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Vanitas knew the orphanage like the back of his hand. It's every nook and cranny, all possible ways to sneak out and in, whenever he pleased. Although it came to no surprise.
With thirteen years in that place, he was just bound to learn something.
And with the looks of his situation, he was well on his way to learn at least a dozen more.
After all, no one wanted the problem child. No one wanted to adopt the boy who had a black eye, and bruises from fistfights all over his face. No one wanted the boy with a report card in the reds. They wanted the nice ones. The cute ones that smiled shyly and behaved. They didn’t like kids like Vanitas. They didn’t want broken ones.
But it’s not like he cared. He didn’t want people who didn’t like him.
He was fine. He didn’t care. Families were useless. Parents were dumb and annoying, always telling you what to do and what to say. He didn’t need them. He had the orphanage. Who cared if it was a rundown building with little to no space for himself let alone the other dozens of little brats that ran around? Who cared if he was slowly becoming the older one because everyone got adopted and left? That only went to show how stronger he was. Because he was the older one in there. He had the right to the top bunk – even he hated it, but the little ones wanted it which was enough reason for him to use it – and no one messed with him.
He was the king of the orphanage.
And no amount of worried looks from Minerva after he came to the orphanage with band-aids and cuts, would make him change his mind.
But perhaps green eyes would.
Ventus had arrived with his twin brother Roxas, after the pair had jumped from orphanage to orphanage, unable to stay in one for too long. That had caught Vanitas' interest.
“Why were you kicked out?” was the first thing he asked them.
It was Ventus who replied.
“A bully tried to scare us,” Ventus replied. “Roxas punched him.”
Vanitas couldn’t help the chuckle that came out of him when he heard that.
“You have guts, brat,” he replied.
It didn’t take long for Vanitas to realize that Ventus and Roxas were much like him. Kids who weren’t what parents were searching for. Problem Children, some said. Ventus was kind, though. Maybe he would have been picked by someone, eventually, if not for Roxas.
That kid was weird. All dead-eyed, staring mindlessly into the air. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was glaring at anything that moved. A grumpy little thing, but Vanitas really could mind. In fact, he liked them. Ventus more than Roxas, but they were a buy-one-get-one-free deal.
If he started teasing Ventus and scaring off the people who were messing with the twins, no one said a thing. Not even Mrs. Maus. And if Ventus and Roxas started hanging out with him more often, no one said a thing either.
When the twins started sleeping on the bed underneath Vanitas bunk one, he made sure no one said anything either.
Vanitas had grown so used to Roxas just brooding in the sidelines as he skipped stones in the lake, that it came as a surprise when the boy started hanging out with Xion. The weird little girl who never spoke to anyone.
Two years after first meeting the twins, Xion arrived. A strange one. Never speaking, always staring into the empty space, hiding her face behind long bangs and oversized hoodies. If adults didn’t like Vanitas for being loud and rude, they didn’t like Xion for the exact opposite. Too quiet, too polite.
“I think he likes her,” Ventus said.
“Of course he does,” Vanitas replied, rolling his eyes. “They’re both weird.”
Despite his attitude, Vanitas really did care for Roxas. In his own Vanitas-way, at least. And the fact that Roxas had finally found an interest outside watching Ventus chase around cats, was comforting. Probably good for him.
“As if you weren’t,” Ventus replied, stealing the stone that Vanitas had been holding. “You’re weirder than us, combined.”
“Whatever makes you sleep at night, brother,” Vanitas replied with a shrug. He watched as Ventus tried to make the stone skip in the lake, but it fell flat on the first throw. A chuckle escaped him. “Lame. Use your wrist.”
“I am!”
Vanitas wasn’t sure how he’d fallen into the surrogate older brother role so easily, but he wasn’t about to question it. Sure, he still picked fights and got below-average grades. Yet…the fights became less frequent, and at least he tried to listen to what the teachers were saying. Mostly because Ventus was starting to have problems, and Vanitas didn’t want to look like a complete idiot who didn’t know how to do basic maths – Thank God, Roxas was smart one-.
Roxas eventually started bringing Xion along most things they did. Vanitas didn’t care, per se. The girl was weird, always imitating Roxas. As if she were unsure of what to do or say. But it didn’t take long her to start imitating Ventus, and eventually even Vanitas.
“Yeah, don’t do that,” Vanitas had to say more than once because he caught Xion flipping off someone after he did. Sure, it was fun as all hell to see the ten-years-old flipping the bird to an old man, but Minnie was gonna have his head if she found out.
It wasn’t until Xion started having sleepovers that realization was beginning to dawn Vanitas. In an attempt to push away his problems, like he always did, he pretended not to notice. Act like he wasn’t walking around with three brats tailing behind him all the time. That he wasn’t, in fact, collecting children like they were pokemon cards.
But when Xion finally called him “Big Brother!” and cried for him to kiss her bruises better, he couldn’t deny it any longer. The warm feeling in his heart after hearing her call him that, was the closes thing to happiness he had found in his life, in a long time.
A year later, Sora came to the orphanage. A scrawny little thing that cried all the time. Vanitas had heard Minnie say Sora was taken away by child services from an environment that was ‘unfit for a boy like him’. Vanitas wasn’t dumb, and neither were his siblings. From the red marks that could be seen through long sleeves, they could tell what kind of place Sora came from.
On the surface, Sora wasn’t like them. Not a problem child. Not by a long shot. He smiled still, he laughed. His way of acting out could still be seen as adorable, and easy to correct.
But for some reason, Xion decided to start talking to him. Or was it Sora who started talking to her? He wasn’t sure, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that, whoever Xion befriended, was now on Roxas’ radar.
Vanitas really hadn’t expected for Roxas to get so attached to Sora, so quickly. But with now three kids hanging off his back, begging to sleep in his bed, and asking for help on their homework, Vanitas wasn’t about to add another one. No matter the puppy eyes Xion and Roxas sent his way.
Then Ventus decided to see what all the fuss was about. Which was the biggest mistake that could have happened. It had taken even less than a day, for Ventus to start pampering the boy with sweets and cuddles. Probably even less for Sora to start clinging to Ventus, and the older boy was gone as soon as the six-years-old smiled.
“Vanitas, please!” he begged. “I’ll do anything!”
“There’s not enough room in your bed!” Vanitas all but screamed. The twins always slept together, and Xion was small enough to fit in between them. But a fourth kid?! Where was he supposed to put him!?
“He can sleep in yours?” Ventus asked with a wobbly smile.
“As if!”
It came to no surprise to him when a couple decided that Sora was the perfect kid. The interview had gone smoothly, with Sora happily talking about Xion, Roxas, and Ventus to the couple. According to Minnie, they’d fallen in love with Sora the moment he started talking.
What had been a surprise, was Sora refusing to go with the couple.
“I don’t want to leave!” he had cried. “I wanna stay with Roxas and Ven!”
The adults tried everything to get him to come with them. Bribes, candy, even the promise of new toys. At least an hour had passed, when they finally gave up and asked what they could do to have him come with them.
“I want my family to come!” Sora cried.
The pair looked at Minnie, who was nervously looking at everything but them. She calmly explained that Sora had made friends here, who he got really attached to. The parents asked to meet those friends since they were still insistent on having Sora.
But of course, a girl who didn’t speak, a pair of trouble-making twins and a boy in his sixteen, wasn’t something they were prepared to face. Minnie apologized profoundly at the young couple, as they left.
“You’re gonna regret that, kid,” Vanitas said with a pointed look. Against his own better judgment, he kneeled down and picked up the boy. If toughing up had done any good, it paled against being able to carry around Sora in one arm.
“I’m happy now,” was all Sora said. “That’s what matters!”
Happy now…
The words were etched in his mind. Carved out with golden needles, as he carried him back to the room. If that was all that mattered…Was he happy right now?
When he stared at Xion and Roxas holding hands, and Ventus making faces towards Sora to get the little boy to laugh, Vanitas sighed.
He wasn’t sure if this was happiness. But at the very least, it wasn’t misery. Which on itself, was more than he could have said of his previous years in the orphanage.
With the years, Vanitas had grown used to sleeping with Sora. The boy slept like a log, rarely ever moving, which was a relief. And especially useful when Vanitas had to wake up a few hours earlier than the rest to go to school. Sora threw the biggest tantrums if he saw Vanitas leaving before him in the morning. He preferred to leave the mess that was a crying Sora, to his younger siblings, than you very much. The only real downside was that Sora was a freaking octopus that liked to wrap every limb he had around Vanitas. Once upon a time, Vanitas had tried to wrestle away from it but had proven to be useless.
But at least it was better than being in the giant pile that was the twins’ bed. Ventus and Roxas knew nothing of personal space, always sleeping holding hands or draped above the other. And Xion was not much better, always finding a way to sleep as close to the twins as she could. It was honestly so cute, it bordered disgusting.
When he finally got out of the hell that was school, he’d have to help all four brats finish their homework. The easiest ones were Xion and Sora’s. Solving middle and elementary school problems was still easy, even for someone like Vanitas who ditched half of those classes. He preferred not to help the twins, mostly because at this point Roxas was the smart one.
If he had time, maybe Vanitas did his own homework. Big maybe. Even if he weren’t taking care of the others, no man in this heaven or hell could make him do his homework willingly.
Then, it was the chats with Minnie.
She was growing worried. With his graduation around the corner, and him soon to turn eighteen, all she spoke about was his future. About college, about his studies, about what he wanted to do with his life. It didn’t help that he was coming home with more scratches and bruises, which he tried to hide from the kids. They didn’t fool Roxas or Minnie though, but Vanitas had never been good at hiding anything from Mrs. Maus.
Vanitas tried to be as polite as he possibly could to the woman. After all, she was the only semblance of a decent parental figure he had. And the fact that she was worrying at all, was comforting in its own way.
But it was also very annoying.
Especially, when he already knew what he wanted.
That’s why he was going to illegal fights for. They paid well. At least, good enough for him to start saving up. It was not much, and with his high school studies, he wouldn’t be able to get more than a minimum wage job. But at the very least he had to try.
When he turned eighteen, he was planning on leaving the orphanage and take his siblings with him.
Sure, they would leave in less than mint conditions. But they’d be better than the orphanage…Hopefully.
After all, his family was all that mattered.