Chapter Text
San Fransokyo
Working for the San Fransokyo Academy of Sciences was never the type of job that Aqua ever envisioned for herself, growing up largely on the back alleys that bordered the Bayview and Kabukicho areas. In her early teens, her future looked more akin to lead to prostitution or gang membership, not this life of exhibition curating and giving free tours of the planetarium to the school kids from that same neighbourhood that she clawed her way out of.
But it’s nice.
This late in the day the tours have finished, and Aqua wastes her time at the entrance to the Natural History Museum, unwilling to return to her desk and suffer through another hour of documenting ammonites.
The hard shell of one of their free lollipops clacks between her teeth as she rolls it with her tongue, clack clack clack, the paper stick beginning to shred as it moves. Leaning against the desk as she is, her weight resting on her forearms, she can occasionally hear the music filtering in from the empty planetarium, eerie and echoey without the laughter of visitors within. It comes and goes with every opening and closing of the door leading to it, flooding the reception with a blood orange light.
She loves it best when it is simply rotating through the constellations. The darkness of the room is comforting to her jaded heart, the silence peaceful with nothing but the stars to watch. Aqua has always loved the stars, has wanted to travel them ever since she was a little girl, and had no trouble volunteering to cover the tours until the new Cosmologist starts at the end of summer.
She loves the stars, because she remembers a time when there was nothing but the choking folds of the darkness, wrapping around her shoulders like a well worn cloak and suffocating her within it.
“Ooh, hot new coworker alert.” Her friend at the desk lilts her voice as she speaks, one hand already reaching to make sure her hair is perfectly coiffed. Aqua turns as the music filters in once more from the planetarium, this time accompanied by the words from the introduction video that she almost knows by heart.
The man is facing away from them, checking the door for a lock it does not have, the numerical keypad always kept unlocked outside of tours. His hair is shoulder length and well layered, a striking bright silver that Aqua knows immediately does not come from any bottle.
The lollipop crunches and splinters beneath her molars as the door to the planetarium slams shut in the draught, condemning the entrance to silence once more. The man turns, and Aqua is already on the floor beneath the counter, wedged between the wood panelling and the office chair and praying that the man does not lean over it.
It takes everything within her not to have a panic attack right there and then.
She grits her teeth as she hides below the desk, sucking at the shards of the lollipop as her friend asks the man if he is lost. In the friendly manner he has always possessed, he tells her that he is their new Cosmologist, and needs directions to the main office.
Quietly, Aqua whispers every curse word in her vocabulary, her fingers wrapped tightly around the lollipop stick still jammed between her teeth. At the very least, the Natural History curators have their own office completely separate from the main one, but this… is not good.
When his footsteps disappear down the hallway (“down to the bottom, turn left, up that staircase to the top and you’re there”), her friend kicks her sharply in the ribs as she pushes her chair out from the counter and brushes at her scraped knees, raw from the cheap carpet.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Aqua ignores the question in favour of pushing herself up, her back aching from the stab of the levers on the chair. Her friend ploughs on. “Shit, did you see his eyes?”
No, because she didn’t need to. She knows exactly what shade of teal those eyes are, for they have haunted her dreams for a thousand years.
Aqua doesn’t wait around, rushing down the hallway and to the right, slipping into the entrance to the collection stores and nipping through to the office at the other end. She throws her coat on, light due to the balmy weather and waterproof because she trusts nothing.
Grabbing her clocking fob and handbag, she swipes it so fast it barely registers, but the moment it beeps she is gone, out the door and back towards the entrance desk, to the double doors behind it and beyond to the streets. She has not been caught, and leaving an hour early is no crime, but as she heads towards downtown she begins to worry she might develop actual shin splints.
Riku, here in San Fransokyo.
What on earth could it mean?
Aqua grabs a hot chocolate from a cafe covered with too many lucky cats, too lost in thought to pay attention, snapping back to reality only as the kind server shouts out the back to the owner that they’re out of maple syrup.
The windows are covered in condensation, the sunny skies that she had failed to trust giving way to a sudden storm. It makes the interior feel damp and humid, and perhaps a hot drink is not her best solution but she has no plans to stay inside.
Outside, she cuts a striking figure on the grey and drizzly streets, blue raincoat stark against the pavement with her matching umbrella skittering away the raindrops. She twirls it frequently to stop the tide of water dripping down onto the lid of her paper cup, her fingers wet and numb from the rain. If she is ambling along without an aim, no one tuts at her or stops her; the world and its people flow around her, heading home from their offices or heading out to work, or fleeing the rain as it comes down in sheets.
In the rush hour of the city that never sleeps, the neon lights have yet to flicker on, and it feels like any other city in this world. Her shoes on the pavement click like another sound in her memories, the final clangs of a keyblade coming to rest at the bottom of an eternal staircase.
Riku’s eyes, as teal as her paper cup (and there’s something in that, something that niggles at her mind), boring into hers and begging for help she cannot give.
Aqua stares at the paper cup as if it has all the answers to questions she does not even know to ask, acutely aware of the tapping of the rain on her umbrella increasing as the wind begins to pick up. She tries to remember the face of the barista, but it is not familiar, but if the barista is not the answer then why…? Why is the cup teal?
Even in the hustle and bustle of a San Fransokyo rush hour, Aqua stops inches from the man standing before her, only his chest visible with her umbrella so low. It is instinctive, the ability to know exactly where he is when he is nearby even when lifetimes have passed. It settles deep into her bones, a relief mixed with satisfaction that almost brings warmth back to her freezing fingers.
Two fingers slip under the umbrella and tilt it back slightly, just enough so that the man can see her face. Aqua doesn’t look at him though, instead focuses on the middle button of his raincoat that has not been pushed through fully. It takes some fiddling, the smile on her face fond as she fixes it with one hand, and the rain begins to pound on the pavement.Smoothing the coat down, she slides her fingers down his arm until she reaches his hand, her cold fingers grasping at his own and pulling them to her chest.
Aqua has never seen this man in her life.
“Hello, Terra.”
The boat rocks gently as Terra rows, the movement too quick to allow for a smooth journey in a boat so small as theirs. Water splashes up over the edges, soaking through Aqua’s layers and cooling her down in the hot air of an arid summer.
They know that the island approaches only because of the mass of darkness that it paints on an ocean that is well-lit by the full moon.
“What was it they used to say about this place?” Aqua asks, feeling disconcerted the closer they get to the island.
“That it’s haunted. It hasn’t been a play island in a hundred years. They say that if you come on a night when the moon is dark, you can see the ghosts of children long gone playing across the bluffs.” Terra’s breaths are heavy from the exertion of rowing in the dark, but as he speaks he feels the familiar brush of sand beneath the oars, a sure sign of land coming ever closer.
They are here.
Aqua purses her lips as they step out of the rowing boat, allowing Terra to do the hard work of dragging it onto the shore.
“If it’s only on nights when it’s dark, how do you see the ghosts?”
Terra shrugs.
Aqua allows the matter to lie, grabbing a heavy torch from her backpack and fiddling with it for a moment until it flickers on, flooding the beach with light as Terra does the same with his own.
Eerie is…an understatement.
Aqua has never put much stock in rumours and hearsay, especially not when it comes to a play island less than a mile off the coast that has simply been abandoned to time. But here, in the dark of the night, she can almost be convinced that the wind carries the sound of a thousand laughs of a thousand children lost to the ages, or the cries of a lost and lonely soul forever doomed to wander the cliffs.
They say the island used to be filled with wooden structures, play castles and tree houses and bridges connecting all the points. If true, the bulk of those structures are long gone, leaving only sand and the palm trees as their only witness. On the ground there remains only rotted wooden planks, forming a walkway half covered with sand, and the wood splinters beneath their feet.
Aqua follows Terra as he leads the way, struggling on the sand in her heavy boots. Terra pushes aside the foliage for her as they pass through the cave that runs through the centre of the island, allowing them to bypass taking the long route. She feels as though a dozen eyes watch her from the darkness, the uneasiness settling over her skin like a damp cloak.
“What are you showing me, anyway?” She asks, hesitant as they emerge from the cave onto the side of the island that is never seen by residents of the mainland. Though the wooden tree houses are long gone, she feels with an utter clarity that she knows exactly how they would have gone along this bit of the island. Like a memory, she can see the bridges that would have led between each platform, the way that the slats would swing flimsily on the long bridge out to the lone palm tree.
Out of the corner of her eye, two children sit on the trunk and stare out to the endless black of the ocean, and when she turns her light on them they disappear like dust into the wind.
“I spotted this when I was diving the other day.” Terra’s voice forces her gaze away from the tree, and for a moment she is incredibly thankful for the reassurance that comes with his broader, taller figure. He gives her a boost to the very platform that holds the tree, and Aqua hauls herself up and over the edge.
If she almost loses her balance and comes close to falling off the other side into the ocean, well, Terra doesn’t see it. Any complaint that arises in the back of her throat disappears, however, when she rounds the tree and inhales sharply.
Terra knows the moment she has seen it.
“I didn’t… they never said the reason they abandoned it was because someone died here.” Aqua is mostly thinking aloud at this point, though she begins to become acutely aware of how sharp Terra’s gaze is.
It is laser focused and intense, and she realises it is not fixed on the gravestone beneath her outstretched fingers.
“Terra… you never explained what I’m doing here.” The stone is weathered and battered, like the old ones in the Destiny Islands’ cemetery. There is a pot for flowers beside it, but otherwise it is bare and long forgotten. There are no markers to define the boundary, nothing to indicate where beneath their feet the occupant lies.
But Aqua is too transfixed to think on that, her fingers tracing over what she assumes is the front of the stone. Halfway down, out of nowhere really, her fingers dip into the faintest groove of an original carving, the name of the poor soul laid to rest in such a lonely place.
S-O-R-A
She gasps into the darkness, as Terra grabs her hand.