Archive of Our Own

Vanitas wakes up to a choking darkness.

He claws at his suit in an attempt to grant his lungs breath. His eyes are open, but there is nothing around him but the absence of light. 

No… this is more than just a lack of light. There is nothing here but nothing itself. Not even sound can exist in his place — he thinks he tears the neck of his suit open, but the sinew rips apart in silence.

Words flash in his mind, swirls of gray against a black void.

You were once whole.

Unquestioned. Powerful. Ancient beyond compare. 

Now you are untethered. Trapped in a heart that doesn’t want you. Tainted by a light that will never welcome you, yet unable to find respite with darkness.

You will never be whole again. Not in the way you want. Not in the way you should be.

You are an abomination. Utterly unsuited for the world.

✯

Vanitas comes to laying on Ventus’s heart station. His cheek, exposed from his still-broken mask, rests against the facsimile of his other half’s. His image sleeps peacefully beneath Vanitas. 

Laughter echoes all around him. The joy behind it pours into Vanitas’s tattered heart, overwhelming him until he chokes on the happiness. For all the emotion must be pure outside, this space renders it mockingly cruel. 

The laughter continues. Just as Vanitas did, Ventus chokes on the sound. There’s a gasp, followed by a raucous joy that slices Vanitas to shreds. He’s caught in a storm of emotions — fear, anger, despair — and Ventus’s happiness only amplifies his pain. Outside of plunging a Keyblade into Ventus’s heart, he doesn’t know how to escape back into the world proper. 

He collapses into a puddle of darkness. He did this often in the Keyblade Graveyard. Reducing his physical form helps ground his heart. In this state, he’s invulnerable. The closest to being safe he could ever be. 

No physical damage can come to Vanitas, but Ventus’s joy still ravages what’s left of his heart. He can’t stand it. He’d take being pummeled by Unversed for weeks straight over this. 

There must be somewhere he can hide. He scans the area, searching for any sort of hole he can shove himself into to escape this emotion. He notices a staircase at the edge of Ventus’s heart station, spiraling down into the darkness. He doesn’t remember seeing it ever before. He must have missed it in the chaos of their battle the last time they were here.

Vanitas takes the opportunity. He speeds down the staircase as fast as he can. He speeds past a reflection of the Land of Departure. Its castle rises out of the void of Ventus’s heart, only to sink back into nothingness. Here, Ventus’s joy is less overwhelming. Vanitas feels a small part of himself returning.

The stairs stretch further into the void. Vanitas follows them to the very bottom. They drop him off at the edge of a strange town. Purple roofs sit over cozy-looking cottages. A fountain bubbles in the center of a small town square. The ghosts of a life long gone flash past him. 

Here, Ventus’s heart is quiet, though echoes of his joy stir the divide between their hearts. If Vanitas let it in, it would overwhelm him.

At least now he has a choice.

With his mind clearer, Vanitas lets his thoughts wander to this new location. If it exists within Ventus’s heart, it must be important to him. What’s odd is how Vanitas doesn’t recognize it. Any place Ventus knows, Vanitas knows better. So why doesn’t he know this world?

Vanitas raises himself out of the puddle. He rids himself of his broken mask. No point in hiding his face when no one can see it.

He takes a few hesitant steps into the town. He takes a seat at the edge of the fountain. There’s a little stand on the other side of the town square. The counter is clear, but it must have once been filled with something. Food, maybe. He wonders if Ventus liked the taste. If he ever bought it.

He tries to imagine what this world would have been like. Maybe children’s laughter filled the air. Maybe Ventus made dozens of friends here, who cared for him the way Aqua and Terra do. 

He looks up to the sky. A massive clock tower stands in the distance. The sight of it strikes something deep within him. A name rings through him, clear as a bell’s toll.

Daybreak Town.

Just why does he know this name?

✯

Not too long ago, Vanitas reunited with his other half. 

Infuriatingly, the first word that came to Vanitas’s mind was beautiful. But Ventus was, asleep like a little princess on his throne. His eyelashes dusted against the tops of his cheekbones. The light filtered across his hair, setting it ablaze in a shade of molten gold. He looked so delicate. If Sora hadn’t been in the way, Vanitas could have snapped him in two, and Ventus would have shattered in the loveliest way.

Now Vanitas lounges in a replica of that chair. He swings his Keyblade in a lazy arc. There’s nothing to do here. He’s already destroyed half the castle for fun, just to turn around and have the whole place fix itself in seconds. There’s nothing to fight. No one to talk to.

He hasn’t left the Land of Departure since waking up. Going to that place — Daybreak Town, some small voice reminds him — means facing the multitude of questions that spill over that pretty cobblestone ground. He doesn’t know what’s down there, and he doesn’t want to find out. 

Going any higher means being swallowed by the waves of Ventus’s emotions. He once wanted to be one with Ventus. Ironic how now he’s afraid of losing himself. 

It’s more ironic that now Vanitas is trapped in the Land of Departure, while Ventus can wander the entire universe to his liking. They really can never be equal.

They can never be one again, either. Vanitas being down here is proof enough. He should have slotted back into Ventus’s heart perfectly once his body perished and his will gave in, but here he is. Trapped in a prison, and the warden’s too stupid to hear the cage bars rattling at night. The warden can’t hear him, but he can hear the warden just fine. 

Ventus’s emotions still filter down here, but they’re weak enough that Vanitas can choose to ignore them. He’s ignored them for most of what he thinks is the day. He decides to humor Ventus a little and figure out what he’s feeling. 

Xehanort used to harp on about the calm of battle, but that never worked for either of them. Vanitas thrives off the glee of battle, while Ventus lets his rage propel him forward. He can tell what Ventus is doing solely from his rage and fear — he’s in a fight, and it’s not going in his favor.

If he really focuses, he can get a vague sense of Ventus’s location. He’s in the awful part of Radiant Garden. Vanitas can see silhouettes of gnarled cliff sides and broken buildings. He can hear Ventus’s labored breathing, and the metallic clink of his Keyblade against Heartless bodies. 

If he dies, it’ll be good for Vanitas. Maybe he can reanimate Ventus’s dead body after his heart leaves for the afterlife. Even if it doesn’t, at least he’ll be free of his dump. 

Pain isn’t an emotion. It’s just your nervous system slapping you in the face, telling you that some part of your body just got messed up. Ventus’s pain has never transferred over their bond, but Vanitas can tell when it kicks in from Ventus’s sudden panic.

Winds pick up outside the castle, making the windows rattle and howl with Ventus’s anguish. His heart station must be in shambles right now. Ventus really must be dying.

Good.

That has to be good.

Vanitas’s entire surroundings flicker. His chair, the walls, even the sun filtering in through the windows — it all disappears. Vanitas falls out of his chair and into nothingness. His body, imagined as it is, becomes weightless. The world around him is a blank white.

The world snaps back into place moments later. He lands back in the chair with a hard thud.

Vanitas fights down the twin to Ventus’s prior panic that swells in his chest. He wants Ventus dead. It’s good! He may be Ventus’s shadow, but he’ll be the stronger half, and this will prove it. He’ll be free to do whatever he wants! He won’t be defined by anyone — not Xehanort, not Sora, and definitely not Ventus. He’ll outlast them all.

That thought feels like a curse. 

He gets to his feet and leaves the castle. The stairway glitters more brightly than ever in the courtyard, beckoning him higher. It’s as if Ventus’s body is trying to bait Vanitas higher in a last-ditch effort to preserve its existence. 

Vanitas tells himself not to take the stairs. Ventus’s death could finally free him. His own body, imagined as it is, refuses to listen. It drops into a puddle of darkness and speeds up them. 

This is stupid. Sure, something horrible could happen to him if Ventus dies and his heart is thrown somewhere else. But something horrible is guaranteed to happen to him once Ventus discovers his existence. 

Ventus’s heart station is in shambles. Cracks run along the floor, tearing Ventus’s sleeping face in two. The entire place keeps flickering. Ventus’s emotions run haywire in a vicious tornado. Vanitas raises up to his full form. Immediately, wind pulls at his hair and glass scrapes against his boots.

Every time he blinks, he sees through Ventus’s eyes. His clothes are bloodied. The amount of Heartless around him never seem to decline, no matter how many he defeats. His heart pounds, begging for life. With every beat, it grows weaker. His legs shake from blood loss. A single thought pierces the void. It whispers directly in Vanitas’s ear.

Maybe it’s easier to give up.

Vanitas grits his teeth. Ventus has always been a loser, but this is a new low. Rage propels him forward. He summons his Keyblade. “If they knock you down, you knock them down harder. Or are you too pathetic to fight back?”

Vanitas? Ventus asks. His voice echoes all around Vanitas, more of a feeling than a sound.

He should let Ventus die. He’d deserve it for being stupid enough to get into this situation in the first place. 

He should, but he’s feeling gracious.

“You’re welcome,” Vanitas says. 

Their connection tells him exactly what to do. He slams his Keyblade into the ground. The cracks widen. The pieces ripped apart by the wind freeze in place. Vanitas wills them back into place. Death can’t have Ventus’s heart. Not when Vanitas wants it. 

Green glass quickly stains itself red. Beneath his feet, Ventus’s body is consumed by Vanitas’s visage.

When Vanitas opens his eyes, he sees a horde of Heartless. 

Vanitas grins. Ventus’s mouth is full of blood. He’s missing a tooth.

Vanitas has been through worse.

The Keyblade in his hand isn’t Wayward Wind — it’s Vanitas’s own, the twisted thing that was never given a name. It feels right like this, heavy and capable. 

Vanitas gets to work. The Heartless are vicious, but they’re nothing compared to his Unversed. Even the Neoshadows that swipe at him are defeated with just a few strikes. Ventus made a decent dent in their numbers, but it takes the better part of an hour for Vanitas to cut them all down.

Finally, the last Heartless dies. He watches its heart float into the air, returning to whatever discount version of Kingdom Hearts it calls home. 

Vanitas takes a seat on a nearby ledge and takes stock of his injuries. Ventus’s missing tooth is a problem, but at least his mouth has mostly stopped bleeding. His arms are covered in scratches deep enough to look like red ribbons. He thinks his ankle might be fractured. He can walk on it, but the pain is awful. He’s a little light-headed from blood loss.

All in all, not too bad. 

“Too weak to handle this, Ventus? How pathetic.”

Ventus’s voice sounds in his mind, weak and throaty. You saved my life?

“It’d be a pain if your body died while I was still in it.” It’s as close to the truth as he can get.  

Thank you, Ventus says, so earnest that it makes Vanitas want to claw his ears out. 

“Shut up,” he says. “Just because I saved your life doesn’t mean I’ll give your body back. Maybe I’ll take it on a joyride through your old haunts. Wring the necks of all your friends who pissed me off. Maybe I’ll plunge the Land of Departure into darkness, too! Wouldn’t you like to see your home destroyed all over again?”

Ventus doesn’t reply. Vanitas scowls. The motion feels all wrong — Ventus’s mouth is smaller than the one Vanitas grew used to. He can’t make his expressions correctly. “Hey. Ventus. What are you gonna do about that, huh?”

He waits for a reply. 

“Answer me!” he demands. 

Still, there’s nothing.

Vanitas gets to his feet. His ankle immediately gives out, sending him crashing down to the ground. He won’t die from these wounds, but it’s worse than he originally thought. 

Vanitas knows how to deal with this, too. Ventus should be grateful.

He senses the negativity all around him. It hangs in the air. Ruins are prime sources for negativity — the lost lives, the broken homes. They’re fantastic reservoirs. Human regrets never fade the way they wish they would.

He tries to beckon it forward to mend the gashes in this body. The negativity comes to him and sits on his skin like static. It doesn’t flow under his skin the way it should. He’s out of practice, sure, but this was one of the first things he ever learned how to do. This shouldn’t be so difficult.

That’s when it hits him — Vanitas may be a being of pure negativity, but Ventus isn’t. Negativity won’t heal him. 

Healing magic will.

He pulls Ventus’s Gummiphone out of his pocket. He knows this thing can summon Aqua. He’s heard Ventus do it before. All he has to do is tap a few buttons, and…

He accidentally pulls up the camera. Ventus’s face stares at him, exhausted and covered in gashes. A nasty-looking bruise blooms over his cheek. What strikes Vanitas more than the injuries are the gold eyes staring back at him. 

Aqua will take one look at him and want him dead. She won’t stop at killing this body. There won’t be an afterlife waiting for him once she’s done.

He fumbles through the phone’s apps a few more times. Eventually he finds the actual part of the phone that calls people, and taps Aqua’s name. Within a few moments, her voice fills the air. “Ven? I thought you were out at Radiant Garden visiting the researchers. Is everything okay?”

Vanitas puts on his best Ventus impression. “Can you come get me, Aqua? I ran into way more Heartless than I thought there’d be. I’m out by the ruins of the old castle.”

“I didn’t know you were patrolling.”

“They needed help! How could I say no? Can you please come get me?”

Her voice is full of amusement. Vanitas hates it. “Of course. I’ll be there soon.”

Well, that’s all settled. Vanitas hangs up. 

Wait. 

Ventus is polite. He always says please and thank you. Aqua’s gonna know something is up. 

He groans to himself. He thought his impression was going so well. 

He has a few minutes before Aqua gets here. The gliders are faster than they used to be. If Vanitas wants to keep existing, he’s gonna have to give up this body. 

Somehow, that thought feels less horrible than he thought it would be. Ventus may know Vanitas lives within him, but now that Vanitas knows how to take control over his body, he can do it whenever he wants.

He closes his eyes. Diving into Ventus’s heart is surprisingly easy — once he thinks about going, he’s back on Ventus’s heart station. Ventus sleeps right at the center, curled over the emblem of the X-blade they were never able to form. 

Vanitas takes stock of the rest of his heart station. Other emblems surround the X-blade. There’s one for the Unversed, one for his Keyblade, and two portraits — one of Ventus, and one of Xehanort. Of course they’d be here. Ventus is defined by the people he loves. Vanitas is defined by the people he hates.

The Keyblade Graveyard at night serves as the backdrop. Vanitas’s sleeping image takes up most of one side. The Unversed’s symbol repeats along the edge.

Nothing about this is surprising. 

Vanitas crouches down at Ventus’s side. Teasing his Keyblade from his slack grip is easy. He taps the glass. The red glass slinks away into nothing, replaced by Ventus’s warm green. Ventus’s image eats away at Vanitas, and the body before him fades into the light.

Vanitas slinks down the stairs, back to the deep recesses of his heart. 

He doesn’t know what to call the emotion he feels.

✯

Vanitas finds solace in the silence of Daybreak Town. 

They must have lived here once, the memories hidden somewhere in the fog that hangs heavy over their past. Vanitas is convinced of it. The purple roofs of these buildings and the mottled cobblestone paths beneath his feet are too familiar to be anything other than a distant home.

Being in this place doesn’t trigger any additional memories. All he gets are wisps of movement out of the corner of his eyes and the nagging sense that he’s been here before. It’s unsettling, but better than being swallowed by Ventus’s emotions. All Vanitas needs to know is that he’s still alive, and this place’s continued existence is proof enough.

He summons his Keyblade. He lets its teeth clink against the ground below as he walks through the town square. The clang of metal against stone is horrible, shuttering down his spine in disgusting waves. The sounds of violence are no stranger to him. Why is this one so particularly horrible? 

He banishes his Keyblade. No need to push it. 

Vanitas hops onto a rooftop and looks up at the frozen daylight. He’s never seen the sun move in the Land of Departure. This place must not be any different. Sometimes he wishes he could hide in the darkness of night, but he’s always quick to banish the thought. There’s no one else here. What’s left to be afraid of in an empty room, besides the stretched out monster some call a shadow?

He sprawls over the rooftop with a freedom he never allowed himself in his body. Even in the Keyblade Graveyard, there was always danger around every corner. Every Keyblade in that forsaken place held a story. Sometimes Vanitas thought he could hear the whispers of their wielder’s hearts. 

He’s never been a fan of ghosts. He’s haunted enough by the person he used to be. 

A flash of orange and white, moves out of the corner of his eye. He bolts up and summons his Keyblade. He shoots a Dark Firaga down at the movement. There shouldn’t be anything else here. He’s the only thing in Ventus’s heart. Nothing else. 

He leaps down to the staircase where he saw the movement. Maybe the thing is somewhere else, in case it really does exist. There’s a chance, however small it may be, that there’s another stowaway in Ventus’s heart. If there is, he’ll destroy it without a second thought. He’s not willing to share.

He prowls through the town, pushing away the odd nostalgia he feels with every step. He checks in empty houses and looks down deserted alleyways. He peeks into warehouses and even scales the outside of the clock tower that hangs over the town. 

He reaches the top and surveys the entire place. Daybreak Town doesn’t go on forever. The town’s borders are lined by the black void of the rest of Ventus’s heart. The staircase leading up to higher levels spirals on in the distance. 

No matter where he looks, he is alone.

It must have just been a trick of his eyes. Nothing else is here. 

Vanitas tells himself this, but he can’t bring himself to banish his Keyblade.

✯

Vanitas isn’t sure how long Ventus stays asleep. Within the confines of Ventus’s heart, the silence stretches on into what feels like infinity. It could be a day. It could be five. Without Ventus’s sleep cycles to mark the days, he can’t tell.

When Ventus finally reawakens, the change is instantaneous. The sun outside the Land of Departure’s castle somehow grows brighter. Vanitas stands up from his seat in the library, dropping the novel he was reading. The light was far duller when Ventus wasn’t himself. 

He can’t hear too much of Ventus’s surroundings from here. He’ll have to travel higher up to listen in. Braving Ventus’s wayward emotions is a risk Vanitas is willing to take. He speeds up the staircase in no time, ending on Ventus’s heart station.

The cracks are fully gone. Ventus is disoriented, but there’s little turbulence in his heart. 

He may not be able to read Ventus’s mind, but he can guess most of his thoughts from the emotions that creep up from the edges of the void. There’s loneliness at the forefront, followed by a childish fear. He doesn’t want to be alone.

He’ll call for Aqua and Terra any moment now. They’ll come rushing in to comfort him, like the little baby he is. 

Except that isn’t the name Ventus calls.

Vanitas?

It echoes all around him, cascading through the depths of his heart with the graceful violence of hundreds of birds taking flight. Vanitas seals himself off from the neediness that crawls out from behind Ventus’s fear, even as it tries to grasp at him. 

Are you here, Vanitas?

Desperation clutches at Vanitas. He shakes himself free of the emotion. It slithers towards him once more, snaking across his body in a desperate embrace. He blasts it away with a burst of darkness. “Stop being so clingy. I’m here, alright!?”

The fear and loneliness disappear instantly. Joy rockets off in the space of his heart. Vanitas grits his teeth and anchors himself to the ground. What is he so happy about, anyways? 

It is you! I knew it!

“You don’t know anything,” Vanitas says reflexively.

I thought you had disappeared for good. The battle’s kinda fuzzy now, but I remember hearing your voice once it went really bad. Calling me pathetic for thinking I was done. I thought I was going crazy, but then the battle was over, and I still heard your voice. You protected me, didn’t you?

His voice bleeds warmth and awe. How gross. It settles on Vanitas’s illusionary skin and sinks into his core. 

He should leave. Disappear and leave Ventus aching.

He’s rooted in place.

“Stop being so sappy. It’s disgusting. I hijacked your body to keep my existence from completely disappearing. I wasn’t saving you. I was just saving my own skin.”

Ventus chuckles. Then why didn’t you take my body back?

“I needed Aqua to heal you, and she’d see right through me. When I’m in control, your eyes turn gold.”

Suuuure. Ventus laughs again, clearly not believing Vanitas at all. Vanitas debates stealing his body again just to punch him in his laughing face. Anyways, thanks. Kairi mentioned she could sense an odd darkness in me a while ago. That’s you, right?

“It’s not like anyone else is here,” Vanitas huffs. 

Ventus’s emotions are still overbearing, and his amusement is incredibly annoying, but they’re not overwhelming the way they used to be. Vanitas can shut them out more easily. He’s never exactly been stable, but at least he can remain in the safety of his own mind. Maybe taking Ventus’s body somehow reset the balance between them.

Their conversation is cut short by a knock on the door. Vanitas closes his eyes and calms his mind, trying to replicate how he saw the fight in Radiant Garden. For brief moments, he can see glimpses through Ventus’s eyes. 

He sees the door open. Aqua comes in holding a glass of water. When she sees Ventus, she rushes forward, relief evident on her face. “Ven! You’re awake!” She barely manages to set the glass down before wrapping Ventus in a tight hug.

“Oof,” Ventus wheezes, tapping Aqua’s back. “Too tight.”

She pulls away, smiling. Her hands come to rest on his shoulders. The sheer amount of love these two feel for each other is disgusting. “I was so worried, Ven. Thank the light you called me.”

“I called you?” Ventus asks.

“Play along, idiot,” Vanitas hisses. “I had to get her to you somehow.”

“You don’t remember?” Aqua’s hand moves to his forehead. Vanitas can’t feel it, but he can see her thumb hanging just over Ventus’s field of vision. 

“You looked horrible, Ven. It took three days just for the Cure magic to fully take effect,” Aqua finishes.

“Sorry, I must have forgotten,” Ventus says. “The battle was way rougher than I thought it’d be. If I hadn’t…”

“Ventus,” Vanitas warns.

“If I hadn’t called you, I really would have been done for!” Ventus finishes. 

Vanitas fades out of the conversation soon after, bored by the small talk. He checks in on a few snippets – Ventus is well enough to walk over to dinner, and wants to start training again the next day – but nothing else catches his interest. 

He wonders what his own future holds. Ventus’s friends all love him. If Vanitas took over his body, they’d chase him down to the edge of all the worlds just to bring Ventus back. It’s not worth taking him over again. 

Is Vanitas content just to be a spectator until Ventus’s light finally snuffs out his darkness? He can’t be. He’d stop being Xehanort’s lapdog just to become Ventus’s. Worse still, Ventus would disguise it as friendship.

Ventus leaves his room to trot after Aqua. He’s forgotten all about Vanitas. Of course he would. For all those niceties he and Sora spouted off in the Keyblade Graveyard, they never meant any of it.

Ventus wanted to see Vanitas as his own person, but he’s always been more comfortable like this: a ray of light bouncing down the hallway, uncaring of the shadow it casts.

✯

Later on, a message travels all the way down to Daybreak Town.

Good night, Vanitas. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

Those words pluck a dead string in Vanitas’s heart.

He shuts the thought out and closes his heart from the dam that separates their emotions. 

✯

Something changes after that day. 

Ventus starts to ask for Vanitas’s opinion. Sometimes, it’s on useful topics, like battle techniques or the best way to explore an unfamiliar area without getting surprised by monsters. Things Vanitas has experience with and can pass on to Ventus. 

More often than not, it’s entirely stupid things. What he thinks Ventus should eat for dinner or what book Ventus should read during his break. Vanitas usually tells Ventus to shut up and that asking him is a waste of his time, but Ventus has so little respect for him that he keeps asking regardless.

Ventus talks to him all the time. When Vanitas doesn’t respond, Ventus gets whiny. He thinks he can monopolize all of Vanitas’s attention.

He’s right, but Vanitas won’t let him know that.

It becomes easier to stay in the higher level of Ventus’s heart so he doesn’t get an earful later. It’s not that he’s avoiding the uneasy familiarity of Daybreak Town. There are many things to be afraid of across all the worlds, and some purple houses hidden in Ventus’s heart are the farthest thing from fear-inducing. Ventus is more annoying when he has to call for Vanitas longer. That’s all.

The days pass, and as they do, Vanitas learns what he can and can’t tune out. Ventus lets his inner monologue escape his mind and infect his heart. Delight surrounds Vanitas whenever he responds. 

He learns more about Ventus. Things that their empathetic link could never transfer. Ventus likes repetitive movements when he’s deep in thought. Sometimes that’s swinging his Keyblade around. Sometimes it’s finding a ball of clay and rolling it in his hands. When he doesn’t have anything to fidget with, he picks at his own nail beds until they bleed. Vanitas hates it. 

He learns Ventus’s thoughts on all the meals his friends make. Aqua’s food is the best. Terra’s good at grilling meats. Kairi has no experience cooking, but she helps out in the kitchen often. Ventus is terrible at cooking, and he complains about it constantly. 

He always describes whatever he’s eating to Vanitas like it’s something important, even though Vanitas doesn’t actually need to eat to survive. When something’s really good, he insists that Ventus should try it sometime. It’s all so idiotic.

He learns about just how easily influenced Ventus is by his surroundings. He’s goaded on into stupid things by his friends.

Oh, his friends. Ventus is almost always surrounded by friends. When he isn’t training, he’s asking Vanitas if he should go hang out with Axel and Roxas or with Naminé and the researchers. Vanitas always tells him neither, your friends are all stupid . It’s somehow enough for Ventus to figure out an answer. 

Vanitas learns just how easily Ventus gets lonely. His friends don’t leave often, but they do leave. His on-world friends will leave to protect the light. His off-world friends will leave to live the rest of their lives. In those quiet moments, Ventus still craves companionship, and that’s when he finds solace with Vanitas.

Vanitas loses track of the number of nights they spend sitting at the edge of his heart station. Sometimes they talk. Sometimes they fight.

No matter what happens, the night ends with the same familiar refrain.

Good night, Vanitas. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

✯

Sometimes, Ventus spends time with his weird cat. It doesn’t happen often — Ventus is busy, and the cat acts guilty every time it asks Ventus to hang out — but when it does…

It’s always awkward. 

There’s some street market in Twilight Town that they’ve been exploring together all afternoon. Ventus is having a great time. Vanitas can’t sense enough to tell if Chirithy is or not.

Dang, says Ventus to himself.

“Just give up already. You keep missing,” Vanitas snaps. 

No, no, I totally got this! See?  

A pause.

Dang.

Chirithy’s voice echoes in Ventus’s ears. Vanitas can hear its shadow. “Um, Ven? You’re getting kettle corn all over the ground. Maybe you should eat it normally…”

“See? You’re embarrassing yourself,” Vanitas says.

Ventus groans at him, but he’s apologetic to Chirithy. What a two-faced little rat. “You’re right. I’ll stop.”

They probably keep walking. Chirithy doesn’t seem to talk much. Ventus is stupid, so he probably thinks Chirithy is just quiet. Vanitas doesn’t need to be out there to see the yawning gap of tension between it and Ventus. He can hear it in every silence. 

Their past is odd. According to Ventus, Chirithy showed up one day, said they used to be friends, and that was that. Ventus had a gut feeling that being with Chirithy felt right, and that one impression was all he needed to let the thing move in with him. 

Its past is shrouded in the same mystery as Daybreak Town.

“Ask Chirithy how you met again,” Vanitas says. 

You know it won’t tell me.

“What, too scared to do it?” Vanitas taunts, knowing that getting a rise out of Ventus is the perfect way to get him to do something. 

Shut up! I’m not afraid! Ventus retorts. Indigence rages behind the wall separating their emotions. Perfect. 

His voice echoes as he speaks to Chirithy. “Hey… how did we meet again?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Chirithy says, quick as ever. “It was a long time ago.”

“Just ‘cause it was a long time ago doesn’t mean it can’t matter.”

“Your life is happy now. There’s no reason to let your past change that.”

If he were the Ventus that Vanitas first started following around, he would have needled Chirithy until it either gave in or left him behind. This Ventus, aged by sleep and loss, just sighs.

“Okay. We don’t gotta talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“Thanks, Ven,” Chirithy says, genuinely relieved. 

They change topics and talk about things that don’t matter to anyone. Vanitas ignores them, his thoughts drifting back to Daybreak Town. There’s no way Chirithy isn’t connected to that place. What happened there that it refuses to talk about?

It feels important. This is a part of his and Ventus’s past, back when they were one. He could ignore that if it wasn’t for how the Daybreak Town that hides in Ventus’s heart makes him feel — unsettling and enticing all at once. It’s like the tingle of a nerve sparking to life when it shouldn’t. He’ll push and push until he can figure out if this is pain or just coincidence.

He thinks of an old conversation he had with Xehanort. He was obsessed with the age of fairy tales, and he insisted that Ventus had some kind of connection to it. He had babbled a bunch of nonsense to Vanitas back then, and Vanitas had dismissed it all. Maybe Vanitas shouldn’t have — the old man was incredibly smart, when he wasn’t giving into his historical delusions. Daybreak Town is a place that seems to exist beyond time. It sounds like something out of a fairy tale, but Vanitas knows it’s real. 

Vanitas heads down into Daybreak Town. He thinks of that saying Sora started to use — May your heart be your guiding key. The phrase stirs something horrible in him, lashing at his core with defiant rage. Sora always was a happy-go-lucky idiot. 

Still, Vanitas must be the biggest idiot of them all, since he lets the phrase guide him forward. He meanders through the town. He goes up stairways and through curved overhangs, hearing the echoes of laughter all along the way. Movement stirs along the edge of his field of vision, though it always disappears when he turns to face it.

It’s as if he isn’t alone. He hates it. He won’t share Ventus’s heart with anyone or anything else. 

He finds himself at the entrance to a warehouse. Something about it is familiar. A burst of triumph sounds within him — just what is Ventus winning at?

He closes his eyes and aligns himself with Ventus’s senses. He can’t see or hear much down here, but the faint tinges of emotion he can scrape up are all uselessly pleasant. Ventus doesn’t feel much of anything right now.

Vanitas takes a step forward. The triumph sounds off like a rocket in his chest.

That isn’t his emotion. 

That’s someone else’s. 

He isn’t alone.

Vanitas drops into the shadows and speeds out of there. 

At least the fear he feels, overwhelming in its intensity, is his and his alone.

✯

Ventus tells him good night, but they don’t actually talk until the next day.

Vanitas spends the day curled in a corner of the Land of Departure’s castle. He’s scoured this place from top to bottom. Nothing from deeper within has managed to slither up here, and not even Ventus himself can dive down this far. Here, he’s completely alone.

He hates himself for running. Hadn’t he beat the cowardice out of himself years ago? Vanitas is the most monstrous thing lurking in any given shadow. Whatever that intruder is, it’s nothing compared to him. 

But how did that intruder infect his emotions? Not even Sora can worm his way into Vanitas’s heart and force his emotions onto him. Only Ventus has the power to do that, and that wasn’t Ventus’s emotion.

There’s no point in mulling this over any longer. The answer he seeks is down there. He doesn’t want to face it. He has to. 

He hates himself. He’s scared. He’s alone. 

When Ventus was scared, Aqua and Terra would always hold him tight in their arms. It never failed to make him better.

Vanitas wonders if a hug could chase this fear away.

Somewhere in the far distance, Vanitas hears the echo of his name. At least he knows this voice. It’s rarely colored in rage, but instead often dyed in fear, excitement, and loneliness. Sometimes it’s all three at once. 

Today, it’s nothing but bright excitement. It grates on Vanitas’s nerves. There he goes, throwing his emotions all over the place without care for how they affect Vanitas. This link has always been one-sided — Ventus throws and throws emotions away, forcing Vanitas to swallow them all. What does he have to do to get a moment of peace? Take Ventus’s body and destroy his precious castle?

He considers the idea as he makes his way out of the Land of Departure. The glass staircase passes by in a blur beneath him. Ventus calls his name again. The hint of fear hiding at the edge of his voice needles Vanitas's imagined skin. It’s like he’s afraid of Vanitas disappearing. Shouldn’t he be grateful if that happened? He’d finally be the perfect pure little light he’s always wanted to be.

He can’t explain the relieved smile that comes over Ventus’s face as he emerges from his dark puddle, nor can he explain the raging storm within Vanitas briefly calming at the sight.

Ventus’s smile grows larger. Vanitas scowls in response. “What’s that face for?” Vanitas demands.

“What, I can’t be happy to see you?” Ventus counters.

Vanitas looks down at Ventus’s heart station. For all the time Vanitas has spent here, Ventus’s heart station only reflects his own face. Vanitas is nowhere to be found, not amongst the Wayfinder sigils or in the bubbles showing the people Ventus loves. Vanitas is the cardinal sin buried deep in his chest, kept secret from the world around them.

But he isn’t the only secret, is he—

“Our hearts must still be pretty separate, huh?” Ventus asks, sounding strangely pleased. Vanitas realizes Ventus was following his gaze the entire time. “Kinda like how my heart was in Sora.”

Vanitas scoffs, dragged out of his spiraling thoughts. “Sure, if you forget that your heart was complete and your body was still waiting for you. I’ve always been a fragment, Ventus. My body died a decade ago. How can you not remember that when you were the one to kill me?”

“How can you not remember that you wanted me to destroy your body!?” Ventus counters. He’s so easy to rile up. It’s pathetic. He cycles through emotions so fast that he must get whiplash. Emotions are so exhausting. Vanitas hates how easily Ventus can bounce through them.

Vanitas’s rage leaves, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion. He’d sink back down to the Land of Departure if it wasn’t for the knowledge that Ventus would whine at him all night long. The idiot actually needs sleep, and he’ll starve himself of it for the dumbest reasons. 

“Whatever,” Vanitas says. “What’d you come here for?”

“I like seeing you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, dummy. Because we’re…” he trails off, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking down at his feet. He can’t find a word to describe them.

At least Vanitas can understand that. 

“I can’t say hi?” Ventus grumbles instead.

“It’s your heart. I can’t make you do anything… unless you want your shadow to consume you, that is.”

“Do you think you sound cool? You don’t. You sound dumb.”

Vanitas chuckles. Ventus grins back at him, sparking a small flutter in his chest. Ventus sits at the edge of his heart station and pats the spot next to him. 

The flutter flaps its ugly little wings harder. “I’m not your dog. I’m not going to come just because you call me,” Vanitas says.

“No. You’ll come because you want to,” Ventus says. Vanitas thinks about protesting further, but they both know Ventus is right. He makes a rude gesture as he sits down at Ventus’s side. Ventus’s smugness fades to something softer as he stares off into the distance.

They share a brief silence, interrupted only by Ventus picking at his fingernails. Vanitas whacks his hand, making Ventus yelp. 

“Shut up. That didn’t hurt,” Vanitas hisses. “And stop picking at your hands. You’ll make them bleed.”

“I can’t bleed in here, my body isn’t real!”

“But it is out there.”

Ventus picks at his nails again just to spite Vanitas. That flutter turns tumultuous, fanning a hurricane in his chest. He smacks Ventus’s hand again, harder than he intended to.

“Stop!”

“Please. I barely touched you,” Vanitas scoffs.

Ventus shoves him. Vanitas shoves him harder, nearly sending him toppling over. Irritation bounces back and forth between the two of them. It’s better than it used to be, but Ventus diving into his own heart turns this place into an echo chamber of his emotions. He stains everything with whatever he’s feeling. 

“Can you be normal for two seconds!?” Ventus snaps. “You’re a jerk to me whenever I try to talk to you out there. I come down here to hang out with you, and then you spend half the night insulting me! Can’t you at least try to be nice?”

“Nice? When have I ever been nice?” Vanitas retorts. Ventus knew this the moment he let Vanitas stay, and he should know it even better now that he knows Vanitas. There’s nothing good in him. Not in Vanitas, and not in the intruder that lurks even deeper within.

Ventus may be a pure light, but his heart is forever stained by darkness. The irony is hilarious.

Normally, Vanitas could contain his amusement. With his emotions still reeling, a laugh escapes him. 

It sets Ventus off. “You’re such a jerk!” he seethes, hopping up to his feet. “Forget this. I’m leaving.” 

“Good! I didn’t want to see you anyways!” Vanitas says to Ventus’s fading form. The last thing Vanitas sees before he fades to specks of light is the same rude gesture Vanitas had given him earlier.

He’s alone again. The anger and heartbreak he feels isn’t entirely his own.

The growing pit in his stomach — that’s wholly his. It hollows him out. He didn’t think Ventus would leave. Why can’t Ventus take a joke? What a baby. Vanitas should beat that out of him. Take control of his body and consume his mind. Purge anything and everything that isn’t Vanitas himself. Then they’d never have to deal with this again. 

But Vanitas can’t hold a conversation to save his life. Everyone hated him in the Organization. The Xehanort slivers hated him as much as the real man did, and the Nobodies that kept their personalities intact saw him as a violent brat. The only person who could vaguely tolerate him was the puppet without a personality, and even she barked at him to get back to work. 

He sinks back down to the ground. Guilt stabs at his gut. The worst part about this is that he wants Ventus to come back. He’s scared. He wishes Ventus would comfort him the way he comforts his real friends.

He wants out. It isn’t that he misses his body. That thing was a vessel for pain. Even his Replica body took on the worst qualities of his original. Unversed would seep from him, taking his rage and fear and loneliness and inflicting it on the world around him.

He wishes he could make them here. At least then he’d be empty of this feeling. He sighs, and the sound in the echoing stillness of Ventus’s heart only makes him angrier. Ventus’s own irritation hangs heavy over his heart station. 

Vanitas takes a deep breath. He’s more unstable than he wants to be right now, and Ventus’s irritation isn’t helping any. 

But why is he letting this feeling control him? He’s lost everything — his body, his heart, his very purpose. He’s no longer that scared child fighting against himself in a graveyard. 

He sinks down into the ground, and races down to the deepest part of Ventus’s heart. Daybreak Town greets him with its usual silence. He lets his heart guide him to that same warehouse. Only when he reaches the doorway does he return to his usual form. He summons his Keyblade and cautiously steps forward. He can’t sense anything here. Nothing but the echoes of Ventus’s anger that worm their way down here. 

A thin sliver of light illuminates the room. Even for a creature of darkness, it’s hard to see. He inhales, and chokes on the smell of blood.

Blood?

Why would Ventus’s heart smell of blood? 

He wonders if it has anything to do with that intruder. Except… hearts don’t work like that. Vanitas could wreck this place and nothing would fundamentally change. This is only a replica of what Ventus knows.

He creeps forward, scanning the ground in front of him. He finds something in the middle of the floor. The wood here is damaged by what looks like fingernail marks. A stain the color of rust covers the area. 

There’s no mistaking it. It really is blood. 

Just what happened in Daybreak Town?

✯

Vanitas thinks he’s going insane when he hears a girl’s voice, clear as day.

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

He spots a flash of movement — orange and white, maybe? — out of the corner of his eye. He kicks off from Daybreak Town’s fountain and dives into the safety of the ground. There’s something else here, and it’s getting closer.

“Hello? Vanitas?”

His name echoes in the sky far above. He can’t hear Ventus’s surroundings down here. Only the echoes within Ventus’s heart can reach this place.

Vanitas surveys the area. As the initial burst of fear fades, he’s comforted by the fact that the voice didn’t actually come from within Daybreak Town. It had to be a higher level of Ventus’s heart. Maybe he was wrong about being alone in the Land of Departure.

“Um… hello?”

Wait. Vanitas knows that voice.

Vanitas makes his way up the levels of Ventus’s heart, taking care to stay in the darkest patches. Why is she here, of all people? Better yet, why did Ventus allow her access into his heart? 

Jealousy flares under his skin. He’s gonna chase her out. No one else should be allowed in here. 

He reaches Ventus’s heart station. A girl in a short pink dress stands right over Ventus’s sleeping face. She curls a fist against her heart. In her other hand is a brightly-colored Keyblade, all gold flowers and blue ocean waves. It looks like a child’s toy. Vanitas could break it in two over his knee.

He stays just off the heart station, invisible in the darkness. The girl turns to face him regardless. He can’t read her expression, and all he can feel from Ventus is a vague apprehension. Is she some kind of exterminator? She couldn’t take out a cockroach, let alone a creature as powerful as Vanitas.

“Is that you, Vanitas?” she asks. He can’t read the tone of her voice. This girl is a void of emotion.

“If Ventus wanted me dead, he should have called Aqua,” Vanitas grumbles, coming up out of the ground. He summons his Keyblade and raises it over his head in a stretch. She watches the graceful swing of his weapon, but her gaze stays blank. 

“Do you really think that twig can hurt me?” he asks, gesturing to her Keyblade.

She dismisses it. “I’m only here to talk.” She offers a gentle smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “My name is Kairi. I’m studying how to use the Keyblade under Master Aqua.”

“I know who you are,” Vanitas says. This girl is a Princess of Heart. One of the seven pure lights, one of the seven Guardians of Light, and whatever other dumb title those fools liked to invent for her. Sora’s little trophy, and Xehanort’s trump card. All in all, she seems too mediocre for a single one of those descriptors. “Xehanort was so happy to kill you,” he says.

She grabs her wrist, practically shielding it with her other hand. It’s too deliberate of a movement not to mean something. “Ven asked me to come talk to you,” she says.

Vanitas snorts. “Talk to me? About what?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Classic Ventus. Just get out of here. Leave me alone.”

She takes a step towards him, unafraid. There’s a disgusting kindness softening her eyes now. She reaches her hand out, ever the pure light, and Vanitas raises his keyblade in warning. “Come any closer and I’ll cut that hand off,” he warns. 

“You seem lonely.”

“I’m not anything. You’re just projecting, princess. Sad that your boytoys abandoned you?” he sneers. That kindness shifts to hurt. He sees the knife, and he twists it in as far as it’ll go. “Oh yeah, I heard all about that. I heard Sora killed himself to save you. And when his little knight found out, he tossed you in the trash and went off to play hero. You didn’t even help look for him. All you did was nap the days away.”

He saunters towards Kairi, relishing the way her eyes go hard. He circles around her. He feints a lunge and grins when she flinches.

She puts her hands down. Straightens her back. “You’re not wrong. It’s my fault that Sora is gone. Riku has to go clean up another mess I caused, just like he always does. I’ve always been a burden.” She looks him in the eye. “But next time, when Riku brings Sora home for good… I’ll finally be someone who deserves to be special to him.”

Vanitas scoffs. “Great speech. How long did you practice that in the mirror for?”

Kairi frowns. “I’ve been shattered into pieces and put back together. Being mean to me won’t hurt me as much as you want it to.”

“You’re not very positive for a pure light.”

“I know,” Kairi says quietly. “I used to be so much,” she says, that lone sentence the most emotion she’s shown the entire conversation. The words of someone who had her childhood stolen from her. 

Why does that sound familiar? Not the particular words, but the sentiment behind them triggers something within him. For a second, Vanitas sees a girl in his mind’s eye. The flash of orange and white from before. Not the one in front of him — this one’s hair is too short, too red. That girl was not a pure light, but she was bright, and he—

“Vanitas?” Kairi asks.

He remembers it so well that it almost feels real — a cry, piercing in the darkness—

“Um… Vanitas?”

Vanitas blinks. That’s what he had seen earlier. A girl. 

The bloodstain. 

They must be connected. 

“You can leave already,” Vanitas says. “Say I’m beyond saving or whatever. I don’t care.”

“If you need someone to talk to, you can ask Ven to get me,” Kairi says. Her voice grows softer.  “Everyone around me is nice, but they all have friends they like more than me. It’d be a favor for me, too.” 

Just what was that girl’s name? Did Ventus and Vanitas know her, back when they were one?

Did she matter to them?

And better yet, does she have a connection to that intruder? 

Kairi looks at him, waiting for a response. “I don’t need friends. I’m darkness incarnate,” Vanitas says.

“Even darkness can’t exist alone,” Kairi says. “I think that includes you.”

Vanitas leaves without saying anything else, feeling Kairi’s eyes on him the entire time. Her words leave him unsettled, even after he’s retreated to the darkest corner of the Daybreak Town nestled deep in Ventus’s heart. 

She’s right. Darkness seeks out the other shadows blinded by the sun and stretches until they’re one. Light may scatter, but darkness pools.

Something faint stirs within him at those words. He refuses to examine it, until it stirs around him. 

He knows, without a doubt, that he is not alone. This sanctuary is broken.

We could have consumed the very world.

✯

Ventus doesn’t tell him good night. 

The absence of those words yawns within Vanitas. He didn’t realize they mattered enough to be missed.

✯

The next time Ventus dives into his own heart, he immediately stains the place with his frustration.

“I don’t know why I’m even here,” he gripes when he sees Vanitas appear. 

Vanitas squashes the relief that tries to bloom in his chest and responds in kind. “That makes two of us. What, Aqua and Terra didn’t pay little baby-waby Venty enough attention today?”

“Shut up,” Ventus says. The atmosphere lightens with his sigh. “Look, Vanitas. I’m sorry for what happened the other day. Kairi pointed out that you seemed upset over something, and now I feel like a big idiot for not realizing it earlier.”

That relief tightens in his chest, choking him of any breath. “You know?” Vanitas asks, his voice small with disbelief. He never thought Ventus would find out about the intruder. It took him forever just to realize Vanitas was here, and he wasn’t exactly trying to hide. 

“Not entirely, but I can guess. You’re trapped here with nothing to do. You can talk to me whenever, but you don’t get to talk to anyone else. I’d be dead from boredom if I were in your situation. Don’t you want more than this?”

Of course Ventus would completely misconstrue what set Vanitas on edge. Even when he’s not forcing Vanitas to feel his emotions, he’s projecting them onto Vanitas instead. Vanitas was a fool for hoping otherwise.

He gives Ventus what he wants: the honest, uncomplicated truth. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted was you.”

“Yeah, and I’m not gonna give you me,” Ventus says. “I like being me. I don’t want to be you, and I don’t want to lose myself.”

Vanitas thinks of the bloodstain in Daybreak Town. Maybe there is a part of Ventus — a part of them both — that’s already lost, and Ventus and Vanitas are just scraps better off never being whole.

When they first joined their hearts together, Vanitas expected to consume the world. He didn’t expect to feel so empty. At the time, he blamed it on Ventus’s refusal to let them become the weapon they were both born to be. Time and distance have led him to a different answer — that the old man was full of garbage, and the solace Vanitas hungers for will never be found by consuming Ventus. 

Besides, the longer Vanitas lives, the more secrets he finds about their past. Neither of them remember the days before the old man found them half-dead in the dirt of the Keyblade Graveyard. 

It’s all connected, but Vanitas can’t find the thread. All he’s certain of is that the secret must be found in their forgotten past. 

A jolt runs down Vanitas’s spine. He knows who can figure this out.

“Ventus. Where’s your cat?”

“Uhh… Chirithy?”

“Yeah. Your talking cat.”

“It isn’t a cat. It’s a Dream Eater.”

“Whatever. Can I meet it?”

Apprehension weighs them both down. Ventus suddenly can’t meet his eyes. “Uh… Chirithy doesn’t really know about you, remember?”

“You’re worried about scaring it off when it showed up out of nowhere and called you its best friend? Just tell it. What’s it gonna do, kill me?”

“Probably not, but still! I don’t want to upset it.”

“Get over it and bring it down here. I need to ask it something.”

Ventus shuffles around a bit, looking completely useless the entire time. Vanitas barely restrains the urge to smack him, if only because he knows that doing so would never get him what he needs. He straightens up after a few moments. “Oh! Why don’t you tell me what to ask Chirithy? I can come back with the answer.”

“No. Bring it here.”

Ventus eyes him warily. “Are you hiding something?”

A surprisingly sharp deduction for someone like Ventus. “None of your business. Are you bringing it or not?” At Ventus’s scowl, Vanitas realizes he needs something to sweeten the deal.

Fine. If Ventus is so insistent on hanging out, then he’ll get just that. “Bring Chirithy here, and our next three conversations will be completely civil. I’ll even tell you about my feelings. Deal?”

Ventus’s eyes shine. Vanitas immediately wants to punch him. Joy fills his heart station with sweetness, and Ventus’s excitement makes Vanitas feel like a dog chasing after its own tail. It takes all his self-control not to let this unwanted emotion show.

“Deal!” Ventus chirps. Vanitas can barely breathe.

He wishes he could bask in this feeling longer. 

✯

Ventus’s heart goes so quiet when he sleeps. Vanitas is most free of his influence then. Remnants of a heart have no need for rest, but occasionally Vanitas will close his eyes and force the hours to go by faster.

That’s what he’s trying to do when Ventus’s voice calls his name. “Vanitas? I need to talk to you!”

Vanitas makes his way up from the Land of Departure. He’s thought about going down to Daybreak Town again, but the more he learns, the more certain he is that the stowaway down there is too big a foe for him to handle alone. He makes a silent resolution not to visit again until he’s ready to find out just what happened there, and tear that intruder to shreds.

He finds Ventus shuffling around at the edge of his heart station, completely alone. Vanitas emerges from the darkness. “Great. You can’t follow basic instructions,” he snaps.

“It’s not like I didn’t try, jeez!” Ventus whines. “Chirithy can’t come down here with me.”

“Why not?”

“It said that if it comes down here, it’d be really bad. Apparently it can merge with my heart and make me into a… Dream Eater?”

Vanitas pushes down the strangest spark of jealousy. So Ventus can merge with the cat and it’ll forever change him, huh? It’s a cat!

“Then how am I supposed to meet it? I can’t grow a body out of nothing and go out there.”

“We could get you a Replica body. It might take a while, but I know the researchers could do it!”

“And have Aqua murder me right out of it? No thanks.”

Ventus huffs. He grows thoughtful. It doesn’t cause much of a change in the atmosphere, thank the darkness itself. “You could go visit it using my body…” Ventus says slowly. He stares to Vanitas’s left, as if the void beyond his heart station is telling him what to say.

Vanitas doesn’t buy it. “Is this a joke? You’d never give up control of your body again.”

“No, I’m serious! It means a lot to you, I can tell!”

“But why?” Vanitas presses, feeling himself grow mad. This anger is his and his alone. Somehow, that’s comforting. No one else can have this emotion. Not Ventus, and not that intruder in Daybreak Town. “The last time I stole your body, you were dying. I only gave it back because you needed someone to heal you. With a strong body, what makes you think I wouldn’t take it and never give it back?”

Ventus stands his ground. He’s calm, and that only makes Vanitas angrier. The emotional feedback loop only works one way, and the thing seems to have broken right when Vanitas could use it. “Because I know you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

He knows? Oh, sure he does! He’s proven he knows everything!

Vanitas laughs bitterly. “You don’t know what I think! You know nothing about me, Ventus! And every time you think you do, you’re dead wrong!”

“Okay, so I don’t know everything! So what? I know that you’re lost and you don’t know why you’re even alive. I know you like me enough to stay here. I know you’re upset, but you hate being vulnerable enough to tell me why.” He approaches Vanitas slowly, but with his head held high. Vanitas summons his Keyblade and places it as a shield between them. With every step Ventus takes towards him, Vanitas takes two back. 

“You’re not me, but we’re connected anyways. And maybe I want to give you a chance that no one else did.”

“You’ll lose yourself all over again!”

“And you’ll be dead for real, so I guess we both lose!”

Ventus stands just inches away from Vanitas’s Keyblade, raised in front of him like a shield. He pushes it down with a single hand. “Honestly, Vanitas? It’s simple. I trust you not to hurt me,” he says.

No one has ever trusted Vanitas before. 

“Shut up,” he says, somehow unable to move.

“Half my friends have tried to kill each other. A few have even tried to kill me. Even Xehanort, as sucky as he was, got a happy ending. Why wouldn’t you deserve a chance at happiness, too?”

Vanitas doesn’t know if happiness could ever fit in his chest. Besides, this isn’t about happiness. This is about the creature that somehow infected them both. It’s about the bloody secret in the deepest part of Ventus’s heart. 

As much as Vanitas hates it, he knows Ventus is right. He won’t hurt Ventus. Not anymore.  

But Ventus doesn’t need to know any of that yet. “Fine,” Vanitas says. “We’ll do it.”

“Great!” Ventus chirps. The satisfaction he feels oozes over his heart station. Vanitas shakes his feet off, as if he could clear himself of this muck. “So… how’d you do it last time?”

Vanitas grins and summons his Keyblade. Ventus immediately stiffens. “What!? We have to fight!?”  

“No, you idiot. Just stay where you are,” Vanitas says, moving to the center of Ventus’s heart station. There are no cracks in the station now that Ventus isn’t half-dead, but the method should still work. 

“I don’t know what you’ll feel. Whatever it is, don’t fight it,” Vanitas adds, glancing at Ventus from over his shoulder. He waits for a nod before steadying himself, his Keyblade’s teeth posed right over his heart station. 

Vanitas stabs his Keyblade into the stained glass, through the muck of trust and warmth that coats the surface. He can imagine it, in its gooey blues and greens, falling over the edge of his heart station and staining the frozen worlds deeper in his heart. 

Red overtakes the familiar green. Ventus grunts softly, but he doesn’t move. He closes his eyes.

Peace overtakes him.

✯

When Vanitas opens his eyes, he’s in the Land of Departure. Specifically, he’s in Ventus’s bedroom. In his bed. That’s not too odd. Sometimes he comes in and lights Ventus’s books on fire whenever he gets really mad. They always come back, but the sight of the paper turning to ash is relieving in the moment. 

What makes this odd is that the sky is dark. The only light in the room comes from the glowing lamp just off the foot of Ventus’s bed. There is no darkness in Ventus’s heart. How is it dark here?

Then Vanitas feels a twinge of amusement that isn’t his, and it all sinks in. He’s in Ventus’s body. He can move Ventus’s arms. He can blink Ventus’s eyes. He can control this body however he wants.

It worked.

He springs to his feet. Ventus doesn’t have a mirror in his bedroom, but Vanitas figures out how to flip his Gummiphone to selfie mode quickly enough.

Ventus’s face stares back at him. Just like last time, his eyes are colored in Vanitas’s molten gold. 

“If anyone sees me, they’ll know what happened,” he says, feeling stupid for talking to himself. He doesn’t know how Ventus filters his internal monologue so Vanitas can hear it.

Ventus’s voice sounds in his mind. Vanitas flinches at the sound. It’s so clear, sounding out from within him. Just don’t let Aqua or Terra see you. 

Vanitas pauses. “You didn’t think to call Chirithy here?”

It has its own room!

“It’s a cat. Why does it have its own room?”

I didn’t wanna share, okay!? Ventus says, embarrassed enough that Vanitas feels the urge to twist the knife in deeper. It made me feel like a little kid with a stuffed animal.

Actually, Vanitas will torture him about that later. He has something more important to do first. “So, where’s the cat’s room?”

Five doors down, on the right.

Easy enough. Vanitas goes to the door and cracks it open just enough to peek down the hall. The coast is clear. Unsurprising. Aqua’s probably haunting some other part of the castle, and Terra’s probably carving some stupid little bauble. Still, Vanitas is careful to move quickly down the hall, cursing how ridiculously big this place is. For all he hates the confines of Ventus’s heart, this castle feels even more like a graveyard. The rooms may be empty, but he passes through a row of tombstones all the same. 

The door is just as plain as all the others. Vanitas doesn’t bother to knock as he enters. What surprises him is how the room is completely empty. He knows his count was right.

“Ventus. You messed up.”

I didn’t! You messed up counting!

“You’re the stupid one between the two of us, not me. Where is Chirithy?”

Whatever Ventus tries to say is drowned out by a strange mewling sound. Dots of light appear in the room, coalescing into a puff of smoke. A small cat-like creature in a pink cape flips out of the smoke. It looks like a stuffed animal. It seems to stare right at Vanitas, despite the seemingly stitched on pink thread it has where its eyes should be. 

“You’re not Ven,” it says, immediately tense.

“I’m not. I’m the darkness that was ripped out of his heart.”

Chirithy’s voice starts to waver. “Ven said he wanted me to talk to you. He didn’t say it’d be like this.”

“Calm down. Ventus and I have an agreement. He’s letting me borrow this body. You can’t come in, remember?”

Hearing this, Ventus radiates a calming aura. It’s interesting. He can feel Ventus’s emotion, but he isn’t overwhelmed by it. Maybe it’s finally the other way around — maybe now Ventus can feel the whirlwind of emotions that are always at the edge of Vanitas’s consciousness. His irritation, sadness, rage, and fear. They must feel horrible to such a pure little light.

Chirithy still looks wary, but at least it isn’t sprinting down the hall screaming for Aqua. “You’re right about that much. But why not just have Ventus pass along your question? If this is some  kind of trick, I’ll…”

“What? Thwack me to death?” Vanitas laughs. Chirithy visibly shudders. His laugh must sound so wrong in Ventus’s voice. “Please. I’ll play nice.” 

There’s an empty chair by an empty desk. Vanitas takes a seat. Chirithy takes a noticeable step away from him.

“Just tell me what you want,” says Chirithy.

“Tell me about Daybreak Town.”

Daybreak Town? Ventus asks. What is that?

Chirithy freezes. If Vanitas didn’t know any better, he really would think this thing was a toy. Vanitas could prop it up on a shelf and leave it to gather dust, and all of Ventus’s little friends would still value it more than they ever could Vanitas.

“How do you know about Daybreak Town?” it whispers.

“I’ve seen it in the deepest layer of his heart. It’s a ghost town.”

Chirithy seems to relax slightly. There’s relief clear in its voice when it speaks. “Oh, I understand. It was once Ven’s home, after all. If it’s just a projection, of course it’d be empty.”

Vanitas suppresses a shudder. “I didn’t say it was empty.”

Ventus’s confusion echoes in his mind. Vanitas… what are you talking about?

Now Chirithy seems lost. “How can’t it be empty? There isn’t anyone in Ven’s heart but you. I’d be able to tell.”

“Wait a minute. You knew I was in there?”

Chirithy shakes its head. “Not really. I could tell there was something different about Ven, but I thought he had just changed. I didn’t realize it was a different being until he told me.”

Great. The cat is proving to be more useless with every word. Still, this is the only lead Vanitas has right now. He’s gonna squeeze every last drop of information out of it. 

“Tell me more about Daybreak Town. Did we spend a lot of time with some girl in white?”

Naminé? Ventus asks, completely lost.

No, you dolt, Vanitas snaps, surprised to hear Ventus’s indignant yelp. Huh. So that’s how Ventus talks to him. It’s pretty easy.  

Chirithy seems puzzled. “A girl in white? Um… Ven knew some girls in his first Union, but I didn’t think they were actually close enough for any of them to leave an impression on his heart like that… What did she look like?”

“Long orange hair. She was attacked by something, and we were there to see it. What do you know about that?”

Chirithy seems even more lost. “I don’t know who that could be. We sometimes met Keyblade wielders who fell while trying to protect the light, but I don’t remember anyone with long orange hair.”

At first Vanitas thinks about chucking the thing out of a window. This was a complete waste of his time. Sensing his emotions, Ventus responds. Calm down, Vanitas, he chides. Vanitas takes a deep breath, helping to settle his frayed nerves. He has to think clearly.

A stray thought strikes him — there’s a strange comfort to be found in the voice whispering in his mind. Is this how Ventus feels when Vanitas speaks to him? No wonder Ventus has grown so warm to him. Even Vanitas’s mile-high walls would crumble with this kind of comfort battering his borders. 

Stop being so nice. I need to focus , Vanitas says. Based on Ventus’s chuckle, he can tell there’s no venom in his words. 

Something else occurs to Vanitas. “How were you separated from us?”

Chirithy, despite not having much of an expressive face, seems solemn. “Do I really need to talk about that?”

“Yeah. Spill.”

Chirithy sighs. “Well, you’ve seen Daybreak Town. In my time, it was the main hub for all Keyblade Wielders. Ven was a Dandelion — a Keyblade Wielder who saw past the factions that caused the Keyblade War, and escaped to ensure that wielders would continue to protect the light from the forces of darkness. There was a woman who gathered all the Dandelions, Master Ava. We had met her before. She was kind and just. 

“One time, she came to meet Ven. She said he was going to be a Union Leader in the new age. Just when I thought something seemed off about her, I lost my connection to Ven.”

Chirithy shudders. “My kind are created to be guides to our wielders. We’re born from our wielder's heart. If they fall to darkness, so do we. We can save their lives if they’re on the edge of dying, but at the cost of their humanity and our consciousnesses.”

Chirithy creeps closer to Vanitas, as if seeking some kind of comfort from being close. Vanitas sees no point in comforting the thing. He’s not what Chirithy wants — he’s just the stain covering the boy it loves. 

“I didn’t understand. No Chirithy has ever had their connection severed like that before. I knew he couldn’t be dead, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find him. My form faded. I started sleeping through the years just to make them pass. One day, a horrible pain woke me from my sleep. I didn’t know I could feel something like that. When I opened my eyes, I was in the Final World.”

“My birth,” Vanitas murmurs. 

“He almost died back then, didn’t he? That would explain why I went there.”

Chirithy seems curious about that, tilting its head towards Vanitas in a way he doesn’t like. He ignores the obvious request playing out in the air — I’ve told you about myself, now tell me about you — and instead focuses on the part that could hold his answer. 

“Wait a second. So you’re telling me Ventus met some fake woman, and then your connection was cut off?”

“Yes.”

“Did she have orange hair?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so. She was always hooded.”

“Could Ventus take her in a fight?”

Chirithy looks aghast, despite its face not moving. “No, never! He’d never fight a Foreteller, let alone win!”

Vanitas can’t help but laugh. “Guess he was even more of a weakling back then.”

“He wasn’t exactly the strongest wielder, but he was also younger than most. He was seven when he started. He was only nine when I lost him.”

And now he’s seventeen, or twenty-seven, or several thousand milennia, depending on how you look at it. Vanitas isn’t much better — five or seventeen or seven-thousand, who knows. He doesn’t. 

“You feel a little like Ven,” Chirithy says. “But you also don’t. I can sense his darkness in you, but you’re not just his darkness. You’re… more. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Vanitas snorts. “Must be the Sora in me. Or maybe the Xehanort.”

“No, not that. I know what Sora feels like, and you only look like him. You don’t feel like him at all. The darkness in you… it’s inhuman.”

“I can make creatures from my own emotions. Of course I’m inhuman. Can’t you do anything besides state the obvious?”

Chirithy shakes its head emphatically. “No, not that either. You feel… you feel like…” It comes even closer.

It looks up at him. He can feel its horror.

“You feel like Master Ava did,” it says. “Not off. Wrong. Against all that we stand for.” 

Vanitas, Ventus says, utterly confused, What does it mean?

It looks at him. Vanitas has not feared himself for many years. It’s only now that he feels the trickle of fear down his spine.

Are you… scared? Of what? Ventus asks.

Chirithy backs away from him. “Vanitas… what are you?”

✯

Ventus and Vanitas sit together at the edge of Ventus’s heart station. The glittering staircase that leads deeper into Ventus’s heart taunts Vanitas. 

He had thought the old man was insane for thinking Vanitas was anything other than Ventus’s darkness. Maybe he was right all along. What does that mean for him — and more importantly, for this uneasy bond he’s forged with Ventus? If they’re not two halves of the same heart, then what’s the point of being together at all?

Maybe Vanitas is nothing more than a stubborn parasite. Ventus’s friends would certainly think as much.

They’ve been in silence for what must be hours. Vanitas doesn’t know who has control of the body anymore. He half expected Ventus to kill him on the spot, but he hasn’t. All he’s done is ask question after question, and all Vanitas has done is answer him. They talk, back-and-forth, until all they know is one and the same.

“Can you take me there? I want to see it myself,” Ventus says. He doesn’t sound scared, leaning back and staring out into nothingness. “I can’t believe it. That’s where we come from.”

There’s awe in his voice. Why?

“That’s where you come from,” Vanitas says. The level of bitterness in his words surprises even him.

“Yeah, and you don’t!?” Ventus spits back.

“You heard Chirithy. I’m connected to whatever ruined your life. You really want me to ruin your life again?”

“So what? You’ve already ruined my life like two separate times. What’s one more?”

“You’re an idiot,” Vanitas spits. “You have the survival instincts of a grenade. It takes so much effort to keep you from dying for stupid reasons. And on top of that, you’re overwhelming. All your emotions drown me. “

“So did your’s when I was down here!” Ventus protests. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “Look… I’m sorry. I never realized what it was like for you. Even when I thought I did, I was wrong.”

“You can say that again.”

“I don’t care about whatever’s hiding in my heart. I don’t care about what happened back then. You’re not that thing.”

“How can you be so sure? You barely know me.”

“I wanna know more… if you’d let me.”

Does Ventus realize just how heavy that statement is? It threatens to crush Vanitas under a weight he can’t comprehend. His throat feels tight. His imagined heart pounds in his chest. He scrambles to his feet and folds his arms over his chest, as if that movement could somehow protect him from the weight of whatever Ventus is suggesting. 

“Let’s go,” Vanitas snaps. “Before I get sick of you and leave.”

“Wait, really!?” Ventus asks, standing up. His grin is blinding.

“Don’t make me change my mind,” Vanitas warns. He turns on his heel and starts down the stairs. He lets the heavy plodding of his footsteps fill his mind. Better that than examine what Ventus just said to him or the feeling it inspired. 

He stops halfway down the first set of stairs when he realizes that there’s only one pair of plodding footsteps, not two.

“Vanitas!” Ventus calls out, exasperated. Vanitas turns to see what garbage Ventus is doing now. Ventus balances precariously on the third step down from his heart station, his foot nearly slipping off the edge. He stumbles, but steadies himself before he falls into the darkness below. 

“Keep up, Ventus,” Vanitas says.

“I can’t see you!”

“What are you talking about? I’m right here!”

“Not anymore, you aren’t!”

Huh. So Ventus can’t even see Vanitas once he’s past the first layer of his heart? What a weakling. He comes back up the stairs. After a certain point, all the tension leaves Ventus’s body in a single exhale, his eyes brightening with recognition. He must be able to see Vanitas again.

“You were walking down, and then you just disappeared. I couldn’t even tell where you went.”

His heart is such an odd place. The longer Vanitas stays here, the less he wants it for himself. Besides, Ventus is as helpless as ever. Since the moment they first met, it’s been up to Vanitas to guide Ventus down his destined path.

He doesn’t know if they’re destined to find the truth. If they are, maybe they’re better off not facing it. Fate, prophecies, destined endings — all they’ve ever done is tear Vanitas to shreds. Was having a purpose worth the pain?

He wonders what answer they’ll find. 

He takes Ventus’s hand. It’s warm, even through his gloves. Ventus gapes down at their connected hands. A gray light glows where they touch. “Vanitas, what are you—”

“Shut up and don’t let go,” Vanitas says, tugging him away from the edge. Ventus stumbles towards him, his foot slipping off the edge of one stair and onto another, but Vanitas shoves him with his shoulder until he’s steady on his own two feet again. Ignoring Ventus’s annoyed shout, Vanitas pulls him deeper into the depths of his heart.

When they’re together, the stairs seem to spiral on forever. Ventus takes every step carefully, unsure where exactly his next foot will fall. Vanitas glances back at him; he has that stupid look on his face that means he wants to ask something, but he’s taken Vanitas’s warning to heart. Good.

The strange thing about Ventus’s heart is how the grand places hidden inside are barely visible until you’re already in them. Vanitas must be able to see the edges of the Land of Departure’s castle more easily than Ventus. He sees its small courtyard and the grand steps that lead up into the castle long before he hears Ventus’s awed gasp.

“Is that the castle?” Ventus asks, in the most stupidly obvious way possible.

“It’s your heart’s perception of it,” Vanitas answers. Feeling too helpful, he snidely adds, “Stupid.”

Ventus squeezes his hand so hard it would hurt in reality. It would be nothing compared to the torture Vanitas compared in his previous life, but it’s still annoying. 

“Is it different from the real one?”

“No. It’s just as sad as empty.”

“Sometimes I can’t stand you.”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

They go deeper. The castle disappears from view. Vanitas ignores Ventus as he puzzles over what happened to the castle. The only thing that’s real here are their feelings. Nothing else. 

The stairs between the Land of Departure and Daybreak Town seem longer than ever before. Ventus still follows behind him, ever the loyal puppy. His hand is so warm. The light that glows between them puts Vanitas at ease. 

He can vaguely sense Ventus’s feelings. Apprehension and curiosity war within him in equal measure. Vanitas can’t relate to that curiosity, but he can’t blame him for feeling it. Vanitas prods at their emotional connection and feels the apprehension swell over the dam between them. Ventus’s eyes bore into the back of his head. 

Did he feel that?

“What did you just do?” Ventus asks.

So he did. That’s new.

“What am I feeling?” Vanitas asks. “Can you tell?”

Ventus hums. “Not from your face. But there’s… there’s like a part of me that’s scared. But it can’t be me. That’s you, isn’t it?”

“Who says I’m scared?” Vanitas asks.

“Your heart,” Ventus says, so simply that Vanitas can’t deny it. Damn. Vanitas feels fear deep within himself, curling around him like a snake. 

It seems that the more often they switch off control of the body, the less one-sided this connection becomes. His chest constricts, though he isn’t sure why. 

“Why are you relieved?” Ventus asks.

“Let’s keep going,” he says, tugging Ventus so harshly that he stumbles again. They take the stairs down twice as fast, and it finally occurs to Vanitas why this trip seems so long. He’s never walked up and down the stairs. He always drops down into a puddle of darkness to travel. Of course walking would take longer.

Finally, a series of purple rooftops come into view. Vanitas moves even faster, only slowing down once he’s sure Ventus can see Daybreak Town as well. The stairs take them right to the town’s central courtyard. The fountain bubbles happily away, beckoning them closer.

They step off the stairs. Ventus seems relieved to be on solid ground. He lets go of Vanitas’s hand and rushes to the fountain’s edge. Vanitas ignores the sudden chill. 

“Wow!” Ventus says, looking up at the sky. Seems he’s forgotten all about why they’re here. “This place feels so familiar!”

“Of course it does, stupid.”

“Shut up,” Ventus says, though his heart isn’t in it. “It’s weird. I can’t remember it, but I can almost remember being here.”

What the brain can’t remember, the heart never forgets. Vanitas feels a surge of hope. Maybe Ventus was the key all along. If Chirithy can’t remember what happened, maybe Ventus can. 

“Lead the way, Ventus,” Vanitas says. Ventus looks down at his reflection in the fountain. Curious, Vanitas comes to his side. Two faces, utterly dissimilar to each other, stare back up at them. 

“Why did you ever call us brothers? We look nothing alike.”

“Do you have a better word for our connection?”

Ventus’s reflection shrugs. His blue eyes shimmer in the water, one and the same. “I’m still figuring it out.”

He pushes off from the fountain and darts around the rest of the courtyard, poking his head into houses and staring up at the rooftops. Vanitas trails behind him. The sun is real enough for them to feel its warmth, but not real enough to cast the shade it should. He’s the only shadow in this illusion. 

Ventus summons his Keyblade. He looks down at Wayward Wind, shifting it in his hand. He freezes suddenly. “I remember something!”

Vanitas creeps closer. “What is it?”

“This wasn’t my first Keyblade. That one was… purple. And gray. Way thinner than this one. Someone told me to stop holding it the way I did. She said I’d break my wrist like that,” he says. He speaks as if possessed by the past. Vanitas listens, intrigued and fearful all at once. Nothing Ventus says sounds familiar.

Ventus’s steps slow, as if drifting into a trance. “I didn’t listen. I didn’t think Starlight fit me. I was always afraid of it never hitting hard enough. I was a bad fighter and she knew it.” He stops altogether, frowning. His eyes are clouded over by faded memories. “She was so much taller than me. She was always in a pink robe, and she had this mask. It was a… um…”

Finally, this triggers something. Vanitas can see it in his mind’s eye — a reflection in the square’s fountain. A wavering mask, a whisper of white surrounded by pink.

“A fox,” Vanitas says.

“Yeah! A fox!”

Ventus looks at the stairway leading out of the square. His eyes seem to land on the warehouse. He walks towards it, one slow step at a time. Vanitas reaches for him, but he stops himself before he can grab Ventus’s shoulder.

He should stop Ventus. If he does that, he’ll never get answers. That stowaway will stay forever.

If Ventus goes, Vanitas doesn’t know if he can keep him safe.

Ventus continues on, blind to Vanitas’s struggle. “There are so many people here.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ventus takes the stairs, but he stops on a ledge just off the stairway. He stands in front of an empty bench. “See? Right here.” Ventus waves a hand over the bench. “They’re just illusions, but I see them. I don’t think I knew these people’s names, but I remember… I remember being jealous of them.”

He heads back up the stairs. He’s clearly seeing something, but it’s only appearing to him. Vanitas can’t understand why there’s a difference between them now, of all times. They used to be one heart. Shouldn’t these memories appear to both halves equally?

He thinks of Xehanort again. Of his theory. He’d die of happiness just to see this place. Vanitas wishes the old man would have never opened his mouth.

“Every time I look at something else, I can remember more…” Ventus says. Even his voice sounds lost, like he’s stuck in a daze. “I used to buy mango chunks from that stand right there,” he says, once they reach the top of the stairs. “The lady who ran the cart always gave me a discount. She said I was too skinny.”

Vanitas glances at this empty cart. White and purple tassels hang from a pole along the top. Vanitas has passed by it multiple times, and he’s never been able to figure out what it was. He’s finally getting answers by bringing Ventus down here. That’s what he wanted.

Why does he want Ventus to leave so badly?

“I was always so lonely here… but eventually, I made friends. Four of them. Three boys and one girl, all way older than me. They were so nice. Even when they were scared and unsure, they took me into the snow and played with me. I had never built a snowman before… It was so fun.”

Ventus keeps moving towards the warehouse. He seems lost in his memories. “I keep seeing her. The woman in pink. Master… Master something. I think she’s leading me to something.”

“Master Ava,” Vanitas says, remembering their previous conversation with Chirithy. It had spoken of her with such reverence, but she’s leading Ventus towards that awful place. 

Vanitas starts to put the pieces together. “She tricked you.”

“She couldn’t have. She saved us, Vanitas. She had said that the war would kill everyone, but look! I’m still here!”

He goes inside the warehouse, disappearing into inky darkness. Vanitas rushes after him in a panic. He grabs Ventus’s shoulder. He’s not letting him go. Not here. 

“This place is messing with your head,” Vanitas snaps. 

Ventus turns to face him. His grin is blinding in what little light there is. “Coming here made me remember how alone I used to be. But I’m never alone anymore. You’re always with me. Vanitas… I think we belong together,” he says, as if having Vanitas tucked away in his heart is a good thing. 

Vanitas can’t meet his eyes. He can’t face the emotion there, and he dams his heart off from whatever’s swelling in Ventus’s. 

He can’t shake this awful feeling. Ventus will regret his words any second now. Fearing what else he’ll say, Vanitas surges forward and claps his hand over Ventus’s mouth. Ignoring Ventus’s muffled protests, he says, “This is the place.”

He shoves Ventus forward, but he doesn’t let him go. Ventus stumbles, then shoots a dirty look at Vanitas over his shoulder. The cloudiness disappears a little from his eyes. Good.

He stays two steps behind Ventus as he creeps further inside. After a few steps, Ventus stops. “I remember now! Master Ava brought me here. She wanted to talk to me about something…”

Ventus trails off, seemingly unable to remember. As he struggles, a new figure appears. Vanitas spots spiky blond hair, fair skin, and cloudy blue eyes.

It’s Ventus.

Undeniably younger than the one Vanitas knows, but Ventus all the same. He’s so small, made all the smaller by what must be malnutrition and stress . Anything could crush him. Vanitas’s Keyblade is longer than he is tall.

These were the famed protectors of the light? Children barely able to feed themselves? 

Ventus pays no attention to his younger self. Not when he nods hesitantly, and not when darkness swirls around him. 

“She’s gone,” Ventus says.

“Ventus, don’t you see yourself?” Vanitas asks, pointing to the boy becoming increasingly clearer.

“See what?”

Vanitas is plunged into cold fear. Sure, Ventus can see things Vanitas can’t. There shouldn’t be anything Vanitas can see that Vanitas can’t. 

The Ventus shade moves oddly. His limbs shake forward more than they move. He summons his Keyblade and moves deeper into the darkness. Vanitas lunges at him. His hands pass right through the shade, flickering back to life as Vanitas pulls away. 

Deeper in the warehouse stands a girl. Vanitas can see her clearly now. Orange twintails trail down the back of her white dress. She seems to be calling out for someone. 

“I see a girl… is this the one you were looking for?” Ventus asks, oblivious to the way his shade raises his Keyblade. Vanitas lunges forward again, as if he could pull that Keyblade out of Ventus’s hand and stops this.

Ventus’s shade strikes the girl. A single, clean hit on an unassuming target. She cries out, falling to the ground. 

He strikes again. 

And again.

Vanitas, who spent his most formative years destroying himself and watching his pain bleed back into his body, can’t bear to watch. 

When he opens his eyes, the shade is stumbling away, an odd book in hand. Ventus can see the girl on the ground now, judging by the way he gasps. He rushes towards her, forgetting she’s just a shade of a long-forgotten memory. 

“She isn’t real,” Vanitas chokes out, even as Ventus falls to his knees. He tries to touch her. His hands go through her body. She cries out weakly. Blood staining her dress, she gets to her feet. She picks something up — her own Chirithy, maybe, though Vanitas can’t see it — and carries it to the door. Ventus trails after her, his hands passing through her back at every chance.

Her body fades to light before she can leave.

Vanitas goes to Ventus’s side, careful to step over the bloodstain she left behind. He doesn’t understand how this rattles him so badly. He didn’t know this girl. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared. Hearing her whisper her final regrets is meaningless — he doesn’t care, and he never will.

Then why does he feel this bad?

“I don’t understand,” Ventus whispers. “Why did we see this? What happened to her? I saw Master Ava, and then… what?”

The darkness that swirled around Ventus, coming from the woman who Chirithy described as off… it possessed Ventus. Took his body as its own.

The thing that possessed Ventus — that’s what’s down here. A creature darker than any Heartless or Unversed Vanitas has ever seen. And Chirithy believes there’s a connection between it and Vanitas. 

For most of Vanitas’s life, there was only one given — that he was Ventus’s other half.

What if that was never true?

Its voice sounds in Vanitas’s head.

The boy was only ever a vessel. We needed him for our plans. You see the truth, and yet it terrifies you. Why?

You want to run from your past? Then run. Deny the truth of your creation. Deny the whole you were meant to be part of. 

Let the light snuff you out. 

Vanitas takes Ventus’s hand and runs as fast as he can.

✯

The monster may sleep in Ventus’s heart, but at least it remains dormant.

He’s safe. Surrounded by friends. His heart shines with light.

What do you think, Vanitas? Should Terra make meat or tofu for dinner? 

Through Ventus’s eyes, he can see Terra in the castle’s kitchen, puzzling between a hunk of beef and a block of tofu. Kairi stands next to him, mixing together some kind of sauce in a bowl. It smells tangy. 

“The beef. Terra knows how to cook it better,” Vanitas says.

Ventus laughs out loud. Kairi and Terra both look at him curiously. Ventus tells them Vanitas’s answer, which Terra seems to accept without a problem. He starts chopping the beef as Kairi fills a wok with hot oil. It’s all so domestic that Vanitas’s imaginary skin crawls.

It’s been two days. They only talked about what they saw down there once. Ventus said he didn’t understand it. He’s become so convinced that Vanitas is a whole slew of words that have never defined him that he won’t listen to anything else. He talks about Vanitas being things like like good and worth saving and able to become part of the castle one day, if he wants. His naivete is sickening. 

He had asked Vanitas why they ran. Vanitas told him only a sliver of the truth: that he sensed that intruder and knew they couldn’t fight it. Ventus had pushed further, but Vanitas refused to budge.

There’s no point in telling Ventus the full truth. He’ll have no choice but to exterminate Vanitas once he finds out. 

He doesn’t know how much of that thing he is. He doesn’t think it can control him fully, but it can influence him. Sneak into his emotions and twist them until he does its bidding. 

He wants to protect Ventus. So much that it scares him. His connection to that thing will sever their bond without a doubt. Vanitas is only welcome here until Ventus discovers the truth. 

He doesn’t want to leave Ventus. He wants to stay with him. 

But when has Vanitas ever gotten something he wanted?

Dinner’s gonna be great! Ventus says. I hope Aqua likes it. She’s been so busy lately. I’ve barely seen her. Hey, do you wanna try some? I can swap with you and sneak you a couple bites!

Vanitas laughs ruefully. Ventus doesn’t know anything. There he goes, on and on about useless things. He’s happy to use Vanitas as his personal diary. So much of his life is mundane. It makes Vanitas realize just how little he’s actually spoken to other people. Most of his life has been lived in silence, broken up mostly by cries of pain.

For a little bit, Vanitas felt warm when Ventus spoke to him like this. Now his words, sweet as they are, turn sour in the air. He retreats deeper into Ventus’s heart, where his incessant chatter is easier to block out. He finds an empty corridor in the Land of Departure and crams himself in the corner. He has nothing better to do now than waste time.

He needs to leave. Get out of here and take the monster with him. If it devours him, then so be it.

He doesn’t want to die.

But he only has two choices: die by that thing’s hand, or die by Ventus’s.

He doesn’t move until he hears Kairi’s voice sound out, calling his name. Why is she down here again? Just what is going through Ventus’s head?

Knowing that she won’t leave until he goes to see her, Vanitas makes the trek back up to Ventus’s heart station. Kairi waves to him when she sees him appear at the edge. “Hello, Vanitas. How are you?”

“Why are you here?” Vanitas asks.

“Ven said you’ve been upset. He asked me to talk to you.”

Vanitas snorts. “He tell you why?”

She shakes her head.

So it seems Ventus kept his little murder a secret. Of course he would — what better way to sully a pure light than to give it a grave sin. 

Ventus may have a lot to lose by admitting the truth, but Vanitas has already lost anything that could ever matter to him. He fills Kairi in on what happened in the depths of his heart, including his own theory on just what happened.

Kairi listens patiently, her eyes never leaving his. When he finally finishes, she hums to herself. “So…” she starts slowly, “you think you’re the darkness that possessed Ven?”

“What else could I be?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What, you think I’m wrong too?”

She shakes her head. “No. I think you’re kind of right.”

He’s shocked into stillness. He didn’t think she’d agree at all. Within seconds, he hardens. She’s a pure light. He’s an abomination of darkness. There’s only one end to this story. “Then you know what to do.”

She glances his way, then shakes her head. “I’m not killing you.”

“Why not? I’m literally the worst nemesis you could ever conceive of.”

She hums. “Well… Sora told me that he encountered something in Ven’s heart when he was trying to find me. It called itself darkness. He thought it was you, but it wouldn’t confirm anything. He had to keep looking for me, so he couldn’t stop to investigate. But he told me before he left. And after hearing your story, well… I don’t think either of you are really right.”

“Then enlighten me, princess. Just what do you think?”

“I think you’re partially the darkness that possessed Ven. But I think you’re Ven, too. Them, and a little bit of Xehanort, and a little bit of Sora, and maybe even a little bit of the place you remember the most. When those things are all mixed together, they make something entirely new — you.”

“How naive.”

She shakes her head. “Look at Xion. She’s supposed to be me, right? We look similar, but we’re nothing alike. Xion is brave and fierce. She’s funny. She has Sora’s eyes, not mine. She has Axel’s humor, and Roxas’s sense of wonder. She takes on a little bit from everyone she meets, but that doesn’t make her any less of herself.”

“Yeah, but she isn’t made of the enemy of light.”

“Riku’s full of darkness, and everyone loves him.”

“He’s actually human.”

She looks down at her hands. Her eyes seem empty. “I’m barely human. My heart doesn’t feel like it belongs in my body anymore. I’ve been split into pieces, and every splinter born from me is more loved than I’ve ever been. Sora saved every single person I know multiple times, but he gave up his life for me. They’ve spent over a year putting their lives on pause to look for him. I can’t fight. I’m most helpful when I keep quiet and out of the way. I’m all that… and people still accept me.”

She looks at Vanitas pointedly. She doesn’t need to say the quiet part out loud — he’ll do it for her. “Are you kidding me? You and I aren’t similar. We couldn’t be more different.”

“I don’t think so. People are more forgiving than you think. If Ven wants you here, despite all the pain in your past… isn’t that enough?”

She gets to her feet. She puts her hand over her heart, as if trying to comfort herself. “I struggle to forgive myself too, most days. I don’t really know if it gets easier, but I hope it does.” She smiles down at him. “I should get going. I need to study some techniques before bed. I’ve heard you’re pretty good with a Keyblade. I’d be very happy if you’d help me train sometime.”

Forgiving himself, huh? He had never thought about it that way. 

She gives a little wave before she disappears into soft light. 

He thinks of her ask at the end. Aqua’s probably training her like the perfect little princess she is. If she’s a bad fighter, then she should learn how to play dirty. When brute strength can’t work, little tricks can. He could show her a thing or two.

Ha! As if Ventus would ever give up his body for something like that.

It’s all just a pipe dream.

✯

Ventus comes down that night. He’s lucky Vanitas is already on the highest level of his heart. It’ll be far easier to tell Ventus to destroy him up here than it would be anywhere else.

He doesn’t know how strong the connection between him and that darkness is. He doesn’t think he can fight it. He doesn’t even know how to get it to appear. 

But if he was born from it, then maybe it’s a thing like Ventus and Sora. If Sora had ever kicked the bucket when he sheltered Ventus’s heart, Ventus would have been done for. So if Vanitas is destroyed, won’t that thing lose its power? Even if it isn’t fully destroyed, it should be weakened, All Ventus would need is a guardian of light or two to come down here and blast it to shreds. 

He’ll know that this is the best way to keep him safe. 

He expects Ventus, and the resolute look in his eyes, to agree. 

“Kairi told me everything,” Ventus says.

“Great. Why are we standing around here? Destroy me, weaken that thing, and then get Aqua down here to blast it to shreds. You’ll never have to worry again.”

“I thought you were going to say that,” he says sullenly, approaching Vanitas without a single bit of fear. 

“You just love to throw your life away, don’t you?” Vanitas sneers, backing away from him. He summons his Keyblade and raises it like a shield. The move is painfully familiar.

Ventus keeps approaching. “Stay away from me!” Vanitas yells. He takes a wild swing at Ventus, but he dodges easily. When Vanitas tries again, Ventus grabs the neck of his Keyblade in his hand. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Ventus says, pushing his Keyblade down. Vanitas feels on the verge of breaking. Seeing whatever embarrassing expression Vanitas must be making, Ventus’s voice softens. “Neither are you, Vanitas.”

“I don’t understand you. You’ve always had every reason to kill me. I won’t even fight back this time. Why won’t you just do it?”

Ventus lunges at him. He wrenches the Keyblade out of Vanitas’s hands and chucks it over the edge of his heart’s platform. “Shut up! Just shut up!” he says, whirling on Vanitas. 

He stalks towards him even as Vanitas tries to scramble away. He won’t give up. His emotions whirl all around them. There’s anger, but it’s not the kind Vanitas is used to. This one is stained by a strange sweetness. He doesn’t understand it. 

“I’m so sick of this! You feel it too, Vanitas, I know you do. Stop lying to yourself!” He backs Vanitas to the very edge. When Vanitas stumbles, Ventus grabs his shoulders and pulls him into a rough hug.

“Let go of me, you dolt!” Vanitas says, struggling out of his grasp. Ventus’s hands are like a lock around his waist. Even when he jams his palm against Ventus’s jaw, he doesn’t budge.

“Not until you admit it! You want to stay with me, Vanitas, just like I want to stay with you! Whatever happened in the past is over. I don’t care how that thing down there is related to you. It doesn’t make me like you any less!” 

If Vanitas had lungs, he wouldn’t be able to breathe. Even without them, he still struggles to take in imagined air. Words battle within him. He feels ready to explode. 

“I’m scared, okay!?” Vanitas blurts out. “I’m scared of the control that thing has over me! I’m scared of dying! I’m scared of leaving you!”

He’ll never be someone else’s tool again. He’s found a new purpose, and it isn’t one given to him by someone else. It doesn’t make him into a ticking time bomb, meant to explode.

He’s meant to protect Ventus. And he’ll do whatever it takes to keep him safe.

Strange, how freeing admitting that feels.

Ventus tucks his face into the crook of Vanitas’s neck. His arms slacken just enough for Vanitas to take in a desperately healing gasp of breath. “Then don’t leave. Stay,” Ventus says, his voice muffled. “We can face that thing together.”

Vanitas doesn’t want to fight back anymore. He knows exactly what Ventus feels at this moment. It’s all around him. He feels the same. 

He wonders if Ventus can feel it, too.

“Okay,” Vanitas says. “I’ll stay. Come with me to take care of that intruder.”

Ventus pulls just far enough back to gape at him. “Now!? I thought we were gonna get, I dunno, a few minutes to prepare!”

“Nope. We’re doing it now. Come on.” Vanitas grabs his hand and pulls him towards the stairway.

“Shouldn’t we at least warm up!?”

“Warm-ups are for babies,” Vanitas says, taking the first steps down to meet whatever awful destiny still waits for them. Ventus’s hand glows in his. The light, as muted as it is, seems to be a comfort to them both. 

Vanitas still can’t fully believe Ventus. He’s half-convinced that they’ll get down there, find that thing, and Ventus will turn his Keyblade on Vanitas instead. If it came to that, then fine. Vanitas can accept that.

He doesn’t want it, but he won’t fight back.

“Cheer up,” Ventus says, giving him a small pat on his shoulder with his free hand. “We’ve each faced all sorts of terrible stuff before. We survived a war at seven. We got this.”

“You survived a war at seven,” Vanitas reminds him.

“Whatever!” 

The conversation dies down once they reach the Land of Departure. The weight of uncertainty hangs over them both — Ventus still hasn’t seen the thing at all, and Vanitas is half-convinced it’s going to try to take one of them over. Maybe it’ll try for both of them. Either way, he has to prepare for every possibility.

They get to Daybreak Town. This time, there’s no question on where to go. Ventus’s eyes wander around as they move towards their goal. He must be seeing dozens of ghosts. Vanitas keeps a tight hold of his hand the entire time. He summons his Keyblade in his other hand. No ghost will attack them, but there are definitely more than just ghosts here.

The warehouse looms over them. The girl’s hazy silhouette hangs in the doorway, forever fading to light. It’s nothing more than a loop of memory, but the sight makes them both tense up all the same. 

Vanitas crosses the gap, passing through the girl’s sparkles of light. Ventus whispers something to her final wisps of being, but Vanitas can’t catch the words. All he can sense is the regret brimming in his heart. 

“Show yourself,” Vanitas demands, making his way to the darkest part of the warehouse. “You’ve hid long enough.”

The thing responds, its voice echoing in Vanitas’s mind. No longer afraid?

Vanitas clenches his teeth. Ventus squeezes his hand. “I can hear it in my head,” Ventus whispers.

The just like you goes unsaid, but it didn’t need to be said in the first place. Vanitas already knows. Too convinced he’ll choke if he speaks, Vanitas settles for a nod.

No… the fear is still there. Larger than ever. You’re terrified.

“Shut up and show yourself already!” Vanitas says.

You are mistaken. Look closer.

What is it talking about? Vanitas peers into the darkness. He casts a fire spell and lets the flame flicker over his palm, illuminating this part of the room. The light chases away every shadow here, but the thing doesn’t reveal itself.

The light will not help you here, it says.

Vanitas kills the flame. Darkness rushes back to fill the void. He tries to spot whatever enemy must be laying in wait, but there’s nothing here. They’re alone.

“Wait, Vanitas… I see something,” Ventus says, pointing to the corner. Ventus outlines some nonsense shape with his finger. Vanitas tracks the movement. At first, he can’t tell the difference. All the darkness blends together. 

No… Ventus is right. There’s something within the darkness. Something deeper and darker than the shadows around it. 

Vanitas tries to grab it. The darkness splits in two around his hand and oozes down to the ground, where it reforms into one solid shape. 

That will not work, it warns. 

That might not work, but Keyblades should. Vanitas swings his Keyblade at it. The darkness moves around his swing with all the swiftness of fog. Ventus lets go of Vanitas’s hand to summon his own Keyblade. He fires a beam of light at it, but the thing dodges without an issue. 

“Just what are you?” Ventus asks. 

Darkness. Not the kind you are familiar with, that creeps in when the sun sets. More than that. More than the Heartless you destroy. More than the force that devours worlds. We are the true enemies of the Light you humans so hold dear.

“What are you doing in my heart!?” Ventus demands.

Fulfilling destiny, child. You were always meant to harbor Darkness. 

“Screw destiny!” Vanitas shouts. He blasts a Dark Firaga at Darkness. It absorbs the blast and seems to grow even larger, spilling across the walls until it towers over them both.

“You can’t fight darkness with more darkness, dummy!” Ventus hisses.

“Shut up!” Vanitas hisses back.

The child is correct. Darkness swirls around Vanitas. Its emotions creep into him — amusement tinged by confusion. A flimsy wall separates it from Vanitas’s consciousness. 

It’s as if his senses have adjusted to a new kind of darkness. He can now clearly see what used to be blended together.

You, however, are a miserable byproduct. Now that you’re here… maybe you can return to us. 

Darkness prods at the flimsy wall. Vanitas can feel its movements. If the link between himself and Ventus is a one-way dam, this is a mesh net. It seeps into his mind.

It slips through the wall, bit by bit. He— he doesn’t understand its thoughts. Words and pictures and something that isn’t quite either of those things fill his mind, pour over his limbs. It takes his hands, his feet, his tongue. Trying to rewrite him into phrases more useful to it. 

Vanitas claws at his head and screams. “Get out of me!”

He hears Ventus shout, but he can’t make out his words. Language is lost to him. He grasps at his own mind, trying to wrestle it back under his control. He desperately tries to put up the wall keeping himself separate, but Darkness oozes through every gap.

He can still hear its voice, but it isn’t directed towards him.

You can have an explanation, child. It does us no harm to inform you. 

That’s what Ventus asked. More about it. 

The confines of Ventus’s heart feel so different now. Darkness surrounds him on all sides. 

We abandoned our physical forms long ago to aid us in our struggle against the light. We were separated from the rest of our kind when we took residence in this heart. To think that we would be split even further when your heart was carved in two… even we could not have predicted that.

All along, he’s been Darkness. 

Ventus protests. Even if Vanitas can no longer hear him, he knows Ventus well enough to know what he’d do. He must be saying that Vanitas can be part of the light, too. That he’s just Vanitas, nothing else. 

To have a name of its own… how antithetical. Darkness teems in legion. Why cast that away for something as fragile as an identity?

It’s right. His identity has always been fragile. Why cling to it?

It creeps over the wall separating his emotions from Ventus’s. It chokes their link. He can’t sense Ventus’s emotions anymore. He can’t sense Ventus’s light. He scrabbles towards where it once was, but all that remains is Darkness. 

No. 

Ventus’s light has always been there. He’s always defined himself by that light. It burned him. It hated him. 

Now, it cherishes him.

That’s right. Let him be Darkness. What does he care? He’s not just Darkness. He’s Darkness, he’s Ventus’s darkness, he’s negativity—

And he’s the one who will protect Ventus’s light. No one else can have it. Not Darkness. Not anything. 

I won’t let you take me!  

Vanitas’s words echo loudly, even in the void of his own mind.

Darkness still pools over him. Vanitas blasts it away with his own darkness — the one that comes from the volatility of negativity, from the worst impulses of humanity, from everything that separates him from this creature. Darkness recedes to the corners.

It’s stupid enough to share its opinion again.

We thought that as its mind faltered, tormented by emotion, we could reclaim it for our whole. We have miscalculated. This shard is too tainted by humanity. It is an abomination, just as we have informed it prior. Too dark to be accepted by the light, but too close to the light to take refuge in the darkness.

Monster. Freak. Abomination. That’s what Vanitas has always been. 

So what?

He scrapes himself back together, extracting himself from the muck its tried to trap him in. He can feel himself standing. The warehouse comes back in view, separate from the view of his own mind.

In his mind’s eye, Darkness clears, slipping into the distance. He blasts it away from the mental link separating him and Ventus.

He looks over at Ventus. He looks worried, but relatively okay. Vanitas rushes to his side, checking him over for injury. “Did it hurt you?”

Ventus shakes his head. His hand finds Vanitas’s and squeezes it. “No. I’m fine. Are you okay? You were screaming.”

“That thing couldn’t take me over even when it tried. I’m too much of an abomination for it, remember?” He keeps hold of Ventus’s hand. “Now come on. Fighting it was a mistake. Let’s get out of here before it gets any other stupid ideas.”

Ventus nods. They rush out of Daybreak Town. If Ventus could chase after him as a puddle of light, it’d be perfect — he could get Ventus back into the waking world in no time. Like this, he has to settle for sprinting. At least Ventus can keep up.

They’re silent for the trip up, too focused on getting away. When they reach the top, Ventus’s hand falls out of Vanitas’s grip. That’s weird. He doesn’t do that.

Vanitas turns back to examine Ventus. His arms lay limp at his sides. His back is slightly hunched over. 

He stands like a puppet with its strings cut.

Vanitas creeps towards him, horror growing in his gut. “Ventus?” he asks, leaning down to look into his eyes.

His eyes, usually such a bright blue, are dull.

He prods at the dam separating their emotions. Darkness pools out from over the top. He realizes, with a yawning horror, where Darkness slithered off to. 

It used him to get to Ventus.

Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe Ventus is just tired or something. He closes his eyes and tries to sense Ventus’s surroundings. He moves through the castle, walking down an empty hallway, but Vanitas can’t feel his emotions. He can’t access his thoughts. Whatever’s moving Ventus’s body isn’t Ventus.

He looks down.

Inky darkness creeps over Ventus’s heart station.

Something in Vanitas snaps.

You can’t have him.

He’s MINE.

He doesn’t even have to think before he summons his Keyblade and slams it into the ground. Red chases away the black, and Vanitas launches himself into control of the body. Darkness may be able to snuff out light, but it can’t choke out his own darkness. 

He takes Ventus’s body back, one limb at a time. Darkness tries to protest, stealing Ventus’s body back for itself, but Vanitas won’t let it. He forces Ventus’s limbs to move on his command, not Darkness’s. He steers Ventus back to his room and locks the door. 

No one else can see this thing. Only Vanitas can stop it. 

All he needs to do is jolt Ventus’s consciousness awake. He feels through their emotional bond, past the parts that Darkness has tried to snuff out.

Ventus! He calls out, in the space where their hearts and minds connect. Ventus, wake up!

Vanitas! Ventus calls out. His voice is faint, muffled by Darkness, but it’s there. Vanitas senses echoes of his emotions. He tugs on Ventus’s hope and pulls him as close as possible.

Within his heart station, Ventus wakes up. Vanitas sends him all the strength and encouragement he can.

I can take control of your body, but I can’t trap this thing, Vanitas tells him.

I have an idea, don’t worry, Ventus says. 

Vanitas splits his awareness as much as he can. He keeps Ventus’s body under control as he tries to observe just what Ventus is about to do. He sees Ventus pull out his Keyblade. Vanitas tries to warn him against taking back control of his body, but Ventus doesn’t slam it into his heart station. 

Hold onto my body, okay? It’ll keep you safe.

He raises it to the sky. Hundreds of beams of light come under his command. It’s bright, overwhelming in his heart. Vanitas’s darkness screams at the radiance. He falls to the ground, his heart pounding in his chest. There’s so much light. It burns him from within.

Vanitas’s vision whites out. He doesn’t know for how long. He clenches Ventus’s fists, feels the roof of Ventus’s mouth with his tongue. He tries anything he can to keep himself rooted in this body.

Eventually, his vision starts to clear. Vanitas blinks away the extra sun spots. His body feels weak. He tries to push himself up, but it takes a few tries until he can finally sit up.

“Ventus?” Vanitas calls out. His voice still sounds like Ventus’s. His body, as he flips open the Gummiphone’s camera, is still Ventus’s, save for the gold eyes. 

I think we’re good. Wanna come check?

Vanitas dives back into Ventus’s heart. Ventus stands on his heart station. There is no Darkness around him. Everything is as it should be. 

Ventus looks tired, but thankfully himself. He gives Vanitas a shaky thumbs up. “I got sick of hearing it talk,” he jokes.

“Where did it go?”

“Back to Daybreak Town. I sent it as far down as I could. Should we go check?”

“Are you sure it’s not gonna possess us again?”

“Uh… probably not?”

“Wonderful. Maybe I can check on it from here.” Vanitas closes his eyes. Within his mind, he searches for the wall that separates him from Darkness. He finds it easily, illuminated by a gentle light. Every gap in the darkness between himself and that thing is filled by Ventus’s light. 

Vanitas prods at it. Nothing slips through. That’s a good sign.

He turns to Ventus. “I’ll check on it. You go to sleep.”

“What!? No way! I’m not letting you face that thing alone!”

“I can fight it off,” Vanitas reminds him. “You can’t. Besides, you need your strength. Your body is exhausted from being tossed around so much.”

Ventus tries to glare at him, but Vanitas glares at him harder. After a minute of glaring back and forth, Ventus finally relents. “Fine. But if anything happens, get me. Promise?”

Vanitas rolls his eyes. “Promise.”

Ventus leaves. Vanitas heads down to Daybreak Town alone. He knows exactly where to go.

He finds Darkness just where they first found it: in the darkest part of the warehouse. This time, it’s separated by a wall of light. It swirls behind the barrier like a viper, waiting for the chance to strike. 

Vanitas searches for the strange sensations it passes off as emotion. He finds nothing. 

“Hey. Can you hear me?” he asks. 

A light this weak cannot contain us for long, it hisses. We must find the rest of Darkness. We need that child’s body.

“Yeah, not happening,” Vanitas says. He’d flip it off if he thought it could understand the gesture enough to be offended. He settles for walking away, leaving the thing to pace like a zoo animal.

A stronger light, huh? Vanitas knows where he can get one of those. 

✯

Kairi looks less like the girl in Daybreak Town now that she’s actually down here. Illuminated by the bright glow of the thing she just made, she looks otherworldly. 

Strangely enough, the thought comforts Vanitas. This girl is strange. Untethered to her body, burdened by her emotions, and yet capable of making a fortress of pure light to trap Darkness within. This pure light is just as alien as he is. 

She turns to face Vanitas. “Can you hear anything?”

Vanitas shakes his head.

“Okay, good.” 

Behind her is a glowing box of light. It’s a stronger version of the barrier Ventus made previously. It hurts to stand too close. Even looking at it makes him tired. If he’s only a shard of that darkness, then how much more damaging is it to a true Darkness? 

Good. He hopes that thing suffers.

“I can’t destroy it, but I think this barrier should keep it from going anywhere for a long time.”

“Good job, princess. You found something to do.”

She had to know that was an insult, but she smiles at him all the same. What a freak. “To be honest… This is the first time I’ve actually helped anyone. At least, not without causing the problem in the first place. It feels good to be useful.”

“Stop beating yourself up already. It’s infuriating.”

“Sorry.” 

“Whatever,” Vanitas says. He takes a deep breath, disgusted by the emotion that wells up in his chest. He only has one way to let it out. “Thanks… I guess. For locking Darkness up so it can’t mess with Ventus, but for all that other junk you said before. It helped.”

She takes his hand and squeezes it. There’s kindness in her eyes. “Of course, Vanitas. You’re really not so bad. I think you and I could be friends.”

“Worth a try, I guess.”

He has Ventus and he has a friend.

He didn’t realize it would feel this good.

✯

Vanitas returns to Daybreak Town some time later.

The place is still a ghost town. The only sound he hears are his own footsteps against the cobblestone. 

The uneasiness he felt before is mostly gone, though he doesn’t think it’ll ever truly fade. Kairi’s light helped reinforce the blockade against Darkness in his head. It’s like she said. It won’t be able to break through for a long time. 

It’s weird, coming to terms with his existence. He can’t call it new — if anything, he’s discovered the oldest version of himself. He’ll always have a piece of Ventus in him, just as he’ll always have a piece of Darkness. Still, he kind of misses being the true other half of Ventus’s heart. 

He goes to the warehouse, but stops at the door. The barrier is just as blinding as it was the moment Kairi made it. 

Somewhere in the distance, Ventus calls his name. 

Vanitas grins. He speeds up to the highest level of Ventus’s heart, though his mood sours when he sees the awful look on Ventus’s face. 

“Why do you look like that?” Vanitas asks warily.

Ventus keeps grinning. “Trust me. I got an idea.”

“Your ideas suck.”

“No, no! This one is good!”

Ventus darts forward and squeezes Vanitas’s hands. He doesn’t even need to feel Ventus’s emotions to sense the fondness bleeding out of the gesture. “Just trust me, okay?” Ventus says, his eyes endlessly bright.

Vanitas used to hate those eyes. He thought they were stolen from him.

They were never fully his in the first place. 

He’s still getting used to that.

“Fine,” Vanitas groans. 

Ventus leaps back with a cheer. “Give me your Keyblade!”

Vanitas eyes him like he’s stupid, which he is. “You know what’ll happen if we try to fight, right? Even if our weapons are switched. Just another failed union.”

“I’m not fighting you, dummy,” Ventus says fondly. “You said you’d trust me.”

Vanitas folds his arms over his chest. He hands Ventus over his Keyblade and moves to the edge of the heart station, waiting to see just what stunt Ventus will pull. 

Ventus goes to the center of the heart station. He raises Vanitas’s Keyblade, then slams its teeth into the glass below.

His heart station changes, red bleeding over the green. The world around him starts to waver as hints of the Land of Departure’s castle come into view.

He blinks, and the heart station is completely gone. Ventus is nothing more than a giggle in his head. Enjoy!

Vanitas looks down. He’s sitting at a table. There’s a hefty plate of food — noodles in a dark sauce, interlaced with chunks of beef and vegetables — in front of him. A bowl of soup sits next to it. There’s a soda can on the other side. 

Vanitas doesn’t know what any of this is. He glances around the rest of the table. Aqua, Terra, and Kairi are here too. Terra and Aqua are engrossed in some conversation about… gardening. Weird.

Kairi sits to his left. She leans closer to him. “Did it work?” she whispers. “Are you… you know?”

Vanitas keeps his eyes low so Aqua and Terra can’t see them. Rage boils over in his heart. Ventus is so stupid. All that they’ve sacrificed, and for what? A joke? He’s going to kill them both! Aqua will rip his throat out the moment she sees them!

“You’re breathing really hard,” Kairi says softly. “It’s okay. You have contacts in. No one can tell.”

Yeah, what Kairi said! I told you to trust me, dummy. Just eat the food, it’ll be fine!

Vanitas forces himself to take a breath. A delicious aroma overwhelms him. His mouth starts watering. Ugh. Human bodies are so gross. 

He grabs one of the utensils on the table. He thinks it’s called a fork? He’s not actually sure. He sets it down; it seems pointless. He grabs the plate and brings it to his mouth.

“Ven,” Aqua warns, finally looking at him. Vanitas freezes in place. The noodles are so close. “Table manners,” she says.

What would Ventus say? “Sorry, Aqua,” Vanitas says in his best Ventus impression. “It just smells so good!”

She chuckles. “Pretty proud of yourself, huh?”

“He should be. It’s good,” Terra adds.

So Ventus made this himself? The thought makes Vanitas feel warm. He puts down the plate. Kairi loudly clinks her fork against her plate. She swirls the noodles around it before bringing it to her mouth, casting glances at him the entire time. 

That’s right. Table manners. Vanitas copies her movements.

He’s never tasted anything like this before.

He can’t deny it. 

This is a gift.

✯

“Ventus,” Vanitas calls that night from Ventus’s heart station, tucked carefully back into secrecy. 

Ventus comes down minutes later. Even the illusion of his body looks tired. He yawns. “You never call me,” Ventus says. “What’s up?”

This is stupid. Vanitas feels stupid for thinking this was a good idea. He hesitates, scowling as Ventus approaches him.

“Is everything okay?” Ventus asks, growing more awake — and more worried — with each passing moment. 

“I wanted to tell you good night,” Vanitas mumbles.

Ventus gets closer. “What?” he asks, a grin slowly blooming over his face.

“You heard me, idiot.”

“Nuh-uh, I totally didn’t. You gotta repeat it,” he says, sliding right up to Vanitas.

Vanitas pushes at his shoulder, but not hard enough to actually shove him away. “Good night!” he snaps, turning away as soon as he’s said it. 

He thought it’d be a nice idea. Ventus always tells him good night. It’s only fair to return the favor sometimes. But then Ventus had to go and be stupid about it.

He can feel joy radiate off Ventus. Disgusting. “Hey, Vanitas. Can you face me?”

“I can punch you,” Vanitas warns. His face feels hot.

“Okay, do that after you face me.”

Vanitas turns to face him. Ventus darts forward and pecks him on the lips. Just a gentle press, nothing more. There one moment, and gone the next. It hardly felt like anything at all.

Vanitas wants to do it again.

“Good night, Vanitas,” Ventus says warmly, intertwining their fingers together. “I should really get to bed. Aqua wants to train at dawn tomorrow. Can you believe that?” he asks, swinging their hands between them like they’re children.

It feels so right.

“We’ll continue this after,” Vanitas says.

Ventus squeezes his hands. “We will.”

He fades away a moment later, but his emotions linger behind, honey-sweet. Vanitas doesn’t know if he’s ever wanted to rest in anything, but he wants to rest in this feeling.

They won’t be like this forever. In time, Ventus will have to tell Aqua and Terra about him. He’ll feel bad about keeping Vanitas inside his heart. He’ll demand they find him a new body, one that no one else can take over.

But for now, this works. Vanitas’s life was defined by pain, but there’s no pain here. Just warmth. He can protect Ventus best from within. As long as Darkness hides within him, Vanitas will hide too. He’ll keep it at bay until they find a way to kick it out for good.

He’ll keep Ventus safe.

But Ventus keeps him safe, too.

Vanitas sits at the edge of the heart station, and looks forward to the promises tomorrow will bring.