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Demyx is something of an annoyance. Or what Ienzo was taught to view as an annoyance, anyway. He exhibits all the behaviors Ienzo would have been scolded for as a boy: he talks while Ansem works; he touches everything in the lab without asking; he asks questions and then does not bother to listen to their answers.
Paradoxically, Ienzo finds his presence a comfort. So much of his home in Radiant Garden is the same. On the first day after his return, Ienzo found, to his surprise, that his old room in the castle was unchanged from when this world fell into darkness, aside from a thin layer of dust. His books were as he left them, neat on his shelf. His notes were the same, pages upon pages filled with Ienzo’s childish scrawl. His bed, which had once been too big, was now cramped when Ienzo sat down on it.
His fingers tightened in the sheets. He didn’t have a word for what he was feeling, the persistent ache located just below his ribcage. Some kind of antithesis to nostalgia. Missing what could have been, not what was. Ienzo should have grown up in this room. He should have grown older here. He should have been here to put away his childish things. But destiny bent another way. He grew up in the Castle That Never Was, and never felt the need to collect things on a shelf, because he felt nothing.
So he does not mind Demyx chattering incessantly. It’s nice to have something that is inarguable in its difference. A true change. Proof that time has passed in Ienzo’s absence, and that nothing will make that any less true. If that something is going to be Demyx, peering over Ienzo’s shoulder as he and Ansem the Wise do their work, well, nothing in this life has ever been what Ienzo expects.
“That’s all that can be done for now,” Ansem says, finally. Roxas’s face looks odd in sleep. Ienzo supposes it isn’t even Roxas, right now. Simply a vessel, primed with data, ready to accept a new heart. And he isn’t sleeping. He is simply nothing. Ienzo feels a sudden burst of sympathy, coming upon him all at once. He closes his eyes against it. “Sora will have to do the rest, when the time is right.”
Demyx leans in closer, nearly toppling Ienzo over. “What, seriously? You’re just gonna leave him all half-baked?”
Ansem, in his wisdom, blithely ignores him. “I am going to retire for the evening,” he says. “I suggest you do the same, Ienzo.”
“Yes,” Ienzo says, only barely biting back the master at the end of it. It would be presumptuous, after everything that’s happened. Ansem may have said all is forgiven, but Ienzo knows better.
“Oh, come on,” Demyx says, halfway across the room now, squinting at the computer console. “It’s not even that late. And we have so much to catch up on!”
In truth, the prospect of returning to his dusty room, to his empty and too small bed, does not greatly appeal to Ienzo. “What do you suggest instead?”
Demyx puts his hands on his hips and leans in. “Well, you’re the local. Don’t you think it’s your responsibility to show me around?”
Of course, Ienzo’s knowledge of Radiant Garden is that of a boy; he leads Demyx to the ice cream stand several blocks away from the castle. They take it to the fountain to eat, Demyx sitting cross-legged on the rim and trailing his free hand in the water, glove haphazardly yanked off and tossed to the ground.
“So,” he says, biting into his ice cream and talking through it, “how’s the being alive thing treating you?”
Ienzo peers down at his ice cream. He hadn’t realized, but it’s been over a decade since he’s tasted it. He takes a small cautious bite. It’s no different. It tastes precisely the same. They clearly haven’t changed the recipe. He blinks against the way that makes his stomach curdle, the same persistent ache from before.
“Hello,” Demyx says. “Earth to Zexion!” When Ienzo looks up, he’s waving a wet hand in his face, scattering water droplets everywhere.
“Apologies,” Ienzo says. “And it’s Ienzo.”
“Oh, okay. Huh. Never would’ve guessed that one.”
“And you?” Ienzo forces himself to take another bite of the ice cream. It’s good. Of course it’s good: there is no reason for Ienzo’s tastes to have changed, now that he is whole again. He is not truly a different person than he was the day he lost his heart, no matter how different he feels.
“Same old Demyx! You know how it is. Woke up back home, and then the old man showed up, gave me the whole spiel, and, I mean. It wasn’t like I was really getting much done as a Somebody anyway. And I kind of missed this.” He spreads his fingers with an unnecessary flourish, and the water from the fountain rises up to meet him, something almost eager about the way it moves. Ienzo finds himself fascinated. “So I figured, why not!”
“And yet you have defected,” Ienzo says. “So, that does beg the question: why not?”
Demyx sighs. “Everyone on that side is so mean,” he says. “Larxene compared me to a cereal bowl, can you believe it? Like I was going to stick around for that. I mean, Vexen had to talk me into it, but I made my delivery, didn’t I? Safe and sound! You guys couldn’t have done it without me!”
Demyx’s excitement is infectious. “I see,” Ienzo says. He realizes that he is smiling. Larxene’s sharp tongue had always amused him, on some level. He had tried and failed to emulate her on many occasions. “Well, now that you’re here, I’m sure between Ansem and Even and I, we can find a way to recomplete you again. It’s the least we can do, after you helped us begin the process of restoring Roxas.”
“Woah woah woah,” Demyx says, holding his hands up. “Hold up. Who said anything about recompleting me? I’m good the way I am.”
Ienzo looks up from his ice cream, furrowing his brow. “What?”
“I’m good! Not a care in the world.” He wiggles his fingers demonstratively.
“You would...prefer to be without a heart.”
“Oh, we do too have hearts,” Demyx says, dismissive. “We always did, whatever Xemnas said.”
“I don’t understand. Isn’t there anything in your past you want to return to? Something you want to do again, or do differently, or fix?”
Demyx shrugs. “The old life wasn’t much to write home about, really. That guy was kind of a loser.”
Ienzo stares at him. When he was Zexion, he would have given anything to be whole again. To reclaim the hazy memories he had of what it felt like to be alive, crying when he skinned his knee, laughing when Braig read him a story and did the voices, smiling when Ansem told him that he had done well. He did give everything trying to get that. He gave up himself, all the ideals he once held dear. He became cruel, sharpened to a purpose, and it was all for nothing; just another foolish mistake. He clenches his hands on his knees, digging his fingernails into the fabric. “Our goal—the goal Xemnas led us to believe in—all we wanted was to be whole again.”
“Yeah, being whole has so many benefits, clearly,” Demyx says. He leans in close and—pokes Ienzo in the face, too quickly for him to do anything but blink. And then blink again, when he realizes what Demyx means, the tears running down his cheeks. He’d forgotten what it felt like. What this particular ache behind his eyes signified. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” Ienzo says. He presses his hand delicately to his cheek, the place where Demyx touched him, where the tear tracks are drying. “Yes. I don’t know. This has been...a confusing time for me.”
“Yeah, I’ll say,” Demyx says, apparently unconcerned now. He leans back, as if nothing important transpired at all. “Vexen explained some of it to me and I’m pretty sure I still don’t get it.”
Ienzo stares curiously down at his fingers. “We’ve been given a gift,” he says. “Another chance at life. You would really throw that away?”
“I’m a go with the flow kind of guy. Things aren’t so bad now, so why mess it up?”
“What a curious way of looking at things.” Ienzo has never been without a purpose. Even as a boy, he wanted to do his work well, to please his teachers. As Zexion, he wanted to become himself again, body and heart. And now, all he wants is to make everything right. To act with intention, the way that he should have when he was young.
“So what are things like here? What’s so important? I mean, recompleting Roxas I get, I guess. Give the kid a chance, sure. But what now?”
Ienzo curls his fingers, and presses them to the cool stone of the fountain, bowing his head. “I need to atone for what I did. What we all did.”
Demyx squints at him. “Huh. Vexen said the same thing. What is it with you guys and this atonement thing? Is that part of the scientific method now?”
“We committed a terrible crime—”
“Weren’t you like, five?”
“I was nine,” Ienzo says stiffly.
“Okay,” Demyx says slowly, drawing the word out. “So, I know it’s not really any of my business, but I feel like you’re not the one with anything to atone for?”
“You don’t have a full grasp of the situation. I betrayed Ansem—”
“You were a kid! When I was a kid I thought if I fell out of my treehouse enough times I would learn to fly. Kids are dumb, it’s part of the whole deal!”
Ienzo blinks at him. He can imagine it. As a child, Ienzo was never much given to whimsy. “And of course you don’t believe that anymore.”
“Duh. Apparently you need fairy dust or something. Look, that’s not the point.”
Ienzo draws his knees up, wrapping an arm around them. He is suddenly very cold, though the weather has not changed. “And what is the point, then?” His sentences are growing shorter, his words sharper. Zexion speaking through him. Perhaps he is not entirely gone. Perhaps he never will be.
“The point is that literally none of this is your fault, and it’s kind of messed up that Ansem the Asshole let you think it is!” Demyx’s hands never stop moving. When he gestures this time, he creates a small wave in the fountain. It doesn’t appear to be intentional. An autonomic reaction, like his labored breathing and flushed cheeks.
When he can find the breath to speak, Ienzo’s voice is small. It reminds him of the first halting words he spoke, months into his stay at Radiant Garden’s castle. After the death of his parents, he did not speak for a long time. “Why are you being so nice to me?” That isn’t what he meant to say. He meant to trace their conversation back, to find the words that would make Demyx see the truth of who Ienzo is and what he’s done. Instead, he can feel his voice breaking. “Zexion was not kind to you. I was not kind to anyone. I have to atone for that, too.”
“Eh.” Demyx lays down against the rim of the fountain, drawing one leg up and resting his arms behind his head. “You had nothing on Larxene, trust me.”
“That’s not exactly a high bar.”
Demyx laughs. What an odd sound from a Nobody. “Okay, but still. It’s a new you! If you want to be nice now, no complaints here, but you don’t have to make such a big deal of it. You really need to lighten up, you know?”
Ienzo feels his lips curving. “You sound like Sora.”
“Huh. Seriously?” Demyx doesn’t sound entirely happy with the comparison. “Didn’t he kill you too?”
“No. Axel holds that dubious honor. Or the Riku Replica, depending on how one looks at it.” Ienzo has been trying not to think of it. The terror of that moment—
Not that he should have been able to feel terror at all.
“Damn, Axel really did a number on us, huh. Vexen was so mad about getting burnt to a crisp. Or maybe that was all part of the act? Ugh, I really do not get any of this.” Demyx brings his bare hand up. He twirls his fingers, the fountain’s water moving in time, and hums to himself as if he is conducting a full orchestra. Ienzo does not recognize the song, but the light streaming through the water is beautiful.
“Are you truly happy? Staying the way you are?” Ienzo cannot remember a time he did not want to change who he was. Demyx is fascinating, in the way of a natural phenomena whose origins elude Ienzo’s understanding. He wants, with stunning clarity, to understand. That feeling, at least, is familiar.
“Sure,” Demyx says. His symphony comes to a crescendo, and the water falls back into its proper place. “Not sure I can stay here, though. Benched or not, someone might come looking for me. I am not interested in getting into a fight.” He sits up. “So, one other question.”
“Yes?” Ienzo isn’t sure he can stomach any more of this...dissection of his own self. Of all the things he knows—the things he believes to be true about his own life. But he is a scientist. He’s meant to answer questions.
“Why do you wear your hair like that?”
Ienzo touches his bangs. “Habit, I suppose.” He cannot remember ever wearing it differently. “Why do you wear yours like that?”
“Uh, ‘cause it looks awesome,” Demyx says. “This is a good look. I get it if you can’t tell. Must be hard to see like that, right?”
The laughter takes Ienzo by surprise, and the inertia carries him through: once he’s started, he finds he cannot stop until he is bent over, clutching his knees, gasping for air at the utter absurdity of it all.
Demyx is laughing too. Ienzo’s ribs hurt for a new reason entirely.
They’ve both long finished their ice cream. Ienzo finds that he is looking forward to having it again. The memories associated with it will be less tainted, now. He didn’t realize he could do that. Demyx stretches and yawns, arms above his head. “Well, good talk,” he says. “But I should probably be getting back. Xehanorts to avoid the wrath of, you know how it is.”
Ienzo is struck all at once by the memory of Sora, a few days ago now, and the way his face fell when he realized it was Ienzo on the phone instead of Riku. That desire to see a particular face above all others. It’s not one Ienzo is familiar with.
He grabs Demyx’s wrist as he begins to rise. “Wait,” he says, speaking again without thought. “Don’t go.”
Demyx stares at him, face startled into total blankness. For the first time, Ienzo truly believes that he is speaking to a Nobody. And then Demyx breaks into a smile.
It seems he had the right idea all along: they always had hearts.
“Sure,” Demyx says. He sits back down, doing a poor job of hiding how pleased he is to be asked for. “I mean, if you really want.”
Perhaps their studies into the mysteries of the heart had been wrong-headed from the very beginning. They were so terribly interested in the heart as a passive object to be dissected and diagramed. They did not think to study its motion, the way that it puts down roots, or even grows again from nothing. Ienzo is a scientist still; that will always be who he is. But it is never too late to find new ways of understanding.