Chapter Text
It takes three months for things to settle in.
The first month is the slowest; thirty days that feel like sixty, because maybe Kaito is around and Kotori is around and Tetsuo and Tokunosuke and Cathy and the president are around, but there’re three ghosts, too, and getting used to their presence is a slow process. At lunch, there are two empty spaces and one empty sky; after school, sometimes he walks with Kotori and sometimes he finds himself walking with Kaito, but most often he walks alone, runs the entire way back so his heart is too busy to wonder about Astral, to wonder about Shark, to wonder about a promise—
—I swear I’ll be back, I’ve just gotta take care of this one thing—don’t do this alone, I’ll help you—I’m not alone, Yuma—
—and when Yuma stumbles home he tires himself out too much to dream in his sleep. Day in, day out, one hour one day one week and then one month, and Yuma’s on his way to numbness even if he’s not on his way to entirely okay.
Then the second month comes around and Yuma’s at home and alone on a day off from school and there’s a knock at the door and a Barian king shuffling his feet at Yuma’s doorstep, hair cut and fingers conscious of it, tucking it behind his ears and it falling out again; cheeks pink and puffed and eyes panicked, worry etched into his face, worry about if Yuma’s okay, worry about if Yuma’s forgotten, worry about what to say and how to say it and does he even care anymore—
Arms around each other and crying into shoulders, sinking to the floor, two boys who’ve had no choice in becoming men.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
And things start to get better, like a lifetime’s worth of memories is living out in each moment of each day, one breath, two breath, your breath, my breath, and Shark’s here, and so is Rio, and so maybe there’s no Astral (but he promised, too, we’ll meet again some day) and maybe there’re still people on his mind—Alit and Durbe and Mizael and Gilag—but life picks up, and a month is finally a month again.
Then comes round three, on a day when—surprise!—Shark skips school again, but this time it’s apparently within reason, because he’s leaning on a wall outside the building when classes let out and he takes Yuma’s hand and mutters so no one else will hear, “I’ve gotta show you something,” and Yuma doesn’t know what to expect when he’s dragged to the Kamishiro mansion on the other side of Heartland, but what he gets isn’t it, because he thought that Shark and Rio lived in an apartment and he thought that they lived alone, but when he gets there…
“Oy, Nasch!” calls a voice into the cold, and Yuma recognizes that voice, recognizes its owner, and recognizes the other Barians shouting after it when Alit, Gilag, Mizael, and Durbe all appear outside one after the other, a grin or a smile or a scowl or a frown—and so, three months pass by, and things are better than okay, and they all settle in.
But if it takes three months for things to settle in, it takes approximately two seconds for them to break out again.
The coldest winter that Heartland’s ever seen is just above freezing, and Vector has two things to his name. They are:
- His jacket
- Nothing, because he is not a legal citizen of Heartland City, and therefore cannot show the welfare office his birth certificate or anything else to receive holiday benefits
- His charming smile
At least, standing in front of the mirror in the central mall during the holiday rush, Vector knows that he looks hot. He grins at himself a few times, smirks, frowns, squishes his own cheeks, giggles, and hell yeah, he is attractive. But being as hot as he is doesn’t actually make the temperature go up or a place to stay for the night magically appear, and the idiot whose house he broke into last year got a new alarm system. Which. Lame.
It’s the end of the year and the start of a brand new leaf or whatever the hell it is, and for lack of an apartment or shelter or a box to live in or something, Vector’s been roaming the mall for the past two hours bored out of his mind. He woke up in a dumpster earlier that morning; he doesn’t remember how he got there, or, like, anything at all after the whole part where he was sucked into Don Thousand’s consciousness, but here he is now, human, hot, hungry, homeless, and more than anything else, unentertained. The mall is decorated with a whole bunch of Christmas shit and there are sale signs advertising things for his ~loved ones~, and it’s really a shame that Vector doesn’t know where Miza-chan is, or he’d definitely go ahead and get him the gold ring with the feather on it or one of those his and her bracelets sets for him and his Galaxy-Eyes Boner Dragon to match.
Oh, well. He’s broke, anyway. He’d try to steal some money from the Hot Topic or something—they always seem to think he’s an employee when he shows up—buuuut he’s been having a bit of a… problem. In that department.
Vector balls his fists and clenches his teeth. Into the bathroom mirror he tries to say, “Mizael is an ug—”
But he can’t. His throat stays locked in the middle syllable, won’t let sound through again no matter how hard he tries, and he glares at his reflection and punches the mirror so hard the glass shatters and some of it cuts his skin and he bleeds and screeches when he gets his voice back again and bounces around the dressing room like a wounded, um, animal.
See, Vector can’t lie.
He’s been trying all morning, ever since he woke up in the dumpster and some punkass kid asked him why he smelled like shit, to which his planned retort was “I was in bed with your dad last night,” but he wasn’t in bed with that kid’s dad last night, wasn’t even in bed with the kid’s mom or his sister, and couldn’t say as much; fell onto his feet and put out a hand and weirded the kid out and then planked on the street, wondering what the hell had happened, why he couldn’t say it. He tried again: “I was in bed with that kid’s dad last night,” to no avail; “Durbe isn’t a tool,” and nothing; “My name is Shingetsu Rei”—no, and then it started to hurt a little, too.
So Vector couldn’t lie, and Vector can’t lie, and he didn’t and doesn’t know why and he’s too pissed to wonder, and it started to rain and he needed shelter because it was cold and it’d turn into snow soon and Vector hates the snow, hates the cold hates the ice hates the festivity, so, naturally, he made his way to the mall and here he is now, locked inside the bathroom stall for the disabled for the better part of an hour (the knocking went away when he told it to go use a blender from IKEA if it really couldn't wait for him, this was important).
So far Vector’s figured out five things:
- He’s not dead/receded into Donk’s consciousness for the rest of eternity
- He can’t lie
- He’s lost his Barian powers
- It is cold
- Mall sample food is the shit (that he could’ve just taken from the dumpster)
And so far Vector’s To-Do list consists of two things:
- He would like to shower in some Axe
- This is Nasch’s fault, and he is going to get his revenge
- Or Yuma’s fault
- But Tsukumo Yuma is Nasch’s fault
- So, you know
There’s only one thing to do. Vector steps out of the bathroom, kicks around the shards of broken glass a little so they’re easier to step on for the next unsuspecting idiot, blows a flying kiss into his reflection in a shard on the way out, and is en route to Tsukumo Yuma’s place when he runs into something that looks familiar, like a lost pet dog, or something, and, hey, Vector thinks he’ll follow it home.
Alit and Gilag forgot the keys, so Merag’s the one that lets them in. Vector lurks outside the gates and glares; they’re all gathering without him, eh? And after all he did for them, too.
Vector takes off his jacket, ties it around his waist; messes up his hair as much as he can, and nods at his dumpster pants, like, yeah, that doesn’t need any work. His teeth chatter and the wind bites at his arms as he fights against it to the front door; he growls at the window, where he can see inside into the warm light and into the stereotypical holiday fire, which Merag should go ahead and sit in, and then he rings the doorbell.
The chatter inside dies down.
“Probably Yuma,” someone says, and Vector is both gleeful to disappoint them and insulted at the very suggestion.
Alit’s the one who opens the door. Vector grins and spreads out his arms, shivering.
“Jan jan jaaaaaaaan!”
Alit stares.
Vector grins wider. “Jan jan jaaaan!”
“...”
“What, is your brain defective or something? Hello? It’s me?”
“I’m calling the cops.”
Alit makes to shut the door; Vector wedges his foot to stop him and yelps in pain when it hits, trips when Alit opens it again and tries to kick Vector out.
“Hold on,” says a voice Vector recognizes and loathes, and then there’s Nasch wrinkling his nose above him.
Nasch pities him. Vector ends up getting the keys to the old apartment where Ryoga and Rio stayed before they moved back into the cute eight emperor estate, which is so sweet and thoughtful of Nasch that Vector would offer to make him a fucking citizen award, except that Vector doesn’t know that Nasch would appreciate the artwork in full and doesn’t plan on exerting the effort to find out. He snatches the keys and smiles, squishes Nasch’s cheeks and smooches his forehead before he’s tossed out the gate, and, aww, how cute, Nasch’s been working out.
He already knows where the apartment is from before, at least.
Vector walks to the building, rubs the soles of his shoes in the mud outside; takes his shoes off and goes all the way to the fourth floor in his socks; puts his shoes back on, walks in, cranks up the radio, and sings along jumping around on Ryoga’s bed, which had shark sheets on it but now it just looks like Vector took a crap. Which he might’ve. He’ll never tell.
Thing is, Vector gets bored pretty quickly, turns on the TV but there’s nothing but stupid family friendly holiday movies on or re-runs of anime that no one cares about, and there’s no food in the fridge or the cabinets, and Nasch didn’t even have the decency to give him the Wi-Fi password, the useless asshole, and around the time Vector just considers going through the baby albums and making a collage of Nasch’s naked visage in all its kingly glory and mailing it to Yuma, the heater breaks down, too. Vector thinks he can get it to work if he maybe smashes it to pieces and surgically attaches them to Nasch’s head, but sitting on his knees and shivering with the baby butt pictures in his face? Vector gets another idea.