By the time Roxas emerged in Axel's bedroom, still dragging along the semiconscious redhead, he was already wondering why he hadn't put up more of a fight. Even if he could yell loud, Demyx was such a chickenshit that the size difference wouldn't matter. Of course, he had managed to knock Axel flat with one punch...maybe it was just as well. Demyx could be one scary bastard when he was angry; he might have broken Roxas's nose.
...Wait...what? That...didn't even make sense. Sure, he'd seen Demyx knock Axel flat; that was a little hard to deny, but...why? Demyx had all the violent tendencies of a cupcake. Well, Axel had been shoving him, and yelling at him...Kingdom Hearts, Roxas had even pulled a Keyblade on him. He hadn't hit him with it or anything, just poked him...but still. And that was how it had been the whole mission; from the first day, they'd all been getting pushy and short with each other, often escalating to just plain rough and vicious; as he recalled, Demyx had sort of taken the brunt of it, whether it was because he was the most mild-mannered by nature or because...
"Kingdom Hearts," he breathed, rubbing his forehead. "He kept trying to tell us there was something wrong."
"What are you going on about?" Axel groaned, rolling into a sitting position and rubbing his jaw. "What are we doing here?"
"Blame Demyx," Roxas sighed, still trying to put all the facts together himself. "After he coldcocked you, he forced me to drag you back here."
"Jackass," Axel muttered, pulling himself to his feet. "I'm gonna go to the bathroom and check the mirror to see how big of a bruise he left. Then I'm gonna go back there and kick his ass at the earliest opportunity."
"You know, you had just hit him over the head and shoved him into the wall," Roxas pointed out as Axel headed for the bathroom, wanting to ease into it in case Axel was still under the violence-inducing effects of that world. No matter what, he wasn't keen on being the next to get punched out.
"...Oh. Right. Okay, I'll give him the mitigating circumstance." Axel seemed to be addressing his own reflection in the bathroom mirror more than Roxas. "But he was being an idiot."
"Really."
"I mean, going on and on about how there was something wrong with that world and we should just cut and run. Off his Goddamn rocker. It was just another boring world." There was no actual venom or anger in Axel's voice; he seemed to be mostly concerned with fixing his hair and fiddling with his insulin pump. "All right, you kind of expect an artist to be a little bit off in the head, but..."
"Well, he seemed to really believe it," Roxas said, quickly checking Demyx's room through the open bathroom doors. "Of course, the fact that you started hitting him at every available opportunity probably didn't help his mental state any. Though it probably explains why he didn't come home too..."
"What?" Now that definitely got Axel's attention; he checked Demyx's room himself, then turned back to Roxas with a concerned expression. "Why the hell didn't he? I mean, he was the one who wanted to scrub the mission...why would he send us home and not come home himself?"
"Well, his exact words on the subject were 'I'm sick of both of you'..." Roxas pulled himself into a sitting position on Axel's bed, his worry suddenly intensifying. "But he was so convinced something was wrong..."
Axel was shaking his head as he went to his mini-fridge for a vial of insulin. "Was that really Demyx you were talking to? Jesus fuck, what the hell is wrong with him? What was wrong with all of us? We were all acting like a batch of jackasses back there, and now that we're out of that world, it seems so stupid and pointless..."
"I know," Roxas sighed, thinking back on the last few days. "That's probably why Demyx was so sure something was wrong. He realized we weren't acting normally. Why didn't we pick up on it?"
"I dunno, it made such perfect sense at the time..." Axel grunted as he disappeared into the bathroom again with the vial. "But Goddamnit. Demyx knew. Why didn't he tell us?"
"He tried, you thickhead; you punched him every time."
"Fuck it..." There was silence for several minutes, while Axel presumably refilled his insulin pump and Roxas just sat on the bed and worried. "Dammit, there's only one reason I can think of why he'd send us home and not come home himself, if he was the one thinking straight and convinced there was something really wrong with the world," Axel said finally as he emerged from the bathroom. "He's going to be out there, playing the hero and trying to solve whatever it is by himself...but he thinks it's so dangerous that he doesn't want us in the line of fire."
Roxas felt an ugly sensation building in his chest - he'd been coming to the same conclusion, but that didn't mean he wanted to hear Axel say the same thing. "So now what do we do?"
"We go back and save his ass before he gets too badly hurt. What did you think we were going to do?"
The world was every bit as bland, boring, and ugly as it had been when they left, which was no big surprise. Roxas had put the portal right where he said the last one had been, around the corner from the rain barrel and stacks of boxes where they'd left Demyx. Demyx, as might be expected, was long gone, and the old stone streets offered nary a hint of tracks. "Goddamnit," Axel muttered, feeling and fighting the same sense that everything in the world was designed to piss him off. They'd figured out that time ran faster in this world than it did back home, but even so, it couldn't have been more than half an hour since they left; Demyx couldn't have gone all that far. He almost had to still be in town somewhere...the only problem was where. "Okay, so...if you were Demyx, and you'd just kicked us back home, and you weren't going home yourself, you were staying in this boring-ass world...you were convinced there was something wrong with the world, and you were going to be a hero and fix it...where would you go?"
"I don't know; I'm not Demyx."
"Don't start..."
"All right...but you know Demyx as well as I do. Unless the source of the problem was really obvious to him - and if it was, I think he'd have told us at some point - well, what's Demyx most attracted to? Music and water. And I haven't heard any music in this world at all. So other than this rain barrel...where do we find water?"
"...There must be some kind of water supply," Axel mused, thinking seriously about the question. Now was emphatically not the time to get pissy or snide, especially when he knew it was the world doing it to them. "The city wouldn't survive without one. And I haven't seen enough of these rain barrels to do it, even if it rained every day. And there's no major lake, no river...there must be wells."
"Right. And if they're the city's only water sources, they must be fairly high-traffic areas..."
"So follow people who are carrying around jugs and buckets that don't look full."
"Okay, like...that woman? The one carrying the buckets. They're not weighing her down nearly enough to be full."
"After her, then!"
As Roxas suspected, the woman seemed to be heading straight for a well, in the center of town, no less. As might be expected, it was probably the most well-traversed spot in town; there was rather a crowd around it, in fact, as if they were all watching some spectacle...that in and of itself seemed odd, because from what he'd seen earlier, Axel wouldn't have figured anyone in this world could muster up any interest in anything...well, the crowd seemed to be dispersing anyway; maybe it was just a lineup at the well. Though it did seem like there were a few people lingering unnecessarily, as if there was actually something at the well that, wonder of wonders, caught their interest...was Demyx among them? Axel couldn't see him if he was, or hear his sitar playing...it looked like there was someone on the ground by the well, though; it figured that no one in this world gave enough of a fuck about anyone else to offer help to someone who needed it...and there was something else, too, that wasn't a person; something bright blue, which stood out sharply in this world without paint, dye, or blue skies...and Roxas was already off and running towards it by the time Axel caught on to what it had to be.
Demyx was lying on the ground near the well, curled up on his side, his eyes still wide open and staring with an expression of raw horror. But he didn't so much as twitch as Axel and Roxas ran up to him, and his skin was an ugly, deathly grey...no, no, it wasn't. That would have been bad enough, but...he wasn't just an unhealthy grey, he was an unnatural grey, as if he'd been turned into a black-and-white photograph. His hair had gone from dingy blond to dingy silver, and his sea-blue eyes were now every bit as grey as his skin. Out of curiosity, Axel peeked under his robe - he knew Demyx had been wearing a dark green shirt when they left, and he was wearing a dark grey shirt now.
Really, that wasn't important. Was he breathing? That was important. No, he wasn't. How long had he not been breathing? Was there any point in trying rescue breathing now? Well, Demyx was probably dead if he did, and definitely dead if he didn't, so...Axel dragged him a little further from the well, rolled him onto his back (gratified to see that he was still as flexible as a normal human and hadn't been frozen in position), and started mouth-to-mouth, not giving a rat's ass about either of their dignities, only praying that he wasn't too late and he wasn't wasting his time forcing air into a dead man's lungs. All he really wanted was for Demyx to turn back to his normal colors, and start breathing on his own, and wake up...he didn't know what Roxas was doing at that moment, nor did he care in the least, as long as he wasn't in the way. And then, suddenly, he heard sitar music.
He looked down; Demyx was still essentially lifeless and colorless. He looked over; Roxas had picked up Demyx's sitar - the blue thing that had gotten their attention earlier - and was playing it with trembling hands. Axel just stopped what he was doing and stared at him, wondering why the hell Roxas would waste his time and effort on that when Demyx - seriously, he looked like - he might be - "Stop staring at me, Ax," Roxas hissed, his expression more than a little frightened. "I just thought it might help. And - whatever that was you were doing -"
"Trying to get him breathing again, you little prick," Axel sighed - he would have liked to growl, but he just didn't have the stomach for it. He would have liked to say more, too, but all of a sudden, he noticed the people around them weren't just ignoring them, acting like they weren't even there...they were actually looking towards them, though mostly at Roxas, as if these bland, apathetic people had some little bit of real interest in what he was doing...
"Well, if you're trying to help him, keep doing it!" Unable to argue with that advice, Axel promptly went back to the rescue breathing, though it beat him what, if any, good it might be doing...Demyx was still, so still, his face still frozen with horror...just breathing for him wouldn't do any good if his blood wasn't circulating, was it? Was it circulating? How would Axel know, aside from the obvious expedient of cutting him or something? Well, from the looks of him, odds were it wasn't...then again, blood was a lot like water, close enough to count as far as Demyx's magic was concerned, or so Axel had heard; maybe it was still circulating on its own...how much did Axel want to bet on that? Not Demyx's life.
CPR's not gonna work on a Nobody, he thought darkly. It was meant for people with hearts. But contrary to popular belief, it wasn't meant to restart the heart, just keep the blood flowing...Axel didn't know exactly how a Nobody's circulatory system was set up; maybe CPR would still keep their blood flowing...it was worth a shot. Given the stakes, so long as it might work, Axel needed no better reason to position himself by Demyx's side and start chest compressions. It might work, it might work, it might work, it might work...
All of a sudden, a trickle of inky black seeped out from between Demyx's lips. Axel froze immediately, not sure whether this was a good sign or a bad sign, and the trickle of black stuff welled into a stream, and then into multiple streams from his mouth and his eyes. Axel tried to back away hastily, not an easy thing to do from a kneeling position, and fell flat on his ass as the black stuff coalesced into a dark cloud, and the cloud floated above Demyx's head, and all of a sudden Demyx pulled himself to his feet and stared straight at him, then at Roxas, with the still-growing cloud hovering over him like some twisted, malevolent balloon, anchored at his mouth and eyes.
And then he opened his mouth and spoke, in a voice that sounded like a sick nightmare mockery of the real Demyx. "Cease this defilement," he hissed, his dark gaze mostly on Roxas. "I want no more of this filth polluting my kingdom." That said, he made as if to take the sitar back, but Roxas wisely scooted away from him, somehow without interrupting his playing. "I will not have you strangers tainting what I have worked so hard to achieve."
"Who the hell are you?" Axel demanded, because there was no way that could be the real Demyx speaking to them right now. Something had taken control of his body, and the best he could hope was that the real Demyx was still in there somewhere.
"I am the lord and master of this world," Demyx hissed, still eyeing Roxas as if he wanted that sitar back now. "For generations now, I have worked to suit this world to my liking. This is my dominion, and I will not be driven out by a handful of deluded vagabonds."
...What the hell was he...? "How are we driving you out?" Axel demanded, pulling himself to his feet in case things got even uglier.
Demyx only hissed at him, sounding like a giant serpent, then lunged at Roxas again. "Give me that!" he demanded, grabbing at the sitar.
Roxas, very sensibly, jumped up and ran a few yards off before sitting down and playing again. "Yeah, no," he said emphatically. "This is Demyx's, and you're obviously not the real Demyx, so...I'm just going to keep it for now. Speaking of which, we'd like the real Demyx back now."
That-thing-in-Demyx's-body blinked at Roxas, as if he/it didn't know what he was talking about, then snarled. "Count yourself lucky if you escape here alive yourself," he hissed. "It would be more than you deserve."
It didn't take bifocals to read between the lines of that one. Scared as hell now, Axel looked around quickly, though he knew there wouldn't be any help for him and Roxas besides each other - these people were probably all slaves of this demon-thing, standing ready to attack as soon as the order was given - and stopped. The people, the uncaring, apathetic, almost robotic people, were gathering around, but they weren't looking threatening or malevolent or as expressionless as ever. They looked - well, it was kind of vague, as if they weren't yet sure what they were feeling or what a feeling was, but for the most part, they looked a little bit scared, and a little bit concerned, and a little bit confused. And the ones looking at Roxas - or more accurately, at the sitar - looked a little bit fascinated, and a little bit happy...
Was it crazy? Sure. But the entire situation was so crazy and so fucked-up that Axel decided it was probably worthwhile to try something crazy and not fucked-up. And if the way the monster kept going after the sitar was any clue, it would probably work. "In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty, I first laid my eyes on sweet Molly Malone..."
The monster lunged at him, but Axel sidestepped it easily without missing a note. Clearly, he was onto something.
Demyx didn't know where he was or what had happened. The last thing he remembered was sensing that all the taint inside the well was rushing at him at once, then a moment of pure agony, then...all of a sudden, he found himself here, wherever here was. It was dark, very dark, and seemed all but featureless, but for some reason its very blankness frightened him deeply. He couldn't see what he was lying on right then; he didn't even know what it felt like, because the texture seemed to change under his hands - one second hard as stone, the next soft as foam, the next more like carpet, the next he didn't even know. He couldn't see what was above or around him, either, though it was probably the same amorphous surface (if surface it was) as was under him. He could kind of see dim, unrecognizable shapes, lighter and darker patches in the surrounding darkness, or maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him. Maybe he'd gone blind.
And why couldn't he summon his sitar? Or a portal? Or one tiny drop of water?
Maybe I just died and went to this particular world's afterlife. And said afterlife is just as boring and dull as the world itself. I could feel pretty comfortable calling it Hell.
All of a sudden, the darker spots in the all-over darkness seemed to coalesce, looming in front of him like a tidal wave - most likely a tidal wave of destruction, he thought as he tried to struggle to his feet; between the variable "floor" and his own shaky knees, it was an impossible feat. "Cease and desist, insect," an unholy voice rang out suddenly, from some direction that seemed like overhead, as the wave coalesced further into the outline of a dragon. "You lack even the excuse of being amusing."
"Well, then, why am I here?" Demyx asked, the most obvious question that came to his mind right then - he didn't exactly feel dead, after all, though he knew from his own bizarre experiences (though he obviously hadn't really been dead at any point) that you usually didn't. At any rate, this bore no resemblance to any sort of afterlife he'd ever seen or heard about, and if he wasn't dead, and didn't have the excuse of being amusing to keep himself alive, why wasn't he dead?
The dragon rose even higher to loom directly over his head, and Demyx suddenly knew that the dragon was the source of the vile taint, and was the taint, now given form and voice. And he was completely at its mercy. "Do you imagine I would leave you to continue ravaging my world like a wild beast? I worked for generations to purge this world of its poisons and make it fit to live in, and then you want to undo that work in a week," the dragon said, while Demyx quivered in terror and revulsion. "Tell me now, who sent you?"
It took Demyx several moments to find his voice, since it had already run away in fear. "N-no one. No one - sent me," he said, trying to convince himself it was technically true. Xemnas had sent him to the world, true enough, but he certainly hadn't sent him on this particular quest - that was something Demyx had done entirely of his own volition, though what he'd been "ravaging" was beyond him. Maybe this toxic taint-dragon considered any form of beauty in the world a personal assault - and that was just what Demyx had been trying to bring to it. And now he was going to pay for it, in such spectacular fashion...
He had just enough time to brace himself before another wave of agony washed over him, leaving him curled up and whimpering with his hands over his head. This was hardly the first time he'd ever been tortured, but that horrible, sickening taint...it threatened to wash everything good, and even every memory of everything good, clear out of him, leaving him little better than a desolate husk, and it seemed to cling to him as if it wanted to seep all the way through him and destroy everything he used to be. It had been one thing to slowly pull it out of the well water, but having it poured into him like this... "Who sent you?" the dragon demanded again, while Demyx tried to gather his thoughts and his happy memories so he'd have something to cling to when the next wave struck.
"No one!" Demyx repeated, and braced himself again, letting a snatch of one of his favorite songs play itself over and over in his head through the next wave. This time, though the pain was just as bad, there didn't seem to be so much of that sickening taint in it, trying to wash him away and destroy him. There was a second wave almost immediately, and then a third, but as long as he could hold on to the music and hold off the taint, the pain all by itself didn't matter so much.
His newfound resistance only seemed to infuriate the dragon. "Who sent you?" it demanded yet again, and Demyx was hit by yet another wave...except this one went on - and on - and on - and on -
He curled up into a tight ball, clutching his head and trying to will the pain to stop. The taint was flooding into him, thick, so thick...it was like being forced to breathe sewage and drink gasoline while being injected with toxic chemicals, all at the same time...he tried to keep hold of that little snatch of music he'd been using to keep himself sane, but the pain was clouding his mind so badly he could barely put two words or two notes together... "No...no..." he whispered, and then "No one sent me! No one! No one!"
All of a sudden, the torture stopped, leaving him lying on the amorphous "floor", unable to do much more than quiver like jelly as he tried to collect his widely-scattered thoughts. If he let himself fall apart now, there would be nothing left to put back together...but the taint had him feeling so sick, so filthy, so defiled... "So...no one sent you?" the dragon repeated, in a vaguely quieter tone, as if it was starting to believe him.
"No...no one," Demyx gasped, trying not to be sick all over himself. "Everything I did...I did on my...on my own..."
"No one sent you," the dragon said again, seeming to mull that bit of information over in its mind. Demyx could only nod weakly, trying to collect more of his thoughts and more of the song to himself. He'd pretty much lost everything but the first verse and the chorus, but even those were more than he'd had. "So...that must mean no one sent reinforcements." ...Reinforcements? Blessed Gods, Axel and Roxas...had they...yes, they must have. Silently, Demyx began praying that the dragon wouldn't do to them what it was doing and was about to do to him. And then, all of a sudden, from out of the endless dark surrounding him...
"In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty, I first laid my eyes on sweet Molly Malone..."
Music. A voice. Singing. Very faint singing, but...blessed Gods, it was Axel. Demyx would know that voice anywhere. And "Molly Malone" was his favorite song - the joke was that it was the only song he knew. He was here, he'd found a way to fight the dragon in the real world...and, as an oddly haunting undertone to the song, he heard a sitar playing. Slowly and inexpertly, but he knew it had to be a sitar - his sitar. And Roxas was the only other Organization member who could play sitar at all...and if he could hear them, maybe they could hear him somehow. It was worth a shot. "And when the night is fallin'..." he began in a feeble, cracked voice, praying that they could somehow hear him anyway. "You cannot find the light...when your dreams are dyin'...hold tight...you got the music in you..."
"I doubt anyone needed to send you. You are simply a toxic creature, a vile thing fit only for destruction. You will not poison my world again."
The dragon's black mass swelled suddenly, blotting out even the lesser darkness of the rest of this non-world. The "floor" suddenly vanished, and Demyx fell.
AN: Isn't this mysterious dragon such a charmer?
