pearlstrings

I'm not so sure.

[There's something quietly contemplative in it- not because he's arguing this point with Vanitas, or because he's attempting to convince him one way or the other. But because this is the first time Bruce himself has really talked about it. That he's shared even a fraction of the events of that night with someone else. That he's unboxed his thoughts on it and taken them out to look.

Vanitas searches for something to do with his hands, settling on a jar of jelly that Bruce doesn't see- he smells it, strawberry, when the lid comes away.

Bruce looks at his own hands, fingers bare and pale on the fabric of the bag. They're bigger now than they were then. All of him is bigger. But he doesn't know if he would have always made that same decision- if he would have walked away when he was younger. If he would walk away now. Maybe that's the part that will stay with him the most: how different were they, really? How different is anyone?]

He invited me to kill him.

When I didn't, he did it himself.

[The bag closes.]

Even the Darkness gets tired.

You don't have to tell me.

[ It's still conversational, as if Vanitas maybe doesn't have the emotional vocabulary to understand the gravity of the moment. But that isn't true. What is true is that this is all his life has been. Fighting to the point of exhaustion.

How many times did he want to give up? How many times did he find that hatred, that envy and rage, and use it to get back up?

He watches Bruce with his bag, his profile, sucking the red jam off the knife. The dark of his lashes, half cast, make his eyes like half lit lamps in their lantern light. ]

I know.

[He's gathered everything he needs- more food supplies, restocks on first aid equipment, a length of rope. And then, because Vanitas seems fond of it, he reaches for a second jar of jam and adds that to the bag as well. The memory has run its course and Bruce finds that, somewhat unexpectedly- he doesn't feel diminished for it. He doesn't feel that he's given too much away, given it unwillingly. Vanitas isn't fishing for details or pouring empathy- he only meets him with understanding.

There isn't anyone else around to see or hear them. By the time they leave and head back towards the museum no one will know that they'd lingered in the square or come into the store. This liminial space won't last forever, they should make their exit now before the new arrivals come searching for supplies. But.

Bruce reaches out and catches Vanitas's hand, rests his own atop the fingers curled around a jam jar. He doesn't need to do this, but what other way is there to fill the gap? To say what he can't.]

Thank you, Vanitas.

[ Whatever he's expecting, it isn't this. Bruce comes toward him and that isn't unusual, it's the touch that makes him freeze like a rabbit. He stops, one hand on the knife in his mouth, his eyes finding Bruce's like there's no where else to look.

It's earnest, the way he says it. Like he really means it, like there's actually something Vanitas had done to warrant that sort of gratitude. Confusion wins out over any other feeling he has about it, and after a beat, he takes the knife out of his mouth. ]

For what?

[ He asks archly, almost suspiciously. ]

[His head shakes. It's a small thing and not the dismissal it might easily be read as- but instead an acknowledgment that some things can't be communicated. He doesn't know how to explain to Vanitas that it's for everything. For the AED, and for the careful unfolding of this conversation, for the absence of reaction. For the quiet understanding and lack of judgement.

His hand slips away and Bruce moves towards the door, a short nod in the direction of their exit.]

Lets go. New arrivals will be coming soon.

[ Bruce let's him go, but the warmth remains. It lingers, a real sensation that tingles under his skin, dances on his knuckles. Vanitas keeps watching him as he starts to step away, inviting Vanitas along like he's always done.

When his back is turned, Vanitas switches the jar of jam to his other hand and clenches his fist.

The outside is chillier than the inside of the General Store. Vanitas feels winter's breath creep down his neck and make his skin prickle. The AED is invisible in Bruce's bag. They don't look like anything special as they walk out, like nothing significant has happened at all.

Vanitas glances toward Beacon proper, the slow grow of lanterns appearing like incoming stars. He looks back at Bruce's iron owl, the light swinging across the snow. ]

Hearts are more than what you're talking about. A heart can be taken, or broken, or corrupted. You can put it in another body, if it's an empty vessel. A heart doesn't need a vessel to exist.

I was whole once.

I even remember some of it.

[The comment seems to come from nowhere at first blush- because Bruce hasn't dug despite how long they've known one another. Despite the things he's seen and the history that's been left in small footnotes, in the margin of a moment. They step outside and the still-winter air washes over them. Their breaths cloud and the glow of far off lanterns begin to make their way ever nearer.

Bruce turns and begins moving in the opposite direction, starting the long, solitary walk back to the museum. He prefers to stay off the path just in case, and begins to pick his way through the trees instead; the forest swallows them up.

What Vanitas answers with is confirmation of a sort. Bruce is acutely aware of the differences between their worlds- of what is possible and impossible. If he were younger, if he were different, perhaps he'd describe it as a fairy tale. There are moral lessons and symbolic losses, heroes and villains. Princesses and swordfights. The reality is not nearly as tidy. Vanitas follows after him and Bruce turns his face, looks back over his shoulder when he asks.]

What do you remember?

Pieces.

[ Bruce leads them into the woods and Vanitas follows easily, reaching one hand out to brace against a tree as they go. The snow is still deep, because there's no real warmth in a perpetually dark place to melt it. There's no daylight to warm the earth and have the dunes sink into something more manageable— but the boughs of the trees create natural pockets to slip through.

Vanitas prefers this, too. It keeps the water out of sight for longer. ]

It was a long time ago. I don't remember it clearly. Just...

[ He trails off. Just the feeling of being whole. Sometimes, he remembers what it must have been like to be without pain. Sometimes, he dreams about being dedicated to a goal without the simmer of rage underneath it all. ]

Pieces.

[It isn't impossible to wrap his head around. Trauma effects all people differently, a response owed to a number of variables. How many of them did Vanitas have to begin with? How many of them has he been given in the years that followed? Bruce doesn't need to search his soul for empathy- that has always been close to the surface. He doesn't give his heart easily and he doesn't wear it on his sleeve, but that does nothing to change its size. Bruce means well even if he doesn't always do well. The suffering of others bothers him on more than a surface level. He wants to believe that change is possible and he's willing to act, to create that change with his own hands if necessary.

Vanitas is a person that's been hurt very badly, for a very long time.
It's people like him that Bruce wanted to fight for.]

You said that you're incomplete.

[The forest is quiet and unnaturally still around them, a timeless quality broken only by the movement of their lanterns, the occasional crunch of snow underfoot.]

What will happen to you when you leave Beacon?

Beats me.

[ He says before laying the knife with jam on his tongue, sealing the lid of the jar so he can shove it into his pocket. The terrain is too uneven to juggle this many things at once. It leaves one hand free for him to brace against a trunk, stepping over foliage. ]

Ventus shattered our heart, but Sora made him whole again. He doesn't need me.

[ There's bitterness there, and jealously. Vanitas chose his side, but that didn't mean the sacrifice didn't still sting. ]

Maybe I'll just go back to being a prisoner. Maybe I'll just fade into nothing.

Whatever.

It doesn't matter, it's not like I have anything to return to.

[ The not like you guys lingers in the air, unspoken. ]

But it would be different if you had a heart to return to.

[This isn't really a statement or a question. The powers and limitations of a heart in Vanitas's world are the stuff of fairy tales for a place like Gotham, and coming to understand the intricacies involved has been a lengthy process. Even now Bruce still pauses before the idea that darkness and light aren't concepts, but real and tangible.

And of course all of this hinges on the idea that there is something after Beacon in the first place. That death isn't just silence and nothingness. It's an optimistic assumption he thinks- that any of them can just 'go back.' The time they've spent here has always been borrowed. Once, when he was smaller, when he'd been locked in a cell to contemplate his eventual murder at the hands of an insane uncle, Bruce had said he wasn't afraid. That he was going to see his parents.

He's not sure if he fears death so much as he fears helplessness.
To be able to do nothing.

Perhaps is the most anyone could ever hope to get.]

Could you join it with mine?

[ Vanitas stops walking. It isn't a slow thing, he halts all at once, like he's stepped into a wall. It's so sudden that probably Bruce doesn't even notice it right away, which leaves Vanitas staring at his back for a few long seconds, caught in a place where he can't really feel his own body.

Could you join it with mine?

He's sure he can't have heard that correctly. Vanitas is positive Bruce is talking about something else, changed the topic maybe.

Because that can't be right. Nobody wants this much Darkness in their heart. Even Bruce couldn't want that, even with his deep well of it, that single burning star in him is too steadfast and powerful.

Still, when Bruce looks back at him, Vanitas has an expression on his face like he's been slapped. ]

What did you say?

[He can hear the precise moment that Vanitas stops because it doesn't happen in parts, it happens all at once. The snow doesn't slush, leaves don't crunch. When Bruce turns it's to find the other boy frozen in place there, as if he's unable to move. It's perhaps the only time he's ever known Vanitas to be shocked into silence.

Bruce looks back at him.]

Could you join it with mine.

[ No, that's exactly what he'd said. There's no misinterpretation with Bruce looking at him over the gap of darkness, illuminated from down low by the shine of his iron owl. ]

I —

[ Its just a vowel, just sound where a sentence should be.

In that desert, all he'd been told, he needed to mend his heart to Ventus to stop the pain. The idea that Vanitas could have patched it up with anyone else had never even crossed his mind until the reality of Sora came to light. And even then — it had been as much about Vanitas wanting his own life.

Jealous revenge, that Ventus could have everything good while he suffered.

He raises one hand, like a compulsive reflex, and lays his palm on his chest. Joining his heart with anyone else... he didn't even think it could be possible. Not without someone being destroyed by it. And besides that, who would ever willingly offer it up? ]

You— don't know what you're saying—

[ The emotion in his voice is hard to parse, it's so tangled up. ]

Edited 2020-02-20 01:59 (UTC)

Yes I do. You've explained it to me.

[It's possible that he'll never understand it entirely, and that's something he's accepted. He isn't from their world- the rules of which will always be beyond him. He can wrap his head around a concept but he'll never live it or know it as intimately as his own. Maybe it won't mean anything concrete. Maybe it simply isn't possible.

Bruce doesn't know if broken people can ever truly be mended or if it's simply a wound that scars over- that some scars form wrong. He isn't sure that he believes people need one another to be complete. But this feels like a very small kindness to offer. They're all dead already, aren't they? Is it so much to ask not to want to head into the unknown alone?]

I don't think I can make you whole.

But if your existence depends on having a place to return to, you can return to me.

[ Vanitas feels like he can't really breathe, a tightness in his chest that rises into his throat. His eyes stay on Bruce because how could they stray anywhere else, after something like that?

His hand closes into a fist in his shirt, clenching the fabric and distending the collar under his scarf. It's cold out here, but Vanitas feels so much heat crawling under his skin that he almost doesn't even notice it anymore. You can return to me.

In that sentence he hears that Bruce wants him to exist. To go on existing, if there's a potential for it beyond this dark world. Inviting him to his own universe, where Vanitas could have the potential to define himself and his Darkness, instead of being reflected off all the people he is pieces of. Tears flood his eyes and race tracks down his cheeks around his shallow breathing, but he hardly notices; he only has eyes for Bruce. ]

[He'd known before broaching it at all that this would be a sensitive subject. It isn't just speculation, in his own world, what Vanitas is, that he's 'incomplete' is a foundational part of his identity. It's linked inexorably to whether or not he's allowed to exist, whether or not he should- to what he could possibly hope for from his future.

Bruce does not come from a world that places rules and boundaries around the heart. They are selfish and sometimes ugly things that people are constantly at war with. They try to control their emotions, try to be better versions of themselves, and sometimes they succeed. Bruce doesn't believe in a world that has a black and white binary- he's seen too much nuance for that. He's seen what the consequences of that belief can mean, what they have meant for Vanitas.

The other's fist clenches in the fabric of his shirt as if he's trying to find an anchor, and instead of saying anything at all, tears well up in his eyes. Bruce, who is not hard-hearted, in spite everything, doesn't just see this. He feels it too. He reaches for his own scarf, unloops it from around his neck, and brings it carefully to Vanitas's wet cheeks.]

[ Bruce closes the distance, and Vanitas' eyes find his own as he comes near. His breath hiccoughs in his throat, stuck there when Bruce raises the soft fabric of his scarf to press it against his cheeks. He can feel it smear the tears, and when Vanitas blinks, more ooze down to get caught in the cashmere.

He doesn't sob. It's a silent thing, whatever this feeling is. One Vanitas can't name. It crawls out of him, Unversed cut through with gold that spring up like flowers at his ankles.

His eyes match them, the glimmer of yellow shining and wet. Maybe this is where someone would say thank you, but it isn't gratitude Vanitas is experiencing. It's something bigger, that makes his heart feel clenched and huge all at the same time. Bruce's palms cradle his face as he chases away the tears, and Vanitas looks up at him with huge eyes for a few long minutes in silence.

So , he'll think later. That's what that feels like. ]

You don't need to decide right now.

[This isn't something he has a great deal of practice with, but he suspects he'll need to learn. Bruce doesn't want accomplices. People have a right to choose and they should be given the freedom to do that. How many people has he hurt simply because they'd been too close? It's the reason Selina had been shot, the reason she wasn't able to walk.]

I can understand if you say no.

[The tears slow in time and Bruce withdraws, watchful and attentive without truly becoming an invasive presence. Even when he wants to interfere- it happens with a light touch. There and not-there.

But once Vanitas has been cleaned up, once he looks steadier on his feet and his breathing evens out, Bruce folds the scarf over his arm and offers one hand. It is becoming a kind of routine all on it's own, this tether.]

Come on. Let's go home.

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