Treasure of my Heart, a Kingdom Hearts fanwork: Sibling Challenge by Inmate XIV, written by Raberba girl
Closet (theme 10) [rough draft]
Eighteen-year-old Van (Vanitas) & six-year-old Sora
Summary: Sora would appreciate his big brother's comfort more than vengeance.
A/N: Takes place in the same universe as Welcome To Our World (though roughly a year or two before the events of that story). Neither Sora nor Van knows very much sign language yet. I wasn't sure about Van's and Sora's ages, so I might have to tweak them a bit if I ever hammer out a timeline for this universe.
o.o.o
Van suddenly lifted the headphones away from his ears and listened, frowning. Then he impatiently switched the music off and listened some more.
It was far too quiet. Usually he could hear the sound of the TV or the radio, or Sora running around or whatever, but it felt like the house was empty.
Van got up and looked into the bedroom his grandmother shared with Sora. Gran and the cat were both asleep in her bed, the yellowed lace curtains stirring gently in the breeze, but there was no sign of Sora. Van went back out and checked the kitchen, the living room, the tiny front and back yards...
Nothing.
"Sora!" he yelled.
Silence.
"SORA."
He must have run off. Well, wandered off. Or maybe he'd been kidnapped...stupid kid would follow anyone who offered him candy or even smiled at him...
Van was just putting on his shoes when he thought he heard a soft thump from somewhere in the house. He paused, frowning. "Gran?" There was no answer - which didn't really tell him anything, since Gran was half-deaf and probably wouldn't have heard him even if she was awake. Van sighed and pulled his shoes back off, then went to check her room again. She was still asleep, but this time, he thought to look in the closet.
It surprised him when Sora turned out to be in there after all. "Sora?"
The boy was huddled on the floor, hugging his knees and looking uncharacteristically miserable.
Van frowned and crouched down before him. "What are you doing in here? Playing hide-and-seek and mad that I didn't look for you? I can't play games you don't tell me about, stupid." Not that he would have played even if Sora had asked, but still.
Sora buried his face in his arms.
"...Hey."
Nothing. Van finally grabbed Sora and hauled him bodily out of the closet. Sora, crying now, struggled free and curled up on the floor again.
"Hey. Hey. Talk to me, Sora, or I'm just gonna shut you in here and go back to my music."
Sora finally signed the word "help."
"Help? Help with what? If you're hungry, suck it up, there's nothing to eat; I'm not gonna play with you, I'm not playing doctor to your stupid toys if you broke them, I'm not-"
"Help," Sora repeated miserably. "Help, please. Brother."
"Help with what?"
Sora lay down completely on the floor and curled up.
"Ugh, whatever; I'm just gonna-"
The edge of Sora's shirt had ridden up. Van frowned, poked the shirt up farther and saw fresh bruises on his brother's flesh, as if he'd fallen hard on something or run into something. Or been hit by something.
"...Sora."
No response.
"Sora," Van said angrily, "where'd you get these?" He jabbed at one of the bruises, and Sora cried out in pain. "Answer me!" Van grabbed his arm and hauled him upright. "Did someone hit you at school?" But Sora had seemed cheerful when he'd picked him up earlier... "Was it-?"
Dirt streaks on Sora's arms and legs. He'd been playing outside before Van had heard him come back in earlier; had it just happened in the last couple of hours?
Van stormed outside and soon found the kids Sora had been playing with. "Oi."
The kids eyed him nervously and started moving away.
"Oi." He seized one by the shirt and dragged him close. "What happened to Sora?"
"I dunno," the kid said sullenly.
"We don't wanna play with that retard anymore," said another kid nearby. Van immediately punched him in the mouth. The boy toppled to the ground, screaming as blood ran down his chin, and the other kids screamed too and ran away.
"You're gonna be a retard after I finish bashing your head in," Van snarled.
"Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" the kid shrieked. Van started to kick him, then noticed that doors were opening and that people were probably going to call the police if they saw him beating up a little kid. He ran.
Once he was out of the neighborhood, he slowed down and began wondering what to do for the rest of the afternoon and evening until it'd be safe to come back home. He had no money, but that wasn't much of a deterrent. If he could find someone to hang out with whom he didn't hate, it might even be fun.
Van was just heading toward the Crescent triplets' house when it occurred to him that he'd left Sora behind. '...He's fine. Gran'll wake up and coo over him and he'll be fine. He's always smiling, he'll forget about it soon.' But there was no food in the house...Gran was so useless anyway, with her bad eyesight and shaky hands and the way she never had any appetite or energy... 'He's alone,' Van couldn't help thinking. 'I just left him there... I didn't even think, I just barged out looking for a fight, and Sora's been curled up in the closet all this time.'
He gritted his teeth in irritation. Why'd his brother have to be like this, anyway? Sora was hopelessly behind all the other kids, he couldn't even talk, and he should have had parents taking care of him but all he had was a grandmother who was useless for everything except the roof over their heads and the welfare checks and her legal guardianship, which meant the only one left for real was Van, Van who'd never wanted a brother and never wanted this life and shouldn't have to take care of anyone except himself...
He banged open the front door, ignoring his grandmother's startled cry, and kicked off his shoes in the entryway.
Gran, huddled on the threadbare sofa, squinted across the room at him. "Oh...oh, Van, dear, where have you-?"
"None of your business."
"Where's Sora?"
"He's here, duh!" Van stormed into the bedroom and flung open the closet door. Sora blinked sleepily and scrambled to sit up. "You know Gran has no clue you're even in here? She thinks you've been out with me all this time. You're like a little rat crawling around in the corners, we forget about you all the time, you know that? I bet if this house ever burns down, you'll be holed up inside somewhere and you'll burn to death and we won't even remember you 'til, like, a week later, and then it'll be 'Good riddance' because I hate how I'm always having to run around after you and you're always in my way and I'm sick of it."
He was probably saying too much too fast for Sora to understand, but the boy did seem to catch on to the general tone just fine. He was curled up tighter than ever.
Van finally sighed and sat down. He started scooching his way into the closet, knocking things out of the way as he went. "Move. Move." Sora struggled to make room for the much bigger boy, and ended up practically in his lap. He gripped Van's tank top in his fists and stared miserably at the floor.
"You hungry?"
Sora nodded.
"Too bad. I told you, we're out of food. You're gonna keep being hungry, all night 'til you get to school tomorrow. I told you that, you have to listen when I tell you things or you'll miss stuff. You just let people do whatever they want to you, don't you."
Sora laid his head against Van's chest. After a minute, he seemed to relax into resigned misery, rather than the more desperate pain he'd appeared to be in before.
"..." Van finally put his arms around the boy. "Sora."
"Brother," Sora signed.
"Shut up. Look, get mad when they're mean to you, got it? Hit them, bite them. Don't let 'em call you names."
Sora put his hand on Van's arm and squeezed gently.
"What's that supposed to mean?" There was no answer. 'Maybe we should start learning more than just a few sign language words...' He'd seen two deaf people 'talking' one time at Sora's school. The swift, graceful way their hands had moved, their expressions, like they were having an entire conversation in another language rather than just conveying basic information... 'Is Sora even smart enough to learn how to do that?'
Sora made the humming "vvvv" sound that Van had only recently figured out might be Sora's way of saying his brother's name.
"What, Sora."
Sora set both palms against Van's chest.
"Stop it." He brushed Sora's hands away. Sora pushed at Van's heart again, more insistently this time. "What do you want?"
"Thank you."
"Thank you for what? Geez, Sora, you really are retarded."
"Thank you. Help. Brother. Please. More." Sora signed his small vocabulary over and over again, looking frustrated.
'That's all he knows,' Van thought. 'Just those and a few more, that's it. ...If he knew sign language for real, could he have told me where he got those bruises?' "Just shut up, Sora. Go watch TV with Gran, I'm gonna go out and see if I can...find something for dinner." He heaved Sora off his lap and got to his feet. Sora held his hand. "Ugh, get off..." Sora squeezed tighter. Van sighed and led him to the living room, where Sora climbed onto the couch and started cuddling with his grandmother.
"I'm going out," Van said.
"Where?" Gran asked in tremulous alarm.
"None of your business! Get off my back, I can come and go whenever I want!" Van shoved his feet into his shoes and slammed out the door, tears stinging his eyes. 'I hate this life...I hate being poor, I hate having family always dragging me down, I hate that they're stupid and I hate that I'm too lazy to just take off on my own...'
o.o.o
Author's Notes: (It's not 'laziness' that keeps him home, ftr. ^^; And he's probably gonna steal dinner, though I hope he manages to obtain it in a more legitimate way...) No offense was intended to anyone by this story. :/ Sometimes it's hard to balance the writer's perspective and attitude with the narrator's.
I couldn't figure out a good way to end this. Van will eventually get steered toward the resources he needs for he and his brother to learn more sign language, and by the time of Welcome To Our World, they're both fairly fluent. I didn't want to disrespect their grandmother, but it was hard not to, writing from Van's POV. :/ Basically, both their parents are out of the picture and their grandmother can barely even take care of herself, much less a troubled teenage boy and a child with special needs. I don't think Van has gainful employment, either. :/ Hopefully things will start looking up for them as time passes and Van hopefully, by some miracle, manages to stay out of serious trouble long enough to get more mature and responsible...hopefully...
Drafted this in one sitting just now because I'm in a procrastinate-on-high-priority-To-Do-List-by-working-on-low-priority-To-Do-List mood. *sweatdrop* Also, I just really wanted to write and post some WTOW VanSo. XD That one-shot wasn't supposed to be continued, but a while ago, I got an idea for a sequel of sorts to be part of a much larger story (though the story is huge and complicated, and I wonder if I'll ever have time to actually work on it and finish it). Then, when I was brainstorming for this challenge, I kept getting a lot of ideas for WTOW siblings, particularly Van & Sora, so I guess WTOW is on its way to becoming yet another one of R. girl's expanded alternate universes. *sweatdrop*
Lol, I've been watching Switched at Birth on DVD; and COMPLETELY by coincidence, the episode of Community that Dad and I watched today had a deaf character in it who interacted with Abed in a few scenes. I think all that is what put me in the mood to want to post some WTOW VanSo now, when I should really be working on other things. X'D Also, I looked up ASL renditions of Frozen songs on YouTube, and one of the "Let It Go" videos made me all teary-eyed yet again. XD I love watching people 'sing' in sign language, it's beautiful. ...The ASL arguments in Switched at Birth are actually fun to watch, too. X'D I'm in awe of what an expressive language it is.
Complete: 2/100