Chapter Text
What do you want to do? Who do you want to be?
The first time Sora was ever asked that question, the broadest prospects he had were along the lines of older and fisherman. It was a question they asked him in school, seemingly at consistent intervals or at the very least relevant places. During introductions or talks with guidance counselors or to friends of his parents.
“I’m Sora and I’m gonna be a pirate!”
“I’m Sora and my favorite colors are blue and pink!”
“I’m Sora and I’m really excited to take woodshop and make the volleyball team!”
How long had it been since someone asked him that?
Had he ever wanted to be an adult or was it always just a vague, hazy concept to him? He was trying to remember, but he had always been content where he was. Riku had wanted to hurry up and grow up to leave, to explore. Kairi had smaller goals, day to day and week to week and month to month and year to year things that kept her plugging along.
Sora was trying to remember so desperately if he ever really wanted anything he didn’t already have. He had wanted his friends to be happy. He wanted them to be safe. He had simple little whims and pleasures that didn’t really mean much.
But was that so terrible to want another day at the beach? Was it so terrible to want jambalaya for dinner again? Was it so terrible to want to sing really loudly in his room to that new album with Tidus on the phone laughing at him? Was it really so terrible to not really care one way or the other if he had magic or mundanity?
“Sora?” Yen Sid repeated, ever patient and polite. He startled a little bit, mundanities long since behind him.
“I—”
Yes.
No.
Who cares?
We care.
I care.
I’m too tired to care…
He winced, just a bit. His body as of late felt like it was being jerked around and he was getting annoyed. He didn’t want to be annoyed. He’d had enough of that. He wanted to be happy and happiness didn’t need magic—hell, it didn’t need normalcy either. Happiness was subjective, wasn’t it?
He worried his palm over his heart.
Sora, do you want to take the Mark of Mastery exam and become a full fledged keyblade wielder? Do you want to protect the order of the worlds from whatever may plague them?
But really, why would he need that test if he was already doing it? It was formality. It used to burn him so much to be called a junior-hero or a little punk kid. But he was a hero. He was a keyblade wielder with extreme expertise. The only keyblade wielders he knew were above him at this point was probably the King and possibly Riku, but that was debatable the way all of their contests had been when they were younger.
Did he want this—or, did he want to just go home?
Sora glanced at Riku, who was patiently waiting for him to decide and answer since the question had been directed at him.
“…Can I have some time to think about it?”
At first Sora thought the smile on Riku’s face was coy and teasing, but in the time it took him to open his mouth, he realized he wasn’t picking on him. There was something softer in the edges of it, aged almost. Sora snapped his teeth shut.
Good. A satisfying feeling, something in his heart insisted.
He wanted to click his teeth now, but he knew better than to make overt stims like that where other people could pick on him for it. He knew Riku and Master Yen Sid wouldn’t, but the nagging was still there.
Odd little creature, what’s it doing now?
He had no idea what voice that memory was in. A teacher, maybe? But the title of teacher felt wrong. Authority felt too strong. Someone above him, for sure. But it was just the words, hollow in voice.
“Of course you may have time,” Yen Sid agreed. “I understand the prospect of being a Master Keyblade Wielder is not for everyone. Some are content and even required in their current stations.”
Sora looked back over to him, an awkward stillness about his own body that made him want to fuss about and go, go, go, go. Go where? Did it matter? What mattered? What was important?
Yen Sid turned his attention to Riku, both solemn and stern.
“I’d like to take the test,” Riku replied. Yen Sid nodded, but Riku continued. “But I’m going to wait until Sora’s made his decision first.”
“You don’t have to do that!” Sora insisted. He himself was unsure how long it would take to reach a conclusion and he didn’t want to hold Riku back. Wasn’t their entire relationship built on urging each other forward, to their best selves?
“I know. I want to.” Riku gave him a light nudge, a bit of playfulness despite being in front of Yen Sid. How was Sora to object to that when it was his own choice? Any blustering or fumbling about while he tried to make a decision was just going to make him look like he was coming up with excuses. So he didn’t. He nodded, embarrassed to look at him.
“Then I will await your answer when you see it fit to return. May you both have a safe journey, wherever it is you may go. And, may your heart be your guiding key.”
“Thank you,” Sora replied, everything crammed inside of his heart trying to guide him in so many different directions.
Sora had so many thoughts and so many questions it was overwhelming. How was he supposed to decide what to start with first? How was he supposed to take a moment to figure it out when none of it was tangible?
Then make it tangible , something sleepy offered. Start there.
His head felt louder, even more so when he was alone. It was as if everything inside of him was trying to fill the spaces silence left in its wake.
Make it tangible. He could do that. He could go into his room in the gummi ship and lock the door. He could take his jacket off and shoes off and roll up his pants and sleeves and put a headband so his hair was out of his face. He could move his bed to the corner of the room and he could clear his collections of gifts and mementos and gifts so it was in a corner and out of the way. He could make a space on his wall.
He could dig out paper and markers and notebooks and pens and pencils.
He could draw and write and scratch it out and ball it up and use one page for huge letters. He could color code it and tape it in certain spots and forget to eat until his stomach gurgled loudly at him and he could inhale food to take a break and then get right back to it.
He could write out ROXAS in big bold letters and trail vague concepts of apologies to his name and Hayner, Pence, and Olette with their own terribly crude stick figures. He could write the Organization and Axel and a huge inkblot he felt belonged there.
He could hesitate to write Xemnas’ name. He could ignore the way it looked shaky as he stuck it up and wanted to bury it. He could recognize the way the name made his jaw ache and his vision swirl and the phantom pain in his hands.
He could write SLEEP and give it its own category. He could write ??? in hot red and place it next to it, attached together. Do not separate. He covered them both in long strips of clear tape so separating them would ruin the concept of them.
He could write the way they felt angry and empty and alone despite being together. They didn’t understand each other and wanted to, but the differences were jarring and painful. He could ease ROXAS over to ??? and let them sit together.
He could remember the way he was always so tired, even before all of the magic. Kairi and Riku had always picked on him for it by calling him lazy for how much he always wanted to sleep. But when he was awake, he was always going a million miles an hour. He had assumed he was justified if it evened out like that.
He could notice, the more he wrote and filled in how much there were huge, gaping holes. How it was mostly a collection of feelings and names.
“Why…am I always being left out?” Despite being so central, why was it he was always one step behind? Why was it he never seemed to be let in the loop? Why, even when they were just kids, did it always feel like that?
Sora’s spacey, it’s fine if we don’t tell him because he won’t remember anyway.
That was how he and Riku ended up so close. Riku had gotten mad, had wanted to include Sora, even if it meant he wouldn’t be included. He wanted to include Sora, even if getting mad about it made everyone else think he was a jerk. But it was okay because that meant they got genuine friends out of it. They got Wakka and Tidus and Selphie and Kairi.
Sora, lose and idle like a spirograph, wrote Riku and Kairi’s names.
He added Naminé’s next to Kairi’s. He wrote heavily, more incessantly, THANK NAMINÉ.
He still didn’t know what he was supposed to thank her for. This had been before The World That Never Was. This had been before he had woken up with everyone hesitating to tell him what happened. This had been before he was told Naminé was the reason he and everyone else were still even alive.
“…You suck,” Sora mumbled to Roxas. “You seriously, seriously suck…” he added. “Don’t think you can hide in here forever and not apologize. If you want to apologize and then go back to hiding, that’s fine…I won’t blame you for that.” Sora sighed, looking back up at his mess of papers.
“…Do you want me to help you apologize? When I was little, I would get into fights with Riku all of the time. I don’t think we would ever actually apologize. We would just do something stupid without meaning to and the other would laugh at it and then we’d go on like it never happened. But there was one time…I said something really, really mean. I don’t even remember why I said it…but I know I made him cry,” Sora found himself mumbling a secret that no one else was listening to.
He pulled his knees up, cheek resting on them as he held himself. Even if he didn’t say it, everything in him knew, excavated a memory that hurt to pull out. It had been about Riku’s dad, a sore topic as it was for him.
“He tried to tell me he didn’t cry, but I know he was just lying so I wouldn’t feel as bad. When I told my mom, she made me write him a letter. She said as long as I apologized, it didn’t matter how. But my dad pulled me aside later and said he didn’t agree with my mom. He said words mattered and if I was going to use them, I should say it like I meant it. Writing it was okay, but it was cheap. If I was going to say something like that to his face, I should apologize to his face too. No wussing out.”
Sora was quiet for a moment, the charcoal from his hands smearing on his legs. Memories, strong ones at least, had feelings attached to them. He could remember how embarrassed he felt, how nerve wracking the entire thing was, and worst of all the dread of Riku telling him he didn’t want to be friends anymore.
“Apologizing is hard…It’s really, really hard if you’re doing it like you mean it. And the worst part is, you can mean it. You can mean it so much and try to never ever do it again and the person you’re apologizing to doesn’t have to forgive you.” Sora rubbed his palm over his heart, a motion he was realizing was never really for himself. “It’s scary to think about how easy it is to hurt people you love…”
He idled, soothing the thing in his chest while the rest were quiet. But he noticed an odd sensation accompanying what he was assuming was Roxas. It didn’t feel like a leech, but heavier than a shadow and more solidly attached. Maybe gripped together by sheer desperation, but it was so hard to tell what was in him at this point.
Everyone knew about Roxas, but it didn’t feel like it was just Roxas and it hadn’t ever since he’d turned into a Heartless to save Kairi. It had been gradual white noise, but now they were just as loud as Roxas. But for right now, at least, they were quieter. He didn’t feel as much, but he still felt more than he should.
“Let me help you…?” Wasn’t that all Sora wanted? All he’d ever wanted? To help, to make sure people were happy and safe? It was okay for that to be his only real want, wasn’t it? To have these ambling, meandering wants like ube halaya for dessert and to place in the ocean for a few hours and to nap in the sun and then to only deeply, truly and consistently want to be kind and helpful, no matter how vague those concepts were.
That was okay, wasn’t it?
“All of you…?” Sora added softly. He was reminded of a movie where someone had insisted there were worms or insects under their skin. It felt like that, but in his heart. He wondered how many holes they would have tunneled through him that would remain empty once he did help them. He wondered, despite all of the aches and chaos, if he would miss them. If they had become integral and he hadn’t even realized it.
“We’re gonna figure it out, okay? I promise. I know you were so, so upset at me in The World That Never Was…I could feel how hard it was for you to have to let me handle things. But I can’t help you if you always try to step in and do it your way. I know it’s hard, but you have to trust me, okay? I need you to believe in me.”
In something that couldn’t be measured or seen. Faith. That’s what it was. He needed all of the loud, desperate voices inside of him to just have a little faith that he could help them. Faith must have been a terrifying thing to bet on, especially when everything had been so visceral tangible before.
“I’m going to take care of you…okay?”
“Sora?” Goofy called lightly, Sora pulling his face away from some squishy part of his own body, wet drool clinging to his cheek and arm. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he apparently hadn’t gone very far. He was still covered in a mess of residual colors and had papers and notes and doodles and tape stuck to everything.
“Sora?” Goofy called again.
“Yeah?” Sora called out, voice heavy and breaking with sleep, bleary eyes trying to adjust to all of the nonsense he’d created in his room.
“Chip and Dale said they got something for us that we need to go pick up, so we’re at our castle again. Do you wanna come out and get them with us, maybe eat and say hello to Queen Minnie? Ya been in there for a long while.”
Sora stared at a paper in the center of his mess.
“Uh…yeah, be out in a bit,” he called back, an automatic reply as he didn’t really listen to what Goofy was saying. Not in a way that he processed anyway. He was too busy staring and realizing for once since he’d become himself again, his heart didn’t feel like it was being pulled in a million different directions at once. They had converged on their path, their decisions all leading them to the same conclusion:
SORA.
He hadn’t written his own name or put it there. It looked like several different people had written his name over and over in the same spot. One, two, three, four—four times, they’d written his name out.
It was one thing to help people because you wanted to and it was another for them to ask for your help. Sora tried to remember the last time anyone had ever genuinely asked him for help. When it wasn’t just because of him being conveniently nearby or the only option left. He didn’t feel like that at all. It felt wrong when he tried to think maybe that was why they’d agreed to it.
Kairi had always been kinder and better with her words. Riku had always been stronger and more resolute in his choices. Sora always felt he rushed headlong into mistakes and tried to laugh everything off if he could. He felt he was a little ridiculous and simple and clumsy with how he carried himself and his words—but he was earnest. He was good at keeping his promises.
Thinking about it like that, it almost felt a little absurd to request they trust him. But however long they had spent inside of his heart had been enough. He didn’t know how hard it was to agree for the other three, but Sora knew this was especially hard for Roxas. He knew he’d already tried to immediately step in the second Sora was down and out. He knew it was very hard for Roxas to trust him despite acknowledging him. Those were separate things after all and Sora didn’t and couldn’t blame him for that.
He gently took the paper out of the middle of it all, the small piece of some bigger mess that spanned across worlds.
“I promise I’ll help you,” Sora swore. “Thank you for…” For trusting him? For letting him try? “…for believing in me.”