RETROACTIVE DEFENSE OF PAST SELF

[vapidus]

This is the first time it happens, so Vanitas is taken completely by surprise, mid-conversation even. The surroundings fuzz, blur; Vanitas's eyebrows come together but before he can say a word, the Ventus in front of him vanishes. So do the Unversed around them. So, as he turns and stands, turning his head this way and that, has the cairn.

Instead of the desert, there's a courtyard. White buildings, bleached as bone with doorways of mouths, surround it. He can hear and smell the sea, somewhere.

"What." Says Vanitas, into the listless air. He's not stupid, he's on another world somehow but he didn't do it, either by lanes or dark corridors.

An Unversed peels out of his shadow and into those of a bush. Fast enough he didn't get a good look at it, but one of the small ones. He ignores it for now, and starts walking, then using keyblade tricks to go from roof to roof. Staying in the empty streets makes him feel weirdly exposed, watched.

Ventus is nearby - he can feel it, he's always been able to feel it even when he had no idea what it was, when it faded over time to the point that, now, he has to really concentrate if he wants any kind of indication of it's truth, and more importantly, it's direction.

He levers up a skylight with his keyblade instead of tapping it, and drops down into the little atrium. This is a weird-ass house, but he's nearby, he knows it.

"Ventus!" he yells. "This better not be your fault!" Although it probably is. Either Ventus.

Comments

i want to be evil lint :)

[vacantis]

If Vanitas had an ounce of self awareness, he might have realized that since he was looking at a baby version of himself: laughter was probably the worse option he could pick right after outright attacking. When was the last time you reacted maturely to someone laughing at you Vanitas? Answer honestly.

Ventus clenched his jaw so fast you could practically hear the snap of it. Wayward Wind, hanging by his side for this entire conversation. He brought it up. Vanitas was only a half a room away, and Wayward Winds short blade came up about a foot short from his chest.

"You-" Ventus began, and then couldn't even find the words to continue. The blood was rushing in his head and the shattered few remains of sense and reason that were yelling at him that this was wrong, and bad and he needed to stop right now or he'd do something he couldn't take back again were drowned out by the perfect clarity of anger. This stranger couldn't just--talk to him like this! Threaten him and ruin his life!

With a twist of his wrist he flicked Wayward Wind in a low arc, rushing Vanitas with a growl. Magic flicked at the edge, green and gold and Ventus slammed his shoulder into Vanitas--only to suddenly go slack.

There had been a live wire in the room, something Vanitas had seen a little, thrumming between them, and that brief moment of contact was enough to make it snap. The atmosphere went from the regular tension of two angry teens, to a true sense of forboding--the miasma Vanitas had sensed coalescing into something far more sold and tangible, tugging at him with a quiet insistance.

Ventus meanwhile, sat up from where he had fallen to a floor with a casual sigh--and fixed Vanitas with two bright yellow eyes.

"Well," He began, in a calm even inflection that didn't match at all. "This is interesting. What might you be?"

you're my dad! boogie woogie woogie

[vapidus]

Vanitas is a very mature young individual and would surely calmly- okay I can't even finish the sentence. He absolutely would flip his lid.

If there's one saving grace to Vanitas's apparently suicidal urge to goad Ventuses, it's that he's become very quick at the draw because he usually doesn't know the exact instant he's going to be flung out a window at high speed. Void Gear flashes into his hand in a downward high block by thoughtless habit - only Ventus doesn't use Wayward Wind, he shoulder-checks, knocking Vanitas off balance as he stumbles back in absorbing the momentum. And then Ventus drops to the ground? This is the weirdest feint Vanitas has ever seen. Foreboding runs over and through him as he stares down at the collapsed form; the same feeling as watching a tornado start to form from debris, close enough you can feel the air being sucked in, pulling your entire body towards it.

Ventus collapsed. Vanitas knows, with absolute certainty, that it's not Ventus that sits up. Void Gear is by his side, gripped tightly. "What. The fuck." What does this mean? Who is this? Whose heart is this? Is this Xehanort's doing? He knows bone deep nothing that man could do could match this.

son im very dissapointed in you for not being evil and crazy :/

[vacantis]

"Hm." 'Ventus' sits up further, brushing his oversized jacket off with a huff. "No memory then? Its funny, you are almost certainly me. I can sense it. And yet..."

He leans over on one elbow, crossing his legs and staring up at Vanitas. The shadows behind him flicker--because they are almost becoming solid, a heavy fog that is almost real enough to see. Perhaps an ancient prerequisite to the unversed.

"Well...why don't we start with you? You are not of this reality, I'm certain. I already exist here, in this body. A traveler from the future perhaps? I'm quite curious what happens now."

sorry dad

[vapidus]

Vanitas has never been scared of the dark. It's where he lives, it was his first home. He's scoffed at Terra beating himself up. He's cursed at his Unversed. He's hated and feared Xehanort, but not because the man had darkness. It is this lack of fear, even at the heart of a morass of complicated feelings about himself and the way people around him thought of him, that kept an internal gyroscope upright, that allowed him to push back, internally, against the idea he was, inherently, bad and wrong.

Standing here, with the hairs on the back of his neck sticking up, he can see, just a little, just a shade, why people might.

"Why should I tell you?" he snaps, off-kilter, on the back foot and hating it. The irony of him being in this position is not lost on him. "What do I get?"

Answers, maybe. His mind is reeling, trying to catch up to the roulette. This is him? He doesn't remember? Natural suspicion is rising up against the ring of truth. He'd closed the chapter on it, or so he thought. Ventus was many things, but a liar not one of them, and Vanitas had hated that then as well. Even before that, he hadn't really thought much about who he'd been or where he'd come from. He'd been curious enough to ask, but it hadn't mattered to who he was.

just do better next time :/

[vacantis]

Vanitas's darkness is so very much the darkness of the human heart--for the best and worst of it. The flickering entity in the room with him had all the cold slickness of the ways between, of the realm of darkness itself. Something alien--even in this new world where darkness was as natural a law as light.

"Hm..." 'Ventus' looks thoughtful. "Very transactional. Would you like my explanation first then? I'm a very good guesser."

He puts his hands on his knees and stands. Despite still being a full head shorter then Vanitas, the action still looms. "I've been in this body a long time. Much longer then it remembers. Time is very funny, like that." He snorts a little at his own joke. "My name... I suppose I was once called Darkness, but that seems a bit redundant now. Oh well. Perhaps Ventus will do?"

Another joke. Darkness is a very funny guy. Yellow eyes meet red as 'Ventus' looks Vanitas up and down.

"And if you want my explination--you seem to be...well thats quite interesting isn't it. Some sort of mix of myself and a human heart. A true chimera. I didn't think such a thing was possible, even here." Perhaps to Vanitas, Darkness appeared a predator, confident and sleek and unbroken--but unspoken was the fact that Darkness lay sleeping even in this world, unable to take its own form anymore outside of the body it had chosen. Oh it was powerful, very powerful, yet its stability was not centered in this world. It was no shadow of the human heart or a creature born from this new realm of darkness--it remained itself, something very old and arising from beyond the world of light, even after dragging the entirety of reality down to its level.

Perhaps the Foretellers had succeeded more then they might have thought--or perhaps it just meant there was more to go, a final nail yet to be placed on the coffin. Darkness was very good at patience.

[vapidus]

They stand there, two snapshots in time, the before and after of darkness. There is an empty throne out there now, left and ignored, with only Vanitas's claim to it as prince.

"You're not Ventus," Vanitas snips defensively. It's like if Xehanort claimed to actually be Terra; injuring Terra's body or no, Vanitas would have attacked him on the spot. The Ventus that was in front of him wasn't his Ventus, but had more claim than whoever this was. "Pick something else."

Vanitas likes transactional, as a general rule. No mess, no fuss, no one owing each other anything, just the impersonal grounding of trade. No wonder he has such an affection for gifts. Darkness answered, with more than expected even, so Vanitas sets his jaw to reply. "Vanitas." A terse name for name.

"It's all Xehanort's fault," he says, the words coming easily from habit. "He wants Kingdom Hearts and had the bright idea that splitting Ventus in two would get him a Chi-Blade." Vanitas's eyes narrow. He'd taken a step back when Ventus stood up; that was a mistake. "Only it didn't work out." It's a reeling concept. 'You came from a boy that died', he was told once. "Who are you? Where did you come from? What do you mean, longer than it remembers?" There's just so much going on.