Black waves crash on the dismal coastline of the Dark Margin. Two boys stumble to the edge, watching, waiting for some unknown force to cause any shift their situation. The lighthearted one-with hair of brown and eyes the color the water should be-turns to the brooding one, carefully picking his words.
"Hey, Riku?" he says.
"Yeah, Sora?" replies the fair-haired one, relieved by the new conversation.
Sora says, "Remember all those buildings we saw in the World that Never Was?"
Riku chuckles a little and says, "How could I forget? You managed to slice quite a few of them in half."
"Haha, right," Sora laughs in response. He continues, "Anyway, did you ever think about if anyone lives there? I mean, I never saw any people while we were there, just hoards of Heartless and Nobodies." There is a certain urgency in his voice, as if he had been mulling over the question in his head, trying to formulate his own answer.
Riku pauses for a few moments, staring at the faint light over the horizon. "Well," he says, "It is a world for Nobodies, right? And they are just empty husks. It makes sense to have a big empty world for a few empty people." He speaks with the cadence and insight of someone much older.
"A big empty world for a few empty people," Sora repeats under his breath, accepting the newly formed axiom as he faces the dark ocean to wait once more.
Riku once again finds himself sitting on the edge of a world. This one has traded a black ocean for a sea of lavender clouds and a grey shoreline for a grassy patch of earth. The companion has changed as well-a man with hair as fiery as his heart now sits beside him. They wait not for a rescue, but for their daily exercises to resume.
"Hey, Master Riku!" calls a young, familiar voice from the tower behind them.
The pair turn to see their lighthearted friend approaching them at a rapid pace.
"You know, when I call you 'Master Riku,' I'm being sarcastic," whispers the lanky man. "This kid means it."
Riku shoves him, dismissing the comment, and says, "Shut up, Lea. He's just being polite."
"Hey guys!" Sora squeaks as he joins his friends sitting on the edge of the world. "Taking a break I see?"
Riku turns to Sora, grimacing somewhat. "Sora, I told you, you don't have to call me 'Master.'" Riku's face conveys the fact that he's still not comfortable with the unfamiliar title.
Sora laughs. "Oh I just say it because it's fun to say. Master Riku. Master Riku. See? It rolls off the tongue."
Riku feels a pair of green eyes rolling over his shoulder. He sighs, resigned, "Alright, whatever."
A moment of pensive silence passes as the trio stares into the void of purple clouds. Their days have been hectic. The present respite is a welcome change of pace.
"Hey, Riku?" says Sora, in his trademark childlike tone.
"Yeah, Sora?" says Riku, expecting him to break the silence.
Sora takes a deep, anticipating breath. He then blurts out, "Do you remember when we talked about the buildings in the World that Never Was? You called it 'a big empty world for a few empty people.'"
Lea lets out a huff without looking at the younger boy. "We weren't empty," he notes, annoyed.
"That's exactly my point," Sora replies, unphased by his friend's biting tone. "The people weren't empty. Does that mean the world wasn't either?"
Riku has all but forsaken his memories of that place. It only reminds him of his prior difficulty controlling his inner darkness. "I don't know," he says."It's entirely possible."
Lea says, "If I may interject-you two do realized I lived there for a sizeable chunk of time."
"Of course!" shouts Sora, dripping with enthusiam. "Who do you think lives there?"
Lea clears his throat. "Well," he begins, "I know the Organization picked that location for headquarters in order to separate Nobodies from Heartless on principle. Heartless act on instinct, Nobodies-supposedly-act on reason. A well planned city just reinforces that idea. Whether the organization constructed the city itself or found it and decided to take up residence-I have no idea."
Lea pauses, catching both his breath and his drifting thoughts. He continues, "I did walk around that city more than a few times, but I never ran into anyone. The stores were always locked, and the streets were always empty. It's strange, though. There were occasionally little hints of life-maybe a candy wrapper blowing around or a light flickering on and off somewhere. Hell, there was even a delivery truck that was flipped over, blocking an alleyway. Somebody had to drive it. I don't know. I could just never shake the feeling that there was something living in that city, somewhere."
The all-too-common thoughtful silence once again returns. Riku and Sora are absorbing the words that hang in the air around them. Lea is decompressing, his personal words leaving him exhausted.
"You know, that still sort of fits," says Sora, breaking the silence once more. "If Nobodies were empty, but slowly regaining a heart, so was the world. It looked empty but had just enough there to hint at something more."
Riku is pleasantly surprised by his friends sudden insight. He admires Sora, not just for his outlook, but for his adaptable nature. "That sounds about right," he says. "I guess it still fits."
"Yeah," sighs Lea. "I guess it does."