He could perhaps have guessed, but he'd have needed a higher stat for that. He does, however, know that sort of breathing intimately from the inside.
Vanitas's go tos for comforting others don't go much beyond 'sit next to them like Terra did', and he's kind of already doing that. There's also gifts but that requires more planning. It's different just meeting someone as opposed to living in a castle where you can fully expect the other person to still be around in a week and be right.
He wordlessly shuffles so that he's a little closer anyway, a comfortable distance as opposed to smack bang halfway between Roxen and the far edge where he first sat.
He shrugs, more nonchalantly than he feels, his gaze anywhere but Roxen and mostly looking more at the town below than the horizon. "I'm darkness," he says, deliberately lightly. "That's one of the first things I knew. And Eraqus... he's a Master of Light. It makes sense, if I ever became a problem..."
He doesn't blame himself, exactly, for running off, for filling the worlds with Unversed, for refusing to come back, for the very real danger of the chi blade. He either made those choices with certainty or had no part in them. And he certainly wasn't going to go down easy, would make Eraqus fight for it (or not, he was a Master and Vanitas an apprentice of four years, the gap in skill was real). But, he gets it. The clean ruthless line of that sort of solution. He implemented it on this body's previous tenant.
And yet... it's still a raw wound. Despite everything, Eraqus was kind. Stern, but kind. Memory is always tricky in hindsight but here the narrator is going to state it as objective fact - there was real affection there, in the crinkle of his eyes as he walked in on Vanitas in the middle of making a mess of the kitchen cooking, in the nod of approval whenever Vanitas managed a spell without it coming out dark.
That too, was complex, being praised for things assumed for Aqua and Terra. It was reciprocal in that complexity - Vanitas looked up to Eraqus as he looked up to Aqua and Terra, resented the permeating sense of difference. The only sure thing is that thinking about the way things turned out, aches.
Vanitas bites into what's left of the icecream to feel the cold jar up his teeth. "It makes sense," he repeats.
no subject
Vanitas's go tos for comforting others don't go much beyond 'sit next to them like Terra did', and he's kind of already doing that. There's also gifts but that requires more planning. It's different just meeting someone as opposed to living in a castle where you can fully expect the other person to still be around in a week and be right.
He wordlessly shuffles so that he's a little closer anyway, a comfortable distance as opposed to smack bang halfway between Roxen and the far edge where he first sat.
He shrugs, more nonchalantly than he feels, his gaze anywhere but Roxen and mostly looking more at the town below than the horizon. "I'm darkness," he says, deliberately lightly. "That's one of the first things I knew. And Eraqus... he's a Master of Light. It makes sense, if I ever became a problem..."
He doesn't blame himself, exactly, for running off, for filling the worlds with Unversed, for refusing to come back, for the very real danger of the chi blade. He either made those choices with certainty or had no part in them. And he certainly wasn't going to go down easy, would make Eraqus fight for it (or not, he was a Master and Vanitas an apprentice of four years, the gap in skill was real). But, he gets it. The clean ruthless line of that sort of solution. He implemented it on this body's previous tenant.
And yet... it's still a raw wound. Despite everything, Eraqus was kind. Stern, but kind. Memory is always tricky in hindsight but here the narrator is going to state it as objective fact - there was real affection there, in the crinkle of his eyes as he walked in on Vanitas in the middle of making a mess of the kitchen cooking, in the nod of approval whenever Vanitas managed a spell without it coming out dark.
That too, was complex, being praised for things assumed for Aqua and Terra. It was reciprocal in that complexity - Vanitas looked up to Eraqus as he looked up to Aqua and Terra, resented the permeating sense of difference. The only sure thing is that thinking about the way things turned out, aches.
Vanitas bites into what's left of the icecream to feel the cold jar up his teeth. "It makes sense," he repeats.