Genre: Drama, angst
Ships?: Hinted Axel/Roxas/Xion
→Familyships?: Vexen&Xion
Characters: Xion, Vexen, Axel, Roxas
→Mentions: Sora, Xemnas, Ienzo (OC)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None!
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or any related characters. This was written out of enjoyment of the series, and no profit is being made.
Music: Didn't Know I'd Love You So Much from Repo! The Genetic Opera
Notes: Whooo, more of that KtH AU silliness! Not that this has yet happened in the roleplay, but it was an idea that crossed my mind. Whoops.
But I Do
"Vexen!" VEXEN!" Her next word jolts out from her mouth, exactly her how her arm jolts from the handle of her keyblade slamming into Sora's jaw. "DAD!" The brown-haired boy stumbles away from her, and Xion thinks she sees red, but that doesn't matter. Nothing else matters, not even Axel's voice calling her as she begins to run. The only thing which has any meaning at all is a person in black, laying amongst shattered ice and frozen pillars.
With each step, the memories that aren't hers (she refuses, she refuses) try to assault her. They plague her already fragile sense of self, raise questions she doesn't want the answer to... But if there's one thing, just one thing she knows after all this time...
Seven steps in, and the floor turns icy. It's not an obstacle, however, not when there's a shield pin in her hair, a blue aura twisting from her heels, and her clothes are mixed black and turquoise. Because of one of his gifts to her, one of many, she flows across the ice with ease. It's either too long or too quick, and her mind can't tell how long it takes for her to fall to her knees besides the scientists. A noise of despair leaks from her throat at the sight of him.
Vexen's skin has always been slightly pale, but now it's positively deathly so. Ice spiderwebs across his coat and his throat while gently gathering by his eyelids as well. Those sharp green eyes she knows so well, once brilliant in their intelligence and pride, are misty and can barely stay open. As fog slips form his lips, Xion has to bite back a sob, especially when he makes a small, shuddering sound. Gently, she pulls him onto her lap and lets her cloak flow past her shoulders. Brushing her hand through hsi hair, she somehow finds a way to use her voice. "Dad, be still. There is nothing you need say-" Her voice shakes. "It can wait." It can, it can, there has to be a way to...
"Xion..." With a deep, shuddering breath, Vexen opens his eyes just a little more. "The Garden's... calling me..."
The Garden... Radiant Garden... The place all the elders had grown up in, that beautiful world she'd heard stories about. Xion squeezes her eyes shut and holds Vexen close. She understands, yet doesn't want to.
Beyond the icy area Vexen had created in his defiance of the Superior, she can hear the others, their breathing, their rustling. There's Sora, with all his friends, and she wonders what he thinks of this, if he feels as she feels. No... She doubts that. This isn't his dad dying in her arms... Then there's the tiny splinter of Nobodies who had started the path of denying Xemnas, Axel at its head. Even Zexion's Heartless is hiding in the shadows. Maybe he...
Oh so carefully, Xion lowers Vexen back to her lap, tears gathering in her eyes. "Sometimes, I wanted to cry," she whispers, "when people elsewhere were not quite the way we were. Somehow..." One of her hands gently reaches up, brushing past the chains of her open cloak to press against her left breast. If she tries, she thinks she can feel her heartbeat. "...I guess I just knew."
Vexen is not the type to regret few of his actions, but now, there's some regret in his expression, some sadness. It vanishes when she takes a hold of his face and rests their foreheads together. The tears in her eyes begin to slip down her cheeks, but freeze before they can begin to fall. "But I didn't know I'd love you so much." Xion can feel her voice begin to choke, and stops it from happening. "I didn't know I'd love you so much." Barely able to stand what's happening, she closes her eyes again, and feels the ice sting against her skin. "I didn't know I'd love you so much..." Can't be a coward, can't be, have to open my eyes- "But I do."
Something deep within her chest is shaking, threatening to break her apart, but then there's a soft touch on her face, brushing away ice crystals. It hurts, both physically and otherwise, to open her eyes, but she does anyway to stare into green. In this condition, it must hurt terrible to speak, but he does anyway. "Sometimes I'd stay up all night," he confesses, voice rough and dragging itself from his throat, "hoping to Light you wouldn't be the next to die." He erupts into harsh coughing, curling up in pain. Words are already trying to come from her, pleas for him to stay still, but then his hand is dropping down to her shoulder and squeezing it slightly. "And sometimes there's not enough time..." He smiles, bitterly, at this, as if reflecting on his life up to this moment, before it falls away, and he stares right into her teary eyes. "But I didn't know I'd love you so much... I didn't know I'd love you so much." A slightly pained gasp and he almost curls up again. Holding back more tears, Xion can only listen as he admits, "I didn't know.. I'd love you so much... But I do."
"Didn't know I'd love you so much," Xion whispers back, her own grip tightening as well. She never wants to let him go.
"Didn't know I'd love you so much," Vexen murmurs, smiling in soft incredulity at himself. She is something he had never thought himself of wanting, but now that he does...
"Didn't know I'd love you so much," is said together, at last, parent to child, however unlikely, "but I do."
Carefully, and shaking worse and worse by the second, Vexen brings one of his hands up to her cheek, cupping it. "Xion, go..."
With one hand still holding him up by his shoulders, Xion grasps his hand with her other and shakes her head, sobbing slightly. "Dad, I will not leave you here!" she cries, not caring who hears. "You will live..." If only saying it made it true.
The words make him close his eyes, and suddenly, he smiles. It's small, not easily noticeable, but somehow, it makes him look different from the man she's known all this time. "But you've already saved me, dear," he tells her, voice just as small and quiet as his smile. Slowly, he opens his eyes for one last time, and his thumb brushes aside some of her hair. Even as he's speaking, his form is fading, becoming nothing more than wisps of darkness and smoke. "Now go and change the worlds... for me..."
Their voices echo one another, if only for just a moment. "And we will always have each other in our time of need..."
"Daddy," she whispers, and then he's fading, turning to nothing in her hands no matter how hard she tries to keep a hold on him. The tears are coming faster now, too hot and burning to be frozen. His voice is disappearing with him, even as he says her name.
"Xion... You're the world.."
"To me," she says with him, even though it's now just her voice, and her, alone in the cold. There's nothing, anymore, not a hint of a black coat that she remembers clinging to so she could keep her balance, all that time long ago, or bright green which would brighten whenever she got something right, or... or...
The tears are pouring down faster without a stop in sight, and Xion can only sit there on her knees, hugging herself and not making a sound. Nobodies... always claiming they want hearts, but now... but now... Oh, Darkness below do emotions hurt. They twist inside and tear apart and... and...
Two pairs of boots are crunching across the ice, and for a minute, she almost thinks she hears the crackle of flame before something smacks into something else, maybe a hand against an arm, and there's whispering she doesn't bother to make out. All she knows is the pain in her chest, the loss of Vexen, and how she's curling her knees up to her chest, shaking with sobs. A warm arm is suddenly around her shoulder, and a different set of hands are on her back. Even before she looks up from behind her bangs, she knows who the two are. "I want him back," she chokes out, the tears dripping onto her clothes and slowly melting away the ice. Neither of them have anything to say to that; Axel only tugs her close and let's her cry into his coat while Roxas hugs her tight to help ease the pain.
I didn't know I'd love you so much... But I do.
