AN:- Set pre-KH2.

Nobodies don't dream. To dream, one needs memories, and Nobodies don't have memories, not really. The closest a Nobody gets to having a past and the memories that go with such a luxury, are the faded, unfamiliar snatches of imagery that made up their Somebody's life. Half-glimpsed reflections like someone else's photo album, which when pieced together tell a story that's more fiction than fact.

Nobodies don't dream, so when Xigbar finds himself walking down corridors that lead to underground laboratories, a white lab coat flapping loosely around his thighs, he knows he must be having a nightmare. The walls echo back his footsteps strangely and everything feels slightly off in a way that's at once jarring and deceptively familiar. He remembers the ghost of fear and the creeping adrenaline rush that shakes in his limbs and makes his feet move faster. He remembers a name, Braig, and it's almost hard to remember that it has ever been anything but.

It's someone else's memories and someone else's emotion, but just for a while it's good to simply sit back and let sensation flood through him. He'd feel like a thief, or a voyeur, but he doesn't have a heart to feel the guilt with. Instead he follows the corridor until he comes to a steel door which he pushes open and steps inside.

The dream - no, the crawling of the skin across his shoulders tells him that this is still a nightmare - Braig's nightmare - shifts and he's stood before a steel laboratory trolley. There is a bright overhead light so strong it casts the rest of the lab into darkness, and in the shadows there are other figures moving. Stretched out on the trolley is a creature, one of the large, pure wild gamma-wolves that stalk the outer plains, all hair and ridged bone and taut muscle. He looks down at the agitated rise and fall of its ribs and sees something awful and terrified in its black eyes.

It ought to fear, nostrils wet and quivering as it picks up the scent of excitement that the gathered students emit. He wonders if it can smell his awful anticipatory terror. He wonders if it understands. He hopes, even now, that it will not suffer.

How painful is it to have one's heart removed, he wonders. Does it sting? Or tear? Or burn? Is it a physical sensation, or is it all in the mind?

They, he and those shifting shadows whose names meant something once, will take the pure essence that makes up the heart of this trembling animal and cut the threads that bind it to the mortal plane. Pull the divine from its body and break it down into all the little pieces Infinity uses to make a heart.

It's the culmination of their experiments; all their studying and work, the long hours of painstaking data collection and too much caffeine, so much it makes their fingers clumsy and their laughter shaky. This is the result of their endless research, the zenith of their achievement that will put a stop to Ienzo's driven laughter, Even's migraines and Xehanort's unrelenting crusade. Or maybe not that last. Braig knows, they all know, deep in their souls that something beyond curiosity is driving their friend further towards obsession. They feel it thrumming in the air like the hum and crackle before a storm; they feel it because it's driving them too and Xehanort isn't always that far ahead of them in the race towards the darkness.

Braig watches as the light above the trolley narrows to a point, the murmur of voices rising around him in a steady tick as Xehanort recites instructions and Even echoes them back in confirmation. He knows he shouldn't be standing this close but it doesn't seem to matter because no-one else is telling him not to even though they're back behind the reinforced glass shields. Braig turns, glances over his shoulder to where Xehanort is standing, eyes startlingly pale against the olive of his skin, and frowns as someone says something he can't quite make out.

When he turns back the flash of light that greets him is so pure and beautiful it almost breaks his heart. The air is filled with a single unrelenting note that resonates somewhere half a dimension up and a fraction of a degree sideways, and he is forced to his knees with the beauty of it.

It's over before his mind can comprehend the sensations and he is left retching on the floor as his body reacts to something so wrong it can make no sense of it. He can hear nothing but the gasp of his breath, but when he looks up the others are already gathered around the lab trolley. Braig staggers to his feet, swaying, amazed at their composure and reaches shakily for Ienzo's shoulder. The youth ignores him as he leans his weight against him unsteadily and fuzzily tries to make sense of his companions' words. Xehanort's face is dark, his lips twisted in disgust, and Even is flinching away from him, his long fingers flicking nervously, placatingly. Elaeus is shaking his head slowly and has already turned to walk away.

The wolf on the lab table is patently dead. The heavy slide of its tongue between its slack lips and the dull, glazed reflection of its eyes are testimony enough. Xehanort's fist hits the metal surface of the trolley with a crash and then he is gone, whirling away with Even at his heels. Slowly the others follow him and Braig is left alone with Ienzo. The youth turns beneath his palm, his back to the dead animal, and looks up into Braig's eyes.

"Careful you don't cut yourself, Xigbar," he says. "The edges are sharp."

"What?" says Braig, stupidly.

And that's when the wolf twitches and rises up, and holy Alexandros but it's like a great rising shadow, and the eyes-! He twists a fist in the front of Ienzo's labcoat and hauls the youth sideways out of the way. The boy cries out indignantly and fights him, pulling at his arm so that Braig is twisted around into the path of the shadow wolf's falling claws. They look like scythes as they descend and he sees Ienzo's head turn, sees the horror twist the youth's face and hears his shocked cry, before the great paw hits the side of Braig's face like a hammer blow and he is punched backwards to the floor. The great beast follows him down howling, and he yells in fear, struggling beneath its huge weight.

He can feel the cold slice of claws through flesh and cloth, but no pain, not yet. His shoulder feels numb where its teeth have found purchase and with a terrible horror he realises that he can't breathe beneath its weight. He feels cloth rip and something spilling down his face and across his neck, and hysteria makes him scream. There's a tearing in his shoulder and then all colours fade to black.

He wakes to Ienzo's voice, frantic and thin with panic, and looks up into Dilan's eyes as the other man leans over him, his lips moving in a buzz of sound. Braig can't make out the words though, can't see him properly and merciful Shiva the pain, it hurts, oh fuck it hurts-

And then Xigbar wakes up. He lies still in the silence of the Castle That Never Was and stares up at the pale, cold ceiling, feeling the memories slip away.

He waits: One minute, two. Then he swings his legs over the edge of the bed, hooking his trousers closer with his toes. Dressing with quick, economical movements, he pulls on his coat and heads out. He takes the long route out to Oblivion's Overlook, his footsteps echoing oddly in the corridors, the black of his coat flickering around his ankles. The repeating sounds and the flutter of material resonates strangely somewhere in his head, and his lips pull back in what would once have been called a snarl.

There's an energy inside him that will not submit and it crawls in his veins where blood should be beating. It quickens his step and makes his fists itch so that when he turns on to the wide balcony that whispers Oblivion's Overlook he isn't sure if his guns are in his hands before or after he see Xaldin.

The other man turns to him, and the light of their Kingdom Hearts casts him into darkness. Xigbar can still see his eyes though and there is a pause as the two of them regard each other in weighted silence. For a moment it's as though the same thought occurs to them both and something elusive clarifies itself in Xigbar's mind. He sees the same memory surfacing behind Xaldin's eyes and something unnamed stir in his gaze, a recollection of a someone else's life. Someone else's memories.

Xigbar raises his guns and fires before the shared thought can finish itself. He misses, because this is Xaldin, and the shriek of the man's spears is warning enough for him to hook a hand into a corner of reality and twist himself away. The energy is still burning in his veins and turning the light of Kingdom Hearts a sickly rusted colour like old blood. It makes him bold and forceful and shakes the memory of anger into his limbs. He stalks across the open space of Oblivion's Overlook, someone else's memories echoing in his head so loud he can still hear the boy's shocked cry.

But Zexion doesn't cry, and Xigbar isn't afraid of anything anymore. And Dilan - Dilan's long dead.

Xigbar grins with the ghost of humour and then there is nothing but the blaze of his guns and the glint of Kingdom Hearts in quicksilver trails along the whisper sharp edges of Xaldin's spears.