au yeah autumn challenge

[sunrises]

Soulmates - Riku / Namine (Kingdom Hearts)
College - Lloyd Irving / Colette Brunel
Single parent - Tyler Lockwood / Caroline Forbes
Enemy - Ochaco Uraraka / Izuku Midoriya
Laundromat - Peyton Leverett / Maxine Hunkel
Hogwarts - Stefan Salvatore / Misty Day
Famous - Tom Bronson / Sharpay Evans
Kwami swap (Power Swap) - Yato / Hiyori Iki
Summer Camp - Evan Tildrum / Tani (Ni No Kuni II)
Secret agent - Izuku Midoriya + Bakugou Katsuki
Mermaid - Senel Coolidge / Shirley Fennes
Royalty - Stefan Salvatore / Jesse Wells
Fake dating - Stefan Salvatore / Freya Mikaelson
Reincarnation - Jason Grace / Piper McLean
Life Swap - Stefan Salvatore + Eugene Woods
Neighbors - Roxas / Olette (Kingdom Hearts)
Sidekick - Iris West + Ashley Williams
Circus - Shizuku Mizutani / Haru Yoshida
Reverse Crush - Katsuki Bakugou (MHA) / Leila (Riordan-verse)
Coffee shop - Ryuji Sakamato / Makoto Niijima
Childhood Friends - Stefan Salvatore / Elena Gilbert
Crime - Tenko Midoriya + Hana Midoriya + Izuku Midoriya
Historical - Barry Allen / Iris West
Office / workplace - Sebastian Debeste / Kay Faraday
Friends with Benefits - Goro Akechi / Haru Okumura
bff swap - Sean Diaz / Ally Parker
Internet - Masayuki Hori / Yuu Kashima
Gym - Eijiro Kirishima / Katsuki Bakugou
Time travel - Max Carson / Lester Papadopoulos
Roommates - Jeremy Gilbert / Kol Mikaelson
"Dealer's Choice" - Roland Crane + Evan Tildrum

PROGRESS: 31/31

Comments

soulmates - riku / namine | word count: 2127

[sunrises]

For most of his life, Riku didn't have a metallic name etched on the inside of his wrist. His best friends Sora and Kairi, on the other hand, had always known they would have each other. Kairi's neat cursive and Sora's messy, half-legible scrawl had been on their wrists their entire lives. These tattooed names were more than power on the islands; they were permanent, lasting bonds, with a bond that could supposedly span an entire universe.

Those without names - like him - were ill omens to an Island tradition. The hushed whispers surrounding him, and the pitying looks from gossiping aunties, had only served to confirm Riku's worst suspicions. He was lesser. He would always be lesser, as the years stretched on with no name in sight.

(He had stopped looking underneath his wrist bands a long, long time ago. He wouldn't find a name there.)

Yet, Sora and Kairi had never thought of him as lesser. Over the years, they would inevitably drag him into "group hangs" or large parties in search of someone else like him - someone who lacked the names that would set destinies in motion. When those attempts all ended in abject failure, they would flee to one of the smaller play islands and build the island raft that would take them far away, to a place where names and soulbonds didn't matter.

Just as they tied the last knot on their raft, Sora would inevitably flop onto one of the giant tree branches next to Riku and peer out towards the never-ending sky.

"I saw you looking at Refia earlier today..." He trailed off, with eager anticipation on his face. "I know she doesn't have a name on her wrist. I checked."

"You should've checked harder." Riku sighed, resting his back against the tree trunk. "Her other wrist says Luneth, whoever that is."

"Okay, but what about..."

"What about giving up on this?" Riku could feel the exhaustion seeping into his bones, and it wasn't from raising the mast and tying down the knots on that sturdy wooden raft.

His hands were already calloused; his feet were already used to the dry, coarse sand; and his skin could handle the blazing sun. No, he knew where this line of questioning would end, and he wanted out.

"Never." Sora huffed, lying down and staring up at the faint moon, just past some clouds. "You'll find someone, Riku. Not everyone has to be soulbonded to each other, you know? Maybe... maybe your destiny involves making a choice."

"Easy for you to say."

When this endless sea locked them on this suffocating, enclosed, scorching hot island, Riku couldn't pretend they were anywhere else. On the mainland, or heck, even in a bigger city, he could have fled. He could have avoided this whole line of questioning altogether. The lack of a name - a soul bonded to his own - didn't suffocate Riku quite like the endless sea, but right now, it felt like another reason to sail away.

Taking Sora's uncertain silence for an answer, Riku reminded him, "You've always known you would be with Kairi. You've never had to stop and think about it for yourself."

"That's not fair!" Sora sat up immediately, holding out both hands in protest. "Don't drag Kairi into this! You know I love her! Of course I do! But Riku...."

There was a heavy, uncomfortable sigh stuck in his best friend's throat. One Riku had never heard before, and one he hoped he never would again.

Sora released that sigh after a long moment, pulling his knees close to his chest and watching the sun dip just below the sea. "You're the lucky one, Riku. You get to fall in love with someone without knowing beforehand that it was already set in skin."






When their world, along with countless others, had been plunged into darkness, Riku had seized the opportunity to travel to far-flung worlds and engage in their cultures. Yet all of Traverse Town's refugees, Deep Jungle's researchers and gorillas, and even Wonderland's topsy-turvy residents had glittering names marked on their wrists.

(So much for sailing away to a world where it didn't matter.)

"Why are you so curious? Not everyone is keen on sharing their soulbond with the world," his new mentor had told him one night, when she had caught him peering too closely at a captive princess's wrists. "You would do well to remember that."

Then he pulled back his wristbands and held his bare wrist in her face.

His mentor grew quiet, and for the first time since they had met, she tugged down her long, billowing right sleeve. The name on her wrist was inset in rough skin tissue, with even rougher green ridges that felt as if they were burnt by her own hand.

Riku swallowed down his fear, reaching over to trace the letters of that name. Supposedly, when a soulmate died, the name faded from the wrist, leaving a blackened mark and a powerful feeling of loss. This - this mockery of a scar wasn't a sign of death.

"What? What happened to him?"

"Nothing." His mentor's smile didn't quite reach her eyes, and her voice was full of bile, almost uncharacteristic rage. "But a long, long time ago, we were young, and we decided to sacrifice our bond. His name, I assure you, is far worse."

He was missing too many details to understand how severing that bond could've ripped apart the very folds of their skin, but he understood. Not everyone's soulbonds ended with a happily-ever-after.




The first time Riku met the King, he couldn't help peering down at His Majesty's wrists. At the base of the King's left wrist, the name Minnie was written in intricate, neat cursive, with two hearts right over the I's.

"Gosh, Riku," the King had said with a good-natured laugh, peering at his wrist before beaming back up at his companion. "If you wanted to know, all you had to do was ask."

"S-sorry," Riku stammered out, bowing in apology as he remembered time, place, and his manners altogether. Sure, they were trapped together in the Realm of Darkness for who-knows-how long, but he did just intrude on a king's privacy.

(For all he knew, the King may have been like Maleficent, sacrificing his bond to ensure his own freedom or happiness.)

"You're fine." The King nodded, glancing around the room in which they had locked themselves. No immediate exit had made itself apparent. "It's neat, isn't it? How names and soulbonds seem to be universal constants, no matter what world you travel to?"

Riku folded his arms, leaning against a particularly large rock. "That's one way to put it."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't have a name." Riku pulled down his wristbands, as he always did, and held his bare wrist in the King's face. His bare, naked wrist. No name, no soulbond to speak of. "See?"

"You sure?" The King squinted, holding Riku's wrist and tracing imaginary letters with his fingers. "Because right here it says Namine."

"Wh-what? Really?"

The King grinned, flipping Riku's hand over and showing him the name, written in neat, child-ish looking print. "N-a-m-i-n-e. See?"

Riku fought a choked sob. So there was someone out there for him. Someone much, much younger than he had anticipated, but someone nevertheless. Whoever she was, wherever she lived, he could only hope that he wouldn't disappoint her. He would inevitably burden such a child with his heavy heart and a body that was forever tainted with darkness.

The pockets of purple-and-black shadows gathered together in front of them, forming a tall corridor. The purple-and-black bits bobbed, pointing in the direction of a place unknown, and - and Riku could sense that it was beckoning to them. Telling them to follow this road, wherever it may lead.

"Well, Riku?" The King jumped up to wipe the newly-forming tears from his face. "We should get going. We can't keep your soulmate waiting for you."





The corridor had led them into the basement of a stark-white castle that demanded memories, and after gaining the bond most precious to him - Riku wasn't going to give them up. Not here, not ever. Every bone in his body was aching by the time he reached the ground floor.

(God, he needed a shower, and a hot meal, and probably both for good measure.)

He thrust his keyblade into the ground, intent on resting on it until he regained his strength. As he did, he peered up at the giant flower-like pod before him, and the unfamiliar technology that had surrounded him. There was a person inside that pod. A young, spiky-haired person that almost looked like... like...

"Sora?!" Riku leapt to his feet, pulling his keyblade back and pointing it at the nearest shadow. "What did you do to him?"

"Nothing," A high-pitched feminine voice called, as she emerged from the darkness. Her sandals clacked against the hard floor, and she held up her sketchbook in defense as she approached him. "He's just sleeping, to get his memory back."

She told him, in no small detail, how Sora chose to forget the castle - to forget all he had observed - to restore his memories of the worlds beyond. Then, as he was trying to process how Sora could have made such a choice, she turned the pages of her sketchbook.

"You have a choice to make too, Riku."

He blinked back surprise at her. "Regarding my memories? But no one's messed with them."

"No, regarding your darkness." She furrowed her brow, stepping closer and resting her palm on his chest. "In your heart, there is darkness, and in that darkness is Ansem. He won't be at bay forever... and some day, he may take over you like he did before. I -" She swallowed her hesitation. "I have powers you can use. I can lock your heart, and that way, Ansem could never come out from inside you."

"What happens to me if I let you do that?" Riku wrapped a hand around this stranger's wrist. He couldn't trust her, not yet. Even if she seemed to know him as well as he knew himself. "Will I forget everything like Sora did?"

She stared down at his shoes, and in that moment, he knew he would have to.

"The darkness in you will be sealed... just like your memory," she confessed, fighting back a sob. "You'll go back to how you were."

To the person who lacked a soulbond, to the person who wanted to escape far away to worlds unknown and to keep running from what he had always known?

Riku glanced up at his sleeping best friend, then back down to the stranger who had given him that enticing choice to begin with.

"No. I'll fight him."

She stared at him. "But- but what if his darkness overtakes you?"

"If that happens, then the darkness will show me a way again." Riku held up his right wrist to her, to the glittering name that held more promise than any universe. He couldn't lose the name, or the promise he had made both to himself and the King. "I can't keep my soulmate waiting much longer, you know."

The young girl's eyes lit up like the stars he once watched every single night, and she drew in a delighted breath as she threw her sketchbook to the wind. "I guess you can't," she said. "Will she - what do you think she's like?"

"Probably a baby, with how recently it appeared," Riku admitted, with some feigned nonchalance as he flipped over the young girl's wrist. "Or, more likely, she's talking to me right now, hoping I would've taken her up on her stupid offer."

There, on her left wrist, was his name, in his left-slanted, thick-stroked signature. He would know that kanji ( the 陸 ) anywhere. He had only written them a hundred-something times a day, back when he was in school and in the boring, mundane existence the Islands had given him.

Quietly, she had to ask, "When did you know?"

"When you smiled like that." It didn't take a genius to realize he had meant something to her. Even he, in his obliviousness, could tell. "My best friend may get to slack off and nap like it's no big deal, but I've gained too much to let go."

Namine - his Namine - laughed, sliding her fingers in his. "I suppose you have."

As they squeezed each other's hands, staring up at the sleeping slacker, Riku felt an immense peace wash over him, and just like that, the entire world clicked into place.