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Assistant: Title: Riku, Home
        Author: Rikudera Rikudera 
        Chapter: 1/1 
        Summary: Adjusting to peace in the world you weren’t sure would even still be there at one point isn’t always the easiest thing to do, as Riku starts to find out. Post-KH2.
        Contents: Summary:
            
              Adjusting to peace in the world you weren’t sure would even still be there at one point isn’t always the easiest thing to do, as Riku starts to find out. Post-KH2.
            
        

        
  Notes:






    
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          Riku knocks on the door, partly because he lost his house key over a year and a half ago, but mostly because it’d be really difficult to try and explain to his parents why he’s at their front door with a Keyblade in his hands. After Mickey, Donald, and Goofy had left for their own world, Kairi told both him and Sora to go straight to their houses and let their parents know right away that they were home again.“Kairi, is that y-” A woman opens the door, and then stops short with a gasp once she sees him standing there, awkward and fiddling with the edges of the pockets on his jeans. It’s his mother.It’s obvious to anyone looking at the two of them that Riku got most of his looks from his mother, what with her tall, slender shape, her skin that’s quite pale for an Islander, and her long, exotically silver hair that ends past her waist. Her eyes are a pale ice blue instead of his own aqua ones, but right now, all he notices about them is that they’re suddenly filled with tears. She was the most beautiful woman on the island when she was younger, as the wedding picture in the front hall can attest, but now she looks… older, and Riku wonders how many of the lines on her face that weren’t there before he left are because of him.“...I’m back,” is all he can say, throat tight, and he just feels so out of place. Is she even going to let him inside the house? But she pulls him into a swift embrace, right there on the doorstep, her forehead hitting his collarbone and the front of his shirt slowly dampening. He returns it after a beat or two, hoping that it isn’t too clumsy.“Riku, where-” she starts, after a minute or so of silence, but cuts herself off again and moves to let him into the house. Well, that’s a good sign. He turns for a moment to shut the door – and it’s a little strange how automatic that action is, now that he thinks of it – then follows her into the kitchen. Neither one of them sits down; they just stare at each other some more, at the unsure, subdued person in front of them that has suddenly become a stranger.“I...” Riku tries to figure out how to explain to her all the things that’ve happened, but doesn’t know how to say it. I destroyed our world because I wanted an adventure. I helped an evil fairy kidnap the seven teenage girls who deserved it the least. I let a Heartless take over my body because I was jealous and insecure, and I’d be worse than dead right now if it wasn’t for my friends, especially Sora. I spent a long time looking like a complete monster. I had to kill some Nobodies, even though they looked and talked just like human beings. But he can’t say things like that to her, even if Mickey hadn’t said that they couldn’t talk about what really happened to people who didn’t know about the other worlds. “...I messed up. I really...” he drops his gaze down and to the side, mouth twisting until he notices and stops it, “really messed up. Sora was fixing things. That’s why we were gone.”“Riku...” She looks like she doesn’t know what to do. And that makes two of them, so it’s a little less uncomfortable than before. Not very much less, but still less.“I’m sorry,” he says, and there are a thousand sentences inside those two words, most of which he’s never uttered aloud. But she seems to understand that there are things he can’t say out loud, so she only gives him a small smile.“I’m just glad you’re back,” she replies. And then she puts a pot of tea on, and they drink mostly in silence while they slowly try and figure out how to talk to each other again.His father, when he comes home that evening with his wire-frame glasses perched exactly on his nose and blond hair in his ever-present low ponytail, doesn’t say much to him. He doesn’t even ask Riku where he’s been all this time, just gives him one of his rare, short hugs and says, “You’re back.” Riku nods, his father nods, and then that’s the end of the discussion. Almost absently, Riku wonders how Sora’s mom reacted to the son she forgot for a year coming home, but figures that Sora’ll tell him how it went between the two of them tomorrow, anyway.*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Sora’s mom is an energetic, petite woman, with chin-length brown hair and sparkling brown eyes that make her look more youthful then any makeup ever could. She’s always welcomed Riku into her home as if he lived there himself – and Riku’s spent enough time at Sora’s house over the years that it isn’t much of a stretch – so it’s not unusual at all when she greets him the next day with as much enthusiasm as she probably greeted Sora when he got back to his house. Sora’s house isn’t quite as big as Riku’s, but it’s cheery and cozy, with bright decorations and a kitchen that always smells like some kind of wonderful spice.There isn’t a wedding picture of Sora’s parents in the front hall of his house because Sora’s mom doesn’t seem to enjoy looking at photos of Sora’s dad every day, instead saving them for the big, bound albums when she’s feeling melancholy. It’s never really been clear to Riku exactly what happened to Sora’s dad, whether he died or filed for divorce or was lost at sea or simply walked out one day and never came back, but neither Sora nor his mom really talk about him to other people. On the few occasions Sora has said something over the years, it was mostly to express a wish that he’d known his dad long enough to actually remember him, that the man could’ve spent more than just a single year with his son. But Sora and his mom have always seemed to be happy with just the two of them, so it’s never really been an issue.And if they were happy with two people in the house, the addition of a third is like Christmas morning to them. Sora says that he can still talk to Roxas, and they later confirm that it’s the same with Kairi and Naminé, so he tells Riku that when he got home he introduced his not-a-Nobody-anymore to his mom.“You told her about Roxas?” Riku asks, raising an eyebrow.“Of course I did,” Sora says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “She’sRoxas’s mom too, now, so she should know about him and be able to talk to him.” He almost rolls his eyes, even. “Really, Riku.”“It’s like one son went away for a while, and then an extra one came back with him,” Sora’s mom says. But she says she likes having Roxas as an extra son, so that’s probably good for all three of them. Riku’s own mother had postpartum for a couple months after he was born, and his father believes in parents fully funding their children’s college educations, so Riku doesn’t really know what it’s like to have a sibling. He wonders for a moment or two if his Replica counted as a sibling, but he figured it was just as well if he didn’t, considering they hadn’t gotten along very well, for the most part.Still, Riku doesn’t really interact with Roxas himself all that much. The only times Roxas and Naminé really get to be out in the world is when there’s no one else on the play island, when Sora and Kairi transform into their former-Nobody halves and the two blonder teens can do anything they want out in the open. Riku talks to Naminé sometimes, as does Sora, and while Naminé seems to like talking with Riku, Riku and Roxas have the tendency to circle around each other a bit. He’s pretty sure that Sora wants the two of them to get along better – and there’s a knot of guilt that Riku feels about it, a worry that he and Roxas are making Sora feel conflicted,confused – but the history between them doesn’t point towards any simple answers. Riku doesn’t think that Sora knows much about that history, but if Sora really wants him to, Riku decides that he’ll try to get along with Roxas despite it, even if it’ll most likely end up taking a while.
  *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The first time it happens, Riku dismisses it as a freak occurrence. His mother rushes into his room when she hears his yell, but calms down a little when he tells her it was just a dream, that he’s completely fine, that he’s sorry he woke her up, and that she should just go back to sleep. He’s lucky she’s too startled to think of turning on the upstairs hall light because it means that she can’t see his eyes or his shivers. The second time it happens, he’s a little embarrassed but still optimistic that it’s not an issue. By the fifth or sixth time, though, he’s sitting in the kitchen with his mother, drinking tea in the dead of night and wondering what’s wrong with himself.He never used to be bothered this much by nightmares, not even when he was in the Realm of Darkness. They’ve finally got peace, so why is it only now that he has to deal with this? He left, and he made a lot of mistakes, but he dealt with the consequences and he came back eventually, so aren’t things supposed to be back to normal, now? Why is he having to struggle to get used to the place he’s known all his life?Riku drinks tea almost constantly whenever he’s at home, and tries to avoid looking at the frowns it produces in his mother. Kairi’s the first of his friends to notice the circles starting to form under his eyes, and she pulls him aside one day to remark that he’s been looking a little tired lately, and is he feeling alright? He tries to brush it off as nothing at first, but admits after some unconvinced prodding that he’s had some incidents with waking up at night recently. What he doesn’t tell her is that it’s an almost nightly event, but the long, tight hug she gives him makes him guess that she’s probably well aware of it. She brings it up again later in front of Sora when the situation doesn’t improve, and the brunet turns to look at him with surprise, and then a downturn of the mouth.“It’s not a big deal, guys,” he tries to say. “I’m a little tired, yeah, but that’s it.” But they all know how terrible of a liar he is, so they don’t budge. “It’s just... dreams, sometimes, that’s all,” he eventually explains, and hopes, a bit pessimistically, that they won’t ask him to elaborate. Sora chews on his lip thoughtfully for a moment.“What kind of dreams?” Sora asks, almost casually, and Riku feels himself tense up. Sora’s gotten him to open up and say a lot of things since he found him in the World That Never Was, including a whispered confession of love on a dark beach that was somehow miraculously returned, but this is something he can’t tell Sora, or not yet, at least. How is he going to explain what he sees in his nightmares, both the ones showing just how everything could’ve gone wrong and the ones showing all the things that will never un-happen? The ones where Sora turns himself into a Heartless and can’t get turned back, the ones where Roxas happily delivers Riku into the hands of the Organization, the ones where Riku isn’t sure if Kairi is still breathing or not anymore, the ones where everyone either runs away from him in fright or tries to kill him because he’s got the wrong face on, the ones where he just wanders around in the darkness fighting dark things until the end of time, the ones about An- Xe- ...that man.“Just dreams,” Riku responds, clipped, hoping it’s clear that he doesn’t want to talk about it right now, thank you. He feels sick to his stomach just thinking about the idea of talking about... that. Sora looks like he’s going to object to this statement, but Kairi, who’d gotten this strange, inward look on her face for a few seconds, gives Sora a look and makes some sort of silent motion that makes him back down.“Well,” Sora compromises, even though he seems unhappy about it, “if you want to talk about it...”“Thanks,” Riku replies. And he means it like he’s always meant it, but... he just can’t talk about that with Sora or Kairi yet.
  *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Riku wakes up with a start and an abrupt, startled noise. He spends a minute getting his breathing back under control, then rolls over and looks at the digital clock on his bedside table. It’s three-oh-f@ck@ng-seven in the morning. Great.He knows he won’t be able to get to sleep again anytime soon, and he doesn’t want to just lie in bed and stare at his ceiling, but he doesn’t want to go downstairs, either. If he goes downstairs, his mother will eventually walk into the kitchen to make them tea, and he doesn’t want to see that miserable look on her face again. Does it mean that he’s failed as a son, if all he does is make his mother either worried about where he is or sad because she thinks he has problems? But dwelling on yet another disappointment doesn’t answer the question of where he should go....F@ck it. He sneaks out his window and goes over to Sora’s.The tree outside Sora’s window is still perfect for climbing, so Riku pulls himself up until he’s perched outside the second story of Sora’s house. He spends a moment just looking at Sora sleeping on his bed, but it’s so much like déjà vu that he reaches out with one hand to lightly tap on the glass. He’s rewarded by watching Sora’s eyes open and quickly focus on his window – okay, so maybe Riku’s not the only one whose reflexes are still a bit jumpy – and Sora doesn’t waste any time sitting up to open it and let Riku climb from the tree into his room.“Hey,” Sora whispers, smiling as he pulls Riku inside and onto his bed.“Hey,” Riku whispers back, starting to feel better already. He pulls his shoes off and puts them silently on the floor while Sora closes the window, and then they’re sitting cross-legged on Sora’s bed facing each other a few moments later.“So, what’s up?” Sora asks, sounding curious but still quiet so that they won’t wake his mom up.“Nothing really,” Riku replies, suddenly finding his hands very interesting. “I woke up a while ago, and then I couldn’t really get back to sleep again, so I just... thought I’d see how you were doing.” God, it sounds so ridiculous when he says it out loud.“You can stay here the rest of the night, if you want,” Sora offers, putting a hand on Riku’s.“...Yeah, okay,” he agrees, feeling like one of many tiny weights has been lifted from him. Riku’s still in his pajamas, and Sora’s wearing just a pair of bright red boxers – not that Riku’s complaining – so Sora tugs on his hand for them to get under the covers. The brunet pulls the blankets over their heads like they’re in a pillow fort, and Riku thinks they must’ve been preschoolers the last time they did that, but it somehow still makes him feel like they’re in their own little bubble apart from the rest of the world. Then Sora leans in and kisses him once, soft and slow, and Riku doesn’t think he’s ever going to get tired of that.And when Sora scoots close with his head tucked under Riku’s chin, wrapping an arm around him, Riku lets himself relax and drift back off to sleep, just like that.
  *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Riku’s wakes up the next morning to the sound of Sora’s mom throwing the bedroom door open in a panic, the house phone clutched in one hand and a spatula in the other.“Sora!” she says, frantic. “I would have told you earlier but I just got the call! Do you know where Ri...” her voice trails off as she realizes that there’s not one but two teenage boys sitting in Sora’s bed and staring at her, hair mussed from sleep but eyes wide awake, “...ku is.” It takes a second or two for everyone’s embarrassment to sink in.Riku contemplates saying something cliché, like This isn’t what it looks like! but doesn’t because he realizes that it’s actually exactly what it looks like. Sure, they’ve still got their clothes on, and they didn’t get up to anything last night other than that one kiss, but there’s no good way to explain to Sora’s mom that her son’s best friend since before they could talk is now also his boyfriend. Boyfriend... it’s such a girly, superficial word; Riku decides that he’s going to need to come up with a better term for it later, when his brain isn’t so scattered trying to come up with a decent explanation. Sora, however, goes for the simplest route.“Riku said that he was having trouble sleeping, so he walked over here and we just talked a little, and then we went back to bed,” Sora tells his mom. Riku makes a somewhat self-conscious sound of agreement. It’s a little embarrassing admitting to Sora’s mom that he has problems staying asleep at night, but the truth is probably the best explanation, in this case. Sora’s mom slowly brings the phone back to her ear.“It’s okay, I found him, he’s here with Sora,” she says into the phone slowly, like she’s still in the process of registering everything, and Riku realizes that it’s his mother on the other end of the line and that she probably panicked when she saw he wasn’t in his bed. He’s going to have to apologize to her again later. “Yes, I’ll talk to you again in a few minutes.” She pushes the button to end the call. “Well... good morning, boys. Riku, you should think about getting back home pretty soon.”“...Okay,” Riku replies, and she makes an effort to smile at him and Sora before closing the door and walking back downstairs, presumably to call Riku’s mother back. Once he’s sure that she’s downstairs, Riku flops back on the bed with a sigh and stares bleakly at Sora’s ceiling. He tried to make things easier for his mother, and he just made them worse. Or was it just that he was being selfish because he wanted to be with Sora?“Hey, that wasn’t actually too bad,” Sora says, poking him in the arm. “No one really freaked out. Well, besides your mom, but just tell her what happened, and she’ll be fine.” Sora’s trying his very hardest to keep Riku optimistic, and it’s really an admirable effort. But Riku’s mother is going to ground him for the rest of his life. And ground is another superficial word, but it seems inevitable.“She’s going to keep me in the house until I’m forty.” And the idea of extended house arrest makes him antsy because he doesn’t like being cooped up anywhere, not even by his poor mother who’s probably just afraid that he’s going to disappear without warning again someday, but Sora seems to pick up on it pretty fast.“If you get stuck there, I’ll visit you at three in the morning,” Sora declares. And it’s just such a Sora thing to say that Riku leaves the house with a smile on his face.
  *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Surprisingly, Riku’s mother doesn’t get upset at him when he apologizes and tells her that he was at Sora’s. She just tells Riku to leave a note next time, and actually seems to improve in mood with the less tea-and-awkward-conversations they have and the more often he just writes I’m At Sora’s on a piece of paper or a napkin and leaves it on the kitchen table. Sora’s mom doesn’t comment on her opinion of Riku staying with Sora so often, but always makes a point of making pancakes for three on the weekends.Kairi – who’s always making little arts-and-crafts things – eventually makes him a doorknob hanger that says Do Not Disturb on one side and At Sora’s on the other. He blushes a bit when she gives it to him, but that only makes her smile more. Riku feels a little guilty that neither he nor Sora have told her about the recent development in their relationship yet, but part of him is still trying to figure out a way that she won’t be left out. He’s wary of talking to Sora about it because he doesn’t know what kind of decision Sora made about Kairi when he started their relationship on the dark beach, or if it’ll make Sora unsure of Riku’s feelings towards him, but he also doesn’t really know if Kairi even likes him that way. He knows she likes Sora, but... Riku doesn’t know if she’s ever thought of him as anything other than one of her closest friends.Or maybe Kairi already knows about him and Sora, but he’s not sure. Kairi usually knows about things like that, so there’s a good chance she does; if she doesn’t, then she’s going to find out eventually. More than anything else, though, Riku just doesn’t know what’s going to happen once everything’s out in the open.
  *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Are you alright?” Riku’s inevitably found himself back in Sora’s room, and it’s very-dark-thirty in the morning. He grips onto his knees to stop his hands from shaking.“...I think I’m gonna throw up.” Sora holds his hair back for him, and they both pretend that the corners of Riku’s eyes are dry.Later: “It was just a nightmare, okay, Riku? It wasn’t real.”“Thanks, Sora.” But what’s Riku supposed to do when everything he just dreamed actually happened? How is he supposed to get back to sleep again when what he saw was a memory, not a dream? How can he even explain something like… that to Sora? Is it better if Sora just doesn’t know about it?“Everything’s fine, now, okay, Riku?” Riku just stares at the scar tissue on Sora’s chest he can’t bear to touch. It’s funny, in a way, because he thinks that the only scar tissue Sora ever pays attention to – likes to touch quite a bit, in fact – is the long, clearly visible line that wraps around Riku’s left side; Sora only likes to think about the good things that Riku’s done....Would Sora be happier, if he didn’t know about it?“...Yeah, okay.” Sora stays up with him, and they don’t go back to bed until it’s after six, when the sunrise starts to creep over the big island’s mountain and through Sora’s bedroom window.
  *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Sora, you’ll never believe what I found the other day,” Sora’s mom says one humid afternoon. It’s at least ninety degrees in the shade today, so they’re hanging out in Sora’s house and Sora’s mom is making them milkshakes.“What is it?” Sora asks. His mom smiles mischievously.“That’s a surprise, honey. I’m almost done with these,” she gestures towards the blender, “and then I’ll go and get it for you.” About a minute later, she sets down two big glasses of milkshake in front of Riku and Sora.“I wonder what it is,” Sora wonders aloud, gaze distant. Riku waits until Sora’s taking a sip of milkshake before responding.“It’s probably something embarrassing from when you were a baby,” he smirks. “Like little knitted booties, or something.” Sora turns his head to stare flatly at him, glass still at his lips. “Of course, your little baby booties were probably twice as big as everyone else’s.” Sora resorts to pouting at this point, but can’t hold the pout for long – mostly because they both know that no one in all the worlds has feet as big as Sora and Roxas– and his face breaks out into a huge grin just a few seconds later. It’s so much of a Sora kind of face that Riku wants to lean over and kiss him that very moment, but Sora’s mom walks back into the kitchen, one hand behind her back and a big smile on her face as well.“To be honest, boys, I first found this a couple years ago,” she begins, which probably means after they left. That doesn’t really bode well, but Riku’s still optimistic that it’s completely innocuous. Maybe it’s something he can tease Sora about, but it’s most likely something that’s basically harmless. Something like baby booties. Sora’s mom continues, “But then I put it away after a while, and it wasn’t until a couple days ago that I found it again.”“What is it, Mom?” Sora pleads, looking like he’s trying not to fidget. “Tell us, already.” His mom brings out her hand from behind her back, and Riku just barely manages to not drop his glass on the floor.“You can do anything you put your mind to, Riku, as long as you try your very best at it.” Riku remembers his father saying that to him when he was little, kneeling down so that he was looking Riku in the eyes with one of the most serious expressions Riku’d ever seen on him, after his mother expressed concern that Sora and him fighting with toy swords would become dangerous. He wonders how – or when – it changed in his head to something more like, “You can do anything you want, Riku, as long as you’re the best at it.” But looking at the wooden sword now, he’s reminded of every single time his trying to be the best at things ended in disaster.“Doesn’t it bring back all those wonderful childhood memories?” Sora’s mom gushes. Sora hasn’t said anything yet, so Riku makes a semi-noncommittal sound that he hopes she’ll interpret as agreement. She turns to look at him with a bright expression on her face. “Riku, whatever happened to yours? Do you still have it?”“I gave it to Sora,” he says quietly, and puts his milkshake back down on the table because he’s suddenly lost his appetite. Gave really isn’t the right word to use here, though. Threw it at his feet in spite and shoved everything it represented in his face, maybe.“Oh, Sora, do you know where it is? You two were always so cute with those things,” Sora’s mom continues, apparently not noticing the eggshells the two boys are walking on.“I, uh... I lost it, Mom,” Sora tells her, eventually. They both know what really happened to it, though; it turned into the Keyblade in Hollow Bastion. There’s a bad joke somewhere in the idea of Riku’s toy sword turning into Sora’s Keyblade, but Riku’s not really in the mood for it right now.“Well, thanks for the milkshake, but I should probably be getting back home now,” he announces, standing up briskly and hoping that he’ll be able to make a clean break without having to explain anything to Sora’s mom. Sora stands up after him.“Riku, wait-”“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Sora, okay?” he interrupts. Or more likely tonight, since he knows he’s going to end up thinking about that stuff for the rest of the day. He starts to walk to the front door, sure that he’ll be able to get away; Sora can’t argue with him about this in front of his mom without giving too much away, without giving away things like the real reason they were gone so long or how their childhood competition changed to real fighting, and the consequences of that fighting, including why her “extra” son Roxas actually exists.“But you didn’t finish your milkshake,” Sora protests despondently. That’s the best argument he can come up with? But when Riku turns to look back at Sora to let him know what he thinks about the milkshake comment, You know I’ve already forgiven you for that, is what Sora’s eyes are saying....Okay, so maybe he got overconfident again.“It’ll ruin my appetite if I finish it this close to dinnertime,” he counters, carefully.That’s only one of us who’s forgiven me for it, Sora.“I’ll walk with you back to your house.” Well, you should. Riku almost considers digging his heels in. “Please?” I followed you to the end of the world. Twice. Shouldn’t that tell you something?“...Alright, let’s go.” Yeah, it does.'
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
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