After his first breakthrough, Terra comes back more often.

Aqua is on edge his entire first visit, not letting up from her battle stance. Terra is fuzzy on the details.

“Terra, there’s you, but there’s also this - dark you, with yellow eyes and white hair, and you said that Xehenort was trying to use you?”

“Xehenort?” Terra gasped, as though this is the first he’s heard of it. He wilted in on himself, placing his right hand protectively over his heart. “I know I have darkness inside me, Aqua. You’re probably right not to trust me. I’m weak.”

Aqua scowled. “You’re not weak, Terra.”  Her hands clenched harder Eraqus’s keyblade, the metal of the grip digging into her palms.

“Well I’m not as strong as I need to be, either,” Terra snapped back, and changed the subject before Aqua could ask what he means. “At least Ven is safe, right?”

“I’m not talking to you about Ven!” Aqua shouted.

Terra blinks at her, his normally determined gaze taken aback and a little afraid, before he ripples out of existence. It’s not quite as disconcerting a disappearance as bursting into a ball of flames while grappling desperately a yellow-eyed demon version of himself, but only just.

It’s impossible to keep track of time in the realm of darkness, but Aqua starts to record her journey in her head in terms of Terra’s visits. He enters into her existence randomly and instantaneously, and he is always fuzzy on the details of how he came to be.

“Are you still fighting Xehenort-”

“-Xehenort-”

“Look, I can’t tell you anything about Ven-”

Terra always vanishes in the middle of their conversations, and it’s starting to drive Aqua crazier than when the only Terras her mind conjured didn’t speak.

She’s pretty sure the first Terra visit was real, when he spoke to her and ended up fighting the not-Terra, but she’s not sure if these new ones are the not-Terra just yanking her friend around harder or just more figments of her tortured imagination.

When she starts actively trying to steer the situation away from the troublesome topics - namely, Ventus and Xehenort - Terra sticks around longer.

Oh his sixth visit, she doesn’t notice anything behind her until he taps on her shoulder.

She immediately conjures the Keyblade and whips around, and he only narrowly ducks low enough to avoid being skewered in the chest. “Whoa, hey, it’s just me!” Terra said, backing up and raising his hands in the air. “It’s me, Terra! Aqua, can you hear me?”

She lowers the keyblade, and allows it to vanish back into light. “Of course I can hear you,” she said, tired enough for her annoyance to bleed into her voice. “What were you doing, sneaking up on me like that?”

“Don’t say it like that,” Terra said, crossing his arms over his chest. “There are loads of times you can’t hear me. Can’t see me, either.”

“What do you mean?” Aqua asks.

“I try to find you whenever I can,” Terra answers. “I like to check in on you, especially whenever it gets to be too much-” he gestures vaguely upwards with one hand. “On the outside.”

She assumes he means his fights with the yellow-eyed demon Terra that she’d struck down in Radiant Gardens that he must be having back in the real world. “You check on me?” she repeats, tilting her head to the side.

“Yeah,” Terra says. “Whenever I can slip away. It’s not to hard to find you, Aqua, especially after I figured it out the first time. You stick out like a sore thumb down here.”

“How long has it been?” Aqua asks immediately. “On the outside?” She knows from Mickey it’s been at least 10 years. Her heart aches at the thought of Ventus being asleep and Terra being locked in a battle with his own darkness that long.

Terra hesitates. “I don’t know,” he admits eventually. “I’m sorry.”  

“That’s alright,” Aqua said. “I don’t know, either, after all.”

Terra’s still frowning. “I try to talk to you sometimes,” he says, slowly, like he’s pulling memories like molasses from his mind. “On the outside, too. But you’re not there. It’s not really you. It’s just...your armor, and your keyblade.”

Aqua blinks in surprise. “You kept my keyblade? I thought, since it’s been so long... you might have thought I was dead and put in in the graveyard.”

“Of course I kept your keyblade,” he answers automatically. “I’m keeping it safe for you, don’t worry.”

“Good,” she said. “I miss Stormfell. Master Keeper isn’t the same, it always makes my fingers a little sore.”

Terra isn’t really listening to her, staring down at his own right hand in morbid curiosity instead. “My keyblade is…”  he starts, and then flicks out his hand in the conjuring gesture.

“I don’t think that will work,” Aqua says. “Terra, you’re not really here. You’re just a heart, or my heart’s impression of you, if anything at all.”

“You’re right,” Terra said. “I left my keyblade and armor somewhere too. I - I needed to guard something, I think.”

Aqua frowned. “Guard something?”

“It was all I could do,” Terra mumbled. He was still standing there staring at his keyblade-arm, bringing the other hand to his forehead. “I left it…” His eyes suddenly went wide. “Aqua, I left it at the keyblade graveyard! Xehenort-”

He disappeared suddenly. Aqua wanted to scream.

 
~

~~

The seventh time Terra appeared Aqua was tired, bone-weary tired. In the Realm of Darkness it is impossible to eat or drink or sleep, but that does little to keep hunger and thirst and weariness away.

She was trudging through some sort of savannah, where the dead yellow grass came up to her waist and crunched under every step, and she looked around again to make sure nothing was following her and there he was to her right.

“Hello, Terra,” she sighed as she caught his eye. She jerked her head in the direction she decided was forward and he fell into step beside her.

“Aqua,” he said, sounding much more alert than she was. “What is this place? I can’t even see the horizon!”

“Something else will come up,” Aqua said. “Something always comes up.”

“Look at the sky,” Terra said, still looking around. “It’s completely black. No moon, no stars, nothing. There’s not even color.”

“I know, Terra,” Aqua said.

Something in the way she said his name made him switch his focus from their surroundings to her. “Aqua?” he asked. “Are you alright?”

“I’m still in one piece,” she answered. “If that’s what you mean.”

Terra frowned. “You don’t look so good. Maybe you should take a break and lay down.”

“I can’t stop,” she informed him shortly.

“Why not?”

“If I stop, they’ll catch up to me,” she said. “The shadows, the Unversed, the Heartless.”

“Heartless?” he asked.

“Mickey said they were called Heartless,” Aqua told him.

“Mickey,” Terra repeated, frowning, and then snapped his fingers. “Oh, that King from Disney Town. I never met him, but his wife was nice. What’s a King from Disney Town doing here?”

“He’s apprenticed to Yen Sid,” Aqua explained. “He has a keyblade, too.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Master Yen Sid is retired,” he said slowly, like she was an idiot.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, Terra,” she snapped. “I’m not stupid.”

“I know you’re not,” he said. “Aqua, I think you’re sick.”

“I’m fine,” she growled. “I’m as fine as I can be.”

“Aqua-”

“ Shut up! ” she shouted. “ You’re not really here, Terra! You’re lost in shadow, you’re being used to get me to talk about Ventus, and I’m not telling you, I’m not , I’m-”

She’s cut off when Terra rushes forward to grasp her shoulders. She gaped at his hands, shocked that they’re able to touch her. He’s just a heart’s projection - he shouldn’t be solid. “Aqua, whatever kind of trouble you’re in, let me help,” he said earnestly. “You look terrible.”

She started trembling, wanting to shrug off his touch but afraid that if she did, it would be the last friendly touch for another 10 years. “Thanks,” she said dryly instead. “But you can’t help me, Terra. I’m trapped here.”

“I’ll rescue you,” he swore instantly.

My heart has ties to the darkness, Terra told her the first time they’d spoken. That must be why we can talk. “I wish you could,” she replied. Her voice broke on the last word.

Terra squeezed her shoulders tighter. “Stay strong, okay?” he told her. “I promise I will never stop fighting until I find you again.”

She sniffed. “I know you will.”

“Where are you?” he asked.

Aqua regarded him one last time. “The realm of Darkness,” she said. “Xehenort threw- ”

Sure enough, Terra had vanished.

 ~~~

The eight time was in the end of a battle.

“Aqua, look out!” he screamed, jumping in front of her to take a hit before she even registered his presence. She threw up a barrier spell at the last moment, watching the fireball bounce off the shield and back at the heartless it came from.

Terra put a hand over his heart. “Pay attention next time, Aqua, you practically scared me to death,” he said.

“I could have taken a hit,” she said. “I have good magic resistance and a 360 degree defensive spell. I’m tough.”

Terra scowled at her. “I’d rather you not take any hits.”

“You never used to say that about me back in the Land of Departure,” Aqua teased. “You used to cheer.”

“I used to be the one hitting you,” he retorted. “We’re not kids anymore, Aqua. It’s dangerous here.”

She blinked. “So you know where we are, then?”

Terra looked around. “Ugly dirt path, lots of heartless, gaping nothingness for a sky? If we’re not in the Realm of Darkness, I’ll do your dishes for a week.”

“You’re more aware this time.”

Terra took a step away from her, grimacing. “I’m sorry, Aqua. I really can’t control it. I try to find you whenever I can, and sometimes only parts of me can slip away.”

“You’re mostly here this time,” she observed.

He let out a hollow laugh. “Yeah, hopefully we’ll have some time before Xehenort realizes I’m gone.” The name jolted something inside of her - Xehenort, of course. This could all be a trap to get her to talk.

If Terra was here, she was going to talk anyway.

“Thank you, Terra,” she told him quietly. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”

“I’m always with you, Aqua,” he said earnestly, reaching over and tapping the space above her heart. “Don’t forget. You still have your wayfinder, don’t you?”

“Of course,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling it out. “Right here.”

She hesitates when Terra reaches out to take in from her - he must have noticed her flinch, because he aborted at the last minute. “It’s so bright,” he said instead, almost reverent. “You’ve got a really strong light there, Aqua.”

“It attracts a lot of attention,” she told him. “I almost lost it once, after the first time you visited. I would have melted the darkness, if Mickey hadn’t…”

His gaze was heavy on her. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “But don’t - don’t give up.”

Her wayfinder always seemed to reflect a moonbeam back at her, even when there were none to catch. “I won’t,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

 ~~~

He had a new trend of being more corporeal, after that.

“Well,” she told him on his ninth visit. “It’s too bad about that darkness in your heart, but at least you’re not dead.”

Terra let out a bark of laughter. “Yeah, okay. Guess what I saw today?”

“What?”

“I found a kid that looks just like Ven today. Same hair spikes and everything.”

“Really?” Aqua said, her hopes rising in spite of herself. “Are you sure it’s not Ven?”

He had the gall to look affronted. “Of course I’m sure,” he said. “Aqua, I’d know if it was Ven. The kid's practically my brother.”

“He’s tricked you before,” she replied.

Terra rolled his eyes. “If you’re talking about the time he made a dummy of himself and snuck out of the castle-”

“His hair was made of straw,” she teased.

“He was new to the castle, I wasn’t about to crowd him,” Terra defended, and she laughed. It echoed oddly in the emptiness surrounding her.

She realized abruptly that it was the first time she had laughed in 10 years.

Terra had no way of knowing this, but he was looked at her, oddly sentimental, all the same. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he answered. “You just have a good laugh.”

She smiled back at him. “Thanks for making me laugh,” she said, reaching out to poke one of his giant biceps. He was once again solid under her fingertip.

“Anytime,” he whispered quietly, eyes crinkling at their corners. “I just want to see you happy.”  He cleared his throat, poked her in her exposed arm, and added, “you sap.”

Too cheerful to point out that Terra was being the sappy one, Aqua punched him on his arm instead. Back in their childhood, this was a method of instigating unplanned sparring matches, but Terra just rubbed the spot of her punch and said. “I gotta go. I’ll find you tomorrow, okay?”

“Make sure you do,” she said, and he vanished.

 ~~~

She awoke to bright green lights flashing behind her eyelids. “Cure! Cure! Goddamnit, Aqua, wake up!”

She moaned.

“Aqua!”

He sounded desperate enough for Aqua to force her eyes open. “Terra?”

“Oh thank god,” he breathed. He was kneeling on the ground, clutching Aqua to his chest with one hand and the flower of a Curaga spell looping around the other. “I thought you were dead. My spells don’t work down here.”

Now that he mentioned it, every inch of Aqua hurt. “That’s because I’m already in hell,” she bit out.

Terra grabbed her arm and raised her own hand to her head. “I need you to heal yourself, okay? And if you’re in hell, at least you’re not alone down here.”

Aqua obediently cast on herself, blessedly silencing the pain in her body. “That’s because you’re my angel,” she said. She didn’t bother to ask what happened - she’d been walking and fighting until she couldn’t fight off the darkness anymore in an endless cycle for as long as she could remember down here. And yet, she always miraculously woke up. “Thanks, Terra.”

Instead of answering, he drew Aqua further up onto his lap, close enough that she could hear his heart pounding under her ear. “I was afraid you were dead,” he repeated, and then kissed her hard.

She startled back, eyes wide. "Terra?" 

His blue eyes were blown wide, like he'd been surprised himself. "Aqua, I..." he swallowed, and she raised a hand to his cheek. "I don't know why our hearts are connected," he said. "But they are, and - I'm so sorry, Aqua, it should be me down here, you didn't do anything wrong, all you did was -"

"Love you," she interrupted, and pressed her lips to his. 

She fell back to the earth with a thud as Terra disappeared.

 
.

..

Terra doesn’t visit for a disparagingly long time after that, until one day she wakes up on a beach with only a shock of brown hair in her view. “Terra?” she asked hopefully.

"....Hey." he smiled at her brightly, as she hugged him tightly, happy to see him as tears ran down her face, as they kissed each other deeply, happily reunited.