Short version: not dead.

Soooooo here's KingdomFlameVIII. Back again from hiatus with, rather than a conclusion for any of the ten million WIP's I have going on, I present to you... a brand spanking new WIP! But hey, it's AkuRoku day and I ha planned, so I figured I might as well toss this out there.

Perhaps things might have gone differently if Roxas had not stopped for a sandwich. Or if he'd actually scheduled his damn eye appointment when he was supposed to instead of waiting for a last-minute, Thursday morning appointment to open up. If he'd tied his shoes before he left, then he wouldn't have tripped and wiped out on the pavement over on King Street.

And if Roxas had never tripped, he might have crossed the street a few minutes before crossing paths with a student running late to school.

But Roxas did stop for a sandwich, and he didn't tie his shoes, and he tripped and fell on his face. And when he crossed the street, some liberal arts student driving her mom's mini-van decided that it would be okay to run a red light just this once if it meant getting to class on time. She never saw Roxas, and Roxas never saw her.

Which is how he comes to wake up in a hospital bed, wearing nothing but a crunchy gown and an itchy IV.

It's all a bit overwhelming at first. He hears the dull roar and the steady beeping of all the machines he's hooked up to. His eyes narrow to slits as he takes in the sunlight streaming in from outside, combined with the awful florescent bulbs that buzz up above. Then, as it slowly dawns on him where he must be, his heart rate spikes.

The device that monitors his pulse is not happy with that at all. The shrill alarm leaves a ringing in Roxas' ears long after it quiets. Before Roxas really has time to process it, there's a nurse with purplish crimson hair and fuchsia lipstick flocking to his side, making all sorts of noise and shining even brighter lights in his eyes. But most of all there's Sora.

Sora, who must have been sleeping with his head on Roxas' bed. His dark, spikey hair is mashed down on one side and his tired eyes are bloodshot. He looks just as confused and alarmed by the sudden activity as Roxas feels.

"What's going on?" Roxas asks, fear beginning to sink in. What on earth had happened to him? He racks his brain, but he can't remember getting hurt, or sick, or doing any drugs or anything that could land him in the hospital. He tries to sit up, and immediately regrets it as pain shoots through his midsection like a knife. He lets himself fall back down before the nurse can notice.

"Everything's fine, honey," the nurse says, not unkindly but a little impatiently. Her voice had that professional medical tone that sounded soothing but did little to mask the boredom underneath it. The words were probably so routine to her she could say them in her sleep. "Do you know your name?"

Roxas is taken aback at the question and really beginning to panic now. How hurt do they think he should be?

"Wh—my name!? It's Roxas. He couldn't have told you that!?" he demands, motioning to his brother. "Why am I in a hospital? How long have I been here?"

Sora touches his arm gently. "Rox, it's okay. Calm down. There was an accident. You've only been out for a couple hours tops," he says.

The nurse, apparently uninterested in talking to Roxas any further, clicks a pen shut and sticks it on top of a clipboard. "Well so far your cognitive function seems to be normal. Your doctor should be in to see you shortly for further evaluation. If you feel any pain, nausea, lightheadedness, or that anything else is wrong, there's a bell to your right that you can use to ring for one of us, mkay?"

When she's gone, Roxas throws his hands up in the air. He realizes that there was only so much the nurse could tell him, and that she might not even have been informed of his details herself. But still. "What the fuck?" he says to nobody in particular. "What kind of accident?" he asks, now to Sora. "I didn't hurt anybody, did I?"

Sora chokes out a relieved sort of laugh and throws his arms around Roxas. The pain returns to his midsection again, but not so bad as when he tried to sit up. He chooses not to tell Sora, because being the way he is, Sora was probably worried sick and needed this hug way more than Roxas did.

"It wasn't even your fault," he says, chuckling almost giddily. "You weren't even driving. You were just walking, and some girl didn't know you were coming, and the car skidded on ice and hit you. That's what the cops figured, anyway—"

"Ice!?" Roxas cuts off frantically, more concerned about why there was ice on the ground during the angry heat of August. "What do you mean 'ice,' it's the middle of summer!"

Sora shakes his head. "No… Rox, it isn't. It's January, remember? Just how hard did you hit your head?" he tries to joke. They both know it's useless. Something was very wrong.

"I don't know. But I definitely know it's not supposed to be January."

"Well," Sora says, his voice steady but frightened. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Roxas pauses, trying to actually think of what he'd been doing before he'd woken up where he was. Driving… through the theater parking lot, maybe? It was the middle of the afternoon, and he'd been with—

"Hayner," Roxas says. "I went with Hayner to go see…something…" he pauses again, trying to work out what the devil he'd gone to see at the movies. "Harry Potter!" he shouts triumphantly. "Me and Hayner went to the movies to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince! And dude, the cave looks so different from how I thought it would, and…"

He trails off when he notices that Sora has gone white as a sheet. He can see right away that something is very, very wrong here. "What…? What year do you think it is?"

And that's how Roxas finds out that he woke up missing five and a half years of his life.

~o~

The doctors come, and they tell Roxas that he's very lucky. They say that the trauma to his brain is nothing compared to what it could have been, and that they're going to wake him up in two hour intervals for the next few days to make sure that his concussion doesn't inflict any lasting damage (like amnesia? Roxas thinks bitterly). The doctors say that his memory will most likely come back in time, and not all at once. It could take months, they say, but he should be pleased to walk away from a hit like that with nothing but bruised ribs and a concussion.

Roxas thinks that five years is a steep price to pay for it.

They leave Roxas alone for a while with a cup of pudding and a quiet Sora. When they come back, they tell him that they're going to keep him a few weeks for physical and mental rehabilitation. They tell him that being exposed to things from his day-to-day life will probably help to jog his memories, and that they want to see him home as soon as possible.

Roxas can't really decide how he feels about losing five years. It's like, he imagined, finding out he had a long lost twin, only to find out that they'd been dead for years. He was angry and sad for what he missed. But at the same time, how can he miss what he doesn't know he's had?

All he knows is that his life is going to be complicated for a while. Sora talks to him as though he's walking on eggshells. Roxas' phone is about the size of a small television, and the case on it is so robust that it took less damage from the accident than Roxas did. And he doesn't even have a facebook to look through for clues about the life he'd forgotten.

"What am I like?" Roxas asks Sora. It's been a few hours since anybody's spoken. "What's my life like? I mean, holy shit I'm probably a few years out of college by now. What's your life like?"

"One at a time," Sora giggles. "I don't know, I guess you're pretty much the same. Got a bit of a taste for adventure once you left school, though. Except your job. You work some corporate job in some boring-ass office doing I-don't-know-what. I'm not even sure you know what. You interned there during your junior year and got hired on while you were still a senior, and I guess it paid you enough for an apartment, cause you moved out on your own for a while after you broke up with Hayner."

"After I what!?" Roxas roars. "I'm not—we're not, what? I'm not dating Hayner! God dammit, you know? You know that I'm—I mean… I'm out?"

Sora laughs. "You definitely are out," he says. "And trust me, you're far better off not remembering anything but platonic buddyship with that douchebag. He was a piece of fucking work."

"Do Mom and Dad know?" Roxas asks miserably.

Sora rolls his eyes. "Roxas, please. Mom and Dad knew before you knew. Anyway, you moved on your own… I wanna say it was like January of 2010? Yeah, it must've been, cause that summer was when you went with me to get my tattoo, and you were complaining about the rent and that was like two months before you moved in with—"

The words were lost as the door to Roxas' room burst open, revealing a tall, skinny man that's out of breath. He'd clearly come in quite a hurry; his nose and cheeks are flushed as red as his hair from the cold outside. He makes for Roxas, opening his mouth to speak, but Sora's up as quick as lightning.

"Axel! Buddy!" he says loudly. "Hey, listen, I know you really wanna see Roxas, but can I talk to you outside for a sec."

"But—"

"No, seriously," says Sora. "Two minutes. It's fucking important."

Roxas says nothing. He has no idea who Axel is, only that he's weirdly happy to see him. But he's assuming that Sora wants to explain the situation away from Roxas. Good. He would rather have it that way than have to awkwardly explain to someone that he has no idea who they are.

~o~

Axel isn't happy to be dragged away from Roxas before he can even say hi or anything. And he's not afraid of letting Sora know that. "What the fuck, Sora?"

"Funny, Roxas said the exact same thing to me like the second he woke up—"

"You said it was important. If you can crack jokes it can wait," Axel says. He and Sora usually get on really well, but it had been a very stressful day for him. The news of the accident hadn't reached him until he'd left work, and then he couldn't even get there because he had to go pick up the car which took hours… it just wasn't his best moment.

Sora sighs. "No, it really can't," he says seriously. "Listen, I get it. I know you're worried sick and you want to be with him and it's scary. I get it, ok? I'm the brother, remember? That's why I texted you the second I knew what was going on, but then he woke up and things got kinda complicated and I'm really sorry that I forgot to tell you ahead of time."

"Tell me what?" Axel asks cautiously. He doesn't like the way Sora's looking at him. It looks like pity and sadness. It looks like placation and god dammit if he hasn't seen that expression on Roxas enough times to know that whatever Sora's going to say to him is not going to make his day any better.

"Ax…" he says softly. "I don't know how you're gonna take this, but he lost five years, roughly. He woke up thinking MJ kicked the bucket last week. He… he doesn't…"

"He doesn't remember me," Axel finishes for him. He accepts the news faster than a person normally would, because that's the one thing he's always been so afraid of. Being forgotten. He'd had nightmares as a kid of his mother not recognizing him; his friends hanging up on him, saying 'sorry, I don't know an Axel.' His fists clench as angry, hot tears well up. "He doesn't know me from Dick, does he? I could be the goddamn President for all he knows!"

His foot swings up and kicks down a table of magazines, sending a wooden leg flying. Sora doesn't say anything. He'd rather it be the table than him.

"You tell him?" Axel mutters. Sora doesn't say anything. "Sora. Did you. Tell him?"

Sora shakes his head. "No," he says. "He just woke up, okay? It's a lot to take in and I—I don't think we should—"

"We?" Axel laughs bitterly. "There's no we about this! It's all right for you, he knows you! I have to tell him. I have to. We were… we were gonna…" he clears his throat. "They're not your memories we're talking about."

Sora stares ahead, refusing to meet Axel's eyes. Because if he does, he'll probably crack and end up taking Axel's side. But he wouldn't get emotional right now. Roxas needed stability.

"Fine. Do what you want," Sora says stiffly. "But make sure you're thinking about what's best for Roxas. Not yourself."

Axel swallows hard, wiping away the tears he could not keep from falling onto his cheeks. He could see the sense in what Sora was saying, and was becoming more and more convinced that the brunet was probably right. But the sooner Roxas knew, maybe the sooner he could start remembering and the sooner things would get back to normal.

No. It wasn't going to work like that. The Roxas he knew could very well be gone forever. This was the only thing he could do. Just for now, until he knew for sure.

Now that Sora's said what he wanted to, he wraps his arms around Axel and holds him tight.

"I know it's hard," he says. "But it's gonna be okay, yeah? We'll all get through it."

~o~

Sora and that guy he called Axel are gone for a lot longer than Roxas thinks they're going to be. He hopes he didn't just meet his boss. This day was already bad enough; he didn't want to get fired on top of that.

When they return, Roxas gets a better chance to look at Axel. He has short eyebrows, dark red, to match his hair; a long nose and a pointed chin. Roxas thinks that Axel must be wearing mascara, otherwise he has the thickest, longest eyelashes Roxas has ever seen on a man. Or maybe they just look that way because his eyes are red. Oh, please don't be crying, Roxas hopes silently. He doesn't know if he could handle crying today. Especially from a guy he doesn't even know. Or remember knowing, as the case may have it.

"Hey, um, hi," Axel says. "I'm uh, I'm your roommate. I've uh, been your roommate for a couple years now."

"Nice to meet you…" Roxas says awkwardly. He doesn't know how to do this. He has no idea how close they are; for all he knew they were best friends. "I knocked my head."

That gets Axel to laugh a little. "Yeah, yeah I heard," he says. "Uh, listen, if you're gonna be here for a while, I can go home and grab some clothes and stuff for you. I can bring like your DS or something so you don't get bored."

Roxas suddenly lights up like a bulb. "Ohhhhhhh my god I have five years' worth of video games to catch up on!"

Laughter erupts between all three of them. Roxas doesn't notice how forced Axel's is.

"See? Always a bright side."

~o~

With the promise of attending one therapy session a week, Roxas is released from the hospital two weeks later, no running or heavy lifting until his ribs are completely healed.

Roxas chooses to move back in with Axel, because his doctor says it will help him trigger his memories. The more familiar the environment, the more easily the memories would come. "They won't all come back at once," the doctor had said. "Give it time"

When Roxas approaches the flat, Axel behind him, somehow he already knows that the gold key is the one he needs to use. He doesn't recognize the place at all; not the street or the building or the door, but his hands know exactly how to jiggle the key in the lock. He knows how far to the right the light switch is from the door frame.

"Um, welcome home I guess," Axel says. "Kitchen's here. Obviously. We have a dining room but we don't eat in it. Uhh, living room's that way, bathroom and laundry room's over there…"

"Is my room that way?" Roxas asks, pointing in the direction that feels right.

"Y-no. That's over here," Axel says, leading him to a small bedroom with peeling wall paint and two windows. He dropped Roxas' bags down on the bed, which was made to military neatness. "I'll just leave you to get situated. Hungry? I was planning on ordering some takeout."

Roxas nods. It feels more like he's a houseguest. "Sounds great," he says.

Axel smiles weakly and leaves, giving Roxas a second to look around. The peeling paint bothers him immensely; he can't figure out why pre-amnesia Roxas wouldn't have painted over it. The closet is big enough; some of the clothes he recognizes, others are newer but he knows them to be his. In the two back corners are winter coats he'd never wear, a few suits wrapped up in plastic, and the occasional Halloween costume. It would seem that he was the keeper of the junk-drawer closet.

His violin is in a case in the corner next to a music stand. He finds his sheet music in thick, neat folders after a bit of rummaging. He has a dresser with a few knick-knacks on it, as well as some books he'd never heard of.

The longer Roxas looks, the more it feels like he's staying in someone's guest room, or the "home office," which is really just a euphemism for "room that we stick all our random crap in." It was all just too neat. The blanket of dust on the surfaces looks months old, not weeks. The room itself is more comfortable than the hospital, but it doesn't say 'home' to him. Not by a long shot.

Roxas brushes it off and begins unpacking. Maybe if I make a mess of it, he thinks, it'll feel a bit more like my own space.

Maybe Axel had tidied it up a little while he was gone. No, if that were the case, there wouldn't be so much dust everywhere. Even as he's putting his things away, he realizes he has to contemplate where to put everything. Not like the front door, where he knew by muscle memory exactly how hard he had to push the key before turning it. He has to search for near half a minute to find a power outlet for his phone charger.

Finally he feels this pressing need to just get out, so he decides to go to the living room and try to find something on TV. He brightens at the idea that he could probably watch five seasons of his favorite shows all at once now.

He sits in a recliner off to the side, which he finds is shaped exactly like his butt. He smirks at the familiarity. It seemed that he had found his spot. It's in the little things like these that Roxas has been finding himself these past several weeks. Habits he never had before, words in his vocabulary that he never would have used. He hasn't regained any old memories yet, but evidence of the past had already been helping to fill in some of the holes.

The smile drops a little as Roxas looks at the remote he's holding in his hand. The power button is easy enough to find, but how in the fuck is the rest of this supposed to work? He thinks he knows what the source button is for, but five years is a long time. He didn't want to unknowingly screw something up.

"Hey Axel?" he calls uncertainly. He feels a little weird about asking for help, in the same way that he would if he were staying overnight at some obscure relative's house.

Roxas hears a door open, followed by, "Hey, what's up?"

Axel and upper torso have appeared in the doorway, peeking at Roxas with a benign curiosity.

Roxas holds up the TV remote, shaking it a little for emphasis.

"How do you work the remote?" He asks with a little laugh. It's easy enough for him to talk about his condition. He hates when people treat him like he was mortally wounded. Or worse, a mental case. Or if they did the opposite and ignored it altogether, acting like the accident never happened. It bugged him so much last week when his parents came around and started talking to him like they did to Aunt Mildred when she developed Alzheimer's, all high pitched voices and small pitying eyes and gentle tones. The same way you'd talk to a child. If you hopped into the Delorian and went back five years, he felt like asking, and you ran into me, would you talk to me like this? No? Then why the fuck are you doing it now?! Why couldn't people just see it as it is?

Axel's not like that, though. He can be awkward about it sometimes, but at least he gets it. "Oh, right!" he says, coming into the room to sit on the end of the couch nearest to Roxas. He leans over far enough to touch, but he doesn't take the remote from Roxas. "Power button is in the top left corner. Okay now hit the source button at the top… right. The top right. Mhmm now on the menu, TV is for cable, AV is for gamecube. PS3 is under HDMI1, PS4 is HDMI2—"

"PS4?" Roxas asks excitedly.

Axel waves a dismissive hand. "Yeah, but I don't really have anything for it yet. All I got is that Definitive Tomb Raider reboot—"

"They rebooted Tomb Raider?" Roxas interrupts again. He's constantly surprised at how much he doesn't know.

Axel sighs. "I'll put it in, but you're not gonna like it. And I have heard nearly every rant about it under the sun so if you're gonna shout about how they "discarded the entire archetype" or "completely disregarded level structure" or whatever the fuck you always say when we play this, I swear I'm leaving."

"Okay," Roxas giggles. It would seem that Axel knew him exactly as well as everyone always says. "Is it any good though? Like as a game?"

"Oh yeah, it's fantastic," Axel says. "It's actually pretty nuts how much it exploded. They announced a sequel, but Microsoft took it as an exclusive, so—"

"THEY WHAT!?"

~o~

Slipping back into his "old life" turned out to be much easier than Roxas would have thought. He found himself getting to work without consulting the directions he'd printed; he found out that doing his job didn't require anything he'd learned in the senior year of college.

His boss, as the man had worded it, "ain't gonna let some tramp in a minivan take away the best damn guy I got" and arranged for Roxas to be retrained.

Sora was right: his job was boring. Roxas picked it up more quickly than the guy could teach it to him. Within the hour, he was tackling projects on his own. Figuring out where the copy machine was located, though, was a different matter entirely.

At about one o'clock on his first day back, a man with sandy brown hair comes sprinting into his cubicle entirely unannounced.

"Rox," he gasps out, "Buddy, you gotta help me. I got a bunch of spreadsheets here in desperate need of your attention, like I can't even read—"

Abruptly he cuts himself off. "Fuck. I'm so sorry, I forgot."

"Yeah, so did I," Roxas laughs. He extends his hand out for the stick drive the guy is playing with. "Give it here, umm…?"

"Demyx," the man supplies, dropping the drive into Roxas' hands. "I didn't see you at lunch."

"I ate here," Roxas says offhandedly, working to set up the files Demyx had given him. "Didn't really know where to sit."

"You sit with us," Demyx says. "There's you and me, and Luxord, he has a lot of piercings, and then there's Larxene. She's cool, just don't piss her off. Jesus, you're freakin' amazing!" he exclaims, as Roxas is nearly done already. "You goddamn genius; how the hell do you do that?"

Roxas shrugs. "I don't know, I'm just glad it gives me job security."

Demyx claps him on the back. "Pft, job security. You son of a bitch, I owe you one."

"I have a feeling you owe me a million," Roxas replies, grinning. He decides that he likes Demyx. It all feels familiar.

"I choose to withhold my answer," Demyx replies. Roxas hands him the drive and he's leaving as quickly as he'd come. As an afterthought, he calls, "K thanks see you later!"

Barely a few seconds pass before Roxas' head suddenly feels like it's going to explode. He clutches his head to try and dull the throbbing, but he can't concentrate on anything but the pictures and emotions racing through his mind.

A hundred thousand little moments play in his mind. Roxas and Demyx at the bar. Roxas and Axel and Demyx at the bar. A company picnic, the man he knew to be called Luxord wiping barbecue sauce off his shirt as Larxene cackles. Countless lunchtime conversations and even more boring meetings. He suddenly knows his old email password, how to tweak the company server.

The flash memories stop eventually, but Roxas' head feels no better. Still, this was good. It finally seems like he's getting himself back.

"Demyx. Got it."

~o~

Roxas doesn't have another burst that like for awhile. Things do come back, though, in pieces. Like the best way to get to the mall from his apartment, or a mug brownie recipe he'd learned from the internet. Halfway through Cabin in the Wood he remembers the plot and pretends to guess the ending. These little things didn't come with headaches, so Roxas is grateful for them.

Roxas can not stop thinking about Axel.

The hell is wrong with me? He thinks. Four years, he'd lived with this guy. How could Roxas from the past have ignored this hot, conveniently single, conveniently gay piece of perfection? Was there some awful detail about him that Roxas simply couldn't remember?

More importantly, how is he supposed to move forward with this guy that already knew god-knows-what about him? He likes the companion that he's made of Axel since the accident. It'd be plain stupid to ruin it by making it weird.

So instead he takes his problem to a very smug, very amused-looking Sora. It's like he already knows, from the second Roxas says, "I have a problem, and it's kind of about Axel."

Which was weird, because normally Sora's reaction to Roxas "having a problem with someone" could be counted on to be full of brotherly wrath. But he shouldn't be smiling, or leaning forward with his chin propped up on his hands, and he definitely shouldn't be saying "Oh really, do tell."

Roxas spills.

"Sora, I have no fucking clue what to do. I kind of have a crush on Axel," he admits miserably.

Sora's lips are stretching over his teeth as he attempts to restrain a grin. He holds for maybe a few seconds.

"Stop laughing at me, I'm serious! You don't even know, I mean, he makes the most perfect coffee. And he likes all the best music and movies and he's really patient with the whole amnesia thing. And god I can't stop thinking about kissing him! I mean—"

"—Rox."

"What do I even—"

"Rox."

"I don't want to—"

"For god's sake Roxas, you have a crush on your own freakin' boyfriend!"

At this point Sora is howling with laughter, and Roxas is still trying to process what he'd been told.

According to Sora, Axel and Roxas have been together since Christmas of 2010, and Roxas can't remember a single minute of it. He can't decide whether he feels jubilant, relieved, or just plain angry. Right now he's leaning toward the latter. Roxas is fucking pissed.

Pissed because dammit Sora, how could you keep something like that from me!? Pissed because that's why his bedroom feels so alien and unwelcoming. Pissed at himself because even though it's not his fault, Axel must be going through so much shit. To have to live with someone he'd shared so much with, without them remembering any of it…

For the first time since the accident, Roxas feels cheated in what he's lost. Before, sometimes he'd get irritated at not getting some pop culture reference, or out of the loop when a song came on the radio that Axel knew every word to. But this is his first time coming across memories that were not replaceable.

Something would have to be done about this.

PT. 2 Coming Soon... hopefully.