Despite all appearances - Xikira had a different side to her, too.
Sure, she was bold, brash, loud and fierce to a fault! Sassy and quick, and smart when she wanted to be. A real quick study, too. But she was also sometimes...surprisingly anxious, and shy, and even...meek.
And that Xikira was always a lot more uncomfortable for Luxu to be around compared with bold and sassy Xikira.
For the simple reason that it reminded Luxu far too much of himself at that age.
He'd been that shy, anxious, worry-wort of a kid. Unconfident in himself, his own abilities, everything. Too wrapped up in his own head and Heart, overthinking and overfeeling. It had only been towards the end of the old world that he had begun to change and become a more confident, stand-firm kind of guy. So much so that his final interaction with his Master had been to voice opposition to him and his plans to defeat Darkness, and then to walk out on him with his chin held high.
The highlight of his entire existence, that day...
Hah...
How pathetic, right?
Because in the end, he'd followed those plans anyways - for lack of any better alternative, as the years and years had passed him by.
He digressed.
Damn kids...weren't...all that bad, after all.
He'd been one once - thought about having them, time and time again, as an adult, but ultimately never had. Couldn't have brought himself to do that, not with someone else's body. So many people's bodies...stolen away...
He felt the old, familiar, aching remorse in his Heart for it. For every life taken, every story cut short by him crashing on into the middle of it to hijack it...and turn it into just another chapter of his own story.
He remembered them all.
Every name. Every person.
He'd always tried to either explain things to them and gain consent, as he had with Brain so long ago, or at least only take over the bodies of scum - like Braig had been. Some thug, who played castle servant by day and criminal by night, that surely Radiant Garden wouldn't miss - that he would even be doing that world a favor, by removing one criminal from the playing field. Luxu had had other things to focus on, after all, than terrorizing helpless citizens for munny or whatever shit Braig had been into.
But more often than not, it didn't work out like that.
Circumstances, emergencies, last resorts...
He'd taken too many people by force, used them and left them when they were older - years of their lives stolen, never to be gotten back again. Falling in love, having families, prime year experiences...
People like Bragi, the Keyblade wielding kid, whose only crime was being a wielder who'd come into Luxu's path and sights at a time when Luxu had needed a ticket into Scala Ad Caelum...
A few times over the centuries, he had even taken people away from their families. Husbands from spouses, from kids... Five times over, wives from spouses and kids, unavoidably.
Not to mention the damages to their bodies he sustained, despite his best efforts. Some, more permanent and serious, like Braig's eye.
And when he left them, he left them with it all.
To pick up those pieces and try to make something of their lives again.
And when he'd left Bragi...what had he even left the kid with? Years of life stolen from him. Dumped on an unfamiliar world. Everyone he could've known and cared for dead and gone - his Master a defeated shell of a man who'd lost everything, and hoped only to retire in peace and solitude. True, the kid could still have had his dreams of being a Keyblade wielder, a hero traveling the worlds and doing good and whatnot, but...
But he'd have been doing it alone.
Luxu didn't know.
He didn't want to know.
Not once had he ever actually gone back...to check in on the people he left behind.
Except...for one, now: Xehanort.
And interacting with the man twice over like this was risky business - even if the payoff could mean finally reaching the end of all this.
If Xehanort even once recognized any of Luxu's mannerisms or phrases from back then, from Bragi...
Luxu closed his eye, sighing to himself.
Bragi, and the countless people before him whose lives Luxu had screwed up...
The sacrifices were too much, for sure.
And yet...he kept going.
Was he really not so different from his Master after all, then?
Where would it end, when would it stop?
He tried to have his rules, his lines in the sand, but even those got broken time and again - like with Bragi. An opportunity stumbled into his path, too damn perfect to pass up, in the name of continuing his mission.
But were they just hollow justifications? Lies and excuses he told himself?
Was it all just...
He opened his eye again, gazing into the downcast, vacant face of Skuld.
"What about you?" he said quietly. "What would you tell me, if you could still talk...? How to handle being around Xikira?"
He waited, watching her closely. Hoping for something. But it was rare that she even reacted to anything these days...
Her "good days" were still pretty damn low, all things considered.
He'd used to be able to at least hold full on conversations with her, even if she was amnesiac and subdued about it.
He didn't even know why she'd deteriorated so badly over all this time. Was it just bad luck, a fluke of the universe, of time travel, or had something been wrong with her pod, or...or had it been Xehanort? The experiments into her Heart and memories, trying to push and prod and uncover her secrets she didn't even know herself? Had they hit something vital in there, poked a hole, caused her serious, long term damage? It wasn't as if the apprentices had all been gentle with their subjects, after all...
Skuld hadn't ever been an exception.
Luxu thought he was actually still lucky that her Heart hadn't just flat out collapsed, like some of the other test subjects back in the day...
"M-m..."
Luxu startled, his eye widening as he looked at Skuld.
Her head raised, just a bit. Her lips moved again. "Ma-y...your...H-H..." She fell silent again, and her head fell.
Luxu watched her for a few more minutes, hoping she'd do something again - she had actually spoken again, for the first time in years! - but...nothing.
He sighed, stood from his chair and left the room.
May my Heart be my guiding key, huh? Figures you'd say that...
But the problem was that he didn't exactly trust his own damn Heart.
They weren't infallible. They could steer you wrong as often as right.
The other Masters, his friends...fallen to their hate, bitterness, greed, sorrow...to the darkness and chaos of war...
On purpose, unknowingly.
Aced, Ira, Invi, Gula...Ava...
And all those Unions, all those kids "guided" by their own Hearts too...
Following your Heart wasn't foolproof. It could be as wrong as it was right! It was up to the person in charge of that Heart to decide whether or not it was right or wrong to follow its desires and whims. And that was another problem: Luxu had no idea, himself, what was even right or wrong anymore. He only knew for certain...that it was dangerous to play with his own Heart like this. To let Xikira play around with it like this.
So why do I keep letting her do it?
Because he could tell himself he could have it both ways, that it wouldn't distract from his grand mission? Or, seen in another light, that it didn't matter if he gave a damn about her in the now? That she'd be dead and gone in a couple of decades, if she lived through all this, just like everyone else that had passed him by in these worlds? Or...that she might end up becoming an empty clone of Xehanort, if Xemnas succeeded in his true plans...
The seven and thirteen...another Keyblade "war"...
What a fucking joke.
Funniest joke in the World. Funniest one he'd ever heard.
Xehanort just wanted his X-Blade, his Kingdom Hearts, that ascent into godhood.
And if he did somehow win - if Kairi and all those other "heroes" failed, like all the other kids had failed back in Luxu's day - then...well...Luxu would have to step in and take the old man out.
Wasn't it so strange, to bet for the other team to win against your own? To want to have faith in them to defeat the guy you were backing? Hah...
Well, regardless of Xehanort, Xemnas, Keyblade War, time travel, spying and lying and playing roles to the hilt...
Luxu knew his Heart was a mess.
And he knew Xikira wasn't helping it any.
So why?
Why take the risks? Why open his Heart to her, even this much?
It wasn't just that he needed her for Skuld, and wanted to stay on her good side.
It was...
The same problem Luxu had had for millennia now.
"You can't do this! The sacrifice is too great!" Luxu shouted, spreading his arms to the man, pleading.
His Master refused to face him, standing with one hand on his desk. Next to that damn Book.
And then his Master's voice filled his ears, that flat, quiet tone that was harsher and more frightening than anything else.
"I told you...not to let sentiment cloud your judgement."
In the here and now, Luxu let out a ragged breath, gazing at nothing. He uncurled the fists at his sides, and his head dropped.
"Damn stupid kid," he croaked to himself. "You weren't any better than the others about being tethered on your Heart's leash..."
And you still aren't.
