A/N: I've never written something in the point of view of Xemnas, but he seems like such an interesting character, and I just couldn't resist :D This is the second ficlet, written again by me (as will the next one be, because darling mylife9 is a little busy, but that's okay).

Genre: is up in the air. Possibly angsty.

Warnings: A feeling without a feeling.

Characters/Pairings: Xemnas, Saix (you can think of it was you wish, but there's really no relationship definition).

Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, but these words are mine, at least, and I revel in that, if nothing else.


[December 2nd: Rectitude]

Darkness was rectitude, he believed; was a rightness that made itself known when the wrong had set for the night, and the night was right, the light was right in its own luminous way (for darkness could not exist without light, and it was right to have a definition, and something to be opposite), but there was only room enough for one right in the worlds. Two rights were biased things, and to be biased was wrong, and to be two-faced was wrong, and he wished to rid the worlds of their wrongness. Darkness, in its ways, blinded one from the wrongs the worlds had embedded into their flesh, and wrong would dwindle out if it could not be recognised as wrong. The wrong would dwindle away, like the worlds. And that was right.

It was near ironic how he would have to go about such things, with Kingdom Hearts so luminescent it resembled light, a light and hope in the sky, and why something as right as hope and something as wrong as light were considered to be the same, he had no inclination to understand. Sayings like that from worlds drenched in wrong were only considered right by those who dwelled too long in that same wrong, and he himself was probably the most wrong of all. A case without something inside, without a thing to hold except a need that didn't come with a heart, and a hatred that could only reach his skin, and a skin that only lived because it was a nothing, and something needed to exist, so something needed an opposite. He was an opposite, and that was right. He was an opposite, and that was wrong. He was going to fix the wrong. He was going to make things right. He was going to be.

Footsteps echoed from behind him, like a warning, but he had stood in this spot for long enough to recognise whose footsteps they were.

"Saix," he acknowledged, as Saix liked to be acknowledged in his presence. "How much longer must I wait until Kingdom Hearts is complete?"

Silence crept between them, like a fog, and if he had a feeling he suspected he would feel annoyed, or anticipated.

"Superior," Saix started when the silence had stretched long enough, voice in his throat dwindling with hesitance, and he felt annoyance tug at his brows, tug at them from the air and not from his chest, not from the nothingness, but from the reaction, and he rather thought a feeling would do him good. "We do not know. Kingdom Hearts had dwelled as ready as it is now for a while. It seems the Keybearer heeds his own ways."

"And?" He demanded, lips tight over his teeth like anger, like a feeling, like a something, like a heart, but he had none.

"There is nothing we can do but hope he fights the enemies he encounters. We can summon more, if you wish, but it would leave us drained. We would have no hope in facing the Keybearer in such a state."

"We would have no hope at all if Kingdom Hearts were to be left incomplete," he whispered, hands reaching for the sky and the heart and the everything Kingdom Hearts was, the something, the defining line between right and wrong and the worlds that had made the definition, and he could nearly feel it, nearly touch it. "Now tell me, Saix, what would we be if we did not have hope? Surely, surely we would be less than nothing," his voice whispered, out to Kingdom Hearts, like a plea that did not exist from a voice that did not exist, and a mouth that did not exist, and a feeling that did not exist, and it was a truth that would have made him sad, if sadness was not a feeling, and only a reaction.

"Of course, Superior," Saix bowed, and he felt the air shift with his movement as it had done so many times before, in that exact same spot, feet nearly imprinted into the ground like that. And the footsteps walked away, echoed down the stairs he had no desire to walk down, into a room he had no desire to enter. His place was with the sky, and the power, and the light in the sky that would turn everything right, turn the nothingness into a something that belonged, turn belonging into a word that needed no existence because it would have no opposite, and they would never be Nobodies again. Would never have to beg without the urge behind them for something they should not have had, should have had; two-faced opinion from the worlds that had been so wrong.

His eyes prickled with the air, a tear that had no meaning besides a reaction, and a cold touch to his cheek as it rolled, and his hands stretched in longing, in hope, and he wondered what they would have been if they did not have the option, did not have Kingdom Hearts in such a begging wait in front of their fingertips, like a curse, like a hope.

Surely, they would have been better off without.