III. Bleed for me

---

"I hate you," she tells him, but her voice is numb and distant, as though he is not standing before her. He watches her dispassionately, observing her calmness in spite of her fate. Some subjects react better than others when they become a Nobody. She is doing remarkably well. He is surprised; he would not have expected it.

"I trusted you," she says, and now she is pacing, looking smaller than ever beneath the leather coat. Her eyes are half-lidded, paler than they once were. She seems lost, uncertain, without her emotions to guide her. She had thrived on those frivolous things too much; sorrow, joy, anger--such things merely distracted the mind from its true purpose. "I didn't want any of this!" He had come into her life, a strange and wonderful entity when her life seemed bleak and dull. He had seduced her with words of wisdom and power, spun tales of castles and fantastic powers. She'd given in so easily; it was almost a disappointment.

"I gave you nothing more than you asked for," he says, golden eyes calm, face unmoved. She stops, turning to him, and she's glaring, her face losing its pale frailty.

"You said I wouldn't have to be afraid anymore," she says, and he knows she's going to start screaming. Not that it will matter anyway. "You said that you would give me power."

"You aren't afraid," he points out. She opens her mouth, can't think of what to say, clenches her fists. He remembers the way she laughed at the end, when she embraced the darkness with arms open and a laugh upon her lips.

"I didn't think it would hurt this much," she says.

"You were foolish and naïve. Now you can be free," he says, but she shakes her head.

"I would rather be dead than be alive without feeling," she says, and turns her face toward the sky. The rain hits her skin, shimmering, falling across her eyelids and he remembers when she first kissed him, in the rain, and he'd played his part and felt nothing. He feels nothing now.

"I feel the rain," she says. "I used to love to listen to it at night with the window open. I used to love the thunderstorms. Now it gives me nothing," she says, her voice bitter.

"This is your reality now. You'll have to get used to it," he says. He narrows his eyes, and his expression becomes more stern. "It is frivolous to pretend otherwise."

"You're a bastard, you know that?" she asks, crossing her arms and putting all her effort into glaring at him.

"Yes," he says, and walks away into the City that Never Was. He's leaving her for the second time. She's screaming but he doesn't hear her.

---

Maybe part of the reason Larxene was so messed up was because she was "initiated" by Saïx. I think that some of the Nobodies would have freely chosen darkness; that's my take on it anyway.