Chapter Text
The End of the World wasn’t one big, catastrophic event; there was nothing cool, no zombies or alien invasions – rather, it was all the little things mankind had been warned about, growing over time. The economy collapsed. Climate change triggered bigger natural disasters and excessive climates. Antibiotic resistance brought back once-dead diseases. Tensions among world powers triggered war, which in turn brought famine. The final seal on Earth’s death certificate was the solar flares, wiping out the very infrastructure that kept the modern world alive. People never realized how much they relied on it, and people were left not knowing what to do to survive. With that, one of the new diseases was able to run rampant, running people down like wildfire.
Ventus had been safe at first, having grown up in a rather cushy middle-class life. It was months of seeing stocks dropping on the news before he would change the channel, bored of what was going on. It was then that the housing market collapsed, and businesses started to fail. Eventually, the market entirely collapsed, ushering in another Great Depression – despite failsafes, money was lost, and people’s life savings were sucked away. He heard his parents whispering and arguing in the dead of night, more concerned than ever. He was still young, freshly 16, and teenagers have far more important things to care about like friends and parties and that new pimple that popped up overnight.
Next followed the environment. Seasons became more severe, summers quickly climbing into the 120s and the winters dropping into the -40s in many places. It was completely unprecedented, all the scientists scrambling to figure out what caused this to happen so quickly. This intersection with the great surge of homelessness due to the economy left many dead, succumbing to the harsh temperatures. And with these temperatures came terrifying natural disasters – the environment was more unstable, leading to tornadoes in areas that had never seen them before. They had to create a new category for them, F6 and then F7. There were snowstorms blocking up towns with no power for months, leaving people to watch their food supply dwindle before they froze to death. The tectonic plates shifted more and more, bringing earthquakes never before seen on the scale and tsunamis utterly decimating large towns, hundreds of miles out from the coast. Hurricanes completely flattened landscapes, and wildfires ravaged the remains.
Another issue with climate change was the diseases that came back. As permafrost melted, new (yet old) illnesses popped up, and antibiotic resistance brought with it another challenge as already defeated diseases began to mutate and become unbeatable. It started with the vulnerable populations, the young and the disabled and the elderly, but quickly spread to the more vital ones. Hygiene and hospitals had been struggling with people becoming unable to pay for the most basic things, and people began dropping like flies as there was no way to take care of them. Face masks and neurotic application of hand sanitizer became the norm in a failing effort to battle the sicknesses.
All these problems made tensions among the countries worse, and stupid mistakes by stupid politicians led to war. Now that the government had lots of fun new nuclear weapons, cities were wiped off the map with thousands more suffering from the radiation. There was nothing the common man could do, just hope they weren’t chosen by the draft to go die for their country (or rather, their country’s stupidity) as supplies were funneled into the war effort. Famine of course followed, and the homeless and sick were the first to go.
The last nail in the coffin was the solar flares and storms. There was hardly any warning, barely minutes as much of the infrastructure had collapsed and technology was waning already. These storms brought down the crux of modern life, frying technology and making it entirely useless except for spare parts. The power grid fizzled and satellites exploded in orbit. There was no electricity at all – no lights, no air conditioning, no sewage, no internet. The basis of modern society, the things we needed to survive, were all gone. Food and medication perished faster, and this affected people more and more. With society collapsing, there was no chance for many people, and more and more and more died in an unbelievable capacity.
A new super virus developed, decimating the population. It was nothing interesting like you’d read in books about zombie apocalypses; simply, between old diseases coming back and loss of herd immunity from vaccinations, this disease was a fatal combination of others, and there was nothing that could be done with so much infrastructure being wiped out. There was no warning and no help, and many couldn’t fight it. Ventus lost his own parents quickly, succumbing to the disease, leaving him homeless to watch as society collapsed.
With only tens of thousands of people left, Ventus somehow ended up finding him again.
Ventus was surviving little bits at a time, making his way from one area to the next, ever vigilant. There were always looters and people willing to kill you for the clothes on your back. It was smart to avoid the big cities, since everything was abandoned, and it was easy to get cornered in the confusing layouts. Cities had people wandering around, still looking around for things to loot, not to mention diseased still wandering around, congregating together to wait for their demise.
At this time, Ventus was navigating his way through a sparse forest, one of the few that hadn’t been completely ravaged, trying to make his way to the next settlement, if there was one before his next destination. At least, maybe he could find some long dead animal’s den here and forage for some food. He was lost in his thoughts and plans until a twig snapped, and he was instantly on guard, reaching for his weapon. Turning around, he was ready to fight – until he saw those eyes and that lopsided grin, ones he could never forget. He lowered his weapon and exhaled through his teeth. “Vanitas. You lived.”
“You know, you shouldn’t let yourself relax just yet,” Vanitas chuckled. “Who’s to say I won’t hurt you?”
“Not like you’ve never done that before,” Ventus said stiffly before turning on his heel and continuing forward.
Too fast to avoid, Vanitas was right behind him, clutching tightly onto his shoulder. “Don’t just walk away from me,” he growled. This was the characteristic Vanitas, always ready to fly off the handle if he wasn’t respected in the exact way he wanted. This had become quite familiar to Ventus over the years, unfortunately.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” Ventus hissed, sending a fist flying, which Vanitas deftly avoided. He instantly knew he shouldn’t have done that by the way Vanitas’s eyes lit up and his grin got bigger. Vanitas always drew out his angry side, made him want to fight back, and that would be the end of him one of these days. Or maybe today.
“That’s it,” Vanitas snapped before Ventus felt an impact, and then black.
A long tone. A flat green line. Doctors rushing and yelling and pressing down on his mother and oh, God, they’re going to break her. He went wild, screaming and clawing as people tried to calm him down, take him out. She was all he had left, and nothing in this cold, broken world would be right again without her. He remembers how white her face was and how cold everything was and he kept reaching and reaching and reaching for-
Wakefulness. The first thing that came to his mind was holy shit, did his jaw hurt. Next was that everything was bumping up and down, and when he turned his head, there was a backpack. He started flailing as soon as he realized, before he was unceremoniously tossed on the ground.
“What the fuck are you doing?! You just flung me over your shoulder and kept going!” Ventus yelled. He couldn’t believe Vanitas’s gall, but he honestly couldn’t be that surprised. Vanitas was prone to doing whatever he wanted without thinking through what other people wanted.
“What?” Vanitas shrugged. “You dropped from one little punch, and you would get looted and murdered if I just left you on the ground. I wasn’t trying to kill you. Just keep you from getting too hysterical.”
Ventus got up and brushed himself off. “Sorry that not everyone picks fights every fucking day. Well, thanks for attempting to be my knight in shining armor, I guess, but I’m leaving now.”
Vanitas scoffed. “No. Night will be here before we know it, and we are going to go find some shelter and food. It’s easier when there’s two.” In response to this, Ventus sighed and dragged his hand down his face. He knew Vanitas was right, he was always sooo fucking clever, and it looks like he was going to have to spend at least one night with this prick. He figured he could at least try to wake up early and bail before he was forced to spend any longer in his presence.
“Fucking… whatever,” Ventus sighed, hiking up his backpack before walking further into the woods.
“You know, you used to be too broken to talk back,” Vanitas remarked, following closely behind with his hands in his pockets.
Ventus’s hackles were going up. Why did it always seem like Vanitas was trying to pick a fight? He nervously fiddled with the straps of his backpack and replied, “Broken won’t survive here.”
There was a pause, and in an uncharacteristically somber voice, Vanitas simply said, “I know,” and carried on.
Once deeper in the woods, Vanitas made quick work of making some rudimentary animal traps, which Ventus was totally clueless to how they worked. He had survived thus far on rations he already had along with foraging for plants rather than killing things.
“We can check these before we leave in the morning,” Vanitas said gruffly. Ventus didn’t miss how he said ‘we’. Why was there a ‘we’ now?
Rather than finding a den (because that plan was suddenly compromised by a certain asshole showing up), Ventus and Vanitas conveniently stumbled upon what looked like a hole a human had dug before. It had a narrow entrance, but was obviously made with human hands, sloping down into the ground.
“I guess this is as good as it gets,” Ventus sighed, taking note of how quickly the sun was dropping below the horizon. He prepared to crawl in, before Vanitas stopped him.
“I’ll go first. Need to make sure there isn’t anyone or anything in there,” he said, unholstering a gun that holy shit, Ventus had not seen yet. He ignored Vanitas’s ass wriggling in and waited at the entrance until the all clear was called before entering. It wasn’t a big space, round and cramped and pitch black, but luckily Vanitas had a lantern – solar powered, he assured Ventus, so he wasn’t wasting supplies.
They both had sleeping bags, luckily, and set them on the floor, preparing to sleep; Ventus made sure to put his as far from Vanitas as possible, which wasn’t very far in the cramped space, but it would have to do. Vanitas instantly laid down and seemed ready to sleep, while Ventus sat up against the wall, messing with his fingernails. They had splintered and grown ragged between lack of nutrition and Ventus worrying at them constantly.
Vanitas sighed and turned over to face Ventus, looking slightly annoyed. “You can lay down. I’m not going to fucking attack you here.” He was fucking exhausted of being treated like a monster at every turn – even if he was once one.
“There’s no guarantee of that,” Ventus shrugged. “It’s not like you ever did anything to make me trust you before.”
“Christ. Yeah, I was a fucking bully, but I wasn’t trying to kill you. Why the hell are you so on edge?” Vanitas replied. Really, he knows he was a douche, but that’s kind of how high schoolers are. That felt like centuries ago to him, everything changing so much since then. He might as well exist in an entirely different world now.
“I don’t know about you, but I haven’t exactly had an easy time out here,” Ventus sighed.
“None of us have. We all get betrayed, we all get fucked over,” Vanitas replied. He had switched quickly from hostility to some kind of resignation, it seemed. Exhaustion was taking over, so there really was no room for intense emotions in this kind of situation.
“Betrayed…?” Ventus probed, although he wasn’t sure why he was engaging in conversation right then – all he wanted to do was sleep. Vanitas sat up and lifted up his shirt, exposing what must have been quite a nasty stab wound directly below his ribs on his right side. It had healed, but it still looked slightly inflamed and tender. Ventus gasped, really not expecting something that drastic. He knew bad shit happened in these times, but he had managed to avoid the worst of it. “Did you have to deal with that yourself?”
“Yeah. Giving yourself stitches is quite a nasty task, but it was that or probably die,” Vanitas simply shrugged. Ventus had no idea how he was always so nonchalant about these kinds of things; sure, it was dangerous in these times, but Ventus had never come that close to death.
“Oh. Well… You’re really s-strong,” Ventus stuttered; he had become flustered by this train of thought, by this vulnerability that Vanitas was showing him for some completely inexplicable reason. Shaking his head to clear it and finally laying down, he said “I guess we better get to sleep. G-goodnight.”
“Yeah. Goodnight,” Vanitas replied before burying his head in his sleeping bag.
In the night, Ventus could have sworn he woke up to the sound of panting and soft whimpers, but all he did was curl into himself tighter and try to lose himself to sleep again.
When morning came, Ventus bolted upright, only to find Vanitas already up, leaning against the wall and mindlessly scraping bark off a stick with his pocket knife. Ventus sighed and scrubbed at his face, his clever plan to leave before Vanitas awoke having been ruined.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Vanitas said, laughing at Ventus’s bedhead (his hair was already naturally extremely weird but somehow always became worse at night), who only glared at him.
“Um. So. I guess I should get going…” Ventus said, trailing off. He hoped he wouldn’t make Vanitas angry because he really was not up to something like that first thing in the morning.
“Where are you going?” Vanitas casually asked, not taking his eyes off his task.
Ventus grumbled, not really wanting to divulge that information, but he figured he had to. “Radiant Garden.”
“Nearest sanctuary city. Me too.”
Ventus sighed and relented, running his hand through his hair. “I guess we might as well go together, since we’d be walking in the same direction anyways.” It would be painfully awkward to go separately to the same place, as they’d no doubt run into each other over and over again.
Vanitas smirked, as though pleased by making Ventus have to say this. He always took satisfaction by being the one in control. “I thought so. Plus, it’s safer that way.” Ventus simply nodded in response, cheeks flushed in irritation, before working on bundling his stuff up. There was no point in wasting daylight, so they may as well get traveling.
Before continuing off for good, Vanitas checked the traps. He carefully dismantled all of them, taking the two unsuspecting rabbits who had been looped in – it was lucky that there was still wildlife left. Vanitas motioned for Ventus to turn around, who always had somewhat of a weak stomach, while he made quick work of slitting their throats. Slinging them over his shoulder, he smiled weakly. “Alright, let’s go.”
They soon continued forward, an entirely unexpected and unanticipated duo against an unknown landscape.