I own nothing, not even the duck's bad attitude. Woe.
"Teach me magic," the boy says, blue eyes bright and terrible in their earnestness. He is too old to still have eyes like that, and far too young to understand what he's asking. For all his strengths, for all his good-natured altruism and his lofty notions about justice and disconcerting enthusiasm for this hero business, the legendary Keyblade Master is still just a child.
"No," the mage answers shortly for what feels like the thousandth time. He is out of patience and intermediaries to soften his opinions about the child and the child's persistence over certain subjects. Magic is not for kids who treat their mission as a grand adventure and their battles as a game, spinning the shiny gold key like a character in an RPG when he's done cutting through darkness. The boy is strong, granted, and undeniably motivated, but in all the wrong directions. The knight says he just needs a little patience. A little time to smooth out his flightiness. The knight is better at dealing with the boy (probably because the knight has a kid of his own, while the mage merely has nephews that can only be endured in small doses), and the mage would prefer that that arrangement stay exactly how it was. Let someone who was used to dealing with thousands of annoying questions and inane requests per day do the babysitting.
The knight gives him a Look whenever the mage mentions this out loud. The mage knows it bothers the knight to see his impatience towards the boy, but he can hardly help it. If the boy wasn't the crucial element to their mission, the mage would've happily left him behind long ago and saved himself some stress and bouts of killing fury.
Oh, but he's crucial, that child. He's so crucial the mage can't stand it. Crucial should have been a strong, powerful warrior, the chosen of the Kingdom, not an untrained, untried brat from a backwater planet.
The knight keeps telling him that he shouldn't be too critical of the boy and that they don't have to worry about him anyway. Whatever else the boy is or isn't, he is exactly what they've been sent to find, he has to be, because their King knows what he's talking about and the Keyblade doesn't choose wrongly, and there is no question that the boy is the Keyblade's chosen one. He can't be anything but the key they've been searching for. He can't be anything but destiny incarnate.
That may be so, but the mage shares Leon's dubious opinion on it. The Keyblade does not choose wrongly, but surely it was getting desperate.
"Come on," the boy wheedles, holding out his arms. He wheedles. He might be asking for candy, or the next turn at the game controller.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I said so."
"That's not a reason."
"It's my reason."
"You won't teach me magic, you won't let me pilot the ship…didn't your King tell you guys to help me out?"
The mage flicks a few switches on the ship console from the captain chair just to rub it in. A few weeks earlier he might have smirked while doing so but he doesn't bother now. It's not worth it, and it's also not worth it to even look up and meet the boy's inevitable pout. This ship is entirely too small to contain a self proclaimed hero's childish defiance and the mage's own fraying temper without steel doors or the knight between them. "He didn't tell us to jump when you say."
"Geez." The boy stalks off, clomping his oversize shoes as loudly as he can to announce his infantile irritation at being denied his every whim to the rest of the uncaring universe, which at the moment consists of a world skipping closet made out of gummi blocks and a sleeping knight and the vastness of space. Oh, and a seething duck.
Said duck nobly resists the urge to fry the boy crispy on his way out.
Teach him magic. Teach his coarse, clumsy, sun tanned hands how to weave energy, teach his flighty little mind to coax and command the forces that knit the fabric of the universe together. Magic is subtlety and precision, leashed destruction and the kind of meticulous discipline that can call fire by chaining together individual atoms one by one. It takes years of study. Magic is the opposite of physical strength and of simple. The boy thinks being a warrior entails hitting things with a large blunt object, and has less than any idea about what being a soldier entails. Discipline comes about as naturally to him as it would to a puppy.
A few buttons are stabbed with more force than strictly necessary and the unfolding cosmos is glared at through the cockpit's windows. Bloody stars. So many bloody stars overrun with darkness and they have to visit each, have to waste their time searching all of them one by one and they can't even 'accidentally' leave the brat behind on one.
The mage knows himself well enough to admit that some of his frustrations are not the boy's specific doing. A lot of it is natural anxiety, the result of the King's disappearance, and uncertainty over the future of the Kingdom, and the fact that they're all crammed together on this tiny bucket with only blocks of gummi between them and instant death by vacuum, and the fact that once they land there'll be nothing between them and instant death by Heartless except their own skills, and worry over whether the kid will be able to hold his own when the mage or the knight aren't watching his back, and worry over whether the kid will be able to watch their backs in return, and the knight's irritating acceptance of the whole situation when he really ought to be sharing some of the mage's concerns. They're following a child into battle and they don't dare lose him because of the Keyblade and their orders and their mission that supposedly depends on him, and all the kid has been doing is making their mission more difficult. He's an unwanted, oh so very necessary, very crucial complication.
The mage respects his King and loves him like a brother, misses him fiercely when he's gone and would do anything for him, but at the moment there's only one thing that's going to happen at their reunion and it will involve a nice right hook across the jaw for saddling them with an intractable brat.
The Keyblade Master is still sulking when they hit planetside. The mage pretends not to notice the extra viciousness in the glittering arc of the Keyblade's swings and the resentful glances being cast his way. The boy's temper is good for one thing after all; he can clear Heartless faster than a high level spell when he's feeling belligerent and under appreciated. Which, to his mind, is a large percentage of the time.
The knight doesn't even have to ask if they've been arguing again. Arguing is their default state, interspersed with rare moments of cooperation due to necessity. They make only the barest effort to coordinate on the battlefield despite the fact that their lives often depend on it. The boy goes out of his way to waste potions rather than requiring curative magic when he needs the boost and the mage lets him, because the boy is the one taking the time to stock their purses with coin enough to buy as many potions as his willful little heart desires. The mage won't lift a finger to handle an enemy that's charging the boy (usually, although concern for the mission will occasionally override lack of concern for the boy's welfare) and that's exactly how the boy wants it, given his indignant squalling about interference otherwise. They fight in the same localized space but they don't fight together. Theirs is an Arrangement and the knight can dislike it all he wants, can disapprove of their bickering and wax eloquent about how much easier everything would be if they would try to get along.
The mage is trying. Not breaking his back for it, of course, but for the sake of the mission he's letting as much as he can slide, and it's still not enough. There's always one more thing to spark their arguments, one more thing to incite their wills to clash.
The Keyblade Master wants to pilot the gummi ship. The Keyblade Master wants to investigate this world rather than that one. The Keyblade Master wants someone to teach him combat level magics. The Keyblade Master wants to get involved with world specific incidents that fly right in the face of every non-interference policy existing. The Keyblade Master wants to be the leader of their mismatched trio and make all the decisions. The Keyblade Master refuses to even consider the possibility that the girl he's searching for and the other friends from his home and even his home itself might just be gone, because that's exactly what's happened to who knew how many people from other worlds and even the chosen of the Kingdom isn't that damn special that he should expect to be the sole exception.
The Keyblade Master thinks this is a field trip rather than a war.
"Are you even paying attention!" the mage has to yell at him time and time again, although it sounds more like a squawk.
The boy just ignores him or rolls his eyes or gives him that cocky 'what do you know, duck' smirk or turns away, and sometimes sticks his tongue when he thinks the mage isn't looking.
It's on days like those that the mage considers, with an alarming amount of seriousness, just how hard it would be for the boy to get used to wielding the Keyblade one handed. Surely a legendary genius fighter of destiny, or whatever crap the myths spewed about the Keyblade's chosen, would be able to figure it out. He didn't really need both of those arms.
On the days that the boy actively challenges him, the mage considers how well the boy would be able to function without a head. It can't be all that much different from the norm.
The knight watches them patiently. Where another might have pointed and laughed he simply smiles good naturedly, where another might have thrown their hands up in disgust he waits for the bickering duo to come to some sort of half ass truce so they can get their job done. Where another might have pounded their heads against the nearest wall, he remembers what it's like to raise an infant and finds the grace to endure and accept. Each time they both claim it's the other's fault. The boy rushes ahead recklessly. The mage hangs back and wastes time. The boy blows their disguises. The mage wastes energy on disguises that could be better spent in battle. The boy can't read maps. The mage isn't tall enough to read signposts. Chocolate. Vanilla. Hamburgers. Hotdogs. Ta-may-toe ta-mah-toe.
"Teach me magic."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you're breathing my air. Now go away."
"But—"
"No."
