Friendship is Power [Active/Closed. They're having a moment, okay?]

[halfdarkened]

Characters: Sora and Riku
Content: Wait, Riku's telling SORA about friendship? That's unexpected.
Location: Deck 2
Time of day: Afternoon?
Warnings: Angst, anger, guilt, sappiness, and possible violence.


At this point Riku was floating upside-down through the hall, trying to look for his best friend and leaving a trail of flower pedals behind. Seeing Sora this was was... Disconcerting to say the least. He'd never asked for Sora's forgiveness, and Sora had never outright said it, but both were always assumed. And now it felt like it was coming undone. The teen pony had to remind himself that this wasn't Sora's doing.

Discord was playing puppet-master, a role Riku had been on the receiving end of before. And though it was simple chaos rather than Discord alone who was pulling strings, it still was something Riku wasn't about to let happen to someone who was previously willing to forgive something he could barely forgive himself then.

Still, Sora remembered all that. Could he really best Riku in an argument?

Comments

[halfdarkened]

The smile faded, and Riku gave him an evenly-toned reply. ...Though he was sideways. "So what would you have wanted the opposite then? That our home would be gone... That you never met Donald and Goofy, and they never found the King? That I'd just be a heart in the Realm of Darkness until I became a heartless, and 'Ansem' ran around in my body? ...And that Kairi would still be a body with her heart in yours?"

"Somehow I think everyone else would be hurting a lot more if it weren't for you. And that you'd be hurting more, too."

[optimistickey]

While Sora tried to come up with a reply to that, he couldn't seem to think up anything that wasn't just another sharp denial. Would he really have been better off if he hadn't had to worry about friends at all? Or would they have been? He squeezed his eyes shut, imagining how things had been right when the world had been destroyed...it was one of the most awful memories he had. Having things stay that way forever, unwilling to change it at all, now seemed unbearable.

"No...but...after everything, it would've been..."

However, even as he was trying and failing to brush off what Riku said, the bright colors were beginning to seep back into Sora, starting at his tail.

[halfdarkened]

"Would have been what? Easier? ...Is it easier to do nothing when its hard to watch people get hurt?" Though not one to put words in other people's mouths, Riku also wasn't going to let an opportunity to make a point slip past now.

Riku simply shrugged. "But what do I know. Good chance I'd be dead if it wasn't for you. Not like that counts, right?" There was no attempt to hide the sarcasm.

[optimistickey]

Sora opened his mouth as if to respond, but still couldn't come up with any good response, even to bite back at Riku's sarcasm. However, he didn't have much chance to, anyway...the colors finally worked their way across his entire form, restoring Sora to normal. Or as normal as he could be as a pegasus pony, in any case.

Sora collapsed a bit onto his knees, and shook out his head, looking dazed. "Wha..."

*OBLIGATORY HAND OUT POSE*

[halfdarkened]

As Sora regained his color, Riku's equine shoulders fell with a silent sigh. A pure and genuine smile appeared before returning to his usual smirk. He held out his hoof to Sora as if it were a hand.

"Welcome back."

[optimistickey]

It took Sora a moment before he realized what Riku was doing, and then took the offered hoof so that he could stand. He still looked pretty shaky on his legs, and somewhere between relieved and disturbed.

"What...happened? I feel like I was living in some kind of horrible nightmare..."

[halfdarkened]

Of course, with Riku floating, Sora taking his hoof was a little different than he expected. The older equine had to quickly plant his hooves on the ground before he was pulled into the floor.

"You were," he said as soon as Sora was up. "But that's over with." However, Riku frowned as he began to float sideways again. "Before any explaining though, you mind helping me ti some wights back onto my feet?"

[optimistickey]

Under different circumstances, Sora would've been both confused and amused at seeing a floating, unnaturally sparkly Riku, but at the moment he was still a bit caught up on recovering from Discord's corruption, and a bit of embarrassment and shame hit him from remembering all those things he'd said to people, even if those memories were hazy.

"Uhh...y-yeah, sure." He shook his head out. "...What happened to you, anyway?"

[halfdarkened]

Riku's eyes narrowed and he grumbled a little as he began shedding flower petals again. "Discord decided to mess with me, too, and this is what I got."

[optimistickey]

"Ohhh." Now he was starting to remember...that strange dragon-horse guy who had showed up, somehow able to use magic even though no one else could. Things had gotten pretty strange at some point, but Sora did remember voices whispering about all of the terrible things his friends had to endure all because of him, and feeling so upset about it...

He still seemed pretty frustrated with it, but at least trying to fix Riku gave him something else to focus on in the immediate future. "Geez...that guy REALLY messed with us. Um...do you have some weights nearby?"

[halfdarkened]

"Yeah, in my room. If I got to sleep with them on my my feet... Hooves... are a little numb in the morning. But then with no thumbs it's pretty hard to get them back on by myself again." Riku hooked his hooves over a doorframe and used it to pull himself into floating the opposite direction.

Riku's door was always cracked open nowadays. Or at least it had been all week, making it easier to open without the use of hands. He pushed it open and floated on in upside-down.

[optimistickey]

Sora followed Riku down to his room...it seemed he'd managed a way to get around even with no traction, silly-looking as it was. "All right, I think I can tie those on..."

As he began searching around Riku's room for the weights, still thinking over that time he spent drainwashed, something very obvious finally struck him. "Riku! We gotta find a way to stop that dragon-guy!" Sora exclaimed, as if just thinking of it. What if it tried to make him weightless too, or brainwash him again...or even worse, try to do it to any of his other friends? It was bad enough thinking through what had just happened, let alone imagining it happening to someone he cared about.