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bluest-planet · 8 months

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Unfathomable Rage, snippet.

Even if Yoruhua's Heart is no longer made entirely of Darkness, their body still is. And sometimes it feels like they just swapped one steel cage for another made of bone.

Vanitas just wants his keyblade back.

Part of this series of a loosely connected OC and Vanitas' roadtrip snippets. Non chronological. And loose continuity.

Yoruhua honestly has no idea what he was doing anymore.

He is old, and he is tired.

He didn't want to do this again; there's was so much left yet to to do, he felt overwhelmed as to which path to follow next, along with worrying over taking care of both himself and Vanitas from any harm in their weaken states. Be it Light or Darkness.

He has no thought out rescue plan, no supplies, no protection in Quiet Regalia, no idea where he's going in such a vastly unrecognizable realm, one that's moved on without him after all these years.

He's just going, anywhere that'll take him. He has nothing to guide him, except his broken piece of heart. Even then, the mountain of work left ahead of him made him so exhaustively frustrated.

Yet again he was forced to restart his life from nothing. To figure out how to climb that infinite mountain.

First it was being born; created by his mourning sisters' misplaced hope in seeing their brother again- left to assimilate in the night, in the Dark. When he hadn't been what they were expecting.

Then, it was being forgotten in a rushed retreat- abandoned to a hostile foreign Realm. Completely detached from the collective he was apart of, like drifting like broken, dying coral.

At least then he had her to keep him company and teach him about her realm. She who allowed him to graft himself onto, anchored to her shadow.

After that, he returned to an immature collective, regained his crown, his power, his title, and his hour of night. But he didn't want any of it anymore, he couldn't, so he gave it up to be one with her forever; promising to share the same heart and shadow, mind and matter.

I am thou, and thou art I.

He thought that was the end of it, he finally had everything he ever wanted. Even if they weren't accepted in either grace of Night and Day. Now he existed in a state fuller than he's ever felt before, heart unbound by natural law, free to traverse between dawn and dusk. He had nothing left and wanted nothing more. Free to make their own choices.

Until... Well, nothing ever seems to last long enough.

Again it was all taken away again. Grossly ripped apart and without mercy. Unwillingly annullling his promise, left to watch the life he didn't even get to finish building, pass by him through a narrow, unfinished window. Leaving permeant angry claw marks on the sil and cracks in the stained glass.

And now? After all that time? He's free, he was alive, he was here, and he made it. But that wasn't very true was it? He's still waiting for her near the end of the finish line, as he promised. He refused to cross the line without her word. Not when he still has to gather all his pieces up again and again.

Over, and over.

It was grounding those pieces down, into nothing but dust.

And you can't fix dust, can you?

Nor can you get it back when it's been blown away. Lost in the wind.

Ash to dust, left to rust, all time fades away...

...

I'm going insane.

It would be so easy to fall back into that ever present anger that still simmered just under his cold skin. Boiling him alive. It was making him sicker by the minute.

For so long, his anger kept him tethered to this existance, using negativity to recreate his own well gravity where there was none; furious at his imprisonment, he used it to crush his foes and bind other hearts to his own, in an last attempt to drag the one he so desperately wanted back,

Her.

Orichalchemi.

His Heart's Promise.

A shuddered breath escapes him as he walks through the small village. It's barely audible under the humid and heavy, down pouring rain. He briefly looks over his short companion for a distraction. There, Vanitas walks beside him quietly for once.

Was he enjoying it? The heavy, oppressive rain practically flooding the streets, creating small waterfalls falling from old clay rooftops tiles into gushing streams atop gris weathered cobblestone. A loud swirling sound coming from the round drain grate in the middle of the street. And though they were largely protected walking besides the storefronts and under their awnings, the wild wind still manages to land a few droplets on them.

Yoruhua tries to enjoy it; having been stuck in a Keyblade for so long deprived of any sensation- this should feel... Euphoric, shouldn't it? Their anger should be washed away with the rain; they had no use for it, now that they were free- it should've instead burned out to give way for fiery determination only.

But...

Another deep breath escapes them, stealing petrichor rich air immediately after, hoping to extinguish the stubborn fury still burning in their lungs like fire in a coal mine. And they swallow saliva to banish the tight bitterness clogging their throat, the toxic fumes that escaped from the hell underneath.

Yoruhua is unable to stop the way their brows furrow into an unwanted hateful scowl on their face.

Immediately, they feel Vanitas' questioning stare. Always quick to pick up on their mood, likely able to smell the intensifying burnt copal wafting from them, even under all this rain. Regardless of the smell, he's annoyingly perceptive like that; able to read people in an instant, always anticipating for hostility.

They used to be the same; but now, they've lost that too, just like they did everything else upon being freed. Walking, talking, breathing, reading, sleeping. And so much more. All of it digested by gluttonous fury that deemed it unimportant to preserve.

They stifle a deep sigh. Guess they'll just have to relearn that too, they've done so many times before.

Except this time Orichalchemi isn't right there by their side to learn along with them, their mind circles back, entirely intrusive. They shift the tracks on that dreary train of thought to something more positive; on her never wavering support and fun mischief. Gone, but not forgotten.

They longed so deeply to hear another of her dumb jokes and puns, get sidetracked listening to whatever rant about some odd plants she found, or just goofing off while the furnaces smelted iron in the privacy of her forge.

He feels the ghost of Orichalchemi's metal touch on her cheeks. It would be warm, heated up by a day's work blacksmithing, comforting on Yoruhua's cool icy skin. Always trying to keep them warm even if she herself couldn't feel the temperature. Smudgy ash would get on his skin, but he wouldn't mind, not when she'd always wipe it off with that well worn, patchy handkerchief of hers.

What Yoruhua would do just to be able to dance with her one more time, or collaborate on creating a new keyblade, or gardening in peaceful silence.

He wanted her and Vanitas to meet. To show Vanitas that not all hope was lost; there were some Lights that accepted and respected them for what they are. That there was a chance at a normal life for them, he didn't have to walk only at the edges of sunrise; the day was theirs for the taking too.

They just knew she would share the same admiration and love for the Dark in him as she did for them.

But their rose tinted memories and dreams do next to nothing to soothe their pain. It only fans the flames.

If... If she didn't find her, then neither her nor Vanitas would be able to truly stop running. She'd never be able to claim the day for herself again. Yoruhua doesn't think she can do this all on her own, so it's not an option. She must find her.

And instead, she's here. Wasting time.

This time, there's no mistaking it, another frustrated sigh seethes past their increasingly blackening teeth. Their icy breath misting miasma into humid, hot air.

Ironic that their emotions burned them inside out within a frosted shell.

They can barely breath. Charcoal black copal suffocating their lungs.

Another step, keep walking, the rain is never ending. His footsteps next to yours; my footsteps next to his.

They're his, they'll always be his, I can recognize his gait anywhere. I would know, I've watched him since birth. You're irreplaceable, you're me, so I'll never forget what you sound like; but when he walks next to me like that, it's like he's stepping in the footsteps you left behind.

Did you make this desired path for us to take? To make this journey ever so easier for me, just as I tried to support him? I hope it leads back to you. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you, where are you? Why am I here at the end of the line, without you? Did you take a branching path I somehow missed? Please wait for me to catch up!

...Will you always be out of reach?

...

Light flashes over the village, a blinding white in less than a second. Lightning. A very old fear plucks at her heartstrings, stopping her in her tracks.

"What's got you so spooked?" Vanitas jeers.

Yoruhua's fingers twitch, and they resist the urge to clench right into a fist. Or to let their claws unsheathe. Ruining their white leather gloves.

Instead, they bring their hands close to their chest and crack their knuckles against their palms. A satisfying string of boney pops and cracks echo between them. Then they twist their atrophied wrists, it's louder, and sounds painful. But it isn't. It snaps instead like pulled rubber.

The space between their joints feel looser, less tight, lest upset.

For now.

Vanitas seems mildly put off by their actions and lack of reply, but puts on a mean smirk, "well, whatever, I'd thought you'd never shut up."

That gets a response.

Yoruhua's miscolored eyes snap to look him directly in the eye. His own red pupils scorned by hers; yellow stained sclera, with birthed red on the right, and adopted blue on the left.

She doesn't say anything, just stares at him as if she's looking right through him. It's... Terrifying. It's not at all what he wanted or expected trying to get another rise out of her.

She shouldn't look at me that, his mind tells him, so vacant but so full of fragile, ancient agony, just waiting to spill out. He feels like he's staring down death.

Maybe he is.

How many lives has Yoruhua taken, as Void Gear? And before that, as a creature of pure Darkness?

In an era where keyblades hadn't been created yet; the first, baby Lights unable to defend themselves against hoards of Darkness.

Her one blue eye has always upset him- how illfitting and horribly familiar it was. It was filled with Light; it made his skin crawl when she looked at him. As if she could find him anywhere and always would. He always expected her to see him for what he really was eventually, like all the other Lights. Just another disgusted, hateful, or scared holy blue added to a growing chest full of ultramarine.

But it never came.

He looks at Vanitas, and his blue eye never averts. Only staring at him with unbridled attention and... Care.

It wasn't pity; just care and attention. It tracks him because it didn't want him out of its loyal sight; Yoruhua was afraid of loosing him. She watches him because it brought her comfort, because she was protecting him.

Not because he needed it, but because she did. Not willing to loose her one connection to the real world in eons.

And then he realized; it wasn't just like the Lights. There was only one other blue eye, recognizable sapphire instead of lapis just as ancient as hers, that he felt- not a fondness, but trust, reliability- when it looked at him. Void Gear.

The realization made him sick to his stomach. He hadn't lost it, his keyblade, he hadn't lost her. His one true companion, and constant since he was brought into this world.

Maybe it wasn't Wayward Wind, and maybe he hated her at first for not being his original keyblade, the one born of his heart and made for his palm. He blamed her, as if she was a symbol of all his failures and proof that he wasn't worthy of reclaiming his old identity. The only keyblade fit for a monster like himself, equally rejected by the Light.

She never belonged to him, but was lent to him. She, a dying keyblade without a wielder, and he a doomed wielder without a keyblade.

A pact made out of survival rather than trust or worthiness.

Haunting sapphire forever forced to silently serve possessed ruby turned tyrant topaz.

Regardless of his vitriol and violence, how he abused the blade in day and night. Refusing to properly maintain the blade as a punishment for the both of them. Waiting for the blade to finally give up on him and break during battle; she stubbornly stuck by him.

Till the bitter end.

And still does now.

She's watching him, like she would when he'd sleep, or when he'd be caught in a fight. Never sparing a look at his opponent, only him. Wondering if he'd make it out unscathed.

But this look, this old, detached rage.

He didn't want to be right this time; all blue eyes would come to hate him eventually.

They always do.

Both of them don't say anything. Vanitas doesn't have the guts, and Yoruhua knew that once she did- she wouldn't be able to stop the floodgates.

Then...

in the distance-

-THUNDER!

"Shit!" Vanitas jumps, turning to see another flash of jagged lightning striking a far off mountain and away from their staring contest.

He doesn't realize his mistakes until it's too late.

The sudden movement, the fact that he looks human, his uniform particularly triggering, the loud thunder and blinding lightning-!

Yoruhua finally snaps, unable to reign in the destructive wildfire festering in their body.

They char within hungry rage, eager to swallow them back in and sink it's teeth into his battered body. Like slipping into an old shoe, he fits in its between its protective fangs perfectly.

Bones snap to relieve the building pressure inside, allowing Darkness to reshape itself into something bigger and meaner.

Vanitas gets the wind knocked outta him, thrown into flooded streets.

"Ahugh-!?"

He twitches on the ground, unable to think straight while so lightheaded. Water soaks into his expose hair and face, the rain has no mercy; filling up his nose and ears.

The shadow cast over his body is what tells him Yoruhua stands above him; hanging oppressively tall and dead silent.

Their sharp golden feet barely make a sound, the ripples following their long strides disrupting the flow of floodwater in front of his face. It gives him a second's reprieve to surface his face to for desperate gulps of humid air.

Uncomfortable cooling droplets fall down from his black hair to his face. He tries to wipe it away to see better, but it's a pointless endeavour while vulnerable in the middle of the storm.

His lungs tremble inside; wracked with exhaustion and heavy pain. A deep bruise settling over his chest where he was struck by pure muscle.

Heaving, he brings a hand to cover his face, about to yell at her for hitting him in the first place, when he finally looks up.

Endless black hollowness.

He stifles a swear. Looking directly at her was a mistake.

As a pure Dark being, Yoruhua has no face and her body was the epitome of her entire existence; Instead it's a hollowed out heart with curled heart shaped horns ending into a sharp point. Long claw like hair tiredly falling down their back. Ending with an upsidedown crown choking their neck. But, with no mouth or nose to breath, her cries have nowhere to go.

The same atrophied, spindly hands- now thin claws- wrap around under their shoulders. A warped mimicry of a hug, or strangulation. Kept in place by white leather belts and golden chains, preventing them from reaching out. Unable to defend a larger heart shaped hollow on their chest, much like an other Darkside. The rain passes through them as if she isn't real; nothing to be concerned about with little impact on the world around them.

Small bat like wings peak from his hips, sharp enough to cut anything trying to get close, but are rendered useless by the long, heavy dragging tail behind them. It almost looks painful to carry, in contrast with the much thinner and weak looking body. It's awkward, really. The sharp halberd point adding unnecessary violence.

The silhouette reminding him of mixture of various monsters made of Darkness, the Heartless, Nightmares, Unversed and the emptiness of a Nobody. But no where did he see a unique mark.

Fitting, considering Vanitas had no idea what Yoruhua really was; she refused to fit into any one definition since he met her.

< When.... When does this end...? >

Vanitas cringes, the sound of Yoruhua's... Voice, grates in his mind. Like it was trying to scrape its meaning into his soft brain with a jagged rock.

But he recovers fast enough, this time, he knew what to expect and could adjust.

His own voice comes out haggard, "you're gonna... 'ave t'be more clear.... 'bout that..."

He couldn't fight back like this, so against his gut instincts he didn't move. Glaring at her gold crown instead.

Wind blows through her hollow face, whipping past to sound like clamoring howl.

< When does it end? > Yoruhua asks.

Vanitas shakes his head annoyed, "I... I don't k-know what you mean!"

One of their hair claws crack like a wip, dredging him up by the neck to force him to look at them.

< WHEN DOES IT ALL END?! >

Vanitas bites down a yell, the loudness pounding against his skull. Angry now, himself, he tries to fight back.

He repeatedly claws at the hair around his throat, even his his fingers just keep slipping through, he doesn't stop trying to break free.

This isn't how he wanted this to play out; he wanted to see the extent of their Darkness, but not with it turned against him like this.

At first he just wanted their power for himself; wanted them to revert back into a sapphire eye caged in black steel for him to wield again. But now he wanted nothing to do with it. Not whole they were possessed by lapis, it looked wrong on them, like they were at its mercy rather than the other way around.

They'd promised to share their shadow with him, but this? This was just their stygian rage.

"I DON'T KNOW! MAYBE IT NEVER WILL!" he spits in their face. Braving the emptiness. He needed to dredge that sapphire out of them instead of endless black.

He manages to wrap a hand around their hair, clutching it tight together hoping it hurt, "it'll never end at this rate, so get yourself together! You don't get to complain to me, of all fucking people, for it to end!"

He pulls on the hair, tugging her head forward by just a bit. He hears and sees nothing; no breathing, no eyes.

Regardless, "I was finished. I was fucking done, Yoruhua! You were the one to bring me back, to drag me with you on this stupid quest, and keep us safe- It's your fault we're both still here!"

He screams in her face, "so don't you dare give up, and finish was you started!"

The monster in front of him recoils, its horns point towards him and graze his cheek as it withers in anguish.

< All of this, was a mistake. >

He barely flinches when blood spills from the cut but her words gut his stomach more painful more than any wound, a horrible sadness and indignation settling.

He used to be jealous of them; of the fact they never seemed to hate themselves as much as he did himself.

He hated being wrong, he hated being wrong so much more than he liked being being right.

He was a mistake. He never should've come back,

And neither, apparently, should've Yoruhua.

No... he thinks, after everything he's done? It can't have been for nothing.

Just like Vanitas; even where everything but the end goal was pointless, it was that one goal that gave him enough to keep going. His was the X-Blade and the peace that came with it, and he failed, so death was his consolation prize.

If Yoruhua refused to give that back to him, they owed it to repay him with something far greater.

Her own quest, to save her Light. To become whole.

Well, maybe he wanted to see the product of that.

And maybe... Maybe that would sustain him, to live through vicariously.

Yoruhua was more like him than he wanted to admit; chasing after the right to exist without pain. And she might just be able to do what he could not. She's done it before, so there was no way he'd believe she'd just stop trying when they've already done the hardest part of doing the impossible. That was just illogical.

Bitterly, he seethes, "Aren't you the one who said... Coming back was yours greatest moment? I thought you reveled in your existance."

< ... >

Vanitas scoffs a humorless laugh, the rain easily drowns it out, but Yoruhua is close enough to hear the mocking sound.

Their grip on Vanitas tightens around his throat, ready to squeeze the life out of him.

This death, could never live up to the first. He was a dying wielder, and they a doomed keyblade.

Well, even in this greatest betrayal, he refused to give her the last laugh.

"So much for your pride, Void Gear." He hissed. Never breaking contact with the shadow of his former sister, even as spots started to fill his vision and his body seized in her traitorous strangle.

What I am is Darkness, so to it I'll always return.

...

......

.........

Faintly, he can hear rain. It's a soft pitter patter against glass; nothing like the aggressive deluge of before.

The air is cool; not humid like before. Brisk, even. He wondered why, but nothing makes sense in the Realm of Darkness.

The wood beneath him is smooth and just as cold. A thin sheet under his body reminding him of the one he kept within his shelter in the Graveyard. Entirely impersonal.

He tries to get a gulp of air, but his throat trembles in weakness. It's scratchy and just shy of turning into a sore throat soon. He regrets it almost immediately. But a whiff of something in the air shakes off his grogginess instantly.

Faint Petrichor... bittersweet, burnt chocolate almost coffee like?... And thick smoky copal...

He almost chokes on it, which thankfully he doesn't; it would have made the tightness in his throat so much worse.

He doesn't have the strength to move his neck, let alone his body, stars, he's light headed...

His eyelids feel so heavy... And the familiar scent so comforting...

Maybe, he can go back and rest.

So he allows his eyes to droop, resting with his eyes closed for a few minutes. Entirely unaware of what conspired before this moment other an exhaustive hate.

Now was his time to rest.

He manages to turns on his side, using his arm to cushion his head, and the other to reach out for-

-Void... Regalia...?

Too tired to ponder if it was the right name, he accepts the summoned keyblade. It fits perfectly in his grasp, and that's enough to ease him back into a dreamless sleep.

The keyblade's resigned sapphire eye faithfully watches over him, quietly. Like it had hundreds of times before.

#kh #kingdom hearts #kh fanfic #kh vanitas #kh oc #starry stories #JESUS CHRIST THIS WAS A BEAST TO DO AND I JUST CUT IT SHORT LOLLLLL #Sorry ive been working on this for a while all on the tumblr app itself that where i usually do #this is not the norm but we were already in deep soooo #anyways please enjoy this angsty mess it was done on pure vibes alone #good night it is 5 am back to ponied #ponies* god mm a mess excuse typos lol #i really do be throwing vanitas against the wall soaked in milk huh #sorry boy ur a ragdoll now my b its just to fun to see him have to be taken care of/manhandled by Yoru cause shes almost 2x his hight #im not kidding. yoru is taller than any other kh character bc i said so #which means hes probably like. 7'5 or smth #allowed tho cause they're a homunculus lol #meanwhile Ori is- *gunshot* sorry no one is allowed to know until we get the Ori chapter actually

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