logsinthenight

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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.

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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."

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."

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?"

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.

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."

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?"

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."

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.

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."

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.

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."

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.

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?"

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.

"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."

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?"

It's a good sign that he's able to regulate his breathing; it controls the swelling of his lungs and reduces the pressure that his diaphragm exudes on his stomach. It happens in degrees at a time but he's able to watch Vanitas reign his responses in, to focus on these smaller things happening in pieces at a time- to stay with them in the moment until the intensity begins to fade. Now that there's food in his stomach to help with the absorption of alcohol, going back to bed isn't a terrible idea. He could use the time to rest. Bruce might not have a crystal clear understanding of his sleep patterns, but Vanitas is chaotic in every other aspect of his life. It would be a strange exception.

"I think you haven't wanted very many things."

Bruce eases away from the counter and leaves the plates, the dishes, where they are. He can take care of them later, when he makes his way back. He brings a canteen of water with him instead and moves in the direction of the door, a signal to follow and abandon the table. Bruce's head tilts towards the hall, to the place Vanitas has been sleeping.

Vanitas could laugh at that. What a ridiculous notion. All Vanitas has done is want things since the day he was created. He's wanted to be whole, he wanted reprieve, he wanted power. He wanted to stop the Unversed from sloughing off of him, a physical manifestation of all his weakness. He wanted to get out of the desert. He wanted Ventus.

He doesn't laugh, but only because doing it makes the muscles in his stomach squeeze and his throat feel tight. Instead, he exhales a sound that could almost be amusement.

Bruce moves away, and Vanitas opens his eyes to consider the plate of eggs. The idea of eating them is unpleasant, so he picks up the last bit of sausage with his fingers. It's bizarre, to want something but also feel sick at the sight of it. But then, that was how he'd felt about Ventus and Sora, too, so maybe it's not so unusual.

"Shows what you know," Vanitas says, looking up at him, standing there in the threshold of the kitchen. It's an invitation, if he ever saw one, though Vanitas can't actually parse where it is Bruce is asking him to go— despite the fact it would be obvious to probably anyone else. After a brief pause, he picks up the alcohol he'd been drinking to take with him, more because he's claimed it as his own and doesn't want to leave it there than any other reason, and trails after Bruce.

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well look what the cat dragged in

my unsuccessful creep into the back fo the classroom...