[Conversations with the unseen]
"I heard your voice. It cut through the darkness around me. I followed the sound into a sea of light, and found myself here - with you."
Sora's mother did not think much of it when Sora did not hurry down the stairs like he usually did. The four-year-old had been out quite late with Riku, after all, and his endless energy was not quite as endless as he liked to think. Still, she wondered, then worried, as the time approached ten o'clock - Sora was always downstairs by nine.
Just as she was getting up to find him, Sora appeared at the top of the stairs. Something was . . . off. He came down the stairs, not with his usual enthusiastic scramble, but with a aching sorrow that had her hastily putting aside her book and running to meet him. Sora's eyes were half-focused, as if remembering something just out of reach, and there was something weary and inexpressibly heartbroken about his posture.
He stirred, and in the shadow of his movement, she saw an echo of something (someone) else that belonged to far grander things than her young son. Then the shadows blurred, and Sora himself stood as a grander thing.
". . . you gave me back something when I needed it most. A second chance."
"I did?"
She dragged Sora into a hug, holding his small frame tight. He jolted, and stared to wiggle protestingly. ". . . smushed," he choked. She let go reluctantly. As she watched, Sora snapped out of whatever half-trance he'd been in, the faint echo of otherworldliness now entirely absent, and started to babble excitedly. "Hey, there was a really cool shooting star last night, and Riku said that all the stars are worlds, and the people on the shooting star must have been going really fast, and-" he paused for breath, "-and I saw this really cool place, and someone was going to sleep, and I helped them, and I was happy and sad at the same time, and RikusaidtomeethimatthesecretplaceagainIpromisetobebackforlunchcanIgothanksbye." With that, he flew out the door, shouting for Riku as he went.
She blinked in confusion. She haven't understood half of the torrent of words, but she knew that whatever bright, heavy shadow had been over his mind had disappeared, at least for the moment. She sat back down with a sigh and a faint smile. Perhaps it had just been Sora waking up in a mood, for once. She would watch him carefully to make sure he was alright, but she would let him handle himself.
"But now, I have to go back to sleep again."
She noticed it again when he came back for lunch. He was laughing with Riku, but when Riku left to go to the bathroom, his eyes became unfocused, and he lapsed back into the weary, quiet sadness from before. Somehow, he seemed so much - so much older, if such a thing were possible. The sadness, the weary ache she could feel from halfway across the room, was something no four-year-old should ever possess, and Sora was always so cheerful to begin with. Something had happened. Something massive.
". . . Are you sad?"
She kept a close eye on him the rest of the day, but nothing else happened. Or, to be more accurate, "everything in the whole wide world" happened that afternoon, according to Sora, but nothing out of the ordinary took place.
The pattern continued on for several more days. Sora would be his happy, curious, bouncy self whenever he was busy doing something, but when he was still, he would fall back into weary silence. She dearly wished she knew what had come over him.
"Do you mind if I stay here, with you?"
"Sure, if it makes you feel better."
Ventus curled up closer to the warm, blinding light that was Sora's heart. He was trying to stay out of Sora's life, he truly was, but it was probably inevitable that some of his feelings would bleed over to Sora. After all, the first time Sora had made contact with his heart, Vanitus had more or less taken Sora's form - a conclusion reached after several hours of puzzling over why Vanitas looked so much like a young boy from a remote ocean world. It made sense, then, that when Ventus made contact with Sora's heart, Sora would be affected.
But, Sora didn't deserve to feel inexplainably sad and hurt - having a shattered heart was rather like breaking yourself over and over again on the jagged shards of what you once used to be. It was not a feeling Ventus wanted to inflict on his young rescuer; even disregarding how Ventus literally owed Sora his life twice over, the boy was just four years old, and no four-year-old should have to cope with such literally heartbreaking pain.
A bitter part of Ventus (was that Vanitas rejoining him? Or did he destroy Vanitas? There was so much he didn't know) thought that he shouldn't have to cope with that kind of pain, either, but he shoved the thought aside. This was no time for regrets. He had said he would do anything to save Terra and Aqua, and it was stupid to feel remorse over doing exactly that.
And yet, he remembered the stars standing watch over the hallowed, bright castle that was his only memory of home, and cried out for the life of innocence lost.
Slowly, he became aware of the stars, the same stars, standing watch over the wide, dark oceans of Destiny Islands, and the ache eased, if only a little. Sora's heart had come, then, and soothed the pain until he could remember what it was like to breathe without loss.
There was so much hope in Sora, so much assurance that everything would be all right, and it was something Ventus desperately needed. He clung to it with every ounce of his being - half a heart, half a weapon, fully a lonely boy - and settled into one of the the quieter corners of Sora's heart. There was a sort of curve to Sora's heart that Ventus slipped into perfectly - it startled him at first, before he realized that just as Sora's newborn heart had dramatically altered Ventus, Ventus's heart was sure to have had a profound impact on Sora. Besides, Sora was the kind of person who always made room in his heart for others, who always had space reserved for anyone who needed his help - and it was help Ventus desperately needed.
Ventus suspected that Sora's heart could stretch much further than a fractured, lost hearts; it could grow to shield entire worlds, given the chance. At least, Ventus hoped it could. With Master Xehenort doing goodness-knows-what, he knew that the worlds would soon need someone like Sora to hold them together and pick up the pieces. The four-year-old was so innocent, so trusting. He knew nothing of the forces building that would rock his world - that would rock the universe - and Ventus could only hope that there would be enough of the worlds left for there to be any remaining pieces to pick up.
And he could do nothing about it. He could only watch and wait, and hope that someday, somehow, he could get home. If he had any home left to go to. (He had seen the shattered remains of home, the broken chains, the abandoned keyblade, and he flinched away from the memory. There was hope. There was always hope. He clutched his Wayfinder until his fingers ached, and tried to pretend that its faint glow was more than his imagination.)
For now, however, he would do everything in his power to make sure Sora would be as safe and happy as one small boy and one shattered soul could manage. It was the least - and the most - he could do.
"Thank you."