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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]

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?"

well look what the cat dragged in

[pearlstrings]

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.

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

[evulsed]

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.