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

[optimistickey]

As far as Sora was concerned, this ship was just too small to be able to get away from all the people that were suddenly soooo interested in what he was doing. What good had friendship done him, anyway? Just kept him away from home for years, gotten him hurt or nearly killed countless times, and worried him sick. He was better off without all that burden.

He was currently tromping down the housing deck's hall, trying to think of someplace where he could go to be alone again. Maybe somewhere on the theatrical deck. At least he could find something to do by himself there.

[halfdarkened]

It didn't matter what color scheme his friend had managed to acquire. He kicked off from the wall, springing back and forth to move down to catch up with him. "Sora! Look, it doesn't have to be like this."

[optimistickey]

Sora shot a glare back at Riku as the other pony caught up with him...although that glare was tempered with a bit of quiet amusement at his predicament. But he wasn't much better off himself; considering he was still wet from jumping out of the shower. Of course he just couldn't get away from anyone on this ship, could he?

"Yeah, it does. Why don't you get the hint and leave me alone already?"

[halfdarkened]

Of course he couldn't get away. If they couldn't get away from Sora, the same would be true for when he was the one in need.

"Because I'm your friend, wise-guy. What else am I supposed to do when I see the guy I grew up with act like a jerk?"

[optimistickey]

Sora's wing was still a little bit tired from his last scuffle from Roxas and the acrobatics he and Ven had done earlier in the week, so he wasn't in the mood to fly away yet, but he picked up his pace. At least Riku couldn't keep up so well.

"Maybe find some new friends!" he shot back.

[halfdarkened]

Riku paused briefly, but barely batted an eye. He grabbed door frames with the crook of his ankles to pull himself forward, trying not to turn upside-down. He wasn't losing his friend. "Nah. You were always better at that then I was. You were always the type to help out a total stranger and make friends in the process.

[optimistickey]

"And look where it's gotten me," Sora grumbled, pointedly not looking at Riku. All friends had gotten him was endless worry, ceaseless fighting, and years away from home. All the good of friendship seemed to have been blocked out of his mind by the corruption, although listening to Riku was not helping his stubbornness.

[halfdarkened]

"Yeah. A bunch of people who hate seeing you sad or messed up. A bunch of people willing to give their life for you." His tone is firm. "Even when I gave up on myself, you hauled me back up again. Literally."

[optimistickey]

Sora couldn't help but slow down a little at that, almost to a trot. He hung his head. "If...if I never had any friends, then they wouldn't have to get themselves hurt or put their lives in danger, either!" he said.

With his tone going from stand-offish and angry to more sorrowful, it seemed perhaps this was how Discord had gotten to him in the first place.

[halfdarkened]

A small smile crossed Riku's lips. "See? You're concerned. That's the Sora I know." He used the decrease in Sora's speed to catch up and float alongside him. Albeit upside-down, but he'd settle for that right now. "You know why friends do that? Because they want to keep something worthwhile safe." He gave his friend a bit of an upside-down frown. Or would that be an upside-down smile since he WAS upside-down? Either way, the corners of his mouth went a little closer to his eyes.

[optimistickey]

Sora caught the smile (Riku smiles were rare enough as it was!) out of the corner of his sight, and quickly turned away from it. Still, it seemed less that he was trying to get away now, and more just trying to curl up and hide.

"It's...it's dumb! I'm tired of me getting hurt or everyone else being hurt because of feeling that way!"

[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.