When Xigbar had broken the news about Axel's presence, not only on Spira, but in their midst, and at that point in time, on his couch, it had been met with mixed reviews
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Axel didn't unclip his chakrams just yet, either. Instead they stayed snugly attached to his belt, ready for use. He was equally as livid as Saix, but for entirely different reasons.
It stung that Saix wished he'd just gone. It ached in the pit of his stomach knowing that he didn't want to see him, even though he'd chased him. He'd hoped, somehow, that he'd attempted to follow him in the market for reasons other than to smash him into the floor, but it seemed that he was to be disappointed.
"You think I want to be here?" He snapped back, lacking the ability to edge his words with growls and snarls. "I was a minute from leaving when Xigbar stopped me. He waited for me at the Aerodrome because your whack-job husband told him I you saw me! Why couldn't you have kept your mouth shut?"
He tried to keep a lid on his temper, but even as he heard his own voice rise to a shout, he couldn't manage to bite it back.
"If I'd have tried running, he'd have shot me full of holes, all right? I wanted to go." He swept a hand across himself, as if to punctuate that sentence. "I was trying to leave."
Saix snarled and rounded on Axel again, letting his fists fly. He aimed for Axel's face, mostly, but he also tried to land a couple of vicious hits to Axel's stomach and solar plexus. They'd scrapped enough as children, and teenagers, but it had rarely ever been serious.
Even when it had been it had been short lived. A few punches, a bloody nose, a black eye, and then the stupidity of it would register and one of the two of them would start laughing.
This was different, and Saix all but yelled, "Stop talking about him like that!" He sounded like the version of him from the past, like Isa, yelling at Lea for insulting his mother, but much angrier about it. "I had to tell him! We thought you'd been left behind!"
He scowled, backing off a few steps as he continued, with less shouting. "I wasn't going to lie to him again. Not even for you. I thought he'd have given you time to go before he told Xigbar."
He gave Axel a look of total resentment, so much of Saix being pushed aside while Isa showed through, the personality he'd buried under the veneer of aloof self control that hid his berserker's nature, "It was obvious enough that you didn't want to stay."
When Axel got knocked on his backside that time, he didn't get up for a moment. Instead he stayed there, spat a gob of blood to one side and put his hand on the sand. He balled it and drove his fist into the ground, glaring up at him.
"Why would I want to, huh? What is there for me here? What is there for me on this world at all!?" His words were stilted as a result of being winded.
He shook his head, giving Saix a thoroughly disgusted look before glancing off to the left. Lie for him. Hah! If anything, Saix owed him a lot of lies after all the ones he'd made him tell due to their big plan. Lies, deception, flat-out withholding of information... a little lie, or him not running back to Vexen right off the bat shouldn't have been too much to ask.
"I don't even know why I'm here, how I'm here!" He yelled, getting to his feet and tossing the sand in his face. It was a dirty trick designed to act exactly like the drink Saix had thrown over him back in the Sandsea and he followed it up with a punch that carried enough force to give the impression that he wanted Saix to spend some time in the sand instead of him for the first time in the course of the fight. "You have no idea what it's been like for me, Isa."
He looked at him then, furious and panting through gritted teeth.
The sand blinded Saix, making his eyes sting and water. He couldn't see the punch when it was coming, but he felt it connect, with the crack of Axel's knuckles and the burst of pain. He could taste blood in his mouth from where the flesh of his cheek had been forced hard against his teeth, cutting it open, and he felt the sand, hard as concrete as he landed back against it.
He tried to blink the sand out of his eyes, swallowing blood. He replied without looking at Axel, his lips red with the blood in his mouth. "Then tell me," he spat, "instead of complaining!"
He shook his head, waiting for the watering of his eyes to clear the sand out.
Axel stared hard at him for a moment before turning away.
“Fine!” He snarled, trying to make his voice sound lighter than he was feeling. “Let’s take it from the top, shall we?”
He dropped his hands to his sides and put them on his hips, ignoring the aching in his stomach and chest - the results of being smacked about by Saix. His face was the perfect picture of a scowl for the few moments of silence before he launched into the tirade he’d been keeping bottled up since he landed on the cursed world. Since then, it had built up and had even more added to it with what he'd been through since ending up there. He looked skyward, took a breath, and began.
“I started life as a normal kid, right? I had a best friend called Isa and he and I made stupid little plans together. Although we were kind of troublemakers, we were far from being the most evil people ever, yeah?” He said, not even looking at Saix. “Then we ended up losing our hearts, me and Isa. We joined up with a group of people in much the same position, Organization XIII, and hatched a plan to take it over. My best friend, who I trusted implicitly, thought it would be a good idea if he got to the top, to give us a bit of leverage, you know?”
He paced as he went off, not so much as glancing at the floored berserker.
“On the outside, I was just a mission-worker while he got the job as the guy who handed out orders. He put me in charge of babysitting the new members and I ended up making friends with the thirteenth and final addition to the group.
So I got sent off to a creepy place called Castle Oblivion with a group of specially selected members. Half of them were the ‘useless’ ones and other half were the ones who had much the same idea as we did. I did as he said and integrated myself into the latter group and, on his orders, I took out some of the former, who were as innocent as Nobodies get, to prove my loyalty before sticking the knife in. Hey presto, half of the Organization were dead thanks to me.
I got back as the sole survivor to find that he'd been picking on the kid I'd made friends with. He made me hold back information from him which eventually drove him off - something I got blamed for. Oh, and he got annoyed when the kid attacked and beat him to get through his 'masterful' one-man blockade. When we discovered where he was, I was the one who had to try and get him back.”
He looked at him then, his eyes narrowed. Up until that point, many of his words were laced with mocking sarcasm to go with the vitriol.
“Are you following me so far?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Good. When I failed to get the kid back and when he managed to find his other half, I did my best to get him back my way. Of course, I got hunted down by my former childhood friend who eventually sent a whole army’s worth of Dusks after me. I took them all out, and myself in the process, but not before letting the Keyblade bearer into the Organization's stronghold. I couldn’t help it. My loyalty to them was shattered when the member I’d done traitorous acts for turned on me for making a friend despite what I'd done for him.
In the end, they all died. In the end, I was responsible for more than half of them dying.”
He took a breath, then, and glared at him.
“Eventually, we all got back out of the Underworld, still Nobodies, but otherwise unscathed. This guy, Saix, sent me on stupid missions for months at a time to keep me out of the way. I was a ‘liability’, he said. He made it seem like it was because I’d let in the Keyblade bearer, but it was really his reputation on the line. If I opened my mouth and spilled the truth he'd have been ruined, right?
So, I was away doing these stupid missions when everything went dead. I heard whispers of a second attempt at a coup, and the involvement of hired help from some of the more loose-lipped members before the silence, but all in all I was left in the dark. Eventually, I went looking and what did I find? A wrecked lab with clear evidence of a fight. You know, crackling machinery, blood stains on the floor -- the works.”
“So I went in to see what had and ended up being grabbed by the Darkness. I got knocked unconscious, but when I come round I was in a field, dressed in weird clothes and not far from a city. It only took about two seconds for everything to hit me and by everything, I mean everything!"
He shouted that, heedless of who might be around and listening to him. That said, to anybody who didn't know the ins and outs of The Organization and it's business, it would have simply sounded like the ravings of a mad man.
"Do you have any idea what it’s like to suddenly find yourself alone with feelings of remorse, guilt, sadness, fear and all of that stuff after having murdered, lied and cheated your way through a half-life in a group of insane people?!”
He forced himself to calm down slightly.
“Imagine it, go on. Imagine reliving the fear on a man’s face as you burnt him to death. Imagine seeing a fake-person kill somebody because they found too out much. Don’t forget having to fight somebody you cared about because he doesn’t remember you. Oh, and I just can’t leave out being used endlessly by your childhood friend, can I, huh!?”
He glared, his breathing having rose to a pant as he spoke.
“So after I do what I can to come to terms with all of that, I go into the city to find it empty. Yeah, empty. Just like The World That Never Was. Just what I wanted to see. Portals didn’t work, so I was stuck, I didn’t know where I was, how or why I got there and to top it all off, I found myself in the single creepiest place ever. Just great, right?"
He shook his head, not sure he'd ever be able to get across just how bad it had been.
"Well it got worse!” He snarled, giving Saix a thoroughly hateful look. “I got captured by this group of lizard things and sold like a particularly rare breed of exotic animal to another group, from whom I escaped and got captured by again. While we’re talking about them, let’s not forget the punishment for that because I’d just hate to omit any of the good bits!”
His voice was shaking by that point and, if Saix was to look at his hands which were by then clenched by his sides, he’d have seen that it wasn’t the only thing.
“Eventually I got sold to the Shinra Laboratories, where I was studied by your usual brand of scientist fruitcakes until I managed to get out, but not before taking with me that little gold thing you saw back in the pub. I assumed he’d been subjected to similar treatment, since he was in a labelled tank and all, so I didn’t want to leave him behind - I’d been left behind before and I knew from experience that it hurt, okay? So I took him with me.
I got shot at by Turks, fell through the Midgar plate, landed on a church and got help from the first person to be nice to me who I couldn’t even stay with for very long in case the Turks found me again. Still, she told me that there were others like me on this world who came before I did, so I left that city to look around to see if the kid I was friends with was one of them.”
He reached up to run a hand through his hair, taking a shaking breath as he did. He was fully aware that he was ranting, but by that point, it didn’t seem to matter. If Saix had tried to interrupt, he’d have gotten told to shut up.
“When I got to Rabanastre, I headed to the Market and saw a familiar face. It was the guy I was friends with as a kid, Isa! I couldn’t get over how happy I was to see him! But then that illusion broke and all I was left with were memories of what Saix did to me back when we didn’t have hearts, so I ran. I lay low all day and headed to the Aerodrome in the evening, not wanting to cause any more trouble or get myself flattened by that guy.
Little did I know that when I got there, the Organization’s resident trigger happy lunatic would be waiting for me. How did he know I was there? Oh, because he’d been told by Saix’s husband who just happened to be the one he oh-so-easily gave me the order to kill because he wasn’t worth anything to our plan. Anyway, Xigbar threatened to shoot me to death if I didn’t agree to stay, which I didn’t want to do, but I had to anyway. It wasn't as if he gave me a choice. He told me what had gone on and that the kid I was looking for, the only person I liked, wasn’t there after all.”
He glared hard at him, trying to keep his frustrated hand-gestures and displays of anger to a minimum, but it wasn’t easy.
“Eventually I met my old friend in a bar and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but when his whack-job husband started giving my only companion on this goddamn world the scientific googly eyes, I kind of lost it. Then he, defending him, ended up dragging me to the desert and beating the hell out of me for doing something I didn’t know was going to make him freak out so much! I tried to care, but after everything I’ve been through, scaring one of the people responsible for the whole Nobody mess didn’t seem like too much of a big deal to me any more!”
Axel gritted his teeth, not taking his eyes off of Saix for even a second, even though they’d started to fill slightly. His voice cracked as he added the last sentence, something probably not helped by the fact that he positively shouted it.
“Have I left anything out!?”
He pulled one of the chakrams free and held it up, wanting more than anything to throw it at him but not quite being able to bring himself to do so.
Saix listened, wiping the sand from his eyes as they watered, flushing the grit out. He didn't interrupt, even though he wanted to.
Getting to the top had been so that they had access to more information than any of the others would be willing to give to neophytes. Without it, they'd have been fumbling in the dark, and they were already doing enough of that. Saix had taken the role for himself because Axel would have never been able to look Xemnas in the face and show courteous respect.
And as for Roxas....
He sat in the sand, waiting for Axel to finish. When he did, he looked up at him, and said, "I don't recall you having been this much of a whiner."
He pushed himself to his feet, wiping sand from his face and looking at Axel. "Do you truly believe that you're the only one who has found this hard? How do you think it felt to land on this world, with a heart, with Vexen, and with all those memories of what I have done to him?"
He scowled at Axel. "How do you think it felt to stand and promise lifelong love to the man I had murdered, and to miss my best friend because I'd pushed him so far away?"
Saix shook his head, "You walked away from me when you met Roxas. You abandoned everything we had planned, in favour of Roxas. You gave up everything we had wanted for him!" He spat, his mouth still bleeding inside, and he looked at Axel intently. "I know that I pushed you away, that I used you, and used our friendship against you, and I know that I took it out on him," he paused, and faltered, looking away across the desert.
"I was so sure that I was doing what was best for us both. Your getting attached to Roxas was dangerous, and I didn't want your attentions to be divided the way they were. You had always followed your own agenda, Lea; you never thought of the consequences. I wouldn't let that happen this time."
Saix sighed, that scowl still etched on his face, but with more than a hint of sadness as he finished; "And I'm sorry. I've felt the guilt of it every day since I landed here, just as I've missed you every day."
He looked at Axel out of the corner of his eye, fully expecting to have everything he'd just said dismissed as rubbish.
Axel listened as Saix spoke and turned away when he'd finished, hurling his chakram into the distance with a shout. It was hard hearing that from him. An apology could never really make up for it all, but it was all he could really offer and Axel accepted that. Somehow, Vexen had forgiven Saix for doing what he had back in the Organization, but it had taken time. A 'sorry, and I've missed you' would never be able to wipe the slate clean, but it was a start and Axel didn't hold grudges for as long as some people.
He stood and thought about it with his back to him. He allowed his shoulders to sag, hung his head and gritted his teeth against tears that tracked down his bloody and dusty face from the moment he blinked. He remained silent, looking out across the sands with blurred vision and measured, shaky breathing. Giving the game away, as Lea always did when trying to hide that he was hurt, he raised an arm and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve.
He didn't speak not because he had nothing to say, but because he didn't trust himself to.
It was difficult to see Axel like that. It was Lea he'd last seen that way, so many years ago now.
Back then it had left him feeling like a lemon. He'd never been very good at comforting people, especially not people he cared about. Even as Isa, when emotions came more easily, he'd been just that bit too detached, that bit too aloof; he never knew what to do when people got upset.
He still didn't, which was why he walked over, and then sat down in the sand near to his feet.
"I thought it would be better if you left, after I saw you in the bazaar. I don't know if we can ever be friends again, or if you will only ever resent me, and I don't know how easily I can forgive you." He bent his knees and clasped his arms around them, the way he used to when he was a teenager, sitting on Lea's bedroom floor. "But if I'd known you were here, I'd have looked for you."
He stayed standing, not looking at him even though he was fully aware that he'd moved and was now sitting by him. In truth, he was a little embarrassed to, due entirely to the little, clean, wet lines down his face. They wouldn't have been too obvious usually, but with the sand dust and smeared blood in place...
"Would you have squashed me when you found me?" He asked, his voice cracked and quiet to try and minimise the sad-sounding edge.
It didn't work, of course. He might have been a Ninja by class, but he was never very good at stealthily concealing his emotions. Even when he'd reached his late teens and early twenties, he'd found it difficult to keep a lid on it all, but that was generally glee or anger and not crying. It wasn't so much of an issue when he was a Nobody, not having emotions and all. Well, until Roxas, anyway. Axel never found out what it was about him and Sora, but they managed to bring them out of him despite the fact that it was theoretically impossible. They really were something else.
"No," Saix replied, after a moment. He didn't look up at Axel. "The thought would have crossed my mind," he admitted, "but I wouldn't have done it."
With a faint, wry smile, he added, "Unless you said anything about myself and Vexen, at least." It was a joke, or as close as Saix got, and a weak one, but it was an attempt.
"Sit down, Lea," he said, quietly. He didn't want him to run off again. Then, remembering, he included, "Please?"
He did as he asked, seating himself on a low but smooth bit of rock that jutted up from the sand. It was flat and not altogether comfortable, but it beat sitting on the loose grains. He had enough in his clothes already, thanks.
He sighed a little and still avoided his eyes. "You've got horrible taste in men, you know." He said, only half joking. "Does he still giggle and talk to himself in corners?"
The idea of him and Vexen creeped him out. Vexen creeped him out generally, really, but that old man and his childhood buddy... eurgh.
Saix scowled, but it was faint.He'd tolerate the comment only because it was something difficult to dispute; they'd all witnessed Vexen's behaviour in the Organization.
"Not as much as he used to," he said, quietly. "I'd appreciate if you let Vexen be," he said. His voice was soft, and he looked over at Axel. "You may not approve, but he is my husband. I'd prefer not to have to keep the two of you separate."
He looked at him then, a pitying and half grossed out expression on his face. He shook his head slightly and sighed, looking away again for a moment.
"Just... tell me it was National Pity the Insane Person Day and you got duped into it." He said, sounding rather hopeful. "Even if it's not true, lie to me. I never want to have to believe that you'd marry him by choice."
He grinned a little. It just about reached his eyes and showed his teeth, but it wasn't as enthusiastic as it could be. All in all, he seemed rather different from how Isa would remember Lea, even when they were older. His personality was the same, but he was decidedly more subdued.
"At least it explains why you're still grumpy," he commented rather cryptically. He broke the puzzle moments later by adding, "His creepy cackling and fevered cries of 'It's aliiiive!' probably keep you up at night."
He demonstrated his perceived Madness of Vexen by throwing up his hands, as one usually does when performing that impression.
The comments were awful. They were all things that on any other day he'd have scowled at Axel for. An hour ago he'd have battered him with his claymore for them.
But at that moment, after everything, it made Saix give a quiet, and small, but entirely real laugh. He shook his head, and thrust his arm out in Axel's direction, shoving him in the side, just the way they'd shoved each other as children.
"Shut up," he said, although it didn't manage to come out as an order.
He smiled to himself, his voice going soft again as he told Axel, "I fell for him. He's not as bad as you think, once you get to know him." There was a distinct note of tenderness in his voice when he spoke about Vexen. It was so obvious now, as he carried on, saying, "He reads too many books, and I have to drag him away from them half the time, and he puts his cold feet on me in the night," he trailed off, and smiled very sadly, "and he's only just come back from Daguerro because after he found out that I'd been the one to order his execution, he couldn't so much as look at me. I know he'll never trust me again."
He swallowed, inhaling deeply before he turned to look at Axel, "I'm sorry. I didn't marry him out of pity."
It stung that Saix wished he'd just gone. It ached in the pit of his stomach knowing that he didn't want to see him, even though he'd chased him. He'd hoped, somehow, that he'd attempted to follow him in the market for reasons other than to smash him into the floor, but it seemed that he was to be disappointed.
"You think I want to be here?" He snapped back, lacking the ability to edge his words with growls and snarls. "I was a minute from leaving when Xigbar stopped me. He waited for me at the Aerodrome because your whack-job husband told him I you saw me! Why couldn't you have kept your mouth shut?"
He tried to keep a lid on his temper, but even as he heard his own voice rise to a shout, he couldn't manage to bite it back.
"If I'd have tried running, he'd have shot me full of holes, all right? I wanted to go." He swept a hand across himself, as if to punctuate that sentence. "I was trying to leave."
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Even when it had been it had been short lived. A few punches, a bloody nose, a black eye, and then the stupidity of it would register and one of the two of them would start laughing.
This was different, and Saix all but yelled, "Stop talking about him like that!" He sounded like the version of him from the past, like Isa, yelling at Lea for insulting his mother, but much angrier about it. "I had to tell him! We thought you'd been left behind!"
He scowled, backing off a few steps as he continued, with less shouting. "I wasn't going to lie to him again. Not even for you. I thought he'd have given you time to go before he told Xigbar."
He gave Axel a look of total resentment, so much of Saix being pushed aside while Isa showed through, the personality he'd buried under the veneer of aloof self control that hid his berserker's nature, "It was obvious enough that you didn't want to stay."
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"Why would I want to, huh? What is there for me here? What is there for me on this world at all!?" His words were stilted as a result of being winded.
He shook his head, giving Saix a thoroughly disgusted look before glancing off to the left. Lie for him. Hah! If anything, Saix owed him a lot of lies after all the ones he'd made him tell due to their big plan. Lies, deception, flat-out withholding of information... a little lie, or him not running back to Vexen right off the bat shouldn't have been too much to ask.
"I don't even know why I'm here, how I'm here!" He yelled, getting to his feet and tossing the sand in his face. It was a dirty trick designed to act exactly like the drink Saix had thrown over him back in the Sandsea and he followed it up with a punch that carried enough force to give the impression that he wanted Saix to spend some time in the sand instead of him for the first time in the course of the fight. "You have no idea what it's been like for me, Isa."
He looked at him then, furious and panting through gritted teeth.
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He tried to blink the sand out of his eyes, swallowing blood. He replied without looking at Axel, his lips red with the blood in his mouth. "Then tell me," he spat, "instead of complaining!"
He shook his head, waiting for the watering of his eyes to clear the sand out.
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“Fine!” He snarled, trying to make his voice sound lighter than he was feeling. “Let’s take it from the top, shall we?”
He dropped his hands to his sides and put them on his hips, ignoring the aching in his stomach and chest - the results of being smacked about by Saix. His face was the perfect picture of a scowl for the few moments of silence before he launched into the tirade he’d been keeping bottled up since he landed on the cursed world. Since then, it had built up and had even more added to it with what he'd been through since ending up there. He looked skyward, took a breath, and began.
“I started life as a normal kid, right? I had a best friend called Isa and he and I made stupid little plans together. Although we were kind of troublemakers, we were far from being the most evil people ever, yeah?” He said, not even looking at Saix. “Then we ended up losing our hearts, me and Isa. We joined up with a group of people in much the same position, Organization XIII, and hatched a plan to take it over. My best friend, who I trusted implicitly, thought it would be a good idea if he got to the top, to give us a bit of leverage, you know?”
He paced as he went off, not so much as glancing at the floored berserker.
“On the outside, I was just a mission-worker while he got the job as the guy who handed out orders. He put me in charge of babysitting the new members and I ended up making friends with the thirteenth and final addition to the group.
So I got sent off to a creepy place called Castle Oblivion with a group of specially selected members. Half of them were the ‘useless’ ones and other half were the ones who had much the same idea as we did. I did as he said and integrated myself into the latter group and, on his orders, I took out some of the former, who were as innocent as Nobodies get, to prove my loyalty before sticking the knife in. Hey presto, half of the Organization were dead thanks to me.
I got back as the sole survivor to find that he'd been picking on the kid I'd made friends with. He made me hold back information from him which eventually drove him off - something I got blamed for. Oh, and he got annoyed when the kid attacked and beat him to get through his 'masterful' one-man blockade. When we discovered where he was, I was the one who had to try and get him back.”
He looked at him then, his eyes narrowed. Up until that point, many of his words were laced with mocking sarcasm to go with the vitriol.
“Are you following me so far?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Good. When I failed to get the kid back and when he managed to find his other half, I did my best to get him back my way. Of course, I got hunted down by my former childhood friend who eventually sent a whole army’s worth of Dusks after me. I took them all out, and myself in the process, but not before letting the Keyblade bearer into the Organization's stronghold. I couldn’t help it. My loyalty to them was shattered when the member I’d done traitorous acts for turned on me for making a friend despite what I'd done for him.
In the end, they all died. In the end, I was responsible for more than half of them dying.”
He took a breath, then, and glared at him.
“Eventually, we all got back out of the Underworld, still Nobodies, but otherwise unscathed. This guy, Saix, sent me on stupid missions for months at a time to keep me out of the way. I was a ‘liability’, he said. He made it seem like it was because I’d let in the Keyblade bearer, but it was really his reputation on the line. If I opened my mouth and spilled the truth he'd have been ruined, right?
So, I was away doing these stupid missions when everything went dead. I heard whispers of a second attempt at a coup, and the involvement of hired help from some of the more loose-lipped members before the silence, but all in all I was left in the dark. Eventually, I went looking and what did I find? A wrecked lab with clear evidence of a fight. You know, crackling machinery, blood stains on the floor -- the works.”
A lab, just like where everything started.
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He shouted that, heedless of who might be around and listening to him. That said, to anybody who didn't know the ins and outs of The Organization and it's business, it would have simply sounded like the ravings of a mad man.
"Do you have any idea what it’s like to suddenly find yourself alone with feelings of remorse, guilt, sadness, fear and all of that stuff after having murdered, lied and cheated your way through a half-life in a group of insane people?!”
He forced himself to calm down slightly.
“Imagine it, go on. Imagine reliving the fear on a man’s face as you burnt him to death. Imagine seeing a fake-person kill somebody because they found too out much. Don’t forget having to fight somebody you cared about because he doesn’t remember you. Oh, and I just can’t leave out being used endlessly by your childhood friend, can I, huh!?”
He glared, his breathing having rose to a pant as he spoke.
“So after I do what I can to come to terms with all of that, I go into the city to find it empty. Yeah, empty. Just like The World That Never Was. Just what I wanted to see. Portals didn’t work, so I was stuck, I didn’t know where I was, how or why I got there and to top it all off, I found myself in the single creepiest place ever. Just great, right?"
He shook his head, not sure he'd ever be able to get across just how bad it had been.
"Well it got worse!” He snarled, giving Saix a thoroughly hateful look. “I got captured by this group of lizard things and sold like a particularly rare breed of exotic animal to another group, from whom I escaped and got captured by again. While we’re talking about them, let’s not forget the punishment for that because I’d just hate to omit any of the good bits!”
His voice was shaking by that point and, if Saix was to look at his hands which were by then clenched by his sides, he’d have seen that it wasn’t the only thing.
“Eventually I got sold to the Shinra Laboratories, where I was studied by your usual brand of scientist fruitcakes until I managed to get out, but not before taking with me that little gold thing you saw back in the pub. I assumed he’d been subjected to similar treatment, since he was in a labelled tank and all, so I didn’t want to leave him behind - I’d been left behind before and I knew from experience that it hurt, okay? So I took him with me.
I got shot at by Turks, fell through the Midgar plate, landed on a church and got help from the first person to be nice to me who I couldn’t even stay with for very long in case the Turks found me again. Still, she told me that there were others like me on this world who came before I did, so I left that city to look around to see if the kid I was friends with was one of them.”
He reached up to run a hand through his hair, taking a shaking breath as he did. He was fully aware that he was ranting, but by that point, it didn’t seem to matter. If Saix had tried to interrupt, he’d have gotten told to shut up.
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Little did I know that when I got there, the Organization’s resident trigger happy lunatic would be waiting for me. How did he know I was there? Oh, because he’d been told by Saix’s husband who just happened to be the one he oh-so-easily gave me the order to kill because he wasn’t worth anything to our plan. Anyway, Xigbar threatened to shoot me to death if I didn’t agree to stay, which I didn’t want to do, but I had to anyway. It wasn't as if he gave me a choice. He told me what had gone on and that the kid I was looking for, the only person I liked, wasn’t there after all.”
He glared hard at him, trying to keep his frustrated hand-gestures and displays of anger to a minimum, but it wasn’t easy.
“Eventually I met my old friend in a bar and I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but when his whack-job husband started giving my only companion on this goddamn world the scientific googly eyes, I kind of lost it. Then he, defending him, ended up dragging me to the desert and beating the hell out of me for doing something I didn’t know was going to make him freak out so much! I tried to care, but after everything I’ve been through, scaring one of the people responsible for the whole Nobody mess didn’t seem like too much of a big deal to me any more!”
Axel gritted his teeth, not taking his eyes off of Saix for even a second, even though they’d started to fill slightly. His voice cracked as he added the last sentence, something probably not helped by the fact that he positively shouted it.
“Have I left anything out!?”
He pulled one of the chakrams free and held it up, wanting more than anything to throw it at him but not quite being able to bring himself to do so.
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Getting to the top had been so that they had access to more information than any of the others would be willing to give to neophytes. Without it, they'd have been fumbling in the dark, and they were already doing enough of that. Saix had taken the role for himself because Axel would have never been able to look Xemnas in the face and show courteous respect.
And as for Roxas....
He sat in the sand, waiting for Axel to finish. When he did, he looked up at him, and said, "I don't recall you having been this much of a whiner."
He pushed himself to his feet, wiping sand from his face and looking at Axel. "Do you truly believe that you're the only one who has found this hard? How do you think it felt to land on this world, with a heart, with Vexen, and with all those memories of what I have done to him?"
He scowled at Axel. "How do you think it felt to stand and promise lifelong love to the man I had murdered, and to miss my best friend because I'd pushed him so far away?"
Saix shook his head, "You walked away from me when you met Roxas. You abandoned everything we had planned, in favour of Roxas. You gave up everything we had wanted for him!" He spat, his mouth still bleeding inside, and he looked at Axel intently. "I know that I pushed you away, that I used you, and used our friendship against you, and I know that I took it out on him," he paused, and faltered, looking away across the desert.
"I was so sure that I was doing what was best for us both. Your getting attached to Roxas was dangerous, and I didn't want your attentions to be divided the way they were. You had always followed your own agenda, Lea; you never thought of the consequences. I wouldn't let that happen this time."
Saix sighed, that scowl still etched on his face, but with more than a hint of sadness as he finished; "And I'm sorry. I've felt the guilt of it every day since I landed here, just as I've missed you every day."
He looked at Axel out of the corner of his eye, fully expecting to have everything he'd just said dismissed as rubbish.
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He stood and thought about it with his back to him. He allowed his shoulders to sag, hung his head and gritted his teeth against tears that tracked down his bloody and dusty face from the moment he blinked. He remained silent, looking out across the sands with blurred vision and measured, shaky breathing. Giving the game away, as Lea always did when trying to hide that he was hurt, he raised an arm and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve.
He didn't speak not because he had nothing to say, but because he didn't trust himself to.
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Back then it had left him feeling like a lemon. He'd never been very good at comforting people, especially not people he cared about. Even as Isa, when emotions came more easily, he'd been just that bit too detached, that bit too aloof; he never knew what to do when people got upset.
He still didn't, which was why he walked over, and then sat down in the sand near to his feet.
"I thought it would be better if you left, after I saw you in the bazaar. I don't know if we can ever be friends again, or if you will only ever resent me, and I don't know how easily I can forgive you." He bent his knees and clasped his arms around them, the way he used to when he was a teenager, sitting on Lea's bedroom floor. "But if I'd known you were here, I'd have looked for you."
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"Would you have squashed me when you found me?" He asked, his voice cracked and quiet to try and minimise the sad-sounding edge.
It didn't work, of course. He might have been a Ninja by class, but he was never very good at stealthily concealing his emotions. Even when he'd reached his late teens and early twenties, he'd found it difficult to keep a lid on it all, but that was generally glee or anger and not crying. It wasn't so much of an issue when he was a Nobody, not having emotions and all. Well, until Roxas, anyway. Axel never found out what it was about him and Sora, but they managed to bring them out of him despite the fact that it was theoretically impossible. They really were something else.
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With a faint, wry smile, he added, "Unless you said anything about myself and Vexen, at least." It was a joke, or as close as Saix got, and a weak one, but it was an attempt.
"Sit down, Lea," he said, quietly. He didn't want him to run off again. Then, remembering, he included, "Please?"
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He sighed a little and still avoided his eyes. "You've got horrible taste in men, you know." He said, only half joking. "Does he still giggle and talk to himself in corners?"
The idea of him and Vexen creeped him out. Vexen creeped him out generally, really, but that old man and his childhood buddy... eurgh.
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"Not as much as he used to," he said, quietly. "I'd appreciate if you let Vexen be," he said. His voice was soft, and he looked over at Axel. "You may not approve, but he is my husband. I'd prefer not to have to keep the two of you separate."
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"Just... tell me it was National Pity the Insane Person Day and you got duped into it." He said, sounding rather hopeful. "Even if it's not true, lie to me. I never want to have to believe that you'd marry him by choice."
He grinned a little. It just about reached his eyes and showed his teeth, but it wasn't as enthusiastic as it could be. All in all, he seemed rather different from how Isa would remember Lea, even when they were older. His personality was the same, but he was decidedly more subdued.
"At least it explains why you're still grumpy," he commented rather cryptically. He broke the puzzle moments later by adding, "His creepy cackling and fevered cries of 'It's aliiiive!' probably keep you up at night."
He demonstrated his perceived Madness of Vexen by throwing up his hands, as one usually does when performing that impression.
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But at that moment, after everything, it made Saix give a quiet, and small, but entirely real laugh. He shook his head, and thrust his arm out in Axel's direction, shoving him in the side, just the way they'd shoved each other as children.
"Shut up," he said, although it didn't manage to come out as an order.
He smiled to himself, his voice going soft again as he told Axel, "I fell for him. He's not as bad as you think, once you get to know him." There was a distinct note of tenderness in his voice when he spoke about Vexen. It was so obvious now, as he carried on, saying, "He reads too many books, and I have to drag him away from them half the time, and he puts his cold feet on me in the night," he trailed off, and smiled very sadly, "and he's only just come back from Daguerro because after he found out that I'd been the one to order his execution, he couldn't so much as look at me. I know he'll never trust me again."
He swallowed, inhaling deeply before he turned to look at Axel, "I'm sorry. I didn't marry him out of pity."
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