#laurienzo

“Can we stop to get something to eat, maybe?”

Oh. Oh, he needed to think up more reasons. His fingers were itching.

When he finally trusted himself enough to speak, Vexen cleared his throat. “Do you know why the two of us were never sent out on missions together, Numbe–Demyx?”

He turned around, scrunching his face up in thought as he considered the question. Demyx tapped at his chin with a finger, pursing his lips and wiggling them around. “Uhhh…I mean, honestly? Probably because you’re all like…stick-in-the-muddy, and I’m a pretty fun, laid-back guy, so…” He met Vexen’s eyes and gasped in revelation. “Oh! Oh! Oh man, you so want to kill me right now, huh?”

“The thought had occurred to me.”

“Aw dang. I’m pretty good at that, though, to be fair. Xaldin used to say–”

Vexen held up a hand to stop him, and was horrified to find it had no effect. He rolled his eyes as Demyx kept babbling, reaching up and kneading at his temples with his hands. All the times he’d complained about being stuck with Zexion and Lexaeus…he made a silent promise to himself that if–when–they were successful in his plan, he’d never so much as pull a face when dealing with either of them. “Demyx,” he said again, after what felt like far too much time. “Demyx, I am going to need you…to stop doing that.”

“Hmm? Stop doing what?”

“Talking. I’m going to need you to stop talking.”

He didn’t even realize his mind had switched the names until he was halfway across the lab, muscles atrophying strands of jelly that shook and shuddered with each step; he willed himself not to fall, willed himself not to stumble. Only once he reached Ienzo did he kneel, the tendons of his legs screaming from misuse and the lingering aches of what he could only assume had been a second death and a second rebirth.

There was no sign of life from Ienzo - not at first. He laid a hand flat on his back, feeling the ridges of his shoulder blades lift and fall with tired, tentative breaths. Good. That was good. His eyes were caught then by the color of his own gloves, leaving him to stare dumbly at the outline of his fingers atop Ienzo’s back. It had been so, so long since his gloves had been white.

A sudden shudder brought him back to himself as Ienzo sucked in a breath and coughed it out, his lungs sounding dry. He grew still under his hand again, his profile affording him a glimpse of one eye slowly opening. At first it was difficult to tell through the shadow of the Apprentice’s hair, but Ienzo cracked his eye, looked tiredly about, and shut it again. There was a moment of deflation, of worry, as he watched Ienzo seemingly drift away again…and then with a wheezing gasp of air, Ienzo sat up suddenly enough to send whorls of dust spinning through the air around them. His head snapped from side to side, eyes wide under his mussed hair. Patting himself up and down, he froze when his fingers brushed the puffed fabric of his ascot, a concerned crease appearing between his brows as he tried to piece it all together.

“Ienzo,” he spoke softly, more from necessity than caution, his throat raw and rasped by time. “Breathe - breathe.”

He obliged, but warily, eyes still wide and watching, pale blue chips of ice in the darkness of the lab. It was only slowly that he seemed to come back to himself, the ragged rise and fall of his chest evening out to something calmer. “Aeleus?” he managed after a time, voice twisted with distraught disbelief.

A rush of something - relief? - washed over him then, the world around them becoming more saturated, more real. “I was worried you wouldn’t remember…the head trauma, the–”

“Not remember?” Ienzo coughed another wracking cough, pressing his knuckles tight to his lips. “Don’t be a fool. How could I ever forget about you?” He looked around the room again, eyes falling on Lea for a long time before he managed to wrench them away. “Are we…where are we? This isn’t…this isn’t Oblivion.”

“No,” he agreed, offering his hand to help steady him. “We’re home.”