Lexaeus did not know exactly what he had been expecting.
Their preceding conversation had been short, curt and most unfeeling. It was cold, like the long, sprawling corridors of darkness which they so often were forced to navigate. Vexen was dead, that much was clear. Lexaeus felt the bitter loss as a warrior might lose a limb in the heat of conflict: numbly and marked with disbelief, as though the annoying babble which Vexen always tended to produce was still lingering about him, like white noise. He had sensed it from the beginning, the true nature as to their assignment to this castle. Trust was rare in this organization, and rarer yet was loyalty.
Xemnas had known that they had seen too much, that they knew too much. He saw it in the judgement of their eyes, the measured sighs of their responses. He wanted to do away with what he could not control. Vexen was the catalyst and Lexaeus feared that the reaction that was to follow would not cease until it had consumed them whole.
But regardless, this was beside the point. He had suspected Xemnas from the moment his heart had been ripped away. He had known this as fact going into the 'transfer'. Now that he considered facing off with Riku in battle, something about the decision felt overwhelmingly final, as though ever word, every thought were being recorded in stone.
He had wanted comfort, reassurance. Above all else, he had wanted to know Ienzo...rather, Zexion was alright. There was always a note of pure and unadulterated perfection in something quite so simple as the child's smile. His ability to remind the guardian of exactly what was important in his existence was something of an amazing feat, but as he stood in the darkness of the library (Zexion's typical haunt), something within his resolve wavered.
Zexion emerged from the shadows. He had been there all along. Perhaps it should have hurt for Lexaeus to admit it, but the darkness suited him. It decorated him like stars adorn the night sky. They were made for one another. He wore his power like a proper king.
"Riku is dead already?" He drawled, recalling that their agreement in this course of action had only happened a breath of a time ago. He stared up at the goliath fighter with expectation in his visible eye.
With a small, polite sigh, he indicated clearly as crystal between the two of them that Riku was alive: he had not yet departed. With a quirk of his brow that even Even would have found himself proud of, Zexion fixed his companion with a petulant glare. Lexaeus peered down, and he found an expression that he was not surprised had surfaced on the doll-like face of the young prodigy.
It was a sneer. Not the smile of the man's childhood that he had wanted to see. Not that hint of humanity which brought him all the closer to his guardian. It was the crass expression of one who is simply tolerating their current company for as long as necessary to make them 'happy' for all intensive purposes. "Then what are you still doing here?"
Lexaeus had never felt so strongly that he wanted to slap someone before, to grab the small academic and shake him until something which resembled sense was jolted back into position in that heinous, glorious brain of his. Perhaps he could see that Aeleus was simply vying for his support, his reaffirmation, but he would offer no such trade off. No, increasingly so to Zexion, idle time was lost time to gain power with. Little Ienzo, to which the guardian had sacrificed so much to the hope for, and the idea of, had been lost somewhere between his sneer and his horribly dead eyes (or, eye, rather). Ienzo had dissipated into...
"Nothing." Lexaeus rumbled, not recognizing his own voice. "Nothing at all." There was a note of coldness which made him want to deny he had answered in the first place. That could not possibly be him. He would never find it within reason to attack a mere child, no matter how powerfully the keyblade posed a threat. That was ridiculous.