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“And what is this about, exactly?” Vexen demanded. “I’m terrifically busy, I had thought you all knew that. I certainly made it clear to the man in charge at last summons.”
The two men in black coats were the only living things in the sunlit badlands. Facing one another inside a ring of ancient stone that partly shielded them from the dry, dusty wind, they looked like ghosts that the graveyard had called up to reenact some memory of long ago. Of the two, Vexen was by far the more animated; his expression was sour, and he looked as if he would rather be pacing, forcing himself to stand still. By comparison, Xemnas across from him might have been a statue, carved of the same weathered rock as the rune-etched ring of labyrinthine walls that surrounded them.
“He did not send me,” said Xemnas, “nor send for you. This is a private matter.”
“Oh?” Vexen folded his arms and squared his shoulders. “Well, then. Might I be so curious as to inquire into the subject? I had thought the so-called ‘Keyblade War’ you’ve all been slavering over so ravenously was drawing near at last. I assume you’ve something vitally important to discuss, if it’s worth taking up both your time and mine at such a critical juncture.”
“The fated day is almost upon us,” Xemnas agreed. “I am surprised you don’t take more of an interest in it yourself.”
“Why in the worlds should I? Hmph. Light, darkness, the whims of destiny…all mere frivolous distractions.” He scoffed. “Your collective ambitions are one thing, but I’ve made my desires quite clear from the outset. I wish to pursue my ideas unfettered, and nothing more. I had been on the cusp of quite a significant breakthrough on the Replica project before my prior research was so unceremoniously halted.”
“An unfortunate occurrence.”
“Indeed, but no matter. Only a temporary setback—one I’m glad to say I’ve overcome. Things have gone quite well with the project since then. Really quite well. In fact I’m almost satisfied with the way it’s all turned out. Of course, there have been technical obstacles, as there always must be, but nevertheless…”
He seemed to catch that he was lapsing into talking to himself, for he trailed off and dropped his arms.
“But enough of that. What is it that we must discuss?”
Instead of answering, Xemnas raised a gloved hand, as if giving a signal. And signal it was, seemingly, for at once a portal of darkness swirled open beside him, and out of it stepped a small figure, clad in the same black coat as the pair of them. The revived Riku Replica stepped out into the dusty plain, the darkness disappearing behind him.
“I have brought him,” Xemnas told the dark Riku. “Do you still affirm it?”
“What is he here for?” Vexen asked Xemnas—and then added to the Replica, in a sudden spate of irritation, “Don’t tell me you’ve gone and damaged yourself, now. I told you that I have better things to do than compensate for your apparent lack of self-preservation instincts.”
The boy ignored him, addressing Xemnas.
“Yeah, he’s lying,” he said haughtily. “I know for sure. He’s not really on our side at all.”
“And what makes you think so?”
“I already told you. He tried to drag me off to that beat-up wreck of a world he’s from. He doesn’t want me to fight in the battle—me or the girl. He wants us both to run away so we don’t get hurt. He’s hoping the light will win.”
“What are you babbling about?” Vexen cut in, scowling. To Xemnas, he added, “The boy wholly misinterpreted my intentions. I had only wanted to be certain that he hadn’t—”
Xemnas raised a hand again; Vexen silenced himself at once. The Riku Replica glared between the two of them, as if unsure of whom he were annoyed with more.
“What do you say to that?” Xemnas asked him. The boy jutted his chin.
“He’s lying. You should have heard him the other day, begging me to leave the Organization. Faker. He’s been going behind our backs and helping those loser guardians.”
The intensity of Vexen’s scowl cut harsh lines into his lean, sallow face. He ground his teeth.
“Is that what this is about, then? You would take the idle prattling of an insolent brat over my word? I, who have brought you all closer than you could ever have hoped to realizing your lofty aims?” He turned away and waved dismissively, disgusted. “Beyond contemptible. I won’t even stoop to discuss it.”
“Stay, Vexen.”
The order was calm, but order it was, and Vexen obeyed it with the immediacy of habit. He stiffened, turning back to face the other two, his scowl softening into a more muted wariness.
“Can I do it now?” the Replica demanded of Xemnas. “You said I could. You said the old man would be fine with it, since we don’t need him anymore.”
“You have proven nothing. It would be irresponsible to break our sharpest tool over a simple misunderstanding.”
“It’s not a misunderstanding!” One of the Riku Replica’s gloved hands tightened into a fist, as if itching to summon his weapon. “Ask the girl, she’ll say the same thing. He tried to drag her off too. This creep thinks he owns us or something.”
Vexen drew himself up to his full height, gold eyes flashing livid.
“Wretched boy. You dare to accuse me of insubordination, after the lengths I’ve gone to in service of this Organization? Why, you’re only standing here at all thanks to the sheer magnitude of my genius. I will not tolerate such blatant—”
Swiftly, with no change in his impassive expression, Xemnas grabbed the Riku Replica by the face with one hand and lifted him above his head. The Replica was so much smaller than him that his boots dangled a meter off the ground.
“What are you—” the boy managed, but no more; Xemnas tightened his grip. The Replica’s snarl of surprise spiked into a yelp of pain, and he kicked against Xemnas’s chest, reaching up to grasp at Xemnas’s wrists with both hands. It was futile. Xemnas was older, taller, far stronger; he did not seem to even feel the boy clawing frantically at his arms, pulling on his wrists, his yells becoming higher and harsher as Xemnas’s gloved fingers dug deep into his skin.
“What is this?” Vexen asked sharply.
“He lied to his betters, did he not? And gravely. Such impudence should be punished.”
The Riku Replica thrashed, yowling, his scratching hands casting crackling darkfire that his captor did not react to. The occasional kick that landed against Xemnas’s chest did not even make him blink.
“That’s quite enough of that, I think—”
“I will not mar the spirit, only the flesh. You can make any needed repairs.”
With a fluid motion Xemnas switched his grasp on the Riku Replica from one hand to the other, now clutching him by the soft throat, exposing to view the deep red marks gouged across his face that already had begun to bruise. The Replica’s cries sputtered as Xemnas’s grip tightened further, an iron vise, and his face turned blotchy, his golden eyes wide and wild.
“Let him go!”
“Why?” Xemnas raised him higher, peering calmly into his contorted, discolored face. “Is this beyond his strength to endure? I had thought your work was of a higher caliber than that.”
“This is entirely unnecessary! You’ll hurt him!”
“That is the idea.”
The Replica’s kicking legs soon stilled, except for the errant twitch. Gone too were most of the screams, as Xemnas’s hold had tightened so much that he could only intermittently draw breath. When he did, it gurgled horribly, as if he were drowning. His eyes bulged, then rolled upward into their sockets, and Xemnas extended another hand—
Ice exploded from the ground. The chunk of it that encased Xemnas’s legs shattered immediately, falling away in clattering shards, but the remaining portion stood tall enough to give the Riku Replica’s dangling legs something to stand on, letting him clumsily brace himself and gasp for air, straining to try and tear Xemnas’s gloved hand off of his throat. He could not quite manage it, and his scrabbling weakened, but once more he braced his feet against the ice and struggled with all his might, fighting to stay conscious.
All trace of irritation, of contempt, had disappeared from Vexen’s gaunt face. His wide eyes showed only horror, his features taut, and Xemnas observed it without reflecting any emotion back. With the careless ease of great strength, he tossed the half-conscious Riku Replica aside. The Replica smashed into the dirt and rolled a few yards before stopping, no longer gasping, or indeed making any noise at all. He did not get up once he stopped rolling.
“Lord Xemnas, I can explain—”
“Lord Xemnas again, now? You flatter me.”
“There’s been a mistake. The boy is confused.” Vexen’s wide-eyed gaze darted around Xemnas to where the Riku Replica lay motionless in the dirt behind them, limbs askew. “He knows not of what he speaks. You know perfectly well that I’ve done everything in my power to assist the endeavors of this Organization—”
“That is not what we have observed lately. You have not been so stealthy in your wanderings as you ought.”
For a long, agonizingly long moment, neither man moved or spoke. Then darkness rent the barren world behind Vexen, a portal to elsewhere, but Xemnas needed only a fraction of a second to close it again with a thought. Vexen tried again, was thwarted again, and then snapped his fingers; at once a handful of Dusks slithered through their own rifts, surrounding Xemnas in a ring, but the first one that sprang he caught as easily as he’d caught the Replica. The rubbery stuff of which it was made was clay to his powers, soft and supple; his rending fingers tore it without effort, ripping the Dusk in twain. The rest he dispatched with a mere gesture, for the substance of them bent freely to his will.
For a third time, Vexen tried to lunge into the waiting darkness. This time the portal did not close at once; instead an X-shaped barrier of brambled nothingness crisscrossed it, white and black, barring passage. He had no choice but to turn back to face the waiting Xemnas, the portal vanishing behind him.
“How long?” Xemnas asked softly. He did not sound displeased, only intrigued. “How long since you betrayed our cause?”
Vexen seemed at last to accept that escape was not immediately possible. Though visibly shaken, and shaking, he drew a deep, steadying breath.
“All this time,” he said, and there was bile in his voice that sounded different to his previous arrogance. “Always. It was a lie from the day I rejoined you.”
“Is that so? Incredible.” Xemnas folded his hands behind his back. “Truly, we suspected nothing until recently. Such a talented performance deserves applause.”
But of course he did not clap, not even in mockery; it was not his way. Xemnas only stood tall and solemn, his eyes half-lidded, and watched impassively as Vexen’s attention moved around the barren ruins surrounding them, the empty dust and high stone walls, seeking safety that was not there.
“Why such hurry?” Xemnas asked him. “I told you, we have much to discuss. It would be prudent to know exactly what aid you’ve rendered to the enemy.”
“I have nothing to say to you, you—you monster.”
“‘Monster’? My, my…how unkind. Was it not ‘lord’ only moments ago?”
“A conceited fiction. You’re lord of nothing!”
“How good of you to notice.”
Far to the side, the Riku Replica groaned weakly and stirred in the dirt; only Vexen’s attention went to him. Xemnas remained in the same unruffled pose, hands behind his back, his posture otherwise relaxed. He might have been standing on a cliffside admiring the sea, or in a gallery contemplating a canvas.
“You look as if you have something you’d like to say,” he remarked, watching a succession of emotions flit across Vexen’s spasming face. Vexen grit his teeth.
“You—you did this,” he said fiercely. “This long nightmare all began with you. If it weren’t for you, the Heartless—Radiant Garden—”
“Is that the feeble lie you tell yourself? That only I am responsible for what happened to your world?”
The accusation struck Vexen like a dart, for he visibly flinched. A single great shudder passed over him, as if he of all people could somehow feel too cold.
“No,” he said at last, stricken. “It was all of our fault, but you—you began it. You were the one who wanted to…to go further. Much too far.”
“I began it,” Xemnas agreed, “and you continued it. So quickly, so eagerly. With such admirable curiosity and zeal.” He tilted his head slightly, as if recalling something with effort. “You must admit, I deserve your thanks. No? I harnessed your true potential; I gave you permission to be the best version of yourself. All you had lacked was someone stronger to cower behind while you did what you always wanted to do. You took so little convincing. Not like your foolish excuse for a master.”
“Don’t speak of him. Don’t you dare.”
“Dare?” Xemnas’s bright eyes for the first time glinted with a hint of something unpleasant. “My, you have grown bold. What a surprise, to hear such defiance from you. I did so much for you in the beginning, and this is how you repay me at the end? With treachery and ingratitude?”
“I don’t owe you a thing. You—you ruined us all.” Vexen shook a fist at him. “For ten years we did nothing under your leadership. Nothing! Only squabbled and suffered. All that time you lied to us and plied us with false promises, manipulated us like toys for your own amusement—”
“And what finely made toys you were.” Xemnas smiled fondly, remembering. “All so petty, so selfish…so violent, so cruel. A pleasure to behold, even without pleasure.”
“We could have changed! Grown. We had the potential—I know that now. We could have learned to care for one another.”
“And yet you never did. Tell me, old friend: what does that say about you?”
Vexen winced, swallowing hard.
“Don’t—don’t call me that.”
“Were we not friends?”
“You don’t know what friendship is.”
“And you do? I see no proof of that.”
“It doesn’t matter what the others think of me. They’re safe, all of them. Whole again, and safe from you.”
“For how long?”
Another spasm passed through Vexen’s whole body. To the side of them, the Riku Replica coughed and gasped, stirring feebly, casting spells to mend himself. Xemnas glanced over at a particularly loud, retching cough, and Vexen rent yet another dark portal, made yet another lunge for it—and yet again it closed beneath him, making him stagger in place.
“How did you imagine this charade would end?” Xemnas asked, as the last wisps of darkness faded from view. “Did you think your audacity would go unpunished?”
“It’s no matter. I’ve done what I set out to do.”
“Which was what?”
Vexen did not answer. Xemnas took this in stride, unfolding his hands from behind his back and stepping forward.
“There is no aid you could have provided to the enemy that would alter the course of destiny. It was foreordained long ago, and writ in darkness eternal. Still…an unexpected complication. Did you taint any more of our number with your rebellion?”
“No,” Vexen said at once. “I—I’ve acted alone. Completely alone, all this time.”
Evidently Xemnas had expected this answer, for he did not press it.
“That was always your way.” He shook his head. “A fool’s gambit, one I would have never expected from the likes of you. You learned to fear me first, and most; I had thought that proved your intelligence.”
Xemnas raised a hand again, another signal. The figure that stepped out of the swirling darkness behind and beside him was as small as the first had been, its hood raised to hide its face, and once the darkness dissolved it did not move or speak, or lower its hood to better see the rest of them. There was something uncanny about its stiff posture that betrayed not composure but total indifference to the world, like a clockwork automaton. It did not acknowledge either of them, or look around.
“What is this for?” Vexen asked cagily. He seemed not to be sure where best to place his attention; it flashed from the newcomer to Xemnas several times in succession. “Why is she here?”
“I had thought they both should be. Do you remember why you made them, Vexen?”
“Why? You…you ordered it of me…”
“Yes. I ordered it to keep you busy. A mind like yours would grow irksome if not kept busy. But I confess I did not wholly expect you to succeed.”
Admiringly Xemnas looked first to the hooded Xion and then beyond her to the Riku Replica, who had healed himself enough to struggle to his hands and knees and was now staggering to his feet.
“How much work were they, all told?” Xemnas asked. “How many weeks, months, years did you spend toiling away alone? Truly, they are your magnum opus—the great accomplishment of your non-existence. And after such long and arduous labor, you deserve to enjoy its fruits.”
“Leave them out of this. They’ve nothing to do with my actions.”
Xemnas summoned an ethereal blade in one of his palms and lightly laid it across Xion’s throat. Vexen gave a strangled cry, reaching out with one hand.
“Nothing at all?” Xemnas asked. “Then this cannot matter, surely? Why, you never even met this one.”
The glowing blade lay a hair’s breadth from the small figure’s neck, casting harsh red light up under the raised hood, revealing a soft, solemn face whose expression stayed blank. Xion did not move, did not react. Perhaps there was not much left inside of her that could, or that wanted to—that had not been strangled to death by the darkness that had painted her eyes bright gold.
“Don’t touch her. You—you need her, you need them both alive—”
“Alive. Not unblemished.”
“Don’t!”
The ethereal blade pressed against Xion’s throat, only making her shift her weight slightly, as if she were barely aware of its presence. Behind her back, another glowing blade raised high, but its downward strike never connected. He had been slow on purpose, giving time for what he knew was coming, and when it did it made him smile: Vexen summoned his shield, a burst of cold air accompanying the flash of light. Xemnas laughed, long and low and quiet, dismissing his blades. The sound made Vexen recoil.
“You would fight me?” Xemnas asked, smiling. “You?”
He did not wait for any reply. In an eyeblink Xemnas disappeared, reappearing mere inches in front of Vexen, making him start. At such point-blank range, with his strength and speed, Xemnas could have done anything he chose: caught Vexen’s throat as he’d done to the Replica, knocked him to the ground, impaled him on a shining red blade and thrown him aside. Instead Xemnas latched onto Vexen’s arm wielding the shield with both hands.
The lightning crack of bone snapping rent the dusty air, not once but twice, and Xemnas did not seem to hear the screams right in his ear as he yanked the shattered arm out of its socket. He did it without fury, indeed without any great effort; it was as if the action were too trivial to be worth exerting himself, a chore rather than a choice. Only when he had satisfied himself that the arm was too broken to readily mend did he step away, leaving Vexen panting and gasping on his knees in the red dirt, his face even more sickly-looking than usual from the sudden onslaught of pain.
“What perplexes me,” Xemnas mused, watching him writhe, “is how regaining a heart could have granted you courage enough to defy me. You could not manage it in your first life, nor your second. How so now?”
“No fair!” came a voice off to the side; Xemnas looked over as the Riku Replica finally rejoined him, healed of his injuries but still stumbling a little from the drain of so much spellcasting. “You said I could do it! You said so.”
“I made no promises,” Xemnas reminded him, “but yes, you may amuse yourself. How better for the maker to appreciate the merits of what he has made than to be annihilated by his own creations? It is poetry.”
“Whatever,” the Replica growled, and wiped the side of his hand against his chin, smearing away dust that had been embedded there by his impact with the ground. Faint impressions of finger marks remained spiderwebbed across his face. “Leave him to me, then. You just watch.”
“I handicapped him for you. You might show gratitude.”
“You think I needed a leg up on this wimp? Please.”
The boy watched contemptuously as Vexen struggled to regain his feet, not quite succeeding. The shield had already gone, banished by the pain, and he could not even clutch at one arm with the other, so much effort did it take to simply stay on his knees. Xemnas looked down at Xion beside him.
“Help to finish him,” he told her. “And take your time.”
“Why?”
“He has betrayed our cause. You know full well how the Organization deals with traitors.”
Obediently the husk of Xion walked forward, summoning her Keyblade. Xemnas teleported further away, granting room enough for what was about to happen and giving him full view of it.
The agony of Vexen’s shattered arm was, as had been intended, a magnificent distraction. It kept him from casting spells half so freely and so well as he otherwise might once the assault began, and every time he summoned his shield nearby it was easy enough for one of the pair to destroy it while the other attacked him unhindered. The Riku Replica’s much more vicious blows, and the taunts he delivered in between them, made Xion’s silent indifference all the more unnerving; if no immediate strike was needed she simply stood with her Keyblade hanging limply at her side, passive, watching.
Xemnas watched too. So little did he react to the proceedings that he might have been back atop his castle, gazing up at the pulsing light of an artificial Kingdom Hearts. All the intellectualism and curiosity, the passion and ambition, had gone into the other half of him, the one who had kept the name Ansem; Xemnas had only the handsome confidence, the cold and distant authority, the cruelty and the serpentine patience. So it was without mirth or even any obvious satisfaction that he monitored the onslaught, interfering only once to banish a dark portal when it seemed neither assailant had noticed it to do so. The two smaller figures rained blows from all sides, lunging in and out to strike, a pair of attack dogs ripping into an injured creature that had been chained to the ground as bait. Flashes of light and dark and ice and fire stabbed towards the cloudless blue sky, making the shadows of the walls that ringed them lunge first to one side and then another, a mad whirling dance punctuated by screams.
The wisdom of Xemnas’s choice of executioners became increasingly obvious as the struggle dragged on for long minutes. Against anyone else, anything else, Vexen would have fought with all the desperation granted of fear, and of the fundamental will to live. But neither his fear nor his will to live were greater than his desire not to do either of them any serious harm. More than once an opening presented itself that he did not take advantage of fully, his spells never as lethally frigid as he could make them, and once he inadvertently tried to use his shield arm, the pain of the attempt stunning him long enough for a precise, apathetic Keyblade strike to knock him to the ground. The impact landed him on his side, onto the bad arm, immobilizing him, and the Riku Replica pounced. His deep slash tore even through the protective black coat, ripping a red gash beneath it, droplets of blood spraying from the tip of the bat-winged blade.
“Gotcha!” he crowed, and leaped back to dodge whatever retaliation would come.
Vexen only struggled to gain his knees, failed, collapsed, and struggled at it again, the attempt made difficult by having use of only one arm. The Replica watched with growing disdain, and stepped forward to threaten another slash, deliberately leaving himself open, waiting. That there was opportunity enough for an attack, and that none came, seemed to infuriate him more than actually being hit by anything.
“Quit playing around already!”
He waited, then slashed to shards a piece of ice that tried to immobilize him.
“Why don’t you fight back for real, huh? Why won’t you hit me?”
“I’ve al—already hurt you enough.”
The hoarse, gasping answer seemed to catch the Replica off guard. He hesitated in the act of winding up the next blow, his sneer twisting into a frown.
“I’m sorry, boy,” Vexen panted. “If you heed nothing else, at least—at least know that.”
“Tell someone who cares, all right? You’re weak, and I’m strong. Strong like the darkness. Stronger than that other Riku. He’s the fake one, not me.”
“You’re not Riku. Your heart is your own, and I broke it. Nothing can ever—ever make that right.”
The boy glowered at the man gasping on the ground, his brow furrowed, trying to work out what this meant.
“You’re just trying to mess with me like always,” he decided. “I don’t need you to tell me what to do, you got it? The master knows how strong I am. That’s why he picked me instead of the real—the other Riku. I’m better. I’ll prove it!”
With renewed ferocity he lunged, and his blade came down at an angle that would have sliced Vexen’s face open had ice not risen to block it. Annoyed, the boy cut the ice with a few zigzagging blows, then knocked away the remnants as they faded, the last chips melting of their own accord, glittering in the dust. Vexen still could not gain his feet, though he tried.
“A suggestion, if I may,” came Xemnas’s voice from far off to the side. “Fire would do well.”
The Riku Replica’s eyes lit up, his grin sharpening into wicked glee at how obvious this should have been. He called darkfire that blazed white and blue in his clenched fist, and Vexen’s eyes widened so large that the flames reflected in them, tiny pale flickers inside the gold. He scrambled, in his panic again trying to use the broken arm, and the agony of the attempt gave the Replica time to step on his coat and pin him down with his bad arm below him, so that even the most cautious movement caused enough pain to paralyze him again. The fear that contorted his gaunt face as the crackling fist came down was not rational but instinctual, wild and frantic, the animal memory of a death that had etched new terror into him.
“Please don’t—”
The Replica seemed to enjoy the sizzling, and the screams, though less so the smell of burnt coat and flesh. A few seconds of it were enough to make him cough and step away, leaving the figure spasming on the ground with tendrils of acrid smoke wafting up from where a splayed palm covered in dark flames had pressed hard to the skin and stayed. The Riku Replica wiped his gloved hand on his own coat.
“Not so fun being somebody’s chew toy, is it?” he jeered. He noticed Xion waiting stiffly off to the side, and called to her. “Hey, you want in, or not? You’re gonna miss all the fun if you just stand there.”
She offered no reply, and he tossed his head, pointing down at their target with his weapon. At last she stirred, raising her blade and walking forward, but without urgency. She had none of the other’s fury; this task, this stranger, meant nothing.
It continued, though to call it a fight now would have been exaggeration; Vexen had been so worn down that he no longer offered much in the way of resistance. Any lull between blows he used only to heal himself to whatever degree he could, which grew increasingly less frequent and less effective, and the next time he managed to get back up on his feet was the last. He fell, and could not rise again, except to his knees. There was no more ice.
Neither attacker slowed.
Eventually, some change in the cadence of Vexen’s high screams made the waiting Xemnas rouse himself and stride forward, signaling with a gesture to the two smaller figures to pause their assault. Xion obeyed promptly, but the Riku Replica could not resist one last blow before stepping off to the side, allowing Xemnas to approach the scorched and bleeding figure shivering in a puddle of blood that the thirsty dust greedily drank, darkening the ground around him to ink.
Xemnas lowered himself to one knee, resting a forearm across his bent leg. It was strange to see him kneel, even partly, even for this. He reached out with a gloved hand as if to catch Vexen under the chin, but the hand moved around his head to grasp tightly at his long, blood-matted hair, using a fistful of it to yank his head back and expose his throat, as if to slit it. But he had no knife, nor did he summon his ethereal blades. He simply gazed directly into the golden eyes that they shared, as if searching there for something he had never before thought to seek.
“Why did you make me do this?” There was sorrow in his voice, feigned, and badly. “Truly, we suspected nothing. If you had not tried to take the children, you might have walked away.”
“They’re mine.” Blood leaked from his nose and mouth, bruises already blooming. “I have to…protect them…”
“Protect them?” The false sorrow slipped off like a mask, becoming mild but genuine amusement. “With what strength? You’ve never had any. Or do you not remember how well you protected the boy?”
Vexen whimpered. Xemnas heaved a heavy, affected sigh.
“Don’t be mistaken, Vexen. I have great respect for your talents. I always have. That is why I arranged this end for you, to let you appreciate the full magnificence of your handiwork. It could have been done much more simply, but you earned this. You’ve worked so very hard.”
He paused, reflecting.
“The vessels you crafted for us are one thing. Mere shells, only capable of life if implanted with an untethered heart. But what of these?” He indicated the two smaller figures standing off to the side with a wave of his free hand. “Altogether different. From the beginning, their own hearts, their own wills…Overwritten easily enough, yet no less remarkable for that. How did you do it, old friend? How did you breathe life into them without possessing a heart of your own? You had no light to bless them with in the making; I made sure of it.”
Vexen wetly coughed up blood.
“Yet,” Xemnas mused softly, as if to himself, “it had been years since we rent ourselves asunder. Many long years…and I was not watching you so closely as I might have. I trusted you more than anyone to keep hollow of your own accord, but perhaps by the end you had some light to give them. Only a little, only a few pathetic sparks…yet it was enough.” Xemnas brushed a gloved thumb down Vexen’s hollow cheek, smearing blood along it. “And maybe not even you know how you did it. Do you? After all, matters of the heart sometimes defy all reason. We learned that together, once.”
Vexen closed his eyes, trembling, and Xemnas let him go—not gently but abruptly, making him crumple face first into a heap, crying out as the impact sent pain through all that had broken. Xemnas studied him coolly, as if deciding whether or where to administer a blow, and then turned away without bothering.
“You have been a great help to us,” he said with his back to him, “but your services are no longer required. A pity.”
He nodded to the other two waiting, and they both stepped forward to replace him, though Xion’s hooded face still showed not the slightest trace of interest in what was happening. Her companion, however, looked impatient, even excited. The Riku Replica waited until Xemnas had put enough distance between them to give them space to fight, then leered down at Vexen, raising his weapon.
“Ready for another round?” he barked, but if he had expected a retort, he received none. The intermission seemed to have been enough to drain the last strength that had hitherto kept Vexen moving, and only the shallowest of his wounds had been mended by the curative spells he’d managed to cast between blows. He did not get up. He shook when he tried.
“Guess that’s a no,” the Riku Replica decided. He raised his bat-wing blade, pointing the tip an inch from Vexen’s face. “Time’s up, old man. Any last words?”
“Go to Radiant Garden.” A bubble of blood popped over Vexen’s mouth, trickling out of the corner. “The castle. My family…they’re yours too. They’ll help you. Go. Take your sister and go—”
The boy kicked him in the stomach, making him wheeze.
“That’s the best you could come up with? What a joke. All you do is blabber on and on about stuff nobody cares about.”
So disgusted was he by the answer he’d received that he kicked him again and turned aside, leaving Xion facing him. Vexen struggled to raise his head and look up at her beneath the shrouding hood of her coat, but she did not react, neither bending down nor jerking away.
“Whoever you became, girl,” he rasped, “you’re you. Do you understand? No matter what his heart tells you, you are not him.”
The hooded head neither nodded nor shook, nor even tilted in confusion.
“Xion…Look at me.”
Whether she obliged or not beneath the hood, it was impossible to tell. But certainly Vexen looked up at her. Lying on his side in the red dirt, he stared wild-eyed and aching up at a face he did not know, as if trying to comprehend what he saw. A torn gloved reached out.
“What…what life did you live, little one?” He clutched at the hem of her coat, his hand and voice both slippery with blood. “Were you safe, ever at all? Did you have friends among them, somehow? Were you happy even a little? Even once?”
Xion did not respond.
“Forgive your brother. I was cruel to him; he may never heal. But you…I wasn’t there to hurt you. You must have had the chance to be—”
The tip of her Keyblade caught him at just the right angle to knock his temple back into the dirt.
“Silence, traitor.”
“Live.” He fought to say it, gasping; his voice wanted to give out. “The life I gave you is not…not his to waste. Live, girl. Whoever you are, flee all this madness and live.”
On the last word he reached for the hem of her coat again, or tried to—the Riku Replica’s boot came down hard on his wrist, grinding his hand into the soil with a heel, making him cry out.
“You really don’t know when to stop talking, do you?” he sneered. “Anything else you gotta spit out?”
“You’re the only…only good thing I’ve ever done. The pair of you. Look…look after one another.”
“Ugh. Shut up.”
“I’m proud of you both.”
“Shut up!” The Replica kicked his good shoulder. “Stop saying stupid stuff. Don’t you get it? This is the end of the line for you.”
“I knew it might be. But I had to try, for your sakes. I had to.”
The Riku Replica kicked him in the ribs this time, hard, as hard as he could. It broke something, or perhaps worsened something that had already been broken; there was a crunching sound beneath the toe of his boot and then Vexen shrieked, but the shriek sounded odd and wheezing, and it looked as if he might be sick. He shivered in a heap, and his gasping had a new, ugly note.
“You’ve barely messed with him at all, have you?” the Riku Replica asked Xion. “Now’s your last chance, y’know. See if he’ll beg or something. I bet he will.”
Xion obeyed the snide suggestion as numbly as she’d obeyed Xemnas’s orders, as numbly as she now did everything. Expressionless she bent down to better speak to the man lying on his side in the dirt, the broken arm pinned beneath him making him spasm any time he tried to move.
“Do you want to beg?” It was not a cruel question, only indifferent, delivered flatly; she had been told to ask it, so she asked. “Is there something that you want?”
Vexen swallowed, gritting his red-stained teeth. A shiny burn on his neck had already begun to blister, and he again reached for the hem of her coat, weakly catching it in his fingertips, shaking.
“Let me go home,” he managed to whisper. “Please. Let them bury me.”
His grip on her coat slackened; his hand fell onto her boot. She did not kick it off, not even when the trembling hand rose again before she could straighten back up. It was obvious from its temerity that it did not preclude an attack, and so she did not bother to flinch away when the hand touched her face just long enough for the torn glove to leave a bloody thumbprint on her cheek—a maker’s mark, the poet’s signature.
The tip of the Soul Eater stabbed not half so deep as its wielder wanted, glancing off of ribs instead of sliding between them. The next attempt went better, though the loudness of the scream that rewarded it made Xion frown as she stood up.
“On three?” the Riku Replica offered her, raising his blade one last time. But movement in the corner of his eye distracted him, and he looked back down.
At first blush it seemed that the pool of blood had widened suddenly, but it was darkness that muddied the ground beneath him, an eddying swirl. It was clear that the concentration it took to summon it would not remain to him for long, and the portal shivered, struggling even to open at all. Yet already he had begun to sink into it, as if melting.
The Riku Replica stooped to snatch him up by the back of the coat. But the shaft of the Keyblade blocked his reaching hand, not swift and sure but loosely, as if it were only stopping him from doing something mildly foolish, like touching a poisonous creature. He glowered at Xion.
“Pointless,” was all she said, her voice dull.
In moments Vexen had melted into the rippling blackness and was gone. The darkness itself disappeared the instant he did, and the two had but little time to contemplate it; Xemnas materialized behind and between them, frowning. At his arrival, only the Riku Replica turned to look up at him.
“Why did you let him escape?” Xemnas asked them. “It was not wise.”
“He can’t do anything to stop us.” Xion’s small voice had no more emotion in it than his. “He’s weak.”
“Very,” Xemnas conceded. But he still looked displeased, and frowned at the place where the dark portal had closed. “Still, it is a loose end…one I had hoped to wrap up. And you,” he addressed the Riku Replica, “I had thought you wanted your revenge.”
“I got it, I guess,” the Replica grumbled, sulky. “He can go crawl off and die in a ditch now. It’d take a miracle to patch him up.”
“The folly of inexperience. You will find that the light has an irritating knack for inconvenient miracles.”
Xemnas contemplated the empty air, perhaps deciding whether it would be worth the trouble to open another portal and go searching, but no tendrils of darkness appeared before him, and after half a minute he sighed and shook his head.
“A loose end indeed, if no more vessels are needed,” he said at last. “But what will loose ends matter after darkness extinguishes the light? There is nothing he nor anyone else can do to prevent it. All must play the role that Kingdom Hearts has chosen for them. It is already decided.”
His golden eyes flickered to the tattered clouds above, as if expecting to see what he’d named, but it was not there, not yet. Soon, though. Very soon.
“Come,” he told the other two. “The fated clash grows ever nearer. We must all meet it as one.”
Looking annoyed, the dark Riku rubbed at flecks of blood on his cheek with the back of his hand, scowling at his glove when the act did nothing but smear the blood around further instead of wiping it off. Xion said and did nothing.
Xemnas put a hand on each of their shoulders, guiding them both into another portal of darkness. Once it evaporated, all that remained of their meeting in the badlands was a slowly cooling puddle of blood.