Don't Fuck with the Forest Spirits || OTA

[evulsed]

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

Comments

[preseance]

I know.

( he ain't hardly a fool. his voice is mild, but there's no fear lurking in behind it. he recognizes that he's losing the kid to panic an' fear an' so he just leans in again, pullin' him back into his arms, rubbing a hand up and down his spine. )

I've known you were dangerous from the start. First time we met I had a fella here with a gun trained on you just in case you tried anythin'. I was a noncombatant in war, boy, I ain't blind.

( medics couldn't even carry guns or risk violatin' the geneva convention. he only started carrying a pistol a few weeks before he died, an' even then it was beneath his coat, an' only because of the way marion died in holland. the s.s was respectin' the medic's band less an' less as the war rolled on. )

But that's livin'. Hell, a bad case of TB would kill me just as sure. Humans are fragile when they can't call lightnin' or fire to their fingertips. ( like kyna. ) Or darkness, I s'ppose. ( like vanitas. ) I've made peace with that. But could ain't will. Bein' dangerous don't mean you ain't deservin' of kindness anyhow.

cw: violent thoughts, abuse mention

[evulsed]

[ The tremble lingers in his frame, and it speaks to his headspace that when Gene leans in to pull him close again, Vanitas doesn't fight him. He lets it happen, lets the wrap around his shoulders act as the band holding his body together. Without unbridled terror facilitating his every thought and movement, he can recognize that it does something to him. It calms the static in his brain, and he can feel the rapid gallop of his heart ease.

He doesn't understand that this is what being soothed feels like. He's never had the experience before.

But it isn't just that. It's I had a gun trained on you, it's I've known you were dangerous— familiar sentiments, things that aren't insisting that Vanitas be more, or better, or good, or light. He cleaves so desperately to these shadows because without them, he doesn't know what he could possibly be. If he wasn't darkness, a constant threat, then what did he have left?

Gene is warm. Vanitas can feel it through the doctor's shirt, and in the friction that smooths up and down his back. Somehow, it reminds Vanitas of the peace he'd felt in Sora's death memory. It makes him want to crack open the doctor's ribs and climb into his chest. Instead, Vanitas curls his hands into fists in his lap and puts his cheek down on Gene's shoulder.

Doing this is a weakness. Xehanort would beat him for it and leave him to pick up the pieces, scar tissue meant to make him stronger. But his Master isn't here, and nobody is around to see it. ]

[preseance]

( so he lets it sit an' settle. doesn't do much else, or offer anymore words than that. it's a rarefied thing, doin' this when there's time. when the world around them ain't bound up in blood an' gunfire. a damn luxury to be able to offer comfort where it's needed an' due without a caveat or somethin' else more pressin' that needs his attention.

a shell-shocked soldier is only less critical than a man with a suckin' chest wound by dint of impending mortality. but it ain't any less a wound.

so he's here. long as he's needed. the occasional murmur of some soft sentiment just to ease the boy's mind on his lips. )