ACCURSED PLOT BUNNIES
I swear I get bunnied by the simplest little things. Someone today left a review on the bitty!Terra drabbles that ended with the line, "I can't wait to see Terra earning his Keyblade! :D"
My thought process following this was, "Well, that's not going to be part of the story, though I do have pretty detailed headcanon for it- oh dammit I have to write this now." This happened at around 2 pm.
TWELVE HOURS LATER, it's done. It's also kind of long, to the tune of eight pages. And it needs a beta. And I am going to bed because oh gad sleep. Anyway, enjoy~
~~*~~
She shouldn’t have been awake.
She was anyway, books piled high on the table she’d staked out in the castle’s library as she pored over a page in one of the thicker volumes. She should be in bed; she should be asleep; instead, she had found every book about monsters she knew of and was working through them one by one as the night wore on and her candle burned lower and lower. Trembling fingers turned the page and she glanced at her candle, silently begging it to go on for just a bit longer. Getting another one would require only a quick trip down the hall to a closet and back. It should be simple, and during the day, it was.
At night, however, the hall seemed an unending tunnel, fraught with shadows cast long by moonlight. Tonight, her mind saw every shadow with long hands and clawed fingers reaching for her and imagined every corner to have yellow-eyed creatures just around the turn waiting to pounce, even though the Master had assured her it could never happen. Not in the castle. The castle was safe.
That didn’t stop her imagination.
She was twelve, and a Keyblade apprentice, and, like every other child, had gone through a phase when she believed there were monsters under her bed. She’d worked through it long ago. Now she knew monsters only appeared in Darkness; not a lack of light, but the kind that shrouded the heart. Her Master had taught her well.
That didn’t prepare her for when the monsters appeared in broad daylight.
It was sunny and warm, perfect weather for staying outside and doing nothing at all. Perched happily in the grass, Aqua had insisted it was Terra’s turn to tell stories this time, and he’d launched into her favorite: a story from his world, the only thing from his world that he would share, about pirates and plunder and the treasure of a thousand worlds, supposedly lost forever. He’d just barely gotten started when she felt a chill - not in the air, but in her heart. Terra paused, and a glance at him told her he’d felt the same thing.
That was when the noise of the very air fracturing reached their ears and wisps of darkness rose from the ground behind Terra, forming a dark creature.
And another.
And more still, until they were well and truly outnumbered, the monsters surrounding them in a loose circle. They were big - almost as tall as Aqua, some taller - and vaguely humanoid, with crumpled black antennae and bulbous yellow eyes. She hadn’t seen them since the day Terra had arrived years ago; back then, the Master had called them Heartless.
“Terra,” she whispered, feeling the fear creep up her spine. Their practice weapons were back at the castle; they were unarmed and couldn’t fight so many of these at once.
She felt his hand take hold of hers. “Run,” he hissed, and they made a break for it, towards a gap in the circle that surged and shifted and simply wasn’t there after the first two steps; the Heartless closed in, leapt, and suddenly they were fighting for their lives. She heard Terra yell in pain, saw nothing but dark bodies scrambling over and between them, felt his hand pulled from her grasp and the claws dig into her shoulder, her leg, her back, and she screamed, fighting all the while. She had to get out of this. She had to get away. She had to help Terra. She had to help Terra!
There was a flash of light and a sudden weight in her hand. Instinct told her to fight, and she swung wildly, glimpsing a flash of metal before the Heartless in front of her was cleaved in two and disappeared. She stumbled backwards, trying to counterbalance from her swing, and finally saw what she held in her hand: a Keyblade, not like the Master’s, but her own, silver and purple-blue with a single jewel at the end of the chain-
And suddenly every yellow eye was on her, with Terra lying forgotten on the ground. “Terra, run!” she’d cried, taking another wild swing at a leaping Heartless, trying to fight and find her balance all at once. “Get the Master! Go!”
She didn’t see if he made it; she was overwhelmed far too quickly.
Aqua shook her head, trying to free her mind from memories of this afternoon. Things had gone horribly wrong, and she didn’t need to dwell on it. What she needed to do was keep reading, because the best way to fight something was to know it and therefore know how to combat it. Right.
Except there were so many different kinds of Heartless in this book alone; not only the ones she and Terra had tried to fight, but ones that were even larger than that, ones that could cast fire and thunder and ice the same as any Master, ones with claws and teeth and spines and-
And there were too many, and there were still so many books just about the monsters, and so much to learn and know and try to fight, and she couldn’t handle it. Head clutched in her hands, she trembled and sobbed, frightened tears streaming down her cheeks. She’d never be able to fight all those monsters - she couldn’t even fight what she’d seen today - it was too much. Shaking, frozen to her seat with fear and despair, she could almost feel the shadows creeping towards her, the light from the dying candle and her own weak knowledge not enough to protect her, monsters reaching clawed hands towards her as the darkness loomed-
“Aqua?”
She jerked, whirling around so fast her chair nearly toppled over with her in it. She didn’t care; that voice meant safety and protection, and that was what she wanted more than anything else in the world right now. “Master!” Normally, she’d try not to make that sound like the frightened cry it was; tonight, she was too far gone with fear to notice or care, bolting out of her chair to run to him and cling to his robes. She felt his arms around her, holding her tightly, and her shivering slowly ceased, breathing slowing and evening out as the tears stopped. For the first time since that afternoon, she felt safe.
There was silence for a few long moments before her Master spoke. “What are you doing up this late?”
She pointed back to her table - “Reading.” - and felt his hand move to her shoulder as he started walking, guiding her back to her pile of books and a candle that was nothing more than a puddle of wax and a single wick, the flame still barely clinging to life. “I thought,” she tried to explain, pausing for a shaky breath, “I thought if I knew more about them, I could fight them better.” She willed back tears. No need to tell her Master she’d been overwhelmed; he could see that well enough himself.
“Aqua, these books are the sum of the knowledge of many Masters, gained over lifetimes of experience. I would not expect you to read them all, especially in one night.” The Master leaned forward, closing the book she’d been reading and snuffing the pitiful flame out, so the library was lit by moonlight streaming through the high glass windows. “And you don’t need to worry,” he continued. “I will teach you what you need to know.”
The simple assurance and the hand on her shoulder were all she needed. “Yes, Master.”
He walked her back to her room, seeing her snugly in bed before he left, closing the door behind him. She waited until his footsteps disappeared from the hall before reaching over to her bedside table, lighting the candle that sat upon it with the smallest of fire spells. Pulling her arm back under her blankets, she curled up, watching the flame dance in the night.
She shouldn’t have been awake.
But she wasn’t ready to sleep just yet.
~~*~~
He shouldn’t have been awake.
He was anyway, standing in the empty practice hall long since deserted by daylight and holding an unfamiliar weapon. He should be in bed; he should be asleep; instead, he was here, his body dragging with exhaustion but his mind buzzing in a barely-controlled frenzy as he tried to figure out just what had gone wrong and how to fix it. He crossed the hall, laying the weapon gingerly on the stone floor, as though he was afraid it would break - and maybe he was. It had failed him before today, or he had failed it - one or the other - so why wouldn’t something else bad happen? It would only be fitting.
He walked backwards, slowly, until the weapon was a good ten feet away. Standing still, he slowly raised his arm, holding his hand out parallel to the floor, as though he could grasp the weapon from where he stood, despite the distance between them.
“Come on,” he whispered, concentrating intently. “Come on. Come on!”
Nothing happened.
It shouldn’t have surprised him, and it didn’t; he was just as successful now as he had been earlier that afternoon.
Running hadn’t worked, and what little he’d been able to do to fight back was quickly overpowered. He and Aqua were outnumbered by the Heartless. He’d been outnumbered in fights before; they usually ended with him soundly beaten. This would be the first one that would end with him dead. With them dead.
Then there was a flash of light, and the Heartless all froze, suddenly distracted by something else - by Aqua, he realized slowly, catching a glimpse of the metal in her hand. She’d gotten her Keyblade. She could fight. And she was yelling his name, telling him to run as the Heartless surged forward, all of them attacking her now-
He couldn’t leave. Fear drained away, leaving solid determination in its wake. He couldn’t leave her. He shoved himself to his feet, glancing around for anything he could use as a weapon, and he couldn’t find anything, but he still couldn’t leave. She was his friend, and there were too many monsters for her to fight alone. He steeled himself, trying to find a way to fight, because he couldn’t run away. He couldn’t leave. He had to protect her. He had to help Aqua!
He winced at the second flash of light, unprepared both for it and for the steel that appeared in his hand, its weight pulling him off balance. A small part of him wondered if this was how it had felt to Aqua not a minute ago; the rest of his mind was still slowly wrapping itself around the fact that he now held a Keyblade in his hand, bronzed and heavy and powerful and hopefully, hopefully enough to fight off the Heartless.
There was one way to find out.
He charged into the fray, swinging his newly acquired Keyblade and trying to remember his training, to fight his way to Aqua, to get her to safety. It didn’t work for long - they were still very much outnumbered, and he realized with a jolt as claws attacked him from each side that these monsters worked together.
He hit the ground hard, Heartless swarming over him and Keyblade knocked from his grasp. He reached desperately for it, trying to fight off both claws that scraped at his body, searching for his heart, and the sudden, choking fear rising in his throat. The Keyblade was supposed to return to his hand. He’d seen the Master do it, so why wasn’t his? What was wrong? Why couldn’t he get to it now, when he needed it most?
He heard Aqua scream, and before he knew it he was adding his own wordlessly desperate cries into the mix, all the while still reaching for the weapon he’d hoped would save them - the Keyblade that lay just beyond his grasp.
Terra shook his head roughly, trying to dislodge the memories that had overtaken him and focus once again on the task at hand. His arm was trembling with effort, but he wouldn’t lower it - he couldn’t. Not until he could retrieve the Keyblade.
“Come on,” he hissed, focusing on his weapon, repeating his mantra over and over until the words ran together and became meaningless. “Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeoncomeon why won’t you come?”
Head hung low but arm still outstretched, he tried and tried, hoping against hope that maybe it would work this time, or this one, or this one. “Why won’t you come?” he gasped again, not bothering to wipe away the hot, shamed tears sliding down his cheeks. He was thirteen years old, too old to cry and too desperate not to. His entire body shook with defeat, and yet he still held his arm out - not from hope, but from a complete unwillingness to even move. “Why- why-”
“Terra.”
He snapped to attention almost reflexively, turning around and scrubbing at the tears on his face despite knowing that his Master had already seen them. He felt the steady hand on his shoulder, and a choked sob tore its way out of his throat. That was enough to get him started again, and he stood, hanging his head again and sobbing, letting the tears fall and the weakness and desperation that had been plaguing him all night show through and this time not caring who saw, while the Master’s strong hands gently rubbed his shoulders and neck, waiting for him to slowly calm down. It took a few minutes for his breathing to even out and for the tears to dry, but he finally straightened back up, feeling the Master’s hand rest once again on his shoulder. He wanted it there. It gave him that anchor he so desperately needed right now.
“What were you trying to do?”
He took a deep breath, then held his hand out again as though that would be answer enough to his Master’s question. “I was trying to make my Keyblade come to me,” he explained, “like yours comes to you. I…it’s not working.” Because he couldn’t bring himself to say I can’t do it.
“Hm.” The Master was silent for a few seconds; Terra didn’t have to look back to know he would have that thoughtful look on his face. “Tell me, Terra, what were you thinking of when you first summoned your Keyblade?”
“I was thinking of Aqua,” he answered almost immediately. “I wanted to protect her.”
“And that is what draws your Keyblade to you. Focus on that feeling in your heart - concentrate - and try again.”
Terra nodded, focusing once again on the Keyblade halfway across the room. I want to help Aqua, he thought. She’s my friend. I want to protect her.
After several long seconds, the Keyblade vanished, reappearing in his hands in a swirl of gold. He jumped in surprise, staggering back a few steps. It had worked.
“Well done.” He saw the approval on his Master’s face, heard it in his words, and suddenly felt much better. “It will come easier with practice - practice that you will start tomorrow. For now, you need to rest.”
The Master walked with him back to his room, seeing him to bed before he closed the door. Terra rolled over on his back, staring at the moon outside his window. He had a lot of practice ahead of him, a lot to learn about the Keyblade and about himself.
He shouldn’t have been awake.
But his mind wouldn’t let him sleep just yet.
~~*~~
He shouldn’t have been awake.
He was anyway, sitting upright in the straight-backed chair, trying to calm his mind enough to at least meditate. He should be in bed; he should be asleep; instead, he was wide awake, watching over the two young children asleep on his floor. They had only just begun to show the exhaustion of the day; he had thought it would have hit them much sooner. Instead, he’d found Aqua in the library, poring over volumes on the Heartless that he himself tended to avoid for the sheer paranoia that reading them induced - Aqua had yet to learn that too much knowledge could be just as dangerous as not enough. Terra had been in the practice hall, attempting to master a technique that normally would not have come up for another few months in his training. He had been amazed at how quickly his apprentice had picked it up; whether that was through strength of heart or sheer desperation, he couldn’t say. In the end, he had done his best to reassure his students and send them to bed.
Ten minutes later, when he went to check on them, he discovered it had not been enough; Terra’s bed was empty and stripped of its blanket, and Terra was curled up under that same blanket in the middle of Aqua’s floor. The two of them had kept their eyes, wide with worry, steadily on each other as though each was afraid the other would disappear. That had been when he’d offered to let them stay in his room for the night. They’d grabbed their blankets and arrived at his door almost faster than he did. Now they were here, sleeping on his floor, and he couldn’t have been more grateful.
Had things gone differently early that afternoon, instead of being alive with his apprentices, the castle could well have been left empty.
He had thought the day to be peaceful and had chosen to meditate outside, in favor of the nicer weather. His meditations were short-lived, however, interrupted by a creeping uneasiness, the vague, sinking feeling that something was wrong that quickly sharpened into a definable problem: darkness. Every so often, the balance of the Land of Departure tilted. This was one such day; it was why he and every Master before him had chosen to stay on this world.
He summoned his Keyblade and took off running, heading in the direction that tugged at his senses. It was only when he got closer that he heard the screaming, and for a moment he felt his heart freeze; those were his apprentices’ voices. The Heartless had gotten to them.
He had never run so fast in his life as he did then, doing everything he could to prevent himself from arriving too late to save them. He crested the hill and was met with a pack of Neoshadows; screams and his own senses told him his apprentices were caught under their writhing mass. He sprinted into the pack, cutting swaths through them, not caring about his own injuries so long as he could find his apprentices. One strike knocked a creature off Terra, and he hauled the boy to his feet; the boy immediately dove back in and came up with a Keyblade of his own, something at which the Master could not afford to stop and marvel; instead, he continued to fight, noticing his apprentice had joined the fray with a series of desperate swings. One of these cut through a Heartless and uncovered Aqua. One apprentice helped the other to her feet, she too retrieved a Keyblade from the ground, and from then on it was a matter of holding his own in the fight while keeping an eye on his students, inexperienced but energized by the simple fact that they were still alive.
Finally, the last Heartless fell, dissipating into black smoke, and he turned to regard his apprentices. They were shaking and bleeding, wide-eyed and frightened; he cast a cure spell over them and told them to return to the castle and watched them run towards safety, staying as close to one another as they could. He, in turn, checked the old enchantments that stabilized the world, maintaining them all as quickly as he could and still be thorough.
When he pushed open the front door and stepped into the foyer, he was greeted by the sight of both his apprentices in their fighting stances, Keyblades drawn, ready to defend each other against the monsters Eraqus had assured them time and time again could not enter the castle. Their eyes told him everything he needed to know; the thin veneer of determination on their faces could not hide the abject terror clearly shining through in their eyes. He assured them everything was fine, that the Heartless were gone; they had dismissed their Keyblades but refused to leave each other’s sight up until the first time he had sent them to bed.
Eraqus shook his head slowly, clearing the memories from the forefront of his mind and looking instead to his apprentices, curled up with one another. They’d lain down separately and somehow found each other in their sleep. Even now, they were still frightened, looking for comfort both in each other and in him before they could find rest.
He would never let them know of the icy fear that still clung to his heart.
As far as his heart was concerned, Terra and Aqua were his son and daughter, and he had nearly lost them both today in one very violent fell swoop. They found solace in him; he would find it in them, in the fact that they were still able to be frustrated and desperate and frightened, because it meant they were still alive. He resisted the urge to reach down and stroke their hair, to tell them everything would be alright even if they might not hear him through their slumber, and instead laid a hand on the castle’s wall, feeling the magic that thrummed through the stones. This was the reason he had told his apprentices that the castle was safe; the walls themselves were steeped in magic, spells that ran generations deep and had been strengthened and maintained by every Master to reside in the castle. No Heartless would ever be able to cross its threshold; it would be a stronghold of light in dark times. Raising and training two children, Eraqus had counted upon that aspect of their home and done his part to ensure it remained.
He closed his eyes, feeling the individual spells weave together to form a barrier strong as any he could have ever asked for. Silently, he added his own to the pattern: a small bit of light and the quiet confidence that whoever lived within the castle’s walls would be protected. The image of Terra and Aqua sleeping peacefully together rose in his head as he bound his magic into the spells deep within the walls.
He shouldn’t have been awake.
But with his children peaceful and safe before him after such a frightening day, he didn’t want to sleep just yet.
My thought process following this was, "Well, that's not going to be part of the story, though I do have pretty detailed headcanon for it- oh dammit I have to write this now." This happened at around 2 pm.
TWELVE HOURS LATER, it's done. It's also kind of long, to the tune of eight pages. And it needs a beta. And I am going to bed because oh gad sleep. Anyway, enjoy~
~~*~~
She shouldn’t have been awake.
She was anyway, books piled high on the table she’d staked out in the castle’s library as she pored over a page in one of the thicker volumes. She should be in bed; she should be asleep; instead, she had found every book about monsters she knew of and was working through them one by one as the night wore on and her candle burned lower and lower. Trembling fingers turned the page and she glanced at her candle, silently begging it to go on for just a bit longer. Getting another one would require only a quick trip down the hall to a closet and back. It should be simple, and during the day, it was.
At night, however, the hall seemed an unending tunnel, fraught with shadows cast long by moonlight. Tonight, her mind saw every shadow with long hands and clawed fingers reaching for her and imagined every corner to have yellow-eyed creatures just around the turn waiting to pounce, even though the Master had assured her it could never happen. Not in the castle. The castle was safe.
That didn’t stop her imagination.
She was twelve, and a Keyblade apprentice, and, like every other child, had gone through a phase when she believed there were monsters under her bed. She’d worked through it long ago. Now she knew monsters only appeared in Darkness; not a lack of light, but the kind that shrouded the heart. Her Master had taught her well.
That didn’t prepare her for when the monsters appeared in broad daylight.
It was sunny and warm, perfect weather for staying outside and doing nothing at all. Perched happily in the grass, Aqua had insisted it was Terra’s turn to tell stories this time, and he’d launched into her favorite: a story from his world, the only thing from his world that he would share, about pirates and plunder and the treasure of a thousand worlds, supposedly lost forever. He’d just barely gotten started when she felt a chill - not in the air, but in her heart. Terra paused, and a glance at him told her he’d felt the same thing.
That was when the noise of the very air fracturing reached their ears and wisps of darkness rose from the ground behind Terra, forming a dark creature.
And another.
And more still, until they were well and truly outnumbered, the monsters surrounding them in a loose circle. They were big - almost as tall as Aqua, some taller - and vaguely humanoid, with crumpled black antennae and bulbous yellow eyes. She hadn’t seen them since the day Terra had arrived years ago; back then, the Master had called them Heartless.
“Terra,” she whispered, feeling the fear creep up her spine. Their practice weapons were back at the castle; they were unarmed and couldn’t fight so many of these at once.
She felt his hand take hold of hers. “Run,” he hissed, and they made a break for it, towards a gap in the circle that surged and shifted and simply wasn’t there after the first two steps; the Heartless closed in, leapt, and suddenly they were fighting for their lives. She heard Terra yell in pain, saw nothing but dark bodies scrambling over and between them, felt his hand pulled from her grasp and the claws dig into her shoulder, her leg, her back, and she screamed, fighting all the while. She had to get out of this. She had to get away. She had to help Terra. She had to help Terra!
There was a flash of light and a sudden weight in her hand. Instinct told her to fight, and she swung wildly, glimpsing a flash of metal before the Heartless in front of her was cleaved in two and disappeared. She stumbled backwards, trying to counterbalance from her swing, and finally saw what she held in her hand: a Keyblade, not like the Master’s, but her own, silver and purple-blue with a single jewel at the end of the chain-
And suddenly every yellow eye was on her, with Terra lying forgotten on the ground. “Terra, run!” she’d cried, taking another wild swing at a leaping Heartless, trying to fight and find her balance all at once. “Get the Master! Go!”
She didn’t see if he made it; she was overwhelmed far too quickly.
Aqua shook her head, trying to free her mind from memories of this afternoon. Things had gone horribly wrong, and she didn’t need to dwell on it. What she needed to do was keep reading, because the best way to fight something was to know it and therefore know how to combat it. Right.
Except there were so many different kinds of Heartless in this book alone; not only the ones she and Terra had tried to fight, but ones that were even larger than that, ones that could cast fire and thunder and ice the same as any Master, ones with claws and teeth and spines and-
And there were too many, and there were still so many books just about the monsters, and so much to learn and know and try to fight, and she couldn’t handle it. Head clutched in her hands, she trembled and sobbed, frightened tears streaming down her cheeks. She’d never be able to fight all those monsters - she couldn’t even fight what she’d seen today - it was too much. Shaking, frozen to her seat with fear and despair, she could almost feel the shadows creeping towards her, the light from the dying candle and her own weak knowledge not enough to protect her, monsters reaching clawed hands towards her as the darkness loomed-
“Aqua?”
She jerked, whirling around so fast her chair nearly toppled over with her in it. She didn’t care; that voice meant safety and protection, and that was what she wanted more than anything else in the world right now. “Master!” Normally, she’d try not to make that sound like the frightened cry it was; tonight, she was too far gone with fear to notice or care, bolting out of her chair to run to him and cling to his robes. She felt his arms around her, holding her tightly, and her shivering slowly ceased, breathing slowing and evening out as the tears stopped. For the first time since that afternoon, she felt safe.
There was silence for a few long moments before her Master spoke. “What are you doing up this late?”
She pointed back to her table - “Reading.” - and felt his hand move to her shoulder as he started walking, guiding her back to her pile of books and a candle that was nothing more than a puddle of wax and a single wick, the flame still barely clinging to life. “I thought,” she tried to explain, pausing for a shaky breath, “I thought if I knew more about them, I could fight them better.” She willed back tears. No need to tell her Master she’d been overwhelmed; he could see that well enough himself.
“Aqua, these books are the sum of the knowledge of many Masters, gained over lifetimes of experience. I would not expect you to read them all, especially in one night.” The Master leaned forward, closing the book she’d been reading and snuffing the pitiful flame out, so the library was lit by moonlight streaming through the high glass windows. “And you don’t need to worry,” he continued. “I will teach you what you need to know.”
The simple assurance and the hand on her shoulder were all she needed. “Yes, Master.”
He walked her back to her room, seeing her snugly in bed before he left, closing the door behind him. She waited until his footsteps disappeared from the hall before reaching over to her bedside table, lighting the candle that sat upon it with the smallest of fire spells. Pulling her arm back under her blankets, she curled up, watching the flame dance in the night.
She shouldn’t have been awake.
But she wasn’t ready to sleep just yet.
~~*~~
He shouldn’t have been awake.
He was anyway, standing in the empty practice hall long since deserted by daylight and holding an unfamiliar weapon. He should be in bed; he should be asleep; instead, he was here, his body dragging with exhaustion but his mind buzzing in a barely-controlled frenzy as he tried to figure out just what had gone wrong and how to fix it. He crossed the hall, laying the weapon gingerly on the stone floor, as though he was afraid it would break - and maybe he was. It had failed him before today, or he had failed it - one or the other - so why wouldn’t something else bad happen? It would only be fitting.
He walked backwards, slowly, until the weapon was a good ten feet away. Standing still, he slowly raised his arm, holding his hand out parallel to the floor, as though he could grasp the weapon from where he stood, despite the distance between them.
“Come on,” he whispered, concentrating intently. “Come on. Come on!”
Nothing happened.
It shouldn’t have surprised him, and it didn’t; he was just as successful now as he had been earlier that afternoon.
Running hadn’t worked, and what little he’d been able to do to fight back was quickly overpowered. He and Aqua were outnumbered by the Heartless. He’d been outnumbered in fights before; they usually ended with him soundly beaten. This would be the first one that would end with him dead. With them dead.
Then there was a flash of light, and the Heartless all froze, suddenly distracted by something else - by Aqua, he realized slowly, catching a glimpse of the metal in her hand. She’d gotten her Keyblade. She could fight. And she was yelling his name, telling him to run as the Heartless surged forward, all of them attacking her now-
He couldn’t leave. Fear drained away, leaving solid determination in its wake. He couldn’t leave her. He shoved himself to his feet, glancing around for anything he could use as a weapon, and he couldn’t find anything, but he still couldn’t leave. She was his friend, and there were too many monsters for her to fight alone. He steeled himself, trying to find a way to fight, because he couldn’t run away. He couldn’t leave. He had to protect her. He had to help Aqua!
He winced at the second flash of light, unprepared both for it and for the steel that appeared in his hand, its weight pulling him off balance. A small part of him wondered if this was how it had felt to Aqua not a minute ago; the rest of his mind was still slowly wrapping itself around the fact that he now held a Keyblade in his hand, bronzed and heavy and powerful and hopefully, hopefully enough to fight off the Heartless.
There was one way to find out.
He charged into the fray, swinging his newly acquired Keyblade and trying to remember his training, to fight his way to Aqua, to get her to safety. It didn’t work for long - they were still very much outnumbered, and he realized with a jolt as claws attacked him from each side that these monsters worked together.
He hit the ground hard, Heartless swarming over him and Keyblade knocked from his grasp. He reached desperately for it, trying to fight off both claws that scraped at his body, searching for his heart, and the sudden, choking fear rising in his throat. The Keyblade was supposed to return to his hand. He’d seen the Master do it, so why wasn’t his? What was wrong? Why couldn’t he get to it now, when he needed it most?
He heard Aqua scream, and before he knew it he was adding his own wordlessly desperate cries into the mix, all the while still reaching for the weapon he’d hoped would save them - the Keyblade that lay just beyond his grasp.
Terra shook his head roughly, trying to dislodge the memories that had overtaken him and focus once again on the task at hand. His arm was trembling with effort, but he wouldn’t lower it - he couldn’t. Not until he could retrieve the Keyblade.
“Come on,” he hissed, focusing on his weapon, repeating his mantra over and over until the words ran together and became meaningless. “Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeoncomeon why won’t you come?”
Head hung low but arm still outstretched, he tried and tried, hoping against hope that maybe it would work this time, or this one, or this one. “Why won’t you come?” he gasped again, not bothering to wipe away the hot, shamed tears sliding down his cheeks. He was thirteen years old, too old to cry and too desperate not to. His entire body shook with defeat, and yet he still held his arm out - not from hope, but from a complete unwillingness to even move. “Why- why-”
“Terra.”
He snapped to attention almost reflexively, turning around and scrubbing at the tears on his face despite knowing that his Master had already seen them. He felt the steady hand on his shoulder, and a choked sob tore its way out of his throat. That was enough to get him started again, and he stood, hanging his head again and sobbing, letting the tears fall and the weakness and desperation that had been plaguing him all night show through and this time not caring who saw, while the Master’s strong hands gently rubbed his shoulders and neck, waiting for him to slowly calm down. It took a few minutes for his breathing to even out and for the tears to dry, but he finally straightened back up, feeling the Master’s hand rest once again on his shoulder. He wanted it there. It gave him that anchor he so desperately needed right now.
“What were you trying to do?”
He took a deep breath, then held his hand out again as though that would be answer enough to his Master’s question. “I was trying to make my Keyblade come to me,” he explained, “like yours comes to you. I…it’s not working.” Because he couldn’t bring himself to say I can’t do it.
“Hm.” The Master was silent for a few seconds; Terra didn’t have to look back to know he would have that thoughtful look on his face. “Tell me, Terra, what were you thinking of when you first summoned your Keyblade?”
“I was thinking of Aqua,” he answered almost immediately. “I wanted to protect her.”
“And that is what draws your Keyblade to you. Focus on that feeling in your heart - concentrate - and try again.”
Terra nodded, focusing once again on the Keyblade halfway across the room. I want to help Aqua, he thought. She’s my friend. I want to protect her.
After several long seconds, the Keyblade vanished, reappearing in his hands in a swirl of gold. He jumped in surprise, staggering back a few steps. It had worked.
“Well done.” He saw the approval on his Master’s face, heard it in his words, and suddenly felt much better. “It will come easier with practice - practice that you will start tomorrow. For now, you need to rest.”
The Master walked with him back to his room, seeing him to bed before he closed the door. Terra rolled over on his back, staring at the moon outside his window. He had a lot of practice ahead of him, a lot to learn about the Keyblade and about himself.
He shouldn’t have been awake.
But his mind wouldn’t let him sleep just yet.
~~*~~
He shouldn’t have been awake.
He was anyway, sitting upright in the straight-backed chair, trying to calm his mind enough to at least meditate. He should be in bed; he should be asleep; instead, he was wide awake, watching over the two young children asleep on his floor. They had only just begun to show the exhaustion of the day; he had thought it would have hit them much sooner. Instead, he’d found Aqua in the library, poring over volumes on the Heartless that he himself tended to avoid for the sheer paranoia that reading them induced - Aqua had yet to learn that too much knowledge could be just as dangerous as not enough. Terra had been in the practice hall, attempting to master a technique that normally would not have come up for another few months in his training. He had been amazed at how quickly his apprentice had picked it up; whether that was through strength of heart or sheer desperation, he couldn’t say. In the end, he had done his best to reassure his students and send them to bed.
Ten minutes later, when he went to check on them, he discovered it had not been enough; Terra’s bed was empty and stripped of its blanket, and Terra was curled up under that same blanket in the middle of Aqua’s floor. The two of them had kept their eyes, wide with worry, steadily on each other as though each was afraid the other would disappear. That had been when he’d offered to let them stay in his room for the night. They’d grabbed their blankets and arrived at his door almost faster than he did. Now they were here, sleeping on his floor, and he couldn’t have been more grateful.
Had things gone differently early that afternoon, instead of being alive with his apprentices, the castle could well have been left empty.
He had thought the day to be peaceful and had chosen to meditate outside, in favor of the nicer weather. His meditations were short-lived, however, interrupted by a creeping uneasiness, the vague, sinking feeling that something was wrong that quickly sharpened into a definable problem: darkness. Every so often, the balance of the Land of Departure tilted. This was one such day; it was why he and every Master before him had chosen to stay on this world.
He summoned his Keyblade and took off running, heading in the direction that tugged at his senses. It was only when he got closer that he heard the screaming, and for a moment he felt his heart freeze; those were his apprentices’ voices. The Heartless had gotten to them.
He had never run so fast in his life as he did then, doing everything he could to prevent himself from arriving too late to save them. He crested the hill and was met with a pack of Neoshadows; screams and his own senses told him his apprentices were caught under their writhing mass. He sprinted into the pack, cutting swaths through them, not caring about his own injuries so long as he could find his apprentices. One strike knocked a creature off Terra, and he hauled the boy to his feet; the boy immediately dove back in and came up with a Keyblade of his own, something at which the Master could not afford to stop and marvel; instead, he continued to fight, noticing his apprentice had joined the fray with a series of desperate swings. One of these cut through a Heartless and uncovered Aqua. One apprentice helped the other to her feet, she too retrieved a Keyblade from the ground, and from then on it was a matter of holding his own in the fight while keeping an eye on his students, inexperienced but energized by the simple fact that they were still alive.
Finally, the last Heartless fell, dissipating into black smoke, and he turned to regard his apprentices. They were shaking and bleeding, wide-eyed and frightened; he cast a cure spell over them and told them to return to the castle and watched them run towards safety, staying as close to one another as they could. He, in turn, checked the old enchantments that stabilized the world, maintaining them all as quickly as he could and still be thorough.
When he pushed open the front door and stepped into the foyer, he was greeted by the sight of both his apprentices in their fighting stances, Keyblades drawn, ready to defend each other against the monsters Eraqus had assured them time and time again could not enter the castle. Their eyes told him everything he needed to know; the thin veneer of determination on their faces could not hide the abject terror clearly shining through in their eyes. He assured them everything was fine, that the Heartless were gone; they had dismissed their Keyblades but refused to leave each other’s sight up until the first time he had sent them to bed.
Eraqus shook his head slowly, clearing the memories from the forefront of his mind and looking instead to his apprentices, curled up with one another. They’d lain down separately and somehow found each other in their sleep. Even now, they were still frightened, looking for comfort both in each other and in him before they could find rest.
He would never let them know of the icy fear that still clung to his heart.
As far as his heart was concerned, Terra and Aqua were his son and daughter, and he had nearly lost them both today in one very violent fell swoop. They found solace in him; he would find it in them, in the fact that they were still able to be frustrated and desperate and frightened, because it meant they were still alive. He resisted the urge to reach down and stroke their hair, to tell them everything would be alright even if they might not hear him through their slumber, and instead laid a hand on the castle’s wall, feeling the magic that thrummed through the stones. This was the reason he had told his apprentices that the castle was safe; the walls themselves were steeped in magic, spells that ran generations deep and had been strengthened and maintained by every Master to reside in the castle. No Heartless would ever be able to cross its threshold; it would be a stronghold of light in dark times. Raising and training two children, Eraqus had counted upon that aspect of their home and done his part to ensure it remained.
He closed his eyes, feeling the individual spells weave together to form a barrier strong as any he could have ever asked for. Silently, he added his own to the pattern: a small bit of light and the quiet confidence that whoever lived within the castle’s walls would be protected. The image of Terra and Aqua sleeping peacefully together rose in his head as he bound his magic into the spells deep within the walls.
He shouldn’t have been awake.
But with his children peaceful and safe before him after such a frightening day, he didn’t want to sleep just yet.