evulsed | IC INBOX

( one day upon waking, vanitas will find a box of stuff outside his door. there's a note on it with his name that gene definitely did not write himself, thanks! just so there's no doubt about who it's meant for.

inside the box is half a bag of m&ms, a little carving that looks like one of vanitas' shadow pets and, you know, a pair of knitted socks. why not. gene's secretly a grandma. better find it before the rats do! )

"Sora!"

Lashed by wind and rain, a trio united by a common cause struggled through the unsteady terrain in the dark, slogging through stony paths choked with tangling undergrowth. Riku's shout smothered by the rain lashing the tree branches, "Answer me!"

The only sound that came back to greet them was the occasional threatening growl of thunder as the ground became ever more treacherous. Stones and brush gave way to soil softened and soggy with rain. It quickly became a sticky slurry of mud that tried to pull the boots from their feet.

They're cold, drenched, and facing the prospect of wading through shin-deep flows as the flash flooding begins. They are no closer to locating Sora or Kairi than when they started. Riku stops, taking a long look at Dawn, at the heavy slope of his shoulders, his own fists curled at his sides.

"Let's stop a minute," he says.

Riku was probably one of the least likely to request a break, present company excluded. Maybe he does it because he knows Dawn won't request it. Because Vanitas is driven like a man possessed (or obsessed), and the three of them are already ragged.

Vanitas very nearly left to do this on his own; and he would have, if he didn't know what was in these woods. More of them means more eyes, and in the end, it means they might be able to find Sora faster— before any of those things get him. He can still feel him, a long tether stretched between his own heart and Sora's, like a far off distant heartbeat, his anguish wrapped into Vanitas' own. As long as he feels that, he's sure Sora is still there, and alive.

But if what these guys said was true, he'd feel it in more than one way, if Sora was killed.

He keeps slogging forward, and only stops when Riku speaks up. Vanitas whirls on him, baring his teeth. It's true that they're all soaked to the bone and exhausted, but Vanitas has been pushed to this brink countless times before— and the real truth is that he doesn't know how to stop. Pointed in a direction, he's like a missile, almost impossible to deflect, right up to the point of self destruction.

"You said we would keep going until we found him."

He expects it, just like Riku knows it's his own instinct to rise to the implied challenge as Vanitas bares his teeth. It would be easy, to burn up his own energy butting heads with Vanitas, it would even feel good to have something to vent his anger and frustration on. But that's not going to help them, it won't have them finding Sora any faster, and it's who he is anymore, picking fights like there's something to prove.

"And we will," Riku can't keep the edge out of his voice, hard and stubborn, "After we take a break."

He's frustrated, too.

"A short one," he compromises, shrugging out of the straps of his soggy backpack to fish for one of those cans he and Dawn collected from the boathouse before they left. "Eat something, we need to keep up our strength."

It's possible Vanitas won't be easily convinced, Riku probably won't try to force him, either, but if they're not going to rest then they at least need to fuel themselves somehow. There's nowhere that's dry - and it makes him ache, thinking about Kairi and Sora out in this, probably freezing, definitely hungry by now.

He won't hope that they somehow found each other. Vanitas and his agitation suggests to him that maybe Sora's distress is contributing to that, and if Sora had been successful in finding Kairi, surely he would have returned to Beacon.

[It's a decision he's made. Doing this, coming here. It's a decision the same way going into the woods had been, the same way following Kairi had been, the same way choosing to meet Xehanort had been. Sora isn't sure if he's ever been the kind of person who runs. He doesn't think things through that way so the way forward is always the path right infront of him, not the one at his back. And that's okay. He's been called naive before- he's been reminded time and again of his own insignificance, of his lack of individual strength or cleverness or power. It's like he'd told Riku, in the end. Every step forward will bring him closer to home.

He has faith, in that.

Of everyone that had found there way here, it's strange to have only Riku and Vanitas left. To have only these two to say goodbye to. As far back as he could remember he's never been just 'Sora,' he's always been just one part: 'Sora and Riku.' If he was going to explain it to anyone, to be sure that he'd be heard, then that made sense. Riku isn't just a friend, he's a partner. They understand each other in a way he's never felt with anyone else- not even Donald and Goofy. But Vanitas is something else- a dark mirror that never throws the right reflection back.

He's been to this room once before, in the very beginning. When he helped Vanitas repair one of the legs of the bedframe. He wonders if it's still there, his little patch job.

One hand raises and Sora knocks, three short raps.]

[ He doesn't spend as much time here as he used to anymore. Those first weeks he had revelled in the concept: a room and a place to call his own. Something like what Ventus had, with a bed and a dresser, something he owned-- after a fashion.

The solitude didn't matter. After all, he'd always been alone, since the beginning. Sharing with a roommate was the last thing he'd wanted.

But things changed. Vanitas is learning that this is the constant way of things. The world wasn't a static as the desert. It wasn't only punctuated by a storm, or the night, or the rising sun; unchanging under those surface conditions. It was learning to eat, learning the consequences of hubris; it was finding out someone else could feel the way he does, want the same relief. It was hearing Sora's heartbeat under his ear, a faint echo of the thing that had imprisoned him unknowingly for a decade.

Always, he has one finger on that pulse, now. Tuned in to the faint throb not his own, a low, constant sound. Still, it surprises him when he crests the staircase and finds the back of Sora's head looking back at him. His compass needle swings and sticks, just there. ]

What are you doing here?