Chapter Text
Neck
Xigbar used one of his arrow-guns to push aside a thorny bush, his eye hunting around for the elusive Heartless.
He’d wiped out most of the Heartless in the rural peasant village he’d been sent to, but one had escaped by running into the forest the locals refused to enter, claiming it was haunted.
He’d promised himself that if he couldn’t find it within an hour, he’d give up and return to the castle. Xemnas would never know he missed one.
Thus he found himself in the middle of the woods, hopelessly lost, with it growing late and still no Heartless for his efforts.
As he went past the offending bush, still managing to snag his coat on some of the thorns, he heard the faintest strain of melody.
Well, that was great. He’d managed to turn himself around and arrived back in town.
Figuring he might as well see if the village had any decent food before he left, he followed the music, not to the town, but to a small lake.
In the fading light, he could see a young man, dressed in elegant clothes and a red cap, sitting on top of the water, playing some sort of stringed instrument.
Xigbar felt a pull from the music as it swirled around him, almost forgetting his mission entirely. It yanked at emotions he hadn’t felt since before the War, trying to tug them into the forefront of his consciousness, but he stubbornly pushed the proto-feelings away.
The Heartless he’d been looking for was there too, seemingly equally mesmerized, watching the young man from the edge of the water, but making no move to attack.
“That’s a funny trick.” Xigbar called to the golden haired man, using his gravity powers to step onto the water and approach.
The youth startled and stopped playing.
Xigbar turned and shot at the Heartless before it could even think of casting off the spell of the music and escaping.
As the Heartless disappeared, the young man blinked at Xigbar in surprise and stupor.
“What brings you here, cousin?” He shook himself awake and asked.
“Cousin?” Xigbar questioned.
“Are you not a Neck like me? Since you walk upon the water like us.” The younger man’s eyes showed innocent curiosity.
“No, I’m a Nobody.” Xigbar corrected.
“Surely you’re somebody?” The young man was confused.
“I mean, I’m a person without a Heart.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Why didn’t that Heartless attack you?” Xigbar changed the subject abruptly.
“Hmm?”
“The creature I killed just now. Why didn’t it go after your Heart?”
“I don’t know.” The still sitting man shrugged. “I’ve seen them before, but they’ve never bothered me.”
“It can’t be because you’re not human. They still go after things that aren’t human.” Xigbar muttered to himself.
“Did you know?” The Neck started the conversation topic idly, clearly bored with Xigbar’s incomprehensible words. “They say that the Neck have no souls? I don’t believe it—of course we have souls!—but when my brothers hear it, they tend to get rather weepy over the whole thing.” He waved a hand dismissively at his absent siblings. “It’s caused the human beings to taunt us and say we’ll never have salvation.”
“No souls?” Xigbar raised an eyebrow. “Then how are you living?”
“I know, right?” The blond nodded enthusiastically, finally finding someone who believed him, his language suddenly turning more casual. “Everything living must have a soul, right? Although I suppose the same could be said about hearts too.” He looked at Xigbar challengingly.
“...Maybe we’re talking about the same thing... What’s your name, anyway?” Xigbar squinted at the other.
“Myde!”
“And are you always here?”
“Well, duh. This is my lake.”
“Hey, I don’t know anything about… Necks, was it? Allow me to be ignorant!”
“You don’t…? Normally nobody comes here because they’re all afraid of me.”
“Afraid of you? As if! But then, I am a Nobody.”
“I have the feeling that word doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it does to you.”
“Probably.”
Xigbar finally sat down, making sure the water didn’t actually touch him and get him wet.
“You going to continue playing?’
“If you want me to teach you, there’s stuff you’re supposed to do first.”
“Nah, I don’t need to learn. Just thought it might be nice to listen.”
“Hmm, okay.” Myde strummed his instrument.
And Xigbar allowed himself to relax for the first time in ages.
***
“You’re late, Number II.” Xigbar has barely stept out of the portal when Saïx’s accusatory words flew at him. The blue haired man stood beside the portal, clipboard in hand, eyes furious.
“...A Heartless got away. I had trouble tracking it down.”
“I see.” Saïx’s tone would have been sarcastic, if it weren’t for how bitingly cold it was.
“Yup, so I’m just gonna hit my bed now. It’s been a long day.”
He walked away with a wave, feeling Saïx’s eyes follow him until he was out of sight. Rather than head to his room, he ambled over to Xemnas’s office, banking on the long hours the Superior usually led.
He entered after receiving permission from his knock and strode over, collapsing irreverently into the chair across from the leader of the Nobodies.
“What do you want, Xigbar?” Xemnas asked quietly over the paperwork he was holding.
“Why I gotta want anything? Can’t I just see you for the fun of it?”
Xemnas shot him an unimpressed look. Xigbar shrugged slightly and straightened up a little.
“Look, Xemnas—Boss Man—,” he corrected at Xemnas’s raised eyebrow and slight frown. “Are we still looking for Nobodies to fill our ranks?” Xemnas had mentioned from the start that he wanted more members, but none had been found so far. Not that they were looking that hard, either.
“You found someone?” Xemnas intuited the reason behind Xigbar’s question.
“Maybe. Hard to tell for sure. But I’d like permission to find out, and if I’m right, convince him to join the cause. Problem is, I don’t know how long it’ll take.”
“Permission granted,” Xemnas nodded.
“Welp, I’m exhausted. I’m off to bed now.” He levered himself out of the chair and set off, not paying attention to whether Xemnas was done talking with him or not. Xemnas just sighed helplessly before returning to his paperwork. There was no taming Xigbar.
***
The next day, Xigbar arrived at the lake around mid-morning, having allowed himself to sleep in and have a leisurely breakfast. Not seeing Myde anywhere, although that could have been because of the fog that surrounded the area, he called out over the lake, “Myde?”
But there was no answer. He remained still, listening as hard as he could until a horse’s snort by his ear made him jump.
“Woah! Where’d you come from?” Next to Xigbar, having come out of nowhere, was a pure white, handsome wild horse. Said horse whinnied, as though laughing at him, and butted him in the chest before prancing away.
It didn’t go far, staying within sight of the lake, but eating the vegetation here and there as something caught its fancy.
Xigbar didn’t know much about horses, but he didn’t recall ever hearing of them being so flighty. This horse barely ate at one spot before abandoning it for another that apparently looked tastier. He could swear he could almost hear it humming brainlessly as it flitted about.
Deciding to ignore his equine companion, he called out across the lake once more: “Myde!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the horse jerk its head, and move toward him. He watched warily as the horse circled around him once, playfully butting against him here and there, before prancing away again.
He felt his mouth drop.
“Myde?” he asked the horse.
With a twinkle in its eye, the horse tossed its mane… and butted him in the butt.
“Hey!” he protested.
Myde whinnied a snicker at him and bobbed his head.
“How’d you become a horse?” Xigbar asked weakly. Myde only snorted at him.
“Is it permanent?” Myde shook his head, indicating “no.”
“Can you change back?” Again, “no.”
“That’s going to make talking to you difficult.” Myde rolled his shoulders in an approximation of a shrug. The movement was disturbingly unhorselike.
“Should I wait? Should I come back later?” Again, the shrug.
The sun, which had remained hidden behind the clouds up to that point, chose that moment to shine, starting its mission to disperse the fog around the lake. Myde started to fade before Xigabr’s eye, slowly turning transparent before changing into fast moving ribbons of white light which surged upward before disappearing with a final flash.
Xigbar shivered in shock as Myde disappeared completely from before him. Had Myde just died right in front of him? Could he have done something to stop it? Or was he overthinking things and Myde was perfectly fine?
Unsure whether he’d failed his new, self-imposed mission so soon or not, he decided to pull up his hood, float in the air, and take a nap for now. (There was no way he was lying in the grass. For one thing, it was still soaked from the fog. For another, who knows whether horse!Myde had left any “presents.”) If Myde didn’t show up by sunset, he’d leave and return in the morning to question the locals.
He woke up in the late afternoon, starving and grateful for having had the foresight to pack some food. After eating, he trudged around the lake, seeing if he could find any more Heartless. A few hours later, bored out of his skull and barely restraining himself from shooting at anything that moved (who knew how Myde would take him shooting the wildlife around his lake? If he wasn’t dead...) and Xigbar was tempted just to leave.
He went back to the original spot he’d portaled to, and decided to take one more nap, even if it meant he’d be up all night. Levitating as before, he used the calming techniques he’d learned over the centuries to quickly bring himself to a light snooze.