A/N:
Disclaimer – I do not own the Kingdom Hearts video game series or associate with any of its creators/owners. If I did, trust me; I would not be pretending to be a fanfiction writer. I also do not intend to get any sort of monetary gain from this one-shot.
This little fic is dedicated to one of my friends on fanfiction.net, Stella Stargaze.
. . .
Stargazing.
. . .
Sora rolled over in his bed, wide-awake.
He didn't know why he couldn't sleep. It was the first night of peace, of calm, of not having to worry about Xehanort and his evil, dastardly plans with his other twelve selves. It was done. Finished. Zilch. He should've passed out on the bed as soon as he flopped onto it. Instead, it was like his brain decided to work on overtime, imagining scenarios where it turned out that Xehanort totally wasn't dead after all and they had to fight him again, or having Lea burst into the castle shouting that Isa randomly went into berserk mode ranting about a reunion, or the Land of Departure suddenly being swamped by Heartless.
Or, or, or. What if's.
It felt like this journey had started an eternity ago, not less than three years. It was as if Sora had been born a teenage Keybearer knowing nothing else but fighting against the forces of darkness. For so long, he had dreamed of returning to that old life of a carefree islander with his friends. Things would be different, of course – he wouldn't abandon King Mickey and the others – but overall, the idea of dipping his feet in ocean water and dozing on the beach... it had been his greatest wish.
Why then, did he feel so restless? His fingers itched. He could feel the power of the Keyblade just under the surface.
Sora sighed and sat up, rubbing his right hand.
Maybe it was his room. Instead of sleeping at his house back at Destiny Islands like he always imagined, he was in his newly appropriated room at the Land of Departure. Terra and Aqua had offered them here as a place to stay, one that would be proper training grounds. They did have a lot to learn from actual Keybearing lessons instead of the winging-it Sora was used to. Of course, at the time, he hadn't thought of this reaction.
Still rubbing his hand absently, he got up on his knees and brushed the curtains back from the bedside window.
It was pure nighttime, the faint, warm yellow light of the lanterns outside the only illumination. He could almost hear the crickets chirping.
A flash at the corner of his eyes caught Sora's attention. He turned his gaze upwards.
His room promptly exploded with noise.
. . .
"Meteor shower!"
Riku's eyes flew open as his door did the same with a bang.
Before he could summon his Keyblade in surprise, Sora's head popped into existence above his own. He was baring an almost terrifying grin of joy. Whelp. There went his blessed sleep. "Meteor shower, Riku!" he shouted right into his ear.
He winced. "Ow, what the heck, Sora?"
"It's a meteor shower!" His friend ran off into the hall, waving his arms around.
It took a moment of pure bemusement for it to sink in.
Riku eventually let out a long-suffering sigh, though he couldn't resist the smile. "Well. Can't leave Sora alone; with his luck, he'll get hit by a meteor."
. . .
"Meteor shower!"
Kairi yelped as she was jolted awake by a large, heavy object landing on her bed. She turned her head to discover that the large, heavy object was Sora. He shook her shoulders. "Meteor shower, Kairi!"
"I'm awake, I'm awake!" she exclaimed, grabbing her friend's arms.
"Meteor shower!" he shouted again. His happiness was terribly infectious; before she knew it, Kairi found herself grinning almost as widely as him.
"Yeah, I heard you, Sora."
"Meteor shower!" He virtually leapt right off her bed and ran back out.
She had lain there for a few more minutes in happily puzzled, half-drowsy surprise before Riku came by her open door. He peeked in, looking a bit relieved when he saw that Kairi was still in bed.
"Which direction did he go?" he asked.
"He turned left a few minutes ago," she responded.
. . .
Sora came across Ven in the hall as he was running.
"It's a meteor shower, Ven!" he shouted at him, pausing in the hall.
The blond stopped as well. "Yep, it's a meteor shower!" he happily shouted back.
"Meteor shower!" they whooped in unison.
The two grinned at each other.
"Have you gotten Terra and Aqua up yet?" Sora asked.
"I was just about to."
"How about I join you then?"
. . .
Kairi found her two friends up on the mountainside cliff.
"It smells like singed hair," she commented.
"Yep." Sora offered no explanation.
She shook her head, smiling, and sat down beside him and Riku on the cliff. They quietly gazed at the night sky for a while, enjoying the unspoken sense of comfort. Bright white meteors streaked through the stars.
"Hey, Riku," Sora finally began.
"Hmm?"
"Have you thought about what's going to happen to us next?"
Riku tapped his chin thoughtfully. "We're going to train with Terra, Aqua, and Ven. I'll be working on deciphering Ansem's research. You and Kairi will probably work on getting your Nobodies their own bodies and getting a Master status, with the occasional make-out session in between."
"Hey!" they both said, casting him offended looks.
"What?" He shrugged. "I'm pretty sure a blind man could see how much you guys make googly eyes at each other. The only unknown here is when it's going to happen."
Sora and Kairi glanced at each other, both rolling their eyes.
"But that's not what I mean," Sora eventually replied. "Like, what about when everything's over?"
"Everything?" Riku snorted. "We're Keyblade Wielders. I don't think our problems will ever be over completely."
"Right." Sora looked up at the stars. He didn't know if Riku was right, but he found himself satisfied anyway. Feeling a crick in his neck start to form, he flopped back onto the grass and stuck his hands under his head. "Come on, guys, you can see the meteor shower a lot better like this."
Kairi followed suit first, stretching out her arms. "The grass feels so nice," she commented with a smile. "Cool, and it's not wet. Get down, Riku, don't be a killjoy."
"Yeah, yeah." Riku chuckled and lay down. The three turned their gazes to the stars.
. . .
Terra jogged up to his friends at the end of the path.
"What's up, guys?" he asked, stopping by them. "Our apprentices –" Gods, was that a weird thing to say. "– are already there. I thought I was going to be the late one."
"It's just..." Ven's voice trailed.
"The last time we were up here," Aqua finished. She looked down towards the cliff where their new students were, face reluctant. She held her hands in front of her waist, clasped together. "It was the last night we spent together before... everything started."
"Oh." With that new thought, the look of the cliff suddenly became much more forbidding to Terra. "Oh, yeah."
Out of habit, he took out his glass charm. He always had it on him; in fact, you would probably have to fight him to take it away these days. Terra tilted the orange-yellow star around, studying the effects the lantern light had on it. The silver edges glinted.
"You know," he eventually began. He looked up at his friends, finding himself unsurprised to see them watching him. "Everything that happened, it was terrible. We missed over a dozen years of life. Xehanort brought a lot of darkness to the worlds because we failed to stop him. But the only thing I regret is the pain I caused." He was astonished to find that he was telling the truth. Terra fingered his charm, trying to find the words.
"If I got a chance to do it over again, I wouldn't – couldn't – change a thing. I made the best choices I could at the time, and you guys did too. It wasn't wholly my fault that I fell for Xehanort's lies; he was a clever old man who knew me better than I did. Neither of us had any idea what was really going on until it was too late." He shook his head. "I'm getting off-track. My point, I guess, is that what we went through helped make everyone stronger while the bad guys got defeated. With that outcome, how can we hate what happened?
"Yeah, a lot of people got hurt because of it. Even killed... But at the very least, that didn't happen because we went to watch a meteor shower on our favorite cliff." Terra smiled at them. It only became more genuine when he saw Ven's smile back and Aqua's tears. "It's all over. Going up there again isn't going to make Xehanort come back to life."
"It's all over," Aqua repeated in a whisper. She wiped at her eyes. "I hope you're right, Terra."
"Come on, Aqua, you know he's right!" Ven beamed at her and tugged on her sleeve. His somber mood had evaporated like mist in the daylight. "Terra knows everything these days." He then brought his hand up by his mouth like a screen and whispered loudly to her, enough that Terra could hear. "Except how to keep a girl from crying, apparently."
Terra snorted at their titters. "That's not even funny." More quietly, he added, "But he has a point. Sorry, Aqua."
"Oh no, it's fine, Terra." She sniffed a little more, rubbing her eyes. "It just made me think... you wouldn't have been able to say anything like that before all of this happened. I half thought you were just going to drag us over there."
"What, I couldn't say anything sappy and sweet before?" He put a hand over his heart. It took a moment for him to realize that he still had his charm gripped in that one. "I take offense to that."
Ven attempted to stifle a grin.
"You're probably right though," he added, after seeing Aqua open her mouth to reply. "Me, being deep? I surprised myself too." Terra showed her his charm again. "I bet it's the magic you worked on this – helping an annoying, thoughtless jock grow into a nice person. You could make munny with that."
Aqua smiled at the last part. "You were a nice person before, too, Terra," she said quietly. "Don't get me wrong." She paused. "But I guess you did have a thicker skull."
The three looked at each other with smiles on their faces.
"Hey, guys!"
They turned to see Sora waving at them frantically. The others had finally spotted them.
"What are you doing over there?" he shouted. "Come and watch the meteor shower with us!"
Terra eyed his friends with a grin and a half-shrug. "Well, we can't just stand here now, can we?" His words held a hidden challenge.
Ven winked at him in an affirmative.
He nodded and dropped his voice down to a whisper. "If you don't come with us, Aqua, I will not only drag you this time, I will carry you over my shoulder like a disobedient kid." It would've been more threatening if Terra had managed to hide the teasing smile on his face. "Promise."
Aqua shook her head, smiling helplessly. "No need for the threat, Terra, I'm coming. It would be impolite to reject their invitation now."
"Glad to know you've seen reason." He held out a hand to her.
She rolled her eyes. But she took it.
"Alright, now come on," Ven said impatiently. He turned to Sora and the others, calling out to them. "We're coming!"
Sora held out a thumbs-up in response.
. . .
That morning, after the meteor shower was over, Sora finally managed to sleep.