Work Text:
“Just whistle while you work
And cheerfully, together we can tidy up the place
So hum a merry tune
It won't take long when there's a song to help you set the pace.”
Vexen glanced up from the open body on the table.
“You know, I brought you here to HELP me,” he said.
“I AM helping,” Demyx picked some notes on his sitar. “You’d be doing a better job if you were humming a little tune.”
“You’re breaking my concentration,” Vexen said.
“And you’re breaking his liver!” Demyx complained. “I think we’re even here.”
“I’m nowhere near the liver,” Vexen said. “What you’re looking at is the small intestine.”
“Uh, no, I’m NOT looking at that,” Demyx said. He punctuated it with a few musical notes.
Vexen scoffed.
“How can you be a healer if you can’t stand the sight of blood?”
Demyx shrugged.
“Maybe I’m a healer so I can STOP seeing blood as fast as possible.”
Vexen breathed pointedly in his direction and went back to his work. Would that he had his usual assistant with him. Though, in a sense, he did.
The tissue beneath his hands was snarled to hell and back around the foreign object. Splinters and metal, and an overgrown nest of adhesions.
“Do you see what you’ve done here?” Vexen said to Demyx. “When you left in the foreign body, your indiscriminate spell fused the tissue together the wrong way. Do you see why this is a problem?”
“No!” Demyx said. “And I don’t want to!”
“Well to start with, this part is a blockage,” Vexen indicated an egregious example.
“I said I didn’t wanna know!” Demyx whined.
“Don’t you want to know what to do if you’re in this situation again?” Vexen said.
“All I want is to NOT be in this situation again.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” Vexen said. “And if I’M going to avoid this situation again, I need you to understand what you did wrong.”
Demyx grimaced.
“Ugh. Fine,” he said. “Is this what you smart guys call ‘peer review?’”
“No,” Vexen said. “We aren’t peers. Now, look.”
Demyx squeamishly glanced over. The tissue of a Nobody was dull and pink.
“Ew, blood. Ew, guts. Ew.”
“Adhesion,” Vexen corrected. He moved aside some tissue with the arrowhead behind it.
“Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii haaaaaaaaaaaate looking at thiiiiiiiis,” Demyx tunelessly sang.
“Agreed.” Vexen said. “Now. You can’t just heal over an issue like this without addressing what’s further down. Do you see how much work you’ve created for me?”
“Maybe he came like that,” Demyx looked away again.
“I assure you, he did not.” Vexen had seen these intestines before. It was his job to leave them better than he found them.
“No fooling the old man, huh?” Demyx said. “Hey, could you tell MY fortune from my guts too? Destined for greatness, right?”
Vexen didn’t look up.
“Destined for a host of issues if you don’t eat anything green.”
“Oh come on, everyone who eats their vegetables DIES,” Demyx complained.
Vexen manipulated a piece of tissue out of the way.
“A flawless display of logic.”
“Well, what, you expect me to eat vegetables NOW?” Demyx said. “You expect me to eat anything ever AGAIN?”
“You’ll get hungry enough,” Vexen said.
Demyx groaned.
“It’s gonna take more weed than I’ve ever smoked to make me feel like eating after this.”
“I have every faith in you,” Vexen said.
“Aw really? Hey, wait.”
Vexen held out his hand.
“Forceps.”
“Huh?” Demyx said. “Is that like ‘biceps?’”
He truly missed his usual assistant.
“Never mind,” Vexen picked them up himself. A mindless extra pair of hands, still better than Demyx.
He clamped aside the offending tissue.
“You know, I don’t think this is my fault,” Demyx said. “You know how he is about people sticking things into him.”
It was Vexen’s sovereign territory.
“Well, use better discrimination next time,” Vexen said.
“I discrimmed!” Demyx protested. “I said I’d get the part that broke off, and he just said ‘don’t you fucking dare, you untrained, unpracticed, unsanitary RUBE.’”
Vexen chuckled. Zexion had admirable taste in medical experts. A child after his own... well.
“But yeah,” Demyx said. “I know he was just having a bad day, I know he didn’t mean to offend me.”
Vexen clamped another piece of tissue.
“No, he definitely meant to offend you,” he said.
He threaded some of the intestine between his fingers. Even nature couldn’t be trusted with bodies. Not when nature included mortality.
“How DID you manage to break off an arrowhead in soft tissue?” Vexen asked.
“Oh, you shoulda seen it,” Demyx said. “Well, okay, maybe you shouldn’t have. It was real impressive though, the Hood guy shot a second arrow right through the first one. Smashed it to smithereens. I only got ONE of ‘em out whole.”
Vexen teased out one of the aforementioned smithereens.
“Hm,” he said. “And yet this marksman somehow missed YOU.”
“I’m getting the feeling you wish he had shot me,” Demyx said.
“Well,” Vexen said. “Were you slacking off instead of doing your job?”
“Hey,” Demyx huffed. “If I’d been doing my job, then we’d BOTH have been shot. You’re welcome, for bringing us both back ALIVE. Sorry that I stopped the fucking bleeding before bringing him back, I guess.”
“It’s possible he would have been fine,” Vexen removed another splinter. “Nobodies bleed slowly.”
“What do you even want from me?” Demyx said. “I’m good at one fucking thing, and you don’t even want me to do THAT? Why don’t I just not go on missions?”
“I’m hardly opposed to that suggestion,” Vexen worked apart some tissue. “God help me if YOU’RE ever the only thing keeping me alive.”
“Yeah,” Demyx said sourly. “Me too.”
Both situations had transpired before.
Vexen got ahold of the arrowhead. In a human body, it would have absorbed some warmth. In a Nobody, it was close to room temperature.
Yes, that had to have hurt.
If he’d had a heart, he’d have cared. If he ever cared again, he’d be pleased with his dedicated work.
He pulled it out. It was deep and pushed sideways, by the help of its friend.
Maybe Zexion WOULDN’T have made it back without Demyx. But Demyx didn’t need to know that.
The arrowhead clicked metallically on the tray.
The extra tissue he excised piled up around it. All of Demyx’s misplaced work, undone.
Such an idiot. So much energy dumped into these extraneous growths. So much energy Vexen had to put into removing them, the shapes he had to carve out of what had become formless.
Such an idiot. But Zexion was alive.
“All right,” Vexen said. “Here’s something I’m sure even you can handle. I need you to get the sweat off my face before it contaminates anything.”
Demyx, unable to handle it, played a few notes on his instrument.
Vexen almost snapped at him before he felt the sweat disappear. He was almost inclined to reach for it.
“What was that?” he said
“Vaporized,” Demyx said.
“Hmph.”
It wasn’t as impressive as working with one’s hands. Though perhaps in a sense it qualified.
“You know, Sleepza woulda put him out faster than what you did,” Demyx said.
Vexen frowned.
“You could have said something then.”
“Well, I thought YOU were the expert,” Demyx said.
“At least you’re right about SOMETHING,” Vexen said. He was preparing another suture.
“Well, for an expert, you’re sure doing things the hard way,” Demyx said.
Vexen scoffed.
“You’d wish you knew the hard way if your magic ran out.”
“The easy way doesn’t leave scars,” Demyx said.
Vexen rubbed a living piece of tissue between his fingers. A rippled mark he’d left there years ago. Everything he had ever done to this body had scarred it.
“All right,” he said to Demyx. “Do it the easy way, then. I’ll supervise. Concentrate on this piece first.”
“That’s gonna sound like blue balls,” Demyx said. “Healing one spot and not the whole thing?”
“Do you want me to accept your help or not,” Vexen said.
“Hey, you know me,” Demyx put his fingers on the strings. “I’m helpful.”
He played a song that was missing notes. It sounded like blue balls.
The tissue in Vexen’s hands knit itself together.
“Satisfactory,” he said. “You can do this one now.”
Demyx played the same song, with different missing notes. It was strange how canny he was about this.
“Look at us working together,” Demyx said. “We’re like Jack Sprat and his wife. I think you’re the wife.”
Vexen reviewed Demyx’s work.
“You are the last person I would marry.”
“Well, YOU’RE not,” Demyx said.
“Next spot,” Vexen said. He prepared to undo a suture.
The spell redid his work. No scar.
“So,” Demyx said, “Aren’t you wondering who is worse marriage material than you?”
“Are you asking because you want to tell me?” Vexen said.
“No,” Demyx said. “I just wanna complain about Larxene a little bit.”
“What if I said now is not the time.”
Vexen took out the remaining clamps. More wet metal on the tray.
He heard Demyx quietly matching the note on a string.
“You know,” Demyx said, “I bet Larxene wouldn’t let me pull out an arrowhead either.”
“Neither would I,” Vexen agreed.
“Even if there was no one else around?”
“You’re underestimating the sorts of things I’ve extracted from myself,” Vexen said.
“God, please do not tell me more about that.”
“Enough,” Vexen said. “We’ll be finished here, if you’ll close the incision for me.”
Demyx grinned.
“You really trust me now, huh?”
“I’m tolerating you.”
Demyx poised himself for the spell.
“Tell Z-man what a great job I did when he wakes up,” he said.
Zexion was not going to hear about this.
Demyx played the tune from before, the version where the balls weren’t blue. Vexen guided the incision shut.
It was like nothing had happened. Pulled together with string, just as Vexen would have done.
“Wow,” Demyx said when it was over. “We’re so fucking cool. High five, buddy.”
Vexen did not high five him.