(no subject)
Title: Left Behind
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Pairings: Roxas/Axel
Genre: Angst
Word Count: 1,583
Notes: Christmas fic for nefthoron, 2006.
Summary: Roxas is always leaving Axel behind.
“He’s not as pretty as you, babe,” Axel joked when he came back from the Castle Oblivion, unperturbed as always by the fact that Roxas could kick his arse to the curb and was sometimes very tempted, especially when Axel tried to sling an arm around his shoulders like that. “And he’s a lot more gullible, too. Better people skills, though.”
Roxas shrugged him off with a glare. “I didn’t ask,” he said flatly, and kept walking, not waiting for Axel to catch up.
“Yeow, talk about cold shoulder!” Axel said behind him, laughing, and Roxas did the only sensible thing: he ignored him.
It made him feel weird to hear Axel talking about his Somebody like that, this Sora who was the original, the authentic version, only apparently he’s not the same at all. Either way, Roxas didn’t like it, and he didn’t know why.
~
Roxas had been content before he’d learned about Sora, or rather, if not content, unbothered by the status quo. Vexen was (had been) a creep, Demyx was like some kind of lost puppy that followed people around as if hoping they’d pick him up and carry him home, Xemnas was a seriously delusional psychopath (I’m tellin’ you, said Axel, who wasn’t one of the original six but was old enough and nosey enough to know about Ansem, daddy complex!), and Roxas didn’t care. Whatever; he did what he was told to do, and it didn’t really matter why or what for or if other members of the Organisation were insane, sadistic, deluded or just plain annoying. He could ignore them.
“What, fighting again?” Axel said, rolling his eyes when Roxas came back from beating the silver-haired weakling who went by the name of ‘Riku’. “Don’t you ever get bored?”
“No,” said Roxas, in his best ‘not in the mood so fuck off and die’ voice. “Don’t you have anything better to do than annoy me?”
The one thing that messed with Roxas and his quest to ignore everything was Axel, who went out of his way to be obnoxious and provoke a reaction and make Roxas care. Roxas didn’t want to care. Roxas shouldn’t be capable of caring, either, not without a heart.
“Nah,” Axel told him, and then leered, invading Roxas’s personal space the way he always does. “But I can think of something better we can do.”
“Get off me, moron,” Roxas muttered disdainfully, and thumps his newly acquired limpet with one of his keyblades, though admittedly he never does hit that hard. He was never as discouraging as he knew he could be, and right now, even more than usual, it was a very lacklustre protest.
(“Lacklustre”. Axel would say “half-hearted” or that Roxas’s “heart wasn’t in it”, but Roxas went out of his way to avoid those expressions purely because Axel went out of his way to use them, and Roxas was nothing if not contrary. So was Axel. It probably said something about them either suiting each other well or not matching at all, and it wasn’t too hard to guess which of them fell on which side of the line for that opinion.)
“Oi, Roxas, where are you going?”
That guy Roxas had beaten, Riku, his goal had been Sora, just like Sora was the one Marluxia and Larxene had been interested in with their plotting back at Castle Oblivion. Everywhere he turned it was Sora, Sora, Sora; Roxas was merely a shadow, just like all the other Nobodies, but unlucky for him, the one casting it was still there, blocking him out. Sora was the one everyone was interested in because Sora was the real thing and Roxas was just a reflection, and who’d choose the reflection over the reality?
Roxas didn’t care. Roxas had never cared. But suddenly he did.
“What was Sora like?” he asked abruptly, despite the fact that Axel had already told him, and what he meant, though he wouldn’t admit it, was is he better than me? Do you like him more?
Axel shrugged with one shoulder. “Fun to play with. He gets riled up easy, unlike you.”
Roxas’s expression darkened for a moment before he turned on his heel again and started to walk away, like he always did. “Then go annoy him instead,” he snapped, and Axel grabbed his arm before he could go too far.
“Nah,” Axel said easily. “Our favourite witch spirited him away somewhere in a coma.”
His tone was casual enough, but when Roxas glanced back at him, frowning, Axel’s head was tilted and his gaze was considering.
“Anyway,” Axel added, smirking again, “I’d rather annoy you. Prickly and difficult is more of a challenge, Sora was boring.”
“You’re an idiot,” Roxas said scathingly, and wondered why no matter how many times he pushed Axel away or shot him down or walked off Axel kept coming back for more, never let Roxas leave him behind.
“Yeah, well,” Axel said, unfussed, and though Roxas shook him off and walked ahead again, Axel’s legs were longer than his and the redhead always caught up.
~
Axel never said “I love you” but he always skirted the edges, pushing every emotional line and boundary he could find between them and making jokes that were not really jokes at all. He laughed about getting too close to the flame, getting burned-- and how ironic would that be? he'd say, and Roxas would just roll his eyes-- but the laughter was tinged with bitter hysteria and there was sometimes a glint of desperation in his mocking green eyes, because he’d been losing Roxas ever since they met and he was falling further and further behind every time Roxas turned away.
“Hey,” Axel had said once, lying on Roxas’s bed while Roxas ignored him on the other side of the room, “do you really believe that Nobodies can’t feel?”
“… What kind of question is that?”
Axel shrugged. “Call it idle curiosity.”
Roxas thought about Demyx and his need to be accepted; Saix’s crazed devotion to their Leader; Xemnas’s screwed up and contradictory desires to be acknowledged by his former master, to be validated and adored, to surpass and to crush. He tried not to think about Axel, about the way Axel would never leave him alone and the jokes he made about hearts and feelings and the desperation lying underneath. About the way Axel confused him and made it harder to block everything out.
“We don’t have hearts,” Roxas said finally, which was no answer at all, but he wasn’t in the mood to discuss this. He’d never be in the mood, and Axel seemed to recognise that, though he kept on pushing.
“Okay, stupid question,” Axel said, but there was something wry and wistful in his smirk before Roxas looked away.
~
“You’ve been fighting,” Axel said simply, leaning against the wall, and Roxas didn’t look at him.
“I lost.”
There were no more words, so Roxas didn’t say anything else and Axel didn’t reply, just watched as Roxas left.
~
“So you’re really going,” Axel said quietly, looking like a bedraggled rodent with his fluorescent red hair darkened to crimson and the irrepressible spikes plastered to his pale wet skin. “Leaving for real this time.”
“Yeah,” Roxas answered, and blinked once when Axel suddenly wrapped his arms around him from behind, squeezing the breath out of him. He could feel the rough wet fabric of their robes sticking together, the air between them humid with body heat and rain, Axel’s bony angles digging in all the wrong places.
“Just so you know,” Axel told him, voice muffled against the back of Roxas’s head, “I meant it when I said I’ll be sad.”
“No you won’t,” Roxas said, but he didn’t shove Axel away, just stared up at the dark cloudy sky and let the rain soak them both to the skin. “You don’t have a heart.”
Axel laughed, broken and not at all amused. “Yeah, guess not.”
When Roxas pulled free from Axel’s grasp Axel didn’t try to stop him, and that was the last time Roxas ever walked away.
~
Roxas had wanted to meet his Somebody because he’d wanted to know what was so much better about Sora than him. Why Sora was the one who’d been chosen by everybody (everybody but Axel), why Roxas was the one left with half an existence.
He’d wanted to know and he didn’t have anything to lose (did he?), so Roxas had gone and left Axel and the rest of the Organisation far behind.
~
Roxas doesn’t mind being a part of Sora so much, anymore, has gotten over his bitterness that Sora was the one to be chosen, but in the end being reunited with his Somebody isn’t all it was cracked up to be. The empty feeling that he’d always assumed came from missing a heart is still there; sometimes it’s worse than it used to be, and Roxas is finally beginning to understand that maybe Axel had been right all along. Maybe Nobodies can feel. Maybe they don’t need a heart to be sad or to care about somebody (nobody).
Roxas had always hated trite sayings, which was part of the reason Axel had loved to throw them at him, but now he thinks: maybe I really didn’t know what I had until I started to miss it, after all.
He’d always been the one to walk away from Axel, but in the end it’s Roxas who’s left behind.