Hey. First Xemnas-centric chapter ^^ Sorry this took so long. Well, erm, it's getting closer to the end. R&R appreciated. Thank you.


Darkness.

Sweet, blissful darkness.

Everything around him was absolute darkness, darkness with no substance, with no direction or depth. He couldn't tell if he was floating or standing, but that ceased to mean anything to him. The darkness bound him in sable chains, it seeped into his soul, it pulsed through his veins and stripped him of self-awareness and identity. He despised it, he feared it, and he wanted it to release him and free him from this nightmare; yet he cherished it, he needed it, he reveled in its emptiness and torture.

But soon, a small orb of light hovered before him. He reached forward and gently took the light in his hands. It was small enough to fit nicely into the cup his palms formed. It wasn't very bright, and it flickered underneath the massive cover of darkness, but it never went out, and it illuminated his face and body. He knew in an instant that this was

his light, and that it would never disappear under this darkness, whosever it was.

And with that resolution, he held his light to his chest and welcomed it into his body. He heard something scream and cry in agony, and the darkness grew brighter and brighter until it blinded him. And then...

xxx

Xemnas slowly opened his eyes and groaned. The room was out of focus, two of everything. His head spun. He closed his eyes again, then opened them. He lifted his head with stiff effort and finally noticed the woman laying next to him.

"Aqua?" Xemnas said, dropping his head to the pillow. "Is it...tomorrow? Are we going to the beach?"

"Not yet," Aqua smiled and stroked her fingers along the back of his head.

Xemnas enjoyed this soothing motion, allowing her to comfort the ache at the back of his skull... Wait. "Were you sleeping in this bed...with me?" he asked, trying to assess the situation.

Aqua blushed. "Not quite, but I understand your discomfort." She sat up and graciously helped Xemnas sit up. "So...I heard you visited Roxas."

"Yes," Xemnas confirmed. "And they tried to kill me."

Aqua grinned. "Like this?" She brought her hand around to caress Xemnas' gut, but he stopped her with a gentle hand around her wrist.

"Exactly so," he said, satisfied by her laughter. His head still hurt, and every noise made it spike, but he didn't really mind, especially since it would be ridiculous to complain over such minor pain when he's felt agony much, much worse.

"So, what happened to you?" Aqua asked, carefully sliding her hand through his to free it.

Xemnas blinked, thinking back. He was leaving Roxas' room and walking down the hall, then...nothing. "Strange," he murmured. "I don't remember."

Aqua shrugged. "There's a lot you don't remember." She smiled smugly, in a way that Xemnas couldn't tell if she was joking or meant it.

"If only you knew how right you were," he said forlornly, looking away from her fading smile.

"Why?" Aqua asked, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

Xemnas shrugged away her attempted comfort. "I don't remember anything about my past before ten years ago," he explained. "All I remember is waking up in the Radiant Castle, and before that, nothing."

"Oh," Aqua mumbled. "But the memories you have of the Castle are goods one, though."

"Precious few," Xemnas muttered, wondering how she would know that. "The rest are dark and unforgiving."

"Then what is this?" Aqua briefly left him, then returned with his first photo album from Radiant Garden. Most of the dust wad missing, so Aqua had looked at it before.

"Get the third one," Xemnas told her, and watched pensively as she set the first down and retrieved the third. He gently took it from her hands and searched for the first picture of a test subject, which he had been required to take as to document their studies. He found it, in the middle of an agonized convulsion, eyes glowing bright golden and darkness coating the flesh of its bare arms and legs.

Aqua grimaced and shivered, reading the caption. "You...did this to people?"

Xemnas nodded. "And like a virus, darkness poisoned every one of us." He quickly skipped past a few more pages of tormented subjects in various stages of degeneration or death and found one of himself, taken by Braig in the latter's final human moments. "We all fell victim, one by one, but I lasted the longest, and cast off my body by my own choice."

He still felt something in his chest when he saw that picture, the faded one of himself, amber eyes shining luminously; streaks of self-inflicted scratches from inhuman talons covering his face and exposed skin; tears dribbling down his face and sinking into his torn lab coat; the coat ripped, clawed and shredded by Heartless, fellow apprentices, and himself, the white fabric a rotten red color from contaminated blood. But despite this, in his scarred and swarthy hands he held an orange charm made of stained glass, which he held as dearly as life itself for reasons he was unable to comprehend.

And below the photo, on a stained piece of paper, was written, Goodbye.

Xemnas sighed and looked over at Aqua. The bluenette looked horrified, transfixed on the dreadfully sad picture, recognition and grief swirling through her eyes like a raging torrent of oil and water. Xemnas quickly shut the dreadful portfolio and embraced her, wanting to assure her and remove her suffering with words he couldn't seem to get past his lips. Before, he had wanted her to see that his life wasn't as happy as she thought, but now he wanted her to forget those images and focus on the present, on who he was now.

Aqua leaned into him and gripped his jacket tight in her fists, tugging it in opposite directions and pressing her elbows into the soft flesh between his ribs and hips as she let out a violent sob. He could feel an odd quality about her tears, like they weren't truly meant for him specifically, like they were meant for some old friend for whom she had not yet mourned. But Xemnas allowed her to cry, for he felt as though she were compensating for his impassiveness, his inability to care for anyone or anything, by crying like that. And it felt...nice, to Xemnas, to know that someone actually cared about him; there had been no tears on the day he had carved his own heart from his chest and felt the blank, blissful feeling of death.

After a while, the crying ceased, but they just held each other like that, not really wanting or caring to move from that tender position, Aqua gripping tight the fabric just beneath Xemnas' hood, her arms tight beneath his shoulders, and Xemnas burying his face into the crook of Aqua's neck, arms gently placed around her as though she were a stuffed animal. Xemnas felt tired, no, peaceful like this, even though Aqua seemed to be full of anguish.

And finally, the words came to him.

"I'm here now, Aqua."

"I'm so glad." Aqua let go of him and flopped down on the bed, clearly exhausted.

"You can sleep there if you like," Xemnas said. "I can sleep somewhere else." He entered his bottom drawer and took out some blankets to pad the hard floor where he would be willing to sleep.

"Hold on." Aqua sat up and produced a Rock Crunch ice cream bar. "For you."

Xemnas, incredulous, rushed over and unwrapped it. "How did you know?"

Aqua smiled. "Would you believe a lucky guess?"

"No, but thank you any way." Xemnas gratefully took a large bite and was accosted by many entwined flavors of caramel, nut, and other bittersweet tastes. He mashed it slowly against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, savoring every moment of this wondrous treat. Oh, how he had forgotten the simple joy of a bar of Rock Crunch ice cream.

Aqua watched with a broad grin as he finished the bar, moaning with delight and rolling his eyes back and forth with each delicious bite. When he finished, he tossed the stick to the side and yawned. Ice cream always made him feel tired, and he had liked to eat it before going to sleep

Aqua pulled herself up in the covers as Xemnas pulled a thin blanket over himself, and willed sleep upon him. Sleep didn't come easily, because his dreams were often plagued by blood, death, pain, and an unnamable despair.

xxx

The dreams were of Aqua.

Aqua smiling; Aqua laughing; Aqua eating ice cream; Aqua and Ven; Aqua thinking; Aqua chatting with him; Aqua smacking him in the back of the head; Aqua giving Ven a tousle of hair; Aqua paying attention to the Master; Aqua fighting; Aqua looking concerned; Aqua regarding him with horror and resentment; Aqua fearfully forcing away his hand from her throat; Aqua slamming her weapon into his flesh...

Aqua, reaching out from the darkness, his own hand reaching out to meet hers.

xxx

Xemnas awoke to what he knew as nighttime.

He couldn't sleep anymore. He tried desperately to remember his dream, but it slipped into blurred obscurity like all others. He couldn't remember his dreams, as he couldn't remember any images from the Chamber of Repose, but he felt this one meant something more than the others did. They all meant something, he knew, but this one had much, much more.

He kicked the covers off himself and walked to the window. Harsh blasts of air whistled past his ears and beat the long end of his coat violently around, and thunder answered his belief that a storm was brewing in the skies. He breathed in deeply, savoring the scent of the cool, crisp air before the rain fell, then slid down the face of the Castle on the rope. He reached Naught's Skyway and tossed the remaining end of his rope over the edge. Lightning exploded overhead like a malfunctioning power line and thunder rumbled down from a heavenly blacksmith's forgery, and by the time Xemnas reached the bottom of the rope, rain was cascading down from the clouds with killing intent.

Xemnas flicked on his hood and zipped the collar of his jacket so that his face was shrouded in shadows, then proceeded on his walk through the city.

The sprawling black metropolis seemed oddly vacant for a city of its size, with little or no living inhabitants. He had only seen live residents once or twice, and each time only in the peripheries of his vision, and then they would pull the shades down or disappear into the back alleys, looted trashcans tipped over and spilled. The Organization had a bad reputation here, known as thieves of hearts and purveyors of darkness and death.

And this is why it was so interesting when Xemnas found someone.

An inhabitant was laying on its side in the middle or the road, dark rain washing its blood into the black concrete. As Xemnas approached, he saw that there was a gaping tear in its chest, in the left side, from which issued no more blood than was already blending among the fallen water and most likely soiling his boots. He gently nudged it with his foot, then again. The cadaver flipped onto its back, eyes peeled open and out. What in the world lurked these streets that would steal a heart and tear out its victim's eyes? He stepped over the corpse and continued on his way, now paranoid with the prickling feeling of being watched.

As he walked down the street, the feeling that he'd been missing an important detail drifted into his mind. What had it been about the corpse?

And when he entered a square and heard a quiet rumbling growl he knew. There was nothing in the cadaver's chest.

As whatever was stalking him charged, he gathered energy of nothingness in his feet and did a skillful midair leaping kick that brought his foot crashing into...Saix's face? He landed on his hands and sprung to his feet, and the Berserker went reeling into a wall, then slid to a sitting position on the ground.

Xemnas ran over to his second-in-command and shook his shoulders. He had a large red mark where his skin had broken against his skull. Saix shook his head and put a hand to his wound. "Th...thank you, Superior. It was happening again."

Xemnas took notice of the blood covering the Diviner's mouth area and bare hands. "I hope you didn't eat the intestines out of the dead body I just saw."

Saix sighed. "Indeed." He groaned and rubbed his head. "You could've been a little gentler, though."

Xemnas helped Saix stand up. "I was being too careful." He let go of the younger Nobody and began walking off.

"Wait."

Xemnas stopped. "Yes?"

Saix approached. "Escort."

"Oh."

Saix opened a dark corridor and grabbed Xemnas' arm as they walked in. His grip was harsh and ungentle, and when they reached the end of the corridor, right by Xemnas' room, he forced his elder out. "Stay." With that he left.

Xemnas sighed. The Diviner was overprotective and austere. He opened the door to his room quietly and glanced at the sleeping Aqua. He tried to recall his forgotten dream again, with was fading even farther from his memory. By morning, he wouldn't even remember having a dream.

He settled back into his makeshift bed and pulled the blanket over himself. Maybe he would find out who he really was.

Aqua was going to free him.