[Complete]
Who: Roxas and this other guy who’s dead.
When: mornin’ after the Wesker battle
Where: to the river and back
Rating: PG? PG-13?
Warnings: Dead people. Person. And one terribly unlucky lizard.
Summary: And Axel didn’t come back that night.
Axel didn’t return that night to the hotel. Once upon a time, such a minor thing wouldn’t have even penetrated Roxas’s armor of indifference, because Axel could take care of himself and they all knew the Superior leashed each of his weapons differently. #VIII had always had a long chain for his missions, at least for as long as Roxas had been there to witness. And anyway, Axel had always come back.
That was before one of them had so unhesitatingly thrown his life away for the sake of the other. Now Roxas worried. Now Roxas made promises that galled him, to not go running off and confront his self-appointed mortal enemy, but stayed put like he’d been asked and grumbled and tried to figure out when Axel’s requests had turned into orders. Surely he’d never felt the inclination to obey a snarky redheaded idiot before. Surely Axel hadn’t always been able to stop their arguments cold with one look and a few words.
He wasn’t sure that he liked it, what had changed between them, but he wasn’t about to test the alternative. So he waited and fumed and read very disturbing things on the network and waited some more as the night turned into false dawn and then into true dawn, all because Axel had asked him to.
And then he kicked the door open and went looking.
The body was relatively pristine. A broken neck, some traces of char, more dirt than gouts of blood. It might have been an easy death, but for the state of the corpse’s surroundings and the smoking ruins of the creatures that been either victims or weapons. Roxas wasn’t really looking at them. He stood over the body of his partner for a second time, and said nothing. For quite a while.
Something finally chittered and clambered oblivious over one still hand, and a Keyblade flashed under the light. The tiny creature was dead before it could blink.
Roxas dismissed his weapon and bent to one knee, expression a terrible mask of nothing, and painstakingly slung the unwieldy body over his shoulders. Axel was too tall for this. An ordinary boy of Roxas’s height wouldn’t have been able to bear the weight, but Roxas was not a human. Nor would he have been willing to let anyone help anyway, if there had been any alternative.
He started walking.
This is not to say that he made good time, or that he wasn’t aching and exhausted by the time he reached his destination, or that he hadn’t been forced to find something to drag Axel on the third time he’d fallen in the streets. From there, it was an unceremonious hauling to the nearest defensible point, aka inside the closest room, and an equally unceremonious dumping on the bed and a very, very silent vigil from the doorway.
When: mornin’ after the Wesker battle
Where: to the river and back
Rating: PG? PG-13?
Warnings: Dead people. Person. And one terribly unlucky lizard.
Summary: And Axel didn’t come back that night.
Axel didn’t return that night to the hotel. Once upon a time, such a minor thing wouldn’t have even penetrated Roxas’s armor of indifference, because Axel could take care of himself and they all knew the Superior leashed each of his weapons differently. #VIII had always had a long chain for his missions, at least for as long as Roxas had been there to witness. And anyway, Axel had always come back.
That was before one of them had so unhesitatingly thrown his life away for the sake of the other. Now Roxas worried. Now Roxas made promises that galled him, to not go running off and confront his self-appointed mortal enemy, but stayed put like he’d been asked and grumbled and tried to figure out when Axel’s requests had turned into orders. Surely he’d never felt the inclination to obey a snarky redheaded idiot before. Surely Axel hadn’t always been able to stop their arguments cold with one look and a few words.
He wasn’t sure that he liked it, what had changed between them, but he wasn’t about to test the alternative. So he waited and fumed and read very disturbing things on the network and waited some more as the night turned into false dawn and then into true dawn, all because Axel had asked him to.
And then he kicked the door open and went looking.
The body was relatively pristine. A broken neck, some traces of char, more dirt than gouts of blood. It might have been an easy death, but for the state of the corpse’s surroundings and the smoking ruins of the creatures that been either victims or weapons. Roxas wasn’t really looking at them. He stood over the body of his partner for a second time, and said nothing. For quite a while.
Something finally chittered and clambered oblivious over one still hand, and a Keyblade flashed under the light. The tiny creature was dead before it could blink.
Roxas dismissed his weapon and bent to one knee, expression a terrible mask of nothing, and painstakingly slung the unwieldy body over his shoulders. Axel was too tall for this. An ordinary boy of Roxas’s height wouldn’t have been able to bear the weight, but Roxas was not a human. Nor would he have been willing to let anyone help anyway, if there had been any alternative.
He started walking.
This is not to say that he made good time, or that he wasn’t aching and exhausted by the time he reached his destination, or that he hadn’t been forced to find something to drag Axel on the third time he’d fallen in the streets. From there, it was an unceremonious hauling to the nearest defensible point, aka inside the closest room, and an equally unceremonious dumping on the bed and a very, very silent vigil from the doorway.