair, arched its neck with his hands planted firmly at the base of its scalp. He pressed their bodies close, closer, and both of them knew then that there needed to be no clothes between them; none at all, not a one.

There was no asking. Riku leaned in for a kiss, and Riku gave over his lips. A wrist twitched, fingers wound with his hair drawing him in the desired direction; harsh pressure, a sharp pull. Riku opened its mouth to him. Tongues pressed, never quite pushed. Deep, lazy. Riku heard the rustle of pants, the clatter of a belt as it hit the floor.

A haze fell over them. Clothes found their way to the carpet, to the bed, slipped slowly against their skin. One body was directed by a hand in its hair, the other by shaking fingers sliding crinkling jacket and crumpling shirt down shoulders, elbows, and wrists. Everything was dyed in warm, sweet orange. Shadows played over their cheeks, reshaping them; Riku seemed as young as he was, sometimes, while at other angles their differences were so shocking it seemed strange to consider him a mirror at all.

But when one pressed closer the other did the same, reflecting desire. They melded, skin humid and wet with sweat. So like him, but not like him; like it, but not like it. Another kiss was shared, then stolen, before lips evaded lips and found hair instead. They followed the strands where they clung to its neck, then—ah! A hard pull snapped his head back, forced him to present his throat to the caress of tongue and teeth. He resisted.

Discovered he could not.

Riku's head tilted back, mouth falling open. He struggled to breathe, the sound snagging somewhere inside him, escaping only once it had become a groan. From the edge of his blurring vision, he could see Riku; face serious, his expression one of barely disguised pain and, worse, affection. Another snag, something in his chest tripping. The image in Riku's eyes was his own. Then there was another pull, and they fell back against the bed together, kisses falling; a summer sun shower.

There were no words. All direction came from the hand in his hair. He followed without resistance this time, clambered back until he was laid naked on the bed, Riku crawling over the top of him, staring down at him, surrounding him. When he lowered himself onto it, held it close, their legs tangled, and his fingers locked its hair in his too tight grip.

He reached back to skim his fingers over Riku's own. A little tug dislodged them, but they only retreated up the inside of Riku's arm, up over his shoulder, his neck, his face. His hair hung peach in the low light, flashing silver as it swayed. It was the thing that had started this, all the way back on that day of kitchen counters and catapulting over two or three fences.

He likes this too. The thought came to him, and with it, the action; a shaggy hank of fringe between thumb and forefinger, a pull. A flush spread across his cheeks; both their cheeks, it knew. Its own burned, after all.

One more kiss, and then another direction from the hand in his hair; away, obey. Riku tried for another press of lips, gasped at the pain when it was denied. The tension remained until he did what he was made to do; arms on Riku's shoulders, legs parting as Riku ground down against him. Wet, hard, a push-pull. It shivered. The feeling building in his core was almost intolerable, but it was not permitted a reprieve.

Instead, it faced the insufferable onslaught, the weight of pleasure. Once, twice, he drew his hips back into the mattress as if he might escape that way, but again there was the jerk of a wrist. Hair taut, head taut, neck taut. He fell still save for the squirming of hips against Riku's, the swallowing of sounds another pull would inevitably force out of him.

Above him, Riku's face was framed in sweat. His arms shook, one clinging to Riku's head, the other supporting. It juddered with every swirl of his hips, every half-taken breath that broke in a whimper. It wasn't sure whose voice that was, high-pitched and shattering. It was gratifying, though, to hear him breaking even as he broke himself, fracture lines spreading from each place they came into contact, each place they connected.

Something throbbed, a pulse running through him at the thought of their bodies meeting. The fingers in his hair gave another pull, and the feeling echoed. Kiss like this, it was told. Less nails, more fingers, shift your legs, twine them with mine. The instructions were never spoken, and the demands came both harsh and soft. Riku followed some and fought others; spread himself, then shut it all away, only to have his body forced open once more. The world was slick between their legs. He shivered.

The body on top of his pressed closer, and then both hands were in his hair, strands curled tight around each digit, palms cupping his scalp, curling close to the nape of his neck. They pulled, and it arched its back, curved to the call of his fingers. Its own hand slipped from its place on his shoulder, entwined with his peach-silver hair and tugged; a returned force, asking for nothing more than a kiss while its legs trembled, the hollow place inside him slowly filling with something warmer than light.

Their faces were veiled, curtains blocking out all but the dim glow as they got lost together in their shared world. It wasn't a homecoming, it wasn't paradise, but Riku had never known either of those things, and he did not ask for them now. He was content with what it was, because what it was—the glide of their tongues, the taste of their mouths, their mutual curling and tangling at each scratch of scalp and caress of an ear, at every stroke of their hair—was real.

It wasn't quite the violence it had wanted, but even so, the pull of its hair was a demand it could not resist. Still, he would need someone to give him that particular form of force, that edge to his play. He would, he was sure. Yet this was something else, something he had asked for just as much; the making of him, the awakening of him, the transformation of it into something real. It lit a fire inside him; a little force that had not previously existed.

It sparked when Riku pushed his legs back and slotted them together, hips undulating, dragging, grinding. It burned when their nipples brushed, lips on each other's throats in an exchange of delirium; wanting to kiss, wanting to be kissed. It ran down his spine and through his body when they moaned, writhing together.

And it glowed when his hair was yanked, when he was lifted from the bed by Riku's arm and wrenched over, rolling until he came to rest on top of him. Riku's hand slipped down to his ass and gripped it, pushed hard even as he pulled, pulled, pulled.

Now, Riku laid bare against Riku, cradled by his body. It swallowed, let balmy palms curl around his biceps, trail over the delicate bone of his collar, slide down and over his chest. All the while, his hair remained a toy, an entertainment, strings on a puppet providing it with flashes of pleasure as it mouthed over a pink nipple and longed for kinship.

There was a moan. Riku grinned, then had it pulled from his face with another tug of his hair. His voice became an echo; more a whine than a moan, though. He flushed, even as there was a flare in the pit of him, a heat between his legs. He squeezed them together.

It was embarrassing, all of it. And yet, seeing the same flustered awkwardness, the uneasiness, accompanying the pleasure on Riku's face, something settled inside him. It was embarrassing to have sex, especially with him, but somehow that only made it more desirable. Flesh in any form was a humiliation, a threat, a vulnerability, a weakness, but, in this moment, it did not feel like his was exceptionally so. That felt good, so good it pulsated through his core, rippled through him as his hair was tugged hard, until he took the sought for position; legs locking with legs, loins to loins, bodies and the slick slide of them as they pushed tight together. It was agony, but a satisfying sort, a gratifying sort.

The hand that had gripped him ran up and down his back, thumb stroking knotted muscles and soft fat, cupping his ass again for another brief grind before slipping between them to that place of shared wetness, shared hardness. Fingers stroked over them both, then reached further for Riku's hole, pressing up and in. Riku shivered, pierced at the top at the point of tension, and below at the point of penetration; hair knotting, body engulfing, pulled taut all the way through. The only noise in his head was a pleasant buzz, one that made all instructions unclear, but his perversity—or perhaps its knowledge of Riku, each and every one—had him mirroring. He slid his hand through their stickiness, bound it in their pleasure, and then breached Riku's opening with a soft, slow thrust.

A sharp cry, a little noise from the mirror. Both sets of fingers pressed deeper, a whimper slipping from Riku's lips as they dug hard against wet muscle and needy walls. It pressed its head to Riku's neck, felt an arm curl around him to cradle his skull; refusing to let go, refusing to let him go. That new lump, so different, sat thick and fat in his throat. Someone sees it; the force in me. He pulls me back from the edge, back from another turn at oblivion.

Did it want that? It no longer had a choice. Someone wanted that little life within him enough to hold on.

Thrust and grind, thrust and grind. Their hips found a rhythm; its hair gripped in his fist, its free hand coming up to stroke the bangs clinging to that flushed face beneath him. Were his eyes that hazy? He was close, so close, the thing that was a stomach alive with it, his throat open for every whimper, every groan, every sigh. Their hearts—it can be a heart, just for now—hammered between them; different, but beating the same.

Now, now, please. He clung to Riku. Everything in him had gone taut as a line; there was no avoiding the hook. Even unwilling, he would have to go. How lucky to be willing, if only this once. He quivered, pleasure crawling out of his core, hot and sweet. His breath came quick, quicker, loud, louder, his moans caught against his neck. In turn, he felt moans against his head, reverberating, ruffling what strands weren't caught in his fist.

Now, pull!

He did, and everything flooded through Riku and came out soaking between them. He squirmed on the fingers inside him, against the body under him, against the hand, drew close, drew away, struggled and surrendered. The blankets rustled, his toes clenched and curled, his hands gripped hard at Riku's hair, their steady rhythm replaced with shaky rolls of the hips. Yet he would not stop, desperate even at the height of his orgasm to pull Riku along with him.

I'd rather face my end with you. Finish me first, and I'll still finish you.

Riku's body loosened and sagged as Riku choked out a ragged sound, tensing under him as he reached his peak. Riku fingered him until his muscles tried to push him out, and then slipped free in time with his partner. His head was jostled, but not quite dragged, as the hand in his hair flexed, grabbed, groped, lost itself in feeling. Both their stomachs and thighs were shaking. It did feel a little like they had melted into each other, or, perhaps, tangled.

It was a knot he would want to untie soon, the touch inevitably shifting from coveted to unbearable. For now, though, it was a thing that made existence tolerable, and he would enjoy that for as long as he was allowed.

They came down together, joined like that. Riku watched as Riku's hand, the one that had been inside it, floundered for the box of tissues on the bedside table. Fingers grappled clumsily without sight, obscured by Riku himself, until he reached over and fetched them for him. The hand fell out of his hair, then, but that was okay. In this second, in this world, it was okay.

They wiped each other down, balled the tissues and dumped them in the little bin beside the bed. The en suite beckoned with promises to wash away their new, tacky skins, but for now they curled into each other, Riku slipping off of Riku's body to nestle by his side.

There was quiet. Everything felt loose, sweaty. Their breath came easy. The air was heavy as a blanket. He did not know if he'd been shown something secret, something special, but he'd been shown something.

Then, Riku asked, "Do you need to talk about it?"

"Hm?"

"Sometimes, after, you need to talk."

It knew Riku's eyes were on him. Cyan, set in peach sugar by the low light. It glanced up just to see. Wondered at the shape of his eyes. Realized, belatedly, that his own must be much the same; dipped in sunset, too soft, and real, achingly so.

"Not now." It let its head come to rest on his chest. "I'm alright. This was what I needed."

A little nod, followed by a caress of his head. There was a pang, but it satisfied.

Silence.

"You really aren't all that dominant, huh? You'd have had me on my hands and knees if you were."

"Shut up," Riku said, snorted, gave a yank of his hair; all play. He followed it with a kiss. "I'm taking a nap. I never get to, you know? Sora and Kairi are always doing it. Almost everyone I know, actually, heh. Guess it's my turn. Want to join me?"

He hadn't needed to offer, not when his other arm was wrapped tight around Riku, keeping him close, keeping him there, and Riku was exhausted besides. But maybe saying it mattered; actions meeting words, words meeting actions. It couldn't solve everything, but it made it a little easier to think things might, on occasion, mean something.

He sighed out the thought, pressed closer. "You know, I think I will."

And so, with their hair tangled on the pillow, he did.

Riku will do this.

He'll sit at a table in Radiant Garden; outside, with a view of neatly trimmed hedges and rows of flowers. Across from him, Even will hunch, though not too much; white coat ruffled, ascot askew, hair split and fraying at the ends. It will observe silver amidst the gold, lines at the corner of the eyes, around the mouth, across the forehead that weren't there a year ago. He'll wonder at how they seemed tender despite the harshness of Even's face, and then he will look down at his hands on his knees, because he does not want to see the condescension that must accompany such kindness.

It won't come, though. Instead, Even will sigh, pick up his tea cup, put it down, sigh. Riku will whisper, "So I won't change."

"You will," Even will say, "if you want to."

At this point, it will no longer tell itself that it wants to. Not with a singular focus, not without contradiction. Still, it will ask, "Can't you change me?"

"No." It will come quick, guilty; the memory of laying a boy—his boy, if Even is honest—upon the altar of science and knowledge and shattering him as unwilling sacrifice. Riku will believe that is what he thinks, anyway. "I can't do that."

"Why not?" He'll let himself be mean. "You did it once before."

"Naminé did it once before." Riku won't mind that the correction comes out too sharp, but Even will. He'll reach up to rub the bridge of his nose. He won't be wearing his glasses, although he should be. He'll mutter something about not being used to them yet; little changes, little aches, little pains increasing in constancy, always asking more, always demanding. Riku won't mention that it gets pain, sometimes; memories of where its mind's breaking left fracture marks physical and mental, recollections of where darkness slid over and under what passed for flesh. What, it might by then acknowledge, is simply flesh in another form. A little pain will crawl under its skin as Even continues, "But I let her. I asked it of her. I commanded it."

The acknowledgement will ease something in him. He'll toy with his hair, might think of Riku, his—their—his friends and companions. It won't quite be a comfort, but the thought will recall strands pulled taut. That will ground him, and he'll be able to accept not only Even's sorrow, but also that there might be a reason for him to be sorrowful in the first place.

That he might have done wrong by him.

"And there's nothing else you can do?" He'll ask.

Even will look at him with blurring eyes, and Riku will catch them. He'll make himself catch them. "No. Nothing of this sort, anyhow, because you don't want me to break you out of that body, Riku. You don't."

He'll be right. It will only hurt a little.

Changes, aches, pains. Another pull will ease.

"Do you know why yet?" Even will ask; a genuine question. It'll be too gentle. Riku will struggle with that, even when the condescension is absent. Will that feeling ever go away?

"Xion said some things." Riku will look away. Seconds will pass, heading towards a minute. Even won't talk until it looks back, and so it does. "Are they true?"

"I don't know what she said, exactly. It's true that replicas become attached to themselves, though, if given the time and space to do so. If you're not aging or growing hair, then it's likely because, on some level, you don't want to. That might not be the whole of it. It's very normal to have contradictory feelings about one's form." He'll open his mouth as if he wants to make a joke about his own body—aging, bending, graying, disabling, bound up in memories of his time as a Nobody—but won't. He'll stop and sigh instead. Too old, too ashamed, caught up in a conversation that's too serious. Riku won't know what it prefers; the possible joke, or this decision to discard it. But it won't mind, either way. "Considering all evidence, though, I think there is a substantial part of you that wants to remain as you are now."

"And that's...fine?"

Riku will doubt. He will probably always doubt.

Across from him, Even will smile. Again, it will be too gentle. "Riku, you and Xion have had to face such battles to even exist. You've both had your selves ripped away from you, have had to struggle so much and for so long to reclaim them, to be here. You had to fight so hard for the identities you have now. Of course you don't want to give them up. Letting that person go would be excruciatingly difficult. Your whole life has been people forcing themselves on you, forcing you to follow their will, their purpose. I am not excused from that." Even will grimace, but he won't allow his smile to fail. "And yet, despite all that, you have persisted. You have claimed this"—he will gesture to him—"for yourself."

A part of him will be ecstatic to hear someone describe his life as a series of events defined by the use of force against him. A part of him will scoff. A part will remain unsure. He'll swallow, avert his eyes. He will not know what to say.

At the edge of its vision, it will see movement, a gesture. It will force itself to look. Even's arms will have dropped back to the table, fingers entwined, face thoughtful as he puzzles out the answer to a question Riku has not asked.

It will be because the question is Even's own.

"The part of you that's seeking change; do you think it actually wants to, Riku?" He'll ask. "Or does it simply think that you're not real enough to matter? That others don't think you're real enough; a spare, a tool, a toy."

Riku won't say anything. It will feel odd.

Yes.

No.

Maybe.

He won't know if that's all of it, or merely a small part of why he longs to be someone else, someone new.

Even will purse his lips, but it won't be unkind. "Do you think that it's only the original Riku we think of when we hear your name? That we think you hold your shared memories the same way he does? That the things you feel aren't yours alone?"

"Don't you?" It will ask. He will think, They can't be mine alone. People have been in my head before. And I have to believe you thought of me, sometimes. You made me. Gotta take some responsibility, right?

It will be impolite. Will it be unfair?

Even's eyes will widen, interrupting its imaginings. "Of course not, Riku. You're similar, but you can't be the same. You've never been the same."

"But..." Riku will stop, then make itself speak. "I am a tool. I was made to be a tool. I know I wasn't a good one, not like Xion. I know I was less than her. I read the reports"—Even's face will be agony, but Riku won't feel anything—"so I know that. I was barely better than any other prototype. And I was only made to reflect him. That's what you made me do. That's what you made me to do. We're so alike, or rather, I'm so alike. I was built from his parts. Broken, from his parts. So how can the things I feel—"

"Riku." Riku will stop. Even will lean over. He won't take his hand; too hesitant to touch him or anyone else, too afraid of what he's been and done. "You are similar, but you are you. Maybe, one day, that will mean changing, and maybe it won't. It will mean sharing, but you'll figure that out. You already have, to some degree. You are indeed made from a part of Riku; a reflection of who he was at a particular point in time. But the moment you were born, Riku, you stepped out of the mirror. That was the miracle of the replica, and it started with you." He won't smile, but there will be something desperate in his voice—the need to reassure, to be reassured—when he says, "All the terrible things done to or by you, all the things projected and pushed onto you, you've pulled yourself through. You've been among the real this whole time."

Riku will run a hand through its hair. It won't know what to say. What Even says is not that different from what has been said an uncountable number of times before. It does not know if among the real means among and a part of, or among but separate from, and does not ask for clarification. It knows what Even meant. It just doesn't know if it believes him.

In the end, it can't hold every thought or feeling, every complication and contradiction. Some won't, and likely can't, exist in him, and others will devour each other in unending cycles. It will always lack something, be unable to resist staggering under the weight of itself, accepting visions of itself as faulty. He will always be the victim as much as he is the survivor; among the dead, among the living. A little less an object than that poor fish and the mausoleum, but not by much.

And yet, he will twirl a strand of hair about his finger and consider. Maybe he will tug it just a little, create a new crack in his shattered self; a little hole of his own making that might allow another part of him to be fed and watered, to exist alongside and in companionship with this pushed thing that he is. He will not make of himself some fairytale of 'perfect balance' or 'as things are meant to be.' He can not; 'the way of things' always seems to hurt him, the negative outweighs the positive, and rosy demands deny the reality he sees. But like this, he might exist tolerably as himself, as itself.

There will never be a 'whole' me, but there will be this. I will be this.

The thought will make him smile.

"So I'm me."

"You're you."

"You're you, he says." Riku will chuckle. Even's eyes will crinkle. More lines. They suit him. "Alright then. I'm me."

They'll sit in silence after that, with no force of any kind in mind or memory, and Riku will close his eyes and doze under the winter sun.

There will be no tallies by his name. It is not an unearned mercy.

Riku sat on the edge of the bed squeezing his hands together, hair in his face, a new tangle building at the back of his throat. No noise, at least. Not yet.

He glanced up as the door to the en suite swung open, watched as the other—as Riku—stepped into the room. Dim light and shadow both caught on damp skin, long silver strands clinging to his cheeks as he toweled them dry. He looked refreshed; presumably, the bathroom wasn't scummy. That'd make for a change.

"I don't know if I can face them," he said, swallowed. The tangle remained.

Riku paused, looked thoughtful. "They'll listen. They might even hear what you have to say, if you say it. No promises, though." He crossed the room to stand before him, slinging his towel over his shoulders before bringing a hand up to stroke through Riku's still sweaty hair. The touch was gentle. Riku did not mind. It wasn't like Riku had been particularly violent throughout, anyhow.

It was a little strange, though, how it was only in the wake of force, subdued as it had been, that he could open himself to this sort of thing. Given what he longed for, he could accept a little of what others longed to give. For my sake, or for their own?

The new tangle in its throat persisted, yet he felt some escape all the same; from the previous one, perhaps, crawling out and away.

"I broke again," it whispered, voice rough. Something in it shook. He leaned against Riku's hand to still it. "How many times will I do that?" He couldn't laugh. "I wasn't meant to say those things. They weren't meant to know."

"Was it true?" Riku asked. "What you said?"

He shrugged. "Most of it. You know some of it was just to—to get them to stop. To get you to stop. I thought...well, I don't know what I thought. Maybe that hurting you would get you to leave me alone. Maybe because I wanted you to look and feel as terrible as I did. Maybe because I didn't want anyone to feel like they were more than me, even if they are." An intake of breath, not quite sharp. "I don't know how to talk about things in a way that matters. I don't know if there's a way to do that. I don't know if words will work."

"Sometimes. They'll work sometimes." The bed dipped as Riku sat, his weight causing Riku to slide toward him. He returned his hand to Riku's hair, stroked it softly. The other found its way into Riku's own. He made no effort to stop its fidgeting, let it clutch desperately.

And Riku did, hard, the tangle still thick in his throat. Fingers through fingers. He thought of Sora's warm, corpse-feel hand and Naminé's wispy silhouette over his shoulder. Xion's gentle gibberish, joy spoken and anguish conveyed. Kairi's incomprehensible light, Axel's bent shadow. Roxas's too sharp eyes. There was Ven, smiling through his brokenness, and Vivi, somewhere between stopping and starting. There was Larxene and her unseen violence. There was Even at the worst; Riku's creation, Riku's birth. All their friends, their enemies, the distant lives that intermingled; real and unreal, standing in the fragments of the wall between their worlds.

"I'm a ghost," he said. "I'm a tool. I still feel like I'm not quite real, like I'm a lesser version of you. And yet I don't want to stop being this, being you, being the way I am. I feel like I was forced. I feel like it didn't matter. I feel like even if it were force, it wouldn't matter. I feel like even I don't think it matters, because of the way I am. Because I still choose this. I don't understand it. I don't understand why I choose to be you."

Quiet. "I think," Riku said, slow, but not patronizing, "that you could say you're being me now. Not me me, but you me. That you could call this your body, your mind, your will, your"—he gave Riku's hair a tug, voice full of mischief—"perversions."

A tingle ran down Riku's spine and into his flesh; replica, real, both. Did it matter? He found a laugh in his throat; short, a little sour, almost sweet, not quite bitter. It did not dislodge the tangle, but he let it loose anyway.

"People have told me that a million times, you know?" He said, but lightly. "That I'm me."

"Well, I guess I'll have to figure out a better way of saying it, if it hasn't sunk in. Maybe I'll even figure out how to show it." Lips came to rest against his hair. "You're you, Riku. Maybe you were born from pieces of me, and maybe you were shaped by others, but aren't we all? The latter, not the former."

"Glad for that," Riku muttered. "Or else we might have even more people that escaped unwanted conversations and awkward situations with fence-jumping gymnastics."

Riku snorted. "You and me both." Lips quirked against his hair, a nose pushed in close. Riku liked it too much. It was starting to hurt. He wouldn't push him away, though, not yet. "You're you. Still you. There's a force in you; it's yours, it's real, and it always has been. And even if it hadn't been, it's real enough now."

"A force in me, huh." Not just the unseen force of others, nor the seen, even. Not a violence, maybe, or perhaps, more honestly, not the same kind. Maybe it had been, once, but not anymore.

Slowly, carefully, Riku searched his shattered pieces for a part of him that could reciprocate. Its fingers caressed the back of Riku's hand, his tender palm; firm flesh with the occasional callous. Similar, yet different; human and replica sharing, if nothing else, the inherent vulnerability of being. The animal form malfunctioning; the machine's meat decaying; exploitation, control, death, all hanging over their silver heads.

They curled closer to each other, and Riku found, for a moment, he could wonder about Riku's pain; like, yet unalike. Perhaps, one day, he might even help to hold it. Not as a body or a mind that was done unto, not as someone that was made for it, or made to do it, not as an object or empty vessel, but as something, someone, willing. It would not be held the way another might; he was a different thing, with a different way, and he had too many cracks and strange, hollow places. But he could hold it, cradle it, inside the force in him, and keep it there a little while.

For however long he lasted, anyhow.

And how long will that be?

The tangle.

"For what it's worth," Riku said, "if the others can live with our, and their, various attempts to hurt, kill, manipulate, and erase each other, they can probably live with this."

Riku snorted, albeit not dismissively. No more an unearned mercy for me than for anyone else. There was truth in it. He wasn't sure if that was the best outcome, though. Stay, or go? Go, or stay? If there was no home anywhere, was here the best place for him?

Were these people?

The bed shifted, Riku tilting as Riku stood. Sitting they had seemed so much closer in height, but with Riku on the bed and Riku standing, the difference between them could not be more absolute.

And yet, still so fragile.

He could not tell what he thought of it; not him, nor himself.

Fingers over knuckles. Riku focused on their hands, connected even now. It choked; not on the new tangle, but on something else entirely. It did not want to let go. All that time trying to escape, running and leaping and hiding, and he did not want to let go.

"I think," Riku said, leaning just slightly toward him," we should go and see our friends."

Riku hesitated, but did not push him away. Something needed to be said, but he didn't know if he could say it, so instead he looked down and asked, "Can I have a shower and get dressed first?"

Riku laughed; mostly dry, but still naked. "Sure. I should probably put on some pants too, even if everyone out there has seen it all before." He flushed at that. Neither of them had a penchant for casual nudity, not like some of the others.

The laughter faded, but Riku's face remained warm, round, smiling. It made Riku a little sick. It felt like betrayal, but not his. The tangle in his throat tied itself in a few more knots. He couldn't run, and only half wanted to, when Riku reached out with the hand not holding his and pet his hair. He stroked down, gathered silver dyed peach—or so he had to assume, judging by Riku's own halo—and slid his fingers in deep. He carded through once, then dug deep and gave the slightest pull.

"We can do all that," he said, "but then we have to go see them, alright?"

Force.

Riku saw a door before him, and wondered if Riku had seen it before. Door to Darkness, Door to Light, door in the depths of the Secret Place, door to his house, door to Axel's, bedroom door; push door, pull door, it didn't matter. It stood waiting either way, ready to open if he only approached. There was no promise of anything on the other side, yet he wanted to get a little closer and take a look anyway. Maybe, he even wanted to step through.

Would things change? It wasn't likely. But he would no longer be static in the face of time. Maybe, maybe.

There's only two choices. I can stop, or I can keep going. Do or don't. It's not fair, but that's all there is once you're started.

The lump remained. He had to say it. He had to.

"Riku."

"Hm?"

"What if it doesn't get better?"

Fingers over knuckles once more. There were little scars in places.

"Can you live with it?"

Can you live with it, or can't you?

It thought. It knew.

It has to be the truth.

"Sometimes."

"Alright." There was another kiss, then, pressed to its head. "Then give me sometimes, and when sometimes fails, when you're at the edge, I'll pull you back. By your hair, if need be."

Riku breathed out, breathed in, breathed out. He swallowed, and the tangle slid down into his gut and dissolved; for the moment, for the now, his throat was clear.

The first thing he did was squeeze Riku's hand. The second thing he did was stand.

"I'll go."

A returned squeeze. A smile.

"We'll go."

Something cracked in Riku's chest. Clouds open, rain pours down. It wasn't the worst feeling. If he couldn't cry, this would do.

The hand in his held on a little tighter and pulled him toward the door.

Pushing the Pull Door

Part Five of 'Blackout (Kink Bingo)'