[Dark Month] - THREE
Title: THREE
Author: Xanthos Samurai
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing/Characters: Dilan/Sephiroth/Dilan, all of the assistants, Ansem the Wise.
Rating: R
Length: 1,961 Words
Warnings: Shota (sorta), alternate timeline, disturbing themes, language, mucking about with canon, spoilers, sciencey babble.
Disclaimer: I do not own nor claim to own anything but the arrangement of the words on the page.
Notes: Once upon a time, I wrote Sephiroth/Dilan set in the "present day" of KH2 and hinted that the relationship had been going on for a very long time, ever since Sephiroth was rather inappropriately young. This details how Sephiroth came to be in Radiant Garden and the beginnings of that relationship.
There were too many places for a little boy to get lost in the castle of Radiant Garden, especially a very young child like Sephiroth. Although to be honest, Sephiroth wasn’t really a child.
He was a construct, an experiment grown in a cold container of glass and steel, bred and developed from a strange being that had fallen to their world. They had gathered the remains of this being and studied it. It had a body and a mind, but it had no heart. No heart, they found, but it wasn’t a Heartless. Intrigued, the young scientists extracted cells to study, to try to find an explanation for its lack of heart. The genetic structure was like nothing they had ever seen, a strange being that was constantly in flux, evolving rapidly to any situation and environment that it was subjected to and that rapidly infected other cells. Because of this, the scientists named it a calamity, codenamed JENOVA. They wanted to try to create a being from the cells taken from the calamity to see if they could create a being without a heart.
King Ansem had originally opposed the creation of an artificial being without a heart, but the arguments of his assistants had won in the end. And so Sephiroth, constructed from the cells of the calamity from space, was created.
All six of them contributed to the experiment. As Even had said, there was no telling which combination of genes would yield the best results, or if any of them would at all. And so, wordlessly, each of them filled a container with blood and wordlessly gave it to Even to combine their DNA with JENOVA’s.
And so six tanks, labeled one through six, were erected, with the combined DNA within each one to develop. And as the young scientists watched, the hybrid beings grew.
Even’s predictions eventually proved correct. Aeleus’ DNA was the first to fail. The thing in the glass tank simply ceased to grow past an indistinct blobby shape, even after the others had started to resemble human children.
“Looks like your genes simply weren’t meant for baby-makin’. Looks like you make delicious shrimp though. Or maybe squid.” Braig hissed in Aeleus’ ear and patted him on the shoulder.
Aeleus’ eyes were blank and calm as he watched Even press a button on the tank’s console, although a tiny muscle was twitching in his jaw.
“Shut the fuck up, Braig.” He pushed Braig’s hand off his shoulder and walked out of the lab. He didn’t return for the duration of the experiment.
Even’s clone was the next to die, and then Dilan’s. Although none of them actually word the word “die” to describe it. At Even’s insistence, they used the word “fail”.
“That particular word has no application here. These beings are not alive and so therefore they cannot die. They are merely experiments that have failed.” Even reminded them all coolly as he disposed of Dilan’s clone. Dilan was watching impassively.
“Well now that leads to a whole rash of questions.” Braig was stretched out on a stainless steel table, just watching this happen. “Are they not alive just because they ain’t got hearts? Because you know that’s not the truth. Heartless ain’t got hearts and they fulfill every other condition of bein’ alive.”
Even glanced back at Braig with annoyance.
“Are you contrary by nature or is it just to annoy me?”
“Both, prob’ly. I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to it.” Braig pushed himself up off the table and ambled over to the remaining glass tanks. “Only three left. Mine, Xeha’s and Ienzo’s. It’ll be awful interestin’ to see which of us has genes that are the most compatible with a space calamity.” He reached up and ran his bony forefinger across the glass of his clone. “Keep growin’, little guy.”
The rest of them secretly hoped that Braig’s clone would be the next to go.
They got their wish. A scant week later, it failed and was disposed of. It must be said that the others felt a certain degree of relief as they watched Even dispose of it.
“Looks like it’s down to Ienzo’s and Xehanort’s.” Dilan mused. All of them looked between the two clones that remained. One had very pale skin and dark hair and the other had a middling skintone and silvery white hair. There was no indication between the two of them which would survive the experiment.
Both Ienzo and Xehanort gazed at their clones impassively. Ienzo, still a child himself, had spent more time in the labs with the growing clones than any of the others save for Even. He had said little about how he felt about the prospect of having a “son” at his young age, but the truth was that he was excited. A little thrill went through his body whenever he looked at the two remaining clones, excited at the potential of them. He even spoke to them sometimes - both of them, not just his own - and told them of the world outside the lab. The town, the people, all of the visitors that King Ansem entertained in Radiant Garden. He liked to think that they heard.
Xehanort, on the other hand, acted with almost complete indifference towards his potential offspring. He went into that section of the lab only when the others gathered to see any significant progress or for a disposal. Today, he acted as he always did, gazing at his clone with apathy until he left to his part of the laboratories to return to his own research.
That was where Xehanort was on the day that Braig wandered into the lab, crunching on an apple.
“Congratulations, by the way. You’re the winner.”
“The winner of what?” Xehanort looked up at Braig.
“You win whatever prize you get if your DNA is the most compatible with space viruses. Ienzo’s clone kicked the bucket this morning and Even says yours is about ready to hatch, so you’re pretty much a daddy. Have a cigar.” He slipped one into the breast pocket of Xehanort’s lab coat with a smirk and walked out again.
Xehanort blinked down at the cigar and went into the lab with the tanks. He found only Ienzo there, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the now-empty tank of his own clone. He was staring at the ground and every once in a while, his shoulders jerked. Xehanort looked at him, then at his clone in its tank. For the first time, its eyes were open, although it didn’t see anything, and they were a bright aqua and slit, almost like a cat’s eyes. He found himself staring at them until another shoulder jerk from Ienzo caught his attention from out of the corner of his eye. He looked down at the child scientist.
“I’m sorry.” He said, and walked back out the door.
Under the tutelage of six foster fathers (and an occasional foster-grandfather in the form of Ansem the Wise) the little clone grew with a speed that astounded even the most skeptical of the scientists. Before long, the clone was physically a young teenager and mentally advanced even more than that. He had been named Sephiroth by Xehanort for reasons unknown to the others. Indeed, it was one of the only times that the scientist ever showed any interest in his clone.
But in the absence of his “father”, Sephiroth formed bonds with the others. Most notably, with Dilan and Ienzo. It became a common sight to see the two boys walk hand in hand around the underground facilities of the castle. But it was with Dilan that the little clone spent most of his time.
It surprised the others. Dilan was not known to be fond of many people and especially not children. And yet the clone was with him almost constantly when Dilan was in the underground. King Ansem had forbidden the scientists from taking Sephiroth out into the town, at least not yet. He claimed it was because there was no telling how the clone would react to the external stimulus there, but the scientists (rightly) suspected that it was because, deep down, Ansem was frightened of Sephiroth.
“The king thinks that I’m too powerful.” Sephiroth said to Dilan one day.
The two of them were deep in the bowels of the laboratory, in a wing that was never used and rarely visited. They found that the dark, quiet places were the best for their purposes.
Dilan was pulling his shirt on again. He cursed inwardly that one of them had torn off one of the buttons earlier. It was no telling who it was - there had been so much grabbing and pulling. He did so love the feeling of Sephiroth’s hands, still childlike, ripping at his shirt. The clone was still young - and in reality was far younger than he looked physically - but the result of the rapid ageing that he had undergone was that he had the mental faculties of an adult, but trapped in a child’s body.
Dilan’s obsession with Sephiroth had begun to consume him once he had realized the truth of the mind growing beneath the innocent-seeming aqua eyes. A child’s body - a form he loved - combined with the chilling, calculating instincts of a killer. Sephiroth had seen the recognition in Dilan’s eyes, the want and had seen in that want his opportunity to drop his disguise and, around one person at least, reveal his true nature.
Thus had been born a bond, inescapable and twisted, between the two: the monster with the taste for children and the man trapped in a body that barely managed to contain him. It was within each other that they found release, savage and ferocious.
And ferocious they were, but always careful not to make marks that would be noticed by others. Sephiroth enjoyed having his skin torn, enjoyed seeing his blood flow, as though to show his disdain for the body that had not yet caught up to his mind. And Dilan was more than happy to help him in that pursuit.
“Dilan. Did you hear me?” Sephiroth turned his piercing gaze to Dilan.
“The king thinks that you’re too powerful.” Dilan grunted as he bent down to find his shoes. “He’s probably right.”
“He seems to think that the minute I step outside this facility, I’ll go berserk and destroy the town that I’ve heard so much about.” Sephiroth studied his nails. “As though I could not simply demolish the paltry security measures he has erected to keep me trapped here. But there is no precedent for me being out of control when exposed to novel stimuli.” Sephiroth, having been raised in a laboratory by scientists, had developed a rather clinical way of speaking.
“That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a precedent set for you losing your temper rather explosively.” Dilan pointed out. “You surely haven’t forgotten the JENOVA incident.”
“I was curious about my mother.” Sephiroth’s voice dropped to a near growl.
“Indeed.” Dilan raised a brow at him. “But you’ve been much better behaved since we’ve been arranging these little ‘release’ sessions.”
Sephiroth stared at him with eyes ever so slightly narrowed.
“Are you suggesting that these activities are merely for behavior modification on my part?”
“No, it’s simply a perk. A side effect of the fact that I genuinely enjoy making you whimper.”
Sephiroth pushed himself off the table and walked over to Dilan. Before the older man could react, Sephiroth had seized Dilan’s dreads and thrown him down to the ground. Now he pressed a foot to Dilan’s chest, pinning him to the cold floor and smiled down at him.
“I’m going to enjoy returning the favor when I’m older.”
Author: Xanthos Samurai
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing/Characters: Dilan/Sephiroth/Dilan, all of the assistants, Ansem the Wise.
Rating: R
Length: 1,961 Words
Warnings: Shota (sorta), alternate timeline, disturbing themes, language, mucking about with canon, spoilers, sciencey babble.
Disclaimer: I do not own nor claim to own anything but the arrangement of the words on the page.
Notes: Once upon a time, I wrote Sephiroth/Dilan set in the "present day" of KH2 and hinted that the relationship had been going on for a very long time, ever since Sephiroth was rather inappropriately young. This details how Sephiroth came to be in Radiant Garden and the beginnings of that relationship.
There were too many places for a little boy to get lost in the castle of Radiant Garden, especially a very young child like Sephiroth. Although to be honest, Sephiroth wasn’t really a child.
He was a construct, an experiment grown in a cold container of glass and steel, bred and developed from a strange being that had fallen to their world. They had gathered the remains of this being and studied it. It had a body and a mind, but it had no heart. No heart, they found, but it wasn’t a Heartless. Intrigued, the young scientists extracted cells to study, to try to find an explanation for its lack of heart. The genetic structure was like nothing they had ever seen, a strange being that was constantly in flux, evolving rapidly to any situation and environment that it was subjected to and that rapidly infected other cells. Because of this, the scientists named it a calamity, codenamed JENOVA. They wanted to try to create a being from the cells taken from the calamity to see if they could create a being without a heart.
King Ansem had originally opposed the creation of an artificial being without a heart, but the arguments of his assistants had won in the end. And so Sephiroth, constructed from the cells of the calamity from space, was created.
All six of them contributed to the experiment. As Even had said, there was no telling which combination of genes would yield the best results, or if any of them would at all. And so, wordlessly, each of them filled a container with blood and wordlessly gave it to Even to combine their DNA with JENOVA’s.
And so six tanks, labeled one through six, were erected, with the combined DNA within each one to develop. And as the young scientists watched, the hybrid beings grew.
Even’s predictions eventually proved correct. Aeleus’ DNA was the first to fail. The thing in the glass tank simply ceased to grow past an indistinct blobby shape, even after the others had started to resemble human children.
“Looks like your genes simply weren’t meant for baby-makin’. Looks like you make delicious shrimp though. Or maybe squid.” Braig hissed in Aeleus’ ear and patted him on the shoulder.
Aeleus’ eyes were blank and calm as he watched Even press a button on the tank’s console, although a tiny muscle was twitching in his jaw.
“Shut the fuck up, Braig.” He pushed Braig’s hand off his shoulder and walked out of the lab. He didn’t return for the duration of the experiment.
Even’s clone was the next to die, and then Dilan’s. Although none of them actually word the word “die” to describe it. At Even’s insistence, they used the word “fail”.
“That particular word has no application here. These beings are not alive and so therefore they cannot die. They are merely experiments that have failed.” Even reminded them all coolly as he disposed of Dilan’s clone. Dilan was watching impassively.
“Well now that leads to a whole rash of questions.” Braig was stretched out on a stainless steel table, just watching this happen. “Are they not alive just because they ain’t got hearts? Because you know that’s not the truth. Heartless ain’t got hearts and they fulfill every other condition of bein’ alive.”
Even glanced back at Braig with annoyance.
“Are you contrary by nature or is it just to annoy me?”
“Both, prob’ly. I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to it.” Braig pushed himself up off the table and ambled over to the remaining glass tanks. “Only three left. Mine, Xeha’s and Ienzo’s. It’ll be awful interestin’ to see which of us has genes that are the most compatible with a space calamity.” He reached up and ran his bony forefinger across the glass of his clone. “Keep growin’, little guy.”
The rest of them secretly hoped that Braig’s clone would be the next to go.
They got their wish. A scant week later, it failed and was disposed of. It must be said that the others felt a certain degree of relief as they watched Even dispose of it.
“Looks like it’s down to Ienzo’s and Xehanort’s.” Dilan mused. All of them looked between the two clones that remained. One had very pale skin and dark hair and the other had a middling skintone and silvery white hair. There was no indication between the two of them which would survive the experiment.
Both Ienzo and Xehanort gazed at their clones impassively. Ienzo, still a child himself, had spent more time in the labs with the growing clones than any of the others save for Even. He had said little about how he felt about the prospect of having a “son” at his young age, but the truth was that he was excited. A little thrill went through his body whenever he looked at the two remaining clones, excited at the potential of them. He even spoke to them sometimes - both of them, not just his own - and told them of the world outside the lab. The town, the people, all of the visitors that King Ansem entertained in Radiant Garden. He liked to think that they heard.
Xehanort, on the other hand, acted with almost complete indifference towards his potential offspring. He went into that section of the lab only when the others gathered to see any significant progress or for a disposal. Today, he acted as he always did, gazing at his clone with apathy until he left to his part of the laboratories to return to his own research.
That was where Xehanort was on the day that Braig wandered into the lab, crunching on an apple.
“Congratulations, by the way. You’re the winner.”
“The winner of what?” Xehanort looked up at Braig.
“You win whatever prize you get if your DNA is the most compatible with space viruses. Ienzo’s clone kicked the bucket this morning and Even says yours is about ready to hatch, so you’re pretty much a daddy. Have a cigar.” He slipped one into the breast pocket of Xehanort’s lab coat with a smirk and walked out again.
Xehanort blinked down at the cigar and went into the lab with the tanks. He found only Ienzo there, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the now-empty tank of his own clone. He was staring at the ground and every once in a while, his shoulders jerked. Xehanort looked at him, then at his clone in its tank. For the first time, its eyes were open, although it didn’t see anything, and they were a bright aqua and slit, almost like a cat’s eyes. He found himself staring at them until another shoulder jerk from Ienzo caught his attention from out of the corner of his eye. He looked down at the child scientist.
“I’m sorry.” He said, and walked back out the door.
Under the tutelage of six foster fathers (and an occasional foster-grandfather in the form of Ansem the Wise) the little clone grew with a speed that astounded even the most skeptical of the scientists. Before long, the clone was physically a young teenager and mentally advanced even more than that. He had been named Sephiroth by Xehanort for reasons unknown to the others. Indeed, it was one of the only times that the scientist ever showed any interest in his clone.
But in the absence of his “father”, Sephiroth formed bonds with the others. Most notably, with Dilan and Ienzo. It became a common sight to see the two boys walk hand in hand around the underground facilities of the castle. But it was with Dilan that the little clone spent most of his time.
It surprised the others. Dilan was not known to be fond of many people and especially not children. And yet the clone was with him almost constantly when Dilan was in the underground. King Ansem had forbidden the scientists from taking Sephiroth out into the town, at least not yet. He claimed it was because there was no telling how the clone would react to the external stimulus there, but the scientists (rightly) suspected that it was because, deep down, Ansem was frightened of Sephiroth.
“The king thinks that I’m too powerful.” Sephiroth said to Dilan one day.
The two of them were deep in the bowels of the laboratory, in a wing that was never used and rarely visited. They found that the dark, quiet places were the best for their purposes.
Dilan was pulling his shirt on again. He cursed inwardly that one of them had torn off one of the buttons earlier. It was no telling who it was - there had been so much grabbing and pulling. He did so love the feeling of Sephiroth’s hands, still childlike, ripping at his shirt. The clone was still young - and in reality was far younger than he looked physically - but the result of the rapid ageing that he had undergone was that he had the mental faculties of an adult, but trapped in a child’s body.
Dilan’s obsession with Sephiroth had begun to consume him once he had realized the truth of the mind growing beneath the innocent-seeming aqua eyes. A child’s body - a form he loved - combined with the chilling, calculating instincts of a killer. Sephiroth had seen the recognition in Dilan’s eyes, the want and had seen in that want his opportunity to drop his disguise and, around one person at least, reveal his true nature.
Thus had been born a bond, inescapable and twisted, between the two: the monster with the taste for children and the man trapped in a body that barely managed to contain him. It was within each other that they found release, savage and ferocious.
And ferocious they were, but always careful not to make marks that would be noticed by others. Sephiroth enjoyed having his skin torn, enjoyed seeing his blood flow, as though to show his disdain for the body that had not yet caught up to his mind. And Dilan was more than happy to help him in that pursuit.
“Dilan. Did you hear me?” Sephiroth turned his piercing gaze to Dilan.
“The king thinks that you’re too powerful.” Dilan grunted as he bent down to find his shoes. “He’s probably right.”
“He seems to think that the minute I step outside this facility, I’ll go berserk and destroy the town that I’ve heard so much about.” Sephiroth studied his nails. “As though I could not simply demolish the paltry security measures he has erected to keep me trapped here. But there is no precedent for me being out of control when exposed to novel stimuli.” Sephiroth, having been raised in a laboratory by scientists, had developed a rather clinical way of speaking.
“That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a precedent set for you losing your temper rather explosively.” Dilan pointed out. “You surely haven’t forgotten the JENOVA incident.”
“I was curious about my mother.” Sephiroth’s voice dropped to a near growl.
“Indeed.” Dilan raised a brow at him. “But you’ve been much better behaved since we’ve been arranging these little ‘release’ sessions.”
Sephiroth stared at him with eyes ever so slightly narrowed.
“Are you suggesting that these activities are merely for behavior modification on my part?”
“No, it’s simply a perk. A side effect of the fact that I genuinely enjoy making you whimper.”
Sephiroth pushed himself off the table and walked over to Dilan. Before the older man could react, Sephiroth had seized Dilan’s dreads and thrown him down to the ground. Now he pressed a foot to Dilan’s chest, pinning him to the cold floor and smiled down at him.
“I’m going to enjoy returning the favor when I’m older.”