I'm really sorry this has taken so long to be updated. Hope that it's still worth reading though...

XII. Variation

If I wasn't meant to feel emotions, then it would have been better if I couldn't remember them. It was so complicated – I wanted them, but they were no longer there. They were simply echoes of what Edym felt. A recurring melody that rang between my ears, urging me to join in their chorus.

Yet, just because Nobodies were never meant to have emotions, it didn't mean we had to ignore them altogether. They were part of us now.

"Don't talk such nonsense."

That was what Vexen told me several days later, as I paid him a visit to his study in an act of insanity. The table was filled with so many tiles and papers of the workings of the heart and the years of work into discovering its secrets. The workings of the Organisation revolved solely around him, and whatever he researched into was more productive than the rest of us put together. His importance in the Organisation was incomparable, and I disliked him because of that.

Vexen himself was pouring over a rather dusty textbook that suited an antique shop, fingering the bottom right of the page as if to anticipate turning it.

I hung my head at the quick answer. I was barely able to present my case. "But listen: we're after our own hearts, but we still have memories. There's still something alive inside us. Isn't that enough?"

Vexen crossed the room and took his seat, still leafing through the book. "Let's put things into perspective. Tell me about your first ten years."

I couldn't help but blink. Ten years old, I wasn't in hospital or a particularly dangerous schizophrenic. I was close to normal, going to school and doing his homework. At least I thought so – I vaguely recalled that memory loss was a side-effect of ECT treatment. How could I distinguish the truth from the lies? "Err…"

Just the sound of uncertainty was enough for Vexen to smile cruelly. "Memories aren't easy to store, or particularly easy to retrieve afterwards. After each recollection, it isn't necessarily replaced in exactly the same way. To compromise for the empty cracks of the story, the brain develops its own memories in such a way to make it have some fundamental sense." His eyes lifted up to me briefly. Perhaps a small sign to check I was still listening. "In layman terms, what you feel as anger isn't anger. Happiness isn't happiness. The brain did a pathetic job in piecing all the pieces together the moment we were turned into Nobodies."

He kept his gaze steady, and I tried and failed to do the same. "The only way to understand fully what it's like is to claim our heart back."

I didn't agree, but neither did I think it was incorrect. He did have a point, and perhaps it was a point that I didn't want to hear. "Do you know that for certain?" I pressed.

He raised an eyebrow. "What exactly?"

"The heart," I answered as I circled the table. "Does it really offer everything we need to become like everyone else?"

Vexen didn't even try to make the exasperated sigh a secret. It was only natural I would annoy him – I was kept out of the loop of everything because I failed to listen during the meetings. "It's the only thing we're missing. I think even you could work that out."

"So how did we lose it?" I continued. If I was aggravating him, then I might as well do us both a favour and do it all in one go.

He gripped his book tighter, probably borderline throwing it at my head. Fortunately, Vexen was more the type to speak his mind rather than resort to animalistic violence. "By submitting to darkness. As humans, it is only a matter of time before one finds refuge in anywhere other than the outside world. Emotions such as twisted insanity, overwhelming regret or simple loss of control are contributors to this."

I didn't stop Vexen as he ploughed on. I had heard all this from Xigbar, but hearing someone else say it made it more believable.

"Most are turned into Heartless. They have a heart, but no will whatsoever. Those with some remorse are turned into Nobodies, who possess some power but effectively are no different to the Heartless. We, however, are special Nobodies. We retain our human selves as a shell, and even snatch the mind for ourselves. No matter how strong our will was to stay alive and pull through the dark, the heart was the one thing we couldn't claim back."

"And that's why we're after Heartless?" I asked next.

"Not us. The Keyblade wielder. We have no way of containing the hearts, so they form more Heartless." Vexen frowned. "Even if we were able to defeat a powerful one, there is nothing to say that the hearts released are abundant enough to return to us."

I folded my arms nonchalantly. "I still don't get it."

Vexen laughed softly as he resumed to his book. "I didn't think so. Don't waste any more of my time, I'm behind schedule as it is. The door's over there."

You're not done with him yet, surely?

The door handle was centimetres from my hand before I mustered up the courage to ask what I wanted from him. "If these feelings aren't real, why do we have them?"

I watched him skim the page. "I told you that already. But if you don't believe in the science, accept it as a curse we must suffer. Now will you leave?"

I did no such thing, instead marching towards his table and slamming my palms on it. Vexen looked up, but he wasn't surprised. "I don't have much of a life to remember. I know anguish and dread all too well, since that was all I felt during my last years." I furrowed my eyebrows. "Add fear and self-loath to that. But how can I know how to laugh, have a good time and even miss someone when my Somebody didn't experience any of it?"

Vexen rolled his eyes huffily. "Then you must have seen similar emotions in the people around you. If there is an emotion which you have never encountered your entire life, which I find incredibly unbelievable, the mind doesn't try to tailor for it. If you haven't seen laughter, the mind's not stupid enough to try and replicate something it can't. It would merely show the absence of it."

Much like Saix, I mentally noted.

The scientist let out an irritated sigh. "Now will you please leave me to my work?"

I had somehow ended up in the lavatories, and not for a quick stop.

If Vexen was right, all the emotions I had been keen to hold onto were simply books in my mental library, taken off the shelves and the lines were all there ready and waiting. My craving for attention, like Zexion had summarised me as, was nothing more than a reflection of Edym and his old self. Not quite the same, but a poor job of it. No reflection could look like the original.

I had awakened to believe that I had a non-physical heart I could call my own, and now everything was turning against me. As I stared at the bathroom mirror, was it me or him staring back? Were those aquamarine eyes the window of my soul or his?

By succumbing to emotions, I was living on his scraps. I was Edym, but a variant of him. Not quite whole, but not quite dead. Dangling his life in front of me. Within reach, but not. How could he do this to me?

The base of my sitar rammed into the mirror, shattering him into several hundred pieces. The mighty crash was still ringing in my ears even after it had broken.

This was me.

I stared down at the broken glass, then I proceeded in trying to put the pieces back together again. It was a good way to make me look the part of madman, but I was beginning to understand what they all meant – Vexen, Zexion, Valitus. By trying to reconstruct the original mirror, some shards were inevitably too small to put back, and try as I may to make it complete, there were still many cracks running across my reflection. There was blood on several of the shards, and as I proceeded to look at my hands, it was there on my fingers too.

"What…"

Zexion looked between me and my work, and for the first time, a look of something beyond interest made its way across his face. Presumably, he had come running over because of the noise.

I laughed softly. "I think I understand now." I looked at my badly constructed reflection again. My smile was crooked, my hair apparently streaked with brown and red. Several parts of my mullet turned at sharp tangents and my eyes were wonky. "This is what we are – a poor reconstruction. The one that's looking back at us isn't what we look like. Take a look at these hands – I bleed and it doesn't hurt. It should, but it doesn't."

I held them up for Zexion to see, but he shook his head slowly.

I brought them down again, running a hand over the broken surface of what was once a smooth one. Several shards lost their place then, distorting my reflection even more. "We can put the pieces together, but there's nothing to keep it in their right place. Maybe the pieces were never put right in the first place."

Zexion squatted down next to me, making sure not to startle me by making sure he was in view. "Come on, let's go. Leave this behind."

All this time, I finally knew what it meant to be a Nobody. "Say Zexion, when I broke the mirror, I was angry at Edym for making me this way." I let out a small laugh. "But in being angry, I didn't feel a thing. It's peculiar…but it makes absolute sense. Everything makes sense."

I turned to him, but the look on Zexion's face was that of concern. An imitation of concern. And as he opened his mouth, he made sure to keep eye contact. Although he tried to be himself, his voice betrayed him.

"Nobodies don't bleed, Demyx."