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Once he’s fallen off the wagon, there’s nothing to do but snowball.
Alone in his black hole of a room at night, Vector wonders if it would just have been easier for everyone if he’d never come back after being absorbed by ole Donny. Surely the other Barian Emperors would find a way to forget about him, seeing as they couldn’t wait to get him out of their hair to begin with-- hell, Vector being a dropout was half the reason they all still went to school to begin with. It was just annoying, he’d say, to be forced into some sort of family-ish arrangement like such. It was just annoying, he’d say, to not even hide his misanthropy and still be ignored, the one frown amongst six somewhat smiling faces in every photo. And even when it wasn’t annoying, it was just plain tiring. Or boring.
Maybe it’s that chronic boredom that pushes him to steal Nasch’s bike key in the middle of the day when the others were probably enjoying an energetic lunch on Heartland Academy’s roof or something. Perhaps it was just the sleepy atmosphere alone at home that pushed him into his jacket and boots and Nasch’s helmet then plopped him down in the seat of the latter’s prized motorcycle. If anyone were to ask, that’s surely what Vector would tell them, at least. That it was annoying to wait at home for any entertainment to slink its way back in through the front door.
He doesn’t really stop anywhere, although he does get a vibe for the Heartland police’s schedule pretty easily with how fast he likes to go all the time. He can only hope that Nasch’s license plate isn’t registered as owned by a vehicular fugitive now, but even so. What could the police possibly do that hadn’t happened already?
Actually, the previous statement was a lie-- he does stop at a couple places, sometimes even parking and pulling off the helmet to get a better view. Most of them are just areas he feels he should at least seem a bit more nostalgic about, like where he first met Yuma while still playing the role of Shingetsu, where he’d reunited with Nasch for the first time after throwing the bastard’s sister off a cliff in Barian World, where he’d been kidnapped away by his clone before disappearing to Sargasso. He supposes he can figure why he isn’t exactly overcome with positive feelings at said landmarks.
When he returns home it’s always only half an hour or a little less before the rest of the Barian Emperors pile back inside the mansion. Vector wonders if he should start wearing a watch.
He manages to keep up the charade that he’s been staying at home or hoofing it for barely a week.
It wasn’t like Vector woke up early enough in the morning to tell who went to school that day and who didn’t. He didn’t really care either way if Durbe had decided to take a day off just to study, the prick, or if Mizael had decided that the school needn’t be blessed by his beauty that specific day. It’s just, if they found out about the whole bike thing, it’d be annoying to deal with. And Vector didn’t feel like being blackmailed anymore.
Maybe it’s that miniscule anxiety in him that convinces him to blast the TV at the highest volume it’ll go without imploding the speakers. If anyone was home they wouldn’t waste time telling him to shut up or keep it down.
After an entire performance from Sanagi-chan at max volume, Vector dully decides the coast is clear and grabs his jacket off the edge of the couch, slipping into his boots and traipsing out the garage door to where Nasch’s bike lays in wait for him. The key hangs from the pinboard above the small workbench that everyone collectively ignores, gleaming at Vector as if it’s winking, saying it knows something he doesn’t. He pulls it from its nail and is halfway through fitting his birds’ nest into Nasch’s helmet for a change when the door opens again. There stands Nasch, in all his unstylish teenage glory, eyes locked on a Vector stumbling over unearthing his head from the helmet immediately. “Need some help?” He asks sardonically, and Vector practically feels a vein pop out in his forehead at Nasch’s tone alone.
He finally manages to pull the wretched thing off (this is why he never wore it in the first place, seriously) and glares. “Fuck off.” Vector spits, voice dripping with venom-- he doesn’t stop to wonder for a moment why he’s suddenly so pissed, but oh well, this was Vector after all. “Did you want something?”
Nasch’s eye twitches. “No, I just went to check on my bike to find some asshole trying to steal it, but it’s fine, because he lives with me anyway.” Only when you say it like that, yeah, it sounds shitty.
Vector doesn’t even grace him with a response. Instead, in true fashion of himself, he sticks the key in the ignition and puts the kickstand up before Nasch can even run over to stop him. Perks of stealing a bike are knowing how to use said bike, unfortunately for the other. The look on Nasch’s face as he speeds away is something Vector’s sure he’ll savor for the rest of this shitty lifetime.
It’s only about two hours until he comes back, though. For some reason nothing peaks his interest today, and he returns home like a dog with its tail between its legs. Nasch is waiting, of course, sitting on the couch looking like his usual disgruntled self. Vector tosses him his key and stomps upstairs to where he promptly locks himself in his room. With his blinds drawn he tosses himself into bed, feeling very tired despite not doing much at all.
There is a sword in his hand, stained with plasma and blood. The handle is rusted to the point where it hurts just to hold it, the grains scratching against his palm at every given opportunity. Vector looks across the abyss before him and points the sword at his opponent today, none other than a face too familiar to place. He grins and the other does not.
Like a whisper in his ear wind seeps through his clothes and lack thereof on his top half, ruffling his hair ever so gently. His adversary pushes a strand of hair behind his ear and, surprisingly enough, doesn’t move to pull his own weapon from its sheath. He just watches the other’s sword tremble in Vector’s grip until he retracts it, with the latter screaming something he himself can’t make out. There’s a beat of silence that spans between the two. His opponent turns to walk away.
Vector sees red. There’s a voice in his ear, murmuring sweet victories. It must be coming from inside, he concludes, since no one is beside him now. The voice that comes from inside whispers what he must do, and he feels no pain, not even as his footing gives out beneath him when he finds himself stepping on nothingness (had he been walking forward?), not even as the sound of his body flipping midair and landing squarely on his head is tuned out for his own sanity, were there any left to begin with. Not even as his vision flickers into darkness and he reaches out into the light of the sun above, shining through the cracks in this black. Not even as the spirits of the dead drape themselves over his corpse, dragging him by the ankles down to their own personal hell.
He wakes alone, as he always does. He doesn’t start or panic-- he just stares at the ceiling, and with a tiny, tiny bout of motivation he pulls himself from his bed and over to his dresser where the switchblade kindly waits. Maybe it’d be more accurate to say that instead of him not feeling pain, he’s simply become an expert at ignoring it. The blood on his forearm surely thinks so.
Only after Vector begrudgingly cleans himself up and tunes back into reality does he realize it’s Sunday. It’s Sunday, meaning everyone is home. Meaning no joyride for him.
Meaning it’s time to barricade the door and wait for Monday.
He’s just about to turn the lock when the knob twists and the door is pulled open, revealing a Mizael with an expression of Nasch-level disgruntlement. “Merag wants you downstairs.” He says curtly, and Vector wonders for a fleeting moment if he’s done something wrong before remembering that he existed in the first place. He nods numbly, and Mizael raises an eyebrow at him before heading back downstairs to where the smell of sausage and salmon both floats up the stairwell.
When Vector throws on his jacket and ignores the sting of the leather rubbing against fresh injuries and opens the window, he isn’t exactly thinking straight. He’s taken this human body on enough test runs to know what’s going to happen if he jumps from the second story window-- he’s not going to die, not by a long shot, but he will indeed break some bones or at the very least sprain them. Still, that seems to be good enough, as Vector seems to pause for a moment before tossing himself out the window like a ragdoll with a bored expression on his face.
Nasch ends up being the involuntary volunteer to go rustle Vector for a second time, since Mizael complains that he’s busy as he hunches over a makeup compact. Merag and Alit are busy preparing breakfast, Gilag is as invested in Sanagi-chan’s new performance as ever, and Durbe has the Alit’s cat in his lap. So Nasch, just catching up on text messages and such from yesterday that he never replied to, is the obvious choice.
When he gets to the top of the stairs he’s already more than aware something is wrong. Vector’s door is ajar-- Vector never leaves his door open, not even when he’s not in it. He either locks it or just builds a flimsy barricade on the inside to keep everyone else out. Great metaphor, Nasch thinks offhandedly as he pulls it open to the other’s mess of a room. Indicator two that something’s wrong is two things, as a matter of fact: Vector is missing and his switchblade is not, sitting shinily on his bedside table as if it were just cleaned, which it could’ve been, for all Nasch knows. The question is just why -- the redhead never went anywhere without his knife, because god forbid he gets mugged in Heartland of all places. The window is open, too; Nasch takes a deep breath before he walks over, as if he knows exactly what’ll await him out there.
Surely enough, Vector’s lying in the shrubbery with an arm twisted in a way that makes no anatomical sense. He smiles up at Nasch when the other pokes his head out to look, trying to make a peace sign with his other hand but failing. “What’s wrong, Naschie poo?” He yells up to him. Nasch just sighs, and Vector can’t really tell if it’s out of irritation or concern, but he decides he doesn’t care as both options sound annoying.
Unsurprisingly, Nasch doesn’t call for the others, instead choosing to traipse down the stairs and walk out the side door to loom over Vector’s body, tangled with the rosebush that happens to be very thorny even without its blossoms. “Hey shitstain.” Vector grins up at him through the insult, hoping to get some sort of rise out of him, but all he receives in return is a tired look. It does nothing but piss him off. Nasch sighs again, effectively making Vector’s blood boil, and asks, “Can’t you just ask for help, like a normal person?”
Vector laughs out loud. “Oh, fuck off.” Nasch’s eye twitches. “From who, Yuma? You?”
“I don’t fucking know, but can you just not throw yourself out a window?” Nasch says quickly with a tone that’s slowly going from annoyance to anger. Vector giggles at his very action being mentioned. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Nasch fixes him with a glare. “Not dying.”
Vector rolls his eyes. “Sounds lame.”
It’s Merag who dutifully calls the ambulance.
Fortunately for Vector, none of the doctors bother asking just how he broke his arm in such a specific way. Good for them , he thinks cynically, less to worry about. Gilag draws a little Ponta on his cast in Sharpie marker as soon as he gets home.
Realizing his switchblade is missing is the hair that breaks the camel’s back, if fifty other hairs hadn’t already. He turns his room upside down with one hand just in case he’s misplaced it somehow, even though he distinctly remembers leaving it right next to his bed when he “fell” out the window. Vector thinks he has an inkling as to who took it, though.
With his hunch, he marches down the hall to Nasch’s room to where the other’s door is cracked, allowing Vector a slim view of him writing something down in a purple notebook. He knocks on the door forcefully enough that it swings open on its own, and Nasch jumps, slamming the notebook shut and throwing it in a desk drawer in one fluid motion. “Where’s my knife.” Vector asks, though it’s more of a command than a question. Nasch runs a hand through his hair and makes a face. “What makes you think I have it?” He plays innocent.
Vector sticks his tongue out at him. “Who the fuck else would?” He spits, and he stomps his foot on the floor like a child as if to make a point. “Give it back.”
Nasch fixes him with a ballsy glare, and Vector hears the word he’s going to say before it even comes out of his mouth. “No.”
Damn this shitty human arm, Vector curses inwardly. “What, afraid I’m gonna cut my lifespan short or something?” He laughs, like it was a joke at all. “Newsflash, Nasch: nobody gives a shit!”
The surprise on Nasch’s face is something Vector wishes he brought his phone to take a picture of. He knows he has to run before the other tries to convince him otherwise, so he spins on his heel and flips him the bird as he leaves the room.
Back in his own hideout, he buries himself under his covers and wills himself not to cry like a little bitch. Nasch, on the other hand, stares at the space where Vector used to be and bites his lip. He pulls his notebook back out, writing just two words before looking down at them and scribbling them out a little more forcefully than necessary. When Durbe goes through his trash later like the pack rat he is for Nasch memorabilia, he’ll see those words from the indentation on the paper and wonder who managed to propose before him.
No one did, but still, it was always funny to watch Durbe get mad.