FIC
This fic, I am almost ashamed to say, has been in the works since 2008. I guess it could be called a labor of love.
Title: Cold When the Summer Is Spent (PART 1)
Fandom: KH
Rating: soft R, hard pg13
Characters/ Pairing: Akuroku. Side SoRiKai, weird forays towards other things.
Summary: Done to a month's worth of 31_days prompts. The story of Roxas. Also, the longest fic I've ever written, at about 11.5k
“You’re a lunatic,” Roxas tells him, straight-faced and with the honesty of a victor.
The blindfolded boy turns his head towards Roxas, eyebrows furrowed above the cloth. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s what a crazy person would say,” Roxas snaps back, unreasonably ruffled by this stranger.
“But I’m not crazy,” hands spread, empty and desperate, “just foolish.”
“There’s a fine line there,” Roxas admits, “but foolish people don’t throw themselves from buildings, blindfolded. Lunatics do.”
“Well, that’s not exactly why I’m foolish.”
“Throwing yourself off of a building doesn’t qualify as idiotic in your books?”
“Not if you expect to land.”
“And you did?”
“Why else would I jump? I couldn’t fight you up there.”
“You couldn’t fight me at all,” Roxas sneers, and gives the boy on the ground a contemptuous look.
“You’re breathing awfully hard for someone who didn’t fight.”
“Well,” a pause, “I guess you gave it your all, but did you really expect to beat me blinded?”
“There’s no other way I can.” The boy levers himself up with his keyblade and gives Roxas a smile that, if only his eyes were visible, might mean something.
“See? You’re absolutely insane!”
“If you really thought I was mad, you wouldn’t want to ask me all those questions.”
“I don’t want to ask you anything,” Roxas growls, and lets his keyblades vanish.
“You will.”
xx.
“What the fuck,” he snarls, back at the castle mostly because he has no place to go. Axel doesn’t respond, but Roxas keeps going, too riled up to care that he’s playing Axel’s little mindgames. “Who does he think he is? It’s not like he can actually accomplish anything, fighting the way he is.”
Axel’s raised eyebrow is enough to deflate him, and Roxas collapses into one of the utilitarian chairs that lurk throughout the castle. “I hate this.”
Axel smirks but doesn’t say what he would have said at any other time, any other place. He’s not foolhardy enough to push Roxas right now, not when he’s chafing at the bonds of camaraderie so carelessly looped around him. “Come on,” he says, and is halfway out the door before he turns around. He’s never turned around before, but now’s as good a time as any to start.
Roxas doesn’t ask where they’re going, doesn’t feel like talking much after what was, for him, an outpouring of sentiment and opinion. He ghosts along, a quarter-pace behind Axel’s right elbow. It’s almost unnerving. Roxas is quiet but he is always violently present, and rarely follows, and certainly not Axel into the darkness.
They end up on a dark beach, on a cold, dead, world, with small wavelets crawling up the sand. Something twists in Roxas’ chest, rises up through his throat and out of his mouth, something vulgar and profane and hopelessly beautiful. A rock settled in his palm relaxes him, and he skips it out across the water. “What are we doing here?”
“Why, whatever you want, Roxas.”
Roxas spins on his heel and spits, “Don’t give me that bullshit, Axel.”
“I would never,” Axel begins, but breaks off with a shrug. “What do you think of this place?”
“It, wait, why do you care?” Roxas steps closer to Axel, his voice rising. He’s look for a fight, one he can win, one he can understand. “What do you know, Axel?” he grinds out.
“I don’t know anything. Jeez, it was just a question.”
“”Nothing’s just a question with you,” Roxas hisses. “You don’t play the game that well, Axel.” He opens a portal and is gone before Axel has time to respond.
xx.
Back at the Castle That Never Was (a name that he can’t help but rolls his eyes over) Roxas heads for a training room on the second floor. It’s the largest and most interestingly shaped; it somehow defies the laws of physics and curves where it shouldn’t, creates the idea of corners where there are none, so, naturally, it is everyone’s favorite. Roxas would normally set himself on fire before walking into a room often occupied by at least two of the Organization, willingly, but Axel knows that and so this is probably the best place for him to go.
It’s not, he tells himself fiercely, that he’s hiding or running away from Axel, because he’s not afraid of Axel, which is a pretty stupid thing, really. No one is precisely scared of Axel, yet, Roxas thinks, but they should be, most of them. Especially the lot that the Superior exiled to Oblivion, because the Superior is obviously not fond of them, and Axel spends a great deal of time passing between castles. Not, of course, that Roxas pays any attention to what Axel is doing. He just likes to make sure that nothing is going on that concerns him, because Roxas, unlike the rest of the Organization, doesn’t even bother putting up a façade of community spirit.
Xaldin and Xigbar are sparring on the far side of the room, and Roxas watches them with a dedicated passivity. They’re both good fighters, skilled at keeping their opponent at a distance, so it’s an interesting match. Not, of course, that either of them is anything like a match for Roxas. He’d learned that his first two weeks at the Castle. No one, except maybe the Superior, but he’s never deigned to spar with his subordinates, can stand against Roxas. He suspects it has something to do with the keyblades, but then, everything in his stupid unlife seems to come back to the keyblades.
He suspects that Two and Three know he’s watching them, because they’re sort of making an effort to keep away from his corner, which is the one of the two real corners in the room, and Roxas’ favorite place to lurk whenever he’s forced to spend time here. So he keeps watching them, and maintains a sort of tally based on completely subjective measures; Xaldin is currently winning by two, because he actually deflected bullets with his lances, deliberately, and the part of Roxas that is very much a fifteen year old boy thinks that is ridiculously awesome.
Xigbar has tied it up with an incredible display of over-the-shoulder shooting when Demyx steals in through one of the far doors. Roxas spares him a glance but returns his gaze to the fight, and doesn’t respond when Demyx sidles up beside him.
“Axel’s looking for you, you know.”
“Of course I know,” Roxas’ voice is practically dripping with disdain, “while else would I be in here?”
“Trying to pick up a few pointers?” Demyx suggests, pointing to Two and Three.
“Right,” Roxas drawls, and shuts down the conversation. Demyx, however, doesn’t make to leave. Instead, he watches Roxas carefully, with that dolphinesque intelligence he thinks he hides so well. Actually, he has most everyone fooled, but Axel is simply on another level of cunning, and he shares some of his little observances with Roxas, not, of course, that Roxas hadn’t seen through Demyx on his own.
“D’you wanna fight, then?” Demyx asks, and Roxas turns to him with a look of pure disgust.
“Why would I do that?” And normally, Roxas isn’t such an asshole, but it’s been a weird day and a half, or so, and Demyx tries his patience anyways.
“Training? Fun?”
“My idea of fun isn’t wiping the floor with you, nine.”
“Well, maybe I’ve gotten stronger.”
“Not strong enough, something tells me.”
“But you don’t know that.”
“Fine.”
They fight, paying close attention to their distance from Xaldin and Xigbar, since the last thing they want is to intrude on their superiors’ training, since Roxas didn’t want to deal with the hassle, and Demyx may or may not have been as afraid of them as he could be, having no heart and all.
As Roxas expects, he crushes Demyx, but as he strikes the finishing blow the door opens, and Roxas knows he’s been caught. He’d known, on some level, since Demyx first approached him, but he’s still furious at everyone involved, mostly himself.
Demyx slinks away and doesn’t even attempt eye contact with Axel, who’s bearing down on Roxas like some horrible firestorm, face carefully devoid of expression, which makes Roxas nervous
Roxas does nothing but nod when Axel approaches him, though, as Two and Three are watching, and any sign of trouble is an indication for them to pounce, and while Axel is not Roxas’s friend, neither is he his enemy. Axel leads the way out of the room, past Demyx, whom neither of them spare a glance, because Demyx always plays a far second to the other in each of their minds.
Outside of the room Axel leads them down a warped corridor, bearing the distinct sadism of Six’s early work. In one of its strange pockets he traps Roxas between his long body and the wall.
“Talk,” Axel growls, caging Roxas with his arms, his eyes bright as always in the dim light.
“There’s nothing to be said.”
Axel doesn’t even dignify that with a response, but just drops his arms and walks away. That doesn’t bother Roxas, not really, but the silence between them does.
x.
Three days later he’s in the library pretending to listen to Demyx while flipping through something he’s almost sure was the Superior’s graduate thesis, full of philosophical bullshit on hearts and darkness that he’s only reading because of its unfortunate application to his life, when Axel claws his way into the room, still stinking of darkness, and leans over Demyx to whisper something in his ear.
Roxas very carefully doesn’t look up when they walk out, but keeps reading, focusing so intently on the words that they cease to mean anything at all. Logically, he knows he’s not actually blinded with rage, but an intellectual approximation of rage, as Zexion and Vexen had explained before Oblivion devoured them, and Axel, too, with his wicked smile.
As he throws the book against the wall and smirks, imagining Larxene’s expression were she still here to have one, the door swings back open and suddenly he’s on the receiving end of that devil’s grin.
“Axel,” he says, voice carefully clipped and measured, designed to show none of the weakness Eight is famous for exploiting.
“Feeling like talking now, Roxas?” Axel purrs, but Roxas doesn’t shy away. Axel maintains an acceptable distance between the two of them, none of his usual cloying closeness necessary yet.
“Like I told you before, there’s nothing to say.” But he swallows at the end of the sentence, and Axel’s green eyes go electric, and he’s lost this round. It aggravates Roxas to no end: short of the Superior, he fights best; he could wipe the floor with Axel if he chose, and, somehow, Axel always has the upper hand.
“So close, Rox. You almost had me fooled,” Axel snarls, “but not quite, so it looks like you’re gonna have to talk.”
“I’ll talk when you’re willing to tell me what happened in Oblivion,” Roxas spits back.
“Oblivion,” Axel snorts, “was just some housecleaning.”
“Since when did you become the Superior’s maid?”
Axel bursts out into laughter at that, and slings an arm round Roxas’ shoulders. “See, Rox, you need to stop being so mad at me. I miss this.” And normally Roxas would complain, or shove Axel’s arm away, but he sees the out he’s being offered and takes it, gladly.
xx.
“Why?” Roxas asks Axel one day when Eight breezes into his room.
“You’ve never had a problem with me being here before, Roxas,” Axel leers.
“Stop playing dumb.”
“Start asking better questions.”
Roxas fumes quietly but also thinks a bit, because the blindfolded boy had asked him for questions too and he’d had none, so maybe questions are important. “Why,” he starts, “why do I have these?” He summons the keyblades, Oathkeeper and Oblivion, whose names he has known since they came to him.
“Probably arbitrary,” Axel shrugs, “why can I do this?” He snaps his fingers and his hand is engulfed in flames. “Why can Demyx make water dance?”
“That’s different, Axel, and you know it.”
‘No, it’s not. Neither of us knows why we can, and it’s not exactly a normal skill set, now is it?”
“Well, no,” Roxas admits, “but, really. You told me yourself that Demyx grew up in a fishing town, or, his Other did.” Roxas looks down at that, angered by the talk of Others. “You liked to burn things,” he continues.
“Then maybe your other self was a keymaker. Or you were a burglar, sneaking into people’s houses, unlocking their doors in the middle of the night…”
“Don’t give me that shit, Axel.”
“Fine. Your Other probably had a connection to the keyblade. Is that what you want to hear, Roxas? What you already knew?”
“That’s not good enough,” Roxas growls, clenching his fists. “I want to know why me. Why my Other?” Roxas has a thousand other questions but he doesn’t want to voice them to Axel.
“Does it matter, Roxas?”
“Yes!” Roxas all but screams. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t know who I am!”
Axel looks almost taken aback, and at any other time Roxas would revel in such a victory. “You’re Roxas,” Axel tells him, and leaves.
xx.
“Come on, then!” Roxas screams into the rain in the middle of the City That Never Was. The blindfolded boy’s words clearly implied he would be back, but Roxas has prowled through the city for nearly three days straight and he’s found nothing. Only a few Heartless that he let scamper of into the shadows because he hated the Superior so much.
“Are you hiding? Is that it? Are you a fucking coward?” Roxas hits the nearest wall with both keyblades. “Come on! Fight me!”
Nothing responds. Roxas bites his lips, teeth crushing down until he tastes blood in his mouth. “Dammit!” He lets the keyblades vanish and punches the wall. The strange boy must be somewhere near, Roxas knows it, and all he wants is to hunt that bastard down and beat him bloody for what he’s done.
Roxas chafes at the bit now; he always disliked the Superior’s pompous speeches but now he actively hates, fuck the idea that Nobodies can’t feel. If they could feel anything it would be hate and Roxas hates the Superior. He knows Xemnas knows who Roxas is, but won’t tell. Instead he lets Roxas stew and storm the hallways of the Castle That Never Was, and snap at Demyx until he starts learning to leave Roxas alone.
Of course Axel doesn’t get the hint, or, rather, gets the hint and then blatantly ignores it, so Roxas isn’t surprised to see Axel heading towards him through the rain.
“Roxas!” Axel shouts over the din of storm and Roxas steadfastly ignores him, and tries his best to look like he has purpose. He stands up straighter and peers out through the sheet of rain as though someone were to meet him.
“Roxas,” Axel says again, this time right beside him with a hand on his shoulder. “Roxas, come on. He’s not coming, and it’s raining and I’d much rather be inside, so let’s go.”
Roxas shakes his hand off and shouts into the storm again, but there’s no answer.
“Roxas,” Axel warns, and Roxas can hear the fire creeping into his voice, Axel’s skinny fingers digging into Roxas’ shoulder.
“No, Axel,” he snaps, “go away. This is something I have to do.”
“What, stand in the rain and yell for someone who’s smart enough to stay out of the weather? I doubt that’s something you really have to do, Roxas.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Oh, Rox, I do. I really, really, do. I just don’t give a damn.” And then Axel hits him on the head, moving faster than Roxas expects and as Roxas’s vision goes black, he feels someone pick him up.
xx.
Roxas flounders back into consciousness while Axel’s still taking him back to the castle and after a few panicky seconds he lashes out and punches Axel in the face.
“Fuck!” But Axel doesn’t drop him. Actually, he grips tighter and tries to hold Roxas’ wrists in one long, skinny hand. They struggle like that, stupidly, really, Roxas knows they look hilarious and prays no one catches them, especially not Xigbar, until they get back to the Castle Not, as Axel fondly calls it, and Roxas finds himself dumped on the redhead’s bed.
“Never thought you’d take the caveman approach,” Roxas snaps.
Axel raises his eyebrows, but makes no move towards the bed. “Explain, Roxas, now.”
“I was looking for him.”
“Him.”
“The blindfolded boy: the one I told you about. With silver hair and a keyblade. He’s kind of an asshole. Maybe the two of you would get along,” Roxas muses.
“And he said he’d be coming back?”
“Not in so many words, no,” Roxas admits.
“So why the hell did you think this little demonstration was a good idea?”
“He said I’d want to ask him questions. He’ll be back. I know it.”
“You said it yourself, Roxas, he may just be being an asshole.”
“”No,” Roxas says, slow and deliberate, “I think he’s fighting me for a reason. Something important. He has to win, I think.”
“And you’re going to let him?” Axel asks, with an eyebrow raised.
“Of course not, but I want those questions, now.”
“You don’t need those questions, Roxas,” Axel hisses, his face drawn tight.
That’s what sets Roxas off, the fear in Axel’s eyes, who is never afraid because he is always the one to fear. Axel knows something, Axel knows everything, Axel is keeping secrets. More importantly, he is keeping secrets from Roxas. He moves from the bed and has Axel against the wall in one fluid motion. “What do you know.” It is not a question. “Tell me what do you know, Axel, about me.”
“Nothing, Roxas, nothing beyond what you know,” Axel slurs as Roxas crushes down on his windpipe.
“Liar,” Roxas growls.
“But you knew that.” And it’s true, so Roxas lets go and stands there, empty, defeated.
“I will, you know. I will find him, and, then, I’ll know the truth.”
Axel says nothing.
xx.
Roxas doesn’t see Axel after that for a long time, or what feels like a long time. Hours don’t pass in the World That Never Was quite the same way they do elsewhere. Here they seem to stretch and shrink as they see fit, while the sky remains dark and clouded. Sometimes it rains.
It usually rains when Roxas goes out hunting for the blind boy. He doesn’t pick rainy days, really, but he never leaves when the sky opens up, either. One day, while he sits on the roof of Memory’s Skyscraper, trying to lure the boy out, he sees a shadow move in the corner of his eye, just a flash of silver, and he leaps from the building and lands, rough, knows he’ll bruise, but takes off.
Somehow the boy eludes him, and Roxas ends up sitting in some horrible alleyway, one of the many nasty little places scattered about their home, pounding his fists on his knees and trying not to scream. As he calms himself with terse reminders that he is a Nobody, he cannot feel, none of this is real, he wonders where Axel is. Normally Axel would have found him by now, mocked him and taken him home.
He doesn’t precisely miss Axel, because that’s a lot like feeling and Roxas can’t feel. But if he had to choose between sitting here alone and sitting here with Axel, he may not choose to be alone. Roxas doesn’t want to get up, though, and look for Axel, because he’s never had to look for Axel before.
He does go back to the castle, though, and after he’s changed into his spare set of clothes Roxas prowls the hallways, not explicitly looking for Axel but looking for someone or something with which to entertain himself. Not many Order members are around, though, so it’s Axel he ends up finding.
He’s in one of the common spaces, talking with Demyx, which is weird to Roxas because normally Axel just tolerates Demyx. But now Demyx is bubbling with excitement, words spilling out of his mouth so quickly Roxas doesn’t really hear them, and Axel appears to be listening.
Roxas shuts the door behind him a little more forcefully than he normally would and that, at least, causes Axel to look up at Roxas. Axel can usually tell when it’s Roxas who enters a room, or when Roxas is approaching, because he’s always waiting with some asshole comment or an arm tossed around Roxas’s shoulders. Not anymore, it seems.
Roxas sits down with them and snatches an apple from the primarily decorative fruit bowl in the middle of the table. It’s sensationally awful, but that’s to be expected of most, if not all, of the food to be found in the castle. All of Demyx’s words dry up as Roxas bites at the apple. Only the clear, crisp crunches are heard.
“Well, I’ve got to be going, then. Later, Axel,” Demyx stammers, and is gone through the darkness before either Roxas or Axel can speak to him.
“Well?” Axel asks. Roxas only raises and eyebrow, so he continues. “What did you want that made you need to freak Demyx the fuck out?”
Roxas shrugs. He didn’t really care about terrifying Demyx; that was a side effect, and Demyx’s own fault. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“What the fuck.”
“I’m right.”
“Why do you care, Roxas?” Axel demands. “You’ve made it perfectly clear what you plan on doing.”
“And you’re just going to let me?” Roxas asks, a little louder and rawer around the edges than he would like.
“Yeah,” Axel tells him with a shrug.
“Oh.” Roxas hasn’t really planned for this. He was expecting Axel’s customary faux-fury or that devious smile that had killed his comrades. He doesn’t know what to do so he puts his head down on the table. “Look, Axel,” he mutters into his arms.
“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Axel says in return, tone carefully flat.
xx.
They fuck that night.
Roxas is still naïve, still young, and it takes every ounce of his carefully collected cynicism (bits snatched from Xigbar and Luxord and most of all Axel himself) to use only that word in the strange, sticky, hot aftermath.
When he wakes up and Axel is gone, he’s glad he did.
xx.
He doesn’t bother to confront Axel the next day, because Axel is always slippery about his reasons for doing anything and to admit that this has affected him would shame Roxas more than he can imagine. So he suits up, ignores breakfast, and heads out to find the silver-haired boy.
He’s waiting, slim, dark keyblade resting in his palm. It’s a different one than Roxas remembers, more sinister in its coal-black curl, less of a key and more of a lockpick. Roxas panics, wonders if the boy is a pretender, too, if he’s as clueless and angry as Roxas himself, but then the blindfolded boy speaks.
“Have you found your questions yet, Roxas?”
“How do you know my name?”
“That’s a start,” and while Roxas is fuming the silver-haired boy attacks from the left, but Roxas blocks almost unconsciously.
“How about you pretend we’re civilized and give me your name?”
That makes the boy laugh and dance away from Roxas. He pauses, and the laughter is gone from his face so suddenly Roxas can’t believe it was there at all. “Riku.” Neither of them moves. “My name is Riku.” He still isn’t moving, but then, Roxas isn’t either, so he can’t blame Riku for not attacking.
He doesn’t know the name, but his heart does, Roxas knows, even though he does not have a heart. His mind, though, knows Riku only from their previous fight. Riku, who stands limp like the Naminé doll Marluxia thinks no one knows about, and Roxas can’t bring himself to move against him like this. Riku is empty of the will to fight that had singed Roxas the last time they met, and to fight him now would be a farce. Roxas has spent his life in one farce or another and he is done.
All Roxas really wants is something real, and now it stands before him, and he has somehow made Riku as empty as Roxas himself. So he opens a portal and backs away.
I’m sorry, he doesn’t say.
xx.
At least Axel doesn’t try his vanishing act again. He’s there, at the castle, when Roxas returns, and, in customary Axel fashion, is a complete asshole. All Roxas wants is to change out of this heavy black robe and go to sleep, and Axel is there, thrusting out barbed questions and hiding his smirk in his eyes. Of course, Roxas wants more than just to sleep: Roxas wants to understand and he wants to know and most of all Roxas simply wants to want. But those goals are far from him, so he would settle for clean clothes and a nap.
“Did you find him?” To his credit, Axel sounds almost interested, but Roxas only sighs and throws his gloves on his nightstand. “Your blind answer-machine, I mean.”
“What’s it to you?” Roxas snaps. His coat hits the floor; he’ll pick it up later, when he’s rested and Axel isn’t square in the middle of his room, somehow drawing everything towards him.
“That would be telling, Rox.”
“It’s about time you told.”
“Then I wouldn’t be me, you know that. And you’d miss me.” Axel hams it up on the last sentence but Roxas shies away from his arm.
“We can’t miss people, Axel.”
“Okay, Roxas, spill. You’re worse than usual today.”
“Hey!” His protest is only half-hearted, but it’s enough to make Axel’s lips quirk, and that’s, maybe that’s something.
“Roxas. What did he tell you?”
“Nothing,” Roxas admits, slow and tired. “He told me his name, that’s it.”
“You couldn’t force anything out of him?”
“I didn’t try,” Roxas says before he can stop himself, and then hangs his head so Axel doesn’t see the flush of shame rising over his cheeks. “He just, all the fight went out of him. It wouldn’t have been any fun.”
When he looks up Axel is perfectly still. That’s his first sign that something is wrong, or, rather, that he’s missed something huge and glaringly obvious. Axel thrums with energy, normally, and it looks nervous to the untrained eye, but his motions are controlled and directed and most importantly they are constant. But whatever Roxas said has broken Axel’s chain of motion.
“Tell me,” he chokes out. “You know something. You know Riku.”
“Riku,” Axel says, letting the name out in a long, shaky breath. “You met Riku.”
“So you do know him, then.”
“You could say that,” Axel muses, “I know a version of him.”
“Axel,” Roxas growls, and then he has to pause and take a breath or five because his vision is actually shaking and he’s excited because this is almost like feeling, he’s pretty sure. “Axel, for once in your existence, cut the bullshit. I know it’s hard for you, being all you have, but just this once.” He pauses, and before Axel can say “no,” he adds, “Please.”
It makes a difference. Axel doesn’t say “no,” he says, “I’m sorry.”
xx.
No one stays at the Castle That Never Was anymore. Either they are dead or off on missions, except Roxas. Even Axel pops off to day long missions, and then snipes with Saïx in back corners where they think Roxas can’t hear them. Sometimes his name comes up, and sometimes Riku does, and for once, Roxas can’t tell which of those two is angrier. It always used to be Saïx, uptight and duty-bound against Axel’s freewheeling, free agent mentality, but now a thin cord of steel runs through Axel’s arguments and he grinds his teeth whenever Riku’s name comes up.
Roxas lets things go on that way for a few weeks, but after yet another day of going through forms with his keyblades in a now empty training room, he snaps.
As usual, no one is around. Roxas puts his things in order, what few things he has, mostly seashells and driftwood, tiny pieces to a puzzle he won’t solve, and heads out to the constant rain and neon shimmer of his world. He finds a place to wait for Riku, far from the castle, down a street he had never seen before, and the jumps to another world, any other world.
He comes back to The World That Never Was every three or four hours to look for Riku, and, after a while, to sleep.
Roxas doesn’t dream. He never has.
For three days he follows the pattern, and then, of course, Axel is there, never one to miss out on an opportunity to aggravate Roxas. He looks more like a heroin addict than normal, even thinner and with a deeper, stranger fire in his eyes, and he’s staring at Roxas like Roxas owes him something.
“So you’re leaving, then.”
“I’ve already left,” Roxas tells him, which is technically true. He’s out of the castle, he’s not listening to Xemnas’s orders anymore. But when those words leave his mouth and Axel looks like he’s been punched in the diaphragm, that’s when Roxas is gone.
“They’ll kill you, you realize,” Axel warns with desperation laced into his voice. Roxas knows what that means. They’ll make me kill you. And Axel will take the job, because it’s not like he doesn’t have practice slaughtering his associates.
“None of them can beat me,” Roxas taunts. He wants to hear it from Axel, how he’ll trick and track Roxas, cage him like a rare bird, stuff and mount him.
“Roxas.” There’s so much heat in Axel’s voice now, all the faux emotion Roxas had wanted in earlier days, but now he just wants the truth, and none of their feelings have been true.
“You knew Riku. You know who I am. And you won’t tell me!”
“I was trying…” Axel trails off, for once speechless, and Roxas seizes the opening.
“To get what you wanted? Like you always are, Axel? I’m done with it. I’m going to find out, on my own.”
Axel’s eyes have never been greener, more like poison. “They’ll hunt you down, kill you.” Now it’s less a warning than a promise.
“Let them try.”
“Roxas, you can’t go.”
“No one would miss me.” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop himself. Axel makes the face he always makes right before he says something incredibly stupid, but Roxas is already walking away with short staccato strides when he hears it.
“That’s not true!” Which doesn’t so much as hitch Roxas’s gait until he hears the lower tones of Axel’s voice, because even if Axel thinks he can’t, Roxas has always been able to pick up what he says.
“I would.”
xx.
Roxas sees Riku once more, and they fight, and Roxas wins but receives no answers. As he leaves, Riku apologizes, and Roxas doesn’t know what for.
He learns, though, three days later, when he is found by a tall dark man, who reeks of Xemnas and a little of Riku. Zexion wasn’t the only one who could smell; he was just the best at it. This Riku-Xemnas, whom Roxas finally relegates just to Riku, because he is Riku, still, has every edge.
So as Roxas evades him with as much speed as he can muster, he figures this is his last chance to get his answers. “Who am I?”
It’s not Riku’s voice that responds, a timbre too deep even for the Superior. “Sora. Your name is Sora.”
That’s it. Roxas knows he could draw this fight out, whittle away at Riku’s patience until he could force a draw, but this is it. He is Sora. He knows the name; it lingered on twelve tongues for months, always just out of his reach, but there had been other names, words he didn’t understand, hiding it from him. Now he knows, and while there are so many details left: what was he like, where is he now, what is going to happen, none of it matters.
He is Sora, and so he can no longer be Roxas.
[ part 2.]
Title: Cold When the Summer Is Spent (PART 1)
Fandom: KH
Rating: soft R, hard pg13
Characters/ Pairing: Akuroku. Side SoRiKai, weird forays towards other things.
Summary: Done to a month's worth of 31_days prompts. The story of Roxas. Also, the longest fic I've ever written, at about 11.5k
“You’re a lunatic,” Roxas tells him, straight-faced and with the honesty of a victor.
The blindfolded boy turns his head towards Roxas, eyebrows furrowed above the cloth. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s what a crazy person would say,” Roxas snaps back, unreasonably ruffled by this stranger.
“But I’m not crazy,” hands spread, empty and desperate, “just foolish.”
“There’s a fine line there,” Roxas admits, “but foolish people don’t throw themselves from buildings, blindfolded. Lunatics do.”
“Well, that’s not exactly why I’m foolish.”
“Throwing yourself off of a building doesn’t qualify as idiotic in your books?”
“Not if you expect to land.”
“And you did?”
“Why else would I jump? I couldn’t fight you up there.”
“You couldn’t fight me at all,” Roxas sneers, and gives the boy on the ground a contemptuous look.
“You’re breathing awfully hard for someone who didn’t fight.”
“Well,” a pause, “I guess you gave it your all, but did you really expect to beat me blinded?”
“There’s no other way I can.” The boy levers himself up with his keyblade and gives Roxas a smile that, if only his eyes were visible, might mean something.
“See? You’re absolutely insane!”
“If you really thought I was mad, you wouldn’t want to ask me all those questions.”
“I don’t want to ask you anything,” Roxas growls, and lets his keyblades vanish.
“You will.”
xx.
“What the fuck,” he snarls, back at the castle mostly because he has no place to go. Axel doesn’t respond, but Roxas keeps going, too riled up to care that he’s playing Axel’s little mindgames. “Who does he think he is? It’s not like he can actually accomplish anything, fighting the way he is.”
Axel’s raised eyebrow is enough to deflate him, and Roxas collapses into one of the utilitarian chairs that lurk throughout the castle. “I hate this.”
Axel smirks but doesn’t say what he would have said at any other time, any other place. He’s not foolhardy enough to push Roxas right now, not when he’s chafing at the bonds of camaraderie so carelessly looped around him. “Come on,” he says, and is halfway out the door before he turns around. He’s never turned around before, but now’s as good a time as any to start.
Roxas doesn’t ask where they’re going, doesn’t feel like talking much after what was, for him, an outpouring of sentiment and opinion. He ghosts along, a quarter-pace behind Axel’s right elbow. It’s almost unnerving. Roxas is quiet but he is always violently present, and rarely follows, and certainly not Axel into the darkness.
They end up on a dark beach, on a cold, dead, world, with small wavelets crawling up the sand. Something twists in Roxas’ chest, rises up through his throat and out of his mouth, something vulgar and profane and hopelessly beautiful. A rock settled in his palm relaxes him, and he skips it out across the water. “What are we doing here?”
“Why, whatever you want, Roxas.”
Roxas spins on his heel and spits, “Don’t give me that bullshit, Axel.”
“I would never,” Axel begins, but breaks off with a shrug. “What do you think of this place?”
“It, wait, why do you care?” Roxas steps closer to Axel, his voice rising. He’s look for a fight, one he can win, one he can understand. “What do you know, Axel?” he grinds out.
“I don’t know anything. Jeez, it was just a question.”
“”Nothing’s just a question with you,” Roxas hisses. “You don’t play the game that well, Axel.” He opens a portal and is gone before Axel has time to respond.
xx.
Back at the Castle That Never Was (a name that he can’t help but rolls his eyes over) Roxas heads for a training room on the second floor. It’s the largest and most interestingly shaped; it somehow defies the laws of physics and curves where it shouldn’t, creates the idea of corners where there are none, so, naturally, it is everyone’s favorite. Roxas would normally set himself on fire before walking into a room often occupied by at least two of the Organization, willingly, but Axel knows that and so this is probably the best place for him to go.
It’s not, he tells himself fiercely, that he’s hiding or running away from Axel, because he’s not afraid of Axel, which is a pretty stupid thing, really. No one is precisely scared of Axel, yet, Roxas thinks, but they should be, most of them. Especially the lot that the Superior exiled to Oblivion, because the Superior is obviously not fond of them, and Axel spends a great deal of time passing between castles. Not, of course, that Roxas pays any attention to what Axel is doing. He just likes to make sure that nothing is going on that concerns him, because Roxas, unlike the rest of the Organization, doesn’t even bother putting up a façade of community spirit.
Xaldin and Xigbar are sparring on the far side of the room, and Roxas watches them with a dedicated passivity. They’re both good fighters, skilled at keeping their opponent at a distance, so it’s an interesting match. Not, of course, that either of them is anything like a match for Roxas. He’d learned that his first two weeks at the Castle. No one, except maybe the Superior, but he’s never deigned to spar with his subordinates, can stand against Roxas. He suspects it has something to do with the keyblades, but then, everything in his stupid unlife seems to come back to the keyblades.
He suspects that Two and Three know he’s watching them, because they’re sort of making an effort to keep away from his corner, which is the one of the two real corners in the room, and Roxas’ favorite place to lurk whenever he’s forced to spend time here. So he keeps watching them, and maintains a sort of tally based on completely subjective measures; Xaldin is currently winning by two, because he actually deflected bullets with his lances, deliberately, and the part of Roxas that is very much a fifteen year old boy thinks that is ridiculously awesome.
Xigbar has tied it up with an incredible display of over-the-shoulder shooting when Demyx steals in through one of the far doors. Roxas spares him a glance but returns his gaze to the fight, and doesn’t respond when Demyx sidles up beside him.
“Axel’s looking for you, you know.”
“Of course I know,” Roxas’ voice is practically dripping with disdain, “while else would I be in here?”
“Trying to pick up a few pointers?” Demyx suggests, pointing to Two and Three.
“Right,” Roxas drawls, and shuts down the conversation. Demyx, however, doesn’t make to leave. Instead, he watches Roxas carefully, with that dolphinesque intelligence he thinks he hides so well. Actually, he has most everyone fooled, but Axel is simply on another level of cunning, and he shares some of his little observances with Roxas, not, of course, that Roxas hadn’t seen through Demyx on his own.
“D’you wanna fight, then?” Demyx asks, and Roxas turns to him with a look of pure disgust.
“Why would I do that?” And normally, Roxas isn’t such an asshole, but it’s been a weird day and a half, or so, and Demyx tries his patience anyways.
“Training? Fun?”
“My idea of fun isn’t wiping the floor with you, nine.”
“Well, maybe I’ve gotten stronger.”
“Not strong enough, something tells me.”
“But you don’t know that.”
“Fine.”
They fight, paying close attention to their distance from Xaldin and Xigbar, since the last thing they want is to intrude on their superiors’ training, since Roxas didn’t want to deal with the hassle, and Demyx may or may not have been as afraid of them as he could be, having no heart and all.
As Roxas expects, he crushes Demyx, but as he strikes the finishing blow the door opens, and Roxas knows he’s been caught. He’d known, on some level, since Demyx first approached him, but he’s still furious at everyone involved, mostly himself.
Demyx slinks away and doesn’t even attempt eye contact with Axel, who’s bearing down on Roxas like some horrible firestorm, face carefully devoid of expression, which makes Roxas nervous
Roxas does nothing but nod when Axel approaches him, though, as Two and Three are watching, and any sign of trouble is an indication for them to pounce, and while Axel is not Roxas’s friend, neither is he his enemy. Axel leads the way out of the room, past Demyx, whom neither of them spare a glance, because Demyx always plays a far second to the other in each of their minds.
Outside of the room Axel leads them down a warped corridor, bearing the distinct sadism of Six’s early work. In one of its strange pockets he traps Roxas between his long body and the wall.
“Talk,” Axel growls, caging Roxas with his arms, his eyes bright as always in the dim light.
“There’s nothing to be said.”
Axel doesn’t even dignify that with a response, but just drops his arms and walks away. That doesn’t bother Roxas, not really, but the silence between them does.
x.
Three days later he’s in the library pretending to listen to Demyx while flipping through something he’s almost sure was the Superior’s graduate thesis, full of philosophical bullshit on hearts and darkness that he’s only reading because of its unfortunate application to his life, when Axel claws his way into the room, still stinking of darkness, and leans over Demyx to whisper something in his ear.
Roxas very carefully doesn’t look up when they walk out, but keeps reading, focusing so intently on the words that they cease to mean anything at all. Logically, he knows he’s not actually blinded with rage, but an intellectual approximation of rage, as Zexion and Vexen had explained before Oblivion devoured them, and Axel, too, with his wicked smile.
As he throws the book against the wall and smirks, imagining Larxene’s expression were she still here to have one, the door swings back open and suddenly he’s on the receiving end of that devil’s grin.
“Axel,” he says, voice carefully clipped and measured, designed to show none of the weakness Eight is famous for exploiting.
“Feeling like talking now, Roxas?” Axel purrs, but Roxas doesn’t shy away. Axel maintains an acceptable distance between the two of them, none of his usual cloying closeness necessary yet.
“Like I told you before, there’s nothing to say.” But he swallows at the end of the sentence, and Axel’s green eyes go electric, and he’s lost this round. It aggravates Roxas to no end: short of the Superior, he fights best; he could wipe the floor with Axel if he chose, and, somehow, Axel always has the upper hand.
“So close, Rox. You almost had me fooled,” Axel snarls, “but not quite, so it looks like you’re gonna have to talk.”
“I’ll talk when you’re willing to tell me what happened in Oblivion,” Roxas spits back.
“Oblivion,” Axel snorts, “was just some housecleaning.”
“Since when did you become the Superior’s maid?”
Axel bursts out into laughter at that, and slings an arm round Roxas’ shoulders. “See, Rox, you need to stop being so mad at me. I miss this.” And normally Roxas would complain, or shove Axel’s arm away, but he sees the out he’s being offered and takes it, gladly.
xx.
“Why?” Roxas asks Axel one day when Eight breezes into his room.
“You’ve never had a problem with me being here before, Roxas,” Axel leers.
“Stop playing dumb.”
“Start asking better questions.”
Roxas fumes quietly but also thinks a bit, because the blindfolded boy had asked him for questions too and he’d had none, so maybe questions are important. “Why,” he starts, “why do I have these?” He summons the keyblades, Oathkeeper and Oblivion, whose names he has known since they came to him.
“Probably arbitrary,” Axel shrugs, “why can I do this?” He snaps his fingers and his hand is engulfed in flames. “Why can Demyx make water dance?”
“That’s different, Axel, and you know it.”
‘No, it’s not. Neither of us knows why we can, and it’s not exactly a normal skill set, now is it?”
“Well, no,” Roxas admits, “but, really. You told me yourself that Demyx grew up in a fishing town, or, his Other did.” Roxas looks down at that, angered by the talk of Others. “You liked to burn things,” he continues.
“Then maybe your other self was a keymaker. Or you were a burglar, sneaking into people’s houses, unlocking their doors in the middle of the night…”
“Don’t give me that shit, Axel.”
“Fine. Your Other probably had a connection to the keyblade. Is that what you want to hear, Roxas? What you already knew?”
“That’s not good enough,” Roxas growls, clenching his fists. “I want to know why me. Why my Other?” Roxas has a thousand other questions but he doesn’t want to voice them to Axel.
“Does it matter, Roxas?”
“Yes!” Roxas all but screams. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t know who I am!”
Axel looks almost taken aback, and at any other time Roxas would revel in such a victory. “You’re Roxas,” Axel tells him, and leaves.
xx.
“Come on, then!” Roxas screams into the rain in the middle of the City That Never Was. The blindfolded boy’s words clearly implied he would be back, but Roxas has prowled through the city for nearly three days straight and he’s found nothing. Only a few Heartless that he let scamper of into the shadows because he hated the Superior so much.
“Are you hiding? Is that it? Are you a fucking coward?” Roxas hits the nearest wall with both keyblades. “Come on! Fight me!”
Nothing responds. Roxas bites his lips, teeth crushing down until he tastes blood in his mouth. “Dammit!” He lets the keyblades vanish and punches the wall. The strange boy must be somewhere near, Roxas knows it, and all he wants is to hunt that bastard down and beat him bloody for what he’s done.
Roxas chafes at the bit now; he always disliked the Superior’s pompous speeches but now he actively hates, fuck the idea that Nobodies can’t feel. If they could feel anything it would be hate and Roxas hates the Superior. He knows Xemnas knows who Roxas is, but won’t tell. Instead he lets Roxas stew and storm the hallways of the Castle That Never Was, and snap at Demyx until he starts learning to leave Roxas alone.
Of course Axel doesn’t get the hint, or, rather, gets the hint and then blatantly ignores it, so Roxas isn’t surprised to see Axel heading towards him through the rain.
“Roxas!” Axel shouts over the din of storm and Roxas steadfastly ignores him, and tries his best to look like he has purpose. He stands up straighter and peers out through the sheet of rain as though someone were to meet him.
“Roxas,” Axel says again, this time right beside him with a hand on his shoulder. “Roxas, come on. He’s not coming, and it’s raining and I’d much rather be inside, so let’s go.”
Roxas shakes his hand off and shouts into the storm again, but there’s no answer.
“Roxas,” Axel warns, and Roxas can hear the fire creeping into his voice, Axel’s skinny fingers digging into Roxas’ shoulder.
“No, Axel,” he snaps, “go away. This is something I have to do.”
“What, stand in the rain and yell for someone who’s smart enough to stay out of the weather? I doubt that’s something you really have to do, Roxas.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Oh, Rox, I do. I really, really, do. I just don’t give a damn.” And then Axel hits him on the head, moving faster than Roxas expects and as Roxas’s vision goes black, he feels someone pick him up.
xx.
Roxas flounders back into consciousness while Axel’s still taking him back to the castle and after a few panicky seconds he lashes out and punches Axel in the face.
“Fuck!” But Axel doesn’t drop him. Actually, he grips tighter and tries to hold Roxas’ wrists in one long, skinny hand. They struggle like that, stupidly, really, Roxas knows they look hilarious and prays no one catches them, especially not Xigbar, until they get back to the Castle Not, as Axel fondly calls it, and Roxas finds himself dumped on the redhead’s bed.
“Never thought you’d take the caveman approach,” Roxas snaps.
Axel raises his eyebrows, but makes no move towards the bed. “Explain, Roxas, now.”
“I was looking for him.”
“Him.”
“The blindfolded boy: the one I told you about. With silver hair and a keyblade. He’s kind of an asshole. Maybe the two of you would get along,” Roxas muses.
“And he said he’d be coming back?”
“Not in so many words, no,” Roxas admits.
“So why the hell did you think this little demonstration was a good idea?”
“He said I’d want to ask him questions. He’ll be back. I know it.”
“You said it yourself, Roxas, he may just be being an asshole.”
“”No,” Roxas says, slow and deliberate, “I think he’s fighting me for a reason. Something important. He has to win, I think.”
“And you’re going to let him?” Axel asks, with an eyebrow raised.
“Of course not, but I want those questions, now.”
“You don’t need those questions, Roxas,” Axel hisses, his face drawn tight.
That’s what sets Roxas off, the fear in Axel’s eyes, who is never afraid because he is always the one to fear. Axel knows something, Axel knows everything, Axel is keeping secrets. More importantly, he is keeping secrets from Roxas. He moves from the bed and has Axel against the wall in one fluid motion. “What do you know.” It is not a question. “Tell me what do you know, Axel, about me.”
“Nothing, Roxas, nothing beyond what you know,” Axel slurs as Roxas crushes down on his windpipe.
“Liar,” Roxas growls.
“But you knew that.” And it’s true, so Roxas lets go and stands there, empty, defeated.
“I will, you know. I will find him, and, then, I’ll know the truth.”
Axel says nothing.
xx.
Roxas doesn’t see Axel after that for a long time, or what feels like a long time. Hours don’t pass in the World That Never Was quite the same way they do elsewhere. Here they seem to stretch and shrink as they see fit, while the sky remains dark and clouded. Sometimes it rains.
It usually rains when Roxas goes out hunting for the blind boy. He doesn’t pick rainy days, really, but he never leaves when the sky opens up, either. One day, while he sits on the roof of Memory’s Skyscraper, trying to lure the boy out, he sees a shadow move in the corner of his eye, just a flash of silver, and he leaps from the building and lands, rough, knows he’ll bruise, but takes off.
Somehow the boy eludes him, and Roxas ends up sitting in some horrible alleyway, one of the many nasty little places scattered about their home, pounding his fists on his knees and trying not to scream. As he calms himself with terse reminders that he is a Nobody, he cannot feel, none of this is real, he wonders where Axel is. Normally Axel would have found him by now, mocked him and taken him home.
He doesn’t precisely miss Axel, because that’s a lot like feeling and Roxas can’t feel. But if he had to choose between sitting here alone and sitting here with Axel, he may not choose to be alone. Roxas doesn’t want to get up, though, and look for Axel, because he’s never had to look for Axel before.
He does go back to the castle, though, and after he’s changed into his spare set of clothes Roxas prowls the hallways, not explicitly looking for Axel but looking for someone or something with which to entertain himself. Not many Order members are around, though, so it’s Axel he ends up finding.
He’s in one of the common spaces, talking with Demyx, which is weird to Roxas because normally Axel just tolerates Demyx. But now Demyx is bubbling with excitement, words spilling out of his mouth so quickly Roxas doesn’t really hear them, and Axel appears to be listening.
Roxas shuts the door behind him a little more forcefully than he normally would and that, at least, causes Axel to look up at Roxas. Axel can usually tell when it’s Roxas who enters a room, or when Roxas is approaching, because he’s always waiting with some asshole comment or an arm tossed around Roxas’s shoulders. Not anymore, it seems.
Roxas sits down with them and snatches an apple from the primarily decorative fruit bowl in the middle of the table. It’s sensationally awful, but that’s to be expected of most, if not all, of the food to be found in the castle. All of Demyx’s words dry up as Roxas bites at the apple. Only the clear, crisp crunches are heard.
“Well, I’ve got to be going, then. Later, Axel,” Demyx stammers, and is gone through the darkness before either Roxas or Axel can speak to him.
“Well?” Axel asks. Roxas only raises and eyebrow, so he continues. “What did you want that made you need to freak Demyx the fuck out?”
Roxas shrugs. He didn’t really care about terrifying Demyx; that was a side effect, and Demyx’s own fault. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“What the fuck.”
“I’m right.”
“Why do you care, Roxas?” Axel demands. “You’ve made it perfectly clear what you plan on doing.”
“And you’re just going to let me?” Roxas asks, a little louder and rawer around the edges than he would like.
“Yeah,” Axel tells him with a shrug.
“Oh.” Roxas hasn’t really planned for this. He was expecting Axel’s customary faux-fury or that devious smile that had killed his comrades. He doesn’t know what to do so he puts his head down on the table. “Look, Axel,” he mutters into his arms.
“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Axel says in return, tone carefully flat.
xx.
They fuck that night.
Roxas is still naïve, still young, and it takes every ounce of his carefully collected cynicism (bits snatched from Xigbar and Luxord and most of all Axel himself) to use only that word in the strange, sticky, hot aftermath.
When he wakes up and Axel is gone, he’s glad he did.
xx.
He doesn’t bother to confront Axel the next day, because Axel is always slippery about his reasons for doing anything and to admit that this has affected him would shame Roxas more than he can imagine. So he suits up, ignores breakfast, and heads out to find the silver-haired boy.
He’s waiting, slim, dark keyblade resting in his palm. It’s a different one than Roxas remembers, more sinister in its coal-black curl, less of a key and more of a lockpick. Roxas panics, wonders if the boy is a pretender, too, if he’s as clueless and angry as Roxas himself, but then the blindfolded boy speaks.
“Have you found your questions yet, Roxas?”
“How do you know my name?”
“That’s a start,” and while Roxas is fuming the silver-haired boy attacks from the left, but Roxas blocks almost unconsciously.
“How about you pretend we’re civilized and give me your name?”
That makes the boy laugh and dance away from Roxas. He pauses, and the laughter is gone from his face so suddenly Roxas can’t believe it was there at all. “Riku.” Neither of them moves. “My name is Riku.” He still isn’t moving, but then, Roxas isn’t either, so he can’t blame Riku for not attacking.
He doesn’t know the name, but his heart does, Roxas knows, even though he does not have a heart. His mind, though, knows Riku only from their previous fight. Riku, who stands limp like the Naminé doll Marluxia thinks no one knows about, and Roxas can’t bring himself to move against him like this. Riku is empty of the will to fight that had singed Roxas the last time they met, and to fight him now would be a farce. Roxas has spent his life in one farce or another and he is done.
All Roxas really wants is something real, and now it stands before him, and he has somehow made Riku as empty as Roxas himself. So he opens a portal and backs away.
I’m sorry, he doesn’t say.
xx.
At least Axel doesn’t try his vanishing act again. He’s there, at the castle, when Roxas returns, and, in customary Axel fashion, is a complete asshole. All Roxas wants is to change out of this heavy black robe and go to sleep, and Axel is there, thrusting out barbed questions and hiding his smirk in his eyes. Of course, Roxas wants more than just to sleep: Roxas wants to understand and he wants to know and most of all Roxas simply wants to want. But those goals are far from him, so he would settle for clean clothes and a nap.
“Did you find him?” To his credit, Axel sounds almost interested, but Roxas only sighs and throws his gloves on his nightstand. “Your blind answer-machine, I mean.”
“What’s it to you?” Roxas snaps. His coat hits the floor; he’ll pick it up later, when he’s rested and Axel isn’t square in the middle of his room, somehow drawing everything towards him.
“That would be telling, Rox.”
“It’s about time you told.”
“Then I wouldn’t be me, you know that. And you’d miss me.” Axel hams it up on the last sentence but Roxas shies away from his arm.
“We can’t miss people, Axel.”
“Okay, Roxas, spill. You’re worse than usual today.”
“Hey!” His protest is only half-hearted, but it’s enough to make Axel’s lips quirk, and that’s, maybe that’s something.
“Roxas. What did he tell you?”
“Nothing,” Roxas admits, slow and tired. “He told me his name, that’s it.”
“You couldn’t force anything out of him?”
“I didn’t try,” Roxas says before he can stop himself, and then hangs his head so Axel doesn’t see the flush of shame rising over his cheeks. “He just, all the fight went out of him. It wouldn’t have been any fun.”
When he looks up Axel is perfectly still. That’s his first sign that something is wrong, or, rather, that he’s missed something huge and glaringly obvious. Axel thrums with energy, normally, and it looks nervous to the untrained eye, but his motions are controlled and directed and most importantly they are constant. But whatever Roxas said has broken Axel’s chain of motion.
“Tell me,” he chokes out. “You know something. You know Riku.”
“Riku,” Axel says, letting the name out in a long, shaky breath. “You met Riku.”
“So you do know him, then.”
“You could say that,” Axel muses, “I know a version of him.”
“Axel,” Roxas growls, and then he has to pause and take a breath or five because his vision is actually shaking and he’s excited because this is almost like feeling, he’s pretty sure. “Axel, for once in your existence, cut the bullshit. I know it’s hard for you, being all you have, but just this once.” He pauses, and before Axel can say “no,” he adds, “Please.”
It makes a difference. Axel doesn’t say “no,” he says, “I’m sorry.”
xx.
No one stays at the Castle That Never Was anymore. Either they are dead or off on missions, except Roxas. Even Axel pops off to day long missions, and then snipes with Saïx in back corners where they think Roxas can’t hear them. Sometimes his name comes up, and sometimes Riku does, and for once, Roxas can’t tell which of those two is angrier. It always used to be Saïx, uptight and duty-bound against Axel’s freewheeling, free agent mentality, but now a thin cord of steel runs through Axel’s arguments and he grinds his teeth whenever Riku’s name comes up.
Roxas lets things go on that way for a few weeks, but after yet another day of going through forms with his keyblades in a now empty training room, he snaps.
As usual, no one is around. Roxas puts his things in order, what few things he has, mostly seashells and driftwood, tiny pieces to a puzzle he won’t solve, and heads out to the constant rain and neon shimmer of his world. He finds a place to wait for Riku, far from the castle, down a street he had never seen before, and the jumps to another world, any other world.
He comes back to The World That Never Was every three or four hours to look for Riku, and, after a while, to sleep.
Roxas doesn’t dream. He never has.
For three days he follows the pattern, and then, of course, Axel is there, never one to miss out on an opportunity to aggravate Roxas. He looks more like a heroin addict than normal, even thinner and with a deeper, stranger fire in his eyes, and he’s staring at Roxas like Roxas owes him something.
“So you’re leaving, then.”
“I’ve already left,” Roxas tells him, which is technically true. He’s out of the castle, he’s not listening to Xemnas’s orders anymore. But when those words leave his mouth and Axel looks like he’s been punched in the diaphragm, that’s when Roxas is gone.
“They’ll kill you, you realize,” Axel warns with desperation laced into his voice. Roxas knows what that means. They’ll make me kill you. And Axel will take the job, because it’s not like he doesn’t have practice slaughtering his associates.
“None of them can beat me,” Roxas taunts. He wants to hear it from Axel, how he’ll trick and track Roxas, cage him like a rare bird, stuff and mount him.
“Roxas.” There’s so much heat in Axel’s voice now, all the faux emotion Roxas had wanted in earlier days, but now he just wants the truth, and none of their feelings have been true.
“You knew Riku. You know who I am. And you won’t tell me!”
“I was trying…” Axel trails off, for once speechless, and Roxas seizes the opening.
“To get what you wanted? Like you always are, Axel? I’m done with it. I’m going to find out, on my own.”
Axel’s eyes have never been greener, more like poison. “They’ll hunt you down, kill you.” Now it’s less a warning than a promise.
“Let them try.”
“Roxas, you can’t go.”
“No one would miss me.” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop himself. Axel makes the face he always makes right before he says something incredibly stupid, but Roxas is already walking away with short staccato strides when he hears it.
“That’s not true!” Which doesn’t so much as hitch Roxas’s gait until he hears the lower tones of Axel’s voice, because even if Axel thinks he can’t, Roxas has always been able to pick up what he says.
“I would.”
xx.
Roxas sees Riku once more, and they fight, and Roxas wins but receives no answers. As he leaves, Riku apologizes, and Roxas doesn’t know what for.
He learns, though, three days later, when he is found by a tall dark man, who reeks of Xemnas and a little of Riku. Zexion wasn’t the only one who could smell; he was just the best at it. This Riku-Xemnas, whom Roxas finally relegates just to Riku, because he is Riku, still, has every edge.
So as Roxas evades him with as much speed as he can muster, he figures this is his last chance to get his answers. “Who am I?”
It’s not Riku’s voice that responds, a timbre too deep even for the Superior. “Sora. Your name is Sora.”
That’s it. Roxas knows he could draw this fight out, whittle away at Riku’s patience until he could force a draw, but this is it. He is Sora. He knows the name; it lingered on twelve tongues for months, always just out of his reach, but there had been other names, words he didn’t understand, hiding it from him. Now he knows, and while there are so many details left: what was he like, where is he now, what is going to happen, none of it matters.
He is Sora, and so he can no longer be Roxas.
[ part 2.]