There were days he woke up and wished that it had been a dream; that he'd be in his own bed, in his own room, and look out his window to see the majestic mountaintops of his home, deep blues and purples vibrant in the crisp morning air.
Every day, he woke to the spare bed in the room a bit too small for someone of his stature, and looked out the window to ramshackle architecture still in the process of repair and rebuilding, the half-mangled structure of a world that no longer lived up to its name.
It was never a dream.
As short as his visit here had been, he could still see how this city had once stood. Venturing into it was a different experience entirely. Streets paved in gleaming white and edged with perfectly manicured lawns had rotted or been ripped away, replaced with stone so blue it verged on black. Houses and shops once contentedly clean and uniform now stood in various stages of disarray, patched up with the few mismatched materials their residents could find - a temporary solution to a permanent problem. The once-proud castle now stood, if just barely, in the same condition as the city, supported by an exposed skeleton carefully constructed of whatever pieces would keep the former symbol of royalty from crumbling for good. Everywhere he looked, the damage from the fall was painfully obvious.
He could feel the darkness steeped into the earth. It set his teeth on edge.
Try as he might, he couldn't walk the streets peacefully - not anymore. The sidelong glances had become almost too much to bear: glances from people who vaguely recognized him, except maybe he had darker skin and lighter hair last time, and wasn't it longer too? Glances that couldn't quite place him. Glances that entirely could. Glances that wished they hadn't. They made him want to scream, to tell the world - this world - that he never wanted this and it wasn't his fault, despite the quiet voice in his head that argued that yes, it was. They made him want to drop to his knees in contrition and grief, choking on apologies that would never run deep enough; his promise to someday make things right included this world, and he well knew it.
He felt the darkness surge only moments before he heard the yell.
"Terra! Over here! Heartless!"
Black, not blue. Fallen hearts, not fallen feelings. Either way, monsters were still monsters. He sprinted towards his friend's call, Earthshaker coming to his hand in an instant.
He could not keep his promise all at once. There was only so much he could do for now. This, at least, was a start.