Chapter Text
The sun over Destiny Islands took ages to set on the longest day Aqua had ever made it through.
That morning, plans were still in motion. Nerves were fraying, tension was high, tears were shed. She’d watched as her successor scrubbed at her eyes with a shaking hand and a stone-faced glare, gripping her Keyblade in her right hand, and watched the way Sora’s hand had claimed her left, probably still wet from tears, and squeeze, hard, until their knuckles were white.
She didn’t know how they’d made it here. They’d been pulled along the docks by those who called it home, elastic minds able to snap right back to reality as they knew it. There was still mud caked on their shoes from the badlands. There was still blood in her hair.
They were walking some kind of practiced path through suburban streets, cuts through backyards, patches of street that were covered in sand from a recent storm surge, following their young (young?) friends home. There were parents, friends, there were tearful reunions, there was food, there were fluffy towels and the first shower Aqua’d had in literal eons, there were new smiles, there were the beginnings of stories that would take days, if not weeks, to tell.
Ventus had disappeared along with Sora. He’d barely turned to flash a grin at Aqua, as if asking permission, before dashing off, joining the others on a spontaneous midnight row over to the children’s island to watch the stars. Aqua knew tomorrow morning she’d probably have to go over there herself and peel several exhausted, sleeping teenagers off the sand. She waved him off.
The mayor, looking frazzled as he had given Kairi a weather-beaten metal cardholder to go claim their boats from the marina, walked back onto the patio where Aqua was finishing a glass of lemonade. The guest room was all set, he’d said. The kids always slept on the couches downstairs when they’d stay overnight. He’d make sure they didn’t make too much noise if they came back late. You two could probably use the time alone, his wife had said, with a wink in her voice. Assumed. Aqua smiled, cheeks burning. Clearing that up would take more words than she’d have the energy to throw together.
Terra was passed out on one of the adirondack chairs on the corner of the wooden deck. He’d made it through most of the gathering, if not a little quiet, wolfing down two plates before tilting his head back and falling asleep, his jaw slackening until he looked only a little bit silly. Aqua nudged the foot of the chair with her boot.
“Can you make it upstairs?”
“Mmmrph.”
“I’m sure an actual bed will give that chair a run for its money.”
Terra’s expression broke at that, laugh lines appearing, and he gave an exhausted sort of exhale that had probably tried its hardest to be a chuckle. He rolled himself forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and hanging his head for a moment, before grunting and levering himself up. Aqua almost felt the need to reach out and grab his hand to guide him so he didn’t walk into any doorframes, but curled her hand against her chest instead. The sky was darkening and the lines were blurring.
If she moved too quickly, trusted too fully, she’d shatter the illusion. That’s all this was, right?
They got upstairs; found the only room with an open door that wasn’t obviously Kairi’s. A queen bed. It looked like a mirage.
Terra, true to form, did actually stumble a little against the doorframe, not expecting Aqua to still be standing in it. He brushed past her, the straps of his suspenders already hanging off his shoulders.
Aqua blinked, sluggishly, as if the sight of a bed had robbed her body of all its muscle tone, the promise of unconsciousness making the rest give up in one long trickle down her body.
She glanced at the bed. It was pushed up against a wall with a window, cracked open to let salty air in, the room a little warm and a ceiling fan lazily pushing it around like the beating of the waves she could hear even from this distance. She glanced at Terra, also clearly a little unsteady with exhaustion, hopping a little as he had stepped inside one leg of his hakama as he’d tried to pull them off.
She swallowed thickly, the fabric of her shirt around her neck suddenly a little too tight, stifling, hyper-aware of the salty humid air and what another human body under a quilt would feel like—
Terra, after one cursory glance in her direction she had barely noticed, had already faceplanted directly onto the far side of the bed, leaving her the spot on the right, in just his undershirt and close-fitting underarmour. His foot was dangling clear off the end of the bed, though he hadn’t quite aimed successfully for the pillow at the top.
She swallowed again. Recoiled from the mirage that was Terra, alive and well, in front of her and foreseeably never to be ripped away from her again. A mirage she’d fallen for dozens of times, eyes closed just like Ven’s, the dozens of times his prone, sleeping form had appeared in front of her just to make things harder, to make it even more tempting to make her next fight the one where she’d finally just lay down and let it happen.
This dream was the most convincing one yet. If she laid down next to him, felt him warm and alive and real, this letdown would be the one that would break her.
Aqua had let herself into the next adjacent room and closed the door before she’d even consciously decided to do it, her eyes burning. Kairi’s room. Kairi wouldn’t be back tonight. It was rude, she chided herself, but it was already done.
She pressed her forehead against the door, hand twitching on the doorknob as the “click” it had made rattled around in her skull. It had felt so final, looking this illusion—this devastatingly realistic illusion—in the eye and choosing to shut the door in its face.
If Terra had noticed, he didn’t follow her. She didn’t know if that was better or worse. It hurt. She knew he was there, just feet away, and so much of her so desperately wanted to hang on to him, to Ven, and never let go, to make up for years lost, just like she'd done the moment they got him back. This didn't make sense. Her body was like a wild thing. Her shoulders tensed, she screwed her eyes shut, trembling all over as she tried to tamp down the instinct to break down sobbing. It was like her body didn’t know what to do with this rapid release of tension, this drastic shift in reality. One day in the sun had not remotely begun to undo ten years in fear.
She kicked her boots off, peeled back Kairi’s covers, pushed herself under, pulling off only what metal pieces prodded at her beneath the blanket and dropping them unceremoniously off the edge of the bed, ignoring how the straps around her ribcage pulled uncomfortably at her as she laid down. She was still shaking. She roughly hugged herself across the chest, grasping at her upper arms too hard, wrestling the feeling away as if it wasn’t in every bone, in every muscle.
Her breathing didn’t slow until long after her body had completely given up the fight, pulling her into sleep, tear tracks dried by the slow beating of the fan.
—
Terra hears the whimpering before he even fully registers where he is.
He lifts his head, disoriented, taking a full few seconds to absorb the beach scene looking down on him from a weathered birch frame until he remembers, wiping his hands down his face and rolling onto his back, every sore muscle screaming at him. He remembers coming in here, but clearly his body had sent his consciousness packing before he’d even decided to lay down
A longer whimper this time.
He’s at the door across the hall in no time, the house dark and silent, even darker than before now that the moon had set. He paused, listening for the sound again. After a moment, it came.
He gently turned the doorknob, pushed inward, saw a writing desk and a handmade mobile before he saw Aqua, knees to her chest under the covers in a small twin bed, wide-eyed and trembling.
“Aqua?” he says, voice low, not sure how far away the mayor and his wife are sleeping.
She looks at him right away, to her credit, shattering the vague fear that he’d walked in on something more frightening.
“Sorry,” she blurts out right away, and she trembles on the end of the word, closing her eyes.
He moves to the side of her bed, kneeling to her level. She’s looking at him with relief, but he can see how prickly her stance is beneath the covers, so coiled in on itself that it might spring out if he were to touch her. It aches more than his battered muscles do. He balls the corner of the blanket in his hand instead.
She’s still shaking, clutching her own wrist, holding it captive against her chest as if she’ll be ready for it if it lashes out without her permission. He watches as she screws her eyes shut, then opens them wide again, the darkness waiting behind her eyelids still too soon, too close to home.
“I get it,” he says quietly.
His knee is starting to ache against the wooden slats of the floor. He pivots away from her, coming to rest with his back against the side of the bed, pulling one knee up to rest his elbow. He tilts his head back to rest it on the edge of the mattress, the adrenaline of rushing to her ebbing in the wake of the three-something AM glaring bright and red on the nightstand next to the bed.
“If something comes for you, it’ll have to get through me first,” he says to the door.
Aqua says nothing, but he hears a few less hitches in her breath, then only the soft, even rustle of the hair on the back of his head as she sleeps.
—
He sleeps, but not well. When he stirs, his shoulderblade aches, his fingers asleep from resting his wristbone on his knee, his body at attention for…two hours, he sees, glancing at the alarm clock. He is careful not to groan as he unfolds his body, cracks his neck, stands as carefully as he can. It’s been long enough that the sky is a dusky grey.
Aqua deserves the dignity of waking alone.
When she wakes, the first of the sunbeams glaring through unshaded windows, she sees the open door, the other one against the hall, the edge of Terra’s leg, having passed out directly on top of the covers. If she inhales, his scent is still on the quilt near her hand, finally unfolded and resting on the bed, fingernail marks like crescent moons in her palms.