only in YOUR DREAMS ✦ [tag: @sora/ari]

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Riku is scared.

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His world fell apart, crumbling beneath his feet. Darkness met him - and then afterward, snowy hills. Snowy hills he didn't recognize, different from the ones in Halloween Town he'd managed to trudge himself through while following Sora's back. Darkness can beget light, and so it's illuminated in front of him, but it's just as confusing as traversing the Realm of Darkness, alone, without a map or a guide or Mickey or anything, because he just as well knows where he's going here as he did then. The shadows are long, as they're cast longer within the light, and he shivered then when he awoke and he shivers now in his sleep that he'd taken in an abandoned cabin he managed to find. He only slept because the energy seemed to drain from him piece by piece until his veins flooded with ice and nothing else and all warmth diminished, leaving the vast emptiness he'd last become familiar with when Ansem haunted the deepest recesses of his mind.

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He's not scared because he's somewhere he's never been, though. He's experienced that too many times for it to be something odd or surprising anymore, and it's not odd or surprising that he knows nothing about how he's gotten here. It'd been the case when he went through the dream world's Traverse Town, it'd been the case when Beast's Castle loomed over him, and it's the case now. It's almost a comforting pattern within his life, as if it's etched into the stars above. The unfamiliarity is familiar in such a way that it brings about the old thirst of adventure, and he'd even been willing to explore the area despite how barren. He'd even thought he heard voices, and a conversation he could've struck; but... He hadn't wanted to.

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It's not the area that leaves him scared. It's not the new things he's found. It's the old things he seems to have left behind.

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No heads, nor tails of Sora bring themselves to mind's eye and Riku's groping at thin air as he calls his name, beckons for him over the hills over to find no answer. And he knows what happened the last time that Sora and he separated - deep within the clutches of the Organization who sought to take over his body for their ill-conceived plan to bring about the Keyblade War anew. It'd drained all the life out of him to see Sora lying in that chair where he doesn't belong, bad wrong bad wrong bad wrong, and hear the gravelly tones of Xehanort speaking over them almost as if in jest with that heinous grin stretching his cheeks and a light within his eyes that any other time would've been funny in its irony.

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It's safe to say that experience has taught Riku to be scared of when Sora disappears in front of him, because it may be the last he sees of his friend awake at all.

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He'd been searching and searching ever since the realization dawned on him that he was completely and utterly alone, but to no avail; and unfortunately, his energy drained as such that he only barely managed to bring himself to bed. Drifting, drifting again as cold blankness greets him like an old friend, and there he is, disappearing into nothingness only to reappear again somewhere else. It's warm and it's beach and Riku wonders where he's gotten here. He wonders that for all of five minutes before he glances down.

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Yellow. Freed arms. Squeaks nearby that he can hear that are oh-so familiar, and this time in a good way rather than routine.

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That's right. Maybe... Maybe Sora is asleep! If he's asleep, he can find him in his dreams. And if he finds him there, then maybe he can figure out where he's gone, too.

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Let's not have this be like the last dream we've met in.

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He starts to wander about the sands, stumbling over himself as he cups his hands over his lips and he calls out, ❝Sora? Sora! Where are you? It's Riku!❞ He pushes himself forward, ignoring the lulling of the waves to his left as he instead traverses about the island, looking for the paopu fruit tree. If Sora is dreaming up this location and he happened to land here in his worry for his friend, after all, then maybe that's the first place he's gone. After all, it's a place of sentiment for the both of them, and Sora's nothing if not an entirely sentimental dork.

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(Like Riku is not. Like Riku never was. Like Riku doesn't lie awake at night thinking about the other boy, wondering how he's doing, and thinking about what things would be like if they were just a little different.)