There's a song meme I do occasionally, where you put your music on shuffle and write something for each song that comes on while it's playing and only while it's playing. This is technically the first fanfic I ever wrote if you ignore some abortive attempts at the age of 15 (oh, Gundam Wing), written during an eight minute remix of Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.

As usual, no profit, characters not mine, and Square Enix can have my broken little fangirl heart.

Axel'd had this theory, since they'd become Nobodies. The Superior had said no hearts; Saix had nodded, and said no feelings; and truthfully it had felt that way for a while there. He and Saix had plotted together as adults just as they had as children, but as Nobodies it never seemed to fall into place right. Saix was pursuing his heart with a single-minded obsession that Axel could not share - which was not to say that he wasn't just as desperate to feel whole again, only that he couldn't believe that creating an artificial heart for himself would have the desired effect. How did one reclaim one's heart, anyway? Was it a matter of killing the correct Heartless? He couldn't say. He only knew that what Saix was doing did not seem right, and they didn't fit together like they had, and all of that fell apart one day when Saix had him pinned to a wall, snarling and half-dressed, and all Axel could do was stare uninterested at the wall behind his blue-haired friend's head.

Apathy suited neither of them very well, and Axel hated it and hated how things had become - missed feeling, missed laughing like he meant it, even missed the sick, gut-twisting fear of being forgotten forever that had plagued him his whole life and still lingered in his un-life, but as more of a curiosity than a fear.

Then Roxas came, and THAT - that felt like having a heart. Roxas - Ven, because he knew that much, knew that face and those blue eyes and that SPEED that was not Sora's - had a heart. He had the full spectrum of real feelings that Axel wanted, inasmuch as one could WANT when one did not FEEL (supposedly), and he had a suspicion that maybe he'd been right all those years ago when he'd joked that maybe he should pick Ven as a best friend instead of - of Isa.

I'm leaving, Roxas said, and that was when Axel realized that getting one's heart back might be an organic process after all, because that HURT. That was pain, and fear, and crushing rejection when Roxas disappeared that day and he was too afraid - really afraid, as in Real Feelings - to go with him because he did not want to die, not for good, not with no one to remember him but these people he hated and his only real friend gone.

Twilight Town's digital reflection cemented that conviction for him, because to find Roxas and have him NOT REMEMBER - that was crippling pain, a series of wounds he did not ever recover from, and desperation didn't really suit him either but that's what drove him to take Kairi, not that it worked, and fuck Saix forever.

So he said to Sora, as he faded away, cold replacing the fire that normally burned in his chest - said, "Roxas made me feel like I had a heart," because Roxas had, even though having a heart seemed like it mostly consisted of fear and insecurity and desperate loneliness.

And hope. Sick, unquashable hope that drove one to extremes no rational being would go to: maybe he could get his heart back. Maybe he could get his friend back. Maybe he could finally make everything feel worth it and leave all this behind.

Maybe in another life there could be the sea and the beach and endless lazy days eating ice cream and needling each other. Maybe in another life he could be a better man, could have a stronger heart and not be so afraid of losing that he never let himself win or feel or tell anyone the truth, and maybe in that life Roxas would stay, or if he didn't, Axel would be strong enough to leave the familiar behind and follow him.