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[equinoctials]

characters: Riku, Vanitas, Bruce Wayne
location: The Museum
date/time: Oct 18 thru the end of the month-ish
content: Riku didn't exactly have the option to agree to be Bruce Wayne's guest at the Museum, as evidenced by the rope burns on his wrists.
warnings: descriptions of injuries, this also deals with character death, complicated grief, depression, and suicidal ideation.


Riku doesn't dream.

He hangs suspended in the featureless black of unconsciousness. For a mercy, it's quiet. No imposing figure comes to drip poison into his ears about the Darkness. Nothing changes. It's an emptiness that demands and expects nothing.

Sometimes it slips away. There's one moment he thinks someone has put a hand on his face to guide it up so his mouth meets the curve of something hard. A cup, he thinks, when it tips water past his lips and he drinks. Twice more he flirts with regaining consciousness, he hears footsteps, or an odd sound he can't identify somewhere else.

When he wakes entirely, it's to a persistent and disorienting black. Only when his pale lashes brush against the cloth does he realize he's been blindfolded, which gives him pause for how it launches his mind into speculative motion. Riku associates the blindfold for a time long since passed, with a specific frame of mind. Why would he wear one now?

And why - as he tries to touch the blindfold and discovers both of his hands are tethered by the wrists, arms out at either side - is he tied up?

It comes back to him in pieces.

The cold. The dark. The desperation and fury as he fought his masked opponent, rolling in the dirt. His right eye feels hot too large in its socket, he's sure he has a black eye under that blindfold, his body is stiff, its numerous aches beginning to sound off as his consciousness sharpens. These are fine - as a guardian of light, he isn't a stranger to injuries more serious than these - it's the other realization.

He saw Sora's lantern scatter to the forest floor in flameless and irreparable pieces and that loss swells huge and smothering. Moments after waking, Riku gasps. It sounds loud after all the silence.

Comments

[pearlstrings]

He had carried Riku back from the forest, and between his unconscious figure and Vanitas, in and out of hungover nausea, Bruce has a surfeit of time on his hands.

That is to say- nothing about Bruce's schedule for the day has changed apart from the company he's keeping, and now that Riku's arms have been secured to support beams in two opposite directions, now that his eyes are covered and now that Vanitas has fallen asleep with a bowl curled into his arm- his habits can resume.

Bruce lingers in the quiet at the top of the stairs- and then he descends.

There are several wings within the museum and Bruce had taken his time exploring the space- mapping which areas might be best suited to which purpose. There are few people that make any attempt to travel out to this place and the privacy is ideal. Once he would have wished to find an empty wing to use the way he'd used their conservatory- to learn to fight. To box, primarily. But he's evolved beyond that now. Bruce isn't a child anymore and the passage of time has allowed him to sharpen his focus- it's allowed for clarity around his goals and by extension, an understanding of what he needs to do to achieve them.

The museum is a place for him to turn inward. There are poles and lines that have been extended from the ceiling, bolted into the curved beams and appearing almost incidental from an architectural standpoint. Bruce dedicates several hours to training these days, and it's become more varied as necessity arose. Selina had given him adequate fundamentals for developing his sense of balance and helping him to look at Gotham's landscape and see more- unconventional avenues to walk. Likewise, Alfred had helped him develop an understanding of how to land and take a blow, how to process the experience and wait through pain, to conserve his energy.

He climbs the columns inside the foyer. Bruce attaches weights to his body and scales the walls. He balances himself along narrower and narrower ledges, he leaps further and increases his stride. He walks himself into handstands until he's able to balance on one palm. He suspends himself from the ceiling in pieces at a time- holding on with an elbow or an ankle, and learning how to pull himself back up even when his body begins to shake. He does pullups and curls, he slings both legs over the bars to do situps while dangling upside down and it gives him time to consider his latest preoccupation. He has been studying the work of Harry Houdini, not as a magician, but as an escape artist- and while Bruce is able to get out of shackles and cuffs and jackets these days, he knows that panic can cause the mind to make leaps in otherwise sound judgment. He should practice inside a dunk tank.

There are bandages that map out the base of his torso, where his lantern has left what will become an interesting pattern of scars. He is still experiencing nerve troubles in his right hand after the debacle with the ferry. Bruce's face is swollen in some places. He'd stitched a gash over his eyebrow and used glue to seal the gap over his nose, he reset the bone.

In between these tasks he checks on his wards. At times Vanitas will make small noises in his sleep and some small, inky creature will appear- wary and wild in the room. Riku's head bobs now and again. Bruce brings him water to drink and is gentle when he lifts his chin. He checks his temperature and looks beneath his clothes for anything that might need stitching or setting. He cleans out cuts and scrapes. He redresses him and brings cool cloths for the worst of his bruises, to reduce the swelling. He's pale. Bruce wonders how long it's been since Riku showered, or slept.

The first time Bruce had been concussed it took forty-four days for his brain scans to return to normal. Alfred told him the average was even longer in people who refused to rest, that it could take a hundred, depending on the severity of the injury- and that even thinking could exacerbate it.

Nothing really changes until the sound breaks the air. A gasp.
Bruce doesn't come running, but he does come. His head lifts in Riku's direction and he climbs the stairs, a series of quiet footfalls.

there goes riku's modesty smh...

[equinoctials]

That's all the sound is, an inhale, sharp and quick as if he had touched a bit of broken glass, something surprising but largely inconsequential. The silence after it is long and tense as Riku tries to find out how to breathe around the fact he's gone. That Sora is dead, truly dead, there's no repairing a lantern that heavily destroyed.

He exhales.

It's a stutter of a thing, one quick shudder of breath that shakes him. Consciousness has done him no favors. Reality has hooked its cruel fingers into his chest and with relish carves out a great hole.

His mouth twists and his lips feel dry enough that his grimace stings. Behind the blindfold, his eyes burn hot.

How?
How can this still be happening?
How can he be here, how is he alive when Sora, when Kairi, when Dawn deserved so much better?
What is he supposed to do?
What's he supposed to do with this?

It's like some awful joke. Who needs World Eaters when some stupid twist of fate can seize the light that matters most and drag it into the depths to drown? His knuckles, split from pounding them against Bruce's body again and again, seep through broken scabs as he clenches his fists. The ropes creak, drawn taut as he pulls and challenges his bonds, the supports they're fixed to are too sturdy and Riku too bereft to make them groan beneath the strain.

They'll bruise and chafe him, that's not nearly the problem, the deterrent it should be.

riku had modesty??? source???

[pearlstrings]

It isn't rope, it's cable. He doesn't yet have the full measure of Riku's abilities and knows that while their fight had shown him a young man at the peak of his desperation, Bruce doesn't mistake that for being the peak of his capability. It's the reason that the cable creaks but doesn't yield, the way that soft rope fiber might. The memory of his mother is there, smiling playfully before she taps the tip of her finger against his nose: If you can't be good, be careful.

Bruce reaches the top of the stairs and regards him in silence. Watches him test his strength, the strength of the bonds. Riku's expression twists, the shape of his mouth is wretched and bare for the way his eyes are covered. His knuckles are bleeding freshly.

"It's for your safety."

This wouldn't be an adequate explanation for anyone, but it isn't meant to be. Bruce uses it to announce his presence, a quiet, measured voice from a short distance away. He's damp with sweat and sore from the exertion of the morning- to say nothing of the healing his body has yet to be allowed to begin. He knows that Riku will not be able to see through the fabric over his face, but that isn't the reason his posture is so precise. That's simply practice.

"We've been experiencing hallucinations for several days, largely visual and auditory. Accompanied by persistent hands that grab and touch."

He paces his way forward, eyes landing on the broad line of Riku's shoulders. The red on his knuckles, the mottled bruising across his face and the dark, swollen circle beneath one eye. The bruises starting around his wrists. There is no creak of floorboards beneath him and by extension there's very little means to follow his movements without using his voice as a point of reference. And that's what Bruce is trying to do. To let himself be followed. To offer information in the hope that it might help him clear his head, stay calm. He's known Riku to be a thoughtful, reasonable personality thus far. There's no reason to believe he can't be that again.

"The hands have vanished, but I can't be certain that the hallucinations have stopped entirely."

There are inches between them. Bruce stands in the narrow crescent of his space and knows that he has many reasons to refuse. But.

"I'd like to keep you this way for a little longer. Just in case."

http://gph.is/XJI25L

[equinoctials]

It's for your safety.

The whole of Riku's frame tenses and goes still but that isn't the same as saying the fight has left him, cables still taut for the sustained strain of muscle against their manufactured reliability. There's even an attempt to strip the anguish from his expression, some automatic mask he slaps over his mouth.

He recognizes that voice and after a beat he surges against the bonds again. They hold fast. Turns out, Bruce's mother made a good point. An abundance of care may have spared Bruce another broken bone and Riku a smashed lantern.

"I know what I saw," Riku croaks. Disuse and panting at air gone dry and musty this far from the shore and this deep into autumn has put a layer of rust on his voice, "People would say anything to save their own skin."

The threat is explicit. He still blames him for his part in Riku's perceived failure to save that one last speck of light he had hoped for, had strived for. He's still... angry and frustrated, for all that exhaustion and grief have crushed its sharper edges into powder. The closer he gets, the more he becomes aware of that scent, the more certain Riku becomes.

It's crazy to think he hadn't identified his masked attacker sooner, but he'd been...

Distracted.

This instead feels like a betrayal, even if they hadn't been close. Because in Bruce he had thought he saw a kindred spirit. A heart that sought to use the light and dark for a better future, not just for himself but for everyone. Someone unafraid of the shadows, a protector of the weak.

Instead, he stopped him. Like Riku needed protecting when he was only trying to protect the one last thing that really mattered. And now he's still doing it. He hears Bruce say he'd like to keep him this way for a little longer, and Riku tosses his head, arches his spine. The cables don't give.

"LIAR!"

[pearlstrings]

He has the answer before Riku strings the words together. The muscle in his arms goes taut, his fingers flex and he becomes still- Bruce recognizes it as the moment before a strike. It's the reason he takes a single step backwards right before Riku surges against the restraints.

Bruce waits through it because that's the only thing he can do. He glances briefly down the hall to where Vanitas has been sleeping, the hope that it won't rouse him and that by extension, Vanitas won't appear and stagger over, try to make things worse. He paces to a small tableau on the opposite wall, withdrawing fresh cloth and a canteen of water. "But you didn't see it, did you?"

It's a place where he could be cruel, but cruelty isn't in Bruce's nature. He understands the pain Riku feels now, because even though the experience is synthetic, the sensation of loss is real. There was too much smoke for a vision to have reached him and that had been the point, he'd been attempting to limit outside input.

"It's an idea. Convincing, like a nightmare. But without any evidence."

The rim of the canteen lifts and Bruce reaches gently, but firmly, for his jaw. Guides the mouth of it to his lips.

"Water. You're dehydrated."

[equinoctials]

Riku can't see him. No - what he can't see are the details, like how he's dressed or the features of his face. He can still sense Bruce. Even with the blindfold and in the spaces when he doesn't have Bruce's voice to track him with, Riku follows him as he moves around the room. It's not just the darkness that he can smell, it's the light that whispers on just the other side of it, steadfast and quiet.

He finds he resents him for being so calm.

It would be easier if Bruce was angry too. Riku broke his nose, he battered him, with fists and anything else at his disposal, and if not for his restraints Riku might have choked the life out of him, too. Bruce so reasonably claims he didn't see and Riku grits his teeth, a muscle jumps in his cheek for the creaking pressure in his jaw.

Of course he saw! And how clearly, the glitter of glass as it rained down in a shatter, the wisp of smoke where there was once a flame in that wreck that was a lantern. He even choked on that same smoke, so thick it burned his eyes, his lungs--

Was it really that thick?

How would he have seen anything?

No. No, it was Ansem, Xehanort's Heartless who was the illusion. Not Sora. He was there, he was so sure of it..! He must be lying!

And yet his heart, the sorrowful mess it is, has doubts. Those doubts begin to drain the tension in his jaw, makes his face more slack with exhaustion and uncertainty. He remembers telling Quentin about the last time he and Sora spoke, about his own concerns that it might have been something his mind made up to quell the heartache.

Did he ever feel Sora's light, in the forest? The way he never scented Ansem's darkness? Was that, too, just wishful thinking, or his private fears given life? His heart aches, filled to splitting with questions, regrets. Bruce has approached again and the grasp at Riku's chin makes him startle, until he smells the water in the canteen. Anger, grief, confusion, even the resentment curdling over Bruce's continued calm doesn't hold up against his own thirst, he relents and drinks.

"Why?"

He says, his voice a little clearer for the water.

"Why are you doing this?"

Hadn't he tried to kill him?

[pearlstrings]

There it is- the first sign of lucidity.

Riku has a very spirited nature underneath the polite composure he wears around town. It isn't enthusiastic or optimistic, but instead it speaks to qualities that Bruce can recognize in himself too. A stubborn unwillingness to budge, a kind of single-minded determination. Everything Bruce has ever let go of had claw marks in it. He can understand the uncertain waver at the corner of Riku's mouth- somewhere between a clenched jaw and curl of resentment, of grief. But despite the complexity of his feelings, despite the situation and the circumstances, Bruce can see him trying to reason his way through it. The moment that he questions himself. Tests the water.

He takes a small sip and Bruce watches his throat contract as he swallows- lowers the cup just a little as he sees a small bead at the corner of his mouth. The angle seems to make it easier, because he swallows more readily after that, perhaps propelled by instinct instead of desire. Bruce takes the moment to examine him more closely. The bruises beside his eye are still a deep ugly purple and his wrists will be raw soon. Perhaps when Riku drifts off again he can come back and wrap the skin beneath the cable, to protect it from worse wear and seal in antibiotics. He'll need to do that part first, because applying a cool compress beneath his blindfold might be enough to rouse him. As the time has passed Riku's become more aware, unconsciously, of his environment than he was at the start. He isn't as pliant for nearly as long.

The cup lowers carefully. Riku's mouth it still wet with it, but nothing spills and nothing rolls down his jaw. He's watching him in profile when the question breaks the air. It isn't strange, all things considered. But there is a kind of sadness in it. Bruce had done all kinds of reckless things in his grief, but no one believed that he deserved punished for it. It begs the question- how many things has Riku had to atone for? How much of it did he think was necessary.

"Because I want to see you recover."

It's a very honest, very simple answer, while the rest of it clutters the inside of his mouth. And then, because the reminder is worth having, especially in times like this, he says-

"There's someone important you're doing all of this for, isn't there?"

[equinoctials]

It would be easy to give him too much or too little from the canteen; the conscientiousness surprises him. The feeling isn't very direct, it sits a little apart from himself, the way he might if he took a particularly shaking blow. He notices. Sets that aside for whenever he's in a position to investigate what it means.

The water he's swallowed has painted a vaguely cool column all the way through his core. Like some of the others in Beacon, once Riku realized how limited their resources would become, he reduced his own intake to a thermos of broth. A little more, to eat something with more substance to make up for poor sleep. It hadn't been enough to spare him the stresses that had waiting for them all when the hallucinations really got going.

Other than a cramp in his empty gut, Riku doesn't feel hungry. Just hollow.

I want to see you recover.

Riku feels something stir in his chest at his answer. Reminded, like stumbling on a nostalgic scent on the air or discovering a photograph at the bottom of a drawer, of a feeling that glows in the dark and hollow space he's in. He felt this the first time they met - that brief encounter on the chaotic lake shore, the ferry sinking and panic a sharp tang on the night breeze.

That kindred desire to protect. Of having something to protect to begin with. What sticks in his thoughts like a burr is all the questions that pop up around the reawakened sentiment. Why he was there that night in the forest?

In his thoughts, he sees Quentin, looking with a dark longing at the dangerous waters below the bridge. He had been so desperate, haunted by phantoms that were all the more real for the cracks they split into his heart. They weren't close. They weren't even friends. Still, Riku couldn't turn away, he needed someone to pull him back from the edge of something irreversible.

Riku's lips part silently. Maybe it's realization, or simply being at a loss for words at Bruce's question.

After a long moment, his head inclines, "...Sora."

[pearlstrings]

Sora. It isn't the first time Bruce has heard this name, and while he lacks personal experience with it, has no face to align with the syllables, it isn't necessary now. Riku says it like an incantation, a magic word that's powerful because he believes in it, because it means something special to him. Bruce knows that he stopped the other boy from pursuing his own demise, that he's wrapped sprains and wrapped cuts. But there's no stitch or splint or bandage for a broken heart. They heal, or they don't.

Riku is very still and Bruce, a matter of inches away from him, watches it pass through him. Instead of pushing any further, he reaches bandaged fingers into the pocket of his slacks and withdraws a small bottle. The ferry gives them very little to work with and this is no exception, but Bruce has been carefully shoring up reserves inside the museum since his arrival. He doesn't have a lot, but he has enough to share. A plastic lid is removed from a plastic bottle. Bruce's hands are, and always have been, steady- but he makes the conscious decision to jerk just a little. Enough that the pills rattle inside the case and by extension, that Riku can know what he's doing.

"Here. They'll help with the swelling."

Two tablets hover, waiting for Riku to make the decision on his own and by extension, to open his mouth. To give Bruce the opportunity to place them inside and follow up with another swallow of water.

"I'll wake you in a few more hours, we'll talk then."

[evulsed]

Vanitas doesn't remember falling asleep, and he doesn't remember his dream. He's sure he must have had one, because he almost always does. It's rare that he ever has a dreamless, restful night. What he remembers is Bruce at the bar, the way the hands had been pushing and shoving, the shape of Master Xehanort in the corner of the room, he remembers leaving with Bruce—

He rolls over with a low moan, cracking both eyes open to the room tipped on it's side. Pushing himself up, there's a tremble underneath his skin that makes his limbs feel loose and shakey. Like all the fire the liquor from the night before had put into him has fizzled out into nothing but damp embers. There are Unversed crowded around him, little jagged things. A few of them take wing when Vanitas starts to move, flying up toward the high ceiling. Disgruntled, Vanitas frowns as he staggers off the mattress, out of the tangle of sheets. He kicks over an empty bowl that had been next to him. When the Unversed at his ankle doesn't immediately get out of his way, he kicks it aside, too, and it tumbles over itself before hitting the wall.

He breathes laboriously through his nose, looking dizzily around the room, taking in his surroundings— and then heading for the door. He lists into the frame, catching himself on the door jam, and realizes with a cold start that he isn't wearing a shirt when the chill of the wall presses into his torso from hip to shoulder.

That's right. He'd been too hot in all that armor. But he still feels too hot, but now he's thirsty, and he can't figure out if he wants to throw up or find something else to drink more.

Fifteen minutes later Vanitas hasn't thrown up, despite the threatening way his stomach lurches and the way his head feels like it can't decide if it's spinning or pounding. He finds his way to the room Bruce is using as a kitchen, where there's food and there are stacks of half-open bottles scattered across the counter. He looks at the stove he'd been gifted by Robin, the one Bruce showed him how to make pancakes on, and considers the effort required. Then he turns his attention to the bottles on the counter.

When he leaves the kitchen it's with a glass of gossamer black liquid, ice clinking against the edges. When he takes a sip, he can't figure out if the candy burn makes his nausea better or worse, but it doesn't stop him from nursing it regardless. It had made him feel something, before he passed out, so it only stood to reason that drinking more would bring it back.

It makes sense to him, anyway

[pearlstrings]

Vanitas has all the subtlety of a car crash.

Bruce is downstairs and he knows that the other boy has begun to wake not because he hears the small groan, but because the small creatures starting to fill the museum begin to scatter. Some, shaped like the idea of a bat, beat their pointed wings through the night air and move to darker, less inhabited halls. A few more skitter down the stairs as if they mean to run, to find a place to hide. There's a small thud, something that hits a wall perhaps? And the uneven thumping of a pair of feet.

The pen stills in his hand. Bruce takes a moment to review his notes, to collect his handmade ruler and compass, and to place them carefully inside a false drawer- behind the fourth stair from the bottom, where he'd pried off a plank then filed it until it would slip seamlessly back into place.

When he makes his way up, towards the bed he'd made specifically for Vanitas, he isn't surprised to find it empty. He is surprised that he hasn't vomited. There seems to be, at all times, a weighing of scaled where Vanitas is concerned- where inexperience meets endurance. Bruce has seen him tolerate a great of pain, discomfort, and now illness- some of which he can be certain is a first-time encounter. But instead of slowing down at all he continues to press forward, bent on whatever whim his initial purpose had landed on for the hour.

He finds Vanitas in the kitchen drinking, of all things, more liquor.

"Good morning." He says it the way someone else might say 'hello.' Bruce doesn't pause before he enters because this space is his own- he's been filling it when no one else has, with no one else's company, for a very long time already. Instead he rounds the corner of his makeshift countertop, near the stove Vanitas has let him hold onto. There are bends and nooks and crannies that have been used as cabinets- where he stores supplies from the general store and where he's kept a small stockpile in his time here. A little black creature sprints through the space, weaving between his ankles. Bruce doesn't interrupt it. He withdraws a carton of eggs instead.

"You look terrible." Two eggs. A beat- maybe three. The stove clicks on and he reaches for a pan. "Are you still feeling too warm?"

[evulsed]

Vanitas is too proud to admit the way he startles at Bruce's appearance. He shows up like one of Vanitas' shadows— existing in a place where nothing had been moments before. His head jerks up, his eyes taking a moment too long to focus on the lean shape he makes walking into the kitchen. Everything still has that slow, syrupy, swooping feeling to it.

Like when he raises his head, his body moves first and his awareness moves second. Like being the after image he leaves behind in a battle.

But more than that, with a belated shocky awareness, he realizes how vulnerable he is in this moment. The only light in the room comes from his lantern, and now Bruce's, and the combined flickering light throw all of his exposed skin into pale relief. Vanitas couldn't say why every scar stands out like a brand on his body. It's been destroyed enough times that he's sure it should be a blank slate— like a replica's body. But there they are, regardless: every broken bone that pierced the skin, every cut from a Keyblade or skin broken by a boot, every contusion that didn't heal properly, the little keloid star Elden had left in his chest when he tried to heal him with his Light.

But none of that makes Vanitas modest. What makes his skin crawl, what makes goosebumps chase all over him and raise the hair on the back of his neck is the fact that when he isn't covered neck to ankle, he feels exposed— open and vulnerable to attack.

His grip on his glass tightens, white knuckled, and Vanitas steps in a half circle when Bruce makes his way to the stove, keeping a careful amount of distance between them. You look terrible, he says, and Vanitas doesn't know the way the bruises hang under his eyes, or the way his already wild hair has gone even wilder for the way he'd been sleeping. He scowls, and nurses his drink. It takes like sugar and candy, like soda pop made impossibly sweeter by the liquor he's mixed up inside it.

"So do you," He bites back, instead of answering any questions, because Bruce does look like he'd been on the wrong side of a fight. "What happened to your face?"

[pearlstrings]

It's a question he'd been asked once, after an arched brow; feeling vulnerable? But then he has the answer without needing to vocalize it in the first place. There's a strange place between hungover and still drunk where the world and it's details lose their easy irrelevance. They edges of everything are too sharp and the entire body feels wretched. Reactions are clumsy and too slow. Light hurts. Cold hurts. The heat is unbearable and every smell is dangerous.

Vanitas, criss-crossed with scars and naked to the waist inside their put-together kitchen- reminds him of a book he read once about snakes. They aren't inherently dangerous on their own, they're reactionary. They hunt, they have desires of their own, but it's provocation that makes them deadly. The way someone or something responds to them, crowds their space, comes too close. Bruce does not miss the way that Vanitas keeps his eyes on him, two sharp gold shards in the dark, and the careful way that he navigates around him despite the unsteady shifting of his weight.

"It's a secret."

The pan settles ontop of a burner and the power clicks as it's turned on. Bruce bends down and reaches for his canteen, filled with water. When he sits back up it's to reach with only his hand, not the rest of his body- for the drink Vanitas is nursing. To offer a trade. Water for alcohol.

"But I'll tell you if you drink this instead."

It isn't something he lingers over because there's no heavy, demanding stare that comes along with it. No stubborn insistence. Bruce broaches it as if they've made a habit of small exchanges already, with a tone that implies that this isn't any different than a stove, or pancakes, or introducing him to the drink in the first place. No part of their interactions have been one-sided and that has been carefully cultivated. It's beneficial for Vanitas to learn that Bruce is clear about his expectations and that they go in both directions. The difference between a dialogue and a demand.

"You have to take a break from it anyway, otherwise it won't feel good, the way it did last night."

[evulsed]

Vanitas rolls his eyes, mightily, and somewhere between Bruce's answer and the gesture some tensions bleeds out of him. The grip on his glass loosens enough that there's no longer threat of it cracking under his palm, and he leans back instead of keeping the upright, tight posture he'd adopted as soon as the other guy walked into the room. Vanitas instead takes half a step back and puts his spine against the would-be island. He's as much lounging against it as using it to help keep him up.

The flash of adrenalin took a toll on his liquor slow body. Putting up a fight feels like too much effort, which might make him nervous if this were any other situation, or if Bruce were anyone else.

Defiant, Vanitas raises his glass and takes a solid gulp. It's a secret. As if Vanitas cares enough about the idiot to warrant actually fishing for the information. If Bruce wanted to go out and get into fist fights with people that wasn't any of Vanitas' business.

But judging from the lack of humiliation coming off him, he can at least assume he won.

"Whatever." He sounds flippant, even if his voice is rough, as if he doesn't really remember how nauseous and awful he'd felt at the end. And a majority of it is because he doesn't, really. He doesn't remember how shakey he'd become, how the darkness had pressed in and instead of leaning into all that rage inside him, it had given way to an unpredictable melancholy— one that drove him to tears before he blissfully passed put.

Vanitas takes another drink and his stomach clenches around the lack of food. His eyes cut to the pan.

"Pancakes?"

[pearlstrings]

"Water?"

Vanitas's defiant expression and the petty scowl he makes as he takes another swallow from his glass isn't met with it's match. Bruce doesn't make a habit of cultivating company but that doesn't mean he's inexperienced with it either. The reckless and self-destructive habits don't make him flinch any more than they make him clamp down harder and begin issuing denials. After all, when had that ever worked on Bruce himself? He knows firsthand how easily those kinds of demands can drive a wedge and how vast the divide can become.

Instead there's something measured in his reply- the pitch and tone. It's the way someone might not block a lunge, but choose to counter it instead. It plays into a rhythm even if there isn't yet enough momentum to carry it.

Vanitas leans against the counter and Bruce suspects that it isn't entirely show. His balance is compromised. And the dark circles beneath his eyes are incredibly pronounced. Bruce cracks one egg at a time in neat, careful movements. It isn't unlike the many mornings that had come before- where he'd sat at the island or drawn up a stool, poured over the morning paper and listened to Alfred start their day. There's something almost poetic about the reversal. If Bruce believed in karma, this would certainly make a case for it.

[evulsed]

"Stop asking," It doesn't come out petty, at odds with the sneer he'd leveled at Bruce moments before, at odds with the almost cocky way he leans against the counter. Instead, its a solid statement: his voice gone low with it, clipped at the ends. It would almost be a warning, if Vanitas were at full capacity, if they were meeting in a way or a realm other than this.

He doesn't want water. He doesn't understand what the relevance is. He doesn't remember Bruce swapping his drink out for water the night before, either.

But the smell of cooking rises up over the hot stove, and Vanitas' stomach clenches again. It rises up in his throat, and his expression sours as he tries to make sense of whether he wants to actually eat, or if he'd rather never look at food again for the rest of his miserable life. He swallows against the knot in his throat.

"You're not my Master." This, though, comes out at more of a mumble as he puts his glass back to his lips. And Vanitas takes another gulp around the strange sense of embarrassment that follows. He hadn't meant to invoke Xehanort, feels a little like he's given something away, which is strange on its own. It isn't like he's been shy about sharing who and what he was before.

[pearlstrings]

"I wasn't asking. I was offering."

His gaze flicks up only after the shells have been neatly discarded, hissing quietly in the pan. He's kept a piece of sausage for a little while and this seems as good an opportunity for it as any. Bruce reaches for it left handed, withdraws a knife with his right. Instead of searching for a cutting board or carving out a piece of the countertop for himself, he slices it in hand- short, methodical, rhythmic movements. It's come with practice, and also from an attentive nature. Bruce has yet to encounter something he doesn't want to understand, a skill he doesn't want to learn.

Their eyes meet around the next gulp Vanitas takes.

"That bottle is the reason you're feeling sick right now. That you're too hot, that your head aches, that your stomach has tightened like a fist. And that you feel like you're going to vomit."

The sliced meat sizzles louder than the rest as it reaches the pan. Bruce looks back at the stove, rotating the knife through his fingers before returning it to the countertop. "As you said, I'm not your Master." It's a revealing title to use, and it isn't Bruce's first time with the concept. Personal experience doesn't fill the void because it can't- that would be too large an assumption too soon. But it provides a foundation to build upon. "I've been honest with you. But you make your own decisions."

Encounter >> Eventually, Dive

[equinoctials]

Without tasks to complete or a goal to drive towards, without that tablet to chime reminders like when to eat or sleep, what illusion of a routine Riku had dissolves very quickly. At first he could have blamed his state of arrest and boredom for sleeping so much, or at least the fact he was convalescing.

It continues after Bruce releases the cables that held him fast by the wrists, for Bruce's own protection and Riku's, too. He might catch a nap for an hour or two and be up for two days before crashing on a couch for a full thirteen hours. There's really no rhyme or reason to it, not anymore.

Inevitably, they encounter one another. Maybe it's only the case from Riku's side, his wrists are sheathed in conscientiously-wound gauze up to the first knuckle, like he's decided to give up the Keyblade in favor of pugilism. If Vanitas had ever visited him while he was unconscious, he'd be none the wiser.

What comes to Riku is more than the fathomless dark that rolls off of the other boy, he smells something else. Possibly the alcohol, on his breath or coming from his pores. One of Riku's eyes is still ringed by a healing and dark bruise and it makes the teal of his irises brighter for the contrast.

He blinks like he's still waking up.

"So this is where you've been," there's a rustiness in his voice, "I wondered."

[evulsed]

After that first morning, where Bruce caught him unaware and unguarded in the kitchen, stripped naked to the waist— Vanitas has done his level best not to give in to the urge to take his clothes off in some primal urge to lessen the heat. He doesn't always succeed, because when he goes too deep the connection between rational choice and impulse frays entirely. Already he has found a number of corners to sleep it off in, tucking himself into the black like the flapping Unversed that now infest the museum, and a few times he doesn't wake up where he vaguely recalls passing out.

It's Bruce. Strange and a little bit dark. Vanitas can't really understand it, but Bruce hasn't asked anything of him. Hasn't tried to force his hand, or demand that he change. And maybe that's why he hasn't left to return to his place in the Invincible.

Or maybe its the easy access to his cabinet. That's what Vanitas would say if asked, anyway.

When Riku finds him his voice floats over, disembodied in a way because Vanitas isn't really all there. Only half of him, like the half empty mug sitting on the floor under the umbrella of his fingertips. The gold of his eyes slit open and Vanitas rolls his head against the stone bench he's laying on, one knee crooked up, in a T-shirt he filched from Bruce because its too hot to wear his turtle necks, but going without anything is unthinkable. His eyes have that molten glaze painted over with alcohol, his cheeks and nose pinched pink. The stone is cold against his cheek, and his hair falls into his face at this angle.

Vanitas looks at the other boy long and slow, but in the place of that usual predatory gleam, it seems like Vanitas just needs this long to put together what he's looking at. What he's hearing. After a moment, he snorts, and the sound folds itself into an aborted giggle, and he turns his face back up to the ceiling as he closes his eyes.

"No you didn't."

[equinoctials]

Bruce challenges a lot of Riku's expectations about people and their capacity to forgive or care about strangers. He uses the dark in him to produce results that place them in lighter territories, to protect people who can't protect themselves. It doesn't surprise him that he's managed to draw Vanitas into his orbit, it surprises him that Vanitas stayed.

He's polished, persuasive without being as hammy as a politician.

Riku's seen Vanitas without his armor, in a dark shirt and pants, but he's never seen him three sheets to the wind. He thinks back to that guy mixing margaritas, Eliot, to the face Vanitas had pulled when he tasted the garnish off Riku's empty cup. Maybe someone had finally convinced him to try it and, having found something good, got a taste for alcohol.

Not that he blames him. Not even a thunderstorm could out-fury the pain and rage that poured out of Vanitas the night it knocked the boathouse to the ground. That wasn't long ago, and yet it feels like years. Time's been slipping for Riku, more and more.

The things he associates with those golden eyes... Riku supposes it means something, that he feels so removed from them and instead feels-

Something else. About Vanitas's state and how vulnerable he is like this and how, just thinking back to their conversation at Eliot's party, Vanitas might not care he could be incapable of defending himself in an attack right now. He feels...

Kind of sad? Which is crazy, because they aren't friends, they're not rivals either, but he knows what it feels like to be tempted to give up. He was lucky enough to have a light to reach towards.

Vanitas has a drink. And Riku has a choice he could make.

"Considering you flattened my house," Riku says without heat, carefully sitting. The floor is cold and hard, and so is the edge of the bench as he puts his back against it, but his body is still host to a number of aches and it feels better than hobbling around.

"Who wouldn't? What are you drinking?"

He makes no attempt to reach for it, he asks like one might ask for the time.

[evulsed]

He hears Riku come closer, the sound of his steps on the stone, but he only realizes he's sat down when he speaks again and his voice is closer than it had been before. Even with Riku sitting down toward his feet, they aren't touching. Vanitas is an island on the bench, tethered only by his own awareness and his fingertips on the lip of his cup.

"Soda pop," Because it is that, chiefly. That and the generous amount of liqueur he'd poured into it. "Chocolate." Because that's the only thing he can think to describe it as. It might taste awful, but Vanitas only really tastes the sugar.

"You're what happened to Bruce's face," He adds, and that almost giggle finds its way into his tone. A sort of amusement that isn't laced with his usual cruelty. "Made you look pretty stupid." Tied up like that in the room. It's why Riku is limping, why his hands are wrapped. Vanitas doesn't know what caused the fight, because he and Bruce didn't talk about it. He just knows the outcome because he saw it.

He rolls onto his side, then, and the world tips dramatically around him. He's dizzy and can't really see straight but it's good— like this he doesn't really feel anything but that manufactured pleasantness. He can't focus, exactly, but it also means everything else he feels is numb, too. Half stretched on his side he raises his glass to his mouth, watching first what he's doing so as not to spill, and then watching Riku when he lowers the drink again.

[equinoctials]

Chocolate, he says. Soda pop, and Riku wrinkles his nose a little. He doesn't share the other boy's fondness for something so sweet, and the alcoholic smell crawling into his sinuses tells him it's hardly something worth calling a soft drink. Sliding his gaze away from the pale fingers perched around the lip of the mug, Riku rests his arm on a bent knee, plants the other one on the floor beside him. His arms ache, but it feels good to be able to move them again.

"I'm what happened to Bruce's face," he confirms, grave versus his liquor-soaked amusement. Made him look pretty stupid, and Riku tips his head away from Vanitas, his shoulder shrugging, "He gives as good as he gets, I have to admit," he doesn't say that begrudgingly, but it is how he chooses to look away from how it absolutely made him look dumb as hell.

When Vanitas looks, he'll find Riku's gaze has fallen back on him, thoughtful and still.

"Were you hurt?"

It's just a question. And it isn't like they haven't done plenty of hurting and giving hurts to each other so far. If he had to question himself, about why he's asking, what he's trying to accomplish, he wouldn't have a very good answer. Maybe the idea of leaving this guy to drink alone strikes him as cruel.

"Is that why you're here? He patch you up too?"

[evulsed]

Vanitas watches him in profile, the way Riku leans into his thought with his head, the way his silver hair pieces around his skin like desert clouds parting around a sunbeam. With his lashes gone low the brilliant teal of his eyes look stormy and dark, backlit by the shape of his lantern at his side. Here, Vanitas can almost see it as much as he can feel it. There's a darkness in Riku, but it's filtered through a sort of light that could smother everything around it. It's not like Sora, marbled and evn. It's not like Kairi or Ventus, undiluted. It's something else, something that shines brighter, maybe because that darkness in Riku is there to strengthen it. The Light was brighter the closer to Darkness it got.

I'm the shadow that you cast. Vanitas snorts, and it's hard for even him to tell if it's at the memory or at what Riku is asking him. He tilts his head against his shoulder, pressing his cheek against the black cotton of Bruce's shirt. It makes the spinning settle a little, and his eyes focus a little better on Riku's face. He has a healing scrape on his cheekbone. Vanitas wonders if Bruce smashed his face into the dirt to make it.

"I always hurt, stupid," He's not slurring, but he is drawling, his voice drawn out and slow, and he sniggers at his own admission, his eyes heavy. That was the point, wasn't it? The more he hurt, the stronger he was. But that was what the old man had never really understood. It hadn't really been all about the power for Vanitas.

Mostly, he just wanted it all to stop.

"Not now, though," He goes on, and raises his mostly empty glass at Riku, almost like he's toasting. He wiggles the cup and the liquid threatens to slosh over the rim. "Better than Curaga." And Vanitas giggles again, because he doesn't actually know if that's true. It's not like he's ever felt one cast on himself.

[equinoctials]

Riku thinks often about the nature of light and darkness. The stronger the light, the deeper the shadows. How it's not about what came first, the Darkness or the Light, it's not deciding this that's important as much as how much the dark loves the light, ever chasing after. How it can't smother the Light entirely, how it burns brightly even in the deepest Darkness. In this nearly lightless world, he's learned how true that is, even if sometimes the light burns somewhat desperately.

His heart's been cracked by the strain it's been under, by the weight of his grief, even Braveheart won't answer its call. Its appearance as the broken Way to Dawn that night in the forest had been a warning, Riku thinks, and instead of heeding it he nearly tried to kill the person who had tried to help him.

While he was still tied up - both for their protection and his own - Riku thinks it was just desperation holding together the pieces. Determination, then, when Bruce released his bonds, tested the treatment he'd given his wrists as he slept, wrapped them again. He feels worn thin and brittle and he's glad for the relative privacy of the museum. It... feels like a place safe enough to be brittle in until he gets stronger.

Bruce doesn't press him, doesn't give the impression he needs to hurry up and get over it and he speculates that perhaps Bruce has been in this sort of position, that maybe he understands what it means to lose something so important it breaks your heart.

Vanitas always hurts, and his honest admission should shock him as much as the revelation but Riku has room for only one. He always hurts, like it's a matter of fact, and abruptly he understands why he's always quick to fight, on the offensive, why he claws out instead of allowing anyone in, why it would take someone like Sora to reach him. Why, with him gone, he might say something like how we don't all have to survive.

He stares at him for a long moment, the slight part of his mouth speechless.

"Nothing like Curaga," he automatically answers, just for something to say, "But what do I know."

Exhaling softly, Riku lifts his hand, reaching for the glass experimentally, "Never tried it."

[evulsed]

Vanitas' thoughts are too slow and syrupy to appreciate that he's shocked Riku with this information. And even if he wasn't, there's no guarantee that Vanitas would even realize that's what's so surprising. Living in it every day, with every keyblade wielder knowing what Darkness is and what it does to a person, then why should this be any kind of surprise? Vanitas was made of it, he'd never gotten the chance to try and be anything else, even back when he wanted it. Back when it was mostly just jealousy filtered through a lens of hatred.

Ventus was everything he didn't get to have. He was everything Vanitas should have been, but he'd been sifted out of his heart and left this hungry, yawning void, separated from any stimulus that wasn't the empty abandonment of the desert. All he'd wanted was to find a way for it to end, and Xehanort told him to do that, he had to but them back together.

Even now, he's not sure how to reconcile the fact he has the x-Blade in his possession, because the actual weapon is meaningless in his palms. Having it doesn't make him hurt any less. It's no different than that wooden toy Vanitas snapped in half in Neverland. But it's the only tether he has to Sora, or to Master Xehanort, and Vanitas isn't sure what he would be without them both lingering like ghosts, defining him even when they aren't around.

Riku reaches for his cup and Vanitas, clicking back into the conversation, frowns at him and possessively pulls it away. It's not out of reach, cuddled in against his chest like that. He and Riku are sitting close enough that Riku could still take it from him.

"Yes you have," He argues, though it looks more like a pout, misunderstanding completely. "You tried to give me that gross..." He raises wiggles his unoccupied wrist, where it dangles off the edge of the bench. "... with the salt."