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Ven departed from Lea and Isa, waving them off with a casual, “Just going to wander the gardens.”
They didn’t argue, probably saw every inch of Radiant Garden’s namesakes too often to want to follow, and Ven was able to get away from their prying eyes without any further fanfare.
He just needed to find a quiet spot to summon his Glider, really.
“Don’t break World Order” was one of the big rules, and Ven wasn’t about to give Aqua or Terra more reasons to scold him.
They did that enough already.
Ven could feel a scowl starting to form, and forced his attention onto his surroundings. Radiant Garden was a beautiful World, pleasant and peaceful. Ven could walk all day and not tire of its sights. It would be a lovely place to live—
And Aqua had said, “Go home, Ven.”
The scowl returned.
“Go home, Ven,” he mocked. “Go back to your room, Ven. This is an adult conversation, Ven.”
He turned and stomped onto a side path, weaving away from a wash of red flowers to something more magenta in the distance.
“What, am I a child to ground now? To babysit? I made it this far, with minimal problems and none I told you about, and you can’t even be impressed—“ Ven kicked a rock. It bounced a couple times, then came to a halt a few feet ahead of him. “Nooo, Ven’s not ready to take his Mastery exam, Ven’s still just a student, we’ll just send him home.”
He approached the pebble and kicked it again, watching as it skidded across the ground.
“What if I don’t want to be a Master?” Ven asked, voice going sharp with frustration. “Huh? Has that ever occurred to anyone? There’s nothing wrong with being a Keybearer. Master’s just a title. A word. It doesn’t mean anything.”
He stomped closer to the pebble. “So what if Aqua’s got some fancy title now. That’s not the same thing as having a job. Anyone can be made responsible for lives. Anyone can be tasked with waking Sleeping Worlds. You don’t need to be a Master to do your duty as Keybearer.”
He kicked the rock again. “And being called ‘Master’ sure as fuck doesn’t mean you’re good at what you’re supposed to be doing.”
The rock rolled to a halt next to an abrupt change in the path’s construction.
Most of the paths through Radiant Garden’s namesakes were paved with terracotta brickwork. The new section, bordered by fantastically vivid magenta blooms amid lush green grass, was a cobblestone walkway.
An oddly… purple cobblestone walkway.
Ven’s pace slowed as he came up to it.
There were stars embedded into the path, set into each giant stone. Golden paint had long faded, leaving them pale and washed out. Moonlike and dreamy as opposed to the strikingly radiant pops of color they had once been.
Ven knew this stonework.
“Go home, Ven,” Aqua’s voice rang in his head, and Ven… knew.
What had happened.
The Keyblade War had shattered the Realm of Light. Like a hammer to a delicate pane of glass, it had broken. Crumbled.
The Keyblade Graveyard was the epicenter of the impact, and like an actual pane of glass, the fractures had woven closer, tighter, the closer one got to it. The further away in the Realm of Light one was from it, the further apart the fractures were, and therefore the larger the shards became.
It had been one contiguous continent of Light, once upon a time.
The Keyblade War had cracked it all the way through, letting darkness seep in and spread, separating the surviving fragments of Light from each other. Thus, each shard of Light had become a World in their own right, brilliant islands bobbing amid the seas of Darkness now known as the Lanes Between.
But the places closest to the Keyblade Graveyard? The ones next to the epicenter of the break? The cracks were so close together, they had broken the nearest towns into splinters. Shattered them apart block by block. Street by street. House by house. Room—
Ven squeezed his eyes shut and gasped for breath. It hurt.
It hurt.
Like a crack running all the way through his Heart, and Ven knew without Diving which part had just fractured under the grief.
Ven had never been allowed to Dive to his own Heart. So he had never seen it in full. He was suddenly, terribly grateful for that.
As the saying went, home is where the Heart is, so the Heart would always reflect its Home.
Ven, who had never seen his Station of Awakening, not once in all the years he’d lived with Eraqus and Aqua and Terra, had no idea what Home his Heart reflected.
And he was so, so fucking grateful for that. Because what if it was Land of Departure?
What if it was Land of Departure?
Had Ven unknowingly destroyed the last intact image of his home World? The last unshattered reflection of it? The last unbroken piece?
Go home Ven, Aqua’s voice whispered, and Ven crumbled to his knees, sobbing.
I am home, he realized. But home is nowhere. Nowhere alive.
It’s dead.
My Home is dead and I’m standing on its corpse.
He folded in on himself, shoving one fist into his mouth like it would stifle the sobs. He keened around it, tears rolling down his cheeks. Plopping onto lavender stone.
Stone he’d only ever see again if he stumbled across another splinter, another shard, another bone broken off the decaying body of his World—
His World, whose name he didn’t even know.
Ven didn’t know the name of his own Home, didn’t know the names of any of his neighbors—didn’t know the name of a single person who had died.
Oh, Light.
How many people had died? How many lives had been lost when their World’s Heart shattered along the lines the Keyblade War had left? How many had gone missing, never to be found? How many had become Heartless, consumed by the darkness swelling in? How many had been outright killed by the collapse?
…how many had survived? Did Ven know any of them? Had he known them? Met them since he’d lost his memory?
If he met a familiar face today, would he even recognize them as he was?
The aching pressure in his chest turned unbearably warm, just as Ven finally heard the telltale sound of footsteps past his own sobs. Familiar boots came to an abrupt halt next to him.
Vanitas had found him.
He loomed for what felt like an age, looking between Ven’s blotchy, tear-stained face, and the cobblestone path whose border Ven was curled against.
After the fight they’d just had, Ven half-expected him to sneer, to call him weak, to spit something cruel because Ven was a failure of a leader who wasn’t worth staying with—
Vanitas sat down. Shoulder to shoulder with him. Boots crossed at the ankle, stretching just over the border onto the cobblestone.
Ven hiccuped in surprise, choking on his own snot.
“You found the splinter,” Vanitas said. His voice was… flat. Tired. He reached up, tugged his helmet off, thunked it onto the ground carelessly. Both arms rested on his knees, and he stared at the star-studded street with an exhausted look in his eyes.
That look had nothing to do with battle fatigue.
Ven rocked a little, curling his arms around his own legs, and nodded.
Right.
Vanitas had told him he didn’t belong on his knees while they were alone in a star-studded street.
Which meant he’d known Vanitas before he’d lived in Land of Departure. When he’d still lived in Home.
And Vanitas—had referenced Ven having taken more before, when they’d had sex. So, he must remember things Ven had forgotten, and if that was true, then Vanitas must remember parts of that World that Ven had lost entirely.
Because it was his Home too.
Vanitas got it. The grief.
That realization was why Ven felt comfortable tilting sideways, leaning against his side as he admitted, “I don’t remember them. Not even a bit. Not one single face.”
He rubbed at his face, trying to wipe away tears and mostly only succeeding at feeling more raw. “They’re all gone now. I don’t even remember them and they’re gone and I don’t even know the names to mourn—“
Wordlessly, Vanitas draped an arm around Ven and pulled him into a side hug.
Whatever composure Ven had managed to regather immediately crumbled. He clung to Vanitas. Babbled.
“I don’t have anyone to ask about them,” he said tearfully. “I don’t have anyone but you to grieve with; no one else knows they existed, let alone their names. No memorials to visit, no graves to tend—not even a trinket to remember them by!“
Ven dragged in a too-shallow breath. “And the worst part is, I can’t even tell them about this! All this grief, all this loss, and I can’t share the burden of it! Not even with the people who claim to care about me!“
“Why not?” Vanitas murmured. He turned, nosing at the crown of Ven’s head.
“Because they’d lie!” Ven screamed. He shoved back, beating at Vanitas’s shoulder with a surge of sudden frustration.
Vanitas twitched a little at the volume, but instead of getting mad or hitting back, he just tucked Ven’s head under his chin and rubbed his spine. Slow, steady circles. Soothing.
Familiar, even though the touch somehow wasn’t.
“They always lie,” Ven scrubbed at his eyes, shoulders drawing tight. He bowed a little, curling into the safe curve of Vanitas’ embrace. “Every single time.”
“Who?” Voice terse, resigned—Vanitas already knew the answer.
But he asked anyway, so Ven could lance the pain before it boiled over.
“Aqua and Terra,” Ven said miserably. He gave up on wiping away the tears and hugged Vanitas back. “Eraqus. They’d never admit I’m not from Land of Departure, not even if I stood them on this path and let them Dive to my Heart.”
How fucked up was that?
Here Ven was, confiding in his enemy because he knew Vanitas would listen to him. Would understand. Would not lie to his face about the blindingly obvious pain.
Aqua and Terra would.
They would without a question, without a hint of guilt, and Ven knew they would. Had faith in it, like he had faith in the sun rising each day. Because just like the sun rose like clockwork, they’d done exactly that. Lied to him. Every day, every single time he asked. For all the years he’d lived with them.
Because they took their cues from their Master, and right from day one, Eraqus could look him in the eye and smile and spoon feed him lies.
Like they didn’t all know the masquerade was on. Like sometimes Ven didn’t ask the awkward questions just to watch them squirm and scramble for the world’s flimsiest cover story. Like every day wasn’t a trustfall exercise, every conversation a cliff under his shoe, and Ven kept falling in the hopes they’d catch him.
Just once.
Just once would be all it took.
But no. The game stayed on.
Smile with your teeth! Let them dig their own graves! If I play naive, how long will it take before you decide I deserve the truth?
Never.
It had always been apparent the answer was ‘never’ and this trip had just—thrown that all into stark relief.
The very first thing they’d told him was that he’d lived in Land of Departure all his life.
But he wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t recovering from a head wound, and—Ven knew, okay, he knew Vanitas had told him he didn’t belong on his knees in a place where stars studded the streets. Just like how he knew his home town had buildings and cobblestone streets all in the same lavender, pale, painted like daybreak, like nothing else in Land of Departure and—
They always told him that he’d only ever lived with them.
But even if that hadn’t rung false to him, he still would’ve known. They hadn’t been subtle at all. He would’ve had to be blind and deaf and dumb to not know.
They hung the clues from the wall! Spoke them into existence every day! And they honestly thought Ven wouldn’t notice.
Terra was Eraqus’ great-nephew. His baby pictures had been hanging from the walls longer than Terra had been a Keybearer. Nine years ago, Aqua had become Eraqus’ apprentice, and she started appearing in photos from then on. Ven—Ven’s pictures only began after he was injured.
He wasn’t stupid.
He knew he didn’t come from Land of Departure. He needed a translator spell just to understand them on a day-to-day basis, and the way they spoke without it was almost understandable, almost intelligible, their words rooted in something familiar, but… not quite.
He wasn’t from there. He didn’t speak their language. He had no pictures with them because he had no history with them.
He knew that.
Just like he knew whatever happened to him was a horrible injury that he was probably better off not knowing about and—if it was for his own good, couldn’t he excuse them lying to him? They had good intentions.
They had good intentions.
But actions mattered just as much.
And Ven was tired of being lied to, of being expected to be too stupid to notice the obvious. Of holding out his hands and his Heart but still never being caught.
“Go home, Ven,” Aqua had said.
Like he was a child who could be grounded on a grown-up’s whim. Like he’d run too far and his kid-safe leash had just gone taut. Like his babysitters had gotten tired of watching him.
Ven loved them enough to let them lie to his face, and still they treated him like a kid in need of minding.
He didn’t need to be spoon fed lies. He didn’t need the truth sugarcoated. He could swallow it without complaint, no matter how bitter it was. He could figure shit out without them telling him, he could travel worlds alone without issue, he could be independent, so why wasn’t that ever good enough for them?
Just once, he wanted them to trust him with the truth.
To treat him like an equal.
Like another adult and not a burden they were bothering with.
Another sob escaped him. His voice was broken, scraped raw—he’d been babbling. Spilling out every painful thought. Crying into Vanitas’ chest about his friends not caring and Vanitas, their shared enemy, who had been trying to kill them only hours beforehand—
Did nothing but hold him.
Vanitas hummed low in his throat, a melody that was agonizingly familiar even if Ven had no memory of it.
Ven pressed himself into Vanitas even harder, like he could climb into his skin and merge with him if he only clung close enough. He twisted around to crawl into the older Keybearer’s lap, buried his face into a warm, bony shoulder. Held on like his World was breaking under his feet and Vanitas was the only solid ground left.
The only splinter left of a World long dead.
Vanitas didn’t even resist. He just shifted, opened his arms, and let Ven crawl in. Kept humming away, like nothing had changed.
If he had ever broken like this in front of Aqua and Terra, they would have been coddling him by now. Swaddling him like a baby in blankets until he was immobilized, unable to leave.
Why was it that the one guy who treated him like an adult—like someone who could make his own damn decisions, even if they were shitty and horny and objectively the dumbest thing he could do—why of all the people who could’ve trusted him, why was it only ever the guy who tried to take his head off every other time they met?
What did it say about the people Ven loved that they couldn’t see past the wreck he’d once been to the person they’d helped him become? What did it say about Ven that the place he felt coddled the least was with an enemy?
Bafflingly, bewilderingly, to Ven’s own relief, Vanitas had more faith in Ven’s abilities than the people he’d trained with.
“I’m glad I still have you,” Ven sobbed, and Vanitas held him until he cried himself to sleep.
***
The next time they met, Ven didn’t even have time to register the heat spilling into his chest before Vanitas ambushed him.
Ven collided with Olympus Coliseum’s painfully hard floors, squawking even as the Stun took hold. Frozen in place, there was nothing he could do to stop Vanitas from strolling over and looking down on him.
“Well, that was disappointing,” he said drily. “Have you ever tried to keep your guard up?” He tsked as Ven worked his jaw muscles, straining to break through the spell, counting the seconds until it broke.
Stun spells never lasted long. Stopga was better for that.
Before it could fade, Vanitas snapped his fingers.
Ven’s shadow came alive, tendrils leaping up to catch hold of his wrists and pin them over his head. Loosely, not painfully. His elbows had some give, bent away from his skull, and his wrists rested so close to his head he could touch his own hair.
There were far more painful ways to hold him down.
Less obscene positions to hold him in, too.
Ven’s breath hitched despite himself, flushing with embarrassment as Vanitas casually stepped astride him, then sat down squarely on Ven’s groin.
Straddling him.
The Stun broke and the first thing out of Ven’s mouth was a furious, “Will you make up your mind already?!”
Vanitas raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh?”
“You won’t stay after sex, but you’ll hold me when I’m crying,” Ven snapped. “You’ll try to decapitate me on a peaceful world, but when you show up on a gladiator’s world, you straddle me instead? Pick a side! Stop giving me so many mixed signals!”
“Am I giving you mixed signals?” Vanitas made a show of stroking his chin guard, so blatantly mocking that Ven’s eyes slitted with rage.
Instead of responding, he bucked up, grinding pointedly against Vanitas.
“If you wanted a fight,” he spat, “you wouldn’t have pinned down my arms. If you wanted me dead, you wouldn’t have bothered sitting on me. This,” another pointed roll of his hips, “is a shitty battle position and you know it.”
Vanitas’ eyes narrowed, his jaw tightening. Something between them started to stiffen and it clearly pissed him off.
Well tough fucking luck.
Just ‘cause he got Ven begging last time didn’t mean he was going to roll over for him every time.
If the asshole wanted to get laid, he’d have to work for it.
Ven deliberately stilled, going lax against the ground with a cocky grin. “Well?” he taunted. “Going to make up your mind? Do you want a lover or a fighter? Because you’re not getting both.”
Vanitas’ face twisted with fury and he took a deep breath. He looked like he was about to spit fire, Heart Dark enough to twist the spell into something vicious and corroding and—
Okay.
Maybe he was a little hot when he was angry.
Ven still wasn’t going to fight him as foreplay every time, though. If he didn’t get to be spoiled through his afterglow, then Vanitas didn’t get to be spoiled in the lead up.
Give and take, dickhead.
“We’re enemies, obviously,” Vanitas said, and settled his weight a little firmer against Ven’s groin.
Ven’s breath caught, and Vanitas, grin widening to insufferably smug proportions, deliberately ground himself onto Ven’s thighs, even as the shadowy tendrils dragged his legs apart. Spread him out like they weren’t in a fucking hallway, where anyone could walk in.
Vanitas waited until he’d wrangled a whimper out of Ven, a hitched breath—then leaned over and said, mockingly bright, “Why, did Venty-Wenty want to do something adult again? Hah! Let me help make you one.”
Then he reached down to Ven’s left ear, like he was going to cradle his face, and Ven’s eyes fluttered shut for a kiss—were they doing this today after all?
Fuck yeah, he was going to get laid again.
Instead, there was a sharp, hot spark of pain and Ven shrieked in surprise. He instinctively tried to wrench away from it, but didn’t get far before he was pinned.
A hand grabbed his face, shoving him down again, and Vanitas snapped, “Hold still, you idiot. Do you want me ripping bigger holes in you?”
His hand dug into the sharp sting on Ven’s ear, and Ven seriously contemplated biting him.
Unfortunately, his hand was a little too far down his jaw to make that feasible.
So instead, Ven said, muffled but indignant, “What fucking holes are you ripping in me, jackass?”
Since apparently ripping was not a synonym for rutting and Ven wasn’t getting anything in him anyway and—ugh.
Vanitas had said enemies.
Ven should stick to his principles and refuse to fuck the guy, just like he’d chosen.
“Ones you asked for,” Vanitas hissed and turned Ven’s face roughly. His other hand disappeared, retreating to his side for some reason, before it reappeared in Ven’s field of view clutching something in a disconcertingly cheerful shade of yellow.
That had better not be a miniaturized Yellow Mustard.
If Vanitas was letting a bunch of bitty Unversed bite him, he was going to stop gentling his Light and let it scour all of them, bystanders be damned.
“When the fuck did I ask for you to—ow!” Another flare of pain, this time on Ven’s other ear.
Vanitas scoffed. “Forgetting already? Your memory is like a sieve. Maybe I should be shocked you even remember me.”
His hand disappeared again, then came back with something matte black. Like wrought iron.
Ven—twitched. Something set in iron-silver-steel for his ear rang a bell, somewhere deep and forgotten. He held his breath this time, staying still as Vanitas leaned a little further up.
One bright spark against his upper ear, then another so quick on its heels that Ven didn’t even have time to wince. Vanitas stroked a finger along it, like he was checking for something, before he sat back and let go of Ven’s face.
“Heal yourself.” He ordered.
Ven tugged pointedly at his restraints, glaring.
Vanitas rolled his eyes. “You don’t need your hands to cast Cure,” he complained, but let go anyway.
Of his arms, specifically.
Ven couldn’t help noticing that his legs were still spread wide open, and his torso remained pinned under Vanitas’s weight.
But he’d wanted to feel what Vanitas had done before he healed it, so he could decide whether to heal it, and the important part was that his hands were now free to investigate.
Vanitas didn’t seem particularly keen to get off him, anyway.
Ven crushed the little voice that wondered if Vanitas would be interested in getting him off instead—principles. Ven had to have principles about this.
No dicking down dickheads. It just gave them an ego.
Case in point: this asshole.
On his left ear—the same side as his dominant hand, some part of him murmured, like it was important—there was a hard, faceted object. A single thin ring dangled from it, attached to a chain with something heavier at the other end. The chain was too short for Ven to properly see it, but the shape at the end felt—oddly familiar.
He tugged at it, as if the chain would magically lengthen, and Vanitas hissed out an irritated, “Heal yourself before you start yanking at shit. You’ll pull it out otherwise.”
Bemused, Ven let go and reached for his other ear, fingering the additions. His other earlobe had neither a ring nor a chain on it, but it did have some kind of raised, spiky disk. It bumped upwards and outwards in a roughly circular shape, and Ven rubbed his thumb across it several times in an attempt to figure out what it was.
Vanitas watched him, mouth tightening with—displeasure? Anger? Jealousy?—the longer Ven touched it.
Puzzled, he moved on to the higher set of pains, and was baffled to see Vanitas’ brow relax a little as he did so.
This set was one conjoined piece cuffing his helix, the rim of his ear, with segmented ridges pointing towards the flat plain of his scapha at the top. Then, about halfway down the piece, the metal ridges inverted abruptly to point outwards right as his helix pinched in towards the folds of his antihelix. The inversion saved him the pain of having metal lodged between the natural shapes of his ear.
All combined, there was only one conclusion.
Ven stared up at Vanitas, absolutely bewildered and melting inside for reasons he couldn’t explain.
“You… pierced my ears?” he asked slowly.
Vanitas nodded once, jerkily.
“…why?” Then, when Vanitas’ shoulders stiffened, Ven hastened to add, “I’m not complaining! I like them!”
He made a point of casting Cure on himself, ensuring that the punctures would suture shut before he could bleed or the earrings could fall out. “I just… don’t remember asking you to?”
Vanitas scoffed, sitting back so that his ass was squarely on the hard ground and—they were both sitting in between each other’s legs now.
Ven could sit up and face him now and, ugh, that was such a stupid thing to focus on. Who cared? Ven wasn’t getting laid from this anyway.
He was just inexplicably getting his ears pierced.
Why did that make him feel so good?
…what new fucking kink had Vanitas unlocked.
“You said you didn’t remember them,” Vanitas said, and it must’ve been obvious Ven had no idea what he was talking about because this time he got a sigh instead of a scoff.
“Your head is full of fluff, I swear,” Vanitas grumbled. “In Radiant Garden. You were crying. Because there were—“
“—stars in the streets, just like home,” Ven murmured. He remembered that. And still, even with the stars there as a reminder, the memories had faded too fast, lost under the swell of grief and exhaustion that had come with realizing he was never going to get the truth.
Nobody would ever trust him enough to be honest with him. They’d just treat him like a child, ground him when he acted out. Never stopping to question why he’d even run away in the first place.
Vanitas huffed, then knocked a fist lightly against his forehead. “Stop thinking so loud,” he said irritably. “I’m helping. If you’re going to be an ass about it—“
“I’m listening!” Ven protested. “I just don’t see what earrings have to do with that…?”
They definitely had something to do with it. Ven knew it was important—but. He just didn’t remember.
Vanitas remembered though. Wherever they’d been together before, he remembered a lot more than Ven.
“They’re adult earrings,” Vanitas said. He folded his arms across his chest, looked away.
Embarrassed, Ven decided, distantly.
He was. A bit distracted as the pieces clicked home. Without thinking, he reached up to touch his left ear—silver, silver or steel in his ear, on the same side as his dominant hand, and Vanitas had said he’d make him an adult.
“On your—on our—home world, you get your ear pierced when you’re legally an adult. On whatever side your dominant hand is on. Silver, steel, or wrought iron to ward away bad luck. Enamel is for blessings, and the brighter the color is, the luckier it’ll be. Or so the myth goes, anyway,” Vanitas shrugged, aiming for casual and missing by a mile as his face darkened with an ichor blush. “The other ear is for—connections. I’m not explaining why I chose the stuff I did. But now you have something to remember.”
He huffed sharply, got up. The restraints around Ven’s thighs vanished.
“People to remember, even. I gave you taken tokens for a reason. Now stop moping. It’s insufferable. Get training instead. I’m going to beat the shit out of you the next time we meet. At least try to make it difficult.”
Vanitas sauntered away, like Ven couldn’t feel him tearing open one of those Dark gates just out of sight while Ven—sat there. Butterflies in his stomach. Heat creeping up his cheeks.
He cupped his ears, his new earrings, and took a shaky, squeaky breath. Then he scrambled to his feet and ran to the first reflective surface he could find.
His face was flushed, visibly so even when tinted bronze by the cup he was peering at.
His left ear had a miniature version of Wayward Wind’s keychain dangling from it. Emeralds dotted it—one stud in his earlobe, from which the ring and chain links descended, another tucked in the cradle of the wings.
His other ear had some kind of spiky blossom shape, like a flower. Ven couldn’t make any more details out, but—it had been yellow.
He swallowed hard. Yellow flowers could be anything but spiky yellow flowers?
Dandelions, his Heart whispered, and Ven swayed a little in recognition.
Yes.
Those were—that was right. Taken by Dandelions. That was right.
And finally, there was the ear cuff. Ven didn’t even have to guess for that one. He’d seen it far too many times to mistake it for anything else.
Ven traced the delicate clockwork teeth, rough iron surface splitting into steel edges sharp enough to slice, like something that could stop a fae in its tracks. Like a pen nib, cutting short a story.
Silver in one ear to shatter a spell, steel and cold-iron in the other to cut away curses, and bright enamel below to bait forth blessings. Wayward Wind to prove he belonged to himself before all else, Dandelions for the loves he’d long forgotten, and Void Gear. For Vanitas.
“What are we?” Ven had asked.
“Enemies,” Vanitas had said—had said. With words.
Words meant nothing on their own. They existed to be twisted. Especially when it was Vanitas speaking.
For someone who was incapable of telling an outright lie, Vanitas was very rarely honest. Misleading wording, rapid-fire dialect swaps, pointed pauses dressed up as “dramatic effect” to disguise the delay between shifting subjects… listening to him was a masterclass in turning the truth into a falsehood.
No, when it came to Vanitas, what mattered wasn’t the actual words he said. Those were always at odds with his intentions. It was the broader context of his actions that mattered, because they betrayed his intentions no matter how hard he tried to hide them.
And just like actions mattered, so too did intent.
Ven had bawled his eyes out into Vanitas’ shoulder because his friends couldn’t treat him as anything other than a bothersome child, and Vanitas had given him silver-steel-and-ironclad proof he was just as much an adult as Aqua and Terra.
Ven had cried himself to sleep in Vani’s arms, mourning a World he barely knew and all the lives lost with it, and Vanitas gave him back a tradition he’d forgotten, with one charm to remember the people he’d lost and another to remind him of the one he still had.
“Nothing but enemies,” he’d said, and studded a claim right into Ven’s flesh.
Irrevocable.
Ven pressed his hands to cheeks and beamed, twirling away from his makeshift mirror with a delighted laugh.
That claim was irrevocable now.
Ven had healed him right into his skin; there was no going back.