Aqua clutched her Wayfinder and thought fondly of her last visit here.
A spaceship hangar, "Mos Eisley" stamped over the entrance.
But the hangar was empty. No Falcon in sight. She'd helped her friends Luke and Han escape from here. And maybe, somewhere in the vastness of the universe, they were alive.
She couldn't feel Luke's heartbeat in the Wayfinder. Maybe she was being optimistic again.
"At least," she mused, "You escaped the destruction of this world."
She walked. And for the sake of her sanity, or for its lack, she talked to no one. "I wonder what you would think of this place, Luke. No wind whispers in the space port. No music warms the cantina. No smells in the market."
She rubbed her fingertips together. Haptics failed to tease her. A mere tingle where her mind thought something was missing.
She remembered the smells and sounds, the insufferable heat. All missing. Even the hues were grayed. Twin suns lit Tatooine, but the light filtered to her unnaturally dim.
Places like this- places unmade by the Heartless- functioned like pictures, barely interactive. Conceptual images of what once was.
Tatooine, like any other world, was a matrix of experiences. Stripped of those, the place was mere nostalgia. An unlit stage. A play without actors. A theme park after hours.
She passed an imperial checkpoint, the very same that Old Ben had waved her and Luke through. She had to step cautiously. "Soldiers lie dead, their weapons scattered, helmets gouged by claws."
A muffled clatter drew her attention. Something had fallen, maybe a cargo container. She summoned the Keyblade to her hand and held very still. Sometimes it was just a noise.
And sometimes, The Hunter in the Dark had found her again.
"Just a noise this time," she decided.
At the city's edge, she spun up the Wayfinder's compass. Sand stretched to the horizon, and beyond.
She smiled. "Only the desert seems peaceful. There was never any life here. There was nothing here to lose. Except…"
Somewhere in this desert was a place she wanted to visit again. One more time, before it was gone.
Her memories were all that mattered now, all that she owned and could care for.
Everything else was gone.
Every friend.
Every family.
Every iota of hope and pride.
She strode endlessly, her feet silent in the sand.
She knew somewhere ahead was the escape pod where she'd first met a chipper, chirping droid and its talkative companion. She stopped there to adjust course again. Last time, she'd felt thirsty, and quenched that thirst from a canteen. She touched her lips and tried to make the memory feel real.
She scooped sand into her hand, and didn't feel it trickling away.
Her body felt numb.
The rest of her hurt.
She picked another heading, and set out again, past a new landmark. A hulking capital ship haunted the desert, its gray mass wedged into the ground like a mountain.
She'd warned the Grand Moff about using Darkness.
She'd warned everyone.
The farm peeked above the horizon, first as pillars of smoke; Then the moisture towers, bent and broken; and the domes, cracked like dropped eggs.
She had fond memories of Luke's family: Owen's stories about good days at the market, and Beru's about better days at the fair. Luke's lopsided smile as he talked about the time he'd scared off raiders. Owen's paternal frown and glare.
She didn't want to see this.
She had to.
The first night that they'd sat together at the dinner table, she'd felt a rush of worry. Watching her hosts and waiting to see the customs. Owen and Beru and Luke bowed their heads and closed their eyes. And together, the four of them offered a prayer: For a good harvest, for Luke's safety, for Beru's medical treatment, for peace throughout the galaxy, for Aqua to find her friends.
Her feet brought her to the ruins.
And her eyes found their bodies, burning, charred. Owen and Beru had at least died together. It was hard to see them this way.
Harder still to see the human bootprints, lined up before them.
Aqua covered her mouth. No matter how hard she squeezed her eyes, the image remained, and the tears escaped her.
She remembered Owen's stone-faced optimism. Confronting everyone's worries, he'd answered, "You have to have faith that things will work themselves out in the end, that the Light will triumph over the Dark."
She had lost that faith.
A wave of shadow covered the planet, all light rolled up like a scroll.
She looked up, saw the first of two suns siphoning into The End. Its event horizon sparkled and sang as another light extinguished in the void. The second followed instantly, and a Perfect Darkness settled across Tatooine.
Aqua wept.
And to everyone, she cried, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
Ventus' image appeared beside her, illusory or imaginary. Another, Terra, sat and stared at the sky, exactly as they used to. Only she hadn't sobbed and screamed back then.
The desert shifted- the horizon stretched out into The End, and the event horizon disassembled all that remained.
In a moment, this place would be just another memory, irrecoverable. Just a pain in the hearts of those willing to bear it.
Sand spilled into the jaws of time, like an hourglass broken and unwinding, slipping from beneath her feet. The moisture towers fizzled and became dust, turned their way towards The End and accepted their new state of matter. Of not mattering.
And in a moment, so would Aqua.
Who would remember her, or the worlds she'd held dear?
A small part of Terra, now possessed.
Ventus, if he ever awakened.
Perhaps King Mickey would someday recall that she existed, and sadly say, "That's a long story, for another time."
Ultimately, her struggles hadn't mattered to her opponents- only to her. And only for those moments that she'd imagined life getting better, stargazing from the Land of Departure.
If she kept struggling, kept ahead of The End, maybe she would see her home again, and watch the castle slide into this final place.
She opened her eyes. This total destruction was beautiful.
Kaleidoscopic.
Hypnotic.
The longer she ran, the longer this would hurt.
But she would still fall, just as everyone before her.
Maybe she would be fortunate enough for a burial. More fortunate than Owen and Beru. But the soil that held her would drift here, slowly and surely.
"Everything comes to this place. This is The End," she admitted, "And there is no escape."
She would never again think that she could save anything. She would never try.
Wind tickled her ears.
The sky lightened, and something cosmically large growled.
She looked up, then up, and turned to see it.
Another world was approaching, charging as if to ram her.
She wondered if that was possible. She wondered what happened when worlds collide.
And then she didn't have to wonder.