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KINGDOM HEARTS:
CHASM OF A WAYFARER'S STARLIGHT
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Author's Notes: I dedicate this Fanfiction to the now Account-Deleted Mirriem, one of the truest friends who a person could hope to have, whose friendship and whose writing are among the largest reasons I'm the person and the writer who I am today.
I also give a very special thank you to Cori Shadowfang, for our Private Message exchange today, on May Fifteenth, 2022, that led me to discover this sleight of hand in the script of KINGDOM HEARTS: BIRTH BY SLEEP.
Even though this Fanfiction has now been revised, expanded, and reSubmitted to this Fanfiction archive, this still holds true.
I now, additionally, give a second, very special thank you to Cori Shadowfang, for the Private Message exchanges that have now lasted for almost a week and a half; beginning on September Ninth, 2022, until today; that caused me to discover these facets of KINGDOM HEARTS.
For the purposes of this story, all of KINGDOM HEARTS is considered canon.
For reference, the quote at the end is from one of Hikaru Utada's songs, and from her official English translation of it.
As with my other Fanfictions, I highly recommend you listen to the same Soundtrack pieces, or MP3s, I do while I write each scene, to get the full mood of it. The music for this story is, in order of scene: 'Great Cathedral Atrium,' from the VAGRANT STORY Original Soundtrack, Disc Two; and afterwards 'A Fleeting Dream,' from the FINAL FANTASY X Original Soundtrack, Disc Four. The first piece can be found in KINGDOM HEARTS Insider's MP3 section, and the second on Zophar's Domain under the name, 'Someday the Dream Will End.'
Ephemer watched as Xehanort alighted upwards through the air towards the true Kingdom Hearts, completed at last after Sora had twice thwarted the attempts of his Heartless, and Nobody, to compile Kingdom Hearts together out of the hearts of worlds, and the hearts of people that were the components of those selfsame hearts of the worlds.
It was happening, for the fourth time.
Even after everything he'd striven for for so many millennia, throughout so much toil, and research, Luxu had successfully maneuvered the Master of Master's scapegoat into re-forging the Kye-Blade, and all the sacrifices, and witnesses, from throughout two whole cosmoses, may very well still turn out to have been for nothing.
"That's not Ven!"
"Correct. I am not Ventus. His heart has become a part of mine now."
As soon as the Keyblade wielder hoisting the Kye-Blade who should have been Ven had uttered those words aloud, without confirming Mickey's belief he was Vanitas, Ephemer had known.
He'd deciphered the riddle, of why the shades of connections more numerous than the rays that could be cast from the prisms of every single star that now drifted in the realm of light had been fragmented and refracted into a single opaque blackbody; of why Ava, and Skuld, and Yozora, and Brain, and Lauriam, and Strelitzia, and Ven himself; of why millions of Keyblade wielders; of why the entirety of two universes themselves, had all disappeared into the vacuum of night.
While it had never been for any of them, or any wielder, to reason why, there actually had been an answer to how it had come to the deaths of not even just one, but two total starscapes of cosmic history.
"This Kye-Blade will open a door – one that leads to all worlds! Then, Keyblade-bearing warriors will flock here from each and every one of them, to battle for the light within Kingdom Hearts! And just like the legend says, the Keyblade War will begin!"
"You're just wasting your energy."
The Master Ava, and Skuld, and Yozora, and all the rest of them, had trusted in so much, had broken all of those hearts and hearths and hopes and warmths and shared laughs and embraces and grins and dreams and trusts, not because he'd had a brilliant strategy for defeating the darkness as a military genius.
But merely because, out of a pragmatic refusal to believe a darkness his Gazing Eye had foreseen when he'd sent it into the future in search of a means to erase all darkness from existence, he'd discovered a near future where the darkness won.
And this had terrified him so much that he'd sacrificed everyone, and everything, throughout two boundless infinities more immense than the farthest horizons dreams could glimpse, over a time more photonegative than the swiftest blink; and even the people who loved, and trusted, in him the most; in order for him to ensure that he was able to ride the tides of history to a future after much of the darkness of his time was contained, and he alone would be safe within Ven's heart, and then Sora's, with his memories preserved in Luxu's Black Box for Xehanort to bring to fount anew, after abandoning, and betraying, everyone, and everything else, to ensure he was the sole person whose heart wasn't lost to the darkness.
So that he alone could survive, and avenge the sins, and hurt, that had been scoured into his heart; everyone, and everything, else; and not just one everyone, or everythings, but two; had needed to be ruined, and die.
For nothing more, and nothing less.
It was that simple, and clean.
And so he could reach a future where he could at last avenge the loss of the people who had been connected to him by attempting to exterminate all darkness until it, or the most infinitesimal potential for it, was extinct.
And to also ensure the losses of the people he himself had loved, and cherished most remained preserved within a suspension no one but himself trusted in, that wasn't even written by the winners, for the winners, or by the survivors, and for the survivors, but that was nothing more than a faithlessly recurring and spiraling nightmare he alone trusted in, as he alone wanted to remember them.
While the true Dandelions had been lost to recollected history in the ditch of the datascape, and the truth behind why so many wielders had died here had been caked in crust upon crust.
If Yozora hadn't been right there, inextricably tied to the heart of the very last heir to his own precise Keyblade tradition before him, just thinking about what he'd realized when the Master of Masters had identified himself within Ven might have been enough to drag him out of his unchained state, and reveal his presence to his final successor.
If not for what Ephemer's sin of attempting to sacrifice himself had done to Yozora, rather than ensure he lived for Yozora, and didn't die for him, had done when everything had all broken to shards for the second time, he might have just done so, and then let Xehanort cut him down.
And not just to Yozora.
To Eraqus.
To Vor.
To Yen Sid, or Odin, as he'd used to call himself.
To Baldr, through his form as Baldr's familiar, Hringhorn.
To Baldr, as Yozora himself; through his words and actions as the familiar who had lacked any features but a tail and arms before he'd entered Baldr's heart; and during periods other than when he'd actually spoken to Baldr, with his heart, or with his voice.
To Xehanort himself.
And to Hermod and Vidar and every single one of the heirs to not just the traditions he'd founded, but Skuld, Brain, and so many others he'd held loved and kept close and sought to guard sound and secure in the warmth of his heart in the two Daybreak Towns, and in the Scala ad Caelum he'd ensure had followed.
Even to Luxu in his guise as Bragi.
And the real Bragi, whoever he was, before Luxu had claimed him.
Luxu didn't want to return to his life of destitution the Master of Masters had saved him from any more than the data Aladdin of the Book of Prophecies, the sole late Hermod, the real one, or Eugene Fitzherbert.
His life as a well to do, privileged have had gotten to his head, and turned him into one of the very things he'd most opposed when he'd been a starving, homeless have not just scraping for another coin of munny, or another crumb of bread, to get by.
However, unlike Jafar, and Hades, as much of a simpering and fawning bootlicker of the Master of Masters Luxu had become to ensure he never again knew deprivation, Luxu, at least, didn't covet a station above his position of second best.
Even to Hoder, as much as she'd brought the Master of Master's hatred of darkness full circle, and she had been the first true flashpoint that was, at long last, drowning the entire World in a second ocean of blood and tears that would cake the realm of light, and all the realms, in enough memories of the First Keyblade War it could successfully function as the Master of Master's second waypoint.
And then boundlessly, immeasurably worse.
"Examine any spot that looks fishy. Track them all down – I'll make it up to you!"
And get to kick back in the meantime.
"I got 'benched' too!"
"Wha'– Hey! Quiet!"
"Oh, please, you couldn't do it last time. You gotta' play it smart, like me."
"Hey, I thought you'd be gone by now."
"You're… the Organization!"
Ephemer had seen those thoughts through a heart tracing his connections through Ven to Roxas, when too many facets of the puzzle of the Nobody's preferred combat style, and talents, and their similarities to Stations of Awakening, and a balanced destiny studied in the Mysterious Tower, and brooms, and the tome of Symphony of Sorcery, had pieced together.
While he valued the dignity of the spotlight, and kicking back, above almost all else.
Revenge.
Ego.
Far too often, a heart combined these two concepts together; refusing, from arrogant vanity, to recognize that no one worldview defined light and darkness; and conflict arose from a struggle between beliefs, where no one perspective was right, or wrong, and each individual person beheld light and darkness differently.
The word for that was:
Indignant.
All of this could be rearranged to pronounce, 'Beryl,' or the very miserly war over the prosperous consumption of Lux that had eventually even devoured the World itself.
Also known as, 'Sa,' and, 'Be.'
Also assembled as, 'Besa.'
When combined with 'Ven,' 'Benmv.'
When this was intermingled with the Recusant's Sigil, 'Benmvx.'
Or:
Demyx.
Even had even played Xehanort, and all his selves; along with Lauriam's Nobody, Marluxia; as Vexen.
Additionally, after Brain's Nobody had alerted Luxu he was onto him, Luxu hadn't confronted Even, so it was entirely possible Even had even been able to deceive Luxu.
But Demyx had been better at subterfuge than even Even.
When Ephemer had eavesdropped on the conversation between Lauriam's Nobody; Larxene, Elrena's; Luxord, Brain's; Demyx, and Xemnas, Ephemer had identified the next hotel stop the Master of Masters had taken.
Demyx had also covered Even's mouth the first chance he'd had to attempt to scale a score.
"Apparently I'm so off everyone's radar, that I'm just the guy to make a special delivery."
"A cereal bowl would make a better vessel."
"Whoa now, you are way out of line. I am extremely imposing… when I want to be. Which is, admittedly, almost never."
"Ooh! You found 'em all! Investigating suspicious spots is the first lesson in Recon One O' One!"
Getting somebody else to do it for you is lesson number two.
"I just hope I don't bump into any nasties out there…"
"I mean, what's in it for me?"
"Forgiveness."
"Huh? For what?"
And Ephemer hadn't been able to risk spying on the goings on of the two Organization Thirteens long enough to scry whether Demyx was doing nothing more than voicing his own fragmented reminiscences, or he recollected all of his past.
Ephemer pushed his awareness of what had happened to Ven, Brain, Lauriam, and Elrena; and just how endlessly worse things could have gone for them, regardless of how much Demyx did, or didn't remember, if even the narrowest horizon had gone wrong; as far away as he could justify, knowing what it would do to him at a time like this if he let it affect him enough.
Besides, Ephemer didn't need a reminder.
He was worse than Lauriam.
Or Elrena.
Or Luxord.
Or Demyx.
He was the mythological, legendary Flynn Rider as Eugene Fitzherbert had imagined him.
Skuld.
Yozora.
Ava.
Ven.
Brain.
Lauriam.
Now even his last true heir.
All he knew how to do was leave everyone, and everything, he claimed to cherish, behind.
And now, with a complete Kye-Blade at last in Xehanort's hands, he still wouldn't reveal to him, and give him the answers he sought to who the supposed friends of his dreams were.
That would be far too dangerous.
If Ephemer told Xehanort the last friends he still hoped to return to had never been his own, and he wouldn't find the answers of even how to return to them in the deepest darkness of all, who knew what that would do to him, the Kye-Blade, Kingdom Hearts, and all of the existing realms.
In the end, all Ephemer could do now was wait in the very grave and ditch he'd dug for himself, knocked from the board of a game he himself had begun before the first chessboard arrayed by Vanitas, and his kind, had even been rent into an everlasting and boundless spiral of fairy tales, never the rogue pawn, but the first Verum Rex himself, yet the true utterly useless and forgotten.
He should be revealing his presence to Xehanort.
He should be gripping his boots and groveling before him, begging to become the first heart of the false lights Xehanort himself sought to eradicate until the light was the spectrum that stayed down, all dead, and no longer able to keep coming, and no longer a threat to the people he loved, and himself.
Ephemer was already willing to publicly confess all of his sins.
But, even though he knew one of the core reasons Xehanort was seeking to found an autocracy in all the realm of light, if not the World, was to put an end to the wrongs inflicted on have nots through establishing a realm where no one but perceived dangers to his vision for a better reality were expendable, and there were no longer any have nots who died in torment for nothing because everyone had grand roles to play because everyone was equal in that all hearts were expendable on the basis of merit, so Xehanort would refuse to torture him and would give him a quick death if he agreed to confess his crimes against the New Realm from the beginning, if Xehanort did succeed in founding a new world under what he saw as Kingdom Hearts' mandate, Ephemer would perform lese majeste anyway until Xehanort had tortured him far longer, and far harder, than the worst victims of autocratic torture in history for those reasons.
Ephemer had been one of, if not the, core reason, the Master of Master's strategy for ensuring he alone made it home from the battlefield, to avenge the losses and preserve the legacies of the minority close to him while all other hearts, and realities, were left to cascade into the lacuna and rot into pieces, had succeeded.
"You think you two have got some grand role to play. As if. You're only here so that when I finish you off… Terra will succumb to the darkness. So… who wants to go first?"
"Me? I'm already half Xehanort."
Both of those times, too, Ephemer had just looked on, not even as much as Luxu did, and he hadn't said a single word.
For the very same pragmatic reasons the Master of Masters had all but surrendered to Vanitas and his kin the first time around.
And now, it was about to happen all over anew.
Ephemer was fairly confident in Sora's capacity to do what he hadn't learned how to until it was aeons too late, and make peace between light and darkness through repairing the shredded connection between Eraqus and Xehanort, and thus keep the realm of light soaring above a second abyssal maw, as long as the plan for containing Xehanort now being discussed below was successfully implemented.
It was Sora's heart he couldn't trust in.
Not after everything he'd done, and said, and, beyond all measured numbers, and concepts, not done, and not said, over the millennia.
Ephemer knew the choice he would make, if he still had the ability to affect things that much in the realm of light.
But he'd given up his chance long ago, not to sacrifice others so he could be free to escape the battlefield, but because he'd been frightened further oversight of the Keyblade academies at Scala ad Caelum would leave them too crippled to stand up on their own feet, and learn how to become responsible for themselves.
"What's wrong? Giving up already?"
Nevertheless, he refused to do what the Master of Masters had done, and lose hope in his own students.
"You're just wasting your energy."
Three times thus far, Sora had refused to become an ordinary soldier.
When the first battle of the Second Keyblade War had been more exhausting than he'd bargained it would be, and he'd truly learned what war meant, he hadn't let it choke his spirit into the covered ditch of a grave, and he'd remained buoyant upon his effervescent springing stride.
When the Demon Tide had almost claimed all their hearts, and even lives, rather than seek vengeance as the Master of Masters had in a futile attempt to preserve their legacies in the future, he'd treated the injured; and he'd thus enabled the guardians of light, and their companions, to pull back from the brink of defeat, and continue to protect each other, and the realm of light.
Lastly, when faced with no end to the Heartless, Nobodies, and Unversed flooding against them, he'd convinced Mickey not to take the rash and desperate measures of power to defeat them that wouldn't have just spent him, but escalated the war to all their detriment.
Sora had met Anna, and Elsa.
And he'd learned how important it was to develop beliefs of his own, and make his own decisions, rather than just battle for someone else's cause, and believe what his superiors did.
After all these centuries, Ephemer didn't see what difference it made whether he lost all of his faith, as the Master of Masters and Hoder had.
Whether it was from false light or hypocritical darkness, he himself did nothing more than leave people behind the same way they did.
Yet, even so, there were two things Ephemer still couldn't let go of any more than the flickering star in The Final World, tethered from totally slipping away by his, her, or its own remaining lights in the deepest darkness, could.
"Sora was the only one able to return to human form without destroying his Nobody. That is a statement to the love in his heart for other people, and the bonds that tie them together. Perhaps… he has the power to bring back the hearts and existences of those connected to him – to recreate people we thought were lost to us forever. Our most precious treasures – even an empty puppet – the trees of the forest, and the petals on the wind – there are hearts around us everywhere we look.
"And it does not take superhuman powers to see them.
"Surely we remember as children the way our hearts made everything seem to shiny, and perfect. Sora has a heart like that – uncorrupted, willing to see the good before the bad. When he sees the heart in something, it then becomes real. When a connection seems broken, he may have the power to mend it. He has touched countless hearts, he has accepted them, and he has saved them. And some of those hearts have never left him – whether they fell into darkness or were trapped there – whether they sleep in the darkness of Sora's heart or were welcomed into its warmth – they can be saved. All Sora needs to do is be himself and follow wherever it is that his heart takes him."
"Thank you. If the worst happens, I'll be glad to leave the future to the kids who see the world in the way that you do. Let the wind carry you far, far away… my Dandelions."
He'd been walking away, but he hadn't been willing to let go any more than Woody, and Buzz, and so he'd heard Ava's words.
And if just being himself had been enough for Ava then; and Skuld, and Yozora, and all the others, even though he'd left Ava, and Skuld, and Yozora, and Ven, and Brain, and Lauriam, behind; he could still believe in the light.
He could believe in Sora.
"Skuld, get in."
"Thank you for being here, Ephemer. I'm glad I don't have to face the end alone."
"It's not over 'till it's over, Skuld."
He'd left everyone but Skuld to face the end alone.
And, even though Ephemer knew Skuld had meant those words for Yozora as much as for him, because Ephemer had attempted to throw his life away like Roxas, Yozora had never heard them.
"My guess is no one's ever loved you before. Because you know nothing about hearts and love."
"There are hearts all around us, trying to connect. Your 'loneliness' only made Woody and Buzz's connection stronger. That's the heart's true nature – to never, ever let go. Wherever they are, Andy and the other toys haven't let go either."
And, if that was how Ava and Skuld and Ven and Brain and Lauriam felt, he could still believe in himself.
"Yeah! You can't keep us from Andy. We're going home no matter what. And taking Buzz!"
Ephemer didn't need to do anything more than be himself.
He'd already caught Sora when he'd almost fallen once.
Ephemer couldn't breathe.
His heart, and mind, practically couldn't even perceive the existing reality about him.
Because now, Sora was back on his feet, and listening to a conversation below him without adding a single other syllable less inflection to the words, "Your Majesty, Riku, are you okay?"
And even then, all he'd said since Donald and Goofy had literally held Sora close to the warmth of their hearts, picked him back up onto his feet, and encouraged him to dry his tears, before then, was the phrase, "Yeah… but… he controls Kingdom Hearts now. And Kairi…"
"But no pouting. We see much bigger and better things in your future… once you side with us."
Sora's head fell, and he gazed down at his Keyblade, a depthless terror and helplessness and guilt and exhaustion in his visage and stance Ephemer had never seen before, but Ephemer knew as well as he knew the most distant farthest reaches of his own heart.
"Uh-oh. Now it's all four of them."
"So what? There are four of us too."
"Still so blind. A Nobody is what's left behind when one gives his heart to darkness. There is only one way to bring Roxas back, which is for you to give up your heart as well. Sora, have you finally decided to call upon the darkness?"
"What?"
"Go on then. The shadows are never out of reach."
"Now, set your heart free."
"Wait!"
"Sora!"
"It's not darkness. Not if it helps him!"
"Good thing snow's so soft. We could do this a hundred times."
"No! Let's not."
"A-hyuck! Ya' sure you don't wanna' go again?"
"Nooo thank youuu! Do you think everybody else made it?"
"I don't think the snow monster got 'em."
"They probably went back to the palace."
"Makes sense. For us, too. We still need to talk to Elsa."
"Second time's the charm!"
"Yeah, back to the ice palace."
"Hey… that's Elsa. But who's that guy?"
"It could be somebody from Arendelle who came up here to help her."
"Don't think so. That doesn't look like help to me."
"Oh no!"
"Darkness?"
"Let's move!"
"Him again?!"
"Hey! You'd better not have hurt our friends!"
"First Marluxia, now you! What is this all about?!"
"Oh, I see, so you bumped into Marluxia. Then why am I explaining this again? I told you before: The New Seven Hearts. If you mess up and don't find your guardians of light, we're gonna' need another group to fall back on."
"Leave innocent people out of it!"
"Ohh, look at this tough guy. Such a big boy now. Well, maybe you should do your job, and find the other guardians of light."
"Please, like you've found your thirteen. The King said you're one seeker of darkness short."
"Oh no, we're set."
"Huh? They have all thirteen? Then if we don't find our seven, they'll go after Elsa and Anna."
"I… have to wake up…
"Yes. Tell me what to do."
"Kairi! Why her?! Why?!"
"I have done it."
Ephemer strove with all his heart not to let go of the tides of loving, forgiving, approving, and welcoming light he was channeling through Xehanort's traced connection to Yozora into his slumbers beneath the asphyxiating shroud of the obsidian nightmares that had devoured all of his self and existence for centuries at the very foundations of the abyss.
However, he couldn't even remember enough about where he was, and no matter how he struggled to grip it, it began to slip away.
Sora himself had been the one to complete the Kye-Blade, by giving into the darkness and seeking to avenge Kairi.
Sora hadn't given into the darkness to bring Roxas home, and yet he'd still brought Roxas home, against every single rule of the order of not just the worlds, but the divine edicts of Kingdom Hearts itself.
And that itself had been what caused Kairi herself to literally almost die now.
Was it really over?
Had even Sora given into the darkness now?
He couldn't hold onto the connection.
He couldn't even do this for Yozora.
"Thank you for being here, Ephemer. I'm glad I don't have to face the end alone."
"Thank you. If the worst happens, I'll be glad to leave the future to the kids who see the world in the way that you do."
"Surely we remember as children the way our hearts made everything seem to shiny, and perfect. Sora has a heart like that – uncorrupted, willing to see the good before the bad. When he sees the heart in something, it then becomes real. When a connection seems broken, he may have the power to mend it. He has touched countless hearts, he has accepted them, and he has saved them. And some of those hearts have never left him – whether they fell into darkness or were trapped there – whether they sleep in the darkness of Sora's heart or were welcomed into its warmth – they can be saved. All Sora needs to do is be himself and follow wherever it is that his heart takes him."
"It's not over 'till it's over, Skuld."
Was he even leaving Sora behind now?
"Thank you for being here, Ephemer. I'm glad I don't have to face the end alone."
No.
No matter how deep the darkness, the light can always radiate a way back home.
It had been Ephemer's fault Yozora had faced the end alone.
But Sora wasn't facing it.
Ephemer couldn't stop believing until it was over.
Sora could do it.
If anyone could sever the spiral of hate and revenge, it was Sora.
And when he did, Ephemer could then trust Yozora to ensure Sora didn't repeat Ephemer's other mistake, and Sora himself wasn't left broken in a ditch by the wayside if he did what Ephemer was almost resigned to the knowledge he would for Kairi, as opposed to taking the prudent course and returning to Yen Sid's.
As unlikely as it was Sora would learn the other lesson, and do what he hadn't for Yozora, and learn that living for others was a greater, and better, sacrifice than dying for them, Ephemer still even refused to give up his faith in that light.
So why?
Why couldn't he hold on?
"Xehanort, you're so caught up in finding the shadows, you forgot about the light that cast them."
Even after everything Ephemer had been through, and learned, he couldn't keep his heart's eye on it, and hear its peals as clearly.
He cast his heart and mind about desperately, but no words of the truths of anyone, or their connections, would even sound for him to understand.
Don't give up.
It's not over 'till it's over.
Don't fall into darkness.
"Aqua. Riku. I'll need both your help if we're gonna' push Xehanort out of this world."
"Understood."
All there was was an opaque spilling shroud of hot, desperate tears of agonized terror that howled and shrieked how even this was meaningless he couldn't even do this much for Yozora the light was right there why couldn't he even reach it now why was it going away he needed to reach it reach reach reach reach reach reach reachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreachreach
nodon'tgo
don'tgo
comeback
pleasecomeback
pleasedon'tgo
arewetrulydestinedtodonothingmorethantowandereverlasting
tovanishtogether
noplease
please
"Wait. I'll do it."
"What?"
"Kingdom Hearts is a much bigger threat. Let me handle Xehanort… while you guys keep it shut."
"Okay, Sora."
"I got this."
Warmth washed over Ephemer to submerge him entirely and wholly, and all the exhausting, fatiguing aches and agonies his heart and mind and soul and brain and body and self had accumulated over so many long, wearying centuries he'd become numb to the knowledge most of them were even there were drowned away, and were replaced with nothing but weightlessness.
Sora had done it.
Sora hadn't betrayed Ephemer's trust in him.
Even after losing Kairi, he'd stopped Aqua, Mickey, and Riku from attempting to take revenge while convincing them to direct power where it belonged concentrated.
Not to overwhelm Xehanort in battle while refusing to show him quarter, mercy, or either, and to take vengeance on him for all his sins, and crimes, but where it could best protect the imperiled.
And that meant he was willing to forgive Xehanort, and seek, not hate and death and revenge war, but forgiveness and treaty and kindness and conference.
Sora genuinely had made the first strikes with his Keyblade at the links of the spiraling intermeshed fence of hatred, and fury, and revenge, and survival.
And, as Sora was willing to make this choice with his loss of Kairi, right before his very eyes, the person he loved the most, still so raw and cracked into fissures in his heart, and self, as much as Ephemer was terrified what Sora would do afterwards, he had no doubts remaining that Sora would continue to seek forgiveness, and mercy, for Xehanort, and all his selves, and all others, and not justice, and judgment.
And that he would pull the rest of the way through his hate, and dream of revenge, and cut the hearts of the people he loved, the others within the realm of light, the World itself, and his own, free of the latticed barrier that divided all realms, worlds, existing reality, and hearts.
The history of animosity wouldn't repeat.
He wouldn't become the key that turned a threefold nightmare into a true quadratic equation.
Sora was willing to face his fears, and forgive, and compromise.
He wasn't frightened of the unknown, and he didn't see hearts, of any kind, as supposedly them, while the people close to him, and he himself, were supposedly us.
He wasn't willing to leave anyone behind.
All hearts, and realms, truly were safe with him.
This Keyblade War wouldn't end, in victory and judgment, but in reconciliation and peace.
"You never lost it…
"It sleeps… until someone needs it…
"Call to it…"
"I am calling… with all my heart."
"Don't do this.
"Wait…
"It's all right!
"You can stop now!
"It's all right…"
"Xion."
"Xion!"
"Hands off my friends."
"All right. What now?
"Guess I… shoulda' brought some ice cream."
Ephemer's eyes widened, and he opened his mouth in a single delighted, elated laugh.
Of course.
The tides of loving and revitalizing light he was pouring through Xehanort's connection to Yozora hadn't even left his grasp.
His lips curved up in a self depreciating and mirthfully amused, but no less heartfelt and sincere, but mirthfully amused, grin.
Of course.
All he'd done was stop trusting he could hold on.
"Mmm, it's okay. I think I'm meant to figure it out for myself.
"It'll be okay. They're strong."
"And now, it's our turn!"
Ephemer had had his turn.
As long as he still had Skuld and Yozora for best friends, and Ava and Ven and Brain and Lauriam loved him, he was fine the way he was.
It really had been enough.
All he needed to do now was to keep calling to the warm light of the people closest to his heart.
And all he needed to do was to trust in it.
Then so much lightness flooded through him he couldn't be sure his physical body wasn't currently striving to breathe, as he realized the light he was basking in wasn't coming from Sora.
It was being funneled through Xehanort's heart, and that meant–
Yozora's voice was exhausted, and resigned, with very little unarmored sentiment, and it sounded as though Yozora was at last giving himself back to sleep after hours of being awake, but Ephemer could still hear it clearly, resounding and reverberating amidst all of the chambers of his heart, and there was enough vibrant strength in it Ephemer knew, the next time he awoke in his new body, once Xehanort at last freed himself from the portal of the future he himself sought to hide in, and Xehanort himself reclaimed his past with Eraqus he'd believed all hope had been lost for returning home to for everlasting time, Yozora would awaken into morning's warm dawn.
"I couldn't see anything, but I woke up as soon as you refused to give up the first time, earlier, when you spoke to Sora and ensured he didn't need to abandon his own loved ones to die, or lose their hearts, at the wayside.
"The three of us promised to unlock the Foretellers' secrets together, didn't we?
"And I've been looking for the two of you, and Strelitzia, for so, so very long, while Baldr was no hotel on my travels."
Ephemer kept himself from even thinking the thinnest, most frayed shimmer of how he felt about what Yozora had done to Baldr.
"I've been dreaming for so long.
"And my travels have been so, so hard, and long.
"I'm so, so very exhausted.
"I just want the nightmare to end.
"And now, after all these wearying centuries, and millennia, and even aeons, and eras, in some of the worlds' timelines, this dream can
"at long
"finally
"last
"co
"t
"nightie'."
The light greatly faded, and Ephemer knew Yozora could no longer hear him, if he'd even been totally aware he hadn't just been drifting within what Ephemer felt new tears pushing into his eyes and cascading down his cheeks at the surety had been a rare comforting daydream inside the relentlessly ruthless and distilled frozen empty remorseless nightmares of the spiral of deathly torment he'd been drowning in for centuries now.
While all he had of Skuld now was his memories.
However, for the first time since the day, innumerable lifetimes past all counting ago, all love and light within everyone he'd known and held most cherished, and two cosmoses themselves, had fissured into cracked and desolate and chapped and barren and parched and desiccated wastelands, Ephemer saw no reason to even think twice about anything, and hold back his laughter for the briefest single instant.
When it bubbled out, no one in space, or time, could hear it, or carry its legacy on into the future, and the tears just kept falling from Ephemer's eyes, and down his face.
But, in this suspended instant in the here, and the right now, Ephemer shared with Skuld, and Yozora, it still sang with the clear foaming spray of crystalline brooks, and the verdant dewy warmth of a kaleidoscopic prism of innumerable blindingly brilliant and incandescent shades of light.
.
"Day in, day out
Comic books and daydreams
He doesn't like
Who he is
.
"Not knowing what he wants
Just wanting
A lukewarm tear
Runs down the cheek
.
"There isn't anything I want to say
I just want to see you one more time
Maybe I'm a coward
Who can't speak my mind
.
"Oh well, but
If I can't see you
Before my world disappears
Let me lay down to rest next to you
I don't care where that may be
.
"Beautiful world
In the days so fleeting"
'Beautiful World – De Capo Version'
EVANGELION: 3.00 PLUS 1.01: THRICE UPON A TIME
