The boy is standing at the port window in the gummi ship, fingers pressed to the glass and so close he's fogging it with every faint exhalation. His expression is a perfect blank, but his eyes give away what he's thinking as if he'd been shouting it.

He has no idea what he looks like, reflected against the starry black.

A world searched. Two worlds. Three. No King, no lost friends. Nothing but Heartless and more riddles, more mysteries to taunt them, and the boy is all but choking on the unaccustomed taste of despair. He's only now begun to realize what is to have to search an entire galaxy for something you've lost.

"Say something to him, why don't you."

In the cockpit, the mage eases the ship into a gentle roll, eyes fixed on the monitor readings. "I don't have anything to tell him that he doesn't already know."

The knight frowns faintly. "But wouldn't you want to hear someone encourage you not to give up hope?"

"If he needs us to tell him that, he'll never find those friends of his."

The boy's fist impacts the reinforced window. "I can't give up," he mutters, reflection gritting its teeth. "I won't."

"He's got to believe it himself," says the mage.

They search another world to no avail. The boy might be getting a little desperate, because for once he stays close to his companions and doesn't mouth off and simply concentrates on searching, lips pressed into an unhappy line as location after location turns into a dead end. There's nothing here but shadows.

He destroys them mechanically, attacks economic rather than enthusiastic, all his energy controlled and trained on getting to the next area. To see if anyone was waiting for him around the corner.

He doesn't take the consistent disappointments well.

"Is this what it's going to be like!" he bursts out, as the mage readies the ship for take-off. "We just look and look and look and never find anything?"

"If you haven't noticed, it's a large galaxy," the mage replies tartly. "We search in a grid pattern, one world at a time, and check in with the guys at Traverse Town at intervals. You think it would be any better to just dash off to haphazard worlds and hope we get lucky?"

"We're dashing off to organized worlds and hoping we get lucky right now," the boy mutters miserably, folding his clumsy limbs into the co-pilot's chair. He stares morosely out the main viewport.

The mage resists the urge to tell him to grow up. It's a valid concern, that they'll have missed the King even if they methodically search every world; it's just annoying to hear the mage's own fears coming out of the brat's mouth.

"It doesn't matter," he says brusquely. "Goofy and I, we'll just keep looking until we find him. Looking is the only thing we can do at this point, so that's what we're going to do. There's no point in getting worked up."

"Who's getting worked up?" Defensive bluster, as if the boy hadn't come to him with fear behind his expression and pleading behind his words. The boy wanted someone to tell him that it was all going to work out. He wanted someone to say that everything would be okay, they'd find their friends and discover the secrets of the Heartless and defeat them and all the worlds would be restored and everything would be happy and shiny again. A child's desire. A child's belief in no consequences, that the adults had a plan for Handling This because adults had plans for handling everything (it was what made them adults), that they would somehow be able to make everything better.

Well the mage didn't have a plan and the knight didn't have a plan and their allies didn't have a plan; they were all putting their faith in the King's plan and in a magic key and a boy that fell out of the sky as much as said boy was putting his faith in them that they would tell him where to go and what to do. They were all of them flying blind and against the wind.

And the person that was supposed to be their destined savior wanted reassurance.

"If you're not going to have any confidence in the search, you'll never find your buddies," the mage informs the boy harshly, accent thick with scorn. "You may as well just give up. Maybe if you mope in one place long enough they'll eventually come find you."

There's a brief stunned look, the boy not expecting an attack when he'd come like a kicked puppy looking for sympathy. It's almost comical how quickly he flashes from depression to anger in response. "I'm not giving up," he snarls, half-rising and one hand even extending to summon the Keyblade as if he could physically smash the doubt that had been raised. "I'll never give up on them. I'll find Kairi and Riku no matter what."

"Oh good. I'm sure they'd be happy to know that you were still interested in finding them rather than whining about how hard it'll be."

The boy glares. The mage glares back. The boy flings himself out of the chair and stalks out of the cockpit. The mage finishes the start-up sequence, muttering. They don't speak to each other until three worlds later, after the knight takes the boy aside for a few talks about faith and unspoken concerns and trigger buttons and how not pushing them made life easier for everyone.

The boy just gives him a blank look, and the knight sighs. "It isn't possible for you two to get along?"

"He starts it," the boy mutters. "He always starts it. He just can't get off my case."

"Aww, he's just worried about the mission…"

"That's the only thing he cares about, the stupid mission!" the boy yells. "What about my friends? What about my home? What about all the things your King said about the Keyblade? How am I supposed to save anyone with a stupid magic weapon if he won't teach me how to use magic? What about---" He stops, breathing too fast.

The knight just looks at him sympathetically. The boy's shoulders jerk, his gaze falling to the floor and all that mess of hair acting as a shield. Anything but to have to face the knight's compassion.

"I…I'm sorry— " he starts.

"Gonna cry?" the mage inquires from the doorway, leaning against it.

The boy's head jerks up. His death glare is somewhat marred by the overbright shine in blue eyes.

"No," he snarls.

"Cos if you are, take it outside so I don't have to listen. Some of us are trying to do our jobs around here."

"Fine." The Keyblade flares to life in the boy's clenched fist. "I'll be outside doing my job. That's what I'm here for, right? That's all you need me for."

"No," the mage says candidly. "That's not what I need you for. That's what everyone needs you for. Aerith, Yuffie, Cid, Leon, your friends and your parents and everyone at our castle and on all the worlds—that's what they need you for."

The boy has no good answer for that, anger brought up short like a dog that's run the length of its chain and is jerked off its feet at the end. He just stands there, fists clenching and unclenching uselessly, trying and failing to come up with some way to deny what the mage had said.

The mage waits, but the boy has had enough. He's too close to tears for any kind of final retort so he just turns tail and runs, and the mage lets him.

For the next three days the only thing the boy does is slaughter Heartless like a soul possessed. Without complaint, without hesitation, without anything save for pure, blind fury.

The mage accepts this sudden bloodthirsty dedication without comment, at least until he notices the knight giving him a Look.

"What?"

"You're doing this on purpose," the knight accuses, long face pulled into a frown.

"We don't have time to babysit. Either he learns how to handle himself or he'll stay a brat. Dead weight. We can't afford dead weight."

"Upsetting him deliberately isn't going to make him stronger."

The mage doesn't have to say it. The sound of the boy taking out his rage on a Heartless that would've otherwise required all three of them attacking to bring it down is answer enough. The Heartless shakes the ground when it falls and fades away to reveal the boy, panting and sweat streaked but nowhere near his limit. He glares deliberately at the mage before launching himself at the next target.

The knight is still frowning.

"This mission is bigger than him and more important than his personal feelings," the mage reminds his partner. "He's got to learn that. If he has to hate something, he might as well be productive about it."

"He'll hate you."

The mage hesitates for the barest second, but then shrugs it off. "He'll get over it eventually."

The knight isn't so sure. He watches them both with unconcealed concern, wondering how far the mage's ruthless efficiency will push the boy before he snaps and pushes back, but as it turns out he needn't have worried. The boy doesn't have it in him to hate. He can be surly and selfish and ill tempered but it passes; he's too much of a good-natured child to be anything but fleeting and childish in his resentment. He's back to his old self in no time at all, detouring needlessly while planetside and getting into unnecessary trouble whenever possible and arguing with the mage. They glare at each other and test each other's limits and generally squabble whenever the slightest opportunity presents itself. The boy pesters the mage to teach him magic and the mage refuses. The mage pesters the boy to be more responsible (by the mage's definition of the word, anyway) and the boy lashes out. Their compulsion to squabble is apparently pathological, and makes the knight wish for the uncomplicated trials of raising an infant. He worries mildly over a sudden bout of deafness that breaks out on one of the worlds; both of his companions talking through him to each but somehow unable to hear his or each other's replies.

"We're staying here for the night."

"We're going exploring."

"I said we're staying here."

"I said we're moving on."

"Come on, Goofy."

"Come on, Goofy."

They glare daggers at each other, and the knight wishes he'd thought to bring a book. Or at least headphones.

One would think that fighting next to each other, saving each other's hides time and time again, scraping by on what meager income they have next to each other, and seeing new sights and braving dangers next to each other would instill some kind of status quo. An equilibrium. An unspoken I do this and you do that, and we all step around each other and it works fine. One would think that after all this time, there'd be some vague, pathetic iota of teamwork involving in their interactions.

Maybe some other mage and some other Keyblade Master. Mastering the arcane arts requires tenacity of the highest degree, and only the King knew what sort of stubbornness could persuade a magical key to accept you as its bearer.

"He wants me to teach him combative magic," the mage rants to the knight in one of their too tiny ship cabins, the one he's appropriated for the night. They're grounded, they've a very nice tent and a wonderful large clearing to set it up in and a big lovely open sky to do it under, but the kid is out there with his mouth and his ego and the mage can't stand another minute of it. He'll sleep on bare iron floor just so the boy can have the tent, so the boy can pretend it's a happy fun camping trip and, most importantly, so the boy will be somewhere else for four or five hours. Or until he discovers some new complaint, or raises his voice in some typical exclamation of pointlessness. It can penetrate through the ship's hull, the mage is positive.

"Offensive magic. Fireballs and craters and 'boom,' like he says." The mage angrily swipes a hand through the air. "We're supposed to be protecting these worlds, not tearing them up."

The knight looks like he's considering something. Never a good sign. "It might be a good idea to teach him eventually," he drawls finally, accent honey thick and unchanging no matter how many worlds they've visited or will visit. "That key channels magic, like you said, so he'll have to learn how to use it at some point and you can't exactly stop him from practicing on his own. Teaching him might at least prevent accidents later on?"

Cloaked in the knight's patient and oh so reasonable tones, the suggestion doesn't sound so much like the complete and utter impracticality the mage knows it to be. Somehow, that's almost more annoying than the boy being demanding about it. The mage doesn't want patience. The mage doesn't want pragmatism or even resignation. He wants a supporter, and who was the knight friends with anyway, the longtime ally or the upstart?

'Both' is not the answer the mage wants to hear, nor is endorsement of something the boy had suggested.

"Sure." The mage snorts. "So he can blow us up in battle with a miscast, or melt a hole through the ship trying to light a candle while we're between worlds."

The knight demurs, he doesn't think that likely at all. The boy is very reliable in his own way, really, or he tries to be. Under all the unpolished edges is the hint of their prophesied hero, the blazing righteous spirit of the savior they've been looking for. The boy has foundations. The boy has talent. The boy is learning. He's getting better and stronger and more comfortable with himself as the Keyblade Master with each locked star. One simply has to anticipate his …temporary lapses.

"His complete and utter lack of good judgment, you mean."

"You were young once, too," the knight says, finally annoyed or what passed for 'annoyed' within his perpetual mellowness.

The mage doesn't have anything to say to that. He glares instead and the knight blinks placidly, and after a terse 'I'll think about it' the knight very chivalrously retreats with his victory. The mage puts off doing anything constructive in favor of some good old-fashioned silent, wrathful brooding.

It's the big bleeding problem right there isn't it, he thinks sourly, watching his old friend tromp gracelessly towards the airlock (no wonder he and the boy got along so well, with their similarities). The big bleeding problem with the boy that no one can do anything about, not even the boy himself.

It's the fact that he's a child. The boy is a teenager, all of fourteen years out in the world and most of them spent on an unremarkable spit of beach playing in the waves with his friends. He doesn't know crap about space travel or invasions of darkness or keyblades, and why should he be expected to? He doesn't have any precedents on a disconnected, peaceful world. He's got no standards of heroism or soldiering except what he's heard about in storybooks. He had no life threatening disasters before this one to teach him about duty or priorities. The mage wonders sometimes if their mutual resentment is really a result of the arguments or because of what they see in each other; what one used to be and regrets leaving, and what one could mature into and dreads becoming.

The mage hopes desperately that innocence is not what drew the Keyblade. They might be able to keep the boy alive, might be able to take him to all the places his quest and his destiny requires, but the mage knows as sure as the sun will rise that they're not going to be able to keep him innocent. Every battle, even the ones that the boy thinks are games, are going to teach him about pain until, (worst case scenario, but the mage has always been a pessimist at heart), it becomes the only thing he knows. And it isn't as though anyone would ask it of him. It isn't as though anyone would want that for him, or for any child. But it can happen and it will happen and the mage knows that that how the boy copes will decide whether they'll have a Keyblade Master afterwards, or just a broken shell.

It's enough to earn the King two right hooks in the mage's mental tab. Making them watch that. Making them a party to it.

But there's no choice. They're stuck with this mission, stuck with the boy and he with them and they may not be the best of friends but they're all they've got out in enemy territory.

"I suppose we ought to be thankful he's lasted this long," the mage grudgingly admits.

The knight drapes an extra blanket over the boy, sprawled boneless in his sleep and fingers twitching as he dreams. "I think you're underestimating him."

"Whatever."

The boy mumbles something. It sounds an awful lot like 'teach me magic.'

The mage's hands tighten on his wand as he resists the urge to swat the kid.

"….so are you ever going to..." the knight begins after a moment.

"No."

"But he …"

"No." The mage looks briefly annoyed. "It wouldn't do any good if I tried to teach him, okay? He's not ready."

"How will you know when he's ready?" the knight persists.

"I have mage senses," the mage snaps. "They'll tingle."

"…gawrsh, really?"

"No. Now shut up, we're landing."