Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He opened his eyes to blinding light. He closed them again, trying not to wince. His mind swam with galaxies of images all at once, thoughts too loud to understand. He registered a muffled voice that sounded like it was coming from somewhere outside his booming head.

“W…What?” he managed, not having understood what it said.

“Ventus, can you hear us?” the voice repeated. It sounded like it was coming out of a speaker. It was a clipped, analytical, and he distantly recalled as belonging to the blonde scientist with the weird eyes.

Someone else took the microphone. “Ven! Ven, are you okay?” Terra.

He still couldn’t open his eyes. “The… the light…”

“He’s sensitive to the light—turn it down.” Aqua.

On the other side of his eyelids, the light dimmed into something manageable.

He cautiously pulled his eyes open, the room focusing clearer with each blink. It was some sort of lab room, or test room, and it looked like something had exploded. Dark, tendriled scorches spread across every surface, originating from… from where he was lying on the floor.

He was in nothing but a pair of scrubs—no shoes, no helmet—splattered with the same tendrils of darkness as the walls.

“Ven! Can you stand?” Chirithy.

Standing was easier than he thought it would be. His muscles thrummed, like he’d been filled with a static charge. In every motion, he could feel the latent energy still crackling through his core and across his mind. He closed his eyes again, trying to sift through it all.

“Let him out of there!”

“Terra, I’m afraid he needs to remain in containment until I’ve conducted the reentry examination.”

“How long will that take?” Aqua inclined.

“I couldn’t say. We need to ensure the fusion is stable enough to be sustained outside of the containment cell.”

Fusion.

Fusion.

He spotted a cracked mirror set back into one of the walls, and he had his arms braced against it in the same moment he’d thought to approach it. Distantly, he registered someone’s scream, but his thoughts were elsewhere as his eyes locked with his reflection’s.

Blue. Like Ventus.

His eyes drifted to his hair.

Black. Like Vanitas. But… short and swooped. Ventus again.

“Ven… Ven? Are you okay?”

Why did they keep calling him that?

The room—the cell—stayed closed and locked while the scientist Even and the other one, Ienzo, alternated asking him a list of prepared questions over the speakers. He knew every answer—no matter what he was asked, a thought rose to supply him. His wayfinder. Disney Town. Castle Oblivion.

They were only asking questions about Ventus.

The charge surged through him violently, brimming with things impossible to contain.

“Ventus, how do you feel right now?”

He looked at the scorches, and thought of how it might feel to make them fresh again. “Fine.”

“May I enter the containment cell to conduct a physical examination?”

The charge receded. “Yes.”

After a few moments, a section of the wall slid itself back, admitting Even into the cell with a small folding chair, which he set near the mirror. He was wearing large protective gloves, but otherwise had the courtesy to not appear terrified of his subject.

Even gestured politely to the folding chair.

He sat down.

Even began with his eyes, shining them with a light so bright his head sparked.

"Blue through and through,” he said almost cheerfully, and proceeded methodically with the rest of the physical.

With every touch and jab, he forced the charge back, pulling it further and further inside himself to stop it from coming out by mistake.

Even finished his examination, and tapped a part of the wall to open the exit again. The charge almost pulled him out behind the scientist, shifting him outside, to freedom, in an instant, but he held it back.

He was going to be good.

They kept him in the cell for a few more days, watching him for signs of instability. He didn’t give them any. Vanitas taught him how to hide weakness, to bury it so deep that it died. Every time the charge tried to flicker up the back of his spine and into his skull, he closed his eyes and sent it back down, imagined it running through his feet and into the ground.

He made a list of rules, of what he had to do to prove to them that he could be good. Don’t speak too often. Don’t make any sudden movements. Keep your face expressionless.

He showed them nothing but calm. Complacency. When would it be enough?

On the third day he found out he could hear them talking, even with the speaker off. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop—that wasn’t part of being good—but he’d found his mind wandering, drifting beyond the cell, and their voices had come to him.

“But is it him, Even?” Aqua asked, calmly as she could manage.

“He still seems so out of it…” Chirithy murmured.

“I’ve detected no signs of abnormality in his physiology, but as of yet there is no way to determine the true nature of his mental state.”

“Then can’t we let him out already?” Terra pleaded. “A mind doesn’t belong in a cage.” Terra would know.

That gave him an idea, then a plan.

The next time Even came in to deliver food and examine him, he put on the best Ven impression he could manage.

“Even…” His voice was coarser than he’d like it to be, still strained by Vanitas’ burdens. It wasn’t soft enough to bend wills and melt hearts, like Ventus’, but he hoped it was close enough. “When are you going to let me leave?” It was a question he couldn’t believe he hadn’t asked yet, and he’d managed to create a tone that was confused, lost, and just a little bit sad.

Even tapped his chin, thoughtful. “…Do you feel as if you’re ready to re-assimilate?”

Could it be this easy? He nodded, trying to bring some of Ventus’ eagerness to his face. “Yes. Yes, I’m ready.”

Even gave a short nod in return. “I shall inform the others of your request, and after some deliberation, we will give you our resolution.”

Even performed the daily physical on him, and he made sure the scientist observed nothing extraordinary, nothing that would keep him here another day. Finally, Even stood, and as he turned to leave, he smiled—a rare display of emotion. “Ventus… You’ve proved a model subject. I’ll be candid and express that it is my professional opinion that we have little reason to keep you here much longer.”

The next day, they let him out. Aqua and Terra and Chirithy were waiting at the door, and they moved to hug him. The charge flared, and he was a few steps back, inside the cell again. Aqua and Terra’s arms froze, empty and lost as the faces they turned toward him. Chirithy looked down, hurt.

He pressed his expression blank, sick with the feeling that if any of them touched him, he might explode all over again. The three of them were complications, tangles waiting to twist him up so tightly he’d never come undone again.

“Now now, let’s not overwhelm him,” Even said politely, placing a firm hand on Aqua and Terra’s shoulders while Ienzo patted Chirithy. “Give him a little more time to adjust to life on the outside.” Life outside. The scientists may have kept him in that cell, but he realized their clinical detachment might be preferable to the mess that was waiting for him outside.

Aqua and Terra finally conceded, stepping aside to let him pass. They were trying to control their emotions, same as him, but they were doing a sloppier job of it.

He was directed towards the pile of clothes they’d laid out for him. Ventus’. He stared at them, pressing back a prickle that ran through his shoulders.

“Is something wrong, Ven?” Chirithy said, having recovered their brightness. “They should still fit okay!”

“Maybe it’s a little much—all the pieces and armor,” Ienzo said, reading his reluctance. “Perhaps we should lend him some plainclothes, just until he’s feeling well again.”

He looked at Ienzo, a silent confirmation in his eyes.

Aqua deliberated. “Well, if you think that’s best…”

They gave him a light shirt and dark jacket, pants and shoes. Clothes that didn’t make him feel like anyone in particular. The charge went quiet.

Aqua was the first to touch him. After they’d finished dinner, Aqua and Terra stood to prepare for their nightly sparring practice.

He wasn’t fit for combat yet, but Aqua gave him a wisp of a smile, and said, “I’m sure you’ll be running circles around us again soon, Ven.” Then she raised her hand. He saw the touch from a mile away, knew it was coming as soon as she’d looked at him. It gave him time to prepare.

He drew in a silent breath, swallowed all of Vanitas’ disgust at being touched, being hurt, and closed his eyes to replace everything he was feeling with images of Ventus having his hair ruffled by loving friends.

Aqua’s hand met his head with trepidation, like she was expecting static shock, but once nothing happened, she drew her fingers softly through his hair.

“We’ll see you in a little bit, Ven.”

He waited until they’d left before crumpling to the floor.

After a week, they had a party for him. A Rebirth-day Party, they called it. Aqua and Terra had made a cake under Chirithy’s direction, and all of their friends had come to celebrate with them in the Land of Departure. All of their friends, save six. The memories were quick to inform him that Sora was still gone, with Mickey, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy all off in search of him. Ventus or Vanitas might have had something to say about that, but for him it just meant less people to disappoint.

He recognized each face, from the people from Radiant Garden to the younger ones who lived in Twilight Town, and they all recognized him, greeted him warmly, but there was little meaning, no context he could find in this reunion.

To their credit, everyone gave their all for the party, throwing themselves into the first distraction they’d had in some time. They were all so happy, but he got the feeling they were just trying to make this normal.

So he started trying too.

He couldn’t break into being Ventus right away, so he went with something small. A laugh.

“What’s so funny, Ven?” Terra teased, though in his heart he was overjoyed. “I’m not that bad at charades, am I?”

“Oh, I think you’re exactly that bad at charades,” Aqua said, beside him. She petted his black hair briefly, overjoyed in her own way. He’d gotten so he could stand that much, and she seemed to understand that she couldn’t allow her touch to linger.

Later, he was watching Aqua cut the cake when he noticed Roxas watching him. Roxas didn't quite have Ventus' face, but then again, neither did he. Both of them had pieces of Sora in different places, like other people would have a birthmark or freckles.

And Roxas did have his freckles.

But Vanitas had never seen the sun.

“Here, Ven.” Aqua handed him a slice of the cake with one of her beautiful smiles.

“It’s your favorite, Ven!” Chirithy chimed. “At least, I hope it still is!”

The cake was a light pink, tinted by the berries the three of them had used. Something Ventus had liked “before”. Chirithy always talked about “before” like it was so long ago—could they even find the same berries?

He only had snatches of “before”—of friends with different smiles and days of other darkness and pain. Would he feel like this if he’d woken with all of those memories instead?

“Thank you, Chirithy,” he said, intonation guarded and blank. He took the cake and stared at it as the others were served. It looked delicious, but unfamiliar.

Lea had already taken a bite of his, and gave him a thumbs up as if to let him know it was safe. “This is some cake, Chirithy! You still had the recipe memorized after all this time?”

Chirithy bobbed their head in a proud nod. “Yup! I’d never forget it!”

He took a bite. It was delicately sweet—more reserved and nuanced than the thickly-frosted cakes Aqua and Terra’s Ventus loved. He must be something like Chirithy’s Ventus, though, because the cake was the best thing he’d eaten since he’d woken.

Chirithy was looking at him expectantly, paws clasped in front of them. If they were hoping for some recognition, some rising nostalgia, they would be disappointed. But he gave them a nod and said, “It’s really good.” Then he tried a smile, hoping that if he kept it small there wouldn’t be enough of it for anyone to notice anything wrong.

Chirithy clapped their paws. “I’m so glad!”

Everyone who had been watching for his reaction seemed to take that as their cue to dig in to their own slices. Roxas let out a soft noise of dismay as he snapped his plastic fork clean in half.

Suddenly, the cake was gone from his plate. He’d yet to get used to his appetite.

“Do you want another slice?” Xion asked, surprisingly attentive. “There’s still some left!”

It wasn’t lost on him that she’d yet to call him by name—Ventus or any other. Was she afraid of messing up?

There were more party games, but he couldn’t bring himself to enjoy any of them. Thankfully, another game that everyone enjoyed was avoiding eye contact with him, and they'd been playing that since they'd let him out of containment, so they were pros at it by now.

He walked a little ways from the group, and took a seat on a wall at the top of some steps. Not the spot Ventus and Aqua and Terra had looked out at the stars—he didn’t want their attention right now, or ever again. This was more of a Vanitas spot, a vantage point set apart.

He’d only been there a little while when a voice rose behind him. ”Hey. You wanna talk?"

He turned to see Roxas, holding an open soda can.

He’d come here to be alone, but maybe that was how Roxas had found him. The other boy must have come up another way, because he hadn’t seen him use the stairs.

He looked back down at the party. “About what?"

"About whatever." Roxas' voice was Ventus', but he used it differently. It was soft, melodic, but with an edge that could cut. "How about this rad party?" His fake enthusiasm was so easy to spot that it had to be intentional.

“Wasn’t my idea,” he muttered. Then added, “But it’s nice.”

Roxas nodded, like he’d given him an answer to a different question he hadn’t asked. He sat down on the wall, next to him.

“You sounded pretty good back there.”

“What are you talking about?” He kept his voice even, like he’d been doing for the past week. If he could sound enough like Ventus, in those first days of being split, they would think he was just taking some time to recover.

“A body’s a lot to get used to.” Roxas lifted his a few of his fingers to reveal the clear imprint they’d made in the soda can he’d been holding. It looked like he’d nearly crushed it.

“It’s like this vessel’s got too much juice in it, you know?” Roxas sighed. “I dunno what it’s like for you, though. Probably different.”

Was it, though? The first time Terra and Aqua had left him alone, he’d called on the charge, just to see what it could do. For the first time, he let it run all the way through his skull as he looked out his window, down at the platform the others had embarked from the first time they’d left home. In an instant, he was there, bare feet cold on the stone latticework. He’d had to sneak back into the castle like someone who didn’t belong there.

When he said nothing, Roxas asked, “How are things going?”

Even posed him questions like that, but from Roxas, it wasn’t a question on a sheet, with an answer that could fit in a box. It wasn’t a question from Aqua or Terra either, who wore the answer they wanted so clearly on their faces that he never had trouble supplying it. Roxas wasn’t gauging his face for an answer, for a data point to mark on a chart. He wasn’t even looking at him. He’d turned his attention back towards the party, like he was giving him a strange sort of privacy.

Fine, fine, fine was the answer that looped in his head, but it wasn’t what Roxas had asked for. Somehow, in some way, he knew Roxas had asked for the truth.

He didn’t know what Roxas would do with the truth. He couldn’t read him like the others. But he took a chance.

“It’s hard.”

He expected Roxas to turn and look at him, more questions being prepared behind his eyes, but he didn’t move from where he was sitting. He just looked down at his can and said, “Yeah.”

They sat in silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It wasn’t the lonely silence from the cell—it was shared, divided between them.

“Xion wanted me to ask what name you wanted.”

“What?” He was taken aback, and he’d forgotten to control his voice.

Roxas shrugged, eyes still on the party. “If you want to be called Ventus, that’s fine, but… I dunno, I wanted to make sure.”

“Xion sent you to talk to me?” The charge was threatening to flicker back. Was that what this was? Another scheduled coddling session? What did Xion know about anything?

Roxas shifted. “Sort of. She asked me if I knew what we were supposed to call you, and I realized I didn’t know. So I said I’d ask.”

“Everyone calls me Ven.” He tried to control his tone, but something leaked out. Suddenly Roxas was closer, the distance between them halved. Neither of them flinched. He could make out the flecks of darker blue scattered through Roxas’ eyes like sapphire shrapnel.

He expected Roxas to back off after that, but instead he held his eyes, blue to blue. “Yeah, but is that your name?”

“It is if they call me by it,” he said, straining not to glare. What did it matter to the two of them? It was none of their business.

Roxas stared at him a while longer, but he wasn’t going to bend so easily. Roxas was the first to look away.

“Okay.” Roxas stood. “Tell the others thanks for the party.”

He watched Roxas go, back down the steps to rejoin his friends.

The rest of them wrapped up—or maybe gave up on—the party soon after that, dispersing back to their ships and their worlds.

It wasn’t until he was back home, looking out at the stars from his room, that he realized none of them—not Lea, Xion, or Roxas—had called him by Ven’s name.

Chapter Text

“Ven, do you want seconds?” Terra held a plate out to him.

“You’ve got such an appetite!” Aqua said.

“Well, Chirithy’s a better cook than Even,” he smiled. He’d strained his voice into a higher register, closer to Ven’s every day.

“Aw, shucks!” they said, giggling.

He was getting better at it. At being their Ven. They were still grieving over Sora—he couldn’t give them someone new to mourn.

So he could be Ven, on the outside where everyone pretended.

Yeah, but is that your name?

It still didn’t feel like it, no matter how hard he tried. It didn’t matter how many times anyone used it or how loudly he repeated it in his head, tried to make it his. Ventus was someone else’s name, and Vanitas was no different. Using either of them felt like a joke, like disrespecting the…

He just couldn’t stop thinking about the way Roxas had stared at him, like he’d been waiting for an answer other than the one he’d given, like Roxas knew something he didn’t.

Yeah, but is that your name?

It rolled around like a thorn in his boot, an itch behind his eyes.

He had to find some way to make it stop.

After dinner, he picked up on Aqua’s graceful footfalls approaching his room. The room they’d given him and asked him to sleep in.

He slid what he was reading under the covers of his bed.

Vanitas read encyclopedias to calm down. They were his windows to places his eyes would never see, to experiences he would never have for himself. Master Xehanort had a room filled with old tomes that Vanitas would retreat to in the empty hours between fighting to become stronger, and lying on the ground as expelled emotions drew themselves painfully back into his chest.

Ventus’ visions of the outside worlds weren’t rendered in cold ink between dusty, forgotten pages. They were painted by the stars that streaked the sky on clear nights, by the stories Terra and Aqua told him about lands beyond their own, by warm promises that someday, each and every one of those worlds would know him as deeply as he longed to know them.

He couldn’t ask those comforts of strangers. So he’d found the library that Ventus had all but forgotten, piled his arms high with weighty books, and hid them beneath his bed, once again feeling like the thief they’d yet to discover, lurking within the castle walls.

Aqua reached his room, and knocked on the door. “Ven?”

The covers were thick enough that she wouldn’t be able to see the thick volume they concealed. Ventus wouldn’t be interested in Accounts of Inter-world Conflict, Vol III.

“Come in.”

Aqua opened the door, but remained in the threshold. Her posture was stiff—it always was, these days—but her face was bright with incoming news. “Xion just called. She asked if you’d like to go to the beach with her and her friends tomorrow.”

Something soft flitted in his chest. The beach, with friends. Then something heavy moved to smother it. That beach, filled with people.

“What did you tell her?”

Aqua blinked. “I told her I’d ask you.”

He should have given her more credit than that. Just because they treated him like their child didn’t mean they made all his decisions.

“Do you want to go?” Aqua’s voice was hopeful—the answer she wanted was on such clear display that he gave it without thinking.

“Sure!”

And he couldn’t take it back, once he saw the smile break across her face. “That’s great, Ven. I think it’ll be a good step!”

He couldn’t mess this up—not if he wanted Aqua and Terra to trust him to do anything. But he couldn’t keep balancing on the brink of breaking, forcing back the flickering energy that pushed him closer to snapping each time it tried to rise.

That night, he dropped the barriers, let the charge set him alight. It brought him farther than he’d thought possible—from his room and out to a floating rock at very border of the Land of Departure, his feet balanced on the edge of the world.

This power unsettled Aqua and Terra, even when he held back. Suddenly he would be standing too close or too far, just out of their reach. Even had placated their concerns and questions by calling it “intermittent spacial instability”, but it wasn’t so simply defined. He’d learned it had causes—when Terra reached for his shoulder, when Chirithy accidentally surprised him—and a reaction, and no matter how hard he tried, a little always seemed to slip out.

Why couldn’t he just be their Ventus? The untroubled, smiling Ventus they’d all waited so long to see?

He drew in a breath of chill night air and called the charge again, and again, moving from rock to rock to get it to leave him, to expend itself like a fuse, but it wouldn’t dim. It wasn’t like using a Corridor of Darkness—it was moving him in straight lines, cutting the distance between two points, like light cast from one end of a room to the other.

It was light that he was being shifted through, he realized. He was moving as fast as light, in the brief flashes of a flickering bulb.

He landed on the grassy platform that bore Master Eraqus’ wreath, brought low to his hands and knees before it.

Master Eraqus knew the ways of light better than anyone. He would have had answers, a strong and knowing hand to guide him through this being.

Or, he never would have let this corrupt corrosion of light and dark come so far as to set foot within their hallowed halls. He would have ended this before it began.

He wanted tears to relieve the pressure in his throat, but he couldn’t get them to come. Vanitas had locked them away behind the sheets of metal that built his chest, and their hinges had rusted shut.

Tomorrow still came, and he didn’t find the strength to back out.

They gave him back his keyblade armor, against better judgement. They’d planned to escort him to Destiny Islands—as if he’d ever get lost on his way there—but now it seemed that they wanted to trust him.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right on your own?” Terra asked. He and Chirithy were helping him affix the armor to his shoulder. Ven always had trouble with it.

“We’ve got to give him a chance, Terra,” Aqua said, easily latching the clasp they were struggling with. She drew her hand through his hair, letting it linger just a little longer than she ever had before. It was getting easier for both of them. Her lips raised for a smile, and his chest lifted a little with them. “Let’s let him have some fun for once.”

It was time to call his glider, but he hadn’t summoned a keyblade yet. Though he knew the power of the X-blade sang inside him, perfected and waiting, its presence scared him. He was terrified that his former Master would come back, somehow, and use it like he’d always intended. It was an irrational thing to fear, maybe, but he hadn’t been built with rationality in mind.

His hand trembled before him, empty for long enough that the others circled him, concerned.

“What’s wrong?” was the question they asked, but he was certain they already knew the answer.

The X-blade wanted to be, so badly that it kept interrupting his thoughts. He closed his eyes, pressing through his heart for another form the keyblade could take—anything but that.

“We should take him ourselves, like we planned.” Aqua and Terra were already making the choice for him. He needed a keyblade—the right keyblade. The one they wanted. The one that would let him go.

“Here Ven, we’ll just—”

Light flashed in his palm as Wayward Wind answered his desperate plea.

They gasped, their worry draining to wonder and pride.

Relief spread across him like sunlight from parted clouds as he tightened his fingers around the backhanded grip.

Chirithy clapped their paws. “Incredible! You did it, Ven!”

He buried the sting of the name and smiled a Ventus smile at them, and when Terra put a hand on his shoulder, for the first time, he didn’t flinch away.

On his way through the stars, in the darkness flecked with light, he let his mind wander, and it arrived, as it so often did, to the days just before they had become he.

Memories seen from two sides, eyes turned towards each other and emotions felt by two different hearts.

Sora’s death had hurt them differently than the others. It wasn’t as simple as heartbreak or grief. They felt the rift rip through their hearts and run deep, deep, too far to mend, as the piece that completed them was torn away.

Ventus could have lived with it, a crack through his chest, but for Vanitas, the loss of Sora wasn’t a simple fracture. He was undone.

He didn’t want to die. He’d come so close, so many times, but it took this one to realize that he didn’t want to die.

He wanted home.

He wanted the person he was supposed to be.

He wanted light and love and life.

And Ventus had given it, without a second thought. A second thought they might have been better off having.

The new fracture left them just broken enough for their puzzled pieces to fit together again, into whatever this was, and then they’d gone, leaving this to deal with it.

As his vision opened to the expanse of blue that was Destiny Islands, his heart opened with a yearning, a nameless nostalgia. It was quickly quieted when he noticed five forms turned skyward, waiting for his descent on the island with the treehouses, and it took the image of Aqua’s smile to keep him from turning his glider back around the way he’d come.

He touched down and hopped off of the glider, recalling his armor and banishing his keyblade.

“When are they gonna fix us up with gear like that, huh?” Lea said, hands on his hips with his lanky elbows jutting out. He was wearing swim shorts and a shirt that could only be described as “obnoxious”, and bright orange rubber sandals.

“You could certainly use the help,” Isa said dryly at his side, also appraising his look. He was in a sensible collared shirt and capris. Lea smacked his shoulder with the flying disc he was holding, and Isa retaliated with a firm elbow to the ribs.

“We’re glad you came!” Xion said. Naminé stood beside her, their hands held comfortably. Must be nice. They were both wearing swimsuits—Xion in a full black tank top and shorts, Naminé in something white and frilly—but Roxas was dressed more like him, in shorts and a t-shirt. The other three from the party, Roxas’ normal friends, weren’t there.

“You look… heavy,” Roxas said.

He frowned. Aqua and Terra had put him in shorts and sandals. He felt the opposite of heavy, like a stiff breeze could knock him over.

“He means you look like you have something on your mind,” Xion said, giving him a smile that was probably supposed to be understanding, even if she didn’t understand.

“Just… things.” It was woefully abridged, but it was the truth. After the party, he’d decided that not lying to Roxas was one of his new rules.

“Well, let’s liven things up here!” Without warning, Lea threw the disc at him. The charge was called and his arm shot straight out, stopping the disc short before it could hit him in the face.

“Nice one!” Lea said, while Isa squinted at him, suspicious.

He didn’t trust himself to be normal, to keep everything inside when the heft of the disc in his hand was stirring his excitement like dust kicked into a storm. He handed the disc to Roxas, who flipped it like a coin and held it right back out to him. “You’re supposed to throw it back.”

He stared at Roxas, silent protest in his eyes, but Roxas didn’t relent.

“They started it. So let ‘em have it,” he said, lips turning up in a smirk. Then, more quietly, like they were the only two people on the beach, “Those two—they’ve only played with the Ventus from before.”

He wasn’t Ventus from before. He lobbed the disc back at them, viciously. Lea wheezed as it caught him square in the chest.

“Hoo! Haven’t lost that hook, huh?”

Isa took it from Lea’s loose hands and threw it back—with force that felt like a challenge.

He caught it easily, hardly feeling the recoil.

He returned it, and the game shifted into something else. It became a game of how hard you could throw the disc, how unpredictable your tosses could be. It became dangerous and wild—something the torrents inside him understood. He directed the energy through his muscles and down his arms, bringing force to his tosses and softening his recoil.

The other two upped their game to compensate. At one point, Lea summoned his keyblade to bat the disc back, and another time, when Isa was about to miss it, he lowered himself and lunged forward across the sand like he’d been possessed.

Isa’s next throw went long, toward where Xion and Naminé had retreated to look at seashells.

They weren’t watching. It was going to hit them. The charge responded to a call he didn’t know he’d made, and at once he was between them and the disc. He braced for impact, but the disc fell into his hands, like its momentum had already been slowed. It had been going so fast…

But that didn’t matter. He turned on them.

“Why didn't you dodge? You didn't even move!” His voice was loud in his ears, but he couldn't stop. "You both just sat there!"

He didn't like the way Xion was looking at him—the way she always looked at him. It was too kind, too compassionate for someone she didn't even know. Beside her, clasping her hand again, Naminé looked more like she was about to cry, and it cracked something inside him. The anger began to drain.

He wanted to step back, but he couldn’t move. Something had locked his body in place. He struggled against the force, but his limbs wouldn’t budge. Panic began to well where the anger had been, drowning him. He was in the dark, locked in a chest whose key had been lost, and all he could hear was someone else's heartbeat thrumming in his ears.

“Naminé—it’s okay.” Xion had turned to start petting her hair, and Naminé shut her eyes. As she let her expression soften, he felt the feeling return to his limbs. The dark receded, and he nearly fell forward. Unbalanced, the panic tilted easily back into anger—rage.

His blue eyes fixed on Naminé. It had been her. “What did you do to me?”

The X-blade trilled behind his ears like a string instrument being tuned inside his skull. It was waiting to come. It wanted to come. He balled his fists to keep his palms closed, bar its return, but it didn’t relent.

Just when he thought he was about to break, he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"Let's take a walk,“ Roxas said. It wasn't a suggestion.

He tried to shrug himself out of the grip, but underneath the skin, Roxas’ refined hands were hard as melded steel. “I said, let's take a walk.”

The fight left him completely, so suddenly that it almost felt like falling. Ventus couldn’t bear being scolded.

He turned from them and made to walk away, but the pressure of Roxas' hand on his shoulder had suddenly vanished. Only then did he realize that the step he'd taken had moved him, all the way to the paths through the trees. He couldn't bear the expressions he knew must be spreading across their faces, so he walked on, toward the paopu tree.

He made sure each new step was solid, deliberate, but he could tell he was being sent forward in starts as the charge continued to flicker in his chest, because soon he was sitting on the trunk of the paopu tree, staring coldly at the bright horizon. Roxas joined him soon after that, and leaned back on the trunk beside him, hands in his pockets.

He expected Roxas to say something, but the silence was back between them. His chest fizzed with sparks as his fingers brushed the same tree that Ventus had been dumped on, so long ago.

Where would they put him when they found out?

He turned to look back at the beach. Lea and Isa had resumed their attempts to bruise each other with the disc, and the girls had moved to the dock. Their faces were turned away, but Naminé’s shoulders were shaking like she was crying, while Xion ran fingers through her hair.

“You scared her,” Roxas said behind him, voice as hard as his grip had been. “She never would have done that if you hadn’t scared her.”

He didn’t understand. His mind was a maelstrom and he just wanted Roxas’ voice to stop sounding like that. He wanted to stop feeling like this.

“She’s like us,” Roxas said, tears hovering somewhere down in his throat. Us. “Xion, too. We… we don’t work right, yet.”

He could have yelled at Roxas, too, told him he was wrong—that he wasn’t broken, but there was nothing for him to deny. The first time he’d moved through light, when he’d shifted to look at himself in the mirror of that cell, Even had screamed. Even.
“Don’t yell at them, ever again.”

His heart dropped to his stomach. He wouldn’t. He didn’t know where it had come from. Well, he probably knew who it had come from.

He’d thought he’d gotten better at walling everything inside, but he’d crumbled at the first opportunity, the first chance to hurt someone. His gaze lowered to the ground at their feet. “I’m so sorry,” he said, barely a whisper.

Roxas was focused on the horizon. Neither of them looked at each other.

“I’m sure she’s sorry, too,” Roxas said. “She shouldn’t have done that to you, either.”

He was already drifting back there, to being trapped inside his own body, inside someone else’s body, in a never-ending sequence of layers he’d never escape from. His chest tightened like it was being pressed down by a boot, and his next breath came out as a sob.

He should just go. They were probably already preparing to call Aqua and Terra to come pick him up, and take him back home like a child who’d thrown a tantrum, and they’d be right to. “…I’ll leave. I’ll leave, and you can all go back to playing together, with someone who doesn’t…” His throat was closing up, so he left it at that, and slid down from the tree trunk.

“I can’t play with them.”

“What, did they assign you to be my babysitter?” he snapped.

“…I broke Lea's wrist,” Roxas admitted quietly, though his voice never lost its edge. “We got it mended right away, but... I don't play anymore.”

Roxas unsheathed his hands from his pockets, and stared down at them like they were weapons at his wrists.

"These vessels were made to fight.” He clenched his fists. “They didn't have stuff like disc toss in mind."

His own hand prickled. He wanted to bring it to Roxas', let his current run between them, so that he would know he understood. Roxas moved his hand before he had the chance to make up his mind.

“What's with you?” Roxas folded his arms.

“What?” he started.

“I told you about me,” Roxas said. “So what's your deal? With the... teleporting."

It wasn’t an accusation, but it felt like one. Not even Aqua or Terra had asked him about it—not directly. It had always been through Even, like the scientist knew more about it than the subject himself.

He looked away, out at the water as he tried to form the words. “It... Something flares up. I don't know. It wasn't... It didn't happen before."

“Do you know what it is?” The questions were the same as the ones at the party—unencumbered by expectation.

“Light,” he said, though it was hard to believe that the calamity inside him had anything to do with light. “It moves me through light.”

“And it never happened before.”

The last word seemed suspended between them. Before.

“Do you want to leave?” Roxas asked. “We’re not keeping you here. Xion just thought…”

Xion. If she was so worried about him, why didn’t she go talk to him at the party? Why wasn’t she here now? All she did was watch. “What does she know, anyway?”

“Shut up, V—” Roxas stopped himself. “Xion’s been through shit you can’t even—”

He was on Roxas in an instant, hands pinning his shoulders. His own voice scared him as it slipped out his throat. “Was she ripped in two and made to suffer? Was she locked away for ten years inside a body that wasn’t hers? Or, was she smashed into pieces and put back together with cheap glue?”

“Get off me.” Roxas’ voice was quiet, but it cut to the bone.

Force struck his chest like a boulder, and he staggered back, his feet just shy of slipping off the section ground they stood on. He doubled over, pain rocking his ribs.

“You think Xion couldn’t guess that you’re hurting?” Roxas went on. “That she couldn’t fathom someone else being in pain?” His footsteps came closer. “You don’t know anything about her.”

He gasped for air, unable to meet Roxas’ face as the anger left him empty again. Rage laid so close to pain and despair, and he wasn’t sure his heart knew the difference.

He’d messed this up. He’d wanted this to be Ven’s day at the beach with his friends—one more step back to the normalcy Terra and Aqua wanted so badly.

And Roxas… Roxas and Xion and the others didn’t search for someone else in his eyes. They’d given him chance after chance, and he’d wrecked them all.

He couldn’t get anything right.

He had nothing.

Not even a name.

Choked sobs rumbled up from inside him, shaking his shoulders violently, but no tears would rise to his call.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” The words poured from him until they lost all meaning, context.

Ages later, two pairs of hands were lifting him, guiding him to his feet.

“Roxas, what’d you do to him?” Lea’s usually casual voice sounded furious. They guided him to sit on a rock while Isa ran hands down his aching chest.

“No broken bones,” he said, once he’d checked each rib.

“Roxas,” Lea repeated.

“He started it.”

Lea stood. “What, are you in kindergarten? Try again.”

“I started it,” he spoke up, voice still shaky from crying. He couldn’t look at any of them. “It’s my fault.”

“Roxas wasn’t the one sobbing on the ground.” Isa’s voice was cold.

“Fuck off, Isa.”

“What’s your damage, Roxas?” Lea raised his voice. “I thought the plan was to help him out!”

“What happened?” Xion and Naminé had come too. Humiliation flared inside him.

“Roxas punched him in the chest.”

“He pinned me, and I shoved him back.”

“Roxas…”

He couldn’t stand it any longer. He stood, ribs still rocked by pain, and turned towards the dock.

“Wait—” There was an emptiness that followed the word. The space where a name should be.

His feet were on the wood of the dock, the paopu tree behind him. He summoned his armor and his glider, ignoring their calls, and he left.

Chapter Text

He wasn’t paying attention to where he was going, or where he’d end up, but he should have known it would be the Keyblade Graveyard. The place Vanitas could find with his eyes closed.

Before even banishing his armor, he let out a roar of frustration and tore his helmet off, throwing it as far away as he could. It clanked as it rolled along the dusty ground, coming to a stop against a rusted keyblade. The graveyard looked even emptier, now that the keyblades had been scattered and uprooted by Sora’s attack, plucked like weeds.

It was unbearably quiet, and like all the times before, he was overcome with a need to fill the silence.

“What’s wrong with you?!” he wailed. Now that he was finally, completely alone, worlds away from concerned ears, he didn’t have to hold anything in. “Why can’t you just be him?  Why can’t you get anything right?!”

Not a single one of the phantoms who dwelled here—people Ventus might have known—had an answer for him, but he continued to scream question after question until his voice threatened to give out. The veins at his wrists crackled with the need to call the X-blade, and he balled his fists and pinned them to the ground.

Other days, he could quiet feelings that surfaced, but Vanitas’ emotions stirred strongly here. They crashed against his ribcage, unable to escape. Without the Unversed, they could do nothing but churn inside his chest. Sobs ripped themselves from his raw throat as he choked, begging for tears, but his eyes remained as dry as the ruined landscape of the graveyard.

The armor became bulky and suffocating, and he brought his fist to hit the segment that dispersed it. He sat there, huddled in the flimsy t-shirt, shorts, and sandals that Aqua and Terra had put him in, longing for the security of his skin-tight suit and blackout helmet.

But those weren’t even his, were they?

He called the charge to take him to the top of one of the stone cliffs and hugged his knees to his chest. The sun was drawing low in the sky, and he knew it must be nearing sunset at Destiny Islands too. By now, those twilight enthusiasts would be pulling the ice cream out of their cooler and settling in to watch the sun dip beneath the horizon.

There was nothing so great about twilight, where light and dark met. It was chaotic and brief, a blurry smear of colors that didn’t belong in the sky.

Warm light glinted across the scattered, discarded metal below him, and he stared down at it all until the land grew cold and dark.

Dully, he registered a buzzing in his pocket.

Of course they hadn’t let him leave without a Gummiphone.

The phone displayed that the caller was Aqua, and his muscles strained against themselves in deliberation. He didn’t trust his face to navigate the gauntlet of expressions he’d need for the looming conversation, but if he didn’t answer, he had no doubt Aqua’s anxiety would dip into something desperate.

Right before the call timed out, he picked up, and set the phone beside him, its camera pointed towards the night sky in compromise.

“Ven? Ven, where are you?” Aqua’s words hit his eyes like biting snow. “Xion called a little while ago to see if you were home yet. Did you stop somewhere on the way back?” Aqua was trying to be understanding, but he could hear the worry threaded through her voice. He was surprised she’d made it this long.

“What else did she say?” His voice came out hoarse and rough. He’d forgotten to try to sound like Ventus.

Aqua picked up on it immediately. “Ven, what’s wrong?”

He took a moment to clear his throat. “I’m okay, Aqua, I just… It was a long day, and I wanted to… to cool down somewhere. I must’ve lost track of time.” It was easier when he could just make the sounds without having to match them to his face.

“Where?” He heard her brisk footsteps as she paced. She’d be on her way to her on her glider in moments if he answered her.

“Sorry for worrying you, Aqua,” he said sheepishly. “I’ll be home soon, okay?”

She drew in a breath, then let it out slow. “…Okay. We’ll see you soon.” It was a promise to herself. “Safe travels, Ven.”

He ended the call, but that last word lingered, swinging inside him like a weight about to drop.

Ven.
Ven.
Ven.

On the other side of that scale sat Vanitas. It tilted in his chest, trying to calibrate and balance itself with no regard for the hinges threatening to come apart and send everything crashing down.

He hated them for it.

He hated Ventus because Vanitas hated Ventus, because they wouldn't stop calling him by his name. He hated Vanitas because he made him fragile and volatile, and because Vanitas hated himself.

When Ventus and Vanitas had first fused, Vanitas had wanted so much that he’d taken everything, shoving his will down Ventus’ throat and into his heart, and he hadn’t cared, because that was what it was like to be whole again.

This time, Vanitas had gone willingly, weakly, and Ventus had accepted him with open arms and heart. With neither of them pressing their will into the fusion, they’d left their work undone—their lingering string untied and beginning to fray.

You think Xion couldn’t guess that you’re hurting?

Had they even told Aqua and Terra what had really happened?

Yeah, but is that your name?

Roxas’ words had a way of digging into him, latching like burs. They cut down to the truth of everything.

As he picked the Gummiphone off the ground, its screen caught a flash of gold in the low light. Confused, he brought it closer to his face. There was something in his eye. He opened the front-facing camera, letting the screen illuminate his face in the dark.

Across the bottom of his left iris, like the mistaken stroke of a paintbrush, was a streak of gold.

Trepidation tipped easily into panic, and he rubbed his eye, as if he could get it out, as if it were a trick of the light, but it was soaked in like a stain, tarnishing the perfect blue that had gotten him this far.

“No, no nono…”

This was Vanitas’ fault. He’d blown up at Xion and Naminé and Roxas, he’d led him here, sent him into a meltdown, and now he was trying to ruin everything.

He couldn’t stay here—not with Vanitas drifting so close to the surface.

He couldn’t go to the Land of Departure—not where they could see him.

He summoned his armor and, face hidden, he called Aqua. She was in a chair in a room at the front of the castle—one with a view of the sky. Watching for his glider.

“Ven? Weren’t you coming home?” The sad little way her brow furrowed made it excruciating to lie to her, and he ended up spouting something close to the truth.

“Sorry, Aqua, I… I know it’s late, but I forgot something at the beach,” he said apologetically. “I’m worried the tide might get it. I’m gonna stop back there real quick.”

“What is it?” she asked, already raising herself from her chair. Terra, who’d heard her talking, walked to stand behind her. “Terra and I can meet you there.”

It took all his willpower to press the proper nonchalance into his voice. “Aw c’mon, Aqua, you don’t have to go all that way.” He had to think of something better. “Just… keep looking up at the stars, and know that I’m out there thinking of you too. Then I’ll be home before you know it.” He smiled under his mask to make it sound right.

Her soft smile and the tilt of her head broke his heart. “All right, Ven.”

“Safe travels, Ven,” Terra said, leaning into the camera frame to give him his own smile.

“See you guys soon.”

He hung up, called his glider, and accelerated, not knowing if that had been a lie or not.

The ride to Destiny Islands should have been time enough to come up with some sort of plan, but he couldn’t get his mind to form anything coherent. If he could just sit on the paopu tree and let the waves clear his thoughts…

He landed on the sand, banished his armor, and let the charge take him to the islet with the paopu tree.

“Um…”

He spun to see Roxas already sitting there on the tree.

The charge flared, and the next thing he knew, he was splashing into the water.

The world became black, heavy, and suffocating.

Ventus, Vanitas—did either of them know how to swim? His panic froze his muscles, and the charge had nowhere to go.

He knew he was sinking, but he looked all around, trying to find the moonlight in the darkness. There was no light, nothing. The pressure was beginning to collapse his chest.

He couldn’t die here in the dark without a name.

The water shuddered beside him, and then he was being pulled up through the weighty depths.

He breached, gasping and coughing as someone took a breath beside him. A strong arm cinched under his shoulders, and he was pulled to shore.

As Roxas dragged him out of the water, arms secure and solid, his panic evaporated.

Then Roxas unceremoniously hefted him up onto his shoulder like he didn’t weigh anything, and he let out another round of sputtering coughs as his face lit with heat. They made it further up the beach, and Roxas lowered him to the ground to let him expel the remaining water from his lungs.

“Why’d you come back?” Roxas sounded mad. Both of them were soaked to the skin, clothes heavy and dripping. Roxas had already taken off his shirt to wring it out. “And why didn’t you say you couldn’t swim?”

“Why are you still here?” he shot back once he’d recovered enough to talk—and it was big talk for someone who’d just accidentally launched himself into the ocean—but it’d been hours since he’d left, and Roxas’ other friends were nowhere to be seen.

“None of your business.” Roxas let out a frustrated sigh and sat down next to him. Then he ran a hand through his wet hair a few times, trying to rebuild his gold spikes, but it all just fell forward again.

It was so… normal, that he felt a little of his own embarrassment slough off.

Roxas shot him a look. “What are you smiling for? You almost drowned.”

He frowned, then brushed his own hair from his face and wrung out the front of his shirt. He wasn’t going to strip in front of someone.

When he glanced back, Roxas was looking intently at his face. “You…”

His breath caught as Roxas leaned closer.

“Your eye.”

His heart dropped into his stomach, and he wheeled away, bringing a hand up to cover his gold-flecked eye.

“That’s new.”

His hand began to tremble, the chill of his still-wet clothes running over him in waves. If he just had his suit…

No. If he let himself think things like that, it’d only make it worse.

Roxas took his hand in his. It was startlingly warm, strong as ever, and he didn’t pull away as Roxas lowered his hand from his face. As he met Roxas’ gaze again, his blue eyes seemed brighter in the moonlight, like they were reflecting the sea. They looked sad.

“Is that my fault?”

What was he talking about?

His confusion must have been palpable, because Roxas went on. “You didn’t have that before I shoved you.”

He had to look away, but Roxas’ eyes continued to pierce him. He shivered and hugged his knees.

“If it happened because of me, I’m sorry.”

Roxas was apologizing? For what was wrong with him?

“I shouldn’t have snapped like that.” Was Roxas already over it? The fact that he’d sprung a Vanitas leak? “But when you were saying that stuff about Xion…”

“You were right,” he suddenly said, the apology spilling from his mouth. “I don’t know anything about her. About Xion. I’m sorry for what I said.”

Roxas seemed to accept that. He leaned back on his arms. “…She covered for you, when you left. She waited hours before asking Terra and Aqua if you’d made it home, and then when they asked how your day went, she and Naminé made up some whole story about burying you in the sand.”

Naminé too? “After I…” He was speechless. He didn’t deserve any of this. His eyes pricked from the salt water, and he tightened his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. He put his head down on his knees. “Why do they… why do you all keep being so nice to me?”

“Because we’ve been there.” Roxas brought a warm hand to his arm, and his goosebumps melted as he looked back at Roxas’ face. “Because…” he sighed, “we’re still there.” Roxas slid his hand away, too soon, and turned to the waves.

“Have you thought of a name yet?”

How could Roxas see through him so effortlessly, when Aqua and Terra and Chirithy, the people who were supposed to know him best, had already unanimously decided who he was and what he wanted?

His throat closed up, and he shook his head. Lives worth of memories in his head, and he still had nothing of his own. He tightened his grip on his knees.

“Do you need help?” Roxas’ voice was like starlight.

He was nodding desperately before he’d thought better of it.

Roxas was quiet for a while, then, “What about Van?”

He shot Roxas a glare, gold fleck sparking in his eye. “Soon as I start to look like him, you—”

“No, no, it’s like…” Roxas ran a hand through his hair again. The spikes were already beginning to reform. “It’s like, if a name is hurting you, then you fix it until it doesn’t. You make it yours instead of someone else’s.”

Fix it. Rewrite it, tear it, take it. It… maybe it made sense. “Van,” he repeated, judging it on his own tongue.

“We can come up with something else if you don’t like it, but… just because a name is part of someone else’s doesn’t make it not yours.”

The rising moonlight was just bright enough to see Sora’s freckles on Roxas’ skin.

Roxas was here, and he was real, and he was himself, and no one thought he was Sora just because they had the same letters.

He couldn’t bear having nothing for himself, for who he was—not any longer.

It was time to take something back.

“Van,” he said again.

Van, a fragment of a name stolen from Ven and Vanitas both.

Van.
Van.
Van.

When he cut it loose from bearings of history and context, it rose, free in his mind, and all at once it was his, it was his, it was his.

“Van.” It sounded even better when Roxas repeated it back to him, said it in reference to him and no one else. Something lit in his chest, and he found himself growing warm despite the fact that he was still damp with seawater.

“Can we… sit here a while?” Van asked.

“Yeah, Van.” It was already effortless on Roxas’ lips.

The beach was cool and the sound of the waves quieted the noise inside him, and compared to this, the Land of Departure didn’t feel much like home at all. They sat so close their shoulders were almost touching, and Van closed the distance, bringing his shoulder to lean against Roxas’. Roxas was like a campfire on the shore, and Van couldn't help but be warmed.

“You had it ready.”

“The name?”

“Yeah.”

“We did some workshopping.”

“Are you serious?” All of them, they’d…

“Lea was really gunning for ‘Venti’, like, the latte size, but he’s an idiot, so…”

A laugh escaped his throat. “He’s always been an idiot.”

Roxas smiled to himself. “Yeah.”

Van’s lip trembled, and Roxas was so warm that he couldn’t blame it on being cold. “Thank you, Roxas.”

“You’re welcome, Van.”

“And the others… tell them thanks too. And sorry.”

“You can tell them yourself. We come here a lot.”

“You’d really invite me back? After what I did?”

Roxas shrugged. “We keep inviting Lea.”

The two of them laughed, and between them, Van could almost hear Ventus.

Reluctantly, he drew away and pulled himself to his feet.

“Aqua and Terra and Chirithy are waiting for me to come home.”

Roxas stood. “Are you gonna tell them?”

Van knew what Roxas meant, and like always, the truth came out. “I’m not ready. Neither are they.”

Roxas didn’t argue. “What are you gonna do about your—oh.” He was looking at his eye again.

“What?”

Roxas squinted, stepping closer to examine it. “The gold. I can’t see it.”

Van scrambled for his Gummiphone, and pulled the camera back open. Roxas was right. The gold had vanished, seeped in to the blue to create a streak of green. In the low light, it was almost impossible to see.

Was it because he’d calmed down? Was it because he…

It didn’t matter. Van breathed out a relieved sigh. He could go home.

“If it happens again, maybe we can…”

Van looked at him, but Roxas didn’t finish.

“Go home,” he pivoted. “They’re probably freaking out by now.”

Van nodded.

“…But let me see your phone real quick,” Roxas added. “I’ll add us to your contacts so we can message you the next time we’re gonna do something.”

Van’s chest was suspended in air as he handed the Gummiphone over to Roxas.

After he’d added himself and the others, Roxas gave it back.

Van held it in his hand for a moment, almost expecting it to be heavier with such important information inside.

When they looked back at each other, Van imagined Roxas’ eyes as the sea after a storm. “Bye, Roxas.”

“See you, Van.”

He’d never get tired of hearing it.

In the Lanes Between, Van breathed in deep, taking in the cold and rushing air. Ventus’ memories were guiding him back to the Land of Departure—to Ventus’ home, not his, but the new freedom in his heart wouldn’t be dampened tonight.

Aqua and Terra were waiting for him on the steps, Chirithy sleeping in Terra’s arms. Van dismounted his glider and banished his armor.

“Ven! You’re safe!” Aqua raced to hug him, then hesitated, but he opened his arms to accept her.

“It was just a trip to the beach…” he muttered. She squeezed him quickly, then let go again, wary not to overwhelm him.

Chirithy stirred in Terra’s arms and rubbed their eyes. “Ven…”

Van pet their head. “Hi, Chirithy.”

“How was your day, Ven?” The question was innocuous, but Terra sounded just as relieved as Aqua. “Lea and Isa were there, right? Did you play disc toss with them?”

Van found himself smiling. “Yeah, they’re as intense as ever.”

“So you had fun?” Aqua asked.

And he remembered he had, however briefly. “Yeah!” There was more. “…They’re good to be around. Roxas invited me back.”

“That’s great, Ven!”

The name wasn’t hurting him anymore, because in his head, where none of them could see or hear, he was Van. Because when they called for Ven, he could bridge the gap between the sounds, and pretend they’d called for him instead.

After he cleaned up and got into bed, he opened up his Gummiphone to look at his contacts, to make sure it had worked.

Roxas had sent himself a message from Van’s phone to connect their numbers. It was a little icon of a beach.

Then, as he was holding his phone, a new message popped up on the screen. Roxas had sent something from his phone this time—a little waxing moon, with some light, and some dark.

Van stared at the screen, holding his phone like a candle that might blow out.

See you, Van.

Roxas’ words stuck to him, tighter than ever, and he fell asleep with the cool light of the screen on his face.

Chapter Text

Instead of waking in the late night or early morning from nightmares he could never remember, Van slept an untouched, dreamless sleep, until Chirithy’s voice drifted to wake him.

“Ven, it’s time for breakfast!”

Chirithy was standing on his bed. They did this every morning, and he’d begun to think they derived some sort of pleasure from surprising him into teleporting and hitting the wall.

“Chirithy, how many times do I have to tell you not to startle me?” he mumbled, still half asleep.

“But Ven!” Chirithy was elated. “You didn’t jump today!”

His eyes shot open, and suddenly he was standing upright on his floor.

“Maybe I spoke too soon…?” they said pensively. Chirithy shook their head and went on, unperturbed. “You must’ve been real tired, so let’s get you a proper breakfast!” They jumped to the floor to prod his leg, but he was still in a daze.

Had any of the last 24 hours been real? Or was it just some jumbled memory taken from nights Ventus dreamed about inside Sora’s heart, mixed with feelings Vanitas wanted for himself?

He picked up his Gummiphone from where he’d left it on the bed. There was a message on the display. The ID said it was from Xion.

X: good morning van!! have a good day ^^

Van stared at it like it couldn’t be real, squinting to make sure that the exclamation point wasn’t an “i”, that the “a” wasn’t a misread “e”.

“You got a message? From who?!” Chirithy asked excitedly.

Van clutched the phone to his chest, barely keeping himself from being sent straight out the window. “O-Oh, just Xion. I… I got everyone’s number yesterday.”

“That’s great, Ven! I bet it was fun to hang out with friends again!”

A smile crossed his face as he said, “Yeah. It was.”

When Chirithy padded out to tell the others he was up for breakfast, Van turned to a mirror mounted just outside the door. It startled him, sometimes, to catch his reflection on the way back to the room, for reasons that seemed to change every time it happened.

Vanitas’ longing for Ventus, the way he looked for him whenever he wasn’t near, even when it filled him with jealousy and despair.

Ventus’ anticipation, the way he expected Vanitas to be around every corner, dogging him like a shadow that would not be ignored.

Today was different. He wanted to see his face.

He leaned close enough for the light reflecting off the mirror to illuminate his eye, and took in a sharp breath.

It was still there. The green in his eye, shining like a leafy island in the middle of the ocean. The island where Roxas had sat beside him and given him a name that didn’t hurt. Van’s reflection smiled back at him.

“Ven woke up without hitting the wall today!” Chirithy proudly proclaimed.

“Really?” Aqua asked, eyes sparkling at him across the breakfast table. Van didn’t hold her gaze, worried she might notice the speck of green in his eye.

He nodded slightly, not sure where this was going.

“You think he’s ready to move back to his own room?” Terra sounded eager.

Under Even’s advisement, they’d set him up in what was essentially a guest bedroom, to “ease his acclimatization”, and he’d had no reason to contest. Now, though, something cracked in him like a crushed eggshell as he realized that what Chirithy had been doing every morning, was testing him.

“How does that sound, Ven?”

“I…” The hesitation slipped out, and he pushed it away as who he was supposed to be, here in this world, came rushing back over him like waves washing away footprints in the sand. “I mean… If you think I’m ready.”

They did. After breakfast, they led him along the familiar route to Ven’s room, the one he could have walked by himself any time before this, if he’d wanted.

He’d never wanted. Ven’s ghost would be fresh, he knew—not even a layer of dust to film the emptiness of that place. But there was no escaping it today, not with six expectant eyes burning across his skin.

He stopped before the door, feet like stone. He looked at each of them in turn, and each gave him a smile or nod that said, “You’re ready.”

He wasn’t.

But Van reached for the doorknob anyway.

His fingers brushed the molded metal, and then he was gone.

He was kneeling on Ventus’ bed, hands thoughtfully cupping his chin as his elbows rested on the windowsill.

Van shuddered backwards, his back thudding against Ventus’ door as the past hour configured itself in his mind as a detached, distant thing—something that wasn’t his, but Ventus’.

The door swings to reveal Ventus’ room, exactly as he’d left it.

A soft gasp escapes his lips as his eyes spark like stars. “No way!”

He gives Aqua, Terra, and Chirithy a smile that lights their own faces in a way he hadn’t seen since—

“It’s all exactly the same!” His eager hands brush familiar books as he takes in the feeling of his old room—the fabric of his bedspread and the worn wood of his desk—all of the textures and sensations that had been imprinted on his heart.

Aqua chuckles, with no weight hanging over her voice. “Of course it is, Ven. We knew you’d be back.”

The charge was running up and down his spine so fast he thought he might explode. It flicked him around the room, to every spot he’d stood as Ventus, nostalgia inside him too strong to withstand.

The hour he’d just lost replayed itself through his body in hyper-speed—testing the bed, sifting through the books on the shelf he’d never had the focus to read all the way through, checking under the bed for a hidden stash of snacks—ordinary and unremarkable things made terrifying by the fact that he hadn’t been there for them.

Van was coming undone with every motion, unraveling across his torn seams, and the only thing he could hear was dry sobbing, which he eventually recognized as his own. The light inside him was bubbling up his throat like blood, so far that it pressed against the backs of his eyeballs.

He wrenched his eyes shut and pressed his hands to his face, trying to trace the contours, but they were all wrong—they weren’t where they were supposed to be.

But he kept his hands there, because the alternative was leaving them open for the X-blade to slip out. They drifted to his neck, brushed a vein beneath his skin, and his fingers found a chaotic pulse.

Van’s touch flinched away at first, but then he brought trembling fingers back to the points where warm blood ebbed inside him, and breathed. His heartbeat flitted like an insect trapped inside a lamp, but it was real and grounding and it reminded him that he was real—he was whole. Not a shattered shard or a broken toy—his heart was complete, and it beat.

He stood there, with his fingers on his neck, until the room stopped jerking around beneath his feet. His rhythm slowed, the charge quieted, and he let himself fall backwards onto Ventus’ bed.

He laid there a long time, dazed eyes staring at the little stars Ventus had affixed to the ceiling. Ven—the real Ven—would never see them again.

As much as his heart wailed at him to, Van still couldn’t cry.

His phone chimed, bringing him at last from his depths. In the next moment he was holding it as tightly as a hand pulling him out of dark waters.

He had four missed texts. He hadn’t even heard them. He quickly opened the one he’d just received.

L: VAN!!!!!!!

Lea must have just woken up. Then,

I: Van,
Hope you’re well.
- I

And,

N: I’m so sorry for everything, Van. I’d like to apologize properly in person, so let us know if you’d like to spend time together again. I understand if not though.

And the first one he’d missed,

R: hey van. let us know if you want to hang out today. no beach this time, we’re just gonna go into town so no pressure

He didn’t wait a moment longer.

V: On my way

Van dressed hastily, but knew how awful he must look. He stepped into the bathroom to fix his hair, and froze.

His hands were pressed against the mirror, as they’d been in the containment cell. “No, no no…” his weak voice echoed against the glass.

His jet black hair had lightened to a dark brown, as if he’d spent weeks in the sun, and both his eyes stared back at him, completely blue. The green island had been drowned before he’d even had it for a day.

Rage lit in his chest. He’d earned that. He’d earned it with Roxas, and Ventus had taken it away in seconds like it hadn't meant anything.

His fist was against the mirror, sending fissures all across his reflected face, and the only thing leashing him back from further destruction was the overriding fear that the noise would draw his caretakers—his gatekeepers.

He whirled out the door, flung open Ven’s bedroom window, and he was out.

The rage carried Van to the edge of the Land of Departure, to a distant floating platform the sun must not quite reach—or hit too strongly—because the grass it was covered in was dead.

Van hugged his knees to his chest, tucked into the fetal position Vanitas found fleeting comfort in. He put his head down and breathed, in and out like the tides, willing it to be enough to quiet the growing hurricane inside him. His sleeves bunched between his tense fingers as he rocked himself softly back and forth, waiting out the storm. He’d been through worse, he’d been through worse.

His eyes opened to a small cut on his knuckle. The mirror had fought back, however fruitlessly. By all accounts, the wound should have been bigger, but this body was too strong to yield to something as fragile as glass. Van wished whatever was inside worked the same.

While he was looking at it, his phone began to chime—with a call this time. His chest went cold. How long had he been out here?

He pulled out the Gummiphone, expecting Aqua or Roxas, but the ID said it was Xion. He almost didn’t answer, but then something surged inside him as he decided all at once that he wasn’t going to lose another day to Ventus and Vanitas.

Van picked up the call and set the phone beside him, facing toward the sky like he’d done with Aqua, but a glance at the screen told him Xion’s camera was off. That was an option?

“Van?” The name grew stronger in his heart each time it was said. “Are you okay? Roxas said you were on your way more than an hour ago, and we just wanted to make sure something hadn’t happened.”

There was a shuffling sound as the phone was passed to someone else.

“It’s also cool if you wanna bow out—I know yesterday was… yesterday.”

Roxas. Some of the pressure in Van’s chest dissipated. “I’m coming.” He picked up the phone to bring it nearer to his face, even though they couldn’t see each other.

“I want to come,” he added. “I’m just… off today.”

“Sure.” Roxas was so patient. “Take your time. We’re just in Twilight Town. Pretty small place—pretty hard to miss Lea’s hair.”

A chuckle escaped his steel-trap chest.

Xion took the phone back. “Hope to see you soon, Van! Take care, okay?”

“Yeah.”

Van summoned his keyblade, then glider. It was Void Gear that answered him this time, but Terra, Aqua, and Chirithy weren’t around to see it, and it wasn’t the X-blade, and he’d wasted enough time already, and he couldn’t bring himself to care.

By the time he got to Twilight Town, it was… late? He didn’t know how to tell. And Roxas had been right—Lea’s hair was the first thing he spotted, like a bright red palm tree growing from the center of the plaza. Lea’s arms were on his hips as he tapped his foot dramatically, waiting for the others to leave the bistro. Isa stood beside him, eyes glued to his phone.

“It’s not our fault you two have such long legs!” Xion called to Lea, right before she spotted Van. “Van! You made it!” She tried not to make the glance to his hair too obvious, which he supposed he appreciated.

Naminé was beside her, their hands held again, and as Van’s eyes fell on her, the girl’s face dropped into a dismayed sort of guilt. That was apology enough, but he knew he’d have to brace himself for a proper one later, like she’d promised.

Van heard Roxas before he saw him. A bark of laughter rang through the plaza as Roxas exited the bistro with his normal friends—two boys and a girl that Van had never gotten the names of.

“Not funny, Roxas!” the one with the light, slicked back hair was saying. “I told you that in confidence!” That only yielded another chuckle from Roxas, and his friend pushed his arm ineffectively. It was a carefree scene, but Van noticed the hesitance in other boy’s touch, how Roxas took the playful shove passively without pushing back.

Roxas’ eyes found him, and he raised a hand in greeting. “Van!”

Van was given a proper introduction to Roxas’ friends—Hayner, Pence, and Olette—but as they all stood chattering idly about where to go next, Van felt himself begin to become overwhelmed. He’d forgotten that he wouldn’t always get Roxas to himself so easily—that he came with friends. People who already knew and loved him, people he knew and loved back.

“What do you want to do, Van?” Olette suddenly asked, summoning the entire group to look at him.

“I…” he began, the charge rising with his panic at being put on the spot. “You guys go to the clock tower, right?” It was the first thing to come to mind, but he immediately regretted it as he realized that it meant sitting squished between a bunch of people, all talking too loudly.

“I guess it’s about that time, huh?” Pence wondered. “Should we swing and get some ice cream?”

“I think our party’s a bit too big for that today,” Roxas said, throwing Van a lifeline. “Maybe we should split.”

“Oh, we can fit in one more person up on the clock tower!” Olette said brightly. “It’s no big deal!”

Xion picked up on what Roxas was trying to do. “Maybe Roxas is right. Van hasn’t even gotten a proper tour yet!” She turned to him. “The two of you can do that, and circle back with us later.”

How did she always know what to say?

“So what happened today?” Roxas asked as soon as they were alone. Instead of a tour, they’d opted to sit on the steps outside the train station, just below the clock tower. Roxas didn’t need to ask about his eye—Van had caught him squinting at it earlier.

Van breathed in and out before he summarized his abominable day in a single sentence. “They… They put me back in Ventus’ room, and his memories… took over.”

“That hasn’t happened before?” Roxas asked, as if it should be a symptom of his condition.

Van shook his head, and stared at the long shadows cast across the plaza. “I came to later. All the feelings were his, but… it wasn’t him, not really, just… just another echo.” He almost wished it had been Ven—brought back to see his old room, however briefly.

“What… do you mean?” Roxas sounded confused.

“That’s what the two of them are,” Van explained. “They’re in me like echoes, but they’re not really there.”

Roxas was quiet for too long before he asked his next question. “Ventus and Vanitas aren’t… together? They aren’t… you?”

Van felt his face fall into a scowl. Hadn’t they been over this? Hadn’t Roxas been the one who understood? “No, Roxas,” he snapped.

Roxas’ gaze drifted like he was lost. “Then what… happened to them?”

Van prickled with frustration. “What do you think happened? They’re gone.”

He immediately knew that was the wrong thing to say. Roxas turned away and looked down, eyebrows knit as his eyes flickered with a series of blinks, like he was trying not to tear up. “I thought…”

Van’s eyes widened as his heart was thrown off a cliff.

“You… thought I was both.” His hoarse voice was rougher than he’d ever heard it. “Not neither.”

Roxas’ eyes were in a private battle against coming tears as his mouth hung slightly ajar. It gave Van his answer.

Van turned away to glower at the streets below. “Well I thought you understood.” Then the rage shifted unexpectedly into grief. “I… thought you knew.”

“I didn’t...” Roxas began in a whisper that broke Van’s heart. “I didn’t know they were…”

Gone.

He could feel the unsaid word cut them both in two. It had suddenly become real, changed into a horribly undeniable truth that rose between them like a wall.

“Van, I need to… I’m sorry.” Roxas raised himself from the steps and ran, like something was chasing him.

Van let him go. He didn’t want to see Roxas cry.

He couldn’t blame Roxas, or any of them. What else were former Nobodies supposed to think? For them, becoming whole again meant you felt whole again—felt like the person your memories told you you were, like the person you were supposed to be. They must have all thought he’d still been Ventus, at heart, just with Vanitas’ instability stirred through him like ink in water to create someone who was more, not less. He’d let them down too.

When Ventus and Vanitas had fused, Roxas hadn’t thought to grieve. Maybe no one had. After all, in this world, even death held no meaning. Sora was proof of that.

He would be back. They wouldn’t let themselves think anything else, or they’d shatter the axis upon which all things turned: that Sora’s light was one that could not be extinguished. Not with any meaningful permanence. It was their lighthouse, their seamark, and it had guided them all in innumerable ways, back home.

And so the hearts Sora touched and built were incapable of accepting his passing, incapable of allowing themselves to grieve.

But Van had been born grieving, sorrow threaded through him like another set of veins with the solemn confirmation that Ventus and Vanitas, as they had been, were gone forever, and they weren’t coming back. He’d entered an empty house built from memories and littered with baggage and trauma, waiting for owners who’d never come.

Maybe they had become the charge, a volatility that moved on instinct, surged like phantom pain. If that was true, Van could forgive them for all the trouble it had caused him.

Maybe they’d become the X-blade, the thing he was most afraid of, calling to him constantly from the place it lurked the depths of his heart. He wasn’t sure he could forgive them for that.

If Roxas was only a taste of how Terra and Aqua would react, there was no way Van could ever tell them, and that knowledge pressed down on every muscle of his being.

He turned off his phone, and didn’t go home that night. The Land of Departure wasn’t his home. Nowhere was, because he was nobody and nothing. He went to the Keyblade Graveyard, where he knew they wouldn’t look for him.

He’d lost another day to Ventus and Vanitas after all, and he’d lost whatever had begun between him and Roxas, which couldn’t be measured in time or space. As he closed his eyes to sleep, yellow pooled in them like gold tears inside his irises.

Chapter Text

Sora’s death echoes across all worlds, all corners of this universe, reverberating and rebounding, distorted by time and space. It takes a while to find me, wherever I’ve been lost.

Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then he’s ripped out, and it’s like being born all over again. But this time, there’s no one there to watch.

I am spilling, threaded muscles unspooling and undone as pieces of me slough out of my seams. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die here alone.

I don’t know how long I have, but I know the way home.

I can only tell him why I’m here. What I came here for. What I need more than anything.

“Ventus.” I don’t have the strength for anything else.

Whispered. Weak, like me. So sad on his lips. It’s the closest he’ll ever come to saying “please”, and I know what he feels like: me, only worse. Always worse. We were broken once, and from that moment on I was given the light, while he was left alone to rot in the dark.

He’ll never forgive me for that. I know nothing will ever erase it.

Except, maybe, what comes next.

I take his hands, feel the crackle of our touch as it’s happening, it’s already happening.

We tell the others in a voice that’s almost the same. There’s no time.

As the scientists prepare, I tell everyone I’ll be back—that I’ll be complete, that this is how I should be. I can’t tell them anything else.

Because in my heart, in ours, we know this is goodbye.

We always knew this would be the end of us.

Van’s eyes opened slowly, sticky and heavy. His face was wet. Had he finally cried? He traced a finger down one of the tracks, but when he drew it away, it was black. The darkness inside him was leaking out, its ichor making a mockery of sorrow. The same thick substance streaked from his nose, and even as his eyes dried, it refused to stop. He drew himself up, turned to the side so he wouldn’t get it all over his clothes.

This was new. And old. He looked down at the drops of black as they grew in number on the dirt, and waited for them to move, to spring to life as Unversed.

He didn’t need a camera to know that his eyes were turning yellow again—he could feel the weight of the gold inside his skull. It was just a matter of time before all the blood in his veins was replaced with viscous despair.

He waited, but nothing happened. It all just sat, stagnant.

This wasn’t like the panicked, instinctual flickers of the charge. This was his grief, slowly churning inside of him like a heavy sea now that he’d let it out. He couldn’t find the charge in the depths, not even when he tried. It had soured and rotted, growing heavy until it was pulled under.

He hadn’t noticed how bad it was getting, on his way here. He hadn’t noticed much of anything, except the looping memory of Roxas blinking off tears, eyes flickering behind his eyelids until they slipped off of Van’s face, and were gone.

He was alone again. Again. In the place where all paths seemed to lead him, where all paths ended. The same as before. Nothing had changed at all, and it never would.

This was where he belonged, but it wasn’t where he wanted to be. He thought of the beach, the sand still warm from the sun even after darkness had fallen, and someone sitting beside him.

He looked at his hands, one smeared black with whatever was still coming out of his face, and then they were someone else’s. An empty hand cloaked in darkness, hungry and wanting. A clean hand masked with light that hid its fractured bones.

They came together, clasping each other tight as if that would stop them both from trembling. The ichor from his face dripped down on them until both hands were black.

Van curled onto his side, hands held as if in prayer, and drifted off again, imagining someone else’s touch on his skin.

It may be the end of us, but it’s the beginning of what comes next.

“Van.”

His ears were thick, and he couldn’t place the voice. It was familiar, and warm, but he couldn’t see anything but black.

“Van. Hey.” He placed it. It was Sora’s.

Then, a soft hand on his hair, combing it free of his sticky face, and he felt a little lighter. It was Sora—his heart was screaming it. He’d know the call of Sora’s heart anywhere, as anyone. But why now? Had he ended up where Sora was?

“Sora,” he heard himself sob, powerless to stop it. “Why did you leave me?”

The hand on his face drew away, and everything went silent. Had Sora already gone again? No… he would have felt it like before.

“Van… Can you open your eyes?”

Van pulled his crusted eyes open to see Xion’s face looking down at him, the ragged sky of the Keyblade Graveyard behind her. She glanced away, incapable of holding his gaze. “I’m sorry, Van.”

A tired breath escaped his lungs, and he closed his eyes again. Right. Of course.

“Leave me alone.”

“No. Not when you need help.” Her voice went back to being Sora’s, so he forced his eyes open. The look on Xion's face told him it wouldn’t be easy to get rid of her.

“I don’t need your help.”

“He didn’t know, Van.”

Roxas had told them. Everyone knew by now—even Terra and Aqua. That was why it was just Xion. No one else would come but the resident saint. He turned his head away to glare at some rocks that were scattered on his opposite side. His limbs felt too heavy to move, but it didn’t matter. It was all over anyway.

“Van, can we just talk?”

“Talk about how much you hate me for taking your friends away from you?”

The air went cold, a frozen tension suspended between them. Then, Xion let out a breath that might have been a laugh, and it dissipated. “We’re all just tangled together in knots, aren’t we?”

She sounded sad. Van slowly turned his head back to her. She was looking somewhere else, out at some cliffs and away from him.

“Sometimes it’s hard to know where you end and someone else begins.” There it was again. Something that made it sound like she understood. Xion pulled her knees up, and Van realized she was still in the same outfit she’d been wearing in Twilight Town. Why hadn’t she changed?

“Why did you come?” And not him? he stopped himself from finishing.

“Because I already knew.”

He stared at her, deliberating. Then, as if he had to, he said, “Knew what?”

“I knew what happened,” Xion said quietly, almost to herself. She drew in a shaking breath, like she was preparing for a confession. “It… leaks into me. People’s feelings—the things their hearts are saying.” She pushed her words out steadily, like she’d prepared them. “I knew what had happened the first time I met you.”

Van stilled as all feeling left his body. The whole time. The whole time, she’d known. And… she’d still given him cake, invited him to be a part of their world—even though she must have known how he would ruin it. And even now she was here, sitting next to him. Why? Why?

“Your heart was crying, and I thought I could help it stop,” she began again, as if she knew he’d need time to process her words. “But I didn’t tell the others, and now…” She sniffed, and brought a hand wipe at her eyes. “I ruined it. I should have told Roxas, so he’d have time to… to…”

Her prepared speech was crumbling beneath its weight, but Van felt the pressure in him loosen enough to sit up.

“That’s not your fault, Xion. It’s—”

“It’s not yours either!” she said, so quickly she had to believe it.

Van went silent. So who were they supposed to blame? There was no one but the dead.

“I’m sorry, Van… I’m so sorry…” Xion’s tears were flowing freely now, clean and clear and for no one but him.

Van felt his heart pinch as it edged closer to hers. She did understand. She always had, but he’d been too locked up inside himself to see.

He remembered Naminé, how Xion had calmed her down. Xion was the tide, and maybe she did more than draw things in.

“Xion.” She turned to look at him with her reddening eyes, barely holding back another hiccuping sob. Van held his hand to her—after he’d made an attempt to wipe off some of the ichor—and locked his eyes with hers.

She understood.

Xion brought her hand to his, and the two of them met like a stream. Immediately, Van felt the trickle of her sorrow and guilt, dripping into him like rainwater through a crack. She shifted her knees down, and held out her other hand to him.

Van took it, felt the waters crest against the walls in his chest. He breathed in, closed his eyes. Xion’s feelings continued to come, but they weren’t enough—they couldn’t break through.

Her grip on his hands fell away, and he thought she’d drawn back until he felt Xion’s arms around him, steadying him like a boat on the sea as more of her sadness flowed into him. The waters were a thumping heartbeat against his chest now. Almost.

Van pulled his arms around Xion, tucked his head into her shoulder, and he cried.

His vision blurred as the tears he’d been waiting for descended like sheets of rain falling heavy from the sky. They hit his body in raging torrents with no end he could find, but he didn’t want one. He and Xion held each other as the tears kept coming, and with each one that fell, another matted knot in his heart came loose, and in the middle of the desert, he thought he could taste the sea.

The two of them said things that wouldn’t matter later, like “I’m sorry” and “It’s okay”. After they’d cried for Van, they cried for Ventus and Vanitas, then for everyone who’d lost them.

They cried for Sora, without giving those tears a name.

The last person they cried for was Xion, but those tears were different. They tasted like gratitude.

When both of them were finally spent, Xion drifted back, but kept herself anchored to him with a hand on his hair. She stroked his head like she had Naminé’s, and he closed his eyes to focus on the feel of it. He hadn’t realized how much touch he’d been starved for until now, and he never wanted it to end.

“You’re not less, Van.” Her voice was rough from crying, but gentle as her touch. “You’re more.” Van blinked his eyes open, and she was looking at him like he was.

When he wiped his nose, there was no more black, and when he touched his face, his fingers came away clean. The shoulders of both their shirts were soaked, and he’d left black smears all over Xion’s.

“Sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I ruined everything. For good this time.” Guilt was seeping back into him now that the numbness had left, filling him with a different sort of weight.

Xion gave his hair a parting brush, then put her hands in her lap and looked down. “Everyone else is still out looking for you. They’re all scared.”

“Of me?”

Xion shot him a look like he hadn’t been listening. “Van, they’re all worried sick. Because you didn’t say anything to anyone before you turned off your phone and then came out here.” She gestured around the desolate earth. “You think anyone wants to come out here again?”

“Then why did you—”

“I knew your heart was here. I’m the only one who could find you, and… I wanted to make sure you were okay before I told the others to come.”

The others. That was right. Xion might understand, but no one else did. It wasn’t like she could stop what was coming. “…What are they going to do with me?”

“Van, they don’t know, okay?” Xion said, fed up. “Roxas told me because he was upset and we tell each other everything, but we haven’t told anyone else.” She sighed. “We wouldn’t… we wouldn’t out you like that unless you told us you were ready.”

The ground felt like it might fall out from beneath him as relief hit his chest like a wave. Tears welled in his eyes—were they supposed to come this easily? “You and Roxas didn’t…” Van didn’t know how to finish, so he sniffed and tried again. “How is he?”

“…He’ll be okay, Van. We all will.” He could almost believe her. “But… we were all in Sora’s heart together, you know? And he and Ventus, well… they were part of each other in a way I wasn’t.”

Van’s mind brushed memories of Ventus’ contented dreams. For an intangible time, he was alone, until a boy with his face appeared, the outline of a girl behind him. And they were together, but someone was missing.

“…What about Vanitas?” It was a question the darker parts of his heart knew all too well. What about me?

Xion shook her head. “…I don’t know. I don’t even know where he was.” She tugged at the hem of her shirt. “We didn’t… I don’t think we ever really got the chance to meet him. But maybe that’s worse.”

Against better judgement, Van sifted through his head for Vanitas’ memories of that time, and stiffened as he was hit with the vice grip of the dark, in the pit of someone else’s chest.

Vanitas’ time in Sora’s heart had not been pleasant. He hadn’t gone willingly into sleep, like the others. No—Vanitas had fought, and Sora’s heart must have locked him somewhere deeper, maybe to protect itself. And there, between drifting fits of slumber, Vanitas had laid motionless, paralyzed inside the boy whose face he’d stolen.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Xion began. “To pull it up.”

 Naminé had been the first to remind Van, when she froze him on the beach, but he knew she wouldn’t be the last. “…It’s okay.”

Maybe it was, now. Vanitas had always been near, but forever set apart. But maybe now… Maybe he was finally somewhere closer.

They weren’t here, but they were a part of him, and in that way, maybe they weren’t entirely gone.

Xion held his hand as Van turned his phone back on. It buzzed with missed calls and messages like a tremor through his muscles. The waves of calm coming through Xion’s touch were the only things that let Van keep his nerve.

They’d wiped off his face as best they could, but his eyes were swimming with streaks of color that refused to settle, and his hair was equally unaffiliated, but it was better than having nothing to show.

He didn’t read anything anyone had sent him. He just dialed Aqua, and Terra in case they were in different places.

They answered at about the same time—right away—and the Gummiphone screen split in two to show both their tired, ecstatic, confused faces.

“Ven!” they said in perfect sync.

“Where are you?” from Aqua with a simultaneous “What happened?” from Terra as Chirithy popped up from behind his shoulder. Terra was at the Land of Departure, no doubt waiting for him to come back, while Aqua was out somewhere he didn’t recognize. Still not content to sit still. He wondered if she’d ever be able to again.

The tears were already coming. He’d have to get used to this. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry.” He couldn’t tell them everything, but that didn’t mean he had nothing to say. With Xion’s hand in his, he went on. “I know… I’ve been acting like I’m okay, but I’m not, and I… I just need you to let me be not okay.” It sounded like nonsense in his ears, but it kept coming. “You’re both so strong, and I’m not, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…” His eyes were too blurry to see their disappointment, and their silence dug into him like icicles.

“Ven…” Aqua said softly, after too many moments had passed.

“That’s not true, Ven.”

Before Van could protest, Terra went on. “We’re… Ven, I don’t think any of us are okay.” His voice pitched, tilting too high like it did when he cried. “But we’re… we’re all trying, and that’s enough. It’ll always be enough. Okay?”

“…It’s all right if darkness still touches our hearts,” Aqua said, forcing her voice out evenly. “Because as long as we’re together, it can never take us again.”

Van wanted more from her—something that didn’t sound like a practiced speech, something raw and real—but it was all he was going to get. They at least seemed to concede that this wasn’t the time to barrage him with questions.

“We were so worried, Ven!” Chirithy mercifully filled the lull in the conversation. “Please don’t turn your phone off like that again!!”

“Sorry, Chirithy…” Van murmured.

“Are you coming back soon?” they asked hopefully, paws clasped. Chirithy was hardest to read, but at least they seemed concerned.

“Soon,” he conceded.

“We’ll be waiting.” Terra’s smile was back, and Aqua had hers, even though her lips were tight with worry.

“You’re so much stronger than you know, Ven,” she said. “And you’ll be okay.”

Van gave a weak smile, then hung up.

Xion continued to sit with him, the two of them saying nothing. It was an easy silence, like the ones he’d shared with…

Van set his jaw, and brought his phone back out. He let his eyes focus on the missed calls and messages from Roxas.

There were so many.

R: van i’m so sorry
R: that was such a shit way to treat you and i don’t know what i can ever do to fix it
R: it wasn’t about you, it really wasn’t. i should’ve known, but i was keeping something else in my head that wasn’t fair to you
R: and i wasn’t ready, but that’s not on you--that’s all me, and i want you to know that because you’re important to me
R: i hope you’re okay
R: i hope we can be okay.
R: i’ll stop spamming you now. sorry

Xion was trying to catch his eye, but he turned away. She took the signal to stand.

“Don’t stay too long,” she said, brushing her fingers across his hair. “I’ll see you later, Van. Okay?”

“Okay.”

The whisps of a dark corridor opened, but before Xion stepped through, Van spoke up.

“Xion.” She turned. “Thank you.” The words weren’t enough, but he knew his heart was saying them louder than his voice ever could.

She gave him a smile, and with a little wave, she was gone. Van was alone again, but it was like everything had changed. His world had never been able to make up its mind, but he wasn’t going to let go of what it had become today—not for anything. Because, somehow, through some miracle, his world had become one where “okay” was a possibility he could see, and hold in the palm of his hand.

Van looked at the messages on the Gummiphone again, to make sure they were still there. To make sure they were still real.

because you’re important to me

i hope we can be okay.

Van steadied his fingers, and typed his reply.

V: I’m okay
V: We’ll be okay.

Chapter Text

Van’s eyes opened, vision swirling until he realized it wasn't his vision—it was his skin. He was looking at his hand, draped next to his head. It had been smooth when he’d gone to sleep, but now it was budding with dark, raised lines.

Vanitas had buried his scars along with his tears, but now they’d come out to press against Van’s skin. They ebbed up and down, sinking beneath the surface as Van pushed them back like low waters over tide pools. His hair danced at the edge of his vision, shifting from dark to light and back again.

He raised himself, and closed the eyes he knew were oscillating between yellow and blue without even needing a mirror to check.

In and out, he pressed breath through his lungs with the rhythm of the tides inside him until he could smooth them to stillness.

The first time, seeing the scars had sent him into another spiral, but now, a few days later, it had softened into part of his morning routine.

Ever since Xion’s tears had unlocked his heart, something had quieted inside him, and he’d spent the past few days sifting through the feelings roiling in his chest. And crying. There had been a lot of crying.

Van was back in the Land of Departure, but the others were keeping their distance, probably worried that if they didn’t treat him like glass, he’d vanish again. Maybe they were right to. They’d said nothing when he’d shut himself away in the first room they’d given him—his room, not Ven’s—and the only signs that Van wasn’t alone in the castle were the meals being left outside.

So when there was a knock on his door, the charge that had been all but put to sleep sent him jolting into his usual wall with a thud.

“Ven?”

Chirithy was the last of the three he expected—he’d always thought Terra and Aqua would break first, but maybe Chirithy was just acting as their liaison.

“Is it ok if I come in?” came their soft voice from the other side of the door. They’d definitely heard him hit the wall, which meant he’d already given up the chance to pretend to be asleep.

Van opened the door, and stepped aside to let Chirithy in. They padded over towards the bed, and hopped up onto the covers, leaving space enough for him to sit beside them. He did.

They wrung their paws in their lap, like something was on their mind. “…I like your hair, Ven. Your eyes, too.”

It was an obvious place to start, maybe, but it was as good a place as any. It was the most visible, the most tangible representation of what was going on inside him, after all. Once he’d calmed himself down, Van’s hair tended to settle into a dark brown, and his eyes had begun to look green if you weren’t close enough to see the blue and gold writhing like cool, opalescent snakes in his sockets.

“…Thanks.” Van had never wished for Ventus’ old memories more—the ones that might help him navigate this conversation with Chirithy.

“…I’m really sorry, Ven.”

He blinked. “Why?”

“You weren’t ready to go back to your old room.”

Maybe Chirithy was sharper than he was giving them credit for. It wasn’t like this was their first time seeing their friend in turmoil—they’d seen Ventus all the way through the Keyblade War, for star’s sake.

The Keyblade War…

That aside, what had happened in Ven’s room seemed so long ago now. Not that he’d want to repeat it any time soon, but he’d spent more time blaming himself than any of them—least of all Chirithy. "You were just trying to help."

Chirithy was quiet. Van stared at their stitched face, trying to find an emotion he could read. Normally, it was no use, but today, he had the odd thought that the small thing looked guilty.

“No Ven, I… I was being selfish. I thought that, maybe, if you felt more like your old self again, maybe you’d be closer to… to…”

Oh. “…To feeling like my old self again.”

Chirithy nodded slightly, ashamed. “But that wasn’t right,” they pressed, jumping up. “You’re a new Ven now! Even newer than before!” They hopped onto his lap and put a small, soft paw on his hand. “And I love you, Ven. I love you no matter what.”

He hadn’t felt like crying a moment ago, but his tears had become a new force he could neither stem nor control. Van choked out a sob, and a torrent of tears took him under. At some point, he wrapped his arms around Chirithy’s tiny form, and tucked them into his chest as he cried.

They stroked his shirt with their soft paw, shhing and soothing him as they did, and something deep in him stirred. Ventus, crying tears vaster than this. Tears without reason or end, too long ago to fathom, and Chirithy had held him too.

“Do you think you’ll be ready to come out soon, Van?” Chirithy asked, still pressed against his chest.

Van nearly hit the wall again. “Wh-What?”

“Aqua and Terra are worried you’re gonna stay in here forever,” Chirithy went on. “You should let them know you’re feeling better.”

“But—” Van’s mouth had gone dry. “—what did you call me?”

“Van, right?”

He hadn’t heard wrong. But how had Chirithy—

“You asked me to call you Van.” Their brow seemed to furrow. “While you were crying?”

Van’s face lit up with heat. His eyes flicked away. “Oh.”

“Do you not want me to…?”

“No!” he blurted. “I mean—I want you to. But… just between us. Until I can tell Terra and Aqua too.”

“I’m sure they’d understand, Ven—I mean!! Van!”

And there was a chance they would—however small—but he still wasn’t ready to find out.

“…I’ll think about it,” he conceded. “Until then, can you…”

“You can count on me, Van!” Chirithy nodded. “I’m good at keeping secrets for you!” Before he could think of a response, Chirithy had leapt down from his bed, and scampered through the door.

He had to talk to Terra and Aqua. Since he’d gotten back, he’d told himself that they’d all been apart so long that a few days here and there wouldn’t make a difference, but he’d known from the beginning that that was a lie, even if it was one he needed to tell himself.

They were on their way back inside from sparring practice. When they saw him, the tears were already blurring them from his vision as nostalgia hit him like a keyblade to the chest. He held out his arms, and they knew what to do. Van was assailed by someone else’s feelings as the three of them held each other, and he let them come because these ones didn’t hurt. He let them hold him until he couldn’t tell his tears from theirs.

“We love you, Ven,” Terra said, his face buried in Van’s hair. “No matter what you’re going through.”

And that was all. They didn’t bring up the Keyblade, even though he could see the questions flickering in Aqua’s eyes. He’d come home on a new glider, and 3 days had been more than enough time for them to get over their happiness at his return and start to wonder what it had meant.

When it had come time for Van to summon his Keyblade and get home, he’d expected the X-blade to be the first one to jump at the call, given how unstable he’d become. But its grating voice had become muffled, like a protective film had grown around it.

The tears had brought him clarity. Resolve. This was a heart that had no use, no need for the X-blade. He intended to keep it that way.

There was no question whether Wayward Wind would be the best glider to come home on, but when he had called to summon it, its name snagged on something in his chest.

A fourth option rose into existence, and materialized in his hand.

Even without the judging eyes, the searing red lines running along the edges like cuts, he recognized Void Gear’s features when he saw them. Wayward Wind was in it too, with its blunt edges and unbalanced teeth.

Van twirled the handle to grip it backhand. It didn’t feel any different between his fingers, and as he held it, a new name rose to his mind like a message in a bottle bobbing to the surface.

Wayward Void.

Van almost scoffed. The joke of a name pricked his eyes as the last vestiges of moisture tried to bring him back into tears. But as he looked at the keyblade, between the fused features of Ventus and Vanitas’ keyblades, there laid… something else. Streaks of green like oxidized copper running between the rivets and welding. The keychain was different, too—an elegant silver “X”, but not a X-blade “X”, more like—

His eyes widened.

Van turned the keyblade into a glider before he could let himself dwell on what it meant.

The day after he let Terra and Aqua hold him, he called Roxas. They’d been texting each other, talking like nothing had happened, even though their first messages still sat at the top of their chat history like heavy bricks.

“…The beach, again?”

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” They both already knew the answer to that. Even though neither of them had been born on the Islands, it was impossible to deny the imprint their sands had left on both of them.

And… this, whatever it was, seemed to belong on the beach—wrapped inside familiar sounds and slow, repeating rhythms that reverberated the foundations of their hearts.

“…You look good.”

Van’s heart kicked against his ribs. “Good?”

“Better?” Roxas corrected, eyes flicking away and back again. “Xion told me you were kind of—” he wobbled his free hand like a scale, “—in flux?”

Van ran his thumb across his palm, along the line of one of Vanitas’ invisible scars. “…Yeah. I’ve gotten better.”

“Did you fix your eyes, too?” Roxas brought his screen closer, freckles shifting as he squinted at Van’s image. “I can’t tell.”

Van felt his face begin to heat at the scrutiny. Roxas, looking deliberately at him, not letting his eyes glance away to focus on something else like he tended to do when there wasn't a screen between them.

“Not yet,” Van said, before deciding that he could do better. Between the quickening beats of his heart, Van pushed out a small promise. “You’ll see them in person.”

Roxas met it. “I will.” Roxas’ smile was small, but it traveled all the way to his blue, blue eyes.

This time, Van thought to pack snacks. One of his soul-searching discoveries had been that all of his running off and having meltdowns in the desert without food or water had been, in a word, unhelpful.

Aqua had gotten back into baking to keep herself busy, and there were always plenty of sweets around. Van wiped down a dusty basket and started bundling some small pies to put into it. Then, remembering the sand, laid a cloth napkin across the bottom of the basket.

“What are you packing for?” Aqua’s voice was tight as a leash. He’d been too distracted to sense her come into the kitchen.

“The beach. With Roxas.” Her shoulders relaxed slightly, and Van pushed the tension out of his own. “I forgot to bring food, before, and…”

Aqua stroked his hair. “Take as much as you need.” He felt his leash being deliberately lengthened with each word, though not yet cut. Her hand laid heavy on his head.

“I’ll be back later,” he told her on the platform. And he would. He would be back, because wasn’t handing over any more days to Ventus and Vanitas, or to despair. They could have scattered hours in the nights he couldn’t sleep, they could have waves of memory that hit him without warning, but not days. Not days at the beach, and… not days with Roxas. The Land of Departure still wasn’t quite home, but he’d resolved to stop treating it as a place to run away from, and the Keyblade Graveyard as a place to run away to.

Besides, they’d know where to look for him now.

Aqua pushed her face into a smile. “Be safe.”

No don’t stay out too long, no come back soon. He gave her a smile in return. “I will.”

Van summoned Wayward Void—which he might have summoned even it wasn’t the only Keyblade he’d managed to call since he got back. Just to remind Aqua it was there.

She said nothing, just nodded her goodbye as Van climbed onto his glider.

Being honest with each other—really and truly honest—was still out of their grasp, but now it seemed within reach.

Chapter Text

Roxas was already waiting on the play island when Van got there—sitting on the tree like he’d been when Van had almost drowned. Van set down the picnic basket.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Silence settled between them—the uncomfortable kind. Van forced himself not to be the one to break it, because he had something he was waiting for. There was a weight hanging between the two of them that phone calls and texts could only carry for so long. One of them still had to cut the rope.

As Roxas hopped down from the tree, he didn’t let his arms fall to his sides with the momentum of the jump. They lingered in the air for a moment too long, like he was trying to decide what to do with them. As they lowered to his sides, Van’s heart sank with them.

Roxas looked him in the eyes. Really looked him in the eyes. Taking in the blue and the gold and everything in between.

“…I’m sorry, Van.”

Van let it spread over his heart like a salve, though it would take longer than this to begin its work. “…Me too.” Roxas flashed him a look like he’d stolen his ice cream bar. Van went on anyway. “For not… talking about it. For not telling you.”

“As if that was your job!” Roxas clenched his fists at his sides. “As if you’re supposed to have to broadcast it to everyone you meet!”

Van looked at him. Roxas looked back. Their eyes crashed against each other like waves, but Van’s bore their weight in gold.

Roxas let out a long breath through his nose, and his hands uncurled like flowers in the sun. “All right. We’re both sorry.”

Van was still waiting for something, though he didn’t realize what it was until Roxas raised his hand. The other boy’s eyes were trained on it as if he could see red-hot metal coiling beneath his skin, and after unbearable seconds had passed, he placed it gingerly on Van’s shoulder. Van’s breath came out in a soft gasp muffled mercifully by the crashing waves on the beach.

“I’m going to make it up to you,” Roxas said, his touch like a seal to the promise. Even so, Van could feel the tension in Roxas’ fingers through the fabric of his t-shirt as he kept it there, like he was afraid if he moved, he’d tear it, rip apart the threads they’d just mended.

Roxas was trying so hard. For him.

“Shit—” Roxas stepped a little closer, his free hand hovering near Van’s face. “Did I—”

A breeze brushed his face, and as Van felt the streaks of cold on his cheeks, he realized he was crying. But more importantly, Roxas’ touch was lifting, about to take off like a startled bird.

Before it could, Van brought his hand to rest on top of Roxas’, fingers closing around it in an easily breakable vise. The two of them stood frozen there until the sound of waves pushed the silence between them back to a place that the two of them could navigate.

“…It’ll be okay, Roxas.” Van let his hand fall, and Roxas pulled his away, fingers splayed so they wouldn’t catch on his shirt. Roxas had touched him so easily before, on the beach in the dark when he’d given him his name. But now Van was a thing that could be broken. Just like everything else in Roxas’ life.

“I can carry that,” Roxas said, pivoting to the basket. As he bent down, his necklace slipped out from underneath his shirt, and when he straightened again, it glinted in the sun like a silver X across his heart.

Roxas pointed to the south, where a sandy island thick with trees peeked above the water. “There’s a little island over that way that I want to show you. We’ll have to take a corridor.”

Van had told himself he’d think about his keychain later.

It was later.

And Roxas was wearing its symbol around his neck.

Van dragged his attention away from it, to Roxas’ plain t-shirt and the checkers running down the sides of his swim trunks, and let his gaze keep drifting until it landed on the form-fitting training garb he himself was wearing. It wasn’t Vanitas’ suit, which he still hadn’t rid himself of a want for, but it was breathable and it wouldn’t matter if he got it wet in the water.

He was stalling.

“My keyblade changed.”

“So did you,” Roxas said, kicking a pebble off the raised platform. “Makes sense.”

Van didn’t know how to bring this up. So he brought up the Keyblade itself. It flashed into his grip with an ease he was still getting used to.

Roxas’ eyes started at the top, then moved down, taking in its pieces one by one. “It’s like you now,” he said, a small smile playing on his lips. As he found the keychain, though, his smile dropped, and the skin under his freckles grew pinker in the sun. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Van’s mouth tightened in matching discomfort.

The silence didn’t last as long as he feared. “…Do you want to use it instead?”

“What?”

Roxas pointed to the small island. “You can turn it into a glider, right?”

Van’s nod came slowly. “So… you use a corridor, and I’ll meet you there?” Maybe a little space would be good, now that he’d made things weird. But why the glider? Roxas knew he could teleport.

“I could… ride with you,” Roxas said deliberately, attention still turned to the island.

“You’d…” Van’s throat dried up. He tried to recover. “You’d have to hold onto me.” Roxas couldn’t be serious.

When Roxas glanced back at him, Van realized he was serious. “Can you wear your armor?”

Van held his hand out, and Roxas used it to pull himself up onto the glider behind him. Through his gauntlets, Roxas’ touch felt normal, and Van wanted it to last longer than it did.

“They really do need to set us up with gear like this.” Roxas shifted his weight, testing the balance of the glider. “Lea’s gonna be so jealous.”

“He’s gonna have to get his own. I doubt I could keep balanced with him on board.”

Roxas hesitated. “But I’m okay? I’m not too heavy?”

“We’ll be fine as long as you hold on.”

Roxas’ hand settled on the same shoulder it had when he arrived.

Tch. “Roxas, that’s not balanced. And if we fall, pulling me out of the water again’s going to be harder with armor on.”

Roxas let go, and as if in retaliation, cinched his arms directly beneath Van’s ribcage like he was going to suplex him off the glider. “How’s that?” He sounded a little annoyed, but it was difficult to tell through the armor, and Van was too busy picturing Roxas’ hands interlocked around his waist.

Van cleared his throat. “That’s fine.”

Before he could lose his nerve, he pushed off. The glider moved easily, unperturbed by Roxas’ presence, and carried them out above the open water.

He started out safe, coasting high above the waves where they couldn’t catch him. But the sound of the seaspray and gulls brought with them Ventus’ memories of Neverland, of exploring lagoons, flying close enough to feel mist on his fingers, and an unshakeable, adventurous heart.

Van tipped his weight forward and the glider tilted down, dipping to trace the crests of waves. He let his muscle memory take over, easily steering with years of confidence behind him.

Van felt Roxas’ laugh before he heard it. It came in a shudder through the chest pressed up against his back, and burst from Roxas’ lips like a splash of water.

Without warning, or at least without any warning he’d noticed, a wave crested before them, rising to eclipse Van’s view. The sudden shadow over his visor stalled his reflexes, locked his muscles.

But before the wave could catch the nose of the glider and fling them into the water, a shift behind him brought it sailing upwards and above the wave.

Roxas let out a brilliant laugh behind him.

Van’s reflexes hadn’t recovered yet, but when another wave came, Roxas shifted his feet again, easily steering them free.

It wasn’t until he felt the strain in his face that he realized how broadly he was smiling beneath his helmet. Van leaned away from the next wave, Roxas circled around the next, and they continued to trade, each trusting the other to lead. It was like dancing.

Each rolling wave pushed Van’s heart higher, higher until it felt pressed against the endless sky.

They reached the shore, and Roxas hopped down to pull the basket off of the back of the glider. Van had completely forgotten about it.

“Is the food okay?”

Roxas snickered, and Van drank it in like freshwater. “A little saltier than it was before, but it’ll be fine.”

“I didn’t know you could surf like that,” Van said after he’d dismissed his armor, not even trying to mask the excitement in his voice.

Roxas sat down on the sand, then flopped backwards. Van settled beside him.

“I can skateboard, too.” Roxas brought his wrist up cover his eyes as his mouth went taut. “Thanks to Ventus.” He pressed it out of his chest like a confession.

So it was time.

“…How well did you know him?” Ventus’ memories of Roxas were harder to parse, too bright to make out. Ventus been asleep as they happened, and Van didn’t want to know what they held, but the idea of not knowing hurt more.

Roxas sighed through his nose. “We were close.” His voice peaked painfully. “When I was… born… pieces of Ventus got into me just like pieces of Sora did. And when I returned to Sora’s heart, those pieces called back to him. We found each other.”

Van kept his eyes on the water, imagined it taking the awful things rising in his chest and carrying them away and out to sea.

“I had… a lot of rage. I was… I was made of it.” Roxas pressed on. “I wasn’t always conscious, or aware of what was going on, but even in the darkness, Ventus was always a light I could count on.”

Van carefully matched his breaths to the push and pull of the tide.

“When he and Vanitas told us they were going to fuse, he made it sound…” Roxas’ voice broke off. “I thought…”

“They lied,” Van added darkly. “They knew what would happen.”

Roxas drew in a shaking breath. “I trusted him. I trusted him to come back, even if he was different. Even if someone else was part of him.” Roxas let his arm fall to the sand beside him, revealing reddened eyes. “But he didn’t.”

Van wanted to brush away a strand of hair that had gotten stuck to Roxas’ wet eyelashes, but Roxas went on before he could.

“I was the one made by mistake. You weren’t.”

Van’s gut twisted. “Roxas…”

“They wanted this. Wanted you.”

A prickling charge met the back of his skull, like someone stroking his hair. Then it was gone.

“And I do too. I want you to be here. You deserve to be here.” Roxas’ elbow pressed into the sand as he raised his arm, palm out. Van reached to take it, laced his fingers to hold it, but it might as well have been driftwood sticking out of the beach, because Roxas didn’t hold it back.

They left their shoes behind with the basket, and set off across the hot sand.

“I want to show you something,” Roxas said, voice as light as it could be after their dip into the fathoms that continued to run invisibly between them.

Van followed him into the shallows, taking in the way the sand beneath his feet shifted from hot and sluggish, to cool and firm, then finally to what felt like lush loam between his toes.

Roxas stopped when they were only ankle deep, and pointed into the water. “Look.”

In the water, there were little fish—minnows, he recalled from one of Vanitas’ encyclopedia sessions. Greyish, almost invisible minnows swam in the shallows, seen only by their small shadows marring the sand.

Vanitas had never gotten to see them, so Van crouched closer to take in their twitching movements, the little sparks of light they kicked up as their scales caught the sun.

“Do you catch them?” Van asked, eyes hungry.

“Sora did. When this place was more popular, there was a little stand that would sell nets.” Roxas laughed to himself. “Kairi was the only one who could ever catch any.”

Van returned his attention to the tiny things, eyes roving for the smallest shadow he could see, and all at once it was in his hands, seconds skipped. It swirled in the water cupped between his palms, and a shadow eclipsed the small pool as Roxas leaned over to look.

“That trick has its perks.” His voice was warm. Close.

Van watched the fish twitch and circle in search of escape. The water was getting low in his hands, so he lowered them and parted his palms, watched the fish flutter away through the water.

He caught another, then another, catching and releasing them like butterflies. When he moved to catch them, the water around his hands would be suddenly displaced, sending a bubbling pulse that scattered the surrounding fish.

The next time, he raised his hands to find two tiny fish cupped between them.

Roxas’ laugh, unburdened and free, sparked the air like notes of music, and Van’s voice joined his.

“Show off.” Roxas elbowed him, as gently as he could, and Van, still laughing, dipped his hands back to release them.

“Think you could get any?”

Roxas’ smile drifted out with the next brush of the waves. “I doubt it.”

“I doubt that.”

Roxas gave him an incredulous look before bringing a hand into the water. As he did, the tiny shades of minnows scattered, scurrying out of the shallows like they’d been hit with a beam of light.

Roxas lowered himself to a crouch, then folded his arms on top of his knees, eyes cast down to the cleared water.

“Why did they…” Van began.

“Animals know,” Roxas murmured.

Van didn’t want to ask, but he didn’t understand and Roxas had gone quiet again. “Know what?”

“It’s the replica body. They know I’m something that isn’t right.”

Van remained beside him, letting shallow water lap at both their ankles as he followed the shadow of a curious minnow that had returned to lace around his toes. His creation had been even more unnatural than Roxas’, so why weren’t they afraid of him too?

“I’m in a body that was made. Artificially.” Roxas had anticipated what he’d been about to bring up. “You’re just in a body that was… rearranged.”

Maybe it made sense. The way animals flocked to Ventus, perched on his shoulder, Ven had practically been a Princess of Heart himself. Across the worlds there had even been animals drawn to Vanitas, though they were more like predators and scavengers circling what they thought was easy prey, and that had been their mistake.

“Does the same thing happen to the others?”

Roxas’ frown deepened in what appeared to be an attempt to stop his chin from trembling. “…No.”

“So it’s just you.”

“They know I can hurt them.”

A spark of anger met the prick of new tears in Van’s eyes. “Have you, though?”

“I already told you about Lea—”

“Anyone could’ve gotten a broken wrist with the way you guys play,” Van interrupted sharply. “If you force things away from you, eventually that’s where they’ll stay.”

Roxas kept his eyes trained on the water.

Van’s life seemed to be a prolonged exercise in things he couldn’t take back, but he was beginning to learn how to keep stepping forward. “You can touch things without hurting them. I’ve seen you do it.”

Roxas turned to him, face shifting with shadows bouncing up from the water below them.

“You didn’t hurt me when you pulled me out of the water.” Even when Roxas had been pissed at him. “Or when you touched my hand. That night.” Van’s heart was reliving touch by touch, holding them up against the awkward, stone grips Roxas had met him with today. “It’s only when you… think about it.” And he was wishing more and more that Roxas would stop thinking about it so damn much.

Roxas shifted backwards, plopping into a seat in the shallow water. He braced his arms behind him and closed his eyes to turn his face to the sky. Van joined him, shivering briefly as the water hit the bottom of his suit.

They could see the south side of the play island from here. From this angle, it looked entirely different, but there was one landmark Van could still recognize.

“Why were you out there?”

“What?”

“The night I came back to the island. You were already sitting on the tree.”

Roxas ran a hand down his face, then up again to adjust his hair. “Probably the same as you. It’s where we seem to end up—all of us.”

Van thought back. He’d gone there because it had felt like the only place left he could go. The only place that wouldn’t remind him of who he wasn’t, wouldn’t judge him for what he was.

It was a lot like Sora.

“Being here makes me feel like we’re together.”

Roxas’ voice was filled with such naked fondness that he couldn’t be talking about anyone but…

“Like Sora’s still here.”

Van never could have forgotten Sora, but he had begun to forget how his name sounded aloud. Ever since he’d woken, he hadn’t heard anyone say it, even though it was always there—waiting with a weight that could shatter the world. But its absence hadn’t shattered Roxas like it had Ven and Vanitas, and its crossing Roxas’ lips wouldn’t be enough to break things now.

“You miss him.” It seemed stupid to make it a question.

“Do you?”

Van’s eyebrows knit. His eyes found the play island again. “I… I don’t know.” Sora was gone, but he was everywhere.

Sora was the reason he was here.

Sora was the reason Ventus and Vanitas were gone.

Echoes of Sora still rang through their reality, strung between the hearts of the people he’d touched. The strings that connected them all were too vast to process, too tangled to unravel, and Sora wasn’t here to do it for them yet.

Yet.

The word was strange in his mind, because unlike so many things, no complication came with it. Because even as Ventus and Vanitas were shattering, rearranging their pieces into something else, they hadn’t doubted Sora’s return. The certainty of it had been built into his very core.

When Van said nothing more, Roxas just gave a soft smile to the sea, like he and it were sharing a secret. “I hope you know him. Someday.”

Van smiled too. “I will.”

Chapter Text

Van and Roxas arranged the picnic on some dry sand, beyond where the rising tide could reach. The sun was beginning to lower in the sky, and would set soon. The day would be over.

The splashes of seawater had damaged the miniature pies less than Van had thought. Once they peeled off the napkins he’d wrapped them in, they were more or less perfect—delicate, flaked crust with a dusting of sugar crystals. Aqua had used little cookie cutters to cut different shapes out of the tops, exposing the filling inside.

Roxas took a raspberry one. “What bakery’d you get these from?” He took a bite, letting out an audible mmm as the taste hit his tongue.

“Aqua made them.” Van’s eyes were trained on Roxas’ hands.

“Seems like she has a gift for everything.”

“She practices,” he said, a little defensive. He’d eaten plenty of sub-par pastries on her path to getting back into baking, and he’d called them delicious because it had made her so happy. It was the price he’d paid to get to this moment… but it was a price all the same.

“What’s that face for?” Roxas asked, mouth full.

“Aqua had a learning curve. For baking.”

He swallowed. “That bad, huh?”

“Yeah. She was really good, before, but after… I think any taste seemed exciting. When she got back.”

Roxas nodded, then, after a beat, “The cake at your… party was pretty good, though.”

“Chirithy helped with that one. I think they made sure Aqua didn’t put anything weird in it.”

“They said it was from a long time ago, didn’t they?” Roxas opened his mouth to say more, but couldn’t seem to figure out how to word it.

“Yeah,” Van answered to cut off the threat of silence. “They made it for Ventus, back when they knew him.” Van hadn’t thought of the cake—hadn’t thought of much of anything that had happened that day, save the parts with Roxas—but this time, when he recalled the taste, something heavy and nostalgic hit the back of his throat. “I…” He swallowed the rising tears because he knew they weren’t his.

Roxas pushed out a breath, taking the reaction as a sign to shift the subject. “That was a weird day.”

“Yeah. I guess.” It felt like so long ago.

“You didn’t blink much. And you kept teleporting,” Roxas explained, trying to smother a smile building on his face. “You almost made Lea spill his fruit punch on Isa.”

“I did?” Van said, feeling a laugh rising to bubble up his throat.

Roxas let his own laugh loose. “Yeah—you appeared right in front of him, like, on your way to get more cake or something, and if Naminé hadn’t stopped Lea’s cup, it would’ve ended up all over Isa’s shirt.”

Van coughed down the bite of pie he’d taken, trying to breathe through a burst of laughter.

“I don’t think any of us knew what to do with you. You were so intense.”

Van breathed in, trying to smother more insistent laughter. “Thanks—Thanks, Roxas. For talking to me, that night.” He sniffed as his chest made a sudden tip into melancholy. “I needed it.”

“Yeah. No problem.” Roxas’ eyes glanced off Van’s face, and out at the horizon. “How are things going? With the others?”

Van let his eyes follow Roxas’, and pushed out a breath with the waves. “Chirithy knows,” he confessed to the shifting sky. “But I’m not going to tell Aqua or Terra yet.” Chirithy had said they loved him no matter what, and even though Terra and Aqua had said more or less the same… they’d been talking to someone else.

“…I’ll tell them when they already know. When they’ve figured it out for themselves.”

“Yeah,” Roxas said. “Maybe… it’ll be sooner than you think.”

“I hope so.”

There was one pie left. Van watched as Roxas took it, fingers nimbly handling its flaky crust without so much as denting it. Van scrutinized the pie as Roxas took a bite, but in truth it probably looked more like he was scowling at it. “You didn’t crush any pies with your stupid hands.”

Van watched the filling spill out of the pie and onto the sand as Roxas closed his fingers around it. “It’s—different.”

“How is it different?”

“Because I can’t hurt a pie.”

“Hey,” Van said. “Pies have feelings. And I’d know. Plenty of Aqua’s wanted to be put out of their misery.”

Roxas shoved him, not hard enough to bruise, and it felt like a win.

“Wipe that smile off your face—I said it’s not that easy.” Roxas ate the crumbled remains of the small pie, and licked off the filling he’d gotten on his fingers. Van caught himself glaring at them.

“…I’m not a plastic fork, Roxas.”

“What?”

“You can’t snap me in half,” Van clarified. “Like a fork.” When Roxas still just stared at him, he went on. “You broke a plastic fork at the party.”

“You remember that and not nearly sending Isa into berserk mode over a stain on his new polo shirt?”

“Roxas.” He waited until Roxas met his eyes. “Will you hold my hand?”

Roxas’ eyes closed, shutting him down and shutting him out. “Maybe later, Van.” It sounded like he was trying to mean it.

When the sun grew low in the sky, dipping the world into the magic hour Roxas and his friends loved so much, for the first time, Van saw it. The beauty they found in twilight.

The bridge between light and dark, painting the sky with their colors together, just before passing into darkness.

Van started crying.

Roxas shifted closer, starting and restarting to speak, trying to find words that would stem the flow. Or maybe he was trying to find some excuse not to have to bridge the gap between them, to have to use his hands to comfort. “Hey…”

“Roxas,” Van snapped between his sniveling. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Roxas’ encroaching hand drew back.

“No.”

“What?”

Van grabbed Roxas’ hand before it could move any father away, and in the moment Roxas was too surprised to pull it back. “No.”

“I don’t know what you…”

“You do, Roxas. You do.” Van could feel the steel tensing inside the hand as he held it, insecurity creeping back into Roxas’ veins, so he let it drop. Van pulled his knees up, folded his arms on top of them, and buried his face. “If it’s never going to happen, just tell me so.” It was no use trying to control the tears at this point, so he let them pour out with his words. “And then th-this can be over.”

A long time passed, and Van counted the waves as they reached and receded, never close enough to touch him. Van resigned himself to it.

Van jumped as something pushed down on his shoulder, like a bird landing too heavily, and Van realized what it was. Roxas’ warm hand sat tensed there against the skin of his bare shoulder, stunned stiff and trying to figure out what it was supposed to do now.

Van raised his head, looking out at the sea, and waited.

Meticulously, muscle by muscle, the tension was stripped away from the touch, until Roxas’ thumb loosened to drift along the shoulder seam of Van’s sleeveless bodysuit.

Still, Van waited.

Ever since he’d been created, he’d been living for other people. For what they wanted. He’d jumped at chances to please them, even as cracks ran like currents through his bones.

Roxas and the others had been the ones to teach him that was wrong.

And here, and now, Van had decided what he wanted, what he deserved. He wasn’t going to settle for anything less.

And if not here, or now… then, somewhere. Somewhen. The world would keep moving. It had to, until it found the sky it had lost.

“I don’t want to hurt you. Any more than I already have,” Roxas said quietly.

Van closed his eyes, letting the twilight disappear from his sight.

“But… I don’t want this to end.” Roxas’ smooth voice was shaking, and after a moment more, his arm slid across the back of Van’s bodysuit to reach his opposite shoulder. “I don’t want to say goodbye to someone else.”

Roxas' touch was gentle, but Van felt like he was being broken by waves crashing on the shore as his chest began to rock with sobs. When he turned his head to Roxas, his vision blurred too much for him to make out his face.

Impossibly, Roxas’ other arm wrapped around him. Van unfolded himself out of his ball, sliding easily into Roxas’ arms. His hands moved to clutch at the back of Roxas’ shirt like he had Xion’s as he buried his face against Roxas’ chest.

Roxas’ hands became clumsy, moving shakily downwards where they came to a rest at the small of his back. Van quieted his crying, and loosened his own grip, giving Roxas the chance to pull away.

The trembling touch lifted, and Van thought it might have gone forever when Roxas’ fingers touched down on his head like warm raindrops in summer.

As his hand combed through Van’s hair, tracing through the parts drawn in Roxas’ own hair, his eyes drifted closed.

The next wave against the shore seemed to push his heart into his throat, high tide flooding his chest with emotions that were almost too much to contain. But even as he thought he might overflow, Roxas continued to stroke his hair, with fingers that felt less and less like strangers.

This was everything Van had wanted, but assumed he would never have.

What Ventus had had, with Terra and Aqua. What Vanitas had deserved, but never gotten. The closest he’d come was the embrace of his suit, wrapping tight around his chest to keep his breathing steady.

This was enough, but it wasn’t, and Van realized there was something more he could have, if he asked.

“…Roxas.”

Roxas’ hand paused. Van’s voice was wet from crying, and he cleared his throat.

“Will you kiss me?”

Before he could take it back, or decide he didn’t want to, Roxas pulled away to stare at him, with what seemed like a thousand excuses forming behind his lips.

Van gave him time to use them, but none of them made it out of his throat. Van tried not to let the hope in his chest breach his lungs and drown him, so he opened his mouth again.

“Or… do your lips have super strength too?”

A smile cracked across Roxas’ face as he pushed out a laugh that broke between them like the crest of a wave. “I… I dunno. I haven’t ever tested.”

Van swallowed to push his heart back down into his chest, and brought his hand to the nape of Roxas’ neck. Roxas’ hair was softer than he’d thought possible, and he kept his hand threaded through it as he leaned forward.

“Van. Your eyes are so pretty,” Roxas breathed in the closing space between them. Roxas’ own eyes were reflecting the amber of twilight, like fire trapped in sapphire.

“So are yours.”

Almost reluctantly, they both closed their eyes as their lips finally met.

There was a pull in Van’s chest that wanted to cascade and crash over Roxas like the rising tide, but the lips that met his were pursed, still unprepared for the contact. Van breathed out, and quieted the tug inside him until Roxas’ lips softened against his own, and as they did, he felt Roxas’ raspberry breath brush his face softer than his hands knew how.

Van’s eyes drifted open when next their lips parted, and met Roxas’ eyes above freckled cheeks. Van let his fingers fall from where they’d been combing through Roxas’ hair, and settled them onto Roxas’ shoulders.

Roxas’ eyebrows tightened with determination, and Van let his eyes drift close again. At last, Roxas’ hands returned to rest at his waist, and Van readied himself for Roxas’ wave to meet him.

Several moments passed, and Van shifted slightly forward in case Roxas needed the confirmation.

Immediately, their foreheads collided, and Van let out an audible “ow”. At once, they were both laughing, arms drawn around each other, and whatever had been tangled between them loosened its slack.

Somewhere between the sounds of their voices, echoes of Ventus, Vanitas, and Sora lit the small island as twilight faded into night.