The Cloak [log]
Who: Roxas [oathtooblivion]
When: 8th August, 3:00am
Where: Roxas’ house
Summary: For differing reasons, Axel and Sakura have left Roxas behind. Frustrated and left alone to brood in his thoughts, Roxas is troubled by bad dreams and can’t sleep. But what happens next when he wakes up troubles him far more than a nightmare...
Notes: Wow, big solo log here. I’ve had the basic outline in my head for some time now that I've wanted to get down in words, and it pretty much was bound to happen eventually. Comments are loved!
Silence pervaded the empty city streets. Silence and oppressive darkness of night time, the towering buildings mere inky black silhouettes and vague shapes. Roxas half-wondered where all the lights had gone as he walked, with every step the darkness seemed to move in. Surely there should be at least some street lamps. He’d never seen the city so dark, but then, he didn’t recognise this street. Was he even in New Sanctum?
He looked up. There was not even a star in the sky, just a big black expanse of nothing. It would have almost been peaceful, were it not for the darkness continually closing in, making it harder to see, making his limbs feel heavier and making him so tired...
“What’s wrong, Roxas?” a familiar voice drawled, and Roxas whipped his head down. Even if he could barely see those piercing green eyes, he knew they were fixed on his, and he knew that an amused smirk played about the man’s lips, taunting him. Axel was watching him, waiting for an answer.
“What’s... wrong?” Roxas repeated dumbly. He was tired, he didn’t want to think, didn’t want Axel pestering him. “Nothing’s wrong. What are you doing here?”
“I should be asking you the same question. You decided to come home?” Axel’s distant figure turned away from him, and he pulled his hood over his mane of fiery red hair, so he melted into the blacks of the street and buildings and became indistinguishable. “Well, maybe we don’t want you any more.”
Before Roxas could make sense of that statement, Axel’s voice lowered, barely audible. Roxas shouldn’t have been able to hear it from this distance, but he did. Axel used no tone Roxas had ever heard him use before: the two words were spat out angrily, cold and murderous.
“Die, traitor.”
One moment, there was peace; the next thing Roxas knew, the street was a scene of chaos. Glowing yellow eyes turned, like searchlights, in his direction. Shadows seemed to spring to life from the darkness, scampering towards him, their sharp claws and teeth extended hungrily. Roxas tried to summon his Keyblades for the oncoming battle, but they wouldn’t come, like this heavy darkness had extinguished even his own light. His body, likewise, had abandoned him as he tried desperately to move and run away, and he was fixed to the spot, forced only to stare on in horror at his attackers.
In seconds the darkness was upon him, the creatures effortlessly pulling him down in a sea of glowing yellow eyes, claws, and pain. Even his thick black coat did little to protect him, and the claws sunk through easily, tearing his flesh, searching for something within him he knew was pointless to look for. He was unable to resist and could only clench his jaw determinedly, refusing to give Axel and these Heartless the satisfying indication of his pain by crying out. But it hurt - already he could feel one serious wound, warm blood flowing steadily out.
Was he going to die? Abandoned, alone, defenseless, left to be consumed by darkness? He couldn’t go like this, there was still so much to be done, so much he wanted or needed to do... He tried to force himself upwards and found himself trembling all over, and then after that fleeting moment his head was forced down again in a blur of black and red - his own blood. He could taste it, too; coppery and unpleasant, and surmised vaguely that he’d bitten his own tongue in an attempt to stop himself betraying his pain, as more of the creatures joined the onslaught.
“Axel...!” He called, his tone almost pleading, his eyes watering in agony and blurring his vision. He had no idea if Axel was still watching, or if he’d long since gone, leaving Roxas to the mercy of the Heartless. He called Roxas a traitor? After all this time, pretending to be Roxas’ best friend and then stabbing him in the back like this, and he dared to call Roxas the traitor? Frustrated, Roxas started, “Axel, help-!”
No. He wouldn’t rely on Axel any more. He couldn’t. Angrily, he tried to force his aching limbs to function, yet the more he struggled, the more the Heartless delighted in his pain, sinking their claws deeper into every inch of him they could reach like scores of small knives, scrabbling and fighting to reach his chest where his heart should be (why didn’t they understand there was nothing there?), and his wounds were burning like fire.
Then, when he thought he could take it no longer and his vision began to fade, he was falling.
Was this death? Falling through darkness...
Abruptly, unexpectedly, he landed on something hard with a painful thump. He tried to stagger quickly upright but slipped and fell down again; something was tangled around his legs. It took him a moment to realise it was his sheets, and that what he’d just fallen from was his bed.
He almost laughed in relief, but a pounding headache was quickly coming on and he stopped himself. It had all been a dream. A silly, nonsensical dream. Axel wouldn’t set Heartless on him and leave him for dead. The Keyblade certainly wouldn’t abandon him.
Despite that, it had felt so real. That pain... It really did feel like he was about to die, if that was what dying felt like. Disentangling himself from his bed sheets, he stood upright in the semi-darkness of what was possibly the early hours of the morning, listening only to the quick rhythm of his shaky breath and shivering slightly even though it was a warm night. He almost expected Axel to be staring out from the darkness, but of course, Axel was... wherever he was now.
Frowning and with one hand massaging his aching head, he messily pulled his sheets back onto the bed, and sat, tugging back his curtains slightly and gazing out of the window by the bed, looking down at the street below. His thoughts kept returning to Axel, and that dream, still fresh in his memory. It was just a dream, he told himself firmly. Just a dream. Forget about it.
But no matter how hard he tried, it sprung back into his mind, the scene repeating itself over and over, preventing his sleep. Odd dreams were not uncommon for Roxas, and he was used to restless nights because of them. Yet this one, one that made no sense and probably held no meaning, was affecting him far more than he’d like to admit.
“Forget it,” he hissed under his breath, afterwards feeling more than a little stupid for talking to himself in the first place. He sighed, retracting his gaze from the window and turning to face his darkened room again. Sleep was going to elude him now his mind was preoccupied, so there was no use in trying. He stood, navigating the furniture mostly by memory, and opened the door, stepping out into the hallway. He was in a mind to go to the bathroom and wash his face to refresh himself, and then perhaps get something to eat...
With that in mind, he crossed the hallway to the bathroom, once again relying on memory. His hand strayed to the door handle, but a flash from the corner of his eye distracted him.
A sliver of moonlight trailed from a door at the end of the hall that stood ajar; he recognised it to be Axel’s room. Not once since he’d cleared the room out for Axel’s use had he been in there, respecting the pyro’s secretive tendencies - even if Axel liked to invite himself into Roxas’ own room. He doubted Sakura even went Axel’s room, and she was the one who did most of the cleaning around the house. Then again, Sakura cleaning his own room made him a little uncomfortable at the invasion of privacy, so it wasn’t all that surprising. But Roxas was a curious person by nature, to such a level that he practically thought that minimally open door was beckoning him to open it and look inside.
He was indecisive for only a moment. Axel would never notice unless he moved anything, and just having a look around wouldn’t hurt anyone… right? Right. And, after all, this was Roxas’ house, so he should be able to go where he pleased, even if he’d given the room to Axel. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little guilty as he opened the door to the room. The guilt was quickly forgotten once he was inside and flicked the light switch on.
It wasn’t all that different to when Axel had first moved in, except now the room was now furnished rather than empty. It still had the same rustic browns as the rest of the house, and much to Roxas’ surprise, the room wasn’t at all messy, unless the stack of boxes shoved unceremoniously into one corner counted. There was even a computer Roxas suspected had been stolen on a desk, along with a CD player with an album beside it - Roxas knew without so much as looking that it was that Avril what’s-her-name Axel was so annoyingly fond of listening repeatedly and loudly to. Roxas had to admit, that as much as Axel annoyed him, company was company; far better than a house so deathly silent it felt abandoned.
Abandoned; it was a good word to describe Roxas right now. Axel had left him for the Organization. Sakura had also left, not even allowing Roxas to follow after her, and it made him feel a little bitter. She would probably say something like that it was her problem, and she didn’t want to burden or trouble him... Why did everyone seem to think he had some need to be sheltered, taken care of and kept out of trouble? It was nice to know they cared, but... he hated being left behind.
Sighing and shaking himself from his thoughts, Roxas took another look around. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary in the room, and Roxas almost felt a sense of disappointment. He’d expected... well, he wasn’t sure. Something unusual had to be here on principle.
Another shiver passed through him as if to confirm his doubts, and his eyes fell on a door he remembered lead to a small closet. Intrigued as to just what Axel kept in there - a dead body was more likely than clothes - Roxas pulled open the door. Besides the clothes he’d forced a disgruntled Axel into buying a few weeks ago, it was empty, except something back stashed in one corner he assumed was a spare Organization XIII uniform.
...Since when did Axel have a spare, though? He was pretty sure he didn’t. Roxas kneeled, picking it up. Underneath the coat were the boots, pants and uniform, all in the standard black. And then something quickly dawned upon him.
This was his old uniform. There was no mistaking the size; he’d always been the smallest and youngest member of Organization XIII.
Minutes later, he’d changed into the uniform and proceeded to look at himself in the bathroom mirror to see how it fitted. This was definitely his own uniform, which he’d always assumed had been lost. But Axel had somehow managed to get a hold of it, probably while on the search for Roxas himself, and kept it for sentimental reasons. That would be so like him - he tended to be simple like that.
Not that it was a bad thing.
Roxas grinned slightly, and his reflection grinned back, and then quickly changed to a face of puzzlement. It was somehow odd to see himself, in that long black cloak, smiling. It was just something that didn’t fit, like it was an entirely different person he was seeing. Like a faint, far-off memory he couldn’t quite recall, yet it was still there. He just had to reach for it, pull it out of the haze...
And then abruptly, there was a splitting pain like his skull had been cleaved in two, accompanied by a harsh, high-pitched sound reverberating through his head and only serving to increasing his pain twofold. Alarmed, his gloved hands immediately flew to his ears in an attempt to block out the sound, but it penetrated through and continued even louder than before. His were eyes tightly shut in pain and in an attempt to shut out the noise, so he barely noticed as he sank slowly to his knees. The sound seemed to be coming from his own head, yet it felt like his eardrums, too, were about to split open from the unbearable force of it.
Roxas was suddenly dazzled by stark white walls all around. The room was devoid of any furniture, decorations, or even a window or other such source of light. Even the floor and ceiling were white, and there was a tall, shadowy figure in front of him, holding out the very cloak he’d just unearthed for Roxas to take.
“-Roxas. You are required to wear this uniform at all times, as part of Organization XIII’s dress code. Understood?”
Roxas nodded obediently, staring up at the man as he took the coat. He could barely see his face under the shadows cast by the hood, but he knew the man’s identity just from his imposing presence. This was the Superior, Xemnas.
“Good. We shall speak again shortly. Until then, I have assigned Axel to oversee you.” Xemnas clicked his fingers, and promptly on cue, a man appeared beside him, likewise hooded to conceal his identity. He inclined his head in respect to their Superior, who then vanished, and then turned to Roxas to give a sort of lazy, two-fingered salute in greetings.
“Hey, kid.”
Roxas gave a reply, but things moved at such a rapid pace until they were blurred, yet he knew what happened all at once. These were his memories; some parts were fuzzy when he didn’t remember them clearly, others he could recall word for word. One such thing was him and Axel sat on a clock tower not unlike their spot at the top of a skyscraper in New Sanctum, eating ice cream and watching the sun set. Another one, he was facing Axel in one of those bleach white empty rooms, and they charged to meet one another, chakrams and Keyblades meeting in a flurry of sparks and the clang of metal.
“The Keyblade,” he vaguely heard Xemnas say, from a different memory. “A truly marvellous weapon. How fortunate it is for us to have a Keyblade bearer on our side - a wielder of two blades...”
How Roxas had forgotten about them was beyond him, they were a part of him. Two Keyblades of light and dark: Oathkeeper and Oblivion. He handled them with a natural ease, fluidly striking out in an almost dance-like rhythm, one hitting, then the other, then the other would strike before Axel so much as had a chance to regain his standing.
Then the scene shifted again, and he was side-by-side with Axel this time, walking through the ruins of a castle he recognised to be Hollow Bastion. He looked up at Axel questioningly. “What’s our mission?”
“Dunno,” Axel shrugged, looking annoyed. “The Superior wasn’t all that clear about it.”
“Exterminating more Heartless, I bet,” Roxas replied, his tone equally annoyed. “It’s all I ever do.”
Organization XIII didn’t trust him. They never did. He was never involved in meetings, as his opinions were near worthless to them unless talk of that ‘other Keyblade master’ came up. They were without hearts, without emotion except for the fragments they could recall by memory, and even then it was only a faint imitation of true emotion. All they cared about was getting their hearts back, gathering more and more hearts, and doing anything to achieve their goal. He disliked them all in equal measure, except perhaps Axel, who even went as far as to call Roxas his ‘friend’. But what defined a friend? Roxas had no idea, since Axel was his first. He remembered always taking an interest in normal people of other worlds and their mannerisms, even if he couldn’t understand them. From that, he got the basic idea that a friend was someone you liked the company of.
And he liked Axel’s company a little more than the others. So it came to pass that they became ‘friends’. Axel, again, eventually went even further to call them ‘best friends’, and the other Organization members were just as baffled as Roxas was how friendship could even happen between beings like Roxas and Axel who could not feel.
He was alone again, in a dark city. It was raining, and all around him, shadows were springing to life again, and the black and white Keyblades were by his side in an instant and he dived into the fray, cutting through them easily. Exterminating Heartless. It’s all I ever do.
A silver-haired man challenged him, called him Sora. Confused, angry, frustrated with the lack of answers, he attacked him, and it seemed like Roxas would emerge as the victor...
Sora. He knew that name, knew he was somehow related back to himself. If he found Sora, everything would become clear. And so, he turned his back on the Organization. He left them, and he left Axel. He felt no remorse - Axel wouldn’t tell him anything, just like the rest of them. His loyalties did not lie with Roxas, who knew that he didn’t need to know the definition of a ‘friend’ to know that Axel certainly was not one any more. Anything he had told Roxas about being friends was a lie, and even when Axel went as far as to say he’d miss Roxas, Roxas brushed him coldly off and left.
The silver-haired man turned the tides, drawing on the power of darkness, overpowering him easily. Roxas saw no more; he had been defeated. Defeated, but not killed - he had been captured.
He didn’t know how many hours had passed when he awoke, barely conscious and unable to move even his eyes to open them. He was slumped uncomfortably on what felt like a cold metal floor, and he could hear snatches of conversation with two unfamiliar voices nearby, which were presumably talking about him above the hum of machines.
“...He’ll need a fake identity... throw off his pursuers.”
“Poor thing.”
“It is the fate of a Nobody.” Then something clicked, and again, Roxas saw no more.
The pain in his head was gone, as the confused flow of thought and memory receded. Roxas moved his hands from his ears stiffly, his fingers aching from holding so tightly. He slowly opened his eyes to find himself half-collapsed on the floor of his bathroom, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
It was over, and he felt exhausted and drained of all energy. The pain was over; the memories were over - but still there, at the back of his mind. He knew everything, he remembered everything. The memories had been there all along, he just needed to get past the block. The block put in place by the two voices at the end of the memories... as part of his fake identity. The identity of a boy who had lived in New Sanctum all his life, who was kind and charming and friendly, and, of course, perfectly normal.
Lies. All of it.
Roxas staggered upright, his weakened legs barely supporting him, and he wrenched open the bathroom door and back into Axel’s room. He undressed again and got back into his pajamas, taking one last look at his uniform bundled in his arms. He considered moving it to his own wardrobe, but quickly thought against it, stashing it back into Axel’s closet. If Axel ever intended on giving it to Roxas of his own accord, he’d wait for that. Roxas wasn’t all that eager to see that cloak again until then.
Sighing in exhaustion, Roxas closed the closet door, taking a final look around the room. On top of that CD case on the desk was the precise amount of cash Roxas had given Axel to pay for the album... Axel hadn’t forgotten about owing Roxas after all. Smiling feebly, Roxas took the note, stuffing it in his pocket and turned, leaving Axel’s room in silence.
When: 8th August, 3:00am
Where: Roxas’ house
Summary: For differing reasons, Axel and Sakura have left Roxas behind. Frustrated and left alone to brood in his thoughts, Roxas is troubled by bad dreams and can’t sleep. But what happens next when he wakes up troubles him far more than a nightmare...
Notes: Wow, big solo log here. I’ve had the basic outline in my head for some time now that I've wanted to get down in words, and it pretty much was bound to happen eventually. Comments are loved!
Silence pervaded the empty city streets. Silence and oppressive darkness of night time, the towering buildings mere inky black silhouettes and vague shapes. Roxas half-wondered where all the lights had gone as he walked, with every step the darkness seemed to move in. Surely there should be at least some street lamps. He’d never seen the city so dark, but then, he didn’t recognise this street. Was he even in New Sanctum?
He looked up. There was not even a star in the sky, just a big black expanse of nothing. It would have almost been peaceful, were it not for the darkness continually closing in, making it harder to see, making his limbs feel heavier and making him so tired...
“What’s wrong, Roxas?” a familiar voice drawled, and Roxas whipped his head down. Even if he could barely see those piercing green eyes, he knew they were fixed on his, and he knew that an amused smirk played about the man’s lips, taunting him. Axel was watching him, waiting for an answer.
“What’s... wrong?” Roxas repeated dumbly. He was tired, he didn’t want to think, didn’t want Axel pestering him. “Nothing’s wrong. What are you doing here?”
“I should be asking you the same question. You decided to come home?” Axel’s distant figure turned away from him, and he pulled his hood over his mane of fiery red hair, so he melted into the blacks of the street and buildings and became indistinguishable. “Well, maybe we don’t want you any more.”
Before Roxas could make sense of that statement, Axel’s voice lowered, barely audible. Roxas shouldn’t have been able to hear it from this distance, but he did. Axel used no tone Roxas had ever heard him use before: the two words were spat out angrily, cold and murderous.
“Die, traitor.”
One moment, there was peace; the next thing Roxas knew, the street was a scene of chaos. Glowing yellow eyes turned, like searchlights, in his direction. Shadows seemed to spring to life from the darkness, scampering towards him, their sharp claws and teeth extended hungrily. Roxas tried to summon his Keyblades for the oncoming battle, but they wouldn’t come, like this heavy darkness had extinguished even his own light. His body, likewise, had abandoned him as he tried desperately to move and run away, and he was fixed to the spot, forced only to stare on in horror at his attackers.
In seconds the darkness was upon him, the creatures effortlessly pulling him down in a sea of glowing yellow eyes, claws, and pain. Even his thick black coat did little to protect him, and the claws sunk through easily, tearing his flesh, searching for something within him he knew was pointless to look for. He was unable to resist and could only clench his jaw determinedly, refusing to give Axel and these Heartless the satisfying indication of his pain by crying out. But it hurt - already he could feel one serious wound, warm blood flowing steadily out.
Was he going to die? Abandoned, alone, defenseless, left to be consumed by darkness? He couldn’t go like this, there was still so much to be done, so much he wanted or needed to do... He tried to force himself upwards and found himself trembling all over, and then after that fleeting moment his head was forced down again in a blur of black and red - his own blood. He could taste it, too; coppery and unpleasant, and surmised vaguely that he’d bitten his own tongue in an attempt to stop himself betraying his pain, as more of the creatures joined the onslaught.
“Axel...!” He called, his tone almost pleading, his eyes watering in agony and blurring his vision. He had no idea if Axel was still watching, or if he’d long since gone, leaving Roxas to the mercy of the Heartless. He called Roxas a traitor? After all this time, pretending to be Roxas’ best friend and then stabbing him in the back like this, and he dared to call Roxas the traitor? Frustrated, Roxas started, “Axel, help-!”
No. He wouldn’t rely on Axel any more. He couldn’t. Angrily, he tried to force his aching limbs to function, yet the more he struggled, the more the Heartless delighted in his pain, sinking their claws deeper into every inch of him they could reach like scores of small knives, scrabbling and fighting to reach his chest where his heart should be (why didn’t they understand there was nothing there?), and his wounds were burning like fire.
Then, when he thought he could take it no longer and his vision began to fade, he was falling.
Was this death? Falling through darkness...
Abruptly, unexpectedly, he landed on something hard with a painful thump. He tried to stagger quickly upright but slipped and fell down again; something was tangled around his legs. It took him a moment to realise it was his sheets, and that what he’d just fallen from was his bed.
He almost laughed in relief, but a pounding headache was quickly coming on and he stopped himself. It had all been a dream. A silly, nonsensical dream. Axel wouldn’t set Heartless on him and leave him for dead. The Keyblade certainly wouldn’t abandon him.
Despite that, it had felt so real. That pain... It really did feel like he was about to die, if that was what dying felt like. Disentangling himself from his bed sheets, he stood upright in the semi-darkness of what was possibly the early hours of the morning, listening only to the quick rhythm of his shaky breath and shivering slightly even though it was a warm night. He almost expected Axel to be staring out from the darkness, but of course, Axel was... wherever he was now.
Frowning and with one hand massaging his aching head, he messily pulled his sheets back onto the bed, and sat, tugging back his curtains slightly and gazing out of the window by the bed, looking down at the street below. His thoughts kept returning to Axel, and that dream, still fresh in his memory. It was just a dream, he told himself firmly. Just a dream. Forget about it.
But no matter how hard he tried, it sprung back into his mind, the scene repeating itself over and over, preventing his sleep. Odd dreams were not uncommon for Roxas, and he was used to restless nights because of them. Yet this one, one that made no sense and probably held no meaning, was affecting him far more than he’d like to admit.
“Forget it,” he hissed under his breath, afterwards feeling more than a little stupid for talking to himself in the first place. He sighed, retracting his gaze from the window and turning to face his darkened room again. Sleep was going to elude him now his mind was preoccupied, so there was no use in trying. He stood, navigating the furniture mostly by memory, and opened the door, stepping out into the hallway. He was in a mind to go to the bathroom and wash his face to refresh himself, and then perhaps get something to eat...
With that in mind, he crossed the hallway to the bathroom, once again relying on memory. His hand strayed to the door handle, but a flash from the corner of his eye distracted him.
A sliver of moonlight trailed from a door at the end of the hall that stood ajar; he recognised it to be Axel’s room. Not once since he’d cleared the room out for Axel’s use had he been in there, respecting the pyro’s secretive tendencies - even if Axel liked to invite himself into Roxas’ own room. He doubted Sakura even went Axel’s room, and she was the one who did most of the cleaning around the house. Then again, Sakura cleaning his own room made him a little uncomfortable at the invasion of privacy, so it wasn’t all that surprising. But Roxas was a curious person by nature, to such a level that he practically thought that minimally open door was beckoning him to open it and look inside.
He was indecisive for only a moment. Axel would never notice unless he moved anything, and just having a look around wouldn’t hurt anyone… right? Right. And, after all, this was Roxas’ house, so he should be able to go where he pleased, even if he’d given the room to Axel. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little guilty as he opened the door to the room. The guilt was quickly forgotten once he was inside and flicked the light switch on.
It wasn’t all that different to when Axel had first moved in, except now the room was now furnished rather than empty. It still had the same rustic browns as the rest of the house, and much to Roxas’ surprise, the room wasn’t at all messy, unless the stack of boxes shoved unceremoniously into one corner counted. There was even a computer Roxas suspected had been stolen on a desk, along with a CD player with an album beside it - Roxas knew without so much as looking that it was that Avril what’s-her-name Axel was so annoyingly fond of listening repeatedly and loudly to. Roxas had to admit, that as much as Axel annoyed him, company was company; far better than a house so deathly silent it felt abandoned.
Abandoned; it was a good word to describe Roxas right now. Axel had left him for the Organization. Sakura had also left, not even allowing Roxas to follow after her, and it made him feel a little bitter. She would probably say something like that it was her problem, and she didn’t want to burden or trouble him... Why did everyone seem to think he had some need to be sheltered, taken care of and kept out of trouble? It was nice to know they cared, but... he hated being left behind.
Sighing and shaking himself from his thoughts, Roxas took another look around. There was nothing particularly out of the ordinary in the room, and Roxas almost felt a sense of disappointment. He’d expected... well, he wasn’t sure. Something unusual had to be here on principle.
Another shiver passed through him as if to confirm his doubts, and his eyes fell on a door he remembered lead to a small closet. Intrigued as to just what Axel kept in there - a dead body was more likely than clothes - Roxas pulled open the door. Besides the clothes he’d forced a disgruntled Axel into buying a few weeks ago, it was empty, except something back stashed in one corner he assumed was a spare Organization XIII uniform.
...Since when did Axel have a spare, though? He was pretty sure he didn’t. Roxas kneeled, picking it up. Underneath the coat were the boots, pants and uniform, all in the standard black. And then something quickly dawned upon him.
This was his old uniform. There was no mistaking the size; he’d always been the smallest and youngest member of Organization XIII.
Minutes later, he’d changed into the uniform and proceeded to look at himself in the bathroom mirror to see how it fitted. This was definitely his own uniform, which he’d always assumed had been lost. But Axel had somehow managed to get a hold of it, probably while on the search for Roxas himself, and kept it for sentimental reasons. That would be so like him - he tended to be simple like that.
Not that it was a bad thing.
Roxas grinned slightly, and his reflection grinned back, and then quickly changed to a face of puzzlement. It was somehow odd to see himself, in that long black cloak, smiling. It was just something that didn’t fit, like it was an entirely different person he was seeing. Like a faint, far-off memory he couldn’t quite recall, yet it was still there. He just had to reach for it, pull it out of the haze...
And then abruptly, there was a splitting pain like his skull had been cleaved in two, accompanied by a harsh, high-pitched sound reverberating through his head and only serving to increasing his pain twofold. Alarmed, his gloved hands immediately flew to his ears in an attempt to block out the sound, but it penetrated through and continued even louder than before. His were eyes tightly shut in pain and in an attempt to shut out the noise, so he barely noticed as he sank slowly to his knees. The sound seemed to be coming from his own head, yet it felt like his eardrums, too, were about to split open from the unbearable force of it.
Roxas was suddenly dazzled by stark white walls all around. The room was devoid of any furniture, decorations, or even a window or other such source of light. Even the floor and ceiling were white, and there was a tall, shadowy figure in front of him, holding out the very cloak he’d just unearthed for Roxas to take.
“-Roxas. You are required to wear this uniform at all times, as part of Organization XIII’s dress code. Understood?”
Roxas nodded obediently, staring up at the man as he took the coat. He could barely see his face under the shadows cast by the hood, but he knew the man’s identity just from his imposing presence. This was the Superior, Xemnas.
“Good. We shall speak again shortly. Until then, I have assigned Axel to oversee you.” Xemnas clicked his fingers, and promptly on cue, a man appeared beside him, likewise hooded to conceal his identity. He inclined his head in respect to their Superior, who then vanished, and then turned to Roxas to give a sort of lazy, two-fingered salute in greetings.
“Hey, kid.”
Roxas gave a reply, but things moved at such a rapid pace until they were blurred, yet he knew what happened all at once. These were his memories; some parts were fuzzy when he didn’t remember them clearly, others he could recall word for word. One such thing was him and Axel sat on a clock tower not unlike their spot at the top of a skyscraper in New Sanctum, eating ice cream and watching the sun set. Another one, he was facing Axel in one of those bleach white empty rooms, and they charged to meet one another, chakrams and Keyblades meeting in a flurry of sparks and the clang of metal.
“The Keyblade,” he vaguely heard Xemnas say, from a different memory. “A truly marvellous weapon. How fortunate it is for us to have a Keyblade bearer on our side - a wielder of two blades...”
How Roxas had forgotten about them was beyond him, they were a part of him. Two Keyblades of light and dark: Oathkeeper and Oblivion. He handled them with a natural ease, fluidly striking out in an almost dance-like rhythm, one hitting, then the other, then the other would strike before Axel so much as had a chance to regain his standing.
Then the scene shifted again, and he was side-by-side with Axel this time, walking through the ruins of a castle he recognised to be Hollow Bastion. He looked up at Axel questioningly. “What’s our mission?”
“Dunno,” Axel shrugged, looking annoyed. “The Superior wasn’t all that clear about it.”
“Exterminating more Heartless, I bet,” Roxas replied, his tone equally annoyed. “It’s all I ever do.”
Organization XIII didn’t trust him. They never did. He was never involved in meetings, as his opinions were near worthless to them unless talk of that ‘other Keyblade master’ came up. They were without hearts, without emotion except for the fragments they could recall by memory, and even then it was only a faint imitation of true emotion. All they cared about was getting their hearts back, gathering more and more hearts, and doing anything to achieve their goal. He disliked them all in equal measure, except perhaps Axel, who even went as far as to call Roxas his ‘friend’. But what defined a friend? Roxas had no idea, since Axel was his first. He remembered always taking an interest in normal people of other worlds and their mannerisms, even if he couldn’t understand them. From that, he got the basic idea that a friend was someone you liked the company of.
And he liked Axel’s company a little more than the others. So it came to pass that they became ‘friends’. Axel, again, eventually went even further to call them ‘best friends’, and the other Organization members were just as baffled as Roxas was how friendship could even happen between beings like Roxas and Axel who could not feel.
He was alone again, in a dark city. It was raining, and all around him, shadows were springing to life again, and the black and white Keyblades were by his side in an instant and he dived into the fray, cutting through them easily. Exterminating Heartless. It’s all I ever do.
A silver-haired man challenged him, called him Sora. Confused, angry, frustrated with the lack of answers, he attacked him, and it seemed like Roxas would emerge as the victor...
Sora. He knew that name, knew he was somehow related back to himself. If he found Sora, everything would become clear. And so, he turned his back on the Organization. He left them, and he left Axel. He felt no remorse - Axel wouldn’t tell him anything, just like the rest of them. His loyalties did not lie with Roxas, who knew that he didn’t need to know the definition of a ‘friend’ to know that Axel certainly was not one any more. Anything he had told Roxas about being friends was a lie, and even when Axel went as far as to say he’d miss Roxas, Roxas brushed him coldly off and left.
The silver-haired man turned the tides, drawing on the power of darkness, overpowering him easily. Roxas saw no more; he had been defeated. Defeated, but not killed - he had been captured.
He didn’t know how many hours had passed when he awoke, barely conscious and unable to move even his eyes to open them. He was slumped uncomfortably on what felt like a cold metal floor, and he could hear snatches of conversation with two unfamiliar voices nearby, which were presumably talking about him above the hum of machines.
“...He’ll need a fake identity... throw off his pursuers.”
“Poor thing.”
“It is the fate of a Nobody.” Then something clicked, and again, Roxas saw no more.
The pain in his head was gone, as the confused flow of thought and memory receded. Roxas moved his hands from his ears stiffly, his fingers aching from holding so tightly. He slowly opened his eyes to find himself half-collapsed on the floor of his bathroom, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
It was over, and he felt exhausted and drained of all energy. The pain was over; the memories were over - but still there, at the back of his mind. He knew everything, he remembered everything. The memories had been there all along, he just needed to get past the block. The block put in place by the two voices at the end of the memories... as part of his fake identity. The identity of a boy who had lived in New Sanctum all his life, who was kind and charming and friendly, and, of course, perfectly normal.
Lies. All of it.
Roxas staggered upright, his weakened legs barely supporting him, and he wrenched open the bathroom door and back into Axel’s room. He undressed again and got back into his pajamas, taking one last look at his uniform bundled in his arms. He considered moving it to his own wardrobe, but quickly thought against it, stashing it back into Axel’s closet. If Axel ever intended on giving it to Roxas of his own accord, he’d wait for that. Roxas wasn’t all that eager to see that cloak again until then.
Sighing in exhaustion, Roxas closed the closet door, taking a final look around the room. On top of that CD case on the desk was the precise amount of cash Roxas had given Axel to pay for the album... Axel hadn’t forgotten about owing Roxas after all. Smiling feebly, Roxas took the note, stuffing it in his pocket and turned, leaving Axel’s room in silence.