Vanitas × Noé

Fateful Mortality

Noé cared about Vanitas, truly, deeply - he seemed to get more entangled with the man every passing day - yet sometimes he found himself wishing they'd never met. If they had never met he wouldn't be burdened with terrible thoughts. Horrible things that crawled inside his open wounds, writhing and squirming, only forcing the holes wider and letting more squeeze through. He wondered how much he could take before there would be nothing left of him but a yawning cavity.

Vanitas was brilliant and kind and wonderful; and he was awful and selfish and cruel. Everything Noé hated and everything Noé loved. A walking contradiction. A precious existence unlike any other, one Noé wanted to protect.

And there lay the problem. Noé knew Vanitas wanted to be saved, but often it felt like that was impossible. Noé had dwelled enough on his mistakes with Louis to recognise that look that crossed Vanitas's eyes when he let his guard down. The hopelessness of the doomed.

He wondered if there was ever any use in loving a person like Vanitas. If Vanitas never got any better, if Noé couldn't make a difference because he was too far gone, then all that effort would be meaningless, wouldn't it?

Noé could be selfish like anyone else, he wanted to protect his own existence above all. Much as he loved Vanitas, much as that love grew, he wasn't sure he'd be able to take another inescapable tragedy. If it turned out that there was only one path Vanitas was able to take, and it ended in destruction, Noé was better off leaving him. He couldn't keep giving and giving, tearing his heart and soul apart, expecting to come out unscathed when Vanitas may never change.

If Vanitas died, he might just break apart. And with everything that was always happening around them Vanitas's mortality was constantly hanging above him.

Vanitas felt so warm when Noé would touch him, even through the layers of his clothes, so alive. Everything about Vanitas was so painfully alive. He seemed to live every moment with the intention of making sure he would make a mark, leaving proof of his existence everywhere he went. Losing that would be a failure that would haunt Noé forever, he knew that as surely as he knew his own name.

He felt that meeting Vanitas, falling for him, continuing to observe him, was a grave mistake. Much as he tried to ignore it, Noé felt deep down, with a conviction that scared him, that the way things ended for them wouldn't be happy. And would be far too soon. Noé must have been the greatest fool alive, for he ignored all his misgivings, continuing at Vanitas's side, even as each step brought him closer to his own destruction.

Something he could predict and should avoid for his own sake.

The deplorable ending.

I won't die... Noé. Even if I'm no longer here...