#guiding key

If a body can regrow a heart, then so too could a stubborn enough heart grow a new body-- one way or another...

After everything that happened, I want Ven to finally get his decade-delayed growth spurt and for Terra to see him and realize "oh god, I love him."

Riku is a spirit.

His eyes used to be blue in KH. By III, they’re green.

Do you think he fully realized that before Sora was taken away from him again? Did he have the slightest idea when he went to bed that first night, holding himself tighter and tighter as his connection to his best friend’s heart faded to a whisper of a whisper, not sensing the shift in his disposition until he rose groggily to the bathroom and saw the yellow discs staring back at him?

Two pools of solid gold shimmering in the low light like cats’ eyes, his pupils morphed into heart-shaped voids as if to rub salt in the wound. For a few terrifying moments, he believes the darkness had retaken him. That his private grief had left a crack in the lock he forged, letting it bleed back out to the rest of his heart. He realizes it hasn’t, that his heart has just as much light as usual, but it doesn’t stop the flood of tears and sobs that flow out of him regardless.

I hc that all Nobodies can feel emotions but they're severely dulled and hard to personally pinpoint in the moment unless they're intense or they remember how having the emotion physically manifested for them when they had a heart. Pain works similarly, letting them tank and soldier on through worse hits than if they were fully aware of how much pain the injury caused. Rox's senses are further muddled from never having his own heart to begin with and sharing Sora's sense-memories as well, so now that he's a complete person of his own he struggles to tell when he's feeling something or not.

You know what IS clear to him? Pain.

Being a Nobody was being filled with constant aches, emotional and physical, uncomfortable but dull. He could feel actual pain in the datascape but it was a different kind of muted. Like getting hit in a dream; the neurons fired but it was cushioned by a fuzzy sludge around the edges. Fading in moments.

However real pain is sharp. It stings and throbs and lingers. He can feel his heart beating when the blood wells up, hear the rush in his ears as the adrenaline spikes. If he's lucky a bruise or scar'll even stick around for a bit before the next cast of cure. He won't damage his body too badly on purpose, not after everything that went into getting it. But if he can convince or goad someone into being a bit rougher with him, he'll take the chance.