[FIC] The Vertigo Shot [KH2/Zemyx/Part A]
TITLE: The Vertigo Shot
AUTHOR: S-P [reveneirz/Sinful Serenity@fanfiction.net]
RATING: Um. PG13 for some swearing?
GENRE: Drama, semi-AU
PAIRING: Zexion/Demyx
WARNINGS: shounen ai, slight spoilers for CoM/KH2
WORD COUNT: {1/1} 13,521
SUMMARY: Memory, like pride, is a dangerous thing: a blade that, when unheeded rusts, and handled carelessly, cuts its owner. Some people are lucky enough to forget, and some people aren't.
Note!: Un-beta'd. Just so you know. And, uh, since the post is apparently too large to fit in one update, I'll split it in two. xD;;
[x]--[x]--[x]
Demyx was nine years old when he remembered.
It was during his ninth birthday party, too. The irony of the timing had escaped him then, at that young and blissful age. It had been when the last of his friends trickled out of his house, when the air in the house was settling and his mother had begun stooping around the living room, retrieving trash and mislaid gifts from underneath the furniture. It had hit him, sharp and sudden and almost cruel, and it had hit him hard.
He remembered that he'd suddenly collapsed on the sofa from where he was gathering his presents--toys packaged by his friend's mothers, clothes and little necessities from his relatives--when the wave of memories crashed into his head. His mother had written the fainting spell off as fatigue from too much cake and soda and play, so she'd picked him up, carried him upstairs, and tucked him into bed. When his mother was murmuring good-night and laying a soft kiss on his forehead, Demyx was dreaming of a life that both belonged to him, and one that--before now--he had not known at all.
He saw himself, older and cocky, in a tall black cloak, he saw himself surrounded by water and music and shadows, and he saw himself dying at the hands of a boy not much younger than he. He saw the disbelief etched into his face, and he felt the sadness that came with the quiet death of a young man that no one had really cared for, or would live to care for. He saw the organization, he saw the keyblades; he saw who he used to be, in another world, far, far away, in another life. And when he woke up and saw his bedroom ceiling and the soft glow of his night-light (his friends had teased him mercilessly about it but he did not care), he felt much older waking then he had gone to sleep.
When he was nine and he remembered Demyx of the Organization XIII, he hadn't fully understood. He'd turn to look at his closet mirror, and a short little boy with chubby cheeks and wide eyes and soft dark-blonde hair just beginning to grow long had been looking back, faintly bewildered.
"I'm not him, I think?" Demyx had announced to his bedroom. He frowned; the sound of music, the ocean, crashed in his head. "But he was me."
[x]--[x]--[x]
"I'm sorry--what's your name, again?"
"Um, Demyx." The blonde scratched the side of his face, smiling sheepishly, and trying not to feel horribly misplaced in the campus office. He failed. "--uh, Melzer. Demyx Melzer."
"Melzer, huh? Let's see... 'M', 'm', 'm's..." The clerk--TIFA LOCKHART, the name plate on her desk read--hummed a little under her breath, fingers flying over a keyboard. She beamed. "Here we go--let me see. You accidentally got registered for...third block, advanced english lit, right?"
"Yeah. Words, you know? Definitely not my thing."
Lockhart giggled heartily, still tapping away. "Oh, I hear you. One of my friends took that class and she couldn't get out of it fast enough. Swear she was hitting the bar almost every other night." Her dark eyes scanned the monitor, and she frowned. Demyx knew that this was a sign of doom. "Um, well, the courses you mentioned you wanted to switch in to (they were all related to music, music, and more music) are all filled, or not offered for this time block."
"...all of them?"
"Yeah." She flipped her hair over her shoulder and began tapping away again. "The rest of your schedule's pretty much set in stone, too. Not much we can do."
Demyx smiled pathetically. "Damnit."
She smiled sympathetically, reaching over to pat his shoulder in a comforting way. "Hey, well, look at it this way. It means you've got a free period!" She smiled bright. "Or, you know, you could take an elective course for kicks--interested in quantitative economics?"
"No," Demyx mumbled, still sounding and feeling rather pathetic. He lived a good forty-five minutes away from campus, so leaving during third block and just coming back to fourth would be a waste of time. He didn't like the campus enough either to stick around for two or three hours until his fourth period, so he didn't have much of a choice but to take on another class. He guessed he'd rather be busy with a little extra coursework then bored with nothing to do. "Uh, anything else?"
"Hang on..."
A minute or two later, she'd rattled off a list of available openings, through which Demyx had sort of zoned out and listened to in a zombie-like state. Tifa glanced at his unfocused eyes, rolled hers, and chuckled softly. Snapping her fingers in his face to gain his attention, she said, "You wanna try psychology and social behavior?"
He said: "Guh?"
"Psychology," she repeated.
Demyx frowned, scratching his head again. "I dunno if that's a good idea," he replied, doubtfully. "I think all that junk would go right over my head."
"Nah, I heard from another friend of mine that it's pretty fun. Supposedly, it's taught by the youngest professor on campus."
"Would that, by any chance, be the same friend that dropped english lit?"
"Oh, shush." She laughed cheerily, and the typing resumed. "Psych it is, then."
The blonde man blinked. "Wait what?"
"Heh, don't worry 'bout it." A new schedule was printed for him, he was winked at, and then he was promptly shoved out of the office. Demyx stared at the slightly creased paper in his hands. PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR screamed up at him from his third block, with the room location, time block, and professor's name in a neat line following it. He wonderedly vaguely what he'd gotten pushed around into this time, and resolved that he'd have some kind of wayward revenge against Tifa Lockhart in the future.
Certain that he had condemned himself to a fate worse than advanced english, Demyx stuffed the paper in the back pocket of his jeans, re-shouldered his schoolbag, and trudged off to hallway exit.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Demyx's roommate, Luneth, had always been something between amused by the young man and intensely weirded out. There'd been a time when he had left a massive pile of homework and projects in his room for a sandwich break in the kitchen, and he'd found Demyx there, swinging around wildly with a mop in one hand, his cd player in the other, and a pair of bulky headphones perched over his fauxhawk (he insisted that expensive, head-encompassing headphones were entirely necessary for the best quality sound; Luneth maintained that he looked like there was a large, cancerous growth coming of his face.) He was dancing in circles, not really mopping the floor, and singing at the top of his lungs. Luneth might have enjoyed his fine voice if he hadn't promptly stepped onto a large wet spot and fallen onto his butt with a rather unmanly shriek.
"Damnit, Demyx! I thought you were supposed to be cleaning, not making more messes!"
Demyx had not heard him. He swung his hips awkwardly, still singing, and swung the mop around with him, nearly beaning Luneth in the face.
"DEMYX IF YOU DON'T LISTEN TO ME RIGHT NOW I AM GOING TO SLASH ALL THE STRINGS ON YOUR GUITARS AND NOT LET YOU BUY NEW ONES AND YOU WILL REGRET IT."
The blonde had paused to remove his headphones; music pounded into the still air. "Oh, hey, Luneth! Did you say something?"
Luneth gaped at him. He caught himself before he let out another girly screech, got to his feet, and, sputtering, stalked off. (Normally, he had a much more cheerful disposition and he and Demyx usually got along very well, but physics projects are enough to drive anybody into something like PMS.)
"Luneth? Luneth! ...Was it something I said?"
Demyx had blinked then, shrugged, and was about to slip his headphones back on when he'd noticed the faucet was dripping, meaning he'd probably forgotten to tighten the knob all the way. He was reaching out to do so when something in him whispered: water. It had clicked then, something warm and familiar, and instead of shutting off the tap he'd turned it on all the way. He'd run his hands under it, the cool stream cascading over his palms and fingers. And he stared at it and remembered again.
Water, he mouthed silently. Dance.
It had only streamed steadily into his cupped palm and over the edges of his broad hand. It would not dance for him. The element did not belong to him anymore. He'd felt sad then, closed his eyes and remembered a time when all it had took was a sweep of calloused fingers over wire and forms had taken shape in the fluid, kept him in company in the long and lonely nights of the World that Never Was.
"If I could still summon water-forms," he had joked aloud to the empty kitchen, "then I wouldn't have to do the stupid mopping."
He'd turned the tap off, had gone back to his mopping, had stared at the white lineolium flooring and thought of white castles, in another time. The faucet dripped behind him, but he hadn't bothered to turn the tap off all the way on purpose. The steady dripping was a lonely sort of noise, one that permeated the hollow ache of his bones when he dreamed, comforting.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Unlike Demyx, Zexion had remembered from the day he was born.
Not in the sense that he'd opened his still baby-blue eyes in this brand new world and thought: I am Zexion, I was Ienzo, and now, I am alive again. No, it had been a gradual release, new--or old, arguably--memories occasionally drifting into his consciousness as time passed. He knew, in his past life, he had been reserved, quiet unless necessary, and a conniving little son of a bitch. Without the influence of his memories, he thought he probably would've grown up that way, regardless, because there are things that simply do not change, through worlds and realities. But because of those memories, he was a young boy haunted, and he would grow into a man haunted. The memory of the buzzing emptiness in his past-life's chest had served to make him curious in this life too.
He'd recorded each of the memories he gained, year by year, month by month, in a journal, in an attempt to understand. When he was a solemn little boy, he had not known it then, but by the time he was eighteen he realized he had written the diary of a deceased man who had always walked the fine line of existence. When he was nineteen, he realized that it was him. When he reached twenty, he entertained the idea that his new life was some sort of crappy joke, as if it were a time extension to agonize more over a past he did not need to remember but did anyway.
In the notebook's much, much, older, yellowing pages: I am a Nobody. We do not have hearts; we do not exist. In red ink, underlined.
Now, much later, he re-read that line and realized that that had been the defining factor of his non-life. He realized then, with a cold sense of not-yet-fear, that he had died before he had regained a heart. It implied that he was reborn because his matter needed somewhere to go, another world to invest in, but it still lacked the vessel inside him that qualified all emotions. It implied that all he had felt up until then--peace, anger, sorrow, pride--was, as in the last life and now in this one, a fake, a substitute for real emotion created by his mind and the mind alone.
In that moment, he'd laid the journal down, as fear gripped him in a paralyzing hold. He had never known what it was like to feel. How would he know now if anything was real? The scientist's mad desire to know surged in his brain. On the outside, his composure did not break--dark eyes unblinking, slate-colored hair unruffled. In the first moment of insecurity he'd felt in a long, long time, he'd laid a hand over his chest where the heart was intended to be, and closed his eyes.
When he felt the stillness beneath his fingers, his breath caught in his throat, and he almost imagined that he did not feel the resounding thud of a skipped heartbeat shortly after, as if it were an answer to any of his questions.
[x]--[x]--[x]
When Demyx met Zexion for the first time, in the hallway of the Castle That Never Was, they'd briefly exchanged glances; Demyx waved, and Zexion merely turned to face forward again, striding off into the inky blackness.
When Demyx meets Zexion for the second time, their eyes lock, and he can almost feel his jaw drop. Because when the schedule Tifa had handed him read Ikeda, Z. under the professor column, it has not even crossed his mind that it could possibly be--
Zexion turns his head to the sound of his classroom door closing, and Demyx says, intelligently, "Um."
The other male is a striking image, still a little on the short side, still stoic and radiating a commanding presence. He looks down at his desk; eyes briefly scanning the paperwork he needs to do, stacked on its surface. "Melzer. Am I correct?"
"Uh, yeah."
"See me after class. I will give you the syllabus and assignments you will need to make up then. For now, take a seat." His dark eyes linger for a second, and then he turns back to the rows of expectant students, who are intrigued by this new young man and his reaction to their also young teacher. "You will start taking notes on chapter two, section three. Fifteen minutes to the hour, we will discuss the material. Begin." His voice is crisp and precise. Demyx thinks he's heard more come out of the mouth of this Zexion then the span of all the years he had known Zexion of the Organization. It is unsettling, and the older man has to send him a reproving glare before he starts and quickly scurries to an empty seat.
He wonders how stony, silent Zexion could possibly have wanted to take on a job like teaching, where he would have had to talk considerably, something he remembered the past Zexion not being very fond of. He wonders how how he's changed. When he looks up from the corner of his eyes, he sees Zexion at his desk, hand poised to write but not actually doing so, face twisted into what he had once dubbed the "I am clearly lost in thought and if you disturb me I will eat your face" expression and almost snickers (he also very nearly breaks Zexion's class rule, number one: do not talk in my classroom, ever. Unless you are addressed, which will also be never.)
He bows his head over his paper to make it look like he is productive, but inside, he is silently counting the seconds until the next bell rings.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Demyx could almost have screamed for joy when the period finally ended. Among the flurry of activity, he placed his notes haphazardly in a binder, closed his textbook, and shoved both objects in his bag. He waited until all the other students left, and then--felt all his bravado take a long walk off a short cliff. Chewing on his lower lip, he approached Zexion's desk in what he felt was a ninja-like, stealthy fashion, worrying all the while. What if he doesn't remember? What if he thinks I'm...I'm insane! What if I scare him and he hates me and he fails me?! AUGHHHHHHHHH--
"Demyx, get off the floor. You look ridiculous."
The young blonde man laughed nervously, pulling himself up from the crouch with which he had sneakily approached. Zexion stared at him blankly. There was a long moment of silence, then:
"Do you--"
"Yes." Zexion interrupted, one hand massaging his temple. "I remember."
More silence, and the quiet shuffling of paper as the shorter man retrieved the necessary course paperwork for the other.
"Oh, man." Demyx finally said, grinning madly. "I can't even believe it." Zexion handed him a packet, neatly stapled; he frowned at it, and it was about to join the tiny cesspit of papers once held and never seen again in his bag when bolded words in the heading caught his eyes. "'Psychology,'" he read aloud. "'The science of mental processes; the study of emotional and behavioral characteristics of an individual.'" He quirked an eyebrow at Zexion teasingly. "You teaching psychology makes total sense, except for the teaching part."
Zexion shrugged. "I needed a job."
"Yeah, but--"
"The subject was interesting." The look in the other man's visible eye declared that that particular point of their conversation was at an end. "Are you not supposed to be at your next class by now?"
Blue-green eyes scrunched up in thought, and then Demyx shrugged. "Eh, the prof's insane, he prol'ly won't even notice I'm gone." He sat on the desk nearest to him, ignoring Zexion's glare, and swung his legs the way a child would, humming at little. Minutes ticked by, with Demyx watching the other man curiously--he looked almost bored, chin propped up in one hand, the other marking a pile of student essays with a red pen.
He'd never dreamed, in a million years, that this was what their future would hold. When he was living in the World That Never Was, the air stank of such hopelessness that it was impossible to think much farther then the day, the next week, month, or year--they were all too preoccupied with their own selfish goals and dreams. His nails tapped out a rhythm on the desk as he thought; he wondered.
"Hey, Zexion?"
When there was no verbal reply, he looked up, and saw that indigo eyes were focused on him, so he went on anyway. "Do you think... the other are here? On this world?"
Pause. "I do not know."
Demyx started tapping again, and the sound echoed in the room. "D'ya think we'll find them?" He sounded almost hopeful, and Zexion almost rolled his eyes. The organization members had rarely associated with each other in the past unless necessary, and here was Demyx, wanting to find them, of all things. He couldn't imagine that any of them could be much different, in this life. He thought that they'd probably acknowledge each other's existence, and then move on. If even that.
"I do not know," he said quietly, eyes drifting back to the paper laid in front of him. He skimmed it idly as Demyx launched into some sort of idle chatter. He marked a 'D', circled it, and began slashing criticism into the margins below.
His next question awoke him from the grading-induced stupor: "D'ya think they remember, too?"
Zexion laid his pen down but did not otherwise move. He saw the journal in his mind's eye; the red, red words: I am a nobody. The curiosity that had driven him to become a scientist, two lifes ago, slept in his aching mind, and he'd only managed to ignore the buzzing feeling in his chest with the amount of work he purposely put on himself. It was the cruelty of it that kept him awake long into the night, searching...
"...Zexion?"
"I hope not," he bit out shortly, and resumed grading.
Demyx watched him interestedly, both intrigued and a little disappointed. The appearance of another ex-organization member had thrown another wrench into his life--before, Demyx had just gone on living like an ordinary boy, grown into teen and then college student; the memories of his past life had only served to remind him to make the most out of the one he had now, so he'd done just that.
But Zexion... he was shocked when he discovered that he was a teacher of all things, but besides that, he did not seem to have changed at all. He talked just as little as he had in his last life, to Demyx anyway, but Demyx sensed a certain change in him, one that was not visible so much as that it prodded at his senses.
He now lacked the sixth sense that all nobodies once had, the one necessary to control and understand their elements, but the lingering remnants of that sense told him Zexion had changed in some infinitesimally small way. He figured the fact that they had both once been evil peons for the same organization qualified as having similar interested and that he could therefore be considered a prospective friend, rather than a stalker. He wanted to know how the other man had changed, and found himself wanting to know more about him. Zexion had spent most of his past life either locked his labs, the library, or at Castle Oblivion, and as a result he was one of the only members that everyone else knew very little to nothing about.
Curiosity killed the cat, Demyx thought idly, and smiled. Good thing I'm not one.
Nearly an hour later found Demyx still perched on the desk, though sitting with his legs crossed indian-style, and Zexion getting through the last of his papers. The blonde man hadn't seen a reason to leave so he hadn't bothered, opting to watch Zexion before eventually drifting into daydreams, staring through the classroom's tall french windows at the beginnings of dusk. He sang a little under his breathe, tapped incessantly, and occasionally air guitared, an act which annoyed Zexion to no end, though not enough to snap at him. When he finally got up to start gathering his materials and stow them in the black messanger bag he carried, Demyx, too, broke out of his tiny musical trance and smiled at him, hopping to his feet.
"Hey, you wanna go out and hit up a resturant for din--"
"I am busy," Zexion said shortly, did up the buckles on his bag, and slung it over his shoulder. He glanced pointedly at the door; when the other man made no move, he looked back at him, and sighed at the absolutely crushed expression on Demyx's face (one that the blonde man had cleverly perfected from many years of begging cookies, as he was currently half-giggling and half-hoping on the inside.)
Something was definitely wrong with him, Zexion decided. "...Perhaps another time," he conceded.
A sunny smile blossomed over the young man's face, blue-green eyes lighting up. "Great!" he cheered, stooping to slip an arm through one of the straps on his backpack, which had been woefully abandoned on the floor through the course of the afternoon. "See ya tomorrow in class, then, I guess. Oh hey..." Zexion was fairly certain the expression on the other male's face was as close to devilish as it would ever get. "Since you're the professor and all, you could, you know--"
"No, Demyx, I will not give you automatic top marks in my class on the merits of once being antagonistic servants of the same organization."
"Damn."
[x]--[x]--[x]
Although he has not let it show, Demyx's appearance in his classroom startled Zexion in a way that he is unaccustomed to. He has, of course, imagined that perhaps the other organization members were also reborn, perhaps in to his very world. But by some irrationality he would have assumed that, had they also existed in this plane, they would have made their presence known by now, and Zexion berates himself for his careless oversight. It is clear now that he is, at least, not the only surviving ex-organization member, and clearly not the only one that remembers a world now locked away.
Demyx is so full of vitality that he disturbs Zexion. He wonders if Demyx, too, contemplated his existance in this world, the reliability of the flare of emotions in his mind. But he watches Demyx in the next few days in class and thinks he probably hasn't, or if he has, he probably does not care. He always was the one, in that world so long ago, to insist that he was not lacking a heart. He watches Demyx the university student, who does not really pay attention to his lectures, who daydreams out the window, who taps a frenetic rhythm on the desk with a pair of pencils, one of the earbuds of his headphones tucked into his shirt, the other into his ear.
He realizes, one day, when he is writing chapter standards and assignments on the whiteboard and turns around--faster than Demyx can look away--that Demyx is watching him. So he watches Demyx watch him, and in the same disturbing way that Demyx barreled into his life for a second time, he is vaguely interested.
When his classroom is ringed in silence and he works long into the afternoon on his own projects, Zexion finds his attention drifting from his work and through the windows near his desk. His eyes trace the shadows and he wills them to move, to bend and shape themselves to his command, but he has known from his birth that in this world his only powers were books and documents. Recorded cases of what has happened, what could, and what never will. The infuriating rage of helplessness echoes, soft and biting, in his head.
He needs this, he thinks, picks up his keys and locks his room, striding off to the library. He needs to know why, and how.
And then, he thinks, he needs to know how to fix it.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Befriending Zexion is not easy. Zexion sure as hell didn't help. Demyx felt, after a month, like he'd done everything possible that a normal person would have responded to. Zexion did not pick up his phones (Demyx thought, then, that having his contact infromation listed ont he syllabus was rather useless, but it was clear that Zexion expected his students to be self-sufficient, mostly), be it weekday or weekend, or respond to e-mails; he always locked his classroom doors as soon as his third block was over with and refused to emerge until much, much later, when Demyx was invariably forced to go home and, god forbid, do his homework; outside of his lecture hall, Zexion was more or less a ghost, one that Demyx, who usually attracted people to him by his bouncy nature, could hardly grasp.
But water hadn't been Demyx's element for no reason; he had oceans of patience and good cheer, and, like water--which, given enough time, could wear through even rock--he kept nagging and pestering (and leaving little boxes of dark-white chocolate truffles on his desk every other week, from a pastry shop close to his house) until, eventually, Zexion broke. (He had once peeked a blue-green eye through the little window of the classroom door after hours and beheld the shorter man munching on the treats, looking almost guilty.)
Demyx had one day, fairly late into the evening, tested the lock on the door, and to his delight and satisfaction, found it open. He then proceeded to fling open the door in a completely unnecessarily loud fashion, and then flung his body into an accusing pose he'd once seen a rival lawyer on Phoenix Wright do. "AH-HAH," he said dramatically, with a downright obnoxious grin, "I KNEW it would be the chocolate!"
Zexion quirked an eyebrow at him, calmly peeled the wrapper off the bottom of one of the chocolates, and took a bite. At Demyx's pointed stare, he rolled his eyes and obliged him by giving a curt nod. From the corner of his eye, he inspected the carton; there were only three left. Damn.
Demyx straighted, brushing imaginary lint off his jeans awkwardly. His grand entrance being made and all, he hadn't really had any idea what to say anymore.
They stared at each other.
"So, uh." He smiled, palming the side of his head. "How 'bout that dinner date, yeah?"
"'Date,'" Zexion echoed, bemused.
"Yeah, yeah. Come ooooooon. I'm hungry, you're hungry--I think, after pigging out on truffles--" the remark earned him a half-hearted glare-- "--and you promised." He scrunched up his face in an attempt to narrow his eyes, fluffed his few bangs over the right side of his face, and said, as low and gravelly as his boyish voice could go, "'Perhaps another time,' maybe when I am not at home having no life and watching Grey's Anatomy all the time 'cause it's all deep and introspective and I like watching people get cut up."
The comment did earn him a smack, and when he was laughing he thought he had seen the ghost of a half-smile on Zexion's pale lips. "You mistake me for Larxene," Zexion said dryly. He looked down at the pile of paperwork on his desk (he had quickly learned in his career that his snappish exterior took care of his students easily, but the agonizing part of being a teacher was the mounds and mounds of damn paper), remembering that he had been rushed this morning, hadn't eaten breakfast, and since he normally skipped lunch, hadn't had food all day, aside from the truffles. His stomach grumbled at him agreeably.
Curse you, random reactions of gastric juice and enzymes. The childish thought made him nearly snort at himself.
Zexion decided, then, in his first true moment of procrastination and utter shirking of duties, that he guessed he could maybe take up Demyx's offer, or something. He could lock his materials in and come in early the next morning; he had always made a point to have his lesson plan for the week readied the sunday evening previous, anyway. Demyx's eyes grew wide when the shorter man got up to retrieve his coat and slip it on. (They both wore long black coats, Demyx 'for old time's sake,' and Zexion simply because little other styles or colors suited him.) He very nearly let out a girly little giggle of joy, the sort that teenage girls do when their crush calls them back for the first time.
"--You are paying," Zexion said.
"What?"
The shorter man smirked, locking his classroom door behind him.
"...Oh, fine. I can," Demyx flung an arm dramatically across his forehead, "lavish even more money on you." Laughter, light and loud. Zexion decided that it sounded alright. "I mean, who'da thunk it? Great Cloaked Schemer Zexion, master of all illusions and brain-fuckery has a thing for dark-white chocolate truffles."
Zexion did not bother dignifying him with a response; but Demyx slanted a look at him from the corner of his eyes, and saw him focused on the tile floor and frowning slightly as they walked, which meant he was kind of embarrassed (he'd first recorded that particular...Zexion-version of an expression when a young woman in the class had raised her hand to ask if they would be discussing any related...sexual disorders soon in a smoldering voice. Demyx had contained his snickers until he'd caught Zexion's cold expression, a very slight scrunching of his visible brow and the barest hint of a flush on his pale skin, and had promptly laughed himself stupid. He had also earned extra-extra homework.)
They stepped out in the freezing air, Demyx shivering as a blast of chill wind blew through his nose, and hastily re-wrapped his scarf. Zexion tilted his head back, just a little, and took a deep breath. The cold stung his lungs in a pleasant way, and the air smelled clean and cool.
"So," Demyx said, smiling, "Where to?"
Zexion turned to face him, though he couldn't see his eyes from the angle. "..."
"Heeeeeey," the blonde said, defensively, "I figured I should be all manly and chisel..er...ous and, uh, let you pick."
Zexion rolled his indigo eyes. "Chivalrous, you mean?"
The spirited young man beamed. "Yeah! That thingmabob."
Zexion shook his head, sighed softly, and turned on his heel. Demyx caught up to his purposeful stride in a few quick steps, and the walk to the nearest train station was a silent one.
The town they lived in now (one Zexion had grew up in, and Demyx had moved into) was remarkably like the Dark City that now laid, sleeping, behind portals choked in shadow--it sprawled over the landscape, and in the nightfall it loomed over their heads, sharp corners and smooth stone shimmering faintly through the damp air, reflecting neon lights. It was a huge strip of lives that had settled into the earth, raised by the continuing generations of blood and sweat, stretching for miles in all directions, and boasted a fair ease of transportation with a huge city-wide network of bullet trains (most of which were in odd states of random disrepair, as far as the interior went). In a two-minute wait, they flashed their boarding passes at the stationmaster (he was a long, spiky blonde-haired man with what might have been charming blue eyes if he didn't look constantly depressed) and boarded the eastbound train. Zexion sat, and Demyx stood, rocking on his heels.
In the silence, Demyx sang.
"'...I could make you see the beauty of a new sun...'" He broke off into humming, still standing and rocking and gazing through the windows at the darkness that lashed past them.
Zexion watched him and the fluorescent glow of skin. He looked, Zexion thought, in this moment, exactly the same as he did in the last life. The lights--in this car, broken by chance, and occasionally buzzing to life before flickering out--made his skin eerily pale and his hair a dusty shade of brown-gold, and he would have looked every inch the organization member if it wasn't for the pale green scarf tucked haphazardly around his neck. His eyes shone, and Zexion thought they were very like the aquamarine sea-color of the Riku Replica that had murdered him.
They got off at the next stop into a street that swam in red and gold and green. When Demyx stopped looking around in wonder, he noticed that Zexion had already started walking off, and had to jog lightly to catch up. They turned into a small resturant tucked in a nook across the street from what looked like a souveneir shop and seated themselves. A fairly young-looking woman stopped by the table, introduced herself as Mulan in an accented voice, and she and Zexion spoke in rapid Chinese.
Demyx, feeling horribly confused, drummed lightly on the table with his chopsticks. When Mulan left, Zexion threw a disapproving look at him, and he stopped, smiling sheepishly. "I didn't know you were, uh, Chinese."
"I am not." Zexion shrugged off his coat and draped it on the seat next to him. "My mother married an immigrant from The Land of Dragons before the pathways of the worlds closed again. My father grew up in a country called Japan in that world." He sipped his tea idly, and caught the blonde man before he began another drumming solo with a glare.
"I didn't know that so many people immigrated from different worlds. Woooow." He fidgeted a little in his seat, trying catch a glance at their waitress as she ducked behind a red curtain. "Somehow, I can't really imagine a warrior like Mulan being a waitress in a little café."
"That Mulan is the great-grand daughter of the original Fa Mu Lan."
"Oooh." Demyx made an understanding noise in his throat, and began drumming again.
Mulan stopped by again with a small pot of rice and another of tea, and Zexion ordered for both of them (when Demyx had launched into a particularly enthusiastic solo and had used the teacups as substitute cymbals, he had considered purposely ordering the most expensive items on the menu.)
Of course, the chopsticks contrived to get their own wayward sort of revenge.
"...Goddamnit. How the hell do your people eat with these things?!" Demyx stared at the chopsticks and his utter inability to use them in despair. Zexion smirked at him (in what Demyx thought was a considerably evil manner) from across the table, easily helping himself from the large plate of stir-fried noodles placed between them.
Demyx also learned early on that stabbing at the food and hoping to spear something usually didn't work either. He cursed the Chinese for the liberal amounts of oil used in their cooking, and finally conceded defeat with a sniggering Mulan stopped by and inconspicuously left him a fork, under the guise of refilling their tea pot. Had Zexion been that sort of man, he would have teased Demyx mercilessly.
Conversation over the meal consisted mostly of Zexion quietly eating and Demyx chattering in between mouthfuls. The slate-haired man honestly had no idea how the other male managed to inhale food at such a rapid pace, talk incessantly, and breathe at the same time, but he guessed it was a skill that came from much practice. Demyx, unperturbed by Zexion's obvious lack of will to participate, talked about everything and anything; the weather, the music of this world, his guitars ("they have nothing on sitars, I swear, but I can't find any! Can you believe it;"), the latest gossip, his university classes, his roommate, and himself.
Zexion discovered that night that Demyx believed in cd players, not ipods, preferred his pizza with anchovies, that he liked the colors blue and purple and green the best (mostly blue), and that--more from watching and listening to the man, rather than his actual speaking--he was insightful, if air-headed and flighty, and there was a certain cheerful kindness that curtailed the obvious lack of guilt in anything he did. Demyx was one who believed in living without regrets, and it showed.
The blonde man had--intentionally or not--avoided the subject of their shared past, and the at least subconscious tactfulness made Zexion wary, and the wariness kept him entertained.
They finished the meal with fresh orange slices and tea, a pair of fortune cookies, and a bill that made Demyx wince and Zexion smirk (those chocolate truffles weren't cheap, damnit; his wallet was already barely clinging to life).
Zexion was carefully peeling one of the orange slices, feeling vaguely--content? he wasn't sure, and he quickly refocused on Demyx's noisy shuffling before the dull roar of repeated questioning awakened from the back of his mind. Demyx cracked open the cookie and stuffed half of it in his mouth. "'Success is living up to your potential. That's all,'" he read aloud, and made a face. "How come I don't get something cool, like... I dunno... Hey, Zexy--" The nickname made him twitch unpleasantly. "--aren't you going to have a cookie? Even if they taste kinda bad..."
"No." Zexion sipped his rapidly cooling tea. Outside, the lights of the souveneir shot flickered once, then snapped off. He wondered idly how late it was, remembering that the weather forecast this morning had predicted a chance of rain. In the December chill, the rain would quickly freeze into hail or snow.
"In that case, I'll just eat it for you." Demyx grinned and reached for the lone cookie, tearing open the plastic and pulling out the small cracker.
When he broke it, it was empty. He frowned, munching on one of the two halves anyway. "Woah, fortune cookie dud. Weird."
Silence hung over the table, not as awkward as their first silences, but not entirely comfortable, either. But the empty fortune cookie seemed to inspire Demyx somehow, because when he looked up at Zexion, his face was scrunched into thought, blue-green eyes clouded.
"Psychology, huh," he said, smiling absently. He wondered where the other organization members were. If the pathways of the worlds could have been traveled, he would have discovered all of them, with time. A tall red-haired man and his blonde best friend, frequenting the same arcade after school with an alarming regularity. A blackjack dealer living in Port Royale. A librarian, a quartet of scientists, a revolutionary botanist, a man who ran a shooting range on his free days. He looked at Zexion, still smiling. "I think you changed a lot."
Zexion, who had been pulling his coat on, stood up, and began making his way to the exit. "Demyx," he said, "you do not know me."
Demyx jammed his arms hurridedly in his own coat, throwing a random tip on the table and quickly following the shorter male. "Zexion!" he shouted, but the other did not turn from where he was walking down the street, in the opposite direction of the station they had come by. Demyx figured he lived near here. When he caught up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, he felt him tense. "Yeah, well, I don't know you, sure, but I want to." Zexion did not bother facing him, or he might have seen the sincerity of the statement shining in Demyx's expression. "But I do know that..." Hesitation; he plowed on anyway. "I know that you're doing what you're doing now for some reason. And--" he spoke gently, so gently-- "--I wanna know. I wanna know you."
Over their heads, it started sleeting. The cold circled around the lonely pair on the street.
The moment stretched on forever in Demyx's mind, but Zexion merely shrugged his hand off. "Goodnight, Demyx," he said finally, and walked away.
Demyx shoved his hands in his pockets and watched Zexion's back until it disappeared into the darkness, and he shivered. Pulling up his hood against the stinging particles of ice and wind, he started heading home.
When Demyx arrived in his shared apartment he'd given Luneth a cursory smile and nod and an absent greeting. His silver-haired roommate decided he'd looked cold and a little forlorn, so when he knocked on his door and quietly entered to leave him a cup of hot tea, he found Demyx looking thoughtfully lost, one of his guitars perched in his lap, strumming lazy arpeggios. Luneth knew that Demyx tapped when he bored, sang when he was lonely, and played instruments for a variety of other emotions, so he'd left the drink on his desk and wished Demyx a quiet goodnight; Demyx was a man of music, and his own melodies were much better consolations to him then Luneth's words could have been.
Hours later, Luneth decided to turn in for the night, and was brushing his teeth when he heard the first clear strains of melody over running water. Demyx made a point to try to master every intstrument he'd come across, and though his true talent laid with his guitar, he was no slouch with the keyboard stowed in his room. The chords he'd struck on the guitar earlier had all been slightly off with a purpose, a little sour sounding, in a way that created a bittersweet song. On the piano, the rise and fall of scales and random bouts of improv were a sweet serenade, just a little bit sad.
Luneth slept to the sound of Demyx's voice, and Demyx sang and hummed and strummed and played long into the night before he too finally slept, bowed over his keyboard with his head pillowed on crossed arms and lengths of sheet music. When he dreamed, he dreamt of cold gray oceans, and tried to imagine what Zexion would sound like, if he sang.
Next
AUTHOR: S-P [reveneirz/Sinful Serenity@fanfiction.net]
RATING: Um. PG13 for some swearing?
GENRE: Drama, semi-AU
PAIRING: Zexion/Demyx
WARNINGS: shounen ai, slight spoilers for CoM/KH2
WORD COUNT: {1/1} 13,521
SUMMARY: Memory, like pride, is a dangerous thing: a blade that, when unheeded rusts, and handled carelessly, cuts its owner. Some people are lucky enough to forget, and some people aren't.
Note!: Un-beta'd. Just so you know. And, uh, since the post is apparently too large to fit in one update, I'll split it in two. xD;;
[x]--[x]--[x]
Demyx was nine years old when he remembered.
It was during his ninth birthday party, too. The irony of the timing had escaped him then, at that young and blissful age. It had been when the last of his friends trickled out of his house, when the air in the house was settling and his mother had begun stooping around the living room, retrieving trash and mislaid gifts from underneath the furniture. It had hit him, sharp and sudden and almost cruel, and it had hit him hard.
He remembered that he'd suddenly collapsed on the sofa from where he was gathering his presents--toys packaged by his friend's mothers, clothes and little necessities from his relatives--when the wave of memories crashed into his head. His mother had written the fainting spell off as fatigue from too much cake and soda and play, so she'd picked him up, carried him upstairs, and tucked him into bed. When his mother was murmuring good-night and laying a soft kiss on his forehead, Demyx was dreaming of a life that both belonged to him, and one that--before now--he had not known at all.
He saw himself, older and cocky, in a tall black cloak, he saw himself surrounded by water and music and shadows, and he saw himself dying at the hands of a boy not much younger than he. He saw the disbelief etched into his face, and he felt the sadness that came with the quiet death of a young man that no one had really cared for, or would live to care for. He saw the organization, he saw the keyblades; he saw who he used to be, in another world, far, far away, in another life. And when he woke up and saw his bedroom ceiling and the soft glow of his night-light (his friends had teased him mercilessly about it but he did not care), he felt much older waking then he had gone to sleep.
When he was nine and he remembered Demyx of the Organization XIII, he hadn't fully understood. He'd turn to look at his closet mirror, and a short little boy with chubby cheeks and wide eyes and soft dark-blonde hair just beginning to grow long had been looking back, faintly bewildered.
"I'm not him, I think?" Demyx had announced to his bedroom. He frowned; the sound of music, the ocean, crashed in his head. "But he was me."
[x]--[x]--[x]
"I'm sorry--what's your name, again?"
"Um, Demyx." The blonde scratched the side of his face, smiling sheepishly, and trying not to feel horribly misplaced in the campus office. He failed. "--uh, Melzer. Demyx Melzer."
"Melzer, huh? Let's see... 'M', 'm', 'm's..." The clerk--TIFA LOCKHART, the name plate on her desk read--hummed a little under her breath, fingers flying over a keyboard. She beamed. "Here we go--let me see. You accidentally got registered for...third block, advanced english lit, right?"
"Yeah. Words, you know? Definitely not my thing."
Lockhart giggled heartily, still tapping away. "Oh, I hear you. One of my friends took that class and she couldn't get out of it fast enough. Swear she was hitting the bar almost every other night." Her dark eyes scanned the monitor, and she frowned. Demyx knew that this was a sign of doom. "Um, well, the courses you mentioned you wanted to switch in to (they were all related to music, music, and more music) are all filled, or not offered for this time block."
"...all of them?"
"Yeah." She flipped her hair over her shoulder and began tapping away again. "The rest of your schedule's pretty much set in stone, too. Not much we can do."
Demyx smiled pathetically. "Damnit."
She smiled sympathetically, reaching over to pat his shoulder in a comforting way. "Hey, well, look at it this way. It means you've got a free period!" She smiled bright. "Or, you know, you could take an elective course for kicks--interested in quantitative economics?"
"No," Demyx mumbled, still sounding and feeling rather pathetic. He lived a good forty-five minutes away from campus, so leaving during third block and just coming back to fourth would be a waste of time. He didn't like the campus enough either to stick around for two or three hours until his fourth period, so he didn't have much of a choice but to take on another class. He guessed he'd rather be busy with a little extra coursework then bored with nothing to do. "Uh, anything else?"
"Hang on..."
A minute or two later, she'd rattled off a list of available openings, through which Demyx had sort of zoned out and listened to in a zombie-like state. Tifa glanced at his unfocused eyes, rolled hers, and chuckled softly. Snapping her fingers in his face to gain his attention, she said, "You wanna try psychology and social behavior?"
He said: "Guh?"
"Psychology," she repeated.
Demyx frowned, scratching his head again. "I dunno if that's a good idea," he replied, doubtfully. "I think all that junk would go right over my head."
"Nah, I heard from another friend of mine that it's pretty fun. Supposedly, it's taught by the youngest professor on campus."
"Would that, by any chance, be the same friend that dropped english lit?"
"Oh, shush." She laughed cheerily, and the typing resumed. "Psych it is, then."
The blonde man blinked. "Wait what?"
"Heh, don't worry 'bout it." A new schedule was printed for him, he was winked at, and then he was promptly shoved out of the office. Demyx stared at the slightly creased paper in his hands. PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR screamed up at him from his third block, with the room location, time block, and professor's name in a neat line following it. He wonderedly vaguely what he'd gotten pushed around into this time, and resolved that he'd have some kind of wayward revenge against Tifa Lockhart in the future.
Certain that he had condemned himself to a fate worse than advanced english, Demyx stuffed the paper in the back pocket of his jeans, re-shouldered his schoolbag, and trudged off to hallway exit.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Demyx's roommate, Luneth, had always been something between amused by the young man and intensely weirded out. There'd been a time when he had left a massive pile of homework and projects in his room for a sandwich break in the kitchen, and he'd found Demyx there, swinging around wildly with a mop in one hand, his cd player in the other, and a pair of bulky headphones perched over his fauxhawk (he insisted that expensive, head-encompassing headphones were entirely necessary for the best quality sound; Luneth maintained that he looked like there was a large, cancerous growth coming of his face.) He was dancing in circles, not really mopping the floor, and singing at the top of his lungs. Luneth might have enjoyed his fine voice if he hadn't promptly stepped onto a large wet spot and fallen onto his butt with a rather unmanly shriek.
"Damnit, Demyx! I thought you were supposed to be cleaning, not making more messes!"
Demyx had not heard him. He swung his hips awkwardly, still singing, and swung the mop around with him, nearly beaning Luneth in the face.
"DEMYX IF YOU DON'T LISTEN TO ME RIGHT NOW I AM GOING TO SLASH ALL THE STRINGS ON YOUR GUITARS AND NOT LET YOU BUY NEW ONES AND YOU WILL REGRET IT."
The blonde had paused to remove his headphones; music pounded into the still air. "Oh, hey, Luneth! Did you say something?"
Luneth gaped at him. He caught himself before he let out another girly screech, got to his feet, and, sputtering, stalked off. (Normally, he had a much more cheerful disposition and he and Demyx usually got along very well, but physics projects are enough to drive anybody into something like PMS.)
"Luneth? Luneth! ...Was it something I said?"
Demyx had blinked then, shrugged, and was about to slip his headphones back on when he'd noticed the faucet was dripping, meaning he'd probably forgotten to tighten the knob all the way. He was reaching out to do so when something in him whispered: water. It had clicked then, something warm and familiar, and instead of shutting off the tap he'd turned it on all the way. He'd run his hands under it, the cool stream cascading over his palms and fingers. And he stared at it and remembered again.
Water, he mouthed silently. Dance.
It had only streamed steadily into his cupped palm and over the edges of his broad hand. It would not dance for him. The element did not belong to him anymore. He'd felt sad then, closed his eyes and remembered a time when all it had took was a sweep of calloused fingers over wire and forms had taken shape in the fluid, kept him in company in the long and lonely nights of the World that Never Was.
"If I could still summon water-forms," he had joked aloud to the empty kitchen, "then I wouldn't have to do the stupid mopping."
He'd turned the tap off, had gone back to his mopping, had stared at the white lineolium flooring and thought of white castles, in another time. The faucet dripped behind him, but he hadn't bothered to turn the tap off all the way on purpose. The steady dripping was a lonely sort of noise, one that permeated the hollow ache of his bones when he dreamed, comforting.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Unlike Demyx, Zexion had remembered from the day he was born.
Not in the sense that he'd opened his still baby-blue eyes in this brand new world and thought: I am Zexion, I was Ienzo, and now, I am alive again. No, it had been a gradual release, new--or old, arguably--memories occasionally drifting into his consciousness as time passed. He knew, in his past life, he had been reserved, quiet unless necessary, and a conniving little son of a bitch. Without the influence of his memories, he thought he probably would've grown up that way, regardless, because there are things that simply do not change, through worlds and realities. But because of those memories, he was a young boy haunted, and he would grow into a man haunted. The memory of the buzzing emptiness in his past-life's chest had served to make him curious in this life too.
He'd recorded each of the memories he gained, year by year, month by month, in a journal, in an attempt to understand. When he was a solemn little boy, he had not known it then, but by the time he was eighteen he realized he had written the diary of a deceased man who had always walked the fine line of existence. When he was nineteen, he realized that it was him. When he reached twenty, he entertained the idea that his new life was some sort of crappy joke, as if it were a time extension to agonize more over a past he did not need to remember but did anyway.
In the notebook's much, much, older, yellowing pages: I am a Nobody. We do not have hearts; we do not exist. In red ink, underlined.
Now, much later, he re-read that line and realized that that had been the defining factor of his non-life. He realized then, with a cold sense of not-yet-fear, that he had died before he had regained a heart. It implied that he was reborn because his matter needed somewhere to go, another world to invest in, but it still lacked the vessel inside him that qualified all emotions. It implied that all he had felt up until then--peace, anger, sorrow, pride--was, as in the last life and now in this one, a fake, a substitute for real emotion created by his mind and the mind alone.
In that moment, he'd laid the journal down, as fear gripped him in a paralyzing hold. He had never known what it was like to feel. How would he know now if anything was real? The scientist's mad desire to know surged in his brain. On the outside, his composure did not break--dark eyes unblinking, slate-colored hair unruffled. In the first moment of insecurity he'd felt in a long, long time, he'd laid a hand over his chest where the heart was intended to be, and closed his eyes.
When he felt the stillness beneath his fingers, his breath caught in his throat, and he almost imagined that he did not feel the resounding thud of a skipped heartbeat shortly after, as if it were an answer to any of his questions.
[x]--[x]--[x]
When Demyx met Zexion for the first time, in the hallway of the Castle That Never Was, they'd briefly exchanged glances; Demyx waved, and Zexion merely turned to face forward again, striding off into the inky blackness.
When Demyx meets Zexion for the second time, their eyes lock, and he can almost feel his jaw drop. Because when the schedule Tifa had handed him read Ikeda, Z. under the professor column, it has not even crossed his mind that it could possibly be--
Zexion turns his head to the sound of his classroom door closing, and Demyx says, intelligently, "Um."
The other male is a striking image, still a little on the short side, still stoic and radiating a commanding presence. He looks down at his desk; eyes briefly scanning the paperwork he needs to do, stacked on its surface. "Melzer. Am I correct?"
"Uh, yeah."
"See me after class. I will give you the syllabus and assignments you will need to make up then. For now, take a seat." His dark eyes linger for a second, and then he turns back to the rows of expectant students, who are intrigued by this new young man and his reaction to their also young teacher. "You will start taking notes on chapter two, section three. Fifteen minutes to the hour, we will discuss the material. Begin." His voice is crisp and precise. Demyx thinks he's heard more come out of the mouth of this Zexion then the span of all the years he had known Zexion of the Organization. It is unsettling, and the older man has to send him a reproving glare before he starts and quickly scurries to an empty seat.
He wonders how stony, silent Zexion could possibly have wanted to take on a job like teaching, where he would have had to talk considerably, something he remembered the past Zexion not being very fond of. He wonders how how he's changed. When he looks up from the corner of his eyes, he sees Zexion at his desk, hand poised to write but not actually doing so, face twisted into what he had once dubbed the "I am clearly lost in thought and if you disturb me I will eat your face" expression and almost snickers (he also very nearly breaks Zexion's class rule, number one: do not talk in my classroom, ever. Unless you are addressed, which will also be never.)
He bows his head over his paper to make it look like he is productive, but inside, he is silently counting the seconds until the next bell rings.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Demyx could almost have screamed for joy when the period finally ended. Among the flurry of activity, he placed his notes haphazardly in a binder, closed his textbook, and shoved both objects in his bag. He waited until all the other students left, and then--felt all his bravado take a long walk off a short cliff. Chewing on his lower lip, he approached Zexion's desk in what he felt was a ninja-like, stealthy fashion, worrying all the while. What if he doesn't remember? What if he thinks I'm...I'm insane! What if I scare him and he hates me and he fails me?! AUGHHHHHHHHH--
"Demyx, get off the floor. You look ridiculous."
The young blonde man laughed nervously, pulling himself up from the crouch with which he had sneakily approached. Zexion stared at him blankly. There was a long moment of silence, then:
"Do you--"
"Yes." Zexion interrupted, one hand massaging his temple. "I remember."
More silence, and the quiet shuffling of paper as the shorter man retrieved the necessary course paperwork for the other.
"Oh, man." Demyx finally said, grinning madly. "I can't even believe it." Zexion handed him a packet, neatly stapled; he frowned at it, and it was about to join the tiny cesspit of papers once held and never seen again in his bag when bolded words in the heading caught his eyes. "'Psychology,'" he read aloud. "'The science of mental processes; the study of emotional and behavioral characteristics of an individual.'" He quirked an eyebrow at Zexion teasingly. "You teaching psychology makes total sense, except for the teaching part."
Zexion shrugged. "I needed a job."
"Yeah, but--"
"The subject was interesting." The look in the other man's visible eye declared that that particular point of their conversation was at an end. "Are you not supposed to be at your next class by now?"
Blue-green eyes scrunched up in thought, and then Demyx shrugged. "Eh, the prof's insane, he prol'ly won't even notice I'm gone." He sat on the desk nearest to him, ignoring Zexion's glare, and swung his legs the way a child would, humming at little. Minutes ticked by, with Demyx watching the other man curiously--he looked almost bored, chin propped up in one hand, the other marking a pile of student essays with a red pen.
He'd never dreamed, in a million years, that this was what their future would hold. When he was living in the World That Never Was, the air stank of such hopelessness that it was impossible to think much farther then the day, the next week, month, or year--they were all too preoccupied with their own selfish goals and dreams. His nails tapped out a rhythm on the desk as he thought; he wondered.
"Hey, Zexion?"
When there was no verbal reply, he looked up, and saw that indigo eyes were focused on him, so he went on anyway. "Do you think... the other are here? On this world?"
Pause. "I do not know."
Demyx started tapping again, and the sound echoed in the room. "D'ya think we'll find them?" He sounded almost hopeful, and Zexion almost rolled his eyes. The organization members had rarely associated with each other in the past unless necessary, and here was Demyx, wanting to find them, of all things. He couldn't imagine that any of them could be much different, in this life. He thought that they'd probably acknowledge each other's existence, and then move on. If even that.
"I do not know," he said quietly, eyes drifting back to the paper laid in front of him. He skimmed it idly as Demyx launched into some sort of idle chatter. He marked a 'D', circled it, and began slashing criticism into the margins below.
His next question awoke him from the grading-induced stupor: "D'ya think they remember, too?"
Zexion laid his pen down but did not otherwise move. He saw the journal in his mind's eye; the red, red words: I am a nobody. The curiosity that had driven him to become a scientist, two lifes ago, slept in his aching mind, and he'd only managed to ignore the buzzing feeling in his chest with the amount of work he purposely put on himself. It was the cruelty of it that kept him awake long into the night, searching...
"...Zexion?"
"I hope not," he bit out shortly, and resumed grading.
Demyx watched him interestedly, both intrigued and a little disappointed. The appearance of another ex-organization member had thrown another wrench into his life--before, Demyx had just gone on living like an ordinary boy, grown into teen and then college student; the memories of his past life had only served to remind him to make the most out of the one he had now, so he'd done just that.
But Zexion... he was shocked when he discovered that he was a teacher of all things, but besides that, he did not seem to have changed at all. He talked just as little as he had in his last life, to Demyx anyway, but Demyx sensed a certain change in him, one that was not visible so much as that it prodded at his senses.
He now lacked the sixth sense that all nobodies once had, the one necessary to control and understand their elements, but the lingering remnants of that sense told him Zexion had changed in some infinitesimally small way. He figured the fact that they had both once been evil peons for the same organization qualified as having similar interested and that he could therefore be considered a prospective friend, rather than a stalker. He wanted to know how the other man had changed, and found himself wanting to know more about him. Zexion had spent most of his past life either locked his labs, the library, or at Castle Oblivion, and as a result he was one of the only members that everyone else knew very little to nothing about.
Curiosity killed the cat, Demyx thought idly, and smiled. Good thing I'm not one.
Nearly an hour later found Demyx still perched on the desk, though sitting with his legs crossed indian-style, and Zexion getting through the last of his papers. The blonde man hadn't seen a reason to leave so he hadn't bothered, opting to watch Zexion before eventually drifting into daydreams, staring through the classroom's tall french windows at the beginnings of dusk. He sang a little under his breathe, tapped incessantly, and occasionally air guitared, an act which annoyed Zexion to no end, though not enough to snap at him. When he finally got up to start gathering his materials and stow them in the black messanger bag he carried, Demyx, too, broke out of his tiny musical trance and smiled at him, hopping to his feet.
"Hey, you wanna go out and hit up a resturant for din--"
"I am busy," Zexion said shortly, did up the buckles on his bag, and slung it over his shoulder. He glanced pointedly at the door; when the other man made no move, he looked back at him, and sighed at the absolutely crushed expression on Demyx's face (one that the blonde man had cleverly perfected from many years of begging cookies, as he was currently half-giggling and half-hoping on the inside.)
Something was definitely wrong with him, Zexion decided. "...Perhaps another time," he conceded.
A sunny smile blossomed over the young man's face, blue-green eyes lighting up. "Great!" he cheered, stooping to slip an arm through one of the straps on his backpack, which had been woefully abandoned on the floor through the course of the afternoon. "See ya tomorrow in class, then, I guess. Oh hey..." Zexion was fairly certain the expression on the other male's face was as close to devilish as it would ever get. "Since you're the professor and all, you could, you know--"
"No, Demyx, I will not give you automatic top marks in my class on the merits of once being antagonistic servants of the same organization."
"Damn."
[x]--[x]--[x]
Although he has not let it show, Demyx's appearance in his classroom startled Zexion in a way that he is unaccustomed to. He has, of course, imagined that perhaps the other organization members were also reborn, perhaps in to his very world. But by some irrationality he would have assumed that, had they also existed in this plane, they would have made their presence known by now, and Zexion berates himself for his careless oversight. It is clear now that he is, at least, not the only surviving ex-organization member, and clearly not the only one that remembers a world now locked away.
Demyx is so full of vitality that he disturbs Zexion. He wonders if Demyx, too, contemplated his existance in this world, the reliability of the flare of emotions in his mind. But he watches Demyx in the next few days in class and thinks he probably hasn't, or if he has, he probably does not care. He always was the one, in that world so long ago, to insist that he was not lacking a heart. He watches Demyx the university student, who does not really pay attention to his lectures, who daydreams out the window, who taps a frenetic rhythm on the desk with a pair of pencils, one of the earbuds of his headphones tucked into his shirt, the other into his ear.
He realizes, one day, when he is writing chapter standards and assignments on the whiteboard and turns around--faster than Demyx can look away--that Demyx is watching him. So he watches Demyx watch him, and in the same disturbing way that Demyx barreled into his life for a second time, he is vaguely interested.
When his classroom is ringed in silence and he works long into the afternoon on his own projects, Zexion finds his attention drifting from his work and through the windows near his desk. His eyes trace the shadows and he wills them to move, to bend and shape themselves to his command, but he has known from his birth that in this world his only powers were books and documents. Recorded cases of what has happened, what could, and what never will. The infuriating rage of helplessness echoes, soft and biting, in his head.
He needs this, he thinks, picks up his keys and locks his room, striding off to the library. He needs to know why, and how.
And then, he thinks, he needs to know how to fix it.
[x]--[x]--[x]
Befriending Zexion is not easy. Zexion sure as hell didn't help. Demyx felt, after a month, like he'd done everything possible that a normal person would have responded to. Zexion did not pick up his phones (Demyx thought, then, that having his contact infromation listed ont he syllabus was rather useless, but it was clear that Zexion expected his students to be self-sufficient, mostly), be it weekday or weekend, or respond to e-mails; he always locked his classroom doors as soon as his third block was over with and refused to emerge until much, much later, when Demyx was invariably forced to go home and, god forbid, do his homework; outside of his lecture hall, Zexion was more or less a ghost, one that Demyx, who usually attracted people to him by his bouncy nature, could hardly grasp.
But water hadn't been Demyx's element for no reason; he had oceans of patience and good cheer, and, like water--which, given enough time, could wear through even rock--he kept nagging and pestering (and leaving little boxes of dark-white chocolate truffles on his desk every other week, from a pastry shop close to his house) until, eventually, Zexion broke. (He had once peeked a blue-green eye through the little window of the classroom door after hours and beheld the shorter man munching on the treats, looking almost guilty.)
Demyx had one day, fairly late into the evening, tested the lock on the door, and to his delight and satisfaction, found it open. He then proceeded to fling open the door in a completely unnecessarily loud fashion, and then flung his body into an accusing pose he'd once seen a rival lawyer on Phoenix Wright do. "AH-HAH," he said dramatically, with a downright obnoxious grin, "I KNEW it would be the chocolate!"
Zexion quirked an eyebrow at him, calmly peeled the wrapper off the bottom of one of the chocolates, and took a bite. At Demyx's pointed stare, he rolled his eyes and obliged him by giving a curt nod. From the corner of his eye, he inspected the carton; there were only three left. Damn.
Demyx straighted, brushing imaginary lint off his jeans awkwardly. His grand entrance being made and all, he hadn't really had any idea what to say anymore.
They stared at each other.
"So, uh." He smiled, palming the side of his head. "How 'bout that dinner date, yeah?"
"'Date,'" Zexion echoed, bemused.
"Yeah, yeah. Come ooooooon. I'm hungry, you're hungry--I think, after pigging out on truffles--" the remark earned him a half-hearted glare-- "--and you promised." He scrunched up his face in an attempt to narrow his eyes, fluffed his few bangs over the right side of his face, and said, as low and gravelly as his boyish voice could go, "'Perhaps another time,' maybe when I am not at home having no life and watching Grey's Anatomy all the time 'cause it's all deep and introspective and I like watching people get cut up."
The comment did earn him a smack, and when he was laughing he thought he had seen the ghost of a half-smile on Zexion's pale lips. "You mistake me for Larxene," Zexion said dryly. He looked down at the pile of paperwork on his desk (he had quickly learned in his career that his snappish exterior took care of his students easily, but the agonizing part of being a teacher was the mounds and mounds of damn paper), remembering that he had been rushed this morning, hadn't eaten breakfast, and since he normally skipped lunch, hadn't had food all day, aside from the truffles. His stomach grumbled at him agreeably.
Curse you, random reactions of gastric juice and enzymes. The childish thought made him nearly snort at himself.
Zexion decided, then, in his first true moment of procrastination and utter shirking of duties, that he guessed he could maybe take up Demyx's offer, or something. He could lock his materials in and come in early the next morning; he had always made a point to have his lesson plan for the week readied the sunday evening previous, anyway. Demyx's eyes grew wide when the shorter man got up to retrieve his coat and slip it on. (They both wore long black coats, Demyx 'for old time's sake,' and Zexion simply because little other styles or colors suited him.) He very nearly let out a girly little giggle of joy, the sort that teenage girls do when their crush calls them back for the first time.
"--You are paying," Zexion said.
"What?"
The shorter man smirked, locking his classroom door behind him.
"...Oh, fine. I can," Demyx flung an arm dramatically across his forehead, "lavish even more money on you." Laughter, light and loud. Zexion decided that it sounded alright. "I mean, who'da thunk it? Great Cloaked Schemer Zexion, master of all illusions and brain-fuckery has a thing for dark-white chocolate truffles."
Zexion did not bother dignifying him with a response; but Demyx slanted a look at him from the corner of his eyes, and saw him focused on the tile floor and frowning slightly as they walked, which meant he was kind of embarrassed (he'd first recorded that particular...Zexion-version of an expression when a young woman in the class had raised her hand to ask if they would be discussing any related...sexual disorders soon in a smoldering voice. Demyx had contained his snickers until he'd caught Zexion's cold expression, a very slight scrunching of his visible brow and the barest hint of a flush on his pale skin, and had promptly laughed himself stupid. He had also earned extra-extra homework.)
They stepped out in the freezing air, Demyx shivering as a blast of chill wind blew through his nose, and hastily re-wrapped his scarf. Zexion tilted his head back, just a little, and took a deep breath. The cold stung his lungs in a pleasant way, and the air smelled clean and cool.
"So," Demyx said, smiling, "Where to?"
Zexion turned to face him, though he couldn't see his eyes from the angle. "..."
"Heeeeeey," the blonde said, defensively, "I figured I should be all manly and chisel..er...ous and, uh, let you pick."
Zexion rolled his indigo eyes. "Chivalrous, you mean?"
The spirited young man beamed. "Yeah! That thingmabob."
Zexion shook his head, sighed softly, and turned on his heel. Demyx caught up to his purposeful stride in a few quick steps, and the walk to the nearest train station was a silent one.
The town they lived in now (one Zexion had grew up in, and Demyx had moved into) was remarkably like the Dark City that now laid, sleeping, behind portals choked in shadow--it sprawled over the landscape, and in the nightfall it loomed over their heads, sharp corners and smooth stone shimmering faintly through the damp air, reflecting neon lights. It was a huge strip of lives that had settled into the earth, raised by the continuing generations of blood and sweat, stretching for miles in all directions, and boasted a fair ease of transportation with a huge city-wide network of bullet trains (most of which were in odd states of random disrepair, as far as the interior went). In a two-minute wait, they flashed their boarding passes at the stationmaster (he was a long, spiky blonde-haired man with what might have been charming blue eyes if he didn't look constantly depressed) and boarded the eastbound train. Zexion sat, and Demyx stood, rocking on his heels.
In the silence, Demyx sang.
"'...I could make you see the beauty of a new sun...'" He broke off into humming, still standing and rocking and gazing through the windows at the darkness that lashed past them.
Zexion watched him and the fluorescent glow of skin. He looked, Zexion thought, in this moment, exactly the same as he did in the last life. The lights--in this car, broken by chance, and occasionally buzzing to life before flickering out--made his skin eerily pale and his hair a dusty shade of brown-gold, and he would have looked every inch the organization member if it wasn't for the pale green scarf tucked haphazardly around his neck. His eyes shone, and Zexion thought they were very like the aquamarine sea-color of the Riku Replica that had murdered him.
They got off at the next stop into a street that swam in red and gold and green. When Demyx stopped looking around in wonder, he noticed that Zexion had already started walking off, and had to jog lightly to catch up. They turned into a small resturant tucked in a nook across the street from what looked like a souveneir shop and seated themselves. A fairly young-looking woman stopped by the table, introduced herself as Mulan in an accented voice, and she and Zexion spoke in rapid Chinese.
Demyx, feeling horribly confused, drummed lightly on the table with his chopsticks. When Mulan left, Zexion threw a disapproving look at him, and he stopped, smiling sheepishly. "I didn't know you were, uh, Chinese."
"I am not." Zexion shrugged off his coat and draped it on the seat next to him. "My mother married an immigrant from The Land of Dragons before the pathways of the worlds closed again. My father grew up in a country called Japan in that world." He sipped his tea idly, and caught the blonde man before he began another drumming solo with a glare.
"I didn't know that so many people immigrated from different worlds. Woooow." He fidgeted a little in his seat, trying catch a glance at their waitress as she ducked behind a red curtain. "Somehow, I can't really imagine a warrior like Mulan being a waitress in a little café."
"That Mulan is the great-grand daughter of the original Fa Mu Lan."
"Oooh." Demyx made an understanding noise in his throat, and began drumming again.
Mulan stopped by again with a small pot of rice and another of tea, and Zexion ordered for both of them (when Demyx had launched into a particularly enthusiastic solo and had used the teacups as substitute cymbals, he had considered purposely ordering the most expensive items on the menu.)
Of course, the chopsticks contrived to get their own wayward sort of revenge.
"...Goddamnit. How the hell do your people eat with these things?!" Demyx stared at the chopsticks and his utter inability to use them in despair. Zexion smirked at him (in what Demyx thought was a considerably evil manner) from across the table, easily helping himself from the large plate of stir-fried noodles placed between them.
Demyx also learned early on that stabbing at the food and hoping to spear something usually didn't work either. He cursed the Chinese for the liberal amounts of oil used in their cooking, and finally conceded defeat with a sniggering Mulan stopped by and inconspicuously left him a fork, under the guise of refilling their tea pot. Had Zexion been that sort of man, he would have teased Demyx mercilessly.
Conversation over the meal consisted mostly of Zexion quietly eating and Demyx chattering in between mouthfuls. The slate-haired man honestly had no idea how the other male managed to inhale food at such a rapid pace, talk incessantly, and breathe at the same time, but he guessed it was a skill that came from much practice. Demyx, unperturbed by Zexion's obvious lack of will to participate, talked about everything and anything; the weather, the music of this world, his guitars ("they have nothing on sitars, I swear, but I can't find any! Can you believe it;"), the latest gossip, his university classes, his roommate, and himself.
Zexion discovered that night that Demyx believed in cd players, not ipods, preferred his pizza with anchovies, that he liked the colors blue and purple and green the best (mostly blue), and that--more from watching and listening to the man, rather than his actual speaking--he was insightful, if air-headed and flighty, and there was a certain cheerful kindness that curtailed the obvious lack of guilt in anything he did. Demyx was one who believed in living without regrets, and it showed.
The blonde man had--intentionally or not--avoided the subject of their shared past, and the at least subconscious tactfulness made Zexion wary, and the wariness kept him entertained.
They finished the meal with fresh orange slices and tea, a pair of fortune cookies, and a bill that made Demyx wince and Zexion smirk (those chocolate truffles weren't cheap, damnit; his wallet was already barely clinging to life).
Zexion was carefully peeling one of the orange slices, feeling vaguely--content? he wasn't sure, and he quickly refocused on Demyx's noisy shuffling before the dull roar of repeated questioning awakened from the back of his mind. Demyx cracked open the cookie and stuffed half of it in his mouth. "'Success is living up to your potential. That's all,'" he read aloud, and made a face. "How come I don't get something cool, like... I dunno... Hey, Zexy--" The nickname made him twitch unpleasantly. "--aren't you going to have a cookie? Even if they taste kinda bad..."
"No." Zexion sipped his rapidly cooling tea. Outside, the lights of the souveneir shot flickered once, then snapped off. He wondered idly how late it was, remembering that the weather forecast this morning had predicted a chance of rain. In the December chill, the rain would quickly freeze into hail or snow.
"In that case, I'll just eat it for you." Demyx grinned and reached for the lone cookie, tearing open the plastic and pulling out the small cracker.
When he broke it, it was empty. He frowned, munching on one of the two halves anyway. "Woah, fortune cookie dud. Weird."
Silence hung over the table, not as awkward as their first silences, but not entirely comfortable, either. But the empty fortune cookie seemed to inspire Demyx somehow, because when he looked up at Zexion, his face was scrunched into thought, blue-green eyes clouded.
"Psychology, huh," he said, smiling absently. He wondered where the other organization members were. If the pathways of the worlds could have been traveled, he would have discovered all of them, with time. A tall red-haired man and his blonde best friend, frequenting the same arcade after school with an alarming regularity. A blackjack dealer living in Port Royale. A librarian, a quartet of scientists, a revolutionary botanist, a man who ran a shooting range on his free days. He looked at Zexion, still smiling. "I think you changed a lot."
Zexion, who had been pulling his coat on, stood up, and began making his way to the exit. "Demyx," he said, "you do not know me."
Demyx jammed his arms hurridedly in his own coat, throwing a random tip on the table and quickly following the shorter male. "Zexion!" he shouted, but the other did not turn from where he was walking down the street, in the opposite direction of the station they had come by. Demyx figured he lived near here. When he caught up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, he felt him tense. "Yeah, well, I don't know you, sure, but I want to." Zexion did not bother facing him, or he might have seen the sincerity of the statement shining in Demyx's expression. "But I do know that..." Hesitation; he plowed on anyway. "I know that you're doing what you're doing now for some reason. And--" he spoke gently, so gently-- "--I wanna know. I wanna know you."
Over their heads, it started sleeting. The cold circled around the lonely pair on the street.
The moment stretched on forever in Demyx's mind, but Zexion merely shrugged his hand off. "Goodnight, Demyx," he said finally, and walked away.
Demyx shoved his hands in his pockets and watched Zexion's back until it disappeared into the darkness, and he shivered. Pulling up his hood against the stinging particles of ice and wind, he started heading home.
When Demyx arrived in his shared apartment he'd given Luneth a cursory smile and nod and an absent greeting. His silver-haired roommate decided he'd looked cold and a little forlorn, so when he knocked on his door and quietly entered to leave him a cup of hot tea, he found Demyx looking thoughtfully lost, one of his guitars perched in his lap, strumming lazy arpeggios. Luneth knew that Demyx tapped when he bored, sang when he was lonely, and played instruments for a variety of other emotions, so he'd left the drink on his desk and wished Demyx a quiet goodnight; Demyx was a man of music, and his own melodies were much better consolations to him then Luneth's words could have been.
Hours later, Luneth decided to turn in for the night, and was brushing his teeth when he heard the first clear strains of melody over running water. Demyx made a point to try to master every intstrument he'd come across, and though his true talent laid with his guitar, he was no slouch with the keyboard stowed in his room. The chords he'd struck on the guitar earlier had all been slightly off with a purpose, a little sour sounding, in a way that created a bittersweet song. On the piano, the rise and fall of scales and random bouts of improv were a sweet serenade, just a little bit sad.
Luneth slept to the sound of Demyx's voice, and Demyx sang and hummed and strummed and played long into the night before he too finally slept, bowed over his keyboard with his head pillowed on crossed arms and lengths of sheet music. When he dreamed, he dreamt of cold gray oceans, and tried to imagine what Zexion would sound like, if he sang.
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