[Fic] Role-Playing Game
May. 22nd, 2021 04:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chirurgiqueTitle: Role-Playing Game
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Character Focus: Xigbar
Rating: PG
Content notes: unreality, manipulation by an authority figure, threatened violence
Words: 1,011
Summary: Even with the petty concerns of the Organization rising and falling around him, there’s not much that can ruin Xigbar’s day. As long as he sticks to his role, keeps his secrets close, and doesn’t time-travel, then he has nothing to worry about. After all, he’s the only one who really knows his own heart.
Xigbar shoved his hands in his coat pockets and whistled tunelessly as he meandered through the old castle’s hollow halls. The Organization’s plans these days were moving along at a snail’s pace, and it was getting progressively harder to find his own fun. In fact, he was so bored lately that whatever he had been doing before this had already seen fit to eject itself from his memory.
What was he up to again? His most recent attempt at stirring the pot had been to provoke No. VI about the Keyblade heroes that had saved his skin as an anklebiter, so he was curious to know whether his needling was going to bear any fruit. The kid did seem to be more in the habit of skulking around the bossman’s business lately, so maybe Xigbar had succeeded in hitting a sore spot. He wasn’t sure if there was an agenda at play or just simple curiosity, but he had nothing better to do than pretend he had a problem with it either way.
He rounded the corner towards the has-been king’s old computer. The entrance to the Chamber of Repose was right this way, and if he was going to find any misbehaving youths sticking their noses where they didn’t belong, this would be where he would catch the culprit.
He strode into the room, and stopped short.
There was a kid at the console, alright. But it was the wrong kid.
Xigbar’s stomach dropped. His vision juddered like the stuttering of a film reel.
It wasn’t one of the Organization’s number. But it wasn’t that Black Coat-clad imposter that had been running around, either. Xigbar knew those shoulders, that silhouette. Like being able to pick a member of your family out of a crowd at first glance, just from the way they moved.
Xigbar knew who he was looking at. But he didn’t know how such a thing could have been allowed to pass.
He was just standing there, bent forward towards the screen, examining it intently like he had any business being here.
Meanwhile, Xigbar was standing in a sudden cold snap, a bolt from the blue interrupting the stage production that his life had become. The broken pieces of his kayfabe lay on the ground in front of him, and suddenly he wasn’t in the mood to be Xigbar anymore. What could he even say in this cold? What have you done?
He opened his mouth to make the accusation, but choked on his dry throat. The kid, the brat that had ruined everything, was quicker on the draw.
“Hey, relax,” Luxu said as he turned to face Xigbar, posting up on the console behind him. He gestured as he talked, lackadaisically placating. Xigbar could feel his own lackadaisy sloughing off like silt. “I’m way younger than you, right? And you’ve never time-travelled. So we must be from different versions of history! You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Xigbar swallowed, and forced a smile. It was more like baring his teeth. “Hah. I could easily be younger again than I am now, if the long game with the old coot doesn’t pan out. You could just be the next sap in line.”
“As if. You know me.”
He did. It only made his anger colder.
“Oh, alright, so you didn’t ruin my hard work! You just broke a nature taboo! That makes it all better.” How long had it even been since the last time he had been genuinely mad? Years? Decades?
“I don’t see why you’re so upset when this doesn’t affect you.” Luxu clasped his hands in his lap mock-innocently. “You’ve been a good boy, right?”
“Aww, but how can I not be upset, when it sounds like you haven’t?”
How much of a bad idea would it be to draw his arrowguns on his past self? And let’s say he did — then what? In this version of history, maybe the plan was fine and whole and unbroken, exactly as the kid had said. But was Xigbar supposed to just let it slide that he would even ever have had the audacity?
Apparently Luxu the younger was bored of his deliberations. “Okay, let me ask you this. How’s it all going?”
“What?”
“It’s all to defeat darkness, right? So how’s that working out for you so far?”
Xigbar shook his head to disguise that the back of his mind was reeling. Actions should have consequences. But what kind of action? What kinds of consequences? They were in a whole new world now. “That’s the problem with kids these days. Always in such a hurry. Ever heard of delayed gratification?” He needed to take stock, reassess, redefine.
“Well, okay. But you know, old folks have their problems, too. The older you get, the slower you get.”
“You’d be surprised at how much I can pick up the pace.” His trigger finger itched, but maybe hostility wasn’t actually the play. The possibility space was too big now for hasty choices.
“I dunno about that.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You’re slow enough to have not noticed that this is just a dream.”
His breath caught in his throat as the last of the film reel spun out.
*
His vision cleared and Luxu was gone, or as gone as he could be. Through the murk and the disorientation, the drab ceiling of his room at the Castle That Never Was was all that stared back at him. His ragged breathing slowed, and the ringing in his ears quietened. He was alone, unseen by anything but the artificial glare of that looming heart-shaped moon pouring in through his window like a searchlight.
It was still the middle of the night. None of it had been real. There would be no redefinition, no need for further plans. The whole new world was cancelled.
He turned over to go back to sleep, good eye buried in the pillow, and didn’t pause to think about whether what he was feeling, as the ice thawed in his veins, was relief or disappointment.
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Character Focus: Xigbar
Rating: PG
Content notes: unreality, manipulation by an authority figure, threatened violence
Words: 1,011
Summary: Even with the petty concerns of the Organization rising and falling around him, there’s not much that can ruin Xigbar’s day. As long as he sticks to his role, keeps his secrets close, and doesn’t time-travel, then he has nothing to worry about. After all, he’s the only one who really knows his own heart.
Xigbar shoved his hands in his coat pockets and whistled tunelessly as he meandered through the old castle’s hollow halls. The Organization’s plans these days were moving along at a snail’s pace, and it was getting progressively harder to find his own fun. In fact, he was so bored lately that whatever he had been doing before this had already seen fit to eject itself from his memory.
What was he up to again? His most recent attempt at stirring the pot had been to provoke No. VI about the Keyblade heroes that had saved his skin as an anklebiter, so he was curious to know whether his needling was going to bear any fruit. The kid did seem to be more in the habit of skulking around the bossman’s business lately, so maybe Xigbar had succeeded in hitting a sore spot. He wasn’t sure if there was an agenda at play or just simple curiosity, but he had nothing better to do than pretend he had a problem with it either way.
He rounded the corner towards the has-been king’s old computer. The entrance to the Chamber of Repose was right this way, and if he was going to find any misbehaving youths sticking their noses where they didn’t belong, this would be where he would catch the culprit.
He strode into the room, and stopped short.
There was a kid at the console, alright. But it was the wrong kid.
Xigbar’s stomach dropped. His vision juddered like the stuttering of a film reel.
It wasn’t one of the Organization’s number. But it wasn’t that Black Coat-clad imposter that had been running around, either. Xigbar knew those shoulders, that silhouette. Like being able to pick a member of your family out of a crowd at first glance, just from the way they moved.
Xigbar knew who he was looking at. But he didn’t know how such a thing could have been allowed to pass.
He was just standing there, bent forward towards the screen, examining it intently like he had any business being here.
Meanwhile, Xigbar was standing in a sudden cold snap, a bolt from the blue interrupting the stage production that his life had become. The broken pieces of his kayfabe lay on the ground in front of him, and suddenly he wasn’t in the mood to be Xigbar anymore. What could he even say in this cold? What have you done?
He opened his mouth to make the accusation, but choked on his dry throat. The kid, the brat that had ruined everything, was quicker on the draw.
“Hey, relax,” Luxu said as he turned to face Xigbar, posting up on the console behind him. He gestured as he talked, lackadaisically placating. Xigbar could feel his own lackadaisy sloughing off like silt. “I’m way younger than you, right? And you’ve never time-travelled. So we must be from different versions of history! You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Xigbar swallowed, and forced a smile. It was more like baring his teeth. “Hah. I could easily be younger again than I am now, if the long game with the old coot doesn’t pan out. You could just be the next sap in line.”
“As if. You know me.”
He did. It only made his anger colder.
“Oh, alright, so you didn’t ruin my hard work! You just broke a nature taboo! That makes it all better.” How long had it even been since the last time he had been genuinely mad? Years? Decades?
“I don’t see why you’re so upset when this doesn’t affect you.” Luxu clasped his hands in his lap mock-innocently. “You’ve been a good boy, right?”
“Aww, but how can I not be upset, when it sounds like you haven’t?”
How much of a bad idea would it be to draw his arrowguns on his past self? And let’s say he did — then what? In this version of history, maybe the plan was fine and whole and unbroken, exactly as the kid had said. But was Xigbar supposed to just let it slide that he would even ever have had the audacity?
Apparently Luxu the younger was bored of his deliberations. “Okay, let me ask you this. How’s it all going?”
“What?”
“It’s all to defeat darkness, right? So how’s that working out for you so far?”
Xigbar shook his head to disguise that the back of his mind was reeling. Actions should have consequences. But what kind of action? What kinds of consequences? They were in a whole new world now. “That’s the problem with kids these days. Always in such a hurry. Ever heard of delayed gratification?” He needed to take stock, reassess, redefine.
“Well, okay. But you know, old folks have their problems, too. The older you get, the slower you get.”
“You’d be surprised at how much I can pick up the pace.” His trigger finger itched, but maybe hostility wasn’t actually the play. The possibility space was too big now for hasty choices.
“I dunno about that.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You’re slow enough to have not noticed that this is just a dream.”
His breath caught in his throat as the last of the film reel spun out.
*
His vision cleared and Luxu was gone, or as gone as he could be. Through the murk and the disorientation, the drab ceiling of his room at the Castle That Never Was was all that stared back at him. His ragged breathing slowed, and the ringing in his ears quietened. He was alone, unseen by anything but the artificial glare of that looming heart-shaped moon pouring in through his window like a searchlight.
It was still the middle of the night. None of it had been real. There would be no redefinition, no need for further plans. The whole new world was cancelled.
He turned over to go back to sleep, good eye buried in the pillow, and didn’t pause to think about whether what he was feeling, as the ice thawed in his veins, was relief or disappointment.
