The Prince
"Such a frown! You'd better watch out, that face could scare small children." Zexion's frown only deepened as number nine strode into the room. Demyx was smiling distantly, fiddling with a bit of blue string twined around his glove.
"It is better to be feared than loved." Zexion stated flatly, refusing to be warmed by the other's good cheer. Demyx looked a hair's breadth away from laughing as he took a seat beside Zexion at the kitchen table.
"Machiavelli, so early in the morning?" Zexion gave him an odd look. "Yes, I've read a book without pictures. Try not to be shocked." Zexion turned back to his coffee, glaring at it as though it was personally responsible for everything wrong with his life. "Though you know... Machiavelli's techniques have never worked indefinitely, even on the light worlds." Demyx was uncommonly thoughtful this early in the morning.
"Especially on the light worlds. His techniques don't make people happy, so the world's heart builds heroes to make them so. It's the dark worlds, where human nature isn't meddled with, where such rulers do well." Demyx appeared to be thinking hard, an uncommon state for the carefree blond.
"Zexion, what makes the worlds light and dark, anyway?" There was a pause, filled only with the painful silence of Oblivion, as number six chose his words.
"We aren't absolutely sure, since they seem to be related to the heartless. We didn't come into being until long after the worlds began to fall dark, at any rate. In the simplest terms, a light world is one where the world's heart is good—not necessarily kind, but wants the best for as many of that world's children as possible. Then there are the dark worlds. Those, the world's heart is slipping into darkness... and it doesn't want to be helped. Sometimes they fade out quickly, but they can linger for centuries before dying." Demyx rose and grabbed a muffin from the counter, but didn't eat it.
"What does that have to do with the heartless?" crumbs dropped to the table as he picked at the sweet bread.
"All the worlds attacked by the heartless have been light worlds." This drew a gasp from Demyx; some of the places they had gone had not been very nice. "However unhappy, however despairing, the people have fought, and their worlds with them. A few give up, and slip into non-existence, but the majority will, long-term, survive, because as long as people re-build, the world hearts will heal, and people with hope can rebuild from nothing." Demyx nodded slowly, stirring the crumbs of his still-uneaten muffin.
"What about this world?" Zexion looked at him for a moment with a sad, bitter smile. "Like us, it doesn't exist." Demyx rose suddenly, his chair falling over with a loud bang in the silent room.
"We do exist! I know you think we aren't real, but we think, Zexion. We feel."
"Memories." He replied coldly. "We are only the memories of the people we once were, the dead who refuse to lay down. We don't feel; we can't. We don't have hearts, Demyx." The words were spoken coldly and sanely, but there was a mad gleam in his eyes. Demyx, however, refused to back down.
"Can you prove we don't have hearts?" He asked. "In all the research he under Ansem the Wise, Ionez never even figured out what a heart was. How can you know we don't have them?"
Zexion jumped in as the other paused for breath, incensed by the use of his old name. "How can you be so sure we do? With all your prattling of feelings—do you have any proof?" At some point during the argument Zexion had risen, and now stood glaring at the taller blond. The two were all but nose-to-nose, and sparks bridged the gap between their eyes.
"The only proof I need is what I feel. When I'm near you, I feel light and warm, like my blood's been replaced with champagne. When we fight like this it hurts, and every time you say we aren't real makes it grow a little tighter. If that's not having a heart, then maybe I really don't exist, because I don't remember that." The two were both breathing fast and shallow, now painfully aware of their closeness. Zexion couldn't seem to find the words to cut the other off, so Demyx kept talking. "I think we feel more intensely, not less." He said, "now we don't have flesh bodies to get in the way. We're rid of the darkness in our hearts, and the light—but that still the leaves the part that isn't good or evil, the part that is just us." Zexion seemed to have composed himself, his lips quirking into an ironic smile.
"The selfish part." he noted. "I could believe in that." His voice was soft and hopeful. Like a promise, like a prayer.
"You make it sound like religion." Demyx replied, equally soft. Somehow, without either of the two noticing, the battle-tension had run out of the air to be replaced by a different sort of tension—like tasting lightning before a storm.
"It might as well be." Zexion said. "Without proof it's only another leap of blind faith."
"I can't give you scientific evidence," Demyx begun, groping for words, "but would you like me to prove it to you?" The words seemed to hang in the deathly silent air for a long, fragile moment. Zexion gave the other an unreadable look, as though searching for something. Apparently he found it, because he nodded slightly. Slowly, gently, Demyx closed the gap and brought their lips together.
There weren't bells and whistles; the kitchen remained utterly silent as the two stood, joined at the lips for a moment stretching into years and folded into a microsecond. The two finally broke apart, but remained near.
"God..." Was all Zexion could manage. Number nine frowned cutely.
"Much as I like being mistaken for a deity, I really prefer Demyx." Zexion looked at him for a moment then let out a harsh bark of a laugh. "So," Demyx continued in a softer voice, "Do you believe me now?" Zexion though for an exaggerated moment, smirking. "I think maybe I need you to prove it again," was all he said.
When Marluxia rose several minutes later, he walked to the kitchen, pushed open the door—and let it fall shut, without going in. "God. He said, "Axel and Roxas in the library, now those two on the kitchen table—when will people learn to GET A ROOM!? Or several, it's not like we haver a shortage! Muttering to himself, Marluxia stalked off to find some brain bleach. Demyx and Zexion continued what they had been doing, oblivious.