THE OTHER SIDES, THE OTHER STORIES
two drabbles for a loved one
Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts © Square Enix/Disney. Everything else © their rightful owners.
A/N: These fics are for ShinraiFaith. She requested them, and it's about time I give them to her.
What Friends Do
Roxas heard a rhyme the other day.
Roses are red, violets are blue...
He never heard the rest because Xion dragged him off towards the train station, the mission in Twilight Town more imperative then the echo of some child's voice as she played hop-scotch with a friend in the dusty alleys of the quaint little town. There was a man with a blindfold to hunt down, after all.
But the words – or, rather, the idea of the words – had stirred something up in Roxas's chest.
He couldn't focus. He couldn't shake their eerie hold. There was some sort of emotional depth to the little diddy and Roxas just couldn't untangle it, so it rooted itself in his chest and began to fester.
Roses.
In one of the books Zexion borrowed forever from the Castle library, there was a whole chapter on them. Florigraphy, the old threadbare cover declared, and inside there hid page after page of information about roses and violets. Black and white pictures of healthy blooms, drawn by hand, and a list of colors below them – red, white, yellow, pink, blue, black. Violets were simple flowers, but roses meant anything from friendship to true love, to desire and passion, to innocence, mystery, consolation, or the betrayal of a close friend, and all of this was because of their color.
Violets are blue and blue violets meant faithfulness. Roses are red and red roses meant true love unless they were paired with white. Then they meant togetherness, and paired with yellow, they meant joy.
"What on earth could possibly make you want to learn about flowers, anyway?" Zexion grumbled when Roxas handed his book back, and Roxas understood vaguely that Zexion was embarrassed to have a book on something so whimsical. Flowers. Zexion was smaller than the others, more easily bullied – just like Roxas, so Roxas could sympathize. What would the others say if they knew Zexion had a book on flowers?
Roxas wandered the halls of the Castle, big sterile jumbled building that it was.
He ran his fingers along the pellucid walls absently, moving slowly down cold empty corridors, glimpses of the heart-shaped moon overhead lending its bruised light through a window here and there. He took stairs he'd never taken before, peeking around corners in precaution, dreading the moment he ran into one of the others. He stood under the broad windows in the Grey Area and realized with a sinking weight what he'd known even before spending the day slipping from corner to corner of the Castle:
There were no flowers in the Castle That Never Was.
But where did Marluxia get his crushed petals, then? That was the most unsettling part to fall on his mind: even Marluxia probably didn't have real flowers with him.
It was unnerving. Roxas didn't really care if the halls of the Castle were decorated differently or not, but the fact that there were no flowers – not even outside, under the great swollen moon – just seemed an injustice. Why, he didn't know, and upon what, he wasn't sure, just that he didn't like it.
Roses are red and violets are blue meant something, but clearly not to them, because they were just Nobodies.
"Why the long face?"
Roxas turned, jumping just a bit – a twitch of the shoulders, a leap of the heart. But he knew the voice, so he wasn't scared, and he let his eyes pass over Axel's face a few times without much of a reply because he was still sort of frustrated about the lack of flowers anywhere in their world.
Axel smelled like he'd been outside all day, hot leather and the roasted scent of heated skin, faint familiar spice of sweat on warm flesh, wild red hair and the lingering perfume of flames. There were some smudges of dirt on his face, near the line of his jaw, and his mane of hair seemed a little more out of control today. He looked tired, bone-tired, or at least ready for a hot shower and good night's sleep. But there was that crooked grin on his face and the dry dancing humor in his eyes, present even when he was ready to drop.
Like a kid on Christmas morning, a voice whispered in the back of Roxas's head, and Roxas had no idea what the phrase meant or why he'd thought it, alien and slightly confusing. He brushed it off. He'd gotten used to brushing those odd moments off.
"Where were you?" he asked, leaning against the windows.
Axel propped his elbows on the back of a couch. He draped over it for a moment, resting his face against the cushions as he let out a long sigh, deflating there. Then he held his chin in both palms and met Roxas's eyes again. "Agrabah, recon. I hate that place."
Roxas felt the smile before he knew it was there on his face. "Me, too."
"I could really go for some ice cream. It's so hot there! I think I'm going to petition for different uniforms... You know?" Axel raked his hands through his hair. He seemed a little perplexed that Roxas didn't answer. "What about you? You want ice cream?"
"Xion's not back yet," Roxas demurred, brow knotting. But his voice faded out on his own tongue and he shrugged, smiling meekly. "I guess she'll know to meet us there, right?"
"Right-o, buddy."
Roses are red, violets are blue...
Roxas wanted to ask him about it.
Axel knew everything, and if Axel knew everything – about being a Nobody, about the world Before, about Others and Heartless and being best friends – then surely he would know what roses are red and violets are blue meant and why it made Roxas's chest get so tight.
But Roxas couldn't find the voice. In truth, he couldn't get a word in edgewise. Axel was off on one of his tangents again, hands slicing through the air with all his emphatic gestures, gravelly voice echoing, tugged this way and that on the wind. The wind was always scary from the top of the clock tower, but scary in a good way. It thrilled Roxas. It made his heart pound and his stomach twist. If he slipped, he'd fall and die, and that danger was addictive.
"Your ice cream is melting," Axel grunted.
Roxas looked between their ice creams frantically. Axel's was already gone, just a popsicle stick now, licked clean and part of Axel's intent gesticulations.
Roxas wilted under the weight of guilt, staring down at his ice cream. He'd only taken three bites and he just couldn't stand the film it left on the inside of his mouth. Sometimes he could ignore it, but sometimes he couldn't, and his stomach churned at the thought of finishing the rest.
"You have it." He stuck his arm out, giving the ice cream to Axel. "I'm not hungry."
Emotion shadowed Axel's face. He frowned, brow dimpling. "You're not?"
Roxas was terrified of the disappointment in Axel's eyes. He took the ice cream back instantly, even though Axel reached for it. He needed to eat it. He really didn't like the taste, but Axel loved it, and it was something they did together so he couldn't ruin it.
Axel didn't seem to care much either way anymore. His voice filled the silence again.
Roxas's eyes passed over the vista stretched out before them, so far below the clock tower. The hills outside Twilight Town were lush and verdant, the city a jumbled scattering of buildings and squares, crooked ocher houses and cobbled streets. If Roxas squinted, he could see the train chugging along on its tracks, elevated over the streets. If he held tight to the ledge and looked down, he could see the light reflecting off the glass doors of the station below them, and the people coming in and out. And the sky was a perfect burning palette of pinks and oranges and reds, a commingling as fragile and soft as watercolor. Watercolor? What was that? Roxas hated those moments of muted thought, like he knew there was something to remember but he just couldn't.
Roses are red and violets are blue...
"Hey, I bet you don't know why the sun sets red, do you?"
Roxas leaned back on his elbows, uttering a short little laugh. He felt the twilight, warm on his face, and the wind from this high off the ground pulling at him, begging him to be careful at this height. He closed his eyes for a moment, the taste of sea salt thick on his tongue. And there was the smile, the contagious one, the one that spread on his mouth so energetically with just the slightest glimpse of Axel's. Roxas gave him a tiny shove, shaking his head. "You say that every time we're up here!"
Axel pretended he almost lost his balance and Roxas's heart dropped. Axel laughed at his dismay. "So what?"
"Light is made up of many different colors – " Roxas droned, rolling his eyes and nodding his head. He'd heard this one too many times.
Axel's grin only broadened. He followed along with his finger, like a teacher listening to a student's recital. "And out of all those colors, red travels the farthest!"
Roxas felt the smile fall away from his face, eyes widening. It was a cold sensation.
But it had hit him with stunning clarity, then, and he felt a little dazed, looking between the rest of his ice cream and the sunset burning over this world.
Roses are red, and so was the twilight.
Violets are blue, and so was sea salt ice cream.
And it meant friendship, and it meant love, and it meant all these things with dimensions so vast that Roxas was afraid to touch any of them. They didn't need flowers in the Castle, because they had those colors elsewhere – but then he felt ashamed and at a loss, because friendship and love weren't supposed to belong to beings like them – and yet if that was the case, why did he feel the weight of them? Why did he feel the significance, the vitality? Why did it make him so happy to know that they didn't need roses or violets, because they had twilight and ice cream?
He ate the rest of his ice cream. They went down to the ice cream vendor's and bought more, wasting time until Xion showed up. And Roxas hated the taste, but he didn't mind eating it, because the taste was associated with Axel's laughter, and Axel's smile, and Axel sitting beside him where on the top of the clock tower they weren't Nobodies, they weren't Somebodies or Others or members of Organization XIII – they were just friends, and they didn't have a worry in the world.
Roxas ate the ice cream even though he hated it, because that's what friends did.
End drabble the first. On to drabble deux...