The flow of time is always cruel...

“...”

“If you look at the raw data,” A voice from afar calls back, “You would know that’s not true and that I’ve defeated Eraqus a number of times.”

Oh dear. Silence. 

He’s heard that one before, especially from ones who couldn’t comprehend brillance.

Riku hadn’t expected to find the apprentice here. Honestly he had not expected to see much of the man at all, rather anticipated avoiding him all-together. The sight of him had been enough to pull a scowl onto his face even if… well. There was little forgiving what kind of pain Xehanort had inflicted before finally handing over the Χ-blade. Riku could live with it but it didn’t make it better. 

Xeha wasn’t wrong either. These days Riku seemed to be walking around with a frown in some way. Thoughtful, worried or stressed, it all ended up pulling his face into firm lines. He almost couldn’t remember the last time he actually smiled. 

Genuinely anyway. Now the expression became a sardonic smirk as he crossed his arms, shoulder leaning on the doorjamb. 

“I’m just trying to figure out why they let you here unsupervised.” Riku cawed back. “You have a tendency to hide things. Especially on that.” A gesture flicked to indicate the computer.

“I have my ways.” He hummed. He went back to what he was doing with a surprisingly playful point at himself, “After all, my unique conundrum does present itself as an interesting point of study, wouldn’t you agree? A boy of a man supposed to be dead torn from time who managed to make his way into a replica at the cost of a few memories. Very few people can offer the sort of studies I can.”

Perhaps he was scared of Riku, or perhaps he was just bored of copying notes, but he turned back to the other, “And besides, we’re all men of science here. Curious about what the heart holds and what laws bind us to this multi-layered reality.”

He grabbed his notebook and set it on his lap, mindful to leave space for a corridor to escape if needed. Tension was something he knew to navigate, but preferred to avoid it if unecessary, after all.

“Wha-I was just looking for a book! You started talking to me first moro!”The Nobody growled, glaring at the back of the other’s head for a second, considering the consequences of punching him.

But.. it wasn’t worth it, even of there was no consequences from others. It would just earn a fight and no answers for his curiosity.

Besides, that flash of indignation subsided almost immediately after he quit contemplating violence. Instead, he took a few quiet steps closer in an attempt to see what the small Xehanort was using to navigate. Unfortunately for him..the map made no sense to the Nobody. Nor did the mutters that had prefaced the other’s remark.

Pretty much the only thing he could tell was that the energy coming from the sitting silver was…odd. Strong like he was focused, but frayed like…like stress of some sort? At least that was the blond’s guess. Either way, he ignored the warning about the difficulty of the task if the other wasn’t concentrating.

“Why do you need the sun to set?” Was it too hot? Or maybe it was navigating to something that could only be found at night. No that didn’t make any sense.

“You approached, I assumed you would want to talk.” He shot a glare over his shoulder, “After all, I must say you’re part of a saccharinely extroverted crowd that I request not to partake in, it’s a very easy conclusion to make.”

He charted another star... Or one he figured would be there. It was hard without a sky for reference. He double checked the angles, the previous stars he’d placed. Xeha began charting another line and another world, mindlessly hoping he’d remember the coordinates of- Somewhere. Somewhere he couldn’t wrap his head around.

He wasn’t sure if it was wanderlust or deja vu that provoked him.

“It’s a very old form of navigation between worlds that relies on the stars. I can’t do that when the blasted sun is in the sky and blocking out their light.”

      “Hm…?”

      She looked up from her page, letting the hardback envelop her lap. Had the doll been any other toy, then Amber might have had trouble opening it. But there she was, shy of two feet tall with a book whose height reached maybe half that size. Though she couldn’t place it, it was hard to brush off that deja vu.

      “I— I’ve been awake for a while, yes.” ‘Sleeping’, ‘haven’t figured it out’, there were plenty of ways one could put it. With a small nod, she noticed that the ‘doll’ was rather articulated — however, he was clearly smaller than the jointed ones she knew. Feeling put on the spot, she tried to direct a question of her own. “You’re not a toy from Verum Rex, correct?”

Yes, it truly did seem that the doll he’d heard of had figured out her proper bearings as toys were prone to in this world. It was fascinating, curious, to think that something so simple and lifeless contained something so... privileged. Across a number of worlds, it was apparent that not everything could live, let alone think and act like a human.

“No, I’m not a toy. I hope you can tell I’m a little more sophisticated than that.” It was a frightfully dull question, but her mind was perhaps frightfully dull, as well. After all, if she couldn’t wander much beyond her little toybox, there wasn’t much to learn, was there?

Sifting through books to find something which piqued his interest resulted in him finding an…unexpected form. A person whose energy made his skin prickle with immense discomfort. However that discomfort was replaced by curiosity as cerulean eyes caught sight of the loose papers. Of course..he stayed wary, trying not to make a sound and stayed tense. But curiosity drew him closer than he would like to the other.

“Huh?” Getting huffed at drew his attention to how close he’d drawn, which drew a silent hiss from the Nobody as he walked backwards. “You started the conversation asshole.” It was easier to snap than to get embarrassed that he was caught. Although…

“..what are you looking at?” The question was quiet, like he didn’t entirely want to let it into the air. But his curiosity had always been a weak point of his.

“This isn’t a conversation so much as a preemptive warning that I don’t like wasting my time.” Xeha snapped right back. “Especially when I’m attending to my own business.”

He squinted at his map, then drew a few lines and muttered under his breath about the directions he tried to recall. “North from here... Southwest from there...” He was still missing so much information. His apprenticeship wasn’t even that long ago, the larger picture of time itself considered, and yet...

Using Dark Corridors was dangerous and reckless, as many argued, but it made for such ideal travel. Nothing but the stench of darkness left behind, if he was careful enough to hide his tracks. Which he was! He knew how to read a room, leave behind barely a trace or nothing at all.

He just didn’t expect the Land of Departure’s library to be currently occupied at the moment. He froze for a moment, caught off guard, but quickly recovered and moved over to the shelf he had planned to browse. He didn’t feel like waiting for the other to start scolding him if they had caught on this wasn’t his first time doing such, or for their permission, and if they were going to do their damnedest to kick him out then he had a very small time frame he couldn’t waste with gawking.

Xeha riffled through a number of Even’s notes he’d nosed his way into reviewing and archiving for him and the other apprentices. His methodology was careful and studious, writing out highlights of every page’s information in his notebook first before quickly typing up the transcription into the computer’s file so he could move onto the next.

Copying the notes for his personal study wasn’t necessarily condoned, or explicitly part of the initial agreement, but it was a lot of information he would be a fool to turn his nose at. He wrapped up the last sentence of his notes, and stopped when he saw a reflection in the computer’s screen.

He shuffled papers around. A number of books borrowed from a number of libraries, the only common thread being they were all open to star charts. A messy recreation was scribbled onto loose papers, accounting for other stars and scribblings of names.

There were bits and bobs that didn’t quite align in his mind at times, but if there was anything that stood out in his memory starkly enough, it was this odd little world full of toys... And his unfinished observations. It was a strange place to him, to think that toys could gain hearts and sentience to rival his own.