So...we are back to practicing Phoenix writes something that is actually finished enough to publish roughly about once every four months that is not in the fandom that her fans favorited her in, AGAIN.
Something that randomly popped into my head in the middle of working on a different Demyx fic (currently in progress, if it'll ever make it out of that state, we don't know) and actually relaxed long enough for me to finish eating and sit down to write it. If it doesn't make any sense, blame the overdose of chocolate
Disclaimer: (although since it's FANfiction, why would you think I owned it anyway?) I don't own Kingdom Hearts, and especially not Organization XIII, of whom I absolutely adore. I do however, own a version of 358/2 Days (and I adore Xion) and I plan to own one of the corset coats as well as KH:II
Vaporous
By Phoenix to Flame
There was no rain in the World That Never Was, when the first six found the tear between realms. Just a castle floating alone in the stars. No water ran away off the sudden drops of land, and no rivers cut through nonexistent fields.
Number IX had never accepted the lack of water, it was one of the two things that kept him smiling when he was Somebody, and kept him him when the transition of being a Nobody began.
His sitar clutched even through the split, and the water that slid all around the two of him.
He sat on the only open balcony of the castle, plucking the strings of his sitar in harmless play. He was far more different than all the others that hid in the castle, except for perhaps the new Thirteen, memoryless and still making him catch his breath with sudden teasing brushes of what it used to be like to have a heart.
He had been a nobody for maybe longer than the first six, hiding in the world full of oceans and not being found by the creatures that fed off of scraps of whatever they found. It was amusing to know that he was older than even II with his gray streaked hair or IV with his 'superior' knowledge or I with all the ambition that would throw him away as soon as nothing else could keep up.
Working in a castle where doing the bare minimum to keep him a pure Nobody and not a Dusk, where he could play his songs at any time of day or night without being physically afraid of the creatures that woke up at night.
Fingers struck out memories in the chords that followed the tune without true words falling away from his mouth like the peacefully spiraling rain that fell on his face. He was possibly more than the rest of the Organization, with not only memories of how it felt to feel, but a tenuous, spiderwebfragile bonding between his body and his Heart.
He might have been the only Nobody to kill his own Heartless, smashing it over the head with the sitar that he was born with from the water, then calling the ocean to smother him into nothingness. Number XIII emphasized the fragile bond he clung to, because IX still felt the string connecting the two pieces of himself together, and XIII leaked connections with his Heart all over the place.
His sitar sang out the songs that used to call birds to him, fluttering around in white cacophonies of feathers while he watched the waves crash up the beach farther and farther till the niche in the sand that he perched on was under the backwave. He didn't even remember the words to this song, but his hands still knew the patterns to make melodies fly away into the rainy night.
His hair didn't stand up anymore under the torrent, but instead draped itself across his eyes and sent rivulets of water like a mockery of tears falling away on his face. He hadn't cried, hadn't felt the need to cry in so many years that it was almost hysterical.
But Nobodies didn't have Hearts, only had memories of emotions and reactions that made one want to laugh or cry or feel fiery anger seeping from every piece of their bodies.
Pathetic.
But IX wanted a Heart again, wanted it so bad he could taste the desire. Unknown years of not caring, of just being the man with a melodic voice and a melodic instrument that blended like the patterns of sun-dappled skies on a field of blue flowers. Like the reflections in the still waters that seemed too perfect to exist- and they were.
At last, focusing on the sitar he held in his arms contently, feeling the slippery caress of it's parent of water, he shifted fingertips to different places on the strings, pulling out a song about the moon on the water, asking for a short time to pretend that he was someone with a Heart, playing songs for someone who wanted to hear them and would sing with him, and stop the feeling of being alone as what he was.
Pretend. Play.
Let the rain fall down like shards of ice and pretend that being a Nobody is perfect, that nothing else is needed, that he didn't want to be Somebody again.
There used to be no rain in the World That Never Was, and there shouldn't have been, except for the water tamer, playing nocturnes on a sitar made of the same magical liquid that fell from the skies like tears from bodies that weren't supposed to be able to cry them.
Review if you thought it deserved it for being good or for being bad. My apologies if you thought the latter. Actually, you don't have to review, I just appriciate it.