Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Golden eyes lazily gazed up at a heart-shaped moon, it’s light the only thing to know in this star-less sky. The light of other worlds did not reach this one, sheltered in the cleft between realms, on the precipice of the abyss of darkness. Yet seldom did that darkness, that inviting sea, reach out. This world was nothing. It’s denizens nothing. It’s past, it’s present, it’s future. All naught.

Occasionally crystalline hearts would rise, aggregating together.

The silver-haired man watched them. All he was left to do, now that his plans were set in motion. He watched them impassively, a sense of longing, long since buried attempting to make itself known. He had lived the lie for so long, he’d wondered how much of it had become truth. 

His mind moves back, sifting through the memories of his current life. This organization, this plan.

‘The strength of the human heart is vast. Soon, though...we will have gained power over it! Never again will it...have power over us.’ A declaration he had spoken to those that remained. Hearts. Hearts would be theirs. And with those hearts, the power to control them. New hearts, a new world.

He closed his eyes. Resigning himself to a truth seldom few knew. Through these 12 vessels, would his original self be reborn. A sigh escapes his lips, recognition of a plan long abandoned. Their numbers had dwindled. Traitors had been routed, and the key-bearer took care of those still loyal. Like his other self, the plan had failed. Recollection of a year ago flashes through his mind, of the memories he had lifted from the Keyblade’s chosen. Of his conflict with Ansem. How his other had chosen a different path than the one laid out before them, one of unending darkness.

Ansem.

Why was it in this new existence did he still yet cling to that name? Why was it that despite everything, despite all that he had remembered did that name hold so much weight? Did he in some ways feel sentimentality towards the name in which his own derives? After all, Xemnas, that name, was the first and perhaps only thing he had ever chose.

“Reminiscing again, old man?” The sudden appearance of a guest roused the Organization’s leader. Shadow weaving into a portal, from which appeared the form of Xigbar. A half-smirk always present on his face.

The ‘old man’ turned to face him, his face as unreadable as it always was. “You have news?” His gaze appeared to almost look through his underling, there was hardly anything behind his eyes.

Xigbar lifts his arms into a shrug. “Nothin’ good.” He places a hand on his hip and casts his one good eye up to the moon. “Xaldin’s done for.” A moment passes as the weight of those words are considered.

Anyone else would mourn. Dilan, no, Xaldin. Had been with them since the beginning. There were now two apprentices remaining. The mind of the superior once again begins to sift through memories. In his previous life, Xaldin turned his studies towards the effects of love on the heart. How feelings may influence it. It’s no wonder the Beast was of such interest to him. Yet, Xemnas had never inquired into his studies. Perhaps some part of him had erred? Could this fate have been averted had he connected? Vague flashes of companionship appear to him, fleeting. A wooden Keyblade and a blonde-haired boy. An abyss of darkness and a falling friend.

He would often times sit, and converse with the former. An attempt to reach her, to find out her secrets. But... Xemnas couldn't help but linger sometimes, longer than he should have. It felt odd, having to choose which memories to reminisce over. Was that the word? Did he truly find himself favouring the memories of that man... On either side of himself, all he could recall was loss. Yet some of those memories rang warmer than the other. Was this... feeling...?

No. It did not matter. Nothing mattered.

“Ahem.” Xigbar verbalises a cough. “Earth to Xemnas. You still in there?” He dramatically leans forward with a practiced joviality.

Xemnas continues to stare through Xigbar, and slowly turns once more to face Kingdom Hearts. “The plan… adjusts.” His arms begin to raise in dramatic fashion, venerating the aggregating power before him. “Where my other self failed… I shall succeed.”

A snarl grows over Xigbar’s face.

“We need yet more hearts.” His arms lower. “Return to your duties. Continue to lead the Keybearer to Heartless.”

Xigbar crosses his arms. “Just want to make sure… In this new world of yours, our deal is still on?” He referred to the Keyblade. How it was promised to him. “Just want to make sure that memory hasn’t got all jumbled up inside of there.” He doesn’t wait for a response as he turns to walk into a forming dark portal, giving a lazy backhand wave to his superior.

Yes. That memory. He desired that which Xemnas had lost. That which would be his again. Casting himself into darkness, splitting himself in two, had rendered the Keyblade unavailable to either of his selves. “I wonder…” Xemnas reaches a had up, as if to grasp a rising heart.

A feeling. Desire.

“Perhaps one of these hearts… is you…?” The superior of the in-between couldn’t quite decide who he was speaking of. The Keyblade master? The foolish researcher? Himself?

Where once stood unreadable in-difference, was now just, difference.

Xehanort.

Terra.

Ansem.

Those names mattered naught to Xemnas now.

His arms once again raise, this time a declaration. “I shall make a new world. One heart at a time. Through my non-existence shall I truly live!”

Chapter Text

I’ve never had my own name, y’know? It was so long ago now that the Master granted us names, and purpose. And once again decades on do I yet again see another, granting names, and purpose.

This is the third time the name and purpose of this body has shifted.

“You wish to become a Nobody once more?” The old man’s younger self had asked, those golden eyes peering right through me. “Even though you carry a fragment of myself already…?” He had asked for curiosity, not because he cared.

I chuckled. “Call it insurance.” And I left it there. I had my own goals, of which the kid was well aware. But who was he to stop me? The old man’s plan was doomed, and I needed an out when I had seen my role fulfilled.

It was some time ago now that I approached the old man, the second time anyway. I had desired power, darkness, the Keyblade. Once he had seen his plan through, it would be mine. I laughed again to myself as I look over this field of dead keys. As if. White energy flashes in my hand, and his Keyblade appears, blue hilt and silver blade. Looking just as it was, all those decades ago.

I wonder. If I just reached out, would the Gazing Eye, would ‘No Name’ reach back? They say Keyblades choose their wielders. I wonder then, what did the Master’s think of me? Did it desire reunion as much as I?

I trace a hand over the tip of this one. “Do you miss your owner?” My words were laced with venom, though for who I could not say. All my life I had taken, taken weapons, taken bodies, took entire lives. My thoughts couldn’t help but turn back to that life, idle musings. When I first met Xehanort.

Not that he knew of course.

It was my hope to live that life out. It was a shame the little guy had to go, but some part of me had wanted to do right by the name I had so brazenly stolen.

Heh. As if.

Nothing ever goes to plan. I’ve learned that by this point. 10 years ago, the old man failed, and I had to watch as he clawed back some semblance of self. He killed me a year later of course. But nothing I hadn’t experienced already. Watching the other apprentices have their hearts ripped out was just a Tuesday for me. Yet, when I saw him go for Ienzo…

My hand gripped the Keyblade even tighter. It had been so long now. But I still can’t get them out of my head.

A part of me was genuinely saddened. I had seen it time and time again. Loss, that is. Fools rushing in head-first, and others paying the price, or just senseless tragedy. I had seen it all in my long, long life. But I suppose it’s a bit different. The Master didn’t want me to interfere, but through that Gazing Eye of his he clearly knew I had. I had to. I had to know if he was the one.

After I ‘died’, I hung back and watched. I can tell you the exact moment when Xehanort’s path was set. When our master ordered him to cut down one of his friends, the future was clear. It was doomed to repeat, teachers leading their students astray. I watched on as best friends tore each other apart, and Xehanort ventured into the dark.

I suppose in some ways I can relate to the old man. We both lost our families. I wonder then, should he gain the power of Kingdom Hearts, would he bring them back? All those we both lost…?

I laughed. “Would be one heck of a reveal when Bragi don’t show up.” I muttered to myself, a sly smile appearing on my lips. “But that’s where we’re different old man.” I tossed the old Keyblade away, caring not where it landed. “I’m so far ahead of you, we’re not even on the same path.”

At the end of this war, I would be reunited with my friends. The lost masters would return. These centuries of solitude would be worth it.

Every time I spoke I could almost feel the fragment of the old man tearing away on the inside. He liked to make it seem like he was omniscient, that he could watch us through it, but it was a ruse. Saix’s duplicity and Ansem’s indifference spoke to that fact. But I just couldn’t help myself. Perhaps I had inherited a fondness for theatrics. To gloat near the very stage of Xehanort’s impending failure.

The grand labyrinth beneath my feet shall be unearthed, and in it I shall disappear. I will once again wait. Wait just a little bit longer.

My long vigil will reach its end.

Chapter Text

Xaldin had been here many times before. Or rather, Dilan had been. A field of flowers, surrounded by water, and a view of a world that seemed to stretch on infinitely. This time though, was different. He hadn’t been here since the witch spread her foul magicks across the land, submerging it in the water he once desperately sought to cross.

In front of him, a view downriver of endless blue cliffs, not a drop of water in sight.

Behind him, a half-built facsimile of the castle he once called home.

And at his feet… “Decay.” One would think Xaldin’s aged face had a look of scorn about it, were it not for his lack of heart. No. Any emotion he deigned show was the same as the world he found himself in, a poor facsimile of better times.

Was it truly better though? The whirlwind lancer would often reminisce on the man he once was, who Dilan was. Some part of him desired to return, to reclaim that which he once lost. But in times like this, he wondered what purpose did that truly serve him?

“Tis all a folly.” He closes his eyes as a wind picks up, carrying with it the dead remains of flowers untended.

There was a girl once. A girl who lived in the castle. “Ah…” His eyes open with recollection. Shortly before their superior had arrived, he remembered the girl having snuck off, to once again gather flowers. An unbecoming smile threatened to creep onto his face, but an uncontained snarl quickly cast it aside.

“All of her effort, all of her love.” He takes a step off of the cracked pavement, and onto the aged dirt. “And this is what it amounted to.” Love withers, and then dies of course. “Love never lasts.”

But then, what is this obsession he now feels? For his own heart, is it not love?

Such questions were of course, not looked fondly on in the Superior’s organization. While they desired a return to what they once were, they were not permitted the luxury of ‘desire’. But was it not a feeling in and of itself to be empty? Xaldin supposed ‘feeling’ was at times physical, as much as it was emotional. He had hardly considered the difference when he was once whole.

He brought up his hand, gazing into his palm. Was the physical feeling of pain, and the frustration one ‘feels’ after not interlinked? Was the skip of one’s heart, when it flutters with love at the sight of another, not one and the same? Xaldin chuckles emptily at the thought. Such considerations were for who he was, not who he is. Though his mind can’t help but turn to another place. Not the silent castle in which he and his compatriots lurked, nor the ruins of what came before that looms over him.

No, his mind turns to a place nestled within forbidden woods, where the emotional lack of love itself turns into physical anguish.

“Hmph.” He lets out a noise of displeasure, though he’s unable to fully swat away the thought. The castle had become a prison for the Beast within, an arrogant beast who now yearns for that which he pushes away. A beast who obsesses over a single object, a withering, wilting rose encased in a prison of glass.

There was no better metaphor for the heart.

Xaldin was living proof of that. The rose inside had long since withered away, no doubt having become a being of shadow summarily destroyed by the key bearer. Yet he remained. He closes his hand, balling it into a fist and digging, as if to puncture a very hole in his palm.

Pain. But no frustration.

Perhaps what he truly ‘desired’ was nothing at all. He had been loyal thus far, willing to go along with whatever his superior had deemed necessary. And much like this garden he had once tended, he did so with nary a complaint.

Much like the garden, withered and dead, he had watched the Organization, wither and die. Was this all he was?

A soldier in another man’s game?

What gave another the right to determine whether or not he should exist.

Six whirling lances appear around him, churning up the wind in the garden. Seldom remains tethered to the ground as dead petals shoot up in the air, scattering to places unknown. Except for a small bright bundle, bright yellow, red and pink.

Xaldin turns to face them, face as serious as ever. “Ah… Those would be…” Dilan did not like anyone picking from his master’s garden. It was his job to tend it, and he would protect it just as much as he did the gates to the castle. Yet he never stopped that little girl from taking as she pleased. Perhaps her living in the castle made her too familiar for him to deny, perhaps he saw how much she loved the flowers.

Love.

There’s that word again. Some part of him wondered, had he made love itself his own prison? Was he no different to that beast, skulking around in the shadows desiring that which is denied to him? “Love, withers, and dies.” He closes his eyes and lifts his head to the scattering winds. Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps he ought to experience it for himself, before truly deciding. The Whirlwind Lancer turned away from the desolate garden, away from the only remaining vestige of light that remained in it. Dilan would have wanted to see it flourishing, for it to be rebuilt alongside the castle.

But perhaps it wouldn’t. It wasn’t for Xaldin to know. Not in this life.

A black-clad arm raises, a portal of darkness forming as the man walks away from the light and once again into the cleft of nothing. This life knew naught but the tight grip of a lance, and with that tight grip would he test the resolve of another’s love. 

Only after he had truly determined the folly of that love, could he truly lament that which he was, or wasn’t.

Chapter Text

Becoming a Nobody was an odd experience. I seldom remember the events leading to it, it was all a blur. The moments leading to my demise are… vague. All I know is shortly after our home found itself occupied by a certain witch… and retrieving notes for my research became all the more difficult, our old laboratories and offices becoming lost in a labyrinth of festering darkness. What I do keenly remember is waking up. There was a short period where we, the apprentices had scattered, awaking in different worlds from one another. Much like some of the others I had awoken in a world of twilight. We Nobodies are denied both the light, and the dark, thus we find ourselves trapped in-between. I walked through the dense woods I had found myself, towards a most interesting mansion.

It was odd. I hadn’t seemed to care much at all about anything.

Before I made it to the threshold of the forest, a portal of darkness appeared before me. And from it stepped Xehanort, or rather, Xemnas. I laugh to myself. We had known him barely a year and he had chosen to so gleefully steal the name of our master. So consumed were we by the pursuit of knowledge that we didn’t stop him. Masquerading as the ruler of our world suited our needs fine. It’s only now several years on that I recognise the boon I have been given. Before, my experiments were restrained by ethics, the matters of the heart would forever elude those who had them. Our feelings, our hesitations staying our hands right on the cusp of true knowing. With my heart emptied, and my mind free, I consigned myself to my work.

To be honest, a part of me forgot why I had started in the first place. What motivated my original self? Would he have done what I have? My tired eyes glance over my latest creation, another replica. This time of the key bearer’s friend. Hearts I had found, contained memories. While it’s true that our physical brains access those memories, and pair them to logic, to reason, memory was much more than that. If you remove the heart from body, both keep their memories. Strange, isn’t it?

I move to note down some of my observations. I had a hypothesis. One I had kept to myself, perhaps to covet or perhaps in fear of what this information could amount to.

I was a Nobody. A being without a heart. Yet, I remember my previous life. I am still motivated by the goals of my previous self; in fact I consider myself no different to my previous self. When a being has the memories of another, what makes them different? Where did Even stop, and Vexen begin? Xemnas after all gave us our new names, to represent how we needed to return to our original states of being. But truly, I don’t believe this form to be disadvantageous.

Through this boy’s memories I discovered something interesting. A puppet. A man-made thing with a heart! Truly fascinating. Was it given? Was it stolen? No. It couldn’t have been, that thing did not have the capabilities. This leads me to but one conclusion.

“He had grown a heart.”

My eyes narrow, reading over my notes time and time again, glancing frantically back to the new replica I had laboured over. “Would this happen to you…?” I pull up my data on No. i. That puppet was made up of memories, she was designed to siphon them from our serendipitous thirteenth member. But, through those memories, and the new ones she makes… would she truly become alive?

If this replica before me differed so drastically from his original, would he too, gain self-hood? I glance over to a device in the corner of the room, slowly turning. An artificial heart created from memories, slowly growing stronger, almost strong enough for implantation. “Even if he was to believe himself the original, his path would diverge significantly. I wonder then… what would his heart look like?”

I do not believe the boy… the replica, would be capable of creating a Nobody. Not like I had done, his body after all was artificial. It truly belonged to no realm whatsoever. “And what of you… Xion…?” In this basement I was cut off from Saix and Xemnas’ updates on the girl, they were to monitor her until I returned. “I wonder if it’s begun then…” A smile, a genuine smile creeps onto my lips. I had done it. I had created life. I laugh, no, I cackle.

“I have outdone you Master!” I raise my arms in jubilation, in victory. “The mysteries of the heart are  mine to know!” Once the Keybearer is ours, the superior will surely see the fruits  of my labour.

But then…

“Surely…” I lower my arms, crossing them. “What of us?” We had long since resigned ourselves to the fact our emotions were in some manner, fake. We remember what it’s like to feel, and thus imitate that, a sense of being for the non-existant. Yet, in this moment, I think I truly feel, I feel multiple things, all at once.

Joy for the fruits of my long research.

Pride for the life I have created in that girl.

Anger, at the lie we have been told.

“I must know!” A frantically take a seat and sift through files on the screen. As far back as our days as apprentices. I know not how long it takes me, how long I sit there, consumed by my own writings. Did Xemnas know? Did our superior know the entire time that we could reclaim hearts? As we speak a witch in the upper floors’ toys with the memories of that boy, with the…

Connections.

I chuckle once more. That was the missing piece. Through new memories, through our connections with others we can regrow that which we lost. Just like that puppet had. The love he and his father felt was so genuine, it resulted in a burgeoning heart to sprout from nothing. Xemnas had downplayed our emotions, our feelings, our connections with another at every turn. He had insisted we continue our research separate. He wanted us separated. Pairing us with our thirteenth member and sending us here was unprecedented. Was he stifling the growth of our hearts intentionally?

“I wonder then, Xemnas… How will you handle her…?” Another smile appears, I wonder if this is how that puppets father felt. Though, I suppose it was rather different. His love for his creation did not rely on it being alive, no, he derived joy from the sheer act of creating, the outcome was but a bonus. But it was clear his emotions were true. “Perhaps I should… encourage her more, once I return.” Was this fondness?

No. i did remind of Zexion’s former self… Perhaps I had grown sentimental, perhaps this is what I lost over the years.

I don’t read the last report as it appears on my screen, instead I stand. The heart was finally ready for implantation.

The boy's parents did not survive the incident.

We have chosen to take him under our wing in the castle. It's rather unorthodox, for the Master to appoint someone so young as an apprentice. It is our hope we can distract the boy from his loss, there is a bright mind underneath his silent stares.

This past week has instilled in me a new desire, one that I hope to pitch to our master. Perhaps the boys parents need not remain deceased? I do not seek to resurrect the dead, but to create new life that his parents can inhabit. I believe memories to be the key. Through memories we can live forever.

For now I shall title it simply: The Replica Project.

- Even