Patience

One-shot. You've been waiting a long time for such an opportunity. Seems a shame to waste it. Xehanort's Heartless centric—OMG. Direct companion to "Drowning."

A/N: Well...this was actually an extremely unexpected one-shot. Let's see how I do with giving the other side of the story. This, of course, is essentially a retelling of my other one-shot, Drowning, from Xehanort's Heartless' point of view. I think I like writing Riku better—he's easier.

Disclaimer: Hah. Haha. You think I could possibly own Kingdom Hearts... You fool.

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Waiting.

You have been waiting for a long time now.

You have been hiding in the shadows for years, waiting for the opportune moment to rise up and rejoin the living—to remind the worlds who is in charge and why. Sometimes, you laugh to yourself at the irony of your motives—in order to truly become one with the darkness, you had needed to cast off your body and plunge in, but in order to truly fight and use the dark to your advantage, you need a body to physically strike, to channel the darkness to its true potential. So now you are reduced to waiting until you are given such an opportunity—the opportunity to regain what you threw away.

You hate waiting. Thankfully, you won't be for much longer.

Pounding footsteps ring down the corridor, breaking the monotonous silence. It draws your attention, and like a predator sensing weakness, you ready yourself. You can smell the anger and fear and bitter confusion that hover in a dark boiling cloud clinging to the figure of an adolescent boy who comes running down the hall as is to outrun merciless Fate herself.

This one shows promise. You have kept a proverbial eye on this child for a while now, ever since the other one—his simple-minded friend—had turned out to be such a letdown, even if he had gotten his little hands on the Keyblade. You are not really interested in the weapon of light, but you are interested in the potential of the hearts of those with the capacity to wield it—and in this troubled youth, you have not been disappointed.

"Why?" he pants bitterly to himself, and ooh, the delicious undertones of anguish and seething rage! "It was mine." So it appears that the Keyblade has rejected him. How unfortunate. Still, you can smell the dark currents of frustration and misery tainting his heart, and you are nearly driven mad with hunger.

Not yet, you tell yourself. You can't afford to lose control to your baser instincts when there are still questions that need answering. Unlike the others, you are blessed with patience, a virtue that has served you well.

"Know this," you say, moving forward. The youth's head shoots up, and eh regards you with a mixture of wariness and distrust (and fear, of course—the fear is rolling off him in pungent gray waves that almost make you salivate). You continue, "A heart that is strong and true shall wield the Keyblade."

His dismay sharpens—you have struck a nerve. "What?" he demands. "You're saying my heart's weaker than his?"

"For that instant, it was." Ah, but so much more easily manipulated, you think to yourself, glad that you don't need to hide a mental smile.

He sighs bitterly, and you can just tell what to say to string him along—he craves a challenge that he thinks he can win, and you are going to give him one. "However," you continue, and he looks up with barely disguised hope (how pathetic), "you can become stronger. You showed no fear in stepping through the door to darkness. It held no terror for you." You drop your voice lower, so he has to strain to hear—you enjoy making him beg—"Plunge deeper into the darkness, and your heart will grow even stronger."

He thinks it over, staring at the floor—but not really seeing it, you can tell. Then, so low even you have trouble hearing: "What should I do?" Waves of quiet desperation emanate from his heart. You've got him cornered—now it's your job to reel him in, pardon the mixed metaphor.

"It's really quite simple. Open yourself to the darkness. That is all. Let your heart, your being become darkness itself," you hiss, and walk forward. He doesn't see you—he has gone somewhere deep inside himself, and you can smell the darkness on him, and it's driving you crazy with hunger because you are so close—

—you know he has found that black wellspring inside, but he hesitates. He doesn't know what to do with it. You're as close as you're ever going to get, though, and you don't want to wait any longer, so you leap—

—for a moment, in that molecular fraction of an instant before you make contact, he looks up and sees you, and in that moment, the stark horror and realization that envelops him drives you into a frenzy, the kind of frenzy that sharks enter when they sense blood in the water. You slam into his consciousness with that same driving force—

—you taste the darkness where he is, and he has barely even grazed the surface of all that darkness in his soul, and you think, Well, let's fix that, and shove him aside to let the darkness free—

—thrashing clawing convulsing his mind is seized by panic like a mouse seconds before it feels the bite of the hawk's talons rending skin and muscle and bone—

—you grab thick oily strands of darkness and cram them down his throat, stifling the agonized mental screams oh how much pain he must be in—

—the terror, oh the fear, you bathe in it—it is raw and feral and sharp, and you drink it in like a desert plant takes in water after a long drought—

—the boy's mind is screaming, screaming (air, air, I need it, I need to breathe, I can't breathe!, and you respond by pouring wet dark slimy blackness into his throat, and he chokes on it—

—you still can't get a grip on his body because his mind is in such a panic and the darkness can only work so fast to give you traction—

—he is still screaming that he can't breathe, and so insidiously, you offer—

—I could breathe for you, like that was really the problem to begin with, but his mind and body are in so much shock that his airways are closing off—

—his body is shaking and spasming and going into shock—he is literally having an allergic reaction because he's not ready to handle so much darkness and you are complicating the problem because no body is made to house two beings—

—and you realize that if he doesn't stop fighting you soon, he is going to die, and then you'll be left with nothing for all your patience and hard work—

—but he knows he's dying too, and he begs—

—anything—

—anything?—

—(anything), he screams, (please, anything, just please for the love of god I'm dying, let me breathe! and you pause a moment to be grateful for that absurd death-grip on life that all humans seem to share, and say, well, if you insist—

—he stops resisting, and you grab his throat and lungs and force them open, and that is your first real physical sensation: breathing, in and out and in (you remember breathing), and the flood of darkness you unleashed calms down a bit and pools around yourself, and the oxygen rushes in and mixes with inky blackness and is pulled through the bloodstream to the heart, and that is your second physical sensation: a heartbeat—

—his body has stopped shaking, and it seems to be coming out of shock, and you are relieved, so you say, there, that wasn't so bad, was it?—

—he knows something is wrong, he knows something has changed—

—what is happening? what have you done to me?—

—you can't resist jabbing him because you so love the taste of the realization of pure despair, so you reply, it's so easy once I find a way in, and meanwhile, you are slowly filling in the rest of the blank spaces in his body—

—fingers flex with a flicker of thought—

—sounds rush in from the outside world—

—you open a pair of eyes that are not your own, and marvel at the fading gloomy quality of the dim light filtered through centuries-old windows; you have not seen colors for a long time—

—it's so easy, once you let me in—

—and even though you've taken over and he can't control the body that is yours now, he's still back somewhere in your new head or heart, and the raw animal fear is still trying to work its way free—

—he can barely think because you've taken most of the neurons and connectors in the brain and he is terror-stricken and bewildered and torn apart on the inside, so he has nothing to do but be, but you still know that if he ever recovers he might be able to take his body back, and you need to make sure that doesn't happen—

—you mentally lash out and slam him hard into the back of his own skull and you feel him bleeding dark despair and pain and confusion, and that is good—

—you snarl, I am in control now—

—slam—

—blood—

—and you are not anything anymore—

—another reeling mental blow—

—you feel his consciousness dim and black out to avoid the pain of being for a while, and that's very good if you can keep him broken for as long as you need him, but you can't kill him because the soul gives life to the body, and if he dies, his body dies, and you'll have lost all that you've gained—

—"so why worry?" You say this last out loud, partly for emphasis and partly to test your new vocal cords. While on the surface you sound like him (it is his voice, after all), you can hear your own darker tones vibrating somewhere underneath, filled with malice and dark promises, and this interesting effect pleases you.

You flex your hands and scrutinize them, then reach up, and you crack the joints in your neck one way, then the other, smiling grimly at the odd mix of pain and pleasure. You can still channel all the darkness you have at your disposal, and this new body can give you the edge you need in combat—

—and face it, won't it be so deliciously ironic when you slaughter the wielder of the Keyblade wearing the body of his best friend? You like the idea. You like the idea a lot.

In short, you're confident you've done very well.

Your patience has paid off.

A/N: Okay, imagine writing that one-shot at midnight, and then imagine seeing the image of him cracking his neck like that. I was lucky we had a snow day, because I got no sleep that night.