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moved-to-void-kissed · 4 years ago

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Out of the Shadows

In trying to help alleviate Ventus’ nightmares by taking the excess darkness afflicting him, Aria’s intervention accidentally reawakens Vanitas, who had been forced back into Ven’s heart upon his defeat. The two brothers have another tense reunion as Aria is confronted, but under Master Aqua’s authority, a solution is found. (2649 words)

Takes place after the ending of KH3. Content warning for a description of a character having a nightmare and what devolves into a bit of an argument between multiple very tired entities. No feelings are permanently hurt.

I refused to let this month pass by without some kind of selfship content, so I decided to write out the scene of where I bring Vanitas back, because he deserves a redemption/revival because I say so. I hope it’s alright!

Comments on and reblogs of my work are always okay, and appreciated, but are by no means required! I recommend reading this on the document that is linked, but if that doesn't work, a copy-pasted transcript is also present under the readmore.

“Um, excuse me..?”

It was very late at night in the Land of Departure, but the door to the Keyblade Master’s room had been nudged open by a small, vaguely catlike creature. It had a troubled expression, which only seemed to be magnified when a pair of unexpected amber eyes met its gaze from the darkness above the bed; it did not speak or even move again until the eyes’ owner, a young woman appearing somewhat displeased, had silently moved away from her still-sleeping partner, and made her way towards it.

“Is something the matter, Chirithy?” she asked in a low voice, but did not lower herself to the Dream Eater’s diminutive height.

“I, um, I’m really sorry to wake you up, but-”

“No, don’t worry; I can tell this is important.” she interrupted. “What happened?”

“..It’s Ven.” it whispered worriedly. “He’s having another nightmare again, but.. Nothing I can do is helping, a-and I’m worried about him..!”

“That is.. not ideal,” replied Aria, now also somewhat concerned. She knew the purpose of each Chirithy bound to all Keyblade wielders, except for herself, back in the age of fairytales - they were companion creatures, assigned to support their wielder and provide them with guidance as they progressed through the ranks of their respective Unions. As Dream Eaters - specifically Spirits, the benevolent kind, unless one was twisted by its wielder falling to darkness to turn into a Nightmare - this should have been something Ventus’ Chirithy could deal with easily. Therefore, the fact it had come to ask the resident Keyblade Master of the Land of Departure for assistance - even if she was not the one who had heard its plea - demonstrated the magnitude of the situation to Aria very clearly.

She gestured at the hallway behind Chirithy and allowed it to hurriedly lead her down the corridor, nervously clutching its bag of Lux in its paws. As it reached Ventus’ bedroom, it pushed the door open wide enough for her to enter, where she could quickly sense that something was amiss. Despite Chirithy having turned the lamp on, and the curtain being half-open to let a stream of moonlight fall into the room, Ven still appeared to be sleeping - but it was clear that he was distressed by the way he was trembling, and the tears that were forming in his tightly-closed eyes.

“I thought my actions earlier would have dealt with this..” she grumbled, more to herself than to the Chirithy. “This is not what I had expected - the process went far more smoothly for Terra. Let me see if doing it again will help him here, assuming that this is caused by a resurgence of excess darkness..”

She curled her hand into a claw, and an aura of darkness began to emanate from Ventus’ body and be drawn up into her hand, like a cloth being pulled from a table. Chirithy gasped and clutched its purse of Lux in alarm, but seemed more surprised than concerned once it realised that Ventus was becoming less restless. Aria could sense that the darkness she was siphoning from him was soaked through with anguish and guilt, stained with pain drawn from memories the young Keyblade wielder had only just ended up regaining again. Though those memories - and Ventus - originated from the same time that she had, they seemed to have become no less impactful in their effect on him over time. Then again, to the boy who had been sent forwards through time without having to wait it out as Aria did, that time was not truly so long ago, even if he had once forgotten it.

After a short while, the flow of darkness started to ease, and Aria couldn’t help but wonder what the problem had truly been as she held what she had collected in an orb. Then she saw it through the moonlight; Ventus’ shadow was flickering. And twice the size it reasonably should have been.

The darkness she was drawing on became wreathed in harsh scarlet, and with a movement all-too-wrongly seeming deliberate, it pulled itself back from where she was taking it and shot directly down to Ventus’ shadow on the floor. Suddenly, the shadow deepened from a pale translucence to a pure and endless void of black, and the writhing red threads that spanned it seemed to somehow match Ven’s now-renewed - and more violent - restlessness.

“Chirithy,” Aria commanded, “go and wake Aqua. Leave Terra to rest if you can, though.”

She refused to tear any more of her attention away from what was happening, and the terrified Dream Eater rushed out of the room only moments before a whirlwind of red darkness wrapped around the room and sent Aria flying out into the hallway. This caught her off-guard, but she had no choice or time to wait for anyone to help her, and decided to once again enter the darkness. The whirling maelstrom could not give her any resistance as she leapt into it, but Aria did not have any means at her disposal to fight back against whatever it was she was facing; she now stood on guard with an uncharacteristic uncertainty inside the fully-dark space, until a figure started to rise up out of the shadows before her.

The adversary emanated a powerful darkness of the kind not seen since the ancient age of fairytales - a furious presence stronger than even the largest Heartless could hope to inflict. Yet there was something empty in its rage, as well, and this emptiness stood first and foremost as the darkness coating the figure began to dissipate. When it had cleared, it showed Aria the face of a teenager older than the very world she stood in, with spiky jet-black hair and piercing, bright red eyes.

She then realised that what she faced was in fact a kindred spirit.

“So it was you who woke me back up, huh?” The figure’s voice was arrogant and uncaring, doing all it could to give off an air of menace as he looked down at Aria.

She decided to be unfazed. “It would certainly seem so. But that was what had to happen. For your sake, and that of Ventus, as well.”

“Oh, don’t give me that.” he sneered back, sounding surprisingly insulted. “You don’t know anything about us. I don’t even know who you are.”

“If only that were true the other way around.” she replied, deciding to match his emotion with apathy. “Then again, it seems the two of us are alike, aren’t we?”

This statement brought the first instance of confusion to Aria’s opponent. “What? Don’t be ridiculous..”

“A Darkness that came to dwell within the heart of an unwilling Keyblade wielder, and has since ended up in the present time alongside them.” she said, telling both his story and hers. “Then it was split, by the act of a Keyblade, to now become its own separate entity.”

“How- How could you know something like that?!”

At this, the figure summoned a black and red Keyblade with a swirl of gears and darkness, and gripped it angrily in his right hand. Nevertheless, Aria stood resolute in spite of lacking one herself, and continued to tell him what at least part of him was desperate to know.

“I told you before. In terms of what you are, you remind me of me.”

“Shut up!” he yelled back at her, now jabbing Void Gear towards her despite the distance between where they were both standing.

For a reason Aria couldn’t quite pinpoint, it pained her to see him like this.

“Why did you have to just get in the way and tear us apart again?” he continued to shout. “Neither of us asked for this!”

“Your presence back in Ventus’ heart was causing him distress.” she explained, having seen it firsthand. “There was not enough space to accomodate what you both have become in each other’s absence.”

Part of him refused to acknowledge this, and the other part quelled his fury slightly as he answered her statements with a bitter voice. “I was happy with my place, you know. And now you’re here, interfering. So what am I supposed to do now, huh?!”

He raised his Keyblade above his head and stepped back as if to lunge at her, but something stopped him in his tracks.

“Vanitas..!”

A voice had piped up from behind where Vanitas was standing, where the darkness receded slightly to reveal a blond-haired Keyblade wielder lying on the floor. It was Ventus, who had finally fully awakened. Aria noticed through his tired expression that the gold flecks in his eyes had mostly shifted to red.

“Ahh, there you are again, brother!” he cried out. As Ven rose to his feet, Vanitas’ expression slowly shifted from gleeful relief to confusion when he sensed his brother’s animosity.

“Ohh, don’t tell me you somehow got attached to this lady?” he asked mockingly, once again pointing his Keyblade nonchalantly at Aria. “Come on, Venty, she’s insignificant.”

“I’m the reason you can dare to stand here and say that, actually.”

At this defiance, Vanitas instinctively snarled and shot forwards to lash out at her - but the blond-haired boy rushed to meet his path, and blocked the incoming blow with a shout.

“Don’t hurt her!”

Ventus’ outburst created a powerful burst of light, causing Aria to recoil and Vanitas to be flung backwards. The storm of darkness around them seemed to falter at the impact.

“You- what?!”

Even after regaining his stance, Vanitas was visibly taken aback, and once again looked insulted.

“You’d trust- you’d protect- a stranger like her, over your own brother? Ventus, she doesn’t belong here!”

“Yes, she does!” he insisted, now holding his own Keyblade, Wayward Wind. “She’s Aqua’s girlfriend, and she’s my friend. Terra would say the same.”

That was the first time Ven had ever made it clear what he really thought of Aria within earshot of her..

“If anything,” he continued firmly, annoyed by lack of sleep - “you’re the one who doesn’t belong, Vani.”

“Don’t you dare-” He tried to retaliate coldly, but found himself exhausted. “Don’t say that to me. Please..”

Aria could sense the tension between the brothers both amplifying and dissipating due to their tiredness - it was clear they were both unwilling to fight each other as she knew they had done so much in the past. As she was trying to figure out a way to resolve the situation, the darkness suddenly flickered and faltered from the impact of a shower of light, and a young Keyblade Master with messier-than-usual blue hair managed to push through into the sphere that Vanitas had summoned.

“Enough of this!”

It was Aqua, whose dark blue dressing-gown somehow did not look out of place alongside her Rainfell Keyblade. She looked weary from being woken up suddenly, but she still tried to appear firm and resolute when faced with none other than Vanitas. As the darkness faded away, revealing Ventus’ bedroom again, she stepped forward with her Keyblade raised to confront him. However, Aria held out her arm to gently prevent her girlfriend from causing further conflict, and Aqua’s Rainfell dissipated with a flurry of pink petals.

“Oh, so you’re here too now, huh. Isn’t that just great.” Vanitas grumbled sarcastically. There were hints of his earlier arrogance still trying to persist, but most of it now had been replaced with a decidedly more melancholy temperament.

“Vanitas..” muttered Aqua, still not trusting him given their previous conflicts. “Why have you come back?”

“That would be my fault.” Aria answered in his stead. “I was trying to help Ventus, but in doing so, I unintentionally brought Vanitas out of his heart again.”

“Oh, I see.”

There was a short pause as Aqua continued to assess the situation, and she was keenly aware of the way that Ven was not holding the same grudge that was once obvious from his demeanour around his brother. As well as this, she had noticed a change from what she remembered of Vanitas, too - if not shown by the change in his eye colour, there was a definite sense that he had potential to be different from how he had acted in their last encounters. This pause trailed into a long and awkward silence as she tried to sort out her thoughts and feelings, and it was Ven who eventually broke the uncomfortableness of the four figures standing and looking at each other.

“What do we do now, then?”

Aqua looked across at him suddenly, then slowly turned to look at Vanitas, whose silent expression seemed to indicate he was willing to defer to her authority in this instance. Then, she admitted the first thing that had come to mind.

“..I think what we all need is a rest.”

This finally brought a smile out of Ventus, and his normal sunny demeanour started to shine through again. “Haha, yeah, you’re right.”

“..What about me?” Vanitas’ voice rang out through the room with a lonely tone.

“Well, you can rest too, Vani.” said Ven.

“What?” He was once again taken aback by this; it was not something he expected in the slightest. “I don’t.. understand what you’re saying-”

“The bonds between the two of us aren’t something we can change.” Ven continued over him. “They’re unbreakable chains, and they have been ever since we were separated. I know we’re not the same, but- you’re here now, and you’re different to how you were before, when we fought. And, I don’t really know why that is, but.. If you want to stay here, then I say you can.”

After saying this, he turned to face his fellow Wayfinder. “Aqua, is that okay?”

She smiled kindly at this gesture. “I’m still not sure how comfortable I am with all of this, but I think that will come in the morning. I’m going to go back to my room now, because I definitely need to get some more sleep. And, I trust you two not to cause any more trouble for the moment. So, for now, I suppose all I have to say is.. Welcome to the Land of Departure, Vani.”

He, again, was left speechless by her kindness.

“I’ll be there in a moment, bluebird.” Aria called after her as she left the room. She turned to face the two brothers and could read the expression of surprise and uncertainty on Vani’s face; it was clear he wasn’t sure if Aqua was lying, and so she decided to reassure him, and extended her hand to him.

“If I was accepted here, then so would you, Vanitas. You can live out your life alongside them, just like I am - you can exist here as yourself, not as anything Xehanort wanted you to be. You can be the darkness, so your brothers can wield the light; for this world lies between their realms, so its inhabitants may together uphold the balance between the two.

There is a place for all of us here.

So, what do you say?”

A long pause followed, but the black-haired boy tentatively responded in kind to her movement, now appearing more like a timid wild animal than the furious beast he had tried to be for so long. A tear started forming in his eye, but it was interrupted when Ventus stepped in to give him a hug, and Aria felt satisfied enough to follow Aqua back to bed.

Though it would take a fair while for things to truly settle properly, with no small amount of awkwardness and lingering moments of tension, it was not the first time the Wayfinder trio had adapted to bring a wielder of darkness into their land, and Vanitas’ presence did indeed seem to fit well with the neutrality of the world, just as hers had.

Perhaps he was fit to walk alongside those he would come to see as his siblings, after all.