Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. This is a not-for-profit fanwork.

***THIS CHAPTER HAS IMAGERY THAT, WHILE NOT NECESSARILY GRAPHIC, MAY BE DISTURBING***

XI.

Bright

He froze. "…What?"

"You feel them too," Sora said. "You did nothing to hurt them. Come with me."

"But he can't defend himself," Even said. "You'll be enough at risk as it is. Sora, do you really need that?"

Another shiver that had nothing to do with the darkness went through him. "Does he really need another burden, you mean?" Demyx asked. The blood was hot in his cheeks. He was covered all over in a feverish sweat. "Because—because—that's all I am, you know."

"Nine, you're just being idiotic," Even said.

"Yeah, you can't fight," Lea said.

Sora still looked at him expectantly. Between all of the stares and the incredible pressure all over his body he couldn't take it. "Enough," he said in a low voice. He took a shaky breath. "I'll go with you."

Sora nodded very seriously. "Then let's go now."

Lea made a frustrated noise. "Fine, but if you get your asses kicked, don't come crawling to me."

Even patted Sora's hand with a passive expression. "We will come if you need help."

Demyx followed Sora down a narrow, shallow staircase. His heart was hammering in his chest, both from anger and a raw, itchy strain. The acrid smell grew stronger and mustier and the burning sensation in his peripheral started to creep into his body. "Shit," he said.

Sora also hissed under his breath.

This level was darker and more cramped, and the windows in the cells were smaller. The air here was humid, too. The damp air crawled all over Demyx's skin and he couldn't help it anymore; he threw up.

"Are you okay?" Sora asked in a strange voice.

Demyx wiped his mouth and shook his head.

"Look," Sora said, and he pointed.

The hallway was long and dark, and Demyx had trouble seeing what Sora wanted him to. Thin tendrils of pure darkness snaked all down the hallway. He watched in horror as it began to consume his vomit into nothingness.

"I know, I know," Sora said to it. "It'll all be over soon."

What happened to the boy who killed without hesitation? Who thought anything linked to darkness was inherently evil?

Sora brightened the light in his palm. The darkness roiled smoothly from a single cell at the end of the corridor, directly facing them. He flinched and put a hand to his head.

"What's wrong?" Demyx asked.

"Nothing. Don't worry about it." He drew his Keyblade. "You came this far. But you don't have to follow me in there."

"Can you handle it?"

"I'm sure I can." He smiled, but his eyes were oddly blank. "You can wait here. Listen to them." He waved and lit his way through the darkness. It quickly slipped over him and took him out of sight.

Alone in the semidarkness, Demyx held his breath. He was alone with Sora, but he wasn't worried about Sora hurting him; more like both of them getting killed. Suddenly this all seemed stupid, and the heat of his anger was rapidly being replaced by an icy fear. The smooth darkness twitched.

"Don't be afraid!" Sora yelled. Demyx didn't know whose benefit it was for.

A blinding light scorched the hallway. Demyx had to shut his eyes. The pressure he'd been fighting against squirmed and roiled and for a second all he felt was a sunburst of pain in his chest. He wasn't sure if the pain was from the light or the darkness; he just wanted it to go away. For a second he heard it—bright, shrill shrieking like a million voices in pain, pushing up against his consciousness and opening something sharp inside of his chest. It pushed and pushed until his knees gave out from under him.

Demyx must have blacked out, because the next thing he knew Even was coaxing him to a sitting position. The intense pain had faded, but he was sore all over to the bone. His vision was distinctly blurry and his eyes hurt as they moved. The tendrils of darkness were gone, and their stink had been replaced by typical basement musk. "…What…"

"Are you all right?" Even asked. His expression was tired and drawn.

Demyx tried to sit up on his own. "…I feel…" he began. Something felt wrong in his body, but he didn't know what. Too heavy but too light at the same time. "I feel weird." Something was missing, like a lost tooth. There was a gap.

"You're lucky that little stunt of yours didn't get you killed," Even said. "Are you ready to move?"

His legs seemed like they had turned to jelly, but he let Even help him up anyway. "Where… where's Sora?"

"Lea took him to see Aerith. He was in worse shape than you. Releasing power of that magnitude… the boy has no real control over his abilities. He nearly burned out his own life. And yours, too."

They began the slow, painstaking walk upstairs. Only then did Demyx process what Even had said, and for some reason he found it funny. "I do the bastard a favor and he almost kills me again," he said. "I thought light was supposed to be good? And healing?"

"Life is about balance," Even said softly. "The stability of matter relies on the presence of both light and darkness. If there is too much of either, the laws of physics become corrupted. Too much light, uncontrolled, could have easily disintegrated your bodies. The problem in this case was too much pure energy. Your cells might have ripped themselves apart."

Demyx didn't understand. Everything was still fuzzy.

"Light usually causes no harm, even in mass quantities. But Sora… is different. His power is unreadable, and for the most part untrained. When he released all that light to ease the darkness, the light took on some of the qualities of the pain he was trying to ease. And that's why it was so dangerous."

"Is that what people mean when they say there's darkness in the light?" Demyx asked.

"Well, no," Even said, and launched into a lecture Demyx didn't listen to. His body weighed him down and he had trouble keeping his eyes open. Why was this castle so big? He listened to the wind wailing through the windows, soft at first and then stronger. The air was cool from the stone, and it soothed some of his feverishness. He stopped in his tracks, listening dazedly, as Even continued rambling. A sharp pain had started gnawing his breastbone.

"Even?" He asked.

"What is it, Nine?" Even asked. He turned to face him. "Do you need to rest?"

"What's happening to me?"

He squinted at Demyx through acidic eyes. "Whatever do you mean?"

His heart was racing in his ears. "I think…" he began, and then crumpled again.

He woke up an unknown amount of time later disoriented and in pain. It seemed to come from the spot right under his breastbone, but there was no injury, and when he pulled up his shirt all he saw were the still-healing scars.

He stood on trembling legs. A thin, butterfly-shaped needle had been placed inside his left hand and tethered him to a pole with a half-empty bag of saline dangling from it. Slowly, wincing, he pulled out the needle and stoppered the blood with a handful of tissues. He was hungry to the point of being queasy, and his drawstring pants felt even looser on him than he remembered.

What the hell happened? He remembered everything in the hallway with Sora, and the burst of light, and walking back with Even. He assumed that they'd only hooked him up like this if he'd been under for some time. He wrapped up his bleeding hand with one of the old rolls of bandages.

He felt… different… and strange, like his body wasn't his or real. Demyx looked in the mirror. His hair was loose and unkempt, and the circles below his eyes were decidedly unpretty, but the face that stared back was his own.

He walked down the castle corridor in his socks. Had he remembered something, and that put him out of commission? If only he could think of what he'd remembered…

He heard voices in the kitchen down the hall. Dilan and Aeleus, he guessed by the timbre. Maybe they knew what was going on. Besides, if he didn't eat something soon he might pass out again. The low blood sugar made him slightly dizzy.

When he pushed open the cracked door the conversation in the room abruptly stopped. Dilan and Aeleus were there, yes. Dilan's expression was one of dry concern; Aeleus's no more animated than it ever was.

But then a third voice, unnoticed until then, spoke. "There you are. Late as ever, I see. You've kept me waiting."

Demyx looked over and wasn't sure what he was seeing was real. He blinked a few times, but the person didn't disappear. In fact, he smiled.

"I assure you I am the real thing," the man continued in his smug accent.

"But… you…" He clutched at the doorway for support. "Lu—"

"Don't say the name, my boy. And somebody get this poor child something to eat." He patted the remaining empty chair next to him. "Come, sit. I'd like to speak with you."

Demyx shook his head. Was he still unconscious? Dreaming, maybe? He looked the same… this Somebody's hair was still blond and shorn. He'd replaced his coat with a respectable white shirt and ironed pants getup. His pants even had creases. A purple vest and red tie were layered over it, and the Nobody insignia earring had been replaced with square studs.

"You look as if you've seen a ghost," Luxord's Somebody said.

"But…" Demyx said. "Where were you? All this time, where were you? And how did you get here?"

"I'm afraid it's a bit irrelevant."

"Tell me anyway," Demyx said. Aeleus put a bowl of oatmeal in front of him and he thanked him weakly.

"I reformed on my home world. That's where I've been. And I got here through the usual means." He pulled out his deck of cards and shuffled them. They had changed too, but every time Demyx tried to get a good look at the back of the card, it seemed to be something different.

"Indeed, one might wonder why you waited so long to contact us," Dilan cut in. The glint in his eyes was quiet and dangerous. His lip quirked.

"Can you blame me for not becoming involved?" The man said calmly.

"So then why did you come?" Aeleus asked. He remained a standing monolith.

"I have some business with our friend here," the man said.

"Nine?" Dilan laughed. "What could you possibly have to discuss with him?"

Demyx looked down into his bowl and tried to squelch the anger.

"I'm sure you've all found this reformation business very mysterious and interesting," the man said. "And, of course, the question remains, why you?"

Demyx gritted his teeth. "I get it. I'm useless, I'm stupid, what could I possibly have to offer their side?"

"That's not what I was thinking at all," the man said. He gestured to the empty bowl. "If you're done, might we walk? Alone."

Demyx wasn't sure whether or not he should trust him. But he'd always had a decent enough rapport with Luxord back in the Organization days, and he'd heard nothing if he was included with Xehanort's bunch. "…Um, sure."

He followed him down the hall. "…So what should I call you?" he asked.

"You don't have to call me anything," the man said.

"But your true name? You have it back?"

Luxord's Somebody shuffled his cards again in his hands, back and forth. "We both know you're neither stupid nor useless," he said instead. "In fact, when you put your mind to it you're just as smart as any of them. And I bet that, were you in fighting shape, you'd have perfect situational awareness—something they distinctly lack."

"What are you getting at?" Demyx asked.

"And your power. Understated by any of this lot, but… potent. Sleeping. I imagine that little encounter with Sora has you feeling strange? Not quite yourself?" He didn't make eye contact.

"I haven't felt myself in weeks." But he understood; he had never felt quite this detached. "Stop speaking in riddles and give it to me straight," Demyx said.

Luxord's Somebody turned and stood in front of him. "You're still changing quite a lot. You're unstable. We know they did this to you for a reason. There are a couple of possibilities, of course. Perhaps it was an experiment, perhaps it really was true randomness of the universe, as it were. But I feel… whatever Sora did to you, however incidentally, was all part of the plan. I think they might make a sleeper agent of you yet."

I feel like Luxord is really one of the more under-loved members of the Org. Like you would think with all this time travel bullshit they would have the Organization member with TIME as his attribute more involved.

Anyway, have a mild deus ex machina.