Blank Points

Two Who Were Never Meant to Meet

Aqua had been walking the Realm of Darkness for eleven years, and in all that time the shore called the Dark Margin had never once given her anyone. Now there was a man sitting on it. He wore a black coat with the hood drawn up, and he stayed seated when she came close, only turning his head a little towards her.

"Who are you?" she asked.

He sounded almost pleased. "Why, hello. It's not often I get visitors."

She gave him her name before he could ask for it. "Please, call me Aqua. Why are you sitting here all alone in the realm of darkness? How did you end up here?"

The man under the hood took his time. "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."

Aqua sat down beside him on the sand. Her answer was no better than his. "That's too bad. I know I've been here a long time, wandering through the endless hours. Unable to escape."

He asked her whether that was what she wanted. "You wish to return to your own world?"

She didn't have to think about it. "It's my friends. I promised I'd be there for them."

The word stayed with him. When he spoke again, he was looking out at the water rather than at her. "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."

Aqua turned to him. For eleven years the worlds outside had gone on without her, and she had no idea what had happened in them. "Keep the light safe? I've been away too long. Did something happen out there? Are the worlds in danger?"

His answer was a quiet one. "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."

A boy with a Keyblade, true to his friends. Aqua knew two, and she said their names almost before she could stop herself. "Huh? Wait a sec. Is his name Terra or Ven?"

The hood moved as he shook his head. "Neither of those, I'm afraid."

She let her breath go. "Should've known."

He told her the rest without being asked, slowly, as if he were working out the pieces as he said them. "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."

He was quiet for a moment, and what came next was said more to himself than to her. "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."

Something in his voice changed then, and it sounded almost like hope. "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."

Aqua had one question left for him. "What's this boy's name?"

The man in the hood turned to her. "His name. Is."

Far from that shore there was a white room in an old mansion in Twilight Town, and in it a girl with pale hair was finishing a drawing. It showed a boy sitting on the curved trunk of a paopu tree. Naminé put down her crayon, looked at what she had made, and said his name.

In the same town three friends sat high up on the ledge of the clock tower, as they once had, with sea-salt ice cream in their hands and the sun going down in front of them. Roxas and Xion said the name too, and Axel sat between them, as happy as they were.

And in the Land of Departure a boy with fair hair sat asleep in his chair, as he had slept for all the years Aqua had been gone. Terra was beside him, as if he had never been anywhere else. Ventus opened his eyes. Above them a star fell across the sky, and the two of them watched it and said the same name.

On the Dark Margin, Aqua was crying. She knew the name. She had heard it once, long ago, on an island in the sun, from a little boy she had asked to look after his friend. Keeping Riku safe was his job, she had told him. She looked out at the moon on the edge of the dark and said it herself. "Sora."

See You Soon

On Destiny Islands, Sora sat on the bent trunk of the paopu tree with a letter in his hands. The King had sent it, and Sora had read it more than once. He wasn't frowning over it any more. Whatever the letter asked of him, his face said he had already answered.

Riku came along the sand behind him and stopped at the foot of the tree. He already knew what was in the letter. "Sora. Your mind's made up?"

Sora told him that it was.

Kairi found them there. Sora turned to her. It was harder to say than he had expected, and it came out in pieces. "Kairi, I. It's just. They really need me. I have to go. I am who I am. Because of them."

She didn't argue. She smiled, took out her lucky charm, pressed it into his hand and closed his fingers over it. "See you soon."