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We are closed in,
and the key is turned on our uncertainty
— W.B. Yeats
The war of light was lost.
In waves of darkness splashing across Radiant’s blue and purple roofs, in tsunamis of death and grief swallowing the land and sky, the world around them fell.
From stained glass windows, Demyx watched. The world — the universe — was ending, but not how he’d expected. When he’d imagined this day, as Xemnas and later Xehanort had described it, he’d expected — well, something more. Fire and explosions, screams interlaced with the crumbling of infrastructure. Instead:
Silence.
Shadow swelled in as swift as high tide, a deafening din of inky black and bulging yellow eyes. Fast, much too fast, faster than any of them had time to react. In a blink it had swallowed half the town, and in another — well, it was a good thing Ansem the Wise had anticipated the need for protection magic.
Of course, he’d always imagined he’d be on the other side of all this. Fools make deals with the devil out of desperation and Demyx had always been a fool. A fool the first time he’d given up his heart, a fool the second time as well. And yet again, when Saix had come to him via proxy, a chance to escape his benchwarmer status and join the heroes of light — because, let’s face it, the good guys always won anyways, right?
Except, of course, this time.
Fool.
But maybe this time he’d had one more reason. Stupid, non-existant heart, giddy upon seeing his soft-spoken smile, you’d give up the world—
Foolish fool with a foolish heart.
And beyond the Radiant Garden castle walls?
A sea of despair.
“They’re attacking the power plant!”
Around him, his former colleagues flitted to and fro, their cacophony drawing him out of his stupor.
“Our calls aren’t able to get out!”
“Get that satellite back online!”
“I’m sorry, sir — there’s no satellite to get back online!”
Demyx peeled his eyes away from the window and turned his attention to the chaos behind. Not that there was much for him to do; he’d already completed his job. Bring the replicas, let the apprentices handle the rest. All he had to do now was relax and wait for light to conquer dark. Right?
Even pounded away at a keyboard beneath flashing red screens. Above, Ansem barked orders from atop the balcony to armed guards rushing to fulfill his commands. The unflappable Aeleus and Dilan ran around disheveled and frantic as they attempted to enforce order.
In the foyer, rattled survivors huddled together. The lucky few who rushed in as the doors sealed shut. The survivors of Radiant Garden.
And then, there was Ienzo. Mouth moving wordlessly as columns of text flashed across his monitor. Fingers flurried as he typed. Red, red, red.
He slammed a button and then— green.
A new screen popped up. And then, a gasp.
People who didn’t know him would say he was quiet, maybe even shy. Demyx knew better. Zexion— Ienzo could talk a million words a minute. Could fill novels with what he could tell you if only you’d let him.
But this. Ienzo didn’t have words for this.
A thunderous boom shook the castle walls. For a moment, the room froze, a collective breath hung in suspense.
Beyond the window, the barrier had been breached.
“Emergency barrier — deploying,” Even said, typing furiously. “If we can just hold out a little longer then maybe—”
“Even, prepare the lab. Prepare for Plan G.”
“Plan— They’re not finished testing yet!”
Ansem silenced him with a wave of his hand. “That’s an order.”
Demyx turned back to Ienzo, whose eyes stayed locked onto the screen before him.
“Zex— Er, Ienzo. We should get ready to—”
“They’re gone. All of them. All seven. Gone.” His face was paler than the walls of their former home.
Sora — offline
Riku — offline
Kairi — offline
Mickey — offline
Lea — offline
Aqua — offline
Ventus — offline
Attempting to reconnect…
“Well that’s just…” Demyx started, stopped. This wasn’t right. The warriors of light always won. They were supposed to win and everything would be fine and then finally, finally he’d be able to tell Ienzo how he felt, how he enjoyed listening to him mutter to himself in the lab, the way he would cover his mouth when he laughed, the way Demyx has spent the last few weeks dreaming of kissing him beneath Kingdom Hearts’ pale moonlight—
Demyx shook his head. Later. Now wasn’t the time. “It’s just their phones, though. Maybe they just broke?”
An exasperated sigh. “Even you’re not so obtuse as to pretend—”
The floor shook, launching Demyx forward into Ienzo’s desk. When the world stopped blurring before him, their eyes met. Petrified, teary eyes. They said everything that Ienzo could not.
Xehanort had won.
“Everyone into the lab — now!”
Ienzo remained as the group fled, the screen flickering before him.
“Ienzo!”
When he still did not respond, Demyx grabbed his hand and began to pull him with. The pit in his stomach sank as he felt Ienzo’s hand tremble in his. Underneath that taciturn facade was a scared boy reliving his worst nightmare.
Behind them the doors shimmered with sealing magic, reinforcing the heavy duty locks sliding into place with a hiss and click.
No sooner than they’d arrived, another rumble shook the ground. Demyx squeezed Ienzo’s hand as he tried to retain his balance. One crash, another. A flash darted around the room and then: darkness.
“So that’s not ideal,” Demyx said.
“Hush,” Even said, voice cutting through. “Wait.”
A faint hum. Then, a warm glow began to emanate from the safety lights at their feet.
“The emergency generators won’t last for long,” Ansem said, marching further into the lab. “Guards, prepare to defend. Apprentices, help me prepare the escape pods.”
Demyx stared at him, mouth agape, as Even pushed past him. “Escape pods? You guys have escape pods?”
“Never allow the same calamity to befall you twice,” Ansem said. “Though, I suppose that’s a lesson you’ve already learned.”
All witty responses caught in his throat. He’d chosen this, yes, but what did any of them understand? They all had a home to return to.
At the end of the day all he had was—
“Ienzo, help Even in the Inner Sanctum.”
“Yes sir,” Ienzo murmured and followed his master down the hall.
Demyx’s eyes followed him as he left, watching him descend metal stairs at the end of the corridor. A strange ache in his heart bid him follow. Even if he had nothing else, he could protect what mattered. Wasn’t that what those heroes of light were always on about?
“W-wait up!” A pull on his wrist jolted him to a stop.
“Demyx.” A man of few words, Aeleus’ voice sent shivers down his spine. He flinched out of instinct and wheeled around to find himself inches away fromthe big man himself.
“Ah, uh… How can I help you, buddy?”
Aeleus wrinkled his nose but continued. “Ienzo. Protect him.” Calloused fingers released him. “Please.”
Despite himself a laugh tore from him. “Yeah, man. Of course. Though...nothing bad is gonna happen, right? Not with you guys around.” He smiled and patted Aeleus’ broad shoulder, a feeble attempt to lighten the mood.
Stone faced as always, Aeleus turned back to his post.
This did not reassure him.
Down the hall, down the metal steps that rattled with each footstep, the apprentices were hard at work. They shuffled from flickering monitor to flickering monitor, the same green glow as the lights below their feet. On each side, four ships rumbled with life, the furthest two packed tight with castle staff and the survivors.
“Commencing launch sequence,” Even called, typing a series of passcodes into the monitor. A countdown appeared on a screen above their heads.
With a roar, the engine sparked to life, lurched down a narrow track. Demyx clung to the rail as the walls hummed with new life.
A haze of smoke filled the cramped space.
Then, a deafening boom and a flash. Just as quickly as it had started, the rumble of the engine faded away.
“You’re telling me you had gummi ships down here the whole time?” Demyx hurried down the steps as Even began to work on the next ship.
“Are you surprised?” Even snapped, fingers gliding over glowing green keys. “They’re supposed to be a prototype , though. Since most of us can’t use our portals any longer.” Even paused and shot a furtive glance his way. “I’m surprised you’re not long gone by now. Considering.”
“I wouldn’t be able to pull all of you through with me,” Demyx said, waving his hands in front of him. “Maybe, like. One or two of you. And those flimsy lab coats wouldn’t do a thing to protect you.”
“Hmph.” Even tapped a large button, prompting the doors on the remaining gummi ships to lift. “How noble. Did you grow a backbone with your newfound heart?”
Demyx rolled his eyes. “I could leave now, if that’s what you’d prefer.” His gaze fell over to Ienzo, diligently typing as steam began to fill the hangar. “I just thought that maybe you’d need me or something.”
“I can assure you that your help is no longer needed.” Even backed away from the monitor. “Ansem, it’s ready. Pull the —”
The room shook and the power flickered off, then on, then off once more.
Silence, save for the rumble of the ship, waiting with hopeful breath.
Then, clanging against the sealed iron doors, cacophonous and violent.
“Everyone onto the ship— now!”
“But Aeleus and Dilan!” Ienzo resisted against Even’s attempts to pull him into the ship. “We can’t just— get off of me, Even!”
Demyx summoned forth a portal with a wave of his hand. “I’ll grab them! Just— just get this thing ready to go!” Without waiting for a reply, before he could doubt his own surprising, headstrong boldness, Demyx launched himself through.
When he arrived on the other side, he could barely recognize the room he’d just left. A ragged-ended pipe pumped steam into the room, casting a haze across the maze of chaos before him. Sparking wires, thrashed metal, the carcasses of heartless disintegrating into naught.
Demyx’s heart recoiled and begged him to return, but with a hesitant swallow, he pulled his hood up and pressed on. Maybe Even had been right— maybe something had changed. The old Demyx would have been half way to Twilight Town and beyond were it not for—
“Begone!” An axe split across his vision — and he jumped back. A moment later and he might have been cleaved in two.
“Aeleus! Aeleus it’s me!” Demyx pushed off his hood in a scramble as the weapon lifted once more. “Come— come with me! Where’s Dilan?”
Aeleus — uniform torn and bloody (blood, oh gods blood sent Demyx’s stomach into flips), pointed to the corner of the room. “The next wave is coming. There’s no time. Did Ienzo—”
“Ienzo won’t leave until you do— grab him and let’s go!” Demyx opened another portal with a wave of his hand.
Aeleus glanced between the portal and Demyx, and then the door, weighing his options.
Then, another ghastly wail as half sealed doors burst open.
“Dance, water!” Demyx called, summoning Arpeggio to his hands and a wave of water crashing forth. In the tight corridor, glowing yellow eyes became engulfed in the water and washed away, followed by another volley rushing to crash through the once-pristine doors.
Another strum of the strings, and another wave surged forward. Again, and again.
“God, why won’t they stop?”
Another wave broke through and this one Demyx couldn’t wash away. A shadowy, sinewy form slid across the detritus strewn floor, water flowing over it like the stream’s path over a fish.
“Oh, no. No, no, no!”
As Demyx readied another attack, it sprung from below, claws outstretched, and bore down—
“Ergh!”
Red hot pain shot through his chest.
Fear flooded his heart and clouded his vision. He wasn’t brave. He wasn’t strong.
Ienzo, he thought. Forgive me.
Damned fool!
Demyx yelped as something ensnared his waist and yanked him backwards, the back of his head crashing into a thick chest with a thud.
The dark walls of the portal closed around them. Demyx blinked and before he knew it, they were back in the hangar, loud beeps and the rumbling of the engine assaulting his senses.
“Wha—”
Before Demyx could form a coherent thought, the same arm was lifting him off the ground and all but chucking him into the awaiting gummi ship. The doors hissed shut behind them.
“Aeleus, you’re bleeding,” Ienzo’s quiet voice cut through the sound.
Demyx rolled onto his side. The world spun before landing on Ienzo’s small form, dwarfed by the giant statured man before him. With frantic strokes of his hand, he was waving away halos of shadow clinging to Aeleus’ uniform — the remnants of traversing the pathways of darkness.
The fear that had once gripped his heart puddled into a different feeling — one his Nobody form had been happy to leave behind.
As a Nobody, Demyx had very little to be envious of. Every new day was a blessing. He’d been happy to spend his days dodging Saix’s busy work and composing songs for an album he would never release.
But this—
The ground beneath him shook as the gummi ship began its ascent.
Ansem’s voice thundered through the small ship. “Three… Two… One… Engage hyperdrive!”
The world spun around him once more, engulfed by a blue light.
Demyx’s eyes squeezed shut. The same whooshing feeling of his portals filled his body.
Ah, he thought. This is what Even had meant by a prototype.
The sharp pain in his chest drew his attention back. He thought back to the unflinching yellow eyes, the outstretched claws. The blank face of death.
As a former vessel, being here right now was a blessing too, he supposed.
So why didn’t he feel happy?
“Demyx.” Ienzo. Demyx opened his eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, just, you know. Um.” Demyx forced a laugh. “Everything’s just peachy.”
Ienzo knelt before him and poured the remainder of a potion over his wound. “That should help, right?”
The weight sitting on his chest lifted, if just a bit. “Yeah,” he said, tilting his head to look past the hair that had curtained the other’s face. “Loads better.”
“The rest we’ll have to use for Dilan.” Ienzo sank down next to him, back against the wall. The initial shock had worn off — now he was just exhausted.
But still beautiful. Demyx thought back to their long nights talking on the balcony of the castle, endless pots of tea steaming into the night air. The heart he’d thought he’d never feel again hopscotching along as he listened to — watched — Ienzo talk about everything, nothing.
Most nights, in fact. The night before. In hindsight, Demyx should have told him then.
Coward.
“Do you think...this is it?”
Demyx swallowed the lump in his throat and plastered on his best smile — in times of certain death it was his second skin.
“This? Nothing the warriors of light can’t handle, right?” He nudged his leg. Ienzo’s face didn’t change. “Right?”
“You’re...very optimistic,” Ienzo said after a moment.
“Oh come on. We’ve gotten out of way worse scrapes than this.” Demyx grabbed his hand. “This isn’t how the story ends. You still need to teach me how to play chess, remember?”
Ienzo leaned forward, hair obscuring his face once more. “Thanks, Demyx. For...saving Aeleus and Dilan, and...being here.” For a moment, Demyx thought he might have seen a smile.
Heat rushed to his cheeks, and a warm fluttering danced through his chest. This was it. The perfect—
“Zexi— Ienzo. I—”
A large thunk rattled the cabin, rattling Demyx’s teeth with. Alarms began to blare.
“There’s— there’s something on the ship!”
“Nonsense. That’s impossible!”
“Ienzo, what I’m trying to say is—”
“You’re saying my readings are wrong ?” Even snapped. “There’s something pulling— it’s pulling us back!”
“Push the engines then. We can make it if we just hold out!”
Ienzo lurched to his feet and joined them at the helm. “No! The ship can’t handle that kind of stress!”
Demyx sighed, rolled onto his knees and shakily rose to his feet. “The hell does that mean?”
“It’s going to get torn apart!”
“More good news, then,” Demyx said as another thunk rattled the cabin. It was all he could manage to hang onto the wall. “Then what can we do?”
“I-I— Nothing? I don’t know!”
A knot formed at the pit of his stomach. He’d been able to pull two people through. A personal record.
A ship, though?
Demyx put his hands on the ship’s wall and closed his eyes.
“Hold on, everyone. I’m gonna try and pull us into a different corridor.”
Even scoffed. “Don’t be foolish. That will never work.”
It was foolish. Everyone on this ship had once used the corridors, knew their limits to stretch and compress. Knew what it took out of you to do so. Summoning portals wasn’t just commanding the darkness. It was inviting it in.
“Do you have any better ideas?”
Silence.
Well. There was no sense in changing what he was now, was there?
He shut his eyes once more, using every ounce of his non-being to focus, to let the darkness fill him and open a new path. If they couldn’t pass through the corridors of light, maybe the corridors of shadow would be kinder.
The ship groaned as purple walls began to squeeze, crunching and cracking and releasing screws with a pop and hiss.
“The ship can’t handle much more of this!”
There it was — the familiar whirling feeling, this time intensified by the light and the dark. Demyx felt the burn of his skin as the flow of darkness slithered along his back, biting in like thousands of angry snakes.
Just a bit more.
A bit more.
A bit.
“It’s gone— Demyx, stop!”
A small body crashed into his own and lurched him away from his post. He met the ground with an unceremonious thunk, felt the weight of the darkness ebbing through and away from him. Pushing, pulling. A tide — no, an anchor, dragging him down to uncertain depths. It ached, everything ached, from his follicles to the tips of his toes.
“Demyx? Demyx, stay— stay with us, okay?”
His eyes fluttered open. His breath came in heaving puffs, yellow eyes meeting Ienzo’s concerned gaze. “Did...we do it?”
“Yes, Dem. We… Gods, your body. How could you be such an idiot?”
Demyx looked down at his outstretched arms, the wounds on his chest. He marvelled at the way darkness rose off of it and vanished in a curl of smoke. Burns. The bare patch where the darkness had eaten away at his coat revealed dark stained flesh that crawled with the same unnerving insidiousness of shadow heartless beneath the light’s edge.
“Ha…” If he’d had the strength, he might have genuinely laughed. “For you, idiot.”
“Me? Don’t say such...things.”
“I always fancied you, you know. In…” Searing pain pounded painfully at the corners of his mind. “The lame white castles and here, now… I like you. My home was lost long ago, but you… H-ha… You felt like home.”
A warm flush spread over Ienzo’s cheeks. “Later, Demyx. We can...discuss this later.”
The alarms began anew as they jolted to a halt. Demyx groaned and looked out the cracked helm to see a sky of glowing yellow light.
Stars. Worlds.
Had they made it?
“We’re...surrounded,” Even’s voice said, hardly a whisper.
Realization dawned and Demyx’s heart sank. No, not stars. Heartless. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, blotting out the galaxy one world at a time.
Well.
This time, he did laugh. What did he have to lose? “We won’t get ‘later,’ Ienzo.” With a shaky hand, he reached up with his remaining strength, pulled the other down by the ascot hanging around his neck. “So just...accept it now. Please. Or don’t. I guess that’s an option.”
“D-Demyx, I…”
He offered a smile. “I’d really prefer it if you did, though.”
A tug, and their lips met, then met some more. Soft, fierce, greedy. Buoyed up by his heart’s delight, the pain echoing along his body receded. There was just this, the feeling of their kisses, and nothing more.
For a bliss filled moment, everything paused.
Somewhere in the universe, a clock ticked backwards. Chess pieces, one by one, retook their places on the board.
Warmth.
As he pulled away, a glorious light began to creep over them, the sun’s rays after a drizzling downpour. It threw Ienzo’s hair into a golden spun glow, alighted over kiss bruised lips, echoed in dazed, half-lidded stares.
Their eyes met. Ienzo’s hand slid into his. “What was that about not having a later?”
Demyx grinned. “You’ll have to tell me why heroes are always so damned late.”
Ienzo laughed, his other hand instinctively covering his mouth. “I think they like the drama of it all.”
A foolish hope rose in his chest like dawn breaking over a distant shore.
Perhaps the war wasn’t lost after all.