Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or any of its subsidiaries.

*****THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE*****

V.

Fight

"Nine? You should eat something."

He said nothing. The glass window was already warm from his skin and there was nothing to look at, but he didn't move.

"It's been hours. You must be hungry."

Don't say anything. Don't move.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much. Your memories are returning. It will come back with time."

Liar.

"Will you look at me? Will you say something?"

Demyx looked at Ienzo just to have the satisfaction of glaring at him. His back hurt from sitting like this for so long and his throat was almost raw with thirst, but all the need and pain seemed oddly detached from him.

"At least drink something." He hated the pity in Ienzo's eyes. "You'll feel better with something in your system."

"Shut. Up." He looked back out the window.

"We're all quite concerned. We had no idea that the damage was this extensive—"

"Shut the fuck up I swear to god."

"We will figure this out, Nine. I promise."

"Do you?" Even his skin felt like it was burning and there was the sensation of being more next to his body than in it. Demyx pressed his face into his knees. "Like what the fuck even am I. Honestly."

A long, long minute passed.

"I'll leave this here for you," Ienzo said. "Please try to eat it."

He ignored him. Once the door had clicked shut he lay down in bed, his back aching. Every muscle in his body hurt. They were on fire.

How had he existed—so passively—without even realizing? He had forgotten it, all of it, all of the music. Even his fingertips were soft from not practicing for so long. And that part of his mind was still empty, quiet, smooth. He wasn't Demyx's Somebody. He wasn't even Demyx. He was… a… a body, a corpse. There were a few fragmented memories where he could remember himself using that… instrument… and he remembered it making that life less hollow; at least, as a Nobody. His human memories were wiped clean.

Should he try? Should he even bother trying to summon her? He opened his left hand and stared at the palm, and the small silver scar he didn't remember getting. Demyx pulled, trying to remember the feel of calling her. At first nothing. And then a sharp arcing pain and a brief flash of what had to be memory. Lying down in a field, barren inedible grasses swaying overhead, joints painful and creaking. The taste of hunger.

He sat up. Very slowly. He looked at his own bones; he was still thinner than he should be but he was not starving. Was not weak.

He reached over and picked up the plate that Ienzo had left for him.

The residential district was a mess. There was no sense to its organization. There weren't really streets, just an endless maze of houses cluttered close to one another. There were more people here than he had seen in a long time; children no younger than eight or so, running around and playing. Some of the slightly older ones had weapons strapped on their backs or at their hips, but they didn't seem to notice them as they chased each other. The noise was incredible, too, reflecting off of the stone buildings. There was no grass here or anything, only the occasional flowerbed or dry fountain.

He found the house with some difficulty. It was towards the back of this sector, off a bit from the others. It was comparatively nondescript, with the same wooden shutters as the other houses. The only difference was the flowers. The other attempts in the neighborhood at growing anything had resulted in some stringy, dry, weedy wildflowers, but these plants were bright and green and alive, and their flowers were colorful against the gray stone. Their smell made him dizzy.

The nameplate next to the front door was embossed bronze. 179 Gainsborough/Kisaragi, it read. He took a deep breath and knocked twice. Nobody answered, and for a minute he thought nobody was home. Maybe he had just wasted all this energy for nothing. Demyx had the sudden strong urge to crawl out of his skin. He was about to leave when the door finally opened.

Aerith looked surprised. "Oh, hello."

"Am I… I'm not… interrupting anything, am I?"

"No." She squinted at him. "Is everything alright?"

What could he possibly say to that? "I was wondering… I don't know if you would possibly know…" it was hard to string the words together. Even the simple act of speaking was almost too much. "You're a healer, right? Like that's what you do."

Her hand flew to her mouth. "Are you wounded?"

"No… not my body, anyway… I was wondering…" but Demyx saw her change in expression. "You already know what I was going to ask." He crossed arms, suddenly chilly. "Should I—maybe I should just go…"

She offered a gentle smile. "No. Come in. I'm sure we have a lot to talk about."

"…Thanks."

The house was tiny and dark. Most of it was made out of stone, lending to its natural gloominess, and it left a sort of dank chill in the air. Aerith and whoever else lived here had tried to brighten up the place; there were more flowers and greenery inside, and there was an intricate blue tapestry over the small couch that he didn't get a good look at. Aerith gestured for him to follow her into the cramped kitchen. There wasn't much here—a hot plate, a sink, and a handful of cabinets. He sat down at the small table and stared at the bare bulb hanging not far above it.

"Would you like some tea?" Aerith asked. She crossed behind him and fussed with something inside the cabinets.

"Um, sure." Demyx clasped his hands to stop the shaking. Even though there was a window in the kitchen, the room was small enough that the walls felt like they were closing in on him. He took a deep breath and listened to the kettle whistle.

A few minutes later she sat down across from him and handed him a mug. He turned the handle around and around, watching the water gradually deepen in color and trying to figure out what he wanted to say. Now that he was here, everything inside his head had gone to static.

"I find it interesting that you came to me," Aerith said after a while.

He forced himself to make eye contact. "Why?"

"I thought that there was a good deal of tension between you all and us. I thought you would trust them more than me. Maybe you do," she reflected.

"I just..." He took a drink to get rid of the dryness in his throat. "I was… coasting along for a while, I don't know, and I thought maybe I could accept what was really going on? But I didn't realize it how bad it actually was. Do you… do you know the story?"

She leaned back in her seat. "I've heard pieces."

"Well, somehow, and I think they know more than they're all letting on, my restoration got botched. My will is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But my body… didn't heal when it reformed, and my heart it's… I don't know, fractured? And I have no clue how but somehow my memories are all messed up. Which would have been fine, I could have gotten along." He wished she would say something, but she listened with an open expression. "And then I realized something. Part of me… the biggest part, you know, that I really considered made me me… it was gone." Demyx's eyes were starting to burn. He took another sour drink.

"And what is that?" Aerith asked gently.

"I was…" A lightning bolt of anxiety. The walls pressed a little closer. "Am a musician," he asserted, as if saying it out loud could change that. "But after I woke up I totally forgot about it. Totally. I forgot my instrument's name, and… everything's just so quiet, you know, before I used to hear the sound in everything. Or it would be quiet, I don't know the difference, I assume. I'm not even sure I can read music. It's all…" He trailed off, slightly breathless. "It's this weird case of me not being me?"

She let the air sit between them and he breathed for a few minutes. Then she said, "So why did you come?"

"I don't know." He didn't. He didn't believe that she would be able to help him. Maybe he just needed to talk to someone objective so his head wouldn't explode.

Aerith stirred her tea; the spoon clinked softly against the ceramic. She cocked her head. "I heal bodies," she said after another substantial pause. "And even if I did know some way to fix your heart, I would be too afraid of making things worse. I don't think you quite understand the tenuous position you're in."

She was starting to sound a little like Ienzo, and the blood rushed to his face. "That's just it. I do. But everyone is making it sound like all I should do is just… sit around! Sit around and do nothing. But what nobody seems to get is that I don't want to do that. I can't do that." His nails were digging into his palm and he forced his fists to unclench. "What's the point of coming back at all if I can't even be me?"

She didn't respond to that. "There is no magical cure for this. The people you work with would know better than I would what's happening to you. If you were told to wait, it's with good reason."

Now he was just tired. "…Is it?"

She smiled. "I'm sorry. I can only imagine how you must feel." She pushed her mug aside. "If having lost that part of yourself bothers you so much, why not try to learn anew? Maybe the key is not to force the old memories to come back, but to coax them out by making new ones."

His head hurt. "I'm sorry," Demyx said softly. "I didn't mean to come over just to yell, but I'm frustrated."

"It's all right. I asked you to come."

He stood. "Thanks for hearing me out. I'll let you get back to work."

"Have you thought about what we asked?" Aerith added. "I suppose it's sort of ironic, all things considering…"

"Oh…" He blinked. "Well, I…"

"Please think about it. After all, you'll be at the meeting tomorrow, won't you?"

"I mean, I didn't know there was a meeting, but I guess so." Oh boy, another thing he would have to steel himself for. "Um, take care."

"You too, Demyx. Try not to worry."

It was startling to hear his name after being a number for so long. He bobbed his head and stepped back out into the street.

It was getting dark out. He had to hurry back. He might have been doing slightly better, but by no means could he handle a fight with any sort of Heartless. Especially since he had a heart now… well, they hadn't been all that deterred, back as a Nobody… Now it made sense…

"What were you doing in my house?"

The voice caught him off guard as he turned a corner and he collided into the wall. Face smarting, he whirled around looking for the voice.

"Up here, idiot."

Yuffie stood on one of the rooftops nearby. She held a large four-bladed shuriken in her hand and she twisted it back and forth. She scowled at him.

"Aerith invited me," he said at last. "Not like it's any of your business."

She jumped down and walked towards him. She was smaller than he had thought, a good head shorter than him, but the weapon seemed to make all the difference. "What did she want with you?"

He was not going into it with her. "Why do you care? Don't you have better things to do?"

She stopped twisting the shuriken. "As a matter of fact I do, and I was about to warn your sorry ass that night is coming and you should go back to whatever hole you crawled out of unless you want to lose your heart a second time. But I mean, you can fight, can't you?" She smirked.

What did he even say to that? "What is your problem?"

"You're kidding, right?" She took another step closer and he had to fight hard not to flinch. "What, are your memories that fucked up?"

He shook his head, confused. He put up his hands.

"Before Sora cut you down, you tried to stop him from getting to those Heartless. You could have brought darkness to this world. Again."

"…That?" It was true that the Organization had allowed that witch to breed the Heartless out of control-mostly because the world contained so much space and with Sora's allies there, it would be the perfect way to harvest hearts. "Look, I had nothing to do with that. I was just following orders."

"Those orders could have gotten people killed. Didn't you think about that? And don't say it was because you couldn't feel, I know you had part of a heart. I know."

Demyx's head was spinning. "I knew I would never survive fighting him," he told Yuffie, and he wasn't sure if it were a fact or a revelation. All he knew was that he didn't feel well, and he wanted to go home, but home didn't exist. "You really think I could have taken him out?"

She floundered. "But say you had. Say you had been able to take out Sora. Without him…" She hissed. "You tried to destroy my home and I can never forgive that."

He fought against the nausea. In the distance, he could hear a recorded voice on a PA system broadcasting that only civilians with permits could be out past curfew.

"Get out of here," she said.

"What would you do, arrest me?" He snapped back, but the response was weak. "Don't you people need me?" He asked her retreating form.

"Fuck off," she responded without looking back.

Demyx couldn't process the interaction. Part of his mind was struggling to put together what had happened moments before his death. He walked back uptown, towards the castle, in the dying light.

The mission card, Xigbar, a smirk. Over half of them were dead by that point. A mounting body count and a sense of recklessness. The briefing about the sorceress and the Heartless, and how this was her way of luring them out, or them luring her out, or both. While they were at it they might as well destroy Sora and the resistance. Was the goal to destroy Sora? That was his mission, that's what he'd been told. But Demyx had just been… what… a distraction? His life had been used to buy time? Was that it?

Thinking about it hurt in a distinctly physical and different way. The battle was clear enough—Sora insisted on fighting, insisted that Nobodies had no right to exist—and the goring and the blood. The boy had been surprised that Demyx bled red, he remembered that. Sora had even paused for a moment before one of his obnoxious companions, the duck, spurred him on. He's just a Nobody.

No. No. He didn't want to think about this. Ripping. Breaking. He'd tried everything—everything to stop him—and once or twice he almost got him to back down. But Sora didn't stop. He didn't stop, he just kept going.

Keyblades weren't sharp. They were blunt. It took time.

Demyx threw up in the gutter. There was no actual blood but he could taste it anyway.

Was it his fault? If he had won, and the Heartless took over, would the deaths of all those people have been his fault? Or would he have just seen it as another victory, or as some more hearts towards the Kingdom Hearts (ha ha) that would make them whole? But he never thought he would win. He had been powerful but no match for Sora and his allies. Had Demyx gone there just to die? Had he wanted to end it?

He didn't know. He couldn't tell. That was the scary part. Now he wanted more than anything to live, but then? Tin soldier to a dying cause… had he really thought he would get his heart back? And then what, return to a probably dead world? He'd had no friends, and if he'd had family he couldn't remember them now, much less know if they were dead or alive… But if it had been suicide, why would he choose something so painful? He wasn't that loyal to the Organization. There were easier ways to die.

"Stop this," he said out loud to himself. "Stop this, stop it…"

He threw up again. It was mostly water and bile this time. He pressed a hand against the wall to steady himself.

"Hey, what are you doing all the way out here? It's almost dark." It wasn't the girl, but Lea. Demyx only caught half an eyeful of him before he saw the Keyblade (Keyblade!) and had to look away.

"Leave me alone," he said hoarsely.

"Are you… are you sick?" Lea moved to get closer, but Demyx held up a hand.

"I said stay away," he said.

Lea's eyes seemed to glow. "What happened to you?" The weapon was just sitting out there, between them. "Let me take you back to the castle."

"No," he hissed.

"You'll get attacked if I don't. Come on. I won't hurt you. I won't…" he seemed to put two and two together and looked down at blade in his hand. "Is that what's got you out of sorts?"

Demyx shook his head. "It's…"

The Keyblade disappeared with a flash and the chakrams came back out. "Let's go. And don't pass out on me again, okay? There's already too much going on."

It was all he could do to follow along meekly.