#one day i'll write terrqua

[snowflake-of-destruction]

Danger of the Deep

AKA: I can’t write a quick, few line caption to save my life Part 1/8. Based off of the first picture of THIS POST where Aqua is posed all sexy but also looking like she wants to eat someone

Part 2/? of Mermaid AU that needs a name

Timeline-wise this takes place long after the plot that may or may not ever happen because this is just a casual exchange of out of sequence fun mermay snippets. @shaky-mayhemm have a surprise Naminé and some interesting questions raised about Ventus.  We hadn’t discussed Ventus yet but I am confident the shared brain is in the same place. These are now things that are happening. I incorporated your language barrier headcanon so now we say Roxas is a rebel who hung out around human ships enough to learn language pre-AU canon. Enjoy my word vomit. Read more for length

Naminé knew she should count herself fortunate. Perhaps, she should even feel honored. Aqua didn't come out of the water for just anyone, even now, verging a year after The Kingdom Below--an imperfect translation of the mercity's true name, Naminé was sure, but one that had stuck after Riku had told his rambling story and one that none of the merfolk, including their blue haired young leader who typically found every occasion she could for objections, protested--had become more open secret than legend amongst half the seaside town of Destiny.  The young artist didn't feel lucky though. She felt like she had swallowed a live eel that was slowly making it's way down her throat, however, as the mermaid regarded her with eyes adapted to hunting underwater, too wide and too bright to pass for human, that were still one of the merfolk's more humanlike features. 

The queen was beautiful, no doubt, despite her scales and other oddities. They all were breathtaking in their own ways. Naminé saw at once why the crew of the Dawnfire had fallen in love. The greater mystery was how they forced themselves to come back to land. That didn't mean, however, that Naminé wasn't at least a little unnerved by the rulers of the sea. Personally, she would have preferred to admire them from afar, catching a flash of a fin in the distance she could sigh dreamily at, wondering how it felt to cut through the water, fast and free. She hadn't voiced that preference though, at least not in so many words. She had sputtered concerns that she wasn't the one to come to for a royal portrait, no matter how unorthodox the kingdom or ruler, and she'd asked if it was safe, but she hadn't made it clear that it wasn't only the safety of the mermaid posing on land that she was worried about. So here she was, propelled by curiosity and her inability to say no, standing in the sand, trying to capture the balance between seductive beauty, the unsettling other, and the danger of a predator. 

"Do you need another bucket of water poured over you?" Naminé asked, peering around her easel more obviously than the quick darts of eye she had been doing previously, speaking slowly so Aqua could read her lips. She failed at keeping eye contact before the merqueen even answered. Did all merfolk not blink or was it just a quirk of Aqua's?

Aqua let out the short chirp Naminé had already learned meant no. The blonde girl repeated the noise under her breath, further committing the intonation to memory. She had a feeling she would be practicing imitating the dolphin-like noises of the merfolks' native tongue in her room that night. Ventus had warned her that the queen wouldn't speak English to her. She'd wondered aloud why the rest of Aqua's people hadn't taught her yet. Ventus had smiled, shook his head, and corrected her gently. Aqua knew English. She simply refused to speak it.  According to Ventus, Terra was becoming quite fluent in mermish under his tutelage however, which begged a question Ventus refused to answer. How did he know mermish so well in the first place, well enough he'd taught Riku even before he started teaching Terra, when he'd been the last to meet the creatures of the deep?

"Alright then. Tell me when you do." Naminé found speaking loudly enough she could be sure the air didn't steal her words before they reached Aqua difficult. It was silly. Aqua was fully beached and may even need help to return to the water if the tide didn't shift again before she was done posing for Naminé , but the artist was helpless against visions of what her tail could do (moving with enough speed and force that if it hit you it could temporarily paralyze you, containing enough muscular power it could snap bones easily, yet demonstrating enough dexterity near the fin that it could wield tools and weapons) and of a flash of pointed shark's teeth that Naminé wasn't sure if she'd imagined or not that forced her to think in turn of those blue eyes full of life turning empty  like a shark's as well. Naminé  swallowed her baseless fear and the imaginary eel, and painted in lines indicating the delicate gold chains that Aqua wore twined around her wrists, her tail, and anywhere Kairi and Xion could convince her to drape them. Naminé had heard that story multiple times from multiple sources, how gifts given to the younger mermaid princesses inevitably found their way to decorating Aqua and making her look "queenly." 

"Calm." The single word almost made Naminé drop her brush. "You are..." It was clear Aqua wasn't used to using her throat to form human words. Though her enunciation was careful and clear, there was a hesitance and strain evident. Blue brows furrowed and Naminé could almost see Aqua sorting through vocabulary in her mind. "...Part of my school."

"School?" Naminé repeated dumbly, meaning coming to her a moment later, a swarm of colorful fish swimming in formation through her mind's eye.

"You were taken too?"

The fragmented question brought Naminé back to a time she'd rather forget. A lightless brig on a ship that never was. She'd known Xemnas had other "guests" while she was there. Demyx was innocently chatty and Xigbar, Marluxia, and Larxene all pointedly, manipulatingly so. She hadn't found out all the details though until her rescue (accidental rescue, she'd never been who they were there for) by the crew of the Dawnfire. 

Namine nodded, but didn't go into the detail Aqua may not have cared about of the how and why and ransoms never paid.

"That will never happen again." Aqua's eyes did darken like a shark's but Namine's visions were changing. The vengeful queen of the sea dragging Marluxia down a trench where light never shone, tail squeezing the life from him before the pressure could. "You are Terra's and you are mine."

"Thank you. " Namine had trouble with her voice again, for much different reasons than before. She'd pour all she had into the portrait of the noble warrior matron of the seas.

#kingdom hearts #aqua #namine #mermaid au that needs a name #snippets #the painting is going to be a gift for terra obviously #one day i'll write terrqua #promise and a threat #mermaid au stories