Under the Star-Filled Sky

There was a time when they had been together. It felt centuries behind them.  They'd stared up at the starry sky and smiled, because they thought nothing could ever change.  Terra and Aqua had hung back a little, knowing that tomorrow would change them, but not quite sure of how. But the calm air brushing their cheeks and the quiet voice of the wind echoing in their ears convinced them that, somehow, things would be alright. That they would be together. Terra, Aqua, Ventus. Under the star-filled sky.

That night had been the last time they'd looked up at the sky together.
---
Looking back, Ventus wondered where it had started to fray and then unravel.

He walked along the cobbled streets, the hollow echo of his footsteps the only sound to keep him company. Despite there being no one out on the streets so late at night, the streetlights poured out their artificial imitation of sunshine. It flowed from the long black poles, a dull yellow stark against the shadows. He hopped from one pool of lamplight to another, making a game of it.

Ten points if he made it. Five if he just barely missed the outskirts. One lonely point if he was way off.
His hair bounced into his eyes, chopping off his view in little snippets. Tiredness tugged at the corners of his vision, softening the edges of the world. The loneliness was what kept him awake.
He spent his days chasing echoes of Terra's voice that bounced off street corners and flashes of blue reflected in shop front windows. Sometimes he would catch up with them. The way the two of them looked down at him as if he were a child and they were grown-ups who knew all the secrets in the universe bothered him.

Aqua kept telling him to go home. Terra just walked away. Ventus always ran after them, shouting and reaching. He was starting to think they didn't want him around anymore.

He leapt across the gap, scrambling to make the jump. Five points.

He wondered what he was supposed to do without Terra and Aqua. He was a lost, like a child in a raging sea, clinging to memories of the only life he'd known. The only one he remembered, at least.
There was no home. No lingering scents of home cooking. No warm, motherly arms around him. No lullabies before he fell asleep at night. Only Terra and Aqua.

He remembered when Aqua used to smile and Terra would laugh. He clutched his lucky charm in his hand. It dug deeply into his palm. He didn't mind that it hurt. He didn't want to let it go. Didn't want to see it shattered on the ground.

He liked the way the green light danced on his fingers. He liked the feel of glass against his skin.
Aqua had said that somewhere there was a star-shaped fruit and that its magic connected people. She said their lucky charms connected them. With all his heart, he wanted to believe that. But he didn't think he had enough to.

Sometimes he felt empty. All alone. As if his heart wasn't completely there. At those times, he would smile to make himself feel better. Play a little game to distract himself.

Ventus didn't want them to be connected by some invisible thread. He wanted them to be together. Being connected and all alone meant that every night he looked up at the sky, he realized that there was no one at all to keep him company.

He took a quick look at the sky. The light from the street lamps and buildings obscured the stars. There was barely more than a handful spread across the sky.

He jumped again, missing the pool of weak lamplight completely.

One point.
---

It was those scraps of light that kept him alive. Tiny lights like stars that lit the way. Those small lights encouraged him. Terra searched for little sparks of light in the darkness to keep him sane.
Light squeezing through the long cracks under locked doors.  Light pouring over open fields. Light dancing on the waves as they pulled in and out of the shore.

His favorite was the light that spread from wide windows, revealing trails of dust hanging in the air. Bars of gold falling to the floor. He loved to walk alongside windows. He would reach out and slip a hand into the light, stirring up the dust and sending long shadows across the floor.

That night there were no luxuriously long halls with wide windows spilling light on hardwood floors. He wondered if there had ever been.  

There was not a single star peeking out from behind the dark clouds that night. He was stretched out on the grass, languishing under the sky's endless black umbrella

It was strange how the grass seemed greener in the darkness. It almost radiated, stark against the shadows hanging over it, twisting around it, and hiding in between individual blades.

His eyes, thoroughly accustomed to the dark, were searching for scraps or bits or loose ends of light. Hoping to find light carelessly tossed across the wet grass. Light that no one wanted anymore.
Terra had always sought a light that he could call his own.

Something half in darkness. Something lost and all alone in the waves of black.

He sat up a moment, breathing in the clean air, the scent of grass. His head hung lazily to one side. He was listening to the crickets. One note played again and again. Played in and out, upside-down and right-side up, interwoven with itself. Like stars stitched into the darkness.

Could sounds create light?

He fell back, the grass soft, wet and fragrant. It cushioned head, tickled his neck and pressed up comfortingly against his back. His odd friend who glowed in the night.

He slipped his lucky charm out of his pocket. He rubbed his thumb over the soft, glassy surface of his portable star. He loved the gentle glow that the charm emitted in the light. Like yellow sunshine from wide windows. He could see it in his mind's eye.

He closed his eyes, pretending there was one bright star shinning against the darkness behind his eyelids.

No, there had to be two. Two brilliant stars.

Starlight, star bright, the old, half-forgotten childhood rhyme floated across Terra's mind, I wish I may, I wish I might have my friends back with me tonight.
---
Aqua couldn't help watching those two boys.

The one with hair poking out from his head wildly, a smile his constant companion. There was an older boy who he whiled away his days with. One with silver hair framing his childish cheeks whose eyes had already developed a strange, distant gleam. The two ran around in circles, never bored of their simple games.

She couldn't help but watch them, the slightest smile forming on her lips. She envisioned Terra and Ventus running along the beach, laughing with water dripping from their hair. She imagined for them a lifetime of days spent lying on the sandy shores with that golden sun warming their shoulders.  
She could have cried, but wouldn't. She'd chosen to be a Keyblade Master. She was the one who had given up a life of lazing about with friends in exchange for the glory that came with becoming a hero.
The boys were watching the stars, sitting side by side with the waves at their feet. Ventus waved his hands in the air, trying to find constellations. Terra sat back coolly, his arms crossed, occasionally releasing a hand to point out a cluster of stars. They whispered to each other, lost in their world of childish dreaming.

Aqua's eyes were drawn to the sky. She wasn't sure if she had seen so many stars crammed into the sky before. The waves glimmered with starlight. The sea-foam at her feet could have been stardust.
Her fingers wrapped around her star-shaped lucky charm. She half-smiled, looking down at the little trinket. It glimmered with starshine. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, like a child making a wish on a shooting star.

But shooting stars are merely broken worlds. She knew that now.

The wind stirred her hair, blue waves against an ivory shore. Her heart remained still and broken.
She missed the days when things had made sense. Everything was twisted up, confused.
Why did things have to be like this? She lamented, staring at the black and blue blur that was the ocean meeting the sky.

She was fascinated by that star-shaped fruit. The boys had called it the paopu fruit when she had asked, just to quell her curiosity. Her little charm looked nothing like it. A poor imitation. Surely it could not twist souls together for all eternity.

She had wanted to emulate that connecting power. She wanted to be the one that held them all together, but she knew she couldn't stretch far enough to bridge the caverns growing between them.

She couldn't stop them from falling apart.

She had made up the magic she called connection. She muttered a strange prayer over the charms, hoping they would weather the storms. The wind, rain, tsunamis. An umbrella to shelter them. A rope to hold them together.

She liked to pretend they would always have each other. A sad smile, almost a grimace, unsettled her features. She knew the truth.

There are no fairytales. Only lonely nights full of stars that don't grant any wishes.

Magic couldn't keep them together.

She was starting to wonder if Terra and Ventus even saw the same sky she did anymore.
---
Three hands clung to their last connection. Three pairs of weary eyes stared up at the sky, wondering why. Three tired sighs hung in the air and three lonely voices called across oceans "I wish you were here."