A Fragmentary Passage

Lanterns on the Main Road

Long before any of it, in the wasteland of old Keyblades, someone stood alone with a Keyblade in his hand and watched Kingdom Hearts come up in the sky.

The castle Aqua had seen from the overlook stood at the top of a valley, and she came down to it by a road with lanterns hung along it at long intervals, not enough of them, the light of each one reaching about as far as the next. At the edges of the road the ground had gone to blue crystal where the world had begun to fail, and pieces of buildings hung in the air above her with nothing holding them. She knew the place, and that was the trouble with it. "Why is Cinderella's world, here in the darkness?"

She had been walking a long time, and she no longer knew how long. That was the thing about this place. "There's no 'time' in the realm of darkness. I walk, on and on without end. In the realm of light, do days or years pass with each step? I know something has started to go wrong. I must hurry."

The road fell in ahead of her while she was still on it and took the way up to the castle with it. She looked at the gap for a moment. "I guess I know which way I'm going."

The way it left her was down into the town, and something in her chest moved that had not moved in a long while, and she stopped to notice it. "I haven't felt my heart stir in a long time. Something about this place." Then the creatures came up out of the ground round her. "It looks like worse things are stirring!"

The town under the castle had been a town. The houses were still standing and the doors were shut. There were stalls in the market with nobody at them, and in the middle of the square a fountain stood with its water stopped, not drained but stopped, holding the shape it had been making. She walked the length of it, keeping to the middle of the road, and talked because there was nobody else to. "I took it for granted. I thought I had nothing in life to lose. Here, too. Everyone in this world thought that they were safe. Not just the people, but the dog waiting for his owner, the cat curled up in her nook." She stopped by the fountain. "So much life. Trees and flowers. There's no deeper sadness than discovering all that you knew is gone. The grief in this place is too much to fathom. That's enough. I can't keep on wishing for the past."

Above her the clock on the castle had moved, and the road had gone when it moved, and she put those two things together standing in the empty square. "The road collapsed when the clock advanced. If only I'd made it in time." She looked up at the clock face. "But there is no time in this place, only, the clock." She found a gear of it and struck the gear until the clock turned back the other way, and the road came back, most of it. "I knew it."

At the castle gate she turned and looked back down at the town. "Not even memories, are safe from the darkness." She thought of a night on a mountain under a sky full of falling stars, and caught herself thinking it. "What I wouldn't give to really turn back time. To spend one more night beneath the stars with my best friends. I'm doing it again."

There was a man standing on the road ahead of her. It was Terra. He was the right height, and he stood the way Terra stood, and he was looking at her, and he said nothing. She ran to him. "It can't be. What are you doing here? You should be in the realm of light. Oh no! Did you not make it out? Don't tell me. Has the realm of light." He only looked at her. "Why won't you say anything to me?"

She understood, slowly, standing in front of him. "So what are you, a memory among these shadows? Are you here to, try and tell me not to lose heart?" Then he was not on the road any more.

She spoke to the place where he had been. "The world keeps our thoughts alive. But where did the people who lived here go, once their world was taken away? At least they're not here. So, they haven't fallen to darkness. I'll take what solace I can from that." And she walked on out of the world.

The Glass Coffin

The next place had a cottage in it, small, with seven of most things inside, and a wood behind it. She knew that too. "Another world that was lost to the darkness?" She went up through the trees and stopped. There was a coffin in the clearing, made of glass. "Is that?" There was a boy asleep in it, fair-haired, with his hands at his sides. "Ven!?"

She went down on the grass beside it and put a hand flat on the lid and left it there. What she said to him she did not say aloud. Ven. What did you come here to tell me? I know I promised to wake you up. I'm sorry. But I have to find a way home before I can help you. I just want you to know that it's been you that keeps my heart strong. Keeps the dark away.

He did not wake. Then the coffin was empty, and then it was gone, and there was a mirror standing upright in the clearing with her in it. "It's a mirror. What!?" Her reflection moved before she did, and took hold of her, and pulled.

The place on the other side of the glass was like two places she had been, the room behind the queen's mirror and the cell beneath the queen's castle, run together. Three mirrors came up out of nothing round her, all alike, and stood a moment, and then drifted apart to three places and settled. "What just happened?" She went back to the way she had come in, and it was not a way any more. "Those mirrors. Maybe they're a clue."

She looked into the first, and there was her own face in it, looking back. "Is this what it means to face your demons?"

The thing that came out of it was her. Not a shape like her: her, her height, her clothes, the Master's Defender or something made in its shape, and the only difference anywhere on it was the eyes, which were a lighter blue. It looked her over and told her what it thought of her. "Only your heart is hollow enough to be a demon's."

Aqua lifted her Keyblade. "That's not true! My heart is strong! I'll prove it!"

She fought it, and beat it. When it was gone she stood with the others still waiting in their frames. "Terra, Ven, and now my own phantom? What could it all mean?" The second mirror gave it back to her, and then the third, and she did those as well, and when it was over she stood in the middle of the three with her own reflection in all of them again. "That's all of them. Terra and Ven didn't have anything to say. But my shadow. She wanted to destroy me."

She spoke to nobody. "Never would have thought I'd become my own worst enemy. I've talked to myself a lot since falling into these shadows. But with the phantom, it's as though all of my doubts have gained a voice of their own. She's the weakness in my heart. I know I'm alone here. Have the uncountable hours in the shadows whittled away the courage I never really had? I'm losing this fight. The darkness has found the cracks in my heart. Is this, the last apparition before it takes me over?" Then she went out through the mirror.

The Road Is Thorns Now

It had been a dark forest under a mountain. It was the same forest now, with thorns grown through it, closing every way but one. "Another world I know." Far up the one way, two figures were walking, and she knew the way they walked. "Terra. Ven." They might be phantoms, like the others. "I don't care if they are, or if I fall into the darkness. I miss them!"

The thorns came across the path in front of her. "Get out of my way!" A giant stood up out of the ground behind them, the kind with a heart-shaped hole through its middle. "You really think you can keep me away from my friends?" And at the foot of the mountain there were more of those than she could count, standing in the open ground, waiting. "Okay then." She went through them, and came off the open ground still climbing, onto the rock where the two had been walking.

They were there. "Terra, Ven." And Terra turned his head toward her voice. "Aqua, you're." She stopped where she was. Nothing wearing a face had finished a sentence to her in all the time she had been here. "Terra. You spoke?"

He did not turn toward her. He turned toward where her voice was. "Can you see me?" She said she could, and Ven too, and that stopped him. "Ven? He's here?" He was standing beside Terra and had been the whole time, and Terra looked straight through him, and Aqua stared. "Terra, what's wrong? Don't you see him?"

He asked where they were, and she told him. "A world the darkness has consumed. It's Enchanted Dominion." He had not known. "Consumed? The worlds fell?" She heard how all of it sounded, and she had just come out of a room with three of her own faces in it. "What's gotten into you? How do I know that you're Terra? And not the weakness that's in my heart playing more tricks? Ven! Please say something." Ven said nothing.

Terra told her carefully, like a man explaining something he had had a long time to work out. "Aqua, listen. I promise this is me. But I'm not myself." She did not understand. "What do you mean?" He tried again. "You're using the name 'Terra.' That means you're seeing me the way that you remember me. But your heart is just painting the picture that it so wants to see. The real me is lost in shadow."

"Then you're here, trapped in the realm of darkness," Aqua said. He shook his head, in the direction of her voice rather than in the direction of her. "No. My heart has ties to the dark. That must be why we can talk. But I can't see anything, Aqua. If you say Ven is there, then he's like me, an illusion created by your heart."

Aqua held on to the part she could use. "I understand. Then, you and Ven are safe in the outside world?" He hesitated. "I think." It was enough for her. "That's good. But, how did you find me?" He had followed her voice. "I looked here. And heard you in the darkness."

She pushed. "Right, but why does your heart have, ties to the darkness now? What did you mean 'lost in shadow'?" He did not answer that. He had something more urgent. "Forget about me. Aqua, Xehanort is trying to locate Ven."

She almost laughed. "He'll never find him. I hid Ven well. I think the reason he's not talking to me here, is because he's still there sleeping."

And the voice that came out of Terra next was not quite Terra's. "This 'place.' Is it the Chamber of Waking?" Aqua began to answer, "Yes," and stopped, and looked at him. "Who are you? Really." It smiled with his face. "You don't know? My name."

Then Terra came up through his own face and got a few words out with the second he had. "No, I can't control." She started forward, and he got a hand up to stop her. "Aqua! Get back!" And he got it out fast, in one breath, because he did not expect to keep it. "I messed up. Xehanort is part of me. Now he's using me so you'll tell him where you hid Ven!"

After that the two of them went at each other inside one body, and what Aqua stood watching was a man losing an argument in a place she could not get to. The voice snapped at him. "Silence!" Terra would not stop. "I won't give in! Aqua! You have to." And the voice again, harder: "Still you struggle!"

Then hands came up out of the ground and took hold of her, and took hold of the boy standing where the man could not see him. "Now you can be one with the darkness!" She reached for Ven first. "Ven." The hands had him before she got there. Terra was shouting. "Aqua!"

He came up one more time, and this time he was not warning her about anything. "That is enough!" Chains of light came off him and put themselves between her and the hands. "Terra." Then the ground took her, and she went down away from him, and she was still talking as she fell, and there was not much left in her voice. "Now I can be, one with darkness."

A Warm, Familiar Light

The voice was not hers and it was not Terra's, and it was the first voice in a very long time that asked her a question and then waited for the answer. "Aqua, are you okay?"

She got up onto one elbow, and then onto her feet. The path was somewhere above her now, and the thorns had closed over it. Standing in front of her, small, round-eared, with a Keyblade in his hand, was a king she had fought beside once in a city of light. "Mickey, how did." She was already turning, looking past him up the slope. "Terra! Ven!"

He caught her arm. "No time to talk." Something was coming along the ground at them, and it was not a crowd. It came as one thing, the creatures pulled together into a single column that turned over on itself as it moved. Aqua stared at it. "Dwellers of darkness." Mickey had a name for them. "They're called Heartless!" They fought it together.

She had been fighting alone for so long that she kept turning to cover ground nobody had left open, and every time she turned there was somebody already standing in it. When it was over he leaned on his Keyblade to get his breath back. "Better not push our luck. Gosh. I never thought I'd find ya in the realm of darkness, that's for sure. So, um, what happened?"

She did not answer that. She was looking at the ground, at the place where the two of them had been standing. "Have you seen Terra or Ven?" He shook his head. "No, just you."

She pressed her hand to her eyes for a moment. "I'm sorry. The darkness in this place, it's getting to me." He did not let her stay there. "Oh. But, you'll be okay." She straightened. "Right."

"Say, we've been looking for ya a long time. How come you're in this place?" She had a question of her own that she had been carrying the whole way, with nobody to put it to, and she asked it first, the way people ask a thing they have decided in advance not to flinch at. "First tell me: how long's it been in the realm of light?"

He told her. "About, ten years."

She took that without any change in her face at all. "Interesting." And then she gave him the rest, in order, like something rehearsed alone and never said aloud. "After we last spoke, I took Ven somewhere safe, and then I went after Terra. But Terra was about to fall to darkness, so I had one choice. I stayed here in hopes of giving him a chance."

Mickey was quiet for a moment. "I, didn't know." She turned it back on him. "What 'bout you? What could've brought you here? Has something happened? In the realm of light?"

He told her standing, in one go, without stopping to see whether she followed. "It's the Heartless. They've been attacking worlds and taking their hearts. And worlds with no hearts vanish into darkness. But if we can lock the door between the two realms, light and dark, from both sides, we can protect the other worlds. So ya see, I came here to find the key on this side. Turns out, it's not so easy getting into the realm of darkness. The points you can cross have become unstable. It's only when a world gets consumed, that an entrance appears in the realm between. So, I waited for my chance, to sneak in. But hey, when I got here, I felt a warm, familiar light. I followed it to find my way, to you."

She had the charm out in her hand before he had finished. "The charm. So they were helping. Terra and Ven brought you and I back together again." Mickey grinned. "Yeah!"

She put it away. "But, the worlds are still in danger. Terra, did he make it back to the realm of light?" He had to tell her. "We still haven't found him." She nodded slowly, and when she spoke again it was with certainty. "I see. Well, wherever he is, he's fighting. He'll beat his darkness. And I know he wants me to fight too." Mickey agreed. "I think you're right. He'll be just fine."

"Yes. But what about Ven? He won't wake up unless I'm there with him. I have to go. I have to find a way back to the realm of light." He brightened. "Good. Then let's locate that key and go home together!" She looked at him for a second before she asked the obvious thing, because she had already worked out what the answer probably was. "Does that mean you know an exit?"

He scratched his head. "Well, uh, I was so busy finding a way in, that I didn't give a lot of thought to where there'd be a way out. But, together we're sure to find one!" And for the first time in a very long while Aqua laughed. "You haven't changed at all."

Before they started down he said something she had not heard anyone say in a long time. "May our hearts be our guiding key." She knew it. "There's a phrase no one's used in ages." He explained it anyway, which she had not asked him to do. "Keyblade wielders used to say those words to each other. And now, it's something I like to try and remember." Then he looked down the slope ahead of them. "So. Ready?"

The Same Boys

The way through was a portal, and then a cavern that ran on longer than a cavern needs to, and then sand underfoot, and a light at the far end bright enough to walk toward. What was on the other side was an island, made of sand, floating with nothing underneath it, palm trees leaning out over the drop and great sharp purple shapes standing up in a ring round the whole of it. The sky over it was blue. Mickey looked round. "So many worlds have been lost. And now they're trapped here in the dark." Then he saw her face. "Wait, you know this place, Aqua?"

She had stopped at the edge of the sand. "This is, where I met those children." He waited, so she gave him the rest of it. "Yes. I visited once, and I met two boys I considered passing the Keyblade on to. But because Terra had already given one of them the power, I didn't."

Mickey was very still. "Aqua. What were the boys' names?" She said them flatly. "They were, Sora and Riku." He was already looking past her at the far end of the beach, working something out. "I see. We're getting warm." She did not follow him. "Huh?"

Mickey laughed. "Welp, it's Sora and Riku who've been helpin' me. We're tryin' to get that door shut for good." Aqua looked at him. "The same boys?"

He had it now. "Aqua, if this is where my friends first got the Keyblade, it also must be where we'll find its counterpart. The Keyblade of darkness has gotta be here on the dark side of their world." He was already moving. "We'll have to hurry. C'mon!" There was a fight on the way across the sand, and they took it between them, and neither of them spoke of it afterwards. "Let's keep goin'."

The place he was taking her was a cave at the back of the beach. She had been in it before, once. "I bet it's in here." And it was, standing upright in the middle of the floor in the dark. "There!" Aqua looked at it. "Is that what you're after?" Mickey was delighted. "Yep, it's just the key I was looking for. A Keyblade from the dark realm!" She understood what it was. "A Keyblade of darkness."

He said some old lines over it first, the way a man says something he learned before he was old enough to understand it. "'The door of darkness, tied by two keys. The door of darkness, to seal the light.' Welp, we've got the keys. Now, we find the ones to close the door." She did not follow him. "Sorry?"

He explained it on the walk back down the beach. "The door between the two realms, it won't let a heart with light pass through. So only darkness keeps spilling out. We can lock the door by using the two Keyblades, but we need help on both sides to get the door shut." She had already worked out what the arrangement cost, and she had already decided which end of it she wanted. "Well, then, since you'll be doing the locking, let me be the one to close the door." He shook his head. "Sorry, but the job's taken, by somebody else." Aqua blinked at him. "Huh?"

He took her to it. It stood tall and white on the sand by the water, a door with nothing on either side of it. "Is that the one?" Mickey looked up at it while he talked, and he talked for a while, because it was the part he had come here to do. "Yep, the door to Kingdom Hearts. Welp, it's not the Kingdom Hearts you know. Not exactly. But even though it's smaller, it's still the heart of many worlds. And even if it's not a complete Kingdom Hearts, we definitely can't leave it open like this, or darkness will escape and destroy the remaining worlds. It's time. With this key and Sora's in the realm of light, we're gonna close this door. Now, all we need is Riku."

A boy came through onto the sand from somewhere on the other side, silver-haired and taller than she remembered, and she knew him from one afternoon a long time ago. Mickey saw him too. "There! That's everybody! Come on, Aqua." She said the two names together, to herself. "Sora, Riku."

Then the swarm came together over the water. It gathered, pulling itself in from every direction until it was one mass, and it turned toward the boy, and the blue sky over the island went dark. Mickey saw where it was going. "Oh no!"

Aqua was already between them. "Back off!" She held it. Mickey was calling her name, and she did not turn round. "Go without me!" He tried to argue. "No, I." And the mass came down between them, and he was on one side of it with the boy, and she was on the other. "Aqua!" She heard him once more, further off, and then not at all. "Aqua."

Then she stood on the sand with it gone and spoke aloud, to nobody. "The battle for the realm of light, is not won. Thanks to Terra and Mickey, I know what's at stake. I'm not afraid. I will face the long darkness. The next time someone wanders into the realm of darkness, I'll be here. A light to cut through all the shadows. I will be their wayfinder. And one day, I'll return to Terra and Ven. I am Master Aqua. And that's a promise."

Somewhere behind her and out of her sight, the door was shut.

She was lying on her back on the sand by then, because she had stopped being able to stand, and had not much minded. The sky had cleared over her. "It's beautiful. The stars are out. Terra, Ven. Just me again." Then something changed in the sky, and she read it. "They did it. The worlds are being restored."

Her hands were empty. The Master's Defender was not in them, and had not been for a while.

The sand gave under her and she went down through it, and she said the phrase he had given her, to somebody who was no longer in the world with her. "'May our hearts be our guiding key.' You'll know, where I am."