DISCLAIMER: I don't own the characters.
WARNING: contains hints of romantic feelings between Roxas and Axel (although you could probably read it as just a very strong friendship.) Also touches on the idea of 'death', in a way, as pertains to the game.
In the darkness, he heard a voice.
"Roxas..."
"Axel?"
It was a huge effort just to form the word in his mind. Without a corporeal body to speak of, he couldn't call out the name, but what remained of his being screamed it desperately into the emptiness, and, after an eternity of timelessness, the first distant beckon repeated. Faintly. The sound thundered through Roxas' consciousness.
"Roxas!"
"Axel!"
Again, he suffered through a long, eternal pause, before a breathless, bodiless voice called, "I can't find you."
"You're looking for me?"
It was a moment's thought, not a question he meant to project to the other being searching through the darkness, so he wasn't even aware that the other had heard it, until a familiar, warm laugh echoed through the void and wrapped around him.
"Of course I am. I wouldn't be here otherwise. I came to find you."
The exchange of words was painstaking, even for someone no longer capable of feeling pain, but he couldn't bare the silence anymore now that he had heard a strong voice calling out for him. Again and again, he forced his voice to call out, desperately, feverishly, for the other person. Each time, his voice sounded weaker though, and the reply was fainter and slower to come. Finally, all he could do was mewl weakly.
No reply came.
The silence was deafening. If he had had hands still, Roxas would have pressed them tightly to his ears to block out the rush of nothingness, but without a body, he could only drift through the emptiness and feel it press in upon him, squeezing the sound from his voice, crushing the tiny flicker of hope that other ghost voice had lit inside him, draining his spirit, until he could feel himself slowly disapearing under the weight of that lonely, heartless silence, until...
drip
"Huh?"
Suddenly, shockingly, he felt. After so long a time of timelessness and nothingness, he -felt- again. Something. Sensations. Tiny spheres seemed to beat down and prickle his face and chest, leaving a wetness behind he vaguely remembered from before - from his past life.
"Rain."
Wait. Was that a -real- voice that just spoke that word? Was that -his- voice?
He knew it shouldn't have been possible but, as the next tiny raindrop struck his left cheek, his eyelids fluttered, and hesitantly opened.
"Wha..."
Everything was hazy and frightening at first, but slowly those startling blobs of red, cream, and black hovering so closely above him cleared up into a shape his heart and eyes immediately recognized. Something he'd thought he'd never see again.
"Axel!"
"Heeeey! Long time no see, Roxas. Long time not seeing anything, actually."
The face above him smirked and, to his own amazement, Roxas felt his own cheek muscles twitch and his lips pull back in a grin. Such a simple gesture. He had forgotten it so easily though... how had he allowed himself to forget all this?
His body began to shake, harder than he could control or suppress. With a ragged gasp, his smile twisted downwards and his vision grew fuzzy again as tears began to stream with the rain down his cheeks.
The figure above him sighed, and suddenly the cold rain was gone, and instead he was wrapped up in a pair of strong arms, held against a warm chest. "It's alright, Roxas. Even though you forgot, I still remembered for both of us."
"Axel, I--"
"Forget about it!" Axel's laughter was delightful and infectious. Soon, pressed tightly into the other boy's embrace, laughing as much from happiness as relief, Roxas' tears dried and his emotions calmed.
He was back. He was alive. And he had been found.