Title: Doomed Before We Even Started
Author: Ebony Kain
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and its characters are all property of Disney/Squeenix. Trust me, if I owned them there'd be an adult version (both that all the characters would be legal age and that it would be rated Adults-Only) that might include DatingSim-like side quests. Maybe an OAV. And the Organization 13 really would have an orgy.
Originally written July 2007. Also posted on y!Gallery
The common belief amongst the younger members was that their numbers all corresponded to the order in which they'd lost their Hearts. In numbers VII through XIII, it may be true. But that was more of a coincidence and the fact that numbers I through VI had no better idea how to organize and keep order over the neophytes. Their numbers really had nothing to do with their Hearts at all.
Depending on which of the first six you asked, you might be told they all six of them lost their Hearts in the same exact moment—Look of anger and promise of retribution on the face of the man you had all called "Teacher", "Mentor" and "Lord". Fear chilling the blood but no turning back now, far too late for second thoughts. Just embrace you own anger, hate and feelings of betrayal. And damn him to the Darkness.
Though if you asked Vexen, he'd tell you it isn't always so sudden as that. Not for him at least. Not like Heartless reaching in and tearing it out with all the sudden pain and wrenching death of form and identity. A true scholar—if you asked him to, he could reach up onto his shelf a find the notes and journals to point out the exact week (even the most personal aspects of his life were recorded and annotated like a scientific journal documenting some long-term experiment) it became noticeable that Even was losing his Heart to Darkness. But you would be hard-pressed to get him to tell you about it. Even now he doesn't like to think on it.
If you asked him to take down the journal dated a year and a half later, Vexen could tell you that Ienzo's death was abrupt. That it was that incident that did it, even though not a one of them realized what was wrong with them for at least a week after Ansem was gone.
But it was two weeks to the day they got rid of their Master that Ienzo sat at the breakfast table and announced the most accurate description of being a Nobody that any of them had heard to this day.
"It's rather like being on morphine, isn't it?"
All of them stop eating to give the smallest scientist their full attention. "When I hurt my leg that winter, and they gave me morphine before pushing the bone back inside. It feels the same. I know what's going on and it's scary and disgusting and very painful… but I just can't care. I think I still feel it… but I can't care about it."
"Yeah," the silence lasts only a moment before Braig's embittered voice breaks in, "but we can't just wait and it'll wear off, now, can we?"
Those first months were hard as they all struggled with the memories of who they had been and the reality of what they became. It was Xehanort who suggested adopting new names. To help them come to terms with their situation, he'd said. Aeleus offered the "X" which bound them together in brotherhood.
"X": the Unknown Quantity of scientists and mathematicians everywhere. And so often in their research it had come to represent the unpredictability of emotion and action generated by the Human Heart.
Dilan presented the idea of the anagram, after that. "The Unknowable amalgamated with the memories of who we once were. We are different now, yes. But we should never forget where we came from." And then Braig had organized the collection of their photographs and any old birthday or holiday cards, letters and scraps of notes passed in conversation during Ansem's lectures, doodles drawn on the scratch pad by the phone… all the odd and ends that painted a picture of life in that house. These he presented to Ienzo, who, with the help of Aeleus, created a wood-covered, leather bound archive of their collective pasts.
Xemnas keeps it now. At least, they all assume he still does. He insisted he be the one to hold onto it, yet grew annoyed with the frequency they asked to view it. They learned to stop asking all together after a year. No one has had the heart to ask if he has it still.
But the numbering system had been given to them by Ansem when they were yet little more than children in the care of scientists. It clung to them like a burr—deeper than their own names had. Every time you try to pull it off it only digs the spines more deeply into a new bit of flesh. The numbers of Organization members I through VI had held no real meaning up until the discovery of Saïx. It had merely been a holdover from their old lives as apprentices, assigned in accordance to what section of experiments and research of the Heartless Project they were appointed to.
Saïx was number VII and they were all his seniors. He thrived only when there was a clear-cut hierarchy. It took thirteen months of study before Xemnas decided their numbers would equal rank—just to keep the young Nobody calm, of course. They would know the numbers meant nothing.
But when Axel was found a year after that, things were made more difficult. He clashed with the elders and Saïx on sheer principle. Numbers and ranking suddenly needed to be enforced and lived-up-to. They six were senior to Saïx, but now the younger Nobody was senior to another—with a year and a half more experience of being a Nobody, Saïx's judgment could be life-saving when they frequently ventured out into Worlds that hated and reviled them for what they lacked. But if Axel could not be given reason to respect that judgment he could endanger the lives of all those around him.
And from there it went. Each new Nobody they discovered with enough sense of self to keep a rational mind and a human shape received a new name (with the "X" of their new Brotherhood) and a number to show them their place. It was more like a tradition, now: Done for the sake of doing, but with the original purpose lost to time and the fragility of Human Memory.
Author's Commentary: Oddly enough...As I was typing it all up from my notebook, for some reason, although it is subtle, Xemnas was reminding me a little bit of Napoleon from Orwell's Animal Farm. ¬_¬
I'll just say my mind makes very strange connections and I will never escape my English Lit major.