Fanfiction: Fair Play (Derren Brown/Kingdom Hearts)
I post most of my Derren Brown fanfiction directly to derrenbrownfic, but it has been months since I last wrote something, and I am so delighted to have broken through my writer's block at last that I'm posting it here. It, er, probably won't be quite so exciting for people who aren't me, because I doubt the Derren Brown and Kingdom Hearts fandoms have much overlap, but have a ridiculous crossover anyway!
(Luxord was terribly difficult to write. I'm still uneasy about him. The lesson to take from this: when writing fanfiction, try to focus on a character who has more than a dozen lines in the canon.
That said, I am massively tempted to attempt actual Derren/Luxord in the future.)
Title: Fair Play
Fandoms: Derren Brown/Kingdom Hearts
Rating: R, but only for language.
Wordcount: 4,600
Summary: Derren finds himself unceremoniously teleported to Castle Oblivion, there to meet Luxord, a man with a goatee and remarkable skill with cards. Wait a moment...
Disclaimer: This is entirely fictional.
He is standing at the edge of a grey marble floor in the open air at night, looking down at the spires and turrets of what appears to be a rather eccentrically-designed castle. Whilst Derren would not generally say that he has an actual phobia of heights, there are places he would rather be than above a dramatic plunge without a safety rail, especially when he is feeling a bit wobbly from apparently having been teleported there. He breathes out, slowly, and tries to think I am steady rather than fuck I’m going to die, and takes a step back from the edge, and looks up.
There is an enormous something in the sky, like a gigantic heart-shaped moon. It towers bizarrely above the turrets, and under any other circumstances he would have wondered about it, but Derren’s list of Things to Think About has become so long in the past few seconds that he’s not sure he’s ever going to reach that particular thing.
“A success?” a voice asks from behind him, low and amused, and Derren turns around.
There is a man standing there, looking appraisingly at him. His hair and goatee are so blond that they are almost white, and he wears a long black coat.
He looks oddly familiar, and Derren feels a strange pull upon seeing him, like desire but somehow stronger.
“So good of you to come,” the man says. “My name is Luxord. I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you, Derren.”
Which complicates things, because Derren was hoping to ask this man whether he knew what had happened and how Derren could get back. If, as what Luxord has just said implies, he is the one responsible for Derren’s sudden displacement, he is certainly likely to know, but perhaps not quite so likely to be helpful.
“Do you know what just happened to me?” Derren asks, anyway.
“I do.”
Derren allows a moment for expansion, then says, when none comes, “Is there any chance you could tell me?”
“Well, you vanished from your previous location and found yourself here at Castle Oblivion,” Luxord says. “I rather thought you would have been able to work that much out for yourself.”
“Thank you,” Derren says, through gritted teeth. “You’re telling me that I just teleported?”
“Not precisely the word I would have used,” Luxord says, looking more amused by the moment, “but you could say so, yes.”
“Right,” Derren says. “You’re aware that that’s impossible?”
“Oh, dear. I suppose I should stop doing it, in that case.”
Derren closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he is still in ‘Castle Oblivion’ and there is still an attractive but infuriating man in front of him. He experiences quite intense disappointment.
“Putting aside the impossibility,” Derren says, “I was in the middle of a stage show when you kidnapped me. I’m going to seem terribly rude.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Luxord says, smiling. “I have a certain amount of power over time. Should you return, you will have been gone for only seconds. All your audience will see is a rather impressive little teleportation trick.”
“Er,” Derren says, his worry unabated. There are a number of things with which he could take issue in what Luxord has just said, but one in particular stands out. “Did you say ‘should I return’?”
“We can concern ourselves with that later.”
“No, I really think I’m going to concern myself with it now.”
“Have you ever heard of a Heartless?”
“Heartless? What?” Derren asks, bewildered by the sudden topic switch from possible death to lexical questions. “You’re not going to rip out my heart, are you?” He is aiming for a light tone, but his voice fairly obviously betrays the fact that it is a genuine enquiry.
“Only in a certain sense.” Luxord is still smiling. This would be quite unnerving enough even without the content of their discussion. “Only possibly,” he adds upon seeing Derren’s expression, which doesn’t actually help a great deal.
Derren considers his escape options. There is the edge of the roof, off which he could launch himself to fall to his presumed death on the interesting architecture beneath. On the other side of the roof is some sort of doorway, glowing with an unearthly light and leading who-knows-where.
Luxord registers his glance and snaps his fingers, and Derren’s options are abruptly narrowed even further by the fact that the entire area is surrounded by what appears to be a wall made of gigantic playing cards.
“You can’t possibly leave so soon,” Luxord says, which is a statement that Derren feels should never be literally true. “We need to talk.”
Within the wall of playing cards, Derren, increasingly confused and alarmed and incredulous, listens as Luxord launches into a mostly incomprehensible spiel about light and darkness. “When a person’s heart succumbs to darkness,” Luxord explains, giving Derren a look that indicates that this part, despite being just as nonsensical as the rest of his speech, is particularly important, “it becomes something new. It becomes manifest; it takes on a life of its own, or a half-life, at least. That is what we call a Heartless.”
Derren tries to look as if he is seriously considering these ramblings, imagining a blackened love-heart running around on little legs.
“The Heartless thrive on hearts,” Luxord says. “The most base form are mindless, seizing hearts from whatever creatures they may come across. The more powerful Heartless, those who most resemble humans, often claim hearts in a more metaphorical sense: they seduce. They draw people to them with sexual attraction, with promises of power, with simple manipulation. Not as satisfying as literal consumption, but it means that they can better pass as human and live amongst humans, and so ensure a constant supply.”
Derren nods automatically and glances at the spinning wall of cards. Perhaps, with a little psychological programming, he can gain the power in this situation and persuade this lunatic to let him go.
“Do look at me when I’m speaking, Derren; this is of particular interest to you.”
Derren looks at him, wondering how on Earth knowledge of these fictional heart-monsters is to be of interest to him in any way. A small part of his mind suggests that, as he has apparently experienced teleportation and seen a wall of cards appear from nowhere, perhaps he shouldn’t be quite so ready to dismiss the Heartless as fictional.
“Oh, of course,” Luxord says, with an air of exasperation. “You doubt what I’m saying. Summoning Heartless is so very inconvenient. I’ve done it quite enough today.” He raises an arm, and small, shadowy creatures bubble out of patches of darkness on the floor. They look around, their antennae twitching. “Shadows. The weakest, most common form of Heartless.”
After being teleported himself, Derren supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised by seeing insectlike creatures rising out of floors, but it is still a slightly disconcerting experience. He takes a step away from the one nearest him, which is scuttling in circles as if lost. “They eat hearts, you say?”
“You’re in no danger,” Luxord says, smirking slightly. He pulls five playing cards out of his sleeve and throws them like darts. They slice through the Shadows, which squeak and evaporate.
Derren feels he has seen more than enough impossible things today, and he is not terribly comfortable being in an enclosed space with a man who has already made vaguely threatening statements and can throw razor-sharp cards with perfect aim. But the wall is still there, so he doesn’t appear to have a great deal of choice.
“Now, when a person of particularly strong will becomes a Heartless, the shell left behind - the body and soul - begins to act of its own accord. This shell has no heart and therefore no emotion, and it is known as a Nobody. Most Nobodies are malformed, pitiable creatures, but a particularly strong will can result in a Nobody that appears human.”
“Er,” Derren says, something occurring to him. “The body is called a Nobody?”
Luxord rolls his eyes. “Yes, the Nobodies are bodies without hearts, and the Heartless are hearts without bodies. I did not assign the names myself. And I really think, Derren, that you are missing something rather more important. I had been under the impression that you were perceptive.”
Derren, who can’t help bristling at the slight even when he has much more important things to worry about, thinks back over what Luxord has said. Remembering the strange pull he felt upon first seeing him and Luxord’s rather sinister ‘certain sense’ comment, he eventually concludes that Luxord may be a Heartless, one of the humanlike ones, and metaphorically eating Derren’s heart. Which is an unsettling thought, but preferable to Derren’s heart literally being ripped out, so he is prepared to accept it.
Luxord laughs when Derren proposes his theory. “Close,” he says. “You’re thinking along the right lines. But I am, as it happens, a Nobody. My corresponding Heartless... well.” He bares his teeth in a rather sinister grin. “I’ve been searching for him for some time. I’m very interested in reacquiring my heart, you see. I can remember feeling emotion, and my present state is a poor substitute.”
There is a pause.
“Oh,” Derren says, and then, “Shit.”
“Oh, well done,” says the man who, now that Derren is thinking about it, looks more than a little like a blond version of him. “I knew we’d get there eventually. You seemed to think everyone could harness the dark powers you had at your disposal; did it ever occur to you to wonder why they didn’t?”
Derren is slightly too busy trying to rearrange his entire view of himself and the world to answer.
“Now, here comes the troubling part,” Luxord says, despite the fact that, in Derren’s opinion, the previous parts have been more than troubling enough. “In order for the heart and body to recombine, one must become subservient to the other. Must be assimilated, if you like. One of us is to be the primary consciousness, and, to be perfectly honest, I’d rather it were me.” He smiles. “Still, I’m a sporting non-being, and so we’re going to play a game.”
“Right,” Derren says, feeling a little unwell. “And, er, just so we’re clear: this is to determine which of us dies?”
“It’s not quite death,” Luxord says, thoughtfully. “Vestiges of personality and memory remain. But, yes, should you lose you will certainly no longer exist as a conscious entity, if a Heartless can be described as ‘existing’.”
Derren is not especially reassured. “Do the heart and body really need to recombine? I was trundling along quite happily as a Heartless, as it happens.”
“As I am incapable of feeling happiness,” Luxord says, “I can’t say I was as satisfied with my situation.”
“Emotions aren’t nearly as much fun as you’d think,” Derren says. “And surely you can’t really want them, because presumably you can’t feel desire. And if you can feel desire, you already have emotions, and so we don’t really need to bother with this assimilation business.”
There is a pause.
“You have a fairly solid argument,” Luxord concedes.
Derren gives an involuntary, relieved nod. “So you won’t kill me,” he says, careful not to give it the intonation of a question.
“I’ll have to reconsider the idea that Nobodies are entirely devoid of emotion,” Luxord says. “Desire I can apparently manage. It was a solid argument constructed on flawed premises, I’m afraid. Not your fault. Technically, as I’ve already explained, I’m not going to kill you whatever the outcome, but your pseudo-existence is still under threat.”
“Ah,” Derren says.
Luxord smirks. “Let’s see how the cards fall.” He makes a sweeping gesture. “I have assigned each of us an equal amount of time. Should you fail in a challenge, your time will be depleted. Should you succeed, mine shall. And, of course, time will be depleted over, well, time. The first to run out of time is the loser. Do you understand?”
This makes absolutely no sense to Derren, or, he suspects, to any sane person. “Not completely.”
“Essentially, the progress of time is a form of scoring. I can speed up or slow down time for each player as I choose.”
Derren has to wonder why he doesn’t just use a pen and paper, but he is distracted by several cards materialising from nowhere, smaller than the cards cutting him off from escape but still significantly taller than Derren. They balance on their lower edges, surrounding him like a bizarre parody of Stonehenge.
Each card, he notices, has several strange symbols on one side and a clock face on the other. The second hand - one of the hands printed on the card - is ticking around. Given the events of the past fifteen minutes, this seems almost mundane.
Less mundane is Luxord’s plucking a card from thin air (not a trick with which Derren is unfamiliar, but somewhat more difficult when the card is eight feet tall), saying, “You have twenty seconds to find me,” twirling around and vanishing into the card.
Instantly, the other cards scatter.
Derren doesn’t know what the fuck to do.
The cards are towering over him, spinning in dizzying circles. Derren stares around, looking for Luxord, but how the fuck is he supposed to find him, he’s disappeared, how the fuck -
Derren forces himself to breathe. Luxord, he tells himself sternly, has not disappeared. It was a simple illusion, not unlike several Derren has performed himself, and Luxord will be hiding behind one of these cards. He just has to chase down the cards, which are sliding on their edges all over the marble, and -
One of the cards, he realises, catching a glimpse of its front as he runs after it, bears a picture of Luxord. That would certainly explain the ‘find me’ command. He grabs it by the side and forces it around to face him.
The picture, rather alarmingly, winks at him, and then Luxord steps out of the card and the card vanishes.
Derren performs a quick internal consultation to make sure he is absolutely certain that he is not dreaming. None of this feels like a dream. He decides to pretend that he is dreaming anyway.
“As you succeeded, I shall shorten my time a little,” Luxord says, with a wave of his hand. “You understand the rules?”
“Hang on,” Derren says. There are many, many questions he wants to ask, but for the moment he decides to focus on the practical. “You mean you’re in complete control of the, er, scoring?”
Luxord gives him a stern look. “I am a fair opponent, Derren.”
“Yes, well, I only have your word for that, don’t I? And you want to steal my heart.”
“I don’t want to steal it,” Luxord says. “I want to win it in a fair game. Were I less honourable, the heart would already be mine. Shall we play again? Look closely.” He spins, and a moment later he is gone and Derren is again surrounded by eight-foot cards, more of them this time, sliding bewilderingly past each other.
Derren tries to clear his mind, to focus only on the cards and forget the stakes. He sees a flash of Luxord’s black coat as a card twists past him, and he leaps forward and flips it over and realises a second too late that the card he glimpsed was behind it.
Luxord, transforming back, shakes his head. “A noble effort,” he says, and then Derren is a card.
Derren has never been a card before, despite his long history of working with them, and he does not quite know what to do with himself. He flutters a bit in a distressed manner before realising what has happened and fluttering in an even more distressed manner, and then, when he has finally managed to balance himself upright on one edge, he hops around in a rough circle, looking for Luxord.
Luxord is perched on top of a smallish house of enormous cards, looking at Derren-the-card with a contemplative smile on his face.
Derren tries to speak and finds himself unable to. As he was probably only going to say ‘what the fuck, I’m a card,’ and Luxord is presumably already aware of this, his inability to communicate is not the greatest of his problems at this particular moment, but it does not improve his mood.
“Considering the world from the perspective of a card increases one’s ability to manipulate cards,” Luxord says. “You’ll be grateful for the experience if you win. Of course, every second that passes in that form is two seconds lost.”
Derren, although he has no idea how it might be done, tries very hard to stop being a card.
“Your hand is looking poorer by the moment,” Luxord says, slipping lightly from his house of cards. “Would you like to fold?”
Derren isn’t sure how a card might shake its head, and he doesn’t attempt it for fear that it might be interpreted as assent.
Luxord raises a hand, and the cards that formed his seating-place rise up and spin around him. He looks at the clock face on one. “I think that’s long enough, don’t you?” he asks, and Derren is suddenly a man again, unsteady on his feet and breathing hard.
“How long do I have?” he asks, when he has re-ascertained the location of his vocal cords.
“Not long,” Luxord says, with a rather malicious grin. “You’ll forgive me if I was impatient.”
Right. This isn’t good news. “And you?”
“You’ve won one game; you’ve lost one,” Luxord says, shrugging. “We have the same amount of time left. I’ve told you: I’m a fair player.”
Although the situation certainly isn’t ideal, and although Luxord is solely responsible for dragging Derren into it, Derren can’t help being a little grateful for the fact that the game doesn’t appear to be too heavily rigged against him. “If this game is supposed to be fair,” he says, a thought occurring, “can I set a challenge for you? It’s not terribly fair if we’re always playing on your terms.”
Luxord agrees immediately, looking so delighted that Derren again wonders how emotionless these ‘Nobodies’ really are. “But if it is unfair,” he adds, “I shall know, and you forfeit your heart with your honour.”
This sounds reasonable, where the definition of ‘reasonable’ includes the possibility of having one’s entire identity forcibly staked on an admittedly fair game, so Derren agrees. It does, however, present Derren with the problem of thinking of a game he can play without rigging. He cannot pick a game of pure chance; even if his opponent is equally or more skilled (and, whilst Derren is extremely good at manipulating cards, he has to admit that he has yet to make them magically stand up and obey his will), Derren wants to be able to fight for his existence. He is very good at Cheat, one of the few games that legitimately permit lying, and suggests it before remembering aloud that Cheat is not really a possibility with only two players.
“That’s no trouble at all,” Luxord says. He raises an arm, and two creatures materialise out of the floor: grey and pink and bizarre, with empty sleeves and heads like spiked weapons. “These lesser Nobodies can be our playing partners.”
Derren is quite alarmed by this development. They’re not human. They don’t even look human. They don’t even have faces. How is he supposed to analyse their reactions?
Luxord, apparently, has no difficulty in analysing Derren’s. “So you were planning to read me?” He gives a laugh, dark in his throat. “I think you’ve forgotten that I don’t have emotions to betray.”
-
“Neither of us has enough time for a full game,” Luxord explains, “and so...” and he waves a hand. The clock faces on the large cards surrounding them stop. “This will be the final challenge, should you or I win.”
Three against one is, Luxord acknowledges, hardly a fair situation, and so should one of the lesser Nobodies - ‘Gamblers’, he calls them, casually - win, they are to play another game. Derren is hoping to finish it here, though. The matter of holding onto his heart and his autonomy aside, he has already had more than enough of people turning into cards.
Derren’s determination to win, however, does not make playing against a man who reacts in no way to anything and two silent creatures without faces any easier. Emotions or not, Luxord is a very good liar, and he claims to have played three sixes and interprets the strange dances of the Gamblers and watches Derren’s card-picking with the same careful half-smile. Derren, unable to use his usual techniques of behavioural analysis to detect a lie, is forced into counting every card that is played and, when Luxord’s hand begins to look a little too thin, making a few wild accusatory leaps of faith.
Luxord also, not entirely to Derren’s surprise, turns out to be an excellent card-counter. All Derren can do is harness the very best of his impressive lying skills in the hope of evening the field.
It looks as if this is going to be a game of chance, after all.
And then, as the game carries on, Derren realises something. Luxord, it appears, is so confident in his lack of emotion that he is taking less and less trouble to deliberately keep his face straight. And, whether from mere feigned emotion bleeding into unhelpful contexts or something deeper, he is beginning to give off hints.
“The tides of Fate begin to turn against me, I see,” Luxord remarks, picking up the stack again. “Take your turn.”
Fate, Derren thinks, repressing the beginnings of a smile as he watches Luxord’s eye movements, has nothing to do with it.
-
Eventually, Derren plays a two and calls it a queen and sits there, trying to control his breathing, trying to control his heartbeat, desperately hoping his opponents will not realise that it was his last card until the next move has been made.
The next player, one of the Gamblers, levitates two cards onto the pile and performs a brief jig. Luxord nods and draws breath to translate, and then he grunts as if physically struck and falls back onto the marble.
Derren, rather hesitantly, stands.
“You won, didn’t you?” Luxord asks, with a breathless laugh. The Gamblers spin and dissipate at the edges of Derren’s vision, and the cards walling them in disappear in a flash. “You play the game well. I suppose your consciousness is to be the uppermost, in that case. A shame, but the winner takes all.”
Derren takes Luxord’s hand and pulls him to his feet, then remembers that Luxord has just put him through a great deal of confusion and misery and therefore Derren has very little cause to be helping him. Still, it’s too late not to help him up now, and pushing him over would appear petulant. Especially as Derren is apparently now not going to be assimilated by a madman with magical powers.
“Place your right hand on my left shoulder,” Luxord says, when he has steadied himself.
Derren has made people mindlessly follow orders too many times to forget to question them himself. “Why?”
Luxord shrugs and smiles. “You won. It is time for you to claim your prize and complete yourself.” He looks carefully at Derren. “Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it.”
And, yes, now that Derren considers it, perhaps he has sometimes felt as if he might be missing something. Perhaps the strange attraction he has felt to Luxord since first seeing him is something deeper than sexual desire. But... “Let me just make sure I’m clear on this. If I claim my ‘prize’, as you put it, you stop existing?”
“I’m a Nobody,” Luxord says. “I never existed.”
Derren doesn’t understand anything about this man. “You didn’t want to lose.”
“I chose to play the game. It can’t be helped. Even the greatest gambler can be dealt a poor hand.” He nods towards the glowing doorway. “When you have taken me, go through there and you will be back upon the stage.”
“I think I’m going to need to know a bit more about this,” Derren says. “You said vestiges would remain.”
“There will be no dramatic changes to your personality,” Luxord says, tilting his head back. “Just in case you were worrying. As, of course, you were.” He lets his head roll forward again and smirks. “I am half of you, after all. I know your concerns.”
If Luxord knows Derren’s fear of losing his identity, Derren thinks, he probably shares it. “So, the vestiges are...?”
“A few scraps of memory,” Luxord says. “A few abilities, perhaps; you may be able to manipulate time a little. There is a theory that emotional connections may be transferred, but as Nobodies are incapable of forming emotional connections a theory it must remain.”
Even putting aside the longing for something not quite definable, which has been growing stronger by the moment since Derren has become aware of it, the ability to manipulate time is a tempting prospect. But he doesn’t dislike Luxord, he is rather taken aback to realise, and the idea of reducing him to a few scraps of memory, even if Luxord would have been willing to do the same to Derren, is one with which Derren cannot be entirely comfortable.
Derren hesitates, wondering whether an explanation or a friendly touch or a punch in the face would be the most appropriate farewell, and then he says, “I think I’ll forego my prize, thank you,” and turns towards the doorway.
“No,” Luxord says, furiously.
Derren, startled, turns back.
Luxord has been so composed, but now he is glaring, small cards spinning around him at high speed. “You are not going to walk away from me. Has it occurred to you, in your little act of benevolence, that perhaps having a heart, even if under someone else’s ownership, is more important to me than the half-existence in which you are so kindly allowing me to remain?”
Derren stares at him. “I’m not going to kill you,” he says. “Even if you ask me to. I don’t think it’s something I can do.”
“I am asking you,” Luxord says, rolling his eyes, “to let me live. Stop talking. Put your hand on my shoulder.”
-
“Thank you so much; you’ve been a wonderful audience. Good night!” Derren calls, waving. He slips out, asking Coops to make his apologies to anyone waiting at the stage door, and makes his way, hands in his pockets, to a deserted street.
He sits on a garden wall and closes his eyes and presses his fingers against his forehead for a long moment, and then he takes his hands away and glances around to make sure that nobody is nearby.
“You didn’t tell me,” he says, quietly, “about the voice in my head.”
I didn’t know, Luxord says, his voice amused. There haven’t been many instances of recombining. It’s pleasant to realise that I can keep my mind. And I can feel that pleasure now, of course, which is rather delightful.
“Not that I begrudge you your consciousness,” Derren says, “but this is going to drive me mad.”
You are having a conversation with your own mind, Luxord points out. Many would call you mad already.
“Thank you; that’s enormously helpful.”
Luxord laughs, the sound echoing in Derren’s mind, and Derren, feeling his soul curled warm within him, can’t help smiling a little in spite of everything.
(Luxord was terribly difficult to write. I'm still uneasy about him. The lesson to take from this: when writing fanfiction, try to focus on a character who has more than a dozen lines in the canon.
That said, I am massively tempted to attempt actual Derren/Luxord in the future.)
Title: Fair Play
Fandoms: Derren Brown/Kingdom Hearts
Rating: R, but only for language.
Wordcount: 4,600
Summary: Derren finds himself unceremoniously teleported to Castle Oblivion, there to meet Luxord, a man with a goatee and remarkable skill with cards. Wait a moment...
Disclaimer: This is entirely fictional.
He is standing at the edge of a grey marble floor in the open air at night, looking down at the spires and turrets of what appears to be a rather eccentrically-designed castle. Whilst Derren would not generally say that he has an actual phobia of heights, there are places he would rather be than above a dramatic plunge without a safety rail, especially when he is feeling a bit wobbly from apparently having been teleported there. He breathes out, slowly, and tries to think I am steady rather than fuck I’m going to die, and takes a step back from the edge, and looks up.
There is an enormous something in the sky, like a gigantic heart-shaped moon. It towers bizarrely above the turrets, and under any other circumstances he would have wondered about it, but Derren’s list of Things to Think About has become so long in the past few seconds that he’s not sure he’s ever going to reach that particular thing.
“A success?” a voice asks from behind him, low and amused, and Derren turns around.
There is a man standing there, looking appraisingly at him. His hair and goatee are so blond that they are almost white, and he wears a long black coat.
He looks oddly familiar, and Derren feels a strange pull upon seeing him, like desire but somehow stronger.
“So good of you to come,” the man says. “My name is Luxord. I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you, Derren.”
Which complicates things, because Derren was hoping to ask this man whether he knew what had happened and how Derren could get back. If, as what Luxord has just said implies, he is the one responsible for Derren’s sudden displacement, he is certainly likely to know, but perhaps not quite so likely to be helpful.
“Do you know what just happened to me?” Derren asks, anyway.
“I do.”
Derren allows a moment for expansion, then says, when none comes, “Is there any chance you could tell me?”
“Well, you vanished from your previous location and found yourself here at Castle Oblivion,” Luxord says. “I rather thought you would have been able to work that much out for yourself.”
“Thank you,” Derren says, through gritted teeth. “You’re telling me that I just teleported?”
“Not precisely the word I would have used,” Luxord says, looking more amused by the moment, “but you could say so, yes.”
“Right,” Derren says. “You’re aware that that’s impossible?”
“Oh, dear. I suppose I should stop doing it, in that case.”
Derren closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he is still in ‘Castle Oblivion’ and there is still an attractive but infuriating man in front of him. He experiences quite intense disappointment.
“Putting aside the impossibility,” Derren says, “I was in the middle of a stage show when you kidnapped me. I’m going to seem terribly rude.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Luxord says, smiling. “I have a certain amount of power over time. Should you return, you will have been gone for only seconds. All your audience will see is a rather impressive little teleportation trick.”
“Er,” Derren says, his worry unabated. There are a number of things with which he could take issue in what Luxord has just said, but one in particular stands out. “Did you say ‘should I return’?”
“We can concern ourselves with that later.”
“No, I really think I’m going to concern myself with it now.”
“Have you ever heard of a Heartless?”
“Heartless? What?” Derren asks, bewildered by the sudden topic switch from possible death to lexical questions. “You’re not going to rip out my heart, are you?” He is aiming for a light tone, but his voice fairly obviously betrays the fact that it is a genuine enquiry.
“Only in a certain sense.” Luxord is still smiling. This would be quite unnerving enough even without the content of their discussion. “Only possibly,” he adds upon seeing Derren’s expression, which doesn’t actually help a great deal.
Derren considers his escape options. There is the edge of the roof, off which he could launch himself to fall to his presumed death on the interesting architecture beneath. On the other side of the roof is some sort of doorway, glowing with an unearthly light and leading who-knows-where.
Luxord registers his glance and snaps his fingers, and Derren’s options are abruptly narrowed even further by the fact that the entire area is surrounded by what appears to be a wall made of gigantic playing cards.
“You can’t possibly leave so soon,” Luxord says, which is a statement that Derren feels should never be literally true. “We need to talk.”
Within the wall of playing cards, Derren, increasingly confused and alarmed and incredulous, listens as Luxord launches into a mostly incomprehensible spiel about light and darkness. “When a person’s heart succumbs to darkness,” Luxord explains, giving Derren a look that indicates that this part, despite being just as nonsensical as the rest of his speech, is particularly important, “it becomes something new. It becomes manifest; it takes on a life of its own, or a half-life, at least. That is what we call a Heartless.”
Derren tries to look as if he is seriously considering these ramblings, imagining a blackened love-heart running around on little legs.
“The Heartless thrive on hearts,” Luxord says. “The most base form are mindless, seizing hearts from whatever creatures they may come across. The more powerful Heartless, those who most resemble humans, often claim hearts in a more metaphorical sense: they seduce. They draw people to them with sexual attraction, with promises of power, with simple manipulation. Not as satisfying as literal consumption, but it means that they can better pass as human and live amongst humans, and so ensure a constant supply.”
Derren nods automatically and glances at the spinning wall of cards. Perhaps, with a little psychological programming, he can gain the power in this situation and persuade this lunatic to let him go.
“Do look at me when I’m speaking, Derren; this is of particular interest to you.”
Derren looks at him, wondering how on Earth knowledge of these fictional heart-monsters is to be of interest to him in any way. A small part of his mind suggests that, as he has apparently experienced teleportation and seen a wall of cards appear from nowhere, perhaps he shouldn’t be quite so ready to dismiss the Heartless as fictional.
“Oh, of course,” Luxord says, with an air of exasperation. “You doubt what I’m saying. Summoning Heartless is so very inconvenient. I’ve done it quite enough today.” He raises an arm, and small, shadowy creatures bubble out of patches of darkness on the floor. They look around, their antennae twitching. “Shadows. The weakest, most common form of Heartless.”
After being teleported himself, Derren supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised by seeing insectlike creatures rising out of floors, but it is still a slightly disconcerting experience. He takes a step away from the one nearest him, which is scuttling in circles as if lost. “They eat hearts, you say?”
“You’re in no danger,” Luxord says, smirking slightly. He pulls five playing cards out of his sleeve and throws them like darts. They slice through the Shadows, which squeak and evaporate.
Derren feels he has seen more than enough impossible things today, and he is not terribly comfortable being in an enclosed space with a man who has already made vaguely threatening statements and can throw razor-sharp cards with perfect aim. But the wall is still there, so he doesn’t appear to have a great deal of choice.
“Now, when a person of particularly strong will becomes a Heartless, the shell left behind - the body and soul - begins to act of its own accord. This shell has no heart and therefore no emotion, and it is known as a Nobody. Most Nobodies are malformed, pitiable creatures, but a particularly strong will can result in a Nobody that appears human.”
“Er,” Derren says, something occurring to him. “The body is called a Nobody?”
Luxord rolls his eyes. “Yes, the Nobodies are bodies without hearts, and the Heartless are hearts without bodies. I did not assign the names myself. And I really think, Derren, that you are missing something rather more important. I had been under the impression that you were perceptive.”
Derren, who can’t help bristling at the slight even when he has much more important things to worry about, thinks back over what Luxord has said. Remembering the strange pull he felt upon first seeing him and Luxord’s rather sinister ‘certain sense’ comment, he eventually concludes that Luxord may be a Heartless, one of the humanlike ones, and metaphorically eating Derren’s heart. Which is an unsettling thought, but preferable to Derren’s heart literally being ripped out, so he is prepared to accept it.
Luxord laughs when Derren proposes his theory. “Close,” he says. “You’re thinking along the right lines. But I am, as it happens, a Nobody. My corresponding Heartless... well.” He bares his teeth in a rather sinister grin. “I’ve been searching for him for some time. I’m very interested in reacquiring my heart, you see. I can remember feeling emotion, and my present state is a poor substitute.”
There is a pause.
“Oh,” Derren says, and then, “Shit.”
“Oh, well done,” says the man who, now that Derren is thinking about it, looks more than a little like a blond version of him. “I knew we’d get there eventually. You seemed to think everyone could harness the dark powers you had at your disposal; did it ever occur to you to wonder why they didn’t?”
Derren is slightly too busy trying to rearrange his entire view of himself and the world to answer.
“Now, here comes the troubling part,” Luxord says, despite the fact that, in Derren’s opinion, the previous parts have been more than troubling enough. “In order for the heart and body to recombine, one must become subservient to the other. Must be assimilated, if you like. One of us is to be the primary consciousness, and, to be perfectly honest, I’d rather it were me.” He smiles. “Still, I’m a sporting non-being, and so we’re going to play a game.”
“Right,” Derren says, feeling a little unwell. “And, er, just so we’re clear: this is to determine which of us dies?”
“It’s not quite death,” Luxord says, thoughtfully. “Vestiges of personality and memory remain. But, yes, should you lose you will certainly no longer exist as a conscious entity, if a Heartless can be described as ‘existing’.”
Derren is not especially reassured. “Do the heart and body really need to recombine? I was trundling along quite happily as a Heartless, as it happens.”
“As I am incapable of feeling happiness,” Luxord says, “I can’t say I was as satisfied with my situation.”
“Emotions aren’t nearly as much fun as you’d think,” Derren says. “And surely you can’t really want them, because presumably you can’t feel desire. And if you can feel desire, you already have emotions, and so we don’t really need to bother with this assimilation business.”
There is a pause.
“You have a fairly solid argument,” Luxord concedes.
Derren gives an involuntary, relieved nod. “So you won’t kill me,” he says, careful not to give it the intonation of a question.
“I’ll have to reconsider the idea that Nobodies are entirely devoid of emotion,” Luxord says. “Desire I can apparently manage. It was a solid argument constructed on flawed premises, I’m afraid. Not your fault. Technically, as I’ve already explained, I’m not going to kill you whatever the outcome, but your pseudo-existence is still under threat.”
“Ah,” Derren says.
Luxord smirks. “Let’s see how the cards fall.” He makes a sweeping gesture. “I have assigned each of us an equal amount of time. Should you fail in a challenge, your time will be depleted. Should you succeed, mine shall. And, of course, time will be depleted over, well, time. The first to run out of time is the loser. Do you understand?”
This makes absolutely no sense to Derren, or, he suspects, to any sane person. “Not completely.”
“Essentially, the progress of time is a form of scoring. I can speed up or slow down time for each player as I choose.”
Derren has to wonder why he doesn’t just use a pen and paper, but he is distracted by several cards materialising from nowhere, smaller than the cards cutting him off from escape but still significantly taller than Derren. They balance on their lower edges, surrounding him like a bizarre parody of Stonehenge.
Each card, he notices, has several strange symbols on one side and a clock face on the other. The second hand - one of the hands printed on the card - is ticking around. Given the events of the past fifteen minutes, this seems almost mundane.
Less mundane is Luxord’s plucking a card from thin air (not a trick with which Derren is unfamiliar, but somewhat more difficult when the card is eight feet tall), saying, “You have twenty seconds to find me,” twirling around and vanishing into the card.
Instantly, the other cards scatter.
Derren doesn’t know what the fuck to do.
The cards are towering over him, spinning in dizzying circles. Derren stares around, looking for Luxord, but how the fuck is he supposed to find him, he’s disappeared, how the fuck -
Derren forces himself to breathe. Luxord, he tells himself sternly, has not disappeared. It was a simple illusion, not unlike several Derren has performed himself, and Luxord will be hiding behind one of these cards. He just has to chase down the cards, which are sliding on their edges all over the marble, and -
One of the cards, he realises, catching a glimpse of its front as he runs after it, bears a picture of Luxord. That would certainly explain the ‘find me’ command. He grabs it by the side and forces it around to face him.
The picture, rather alarmingly, winks at him, and then Luxord steps out of the card and the card vanishes.
Derren performs a quick internal consultation to make sure he is absolutely certain that he is not dreaming. None of this feels like a dream. He decides to pretend that he is dreaming anyway.
“As you succeeded, I shall shorten my time a little,” Luxord says, with a wave of his hand. “You understand the rules?”
“Hang on,” Derren says. There are many, many questions he wants to ask, but for the moment he decides to focus on the practical. “You mean you’re in complete control of the, er, scoring?”
Luxord gives him a stern look. “I am a fair opponent, Derren.”
“Yes, well, I only have your word for that, don’t I? And you want to steal my heart.”
“I don’t want to steal it,” Luxord says. “I want to win it in a fair game. Were I less honourable, the heart would already be mine. Shall we play again? Look closely.” He spins, and a moment later he is gone and Derren is again surrounded by eight-foot cards, more of them this time, sliding bewilderingly past each other.
Derren tries to clear his mind, to focus only on the cards and forget the stakes. He sees a flash of Luxord’s black coat as a card twists past him, and he leaps forward and flips it over and realises a second too late that the card he glimpsed was behind it.
Luxord, transforming back, shakes his head. “A noble effort,” he says, and then Derren is a card.
Derren has never been a card before, despite his long history of working with them, and he does not quite know what to do with himself. He flutters a bit in a distressed manner before realising what has happened and fluttering in an even more distressed manner, and then, when he has finally managed to balance himself upright on one edge, he hops around in a rough circle, looking for Luxord.
Luxord is perched on top of a smallish house of enormous cards, looking at Derren-the-card with a contemplative smile on his face.
Derren tries to speak and finds himself unable to. As he was probably only going to say ‘what the fuck, I’m a card,’ and Luxord is presumably already aware of this, his inability to communicate is not the greatest of his problems at this particular moment, but it does not improve his mood.
“Considering the world from the perspective of a card increases one’s ability to manipulate cards,” Luxord says. “You’ll be grateful for the experience if you win. Of course, every second that passes in that form is two seconds lost.”
Derren, although he has no idea how it might be done, tries very hard to stop being a card.
“Your hand is looking poorer by the moment,” Luxord says, slipping lightly from his house of cards. “Would you like to fold?”
Derren isn’t sure how a card might shake its head, and he doesn’t attempt it for fear that it might be interpreted as assent.
Luxord raises a hand, and the cards that formed his seating-place rise up and spin around him. He looks at the clock face on one. “I think that’s long enough, don’t you?” he asks, and Derren is suddenly a man again, unsteady on his feet and breathing hard.
“How long do I have?” he asks, when he has re-ascertained the location of his vocal cords.
“Not long,” Luxord says, with a rather malicious grin. “You’ll forgive me if I was impatient.”
Right. This isn’t good news. “And you?”
“You’ve won one game; you’ve lost one,” Luxord says, shrugging. “We have the same amount of time left. I’ve told you: I’m a fair player.”
Although the situation certainly isn’t ideal, and although Luxord is solely responsible for dragging Derren into it, Derren can’t help being a little grateful for the fact that the game doesn’t appear to be too heavily rigged against him. “If this game is supposed to be fair,” he says, a thought occurring, “can I set a challenge for you? It’s not terribly fair if we’re always playing on your terms.”
Luxord agrees immediately, looking so delighted that Derren again wonders how emotionless these ‘Nobodies’ really are. “But if it is unfair,” he adds, “I shall know, and you forfeit your heart with your honour.”
This sounds reasonable, where the definition of ‘reasonable’ includes the possibility of having one’s entire identity forcibly staked on an admittedly fair game, so Derren agrees. It does, however, present Derren with the problem of thinking of a game he can play without rigging. He cannot pick a game of pure chance; even if his opponent is equally or more skilled (and, whilst Derren is extremely good at manipulating cards, he has to admit that he has yet to make them magically stand up and obey his will), Derren wants to be able to fight for his existence. He is very good at Cheat, one of the few games that legitimately permit lying, and suggests it before remembering aloud that Cheat is not really a possibility with only two players.
“That’s no trouble at all,” Luxord says. He raises an arm, and two creatures materialise out of the floor: grey and pink and bizarre, with empty sleeves and heads like spiked weapons. “These lesser Nobodies can be our playing partners.”
Derren is quite alarmed by this development. They’re not human. They don’t even look human. They don’t even have faces. How is he supposed to analyse their reactions?
Luxord, apparently, has no difficulty in analysing Derren’s. “So you were planning to read me?” He gives a laugh, dark in his throat. “I think you’ve forgotten that I don’t have emotions to betray.”
-
“Neither of us has enough time for a full game,” Luxord explains, “and so...” and he waves a hand. The clock faces on the large cards surrounding them stop. “This will be the final challenge, should you or I win.”
Three against one is, Luxord acknowledges, hardly a fair situation, and so should one of the lesser Nobodies - ‘Gamblers’, he calls them, casually - win, they are to play another game. Derren is hoping to finish it here, though. The matter of holding onto his heart and his autonomy aside, he has already had more than enough of people turning into cards.
Derren’s determination to win, however, does not make playing against a man who reacts in no way to anything and two silent creatures without faces any easier. Emotions or not, Luxord is a very good liar, and he claims to have played three sixes and interprets the strange dances of the Gamblers and watches Derren’s card-picking with the same careful half-smile. Derren, unable to use his usual techniques of behavioural analysis to detect a lie, is forced into counting every card that is played and, when Luxord’s hand begins to look a little too thin, making a few wild accusatory leaps of faith.
Luxord also, not entirely to Derren’s surprise, turns out to be an excellent card-counter. All Derren can do is harness the very best of his impressive lying skills in the hope of evening the field.
It looks as if this is going to be a game of chance, after all.
And then, as the game carries on, Derren realises something. Luxord, it appears, is so confident in his lack of emotion that he is taking less and less trouble to deliberately keep his face straight. And, whether from mere feigned emotion bleeding into unhelpful contexts or something deeper, he is beginning to give off hints.
“The tides of Fate begin to turn against me, I see,” Luxord remarks, picking up the stack again. “Take your turn.”
Fate, Derren thinks, repressing the beginnings of a smile as he watches Luxord’s eye movements, has nothing to do with it.
-
Eventually, Derren plays a two and calls it a queen and sits there, trying to control his breathing, trying to control his heartbeat, desperately hoping his opponents will not realise that it was his last card until the next move has been made.
The next player, one of the Gamblers, levitates two cards onto the pile and performs a brief jig. Luxord nods and draws breath to translate, and then he grunts as if physically struck and falls back onto the marble.
Derren, rather hesitantly, stands.
“You won, didn’t you?” Luxord asks, with a breathless laugh. The Gamblers spin and dissipate at the edges of Derren’s vision, and the cards walling them in disappear in a flash. “You play the game well. I suppose your consciousness is to be the uppermost, in that case. A shame, but the winner takes all.”
Derren takes Luxord’s hand and pulls him to his feet, then remembers that Luxord has just put him through a great deal of confusion and misery and therefore Derren has very little cause to be helping him. Still, it’s too late not to help him up now, and pushing him over would appear petulant. Especially as Derren is apparently now not going to be assimilated by a madman with magical powers.
“Place your right hand on my left shoulder,” Luxord says, when he has steadied himself.
Derren has made people mindlessly follow orders too many times to forget to question them himself. “Why?”
Luxord shrugs and smiles. “You won. It is time for you to claim your prize and complete yourself.” He looks carefully at Derren. “Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it.”
And, yes, now that Derren considers it, perhaps he has sometimes felt as if he might be missing something. Perhaps the strange attraction he has felt to Luxord since first seeing him is something deeper than sexual desire. But... “Let me just make sure I’m clear on this. If I claim my ‘prize’, as you put it, you stop existing?”
“I’m a Nobody,” Luxord says. “I never existed.”
Derren doesn’t understand anything about this man. “You didn’t want to lose.”
“I chose to play the game. It can’t be helped. Even the greatest gambler can be dealt a poor hand.” He nods towards the glowing doorway. “When you have taken me, go through there and you will be back upon the stage.”
“I think I’m going to need to know a bit more about this,” Derren says. “You said vestiges would remain.”
“There will be no dramatic changes to your personality,” Luxord says, tilting his head back. “Just in case you were worrying. As, of course, you were.” He lets his head roll forward again and smirks. “I am half of you, after all. I know your concerns.”
If Luxord knows Derren’s fear of losing his identity, Derren thinks, he probably shares it. “So, the vestiges are...?”
“A few scraps of memory,” Luxord says. “A few abilities, perhaps; you may be able to manipulate time a little. There is a theory that emotional connections may be transferred, but as Nobodies are incapable of forming emotional connections a theory it must remain.”
Even putting aside the longing for something not quite definable, which has been growing stronger by the moment since Derren has become aware of it, the ability to manipulate time is a tempting prospect. But he doesn’t dislike Luxord, he is rather taken aback to realise, and the idea of reducing him to a few scraps of memory, even if Luxord would have been willing to do the same to Derren, is one with which Derren cannot be entirely comfortable.
Derren hesitates, wondering whether an explanation or a friendly touch or a punch in the face would be the most appropriate farewell, and then he says, “I think I’ll forego my prize, thank you,” and turns towards the doorway.
“No,” Luxord says, furiously.
Derren, startled, turns back.
Luxord has been so composed, but now he is glaring, small cards spinning around him at high speed. “You are not going to walk away from me. Has it occurred to you, in your little act of benevolence, that perhaps having a heart, even if under someone else’s ownership, is more important to me than the half-existence in which you are so kindly allowing me to remain?”
Derren stares at him. “I’m not going to kill you,” he says. “Even if you ask me to. I don’t think it’s something I can do.”
“I am asking you,” Luxord says, rolling his eyes, “to let me live. Stop talking. Put your hand on my shoulder.”
-
“Thank you so much; you’ve been a wonderful audience. Good night!” Derren calls, waving. He slips out, asking Coops to make his apologies to anyone waiting at the stage door, and makes his way, hands in his pockets, to a deserted street.
He sits on a garden wall and closes his eyes and presses his fingers against his forehead for a long moment, and then he takes his hands away and glances around to make sure that nobody is nearby.
“You didn’t tell me,” he says, quietly, “about the voice in my head.”
I didn’t know, Luxord says, his voice amused. There haven’t been many instances of recombining. It’s pleasant to realise that I can keep my mind. And I can feel that pleasure now, of course, which is rather delightful.
“Not that I begrudge you your consciousness,” Derren says, “but this is going to drive me mad.”
You are having a conversation with your own mind, Luxord points out. Many would call you mad already.
“Thank you; that’s enormously helpful.”
Luxord laughs, the sound echoing in Derren’s mind, and Derren, feeling his soul curled warm within him, can’t help smiling a little in spite of everything.