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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

[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."

[evulsed]

It doesn't sit on his tongue. He doesn't savor the concoction the way he savors other things, like honey or bread or chocolate. For as much as this tastes like candy, he isn't drinking it to enjoy the flavor, like he'd been doing with those shots Bruce showed him to pour before. It still tastes good, but there's a purpose behind it above anything else.

The ice clinks against the sides when he lowers the glass, staring at Bruce like he's a particularly complex puzzle to unravel. As if Vanitas could solve it simply by looking at him hard enough.

That's true enough. Now that he's said it, even around the uncomfortable twist in his stomach and the tilting in his vision putting him on the cusp of true irritability, he can recognize that much. Bruce has never really tried to force him to do something, has ever taken a choice out of his hands. And he doesn't loiter, for the moment, on what Vanitas has said: just agrees, and lets the moment pass.

He doesn't put his drink down, but he takes half a step forward to narrow the distance between them. Just enough to take the canteen from where Bruce has set it on the counter. He doesn't back up gain, now that he's lessened the space, and tips the canteen up to take a thick swallow of water.

It always surprises him, how immediate the effect is. He can't remember the last time he had water— even though it was the night before— and the dehydration kicks like a mule. He tips his head back, preparing to really swallow down the whole contents— but then it floats back to him. The first time he had water, and Gene. Vanitas stops himself, purses his lips around the mouthful, raising his wrist to his mouth to wipe what escapes from the corners and slides down his cheek to fall on his bare collar.

"Why does it do that?" He finally asks, both hands full, his eyes cutting from Bruce to what he's doing on the stove. Too hot. Head ache. Stomach ache.

[pearlstrings]

Alfred would have said something to him in passing, about picking up strays. And perhaps that's warranted. Bruce has never gravitated towards people who were uncomplicated because he would always be required to lie to them. He would always be pretending to be an uncomplicated person in turn. This isn't to say that Bruce hasn't worn that facade- that he's cultivated it even- but those interactions had been purpose driven. He'd understood the motivation and recognized his persona as a tool to achieve that end.

That isn't the case here.

Vanitas watches him for a long moment and Bruce doesn't meet his gaze with steely defiance or narrow determination. He continues to make breakfast. And on his own, for his own reasons, the boy chooses to drift in closer- to stay there even after he reaches for the water. Bruce doesn't feel a rush of victory or pride but he finds that he does feel something. Relief, perhaps.

The question is a good one, though not the first to underline Vanitas's particular brand of inexperience. Bruce considers his options. He's given plenty of non-answers before, he could use simplify it. But Bruce knows what it's like to try and make decisions for himself, to find his footing, when he doesn't have enough facts first. Perhaps it's time that someone armed Vanitas with knowledge instead.

"When you eat or drink anything, your body absorbs what's inside it to use as energy. It's called metabolizing, and different organs inside of you metabolize at different speeds, and some food is absorbed more quickly than others."

His gaze lifts just enough to glance towards the spices, something for flavor- but experience tells him that Vanitas is unlikely to appreciate it while he's this hungover. He needs food to help with the alcohol absorption, but strong flavors won't be a welcome addition to the experience. He leaves them out, reaching for a piece of bread instead.

"Alcohol gets absorbed by your liver, and it gets absorbed before anything else- but it also takes a long time to go all the way through. In the beginning, it can feel good, because a few drinks can lower your inhibitions, you might feel excited or impulsive. Sometimes people say and do things they wouldn't otherwise."

He reaches for a plate.

"But when you have too much of it, it acts like a poison and your liver is hurt. People might feel like you, or they could pass out. It's possible to die, actually. You have to wait for the levels to go down and for your body to recover before you can do it again and enjoy it. It isn't unlike training, in that way. It's fine to push hard, but after awhile your muscles will stop responding because they've worked too hard and there isn't any strength left. If you keep working you don't become any stronger, you just damage the body."

[evulsed]

Anyone else might not have favored him with a literal answer. Someone else might have skimped on the details, given him a much simpler explanation on the effects of liquor on the body. But most people probably don't have the patience for this kind of thing— the sorts of things that Vanitas, with this face at this age, should most certainly be aware of. He is ignorant of simple facts, things that he'd never had the opportunity to learn on his own, things that in another life he probably knew already— but couldn't remember, because when he'd been ripped out of Ventus it had shredded his memory in the process.

Vanitas watches him as he explains, even though Bruce doesn't watch him in turn. He focuses on other things, gathering plates and cooking breakfast. Vanitas weighs his two drinks, considering the new information, lifting it up against how he feels and how much he wants to push.

The thing is, he's seen what alcohol does to people, because it's happened here in this place— where he's had the time to sit and to watch. He's seen them act foolishly and pass out across counters, stagger up to their rooms clutching their lanterns. He'd never understood the allure, because from an outside perspective, the act of forgetting that he'd sneered at Bruce about just hours before looked grotesque and weak.

But it's different, experiencing it himself. He understands it a little, for the numbing agent it is.

"It'll heal," He says, but maybe a little less flippantly than he would before. After all, hadn't his Master beat him into an unmoving mess? Into unconsciousness, before Vanitas learned how to get away from it, how to weather the blows without letting them knock him out? Without any other experience to measure it against, learning to weather alcohol doesn't seem so different. Only he isn't sure you can really get used to it. All the people in the Invincible seem to hit this point sooner or later.

But he takes another tentative sip of water.

"It's not the worst thing to happen to me."

[pearlstrings]

No, Bruce thinks. I suspect it isn't. I've seen your body.

Whether the scarred state of him is something Vanitas feels self conscious about is a moot point. Bruce has never seen him this physically bare before, but when he measures that against the amount of alcohol he's had the answer becomes even less conclusive. It only serves to bring them around to his original point- alcohol adjusts reasoning. Choices are made that wouldn't be otherwise.

It speaks to his experience weathering discomfort that Vanitas doesn't just allow the words to go in one ear and out the other. Like so many times before, despite his assumes volatility, he listens. He's not an openly eager student, but he soaks up the information he's given and questions it further, testing its weight and practicality. It's a quality he appreciates- but it's also a quality he sees value in nurturing. So long as he continues to ask, Bruce has made the decision to continue meeting him with honesty.

The ghost lingers.
His master, he'd said.

Bruce's hands are pale, he has a home-made splint around two fingers and he believes at least one of them is broken. The black and blue bruising travels up his knuckles and blurs against the deep purple and yellow along his forearms, from time spent defending against Riku's furious blows. Despite this, he's very steady. There's no tremor in the way he lifts the pan or maneuvers the long fork, portioning Vanitas's greasy breakfast onto a plate.

"What was?"

[evulsed]

The question catches him off guard, and Vanitas almost startles underneath it. Not because it stings, but more akin to having something come narrowly close and not suspecting it to be there. Vanitas doesn't flinch easily, because it can be the difference between standing and being in the dirt. Very few things even make him blink. He keeps the helmet not just because it was part of his identity, but because it has a practical use.

He'd been forged in the desert, where the sand itched and bit if it was allowed in to the seams.

Nobody has ever asked him questions, not like this. Most of the time, they had been something along the lines of Why are you doing this? and Vanitas' answer for that had always been simple. Because he had to. Because it was the only way. Because he was Darkness itself. His existence has been one long stream of agony, an exposed nerve tapped again and again until he could redirect the pain into strength. Turn it into physical power or shed it like the Unversed.

What was?

What was the worst thing to ever happen to him?

Vanitas' gaze slides from Bruce. Not on purpose, but because his attention goes inward, his brow furrowed deeply. He's never thought about this before. Why would he? It isn't like he had anyone around to ask. It wasn't like Vanitas had any kind of measuring stick to hold it up against, other than the snippets he dreamed from Ventus, where he lived and grew pain-free. The cloud settles over him, an almost literal thing in the kitchen, because the shadows flex without Vanitas thinking about doing it. Is Ventus the worst thing to happen to him? Knowing that he had everything good, everything nice? Knowing that if he'd never been rend from his heart then maybe Vanitas would never have experienced the endless anguish of his existence? He doesn't even think to factor his training into the equation. The old man only went hard on him to make him stronger, after all. And besides, didn't the fracture of his heart hurt much worse than anything that could have ever been physically done to him?

He falls into silence, gaze thoughtfully averted. Not because he's avoiding the question, but because he's actively ruminating on it.

[pearlstrings]

There's something about the sudden, precise stiffness in Vanitas's shoulders- the way his entire body seems to respond to the question that reminds him, powerfully, of Selina. Selina who so often wanted to know the score, to have the calculations measured out of how much she owes him and how much he owes her. Who said she never wanted to be his girlfriend, who had been hurt time and again simply because Bruce cared for her. Who knew how to be alone and preferred it, even if that wasn't the same as wanting to be alone.

He misses her.
In the space where Vanitas doesn't answer right away- where he looks into himself and finds something that Bruce is afraid, suspects, is bottomless- he allows himself to feel it. Selina would not uncomplicate things. She would do it her own way and he would compromise in places where he shouldn't. But it doesn't stop the wanting.

She might know the right thing to say to Vanitas, at any rate.

The boy's gaze slides away and it seems that the moment they do there's a palpable change within the kitchen. Bruce is no stranger to darkness. He'd been afraid of it for a very long time, but the fear didn't make it any less a part of him. The shadows that move around Vanitas now are different. They could almost be sentient. Bruce sets the plate down in front of him, just loud enough to draw attention, a little thud against the wood. Followed by a fork.

"I can see why you'd choose to drink so much. You have a very big scale to balance."

[evulsed]

His gaze snaps up at the sound, at Bruce's sudden nearness. Its a testament to how under the weather he's feeling that he didn't notice his approach, another thing to add to his list deciding if drinking the way he did is worth it. The gold of his eyes flick up to find Bruce's bruised face, lingering before dropping to the plate. His stomach rolls over once more, nausea in the wake of the greasy smell.

You have a very big scale to balance.

"I'm a scale that can't be balanced. I was defeated, I'll never be whole."

Vanitas sets both drinks on the counter to free his hands, but takes half a step back out of Bruce's personal space. It might look like running, and in some fashion it is. The vulnerability of being caught shirtless and then snuck up on lingers in him, even if he isn't actively thinking about them just yet. He takes the plate by its lip and pulls it closer to himself, then narrows his eyes.

"Where's yours?"

[pearlstrings]

Vanitas is, in Bruce's experience, very straightforward. He doesn't bother with deflection or evasion and seems to regard them as a waste of time- time better spent charging straight forward. It's a dangerous kind of honesty. It makes him easy to read and easy to predict, but it also threatens to be Vanitas's undoing. Some challenges can't be met by direct force, some require verisimilitude. Patience.

Bruce watches his profile as the boy looks down at his plate, presumably struggling with the nausea that rolls his stomach and wonders if he might have been this once. How different would he be now if he'd been alone? If he hadn't had Alfred to watch over him.

Instead of staying where he is, Vanitas chooses to set both drinks on the countertop and move away, reintroducing a boundary between them- a safer margin. Bruce knows wordlessly that he has hit a mark, whether Vanitas knows he's been wounded yet is another matter entirely. Perhaps that only underscores the problem. He's been hurt too many times to feel it. His head shakes.

"I'm not talking about being whole." He's heard this explanation before, not directly, but in parts across the network. Vanitas isn't shy about his origins. He doesn't hesitate to tell others what he is and by extension there's no moment where Bruce needs to ask for clarification and no space where he balks at the idea. Even without the same connection to darkness and light, Bruce doesn't believe in being whole. More full, perhaps, or more empty. But not whole.

His one good hand reaches for a nearby mug. He'd made coffee some time earlier and it's gone cold. Good breeding and blue blooded privileged not withstanding, he empties the contents into a small pot, then clicks the stove on once more.

"I mean the balance between pain and pleasure. Of experiences."

[evulsed]

It isn't lost on him that he has most, if not all, of the food Bruce made on his own plate. The dichotomy is strange. It isn't like he hasn't seen Bruce eat, but the way people talk about meals and their necessity pours so much conflicting information into Vanitas that he has yet to really comprehend what eating is supposed to look like. Gene had explained it to him, but he's seen people go days without it, and some people do it all the time. He's seen talk about rationing, he's seen people make things, he's seen people throw food away.

Bruce pours himself a cup of coffee instead of eating. Vanitas doesn't think that's supposed to be a meal, but how should he know? People told him to eat more than just sweets but he's been just fine eating little more than candy and breads and fruits and chocolate.

It's of less interest than what Bruce is saying to him, either way. The balance of pain and pleasure. Vanitas frowns at him, and it makes his head throb in protest. Part of him wants to just forget this whole food and drink thing and just go back to bed.

"What strength is there in pleasure?" Vanitas almost sneers it, and picks up his fork almost defiantly. "Ventus was a wuss before I went to his stupid castle and told him to get off his lazy ass. All he got was the good things. I was much stronger than him before we tried to kill his friends."

He scowls down at his eggs, because the irony isn't lost on him. They'd needed him to be stronger to forge the x-Blade, but then he'd been so strong that Vanitas' darkness couldn't keep a foothold. His only comfort is that the second time, at least it had taken Ventus and Sora to bring Vanitas down. He stabs at the eggs, pushing them around on the plate.

[pearlstrings]

Does he know that he sounds jealous? That he has reason to be? It's an interesting concept to consider, but the evidence he's found thus far runs to the contrary. In some ways it's easy to liken Vanitas to a child- inexperienced with his own emotions, unable to name them and unfamiliar with the cause. The trouble with allowing that similarity to become a blanket assessment is that it minimizes and even eliminates his capacity for agency. Children learn because people are there to model, support, and sometimes teach- they see that their actions have consequences and develop empathy through experience. Vanitas has already passed these benchmarks, not through personal growth and development, but through cultivation. These beliefs and ideas, the way that he acts, these are not innate. These traits have been learned.

He takes up his fork like a weapon and just holds it for a long moment, before he starts stabbing at his eggs.

This is the first time he's mentioned 'Ventus.' Bruce recognizes that it's significant immediately even if he doesn't yet have the details to contextualize it. But with that recognition comes the awareness that this isn't the time or place to pursue it. Vanitas is terrifically hung over and quite possibly also still drunk. Bruce does not have qualms with taking advantage of a situation that presents itself to him, but he can also recognize when his gains will be outweighed by his losses. It's an easy decision to make.

Vanitas has been hurt and exploited in the time before he's come here.
Bruce doesn't want to be one more person to add to that list.

So instead he reaches across the countertop, with his mug still at his mouth. He looks Vanitas in the face as his fingers wrap around the neck of the liquor bottle and begin to lift it. He is, visibly, baiting him. "I suppose you're finished with this then."

[evulsed]

Vanitas doesn't notice directly what Bruce is doing, or reaching for, because he's scowling down at his eggs like they're the source of all his problems— even though in reality the object of his rage and envy had never even been in Beacon. It isn't until the shadow of his arm crosses the plate and he hears the soft sound of the glass coming off the counter that he jerks his head up with much more dramaticism than the situation calls for. Half of that is accidental— and he feels his head throb in protest with the sudden movement.

He has two hands, but Vanitas drops the fork with a clatter and reaches for the bottle. Bruce might be baiting him, but the fact is, Vanitas has never been playfully baited before. He hardly knows what play means in a context that doesn't end in discipline. To him, Bruce is really going to take this thing away from him.

His hand closes around the bottle above Bruce's, and he forces it back down to the counter with a soft thunk. It leaves them both holding it, though Vanitas' own grip is a little too tight— possessive, but also just because judging his own surroundings is a little off.

It would bother him more, maybe, if he were alone. If he were with anyone but Bruce. He doesn't yet recognize the significance of that fact.

But then, as the moment stretches, Vanitas' gaze goes from the bottle to Bruce's face— and he lets go of the bottle like it's burned him. Something molten crawls up his spine, then. It comes to him white-hot, and makes his stomach turn, equal parts nausea and the shape of the emotion. He wants that drink. He wants the way it made him feel, like nothing really mattered; the way it chased all his pain into the edges and made it numb, the closest thing to peace he's felt since tucking up with Sora in his stupid hammock. Since feeling that gentle let go of letting life go.

Bruce says I suppose you're finished with this, and Vanitas is reminded that he isn't supposed to have those things. He's reminded of his Master, of I suppose we're done here, when Vanitas hadn't lived up to his expectations. Normally, his barriers are much stronger than this— but that tremble is still under his skin, the vestiges of too much booze and the way it wracks at the body. Inadvertently chastised, Vanitas flushes hard, his cheeks flaming up.

"I'll just take it when you aren't looking," He bites, but there's something brittle in his voice; he can feel the thickness of it, choked up by the Unversed that it wants to crawl out of him as. He picks up his fork again and stabs into a piece of sausage, putting it into his mouth and averting his gaze.

[pearlstrings]

It's shame that colors Vanitas's face. Bruce recognizes it immediately in the way that all empathetic squeezes take hold of the heart. But it isn't so simple either. Vanitas moves in stop-starts. He looks accusingly down at his breakfast that he perhaps hasn't yet decided to eat, and then looks up just in time to see the bottle moving away from him. Bruce expects the reflexive reaction that follows- that he lashes out immediately to take hold of the bottle in turn. To keep it because he wants it, but perhaps also because he considers that it belongs to him.

The synapses catch up to him.

Bruce's gaze is on his face when he freezes, when he lets go of the bottle as abruptly as he'd grabbed hold of it in the first place. There's a momentarily stiffening to his limbs that he's sure doesn't even register around the noise that must be screeching through his head. The bottle hovers there, but then it had never been Bruce's intention to take it away to begin with. Vanitas has made every decision that's brought him to this point, in his interactions with Bruce that is, and that agency isn't something he's eager to strip away.

"That's what I mean."

The bottle lowers, on Vanitas's side of the table once more, precisely where he'd left it. "Whether I'm looking or not is irrelevant. You're pursuing it for yourself. For the pleasure of it." In anyone else's mouth these words might sound smug or self-satisfied. Bruce is actually mildly embarrassed to find that he sounds like an echo of Alfred- patiently explaining a point that Bruce had refused to acknowledge, that he thought he could just circle. "You might never be whole, but that doesn't mean you're obligated to live a life that's nothing except pain. Everyone is selfish about something."

[evulsed]

Even after that first bite, he still can't quite tell if he wants to eat or not. It goes down with some difficulty, though whether that's the nausea or the tightness in his throat, Vanitas can't tell. He doesn't quite look at Bruce: it's almost like he starts to, and then aborts it right at the last second, being aware of him in the periphery.

He's given the drink back, but conditioning leads Vanitas to believe its a test, even though Bruce has only ever done exactly what he said he would in the time they've known each other. Regardless, Vanitas doesn't try to take it again, despite the way he itches to covetously move it away from Bruce's reach.

"Maybe that's how it works where you're from," He spears another sausage. "I don't even care about those things. I just wanted it to stop, and the only way I could do that is through joining my heart with his."

It should be stranger, to explain all of this. But what's the point in hiding it? Vanitas had never made it secret what he was after, even when he was faced with Ventus himself. Ushering in the Darkness, the Keyblade War— all of that played second fiddle to Vanitas' desire to feel anything but the endless anguish.

"But I know that won't happen." Not now that the x-Blade is created, especially not now that he's in this place. "I am the shadow that their Light casts. Darkness is who and what I am."

Maybe emboldened by his own commitment to his place in the world, maybe reminded if his true purpose because of the direction this conversation took, Vanitas finally looks back at Bruce and his expression is fixed in such a way that its clear he won't listen to any argument made otherwise.

[pearlstrings]

There are moments where Vanitas seems to look without looking. He doesn't raise his eyes to Bruce's face just yet and he doesn't glance at the bottle either. But Bruce has learned through both practice and study that there is just as much evidence to be found in absence. In what's missing.

He doesn't push. Some things can only happen in their own time, no matter how much he might want to unravel them. His forearms are too damaged to lean his weight into, so instead it's his hip that comes to rest against the countertop. The mug remains between his palms and Bruce's fingers, bandaged in some places and purple in others, thread around the ceramic curve. There's very little warmth left to be found in it, but it is not his first time drinking the dregs of cold coffee and he suspects it won't be the last. Vanitas's fork clicks hard against his plate a second time, as he goes for another bite. It's a promising sign. Bruce remembers how little he'd wanted to eat, how little he'd even wanted the smell of food waking up after a night of drinking.

But there's something to be said for the power of distraction- the ability of a task to loosen thoughts and ease the way. Vanitas doesn't seem to chase the thought; instead it catches up to him and then lingers in the air. He says that he doesn't care about "those things" and while Bruce believes this is perhaps intellectually true, that he isn't consciously aware. It doesn't keep him from reaching out, to find a means to stop a pain that is otherwise unstoppable, to distract from the inevitable.

Bruce is not a stranger to darkness. He recognizes what it is that lives inside of him and what it is that he's chosen- this part of his nature. Vanitas stares back at him, steely and unflinching. Bruce looks back at him and like recognizes like.

"Do you use it, or does it use you?"

[evulsed]

The question catches him off guard, enough that Vanitas' expression narrows— though he immediately regrets it. The dull, uncomfortable throb in his head swells with the squinting of his eyes, and in the same moment feels his stomach turn over. He's had two bites of sausage and the third was almost a full mouthful, but maybe it's too ambitious. It reminds Vanitas too much of that first time, when his head and stomach ached, when he guzzled the water and it all came back up immediately.

Only now he knows Bruce isn't trying to poison him, the way he thought Gene was.

"Of course I use it. What kind of stupid question is that?" He bites, a little more caustic now just because of his own discomfort. Vanitas puts the fork back down, defeated for the moment by the texture and the discomfort in his stomach. He still keeps feeling it rise up in his throat, like he wants to bring up everything he had the night before. Bracing one hand on the counter, he puts his other one on his bare belly and exhales in a single, long hiss.

It's the sort of self soothing thing he's used before, when the pain became this sort of full-body thing he couldn't shake off. He shoots Bruce a sidelong look from under his lashes, indicating he's actually still waiting for an answer to what may have sounded like a rhetorical question, before closing his eyes to try and stop the world from spinning.

[pearlstrings]

"Just go slow. Your body is trying to fight the impulse to be sick."

There's no soothing pain like that, and in Bruce's experience this is true of most hurts. They can only be felt and endured. There are ways to lessen the blows or numb the edges, but it isn't something that can be outrun. It always catches up. Vanitas's body is revolting against the binge drinking and sympathy is easy to find- he's been in this position often enough, had once been the figure doubled over countertops and curled inside beds, waiting for it to stop. It did very little to discourage repeat performances and he suspects that this will hold true for Vanitas too. He needs tools and resources before he can hope to make different decisions.

He hisses, resting one palm against the counter and the other against his stomach. Bruce doesn't stare. There isn't much privacy to be had for Vanitas's largely undressed state and wretched appearance, the unsteady movement of his limbs and shadows under his eyes. But perhaps it's the spirit of the thing. His eyes close a moment later and Bruce stays where he is, a still point on the opposite end of the counter.

"I suppose I don't see why that would keep you from pursuing things that bring you pleasure. It doesn't change the darkness. The darkness will always be there."

[evulsed]

Vanitas exhales thinly, long and slow, from between his teeth. It comes out like a hiss, and he does this a couple more times when he realizes the soothing quality it has— which maybe shouldn't be so surprising. He's learned breathing techniques like this from his Master for battle. Even before, when he hadn't been as arguably human as he is here, it didn't mean he couldn't feel pain, or break bones or skin.

But it also means that he has to stand and listen to what Bruce is saying to him. It's a little strange, to hear; this idea that he could have something good, while being so dark. Vanitas doesn't think he shies away from going after what he wants— but he also just doesn't understand that he hasn't had the opportunity to do it. Being here, in Beacon, has been an exercise in living.

Vanitas does go after what he wants, in baby steps. Food, and sleeping in a bed, and now alcohol— things that are so simple, but have an enormous impact on him.

"I know that," He finally says, his voice gone low for the tenderness in his belly and his head. All this excitement is exhausting. He wants to go back to bed. "You think I don't just take what I want?"