when the day turns to night and you run out of candles to burn

[dark_rescue]

Lea still isn't sure what to make of the whole situation. By this time he'd heard so much about Master Aqua this and Master Aqua that that he practically felt like he'd known her, despite the fact that they'd never met. Finding her in the Realm of Darkness with that silver hair and those sick, sallow yellow eyes, though, had shaken him. It had been hard enough to see Isa a fallen vessel of Xehanort, but if someone so devoted to the light as Aqua--the paradigm of all that was good and pure about Keyblade Masters--could fall to the Darkness, then is there any hope of winning this war at all?

He doesn't want to think about it, and in the end, they had managed to help Aqua regain enough of herself that she wasn't lost to Xehanort's control anymore. At least, it seems that way. She's been asleep most of the time since they returned anyway, but at least her eyes had been... more green than gold, last he'd checked. It was progress, but there had still been a guard outside the door to her room in the tower from the moment they'd returned. Lea doesn't mind taking a shift, but he can't deny a little nervousness. If Yen Sid's stories are even half-true, he's pretty sure he won't stand a chance against her if Xehanort's influence regains control and she decides she wants to destroy them all, but he doesn't want to think about that, either.

Sitting backwards in a chair outside her room, Lea rests his arms on the back of it and pillows his chin on them with a sigh. He's only half an hour into this guard shift, and he's already bored.