(no subject)
Cats in Boxes, Ch 2
By: kytha, rabbitprint
Length: ~7.3k
Summary: As he wanders further into the depths of what Vexen once was, Saix finds the fine line from where reality ends and insanity begins increasingly difficult to draw.
Chapter 1 - 2 - 3
* * * * *
If he can remember thought, then he can remember self. If he can remember taste and touch and smell, he can remember what it is to be alive --
* * * * *
Two months in, and Saix is as uncertain as when he started. Marluxia's rooms remain sour with machination, and Saix does not care to linger in them. He might have expected a man so fond of flowers to have rooms that smelled like a pollen cocktail, a battleground of flora, but instead Marluxia's quarters reek of a thousand blossoms left to rot. The air of those rooms is choked with ill-will and seething resentment, prickling at Saix intensely enough to cause discomfort. No amount of open windows helps dispel the miasma. Marluxia’s rooms died along with their schemer; like XI, they are impossible to ignore even after their lives have moved on.
Larxene's, by contrast, feel like the sky after a thunderstorm: vacant and desolate, dried husks scoured clean of life. They had never been cramped to begin with, as Larxene cared little for personal possessions. Now, robbed of the scant protection that XII's prickly presence had always provided, their emptiness seems to yawn even larger, lonely and wide. There is nothing there for Saix to find.
He wonders, briefly, if there ever would have been anything at all.
Lexaeus's rooms gave him a sense of quiet strength, of dignity and buried wisdom. Saix had absorbed the taste of that air before respectfully closing the doors, and moving on.
Zexion's chambers had been strange. Saix had expected the Schemer to guard his secrets as closely in private as he did everywhere else, but Zexion had kept a fairly straightforward house. Everything of any importance had been neatly sorted into boxes, labeled for convenience, and the berserker wondered if in some way, perhaps VI had anticipated his own demise. Whatever the truth of the matter is, Zexion's forethought made his rooms easy to deconstruct.
But Vexen's are an eternal confusion, refusing to be consumed by Saix's questing mind. Instead of scientific detachment, IV has a teapot. He used fine china to brew coffee instead of tea leaves, kept journals labeled with old names, and left a hard kernel of something unidentifiable embedded in one of the pillows.
The bulge digs mercilessly into the nape of Saix's neck for a week before the Diviner finally admits discomfort and fishes for it. His quest uncovers a white paper twist that crinkles when he pinches it open. As he does, a strange, spicy odor stings his nose; his mouth suddenly waters in curiosity, and he instinctively touches his tongue to the amber ball revealed inside.
One slightly panicked moment later -- the time it takes for him to get over the relief that he hasn't inadvertently licked some kind of fancy mothball -- Saix registers the sweetness blooming across his taste buds.
Of all things for him to find hidden in Vexen's pillows, ginger candy is not one he expected.
Assuming that Saix had thought there would be anything at all. Other Nobodies might have tucked books among their bedclothes, or weapons -- even Zexion had lodged a pen in the gap between the bed frame and the wall. Vexen's late-night snacking seems a habit better suited for Larxene, or possibly Marluxia. The scientist had never seemed big on treats.
If nothing else, at least the candy is no longer in a position to irritate his already-aching neck. Saix deposits the stale nub into the wastebasket, wrapper still bleeding half-melted sugar. As for the stickiness on his fingers, he finds himself at a loss. Finally, he decides to wipe them off on the sheets, leaving trails of tacky fluid on the linen before turning over and curling into himself.
He is not very surprised when his dreams are filled with scent. Human musk mixes with spice and honey. Ginger stings his tongue.
In the morning, Saix quells his sudden craving for sweets by putting three tablespoons of sugar into his coffee.
He occupies himself the rest of the day by continuing to browse through the scientist's journals. For all the density of text, they’re not overly difficult to read. Vexen writes plainly enough, with little embellishment -- perhaps out of a disdain for ciphers, or simply out of confidence that he would always be there to protect his words if need be. Encryption might simply be an unnecessary nuisance to a man of Vexen's sensibilities; the effort could be better spent on more productive things.
Whatever the reason, IV has made no effort to disguise his words in incomprehensible metaphor and verse. Even so, Saix supposes the scientist's handwriting is a code in itself, cramped and illegible by most standards: a true academic's scrawl.
Saix does not have any trouble reading it -- at least, not in the way it matters. It's tricky to guess if an 'a' is meant to be an 'e', but Vexen's script speaks clearly in every other aspect. The writing is slanted and jagged whenever the scientist was excited or rushed, elaborate when idle, and schooled into ranks upon ranks of ink and lead when recording the results of an experiment.
The Luna Diviner may not always understand Vexen's theories, but on occasion, he thinks he can catch a sense of what the other man was thinking. For now, that will have to suffice. In the end, he doesn't care about half the experiments that interested the scientist; what matters are impressions, and those remain in abundance.
To help sort through the tangle, Saix starts to read the journals aloud. Not for something as sentimental as comfort. He has never been afraid of being alone, not even when he still had a heart, and so he lacks any memory of loneliness to reference on the subject.
But he reads Vexen's journal entries in his own voice anyway, trying to learn the shape of the man's thoughts by reviving them through himself.
At first the language stumbles. Vexen picks words without a care for how they sound together. Scientific jargon clashes with careless shorthand. As Demyx would say, Saix thinks gloomily, Vexen’s words don’t flow. They crawl like glaciers, carving gouges out of the page rather than rolling smoothly along.
"'And the additive function of Dusks implies,'" Saix finds himself reciting aloud one day, making no effort to conceal his boredom or to keep it from twisting his words, "'that either I don't know what I'm doing or I have no taste in furniture. In the event of my death, I shall resolve to find better chairs.'"
No, he finds himself corrected instantly, a whispered memory of what could have been Vexen's affronted dignity. Implies that the mutability levels of each generation can be increased by a level proportionate to their base complexity. Get it right.
He argues with himself for the rest of the afternoon, simply to pass the hours. Each time he quips one of Vexen's lines wrong, he's quick to imagine the scientist's lofty pride leaping to defense.
The diversion keeps him occupied as he delves through a fresh stack of journals; these ones are labeled as eight years old from one of Vexen's previous labs, which apparently had to be shut down after an unfortunate incident with chemical beakers. Spatters of multicolored fluid have dried into the covers of the journal, seeping into the pages to leave a sticky gilt along the paper's edge. From one meticulously scribbled note, Saix gathers that the cause was 60% probable to be a mistimed levitation spell, 23% to be an explosive reaction between two composite substances, and 17% to be Xigbar.
Somehow, this doesn't surprise him. It's only after a moment that he realizes he hadn't known not to be surprised.
* * * * *
When the games moves on from the journals to the rest of Vexen's possessions, Saix can't say he's relieved. Or surprised. It was only a matter of time, he figured, before the soul of Vexen could finally be extracted from the potpourri of his life. Even Marluxia's rooms hadn't been this difficult to examine; then again, Marluxia's goals were ultimately very simple, once one knew to look for treachery.
He notices the change first while searching through one of Vexen's wardrobes. Each of them have their own supply of coats -- and spares, in the event of accident, bloodshed, or Keyblade Masters -- and Vexen had been no different. His choice of tailoring, however, had involved a narrower waist and wider bell of the jacket as it came off the hips. Not a particularly masculine look, in Saix's opinion. Xaldin, certainly, would never be caught dead in a jacket that flared.
Just as Saix is pulling on the sleeve of one coat and wondering how thin Vexen's arm must have been to fit inside, he hears another man clearing his throat.
Excuse me. Polite, yet firm. Those are my clothes.
"You're dead, you know," Saix tells the heaviness in the air beside him, invisible but real. "I can say anything I want about your lack of physique."
I know, Vexen says, and even for a ghost his voice is as alive and dry as the rest of him ever was. But I heard you calling me.
Saix's face goes flat in instant denial. "I was not."
Yes, you were.
Dropping the coat unceremoniously on the bottom of the wardrobe, Saix closes the door firmly, and turns away.
But the commentary doesn't end there. Later on, Saix hears Vexen complain during tea. As he reads -- don't leave the books open like that, get a bookmark at least. Dinner is brought down by a pair of Dusks, and as Saix eats, he does so to the tune of, don't drip any on the tablecloth, were you raised by animals? Please. If you're going to be in my rooms, at least pretend to be civilized. Did you file those books back in the right order? There is an order, you know. Or did you even bother to learn the proper form of the alphabet?
It gets to the point where Saix finally sets his teacup down hard. Ignoring the protest on the air, he repeats, "You're dead."
If I wasn't before, I would be now after seeing you mistreat my personal library.
"You're dead," Saix says again, and then, feeling more than a bit helpless, "Shouldn't that make you less vocal?"
His answer is a disdainful snort.
Saix doesn't know if being divested of his body has also separated Vexen from the ability to act like a mature adult instead of a contrary teenager, but he refuses to play any further. Calling the scientist -- like a pet, or a sheep that's been lost, or just someone looking for someone else, which is ridiculous. It's all irrational and the bored memories of Saix's mind inform him that he doesn't like it.
As much as he doesn't like anything, he reminds himself.
He refuses to acknowledge the ghost of Vexen any further, leaving the scientist's quarters early and seeking out the Superior. But when he asks -- tactfully -- for Xemnas to come down and look at Vexen's old things, the Superior stares, and then agrees.
Xemnas stands there for several moments in Vexen's room, holding himself very still, like an animal in black leather and closed fists. But when he turns back around, his face is as carefully bemused as ever. "And?"
"And?" Saix mimics back the word rather blankly. Part of him had hoped that Xemnas would solve this dilemma by instantly recognizing the extraneous presence in the room; part of him had never planned further than now. "Don't you think there's something strange here?"
"Everything about Even was strange." There's a different tone to Xemnas's voice, one that Saix has never heard before; it's touched by some memory that the Berserker has no comparison for. The sound fades quickly, before it can be defined, and then Xemnas is professional once more. "Vexen, rather. Finish sorting through this, please. There is other business to attend to."
"What -- " Saix starts to ask, but the Superior is already out the door, slipping away into a portal hastily opened in the hall.
He can't see Vexen's ghost, but he can sense something like satisfaction tainting the neutrality of the room's atmosphere. "Why couldn't the Superior sense you?" Saix asks. He's not sure what makes him speak aloud, and the sound of his own voice being absorbed into the walls and ceiling nearly makes him jump.
There is nothing but silence for a few minutes, long enough that Saix begins to think that he has been imagining the strange presence in these rooms -- but then the response comes, slow and thoughtful, and he finds himself once again having to re-evaluate his sanity.
I don't know, Vexen admits. Perhaps Xemnas is unable to sense these things. Xehanort always preferred focusing on his own research subjects; this may lie too deeply outside his current realms of study for him to register.
That sounds a little more like the scientist that Saix knows, and so without thinking, he dares to speak again.
"And I?" Saix asks. "Why can I sense you?"
Not a clue, the coolness collapses in a flash, and the shrug is nearly audible. Maybe you're just insane.
They both mull over the concept in silence.
I thought, the spirit whispers again, for one moment, Xemnas really did see me. But then he turned away.
* * * * *
When Saix works up the opportunity to ask the Superior again, obliquely, about Vexen's rooms, Xemnas doesn't acknowledge the words.
He never comes down to visit them again.
* * * * *
Do you remember, Vexen's ghost asks one day, as Saix is sorting through the contents of an archival box, the last thing you ever said to me? When I was alive.
"No," Saix replies. And that is that.
It's a lie, though.
He remembers it perfectly.
When Saix finally found himself at Vexen's doors, it was to discover that the scientist had firmly wedged himself in the doorway, for all the world as immovable and belligerent as a badger interrupted in his mid-autumn meanderings. The pose was a casual gesture, meant to disarm -- the tilt of his head and the set of his jaw calculated to best display his indifference to Saix's untimely arrival on his doorstep.
The bluff was a failure, in more ways than one, if only because Saix could see Vexen's fingernails worrying individual splinters out of the doorframe -- one by painstaking one, leaving slivers of wood buried in the tender flesh of his hands. The motion was almost hypnotic, in its even-ness, and for a moment, Saix was almost caught.
Realizing his own fixation, Saix frowned and shook the trance off -- he had a missive to deliver. The fact that Vexen was effectively forming a living barricade to his quarters, bristly as a porcupine, was of little consequence.
Before Saix could clear his throat to impart the Superior's orders, Vexen cut him off, already shaking his head. "I know what you're here to say," the scientist said, making a poor attempt to feign boredom. His gaze reminded Saix of a hunted animal, cunning yet terrified at the same time. "I'm wanted at Castle Oblivion, I'll be working under Marluxia, so on and so forth. I am more than aware of this; your presence here is unnecessary."
Pushing himself off the doorframe, Vexen stood before Saix, hands tucked into his arms as he continued relentlessly.
"The Superior's briefed me about it himself, and he's been very explicit about what he expects of me," he said, baring his teeth in an unvoiced snarl. "So why don't you go run back to him like a good little puppy and tell him that Vexen's got the message and doesn't need to be reminded about it at every turn?" IV smiled, a little too tightly to be honest, and slumped against the door once more, lanky frame obstructing the way.
At a loss for words -- both because this was the most he'd ever heard Vexen say in one breath, and because IV's diatribe essentially covered everything he'd been sent here to say -- Saix decided to settle, instead, for a question. There was an agitation to Vexen's movements he had never seen before, a restless, aching energy that sparked off answering shivers in his bones. It's there, after all, where the thirst for the kill used to lie so close to his marrow; the traces of the hunting beast in him had not been dulled by his lack of a heart. Such desires were basic, and instinctive, and to deny them was to deny what little humanity he had left in him.
"Are you so bitter," Saix asked, with curiosity that was almost genuine, "that the Superior's cast you aside?" He meant to add more after that, to clarify his sentiment -- Is working beneath Marluxia's command so repulsive? -- but he didn't get a chance.
Vexen's skin, never tan to begin with, paled to chalk. A beat later and fury sent blood rushing back to his cheeks, a vengeful tide of purple that flooded his face from the nape of his neck and onwards.
"Get out," he whispered. Then, louder: "Get out!"
Saix wasn't sure what made him answer, but the word tripped and fell from his mouth before he could think to take it back.
"No."
And then Vexen --
( -- whirls into his rooms and slams the door in Saix's face; that is the last conversation the berserker ever has with him, the last he sees or hears of the other man until they receive the news that Castle Oblivion is gone, gone, fallen into ruin and Garden knows what else -- )
-- reached forward, fists seizing into Saix's jacket like a swimmer grasping for land, and pulled him down for a kiss that could've broken worlds.
Saix's first reaction was to rear back, though whether it would have been in shock and disgust or something other, even he could not have said. Vexen's hands clamped firmly into his clothing, the grip of his fingers becoming tighter and tighter in fitful jerks, and Saix could not pull away, mesmerized and weakened all at once by the intensity behind the cool lips and clicking teeth.
"Try and lick your master's feet with that mouth now," Vexen had snarled as soon as he had a moment, but without any real force in his words, air robbed by his gasping. Saix didn't respond, too occupied in trying to yank Vexen's hands off his jacket; he missed whatever Vexen said after that, because the scientist had leaned back in, and Saix's lower lip had suddenly tasted like blood.
At some point, Saix realized he was answering Vexen's mettle, fighting the only way he could think of by answering the kiss with equal force. That, that makes him jerk back -- or try to. Vexen, unbalanced, followed him down, and they fell to the floor in a tangle of hate and spit and --
And then Saix wakes up, eyes itching with brine, and thinks: That was not how it happened.
Vexen had not gripped his shoulders with the same desperation of a drowning man. His mouth had not felt like an animal's, hungry and sharp; he had not been angry with a bitterness that lasted through the loss of a heart, a memory everlasting of being second-best to everyone.
There could never have been want of any sort. Not real, not imagined, not memory.
Saix wipes his mouth off on the back of his hand and tells himself that he would never have kissed Vexen, had the choice been given to him. Maybe if Vexen -- no. Not Vexen, not ever, and particularly not while they were both growling caustic words about Xemnas, competing for attention, because when everything else has been stripped away, only the presence of another being affirms the new reality --
Saix scrubs his face with a palm until he's certain that he's fully awake. The dream leaves him out of sorts, unwilling to go back to sleep, so he makes a fresh cup of coffee and stares at it until the morning comes.
* * * * *
On the fifth week of his mismatched sleep, Saix dreams that he dies.
There's blood, which is to be expected, and some violence. He's pitted against an unseen opponent who shrugs off each of his blows, turns his Nobodies against him, and breaks one of Saix's arms in the process. There's blood, and a horrible cracking heat along Saix's back, and then nothing.
Then cold fingers brush his chin and pull his face upwards, and Saix finds himself staring into a familiar-but-not pair of sea-green eyes.
"You little idiot," Vexen says softly. "Now what did you have to go and get killed for?"
The touch is so gentle that Saix gapes at first -- an inelegant form of surprise, but when had Vexen ever been kind?
The scientist's hand drifts down, tracing along Saix's neck. "Now you're stuck here," he whispers, keeping the Diviner's gaze trapped under his own stare. The tip of one finger dances along skin and muscle, tracing small, intimate circles on Saix's body. "Now..."
Saix's breath is thin in his lungs. "Now?"
"Now there's no one left alive to keep thinking about me," Vexen finishes, and then both his hands tighten on Saix's throat.
And then Saix wakes up gasping, alert with that horrible non-fear that's replaced actual terror since losing his heart: alert and calm and convinced that he's about to die again the very next second. Die somehow. Die in a dream twice-over, or maybe just lose his heart again, or -- the Dusks come when he calls, come and turn on all the lights and heat up water for coffee, and Saix spends the rest of the night on edge with the taste of cream souring his tongue.
Despite that, he doesn't got back to his own bed.
* * * * * *
If he can remember thought, then he can remember self. If he can remember taste and touch and smell -- the feeling of paper in his hands, the warmth of coffee in his mouth. He will remember and he will exist, and he will remember --
* * * * * *
After a while, Saix realizes that he's stopped wondering how insane he might be going, or how much of Vexen he might be hallucinating. He is, after all, the Luna Diviner. A title which is only one step away from lunacy.
Instead the questions have slowly become: where is Lexaeus's ghost? Where is Zexion's presence? If the rest of the Organization dies, will they be faced with Marluxia and Larxene once more?
If Saix dies, will he exist forever like this -- haunting back rooms that no one visits, making snippy commentaries on the state of the carpet?
As soon as he thinks that, the berserker decides suddenly that he never wants to find out.
He continues to seek out information in the rooms of the dead, hunting for their voices and mannerisms as primly as a lady in search of a new hat. None of their habits shape themselves out of nothingness as readily as Vexen's -- as if, out of all the destroyed Nobodies, only the Chilly Academic truly desired to live. Desired so much that he was willing to infuse his possessions with numerous quirks and habits and characteristics, like a miser stuffing a mattress with any object that came to hand, no matter how tarnished.
The image of Vexen intrudes on Saix's sleep more often now, slipping into the usual flesh-driven lusts that plague any physical body. Sometimes Saix's hands find themselves tangling in light brown hairs -- though how they got there, Saix does not ever recall. Sometimes the tanned skin of Xemnas becomes a paler one of ice.
Saix blames the sheets, which still smell like the researcher, and probably always will.
Either way, he forces himself to wake whenever he notices his sleep twisting off course. Fantasies about the Superior are normal enough; Saix wants nothing to do with the Chilly Academic. Those dreams always become strange and desperate, like two animals rutting together because they have no other outlet they can risk.
The lack of decent rest leaves him bleary in the mornings. In revenge, he develops a taste for coffee, and sets about demolishing Vexen's stash.
"Chasing ghosts again, Saix?" Xigbar calls offhandedly one day after a morning conference, and for a moment Saix cannot move, cannot breathe, something unspeakable clutching at his insides. Has his secret been discovered? Have his conversations with Vexen been witnessed? His reaction is not fear, cannot be fear -- he tells himself -- for he lacks the essential components for honest terror.
But it would be awkward if his superstitions were ferreted out.
One beat after the pause extends too long to be casual, Saix realizes the Freeshooter means it as a casual joke. "No," he responds curtly, ignoring the now-avidly curious look on Xigbar's face. "I'm only doing my job."
Xigbar grins, grins and tilts his head like a boneless cat. "'kay," he quips, an idle, careless word. "Keep being a good little Diviner, then."
* * * * * *
One day, Saix discovers that Vexen can touch him -- or more accurately, Vexen discovers that he can touch Saix.
The first time Vexen notices it, it's some tiny, quiet triviality. All his attempts to manipulate the objects around him have failed; no amount of willpower or mental discipline causes them to react to his touch. The handicap is one which he should, logically, be able to dismiss. After all, he has his wits; what kind of scientist would he be if he could not be satisfied with that?
But one afternoon while he eavesdrops over Saix's shoulder, Vexen notices that the hairs on the back of VII's head -- which he hovers over more often than anyone would ever consider to be healthy -- are moving.
At first, he wonders why they seem to be waving in synch. A moment later, he realizes it's because of him -- him, breathing even in the afterlife, a parody of even his former half-existence as a Nobody. It's his actions that stir the fine, short hairs on the back of Saix's head, fluttering back and forth like tiny divining rods.
Responding to his presence. Responding to his breath. Fascinated despite himself, Vexen reaches forward to touch --
Saix's tosses his head irritably, like a restless horse with an itch, but not before Vexen sees silver-blue strands bend and bow beneath his fingers.
He tries again. At first his hand only passes through the fine strands, but then he concentrates and remembers what it was like to want to exist -- remembering begging, remembering wanting to live -- and again those hairs shift, parted by careful millimeters.
"Vexen."
Caught in -- he's not sure what -- the scientist pauses. Yes?
"Your room has terrible insulation. No wonder you're dead."
I never found it to be cold, Vexen informs him primly, but his irritation is barely there, easily overlooked in his moment of triumph, and he doesn't even mind when Saix gets up and stomps over to the doors to shut out any mysterious drafts.
To be a ghost is to be caught in the role of an observer, forever watching without the power of influence. Vexen can see, but he cannot touch. Vexen can listen, but he cannot always be heard.
And yet even this is more than what he had before Saix came.
Vexen remembers being trapped in clammy fog, in a field of white noise, and being alone. He remembers being caught in the memory of what a body was like, and of what a heart used to be. For a brief, shuddering moment he can almost pull all those scattered thoughts together again, gathering them up like so many broken bones and muscles and organs.
Then he starts to rub his eyes with a hand and realize that he no longer has one.
He remembers the desire to give in, to give up, to pass into oblivion a second time over: overwhelming and relentless like the pound of the sea.
Vexen does not remember how it was, finally, that he found his way back.
But what he cannot forget is the voice that led him there.
* * * * *
"You're dead, you know."
I know. But I heard you calling me.
"I was not."
Yes, you were.
* * * * *
Eventually, Vexen finds himself weighing the worth of telling Saix that to rifle through a dead man's belongings -- to pick apart the things that defined his life -- is as good as a challenge, as good as rattling the bones in a grave. Does the berserker expect to be able to erase the remnants of a life unmolested? Does he think that the dead will not rise to defend their own?
Something rises in Vexen's throat, imagined but real at the same time. He tries to clings to his pale anger, his ersatz rage, but it slips through his fingertips each time. His own thoughts are too insubstantial to hold. To be caught in this half-state of decay is impossibly crippling, for now he lacks both the power of conviction and the certainty of the living.
Every moment Vexen spends in the waking world is borrowed time, and he is never more keenly aware of it than when Saix's attention wavers and he feels himself starting to come unmade.
Vexen cannot hate Saix, for odd as it is, he is grateful to be remembered, grateful to be anything but alone.
But he can hate what Saix has done.
Whenever Vexen sees the berserker looking through his possessions or sleeping in his bed, Vexen would like nothing more than to take him by the shoulders and shake him, and scream, That is mine with a voice that he no longer has throat or tongue or air to shape.
But being remembered feels far too good, and every time Saix speaks his name into the darkness, Vexen can pretend, for a moment, that he's still alive.
Vexen has lost his heart and his body now, but his soul remains: the most eternal part of him, he thinks, but also the most useless. Almost as useless as a heart. Without hands to carry out orders, thoughts alone are futile. Without hands to touch, and feet to move and lungs to breathe -- and late at night, Vexen wonders if it's possible for a spirit to go insane from various forms of deprivation.
Emotional, no. Physical, maybe.
Maybe.
But he can see his surroundings, and he can remember feelings, and he can remember thoughts; if memory is the sole thing keeping him alive, then Vexen can't afford to let it go.
If Saix is the only one who can perceive him, then he'll have to take what he can get.
* * * * * *
At some point in their bizarre conversations, something changes. Vexen no longer spends his time grousing about the topic at hand, speaking only about the activities which Saix is involved in. Instead, he demands information. Conversation. Words, any form of attention possible, any acknowledgement that he is there.
It's bad enough that Saix realizes he's getting to the point where, if he had a heart, he'd be using it to become seriously annoyed. Saix does not exist to provide IV with the daily news. If anything, the illusion of the scientist is only there to be used by him; the memory of Vexen is a tool to understand the past that went on between the original founding members, all so Saix can fill that gap more efficiently, and from there improve on his own role within the hierarchy.
But the time is not entirely ill-spent. Saix has learned more about the Organization than he expected; more importantly, he has learned more about Xemnas. The dignity of Lexaeus's rooms, the clarity of Zexion's -- all contribute to a sense of how the original six members first made things work. He teases the feel of their influence out of the gaps left behind, the undercurrents that he'd never had a chance to notice before they were gone. He guesses the reasons for the particular architecture of the Castle, and why certain rooms are placed closer together. He learns what meshes best with Xemnas's quirky temperament.
The next time he takes a mission from the Superior -- the man looking, for a fleeting moment, harried as he passes over the briefing folder -- Saix does not wait to be dismissed, but only bows and opens a portal without wasting any time.
He has the satisfaction of noticing surprise jump like a spark over Xemnas's face.
Hallucinating Vexen is a tolerable risk -- so long as Saix can keep the scientist at an arm's length, the certainty of deceased in his mind. Sight becomes a necessary barometer, his own self-defense. With it, Saix can keep track of his own sanity, keeping their encounters readily divided between those which come during sleep, and those which come when he is awake. Between fantasy, and reality.
Between the living and the dead.
Old wives may say that seeing is believing, but in the heart of Vexen's rooms, Saix's eyes are the only sense he has that is not malfunctioning.
He may hear Vexen's voice in his waking hours, may sleep in the other man's bed and be swallowed by an unfamiliar scent, may think he feels the chill of fingers on his skin and taste cold spit on his tongue -- but it is only in dreams, his dreams, that they possess visible form and shape.
This is how Saix knows he is awake: when Vexen is nothing more than a biting voice in dead air, a retort caught in rapidly distorting glass.
This is how Saix knows he cannot afford to lose his already-tenuous definition of existence.
* * * * * *
Vexen could have told Saix differently: of all the tools at a human being's disposal, one's senses are the most unreliable.
There is no empirical evidence for the soul -- no matter how carefully they tried to measure it back in Radiant Garden, with their test tubes and counters and darkness extractors -- but it is real anyway.
* * * * * *
The manifestation of Vexen's ghost seems to have aborted the blurring line between the scientist's memories and his own -- and for that, Saix is grateful, and not a little relieved. On the other hand, it also means that the construct isn't nearly half so manageable. It hovers and complains and offers pithy commentary while Saix is attempting to concentrate, and is, generally speaking, an all-around nuisance. The Luna Diviner supposes he ought to be glad, at the least, that he's been given something more tangible than a voice at the back of his head to speak with; all the same, he isn't sure that this is much of an improvement.
Matters come to a head when the ghost speaks directly into his ear, criticizing his handwriting as he attempts to translate the scientist's notes. As far beyond irritated as any of his kind can possibly be, Saix snarls an oath, pushes himself away from the desk, and hurls the inkpot at what he estimates to be the location of Vexen's head.
Even if it were there, of course, the projectile makes no impact, but smoothly sails on through. The subsequent shatter of glass against the far wall of the room -- and the black stain that blooms against the stone -- is enough of an indicator of the trajectory the ill-chosen missile takes, and Saix frowns. He'll have to get a Dusk to clean that up later, and perhaps get him a new inkwell. What a waste, really. He shouldn't have snapped like that.
Vexen's ghost seems to be thinking along the same lines, because its voice is full of reproach. Now what was that for?
The question is enough to douse what's left of Saix's brief rage; memories of emotion only go so far once rationality arrives on the scene. The Diviner loses his hands into slow fists, and then opens them again, feeling the play of muscles and bones. This is flesh. This is real.
Vexen is not.
"Why," he blurts suddenly, leaning back against his chair with a long-suffering sigh, "do I have to have such unhelpful delusions?"
There is a long pause.
I'm not just a delusion. If it's possible for a voice to be pale, Vexen's is, and Saix wonders which of them he's trying to convince.
"Yes, you are," he answers, and the words form a bored drawl. "You're a fiction of my mind, you're a ghost of a man who I never knew to begin with -- you aren't real." You never were, he wants to add, to make the insult bite deep, but before he can say it he feels the atmosphere of the room change subtly, and he tenses without knowing why.
Then how do I know whose name you call out in your sleep?
For an instant, Saix freezes; he thinks suddenly of Xigbar, and of secrets. Then he turns his face in the vague direction where Vexen might be, and replies, "Because you don't."
That challenge charges the air more suddenly than any of Larxene's fits.
I don't? Vexen's voice is taut as a steel cable. Then tell me, how are you getting along these days with a man who doesn't need anything you can offer --
It's not anger which propels Saix out of his chair; not anger, not rage, not anything as honest as emotion, but the memory of it possesses him as deftly as any berserking fury, boiling up from that part of himself which ignored any loss of his actual heart. His identity, maybe, as irrevocably bound to anger as Vexen's seems to be to life. Not anger, then. A wounded sense of pride, perhaps, or rudimentary affection gone sour.
The half-companionship he's grown comfortable in inverts upon itself in less than the time it takes to blink. Summoning bitterness takes hardly any effort at all. What a state he's come to, to be caught arguing with a fiction of his mind. How pathetic. What would Xemnas say?
Saix would laugh, if the words didn't sting so close to the truth.
How does one war with a vision? Even as he pushes himself off the chair and reaches for the voice that spits insults as easily as false breath, Saix already knows the effort is futile. Still, he can't help but try. There is a world of difference between a mere inkpot and a powerful Nobody lunging through the air, though they may well possess about the same emotional capacity.
Exactly how much that is, Saix isn't certain sometimes.
Confusion solves no dilemmas. Saix's body is his truest law, now that he's lost his heart; it claws at the room in impotent gestures that grant no satisfaction. Air parts easily around his fingers, providing as much of a sense of accomplishment as cutting fog.
The lack of anything solid to absorb his attacks means that his aggression finds itself trapped in the circuit of his nerves, biological electricity looking for somewhere to ground itself. Something strange is happening behind his eyes; it's not rage, but it's the closest to that white hot oblivion he's had since he became a Nobody, and he embraces it like a lover.
He wants to grip and grasp and tear apart -- he wants to exert his non-frustration on something, anything, that can receive it.
On his third wild swing, his half-curled fingers connect with something like flesh. Tiny bones beneath it give a sudden, terrible creak as he lets his hand clamp around them and squeeze, hard. Saix is mildly gratified to hear Vexen hiss, relishing the familiar scornful sound of indrawn breath sucked in through the scientist's teeth. The Chilly Academic has always been proud of his unshakeable demeanor; it's always a grim sort of pleasure to see him rattled out of it.
It's only a beat later that Saix realizes the extent of their madness. While his skin is telling him in no uncertain terms that something is certainly there, ice cold and clammy against the sweaty heat of his palm, his eyes are giving him a completely different message: there is nothing in his grasp but air.
The realization stuns him long enough that when the impact comes, he doesn't expect it -- though Vexen, as expected, punches like a complete woman, slapping more than hitting. The momentum behind it may be weak, but the hit has an unexpected sharpness to it: the knuckles on the scientist's hand, bony as the ridges on one of Xaldin's dragoons, crack against Saix's cheekbones with enough force to leave stinging pain and bruises in their wake.
Twisting his head around sharply, even before the sound of fist against flesh finishes echoing around the room, Saix retaliates by snapping at air. His aim's true enough, and he manages to catch Vexen's hand in his mouth. He lets his teeth grind against Vexen's knuckles, unconsciously waiting for the tang of blood; it's almost a disappointment when none comes. He finds himself grinning in not-entirely-wholesome amusement -- and can't find it in himself to really care.
In response, the scientist half-cracks Saix's skull with an impact that could only come from a headbutt.
They fight with no grace and no beauty, and as they crash furiously around Vexen's quarters, the detached part of Saix not running high on adrenalin wonders what this tableau could possibly look like to anyone who came in right now. Would they think Saix had at last snapped, gone around the bend? Or would they recognize the unknown at work? More than likely, he reckons, it would be a combination of both -- they'd assume he'd been possessed by some sort of vengeful ghost.
And maybe that's the real truth.
Saix can't see where Vexen's hits are coming from, but he can judge their source, and it doesn't take him long to discern that Vexen is still fighting with both feet on the floor, with whatever physical strength he must have had in life. That's a pleasant surprise in Saix's favor; had Vexen known of or tried to use his own intangibility to his advantage beyond simple invisibility, then the fight might be a lot more complicated.
As it is, however, it isn't hard for Saix to knock Vexen down to the ground at all. He spents a few moments spread-eagled over the scientist's heaving chest, groping for his ankles and wrists to hold him down, listening impassively to the sistrum-rattle of the other man's breath.
"Do you yield?" Saix asks, though it's a purely perfunctory gesture. He can feel the strange headiness inspired by physical exertion beginning to fade.
If Vexen had eyes he could actually see with, Saix imagines, he'd be glaring. Even so, Saix can still feel the weight of that invisible glower.
No, Vexen spits, and then his invisible mass disappears from under Saix, dropping him to the carpet from a good ten inches or so in the air. Saix swears as the impact sends a particularly sensitive bundle of nerves in his elbow screaming. Awkwardly, he maneuvers himself to his feet, flopping onto the bed.
"That could have gone better," he says aloud. There is no response.
Vexen doesn't return for the rest of the night.
Chapter 1 - 2 - 3
By: kytha, rabbitprint
Length: ~7.3k
Summary: As he wanders further into the depths of what Vexen once was, Saix finds the fine line from where reality ends and insanity begins increasingly difficult to draw.
Chapter 1 - 2 - 3
* * * * *
If he can remember thought, then he can remember self. If he can remember taste and touch and smell, he can remember what it is to be alive --
* * * * *
Two months in, and Saix is as uncertain as when he started. Marluxia's rooms remain sour with machination, and Saix does not care to linger in them. He might have expected a man so fond of flowers to have rooms that smelled like a pollen cocktail, a battleground of flora, but instead Marluxia's quarters reek of a thousand blossoms left to rot. The air of those rooms is choked with ill-will and seething resentment, prickling at Saix intensely enough to cause discomfort. No amount of open windows helps dispel the miasma. Marluxia’s rooms died along with their schemer; like XI, they are impossible to ignore even after their lives have moved on.
Larxene's, by contrast, feel like the sky after a thunderstorm: vacant and desolate, dried husks scoured clean of life. They had never been cramped to begin with, as Larxene cared little for personal possessions. Now, robbed of the scant protection that XII's prickly presence had always provided, their emptiness seems to yawn even larger, lonely and wide. There is nothing there for Saix to find.
He wonders, briefly, if there ever would have been anything at all.
Lexaeus's rooms gave him a sense of quiet strength, of dignity and buried wisdom. Saix had absorbed the taste of that air before respectfully closing the doors, and moving on.
Zexion's chambers had been strange. Saix had expected the Schemer to guard his secrets as closely in private as he did everywhere else, but Zexion had kept a fairly straightforward house. Everything of any importance had been neatly sorted into boxes, labeled for convenience, and the berserker wondered if in some way, perhaps VI had anticipated his own demise. Whatever the truth of the matter is, Zexion's forethought made his rooms easy to deconstruct.
But Vexen's are an eternal confusion, refusing to be consumed by Saix's questing mind. Instead of scientific detachment, IV has a teapot. He used fine china to brew coffee instead of tea leaves, kept journals labeled with old names, and left a hard kernel of something unidentifiable embedded in one of the pillows.
The bulge digs mercilessly into the nape of Saix's neck for a week before the Diviner finally admits discomfort and fishes for it. His quest uncovers a white paper twist that crinkles when he pinches it open. As he does, a strange, spicy odor stings his nose; his mouth suddenly waters in curiosity, and he instinctively touches his tongue to the amber ball revealed inside.
One slightly panicked moment later -- the time it takes for him to get over the relief that he hasn't inadvertently licked some kind of fancy mothball -- Saix registers the sweetness blooming across his taste buds.
Of all things for him to find hidden in Vexen's pillows, ginger candy is not one he expected.
Assuming that Saix had thought there would be anything at all. Other Nobodies might have tucked books among their bedclothes, or weapons -- even Zexion had lodged a pen in the gap between the bed frame and the wall. Vexen's late-night snacking seems a habit better suited for Larxene, or possibly Marluxia. The scientist had never seemed big on treats.
If nothing else, at least the candy is no longer in a position to irritate his already-aching neck. Saix deposits the stale nub into the wastebasket, wrapper still bleeding half-melted sugar. As for the stickiness on his fingers, he finds himself at a loss. Finally, he decides to wipe them off on the sheets, leaving trails of tacky fluid on the linen before turning over and curling into himself.
He is not very surprised when his dreams are filled with scent. Human musk mixes with spice and honey. Ginger stings his tongue.
In the morning, Saix quells his sudden craving for sweets by putting three tablespoons of sugar into his coffee.
He occupies himself the rest of the day by continuing to browse through the scientist's journals. For all the density of text, they’re not overly difficult to read. Vexen writes plainly enough, with little embellishment -- perhaps out of a disdain for ciphers, or simply out of confidence that he would always be there to protect his words if need be. Encryption might simply be an unnecessary nuisance to a man of Vexen's sensibilities; the effort could be better spent on more productive things.
Whatever the reason, IV has made no effort to disguise his words in incomprehensible metaphor and verse. Even so, Saix supposes the scientist's handwriting is a code in itself, cramped and illegible by most standards: a true academic's scrawl.
Saix does not have any trouble reading it -- at least, not in the way it matters. It's tricky to guess if an 'a' is meant to be an 'e', but Vexen's script speaks clearly in every other aspect. The writing is slanted and jagged whenever the scientist was excited or rushed, elaborate when idle, and schooled into ranks upon ranks of ink and lead when recording the results of an experiment.
The Luna Diviner may not always understand Vexen's theories, but on occasion, he thinks he can catch a sense of what the other man was thinking. For now, that will have to suffice. In the end, he doesn't care about half the experiments that interested the scientist; what matters are impressions, and those remain in abundance.
To help sort through the tangle, Saix starts to read the journals aloud. Not for something as sentimental as comfort. He has never been afraid of being alone, not even when he still had a heart, and so he lacks any memory of loneliness to reference on the subject.
But he reads Vexen's journal entries in his own voice anyway, trying to learn the shape of the man's thoughts by reviving them through himself.
At first the language stumbles. Vexen picks words without a care for how they sound together. Scientific jargon clashes with careless shorthand. As Demyx would say, Saix thinks gloomily, Vexen’s words don’t flow. They crawl like glaciers, carving gouges out of the page rather than rolling smoothly along.
"'And the additive function of Dusks implies,'" Saix finds himself reciting aloud one day, making no effort to conceal his boredom or to keep it from twisting his words, "'that either I don't know what I'm doing or I have no taste in furniture. In the event of my death, I shall resolve to find better chairs.'"
No, he finds himself corrected instantly, a whispered memory of what could have been Vexen's affronted dignity. Implies that the mutability levels of each generation can be increased by a level proportionate to their base complexity. Get it right.
He argues with himself for the rest of the afternoon, simply to pass the hours. Each time he quips one of Vexen's lines wrong, he's quick to imagine the scientist's lofty pride leaping to defense.
The diversion keeps him occupied as he delves through a fresh stack of journals; these ones are labeled as eight years old from one of Vexen's previous labs, which apparently had to be shut down after an unfortunate incident with chemical beakers. Spatters of multicolored fluid have dried into the covers of the journal, seeping into the pages to leave a sticky gilt along the paper's edge. From one meticulously scribbled note, Saix gathers that the cause was 60% probable to be a mistimed levitation spell, 23% to be an explosive reaction between two composite substances, and 17% to be Xigbar.
Somehow, this doesn't surprise him. It's only after a moment that he realizes he hadn't known not to be surprised.
* * * * *
When the games moves on from the journals to the rest of Vexen's possessions, Saix can't say he's relieved. Or surprised. It was only a matter of time, he figured, before the soul of Vexen could finally be extracted from the potpourri of his life. Even Marluxia's rooms hadn't been this difficult to examine; then again, Marluxia's goals were ultimately very simple, once one knew to look for treachery.
He notices the change first while searching through one of Vexen's wardrobes. Each of them have their own supply of coats -- and spares, in the event of accident, bloodshed, or Keyblade Masters -- and Vexen had been no different. His choice of tailoring, however, had involved a narrower waist and wider bell of the jacket as it came off the hips. Not a particularly masculine look, in Saix's opinion. Xaldin, certainly, would never be caught dead in a jacket that flared.
Just as Saix is pulling on the sleeve of one coat and wondering how thin Vexen's arm must have been to fit inside, he hears another man clearing his throat.
Excuse me. Polite, yet firm. Those are my clothes.
"You're dead, you know," Saix tells the heaviness in the air beside him, invisible but real. "I can say anything I want about your lack of physique."
I know, Vexen says, and even for a ghost his voice is as alive and dry as the rest of him ever was. But I heard you calling me.
Saix's face goes flat in instant denial. "I was not."
Yes, you were.
Dropping the coat unceremoniously on the bottom of the wardrobe, Saix closes the door firmly, and turns away.
But the commentary doesn't end there. Later on, Saix hears Vexen complain during tea. As he reads -- don't leave the books open like that, get a bookmark at least. Dinner is brought down by a pair of Dusks, and as Saix eats, he does so to the tune of, don't drip any on the tablecloth, were you raised by animals? Please. If you're going to be in my rooms, at least pretend to be civilized. Did you file those books back in the right order? There is an order, you know. Or did you even bother to learn the proper form of the alphabet?
It gets to the point where Saix finally sets his teacup down hard. Ignoring the protest on the air, he repeats, "You're dead."
If I wasn't before, I would be now after seeing you mistreat my personal library.
"You're dead," Saix says again, and then, feeling more than a bit helpless, "Shouldn't that make you less vocal?"
His answer is a disdainful snort.
Saix doesn't know if being divested of his body has also separated Vexen from the ability to act like a mature adult instead of a contrary teenager, but he refuses to play any further. Calling the scientist -- like a pet, or a sheep that's been lost, or just someone looking for someone else, which is ridiculous. It's all irrational and the bored memories of Saix's mind inform him that he doesn't like it.
As much as he doesn't like anything, he reminds himself.
He refuses to acknowledge the ghost of Vexen any further, leaving the scientist's quarters early and seeking out the Superior. But when he asks -- tactfully -- for Xemnas to come down and look at Vexen's old things, the Superior stares, and then agrees.
Xemnas stands there for several moments in Vexen's room, holding himself very still, like an animal in black leather and closed fists. But when he turns back around, his face is as carefully bemused as ever. "And?"
"And?" Saix mimics back the word rather blankly. Part of him had hoped that Xemnas would solve this dilemma by instantly recognizing the extraneous presence in the room; part of him had never planned further than now. "Don't you think there's something strange here?"
"Everything about Even was strange." There's a different tone to Xemnas's voice, one that Saix has never heard before; it's touched by some memory that the Berserker has no comparison for. The sound fades quickly, before it can be defined, and then Xemnas is professional once more. "Vexen, rather. Finish sorting through this, please. There is other business to attend to."
"What -- " Saix starts to ask, but the Superior is already out the door, slipping away into a portal hastily opened in the hall.
He can't see Vexen's ghost, but he can sense something like satisfaction tainting the neutrality of the room's atmosphere. "Why couldn't the Superior sense you?" Saix asks. He's not sure what makes him speak aloud, and the sound of his own voice being absorbed into the walls and ceiling nearly makes him jump.
There is nothing but silence for a few minutes, long enough that Saix begins to think that he has been imagining the strange presence in these rooms -- but then the response comes, slow and thoughtful, and he finds himself once again having to re-evaluate his sanity.
I don't know, Vexen admits. Perhaps Xemnas is unable to sense these things. Xehanort always preferred focusing on his own research subjects; this may lie too deeply outside his current realms of study for him to register.
That sounds a little more like the scientist that Saix knows, and so without thinking, he dares to speak again.
"And I?" Saix asks. "Why can I sense you?"
Not a clue, the coolness collapses in a flash, and the shrug is nearly audible. Maybe you're just insane.
They both mull over the concept in silence.
I thought, the spirit whispers again, for one moment, Xemnas really did see me. But then he turned away.
* * * * *
When Saix works up the opportunity to ask the Superior again, obliquely, about Vexen's rooms, Xemnas doesn't acknowledge the words.
He never comes down to visit them again.
* * * * *
Do you remember, Vexen's ghost asks one day, as Saix is sorting through the contents of an archival box, the last thing you ever said to me? When I was alive.
"No," Saix replies. And that is that.
It's a lie, though.
He remembers it perfectly.
When Saix finally found himself at Vexen's doors, it was to discover that the scientist had firmly wedged himself in the doorway, for all the world as immovable and belligerent as a badger interrupted in his mid-autumn meanderings. The pose was a casual gesture, meant to disarm -- the tilt of his head and the set of his jaw calculated to best display his indifference to Saix's untimely arrival on his doorstep.
The bluff was a failure, in more ways than one, if only because Saix could see Vexen's fingernails worrying individual splinters out of the doorframe -- one by painstaking one, leaving slivers of wood buried in the tender flesh of his hands. The motion was almost hypnotic, in its even-ness, and for a moment, Saix was almost caught.
Realizing his own fixation, Saix frowned and shook the trance off -- he had a missive to deliver. The fact that Vexen was effectively forming a living barricade to his quarters, bristly as a porcupine, was of little consequence.
Before Saix could clear his throat to impart the Superior's orders, Vexen cut him off, already shaking his head. "I know what you're here to say," the scientist said, making a poor attempt to feign boredom. His gaze reminded Saix of a hunted animal, cunning yet terrified at the same time. "I'm wanted at Castle Oblivion, I'll be working under Marluxia, so on and so forth. I am more than aware of this; your presence here is unnecessary."
Pushing himself off the doorframe, Vexen stood before Saix, hands tucked into his arms as he continued relentlessly.
"The Superior's briefed me about it himself, and he's been very explicit about what he expects of me," he said, baring his teeth in an unvoiced snarl. "So why don't you go run back to him like a good little puppy and tell him that Vexen's got the message and doesn't need to be reminded about it at every turn?" IV smiled, a little too tightly to be honest, and slumped against the door once more, lanky frame obstructing the way.
At a loss for words -- both because this was the most he'd ever heard Vexen say in one breath, and because IV's diatribe essentially covered everything he'd been sent here to say -- Saix decided to settle, instead, for a question. There was an agitation to Vexen's movements he had never seen before, a restless, aching energy that sparked off answering shivers in his bones. It's there, after all, where the thirst for the kill used to lie so close to his marrow; the traces of the hunting beast in him had not been dulled by his lack of a heart. Such desires were basic, and instinctive, and to deny them was to deny what little humanity he had left in him.
"Are you so bitter," Saix asked, with curiosity that was almost genuine, "that the Superior's cast you aside?" He meant to add more after that, to clarify his sentiment -- Is working beneath Marluxia's command so repulsive? -- but he didn't get a chance.
Vexen's skin, never tan to begin with, paled to chalk. A beat later and fury sent blood rushing back to his cheeks, a vengeful tide of purple that flooded his face from the nape of his neck and onwards.
"Get out," he whispered. Then, louder: "Get out!"
Saix wasn't sure what made him answer, but the word tripped and fell from his mouth before he could think to take it back.
"No."
And then Vexen --
( -- whirls into his rooms and slams the door in Saix's face; that is the last conversation the berserker ever has with him, the last he sees or hears of the other man until they receive the news that Castle Oblivion is gone, gone, fallen into ruin and Garden knows what else -- )
-- reached forward, fists seizing into Saix's jacket like a swimmer grasping for land, and pulled him down for a kiss that could've broken worlds.
Saix's first reaction was to rear back, though whether it would have been in shock and disgust or something other, even he could not have said. Vexen's hands clamped firmly into his clothing, the grip of his fingers becoming tighter and tighter in fitful jerks, and Saix could not pull away, mesmerized and weakened all at once by the intensity behind the cool lips and clicking teeth.
"Try and lick your master's feet with that mouth now," Vexen had snarled as soon as he had a moment, but without any real force in his words, air robbed by his gasping. Saix didn't respond, too occupied in trying to yank Vexen's hands off his jacket; he missed whatever Vexen said after that, because the scientist had leaned back in, and Saix's lower lip had suddenly tasted like blood.
At some point, Saix realized he was answering Vexen's mettle, fighting the only way he could think of by answering the kiss with equal force. That, that makes him jerk back -- or try to. Vexen, unbalanced, followed him down, and they fell to the floor in a tangle of hate and spit and --
And then Saix wakes up, eyes itching with brine, and thinks: That was not how it happened.
Vexen had not gripped his shoulders with the same desperation of a drowning man. His mouth had not felt like an animal's, hungry and sharp; he had not been angry with a bitterness that lasted through the loss of a heart, a memory everlasting of being second-best to everyone.
There could never have been want of any sort. Not real, not imagined, not memory.
Saix wipes his mouth off on the back of his hand and tells himself that he would never have kissed Vexen, had the choice been given to him. Maybe if Vexen -- no. Not Vexen, not ever, and particularly not while they were both growling caustic words about Xemnas, competing for attention, because when everything else has been stripped away, only the presence of another being affirms the new reality --
Saix scrubs his face with a palm until he's certain that he's fully awake. The dream leaves him out of sorts, unwilling to go back to sleep, so he makes a fresh cup of coffee and stares at it until the morning comes.
* * * * *
On the fifth week of his mismatched sleep, Saix dreams that he dies.
There's blood, which is to be expected, and some violence. He's pitted against an unseen opponent who shrugs off each of his blows, turns his Nobodies against him, and breaks one of Saix's arms in the process. There's blood, and a horrible cracking heat along Saix's back, and then nothing.
Then cold fingers brush his chin and pull his face upwards, and Saix finds himself staring into a familiar-but-not pair of sea-green eyes.
"You little idiot," Vexen says softly. "Now what did you have to go and get killed for?"
The touch is so gentle that Saix gapes at first -- an inelegant form of surprise, but when had Vexen ever been kind?
The scientist's hand drifts down, tracing along Saix's neck. "Now you're stuck here," he whispers, keeping the Diviner's gaze trapped under his own stare. The tip of one finger dances along skin and muscle, tracing small, intimate circles on Saix's body. "Now..."
Saix's breath is thin in his lungs. "Now?"
"Now there's no one left alive to keep thinking about me," Vexen finishes, and then both his hands tighten on Saix's throat.
And then Saix wakes up gasping, alert with that horrible non-fear that's replaced actual terror since losing his heart: alert and calm and convinced that he's about to die again the very next second. Die somehow. Die in a dream twice-over, or maybe just lose his heart again, or -- the Dusks come when he calls, come and turn on all the lights and heat up water for coffee, and Saix spends the rest of the night on edge with the taste of cream souring his tongue.
Despite that, he doesn't got back to his own bed.
* * * * * *
If he can remember thought, then he can remember self. If he can remember taste and touch and smell -- the feeling of paper in his hands, the warmth of coffee in his mouth. He will remember and he will exist, and he will remember --
* * * * * *
After a while, Saix realizes that he's stopped wondering how insane he might be going, or how much of Vexen he might be hallucinating. He is, after all, the Luna Diviner. A title which is only one step away from lunacy.
Instead the questions have slowly become: where is Lexaeus's ghost? Where is Zexion's presence? If the rest of the Organization dies, will they be faced with Marluxia and Larxene once more?
If Saix dies, will he exist forever like this -- haunting back rooms that no one visits, making snippy commentaries on the state of the carpet?
As soon as he thinks that, the berserker decides suddenly that he never wants to find out.
He continues to seek out information in the rooms of the dead, hunting for their voices and mannerisms as primly as a lady in search of a new hat. None of their habits shape themselves out of nothingness as readily as Vexen's -- as if, out of all the destroyed Nobodies, only the Chilly Academic truly desired to live. Desired so much that he was willing to infuse his possessions with numerous quirks and habits and characteristics, like a miser stuffing a mattress with any object that came to hand, no matter how tarnished.
The image of Vexen intrudes on Saix's sleep more often now, slipping into the usual flesh-driven lusts that plague any physical body. Sometimes Saix's hands find themselves tangling in light brown hairs -- though how they got there, Saix does not ever recall. Sometimes the tanned skin of Xemnas becomes a paler one of ice.
Saix blames the sheets, which still smell like the researcher, and probably always will.
Either way, he forces himself to wake whenever he notices his sleep twisting off course. Fantasies about the Superior are normal enough; Saix wants nothing to do with the Chilly Academic. Those dreams always become strange and desperate, like two animals rutting together because they have no other outlet they can risk.
The lack of decent rest leaves him bleary in the mornings. In revenge, he develops a taste for coffee, and sets about demolishing Vexen's stash.
"Chasing ghosts again, Saix?" Xigbar calls offhandedly one day after a morning conference, and for a moment Saix cannot move, cannot breathe, something unspeakable clutching at his insides. Has his secret been discovered? Have his conversations with Vexen been witnessed? His reaction is not fear, cannot be fear -- he tells himself -- for he lacks the essential components for honest terror.
But it would be awkward if his superstitions were ferreted out.
One beat after the pause extends too long to be casual, Saix realizes the Freeshooter means it as a casual joke. "No," he responds curtly, ignoring the now-avidly curious look on Xigbar's face. "I'm only doing my job."
Xigbar grins, grins and tilts his head like a boneless cat. "'kay," he quips, an idle, careless word. "Keep being a good little Diviner, then."
* * * * * *
One day, Saix discovers that Vexen can touch him -- or more accurately, Vexen discovers that he can touch Saix.
The first time Vexen notices it, it's some tiny, quiet triviality. All his attempts to manipulate the objects around him have failed; no amount of willpower or mental discipline causes them to react to his touch. The handicap is one which he should, logically, be able to dismiss. After all, he has his wits; what kind of scientist would he be if he could not be satisfied with that?
But one afternoon while he eavesdrops over Saix's shoulder, Vexen notices that the hairs on the back of VII's head -- which he hovers over more often than anyone would ever consider to be healthy -- are moving.
At first, he wonders why they seem to be waving in synch. A moment later, he realizes it's because of him -- him, breathing even in the afterlife, a parody of even his former half-existence as a Nobody. It's his actions that stir the fine, short hairs on the back of Saix's head, fluttering back and forth like tiny divining rods.
Responding to his presence. Responding to his breath. Fascinated despite himself, Vexen reaches forward to touch --
Saix's tosses his head irritably, like a restless horse with an itch, but not before Vexen sees silver-blue strands bend and bow beneath his fingers.
He tries again. At first his hand only passes through the fine strands, but then he concentrates and remembers what it was like to want to exist -- remembering begging, remembering wanting to live -- and again those hairs shift, parted by careful millimeters.
"Vexen."
Caught in -- he's not sure what -- the scientist pauses. Yes?
"Your room has terrible insulation. No wonder you're dead."
I never found it to be cold, Vexen informs him primly, but his irritation is barely there, easily overlooked in his moment of triumph, and he doesn't even mind when Saix gets up and stomps over to the doors to shut out any mysterious drafts.
To be a ghost is to be caught in the role of an observer, forever watching without the power of influence. Vexen can see, but he cannot touch. Vexen can listen, but he cannot always be heard.
And yet even this is more than what he had before Saix came.
Vexen remembers being trapped in clammy fog, in a field of white noise, and being alone. He remembers being caught in the memory of what a body was like, and of what a heart used to be. For a brief, shuddering moment he can almost pull all those scattered thoughts together again, gathering them up like so many broken bones and muscles and organs.
Then he starts to rub his eyes with a hand and realize that he no longer has one.
He remembers the desire to give in, to give up, to pass into oblivion a second time over: overwhelming and relentless like the pound of the sea.
Vexen does not remember how it was, finally, that he found his way back.
But what he cannot forget is the voice that led him there.
* * * * *
"You're dead, you know."
I know. But I heard you calling me.
"I was not."
Yes, you were.
* * * * *
Eventually, Vexen finds himself weighing the worth of telling Saix that to rifle through a dead man's belongings -- to pick apart the things that defined his life -- is as good as a challenge, as good as rattling the bones in a grave. Does the berserker expect to be able to erase the remnants of a life unmolested? Does he think that the dead will not rise to defend their own?
Something rises in Vexen's throat, imagined but real at the same time. He tries to clings to his pale anger, his ersatz rage, but it slips through his fingertips each time. His own thoughts are too insubstantial to hold. To be caught in this half-state of decay is impossibly crippling, for now he lacks both the power of conviction and the certainty of the living.
Every moment Vexen spends in the waking world is borrowed time, and he is never more keenly aware of it than when Saix's attention wavers and he feels himself starting to come unmade.
Vexen cannot hate Saix, for odd as it is, he is grateful to be remembered, grateful to be anything but alone.
But he can hate what Saix has done.
Whenever Vexen sees the berserker looking through his possessions or sleeping in his bed, Vexen would like nothing more than to take him by the shoulders and shake him, and scream, That is mine with a voice that he no longer has throat or tongue or air to shape.
But being remembered feels far too good, and every time Saix speaks his name into the darkness, Vexen can pretend, for a moment, that he's still alive.
Vexen has lost his heart and his body now, but his soul remains: the most eternal part of him, he thinks, but also the most useless. Almost as useless as a heart. Without hands to carry out orders, thoughts alone are futile. Without hands to touch, and feet to move and lungs to breathe -- and late at night, Vexen wonders if it's possible for a spirit to go insane from various forms of deprivation.
Emotional, no. Physical, maybe.
Maybe.
But he can see his surroundings, and he can remember feelings, and he can remember thoughts; if memory is the sole thing keeping him alive, then Vexen can't afford to let it go.
If Saix is the only one who can perceive him, then he'll have to take what he can get.
* * * * * *
At some point in their bizarre conversations, something changes. Vexen no longer spends his time grousing about the topic at hand, speaking only about the activities which Saix is involved in. Instead, he demands information. Conversation. Words, any form of attention possible, any acknowledgement that he is there.
It's bad enough that Saix realizes he's getting to the point where, if he had a heart, he'd be using it to become seriously annoyed. Saix does not exist to provide IV with the daily news. If anything, the illusion of the scientist is only there to be used by him; the memory of Vexen is a tool to understand the past that went on between the original founding members, all so Saix can fill that gap more efficiently, and from there improve on his own role within the hierarchy.
But the time is not entirely ill-spent. Saix has learned more about the Organization than he expected; more importantly, he has learned more about Xemnas. The dignity of Lexaeus's rooms, the clarity of Zexion's -- all contribute to a sense of how the original six members first made things work. He teases the feel of their influence out of the gaps left behind, the undercurrents that he'd never had a chance to notice before they were gone. He guesses the reasons for the particular architecture of the Castle, and why certain rooms are placed closer together. He learns what meshes best with Xemnas's quirky temperament.
The next time he takes a mission from the Superior -- the man looking, for a fleeting moment, harried as he passes over the briefing folder -- Saix does not wait to be dismissed, but only bows and opens a portal without wasting any time.
He has the satisfaction of noticing surprise jump like a spark over Xemnas's face.
Hallucinating Vexen is a tolerable risk -- so long as Saix can keep the scientist at an arm's length, the certainty of deceased in his mind. Sight becomes a necessary barometer, his own self-defense. With it, Saix can keep track of his own sanity, keeping their encounters readily divided between those which come during sleep, and those which come when he is awake. Between fantasy, and reality.
Between the living and the dead.
Old wives may say that seeing is believing, but in the heart of Vexen's rooms, Saix's eyes are the only sense he has that is not malfunctioning.
He may hear Vexen's voice in his waking hours, may sleep in the other man's bed and be swallowed by an unfamiliar scent, may think he feels the chill of fingers on his skin and taste cold spit on his tongue -- but it is only in dreams, his dreams, that they possess visible form and shape.
This is how Saix knows he is awake: when Vexen is nothing more than a biting voice in dead air, a retort caught in rapidly distorting glass.
This is how Saix knows he cannot afford to lose his already-tenuous definition of existence.
* * * * * *
Vexen could have told Saix differently: of all the tools at a human being's disposal, one's senses are the most unreliable.
There is no empirical evidence for the soul -- no matter how carefully they tried to measure it back in Radiant Garden, with their test tubes and counters and darkness extractors -- but it is real anyway.
* * * * * *
The manifestation of Vexen's ghost seems to have aborted the blurring line between the scientist's memories and his own -- and for that, Saix is grateful, and not a little relieved. On the other hand, it also means that the construct isn't nearly half so manageable. It hovers and complains and offers pithy commentary while Saix is attempting to concentrate, and is, generally speaking, an all-around nuisance. The Luna Diviner supposes he ought to be glad, at the least, that he's been given something more tangible than a voice at the back of his head to speak with; all the same, he isn't sure that this is much of an improvement.
Matters come to a head when the ghost speaks directly into his ear, criticizing his handwriting as he attempts to translate the scientist's notes. As far beyond irritated as any of his kind can possibly be, Saix snarls an oath, pushes himself away from the desk, and hurls the inkpot at what he estimates to be the location of Vexen's head.
Even if it were there, of course, the projectile makes no impact, but smoothly sails on through. The subsequent shatter of glass against the far wall of the room -- and the black stain that blooms against the stone -- is enough of an indicator of the trajectory the ill-chosen missile takes, and Saix frowns. He'll have to get a Dusk to clean that up later, and perhaps get him a new inkwell. What a waste, really. He shouldn't have snapped like that.
Vexen's ghost seems to be thinking along the same lines, because its voice is full of reproach. Now what was that for?
The question is enough to douse what's left of Saix's brief rage; memories of emotion only go so far once rationality arrives on the scene. The Diviner loses his hands into slow fists, and then opens them again, feeling the play of muscles and bones. This is flesh. This is real.
Vexen is not.
"Why," he blurts suddenly, leaning back against his chair with a long-suffering sigh, "do I have to have such unhelpful delusions?"
There is a long pause.
I'm not just a delusion. If it's possible for a voice to be pale, Vexen's is, and Saix wonders which of them he's trying to convince.
"Yes, you are," he answers, and the words form a bored drawl. "You're a fiction of my mind, you're a ghost of a man who I never knew to begin with -- you aren't real." You never were, he wants to add, to make the insult bite deep, but before he can say it he feels the atmosphere of the room change subtly, and he tenses without knowing why.
Then how do I know whose name you call out in your sleep?
For an instant, Saix freezes; he thinks suddenly of Xigbar, and of secrets. Then he turns his face in the vague direction where Vexen might be, and replies, "Because you don't."
That challenge charges the air more suddenly than any of Larxene's fits.
I don't? Vexen's voice is taut as a steel cable. Then tell me, how are you getting along these days with a man who doesn't need anything you can offer --
It's not anger which propels Saix out of his chair; not anger, not rage, not anything as honest as emotion, but the memory of it possesses him as deftly as any berserking fury, boiling up from that part of himself which ignored any loss of his actual heart. His identity, maybe, as irrevocably bound to anger as Vexen's seems to be to life. Not anger, then. A wounded sense of pride, perhaps, or rudimentary affection gone sour.
The half-companionship he's grown comfortable in inverts upon itself in less than the time it takes to blink. Summoning bitterness takes hardly any effort at all. What a state he's come to, to be caught arguing with a fiction of his mind. How pathetic. What would Xemnas say?
Saix would laugh, if the words didn't sting so close to the truth.
How does one war with a vision? Even as he pushes himself off the chair and reaches for the voice that spits insults as easily as false breath, Saix already knows the effort is futile. Still, he can't help but try. There is a world of difference between a mere inkpot and a powerful Nobody lunging through the air, though they may well possess about the same emotional capacity.
Exactly how much that is, Saix isn't certain sometimes.
Confusion solves no dilemmas. Saix's body is his truest law, now that he's lost his heart; it claws at the room in impotent gestures that grant no satisfaction. Air parts easily around his fingers, providing as much of a sense of accomplishment as cutting fog.
The lack of anything solid to absorb his attacks means that his aggression finds itself trapped in the circuit of his nerves, biological electricity looking for somewhere to ground itself. Something strange is happening behind his eyes; it's not rage, but it's the closest to that white hot oblivion he's had since he became a Nobody, and he embraces it like a lover.
He wants to grip and grasp and tear apart -- he wants to exert his non-frustration on something, anything, that can receive it.
On his third wild swing, his half-curled fingers connect with something like flesh. Tiny bones beneath it give a sudden, terrible creak as he lets his hand clamp around them and squeeze, hard. Saix is mildly gratified to hear Vexen hiss, relishing the familiar scornful sound of indrawn breath sucked in through the scientist's teeth. The Chilly Academic has always been proud of his unshakeable demeanor; it's always a grim sort of pleasure to see him rattled out of it.
It's only a beat later that Saix realizes the extent of their madness. While his skin is telling him in no uncertain terms that something is certainly there, ice cold and clammy against the sweaty heat of his palm, his eyes are giving him a completely different message: there is nothing in his grasp but air.
The realization stuns him long enough that when the impact comes, he doesn't expect it -- though Vexen, as expected, punches like a complete woman, slapping more than hitting. The momentum behind it may be weak, but the hit has an unexpected sharpness to it: the knuckles on the scientist's hand, bony as the ridges on one of Xaldin's dragoons, crack against Saix's cheekbones with enough force to leave stinging pain and bruises in their wake.
Twisting his head around sharply, even before the sound of fist against flesh finishes echoing around the room, Saix retaliates by snapping at air. His aim's true enough, and he manages to catch Vexen's hand in his mouth. He lets his teeth grind against Vexen's knuckles, unconsciously waiting for the tang of blood; it's almost a disappointment when none comes. He finds himself grinning in not-entirely-wholesome amusement -- and can't find it in himself to really care.
In response, the scientist half-cracks Saix's skull with an impact that could only come from a headbutt.
They fight with no grace and no beauty, and as they crash furiously around Vexen's quarters, the detached part of Saix not running high on adrenalin wonders what this tableau could possibly look like to anyone who came in right now. Would they think Saix had at last snapped, gone around the bend? Or would they recognize the unknown at work? More than likely, he reckons, it would be a combination of both -- they'd assume he'd been possessed by some sort of vengeful ghost.
And maybe that's the real truth.
Saix can't see where Vexen's hits are coming from, but he can judge their source, and it doesn't take him long to discern that Vexen is still fighting with both feet on the floor, with whatever physical strength he must have had in life. That's a pleasant surprise in Saix's favor; had Vexen known of or tried to use his own intangibility to his advantage beyond simple invisibility, then the fight might be a lot more complicated.
As it is, however, it isn't hard for Saix to knock Vexen down to the ground at all. He spents a few moments spread-eagled over the scientist's heaving chest, groping for his ankles and wrists to hold him down, listening impassively to the sistrum-rattle of the other man's breath.
"Do you yield?" Saix asks, though it's a purely perfunctory gesture. He can feel the strange headiness inspired by physical exertion beginning to fade.
If Vexen had eyes he could actually see with, Saix imagines, he'd be glaring. Even so, Saix can still feel the weight of that invisible glower.
No, Vexen spits, and then his invisible mass disappears from under Saix, dropping him to the carpet from a good ten inches or so in the air. Saix swears as the impact sends a particularly sensitive bundle of nerves in his elbow screaming. Awkwardly, he maneuvers himself to his feet, flopping onto the bed.
"That could have gone better," he says aloud. There is no response.
Vexen doesn't return for the rest of the night.
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