Lies
The streets were silent, even the patter of raindrops muted against the stone ground beneath his feet. He could not even hear his own footsteps, and his breathing, too, seemed very far away. His gleaming eyes swept the space around him with the awareness of a soldier, one who is used to being hunted, but they took in nothing. Lost in thought, he fought to see this street as it had been, as he had felt it, before.
How long had it actually been? Days, months, years, hours? Some things never changed, and still others were in perpetual motion. It was impossible to be sure.
He shook his dripping hair out of his eyes and came to a sudden stop in the middle of the road, shocked. It wasn't just rainwater on his face, there were tears mixed in as well. He ran a finger along his cheek and stared blankly at the salty water he found there. He had not cried in all this time, had not thought himself capable of doing so. Why now? What was the thinking?
But there was no thinking, and he knew it. Had he been lying to himself all along then? He didn't want to answer that question.
He reached out for the support of the one beside him and then remembered there was no one there anymore. He spun around then, screaming at the sky. "Yes- I was lying! Okay? I was lying! I love you!"
He knew his words would reach no one's ears. There was no life after for any of them. The one he loved was gone forever. And he knew that all too well.
There was nothing left for him to be alive for- or as close to alive as he could be. But he instinctively rebelled against the idea of ending it. When he was gone, all the memories would be lost. There would be nothing left to tell the world- every single one of them- that they had existed, had done what they had done, had been what they had been, even if that was nowhere close to what they should have been.
If he couldn't have love, he would have memories. And wasn't that all there really was, anyway? Wasn't that all they'd ever had to work with- memories of what used to be possible? And yet there had still been love.
Had he deserved that love? Barely, if at all, if he wanted to be truthful. And there was no time to lie to himself, because behind him, a shadow twisted its way into being.
"You're going down," the boy declared, raising his prized golden blade. His blue eyes shone with fierce pride- young and simple, pure, complete. How he envied this child. How he wished that could be him, that he could have made the right choices, that he would be the one to win.
He didn't need to win anymore. Victory was past gaining. All he wanted now was the courage he'd never had.
"Not a chance," Xemnas lied, and let himself be struck where his heart should have been.
Of course it wasn't that easy. Fate wasn't going to let him go so soon. And he wasn't a fighter for nothing.
So Xemnas fought there in the rain, and he made the boy defeat him just so that he could say- to no one- that he had never given in. But in truth, he knew he'd surrendered long ago.
"…Superior?"
"Saix, shut up. It can wait."
"Superior, I-"
"Saix, attempting to talk interrupts me trying to kiss you. It can wait."
"Xemnas."
Saix never called him Xemnas. Ever. Period.
It stirred something in him to hear his lover say his name, even if he was just saying it in a whispered conversation and not as a moan of pleasure.
"Yes?"
"Xemna- Superior. I love you, Superior."
How was that possible? The idea was so beautiful, so wonderful, but the stupid, cowardly voice in the back of his mind kept saying that it could never be true. Saix had to be lying, too far gone on the high they gave each other.
And even deeper in his soul than that thought was the knowledge that Xemnas feared those words, because he didn't know if this was what being in love was or not. He didn't want to lie to Saix, but he didn't know what the truth was.
"I…"
He couldn't say it. He was too scared of what it might mean.
Instead, he twined their tongues together, and soon, the idea of conscious thought was lost to them.
Saix never said it again. Never called him Xemnas again. Nothing changed between them. And now Saix was dead.
Xemnas wanted to be dead. He couldn't tell the tears from the rain anymore. He couldn't tell if he was even still crying.
He wanted to know so badly, wanted to feel himself sobbing, know the numbing pain of the hole in his chest that was love.
But no, only at the very end did he truly learn what it meant to be heartless. Heartlessness was knowing you were feeling this pain, and it being unable to affect you no matter how much you wanted it to.
The end result of his sins, how it would hurt him, how painfully it would kill him, if only he could make it touch him…
The boy lowered his sword from Xemnas's neck with expression Xemnas knew well and hated- pity. "You're wrong, you know. It doesn't matter how lost you are to darkness, there's always a light in you. The size of it doesn't matter, as long as you follow it."
But Xemnas knew the truth. There was no way he could explain it to this child, this hero, who knew only love and nothing of its end. There was no way that he could put into words what he should be feeling, and the desperate, pointless way in which he fought for it.
"It's over for me. My light is gone. It wasn't ever mine to begin with. Kill me boy, because I can't stand this darkness anymore. You've killed my light. Now put me out of misery."
Sora did.
The nothingness, the finality, was a sweet relief. He felt it wash over him, and then, at last, he felt it wash through him. Xemnas closed his eyes and smiled, and though he died alone, the memories and the love were all around him, and he didn't feel it when he faded away.
Staring out across the ocean lit by a white sun, standing on the shore of a black world as Sora found his own peace and his own light, Riku heard Xemnas's last words echo in his head, and wondered which of the Organization he had loved.
The End