Note: Warning for non-explicit m/m smut.

There was no garden in the Castle until Eleven came, and then there was, suddenly. But there was no day, no sunlight in that world; it was a twilight garden in the perpetual rain.

Luxord stood at the window which had not been there the day before, and looked out into the new courtyard (with its cracked pathstones, its old-growth trees, as if it had stood a thousand years), and watched the man who stood in the rain, with the vines twining up around his new black cloak, his face turned up toward the light of Kingdom Hearts that slanted down between the Castle's high walls.

That was the first time he saw Marluxia.

"Number Ten."

Luxord looked up from the dice game he'd been at with three of his Gamblers. "Mmm?"

"A word, if I may?"

"Of course," he said, with a little half-bow, and an apologetic nod to the Gamblers.

"Tell me how it is," Marluxia said, when they were alone. "How this organization works."

"I thought Zexion was to give you the rundown."

"He has. But . . . " Marluxia's hands opened, closed. "I heard something today. From—Nine. Axel. 'Inner circle.' 'Apprentices.' 'Chosen ones.' I am not fool enough to ask Zexion."

Luxord smiled. "Perhaps I can enlighten you on that, yes."

Marluxia was a fast learner—and a faster questioner.

The look he gave Luxord, over their cups of tea in the Chamber of Surpassing Quiet, was calm, inscrutable. His eyes glittered, warm amber, a yellow entirely unlike the sharp gold of Xigbar's one tilted eye. "Are you a believer, then?" he asked.

Luxord canted his head. "In what?" he asked, though he knew. He wanted to hear how Marluxia would put it, the words he would frame it in.

"Our Superior's plan is a grand one," Marluxia said, "make no mistake; I cannot fault him for scale. Or even for theory. But in practice—well, does it seem plausible to you? I do not see you performing obeisance to Kingdom Hearts with Saix, after all."

"Neither does Xigbar," Luxord said, "or Xaldin, or any of them—" them, spoken by Eight through Twelve, meant the six, the apprentices, the chosen ones. (Saix was a no-man's-land, peculiar uncharted territory somewhere between the inner circle and the outer orbit.) "I daresay they have faith in the plan, nonetheless."

"And are you with them?"

"I haven't been shown a better option, if that's what you mean."

"Mmm," said Marluxia.

Poker with Xigbar, Axel and Zexion was always . . . entertaining. Xigbar had a great poker face. Axel had a terrible poker face but was impossible to predict—and he loved calling a bluff, even at risk of his own winnings. Zexion played close to his chest, as if he were playing chess instead of poker.

"I'm out," Xigbar said, folding. Zexion gave Axel a long, cool look, and then laid his cards down face-down as well. Axel grinned, cat-eye green eyes tilted with amusement, and revealed a hand of worthless cards. Zexion rolled his eyes; Xigbar laughed.

Luxord said nothing. He took the deck, dealing the cards. "All right, ante up," he said.

A flower—a poppy, heavy and narcotic—landed on the table, atop the growing pile of chips. He looked up into a thoughtful smile.

"He is dangerous," Vexen said. "Foolish. Insubordinate. He questions me all the time."

"Everyone questions you all the time," Xigbar interjected. "It's 'cause you always sound so sure of yourself. S'too much fun to puncture your great big ego."

"Still," Zexion said, as Vexen glowered and Xigbar smirked, "he has proved harder than expected to handle. Luxord. You have dealt with him. Thoughts?"

Luxord was surprised to be called upon to speak. "He . . . is serious about getting his heart back," he said. A safe opinion.

Xemnas finally spoke, in his deep calm voice: "As are we all."

Luxord met Marluxia under the oppressive light of Kingdom Hearts, in the courtyard-garden, his demesne.

"Memory is the key, I think," Marluxia said. He held out his hand, and the moonflower uncoiled and trailed a heavily-scented tendril around his hand. The blossoms opened, ethereal as a phantom, as the Lady in White feared and revered on Luxord's first world. "Memory, and dream. Rather than hope that Kingdom Hearts can give us back our hearts—for what is a heart, anyway? not a physical thing, surely, to be stored and passed around like so much dross—we think it better to mine the depths of personality, to rediscover or rebuild what must be buried in our selves."

"'We'?" Luxord felt the tendril insinuate itself into his own hand. Rather than push it away, he lifted it, drew a deep breath of the blossom's sweet scent. "You have convinced your lightning witch?"

Marluxia's smile deepened, and he bent his head. In the dim light of the twilight world, the shadows cast by his hair sank his face into darkness. "Not 'mine,' and not a witch," he said, "but yes. Larxene and I see eye to eye on this matter."

"There is the castle," Zexion said. "Oblivion. Send him; send me. I'll keep an eye on him, and see what he's up to."

"And Twelve?" Xaldin rumbled. "That'd be two birds with one stone."

"If his aims are truly in line with our own," Xemnas said, "then it is to all our advantage to give him free reign. If not . . . "

"We'll take care of the problem," Zexion said. Lexaeus nodded, silent agreement.

Luxord kept his silence.

He did not remember falling asleep in the garden, but he woke to a heavy soporific scent, strong as wine, overlaid with the sweetness of cherry blossoms, the voluptuous scent of roses. Marluxia stood under the moon, twined with vines, his eyes heavy.

"Is this how you approach all potential allies?" Luxord asked, even as he loosed his own robe, dizzy with the scents, dreamlike. This was an unreal thing, an unreal place, perfect: for he had not felt real since he died and was reborn as Luxord, Number Ten.

"Say rather, I seek in allies those who I would willingly approach like this," he said, voice silky, softly-veined. "As we are now, it surely means nothing other than the satisfaction of certain desires, the cementing of alliances. It is one of Xemnas' articles of faith, that we cannot care, so there is no greater meaning to layer onto this. Or do you doubt that?"

"I think," Luxord said. His thoughts trailed off, amidst the sweet scent of roses, the vines that tugged off his cloak and trousers and boots and gloves, gently, "I think . . . the jury's still out on that one."

And it went slowly, and though Marluxia seduced him with the heavy scent of flowers, in the end it was not that at all: it was the heavy earthsmell of loam, the cold clean smell of rain on the air, the green smell of crushed leaves. He expected Marluxia to take control—he was, after all, mazed and dizzied by Marluxia's garden—but he did not; he did not, and he was the warmth of the plowed field under the sun, though there was no sun—and he was not soft, though the earth was soft with rain, and the flower-petals, but he had the wiry strength of his vines, and hidden serrated edges, like many leaves.

And Xemnas was right; he did not feel, as he would have felt before, but there was something: and at the crucial moment, when everything tightened to a point of light, he heard Marluxia hissing, "You remember. You remember."

He remembered.

"No," he said, two days later, when they met again: in his chambers, this time, not the gardens—his chambers, where his powers held sway and not Marluxia's.

"You know that I am right," Marluxia said. "You felt it."

"I remembered it, yes."

"With them, you will never—they will always be better than you. With their numbers, and their hierarchy, and—" Marluxia stepped in close, and the smell on his hair and his skin made Luxord's blood spark, but he ignored it. "We need you."

"But I don't need you," Luxord said. "There are risks I'll not take. Not for you, or for anyone else."

"You. Chance is like breathing, to you."

"I understand odds. That's why I can't do this."

Marluxia hissed, swore. Looked away. Then he looked back. "We will welcome you," he said, "if you come. As long as you do not move against us."

"I bear you no ill will," he said. "But I've risked enough. I'll risk no more."

"When he leads you all to darkness," Marluxia said, "remember me."

And then there was a flower in Luxord's hand, and he had no sense of how it had got there: a thorny branch, sweet-smelling. "I will."