The Way to What Used to be Vexen's Heart [Vexen, Demyx]
Canon Status: KHI - 3 years, between Luxord and Marluxia in Org terms.
Genre: ...Romance? Maybe? Ish?
Rating: PG.
Characters: Vexen, Demyx, slight Xigbar, even more slight Lexaeus.
Pairing: Vexen/Demyx in an implied sort of preslashy way.
Warnings: Contains Xigbar. Preslash.
Notes: I actually looked stuff up for this. And as for the Cauldron-Born, if you don't know, I shan't tell you. Go read a book.
Summary: In which Demyx pulls a Xigbar, only in a slightly less annoying fashion.
The experiment was so far proceeding as expected. Of course, at this early stage there were still myriad things that could possibly go wrong, but Vexen nevertheless considered the hypothesis promising. The reactions were behaving exactly as he had predicted. He smiled thinly, pleased. He might have found the correct combination of chemicals at last.
His progress had come only after extensive, frustrating trial and error, the result of which was row upon row of used glassware. Vexen turned to look at the test tubes and crucibles in need of cleaning and sighed. This was without a doubt the most tiresome part of being a scientist, but it had to be done, and the Dusks, he had discovered after far too much broken glass, did not have the manual dexterity necessary. He would have to do it himself if he wanted it done right.
At that very moment, someone knocked on the door.
“What?” Vexen snapped, predisposed to annoyance by the chore in front of him.
Demyx peered around the door. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“Well, you did.” At the sight of Demyx pouting and starting to sidle off, Vexen rolled his eyes and added, “But now that you have, you might as well actually say whatever it is you came here to say.”
“Oh. Okay.” He stopped clinging to the door like a particularly large limpet in a black coat and came all the way into the lab. “I just wondered if you needed help with anything.”
“You what?”
“I-“
“Don’t repeat yourself; I heard you the first time. What do you want actually?”
Demyx feigned hurt innocence like a real person, Vexen noted. “I told you, I was bored and wondered if I could do anything to help out.”
“Of course. And since you were bored, you decided to come here, because you neophytes don’t find everything that goes on the lab boring at all.”
“Don’t lump us all together like that!” Vexen had been only peripherally aware that Demyx could be serious at all, still less so suddenly forceful. “We’re individuals, just like you, and maybe Axel says the lab is boring but I don’t!” As quickly as it had come, the serious mood was gone. “Besides…Axel doesn’t come down here.”
“Axel.” Vexen felt the word conveyed his opinion (i.e. that turning Axel into a Nobody might manage to surpass turning themselves into Nobodies for the most foolish decision they had ever made) without need for further elaboration.
“Yeah. I was trying to practice, but he kept showing up and trying to hit me with fireballs. It was annoying. So I came down here. Can I stay, just for a little bit? Please? I’ll be quiet!”
Vexen looked at Demyx, then at the pile of dirty glassware. “Fine,” he said. “You can clean the test tubes. Brushes and disposable gloves are under the sink, turn them upside down to dry, and whatever you do, don’t stick your nose in one of the dirty ones.”
Demyx was not, strictly speaking, quiet: he hummed the entire time, just loud enough that Vexen was sure where the sound came from. Still, he had to admit that it was a small price to pay for not doing the washing. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sound, in any case.
* * *
It had been a long day. If measured in time since he had last slept, it had actually been a long week. Between Xigbar hovering around any time Vexen left the lab, Xemnas demanding extensive status reports, and Axel in general, he was in no mood to deal with other Nobodies more than absolutely necessary. He retreated to the safe confines of his lab, where things made sense and, above all, there were no other people to demand his attention and ask him about his progress. He had left the next stage of his experiment to sit and cool on his last foray out of the lab. If all went as expected, the resulting potion should combine elements of light affinity, the only known antidote to an attack by the Heartless, with the grey elements that interacted best with nothingness.
It didn’t. The light-aligned component had burned out all the rest as the temperature reduced. The result was worthless.
Ordinarily, Vexen would have returned to the previous step and watched closely to fully analyze what had gone wrong. He would then have returned stubbornly to work, ironing out the impossibilities one at a time.
Instead, he snapped. Snatching the worthless potion up, he threw it at the wall, a part of him enjoying the shattered glass and white stain on grey metal. Then he proceeded to send everything within reach after it, every vial and retort and stirring rod. He took a vicious satisfaction in seeing them shatter the way all his dreams and hopes in the past five years had shattered. He could see no reason not to let his power go as he had not in far too long, frosting over everything, ice shards crashing into cupboards and walls and ceiling, almost indistinguishable from the glass. He wanted to destroy, to wipe everything away, all the evidence of failure and inadequacy, and start fresh.
In the crash of ice on metal, he didn’t hear the door open. The first he noticed of someone else nearby was a cautious touch against his shoulder. His power still flaring, Vexen spun and struck out at the intruder. He didn’t want to be bothered by Xigbar and his misplaced facsimile of concern, not now.
Rather than shoving Xigbar back, however, his hand sank smoothly into a figure made all of water that stood behind him. As soon as he touched it, ice began to spread out from his hand until he was stuck elbow-deep in an ice statue of Demyx. He glared at it; the ice splintered, needles flying everywhere. One sliced along his cheek, and abruptly he was himself again, not an inhuman force of destruction, just Vexen, with one hand pressed to his cheek where blood was beginning to flow.
Demyx must have been watching through a crack in the door, considering how promptly he opened it again once Vexen restrained his power and fury once more. His sitar dissolved into bubbles as he entered. “Wow, you really did a number on this place,” he said, only a little subdued.
Vexen looked around, really seeing for the first time the results of his loss of temper. He would have to clean all this up before he could begin to figure out what had caused the failure of his experiment. He didn’t even know where to begin. All of a sudden, he was very tired.
Demyx looked at him, then said, “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. You look like the living dead. I mean, I guess you are, kind of, but you look like the maggots-eating-your-brain kind of living dead, which is just plain gross. Go get some sleep, okay? I’ll handle this.”
“But-” The part of Vexen not exhausted or still screaming in the back of his head was fairly sure that leaving Demyx alone in the lab was a Bad Idea.
“Sleep.” Demyx looked at him seriously, then grinned. “Unless you want me to sing you a lullaby and tuck you in first.”
Vexen surrendered the field. He fell into sleep like a stone into the ocean as soon as his head hit the pillow.
* * *
Vexen awoke slowly. For a fraction of a second, as he did every time he woke up, he forgot that he was no longer Even. He was in Radiant Garden, the sun was rising outside, and all was right with the world. The fraction of a second after that, when he remembered, as he had every time since the first five years before, was the single thing he hated most about being a Nobody. Every time he woke up, he lost everything all over again.
Unsurprisingly, he slept as little as he could get away with.
Eventually, he reassembled his memory up to the previous night, and it occurred to Vexen that he should probably go see what state his lab was in. This did nothing for his mood.
He could not himself have said what he expected to find; a floor aswim in melted ice and treacherous with glass, in all likelihood. He was certain, however, of what he had not expected to find: the lab as neat and tidy as if he had not had a violent breakdown in the middle of it, except for a few dents in the metal cupboards, and Demyx, barefoot, coat discarded on the floor, cooking what looked like stew over one of the burners.
Demyx turned around when Vexen came in and smiled brightly. “Good morning! Or, um, afternoon, or maybe evening. I kind of can’t tell. Luxord’s the only one who can, and I haven’t seen him recently, but I think he’s making it up half the time. Anyway, there’s food.”
Vexen looked at the stew and felt slightly sick. He hated eating right after waking up. “I’m not hungry.”
“More for me, then!”
Vexen found himself coffee, feeling as if he were dreaming. Nobodies did not truly dream: the closest they came was a spontaneous reminiscence that differed not at all from their waking memories. Still, Vexen remembered dreams in which Even had accepted the strangest combinations of circumstances without batting an eye. He felt like that now. Demyx was looking pleased to see him, for one thing; for another, he was sitting and drinking coffee in his miraculously clean lab while Demyx ate stew and chattered. These things simply did not happen.
“Did you clean my lab?” he asked abruptly, interrupting whatever Demyx was saying (not that Vexen was listening).
He didn’t seem to mind; on the other hand, Demyx hardly ever seemed to mind anything. “I said I’d handle it, didn’t I? It wasn’t too bad, actually, mostly ice. I just let it melt and poured it down the drain. It didn’t take that long. Lexaeus came looking for you, but when I said you were sleeping he smiled and went away. And then I practiced playing for a bit. Is it always this quiet down here?”
“Yes.” Vexen added waspishly, “I consider the quiet one of its better qualities.”
Demyx was neither stupid enough not to get the hint nor obnoxious enough to pretend he didn’t. Instead, he pouted, an expression that should have looked far more ridiculous than it did on someone his age. “I’ll go practice somewhere else, then.”
“You do that.”
Vexen admitted to himself later that he had been perhaps slightly less polite than was appropriate to someone who had saved him a dreary job. In his own defense, Demyx should have known better than to invite Vexen’s conversation when Vexen was on his first cup of coffee. He had never been polite before at least the second cup before and saw no reason to start.
* * *
“Vexen! Vexen! Look what I found!”
Vexen looked up reluctantly. Only a brief acquaintanceship had taught him that Demyx, having once begun vying for his attention, would not be ignored. The important thing was to hold out until his voice became unbearably annoying, or he brought coffee, more often the latter. “Look what I found,” however, suggested something which required more than usual notice. It might be explosive.
“I thought you were on a mission,” he said by way of greeting.
“I was, but now I’m done. Are you going to look or not?”
“All right, all right, what is so very-hmm.” What Demyx was holding carefully in both hands was a cylinder of what looked like some kind of crystal set into a hemisphere of metal. It was slightly blue and glowing faintly. Vexen had never seen anything quite like it before. “Where did you get that?”
“I picked it up on my mission. I thought it looked interesting.”
“Yes, but what exactly does it do?”
“I…actually, I’m not sure. I wasn’t there very long. But they were all over the place outside, so they can’t be dangerous, right? And it’s shiny!”
Vexen did not consider that observation deserving of a response. Instead, he lifted the device from Demyx’s hands and brought it to a clear space on the countertop. The cylinder was made of glass, not crystal, but inside, clearly visible from the top, were set four small crystal spires. They were the source of the faint glow. Small silver wires wrapped around the base of each spire in a complicated pattern.
He still could not deduce its function. At home-in Radiant Garden, he corrected himself before the word had fully formed in his mind, he would have called it some kind of electrical system, but several aggravating experiences had taught him that other worlds had other sources of power. It could make combining scientific procedures an even more wearisome process.
The first step was removing the exterior, unnecessary portions. There was a visible join between the metal and the crystal. In all likelihood the metal had been fitted over the rest to keep all the wiring in place. Vexen opened the drawer where he kept a selection of small tools for such purposes and pulled out a series of screwdrivers, collected from half a dozen worlds. With luck, one of them would fit the small screws he could see at the join.
“What kind of power did the people in that world use?” he asked as he examined the star-shaped indents and compared them to similar screwdrivers. “Electric, pure magical, anbaric, doxial?”
“Um, I dunno. How do you tell the difference?”
Vexen sighed loudly. This was why he hated working with unscientific minds. “Every world beyond a certain level of technological development has some variety of power they use to run their machines. Electric power involves the generation of electricity, obviously, which is almost invariably on a citywide basis. Pure magical power, on the other hand, is usually on an individual level, whereas anbaric-oh, never mind; it’ll be quicker to test it myself.”
He expected Demyx to leave after that, but the younger Nobody hovered around the lab as Vexen worked the metal base neatly off. Beneath was the rest of the wires, which resolved themselves at the end from a maze into two neat bundles. Probably electric or anbaric, then. There was only one way to be sure.
“Demyx, second cupboard on the right, get down the machine, and take care not to drop it,” Vexen instructed. If Demyx wanted to linger in the lab, which was not in itself a strange desire, in Vexen’s opinion, except in that the neophytes all disagreed, then he could at least make himself useful.
“What does this one do?”
“You’ll see.” He hooked the wires from the mysterious device to his small generator, then turned it on to the lowest setting. The current increased in very small increments, so the lowest setting never was sufficient to run anything, but an important part of the scientific method was being systematic.
To Vexen’s surprise, the effect was immediate. The crystal spires, which had been glowing dimly, shone as bright as any of the lab’s lights, throwing everything into stark relief. “Hmm,” Vexen said again. “That’s interesting.”
“Is it supposed to do that?”
“Apparently so. This is definitely a variety of electric light, but I’ve never encountered one so efficient before. Fascinating.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, obviously, that the reaction produces a great deal of light with very little power. Not relevant to our long-term goals, of course, but interesting, all the same. I wonder how it’s done…”
It took Vexen three days to determine the precise configuration of silver wires necessary to produce the effect. For those three days, he saw very little of Demyx, but there always seemed to be coffee in the pot when he wanted it. Six days later, he had successfully reproduced the lamp, working around his more important but less gratifying projects. It was the most satisfied he had been with his work in some time.
* * *
Demyx had been on a mission for much of the day, which for Vexen meant that he had to make his own coffee. He was not pleased. It had been easy to settle into a routine based around Demyx’s presence, and the breaking of that routine threw him ever so slightly off balance. The lab seemed more silent than usual. Of course, it was, but that was no excuse for the impression Vexen kept getting that his voice would echo in the emptiness. He stalked about discontentedly, glowering at his latest cultures (they were behaving perfectly as planned, but he was in no mood to be pleased, and therefore wasn’t).
“Ve-Vexen?”
He spun around, prepared to vent his spleen on Demyx for daring to vanish just when Vexen was getting used to him, but what he saw gave him pause. Demyx had opened a dark corridor directly into the room for once, and it was still open, like a livid bruise on the white and silver of the lab. He was still holding his sitar, leaning on it in fact, his free arm pressed against his stomach. Perhaps it was just the contrast against the black and grey and white all around him, but Demyx’s blue-green eyes looked even larger than usual.
Vexen moved just quickly enough to support him as he banished his sitar and stumbled without it. He wasn’t putting any weight at all on his right leg, Vexen noted, and from close to his coat was scored with slashes that must correspond with wounds on the flesh beneath. “What happened?”
Demyx drew in several shuddering breaths before he managed to say, “Monsters…that won’t die. Or stop. They’re following…”
With a small effort, Vexen closed the open portal. “They can’t follow you back here.” He managed to get Demyx up onto an empty table without putting too much pressure on his wounds. The lab was the closest thing they had to an infirmary; none of them was trained as a doctor, but they did the best they could on those rare occasions when a potion wouldn’t suffice. Vexen unzipped Demyx’s coat. The shirt and pants beneath were just as torn, and tacky with blood besides where the fabric stuck to still-open wounds.
He snapped his fingers, summoning a Dusk. “Fetch Lexaeus,” he commanded. “If he is not in the castle, Zexion.”
Loath to proceed further than necessary on his own, Vexen turned his attention to Demyx’s injured leg. From the look of it, it was broken. “Tell me you didn’t try to walk on this leg,” he said.
“Just…a little bit?” said Demyx hazily. “I had to. It didn’t hurt then.”
“Endorphins, I suppose.” Vexen measured out a dose of anesthetic. “Drink this.” Demyx took the glass, but by that time he was shaking all over and couldn’t hold it steady. “Here. That’s right. Just swallow.” He took advantage of the moment to feel Demyx’s pulse, which was fast but not quite as strong as it should be. His face was pale, as well, and clammy to the touch.
Closing the wounds had to come first, before he lost took much blood. Vexen cut Demyx’s shirt neatly away rather than wrestle with undressing him and injure him further in the process. What was revealed made him remember nausea (something he would have happily gone without): five large wounds, dozens of smaller scratches, and so many bruises it was hard to find unmarred skin anywhere. Whatever had befallen Demyx, it had come close to ending the Nobody’s half-existence on the spot.
In a swirl of darkness, Lexaeus appeared. “What happened?” he asked, taking the situation in at a glance.
“That’s hardly relevant,” Vexen said, more harshly than he meant. Lexaeus did not take offense; he seldom did.
“Mission…went wrong,” Demyx offered in a distant voice that indicated the medicine was taking effect.
“Hush,” said Vexen absently. “Go to sleep, Demyx.”
“’Kay,” Demyx agreed, eyes closing even as he did so.
“We have to close the wounds first,” said Lexaeus. “Needles, thread, disinfectant, sutures if we have any.”
Vexen did not think, as he pulled the supplies out of a neatly organized cupboard, that Demyx had done the organizing. He did not think, as he bandaged and sterilized and stitched and checked for cracked ribs and splinted a broken leg, that Demyx was breathing too softly. He did not think about anything except the task at hand. Everything else was unimportant.
“Sleep should do the rest,” Lexaeus said after what might have been hours or mere minutes. “Once he wakes up, get him to hydrate himself if he can, and eat or drink something full of sugar. Potions will help the healing process along, but they won’t make new blood to replace what he’s lost.”
“Yes, thank you, I know that. And what makes you think I’m going to be around when he wakes up?”
“Someone has to make sure he doesn’t pull his stitches or try to stand on that leg.”
“Granted, why should ‘someone’ be me?”
Lexaeus looked at Vexen enigmatically. “You would be there anyway, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s not the point.” Vexen wasn’t entirely sure what the point was, only that Lexaeus seemed to have one he himself didn’t understand. In these circumstances, he had long since learned, it was best to concede. “Oh, never mind. I’ll watch him.”
“I’ll tell Xemnas why he won’t be hearing from Nine for a while.” With a brief gesture of farewell, Lexaeus vanished, leaving Vexen alone in the laboratory with an unconscious Demyx.
“At least you’re quiet this way,” he said to Demyx who, lying on the table, looked younger than his years. “On the whole, I’m not sure I don’t prefer the humming.”
It occurred to Vexen eventually that it would be easier to clean up if he moved Demyx to his own bed. This took less time than it might have done, once he placed the portal precisely right, but afterward there seemed no reason for him to stay in the lab at all.
Demyx’s room was more fully furnished than Vexen’s own, including one particularly comfortable armchair. If he pulled it up close to the bed, he would be awoken if Demyx stirred. Vexen dozed off slowly, part of his mind still listening for any change, whether for the better or the worse.
* * *
“Wha--?”
Vexen shook himself awake. Demyx was blinking up at him, still tired-looking but much closer to normal in color. All seemed well.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“I hurt. Kind of a lot. And my head’s spinning.”
“You can hydrate yourself; that should help steady your head. And as for the pain…stay right there.” Vexen left his corridor of darkness open just long enough to grab an Elixir from the curative cupboard and then returned. “That should help.”
“Thanks! Oh, wow, it really does help!”
“Don’t think you can get up yet, mind you. You lost entirely too much blood to be up and about. What did you do, walk through a battle without looking where you were going?”
“Not exactly. It was those things-I heard somebody call them Cauldron-Born. The Superior sent me to find out about them, ‘cause they’re like soldiers made from dead people, and I guess that’s kind of like a Nobody. Except it turns out they’re completely different, and one of the different things is they can’t be killed at all.”
“I see. I wonder how…Possibly an effect of the way they’re made?”
“I didn’t ask. I was kinda busy trying to get away before they killed me.”
“Try harder next time,” Vexen said. “I don’t want to have to deal with you like this again.”
Demyx smiled brightly for no reason Vexen could see. “I promise!”
“See that you do. Saïx or Xemnas will want to hear your report once I tell them you’re awake.” At this, Demyx started struggling to sit up. Vexen pushed him down by the shoulders easily, proving to himself that Demyx was in no state to be on his feet. “Absolutely not! Weren’t you listening when I said you were not to get up? If the Superior wants to hear your report, he’ll have to come to you.”
“He won’t do that just for me,” said Demyx.
Vexen had to admit the truth of this statement. “Be that as it may, your leg is broken. Not even Saïx would think it reasonable for you to stand on a broken leg just to give a report that isn’t even time-sensitive.” When Demyx continued to look stubbornly likely to try getting out of bed as soon as Vexen turned his back, he added, “If it’s that important to you, I think I have a recorder somewhere. You can give your report into that. I’ll see he gets it.”
“Would you really?” He was practically beaming.
“That’s what I said, wasn’t it? Try not to fall asleep again before I get back.” He might as well go get food in any case; Demyx would need the energy to heal. It wasn’t much more trouble to fetch the recorder, and it would save the trouble of physically restraining Demyx when he tried to get up otherwise. Vexen shook his head internally. He could not understand Demyx’s loyalty to Xemnas even at cost to himself. (Part of him, part he ignored whenever possible, noted that he understood better than he was willing to admit, or Vexen would never have come into being in the first place.)
* * *
“Did you leave the lab at all while I was away?” Demyx demanded.
Vexen looked up with something like a smile. This stage of testing his latest hypothesis required a great deal of sitting and doing nothing, so he was more than usually pleased to see Demyx, who could hardly help being more interesting than watching crucibles boil.
“You didn’t, did you? I bet you didn’t even sleep! Honestly, I go away for three days on recon, and we’re back to this. When did you last eat?”
“Just now,” Vexen said. Evidently Demyx was in one of his more maternal moods (not that Vexen would call them that out loud).
“Coffee doesn’t count. When was the last time you ate something with no caffeine in it at all?”
“…” When Vexen thought about it, he couldn’t recall exactly how much time had passed, although he was fairly sure it had been the last time Demyx had cajoled him into a meal.
“That’s what I thought. No wonder you’re so skinny. Come on; we’re going to get dinner.”
“We are?” Vexen asked sardonically.
“Yes, we are. It’s dinner time anyway, and I’m hungry. It’ll be good for you!”
“I have to monitor this reaction!” he protested.
Demyx barely glanced at it. “You put that on heat five minutes ago, tops. It’s barely warm. It can stand to cool back down and sit for an hour or so. Besides, you can’t tell me you really want to sit here watching water boil! I’ll boil it for you in half the time if you come with me now.”
For some reason he chose not to examine too closely, Vexen agreed. Surely the plaintive look on Demyx’s face had nothing to do with it.
* * *
He would never admit it to Demyx, but the actual meal made the headache Vexen had felt pounding between his temples subside somewhat. The company was not as bad as he had half-expected: Axel had come in, bolted his food, and left; Saïx, who had a stifling effect on conversation at the best of times, was away on a mission; and Luxord was not as unbearable as Vexen had at first found him. He was almost enjoying hearing about what his-not friends, not anymore-colleagues had been doing.
Then Xigbar arrived.
Xigbar was, in general, a known quantity. He could be incredibly aggravating, but by this point Vexen knew exactly where he drew his lines. As much as Vexen occasionally wanted to strangle him, he knew Xigbar would never actually act with intent to harm him. On this occasion, Xigbar strolled around the side of the doorframe, vaulted into his seat from the wall, and began helping himself from dishes all along the table. He stole a forkful of Xaldin’s potatoes; Xaldin reached through the small portal the other way and stole it back.
Then Xigbar noticed Vexen’s presence at the table. He grinned (Even had learned, over the years, to react to Braig’s grin with deep foreboding, and Vexen continued in this tradition) and said, “Look who finally crawled out of his cave! I gotta say, Demyx, I’m impressed. You know how long I’ve been trying to get him to do that?”
“Perhaps if you had not already taught us all that the best way to treat your suggestions is with complete avoidance, you would have more success,” Zexion said, but Vexen was no longer listening. Something in the tone of Xigbar’s voice, the expression on his face, had recalled a dim memory of days long ago, and suddenly Vexen knew why Demyx had become such a large part of his daily routine.
He had no proof, not even evidence, yet. He simply knew, the way sometimes (more and more rarely now) a dozen coincidental properties flew together in his head to form a perfect formula. Now his own character, Xigbar’s, Demyx’s, Lexaeus’s and Zexion’s and Xaldin’s, even Axel’s, were all part of the formula. He put them together just the right way, and he knew.
Remembering what it was like to be furious with Xigbar’s interference was as easy as connecting a simple circuit. Vexen stood, careless of the others’ surprise, grabbed Xigbar by the hood, and pulled him bodily from the room and through a portal to the Proof of Existence.
“What’s eating you?” Xigbar asked. Of course, he had no way of knowing that Vexen knew.
Vexen decided explaining was as good a start as any. “You-you meddlesome, nosy, officious-you set Demyx after me, didn’t you?” Possibly that wasn’t much of an explanation, but Xigbar was smart enough to fill in the blanks.
“What do you mean by that?” said Xigbar, but Vexen could tell he was bluffing.
“I wondered who gave him the idea my lab was a good place to start hanging out! And where he got the idea I don’t sleep enough, and all the rest! You told him, didn’t you? I was ignoring you and your desperate need to-to mother me, so you set him on me instead!”
“That’s not what happened, dude-“
“Shut up! Now I know why you stopped coming by and pestering me. You didn’t have to if you knew your little cat’s-paw was there instead!”
“Okay, so maybe I knew he was hangin’ out with you, but I’m not the only one, y’know! Ask Lexaeus if you don’t believe me.”
At this point Vexen’s rage had built up too much steam to be easily derailed. “What did you bribe him with? Took on some missions for him maybe? Or did he just do it as a favor to someone he respects?” There was actually, he noticed with the part of his mind that was watching, a ghost of hurt there: it had taken him so long to believe that someone genuinely enjoyed spending time with him, and realizing that he had been right to think it couldn’t be true reminded him of how Even had felt, more than once. “Did you laugh?” the part of him that remembered being hurt asked. “Did you have fun fooling me into thinking-into-“
“Vexen, no! It wasn’t like that!” For once, Xigbar was completely serious. Vexen waited. A serious Xigbar was rare and always sincere. “I get what you’re thinking, but you got it all wrong.
“Yeah, I suggested to Demyx that maybe you weren’t so bad really and could use a distraction or two, but I swear, I never bribed him to do anything. I can’t speak for him, but he’s not the type to go looking for time with someone he doesn’t like. I thought maybe you’d hit it off if you gave it a chance, so I dropped a hint or two, that’s it.”
“But-why?”
The look Xigbar gave him suggested that he should already know the answer. “’Cause you were losing it, dude. You were shutting yourself up in the lab, and we couldn’t get through to you whatever we did-you know all our tricks. I thought maybe someone new could pull you out of it. And I was right.”
“Were not,” Vexen said automatically.
Xigbar had been spending far too much time with Zexion, Vexen decided. The skeptical look was one of the latter’s finest. “You came to dinner. I haven’t seen you at a meal since-a month? Month and a half? And you smiled! I saw you! Do you really think Demyx’s bothering you?”
Vexen looked at his feet. He had never learned to like admitting someone else was right. “Not as such, no. He’s been quite helpful, actually…”
“So there you are! ‘Sides, he likes you. He’s been…happier, I guess, so to speak. Kid likes taking care of people or something.”
“And you decided to set this up out of sheer goodwill.”
“Hey, why not? It’s what Braig would’a done.”
Vexen sighed, remembering. “I suppose I can’t deny that.”
“We’d better go back before all the food’s gone,” Xigbar said, as though Vexen had not just been yelling at him. “You better come too, or I’ll tell Demyx aaaaaaall about you and the cod liver oil.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” said Vexen, falling easily into the pattern of half-friendly, half-competitive conversation with Xigbar.
“Wanna bet?”
Vexen ignored the curious looks as he sank back into his chair. Demyx leaned a trifle closer, hand hovering over Vexen’s arm as though he couldn’t decide whether or not to reach out comfortingly, and whispered, “You okay?”
Vexen surprised even himself by turning his arm so he could briefly squeeze Demyx’s hand in his. “I’m fine,” he whispered back.
It might, he thought, even be true.
Genre: ...Romance? Maybe? Ish?
Rating: PG.
Characters: Vexen, Demyx, slight Xigbar, even more slight Lexaeus.
Pairing: Vexen/Demyx in an implied sort of preslashy way.
Warnings: Contains Xigbar. Preslash.
Notes: I actually looked stuff up for this. And as for the Cauldron-Born, if you don't know, I shan't tell you. Go read a book.
Summary: In which Demyx pulls a Xigbar, only in a slightly less annoying fashion.
The experiment was so far proceeding as expected. Of course, at this early stage there were still myriad things that could possibly go wrong, but Vexen nevertheless considered the hypothesis promising. The reactions were behaving exactly as he had predicted. He smiled thinly, pleased. He might have found the correct combination of chemicals at last.
His progress had come only after extensive, frustrating trial and error, the result of which was row upon row of used glassware. Vexen turned to look at the test tubes and crucibles in need of cleaning and sighed. This was without a doubt the most tiresome part of being a scientist, but it had to be done, and the Dusks, he had discovered after far too much broken glass, did not have the manual dexterity necessary. He would have to do it himself if he wanted it done right.
At that very moment, someone knocked on the door.
“What?” Vexen snapped, predisposed to annoyance by the chore in front of him.
Demyx peered around the door. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“Well, you did.” At the sight of Demyx pouting and starting to sidle off, Vexen rolled his eyes and added, “But now that you have, you might as well actually say whatever it is you came here to say.”
“Oh. Okay.” He stopped clinging to the door like a particularly large limpet in a black coat and came all the way into the lab. “I just wondered if you needed help with anything.”
“You what?”
“I-“
“Don’t repeat yourself; I heard you the first time. What do you want actually?”
Demyx feigned hurt innocence like a real person, Vexen noted. “I told you, I was bored and wondered if I could do anything to help out.”
“Of course. And since you were bored, you decided to come here, because you neophytes don’t find everything that goes on the lab boring at all.”
“Don’t lump us all together like that!” Vexen had been only peripherally aware that Demyx could be serious at all, still less so suddenly forceful. “We’re individuals, just like you, and maybe Axel says the lab is boring but I don’t!” As quickly as it had come, the serious mood was gone. “Besides…Axel doesn’t come down here.”
“Axel.” Vexen felt the word conveyed his opinion (i.e. that turning Axel into a Nobody might manage to surpass turning themselves into Nobodies for the most foolish decision they had ever made) without need for further elaboration.
“Yeah. I was trying to practice, but he kept showing up and trying to hit me with fireballs. It was annoying. So I came down here. Can I stay, just for a little bit? Please? I’ll be quiet!”
Vexen looked at Demyx, then at the pile of dirty glassware. “Fine,” he said. “You can clean the test tubes. Brushes and disposable gloves are under the sink, turn them upside down to dry, and whatever you do, don’t stick your nose in one of the dirty ones.”
Demyx was not, strictly speaking, quiet: he hummed the entire time, just loud enough that Vexen was sure where the sound came from. Still, he had to admit that it was a small price to pay for not doing the washing. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sound, in any case.
* * *
It had been a long day. If measured in time since he had last slept, it had actually been a long week. Between Xigbar hovering around any time Vexen left the lab, Xemnas demanding extensive status reports, and Axel in general, he was in no mood to deal with other Nobodies more than absolutely necessary. He retreated to the safe confines of his lab, where things made sense and, above all, there were no other people to demand his attention and ask him about his progress. He had left the next stage of his experiment to sit and cool on his last foray out of the lab. If all went as expected, the resulting potion should combine elements of light affinity, the only known antidote to an attack by the Heartless, with the grey elements that interacted best with nothingness.
It didn’t. The light-aligned component had burned out all the rest as the temperature reduced. The result was worthless.
Ordinarily, Vexen would have returned to the previous step and watched closely to fully analyze what had gone wrong. He would then have returned stubbornly to work, ironing out the impossibilities one at a time.
Instead, he snapped. Snatching the worthless potion up, he threw it at the wall, a part of him enjoying the shattered glass and white stain on grey metal. Then he proceeded to send everything within reach after it, every vial and retort and stirring rod. He took a vicious satisfaction in seeing them shatter the way all his dreams and hopes in the past five years had shattered. He could see no reason not to let his power go as he had not in far too long, frosting over everything, ice shards crashing into cupboards and walls and ceiling, almost indistinguishable from the glass. He wanted to destroy, to wipe everything away, all the evidence of failure and inadequacy, and start fresh.
In the crash of ice on metal, he didn’t hear the door open. The first he noticed of someone else nearby was a cautious touch against his shoulder. His power still flaring, Vexen spun and struck out at the intruder. He didn’t want to be bothered by Xigbar and his misplaced facsimile of concern, not now.
Rather than shoving Xigbar back, however, his hand sank smoothly into a figure made all of water that stood behind him. As soon as he touched it, ice began to spread out from his hand until he was stuck elbow-deep in an ice statue of Demyx. He glared at it; the ice splintered, needles flying everywhere. One sliced along his cheek, and abruptly he was himself again, not an inhuman force of destruction, just Vexen, with one hand pressed to his cheek where blood was beginning to flow.
Demyx must have been watching through a crack in the door, considering how promptly he opened it again once Vexen restrained his power and fury once more. His sitar dissolved into bubbles as he entered. “Wow, you really did a number on this place,” he said, only a little subdued.
Vexen looked around, really seeing for the first time the results of his loss of temper. He would have to clean all this up before he could begin to figure out what had caused the failure of his experiment. He didn’t even know where to begin. All of a sudden, he was very tired.
Demyx looked at him, then said, “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. You look like the living dead. I mean, I guess you are, kind of, but you look like the maggots-eating-your-brain kind of living dead, which is just plain gross. Go get some sleep, okay? I’ll handle this.”
“But-” The part of Vexen not exhausted or still screaming in the back of his head was fairly sure that leaving Demyx alone in the lab was a Bad Idea.
“Sleep.” Demyx looked at him seriously, then grinned. “Unless you want me to sing you a lullaby and tuck you in first.”
Vexen surrendered the field. He fell into sleep like a stone into the ocean as soon as his head hit the pillow.
* * *
Vexen awoke slowly. For a fraction of a second, as he did every time he woke up, he forgot that he was no longer Even. He was in Radiant Garden, the sun was rising outside, and all was right with the world. The fraction of a second after that, when he remembered, as he had every time since the first five years before, was the single thing he hated most about being a Nobody. Every time he woke up, he lost everything all over again.
Unsurprisingly, he slept as little as he could get away with.
Eventually, he reassembled his memory up to the previous night, and it occurred to Vexen that he should probably go see what state his lab was in. This did nothing for his mood.
He could not himself have said what he expected to find; a floor aswim in melted ice and treacherous with glass, in all likelihood. He was certain, however, of what he had not expected to find: the lab as neat and tidy as if he had not had a violent breakdown in the middle of it, except for a few dents in the metal cupboards, and Demyx, barefoot, coat discarded on the floor, cooking what looked like stew over one of the burners.
Demyx turned around when Vexen came in and smiled brightly. “Good morning! Or, um, afternoon, or maybe evening. I kind of can’t tell. Luxord’s the only one who can, and I haven’t seen him recently, but I think he’s making it up half the time. Anyway, there’s food.”
Vexen looked at the stew and felt slightly sick. He hated eating right after waking up. “I’m not hungry.”
“More for me, then!”
Vexen found himself coffee, feeling as if he were dreaming. Nobodies did not truly dream: the closest they came was a spontaneous reminiscence that differed not at all from their waking memories. Still, Vexen remembered dreams in which Even had accepted the strangest combinations of circumstances without batting an eye. He felt like that now. Demyx was looking pleased to see him, for one thing; for another, he was sitting and drinking coffee in his miraculously clean lab while Demyx ate stew and chattered. These things simply did not happen.
“Did you clean my lab?” he asked abruptly, interrupting whatever Demyx was saying (not that Vexen was listening).
He didn’t seem to mind; on the other hand, Demyx hardly ever seemed to mind anything. “I said I’d handle it, didn’t I? It wasn’t too bad, actually, mostly ice. I just let it melt and poured it down the drain. It didn’t take that long. Lexaeus came looking for you, but when I said you were sleeping he smiled and went away. And then I practiced playing for a bit. Is it always this quiet down here?”
“Yes.” Vexen added waspishly, “I consider the quiet one of its better qualities.”
Demyx was neither stupid enough not to get the hint nor obnoxious enough to pretend he didn’t. Instead, he pouted, an expression that should have looked far more ridiculous than it did on someone his age. “I’ll go practice somewhere else, then.”
“You do that.”
Vexen admitted to himself later that he had been perhaps slightly less polite than was appropriate to someone who had saved him a dreary job. In his own defense, Demyx should have known better than to invite Vexen’s conversation when Vexen was on his first cup of coffee. He had never been polite before at least the second cup before and saw no reason to start.
* * *
“Vexen! Vexen! Look what I found!”
Vexen looked up reluctantly. Only a brief acquaintanceship had taught him that Demyx, having once begun vying for his attention, would not be ignored. The important thing was to hold out until his voice became unbearably annoying, or he brought coffee, more often the latter. “Look what I found,” however, suggested something which required more than usual notice. It might be explosive.
“I thought you were on a mission,” he said by way of greeting.
“I was, but now I’m done. Are you going to look or not?”
“All right, all right, what is so very-hmm.” What Demyx was holding carefully in both hands was a cylinder of what looked like some kind of crystal set into a hemisphere of metal. It was slightly blue and glowing faintly. Vexen had never seen anything quite like it before. “Where did you get that?”
“I picked it up on my mission. I thought it looked interesting.”
“Yes, but what exactly does it do?”
“I…actually, I’m not sure. I wasn’t there very long. But they were all over the place outside, so they can’t be dangerous, right? And it’s shiny!”
Vexen did not consider that observation deserving of a response. Instead, he lifted the device from Demyx’s hands and brought it to a clear space on the countertop. The cylinder was made of glass, not crystal, but inside, clearly visible from the top, were set four small crystal spires. They were the source of the faint glow. Small silver wires wrapped around the base of each spire in a complicated pattern.
He still could not deduce its function. At home-in Radiant Garden, he corrected himself before the word had fully formed in his mind, he would have called it some kind of electrical system, but several aggravating experiences had taught him that other worlds had other sources of power. It could make combining scientific procedures an even more wearisome process.
The first step was removing the exterior, unnecessary portions. There was a visible join between the metal and the crystal. In all likelihood the metal had been fitted over the rest to keep all the wiring in place. Vexen opened the drawer where he kept a selection of small tools for such purposes and pulled out a series of screwdrivers, collected from half a dozen worlds. With luck, one of them would fit the small screws he could see at the join.
“What kind of power did the people in that world use?” he asked as he examined the star-shaped indents and compared them to similar screwdrivers. “Electric, pure magical, anbaric, doxial?”
“Um, I dunno. How do you tell the difference?”
Vexen sighed loudly. This was why he hated working with unscientific minds. “Every world beyond a certain level of technological development has some variety of power they use to run their machines. Electric power involves the generation of electricity, obviously, which is almost invariably on a citywide basis. Pure magical power, on the other hand, is usually on an individual level, whereas anbaric-oh, never mind; it’ll be quicker to test it myself.”
He expected Demyx to leave after that, but the younger Nobody hovered around the lab as Vexen worked the metal base neatly off. Beneath was the rest of the wires, which resolved themselves at the end from a maze into two neat bundles. Probably electric or anbaric, then. There was only one way to be sure.
“Demyx, second cupboard on the right, get down the machine, and take care not to drop it,” Vexen instructed. If Demyx wanted to linger in the lab, which was not in itself a strange desire, in Vexen’s opinion, except in that the neophytes all disagreed, then he could at least make himself useful.
“What does this one do?”
“You’ll see.” He hooked the wires from the mysterious device to his small generator, then turned it on to the lowest setting. The current increased in very small increments, so the lowest setting never was sufficient to run anything, but an important part of the scientific method was being systematic.
To Vexen’s surprise, the effect was immediate. The crystal spires, which had been glowing dimly, shone as bright as any of the lab’s lights, throwing everything into stark relief. “Hmm,” Vexen said again. “That’s interesting.”
“Is it supposed to do that?”
“Apparently so. This is definitely a variety of electric light, but I’ve never encountered one so efficient before. Fascinating.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, obviously, that the reaction produces a great deal of light with very little power. Not relevant to our long-term goals, of course, but interesting, all the same. I wonder how it’s done…”
It took Vexen three days to determine the precise configuration of silver wires necessary to produce the effect. For those three days, he saw very little of Demyx, but there always seemed to be coffee in the pot when he wanted it. Six days later, he had successfully reproduced the lamp, working around his more important but less gratifying projects. It was the most satisfied he had been with his work in some time.
* * *
Demyx had been on a mission for much of the day, which for Vexen meant that he had to make his own coffee. He was not pleased. It had been easy to settle into a routine based around Demyx’s presence, and the breaking of that routine threw him ever so slightly off balance. The lab seemed more silent than usual. Of course, it was, but that was no excuse for the impression Vexen kept getting that his voice would echo in the emptiness. He stalked about discontentedly, glowering at his latest cultures (they were behaving perfectly as planned, but he was in no mood to be pleased, and therefore wasn’t).
“Ve-Vexen?”
He spun around, prepared to vent his spleen on Demyx for daring to vanish just when Vexen was getting used to him, but what he saw gave him pause. Demyx had opened a dark corridor directly into the room for once, and it was still open, like a livid bruise on the white and silver of the lab. He was still holding his sitar, leaning on it in fact, his free arm pressed against his stomach. Perhaps it was just the contrast against the black and grey and white all around him, but Demyx’s blue-green eyes looked even larger than usual.
Vexen moved just quickly enough to support him as he banished his sitar and stumbled without it. He wasn’t putting any weight at all on his right leg, Vexen noted, and from close to his coat was scored with slashes that must correspond with wounds on the flesh beneath. “What happened?”
Demyx drew in several shuddering breaths before he managed to say, “Monsters…that won’t die. Or stop. They’re following…”
With a small effort, Vexen closed the open portal. “They can’t follow you back here.” He managed to get Demyx up onto an empty table without putting too much pressure on his wounds. The lab was the closest thing they had to an infirmary; none of them was trained as a doctor, but they did the best they could on those rare occasions when a potion wouldn’t suffice. Vexen unzipped Demyx’s coat. The shirt and pants beneath were just as torn, and tacky with blood besides where the fabric stuck to still-open wounds.
He snapped his fingers, summoning a Dusk. “Fetch Lexaeus,” he commanded. “If he is not in the castle, Zexion.”
Loath to proceed further than necessary on his own, Vexen turned his attention to Demyx’s injured leg. From the look of it, it was broken. “Tell me you didn’t try to walk on this leg,” he said.
“Just…a little bit?” said Demyx hazily. “I had to. It didn’t hurt then.”
“Endorphins, I suppose.” Vexen measured out a dose of anesthetic. “Drink this.” Demyx took the glass, but by that time he was shaking all over and couldn’t hold it steady. “Here. That’s right. Just swallow.” He took advantage of the moment to feel Demyx’s pulse, which was fast but not quite as strong as it should be. His face was pale, as well, and clammy to the touch.
Closing the wounds had to come first, before he lost took much blood. Vexen cut Demyx’s shirt neatly away rather than wrestle with undressing him and injure him further in the process. What was revealed made him remember nausea (something he would have happily gone without): five large wounds, dozens of smaller scratches, and so many bruises it was hard to find unmarred skin anywhere. Whatever had befallen Demyx, it had come close to ending the Nobody’s half-existence on the spot.
In a swirl of darkness, Lexaeus appeared. “What happened?” he asked, taking the situation in at a glance.
“That’s hardly relevant,” Vexen said, more harshly than he meant. Lexaeus did not take offense; he seldom did.
“Mission…went wrong,” Demyx offered in a distant voice that indicated the medicine was taking effect.
“Hush,” said Vexen absently. “Go to sleep, Demyx.”
“’Kay,” Demyx agreed, eyes closing even as he did so.
“We have to close the wounds first,” said Lexaeus. “Needles, thread, disinfectant, sutures if we have any.”
Vexen did not think, as he pulled the supplies out of a neatly organized cupboard, that Demyx had done the organizing. He did not think, as he bandaged and sterilized and stitched and checked for cracked ribs and splinted a broken leg, that Demyx was breathing too softly. He did not think about anything except the task at hand. Everything else was unimportant.
“Sleep should do the rest,” Lexaeus said after what might have been hours or mere minutes. “Once he wakes up, get him to hydrate himself if he can, and eat or drink something full of sugar. Potions will help the healing process along, but they won’t make new blood to replace what he’s lost.”
“Yes, thank you, I know that. And what makes you think I’m going to be around when he wakes up?”
“Someone has to make sure he doesn’t pull his stitches or try to stand on that leg.”
“Granted, why should ‘someone’ be me?”
Lexaeus looked at Vexen enigmatically. “You would be there anyway, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s not the point.” Vexen wasn’t entirely sure what the point was, only that Lexaeus seemed to have one he himself didn’t understand. In these circumstances, he had long since learned, it was best to concede. “Oh, never mind. I’ll watch him.”
“I’ll tell Xemnas why he won’t be hearing from Nine for a while.” With a brief gesture of farewell, Lexaeus vanished, leaving Vexen alone in the laboratory with an unconscious Demyx.
“At least you’re quiet this way,” he said to Demyx who, lying on the table, looked younger than his years. “On the whole, I’m not sure I don’t prefer the humming.”
It occurred to Vexen eventually that it would be easier to clean up if he moved Demyx to his own bed. This took less time than it might have done, once he placed the portal precisely right, but afterward there seemed no reason for him to stay in the lab at all.
Demyx’s room was more fully furnished than Vexen’s own, including one particularly comfortable armchair. If he pulled it up close to the bed, he would be awoken if Demyx stirred. Vexen dozed off slowly, part of his mind still listening for any change, whether for the better or the worse.
* * *
“Wha--?”
Vexen shook himself awake. Demyx was blinking up at him, still tired-looking but much closer to normal in color. All seemed well.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“I hurt. Kind of a lot. And my head’s spinning.”
“You can hydrate yourself; that should help steady your head. And as for the pain…stay right there.” Vexen left his corridor of darkness open just long enough to grab an Elixir from the curative cupboard and then returned. “That should help.”
“Thanks! Oh, wow, it really does help!”
“Don’t think you can get up yet, mind you. You lost entirely too much blood to be up and about. What did you do, walk through a battle without looking where you were going?”
“Not exactly. It was those things-I heard somebody call them Cauldron-Born. The Superior sent me to find out about them, ‘cause they’re like soldiers made from dead people, and I guess that’s kind of like a Nobody. Except it turns out they’re completely different, and one of the different things is they can’t be killed at all.”
“I see. I wonder how…Possibly an effect of the way they’re made?”
“I didn’t ask. I was kinda busy trying to get away before they killed me.”
“Try harder next time,” Vexen said. “I don’t want to have to deal with you like this again.”
Demyx smiled brightly for no reason Vexen could see. “I promise!”
“See that you do. Saïx or Xemnas will want to hear your report once I tell them you’re awake.” At this, Demyx started struggling to sit up. Vexen pushed him down by the shoulders easily, proving to himself that Demyx was in no state to be on his feet. “Absolutely not! Weren’t you listening when I said you were not to get up? If the Superior wants to hear your report, he’ll have to come to you.”
“He won’t do that just for me,” said Demyx.
Vexen had to admit the truth of this statement. “Be that as it may, your leg is broken. Not even Saïx would think it reasonable for you to stand on a broken leg just to give a report that isn’t even time-sensitive.” When Demyx continued to look stubbornly likely to try getting out of bed as soon as Vexen turned his back, he added, “If it’s that important to you, I think I have a recorder somewhere. You can give your report into that. I’ll see he gets it.”
“Would you really?” He was practically beaming.
“That’s what I said, wasn’t it? Try not to fall asleep again before I get back.” He might as well go get food in any case; Demyx would need the energy to heal. It wasn’t much more trouble to fetch the recorder, and it would save the trouble of physically restraining Demyx when he tried to get up otherwise. Vexen shook his head internally. He could not understand Demyx’s loyalty to Xemnas even at cost to himself. (Part of him, part he ignored whenever possible, noted that he understood better than he was willing to admit, or Vexen would never have come into being in the first place.)
* * *
“Did you leave the lab at all while I was away?” Demyx demanded.
Vexen looked up with something like a smile. This stage of testing his latest hypothesis required a great deal of sitting and doing nothing, so he was more than usually pleased to see Demyx, who could hardly help being more interesting than watching crucibles boil.
“You didn’t, did you? I bet you didn’t even sleep! Honestly, I go away for three days on recon, and we’re back to this. When did you last eat?”
“Just now,” Vexen said. Evidently Demyx was in one of his more maternal moods (not that Vexen would call them that out loud).
“Coffee doesn’t count. When was the last time you ate something with no caffeine in it at all?”
“…” When Vexen thought about it, he couldn’t recall exactly how much time had passed, although he was fairly sure it had been the last time Demyx had cajoled him into a meal.
“That’s what I thought. No wonder you’re so skinny. Come on; we’re going to get dinner.”
“We are?” Vexen asked sardonically.
“Yes, we are. It’s dinner time anyway, and I’m hungry. It’ll be good for you!”
“I have to monitor this reaction!” he protested.
Demyx barely glanced at it. “You put that on heat five minutes ago, tops. It’s barely warm. It can stand to cool back down and sit for an hour or so. Besides, you can’t tell me you really want to sit here watching water boil! I’ll boil it for you in half the time if you come with me now.”
For some reason he chose not to examine too closely, Vexen agreed. Surely the plaintive look on Demyx’s face had nothing to do with it.
* * *
He would never admit it to Demyx, but the actual meal made the headache Vexen had felt pounding between his temples subside somewhat. The company was not as bad as he had half-expected: Axel had come in, bolted his food, and left; Saïx, who had a stifling effect on conversation at the best of times, was away on a mission; and Luxord was not as unbearable as Vexen had at first found him. He was almost enjoying hearing about what his-not friends, not anymore-colleagues had been doing.
Then Xigbar arrived.
Xigbar was, in general, a known quantity. He could be incredibly aggravating, but by this point Vexen knew exactly where he drew his lines. As much as Vexen occasionally wanted to strangle him, he knew Xigbar would never actually act with intent to harm him. On this occasion, Xigbar strolled around the side of the doorframe, vaulted into his seat from the wall, and began helping himself from dishes all along the table. He stole a forkful of Xaldin’s potatoes; Xaldin reached through the small portal the other way and stole it back.
Then Xigbar noticed Vexen’s presence at the table. He grinned (Even had learned, over the years, to react to Braig’s grin with deep foreboding, and Vexen continued in this tradition) and said, “Look who finally crawled out of his cave! I gotta say, Demyx, I’m impressed. You know how long I’ve been trying to get him to do that?”
“Perhaps if you had not already taught us all that the best way to treat your suggestions is with complete avoidance, you would have more success,” Zexion said, but Vexen was no longer listening. Something in the tone of Xigbar’s voice, the expression on his face, had recalled a dim memory of days long ago, and suddenly Vexen knew why Demyx had become such a large part of his daily routine.
He had no proof, not even evidence, yet. He simply knew, the way sometimes (more and more rarely now) a dozen coincidental properties flew together in his head to form a perfect formula. Now his own character, Xigbar’s, Demyx’s, Lexaeus’s and Zexion’s and Xaldin’s, even Axel’s, were all part of the formula. He put them together just the right way, and he knew.
Remembering what it was like to be furious with Xigbar’s interference was as easy as connecting a simple circuit. Vexen stood, careless of the others’ surprise, grabbed Xigbar by the hood, and pulled him bodily from the room and through a portal to the Proof of Existence.
“What’s eating you?” Xigbar asked. Of course, he had no way of knowing that Vexen knew.
Vexen decided explaining was as good a start as any. “You-you meddlesome, nosy, officious-you set Demyx after me, didn’t you?” Possibly that wasn’t much of an explanation, but Xigbar was smart enough to fill in the blanks.
“What do you mean by that?” said Xigbar, but Vexen could tell he was bluffing.
“I wondered who gave him the idea my lab was a good place to start hanging out! And where he got the idea I don’t sleep enough, and all the rest! You told him, didn’t you? I was ignoring you and your desperate need to-to mother me, so you set him on me instead!”
“That’s not what happened, dude-“
“Shut up! Now I know why you stopped coming by and pestering me. You didn’t have to if you knew your little cat’s-paw was there instead!”
“Okay, so maybe I knew he was hangin’ out with you, but I’m not the only one, y’know! Ask Lexaeus if you don’t believe me.”
At this point Vexen’s rage had built up too much steam to be easily derailed. “What did you bribe him with? Took on some missions for him maybe? Or did he just do it as a favor to someone he respects?” There was actually, he noticed with the part of his mind that was watching, a ghost of hurt there: it had taken him so long to believe that someone genuinely enjoyed spending time with him, and realizing that he had been right to think it couldn’t be true reminded him of how Even had felt, more than once. “Did you laugh?” the part of him that remembered being hurt asked. “Did you have fun fooling me into thinking-into-“
“Vexen, no! It wasn’t like that!” For once, Xigbar was completely serious. Vexen waited. A serious Xigbar was rare and always sincere. “I get what you’re thinking, but you got it all wrong.
“Yeah, I suggested to Demyx that maybe you weren’t so bad really and could use a distraction or two, but I swear, I never bribed him to do anything. I can’t speak for him, but he’s not the type to go looking for time with someone he doesn’t like. I thought maybe you’d hit it off if you gave it a chance, so I dropped a hint or two, that’s it.”
“But-why?”
The look Xigbar gave him suggested that he should already know the answer. “’Cause you were losing it, dude. You were shutting yourself up in the lab, and we couldn’t get through to you whatever we did-you know all our tricks. I thought maybe someone new could pull you out of it. And I was right.”
“Were not,” Vexen said automatically.
Xigbar had been spending far too much time with Zexion, Vexen decided. The skeptical look was one of the latter’s finest. “You came to dinner. I haven’t seen you at a meal since-a month? Month and a half? And you smiled! I saw you! Do you really think Demyx’s bothering you?”
Vexen looked at his feet. He had never learned to like admitting someone else was right. “Not as such, no. He’s been quite helpful, actually…”
“So there you are! ‘Sides, he likes you. He’s been…happier, I guess, so to speak. Kid likes taking care of people or something.”
“And you decided to set this up out of sheer goodwill.”
“Hey, why not? It’s what Braig would’a done.”
Vexen sighed, remembering. “I suppose I can’t deny that.”
“We’d better go back before all the food’s gone,” Xigbar said, as though Vexen had not just been yelling at him. “You better come too, or I’ll tell Demyx aaaaaaall about you and the cod liver oil.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” said Vexen, falling easily into the pattern of half-friendly, half-competitive conversation with Xigbar.
“Wanna bet?”
Vexen ignored the curious looks as he sank back into his chair. Demyx leaned a trifle closer, hand hovering over Vexen’s arm as though he couldn’t decide whether or not to reach out comfortingly, and whispered, “You okay?”
Vexen surprised even himself by turning his arm so he could briefly squeeze Demyx’s hand in his. “I’m fine,” he whispered back.
It might, he thought, even be true.