Symphony
The audience rose to its feet and applauded as the young composer made his way across the stage and shook hands with the concertmaster. He greeted the conductor next, and the audience's response grew even more deafening, although one may not have thought such a thing to be possible. By the time he had made his way over to the grand piano in front of the harp, the audience had more or less settled down, and the conductor was on standby, waiting for his cue.
He didn't look particularly talented at a glance, most would have agreed. For such a renowned composer, he looked extraordinarily normal. Lanky and pale, his looks suggested that he might have been a programmer, or any other occupation which was associated with not spending a lot of time outdoors. The only notable features on his person would have been the white streaks in his hair – highlights, according to his hairstylist – and the fact that he wore a turtleneck instead of a shirt and tie under his jacket, as most other composers would when playing with an orchestra.
Looks aside, everyone in the concert hall knew exactly what he was capable of. It was what they had paid for to see, after all.
A quick glance was all it took for the conductor's baton to start dancing about, and the tension in the hall noticeably thickened. The audience sucked in its collective breath, and listened for the first notes from the orchestra.
When the concertmaster's violin sounded the first few notes, unaccompanied by the rest of the orchestra, a large portion of the audience was confused. Where were the grand explosions of sound that he was renowned for?
They barely had time to mull on those thoughts, though, once the composer himself started playing, with full backing from the strings and woodwinds. While intricate and pleasant, the music was barely audible, almost like a fleeting dream.
And then the percussion burst into the picture like a thunderclap, making nearly half of the audience jump out of their seats in shock.
The show was on.
xxx
He found him slumped against a wall in an alleyway, not a kilometer away from the bombed-out wreck that had once been Cid's place. The smaller man looked like a wrung-out dishcloth, and every breath he drew seemed to cause air to leak out of the numerous tears in his jacket and jeans. A pair of blue eyes fixed their stare on the blond from behind a curtain of slate-grey hair that was matted and stained with what looked like clotted blood.
"They're dead," said the blond, as he squatted down next to his onetime friend.
"I know," replied his battered companion, sounding perfectly nonchalant despite his appearance. "We did it."
With a sigh, the blond moved over next to him, and sat down. He leaned over onto the blond's shoulder, and for a while, they just sat there in silence.
Sirens echoed from somewhere a distance away and there was the muted buzzing of a helicopter at one point. But still, the two men remained silent, watching as cars zoomed past the mouth of the alleyway and people hurried past, ignorant as to just who they were not seeing just several meters away.
"It's over."
The lanky blond turned his head, and saw that where there had only been someone else's blood just minutes ago, fresh blood was now sluggishly oozing out of his companion's nostrils.
He let out a startled cry, but didn't get to speak, as the grey-haired man spoke once more, tilting his head to offer him a wan smile. Blood all but covered the lower half of his face, making the expression more morbid that he had probably intended it to be.
"Can't say I didn't see this coming, though – Luxord always put in failsafes in case someone stabbed him in the back."
Almost bonelessly, he let himself slip off his friend's shoulder. His eyes, finally uncovered, looked up at the night sky, where not a star was in sight.
"You know what to do, right?"
Silently, the blond nodded, anguish etched in his features.
Those blue eyes, always so sharp, now looked glazed over. "And I thought that maybe tonight, I'd see the stars once again."
A pair eyes flickered shut for the last time, and for the first time in a long while, they were blue instead of grey when they closed.
xxx
The first piece closed as it had started, with several unaccompanied notes from the concertmaster. Given that the bulk of the piece had practically made the concert hall's roof vibrate a little, those last notes seemed a little bit of a mood-killer.
Later, the critics would comment that the closing section of the piece was actually very apt. Nothing else could have described the fall of Organisation XIII quite as well as a strangled cry, they said, and so the apparently misplaced notes were indeed suited to their purpose.
All that was left of the Organisation was that blond member, anyway. And everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the police got that one.
That night, however, few would have been in any position to realize such facts. All they had as a breather before the next piece started was a measly fifteen seconds, anyway.
With a spine-chilling wail, the choir led the percussion section and horns into the second piece.
xxx
Riku Nomura was dead. Demyx was dead tired.
Zexion was, surprisingly enough, upset.
"You alright, Zex?" Demyx asked, as he sat down next to his unusually emotional friend. "It's just a hit – what's gotten into you?"
The Cloaked Schemer slowly turned and offered him a flat look and a grimace. "I knew him once."
"Oh." Demyx blinked, unsure of what to say, and Zexion took the silence that followed as his cue.
A shaky hand swept grey locks out of his eyes, which had already taken on a faraway look. "It was before your time, you know? The days when Vexen, Lexeaus, and yours truly were all in the labs making shit for the Organisation. One day Riku comes along, and single-handedly tears apart the lab. Xemnas wasn't pleased, so I got sent to do him in.
"It took a while to track him down, and by the time I had, you'd joined. Those were the last of my days as Sora Hikari."
Seeing Demyx's confused expression, Zexion chuckled. "Brunette."
"But…," Demyx struggled to find the right words, as facts and memories started falling into place, one after the other. "That was a year ago!"
Zexion nodded glumly. "I tried to keep him safe. I really did.
"But there he went, finishing off Larxene and Marluxia, and Xemnas knew he was back in town. So I got sent after him again, and they put you on the case with me so I wouldn't screw up."
A wary glance was cast at the silver-haired corpse not five seconds away from them. "Thank goodness it all ends soon."
Somewhere in the silent house, a clock chimed five times. A truck rumbled past the house. Some children on bicycles went by, screaming like hooligans and making enough noise to qualify as a health hazard. The sky grew darker.
Neither Demyx nor Zexion noticed.
In the silence of the darkening day, Demyx learned of how Zexion had loved and lost, and Zexion learned that there were depths to the blond beyond music.
They didn't leave till somewhere past nine, and it was only when they had pulled up in front of Zexion's apartment complex that he leaned in and whispered a long-unspoken name into Demyx's ear.
"Roxas."
xxx
After the second piece, the audience was practically rabid. None in their number had expected works of such quality from him, and they were only done with two of his three pieces for the night. If the first had managed to shake the hall's ceiling, the second must have blown the roof open.
And yet, despite the ominous feel of the second piece, there was something in it that most members of the audience could not really pinpoint. Some would later describe the piece as having a regal sense to it, almost like a Shakespearean tragedy; beautiful in its darkness.
Which is why, when the third piece started, the audience was thrown off-balance yet again.
It started slowly and quietly, in sharp contrast to the two pieces that had preceded it. With a gentle opening from the woodwinds, it had a sluggish, almost sorrowful feel to it.
And then the composer's fingers danced across the piano's keys, and it all felt right.
Few knew or noticed that the third piece had a six-eight time signature for its melody, and a nine-eight for its countermelody. Fewer still would have known or noticed that both of the preceding pieces had been the same.
And of course, no one in the audience noticed that the song faded out to a thirteen-four time signature.
xxx
The next day's news featured not one, not two, but three separate headlines regarding the composer.
"World-renowned composer commits suicide."
"Three-piece mystery: Composer found dead in hotel room."
"Composer kills self after critically-acclaimed performance."
None of them mentioned the note that had been found next to the composer's corpse, nor did they mention the words that had been written on it in the composer's characteristically messy scrawl. However, this may have been due to the fact that the police had managed to contain the crime scene before the media got to it, along with the note and its message.
It was only six words, though. Few of those who read the note failed to notice that it had been written in two lines of three words each, though.
'And now our tale is told.'
Fewer still at the crime scene wondered why the recently deceased had such a large quantity of coloured contact lenses in his suitcase.
xxx
"That was beautiful."
A clear tenor – Zexion. Demyx turned to look his on-again, off-again boyfriend, and offered him a grin. "Thanks, Zex. Join me?"
Zexion shook his head. "Would love to, but we've got work to do. I trust you remember Riku?"
With that said, it didn't take five minutes for Demyx to get his gear, and they were off in the inconspicuous old car that the Organisation favoured for such missions. Halfway to their destination, Zexion withdrew a small bottle from one of his hoodie's pockets, and proceeded to drip the clear fluid within it onto his eyes.
"Contact lenses being a bitch, again?" Demyx asked, nodding towards him. "You should tell Vexen, man."
Zexion shrugged, as he blinked to spread the drops out over his eyes. "No matter – you know it's not going to change anything, right? Hair dye, coloured lenses, even the helium, that once? Concealment at all costs."
"Out of curiosity, just what is your natural hair colour, anyway?" the Melodious Nocturne asked, as they overtook a slow-moving Pinto. "This one's clearly phony, and I've seen you go brunette before."
No reply was forthcoming, and so they sat in slightly strained silence for a while. The two of them had never been on the best terms as far as their colleagues knew, and whenever they had been together, it had always been on the sly. From stolen kisses in quiet corridors to passionate nights in each other's beds, their relationship had been anything but normal, and anything but lacking in excitement.
They were just taking the exit towards the target's – one Riku Nomura – neighbourhood when Zexion spoke just a single word.
"Blond."
xxx
"Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a great night for all of us," declared the conductor proudly, "and we have heard so much good music here tonight! Let us hear it for the Hollow Bastion Philharmonic Orchestra and Gullwing Choir once again!"
Thunderous applause filled the concert hall as the orchestra's ninety members stood up, along with the forty-strong choir. Only when the conductor gestured for silence and the musicians took their seats did the audience go silent once again.
"And now, for our encore performance, it gives me great pleasure to announce that we will be having not one, and not two, but three pieces," announced the conductor. "If that wasn't enough, let me say now that tonight shall be the world premiere of a three-piece composition. The three pieces are named, in their order of performance, as The Thirteenth Anthology, Destati, and The Other Promise."
The silence that was the audience's response to his words was one of pure shock. No one had expected that of him, anyway. While his name had been on the programme – and given that none of his pieces had been performed, his cover as the encore act had been blown, so to speak - no one had mentioned anything of a world premiere.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to the legendary young virtuoso and composer, Hayner Miyazaki!"
xxx
Six months later
"This just in: the manhunt for the notorious Demyx Kohaku was called off today, when it was discovered that he was already deceased! Official sources-"
"- legendary composer and pianist Hayner Miyazaki was the alter ego of crime lord Demyx Kohaku. In an earlier statement-"
"- society as we know it clearly has more to it than meets the eye. In a document willed to his sister, Miyazaki revealed the true identities of several other kingpins, including Xehanort Ansem and Isa Ruebens. The strangest among the reveals, however, is the deceased Organisation member known as Zexion Nomura, who was identified by Miyazaki as being two men known as Sora Hikari and Roxas Strife, who was also the Organisation's Number Thirteen! More on this later-"
END