For those who have read The Xehanort War, I've gone back and updated the official timeline at the end to add in a few things I left out initially because I needed to work out the dates.

Heads up there's going to be some more dark Vanitas backstory this chapter (I know, as if what Xehanort put him through can't get any worse than it already has), but it quickly turns on the feels and follows up with some sibling bonding between the three teenaged Key bearers. The chapter title comes from one of the songs from The Tigger Movie.

Minor language warning for this chapter, Vanitas does start letting a few strong words out when discussing his backstory with Sora.

5 more chapters, dear readers. Almost done with Regroup and Rebuild, and then on to Ripple Effects

Episode 27: Round My Family Tree

Destiny Islands – Sora's House

August 27, 2015

Sora smiled as he climbed out of his sleeping bag the following morning. He'd had a blast spending time with his older brother last night. Speaking of, Sora looked over and saw that Ven was still asleep and Vanitas' sleeping bag was rolled up, its former occupant evidently long gone. Since everyone left in the house was still snoozing soundly, Sora got up and quietly crept towards the back door. Since coming home from his fight with Xemnas a two years ago, he'd gotten into the habit of getting up relatively early in the morning and going out on the back porch to watch the sunrise. To the Keyblade master, the rising sun piercing the dark of the night reminded him of the Door to Light opening to bring him and Riku home from the Realm of Darkness.

As he stepped outside, he was surprised and confused when he bumped into something that felt like another person's back as he tiptoed across the patio.

"Sorry," he heard a voice that sounded exactly like a younger version of his own said as the form in front of him shifted and Vanitas stood up from where he was sitting on the deck. "I didn't mean to get in the way."

"Don't be," Sora whispered. "I thought you'd already left. So what are you doing out here anyway?"

"Meditating," Vanitas answered quietly as the two identical Key bearers leaned against the porch railing. "It helps me think when I don't have anything better to do. What about you?"

"I like coming out to watch the sunrise every morning," the older of the two look-alikes replied. "How come you meditate so much? I know it helps you think, but last night Ven mentioned that you do it almost all the time. Your life doesn't sound so dull that meditation is the best thing you can come up with to keep busy." Vanitas took a deep breath before responding.

"I just haven't really gotten used to actually having a life yet," he replied. "Living with Xehanort made me feel less like a human and more like an attack dog being trained by repeating the same routine on a daily basis until it was ingrained in my head that this was what I need to do. The old man was a master manipulator. Breaking people is… was his specialty. For someone like me who didn't know any other way of life, all he had to do was have me repeating the same routines for so long that when he told me to do something I'd done before, I was happy to do it."

"He didn't just put me through all that "training" so I'd know what to do in a situation," he went on. "He'd conditioned me to want it. To enjoy doing it. But even though I'd been conditioned to instinctively want to train for hours or have sex with strangers for food, I could sense a basic idea of what Ventus was feeling all the time and there was always a knot in the pit of my stomach constantly reminding me that there was more to life than what Xehanort had conditioned me to enjoy."

"And I hated myself through all of it. So I started meditating to take my mind off everything I'd been conditioned into doing and actually get to do what I really wanted. Underneath all the training and manipulation, all I wanted was to have one friend who accepted me for what I was. After spending so long trapped in a cycle of creating and killing Unversed, I just didn't want to be alone. But now that the old man's finally gone, the conditioning still has a hold over me. So there's my big tragic sob story. Are you happy now?"

Vanitas was sweating profusely when he finished his rant, and tears streamed down his face as he panted heavily. He wasn't really felt comfortable sharing his feelings and all that sappy garbage, but something about Sora (either the fact that they shared the same face or the fact that the guy had a habit of nonchalantly bonding with just about everyone he met) made the dark teenager feel less guarded. The Keyblade Master in question quickly turned and pulled his brother's formerly-evil twin in for a hug. Vanitas clearly needed it.

After a few minutes of comforting his dark-haired doppelganger, Sora tried to cheer Vanitas up by talking about things he wanted to try now that he was free from Xehanort. Vanitas was a little reluctant to talk at first, but eventually, the two boys ended up bonding over shared dark powers as Vanitas offered to teach Sora some more advanced ways of using his darkness both in and out of battle. Ven was awake when the two near-identical teens snuck back inside to change and grab some water bottles and towels, and insisted on coming along.

"I haven't had a chance to spar in weeks," he said. "I gotta stay in shape." So the three teenagers headed back outside and walked along the cobblestone streets of town towards the beach. When they arrived on the shore, they laid their towels and water bottles on the grass at the edge of the sand. Sora and Vanitas were up the first round while Ventus unfolded the beach chair he'd brought for whoever would be sitting out each round.

For the next few minutes, Sora and Vanitas swung their Keyblades back and forth across the sand. As both warriors called on their darkness-based abilities, Vanitas called out suggestions and advice to Sora for him to improve his technique. Sora was a fast learner, but Vanitas had more experience using darkness in a fight, and emerged as the victor. Since Sora lost, he walked over to the beach chair and Ventus got up to take his turn. Despite the fact that the last time they dueled they'd trying to kill each other, the two twins managed to get through their entire duel without having flashbacks to what had happened that fateful day.

After an hour and a half of sparring, the three Key bearers decided that they were all ready to head back and eat breakfast. Sora passed everyone their towel and water bottle as they walked back to the house. On the way back, they all provided commentary on their multiple matches, jokingly teasing each other over their various losses like they'd been doing this for years. They got back to Sora and Ven's house to find their mother making them pancakes for breakfast. Vanitas went upstairs to shower first while Sora and Ven sat on the back porch while they waited for breakfast to be ready.

"Vanitas was a lot less moddy this morning," Ventus observed as they sat outside in the morning sun. "I assume you had something to do with that?"

"A little," Sora admitted. "I accidentally bumped into him while he was meditating when I came outside to watch the sunrise, and I asked him why he spent so much time meditating."

"Let me guess," Ven interrupted before his younger brother could continue. "it has something to do with Xehanort."

"Yeah," Sora replied. "But you should ask him what it was. It's his story to tell. I guess he didn't just get his face from me. It looks like he got my habit of bottling up my pain and anger too. He really needs to learn how to loosen up a bit and not try and hold all his frustration and trauma inside."

"I've been trying to tell him that for weeks," Ven countered. "But I could never get through to him. How did you get him to open up to you like that?"

"Beats me," Sora answered with a shrug. "It's probably has something to do with either the fact that we have the same face, or how I get people to trust me so easily. I really don't know." Their conversation was interrupted when a newly clean Vanitas poked his head out the back door and informed the two brothers that he was done in the shower. Sora went next, leaving Ven and Vanitas to sit outside and talk. Breakfast was ready, but the three boys agreed to wait until they had all cleaned up before eating.

When he came outside to tell Ven it was his turn, he found his brother (it was weird thinking of Ventus as the older sibling even though he was born first because of the fact that he was physically younger than Sora, and everyone agreed to just not think about it to avoid giving themselves migranes) offering to teach his dark doppelganger how to surf. Sora smiled as he heard Vanitas sounding a little less guarded, and he burst out laughing when, after he'd told Ven it was his turn to shower, Vanitas told him to hurry up so they could eat.

A few minutes later, the three boys sat around the kitchen table eating chocolate chip pancakes with an enormous amount of syrup on top. As they ate their breakfast, Emi and Taro watched silently from the dining room and discretely took photos of the heartwarming sight. Ven and Sora adjusted to the revelation that they were siblings extremely well, and were getting along like a house on fire. Vanitas needed a little more time to adjust to being part of a family, but Emi suspected that their oldest son's embodied dark side would be showing up at family gatherings over the holidays from now on. Even though Sora was still the only one living at home (at least until he graduated high school), the two parents were thrilled with how much larger their family had grown in the last month.

I figured it would be great for Sora and Vanitas to actually have a face to face conversation in this fic, since I didn't really show them talking in The Xehanort War, and I figured all three guys bonding this chapter would be really heartwarming and emotional. Vanitas is pretty much officially part of the family, even if he won't admit it out loud.

The reason they don't really talk about Roxas being part of the family is mainly because in my mind Roxas would want to distance himself from Sora's life (they're still going to be friends with each other) because he's been told for his whole time in the simulated Twilight Town that he had no right to exist as anything other than a copy of Sora, and now that he's alive again it made sense to me that he'd want to forge his own life and be separate from his original self.

Next chapter: Sora, Riku, and Kairi endure one of the most horrifically insane activities of all time, regardless of age: Back to School shopping.