Aqua paced in a castle hallway.
Young and inexperienced, she'd meticulously picked her words and practiced them under her breath. Her heart skipped nervously in her throat.
She had to do this. She was right And Master Eraqus said that when you're right, you must act.
Aqua stopped pacing, pulled back her shoulders, lifted her chin, and took a deep breath.
"You're doing this for your friends," she reminded herself.
And then she pushed open the door to Master Eraqus' study.
He smiled warmly, but his expression was soured by the jagged scar falling from his eyebrow to his lip. There, his smile became a grimace.
"Aqua," the old man said. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
She looked into her hands, folded before her, and held out her first finger, to remember her opening words.
"M-master Eraqus, I-I've been speaking to Ven. Ventus. You tasked me with welcoming him. Making him feel at home. I have. He's really opened up to Terra and I, and… He's started talking more to us."
She extended her second finger. She swallowed. "He's been talking to us about his training under Master Xehanort."
"Aqua," Eraqus sighed. "You understand, I hope, that different masters have different methods. Sometimes a master and a student are not well-matched. Xehanort recognized this. And that is why Xehanort brought Ventus to me."
Aqua had expected to say her piece before being denied. She didn't know what to do now. Her heart kept thrumming, and she couldn't keep her jaw from flexing.
Master Eraqus sensed this hesitation and softened. "I'm sorry. Please continue, Aqua."
She extended her next finger. "You scolded Ventus. Yesterday, when he was having trouble striking the wind chimes."
"Yes?"
Aqua struggled to keep her voice calm, to state this matter-of-factly. "Ventus… He said to us… He was concerned that you might kick him out, and that he would be abandoned somewhere."
"Oh. Oh my. I didn't mean to be-"
"No, Master. He said that… Master Xehanort said to him that a student who does not respond to teaching is worthless. He said Master Xehanort called him… Trash. That he-" she stuttered, "When he brought Ventus to you, he said that if you couldn't teach Ventus, that he had no place in any world."
Master Eraqus had not closed his mouth since being interrupted.
Aqua relaxed her fingers, then hugged herself. She had just accused Eraqus' dearest friend of heinous behavior. And Master Eraqus did not look pleased.
His brow tightened, and his face hardened to a place between pensive and angry. His eyes unfocused, then turned out the window.
Aqua closed hers and bowed. "Master, I apologize for-"
"Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Aqua," he interrupted.
She looked up. The man was like a rock. Unreadable.
She wanted a confirmation from him. A decision. "Master… Ven is one of us, right? Ven… He's your student, just like Terra and I?"
She'd grabbed his attention. His eyes focused, and he committed, "Yes. Of course. Please, leave me now. You've given me much to think about."
She bowed, then retreated to the door, and escaped.
In the hallway, Terra asked, "How'd it go?"
He'd grown again. They were both hitting their spurts, reaching adulthood and learning to cope. Terra glared at her with his default intensity, waiting for an answer. Aqua brushed her goosebumps away and dusted herself self-consciously.
"I told him. He's still thinking."
She stared back into Terra's eyes, telling him with her silence and uncertainty that she couldn't guess the future, but things were alright, for now. Terra nodded, then looked down.
Spiky, blonde hair entered Aqua's field of view from below.
Ven was looking up at her.
He mumbled, "So… Can I stay?"
She sighed raggedly, and wrapped her arms around him. "Ven… You're not worthless. You and Terra are the most important things to me in all the worlds. And it's going to stay that way forever."
The hug stuffed his face into her belly. He wrestled his way up for air and asked, "You really mean that?"
"I would die for you, Ven. Both of you."
Terra joined embrace, and the oath of love that bound them together. She remembered that moment as her warmest.
Aqua woke with tears streaming down her face.
A thatch ceiling hung above her.
Slowly, her senses returned.
The bed- a cot- had no mattress. Her body ached as soon as it reported. She yawned, then stretched, until the fatigue of the last ten years creaked in her sinews.
Through the window, she saw a meadow in bloom. Last night, she'd plotted the starts from there. This village, Shion, was named after those flowers.
She'd traced her finger over an illustration of the petals before. The name meant, "I won't forget you."
Her ears awoke, and she heard a woman giving instructions.
"Swing!"
Jaune grunted.
"Swing!"
Grunt.
Aqua sat up to the window and peered down. Jaune was practicing with his sword. The voice came from a device he'd propped onto a nearby crate. He'd called the device a Scroll. It held the image of a young woman, and carried her voice.
"Swing!"
"Yah!"
The swing was good. He understood that the sword's tip was his weapon. And he swung to kill, flicking sweat from his arm in the motion.
From the scroll, a girl encouraged him. "That's a hundred reps! Great work, Jaune!"
Ven had started this way. Swinging at air, then bonking those silly wind chimes. Jaune, like Ven, was doomed.
Jaune wasn't going to find his friends; not the way he remembered them. Ten years would pass, and if they reunited, maybe it wouldn't even be as friends. If Aqua carried Jaune into the big bad universe, changing wouldn't be his problem. He'd die. Just like his world was dying.
Aqua had no pity to spare for doomed people, nor for doomed worlds. She had to think about herself and her friends. Radiant Gardens lay within her reach. She had to rescue Terra.
She could take Jaune to Radiant Gardens on the pretense of searching for his friends. He wouldn't know any better.
Aqua had been staring out the window, looking down on Jaune like a bug.
She refocused on her reflection in the window's pane- on scowling lips and a contorted frown. This expression was uglier than she'd ever imagined herself. Flame danced in her pupils.
Her irises glowed like molten bronze.
Aqua woke with a gasp.
Goosebumps spread across her arms. She sat up in bed and rubbed them away.
As she blinked her dreariness away, she felt the night's tears crusted on her eyelids.
The desire to save her friends remained. But it no longer possessed her. Duty reasserted itself. There was a proper order to things. And as a keyblade Master, her place in that grand order was here, where a keyblade master was needed.
She had to rescue Jaune's friends so that they could rescue their world.
She had to do the right thing, or she was going to do something very wrong. She could feel it within her, a Will that she dare not indulge.
In the window, her eyes were now rightfully azure.
Out the window, Jaune's scroll chimed, "Break's over! Fifty more! And… Swing!"
"Yah!"
Getting out of bed felt like learning to walk. Fatigue and drowsiness left her stumbling. But an hour later, she was comely and composed.
Floorboards creaked in the inn's main room. Everyone removed their hats as she passed.
Everyone but Qrow, who set down a coffee cup, thanked Rufus, and stood from the bar to intercept her.
"Morning, Mister Branwen," Aqua smiled.
He nodded, "Morning. And it's Qrow to you."
"Qrow," she nodded.
Qrow looked at her with an expression of stress or disappointment, like he had something to say but couldn't.
Last night, in the meadow, she'd told him that a murder threw their world out of alignment. Qrow and Jaune didn't act surprised or ask her to clarify it. She'd said "A Murder" and they'd immediately asked her about a tower.
Aqua had gathered- from the stars, from the general mood- that this world had lost its Princess of Heart.
Qrow and Jaune already known the truth in their hearts: That this death was different. This death mattered on a cosmic scale.
In a way, Aqua was the bearer of bad news. Was Qrow mad at her? He didn't look mad. He looked uneasy.
"Standing guard over a village you've got no attachment to," Aqua realized, "Leaving the rescue of your niece to a stranger…"
Qrow sighed like a horse, then shook his head in disbelief. "Am I that easy to read?"
"I know the feeling," Aqua nodded. "So… What are you going to do?"
He was looking around the room, anywhere but at her.
Everyone watched them with baited breath. They would perish or prosper by the grace of The Huntsman. And if he wouldn't stay to save this world, Aqua wouldn't think twice about leaving. Her heart skipped at the realization.
These weren't her people. They wouldn't mourn her passing, nor she theirs. Her tears had run out on the long march through the darkness. World after world of stories that terminated in silence and shadows. Someday, she would stop caring.
Maybe today.
Qrow turned back to her. "I'm not abandoning these people." He stared at her for a while, waiting for it to sink in.
Jaune entered in the silence. He raised his eyebrows at the tension, and walked into the conversation like he didn't want to wake a baby.
Qrow finished, "I hope you won't abandon us either, Aqua." His head tilted down, and he very suggestively added, "We both know the feeling."
Aqua's goosebumps returned in a wave, like a tide of ice washing down her body. She folded her arms across her chest to arrest the sensation. She swallowed her fear, then cleared her throat. "Jaune and I are going to Olympus Coliseum today. We'll be back."
Her next exhale was heavy. The last of the fear left her when she committed. She was a good person and she was doing the right thing. Tomorrow, she'd wake up with a clean conscious and laugh this moment away as mere nerves.
The fear for her soul subsided, letting Heartache for her friends replace it.
Qrow nodded at her resolve, then half-turned to Jaune. "Hear that? You're going to another world."
Jaune stepped forward. "I'm ready when you are."
Aqua could only lift half a smile. "If you say so."