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Traverse Town was—by nature and necessity—a wayward place. Its streets were a patchwork of bricks and cobblestones salvaged from other worlds. Alleys were lined with driftwood. Lampposts were nothing but scrap metal and beach glass that fused together, crooked and slapdash and lit by an unknown source. It was a makeshift home for a makeshift population.
The town did its honest best to stand upright, but like any living thing, it tired. Ladders sagged. Bricks loosened. Storefront signs developed a lopsided flair. It was a charming mess that amounted to little more than the sum of its parts, but it made the most of what it was given, and Cid Highwind was a man who could respect the hell out of that.
So it struck a nerve when, on his way to the Accessory Shop with a supply crate on his shoulder, he glanced down an alley and saw some redheaded troublemaker pulling apart the driftwood partition between districts. It had already been a miserable excuse for a wall long before she got her hands on it, but it had done its job, and with a surge of defensiveness toward a world whose very existence he resented, Cid barked out, “Hey! The hell you think yer doin’?”
The girl—Kairi, he managed to remember—glanced over her shoulder, both hands still hooked under the wooden panel, which was now hanging on by a few weak fibers. “Nothing,” she said, letting go. The plank, with no tensile strength left to speak of, clattered to the ground, and Kairi gave it a little kick while Cid sighed.
“What, the worlds ain’t fallin’ to pieces fast enough for you? Gotta speed up the process?”
“It was loose.”
“So ya nail it back in place, not rip the whole damn thing—” Cid cut himself off, trying not to swear in front of the kid. He glanced at the driftwood, cast aside once more, and figured the damage was minimal. The world would repurpose it eventually, like always. Kairi clenched and flexed her fingers a few times, then swung her arm, bumping her fist against her leg as she looked for a new way to keep her hands busy. Cid hoisted the crate higher on his shoulder and sighed again.
“Look, if you wanna go tearin’ stuff up so badly…” He patted the side of the crate. “You any good with a crowbar?”
Her eyes lit up, as Cid had expected. He jerked his head toward the shop as he turned around. “C’mon, then. Shake a leg.” He didn’t bother looking back; her comically oversized sneakers echoed in the dim, damp alley as she trotted to catch up.
As it turned out, Kairi was fairly good with a crowbar. What she lacked in upper body strength, she made up for with a willingness to throw her whole body into the task, even kicking off the floor to give herself more leverage. The squeak of nails and the feeling of the wood prying loose was immensely satisfying, though she seemed disappointed that Cid only had one crate to offer up for her destructive appetite. He passed her a mug of hot chocolate instead, which pacified her for the time being. She hopped onto one of the countertops by the far wall, pulling her feet up and crossing her legs while she sipped the drink.
Cid took his post behind the main counter out of habit. He expected Kairi to start chatting up a storm—she’d reminded him so much of Yuffie, right off the bat—but she was quiet. Her hands were still restless, though, tapping against the ceramic mug, producing slightly different tones the more she drank. She laced her fingers together around the body of the mug, squeezed her knuckles, and released them again. When her foot started to bounce, Cid finally broke his rule about minding his own business and said, “Yer a fidgety one, huh?”
Kairi looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was in the room, and then she looked down, stilling her foot. “Not really. It’s just, since I got back…” She ran her thumb over the rim of the mug, piecing her thoughts together. “I think it’s homesickness, mostly,” she said. “I wasn’t feeling it until Hollow Bastion. Probably because I was with Sora the whole time. It only started to sink in when my heart went back—came back,” she corrected herself, and once again her foot bounced, ankle rotating occasionally, tiny gestures to affirm that her body was hers.
Cid rubbed the back of his neck. “Well…I dunno about all that, personally.” He held his hand up when Kairi gave him a dry look. “Not sayin’ you’re fibbing. If that’s what happened, that’s what happened. Just a hard thing to get your head around, hearin’ it secondhand, y’know?”
Kairi stared at her drink again, swirling it gently. “I know. It’s hard enough for me to get my head around it. And I lived it.”
She took a sip of hot chocolate, resuming her silence. Cid had no idea how to handle this type of conversation, and Kairi didn’t seem to want him to. Her laser sights were locked onto something inside herself, too gripping and deep-wired for her to begin to understand, let alone explain.
“Well, homesickness ain’t nothin’ new around here,” Cid said, ignoring the whole heart-hopping thing in favor of a subject he was more qualified to speak about. “And you coulda landed in a worse town, all things considered. Least this place is quiet now, with all those walking suits of armor gone. Got your friend to thank for that—though I guess I don’t need to tell you. Hell, you probably did half the work for him, huh?”
That got a brief snort out of Kairi, but she tapped her shoe on the counter thoughtfully, staring into the fireplace. “I don’t really like this town all that much,” she said. “I mean, it’s fine. But like I said: I miss home.”
“Yeah,” Cid agreed, easily abandoning his own attempt to cheer her up. “Guess no one really likes it here. Kinda the point.”
He’d gotten used to it, of course, over the years. People didn’t tend to like having emptiness inside them. Memory gaps were seamlessly filled in, because a false recollection was better than a void. And the longer they let homesickness chew holes in their hearts—the more time they spent in a place that was distinctly not the world they longed to return to—the more that place began to feel like home anyway.
It was hardest on the kids at first. Yuffie had been so young, so furious, not understanding why they couldn’t just leave. She’d explored the town to the fullest extent by the end of the first week, digging up all of its well-hidden but unguarded secrets. As she entered her teen years, she reclaimed her cheerful, boisterous personality, but Cid had still found her bloodying her knuckles on barrels and kicking dents into trash cans on more than one occasion.
Because, in the end, Traverse Town was a show home at best. Its quaint, unassuming atmosphere was like wallpaper plastered on crumbling drywall and cheap plywood. The neon signs were silent; no electricity ever buzzed in this town. Its borders were unnervingly clear; you were too aware of having bumped up against the edge of the world, even if you couldn’t see past the steep rooftops and bent chimneys. Stargazing was always possible in the constant gloaming, but it was more of a mockery than a soothing pastime. Those who tried it always ended up looking for a star they knew they wouldn’t find.
It was a cozy and placid world, designed entirely to serve its residents. It exuded nostalgia and a quiet, consolatory kind of cheer. But you didn’t find a lot of people letting their gazes turn upward.
“We were gonna sail away, at first.”
Cid looked up, startled by Kairi’s voice as it cut through his moping. “What’s that now?”
Kairi slouched against the wall, tilting her head back. “Before any of this happened, we wanted to get off our island and see the worlds. It was going to be our adventure. So we started building a raft.”
“…you kids were gonna try sailing to another world on a raft?”
“Yep,” Kairi said, still loyal to their original plan in spite of—or perhaps because of—its absurdity. “We had it all figured out. But the thing is, Sora would work for twenty minutes, and then he’d wander off to take a nap on the beach. Our other friend, Riku—he’d blast both of us for being lazy. But as soon as the heavy lifting was done, he’d go sit on the palm tree, trying to look cool, or just spar with the other kids for the rest of the afternoon.”
Cid chuckled, thinking how easily that could’ve been Leon in his early teens, if he hadn’t had to grow up so fast. Kairi smiled fondly to herself. “Sora didn’t mind climbing trees to get coconuts, or running around in the shallows to catch fish. And Riku didn’t mind carrying the logs. But I was the one who designed the raft. I put it all together. I made the supply lists every day. It was my…”
She shook her head and smiled a little wider, but it was too watery a smile to trust, and Cid, who had done his best to keep the conversation light, was now scared to death she was about to cry.
“Sora was the daydreamer,” she went on. “Riku was the fighter. And I just wanted to go on an adventure with my best friends. Now Sora’s off fighting everyone’s battles, and Riku’s lost, and I’m stuck here, doing nothing—in a world that’s not even supposed—”
She cut herself off before her voice cracked, and her hand went to her eyes. As panicked as Cid had been at the idea of her crying, the sight of her rushing to compose herself was a hundred times worse. But even if he knew what to do, the moment to reach out had passed. She was already rubbing her face with the heel of her palm, leaving her cheek relatively dry but twice as splotchy from the friction.
He struggled to think of a way to cheer her up. It wasn’t exactly his forte; the only reason he was so good at handling the other three was because he’d had a decade of practice. But when in doubt, he tended to fall back on his gut instinct, and as long as he wasn’t too hungry, it never failed.
So, with an air of decisiveness, Cid slapped his palm down on the countertop and said, “Hey. Y’ever tinkered with gummi ships before?”
Kairi paused with her fist still pressed to her face. “Um…no? When would I ever have had the…?” She trailed off, noticing the unimpressed look on Cid’s face and finally realizing that his non-sequitur was, in fact, an offer. She lowered her hand and raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Seriously?”
Cid rolled his eyes and held his hand out for the mug. “C’mon.”
Kairi’s eyebrows rose higher, almost disappearing beneath her uneven bangs. She gulped down the rest of her tepid chocolate, grimacing at the congealed layer on the bottom, and then hopped off the counter. She was utterly transformed from the morose girl she’d been a moment ago, waiting eagerly and impatiently while Cid stashed the mug under the counter and grabbed a heavy set of keys. With a bounce in her stride much more suited to someone her age, she followed him out the front door and back into the cool evening air.
Her excitement flatlined when they returned to the alley, armed not with schematics and intergalactic weaponry, but a good old-fashioned hammer and a small tin of nails. Cid made Kairi pick up the piece of driftwood she’d torn down earlier and hold it back up to the wall. “This is where it was before,” she insisted when he told her to lift it higher. Cid raised an eyebrow.
“You wanna make it just like it was, or you wanna make it better?” He tilted his chin up, and with a furrowed brow, Kairi raised the panel so Cid could hammer it in place. He was quick but diligent, testing his handiwork until the board finally held fast. Kairi tested it as well for her own sense of satisfaction, then gathered the loose nails that had fallen between the cobblestones and eluded Cid’s broad fingers.
As he led them to his temporary gummi garage—a small, half-walled area of the First District, just a stone’s throw from the Accessory Shop—Cid warned Kairi that they lacked the materials to build anything functional, let alone cool. “Runnin’ low on spare parts these days,” he said, putting the hammer and nails away while Kairi glanced curiously at the supplies that had been left behind. “Only had enough material for one working ship to begin with, and Sora and those goobers’ve got dibs. Some crap about ‘saving the universe’ or whatever.”
“It’s always excuses with him,” Kairi said, laughing a little as she knelt down to root around the lower shelves.
“Yeah, well. S’long as they bring my ship back in one piece, I’ll be happy.” Cid whistled and waved Kairi over to the simpler blocks, and she rose to her feet with an effortlessness that made him supremely jealous of her youth. But Kairi brushed the dirt off her knees and stood at attention, eyes bright, shoulders back, and Cid, as he so rarely got a chance to do, went into teacher mode. He walked Kairi through the basics of gummi construction, wishing far from the first time that he had access to a real garage. But Kairi was a quick study, retaining information fast and even starting to intuit the purpose of other blocks without waiting for an explanation.
She inspected every available gummi piece, often with her hands clasped behind her back, but occasionally untangling her fingers to pick up an item for a closer look. She was a tactile learner, turning the blocks over and over to examine them from every angle. When she exhausted Cid’s meager inventory, he found a book of old blueprints for her to peruse. He shook the dust off and laid it on the table of what was once an actual workstation, and Kairi pored over the sketches with the obsessive focus of a true engineer, not skipping a single page.
When she reached the final model, Cid found a white pencil and pulled out his pocketknife, whittling a sharper point. “Here,” he said, blowing off the shavings and handing the pencil over. “There’s some blank pages at the end, if you wanna take a crack at designin’ a ship of your own.”
Kairi took the pencil. “Is this your only book?” Cid shrugged, and she started to roll the pencil between her thumb and forefinger. “That’s all right. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
“No shit,” Cid said, tapping the paper twice. “That’s why we practice.” When Kairi hesitated, Cid added, “’s fine. I’ve had my fill of designin’ these things. Just got depressing after a while, not having the materials to make ‘em real.”
Kairi still looked reluctant, but she scribbled the date on the page, then tapped the pencil against it while she contemplated possible designs. Cid crossed his arms and leaned back against the low wall that enclosed his workshop, looking out past the roof to gauge the weather. Rain, like everything else in Traverse Town, was quick to arrive, and often did so without warning. But unlike everything else in Traverse Town, it was just as quick to move on.
“Hey, Cid?”
“Yeah.”
“What was your home like?”
Cid drew back under the roof and glanced at Kairi. She hadn’t looked up from her barebones sketch, but she waited for his answer with clear focus. Cid scratched his elbow and shrugged again. “It was nice,” he said, a little blandly. “Bright, clean. Spacious. Nothin’ like this place, that’s for sure. And probably nothin’ like it is now, if you guys weren’t exaggerating.”
“We weren’t,” Kairi said as she swept the pencil in an arc to create the dome of the cockpit. “What we saw…it’s hard to believe anyone ever lived there.”
“Yeah, I’m amazed the place still exists at all, to be honest. I figured when it fell to darkness, it…y’know, fell to darkness. Totally wiped out.”
Kairi nodded thoughtfully, standing up straight for a moment to get a more complete look at her sketch, and then leaning down to fix up a wing. “I don’t know if it always destroys,” she said. “The darkness…I don’t like it. But I think all it really does in the end is change things.”
She sounded uncomfortable, as if the concept of change were more daunting than total obliteration. “Well, some things’ll always change, I guess,” Cid said easily. “Wish home didn’t, though. Leon’s been talkin’ a lot about fixing it up. I dunno if he realizes what a load of work he’s in for. Always gets ahead of himself like that. But I don’t say nothin’—we’ve all gotta hold onto something while we’re stuck here. Better to be planning than moping.”
Kairi didn’t respond, still adding details to her ship. It was coming along nicely, Cid noted, however impractical some of her design choices may have been. He decided to quiet down and leave her to it, stifling a yawn to keep the toothpick between his teeth. A growl started to brew in his stomach, and he was just about to let his thoughts turn to dinner when Kairi said, “I came from there, you know.”
“What’s that?”
“I—” She seemed to second-guess herself, but her silence gave Cid time to catch up. His jaw went slack, the toothpick threatening to drop after all.
“Wait. From…?”
“…yeah. I mean, I think so. I’m pretty sure.” Kairi took a deep breath and sighed, looking straight ahead now. “I’ve been having these weird feelings for a while. Ever since we left the island. There was so much going on, but every so often, I’d get this…flash. A memory I didn’t realize I’d been holding onto. When we arrived at Hollow Bastion, I still didn’t have enough pieces to put it together. But I felt it.”
“…you’re shittin’ me.”
“I’m not,” Kairi assured him. “I mean, I always knew I wasn’t born on the islands. I could never really remember what came before, but now…I’m sure of it. I felt something in that world that I didn’t feel in any of the others.”
Cid shook his head slowly. “Damn,” he said, regarding Kairi with a new perspective. “Well…you startin’ to remember it better, now that you’ve been there?”
Kairi chewed the inside of her cheek. “Not really,” she admitted. “I remembered the library. I know I’ve been there before. But I can’t remember the world itself.” She tucked a short strand of hair behind her ear, needing a few tries to make it stay. “…could you tell me about it? Anything you can remember?”
Cid frowned—a multipurpose expression for him. This time, it was his thinking face. “Yeah, ‘course. Lessee…well, the castle was the eye-catcher, for sure. Could see that thing from any point in town. It was a nice place to live overall. Nice neighborhoods, nice marketplace. And the fountain courts—those were a busy spot come summertime. Never made much use of ‘em myself. They’d do these light shows in the evening, and during winter, they’d turn ‘em into skating rinks.”
“Sounds fun,” Kairi said, her tone brightening. “I’ve never gone ice skating before.”
“What, seriously?”
“Yeah. Maybe I forgot to mention it, but I’ve been living on a tropical island until very recently.”
Cid snorted. “Fair enough. You definitely gotta stop by once it’s ready, then. We’ll give you the grand tour. Hope you like flowers.”
“I love them.”
“Well, I’m allergic. But the place was famous for its flower gardens. I’m sure Leon’s already accounted for that in those plans of his.”
Kairi was smiling for real now. “It sounds great,” she said, knowing that the images she was conjuring up came from her imagination rather than memories, but finding comfort in them regardless. “Thanks, Cid.”
He nodded once, and part of him wanted to thank her right back. It had been a long time since he’d talked about his home in a specific and concrete way, but with a homecoming finally on the horizon, he felt it had done him some good. He felt it had done Kairi some good, too, until he noticed the pensive pull to her smile. “Y’all right?”
She nodded unconvincingly, and Cid frowned again, this time in disapproval. “C’mon, out with it. What’s eatin’ you?”
Kairi shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“You worried about your friends?”
“Well, duh.”
Cid really couldn’t thank Yuffie enough for building up his tolerance to this kind of unfiltered teenage attitude. “So, what else, then?”
Kairi opened her mouth, paused, then closed it again before she replied. “I wanted to go on an adventure,” she began, speaking slowly so she wouldn’t outpace her thoughts. “But I always imagined that wherever our raft took us, we’d be able to go back to our island, and things would be normal again. But things were already changing before any of this happened, and I didn’t admit it until it was too late. And now, even if we could go back to how it was…” She shifted her jaw. “I just feel like I have no idea what I want anymore.”
Cid scratched the back of his head, his short hair bristling under his fingertips. “Yeah…tough spot, I guess,” he said. “Sounds like your standard teenage woes to me, though, if I’m bein’ honest.”
At Kairi’s indignant look, he rolled his eyes. “Ah, gimme a break,” he said. “Been lookin’ out for the trio here since they were younger’n you. Any problems you’ve got, I’ve heard before, more times than I can count. And look at ‘em now. They’re doin’ all right, aren’t they?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?” Cid repeated, now his turn to take offense. “I mean, don’t tell ‘em I said this or anything, but I think they turned out great. And they’ve been away from home a lot longer than you and your friends.” Cid finally tossed his toothpick aside, unable to speak as passionately as he wanted to with it in his mouth. “Look, this deal sucks. No gettin’ around that fact. But it’s just a big hiccup, in the grand scheme. Those three are gettin’ themselves ready to go home, and soon you and your friends’re gonna do the same.”
“…you think so?”
“Hell,” Cid said, spreading his arms and encompassing all of Traverse Town with the gesture, “why wouldn’t I? You think we got dumped in this crapsack town to stay? We put our time in, and damned if I’m lettin’ any of us settle down here for good. Your friend’s out there making sure we’ve all got worlds to go back to when this is over, so let’s bank on that. I mean, you know him better’n I do,” Cid added. “Think he’ll deliver?”
Kairi’s hand instinctively strayed to her pocket. There was an empty space in it where her lucky charm used to be, but now she carried a promise there instead. “Yeah. He will.” Cid nodded, satisfied with her confidence, especially when she said, “Because he knows he’s in for a knuckle sandwich if he doesn’t.”
“That’s what I like to hear. And speakin’ of sandwiches, let’s get some grub before it starts rainin’ again. C’mon, gimme a hand.”
Kairi helped him put the gummi blocks away, handling the lower shelves for the sake of his knees. When she asked him where to store the book of blueprints, Cid said, “Bring ‘em along. If you help me unload that supply crate, I’ll take a gander at that ship of yours and give you my professional critique. How’s that?”
She nodded, sliding the pencil behind her ear and rolling the papers up. Cid caught a glimpse of the page before it disappeared and chuckled at the word EXCALIBUR scrawled in the corner. “Nice name,” he said. “The magician’ll get a kick outta that.”
“Yeah?” Kairi said, stuffing the blueprints under her arm and following Cid back out to the street.
“Oh yeah. You know, he’s got a place—well, had a place back home. The guy seems to have a little vacation house on every damn world. Nothin’ fancy on the outside, but you never know with that kook. Got more magic in his pantry than there is in the rest of the universe put together.”
“Sounds nice,” Kairi said, taking one and a half steps for each of Cid’s. “I’d like to see it. Not just his house—the whole town, when it’s all fixed up.”
“Hey, feel free to stop by sooner. We’d be happy to put you to work, now that I know you can handle repair jobs. You can get my gummi garage up and running while you’re at it.”
Kairi stuck her tongue out, and Cid chuckled. “In all seriousness,” he went on, “I’m sure Leon’d love to show the place off once it’s nice and shiny again. We’ll figure out a visit for you when we get it lookin’ like it was.”
Kairi gave his arm a quick, light punch. “Better than it was,” she corrected, and Cid elbowed her right back.
“Yeah, yeah, smartass,” he said while Kairi beamed, pleased with herself. “Good to know you learned somethin’ today.”