#voidedgear

✧˖° ✩࿐ °˖ ✧ The words hit him like a ton of bricks and it makes it clear to him now why she doesn't look at him the same way she used to. She says that he can talk to her - but can he - really? He's just as wicked as his Other is but just held in a different elemental hue.

Light can burn just as well as Darkness can bind.

Even if he does have his own qualms with his darker half, that is for them to work through. That is for them to sort. The shattered shards that form their singular bond are for them and them ALONE.

It isn't Terra or Aqua's mess to try to figure out. It isn't for Sora or Riku or Kairi or Roxas - it isn't for anyone else to stick their hands into to try to make sense of because none of them know what it's like to be living your life as a fragment of something never to be whole again.

He'll never be whole again.

What do they know?

Nothing.

Twisted ideas of what is noble and what is just. Whatever the light tells them is the correct path without ever stopping to speak to the darkness. The Darkness has emotions too. The Darkness was born of it. Why not just stop to ask? To talk? To inquire how it feels?

It was apart of ALL of them whether they liked it or not - the rest of them just were never very involuntarily gifted the ability to look theirs in the face. That small dark voice that exists inside all of us. The worries and woes that creep in the back reaches of one's mind. Darkness was apart of all of us and it would have been so much easier if they all had just learned to stand hand in hand instead of raising their keyblades and calling for war.

War between families. War between friends.

If this is how she felt then she should have just ended him like he told her to in the first place.

Then no one else would have had to suffer. Then no one else would have had to deal with his darkness if such a thing were so vile. So wicked. So tainted. So Ugly.

So the sky is burning as his gaze falls to narrow, nose wrinkling as he snarls. She wants to know who loves him?

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆ As if in invitation to look closer the Misterican floats, crossing the space between himself and the boy to travel around him in a fluid circle as he listens. There's something off about this one. A heartbeat barely traceable even by his own hearing and a rumbling sense of darkness that reminds him more of Black Wind than it does Chaos.

Though there is still something chaotic about the boy. There is still something off about him that tells the swordsman that even if this boy appears human, he most certainly isn't.

He's looping back around but remaining in a full float as he lingers in air just before this ... denizen of the dark unsure of what to make of him. He's missing something. He's only darkness but that purity in elemental hue... It doesn't feel natural.

Not like himself or Black Wind. Black Wind is darkness but he doesn't feel so.... fragmented? Is that the word he's looking for? He doesn't know if it's quite right...

But the boy is asking to see his blade and Snow White Prince is making a face behind the thin metal covering the lower half of his face. Hidden lips frown as he sighs, a puff of white clouds striking against his mask only to be filtered out before it ever makes it into the outside air.

"I don't mean you any harm, young one." He starts as he continues to hover in place as if his body is light as a feather. "I was just saying that I find you rather vexing because your heart sounds so... so... are you feeling well? " It's a sudden change in subject as he struggles to find the word to properly describe what he's hearing.

Shadows draped the street in long ribbons of dark cobblestone and faded brick facades. The day had grown long and weary, receding into the afterglow of golden twilight. He stood at the mouth of the alley, flanked by cardboard boxes, broken glass bottles, and the oil slick, dusty puddles left there by an earlier rain. Haloed by the gleam of dying sunlight he was like an ink stain, spilled across a page. His helmet left him featureless, only smooth, ungiving black glass in lieu of eyes, mouth, and nose. But he was a boy. She could hear it in his voice and see it in his still thin shoulders. His magic sung of cold, frozen depths, the bottom of a sea floor where no light filtered down but where there was still life. Bitter, meager life, used to scarcity, used to the cold.

Xion lifted her chin, weight leaned into her leg. She gave him no hint of surprise. There was no surprise. She felt his presence clear across the city. She had encountered him only a couple times before but he was distinct, memorable, even. The other-half of Ventus and another shadow of Sora. Just one more mirror of a fragmented heart. Things would be so much easier if Sora didn't keep losing pieces of himself for others to accidentally pick-up.

"So, you survived," Xion said. Her eyes narrowed, trying to peer past the glare of sunlight that obscured the street and hid him. She smirked, "I was starting to get worried."

'Sister,' he called her. Sora had mentioned that Vanitas, this boy, had called him and Ventus 'brother.' In a twisted way, Xion supposed that made sense. They were all reflections of each other, tangled-up and bound together. Sometimes making it hard to see where one started and the other began. Something Xion could relate to all too well. Sora was infectious, he put his nose in places it didn't belong and involved himself in people he had nothing to do with. It was just his nature to wrap around other and to allow others to wrap around him, like overgrown, tangled vines.

But she had extracted herself from him, from his mess, from his knots, and clawing, desperate hands. He just hated to be alone. Sora was her friend but they were separate, and intentionally so. By her design, Xion had no family. At least, none worth keeping.. And the connection between her and Vanitas was tenuous at best.

@voidedgear

"Shoka go check out the scramble crossing, the noise are acting really weird." She muttered, mockingly, to herself as she hopped up to one of the taller buildings of the district. If the noise were acting that strange, shouldn't someone higher up be handling it?

Whatever.

Once she got a good footing on the edge, she peered out over, surveying things. She could see the noise in the distance. Weird. Normally they were all over the place, but right now they were pretty heavily concentrated.

"The hell...?" Maybe it was a new player who didn't know what the hell they were doing? Was she going to have to play babysitter for some newbie... What a joke.

It didn't take her long to cut her way across the area, avoiding having to walk where she could. Until finally she hopped down, across from the player.

Riku sighed lightly as he saw a dark haired boy on his own, he knew who he was. Vanitas. He'd heard about him and saw him briefly at the graveyard but had not had the chance to fight him. Now Xehanort was gone, there wasn't just a simple good and bad side anymore. Sure, there were still heartless to take out and stray nobodies but that would be an issue they'd be dealing with for eternity and Riku didn't mind that as it was the balance. In his eyes there shouldn't be too much of either side, darkness had just as much of a place in the world as light and he was an example of that idea with both him and Ansem existing as one. 

"Mind if I sit here?" Riku approached the boy, but sat down before the other could respond. He knew that if he waited he’d be turned down and he wanted a chance to talk to the other. He’d never had the chance to actually talk to him, it was kind of hard to with not only how Vanitas was but with how much he looked like Sora. Riku knew that was a stupid reason, after all he’s talked to plenty of other versions of himself that weren’t himself but when it came to Sora he was protective over. Vanitas looked like him but was nothing like him, not even his heartless or nobody and it was unnerving.

Sora wholeheartedly accepts that.

Life like this wouldn't ultimately bring closure or a new chapter. In many ways for someone who was fashioned for combat, conquests, the needs of others while thriving in the chaos they wrought, just where does their answer lie?

Being met with that sharp question felt like a good first step. The glow within the eyes in the keybearer had remained humbly calm as devouring darkness of that mask stares back. A certain tension found itself growing heavier within nature itself at their reduced distance. The clash of keybearer's after all would happen to be this Greater World's potential undoing.

"Figured that being stiff wasn't your style at the end of the day." There was a particularly cheekiness settled in those words. Whether it's arrogance or the freedom imbued in free will, joy stays within the momentum of what he does, leading to surroundings looking more pristine by proxy of his presence upon these very grounds.

"Oh?" His brow quirks as his curiosity is piqued. "That's one good way to kick up all this restless energy in me. Same rules as regular tag, bigger scale?"

"Or is there any other catches I need to be aware of?"

Nico's brows bounced to his hairline at the declaration, not necessarily surprised by the vehemence behind the words and not necessarily afraid either. People who were afraid tended to strike out, he was all too familiar with that response, and he should have expected that this person wouldn't take it well, although Nico had meant his words to be comforting. Maybe he could have picked something better to say too.

"You're right. I don't know what you're feeling," he said instead, hands hanging loose at his side as he studied the other--even if fear hung thick in the air. It was hard to tell if the fear came off this guy or just happened to be around this guy, and Nico couldn't help but think of the Helm of Darkness.