Chapter Text
The events of the Keyblade Graveyard haunted Aqua. When that Demon Tide had come after them, she had frozen up like a coward. Locked in the past, stuck in a memory. It was like all those Heartless were her phantom selves, taunting her, tormenting her, reminding her of all those years she’d been stuck alone in the realm of darkness and her inability to do anything about it.
They all should’ve died that day, but Sora and Kairi had come to the rescue. Kairi by stubbornly refusing to let go and lighting Sora’s way, and Sora by tracking down every single one of their hearts until he reached her. Together they’d brought everyone back. And then Terra had finally broken free of Xehanort not long after. Hugging him and Ven again had felt so wonderful that the harrowing experiences of that day faded slightly.
Until they’d lost Sora. The price he’d paid to rescue them, to rescue Kairi…to go against what fate had ordained…he’d settled the debt with his own life.
Aqua sighed and curled in on herself. That brave, kind boy, risking everything to save her and Terra and Ven…she sometimes asked herself why he’d done it. She could still see his big bright smile in her mind’s eye, still picture the hand he’d offered to lift her up out of the water, out of the darkness and into the realm of light again. It didn’t feel like he was really gone. It had happened so suddenly. One moment he was sitting on the paopu tree on Destiny Islands, real as can be. The next he’d simply vanished.
Aqua still couldn’t get Kairi’s cries out of her mind, and it had already been a week. Everyone’s tear-streaked faces would forever be etched in her mind and heart too. Some things you just didn’t forget.
The other things you did. Time seemed to flow differently, much like in the realm of darkness, and Aqua felt like she was in a strange fog. The days blended into each other, and though Terra and Ven were here, she felt distant from them. They all grieved differently. Ven cried a lot, Terra withdrew, and she ruminated constantly. On and on and on, over and over again, wondering what she could’ve done differently.
There was a knock on her door. She sat up, the blanket falling off of her, the chilly night air making her shiver.
“Come in,” she said, and a moment later, she was greeted by Ven’s hollow expression and red, puffy face.
“Need a hug?” he asked softly.
“I think you do, Ven,” she said softly, holding her arms out. “And yeah, I think I do too.”
They had an agreement: Ven would give her as many hugs as her heart desired. He’d figured out pretty quickly how starved she was for human contact after all that time spent alone in the realm of darkness.
If only Terra would offer hugs like that. At first he had. At first he’d been overjoyed to be reunited with her and Ven and had given them so many hugs it made her heart sing. But then Sora had disappeared, and she wanted to give him his space as he grieved. For the years lost, for everything he’d been powerless to prevent, for what she and Ven had gone through. For Master Eraqus’s final goodbye. And for Sora’s cruel fate.
The three of them had already made plans to search for Sora, but picking up the pieces was still tough. So she gave Ven a hug, and the ache in her heart and the years of loneliness faded a little. No matter how many affectionate touches she got from friends, it felt like she was still paying back a debt to herself she hadn’t realized she’d owed.
She wondered if she’d ever feel “normal” about touch again.
“I can’t sleep,” Ven admitted. The dark circles under his eyes were proof enough, but she was glad he was being honest with her. Irony of ironies that the boy who had spent so much of his life in slumber was now struggling to sleep.
“I’ve heard it’s common to either not be able to sleep or to sleep too much when you’re grieving,” she said, gently ruffling his hair.
“I wish I got the sleeping too much version of this grieving stuff then,” he muttered. “Then I could escape in my dreams for a little while at least.”
“My dreams aren’t much better,” she told him sadly. “And then I wake up and I remember all over again that Sora’s gone. It’s like waking up in a world I don’t want to be in.”
Master Eraqus’s passing was heartbreaking, but he’d lived a good, full life, and Aqua had had a decade to come to terms with it. She’d gotten to say goodbye, too. But Sora? There was nothing she could rationalize about his disappearance. There was no closure. He was young and had had his life cut short due to the machinations of a cruel, selfish old man.
“Yeah, me too,” Ven said. “He saved us all. But at what cost?” He pulled away a little to search her face, as if she might have the answers. But she didn’t have the answers. How did you bring someone back who hadn’t died a normal death but had been completely banished from this entire realm?
“We’ll just have to save him too,” she told Ven, because it was the right thing to tell him. “That’s how we’ll make it up to him.”
She didn’t see how else they could do it. Maybe the collective strength of their hearts would be enough to save him. His heart had been enough to save all of them, after all. Granted, that heart was strengthened by all the connections he’d made, but she and Terra and Ven and all his other friends were those connections. They were his living, breathing legacy. Surely that counted for something.
“Yeah,” Ven replied. “It’s the least we can do.”
She and Ven comforted each other for a while after that, talking about what had happened and where they might find Sora. Ven went to bed a few hours later, exhausted at long last, and she couldn’t help the queasy, panicked feeling that rose in her gut as he closed the door behind him.
Alone. She’d spent so much time alone. Terra and Ven’s backs were always to her. They were always walking away, always leaving her behind. She could reach and reach for them all she wanted, but they wouldn’t turn around and grab her hand. The one person who had grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the darkness was gone. He was in a pit of despair of his own now that no one could reach. Their savior needed saving, and she could only imagine how scared and lonely he must be. Cut off from everyone and everything he knew and loved.
She couldn’t help herself. Hot tears stung her eyes and wove sticky trails down her cheeks. For Sora and for herself. Sora deserved all her tears, but crying for herself was completely selfish. Irrational. The more she thought about it, the more frustrated she got with herself. Why was she crying? Terra and Ven were still here in the castle with her. They hadn’t left her behind and hadn’t willingly abandoned her to the realm of darkness for all those years. And yet she couldn’t help but feel completely and utterly isolated and alone.
“Stop that, Aqua,” she muttered, scolding herself. “You’re not alone. You’re back here in the realm of light with your friends. Sora’s the one you should be crying for, not you. You don’t deserve any tears. If you hadn’t frozen up in the Keyblade Graveyard, Sora wouldn’t have had to rescue everyone, and if he hadn’t had to rescue everyone, then saving Kairi later on wouldn’t have killed him.” She scowled angrily at the teddy bear holding a red heart that Terra had gotten her to make up for being such a downer about her Keyblade Master ceremony.
“Some Keyblade Master I am,” she told it. “I’m nothing but a failure. A weakling.”
“I disagree,” came a soft, low voice from the direction of the doorway. She squeaked and dropped the teddy bear. Ven must not have closed the door all the way, because she could make out someone else standing in the doorway.
“Terra?”