Title: Frigid.
Pairing: Yandere!Rosaria/Reader (Genshin Impact).
Word Count: 2.5k.
TW: Fem!Reader, Modern AU, Non-Con, Semi-Public Sex, Drug Use, Toxic Relationships, Victim-Blaming, Implied Past Assult, Dissociation.
Touching Rosaria was like touching ice.
Or, like having ice touch you, at least. She didn’t like it when you touched her – if she did, she wouldn’t have her hand clamped around your wrist, right now, there wouldn’t be a chill washing over your skin, inching towards your chest, making your heart beat a little faster every time the threat of frostbite began to seem more like a strong possibility than a distant fantasy. It was jarring, really, compared to the heat of the bodies around you, dancing and moving and sweltering, despite how crowded the club felt, despite how much you wished they would stop. You’d been the one who wanted to come, you were the one who usually liked this kind of thing, but suddenly, the music was too loud, everyone was too close, you could still feel your last drink burning at the back of your throat. It was all too much. It was all too hot.
Except Rosaria, of course. Never Rosaria.
You couldn’t remember the last time you’d felt warm, around her.
She was sticking close to the walls, thankfully. You were glad you’d chosen a smaller club, easier for Rosaria to navigate as she dragged you across the cramped space. It was too dark to see where she was going, darker than it usually was, but you didn’t mind letting her pull you along. You were used to it, the graceless way she pushed through couples and groups and inebriated patrons, the quiet apologies you let out as you followed her, how easy your own feet were to trip over as the bright, flashing lights and the sour flavor coating your tongue made it more and more difficult to think. It was almost a relief when she found what she was looking for – the side exit, the one you liked to use whenever you got too overwhelmed. It was sweet that she’d thought to use it tonight, too, even if you couldn’t remember telling her about your little escape route.
The alleyway it opened into was narrow, just as dark and just as stifling as the club, but the music wasn’t as loud, the air wasn’t as choking, and more importantly, you were able to collapse into Rosaria, burying your head in your chest as she caught you by the shoulders, begrudgingly accepting your clumsy affection. She didn’t like being touched, but you really liked touching her. It made sense that she’d make an exception for you, in the moment, at least. She always made an exception for you.
“Rosey,” You started, slurring the nickname into something near-incomprehensible. There was a tap to your shoulder, a row of blunt nails skirting across bare skin. In the back of your mind, you wondered if she was mad at you. “I can’t… It’s too warm, Rosey. My head hurts.”
“Obviously.” Her tone was lighter than it usually was, more playful. Not quite patient, not yet, but more sympathetic than she usually bothered to be. Like she was talking to a child, rather than a friend. Like the two of you hadn’t already done this a hundred times. “You overdid it, princess. You’re drunk.”
You shook your head, absent-mindedly. You didn’t feel drunk. You felt… dizzy. Out of it. Disoriented in such a way that meant trying to find out why you were struggling to keep your balance only made you more likely to fall. “You had more than I did,” You mumbled, because it was true. You knew how Rosaria could be. You’d wanted to be good, tonight, even if she claimed to be content nursing her third glass of wine. “’s not fair. I’m don’t even feel that—”
“You’re always so careless, too,” She said, cutting you off. Speaking over you, like you’d never said anything at all. Her grip tightened, and you backed away, pressing yourself against the nearest wall. Rosaria didn’t let go. “Drinking so much, staying out so late… It’s a miracle you haven’t learned your lesson, yet. I’m a little surprised no one’s ever taken advantage of you.”
Your heart dropped in your chest. The wall was unpainted, uneven, bare cement and little else. It hurt to touch, to lean against, especially with Rosaria resting her weight on you. It hurt to move, when you finally thought to fidget. “You're being mean,” You whispered, and her hand fell to your hip. Your dress was too thin, too tight. It felt like you were bleeding out in a snowbank. “Would someone really do that?”
“I would.” She was too close. She was too cold. You didn’t find the constant chill comforting, anymore. “In a heartbeat. Especially after you start acting like such a fucking tease.”
You wanted to go home. There was something pounding in the back of your skull, now, throbbing, blocking out whatever Rosaria might’ve said, making it impossible to process anything but the black dots fraying at the edges of your vision and Rosaria’s lips, chapped and painted red and on your neck, the corner of your jaw, only lingering for a moment before her teeth dug into your jugular and you screamed, the shrill sound immediately cut short by a palm against your mouth, keeping you quiet despite the little whimpers you let out as she pulled back, allowing something warm to run over your skin and pool near your collarbone. In the back of your mind, you wondered if it would get on your dress, if it would leave a stain. You wondered if she would apologize, when it did.
“Spoiled little brat,” She growled, nearly under her breath. Her grip loosened, Rosaria shifting, but any reprieve was short-lived, quickly replaced by two fingers pressed into your tongue and a row of nails clawing at your waist, pulling at your skirt, leaving you to gag and whimper as ice-cold fingertips dug into your thigh, cold enough to leave you trembling. She wasn’t holding you, not really, not tightly enough to call it restraint, but your body felt weak, your legs were shaking, and you couldn’t imagine trying to run. You couldn’t imagine trying to stand. You were almost thankful for the knee she forced between your thighs, for the trace of stability she thought to offer. You wanted to be thankful. You were trying to be thankful. “No talking, alright? I need you to keep quiet. Can you do that for me?”
Right. Obviously. Rosaria was so smart. She always knew what to do, so she must’ve been right, and she was so kind, too, letting her fingers slip out of your mouth as soon as you offered her the small, eager nod she was looking for. You were glad she was wearing leather, a jacket a size too big and pants that clung to her like a second skin – it gave you something tangible to hold onto, something to hide your face in, even if you hated the texture, the sound, the way it felt under you as she cupped your pussy and some thin piece of fabric tore, forcing you to shy into her just a little more. You almost asked why. If she didn't like your dress, she could’ve just told you. If she didn’t like you, she could’ve said so in a way that didn’t make you feel so…
So bad.
“You said you were hot.” Rosaria was talking before you could, though, explaining herself. Why was she allowed to talk? Part of you wavered, flickered, realized that she wasn’t being fair, that she wasn’t being nice, but Rosaria was good at this kind of thing. She must’ve known something you didn’t. That’d make sense. She knew a lot of stuff, compared to the handful of foggy ideas that separated your mind from total oblivion. “I’m just helping you out. You’re not stupid enough to turn down help, are you?”
You shook your head. You weren’t, even if she chuckled at your meek response, even if you couldn’t see how grinding her hand into your cunt could help you feel anything but hot, like you’d been in the sun for an hour too long. Like you were being burnt alive, and Rosaria was the one stoking the flames.
Your thoughts were spinning, now, twisting, spiraling, the need to shut your eyes and make it stop almost overshadowing the slick building up between your legs, that awful, sticky feeling that made you squirm, holding Rosaria tighter and attempting to weakly push her away at the same time. The embarrassment was palpable, that nagging sense of shame, only made worse by Rosaria’s huff of a laugh, by the lingering sensation of her teeth ghosting over your skin and the way you jolted into her, anything intelligent you might’ve said replaced by a small, submissive whimper. It was embarrassing. You wanted it to stop. You wanted her to stop.
But, she didn’t. She wouldn't. You couldn't force her to.
You couldn’t even bring yourself to ask.
It didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel like much of anything, honestly, as her fingers slipped below the black lace of your panties, as she toyed with your clit and drank in those pathetic sounds you might’ve thought someone else was making, if your own voice hadn’t been so recognizable. Your body was too numb, your nerves already too burnt, Rosaria’s chest too cold where it pressed against yours, like your life depended on little more than ice and sleet. It didn’t feel good, but your face must’ve been flushed, your pupils blown out, your scrunched expression littered with hints that you were in anything but agony. Rosaria sounded smug. She wouldn’t sound like that, not unless you gave her a reason to. She wouldn’t do that to you, not unless she thought you deserved it.
“For fuck’s sake,” She drawled, slowly, like she didn’t have anywhere better to be. She didn’t have anywhere better to be. She wouldn’t have bothered to spend time with you, otherwise. “You’re already so damn wet. If I’d known you’d be this needy, I wouldn't have bothered with the fucking pills.”
You opened your mouth, but you were barely able to get out a strangled cry before something was inside of you, your panties pushed to the side and two long fingers scissoring you open, too quickly, too suddenly, too violently. It was like she’d broken a dam, like some necessary barrier had been crossed and crushed, like everything you’d lacked, earlier, everything your mind had been merciful enough to block out came flooding in for the first time. There was the sting, tight and tearing and impatient, but there was pleasure, too, something beyond awareness, something beyond discomfort. It was a fire, smoldering and invasive, and you didn’t like it. You didn’t like the way your hips bucked to meet her hand, or the new weight behind your eyes, or her smirk, her smile, her self-satisfied sneer. You didn’t like that she was happy. You didn’t like that you were in pain, and she was happy. If you were being honest with yourself, you might’ve been able to admit you didn’t like Rosaria at all, right now.
“S-Stop, Rosey, it hurts—” She had a pattern, now, a tangible pace, a vengeance you wished you'd never provoked. She must’ve hated you. She must’ve. You couldn’t think of another reason she’d curl her fingers like that, another reason she’d abuse every sensitive spot that made you whine and tremble and tense-up, another reason she’d be so mean, especially to you, especially now, especially here. It wouldn’t even matter if you made noise, if you cried out, if you screamed. It couldn’t be louder than your rapid heartbeat, your racing pulse, the wet clicks that only got worse as Rosaria slipped a third finger in and left you to clench around her, too humiliated to care about the slight pain. “Please, I don’t wanna—”
“What did I say about talking?” She was being cold again, ruthless, but it was a playful sort of cruelness, her tone just lilted enough to make you feel guilty for trying to convince yourself she was such a monster. “You don’t want to what? Sit pretty and let me do all the work? Stand there and cum?” There was a laugh, a flick of her wrist, and the heel of her hand came up to grind against your clit. Instantly, you wished you’d never said anything at all. “Do it. Make yourself useful, for once. Cum.”
You didn’t want to. You really, really, really didn’t want to, but there was nothing you could do to stave it off, to get away from it, to keep your knees from buckling or your body from going rigid or Rosaria from kissing you, stifling the breathy moan that threatened to spill out between choked sobs and quiet pleas for her to stop. At least she was gentle about it, as gentle as she could be, pointed canines barely cutting at your lips, a cloud of lingering cigarette smoke barely choking you, her touch barely forceful enough to bruise, as she cupped your cheek with her free hand, tilting your head back and encouraging you to lean into the gesture.
It was almost sweet, how she lingered, how she didn’t pull away until after the aftershocks had faded, until you’d stopped trying to resist, until you were too tired to do anything but collapse into her when she let you go, catching you the moment you threatened to fold into yourself. It was a small mercy. You didn’t want to spend the rest of the night on the ground, sobbing yourself to sleep in some dark, claustrophobic alley. You didn’t want to do that. You didn’t want to be here.
You just wanted to be with Rosaria. You just wanted to be anywhere else, with her.
“Rosey,” you tried, testing the waters. You tried to blink, to stand up on your own, but your eyelids felt heavy, you felt heavy. Rosaria only hummed, in response, snaking an arm around your waist. Already, you were struggling to remember why you couldn’t stand. You were struggling to remember why it hurt so much, when you tried to. “I… I’m not having fun, anymore. Can we go home?”
“You’re lucky I like you, princess.” You were. She was such a good friend, and she always came out drinking with you, and she always took care of you the day afterward, too, when you were sore and hungover and, more often than not, too bruised and battered to get out of bed. Even if the kiss she pressed into the top of your head made you shiver, even if the ghost of her icy breath made your skin crawl, even if a part of you was still begging to keep her at a distance, you were lucky to have her. You were thankful you had her, thankful enough to ignore how low her hands dipped as she held you up, thankful enough to stop yourself from thinking about the slick dripping down your thighs, and the cut on the side of your neck, and the chalk coating your tongue, tasteless and unremarkable, but not completely unfamiliar.
Thankful enough to look up at her and smile, as she finally sapped away the last of your warmth.
“Let’s go home.”
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Terraqua Week Day 4 (Legends/Tales)
Summary: Someone calls for help from the deepest depths of darkness. Terra and Aqua trace the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. || Word Count: 8,983
Read on AO3
A/N: @terraquaweek hooooo if you thought yesterday’s was angsty dkfjdkfjdk So everyone and their mom compares Terraqua to Orpheus and Eurydice (Orphydice?) and I totally agree. It was time to officially jump that wagon. This one was difficult though - originally, I was going to have them sitting near a fireplace and talking about fairy tales over drinks, but I think I did the sit down apology fic way too many times and needed something different. This one was a huge challenge in such a tiny frame of time though. It took me the longest to write (a whole week, when I normally take months), so I couldn’t clean it as much as I would like to. I hope you like it anyway! <3
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The Long Way Down ~ no further debts to be paid
Aqua has been dragging him all over town, following a call—this gut-wrenching feeling that something is wrong and someone is crying but she doesn’t know who or where. Except here, wandering around Thebes, though Terra doesn’t mind at all. Keyblade wielders are supposed to follow their hearts. Terra will follow hers anywhere.
What he does mind, though, are these screaming fangirls.
He collides head first into a neglected booth of rugs, scampering away from a group of young women who were trying to rip his left arm out of his socket, seeking pieces of his armor. They squeal, they cry, they sigh with all the fever of delusion. Champion! Terra! You’ve come back! You’re more beautiful than the gods!
Aqua strides by him, hiding an amused smirk behind her elegant fingers. “You picked a good hiding place.” She straightens a bent rug and rolls it tighter, letting it lean on its side by the wall.
Terra knocks a rug off of his head. “I did nothing to deserve this.”
“I nearly forgot,” Aqua says in a way that means she didn’t. “You won a championship.”
“Years ago. Once.” He kicks the pile on his back and crawls out. Zack and Hercules would never let it down if they hear about him hiding from harmless girls like he’s a mouse. “I’m no celebrity.”
“I beg to differ.” She unfolds a tapestry. Weaved into the fabric is a figure of a man armored in golds and burgundies, tall with dark hair and wielding a giant key. “You’re a story they share. Be grateful for your adoring fans.”
The only thing he’d be grateful for is the attention of the person standing right next to him. He never thought about the Olympus Coliseum championship while he was possessed and trapped in Darkness, not once. He thought of her every day and night.
“I think you’re jealous they’re chasing me and not you, Master Aqua.”
“Well, I would handle it with more grace.” She beats dust out of the corner of a rug with her hand.
The way she jokes with him is instinctual, natural, but the way her eyes wander is not, like she’s not paying attention. They’ve searched Thebes for hours, and while the city-state’s stairs for hills and elaborate gardens are impressive, they’ve found no lead as to who Aqua is looking for. She unrolls another tapestry like she’s reading a scroll. She doesn’t even have a name, just a dream that spoke to her one night: Find me, please.
“There’s nothing here, either,” she mumbles.
Terra doesn’t know how to lift her spirits. “Maybe the answer is not in Thebes.”
“We haven’t searched everywhere.” She pulls out another tapestry that he’s sure she’s already deciphered.
How many times are they going to circle the marketplace? Terra sighs and risks peeking at the main street from the alleyway. If he stays close enough to Aqua, the fangirls stay farther away, as though she’s a repellant. Who knew Aqua makes for a good shield.
The marketplace swarms with chatter and dust pickup from sandals and wheels. They’ve been through every store on this block. They’ve been through museums, they’ve listened to storytellers on the streets, met with sages and fortune tellers. There’s not much to deduce out of a whisper from a dream.
A high-pitched scream breaks through the loud talk of shopgoers, and Terra summons his Keyblade, watching for Heartless.
It comes from a girl, pointing a finger at him. Everyone else gawks. She shivers from head to toe. “Terra!”
At the sound of his name, like mockingbirds for sheep, they call out. “Terra!”
“Damn the stars,” he mutters and sprints back into the alleyway, a stampede behind him. “Aqua?” She’s not by the rugs. “Aqua!” He turns the corner of the empty alleyway, stuck between choosing a direction in a crossover. There’s no sign of her, no sign of his star in the darkness or his shield.
A hand waves at him through a window.
“Terra!” the girls squeal.
He dashes, throwing himself through the window. He lands on his back, on hard concrete. Aqua cradles his head on her lap and keeps low beneath the windowsill, a finger to her lips as the wave of giggles and cries ride past them and fade away.
“You were gone,” he whispers.
Aqua brushes her fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry,” she says, but she offers no explanation.
They’re in what looks like the back room of a pottery shop, half of them unpainted with the clay still slick, and the rest completed but possibly not inventoried yet.
“We’re breaking into people’s homes now?” Terra asks, grunting.
“You needed a hiding place,” Aqua says. She sounds unlike herself. Too tone-deaf, too distracted, her heart in the right place to help him like she always does, but she’s disregarding the consequences she’d normally consider before making such rash decisions.
“Why are we here?”
Aqua looks at him with a blank expression. “I don’t know.”
“You just waltzed in here?” He sighs. The shopkeeper is lucky Terra hasn’t destroyed anything when he crashed. He sits up and holds her chin, checking for vital signs of injury. “Are you feeling alright?”
Aqua grimaces. “Maybe we’re in here for a reason.”
Or maybe she’s lost her mind.
“Is it too early for me to say that I’m worried about you?”
“I’d say so.”
Terra scoffs and stands up, his knee hitting a table next to him. The vase on the surface rattles and spins. Aqua catches it.
When she glances at the artwork, she glares. “This one.”
“Huh?”
The vase is stamped with an image in black. Two figures, a man and a woman, reach out for each other, but there’s a wall between them.
“You recognize this?” Terra asks.
Aqua waits before she answers. On the man’s side is a lyre. On the woman’s, wisps of smoke. “Not really. But something about it is so unpleasant.”
It’s not much, but her reaction is the closest they have ever gotten so far.
She takes the vase with her and heads out the window, the door to the rest of the shop locked. “I’m borrowing it.”
“Aqua—”
“I’ll bring it back.”
Out in the alleyway, Aqua cradles the vase gently in her arms, desperately looking around for someone to talk to.
As much as he doesn’t want to, he says, “We can head back to the marketplace.”
The shuffle of feet approach them from behind the building next door. A lost girl blinks at them, her makeup smudged and running as though she’s been crying, her lip color smeared on her teeth. She recognizes Terra—
—Terra casts Silence on her and pulls her aside, up against a wall. “Shhh. Please don’t yell, please don’t yell.”
Without her voice, her squeals are replaced with gasps. She throws her arms around him.
“Hey!”
Aqua runs up to them without acknowledging how Terra is peeling this girl off himself. She points to the vase. “Do you know who this is?” The girl stares back. “Can you tell me? Please?”
As much as he really doesn’t want to, there are miles he’s willing to trek just for Aqua. “If I remove my spell,” Terra tells the girl, “and you answer Aqua, very gently, who this picture is supposed to be of, I’ll let you hug me again.”
The girl’s eyes go wide and she nods.
He recants his spell, and the girl suppresses her squeaks.
“Oh gods, it’s really Terra.” She hops, pinning her hands in between her legs. “You smell so good. I love you, Terra. I mean, um…” Instead of speaking to Aqua, the girl just locks her eyes at him. “That’s Orpheus. Everyone knows who that is.”
The look on Aqua’s face tells Terra that her heart is stirring.
“What’s his story?” Terra asks.
The girl is happy to oblige. “He sings the saddest ballads, all about the death of his most beloved wife.” She twirls a lock of hair. “Lost her to a snakebite. They say he went to the Underworld to find her, but he lost her along the way. He wasn’t a strong person.” She stands on her toes. “Not like you, Terra. You wouldn’t leave the one you love in the darkness, would you? You’d save them?”
Terra steps back. The onslaught of such specific questions makes him sick to his stomach.
The girl leans forward. “Can I touch your hair?”
“No.” He slaps her hand out of the way.
“Where can I find him?” Aqua asks, completely serious.
The girl rolls her eyes this time, as though it’s such a rude interruption. “If you trek up Mount Olympus, you’ll eventually cross a forest. You can find his head there.”
“His head?” Terra says.
The girl steps up to meet him face to face. “They say he still sings—that’s how Death came to meet him. Anyone who hears his songs will be instantly enamored. Man and beast alike. Even the leaves and the stones will move just to be near him. That reminds me of you, Terra.”
Aqua—already sprinting back toward his direction from the pottery shop after leaving her borrowed vase at its windowsill—cuts between Terra and the fangirl, pulling him away from her by the hand. The hug he promised this girl is cancelled, and Terra is grateful for it
“Thank you!” Aqua says, not breaking her speed. The girl is left behind, dejected.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Thebes is now a miniature, a toy town of red roofs and sandstone streets, that disappears from view as soon as they cross over a cliff, where the face of a forest is tucked away. The quiet greets them, a chirp of a bird here and there.
Terra follows Aqua, not knowing where she’s going.
“So we’re looking for a severed head?” he asks.
“According to the girl, yes.”
“Isn’t that a bit gruesome?”
“I think what she was hoping to do to you may be worse.”
Aqua skids to a stop. She looks over to her left, and runs in that direction. The treeline gets thicker, casting a dim filter over the ground. Aqua stops at a short, stone monument—a statue of a head on a pillar. The man’s face is carved with an open mouth, like he’s singing an opera. The trees sway in the wind.
“That’s Orpheus?” Terra asks quietly.
Aqua frowns. “I don’t hear a song.”
“I don’t, either.”
“But I feel so sad.” She holds a fist over her heart, her eyes watery.
Terra places a hand on her bare shoulder. She feels cold, and he has a sickly feeling that she’s getting worse. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know, yet. There’s not much I can do here. There’s no text, no clues.” Aqua walks, scanning the ground for a hint.
For a mural, there are no words or poems honored to Orpheus, no maps or glyphs that lend to any guidance. Terra touches the head of the pillar. He feels nothing. Keyblade wielders can be invulnerable to certain spells, but this is supposed to represent grief, and grief is Darkness. How he isn’t affected is an enigma to him—how he is spared and Aqua is not, is worrisome.
“You know what I think?” he asks.
She’s no longer there. Terra steps away from the statue.
“Aqua?”
No answer.
He jolts into a sprint, passing tree after tree with no sign of blue, none of her sashes flowing in the air. How did she get so far away?
Terra shouldn’t be so worried. The Heartless population here after the Keyblade War is minimal, and Aqua is more than capable of taking care of herself—but how she’s coming in and out of reality is more than Terra can bear. He can’t lose her. Not ever again.
“Aqua!”
Terra cries out in relief. She’s standing in a field of red flowers. Lilies, by the shape of them, speckled in the color of raspberries. Their stems curve over, swaying like bells. They’re not stretched towards the sun but hang towards the ground, as if they’re watching for fingers to climb out through the grass.
“I thought I lost you,” he says when he approaches her.
Aqua crosses her arms. “There’s something here.” When she inhales, she turns around like she just realized he was there. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you.”
Terra fights the urge to hug her. He loses, taking her in his arms. “I think I’m going crazy... I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says, though there’s so much more he needs to tell her.
“What a little, perfect, crispy portrait of a love story,” a heedy voice says, pronouncing every syllable with sweet spite, exaggerated by hand movements. First is the creep of black smoke over the grass. A shadow emerges from behind a tree, bald head with blue fire for hair, a long black cloak wrapped around his body. “Really, it’s a photo op, an exhibition, a grand spectacle.” He frames them with his fingers. “Bluebird and the Waste of Space, classic. All the children will hear about it.”
“Of course you’re involved in this,” Terra spits, letting Aqua go. He keeps his Keyblade near, in case he needs to summon it.
“On the contrary, I’m the victim in this case.”
“Hades,” Aqua says, an icy chill to her voice. “These flowers...”
“You like them?” Hades flashes a grin, teeth sharp as needles. “A specialty from- you could say a good friend. They’re called eurydice, funnily enough.”
Aqua freezes.
“What’s so funny about that?” Terra asks, stepping in front of Aqua so he’s a barrier.
“I forgot you’re not the sharpest rock in the canyon,” Hades mumbles, before animating his hands, presenting his words like they’re a marketing technique. “Eurydice, the pride of the forest. A muse, a sprite, a dryad.” He motions quotation marks with his fingers. “‘She’s not like other girls,’ whatever you want to call her. A gold prize.”
It comes to Terra like the dawn. Orpheus’s wife.
“What is she to you?” Aqua asks, defensive.
“Well…” Hades casually places a hand on his hip and relies on the other to tell his story. “The Underworld is a vibrant culture of flora. There’s still some Heartless mucking about in the crevices, little maggots, doing Zeus knows what, but…” He pinches the air with his fingers. “There was a teeny tiny leak, a blemish in the system.” He shrugs. “And she slipped. You want to save her, and I want her back in my perfectly packaged Paradise. We work together and we both win.”
Terra scoffs. “You lost a ghost in the Underworld?”
Hades bites a breathy laugh, flicking lint off his robe, a gross smile stretching across his face like he knows a dirty secret. “My Underworld is a tight machine. No. She went somewhere darker.”
Aqua is the first to speak after the silence. “I see.”
“You see what?” Terra says.
Aqua casts her eyes downward. She usually never breaks eye contact in the presence of an enemy. “She’s in the Realm of Darkness. That’s why I’m connected to her.”
Aqua has often said that she thinks a piece of the Darkness will stay with her until her final day, a single thorn growing out of her heart.
“It’s not a place for the sensitive.” Hades scoffs with false modesty.
This is something no one has the right to ask of her. “We’re not bringing Eurydice back to you,” Terra says.
Hades disappears in a blink, reappearing by Terra’s shoulder, his hand a warm pot on the stovetop. “You, my friend, are the last person to bargain.” He disappears again and bursts into flames by Aqua’s side. “Aren’t Keyblade wielders supposed to keep a world’s balance at the tip of their fingers? There’s only one place everyone ends up in this world. Who says you can take the dead away from me? Where else would they go?”
Aqua won’t give him the merit of a look. She swats his smoke away like it’s a fly.
Hades continues, “You see, the living owe a debt. You borrow life to breathe here for a few short happy years, and when you’re done, you return back to where you came from. And if you borrow, then you owe.” He flashes the teeth. “Therefore, she’s mine.” Hades flicks a finger on Terra’s chest. “You—both of you—have cheated. You’re thieves, you reek of it. Talk about privilege.”
Terra stammers.
“We’ll do it,” Aqua says.
Hades taps all his fingers together. “I’m glad we came to an agreement.”
“We didn’t agree to anything,” Terra says, his eyes begging Aqua for an alternative way to do this.
“Down boy. Your bite is just as intimidating as your bark.” Hades turns over his shoulder. “Oh, and one other thing.” He raises a finger, and addresses Terra directly. “Have you ever worked with ghosts before? Miserable company. They’re mopey, they babble too much about nonsense. Not the guest you want to invite over for dinner. They’re confused, it’s part of their nature. Being connected to one isn’t the most sane habit. If you’re not careful, they’ll infect you with their pain.” Hades winks, and nods toward Aqua. “You might want to keep an eye on her.”
Terra’s heart strikes his chest like a hammer to the blood vessel, and he swallows bile. Aqua doesn’t seem fazed.
“Well,” Hades says, “it’s a long walk down. Stay healthy, drink water, don’t go crazy.” With that, he vanishes for good this time, leaving the wind gliding through the flowers, all looking for someone below.
“She’s nearby,” Aqua says, her voice breaking a silence that doesn’t want to be heard. Like poison to be drunk, denial to be told the truth, there’s no ignoring this. “I can open a door here.”
“You’re really going back?”
“I can’t let her continue to suffer,” she says. “But I won’t put you in danger, either.”
“Wait,” Terra says, getting in her way. “I’m coming with you.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“I don’t expect it to be anything else. Danger doesn’t scare me.” Terra takes her face in his hand. “After everything you’ve been through, you can’t ask me to let you do this alone.”
Aqua opens her mouth as if to refuse but she grimaces. “I admit I would like the company this time.”
Terra’s heart thumps, stroking her cheek. “I’ll never turn my back on you again.”
“A shame. You look taller from behind,” she says, and he snorts.
When she moves away, he feels hollow, a sudden need to hold her again invading his body. He shrugs the feeling off. “I’m texting Ven.” He pulls out his Gummiphone. “He’ll need to open a Door to Light for our return.”
“Yes.”
“Any tips for how to survive?”
Aqua summons her Keyblade and points to the ground. “The Realm of Darkness wants you to feel hopeless and scared. It feeds from your mind.” She looks at him. “You can’t trust what you think or feel. You won’t be able to tell the difference between you or the Darkness.”
“Then how are we supposed to find her and come back if we can’t even think?”
Aqua lifts an elegant shoulder. “You keep your head up. That’s your best defense. The Realm will do many things to make you want to give up, to make you doubt yourself. You have to choose your battles. Even if you feel like you’re being followed, don’t look back. Don’t give in to its tricks.”
It sounds like hell. It feels like a knife to the liver—Aqua has suffered so much. His biggest regret is not having the strength to break out of his prison and do something about it.
“Are you having second thoughts?” Aqua asks.
“Not at all.”
The way she smiles this time makes her look like herself. “You know, I feel better now. Much clearer.”
Terra hopes that’s a sign of sweeter things to come. The smile he gives is weak when she summons a Door to Darkness.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The Realm of Darkness is a dirt path in a forest that sprawls under patches of stars, as though someone has taken photos of different skies and pasted them together in a collage. Few lanterns light the way, smokey as if caked in fog. It would be similar to a romantic walk on the mountain in the spring if not for what it really is.
Terra trails close behind Aqua, the cape of her armor bouncing in the air. She jogs with such confidence despite that they have no map and have never been here before—well, Aqua has, but not here. According to her, the Realm of Darkness never stays the same. There’s no path back the way they came.
So far, it’s lacked excitement, a still silence as though this world’s heart has stopped beating.
“How do we find her?” Terra asks, his voice loud enough to make him worry if something hidden behind the trees has heard him.
“We keep going.”
A sudden clank, metal on metal. Terra sprints to her. “What’s going on?”
Aqua has stepped onto a metal surface, a sudden cutoff from the forest like mismatched puzzle pieces forced together, spreading beyond what they can see. When Terra steps on it, the boot of his armor reverberates from his weight.
“I don’t like this,” Aqua says.
The river is black and made of torn iron, shards that jut out like shredded waves frozen in time. Lanterns from broken boats wedge into the collisions, a ship graveyard where they all crashed into each other in a hurricane.
“What now?” Terra asks, hushed.
She turns to face him, her helmet obscuring her expression. “We keep going.”
Their only direction is forward. There’s no compass, no horizon to see where they’re going. They curve around mountains of broken war and cruise ships and melted steel, like hills to climb and descend. Whether they’ve trailed a huge arch and are going backwards, Terra can’t tell.
Then again, Aqua has said there is no backwards in the Realm of Darkness. But what if this river doesn’t have a shore?
“Those aren’t lights,” Aqua warns.
Some of the lanterns bob up and down, blinking.
“Stars,” Terra curses, summoning his Keyblade. Aqua has already conjured hers and is throwing a blast against a group of eyes hiding inside half of a ship, its inner scaffolding exposed like bent needles. The impact combusts.
Heartless swarm up and rain on him. They’re stronger here, these small Shadows more resistant, withstanding his powerful swings when they’d normally be thrown far back.
A huge crash rumbles behind them, and Terra is knocked onto his knees. A ship sinks as its bow breaks off. It sounds like a building caving in.
Aqua grabs his elbow. “Forget it,” she yells over the clamor. They run past hordes of Heartless materializing from the metal as if they’re being born, more and more and more until the sea behind them is a mass of yellow eyes. Terra relies on nothing but his two legs, pushing and pushing them despite the strain to catch up to her. Ships and boats disintegrate, about to swallow them if they can’t find solid ground.
They step onto dirt, a slab of earth suspended in space. They’re blocked by a huge stone gate without walls.
Aqua turns and slices her Keyblade across, light thrusting forward to cut through the first wave of Shadows.
Terra grunts when he jabs his Keyblade, a beam striking the gate in the middle. He summons a keyhole, a plea to enter.
The gate opens.
“Come on!” He grabs her elbow and bolts inside. Terra immediately pushes his weight against the gate, Aqua mimicking the same—a desperate slog at first, his breath hitched and pulsating at his temple, until they build momentum and shut it. At the slam of the door, dust drops from the ceiling and lands on their shoulders.
Behind them is a dim hallway of two choices: left and right. The little light they have here comes from nowhere.
Terra sighs, breathing heavily. The air inside his helmet doesn’t smell fresh. “Well, your heart, your pick.”
Aqua chuckles, her voice muffled. He wishes he could see her smile. “Enjoying your stay?”
“You’re sick.”
“Remember not to get too affected by what you see, Terra.” She holds his shoulder, her glove clunking onto his pauldron. “The Realm will probe your mind until it finds what it can use.”
She leads the way right, her steps kicking up clouds of dust. The entire floor is sand, sinking the sound of their steps. The hall turns left. It turns left again.
Terra can’t shake the feeling that they’re being watched. He eyes the ceiling where the crevices that meet the wall are at their darkest, where he anticipates small, yellow eyes blinking at him.
He thinks he hears something, but shrugs it off.
No, he has heard something. Growling.
It thrums louder and Terra is walking slower, growing a distance between him and Aqua who hasn’t noticed yet.
The growling is coming from behind.
He turns.
There’s nothing.
“Aqua.”
“What is it?”
“I’m hearing an aggressive dog.”
“There are no dogs in the Realm of Darkness.”
“But it’s following us.”
“Trust me, there isn’t anything behind you.” She waves with her hand. “Come on. The Realm wants you to worry. The moment you start to believe it is when your heart begins to falter.”
At another two-way junction, Aqua chooses left—they’ve just gone in a circle. Terra expects to come back to the stone gate—but as though the Realm has heard him and is laughing at his assumptions, the hallway opens up into a path of eight directions. One of them a stairway up, one a stairway down. The opening next door is blocked from a staircase turned upside down, and the one next to that leads to a staircase that twists and leans on its side.
Aqua chooses the way straight ahead, a long uncomplicated hallway.
The hallway turns right. She’s no longer there.
“Aqua!” Terra dashes forward and the hallway turns dark, like the twist of the knob on a lantern, a flame fading.
He turns over and heads back. “Aqua!”
They went left, left, left, straight. All he has to do is trek that backwards.
When Terra arrives at the large expanse of eight directions, Aqua comes in from behind him.
“Terra!”
She runs into him when he halts and spreads his arms, their breastplates colliding. “Where did you go?” he asks.
“Down the hall, that’s it.” Her voice trembles. He’ll have to do better to be braver, for her. Aqua pulls away to look up at him. He wishes he could see her eyes. “What did I say about giving in?”
He licks his lips. “Don’t go back.”
Aqua swallows as if to stop a sob. “There’s no going back in this place, Terra. You could have gotten lost. The Realm wants you to doubt yourself.” She nods as if to make a point, her voice thick as if to mask how terrified she is. “Do you understand now?”
No. “We keep going.”
“I’ll stay close to you this time.”
“Please.”
“I-I can’t lose you. Not again.”
“You won’t, I promise.”
She points to a hallway different from the one she chose earlier, and walks by his side this time, step by step. Down this way is brighter, the stone newer, the sand thinning until they step on cobble. The walls shrink into a tight foyer framed by fully lit torches, parchment and paper scattered all over as though a storm blew through a library.
Terra bends to pick some up. They’re all blank.
“Love letters and songs,” Aqua says, reading through empty pages, “that Orpheus wrote to her.” She shakes her head. “The stories I grew up with were so stupid.”
“Which ones are we talking about?”
“Those books I used to read when I was a teenager.”
Terra grimaces. “About true love.”
“I believed them until the end.” She sighs. “They seem so silly now. That you could be in love at first sight, without ever bonding with them—without ever knowing the ties you create with them and how much it pains to have those cut. It’s improbable. How does anyone expect them to be willing to pluck their hearts out of their chests and sew them together like that? How is that supposed to be ‘true,’ or ‘pure?’ The trials they’ve gone through to prove themselves in the name of that love—so small in comparison to some.”
“You mean in comparison to what Orpheus tried to do.”
Aqua swipes her hand over a page to flatten the bends. “I can’t imagine how brave he had to prepare himself to be, and how little he cared for his personal safety. That he would descend so deep into darkness for her. After everything I’ve been through, I could say—that is love. The fairy tales I’ve read don’t come close.”
Terra watches her stack parchment together, tapping the edges so that they align, her movements stiff due to the armor. There are no written words to be read on the pages, but there’s not a single word that could describe the epiphany he’s having. That she is sitting next to him, that there are things neither of them uttered a sound for, that she is the same person who fell to the depths just to save him, that she is not the same child who used to sneer at his essays. That day, he only had a feeling that he was being hugged until he went to sleep, then he woke up twelve years later.
“You love me,” he says, part question, part certainty.
Aqua pauses. Her visor reflects his. “I do. I have for a long time.” She scoffs softly at herself. “You know, the Realm has brought you to me in lucid dreams. Five times. The first three, I told you how I felt. And you smiled. Then you were gone. I got fooled each time.” She hangs her head. “It was the fifth time that it was really you.”
“I remember,” Terra whispers.
“I couldn’t say how I felt, but you took those precious few seconds we had to tell me not to give up. I realized later that I needed that more than saying anything.” She sighs, her breath parched from the helmet. “I never expected to say it again, here, of all places, but now… Now you’re here. And I love you.”
Terra leans forward, bracing her arm, the cusp between her shoulder and neck. He feels the inner padding of his gloves. They can’t take their helmets off, not here, but a swelling of solace fills him. For a moment, he forgets where he is, his imagination only seeing her face, his heart asking to break the metal and touch her.
“Do you have any idea how important you are to me?” he asks.
She breathes like she’s laughing. “I have an inkling.”
He leans his helmet against hers. “With all my heart,” he says.
“I thought so.” She squeezes his gauntlet.
When they get out, the first thing he’ll do is take her in arms.
“I think we’re close,” Aqua says, talking about Eurydice.
They have to see the light of day first. When they get out, the first thing he’ll see is her smile.
“Let’s do it and get out here.”
Beyond the next archway is a new place: a cavern maze, the walls roughed up by raw mineral, crystals glowing pastel colors in the dark. It’s beautiful in its own expression, a small memory of whatever the Realm took and couldn’t digest. The single paths here are disorienting, the walls littered with natural dips and holes to take shortcuts.
The cave opens up to a jagged, rocky clearing, its natural structure much like a coliseum. He and Aqua stand at the top. The boulders cut off a clear sight of the path below, a single star in the sky and a single fig tree at the bottom, its exposed roots dug into a pond. Terra and Aqua descend, the rocks down here taller.
“Prepare yourself,” Aqua says, taking the lead.
Terra summons his Keyblade too, bracing himself for Heartless. A shadow moves near the tree, hiding behind one of the roots.
A surprised shriek comes from the tree, like it’s been woken up, and it shifts. The roots straighten out, the branches curl over and sharpen like claws. Cut through the trunk is the shape of a heart, empty and black inside. No yellow eyes.
“What is that thing?” Terra yells before dodging. The tree slams its branches between him and Aqua.
Terra trips. A tree root chokes his ankle, pulling him from under the dirt.
Aqua doesn’t see it happening. She scrambles and ducks behind a boulder before the earth behind her collapses into a sinkhole. She climbs the boulder and jumps onto the canopy.
The tree rocks viciously to knock her off but she stabs the bark with her Keyblade to hold on. It digs its vines and branches into the ground. A flash of purple lighting cracks the boulders into halves.
Terra cuts himself free. The root shrivels, and the ground it touched caves into nothingness. He dashes, taking fast cover behind boulders. It’s hard to tell if he’s effective since he doesn’t know whether the tree has blind spots.
When roots shoot up to throttle him and fail, they punish the earth instead, ripping away respites and hiding spots. If enough of the dirt sinks, the boulders fall with it.
Terra can only keep running.
The only signs that Aqua is okay are the flashes of light from her Keyblade, spellcasting and waves of reflective blues crushing the tree. Stuck on the canopy, Aqua doesn’t have much room to escape when the ground is collapsing at random.
Terra yells and charges towards the tree, calling upon his Keyblade to transform into his glider. He slams into the roots, all of his offense and magic building up and combusting against the bark.
The tree tumbles and Aqua lets go.
Terra catches her and flies up. He hovers a rock that is still holding on at the edge of a newly formed cliff.
A dark lightning bolt strikes from above and Aqua summons a barrier to protect them.
“It’s her,” Aqua says, straining to keep the barrier intact.
“That can’t be possible.”
“We don’t know what the Darkness can do to the dead. We don’t know anything.” Aqua chokes on her words. “But that’s Eurydice, I know it.”
The tree scratches at nothing and wails, its roots crumbling hard onto the ground with every step it makes. Eurydice sounds like anger, a need to make sure everyone else suffers with her.
“The hole in her trunk, where her heart would be if she wasn’t dead.”
“Terra—”
“Say no more.”
He revs his glider and charges towards the clearing, now a gaping hole sunk down the middle with no bottom. Terra sticks to the cliff sides. Aqua jumps off from the back, high into the sky, waiting for his next move.
Terra lets go and holds on to his Keyblade’s grip. It stretches and transforms into a whip. He slaps one of the branches where it hooks, and slams his fist onto the ground. The tree careens. He keeps pulling, forcing the tree flat against the ground.
From the sky, Aqua points her Keyblade towards the trunk and calls. A beam of light strikes through the heart void, glowing.
The tree shrieks and thrashes. Terra is thrown off and the tree slaps Aqua out of its way. Aqua lands on the side of a cliff, climbing up. The tree stampedes towards her with the motion to crush her.
Aqua yells and yanks herself over, rolling onto her back, pointing her Keyblade up again. Her light blinds this time, a force that shocks the air and pushes everything with swept pressure. As though Aqua has summoned water, Terra is thrown, the currents taking him away.
He lands and rolls. It’s quiet.
His muscles ache and sting. He’ll have bruises but those don’t matter. Terra stumbles when he stands, leaning on a boulder near him. He peers over, praying for the image of Aqua climbing over the hole, but what he sees is a picture from before the nightmare: the clearing back in its original state, as though he has hallucinated everything. The rocky exterior makes it hard for him to notice anyone. If she’s crouching due to pain, if she’s stranded somewhere, knocked out…
His knees give out when he runs, and he tumbles down the hill. Summoning his glider, Terra asks it to carry his slacked weight. There is no puddle at the bottom anymore. He keeps himself up high where he has a vantage point, calling her name. There’s no sight of her.
“I won’t be fooled. You’ll take me to her,” he tells the Realm. He scans. No sign of her. What if she’s buried beneath the earth...
A pale glow flickers between rocks.
He drops.
Aqua isn’t here. In her place is a green, ghostly apparition of a woman in a simple, flowy dress that allows for dancing, her long hair swaying to zephyr. Terra doesn’t need to ask for her name. His voice croaks. “Where is she?”
“Of whom do you speak?” Eurydice says. The ghost has no voice but a loud breath, as though she is whispering right into his ear.
“Aqua!” he calls but he gets no answer. No sound of the pebbles crumpled by her bootsteps, nor the clank of armor.
“Ah,” Eurydice sighs. “The one who looks like a naiad. A water nymph.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“In the labyrinth.”
Terra turns over his shoulder and starts up the hill. Where is the entrance they used to get here?
“If you enter the labyrinth, you will lock her inside, Keybearer.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” His helmet feels tight. “How do you know about Keyblades?”
“The body is an entrapment, a vessel designed to define concepts that we can’t understand. What we call prayers, offerings, angels, the Light, the fountain of the gods, Keyblades, Kingdom Hearts, Paradise, Mount Olympus—all bear the same resemblance depending on the language we use. Without a body, I am not burdened by any of those barriers.” She holds her hands together with reverence. “Your armor glimmers like a star.”
“Can you feel her then? Is she hurt?”
“She is with you.”
That’s the same thing people say to him about Eraqus. Your Master will always be with you, no matter where you are. You just need the faith to know he’s there.
I’m sure he’s proud of you.
I’m sure he knows how much you love him. He’s with you.
“Aqua!” Terra bolts into a run, picking whatever direction because this clearing is a circle and there is no exit. He’ll have to break one open. His helmet presses on the pulse in his neck. He’s losing oxygen. He’s gasping. He’s removing his helmet, collapsing to his knees, yelling at the most his lungs could give him, now that his voice is no longer muffled by metal. “Aqua!”
His throat throbs.
“No panic, no haven for panic, Keybearer.”
Terra stares at the dirt under him—cracked from drought, a single pebble and a patch of grass. “You should have taken me,” he wheezes.
The ground rumbles and he snaps up, dying to see if it’s her. A giant hand pounds towards him, attached to a giant body with beedy yellow eyes and tentacles for a face. A Darkside, towering over him, watching him like it’s going to grant a wish.
“Keybearer,” Eurydice warns.
The Darkside digs its fingers into the dirt like the roots of a tree. A black puddle opens up a pathway for the sprawl of eyes to crawl out.
Terra would summon his Keyblade but he’s slow and tired. Numb. His skin is exposed to the Realm, and it seeps into him. It lulls him, it quiets him. There’s no sanity better than the world the mind makes up.
The Darkside grabs him.
Terra is tired, watching for a hint of blue when he sees black.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Terra.
“Aqua.”
Terra wakes submerged in an ocean. He reaches for her but grabs air.
He’s gently sinking.
So he’s lost her. He’s failed at his duty of protecting someone who needs his help. This is why Aqua is stronger than him. Terra could never survive in a place like this, he could never withstand twelve years of this torture.
“Aqua, I’m so sorry.” He wants to cry but he can’t. The Realm won’t let him, anesthetizing the fall of tears.
What is in the ocean with him? A monster he can’t see? Will it have teeth? Will it swallow him? Or will it watch him float here, waiting for him to turn so he could become one with it? Terra could let go here—
—but a faint glow hovers near, like breath to a limp body, like a light at the exit. There’s still time and a chance. If he can open his eyes, then Aqua could, wherever she is.
Eurydice watches the amoebas in the water, floating by herself.
Terra swims to her.
“‘Twasn’t a long wait,” she whispers when he approaches.
“I’m sorry for turning my back on you,” he tells her. “I’m glad you’re alright.”
Eurydice smiles at him. She looks sickly, hollowed cheeks down to the lines of her skull. But if she was healthy, she would be the beauty that captivated people in the forest.
Terra takes her wrist and gravity takes them. They gently land on solid ground, in the black, in the middle of nothing. Endless dark, endless shadow, endless lack of everything.
“We can’t go anywhere without Aqua. We have to find her first.” Though Terra doesn’t know where he is or which direction he should take.
“We are everywhere, she is nowhere.”
“What does that mean, though? She isn’t here? Then where is she?”
“Below. Nowhere and the end. At the beginning, where you can’t see.”
Terra jerks forward to beg, but a ghost is the last person to ask for answers. He trembles.
“You have a kind face,” Eurydice says. “The bards would have sung in honor of you.”
That’s no consolation. Terra sobs but it’s dry.
“Beware, Keybearer.”
He hears the sloshing of water. His ankles are sunk under.
If he despairs, the Darkness will take him. If he stays calm, he’s betraying her.
“Aqua, what do I do?”
“I called to Lady Aqua because I saw her Light,” Eurydice says, nodding slowly. “The only star in the dark. I would trust her choice, always. I believe in the Fates.” She brings her hand to her chest. “I believe she brought me you.”
The truth stings, a slap to the face, the swallow of a knife, the burn of the tongue with a lighted match. He can’t bear it, but he has to. Aqua would trust him with anything.
“I…” He is such a horrible person, looking at the face of the needy and the hurt but thinking about someone else. He can’t do it. He has to. “I was supposed to hold her when we got out.”
“We were to be married.”
Terra feels as though a pail of water was dumped on him. He takes a hard look at Eurydice, at how she’s trying to warn him with bulging eyes, distorting. Ghosts are emotional. “What happened to you?”
“I died. Vipers are the most unpleasant.”
Terra doesn’t want to ask, afraid of where this conversation will go. “And Orpheus?”
She brightens up, washed over by nostalgia. “He came for me. With his gift of song, he moved Hades enough to agree to be charitable. Hades granted me freedom so long as Orpheus accepted the terms.”
Of course, Hades and his contracts.
Eurydice’s face ashens more than it possibly can. “I was to follow. Orpheus was to lead me to the sunlit earth, so long as he did not look back at me while I was in the dark.” She pauses, as though her lips are sewn together. Talking about this hurts her. “So Orpheus led with much enthusiasm. So much at peace. I was to finally be with my beloved again, to smell the pomegranates and taste the olives.
“Love is powerful but Death more so. Every step was a moment to rethink. He could not hear me behind him, for I was a mere shade. Orpheus could not trust Hades. I could feel his anticipation, his desperate need to hold me dearly, his doubt that he was being played.”
“I can’t blame him.”
“At the end, right as the light was about to touch us, Orpheus lost his faith. He looked back to see my face.” Eurydice hugs herself. “I gave him my farewell and kind regards, then I was whisked away, back into the Underworld.”
“I’m so sorry.” Terra swallows, not liking what this is supposed to mean for him. “Aqua would have chosen to help you.”
“Will you set me free?”
“Yes, of course but—” He inhales. “How could I leave her?”
The look on Eurydice’s face stops him. “I did what was asked of me. I followed him. I kept close. I was loyal. I spoke to him though he could not hear me. And yet he turned and tore us apart. I have yet to understand what I did wrong to let him doubt me.”
“He didn’t doubt you.”
“Then why hesitate to trust Lady Aqua?”
Like a knife to the throat, Terra falls to his knees and grips at his chest, the guilt inside so heavy and thick that he wants to rip his armor off and cut it open, dig it all out so he could finally breathe.
If she were here, Aqua would have told him to save Eurydice. There’s no denying that.
“I’m sorry,” he says, hoping Aqua could hear him. “I’d give you my whole heart if it meant you were here.” He swallows. “I’m so sorry. I’ll be back, just wait for me.” He doesn’t want to stand up, for that would mean that he’d have to walk. But he tells himself that there must be ways around this. There must be an exception, a line in the fine print. “Wait for me, I’ll come to you. I swear with every will I have to live.”
Terra stands. He summons his helmet. When he wears it, he finally cries, soft tears that feel warm then cool, muted because they’re delayed.
“Okay,” he tells Eurydice. “Let’s go.”
He wades across the water, ripples that fan out and reflecting light that isn’t there.
Eurydice floats by his side. “I’m grateful. The vipers are the most unpleasant.”
Terra stops a chuckle. “Yeah, you told me.” Repetition is a symptom for the eldritch, an obsession with what life was. Eurydice deserves so much better. “Do you have to go back to Hades?”
“Orpheus is with him. Once we reunite, we will walk the Underworld together.”
“But it’s a prison.”
Eurydice glances at him. “Man and god are the same. They associate death with misery and see the Underworld as nothing else. But we don’t see what you see.”
“The thought of Hades hating his job is satisfying.”
“He makes for an upsetting neighbor.”
Terra scoffs.
“But I shall be content. Death is powerful but Love more so.”
Terra doesn’t know how to respond, but it spells for him a kind of peace. The Realm numbs everything it touches. As long as they play by the rules, it’s not so bad. Aqua is the only balm he’d need.
“How shall we escape?”
“Ven—my best friend—is waiting on the other side. You see that light?” Ahead of them, far in the distance, is a star. “He has a door open for us.”
“But we’ve been walking for so long and yet it does not come closer. Are you not looking forward to seeing him?”
“Of course I am.” Terra slows to a stop. The water has reached to his waist.
Eurydice studies him with sadness. “You mean to stay here.”
Terra doesn’t answer Eurydice’s remark. “I mean to see you free and happy.” He holds out his hand and she takes it.
Nothing is truly ever following Terra here, for the Darkness wants him to think so. So he will stay, walk forward and walk far without a map or a compass. Eventually, he’ll have to cross paths with her. There is no other place he’d want to go, and any world without her is a world behind him. With that vow to himself, the star finally comes close, the black fading into gray.
“Ven?” Terra calls.
“I have always wondered what it would be like to cross over,” Eurydice says.
Heavy, loud footsteps approach them. Ven appears in the light, in a box colored in white, his armor worn. “Terra? Finally, I’ve been—” He jerks his head towards Eurydice’s direction, the sharp rabbit ears of his helmet tilting. He leans forward as if to peer inside. He does not have a reflection in the water. “Where is Aqua?”
“We are everywhere, she is nowhere,” Eurydice says.
“You don’t see her?” Terra asks, his voice brittle. A tiny part of his heart was hoping he was wrong.
“Dude,” Ven says, “I can barely see you. You’re like an outline.”
“That’s proof enough.”
“Such lies,” Eurydice says.
“What is the ghost talking about?” Ven asks.
“It’s okay, Ven,” Terra says. “I’m going to find Aqua.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“She’ll never forgive me if you follow.” Terra hangs his head. “Please don’t ask me to leave her.”
“That’s not—”
“I’m not afraid of the Realm of Darkness.”
Eurydice turns to Terra. “Such bravery yet you are frightened to cross the threshold for her. Is it natural that faith betrays you? Don’t do this to her. Don’t punish her.”
Ven looks at her, looks at Terra, looks at her.
Terra says, “Once I find her, I’ll be okay.” He moves to turn.
Eurydice holds his shoulder. “Many don’t know how to love. They only know the fall, and they fall, waiting for peace to replace the ecstasy and despair. But it will not come if you do not beckon it. May you listen to your heart?”
His heart aches.
Ven grabs his forearm. “I’m going to listen to the freaky lady. She knows more than you.”
“Ven—”
“I can’t lose both of you. We’ll figure out an action plan, and”—Ven uses all his weight and both of his hands to try to pull Terra over—“you’re coming with me.”
“I can’t leave her here.”
“We’re not! Come on, man, she’s strong.”
“Step forward with me. The vipers are most unpleasant,” Eurydice says.
Terra holds onto the doorframe. The sun hits his gloved fingers, baking them. Aqua, what do I do?
Terra, please.
That’s Aqua’s voice, far away. For the Darkness wants him to think nothing is following him.
“You promise me we’ll come back?” Terra asks Ven.
“Of course. Anything for her.”
Terra doesn’t sob when he wants to. He doesn’t make a decision—he leaps, stepping forward into the light. Eurydice follows.
But a heavy ton, the Darkness, drags him back. Hands from the water grab his cape into bunches and pull on his neck. They hold onto his legs and bend his knees, desperate, like beggars that need his help, need the stars that glimmer in his armor.
One hand grabs his forearm, metal on metal, like it’s telling him not to forget something.
Terra gasps.
He grabs that hand and throws himself forward with a yell, ripping away from the Darkness begging him to stay, knocking Ven out of his balance, and pulling her out.
Terra lands on his back and hears her gasp and whimper out of shock, relieved. He throws his helmet off.
“Aqua.”
Aqua’s blue armor stares at the grass while she takes in the scene, her sobs controlled and hushed.
Terra pulls her helmet off to look at her face, stained with tears and tired smiles. “Aqua.”
“You didn’t hear me?” she asks, crying quietly. “No one heard or saw me, I was there the entire time.”
“I’m an idiot.” Terra weeps with her. He dispels his armor and touches her pauldron to dismiss hers. He holds her tightly. She’s warm and sweaty, small in comparison to him, folded into his chest like she fits perfectly. “Call me an idiot, I deserve it.”
Aqua’s cries tremble into laughter as she buries her face in his neck, twisting his suspenders in her fists. Terra lets her weight pull him onto the grass. “That girl was right. You smell good.”
“What are we talking about now?” Ven removes his helmet and brushes through his hair. Terra is so happy to see that chubby face. “Everything’s so confusing.”
“These girls have been chasing Terra. They’re harpies.” She looks up at him and smirks. “I don’t think they’d be pleased if they saw us like this.”
Terra chuckles into her hair. “I don’t care.”
“Wait,” Ven says, scoffing. “Now we’re going to be murdered by rabid fangirls? Ugh, Terra, why are you always inviting trouble? We don’t need it.” He slams his helmet back on. “Stay here, I’ll scout to see if it’s safe. I’m kicking your ass when we get back home.”
That’s fine. Terra will hold onto Aqua here, stroke his thumb on her cheek, wipe her hair off of her face, massage his hand over her exposed back, under the straps. It’s overcast, the clouds a respite.
Flowers named eurydice watch over them, their anthers hanging close.
“She’s okay,” Aqua whispers, sighing. Her body relaxes. “Thank you.”
Terra kisses her forehead and brings her waist closer. His star in the darkness. She blinks from behind blotted clouds.
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