Me and Myself (illicitresearch)

[throwingthebook]

Ienzo still didn't know much about the consequences of being recombined as a whole person. Aeleus seemed to be adapting to having a heart again well, if he was ever very much different as Lexaeus. Dilan had horrible nightmares for the first few weeks. Even was quiet, more reserved than how Ienzo remembered him. Not to mention nervous around Axel. Though that was to be expected, considering what happened...

As for Ienzo himself? He didn't know. He felt all right, for the most part. There were things he didn't want to dwell on...couldn't bring himself to think about for very long, if at all. He'd spent half his life in the Organization, led to believe that he was nobody. He'd spent so much time studying the mind that he knew something must be wrong with him. Ten years... That was a long time for anyone. But he was the youngest.

So when strange things begin happening, at first he considers it a side effect. Like Dilan's nightmares. Even's withdrawn behavior. A book out of place. Waking up to the computer on, when he was absolutely certain he'd turned it off. Then it became worse. He would wake up in the middle of the night in the rooftop pavilion, or the gardens, or standing in the middle of the library with no memory of actually going there. It happened during the day, once. That frightened him. One minute he was walking to the kitchen for something to eat, the next he was in the library, at a table, with a half-eaten watercress sandwich nearby and a book in his hand.

But speaking to Aeleus got him thinking. "Are you all right? The other night in the hall... You were speaking like him. Zexion. Are you sure we shouldn't contact Yen Sid?"

He didn't need Yen Sid to tell him what he already suspected. Ienzo made the preparations. A lucid dream was difficult to trigger. The realm of dreams was too unknowable, too risky to go in unprepared in anything other than normal sleep. But he learned more of spells and magic than he ever would had he never become a Nobody. A sachet of herbs under his pillow, a sheet of paper with the proper sigils under his bed, a few other arrangements. It was a very old method, and more the work of a hedge witch, but perhaps the most tried and true, if the older generations had thought to write it down. And it worked. When he had finally drifted off to sleep, he "woke" to his room again. But the signs were there--a few things out of place, but most importantly, the objects he had placed on and under his bed were no longer there. Now the hunt for whoever had been controlling his body without him knowing it.

...Where better to search for another part of himself than the library?

The logic of dreams dictated that his bedroom now opened directly there. It wasn't so much a library of books, here, but of memories. His earliest shelved in a section seemingly meant for small children, the technical manuals and books on psychology that Even had given him to read (and he'd read them ferociously), the newest section mostly vacant and bare.

It was disturbing to see most of his memories were seated on stark white shelves, bound in black leather.

Ienzo took a deep breath, hand pressed against his jaw, hair covering his eye as he slipped in amongst the black-bound books. "Zexion. I know you're here. We need to talk. ....I know what you've been doing."

Comments

[illicitresearch]

There as little use in hiding from your own self, when they'd gone through such lengths to have a conversation. Zexion was already waiting for him there, perched upon one of the half-sized shelves with one of Ienzo's white research binders open in hand instead of his usual, potent Book of Retribution.

He looks up placidly, patiently, as though he'd been expecting a visitor to drop in on him any moment.

His eyes rove slowly over Ienzo's body, top to bottom and then back upon his chest, serene yet dappled with traces of some muted emotion, something between remote affection and envy.

"Do you?" There's a lofty, coy character in his tone that's nettled ever so delicately, his eyes expectant as he eases the binder shut and sets it on his knees. "I wonder if you wholly comprehend it yet, those moments where our heart cries out for a moment's reprieve. But you must, by now- you are here, after all."

"Ienzo." He exhales on a darkly wistful little sigh, shutting his eyes and wrapping his fore arms across his middle. "Yes, let's talk."

[throwingthebook]

Ienzo is careful to keep his expression neutral. He knew there wouldn't be much of a direct altercation. He hadn't earned the title Cloaked Schemer for nothing. But at the same time he hadn't expected his Nobody to be sitting out in the open so brazenly, either. Ienzo frowned slightly, trying to read Zexion's body language, his tone of voice. He couldn't read his mind...and wasn't so sure he wanted to. Zexion was the embodiment of his Darkness...everything that lay at the deepest recesses of his heart given form and a voice and a will of its own. But the question still stands--why isn't Zexion there, instead of so close to the surface? Better yet, what did he mean? 'Those moments where our heart cries out'...?

Well, then. Best not to keep this one waiting too long. He gets straight to the point, not really in a mood to humor the twists and turns of a dark mind. Especially not after being stared at with...with whatever kind of appraisal that was.

"...Why are you stealing my body? You should know better. You're part of me, not the other way around."

[illicitresearch]

Zexion's eyes slip open again, and his brow arches high, his gloved fingers drumming a steady patter on the sterile, plastic cover of the binder. He watches Ienzo silently for a few moments more, then clears his throat and stretches his arms out behind him to find the back edge of the shelving, leaning some of his weight back on them and crossing his boots behind the ankle.

"Perhaps you ought to rephrase that question in a less presumptuous light." He suggests, his voice low and deceptively mild, the slightest bit reproachful.

"What you ought to be asking yourself," the schemer amends, canting his head to one side so that he can peer at Ienzo with both eyes. "Is why are you extracting me from the recesses of your consciousness and closing your heart off, hiding it behind the shutters, to help you cope?"

"Do you have so little faith left in your own strength?" Zexion questions so keenly, honing in so swiftly that the criticism cuts right to the bone without wasting time. He's always been very self-motivated to be exacting, efficient. Why should speaking to his Other be any different?

"Please don't waste time on denying it- because I do understand your concerns better than anyone. You do not wish to make gross outbursts, like Even. You cannot stand surly and gruffly unmoved as Dilan pretends to be. And you doubt you can bear an excess of guilt and shoulder responsibilities well as Aeleus can, without crumbling and losing your mind and heart all over again."

"And thus you've turned me loose, now and then. You've practically begged me back into being, the way a desperate child hopes at falling stars. You are the one who should know better, Ienzo."

[throwingthebook]

He wants to deny it. Wants to be angry. Stand there and scream all night, if he has to. But it's true. All of it. All this time he's been borrowing on Zexion's power to shut down his own heart, as if he'd never become human again to begin with. Using Zexion as a shield against guilt and madness. And he didn't even realize it. Normally a Nobody would be completely reintegrated with its heart. They shouldn't be having this conversation at all. But it's not Zexion out to steal his body. It's him who needs Zexion.

Ienzo sighed as he placed his hand over his chest. "I know. It's not fair to you. I've been selfish with my light. I'm sorry."

It's an earnest apology. Zexion should be sleeping peacefully, not experiencing a harsh schism between them. "...You know I envy Lea. How he can move forward from everything Axel did, and still be himself." Even after acknowledging it, he couldn't bring himself to break the barrier between thought and emotion. Ienzo faltered. His head dipped slightly, hiding the way he used to when he was small. By closing himself off, arms held close to himself. It was hard. Harder than he expected. "...I think the problem is, I don't even know who I am. Not anymore."

[illicitresearch]

"Not fair to me?" Zexion laughs only once, a throwaway toss of a sound that's like a self-effacing scoff. "I've already choked down my share of bitter unfairness, and I know I hardly deserve to see the light of another day?"

He can pretend to be appalled all he wants until eternity, for his abandonment at Castle Oblivion and Axel's betrayal, but the darker shadow of himself knew that it was a fate too long-evaded, and justly-deserved for chasing forbidden questions and following men of questionable morals... sometimes even steering them into the depths of their corruption. To be back in Radiant Garden and find it in a state of disarray, but not lost forever, seemed like a case of pearls before swine.

And wasn't he a mere piglet, when last they'd left it to spoil?

"(As if either of us knows what to do with such a gift.)" He murmurs dully, shoulders slumping as they loosen. Mention of how well Lea's been coping proves an unpleasant thing to swallow, and something sours thick like bile at the back of Zexion's throat. He swallows and fixes his Somebody with a harsher, withering look.

"But you didn't come here to talk about how well Lea's been doing, I should hope?"

"Why don't you look instead to the rumors of how Riku's grown?" Zexion suggests, infernally curious. "Or does that feel too much like you are betraying the hour of my own failings?"

"Frankly," He adds, extending his hand and motioning his Somebody nearer. "I should be the one apologizing to you." There's regret shadowing his eyes, for how much the body housing his heart has grown. Ienzo the boy had often desired to be someone older, someone taken seriously, treated like an equal in studies instead of a charity case, but it should not have taken a decade. Ienzo should never have stopped being in the first place.

"I have done you a tremendous disservice, in taking so very long. In losing our heart to dormancy for so many years. It's like having an atrophied muscle that's lost years of maturation. You fear yourself weaker than the others, because for you it was half a lifetime ago. You have to figure yourself out all over again, where the others have the luxury of practically picking up right where they left off."

[throwingthebook]

....He didn't want to know how Riku was doing. It wasn't right, he knew. It wasn't Riku that had killed him...them. It was the replica. But that face, a cruel, cold grasp around his throat, choking the life from him...

Zexion broke him from the fear beginning to cloud around him. He blinked, shoving the memory-book that had drifted over away from his face. There was no fear at all when he approached his Nobody, even clasping him by the arm gently. He tilted his head at the apology. "It wasn't your fault. There's only one man who's to blame for all of us being separated."

Come on, Ienzo. It'll be fun. Just talk to him. If you tell him how much you want the laboratory for your own, I know he'll be impressed. Then we could do more things together.

It still made him feel sick to his stomach.

[illicitresearch]

"Ah," there's an elegant, oily blackness that clings to Zexion's voice, persuasive as it is a little scathing, here. He reaches to curl his leather-clad fingers around the consoling touch of Ienzo's bare hand. "How swiftly we settle right back into our beloved pastime, shifting the blame around."

"Yes, everyone else is very keen on making an enemy of Xehanort now, aren't they?" There's a flare to his nostrils that seems to suggest disgust, even as his second hand reaches for Ienzo's shoulder, drawing him closer, closer, leaning forward until their bangs are nearly brushing and his voice can shrink even softer in the space between without losing its tarry, silver-sharp bite. "As though they never made their own decisions. Deluding themselves with the notion that they are less culpable, somehow, now that his aims have been laid out clearly. It's a comfortable lie they'll continue to tell themselves as they try to reclaim your light for you, that were too young to possibly comprehend what you were doing."

"But it doesn't sit right with you, does it?" The hand at Ienzo's shoulder slips up the side of his neck, tracing behind the shell of his ear in a gesture that seems to mock affection, then feathers down, fingers spread, to rest fingertips over his chest. "Because you know the truth in your heart."

"He delighted you, once." Zexion murmurs gravely, more with more rueful sympathy than one might expect out of a Nobody. "In fascination, you would have followed him to the outer limits of the stars. Your heart aligned itself right within his thrall, and who knows for how many years thereafter, His heartless possessed it?"

"And now you begin to question, in the quiet, when you are left alone with your thoughts, that if you dared to allow your heart to take the reins again and guide you, could the same mistake be made twice?"

[throwingthebook]

Even before Zexion's hand pressed over Ienzo's heart, he might be able to hear just how hard it was pounding in his chest. Fear, anger...a hint of something else, something that brought confusion and shame. Ienzo heard every word like a new knife in him, twisting in his heart with the truth. He finally broke from his stunned silence, pulling himself free from the Nobody and stumbling as he retreated.

Ienzo took a deep breath. "You think I don't know what you're doing? Do you really think there isn't a day that goes by that I don't feel guilt for what I did?"

His voice was raising now, defensive and edged with frustration. "I betrayed the only father I've ever known. I was lured into destroying people's lives because I let a monster appeal to my ego. Is that what you want to hear?"

He faltered, pride and rage crumbling as easy as they had come. "What do you want from me?" It was a question born of desperation. Zexion's hadn't clambered for attention just so he could antagonize him. He could have just as easily done so through his own subconscious and they both knew it. In a way he almost feared the answer.

[illicitresearch]

"Why should you bother with telling me things I already know?" Zexion motioned dismissively with his hand, shaking his head as Ienzo countered him with hackles raised, impassioned in ways that the Nobody envied.

"Master Ansem may have been king and teacher, guardian, and you certainly did disobey him like an ungrateful brat... but he was never truly the fatherly figure he tried to be, was he?" He argued, more scornful than mournful of their late master. "You thought him an inattentive old fool."

"You didn't even want to want a new family, did you?" Another acute reading between the lines, accusing, slipping off the shelf as he followed a step closer toward Ienzo's retreat, then two more. "In every children's story, an orphaned boy was ripe for destiny, and would lead a life rich with adventuresome prospects. You didn't want to belong here, if it meant being coddled and spoonfed ideals. The cost did not matter. At the time, you did not think what you had here was as valuable as all the potential Xehanort saw in you, and intended to make immediate use of."

His hands come bracing to Ienzo's shoulders, as he does not really mean to be particularly cruel, even if he is trying to mirror the exact situation that made Riku retaliate and emerge surer-footed for it.

Only this time something does soften in his eyes, the twisted-round, narcissistic affection a Nobody can only hold for his own heart.

"I want you to go forward, and thrive." He replies, sobered and severe, his gloved hands bracing on the labcoat, almost clinging in matched desperation. "I want you to wield every dark thought harbored in your heart like a knife, stride back into the light and brazenly face anything that dares to keep you from growing."

"Indeed, lately you've been feeling such profoundly terrible things, have struggled with such an onslaught of overdue emotion, that you've allowed your heart to sever itself partway instead, when you surrender your waking body to me."

His mouth curls up on one side, and his expression wears very strangely, more of a longing simper than a smirk. As if sensing the need for distance, Zexion withdraws a step, lowering his arms in resignation.

"We can't keep doing this, Ienzo. I don't exist anymore."

[throwingthebook]

It was all true, all of it. He never wanted any of this. Ienzo had an uncommonly long memory. He remembered things that most thought to be gone from their memories forever. He remembered his real father, tall and strong, always so skilled with his hands, a craftsman of toys. His mother, small and delicate, a great lover of books and the written word.

He remembered the fire.

He was trembling by the time Zexion gave him his space, hand pressed over his mouth to hide the gaping horror that surged within him. He was no hero. No on eds destined for greatness. He was a broken mind, a heart that had no idea how to wield its own light. But he wouldn't break down. Not in front of Zexion.

"...I still need you." He looked up, feeling incredibly small and alone and afraid. Not of his Nobody. Of the future. Of what it meant. "You're...the only one I can trust. You're part of me. I need both...I need the darkness and the light."

He straightened a bit, calming himself to where he could look Zexion in the eye. "I won't be like Dilan and keep you buried so deep it makes you angry. You're just as much a part of me as my heart."

[illicitresearch]

It was strange all over again, to be the only one he could trust- Lexaeus had confided in him once before, to that effect, and Zexion had been a little astonished to hear it, then. After all, was he not a schemer, a manipulator, an illusionist? How could he ever be relied upon as someone honest? Perhaps Lexaeus had been the one to con him into trying to honor that trust by pushing himself to become worthy of it

With his counterpart, at least, it didn't feel so very misplaced. Zexion could afford to be selfish, on Ienzo's behalf.

"(As though he needs the excuse to be angry.)" He chuckled below his breath, at the thought of Xaldin's brusqueness. "Yet you have sought me here, after all, because I have become a part of you that shouldn't be pushed to the surface? Isn't that right?" Zexion questions keenly, carefully monitoring Ienzo's body language, all of it speaking to a sense of insecurity. By contrast, the Nobody is aloof and observant, seemingly unflappable.

"Surely by now you understand that I am neither of those things?" He reasons, palms open, gesturing as if weighing darkness and light in each hand like a set of scales. "The darkness and the light reside within your heart, in meager measure, put away in tidy compartments, because you are hesitant to confront them. And I am all that you are, without their influence."

"You need to learn to trust your instincts again, and search your emotions for the guidance of all that I've made do without, for all these years. Perhaps now that you do possess a heart, you may finally unpack the contents of your old memories," Zexion advises, "And decide what you can still do constructively with them, or if they are feelings better let go of, to make room for something new."

[throwingthebook]

Insecure? Yes. Yes, he was. But if he couldn't trust himself, then who could he trust? The others had seen the worst in him. He had seen the very worst he was capable of. Zexion was nothing if brutally honest with him. He couldn't do this alone...but he had to put his trust in someone. Aeleus was the most well-adjusted of all of them... Perhaps he could confide in him, if no one else. Still, something wasn't sitting well with him, in regards to Zexion. Something was nagging at him, unwilling to simply let him go. His body language became far more relaxed, more trusting. If Zexion truly wished to attack him, he would have done so by now.

"...I'll try," he said quietly. "For both our sakes. But...what about you? What is it that you want?"

Ienzo couldn't imagine that Zexion truly wanted to sleep forever. If he truly was gone, if he were truly, fully reincorporated with him, then no amount of imagining or conjuring could summon him up. Not the way he was right now. Zexion was fully sentient, fully himself. Almost like an entity all his own. He didn't read like a tulpa or similar entity, and besides, he would have had to expend a lot of conscious, purposeful energy to create such a being. So here was a mystery, then, and one he was determined to solve.

[illicitresearch]

"Haven't I already told you that I want you to endure?" Zexion smiled, as if wryly amused by the question. Could Ienzo not bring himself to believe that the side of him still swathed in shadow and tucked into subconscious held no self-sabotaging ulterior motives?

"My time has passed." His shoulders sink in resignation, shaking his head. "...and good riddance! If I only could have returned to you sooner. I have robbed you of so many years, and it is my fiercest regret, if a Nobody can truly know such a feeling, that I cannot give them back to you."

The bracing strength of ten years of existing on sheer will to not fade out and become nothing, though, that he could loan forward as a gift.

Zexion's gloved hands rise again to Ienzo's shoulders, where they rest with a slight squeeze, leaning in with an intimate murmur.

"Cherish your wholeness, Ienzo. Explore the unfathomable richness of your heart's senses, and indulge in them to make up for all I have denied you. Be more</> and live well, as I never could, where I fell short of being enough."

[throwingthebook]

And yet for all of Zexion's protests and all his pretty words, Ienzo still had doubts. Not of his intentions, but of his motives. The touch is gentle, reassuring. He doesn't pull away. "That's what you want for me," he said quietly in response. "My question wasn't about me. What do you want for you?"

He reaches up, fingertips laying over where the Nobody's heart would be. He turns his head, looking at Zexion, blue eyes betraying his concern.

"Someone without a heart can't feel fear. You did. That wasn't my influence. It was you."

[illicitresearch]

"We don't need to be reminded of that!" Zexion snapped, glancing aside with a bit of tension straining in his throat. Fear was the primal, instinctive reaction to the unknown of a threat closing in. Of course it was something he could experience for himself, backed into corners and taunted while he could only muster weakness. His eyes darkened.

"How am I supposed to want anything more than that?" He sighed roughly, hanging his head. "I want to be avenged. I want to be forgiven....I want to earn it, not use deceit that can be found out and punished even further. I want to belong to something that, for once, will not fall to pieces all around me!" By the end of that, he's laughing hollowly at himself for how pathetic those wishes sound.

"But I want that all for you, Ienzo, I want you to carry it for me, because I have nothing left in me that you are not greater-than. Do you understand?" For that instant, he almost seems plaintive, reaching to cradle the side of Ienzo's face. "And I want to be able to trust you won't need me any longer, before I am forgotten completely."

[throwingthebook]

Ienzo's heart seized up. It was a reaction rubbed raw and aching from being newly anchored. He accepted the touch, even leaned into it, reaching up in return to touch Zexion's face in kind. "I forgive you," he said quietly. "You're not greater or less than any other part of me. But you're still a part of me."

He moved his hand to the side of Zexion's head, thumb in front of his ear, his other fingers nestled in his hair. "And if I'm going to avenge you, I'm going to need all of me together. Working together. If you'll work with me..."

[illicitresearch]

But did forgiving yourself mean anything at all?

Or maybe it meant the very most of all.

Perhaps that had been Riku's preservering strength. Or perhaps Riku merely had faith that a true friend would... and where Zexion had none he could depend on for that, he would have no other choice to turn to his own Somebody.

"I am yours." Zexion promised, equally softened, fingers moving to mirror Ienzo's, stroking a slow curl behind his ear, against his hair. He pressed into Ienzo's hand in turn, leaning into the touch as a housecat might. "For as long as you need to call upon me, I am here."