Blank Points

Two Who Were Never Meant to Meet

Eleven years after Kingdom Hearts II closed, Aqua was still walking the Realm of Darkness, and a stretch of it called the Dark Margin put a stranger in her path for the first time since she had gone under.

He sat on the shore in a black coat with the hood up, and he stayed where he was when she stopped in front of him.

"Who are you?"

"Why, hello. It's not often I get visitors."

"Please, call me Aqua. Why are you sitting here all alone in the realm of darkness? How did you end up here?"

He answered her the way a man answers a question he has already given up trying to solve for himself.

"Well. I can tell you this is my second time on these shores. But unfortunately, much like the first, I do not remember who I am or whence I came. Everything was washed away in whatever currents carried me here."

She sat beside him and gave him back the same kind of answer, plainly, in exchange.

"That's too bad. I know I've been here a long time, wandering through the endless hours, unable to escape."

"You wish to return to your own world?"

"It's my friends. I promised I'd be there for them."

The word caught on something in him.

"Your friends? Somewhere in the scraps of memory I have left, you remind me of a boy I once knew. He is very much like you, true to his friends, and kind. This boy travels to many worlds and fights to keep the light safe."

"Keep the light safe? I've been away too long. Did something happen out there? Are the worlds in danger?"

"Sad to say, they nearly fell to darkness more than once. But at every turn, that boy arrived with Keyblade in hand to save the day."

Aqua had two names ready before he finished. "Huh? Wait a sec. Is his name Terra or Ven?"

"Neither of those, I'm afraid."

"Should've known."

He gave her the rest of it unasked, the way a man finally sets down something he has been carrying alone for a year.

"How long has it been since I met him? At least a year now, perhaps more. Back then, my heart was clouded with vengeance. I did terrible things, both to him and his friends. I brought unhappiness to more lives than one. I felt something must be done. Was that why? A means of clearing my conscience? Or perhaps, out of a sort of scholarly instinct? While the boy slept his long sleep, I hid the results of my research inside him, transplanting the data to where it might best serve a purpose. In fact, I would like to believe. Maybe he can set things right. A boy like him who touches so many hearts, he could open the right door, and save all those people whose lives I managed to ruin. So many are still waiting for their new beginning, their birth by sleep. Even me, and even you."

She asked him the only thing left to ask.

"What's this boy's name?"

"His name. Is."

He did not finish it. Aqua finished it for him, and knew, saying it, that she already had the answer before he gave it to her.

"Sora."

She wept there on the Dark Margin, looking out to the cold light on the horizon.

In the White Room of the Old Mansion in Twilight Town, Naminé finished a drawing of Sora on a paopu tree and said his name.

On the clock tower above the same town, Roxas, Xion and Axel sat together with sea-salt ice cream, watching the sun go down, and Roxas and Xion said his name too.

At the Land of Departure, in the sealed room where Aqua had left him, Ventus stirred.

Terra was there beside him when he woke, and the two of them, looking up at a shooting star, said the same name Aqua had just learned on the other side of the dark.

See You Soon

Sora sat on the paopu tree with a letter in his hand, the one Mickey had sent out in a bottle after the data world closed. He had been sitting with it long enough that the look on his face had settled into something closer to a decision than a question.

Riku came up behind him already knowing what the letter said. "Sora. Your mind's made up?"

Sora told him it was.

Kairi found the two of them there, and Sora told her himself rather than let Riku do it for him.

"Kairi, I. It's just. They really need me. I have to go. I am who I am. Because of them."

She said nothing against it. She took her own Wayfinder and put it into his hand.

"See you soon."