oRganization thirtEeN sTories
a/n: for vix, my onee-chan. thank you for always being there.
summary: romance. drabbles. het. yaoi. can you spot my inspiration?
disclaimer: nothing is mine.
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"Can you believe, you've been with us here in the Organization for a year?" the blonde Nobody asked the younger one he held in his arms.
"Mmm?" Marluxia inquired sleepily, half-waking from the nap he'd been enjoying. "How do you know that? How do they measure time here?"
Vexen smirked and whispered a single four-letter word into his pink-haired lover's ear, and suddenly Marluxia understood.
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Axel frowned, shooting little flames at imaginary targets on the already-scorched white walls of his room in the Castle that Never Was.
For the millionth time, his attempts at being friendly to the nervous, alone (and really cute) new guy, XIII, Roxas, had been rejected.
VIII glared at the pile of papers (scripts, screen plays mostly) sitting on his bed. His Somebody had been a writer.
He had tried to write again, but there was no feeling, no emotion—no heart left in his words. They were e m p t y.
With one last scathing glare, Axel shot a flame at the offending pile, and his empty, empty writings exploded into an inferno of beautiful sparks.
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"Gentlemen….and lady, right, and lady….don't you understand! A brilliant, shining world—even worlds, heck, even universe, of slaves, heartless slaves conditioned to fulfill our every whim and wish…."
Xemnas's eyes glowed as he addressed his organization. "And we, we alone will have hearts, we will rule, we will command, all will be ours…"
From the blank faces of his twelve subordinates, Xemnas could tell that they really just didn't see….
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Demyx's fingers trailed over the strings of his sitar listlessly. A tuneless garble of notes echoed across his small white empty room.
"I'm cursed," he said aloud to nobody (or was that no Nobody) in particular.
"I have half of what I need. Only half! I have the instrument, the ability, the talent…"
Tears streaked from his aquamarine eyes. "But not the spirit….not the creativity…no emotion, no nothing…" he all but pouted.
A moment later, the tears were gone from his eyes as IX resolved not to be babyish and just try to continue working on his song.
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A knock. Then, scant seconds later another. And a third.
Stumbling through the dark room, Axel summoned a fireball to act as a guiding light. Finally reaching the door, he shoved it open unceremoniously….
….almost knocking over the Nobody of his dreams, Roxas, standing on the threshold with a slender white unlit candle clasped in his slender hands.
For the first time, the pyromaniac silently praised the frequent Larxene-caused power outages.
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"He's weird…" Xigbar confided to Lexaeus as they witnessed the spectacle of their newest (eleventh) member dancing around the meeting hall, scattering lurid pink flower petals as she—he—what the HECK was this thing?—went, and drumming on every available surface with an oversized scythe.
"And that is how I came to be a Nobody!" she/he proclaimed in his/her high, squeaky, girlish voice.
"Yeah," V admitted to his friend. "She…he?...is weird."
"But it," II decided on a neutral pronoun, "brings food and munny, so I'm definitely not complaining."
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"Hi, my name is Luxord, and Larxene is cheating on me," the Gambler said, feeling like a total idiot.
"Hello, Luxord," eleven voices chorused in unison.
"It's…that bad?" the British blonde asked, astonished, as his eyes found the sign above their heads, SOCIETY FOR PEOPLE WHOM LARXENE HAS CHEATED ON.
Demyx nodded glumly. "It's that bad. So…who's going to be his partner for the initiation dance?"
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Perhaps it was because he was a violent person by nature, but Saïx would have expected the Organization XIII initiation ritual to be a little more…well, violent.
But the Diviner had to admit, if he still had to power to cry, that little prayer/invocation he had uttered with them would have brought him pretty close.
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Come nighttime, Larxene was restless.
She couldn't stay cooped up in that small white room, in that small, cramped white castle of…white-ness and boring-ness.
It wasn't hard. Being the only female in a group of twelve men, it didn't take much. Appear at their window, give her little come-hither gesture and (more than mildly suggestive) dance, maybe sing a little if they were having a bad night...that was all it took to get one of them to take her out.
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"Go away, Demyx," Zexion demanded firmly.
"But…" the sitarist begged, tears welling up in his eyes. "Who knows if we'll get another chance…"
"We'll never get a 'chance,' IX. We can't feel. Heartless. Emotionless. Remember?"
"Zexy…"
VI glared up at the brunette, and when he next spoke, his voice was icy. "Leave me to my research. Go away, Demyx. Come back another time, when I'm not so busy…or better yet, don't come back at all."
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It wasn't the want for hearts that motivated them to fight. That may have been enough for Xemnas, but for the other twelve, it wasn't enough.
But there was one thing that kept them going, kept them raining blow after blow on the Keybearer, fighting until the last scrap of their essence faded away.
They didn't have hearts.
They didn't have feelings.
In a sense, they didn't even have lives.
But there was one thing they still had, even in their empty existences. One thing they were so scared to lose, it was worth fighting for with all that remained of their so-called lives.
and each pondered, as they ceased to exist at last, whether they had lost it—or if they had never had it in the first place…
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"It is days like these," Marluxia announced melodramatically, flinging himself down at the table with a plate of Zexion's "cooking," (read heap of brownish mush) "that I really wish I could go into the culinary business in an arid southwestern state in America."
Utter silence reigned.
Zexion looked up from his pot of something-or-other. Vexen looked up from his book. Xaldin looked up from—something.
It was the scientist who ventured the question first.
"Where's America?"
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"Angsting out in the snow again?"
Roxas turned, his blue eyes settling on the gangly redhead approaching.
"You know that's not good for your health," the normally sarcastic voice spoke with infinite tenderness as Axel sat down beside him. In one fluid motion, he wrapped a heavy black coat around XIII's shoulders.
Blue eyes met green for a scant moment. A word (why?) from Roxas, and three in return from the redhead.
And then a long pause, and then—finally, after months of evasion and fights and who knows what else—they kissed….
…and Roxas resolved to go angst in the snow more often.
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"Hehehehee….I'm Xemnas…" a very drunk Larxene joked. She stood shakily in front of the other eleven members, doing a passable imitation of their Superior in his favorite pastime—ranting about Kingdom Hearts.
"Blah blah blah blah!" XII proclaimed, "Kingdom hearts blah our missions blah hearts blah blah!"
The Organization laughed raucously, Xigbar and Demyx beginning an odd "back-up" riff as she began singing about what an idiot "Mansex" was.
And then….Silence.
Eleven heads turned…there stood Xemnas, with a police force of Dusks at his back.
Needless to say, they ran.
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"Oy, Vexy!"
The Academic looked up in irritation from his oh-so important experiment. The Freeshooter stood there, one of those musical devices from one of those other worlds jammed in his ears.
"What, Xigbar?" he asked icily.
"Don't you think this song would be a great theme song if we ever rebelled against Xemnas?" He shoved the earpiece into Vexen's ear.
The Academic listened for a few seconds. The song, as far as he could tell, consisted mostly of a single three word phrase being repeated over and over again.
"How would I know, II?" he asked in an exasperated tone. "I don't speak French."
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"Dem….Demyx…" Saïx whispered in a distressed tone.
"What is it, Puppy?" his love asked, using his loving nickname for VII.
"Demyx….I'm a berserker," he admitted in a small voice, before bursting into tears.
Several moments' pause.
Yellow eyes looked up into aqua. "You don't hate me?"
"Of course not, Puppy. I….I have a secret too…I….I don't remember life as a Somebody."
And throughout that long, cold night, the lovers held each other and cleansed their hearts (for there was no question at this point whether they had them) of the dark secrets residing there.
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How does one expect to get any work done with that infernal racket going on? Xemnas wondered, looking up from his important secret papers. He rubbed his temples in annoyance.
Finally, about ten minutes later, he got up to find the source of the disturbance….only to discover…
….his twelve subordinates drinking beer and dancing on the kitchen tables?
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"If this was it, and you were going to fight the Keybearer and lose at the end of this year, and so you knew it was your last year alive, what would you do?" Zexion asked as he and his love watched the New Year's fireworks exploding in the Land of Dragons.
"Hn…" Lexaeus grunted as he shifted out of his comfortable position. "That's oddly philosophical for you, Zexy."
"I know but…you know Superior is sending us and the others to Castle Oblivion later this year…I…I'm scared, Lexy."
"Well….I guess I'd…spend as much time as possible with my friends and those I love?"
The schemer thought for a minute. "Good enough for me," he decided finally.
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"Well…you pink-haired freak, if you have a PROBLEM with who I am then…go, just go!" Larxene yelled, storming off down the halls of Castle Oblivion.
"Well….I'M NOT THE ONE WITH THE PROBLEM! YOU ARE! ALWAYS…making fun of MY PRECIOUS HAIR!" Marluxia retorted.
From the cracked-open door of a nearby room, one green and one blue eye observed the goings-on of the former couple.
"Do they do this a lot?" Roxas wondered.
His boyfriend's only response was, "Welcome to Castle Oblivion."
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Why did I have to leave him?
Why did he have to go?
Why did we have to fight at that last good-bye…
Will I ever tell him I'm sorry?
I miss you….
Please come back….
How will I live without you here?
Miles, universes and dimensions separated the pair, but the tears that ran down Demyx and Zexion's eyes were one and the same.
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An awful, wordless scream ripped from Roxas's throat as he ran towards the prone body of the redhead.
"Noo…." he sobbed, "No, please, no…Axel…no, please, it's not true…"
Even as he lay the thick black coat that had brought them together over Axel's thin, ice-cold shoulders, Roxas could not accept that his love was gone….
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Xemnas's yellow eyes blinked as he watched the last blue light in the Proof of Existence turn red.
"They are all gone…" he whispered to himself.
His Organization, his followers…all of them dead. Betrayal, treachery, "love," so many things had conspired against them and killed them all.
Three words left his lips as he readied his blades for his own final battle.
"I am alone."
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"I hear that Superior is sending you to fight the Keyblade master." Xigbar's normally joking voice was serious and angry.
Xaldin turned, blue eyes glaring hatred at his ex-lover. "And…"
"Well…I kinda thought you might want me to say goodbye?" the one-eyed Nobody ventured.
Angrily, the Lancer turned, twisted emotion lacing his voice as he shot his former love's catchphrase back at him. "As if."
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"Xemnas?"
"Yes, Axel?" the Superior questioned, looking up at his redheaded subordinate.
"I don't care what you say. We have hearts. I can't keep listening to your stupid shit, OK? I'm leaving. I'm going. For good."
And VIII stormed from the Castle that Never Was for the final time, ready to go and find Roxas and show him once and for all that he was not alone.
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"Um….hey, listen, I know you thought I was cheating on you with Luxord but…it's not true, it's really not." The Savage Nymph's voice, normally so harsh and accusing, was soft and….laced with real fear.
Gently, like he was handling a newborn bird, Marluxia cradled her face with one gloved hand. He spoke two words, and she knew all was forgiven between them.
"I know."
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Zexion turned around, wiping tears away that he couldn't allow Demyx to see. To tell the truth, the love song the sitarist had written him was beautiful, had touched whatever he had left of a heart…
But those were not the words he said as he faced the expectant look on his love's face.
"Demyx….it was nice and all….but you know, despite popular belief, I do have two eyes…"
The pair burst into joyous laughter as, for the first time ,the Schemer brushed the violet locks away from his normally concealed eye.
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It had taken so much for them to get there. Fights, battles, victories, losses, love, hate, parties, arguments…
But finally, Organization XIII was there, in the next life.
With hearts.
With another chance.
With more days, together. With a chance to reunite, to love one another as they had never been able to before.
It was not THE END.
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