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WEEKLY BULLETIN

announcements
What do you get when you combine a Catholic and a spirit child? I don't know, it's not a joke, it's just an announcement that one of the spirits-- a baby, it looks like-- has been adopted.

What an awful week, though. Both the exploration group and the distraction group did so well, and honestly? It made a difference. You guys should be proud.

On a lighter note, autumn is just around the corner! Look for temp drops and gusty weather cropping up in the next week or so.

classifieds
None.

If you wish to submit an advertisement, please drop them by the post office.

obituaries
Capt. Ben Winters: at least he died as he lived: doing something worthwhile. Thank you, Winters.

Number Five: clever right to the end.

A whole host of people have gone missing since the party... We haven't found their bodies or their lanterns yet, but I think it's safe to assume they're probably gone. Here's the list: Melisandre, Yaeris, Gene Hicks, Ahven Sychantus, Scott Ryder, Nathan Drake, Brienne of Tarth, Raylen Givens, John Constantine, Chloe Frazier, Irwin Wade, Elisha Harper, Dick Grayson, Aragorn, Rafe Adler, Billy Russo, Ben Hargreeves, Kyna Midha, Washington, Sam Drake, Daniel Riordan, Replica Riku Dawn, Eleven, Shadow Moon

[Worthy of note: this bulletin comes to you not via a newspaper, but by the network, now that Robin's connected with you guys once more!]

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[ The signs of life he's used to finding here are absent. There's no unfamiliar, catchy tune playing on a gramophone. Not even that acrid smell of burning tobacco to make him wrinkle his nose. The cabinet of first aid supplies still sits near the doorway for anyone to take. Riku wonders if Gene will ever stroll back in here, smoking like a chimney, touching lives like he knows how easy they are to lose.

Vanitas isn't being very forthcoming and that tracks, maybe because Riku wanting to know means Vanitas needs to keep it from him, expecting a trap or laying one. Always ready to fight. ]

Just found him. You?

[ Maybe the glance into the empty room behind him, even obscured in the dark as it is, appears a little pointed on Riku's part. ]

[ It's about the imaginary line in the sand, the structure Vanitas keeps hunting after: him, the darkness, against them, the light. He might not even tell Sora, if he were here and the one to ask— not even because it's not his business, but simply because Vanitas doesn't know how to turn off. If he isn't pushing back, then what else is he? ]

Me?

[ His voice is arch, somewhere between dubious and entertained. It's only surface deep. ]

Are you sure?

[ Vanitas moves, slinks along the wall and between the pillars holding up the ceiling. ]

Are you sure it isn't someone that looks just like you?

[ Vanitas slips along the shadows clinging to the edges of this space and Riku tracks him with his eyes, subtle shifts against the dark and the gleam of his golden eyes. It's just a technicality, when he could track him by the scent of his Darkness, strong and cloying. ]

...You're looking for him?

[ Riku's too tired to hold back the surprised exhale of his observation, maybe a wild guess, but there was some kinship between Dawn and Vanitas that Riku didn't know enough to quantify. A connection.

Dawn had never been afraid of the dark, after all. He stood with both feet firmly planted in it, embraced it, used its power with a freedom Riku had lacked when they first met.

His nails bite crescents into the leather covering his palms, he doesn't look away, but his teeth are grit enough that the muscle in his jaw jumps in the candlelight. His breath stales in his lungs around the heavy, tightening band that squeezes his heart: Dawn is gone and Riku has no illusions that he's gone somewhere better. ]

[ His eyes go heavy and in the dark its difficult to tell if his expression is critical or disinterested. There's some vindication in the breathless quality Riku's voice takes on with the invocation of that replica. Maybe he'd lured the other boy here by accident, but for Vanitas, this is proof enough that things haven't changed.

He couldn't be looking for Vanitas. He isn't sure if he's relieved or not. ]

You are.

[ Vanitas stops pacing, just aside the wall of candles. They throw flickering golden light over half of his body, like it just won't stick. ]

You're always looking for your friends.

[ You are, Vanitas says, and Riku measures the possible impact, whether there's any value in denying it, and why.

Anyone on that list might still be out there, lost, maybe trying to make their way back. Or they might just show up in this church one day, resurrected by whatever mysterious process brings a dubiously fortunate few back to this place.

Concluding that he has no way of predicting with any reliability how Vanitas will take this, he slowly shakes his head. You're always looking for your friends is baiting, he won't take it. ]

Sure feels like it. Dawn's not here, Vanitas.

I know that.

[ Not because he has some inherent way of tracking him, no matter how he might be able to feel the way darkness moves around him, but because he hasn't seen him appear. Vanitas might not know much about the way this world works, but he does know what happened after he died himself, how he came back— so this is where they'd be.

Regardless, he could take or leave the replica. He could take or leave almost any of these people from his own world. ]

None of them are here yet.

[ Sora has that effect on people. ]

...

[ Riku doesn't know for sure. He's not sure what it was like for Sora in the time between he felt Vanitas die and when Vanitas returned, he's not sure if there was a vacant ache in his heart the way he has now, heart raw and bleeding around where Dawn's presence should be.

He doesn't think Dawn is going to wake up in this church, now or tomorrow or ever. ]

Yet? Huh, so you can hope.

[ Vanitas lowers his chin, just a little, watching Riku from under the shadow of his eyelashes. He hasn't stopped to consider what Riku might feel about his twin, because he doesn't know how to articulate something so gentle as empathy; or to define it or understand it. That he'd felt it for Sora doesn't change his lack of understanding. ]

I just know what happened to me.

You came back.

[ Riku shouldn't let the bitterness enter his answer and yet, there it is, an ugly sentiment. Jealous. Resentful. They can relate as far as the Darkness goes, but any connection Riku has made has been with his fists.

At the same time... he actually finds himself caring whether Vanitas is still around or not. It's not about his resemblance or connection to Sora. Not exactly. It's more nuanced than that. More tied to the Darkness, to the orchestrator at the center of great influence in both their lives. ]

Who are you waiting here for?

[ He can taste that bitterness on the back of his tongue, even from this far apart, and Vanitas' mouth pulls up into a crooked smirk. It's there, still, just under the surface and growing— the Darkness in this hero.

But the expression is short lived, smoothing out into something even and thoughtful. Vanitas doesn't necessarily have anything to hide, even if dodging questions and instigating fights come second nature to him. His eyes carve over Riku, considering, before Vanitas turns away from him and goes to the wall of candles, standing in front of it and looking at all the little flames. It turns him into a black silhouette against all that light. ]

The doctor.

Gene?

[ There's something complicated about that syllable, pensive. The truth is, Riku is sorry to see his name on that list. It was a connection only recently made... but what does that matter to a heart that makes it? The loss is still a loss.

He's going to miss him.

Considering the other boy's back, standing there like a ragged black pit that dims the candles behind him, he thinks... it's not outside the realm of possibility that Vanitas might miss him too.

Loneliness, after all, belongs well and truly to the Darkness. ]

You plan on hanging around here until he shows up? Why?

[ Gene. It isn't like Vanitas didn't call him by name, but somehow it seems— different. Personal in a way Vanitas doesn't want to admit outloud, and certainly not to Riku, who is supposed to be on the other side.

But that man had been there when Vanitas woke up screaming. Told him about that place he was from just to do it. Made him feel— nothing, in the place of all that pain, if just for a little while. Vanitas' eyes jump between the candle flames, all that fire that doesn't give off the same kind of light that he craves. He recalls what it felt like to be held while he cried and curls both hands into fists. ]

I don't have anything better to do.

[ They fought at different sides of the same war, but that war is over. Vanitas pits himself at odds with them because he seems to believe that's where he belongs - the darkness kept in the prison of Sora's heart.

There isn't much that view of Vanitas's back can tell him. Riku hasn't exactly made every effort to understand Vanitas, his motivations, but he can guess at some things. Like what the clenched fists at his sides might mean in this context of recent loss, knowing that beneath what war hardened in him, Gene had a certain soft compassion.

How lonely the Darkness is. How powerful and how painful its desolation, ever-hungry. ]

...

[ Riku's slow and silent approach ends. They're not friends. There's no trust or bond built up in between them that this should be any of his business. Yet he's connected to Dawn. And Sora, each of them in ways that remain mysterious to him. Riku knows this: Mickey hated the Darkness, and then they met. That changed the King's mind, and changed Riku's life.

So he takes a chance, his fingers touching the other boy's shoulder. ]

Maybe he'll come back.

[ That was being comforted, he knows it, even if he doesn't have any sort of barometer for what it's meant to look like. His Master never showed him an ounce of compassion, and whatever he saw between Ventus and his friends, that stuff had only ever been a weakness. Vanitas isn't convinced that whatever he might have felt about Gene was just the same— something soft to be exploited and snuffed out.

Riku comes close. Vanitas can feel him even before he touches him, that hyper-vigilance a constant thrum under his skin. It's strange, to feel the heavy weight of his palm on his shoulder, to hear his voice go low when barely a week ago it had been full of hatred and rage.

Maybe he'll come back.

Vanitas shakes the hand off his shoulder and slinks away from that feeling, the one coming from Riku that isn't caustic and dark, the one that brushes up against him with the same feather-light sensation he's gotten from Sora, the one he got from Gene. He ducks back into the shadow under one of the support beams. ]

Don't you have somewhere else to be?

[ It's IS strange. They had been injured, exhausted, strung out on too much strain and too little relief. Too long with their worlds being turned inside out with little control over when and how and what happened after. Vanitas always acts like everything has the potential to exploit him, or be a thing he can exploit.

Sometimes, Riku wonders if Vanitas knows how to be anything but aggressive, a bared blade at all times.

Can he really talk? He might have sometimes had a better handle on it, but Riku's aware of his own temper. It had flared up that day, the two of them taking swings at each other like bloodying their own knuckles could bring back anything of value.

On the other side of that temper is this: a soft and quiet compassion, understated, rarely laid so bare.

Does Vanitas, as something so dark, even know what it is to care about anything enough to miss it when it's gone? Is that why he's here, haunting this place like a ghost, because he doesn't know what else to do with that feeling of loss? ]

I came here for you.

[ He turns up his hands, for no other reason than to expose his empty half-gloved palms. ]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not here to apologize for kicking your tail.

[ He snorts, openly derisive, and doesn't turn around right away. Without his gaze turned outward, the only suggestion of his shape is the understated, dim glow of his black lantern. He almost disappears into the shadows because of it. ]

I would've wiped the floor with you if that guy hadn't showed up.

[ The fight had been cut short by that other kid's interference, but the truth is Vanitas isn't entirely sure how it would have ended. He hadn't even really cared at the time. All he'd been interested in is the darkness Riku was giving off, and the impact of flesh on flesh.

In the black the skittering sound of Unversed bounce back, the only other sound in the church beyond their talking. Vanitas looks over his shoulder. ]

What do you want?

Asking for a rematch?

[ Is that what he's supposed to read there, a challenge over the forced truce between them? The show of derision is more in line of what he expects, that or something combative, looking to fight. Not vulnerability, not from someone who sees that as weakness. Vanitas almost sinks into the dark backdrop.

To Riku, it seems a little like hiding. ]

That won't bring anybody back. It's just a distraction.

[ Riku places a hand against his own hip, the other brushing a knuckle against his nose as he turns his glance away. ]

Sometimes those are alright, too.

You're not worth the effort.

[ What he's really saying is I'm not in the mood, and that alone would be a red flag if anyone knew him well enough to understand it. But where Vanitas can't help provoking, that antagonism is only a part of the culmination of his darkness. He isn't just anger and greed; fear and sadness and that empty ache of wanting are just as prevalent.

Maybe more so, now, that he knows what it's like to lose something he's decided to covet.

Either way, he's not here to fight. He's here to wait for Gene. And Riku has already said that isn't what he came here for. ]

You have something else you want to add? Or are you done?

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