logsinthenight | Don't Fuck with the Forest Spirits || OTA

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Don't Fuck with the Forest Spirits || OTA

characters: Vanitas (

evulsed) + OTA
location: mostly The Church, the Invincible + the Boathouse
date/time: July 19 and the days following
content: just waking-up-after-being-dismembered things
warnings: violence

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[ Vanitas' eyes cut to the girl, and it takes him a moment to place her. Not because she's hard to recognize, but because he's been so wrapped up in what he's just come back from that he hasn't been thinking about anything that preceded his trip into the woods. On reflex, his mouth ticks up in the corners, like he can't decide if he's going to smile or bare his teeth. ]

Then what are you looking at?

Nooothing...

[Pursing her lips, Mary looks back down at whatever it was she was drawing. She pulls out a black crayon from her box and scribbles messily on top of the artwork. At least this is a more productive way of letting out her emotions than, you know, with a knife.]

[ He should leave well enough alone, but Vanitas is volatile at the best of times and now is no different. Now, in fact, is worse— so he turns toward her and slips into the seat directly across from Mary. His eyes flick down to her drawing, then back to her face. ]

I saw what you were hiding you know.

[Mary's crayon stops in its destructive path, and she feels her teeth gnash together behind her lips.]

Are you going to tell people?

[ He watches her steadily, unblinking. ]

I haven't decided yet.

[Humming in thought, Mary abandons her drawing and opens to a new page in her sketchbook. She doesn't put the black crayon away, but seems to start drawing something less manic.]

If you tell on me, we won't be able to play anymore!

[ Vanitas' eyes go heavy and speculative, still watching her face instead of what she's drawing on the paper. ]

Why not?

Because things will be different. We won't be any different, but everyone else will be.

[Always watching in a way that they weren't before. Always cautious, always wary. Finishing with the black crayon, she grabs a few different colors.]

I like how things are now. Don't you?

No.

[ It's an honest answer, and Vanitas can't say why he gives it to Mary of all people. Maybe because she has a hidden darkness. Maybe because she'd been the one to skewer him, to his own surprise. Maybe because he doesn't think anyone would take her seriously if she told.

His eyes flick over her, like he's assessing her. ]

Why don't you just play with everybody, instead of hiding it?

Because I tried that once, and that's how I died.

[Her mouth turns down into a frown. She has the very abrupt, intense urge to chew on her crayons, mash them into itty bitty unusable pieces. But no, no, if she did that, she couldn't color with them anymore.]

My friends didn't like it when I tried to play with them! They ran away from me! And then, when I caught up, they set me on fire!

[ This is a sentiment Vanitas really can't understand or empathize with&msdah; not the least of which is the idea of having friends, and the concept of losing them because of what he is. He's never had something to lose, beyond his own life. ]

If you'd been faster, they wouldn't have caught you.

[ At least, that's what Xehanort always told him. ]

...it doesn't matter.

[The ending would've been the same. She would've been all alone. Wouldn't she? Mary goes quiet as she finishes her drawing, and then holds it up to show him.]

Look! It's us!

[She's drawn the two of them speckled with blood. You know, for kids!]

[ He's so startled Vanitas just openly stares. It's crude just by virtue of her youth, but he recognizes the characters. The black void he makes up, spiky hair and all, and her shorter, more colorful self. The obvious markers of blood.

But looking Mary holding it up, it tickles something in the back of his mind. Like some kind of memory that isn't his own. The de ja vu of being in this position with another fair-haired girl who made pictures with colored pencils.

Whatever he was going to say is utterly lost as he stares. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do in this situation. ]

[Mary giggles as she puts the sketchbook back down and admires her own handiwork. Usually, this is where she'd give it to him as a present, but...well, she doesn't trust he won't rip it up or something.]

I'll keep it safe for now. And I'm going to get even better at playing, so when we play again, you can have it if you win!

[ She pretty well saves him from having to make the decision, and some kind of uncertain tension goes out of him with the scoff of a laugh that follows. ]

You have your work cut out for you then.

I let you win last time.

[ Not strictly true, it had mostly been accidental, but if Vanitas had been trying she wouldn't really have stood a chance at all. ]

No...if I'd really won, you wouldn't have been been able to see my secret. You wouldn't have been moving. So, next time...

[Mary points a finger straight at his chest.]

[Next time, she'll get his secret. She'll pry open his skin with her fingers, crack open his ribs, and revel in the vibrant colors he keeps locked away inside. That's what she wants. He'll be so beautiful, and he won't be able to go anywhere, or do anything that she doesn't like.

The perfect friend.]

Vanitas.

[Mary beams.]

I'm going to give you a big, big hug, right there!

[ He'd seen this part of her in that vision, just as he'd seen a flicker of it when she attacked him with that palette knife, but watching it unfold a second time is like seeing a cocoon split right down the middle to reveal something ghastly from the inside. It's like watching an Unversed bubble up and take shape. Vanitas smiles. It's slow and a little mean and it makes him, finally, feel the most normal since he's woken up. ]

Hold on to that darkness, Mary.

[ He pushes himself up from his seat, and his fingers linger on the table top next to the picture she's drawn of them both. His eyes drop to the dark slash of black, all the red, the two of them side by side. ]

And maybe someday you'll be good enough to do it.

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