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They make love the way they do everything: with gusto, with obsession, with promise.
They’d shared testy kisses in brief, fleeting moments before the final battle, but the actual “laying in the bed and touching” thing—that comes after Xehanort’s defeat, after the Land of Departure had been restored. Only then had they not guilted themselves for taking a few minutes alone, for stealing away from the others to explore the continents of each other’s bodies. They’d met with shaking hands and nervous, high strings of laughter, come back bruised and aching and blissful.
When he innocently asks where he might go to amp up his game, she smirks points him to a tucked-away section of the library.
Later, he shows her what he's learned, is given a gold star.
+
He doesn’t remember grabbing her neck. Not the first time. Aqua tells him it's because it hadn’t really been him when he’d done it, never puts the blame on him. She corners him between practice sessions and quiet moments, says, "It isn't your fault.” But he knows better. It had been his hands and it had been his face that Aqua had looked into that day.
If he had made better choices, none of this would have happened.
The second time, it's an impulse reaction tossed between hard hot kisses. He doesn't even notice what he's done until she turns flaccid in his grip. He never gets the whole story from her of that day and all the dark days after—he never asks, for the same reason Aqua doesn’t ask about his struggle to get his body back. Later she’ll say that it’s not his fault, it’s a stupid reflex, she’s not afraid of him.
Terra is, though. He’s afraid of him, all the fucking time.
+
He’s not quite sure how they got here. He remembers an off-world expedition and fighting Heartless. All Terra knows right now is that they’re in a tent, shielded from the wind ravaging the countryside, and fucking. They’d stripped off their shirts and pants and belts—so many fucking belts—and traded them in for their bodies. His back’s to the ground and his hands are tearing new scars into the earth.
"Is this," he starts to ask, before she bucks her hips against his, driving him further into her. His words dissolve in a low groan; he has to fight for coherency, to keep his hands tangled in the grasses, the floor of their makeshift tent. "Are you—”
Her nose finds a pressure point on his neck; he writhes under the touch, fingernails cutting new scars into his palms. "If you're…?"
"I'm fine," he said. "But are you…?"
"Fine," she says, brushing her lips against his.
It's easier when she tops. He can grab bed sheets and hold on tight, make it a game for himself: no use of the hands or the arms, only his legs, his cock, his mouth. She likes taking control, alternating between feathery touches over his eyes, his lips, his chest, and her nails against his skin, her teeth at his lips. He lets her, gladly so. The pain grounds him as much as the heat of her skin against his does, as the dizzying warmth of her wrapped tight around him.
He swallows the moans that bubble from her throat when he bucks his hips up, wrapping one leg around her waist. Her trembling fingers ghost across his cheeks, down his chest, down his arms. The night is dark and there is no light in their tent, so at first he doesn't realize that his eyes had been closed—it's only when her (wet, slick) hands are wrapped around his that he looks up at hers, wide and blue in a hot face.
(He means flushed, but.)
Even through a shared, violent orgasm, even after Aqua falls in a contented heap upon him, their hands are tangled together. Her nose is buried in the crook of his shoulder as he adjusts them, wiggling off the grass and onto their opened sleeping bag. She heaves a sigh that tickles, that makes him laugh.
"Thank you," she whispers. She untangles one hand from his to brush back his bangs, places a kiss on his now-naked forehead.
It’s a reflex action, his free hand coming up to tuck lock of hair behind her ear.
Their eyes meet hesitantly as his hand stills, huge fingers hesitating over her right temple. She leans into the touch with a sigh, brings her hand to press his against her face. His is huge in comparison to hers—if he tries, he can cup the entire side of her head with one hand.
If he tries—
“Don’t think about that,” she whispers. “Be here with me.”
But he’s already slipped away from her to put his pants and shirt back on. Ends of the Earth is cold in his hand as he zips back the flap, slips outside into a blustering wind that robs him of the warmth they had managed, somehow, to create.
+
Three weeks pass after that disaster. They don’t speak to each other once.
No one asks him questions. He sees them on Sora's lips, in Kairi's eyes, in the inquisitive arch of Riku's brow, but they never ask them. Terra goes on missions and defeats Heartless and charts the worlds, either alone or with a partner.
Ven, who’s able to sneak into people’s hearts and histories like it’s nothing, discovers what's wrong before anyone else. He says nothing but provides company during the long nights of world-watching. The two of them spar and joke and roughhouse together as though they’re children trapped in adult bodies which, in a way, they are. They wear off nervous energy and strike, strike, strike, taking pleasure in taking back the time they’d lost from each other.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this,” Ven says one night, “it’s that we can’t distance ourselves from each other. No matter what.”
Ven meets with Aqua, too. He'd be stupid not to assume so. This sounds like something Aqua would say. He breathes a sigh and lays down on the grass, his hands pinned under his head.
“Even if it’s for a good reason?”
“Is it a good reason?”
The stars twinkle innocently above their heads. Terra breathes slowly through his nose, trying to find one in particular. It doesn’t take him long: Radiant Garden is almost a supernova tonight, bursting in celebration.
“I hurt all of you,” he says softly. “But I hurt her most of all.”
“If you don’t want to keep… you know. With Aqua? Then break it off.” Ven’s fingers dance on his knees, as if he can burn off the years of energy that hadn’t been spent. “But if this is just because you don’t trust yourself… then don’t hold yourself back.”
Maybe Ven had always been wise, and sleep had brought it out. Maybe this was the first time Terra was listening to him, not as someone to watch over but as Ventus.
“And if she doesn’t want to?”
Ven laughs. “She’ll have no problem letting you know.”
+
It still takes him a week to face her. Really face her, and talk to her.
He finds her in the kitchen, making brownies from scratch. Crushing the cacao beans and everything, with Eraqus’s roller miraculously pulled from the wreckage. Terra announces his presence with a knock on the door frame—Aqua lifts her head, turns to face him, and sighs before returning to her work.
He knows a cool-down routine when he sees one: if she continues, the counters and table will be loaded with baked goods. He offers his help anyway.
She takes it, instructs him to measure out flour, baking soda, sugar, salt, vanilla extract. There aren’t many ingredients, so they don’t make much: chocolate brownies, white cake with frosting, peanut brittle bars. Aqua looks directly at him as she adds shaved nuts to another batch of brownies.
When he kisses her this time, he doesn’t hold his hands behind his back.
+
Their Keyblades meet in harsh clangs, in hisses of fire and crackles of electricity. They train to keep themselves sharp for battle—Xehanort might be gone but, as Eraqus had often told them, evil never slept.
By evil, of course, he’d meant Darkness.
But Riku and Sora and Roxas and Lea, they’ve proven that dark does not mean evil. They’re living reminders. Terra is a living reminder, as Aqua frequently reminds him, and it’s only after continual reassurances that yes, this is his body, and no, he truly is not Xehanort, that he has come to accept this as a truth and not a wish.
Aqua throws up a barrier to deflect his Strike Raid, which crashes back into his waiting hand. Pain ignites and he grunts, losing his grip on his blade. She notices immediately and releases her own in a shower of petals, runs over to him. He doesn’t have time to protest, to claim that a simple Cura isn’t out of his wheelhouse, before she washes his hand in a burst of green light.
It’s still held tight in both of hers after the glow fades.
Her eyes meet his, bright and anxious, when she suddenly asks, "Do you trust me?"
He trusts her more than he trusts himself. It's something he never has to say, because she knows, she's always known. But he nods anyway.
They're built for battles, for the high-speed "do or die" decisions that come with fighting ever-changing enemies. Not for the agonizing slowness with which Aqua brings his hand to her neck. She holds him tight, stroking his knuckles with her thumb.
"Do you," he starts to say, before he feels the familiar sting of tears in his eyes.
"You are not him," Aqua says. "I hate seeing you fight against yourself. You've done that for so long, and it's... it isn't fair."
His thumb, after a few treacherous seconds, brushes below her sharp jaw. Her breath hitches, her eyes go dark, at the touch. "None of it was fair," he says, his voice thick. "You or Ven, or Sora and Riku and Kairi, or the others. We didn’t… I… I know it isn't my fault, but... I don't trust myself."
The grip on his grounded hand loosens. Hesitantly Terra brings its twin up to her face, wiping tears from her eyes. She leans into his hands, both of them, then pushes through to kiss him, soft and warm and thanking. He kisses back, feels his hands move down from her head and neck to massage her shoulders.
"I trust you,” she says. “If that was your question. Even if it wasn’t. I trust you.”
This time it’s her hands on his cheeks as he cries. He buries his nose into her shoulder and she stands firm, rubbing her thumbs against the wide expanses of his hands.
His lips are so close to her ear, riding her skin, that she feels the words before she hears them.
+
She returns them as he hovers over her, his questioning mouth on her breast.
He pulls up bewildered, eyes wide and dark. “What did you say?”
She brings her hand from his thigh to his face, watches tenderly as he leans into the touch. “I told you,” Aqua says, and leans up to press their noses together. “I love you.”
Every twitch of his lips, every shaking and disbelieving breath, helps erase the memory of a Xehanort-possessed Terra, of a stranger’s hands wrapped tight around her throat. Most of what she remembers now is rage—at Xehanort, at herself for letting things get this far—though every once in a while those eyes will haunt her.
But those eyes aren't the ones she sees now. Similar faces perhaps, if she looks at the sharp planes of his face, the slope of his brow. But the look Terra wears now is a polar opposite of the one Xehanort had given her. This is her Terra.
Her Terra, she thinks. Her Terra.
Her Terra's hands run down her arms to entangle with her hands, threading their fingers together, dark around pale. Their lips meet as equals, warm and chapped and swollen, as he positions himself over her.
“No matter what happens,” he whispers between kisses. “You and me.”
She lifts her hips and kisses him tenderly, and he gently eases himself into her. One hand disentangles from Terra’s to stroke the base of his cock, of her clit. They store each other’s moans for reference, to use for daydreams when duty pulls them apart. Terra's free hand finds its way to the bed sheets, gripping them tightly. They move with each other, building and stretching and crying and wanting, bottling love and watching it spill over.
After, they collapse back onto the bed and wrap themselves decidedly around each other. His hands don’t shake this time when they come up to brush her bangs out of her eyes, when he runs a thumb over a cheek that hurts from smiling.
“Together,” she finally answers, brushing a hand over his neck. “Always.”