Three months since it happened.
Three months since Sora took his last breath. Since his body disappeared into motes of Light and Shadow. Three months minus a week since Sora reappeared, alive, and whole again...mostly. He was still weak; it had taken three whole months for him to regain mobility.
But he was alive, and cancer-free.
It was a miracle. Nothing short of one. Sora had explained it to them--but Ven still didn't understand. Tempered? Forged? How does one forge a person, even if that 'one' is a god?
Everything had happened for a purpose, Sora had said. Sora's purpose--his reason for living.
It put stones into Ven's gut. He couldn't forget. He couldn't let go. What he'd told Demyx that day, the two of them sitting in the backyard...how badly Ven had just wanted to give up. How badly he wished he could dissolve into motes, too.
How he'd wished for it almost constantly since the day he got his Heart back. Since that day five years ago, when he'd woken from his long sleep.
Eleven years wasn't such a long time in the grand scheme of things, and the worlds hadn't changed that much, really--not of their own accord, anyway. The Darkness had taken some worlds, changed others, and put others to sleep, but his home? The Land of Departure was wholly changed, and not by the Darkness. But it was irreversible, as far as they knew...and even if it was still there, what was home? Without Master Eraqus? Without Terra? With Aqua being so different, so frightening...? What was the point of longing for something that would never again be?
The shock of that was something Ven had never really taken the time to deal with, and it had taken Sora's death to make him realize that. The moment after he woke up, his existence had found a new focus: fix. Fix others. Fix Vanitas. The boy who wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for Ven; the boy who wouldn't have suffered if it wasn't for Ven. The boy who Ven killed.
Five years later, Van was okay. Ven had poured everything into that effort, all of himself--and thanks to him and Sora, thanks to Xion and Ikki and Riku and even Roxas, Van was okay. He was a person of his own, with a Heart of his own, who lived and loved on his own. And even though losing Sora had nearly destroyed Vanitas, he'd bounced back after Sora came back. He was alive. He was fine.
That piece of himself that he'd lost when he'd felt his connection with Sora fade...it hadn't come back yet, somehow. Or was that it? Ven didn't really know; all he knew was that he felt tired, all the time. Van made him drop two classes out of his six, and he didn't fight him as much as he would have a semester ago. He didn't fight him over changing two of his classes to online ones, either. It was a struggle for Ven to get out of bed just for those two classes, or for his training sessions with Master Yen Sid three times a week.
He didn't want to think about it. He tried not to think about it--to just function. To shake himself awake long enough to do his homework, because he couldn't afford to fail, not with Mom putting so much funds and effort into getting him an education. He did what he needed to do, and these days...that was it.
He wanted to see Sora. Wanted to. And he knew that Demyx had discretion, that he wouldn't tell. But he was still terrified that somehow, Sora would find out. Find out that Ven had confessed to Demyx that he didn't want to live. Because Sora always knew. They'd been connected since before Sora was born; Sora always knew what was in Ven's Heart.
Ven tried with every fiber of his being not to think about it, but he did. Constantly. He thought about how he'd succeeded in his efforts to help Van be a person, and now that that was done, he had no idea what else to do with his emotions, with his personal direction. He thought about how little a degree meant to him, how it only meant something to other people, which was why he continued to pursue it. He thought about how Aqua had lost touch with him and with reality; how the Master was going to tear him limb from limb when he finally came back; how Terra's Heart was in pieces and he'd probably never see him alive again. He thought about how scared he was of Sora worrying about him. He thought about how scared he was of everything, all the time.
Too scared to do anything about it. About any of it.
He'd waved off Master Yen Sid's attempts to get him to talk. He'd kept to himself in their apartment in Twilight Town, keeping in touch with Mom and everyone through brief phone calls. He'd even batted away his other half's attempts to get through to him, by either false smiles or stonewalling.
Lea would know what to do. So would Demyx. But both of them were so blunt, so perceptive...he knew that whatever they had to say, they would be right. And whatever they had to say, he wouldn't want to hear it for that exact reason.
He didn't know what he wanted to do, where he should go, what he should strive for. All he wanted was to hide from everybody, everybody, that anything was wrong--that everything was wrong.
Ven felt himself withering from the inside out, and didn't care.
