Unnatural
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine
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When I was human, when I was Ienzo, when I was an apprentice to Master Ansem, I was a reader.
I read everything in the Radiant Garden library, and more besides. I read fantasy and science fiction, biographies and documents and essays and everything in between.
And I believed what I read. I was young and innocent, and extremely gullible. The books held all that the world believed, and through the books, I accepted the world's standards as my own.
I read that good must always triumph over evil, and I believed it. I read that unicorns didn't exist, and I believed it. I read that 27 of people with red hair have schizophrenia, and I believed it. I read that pain was bad, and I believed it.
Yes. That sentence passed under my calculating eyes many a time. It was one of the world's most deeply held beliefs, one that you just simply did not question. Pain was an irritant at best, and fatal at worst. Pain caused death. Pain distracted you from productivity. Pain was evil, and had to be eliminated.
Doctors who created medicines to cure pain were heroes. The ultimate utopia would be a world in which pain didn't exist. And those who liked pain, those who went to the extent of purposely causing pain by destroying their own bodies, were considered "weird" and shunned and whispered about and sent away to mental asylums.
All this I read. All this I believed.
After all, I had never heard anything to disprove it. Master Ansem, who was my hero and the wisest man in the world (or so it seemed to my young, impressionable mind) was working to create inventions that would take away pain—though not physical pain, he always told me, but emotional pain, the pain of the heart, which had never yet been successfully eliminated. Aeleus, my closest friend and brother figure, always told me that when he worked out, he was always trying to reach a 'place in his mind' where the pain went away. And when we were taught to fight, we were told never to use our skills to bring pain to any living thing.
So I hated pain, and vowed to do my best to fight it, just as all the people I loved and respected were doing.
And then came that day when my heart was torn from its spot in my chest, and I was empty. There were no more emotions, no more feeling.
I was a Nobody, I was Zexion, I was a member of Organization XIII, and I still hated pain.
The only memories I had of my transformation to a Nobody involved blinding pain—and that was bad, for it left me without a heart.
So I still loathed pain, and still believed it inherently evil, but things were different. In the eye of the world, I was evil now, and I could do nothing to fight pain. Because I no longer had the burning desire in my heart to create a world without pain—because I could feel no longer.
But only a few months after the Organization gained its thirteenth member and reached completion, that all changed.
Superior Xemnas, an even stricter master than his Somebody had been, forced us all to train constantly. We were, he told us in that slow monotone with which he always spoke, preparing to destroy the Keyblade master, and needed our strength.
I hated training. Though emotions were gone, physical pain still existed to us. Ienzo had never been athletic, and Zexion was no better, so training hurt. Even though I was a shape-shifter, an illusionist, a schemer, I still needed to fight, and it still hurt.
But then one day, all things changed.
I was sparring Axel, and he was winning. He was one of the more skilled fighters among our group, and he had me back against a wall with his flaming chakram preparing to descend upon my head. He would not hurt me severely, but I would lose, and it would hurt.
And then something happened.
The pain didn't go away. It rose up, surrounded me, like a burning, rolling tide. For a moment it was unbearable—and then it was wonderful. No longer fighting the pain, instead working with it in perfect harmony, and surrendering to it, I had infinite strength, surging through my veins.
I charged Axel, and within moments the flaming one was on the ground before me. My eyes were gleaming with feral joy, my hands were spread in front of me, and I felt…
I felt.
Somewhere, in that rolling, steaming, surrounding ocean of pain, I found my emotions again. It was euphoria, pure euphoria…feelings, happiness, surprise, anger, greeting and embracing my body like a long-estranged lover, and a wild, spastic beat echoing once again in the cage of my formerly empty chest.
I realized then where I had gone wrong. I had always been searching for the place where pain went away. But that wasn't what I needed .For when I submitted to pain, it was evil no longer, instead becoming a wonderful ,joyous thing that let me feel again.
Later that night, in my room, I found my empty chest aching and my breath coming fast. I wanted it back. I wanted to feel again. I needed that place I had found earlier. I needed the pain.
That was when my eyes found the knife. A simple kitchen knife from when I had taken my dinner in my room, scant days ago.
But it was what I needed. It would help.
Within moments, I had locked the door and found the pain again. I dragged the knife across my flesh, slicing various parts of my body, feeling jolts of adrenaline and joy shoot up my spine with each incision. The blood didn't matter, the scars didn't matter. I could feel. I could feel. I could feel.
For weeks it went on like this, but it could not last. The growing collection of scars on my body became noticeable. I heard the other members whispering, saw them stepping around corners as I passed. But I didn't care. I could feel, and that was all I needed.
But then one night, Xemnas and Vexen came to my room while I was alone, preparing once more to enter my pain-world. Vexen took the knife from my scarred, still fingers, and Xemnas spoke to me in little bitty baby words and explained how what I was doing to myself was bad, and unnatural, and how I had to stop because it would hurt me, and I could die, and I shouldn't destroy my own body.
I wanted to scream. I knew it hurt me! That was why I did it! The pain was my escape, my friend, my love, my lover, my one source of emotion.
But they didn't listen. They took the knife, and I cried for hours and hours. When I had finally calmed down, I realized I just didn't understand.
All of the Organization members were trying to find a way to feel again. We all had different methods. Axel and Roxas used their relationship. Demyx used music. Vexen used experiments. I used pain.
Why, out of all of them, was my way of feeling considered unnatural and bad and evil?
Why, out of all of them, was my way of feeling whispered about behind my back?
Why, out of all of them, was my way of feeling so strange that it caused my own Organization to shun me like a leper?
Why, out of all of them, was my way of feeling taken away from me?