Chapter 3: In Every Heart
Chapter Summary: Aqua runs from herself. Vanitas offers a more useful choice of clothing.
Vanitas quickly found Aqua disappointing when she wasn’t fighting or arguing or rambling about her stupid friends. Her expression stayed closed and brooding whenever he checked over his shoulder to make sure she was still there, and she hadn’t spoken a word since they started walking.
Of course, neither had he. Was she as bored as he was?
At least the Heartless they ran across broke up the monotony. Not because the dark creatures were particularly interesting, but because he got to watch Aqua’s twirly, sparkly fighting style without worrying about blocking her attacks.
“Something funny?” She asked—finally, something to break the silence—when she caught him snorting after she came out of her Spellweaver command style.
“Huh—? The Heartless are just pathetic, that’s all,” he covered quickly, crushing an HP orb in his hand. Her twirliness may be amusing, but he knew from experience how deadly it could be.
“These aren’t as bad as the ones I had to face earlier.” She wandered across the width of the gorge they were travelling through, absorbing the rest of the HP orbs. She needed them more than he did.
“’Cause you’re not spewing light everywhere anymore. You’re not attracting the worst ones.”
Aqua glared at him, but her gaze wavered.
“This place isn’t right.” She shook her head. “Any place where darkness is more of a protection than light is wrong.”
Her voice had lost a little of its gravely-ness from the potion earlier, but even the air in this place seemed to make her sick, probably stinging her throat the same way the scent of her light burned his.
Vanitas rolled his eyes. “Again with the whole ‘Light is Perfect’ thing. I don’t know how you can still believe in that after all this.”
“All what?” Aqua raised an eyebrow, and Vanitas snorted.
“Everything. Do you need a list?”
She didn’t reply, so apparently she did.
“You getting stuck here in the first place, Ventus ending up in a coma…” His eyes were drawn to her keyblade, which she still gripped protectively. “Your Master was the most Light-happy of them all, wasn’t he? And you know what happened to him.”
She squeezed the handle of Eraqus’s keyblade tighter, staring at it intently, and then replied, “That was Xehanort’s doing. All of this was, in one way or another. What happened to us, what happened to you, all of it. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for darkness.”
Vanitas shook his head. “Don’t think everything about darkness is stupid just because the old geezer was. I wouldn’t be able to find our way out of here if it wasn’t for the power of darkness.”
“That’s not the point,” Aqua said, continuing down the path that narrowed the farther they walked. “If it wasn’t for the darkness, we wouldn’t need to find a way out.”
Vanitas shrugged. “Call me biased, but if it weren’t for darkness, I wouldn’t exist.”
“Is that supposed to make me accept it?” she asked with raised eyebrows.
“Ouch, Aqua. I thought people with light in their hearts would be a little nicer than that,” he replied, exaggerating his offense.
Nice to be reminded where I stand… Whatever.
“Of course, even your heart isn’t completely full of light,” he retorted sharply.
“It’s better than yours,” she snapped.
“Better than me, Aqua? I thought light didn’t boast,” Vanitas taunted, enjoying the frustration on her face. Finally, a decent reaction. “What would your Master say?”
“You know nothing of my Master,” she growled, baring his keyblade in a battle stance. Was she actually planning on fighting him now, in his home court, when she was still weak and dependent on him?
“I know he hated anything with a fraction of darkness. So seeing you here, surrounded by it, talking with it…” Vanitas laughed. “He’d have a heart attack. If he was still alive, that is. But he’s not. And that’s Terra’s fault as much as Xehanort’s; you know that, right?”
“Shut up!” Tendrils of magic swirled around Aqua’s keyblade and up her arm. “You have no right to insult my friends! Terra fought his darkness!”
Vanitas’s eyes widened in genuine surprise, not that she could see.
“And are you fighting yours, Aqua?”
She gasped in a mixture of shock and confusion, then looked at the weapon in her hands. Her confusion slowly faded to disbelief at the dark magic swirling around her late Master’s keyblade.
“What…?” She tried to shake it off, but it only spread farther up her arm. “No! I don’t know what kind of trick this is—”
“It’s not a trick, Aqua. It’s you.” He was almost as shocked as she was. He knew she had natural talent at magic, but did that include dark magic that she’d (assumedly) never used before?
“No… NO!” She cast Aeroga over herself to blow away the dark magic, which finally vanished. “I can’t… I won’t…”
“Sheesh, Aqua, just give up already,” Vanitas said, leaning against a faintly glowing rock outcropping to the side of the path. “Darkness is in everyone, even in the Realm of Light. What makes you think you can escape it here?”
Her shoulders slumped as she hugged herself tightly, shivering.
“I don’t know.” Her voice came out as a hoarse growl. “I don’t know… But I have to get out of here. I have to get out…”
Vanitas didn’t think she had the energy to run, but apparently she did. She fled into a maze of organic-looking rock pillars before he remembered that he should probably chase her down, unless he wanted to be alone and bored again.
Still, something was wrong. He’d brought out the worst in her, just as he’d intended. He’d won his little game, proved that even the great Master Aqua could be broken.
“So why isn’t this any fun…?
It was even more of a maze on the inside than he’d thought. Some of the pillars were more like ridges, winding in odd patters and dead-ending in several places.
“She couldn’t have gotten that far…”
Maybe not, but there were too many directions to check, and his cloaking spell had done its job too well. Either that, or she had lost more light…
“Why should I care if she loses all her light? It happened to me, and I turned out fine,” he told himself, picking another path at random. Spiked pillars jutted from the ground in the middle of this one, forcing him to carefully weave his way down the path.
“She couldn’t have come this way,” he decided. “She’s not thinking straight enough to—”
Sobbing. Faint, but definitely coming from the end of this path. Vanitas slashed through the remaining narrower spikes between him and Aqua, who was curled in a ball under a ledge that protruded from a dead-end wall.
Now that he found her, he had no idea what to do. He’d never heard anyone cry before, unless he counted himself, and that had been a long, long time ago.
But this wasn’t that pathetic child he’d been. This was Aqua.
“Shut up,” he ordered, arms crossed over his chest.
She ignored him, the quiet shudders still wracking her body.
“I said shut up!”
She finally looked up. Her other sleeve was missing, probably caught on one of the spikes he’d chopped down. Fresh cuts marred her bare arms.
“Are you a Keyblade Master or not?” Vanitas spat. “I thought you were better than this.”
“I’m not,” she mumbled, tears streaming down her face. “I have darkness inside me…”
“So what?” He crouched in front of her. “I already told you, every creature on the face of the worlds has darkness in it. Even your beloved Master did. You’re no special snowflake.”
She lifted her head enough to glare at him.
“What sick game are you playing now? This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To watch me end up just like you?”
“As if you’re anything like me.” He almost laughed. Instead he sat down next to her with his back to the charcoal grey ledge. “You don’t even have a fraction of the darkness Ventus started with, before I was taken out.”
“But—”
“Look, you’re in the Realm of Darkness. No being of light has ever survived here, ever. So get over yourself.”
Vanitas stood up and stuck out a hand in her general direction. She stared at it, but she didn’t move. Her eyes were still dull, grey, empty, like the stone walls surrounding them.
He decided he didn’t like them like that.
“Why should I come with you?” she mumbled.
He sighed heavily. “We’ve been over this before. If you want to keep rotting down here, fine, but I’m getting out.”
“...I don’t trust you.”
“I don’t expect you to.” He shrugged, still offering his hand. “So are you coming or not? My arm’s getting tired.”
She took too long with her decision, not being considerate towards his tired arm.
“…I’m coming.” Finally she tried to stand up (though she wouldn’t accept his hand, stubborn idiot), but her legs gave out and she fell to her knees.
He rolled his eyes. “We’ll just camp here. I don’t want to carry you out.”
“I’ll be fine…”
“No, you’ll fall over on one of those spikes and impale yourself.” Vanitas summoned a few Floods and bashed them with his keyblade until HP orbs came out.
“Wait—you were the one behind the Unversed?”
“Shut up and get better.” He tossed a glowing green orb to her and stalked off.
“Where are you going?” Aqua asked weakly.
Where was he going? He wasn’t really sure, but he didn’t feel like sitting, not right now. If he sat down he might think about things. Like the fact that he might actually want her to get better.
“I saw your sleeve back there.” At least he thought he did; he hadn’t really been paying attention after he found her.
“Don’t bother,” she replied. “I can’t fix it.”
He kept walking anyway. The white tube of cloth hung in tatters from the point of a smaller jagged spire not far from their makeshift camp. She was right; there was no point in saving it. For some reason he grabbed the shredded cloth anyway.
What he came back, Aqua had summoned a small orb of Fira and sat shivering behind it.
“You need some better clothes,” Vanitas said, sitting on the other side of her Fira and still holding her sleeve. “Not that you had much to begin with.”
She glared at him, but she kept her temper in check this time.
“I live in a castle full of boys. The only clothes I had belonged to Masters that had lived there decades ago, and what I made myself.”
“Which one was that?” Vanitas nodded in her general direction.
“All that’s left are the borrowed parts.” She shivered. “But I can’t make any new clothes without the proper materials.”
He looked her over. He’d already seen that her skirt-thing was missing, and so were both of her sleeves, of course. One of her pink chest-straps had snapped too. What he hadn’t noticed before was that her shoes were also missing (how had she lost metal boots? Throwing them at the Heartless?), and her long black socks were crisscrossed with scars. Her shirt was thick enough to weather cuts and scratches, but it had been singed on the left side. Vanitas was slightly disappointed that she’d never been this damaged by any of her fights with him.
“Those won’t last another Heartless attack,” he said truthfully.
“They’ll have to,” Aqua replied, still shivering as the Fira cast flickering orange highlights and shadows across her face. “This is all I have.”
“Maybe not,” he thought out loud. “My suit was created from the darkness. I might be able to do the same for you.”
“No!” she objected immediately. “I don’t want anything else to do with darkness.”
Vanitas shrugged. “Fine, but if your clothes fall off while we’re fighting, it’s your problem.”
He wondered if it was just the tint of his mask combined with the glow of the fire, or if it was actually possible for her to blush blood red.
“My clothes aren’t going to fall off.”
“Stop acting like an idiot. It’s not like a dark suit will hurt you, anyway. If anything, it’ll protect you from the darkness.”
“I don’t believe you,” Aqua huffed, “but I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”
“You still have a choice.” He shrugged again. “You can choose to go naked. I don’t really care.”
She glared with more hate than he expected. “You’re disgusting.”
“What?” Why were clothes such a touchy subject? Her eyes didn’t look that angry even when he insulted Terra and Eraqus. “Am I supposed to care if you wear clothes or not?”
Now it was her turn to be confused.
“No. Wait, yes—ugh.” She dropped her head into her hands, which had retained their fingerless gloves. “People have to wear clothes. I have to wear clothes. End of discussion.”
“Okay, whatever.” He still didn’t see what the big deal was. He wore more clothes than her on a regular basis anyway, and it was only for the sake of protection (and because Master Xehanort had forbidden him from getting rid of them). But that didn’t sound like what she was worried about. “So do you want a dark suit or not?”
“Fine,” she grudgingly agreed. He suspected it was just to make him shut up.
“Move your arms.” He pointed to where her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, trying to keep warm.
“Why?” she asked suspiciously.
“Shut up and do it. I’m running out of patience.”
She finally obeyed, and he placed a hand at the base of her neck, where her collarbones would meet if they weren’t covered by her shirt. She flinched away.
“Don’t touch me!”
He rolled his eyes. “How else do you expect me to make your suit? Just be glad I’m letting you keep your shirt on. This would probably be easier without it.” He couldn’t be sure since he’d never actually done it before, but the barrier of fabric was another variable he had to deal with.
She gritted her teeth.
“I hope you know I still hate you.”
“I’d be offended if you didn’t.”
He closed his eyes and focused on his inner darkness, sort of like when he would summon a dark corridor, only he coaxed it into forming thin navy-blue tendrils. To make those tendrils grow, he had to reach out to her darkness, tearing a bloodcurdling scream from her lips.
“Suck it up, you’re fine,” Vanitas told her, his focus wavering. The tendrils paused until he tugged at her darkness again.
“You said it wouldn’t hurt!” she screamed.
“I said the suit won’t hurt. I never said making it wouldn’t.”
She screamed again, but he gritted his teeth and pushed through it, making the organic tendrils split and wrap around her neck and arms. Next he made them cover her back and chest, forming a pattern similar to the one on his own, before moving on to her waist and legs. A ragged skirt, longer than his own, flowered of its own accord. Her cries had faded to whimpers by the time he ended with pointed boots.
Aqua gasped for breath. “You—you...”
“Yes, I’m a monster,” he drawled, remembering the previous time she’d called him that, back in Neverland. In the Realm of Light. It already felt like a different lifetime. “You can call me that when that suit ends up saving your life.”
“What life…?” She slid down the stone wall until she was almost lying down. “I’m already dead…”
Vanitas stared at her sad grey eyes before they closed in fitful sleep. No appreciation. No “thanks, Vanitas, for trying to stop me from getting myself killed.” He shouldn’t have bothered.
“You’re not dead, Aqua. Not until I say so.”