Chapter Text
Sometimes she misses Ventus a lot; Vanitas is good too, but it’s not quite the same. The feelings are different (delicate, more painful, like the beginnings of a sunburn) and the way Meg looks at her when she sees them together is different (makes Rose’s throat turn dry, makes her heart twist like a chariot veering out of control). With Ventus things were pretty simple.
Looking back, she supposes she gave him a bit of a hard time, but he was always reliable and patient, and she appreciated it a lot. She tries to be there for Vanitas in the same way Ventus was there for her — sometimes it feels like Vanitas doesn’t care about his own life, and she thinks it’s because no one ever cared about his life for him.
It makes a difference.
“I think you and Ventus would like each other,” she says sometimes, idly tracing flowers over the back of Vanitas’s gloved hand.
“I think he’d take care of you,” she promises.
(Maybe she was just giving Vanitas a push towards his own destruction, she thinks later, when everything is over and she’s left grasping at smoke and her heart hates, her heart hates, her heart hates.)
Vanitas lets her say things like that; he lets her touch him in strange, intimate ways, she lets him marvel over the pieces of him. She knows what he is — darkness torn from Ventus’s heart. She knows what that means, even, that Ventus won’t remember her, that he probably won’t remember anything, that she’s lucky Ventus is even still alive, even if he’s off with new friends and new adventures.
She doesn’t think Vanitas knows, though; she tip toes around the conversation, afraid of tearing open wounds that have only just begun healing. Instead she rests against him, like a butterfly settling on the leaves of a flower. Her cheek against his shoulder; her arms wrapped around his, holding him like maybe she’ll stop losing people eventually.
He lets her; sometimes he even reaches back — awkwardly reaching to brush her hair out of her eyes, or resting his hand against her elbow when she’s walking, as though he might steady her. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with physical contact.
She misses Ventus; Ventus would know what to do; Ventus would know how to stitch this strange boy back together, just like he knew how to fix Rose, piece by piece, until she was almost a person again.
Rose only knows how to wait (it’s hard), so she does the best she can with that (it’s so hard to slow down). It seems to help a little, at least; one day Vanitas comes to their meeting place with sweets.
“Where’d you get these?” she asks, plopping down next to him; he doesn’t seem to know what to do with the assortment of candies and small pastries. For now, he’s organized them into sections based on color, but he does pick one up, examining it in the mottled sunlight.
“You’re gonna have to take your mask off if you wanna eat it,” Rose tells him. He still doesn’t respond, turning the pastry back and forth as though thinking about something very carefully.
She likes seeing his face; sometimes she thinks she might be a little obsessed, but he’s beautiful under the mask, all shadows and angles, except for his eyes, which are dollish and golden, like sunlight freckling through clouds.
He seems to sense her staring, because he turns towards her, still holding the pastry.
“Open,” he says.
Rose isn’t quite sure what he means, and when she hesitates, he repeats himself, impatiently, the mask over his face dissolving, “Open up your mouth, dummy.”
His expression is cool and restrained, but there’s a weird downward draw to his lips, as though he’s fighting off a pout.
She opens her mouth reflexively, and he pops the pastry past her lips, looking away hurriedly. There’s a long pause; Rose remembers to close her mouth and looks away.
“I saw . . .” Vanitas says; she can tell from the way his voice is just a little more muffled that he’s put the mask back on, “I saw a guy doing this with a lady in the marketplace today.”
He holds out another pastry, but his hand is no where near her face, so she’s not sure what to do. Does she lean down? Take it from him with her fingers?
Of course she’s supposed to take it with her fingers; her face heats up at whatever she was picturing, as Vanitas lets her take the bit of pastry.
“They were probably a couple,” she says, and hears Vanitas sigh.
“I know that,” he says, “I thought you might like it.”
She doesn’t know if that’s a question, or if he wants some sort of answer, and she peaks at him through her lashes. He’s not looking at her — or if he is, she can’t tell behind the mask; he’s drawn up one of his legs to his chest, so he can rest his elbow there, and now that his hand is free of the pastry, he’s reaching down to his blue handkerchief of goodies to take a candy.
“I do,” she says, surprising herself, and Vanitas freezes. Suddenly, she’s not sure if she should have answered — maybe it really wasn’t a question after all, “I mean, they’re really good pastries! I’m glad you shared them with me — I hope they didn’t cost too much.”
“. . . You think cost is an issue here?” he asks.
Rose refrains from pointing out that she doesn’t think he has pockets, or any sort of money. He probably just stole it, or something, anyway — and it’s not like Rose hasn’t stolen her fair share of food.
“Well, you know,” she finishes, somewhat lamely, and Vanitas chuckles, his shoulders relaxing.
“Feed me,” he says, passing her the napkin; the mask dissolves away again, and he leans towards her; his lips are curving up in a smile, and his eyes bore into her own.
For a long moment, she just freezes, blinking at him; then her fingers fumble with the pastries — he should like any of these, right? It seems silly for him to buy food he wouldn’t like. Still, she glances down at the napkin, and her fingers hover back and forth between the baklava and candied nuts.
The baklava wins out, though, and she picks it up, hesitantly, peaking at Vanitas again. His eyes have finally moved away from her face, following her hand, and that’s really for the best, because she’s pretty sure she forgot how to breathe for a second.
She can do this. She has no idea why Vanitas has decided he wants to be hand fed, but it’s really not something she minds, exactly. Just also something she’s not sure she wants to think about too much. She’s pretty sure if she thinks about what might be going through Vanitas’s head, she’ll think about other things — like finding Meg crying alone in the dark, like how men can break your heart without even trying, without even caring, without even looking back.
“O-open up!” she says, and he barely gets his lips parted in time for her to shove the baklava into his face; this does not work in her favor — her fingers brush over his lower lip, and his teeth skim over the tips.
Her face is definitely on fire.
If she really is Hades’ granddaughter, she will spontaneously combust any second now, and she stands abruptly, the handkerchief tumbling to the ground, “I’m sorry, I just realized I have a . . . I have lessons today! Pain and Panic are gonna be looking for me — they’re probably worried sick! I — I um.”
“I’ll walk you back.”
The mask has closed again; Vanitas’s face is hidden completely from view and his tone of voice is unreadable. Rose can not look at him for too long; she really is reaching dangerous temperatures, here.
“You don’t . . .” She wants to say he doesn’t have to, but the words die in her throat because she also doesn’t want him to just let her go back alone. Pain and Panic don’t really like him that much (and she thinks he doesn’t really like them), but they shouldn’t complain too much if he’s bringing her back, right?
“I want to,” Vanitas says, simply, and holds out his hand; he seems a little more confident today, for some reason, and she takes his fingers tentatively in her own. He stares at their hands for a moment — his reaching out, hers wrapped around his fingers like a blanket, and then twists his fingers to twine them with hers, “Where to?”
“The coliseum,” she mumbles, “Phil’s going over holds today.”
“Maybe I’ll join in,” Vanitas says, “You’ll need a sparring partner.”
He turns his head, as though he wants to make sure she knows he’s looking at her, “And Phil’s too short. Most of your opponents will be at least my size.”
Rose bites her lower lip, looking down, and swings their hands between them, “Alright. I’d . . .like that.”
“What was that?” Vanitas’s voice sounds a little amused and a little confused — it’s hard to quite pin down what he’s feeling, so Rose doesn’t try to.
“I’d like that,” she says, more confidently, “Let’s . . . Let’s go.”
Vanitas gives her hand a little squeeze.
Sometimes, she thinks that what happened with Meg doesn’t have to happen with her, and those are the scariest times of all — but like this, right now, with Vanitas carefully leading the way back to the Coliseum, she wants to believe in him so badly it hurts.
Think of Ventus, her brain tells her, but it does nothing to quiet her heart, or slow down the pound of it in her ears. She and Vanitas are inevitable, she thinks — all she can do is pray he doesn’t break her entirely.