Cid has taught Cloud well. The clawed glove on his left hand dances across the gummi ship's controls without any apparent effort. Leon flexes his hands to get them to feel. The altercation in the town seems to have sucked all the blood up into his head—fuel for the riot in his brain.

"So…do you want to talk about it?"

It takes a moment for Leon to realize he is being addressed.

"Oh. Um, no. I don't know. I'm fine."

"Liar."

"You called it. Pop your ears."

They hit the warp hole and feel the familiar nausea as they're sucked away from one route to another. Behind them, Deep Jungle shrinks into a mossy pebble.

Candy meteors and hula hoops fly past, accompanied by fleets of unmanned gummi ships with Heartless emblems splattered on their sides like graffiti. Cloud locks onto them and lasers spray out of the Ifrit's twin cannons.

"Plagiarizing bastards, how dare you," Cloud hisses at them through clenched teeth. He turns to Leon. "I ask again, do you want to talk about it?"

"I'm just…frustrated. We've all been robbed."

"Of?"

"Shit, Cloud, do you have to ask? Yuffie is sixteen. The same age I was when I killed my first Heartless…when I saw those eyes for the first time. We're all still kids, Cloud, and these are supposed to be our peak years. We've spent them staring into those eyes and fighting…I never thought I'd say it, but I'm so tired of fighting."

"Damn. Squall Leonhart, the gunslinging firebrand, wants to settle down?"

"That's not it, and please don't call me that. It's just…almost a decade of my life has been swallowed whole by darkness. When the Heartless showed up, I'd just passed my SeeD tests. I thought I was invincible. I didn't know what those…" He gestures with his head to a lone passing ship emblazoned with the emblem. "…things represented."

"They don't represent anything, Leon. Darkness isn't anything other than the force we all have to overcome. Don't read meaning into it that isn't there. It'll use that to get inside you. You give it power. That's what happened to Ansem, that's what happened to Quistis…"

"Oh gods…"

"…and that's what happened to me. I'm not going to watch anyone else be used that way, not if I can prevent it. I was a kid when the world fell, too. I forgot its name just like you did, and it fucked me up way more than it did you, trust me. You still have both your wings, Leon. I saw you at the inauguration ball. I saw you dance with her. Whatever you need to do to hold onto that moment, to hold onto your light, do it. You're a leader whether you like it or not. If you break, everyone breaks."

"I'm trying. When we get home, when we start rebuilding, I think it'll get easier…I hate Ansem…"

"He didn't know what he was dealing with, he was old. It happens."

"He ruined everything. Everything. You saw our world. They left nothing for us, not even a name to remember it by. Everything that's still there is his. That awful castle, those laboratories, everything. It's a monument to our failure, to how blind we were to what he was doing in there."

"I don't know, I suspect someone else did most of the damage. Probably one of the assistants. Even and Braig always creeped me out."

"Did you read the reports, Cloud? It's all in there, it was all him."

"I don't buy it. Something doesn't feel right. I'm just as tired of all this directionlessness as you are. All these secrets. This past year has been the lowest of my life, to the point where I agreed to be a hired thug for the blue clown of the Underworld. I was that desperate. I was so lost in darkness that I didn't care what happened to me, or if I saw Tifa again, or anything. I just wanted it to end. I wanted Sephiroth to kill me."

The cockpit falls silent and Leon realizes that this whole time, Cloud's hands have never been still. They're dancing across the controls like he's conducting an orchestra, and the gummi ship is fluidly dodging blasts from the mindless Heartless ships. In that moment, it dawns on Leon just how brutal Cloud's struggle has been. While he, Yuffie, and Aerith waited for the Keyblade to appear and futilely attempted to rehabilitate the universe's orphans, this man was lost in space, fighting a nine-year Platinum Match against an unstoppable demon. Leon's nine years had been miserable, yes, but he never felt in mortal danger in Traverse Town. Other than the nightmares that woke him in a cold sweat each night, he was mostly okay. Cloud's nightmare was very alive and actively trying to destroy him.

"Cloud…I never realized…"

"I know. I've never told anyone. Not even Cid."

"Are things…better for you at all, now? I feel bad for complaining."

"It'll be fine. We'll all be fine. I think it may be too late for me, but that's not much of a loss. There's nothing to do now but set things right. Help people find their light again."

He looks ahead.

"And there's some now. Activate Osmose-Gs."

From behind an asteroid, a small house floats into view, suspended by hundreds of balloons. A garden hose hangs from the porch, swinging elegiacally in space. They engage the appropriate gummis to draw it close, and a flock of Bit Snipers flutter out from under the eaves, quickly destroyed by well-timed laser shots. The two friends delicately maneuver it out of danger and back toward the warp hole.

They don't talk for a while. As they emerge from the orange-vanilla vortex and are careening past the Coliseum, Leon makes a weak attempt at small talk.

"We should schedule a training session there sometime with Herc. He could learn a lot from you. We all could."

"You can think that, I guess."

"You didn't really mean what you said back there, did you? It's not too late for you. For anybody."

"…I'm not sure. Now that you mention it, things have gotten better. A lot better. I actually…haven't been this hopeful in a long time. …And know who got me back on track?" He chuckles to himself, amazed at life's absurdity. "The kid. That…awkward, dorky, weird little kid. Without him…I might not be here."

"Sora had that effect on all of us, I think. It was so strange to see someone so…open. Obviously he's young, and kind of a doofus—"

"He can be a cocky little shit sometimes."

"That too, but he was so committed. He hadn't been touched by this conflict at all before the Keyblade chose him…and he jumped right in. I've never seen someone become so powerful in so little time, not even Quistis. It was weird to be around someone with that much energy. We were all so tired by that point. And I think he was so effective because he stayed focused. He had a clarity that the rest of us had lost. All he wanted was to find his friends. That was it."

They pull up to the world gate, balloons trailing behind them like ovular victory flags. Leon looks out the window and sees Wonderland framed by a distant nebula.

Cloud initiates landing sequences, and sighs.

"Yeah, that was it."

The gate opens.

In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together;
the leopard will lie down with the baby goat.
The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion,
and a little child will lead them all.

—Isaiah 11:6 (New Living Translation)

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.

—Isaiah 11:6 (New Revised Standard Version)