SUMMARY | But standing there with your heart in my hands, I felt closer to you than you would have ever known. Vanitas, Ventus.
DISCLAIMER | The same standard applies, and Square Enix, of course, owns what it owns.
NOTES | So I'm trying to get back into writing. Emphasis on trying.
By mistake or design, Vanitas came to the realization that he was born to die.
It wasn't an epiphany, with the angels sending their own blessed messenger down from the stars to regale him tales of his beautifully morbid death, blood and gore and execution by fire. It was just a fact; one that he'd come to the conclusion of after having his ass effectively whooped by Miss High-and-Mighty Magic Princess herself, sans dignity leaving some pirate-esque world teeming with weirdos and children. More of the former, but then again, every world seemed alike; some of the good, some of the bad, and all varying degrees of the same stupid.
Coming to the core of the problem, he could go about this in one of two ways: beat every single thing in sight into an unrecognizably desiccated mass of viscera, or willingly domesticate into some average house pet for the all-powerful LIGHT, fighting for all that was good and just and absolutely wonderful, all while struggling to contain the darkness that made him who he was! (Exclamation marks for emphasis, of course. He had read one too many of Xehanort's dime-store novels of the brave and the valiant to know exactly where that would lead him.)
Bullshit, entire.
It wasn't like he'd made himself to be conniving. In a world where the darkness was virtually shunned and he had the insatiable urges to fightfightfight and hurthurthurt (an endless mantra that echoed through his skull) making him half-crazed with mania, there wasn't much he could do. .. Scratch that.
There wasn't anything he could do.
So, being the reasonable, rational entity of encompassing darkness he was, he made it one of his key goals in life to make Ventus miserable. An idiot who was so opposite from him in every respect that Vanitas had entertained the thought of stabbing him straight through the heart, just to see if he'd feel it, too. The fear and hysteria clawing up his throat, adrenaline-fueled panic racing through his bloodstream. A clean slice through rib-cage and sinew down to that shoddy organ that was proclaimed to give people the will to overcome just about anything.
Vanitas had always known. The old man wasn't one to skimp out on the details, a wrinkly centenarian with a partiality for disturbing hand movements, and when you lived with the very person who'd brought you into painful, gut-ripping existence from some pubescent boy like an ectopic pregnancy gone horribly, horribly wrong, there wasn't any concept of shame. Shit, there wasn't even the ghost of uneasy reassurance.
Just two crazed individuals, partners of convenience and whatever loyalty they'd scraped from the bottom of their pitch-black souls.
But he didn't regret a single damn thing.
He wouldn't collapse, wouldn't break, and wouldn't have his existence any other way. He hated Ventus, and he wanted him to know it.
Wanted to see it consume and eat him from the inside out. Riddled with guilt and the burden of his friends hanging on him like a vice, marring whatever hopes he'd had toward being that infuriatingly naïve child that sought after attention like a toddler in a candy-shop; pathetically Ventus, through and through.
Not to be self-deprecating or anything, but still.
Launching him onto the path toward his destruction had been easier than he thought. Plant the seeds of doubt in Ventus toward that equally moronic caricature of a person known as Terra; send him off on a treasure hunt with a moving target. Train Aqua as a ready replacement, a patronizing piece of work with a penchant for nagging and unjustified self-righteousness (but those legs; really Aqua,not bad). Work Ventus up to barely acceptable offensive skills. Act like Xehanort's ever-loyal lackey, and then backstab him at the first strike of dawn.
To give Vanitas some credit, he'd played the part of immoral traitor to a t.
Their plan was haphazardly coming together, and the pawns, true to their words, gathered in that barren wasteland, hallmark to the dead and gone down under. It was doom they chased after, and Vanitas was going to give it to them all. If they wanted their demises, so be it. Who was he to question what they wanted?
Terra was nothing. He fought bulkily, muscle and brawn with nothing of speed. It was all-too-easy to send a few spells to make him spin, always dodging. He wasn't the main focus, after all; a footnote in the battle, riling him up with loose words and even looser sidesteps. When Vanitas dove over the edge, he didn't heed the nitwit's pathetically brazen threats. The idiot would become his Master's, soon enough.
Aqua was nothing. She looked up with the sun shining in her eyes, and it had been so easy to aim at her weakest point, striking the core in one fell move. She was too blinded by the light she so sought to see clearly. In that hazy, shifting glare, he was her shadow. And when she fell, he became her executioner. Raise his weapon so lofty, and inch by inch, tantalizingly slow toward her heart. Cut her down.
Ventus was nothing. Enrage him to action, force him to move his limbs and scowl so deeply it'd permanently scar his features. A self-destructive battle with only one outcome they would drive toward. Win or lose, he would emerge the victor, surely. Relishing that instant moment when he took over, parasitic over the parts the blond had lost and the ones replaced.
Vanitas been substituted with some newbie runt; and now he was taking over for both.
He should have known the power of the third and final wish, in retrospect. Three wishes the magician's nephew had been granted, and it was always the third one that led to ruin. When he was at his strongest was when he was the most susceptible to his downfall. But he'd been too caught up in his victory to notice that Ventus just wouldn't roll over and die.
He was succeeding, at first.
Then his attacks began to slow. Although enlivened and doubled in strength from an incomplete weapon, his power continued to sap, while the other's exponentially increased. Dwindling control; a battle for supremacy he was losing, terribly.
Even in the heart they shared, Ventus wouldn't cede and accept him. Always the outsider, the intruder that was taking his last chance away, even though it was the other way around. There was no way that loser would ever understand.
Fading to nothing, energy spent. An endless fall awaited him, and the X-Blade loomed only a few inches ahead. Compelled by the insane desire to try still, even as everything he'd feverishly worked toward slipped away, he reached out –
And drew in air in the tips of his fingers; he could have cried, just then. But he wouldn't. Not in front of that idiot, not in front of anyone. An onslaught of emotions; weakness and defeat in the same quivering breath; Vanitas closed his eyes, let the desperation cloud his thoughts, hoping it'd live on in some form, even if the rest of him didn't.
He wasn't asking for fairness. There was no point in praying to deaf gods, looking to Ventus for some warped last-minute salvation.
All he wanted was an explanation to why things ended up the way they did. Why Ventus had chosen to discard him, why his existence had no reasoning behind it. Why, even though they were two halves of the same person, Vanitas didn't feel as though he belonged anymore.
But in that fall, absolutely nothing awaited him but destruction.