Roxas could only watch in helpless horror as the cloud over the monster's head swelled into a menacing shroud, and it lunged at Axel with clear intent to kill. Even when Axel started screaming in pain again, he was paralyzed - that dark cloud simply radiated blackness and poison and the death of everything good, and all he could remember was a vaguely acrid scent in the air, and then all of a sudden his lungs were burning and his eyes were on fire, and he couldn't see and couldn't breathe, choking to death on his own blood in some war-torn world whose name he couldn't even remember, only that it started with a P...even as Axel's screams died down to tortured whimpers, no matter how badly Roxas wanted to step in and save him, and keep the monster from doing to him what it had already done to Demyx, he couldn't move. The gathered people were looking away now, losing interest, slipping back into their bland, grey lives...the monster was working its will on them, sapping away their newfound liveliness and concern and turning them back into shells, and there was nothing Roxas could do. The poison had him so utterly terrified he couldn't even defend himself if he had to.

And why should he have to? None of this was any concern of his. So a man caused trouble and died; the only reason he should care is to be glad it wasn't him. Even that wasn't good enough reason - there was no point in caring at all. The only thing that mattered was that he went about his business, and there wouldn't be any trouble...as long as everyone minded their own business and didn't waste time on unimportant things, there would be no trouble at all...and after all this chaos, "no trouble" sounded like a grand thing indeed...maybe not grand, but...well...eh. Something.

...Hold on a second. My business is hunting and killing Heartless. How is that ever going to not be trouble?

Good one, you bastard. But Malenisa's already tried that, and she did a better job of it than you did. And you've already murdered one of my brothers; you're not going to get the other one without a fight. Gritting his teeth and swallowing hard, Roxas charged that terrifying toxic cloud and lashed out with his Keyblades, aiming for the center of that cloud where he thought the body would be. He struck something solid, and the monster hissed, and Axel fell to the ground and started crawling away. "Leave him alone!" Roxas screamed, circling to keep himself, not to mention his weapons, between Axel and the monster in Demyx's body.

It's only a monster. The real Demyx is already dead. You can't hurt him; there's nothing of him left to hurt.

"You are a venomous little fiend," the monster hissed, sounding more annoyed than anything; the dark cloud surrounding it spreading out like a pair of unholy wings. "Eliminating the pair of you will be very satisfying."

"Yeah, I'm almost sorry to deny you the satisfaction," Roxas said, taking a step back to avoid the monster's lunge at him. "Except for what you did to Demyx!"

"And if you'd been clever enough to leave, you might have avoided the same fate -"

"'Twas a bright and stormy evenin' in the chill of late July when the bullfrog took his lady to the glade of fireflies..."

Both Roxas and the monster paused in their tracks - that sure as hell wasn't Axel singing. It was one of the old men, looking rather doubtful and embarrassed, not to mention terrified, but Kingdom Hearts, one of the townspeople was actually singing. And the rest of them were starting to look interested and alert again...some of them had grabbed Axel by the arms and were dragging him out of the monster's reach...and the monster itself looked profoundly disgusted. "These people are beyond saving now," it hissed as the old man rattled off a few more lines of similar nonsense. "Extensive purging will be required once I rid myself of the two of you, starting with the eldest. But first..." Roxas's attention had been distracted while he kept an eye on the townspeople who were now tending to Axel, and he didn't see the monster lunging at him until it was too late.

If he'd thought it was agonizing the first time, it was like a soothing massage compared to this. This wasn't just like being injected with poison, this was like having to relive the gas attack, with the poison being forced into him in a way he couldn't prevent or avoid any more than he could avoid breathing, eating him away from the inside out and leaving him without enough breath to scream, and all the while Malenisa's spell was working at the edges of his mind, leaving him unable to care about those he cared about most, tearing away what really made him him and replacing it with what she wanted him to be...docile, obedient, and just as rotten as she was...Axel wasn't moving, and the old man's voice was faltering, and Roxas was going to die like this, and he didn't want to die...

Demyx...think of Demyx...he was the antithesis of everything this monster seems to stand for...music hurt it, maybe so will thinking of him...Struggling to focus, Roxas pulled as much of his attention as possible away from the pain, onto the past, onto countless bull sessions and late-night meals and sitar lessons...especially sitar lessons...Demyx guiding his hands through a new technique, giving him that hundred-watt grin when he finally got it on his own, playing a demonstration piece and getting so wrapped up in the music he forgot he was supposed to be teaching...none of it more than memories now, thanks to this monster...

"No!" he howled, wrenching himself out of the monster's grip and stumbling backwards, the Keyblades still dangling loosely in his hands. Before he could raise them to strike, the monster suddenly stumbled, looking pained, then went down on one knee, clutching its stomach as if it had eaten something deadly poisonous that was just now taking effect. Had his memories of Demyx had that much effect? Roxas didn't know, but it didn't seem to matter; the only sensible thing to do now was move in for the kill.


Axel wanted to jump up and attack when the monster grabbed Roxas, he really did. He wanted to start singing again, and distract the monster's attention. Hell, it would have been nice if he could have at least screamed. But he couldn't - that last dose of the monster's poison had left him all but helpless. All he could do was watch as the monster tortured his little brother...it was going to kill him...it was going to kill both his little brothers, and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop it...

Then, all of a sudden, Roxas wrenched himself out of the monster's grip, and stood questionably ready to attack once again. Axel could only lie there and admire his guts...and then the monster went down on one knee, as if Roxas had struck a crippling blow, even though he had yet to attack it at all. Axel couldn't understand why, but he didn't care - if it was weakening, it could be killed. "Keep singing," he begged the old man behind him - no way could he do any singing himself. It felt like the monster had sucked every drop of music out of him.

"'Twas a bright and stormy evenin' in the chill of late July," the man began again, hesitantly. "When the bullfrog took his lady to the glade of fireflies...so blue the red, red roses bloomed beneath the purple trees, and all the fish sang merrily as they swam along the breeze...sorry, lad, that's all the more I can remember."

"Then just sing it over and over!" Axel insisted, trying to struggle back to his feet only to find his legs wouldn't support his weight anymore. "The rest of you - try to join in! It's a simple enough tune, there aren't that many words...if anyone can help him remember what's next, that would be great..."

"The frog, he wore a satin vest and golden beeswool frock, his lady wore a mothwing gown that shimmered as she walked..." an old woman added. "I think that's how it goes. That bit might be later."

"What's satin?" a younger woman asked, sounding genuinely confused.

"Never mind that!" a man - maybe her husband - insisted. "Just try to sing along! 'Twas a bright and stormy evening in the chill of late July when the bullfrog took his lady to the glade of fireflies..."

The monster glared poisonous hatred at them all, but was too weak to do anything to stop them, and their singing only seemed to cripple it further. "Once I destroy these intruders, I will purge this entire city!" it hissed, but all the threat its voice might have held was draining away. Even the cloud surrounding it was dwindling. "I will make you all suffer for allowing yourselves to be so contaminated!"

"Oh, you do talk a lot, don't you," Roxas snapped, clubbing it over the head with Oblivion. "I hate to break it to you like this, but your game is so over."

The monster collapsed a little further under the blow, but didn't go down all the way. "I am the master of this world!" it screamed, sounding increasingly desperate. "No foreign upstarts are going to unseat me!"

"There's no need!" another young woman announced, the same one the monster had stopped from comforting her own child earlier - she looked just like every other woman of her age, with only variations in facial features and hair and eye color. "I am the queen of this world! Not some poisonous body-stealing demon!"

The monster stared at her in a mix of horror and pure hatred, and suddenly jumped to its feet and lunged at her, but Roxas tripped it and sent it sprawling in the dust. "You're finished!" he announced, whacking it in the side - a blow that an ordinary human would remember for a month or more. All the while, the people kept repeating the old man's nonsense verses - enough of them that they were almost drowning Roxas out. "They know what you are now, inside and out, and they'll never let you corrupt them again!"

"Brave words," the monster scoffed, but the fear in its eyes told a fuller tale. It knew damn well it was broken, defeated, all but dead, only fighting for the sake of the fight. For a second, it looked just like Demyx in greyscale, when he knew damn well he didn't have a prayer but kept fighting anyway...

"No," Axel whispered to himself, finally struggling to his feet and summoning his chakrams back to him. The nonsense chant was growing louder and louder, and the woman who'd just declared herself queen was singing the loudest, taking the lead in directing the rest of them. "He's already dead...you're just a...a thing that's moved into his body."

"Cease this heresy!" the monster demanded, trying to pull itself back to its feet as it glared at the people with destructive malice that was totally unlike Demyx and helpless fear that was totally like him. The cloud over its head was little more than a smudge. "I will destroy you all before I let you poison my world further!"

"Shut up!" Roxas ordered, hitting it in the shoulder with the flat of Oathkeeper's blade. The monster stumbled and went flat on its back, but Roxas seemed to be waiting for it to attack before he struck again. "You're already dead!"

Little idiot, no it's not, Axel thought to himself, trying to stay on his feet long enough to do any good. Damn it, why wouldn't Roxas just finish it already? He had it over a barrel, he had his weapons out and ready to kill with...but he kept striking with the flats, or the dull edges, never actually landing the finishing blow...as if he didn't want to kill it at all... "For God's sake, Roxas, finish it!" he said as loudly as his voice would manage, trying to make himself heard over the singing. It wasn't enough; Roxas didn't seem to hear him. "Demyx is already dead! You won't hurt him; there's nothing left to hurt! Just kill that thing and end the charade!" he said, trying to raise his voice, but he could barely hear himself. The monster tried to get up, and Roxas hit it again - striking with the flat of Oblivion's blade, another nonlethal blow.

...God, I don't want to do this either. But it needs doing.

His hands were shaking with weakness; maybe he wouldn't even be able to do this. But he had no choice but to try. Twirling one chakram idly with his fingers, he sized up his target, gauged his trajectory - this would be tricky, with a target lying flat, but doable - and threw it in a careful arc. The monster just stared up at the flying chakram as it sailed lazily through the air and came down, spiked edge first, in the center of its chest.

Black smoke started to curl around the embedded points as the monster screamed. Axel summoned the chakram back to his hand, and smoke billowed out of the holes it left behind, an all-encompassing dark cloud that threatened to grow and expand until it had consumed both of them, all of them, everything in this world, as the monster kept screaming, and screaming, and screaming...and then the screaming stopped, and the cloud dissipated as if blown away by the wind, and Demyx's body was lying next to the well, in full color, with holes in his clothes but not a mark on his skin.

We did it. We actually did it. We killed that thing.

The people behind him instantly broke out in screaming and cheering, except for one little girl who was startled by the noise and started crying instead. Axel didn't care; he just dispelled his weapons and stumbled over to Roxas and Demyx, wanting to share this triumph first with the people who mattered most. But the look on Roxas's face, and the way he was kneeling by Demyx's side and cradling his head in his arms, brought home like a five-ton weight just how empty this victory was - it was only a dead body. They'd saved the world, but they hadn't saved their brother. "I'm sorry, Ax," Roxas whispered, as if this failure was somehow his fault.

Axel could only shake his head for a moment. "...We did it," he finally said, his voice sounding as hollow as the rest of him felt. "We killed the monster that killed him. And we're still alive. I'm sure he'd be happy to know that." Trying to choke back tears, he knelt on Demyx's other side, gently stroking his hair - this was the last time the three of them would be together, before Demyx's body inevitably faded. Maybe the monster hadn't quite killed all the music inside him; he was feeling the urge to sing something, anything, because it was no more than Demyx deserved. But what song could possibly do him justice?

"And the light of a fading star...is what you were, is what you are..."


It no longer mattered to Demyx how long he'd been trapped in the void. Time had no meaning to him anymore, and hadn't for...for...well, as far as he knew, it had never meant anything; it was just a random string of four letters. Letters...letters, lines, shapes, what did any of them matter? They were things you saw, and sight did not exist. Words and sounds were things you heard, and hearing did not exist. Senses were only an illusion, there to trick you and fool you and keep you from waking up to the nothingness.

Sometimes, though, if he really tried, he could convince himself that he could really see the music. He could almost see it, almost taste it, almost smell it, almost hear it...most importantly, he could almost feel it...

He could feel it. The music was the one thing that was still with him, and had always been part of him, even in this void. When every sense had left him, and his own body had betrayed and abandoned him, the music remained. And in this expanse of lonely nothingness, where he might have otherwise died or gone mad, the music had stayed, keeping him alive and sane. It was part of him - it was him, and he was the music. And he swirled and danced and plunged and soared, weaving grand and intricate melodies across worlds and landscapes and beauties he'd never really been and never really seen, because they didn't really exist...and it didn't matter. He was the music; the music was everything. He was everything, and everything was him.

If words still had meaning, the only word that could have fit the situation was "glorious".

The universe was not an empty void; the universe was him, the music, and he was not a void. He danced, and there was being; he sang, and there was life. He was the being, he was the life, he was the eternal glory. He had no name; he needed no name. There was no need to name him and separate him from anything. He was everything. He sang himself into stars, into worlds, into rivers and oceans and clouds and trees. There was an entire universe within him, just waiting to be sung, and it was all him. All the grandeur and beauty that had never really existed suddenly was, and was him, just as he was the beauty and the music and everything else in the universe. Everything was one, and he was that one, and this one was his - and him - forever. He was, and he was the music, and the music was the universe, and the universe was him, and he reveled in the glory of this cosmic unity. His mind encompassed eternity perfectly, because eternity belonged to him; eternity was him. He knew everything, all of time and space, down to the tiniest detail of the arrangement of atoms in the tiniest fleck of dust in this entire vast, beautiful universe. He controlled everything, orchestrated the motion of stars and worlds and clouds, and could rearrange the atoms in that fleck of dust or make an entire spiral galaxy spin the other way with no more effort than it took to think about it. He knew everything, and he controlled everything, because he was everything, a god and a universe in perfect, true oneness. So it was, so it had always been, and so it would be for eternity; he was eternity, and he would have it no other way.

All of a sudden, he saw something.

There was a light before him, a light that was not him, was something entirely separate from him. He reminded himself that it couldn't be there, that sight was an illusion, and waited for it to go away, but there it stayed. This intrigued him - he was everything, and everything was him, so how could the light be and yet not be him? Part of him was tempted to will it away, wipe it out, eliminate it from this glorious universe that was him, because it was not him and did not belong there...but another part of him was curious. What was it, if it was not him? How did it come to be there? Where did it come from? He tried to reach out and touch it (but what did touch mean?) but it eluded him, hovering right there as if beckoning him to follow, and he followed...

"And the light of a fading star...is what you were, is what you are..."

That was a voice. He'd heard it. That was impossible, and yet, it was, and it was also not him any more than the light was. What was going on? What was happening? And he had the strangest sensation...something...something behind him...what did behind mean? And what was...that...oh, that's what touch meant. Something was touching him. He'd all but forgotten what it felt like...

Felt.

He could feel.

He could see light above him, and hear voices around him, and feel something touching him...touching his back. He had a back? Yes, yes he did, and arms, and a face, and ears, and legs, and a whole bunch of other body parts that he hadn't been aware of...he had a body. A body that included a nose and mouth...and he could smell something, something that made him think of dryness and dirt...dust. He could smell dust. He could even sort of taste it.

His - his - chest, that's what it was - flexed suddenly, and air rushed into him - into his lungs, another useful body part - in a way that surprised him, and made him cough. It was slightly painful - pain, that was another whole new concept - but he welcomed it nonetheless, because having air in his lungs made him feel a whole host of other new things, like energized and awake and alive. It also got some of the taste of dust out of his mouth, which was good, because he didn't really like it. Clean air tasted so much better. And he had eyes, he realized when he blinked to clear the dust from them. Whenever he closed them, he couldn't see anymore, and when he opened them, he could see again. That was fascinating.

"Demyx? My God, are you..." Demyx? What did Demyx mean?

That was his name...

Blessed Gods, he had a name now. A name, and a body to feel with, and a mind to think with, and...and everything...but a name was more than just a word that meant "you", names had history, names had stories behind them, names gave definition to the body and the mind and...and the soul...

All of a sudden, he was pulled upright - what was up? What was down? His inner ears were still sorting that out - and then something was touching him on both sides, hard, more like squeezing - he couldn't figure it out. He was still trying to figure out all the things he was seeing, and try to make sense of them all. What was that all over his body? It wasn't part of him, he knew that...it reminded him of the void, dimly, except it was there, it was simply...black. Black was a color. And those were clothes. And there were bodies on either side of him, he realized when he turned his newfound head, bodies with faces, that had eyes and mouths and noses like his...these were people. Did that mean he was a people too?

He couldn't take it anymore. He closed his eyes and clamped his hands over his ears - hands and ears, more new body parts to get used to - and tried to will all these new things and new sensations to go away, or at least back off a little and give him a chance to process them all. Right now, it was just too much. It was enough to drive a man insane.


AN: Poor Demyx. At least he had some fun thinking he was a god for a while. Now he has to figure out whether or not he's a people.

"Light of a Fading Star" belongs to Flogging Molly.