Chapter Text
Ventus didn’t know what to expect after his and Vanitas’s final fight.
He hadn’t exactly had much time to contemplate what might await a person after having their heart literally shattered. It could be nothingness; it could be sleep; or it could be merely death. Whatever it was, the last thing Ventus would have expected is the bright blue sky that awaits him when he comes to, feeling as disoriented as he did when his heart woke up after first being split from Vanitas.
There’s a brief moment where he thinks that everything was a dream—that he had fallen asleep up on the summit, his journey nothing but a restless nightmare, and Aqua will show up at any second to chastise him for being such a sleepyhead. But then, as he gathers his bearings, he notices the sound of ocean waves, not birds, and the feeling of sand beneath him, not grass. Wherever he is, it isn’t the Land of Departure. It isn’t home.
Once he sits up, he soon recognizes that this place is the play island off the coast of the Destiny Islands; however, the strange thing is that the mainland is nowhere to be seen. Where there should be more islands off in the distance is only water, blue and sparkling and endless as it stretches out to meet a horizon that might not even be there.
Sora’s heart, a voice in his head supplies, and somehow Ventus knows in his gut that the voice is correct. Ventus can feel the presence of the heart he’s been connected to for four years all around, sheltering him in his time of need—in his time of patience, left to wait for his friends to rescue him.
That thought is excruciating. He wants to be out there fighting alongside Terra and Aqua and ensuring that Xehanort doesn’t get his way, but instead he’s here with no idea of what has passed in the outside world. Did Terra manage to fight off Xehanort’s influence? Did Aqua get all of them out of harm’s way? Or are the two of them also in trouble, and was Ventus wrong to destroy himself because now there’s no one left to save them from their fates?
A sudden pang in his chest has Ventus curling in on himself. It feels like his insides have been splintered, which he can only assume is a consequence of shattering his heart—and Vanitas’s heart along with it.
Vanitas. What happened to him? Did he disappear for good? Is he part of Ventus’s heart once again? Or is he somehow still out there, seeking to hurt innocent people and upset the balance of the worlds even further?
The panic that floods through Ventus physically hurts. It’s as if every cell in his body is vibrating, screaming to return to the battle and fix what’s been broken, but if he really is in Sora’s heart, then there might be nothing he can do…
No. He can’t accept that. Ignoring the pain, he springs to his feet and surveys his surroundings. The small island appears as innocuous as it did in real life, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s nothing more than it seems. A secret might be hiding from him, and if so, he has no choice but to find it.
First, he runs over to inspect the canoes lined up at the dock. Those obviously are going to be no help since there’s no other land anywhere to be seen, so he goes to explore all of the various wooden platforms. The treehouse seems potentially interesting, but it turns out that there’s nothing of note there either. It’s the same case with the wooden shack and the island with the paopu tree—but things change when he opens the door to the cove.
Ventus freezes in place when he sees something laying on the shore, half in the water and half on the sand. On this peaceful, idyllic world, Vanitas sticks out like a sore thumb.
“Vanitas!” Ventus yells, bracing himself for a fight; however, Wayward Wind doesn’t come to his hand and Vanitas doesn’t stir.
Ventus tries a second time to summon his Keyblade and wake Vanitas up with another shout, but once again, nothing happens. Vanitas remains motionless and Ventus’s weapon is still missing. Ventus decides that, while the Keyblade thing is worrying, Vanitas is the main thing to be concerned about right now, so he creeps forward to get a good look at him.
For all intents and purposes, Vanitas appears to be deep asleep, but he could easily be pretending, lying in wait to catch Ventus off guard. After all, this is Vanitas, Ventus’s greatest foe and the person partially responsible for the downfall of him and his loved ones. So moving even closer, Ventus nudges Vanitas with his foot. Vanitas’s head lolls to the side until Ventus can see his unmasked face, serene in sleep.
For just one fleeting moment Vanitas appears to Ventus as nothing but his peer—just another sixteen-year-old boy who got caught up in chaos that he never asked for.
It’s a dangerous idea that Ventus tries to shake off immediately. Vanitas owned his cruelty and delighted in hurting others through both words and actions. He’s never been an innocent party when he participated so gleefully… right?
That train of thought makes Ventus’s head feel strange, so he brushes that off as well. What’s important right now is fully evaluating the situation. Vanitas most likely isn’t a danger at the moment unless he’s an expert at feigning sleep, but is he going to wake up, and if so, when?
“Why couldn’t you have just disappeared?” Ventus whispers into the silence of the island. Vanitas doesn’t answer.
Ventus spends a long time staring at Vanitas just to be sure, but nothing changes. There’s no reason to think that Vanitas is going to wake up imminently, so Ventus accepts that he’s just going to have to leave it be. This is a problem for later—if or when Vanitas finally comes back to consciousness, if the state they’re in can really be called consciousness at all.
So he trudges back to the other side of the island with the intent to figure out what’s going on with his Keyblade. “What’s with this thing?” he mutters to himself when it still doesn’t come to hand, a slight sense of panic overtaking him. It feels wrong to not have Wayward Wind waiting for him at any moment like an old friend—his only friend here.
Unfortunately, there’s likely not much he can do about it. He has to assume that this is a consequence of having shattered his heart, and so he has to live with what he did and hope it hasn’t doomed him forever.
Ventus eventually passes out on the shoreline, tumbling into troubled dreams of a life that isn’t his. The next thing that he’s conscious of is a loud crash, and then moments later he’s tackled by a blur of black and red. “Ventus!” Vanitas hollers as they tumble across the sand. “You did this to us! You did this to me!”
Ventus gasps, feeling like all of the air has been knocked out of him. “Vanitas, stop!” he shouts back. “It was the only choice I had!”
“It was never your only choice,” Vanitas hisses, his eyes alight with rage as he reels his fist back. “You could’ve joined with me whenever you wanted.”
“No, you know that I—”
Ventus’s protest is cut off when Vanitas punches him in the face. Ventus howls, expecting his nose to break—but the strange thing is that it doesn’t feel anything like being hit in the face typically does. Nothing cracks or snaps or bleeds and it doesn’t even really hurt. Ventus’s confusion allows Vanitas to get another square hit in, and the sensation is no different that time.
Ventus avoids getting punched a third time by quickly raising his arms to protect his face. As he does, he shoves his knee into Vanitas’s gut and rolls them over. A scuffle ensues, neither of them managing to gain an upper hand for long enough to end the fight, until Ventus ends up stomach-down on the ground, Vanitas’s knee digging into the small of his back and his hand holding the back of his neck.
“You’re still a weakling,” Vanitas says, fingers digging into Ventus’s skin. “I win again.”
“You didn’t win when it mattered,” Ventus snaps back, which just results in his face being shoved down. When Vanitas lets up, Ventus spits out sand and groans. “Stop it already! Don’t you see that this isn’t helping anything? I mean, look!”
He gestures at his face, and Vanitas squints at him before flipping him over onto his back, now pinning him down by the shoulders. His scowl deepens as he intently examines Ventus’s face. “Why aren’t you bruising?” he demands.
“I don’t know. Probably because this place isn’t real,” Ventus says, looking at his pristine knuckles. “We’re in Sora’s heart.”
Vanitas looks around as if this is the first time he’s paid attention to his surroundings. Ventus wouldn’t be surprised if it is—Vanitas was obviously driven by nothing but instinct and fury when he attacked him, mindlessly set on the same goal even though it’s no longer achievable. “Who?” he asks, his eyes narrowing.
“He’s the one who—” Ventus starts, using the opportunity to shove Vanitas off of him, but then he realizes that there’s not much point in bothering to explain things to Vanitas. This is the enemy—yes, he may be the other half of Ventus’s heart, but that just makes everything that he did seem so much worse. Vanitas isn’t someone he should be having a conversation with. “It doesn’t matter. Bottom line is that you and I are stuck here.”
Vanitas’s expression shifts back to anger and he lunges for Ventus once again. Ventus, prepared this time, tumbles out of the way just in time to avoid him. “It’s no use trying to fight me, Vanitas,” he insists, brushing sand out of his hair. “We can’t form the χ-blade here. We can’t even summon our own Keyblades.”
Vanitas looks at his empty right hand, probably realizing that he really can’t summon Void Gear in this place. Shaking his head, he clenches his hand into a fist. “You don’t know that,” he replies, his teeth bared. “The χ-blade might be different.”
“I shattered the χ-blade. It’s over and you know it, Vanitas,” Ventus says, letting out a long, slow breath. “Xehanort’s will can’t touch us anymore. Not here.”
Whichever emotion flashes across Vanitas’s expression is gone too quickly for Ventus to identify what it was. Vanitas scoffs and folds his arms, turning to face the ocean. “Ever the optimist. Doesn’t it get tiring?”
Ventus has to laugh at how utterly wrong Vanitas is. What kind of optimist asks his friends to kill him if he fails at his task? Truthfully, Ventus hasn’t felt fully optimistic in a long time—he’s just kept all the thoughts of doubt inside and tried to ignore them. “I wouldn’t call it optimism. It’s the truth and we’re going to have to accept that whatever is going on… it’s just you and me now. We’re trapped together.”
Vanitas frowns, looking suspiciously like he’s thinking about attacking Ventus again. “You gave up quickly. What happened to your determination?”
Ventus shrugs. “Well, this is better than I thought might happen. I accepted that it might happen one way or another a long time ago.” Either by his friends’ hands or his own—it didn’t matter.
“Death,” Vanitas answers, reading Ventus’s mind. He then mutters something to himself, too soft to be heard, but Ventus doesn’t bother asking what he said because he isn’t sure he would like the answer.
After another awkward ten seconds, Vanitas stands up and leaves without another word. Ventus doesn’t move a muscle until the door to the cove slams shut behind Vanitas, and then he flops onto his back and stares up at the sky, feeling more drained than ever.
“Where are you? Terra? Aqua?” he asks night as it creeps in. The stars, nothing but an illusion, stay silent and far away. Ventus has to do this on his own. “Okay,” he whispers, closing his eyes. “I can do this. It won’t be long until they find me. I believe in them.”
Ventus knows that deep down in his heart he doesn’t quite believe the words he says, but that’s too heavy a thought for a day so taxing. When weariness, so strong it feels unnatural, comes to find him again, he gives into it easily.
It’s the only thing that’s going to be easy about all of this.