The World That Never Will Be Chapter 28
by the infamous and notorious tocasia
9/25/2020
Important Author's Note: Hey look, I brought words!
CHAPTER 28
Sephiroth loitered on the ridge, next to Master Aqua.
"There are heartless in Villain's Vale, right?" She squinted through charcoal eyelashes.
"Yes."
"I'm going to go fight them," Master Aqua declared.
Sephiroth summoned Masamune with an extra flourish. He put on his best charming smile and offered her his free hand. "Let's go."
He'd been looking forward to this!
"No."
"What?"
He tried to keep an open mind. It was too soon to succumb to disappointment.
"I have to go on my own."
"Why?" Sephiroth carefully masked his hurt with confusion.
...she was stalling. Sephiroth imagined the litany of excuses she must be systematically discarding. None satisfied.
At least she seemed conflicted. Her gaze lingered on her feet; she stumbled on her words. "The truth is, there's something I need from the heartless."
"Oh? What kind of thing?"
"It's a secret."
Sephiroth frowned.
"It's... for a surprise. For you. So, please don't spy on me."
...interesting.
Sephiroth shook his head, playful, "I wouldn't be a very good guardian angel if I made myself entirely blind to my charge."
"I'll be fine," Aqua said, unswayed. "This won't take long."
He had no cause to deny her this excursion. She wasn't his captive.
He had nothing to gain by her ill will, and he did not want his presence to be stifling.
She'd come back soon. It was considerate of her to tell him where she was going.
Bandaging his wounded expectations, he agreed. "Alright, I won't watch too closely. Unless you need me."
...she wouldn't need him. There wasn't anything in Villain's Vale she couldn't handle.
Sephiroth rolled his shoulder in readiness, but before he could ask if she wanted a lift, Master Aqua had zipped away, skating along her trail of ice, the spurs on her boots grinding powdery sparks.
Sephiroth decided to be touched rather than upset. Was Master Aqua going to make him something? A present?
He wasn't used to enjoying surprises. But this one... he'd wait and see.
...it was exceedingly difficult to curtail his curiosity.
What was she gathering from the heartless?
He would gather it for her, too, if he knew what it was.
She'd have a dragon's hoard of it, if she wanted! A mountain of bloodied treasure, to prove his devotion to her cause!
...If you want them all dead, I can gift them to you.
He could topple Villain's Vale like a sandcastle! Grind the rubble into grains. Or... a sunken ruin, in a crater-lake. A sea, after all, for their seaside retreat!
Sephiroth found solace in conceptualizations of creative terraforming... until rationality soured the dream.
...the result would be more like a puddle, perhaps devoid of animal life for months, maybe years, too polluted by darkness for swimming; it would reek of anoxic mud. Although... the pools could end up quite colorful, depending on which extremophile bacteria and algae colonized them. It would be prudent to know what was underneath Villain's Vale first, if something might be released or awakened... he would not be able to hide such a disaster.
...the Land of Dragons had a bunch of mountains no one was using. He could practice glacier lakes there instead. Coax a few peaks to volcanism. Or was radioactivity a better heat source? The temperature was important.
Master Aqua thought hot springs were romantic.
Aqua stepped lightly, avoiding sharp shards of stained glass in the dirt.
Red and green, roses and thorns.
Villain's Vale was larger up close. Jumbled architecture, labyrinthine, ravaged by the elements; more of a pile of blocks than a proper fortress. Shadows where there should be none. Dirty and too clean at the same time, as if everything had given up trying to grow here.
It was way creepier than she'd expected.
Flagstones stacked and buried, slippery. Silvery pipes scaling the spires like willowy, disembodied hands. Decayed foundations and spilled segments of aqueducts.
Something evil, in the stones. The way the wind breathed through the fallen arches. A gloom the sunlight didn't touch.
Like the changing of the tides, first an emptiness, and then, a different temperature and texture of malevolence overtook the area.
She could sense them. Little blots of darkness, watching. Yellow eyes, bubbling into being with a sound like scorched wax, an absence of understandable, conceivable noise.
The heartless fell upon her, seeking the light of the keyblade.
Helmeted, gray-armored slashers surrounded her. Several appeared already damaged, with cracked knightly visors askew. They circled with battle-forged limps, breakdancing, with blades for arms and an insectile sweep to their legs.
Intimidating, but slow.
Aqua's Blizzaga brittled their armor; they shattered.
She invoked her shield to protect her eyes from the shrapnel, but what fragments struck her were no stronger than sand.
...there were more. A whole battalion. Vulnerable to ice.
And what else?
Let them come! She would break them on her wheel of fire!
Behind her.
Aqua grinned as her Stopga spell froze the heartless in place.
Hunched and vaguely humanoid, some kind of augmented Shadow, but bigger.
She willed Master's Defender ablaze, and followed up with a blitz it couldn't dodge.
Aqua vaulted skyward, her tallest, highest backflip.
The hovering little red mages with their cute bird feet couldn't match her in the air.
Their fiery spins missed. Their explosive bombs burst far below her, shrunken to harmless fireworks.
She shredded their tiny bodies in the teeth of her key. They couldn't survive more than a few hits of her combo.
And no matter how erratic their movements, they couldn't escape the range of her magic.
It was all coming back, now. The darkness had stripped none of her skill from her. Aqua experimented, and put new twists on her old techniques.
The knight lurched backwards, sizzling satisfactory steam. Smoke poured from the hole blasted by her fireball. Cooling metal pinged, smooth along the melted margin of the void. But yellow eyes did not fade, and it scrabbled to rise.
No, she wouldn't let it. With a colossal two-handed swing, Master's Defender hammered her order home, and she moved to the next opponent.
Aqua winced. Despite her superior agility, she'd sustained a collection of minor bites and gashes. The wounds stung.
Buzzing shapes blackened the sky.
Flying mechanical heartless resembling brown floating teapots descended, whirring propellers and drilling arms, a diving charge to gouge with bladed rotors, firing triple salvos of tiny pink lasers.
Aqua raised her shield, evoking a harmonic, metallic whine reminiscent of a sword being drawn.
They collided with her barrier. She felt her strength renewed.
She cut them down.
"Gotcha!"
Aqua slammed Master's Defender into the creature's carapace, hard. It made a hollow crunching sound.
She scythed with her spurs, delivering a vicious kick. A spray of midnight ichor stained the mud.
She cast Aeroga, summoning green blades of wind overhead, sucking the heartless in, crushing it against a wall of tumbled brick, multiplying her single uppercut manyfold.
Howling gales scoured to dust the splotch that remained.
...she'd have to find another wall.
Their designs were bizarre and comical. Mindless jittering motion, uncanny monstrous automata. At times carnival-gaudy. Part of the darkness's deception, a threat meant to be underestimated.
She did not have names for them. Aqua wondered if Sephiroth knew, or cared, what they were called.
In the Realm of Light, it didn't really matter. She had anchors to sanity besides giving names to the heartless.
This one, she'd call a Morning Star.
Round, olive and yellow. Large, heavy-bodied, and spiky; like a naval contact mine topped with a wizard hat and tiny beady eyes. Its fists morphed into pummeling golden mace heads, luminous like unsafe lightbulbs.
Master's Defender bounced against it, left a wobbly dent, and relayed a disgusting jiggling up her arm. Aqua aimed her next four strikes at the same place.
Increasingly battered, it dropped its guard and launched into a wild spin.
Aqua cartwheeled out of the way.
The lightning of its mace-arms made her hair stand on end, tracking the breeze of its passing.
But its attack was reckless; off-balance, stunned, it stopped to reorient itself.
An opening.
It was easier in Light. Power rushed through Master's Defender, the gathering hope, focused, locked-on, rainbow from a sun-scorched prism.
Her entire volley, a direct hit.
The Morning Star's corpse cracked the earth and it vanished, releasing the heart it had devoured.
It was stressful, paying so much not-attention.
Sephiroth recalled Cloud to him to ...preserve Master Aqua's privacy.
His loyal subject appeared before him, materializing in the stretched-out darkness of his shadow.
Cloud was near-dead on his feet, covered in the festering scratches of the heartless. His knees gave up and he sank to the ground in a parody of prayer.
Sephiroth kicked him hard in the ribs; the blow rolled him onto his back. "Wake up. You will not die here today."
A blank, glassy stare was the only reply. The eyes, bloodshot. A mortal body pushed beyond its limits.
...he tended to forget, that for all the times Cloud had killed him, Cloud was not as strong as he was. Though he'd remembered to provide the bare minimum of food and drink, a week without sleep had taken its toll.
Sephiroth was correct; it would not do for Master Aqua to see his subordinate in such a state.
A thought, to brush blood and filth from skin, to mend the tattered clothes. A Cure, for the superficial wounds, the only ones that were meant to heal.
...what did Cloud think of Master Aqua?
He was rewarded with complete bafflement, Cloud's ultimate incredulity, that Sephiroth would ask him for romantic advice, or his opinion of anything at all.
"Isn't she wonderful?"
In stuporous, contrary answer, or desperate association, images of Tifa, of Aeris. Frustration, failure, indecision, and regret...
Panic. A systemic response so chemically potent Sephiroth scrambled to subdue it before his toy damaged himself further. A heart beating too fast and not enough. Why?
Ah. An interesting idea, but no.
"No. The thing you fear I'll do, I won't. I don't plan to force your ...choice."
A taste of Cloud's relief. Defiant, violent, so begrudgingly given. On the cusp of inevitable defeat, like the darkness binding them.
Except, no alchemy of spiritual distillation he knew of had affected the darkness within Cloud. He could transfer it between them, take its lying strength for his own, but nothing destroyed it outright. Not yet.
Purification did not seem possible; transmutation, bitterly inefficient.
Sequestering the worlds' darkness in Cloud would not be a viable long-term solution.
Sephiroth smothered another wave of unnecessary fear. "Our time together is coming to an end. I'll release you soon."
Terror at the prospect of abandonment. Frantic, self-loathing need, mostly born of Reunion instinct.
"You have served me well." He combed his fingers through Cloud's spiky blond hair, dispelling tangles and blood-caked mats. Even clean, it was nowhere near as pleasant as Master Aqua's.
"Rest."
Injected with the proper gratitude, blue eyes closed.
...did they have what she needed? A lull in the action burdened Aqua with time to think.
Aqua magneted the drops to herself before Sephiroth could see. If he could see. If he was watching.
She should be ashamed.
...why did I leave Sephiroth behind?
He'd seemed so eager to come with her.
She'd wanted him by her side more than anything, so why had she made so many excuses?
...this is like what Terra and Ven did.
No, it isn't the same. It's not the same.
The sooner she succeeded, the sooner her guilt would go away.
Aqua struggled to focus.
Oh, it was funny, the way they bounced like basketballs. Horrible but funny; slapstick antics. It'd be different, if they could feel pain, but the heartless weren't really alive.
...it was hard to take the fight seriously.
Her body and mind enjoyed the workout, but it was like jogging to the store for groceries.
She'd learned quickly, their unchanging patterns of attack, and when to dodge or block. The little red mages were immune to fire and resisted thunder; the teapot robots and clanky armor knights she could fry with anything.
Were there deeper passages in the ruins, home to more dangerous types of heartless, with better treasure?
Aqua searched for an entrance.
In the chill of an untoppled arch, semi-congealed mud, cave-floor gray. Stagnant shadows, beckoning...
The roar echoed from everywhere at once.
Acid flames lit up the tunnel.
Scales, claws, wings. A snaking neck. Teeth.
Aqua staggered backwards from reflected brightness and brimstone stench. She blinked her sight clear and swallowed her nausea as best she could. It churned to fear in her gut.
Darkness in the shape of a dragon.
"Is that... Maleficent?!"
No, it couldn't be. Didn't Maleficent's dragon have green eyes, the color of hell's envy? This one's eyes were yellow.
Too many eyes.
Aqua could see the bulges move under its hide, a composite creature of swarming darkness. Smooth skin ruptured, hatching hundreds of twitching antennae.
A copy made of Shadows. A memory given form, not a live and thinking thing.
"Freeze!"
Her glacial wave engulfed the writhing mass in a tornadic blast of frigid wind.
With their aggregate disjoined, caged by pressure, the crystalline shroud shattered them all.
Aqua found herself breathing hard, heart thundering. A monumental effort, to banish the past and her desire to flee.
She tried to laugh at herself. She'd been through so much worse. Silly for her to be scared of an illusion of a dragon.
There was nothing at the end of the tunnel. A dead end.
Sephiroth had time to waste.
Their provisional abode contained a tv he had ...requisitioned.
With a built-in video player, because Master Aqua had asked him about movies.
A single tape, by chance or fate bundled with the assortment of library materials, huddled on the bookshelf. The cardboard sleeve was worn, the title image's halcyon days long faded.
Well, it might play.
Simple, to set a weak Thunder spell to power the machine. A sturdy model. Sephiroth placed his trust in the capacitors.
Only static hailed him, of course. Without cable or reception, he had no access to potentially useful local news broadcasts. He had no practice interpreting the raw signals himself, and was ...unacquainted... with any radio hobbyists. Electromagnetism applied to communications had not been Hojo's area of expertise. Embarrassing, that such basic science was lost to him.
Sephiroth turned on the tape player. Rewound the tape, sighed relief at the absence of catastrophic screeching noises.
The sound quality was surprisingly good.
It was a nature documentary about the prairie and how its inhabitants dramatically survived floods and fires. Square dancing scorpions featured prominently, and sage grouse had very different mating displays than chocobos. Every creature made a fool of themselves for love.
...indeed.
...he ate another one of the coconut chocolates.
For her trouble, Aqua had a couple of lightning gems, enough munny to do whatever shopping she wanted to do in town (probably, if inflation wasn't too bad), and a mega-ether.
The fights started to become dreamlike, infested with surreal worry.
"I've been fighting for what feels like hours."
"It's wrong, but sometimes... I think I miss the darkness. I never got tired there. Physically, I mean. I know it was a lie, so how is the memory so tempting?"
Aqua hurled her icy keyblade at an armored knight, a straggler from a group she'd defeated earlier.
Its darkness sublimed to less than dust. Another stolen heart liberated. Her weapon returned.
"...I'm going to be battling the darkness my whole life."
Aqua clenched her jaw.
"I chose this. The life of a keyblade master. I won't regret it."
A shadow passed over her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Behind her! Aqua whirled, and pointed her keyblade at the threat.
"Oh. It's just you."
"Just me?" Sephiroth said.
Aqua lowered Master's Defender. "Why are you here? I thought I told you..."
...told him what? To stay home? Like she'd told Ven?
"You've been gone a while. I came to check." Sephiroth briefly scanned the area, taking in the signs of battle, the scorchmarks, and the misshapen footprint where she'd slipped in the mud, just the once.
"I'm not in danger." Her tone came out accusatory and cold.
"I see that now." Sephiroth seemed concerned, as if he might cast a healing spell on her at any moment. "Why are you sad? You've killed many heartless."
She was angry, not sad. At his impatience, at the futility of hiding anything from him. At the heartless, for not having what she needed. At herself, for taking too long, for leaving him behind, for getting mad and frustrated when she was trying to do something nice. She didn't want to feel like this. She wished she'd taken a break for lunch. Get it together, Aqua.
Argh! "You said you wouldn't do anything stupid!"
Sephiroth tilted his head. "What's stupid about this?"
"You'll spoil your surprise!" she shouted.
Sephiroth weathered her ire, perplexed. "I only know you need something from the heartless. I don't know what you're planning. I've tried not to guess. It's... still a surprise...?"
His almost-pleading hope twanged at her heartstrings.
Aqua took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. Were you worried?"
"No. But I missed you."
"Were you watching?"
"No. But when I looked, your light was easy to find."
Her shoulders sagged. His kindness was ruining her anger.
"I can tell you are tired. Come here," he said, with open arms.
She stepped into his hug.
He wrapped his wing around her, shutting out the world, "Let me help."
"I should be able to do this on my own," Aqua insisted.
"Of course," he allowed, "But I am bored, and willing to help you. A friend offering assistance isn't an insult. It will go faster with both of us working together."
He was right.
Aqua yielded, resting her cheek on his chest to prove there were no tears. "...I missed you too. I'm glad you came."
She stepped back; he loosened his grip. "If you find any gems or crystals from the heartless, can you bring them to me?"
"Show me an example of what to look for."
She did.
Aqua had another request, "And Sephiroth?"
"Yes?"
"Will you please... not use the darkness?"
Please don't use the darkness.
Had she said that to her friend, whom she'd tried to dissuade, once upon a time?
It was no trouble for him, to kill a few heartless without drawing on that distasteful, disappointing power.
Sephiroth checked his strength, to be sure. His recovery had taken a satisfying turn. He was not beholden to the darkness for a crutch.
He would likely not need to cast or even teleport.
"I won't," Sephiroth answered easily.
"Careful!" Aqua warned, "The big round ones are immune to fire and ice!"
"Understood."
Sephiroth sliced a heavy, lumbering orb in half like a watermelon. Skewered a second, and flung it from his sword, a trajectory to go the distance, way under par.
Three Firagas in sequence; Master Aqua lit up the sky with her scorn.
Sephiroth made true admiration shine in his eyes. She was so beautiful, breathtaking...
The fractal sound of ice.
"Good shot," she heard him remark.
"Thanks! Don't get distracted," Aqua teased.
In a conspiratorial whisper that made her shiver in excitement, Sephiroth practically purred, "You are my favorite distraction."
She snuck a glimpse of him bending down to pick something up, curious but direct, his head held in that special way of his that ensured none of his hair would brush the ground. Effortless pristine vanity.
What she felt...
...was no longer the adrenaline of battle.
"We work well together," Sephiroth said.
Sephiroth had one of the robots pinned to the ground, spinning in circles, his expression detached from the tick-ticking noises as its helpless rotors bit the earth, to skitter over, scrape across old stone. He was slowly wearing the heartless down; his sword ran black with dripping shadow. A waste of cruelty.
He caught her staring and dispatched it.
"I expected new variety. None of these pose much challenge for us. Their only advantage is in their numbers, and shock value, perhaps. But they are poorly made."
Aqua agreed.
"It has been a year," he said, when the battle brought them close again. "One year, since I was banished from this place."
"I don't want to think about it," Aqua replied.
"Of course. I apologize."
...Sephiroth had ripped one day from Cloud at a time. Like pages shorn from a calendar by a vengeful wind, and strewn about as carelessly.
But Master Aqua did not need to know that.
Ever her vigilant protector, he impaled a Neoshadow in mid-pounce that dared to threaten her from behind. Cut short its leap, and its pathetic facsimile of life.
...all that has wronged you, I want to destroy.
In her peripheral vision, torn crimson cloth fell like maple leaves, kindling with the scent of a struck match.
Sephiroth had cut eight of the little red mages in half.
But he didn't see...
"Watch out!"
He turned, with arrogant calm, and...
She raised her shield around him, instantly, perfectly, scattering the tracking fireball mines that had lingered after the heartless' demise.
He murmured his surprised thanks.
"I've missed it," Aqua admitted, smiling freely. "Having someone I can defend besides myself."
Aqua noticed him glancing her way often. Felt the weight of his appraisal, his approval.
Sephiroth noticed her noticing.
"I like to watch your strength because it is not my own."
He paused, contemplative. "If you fought in the arena, I'd watch all your matches. I know you would win."
Aqua tried to remember. "Er... there wasn't much to see, actually. They were over so fast..."
Sephiroth laughed. "I wouldn't miss a single moment. Why humble yourself? Be proud, Master Aqua."
A rapid, high-pitched clicking, an immense gathering of energy. Above, from one of the brown teapot robots.
Aqua air-dashed behind it, grabbed its arms, and aimed.
It struggled in her tackle. The coalescing fulgent beam wobbled.
Almost wobbled.
She planted her feet firmly, shifted her weight.
The beam of killing laser light screamed straight and wide, bisecting three Morning Stars in a row.
In the smoking, darkened dirt of their disintegration...
...a sparkle of blue.
Aqua smashed the robot against a crumbling wall. It sputtered and died, its usefulness spent.
"Sephiroth, does Hades still run the tournaments?"
"I assume so. Why?"
"He uses the darkness to cheat!" Hades made her uncomfortable in other ways, too. Aqua made sure her disgust came through loud and clear.
"He does, yes. But I think you have already proven there is no darkness you cannot overcome."
He gestured at their much-depleted battlefield as extraneous testament, an allusion to her perseverance in the Realm of Darkness, then frowned. They both understood the absurd inadequacy of the analogy.
...she blushed at his sentiment, anyway, and tucked her bitter laughter away for later.
Sephiroth added, "I would protect you. With me by your side, you'd have nothing to fear from him. Or we could go somewhere else. The Olympus Coliseum is hardly a unique venue."
...he'd said exactly what she'd hoped for, what she needed to hear.
...his voice was like silk.
Aqua sighed. "You're good at reassuring me."
"Shouldn't I be?" He pretended affronted hubris, while also obviously preening at her compliment.
"Well, I wish I could do it better myself."
Sephiroth considered, theatrically, and nodded. "Until then, I will remind you."
...he really was her dream come true.
"I'll do the same for you," she vowed. "If you're ever uncertain, I'll be here."
"I know you will be." Not a trace of smugness. Pure sincere acceptance of her promise.
She loved his trust.
They fought the next wave back-to-back.
They fought until, once again, his was the only darkness worth acknowledging, and no further heartless sought to join their fellows in oblivion.
Sephiroth caught her teetering wrist. "Steady, Master Aqua."
He was refreshingly solid to lean on. She did feel pretty worn out.
"You need to learn to pace yourself."
"Yeah."
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
...maybe. She could make a good charm with what she had, but she'd envisioned something grander.
"I found these," Aqua showed him her handful of lightning gems and serenity stones. "And this!" she lifted her power crystal so the late afternoon sun could diffuse cobalt rays through it. "What did you get?"
Against the black leather of his glove glittered a dusting of multicolored opal chips. "They all shattered," Sephiroth explained, "Except this one."
He unfolded his other fist, revealing his prize: a rare bright crystal, its stored light and magic glinting viridian between them.
"Ooooh," Aqua exclaimed, leaning closer, "That's perfect!"
Secretly, she was... annoyed? that she hadn't found it herself hours ago.
It's not a contest, Aqua reminded herself.
What he'd found hadn't invalidated hers; what they had was better together. Wasn't that the point?
The wind, cool in her hair, tugged at her billowing, white sleeves, emphasized her breathlessness from exertion.
Her bare shoulders felt the sun.
Sephiroth was bending down just right, he'd elected not to loom; she didn't have to stand on tiptoe.
Aqua looked at the crystal held in his open palm, and back at him, and her hand hesitated over his. "Is it alright?" she asked.
"You should take what you want, Master Aqua." His smile turned a little bit wicked.
She kissed him.