Waves
The light was weak.
Aqua saw it in Mickey's eyes, in Riku's shattered Keyblade. The light held them back, restrained them. Riku was powerful when he used the darkness, but he insisted on turning it into light.
Typical. Aqua brandished Mickey's stolen Keyblade in her dark grip, her fingertips a blood red. Her body finally reflected what had been inside her heart for a long time now.
See, Mickey? This is what happens when you abandon a friend.
He had no idea what it was like. He didn't understand the misery of her existence, imprisoned in this hellish place with no way out.
Her almost rescue made it that much worse. To have what she wanted more than anything dangled over her, tempting, taunting, then yanked away at the last possible moment, all to save some boy she barely knew—
I doomed myself. This is what I get for always putting other people first. I've learned my lesson, and now they're going to pay.
Because that same boy (more man than boy now) was here. He and Mickey had come to rescue her.
Aqua wanted to laugh. It was far too late for that. This was her home now. She belonged here. If they couldn't see that in her tainted clothes, her golden eyes, her silver hair, then they were more foolish and naive than she'd originally thought.
She turned her back on them and did the abandoning for once. It was her lot in life to be alone. She'd learned not to expect anything different. There was no room for sorrow in her heart anymore. No room for a heart at all, really.
The darkness reached past her thighs and elbows now and ate into her clothes. Her fingers turned completely red.
It won't be much longer before I truly feel at home here.
What else could she do to speed up the transformation? To end her loneliness and misery?
Because the Heartless were never alone. They always attacked in groups. And now, at long last, she was becoming one of them.
She wouldn't be lonely much longer.
The next time Mickey and Riku came, she was at the Dark Margin again. There must be some kind of link between this place and the Realm of Light.
That was fine by her. The more she could dish out her misery and anguish on the people who had left her here, left her to rot and wither and be swallowed by despair before drowning in the darkness, the better. It surged within her now, feeding on her anger, eating her resentment and gnawing on her rage.
How dare they show their faces here again. How dare they.
With Mickey's stolen Keyblade gripped in her claw of a hand, she whirled around to face them and glared. "All that's left in my heart is misery and despair, and I want you to feel it!"
Mickey braced himself as her Keyblade collided with the Kingdom Key D's gold blade.
"Aqua, stop!" he had the gall to say. "We're here because we're tryin' to help!"
Aqua cartwheeled backwards and glanced up. Grasped in Riku's hand was a Keyblade. It was different from the one she'd broken. He must've repaired it somehow. He used the darkness to teleport behind her, and she just barely whirled around in time as his heavy silver blade collided with her more elegant weapon.
"Using my own moves against me?!"
Typical. They hadn't seen anything yet. How'd they become masters when they were nowhere near her level, she had no idea. She summoned great spiky blocks of ice cloaked in the darkness and sent the projectiles hurtling after them. She laughed as she watched them splash around in the water of the Dark Margin and trip on its cold sand.
That ice was one of her specialties, and it tracked the movement of its target. Only by guarding or canceling it out with thunder magic could they protect themselves. Had they learned nothing from their previous fight with her?
Riku jumped in front of Mickey to shield him from one of the ice spikes, and they both went sprawling into the water. Now was her chance. She readied one last attack when—
"Now!" came Riku's voice. A blinding light shone over the horizon, and it hurt. Aqua cried out and shielded her eyes from it. She stumbled into the water and sank deeper and deeper into it, into the darkness.
When she opened her eyes again, the light was gone and the waters of the Dark Margin were solid beneath her feet. Mickey's Keyblade was still gripped in her fingers, but Riku and Mickey were gone.
She wasn't alone, however. A little ways away from her was a boy with brown hair and eyes as blue as the sky.
"Aqua."
The way he said her name made something stir inside her cold, dead heart. Almost like… like he knew her. Like he knew what she'd been through, and it broke his heart.
How—
How dare he pity her. Whoever this boy was, she would take care of him, just like all the rest of her enemies. She didn't want to feel anymore. Feeling anything other than anger and hatred just hurt too much.
She drew herself into a battle stance. He hesitated. His hands were free of any sort of weapon, but that didn't make him a friend.
"Aqua, please," came his voice. Desperate. Pleading. How many times had she begged someone to come rescue her, to no avail? His request fell on deaf ears and a hard heart.
He took a step towards her, ripples spreading out from beneath his feet. "I need your help to save—"
She sent a Dark Blizzaga hurtling right at him. He rolled out of the way and landed on his feet a little ways away from her, knees bent and arms extended to balance himself. They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity, his eyes sparking a strange sense of familiarity deep inside her heart.
Then a determined glint filled them as a Keyblade appeared in his hand. But not just any Keyblade. The Master's Keyblade. The Keyblade he'd left behind for her. She didn't know what she'd been thinking, sending it away like that. At best it was a pathetic cry for help. Loneliness had a funny effect on the heart, but now she would never allow herself to get hurt again.
She'd prove it, starting with this boy. Defeating him would be the final catalyst. It would end her pain. It would transform her into the heartless creature she longed to become, free from misery and despair. She would empty herself of all that misery and despair, pour it out onto him and make him drown in it. Then her heart would finally be empty, free of the torment of her imprisonment.
She readied herself, switching into her Spellweaver mode of fighting as he started running on the surface of the water. She teleported and created two illusions of herself, siccing them on him as she likewise attacked. She caught him in the chest and he staggered backwards. Still he did not fall through the surface of the water. Already she was two steps ahead of him; she teleported out of the way before he could retaliate and prepared her next attack.
More of her dark ice. It chased him as he ran across the water's smooth, glassy surface. He guarded with his Keyblade at just the right time. It crashed against it and broke into hundreds of shards of ice.
Another one was already coming at him. He held out his Keyblade and zapped it with Thunder. Shocks of electricity coursed through it, and it shattered and fell to the ground at his feet before melting into the waves beneath.
Huh. Not bad. She teleported all around him, throwing him off and catching him in the back. His sharp cry was like music to her ears. It meant someone else was down here with her, suffering; she wasn't alone, she wasn't abandoned, she wasn't—
No. Stop. That had been close. She grabbed the inklings of hope trying to sprout in her heart and tore them out. They had no business being there.
The corruption crawled up her neck and spread its inky tendrils across her scalp. It wouldn't be much longer now. She could feel the darkness closing in on her heart. It didn't have much further to go.
But her momentary distraction had given him time to recoup and get away. And not just that. He launched an attack of his own. Orbs of light blasted out of his Keyblade and swirled around her, tracking her as she shouted and destroyed them.
Enough. "Feel my despair!"
She channeled her anger and rage and loneliness, her despair and pain and anguish, into her Keyblade. It created dozens of illusions of her, taunting, tormenting, telling him he would never understand, telling him he wasn't good enough, telling him he couldn't save her, telling him he would never see his friends again, telling him he was bound to die here, alone, abandoned, without hope.
She couldn't hear him over the din of her voice telling him all the things she'd told herself. But she caught a glimpse of his face. Saw the tears streaking his cheeks and the pure anguish in his eyes as she subjected him to the torment that she herself had gone through. He dropped his Keyblade and crumpled to the ground in a heap. He didn't lift so much as a finger to protect himself from the onslaught.
Why wasn't he fighting back? Why wasn't he defending himself?
How dare he. How dare he give up so easily. She'd fought and fought and fought, pushed through months of loneliness and years of misery before giving in, and at the slightest hint of pain he was ready to give up.
"That's what I had to deal with for YEARS! How dare you—"
She stopped. He hadn't given up. He'd grabbed the hand of the nearest phantom and purified her with light. His fingertips turned black for a brief moment, then she disappeared and he grabbed the leg of another phantom.
Aqua watched, speechless, as he repeated the process. The darkness reached his knuckles this time and took longer to subside. She looked at her hands. Her fingertips briefly turned normal again and then went back to red.
He grabbed the hem of a third phantom's ruined sash, and this time the darkness made his entire hand transform and turned Aqua's hand into light.
"Stop!" She dropped Mickey's Keyblade and cradled the normal hand in her dark claw. She didn't want him to do this. She didn't want him to—
He lifted his eyes and looked right at her. His teeth were gritted and his face was contorted in pain, but he didn't stop what he was doing and even spoke to her.
"Do you really think – we can't – handle it?"
We?
She banished the phantoms, and the remaining misery and despair returned to her heart. Sweat dripped down his forehead, and his face was deathly pale. He took several moments to get control of his breathing, then staggered to his feet, his legs wobbling as he faced her once more.
"You think that becoming a Heartless will make you feel better, don't you? That if you can't feel anymore, you can't hurt anymore, either."
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Aqua gasped as the darkness wrapped its way around his arms and legs, turning his clothes and skin inky black and his eyes yellow. Dark smoke oozed off his body, and—
Just like that, he was himself again.
Was he like her? Was he a Heartless just pretending to be human? Then why—
"But you're wrong," he said, interrupting her thoughts. "You won't feel better. You'll feel worse. You'll forget who you are. You'll lose all your memories." He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was filled with anguish. "And… you'll forget Terra and Ven."
She thought she couldn't break any more. She thought she was broken beyond repair already. But hearing their names proved to be too much.
How dare he. How dare he use them against her, after everyone and everything else had. She screamed and slammed Mickey's Keyblade into him, and he cried out and fell on his back, his body skidding across the glassy surface of the sea.
Except it wasn't him anymore. He'd transformed again. He had blond hair and blue eyes and Ven's voice. He said her name the way Ven always did. He looked at her exactly the way Ven would have. Not with anger or fury, but with sorrow and compassion.
It was Ven. It was Ven she'd struck and Ven she'd hurt and Ven she'd tried to kill.
She was vaguely aware of her voice screaming his name. But she couldn't reach him. She tried to grab his hand, but it was too late. She cursed herself, cursed her miserable existence as she broke through the water of the Dark Margin and sank into it, sank deeper into her darkness and despair.
It wasn't enough that she'd been abandoned. No, fate had tricked her into hurting one of her dearest friends. And not just that. Now she knew. Now she knew why the boy's eyes were so familiar. It wasn't just because he reminded her of Ven, though he was so much like Ven it made her heart ache.
No, she had seen those eyes before, long ago. And she knew whose eyes those were now. It was the boy who had done so much for the worlds. The boy who had kept them safe, time and again. The boy who had helped her friends. The boy who had put his life on the line to try to save her, too.
"Sora," she sobbed, her heart flooding with all the things she didn't want to feel anymore. Sorrow. Pain. Loneliness. Abandonment. Despair. This was what she deserved. She'd had her chance to be rescued and she'd thrown it away. She'd tried to murder her rescuer. Surely he wouldn't want to save her now.
Hot tears stung her eyes and were carried away by the waves engulfing her. At long last, she could finally become one with the darkness. It was what someone like her deserved.
But she wasn't alone. She wasn't abandoned. She wasn't beyond saving. Sora's hand broke through the waves and reached towards her. A lifeline, a way out of the darkness she'd fallen into, the loneliness and pain she'd drowned in. She took his hand, and his grip was strong and steady and firm. He brought her above the cold waves and led her into the warmth of his embrace.
She'd been drowning for so long she'd forgotten what it felt like to breathe. She gasped for air, taking it all in and letting it all out in sob after sob after sob. The sun shone down on them, bright and wonderful and real, and the sparkling waves of Destiny Islands lapped at their feet. Her fingers were their natural color and her gloves were visible again, no longer covered in the darkness that had once cloaked them. Riku and Mickey and Donald and Goofy were on the shore nearby, the biggest smiles on their faces as they clapped and cheered.
"I'm free," she choked out, not really believing it. Sora's grip around her tightened, and it was like both he and Ven were hugging her at the same time. When she leaned back to look at him, to look at the face of her rescuer, tears shone in his eyes and a big, beautiful smile lit up his face.
It had been too long since she'd felt the warmth of another person. And this person, who she'd wanted to meet again more than anything—
His light shone bright enough to melt the darkness away.
A/N: This was written for the KH3: FAUX fanzine organized by kenzichi on tumblr. A big thank you to Ken for organizing the zine and putting it all together. It was a lot of fun to write something for the zine and I'm glad I got to be a part of it!
And of course I drew heavily on the TGS 2018 footage as I wrote this. I'm very happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to play through Aqua's rescue in the game itself.
As always, thank you for reading!