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Not really a continuation from before, but continuing all the same!
P.S. Some downtime of the website possibly forthcoming. Just a head's up, as servers get juggled!
HOLLOW MEN III & IV
Kingdom Hearts 2 -- Organization XIII (+ Naminé); game spoilers/speculation. Roxas/Axel [ONE NOT WORKSAFE]
... these are so loosely, loosely loosely connected. A bunch of short omg pretentious pieces based on lines from T.S. Eliot's "Hollow Men." I jump all over the damned place, hah.
+++++
III: this is the dead land
They say the Keyblade only appears in times of trouble.
It is not, however, clear whether or not it is the answer to problems, or the cause of them.
+++
Shortly after they first brought him to the nameless castle in the nameless world, Marluxia went for a walk. Two Nobodies materialized to follow him, but he ignored them; he still wasn't quite used to them, their strange eyeless faces and swaying stilted walk. He chose not to open any gateways as he walked, letting the echoing sound of his footsteps guide him.
He left the castle and kept walking and then hit ... nothing.
He stopped at the edge, staring at where the world sheered away into pitch darkness. Behind him, the Nobodies shifted and rocked.
"You," he said to them.
My lord?
"What used to be out there?" He pointed. "This is a castle. There should be gardens or something. Where did they go?"
Gardens? The Nobody tripped into his line of vision, and he found he did not like it at all -- it was an ugly angled thing, with fish-white skin and it sort of smelled like rotting vegetation. There was never such thing here, my lord.
"At all?" His tone was disbelieving. "That can't be. This is a castle, there should be --" and here he flung out one arm, gesturing grandly at the tall, twisted spires of the castle and the short circle of land around it -- "gardens! Dozens everywhere, timed to the seasons! What's wrong with this place?"
Even with all that wide open space, the sound of his voice fell flat without an echo.
The Nobody rocked back on its heels. It said nothing, as though waiting for his prompt. The other one jerked its head and shoulders like a puppet, and the stink of them was nearly enough to turn his stomach. He looked down at the smooth walkway beneath his feet, scuffing the toe of one boot; there should be at least weeds here, he thought, small scrappy growing things that could take the weak light here and bloom--
Marluxia made an irritated noise, pivoting on his heel. With one hand he opened a portal and stalked through, closing it before his attendants could follow.
+++
"You know what I'm gonna do?" Xigbar exhales smoke upwards, so that it spreads around his head in a cloud. "I'm gonna build a fucking statue of me."
Demyx blinks rapidly, glancing sidelong at him as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Kid doesn't like to stay still, Xigbar has noticed, always moving around like the Dancers that follow him like lost puppies. "Um. Okay?"
"No, listen." Xigbar gestures. "We'll be fucking heroes, dude."
"Err--"
"Nah, think about it. We're Organization XIII. Friend to the fucking underdog. You think all those Nobodies follow us just 'cause we've got good fashion sense?"
Demyx doesn't even try to answer that, just looks at him.
"If the Superior gets his way," Xigbar says, drawing air circles with his cigarette, "Kingdom Hearts is gonna give us all our hearts back." He jabs his hand towards the low-hanging creation in the sky. "There'll be enough for us all."
There is still no response, but he glances over and Demyx's fingers move nervously, plucking odd notes off the sitar. He grins. All you really gotta do is get Demyx started, he does the rest.
"... Heroes?" Demyx finally asks. There's a wondering note in his voice, like he can't believe it, and he looks up at the starless sky. "You really think so?"
"Kid," says Xigbar, and puts a heavy arm around Demyx's shoulders; IX doesn't even flinch, though everyone in the Organization, as a rule, dislike touch. "Better fucking believe it."
+++
"Maybe you bastards are gonna die," Alex tells his friends at the bar, raising his cup high over his head. "But me, I'm planning on finding an alternative." He taps his forehead and smirks. "Commit that to memory."
+++
What he remembers is when he wasn't in the lab, there was a cottage at the quieter edges of the city and a girl whose smile had been the entire world. She'd had very small white hands, and he remembers how clumsy his had been, when trying to hold her.
He thinks maybe she smelled like jasmine.
She'd liked to sing when she cooked, he remembers that much; he would occasionally come home and find the windows open, and the sound of her voice would draw him as much as the promise of a hot dinner. Even could find his solace easily enough in the sterile environment of the lab, but Eleaus (he thinks, he hopes) had not been so cold.
But then had come the darkness and the madness of their experiments. He remembers when Radiant Garden was overrun and the Heartless would spill from any patch of shadow deep enough to support them. He remembers how cold it was, when his heard had been pulled from him.
Only once since has Lexaeus gone back to that place. What he found was a single low-level Heartless limping around the ruins of a house of wood and stone, its tiny head bobbing.
He killed it, and walked away without looking back.
+++
IV: this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
But eventually, one will find a door that cannot be unlocked except with a key.
+++
In the Land of Dragons, an old fortuneteller caught the hem of his coat as he walked by.
"Young man," she croaked. "Young man, your future for a penny."
Saix paused and looked down at her. "What?"
She smiled, so that most of her face disappeared into a mass of wrinkles. There was a strip of dirty cloth tied around her eyes. "Your future," she said again. "Old Li-Mei's inner vision has not failed her yet."
"Old woman," Saix said flatly, and yanked his arm free of her hold, "I do not have the time for this."
The old woman merely clucked her tongue. "Young man, your temper will be what ends you," she said. "You've the eyes to see, but not the vision to follow it. The moon's long blinded you."
The knowing tone of her voice irritated him. How a wretch like her could know it had been such a long time since the moon had given him a proper answer--
He turned and lifted his hand to be done with her already, when the door opened and a young man cried out at the sight of him. "You! What are you doing to Grandmother?!"
He hardly looked worth the effort, and Saix just snorted and turned away. "Control your tongue," he told the old woman, and stalked off as the boy rushed up.
+++
"Dude," says Xigbar. "That's the last fucking time I let you lead."
"Fuck off," Larxene tells him, fanning her knives between her fingers. "Like you knew any better."
And then the wave of Heartless comes crashing down atop them.
+++
My lord.
Xaldin doesn't turn, staring down at the city stretched out below them. "You know," he says, "I hear they renamed it."
The Dragoon does not lift her head from its bowed position. She is a sleek and deadly thing, and has served him faithfully for a long time, and she knows when to speak and when to remain silent.
"They're calling it 'Hollow Bastion' now." He snorts. "The witch has the same naming sense that the Superior does."
The gardens that used to bloom around the castle have now become a tangled batch of briars; Xaldin remembers a little girl who used to play there, crowned with a wreath of flowers on his old master's knee.
Now only the Heartless writhe and wriggle among the dense branches, with a thousand gleaming yellow eyes that see nothing.
My lord. The Dragoon's voice gives away nothing, and she still have not moved. We must hurry. They will notice us soon.
Xaldin spits at the castle, at its ruined gardens and breeding Heartless, and then he turns and stalks away, the Dragoon following a step to his right and two paces behind.
+++
Roxas grunts, once, as his back slams into the wall; he can taste blood on his teeth and finds he doesn't really fucking care. He claws Axel's back for purchase, feels leather scrape under his nails. Axel makes some kind of noise of protest and he ignores that, because if he acknowledges it Axel will talk and Roxas is so fucking sick of talking--
Axel bites his shoulder and presses into him and it fucking hurts, like he's being torn apart from the inside and there's this keening noise rising from his throat that he's embarrassed to realize is him.
But it's too late to stop now, too damn late, Axel's heavy against him and the fence is rattling against his back and fuck someone is going to notice soon --
Afterward, when Axel pants noisily into his hair, Roxas finally forces his ankles to unlock from Axel's hips and tips his head back.
Kingdom Hearts hangs low in the sky, and offers no judgment.
+++
Xemnas tracks the presence of the Princess of Heart as she wanders from world to world, wandering into the lives of people and then away again, never able to quite rest. The girl is special -- she is their own, his own, and all the other six have their own families and their own places -- but she is the drifter, her threads cut when her guardian was ... disposed of.
He does not tell the others about her; Vexen alone would want to dissemble the girl, see if he could find out the secrets of a heart from that tiny beating thing in her birdlike chest -- is the heart of a Princess any different from the heart of a man?
By the time her Nobody is discovered by the others, that fragile white scrap, it's already too late; he knows exactly what he needs, and the bearer of the Keyblade is already on his way.
+++
He's not really sure what he expected to happen when he finally met Sora -- maybe they could fight, a challenge to see who would be the "real" one --
at the very least he thought he'd be angrier because he was losing himself
--but Roxas closes his eyes and lets go, and it sort of feels like coming home.
+++
"When you wish upon a star," the song goes, but then, also, "a wish is a dream your heart makes."
Even though he doesn't have one, Demyx thinks, it's worth a shot trying.
--END III & IV--
P.S. Some downtime of the website possibly forthcoming. Just a head's up, as servers get juggled!
HOLLOW MEN III & IV
Kingdom Hearts 2 -- Organization XIII (+ Naminé); game spoilers/speculation. Roxas/Axel [ONE NOT WORKSAFE]
... these are so loosely, loosely loosely connected. A bunch of short omg pretentious pieces based on lines from T.S. Eliot's "Hollow Men." I jump all over the damned place, hah.
+++++
III: this is the dead land
They say the Keyblade only appears in times of trouble.
It is not, however, clear whether or not it is the answer to problems, or the cause of them.
+++
Shortly after they first brought him to the nameless castle in the nameless world, Marluxia went for a walk. Two Nobodies materialized to follow him, but he ignored them; he still wasn't quite used to them, their strange eyeless faces and swaying stilted walk. He chose not to open any gateways as he walked, letting the echoing sound of his footsteps guide him.
He left the castle and kept walking and then hit ... nothing.
He stopped at the edge, staring at where the world sheered away into pitch darkness. Behind him, the Nobodies shifted and rocked.
"You," he said to them.
My lord?
"What used to be out there?" He pointed. "This is a castle. There should be gardens or something. Where did they go?"
Gardens? The Nobody tripped into his line of vision, and he found he did not like it at all -- it was an ugly angled thing, with fish-white skin and it sort of smelled like rotting vegetation. There was never such thing here, my lord.
"At all?" His tone was disbelieving. "That can't be. This is a castle, there should be --" and here he flung out one arm, gesturing grandly at the tall, twisted spires of the castle and the short circle of land around it -- "gardens! Dozens everywhere, timed to the seasons! What's wrong with this place?"
Even with all that wide open space, the sound of his voice fell flat without an echo.
The Nobody rocked back on its heels. It said nothing, as though waiting for his prompt. The other one jerked its head and shoulders like a puppet, and the stink of them was nearly enough to turn his stomach. He looked down at the smooth walkway beneath his feet, scuffing the toe of one boot; there should be at least weeds here, he thought, small scrappy growing things that could take the weak light here and bloom--
Marluxia made an irritated noise, pivoting on his heel. With one hand he opened a portal and stalked through, closing it before his attendants could follow.
+++
"You know what I'm gonna do?" Xigbar exhales smoke upwards, so that it spreads around his head in a cloud. "I'm gonna build a fucking statue of me."
Demyx blinks rapidly, glancing sidelong at him as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Kid doesn't like to stay still, Xigbar has noticed, always moving around like the Dancers that follow him like lost puppies. "Um. Okay?"
"No, listen." Xigbar gestures. "We'll be fucking heroes, dude."
"Err--"
"Nah, think about it. We're Organization XIII. Friend to the fucking underdog. You think all those Nobodies follow us just 'cause we've got good fashion sense?"
Demyx doesn't even try to answer that, just looks at him.
"If the Superior gets his way," Xigbar says, drawing air circles with his cigarette, "Kingdom Hearts is gonna give us all our hearts back." He jabs his hand towards the low-hanging creation in the sky. "There'll be enough for us all."
There is still no response, but he glances over and Demyx's fingers move nervously, plucking odd notes off the sitar. He grins. All you really gotta do is get Demyx started, he does the rest.
"... Heroes?" Demyx finally asks. There's a wondering note in his voice, like he can't believe it, and he looks up at the starless sky. "You really think so?"
"Kid," says Xigbar, and puts a heavy arm around Demyx's shoulders; IX doesn't even flinch, though everyone in the Organization, as a rule, dislike touch. "Better fucking believe it."
+++
"Maybe you bastards are gonna die," Alex tells his friends at the bar, raising his cup high over his head. "But me, I'm planning on finding an alternative." He taps his forehead and smirks. "Commit that to memory."
+++
What he remembers is when he wasn't in the lab, there was a cottage at the quieter edges of the city and a girl whose smile had been the entire world. She'd had very small white hands, and he remembers how clumsy his had been, when trying to hold her.
He thinks maybe she smelled like jasmine.
She'd liked to sing when she cooked, he remembers that much; he would occasionally come home and find the windows open, and the sound of her voice would draw him as much as the promise of a hot dinner. Even could find his solace easily enough in the sterile environment of the lab, but Eleaus (he thinks, he hopes) had not been so cold.
But then had come the darkness and the madness of their experiments. He remembers when Radiant Garden was overrun and the Heartless would spill from any patch of shadow deep enough to support them. He remembers how cold it was, when his heard had been pulled from him.
Only once since has Lexaeus gone back to that place. What he found was a single low-level Heartless limping around the ruins of a house of wood and stone, its tiny head bobbing.
He killed it, and walked away without looking back.
+++
IV: this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
But eventually, one will find a door that cannot be unlocked except with a key.
+++
In the Land of Dragons, an old fortuneteller caught the hem of his coat as he walked by.
"Young man," she croaked. "Young man, your future for a penny."
Saix paused and looked down at her. "What?"
She smiled, so that most of her face disappeared into a mass of wrinkles. There was a strip of dirty cloth tied around her eyes. "Your future," she said again. "Old Li-Mei's inner vision has not failed her yet."
"Old woman," Saix said flatly, and yanked his arm free of her hold, "I do not have the time for this."
The old woman merely clucked her tongue. "Young man, your temper will be what ends you," she said. "You've the eyes to see, but not the vision to follow it. The moon's long blinded you."
The knowing tone of her voice irritated him. How a wretch like her could know it had been such a long time since the moon had given him a proper answer--
He turned and lifted his hand to be done with her already, when the door opened and a young man cried out at the sight of him. "You! What are you doing to Grandmother?!"
He hardly looked worth the effort, and Saix just snorted and turned away. "Control your tongue," he told the old woman, and stalked off as the boy rushed up.
+++
"Dude," says Xigbar. "That's the last fucking time I let you lead."
"Fuck off," Larxene tells him, fanning her knives between her fingers. "Like you knew any better."
And then the wave of Heartless comes crashing down atop them.
+++
My lord.
Xaldin doesn't turn, staring down at the city stretched out below them. "You know," he says, "I hear they renamed it."
The Dragoon does not lift her head from its bowed position. She is a sleek and deadly thing, and has served him faithfully for a long time, and she knows when to speak and when to remain silent.
"They're calling it 'Hollow Bastion' now." He snorts. "The witch has the same naming sense that the Superior does."
The gardens that used to bloom around the castle have now become a tangled batch of briars; Xaldin remembers a little girl who used to play there, crowned with a wreath of flowers on his old master's knee.
Now only the Heartless writhe and wriggle among the dense branches, with a thousand gleaming yellow eyes that see nothing.
My lord. The Dragoon's voice gives away nothing, and she still have not moved. We must hurry. They will notice us soon.
Xaldin spits at the castle, at its ruined gardens and breeding Heartless, and then he turns and stalks away, the Dragoon following a step to his right and two paces behind.
+++
Roxas grunts, once, as his back slams into the wall; he can taste blood on his teeth and finds he doesn't really fucking care. He claws Axel's back for purchase, feels leather scrape under his nails. Axel makes some kind of noise of protest and he ignores that, because if he acknowledges it Axel will talk and Roxas is so fucking sick of talking--
Axel bites his shoulder and presses into him and it fucking hurts, like he's being torn apart from the inside and there's this keening noise rising from his throat that he's embarrassed to realize is him.
But it's too late to stop now, too damn late, Axel's heavy against him and the fence is rattling against his back and fuck someone is going to notice soon --
Afterward, when Axel pants noisily into his hair, Roxas finally forces his ankles to unlock from Axel's hips and tips his head back.
Kingdom Hearts hangs low in the sky, and offers no judgment.
+++
Xemnas tracks the presence of the Princess of Heart as she wanders from world to world, wandering into the lives of people and then away again, never able to quite rest. The girl is special -- she is their own, his own, and all the other six have their own families and their own places -- but she is the drifter, her threads cut when her guardian was ... disposed of.
He does not tell the others about her; Vexen alone would want to dissemble the girl, see if he could find out the secrets of a heart from that tiny beating thing in her birdlike chest -- is the heart of a Princess any different from the heart of a man?
By the time her Nobody is discovered by the others, that fragile white scrap, it's already too late; he knows exactly what he needs, and the bearer of the Keyblade is already on his way.
+++
He's not really sure what he expected to happen when he finally met Sora -- maybe they could fight, a challenge to see who would be the "real" one --
at the very least he thought he'd be angrier because he was losing himself
--but Roxas closes his eyes and lets go, and it sort of feels like coming home.
+++
"When you wish upon a star," the song goes, but then, also, "a wish is a dream your heart makes."
Even though he doesn't have one, Demyx thinks, it's worth a shot trying.
--END III & IV--
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From:
no subject
So good, all of them. The one with Lexaeus and the last one is like being KICKED and the one with Xigbar and the one with Xaldin and I want Marluxia to plant some gardens and *snffles*
but very good, and so well written. ♥
From:
no subject
A) He was grumpy and bitchy about how The New Kid got a whole subclass of Nobody minions and HE didn't or
B) He wanted gardens, damnit. "Wonderland" sort of counts. >_>
But thank you! ♥♥ Seriously, I'm so relieved you guys are liking this~♥ XD;