Work Text:
Together | Phobia | Breath
Arm up, keyblade turned teeth out, feet apart with your weight on the balls of your feet. Always be ready to move. Track their muscles, try to predict their moves before they make them. Be stronger, be faster, be the best.
Breathe in, breathe out. Move.
Darting forward, slipping in and out of the shadows, Vanitas keeps up a constant guard. The attack could come from anywhere and he needs to be prepared. He trained and trained and trained for this. He will not fail. He inhales and folds himself into another shadow, waiting.
“Vanitas!” The shout feels like enough to shake the rocks around them, despite the aged rasp to it. It makes his heart feel like it could burst out of his chest. He stays in the shadows, waiting for the man to appear. “Vanitas, come out this instant. What did you do?”
He tightens his grip on his keyblade and doesn’t breathe, doesn’t speak. His thoughts roar in his head. What I had to. The emotions in his chest, so easy to spill out across the ground, stay curled tight in him. This is how it’s supposed to be.
The wind is picking up and his lungs scream for air, but Vanitas listens hard from the shadows, for the scrape of footsteps over stone. Help is coming, but I don’t need it. Something exhales, closer than expected, and Vanitas lunges.
He’s not fast enough.
A keyblade catches him in his side, a brutal blow that sends him through the air until he hits another spire. It knocks the breath from his lungs and he wheezes on the ground, clinging stubbornly to Void Gear. He forces it up over his head just in time. Their keyblades clash and he glares upward even as he struggles to keep the blade from coming down on him again.
His master glares down at him with those awful eyes. “You stupid boy, what did you do?” A booted foot kicks out and Vanitas yanks his arm back, dodging both foot and blade. He rolls across the ground and back to his feet, Void Gear clenched tight in one hand. His master throws a ball of fire at him, but Vanitas bats it away, flipping backward because there is always a follow-through.
The silver keyblade stabs into the air he just occupied and Vanitas clenches his teeth before he can smile. He throws the fire this time, aiming for the old man’s feet, but he steps aside as if he avoids nothing more than a puddle. Xehanort lunges at him and Vanitas twists, but can feel it rip into his side. He hits the ground again, but doesn’t wait for the next strike; he melts into the ground and pulls himself into the shadow of the spire.
“You can run forever, boy, but there is nowhere for you to go! Come back and tell me what you did to Ventus.”
Nothing, you stupid old man! Vanitas squeezes his eyes shut even in the dark. He can feel the strain on his chest, the brittle feeling of broken ribs. Help is coming. You’re strong enough to last. You told him you could do this. Something warm has been curled in his chest since then. Now, it eases the ache of broken bones and gives him strength.
Vanitas pulls himself from the shadows, listens, and this time, he swings first. Void Gear locks with his master’s keyblade, but he presses forward, presses against that massive strength that would cave in his ribs and have him spitting over the ground. He grits his teeth and pushes back .
Xehanort’s other hand comes around, full of dark fire. It burns into Vanitas’s arm, but he screams through his teeth and keeps pressing. His shadow writhes with pain, but Vanitas doesn’t waver. Claws pull themselves free, monsters with bright red eyes that throw themselves at his master. Xehanort is forced to turn the fire on them, but it burns Vanitas all the same. He pushes through it, pushes harder, and then-.
His master has to turn, to give, and Vanitas grins wide in triumph. This time it’s his blade that makes contact, slamming into the old man’s side. Xehanort does not fly, but his breath wheezes out.
Withered fingers, strong like metal cables, wrap around his wrist. Vanitas yanks, but his master pulls back, yanking him close. Vanitas bares his teeth even as he feels the cold rush of fear down to his toes. “You want to know what I did? What’s different about Ventus?” He spits the words out, hard and fast, a pathetic distraction for just a few seconds more.
Xehanort stares at him with those emotionless, cold eyes. He was always cold, always distant. Vanitas will never be that way and he’s so sick of trying. He yanks again at the grip on his arm, ignoring the cold that’s creeping up it. “I went to Ventus and I talked to him. I told him what we are, what our destiny is.”
“Foolish creature. Did you think he would agree?” Xehanort sinks his claws in, cold darkness hooking into Vanitas’s. It makes him want to scream, but he digs his heels in.
“He didn’t have to,” Vanitas grits out. “We talked and figured it out, without you .”
There’s a whine in the air, coming closer rapidly, and Vanitas breaks into a grin. “You told me I needed the x-blade to be whole. You lied.”
He kicks his master in the chest, getting him a tad bit more distance. There’s a flash of light and then a shooting star slams into them both. Vanitas’s arm is free and then he feels another wrap around his back, lifting him up. The warmth in his chest swirls outward, wrapping around him. Ventus keeps hold of him, keyblade still singing with light in his left hand, and eyes bright enough to be afire.
Vanitas puts a hand on his arm and they both glare at their master. Wiping the blood from his lip, Vanitas finally breathes in again. The warmth in him lets him breathe deeply. He breathes in, out, and in again, feeling Ventus do the same beside him.
He’d been desperate when he set off through the dark corridor. Everything ached and burned, but he had felt that light, that connection, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He followed it, followed the tug and the feelings that made his feel all the more rotten. He’d come through the corridor into a bright bedroom, full of things and sunlight, and his old face staring back at him in shock.
Vanitas wanted to rip him apart, to take back what was his, but Ventus had held a hand up and said, “Who are you?” He’d asked, but his voice had been strange, like he already knew that this was something different. And Vanitas, tired and broken and angry, had held his hand out and let their feelings do the talking. When their fingers had brushed, it was like a shock straight through his broken, cast-off bit of heart.
Xehanort had been wrong. He didn’t need to clash with Ventus; he needed to connect even deeper than they were.
Now, they wind their arms around each others’ backs, their hands come together, and a blade of painful bright gold cleaves through the man that broke them. They exhale.