The possibly paradoxical concept of equating taking arms with not being is usually explained by that taking arms against an irresistible sea of troubles is suicidal — our troubles, resisted rather than borne, will destroy us.
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They echoed him hollowly, raising their glasses in a deadpan cheer. Their voices carried more enthusiasm than their bodies showed; they toasted their loyalty with all the seriousness of prisoners praising the guillotine.
"To Kingdom Hearts!"
After all, who amongst them could summon enough feeling in their numb, vacant chests to show something, anything other than blind allegiance to their leader, however singularly devoted they all were to their goal? For really, no matter how different they may have seemed…cool intelligence, cold cruelty, naïveté, unpredictability, musical devotion, hidden aptitude…these where just facades, ghosts of ghosts of memories not quite remembered, not quite their own. Every member of Organization XIII was one and the same, borne from the same darkness and destined to fade back into it when their time came.
"Traitor," one said, hissing his word like one would a powerful obscenity.
"Weakling."
"Disloyal."
"Spineless."
"You'd betray Xemnas as soon as you would look at him."
"You serve no useful purpose."
"At least I'll stay with him until the end."
"And what will you get out of it? At least I'll survive."
"Could you live with the guilt?"
"What guilt?"
And the first could not say anything more.
Their names were strictly for ease of calling, like labels on spice jars in a housewife's pantry. They were dolls made from the same glass, books from the same tree, leather from the same dead animal. All created by darkness and inseparable from the rest.
They were mistakes. They were never meant to exist. They were botched crafts, broken goods, unholy shadows of benign beings. Fractions of fractions of fractions of real, and the word dangled in front of them…human.
If only they could be human. What they wouldn't give to be human.