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mimiplaysgames · 3 years

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abandon all fear, you who enter here (ch. 1)

Ship: Terra/Aqua Rating: T Word Count: 11, 839

Summary: To wander in the Realm of Darkness is to be lost. The Wayfinder Trio embark on their search for Sora but find only bones, nightmares, and wishes.

Read on AO3

A/N: OMG I finally got this out - it has taken me F O R E V E R to finish this fic. Yes, that is a reference to Dante’s Inferno, but I felt “abandon all hope” was too dreary for the themes I wanted to do. I put poor Ven through the second circle of hell hee hee. It was supposed to come out back in April for my fic anniversary, but here it is - just in time for spooky season! Happy Halloween!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Viento

The search for Sora starts on a train ride to nowhere. It ends somewhere else.

~*~

Ven kicks the leg of a croaky pew, which splinters. It’s nice for a helltrain.

Each exhaust of the train’s piston rods keeps in time with the roar of its engine, inking the sky a grimey gray. Bulldozing down the railway, the train shakes its own faded floral wallpaper loose where the vines curl down to the floor like brittle cages, cracked right down the middle and exposing crusted glue. Pale yellow lace curtains drape over the windows, obscuring a muddled view of the outside. The ceiling lights flicker on plumes of dust that spit up with every step on thin, cakey carpet. Ven wonders if there’s a point to this.

The train was the first thing they met when they opened the portal to the Realm of Darkness. A steam engine with its headlamp slicing across a forever lake, catching bobs of black water. No conductor to welcome them or check if the valve pipes were working. The train had exhaled, a slide door to one of its cars already ajar.

“It’s better than going in the water,” Aqua had said with no conviction, as if she knew the Realm was going to slap her in the face but she couldn’t predict which hand it would use, too busy worrying about being knifed in the back.

Aqua had vague advice on how to survive. Don’t give the Realm anything to make you afraid in the first place.

You can’t always trust what you see.

Remember: what you see has a grain of truth. Be careful with what you believe.

She might as well have said, Don’t trust you’re alive. Don’t trust you’re dead. You’ll figure it out eventually. In the meantime, keep breathing.

Turbulence rattles the train car.

Ven swallows a lump in his throat and checks the leather gorget on his neck, where his helmet connects with his breastplate. It’s tightly sealed, as it should be. He checks his gloves: they wrap around his wrists and dig under his gauntlets, leaving no skin exposed. As they should be. The Darkness can’t seep in. The Darkness can’t seep in.

“You’re okay,” Cheers says, hovering nearby and patting Ven’s pauldron with a paw. Chirithy—Cheers, delightfully christened only because Terra the oaf can’t pronounce its full name—lives on a wavelength with Ven, responding to unsung emotions as if Ven’s brain scripts its own language.

“I don’t feel okay.” They’ve split up, with Ven scouting the train towards the caboose at the rear.

Well, they decided to split into two: Ven and Cheers, Terra and Aqua.

Terra and Aqua.

~*~

“I can’t help but wonder how much has changed… If I would recognize anything. Will it recognize me? Does it demand that I come back?” Aqua whispered one night—to Terra, not to Ven—when the only light in the kitchen was the bulb inside the refrigerator. She inhaled sharply. “Am I insane for thinking about this?”

Terra closed the fridge and turned to her, his fingers skating her bicep. So much detail was lost in pale soft moonlight, and Ven couldn’t decipher the expression on Terra's face, so far from the door he was peeking from. Ven would have expected a facetious joke, a line of You’re probably the craziest one among us, admit it, but Terra spoke to her differently ever since they came back home. Terra and Aqua. They’d been spending a lot of time in the dark together.

“I wondered what Xehanort would say to me when he saw my face again,” Terra told her, caressing her shoulders. “And... I’m disappointed he said nothing. No recognition. Not even a hello. Maybe that makes me just as nuts as you are.”

Or maybe the crazy was a warning, Ven thought.

~*~

Everything has changed—no Master Eraqus with the smell of coffee and tarts in the morning, Terra and Aqua thinking that Ven doesn’t notice, Chirithy kneading a crater in his bedsheets every night.

Of course Terra volunteered to search the train with Aqua. Of course Ven noticed how close he’s been standing to her, despite that she’s donned in armor too, that she could take care of herself. They deduced that a powerful someone is manning the train and is waiting for bait, so they left, assuming (not voicing) Ven would be safer if he didn’t follow.

So far, the train has been empty.

“You have me,” Cheers says. “Do you want to hold my hand?”

Ven chokes, wishing he could take off his helmet and gauntlets. “Nah, I’m fine. Besides, don’t you think I’m a little old for that?”

Cheers doesn’t respond.

Not that it would make a difference. Cheers isn’t really here. Just an apparition, the only way it could drift so far from the Realm of Light. They don’t know how long the tether is but the train must have covered miles so far.

Ven has to be honest: he’s had a not-so-terrible twelve years, at least by comparison. Sora made it so, and Ven owes a huge debt. But it was lonely. He hadn’t once spoken a word that entire time. Sleep was a cloudy dream, a wish, a wonder. He had ideas that somebody stood by his side. Probably Sora. He’s sure his friends thought about him, but sleep was an iron curtain, disrupting the currents that would connect their hearts.

What he really needed was one night—his best friends to visit him for one night, one little tug on his fingers for a little hope. To hear their voices. To learn how much longer he’d have to wait before he can finally wake up. Not even Sora really knew.

~*~

The caboose is empty, discolored wood on wood with a barren shelf, an open crate and a single barrel.

“Figures.”

“Better than Heartless,” Cheers says.

“Better than ghosts.”

“Actually, they’re not so bad. Just lonely and wanting someone to talk to.”

“I don’t want to ask how you came to know that.”

“When you’re ready, it’s an interesting story I’d like to tell.”

Ven grins. “Sure.” He brushes his gauntlet over its fur and Chirithy nuzzles against it like it’s really happening. “Do you actually feel something?”

“I feel warm. I know you’re thinking about me and are sending me well wishes.” Chirithy arches so Ven can scratch its back. “See? Your connections are strong enough to shine through the deepest Darkness.”

Ven remembers such lessons from his own classes. The Wayfinders might have played a part in that, maybe. It’s hard to say. Connections usually don’t have visual strings.

“Well, if you want me to rub you behind the ears, just say the word.”

“A teeny little bit. Right there.”

The floor protests through wood rot when Ven continues his search, and Ven taps the barrel with his Keyblade. It replies with a hollow sound. He makes his way to the back door, turning the handle. It won’t budge. He pushes harder—shit.

Wind thrashes his cape around, twisting it around his neck and slapping him forward. Ven grips the railing, spreading his legs apart to hold steady. The train wails, pummeling through luminescent flowers of colors that blur together and silhouetted woods that blend into the sky. Too fast.

“Stay back!”

“Don’t worry about me,” Cheers says, peacefully floating at the other end of the caboose.

Ven braves an arm and snags the door handle, dragging himself back inside. The door won’t shut, strapped open by the squalls barreling inside. With his weight anchored on his heels, Ven pulls. He groans, his strength stretching from trying to shut the door. The door handle snaps and he flies back, crashing onto the barrel.

Underneath him, the wood moans as if intending to break. Too fast. The train wasn’t going this fast before he touched this door handle, now chopped and strangled in his hand, now tossed on the floor as he scrambles to his feet. It’s as if the train is gaining the speed to hurl itself off a cliff.

“We need to go back and find them.”

Cheers fades away, following Ven in light and spirit.

Ven uses his Keyblade this time. Everything screams when he opens the slide door towards the previous car, the train heaving, the wheels ramming against steel, the flowers whistling, the wind howling. He carefully hops over the railroad coupling, his hands always holding onto something because stars, this train wants to buck him off.

He shuts the door. Everything quiets, like a swift nick at the jugular, and the breathing stops.

Then again and again, a scream, a sudden guttural quiet, a cry, a fatal hush, car after car until he reunites with the ripped wallpaper.

The door on the other side opens.

Aqua enters with a faint laugh. “Fifty munny,” she says, turning to look behind her, “and you have to do push-ups at the same time.” Her cape dips gently, tucked around her ankles by a subtle breeze.

“One hundred and I’ll do them handstand,” Terra says. They’re betting over house chores with ridiculous dares, like they always do.

“You’ll fall on your ass.”

“Two hundred. You’ll eat your words.”

“Huh?” Ven mutters, looking behind him, keeping Wayward Wind close to his chest. The train is running smoother at a decent speed.

Cheers reappears in a puff of smoke. “I was there. It wasn’t a lie,” it tells Ven.

“Ven?”

Aqua runs to him, heavy beats on such delicate carpet, her gauntlet thunking against his shoulder.

“Did you find anything?” Ven asks her, cutting her off from asking if he’s okay. He’s okay, stronger than they give him credit for… he hopes.

She pointedly hesitates. “Nothing. There was no one in the conductor’s room.”

Of course.

“Was the train running super fast a moment ago?”

Terra stands near Aqua —close to her—and braces his hands on his hips. Like Ven is on the other side of some invisible wall, it only looks like it’s the three of them as usual. Something is happening, and maybe they are no longer equals.

Maybe Ven never was. He’s always been behind, always been too young.

“It’s going painfully slow,” Terra says, leaning towards Aqua. Does he even realize he’s doing that?

“But…” Ven mumbles.

“To us, anyway,” Terra says, like it’s any consolation. Ven can’t see beyond Terra’s visor but he knows Terra. He knows there is a smirk behind that helmet. “It could be worse. It could have been a bumpy ride.” And Ven wants to jab him with the elbow.

“Have you been seeing things?” Aqua asks.

Ven inhales, fiddling with his gorget, checking for rips. None. “Nah. I just want this to be over already.”

Terra snorts. ‘We’re probably going to be on this train forever.”

The Realm responds in kind.

The howling of the train thins, a sudden darkness swallowing the car. They’re passing through a tunnel. Chirithy’s faint glow reflects off the sheen of their armor.

A thud drops, heavy enough to dent the ceiling. Stars blink outside their windows in an expanse of space—no, not an expanse but a swarm, a slithering of beedy yellow eyes, filling every millimeter of the dark on the other side of the glass. At least the windows are closed—not locked but closed, a faint advantage before they have to move.

“Finally, something to do,” Ven says, feigning confidence when Aqua steps in to shield him.

The atmosphere in the car thickens with the electric swish of Keyblades materializing. Heartless pour in. Thick, black fingers crawl inside through the windows from a giant they can’t see. Terra bludgeons and slams against knuckles and stretchy, oily skin, but compared to the giant, his strength is reduced to that of a mouse. Terra yells and it sounds like he’s about to puncture a lung, uppercutting one of the fingers and it finally retracts, rattling the car with it.

Ven jabs Wayward Wind at a Shadow approaching him but it reverberates, a rubbery movement. They’re stronger down here. It slides against his greaves and dodges his thunder with such ease it’s as if Ven is targeting his own shadow.

A light gasps and blinds Ven. Aqua is summoning her most powerful spells, the energy of her magic picking her up like she’s a dancer on a music box. Swirls of rain and molten earth, daggers of ice and spears of gems, but the Heartless don’t flinch. They multiply. They stand together like a wall. She doesn’t seem surprised. But she keeps trying.

A Shadow grabs Cheers by the ankles.

“Ventus—!”

“Cheers!”

“Ven, don’t!” Terra calls.

But he’s long left behind. Ven dashes through the following car, hitting Heartless in the face point blank and swiping swords of Light to cut them apart. They barely recoil but it’s enough of an inch to clear his way. He focuses only on Cheers, dragged through another slide door, another car, where the Heartless drop from the ceiling, where Ven ignores them. Cheers, with its tiny paws wiggling out of the Shadow’s grip.

Ven arms for an attack, aiming for a wary hit that won’t hurt his best friend.

The train jolts. Ven is launched forward, crashing into the back wall. Frail pews tear off from their nailed flooring and pile on top of him, knocking onto his helmet, his back, socking him by his side, the metal of his armor leaving its own bruises. Ven instinctively covers his visor, bracing for worse, a collision, a collapse of the ceiling above him. The train screeches, whatever force driving it suddenly yanking on the brakes into a complete halt.

The shrieks to draw out and the quiet builds slowly.

“Ventus?”

Ven looks up from the tap tap taps on his helmet. The Heartless are gone. There is only Cheers, with that round, little face and his little pouch.

“Are you okay?” Ven asks, his voice too unstable for his liking, his sore muscles shaking from the adrenaline. He crawls out by his elbows, pews buckling over him.

“Of course I am, why would you ask that?”

“What are you talking about?” Ven kicks a pew off his back.“You were taken by a Heartless.”

Cheers scowls, wrinkling its snout. “That’s not what happened, Ven.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ven stands—struggles to stand, settling on his knees.

“You separated from the group.”

“Not on purpose.”

“I followed you here.”

Ven shakes his head. That can’t be.

“Please stop, I don’t want to hear any more.” He grabs the leg of an overturned pew and lifts himself up, groaning. “We’re getting to the bottom of this.” Ven limps, falls, staggers, reaching for the door he came from. Cheers watches, tightlipped and fumbling with its claws.

The door doesn’t open. Ven bangs on it. “Terra? Aqua? You okay?”

No answer.

“Crap.” He throttles the handlebar, pushes on it with his shoulder but it won’t budge. He groans, every muscle and surface area of his skin aching. They could have been knocked out. They could be gravely injured. The monsters could be dragging them away.

Preparing himself with a long inhale, he throws himself against the door—and shrieks, grasping onto the doorframe before falling head first into the water.

The rest of the train is gone.

“What—?” Ven chokes, turning back to look at Cheers. “Tell me you see this.”

“Nothing but a river.”

“Terra! Aqua!” Ven screams, his lungs burning. He whips out his Gummiphone. It’s dead. “Stars,” he curses, “did they...?” He doesn’t want to say it.

“Does your heart say so?”

The water is too muddy to see anything under. The metal frame isn’t crushed in, which suggests that a crash didn’t happen. The railroad coupling that connects the cars isn’t ripped, as though the first half of the train simply vanished.

Ven slides down to his knees, tempted to dip his glove into the river. He almost does. There’s no way he’s never going to see his friends again. No way. ‘We’re probably going to be stuck in this train forever’ are the stupidest last rites that could have come out of Terra’s mouth.

“It’s not fair.” Ven smacks the doorframe. “I’m supposed to witness Terra having the balls to finally tell Aqua he loves her. It can’t be possible that they’re gone.”

Cheers grumbles. “Such behavior coming from esteemed Keyblade wielders.” It floats closer. “Your heart, not your head. Where are they?”

Ven trembles, remembering what it’s like to have Sora nearby but never close. Alive. “Far away.”

“Then we can find them.”

How? He left his Wayfinder on the Master’s memorial. At this point, whether they find Sora is as good as an unlucky hand with one decent card.

Ven huffs his disapproval. He doesn’t want to leave the train, staring hard at the water as though any moment it will stop pretending, turn into nasty carpet and let his friends come back.

“Aqua doesn’t like the water,” he mumbles, wondering how she’s doing. Terra would never let her near it, so she should be alright.

And Terra? He lets his thoughts bother him too much. Someone has to always watch for what he says. But no one calms him down like Aqua does. She’ll keep him safe and awake.

They shouldn’t have split up. Maybe that’s the point. The Realm wants to play.

“Let’s not waste time,” Cheers says carefully. It makes sense. Ven is a pawn on a chessboard, and he needs to move to avoid the next move. The water will stay muggy, and trains do not travel backwards. “The Realm might have thrown them somewhere in the city,” Cheers says, treading its words like it’s trying not to snap twigs. “You three have an unbreakable connection. They can’t have gone far.”

Ven hears that all the time—the three of them, their little trio, an unbreakable connection.

“Fine.”

The rear end of the train is parked neatly at a station on a dock, as though the Realm has dismantled it and left them with well-meaning wishes and care. Within walking distance is a tall, compacted city—a clock tower jutting into the horizon, a lit and empty bridge that stretches across the river. The city is a grandeur of lanterns alight and steppes of glass, all cloaked in a fog so dense that the stars can’t shine here.

Ven leaves the passenger entrance open in case his friends come looking for him, and steps onto the wooden dock.

This place is warped.

The wood boards are enormous, the natural gaps in between a feat of leg prowess.

“Am I mousey-sized again?”

“You were a mouse?”

“It would have been easier if I was.”

“Ooooh, I want to hear that story.”

Cobblestones are like hills he has to climb, its waning dips and overly-smooth, slippery texture a symptom of endless rain and pressure from carriages. The street lamps are the same size as the pine trees back home. The buildings are more like mountains, what would be normal shop and condo doors for humans are caves for giants. Exploring this world is going to take forever.

Ven distracts himself by telling Cheers stories of his memories, where he made mousey friends and he had hope and stars in his eyes for his first big adventure. The act of talking almost makes this world feel like it is frankly normal.

That’s the thing—it’s empty. Lights without anyone to snuff the candle at dawn. Signs of dirt with no footprints, no hooves from horses, no smoke coming out of chimneys, no distant chatter from beyond the windows. They look warm and inviting, like a dinner for guests, like a still life painting for the starving.

They are even tiny homes, crevices in the stone adorned with a proper door and inserts for delivered letters, fit for mice with a taste for domestication. He tries the knob. It’s locked.

So there were humans and mice who lived here, their lights left on like they’re still indoors.

The drop of a pebble bounces somewhere. Ven slows to a stop and listens.

“Ven…” Cheers whispers. “Connecting here is becoming harrowing.”

The tether. “I’ll take care of everything. Relax and… meditate? Is that what you’re doing?”

“I don’t want you to see.”

“See what?”

“Anything.” Cheers hugs itself. “The Realm preys on your mind. I worry about what you will find here.”

Ven purses his lips. Cheers had given him plenty of warnings in the past anytime he had questions about where he came from, each answer a diversion from some half-truth.

There is a person here.

There is a person sitting on top of one of the street lamps watching them, dressed in a black suit shaped in the folded wings of a bat, legs tucked in. They wear a round helmet, inked and oiled.

“Vanitas?”

“What are you seeing?” asks Cheers.

A person he’s been longing to meet again. A ghost, a twist in the stomach. Maybe there’s a connection through the Darkness that keeps Vanitas here? Ever since Vanitas dissolved into air, Ven had wondered if there was something he could have done differently. He had gone to Radiant Garden for testing. He had found out that his heart was whole again, mended by Sora and the connection with his friends.

How was that fair though? Did that mean Vanitas was still fractured at the time of his end? Ven was too mad and too late to ask.

Ven raises his voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Ventus, we don’t know who’s listening,” Cheers whispers.

Vanitas doesn’t move or suggest he registered anything.

“You’re just going to sit there?”

The Realm responds with the call of an animal.

Ven is slammed against the ground from behind by a whoosh from the thrash of wings, a grainy and mischievous growl, and a pressure on his helmet heavy enough to crush it.

A light sparks—Cheers—and the creature flaps away. Ven rolls onto his back and meets the bat head first as it pounds against him. Brilliant vibrancy on the wings, gray, purple and blue. A ripped and tattered scarf, colorless. The Heartless insignia on the chest. Fangs clamping—Ven grabs the jaw from taking a bite. He stares into eyes round and yellow, ears bent, one leg missing and replaced with a wooden peg.

Vanitas is no longer there.

“Stars,” Ven curses, and chucks the bat off of him. Now there are thousands. Peg-leg is the largest. “Cheers, you okay?”

“No.”

Ven summons Wayward Wind and throws it, guiding its Light to arc and slice through several bats in one swing. It doesn’t do much—a handful knocked out, a skyline left. Peg-leg swoops down, aiming for him as if Cheers isn’t there at all. Ven dodges, bent up from before and left on his knees. The others hover closer, predatory and mindful of a trespasser in their territory.

Wayward Wind comes home. Ven has no time to think. He’s never seen so many Heartless before.

Peg-leg grabs his shoulder—by the fangs—and launches him up into a thicket of wings and large talons, tearing at his cape and scratching his visor. He swings his Keyblade in a fury to beat them away from him. Peg-leg dips in the air and he falls with it, only to be hung up again in a whiplash. The Heartless is trying to make him dizzy.

“Let go of me!” Ven stabs behind him and Peg-leg shrieks, dropping him. The bats follow his gasps and yells, funneling into a sharp tornado.

If he doesn’t do it now, he may not get another chance.

If he does, he may not have the energy to withstand the rest of this nightmare.

Ven channels his magic through his Keyblade, draining what little perk he has left and multiplying his Light into daggers for wings of his own. He waves his arms and they unsheath, cutting through the bats. They scatter. Ven lands on his feet and waits for the right moment.

“Keep your distance,” he calls out to Cheers, who is idle and staring at the ground, its ears twitching when he speaks.

He waits.

The bats swirl over him like a storm brewing, billowing towards the ground.

He waits.

Peg-leg, dazed from before, finds its direction and dives back at him.

Now.

Ven marks the cobblestone, conducting his daggers of Light with his arms. They point downward and suspend, preparing. The moment the bats come close enough, he slams his daggers onto the ground. A Light erupts and spreads through the block, igniting the rusty brick color of the roofs.

Peg-leg is the only one willing to try again.

Wayward Wind soars, stabbing the Heartless insignia at the heart, a burst of Light cutting through the fur and leather. The Heartless squirms and heaves, fluttering away with the rest.

A fade of chirps and flaps dissolve into the fog. He waits for their return. They don’t come. Vanitas won’t reappear, either.

When the stillness finally settles, it’s piercing.

Ven has been holding his breath. He sighs deeply from exhaustion, throbbing, bruised and tired and sleepy. He checks his gorget. It’s fine. He pulls from within, where the well of magic lives in his core, but it’s thin like a pen running out of ink. A simple Cure spell barely sparks. “Ugh, that’s annoying.”

“That was reckless.”

“Well, we’re fine now.”

“You’re fine. I can’t feel pain here, but... I am tired.”

“But you’re alright?”

Cheers hesitates. It shakes its head. “Everything sounds distant. Too much fog and I can’t see. It’s making me confused.”

Ven pauses and studies the fur on Chririthy’s coat. It’s not a truth he wants to know. “Let’s get this over with. The Darkness can’t keep us apart.”

“I can’t, Ven.”

Ven turns over his shoulder, and reaches for Chirithy’s hand. “You’re okay.” He cradles his Dream Eater into his arms. “I’ll carry you the rest of the way.”

“This is too far and too deep for me,” Cheers whispers. “You be strong and find your friends.”

“Don’t say that.” Ven rocks his cat, the one presence with him every single night and has been for months. The first face he sees when he wakes up. An instant smile for a bad day. Life without is an unreality he doesn’t want to relive. There isn’t a point. With Cheers, he has his shadow, a nagging squeak for breakfast reminders, a furry snout nudged into his face, a voice to talk to. “Please don’t leave me alone.”

“I promised I would tell you, slowly, one secret at a time.”

“You can tell me when we get back.”

“Whatever you’re wondering—before I say anything else—no matter what you see, you have to know you did your best. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I don’t know what that means. Cheers, don’t go.”

“Good luck, Ven. Stay safe. I know you’ll do well.”

What’s left in his arms are sparkles. He’ll walk the Realm alone.

The clash of metal against stone drops from within the fog. A hollow, round black helmet rolls towards him, tapping the tips of his boots.

~*~

Ven swears he hears rats.

“Stars.” He sidesteps a sewage drain—the size of a field for his small frame—avoiding a squirmy shuffle down below. He grips Vanitas’s helmet close to his chest. “Rats. Rat Heartless, whatever.”

The fog breaks for the block ahead, but it’s all the same: filtered lamps, large step terraces that he can’t climb without using up his last magic reserves, roof after roof after chimney after shut windows with the lights on. The streets criss-cross in sharp angles, and Ven has the feeling that it doesn’t matter which direction he chooses. One side mirrors the other. The moonlight here is surreal—a good mimic of one, a pale glow but not the right color, coming from nowhere. Ven can’t imagine the Realm has the power to swallow a moon, but when he looks up at the clouded sky, he wonders if it simply is a memory of one.

“I could turn back to the train,” he tells Vanitas Helmet. Behind him is more fog. Wait—which direction did he come from? “Or not. You know, I’m not usually the type to talk to myself.” He looks down at the helmet, intact and shiny. “But it helps.”

He walks, for how long he can’t measure. He’s surprised by what he doesn’t feel. The last thing he ate was breakfast, a stack of banana chocolate chip pancakes with whipped cream and strawberries. The thought makes him want to be hungry. What’s missing is the need, like he could live the rest of his life without ever experiencing mango sherbert again.

“That’s sad.”

Vanitas Helmet doesn’t reply.

Ven doesn’t feel tired either—exhausted yes, but never to the point of needing rest. Each foot moves like it’s built out of machinery. He could think about the promise of a soft pillow and just-washed sheets, but if he’d sit in one now, he’d be bored. He wouldn’t be able to succumb to the sweetness of letting his muscles relax, suspended in a place where the Realm keeps him going but keeps him weak, right where it wants him.

“You’d probably say something like, You’re stupid,” Ven says, mimicking a gritty voice. “What’s the point of you having two legs if you won’t jump at the opportunity of being immortal? You’re a waste of space.” He clears his throat. “Or something like that. Not because it’s actually stupid, but because you’re mean. I wonder why you’re so mean. I don’t want to be immature and say it’s because you’re Dark because…” He stops.

Because of Terra. He’s so kind, but he has Darkness, powerful enough for it to seethe out of his skin. Who knows, if Light and Dark are two sides of the same coin, then Terra may be Dark and that’s not so bad.

Then there’s Aqua. She told them both the story of her falling to the Darkness. She’s the last person Ven ever expected.

Xehanort was a Master of Darkness, proof that there’s such a thing.

Ven’s Light wasn’t strong enough to keep his heart from breaking, so he slept. Sleep is the thrust into the Dark, right? It’s hard to sleep with the lights on.

Come to think of it, there’s a lot Master Eraqus never told them about Darkness. Then again, Ven never expected Eraqus would sway to the idea of murdering a student.

Suddenly, Ven doesn’t want to know why Vanitas was the way he was.

He glances down at the helmet. “I’m glad you’re here and not… nowhere.” He swallows. “Right? You’re here? Where else would Darkness go?”

He passes by another civil home for a mouse—a shop, delicately titled Flaversham’s, and Ven stares, halting as if someone had punched his diaphragm. This is the first time he’s seen a name, his stomach dropping with such velocity that he’s about to vomit at its doorstep. All this time, he took comfort in the slight possibility that the Realm was playing tricks with his mind. But here is someone’s surname, someone lost, a family, a profession. Here we lived, formerly existed, signed Flaversham.

Ven squints through the window panes. It’s a toy shop. The owner must have carved them out of wood. They must have been an engineer too, considering the gears and half-finished robots. On a table where the seats have been pushed aside is a ballerina doll equipped with a winder. Whoever worked here stood up from that table and walked away. The shop must have been closed when the world fell.

How many years has it been? Could Ven and Terra and Aqua have prevented it if they were awake?

Ven eyes his own reflection on the window pane.

He’s small, his helmet donned with rabbit ears and chunky, tiny pauldrons. No metal on the legs so he has the freedom to run as fast as possible. Knee braces for protection. Sneaker boots because it felt cool at the time he designed them. He doesn’t look powerful like Terra or composed like Aqua, where the Light ricochets off their chest plates when they fight, beautiful and terrifying at the same time. One look at them and you’d want to stand tall—they’re foreboding to their enemies, like bludgeons to the fingers. Ven can’t imagine he has the same grace. He looks like a child.

A loud crash snaps him out of his stupor and he defensively throws Vanitas Helmet against the wall with enough force to crack it. A stuffed mouse has fallen from a shelf, knocking gears out of the hips of a robot, its torso missing.

“You don’t scare me,” he says to the Realm, kicking brick. “You hear?”

The Realm stays silent.

“Good.” He huffs. When he glances down at the helmet, heat bubbles in his cheeks. Vanitas would have called him infantile for this.

And what would a non-child do? Probably not pick the helmet back up, unscratched. Probably not stick to a resolve to find him. He may not be here. He may mean that the Realm is working its magic into Ven’s brain, tricking him with illusions.

Is that possible when Ven has his armor on? He checks his gorget. Still intact.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ven says to Vanitas Helmet, a black mirror reflecting those ridiculous rabbit ears. “I still have things to say and this is what my heart wants to do. It can’t lie to me.”

Above him rings a voiceless, breathy laugh. On a street lamp is Vanitas, his heavy frame a drape of shadow over the lantern. He wears his helmet, and Ven checks his arms to find nothing, as though he hasn’t been carrying anything this entire time.

“I knew it,” Ven says, raising his voice. “You’re here.”

Vanitas does not reply.

“It wasn’t fair, you know. You choosing the Darkness. Why? If you had all the freedom—and Sora would have given it to you—why choose to be an assclown? Just because?”

Vanitas has nothing to say. He’s not even looking at Ven.

“Don’t ignore me! I’ve thought about this a lot…” Ven pauses, searching for words in the mist, spare thoughts that come and go, that repeat, that get forgotten. “The first time, when we split in two, it hurt so much. I remember I ached for days and I think it went on and on, until I started talking again. I could have died.

“And I thought by the end of it, you’d come back home. I thought we’d work on sewing the pieces together. But no. You stayed you. With your own words and your own bullcrap.

“You said you’re on my side because you’re the shadow that I cast. How is that fair? What kind of life is that, to watch me live mine when you are nothing but shades? I don’t think you deserve that kind of punishment, even after everything that happened.

“And you know what? You’re the one who’s dumb. Who chooses a life like that?” Ven swings his arm, punching air. “Why leave me with all this guilt? What’s the point?”

Vanitas says nothing, still as a statue.

“Tell me how I’m supposed to feel.” He slams his foot against the cobblestone, pitching his voice high. “It didn’t—It didn’t hurt when you faded away. Physically, I mean. That means I’m whole now. But it hurts everywhere else and I don’t know what it means. I keep losing people in my life. Terra and Aqua are slipping away from me, and I keep thinking about how you have nothing, too. If you’re my brother, what could I... I can’t help but think I should have given you a real place to stay.”

Vanitas. Quiet as moss left on stone.

“Say something.”

Vanitas lifts his chin off his palm, gazing down on Ven with his nose high.

Ven gapes. He realizes he’s been crying.

Vanitas stands on his toes and jumps. Ven chases him.

Ven chases nothing, empty streets in empty fog.

“But that’s not fair.” He falls to his knees. He checks his gorget, though he realizes that there’s no point. Despite that it’s still sealed, the Darkness has seeped in.

~*~

It couldn’t have been a trick—Ven spoke from the heart and it can’t lie to him. That’s what he keeps telling himself.

It could have been hours, it could have been days. He’s tried to head towards the bridge, see if he could cross the river, but either he’s walking in circles or the Realm is turning on his heel like he’s walking on a turntable, keeping the bridge afar. He’s been relying on the clock tower as a compass, but it never strays from the horizon.

“You out there, Cheers?” he says out loud, testing to see if the broken tether can still connect them through some frays.

Nothing.

“Well, I hope you know I’m thinking about you.”

So he keeps going, taking left turns before right ones, the streets suspiciously quiet and uneventful. He wants anything, anything, please, anything to break the monotony.

It takes a thousand steps before Ven hears a sound: a sob.

A girl dressed in a vivid white robe sits by herself on a battered match box, alone in an alleyway and under a lantern that’s brighter than usual. Her long copper hair drapes out of her hood in two ponytails, brushing over her hands clenched on her lap. She sniffles.

He knows he’s desperate. He knows he shouldn’t bite, but anything else is a stale taste. Besides, this can’t be a trick. He hears her. She’s there, he can even see her breathing.

“Hi.”

She says nothing.

“Are you lost?”

Still, nothing.

Ven bites his lip to keep himself from snapping. No one wants to talk to him these days, but he can’t blame them. There’s no incentive for anyone to want him for a friend without something in return.

“There’s monsters here. Do you need help?”

She doesn’t reply. She obviously wants nothing to do with him, so he should probably leave her alone. But—Ven sucks his teeth. He has his sworn duty to protect those who need it, but also the decency to respect the wishes of others. What should he do?

Maybe she’s a survivor. Maybe she’s from another world and landed herself here.

She’s too quiet. “Did someone hurt you?” he asks.

The girl lowers her head.

Maybe he’s scary-looking. To her, he’s nothing but a chunk of metal.

“I’m smiling, see?” Ven points to his visor, stretching teeth that she… can’t… see. Stars, he’s such an idiot.

A passing, small thought wonders if it’s okay to show his face, for a few seconds, just to assuage her. It can’t hurt.

Instead, he grips his wrist. He could tell her they can be friends and hopefully she’ll feel more comfortable—but every muscle in his body straightjackets him from saying it (friends) as if it would be offensive.

“If you don’t want to talk, I can respect that,” Ven says, ignoring the widening pit in his stomach and the way his voice shakes. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he stares at the ground.

This is why Terra and Aqua are so special. They took him in, no questions asked, feeding him whatever cake flavor he wanted, laughing at his poorly-timed jokes, training him under pure faith, checking in on him at night to make sure he’s alright, tucking in with him if he wasn’t. He’s never met anyone so open and he’s never once asked them why.

He hopes they’re together.

This girl, though, is the tick of a broken clock, a reminder that Terra and Aqua gift him the honor out of courtesy. He doesn’t know why she makes him think that way. He’s never met her before.

She stands up, and for a second Ven loses his breath. Her face is shrouded under her hood, and he has a very distinct, nauseating feeling that he’s seen those lips, that chin before. At Aurora’s palace, from within the crowd? Snow White’s? That can’t be, he only met dwarves there.

(He knows.)

The girl leaves with no urgency in her feathery steps, her robe gently swishing and dusty as it drags on the ground.

“Where are you going?” Is that rude to ask?

Small yellow eyes peek from under the matchbox she was sitting on, crawling over two soaked matches. They don’t move, as if waiting for the right opportunity like roaches with teeth.

“Wait, you have to be careful!”

She breaks into a jog, the fog blurring her robe into gray. Stars, this girl could walk straight into Darkness and wouldn’t recognize the danger she’s in.

Ven runs after her—he’s chasing an instinct, a dense worry that something will go fatally wrong and that he has to stop it, he has to stop it and he may too late that there is something terribly wrong about this that maybe the pain won’t let her come back that he’s forgetting something that his stomach hurts and there is a clock. A tower. About to tick. What is going on with him?

“Hey!” he calls, shaking his head out of a rush of bile clogging his throat. He has no idea how Aqua dealt with being here for twelve years when he can barely survive one visit.

The girl kicks off the ground and floats in midair like she’s a cloud, taking herself to a windowsill that’s tall enough for a dog to peer over. It’s an unremarkable building, hastily put together by an owner who probably grieved over his job, quaint and unassuming, TOYS painted over a typical awning with a wooden door. She slips through a loose window pane.

Ven groans. As thin as his reserves are already, he calls on his nearly depleted magic, using it to launch himself, and lands on heaps of dust. The girl left the window pane open, the lights out inside.

It’s dumb to follow. Ven follows.

Her steps are delicate, strutting like she’s waiting for him.

“Where are you?” He slams into a block—

—the leg of a porcelain doll, holy stars, he’s only tall enough to reach her ankle. Her eyes, the size of suns, glisten from the synthetic moonlight outside, giving her a dim shine that leaves her with a blank stare. He’s surrounded by dolls like this one, by stuffed bears for full-sized children, miniatures his height, wind-up contraptions painted with bright colors. They are all plastered with large smiles, yet they glare at him with that glisten, like masks to cover the dead.

The girl’s footsteps come closer, carrying with her a bold red cloth that she took from a toy soldier.

“Is that a scarf?” he asks her.

She keeps her head tilted downward so he can’t look her in the eye, wrapping the scarf around his neck and patting it against his chest plate like it’s dear to her.

(He knows.)

“I don’t,” he says as she turns over her shoulder, “like this color on me.” He pulls it off of him, overtaken by a desire to hold it close when he really wants to dump it. (Keep it and keep it dearly, throw it and run far, far away.)

Ven follows her, that scarf glued to his hand. An exposed jack-in-the-box hangs over from its box, bobbing as it stares holes through him, a toothy grin inches from taking a bite.

The girl fiddles with trinkets from the hip of a wind-up dancer, excitedly running back to Ven to drop them in his hand. Silver star charms that could have hung from a purse or a belt, intertwined through his fingers like chains. His stomach hurts.

“I don’t know what you want me to do with these.” (It all burns in a radiant sky of Darkness.) But she’s already on her way across a chessboard to grab another item: a hat from a stuffed cat.

It’s fancy-looking, a fedora with a pinned feather, something only the (slickest, coolest) most confident person could wear. Next to him is the shiny plastic of carousel mirrors. He’s holding just the hat in his fists (did he not carry some trinkets a moment ago?) and he tries it on for size. Cool. Slick.

What surprises him is how the hat is already carved with slits for his helmet’s ears, as though the Realm has tailored it specifically for him.

The girl stands by him to look at his reflection, holding a pink, paper rose.

“You’re not real, are you? The Realm made you up.”

Her lips quiver before she scowls.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you upset. These gifts are nice, but,” he slips the hat off, “I don’t know what they’re supposed to mean.”

(They’re not for you.)

She hangs her head, morosely taking the hat back. One petal from her paper flower wilts to her feet.

“My name is Ventus, by the way.” He places his hand over his breast. “You can call me Ven.”

The girl stares at her flower. She sniffles, and Ven notices the shape of her nose. There’s something about her face that he can’t piece together, broken puzzle fragments from an old picture ripped apart.

“I... don’t know if I should say this,” he says slowly, “but I think I’ve met you before.”

She stiffens.

“Can you tell me your name at least?” He leans over to peer into her hood to catch a glimpse of her eyes—which earns him a slap across his helmet.

Ven doesn’t feel the sting of it but the knock of his helmet against his cheekbone.

“I-I’m sorry?” He reaches to touch his face but of course only meets his visor. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

The girl walks away, passing a group of miniature dolls on replica rocking chairs, lounging outside a wooden brick-painted dollhouse. She strokes the doorknob, barely stopping herself from turning it.

“Do you sleep there?”

The girl says nothing, but he figures he’s right. For some reason it wretches at him, his stomach swelling with acid. He imagines her closing that door behind her, smaller than a human palm. She would climb those tiny stairs, painted white, to the second floor, and slip into a straw-stuffed bed, covering herself with a knitted handkerchief. He might faint. He doesn’t like the idea that her only friends are dolls.

A part of him wants to take off his helmet and give it to her. She has nothing but that robe. It can’t possibly be good protection against the Darkness.

“Listen, I don’t feel good,” Ven moans, reaching out his hand for her to take. “Why don’t we head back? I can keep you safe.” At the sound of his words, he almost regrets them. He’s no Terra, just a scrawny kid, sticks tucked in a wet matchbox.

The girl hesitates, but the fact that she’s tensing up instead of dismissing him, that she’s considering it, that she lifts her hand and their fingers nearly make contact is a good sign.

A bang reverberates through the room. Shit. Ven desperately searches for the source of the racket, a screeching clamor of slaps and out of tune blasts. He flinches with every rhythmic beat. There—a wind-up set of a band bashing cymbals and blowing horns. It shakes the room alive.

Fuck.

Ven kicks the winder out of its socket, shutting down the pandemonium. He brings a finger to his lips, motioning for the girl to hold her breath.

There is peace. Ven sighs.

Something—some things—growl behind him.

Bald across the spine. Tongues dangling between fangs. The Heartless insignia branded on foreheads. The rats approach him slowly, predators measuring their strike.

“Stay behind me!” Ven summons Wayward Wind with no star-damn clue how he’s going to fight their way out of this shop.

He watches for ticks of movement.

One of the Heartless convulses like a regurgitating heartbeat. That one will either attack first or will act as the diversion.

But he’s wrong on both counts.

As though possessed, it stumbles and bites its comrade at the brainstem. Together they fizzle and deflate, purple smoke hissing out of the wounds, fur ripped into stubbled patches. The infection spreads, the sound of chews into meat, ally to ally, fangs into necks. They melt into each other’s skulls, two eyes become four become eight. Flesh blends and worms together, sinking into fog like a thrumming vein. The mass now has claws sticking out of the shoulders. Tongues drag over the wood like outstretched udders. Clumpy yellow eyes, hundreds of them, mount the chest. The mouth sits on the crown, fangs too long to keep sheathed.

“Run,” he calls to the girl, turning on his heel and breaking into a sprint.

She doesn’t.

He skids to a stop. What is she staring at? Claws. Claws creeping over the edge of the dresser they’re standing on. Ven slices Wayward Wind across the knuckles, throwing them into a sea of squirming rats on the floor.

There are rats taking hold of the furniture, climbing. There are more scuttling down the walls from the ceiling. Eventually the entire store will be digested.

The girl gazes up at the Rat King as it towers over her, watches as it opens its mouth, trembles at the smoke and oil oozing out of its curved, warped lips.

Ven will have to choose his battles.

Wedging himself between the Rat King and the girl, he yells, casting a flash of a barrier spell. It lasts a second, but it blocks the Rat King’s lunge. Ven grabs the girl’s wrist. “Come with me.”

They run across the countertop, which shakes from the heavy tramp of the Rat King charging behind them. Ven leads her through openings where the rats aren’t crowding in droves. Between the legs of dolls. Behind boardgames leaning against the wall. He kicks marbles to trip the rats up, knocks chess pieces over to create a block, strikes rocking horses to throw them off his trail. There are discarded toys with their clock mechanisms ripped out, and he helps the girl climb through them. Ven has to rely on his emptying well, mumbling half-prayers for crumbs of replenished magic to keep him going.

They’re at a dead end, obstructed by a pile of stuffed bears they’d have to crawl over. Rats are the better crawlers.

The rats crouch behind them like a wall trap, the kind that crushes your body against stone. Ven uses Wayward Wind like a gun, shooting pellets of Light. It fizzles out on him.

“Stars,” he prays. If Aqua was here, she’d know what to do.

He needs a savior.

Like an answer, a Light shines above him.

“There!”

Drinking this newfound hope like an elixir, Ven uses the adrenaline and summons a barrier, throwing the Heartless back and creating a path to a stack of alphabetical blocks that reach the ceiling, where an open skylight marks an exit.

“Go! Hurry!” He lifts the girl up onto the first block. Her climbs are slow and apprehensive, like a child in need of a watcher. Ven takes laps near her, stabbing Heartless coming too close so she could get a headstart.

The Rat King pummels through the inferior rats, demolishing a cuckoo clock with its claws for hammers. The cuckoo spits out and dies, its wooden eggs squashed.

The girl is halfway up when the Rat King rams into the block tower, crumbling its weak foundation and knocking her down. It snatches Ven by the waist.

Ven stabs Wayward Wind through the claw, through and through, thorough and thorough. A mass of eyes blink boredly at him, and Ven barely has the capacity to wiggle out of its grasp.

The Rat King squeezes him.

His breath, his lungs—

Aqua would be strong. Terra would be indestructible.

“No…”

It’s as if Ven has been slapped all over again.

The girl spoke? She’s like the small peep of a bird, pollinating a flower.

He looks down.

She graces her hands open like she’s trying to reach up and catch him.

Resolve is a fickle friend, but Ven swells with it. “Let go of me,” he growls, slamming his Keyblade against the claws that bind him. It won’t let go. He slices it across the Rat King’s chest with a thunderous burst, his magic fueled by overhammered desperation, aiming for eyes and shutting them for good. He uppercuts against the chin, stabbing the Heartless in the throat, right where the insignia now sits.

The Rat King roars. Ven crashes into a box of checkers pieces.

“H-hey,” he calls, stumbling out of the box. “Where—?”

The girl is being dragged by one of the rats. She kicks it in the face, but it doesn’t flinch.

Ven shoulder-tackles the rat, swiping his Keyblade across the forehead. He’s swallowing oxygen, heaving into his helmet’s bascinet which brushes it back onto his lips, his breath dirty, sticky, and warm.

He’s so tired, but he prays again for a refill, single drops of mana.

A roar shakes the clocks. The Rat King hunts for them.

The girl sways when she stands on her feet. The hope for the skylight is gone. The floor is nothing but slithering Dark. And now they’ll be run over by a tank, if not eaten.

Ven leans on the leg of a porcelain doll wearing a green dress. Aqua would have told him to pull from his magic one more time, that he’d have more when he thinks he doesn’t, that his heart can’t fail him, to get creative.

“Stay back,” he moans to the girl, pointing his Keyblade high at the back of the doll’s head. He shoots like he’s batting a ball.

The doll lurches forward, rocks on her toes, and falls. Her face smashes against the Rat King, cracking across the nose, her cheek crumbling. She loses an eye.

“Come on,” Ven groans, holding his side and wincing. Rats are already climbing over the porcelain, the Rat King digging itself out from under. When the girl doesn’t give any indication that she’ll move, Ven touches her wrist. “We’ll find another way. I won’t give up.”

The girl yanks her hand from him as though his touch burned her.

“You okay?”

The girl faces him with a glower and pushes him away.

“Why?” Ven lifts his arms up in surrender. “Did I say something wrong?”

She shoves him further back.

“What did I do?” Ven chokes back a sob. “We’re on the same side!”

But they’re not. He sees her eyes for the first time, barely exposed from the hood, an angry amber from deep within a tree. They’re oversized as if they don’t quite fit her face, familiar, cynical, eyes he does recognize.

“Vanitas?” he whispers.

She shoves him one more time with every ounce of her gentle, small strength. When she grunts, she sounds like a squeak.

Ven trips backwards and lands on bent cardboard. Another matchbox.

“I don’t remember seeing this—” The matchbox vibrates and lifts off. It’s attached to a flag which acts as the envelope, its corners tied together under him, propelled by balloons. A makeshift blimp. A way out.

“Take my hand,” he calls to the girl. The blimp hurls skyward, knocking him down to his knees.

She sighs like she’s finished with the most arduous, bone-breaking task, choosing not to watch him fly away, choosing not to move when the rats slither around her, her body tripping when they scuttle past her legs.

Ven punches balloons out from under the flag so he’d lower in altitude. “No, I’m not leaving you behind.”

The blimp lurches upward, whiplashing him. It’s as if the Realm itself has taken its invisible hand and swatted him away. Let her die. You watch. I command it so.

Dizzy, he holds onto the flag. He shakes his head. Where is she?

In the clawed grip of the Rat King, as the Darkness tucks around her like a doll into a crib. The Rat King’s mouth opens, ready to eat.

“No, you can’t do this to her!” If only he could aim this stupid blimp, he’d catch her and they would fly off together.

Ven moves to throw himself off the blimp, but the gusts throttle him into submission, picking the blimp up and throwing him out. The store is now a black mass of furry Darkness, pulsing and squirming. He doesn’t witness what happens to her.

A chimney burns a thick black, embers sputtering out of it. He’s high in the sky, the fog stuffing the streets, a trace of a moon stacked behind the clouds like a glass bulb through a paper filter.

Ven has no control. The wind takes him away, as if the Realm is parading him around like a choo-choo train. It should have been a familiar story. You can’t wield a weapon against the wind.

Ven lays on his stomach, watching the neighborhood shrink into toy houses. At this point, who cares what little else the Realm will take away from him. Let it be his helmet.

The blimp glides across the skyline, snaking itself closer to the river. Let the Realm dump him into the water. So long as there are no more bats.

It instead curves around, approaching the clock tower. From the ground, he couldn’t get a good look at it, just the golden face with its hands, as if there’s a great lantern inside that doesn’t ever snuff out. Up close, he realizes that it’s leaning, threatening to collapse. Well, okay. Let the Realm crash him into it.

But as he gets closer, he notices a person standing on the minute hand, at fifteen. Twelve and fifteen minutes. She wears a white robe with her copper hair flowing out in ponytails, her face hidden under that hood.

“You.”

The wind billows around her, her robe rippling, her hair whipping.

“You’re okay!” Ven snatches the corners of the flag and pulls. The matchbox jerks in a circle, but he pulls again, trying to get the blimp to travel in her direction. “I’m getting her this time,” he tells the Realm, “and you can’t stop me.”

He bounces off the glass of the watchtower, just below her feet. Ven looks up at her, and catches sight of her eyes under that hood.

They’re green.

“But—”

So he has all the pieces (together) and now he has a face (with a name) that he can’t name or remember.

“I know you,” Ven says, conviction enunciating every syllable.

The girl says nothing.

“Please say something.” Ven opens his hands, maybe to show her that he means no harm, maybe to invite her onto the blimp. “Everything is so confusing and I just want an answer. I know you, don’t I?”

The wind picks up, nudging the blimp, so Ven grabs onto the flag and pulls, using his weight to swing it back to her.

“It’s me, Ven.” He lets go of the flag and uses both hands to identify himself. “Do you remember me?”

She doesn’t reply.

“Can you tell me anything? I want to remember. Please?”

The girl motions to take off her hood, but she stops.

“Look at me, you must know me.” Ven throws off his helmet to show his face.

A cold washes over his cheeks, from the slicing of the high altitude, from something else. A whisper in his ear, someone leaning over from behind him to smile into his face, coaxing his shoulders to relax. His skin is suddenly numb to the chill, to his feelings, to his thoughts which seem like they’re slowing down, to whatever is happening down below in a city with no ghosts, to the girl who readjusts her balance as the minute hand moves to sixteen.

He needs to ask her to get on the blimp.

The Realm is whispering to him to calm down. It’s over now.

“I still want to see your face,” Ven murmurs.

The girl throws back her hood. The wind howls and blows him off the blimp before he could see.

He thrashes in spins, the wind winding him into a cyclone, its turbulence so labored that it sucks the air out of lungs. It throws him and plays with him, showing him a blur of city lights until they’re upside down and then right side up.

Before it all goes black, he sees a face: a shy smile, a small temperament with no name in a field of strelitzia wildflowers, watching a lemonade pink sunrise.

~*~

Days before they departed for the Realm of Darkness, they were reliving, piecing together a new reality.

Ven shoved a cherry popsicle into his mouth, by far his new favorite treat. That was the one thing he missed the most: the taste of sweets, the delicacy of whipped cream, the joy of chocolate, the euphoria of candy. He wanted to try more—he had read about lavender ice cream and wanted to ask Aqua if she could find a recipe for it.

This was usually the hour for her to be reading, but she wasn’t in the library. They all avoided the Master’s study, so she wouldn’t be there. Perhaps she was practicing her daily drills, so Ven tried the gym, but nope. Not there. The only other place she could be this late was in the training grounds outside, or even better the cliff where they’d go star-gazing. That sounded nice. If Aqua and Terra were nowhere to be found, he could bet they were waiting for him already.

They weren’t.

Ven heard their voices creeping out from the lounge. A soft light streamed through the crack at the door—Terra was lighting a candle with his finger, coaxing the flame to grow. It was the only light in the room, carving a sharp line between the middle where Terra sat on the loveseat and the corners of the room where the bookshelves were hidden. Aqua tugged a blanket around her shoulders. Since she came back home, she smiled less. But right now, she was renewed.

Terra looked different, too. He smiled more often.

Ven kept himself hidden behind the door.

“I can’t wait until it starts snowing,” Aqua said, the thought alone taking her breath away. “The spring showers, the summer storms.” She bit her lip, glancing at Terra. “In the autumn, when the gusts would shake the leaves…” Her smile fell. “We didn’t have weather in the Realm of Darkness. The trees so still. The wind never blew.”

Terra, who cupped the flame as if to keep it from being blown out, looked up. “If it’s too soon—”

“We can’t wait any longer. Sora is missing.”

Terra grimaced. Ven agreed, to be honest. She was pushing herself too hard, but checking out of the search for Sora was not an option any of them could take either.

“Of course,” Terra said. “I wouldn’t want you to be any different.” He patted the seat next to him.

Aqua wrapped the blanket tighter, skipping over to the loveseat. She wrestled with a smirk on her face, failing to hide her excitement.

That’s the thing with the two of them. It could be the tiniest thing, but whatever Terra did made her smile so much.

Terra stroked the flame, making it dip toward Aqua. She pushed it back with the flick of her finger. They sat together, playing with this flame as it swayed between their hands like seaweed in the tides.

Terra’s eyes skated up her shoulders to her face. When she caught him starting, he grinned.

She got lost for a moment—that was what it looked like, her reading his eyes. They were comfortable, sitting in silence like they would be if they were in the library, reading books, writing essays, watching the fire dance. It was never a secret that they could unwind in conversations without uttering a word, having known each other since they were children.

Despite that they weren’t speaking, Terra cleared his throat as if to change a subject. “You know, I’m glad I’m coming with you.”

“You’re glad? To explore the Realm of Darkness?”

“It’s worth it. With you.” Terra licked his lips. “I’m glad I’m not doing it alone.”

“Me, too,” Aqua said, her voice low, her eyes blinking. Her gaze fell—from Ven’s perspective it seemed like she was studying Terra, but she was too sad. “I’m worried about Ven.”

At the sound of his name, Ven’s chest lurched. It felt wrong to be included in this conversation.

“He’ll be fine. He’s stronger than you think he is,” Terra said, waiting for her to nod. “And he’d appreciate being included.”

Terra pinched the wick—it hissed—and he cloned the flame so that they had one of their own, so that they could sit closer without the coffee table in the way. Aqua smiled wider, rolling the flame under his hand. They were touching without making skin contact.

“Will we need time?” Terra asked her. “To prepare?”

“No.”

That No wasn’t a typical Aqua No. It wasn’t a lie, the kind where she would say she was fine when she wasn’t. It wasn’t the truth either, the kind where she was confident.

Terra noticed. He delicately took her hand, the light in her palm beaming between the folds of their skin like a lantern with cutouts.

“We will need our armor of course,” she followed up, sounding flushed.

Terra smirked. “Should we carry flashlights?”

“Terra,” she warned, swatting his bicep. “No jokes in the Realm of Darkness.”

“The Realm of Darkness doesn’t have a sense of humor?”

She froze, her stare a chokehold on the smile she had been keeping, snatching its breath until it died.

“Did I say something wrong?” Terra asked softly.

She motioned to let go of him but she didn’t. She shook her head.

Terra weaved his fingers through hers. The fire they held snuffed, its smoke trickling out. “It’s just me, Aqua. No one else. You can tell me you’re afraid.”

She’d never admit to it for herself. She’d say she was worried that Ven would hurt himself. She’d be worried that Terra would make the wrong decision, the type that would spell catastrophe.

Aqua watched the way his thumb stroked the back of her palm. She looked at him. “I’m afraid,” she said.

“Come here.” He pulled her into him, safeguarding her with his huge arms, his thick legs wrapped over hers so he could lock her tight. She dug her face into his shoulder.

“We’re going with you this time,” Terra reminded her, rubbing her back. “I’d never stray again, I promise you this.”

She whispered something that Ven couldn’t hear. Terra laughed with his breath and held her head, brushing his fingers through her hair. They passed several seconds in silence.

The cherry popsicle, half eaten, dripped down Ven’s fingers, red slipping down his wrist and onto the floor. He stepped away, deliberately pressing on the heel first to muffle the sound, taking himself back towards the entrance hall. He trashed the popsicle at the first bin he passed by.

He walked himself out the front entrance, past the clearing where the lanterns gave way to the forest, up the waterfall and into their favorite clearing. Where the stars shined the brightest, where they could point out their favorite constellations, galaxies where sister worlds were connected. So much Darkness to let the Light shine.

Ven had wondered, almost every night, how much of it was true: that he needed Vanitas to make his own Light bright. If Vanitas was out there, a ghost in outer space that gave the stars their center stage.

Any moment now, Terra and Aqua would untangle and come join Ven. They never miss a night out with the stars unless it was storming. Maybe they’d be kissing—stars knew they needed it—and when they were done, they would realize what time it was. As long as they didn’t give Ven any gory details.

But they didn’t come. The moon arced over the tallest mountain and started to fall.

Terra and Aqua were still in the lounge, deeply asleep, knotted together. The candle wax was building up on the coffee table. Aqua’s blanket hung over the loveseat. They never looked more at peace, like the rise of the sun on a spring day, when the nightingales wrapped up.

Ven snuck into the room, heel to toe, carefully taking her blanket and draping it over them.

Terra sharply inhaled, hugging Aqua closer to him as if his chest would swallow her whole. He used her skin for air, gripped onto her like she would slip through his arms and disappear. He didn’t open his eyes.

They were warm—not through touch, he made sure not to wake them up. It wasn’t warmth but warmth. Ven realized it then: this was their Light, boxed between their bodies, as hot as a distant supernova, as dense as their stubborness, as small as a beating heart. He had witnessed a star that fell from the skies.

Ven cupped the flame and gently blew it out.

In the hall that led to the ballroom, Cheers studied the ceiling. He flicked a paw and one of the bulbs in the chandelier came back to life.

“It’s bedtime!” Cheers said, his favorite time of the day.

Ven groaned, slapping his back onto the wall and sliding down to the floor. “Cheers, in my life before, did… Did I have other friends?”

Cheers hesitated. “That’s not the first time you’ve asked.”

“I don’t know why you won’t answer.”

Cheers lowered its head, counting claws. “It would make you upset to know.”

Ven gaped.

Something bad had happened or the answer was he had none. There was no other explanation. Terra and Aqua, something was growing, and he knew its name but he didn’t want to say it, and he knew one of these days it would fill the castle with breath, with something fresh but stuffy, beautiful and sad at the same time. He had no one else.

“I want to know.”

“Once I tell you, you’d wish you didn’t ask.”

Ven sighed. He stared at his hands. His forearm was stained with food coloring. He forgot to wipe it off. “Their names. If they liked me much or if they were just pretending.”

Cheers nodded. “It would be a painful experience to relive memories that aren’t chained together in your heart anymore. All at once. I think it would be best to tell you slowly, one thing at a time.”

One. That’s all it took to build something up, less effort to tear it all down.

Terra and Aqua would grow apart from him one kiss at a time. Lea and Isa already had Roxas and Xion, strengthening those bonds one inside joke at a time. Xehanort and Eraqus were gone, the last two people who knew about Ven’s past. They exchanged one secret at a time, all of them drowning at the very last exhale.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

#terraqua #wayfinder trio #ventus #terra #aqua #chirithy #kingdom hearts fanfiction #kh fanfic #i am exhausted #from editing all this #i really hope you like ;-;#my fic

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