Warnings: Angst. Angst. ANGST.

Disclaimer: I do not own Demyx, despite my love of torturing him.

Notes: I…have no idea what to say about this. It was just an idea I’ve had floating in my head for a while. The song I wrote it to was Pretty Girl by Sugarcult.

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Demyx plucks the strings of his sitar, summoning the water to his side. Fingers slide up and down the instrument’s neck, the notes shaping the element before him. Never allowing his fingers to stop moving, Demyx dares to glance up at his creation.

A water clone of Zexion stands before him, liquid and doll-like. The replica is hardly a perfect copy but it’s the best he can do now that the real thing is gone. Demyx stares emptily at it, his hands frantically playing notes to maintain the image, independent of the husk of a man who watches. He can’t tell if it’s sad or happy because the water isn’t precise enough to give Zexion a face. The features blur with the flow of the water constantly swarming and moving to hold its form.

“For you,” Demyx murmurs. “The music was for you.” If he could, Demyx might laugh or cry from bitterness but all he can do is stare at this imitation, this facsimile of the one that gave Demyx a reason to want his heart back.

His fingers are raw now from summoning this clone over and over again. If his fingers weren’t already so callused, they might bleed from the way Demyx abuses them.

“Come back,” he begs Zexion’s ghost. “I’m alone!”

Demyx’s playing becomes more desperate as he moves the clone toward him. He can feel its hand on his face, unstill and moving as water swirls in its barely-kept form. “Come back…”

Staring into the empty face of this not-Zexion summons more water but it is water over which Demyx has no power. The water of tears, salty and warm and living, wet his face, mingling with the cold, lifeless water of the false Zexion’s hand.

Mechanically, Demyx raises a hand to touch the cheek of his water clone—Demyx is so desperate, so enthralled, so lonely—only to watch it fall apart, splashing to the ground with a sound like cruel laughter as Demyx’s hand falls to his side in realization.

With a wave of his hand, Demyx dismisses the water before casting the sitar aside and drawing his knees to his chest, letting the tears blur his world and turn everything gray.

“Dance, Zexion,” he whispers brokenly to the ghosts. “Dance.”