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Zexion looked at the fountains of the Enchanted Dominion, and remembered a warm smile, a warm sun, a warm chorus of laughter.
Too often, such memories fell black and alien in his mind’s eye, pulled up as if painted over in a black wash of ink. Distorted and shadowed. Distorted and shadowed like the creatures he’d once helped make.
Made as a boy who thought the Soldier Heartless were fun creations, made as a boy who thought the Wyvern Heartless were his imagination made real, and nothing more.
But those had been boyish thoughts.
He frowned. Tilted his head. Studied the fountain. There was no real beauty to it, no architectural prowess beyond the norm, no mark or words hidden in the curve of bone-white brick or below the water.
Yet all the same, the Cloaked Schemer stood transfixed, remembering.
Remembering the fountains of his home: the hundreds and hundreds of fountains, each a monument to the life the water of Radiant Garden provided. Each a shrine of gratitude.
Master Ansem’s warm smile on a sunny day as they took a well-needed break from their work. Braig and Dilan laughing at something Even said behind them. Aeleus smiling in silence, too much of a gentleman to laugh along with them. The taste of something salty, something sweet.
The crashing of metal and the screech and scream of pipes bursting. The cries of terror as the Heartless were unleashed. Watching, dead-eyed, as the water dried up - as each fountain spurted and died like a shrine’s candles sputtering out. As Radiant Garden grew hollow and dead.
Zexion scowled and looked away. What thoughts were these? Illogical - or, at the very least, useless. Memories like these could be carefully filed away until they faded with time, like any forgotten papers dashed in a drawer.
Strange and most annoying: they almost made him feel.
He wrinkled his nose in distaste at his own judgement. Such things, as always, were a trick. To remember how to feel was just a lie to oneself; Xemnas had said as much.
Nobodies like him had no Hearts. They could feel nothing.
Not even homesickness.
---
“Where are you going?”
Some amount of satisfaction filled Saix’s throat as Axel flinched. The redhead turned, sighing.
“What, are you stalking me, now?”
Any wisp of satisfaction vanished into his frown.
You could only hope as much.
“You have work to do,” he said instead, his voice flat even to his ears. The portal in front of Axel whooshed and swirled in slow, hypnotizing currents of Darkness.
“I finished it,” Axel said with an annoyed glint of his eyes. “Get off my back.”
You didn’t answer my question. But they both knew he never had to ask: Saix knew where Axel was going. It was the only place he ever went. He could even see the munny pouch held tight in one of Eight’s hands. Saix was sure the only thing Axel spent munny on was enough sea-salt ice cream for him and his two friends.
“You could do to do more,” Saix said. “You waste enough time as is on the clocktower.”
‘ Isa - oh, shit - Saix! Hey! ‘
Lea - Axel, now, Axel, he had to remember that - ran up to him, a grin on his face and the tassels of his cloak snapping around him. He skid to a stop.
‘Guess what I found.’
Saix frowned and tilted his head. ‘ What? You know I don’t like guessing -’
Axel swung his arms out from behind his back, producing -
‘Sea-salt ice cream?’ Saix said, taken aback. ‘How did you find that? I thought it -’
‘Some guy was selling them in Twilight Town! Crazy, right? I couldn’t believe it!’ Axel shoved one at him. ‘Man, I haven’t tasted this since - well. You know.’
Saix stared at the blue popsicle. Strange. The hollowness in his chest, present ever since he had lost his Heart, tightened. ‘ Yeah. ‘
‘C’mon. Let’s go eat some of this stuff before Xemnas asks us to do more icky stuff, huh?’
Axel scowled at him.
“I think I do enough for you, as is,” he said, and vanished into the portal.
Saix stood, unmoving, watching with a blackened look as the Darkness vanished.
Nobodies like him had no Hearts. They could feel nothing.
Not even jealousy.
---
Tropical plants - plants of paradise, plants of true and terrible beauty - were the hardest to take care of, and so Marluxia should have understood when one of his strelitzias died overnight.
But he stood there, staring at the limp and browning plant, unsure what was overtaking him.
Maybe it’d been taken by a virus strain he’d accidentally brought in from another world, or maybe it had simply laid down, its orange petals curling underneath it, and not gotten back up again. Neither explained why he stood there, staring at it. Any other dead plant would be immediately disposed off, turned to fertilizer.
The Graceful Assassin frowned - a gesture of a frown, a ghost of a frown - and placed a hand on his chest. It felt heavy, weighed down, the pressure pushing against his lungs and ribcage and threatening to tighten his throat.
He was forgetting something again. Something monumental, this time. Very profound.
But Nobodies like him had no Hearts. They could feel nothing.
Not even sorrow.
---
Demyx kicked back on the couch and strummed quietly on his guitar.
He would have jammed louder, if not for Larxene glaring poison at him from across the room. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with more of her complaints right now, not when he was feeling it.
Each new pluck of the strings, each new note, each new flutter of rhythm rose and fell in his chest like a heartbeat. It’d become a ritual of sorts to play before Saix gave out missions. After all, a little touch and jive of music before something as annoying as missions lifted the Heart!
Demyx slowed. The tone grew methodic and lilting. You are a Nobody. You are a shell of what you once were. Your Heart is no more. Xemnas always had to be a bummer, didn’t he?
Weird, though. Weird, he thought, picking up his tune to something more light and free, he could imagine something in that empty chest of his. Felt something he supposedly shouldn’t have when he was playing his music. Was it wishful thinking?
Apparently Nobodies like him had no Hearts. They could feel nothing.
Not even happiness.
---
Larxene burst out laughing.
“Oh, you bastard,” she said between cackles. Alone atop the balcony of the Hall of Empty Melodies, she and Marluxia stood overlooking the training area below. Her laughter bounced down the silver panes and echoed into the emptiness of the castle, and for a moment, the place felt a little less static, a little less dead. Marluxia had a thin, smug smile.
“You have to tell that to his face!” she wheezed, and reached out to grip Marluxia’s forearm and squeeze.
It was as if she had electrocuted herself. Marluxia looked at her, puzzled, and Larxene’s laugh cut off.
It could have been a shift in her fingers, a change of her laugh - but this was not the usual flirtatious touch she was prone to do: this was something more, and the two knew at once.
This was a touch of trust, the touch of a friend.
She let go, disgusted with herself.
Why the fuck had she done something like that? What’d come over her? She wasn’t supposed to feel stuff like that.
Gross.
Nobodies like her had no Hearts. They could feel nothing.
Not even friendship.
---
Xigbar leaned back in his throne and popped his shoulders.
Xemnas droned on, the speech as dull as all the others.
“ - only then will we become whole,” Xemnas drawled. “We will claim our Hearts for ourselves once again.”
Finally to the good part. Xigbar eyed the others’ faces, as he always did when the subject came up. Demyx was actually paying attention now; Saix’s gaze grew darker than usual. Larxene rolled her eyes and looked away with disinterest while Zexion lowered his. Marluxia’s face revealed a ghost of a frown.
Always good to watch ‘em when Xemnas was talking about stuff like this. Even with one eye, he could easily take stock of who had started straying off their purpose. He’d been alive for a long time, after all.
Always good to see who had started feeling.
He’d dealt out a buncha’ lies before, but this whole Heart business was the real delicious one.
But, hey. None of ‘em would ever guess the truth. Xemnas had made sure of that, telling them over and over anything they felt was only the memory of emotion, only the mind tricking itself. Say things enough, and they became real.
He smiled and leaned back into the throne. All as planned, really.
‘Cause the thing was, Nobodies like him could regrow Hearts. They could feel.
Even deep and terrible amusement.