It speaks volumes to how far they've come, though maybe it could also be said that Vanitas has been following Bruce from the first. Or close enough to it— when Bruce had offered a trade over bottles of liquor. Maybe it's because he's never said, or done anything other than what he said or did in the aftermath. There was no minefield to navigate, no need to pick out the things left unsaid. For every moment Vanitas felt the specter of four years under a fiercely intelligent, fiercely driven man, Bruce has carefully plucked his expectations out from underneath him.
Vanitas isn't the sort to give his loyalty lightly. He's not the sort to give his loyalty at all— even Xehanort hadn't had it, not really, the very man who created and forged him.
He finishes turning, and walks to Bruce without argument. He doesn't ask What for? or Why? In his eyes, Bruce has long since proven that whatever he might want or decide, it is nothing that will be to the detriment of Vanitas. There's a novelty in that, for a person who had always wanted so desperately to be something other than disposable while simultaneously knowing himself to be nothing but.
"I think they wanted to change us," He says, apropos of nothing, trailing Bruce like a shadow. They've talked about this already, Vanitas blustering flamboyantly through any questions Bruce would ask, almost cruel in the clarity of the details.
He doesn't hurry Vanitas through the motions, not just because there's no need to, but because it would be unkind. Bruce has come a long way in his growth, in his pursuit to become stronger, smarter, better prepared. But this soft, tender part of him has always been the same. There's more than enough pain in the world and more than enough unfairness. Some cuts go too deep to heal, some breaks don't mend right- and there's no telling, in the end, where this will leave Vanitas.
It's something they'll have to navigate together.
Bruce doesn't move until the other has closed the distance, as if his subconscious intention is to remain a kind of fixed point- a place that Vanitas can navigate around. Perhaps it's a more sentimental description than he deserves. Bruce wants to help. But he's made the wrong call before.
It's not until they're together, Bruce and his shadow, that he begins making his way up the stairs. His head tips, a small nod of acknowledgment. This isn't the first time they've discussed it, what happened there. It won't be the last. He turns to look over his shoulders, pace measured and deliberate. "Do you feel changed?"
Does he feel changed? Vanitas recalls speaking with Masaomi over a bare of dark sunglasses (Do you feel the sudden urge to eat them?) and considers the ramifications of that very suggestion.
"I was already closer to what they are than anyone else," He says, finally, wending his way after Bruce. Behind him, he can hear the flutter of Unversed near the ceiling. He hears the skitter of needle-point paws in the corners. He doesn't feel more like what he thinks the green-eyed spirits are. No more murderous, no more conniving or vindictive.
He isn't worried, particularly, about what may have shifted in everyone else. Vanitas had a front row to seat to those changes. To the way Daylight had sagged under the weight of the trauma, how Masaomi had been almost calm. The haunted expression in Riku's eyes, despite all his attempts to keep a level head. The screaming, the crying, the gagging. Maybe like Masaomi said, they're more like them than they were before. Maybe all that pain, just as Vanitas suspected, had forged something inside of them like iron under the repeated strike of the flint.
But... his answer is a nonanswer because Vanitas isn't sure. He thinks something has changed, but he can't be sure what. Like everything he navigates has been moved just one inch to the left, and he can't calculate how or why it happened, or even what to do about it.
Bruce isn't looking for one particular answer so much as he's looking for any answer. He's spoken to a few of the captives in the days that have followed and he finds it interesting that so many of them seem to feel no ill will. That they're frustrated and hurt, but they don't want vengeance. Vanitas isn't without the ability to empathize- this is a fact Bruce is intimately aware of. But there's something unfortunately cruel in it- the way that Vanitas is the one to disclose so many details. That he's reported every note worth mention any time he'd been asked. That too, Bruce thinks, has been learned.
An unversed skitters by them up the stairs, too fast to be any living creature. It passes his ankles on the left and darts up onto the landing, turns towards the unlit halls. Bruce turns into a side room, reaches for the screen he's using as a door. "Daylight and the Soldier have implied that they thought it was a kind of miscommunication. That they had a goal that wasn't torture."
Vanitas laughs. It's a humorless bark of a sound, abrupt and short, just this side of forced. It doesn't surprise him in the slightest, to hear at least Daylight thought that way. That boy's weak heart... Vanitas is convinced he could be coerced into anything if the right bleeding heart presented it to him. At mention of him, their conversation plays back on him; the heaving shudder of metal on metal, the anger simmering just beneath the surface. And even that hadn't been enough.
"What is the enemy?" He sighs, like he'd never laughed at all. It doesn't matter to Vanitas, in the end, if they are friend or foe. Whether they really had wanted to break and remake them into something familiar, maybe even into one of them. A spirit, flesh and blood. "To me, Riku was the enemy. Riku and Sora and Ventus... all their little friends. Which one of us was really right?"
Was it them, wanting to beat back the Darkness? Was it Xehanort, who wanted to obliterate it all to start over? The question, mostly, is rhetorical, but The Night Market, the Wild Hunt... it rings all so hauntingly familiar. The classic clash of Light versus Dark. Months ago, Vanitas knows which side he would have fallen in with. Now, he reflexively tugs the screen door Bruce had opened shut, because he knows the other guy doesn't like to leave it hanging open.
"I don't care," He settles on, as he meanders after Bruce, following him without consideration, entering his space like he belongs there. "But if I get the chance to put a Keyblade through one, I'll take it."
He realizes that he's missed the mark as soon as Vanitas's head tips back, a sharp bark of a laugh. There are blank spaces in his understanding of Vanitas's history- enough that he can make a composite, come up with a general summary. But not enough to know the precise ins and outs. It would be in line with the rest of his performances in Beacon if he chose to throw his hands up or to gnash his teeth. To refuse to answer with anything except an attempt to provoke. But he doesn't. Instead he says to me, Riku was the enemy, and Bruce wonders if he feels conflicted about it at all. To have Riku staying just a few feet away. To have seen the way they drew strength and found comfort in one another while trapped in that building. Which one of us was really right? And who is he to say.
Bruce's experience has taught him that the truth is rarely clean and never simple. How much can any one person know? And how much of that is viewed without the lens of expectation and reinforcement, how much is uncolored by personal values and beliefs. What he'd meant to ask was did you feel like the spirit's were motivated only by wanting to cause you harm, but it's too late for that now. Maybe another time. "I see."
The screen closes behind them and it leaves Bruce's part of the room a dim, quiet, space. There are two books beside the bed and a canteen of water. There's a weapon beneath the frame, and on a chair not far off, one of Vanitas's long sleeved shirts is there- a hole recently mended. Bruce sits on the edge of the bed and carefully unlaces his boots- leaves the mouth of each one open for a hasty redressing- sets them side by side and within arm's reach of the mattress. "Come take your shoes off."
Like every other time, Vanitas takes the moment to glance around the room. It's strange to him, how easily Bruce invites him into his spaces— and maybe much of that comes from the way Vanitas has always forced his way onto others. Everything he's ever had, at least before Beacon, was something he had to take. Even now, the reflex is still there.
But it doesn't explain the way he'll come down to eat a meal with these other boys. That he'll freely offer to them something interesting he's found, even if it might be of some curiousity to Vanitas himself. Months ago, he never would have done something as selfless as offer Bruce the AED, even though Vanitas would have no idea what to do with it. That finders keepers mentality.
His eyes settle on that long sleeved shirt, tucked over a chair. It's not the first one Bruce has mended, something that confused Vanitas when he first encountered it. Something so simple as wanting to mend something broken for another person, it had been utterly lost on him. Slowly, though, he's been learning.
This is the kind of thing friends do for one another. This is the sort of thing Ventus would have encountered, an act not just of kindness but of care. It reminds him all over again of why Bruce came to that prison, and a flush of warmth supersedes that listless, haunting sensation that's been following him around.
His eyes come back to Bruce, and he presses forward to sit heavily on the bed next to him. Like a mirror, he leans down to unlace his shoes, but when he toes them off he isn't so considerate as Bruce. One boot stays upright, the other falls over haphazardly and Vanitas doesn't bother to fix it. Instead, he leans against his knee to reach down and pull up his socks. When he sits up again, his gaze is still angled toward the floor.
There have been a few small moments like this, in the time they've lived together and learned how not just to share space, but to navigate it. Perhaps it's a rude comparison to make but at times Vanitas is not unlike the alley cats he'd grown used to with Selina- the ones who come and go as they please, who follow rules of their own devising and take care to learn the ins and outs of places, of people. It doesn't matter that they've lived in this museum together for months now, that he has a bed here and the three of them have found a kind of rhythm around training and meal times. Vanitas enters rooms as if he owns all of them, but his eyes give him away. They're too wide. Too watchful.
Bruce doesn't know every point they land on because he's careful not to observe so closely- to make sure he doesn't feel hemmed in, or controlled. Instead, after his boots are settled beside Vanitas's haphazard pile- he stands again, reaches for his belt and begins to unthread it from the loops. "What's strange?"
His gaze comes up with the click of Bruce's belt, and he watches him pull the leather from his jeans. It's more the movement than the act itself, and Vanitas eyes only move as Bruce does, watching him undress with the sort of idle interest reserved for a person sitting on a park bench observing the world go by.
"Riku said you would come," Maybe its stranger that he could talk about Riku as his enemy moments ago, and now refer to him so casually.
"But I was." He pauses on the word, and doesn't look up. "Relieved. You were not there. You were not caught."
Like the other rooms, Bruce doesn't have a dresser. He'd been careful to build storage into the bedframes, to give them small spaces to call their own- and for Riku at least it'd been a start. He's added shelves and baskets, a few trinkets that make it look personal. But Bruce hasn't inspected Vanitas's space. The boundaries between them are- different.
At any rate, Bruce's room is likely to be the most spartan of them all. He spends most of his time in the makeshift study downstairs, or lately at the workbench along side Riku's pale profile. There's nothing glamorous or personal about his bed. The blankets are dark and nondescript, functional not beautiful. There's an overturned crate he uses as a night stand, hangers dangle from a water pipe they'd routed through the museum. That's where he goes now, as he reaches for not just one pair of soft lounge pants, but two. He tosses one across the space, knows that Vanitas will catch it without the word of warning. His hands return to his waist, to trade one pair of trousers for another. "Because you didn't want me to be hurt, or because you knew I would come for you?"
He folds his slacks, precise crease for precise crease. "Or both?"
He raises one hand, snatching the sweatpants out of midair without fumbling, or even looking up.
"I did not think about being rescued," He shakes his head. That had never been at the forefront of his mind. Riku had even said it, that Bruce would already be planning on how to find them, to get them out— but even then, Vanitas hadn't counted himself one of those to be found. Why would he, when that had never been part of his narrative? Even knowing Riku was right hadn't changed how his heart felt. The reality of it didn't hit him until Bruce reached into that cage when he was the only thing left, when he'd crushed Vanitas to his chest.
The soft fabric sits between his hands, dangling between his spread knees and touching the dark floor, because his elbows are rested on his thighs. Finally, he looks up, watching Bruce with the faintest furrow between his eyes.
Vanitas's head shakes and then it turns down towards the fabric in his hands. Bruce doesn't rush his way through the reply or press for more. Some things will always take time and Vanitas looks... worn. Fatigue clings to his features and alters the pallor of his skin. His reflexes are good but he's quieter, subdued.
Instead, he takes the moment to change his shirt, something looser, a chunky cable knit. He busies his hands with finding a spare, finds long sleeves and a scooped neck. It stays in his grasp as he turns around, as he finds Vanitas slowly raising his gaze, a crease between his brows. "Does it bother you?" He asks quietly, moving across the room once more. "That you felt that way?"
"You don't understand," He says, and it would sound more argumentative, maybe, if there was more fire in him. "I shouldn't feel that way."
Vanitas has been changing. He's felt himself changing, as time has worn on here. Back, before, he'd had nothing— constantly hungry for something he'd never had, he was like a gasoline fire burning hot and constant, ready to consume everything around it. In this place, he can have all of that. He's getting all of that. There are people here that care about him, and Vanitas doesn't count them in numbers. Even one would be enough to alter his whole reality. He gets to eat sweets. He has his own room. His own clothes.
Those feelings haven't gone away. He still has the innate impulse to destroy everything around him, bring it close and wreck it completely. He still wants others to suffer, some righteous vindication for the pain he's felt, knowing he can bring it out in other people.
But.
How can he be Darkness if he knows these things too? He'd said it, back in that battle. I am the shadow that you cast. Sora and Ventus can be the light because Vanitas is the long darkness behind them. More than that— he was created this way. Just by his very nature, he shouldn't be able to feel these things, should he? His grip tightens on the lounge pants in his hands. Some part of him wants to fight this feeling. How can he be darkness if he can have those good things, after all? But he's so tired, and his head feels just a little fuzzy, like he's had too much to drink.
He can only see what Vanitas allows him to see- what Riku chooses to elaborate upon. The rules that govern their world and their lives are a far cry from the rhythms of Gotham City. Vanitas's darkness is more than symbolic, but he thinks that it is the symbol, now, that he's grappling with.
Bruce comes to sit beside him, a weight that tugs the thin mattress down for their combined pressure- for their nearness. He doesn't turn his head to look because he doesn't want to rob Vanitas of this contemplative process. When he says I shouldn't feel that way it doesn't sound like something he feels shame about, but instead like a capability he never considered possible. That he's struggling to reconcile the impossible. Not for the first time the questions surface inside him. What had Vanitas been told about himself? For how long?
His hands rest on his knees and with it, the long sleeved shirt is left in a folded pile on his lap. For a moment the silence lingers, acknowledgement, consideration.
"Before Beacon, you'd only ever known the desert."
Bruce isn't wholly incorrect in his assumption, even if he can't understand the minutiae of it. What Vanitas is, in his world, is nothing more than a fantasy. Vanitas knows that much, even if he knows very little else. He doesn't stop to dwell on it, how little he knows about the young man sitting next to him. Bits and pieces; the murder of his family, the name of the city he hails from, that he's fierce and intelligent and he walks like a warrior but speaks and conducts himself like a prince.
"That's where I was taken from Ventus," He agrees. Saying he was made there, isn't quite right. He'd existed long before Xehanort pulled him from Ventus' heart, after all. "It's where I stayed."
It's part agreement and part amendment. For all the time they've known one another, Vanitas's explanation of himself and his understanding of the world has always gone backwards. It's all come from the sliver he'd been given in his earliest experiences, in the circumstances that didn't just dominate his life but became his narrative.
"It's no wonder that you can't add it up. You left that place. You have more memories, more experience, and more people than you did before."
Is the answer that simple? It's a matter of experience, and nothing else? But it can't be so straight forward. It would scrub out the narrative of everything he's known. Vanitas' brow creases, not cross, but maybe disturbed. He's spent so much of his time and energy hating Ventus, being envious of everything he had, things Vanitas could never have. He'd steadfastly held to that belief that all he needed was to be completed, like he could gather up all these pieces, slipping inexorably through his fingers to be complete.
His head is starting to pound, and he exhales thinly through his nose, standing up from the bed, setting the trousers down on the mattress so he can free both hands to unclip his belt. It's noisy, in the relative silence, the shuffle of fabric as he peels off his pants. Any other time he might shed everything at once, but there's a chill that still permeates the museum, and he isn't wearing anything under his jeans and his shirt. He steps into the sweatpants, pulls them up with a military sort of efficiency before pulling off his longsleeve shirt. His wounds from the kidnapping are healing, but not unlike the attack from those spirits in the corridor, they take longer. He still has some bandages, still has some pink, tender looking skin.
His expression wrinkles and Bruce doesn't hold his breath but he does hold a kind of vigil. He waits in silence as Vanitas tosses this idea from hand to hand, examines it from another angle and can't quite find a place to put it. This too is not a great surprise. His body is still riddled with skin that's pink and new, stitches that had barely come together and been freshly removed by the time of his abduction. And now there are new ones, criss-crossing over his body, creating an all new roadmap. New cuts, new bruises. The exhaustion clings to him like a shroud, drawing his shoulders down and diminishing even his frustration.
But instead of shouting or lashing out he climbs to his feet and begins changing his clothes. Bruce waits through that too, ignores the puddle of clothing that Vanitas abandons beside his bed and pulls on sweat pants. Waits as he peels his shirt off over his head and ruffles his hair in the process. He reaches out just once, to touch at a bandage that's beginning to come loose at a single corner, his fingertip cool and dry on Vanitas's skin. "We'll need to replace this one in the morning."
And then he offers the shirt, holds it patiently aloft.
Vanitas doesn't jump when Bruce reaches out to touch him, he doesn't tense or flinch away in the same manner he did in the beginning, like every incoming contact was going to start a fight. His fingertip barely brushes his skin, flattening along the bandage, and Vanitas is aware of the touch from a wholly different angle. Even through the fatigue nuzzling up against him like a persistent, cozy animal, his skin feels like it tightens under his touch— a tingle that crawls, warm, through his veins.
He has the strange, unmistakable urge to step closer, to feel the wide press of Bruce's palm on his torso. The particular way his callouses catch on his his scars. He knows how it feels, now, because of how much time he's spent under his careful attention the last month.
"Soon," he agrees. And as Vanitas takes the shirt Bruce's weight comes forward to rest of the vert edge of the bed. Inside the crate serving as his nightstand there's a jar, and inside that jar-
The lid comes open with a small rattling sound, the tinkle of metal on glass. Bruce holds it up so that the mouth of it hovers near Vanitas's waist, perfectly within reach. There are small chocolates inside. They aren't perfectly shaped, but then- "I didn't have moulds to pour them into, so they aren't very pretty."
He's pulling the top over his head when he hears the rattling, and while it piques his curiousity it doesn't concern him in any way. That sound could just as soon be medicine as anything else, but Bruce has never given him anything that's come with a consequence he hasn't been prepared for. Even without knowing the full expanse of what might happen, the knowledge has been there.
So the smell hits him before anything else, the familiar cloying smell of chocolate. The shirt comes down and his hair is twice as mussed as before, and his eyes flick down to the open jar. A flush of warmth takes root in his chest, a tentative little thing. It's been happening on a semi-regular occurrence ever since that walk in the woods. He puts his hand into the container and pulls out a chocolate.
"It's fine, unless they taste like crap." But because nothing Bruce has ever been bad, he pops the chocolate whole into his mouth and pushes it into his cheek before Bruce can offer any kind of warning.
"Well if that's the case-" It doesn't occur to him that Vanitas won't take one, but then, that's the point. Putting sedatives in Riku's food had been a relatively easy task. But Vanitas hasn't been eating. Just like he hasn't been sleeping. He recloses the jar and sets it to one side before his weight shifts on the mattress once more. "Even if they're terrible just lie to me about it."
He's grown into his limbs different in the last two years, where he'd started to build muscle mass and learned to move more deliberately. Learned how to fold himself. Bruce slides back across the bed and draws the blanket up in the process. Even this is strange for how un-clumsy it is. "Come on."
That makes him smirk, an uptick in the corner of his mouth that makes even makes it to his eyes, one of maybe a handful that hasn't been put there for show. And Vanitas has been putting on a show: to everyone in Beacon, riding the high of anxiety from everyone while ignoring all the demands his body has been screaming at him for days. Since the whole ordeal started.
Bruce slides back on the mattress as Vanitas is sucking on the chocolate, tasting it melt. He puts it between his teeth, tempted to bite down and break it in two, but instead holding it there delicately, rolling the flavor around. Vanitas had never thought him clumsy, exactly, but there's a fluidity to him now that Vanitas recognizes because it's one he himself possesses. Like every movement is a smooth, casual choice. It's strength. Something hidden, otherwise, by his slacks and jumper.
He pauses only a moment, regarding Bruce for a moment. It occurs to him that up to this moment, he wasn't sure he'd really been thinking about how he had to leave to go back to his own room. This feels... natural. He steps forward and crawls on all fours after Bruce, into the empty space next to him.
This is a new element to their conversations- not just the verbal, but the language of movement and body and intent. Bruce makes the kind of remark he rarely does in company, and he's rewarded by the flicker at the edge of Vanitas's mouth. By the way his eyes come back around.
The less certain thing, however, is whether Vanitas will accept the offer. They've all shared a bed before and yes, that too was purpose driven- the result of a crisis and emotions running high. This is a decision that can still be made. Vanitas has the option to go back to his own bed, or even to make his way to the Invincible if he wanted. But in the same way Bruce has answered Riku's uncertain voice, the same way he'd lingered in open doorways to remind them of his presence and their safety- he offers the bed to Vanitas. Vanitas who lingers for just a moment, and then crawls into the space beside them. There's no pillow to fight over, but there's all the more mattress because of it. One arm lifts, to offer a place for Vanitas to rest his head, and he waits until he's settled to draw the blankets up.
Figuring out how to arrange himself is a more difficult task. Vanitas has shared a bed with both of them before, when the cold had bitten the feeling out of Riku's limbs. He's shared Riku's bed before now, too, though maybe neither of them really slept for it— exhausted and beaten raw by everything that happened in that medical centre.
But that isn't quite the same as this. For a moment, he lingers there on all fours, looking at Bruce like a particularly cautious cat, looking at the spread of his arm and the curve of his chest. After a lengthy pause, he crawls the rest of the way up, shoving his legs down under the blanket, and laying back with Bruce's arm under his neck.
He's hardly there a second before he rolls over onto his side, the way he'd done with Riku, giving Bruce his back. Maybe it would seem more vulnerable, when Vanitas is so keenly aware of who is behind him at all times, but the alternative— it makes him hot with some unnamed emotion, something kind of like embarrassment, that makes his stomach twist all over. This is safer, somehow, and just as comfortable.
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Vanitas isn't the sort to give his loyalty lightly. He's not the sort to give his loyalty at all— even Xehanort hadn't had it, not really, the very man who created and forged him.
He finishes turning, and walks to Bruce without argument. He doesn't ask What for? or Why? In his eyes, Bruce has long since proven that whatever he might want or decide, it is nothing that will be to the detriment of Vanitas. There's a novelty in that, for a person who had always wanted so desperately to be something other than disposable while simultaneously knowing himself to be nothing but.
"I think they wanted to change us," He says, apropos of nothing, trailing Bruce like a shadow. They've talked about this already, Vanitas blustering flamboyantly through any questions Bruce would ask, almost cruel in the clarity of the details.
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It's something they'll have to navigate together.
Bruce doesn't move until the other has closed the distance, as if his subconscious intention is to remain a kind of fixed point- a place that Vanitas can navigate around. Perhaps it's a more sentimental description than he deserves. Bruce wants to help. But he's made the wrong call before.
It's not until they're together, Bruce and his shadow, that he begins making his way up the stairs. His head tips, a small nod of acknowledgment. This isn't the first time they've discussed it, what happened there. It won't be the last. He turns to look over his shoulders, pace measured and deliberate. "Do you feel changed?"
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"I was already closer to what they are than anyone else," He says, finally, wending his way after Bruce. Behind him, he can hear the flutter of Unversed near the ceiling. He hears the skitter of needle-point paws in the corners. He doesn't feel more like what he thinks the green-eyed spirits are. No more murderous, no more conniving or vindictive.
He isn't worried, particularly, about what may have shifted in everyone else. Vanitas had a front row to seat to those changes. To the way Daylight had sagged under the weight of the trauma, how Masaomi had been almost calm. The haunted expression in Riku's eyes, despite all his attempts to keep a level head. The screaming, the crying, the gagging. Maybe like Masaomi said, they're more like them than they were before. Maybe all that pain, just as Vanitas suspected, had forged something inside of them like iron under the repeated strike of the flint.
But... his answer is a nonanswer because Vanitas isn't sure. He thinks something has changed, but he can't be sure what. Like everything he navigates has been moved just one inch to the left, and he can't calculate how or why it happened, or even what to do about it.
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Bruce isn't looking for one particular answer so much as he's looking for any answer. He's spoken to a few of the captives in the days that have followed and he finds it interesting that so many of them seem to feel no ill will. That they're frustrated and hurt, but they don't want vengeance. Vanitas isn't without the ability to empathize- this is a fact Bruce is intimately aware of. But there's something unfortunately cruel in it- the way that Vanitas is the one to disclose so many details. That he's reported every note worth mention any time he'd been asked. That too, Bruce thinks, has been learned.
An unversed skitters by them up the stairs, too fast to be any living creature. It passes his ankles on the left and darts up onto the landing, turns towards the unlit halls. Bruce turns into a side room, reaches for the screen he's using as a door. "Daylight and the Soldier have implied that they thought it was a kind of miscommunication. That they had a goal that wasn't torture."
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"What is the enemy?" He sighs, like he'd never laughed at all. It doesn't matter to Vanitas, in the end, if they are friend or foe. Whether they really had wanted to break and remake them into something familiar, maybe even into one of them. A spirit, flesh and blood. "To me, Riku was the enemy. Riku and Sora and Ventus... all their little friends. Which one of us was really right?"
Was it them, wanting to beat back the Darkness? Was it Xehanort, who wanted to obliterate it all to start over? The question, mostly, is rhetorical, but The Night Market, the Wild Hunt... it rings all so hauntingly familiar. The classic clash of Light versus Dark. Months ago, Vanitas knows which side he would have fallen in with. Now, he reflexively tugs the screen door Bruce had opened shut, because he knows the other guy doesn't like to leave it hanging open.
"I don't care," He settles on, as he meanders after Bruce, following him without consideration, entering his space like he belongs there. "But if I get the chance to put a Keyblade through one, I'll take it."
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Bruce's experience has taught him that the truth is rarely clean and never simple. How much can any one person know? And how much of that is viewed without the lens of expectation and reinforcement, how much is uncolored by personal values and beliefs. What he'd meant to ask was did you feel like the spirit's were motivated only by wanting to cause you harm, but it's too late for that now. Maybe another time. "I see."
The screen closes behind them and it leaves Bruce's part of the room a dim, quiet, space. There are two books beside the bed and a canteen of water. There's a weapon beneath the frame, and on a chair not far off, one of Vanitas's long sleeved shirts is there- a hole recently mended. Bruce sits on the edge of the bed and carefully unlaces his boots- leaves the mouth of each one open for a hasty redressing- sets them side by side and within arm's reach of the mattress. "Come take your shoes off."
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But it doesn't explain the way he'll come down to eat a meal with these other boys. That he'll freely offer to them something interesting he's found, even if it might be of some curiousity to Vanitas himself. Months ago, he never would have done something as selfless as offer Bruce the AED, even though Vanitas would have no idea what to do with it. That finders keepers mentality.
His eyes settle on that long sleeved shirt, tucked over a chair. It's not the first one Bruce has mended, something that confused Vanitas when he first encountered it. Something so simple as wanting to mend something broken for another person, it had been utterly lost on him. Slowly, though, he's been learning.
This is the kind of thing friends do for one another. This is the sort of thing Ventus would have encountered, an act not just of kindness but of care. It reminds him all over again of why Bruce came to that prison, and a flush of warmth supersedes that listless, haunting sensation that's been following him around.
His eyes come back to Bruce, and he presses forward to sit heavily on the bed next to him. Like a mirror, he leans down to unlace his shoes, but when he toes them off he isn't so considerate as Bruce. One boot stays upright, the other falls over haphazardly and Vanitas doesn't bother to fix it. Instead, he leans against his knee to reach down and pull up his socks. When he sits up again, his gaze is still angled toward the floor.
"It's strange."
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Bruce doesn't know every point they land on because he's careful not to observe so closely- to make sure he doesn't feel hemmed in, or controlled. Instead, after his boots are settled beside Vanitas's haphazard pile- he stands again, reaches for his belt and begins to unthread it from the loops. "What's strange?"
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"Riku said you would come," Maybe its stranger that he could talk about Riku as his enemy moments ago, and now refer to him so casually.
"But I was." He pauses on the word, and doesn't look up. "Relieved. You were not there. You were not caught."
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At any rate, Bruce's room is likely to be the most spartan of them all. He spends most of his time in the makeshift study downstairs, or lately at the workbench along side Riku's pale profile. There's nothing glamorous or personal about his bed. The blankets are dark and nondescript, functional not beautiful. There's an overturned crate he uses as a night stand, hangers dangle from a water pipe they'd routed through the museum. That's where he goes now, as he reaches for not just one pair of soft lounge pants, but two. He tosses one across the space, knows that Vanitas will catch it without the word of warning. His hands return to his waist, to trade one pair of trousers for another. "Because you didn't want me to be hurt, or because you knew I would come for you?"
He folds his slacks, precise crease for precise crease.
"Or both?"
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"I did not think about being rescued," He shakes his head. That had never been at the forefront of his mind. Riku had even said it, that Bruce would already be planning on how to find them, to get them out— but even then, Vanitas hadn't counted himself one of those to be found. Why would he, when that had never been part of his narrative? Even knowing Riku was right hadn't changed how his heart felt. The reality of it didn't hit him until Bruce reached into that cage when he was the only thing left, when he'd crushed Vanitas to his chest.
The soft fabric sits between his hands, dangling between his spread knees and touching the dark floor, because his elbows are rested on his thighs. Finally, he looks up, watching Bruce with the faintest furrow between his eyes.
"I didn't want you to be hurt."
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Instead, he takes the moment to change his shirt, something looser, a chunky cable knit. He busies his hands with finding a spare, finds long sleeves and a scooped neck. It stays in his grasp as he turns around, as he finds Vanitas slowly raising his gaze, a crease between his brows. "Does it bother you?" He asks quietly, moving across the room once more. "That you felt that way?"
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Vanitas has been changing. He's felt himself changing, as time has worn on here. Back, before, he'd had nothing— constantly hungry for something he'd never had, he was like a gasoline fire burning hot and constant, ready to consume everything around it. In this place, he can have all of that. He's getting all of that. There are people here that care about him, and Vanitas doesn't count them in numbers. Even one would be enough to alter his whole reality. He gets to eat sweets. He has his own room. His own clothes.
Those feelings haven't gone away. He still has the innate impulse to destroy everything around him, bring it close and wreck it completely. He still wants others to suffer, some righteous vindication for the pain he's felt, knowing he can bring it out in other people.
But.
How can he be Darkness if he knows these things too? He'd said it, back in that battle. I am the shadow that you cast. Sora and Ventus can be the light because Vanitas is the long darkness behind them. More than that— he was created this way. Just by his very nature, he shouldn't be able to feel these things, should he? His grip tightens on the lounge pants in his hands. Some part of him wants to fight this feeling. How can he be darkness if he can have those good things, after all? But he's so tired, and his head feels just a little fuzzy, like he's had too much to drink.
"I've only ever... hurt."
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Bruce comes to sit beside him, a weight that tugs the thin mattress down for their combined pressure- for their nearness. He doesn't turn his head to look because he doesn't want to rob Vanitas of this contemplative process. When he says I shouldn't feel that way it doesn't sound like something he feels shame about, but instead like a capability he never considered possible. That he's struggling to reconcile the impossible. Not for the first time the questions surface inside him. What had Vanitas been told about himself? For how long?
His hands rest on his knees and with it, the long sleeved shirt is left in a folded pile on his lap. For a moment the silence lingers, acknowledgement, consideration.
"Before Beacon, you'd only ever known the desert."
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"That's where I was taken from Ventus," He agrees. Saying he was made there, isn't quite right. He'd existed long before Xehanort pulled him from Ventus' heart, after all. "It's where I stayed."
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It's part agreement and part amendment. For all the time they've known one another, Vanitas's explanation of himself and his understanding of the world has always gone backwards. It's all come from the sliver he'd been given in his earliest experiences, in the circumstances that didn't just dominate his life but became his narrative.
"It's no wonder that you can't add it up. You left that place. You have more memories, more experience, and more people than you did before."
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His head is starting to pound, and he exhales thinly through his nose, standing up from the bed, setting the trousers down on the mattress so he can free both hands to unclip his belt. It's noisy, in the relative silence, the shuffle of fabric as he peels off his pants. Any other time he might shed everything at once, but there's a chill that still permeates the museum, and he isn't wearing anything under his jeans and his shirt. He steps into the sweatpants, pulls them up with a military sort of efficiency before pulling off his longsleeve shirt. His wounds from the kidnapping are healing, but not unlike the attack from those spirits in the corridor, they take longer. He still has some bandages, still has some pink, tender looking skin.
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But instead of shouting or lashing out he climbs to his feet and begins changing his clothes. Bruce waits through that too, ignores the puddle of clothing that Vanitas abandons beside his bed and pulls on sweat pants. Waits as he peels his shirt off over his head and ruffles his hair in the process. He reaches out just once, to touch at a bandage that's beginning to come loose at a single corner, his fingertip cool and dry on Vanitas's skin. "We'll need to replace this one in the morning."
And then he offers the shirt, holds it patiently aloft.
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He has the strange, unmistakable urge to step closer, to feel the wide press of Bruce's palm on his torso. The particular way his callouses catch on his his scars. He knows how it feels, now, because of how much time he's spent under his careful attention the last month.
Instead, he takes the shirt out of Bruce's hand.
"Are you going to bed, then?"
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The lid comes open with a small rattling sound, the tinkle of metal on glass. Bruce holds it up so that the mouth of it hovers near Vanitas's waist, perfectly within reach. There are small chocolates inside. They aren't perfectly shaped, but then- "I didn't have moulds to pour them into, so they aren't very pretty."
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So the smell hits him before anything else, the familiar cloying smell of chocolate. The shirt comes down and his hair is twice as mussed as before, and his eyes flick down to the open jar. A flush of warmth takes root in his chest, a tentative little thing. It's been happening on a semi-regular occurrence ever since that walk in the woods. He puts his hand into the container and pulls out a chocolate.
"It's fine, unless they taste like crap." But because nothing Bruce has ever been bad, he pops the chocolate whole into his mouth and pushes it into his cheek before Bruce can offer any kind of warning.
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He's grown into his limbs different in the last two years, where he'd started to build muscle mass and learned to move more deliberately. Learned how to fold himself. Bruce slides back across the bed and draws the blanket up in the process. Even this is strange for how un-clumsy it is. "Come on."
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Bruce slides back on the mattress as Vanitas is sucking on the chocolate, tasting it melt. He puts it between his teeth, tempted to bite down and break it in two, but instead holding it there delicately, rolling the flavor around. Vanitas had never thought him clumsy, exactly, but there's a fluidity to him now that Vanitas recognizes because it's one he himself possesses. Like every movement is a smooth, casual choice. It's strength. Something hidden, otherwise, by his slacks and jumper.
He pauses only a moment, regarding Bruce for a moment. It occurs to him that up to this moment, he wasn't sure he'd really been thinking about how he had to leave to go back to his own room. This feels... natural. He steps forward and crawls on all fours after Bruce, into the empty space next to him.
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The less certain thing, however, is whether Vanitas will accept the offer. They've all shared a bed before and yes, that too was purpose driven- the result of a crisis and emotions running high. This is a decision that can still be made. Vanitas has the option to go back to his own bed, or even to make his way to the Invincible if he wanted. But in the same way Bruce has answered Riku's uncertain voice, the same way he'd lingered in open doorways to remind them of his presence and their safety- he offers the bed to Vanitas. Vanitas who lingers for just a moment, and then crawls into the space beside them. There's no pillow to fight over, but there's all the more mattress because of it. One arm lifts, to offer a place for Vanitas to rest his head, and he waits until he's settled to draw the blankets up.
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But that isn't quite the same as this. For a moment, he lingers there on all fours, looking at Bruce like a particularly cautious cat, looking at the spread of his arm and the curve of his chest. After a lengthy pause, he crawls the rest of the way up, shoving his legs down under the blanket, and laying back with Bruce's arm under his neck.
He's hardly there a second before he rolls over onto his side, the way he'd done with Riku, giving Bruce his back. Maybe it would seem more vulnerable, when Vanitas is so keenly aware of who is behind him at all times, but the alternative— it makes him hot with some unnamed emotion, something kind of like embarrassment, that makes his stomach twist all over. This is safer, somehow, and just as comfortable.
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