AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Hey guys! How we all feeling today?

Before we dive in, I wanna say a huge thank you to The voice of all things who recently joined the story. It was such a pleasure to read your reviews in real time as you made your way through each chapter! (Hope I didn't flood your inbox too much with all of my replies!)

Shout at as well to Scarlett-95 who is just so lovely – I love receiving your messages!

With that said: on with the show!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN | INVERSION

The heartless were attacking from all sides; a sea of black dotted with the silvery silhouettes of nobodies that swung for her whenever she stumbled within their reach. She swung Destiny's Embrace wildly, all thoughts of Merlin's training gone as she focused on a desperate desire to simply survive.

"Sora!" she cried. It didn't matter. She was alone. Something struck her side and sent her barrelling across the floor, skidding to a halt several feet away. The heartless swarmed, grabbing at her arms and legs and leaving her utterly defenceless as they dragged her down in to the darkness. Her fingers touched silk. A raven cawed, its talons tap-tap-tapping their way across the glass lid of her coffin.

"She's waking up," a silky voice purred. "He must be close. Go, you know what to do." Footsteps retreated. She watched as Maleficent's face came in to view, leering down over the coffin.

"I'll have your heart yet," she crooned, "just as soon as Sora brings it to me." Kairi opened her mouth to scream but heartless flooded the coffin, stealing the air from her lungs. The world went dark. She could hear voices muttering words she didn't understand, too distracted by pain as the heartless continued to claw at her limbs.

"Kairi."

The voice pulled at her heart. She latched on to it, wrapping herself around it.

"Sora?"

"Kairi, you have to wake up."

The heartless were tearing at her clothes and pulling at her hair as they continued to drag her deeper in to the darkness. Panic set in as she felt the voice slipping against her fingers. She reached out but her hands grazed glass – some kind of cylinder flooded with shadows and claws.

"Don't leave me!" she cried.

There were people outside dressed in white. One of the came closer. Kairi couldn't see their face; only a flash of silver-white hair.

"How unusual," the figure murmured. Claws dragged her away from the glass, surrounding her in darkness again.

"Wake up!" the voice commanded. She buried her face in her arms.

"I can't!" she sobbed.

WAKE UP!

She bolted upright, her breath coming in short gasps. Morning. It was morning. She glanced over to find Naminé still sleeping soundly in the bed. A shadow twitched in the corner of Kairi's vision and she swallowed a scream, but by the time she had turned towards it the shadow had disappeared.

Relax, it's just an unversed, Vanitas chided. It won't hurt you.

What's it doing here? Kairi asked.

The unversed come from me, he answered. Wherever I go, they go.

It won't cause trouble, will it?

Not if nobody troubles it, he answered. She swallowed nervously and tasted his exasperation. That one's made from fear. It'll find somewhere to hide for a while until it can disappear.

Based on fear? What does that mean?

It's a long story, he answered. Now, about my vessel? She sighed and bit her lip, gnawing on it anxiously.

I need to shower first, she answered. She slid from the futon and made her way quietly down to the hall and in to the bathroom. It was only when she grabbed the hem of her shirt that she paused, eyes wide.

Vanitas? Can you see anything? His resounding chuckle only served to unnerve her.

Took you long enough to consider it, he said. The answer's no. I can hear what you hear and what you think, but all I see is your heart. Seriously, invest in some darkness, it's too bright down here. It made sense, she supposed, but she still went out of her way to avoid looking at herself as she undressed, avoiding the mirror entirely just in case Vanitas could somehow see through her eyes. She spent the entire shower staring at the ceiling as she tried to wash the remnants of the dream away. Try as she might, the feeling of fear and unease lingered and after wrapping herself in a towel she spent several minutes perched on the edge of the bathtub trying to conquer her raging emotions.

I can help, Vanitas offered. She pressed her lips together in a thin line.

No thank you, she answered. I don't need darkness to-

It's not darkness, he countered firmly. Here, let me show you. Before she could object she felt him reaching in to her heart, scooping out the lingering fear and despair. A shadow began to form at her feet and she yelped in surprised as the unversed emerged. She leapt back, summoning her keyblade, and was surprised when the unversed scurried away from her. It collided with a wall where it curled in on itself and began to tremble violently.

What's it doing? Kairi asked. Why isn't it attacking me?

It's your fear, Vanitas answered. It's as scared of you as you are of it. She frowned, taking a tentative step towards it. It jumped and curled up tighter, its jagged antenna wrapping tightly around its tiny, trembling body.

I don't understand… I made this?

No, I made this, he corrected, using your fear. That's what I do; the unversed come from me. Kairi stepped closer, clutching the towel to her chest as she crouched next to the unversed. It peered up at her and its red eye bulged with terror before disappearing again.

That's what the unversed are? Emotions? She paused with a frown as the creature continued to try and shuffle away from her until it had backed itself in to a corner. I thought they were darkness. Vanitas scoffed.

Everything that isn't sunshine and rainbows is darkness to you Guardians, he huffed. She slowly reached a hand out towards the unversed.

"It's okay," she cooed. "I'm not going to hurt you." The unversed lifted its head a fraction, glancing first at her hand and then to her face. She smiled. "You're okay. You don't have to be afraid."

I don't know what you're trying to achieve, Vanitas grumbled. It's made of fear; that's all it knows.

"How awful," she mumbled. The unversed was reaching out towards her like a wounded puppy, leading with its snout as it approached tentatively. Kairi held her breath. As it drew closer Kairi could feel its fear – her fear, she supposed. What an awful existence, she thought, to know nothing but fear. Or sadness, or hurt. She wondered what each of them looked like.

Just destroy it and be done with it, Vanitas snapped.

"No!" she retorted aloud. The unversed jumped, flattening itself against the floor. Kairi gasped. "Oh no, not you! I'm sorry I scared you, I didn't mean to shout. It's okay, I promise." She held out her hand again. The unversed hesitated for a moment, eyeing her warily before trying again. Vanitas groaned.

What are you doing?

This creature is made from my fear, she answered. I'm the reason it's here. The least I can do is show it a little kindness. Vanitas huffed. She could practically feel him rolling his eyes at her. The unversed shuffled closer. Look, just because you reject kindness and light doesn't mean the unversed will too.

Can't reject what you've never had, he retorted.

What?

He was saved from answering when the unversed touched her hand. The connection made her stomach roil as a wave of fear flooded her senses. She fought back purely by instinct, fighting the terrified chill with a brave warmth that swelled in her heart and quickly spread in to her fingers. The unversed recoiled, its entire body trembling, and then it exploded in a sudden flash of light. Kairi toppled over with a surprised yelp, one hand clutching at her towel and the other shielding her eyes. The warmth in her fingers faded with the light and she peered cautiously out from behind her hand.

The unversed was still there but it had changed drastically. Its purple and black body was now white with blushes of pink on its snout and at the end of each antenna. Red eyes had shifted to a warm, rich purple that watched her with an air of calm confidence. It waited patiently for her to sit up before it trotted over, climbing up her arm to nuzzle its snout against her cheek. She couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled up her throat.

Vanitas, what did I do? She received no answer. She called to him twice more before reaching out towards him; he was still there, but he had retreated. Either that or he was just ignoring her. Kairi sighed, though her frown quickly turned to a smile as the unversed nuzzled her cheek again. She scratched it absently behind the ear.

"What am I going to do with you?" she asked. The creature made a strange noise – halfway between a squeak and a chirp. She smiled at the sound. "Well I supposed I can't do anything down here on the floor." She tried to stand but a wave of exhaustion sent her back to knees. The unversed toppled to the floor as she clutched at the side of the bathtub, waiting for it to pass. The unversed approached her then, wrapping its stubby limbs around her wrist and pulling until she held her hands out towards it. Purple eyes blinked once – twice – and then the unversed pressed itself against her palm. It glowed again, softly this time, before disappearing in to wisps of light that snaked inbetween her fingers and sank back beneath her skin. A rush of warmth surged through her along with a spark of energy, restoring enough strength for her to make her way back to Naminé's room where she ran Naminé through the events of the morning so far.

"And Vanitas still won't talk to you?" Naminé asked when she was finished. Kairi closed her eyes and called to him again.

"Not a word," she answered when her calls were met with silence. Naminé frowned slightly.

"I wonder…" Her hand came to rest on her heart and her eyes slid out of focus as she quickly became lost in thought. Kairi waited patiently, but when Naminé said nothing else for several minutes she quietly cleared her throat. Naminé jumped a little, her gaze returning to Kairi as her hand fell back in to her lap.

"What were you wondering?" Kairi asked. Naminé smiled and shook her head.

"It doesn't matter. What happened to the unversed? You said it looked different?" Kairi knew a diversion when she saw one but she didn't try to fight it. Whatever Naminé had been thinking about, she wasn't ready to share it. Kairi nodded, leaning back against the wall and drawing her feet on to the bed.

"Not just how it looked but how it felt," she began, resting her chin on her knees. "Vanitas said it was made from my fear and I could feet it when we touched. After it changed, it felt… calmer. Less afraid."

"Braver?" Naminé suggested. Kairi nodded.

"Exactly," she said. "It wasn't afraid of me anymore."

"You made it its own opposite," Naminé said with a smile. "You took the fear and inverted it." Kairi glanced at her fingers, remembering how the unversed had tugged her hand so confidently. It had felt so soft and warm as it had faded away.

"Do you think I could do that to Sora?" she asked. "Take whatever Luxu's done to him and invert it?" Naminé's smile saddened as she reached out to take Kairi's hand.

"When it comes to you and Sora, I'm pretty sure anything is possible."

They lapsed in to silence after that. Kairi's mind drifted from one thought to the next, from wondering exactly what had happened to Sora to trying to figure out how to help him. Her fingers trace the faint scars across her chest and she absently murmured some kind of acknowledgement to Naminé as she made her way to the showers.

Eventually Kairi's turned her thoughts to Vanitas (if only to avoid circling the drain around Sora's current predicament). She reached out to him again but he remained silent. At first she wondered if she should be worried, but she decided that if making an unversed took as much energy as inverting one then he was probably just resting. She thought back to his words… Can't reject what you've never had. Had he really never known light? Kindness, happiness, love… She knew so little about him. Sora had mentioned him once or twice but never in any great detail, though she supposed it would have been hard for him to talk about Vanitas with Vanitas' voice ringing through his mind. She knew that Vanitas was closely tied to Ven – almost like how Sora and Roxas were connected, and yet nothing like that at all. Roxas' resemblance to Ven had made her curious, especially once she had finally seen them side by side, but now seeing how Vanitas looked like Sora (or was it Sora who looked like Vanitas?), she was truly baffled.

Deciding that she'd never get to the bottom of it perched on the edge of Naminé's bed, she left a message on Naminé's phone before heading out in search of Ven (though she ventured to her room in search of clothes first).

She was surprised to find him awake given that it was still fairly early in the morning. His door was ajar when she approached, and through the gap she saw him sitting against the headboard of his bed staring absently out of the window. She hesitated when she saw him; his clothes were rumpled and still covered in dirt, and a faint bruise had blossomed over his jaw. His shoulders were slumped forwards, his jaw set tight, and when he blinked it was slow and heavy and made his head loll forwards. She wondered if he'd slept at all. Slowly she backed away, and when she was further down the hall she called out: "Ven? Are you there?"

He appeared in the door a moment later with a concerned frown.

"Kairi, is everything all right?" he asked. She nodded, retracing her steps back towards his door.

"I was just wondering if I could talk to you," she said.

"Is it about Vanitas?" She gaped at him. How could he have known? Ven chuckled. "After the unversed saved you yesterday I was wondering if you'd have questions." Of course – the wall of unversed that had saved her life (had that really been only yesterday?). Kairi smiled a little and gratefully accepted Ven's invitation to follow him into his room.

It was no smaller than most other rooms in the castle but Ven had packed it so full of stuff that it felt small and cozy. A small desk had been squeezed between the fireplace, which was hidden behind several large clay pots, and the towering bookshelf, which had been filled with books and trinkets from Ven's adventures. He offered her the chair, pulling it out from the desk as he made his way back to the bed.

"You never really met Vanitas, did you?" he asked once they were settled. She shook her head, deciding the conversation might be easier for Ven if he didn't feel like Vanitas was eavesdropping (not that she thought he was listening at all).

"What was he like?" she asked. Ven frowned.

"That's a tough one to start with," he said. "Do you know how he was created?"

Created. Sora had used that word once too. She shook her head.

"I know it had something to do with Xehanort," she said. Ven nodded.

"Xehanort was my master, before Eraqus," he began. He recounted the tale with apparent ease, though it seemed impossible for him to entirely hide his discomfort. He didn't know all of Vanitas' side of the story, but he told her what he knew and filled in the gaps with guesses and assumptions. Some parts were harder to listen to than others. It didn't take long for Ven to reach the part where Xehanort ripped Ven's heart in two, separating the dark from the light. Kairi's own heart skipped a sympathetic beat.

"That's where Sora came in," he said, a smile gracing his lips for the first time since he'd started the story. "His heart connected to mine and he gave me the strength to keep going." Kairi's lips curled in to a smile.

"Trust Sora to get himself tangled up in something so complicated," she said. She tilted her head as a thought came to her. "The connection… Is that why Roxas looks like you?"

"Probably less because of the connection and more because my heart was inside his when he became a heartless, but probably," he answered. "It's definitely why Vanitas looks like Sora thought. You didn't see his face, but the two of them look almost exactly alike. It's freaky." She forced a laugh.

"I'm sure it doesn't look bad though," she said, just in case Vanitas was listening.

"No, not bad," he agreed, "just different. I saw Vanitas' face first and at the time he used to scare me because he was just so strong and angry. The first time I saw Sora's face was when he and Aqua came to wake me up. It was weird, seeing Vanitas with brown hair and blue eyes and a smile. Freaked me out for sure."

He glossed over several memories then, hurtling towards his first big clash with Vanitas where they almost formed the fated χ-blade, and finally she found herself understanding how Ven had come to reside in Sora's heart in the first place. After that the story became hazier. Ven still wasn't sure of the exact timeline of when (or how) Xehanort had brought Vanitas back. He knew that Vanitas had been there when Sora and Aqua had come to wake him, after which Ven didn't see him again until the Keyblade Graveyard and their final clash in the Skein of Severance.

"Sora said that after you defeated him, you let him go," she said. Ven sighed heavily and knitted his fingers together.

"I didn't want to but his mind was made up," he answered, his voice thick and heavy. His gaze fell in to his lap. "I wish I could have changed his mind, but he was so determined that he could only ever be darkness – like there was no other option for him. I wish I could have talked to him more to try and show him that he was wrong, but we were running out of time. Terra still needed saving and Aqua was holding him back on her own while we were dealing with Vanitas. I had to let him go." He hesitated, a sad frown playing over his face. Eventually his eyes met hers, his gaze firm and unwavering. "I don't think Sora understood why I did it, but I think you will. You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved." The words struck a painful chord and she nodded slowly both in agreement and understanding. Sora would see it as giving up, she knew, while Ven seemed to see it more as letting go.

"Do you regret it?" she asked. She knew the answer, of course, but on the off chance that Vanitas was listening she wanted him to hear Ven say it for himself.

"Every day," he answered. "After we'd all recovered I tried to find him. I hoped that I might find Sora somewhere along the way but I got nowhere. Eventually I had to give up. I came back here and tried to move on. I distracted myself with training but I never stopped thinking about him. I always liked to think that he'd moved on, that he was somewhere peaceful, but when I saw the unversed yesterday…" He closed his eyes and sighed heavily. He clenched his jaw and his fists until the feeling had passed. "Now I can't help thinking that he's been trapped there this whole time. It was the only place I could never get back to, no matter how hard I tried." A tear rolled down his cheek and he scrubbed it with his sleeve, leaving a smear of dirt in its place. Kairi swallowed thickly past the lump in her throat.

"If you could help him," she began slowly, "would you?" His eyes met hers and he nodded firmly.

"Of course," he said. "I'd do anything to help him. I know he's done a lot of bad things but they weren't his fault, not really. He deserves to be free, to make his own choices. He shouldn't have to feel like anyone's shadow anymore." She nodded slowly, a feeling of warmth rising in her chest. At least she knew he was on their side. She was halfway to telling him the truth when she noticed the trembling in his hands and the red rings around his eyes. If she told him now he would be as stubborn as Sora and he wouldn't rest until Vanitas was standing beside him. So Kairi bit her tongue and offered him a sympathetic smile.

"He saved me yesterday," she said. "I know nobody would have ordered him to do that. I think he's making his own choices already." His face brightened a little at that, though his smile was still tired and strained.

"You're right," he murmured. "Thanks, Kairi." She reached out to squeeze his hand as she stood.

"You should get some rest," she said softly. "Things will look better when we aren't so exhausted." He hesitated for a moment, eyes flicking to her hand, before he nodded. She tucked the chair back under the desk and showed herself out, closing the door behind her.

Ven had certainly given her a lot to think about. Whilst she'd never assumed Vanitas' past to be simple, and whilst she knew she still didn't know the full story (and probably never would), it was starting to make a twisted sort of sense. She couldn't even begin to imagine what he must have endured – all the pain and suffering that he had to overcome on his journey to becoming whole. It was unfathomable.

You didn't tell him about me.

She screamed. Her heart pounded in her ears and she leant heavily against the wall as her knees threatened to give way beneath her. She clutched at her chest and fought to catch her breath.

Vanitas! she scolded. The door flew open behind her and Ven appeared, keyblade in hand.

"Kairi, are you okay?" he asked, his eyes scanning the corridor. Kairi forced a smile and nodded.

"I'm fine," she said. "I… I thought I… saw a mouse." Ven lowered his guard with a confused frown.

"A… mouse?"

"But it wasn't, it was just a… trick of the light."

You are the worst liar.

"If you're sure…" Ven said slowly.

"I guess I'm still a little jumpy from yesterday," she said. "I think I'm going to go and lie down." Ven watched her carefully, unconvinced, and she quickly hurried down the corridor. As soon as she was out of sight she pressed herself against the wall and let out a nervous breath.

You scared me, she snapped.

I'd tell you I'm sorry, but…he trailed off with a sinster chuckle. She huffed and pushed away from the wall, beginning the journey back to Naminé's room.

You were listening?

Every word, he answered. Why didn't you tell him about me?

He needs rest, she said.

And I need a vessel, he huffed. She rolled her eyes.

A few more hours won't kill you, she countered. Ven's been up all night worrying about you. The least you can do is let him rest before we ask for his help.

Yeah, well, I didn't ask him to care, Vanitas grumbled. Kairi paused and frowned, her foot resting on the stairs.

That's something you'll have to get used to, she said, pressing forwards. People are going to care about you whether you ask them to or not.

So once he's had his little nap, then you'll get me my vessel?

She hesitated, hovering in the hallway. She gnawed her lip and rubbed absently at her chest.

It's not that simple, she said. She wished she could speak to Sora – he would know what to do. Vanitas huffed.

Trying to buy yourself more time? he sneered. We had a deal, princess.

I know, and I'm not trying to get out of it, she answered. She sighed and leaned heavily against the wall, staring at her shoes and fiddling with the hem of her skirt. I wouldn't even know where to start or who to ask. And even if I did, I doubt they'd trust me. They didn't believe me about Luxu and the others, about how strong they were. I think maybe I need to go about this slowly, try and get people on our side.

Like Ven? Who still doesn't know about me? She scowled and folded her arms.

I'll tell him tomorrow, she stressed. I promise. And then once he's in the loop we can work on getting more people on board. Maybe someone will know the best place to start when it comes to actually creating the vessel.

The sooner you get started, the sooner this nightmare ends for the both of us, he huffed. She rolled her eyes and pushed off from the wall.

You don't need to remind me.

I mean, did any of us expect Ven not to be on Vanitas' side? My boy is too pure.

See you next time!