A/N: Filling in the prompt "Right before he died, the last ghost Prince Vector saw had the face of his mother" by carmypen for the fanworkathon on DreamWidth.

Vector is crazy (in a good way, writing wise). I need to write a multichip on him one day; there's too much to fit into ficlets. I hope I captured his death scene well enough.

Notes regarding canon/changes are at the end.

Crumbling Castle

The castle was empty save for his own and Nasch's footsteps pounding on crumbling rock. Vector didn't much care whether Nasch followed him or not; if he didn't, he'd crumble with the castle. If he did, he'd get a little treat before going down. Because the halls, the floor – the entire castle was empty: empty even of its foundations, the things that held it up.

There were the echoes of things that came with emptiness as well, but they were his and that bastard Nasch wouldn't, couldn't, be a privy to them. Like the ghosts that screamed at him through brittle wall, that raked away at stone that was already crumbling without help. Fools, the lot of them. The entire world was filled with nothing but fools. And he was a fool too, to lose it all. Nasch had been the last: the last link in a rapidly crumbling chain, now broken. And all those battles before: the fights, the massacres – why didn't the world turn red? Why didn't the screams of souls disappear? Why did he bother with such a demented world, with such a demented life?

And now he'd lost and he was alone save for ghosts too foolish to let go of their old life, muttering about how he'd changed, how he'd gone mad –

Mad? Hah. It was the world that was mad, resisting and destroying itself just so it could fight with him. Just like poor little Nasch who'd lost his family, his army, his entire kingdom to defeat him – and he was going to defeat Nasch in the end anyway.

'You here that?!' he roared. 'I'll defeat you yet.'

The footsteps behind him did not falter, even as Vector ahead burst into the chamber that was once his father's. 'Your deathbed,' he sneered, turning to the Poseidon king. 'This is the castle you came to defeat. It crumbles without your help.'

Nasch did not move, even as the ground between them spat and cracked.

'Your graveyard! Isn't it wonderful; surrounded by all the others I've killed, swamped by all of them?' Vector raised his arms, the jewels on his fingers glittering in the fake light. The ghosts swarmed around, a flurry of emotions: angry, shocked, confused, pitying…and then there was a crying woman that captured his sight and made him clutch his chest in pain and laugh like the oblivion descending to claim him. 'Wow, look, even my dear mother has come to welcome you with her open arms!'

Nasch might have been listening; he might not have been. He might not have been alive to listen; the ground had all but crumbled away and it was only the ghost of his mother that kept him in the air. But she was just a stupid ghost who wouldn't let go of a world no better than ash – no, worse, because there would be no phoenix to bring it back from this total destruction.

His mother's hand reached for him as he fell. 'Too late mother,' he taunted her. 'You should have had your revenge before giving birth to me.'

Post A/N: In regards to canon, I think the way Vector dies is very ambiguous (I think just an appearance of spirits before an off-screen death?), and it's never mentioned how Nasch died (though it's implied he had a child at least, since the Kamishiros appear to be direct descendants from Nasch's bloodline). I kind of like the idea of the castle losing its support, ie. the people who lived there, and crumbling in on itself, burying both Vector and Nasch, who'd both lost everything, with it. Not necessarily what happens, but it could. :D Maybe with a little bit of glossing over necessary...