Title: My Enemies Belittle Me
Author: Reno
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Setting: The World That Never Was, KHII
Pairing: None
Characters: Xemnas, King Mickey, Ansem The Wise, Sora, Kairi, Riku, Naminé, Xehanort
Genre: Angst/Spiritual
Rating: T
Chapters: 1/1
Word Count: 778
Type Of Work: One-Shot
Status: Complete
Warnings: Existentialism, Headcanon Heavy, Xemnas-Centric
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Summary: Xemnas visits his thoughts for one final time as the race against him is coming to a close.
AN: Hey guys, it's me again! If anyone wants my writing discord, please DM me. I also have a writing tumblr!
Anyway, I really like this fic, I hope you guys, too. It can be very triggering if your mental health is not great, I think, so please read with caution.
My Enemies Belittle Me
There was something to be said for the voracious appetite of the Keyblade.
It gathered hearts like nothing he'd ever seen before, and the sheer number of them that Sora was drumming up for him only made a faint smile come to his lips. Watching his Kingdom Hearts coming into being, knowing what it meant for him, well… He would say he was elated if he could feel anything at all.
Not even annoyance crept into his life. There was no question that every last member of his pitiful Organization had their own agenda. Perhaps the other didn't know it, but he was well aware of Saïx's true intentions. It was one thing to have a suspicion, but knowing that he was actively being betrayed probably should have elicited more of a reaction from him.
Instead, he felt nothing. Not even a numbness, but a profound emptiness. Part of him recognized that this was likely what death felt like. Or, perhaps, he was death. That was what many considered nonexistence, and by all rules and logic, he didn't exist. Which meant that nonexistence wasn't even radio static. It was silence, it was emptiness, it was torturous.
When Xehanort had sought out this end to his emotional upheaval, he had intended to make his life easier. Erasing the emotions would make it simpler to deal with the everyday things that haunted him.
Or, at least, that was what he had thought.
Unfortunately, Xemnas had found that completely removing all emotion probably wasn't worth it. He wanted to have the good emotions back. Why did life deem that an unnatural occurrence? It would have been so much better, so palatable, to be able to just switch off the negativity. The constant intrusive thoughts had driven him to nothingness, and now he operated on the fringe edge of light and darkness.
This was not what he had wanted, and he couldn't even express his distress. What a mess he had gotten himself into. It wasn't like he was truly prepared for what true emptiness would feel like. Sometimes, science was an art, and he had never been very artistic. In fact, he had always leaned more into the scientific, to facts, to learning… To exploring the doors that nobody wanted to even unlock.
Perhaps that had been where he had messed up this time.
Would death set him free? He honestly didn't know. It was an interesting prospect to dissect in theory, but watching his fellow Nobodies dispatched so easily by Sora and his keyblade was growing worrisome. Perhaps he didn't wish to continue living with nothing inside him, but was it truly so simple? Could the endless nothingness that waited be any different from the empty void he was already a part of?
Sora would bring him an end, one way or another. Be it by his collecting of hearts or his own hands, Xemnas would have to find it within himself to feel solace in the fact that his fate was being written as he sat in silence.
Riku and Kairi were something he hadn't truly expected, however. Sure, he knew they were loose in his castle, of course, he did, but their reuniting with Sora was a thorn in his side. What twisted the knife was Ansem the Wise's involvement.
Xemnas must have been a big-ticket enemy for the King, Riku, Ansem, Kairi, Sora, and even Naminé and Axel to band together against him. Perhaps his ideals were too big, too much for them to understand. Most likely, they would never understand his motivations.
It wasn't necessarily Xehanort that he desired to become by completing Kingdom Hearts. The end goal was to have the thirteen vessels he would need in order to complete his plans. Everyone listened to him, he was the first, they believed him, or so he thought. Why else would they listen when he told them to do things? It wasn't like his missions served a purpose in the grand scheme of things. Sure, here and there they would guarantee he was making the correct decisions… But there was an underlying reason.
Tired, overworked people, Nobodies included, would listen. They would do whatever he wanted because they were told to, they were too beaten down not to. He encouraged them to waste themselves away so that his plans would not find any hiccups. Giving them little downtime meant less time to plan a coup. Or, so he'd wanted.
"I will be executed no matter what I do, so what does it matter?" He told the emptiness of the void, watching the hearts swarming to the sky above him. "It will be what it will be.
AN: So, I wrote this as a Solo for my Xemnas rp account! I really like how it came out, I hope you guys like it, too!
Prompt: "I will be executed no matter what I will do, so what does it matter?"