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Xehanort arranges a meeting with Eraqus. Eraqus accepts and makes time for him, as usual. He does this in a concerningly short amount of time, as usual. It pains him, it ashames him to admit it, but he’s more loyal to Xehanort than he is to the Light, sometimes, it felt like. But that’s ridiculous.
In a way, this too is dedication to the Light, to the love and the loyalty it entails. Unconditionally. And Eraqus considers himself quite unconditionally loving- no matter how far Xehanort strays, he’ll always be there to pull him back to the right path.
If he didn’t love Xehanort- if he hadn’t chosen Xehanort to be his other half, his husband- maybe he wouldn’t have been able to justify giving so much leeway. But it’s natural to turn a blind eye to Xehanort’s distressing research when they were the only survivors. The rest of their classmates were gone. Dead. He’d hold onto Xehanort with everything he had, just to not be left all alone in his grief.
But, as the days and weeks and years go by and the bright glint in Xehanort’s eyes darken, Eraqus fears that maybe, he wasn’t enough. Maybe, Xehanort is walking down the same road Baldr- no. No, that can’t be the case. That couldn’t be the case. Xehanort was there for his downfall, just like he was. He’d never let that happen again.
Xehanort would listen to him eventually.
“Thank you for taking the time to talk with me at such short notice,” Xehanort says, the affection he still clearly holds for Eraqus seeping through. Of course it’d be there, they’re married, why was Eraqus holding his breath?
“Of course.” Eraqus nods, muscles bunched up and body tense despite himself. He can feel Xehanort pressing further and further each conversation they have about the darkness and his fascination with it.
To truly fight against something, you must know it inside and out, don’t you think?
Xehanort’s previous justifications rattle around in Eraqus’s head as he braces himself. What more could they possibly learn about the darkness that would help them? They already know how it manifests, what traits it feeds upon (Terra... he loves his bright student, but the stress eats away at him), isn’t that enough?
Why keep chasing the darkness when he had a choice to stay with the Light? To stay with him?
“...Now tell me, do you really believe that ignorance is better than knowledge?”
Eraqus grits his teeth. He knows where this is going. “Under normal circumstances, of course not. Without knowledge, you can’t properly act. But there are limits to how far you should go to gather that knowledge.”
“But it’s convenient, isn’t it? That we’re barred from certain sects of knowledge. I wonder what those ancient Keyblade Wielders were hiding?”
“...What sects are you talking about this time, Xehanort?”
Xehanort smirks. Eraqus doesn’t flinch. “The X-blade. For such a powerful weapon of destructive power, isn’t it interesting how we know so very little about it?”
The X-blade, again! Xehanort couldn’t leave things well enough alone. “That’s for a reason and you know it.”
“A reason? Or an excuse?”
“Does it matter?”
“That’s the answer I’m trying to find, Eraqus. Does it matter indeed... I’ve scoured every archive we have access to. What I’ve found implies the X-blade isn’t just a theoretical concept, but rather a weapon that had been forged before. But for an existing event, our written history is... lacking.” Xehanort’s eyes meet Eraqus’s, with an intensity he hadn’t seen in years. “What could they be hiding from us?”
“...What no one should know, I’d presume.” Eraqus breaks eye contact. “Some things shouldn’t be brought back into the light. It’s too dangerous!”
Xehanort turns away, his carefully maintained voice dipping into sharp disgust. “Moving the goalposts, are we? First it was that some sacrifices aren’t worth making for knowledge. Now it’s the knowledge itself that is forbidden. What a joke.” He walks away, his tone all arrogance and finality. “I see it’s up to me to fix this oversight. I will uncover the dark truths they’ve buried.”
This wasn’t just a bluff. Eraqus can tell in the way Xehanort carries himself.
(It’s the same way Terra would stand a little straighter, taking measured, controlled steps after being told what he could do to improve himself as a Keyblade Wielder. Certainty and dogged determination in every movement of his body.)
Was this it, then? Was Xehanort already lost? Would Eraqus lose all remnants of his past?
“Wait, Xehanort!”
Xehanort hesitates, or he’s just placating him. Eraqus will take either at this point.
“There’s a reason the precepts bar us from such knowledge. Why do you seek the X-blade? Would you blanket all the worlds in darkness, reduce them to nothing!?” It’s scolding. Nothing but scolding. Eraqus knew Xehanort never responded to such feeble attempts at a power grab, but it just came so naturally to him whenever Eraqus felt desperate.
The worlds deserved a chance.
The worlds were too far gone.
“But darkness did cover the world once, in legend. We know so little about the Keyblade War- only that it was just the beginning.” The beginning of their worlds as they knew it, yes. Though once unified, the world shattered, those splinters then enveloped in endless darkness. “Amidst that crisis a precious light was found. It is a curious tale- and one worth exploring. They say ruin brings about creation. So what, then, would another Keyblade War bring?”
Scholars of the past surmised it would bring about yet another new framework the worlds worked within, or the end to everything. How far can something be broken apart until nothing but fine dust is left?
Xehanort talked a lot about his disillusionment with the worlds. He couldn’t mean...
“When the darkness falls, will we be found worthy of the precious light the legend speaks of? I must have these answers. The X-blade needs to be forged, and with it, the door to the Keyblade War unlocked!”
This is madness. This is nothing but darkness. Twisting within Xehanort, turning him into nothing more than a monster. But how? Why? Was Eraqus blind to just how far Xehanort changed from the sweet, introspective boy he once knew? How long had Xehanort been, not just flirting, but immersing himself within the darkness?
Why would Xehanort leave him for this?
“Fool... you would risk an apocalypse out of sheer curiosity? I will never allow it, Xehanort. Not while I live!” Eraqus spits out, the sheer venom beneath just barely held back in some worthless attempt to keep composure.
“But once again you have it all wrong, Eraqus.” What could he possibly have gotten wrong, all of Xehanort’s plans and intentions laid out in the open? “Darkness is a beginning, you see, not an end.”
A beginning that the Light made tolerable, that is.
“At birth, every one of us emerges from darkness into a world of light, do we not?” Xehanort elaborates, that painstaking patience he has with Eraqus bleeding through. A long time ago, he might have found it charming. Now?
“Poetic excuses!” Eraqus hisses. He hates how Xehanort would talk in circles, trying to lead people into agreeing with his horrendous ideals. A trick of the spoken word, one Eraqus is more than used to seeing from the old man.
Xehanort is similarly less than charmed, turning his back to Eraqus, walking away. But Eraqus won’t let him. This would destroy the worlds. This would destroy Xehanort himself, and he would surely come to regret it. He has to do something, anything at all. That is his promise as a Keyblade Master. “If words won’t dissuade you,” Master’s Defender in hand, willing to go as far as necessary, “only one thing will.”
Eraqus darts towards him. Hoping to catch Xehanort off guard with the sudden aggression. Xehanort turns to meet him, not even flinching. Then, darkness. Channeled by Xehanort, the two pulsating spheres hitting Eraqus in the face. In the eye. It burns. The darkness eats away at skin, scarring, and for a brief second he’s afraid it’ll eat at his heart too.
To raise his blade against the one he claims to love, no matter how strained their marriage... Xehanort is truly gone. “That power...” Eraqus searches Xehanort’s face, his eyes, his body language, for any hint of regret, but finds nothing. “Has the darkness taken you, Xehanort?”
If Xehanort is hurt by the hatred in Eraqus’s words, the sheer disgust in his glare, he doesn’t show it. “Not your concern.”
Not his concern. Not his concern. How laughable. They’re partners, they’re husbands, they’re married. Everything is his concern. “How dare you! I am your-”
“Not anymore.”
“What?”
“I did not mince words, did I?” No, he did not. Xehanort keeps walking away.
“We meant nothing to you? You’d throw this away for your own ill thought-out ambitions?”
“What am I throwing away, exactly?” At Eraqus’s sputtering, Xehanort smiles. Sly and calculating to further stab into his heart. “We’ve done nothing these past few years other than bicker. Well, that’s too fair to you. You’ve done nothing but lecture me because you refuse to understand anything outside of your narrow view of the world.”
“And you’ve done nothing but chase these dangerous fantasies of yours!” Eraqus gasps, struggling not to break down emotionally and physically. It hurts... “We both know we don’t have many years left, I just wanted to spend the last of our days together.”
“My failing body is exactly why I need to start acting.” A scoff of disdain. “I can’t afford to have you drag me down anymore.”
“...Then so be it.” Eraqus also turns his back to Xehanort, not willing to let the other man gain satisfaction from how much this breaks him. Eraqus will break him first. This is Xehanort’s fault, it’s only fair. “You’ve made your choice, to choose the darkness, loud and clear. You’ve changed. Or maybe, I’ve never known you after all. I never had a husband, Xehanort.”
“...You’re right, Eraqus.”
Xehanort takes Eraqus’s silence, his shock, as a request to elaborate.
“I suppose you never did. After all, you never did see me for all that I am. If you did, you would have surely thrown me away sooner. You loved who you thought I was, but I was only ever a stranger. I never was your husband, and you were never mine.”
Xehanort takes one last stab at Eraqus’s heart, in the end.
But Eraqus still dreamt of holding his hand, of a miracle that could never be.