She walked for a very long time. Seconds may as well have been years here - there was no day or night, no beautiful morning or fleeting twilight. No sun, no moon, no stars. There was only endless darkness. It was very draining, and yet-
She was still there.
She still existed. She hadn't lost herself. The darkness surrounded her and engulfed her, every waking moment, but she was like a coconut, or a melon, perhaps; like some hard shell existed that protected the valuable parts within from being tarnished, no matter how battered the exterior.
There weren't any other people, none that she had seen. Maybe there had been at some point (she had no idea how vast this place was, or even if it was really a "place" at all), but they had lost themselves after paying their dues in heart and willpower.
So there was little to do except walk, for such a long time.
It had been after a month, or maybe a decade, or maybe even hours after she had started walking that something...happened. That was all the young Master could honestly say about the event, was that it happened.
Something very bright intruded on her world. It actually hurt; she had not been exposed to anything except nothing for so long. It was something very bright, and very insistent, and very, overwhelmingly light.
So why was it here?
She tried to watch as it shaped, but it stung her conditioned eyes to look at. The first thing she became aware of was color, in this world of endless hues of black, black, black.
Blue. Intense blue. Dark blue. Very, very blue.
A pair of things that were blue. Eyes? They did seem to be looking at her, and the one thing that ripped its way savagely to the forefront of her mind in the face of that deep, endless blue-
"Aqua?"
Ven.
"Ven." It felt like she hadn't said his name for a very long time. Ven, Ventus, Ven, Ven, Ven.
He stared at her, and those eyes hurt to look at almost as much as the bright light. It was him, blond and bright and blue. But something wasn't there, wasn't definite, wasn't right, as he opened his mouth to ask-
"Who?"
He changed like a broken reflection, like a record that had somehow jumped half a groove and turned out nothing but white noise; she suddenly felt very much like a ghost. She refocused her sensitive eyes - squinted them, trying to filter the flow of unbearable light.
"Who?" But it wasn't him who spoke this time, it was her. The sound of her own voice surprised her, and the young-faced, brown-haired boy looked quizzically at her, endless blue, seeming almost (very) familiar.
"Don't I know-"
The light disappeared. Her eyes widened, desperately opening themselves up to any small pinprick of it that was left - but there was none. Someone experimentally tapped at the coconut-melon exterior protecting her, echoing the intent to break.
"-you."
It may have been her that said it. It may have been him. There was no more brightness, no more blue, certainly no more Ven; even though, perhaps, technically, there really was.
He smiled toxins and the darkness seemed to expand from his yellow eyes, so shallow, so hollow. Sora. But he wasn't. The boundless emptiness warped and converged around him, or maybe her mind really did think he was just that evil - and wasn't he?
"Imagine meeting you here." His voice spilled like tar, smooth and dark from his lips. She had never seen his face before. "It's been a while, Master Aqua."
She hated hearing even her own name in that deceptive, sweet-sour voice. So many questions fought for the right to her mouth. Ultimately the victor was: "Where's Ven?"
"And here I thought you were the intelligent one, Miss Master," he returned, words languid, as if he'd first dragged them through mud before speaking them and couldn't care less. "That you'd not know where your precious Ventus is...maybe your little arts-and-crafts project finally ran out of juice." Her fingers instinctively flexed in the direction of her Wayfinder, and he laughed, all sharp edges and venom. "I bet you don't know where Terra is either."
"Why are you here?" A diversion; lingering on her disconnection from Ven and Terra might upset whatever it was that allowed her to keep her form amidst the oblivion, and if she lost herself, then she would lose them forever too.
Another laugh cut the cavernous blackness. "I guess you didn't get the memo. We're not in your world anymore. On this side, you're the intruder." He grinned shattered glass as someone broke the mirror, flickering Ventus-Vanitas-Sora, blue-yellow-blue. "The question is, little bluebird..." Sora again, Vanitas again, Ven again - but nothing now except yellow, yellow, yellow and that smile just short of stability that cried mutiny against her best friend's face. "Are you afraid of the dark?"
She ran.
A/N: idek man. i don't really ship Vanitas/Aqua that much (i prefer my beautiful TVA OT3), but the lack of fic for it just made me sadface. i have no freaking clue where my mind was going with this and it probably doesn't make sense, but clearly my thought train gave up on riding the Sense Tracks and veered off somewhere to crash into Surrealism Station. nonetheless i hope it is pleasing brain-candy to all you readers out there. this is set during KH1 - specifically, the moment when Sora decides to Keyblade-seppuku to set his (and Kairi's, and thus probably Ven's) heart free. so uh, yeah. hope you liked it?