Our Last True Prayers [the apprentices]
Title: Our Last True Prayers
Pairing: Characters: Aeleus, Ienzo, Even, Braig, Dilan [erk. Dilan/Braig. Can't help it.]
Type: Food for Thought
Rating: PG
The door to Aeleus's room opened and shut quietly, and the boy who entered was barely more than a shadow.
"Aeleus... I'm scared."
The muscular man nodded; there really was no other way to put it. "Me, too." He sighed, then patted the space next to him on the window seat.
Ienzo sat, his initial nervousness at being here dissipating against Aeleus's calm comfort. "It's like I don't know who to trust any more. Braig and Even, they'll go along with anything just for the hell of it... and Dilan would follow Braig to the ends of the earth." He fidgeted, tugging on the ends of his sleeves. "What worries me... is that that's where we're going to end up. And I'm not sure if I'm okay with that."
Aeleus nodded slowly. "I can't say for sure what the 'right' course of action is... there are too many what ifs, and too many personal opinions, tangled up in all this..."
"...mess," Ienzo finished for him. "But..." he looked out the window, into the night sky. "You're the one I don't understand. Everyone else... most of us, at least... we have nothing to leave behind." He paused, then completed the thought. "You do."
Aeleus sighed. "My family... I - " but he stopped mid-sentence, as a faint sound revealed itself to be Even, peering around the edge of the door.
"Oh. I'll go..."
"No, please." Aeleus waved him inside. "I think you'll benefit from this discussion."
Even took the seat at Aeleus's desk, and eyed Ienzo nervously. Not that they didn't get along - not like him and Braig, anyway - but he'd always found the young man's insight and observation to be a little... unnerving. "I can hear things from Xehanort's room again, Aeleus."
The big man nodded. "I surmised as much." He leaned his head back against the wall, and addressed Ienzo again. "You ask me about my family. The answer to your question... is that I do not know." He caught Even's eye and grinned. "Even seems to think that having an emotional connection to my home will be somehow siginificant in the coming days."
That phrase made them all quiet again. Days. It was only a matter of days until they ventured forward... into the unknown.
The door opened again, and two more people came in. "We heard voices," Dilan murmured, Braig nodding right behind him.
Aeleus smiled and nodded. "You know you are all welcome." They took a seat on the bed, and he spread his hands, taking in everyone with the gesture. "We're all scared," he began.
"Terrified, actually," Ienzo said in a small voice, which made Braig smile.
"Are we afraid of... losing something? Our humanity? Our lives?" Even looked around the room as he spoke.
"Our hearts?" Everyone turned to see, surprisingly, that the voice had come from Braig. He looked up rather sheepishly, and began to explain himself. "I guess, out of all of us, I'm the closest to Xehanort."
Aeleus nodded, they were known to be good friends.
"...It's like... it's not even about the door, or about studying emotions..." He met everyone's eyes with his own, bright amber in the moonlight. "It's like he wants... to be heartless."
They let the word settle in, and a quiet stillness enfolded the room.
"...Before I came here, before - " Braig looked to his left and caught Dilan's steady violet gaze. " - ...well, I didn't really care about much of anything. It was all just fun and games. I mean, sometimes it still is. Most of the time." They all grinned; Braig's reputation and history were both well-known.
"...But now?" He bit his lip. "I can't say that there's nothing I care about anymore. And I'm afraid - terrified, to use your words - that if we give in to the darkness, we'll..." he hesitated, then went on. "...forget how to love." He looked over at Dilan, then quietly laced their fingers together.
The quiet washed over them again, as each person thought about what those words meant to them.
Then Dilan spoke up, and everyone listened.
"...I believe we're looking at this the wrong way."
Ienzo sat up a little straighter, frowning slightly.
"We really have no idea, whatsoever, what is going to happen when we step through that door." Everyone nodded; that fact was blindingly obvious. "Our previous experiments - Xehanort's, I should say - with small Heartless and Nobodies is... distressing, but nonetheless scientifically inconclusive." The familiar clinical words calmed them, put reason back into their heads. "The only thing we have is our memories, our opinions... and our will."
Braig looked up at his lover's face, questioning silently.
"We're not going to lose the capacity for emotion just because we step through a door, or give in the powers of darkness, or even die." His face was full of a quiet seriousness. "The capacity will still be there. What matters is our will to conduct ourselves in a manner that expresses our will to remain emotional, as well as the will to remain rational."
"Uh, English please?" Braig winced. He'd been understanding fine until the 'conduct ourselves' part, at which point his brain detached.
Everyone grinned. They'd understood; it was so typical of Braig to just zone out like that.
"Essentially? We love because we want to. Nothing will ever change that."
And that... was that. They moved on then, and talked of other things - no one seemed inclined to leave. Sleeping alone, and afraid, was a bit too much to ask for, this clsoe to the end.
Eventually they began to fall asleep, right where they were - Even slumped over the desk, Dilan and Braig curled in a ball on Aeleus's bed, and Ienzo and Aeleus sitting in the window seat.
Ienzo felt that dizzy feeling that he got when he was too tired to keep his eyes open. "Aeleus...?"
"Mmm?" Aeleus was almost asleep himself.
"...I'm too young to die."
There was a heavy silence between them, and Aeleus finally answered, "We'll just have to make sure we don't."