And There Are Storms We Cannot Weather (Ch. 3)
Pairing: Terranort x Anti-Aqua Rating: M Word Count: 3,303
Summary: Terranort baits her into following him—straight to Castle Oblivion.
Read on AO3
A/N: First fic of 2021 and I had to give it to the dark OTP. I spent weeks insecure about this chapter, but it’s thanks to @lyssala for reading through it and assuaging my fears. This is honestly the end of... the easiest part of this fic ljgfjlgfjfklgj I’ve really got my work cut out for me. Thank you all for your patience, feels like it’s been a while!
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My Worst Brings Out The Best In You
Waking up is nothing like how she remembers it to be. Soreness ruptures her back, and her skin jolts as she peels off of knuckles of stone that dug in all night. She barely remembers if she dreamt. What she really can’t recall is if there’s such a thing as a refreshing morning.
To top it all off, her ass is numb. Aqua groans when she stands up, stretching as hot gusts blow into the cave, throwing dust to her legs, caking the armor, nudging the shadows as they stir. Besides the wind rolling pebbles along, there’s no noise to enjoy in the Badlands, all the sun glaring down on bleached red sand.
The first thing she does is not breakfast (she must), nor a wash (she should), but to close her eyes, reading darkness. Maybe he woke up, too.
He did.
He’s here.
Aqua shushes her Heartless. They’re squirming, reacting to the way her heart is pounding. At the mouth of the cave, Aqua surveys where she should go. The Badlands splay out with endless sunlight, no shade to cover her except for a passing dust storm. It’s not a view she’d share with anyone; it’s the worst place to sneak around. She’d be like a marker with a giant arrow, her shadow stretching to grotesque proportions depending on the way the light hits her. If she’s going to titter around this exposed, she’d better make it count.
She starts by running then she fades away into clouds of smoke, magnetized to the nearest cool spot beneath a plateau, a stark, black slice across the dirt. Here she’ll recover and look for a different spot. As long as it heads in the same direction.
It’s after the third resting place, a tunnel cutting through a mountain, that she notices she’s heading towards the Graveyard. Well, if she heads west she’d reach it. But her gut feeling—a twinge in her nostrils—veers her slightly north. When Aqua steps out amidst a precipice, she spots a gathering of oddly skinny rock towers stretching to touch the sky. No natural force could have made them.
On each of these towers stands a cloaked figure. Different heights, different hierarchies, with hearts inexperienced, lost, angry, bored, apathetic. There’s one with a third mind. Regardless, they all reflect the image of an old man somehow, like a plague they’ve infected themselves with.
Ah, there he is, wearing black like all the rest.
She inches closer, melting into a shadow cut off by a boulder, peeking over the edge. On the tallest tower is someone she hates to recognize. The only one without a hood. Bald. Old. Breathing with the excitement of a bully crushing dirt into another child’s hair. He’s about to land something big and Aqua knows what it is but she doesn’t care anymore. She just wants him dead for stealing.
Xehanort waves a hand and Aqua ducks back. He couldn’t have seen her.
But when she risks a glance, most of the figures burst into a fire of purple and black, disappearing.
Except for the only one she wants, of course.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if they knew she was there. Aqua thrusts forward, gliding over the sand, flying up parallel to one of the rock towers until she gracefully floats back on her feet at the top.
He stands across from her, a field of what looks like ruins in the distance behind him. He takes off his hood and draws a proud smirk on his face.
“I’ve proposed they take care of you,” he says, proceeding to undress his gloves one finger at a time.
It’s a funny way of saying he asked them to get rid of her, and maybe Aqua should be nervous about it, but she tells herself that she can handle twelve nameless men. That is, until she thinks about their empty spots in this ritual circle.
Is this supposed to intimidate her? She has to hand it to him, he’s got spine. “Looks like they left you to do it yourself.”
There’s a flash—a knot at the edge of one eyebrow—of a shot of rage, like he’s about to chew her head off. Then he flashes teeth. He smiles too much.
“Then we shall begin,” he says, rolling his shoulders. “Mind a detour?”
Energy sparks at the tips of her fingers, readying a Keyblade but she stops short of summoning it. A detour? He’s not making a move. Aqua leads a staredown, watching for signs of what he’s plotting.
But he doesn’t plot. He steps backward off his pillar with that ridiculous gremlin smile as if to let himself fall. An inky doorway swirls open and swallows him whole.
Aqua bursts across the chasm, throwing herself into the same portal. She won’t lose him this time.
She lands on a muddy, brittle pathway suspended in the air, where clouds blot the sky so there’s no horizon to see. She lands on what could have been where she first conjured her very own Rainfell. Where she slapped Terra in the face that one and only time. Where she made love to him, where she picked up her Master’s abandoned Keyblade for the first and last time—it’s all erased here, ground and packaged into a single path where even the mountains eroded to dust. It’s worse than the Badlands. It’s home.
The castle stands in the same condition she left it in years ago: painted the color of stale, crusty shit and topped with a bright turquoise roof, like a surprise gift to give your worst enemy. Warped with upright towers, towers that jut out to the side, and towers that hang upside down, it’s disjointed and bizarre, a puzzle with mismatched pieces forced together. Which is exactly the point: let the intruder wander, let him be lost, let him forget and enjoy the oblivion.
He has thrown away his cloak at the entrance of the castle, Terra’s armor adorning his left arm. He has his back to her but there’s a tension in his shoulders as though he’s pretending not to notice she’s behind him.
There’s one reason, and one only, why he’d bring her here. Aqua readies the Keyblade.
“Like an animal,” he quips. She can imagine him snickering. “Always prepared to deal the first blow.”
She strikes. He dodges. She’s right—he is snickering, making a show of gripping the door handle like bait asking to get caught. “Stop,” she hisses. Which is stupid. Of course he wouldn’t.
Of course he’d turn the handle. Of course he’d glance at her, tilting his head as an invitation to come inside with him.
“You don’t have the right!” she yells.
He laughs, leaving the door open for her.
Terra. She could lose him today, forever. If they spend hours wandering the rooms of this castle, they’d lose memories with no way to predict which ones go first. The painful? The nostalgic? Either way, there’s no such thing as Terra and Aqua holding hands if they are gone.
Aqua tackles the front door before it slams in her face. It’s heavy, resisting her at first before swaying momentum and throwing her off balance. Instead of a grand entrance hall with a proud foyer, luscious stained glass displays, mirrored marbled stairways, and a warm hello, it’s just one room.
An empty blank room, so clean that she’s the stain, framed by polished sculptures and a rose dais she doesn’t recognize. It’s not like she had a design in mind when she transformed the castle. There’s no memory of where this came from, no record of it ever written. Not even from Eraqus, who had an idea and not a clue. She takes one step; it echoes like a screech. The white on white on white glare back. The walls stand like sterilized canvases, starched for a bleed of whatever color in exchange for a few of her thoughts. They know. This isn’t home. There’s nothing here. Just him.
“Lest you forget, this was my home, too.” He smiles.
Aqua nearly spits that it isn’t, wasn’t, never will be, but that isn’t true, is it? He’s pleased with himself, leaning on the door on the opposite side with his elbow propped up as though the castle is a casual friend he’s embracing.
“Now, isn’t this exactly where you would prefer me to be?” he asks.
“Acting like an idiot?”
“Somewhere familiar. Old family. Fond memories. A place to call your sanctuary.”
She shrugs it off. “Not much of a spectacle anymore.”
His eyebrows worm one by one. He’s lucky he has Terra’s face, otherwise she’d shave them. “But a spectacle worth revisiting.”
“There’s nothing left,” she snaps. “This place is empty.”
He strokes a finger on the door, a gesture that is halfway between Is that so? and Not so fast. “Except one room.”
Hunger churns in his eyes and she’s uncomfortable with the way he’s looking at her, like he’s about to drag her by her ankles.
“Don’t bother asking. It’s not like you’d ever see it,” she says.
His nostrils flare, surveying disgust as he scans the room from floor to ceiling. There’s a ferocity there, an ignition of something ready to deteriorate. Aqua settles for what’s coming, claws extending as they fasten her Keyblade. If she tears flesh today, so be it. It will only be a little.
How he gets himself to smirk the next moment is a secret she’d have to learn. “Then a bargain. The Chamber of Waking, and I won’t harm him.”
Aqua grunts and cuts an arc through the air with her Keyblade, firing a sphere of energy dark enough to absorb light. He blocks it with a wave of his hand and he chuckles like there’s not a day worth living if you’re not close to dying.
Summoning his giant Keyblade, he swings back, rupturing the tile beneath him as it cracks and crumbles towards her. She dodges, but an explosion bursts from beneath and knocks her off balance. As she turns over to stand up, he’s already looming over her.
They’re in a tight space, the walls knitting together and forcing them to take intimate strikes and forgo the fancy spells. Tinks and shears and blasts echo as though one hit is actually three, the sound of their blades bashing against each other. Her Heartless can’t form a congregation here. He doesn’t bother with his Guardian either, too cumbersome and clunky to maneuver inside.
He’s slower than her, but the close proximity means she’s running out of space to dodge his wide reach. Every hit he throws is the force of a boulder destroying a mountain as it avalanches, testing her balance, stealing the seconds that she needs to steady herself and parry the next.
She readies a spell. He blows the tile beneath them, an earthquake tripping her feet.
Every curse she scrambles with—a Sleep, Confusion, anything to throw him off—does nothing, as though he’s feasting on her efforts. She should’ve known better.
It’s fine. Aqua’s tough without her Heartless, tough without needing to trust anyone but herself. Glowing with an icy hotness that burns like frozen snow on exposed skin, she’s about to multiply—
“You will not,” he says.
He pummels into her like a canon, his armored hand around her throat as she collides back onto the door behind her. Not the front door, no—she’s foolish and distracted enough not to notice that he’s been circling her in this small, square room. He’s pinning her against the other, the one that would lead to Ven but wouldn’t. It creaks under the weight of her body and the pressure of his strength.
“I could lock you up in this purgatory,” he whispers, his breath brushing her cheek, her nose, her lips. Smiling. “Or you could take me to him.”
Aqua pants, her fingers scratching the surface of the door. The thought of being left behind—
Like choked breath, she stops the moment she sees the proud expression on his face.
It’s a bluff.
Calm down. He wants to scare her. It’s a bluff.
He needs her to get inside regardless, even if he doesn’t know everything. That you need the Master’s Defender at all is a secret only shared with those who wield it. He wouldn’t know. Despite how desperately she wants to dig her way out, Aqua keeps her chin high, staring him down. She scoffs through her nose.
His eyes twinkle as he reads her. Aqua tries not to lead him on with any assumptions. Keep it stoic.
But there’s something about the way she’s doing it that’s betraying her. She’s failing with every second that he blinks. “Ah,” he cooes, “you do not have the means—”
Claws into flesh—she pierces his wrist, right through the leather in between the metal, and he yelps. Pulls off of her. She closes the gap with black fire and cold fingers and the intent to rip an iceberg in half. He has his arms over his head, his Keyblade forgotten as he pathetically defends himself against a rabid monster flailing at him.
All she sees is the opportunity to take back. Priming a sharp hand over his face (and at such the perfect angle to peel it off his skull), she lunges forward and pins him under her. Reaches to his waist. Pulls the orange Wayfinder out of his pocket.
He yells and throws her off of him. His pupils shrink to nothing, his Keyblade burning with an unnatural color. He’s clutching his chest as though his heart is pounding too quickly and is about to plop dead. Aqua is on her knees, the Wayfinder’s chain threaded around her red knuckles.
Move. She needs to move while he towers over her, a trickle of drool seeping from his lips, his white hair messy. He’s manic, searching her and searching the floor and searching the walls, moaning. Aqua has to move. Aqua sits frozen.
Has he forgotten where he is?
Is this…
She whispers his name, barely audible.
For a moment, he stares past her. He growls and throws himself on her, the back of her head hitting the floor. Pupils so small his eyes are golden orbs, two little false lights in the dark, tempting you to go deeper into the fog where a monster waits. Like the Guardian’s, watching her take her last breath underwater. As though he knows no weapons, or no magic, he squeezes a fist around her hand, his fingers prying the Wayfinder out of hers with such strength that he could amputate them. Aqua chooses her fingers and lets go.
Once he has it back in his possession, he stumbles off of her, heaving and hunched over. With the Wayfinder to his chest, his pupils slowly grow back. Brows knitted, lips quivering, eyes lost. That’s not a face Xehanort would make.
Then he runs. He bolts down the terrace, disappearing in a cloud of smoke, leaving Aqua on the floor, leaving the doors open. Terra’s body is traveling like a shooting star. She can feel it propel somewhere in the far sky, where the stars hover above the clouds. She could follow him, fight more and more and more until she drags him to the ocean kicking and screaming and losing.
But it aches.
But she’s tired. She’s fought, and they’ve matched the same games over and over, with nothing to show for them except sore throats and scratched cheeks and defeated bodies slumped over floors like they weren’t dignified Keyblade wielders but wronged children.
It aches. It aches more than anything the Realm of Darkness threw at her, as though a hollow has cracked inside, collapsing her lungs into a pit of gravity and threatening to take the rest. If this is how it feels to be human again, why bother going back? What good is it to pretend that fate is kind and hearts are strong and one day he’ll realize what just happened and wake up with his blue eyes?
Instead, she should try to find Ven on her own, without her Master’s Defender. Her heart will lead the way, let her keep her memories. Or she’d lose it all, walking in circles, be the ghost that haunts this castle and create a legend that will keep her name immortal. It’s a stupid idea.
Aqua rolls over to her side, the tile underneath jutting into her hips and ribs. The doors he left open frame the outside, a dry and empty nightmare. She misses the sound of pattering, the smell of moisture, the promise of green every year. The Land of Departure certainly had its dreary days when the clouds were thick, but the light never dimmed. It would rain and all would be clear, the raindrops bulbous as they pummeled and exploded into miniature puddles.
Maybe the reason why the dirt is so rancid here is because rain never fell on Castle Oblivion. If she and Terra were caught under an onslaught, they’d continue to par. Water never stopped her flow and he couldn’t be bothered to slow down.
There was one obnoxious day when Terra grabbed her elbow and dragged her to the front porch, just under the awning in an effort to keep dry but it was futile—they were still pricked by frigid droplets. Beneath the rain, his blue eyes were less noticeable. His dark hair weighed heavy but it was thick enough to perk up if with less gusto. He smirked at her, and she knew what it meant.
She smacked his arm while he glanced through the entrance as he watched for signs of someone coming. If the Master, they’d be in trouble. If Ven, they’d have to suffer relentless teasing, and maybe pay off his blackmail.
When Terra was sure no one would see them, he went for it in spite of her whispered giggles and hushes. A warmth on his lips that burned on hers when the rest of her was cold, drenched, and shivering.
I wanted to know what you taste like in the rain.
He had tasted like water, a spring from the mountain.
She was close to Terra today. She’s sure of it.
Tied to her sashes is her blue Waydfinder in immaculate condition, glass stronger than metal with a vibrance that’s foreign to her.
It sits in her claw, blood red framing its brilliant shine. She’s done so well not to stare at it every time she felt nostalgic, but here she is now: a damn mess, with scales that cover skin, rough and pointed at the tips. Cold with layers of calloused leather that never molts unless she tears it off, building on top of her knuckles that folds as she retracts her claws, like there’s something slithering beneath. Her hands are now beyond repair, so thick that she’s unable to feel what she touches.
I’m ugly, she realizes, keeping her claws contracted so they don’t scratch the surface of her Wayfinder. It’s still pretty.
Dull stars float down to the entrance of the castle. Not stars, but a plethora of orbs, pairs of them as her Heartless pile on top of each other and funnel inside, squirming themselves free. It would have been easier for them to make a line. They’re silly, sometimes.
Something small butts its head into her—the six-year-old, scratching the tile as it makes space up against her belly. It lets her wrap her arm around it. Another Heartless nuzzles up to her chin. One sits at the crown of her head, and another nestles at the small of her back. More tack on, forming a seabed to let her rest.
It would’ve been lonely otherwise. The night seems flippant now, impatient for the sun to come up in a world where it can’t shine.
