I think this should be the final redesign of the corrupted Comestible Aqua. I tried to make the previous one similar to Anti-Aqua, but the colors didnt clash well so I tried something a little simple but familair here.
The data greeting actually took me forever to do but I had it planned from the start. The comments I just came up with real quick, I was just happy to finish the data greeting pic.
Pairing: Terranort x Anti-Aqua
Rating: M
Word Count: 4,457
Summary: If light won’t give Aqua her family back, she’ll use darkness to free them instead. There’s just one problem: him.
Read on AO3
A/N: Happy TWO-YEAR fic anniversary to me!! I’m releasing this a week ahead of the big day, I was just too excited to keep it to myself. This is such a rarepair (strangely? WHYYYY) and it’s exhilarating and liberating to get on something different! It’s an Enemies to Friends to Lovers fic and it’s such a scary thing to work on. I need to thank my two betas: @steadyknight who is my sharper edge and will push me to my limits, and @lyssala who is my soft embrace and will keep me hopeful. Together, they balance this piece out and without them, I would not have the courage to post this. Thank you both so much for your insight, encouragement, and critiques. ;-; ;-; ;-;
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Laced With Nitroglycerine
If she asks anyone in the world whether she exists, they’d say no - they don’t remember her, after all. They don’t even know why she disappeared in the first place, nor do they want to.
At least, no one today remembers her. She led a whole life a long time ago, and she spent twelve years recounting those memories like they were printed in a book, word for word. Each one of her loved ones has a text of their own, and if she had her way, she’d have them all on a shelf along with hers, together.
But there are empty spots on her shelf now. One is dead.
Another is sleeping, and she can’t retrieve him without the right key, unless she risks losing her mind.
The last one is unaccounted for.
So she traces her steps like she’s reading backwards, and watches people from places they don’t notice: within the cracks in between cobblestone, where they step on her; by the dumpster, where they abandon waste all over her, never realizing they’re burying her; under the storm drain, where they don’t bother to look; inside of closets, where they’re too preoccupied to peek.
After hours of eavesdropping useless conversation, she decides staying in Radiant Garden isn’t worth her trouble. She leaves, heading nowhere until she’s distant enough to wonder where she belongs.
Nowhere is a wasteland, with only a graveyard. And a man.
When the man sees her coming, he’s delighted to see her again, the way a child imagines a demon would be: lips curled, showing both rows of teeth, and a hungry glare where she’s the feast.
He looks the same, but he doesn’t, golden eyes ambered and deep which pierce through her. His hair is whiter than the sun - there’s no denying his presence, even yards away in the middle of an unmarked Keyblade burial site.
"All worlds begin in darkness, and all so end. The heart is no different - such is its nature. In the end, every heart returns to the darkness whence it came."
These are his first words to her, rich and smooth like the hum of a distant earthquake.
His glee cackles, an indication that he is no different from the very last moment she's seen him and that he has changed in every single way imaginable.
“I fell into darkness for you,” she says, her voice icy.
“Come again?”
She doesn’t lend a second for thought. He will not play dumb today. He will take responsibility.
Gliding across the sand, Master Aqua whips out a Keyblade - tacky blue slamming against ornate silver, her ugly Keyblade bouncing off of his as he knocks her back.
He sneers when he glances at her weapon. “Interesting choice for plunder.”
She grunts. She shrieks. She won’t give him a chance to talk (who cares what she stole?). Aqua slams her Keyblade against his, again and again and again. He’s going to take responsibility for leaving her behind. She will make it hurt.
He parries, sliding his blade up against hers to throw her off balance. Then he steps forward, and disappears in a puff of smoke. Pops back up, too close for comfort and erasing the space between them.
Close enough to grab her. Enough to take a faint whiff of cologne every time he takes a massive swing of his heavy Keyblade.
She dodges, floats, kicks dirt in his face - anything to break the air between them but still he comes charging at her, chest open for a strike and yet he gets too near to allow her a clear shot.
Like he knows she wants to. He knows what his weaknesses are and leaving his body exposed isn’t one of them.
Damn him.
They trade blows, metal to metal in beats and uppercuts, always blocked, clanking away and making enough noise to wake the dead.
Then without warning, he lurches back to keep his distance, strutting her in circles like he’s the predator.
If that’s the case, then he truly cannot grasp what he’s dealing with.
“Following ghosts from your past, are you?” he says, keeping his Keyblade flexed. “No, I am mistaken. You walk among them.”
“You’re not who I’m looking for.”
“On the contrary,” he coos, “I am.”
Digging into his pocket, he pulls out a metal and glass trinket, dipped in a color bolder than the earth beneath his feet.
"Give it back," she growls, as quiet and collected as a feline stalking prey.
The warm-orange Wayfinder dangling in display catches the sun when he wiggles it, before he clasps the entire thing in his large hand. He shoves it deep into his pocket like he's making a show out of taking something precious away from her.
“It is mine,” he says with a smile as sarcastic as a snarl.
Part of her should have known. The Realm of Darkness is not the only monster with teeth, and the moment she freed herself left her exposed to all that is hungry in the outside world.
When she steps forward, he steps back, his grin brimming like he’s excited. She throws herself against him for another hit.
He replies by playing coy, using switch and bait tactics to avoid every one of her attacks until she tires out. She's smart enough to realize it but she's too angry to care, telling her body that it can finally rest when he’s stopped breathing.
A lurch back when she lunges, a swerve when she's too close - he blends in and out of darkness to put distance between them just so she wastes her time catching up. He’s amused, beckoning her to come near with a finger. Come, is what he’s saying when he does this, I’m over here.
It's only when she starts getting furious, when darkness starts smoking off her skin, that he finally loses interest in taunting her.
She's used to attacks that stun; she's dodged and blocked against them all her life, but his have an extra kick, an extra surge of that desperate need to be stronger, faster, better, bigger.
Power is seductive and he's addicted to the girth of his muscles, into the way he slams his Keyblade onto hers, in the way his shoulders flex and tense with gusto when he pushes hard enough to make her stumble, in his prowess with dark magic that allows him to be too fast for his size.
He's a cheater, put simply. He cheats the laws of physics when he teleports, when he launches himself across the field like a bulldozer, when he floats around and mocks how hopelessly she chases him.
"So unrefined," he says about her flurries and fireworks, her ghosting and her flashy waves of purple. "You are deafening the desires of your heart," he continues like he's giving advice to a boring child, his posture suddenly lax like he has nothing to fear.
"I listen to it." She doesn't. It's abandoned her, silent as a weep when she turns to herself for answers.
"Clearly.”
"Shut up."
It's not like she doesn't know how her heart feels - angry and bitter enough to propel her forward, to make that Keyblade glow darkly and launch fireballs, blinding him until she follows through and meets him face to face, Keyblade to Keyblade, grinding and sparking and trembling. There's enough hatred and misery mixed in their magic to pool darkness together, a mass so dense it could stain stardust with black ink.
"You will do better by paying attention," he smirks, and she wants to punch it out of his face. His eyes scan her own, so deep and slick in gold that it reminds her of what she truly is: the same as him.
She spent many foolish years indulging in fantasies of what she'd make with their bodies once they were both reunited - making war was far from it.
"Give in," he says smoothly, their Keyblades shaking by this point. "Let your heart speak for itself."
She nearly spits at him. How dare he tell her how to do anything?
"Yes." He approves of her reaction, like he's getting off on it.
She’ll make him regret speaking to her like that.
Dropping to her knees and sweeping with a kick, she trips him, disappearing from his line of vision and leaving him stranded with nothing but dead Keyblades.
Aqua doesn't have much to say with words anymore. Her phantoms would pull their weight with that kind of hard work.
They creep from the Keyblades, stalking him until they finish their lap and vanish. Meant to be disorienting, they're a message, a filter for her pain so that someone out there knows. So that someone listens because dammit, she's been talking to herself for too many years.
"You left me to rot alone--"
"I waited so long for you to come get me--"
"I only wanted to go home--"
"I don't know what I did all this for--"
"Did you not care about me enough?"
“Traitor…”
"You will drown with me--"
But the bastard is not intimidated. He strides, barely giving them much of a glance as he rolls his shoulders and stretches his neck. He's not moved by her words when he should be.
So she slithers, comes right behind him for a direct hit but he's suave and self-assured, blocking her with the force of a boulder.
It's hard to say what catches his attention, what with her shrieking when she misses such an easy target. His eyes drink her face like he's reading her, down her ink-stained arms to her pauldron and ripped sleeves, like he's undressing them.
"What a wasted opportunity," is all he has to say.
He counters - three grounded steps forward with furious swings before a horrendous slam to the ground, darkness lapping at her face and tossing her backward. She stumbles over her feet, her still-foreign Keyblade forsaking her grip.
Aqua spits dry sand out of her mouth; this place is out of her element. He stands in her way, proud and reserved, brushing hair out of his face. Seeing him do that makes her blood boil and her mood miserable.
"It is not a wasted effort, however," he says, towering her, enjoying how he's looking down on a woman on her knees, clutching her chest and gasping for breaths. "What power would you hold if you simply-"
"What do you care?"
"I can offer you a better existence," he says, one hand at his waist, his Keyblade not fading away in the other. "Something with more class than a beggar in the desert."
"Who says I'm begging?"
"You are a commodity, a great asset."
“For what?” She scoffs. “To be a Seeker of Darkness? Summon Kingdom Hearts? None of that is my problem.” Looking him in the eye, even from the ground, makes her feel tall. “I’d rather swallow acid than stand next to you.”
He's smug. "Your heart is weaker than I expected, fleeing the inevitable like a wounded creature."
"It is not weak," she says, emphasizing the sharpness of that last word with a tisk.
She realizes she’s good at this - pretending to know what she’s about even though she wonders if she's truly gone apathetic.
What she wants right now is to scratch that smile off his face. "Neither is Terra's."
"Terra?" he asks like he has forgotten who that is. He searches the horizon, his lips curling with captivation when he remembers a game he's won. "Terra yearns for my confidence."
Whatever ego-rubbing he's feeding off of, it emanates in clouds of smoke licking the skin of his fingers. "Terra desired strength.” He holds a fist in the air, flexing the forearm. “Witness how powerful he is now. You can have the same, whatever you desire if you learn to control it."
She scoffs, rolls her eyes.
"You know nothing of the darkness,” he says.
Nothing? No. “I am darkness.”
She screams. She knows plenty, years' worth. Master Aqua hates darkness. Master Aqua reeks of it.
They come, hundreds of Heartless in reply, desperately crawling over each other like they will each die if they're too slow.
She hears them, trickling like raindrops... help help help help help.
At first, he's proud, waving his arm in grandeur like he’s announcing their arrival. He’s expecting they're here to be used as his example.
Yet he's the one insinuating she knew nothing. What a fool.
It's delicious to see him hesitate when they don't answer him.
Aqua laughs, twisted enough to remind her he's not the only one who's changed. "They're mine," she informs him.
With her horde, she's finally mutable, melting into their group when they save her, ebbing with their movements.
Until the man with Terra’s face is surrounded by a tornado of monsters. Until they are face to face again, and he's shaking to push her off of his Keyblade.
Her claw grips the armor on his left arm and he braces himself as she scratches the metal.
“Smile at me like you used to,” she commands, bringing her face closer to feel his breath.
He doesn’t obey. His teeth are locked in a snarl, his eyes occasionally darting to see if his blind spots are in danger - not in fear, but in fury.
Refusing her is the wrong answer. "What I want with all my heart is to take you back," she tells him with savor in her voice. "I swear, no matter where you are, I will be close. I will make sure you are never too far away from me. I will fix you."
He throws a mean glare before he knocks her off and teleports out of the eye of the storm, forcing her to open her Heartless barrier open and chase after him.
Now he gets serious. He slams the ground with his Keyblade, and the dirt under him ripple like the deep sea in the middle of night. From there, he floats, casting a spell, a summon - a Guardian of sorts - and the colors start weaving shadows.
Aqua and her Heartless have a heart-to-heart link. She doesn’t need to say anything for them to know what she wants. They leave her, twisting in a tidal wave with the intent to crash into him directly while she deals with his new threat on her own.
The shadows underneath her feet converge and slither. They are cold and slimy, the touch of something lurking underwater brushing against her legs.
Bursting out of the ground, it grabs her by the leg and thrashes her around like a toy. The momentum of it makes her dizzy, and she limps in its hold.
She shivers at the sight.
Empty yellow eyes, but angrier. Mouth taped by bandages like it’s injured. An empty shell in the middle of its chest, like it feels less than a regular Heartless. It’s huge and broadchested, and the first thing that comes to mind is the exact moment when she first met this creature. It hurt.
It hurt her.
Disappearing from its grip in a puff of smoke, Aqua comes at it from above, Keyblade in hand.
Her Heartless know to circle back away and pummel into the beast from behind. It takes a direct barrage of her grunts and strikes with her Keyblade - and her very kicks - to its face, until she’s too pissed off to have mercy and she starts coming at it with her worst blasts and explosions.
She’s found the man’s weakness - this creature. It raises its hands to cover its face from another one of her surging powerballs when the man throws himself in between, blocking with a barrier. Juggling both her and the tidal wave, he knocks out her attacks with large shockwaves while commanding the Guardian to deal with the Heartless - blast by violent blast, creep by unnerving creep.
The Guardian hides and stalks her Heartless, targeting the ones in the middle: the ones less aggressive and are only there to fill numbers. The lost. The confused. The children.
Each time it leaps from the ground and takes a hard strike, Heartless are ticked off, lost to nothingness forever in just one shot.
Aqua gasps.
Every Heartless vanquished is a sting somewhere, like a knotted string pulled from the surface of her skin until it cuts off her circulation. Then it snaps - from her back, her bicep, her face, her own heart, like a slap of rubber. Each and every one.
They’re gone. They’ve suffered enough crawling around the Realm of Darkness, and now this. It’s not fair.
Aqua calls them nearer to her. Together, they are sturdier, and she pets one of her Heartless - the youngest yet the oldest one of the group - to make sure it’s alright.
Man and beast teleport far enough away to add yards between. His shoulders heave with breath, and he staggers ever so slightly before straightening, like he has to remind himself that there’s something to be proud of.
The Guardian is dismissed, and the man opens up his arms and bows to her.
Stalemate. Surrender. It doesn’t matter. All she feels is pain when she promised herself after she left the Realm of Darkness that she’d never feel it again.
“Equal powers,” he says, hiding his defeat in his smile, “equal strengths. Equal truths.” She doubts that. “You are a worthy enough adversary, and yet I’ve bided enough of my time on you.”
He turns over his shoulder.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me,” she spits, her knees shaking.
It’s uncanny for an enemy to expose his back - traditionally his weakest spot - but he doesn’t consider it.
“You came here looking for ghosts, were you not?”
“It has nothing to do with you.”
“The graveyard is the perfect place to find one,” he says, waving his hand to beckon her. “This one is exactly who you’re looking for.”
Whether he’s taunting her or amusing himself, it’s easy to tell but hard to differentiate.
“You’re lying.”
“Suit yourself.” He continues on his way like he’s talking to himself. “The departed never linger.”
He doesn’t wait for her to catch up. Is he telling the truth? He’s smart, she’ll give him that. Smart and obnoxious, but he can’t afford to boldly take her to a trap.
If he pisses her off, she can finish the job. He’s weak enough now, and he should know this.
Aqua follows, her Heartless obedient and staying close. She eyes his shoulders, tracing the muscles to his spine. The most vulnerable spot is right at the brain stem.
He’s so much the same, and yet his stride has more bravado, more of a direction of where to go, like he’s solved all of his problems that plagued him in his young life.
“Tell me,” he says, glancing over his shoulder, “how did you escape the Dark Realm?”
Aqua doesn’t answer. It’s not his right to know.
“Peculiar,” is all he has to say about her silence.
She stops. “You’re wasting my time-”
“Here.” He gestures with his arm toward a blunder of rocks and boulders that have recently been blown off from a plateau high above.
Some of the pieces gleam in the harsh sunlight.
“This…” she hisses.
Armor. Chunks of it, sliced and abandoned in gold and red, next to a humongous, dull Keyblade laying flat on the ground. A scrap heap instead of a memorial, like all the rest.
She feels the man watching her as she gapes at the rubble before her.
“A lingering spirit,” he explains, his voice laced with a touch of condescension. “But no more. He spent far too long waiting for repentance until he was depleted of his will.”
She glares at him, golden eyes to golden eyes. His lashes are still luscious and as long as ever, lips slightly chapped as they always are. His lips are the same, but the smile is ugly. It twists, mischievous, like he understands exactly who’s responsible for this mess.
There is so much anger unspoken for but she doesn’t need words to tell him. Her fingers twitch, ready to slash him across the chest... but she’s drawn back by the very armor that needs her, pulling her heart heavily towards the ground. She doesn’t want to look at it but she knows it’s there, waiting for her to take care of it.
She can’t leave it now.
So she stares, waiting for the man to cower in her sight, refusing to be the first to step down.
But he notices what she’s trying to hide, and smirks. “You’re bound by his chains.”
His words pump her blood, her heart banging in her ears.
“Be wary of dead weight,” he says softly, his eyebrows pulsing upward. “Tied to your ankles, it will make you sink.”
“I know enough about drowning,” she quietly says.
He cocks his head, leaning forward. “There are depths you still cannot fathom.”
She inches closer to him, and can feel his breath on her lips. “We’ll see how hard you struggle to swim,” she whispers. “From now on, every breath you take is a gift from me.”
Something flickers in his eyes, and he smiles to himself.
Straightening up, he leaves her for silence, taking a step into a portal of darkness until it zips up behind him.
She hates him. Hates him for that stupid smirk he’s always wearing. Hates how good he is at reading her so easily, for knowing at first glance that she’d stay behind with the rubble when he turned over his shoulder.
She hates him for not letting her grieve her losses in peace.
The Realm has made good work of numbing her for twelve years, and now she takes a piece of it with her. Any surge of emotion - despair, nostalgia, yearning, wishing, and yes, even love - fades, leaving her stuck between yelling and not caring. Escaping the Realm should have been triumphant - not really deserving of applause, but it should have been the most important moment of her long life.
Standing here, in the midst of this mess, she wonders if waiting has been pointless all along.
Spurts of Heartless crawl toward the armor - they’re curious, as much as she is shaken by the sight. They’re attracted to what she feels, and because this armor makes her feel something, their interest spikes.
“Don’t touch,” she commands, and they squirm away.
First she takes the helmet under her arm. With the other, she grabs the torso by the neck rim, dragging it behind her. A few yards away is an indent carved into the plateau, right under an outcrop. It’s cooler there because the sun can’t touch it.
She takes laps, bringing in gauntlets and leg braces, all by herself. Finally, she drags that enormous Keyblade through the dirt, leaving a trail. It’s bigger than she remembers.
In the cave, she assembles the hips upright on the ground, right against the rock. Balances the torso on top. Lays the legs in front. Tries to attach the arms, but they simply fall.
Then the helmet. Sand spills out of the folds. One of its tall ears is chipped halfway, among other missing bits that tell her it was bashed in the face. Its visor is cracked, the damage running deep when she traces it with her finger. She imagines a pair of deep blue eyes behind the glass, but all she sees in the foggy reflection is her morphed face, gold eyes staring back.
“You broke before I did,” she says spitefully. Then the spite fades away, just like everything else. “I waited a long time for you, and…”
And it looked like it waited a long time for someone, too.
No matter how many times she wills her Heartless away, they always come back. Like puppies, they want to know what’s next. They just don’t have the words to ask.
“He’s not too far, don’t worry,” she says. Whether she’s saying it to her Heartless or to the armor, she doesn’t think too hard about it. “But this comes first.”
She balances the helmet on top of the torso, taking extra time with it. The last step is to lean the Keyblade next to the suit, against the rock. She’d rather have it here than among the nameless Keyblades out there - at least this can be a proper shrine, something to tell strangers who walk by that this was assembled with care. That someone who is nameless to them has been loved by those who remember him.
It’s better than the treatment she’s gotten, and she’s okay with that.
There’s still so much to fix.
Years of study have taught her that hearts are connected, and if a friend is in danger, she’d feel it.
Now that she’s spent enough time fighting with this version of a man, she can replay how his twisted heart beats (morphed, melted? Something is off with the way his heart thuds).
He’s traveling farther with each second, landing in a world that’s relatively close. He’s not in danger, not in the slightest, but it’s impressive how darkness makes it so much easier to track him than light could ever do for her. This is exactly why Heartless have an upper edge over people, lusting after hearts all the time, and she can almost feel it beating as though she has a hand over his chest.
Stepping out into the sun, Aqua and her pets are the only shadows in a world where nothing can escape its glare. A brighter light creates a darker shadow, and therefore the desert makes her the most powerful being here. Puffs of darkness spit up with dust with every step she takes, and Aqua conjures her own dark portal. It won’t be hard to find him.
