"On the Other Side"
Ienzo's head swam as he lost consciousness, having been stabbed in the chest by Xehanort's Keyblade. The floor faded away beneath him - no, it was his body that was fading. After what seemed like an eternity, he woke up somewhere else. "Am I dead?" he wondered aloud, struggling to stand. "Where is this place?"
"From what I've gathered, it's neither here nor there," said a familiar voice. Ienzo looked up and saw Xehanort wearing a black coat. Handing one to Ienzo, Xehanort continued, "Put this on and I'll explain. We're in the land of the in-between."
"Abandon all hope, all ye who enter," Braig chimed in, appearing out of nowhere. Ienzo noticed that he was also wearing the black coat, as were the other three when they appeared. The last thing Ienzo remembered was the six of them doing experiments in the laboratory; everything else was slowly coming back to him.
"But what does that mean?" Ienzo asked, putting on the coat as he was told. "And what's with these coats?"
"When we opened the Door to Darkness, we paid a heavy price," Xehanort explained. "Those creatures took our hearts, and our bodies were destroyed. The coats are necessary to keep the darkness from tearing our current forms apart. Without our hearts, we have no light. From now on, we will only know darkness."
Ienzo looked aghast. "There must be some way to reverse this," he insisted, his voice breaking.
"There might be, but for now we are non-beings called Nobodies. As such, we must forsake our old identities and take on new names." Xehanort renamed them by mixing up the letters in their names and adding X. "Xigbar. Xaldin. Vexen. Lexaeus. Zexion. And I am your leader, Xemnas."
Ienzo remembered what they had done, how they had banished their real Master Ansem to the darkness for trying to stop them. They had gone too far. "This is insane," he protested. "Let's just find Ansem and apologize, and then maybe we can all think of a way to get back to-"
He was cut off as Xehanort slapped him across the face. "Ansem is gone," Xehanort said tersely. "I'm in charge now. Even if you did find him, do you think he'd take you back? You betrayed him. He doesn't love you anymore. You don't have a heart anymore either. That means you don't have feelings. None of us do. Now stop sniveling like a lost child and help us establish our new headquarters."
Zexion stood there with his hand pressed against the red slap mark on his cheek, his eyes watering. One by one, the others turned away from him and followed Xemnas into the oddly-shaped castle. After a short interval he was able to compose himself and follow them. As he caught up to Lexaeus, he impulsively reached out and grabbed his sleeve. Lexaeus looked at him but didn't stop walking. Ashamed, Zexion let go.
"Fever Dream"
There was one day when Ienzo had come down with a terrible cold. He was bedridden with a high fever, and Ansem was worried that the boy had pneumonia or something more serious. With Xehanort continuing their research and Braig actually doing his job for once by guarding the front gate with Dilan, Ansem had Even and Aeleus helping him take care of Ienzo. As Ansem applied a cold compress to Ienzo's forehead, the boy whispered weakly, "Will I get to see my parents again?"
"You might dream about them," Ansem replied gently. They all knew what the boy meant.
"You're not going to die, Ienzo," Even said determinedly, giving him a shot of medicine. Ienzo cringed and turned his head away from his arm as Even did it, causing the cold compress to slip. Ansem put it back in place.
"Try and get some rest," Aeleus said. "You'll feel better in the morning." The medicine began to take effect and at last the boy drifted off to sleep. Aeleus watched over him, relieving the other two so they could rest as well.
The next day, Ienzo's temperature had gone down significantly. Although he was out of danger, he still needed to remain in bed. He managed to sit up, so by evening Aeleus was able to bring him some vegetable stew.
"I'm not a baby," Ienzo complained when Aeleus held out the spoon aleady filled with stew. "I can feed myself." He reached forward to take the spoon from him with an unsteady hand.
Aeleus reached out his other hand and touched the pressure points on either side of Ienzo's jaw. Momentarily paralyzed, Ienzo let his arm drop, and Aeleus began spoon-feeding him. "It's not that we're trying to baby you," he explained. "We just want to take care of you. That's what families do. We're like a family here." He let go of Ienzo's jaw and lighty ruffled the boy's hair. "Now let your older brothers help you get better, okay?"
Mortified but secretly pleased, Ienzo nodded and lay back down slowly. "Will you read me a story?" he asked tentatively. He felt like a child, but for once he didn't let it bother him.
"Sure," Aeleus agreed.
***
Zexion opened his eyes, wondering why this memory had suddenly come to him from out of the blue. "Do you remember that one time I got really sick when I was little?" Zexion asked Lexaeus as they were meditating, knowing Lexaeus wouldn't tease him for still being so small. Instead, Lexaeus put his hand on Zexion's forehead to see if he felt warm. "No, I don't mean I'm sick now," Zexion said. "I don't even know if that's possible."
"It could happen," Lexaeus murmured, putting his arm down.
"What I meant was, do you remember it?"
"Now that you mention it..."
"You said we were like a family. Do you still think that's true?"
"To some degree." There were more people in the Organization now than the original six of them, so it was a different sort of dynamic than what they had before, especially with Ansem out of the picture. "We need each other now more than ever."
Zexion sighed, sensing the Organization was full of factions and conspiracies. He sank back into silence, pondering the mysteries of life and death. He also thought of his parents, dreading that they would hate him for what he had done; he also thought for a wild second that he'd want them to see how their son had grown up despite how he'd turned out without a heart. When the Superior had told him that he didn't have a heart anymore he'd nearly cried, but that was a long time ago and he'd learned to rationalize these thoughts by now. He definitely didn't cry anymore, that was for sure, at least not in front of anyone, not even Lexaeus.
Lexaeus was also quiet, remembering the time of Ienzo's illness. After having read to him, Aeleus had brought the empty bowl of stew back into the kitchen where Dilan was washing dishes.
"How is he?" Ansem had asked.
"Stubborn, as usual," Aeleus had replied, "but resting comfortably now."
Ansem had chuckled. "Good."
"Don't bother him, Braig," Aeleus had warned, seeing Braig sneaking out of the room out of the corner of his eye. "Your presence will only agitate him." After the incident with the shaving cream one night when Braig had put Ienzo to bed, Braig had not been allowed anywhere near the kid, at least not by himself.
"I wasn't going to do anything," Braig had protested. Who knew if that was true, but it was unlikely that Braig would play any more pranks when he had both Ansem and Aeleus to answer to. He started up again after they became Nobodies, of course, but Lexaeus always knocked some sense into him in the end.
A sudden thought came to Lexaeus' mind, interrupting his reverie. "I heard Axel and Roxas talking about going to Twilight Town to eat sea salt ice cream up in the clock tower. Do you want to go too?"
"No," Zexion replied, almost at a whisper. "That stuff reminds me of him, so I don't eat it anymore." He remembered eating sea salt ice cream for the first time with Ansem on the day Xehanort first showed up. After everything that happened, he tried to avoid it as much as possible. Lexaeus knew Zexion was referring to Ansem, and neither one of them decided to broach the subject again.
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