Pairings: Riku/Sora; Sephiroth/Cloud + Zack; (adult) Seifer/Squall
Summary: The fine lines between love and obsession. AU, yaoi, dark. Riku POV.
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, physical and mental torture, government conspiracies; references to rape, drugs. Cloud is also crazier than usual.
Note: Bastard fusions of FF7, FF8, and FFX canon to KH canon. This fic will also retain things like magic, potions, and moogles because it’s just no fun to write a purely mundane AU. Unbetaed.

Lithium
Hades’ Phoenix

Say a prayer for me
I'm buried by the sound
In a world of human wreckage
I'm lost and I'm found
And I can't touch the ground

--Sponge, “Plowed”

1.

Sora could never understand the darkness. It was too malleable, too full of twisted deceitful shadow for him to see more than a flash of cruelty or a brief curve of manipulation. He couldn’t conceive of a darkness that was more than the petty anger and jealousies that everyone had in their hearts – he couldn’t imagine how deeply, how powerfully true darkness could break a man.

Some people called him naïve, but I knew better. I’d seen him face that kind of darkness and be unmoved, angry but not blinded, shocked but not fearful. His was a heart that had gripped the earth like a rock and refused to be buried under the weight of a dark, lashing storm.

Unlike mine. People thought I was the stronger, but that was because most people were too fucking stupid to realize that true strength wasn’t in how soundly you could thrash an opponent in a duel. True strength doesn’t involve such an unbending pride that you’d sooner cut off your own nose to spite your face than admit a mistake.

Sora could never understand the darkness, but as long as I was there, he didn’t have to.

…

The moment I walked into Balamb Garden, I hated it. Sora had already broken away from my side to cheerfully hail an older student in uniform about directions to the dorms, leaving me standing alone in the entrance hall with our bags. The Garden really was the architectural wonder that all the disgustingly chirpy pamphlets claimed it was: it was like an artist had started with several panes of colored glass and managed to melt and bend them into vaulted ceilings that turned natural sunlight into materia-like prisms. It hurt my eyes even through sunglasses. I wondered how much materia had actually been used in construction, if the different magics would sleep quietly until someone invoked them. It would be a powerful defense.

Then Sora was at my side and slinging his bag over his shoulder, waiting for me to pull my head out of my ass and follow. As he related to me everything that he’d learned, I made sure to cast a narrow-eyed glare at the female student. Unfortunately she seemed too dim to be intimidated.

“And Selphie gave me these cards, too,” Sora went on, holding up three Triple Triad cards in his callused fingers. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to thank the woman for contributing to one of Sora’s favorite hobbies or put my fist in her face with the sudden small flare of jealousy. “You wanna play a game tonight? I want to see how good these are at kicking your ass with my Earth and Fire deck.”

I snorted, memorizing the path we were taking and the faces of other students from under my long bangs. “I seem to remember that I kicked your ass last time with only a Water deck.”

“Only ‘cause you had that stupid Summons card, which is totally cheating and totally defeats the purpose of the game.” He stuck out his tongue and added in a high voice, “My name’s Riku and I’m a cheating meanie cheater!”

“My name’s Sora and I’m a sore loser,” I crooned back, snickering when he socked me in the shoulder and screwed up his face into a pout. The chains on his blue jacket and baggy dark shorts jingled with each step and wild gesture.

It wasn’t long before we had to separate to find our dorms. They were only a hallway apart, but for days after receiving confirmation of our boarding I’d been furious that the administration hadn’t put us together. Threats of putting my fist so far down their throats they’d feel it in their toes hadn’t gotten more than sneers, and I’d learned the hard way when to admit (momentary) defeat. Didn’t mean that I stopped daydreaming of bringing down those old cocksuckers’ precious Garden around their ears.

After promising to meet Sora in a few hours for dinner and a card game, I found my assigned room with little difficulty. It was a triple room, the kind generally reserved for poorer students. Of course, Sora had chosen a triple purely because he was optimist and was certain that he’d get along brilliantly with his roommates anyway.

Immediately upon opening the door, I knew that I wouldn’t have the same kind of luck.

It was easy to make my body relax into a confident stride to hide the sudden pricking of my hackles, and I crossed the room to the last available bunk with the kind of coldness that usually made people leave me alone. The two men staring at me weren’t particularly impressed. I kept my expression flat behind my sunglasses as I dropped my bag onto the mattress and turned to them with a rude, “Who’re you?”

The brunet’s eyebrow twitched slightly. Good. “Leon,” he replied shortly, apparently unwilling to play my game. “This is Cloud.”

The other, a blond sitting on his bed and leaning against the wall, just stared at me for a moment longer before turning back to his book. The Gods of Ice and Fire, the title read. It sounded like a bad novel, but looked more like one of those boring textbooks you found in old charity shops.

“Riku,” I replied shortly, and Leon nodded sharply before he turned to his laptop, apparently having used up his word quota for the day. A faint sneer crossed my lips, but inwardly my mind was racing. Leon, I knew immediately, was dangerous. It was in the firm set of his shoulders, the careful economy of movement, the calculating edge of grey-blue eyes. There was a black case beneath his bed that I recognized as part of larger firearms and the smaller types of gunblades. Gunblades were particularly difficult weapons to wield, but either way that simple case told me Leon was the type of determined, ruthless fighter that could be terrible on a battlefield.

The thought of a potential challenge made my sneer morph into a smirk.

But Cloud; I couldn’t read him at all, and that more than anything put me on edge. No weapon was in sight, but he didn’t give off the aura of magic that mages usually did. And his eyes were…wrong. They glowed, as though he’d overdrawn on magic or tried to use a materia too powerful for his body to handle –

Or as if he had mako poisoning.

I had to turn away from him and pretend to be busy with emptying my travel bag. I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking, even when I judged the light to be dim enough and finally took off my sunglasses.

Only one man ever made it selling mako on the streets, and I knew his junkies. Cloud hadn’t been one of them, but even so…

Stop it, I snarled at myself, disgusted at how an unexpected reminder of past fuck-ups could make me act like a fucking paranoid nutcase. You’re over it. The fucker’s dead and you’ve moved on.

The only sound in the utilitarian room besides the background hum of the Garden’s generators was a small radio on Leon’s desk that provided a recapping of the day’s headlines with a dry, monotonous voice. Not much was happening, now that the western-most nation of Wutai had been broken and the distant war ended, and the small raids by Al-Bhed nomads were hardly worth commenting on. About the only thing to give a shit about was Esthar on the east continent, a country of unbelievable technology that had appeared out of fucking nowhere, but even that was mostly just political negotiations and treaties that no one except senators bothered to think about. Except Leon, that is.

The droning of the commentator helped me find some self-control, and the hands that hid several orange pill bottles in the bottom drawer of the desk were perfectly steady again. I refused to be ashamed of those meds; more than half the gods-damned world popped something, whether dust or dragons’ scales or the mind-blowing mako shit that made death in a gutter seem like a dignified way to go. Sometimes people’s poison was even legit, though I wasn’t so stupid as to think doctors and healers were above a bit of bribery to provide a few extra hits. Put it that way and I was a fucking altar boy of the criminally insane.

…

“Leon, Cloud. This is Sora.” The door closed behind us with a hydraulic hiss.

This was the first time I’d brought Sora to my dorm. Usually I went to his, willing to put up with his two moronic roommates if it meant being out of the atmosphere that followed the combination of my own roommates like a personalized oppressive storm-cloud.

Leon looked up from his laptop for once and grunted in reply. Sora grinned. Cloud, who was lying on his bed and staring up at the ceiling with a textbook forgotten on the covers beside him, turned his head to blink at us slowly. A strange, unreadable expression passed over his features.

“Hey, Sora. I’m…Cloud.”

I narrowed my eyes as Sora wiggled his fingers in greeting. There was a note of something in Cloud’s voice that reminded me of an old homeless crazy I once saw wandering the streets of Radiant Garden. He’d worn a black hooded cloak and had a tendency for loud arguments with himself. My hand twitched in readiness to summon my Keyblade, but instead I took Sora’s wrist and led him towards my side of the room.

“Gee, this is homey,” he snickered at the plain off-white walls.

“At least I can see the walls,” I retorted.

“Exactly. Where’s the fun in that?”

“Excuse me for not wanting to go completely blind in the next ten years.”

“Party pooper.”

I met his smile with a smirk of my own.

“Are you two fucking each other?” Cloud suddenly asked.

My spine stiffened and even Leon’s steady typing slowed. It was only Sora’s tight grip that kept me from leaping across the room and demonstratively shoving my Keyblade up the blond’s ass.

“Yep,” Sora said lightly, but Cloud didn’t even have the fucking courtesy to stay interested in his own question. He replied with a vague hum and promptly went back to staring at the ceiling.

Leon, on the other hand, glanced at us. “You’ll want to be careful,” he murmured.

It was instinctive for me to slide halfway in front of Sora and start reaching for that place in my heart where my Keyblade was. “Yeah, why’s that?” I demanded lowly.

“You’re in a mercenary facility where the overwhelming majority is male students.”

I snorted. “Most of them won’t become anything more than glorified rental cops.”

“They can still make your life difficult.”

“And you, Leon? Are you going to be part of the overwhelming majority?”

Raising a thin brow pulled the scar that ran across his nose as taut as his leather trousers. “Don’t be stupid, Riku.”

We stared at each other for a long moment. Balamb Garden wasn’t Destiny Islands, and as much as I hated the damn place, Sora and I had lived there for so long that we’d already carved a niche for ourselves in the community. Here, we had no such history or immunity.

I broke our staring match to grab my long coat and escort a quiet Sora out of the dorm and into the empty hallway. I didn’t realize that anger was making my strides too fast until he caught my elbow and pulled me to a slower pace at his side.

“I’m sorry about that, Sora,” I murmured, momentarily wishing for my sunglasses to hide my face.

He tugged me to a complete stop and made me turn to face him. “You can’t control other people’s actions, Riku, you don’t have anything to be sorry for.” He pushed some of the long hair hanging in my face behind an ear so that he could look at me evenly. The vivid blue of his eyes never ceased to make me breathless. “Besides,” he winked, “it just means I can’t molest you in the dining hall.”

I couldn’t help laughing quietly. He had once crushed me to him and all but eaten my mouth in the middle of a public market, but it hadn’t been an attempt to stake some kind of claim on me – it was because he was the type of guy who got swept away by his own affection. More than once he’d spontaneously scooped up Kairi and twirled her until they both collapsed in laughter, mostly just because he could.

…

Even though Balamb Garden was meant to teach kids about war and killing, it was also a school, and so I didn’t have much choice about going to classes I didn’t give a shit about and sitting through the lectures. Maybe they required this kind of bullshit because they knew that most of the idiots here didn’t have the talent to be true warriors.

So when my PHS rang while I was in the middle of staring blankly at my computer screen and willing an essay to write itself, I welcomed it.

“Hello?”

“Riku, my dear tomcat, how are you?”

When I realized it was Sora’s mother, I gleefully pushed my laptop to the side and put my feet up on the desk. “Hey, Ms Gainsborough, I’m fine. How’re you?”

“Call me Aeris, darling, I’m not that old! I was just thinking that I haven’t received more than a couple texts from my son and none from you at all since you both left us fogeys on the islands. Are you eating properly?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Keeping up with your schoolwork? Sometimes you’re too smart for your own good, tomcat, so I hope you’re putting that to good use and making the instructors feel terribly inadequate.”

I laughed. “And people think I get into trouble all on my own.”

Her own laugh was a merry, tinkling sound that I’d learned to associate with pranks and hot apple pies. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m just a single mother trying to take care of her two lovely boys.” Thank the gods Leon was too busy listening to his radio news to notice the flush I knew was spreading across my cheeks. “Now, any fights or bullies? You know I prefer to hear your side before I get letters from the school.”

“The benefit of attending a Garden is being able to beat the shit out of classmates and get good grades for it,” I said dryly.

“Even so, remember that you have an advantage over anyone else with your Keyblade. Its connection to your heart gives it a unique power.”

“Yeah, I know. Officially we don’t start practical weapons practice for another week, when the newbies will finally make up their minds about what to specialize in.”

Sora’s mum hummed in thought. “Just don’t you start forgetting again that good training also includes taking proper care of your health. I don’t want to get a call from Sora with him panicking over you not eating or sleeping.”

Normally these would be the kind of words I’d snarl at or turn away from with a cold shoulder. But Aeris Gainsborough had the (often annoying) talent of being both unavoidably blunt and sympathetic at the same time. Besides, she’d seen me at my worse moments: mere hours after that man had left me a bloody broken mess; when my mako withdrawals sent me into a weeks-long delirium; when I’d held my Keyblade to my own heart with utterly serious intent.

“Yes, ma’am,” I repeated.

She hummed again, but thankfully let that topic drop. “Now, you two are using condoms, right? Do I need to send some more?”

And promptly picked up a worse one.

“I, uh…”

“I came across the loveliest pair of leather trousers the other day,” she went on happily. “I’m afraid my son doesn’t exactly have the right kind of confidence to carry them off, but they were just your size – “

I cast a longing look at my barely-started essay as I resigned myself to a long conversation with my boyfriend’s mother.

…

Weapons practical was taught by a man with long black hair and scarlet eyes. Rumor claimed he’d once been a Turk, and a damn good one at that, though no one seemed to know why he would’ve given that up to teach snot-nosed brats how to wield a weapon without chopping off a limb. Hell, he could’ve at least gone to Galbadia Garden, which only accepted veteran students from Balamb and Trabia.

I could feel the darkness in my heart stirring the moment I walked with Sora into the Training Room. If I’d thought Leon was a cold and controlled person, it was only because I’d never met Vincent Valentine, who was more like a demon poised to attack than a human.

“I can feel it too,” Sora whispered almost soundlessly into my ear, his face gone unusually serious.

The students stood in a loose crescent in front of the instructor. Valentine silently surveyed us with his hands clasped at the small of his back, impeccable in his dark suit and marble expression and no weapon in sight.

“Carrying a weapon does not make you a true warrior any more than using materia makes you an Ancient.” Though his voice was quiet, it had the dark, velvety quality that didn’t need volume to make it carry. Immediately I distrusted it on principle. “You are here to learn how to use your chosen weapon to your greatest potential. I am here to make sure that the promise of power doesn’t consume you.”

I could no more help the tension in my shoulders than I could help breathing.

“You do not all bear the same weapons, and none of you use them the same way,” he continued after a pause. “You are expected, therefore, to seek out those instructors who can help you master your weapons. For those who wield firearms and unique weapons, I will be your instructor.

“Twice a week we will all meet here, regardless of training or specialty, and you will be randomly paired up. In true battle there is never a guarantee that you will face someone using the same weapon as you. Adaptability and creativity are the hallmarks of a skilled fighter.”

He took the time then to look each one of us in the eyes, an act that made me wish sharply for my dark glasses and increased the tension in my shoulders. I willed myself some measure of calm from Sora’s presence at my side. When he appeared satisfied that we’d all gotten his point, he suddenly barked out, “Mages to my left.”

A few students hesitantly split from the group and practically huddled together to the side.

“Gunmen and gunbladers, beside them.”

It was a pity that Leon wasn’t in this class. The more I realized how much he tended to hide from the damn world, the more I wanted to see just how good a fighter he might be.

“Swordsmen, knife-wielders, to my right.” A large percentage of the class shuffled away. For a moment I considered following, but the Keyblade wasn’t as easily classified as that; I stood my ground.

“Spearmen, archers, and long-range types beside them.

“Martial artists and hand-to-hand, next to the archers.”

It didn’t take long before Sora and myself were standing alone. Valentine looked us both over.

“Keybladers, sir,” Sora volunteered without prompting. The only sign of the instructor’s surprise was the raising of an eyebrow.

“…Indeed. Summon them.”

I shared a covert glance with Sora, then held out a hand. I reached for my self-loathing, my pride, the determination that had never been broken even when everything was, and willed it all into a blade that could cut down the enemies that dared to stand in my way. My fingers wrapped around a cold, hard hilt, and my body had instinctively adjusted its balance to accommodate the weapon pulled from my heart. It was a weapon that balanced between beauty and ugliness, a scimitar like an outstretched demon’s wing with an edge of blood-turned-glass and spines of shadowed dark crystal. A single eye set in the tang rolled madly above my hand.

Where mine was dark and jagged, however, Sora’s was smooth and shining. The blade was long, straight, made of untarnished silver while the curved guards were gold, and the teeth at the end of the blade formed a simple crown. The differences between Soul Eater and Kingdom Key couldn’t have been more different, even though all Keyblades came from the heart.

(If there was one thing I despised about Keyblades, it was how revealing they were about their bearer. Only knowing that it was better me than Sora carrying this twisted blade kept me unashamed of it.)

Valentine stared at the Keyblades with an inscrutable face. After several long minutes in which the other students started shifting uncomfortably and I was just starting to contemplate showing off a few of the darker spells, he nodded once sharply and addressed the class as a whole.

“Look at the people standing beside you. These are the ones that share your choice, and you would do well to get to know them and learn all that you can. Be aware, however, that fighting outside of class, this room, or an authorized duel will not. Be. Tolerated.”

Something in his undertone turned his calm voice inhuman.

Some time later he dismissed the students, many of whom were pale or trembling, but then called out, “Sora, Riku, please stay behind.”

I regretted having dismissed my Keyblade before leaving the Training Room entirely, but I wasn’t about to betray myself by summoning it again. I stared at Valentine from behind the fall of my hair.

“Yes, sir?” Sora asked politely.

“I’m sure you understand the difficulty of training Keybladers,” he said, sounding completely normal if rather quiet. “Keyblades are the only weapons created solely from magic and which can fight on both magical and physical terms. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the bearer himself can alter the weapon, making no two Keyblades alike.”

“Your point?” I demanded flatly. He didn’t seem to give a damn about my ‘lack of decorous respect,’ unlike that harpy Quistis Trepe.

“I would like both of you to practice training with other weapon types. The mages will help you with your casting, the swordsmen with your technique. Even the marksmen may help focus your magic attacks. Ordinarily I would encourage anyone, regardless of weapons preference, to become at least proficient in hand-to-hand combat in the event of losing their weapon, but I know that it’s nearly impossible to separate a Keyblade from its bearer.”

When I didn’t say anything, Sora picked up the slack. “Thank you, sir.”

But Valentine didn’t seem to hear him. Instead he was staring at me, and I couldn’t help lowering my chin slightly and narrowing my eyes. Finally he said, “Darkness is as necessary to the heart as light. It’s when it becomes the last refuge of the hunted that it truly becomes dangerous.”

…The hell?

…

A game of Triple Triad was spread out on my plain white comforter, myself leaning against the wall and Sora sprawled with his legs hanging over the edge of the bed.

“Fuck yeah, Riku, check that!” He slapped down a monster card that would have obliterated my Ice-based defenses if I hadn’t laid down a Water illusion that reflected back half his monster’s attack points.

“Nice try, but not good enough,” I grinned, subtracting several points from his score. Sora groaned and flailed like an unbalanced puppy.

“Hyne damn it, I always forget your stupid instant-action cards!” he wailed. Fortunately Leon wasn’t here to get irritated with our yelling, and Cloud was absorbed in his work with headphones on.

“You’re too used to Earth and Fire. They work well together, sure, but that’s because one’s pretty straightforward defense and the other outright offense. There’s no deception.”

“I don’t understand it. Why waste energy trying to manipulate someone when you can just get up in their face and smash their fortress?”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “I just use it in the cards because it pisses you off so much.”

Sora was ready to pounce on me, but then our door opened and Leon stalked in radiating so much rage that I automatically put an arm between him and Sora. It took only an instant to summon a Keyblade and it would take him three good strides to reach my bed –

But he didn’t attack, even with Sora and I watching him carefully and Cloud openly observing. Instead he stood in the center of the room, breathing harshly through his nose, fingers twitching over the handle of his gunblade. Several seconds passed in which I saw more emotion from him than I had in the last month of rooming with him.

The tense silence was broken by the ringing of my PHS.

I flicked my eyes towards Sora. He grabbed it, paused with a furrowed brow, and then answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey kid, is there a pissy son of a bitch nearby that looks like he’s about to rip some motherfucker a new asshole with that gunblade of his?”

I could clearly hear the voice of the unknown guy on the other line, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he had something to do with Leon’s sudden tantrum.

“Um,” said Sora.

“Put me on loudspeaker so the little cocksucker can hear me.”

Not knowing what else to do, Sora did so.

“Hey princess, can you hear me?”

Leon’s growl was impressively realistic. “Fuck off, Seifer.”

“Hyne’s fucking balls, Squall, the poor bastard was trying to explain everything to you.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Get the fuck over your teenage existentialist bullshit, Squall – I’m sorry, I mean Leon the gods-damned coward. The past is past, so get your head out of your tight ass and listen to what Laguna’s got to say.”

“It happened twenty years ago. He doesn’t need to bother.”

“Fuck.” Apparently this Seifer could tell that Leon was calming down and turning cold and distant. It was interesting to witness. “Squall, the man’s your father. It’s not his fault Raine never told him he knocked her up. I swear to Hyne you’re as fucked up as a fucking serial killer, but if you want to hide in Balamb Garden like a pussy and cut your wrists with angst, then fine, fuck you. I’m not gonna waste my precious time on a damn idiot.”

The line went dead, and Sora gingerly turned off my PHS. All three of us were staring at Leon, who was copying one of my habits and hiding his eyes behind a fall of hair.

“…Well, that sucked,” Sora commented. I watched warily as a tiny, bitter smile briefly twisted the corner of Leon’s mouth. Cloud, however, merely shrugged, looking entirely unconcerned.

“At least you found a father.”

“This has nothing to do with you,” Leon snapped, as sharply as cracking ice.

“It does when assholes I don’t know are tapping into my phone,” I snapped right back from the other side, “and if this Laguna managed to track you down after twenty years, then ignoring him isn’t gonna make him disappear.”

“…Whatever.”

I eyed him, pissed off that someone had hacked my PHS but not wanting to blindly engage him in a fight when I didn’t know what he was capable of. Leon just sat down at his desk, adjusting his gunblade so that it wouldn’t dig into his hip, and turned on both his laptop and the radio, apparently willing us to pretend that the last few minutes had never happened.

“Um,” said Sora again awkwardly.

I bit my tongue and muttered, “Let’s just finish this game.”

…

Sora was crying when I first met him.

I’d been balancing on a low stone wall, holding my arms out to either side and pretending to be one of those epic explorers in documentaries that braved the dangerous monsters of the rainforests or the depths of a dragon’s lair. I used to dream of growing up to be like Tidus’ guardian, Auron, or even General Sephiroth himself. I’d be a powerful warrior, a leader of similar men.

Then I stumbled over a kid I recognized from the school playground sitting on the sidewalk and wailing. He seemed to be made mostly of scrawny limbs and cowlick hair. There was a big scrape on one of his shins, one that made me wince in sympathy, and I looked around for his mum but didn’t see any likely candidates around.

“Oi, stop crying, you big baby,” I told him.

He looked up at me with a face streaked in snot and tears. “I’m not a baby!” he cried.

“You’re crying. Only babies cry.”

“Shut up, meanie-head!”

“Crybaby!”

“Poopie-face!”

We started scrapping right there and then, and even though I was stronger than him, he was as wriggly as an eel with sharp elbows. We both ended up filthy and bruised, but grinning. The next day at school we played Al-Bhed Raiders and made the girls cry. Even though I was a grade above him I shared my chocolate milk with him at lunch and he gave me half a cookie his mum had baked, which sealed our solemn pact as brothers-in-arms.

When I found out that he’d been crying that first day because a bully in my grade had a habit of knocking him on the ground, I went and beat the crap out of the kid. It was worth having to spend the next few recesses sitting in the classroom as punishment to see Sora look at me with awe and adoration, and from then on everyone knew that one of us was never far from the other. The adults sometimes called us Soraandriku, as though we were a single unit.

I’m so glad he has you, Ms Gainsborough had once said to me out of the blue. We were standing in her kitchen, flour covering her hands and forearms in a fine white powder, waiting for Sora to come back with some sugar from the neighbor’s. Ever since his father died…

I’ll protect Sora, Ms Gainsborough, I’d replied with all the sincerity a nine-year-old could muster. I promise.