Disclaimer: your face is a disclaimer.

Heeey guys. I'm trying this again so that when I write, I write for fun, not because I want attention. I know me. I'm an attention whore who craves reviews. I CAN QUIT ANY TIME I WANT

On a related note -

Things this story does: HAVE GUNS

Things it doesn't do: MAKE ANY GODDAMN SENSE

"He that would travel happily must travel light."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It could be worse. There are...worse things; there have always been worse things.

Roxas knows that. He's been preached at by books and other kids his age. But just because some have it worse doesn't mean that Sable doesn't have it bad, and him especially.

It's an arid, sandy place right on the edge of the desert. The plants are seeded in neat rows along irrigation canals, and the people aren't xenophobic, so if you want to join up with them it isn't too hard.

He loves it because he doesn't know anywhere else, because he doesn't know any better; trucks go through sometimes, big, clunking, military things. Nothing to worry about. The only thing to worry about is getting lost, being swallowed up by the dunes and having the old airship not spot you and your blond hair until too late.

In Sable, you wear black and white. It's not a rule, but you do it. In the day, the only thing that stands out in the sand is black; at night, it's the faint glow of the moon on white fabric. Fingers are painted, or even tattooed - black on the front and white on the back, in case you need to sign something across a field. You wear black and white, you ignore the looks of strangers passing through. It's so practical, just here in this place, when standing out is a necessity and letting go is just as much.

The soldiers began to build their base one day, about three kilometers away from his house. Giant trucks carted in Magitek armor and funny metal rods and stacks upon stacks upon stacks of uniforms his mom calls 'olive-colored'. "It's a plant," she explains, when he tells her olive is just a kind of oil, "The oil comes from the fruit – at least, I think it's a fruit. I've never heard of salty fruit, though."

And in typical fashion for Roxas's mother, she goes off to look it up in one of her three dozen field guides, or two sets of encyclopedias.

He just stays and watches the trucks. He wonders what's so important, that they have men with guns and weary eyes standing around all of their things.

Slowly, over a period of months, a tower is erected in the sand. It doesn't seem very militaristic to Roxas – it's quite square, and metal, and has little buildings all around it for food or laboratories or whatever. Certainly no barracks or anything like the rumors which carried in the wind.

And he was nearly a grown man, by Sable's definition of it, but he couldn't bury the urge to creep closer to the tower and the people inside of it. He wanted to know what they were doing to his desert, to the lonely expanse of sand he loved. Why it was necessary to look out his window and see this hulking black shadow when nobody had told them anything. Who these people were, that they were allowed to bark and shout and march.

It's just curiosity at first – there's no malice or suspicion in what he's doing.

He goes right up to the fence, hooking his harlequin fingers into the loops of metal, but he can't see anything from here. There's a five-foot tall wall of concrete right in front of him that trucks disappear behind. Never one to give up in the face of a simple problem, Roxas grasps the fence higher and pulls himself up, hitching his toes on the squares. Cruel and generous swathes of barbed wire are positioned a few inches from his head, but he couldn't care less – he's got farmer hands, rough and calloused.

A big man, with muscles on his arms Roxas could only dream of having, marches by not twenty feet away, followed by a dozen troops. He's bald, but his men don't seem to have been forced to adhere to the same code. Most have reasonable hair, messy and around their ears. A few have it longer, and up in ponytails, including one redhead. But they all walk the same, holding boxes of supplies.

Suddenly their leader spots Roxas, his beady eyes narrowing, and he turns to shout.

"Where's your uniform, soldier?"

Roxas looks down. A black shirt and shorts, and striped sleeve and leg attachments, since he'd just come from the far end of the field (it was a good precaution if you got lost in the dunes). "I'm wearing my uniform," he replies eventually.

"Tch!" Mr. Sergeant (what rank was sergeant? He'd only read it in books) barks. "You ain't one of my boys, are ya?"

By now he's started walking over here, so Roxas hops off his perch and plants his feet on the ground, a couple feet from the fence. Mr. Sergeant's troops follow him, resting heavy packages on their hips. This close he seems even bigger, and sweatier, and balder.

"N-no sir," Roxas hears himself stammer.

A grin. "Yeah, not with that physique you aren't. So where'd you come from, you little shit?"

Roxas almost can't understand his question. Where did he come from? He was here before them! He'd stood where he's standing now, and looked out at nothing but sand blown into ever-moving hills by the wind. But he only shakes his head, and points back to Sable. "From the town a way's over there. We're pretty big, we've got almost two thousand people – "

"Town?" Mr. Sergeant frowns, grinding his square jaw, and looks at the redhead with the ponytail. "There a village over there?"

"Yea- yessir," says the soldier. "Sable. Pretty basic farming community."

What a curt way to describe the place that had been home to every facet of Roxas's existence. A 'pretty basic farming community'. Well, they'd constructed a 'pretty boring military facility.' Mr. Sergeant snorts, and checks the pocket watch hooked onto his thick belt. "Guess I did see somethin' over there when I rode in," he muttered. "I thought we were supposed to find an isolated place?"

Roxas has always thought the Empire's soldiers would be a lot less...forthcoming. And a lot more...informed. But then, he supposes it could just as easily be only this clueless bastard who was giving them all a bad name.

It's the redhead who replies again. Maybe he's Mr. Sergeant's right-hand man; maybe the others are just too shy. "Headquarters did the best they could on such short notice," he says. "Nowhere else was far enough in the desert, but still reasonably close to the transport roads. They made the necessary arrangements." There's a heavy pause in the air, as if the soldier has decided last-minute not to say something.

Roxas scrutinizes this man, who keeps his eyes on his leader and nowhere else. His hair sticks out everywhere past his ponytail, squashed down by his military-issue hat. Roxas thinks to himself in passing that he'd like to see how big this man's hair would get without a ponytail, and wonders why someone with such a distinctive head speaks so proper.

"So, what," Mr. Sergeant continues at length, "That tightass is just fine with a couple thousand hicks as spectators?"

What follows is nothing like the silence that comes during hours of rerouting irrigation hoses two feet away from your friend, both of you too hot to waste energy talking, and it's nothing like the silence of walking back with him when you're both tired and satisfied and quietly congratulatory. It's heavy, and the redhead's eyes flicker briefly from Roxas back to his sergeant, waiting.

"Hn," the bald man says. He turns to Roxas, now, his grey eyes narrowed. "I'm thinkin' you don't much recall what we discussed, yeah?"

"Yessir," he slurred. Having that gaze locked so coolly on him made Roxas's spine feel like jelly. He would do just about anything to deflect it.

"It's not that we're hiding anythin'," Mr. Sergeant takes a step closer to the fence. "But you know how sensitive people get about this government stuff. Conspiracy this, cover-up that – nobody wants to think a boring ol' base is just a base."

"No, yeah, I get it," Roxas says. "I understand. I won't talk, or anything."

"Nothing to talk about," is the smooth reply. "Just don't go spreadin' unnecessary rumors. That's the sort've thing liable to make your uppity military types real unhappy."

The blond nods furiously, taking a step further back. Mr. Sergeant laughs at him, then walks forward, grabbing the fence and rattling it. Crash! Roxas stumbles and runs away as fast as his jelly legs will take him, away from the mysterious military base and around the nearest dune he can manage, zig-zagging back through the hot desert, and doesn't slow down until he can see his house.

The bald man snorts, and motions with his head to the small group of soldiers to continue with their work. "Shouldn't've happened," he mutters, almost to himself. "Damn but that shouldn't've happened. HQ'll be up in my ass if they find out." He glanced at the redhead, pursing his thin lips. "How'd that kid get all the way up here, anyway? I thought I said to post a hundred fifty Magiteks patrollin' the perimeter at all times."

"You did. They are."

"Well?"

"I don't know, sir." The 'sir' almost seems an afterthought. "He's a native. They know the terrain better."

"Then double the fucking guard." The sergeant sneered and stomped back inside, his subordinates following. "Have to do fuckin' everything. HQ's trainin' the fucking initiative out of you people."

Roxas has not been raised on picture books, or fairytales, or fantasies. Myths aplenty – he can recite two dozen different origins for the world, name a hundred gods of everything from thunder to laundry – but happy endings have never really caught on in his house, because his mother is far too sensible for that sort of thing.

She's not very talkative – doesn't cram information down his throat – but perhaps Roxas's parents raised him with an inevitable wanderlust. It has seeped in, osmotically, and is far too deep in his skin ever to be removed.

So when he does get home, fearful that Mr. Sergeant has changed his mind and is thundering through the sand behind him with a sword, he just goes up to his room and sits down on his bed. He's almost eighteen; he doesn't need to go tell his dad everything that happens to him. He takes off the striped attachments and changes into a white shirt to try and lessen the heat, glancing out the window. "Bah! Weather tomorrow? Same as yesterday! And the day before that...and the day before that..." he grouses in a poor imitation of his grandfather.

Desert sunsets are completely amazing. Nothing gets in the way of them, not mountains, not trees, not houses. They trail orange lace across the sky and spill violet over everything you touch.

Maybe Roxas is naive, but he honestly doesn't suspect that base of anything but what they've said – building a base, for supplies, and strategic vantage points and all, and maybe experimentation. It isn't his fault. He hasn't been lied to nearly enough, and he's only a boy, as the newly-married men like to loudly inform him.

He's got nightshift today, and probably for something frustrating, like herding chocobos. He's never taken too kindly to the animals on the plantations, if only because they have never taken too kindly to him (which for Roxas, more often than not, translates to "your head is in the way of my spit"). Instead he favors the late evening, patrolling the massive herb gardens with nothing but a lantern and his own quiet footsteps to chase away overly curious Maligas.

But he keeps on being drawn to his window to that tall black pillar, to the construction going on behind it, the flashes of bright hair in between gunmetal and khaki. It's not like he's a terribly adventurous boy, and he hasn't got any aspirations of heroism, but damn if he isn't curious.

Still, years of being an obedient child stop him from sneaking back to the fence. After all, if there is one thing Roxas doesn't want to be, it's an inconvenience. He has been raised with a love for myths and the lesson that if you can't do something useful, you'd better not keep other people from doing so. When his mother calls him down with a loud "Roxas, your friends are here! Don't forget your matches; you're on herding duty tonight!" he dismisses the thoughts from his head, shrugging on a white tunic with long sleeves and his tall boots. It's very cold in the desert at night; the people of Sable have made the quick adjustment to changing temperatures an absolute art.

When he gets outside, waving goodbye to his mom, Roxas learns from Hayner that he is indeed herding a small army of juvenile chocobos around to stretch their legs, whereas Hayner and Olette get to share greenhouse duty.

"Are you kidding me?" he cries, punching Hayner on the shoulder. "This is like my nightmare."

On his other side, Olette tugs on his black hood. "Don't complain," she says, raising her eyebrows. "I had herding duty three nights in a row last month and I bore it with a grin."

Roxas rolls his eyes and starts walking backwards to face the two of them at once. "That's because you're nuts," he says simply. "Have you ever looked into the eyes of a chocobo? They're evil. They are stupid empty vessels of evil, and I have to herd around juveniles, which are the worst ever."

Hayner laughs, and makes a retort about how if stupid things are evil, Roxas is a demon king. "Besides," he says, heading for the warm safety of the greenhouse, "You get to walk around all alone at night. You love mopey shit like that."

Contrary to Hayner's perception, Roxas does not, in fact, love shit like that. But he could see how his best friend could make the mistake – when he has a night off, Roxas frequently spends it walking around the dunes, just close enough to the edge of Sable not to be hopelessly lost. This is purely because it helps him think. Farming, especially on a plantation, is not the most intellectually involved of jobs, but he's always found it hard to think properly when he's checking plants for parasites or obsessively weeding. Best to have nothing but his feet going.

Besides, you're not really alone at night when you've got forty chocobos of perfect, face-eating height you're meant to be taking on a walk.

The only way to get a herd of chocobos to move is by convincing them that another one knows where it's going. The inherent problem being, of course, that no one chocobo is ever willing to take the initiative, which means Roxas has to resort to pulling one a few feet in a particular direction, then having them all follow and stand around aimlessly while he encouraged the stragglers.

"Come on, pretty girl," he coos. This particular one has been giving him trouble all night. He is entirely convinced that she was, at some point, secretly lobotomized. At the moment the thing is staring off in a completely different direction than the rest of them, with one beady eye set on him and her head cocked bizarrely. "Come on. This way. Come get your friends."

She grinds her beak and blinks. "Great. This is just awesome." Then, in that same cooing, placating voice, "You're an idiot! Who's an idiot? You are! You don't have the common sense the gods gave cabbage, isn't that right, pretty bird?" This yields about the same reaction, at which point Roxas loses all pretence of patience and just smacks her between the wings.

"Brawk!" she screeches, bounding away from him. She runs right into the rest of the herd, jostling all of them into jogging forward a few long-legged paces. Roxas stands there for a moment, eyes shut tight to the sand being blown into his face, wondering if there's really anything in the head of a chocobo besides tuneless whistling and vague cartoon sound effects.

"Just. Awesome," he repeats.

Axel can catch a fish with his hands and fold all of the origami patterns on the 'expert' level of the book Demyx gave him. He can do card tricks, and give awesome back massages, and was placed in the top fifteen percent of his graduating regiment, so he really and truly doesn't understand why he can never get his Magitek armor to work right.

The huge machine lurches forward and stops, slamming him against the controls. His hip bumps a lever or pushes a button or something and a bolt of blue electricity is shot into a nearby dune. It's absorbed, curiously; the singed hole immediately caves in on itself and the dune is a dune once again. "Join the army!" he mutters to himself. "Waste resources and do stupid things on a larger scale and at the expense of the government!"

Glowing words scroll across the control panel: Warning shot fired. Proceed with auto-target system?

"Auto-targeting what?" he asks it, looking around. He's a good ten feet off the ground with the suit, and extends the legs as far up as they could to see past the dune he'd shot. Nothing there, not even far off.

Proceeding with auto-target system. The energy canon in the belly of the beast swivels menacingly around with that funny mechanical whirring. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" he shouts, looking around desperately for whatever would cancel the shot; a big red button, surely, or a switch marked "undo", or anything, really. He hates this default program. He hates being put into giant machinery legs, instead of walking around on his own two feet with night-vision goggles and a big gun with no commands or switches or glowing text. This is just ridiculous.

"It's like a mouse or something, isn't it? What're you gonna do, cast Ultima on a freakin' mouse?" He kicks his seat and hopes there aren't any pedals or something under there. Just watch there be the speed dial and he goes crashing into the base.

It's still set to electricity, and BZZT goes another shot, illuminating the darkness.

And instead of the death squeak of a helpless desert mouse, the sound of spluttering and somebody falling over with an alarmingly human thud in the sand.

"Oh gods. I killed somebody." Axel blinks a few times and cranks up the brightness on the Magitek armor's single headlight. "Hello?"

"Let that be a warning, birds!"

"What?"

"Do not cross me! I will – send – magical sideways bolts of lightning at your asses with my thoughts! Apparently!"

"Excuse me?"

"What."

"What?"

Swinging around the control shaft, Axel waves the headlight back and forth across the sand, up and down and across rows of fuzzy yellow heads. What are those? He's seen them on farms and pulling carts, and a few generals have ridden them during formal ceremonies. It really is a different world, all the way out here. He supposes.

And then the light finds this boy, this kid, really, in some funny-looking old shirt and boots and it illuminates the slickness of his hair, his sweating face and wide eyes. A thin chest hyperventilates, the thin linen of his clothes undulating with it. "Oh – oh God," the boy stammers, his pupils shrinking to a fraction of their size in the bright beam. "I'm so sorry I'm sorry I am, I'll go now, I'm sorry, I promise I didn't – "

"It's okay, it's fine, sheesh." Axel runs on his autopilot of Kohlingen hospitality. One must assuage those who feel unwelcome, simply on principal. It doesn't occur to him that this boy really isn't welcome here, which is funny, because Axel's had no problem shooing away the nosy wives and the fathers with their young children pointing out the big trucks. Maybe only that this one is so quick to assume he is not wanted.

He swivels the light away, points it at the ground, and for the first time notices the dull pulsing glow of the lantern the kid's holding. It's so faint. How can he see in such dim light?

"Um." Fiddling with a thin black string tied around his neck, the boy stares at him endlessly. "No offense, but I don't really think it is, see. See I was here before and they told me to go away because I was going to get in trouble for it."

It's horribly cold in this desert at night. The whole thing is on this long strip of land connecting the two northern continents. It's flanked on either side by mountains and angry oceans which take away all of the heat when there's no sun to accumulate. Axel wears gloves with the fingertips cut off to operate machinery.

"Hey, you live around here, right?"

"...well, yeah. You stupid chanka!" There's a dull thud.

"Sorry?"

"Not you, the bird. Why do you care where I live?"

"How often does it rain?" Axel asks him earnestly, glancing up at the brilliant sky with more stars than he's ever seen in any Kohlingen forests or the high plains of the Veldt. There's nothing to get in the way here, he supposes. He starts to finger the little pocket watch around his neck absentmindedly.

"I dunno. Once, maybe twice a season. It snowed, once," the kid adds, looking up at the sky with him.

"Really? It snowed?"

"Yeah. It was at night. And it gets cold at night – colder than this a lot – and it was raining and the rain froze up there and fell down here and – and it snowed. It was so weird. You know?" He doesn't look at Axel the whole time he's talking.

Axel stares at him again, at the dim flickering light and the herd of birds behind it, sketched in the vague feathers outlined by the flame. "Not really. But you're fine here. Just don't go past this point. We're guarding the perimeter, to keep civilians from getting too close –could be dangerous – and there's some rule says if a civilian finds out too much from being past here we have to arrest them and interrogate them for a day." He opens the watch, snaps it shut again, and then opens it. He doesn't look at the time. "You can tell people that bit if you want. That it's an official rule. It's a law and shit. Scare off yer stupid friends."

The kid doesn't speak, but takes a step backwards and slightly to the side, so he's standing right next to one of the birds. Nervously, he touches its flank and stands one toe on its tips, as if he's getting ready to mount it and gallop off at top speed. The birds don't look big enough for it, not quite.

"Whoa, hey," Axel says. "Hey, you don't have to be afraid. The bolt was an accident – I mean this thing is practically the destroyer of worlds here. As soon as it sees something alive it tries to shoot it down."

"That's...that's really comforting," he replies, a dryness to his tone making Axel stifle a laugh.

"So you're a native? I'm St- I'm Axel. I'm a private."

"Roxas," Roxas says, fumbling a bottle out of the bag tied to his belt loop. He takes a little too much time unscrewing the cap. "Private is an adjective." Staring at the bottle, he swishes the liquid around once or twice before taking a sip.

"What? No, no, I'm a private."

"You're a private person," he mutters. "Not a private. If you keep talking funny nobody will understand what you're saying."

"A private is a military rank," Axel says gently. He keeps his eyes trained on Roxas, waiting to make eye contact again.

Roxas does. He stares up at Axel with those same wide eyes, and there it is again, that something afraid apologizing for its own existence. "Oh. I'm, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you, sir – "

Axel shrugs. "Mistakes are how I learn everything. Nothin' to apologize for. But really, how long've you lived around here?"

"Around – a-around in the desert?" He hasn't blinked once in the last thirty seconds, just staring. "All the time." His lips pursed so tight they turn white, Roxas screws the cap back on the bottle and clears his throat. "Forever."

Now, Axel knows for an absolute fact that these people had been living in deserts since before the army even got organized. The natives in the deserts are allowed to go undisturbed, and for obvious reasons. Nobody else wants to live here. There are no battles over land nobody can use.

He's heard, from other teams, vets of different missions, that the desert folk are disturbingly peaceful. Simple. Just not simple-minded. They say that these people will let things go that the forest tribes get all uppity about, tolerate breaks in tradition or loud insults to them and their way of life. It must, Axel reasons, have something to do with the sand. Sand probably erodes everything. The dunes are always changing. The people are used to it, then.

Axel looks back at the army base and swallows.

"You guys must be pretty isolated," he offers, setting his eyes on Roxas again.

The bird next to him shifts, and Roxas turns to it and starts to smooth down its feathers. "Suppose so," he says. "We certainly don't get many visitors, though a few people make a book trip once every couple of months. We may not know much of politics, but we're not stupid."

Roxas seems to give this idea some thought, staring off into space. "According to my parents, we even bothered to learn your language. Just to prove to you that we were your equals. Over a hundred years ago, of course, so understand I'm not accusing you of anything."

"Right," Axel says. "Of course not." He tightens his hand on the movement lever. "Do you speak two languages, then?"

"Yes."

"What's the other one called?"

Roxas says something slippery and resonant with too many syllables for Axel to remember. Instead of repeating it, he just tells him, "Pretty."

"I think so." The kid smoothes down his shirt self-consciously, then glances up at what Axel imagines is a terrifying sight from down there. "I – it's probably – it's probably late by now. I'm sorry I – imposed – "

A quick flip of his watch confirms the time. "Good seven, eight hours till sunrise," he interrupts. "Not too late by military standards, but I guess you guys operate differently."

"Why is there a watch around your neck?" It's the first time Roxas has spoken to his face without stuttering. And suddenly something in Axel finds those eyes not pitiful, but enthralling. It is fantastic to have them on him and nowhere else.

"To...remind me, I guess," is his stupid reply.

"Remind you of the time?" He cocks his head to the side and sniffs a little, but his voice is still calm.

"Not really. More – the ticking. It reminds me that nothing ever stops." He looks down at his hands, splayed across the control panel. "Not life. Not the world. Not anything."

There's a long silence. Axel knows it sounds stupid. He knows it sounds really, terribly juvenile, especially when he's got no real reason to think this way, and waits for the embarrassment to settle in and his temper to flair up defensively. The night, and the machine, and the boy, have made him uninhibited. Misguidedly so.

"Alright," Roxas says.

And then the funny thing. He doesn't shift awkwardly on his feet and say "Well..." or prevaricate. Roxas just nods at nothing in particular and then turns around, making his way through the flock of flightless birds to the back of the herd, tugging on the neck of one and walking forwards. They follow him, somewhat reluctantly, though a few remain to stare at Axel inquisitively without blinking.

"Oy!" comes the shout from the front of the herd, and even these, too, run to join him.

No goodbye.

Axel doesn't understand what's happened, naturally. He can only hope that what passes for a rude goodbye in Kohlingen is a polite dismissal in Sable.

A/N: Whelp.

There it is.

Review?