Brushie Brushie Brushie

A Kingdom Hearts fan fiction

Never let it be said that the darkness is without weaknesses. Soft spots, if you will. The multiverse is loaded with people you never want to cross even in broad daylight in a crowded town square, but none of these people are absolutely without something they care for. At LEAST one something.
Even those who are technically heartless have soft spots. With emotion gone, all that remains is logic, and surprisingly, logic steers people in the direction that they should NOT eschew valuable things or people from their lives, and that being alone is a bad idea. Even without direct emotional pleasure, a logical person will still draw treasures—inanimate or living—to himself or herself. It just happens that way.
So although Vexen was creating another batch of shrinking solution for incredibly evil purposes (well, evil from the eyes of anyone with sanity), say, if someone needed to infest the mouseholes of a light-hearted maid's manor with teeny-tiny Heartless in case yet another mouse-sized Keybearer should get caught in a trap there (it happened once and could happen again), he couldn't help but be distracted when one of his personal weaknesses came through the door and suddenly appeared next to him, hunched over the iron cauldron.
"Heya! Whatcha doin'? Pulling out the old-fashioned equipment, huh? This must really be a piece of work if you're usin' old Bessie!"
"Demyx…" Vexen closed his eyes and sighed, never sure where to start. "First of all, we've been through this, the cauldron doesn't have a name. I mean, I won't stop you from calling it whatever you want, but if you want me to know what you are referring to, please call it the cauldron." Or the alchemic dinosaur, his mind added. "And second, this is an extremely important project. Possibly revolutionary. I need to be in solitude for this."
"Wha…you want me to leave? But I just got down here to see you and everyth—"
Sighing again, Vexen put a hand on Demyx's shoulder, turning him so they had eye contact. "Demyx. Listen to me."
"Mmhmm."
"You know I care for you. In the completely logical sense."
"Mmhmm."
"You know I appreciate your company."
"Mmhmm."
"And you also know you are very distracting."
"Awwwh."
"So if you would give me fifteen minutes…just fifteen minutes of peace…then we can do whatever you want. Does that sound fair?"
"Yup."
"Good." Vexen patted Demyx's shoulder a couple of times. "Now…be on your way to…something that will occupy you for a while."
Begrudgingly, Demyx left to work on his sheet music, never being one to think ahead on the evil schemes he was supposed to be working for the Superior. (Evil, again, being a matter of perspective.)

However, fifteen minutes passed, and then Demyx was back in the laboratory. He noticed that Vexen had stepped out for a minute, and this caused Demyx to consider doing something less evil and more naughty.
The potion was now stored in a large flask labeled SHRINKING SOLUTION. The cauldron was shoved back in the storage closet where Vexen preferred it to stay. Demyx had always been curious about what it would be like to be as small as a mouse. Well, he also wondered about what it would be like to have wings, be a giant, and have the kind of godlike footprints that grow flowers in them. However, only one of his odd daydreams was to be fulfilled that day.
He fetched himself the tiniest glass of the potion he could find so Vexen wouldn't notice it missing. Then he downed it furtively.
In no time, he was mouse-sized, and furniture towered over him. He ran for the door, anxious to see what the castle outside looked like from a mouse's perspective. However, progress was blocked; Vexen had his door sealed off with a weather strip. Perhaps that was necessary, when anger tantrums tended to come with a lot of blizzard quality snow and flying ice.
A ventilation duct led to the outer hall, and this one was open, letting the fumes from the concoction spread out among the castle air. Demyx took this way out, having to trek through several dust bunnies to do so.
The outside hall turned out to only be clean from a human's perspective. A mouse-sized being was the only sort that could see all the dirt in the corners. Even more dust started clinging to Demyx's black robe. "Yuck," he murmured. Brushing it off his sleeves, he didn't figure out what the very loud clicking sound coming up to him was until it was almost too late.
When he turned around, Saïx's boot hovered over him, ready to crush him. And in that moment, he came face to face with certain death, accepting the end—
Until a hand swept under Saïx's shoe, picking the little Demyx up and lifting him far from the ground. "You IMBECILE!" a familiar voice screeched at Saïx. "Will you WATCH where you are walking, especially when I am creating a shrinking solution? You nearly crushed our ninth!"
Saïx looked at the small Demyx, who waved. The seventh just snorted and walked on, not really caring.
Demyx looked up at his rescuer, meeting Vexen's stern visage. He tried waving and looking innocent again. Vexen just rolled his eyes. "And I suppose it was too much to assume that not touching the potion was part of the deal?"
"Just a bit. You know I get curious! Beats working!"
"I suppose…look at you, you're filthy."
"Because the floors are!"
"You know you almost got KILLED!"
"Yeah…I'm sorry…I should've thought it through…"
"No matter, no matter…" Vexen breathed. "Close as that was, you're safe now. Let's get all that dust cleaned off you."
Vexen brought Demyx back into the laboratory, where he took a toothbrush from a set of tools he often used on delicate rock specimens.
"What's with the toothbrush?" Demyx asked.
"Just hold still," Vexen commanded. He gently ran the brush over Demyx, clearing all the dust away.
"That tickles!" Demyx squeaked, falling over and rolling about. He made such a cute sight that Vexen didn't even think to scold him for not holding still. At last, the little Nobody was clean, and Vexen had to break it to him:
"I haven't got anything on hand to reverse this. I would have to make an ingestible growing solution, since powders and pills wouldn't work on someone your size, and a spell wouldn't reverse this permanently, seeing how the original solution affected your chemical makeup. I'd have to haul old B—THE CAULDRON back out of the closet. It would take hours."
"It's late, isn't it?" Demyx stole glances at the clock—the only way of telling time in the sunless world (aside from just asking Luxord, who had every time zone in existence programmed into his system). "How about we just fix it in the morning? I mean, you probably would need a growing potion anyway. For, you know. Stuff."
"The Heartless that populate the Bizarre Room in Wonderland are quite small," Vexen agreed. "They could use a boost in size. After you're set right, of course. In the meantime, I…" Thinking about what kind of bed he could set up, all Vexen could come up with was a large bag of cotton balls. "Would this be comfortable enough to sleep on?"
"Yeah!" Demyx nodded furiously.
When the night came to a close, and Vexen was asleep in his own bed, Demyx was asleep on the nightstand, nestled in a pile of cotton balls.

They say Maleficent gets attached to her flunkies and grieves when she loses one. They say Jafar holds onto several childhood mementos, keeping golden toys in a drawer in his lair. They say if Sephiroth's mother ever came back to life, he might break down into genuine tears. And some even dare to say that the Heartless who took on the moniker of Ansem couldn't shake a primal instinct, heartless or not, that he somehow wanted to get married and sire a child.
You don't have to look far to find Vexen's weak spot. As the abnormally small Demyx fashioned his makeshift bed out of cotton balls, the scientist watched him and wondered: despite his ability to do underhanded (perhaps he did not find them EVIL, but at least they were underhanded) things without batting an eyelash, could he possibly be getting inextricably attached to this young man in a way that was dictated by a little more than logic?