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Fanfiction ► Outside the Window (a KH one-shot)



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Andillexe

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My little sister wrote this story, and I almost cried (which is a big deal since I almost never cry).

Riku woke up in an uncomfortable and unfamiliar bed. For some reason, he couldn’t see anything but darkness, so he reached up to pull off the blindfold and was surprised when his fingers felt nothing but his own eyes. That’s when he heard another boy’s voice break through the blank abyss.

“So you’re finally awake?” The boy sounded around his own age, give or take a few years.

“Where am I?” he asked, bracing himself for the boy’s response.

“You’re in a hospital room. I’m Sora Hikari, your new roommate!” The boy was unnaturally cheery for being in a hospital. He heard another voice disturb the air.

“Mr. Tanada! I’m glad to see you awake. I’m Aerith, your nurse. How are you feeling?”

“Why can’t I see? And how did I even get here? I don’t remember anything!” Riku panicked. He couldn’t even recall how he had hurt himself in the first place.

“You fell down some stairs and hit your head hard.” She paused before continuing with a sad voice, “Your retinas detached themselves in the process. We tried to reattach them, but it seems that the surgery was unsuccessful.”

Riku’s head hit the pillow with a slight sound. Blind?! he thought. I can’t be blind!

He sank his head into his hands, rocking back and forth and sobbing quietly. Aerith cleared her throat nervously.

“Well, I’ll just go…do something…” She shuffled out of the room, closing the door with a soft click. Silence filled the room for several minutes before Sora spoke.

“Hey, if you want, I can describe everything to you, just so you have an idea of where you are!” Riku nodded and a detailed picture grew into his mind: two white hospital beds with silver railings, a bedside table in between the beds, watercolor paintings of flowers on the wall, the heart monitor, the off-white door, and lastly, the window with the doorway to the outside world.

Sora continued weaving more and more descriptions about everything going outside. “There’s a girl out there with grey sweats and a grey jacket on with headphones. She has really blond hair, almost white and she’s jogging with her dog (a Chocolate Lab) on a leash.”

Riku let all this sink in before wondering, “Sora, what do you look like?”

Sora paused slightly, but then launched into a full explanation of his characteristics. “Well, I have light brown hair which spikes up all over the place. My friends say that it defies gravity so I had to have some sort of gel in it, but it’s all natural. And I have really blue eyes that are the same color as the sky on a clear, sunny day. They’re huge, though, so it makes me appear a few years younger than I really am. And I’m wearing the same hospital gown as you are, except I’m a lot scrawnier than you and I feel like I’m wearing a sundress or something!” Riku could hear the exasperation in his voice and couldn’t help but smile. It did not go unnoticed by Sora, and he himself smiled. He felt happy that he could make the “always gloomy Riku” smile for once.


Days passed, and ever single one of them was filled with what was happening outside. Riku even met one of Sora’s friends, Yuffie. She sounded just as energetic as his roommate, possible even more so.

---------------Flashback------------------
Riku was talking to Sora like any other day, when he heard a new voice other than Sora’s and Aerith’s reach his ears.
“Hey, Sora! Who’s your friend?”
“Oh, hi Yuffie. This is Riku! He’s blind.” Footsteps approached Riku’s bed and stopped at the edge. He felt the air around his face shiver a bit.
“Yuffie,” Sora said in an annoyed tone, “I don’t think waving your hand in front of his face is going to help his sight at all.”
“Well, it was worth a shot. I was just making sure he was actually blind. Does he talk?”
“Of course I talk. I’m not mute. But why would I fake blindness?” Riku interjected. Now he was annoyed at this girl. Who was she to think him a liar?
“Well, don’t get all grumpy at me since I’m the bringer of the food!” Riku’s ears perked up at the mention of food. When was the last time he ate, anyway?
As if his stomach could hear his thoughts, it rumbled loudly. Yuffie let out a bark of laughter and laid the tray on his lap, skipping out of the room. And she came every day after that to have conversations, however short they may have been. (The length was determined by Riku’s mood.)
----------------End Flashback----------------

“Hey Sora,” Riku began to ask. It had been a few weeks and yet Riku still didn’t know anything about Sora’s condition. “What’s wrong with you anyway? You seem fine to me.”

“Oh, I have this weird disease. Apparently it’s really rare! There’s some sort of darkness inside of me, and they treat me as best as they can. They have yet to find a cure, but they’ve kept me alive! I’ve been here for about two years. The doctors tell me that it’s stabilized at least and not contagious at all, so I’m glad about that.” He said all of this nonchalantly, as if he had already accepted his fate.

“I’m sorry,” Riku choked out.

Sora just laughed. “It’s no big deal!” But Riku still felt extremely guilty. He had told Sora over and over that he was blind; how could that be worse than anything? And now here was Sora telling him that he might die soon because of this disease. Could Riku have been any more ignorant?

Riku kept all this to himself, however, and just changed the topic as if nothing had happened.

That night, Riku had a nightmare:
He was walking in utter darkness. He blinked once, twice, but nothing happened. He walked in a straight line, attempting to find some way out of the blackness.

“Hello?” He listened for a reply, but he found none. Then the darkness shifted, tendrils of it shooting out and wrapping securely around him. He struggled frantically, desperately trying to escape its grasp.

“Sora!” He shouted over and over. “Sora! SORA!” The darkness cut off his air supply, strangling him.

He bolted upright in his bed, sweat drenching his body.

“Are you alright, Riku?” Riku turned his head to the direction of the voice. “You called out my name in your sleep.”

Riku flushed, embarrassed that he had actually shouted Sora’s name. However, he began to swing his feet around and stood up, walking forward with his arms stretched out to keep him from running into anything.

“Riku, stop, you’ll only hurt yourself!” Riku stumbled toward the sound of the voice.

That’s it, Sora, keep talking. Let me hear where you are. His legs ran into the corner of the bed and he groped around for his friend.

“If you wanted to come and sleep with me, you could have said so,” Sora said with dry amusement. Riku snuggled into Sora’s side, his arms encircling the other’s body. He felt safe there. After all, Sora was the only friend he had, other than Yuffie and Aerith of course.

“Sora, what’s going on outside the window now?”

“Well, there are three children playing in the snow. Two of them are—Hehe!—they’re ambushing their friend with snowballs! They’re both creeping up on him while he’s looking around for him. The third one doesn’t even notice! Ha! They got him! He didn’t suspect a thing!” Sora giggled.

Riku sighed contentedly. “We have to do that sometime, me, you and Yuffie of course.” He then proceeded to yawn, close his eyes, and fall into a dreamless sleep.


“Riku, wake up!” Riku groaned, shifting to lie on his back. “What time is it?” he grumbled.

“5:30 in the morning. But the sun just rose and I wanted to describe it to you! The golden rays are hitting the ground so that it lights up everything. It’s reflecting off the lake so that it sparkles. The sky is purple and pink and blue all at the same time!” He sounded so excited and happy that Riku couldn’t bring himself to yell about the time. Instead, he wore a small smile on his face because of the vivid detail that Sora gave.

As Sora finished, Riku said, “Well, I’m going to sleep some more, since it’s still early by my schedule.”

“Alright, I’ll still be here when you wake up!” Sora said.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”


When Riku woke up the next morning, he was shivering. Seeking out Sora for warmth, his arms went out and clutched nothing but air. Panicked, he sat up quickly and tuned his ears to pick up any sound that could distinguish Sora’s whereabouts. Coming up with only silence, Riku grew distressed until he heard the familiar tapping of Aerith’s heels. He turned his head toward the sound, grateful that he could ask her about Sora.

“Good morning, Riku.” Was it just him, or was her voice a bit off?

“Morning, Aerith. Do you know where Sora is? I woke up and he wasn’t here.”

“Yes, that’s what I came to talk to you about.” Aerith sounded sympathetic now. Riku’s heart sank deep into his chest.

“Where is he?!” Riku demanded.

“Well, this morning when we came to check up on him, something was wrong. There was a chemical running through his body that needed to be removed, so we took him to surgery.”

“A-and where is he now?” Riku said in a choked whisper.

“I’m sorry, Riku. But Sora didn’t make it.” Seconds past, and the words sank in.

“No. NO! You’re lying!” Riku kept trying to believe that Sora was somehow alive. That somehow, Riku would hear what was outside the windows, as was routine.

Riku shot out of the bed and attempted to run at the door, but Aerith grabbed him around the waist.

“Riku, stop! You’ll hurt yourself!”

“I don’t care! Sora’s not dead! He can’t be!” He stopped moving gradually, ragged breaths escaping his lips. Tears formed in his eyes and spilled over. “He promised me,” he whispered. “He promised that he would be here.”


For days, he did nothing but cry. He didn’t even speak. On the fourth day, he heard shouting in the hallways.

“How was I supposed to know you would break your leg? It’s not my fault you have a complete lack of balance!”

“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have fallen in the first place!” The voices grew louder until they filled his room. A hand rested on his shoulder, causing him to flinch in surprise.

“Hi, Riku.” It was Aerith. “I’m really sorry, but there’s nowhere else for this man to go. Can I put him in here as your roommate?” He nodded his assent, listening to the two men’s ongoing bickering.

“You know what, Leon? Don’t expect any visits from me!” Riku heard a pair of feet stomp away furiously.

“Geez, Cloud, you are always so overemotional,” the man called Leon growled. The bed beside Riku creaked with sudden weight, and for a few moments the only sound was Aerith busily propping up the broken leg. Then, her job being finished, she left the room. And for the first time in four days, Riku spoke, his voice slightly raspy from little use.

“Hi, Leon, I’m, uh, Riku,” he said nervously. Leon merely grunted to show he had heard. “Would you do me a favor?”

Leon sighed before mumbling something incoherent under his breath. A few long moments passed before he gruffly said, “What do you want?”

“My old roommate…” Riku swallowed the lump in his throat and continued, “He used describe what was happening outside the window, since I’m blind and everything. So I was wondering, if it wasn’t too much to ask…could you tell me what’s out there?”

“…What the hell are you talking about? Why would he do a damn thing like that?”

His eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean? He’d just tell me what’s outside and I would listen.”

“Well, kid, your friend must have been one hell of a storyteller. There’s nothing outside that window but a brick wall.”

And Riku realized that it was never about what was out there. It was how you chose to look at it that mattered.
---------------------------

I think that this is bordering on the edge of yaoi, but she says otherwise. I don't believe her.
 

Andillexe

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I keep telling her that she's a good writer, but she doesn't belive me. It's when she writes stories like this that I start to think she'll be better than me.
 

Lanydx reborn

The Superior Lanydx
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Your sis is one heck of storyteller. Wow. I almost cried. Poor Sora. Tell your sis to keep doing what she's doing.
 

Andillexe

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This is Andillexe's sister. Thanks for all the commenting! I didn't think it was really that good but I'll take your word for it. I'm glad that it inspired the readers out there. But I'll try to write more, I promise.

(Andillexe: told you she doesn't belive in herself. :3)
 

madammina

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That was really sweet! I would normally say up the detail (maybe a bit more) but Riku is blind so there wouldn't be much.

I LOVED Leon and Cloud arguing, and the bit about the wall... Sora was so sweet in the whole thing (maybe a bit over naive but anyway)

She's good. Practice always helps. More practice and she'll rock!
 

Andillexe

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Right now she's writing two (maybe three) stories. One's for her friend for Christmas, another we're trying to collaborate on but we need to work out the details still. The last one she won't tell me about, secretive little sister. But she has gotten a lot better since she started writing. She says her biggest problem is dialogue. That's what I do well, so I really don't see how it's that hard.

Thanks for commenting. ^_^
 

Evello

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First of all, that was an awesome story. It was very inspiring, and I loved the ending.

But, on that note, I think that the last line could flow a bit better. I think something like "With a start Riku realized what Sora had known all along, that it was never about what was out there. It was how you chose to look at it that mattered."

That's just my opinion though, there's nothing actually grammatically wrong with how it's written. It was a great story.
 
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