Young Xehanort's mind was reeling. He knew he didn't cry a terrible amount, having already steeled himself for eventual parting, but to say that he didn't would be a lie. For now he wallowed in the misery of one of the most solid rules of time: that which was destined to occur could not be changed, and this seemed more destined than anything. Two sides, good and evil, would never be together for long. That only happened in fairy tales and stories.
He went over the many things he admired about Sora: those blue eyes full of innocence and wonder and wide as the sky, the laughter and levity he could summon at will, how innately he understood the heart and its capricious ways (certainly better than him), how infinite his love for everything seemed. Even for him, someone so steeped in darkness, it had few boundaries and Sora found his way to seeing the best in Xehanort. Perhaps that was what he meant by "make him good again". Make it so that everyone else could see what he saw, bright the light within the darkness forward.
Xehanort chuckled when he recalled Sora's admission of his feelings in that blissful world. "Do- do you like me o-or something?" He had said, "B-because you're always following me around. It's always you. Y-you're always there in every world... L-like you got some kind of c-crush."
It was a blunt and stumbling phrase, one that slipped past him with hesitation in harsh contrast with how easily he spoke. His face had been growing red, so red, at what then was taken as anger.
"Maybe." Xehanort had teasingly replied, abandoning his escape and deciding to draw this out. It was interesting hearing Sora's side of the unthinkable. "You're very cute after all."
Sora had been taken back by the response so much his offensive attitude crumbled like dust. He didn't do anything when Xehanort dared to edge closer, closer, and then close enough for the silver haired youth to hold his chin. "Perhaps I do have some sort of affection for you." Was all he said before placing a kiss on Sora's paralyzed lips.
Xehanort sighed and let the memory slip away. The memory and rest of its kin was merely history now.
So if Sora had already been infected with darkness... His thoughts stopped as he stared at his hand. His darkness. His fault. He quietly mulled over that.
The train of thought drifted over. He was the youngest, from the farthest back in time, wasn't he? A lynchpin for his other selves. If he was to perish, what would happen?
He closed his fist.
He finally had a plan.
...
Riku couldn't believe it. Darkness wafted into his nose in that unmistakable stench. He looked outside and was surprised to see that insufferable Sora-stealer in the courtyard below. "Getting awfully bold there..." Riku muttered. He watched a moment, hoping he could discern what the enigmatic boy was thinking. Was he trying to make a trap?
No... Just sitting there. Waiting. For some reason that unnerved Riku more than doing something. Riku saw him come in, he saw the wisps of darkness dissipating around his form. He hadn't missed anything. And still the foe waited.
"Riku," Ventus walked up to him, "Everything-" Riku had to clamp a hand over Ventus's mouth before he alarmed everyone.
"Quiet, he doesn't know we're watching him." Riku whispered, "I wanna see what he's gonna do."
The two watched in rapturous silence. Xehanort the younger still did nothing. He just sat there. He idly began fiddling with his hands, and his lips moved in some sort of silent mumbling... or scheming. Who knew what that enigmatic mind conceived.
Ventus peeled Riku's fingers off of his mouth, "What's he doing?"
"Dunno." Riku curtly replied, "He's just... Waiting." His eyes narrowed, "He knows he's dead meat here if we can gang up on him... What on earth is he waiting for?"
Ventus gave an unhelpful shrug, "Should we investigate?"
Riku thought a moment. "Is it just us here?" He asked.
"Well," Ventus began, "Yen Sid is meditating over what we should do... Kairi went off with Roxas and Lea... I think Aqua's doing something with Mickey, and Donald and Goofy are still looking for Sora..." Ventus shrugged again with a hesitant whine, "I guess? Riku what are you thinking?"
Riku ran down the stairs, Ventus stumbling after in surprise, "Riku! Hey hold on!" He called after him again, "Riku as someone older than you-" he cut himself off when he arrived at the intense staring contest between the two young men. He awkwardly lingered, not quite between the two but definitely a third wheel.
Riku broke the uncomfortable silence, "What are you doing here? Trying to snuff out another light? Can't stand it?"
Ventus shook his head, "Riku we shouldn't goad him on-"
"Quite the contrary," Xehanort interrupted Ventus. His voice was stiff but... Was that melancholy lost in the flat tones? "I have been blinded by its brilliance."
"And so you've come to take one out, even if we're already straggling for seven!" Riku barked at him.
Ventus nodded in agreement, but not without grabbing Riku's arm, "Dude, calm down."
"What are you going to do? Kill me?" Xehanort asked. His voice held a different flatness to it. Rather than indifference this was acting, wearing a mask that didn't fit right. He held out his hands, "I'm right here. All lonesome."
Riku knew there was a trap, a catch, "What are you getting at?"
Xehanort sighed and turned around, the act dropping for frustration to replace it, "Oh how I hate being blunt to people who fail to understand subtlety."
Riku sighed back, "You're not subtle you're cryptic as hell!"
Ventus shrugged, "When I met Xehanort he was pretty straightforward about things." He directed his rambling at Xehanort himself, "But then again, Riku's right, what the heck is your point? If you don't have one get lost!"
Xehanort didn't reply. He sat there, exposing himself for a prime backstabbing. For tantalizing moment after moment, he left himself wide open. He sighed, "Was that not a clue enough?" The sad overtones in his words returned.
Ventus and Riku looked at each other. "I don't know." Ventus said with a shrug.
"Me neither." Riku agreed. Xehanort was blatantly pointing at the two of them making a move on him, but he was pushing for it way too much.
Xehanort turned back on them, his mask gone with only an empty look of regret left behind. "How did you put it, Ventus?" He asked, "... Put an end to me, was it? A more poetic way of phrasing the task I ask of you."
Riku thought it over. This still seemed way too good to be true: if they they took out Xehanort's past they took out his future, and now here he was offering himself up. "There's gotta be a catch, gotta be a trap." He said.
"I assure you this is no trap!" Xehanort begged, catching both Ven and Riku off guard with how sudden the emotion poured out, "You have to trust that for once this is not tied to some greater scheme-"
"And how am I supposed to trust the guy who almost killed my friend?!" Riku demanded, "You crossed way past the trust line from the moment I saw your resemblance to Ansem, Xemnas, heck every single one of you!"
Xehanort sighed and began pacing with his head in one hand, "I figured you'd be more than happy to plunge a Keyblade through me, practically trigger happy, but no, I suppose not." Xehanort's sigh was remarkably empathetic with Riku in how frustrated it was at his plans unraveling. Riku was even surprised to see those golden eyes shining with something besides triumph. The exact opposite, really.
Ventus finally spoke up again, "Riku, what advantage could they have if we kill him? It's obvious we're the only ones here, after all..." He looked up, wondering if anyone had heard the ruckus.
Riku shook his head, "I don't know, he's Xehanort! He's gonna come up with something we won't." Still, Ven had his point. Riku couldn't even imagine how dying would aid the old man in his plans for war.
Ventus shrugged, debating the offer himself. "You're serious? You want us to kill you?" He asked, "You do realize that'll undo everything, right?"
"Completely." Xehanort answered. It was too genuine to be a lie.
"Okay then," Riku's mind begged him to not even think of making a deal with Xehanort, but they were ready, and if he really was being honest here... "If you're serious about this, then start up the war." Ventus stared at Riku with aghast horror as he continued, "We meet up at that barren world, my seven, your thirteen, and in the heat of battle come find me. I'll kill you then. Easy. Simple."
Xehanort seemed surprised. His jaw fell slack and mumbled useless things. He then clutched his chin, eyes darting around as gears turned in his head. "That... That could work." He said hesitantly. "Do you have-"
"Managed to scrape up seven, no thanks to you." Riku's harsh phrase brushed the question off for a more important one. One that had plagued his mind for far too long, "But what about Sora?"
Riku and Ventus didn't anticipate ever seeing Xehanort express such loss and guilt. It was a deeply human emotion that they had thought long abandoned by someone so had become so inhuman. Those golden eyes darted away, "He..." Suddenly a person so eloquent seemed to have trouble speaking,"I... I couldn't protect him."
Ventus was silently expressing the full range of his shock- Sora, taken by Xehanort again and there was none of his interference to save him this time -but Riku was slowly knotting into a ball of fury. "Excuse me?" He whispered.
Xehanort summoned a dark corridor, "I-I should leave they'll suspect me if I-"
"Excuse me?!" Riku repeated, louder.
Xehanort hadn't left yet, frozen. He trembled, perhaps from blame, perhaps from fear of what Riku was going to do to him if he fully divulged Sora's fate. "Sora has..." Xehanort's normally eloquent speech stumbled and faltered, "I-it was... my fault. I held him up... and such was the sunlight that caused his wings to break, what caused his fall."
He vanished into darkness just as Riku charged with an inhumanly outraged roar.
...
Sora didn't know what Xehanort meant by his parting words, nor did he care. Well, to be completely honest he still did care. He was just in deep, deep denial about it.
"He didn't love you." He muttered for what felt like an ever larger number in a long line of repetition, "It was all a big fat lie to try and get you and you fell for it as sure as the waves rolling in back home."
Yes, these words were the only thing truly keeping him alive, keeping his heart beating. Otherwise his heart would've shattered to pieces a long time ago. Sora closed his eyes and stuffed a pillow into his face. He could feel tear stains on it even now.
Oddly enough they didn't force him into much after being captured. He just remembered being told that his first love had been a complete and total fabrication to corrupt him, then... It was an angry blur of heartbreak. He probably bit someone, punched another, definitely wailed. "You're lying!" He had shrieked, "You're lying because he wouldn't do that! He's changed! He knows he's been wrong, that you're wrong! he HATES YOU!"
Sora figured it was Xehanort himself who came in and subdued him with some sort of old and long lost magic. It was all too blurred together for him to make sense of it, nor did he want to. It was a mash of pain that he had more than enough of. Taunting laughter reveling at his misery, "oh yes, it is!" to counteract every utterance of "no! I can't be true!"
Perhaps what pained him most was how he couldn't get over it. Every kiss, every touch, every word, felt so genuine... Sora didn't know who to trust, but ultimately it went to what was most logical; the majority who explained that nothing was ever truly meant. The big, grander plan of making him fall. They had tried to take him once, and this was a stunning gamble.
Sora felt like he was dying, his heart being led astray once more. He was so sure this time that just maybe he had managed to see something good in someone so evil... Could he even trust the useless thing anymore if people were going to exploit it with such ruthlessness? What was even the point of listening to it?
"You're so stupid." He muttered, "You opened yourself up for defeat the moment you let yourself fall for him..."
First it was those stupidly handsome features, then that teasing, that lack of answers with only question after question that urged on Sora's desire to see him again... Perhaps it was the dangerous taboo of falling in love with the enemy, too. Then when it all came to a head and they both admitted their feelings the impulsive crush snowballed into love Sora's impulsive heart couldn't stop. The way Xehanort called him his "little sky", the care he kept showing, practically coddling someone long past such actions. He was so much more intelligent, but he never, ever flaunted it in Sora's face, and still found ways to compliment him.
Xehanort cared. He cared so much. He cared about Sora so fiercely despite all of his actions so far showing that there was no heart in that body. With everyone else he put up a front, but the moment he could he tried to show through every second and word he had that Sora meant more to him than the Keyblade War and their answers, more than the plotting of his older self, enough to deny fate and destiny and spit at it right in its face.
Sora wanted people to see that even someone deemed so heartless had the ability to love, that even the coldest heart could have the chance to be good again. Everyone didn't see the man Sora saw, but he wanted them to almost more than anything.
In hindsight the love that grew in Sora's heart was a cliff. It got taller, and taller, and you could see everything for miles and there was such a clear path forward and it was all bright and shining, but then suddenly you just dropped, and the light went with it. Sora just was unable to see the fall at the end this whole time. He wondered why his friends didn't pull him out of it sooner. He scoffed at himself; he didn't let them, that's why. Too used to being right, to used to understanding his judgement was intuitively "correct".
"Why are you even so hurt..." He croaked. But yet, he had no answer. He didn't want to feel that solid, reassuring embrace, but here he was wearing that cold leather. He didn't want to hear his voice, but he kept talking to himself, probing his thoughts for answers. He still kept thinking about his companion long gone. Sora still wanted the Xehanort he knew, the Xehanort that cared, but who knew if he still did?
Sora closed his eyes, figuring that maybe darkness wouldn't be so bad.
Things are really coming to a boiling point now! I think we have like two more chapters left? Really depends on how I feel but the end is indeedy coming soon.