Another small oneshot written a few months ago. Inspired by the Vietnam novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

The Things He Carried

-o-o-

Late at night when Donald and Goofy were fast asleep, Sora would sit under the stars by himself and remember. He carried very few possessions that weren't used for battle, but unlike the vials of potions and synthesizing materials, he carried these things close to his heart.

His necklace was one. He tried to never take it off because it made him feel closer to home, and when it was absent, he felt like he'd never see those blue waves or sandy shores again. Sometimes, when he felt lonely or nostalgic, he would find himself reaching for the necklace, and he would trace his fingers over each point of the crown, and think about what that number represented for him.

Three. Three to the trinity: Sora, Donald, Goofy. Three parts to a whole: Heart, body, soul. Three types of enemy: Human, Heartless, Nobody. Three shades, not just black and white: Light, Darkness, and the In-Between. Three best friends: Sora, Riku, Kairi.

Kairi. The second and last thing from home that Sora carried actually belonged to Kairi. Her good luck charm, woven together from Thalassa shells she herself had found on the beach back home. Her face was painted on one side, and Sora's was on the other, and whenever he studied the good luck charm, he wondered where the third best friend was.

But there couldn't be three sides to a coin, and so Riku was absent from the Thalassa shell charm. Sora couldn't help remembering the day before Destiny Islands had fallen apart, when he had etched that paopu fruit into the secret place's wall. Riku hadn't been a part of that, either. When Sora thought about things like that, he felt like he could sort of understand where Riku went wrong and why he had done the things he had. He had been afraid of being left out.

And when Sora did think about things like that, he felt an ache in his chest, a pressure on his heart, and a stinging in his eyes, but he never cried. He just missed home. He missed acting silly with Tidus and Selphie and Wakka, he missed his mom's home-cooked food, and he especially missed Kairi's sweet smiles and Riku's rich laughter.

He knew, though, that Kairi was somewhere safe at home, and Riku was still out there somewhere, and so he fought for them. He fought to protect Kairi's sanctuary, he fought to be reunited with Riku.

He missed his other friends, too. Another thing he carried was a photo a friendly Moogle had taken of him and the Traverse Town crew in the small house in Third District. He was standing in the middle of the group with Yuffie hanging on his shoulders and giving him bunny ears, while Cid stood to the side, grinning at them. Leon had his arms crossed and was faintly smiling in their direction as if not realizing he was, and next to him, Aerith sweetly smiled as well, her hands clasped in front of her as she looked at the camera.

All of them were back in Hollow Bastion now, rebuilding their once lost world and trying to pick up the pieces of their lost lives. Sora would think about how far they had all come, after nine years living in a state of limbo while waiting for a keyblade master to show up, to the hope they had all regained because of Sora's efforts. They were another reason for Sora to keep fighting.

He kept the photo tucked away with three scraps of paper, each of them also important to him but useless in battle.

The first was a letter from King Mickey, and whenever Sora reread it, he would feel a certain confidence that neither Donald nor Goofy could give him. They weren't keyblade masters like he was. Mickey, however, knew what he was going through. As long as King Mickey had his back, he felt as if he could fight forever.

The second was a tiny torn page from Jiminy's journal, and it had only two words on it. Thank Naminé. Sora couldn't remember how that got there or even who Naminé was or how he or she was important enough to thank, but he kept the tiny page to remember that he should remember to thank him or her anyway.

The last scrap of paper was something he had done himself. It was a drawn portrait of Riku, and even though he couldn't remember where it had come from or when he had done it, Sora knew he had drawn it because it carried traces of his not-so-great art style. The silly portrait made him smile, though, wherever it had come from, and sometimes, on the back of the paper, he would try to draw other portraits to test himself. He'd try to draw Riku again, or Kairi, sometimes his mom and his other friends, just to see if he could remember their faces.

Most of the time, he realized, he couldn't remember them well enough. He could remember certain ways their hair fell or the way they wore their clothes or the colors of their eyes, but he rarely remembered their faces in detail, as if a haziness took over whenever he tried to picture them in his mind's eye.

Along with a short, nervously-bitten pencil, that page of portraits was the last thing he carried. Each of those items carried a special place in his heart and made him remember the reasons he continued to fight. He took care to make sure he never lost any of them, those mementos of home, those mementos of the places he'd been, those fragments of who he was and who he used to be.

And late at night when Donald and Goofy were fast asleep, Sora would sit under the stars by himself and go through each of these special things he carried, and he would try to remember what it was like to be a kid.