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Vanitas finds him.
Of course he does, it’s not like there was any other option, Ven knew he was coming eventually. Could feel the prickle on the back of his neck and the nonexistent fissures in his heart ache for something he couldn’t place if he tried. So he sighs, and puts down the book Aqua had pressed into his hands earlier, and barely summons Wayward Wind in time to block an explosive overhand strike.
Ven’s heels dig into the ground as he takes the weight and turns it into momentum, throwing Vanitas backward down the hill. He does a flashy little flip on the way down, his skirt neatly following him like trails of smoke, but his expression is anything but smug. The glass of his helmet has either shattered completely or melted away, and his lips are pulled into a snarl, complete with bared fangs. His eyes are always sharp, harder than diamond in their amber, but now they seem wilder than usual, almost feral. They never once leave’s Ven’s as they both straighten into fighting positions.
“So, welcome back,” Ven says, gesturing with his free hand. Vanitas barks a laugh, and snaps his jaw closed so fast he almost bites through his lip. He rushes him, the familiar pitch-clang of their keyblades echoing down the hill and stopping at the treeline, enclosing the space like a cage. Ven ducks another wild slash and skids left, flinging his keyblade in a wide arc and forcing them back apart.
“I was going to say something else,” he calls, catching Wayward Wind and spinning it behind him. “Maybe we could sit down or something?”
“Sit around and talk about our feelings? ” Vanitas hisses.
“...yeah! And other stuff. You can’t expect me to know what you’re thinking.”
Vanitas makes a noise almost like a strangled fox and lights Void Gear ablaze, flinging a ball of fire straight into Ven’s block. It explodes on contact, ricocheting in five different directions and turning the grass to charcoal, and Ven leaps backwards as Vanitas’ still-burning keyblade slams down where he just was. They swing and lock, straining to stay in place.
Ven’s voice is as casual as he can make it. “I was being serious! I have questions. I wish you would, I dunno, communicate.”
“I think I’m ‘communicating’ just fine.”
“You haven’t said jack,” Ven mutters, and yanks his keyblade out of the lock, spinning in a slash that connects with Vanitas’ chest. He growls in frustration and disappears in a flash of darkness. Ven whirls, listening for the sound of smoke, and dodges neatly out of the way of the first few phantom attacks, but falters on a root underfoot and takes the last blow hard to his back. He rolls out of it, springing back to his feet and dancing backwards at Vanitas’ continued flurry of strikes. He’s being even less careful than before, Ven notes, which he could connect to something if Vanitas had decided to let him ask why he came. Or what happened. Or where he was, or how he found him, or how he’s alive. Or anything, actually.
Ven pulls up and casts Thunder, barely slowing Vanitas down as he comes after him again. Light flashes from his keyblade when it ricochets off of Void Gear, which responds with curls of darkness -- he's cutting this close. Ven grits his teeth and shoves Vanitas’ keyblade down and clasps his hand to his chest and murmurs “ Salvation,” and leaps into the air as blinding white columns of light sear into a tornado-spiral around him. Vanitas howls as he’s thrown down the hill onto the cobblestone, darkness hissing and spluttering around his feet. It burns, wisps of black writhing from his forearms, and he blinks away sunscatters in a fury. His shadow convulses, scrabbling at the tile and launching itself in all directions, sloughing oil away from red eyes and tiny claws.
Vanitas lets the Unversed attack Ventus in his stead, rubbing at his eyes. The light Ventus uses always deepens his shadow rather than chase it away, and it’s starting to make him feel nauseous. He knows he’s stronger like this, he always has been, but if he doesn’t mind the gap, it could turn on him.
Ven bats a flood across the field. “Like, hey,” he says, ducking under a swipe, “I’d love to know why you’re still trying to kill me. I thought we had an understanding.” Vanitas doesn’t even dignify that idiotic assumption with a response, sickly tarlike emotions starting to tear at him and burn in his throat.
He makes up his mind. This familiarity isn’t so much of the comfort he thought it would be as it is purely annoying, sourly frustrating that they can never take a different path, it always ends the same. So he grabs those feelings and crushes them in his fist, clawing at the ugly bubbling swirl of a heart he has and shoves them out into a screeching chimera of a monster and it flings itself, roaring, at Ventus. Let that ‘communicate’ how he feels, he thinks, viciously. The spots in his vision increase into more of a suffocating headache, and he takes the opportunity to crouch on a raised stone as if loftily observing.
Ven is not afraid of this thing any more than he’s afraid of fighting any other Unversed, but knowing what it is and also that it has six very sharp claws on each hand is slowing him down a little. Vanitas must be a little out of practice, or at least out of it, because it takes him a solid twenty seconds to dodge underneath its snapping jaws and coat his keyblade in a blinding sword of light, cleaving the thing straight in two with an awful squelch. He turns on Vanitas, half in hey, what gives! and half is that all you got? , only to drop his guard as Vanitas picks himself off the cobblestone from where he clearly collapsed, panting.
“Wh- ah!” Ven shouts, confusion giving way to surprise as Void Gear slams into his shoulder full-force.
He deflects the next blow, and Vanitas steps too heavily into another strike and whiffs past him, losing him entirely, but as he stumbles out of the combo Ventus is there, and he shoves Vanitas over, sending him into the ground again. Void Gear clatters across the rocks, disappearing in a scatter of black sparks. Disoriented, Vanitas tries to at least get into a sitting block, but the armored shoe that presses down into his chest begs to differ. Taking haggard breaths against the nauseating fog, he swipes at Ventus' ankle with the hand that isn't immediately trapped under his other shoe, catching it and digging his nails into his skin.
Ventus doesn't seem to notice. Instead, Vanitas feels the cold heat of a keyblade under his chin, and when he forces open his eyes enough to focus, Ventus frowns with something like concern .
"Are you okay?"
Vanitas wheezes. "What... What a strange question, for someone who wants the answer to be no."
Ventus blinks, and his expression deepens. He opens his mouth to say something, object maybe, but closes it again after a second. In that moment, something seems to make itself up in his mind, and he shifts his weight further into Vanitas’ chest. Vanitas twitches his sword hand, snagging the edge of Ventus’ armor, but his keyblade is unwilling to summon through it. Pulling his form back together from basically nothing and then tossing it around like that must have taken… more than he thought.
Ven leans down and pries the claws out of his ankle. His grip is surprisingly strong despite his looks, now, but Vanitas seizes the opportunity and rips his hand completely free of Ven's, slashing upwards as far as he can reach. He manages to catch Ven's upper lip as he jerks his head backwards, feeling a twist of satisfaction as tiny beads of blood scatter across Ventus' face. Ven isn’t swayed, however, and wrenches Vanitas' hand awkwardly back to the ground to pin it underneath his knee instead. Ven has more of a scowl on, now, as he runs a tongue across his bloodied lip, which sustains the small triumph for a moment longer before it drowns.
He snaps out a sentence instead of thinking about that. “Congratulations, Ventus,” he growls.
“Thank you!” Ven says, and promptly drops the rest of his weight on Vanitas’ stomach.
The oof- that escapes him instead of the rest of a sentence is not dignified, but it is perfectly justified, because despite how light Ven is he isn’t light and it’s like having the flu and being punched in the gut . Reflexively Vanitas jerks one knee up to maybe kick him off, but abruptly realizes the effort is useless, and it shudders back down into a half-bend. He cracks open his eyes again and glares.
Ventus just looks rather satisfied with himself. “You won’t talk to me up front,” he says, “so I’ll just ask you questions until you answer me.”
“I d… I don’t have to stay here.”
“I guess not. But I kinda hope you will? I wanna talk. You can ask me questions too, but me first.”
Vanitas scoffs and keeps glaring, though it gets a little harder when Ventus puts his head in his hand and hums, because apparently he didn’t even think of questions to ask. For such blustery confidence, he has to mull over exactly what it is he wants to know, and even then, he doesn’t seem like he has a laundry list of inquiries. Vanitas is at least expecting a “why are you here” (great question, Ventus! Wow, like you don’t know), or a “why did you try to kill my friends” (easy, they were obstacles), or maybe “why’d you collapse”, as if he’d give that answer. But Ventus still hasn't said a word. He's still just looking at him, considering him, with bright green eyes that hold nothing but curiosity.
It’s tonally dissonant and he doesn’t like it.
Ven, for his part, is thinking. He’s thought a lot, over the past ten or eleven or however many years, more than he usually does, and he’s come to two of many conclusions: one, something is keeping them tied to each other, like a string, despite being separate and despite Ven being told he’s a whole person on his own. Two, Vanitas really likes to fight, specifically fight him, specifically to fuse or whatever, but there’s a reason for it he doesn’t know. The x-blade isn’t the reason. And neither is pure hatred of Ven, though that’s a part of it, and sometimes Ven knows exactly how he feels in that something about him makes him want to get rid of him as soon as possible. But, though he doesn’t want to compare them, Aqua gets like this too, more recently than before, where she won’t say what’s bothering her and just tries to solve it herself. So maybe there’s a better way. This might not be it. But they’re here.
Vanitas' forearms are starting to prickle and fall asleep. He feels far, far too much like some sedated wild animal waiting for someone to find it, and this is not a feeling that he's supposed to feel. It's something snagged on the edge of fear, fear because of Ventus , of all people, because if he wanted to and Vanitas is sure he does he could move an inch and wrap those hands around his neck and bear down and choke whatever's left of his life out of him. It seems to be the direction he’s chosen, rather than diplomacy. Vanitas glares harder at the askew tips of Ven’s hair that cover his eyes.
Ven points at his jawpiece. “Do you always wear this?”
That's. Not the question he was expecting to be asked.
Vanitas is silent for a long moment, only drawn back to reality by Ventus' expectant hum.
Vanitas rolls his eyes, exhaling sharply. "It's a part of me," he says, dropping the answer to indulge him more than anything.
“Where’s the clasp?”
“There isn’t one.”
“How’d you get it on, then?”
“I didn’t.”
“The-“ Ven huffs, then regains his slight dip in compusture. “Can I see it?”
“You’re seeing.”
“Can I touch it.”
“Sure, I’d love to see you cut yourself,” Vanitas says, snidely. It was sarcastic, but Ventus seems to take it as permission.
Ventus reaches forwards, and there's an instant when Vanitas can feel his fingers' proximity to his skin where they both flinch away, reflexively. He bares his teeth, but the two of them lock eyes and his expression drops.
Moving slower this time, Ventus reaches back for Vanitas' face and cups the sharp edges of his metal jawpiece in his hands. His thumbs skirt across it, making light trails in the accumulated dust, and the fingers he's wrapped lightly around it just barely brush the matted hair behind his ears. He sort of lifts it up to inspect the twisted curves of metal, and despite how easy it would be to get a quick jab at Ventus and jerk his head down onto them, he doesn’t do it. It’s a sharp thing, on the edges, but Ventus runs his fingers across them and doesn’t even flinch.
It’s weird. Vanitas does flick his hair back now, making Ven startle just a little bit and withdraw his hands. He gives him a look, one full of emotions he knows but can’t quite pin down, and then says,
“You must have a really weird tan line.”
Vanitas blinks, jolted back to reality he’s not sure when he left, and then scowls. “Of all the stupid—“
Vanitas tries to jerk his arms out from under Ven, but even though he's not a heavy kid, he's very strong when he wants to be, and Vanitas still feels shaky and sick when he tries to throw Ven off. So it doesn't work.
Apparently confident enough that there's no actual threat, Ventus quirks his mouth up into a grin, not abating in the slightest when he sees Vanitas' scowl deepen. He actually laughs a bit, under his breath. Cheeky.
“What’s your point,” he grumbles.
“Oh, I was just curious. I wouldn’t have gotten an answer any other way. Anyways that was your question, it’s my turn again.”
“That wasn’t a question!”
“Yeah it was!” Ven laughs, but then winces as it reopens the cut on his lip. He pauses, touching at it lightly, and then furrows his brows a little.
“Why’re you so sharp? Is that a darkness thing?”
“What?”
“That’s my question.”
“That was two questions,” Vanitas says, smugly.
“Just the first one then. They’re related anyways.”
Vanitas is silent again for a while. Without the mask on, it’s easier to see that he really does emote. Often. Of course it always settles back into a neutral scowl, and his voice is always flat, but it’s as if he’s never lied in his life, his eyes constantly flicking back and forth and giving away exactly what he’s thinking. He’s considering it, so Ven waits.
“Clarify,” he says. “No one understands you like that.”
“I mean,” Ven says, and grabs Vanitas’ hand like he wants to show him, but can’t without letting him free and gives up, instead just holding it and tapping the tips of his gloved fingers. “I can’t tell under this, but these are sharp anyways. Like claws. And…”
Ven considers something, and then switches targets. He gently (everything he does is gentle, that’s stupid, there’s no reason to be) pushes at the very edge of Vanitas’ lip, exposing his sharp canines. He pulls away before Vanitas breaks out of that odd reverie he slipped back into and snaps down.
“Manhandle me again,” Vanitas snarls, “and you’ll lose that hand.”
“Sorry. Most people don’t have like, vampire fangs,” he says.
“Most people don’t touch.”
“Sorry,” he says again. He’s apologized twice now. Vanitas almost tells him not to go back on himself like that, but decides not to give him advice and just answers the question.
“Probably.” He decides. “My turn. You already asked too many.”
“Okay.”
“What did you do.”
“Be more specific,” Ven hums. If Vanitas didn’t know any better, he’d say he was mocking him for earlier.
“You brought me here.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did. How.”
Ven’s expression sours, slightly, but pulls back. “I dunno.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I don’t! If I even did anything, I didn’t mean to. And you didn’t give me good enough answers either, so there’s that. I guess, I just… I’m still curious, I guess. And I can feel pieces missing, even if I got help filling them in, like papered over holes. I was. I wanted to know.”
“You reached out to your missing pieces because you were curious? ”
“Yeah, I-“ Ven stops, suddenly. “For you, not me.”
“Again-“ Vanitas is cut off by Ven’s sudden hand on his chest. The word catches in his throat and dies, and strangely enough so does the argument.
The sickness has worn off by now, surely, but it's increasingly replaced with that new growing shape, a curling, pervasive sort of warmth, one that feels like it's lulling him to sleep while it fills his lungs and pulls them slowly through his ribs and out of his chest. It... nice is not the right word. He doesn't know what this is. He can feel it pulsing just under his skin like it wants to escape, but it can't. Won't.
Ven frowns, slightly, his palm almost like a brand as he waits. "You do have a heart in there," he says.
"And? Is that supposed to mean something to me?" Vanitas probably sneers. He doesn't know if that got across.
Ventus doesn't answer.
The silence stretches for far too long, the gears turning in Ventus' head, and Vanitas lets it, albeit unwillingly. He feels dizzy. It's not supposed to do that. They should go back to fighting. He can probably get up now, the sickness is gone, Ventus isn’t heavy. They need to go back to something he’s supposed to do. Not… not this. But he knows the warmth will shatter when he does. Does he want that? This is confusing.
"You're taking an awfully long time to kill me, Ventus."
“I wouldn’t do that, not this time. I’m not like you.”
“I am you.”
“This is a recursive argument. Besides, you know I don’t want to kill you, and I don’t actually think you want to kill me either.” Ven’s hand is still on his heart. “My turn.”
Ven’s hand won’t leave. “When you said you needed me, did you mean it?”
“Obviously.”
“I know it’s not in the way regular people would mean it. And I’m still mad at you. But I’m not as mad, if I think about it.”
“That’s stupid. I nearly killed your friends, that Sora kid too.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m mad. But I’ve been thinking, about me, and that week. You don’t make yourself easy to understand, you know, but I think I understand a little.”
Vanitas’ arms don’t feel like they’re falling asleep anymore. That’s odd.
Ventus moves backwards a little, and then wraps his arms around Vanitas and pulls up a little bit and stays.
It’s… very warm. It’s very warm, and soft, and his heart stutters, like it’s sad, but it sinks into how warm it is. And he can’t bring himself to remember why that hurts, for a minute. He can’t return the favor, either, his arms would only be cold, but Ven doesn’t ask him to. He knows this feeling, the fuzziness in his head, he knows what it is, it’s…
He can’t remember.
Vanitas follows Ventus up completely into a sit with Ven on his legs rather, his arm against the ground more of a formality against the magnet-force between them. He blinks, the warmth in his chest slowly draining out and off the half-drowned and broken walls of his heart. Without the contact, they separate back into their own selves, and Vanitas remembers the ground beneath him.
“You could be a good person if you tried. You just don't want to try.”
Vanitas stares.
“I know you’re scared to,” Ven says, bluntly.
Vanitas curls his lip, a snarl bubbling in his throat. “I am not scared-“
“Then why not.”
“You know what I am, I laid it out for you, idiot!”
“Yeah, I do.” Ven shoves at his chest, pointedly.
The warmth is coming back. Vanitas pushes it down. “I’m done.”
“I’m not.”
“Sometimes you don’t get what you want.”
“Would you listen to-“ Ven nearly bites his tongue as Void Gear materializes and swings straight at his side, throwing him off of Vanitas’ legs. Ven whips around and reaches for Wayward Wind, flinging a Blizzara towards the spot where Vanitas was, but he dodges, hand outstretched already towards a dark corridor.
Vanitas darts through without making eye contact.
“...nuts,” Ven mutters.
Oh, well. He’ll be back.