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A lot of things had changed following the Mark of Mastery exam. Life in the Land of Departure had become completely different within just a week of Aqua being granted the title of Keyblade Master, meeting the evil Master Xehanort, then defeating him when he tried to bring about the apocalypse.
But even with all the difficult battles and discoveries about the nature of light and dark, the biggest change she and the rest of the Guardians had to adjust to was Vanitas.
Xehanort’s pupil. Or, his former pupil. Though these days, Aqua tended to think of him as Ven’s darkness, instead. It was a bit of an oversimplification of the role he played now that they lived together, but he didn’t seem to have any issues with the term. In fact, he was probably the one who used it most to refer to himself. Like it was a source of pride for him.
Welcoming Vanitas into their home had come with a few… hiccups, and more than one tense, lengthy conversation between the world’s five residents. Aqua and Terra, having personally faced the worst of the Unversed, had some reservations about the proposed arrangement—that Vanitas would live in the castle effective immediately, reuniting with his other half and taking Eraqus as his new master. Things were just moving too quickly for Aqua to make a reasonable judgement, and though her heart leaned towards doing what would surely make Ven very happy, she was wary of being deceived again. Ultimately, Ven’s fierce advocacy and Master Eraqus’s sense of responsibility for the boy whose master he’d struck down had won out, and Aqua and Terra simply had to get used to the new normal.
It turned out not to be so bad, once Vanitas found his footing. He was sharp and exceedingly independent, so he learned to navigate the castle quickly and enjoyed coming and going as he pleased, not that Aqua could ever stop him. Even Master Eraqus struggled to get him to do as he was told, sometimes.
Something that Aqua had noticed over time was how Ven seemed to rub off on him when they were together. It wasn’t in Vanitas’s nature to be polite or engage in social niceties, much to everyone else’s chagrin. At a certain point, Aqua had begun to wonder if Xehanort ever taught the boy how to say please or thank you. But all Ven had to do was give him a look or a discreet nudge, and Vanitas suddenly remembered his manners. It was kind of like a superpower, being the castle’s resident darkness-whisperer.
Of course, like all matters of light and darkness, this also worked in the other direction. This turned out to be another difficult adjustment.
Since Vanitas came into their lives, Ven had developed an attitude and a willingness to argue that he’d never shown before. Aqua would be the first to admit that they’d all gotten comfortable with never needing to explain themselves when they gave Ven rules or instructions. He had been trusting and deferent to a fault, thanks to his heart of pure light, and that made him an extremely easy teenager to help raise. Now, he was sort of just a regular teenager, if you thought about it. But Aqua was still shocked sometimes to hear him talk back. She’d nearly had a heart attack the first time Ven told her to shut up. (He’d cried like a baby apologizing afterwards, while Vanitas stood by and laughed.)
But nobody riled up Ven more than Vanitas, and vice versa. It was no contest. The two were almost always joined at the hip (or at least in the same room) and anytime they weren’t, it was because they’d irritated one another or one had hurt the other’s feelings and they couldn’t stand to be near each other anymore. This never lasted long, from what Aqua had observed. Ven had tried describing his heart’s attraction to Vanitas’s before, telling Aqua that it felt like the two of them were on either side of an elastic band. The further they pulled apart, the more uncomfortable and noticeable the separation became.
It worried Aqua now and then to think about young, inexperienced Ven—who had few friends and a very small family to boot—jumping into such an intense, unique kind of relationship. The two managed themselves well enough most of the time, but their moments spent bonding over nothing were made up for equally with bouts of fighting over nothing. The friction and energy of being too close for too long always ended up coming to a head one way or another.
“Aqua! Vanitas just hit me!”
Like now.
Aqua turned in her seat at the garden table after sharing an eyeroll with Terra, their conversation interrupted for the umpteenth time that afternoon. Here we go again.
She was inclined to say that Ven had been crying wolf. After all, he could be particularly sensitive about admittedly little things sometimes. But in his defense, Vanitas had been pushing his buttons all day. At least from what Aqua had heard from them play-sparring on the other side of the garden.
Aqua watched as Ven stomped over, fists clenched at his sides and lips pursed in a childish pout. Before Aqua could ask any follow-up questions, Vanitas shouted from a little ways back, arms held out in exasperation.
“No I didn’t!” A solid defense.
Ven whipped his head around, shouting back. “Yes, you did!” He turned back to Aqua and pointed a finger behind him at the other boy. “He did! And he did it on purpose!”
Aqua shared a tired sidelong glance with Terra, who proceeded to pick up his book and turn away, pretending to read. She sighed. Perks of being the only Master in the room. She was always the grown-up who had to break up the fight.
Vanitas dismissed his Keyblade and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Oh, you are such a baby,” he drawled. “It didn’t even hurt.”
Ven didn’t challenge Vanitas on that, so Aqua didn’t either. She didn’t know how deep their connection ran, or what parts of each other’s hearts they felt as their own. The two boys still seemed to be figuring that out themselves. Maybe they could feel the other’s pain. But that didn’t seem like the most relevant part of all this, Aqua thought. After all, Vanitas hadn’t denied that he’d done it on purpose.
Aqua looked at the offending boy, weary of their little squabbles at this point.
“Vanitas, why did you hit him?”
Vanitas narrowed his eyes at the back of Ven’s head. “I didn’t hit him, my Keyblade touched his arm,” he explained. “His royal whiny-ness is just being dramatic.”
Aqua put her face in her hand and prayed for patience as she listened to Ven gasp, taking the bait. One of his darkness’s preferred insults was to compare the boy to a Princess of Heart. He’d used the term affectionately before, but clearly he was trying to ruffle some feathers with it now.
“I’m not being dramatic!” Ven scoffed over his shoulder. “What if you hit me and it made the ꭓ-blade?!”
That line was a favorite of Ven’s—well, insofaras Ven enjoyed any of these arguments. Violence of any kind was already strictly against the rules of the castle. They didn’t really need another reason for it to be disallowed, though the threat of a cross-dimensional superweapon had made them all extra wary of the boys’ fights getting physical… at least at first.
By now, it seemed pretty clear that the fairly-tame pushing and shoving that came with bringing up two teenage boys in close quarters was not going to be making any legendary blades anytime soon. Still, Ven held onto it like a bargaining chip and used it liberally when Vanitas was getting on his nerves.
Vanitas raised his eyebrows and smiled, obviously amused at how riled up Ven was getting.
“Oh,” he said in an sweet, patronizing tone. “You wanna see the ꭓ-blade? Well, why don’t you get back here, coward,” he summoned his Keyblade, just to intimidate him. “I’ll let you see it for yourself!”
Ven held his hands up defensively. Dramatically. “Aquaaa!”
Terra turned his attention back at that, lowering his book as he watched Aqua. Yeah, this had probably gone on long enough.
“Boys,” she spoke up, loud and firm. They both looked at her with wide eyes full of hope that she’d be on their side. After spending the whole morning playing referee to their nonsense, Aqua thought it was a little late for that.
“Time-out, separate rooms.” She thought a bit before adding: “One hour.” Why not? She was the Master, after all, and she wanted to continue her conversation with Terra in peace. An hour would be plenty.
The two turned to glare at each other, angry that they’d both gotten in trouble somehow. Aqua was going to try to punish only Vanitas, since he was the one who started it, but neither boy was very pleasant to be around when they had to be separated. And besides, she figured, Ven needed to learn that tattling didn’t always get him what he wanted.
They kept their little staring contest going, not answering her. Aqua decided she needed to put her foot down a little harder.
“I can make it two hours,” she casually added, and the two troublemakers looked at her suddenly as if she’d threatened murder. She was bluffing, but they didn’t know that. In the few months since their reunion, Aqua hadn’t seen the two be apart for much longer than an hour. That elastic could only take so much stretch, it seemed. It had to snap back at some point. Two hours in different rooms must have sounded like torture to them, even if they were mad at each other.
Ven was the first to give in, pouting and hanging his head slightly. “Yes, Master Aqua.”
He liked to throw in her title when she was being bossy, as he described it, even if he still ended up doing as she said. Just a hint of defiance. A hint of darkness.
Aqua nodded and directed her unbothered, authoritative gaze at Vanitas. He sneered at her for a while, but eventually rolled his eyes and dismissed his weapon again.
“Whatever,” he said as a dark corridor emerged from the grass to take him away. “I’ll be in the library. I’m sick of him, anyway.” He stepped back and disappeared into the wispy darkness before the portal fell away as quickly as it had formed.
The corridors were his act of defiance. He knew that none of the Guardians were very comfortable with his overuse of dark magic, and that it especially tended to set Terra and Master Eraqus on edge. Aqua herself didn’t mind the darkness so much, but the intention behind it was usually unkind or performative. So, normal teenager stuff.
With Vanitas gone, Aqua could see the shame of having misbehaved seeping into Ven’s expression. He watched her with an upturned brow and guilty eyes as she nodded towards the castle’s front door. His time-out spot was always his room, so he didn’t need to ask for further instructions before sulking off to wait out his punishment.
The garden finally quiet and peaceful, Aqua turned back in her seat to continue her conversation with Terra. He set his book down without marking the page, having almost certainly read none of it during that interaction.
“Were you really gonna make ‘em wait two hours?” he asked with a knowing smile. Aqua shook her head, chuckling.
“I don’t think they’re going to last one, honestly.”
***
Aqua did wait the full hour before checking in on them, though it wasn’t often they needed to be reminded about time-outs ending. Both boys tended to be acutely, supernaturally aware of how long they’d been apart. And she’d never seen them come out on the other side of a time-out and still be cross with one another. If absence made the heart grow fonder, you’d think they’d been told to separate for another three years.
She checked in Ven’s room but found it empty, so she headed down the hall to the castle’s library. Ven was usually the one to seek out Vanitas, though she’d found the two in Ven’s room after making up before. When Vanitas went to find Ven, it was usually before the time had elapsed. Ven never broke the rules of being grounded, but he also never argued when Vanitas did. Not when it meant they could see each other sooner.
Outside of the library, she saw the door was already open, though she hadn’t heard a peep from the hallway. She peeked inside and saw the two boys sitting together on the cushioned bench under the ceiling-height window. Vanitas had his legs curled up on the seat and his head resting on the shoulder of Ven, who was reading a book and sitting cross-legged. It seemed like they were both reading, but as Aqua looked more closely she could see that Vanitas’s eyes were closed.
She watched them coexist, slotted together comfortably under the amber light of the late afternoon. Vanitas fit perfectly against Ven’s side, as natural as a shadow. They may have been a handful and lit each other’s fuses like nobody else, but they needed each other. And in moments like these, private ones where they seemed so peaceful and content just to be, Aqua understood that it was a peace Ven had never felt before finding his darkness. And surely Vanitas hadn’t felt it, either.
True to their origins, they came apart but always found their way back together. And now that they both knew what they had been missing all that time, neither was keen on reliving that separation. Come apart, come together. Repel, then attract. Maybe that was just how they were destined to be. The form their love was always meant to take.
…maybe next time thirty minutes would be plenty.