Scattered Dreams Chapter 1: Organization XIII, a kingdom hearts fanfic

This collection is for another LiveJournal comm: 20_dreams. The challenge is to take a character, pairing, or group and write 20 'facts' about them. They can be canon, fanon, or your own speculation. The ratings here will vary, but are mostly in the T-Soft R area.

I do not own any of the franchises or any related characters mentioned here. This was written out of enjoyment of the series, and no profit is being made.

Claim: Organization XII, feat Naminé
Rating: PG-13, for language
Notes: My first attempt. I'm not sure if I messed it up, seeing as a lot of these morphed into vignettes instead of facts. Takes place at various points in the Organization's history.

19 is more or less a test of a multi-chaptered fic thing that's been eating my brain. That Jubjub bird in 6 will also be returning soon, but actually in Wonderland.

And yeah, that one at the end? I totally went there.

Fun with XIV Powers

There is something of a running joke between Luxord and Xigbar, as to who will be the first to rip a hole in the space-time continuum. When one feels the odd tug of the fabric of the universe being pulled on, he becomes determined to hunt the other down.

Xigbar turns to grin over his shoulder as Luxord runs into the room, having just missed Roxas and Axel go through one of Xigbar's Corridors. (The ones he summons can cross limitless miles.) "Sorry, Brit," he says. "Haven't done it yet."

The younger man grins back. "Splendid. You do know I'll be the first one to succeed...?"

"As if!"

The only time Xaldin is ever apologetic about anything (whether it is sarcastic or not is another matter entirely) is when winter rolls around and the World that Never Was gets deathly cold. (They have no sun, after all.)

You see, he catches colds easily. And with sneezes like his, well...

Make sure you stay at least a hallway's length from him. If not for the wind-speed, than for the sound. Every new recruit thinks there is a series of small explosions navigating the halls during their first winter.

After the scientist had made a particularly scathing remark about his poor work-ethic (or whatever it was he had said), Marluxia takes the time and consideration to send Vexen a potted plant.

The next morning, there is a monstrous piranha plant blocking the door to the lab. He manages to evade four snaps of its jaws before XI and XII burst out laughing from their lookout point.

A week or so later, Marluxia's scythe goes missing. He walks into the courtyard, still searching. Lexaeus and Zexion are watching as Vexen carves a huge block of ice with a certain green-and-pink weapon. The blade is so dull and scratched up it would take weeks to repair.

"Ah, Marluxia!" the Academic grins down at him from a stepladder, eyes invisible behind a pair of heavy goggles (for the glare; ice reflects moonlight rather well). "The three of us are in need of a fourth opinion for the subject matter of my sculpture. Hobby of mine, you know."

It is safe to say the courtyard wasn't the same for months.

Demyx is quite chivalrous, once you get to know him. He doesn't remember what his Somebody did, but many of them suspect he could've been a knight, or at least a soldier. Whatever he did, they're almost sure it involved protecting women or young girls.

Because when Xemnas first mentions kidnapping the Princesses of Heart out of Maleficent's clutches (experimentation purposes, you see), Demyx is so upset he manages to surprise them all by doing two very intriguing things.

One: despite the large height distance between the two thrones, not to mention all the unwritten statuses, the Nocturne works up the nerve to shout at the Superior.

Two: probably unconsciously driven by his raised voice, the water circulating through the walls in the giant castle speeds up to the point that they all hear metallic crashes and ripping sounds before Demyx teleports out of Where Nothing Gathers.

He managed to single-handedly destroy all the pipes without raising a finger.

Xemnas dropped the plan only after Number IX somehow managed to pull off the stunt for three straight weeks. (You can imagine the complaints.)

Zexion can, literally, play with people's minds. If the person is restrained well enough, all it takes is one open page of the lexicon, and it's over.

Until Vexen introduces him to the Jubjub bird, a subject from Wonderland. It ("She", Vexen corrects,) is apparently sentient and capable of advanced speech, but, like all Wonderlandian things, is odd.

Because when Zexion opens the book to enter its mind, his fingers freeze, and he can't for the life of him understand why he can't close the book. By the time he leaves the bird's mind, he is seeing flashes of colour from cameras bulbs that aren't there, and hearing faint songs on radios not in the room. Lexaeus and Vexen speak in rather strange, garbled voices, and the plants in Marluxia's garden look like they hold comet tails and fairy lights in their petals.

The worst part is witnessing the most absolutely elaborate musical numbers that his comrades are unable to see, despite the fact that they're the ones singing and dancing.

There was one late night in the kitchen. They should all be sleeping but none of them are tired and the impossible has happened: somehow the floodgates of conversation have opened. The laughs quieted as the Nymph continued.

"I'm telling you, it was a nightmare," Larxene was saying. "There were flowers fucking everywhere..."

"And you were..." A smile threatened to twitch Lexaeus's face, "...singing?"

The other four men burst out laughing again. They must've been drinking too much because Larxene actually grinned abashedly. "Yeah," she confirmed.

"I wonder where it was," Demyx said, mostly to himself.

"Maybe it was at Disney World," Xigbar spoke up.

The laughs quieted slowly. Xaldin was frowning.

"...Where?" Luxord asked, still smiling.

"You know, Disney World?" Xigbar repeated.

"You mean Disney Castle," Larxene corrected.

"No, I mean..." The Freeshooter drifted off.

"Xigbar," Xaldin nudged him, as though that would bring sense back into his head.

He continued. "No, you guys have to know." When met with blank stares, he said, "You know? The cobblestone streets? With all the kids? And they're all wearing Mickey Mouse ears?"

"They're wearing his ears?" Demyx repeated in horror.

"As in, King Mickey's ears?" Lexaeus repeated blankly.

"No, I-" The man cupped his head in one hand. "I'm confused."

"You had another one of those dreams, didn't you?" Xaldin asked.

You must understand; to Xigbar, distance is nothing. It seems, in his sleep, he can glimpse things very far away.

Very very very far away.

He sneaks into her room through the window looking down onto the courtyard (it's rather easy, he can run up the walls of Memory's Skyscraper in a pinch if he'd like) so she knows he's there. The last time, he teleported in, and almost got hit in the face with her sketchbook. That spiral binding smarts.

They sit at the foot of her bed and talk about things quietly, her knees to her chest and his legs folded underneath him. They quiet and stare across the room in silence at the opposite wall, where a night-light glows orange. It is the only light in the room, other than the thin line coming in from beneath the door.

"Do you want to draw? I'll watch," he offered.

"How?" she asked.

The dim glow of the night-light reveals little of his face as he turns to her, but she can make out a smile. He cups his hands together, as though waiting for a liquid to be poured into them.

Instead, light seeps through his black gloves, gathering in his palms like water. It balls into a cluster of fragile bubbles, all weak pigments and warmth. He can see her looking at his handful of light-marbles, completely astonished. He smiles a little wider, then blows on his brand-new night- lights. They take the air like seeds on a dandelion puff.

They float around her room as though they were multi-coloured fireflies.

"I didn't know you could do that," she whispers.

"Yeah, well..." he looks down at his hands, faintly green in the glow of a passing marble.

He considers telling her what Vexen had told him this morning, but Axel said to keep the showing off to once per visit.

Apparently, no one has ever been able to manipulate light as easily and as skillfully as he has, even though he was far off from creating a fireworks display.

He looks at her, and is slightly panicked to see her looking at him so thoughtfully. Naminé was cleverer than she appeared, he remembered, and only the Gods know how many reasons he and Axel had given her for revenge. (She was fun to play jokes on; they always flustered her.)

Instead she leans over and pecks him on the cheek. She turns away and retrieves her sketchbook from under the bed, as though nothing happened.

"Can you pass me my pencils?" she asks, and he swears he sees colour in her cheeks (but maybe it was just one of the passing red lights).

"R-right."

If you need one good reason not to piss off Larxene, it is this: the equipment needed to keep the Castle That Never Was floating is expensive, delicate, and highly prone to overloading.

Roxas swore on his life (or whatever) that he would never skateboard down the banister again. At the very least, not when Xemnas was around.

Because this was the worst possible punishment imaginable.

Axel had practically begged the Superior not to go through with it.

"Do you take sugar in your tea, Roxas?" Saïx asked, smiling cordially.

The blonde continued to gape, as he had been doing since he spotted the small table, set for two on VII's large balcony.

The man furrowed his eyebrows but continued to smile, as though the boy was telling some vaguely amusing joke. "Really, Thirteen, if you keep looking at me like that your face will freeze. Can't two grown men share a polite cup of tea?"

Normally, Roxas might've been honoured to be called a 'grown man' by one of the older members. But he expected that if he had ever managed to do anything to deserve that, it would've come from Xigbar.

This was just weird.

Seeing that any conversation attempts were pointless, the Diviner turns to Kingdom Hearts, burning in the sky, rusting and ruddy.

"A little scary, isn't it?" he says, musing aloud. "It feels like the moon is dying."

He shakes his head slightly. "Strange..." he lifts his tea cup off it's saucer and up to his smiling lips before sipping.

Roxas waits for him to finish, but nothing happens.

It's only on nights like this that Saïx is actually sane, and drifts off into thought, not some churning sea of calm and rage.

He makes a mental note to behave himself whenever another lunar eclipse comes along.

Pair up Demyx and Larxene if you have to, but whatever you do, don't pair up IX and X in the combat arena. Water, when sped up, can cut through steel like a hot knife through butter. (The walls still have some deep gouges from the one time.)

Sometimes, when they have nothing better to do, VIII and XIII walk the empty streets of the Dark City and cause a little bit of chaos. Axel causes the occasional Dusk or Creeper to spontaneously combust, and Roxas lets the neon signs glow so brightly that they explode, leaving only splinters of glass and angry embers of colour.

Luxord sneaks her out of her room a lot. He says it's unhealthy to be surrounded by nothing but bleached walls and curtains and flowers.

So naturally, he takes her to the place with the darkest, dirtiest colours he can find.

Tortuga.

"Luxord, this place is kind of scary," she says, tugging at the tassels that hang off her belt. She is behind him by several paces, obviously not wanting to head into the bar he's walking towards.

He smiles and drops his tricorne onto her blue-bandannaed head when she catches up. It's far too big and slips over her eyes. "If it's any consolation Naminé, I can't let anything bad happen to you. The Superior - not to mention Marluxia - would have my head."

She nudges the hat back from her eyes so she can frown at him properly.

He rolls his eyes. "Or you could hang on to me," he offers an arm.

She latches onto it as though for dear life as they enter the Faithful Bride. It smells of sea salt and fish, not to mention the horrible stench of sweat and alcohol. She tries to avoid the leers of some of the men as they pass and presses herself closer to Luxord's side.

Her guide meanwhile, walks towards one of the back tables as though in a trance. He knows exactly where to sit where they won't be noticed because he's suddenly a different person and there is suddenly a very different little girl on his arm.

"Poppet," he calls her, and the odd nickname gains her attention even over all the distractions. "I think we've just made a rather serendipitous ascertainment."

"Um...what would that be, Luxord?" she asks as they sit.

He smiles at her, almost greedily, as though having just learned the rules of a new game. "You can affect absolutely anyone's memories."

Axel, like Vexen, can control his body heat as easily as one might flex a muscle. If he concentrates, he can will the fire he controls to burn just underneath the surface of his skin, tingling and threatening to scald him.

It was quite useful to heat up the empty hollow in his chest. It made pretending easier.

He stumbles and pushes through the reeds furiously. Where the hell did he put the damn Gummi Ship?

"We similar!" the ...thing that's been following him says. "We use recipes of yummy-yummies we eat!"

"I do not eat them," Zexion replies coldly, making sure his lexicon doesn't fall as his boots get stuck in the mud again. "And we are not similar."

The odd gelatinous thing (person?) lifts him up out of the mud by his armpits and sets him down next to...her? Him? It. "Okay, okay," it says. "Do you have food? Quina hungry."

He says nothing. He heard that these ...frogs? Frog-people? ...People like to eat frogs (they have to be people, or something similar, because otherwise they would be cannibalists), but never even thought they existed until half an hour ago. He opens his lexicon and summons a flame, courtesy of the Red Nocturne illustration on the page.

"Book, on fire!" the thing shouts. "Look out!"

It opens its huge mouth with its huge tongue and blasts him with a huge gust of wind, something he had once seen an Emerald Blues do.

As he goes flying up and out of the marsh, and lands with a painful clunk on his Gummi ship, he realizes (spitefully) that he and the thing are a little bit similar.

"I freakin' love this place," she says.

"Love?" Axel asks, watching her from behind the garbage-can-set-ablaze and raising an eyebrow.

"You know what I mean." She doesn't tear her eyes off the dizzying maze of lights and cars and people below. "If we ever get our hearts back, I'd want to live in a place like this."

"Really?" he asks. "You always struck me as a...quiet, countryside type of girl."

She looks at him over her shoulder and they start laughing simultaneously. "That's got to be one of the stupidest things you've ever said."

"Can't be," he replies. "I've said a lot of stupid stuff."

"It's got to be in the top ten," she says. Suddenly she turns back to the open air, taking in a breath of air.

"Another thing I love about this place," Larxene comments as Axel comes to stand next to her. She summons her kunai and grins wildly, blue-green eyes crackling. "It's always good for target practice."

She aims for the slightly draconic silhouette that had appeared in the sky, far-off and between two skyscrapers. She throws: there is a blinding flash and Axel has to cringe and cover his ears as thunder rips through the air.

Larxene never misses.

She rests her elbow up on his shoulder as they watch the silhouette falter slightly, before picking the dagger from its rocky hide like a toothpick and flying on. "You know, I never would've gotten so good if you hadn't shown me this place?"

He shrugs. "Whatever. I needed someone to bet on against Xigbar."

The Neophytes, even Saïx, wonder why Vexen is the only one of the original six who fears Xemnas. (Whatever it was, it happened before any of them arrived.)

The truth is: a) all of them fear him, one way or another. b) Vexen doesn't think he remembers.

But he does remember.

You see, all he remembers is that Xemnas had turned on him, palm up as though silencing him. And then there was just cold, so black and antarctic that even he couldn't bear it.

He's sure that there was more to what Xemnas did to him. He's sure that he had witnessed some other nightmare that his subconscious has since blocked out. But there's nothing else to remember. The only thing the Superior had inflicted on him was a heavily amplified blizzard spell.

The other four don't know the genius of this simple punishment. They only knew what they saw: Vexen falling to the ground, not a man but a twitching silhouette, covered in Darkness as thick and foul as tar. Xaldin had tried to scold the Superior, warning him that he had lost a brilliant and loyal follower to fear, but Xemnas only watched as the heap of shadows and cloth struggled to scream.

All he needed was cold to send him to depths?

How pathetic.

"Why, Mr. Saïx," a voice calls from up in the trees. "What a pleasure seeing you here!"

Number VII half-expects another encounter with the Cheshire Cat until he remembers Wonderland is one warp-gummi trip away from this World. He looks up into one of the clearing's trees with raised blue brows. "Marluxia," he states. "I'd prefer you refer to me-"

XI grins sheepishly, fakely, from his lounging pose on the tree-branch. "Ah, of course. My apologies, Seven. Glad to see you're not alone."

He nods at the pack of humongous wolves surrounding the man, almost protectively, in the snow. Saïx just barely touches the hair tips of one's mane. It shifts slightly. "What is your business here, Eleven?"

"None. I had some off-time, thought I'd spend it out in the beauty of nature."

Gold eyes scan the clearing, taking in the frozen tree trunks and blanketed ground. "Doesn't seem to be much flora to commune with."

"That's what you think," Marluxia smirks. "I'm assuming that means that you've been communing with the fauna here?" He waves casually towards the towering empty limbs that claw the air. "I hope you're not thinking of stealing those wolves. The trees tell me their mistress isn't one you should trifle with."

"Of course not. I'm just borrowing them," Saïx replies calmly. "My Other made it his duty to rend all ties he had to nature as quickly as humanly possible." He contemplates the wolves at his feet. "It seems mine is to repair those ties."

"How touching," the other man yawns.

The Diviner turns and coolly regards not the Assassin, but the tree in which he's resting. It's old and crooked; could be easily toppled over if the Queen keeps up this dreadful winter.

"Maugrim," he addresses the wolf he had alerted earlier. "Fetch."

He is the only one to have ever lost control of his powers. And it happens after the Organization is long dead (both literally and figuratively), when they are escaping the Underworld.

He had been pushing the envelope the whole day though: going from a heist to break into the prison of the dead to an escape across a giant mythological river wasn't exactly going to rejuvenate him (he wasn't Larxene or Xaldin, they lived and breathed for battle, it seems).

And then having Xemnas, Saïx and Marluxia show up ("All a happy family again," Zexion had muttered) when they were half-way up the Psychopomp Tunnels certainly wasn't beneficial.

Well, somebody had to stop that Arial Blade coming at Vexen's head. So he stopped time.

Or at least tried to.

Because as soon as he tapped into that power, made the gold clock face appear like a rune-circle at his feet, he knew something was wrong. One of the teeth on one of the gears inside him snapped and then everything started spinning and speeding up and he couldn't hold on, and it just - slipped.

And the worst part was, behind all the deafening tick-tocks and the hour-minute-second-hands that ran circles in his eyes, he could hear them. Those three old hags he had been outrunning all this time whispered in his ear.

"You know we'll catch up to you one day, deary."

"You can't cheat us forever."

"We're going to have to take at least one of you back."

"But we'll let you keep playing," they say in unison, and he shivers. "You are quite fun to toy with."

It all ends with a crack, and he lifts a hand to his left cheek as he realizes he's been slapped. Then it registers that Larxene is standing next to him, raising an eyebrow. "You alright?" she asks, not entirely concerned.

He nods numbly. "Yeah. Where are our lovely antagonists?"

"Underneath the rubble," Xigbar says, appearing at his side and shoving a Potion into the hands. Luxord sees that the stone tunnel has been torn apart by his brush with the Fates. "Told ya you should've had one of these after the Styx, dude. Speeding up a boat for that long?"

He nods again and pops open the bottle. "I suppose the good news is that if ever that happens again, Larxene can just slap me across the face."

"Surprisingly," she says, as she straightens her glove, "I'm not looking forward to it."

"Can you paint with all the colours of the wind where you come from?"

He looks up at her skeptically as they walk beside the river, him across the bank, her across the boulders. "Pardon?"

She smiles to herself. "It's nothing. Just a song my best friend sings."

He nods. "Ah."

They walk on in near silence: his boots still tread under the pebbles and he's almost jealous of her bare-footed leaps that never disrupt the quiet water.

"You wouldn't want to hear how it goes, would you?" she asks.

"If you don't mind singing it..."

"Oh, no, I'm a terrible singer," she stops on her most recent boulder, waving her hands. "But it has rather nice lyrics."

"Please," he said, gesturing to continue.

They start walking again. She hops from one boulder to the next, while his feet crunch beside her on the riverbank, and the woman started repeating the lines of the song.

"Well, um, it goes 'We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains, we need to paint with all the- what?"

The man had started to chuckle, very quietly. "It's nothing."

"No, tell me!" she says, as they stop to observe one another. They were an odd pair, that's for sure. The woman had never seen a man with clothing like his, not even from the newcomers. She probably shouldn't be trusting him, but there was something about him - something that reminded her of home.

His lips twitch and, foolishly, her heart flutters. He shakes his head.

She puts her hands on her hips and pouts, thinking. If she had to convince Kocoum to do something, how would she do it? So serious, these men.

"If I show you a secret place afterwards, will you tell me what's so funny?" she offers.

He shakes his head again, slowly this time. It's tempting, apparently. "That would be unnecessary. I'm just not sure if I would call it singing."

It is her turn to look at him skeptically. "You can't sing with all the voices of a mountain."

He 'hmph's at her, then faces forward, closing his eyes. A look of total concentration comes over his face.

Slowly, a rumble starts far below. She feels it first in her heart, causing it to beat slightly faster.

Then the pebbles start to jump all along the riverbank. The air whizzes loudly as they collide into one another.

If she isn't amazed at this, she is when the boulder under her feet lifts into the air by itself.

"Whoa-ohhh!" She looses her footing and tries to clutch onto that poise and courage she knows Pocahontas possesses.

She falls right into his arms. The boulder and the pebbles crash back into the mud with her.

She regains her breath as he straightens her up, makes sure she can stand. "By all the spirits of the water, earth, and sky. You...the rocks really listen to you!" she says, looking from him to the boulder and back. "What did you say your name was again?"

He frowns slightly. "I'm afraid I didn't. My name is Lexaeus."

"I'm Nakoma."

She smiles at him, and wonders if she should be running and if it was stupid to have told him her name. She is eased slightly when he finally smiles back at her.

'Lexaeus' has a very nice smile.

AN. Cameos, in case you missed them: Quina Quen (FF9), Maugrim (Narnia), The Fates (Hercules), and Nakoma (Pocahontas).

Concrit is a 'yes, please!'