The cloud of smoke hovering over the table formed itself to show a silver haired young man climbing rocks at the bottom of one of the ravines that littered the broken landscape of Hollow Bastion. He was smiling as if he'd just thought of something funny, and though the moving picture of the youth had no sound associated with it, when his mouth opened and lips moved a few moments later anyone watching knew he was sharing the joke. He was a far cry from the similar looking boy who had been exploring the same areas a few days ago, now unburdened by the worry that had been weighing on his shoulders, at least for the moment, finding someone to share it with. He reached a hand down beyond what the picture showed, and when he pulled his arm upward a laughing younger girl with long blond hair and two small fairies furiously tugging on the back of her collar to help lift her came into view.
"Riku and Alice are getting along better than I would have thought." As was becoming habit she didn't realize when she spoke of the boy, Maleficent sounded maternally pleased that her protege had made a friend, though she would assert the association pleased her for more complex reasons.
"He's a child still and children are all the same." The curl of Hook's lip as he let the dismissive words fly said exactly how little he thought of children. Maleficent wondered what the man had been like when he was growing up, and if he even remembered it or thought he'd sprung into the worlds fully mature. Humans were so strange sometimes. She supposed Hook could be given a certain latitude though. From what she'd gathered, he'd lived hundreds of years in his current state of stagnation, captaining the Jolly Roger and locked in battle with Peter Pan.
Hook was ignored, not just by Maleficent, but by the entire table.
"He's feeding on her light. You can almost see it drifting from her to him to cut through his darkness," Maleficent remarked, purposefully falling into the detached fascination of a scientific observer.
"That's just how men are, Sweetness. Suck the life right out of you just like that." Usula simpered, then barked a laugh at her own quip, slapping a tentacle against the floor with a sharp crack that was in some way supposed to imitate how quickly a man could absorb a woman's light.
"Quite," Maleficent let the corner of her mouth quirk upwards slightly, indulging the joke and reinforcing the hierarchy, at least today's hierarchy. Ursula was worth acknowledging, but Hook wasn't for what, on the surface, was a comparable generalizing statement. "But this light does not diminish from being shared. Look how brightly Alice shines." Maleficent knew most of those who stood assembled couldn't properly see it like she could, especially not through a scrying image, but Alice was blinding. It made the darkness hunger, but also quake.
"Yeah, yeah, it's like Apollo when he parks his chariot too close," Hades dismissed, "But from where I stand you got two problems there. One," Hades summoned a small flame in one palm, "the light may not be diminished, but all that carefully cultivated darkness we've been helping Broody with?" He snuffed the flame out. "Progress ruined. Poof. Zap. No more. Then, Problem B," he stoked the flame again, "having the princess of heart go free range doesn't seem like the safest plan. You got to get that flower under glass, Mal, Honeycake. I am begging you. Remember what happened to the last one? We got back an Angel Star and a Bad Dog and what does that get us? Zilch!"
The term of endearment had Maleficent's raven squawking his displeasure from his perch on her shoulder before the great fairy even addressed it herself. She gently petted the feathers of the side of his head with two fingers. "Calm yourself, Diaval. He's not used to getting burned when he plays with fire. He doesn't know what he risks." She was curious to see how Hades' quick temper responded to being talked about as if he couldn't hear conversations being had about him to his face, but she didn't pause long enough to make it obvious she was provoking before addressing his concerns.
"Darkness can mean many things and take many forms. Riku is being enhanced, not weakened. Taking some of the sadness and anger does not cut him off from being able to access the powers I have unlocked for him. He doesn't need that kind of darkness to be the dark, and after a certain point it's no longer useful for controlling him either. Hope can open more roads if you hold it out after despair. Not all of us like our underlings eternally miserable. It can hinder their productivity. As for the latter, patience, Hades, all is according to plan. I plan to have Alice and Belle both locked away before the end of the day, and not to have to hide it from Riku or risk his objection. He'll agree it's for their own good. "
"Now that would be a trick," Hades expressed his skepticism, ignoring most of Maleficent's points to scoff at her overconfidence about her ward.
"It will be," the fairy assured him, taking up the mantle of the challenge as her eyes frosted over with distaste that she would be doubted in the first place. "It is time we clip their wings. The case was..." Maleficent hesitated a moment, trailing a finger in an absent repeated ring around the top of the bulb of her staff, " different with the sorceress. We were unsure whether she was destined to be a light. We needed to give her space to grow, as we had to with Belle until her selfless love for that wretched Beast purified her heart."
"Yeah, yeah, it's a whole trial and error thing," Hades waved dismissively. "Break a few eggs. Lose a few princesses. Not like you were the only one." He cast a significant look across the table at Oogie Boogie.
The sack of bugs raised what passed for his hands defensively. "Hey, hey, hey, that Rosa doll was dying when I got her."
"And yet, she could have been saved if I had been told about her desert fever in time to treat her," Maleficent joined Hades in judgment.
"How was I supposed to know bone white and clammy weren't normal outside Halloween Town? I thought it was a cute look on her," Oogie whined. "The little one, the backup, was green and she was fine until the sea serpent ate her... which happened on Hook's watch." He hissed like a snake in the captain's direction and got a hook waved at him in what was surely supposed to be an obscene gesture hard to carry off without fingers in return. "The two before that were both brought in sleeping like the dead." He gestured toward where Snow White and Aurora rested in their capsules to prove his point, "The Kairi girl too. It's just bad luck mine was broken. Humans are too delicate. If you had just let me take her bones to the graveyard in my neck of the woods, we might have been able to salvage it when she was fresh."
"Sure, the pallor of the dead is nothing a little lipstick and rouge can't fix, and the taste for flesh that the reanimated develop? We just put her on a diet," Ursula backed Oogie up with a twist to her mouth that was equally likely to be mocking or an attempt at a supportive smile.
"We don't need to dwell on the past." Maleficent interjected before Oogie could accuse the sea witch of making fun of him. " Alice and Belle will be secured. The princess of Radiant Garden, Cinderella, Snow White, and the Briar Rose are all ours. Jasmine will be ours soon enough and Jafar has promised she is a perfect light. When we have the seven, we will be unstoppable." Maleficent did have some concerns about Riku's Kairi. The nature of her enchantment was a different magic than had been on Snow White or Aurora. It may be enough to disrupt their plans, but that was a problem to deal with once they had the rest of the lights, if it even turned out to be a problem in the first place.
"And while we're waiting on Tall, Dark, and Creepy the Royal Vizier to deliver our final piece, I have a solo project to return to," Hades pushed himself back from the table. "You aren't the only one making new friends, Mal-Mal Baby. I've got a little storm-Cloud that is going to make my skies clear up waiting for me back in Thebes, ready to compete in today's tournament and mop the floor with Jerkules. I think this one may actually stand a prayer. He's got the Darkness full strength...and a bat wing." Hades continued to talk a mile a minute, volume waning as if he was really only concerned with performing for an audience of one, himself, fixated on the sound of his own voice aloud, "I don't know what's up with the bat wing, and at this point I'm afraid to ask. Did he always have the bat wing? Is it part of the outfit? It makes a statement. I'll give the kid that. Pledged his allegiance just on the chance I knew where to find his little friend Zack." He leaned into Hook who leaned away. "I'll keep my end, have a little poke around the Underworld when I go to taunt my dear nephew, but there are so many stiffs down there and none of them feel up to chit chat so it's going to take a millennia or two and by then? Ol' Cloudy is down there himself and no longer needs my help with a reunion."
"Yes, you've spoken of Cloud before," Maleficent didn't offer any more encouragement than that. Hades had talked up the new arrival on Olympus already that day, proving his insecurity that Maleficent had found a useful tool in Riku that he needed to shout louder about his own discovery that, surely, was no match for a god. Perhaps Hades would shut his mouth for a few minutes when Hercules broke his new toy. "Go see to your nephew's demise by all means, Hades." Maleficent rapped her staff sharply against the ground three times and the image over the table changed to the interior of a gummi ship. A man with unkempt brown hair long enough it curled over the collar of his black jacket was piloting while a teenage boy with similar coloring and lack of care for corralling gravity defying hair spun the co-pilot's seat in circles and flapped his jaw while making animated hand gestures. "You may want to hurry. The keybearer is on his way to your Thebes."
"Has-a-what-now?" Hades blurred words together incomprehensibly, smug look giving way to a slackened jaw then a terse frown and brief flame up of his hair when Ursula laughed at him being taken off guard. The flames cooled back to a flickering blue coif as he reassembled a mask of superiority. "Not a problem. I'll just have Cumulus form a welcome and chop him off at the knees. Great opportunity for it, now he's separated himself from the gaggle. Only one protector riding his back and that's easy. A little 'Leon, I'm here for Zack because I'm honor bound but the only one I really want to play Patrocles and Achilles with is you' to appeal to the ego here, a little stab stab there, and we're done."
"I'm afraid that won't work." Maleficent replied mildly, keeping partial attention on the image of Sora and Leon even where it compromised her ability to stare Hades down.
"You're right. Too many words. He'd never buy it. We'll just cut straight to the stabbing. I'll make sure Cloudy With a Chance of Rebellion signs a contract he can't reverse before they land."
"Naturally. Have your stooge take care of the obstacle," Maleficent paused significantly, relishing in the rapt attention the room's other occupants were paying the exchange and the palpable hunger to see either her or Hades taken down a peg-none of them cared which as long as they saw someone be outmaneuvered and thus reveal a weak underbelly to be shredded. Such was the nature of alliances like theirs. "I'm sending Riku to meet Sora when they land, however."
"You think the kid is ready to kill the keybearer?" Shadows of a smirk were returning to Hades' face as he geared up to mock the idea.
"No, I think he can bring the keybearer back here."
"And then we kill him!" Oogie interjected, rubbing what looked more like pointed fins than hands together as a beetle crawled out of the yawning, mouthlike opening of his sack and toward his painted eyes. "Let me do it. I've been so hungry lately." He threw his head back and captured, tossing the blue backed beetle into the air and catching it back in his sack mouth. A loud crunch followed.
Maleficent's lip curled in distaste as her fingers circled the top of her staff again. "No, and then we use him. The keybearer's power is legendary, as we all know. We all agreed snuffing it out before it can be discovered was vital to our plans. To that end we monitor the keybearer's progress since I found him on Traverse Town, and we've been waiting for just such an opportunity as today..."
This time it was Hook who interrupted with, " Get on with it." The impatient statement clipped off quickly as the pirate captain held himself back from calling Maleficent a wench. He did not want to die today. As it was, the glare she shot him as she smoothed Diaval's feathers again as if holding the intelligent eyed raven back was of the force to reduce stone to dust.
"We've been thinking too small. The legends don't just speak of keyblades of light, but those of darkness as well. If we could corrupt the keyblade that can lock and unlock the heart of a world to Darkness, then that is a force that may be just as great as the promised Kingdom Hearts. The keybearer is isolated. We've seen him sad and lonely. We've seen he doesn't trust his new companions, and we have the perfect leverage over him." She could see Oogie was considering it. His bugs had stopped chittering, which was usually a good sign. The others looked more skeptical. Hook and Ursula shared a look that Maleficent had trouble reading. It was not a team-up she'd expected, but judging others made quick allies.
"If I may be the first to voice an objection?" Hades asked with calculated politeness that typically meant he either knew he held cards up his sleeve or that a tantrum was near. He smoothed a hand through his flames as if slicking back hair. "You can't even get your first protege to open a portal yet and you think you're going to get Future-So-Bright-Gonna-Need-Shades who trips the same alarms as the potential princesses of heart to fall to the dark? And your big plan for leverage is the power of friendship?" Agreeing rumbles started to circulate the room. Maleficent was losing ground fast. "Maybe," Hades gestured with both hands, gaining confidence and thus viciousness in his smile, "Maybe keykid and your little protege can be used against each other. Maybe they could also be stronger and smarter together, and that's the last thing we need. Maybe the keybearer lays a little smooch on their princess and it true love." Hades spat distaste. "The problems keep multiplying. Soon, we have a mutiny on our hands. They're freeing princesses, staying out past curfew, just being awful teenagers." Hook let out a pained noise at the last word that punctuated Hades' words.
"We have a plan that's working. You said yourself the princesses are almost gathered. Let's just kill the boy," Ursula's urging was more coaxing to counterbalance Hades' arguing.
The Lady of Hollow Bastion blinked slowly. "Very well. We'll kill the boy." Maleficent's tone was even and face impassive. There wasn't even a clench of her hand on her staff or the swirling of green flames. Nobody believed the instant retraction of her proposal, and, sure enough, after another slate clearing blink and pause, Maleficent continued, "We'll have Riku bring him back here. None of you would argue that he should be able to convince his friend of that much as long as Cloud is able to keep his minder distracted in some way, correct?" She didn't pause for a rebuttal and none came to interrupt her. "He'll be more easily taken care of beyond the possibility of interference by Hercules, the Lion's Heart, or even Hades' little tool if he decided to go rogue if forced to confront service to the Underworld could include killing children. The first sign of dissent, of the path I suggested not proving superior, and we can kill him and Riku both. I offer them to you, and my vow that if the keybearer's light cannot be dimmed, that I will take it as a sign that perhaps I am not qualified to lead these war rooms and should keep my opinions to myself."
The last of her words sweetened the deal beyond what any at the table could resist. Agreement to the terms rippled from one to the next.
"It's your funeral, Honeycake," Hades was the last to agree. He could only hope the words became literal.
The cloudy image hovering over the table could not properly convey the deep boredom the keybearer the council was so wary of felt at that moment. Leon had taken over piloting the ship yet again. He had done so abruptly and not as politely as Sora thought he could have every time. It involved shouting, "Enough!" and practically shoving Sora out of the pilot's seat, though, perhaps how hard the push had been this time was the fault of Sora having just sent the ship into another accidental barrel roll, and it had been more a slide and fall than rough intent. The time Sora actually spent flying was greatly eclipsed by the times he was sentenced to the second chair and repeated lectures about safety and repeating back everything Cid had taught him about piloting. Then there were long stretches where Leon just piloted silently before insisting Sora take another turn at the helm just as abruptly as he'd batted him away.
Sora was beginning to think that his so-called flying lessons were an excuse to kidnap him. The first clue had been when he learned their planned flight was not an hour jaunt, but a three day journey one way that passed by other planets on the way to this Olympus place, and they didn't have plans to stop on the way. The second was that Leon's instruction had first been constrained to, "Cid taught you what buttons do what, right? Go ahead and fly," and he seemed put out when more than that was necessary. Sora hadn't yet gathered enough information to say whether Leon was taking him far away to kill him because he was more trouble than he was worth; as part of some kind of test to see if he was ready to take up this full mantle of keyblade wielder that everyone kept talking about, which had pretty good odds of achieving the same result as the first option; because he was planning on stranding Sora offworld and forcing him to start sealing keyholes whether he was ready or not; or whether it was just some escalation of the forced bonding attempts. It didn't occur to the younger man to consider Leon just wanted backup in going to recover Cloud or that the older man may just be trying to be nice, giving Sora an opportunity to search another world for Riku and Kairi under supervision.
They were in a silent stretch now. Sora was technically supposed to be manning the weapons, but they'd had a quiet flight so far, suspiciously so to the point where Sora was tossing around dual theories. Either Leon and Cid had been exaggerating how many Heartless ships were waiting in the routes between planets or they were being vaporized before they got close under the power of the permanent, intense thousand yard stare Leon wore when he piloted. The novelty of space had started to wear out, something the Sora of yesterday would have been appalled to know present Sora was thinking, but there was only so many hours you could fill marveling at what seemed to be the same view of the same constellations with no sign you were closer to any goal, especially when you were with someone who wouldn't answer any questions or engage.
"Why are there green shrubs in space? How are they surviving without atmosphere?"
"Don't know."
"You don't know how they got there or you don't know how the space plants are surviving?"
Noncommittal grunt.
"Who put those rings up? Are they ruins of space stations?"
Grunt.
"What is that group of stars called?"
"Stars."
"The stars are stars? Riiight. Want to name them with me? I think they look a bit like a top hat so I'm going to call that the Habberdasher Galaxy. What do you think?"
"Flying."
"You want to call it the Flying Galaxy? Why?"
"I'm flying the ship."
"Oh. Are there any habitable planets in that cluster?"
Another grunt.
"You aren't very talkative, are you?"
"...Whatever."
"You know, Aerith would be disappointed in you. Aren't you supposed to be winning me over? You should be friendlier."
"Don't need to talk to do that."
And so it had gone, with Leon, in Sora's reading of the situation at least, either too embarrassed that he didn't know the answers to every question to even engage in speculation or try to remember a time when he'd found everything interesting, or conserving words like they were a limited resource he might need later. Sora eventually needed to resort to slightly underhanded techniques.
Before Leon had flopped down in the co-pilot's seat when he first entered the ship, he'd fastened something on the dash between the chairs, high up just under the viewport. It was a photo more aged looking than the cluster that decorated Aerith's dresser back in Traverse Town, though that may have just been a side effect of it being black and white with finger smudged edges that spoke to it having been handled a lot. There was only one figure in the photo, a man about Leon's age, maybe a few years older but still youthful, dressed in a suit of armor with the helmet held under one arm while the opposite arm held an oddly blocky sword down by his side. The dark hair that fell across his shoulders and down into his eyes was long enough that it was a matter of curiosity how it would fit under the helmet without getting in the way if it wasn't tied back or put up into some style and the glint of an earring that stood out as not fitting with the knight aesthetic glinted in one ear. His smile was relaxed and his eyes held a private joke. The smile wasn't familiar but the shape of the face and its features were.
"Is this your dad?" Sora asked, grabbing at the photo for a closer look. It refused to budge and nearly tore before Sora realized Leon had stuck it in place with a strip of gummi.
"Don't touch that!" The ship pitched to the side as Leon took his attention away from the helm to bat Sora's hands away.
"Ten and two," Sora sing-songed with smugness, his urge to apologize for not paying close enough attention to see he couldn't just yank at the photo vanishing in a flash. He wasn't going to rip it. He'd realized his mistake in time. He wasn't some oaf that ruined everything he touched. Still, Sora didn't try again. The picture was obviously special, and the fact that Leon didn't display it all the time but wanted it with him when he was traveling worlds, was an indicator it meant even more. Leon didn't bother with many possessions. His side of the room back in Traverse Town was nearly as bare as Sora's, and the younger man had a feeling that it wasn't just because Leon still saw Traverse Town as temporary . Sora wouldn't taunt him with or risk damaging what Leon did have.
Leon gripped the wheel hard and refused to respond to the original question. Sora assumed he'd forgotten and repeated, "Your dad? The picture? It is your dad?"
"No." Sora was just resigning himself to having to carry on pressing Leon for information, trying out different questions until he got an answer more than one word, when Leon added,"He's an actor. Laguna Loire. It's a publicity still from a movie Scrooge McDuck showed in the garden square every year."
Sora balled his fists and willed his mouth to stay shut, giving away only a brief hum of interest. He felt like a hunter sneaking up on a wild animal, trying the tactic of leaning into the pauses and just giving Leon more room to speak.
"It was about a keyblade wielder. The movie." Stringing too many words together in a row appeared almost painful to Leon, and Sora wondered who had silenced him in the past. "That's where we got the legends from, Aerith, Cid, and I. I'm not sure Yuffie remembers. They stopped the yearly showings when she was really young. Years before Maleficent came. I only half remember it myself. I wasn't obsessed like Seifer was." For all the other words that fell like tumbling stones and broken glass from Leon's lips, the name Seifer and his obsession were granted a softer tone, softer eyes. It wasn't a chest warming softness though, but one that caused a sudden heaviness to come into the air. "He could quote the whole thing. He probably still would have been able to now. He was going to be the keybearer. Protect the world. It was a silly dream of his. He told me it was romantic. That was right before he shoved my face in the dirt for telling him he was lame. Lamer. He said I was a lamer for thinking lamer was an insult. Then he never stopped using it."
Sora didn't want to interrupt when Leon was on a role, but something like dawning horror had broken through the melancholic mood Leon was casting. "All your lessons on my duty as the keybearer were based on a movie? You were going to send me out to fight demons alone because of some film you used to watch as a kid? A lame movie you didn't even like?" Sora could feel curses building up in his throat as his eyes near bugged out of his head. "Was this a historical film at least?"
"It was billed as fiction. Now we know better. " Leon was unfazed to the point Sora wondered if he was even cognizant how upsetting Sora had found his words. "So many details are lost. I would have paid more attention if I knew lives would count on it."
"What the fuck?" The rhetorical left Sora as a disbelieving exhale.
Leon continued to ignore him, eyes on the stars. Silence reigned for several long moments. Shaken from what was, from him, an overshare even without the part that alienated the keybearer yet again, Leon decided that saying nothing more was the best option.
Sora fumed silently, warring with the desire to ask more questions and the instinct to throw Leon out into the vacuum of space. "Who wrote the movie? Who else was involved in it?" He put effort into being as terse as possible so satisfying his curiosity and assembling information that may help him with his destiny, if it even existed, would not be mistaken for willingness to accept and forget that Leon wanted him to die because it made a cool scene in a movie.
"I don't know."
"Don't know or don't want to tell me?"
"What would you be able to do with the information? Everyone involved in the movie would be dead now."
"You were on Hollow Bastion and you're here. Didn't any other gummi ships escape? Didn't..."
Leon cut him off mid-word with a sharp, "No," that called the matter settled and closed off to arguments. "The king was the only one who owned gummi ships. There were only two and only one made it to Traverse Town. The other crashed. I watched it ."
"I know. Two ships. One was still under construction. There was a coin flip for who would take what ship. You all knew the half finished ship wasn't likely to make it, but it was that or stay behind on a doomed planet," Sora quoted impatiently. Aerith had told him that story. Sora had tried to get Cid's version, asking him about the names Aerith had used, and all he'd gotten was "Setzer Gabbiani was a tough son of a bitch but none of us are invincible" and a few muttering about "poor kids" that had went down with him.
"It wasn't a coin flip. They drew from a deck for the high card. Cid got an eight. The other pilot drew a king, but it was the king of hearts. Suicide king. He said it was fate then and claimed the broken ship even though he won."
It sounded like embellishment, but Sora wasn't callous enough to anger the dead-or the living Leon-by saying that sounded like a good idea for a movie, no matter how bitter he was at the moment. " But ships other than the king's and its back up? Someone had to have given Ansem the blueprints he gave to Cid. And didn't anyone else, you know, show up in Traverse Town even without a gummi ship?"
"Cid, Cloud, Aerith, Yuffie, Rinoa, and I were the only survivors of Hollow Bastion." Leon was firm, perhaps for his own sanity. "Now there's even less."
Sora wanted to keep pushing, but the grinding of Leon's jaw said it was useless. He switched topics or at least tactics. "Why do you have the picture of the actor if you didn't even like the movie?"
"It belonged to Sis." No further context was provided. This too was a statement beyond argument. It had belonged to this Sis and apparently that made the photo sacred.
"Your sister?"
Leon shook his head. "An older girl in the orphanage, though she'd lived with my mother for a time after her own parents died until Raine died too, and she acted like she thought she was responsible for me, so it was almost like it."
"Was she a fan of the movie then?"
"Something like that."
Sora wasn't in the mood anymore to coax out words from Leon one by one. There was more of a story there, but Sora hadn't heard a story he liked from Leon yet.
Maybe it was a law of inverse need at play, but Leon didn't stay silent for long before offering another disconnected piece of the puzzle. "Sis...Ellone disappeared when I was six. It was shortly after Aerith got adopted. I was told Ellone was adopted too, but she'd left in the middle of the night. Her stuffed moogle was still on her bed and that photo was underneath it. I knew it was a lie. She was just gone."
Sora couldn't help himself. "What happened to her?"
"I don't know." Other than a flash of grief in Leon's eyes so brief it could have been imagined, there was no more feeling attached to this uncertainty than Leon not knowing who else was in the keybearer movie. "That happened sometimes. People disappearing in the middle of the night. Ones that wouldn't be missed, that had no family. Then it stopped. Then it started happening again years later. I made myself strong enough that I would have a chance against whoever tried to take me. Seifer made himself louder and more obnoxious so he'd get attention. You knew when Seifer was in a room and when he left it."
Sora couldn't absorb the enormity of children disappearing regularly and it just being a part of life. Not all at once. He stared at Leon, waiting for a punchline that didn't come, then stared at his hands until he'd processed enough to form a coherent question. "Didn't anyone look for them?"
"There were rumors. Lea and Isa, these two boys I went to school with, said there were prisoners in the castle. Nobody that worked there ever saw evidence of that. Cid went to the castle. He would have told me. And Isa and Lea also claimed to have met a living keyblade wielder, so they weren't exactly trustworthy."
"A living keyblade wielder?" Irritation surged again, battling confusion and sympathy for dominance in Sora's reeling mind. "You didn't think to tell me before?"
"It was a rumor, and not a very credible one."
"So was I before you met me! So was the thought of other worlds when I lived on Destiny Islands!"
"Fair point," Leon allowed, then lifted a hand from the helm to point off through the viewport. "Olympus, coming up. Make sure you're strapped in for landing."
Sora clicked the harness into place, the action taking longer than it should have when he refused to break accusatory eye contact with Leon and was reaching blindly. "What possible reason could you have for not sharing everything with me?"
"I don't like to talk about the past. Talking about people in the past tense I like even less."
"Not that!" Sora protested, a bit stunned he even had to clarify. "I could care less about Seifer and your sister."
There was barely a ripple of emotion on Leon's face. His interjected reply was monotone as he guided the ship in its descent. "Couldn't."
"What?" Sora found himself copying the tone, not to mock but because at every turn Leon brought him up short. Was he really correcting grammar right now?
"You couldn't care less." Turns out he was.
"No, I definitely still care, even though you don't deserve it, so I actually could care less," Sora huffed, anger stoked that he couldn't enjoy his first gummi landing and take in the sights of the new world properly for this argument. "But if we're supposed to be on the same side, you need to tell me everything you know about the keyblade and other people who had it, even the rumor. It's all rumor! How are we supposed to build trust or whatever when I keep learning you're holding stuff back?"
Leon finally deigned to make eye contact and that's how Sora realized he had missed touchdown completely. "On the way back, we'll start over. I'll tell you everything I know." No apology but no excuses. Sora wasn't sure if he appreciated the latter enough still to keep ignoring the former.
"Everything?" Sora extended it like a second chance.
"Down to the stories I know Seifer made up himself," Leon vowed. He flicked the switch that extended the gummi ship's shields into camouflage. "Now, some ground rules for exploring Thebes." He ticked them off on his fingers. "One, don't mention you're from off world. Try not to even talk to the locals if you can help it. You don't have the experience I do knowing what to say and what not. I don't want you to get into trouble on your own. Don't go beyond the city walls. Don't..."
"Aren't we going to be sticking together?" Sora broke in with more urgency than he would have expected to feel considering he was still upset with Leon.
"I thought you might want to look for your friends while I ask around about Cloud."
"And we can't do that together?"
"We could," Leon was reluctant, but Sora couldn't tell why since, like usual, Leon wasn't very forthcoming on the larger picture. "Is that what you want to do?"
Sora struggled out of his restraints, clumsy in another flare up of irritation, and leapt to his feet. "No, forget it. I'd rather go on my own. When and where are we meeting up?"
"Back here on the ship before sunset. Hopefully, I'll have Cloud with me. " Leon's face was scrunched into a disappointed frown. "Sora..." He sighed heavily but didn't voice any follow up to the name even after a long pause, seeming to struggle with how he wanted to continue.
Sora's patience ran out before Leon landed on words to use. "...Whatever," the keybearer shook his head as he went for the gummi hatch.
Sora blinked in bright sunlight, blinding after the dark of space, as he exited the ship and threw an arm over his eyes. The sky was almost as vivid blue as the islands Sora had grown up on, dotted with pink tinged clouds so fluffy they nearly appeared solid. Relief came before Sora's eyes fully adjusted as one of the marshmallow-like masses shifted in front of the sun. As the world came into focus, Sora took in a mosaic of small tiles in blues and grays under his feet, a winding path implied even though technically the space the ship was parked in was a large empty square. A bench and two large, decorative pots were the only other occupants of the square. There were stairs going up and stairs leading down. Sora was saved from picking a path as Leon exited the ship and headed for the downward stairs without any further attempt at speeches.
The upward path took Sora to another empty and unnervingly quiet courtyard, this one with tall, free standing white pillars whose purpose he could only guess at. He couldn't help but be disappointed at the loneliness of it after being prepared for a bustling city. He resolved to only go one more level before turning around and following Leon.
The next level was more of the same at first glance, cold stone and empty spaces, but as Sora's eyes scanned up more pillars he took in a figure that seemed more like a phantom for all he'd dreamed of it, crouched atop the marble. Riku, still dressed in the same sleeveless yellow shirt Sora had last seen him in. Riku sprung to a standing position, so quickly and smoothly it reinforced the impression he was a mirage, effortlessly balanced on the small space. He jumped down, landing lightly on his feet before Sora's wordless yell that was supposed to communicate a warning about breaking his ankle was even finished. The relief and affection on his face when they came eye to eye was luminescent and that pointed to a daydream as well. Riku always held back these days.
"There you are, Sora. I've been looking everywhere." His voice was sun soaked sand and the waves of home.
Sora's voice was broken hope. "Riku?" He stepped forward and raised a hand to brush the back of his fingers against Riku's cheek. He felt so real that disappointment constricted Sora's lungs thinking how bad it would be when he woke up back on the gummi ship with Leon. The now familiar periodic surge of warmth in his chest that didn't match his emotions sparked and spread.
Riku returned the gesture, still solid and real, causing Sora's heart to speed and the warmth to grow even more, pulsing like a lighthouse beacon. "I'm here."
"You're here," Sora near echoed, giving in and throwing his arms around his best friend.
Riku held him back more tightly than he'd allowed himself since they were young, eyes misting. They stayed just that way for several seconds. The worst was over now. Things could only look up from here.