Calls the Curtain

Saïx knows it's the best placating gift the Superior can give him. It's the crescendo before the climax, the promise of finality, the reassurance that their numbers haven't dwindled in vain

but he doesn't need reassurance

even as the war rages on, and they're sorely outnumbered in both people and Keyblades. If Roxas were here

he's not on our side, only one was on our side; he's dead - dead - beneath the shield, foundering at the hands of the others, all the others, concealing their lies beneath their elements and were only revealed when they fell - they all fell

he would do nothing, or something; it would either be nothing or the same sort of something that the Keyblade Master was doing now, veering around corridors, destroying everything in his path. Some sort of rocket whistles off a lower balcony

you're my gift; Roxas, Sora, I can't wait to play with you

and dashes itself in crackling, seething fury. Xemnas smiles

it will be genuine soon; we will rebuild everything, and it will be like you dreamed, like you said, like everything you dreamed and said and did that we couldn't

and Saïx answers the gesture with a nod, bracing his weight against his claymore, because it's actually happening, and it's not what he expected. Since the beginning - or since his beginning - he remembers that moon lingering just beyond his grasp. He remembers being wrong when he'd remarked that the moon wasn't his, that he couldn't draw his power from it, that he pulled from moons of worlds that had succumbed to darkness and Xemnas corrected him, hanging the sultry mockery of a heart before his eyes and telling him that it would be his.

Xemnas approaches the berserker with purpose after he acknowledges him, his hand a light pressure on Saïx's right shoulder. His eyes are cold, shadowed, eager, just like they always have been.

"Superior," Saïx begins. He tilts his head a little to glance over Xemnas' shoulder

who would be there, there's no one left

and then faces ahead. Their eyes meet, and as firm understanding is not a captive of the heart's duties, it sears in the tunnel of their gaze until the distance between them is closed, violent and sudden, impromptu and improper and impossible because they don't know what it should feel like but they're in it together, and starting twenty minutes ago, they were in it alone.

The Superior curls his fingers around a tuft of brittle blue hair at the nape of Saïx's neck and presses soft lips against the berserker's chapped ones, condensation swirling in their breath and moistening their mouths, a charade that tries to imitate passion and falls short of it, despite the low moan Xemnas elicits against Saïx's lips. The berserker knows this game

everything's a game, a gamble, Luxord said so himself, but he's dead; if he should be so good at games and die then what will become of he who is so good at pretending and those who follow him?

and responds, intensifying the connection between their mouths

it can't be a kiss, a kiss is too intimate a word for those who cannot love, who do not wish to love if they could

and probing the Superior's with an insistent tongue, tasting nothing but a reminiscence of tea. Xemnas digs his fingernails into the flesh at the base of Saïx's skull, and Saïx inhales sharply, lunging forward on reflex; his teeth scrape against Xemnas' and embed themselves in cushioned lips. It's familiar, like the taste of iron that follows, and Saïx's reaction is physical elation, dredged up from some memory he doesn't care enough to recall.

"Saïx." Xemnas says, though his mouth is still occupied by the berserker's ministrations. "I will be at the Altar." He lets their tongues slide against each other once, warm and wanton, then pulls away. "You will meet me there when you have disposed of the Keyblade Master."

It isn't a question or an invitation; it is a demand born out of caution.

"I will," Saïx agrees without hesitation and turns away. He hears the Superior's footsteps recede, then moves to usher his own in the opposite direction.

His hands caress the balcony's railing at the Addled Impasse, and a smile pretends to dance across his lips as he admires their work. He feels the nerves in his mouth give in to steadily dissipating electrical pulses as the memory of the Superior's movement against them fades into the present. Saïx hears them coming, and when he turns around, the smile is still there.

I'll bring your body to him, Roxas. He'll relish the sight of your lifeless form as much as I'll relish taking the life from it. It's the least I can do, after all.