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They huddle for warmth. Their bodies, unregulated, fail to act without direct command. Every breath is forced, every pulse of blood pushed not by a heart but by the same cold, hard magic that keeps them all animate and alive.
Axel hates that power.
He is not Axel yet. He has no name. He is a rippling mass of white shivering in an ivory sea. He remembers fire; he was from a warm place. Radiant. They all were. Everyone around him. Nobodies from a dead world. Their heart was fire; now it is gone. They are cold.
A man is smiling at him. He is as cold as the dead world all around. His touch, however, carries a flicker of warmth masked under a dark leather glove. Axel clutches the extended finger, intent on sucking the fraction of heat from it. It is a false, deceitful phantasm. A manipulative hope.
“I can give you fire back.”
Fire can never come back. Fire was in Axel’s heart, and that is gone. But the dying lick of heat emanating from this man’s glove feels almost like the flicker of a limp flame on a chilly day.
They are nobodies. This is the best they can hope for.
~*~
Demyx gasps for breath and chokes on the dry, dry air all around him. It is like a playful leap that will never end, hurled into the sky without loving gravity to pull him back into the waves.
The sea is gone. He was the sea, but now it is gone.
Something brushes his gills, like a pulse from an electric eel. Demyx jolts to awareness.
A man is smiling at him. He is dry like the desert sands. Empty and soulless as a dead dry fish. Empty and soulless as Demyx.
He holds out an offering. His hand is wet. Sweet moisture! A reason to continue. Demyx expects joy. He feels only grim determination. This is enough to swim for. He must tread water a little longer.
“I can give you water back.”
Water can never return, Demyx knows, in the empty space that water once filled.
They are nobodies. This is the best they can hope for.
~*~
Larxene lies placid and meek on the hard stone. She is empty, drained, out of juice. She had driven far, ran farther, but she had run out, and the darkness had taken it; her energy, her power, her life. The darkness took her lightning.
Try as she might, she can not move. Her heart isn’t in it; energy was in her heart, and now it is gone. She has no energy. She has no heart.
A flicker of light would catch her eye, if her eye could move to be caught. The light comes to her, instead. A man leans over her, smiling. His face is mellow, relaxed, dull and listless. He is slow like molasses. He snaps his fingers, and whispers of static coalesce into a pitiful crackle.
“I can give you lightning back”
The lightning is gone forever. This, she never doubted. But this man carries sparks. Sparks are almost enough to remember the surge of electricity, the crackle of thunder, the blinding, brilliant light.
They are nobodies. This is the best they can hope for.