One Key to Open the Door to the Heart
Chapter 1: Revelations
Okay, so I've been wanting to post these for some time now just to get it out there cause I am not a big fan of Roxas or Sora for that matter, finding them both to be highly annoying and feeling bad for Xion and her lot in her nonexistent short life. Xemnas obviously saw her as a success and clearly wanted her to remain their keyblader and not Roxas so what if his plans went a little differently? What if he made sure that Xion was his little puppet and that Axel didn't get involved for the inevitable show down that governed who absorbed who? Well this is my rendition of such questions put to life and I hope you will enjoy this and review as I hope I can give it the time and attention it deserves! ^^
Xion stood in the center of the thrones in the Room Where Nothing Gathered, her hood pulled over her face, her face hidden in its shadow. There was only one other in the room with her and he sat in the highest throne in front of her, the Superior of the In-Between and the leader of Organization XIII himself, Xemnas. She chanced a glance up at him, her ocean blue eyes wavering slightly in anticipation. She had only ever been in this room of the Castle that Never Was once before, the day she had first joined the Organization and met Roxas along with the others. She wasn't entirely aware of what went on in here except that there were thirteen thrones that each respective member sat in during meetings like when a new member joins. She wondered briefly where she would sit when another Nobody joined their ranks but was drawn back to the lone black cloaked figure sitting high above her with a smirk on his handsome face. His amber eyes, the orangey color of the sunset she had seen when out with Axel and Roxas at Twilight Town, didn't blink as they remained fixated on her smaller figure. She was beginning to think it had been a misunderstanding on her part to have thought he had summoned her here. Shouldn't he be addressing her? Or maybe there was a way of addressing him that none of the others had told her about? But they all just appeared in their respective thrones when seeking a council with their leader, right? So what was she doing here?
Xemnas' low commanding voice echoed around the empty room, "Xion, Number XIV of the Organization XIII, you do see the problem don't you?"
Xion's face jerked up to better look at the Superior. She had been wondering that. It should be Organization XIV now if it was being named off the number of members and not some alterative meaning behind the number thirteen. He smiled down at her.
"My little pet, the others have been rather uncouth to you, haven't they? Especially Saix, am I correct?"
Xion didn't know what to answer with so she just remained still, still peering up in confusion at the silver-haired man above her.
He nodded as if she had given an answer to his liking. "They have, but you do not know why except that they have doubts in you deserving our title. It hasn't been very long, your stay with us that is, but you already feel misplaced. You haven't really performed as we had planned but that is always expected in the beginning. In time you might prove worthy, but we have very little of that."
Xion's mind buzzed with adrenaline. What was he saying? That everyone had started out slow like she had? She knew Roxas had from the jokes he and Axel had been making in front of her about his zombieness in the beginning and lack of memory. She had been the same although she had been 'regaining memories of her past self' although she didn't fully recognize them. Did this make her different? Did it handicap her so that she wouldn't be able to use her keyblade properly? She had already lost use of it, though no one knew about that little fact and she planned on keeping it that way until she fixed it somehow.
Wait, was this about that? Was it a drawn out explanation of 'hey, we know you can't use what we needed you for so you're better off gone so we're turning you into a Dusk' speech? She didn't want to be one of those wiggling Dusks!
Xemnas seemed to catch her anticipation as he made a calming 'shh' noise. "Don't worry my little pet, you are only going through what would be considered normal for one such as yourself. You must have realized you aren't like the others here. You didn't come into being as they did and only a few of us know that, hence the hostility, they think you are weak but I know you will be strong. I want to explain what you are, to yourself and the Organization. You are vital and honestly better than our current key to our goal of obtaining our hearts once more. I was going to explain it later on, but certain events at Castle Oblivion have me wanting to move things along at a faster pace."
He waited to see if she would respond to this before laying the big revelations of her but she remained stoic and motionless below him, her eyes hidden in the shadow of her hood with her face turned up towards his. He continued to stare down at what bit of her face he could see, seeing her for what Roxas and Axel would see her as, a girl. If the hood was removed however… He dismissed the thought and continued with the explanations.
"You have no Other, you were created in the Replica Program to adopt the abilities of a certain other Nobody. This is something you have indeed done although you are both proving to be very persistent in being your own person."
She spoke now, "What? I Was created to be a replica of someone else? Who?"
Xemnas smiled, she was exactly like what he had hoped she would be. "The other Nobody is of no importance to me, in fact, he will have to be disposed of so you can take his place. You see, my little pet, only one of you can exist in our non-existence, the other will eventually drain the other of all their power and absorb them completely in the process, that or Sora will absorb you both."
She clenched her fists at her sides and scowled. "Who is the other Nobody I've been taking my abilities from? Why can only one of us exist? Why can't we go on as we have been if I am a replica of him?"
Xemnas laughed softly at her questions. "Because, you were created to be better than he and you have been taking his power as he takes it back in turn. That is why you started out without a weapon of your own, that is why you are where you are at now without the use of your weapon. Do you think I haven't been watching my favorite little member of my organization closely enough to know what is going on?"
Xion gulped down the growing lump in her throat, her fear rising. "Who is he?" she forced past the lump that wouldn't go down, afraid she already knew the answer.
"Sora's special Nobody, Roxas."
Xion would have cried if she could feel emotion, if she had a heart to grasp fully what she thought she was feeling, what she knew she would be feeling if she had one. Despair. "No! I won't do it! And neither will he, we're best friends. He, Axel and I all are and nothing will ever change that!"
Xemnas' smirk returned. "Are you sure about that? Axel follows his own rules most of the time and does what's best for him and that usually means what's best for the Organization. Roxas however is becoming a burden to me. You were supposed to replace him after your time here and I do believe it will come to pass even if it is accelerated a bit."
"Friends don't hurt their friends!" Xion declared, taking an angry step forward.
Xemnas laughed, the deep sound resonating around Xion and the room of thirteen thrones. "Friends aren't as trustworthy as you might think at first, my pet." He disappeared in a pillar of darkness before appearing in another so that he was standing in front of her. He reached out with a gloved hand and cupped her feminine cheek. "To Roxas, you appear as the girl Sora is so emotionally attached to, how Sora remembers her with slight variations. To Axel, you appear as her Nobody who is unique in her own way as well, Naminee. To Saix and the others of the Organization you appear as a hooded puppet that in some opinions is defective while to me you are a perfect replica of Sora, Roxas' Other." he pushed back her hood with his other hand and watched as her feminine facial features instantly became Sora's in a blink of an eye, even her boots changed to a pair of overly large sneakers resembling the ones Sora wore. He sighed sadly and pulled her hood back, marveling at the change once more.
Xion gasped and stepped back. This was too much to take in. how could she have been created in an experiment? How was she draining Roxas' power and how could she stop it? Could she stop it? Could things remain like they were or did she have to decide to live or die now? And how could Axel, Roxas, Xemnas and the others see her differently, literally? What did Sora look like? What did Naminee look like? Her frightened deep blue eyes peered back up at Xemnas who still stood before her and she stepped closer. She wanted to ask all those questions but couldn't find the voice to get them out.
"Xion, I don't want to see Sora's annoying face when I look at you, nor do I feel you need to run around as a 'broken puppet' in the eyes of the others. You need to become your own person, Roxas won't go away exactly, just return to Sora who is currently in Castle Oblivion. That is what makes you two so special, the one you resemble is still his own person and not a Heartless, therefore his Nobody won't just disappear but just reunite."
"Why do I resemble him? Why does Roxas see me as a girl he remembers and why does Axel see me as Naminee?" Xion finally asked, her hands clutching at the base of her throat at her cloak.
"You, in absorbing Sora's abilities through his Nobody, also took on his memories that were leaking from Roxas from him. Roxas himself isn't whole because Sora still breathes and that is why he doesn't claim these memories and you can by being around him." Xemnas explained softly.
Xion processed this new information and frowned. "So that's why my first few missions were with him, so I could use the keyblade."
Xemnas nodded, a small smile warming his features to an almost father like expression of pride in his child.
"So you didn't intend for Roxas to stay within the Organization at all then, from the beginning." She accused, hurt for the crime against her best friend.
Xemnas frowned as he thought out what he was going to say next, everything rode on this conversation with her, they needed a keywielder and not one that was defective. "Not exactly, you see, we discovered that Roxas, while having the needed abilities of Sora's to wield the keyblade, couldn't be all that he could be with Sora still out there. That is what makes him so special, his Other is still out there swinging his key around. We needed someone who wouldn't be absorbed by Sora if they met, someone who could take him out of the picture entirely. That is when Vexen, Zexion and Lexeaus created you in the basement of Castle Oblivion and they did far better than I had expected. They made you perfectly like Sora but completely unattached in any way that he could take you back. Except for the memories. Those are a problem that we will deal with by ending Roxas' non- existence. We must have them taken care of immediately so you can be free of them."
Xion shook her head forcefully. "No, I don't want, I don't need to be free of Roxas. He's my friend, how many times must I tell you that? Friends help each other out, they don't stab them in the back."
"You don't have to necessarily do it in the back, you can stab him in the front after confronting him. You can explain the situation if that makes you feel any better…"
Xion looked shocked and disgusted. "It won't! How could it? He would still be my friend and I'd still be betraying him. Besides, how do you know I'd win? He's stronger than me with the keyblade."
"For the time being," Xemnas mused, tapping his chin thoughtfully with his arm crossed in front of him, "But you have been getting better. I've been watching you, remember? You'll get the lion's share soon and that will be the time to strike."
Xion shook her head in disbelief. He wasn't giving her a choice, was he? She didn't know what to say but she knew that Roxas would be waiting for her at the clock tower in Twilight Town for ice cream. "I have somewhere I need to be."
Xemnas nodded, excusing her. As she turned to walk out of the room, he said softly behind her, his deep voice echoing off the blank walls and empty thrones once more. "Just remember what I said, my pet. Only one will survive, the other will die."
Xion tried to hide the shiver that ran down her spine but feared it still showed. She hurried to her room and sat on her plain bed, pulling her knees up against her chest and wrapping her trembling arms around her legs, her face falling in the crook of her knees. Nonexistent tears stung the back of her eyes and she felt a dry sob wrack through her body and found that curious as she really couldn't cry, but the emotion was there. Or the memory of an emotion as all the Nobodies said it was. But she had no memories from a previous life, she had been an experiment in a lab in a basement of a castle. These were real feelings, though she couldn't express them like a normal person would. This realization brought another wave of dry sobs from her, causing her to almost choke on nothing but the emptiness that was there in her gut and the cold spot in her chest. But that was normal. Even if she was a creation by the scientist Nobodies, she still had no heart to fill that dark void in her chest.