Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. This is a not-for-profit fanwork.

XIV.

Future

"…What?" Demyx asked.

Ienzo sighed. He sat down. "You were always the most drastic and extensive case," he explained. "But when we all woke from reformation, we all had something wrong with us. Dilan's memories took many days to align, and some are missing still. Aeleus was paralyzed for several days. Even suffers from vertigo. And I can't summon my lexicon, and my powers seemed to have shifted in terms of how I portray other's memories. We had thought—having no previous data or record of any of this ever happening—that reformation wasn't foolproof, or perfect. The process is too chaotic; it favors entropy. We had thought for a long while that this is just the way things naturally will be. But… it changed the day you appeared.

"We had thought you reformed on your homeworld, and that you had moved on. But when we found you, so brutalized in that way, I began to suspect that our conditions weren't so natural after all. And something else confirmed it."

"What was that?" Demyx asked. He didn't want to know. He was too tired for this.

"Lea," Ienzo said. "There's nothing wrong with Lea."

"How can you tell? Perhaps he's lying," Dilan said. He came closer to the table.

"Well, we had considered that. But there are markers. Signs," Ienzo asserted. "There's a sort of haziness in the pupil. We all have it. Lea does not."

"Why him?" Demyx asked.

"So the numbers add up," Dilan spat. He shook his head. "Thirteen darknesses, seven lights."

"But why were we altered?"

Ienzo shook his head. "I'm not so sure. We have several theories."

"And with Ten's information yesterday…" Even frowned. "We don't think this was about pacification, or an elimination of witnesses. It was an experiment."

Demyx and Dilan looked at each other. Dilan's jaw was tight. "For what?"

"Many things. Breaking down a being, but without darkness. Manipulating the natural order of a form. And, possibly, controlling someone against their will without darkness."

"And why would he do that?" Dilan continued. "We know he has darkness on his side."

Ienzo sighed. "I cannot say. But darkness can be fought, potentially cured. Something like this… cannot. I'm hoping that his reports will shed some light on the matter. He's so thorough…. There must be record somewhere of some seed of a plan."

A significant pause. "…You went back," Even said.

"It seemed imprudent not to. All of the paperwork is still there in carbon copy."

Even's eyes burned. "After what happened with Sora, we had agreed—"

Ienzo stood. "I refuse to abandon such vital information," he said. "It's time we accept what we did. If we can find anything that might do the slightest good, then it won't have all been in vain. Don't you agree?"

Dilan scoffed. "What could there possibly be? How many experiments were carried out?"

Silence. Even and Ienzo looked at one another. "You were there," Even said evasively.

"I was a castle guard. Not a researcher."

"Ansem the Wise had any number of ideas," Ienzo said. "We performed quite a few tests. And Xehanort was the most prolific of us all."

"You have his records?" Dilan asked.

"He… he kept very few," Ienzo admitted. "But Even and I have many, as well as our personal journals. I'm hoping to triangulate our observations. Maybe I noticed something, or Even did, and we wrote it down, and that might help us infer more about his plans for us."

Dilan shook his head. Demyx sipped at the coffee. His stomach churned.

"There's nothing else to do but wait," Ienzo said. "If he has a power like this, there's no telling what he could do."

Even pursed his lips. "Then I will go with you." He turned to Demyx and Dilan. "I'd recommend you rest. We have no idea what will come."

He dreamt in vivid snarls that night. Memories ran through his fingertips like sand. No more plains; a city, now. The city was made of stone and empty bazaars. His mother, teaching him how to read. Leaving for hours at a time at night. She had used to sing, in the time before, but not so much now. She grew thin. The kohl on her face would leave black smears. They had been in drought for years. Thirst was a thin film in the back of their throats; joint pain was a constant. She would tell him the legend sometimes when she returned at daybreak, about the rains that would come, and that they would know because they would hear spirit's music. The music, it was said, would sound exactly like a—

He woke up then. The image melted behind his eyes. Rain battered the window in the dark, and a cool draft touched the sweat on his face. She had used to sing. He couldn't remember what it sounded like.

I am so tired, he thought. He wanted to sleep for a while more; maybe a year or so, until things calmed down or until Sora murdered Xehanort.

And then? Then what would he do? Where would he go? No music, no friends, no money. He really was nothing. He lay back down. His body seemed to weigh heavily against the sheets. A weighty loneliness held him there, sharp and scrabbly, and made him feel vaguely desperate for some kind of positive human contact. He stayed there, not sleeping and barely thinking, until his stomach grew too empty to permit stillness.

He found Aeleus in the kitchen. His injured arm was in a sling, and his face was tense and red with pain.

"So, uh, how are you feeling?" Demyx asked. He was sure Aeleus was supposed to be resting.

The man nodded.

"Must be pretty painful," he said. "Why don't you go back to bed?" He remembered the days of scalding agony when they had fixed his own bones.

Aeleus ignored the comment. "Meeting later," he grunted.

"Fuck," he said. He rested his head in his hand.

"Precisely," Aeleus agreed.

"Well—let me at least get you something to eat—"

Aeleus held up his good hand and shook his head.

He fixed his meal and sat at the table.

"Your power returns," Aeleus said. "I felt it."

He hesitated. "Even was really jealous. Kept going on about how much he could have used me. Before, you know."

Aeleus nodded.

"It's… really hard," he continued. "It used to be so easy, you know? So effortless. And I never got tired. But now it's just a big mess? And everything hurts. If I keep puking every time I try something big I'm never going to get anywhere. Plus it's gross."

Aeleus shrugged. "You're growing."

"It doesn't make sense. How can I grow if… if my heart is fractured, or whatever? And I'm not growing. I was way more powerful before."

"Were you?" he asked. He leaned into his good hand and patted his sweaty forehead with a kerchief.

Demyx knew medicine was perfectly useless in his situation, but felt sorry for him anyway. "Well, yeah. I couldn't drown. I couldn't be poisoned. That could make it pretty inconvenient for bad guys." That also depended on your definition of bad guys.

"You couldn't feel, either. Water is malleable. It yields to emotion and humanity, and carries energy. It's not like earth."

"If I'm more powerful, then why is it shredding me?"

"Empathy. You can feel. You felt the pain in the water when it was tainted with darkness."

Demyx shook his head.

"You felt my pain during the surgery. And I yours."

The blood rushed to his face.

"You will heal," Aeleus said with a nod. "And you will be dangerous."

He was no longer hungry. "Please stop," he said softly. "I don't want to talk about this."

"Nine," Aeleus said. "It is simply true. I must… I must rest." He struggled to a stand and hobbled out of the room.

Demyx's heart beat faster as he walked the halls. He was supposed to be going somewhere, right? The meeting? Doing something? Was the ventilation off? It seemed like the air wasn't working.

Dangerous. Aeleus didn't speak in long expository breaths like the others. Possibly he had meant something else.

But wasn't he right? Demyx felt the weight of the castle through its pipes right now. One wrong move and the right pipe could burst and a support could come crashing down and someone could be hurt.

And the reservoir. If he left the castle, the water still ran through the town. He could flood the streets if he couldn't contain the power.

He didn't even need a body of water. A person was enough. Fluid in the lungs, a burst blood vessel, a ruptured bladder. It would be so quick. As time passed and his power returned to him, more volatile and uncontrollable than before, what could he do? How much control did he really have over himself? Was this what Luxord's Somebody meant by sleeper agent? Sleep. His power was asleep, or had been. Has Sora's light woken it the rest of the way up?

He sat down before his knees gave out and heard his own frantic breaths. He felt the subtle tug of the weight above him; omnipresent but unmoving. His own blood prickled in his veins.

His power had never exploded out of him before. He tried to find solace in that. Even if it had been hard to manipulate or painful, nothing in him had ever snapped.

But then he remembered the paralyzing terror he'd experienced after Sora cleared away the darkness. Sora had changed something in him, Luxord's Somebody had said. Was that it?

He couldn't feel his teeth. Was he dying? Was something happening right now?

"Oh, Nine. Here we are again, are we?"

He jerked his head in the direction of the voice. Luxord's Somebody waited patiently in the light of a nearby window. "Just leave me alone," he said. "I don't have time for your bullshit."

Ten came over and squatted next to him. ""Bullshit" is subjective, I think." He pulled a lilac kerchief from his pocket and handed it to him. "Over the nose and mouth. There's a good chap."

It felt like being smothered, but it seemed to help loosen the airway. "I've heard enough theories and epitaphs today. I don't need any more."

"Alright. Then I won't say anything." Luxord took out his cards and began shuffling them. "You never were one for poker. Gin rummy? Blackjack? Or maybe just some Go Fish." He dealt several cards to Demyx, but he didn't touch them.

"Why are you still here?" he asked. He clutched the handkerchief in his hand. It was warm from his breath, and slightly damp.

""Why" is subjective too," Ten said.

"You can leave any time. There must be some reason. And I know you could care less. You don't want to be involved." His eyes felt swollen and a few more tears wormed out.

Ten took Demyx's cards back and began to play solitaire. "Desire and involvement are in no way correlated," he said after a long moment. "He chose me all those years ago, so here I am, to watch the train wreck. So to speak."

"…We really are fucked, aren't we?"

Ten chuckled. "A teenager with a Keyblade versus some thirteen omniscient beings. I rather feel sorry for them."

He swallowed. He tasted blood; he'd bitten the inside of his cheek. "You see the future," Demyx said.

"I see time. Time changes. It's fluid. It isn't linear. There are millions of futures at any given moment. Everything changes. So you choose to eat toast for breakfast instead of oatmeal. Everything's different again. The butterfly effect. You've heard of it, yes?" He put the cards back into his pocket.

He nodded and mopped his eyes.

"There are futures where Sora wins. There are futures where he wins. If any of this can be considered winning. And there are futures where nobody wins, at all. I really don't see much very clearly. It's like snatches of dreams. The human body is not built to contain such power. Any power, really." He exhaled.

"…So what's the point?" Demyx asked dryly. "Of this? Of any of this?"

Ten frowned. "Where do you stand when it comes to the fight?"

"Against him?" Demyx paused. "I just… I just want to live. I don't want to deal with this. He messed me up enough. I don't want to hurt anybody." Ten continued to stare at him contemplatively.

"You have to admit you're in a unique situation. One that could, quite possibly, allow you to see the other side of the coin. As it were." He canted his head, as if listening to something. "Look at me, I've made you late. Get to your meeting." And then he disappeared as if into thin air, leaving no trace of himself other than the purple cloth in Demyx's hands.