This is a cross-post from AO3. I'm posting this here as a test. If the response seems positive, I'll start posting my second, much longer story in the "It's Okay for Demyx to Have Feelings Darn it Verse" series, the final chapter of which I'm in the middle of writing. The two stories are unrelated, but share similar head cannon verse settings and are meant to be complementary. That is, I tried to write the second one so that each story makes a little more sense if the other story is read, although they can and do stand alone.

Author's Notes:

First, I like the theory that Demyx is secretly the MoM and this story revolves around that.

Second, in my head cannon, since we still don't know Demyx's background, I have this idea that while he's the MoM, he's *also* originally from an alternate Earth where Kingdom Hearts games don't exist. (Actually, this was my head cannon even before I played KH3.) So, rather than saying that KHIII's epilogue took place in The World Ends With You or Verum Rex, in my head cannon, it's alternate Earth. Or, as I put it, Eårth.

Third, this story was both darker and smutty-er in my head. Alas, my writing skills, regardless of my imagination, tend to skew toward comedy and non-smut. I wasn't quite sure whether this made it to an M rating, but I feel pretty comfortable giving it a T. I added the "Graphic Depictions of Violence" tag just in case, but I'm not sure it's necessary. If anyone wants to take this idea and make it smutty-er and darker, while giving me proper credit and asking permission first, I would be on board with that idea.

Fourth, while I consider myself a grammar nazi, I am notoriously bad at checking my own work. I've been reading and reading everything as I went along, but if you find any mistakes please do let me know.

Fifth, in some versions of this fic, the Black Box contained Demyx's memories or a certain Keyblade. Frankly, I forgot about the BB while I was actually writing this, so please don't ask me about the BB.

How Love Destroyed the Worlds

When the monsters came, no one could believe it. Surely, this was some sort of sci-fi or horror or fantasy movie being filmed. Monsters didn't exist after all. Myde held onto that idea as he clutched his phone outside the GameStoppe in the chintzy downtown mall, eyes wide with disbelief and fear, until he felt the pain of his body being pierced. He looked down at his chest and saw the claw and the blood and the gore. And then Myde died.

When Demyx became a Nobody, he didn't produce a Heartless. Instead, he felt his consciousness hurtle through space, through some sort of moon, and shatter on the other side. He was everywhere and everywhen, gazing down and up and through the vastness of this world he didn't recognize, that looked nothing like home, like Eårth. He saw civilizations rise and a massive war that destroyed everything. Nothing lived. After the war there was only Darkness which went on and on and on and Demyx screamed and screamed and screamed, as he felt the edges of insanity start to engulf his mind.

And then he was whole again. He stood, on a white, white, too white tower, shivering with the aftereffects of his consciousness being pieced back together. His black leather jacket and band shirt and blue jeans had transformed into a long, black coat, black shirt, black pants, black shoes, black gloves. In his hand he held his Heart made manifest—the x-blade. And somehow he knew, with no idea how or why, that Kingdom Hearts had sent him there—to Daybreak Town—to save the Realm of Light.

First, he tried to prevent the war. This did not work. Time and time again, he sent Luxu out into the world with No Name (because even if he'd seen the future once before, he needed to know that his changes were working now), and the only thing that changed was that each time the war started earlier and earlier.

His new plan was to trigger the war a few centuries early, but in a controlled manner so that there were survivors. This worked... until the second Keyblade war when the Dark Master won and reset the worlds using Demyx's own Heart.

His third plan started with his second, but he decided to give Luxu a little more guidance, and to be there for the second war. This plan would require breaking his Heart, to prevent the Dark Master from getting his hands on the x-blade too soon. The price of his broken Heart would be amnesia. But Kingdom Hearts needed to remain safe, after all.

After the second war, the plan would be to get ahold of the x-blade and revive his memories, and work on restoring the Realm of Light into the strong, singular entity it had been originally.

Traveling to the right time wouldn't be a problem, since a part of him already existed at every point of time.

But, once this plan was set in motion, it was unlikely he could try again. He knew he was having some trouble this time, seeing the events around the time he'd be there and the second war. But his plan had to work. It just had to.

As the Master of Masters, he hadn't expected his amnesic self to fall in love—much less with three people. It probably didn't help that no one realized that Demyx was a special Nobody, that he actually did have feelings right from the start, thank you very much. That he felt frustrated, because the sitar felt so wrong in his hand but he could never quite grasp the image of what he was supposed to be wielding instead. He spent painstaking years learning to play, trying so desperately to be strong, to be useful, to be needed, never realizing the irony that he'd been the one to handicap himself. That he was supposed to be stronger than anyone, that he was the first Keyblade wielder, that he was the one Kingdom Hearts had chosen to protect it. Eventually, he gave up trying and in despair he shunned the work he'd tried so hard to do. And the insults and sneers which he'd always felt around him just came thicker and faster. It left him vulnerable to perceived kindness.

The first and the last was Luxu. Of course Xigbar recognized Demyx. Xigbar was never kind to anyone, but he protected Demyx, stood up for him against the jeers, asked him if he was "okay," and stared at him with a soft gaze and a small, barely there, genuine smile. Falling into Xigbar's bed was easy, and made Demyx feel warm and protected. Demyx trusted Xigbar more than anyone, so it was Xigbar, more than anyone, which led to Demyx's insanity.

The second was Zexion. Demyx's body was a mystery—giving off spatial and theoretical forms of radiation it absolutely shouldn't. And unlike the rest of the Nobodies, Demyx's cells seemed frozen in time, undying and unaging. To study Demyx, Zexion baited him with homemade chocolate chip cookies and delicious handmade meals, and assurances that he wasn't useless, and compliments on how very pretty he was. Demyx always felt like something was vaguely wrong, but he couldn't resist the food or the praise or the "experiments" that Zexion performed on him. Not the science-y ones, but the ones that tested the best ways to make him moan or how many clones it would take to make him scream in pleasure. So he allowed himself to be poked and prodded, and knew he was in love.

When Zexion died, he cried in his room for weeks. He only stopped after Axel came back safe and sound, and the relief mitigated the grief. Until the day he realized Zexion never loved him at all. But that was later.

The third and shortest was Axel. It didn't help that when Demyx looked at Axel, he saw his ideal sex god. There was something about tall and lankythat just did it for him. When Axel narrowed his eyes at Demyx and purred, Demyx would trip, or fall down, or run away. Eventually, Axel managed to corner Demyx. Axel was just looking for an easy lay, and he figured: Demyx was already sleeping regularly with two people and occasionally with other members of the Organization when they could manage to convince Demyx it was a good idea, why not try Demyx for himself? But only Zexion and Xigbar slept with Demyx more than once and Demyx was in love. So when Axel wanted a second time, Demyx assumed Axel was in love with him too. And it was easy for Demyx to fall in love with the sex god who he thought loved him.

Years later, when Roxas came and Axel pulled away and started sneering at Demyx and telling Roxas and Xion to stay away, because Demyx was such a slut and might try to rape them, and Axel started looking at Roxas like that, Demyx felt so much pain. He wondered if Axel had ever really loved him at all. And with Zexion dead, he couldn't stop himself from clinging onto Xigbar as his lifeline. He became utterly dependent on the sharpshooter.

After the second fight with Sora, Demyx didn't die. There was be no way he could be recompleted, what with his Heart being in twenty pieces. Instead, Xigbar teleported him out at the last moment, when he was mostly dead and Sora wasn't looking, and stuffed a potion down his throat. Demyx was so grateful to be saved: more proof, he thought, of Xigbar's love, that he only wondered, and never questioned, why instead of taking him back to the castle, Xigbar took him to a dusty, red world, full of dead Keyblades that hurt Demyx to look at. His gaze kept shying away, as his throat clenched and tears pricked his eyes. Xigbar led him through a canyon of tornadoes and a maze, before coming to a clearing. He told Demyx to wait there for him. And Demyx did. Xigbar left him with food, but it wasn't enough. After a few weeks, Demyx curled around himself, waiting for Xigbar's return. Too afraid to use a portal to get food, because Xigbar had told him to wait. When he next woke up, weak with starvation, a strange man was standing over him, old and bald, but something about the golden eyes seemed familiar. Demyx lifted his head and his ear brushing against his arm felt strange. He lifted a hand to his other ear and found that ear was pointed.

Demyx didn't like the idea of being benched. He'd thought he was needed, that he'd been norted because he was part of the plan. "Don't worry," Xigbar told him. "I have a very special, secret mission for you." So he whined, but didn't kick up too much of a fuss. He was needed, after all.

When he'd learned that the Nobodies who'd died had been recompleted, he decided to look for Zexion. His mind shuttered away from the thought of looking for Axel, the pain too raw and overwhelming. Only, he didn't know where Complete!Zexion would be. In all the time they'd been together, Zexion had never told him where he was from. He asked Xigbar, but Xigbar didn't answer. Xigbar just gave him a long, silent look he couldn't interpret. So he decided to search for himself. But where would Zexion be? Somewhere there were lots of books, he decided. But no matter how many times he searched Beast's Castle or Twilight Town (Twilight Town has schools, which must mean books!) or Space Paranoids (because computers were like millions of books crammed together, right?), he couldn't find Zexion. Later, he would curse himself for having portalled directly to Space Paranoids rather than stopping at Radiant Garden. Then, he would realize it didn't matter anyway.

When Vexen had him deliver the replica, he was surprised to see Zexion, and so, so happy, but a small, cautious part of him decided to play it cool. He nonchalantly greeted Zexion, while inwardly wondering whether Zexion had been looking for him too, and wouldn't he be just as happy to see him? But at Ienzo's impassive stare, Demyx faltered. Grin more false than genuine now, he revealed his second delivery of Ansem. Demyx's throat knotted, as Ienzo emotionally greeted Ansem. He gave a loud good-bye, but lingered at the edge of the portal, hoping Ienzo would stop him from leaving. Ienzo never did. He no longer cared for finding the mysteries behind the science experiment he'd never managed to crack, more content to work on something that he could figure out.

Whispers of the madness he'd felt in the void when he screamed to the Dark came back to him. Demyx's supposedly non-existent heart broke a third time.

Before the second war started, Xigbar showed him a portal. "Go in," he said. "And wait. You'll be safe there. I'll come for you once the war is over."

For the first time in centuries, Demyx was home. But he didn't remember it—didn't realize that that's where he was—didn't even realize that time had been frozen since he'd left, restarting the moment he stepped foot there. Time on Eårth ran on a different path from the Realm of Light, so Demyx waited and waited and waited. What was a few hours for Sora and Xigbar was several months for Demyx. Then Sora and Riku strolled into Demyx's world. At first, Demyx was terrified, thinking Sora would try to kill him again. But circumstances makes friends, and soon Sora and Riku and Demyx were killing the monsters—the Heartless—that had killed Demyx in the first place—the ones that had somehow bled through Kingdom Hearts to his home world, which until then had been protected. Demyx tried to create a portal back for Sora and Riku, but he didn't know where he was or where the Realm of Light was, and so the portals failed. It took a year for Sora and Riku to convince Demyx to stop wearing his coat, to leave it in a small, trendy backpack while he wore more comfortable clothes. He came to like wearing blue jeans, a blue plaid shirt, and blue canvas shoes.

It was a shock when they discovered that Demyx was a Keyblade wielder. It was so hard to escape pop songs here, that Demyx accidentally memorized one. One day, in Shibuya, while monster hunting, a giant billboard TV started playing the latest hit and Demyx started singing, and Arpeggio twisted into a Keyblade, full of blues and greens and turquoises. Ocean's Song The Keyblade only appeared when Demyx sang—why had Demyx never tried singing before...?—and somehow Demyx thought that it was incomplete, perhaps the twenty-first piece of something else, something better; but it was easy to use and powerful, and for the first time since he lost his memories, Demyx enjoyed fighting. He'd surf on the Keyblade to travel quickly, the water beneath shooting him forward, then he'd skate in a flow motion fashion off a rail or some sort of edge or a wall, and while in midair he'd grab the blade from beneath his feet and send blades of water gushing out from the key at the enemy. It was fun. Soon, Sora and Riku started requesting he sing certain songs while fighting, or groan when he picked ones they didn't like. They were friends. They were family.

Until Xigbar arrived two years later and it all fell apart.

Luxu knew about the world beyond Kingdom Hearts because the Master had told him, had taught him how to create the portal there.

Sora hasn't brought the x-blade to Eårth because it couldn't exist there. It was a thing of Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts belonged to the Realm of Light.

Xigbar stepped into the world of Eårth and heard the chorus of "Pumped Up Kicks" being sung loudly and slightly discordantly in the voice of the person who he {loved} {hated} most. Soon, Demyx came into view, Keyblade surfing as usual, Sora and Riku running behind him. When Demyx spotted Xigbar, his throat caught, the song dying away on "better run, better run." Demyx threw himself at Xigbar, hugging and clinging and kissing and crying and laughing. When Xigbar managed to get Demyx to pull away, he gestured at the portal behind him, a grin on his face. Demyx immediately insisted that Sora and Riku should go first, but "wait just a second while I get my coat out and back on." Xigbar lightly frowned, but knew it was necessary to get the Master back, so he nodded.

The x-blade came to Sora as soon as he stepped out of the portal into the graveyard. When Demyx stepped out, the blade dematerialized out of Sora's hand and rematerialized in a surprised Demyx's. Demyx felt Ocean's Song vibrating inside of him, so he pulled it out, and the Keyblade melted into the x-blade, transforming the Kingdom keys into the same sinuous, wave shape of Ocean's Song.

And Demyx remembered.

By now, Demyx throughly trusted Sora and Riku, so he told them everything. All about who he was and his plans to help protect Kingdom Hearts and save the Realm of Light.

They didn't understand.

Instead of seeing what he'd been trying to do, they saw what he had done. The people he'd manipulated. The lives he'd let die. The apprentices he'd plucked from their destined, normal lives and twisted into suspicious, corrupt things which started the war too, too early.

Suddenly, they saw him as TheEnemy(tm) and oh, there was Axel, looking at him with as much disgust and frigidity as always.

Why?

Why?

Riku had fallen to the Darkness and Sora had done everything to reach out and save him. He'd even forgiven Xehanort of all people.

So why was Demyx the bad guy?

Somewhere, Demyx heard screaming, as his heart broke a fourth time.

His other apprentices didn't stay long. He revealed his plans to save the Realm of Light to them, but they didn't trust him. Not after they realized that he'd let the war happen in the first place. No amount of explaining that the war was inevitable helped. They returned to whence they came, preferring death to staying with him a moment longer.

The day after the rest of his apprentices left, and after Sora declared that he'd stop the Master, the Master of Masters was tired. He pulled his exhausted body toward the bed Luxu had prepared and paused before passing Luxu. He rested against the taller man, placing one hand on his chest the other on his cheek, and kissed him. Luxu didn't kiss back.

Demyx bit back a noise of frustration.

"Why?"

Luxu turned away.

"Luxu, what's wrong?"

Luxu merely shook his head.

Demyx moved so that he was in front of Xigbar again. His finger moved as he made his point.

"I love you... I haven't seen you in three years... I waited for you all this time. Your feelings couldn't have faded in just a day or two, could they?" He snorted.

Luxu looked at the Master strangely.

"What makes you think I ever loved you in the first place? As if. Yeah, I respected you as my Master, and it was nice to have a fun time, but that was it. If that's all, I'm going to go to my room and go to bed."

Xigbar left and Demyx collapsed on the bed, in shock. He buried his head in his hands. He felt the weight of the x-blade materialize next to him on the bed, even though he hadn't called it.

Demyx felt the Darkness rush to consume him.

A terrible, rotting smell filled the room. Demyx's eyes widened as he looked at the x-blade. What should have been metal acted more like flesh, sloughing away into decomposing pieces as Darkness writhed over it. As the last piece broke apart, Demyx heard a laugh coming from it, a laugh that sounded almost like a scream. A dark figure arose from the former blade, and coalesced into a figure that looked exactly like him, save for the Heartless emblem on its chest, the black hair, and the golden eyes.

"Myde." It half croaked, half sang.

"Everyone's abandoned you. Even Kingdom Hearts no longer loves you. Poor Myde." Its arms circled around him. "I love you, Myde. I'd never abandon you." It kissed his cheek. "Give me your pain." Demyx felt himself nod. "Give me your anger and your sadness." He nodded again. "With me, you'll never have to feel that way again." It smirked at the emotionless puppet it held in its arms. "And together, we'll make them all pay."

Darkness rushed out.

Light will see defeat and expire, while darkness prevails evermore. -Book of Prophecies