Hello dear readers and welcome to the fifth installment of the Acolytes of Chaos saga, Before The Storm. This is a prequel to the previous story, Kingdom Hearts IV: Connected Worlds, and it'll mainly just be a series of fourteen short, fluffy one-shots depicting what the characters are all up to during the six year time skip. These will cover everything from Maleficent scheming to Terra and Aqua's wedding. If you haven't read any of my previous Kingdom Hearts stories, go read those first because otherwise you'll be hopelessly lost. Go on, shoo. Everyone else all caught up? Good. On with the show.
Episode 1: A New Day is Dawning:
The Land of Departure – Throne Room; December 2015:
This is it, Aqua thought to herself as she stood nervously in front of the large doors of the Land of Departure's throne room. Today is the day. After months of planning and preparation, today was the day she and Terra were finally getting married. They had been attracted to each other for years, but had refrained from acting on their crushes out of fear that Master Eraqus wouldn't approve. But when she looked through the contents of their teacher's study when she turned Castle Oblivion back into the Land of Departure, she found his will, in which he told them that he knew they had feelings for each other and not to deny how they felt on his account.
The two of them quickly made up for lost time, although the fact that he was still partially possessed by Xehanort limited their ability to see each other on a regular basis. Once Terra had been completely freed from Xehanort's control, they finally began dating openly. A month after Xehanort's demise, Terra worked up the courage to propose, and now, here they were. Inwardly, Aqua chastised herself. She had survived in the Realm of Darkness without breaking for over a decade, but now that she and Terra were about to tie the knot she was a nervous wreck? A comforting and familiar gloved hand reached over and squeezed her own. This managed to calm Aqua down as she looked down at the mouse king who would be walking her down the aisle.
Neither Terra nor Aqua had had normal childhoods. Terra's parents were killed by a mugger when he was a toddler, and he lived on the streets of San Fransokyo until he was thirteen. The kids at school bullied him for being an orphan, and the other kids at the orphanage often took their pain and frustration at life out on each other. Because he'd been there when the mugger had shot his parents, he'd developed a primal hatred for bullies of all shapes and sizes, and he had frequently gotten in trouble both at school and with the police for jumping in to a fight when he saw someone being hurt. He'd grown up constantly hungry, always looking over his shoulder, and his hand practically glued to the switch blade he kept in his pocket to protect himself. But then Master Eraqus had found him and took him in, gave him the stable home and supportive father figure he'd been lacking, and a purpose to keep him going.
Aqua's parents survived to raise her, but in her opinion they did a horrible job of it. Her mom and dad had been fairly wealthy, owned a big house on the Destiny Islands, but they never got along with each other. Always keeping secrets and having affairs left and right. Both of them kept making her keep their secrets by bribing her with candy, and she always felt awful as she sat on the couch with a bowl of candy while her mother had sex with her surfing instructor upstairs. When she was eleven, they finally decided to get a divorce, but they continued to argue, only this time, it was about which of them she would live with. Tired of being treated as an object by her own parents, she decided enough was enough and ran away. Her parents had sent the police out looking for her. Not because they actually cared about her well-being, mind you, but to make sure that the other didn't grab her up for themselves.
While she was running along the beach, she'd seen a shooting star fall from the sky further along the shore. Curious despite her situation, she crept forward and found two men, one older and one younger, standing on the beach. The younger one was only three years older than she was, and he asked her what was wrong. She told them both about her situation with her parents, and after talking to the boy in hushed whispers for a few moments, the older man produced a strange-looking swoard, and he asked her to hold it for a few moments as he said some (at the time) cryptic words. When it glowed brightly in the dark, the man asked her if she wanted to learn how to use his sword. Desperate to get away from her parents, she hastily agreed.
The boy introduced himself as Terra, and told her about other worlds and Keyblades while his teacher, Master Eraqus, lead them back into town. Aqua was reluctant to go anywhere near her parents, but Eraqus explained that if she was going to learn to wield a Keyblade with them, he didn't want anyone to think that he'd kidnapped her. Her parents had drilled the whole "stranger danger" routine into her since she was old enough to understand, but with parents like hers, who wouldn't jump at the chance to get away from them? Eraqus spoke to her parents and since the other didn't get custody of her, it was pretty easy to convince them to sign custody of her over to the middle aged Keyblade Master. Aqua never saw her parents again, and while she always felt slightly ashamed for thinking so, part of her said "good riddance" when she found out after Xehanort's demise that they'd perished when Destiny Islands was consumed by the Heartless during her imprisonment in the Dark Realm.
So since neither of them had parents to be there for the wedding, and Eraqus himself was dead, Mickey had volunteered to walk his old friend down the aisle on her wedding day. Aqua had happily accepted her friend's offer, and she took a deep breath as the large, heavy doors of the castle opened.
"Show time," she whispered as the music began to play. With practiced ease, she and Mickey walked down the castle's front steps to where the altar, aisle, and seats had been set up in the Forecourt. She looked up the aisle to see her fiancé gingerly checking his hair for any signs that his Xehanort-induced white roots were showing. She couldn't help but smile. Even when he was always trying to look serious and mature, he could still be a big dork sometimes. Because of Mickey's smaller stature, she had to walk more slowly so that the king could keep up. Not that she minded, really. Because taking longer to get to the altar simply meant more time to admire Terra's face. The music faded as she and Mickey finally reached the end of the aisle.
The ceremony was short but sweet. Everyone applauded for them when the priest from Atlantica announced that Terra could now kiss the bride. Almost everyone danced at the reception, and a recording of the Atlantica choir singing "Kiss the Girl" played as the bride and groom slowly glided back and forth across the dance floor. Some of the guests joked about the bridesmaids all being related to the bride when Aqua shared a glass of champagne with Kairi, Namine, Xion, and Yuffie. While Aqua wasn't particularly close to the "Great Ninja" of Radiant Garden, they'd still been friends since Ven had started inviting her over to the castle on the weekends.
The groomsmen were all loud and rambunctious as Dilan, Even, Aeleus, Ienzo, Lea, and Riku shared embarrassing stories of all the dirt they had on Terra from his days as Ansem's apprentice. The fact that it had been Xehanort's name and influence meant nothing to them. As far as the former founders of Organization XIII were concerned, the Keyblade Master had always been one of them. Eventually, the party wound down as the sun finally dipped below the horizon, and once the last guests had left the room, Ventus, Yuffie, and Vanitas left to spend the night in Radiant Garden. Their knowing smirks went unnoticed as Terra scooped Aqua up in his arms and carried his wife upstairs to their bedroom. It was time start with the lovemaking.
I made up Terra and Aqua's pre-Keyblade backstories myself. We don't know anything about what their life was like before they started training with Eraqus, but I decided to come up with backstories that gave context to their personalities and vulnerabilities in Birth By Sleep. Terra's so desperate to protect his surrogate family because he feels he couldn't protect his biological one, etc. I wanted to have some contrast between their upbringings, with Terra growing up in poverty on an urban world while Aqua grew up wealthy in a more rural location, but both had miserable childhoods.
And yes, the similarities to Aladdin and Jasmine in the whole street rat/rich girl dynamic were intentional. Kingdom Hearts is a Disney franchise after all, there are bound to be parallels. And having the little paragraph focusing on Ven and Yuffie was an apology for killing them off in Connected Worlds. There will be more couples fluff throughout the fic (in fact, it's pretty much 40% fluff), so there's more where all this came from. The chapter title is a reference to the song "A New Day Is Dawning" from Kingdom Hearts 2, because of the whole "land and sea come together" thing matching with Terra and Aqua's theme naming.