[kh2][Akuroku] In Which Roxas Tries to Leave The World That Never Was...
I was going to sit down and write a Fullmetal Alchemist fic tonight, because that's all I've been reading lately...and then I watched this masterpiece - GO WATCH IT because it is brilliant. And I had to write Akuroku. I just HAD to.
So I can't decide if I'm writing a series of one-shots, or a long fic with many chapters. I think for now we'll say a series for one shots, due to the glaring tense changes between parts 1, 2, and 3. Eventually I will change Haunting into present tense, give it a name to match the other two (In Which Marluxia Attempts to Traumatize His Fellows and Instead Discovers the Truth?), and solidify them all into one fic. Maybe.
I'm the world's laziest person, so, uh, possibly not.
Without further ado - Part 3 of my cracked out fic :D Enjoy!
Title: In Which Roxas Tries to Leave The World That Never Was and is Attacked By A Redhead (Multiple Times)
Author: kaeda
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: PG-13, some language and sexual suggestions. nothing graphic, still. *wimp*
Pairing: Axel/Roxas (it's REAL in this chapter)
Word Count: 3,246
Summary: Roxas knows he has to leave, but Axel is determined that he will stay.
Warnings: spoilers for CoM, vague hints towards the beginning of KH2 but nothing concrete. Slight angst. Still humorous (IMO). Yeah, I don't know how that works either. Extensive italics abuse.
previous parts of this sucker
Disclaimer: hey, guess who owns Kingdom Hearts, KH2, KHCOM, and everyone else? Square Enix. They also own Fullmetal Alchemist, so I think they're pretty much just god incarnate. Uh, yeah.
Roxas rolls over in the night and spits out a lock of cherry-red hair.
It’s dark and quiet and The World That Never Was is asleep, all except for him. He revels in the stillness, but it also makes him wonder. That desire for knowledge gnaws at his soul, threatens to devour him whole, and he wants, more than anything else, to know who he is and where he came from.
He sits up. Axel murmurs in his sleep and curls one long arm around his ankle, but Roxas quickly disengages himself without too much thought and is in his coat and out the door before he can wake the redhead.
He stares up at the night sky, barely visible. This is his secret, his penance, his journey to undertake. He has to leave before Axel stops him again with sweet words and an expression that makes his chest ache, before he feels friendly when he hears Demyx strumming on his sitar, or smiles indulgently when Xigbar starts talking about his guns.
Roxas is different from the rest of them. They understand their purpose; they are where they’re supposed to be. The Superior doesn’t lie to them.
Roxas is Roxas. But at the same time, Roxas is someone more.
-------------------
He’s standing by the exit to the castle when Demyx finds him. The older boy sneaks up behind him and a lonely sitar chord fills the heavy night air. “You’re finally going?” Roxas is surprised that the musician knows what he’s been thinking, but realizes he shouldn’t be. Demyx has always been intuitive and smart.
“I have to,” he says.
“No,” Demyx says flatly. “You want to.” Another chord joins the first and Roxas hopes that he doesn’t intend to play a song; music would wake the other Nobodies (Axel) and they would get down here and Axel would hug him and stick his nose uncomfortably in Roxas’s hair and Roxas would go back to bed and have to sneak out again another day. He’s already on his fourth attempt. Roxas doesn’t intend to risk it enough for the Superior to find out.
“I’m someone else, Demyx.” He know it sounds stupid but Demyx and Axel are the two Organization members with the greatest chance of understanding him. Axel doesn’t want to understand, because understanding means that Roxas will leave, and the Superior will declare him a traitor and then Axel (Axel!) will have to hunt him down, but Roxas doesn’t mind the thought. If he has to die, he wants it to be at Axel’s hands.
He wonders if that makes him a sap.
“I’m going to get Axel,” Demyx says petulantly, as if he can read Roxas’s mind. “If you leave without saying goodbye to him, he’ll never forgive you.” Roxas knows this, but doesn’t want to be forgiven, so he smiles and pretends he agreed. Demyx skips down the stairs to the Proof of Existence and Roxas is about to keep going, get out of the World that Never Was forever and leave all of this behind, when a footfall sounds behind him.
“You have to wait for Axel,” Xigbar’s gruff voice tells him, and Roxas is seriously annoyed. When did they all turn into such busybodies? Did everyone know about how he and Axel felt about each other? (Not that they felt anything of course - no hearts - but there was no denying that they’d paired off.)
“I have to go,” Roxas is embarrassed and annoyed that his voice comes out almost whining. He hates them all, especially Axel with his stupid red hair and his stupid long coat and expressive hands and lips and smiles and the way he whispers in his ear. Oh, yes, he hates Axel so much.
“The Superior will have you killed,” Xigbar is saying when Roxas snaps back to the present. “We can’t keep hiding these late-night excursions from him forever. Sooner or later he’s going to notice how we’re all yawning except Saix and Luxord, and then we’re all fucked.”
“We’ll just tell him we’re having wild orgies in my room,” the most annoying man on the planet says, coming from the Proof of Existence with Demyx trailing behind him. “He’ll believe us. We’re leaving Number VII out, and nobody’d ever want to fuck him.”
“Axel,” Roxas says with no emotion. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving you.” And damn, the bastard has that look on his face again, the one that says he’s going to make some bullshit remark, and here it comes-
“But what about the kids?” Axel croons, gesturing at Demyx (who just looks at him before going back to his sitar). Roxas is not amused and stiffens his jaw into what a stupid man would call a pout. “Oh, stop pouting,” Axel adds. Case in point, Roxas thinks to himself.
“It’s more of a determined frown, don’t you think?” Xigbar says, mostly to remind Roxas that if he does decide homicide is on his agenda, Axel should be the only target.
“I have to go,” Roxas says, ignoring everybody, especially the damned man who can’t stay out of his head. Axel is still sleepy, not quite on top of his game, so Roxas can almost forgive him for not having the patience to deal with this situation for the fourth night in a row. Except for that Axel’s stupid arms are around Roxas’s stupid waist and now Roxas knows he’s going to go back to bed and sleep until noon and wake up with hair in his mouth again, like he has for months.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Axel murmurs in his ear and Roxas curses the day he ever met the man, the day he heard that voice and the day he had his own vulnerability handed to him on a silver platter.
“I hate you,” he says, but the words are lost when he spins around to hug Axel back and his mouth is buried in the black leather of the taller man’s coat.
-------------------
The routine is getting tiring, but three days later Roxas is again at the exit to the castle, almost into the City That Never Was. This time he’d waited before trying again, figuring maybe the others would let down their guard, but to his chagrin, Demyx is standing by the bridge, smiling and playing his sitar, and Roxas realizes he should probably just teleport out like a sane man and forego all the sentimental garbage.
Too late. Demyx sees him and pounces.
“I knew you were lulling us into a false sense of security! Xigbar said you’d finally decided to appreciate what life gave you but I knew better.” He seems unnaturally proud of his own assessment and Roxas smiles despite himself. He really does like Demyx.
“I have to go,” he says, and he feels like this is all he’s been saying lately, but it’s still true and everyone knows it. His identity, the person he once was, the reason that he can wield the keyblades - it’s all there, right beyond his grasp. Sometimes he thinks that if he could just jump the tiniest bit higher, he could grab the missing half of himself and shove it back inside, to the empty place in his chest, and then he could love Axel and it would all be okay.
He crossly wonders why everything always goes back to Axel.
“Don’t your fingers ever get tired?” he asks, gesturing at the sitar. Demyx looks at him with utter disbelief, as though he’d spoken blasphemy instead of a simple, logical question.
“Of course not,” he replies. It reminds Roxas of the time when he’d asked Axel if his chakram had ever burnt him. The look on the man’s face had been priceless, and the haughty way in which he’d answered had been even better.
Roxas clamps this thought down. He doesn’t want to think of Axel.
As if the thought had summoned the man, Xaldin and Axel round the corner and Axel also pounces. Roxas vaguely wonders if they planned this ahead of time, but then Axel is holding his shoulders with his large hands and it’s warm.
“You can’t hold me here against my will,” Roxas tells him, even though at the moment it’s not against his will and all he wants to do is go back to bed. Again.
“If you truly wanted to leave, you’re sneaky enough to get out of here without our help. You want us to stop you,” Axel replies, his nose buried in Roxas’s hair. “Conniving bastard. I was enjoying getting some sleep for a couple nights.”
“I do want to leave,” Roxas protests. “I’d really just rather not go when the Superior is up and about. That man knows everything.”
“He sure does,” another voice says. On the opposite side of the bridge, Saix has his arms folding and he’s smirking like the cat that got into the cream.
Xaldin growls, Demyx stares, and Axel grins wickedly in challenge. Roxas simply wonders how much Saix overheard.
“If I told him his favorite pet was planning to leave…” Saix trails off.
“Sorry. No matter how hard you try, you can’t be in on our orgies,” Axel says in the sleaziest tone of voice that Roxas has ever heard him use (and he’s heard some extremely sleazy things coming from that mouth). “With that scar? We’d all have nightmares for weeks.”
Saix gets a decidedly murderous look on his face. If he harms one stupid red hair on Axel’s stupid head, Roxas is going to kill him. Then he’s going to kill Axel for baiting a man whom they really could use on their side. All in all, there will be quite a bit of bloodshed, and Roxas licks his lips in anticipation.
Unfortunately for him, Saix backs down.
“I won’t tell the Superior what your little pet is up to,” he sneers. “If you cease shrinking my clothes and leaving pornography out on the tables when the Superior comes to my rooms. Don’t give me that look, Number VIII. I know it was you.”
Demyx mouths, ‘pornography?’ at Axel with those wide, innocent eyes, and Roxas wonders why on earth he associates with any of these people, when obviously he’s in love with a madman and he’s friends with a teenager who is extremely naïve about everything.
Axel laughs. “Deal.”
As he leads Roxas inside (drat, Roxas thinks, I’ve been foiled again!) he smirks to himself, and with the insight of dealing with the same twisted mind for months, Roxas knows exactly what his madman was up to.
“You started hitting Saix heavy with pranks to give yourself leverage when I finally left, didn’t you?” he asks.
Axel pulls him flush against him and nuzzles his blond hair in answer.
-------------------
“If you truly wanted to leave, you’re sneaky enough to get out of here without our help. You want us to stop you.”
Roxas hates Axel, but it’s the kind of hate that makes his insides tingle and his stomach churn. The man is infuriating and annoying and makes him want to shove a keyblade someplace very uncomfortable three quarters of the time. It’s that other quarter, when he’s quiet (mostly when he’s asleep), that Roxas truly finds himself fond of Axel.
He refuses to admit to anything that remotely resembles “liking”. And there is no way in hell that he loves him, except for that he does.
The tradition of gathering in the large reading room upstairs has continued to the point of redundancy, and Axel is sprawled in an oversized chair with his eyes boring into the back of Roxas’s neck. Roxas is trying to read a book on existentialism, but this obviously is not in Axel’s Plans For the Evening, because soon he finds himself ready to shove a keyblade through the man’s forehead.
When Saix enters their sanctum for the second time in a month, even Axel has the dignity to seem surprised.
“What are you doing back?” Demyx asks. “Did you come to debate about truth again? Because Roxas is reading one of the books I finished the other day and it’s so interesting!”
“No,” Saix says. “I need to speak to Number VIII.”
“Oh.” Demyx goes back to playing his sitar and looks vaguely put out. Saix gets an impatient look on his face and Axel stands reluctantly, shooting one last pining look at Roxas, who is simply glad that he will get to read a bit more before being hauled off to various nefarious activities. (Last night Axel had conned him into burning a deck of Luxord’s cards and leaving them around his rooms like small sacrifices. Roxas had heard the commotion when he’d been trying to sneak out that night, and knew with the whole castle awake, leaving was a Bad Idea. He was still suspicious about the timing of the whole thing, but Axel had made some stupid gesture with his hands implying the likeness of his lips to a zipper, and Roxas hadn’t really had the heart to tell him how much he’d looked like an idiot, so he’d let it go.)
Axel exits with Saix. Moments pass, silently and peacefully, and Xaldin and Xigbar’s chess game finishes with the practiced ease of many similar nights. Luxord is missing, doubtlessly still sulking somewhere on the torture of his cards, and Demyx is playing classical music that fits with the classy atmosphere. The moment Axel returns, the mood is broken, of course, because ‘classy’ and ‘Axel’ will never be associated with one another unless Hell freezes over, but Roxas appreciates it while it lasts.
Axel sits down heavily with a whoosh. Roxas glances at him and puts his book down suddenly; all the color is drained from his face, his eyes are tense, and for the first time ever, Axel looks serious.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, even though he normally doesn’t acknowledge the redhead’s existence in these evening sessions until he absolutely has to. Axel scans the room, knows they’re all trustworthy but still hesitates to speak, and Roxas feels something akin to dread pooling in his stomach.
“The Superior told Saix to keep an eye on you today,” Axel finally spits out. Roxas frowns; something like that would worry Axel slightly, maybe, but the man was usually so cocky that the Superior did little to daunt him. “He said…” and here he chokes. “He said you had the same look as Marluxia. In your eyes.”
Roxas shivers, and suddenly realizes why Axel is so afraid. Marluxia had betrayed them all.
-------------------
“I’m not Marluxia,” Roxas whispers to Axel as they’re falling asleep. “I will never be Marluxia.”
“I know,” Axel replies and wraps his arm tighter around the younger boy.
“The only person I would ever betray is the Superior. And maybe Saix. But that’s only because Saix loves the Superior and would take it as a betrayal.” Roxas hardly ever speaks this much, but he feels it’s important that Axel realizes he has no intention of betraying him. Ever. “If I left, it would be to find out who I am.”
“If?” Axel asks archly. “It’s not a done deal anymore?”
“The Superior is suspicious.”
.
“Do you want to meet him?” Axel whispers in his ear, trailing one finger down Roxas’s side. “Do you want to know who you are? I’ve met him, you know.” And Roxas is sitting up, glaring and angry and what, Axel’s met him? And who is he, who is this person who haunts his dreams? They are Nobodies, which means while they’d once had a Somebody, those Somebodies have turned into Heartless and that is why…
A Somebody who isn’t a Heartless. Suddenly the incomplete feeling makes much more sense.
“You met him and you didn’t tell me?!” Roxas feels like a girl, offended and angry over withheld secrets, but he also thinks he has a right to feel betrayed. “You met me?!”
“He’s not you,” Axel says so fiercely that it burns into Roxas’s skin. “He’ll never be you, and I couldn’t tell you. It was an order, Roxas, and even though you’re thinking of leaving, I’m still loyal to the Organization.” And that hurts, it slams into Roxas’s chest like a thousand tons, but at the same time he wants to know everything.
“Who is he?”
“His name is Sora. He’s fifteen like you, short like you, but his hair is brown and he wears really ugly clothes. He’s extremely passionate and extremely gullible, and although he beat me in a fight, he did it just barely. I betrayed Marluxia to help him because…he’s you.” It comes out in a rush and Roxas smiles at Axel’s critique of Sora’s (his?) clothes and frowns at Axel’s contradiction.
“I thought he wasn’t me,” he says.
“He isn’t. But he is, just not in the important ways, not in the ways that count. He went through hell and back to save his best friends.” Axel grins at him. “I happen to know that you’d do the same.”
“Where is he now? Obviously he escaped Castle Oblivion,” Roxas asks.
“We…don’t know. Rumor has it that he disappeared somewhere around Twilight Town, but…Namine is missing too. And Roxas…Sora is the Keyblade Wielder.”
It’s like pieces falling into place on the puzzle of his life, and Roxas has never felt so achingly empty as he does at the moment when he tries to imagine his other self and fails completely.
“I have to go,” he says, turning to get out of bed.
“No,” Axel replies, and pulls him back down, snuggles into his back and spoons against him. “You have to stay, and process this. If you think it through and still want to leave…I won’t stop you.”
Roxas closes his eyes, tries to block out the emotional pain these words bring. He knows Axel will regret that promise. He knows it, and yet he doesn’t have the strength to tell him to take it back.
-------------------
The cranky man with unnatural blue-purple hair and sharp eyes hates his job. Working at an ice cream parlor is normally a nightmare, but on this particular day, it has been even worse.
First a redhead comes in, smirks when he sees him, then abuses him utterly while ordering a chocolate cone. Said redhead is now seated happily at one of the tables and he could swear that the man is mouthing the word ‘pornography’ at him occasionally.
Finally the redhead leaves. He notices briefly that the man left his wallet on the table, but smirks and says nothing.
A blond boy is now glaring at him from across the counter.
“What can I get for you?” he asks, ignoring the strange feeling in his brain that he’s met the twerp before. He does not associate with teenagers.
The blond squints at the menu, looks at the person next to him - a much friendlier-looking boy, with wide blue eyes - and shrugs.
“What the fuck kind of flavor is Sea Salt ice cream, old man?” he finally asks. “It sounds disgusting.”
The redhead - coming back to get his wallet - stops dead in his tracks and stares at the blond with a strange intensity. The kid doesn’t see him. The man grabs his wallet and makes as if to walk over - except he doesn’t notice the chair in his path and trips over it with a clatter, falling to the floor.
Saix covers his face with his hands. Today is going to be hell.
to be continued, you bet your ass.
maybe next time Roxas will actually leave
maybe next time I also won't abuse italics as much. I just love them so!
Also, I'm sure I'll find a tense slip somewhere in this when I reread it later. I'm too impatient to utilize a beta reader, so I proofread my own stuff. Apologies ahead of time!
So I can't decide if I'm writing a series of one-shots, or a long fic with many chapters. I think for now we'll say a series for one shots, due to the glaring tense changes between parts 1, 2, and 3. Eventually I will change Haunting into present tense, give it a name to match the other two (In Which Marluxia Attempts to Traumatize His Fellows and Instead Discovers the Truth?), and solidify them all into one fic. Maybe.
I'm the world's laziest person, so, uh, possibly not.
Without further ado - Part 3 of my cracked out fic :D Enjoy!
Title: In Which Roxas Tries to Leave The World That Never Was and is Attacked By A Redhead (Multiple Times)
Author: kaeda
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: PG-13, some language and sexual suggestions. nothing graphic, still. *wimp*
Pairing: Axel/Roxas (it's REAL in this chapter)
Word Count: 3,246
Summary: Roxas knows he has to leave, but Axel is determined that he will stay.
Warnings: spoilers for CoM, vague hints towards the beginning of KH2 but nothing concrete. Slight angst. Still humorous (IMO). Yeah, I don't know how that works either. Extensive italics abuse.
previous parts of this sucker
Disclaimer: hey, guess who owns Kingdom Hearts, KH2, KHCOM, and everyone else? Square Enix. They also own Fullmetal Alchemist, so I think they're pretty much just god incarnate. Uh, yeah.
Roxas rolls over in the night and spits out a lock of cherry-red hair.
It’s dark and quiet and The World That Never Was is asleep, all except for him. He revels in the stillness, but it also makes him wonder. That desire for knowledge gnaws at his soul, threatens to devour him whole, and he wants, more than anything else, to know who he is and where he came from.
He sits up. Axel murmurs in his sleep and curls one long arm around his ankle, but Roxas quickly disengages himself without too much thought and is in his coat and out the door before he can wake the redhead.
He stares up at the night sky, barely visible. This is his secret, his penance, his journey to undertake. He has to leave before Axel stops him again with sweet words and an expression that makes his chest ache, before he feels friendly when he hears Demyx strumming on his sitar, or smiles indulgently when Xigbar starts talking about his guns.
Roxas is different from the rest of them. They understand their purpose; they are where they’re supposed to be. The Superior doesn’t lie to them.
Roxas is Roxas. But at the same time, Roxas is someone more.
-------------------
He’s standing by the exit to the castle when Demyx finds him. The older boy sneaks up behind him and a lonely sitar chord fills the heavy night air. “You’re finally going?” Roxas is surprised that the musician knows what he’s been thinking, but realizes he shouldn’t be. Demyx has always been intuitive and smart.
“I have to,” he says.
“No,” Demyx says flatly. “You want to.” Another chord joins the first and Roxas hopes that he doesn’t intend to play a song; music would wake the other Nobodies (Axel) and they would get down here and Axel would hug him and stick his nose uncomfortably in Roxas’s hair and Roxas would go back to bed and have to sneak out again another day. He’s already on his fourth attempt. Roxas doesn’t intend to risk it enough for the Superior to find out.
“I’m someone else, Demyx.” He know it sounds stupid but Demyx and Axel are the two Organization members with the greatest chance of understanding him. Axel doesn’t want to understand, because understanding means that Roxas will leave, and the Superior will declare him a traitor and then Axel (Axel!) will have to hunt him down, but Roxas doesn’t mind the thought. If he has to die, he wants it to be at Axel’s hands.
He wonders if that makes him a sap.
“I’m going to get Axel,” Demyx says petulantly, as if he can read Roxas’s mind. “If you leave without saying goodbye to him, he’ll never forgive you.” Roxas knows this, but doesn’t want to be forgiven, so he smiles and pretends he agreed. Demyx skips down the stairs to the Proof of Existence and Roxas is about to keep going, get out of the World that Never Was forever and leave all of this behind, when a footfall sounds behind him.
“You have to wait for Axel,” Xigbar’s gruff voice tells him, and Roxas is seriously annoyed. When did they all turn into such busybodies? Did everyone know about how he and Axel felt about each other? (Not that they felt anything of course - no hearts - but there was no denying that they’d paired off.)
“I have to go,” Roxas is embarrassed and annoyed that his voice comes out almost whining. He hates them all, especially Axel with his stupid red hair and his stupid long coat and expressive hands and lips and smiles and the way he whispers in his ear. Oh, yes, he hates Axel so much.
“The Superior will have you killed,” Xigbar is saying when Roxas snaps back to the present. “We can’t keep hiding these late-night excursions from him forever. Sooner or later he’s going to notice how we’re all yawning except Saix and Luxord, and then we’re all fucked.”
“We’ll just tell him we’re having wild orgies in my room,” the most annoying man on the planet says, coming from the Proof of Existence with Demyx trailing behind him. “He’ll believe us. We’re leaving Number VII out, and nobody’d ever want to fuck him.”
“Axel,” Roxas says with no emotion. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving you.” And damn, the bastard has that look on his face again, the one that says he’s going to make some bullshit remark, and here it comes-
“But what about the kids?” Axel croons, gesturing at Demyx (who just looks at him before going back to his sitar). Roxas is not amused and stiffens his jaw into what a stupid man would call a pout. “Oh, stop pouting,” Axel adds. Case in point, Roxas thinks to himself.
“It’s more of a determined frown, don’t you think?” Xigbar says, mostly to remind Roxas that if he does decide homicide is on his agenda, Axel should be the only target.
“I have to go,” Roxas says, ignoring everybody, especially the damned man who can’t stay out of his head. Axel is still sleepy, not quite on top of his game, so Roxas can almost forgive him for not having the patience to deal with this situation for the fourth night in a row. Except for that Axel’s stupid arms are around Roxas’s stupid waist and now Roxas knows he’s going to go back to bed and sleep until noon and wake up with hair in his mouth again, like he has for months.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Axel murmurs in his ear and Roxas curses the day he ever met the man, the day he heard that voice and the day he had his own vulnerability handed to him on a silver platter.
“I hate you,” he says, but the words are lost when he spins around to hug Axel back and his mouth is buried in the black leather of the taller man’s coat.
-------------------
The routine is getting tiring, but three days later Roxas is again at the exit to the castle, almost into the City That Never Was. This time he’d waited before trying again, figuring maybe the others would let down their guard, but to his chagrin, Demyx is standing by the bridge, smiling and playing his sitar, and Roxas realizes he should probably just teleport out like a sane man and forego all the sentimental garbage.
Too late. Demyx sees him and pounces.
“I knew you were lulling us into a false sense of security! Xigbar said you’d finally decided to appreciate what life gave you but I knew better.” He seems unnaturally proud of his own assessment and Roxas smiles despite himself. He really does like Demyx.
“I have to go,” he says, and he feels like this is all he’s been saying lately, but it’s still true and everyone knows it. His identity, the person he once was, the reason that he can wield the keyblades - it’s all there, right beyond his grasp. Sometimes he thinks that if he could just jump the tiniest bit higher, he could grab the missing half of himself and shove it back inside, to the empty place in his chest, and then he could love Axel and it would all be okay.
He crossly wonders why everything always goes back to Axel.
“Don’t your fingers ever get tired?” he asks, gesturing at the sitar. Demyx looks at him with utter disbelief, as though he’d spoken blasphemy instead of a simple, logical question.
“Of course not,” he replies. It reminds Roxas of the time when he’d asked Axel if his chakram had ever burnt him. The look on the man’s face had been priceless, and the haughty way in which he’d answered had been even better.
Roxas clamps this thought down. He doesn’t want to think of Axel.
As if the thought had summoned the man, Xaldin and Axel round the corner and Axel also pounces. Roxas vaguely wonders if they planned this ahead of time, but then Axel is holding his shoulders with his large hands and it’s warm.
“You can’t hold me here against my will,” Roxas tells him, even though at the moment it’s not against his will and all he wants to do is go back to bed. Again.
“If you truly wanted to leave, you’re sneaky enough to get out of here without our help. You want us to stop you,” Axel replies, his nose buried in Roxas’s hair. “Conniving bastard. I was enjoying getting some sleep for a couple nights.”
“I do want to leave,” Roxas protests. “I’d really just rather not go when the Superior is up and about. That man knows everything.”
“He sure does,” another voice says. On the opposite side of the bridge, Saix has his arms folding and he’s smirking like the cat that got into the cream.
Xaldin growls, Demyx stares, and Axel grins wickedly in challenge. Roxas simply wonders how much Saix overheard.
“If I told him his favorite pet was planning to leave…” Saix trails off.
“Sorry. No matter how hard you try, you can’t be in on our orgies,” Axel says in the sleaziest tone of voice that Roxas has ever heard him use (and he’s heard some extremely sleazy things coming from that mouth). “With that scar? We’d all have nightmares for weeks.”
Saix gets a decidedly murderous look on his face. If he harms one stupid red hair on Axel’s stupid head, Roxas is going to kill him. Then he’s going to kill Axel for baiting a man whom they really could use on their side. All in all, there will be quite a bit of bloodshed, and Roxas licks his lips in anticipation.
Unfortunately for him, Saix backs down.
“I won’t tell the Superior what your little pet is up to,” he sneers. “If you cease shrinking my clothes and leaving pornography out on the tables when the Superior comes to my rooms. Don’t give me that look, Number VIII. I know it was you.”
Demyx mouths, ‘pornography?’ at Axel with those wide, innocent eyes, and Roxas wonders why on earth he associates with any of these people, when obviously he’s in love with a madman and he’s friends with a teenager who is extremely naïve about everything.
Axel laughs. “Deal.”
As he leads Roxas inside (drat, Roxas thinks, I’ve been foiled again!) he smirks to himself, and with the insight of dealing with the same twisted mind for months, Roxas knows exactly what his madman was up to.
“You started hitting Saix heavy with pranks to give yourself leverage when I finally left, didn’t you?” he asks.
Axel pulls him flush against him and nuzzles his blond hair in answer.
-------------------
“If you truly wanted to leave, you’re sneaky enough to get out of here without our help. You want us to stop you.”
Roxas hates Axel, but it’s the kind of hate that makes his insides tingle and his stomach churn. The man is infuriating and annoying and makes him want to shove a keyblade someplace very uncomfortable three quarters of the time. It’s that other quarter, when he’s quiet (mostly when he’s asleep), that Roxas truly finds himself fond of Axel.
He refuses to admit to anything that remotely resembles “liking”. And there is no way in hell that he loves him, except for that he does.
The tradition of gathering in the large reading room upstairs has continued to the point of redundancy, and Axel is sprawled in an oversized chair with his eyes boring into the back of Roxas’s neck. Roxas is trying to read a book on existentialism, but this obviously is not in Axel’s Plans For the Evening, because soon he finds himself ready to shove a keyblade through the man’s forehead.
When Saix enters their sanctum for the second time in a month, even Axel has the dignity to seem surprised.
“What are you doing back?” Demyx asks. “Did you come to debate about truth again? Because Roxas is reading one of the books I finished the other day and it’s so interesting!”
“No,” Saix says. “I need to speak to Number VIII.”
“Oh.” Demyx goes back to playing his sitar and looks vaguely put out. Saix gets an impatient look on his face and Axel stands reluctantly, shooting one last pining look at Roxas, who is simply glad that he will get to read a bit more before being hauled off to various nefarious activities. (Last night Axel had conned him into burning a deck of Luxord’s cards and leaving them around his rooms like small sacrifices. Roxas had heard the commotion when he’d been trying to sneak out that night, and knew with the whole castle awake, leaving was a Bad Idea. He was still suspicious about the timing of the whole thing, but Axel had made some stupid gesture with his hands implying the likeness of his lips to a zipper, and Roxas hadn’t really had the heart to tell him how much he’d looked like an idiot, so he’d let it go.)
Axel exits with Saix. Moments pass, silently and peacefully, and Xaldin and Xigbar’s chess game finishes with the practiced ease of many similar nights. Luxord is missing, doubtlessly still sulking somewhere on the torture of his cards, and Demyx is playing classical music that fits with the classy atmosphere. The moment Axel returns, the mood is broken, of course, because ‘classy’ and ‘Axel’ will never be associated with one another unless Hell freezes over, but Roxas appreciates it while it lasts.
Axel sits down heavily with a whoosh. Roxas glances at him and puts his book down suddenly; all the color is drained from his face, his eyes are tense, and for the first time ever, Axel looks serious.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, even though he normally doesn’t acknowledge the redhead’s existence in these evening sessions until he absolutely has to. Axel scans the room, knows they’re all trustworthy but still hesitates to speak, and Roxas feels something akin to dread pooling in his stomach.
“The Superior told Saix to keep an eye on you today,” Axel finally spits out. Roxas frowns; something like that would worry Axel slightly, maybe, but the man was usually so cocky that the Superior did little to daunt him. “He said…” and here he chokes. “He said you had the same look as Marluxia. In your eyes.”
Roxas shivers, and suddenly realizes why Axel is so afraid. Marluxia had betrayed them all.
-------------------
“I’m not Marluxia,” Roxas whispers to Axel as they’re falling asleep. “I will never be Marluxia.”
“I know,” Axel replies and wraps his arm tighter around the younger boy.
“The only person I would ever betray is the Superior. And maybe Saix. But that’s only because Saix loves the Superior and would take it as a betrayal.” Roxas hardly ever speaks this much, but he feels it’s important that Axel realizes he has no intention of betraying him. Ever. “If I left, it would be to find out who I am.”
“If?” Axel asks archly. “It’s not a done deal anymore?”
“The Superior is suspicious.”
.
“Do you want to meet him?” Axel whispers in his ear, trailing one finger down Roxas’s side. “Do you want to know who you are? I’ve met him, you know.” And Roxas is sitting up, glaring and angry and what, Axel’s met him? And who is he, who is this person who haunts his dreams? They are Nobodies, which means while they’d once had a Somebody, those Somebodies have turned into Heartless and that is why…
A Somebody who isn’t a Heartless. Suddenly the incomplete feeling makes much more sense.
“You met him and you didn’t tell me?!” Roxas feels like a girl, offended and angry over withheld secrets, but he also thinks he has a right to feel betrayed. “You met me?!”
“He’s not you,” Axel says so fiercely that it burns into Roxas’s skin. “He’ll never be you, and I couldn’t tell you. It was an order, Roxas, and even though you’re thinking of leaving, I’m still loyal to the Organization.” And that hurts, it slams into Roxas’s chest like a thousand tons, but at the same time he wants to know everything.
“Who is he?”
“His name is Sora. He’s fifteen like you, short like you, but his hair is brown and he wears really ugly clothes. He’s extremely passionate and extremely gullible, and although he beat me in a fight, he did it just barely. I betrayed Marluxia to help him because…he’s you.” It comes out in a rush and Roxas smiles at Axel’s critique of Sora’s (his?) clothes and frowns at Axel’s contradiction.
“I thought he wasn’t me,” he says.
“He isn’t. But he is, just not in the important ways, not in the ways that count. He went through hell and back to save his best friends.” Axel grins at him. “I happen to know that you’d do the same.”
“Where is he now? Obviously he escaped Castle Oblivion,” Roxas asks.
“We…don’t know. Rumor has it that he disappeared somewhere around Twilight Town, but…Namine is missing too. And Roxas…Sora is the Keyblade Wielder.”
It’s like pieces falling into place on the puzzle of his life, and Roxas has never felt so achingly empty as he does at the moment when he tries to imagine his other self and fails completely.
“I have to go,” he says, turning to get out of bed.
“No,” Axel replies, and pulls him back down, snuggles into his back and spoons against him. “You have to stay, and process this. If you think it through and still want to leave…I won’t stop you.”
Roxas closes his eyes, tries to block out the emotional pain these words bring. He knows Axel will regret that promise. He knows it, and yet he doesn’t have the strength to tell him to take it back.
-------------------
The cranky man with unnatural blue-purple hair and sharp eyes hates his job. Working at an ice cream parlor is normally a nightmare, but on this particular day, it has been even worse.
First a redhead comes in, smirks when he sees him, then abuses him utterly while ordering a chocolate cone. Said redhead is now seated happily at one of the tables and he could swear that the man is mouthing the word ‘pornography’ at him occasionally.
Finally the redhead leaves. He notices briefly that the man left his wallet on the table, but smirks and says nothing.
A blond boy is now glaring at him from across the counter.
“What can I get for you?” he asks, ignoring the strange feeling in his brain that he’s met the twerp before. He does not associate with teenagers.
The blond squints at the menu, looks at the person next to him - a much friendlier-looking boy, with wide blue eyes - and shrugs.
“What the fuck kind of flavor is Sea Salt ice cream, old man?” he finally asks. “It sounds disgusting.”
The redhead - coming back to get his wallet - stops dead in his tracks and stares at the blond with a strange intensity. The kid doesn’t see him. The man grabs his wallet and makes as if to walk over - except he doesn’t notice the chair in his path and trips over it with a clatter, falling to the floor.
Saix covers his face with his hands. Today is going to be hell.
to be continued, you bet your ass.
maybe next time Roxas will actually leave
maybe next time I also won't abuse italics as much. I just love them so!
Also, I'm sure I'll find a tense slip somewhere in this when I reread it later. I'm too impatient to utilize a beta reader, so I proofread my own stuff. Apologies ahead of time!