The whole world was about a quarter mile long, if you didn't count the massive, lopsided tower that dominated its westernmost edge. Overhead, the skies burned a permanent auburn, flecked with stars and saffron until orange gave way to a sea of navy, blue, and black. The beginnings of a forest blushed out from the grassy sides that surrounded the tower's base, led the way to a distant ledge, and then fell away into a blanket of gold clouds that spanned eternity.
Somewhere high up in the tower, Master Yen Sid was busy consulting his almost infinite textbooks for some key piece of wisdom.
There were more interesting things going on out on the grass.
A blossom of flame shot from the tip of Kairi's flowery keyblade, swallowed an enchanted teacup whole, and then vanished into a whisper of smoke. Sora watched her level Destiny's Embrace at another target, take careful aim, and dispatch her second teacup adversary with the same focus she used to murder the first. She swung hard right, took one more shot, and missed the last one in the row by a country mile.
Fire went spewing off the world's edge.
She huffed.
Sora laughed.
"Don't worry," he called out, cupping his hands over his mouth for the added volume. "You'll get 'em next time!"
"You said that last time," she shouted back, turning to face him with her blossom-littered key slung over her shoulder. Her hair fell just right over her pouting face, and for a half second, he wondered if she didn't believe him. "Now I have to wait for them to come back."
Kairi blew a lock of strawberry hair out of her face, pivoting so that she could watch the little rack they set up like a particularly pernicious hawk. Sora leaned forward on the ledge of the steps, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. His fingers drummed at the borders of his jaw, establishing the same, cheery rhythm that they always did in moments of impatience.
Her training was coming along a lot better than she thought. She was getting the hang of her spellcasting, and her actual mana pool was a lot deeper than any of them expected. More impressive was her strength; she wasn't as strong as Riku, not yet, but magic loved her. It flocked to her muscles, flowed through her like wine through a loose bottleneck, and filled her to the brim to bolster her when she needed it most.
He could see it even if she couldn't.
It only took a few spells to wipe him out, back when he first learned how to use his keyblade. She could go for hours at a time, as if there were no such thing as stamina. Sora figured part of that had to do with her keyblade, sure, but some of it was probably just her — the natural energy she always let off, the way the sun clung to her skin told him that. She hadn't seen a beach in months, but she still looked just as lively as ever.
He was the same way, and he figured that's how he knew.
Their shared training was enough to tell him that, but he knew she was that way long before she ever got a keyblade. Kairi was just so sunny, both in disposition and in every other way he could think of. She was the morning sun, encouraging and soft. More often, she was a bright, noontime sky, enthusiastic and ready to brave through the day. Other days, she was the cool star that burned in the evening, steady, reassuring.
Tapping her foot while she waited for the tea cups to reappear on the little fence Yen Sid summoned for them, Sora figured she was probably in a noontime kind of mood.
He watched her blow away cup after cup for the better part of two hours, shouting encouragement until the burning sky up above faded, consumed by splotches of black and blue that ate up all the color. By then, she must've blasted at least a hundred of 'em apart.
"You're learning really fast," he commented, leaning up against the fence post while she collected Yen Sid's enchanted china into one neat little pile. "It's impressive. Yen Sid said you'll be able to take your mastery exam in no time."
"He said that exactly?"
"Well, I mean — he said it in Yen Sid-ese," Sora qualified.
Kairi inhaled.
Closed her eyes.
Exhaled.
"Sora," she began, her mousy voice suddenly deeper than a rumble of thunder. "Your friend Kairi is advancing rapidly in her training. She will soon qualify for the mark of mastery. It is your job to guide her."
Sora snorted.
"That's a good impression."
"Thanks," she laughed, placing Yen Sid's cups on the leftmost fence post. She looked almost troubled, and Sora was half-cracking by the time she explained the look on her face. "Riku says I'd fool King Mickey, if only I could grow a beard and about three feet taller. It's a shame."
"I'm sure there's a spell for that."
"He wouldn't teach it to me."
"That's true," Sora admitted. "He never teaches the fun stuff. Merlin might, though, if you ask him."
"Merlin…"
Kairi looked over to him, brow furrowed, half-lit by the lamp that shimmered over the entrance to Yen Sid's tower. She reached for her keyblade, its gold-peony teeth glittering in the light while she tried to remember the significance of the name.
"He's the one who taught you magic," she said. "Isn't he?"
"Yeah, he enchanted a bunch of stuff and I had to shoot it down with different spells. Elemental stuff. So, like, fire, ice, that kinda thing."
"Blizzard, you mean."
"Same thing."
Kairi rolled her eyes.
"Sora, you should know the name of the spell if you're gonna use it," she chided. "I mean, isn't half of the point of training that you know what you're doing?"
Sora waved his hand to dismiss that notion before it got off the ground.
"Maybe for you," he joked. "I learn by doing."
"That makes sense. I don't think you'd know what to do with a textbook, so I really don't think you're the studying type…"
"Hey, rude!"
She punched him in the arm.
"Don't call me rude for being right," she said, turning her nose up at him.
After a second's silence, they both devolved into laughter, with Sora rolling his eyes and Kairi leaning up against the fence post beside him. He loved having the chance to actually get to know her, now that Xehanort was gone. The dark was still there, somewhere, waiting to return, but for a little while, they could just lean back, enjoy the warm summer nights they got to share, when the fireflies rose from their bushy graves to dance in the black.
By the time they stopped laughing, Sora couldn't help but really feel that gratitude settle in on him. He'd been so close to losing her forever that — well, he couldn't help it. She was his best friend. What were the odds that she got to fight alongside him, too? What were the odds that he got her back, that she didn't lose him, and that they could share lazy afternoons and dusky evenings together?
Plus, it was nice to see her in her element.
She was adapting to her training a lot faster than anyone thought she would have. She wasn't as strong as him, not yet, but he knew she could hold her own. Her shoulders were broader than they used to be, and her arms thicker. He could see the fruits of her training plainer than day.
"I'm glad we finally get to do this kind of thing," she whispered, her back to the fence post, Destiny's Embrace over her shoulder.
"Me too," he admitted.
Sora peered over at her when he was probably supposed to be looking up at the sky. She looked so calm that he almost didn't wanna interrupt the moment by kissing her the way he did. When she looked back at him, though, her eyes lit by his and her smile so still — he just couldn't help the way he leaned in, or the hum that sounded in his heart when she leaned in too, soft lips pressed to his.
When he pulled away, she was smiling, and Sora joined her in that. She took his hand without a beat between them, lacing their fingers together like strings, and he felt the callouses on each one where he knew softness should've been. Part of him liked that feeling better than the last time they held hands — for six seconds, probably ten years old, on a dare neither of them remembered.
"I liked that too," she quietly said.
Sora turned redder than the wood lily over her shoulder when she leaned up against him in the moment after, glad they finally had the chance to share something together. It wasn't a perfect date, and it wasn't anything grand, but that kinda thing didn't fit either of them. They weren't normal kids, learning to drive. They were starseekers, chasing the dark from distant worlds like light through the leaves every morning.
With her head against his shoulder, he buried a kiss against her hair, then turned back to the dark cast over them like it might break at any second.
Yen Sid's training chamber was a little different than the sandbar Sora remembered getting drop-kicked off of as a kid. There were no palm trees, and the sea-breeze was nowhere to be found. Instead, the warm, night air filtered in through a set of three, star-shaped windows on the east wall, accompanied by auburn strobes that painted the floor in bloody orange. Each wall was a dingy taupe, and the floor was tiled with marble. A few, errant books were in constant danger of toppling off of their shelves here and there, held in place by bookend candles. Smoke trailed from each wick, filling the room with the scent of burnt wax.
The sole spot of color was Kairi, her hands gripped tight around the hilt of Destiny's Embrace, her calloused fingers lost beneath its watery guard. Unlike yesterday, she actually looked a little drained — sparring could do that, Sora thought — and there were a few nicks and bruises on her arms and legs.
He found his eyes drawn to each little cut that trailed down her arm like ladders. Some were from claws, others from blades, less from the sharpness of a make-believe monster's teeth. Yen Sid's imaginary heartless were real, in the sense that they could leave behind lasting harm, but they weren't the real thing. They didn't fight to kill, but stopping short didn't make them much less tenacious than actual monsters.
Sora watched her do vicious battle with a swarm of shadows, her keyblade carving through the dark like a torch. Each strike knocked down one or two more than the last, and by the time she dispatched her final foe, Sora could honestly say that he was proud of her.
She smashed its head in with her keyblade's pommel, dispersing it to the dark it came from with a wild huff. She blew the excess air out of her nose like a bull, then slung Destiny's Embrace over her shoulder with the same devil-may-care attitude that Riku would've.
"And that's that," she whispered to herself, patting down the front of her pink dress.
It was covered in dirt, somehow, and her sleeves were a little ripped. Sora couldn't say it wasn't a cute look, for her. The bandage across her cheek was like a badge of honor, pinned to her face with the same zeal that a third grader might pin his drawing to a fridge with. He felt sort of proud — it only took him two tries to put it on her, and she only winced the first time he missed, so it was a good win.
"Wow," he managed. "You're getting really good at this whole keyblading thing."
"Mm," she said.
He could hear the dissatisfaction in her voice from a mile away. Sure, okay, she was only actually like ten feet from him, but it was still clear as day.
"What, you're not happy? Yen Sid said you probably wouldn't make it all the way to the end."
"It's just…"
"Just what?"
She looked at him, pouting harder than he'd ever seen her pout in his entire life. At once, he sort of understood where she was coming from. The challenge was supposed to be a ramp-up from the trial she completed the week before, but… there was no topper to it. She waded through an army of shadows, slaughtered her way through a slew of soldiers, fought a few fat bodies, and then warred her way back without ever finding an actual opponent.
Real battles didn't work that way. They weren't random, even if they were chaotic. There was always some underlying cause to the dark that plagued a world, even if it wasn't immediately apparent. Sometimes, like in the Deep Jungle, it was human greed. Other times, arrogance or ambition, like in China. In Beast's case, it was the desire to belong turned into something else, the most human error of all.
"It's nothing," she concluded.
"No, I get it," he shot back. "You want, like, a real fight."
"That's wrong, isn't it? I shouldn't want that kind of thing. Not after—"
"You just want to be prepared for the real thing. Just in case. Don't apologize."
She went quiet for a second.
"Master Yen Sid doesn't think I can handle myself, in a real fight."
"You did good when you fought Xion, didn't you?"
Kairi shrugged.
"She was holding back. I could feel it. And Saix was targeting Lea the whole time, so I didn't really get to see what he was capable of."
She planted Destiny's Embrace on the ground teeth-first, leaning against its base. Its paopu keychain dangled under her arms, swaying left and right as she spoke.
"I spent so long, trying to catch up to you guys, and now there's no way to know if I have or not. What if we get into a real fight again and I'm not ready?"
Sora didn't say anything to that. Instead, he studied her, uncharacteristically quiet.
"What if… what if we fight another bad guy, and—"
"I'll fight you," he interjected, desperate to stop whatever thought threatened to tumble out of her head right then and there. The shiver in his heart told him that it couldn't have been a good one, and he didn't want her to think something that dark. Not after what she went through, and how hard she worked just to get as far as she had. "I mean, if you want me to."
"You don't have to do that," she said.
"No, really, it's okay."
"Are you sure?"
"You're the one getting walloped."
"Excuse you?"
"I mean—"
"First of all," she began, scoffing. "How dare you."
"Second?"
"Second, you're probably right, but you really don't have to do this if you don't want to."
Sora laughed at that, rising to his feet. He looped one arm under the other, stretched out a little, and bounced from leg to leg with the same jovial enthusiasm he gave everything else. It felt a little weird that he was about to be going toe to toe with her, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to. He felt a little weird before kissing her, too, and that hadn't stopped him one bit.
"I'm just gonna feel a little weird hitting my girlfriend is all," he said.
"Oh, so I'm your girlfriend now?"
He blushed.
"Well, I mean—"
"Sora, I'm kidding."
"Oh, you're—"
"Yes, I'm your girlfriend. Now, please, hurry up before I change my mind."
"About dating me?"
"About fighting you, doofus."
When she laughed, it just bubbled out of her throat like water through a riverbend. Despite being beet red, Sora clambered off of the staircase to take a spot opposite her. He summoned the Kingdom Key the second he got into position, cocking his wrist back to conjure up his signature weapon. It forged itself at the ends of his fingers in a sea of sparks, glittered for a second in the light, and then fell hard into his open palm.
He was in way better condition than Kairi was, but he figured that wasn't too far out of the norm. Most bad guys didn't do their own dirty work. They usually tried to show up at the last second to put him in the ground, or spike him into space, or otherwise yeet him into the nth dimension with some ingenious villain-of-the-week style strategy that he would probably never see again.
"We should at least make a game out of it," he decided, slinging his silvery key over his shoulder in the same way he always did. "That way it's fun."
"What, hitting your girlfriend's not fun?"
"Riku and I used to keep score," he mused.
"He never shut up about having one more win than you did," she remembered.
"That's just in the foot race," Sora shot back, waving his hand to dismiss such a silly thought. "I'd cream him if we fought now."
"I'm sure you would, oh-great-keyblade-master."
Sora snorted.
"Big talk, coming from a… uh, coming from a key-prentice."
"Sora, we're the same rank."
"There aren't ranks!"
"That's how we're the same one, you goof."
"Maybe we could make a bet?"
Kairi straightened at that.
"A bet?"
"Yeah, like…"
"Winner buys the loser ice cream?"
"Other way around."
"I was kidding."
"Oh, uh…"
Sora frowned, tapping his chin. He didn't wanna come up with a bet too lopsided. Honestly, she was kinda the underdog, and he didn't wanna do her wrong by putting a bet too heavy in his favor. Riku would've teased him with the terms of any bet they made, but that felt kinda lame to do. Thankfully, she broke the silence before long.
"Loser takes the winner out on a fancy date?"
"A fancy date?"
"A date."
"Oh, okay, yeah! Let's shake on it, then!"
He extended her a gloved hand and she took it, graciously shaking and swearing upon her honor as a warrior — or something. He was laughing a little too hard to pick up the last little bit of what she said, only calming down when the two of them spread apart to opposite sides of the chamber. On his way to the far wall, he plucked a book from the shelf, turning it over in his hands with each step he took.
"Alright," he called out, taking his spot. "When this book hits the ground, we'll start, okay? I'll hold back a little to keep things fair."
"Sounds good to me," she said.
Sora balanced the book — A Beginner Magician's Delve Into Advanced Magical Theory — and studied her for a second. She wasn't the frail little girl from back home, anymore, and part of him knew that… but it was his first time really noticing. Her face was still just as soft, but the rest of her was harder. Her arms were lean, but thicker than they were before, and he could see the musculature of her calves while she bounced from leg to leg in anticipation of the moment he threw the book.
When she finally settled into place, her stance was a little too wide, and her knuckles white. She looked a little wobbly, just like he used to before a big fight, but her heels were planted firmly against the marble floor. Despite the fact that she was going up against (arguably) the strongest guy in the known universe, she didn't look afraid at all.
He admired that, and the way her lips curled into a little smile when she caught him staring at her with the biggest set of heart eyes the galaxy had ever seen.
Then he tossed the book.
Sora barreled forward the instant that book touched the ground, and she sprinted forward to meet him. They crossed paths somewhere on her side of the room when he leapt into the air, bringing the Kingdom Key down hard with a left-handed slash that knocked her off balance. His boots touched down while she recoiled and he pounced, rolling around her so that he got around to her other side.
She spun the instant he swung, barely raising Destiny's Embrace to catch a two-habded strike. Steel bounced off steel and recoil jittered up her arms, forcing her to stumble backward. She caught a glimpse of his smile the instant before he let go of his weapon — spun it hard in his hand — and then jerked it downward to disarm her by raking the Kingdom Key's teeth down the length of her keyblade's shaft.
Kairi gasped as her weapon was ripped out of her hand, diving backward as Sora dove forward to drive home the finishing blow.
Her left hand rose up—
His keyblade came down—
And fire blossomed across the space between them.
"Yeow!"
Embers burned him from all sides as she retreated, dancing nimbly backward so that she could summon Destiny's Embrace back to her off-hand.
"Gotta be more careful," she breathed, already panting a little.
"Yeah, I'll say," he mumbled, blowing a still-burning cinder off the arm of his jacket. He was kinda impressed, but he wasn't gonna tell her that. Not in the middle of a duel. Even if it was kinda cool that she thought so well on her feet and also that she looked really cute while she did it.
"Heads up!"
Sora glanced up from the scorch mark on his jacket just in time to see a shard of ice the size of his head flying right for him. He batted it aside with a heavy strike, then whipped his keyblade right at her from across the room.
She deflected it with both hands, knocking it up into the air.
When she looked down to find him again, he was gone.
Then she noticed the shadow over her. Somehow, in the span of a second, he leapt up to catch his weapon, and now he was coming down on her like a comet. She raised her key up in defense of herself, just barely hanging onto it when he came down hard, wreathed in a coronet of light that exploded into a sea of brilliantly flashing sparks when he made contact with the shaft of her blade.
Sheer force exploded out from that point of impact, blasted her onto her shoulders, and let her roll onto one knee as he came barreling after her again, that same, wild smile still plastered across his face.
Still aching from his earlier dive, she jumped forward to tackle him by the waist in the instant before he could swing. Sora threw both hands up to try and defend himself, but he was so caught off guard that she dragged him to the ground out of sheer surprise.
"Ah, no fair!"
"Way fair," she determinedly mumbled, clambering up his chest while he struggled desperately to get himself out from under her.
"You have to have super strength," he grunted, dropping his keyblade for a better chance as she mounted him. She didn't hesitate to do the same.
"Nope — and you're not getting out, Sora!"
"Hey, wait, hang on…"
They wrestled back and forth for a second until she caught his wrists. He struggled, laughing, up until the point that he accidentally popped her in the eye with the back of his hand. She retorted by smacking him hard across the face when he went to apologize.
"Hey, that's cheating!"
"Now I know why Riku beat you all the time," she joked, hopping up so that her knees came down on his arms and pinned him to the ground. "You let your guard down too much."
"I was saying sorry!"
"For what?"
"I hit you in the face!"
"Sora, I tried to burn you to a crisp not five minutes ago."
"Yeah, but…"
He huffed.
She laughed.
"I could totally flip you right now," he declared, wriggling beneath her. "You know that, right?"
"Yeah, but then you'd see up my skirt, and that's not very gentlemanly."
"What, no, I would never—"
"Really, all you can do is accept this loss and learn your lesson."
He knew that she'd have stopped if he didn't look cute when his face was redder than a freshly painted barn. Still, it wasn't like he minded conceding defeat.
To her, at least.
He'd have flipped Riku flat on his ass.
"Alright, you win," he sighed. "I'll take you on a date."
Looking as serious as any true hero could, she kissed him on the nose.
"How gracious of you," she said, lifting herself up off of him and rising to her feet.
Sora patted himself down as he did the same, shaking his head all the while. Underestimating her was something he really shouldn't have done, but it wasn't really that he'd misjudged her. It was more that he hadn't expected her to literally tackle him to the ground in the middle of a swordfight. Riku had way too much pride for that.
Roxas might've tried it, but he liked his keyblades too much. Marluxia was kinda prissy, at the end of the day, and Xemnas wouldn't have risked getting dirt on his super cool robes. Demyx would've sooner cried, and he figured Xehanort would've never thought to do it in the first place.
He didn't know when the smile on his face started, or if it'd been there the whole time and he just hadn't realized. He only knew that it grew when he looked up and caught her staring at him.
"Huh?"
"No, it's nothing."
"What, do I have something on my face?"
"Sora, you're ridiculous," she laughed. "What could you possibly have got on your face?"
"I don't know. Dust. Fire. A bruise."
"I didn't even hit you in the face."
"You smacked me in the face, um, not even a minute and a half ago."
"Here, then, let me get a clear look at you."
She stepped forward, cutting in way closer than she had during their fight, and brought a hand up to his cheek. Sora looked down at her — proud to be a whole three inches taller — and felt something strange twist in his gut. He swallowed back a ball of apprehension while her eyes searched his face, scanning for any injury, big or small. Her thumb smoothed over the round of his cheek without incident, but somehow, his hands still wound up on her hips.
She glanced down for just a second.
When she looked up, he met her lips with his, and she let out a surprised breath that led into a softer kiss than the one they shared yesterday.
It took him a minute to pull away. She huffed when he did.
"You know, the loser shouldn't get to kiss the winner."
"You gonna rub it in my face?"
"You already did that, you dork," she shot back, punching him in the shoulder as she turned toward the stairway, claiming her keyblade on the way. "You really better take me some place nice."
He watched her go, ignoring the thunderous shift outside. It could wait a while, until the smile on his face wasn't quite so strong or the feeling in his heart faded enough that he didn't mind her absence. It was always hard, leaving those little daydreams behind in the doldrums. Hands closing around the hilt of his Kingdom Key as he picked it up off of the ground, Sora decided he'd take her up on that demand of hers.
He loved to spar with her, after that, but his favorite moments weren't spent in the ring. Nor were they spent in the training field, even if he had a good time blasting targets off of the fence. Her aim was a little better than his, but he made up for it in speed, and they got a good kick out of seeing who the baddest cowboy in the whole wide world was. His favorite moments, though, were the starry ones.
They were the kinda moments spent in the dead of night, when the vault of glass lording over their heads was full of worlds ripe to explore and dreams yet to be had. He loved laying out there with her at night, backs on the grass, her head on his chest. He loved getting that time with her, to really get to know her and the girl he fell in love with so much more intimately than he ever thought he'd have the chance to.
He liked hearing about the things that worried her. They worried him too, usually, and he was glad not to be alone.
He loved hearing about the things that made her laugh more. Or about the dumb stuff Lea did in training, and how she tried to tackle him but he was smart enough to dive out of the way.
More than any of that, he loved seeing the way she always reached for the sky — as if she could just take one of the stars in her hand and bring it down to earth. Her fingers were a tether, but their gravity didn't extend that far. Instead, their pull was limited to his heart and his own hand. He never could pull it away once they were linked, and it was always up to her to break the little pact they shared.
Sometimes, she pulled away when he started tracing the outline of each finger with his index. Other times, it was long after he drifted off that she'd leave him on the grass to nap until morning came. He didn't take her departure personally, even if it felt weird waking up without her.
Other nights, when the navy sky overhead faded into teal mirrors, he missed her more.
He kept that to himself, though, and hoped she knew instead.