Chapter Text
Vanitas couldn’t stop looking at his brother. Seeing him stand in the cold hallways Vanitas had lived (well, not lived) in for four years was more mind-boggling than any of the magic he had seen or done during that time. It was exactly the kind of juxtaposition Master Xehanort had warned him against during his foolish sentimental moods when he wanted to contact his other siblings.
“Don’t touch that,” Vanitas snapped as Ventus leaned towards one of the masks hanging on the walls.
“I wasn’t gonna,” Ventus protested.
His nosiness hadn’t changed in the four years they had been separated. It gave Vanitas an idea.
“Follow me,” Vanitas said. “I’ll show you my room.”
Ventus practically jumped in excitement. The cat in his arms (probably his familiar) squeaked quietly in protest. Ventus must have noticed Vanitas’s glance, because as they were walking, he held out the gray tabby and showed him to Vanitas. The cat’s legs and torso drooped from his grip
“This is Chirithy. I found him a year after I started training with my master. Isn’t he cute?”
Cute. Now that was a word Vanitas wouldn’t be caught using.
“Sure,” he said in a razor-even voice.
“Do you have any familiars?” The smile dropped from Ventus’s face. “Or is it impossible because you’re dead?”
“It’s a little bit of both,” Vanitas said. “I’ll show you sometime.”
“Please do!”
He was so damn excited to see Vanitas. A part of Vanitas wanted to let himself get excited too, and actually catch up with his brother, but he couldn’t miss the opportunity to hear what the other witches would say about him and his master. He led Ventus through the endless marble halls and into his room.
The bed was neatly made in the exact same way it had been when Vanitas first walked into the room four years ago, but everything else had been changed. The floor was painted with a variety of ritual circles adorned with arcane runes. Piles of animal bones were stored on black shelves next to leather-bound tomes, chunks of obsidian, and bottles of nightshade and crude oil. A bundle of dried gray-green sage hung above the lightswitch. Its musty scent filled the expanse of the room instead of that of a living teenage boy. Aside from it and a single tarot card taped above the desk, the walls were bare.
“Woah,” Ventus said as he looked around at everything. “What does this do?” he asked, pointing at one of the racks of animal skulls. “Are those just for decoration?”
“No. I have to grab something. Don’t touch anything, and don’t snoop!”
“Wait, where are you going?”
Vanitas didn’t answer, just walked back out the door and returned to the darkness of the fourth plane. His ghost settled like he was a magnet returning to his correct polarity. While the lower planes were defined by scattered light and color, the fourth was an endless sea of shadow. Most ghosts were torn apart by the whirl of death and oblivion. The few that didn’t lost the majority of what they were.
For Vanitas, on the other hand, existing in and navigating through the fourth plane had been easier than learning to walk, despite the fact that he had never plane-walked even on the second plane before his death. He wasn’t foolish enough to think the plane liked him. His presence was nothing short of defiance of the very void he stewed in. The end was inevitable. Vanitas simply refused for it to happen that day or the next.
Translating between the shadows of the fourth plane and the geometry of the first had been difficult to master once upon a time. But being dead had given Vanitas nothing but time. Leaving Xehanort’s house was a simple matter. Ventus may have become less nosy in four years, but the temptation to snoop through Vanitas’s room would be so great he’d have to wrestle with it and not worry about where Vanitas was. And since Vanitas never tired, he could catch up with the older witches-
Chirp.
Vanitas looked down.
“Darkness and void between,” he muttered with a grimace.
He had forgotten about the cat. Familiars, especially cats, could see onto the fourth plane just as well as he could.
“Don’t you dare snitch on me.”
The cat meowed and sat in front of Vanitas.
“Don’t try to stop me, either. I’ll be your anchor on the third in exchange for your silence.”
The cat nodded, so, after a moment’s hesitation, Vanitas flickered to the third plane, lifted the cat, and held him in an approximation of Ventus’s cradle. The cat squirmed, but Vanitas just tightened his grip.
“You wanted to be picked up, didn’t you?”
Vanitas took off again. He and the cat were walking alongside the older witches in less than a minute. A silence had descended on the three of them, so thick Vanitas figured he could poke at it with the Keyblade hanging under his shirt.
The old man, Ventus’s master, looked like he would be the first to break it. He kept glancing at the young man with eyes the color of worn iron. He was wearing more chains around his neck, wrists, and fingers than a washed out eboy. Unlike an eboy, however, the old man actually had a use for the links draped on his body, as Vanitas had learned the hard way.
“So,” the old man finally said. The younger man, the one who was so pissy he had to stay outside, tensed. “You’ve met Xehanort?”
“Yes.” The younger man’s response was growled through clenched teeth.
He only had a smattering of jewelry: a total of three ear piercings, a nose ring, two rings on his fingers, and a single necklace with links so big Vanitas could spot a sigil engraved into at least one of them. The nose ring gave Vanitas pause, and not just because it, combined with the younger man’s mountainous figure, made him look like a bull; it was made of tiger’s eye.
Interesting choice.
Aside from a suspicion based on his choice of stone for a nose ring, Vanitas couldn’t intuit the man’s specialty. The woman in blue beside him was dripping with so much silver jewelry and piercings of colorful stones that Vanitas could immediately understand that she was an elementalist and a barrier-conjurer. The old man’s chains spoke for themselves. But the young man… well, if Vanitas’s hunch was correct, he couldn’t blame him for hiding his specialty.
After a deep breath, the young man’s jaw relaxed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You mentioned that Xehanort used to be part of our coven,” the woman said. “What happened?”
The Master used to be in their coven?
Vanitas wondered if that meant they had Keyblades tucked under their robes like he did.
The old man tightened his lips. “He used dark magic. It made him a danger to the coven and clan. I had to banish him for it. There isn’t much else to say.”
The younger man’s face crumpled at that. Silence descended and strangled them until they reached the other witches.
Their tent had been set up just outside of Xehanort’s property. It was surrounded with a barrier against attack spells on the second and third plane. There was a ward at the entrance, but it didn’t extend to the walls, so Vanitas just phased through the side of the tent. He wouldn’t harm anyone in the tent, but not because he had no desire to.
The interior of the tent resembled the war tents of old, complete with tapestries, floating lights that cast a musty glow on the make-shift room, and a polished hardwood table inscribed with what must have been the clan’s insignia. Vanitas was grateful he didn’t have to breathe the dense, stuffy air in the tent, but the witches seated around the table didn’t seem to mind it. Every single one was dressed in some variation of formal witch robes that they probably never took off.
“Welcome, Eraqus,” an old man said. The table was a round one, but he sat across from the entrance to the tent in a position clearly indicating he was a leader. He had the most stereotypical witch beard that Vanitas had ever seen. “It has been quite some time since we have seated a member of your coven here. Aqua, Terra, it is good to see you again.”
“Thank you, Yen Sid,” the two quietly chanted in unison as they took their place on both sides of their master’s seat.
“Let’s get to the point,” an old woman next to Yen Sid said. The lines on her round face suggested she smiled a lot, but there wasn’t a single smile to be found in the room. “Eraqus, a former member of your coven has been arrested for murdering an amagical official. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how severe of a crime this is. The amagicals-”
“I have good reason to believe he did not commit the crime in question,” Eraqus said. His voice was quiet, but firm.
“Regardless of his innocence vis-a-vis the murder, this incident has brought disturbing news to light,” another old man said. His beard wasn’t quite as ridiculous as Yen Sid’s, but it was a close call. “We had known, of course, that Xehanort had used dark magic, but we can see that his banishment has done nothing to curb such disturbing behavior.” Vanitas resisted the urge to throw a jinx at him. “If anything, it seems that it has lifted any inhibitions he may have possessed earlier.”
“Is there protocol for this?” a middle-aged woman asked. She was one of three middle-aged women clothed in matching garish robes. While their clan-mates mostly wore muted colors like dark or light blue, they stood out with bright colors that might have suited them forty years ago. Vanitas knew he could pull off the bright red better than she could.
“Is it even our place to take care of this?” another woman, draped in an obnoxious blue, shot back. “He’s been banished for years. Wouldn’t involving ourselves negate the purpose of banishment?”
“Are you joking?” A third robed woman asked. Her apple-green robes were nauseating against the red of her coven-mate beside her. “Dark magic is a threat to the World. It doesn’t matter which coven or clan a dark witch hails from- it’s every witch’s responsibility to stop them.”
“But he’s already been banished,” Second-Worst Beard said. “Is there really no protocol for this situation?”
“Of course there isn’t!” Obnoxious Blue exclaimed. “Legally, banished witches no longer exist- that’s the entire point!”
And so on and so forth. Vanitas could tell that the witches of the clan were like his master in their inability to get to the point, so he leapt onto the table and plopped down. The cat wriggled from Vanitas’s arms and settled beside him. Vanitas must have moved a little too quickly, or a little too close to Terra, because his eyes glowed gold for a second and focused on Vanitas.
Thought so. That explains the tiger’s eye.
Vanitas smirked and replied with a cheeky wave. Deep down, he was impressed Terra had the gall to use dark magic in a tent full of such close-minded witches, even if it was just a quick glance onto the fourth plane, but there was no way Terra could snitch without telling everyone he could use dark magic, too. The other witches were too stupid to see or understand the signifier literally hanging off his face.
Vanitas kept his gaze on Terra. The man clearly knew Xehanort and dark magic, a combination that was almost certainly not a coincidence, but Vanitas had never seen him before. Maybe he looked vaguely familiar, but he definitely wasn’t someone Xehanort had met with in the four years Vanitas spent under his tutelage. But the way that he had looked at Vanitas during their desert standoff made Vanitas think that maybe Terra recognized him- but how could he know Vanitas and not the other way around? Maybe it was just because Vanitas had the same face as Ventus.
“The situation is clear,” Yen Sid said, finally drawing Vanitas’s attention back to the conversation. “Xehanort’s use of dark magic has exceeded our initial understanding. However, his ability to work said magic is currently hampered due to his arrest. We must take this opportunity to investigate the extent to which he has conducted forbidden magic.”
“It’s a shame you exorcised his apprentice, Eraqus,” one of the witches said.
“I failed to exorcise him,” Eraqus said, “but one of my apprentices managed to pacify him.”
Vanitas resisted the urge to step back to the third plane and show them all how pacified he wasn’t.
“I don’t think he’ll cooperate with you,” Terra said to Yen Sid and the others. “Leave him to us.”
“Why should we trust someone so important with your coven?” Bright Red snapped.
“His apprentice managed to pacify Xehanort’s, so I see no better candidate at this table for dealing with him,” Yen Sid said. “Besides, there is no one else in the World who knows Xehanort like he does.”
“I have an idea on how to exorcise him as well, should the need arise,” Eraqus said.
“Then it is settled,” Yen Sid said. “Eraqus, you will take Xehanort’s apprentice. As for the rest of us, we need to investigate Xehanort’s activities, beginning with this apprenticeship in question. We will keep in touch. That will be all for now.”
“Good riddance,” a witch muttered.
Vanitas scowled. They were just like the foster agents, discussing his fate like he had no part in it. Well, the joke was on them. Vanitas wasn’t leaving his master. No apprentice worth their magic would. He wasn’t just some foster kid they could shove from home to home- not anymore.
Vanitas snatched the cat up and jumped off the table.
“Let’s go,” he growled.
By the time Vanitas returned to his room, Ventus was flipping through a book with the forced nonchalance of someone who definitely had not been reading in the last minute.
“What did you think of my room?” Vanitas asked, flickering onto the third plane without warning.
“I dunno,” Ventus said. “I didn’t poke around too much.”
“Did you find the dead body?” Vanitas joked.
Ventus held out his arms. Right, Vanitas was still holding his familiar. He tossed the cat back. The cat must have returned to the first plane as he did.
“Vanitas! Don’t throw him like he’s some sort of stuffed animal!”
“You caught him, didn’t you?”
Ventus scowled and readjusted the furry bundle in his arms. “That’s not the point.”
“You’re right,” Vanitas said. “The point is that you were snooping in my room.”
“I didn’t snoop that much! Well, except for the book.”
“Really? If that’s true, what were you doing while I was gone?”
“Listening to the meeting, stupid. I thought that was why you took Chirithy with you.”
Okay, maybe Vanitas should have realized that Ventus could listen through his familiar.
“Well, what did you think?” Vanitas asked with a sardonic smile. “Truly, your clan’s most noble representatives. You could tell they were petrified with concern over my master.”
“Don’t care about them. But you get to come with us, right?”
Vanitas narrowed his eyes. “Get? Those self-righteous bastards have no say over what I do or where I go. I’m staying here and waiting for my master to pay his bail like any good apprentice would. Did you really think I’d go with you?”
Ventus’s heartbreak was plain as day on his face.
“Yeah, I did! My mistake for thinking you missed me even half as much as I missed you!”
“This isn’t about you, Ventus. My master needs me here.”
“To do what?”
“To wait for him. I don’t need food or water, and I’ve lived for four years without anyone else. There’s nothing I need from anyone else, and the Master knows that. Wouldn’t you do the same for your master?”
“Master would never make me stay alone in an empty house,” Ventus said. His voice crackled like rustling foil. “He’d want me to stay with someone, anyone, just to talk to.”
“Your master’s a little bitch, anyway,” Vanitas said. “My bad for bringing him into this.”
“Don’t you want to see our siblings again?”
Ventus’s question was so out of left field that Vanitas’s mouth hung open for a split second. He closed it.
“Master wants me to stay here,” he managed to say.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Of course I want to see our siblings again!” Vanitas snapped.
He seethed internally. He had done so well for four years. With Master Xehanort’s help, he was able to pretend that they were dead to him and had never meant anything to him anyway. He had been able to pretend that he had no siblings, that he had never been anything other than Xehanort’s apprentice. And then Ventus had to show up and tear that illusion to pieces by standing there with those baby-blue eyes that used to mirror Vanitas’s own.
“Then come with us. Please.” Ventus’s voice was closer to the soft, quiet one that used to be the only thing he managed to squeak through. “It won’t be like those witches said. We won’t use you for the investigation. And I know you don’t want to leave your home again, and move to a new place again, and learn new rules with new people, but it’ll be different this time- I’ll be there.” His big eyes began to fill with tears. “Don’t you want to be able to live with me again? I thought I’d never be able to see you again!”
“Don’t be stupid,” Vanitas spat. “Of course I want to go with you.”
“Then come with us,” Ventus pleaded. “Once your master manages to pay his bail, we can take you back. Even if it’s just for a few days, I want to be able to see you. I want you to be able to see Sora and Roxas- and you haven’t seen Xion yet. She looks just like Mom.”
“Fine,” Vanitas said before he could stop himself.
Ventus lit up. “Really?”
This was a huge mistake. It was going to be a trainwreck for everyone involved.
But the temptation of being able to just watch Ventus have breakfast was too much, Xehanort be damned.
“Are you deaf or something?”
Ventus put his familiar down on the bed and raced towards Vanitas, forgetting or ignoring the planes between them, and tried to place his forehead against his. It passed through, but Vanitas tried to put the tip of his head against where Ventus’s was anyway.
“Thank you. I missed you.”
“Missed you too, stupid.”
Vanitas didn’t mean to say that, but he didn’t mind that it slipped out