Chapter Text
When she'd stopped breathing so hard, Aqua's first thought almost got her started laughing again.
Merlin was going to kill her.
Sephiroth had ripped the medial armrest off the passenger seat and tossed it, through the shield, spinning electric in the void, out the gaping hole where the cabin door used to be. He'd slid the seat back as far as it would go to give himself extra legroom. Aqua wished he'd similarly ...remodeled... the captain's chair for her but she still hesitated to ask him to commit vandalism on her behalf.
Aqua reinforced Sephiroth's barrier with her own. In case one of them fell asleep, she said. His eyes were closed already.
The autopilot still worked. The engines burned smoothly, smokelessly, along at speed. Good. They needed to hurry. The heartless had been an easy victory earlier, but anything could be lurking beyond the next solar horizon. There would be no advance warning of attack. The flashing red alert lights, overeager and incessant during the escape, had flashed and wailed their last. Sephiroth had stared at them and they'd just given up, faster than she could locate or check for a manual override.
Her stomach growled.
...maybe she should've let him ring the bell for broom service. There were a lot of things she should have done. But rest hadn't truly been offered her there, only defeat.
"Under your seat," he said.
"Huh?"
"There's a box with food under your seat."
Sure enough, there was a compartment that definitely had not been there before.
"But you said you didn't touch anything!"
"Nothing that would have impeded our takeoff. Don't worry. I think you'll like it. It's better than the chocolates."
She recognized this cabinet, and the magic it contained.
It hadn't been in Yen Sid's tower then, and certainly not here; it'd been in the kitchen in the Land of Departure, too high for their child arms to reach.
Here was the dent where Terra's wooden practice keyblade had collided with its frame during a particularly ambitious late-night raid.
...they'd been trying to get more dough for the gingerbread cookies.
Her thoughts stuck, like a knife, remembering the tiny wish.
Aqua opened the cabinet door, daring to hope...
...the smell of the cookies was like being saved by her friends' wayfinders again.
Hunger was a good cook, much better than she and Terra and Ven. But it was real food, hot and fresh and sweet, and she could order anything she liked, anything she could think of, the cabinet would provide. A true cornucopia. An infinite spread of banquets as needed.
A little bit of light.
Sephiroth had...
"You stole from Yen Sid???"
Aqua immediately regretted impulsive incredulity and amended her exclamation with a more decorous "Thank you."
Sephiroth laughed. "It can still only be borrowed, if you like."
"But I..." She'd reformed that whole world. She'd used Master Defender's power where it was not sanctioned to be used. The Mysterious Tower was somewhere else now. A new place, a twisted place, like the Land of Departure into Castle Oblivion, but she hadn't concentrated on any particular design, no reason inspired its metamorphosis. And none but her could undo it.
They'd gotten away. They wouldn't have, otherwise.
"It was beautiful." Sephiroth had stars in his eyes for her. Awe, worship, adoration. "You tear reality apart, indeed! My precious ally..."
Her heart leapt at his fanatical praise, and yet... his wonderment was stifling. And she had to say something, had to stop him from saying, in hungry radiance, what he probably planned to say.
"Stop. Please."
...don't ask me to do it again. Don't ask me to show you another world. And don't say....
"Why?" his confusion was predictable.
Because...
...and Aqua knew that this was perhaps the bravest thing she'd ever had to do...
"I want to be loved for helping people, not for destruction."
...even if helping people get back into their locked cars hadn't exactly been fulfilling.
She looked Sephiroth straight in the eye, from her humbler position kneeling in front of the captain's seat, her seat, "Can you do that?"
"I can," he said.
No more solemn promise had ever been made. None of his reverence was gone.
Her confession (with conditions! Brave Master Aqua!) made him wistful unto poetry, uncaring (or maybe proud!) of how easily he smiled and how easy it would be to do as she asked and...
I love you because you are alone.
I wish I wasn't alone.
If you don't want to be alone, I can be here.
The friends who'd abandoned her were idiots, and Sephiroth wondered if he should let her choose to go back to them.
...he could make them appreciate her loyalty.
...he could make them love her as their proper savior.
...he would make them apologize.
...but she would probably not admit to wanting that. It might not be his battle. Oh, but if she called for reinforcement...!
If he rescued her friends, would they be his friends too? What would they all do together? He would have to be very careful not to be jealous. He could let himself be invited to things, like he had with Zack...
Zack, whose memories were lost, spirit reduced to that of a child, too vulnerable for Sephiroth's own keeping, entrusted to Hades until...
Until those memories could be restored, and Sephiroth could face Zack's reckoning?
He was not a coward, he'd asked Hades for Zack from time to time. To be told no, not yet. Not yet. A lost soul, elusive in the tide, like "finding a needle in a hay-Styx". His own search self-denied at the rocky start, for if there was one soul he'd feign to keep apart from himself it would be Zack, and at the beginning the raw loss of Gaea to the heartless had made him reckless.
...and Zack would not forgive him but...
There was a chance, the smallest chance...
...if not of recollection than of rebirth, in half-innocence a friendship forged anew...
Or, if that failed, he wanted to hear his rejection, to be sure of it, to put the mistake of paranoia behind them, because he knew with his new clarity that Zack had never been a traitor.
So again he and peerless Master Aqua were the same.
Aqua offered one of the cookies to Sephiroth.
He accepted it... politely. Right. She'd told him the story.
"It's not the worst I've ever had," was his cautious verdict.
"Flatterer," she laughed, and so did he.
"I am honored to share in your memory."
"Me, and Terra, and Ven. What if... they don't want me back?" Aqua worried. "If we can't agree on who should apologize to who?"
"I will stay with you," Sephiroth promised.
"I based an awful lot of who I was on them."
"We all do that. It's natural to draw our identities from those around us. Don't be ashamed."
"I want things to go back to how I thought they were." A tread of thought worn deep, just as tired as she was.
Was she enamored with a false past?
Could she afford now to doubt?
"But," she continued, "Even if we can't be friends anymore, I want them to be safe."
"I will help you take back what is yours." An ever-comforting conviction.
Aqua put on a brave face, "I bet you guys will get along great!"
Sephiroth gave a noncommittal hmmm she decided to regard as hopeful, "Do you really think so?"
"Yep!"
The radio still worked.
Sephiroth listened as his precious ally, who had an incredible resilience to irritating music and seemed to know this, flipped through stations dodging static. She watched him in a way she thought clandestine, changing channels when she suspected his disdain. She was adorable.
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
Mickey Mouse!
Mickey Mouse!
'Mic-key-Mouse' had the same number of syllables as 'Seph-i-roth', though he'd prefer a less tinny march.
"What's Mickey like?" he asked.
"He cares about people. It's a good trait for a king to have. And, he doesn't give up," Master Aqua admired.
"Kind of like you, then."
Yes, he was rewarded with her blush. It was ridiculous how much he enjoyed being the cause of so harmless a thing.
"Hey, Sephiroth?"
"Mmm?"
"When this is over, what do you want to do?"
Were not the possibilities limitless? "We could go anywhere, to any world, and see anything we wanted."
"That would be wonderful."
"And you?"
"I think..." she took an endearing breath of determination, "I want you to take me somewhere new. We're going forward, but always back to old, painful places. I think after this... I'll be tired of chasing the past. Make some new memories with me?"
Sephiroth did not recall ever having been asked on such an innocent(...?) date. Certainly not one so honestly requested.
His surprise must have bled through, because Master Aqua stumbled on, "We should.... We don't even really know each other. We haven't done anything except plotting murder together."
"That doesn't count as a friendly activity?" Sephiroth joked.
"No, not really."
"Hmm." Sephiroth thought fast.
Anything to do with chocobos would probably work. But he hadn't seen a single one on his travels. The (horrifying) ballet ostriches didn't count.
Not an arena; though he'd enjoy it, she might wish an escape from violence.
There was the teasing about skating, and hotsprings, and his little beach dream.... Ah. He had an idea.
"Have you been to Atlantica?"
"No, I haven't," Aqua lied. She'd been very young, and she wouldn't mind going back there, and she wanted to hear Sephiroth's plan instead of admitting that. "What's it like?"
He launched into his glorified description, "There's singing, in the waves. About what it means to be human, and the truth of one's soul. About love nearly lost and newly found, and how these things transcend an unmentioned death."
"Sounds more morbid than fun," Aqua said.
"Then we'll pick a happier song."
"What???"
Sephiroth demonstrated. Aqua couldn't believe it. He was actually singing.
~Everything's better, down where it's wetter, under the sea~
"There's karaoke there," he explained. "I liked your voice, when you sang in the shower."
She'd forgotten. Hadn't known he'd been listening. Wouldn't have done it, otherwise.
"Er, really?"
"Yes."
Aqua couldn't help it. She fumbled an awkward complication, "What if I don't know the words?"
Fortunately or unfortunately, Sephiroth had a solution prepared. "We can scout first and learn them."
"Is that allowed? I thought it was supposed to be more spontaneous than that. I don't want to make a fool of myself."
"Maybe something else then," he pretended to consider, before following up with a low, suggestive, "And you can save your singing for me."
Her secret thoughts short-circuited.
But, why not try? It could be fun, getting up on a stage. She didn't have to be embarrassed. And... she'd need practice if he really wanted her to sing for him....
"Alright. Let's do it. I'll come with you to Atlantica and we can sing karaoke together."
"Excellent."
Aqua racked her brain for lyrics, any lyrics. "Oh! I think I do remember some!"
"Oh?"
She sang the part she remembered:
~Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Don't be shy
Do what the music say
Go on and
Kiss the girl~
"How'd I do?"
"May I?" Sephiroth asked.
Aqua mentally retraced her recent jubilant recitation. Oh. "Yes. Please."
He kissed her.
She had her hands all tangled up in his hair and what he wished more than anything was that she'd take off the fingerless gloves and touch him with all of her like she meant it, like she dared, and he was actually about to say so, ask her to, he'd spent the last few seconds testing out words in his mind that weren't orders or commands, and was getting frustrated with himself.
...because they should be planning ahead to the battle instead of...
"Take your gloves off," he said.