Disclaimer: I own none of the characters mentioned in this story, they all belong to Disney and/or Square-Enix respectively. This has been written for amusement, not for profit. All comments are welcome.
"Darkness in Zero"
He was not one of them. They were cold, tenacious, and frighteningly vicious, but more than anything else, they were empty. Nobodies were shadows; ghosts trying either to re-live or lash out against their own memories, the agonizing absence of their hearts. Just like them, his memories were the genesis of his turmoil, the foundation of his pain. However, where for them there was only emptiness, in him something festered.
He was not Ansem, the self-dubbed "Seeker of Darkness". At Castle Oblivion, the bizarre battlement of the Organization, he had posed as him. Ansem reveled in darkness, a man with a mind so twisted that it survived and embraced the loss of his heart. Ansem was Heartless incarnate, an absolute. From his first choice to his final moments he was always certain, always faithful to his nefarious calling. As the Nobodies had lost their hearts, he had lost his humanity. But that man could not pose as Ansem. True he had his drive, his overwhelming conviction, but he was not a being of darkness, not yet. What lurked in him was more organic, more erratic, but just as all-consuming.
DiZ exuded hatred. He cared nothing for light or darkness - both served his purposes. He hated the Heartless, but he loathed the Nobodies. His grudge with them was personal, and by no means exclusive to the Organization. He cared nothing for Roxas, who was by his own words, "never meant to exist." Namine too, was of no more value to him. Less than merely expendable, he had ordered her "disappearance" after she had finished restoring Sora's memories. Whatever the Organization had done to him, his vengeance was an indiscriminate wild-fire. It threatened to consume everything involved: himself, the Heartless, the Nobodies, and even Sora, if it came to that. DiZ had survived the darkness, escaped the emptiness, but only by embracing fury, and Riku would have no further part in his schemes.
He had let Axel and Namine go - he was not DiZ's personal executioner. He knew very well the dangers of anger. It consumes, deludes, and clouds judgment, making friends seem like enemies.. Riku betrayed his friends, selling his love for them for a childish outburst of anger spawned by his own self doubt. He had nearly fallen into oblivion for his mistake, locked away forever in a shadowy grave which he had dug for himself. His unwarranted second chance was a gift of both the King and DiZ, but he knew that only one of the pair acted out of genuine compassion.
Yes, Riku knew the hate that burned in DIZ. Though they had both come to it differently, only one was still blinded by it. Riku had seen the darkness which hate invites, how it destroys anything noble that may have inspired it. He had been slave to it once, but never again. His sins may be unforgivable, unforgettable, but he still had the power to act. He would never allow his friends to be harmed by another's reckless resentment, not while he lived, and if that meant facing DiZ as well as the Nobodies and Heartless, than he would accept that.
Riku gazed at the eternal dusk of Twilight Town from Sunset Hill's wooden rails. For all DiZ's calculations, he could never account for Sora. Of all people, Riku knew first hand just what he could do when things came down to the wire. He'd rise above any schemes, and somehow pull through at the end. He never forgot the love of his friends, and that's what made him the Keyblade master. Riku may have forgotten that once, but Sora had a way with bringing out the best in people. Now Sora was awake, and the dusk of Twilight Town almost seemed like dawn. Who knows, maybe he'd bring out the best in DiZ too.
