A Different Side: Number IV and the Replica
Staring at the bright red button hidden underneath the computer panel, I stood on the platform, unmoving, as my cloaked creator gathered some darkness into a flask. "What's that for?" I asked, nodding my head towards the button. He looked up at me and through the transparent plastic of his lab goggles, I noticed his eyes narrowing.
"What?"
"That," I asked again, repeating what I did a moment ago. "Why is it under the panel?" Taking off his goggles, he walked towards me, his cloak shuffling with each step, his stale, blonde hair slightly messy from where the goggles had marked it and held out a rather long test tube containing darkness. Quickly, he covered it with a leather wrapped thumb. "Hurry. Or else the darkness will leak out." Without hesitation, I grabbed the test tube and put the brim to my lips, feeling the cold essence slither into my mouth, then down my throat, making me shiver.
"That is a panic button. It's under the panel so I don't accidentally press it." He explained with a sour expression, as if saying, like that will ever happen. I wanted to believe that nothing he does is an accident, that nothing he creates is a mistake. Because he is my creator, I wanted to convince myself that I wasn't a mistake. But for some reason, I can't. Because while he calls me "a work of art –perfection.", she still calls me "a fake." They all do.
And perfect things can't be fake.
He watched me slowly finish the darkness, some of it dribbling down the corners of my mouth. Without waiting for me to finish, he elaborated, "If anything were to go wrong in this basement laboratory of mine, I'd have to press the button so everyone in the castle would be alerted." I forcefully lowered the tube and, using my sleeve, wiped away the darkness from my lips.
"So they can save you?" Would the actually do that? The tone in my voice was bordering on disbelief. Seeing the suppressed admiration on my face, he raised an eyebrow.
"Save me?" He scoffed with a bitter smile. "Hah. More like so they can evacuate."
A silent moment of deflation overcame me and when he noticed, his bitter smile faded and turned back into the frown he usually wore. "Finish the darkness; we can't have you turning into a lifeless doll in the middle of a battle." I let out a sound of exasperation and turned away, chugging the last of the darkness into my body.
What a pitiful existence I live. Living off darkness and someone else's memories, someone else's identity. A solid imprint yet at the same time, as unreal and non-existent as the nobody who created me. The both of us, claiming to be unfeeling and yet, at the same time, totally longing for something that would turn us into someone who meant to exist. "And if everyone evacuated, what would become of you?" I inquired, though I already knew the answer.
"A scientist like myself goes down with his lab the same way a captain goes down with his ship."
"I'd come back for you." I blurted out and once again, he raised an eyebrow at me.
"You? What could you, or anyone else for that matter, possibly do to save me?"
Irritated, my trembling hands balled up into fists. "At least I'd had gone back for you."
He took the empty test tube from me, his expression unchanging. "We both would have died, then." He spat out, "You'd have come back for nothing." And if I wasn't imagining it, I swear his frown grew even deeper. A moment's silence passed between us.
"The real Riku could've saved you."
"What?"
"I said, 'the real Riku could've saved you.'. Because he doesn't live off the darkness, because he's got a real heart, he's got a conscience, he's got friends. Because he isn't a fake, like me," For some reason, I couldn't stop. The words just flowed out of me. "It's because he's real."
"I'm better than the real Riku"? "I'm stronger"? "I have no intention of imitating some wimp who can't even deal with the darkness inside him"? Was that what I said? Who was I kidding? As long as Riku's around, I'll never be more than just a shadow.
I faced the floor, closed my eyes and imagined myself bursting into the lab, searching through the smoke for my creator, and then finding him at last, unconscious, surrounded by flames. I imagined myself picking him up and running out the doors just moments before the castle explodes. And then, I imagine myself being thanked by him and then Sora running up to me, "You're amazing!" he tells me and Namine is beside him smiling cheerfully at me, too. I imagined myself, but it wasn't me I saw. It was Riku.
When I opened my eyes, two arms suddenly wrapped around my neck. Mine, however, lay limp at my sides. "Vexen?" He was leaning down to match my height. He clutched me even tighter but remained silent. The leather sleeves of his coat felt cold against my cheeks. He's hugging me. I thought. What is this? Sympathy? Pity? I raised my hands to hug him back but before I could even touch him, he spoke softly against my ear and they immediately went back to their place.
"One day," he said, "You and I. We're both going to be real."
And with that, his arms slipped away and it felt much colder. I didn't know what to say to him. For a while there, I had forgotten that he wanted to be real, too. Did he have a fake heart, like me? I never bothered to ask.
"You're done here. Go back out there and serve your worth. Just don't come back broken again." He commanded without even looking at me. So I nodded my head, smirking, knowing that he couldn't see my face and stepped off the platform.
"Don't come back broken."? Remembering those words, my smirk grew even wider. But when I found Riku again, Vexen was already dead. The anger in my fake heart was almost unbearable. The anger and the anguish clouded my mind. In the end, Riku defeated me. Though, I probably knew that was going to happen. During my final moments, I was still thinking about him. Did he have a fake heart, like me? I never bothered to ask.
"Hey, Real version of me."
He turned to look at me, at his replica that was sprawled out on the ground.
"What happens when someone who's not real dies? Where will my heart go? That is, if it doesn't disappear completely."
Will it go where he went to?
"It'll go somewhere. Probably the same place my heart will go."
"Heh…" So his real heart and my fake heart end up in the same place, anyway? For once, I'm disappointed.
"How original."