It takes nothing at all to send him over the edge. Less than a breeze, reflected in the way he exhales one more time and the sound that comes on the tail end of it sounds like a hum. Sleep should be a kindness, and sometimes it is. Sometimes he falls asleep and it's nothing but a long blackness. Other times, it's reliving the endless cycle of his existence. He doesn't always remember it when he wakes up, but that doesn't really change the fact that it exists.

In the waking world, his hand goes slack. If Riku doesn't catch it, the glass will tumble freely from his limp hand and tinkle against the floor to spill a dark patch on the ground.

But in sleep, he is far from any kind of guarded. In sleep, his heart station is an open, if broken, thing, almost identical to the grave stone that had been erected for him so many months ago. Only this one is a complete circle, with a fracture down the middle with half the picture missing. Vanitas falls into it, through it, and dreams about the desert.