Vanitas has never known how to love; how to say sorry.

Even in his youth, he hid a racing heart with scoffs and dilated pupils with scowls. He was strong until it came to speaking these things, speaking his feelings instead of just emotionless thought.

It's almost laughable how much he struggles with it actually, considering how guilty he felt for almost everything that happened to those around him. In fact, the word sorry never really left his lips.

He'd said it twice in the last few days. Which was actually a rather large amount, but one was half-assed and begrudgingly, the other he deemed a moment of weakness, and immediately became all witty again after.

He still felt bad for it. That fight that had happened because of Mikhail, once his closest person. He wasn't the same, and when he came asking for an Archiviste to drink Vanitas' blood to read his past, Vanitas lost it. He remembered the feeling, like a cornered animal. He remembered the fragile trust beginning to caramelise at the corners of his mind breaking into ashes that night, that he thought that was it for being loved.

But you were still here. They were all still here. Vanitas didn't understand it. He was a doctor and he was smart, he could read people like they were simple picture books, and yet he didn't understand. He had said his sorry too, and he was almost proud of that.

He apologised for times he hadn't been enough, and when it weighed on him. He said that he was sorry, and you accepted. Things were back to normal. He said, when his wounds recovered from the fighting, he would go back to his patients. Use his powers and work with you.

But now was the but he was even more confused about:

Wasn't guilt meant to go away after apologising?

It was a day after all the fighting, the violence, and he'd already apologised, but he still felt bad. He felt that words hadn't been enough, that they were like him in that regard. And so he ended up going back to his most reliable love language. It had never let him down before; he just hoped you wouldn't ask why he would suddenly be pushing gifts your way for the next week.

He always used his actions to show his guilt, his sorrow, and his love. The man loved like a cat.

He went to the kitchen of the hotel —somehow. Honestly, he didn't know why Amelia let him either— and make the tenderness in his heart into food. Of course, he was always a good baker. Perhaps it was because he had to provide for himself alot and then for Mikhail and Luna too when he lived with them—

He was especially good with desserts.

And he also knew you. He knew the way you always squealed like a toddler whenever someone put Tarte Tatin in front of you. He was sure he could ruin your life and you'd forgive him for a Tarte Tatin...

So he made one. He used to make them every now and then, and it was rather easy. It was a few hours since he talked you, and Vanitas had since slinked off as he always managed to. Yet you also were a professional pest. Vanitas knew full well that time ticked fast until you'd find where he was in the kicthen, of course—

The creak makes him sigh.

He was praying you didn't realise he was doing this to make it up with you, and you'd instead just assume he wanted something to do since he was still all beaten and in bed clothes. But with Mademoiselle Amelia around, she'd probably tell you in a giggly whisper anyway.

But that wouldn't be for a bit, at least, since you were pestering him with at least a thousand questions over his shoulder as he cut up apples.

'What are you making?', 'Is it sweets?'; 'Is it Tarte Tatin?' Rattled on in his ear. And for a moment he wondered why he put up with you, before he answered himself unceremoniously. Love. Stupid thing, really.

However, he was concentrating, and Vanitas had a habit of being rather quiet when he was concentrating. So at all your constant questions, the ravenette only says a word. His voice is blunt, and dry as he says it, the opposite to how he apologised beforehand; he's making up for the softness.

"Quit."