Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan work.

VIII.

First Day

Demyx only barely stopped himself from saying "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," out loud. If Leon noticed his frustration, he didn't say anything.

Yuffie also had a scowl on her face when she got closer. "Squall, I swear to—"

He held up a hand. "Yuffie, you really need to grow up. You said you wanted a break from patrol. Well, here it is." He crossed his arms. "In order for this to work you have to get along. I fully expect you to be civil. You are both adults. Now act like it."

She snorted. "Yeah, alright."

They all went together to the first site, an aqueduct to the far side of town. The pipes and pump were broken, and as a result the water source was hundreds of meters belowground. Demyx could feel the distant humming in his bones; it didn't help his growing dread. He would rather do a lot of things than spend a whole day with someone who wanted him dead.

Once Leon was gone, they both stared up at the top of the aqueduct rather than look at each other. The stone was crumbling in places, and the green paint was washed out and chipped.

After a long moment, he tried to quell his racing heart. Demyx's palms were sweaty, and it wasn't just from the warm day. He dried them on his jeans. "So, uh," he began.

"I really don't want to talk to you," she said. She popped off a metal maintenance panel of the first pump and looked at the machinery. He saw the small set of hydraulics and wiring. With a bit more violence than was really necessary, she used a wrench to pry out the corroded pieces and yanked out the rotted wiring. "Just do whatever you're supposed to."

"I mean I don't really know what I'm supposed to do."

She rolled her eyes and pulled some new pipes out of the toolbox. "Of course not."

"Look, I'm not happy about this either—" He felt the blood rising in his face. "But maybe we should listen to Leon?"

She scoffed. She clipped the ends of the wires where they were broken. He wasn't sure of the state of the power. If she wasn't careful she could really hurt herself.

"Um," he said. "You've been trained how to do this, right?"

Yuffie huffed. "What, do you think I'm stu—fuck." She'd slipped with her wire cutters. She shook out her hand.

"…Cut yourself?" He asked.

"I'll cut something, alright," she said. She took off her wrist brace. The blood had already begun to well in her palm.

Demyx almost didn't want to ask. "Are you okay?"

"Fine."

He reached out. One thing he had recovered was an ability to heal. "Let me see it."

She took a step back. "You're not touching me."

"I can fix it."

"It doesn't need to be fixed."

He paused. "That's kind of bleeding a lot."

She studied it with an impassive expression. Red splotched onto the ground. "I'll go to Aerith. I don't trust you."

"And waste time going all the way back to town? Let me see it."

She glared at him. After a long moment, she turned her gaze away. "Fucking fine."

Demyx took her hand. Without the brace it was small, but strong and heavily callused. The cut fit right against her lifeline. He gathered some water in his hand, held it over the palm, and began to heal the damaged tissue. She flinched and jerked but did not take her hand away. It was a beautiful heal, he had to say; there wasn't even any scar. But she did not thank him. She tugged her brace back on and picked the wrench back up.

It took her about an hour to fix the pump. In the meantime he reached for the water underneath. He expected there to be a certain amount of blockage—either by fallen stone or other debris—and he wasn't wrong. It felt like plant matter or something otherwise light; it took him a while to draw it up because it required a lot of water pressure in the small stone pipe. Demyx was able at last to clear the way; by that point his stamina was about gone. He didn't want her to know that he was tired. His knees were shaking.

With a final crank of the wrench the tiny pump started moving again. "That should work," she said brusquely. "Well, don't just stand there, be useful."

Demyx tried. The water fought him, almost like it knew he was tired, and he felt a stinging pain in his arm muscles. How am I supposed to do this all day?

They moved onto the next one in silence. He preferred the quiet to the antagonism, but he could feel Yuffie simmering and often she cut glares at him. They followed the same routine—thankfully this one was a little easier on him, though there were more mechanical problems—and broke for lunch. He sat facing the town, legs dangling above a ground hundreds of meters below. He found he didn't mind the height. Demyx expected Yuffie to stay far away from him, but she surprised him by sitting only a few meters away, eating takeout noodles from a plastic container.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" She said neutrally, and gestured to the town.

He could see the moldering old castle and the blue rock in the distance. He guessed that it could be conjectured by some as beautiful, but he felt nothing towards the town other than a gaping homesickness. "I guess." He had nothing more to eat and wasn't sure what to do with himself.

"Funny how close it was to being gone forever, huh," she added.

He got the message. She was not trying to be friendly. "Look," he said, wondering if he should say this when so close to a ledge. "I know I've done some bad things. And I know my actions are not excusable, et cetera, whatever. But it looks like we have to work together for who knows how fucking long, so can. You. Not."

A moment of silence. She did not look angry. Demyx didn't know how to interpret the look on her face.

"To be fair…" Why was he still talking, "We've all done our fair share of shitty things, but I'm over it and I'm just trying to move on with my life, what's left of it. So leave me alone. Or at least shut up about it."

They stared at each other a long moment. Yuffie wore that same odd expression. Her eyes, he noticed for the first time, were not brown like he thought, but a dark shade of violet. She didn't look away, so he didn't want to either. His eyes were starting to water from not blinking. She broke the staring contest first and turned away, nose in the air.

"You're pathetic," she said.

Demyx tried to come up with some quick reply, like, well you're not a whole lot better, or something in that vein. The comment got to him in a way that he couldn't quite define. Because she was absolutely right.

He picked up the scraps of his lunch and tucked them back into the small bag he'd brought. He felt her gauging his reaction. It wasn't that he couldn't take an insult—oh boy, he could, he knew from experience—but that phrase had dredged up a forgotten stickiness. Fuck. Not now. Please. He gripped the wall for support, trying to play it casual, but firecrackers of pain were exploding behind his eyes. Demyx had to stay conscious. He couldn't afford to lose his shit. He could do that later, in the privacy of his own room in the weighty loneliness of the castle.

A cramped city, dingy and old, something with wooden parapets. He clung to consciousness, clung to the now, leading to a strange sense of doubled-vision. Bright banners. Sullen people, fast-moving crowds, being chased by… who? Or what? Not Heartless. This was human.

"We should get a move on," he heard Yuffie bark.

Humans. More than one, less than a few. Older than him but only by a little. He was not alone, he was in a group. Being chased for… stealing? Not food, though there was hunger.

Demyx no longer saw Yuffie's face. It was like the ground had been ripped up from under him. The sharpness of the pain worsened. He wasn't fast enough. He got grabbed up by the ankle. A knife that was cold and shimmery. Getting dangled above the first level of the city. Something about a punishment for dirty thieves. The necessary epithet, "You're pathetic." And then being dropped.

He did not regain consciousness before he hit the ground in the memory. He felt it all in stunning technicolor, ripping through a banner that saved him but only barely, flopping still too far onto the ground. Bones broken, in total: three ribs, the left radius and ulna, a fractured skull, and a femur. Lying there, disoriented and unable to breathe, just in time for the police to arrive.

Waking up for real because of a stinging slap. She'd actually hit him.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

Demyx's body seemed too heavy for him. He sat down and put his head in his hands. His cheek burned from her slap. "I don't know what they told you." He spoke like he'd never heard words before. "My memories—"

"Yes, I know, I was told. Your fucking memories."

"Quit yelling."

"I'm not yelling."

She wasn't. Now he had a real world migraine, bright and needy, rendering daylight into sharp arrows of pain. "I need a minute," he said, and to his horror his voice quavered.

"We've already wasted enough time."

"Shut up," Demyx said. He tried to breathe through the pain and get his body to heal it away. He focused on nothing at all and held his breath until it started to recede. He took a long drink of water. He wanted to try and figure out what he'd seen, but he couldn't do that with her breathing down his neck. "What's… what's next? Where do we have to go?"

"Towards one of the pumps in the south."

He stood on shaky legs. "Then let's go."

Home at last.

The castle had never been so welcoming before. At least it was quiet. His head was hurting again. Demyx just wanted to lie down and sleep; he felt the exhaustion all the way down to his bones. He wasn't sure he could do this, day in and day out. Something had to give. Maybe if he talked to Leon about it—

And then what? Give her the satisfaction of knowing she'd gotten to him? He would have to get stronger with time. At least, he hoped.

The walk back to his room seemed particularly long and his body dragged him down. He didn't want to stop and rest for fear that he would be unable to get up. His eyes were hot and sore with fatigue. He idly traced a hand down the molding of the hallway.

Up ahead he saw a previously collapsed passage had been cleared, leaving behind a raw tunnel of pure earth. Aeleus must have been here earlier today. Compared with the delicate architecture of the rest of the castle, it seemed like a gaping maw, but according to the map, it would get him back faster.

As he passed through the halls, he heard voices. Aeleus must still be working. Demyx didn't mind talking to Aeleus, mostly because there was absolutely no pressure to say anything, so he decided to keep on walking through.

Dilan and Aeleus were working in tandem, with Aeleus clearing the debris and fixing the supports and Dilan managing all the dirt and dust. "Well, if it isn't our little maintenance man," Dilan said smoothly. There was a shattering crack as Aeleus cut some of the rock; Demyx flinched. "What was it like, working for the committee?"

He debated, and decided that Dilan would probably enjoy hearing about his misadventures. "Oh, it was just great. I'm exhausted and my partner treats me like a pariah."

"So, basically another day on the job, eh?"

Demyx rolled his eyes, and then paused. "I guess so, now that you mention it."

With another crack the passage was cleared. Sweat dripped down Aeleus's face, and he swiped at it absently. "Are you feeling alright?"

"I'm fine. Just tired."

"Glad to know you're about in fighting shape," Dilan said. "Heaven knows you might need to be."

Demyx blinked. "What?"

"I could use rest as well," Aeleus said. "Once I secure this spot, I say we all go eat." He stomped and pressed his hands against the wall. The earth shifted and shuddered above them. Demyx swallowed, but nothing more than a faint trickle of dust came down. "That should do it."

"Very nice work," Dilan said condescendingly. "Though it's a shame about the architecture. What lovely hand-carved molding."

"If you want artistry, you work on it yourself," Aeleus said blankly.

There was something familiar about going back with them. Like Dilan had said, it was like the old days, though they were all different. They had good intentions now, or at least, Demyx hoped they did. He was fairly sure that none of them meant any harm. But at the same time, minus Xemnas (Xehanort, whatever, whomever), could they all make the jump to "good" so quickly? What about everything they'd done—the Heartless, the manipulation, the controlled takeovers? The casualties that had to come with all that? The trauma they'd inflicted to others? A lump stuck in his throat.

And what good were they actually doing? Giving people water and fixing up the town seemed like something good. Still, Demyx didn't exactly feel satisfied with his day's work. Maybe it was because Xehanort was looming, but it seemed odd to him that they hadn't really moved on with their lives like they used to anticipate they would. Then again, some of them had spent nearly eleven years in the Organization, so maybe there wasn't even much to move on with. Ienzo and Demyx might have been younger and able to forage a new path, hypothetically, but the others? What did they have left?

And what about Lea? Demyx hadn't seen hide or hair from him in a long time. "Where is Lea?" he asked them.

"Off gallivanting with that Keyblade, I'd wager," Dilan said. "Loves playing the hero. It's kind of ironic."

"He's repenting," Aeleus said, but like usual he didn't expound upon that thought.

"Aren't we all," Dilan said dryly.

"It's different, for him."

"Well, believing hard enough isn't going to stop the enemy," Dilan continued. "And with the way this is all going… who knows?"

"Is it bad?" Demyx asked. Part of him really didn't want to know.

"How can it be good?" Dilan turned to face him. His black braids were caked with rock and dust. "How can it be good when we have an enemy who can see three steps ahead of us at all times? It's the most we can do to survive. Might be best to quit while we're ahead."

"We must survive," Aeleus said. "It's all to do."

"Right you are. I don't suppose you have any opinions on the matter?"

Demyx thought. "Aeleus is right. I just want to live. But I… I can't fight him. I don't even know if I can help."

"I'm sure you have something valuable to contribute."

"That's not what I meant," Demyx said. "I don't want to get sucked in again. Not now that I have a choice."

That stunned Dilan into silence. Finally, Aeleus said, "I suppose that's a wise thought."

Night and the sleep of the dead. He was down for the count for about twelve hours, and woke up disoriented. He half expected to wake up in his bed at the Organization's castle. But no, he was only in the small room on the small hard bed in Radiant Garden.

He went through his morning routine. He needed to do laundry. (When you only had four shirts you did an awful lot of laundry.) He was so tired so early in the morning that he struggled with the coffee percolator for a quarter of an hour, and then finally decided it would probably just be easier to shell out a few precious munny in town. Demyx shouldn't be late anyway. Well, what did it matter? Yuffie was going to be mad at him late or early.

But when he got to the spot they'd agreed upon yesterday he found Cid in her place. "I hope you brought some for me," he said when he saw the cup in Demyx's hand.

"…Didn't think of it," he answered lamely. But he was relieved. He could only hope this new arrangement would be permanent. Before he could even finish the thought, Cid added,

"I'm only with you for today. There was a pretty bad surge last night. You know, of Heartless. Yuffie's injured pretty bad. She and Leon both."

Like he cared. Still, he felt an involuntary swell of concern. Probably more for Leon. "Will they be okay?"

"They're in good hands. I've seen a lot of gross stuff, but nothing Aerith can't fix." He adjusted his goggles and leaned in. "Once I even saw her reattach a hand. It was amazing. Kid had full coordination and everything. Within an hour she was out playing again."

Demyx shuddered. "There's no risk for them, you know, to become…"

"Heartless?" Cid finished. "No, fortunately. Burns, more like, from one of them artificial types."

"…Oh."

"Well, look at us standing around gossiping. Let's get to work."

Another long, exhausting morning. Demyx thought he should probably talk to someone about why he was so damn tired. Maybe he was getting sick. Being stuck in the castle was like being in a vacuum, probably. Cid was pleasant and chatty and he could tell a great dirty joke, but Demyx felt weaker and weaker.

"Is there a bug going around town?" He finally braved himself into asking. "Like, a cold, the flu, something?"

Cid shrugged. "Not that I know of."

"Mind if I sit for a minute? Using my powers still wears me out."

"Go right ahead." Cid pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. "I had quit for a long time, but right now it's been so stressful that this is the only thing that helps." He offered the pack to Demyx.

He took one. The taste was different than he remembered, but the burn in his lungs was soothing and he felt a little better.

"Didn't picture you as a smoker," Cid said.

"Only every once in a while." He'd seen his fair share of party scenes as a member of the Organization—both voluntarily and because of reconnaissance. Mostly he just liked watching the people, the dancing, the music… he exhaled a cloud of smoke.

"You good, kid?"

"…Yeah. Just… thinking, that's all."

Demyx took another long drag and ground out the butt. The music. He had to start looking for the music.