Title: Sleeping Beauty
Rating: Erm... PG, maybe?
Genre: Drama?
Characters: Xion, Roxas, Xigbar, small cameo from Axel and mentions of other Organization members.
Warnings: This is going to sound strange, but there are no real pairings even though this story involves a kiss. There are tiny hints here and there toward various pairings, though. Or I might be wrong. I'm not sure what other people consider hints, to be honest.
Summary: Xion slowly comes to realize that her hopes and wishes for Roxas to wake from his sleep are not enough, and that maybe it's time to try other methods. Enter Xigbar with a fairy tale.
Notes: Inspired so very long ago by A Perfect Circle's "Sleeping Beauty." This kind of conflicts with some of the game timeline, sadly, but I hope it's not too jarring.
Roxas never moves, even slightly, when Xion comes to visit him after her missions. If it wasn't for the soft whisper of his breathing, she would wonder if he was even alive at all. He never speaks, either, though she doesn't hesitate to speak to him.
"I think I did well on my mission today, Roxas. Did you know there's a world out there with buildings as big as the castle? It was noisy too, and there were machines and people everywhere. It was kind of hard to move around without being seen. A little orange, fuzzy thing got its claws caught on my coat. Luxord called it a cat, but I thought it looked a lot different than that one in Wonderland... That place was just like this world, only.. only brighter..." She trails off, staring down at the blond, still as ever.
Xion sighs and rests her elbows on her lap, hunched over in her chair. She puts her face in her hands and stares down at him, longing for something she can't quite name.
"I really wish you'd wake up. You never even move. Am I talking to a doll?"
Roxas only continues sleeping.
She hangs her head, digs out her seashell for the day (a little cone-shaped one), and leaves it by him. She lingers in the doorway just a few seconds in hope, but finally gives up and departs.
The next day, her mission involves searching for Heartless in the bright version of the World That Never Was she'd mentioned to Roxas the day before. It's a struggle just to get through the crowds and even harder to complete her mission without being seen as something strange or out of place. She accidentally sends a man dressed in rags and his pack of dogs running when she brings out the Keyblade, unaware of their presence in the alleyway she'd led the Heartless into.
Saïx berates her harshly, to the point where she's not sure if her fleeting mistake is going to be the end of the Organization or not.
After she's dismissed, she glumly wanders to Roxas's room, wondering all the while if Saïx has gotten more irritable lately or if it's just her.
"Hey, Poppet."
Xion whirls around, startled out of her thoughts.
She knows it's Xigbar before she sees him; he's the only one to call her such an odd name.
He's standing behind her, casual as always, but with an odd, intimidating air around him. He seems ready to pounce, even while standing so still.
She watches him closely, eyes narrowed. He is not one to simply talk to someone for no reason, she's learned, and she wonders what he wants. To her surprise, he merely lifts one hand to his chin while the other settles on his hip. He gives her a slow searching look.
Xion shifts uncomfortably and frowns at him, "What?"
His face suddenly breaks out into a grin, his usual expression when he knew something she didn't. She hates it.
"Ever heard a story called The Sleeping Beauty?"
The name immediately makes her think of Roxas, and she's sure it wasn't unintentional. She shakes her head, eyes still trained on his movements.
"No? Well."
He walks towards her, slow but purposeful, beginning the story, "It's about a princess. Aren't they all? She was cursed to die on her sixteenth birthday-"
She glares at him, causing him to cut himself off and laugh.
He shrugs, "Hey, don't give me that look. I didn't write this thing."
She tenses up when he stops right in front of her, but after a few seconds of gazing at each other, he only passes by her. She turns to watch him walk away.
"Of course, someone else came along to soften the blow. Isn't that the way it always is? The big, bad curse was knocked down to a spell of eternal sleep."
Xion interrupts him, "Why are you telling me this?"
She knows he must have a point in this story, and she thinks it has something to do with Roxas. She just can't figure out what he wants her to do or know. Even if it made sense, sometimes Xigbar had a habit of pointing out things she didn't want to think about. She can never tell what to take seriously with him, when to listen and when to turn her back and walk away.
He stops, but doesn't face her again. Instead, he raises his arms slightly, hands away from his body as if he was being given a particularly large gift.
A short chuckle, "Man, eternal sleep. Can you imagine it? Now that's a vacation."
She can't, actually. Sometimes she's not sure if she's ever slept at all.
Finally, he turns and continues back towards her, not waiting for an answer, "Well, it works. Sixteenth birthday rolls around, and she doesn't croak. Just... goes to sleep and doesn't wake up. Nothing can wake her up. Not even," he swipes at her hand faster than she can react, snatching away the light blue shell she'd picked out for Roxas, "little trinkets."
"Give it back!"
Xigbar turns the shell over and over in his hands, scrutinizing it with an amused grin. Without a fuss, he tosses it back to her.
"What I'm trying to say is this: when trinkets and superstitions fail, Poppet, maybe it's time to try something new."
She tries hard to ignore the question forming in her mind, instead focusing on the shell's condition and then slipping it into her pocket (though she doubts that will stop the Freeshooter should he want to see it again). When she looks back up and realizes her curiosity has not gone away, she relents.
"How did they wake her up again?"
He smiles at her, an almost entirely normal expression that leaves her confused and uncomfortable, because it's Xigbar and Xigbar is certainly not normal.
His next three words are smooth, almost pleasant.
"They kissed her."
Xion spends the rest of the day in agitation, small-scale fury and indecipherable clumsiness. She walks away from Xigbar without another word after he finishes his story (was he finished?). She doesn't care; she only wants to be as far away from him as possible. She wanders past Saïx without even a glance and doesn't even notice Luxord's polite questions.
Her room is harsh and plain as always, but suddenly it's all she wants. Until she's called for another mission, she lies on her bed, wondering what it would be like to simply sleep and never wake up; if this sudden lethargy even comes near the feeling.
She wonders if it's the same thing as death and if that means that Roxas is dead, but her vision is immediately blurred with tears, and she drops that thought.
Xigbar's inane story is fresh in her mind even two days later, the lines she had reluctantly memorized playing over and over, eventually overlapping and ceasing to make sense. But she finds herself overcome with curiosity and barely manages to concentrate on her day.
All Xion can think about is seeing if the story is true, and it slowly grows from a completely ridiculous story told by a completely ridiculous man to not a bad idea, until finally it's the solution she's been waiting for. Demyx has to save her twice and ponders aloud if she's perhaps forgotten how to use the Keyblade.
She promptly steps very hard on his foot and pays for it later when the water for her shower "just so happened" to get stuck inside the showerhead, only bursting out when she looks up into it.
Later, when she asks Axel about Sleeping Beauty, he nearly drops his ice cream.
"Come again?"
She bites her lip, but restates, "Does kissing someone... wake them up?"
Axel rubs the back of his head and looks away, "I... guess it could. Wouldn't say it's a common occurrence."
He eyes her for a few seconds, "Why?"
She shakes her head, too unsure about her idea to voice it and too invested in it to have it shot down, "Just curious."
But there's a suspicion in the way Axel looks at her, like he knows what she's thinking, and he doesn't like it. She finishes her ice cream and leaves him alone on the clock tower.
When she enters Roxas's room, she sees that he's been moved just a little since her last visit: his head no longer uncomfortably pushed to the right of his pillow and his arms arranged a little less stiffly. She wonders if Axel comes by to visit him.
Xion looks down at the blond, unsure what to do now. She reaches in her pocket and feels the little shell there. She wants to place it next to Roxas with all the others and tell him about her day, somehow sure that he'll remember it when he wakes up. But when she sees all the shells, her mouth turns dry and she can't swallow. All those shells...
Xion doesn't know what she was hoping with the shells: whether they were just meant to be a nice wake-up gift when Roxas opened his eyes, or, as silly as it is, if she had actually hoped the time and energy she'd devoted into them would somehow give him the same to wake up.
Still, she can't help but feel disappointed by the small pile. They aren't doing anything. They aren't helping at all.
Again, that voice, driven by curiosity, speaks up in her mind.
Try it.
So what if it doesn't work.
What'll it hurt?
Who will know?
And if it does work...
She swallows with difficulty.
If this worked, Roxas was sure to like her, wasn't he? She wouldn't have to worry anymore; he would be awake, alive, again.
Wouldn't he?
Xion leans forward, eyes wide and bright, and hesitates just short of her friend's cheek. Something beats furiously in her ears, and it makes the situation more dramatic, a fast staccato punctuating every breath she takes.
What'll it hurt...?
She closes her eyes and nearly catapults herself forward the last couple of inches to ensure that she can't back out of it again. The kiss is sloppy, just a smushed brush of her lips on his cheek; Xion is fairly sure she's never kissed anyone before, and it shows.
She stays like that for only a few minutes, but she doesn't feel anything special.
Finally, Xion sits back and observes, though already she can feel her face warming up, and a horrible suffocating feeling is making itself known in her chest: regret.
The fact that, even for just a moment, she had actually believed it would work is too much, and she can't believe how stupid she feels when Roxas is as still as ever. She buries her head in her arms as a feeble attempt to shield herself from the humiliation bearing down on her, to hide the hot tears rolling down her cheeks.
She's sure no one saw her, but she still can't help but feel paranoid, like Xigbar is going to come down out of the ceiling and laugh at her. Was this just an elaborate prank? Would he actually have the patience, the cruelty, the desire to do this?
She stands and rushes out of the room, forgetting to leave the seashell she'd picked out for the day.
Roxas wakes up almost a week later, beautifully unaware of her failure and subsequent humiliation. She smiles and plays the part of the concerned friend happy to have him back and well, but can't even imagine telling him what happened a week before. She wasn't able to help him, much less save him, and now she fears she really is useless in an Organization that already has her position filled, when she couldn't even do anything for the person she cared for most.
A/N: ...Oh, Xion, you'll always be un-useless to me. I should write something happy for her. ::sniffs::
Hey, uh. Axel wasn't here at this time. D'oh! So this isn't completely in touch with the game canon. I just liked Axel and Xion conversing so much; I couldn't bear to cut it out.
I guess we can just kinda pretend that Roxas had introduced them or something, even though that probably fudges the timeline even more and gets rid of any dramatic mystery on Roxas's end on whether or not Axel was okay at this point.
...
FFFFFFFFF- screw it the timeline is hard to keep track of anyways