A/N - Fair Maiden here. What do you know, Lexaeus wanted his own oneshot. Here you go, big guy.
Disclaimer - Hey, if I owned the Organization you wouldn't be forced to kill them all in order to win the game. I don't own the others, either.
Impossibilities
o
"Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish."
- Euripedes
o
Not that it's the place of a Nobody, something universally despised as an open wound in the universe's side, to point fingers or judge, but he does it anyway.
Those two are insane.
The stuff of which legend is made from, up close and personal, but the problem with legends is that when you can see them face to face - close enough to feel their breath, see the way their eyes dart from side to side as they scan your defenses, feel the cold bite of their blade - you might not like what you see.
He should know. He used to be a legend himself. Not now, of course. Nobodies aren't allowed to be legends, just bad dreams, children's stories told to warn incautious young 'uns of straying too far from their parents' careful protection. If you don't listen to me and keep where it's safe, he remembers some cross mother saying, a big black Nobody will come and eat you up. How would you like that?
He could have spoken up and told her that Heartless were the real dangers when it came to being eaten, that he'd never eat kids, he kind of liked them, that back in the day (blurry, painful memory) he used to swing them up on his shoulder for a ride, toss them into clear ocean waves to the tune of delighted shrieks, that the only reason he was spying on her and her family, lurking in the shadows like any typical monster, was because her little girl reminded him of another little girl he'd known, long ago. In the end he doesn't speak because it wouldn't be worth the screams, and anyway he agrees with her in a way: children should stay where they're safe, not go poking around in dangerous places, in the dark.
He'd never want a kid that could have been one of the ones he'd loved to end up like him.
Or like those two Keyblade bearers, for that matter. Better to not be a legend at all - never to know the hungry caress of darkness, the blinding touch of light, the empty, starving places hidden within worlds and hearts which scream their nonexistent throats raw for something more, and are met with nothing but silence. Let the little girl laugh and play and do her homework and grow up and complain that her life was dull and have a blissful, happy, normal existence.
It's what he would have chosen for any of the kids he'd loved, if he'd had the chance.
It's what those two will never have, not now that they've allowed themselves to be pulled into the story. Insane, he repeats to himself, and he remembers a flash of silver hair and darkness too pure, light too clear, and he remembers a Keyblade that could lock and unlock any door, reveal any secrets, and a pair of guileless, sea-blue eyes with no knowledge of the proper use of the power with which they battered their way through matters more delicate than they could guess.
Just boys, just a couple of kids still wet behind the ears, and enough power to save or damn a universe full of worlds placed in their hands.
The Organization has learned enough to be cautious with the power they can summon, to stick close to the shadows because they know what could be lurking in the deeper Dark, to keep a wary eye on the Light which has little love for their kind, to walk softly through the Corridors of Darkness because it's best not to leave any mark of your passing, and to above all keep the tenuous balance they've established with the world around them. Give and take, and maybe their very existence is an insult to the worlds which bear the marks of their feet, as a guardsman (who reminded him a little of the person Xaldin used to be) had spat at him a few weeks ago before he'd been killed by a heavy blow of Skysplitter; maybe, but at least he knows that if it weren't for the endless missions beating back the waves of Heartless, that guardsman and his entire family, from his wife down to the youngest infant, would have been lost to the Dark long ago.
These boys, half-trained and desperate with fear and confusion, are not careful. Because they saved the worlds once, they think they know everything, with the typical arrogance of youth - at least the brown, sea-blue one does, he thinks that the silver, sea-mist one might be a little more aware - and leave the marks of their passing blazing like beacons for all to see, trample plans that have been years in the making under their clumsy feet. It was too much to hope that the one who'd been closer to the Dark for a while could grasp what it meant to be a Nobody, to be Nothing, he knows that now, but for a little while it hurt to know that the enemy who had come the closest to being one of their own was siding with all the rest of the world and not with the ones he'd had a chance to understand.
Give and take is obviously not something these boys understand. They think they can cheat, take from the Dark while only giving back to the Light, and refuse to hear the ominous rumble under their feet which means that sooner or later their stubborn bigotry is going to rip them apart. The universe is no human judge to be swayed by emotional appeal or the blindness of hatred, it merely knows an imbalance when one is created, and corrects it by the simplest means possible; forces of nature are never very complicated and that's probably why so many people are scared of them.
Arrogant, hot-headed impatience; fumbling, power-hungry ambition, and they're both still so young that they've mistaken Dark and Light for black and white. He could have told them that no story was that simple, that if they'd looked a little closer they would have seen that the reason Merriweather hated Maleficent so much was because they used to be best friends, the awkward duo with the energetic, crazy ideas; that half the populace in Agrabah still missed Jafar because while he was around the taxes might have been regular but so were the inspections of the roads and the upkeep of public buildings; that the eco-system in Wonderland depended heavily on the dark, almost twisted plants and beings that fed on Darkness and gave the Light in that world its mysticism and haunting power; that Halloween Town itself was a prime example of the life-giving, nurturing side of the Dark.
He could have told them, but they wouldn't have listened. He was a Nobody, after all, and Nobodys weren't supposed to have emotions, and apparently that meant that they couldn't think or reason as well. He's not quite sure where the logic for that came from, but he'd been shut up by enough squawking voices whenever he'd tried to explain something that he was pretty well used to it by now.
Sometimes he puts a hand over the empty, aching place where his heart ought to be, and thinks, I feel. I feel loss - and hunger - and need. When Demyx tripped and fell on top of Xigbar the other day, I laughed. I thought that it was funny - doesn't that mean that I feel? Even if part of me has been ripped away - even if I know that the person I used to be has been damaged maybe past repair - don't I still have feelings?
Maybe when I get my heart back, feelings won't hurt so much.
Sometimes he looks at Sora and wonders why the stupid, blundering child can't see that if the Organization are freaks, so his he - he and that friend of his caught between Dark and Light and the princess that even he has sense enough to cherish. They're all anomalies, peculiarities that logically have no place in the worlds - that could only have a place in a story filled with monsters and magic and impossible feats of heart and mind - and, he hopes, redemption and rebirth and the kind of ending where the people you thought were dead were really just pretending all the time.
They're all impossible, except for the fact that they are - living and breathing and laughing and crying and breaking hearts and saving them.
No wonder reality is splitting apart with the effort of telling their story.
Oh man, there's nothing better than writing a Kingdom Hearts fanfic that you're really satisfied with.
I hope you guys feel the same way - but how am I to know unless you tell me?
Hint. Review.