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It starts out as a mistake.
The cause of, Larxene’ll never quite know. Maybe she reached too far with her Corridor. Maybe an oversized Heartless passed by at just the wrong time, causing her Corridor to close too soon.
That’s what they’ll say, later. An attempt to explain the unexplainable. But now, it’s simply a mistake.
A mistake that dumps her in a world drifting around in the Dark, just barely afloat.
Traverse Town, the locals call it. Another world in the Dark, another world that barely manages to stay connected to anything.
Organization members are not supposed to be here . It’s never been really explained why, it’s just something that all of the older members know, down to their bones. Not telling anyone else. Them and their secrets .
( Assholes. Useless assholes.)
“Hey you!” Hm? Someone calling after her? When she’s not supposed to be seen?
Well, no one can say that they’ve seen her if they’re dead.
Larxene’s daggers slip out, just between her fingers. She turns, ready to end this Somebody who dares to see her.
A girl, with dark hair, dark eyes. Wearing a green tank, short tan shorts. Pointing dramatically at her, right in her face.
Larxene’s not sure what causes her pause in her attack. Maybe it’s the determination in those eyes. (Yeah, right. Like that’s ever stopped her before.)
More likely, it’s the strange weapon that sweeps around in front of her. Suddenly large where it was once small. Alive with magic.
Enormous.
Ugly.
“What is that .”
Stupid girl puffs up like it’s something to be proud of. That oversized abomination. “It’s my shuriken, of course! Stop right there, evildoer.”
Larxene scoffs. Evildoer, what a word. Does it describe her? Yes. If being evil is going against Somebody interests, at least.
A shuriken, huh? Of course Larxene knows what a shuriken is, but that one...
“Seems a little...big. For a shuriken.”
“Only because of my super-special secret technique.”
“A technique, hm?”
A Nobody’s weapon, once summoned, stays the way it was summoned. It cannot change shape or size like this girl’s shuriken can.
What a useful trick to know. A clever ace up the sleeve.
“How do you do it?” She’ll ask and if the girl doesn’t tell her, well, she’ll kill her. Easy-peasy. Simple.
“Well, it wouldn’t be secret if I told everyone that asked,” the girl points out, picking up her scattered shuriken. Never once taking her eyes off Larxene, not turning her back on Larxene. A lot of Somebodies can’t keep their eyes off her, should they see her. But most do not watch her only to make sure she won’t attack them.
There’s something...liberating, about this Somebody who looks only to attack. Rather than anything else.
“You want something? You fight for it.” The girl thrusts her chest forward, holding her strange oversized shuriken in an attack pose.
Larxene feels her lips curl up in something that might be called a smile, but more properly would be called a smirk. She holds up her hands, a half-baked Thunder sparking between her fingertips. “I’ll fight you then.”
Stupid fool.
The girl spreads out into a battle stance. “Bring it!”
The fight is good. Better than any she’s really had for a long time. Larxene’s not trying to kill this stranger, but she’s not holding back either.
A thrill of the fight, the closest she’s ever had to a heartbeat, it drives her. Until it ends. The girl trips, fails. Yet Larxene doesn’t kill her, for daring to interrupt their dance.
“Whoa, you’re really good, aren’t you?”
“I’m the best,” Larxene huffs. Anything less would mean her death, of course she’s good.
“What’s your name? Mine’s Yuffie!”
A name. Why not? “Larxene.”
Yuffie points at her again. “Larxene. Just you wait, I’ll beat you next time!”
Larxene feels her lips curl. “Of course you won’t.”
“I will!”
How ridiculous. That implies there will be a next time.
Larxene twists on her heel and walks away.
“Hey, wait! Come back!”
She doesn’t.
Why would she?
-
Marluxia is...familiar. In a way she cannot place, in the hole that was her life before waking up with no heart.
He’s no fool, at least, unlike most of the Organization.
Until the day of the Offer.
“Help me overthrow the Organization.”
Hm. Why would she do that? There’s no reason she wants to be in charge of this flock of morons and misfits.
She scoffs. “Come back with a better offer, and then we’ll talk.” Larxene turns on her heel, head held high as she sweeps out of Marluxia’s room.
“We’ll see.” Marluxia calls after her, as unruffled as always.
Sure they will.
-
Larxene comes back. She doesn’t really have any reason for going back to Traverse Town. Not one beyond it’s somewhere no one in the Organization would ever think to look for her, boring lot they are.
“Aha!” The ninja points at her dramatically. “I knew you would be back!”
“Did you really?” Larxene asks, bored. Not interested in an answer. She still gets one.
“Of course!” The girl grins, leaning forward with her hands on her hips. “You’re that kind of person, after all, to come back.”
She is cruel, she is careless. Savage and monstrous, she is Larxene.
(Not...whoever this girl thinks she is.)
(Does she...want to be whoever this girl thinks she is?)
“Fine,” Larxene huffs. “I came back.” She calls out her blades and Yuffie’s grin grows wider and fiercer in response. Ready for a fight.
Larxene’s lips almost smile. She does end up showing her teeth.
And the fight is good. Better than the first one. “You’ve improved.”
“Of course I did! Had to fight you!” The girl beams.
That leaves Larxene with...something in her chest. Something that she ignores, turning to examine her blades instead.
“What kind of knives are those?”
“These?” Larxene raises one of the knives in question, tilting it back and forth to catch the light from the street lights. “Throwing knives.”
Obviously.
“Can you hit that light over there, with them?” The girl points at the street light that is the farthest down.
“Of course.” Easy as breathing, she tosses and the light goes out. No need to retrieve the knife, when it returns to her hand when Larxene demands it.
The girl hops in place. “Cool! I can throw farther, though, with my shuriken.”
Larxene lifts an eyebrow and sneers. “Oh really?”
“I’ll show you! See!” And three small shuriken take out a small mailbox, a couple feet away from the targeted lamp.
“Hm. I can do better than that.” Without Lightning too.
Challenge in those warm brown eyes. “Then do it.”
The rest of the time is spent naming targets, and hitting them. Every time. Of course Larxene could manage it but the skills of the Somebody...impressive. For a Somebody.
She almost misses the girl, when she leaves.
Going back to the Organization afterwards is a disappointment. Especially with those loudmouths being too easy targets, for her Foudre.
-
Larxene’s first kill happens before the Organization.
She is without a heart, when it happens, but Nobodies can happen independently of the Organization, not only because of it.
Less likely, but it happens.
A man touches her. He refuses to stop, takes her quietness as acceptance.
He touches her. Keeps touching her.
“No.” Not even a pause. He continues, like she had said nothing at all.
Lightning in her veins, where blood should have been. Why won’t he stop?
He dies, violent and messy, and she does not regret. Wouldn’t regret it even if she could feel such a thing.
That seems to be all that hearts are good for. Feeling emotions that make one stop from doing what they wish, lingering forever and ever.
Why would anyone want something that made them so...weak? she thinks.
No, Larxene doesn’t need a heart. She never has. The rest of Organization...why are they so insistent on gaining what is so useless to them?
Are they all so determined to be weak once more?
No. Of course not.
They’re just fools, chasing after the impossible. All of them.
-
The ninja girl is stupid . Teaches the method behind her shrinking and growing weapon, and still expects Larxene to come back.
Larxene does, but only because she wants a good fight. That’s all. Nothing more. She’s bored and the girl provides an escape from that stupidity.
“Larxene, where do you live?”
Larxene pauses in the middle of examining one of her own knives. “Nowhere.” Why does she say the truth? It’s not like the girl will know any differently.
“Oh.” Larxene shoots the girl a side glance, examining how she droops.
Before perking up again, as she does. “Hey, you could stay with me! If you have nowhere to go.”
A snapping sound. Pain. Numb but for the pain, Larxene looks down, to see her shattered knife digging into her palms right past her gloves.
Stay with her.
There’s a pressure in her chest.
“Larxene?” That voice, with her name... dark eyes, looking at her. Wanting .
The girl, the girl that wants. Her name is Yuffie.
She leaves, before she erupts, before she turns Yuffie into charcoal.
When Larxene returns to the Castle, she leaves dark Thunder burns everywhere, all over the pale walls. The air stinks of her signature ozone and she nearly guts Axel when he walks in on her, panting and screaming at the useless sky.
She gets more work because of it, but she doesn’t care. She can’t care.
It doesn’t matter.
It never has.
(It can’t matter.)
-
Xemnas calls her the ‘Savage Nymph.’ Those are the first words to leave his mouth, after he names her Number XII. XII, out of XIII. Second to last.
The only woman.
Savage is clear enough. Nymph is a word Larxene doesn’t quite know, but she figures it out soon enough, from her first missions.
A few worlds, not many in the scheme of things, have beings called ‘nymphs.’ They’re all women, all females, as far as she can tell, from a distance.
These nymphs...they wield plant and water alike. Elemental spirits, akin to her connection with Thunder. Yet, despite the potential power they wield....
Larxene watches, as yet another nymph gets chased into the undergrowth by some... man.
There’s screaming. Wailing. In the bushes.
Larxene snarls, turning away. All that power and they do nothing with it, against those who chase them.
Is that what they want of her? He calls her Savage, merely because she refuses to lay down for him?
Well, let them call her that.
Larxene is no one’s slave.
She will not be their caged lightning.
If one refuses to fight back...well, they deserve their fates. Larxene will never back down, never surrender. Because...she is Lightning.
The sky rumbles, far above, and she spreads her arms to meet it.
Let the Thunder come.
There’s nothing that can stop her now.
-
Yuffie’s eyes are looking especially red today. Her throat works. The girl clearly wants to say something.
Very well.
Larxene vanishes her blades, tilts her head. Pretending to listen.
Yuffie doesn’t hold back, once those clear signs are given. A floodwater of words.
“There was an execution. Today.”
“An execution?” Larxene hums. Hm, she hadn’t thought that Yuffie’s little band would be the type to execute anyone, but you never knew, with Somebodies. Unpredictable in a way Nobodies were not. “Why?”
She doesn’t ask: did they deserve it? Deserve doesn’t enter into the equation. Death just is, the way Life is. Everything dies and sometimes, she helps it along.
Gives it a shove, if you will.
“He was...killing people. We had to,” Yuffie says, her dark eyes wide in her face. Wide enough to keep water lurking behind them back. “Or people would be afraid, scared that he would get out. And then...”
The Heartless would come, Larxene finishes for her mentally. Fear draws in Heartless like hungry piranhas, especially in worlds lingering in the Dark like Traverse Town.
Kill the one, to protect the many.
(Why does that sound so familiar?)
She knows what Yuffie is looking for. That it was right. Larxene doesn’t give it to her.
There is no right, only need.
“It had to be done.”
What does it matter if she hurts and kills? There’s no divine punishment waiting for her once she fades. No heaven, no hell, no afterlife.
Nothing.
And if there’s nothing, then why act if there is something?
-
Would be easier to say that she hates the Organization. But no, that would be too simple for a collection of thoughts (not feelings, never feelings) that brew in her mind about the entire set-up.
First, the lies. Of course there are lies. Why wouldn’t there be lies? There are always lies. Everyone lies, but in the Organization you lie like breathing. Plentiful and required for survival.
Second, everyone in the Organization. Everyone. They’re... annoying. Prying and demanding, except when they completely ignore her. Morons. It’s all about being useful. Which is how it works, between her and Yuffie. But it also...doesn’t.
Larxene doesn’t know. Only that this thing between her and Yuffie...it’s not like the Organization. Not at all. Complicated, where the Organization is simple. Painfully simple. Like its members.
Lightning is a complicated thing. The inhabitants of worlds still puzzling themselves out have a tendency to call lightning the weapon of the gods. Other places, places with more technology and words about the building blocks of the universes, harness it in the form of electricity.
All lightning, in the end.
What’s the truth of it, the core of it? What is Lightning?
Lightning takes the path of least resistance, that’s what they say. But what is the least resistance?
The tallest thing standing, they say, slightly less confident in their musings. But still holding firm.
Not true. Not even close.
Lightning makes its own path, through and through. That’s why it’s crooked, after all.
To break the sky.
-
Yuffie hops from foot to foot. She looks ready to explode, with whatever news she’s carrying inside of her. “What happened?” Larxene obliges her, before she really does erupt. Can’t lose her sparring partner, after all.
“There’s a kid who just came by!” Yuffie bursts out.
A kid? There are always many kids. Why is this one different? “So?” Larxene taps her fingers together.
What does it matter?
“He’s got the Keyblade!” Yuffie beams.
A Keyblade. Her core, something deep inside, hums at the word. She knows that word. Knew about it before the Organization told her it. She doesn’t know how she knows that word, beyond the basics.
That when that word comes up, she’s supposed to report it.
If Larxene reports it...they’ll ask her where she heard it. What world this Keyblade was found on.
She’s not supposed to be here. She’ll never be able to come back.
(She’ll have to leave Yuffie behind.)
That stupid boy. How dare he show up. Now everything will change. There’s a choice to make here, to either leave Yuffie forever or...
She could cut out Yuffie’s heart. Carve it right out of her chest.
Make the ninja one of her own Ninjas. Nobody and all.
Her fingers twitch, curling around the blades hidden by her wide sleeves. Would be simple. A straight slice, and the heart would plop right out.
Yet. Larxene stays her hand.
If Larxene rips out Yuffie’s heart...well, she risks ripping out who Yuffie is. Not the heart, you can still be without a heart. But the memories...are more delicate. Yuffie might not remember anything, if Larxene takes her heart.
Memories...memories are a sticky thing. Especially for Nobodies. She’s supposed to have them, the Somebody ones at least.
That’s what the cranky scientist says, at least. But she doesn’t. Have them, she means.
Just fragments and pieces that don’t make any sense.
And if she doesn’t have them, then it’s possible that Yuffie wouldn’t either.
What would the point of that be, then?
Why would she want Yuffie, if Yuffie didn’t know Larxene? Useless.
She could just kill her so no one else can have her...
Her fingers tighten around her blades.
“You should meet him. Maybe you could teach him a thing or two.”
No.
“I need to go,” the words drop like hailstones, shattering bones with their pain.
“Oh?” Dark eyes blink at her curiously.
Larxene provides no explanation. She doesn’t need to. She never has. “Have fun with your Keyblade boy ,” she hisses, wrapping her arms around her shoulders as she turns away.
“Oh, it’s not like that, don’t leave,” Yuffie pleads, wrapping her hands around each other in the parody of prayer.
“No, I need to work.”
Dark eyes look her over. “As long as you come back soon.”
Larxene doesn’t answer. No need to answer silly unspoken questions. She owes Yuffie nothing.
“Hn.” Her heels click as she turns her back on Yuffie, ready to walk away.
“See you soon!” Yuffie waves.
No. No, she won’t.
Enough time apart is enough to wash any memories away. Soon, she’ll forget. Soon, she won’t think of Larxene much at all.
(It doesn’t matter.)
(Really, it doesn’t.)
(Why would it matter?)
Larxene allows the Darkness to swallow her up, like she always has.
And like she always has, doesn’t look back.
-
“About that offer of yours, Marluxia...”
“Yes?” A sly smile, him just waiting for the words to drop from her mouth.
“I’m in.”