A/N: Takes place before all games. Thank you to everyone who has submitted reviews, given me watches, favourites, and has the sense to humour a lunatic in her hour(s) of need, and kudos/fluffy Keyblade plushies to those who stuck it out all the way through. Especially Water-gem, my beta, who tolerated my plague of e-mails.
I hope you all enjoyed it!
Disclaimer: If anyone in this story belonged to me, I would be filthy stinking rich. Since I'm anything but, you may rightly assume that I'm merely playing with someone else's toys - Square Enix and Disney Interactive's toys, to be exact - and that I may, someday, give them back. When I feel like it.
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Chapter Eight
He sat plainly on the edge of the balcony, lower legs jutting out from the knees to form a forty-five degree angle, boots hooked in the marble posts to keep his balance. His sitar hung from a chain that crossed his shoulder blade, and he leaned over the instrument with a sort of neurotic concentration, gently moving a couple of frets to a new position and strumming, trying to match each note to his hum. There. That did it. A brand new chord. Who cared if he cheated, anyway? Who, besides him, had even the memory of appreciating any sort of music – oh, least of all the sharp, full, echoing tones of the sitar?
Who cared if he only pretended to tune?
"You have potential. Nothing more."
The musician smiled, his lips curling almost mischievously as he recalled the smallest details from his dream. A sour note rang true – the first one to do so since his last round – and Demyx recalled passing Saïx once since the incident. It was in the once-unnamed hall that Axel had shown him, the hall which was now appropriately dubbed the Hall of Empty Melodies (Xemnas was more partial to the name than Demyx had been, by far).
Saïx had turned to regard him with a look that was hollow and haunting; his eyes had become eyes of hurricanes, the calms before storms. Demyx had smiled at him, suppressing none of his innately scripted cheer, and politely turned away. What little he saw of the Nobody after that day seemed to be confined to councils, and the mage couldn't say he was complaining.
"A-hem. Hmm, hmm." Demyx wasn't sure if he was humming C sharp at all, but it was the closest he was going to get without an external tuning device. "Hmm – hmm – HM." He chuckled dryly. Why was he even trying? It would never work. He'd been at it for over an hour. With some persuasion, he would learn to accept his deficiency.
I should have never knocked you out of tune. I should have never used you to fight. I've committed you to a foreign and totally improper path, and I can never take it back. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
The notes that once vibrated so crisply in his throat were stripped of their electricity; they hummed now with a glow that barely surpassed that of the dull neons in the city. It was difficult to deny, and even more so to rationalise the change. What was there before simply wasn't, and that was that. How had he fooled himself before?
One by one, he tapped at the fine tuning beads, his mouth forming a small "o" of disappointment when he noticed that one of them had cracked. "Battle wound," he murmured softly, hopping down from the railing to kneel at the gourd, fingering the bead at the bottom. The string had wedged itself into the fissure.
"Aw, man."
A lean figure, clothed in black, leant against the column supporting the passageway leading out to the balcony. He held his arms languidly across his chest, his mouth tightly set, the line straight between his lips. His head tilted awkwardly to the right as Demyx leapt down to fiddle with something at the bottom of the instrument – the weapon. The figure shook his head, his fiery mane of hair moving with the torque to his neck as he did so. It was a weapon now, a weapon alone, and the sooner Number Nine realised that, the sooner he stopped fussing and fidgeting over it as if it were destined to produce anything but an echo of the melodies it once so freely gave.
The defeated exclamation came at last from the Nocturne, and the figure watched intently as his blond head pressed quietly to the instrument's – weapon's – neck, the sigh heaving his whole body from his shoulders down. The figure pinched the bridge of his nose furtively, a smirk cracking the seeming immobility of his mouth. He stepped out, ready to address the musician at last. That guy really needs another hobby.
"Axel."
The figure whipped around, his brow instantly knit in a strange sort of panic. He recognised the way his name was pronounced, and the gruffness in the tone. "Saïx," Axel muttered, ready to fall back into conjured darkness if negotiating failed – it usually did – and self-preservation became an issue. "Can I help you?"
Saïx ignored the inquiry, choosing instead to look past the red-haired Nobody, where the Nocturne had returned to his fussing. "Hm." He stared ahead. "Shallow victory, Number Eight; have you nothing better to do than gawk at it?" His footfalls led him closer to Axel, who stepped back just as much.
"Oh, I can leave. I'd actually be more than happy to; I was really just going to ask Number Nine the same thing."
"Have you?"
"Didn't – ah. Didn't get a chance." Axel shrugged.
Saïx narrowed his eyes marginally. "Then leave. I'll do it for you."
Axel glanced from the Nocturne to the Berserker, a debate clearly having it out in his mind. It wasn't a long debate at all, nor was it a very difficult choice to make. He nodded to Saïx, letting the darkness curl about him quickly, removing him from that location and placing him in what he considered a safer one. He and Number Nine were no longer fighting the same battles. It was none of his concern.
Wait –
No. No. Not my fight.
Saïx lifted his chin to study the absence for a moment, then turned toward Demyx, who continued to remain oblivious, still adamantly working the beads with his fingers. "Number Nine," he said. His fingers flew to his throat. If he hadn't simply hallucinated that second tone, slightly accented, he would swear that two voices had just elicited from one mouth. His mouth.
Both theories, however, were put to rest moments later. A blur of blond hair and the glint of an earring brushed past Saïx, nudging him a little to the side. The Berserker's fists clenched.
"Apologies," said the man with the earring, and he turned back to the kneeling musician.
Saïx scowled, then calmed just as quickly. He nodded impassively; enough of his time had been wasted. With a toss of his hair, he stepped through a portal of his own design.
Demyx looked up at the newcomer, then stood, leaning his sitar against the railing. "Number Ten! Er, I mean – Luxord, right?" He'd moved from dejected to cheerful, wielding his Other's memories like puddle-charms as he held out a hand in greeting. "To what do I owe this visit?"
Luxord paused in delivering his own greeting, his lips slightly parted as his voice and expression dangled in a suspended state. His face was creased with anything but cheer; there was some presence of what might have been called confusion, along with a certain smugness that seemed too permanent to be anything but residual from his Other, but nothing else. "The Superior sent me to find you. He told me you would teach me to fight."
The musician's eyebrows almost met his hairline; they were raised so prominently with his surprise. "Wait. Hang on. The Superior – Xemnas – told you that I would teach you how to fight?" He blinked.
"Are you Number Nine?"
"Yes," Demyx said.
"Then yes, that's what I said," Luxord replied.
Demyx pressed a hand to the side of his head. "I don't get it."
Luxord sniffed. "I don't know, the concept seems pretty straightforward to me." He folded his arms. "So, are you going to do so, or shall I return to the Superior with your declination?"
Demyx paused uncertainly in his words and movement, studying the face of his charge. Already, he noticed acceptance. He would take his new lot in life – not-life – with ease, Demyx suspected. Something he was struggling to do, but would do in a matter of time. Once he learned to be selfish enough to do anything in his power to take back what was rightfully his –
The mage blinked up at Number Ten. He wanted to see sincerity. He wanted to see something there, something he'd already admitted that he would never find in the Organization. Something he didn't want to lose; he'd lost enough.
"What?" Luxord snapped uneasily.
Demyx gave him a wan smile and shook his head. "Nothing." He gripped the neck of his sitar, then let it de-materialise to a faint glow in his palm. "Want to go get started, then?"
Luxord's eyes widened. "Are you going to teach me to do that? If so, then yes."
Demyx shook his head. "You've your own weapon and magics, haven't you?"
The other Nobody snorted. "Do I, now?" He lifted his empty hands to inspect them closely. "Ah, yes. There they are. Right alongside the unicorn."
"Then you haven't been told what your weapon or magics are?" Demyx asked patiently. He tugged at Luxord's sleeve, urging the Nobody to walk with him toward the Second Chamber of Arms.
"No," said Number Ten simply, following behind. "Are you going to tell me?"
Demyx frowned as he looked ahead, past the cold and consistently dark reaches of the hallway, down to the other side where another balcony stood, stately and gleaming beneath the only source of light on that world – a heart-shaped moon hanging in the sky. "I don't think so," he murmured finally, his eyes focusing on the heart's tip. He looked down and away. "I think it's better if you find out for yourself."
Demyx knew Luxord remained behind him by the clunk, clunk sound of his boots. Even if Number Ten did wander off in lieu of entertaining his battle-mind, where would he go? How long would it be before inevitability would bring them against each other once more, pitted in trials and triumph like net-men in Nero's Colosseum?
They reached the Second Chamber, and Demyx pressed his hand to the threshold. "Why?" Luxord persisted. "Why won't you just tell me?"
The Nocturne glanced over his shoulder at Number Ten, his expression nigh unreadable. He couldn't properly sate the Nobody's curiosity – expressed all the way en route to the Chamber both in languid pries and frustrated sputterings – if he tried. "Because I don't know," he said, breaching the doorway. "And even if I did, that's not the way things work around here." Luxord's eyelids flickered open a mite wider, and Demyx sighed. The guard slid back into place behind them. "Trust me. I'm doing you a favour."
It was Demyx's first empty victory, and it wouldn't be his last.