This has been in the works for, I'm a little sad to admit, about 2 years. Each section was inspired by a 31 days prompt. I'm just glad I finally churned something out about what may be my favorite pairing in KH.
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"You're a lunatic," Roxas tells him, straight-faced and with the honesty of a victor.
The blindfolded boy turns his head towards Roxas, eyebrows furrowed above the cloth. "I don't think so."
"That's what a crazy person would say," Roxas snaps back, unreasonably ruffled by this stranger.
"But I'm not crazy," hands spread, empty and desperate, "just foolish."
"There's a fine line there," Roxas admits, "but foolish people don't throw themselves from buildings, blindfolded. Lunatics do."
"Well, that's not exactly why I'm foolish."
"Throwing yourself off of a building doesn't qualify as idiotic in your books?"
"Not if you expect to land."
"And you did?"
"Why else would I jump? I couldn't fight you up there."
"You couldn't fight me at all," Roxas sneers, and gives the boy on the ground a contemptuous look.
"You're breathing awfully hard for someone who didn't fight."
"Well," a pause, "I guess you gave it your all, but did you really expect to beat me blinded?"
"There's no other way I can." The boy levers himself up with his keyblade and gives Roxas a smile that, if only his eyes were visible, might mean something.
"See? You're absolutely insane!"
"If you really thought I was mad, you wouldn't want to ask me all those questions."
"I don't want to ask you anything," Roxas growls, and lets his keyblades vanish.
"You will."
xx.
"What the fuck," he snarls, back at the castle mostly because he has no place to go. Axel doesn't respond, but Roxas keeps going, too riled up to care that he's playing Axel's little mindgames. "Who does he think he is? It's not like he can actually accomplish anything, fighting the way he is."
Axel's raised eyebrow is enough to deflate him, and Roxas collapses into one of the utilitarian chairs that lurk throughout the castle. "I hate this."
Axel smirks but doesn't say what he would have said at any other time, any other place. He's not foolhardy enough to push Roxas right now, not when he's chafing at the bonds of camaraderie so carelessly looped around him. "Come on," he says, and is halfway out the door before he turns around. He's never turned around before, but now's as good a time as any to start.
Roxas doesn't ask where they're going, doesn't feel like talking much after what was, for him, an outpouring of sentiment and opinion. He ghosts along, a quarter-pace behind Axel's right elbow. It's almost unnerving. Roxas is quiet but he is always violently present, and rarely follows, and certainly not Axel into the darkness.
They end up on a dark beach, on a cold, dead, world, with small wavelets crawling up the sand. Something twists in Roxas' chest, rises up through his throat and out of his mouth, something vulgar and profane and hopelessly beautiful. A rock settled in his palm relaxes him, and he skips it out across the water. "What are we doing here?"
"Why, whatever you want, Roxas."
Roxas spins on his heel and spits, "Don't give me that bullshit, Axel."
"I would never," Axel begins, but breaks off with a shrug. "What do you think of this place?"
"It, wait, why do you care?" Roxas steps closer to Axel, his voice rising. He's look for a fight, one he can win, one he can understand. "What do you know, Axel?" he grinds out.
"I don't know anything. Jeez, it was just a question."
""Nothing's just a question with you," Roxas hisses. "You don't play the game that well, Axel." He opens a portal and is gone before Axel has time to respond.
xx.
Back at the Castle That Never Was (a name that he can't help but rolls his eyes over) Roxas heads for a training room on the second floor. It's the largest and most interestingly shaped; it somehow defies the laws of physics and curves where it shouldn't, creates the idea of corners where there are none, so, naturally, it is everyone's favorite. Roxas would normally set himself on fire before walking into a room often occupied by at least two of the Organization, willingly, but Axel knows that and so this is probably the best place for him to go.
It's not, he tells himself fiercely, that he's hiding or running away from Axel, because he's not afraid of Axel, which is a pretty stupid thing, really. No one is precisely scared of Axel, yet, Roxas thinks, but they should be, most of them. Especially the lot that the Superior exiled to Oblivion, because the Superior is obviously not fond of them, and Axel spends a great deal of time passing between castles. Not, of course, that Roxas pays any attention to what Axel is doing. He just likes to make sure that nothing is going on that concerns him, because Roxas, unlike the rest of the Organization, doesn't even bother putting up a façade of community spirit.
Xaldin and Xigbar are sparring on the far side of the room, and Roxas watches them with a dedicated passivity. They're both good fighters, skilled at keeping their opponent at a distance, so it's an interesting match. Not, of course, that either of them is anything like a match for Roxas. He'd learned that his first two weeks at the Castle. No one, except maybe the Superior, but he's never deigned to spar with his subordinates, can stand against Roxas. He suspects it has something to do with the keyblades, but then, everything in his stupid unlife seems to come back to the keyblades.
He suspects that Two and Three know he's watching them, because they're sort of making an effort to keep away from his corner, which is the one of the two real corners in the room, and Roxas' favorite place to lurk whenever he's forced to spend time here. So he keeps watching them, and maintains a sort of tally based on completely subjective measures; Xaldin is currently winning by two, because he actually deflected bullets with his lances, deliberately, and the part of Roxas that is very much a fifteen year old boy thinks that is ridiculously awesome.
Xigbar has tied it up with an incredible display of over-the-shoulder shooting when Demyx steals in through one of the far doors. Roxas spares him a glance but returns his gaze to the fight, and doesn't respond when Demyx sidles up beside him.
"Axel's looking for you, you know."
"Of course I know," Roxas' voice is practically dripping with disdain, "while else would I be in here?"
"Trying to pick up a few pointers?" Demyx suggests, pointing to Two and Three.
"Right," Roxas drawls, and shuts down the conversation. Demyx, however, doesn't make to leave. Instead, he watches Roxas carefully, with that dolphinesque intelligence he thinks he hides so well. Actually, he has most everyone fooled, but Axel is simply on another level of cunning, and he shares some of his little observances with Roxas, not, of course, that Roxas hadn't seen through Demyx on his own.
"D'you wanna fight, then?" Demyx asks, and Roxas turns to him with a look of pure disgust.
"Why would I do that?" And normally, Roxas isn't such an asshole, but it's been a weird day and a half, or so, and Demyx tries his patience anyways.
"Training? Fun?"
"My idea of fun isn't wiping the floor with you, nine."
"Well, maybe I've gotten stronger."
"Not strong enough, something tells me."
"But you don't know that."
"Fine."
They fight, paying close attention to their distance from Xaldin and Xigbar, since the last thing they want is to intrude on their superiors' training, since Roxas didn't want to deal with the hassle, and Demyx may or may not have been as afraid of them as he could be, having no heart and all.
As Roxas expects, he crushes Demyx, but as he strikes the finishing blow the door opens, and Roxas knows he's been caught. He'd known, on some level, since Demyx first approached him, but he's still furious at everyone involved, mostly himself.
Demyx slinks away and doesn't even attempt eye contact with Axel, who's bearing down on Roxas like some horrible firestorm, face carefully devoid of expression, which makes Roxas nervous
Roxas does nothing but nod when Axel approaches him, though, as Two and Three are watching, and any sign of trouble is an indication for them to pounce, and while Axel is not Roxas's friend, neither is he his enemy. Axel leads the way out of the room, past Demyx, whom neither of them spare a glance, because Demyx always plays a far second to the other in each of their minds.
Outside of the room Axel leads them down a warped corridor, bearing the distinct sadism of Six's early work. In one of its strange pockets he traps Roxas between his long body and the wall.
"Talk," Axel growls, caging Roxas with his arms, his eyes bright as always in the dim light.
"There's nothing to be said."
Axel doesn't even dignify that with a response, but just drops his arms and walks away. That doesn't bother Roxas, not really, but the silence between them does.
x.
Three days later he's in the library pretending to listen to Demyx while flipping through something he's almost sure was the Superior's graduate thesis, full of philosophical bullshit on hearts and darkness that he's only reading because of its unfortunate application to his life, when Axel claws his way into the room, still stinking of darkness, and leans over Demyx to whisper something in his ear.
Roxas very carefully doesn't look up when they walk out, but keeps reading, focusing so intently on the words that they cease to mean anything at all. Logically, he knows he's not actually blinded with rage, but an intellectual approximation of rage, as Zexion and Vexen had explained before Oblivion devoured them, and Axel, too, with his wicked smile.
As he throws the book against the wall and smirks, imagining Larxene's expression were she still here to have one, the door swings back open and suddenly he's on the receiving end of that devil's grin.
"Axel," he says, voice carefully clipped and measured, designed to show none of the weakness Eight is famous for exploiting.
"Feeling like talking now, Roxas?" Axel purrs, but Roxas doesn't shy away. Axel maintains an acceptable distance between the two of them, none of his usual cloying closeness necessary yet.
"Like I told you before, there's nothing to say." But he swallows at the end of the sentence, and Axel's green eyes go electric, and he's lost this round. It aggravates Roxas to no end: short of the Superior, he fights best; he could wipe the floor with Axel if he chose, and, somehow, Axel always has the upper hand.
"So close, Rox. You almost had me fooled," Axel snarls, "but not quite, so it looks like you're gonna have to talk."
"I'll talk when you're willing to tell me what happened in Oblivion," Roxas spits back.
"Oblivion," Axel snorts, "was just some housecleaning."
"Since when did you become the Superior's maid?"
Axel bursts out into laughter at that, and slings an arm round Roxas' shoulders. "See, Rox, you need to stop being so mad at me. I miss this." And normally Roxas would complain, or shove Axel's arm away, but he sees the out he's being offered and takes it, gladly.
xx.
"Why?" Roxas asks Axel one day when Eight breezes into his room.
"You've never had a problem with me being here before, Roxas," Axel leers.
"Stop playing dumb."
"Start asking better questions."
Roxas fumes quietly but also thinks a bit, because the blindfolded boy had asked him for questions too and he'd had none, so maybe questions are important. "Why," he starts, "why do I have these?" He summons the keyblades, Oathkeeper and Oblivion, whose names he has known since they came to him.
"Probably arbitrary," Axel shrugs, "why can I do this?" He snaps his fingers and his hand is engulfed in flames. "Why can Demyx make water dance?"
"That's different, Axel, and you know it."
'No, it's not. Neither of us knows why we can, and it's not exactly a normal skill set, now is it?"
"Well, no," Roxas admits, "but, really. You told me yourself that Demyx grew up in a fishing town, or, his Other did." Roxas looks down at that, angered by the talk of Others. "You liked to burn things," he continues.
"Then maybe your other self was a keymaker. Or you were a burglar, sneaking into people's houses, unlocking their doors in the middle of the night…"
"Don't give me that shit, Axel."
"Fine. Your Other probably had a connection to the keyblade. Is that what you want to hear, Roxas? What you already knew?"
"That's not good enough," Roxas growls, clenching his fists. "I want to know why me. Why my Other?" Roxas has a thousand other questions but he doesn't want to voice them to Axel.
"Does it matter, Roxas?"
"Yes!" Roxas all but screams. "I don't remember anything. I don't know who I am!"
Axel looks almost taken aback, and at any other time Roxas would revel in such a victory. "You're Roxas," Axel tells him, and leaves.
xx.
"Come on, then!" Roxas screams into the rain in the middle of the City That Never Was. The blindfolded boy's words clearly implied he would be back, but Roxas has prowled through the city for nearly three days straight and he's found nothing. Only a few Heartless that he let scamper of into the shadows because he hated the Superior so much.
"Are you hiding? Is that it? Are you a fucking coward?" Roxas hits the nearest wall with both keyblades. "Come on! Fight me!"
Nothing responds. Roxas bites his lips, teeth crushing down until he tastes blood in his mouth. "Dammit!" He lets the keyblades vanish and punches the wall. The strange boy must be somewhere near, Roxas knows it, and all he wants is to hunt that bastard down and beat him bloody for what he's done.
Roxas chafes at the bit now; he always disliked the Superior's pompous speeches but now he actively hates, fuck the idea that Nobodies can't feel. If they could feel anything it would be hate and Roxas hates the Superior. He knows Xemnas knows who Roxas is, but won't tell. Instead he lets Roxas stew and storm the hallways of the Castle That Never Was, and snap at Demyx until he starts learning to leave Roxas alone.
Of course Axel doesn't get the hint, or, rather, gets the hint and then blatantly ignores it, so Roxas isn't surprised to see Axel heading towards him through the rain.
"Roxas!" Axel shouts over the din of storm and Roxas steadfastly ignores him, and tries his best to look like he has purpose. He stands up straighter and peers out through the sheet of rain as though someone were to meet him.
"Roxas," Axel says again, this time right beside him with a hand on his shoulder. "Roxas, come on. He's not coming, and it's raining and I'd much rather be inside, so let's go."
Roxas shakes his hand off and shouts into the storm again, but there's no answer.
"Roxas," Axel warns, and Roxas can hear the fire creeping into his voice, Axel's skinny fingers digging into Roxas' shoulder.
"No, Axel," he snaps, "go away. This is something I have to do."
"What, stand in the rain and yell for someone who's smart enough to stay out of the weather? I doubt that's something you really have to do, Roxas."
"You don't understand."
"Oh, Rox, I do. I really, really, do. I just don't give a damn." And then Axel hits him on the head, moving faster than Roxas expects and as Roxas's vision goes black, he feels someone pick him up.
xx.
Roxas flounders back into consciousness while Axel's still taking him back to the castle and after a few panicky seconds he lashes out and punches Axel in the face.
"Fuck!" But Axel doesn't drop him. Actually, he grips tighter and tries to hold Roxas' wrists in one long, skinny hand. They struggle like that, stupidly, really, Roxas knows they look hilarious and prays no one catches them, especially not Xigbar, until they get back to the Castle Not, as Axel fondly calls it, and Roxas finds himself dumped on the redhead's bed.
"Never thought you'd take the caveman approach," Roxas snaps.
Axel raises his eyebrows, but makes no move towards the bed. "Explain, Roxas, now."
"I was looking for him."
"Him."
"The blindfolded boy: the one I told you about. With silver hair and a keyblade. He's kind of an asshole. Maybe the two of you would get along," Roxas muses.
"And he said he'd be coming back?"
"Not in so many words, no," Roxas admits.
"So why the hell did you think this little demonstration was a good idea?"
"He said I'd want to ask him questions. He'll be back. I know it."
"You said it yourself, Roxas, he may just be being an asshole."
""No," Roxas says, slow and deliberate, "I think he's fighting me for a reason. Something important. He has to win, I think."
"And you're going to let him?" Axel asks, with an eyebrow raised.
"Of course not, but I want those questions, now."
"You don't need those questions, Roxas," Axel hisses, his face drawn tight.
That's what sets Roxas off, the fear in Axel's eyes, who is never afraid because he is always the one to fear. Axel knows something, Axel knows everything, Axel is keeping secrets. More importantly, he is keeping secrets from Roxas. He moves from the bed and has Axel against the wall in one fluid motion. "What do you know." It is not a question. "Tell me what do you know, Axel, about me."
"Nothing, Roxas, nothing beyond what you know," Axel slurs as Roxas crushes down on his windpipe.
"Liar," Roxas growls.
"But you knew that." And it's true, so Roxas lets go and stands there, empty, defeated.
"I will, you know. I will find him, and, then, I'll know the truth."
Axel says nothing.
xx.
Roxas doesn't see Axel after that for a long time, or what feels like a long time. Hours don't pass in the World That Never Was quite the same way they do elsewhere. Here they seem to stretch and shrink as they see fit, while the sky remains dark and clouded. Sometimes it rains.
It usually rains when Roxas goes out hunting for the blind boy. He doesn't pick rainy days, really, but he never leaves when the sky opens up, either. One day, while he sits on the roof of Memory's Skyscraper, trying to lure the boy out, he sees a shadow move in the corner of his eye, just a flash of silver, and he leaps from the building and lands, rough, knows he'll bruise, but takes off.
Somehow the boy eludes him, and Roxas ends up sitting in some horrible alleyway, one of the many nasty little places scattered about their home, pounding his fists on his knees and trying not to scream. As he calms himself with terse reminders that he is a Nobody, he cannot feel, none of this is real, he wonders where Axel is. Normally Axel would have found him by now, mocked him and taken him home.
He doesn't precisely miss Axel, because that's a lot like feeling and Roxas can't feel. But if he had to choose between sitting here alone and sitting here with Axel, he may not choose to be alone. Roxas doesn't want to get up, though, and look for Axel, because he's never had to look for Axel before.
He does go back to the castle, though, and after he's changed into his spare set of clothes Roxas prowls the hallways, not explicitly looking for Axel but looking for someone or something with which to entertain himself. Not many Order members are around, though, so it's Axel he ends up finding.
He's in one of the common spaces, talking with Demyx, which is weird to Roxas because normally Axel just tolerates Demyx. But now Demyx is bubbling with excitement, words spilling out of his mouth so quickly Roxas doesn't really hear them, and Axel appears to be listening.
Roxas shuts the door behind him a little more forcefully than he normally would and that, at least, causes Axel to look up at Roxas. Axel can usually tell when it's Roxas who enters a room, or when Roxas is approaching, because he's always waiting with some asshole comment or an arm tossed around Roxas's shoulders. Not anymore, it seems.
Roxas sits down with them and snatches an apple from the primarily decorative fruit bowl in the middle of the table. It's sensationally awful, but that's to be expected of most, if not all, of the food to be found in the castle. All of Demyx's words dry up as Roxas bites at the apple. Only the clear, crisp crunches are heard.
"Well, I've got to be going, then. Later, Axel," Demyx stammers, and is gone through the darkness before either Roxas or Axel can speak to him.
"Well?" Axel asks. Roxas only raises and eyebrow, so he continues. "What did you want that made you need to freak Demyx the fuck out?"
Roxas shrugs. He didn't really care about terrifying Demyx; that was a side effect, and Demyx's own fault. "You've been avoiding me."
"What the fuck."
"I'm right."
"Why do you care, Roxas?" Axel demands. "You've made it perfectly clear what you plan on doing."
"And you're just going to let me?" Roxas asks, a little louder and rawer around the edges than he would like.
"Yeah," Axel tells him with a shrug.
"Oh." Roxas hasn't really planned for this. He was expecting Axel's customary faux-fury or that devious smile that had killed his comrades. He doesn't know what to do so he puts his head down on the table. "Look, Axel," he mutters into his arms.
"Don't worry about it, kid," Axel says in return, tone carefully flat.
xx.
They fuck that night.
Roxas is still naïve, still young, and it takes every ounce of his carefully collected cynicism (bits snatched from Xigbar and Luxord and most of all Axel himself) to use only that word in the strange, sticky, hot aftermath.
When he wakes up and Axel is gone, he's glad he did.
xx.
He doesn't bother to confront Axel the next day, because Axel is always slippery about his reasons for doing anything and to admit that this has affected him would shame Roxas more than he can imagine. So he suits up, ignores breakfast, and heads out to find the silver-haired boy.
He's waiting, slim, dark keyblade resting in his palm. It's a different one than Roxas remembers, more sinister in its coal-black curl, less of a key and more of a lockpick. Roxas panics, wonders if the boy is a pretender, too, if he's as clueless and angry as Roxas himself, but then the blindfolded boy speaks.
"Have you found your questions yet, Roxas?"
"How do you know my name?"
"That's a start," and while Roxas is fuming the silver-haired boy attacks from the left, but Roxas blocks almost unconsciously.
"How about you pretend we're civilized and give me your name?"
That makes the boy laugh and dance away from Roxas. He pauses, and the laughter is gone from his face so suddenly Roxas can't believe it was there at all. "Riku." Neither of them moves. "My name is Riku." He still isn't moving, but then, Roxas isn't either, so he can't blame Riku for not attacking.
He doesn't know the name, but his heart does, Roxas knows, even though he does not have a heart. His mind, though, knows Riku only from their previous fight. Riku, who stands limp like the Naminé doll Marluxia thinks no one knows about, and Roxas can't bring himself to move against him like this. Riku is empty of the will to fight that had singed Roxas the last time they met, and to fight him now would be a farce. Roxas has spent his life in one farce or another and he is done.
All Roxas really wants is something real, and now it stands before him, and he has somehow made Riku as empty as Roxas himself. So he opens a portal and backs away.
I'm sorry, he doesn't say.
xx.
At least Axel doesn't try his vanishing act again. He's there, at the castle, when Roxas returns, and, in customary Axel fashion, is a complete asshole. All Roxas wants is to change out of this heavy black robe and go to sleep, and Axel is there, thrusting out barbed questions and hiding his smirk in his eyes. Of course, Roxas wants more than just to sleep: Roxas wants to understand and he wants to know and most of all Roxas simply wants to want. But those goals are far from him, so he would settle for clean clothes and a nap.
"Did you find him?" To his credit, Axel sounds almost interested, but Roxas only sighs and throws his gloves on his nightstand. "Your blind answer-machine, I mean."
"What's it to you?" Roxas snaps. His coat hits the floor; he'll pick it up later, when he's rested and Axel isn't square in the middle of his room, somehow drawing everything towards him.
"That would be telling, Rox."
"It's about time you told."
"Then I wouldn't be me, you know that. And you'd miss me." Axel hams it up on the last sentence but Roxas shies away from his arm.
"We can't miss people, Axel."
"Okay, Roxas, spill. You're worse than usual today."
"Hey!" His protest is only half-hearted, but it's enough to make Axel's lips quirk, and that's, maybe that's something.
"Roxas. What did he tell you?"
"Nothing," Roxas admits, slow and tired. "He told me his name, that's it."
"You couldn't force anything out of him?"
"I didn't try," Roxas says before he can stop himself, and then hangs his head so Axel doesn't see the flush of shame rising over his cheeks. "He just, all the fight went out of him. It wouldn't have been any fun."
When he looks up Axel is perfectly still. That's his first sign that something is wrong, or, rather, that he's missed something huge and glaringly obvious. Axel thrums with energy, normally, and it looks nervous to the untrained eye, but his motions are controlled and directed and most importantly they are constant. But whatever Roxas said has broken Axel's chain of motion.
"Tell me," he chokes out. "You know something. You know Riku."
"Riku," Axel says, letting the name out in a long, shaky breath. "You met Riku."
"So you do know him, then."
"You could say that," Axel muses, "I know a version of him."
"Axel," Roxas growls, and then he has to pause and take a breath or five because his vision is actually shaking and he's excited because this is almost like feeling, he's pretty sure. "Axel, for once in your existence, cut the bullshit. I know it's hard for you, being all you have, but just this once." He pauses, and before Axel can say "no," he adds, "Please."
It makes a difference. Axel doesn't say "no," he says, "I'm sorry."
xx.
No one stays at the Castle That Never Was anymore. Either they are dead or off on missions, except Roxas. Even Axel pops off to day long missions, and then snipes with Saïx in back corners where they think Roxas can't hear them. Sometimes his name comes up, and sometimes Riku does, and for once, Roxas can't tell which of those two is angrier. It always used to be Saïx, uptight and duty-bound against Axel's freewheeling, free agent mentality, but now a thin cord of steel runs through Axel's arguments and he grinds his teeth whenever Riku's name comes up.
Roxas lets things go on that way for a few weeks, but after yet another day of going through forms with his keyblades in a now empty training room, he snaps.
As usual, no one is around. Roxas puts his things in order, what few things he has, mostly seashells and driftwood, tiny pieces to a puzzle he won't solve, and heads out to the constant rain and neon shimmer of his world. He finds a place to wait for Riku, far from the castle, down a street he had never seen before, and the jumps to another world, any other world.
He comes back to The World That Never Was every three or four hours to look for Riku, and, after a while, to sleep.
Roxas doesn't dream. He never has.
For three days he follows the pattern, and then, of course, Axel is there, never one to miss out on an opportunity to aggravate Roxas. He looks more like a heroin addict than normal, even thinner and with a deeper, stranger fire in his eyes, and he's staring at Roxas like Roxas owes him something.
"So you're leaving, then."
"I've already left," Roxas tells him, which is technically true. He's out of the castle, he's not listening to Xemnas's orders anymore. But when those words leave his mouth and Axel looks like he's been punched in the diaphragm, that's when Roxas is gone.
"They'll kill you, you realize," Axel warns with desperation laced into his voice. Roxas knows what that means. They'll make me kill you. And Axel will take the job, because it's not like he doesn't have practice slaughtering his associates.
"None of them can beat me," Roxas taunts. He wants to hear it from Axel, how he'll trick and track Roxas, cage him like a rare bird, stuff and mount him.
"Roxas." There's so much heat in Axel's voice now, all the faux emotion Roxas had wanted in earlier days, but now he just wants the truth, and none of their feelings have been true.
"You knew Riku. You know who I am. And you won't tell me!"
"I was trying…" Axel trails off, for once speechless, and Roxas seizes the opening.
"To get what you wanted? Like you always are, Axel? I'm done with it. I'm going to find out, on my own."
Axel's eyes have never been greener, more like poison. "They'll hunt you down, kill you." Now it's less a warning than a promise.
"Let them try."
"Roxas, you can't go."
"No one would miss me." The words are out of his mouth before he can stop himself. Axel makes the face he always makes right before he says something incredibly stupid, but Roxas is already walking away with short staccato strides when he hears it.
"That's not true!" Which doesn't so much as hitch Roxas's gait until he hears the lower tones of Axel's voice, because even if Axel thinks he can't, Roxas has always been able to pick up what he says.
"I would."
xx.
Roxas sees Riku once more, and they fight, and Roxas wins but receives no answers. As he leaves, Riku apologizes, and Roxas doesn't know what for.
He learns, though, three days later, when he is found by a tall dark man, who reeks of Xemnas and a little of Riku. Zexion wasn't the only one who could smell; he was just the best at it. This Riku-Xemnas, whom Roxas finally relegates just to Riku, because he is Riku, still, has every edge.
So as Roxas evades him with as much speed as he can muster, he figures this is his last chance to get his answers. "Who am I?"
It's not Riku's voice that responds, a timbre too deep even for the Superior. "Sora. Your name is Sora."
That's it. Roxas knows he could draw this fight out, whittle away at Riku's patience until he could force a draw, but this is it. He is Sora. He knows the name; it lingered on twelve tongues for months, always just out of his reach, but there had been other names, words he didn't understand, hiding it from him. Now he knows, and while there are so many details left: what was he like, where is he now, what is going to happen, none of it matters.
He is Sora, and so he can no longer be Roxas.
xx.
Roxas wakes up to his alarm, and the hazy heat of the sun slipping through his window. He wants to go to the beach, and the thought summon images of four teenagers playing in the waves. Olette will help plan things, he figures, since the rest of them are so bad it. Absolutely crap, Olette says whenever Pence admits he forgot to check the train schedule or Hayner rubs the back of his head when she asks where his money is.
He's the last one to the hideout because he takes his time, daydreaming of white sand and clear skies and bits of driftwood on the shore, bits of driftwood lined neatly on a dresser…
Roxas knows he doesn't keep stuff like that in his room, but he supposes he might start a sort of collection. The thought fills his mind as the group berates him for being late and tries to tell him that Seifer's gang has stolen something. The words stick in their throats and soon it does, too, in Roxas's. It makes him angry, which is strange, because he doesn't remember being accustomed to hot flashes of anger like this. That's always been Hayner's job, to fly off the handle.
Hayner does, when they run into Seifer and company. Roxas wants to stop him, because Olette makes the face she does when caught between fear for her friends and anger at Seifer, a drawn, tight face, just a little sad around the eyes, that breaks Roxas and Pence down, and would break Hayner, if he ever looked. But Seifer is particularly annoying today, so Roxas lets Hayner fight, until he sees the thing.
It's thin and wispy and a strange color, like dusk, but Roxas doesn't know why he would think that, since in Twilight Town there is no dusk.
It's holding the nameless thing, so Roxas chases the piece of dusk through town and away from his friends up to the mansion gates, when they attack him. It's not like Seifer, who fights like a thug, albeit a good one. These things move like liquid and his silly foam bat barely grazes them. It frustrates Roxas, because he knows he's fast enough, and strong enough, even if he doesn't know how or why.
It's probably fear an adrenaline, and the power of positive thinking then, and that makes him laugh, that causes cold metal to ring in his hand and beat back the things.
His day is shot after that, and no amount of ice cream can make things better. If anything, the ice cream makes his edges sharper. He gets quiet and angry, arm-wrestles Hayner and smirks when he wins.
Roxas goes to bed early that night, and he dreams.
xx.
Roxas probably has a fever, a raging, scorching fever that is plundering his body and forcing his mind to spit out weird things. Things like, say, and impossibly tall, addict-thin redhead in black waving these bizarre weapons and saying Roxas's name.
Except he definitely doesn't, because all odds point to his losing this fight. The stranger, Axel, fights much differently than Seifer and Hayner and anyone else in this backwater town, which Roxas has never thought of like that. Axel aims to kill with every blow, but Roxas finds himself mapping out Axel's actions, seeing them before Axel himself does, and evading them because he's always been the better fighter of the two.
Axel thinks he should remember something. Roxas doesn't, but the sudden blade in his hand does, and it knows every move of Axel's weapons. Chakrams, some recess of his mind supplies. But even if his body and the reptilian part of his brain know exactly what's going on, Roxas is confused and angry. It shows on his face, apparently, because Axel smirks and says,
"I did warn you."
"What? I've never met you before!"
Axel looks like he's been punched, the same way he did when Roxas first said he had no idea who Axel was. "Oh, Roxas. I did, you know. I told you this was going to happen." He leers at Roxas, showing too many teeth to look like anything but a starving lion.
Before Roxas can say anything someone else appears, and that's the indication that this isn't some sort of fever dream, because nothing in him, not the weird keyblade thing or the part of him that actually flushed when Axel appeared, knows who this guy is. He looks, if it's possible, even weirder than Axel, and apparently those two aren't friends.
The strange man chases Axel off, but before Axel vanishes, he turns back and asks, in a voice Roxas knows he wasn't supposed to be able to hear, "You couldn't let him remember?"
Roxas doesn't know what that means, but he knows he's always been able to hear what Axel hasn't wanted him to.
xx.
Naminé is doing a pretty piss-poor job of explaining the whole thing, Roxas thinks as she sort of stumbles around telling him that he's a mistake. Whatever she did, and Roxas knows she did something, because she made a sort of doodle and then he spontaneously became schizophrenic, is only making everything worse. Half of his mind is in complete shock, the half of him that can't remember a time when he didn't wear khakis and sort of like Olette and dream of being the struggle champion. The other half is just quiet and tired and maybe a little amused that Naminé has just described him and Axel as 'best friends.'
He doesn't really remember anything, but there are strange sense memories, flashes of rain sticking clothes to his skin, of the green of Axel's eyes when he spots weakness, of the sounds of his own screams, and the space where knowledge was meant to be.
Naminé looks a little sad, in her white dress and her white room, genuinely sad that she had to take these things from him, and the drawing she gives him isn't quite enough to make up for it, Roxas thinks. He doesn't really know which of his two lives was better, but it apparently doesn't matter, since neither of them was real.
xx.
Some third part of Roxas must win that fight, because all he really wants is to burn.
xx.
He wakes up somewhere new, again, and he's tired of this, so tired. But instead of a bed or the strange dark beach he was first found on, this is only a void. Of course none of this is real, Roxas thinks, almost in hysterics. This must be some construct, helping him to cope with acorporeality. Sora is vast, and Sora is many, the landscape of his mind dotted with his sad substitutes, all failed, all slowly sinking into him. Roxas knows his fate, then, to melt into Sora and slowly become one of the niggling voices, and then just the occasional impulse, the sudden love of fire and the brief moment of quiet in the bluster that is Sora.
As he picks his way through the darkness, or, rather, the emptiness, he has to admit, because if there's one thing Roxas knows it's darkness, he pauses to thank Naminé. He doesn't know what happened to her after the illusions caved in, but he saw her drawing as they spoke, and he knows that when she draws things happen.
Roxas still can't remember anything beyond his Twilight Town days, though when he stretches his mind out into the empty space where the rest of his memories are supposed to be, well, at least there's an empty space. If he looks hard enough, he can fill it. Maybe that's why he's here, in Sora, but not actually a part of Sora. Naminé's giving him his last chance, one more try to find his heart.
Being here, maintaining himself in the face of Sora, is like a long slow death by stone, but Roxas has died now twice. Against the void, he begins to walk.
xx.
Roxas walks for a long time before he becomes aware of the world outside of Sora. Sometimes he hears little snippets of conversation, or flashes of color will burst before his eyes. Once, Sora must have been hurt, because a searing pain filled his left leg and he collapsed for a moment, trying to remember how to breathe.
He snaps into awareness when Sora's on his hands and knees, and Roxas can feel the cold stone on his palms, too. Axel's there, and Roxas doesn't want to think that it was this, the specific blend of red and black and green and those spindly arms and speech patterns, that brought him back to the world, but part of walking with only yourself for company is that you cease to deceive yourself. So, of course, it is Axel that holds Roxas's attention. He's taken something from Sora, something very important.
Roxas remembers his brush with Kairi's heart, its sweet white heat, remembers how much she loved Sora, and knows that she's worth this prostration. He can sense Sora's mounting anger but can't seem to take any for himself. He's tried, recently, to steal bits of Sora's feelings and make them his own, but he can't. For all that Sora gives parts of his heart to everyone he meets, for Roxas he has closed it off. But, also, he can't fathom hating Axel the way part of Sora does, no matter how he understands it. Axel took her from Sora, and now gloats over him, and Axel, well, Axel can't do anything without being an asshole.
He doesn't want this, the choking glut of anger and sorrow, but it's all he's ever known how to want. If he stops now, just sits down and sinks into Sora's fabric, then what? He'll have wasted everything, so he closes his eyes and his fists and his mind and keeps walking.
xx.
When Axel dies he goes very, very still and pretends that his world hasn't just shifted on its axis.
xx.
Naminé finally gives him the key, at the end of it. They're talking, Naminé outside of Kairi and Roxas following her cue, and she explains to Riku that the Roxas here is the Roxas she knew. Riku looks disappointed for just a second, but Roxas catches it and so does Naminé.
"Will I ever remember?" He asks her, voice cracked with disuse.
"I don't know, Roxas. I can't give back to you the memories I don't know."
"But I know I'm supposed to have them! There's a…a place in my head for them."
"I'm sorry, Roxas." Her eyes drop.
"Then there's no way? Please, Naminé." He doesn't mean to, but his voice hitches on the soft syllables in her name; he has known only harsh words for a very long time.
Naminé plays with the hem of her dress and twists her lower lip in her teeth. She won't meet Roxas's eyes, and then, with a sigh, she does. "The heart remembers."
"I don't have a heart."
"Everyone has a heart," she laughs. "You just need to know how to find it."
xx.
It makes sense that Sora's heart would be well guarded, but that doesn't stop Roxas from being aggravated. He's been trudging through Sora's consciousness for what feels like the better part of an eternity, looking for it, and he's found nothing. Only Sora's idle thoughts and random perceptions, brief flirtations of warmth or rain or a smile, but nothing more.
Roxas thinks he might go mad here, in the wasteland, but instead he keeps looking because he can feel something deep in his bones, the heart that is also his. He doesn't remember anything beyond Twilight Town, but in Naminé's eyes had been the whisper of something deeper, when she finally told him, "The heart remembers."
"I don't have a heart," Roxas had told her, and she had only laughed and said, "Everybody has a heart."
Now here he is, on the beaches of Sora's mind, and he knows he's close; of course Sora's heart would be on a seashore. But the door is locked, and Roxas doesn't have the key, so he sits in the sand and draws aimless doodles while the waves lap at his ankles. Sora's a trusting soul, he knows, so there should be a way in, and then it hits him.
Roxas stands up and wades into the water until he can't find the bottom anymore, then dives down below the swell. They key gleams at bottom, buried in mire, but he catches it in his fingers and breaks the surface again, flinging water from his hair and breathing deeply. He wonders, as he swims back to the door, if this was Sora's childhood: beaches and treasure hunts, and for a moment he considers dropping the key back to the depths.
Back on the beach he can't seem to make his hands move, and fit key to lock. He knows what lies beyond that door: his heart has to be a part of Sora's. Of that he is not afraid. But Roxas has lived all his little lifetimes without a heart and he doesn't know if he can handle emotions, or if his body will crumble under the weight of years of absent feelings. But he does want his memories, tired as he is of being haunted by ghosts he cannot name.
That's what it is, in the end, that wins. He's only ever really wanted one thing and now he has the key, the real key, none of those soppy metaphors Xemnas had spouted before Sora killed him. He fits the key into the door with delicate precision, and falls to his knees in the wave of light he releases.
xx.
Being in Sora's heart is like drowning in love. The glut of affection barrels over him, love for Kairi, love for Riku, love for Sora's parents, a strange and deep gratitude towards Naminé, something positive for almost every person Sora' ever come across. Roxas lies there until he's accustomed to the ebb and flow of Sora's heart, and then begins to wade through it. His heart must be in here somewhere, the other half of all this love. It won't surprise him if his heart is cold, as long as it's his heart.
He sees it across the landscape, the door, plain and wooden like Sora's was. A keyhole shimmers in the middle, deep bronze and empty. Roxas has no key, still, when he reaches the door, so he lays a hand upon the wood and presses, but the door doesn't yield. He rests his forehead on the door and then it hits him. There's only one place he would hide his key.
Roxas stands back from the door and takes one deep breath through his nose before he places his hand on his chest and slowly relaxes. His fingers go right through his shirt, and then slip through his skin. His hand finds the key in a cold hollow nestled deep behind his ribs and he draws it out slowly, lest it catch on something.
But it doesn't, and Roxas fits it, still slick and gleaming, into the lock. The door yields less easily than Sora's did, but of course he expected that. He even expects the emptiness that greets him, cold and silent. He screams into it, "Where are my memories?" The words echo tonelessly and when they die, something responds. They enter him slowly, at first, a strange cold crawl through his ears, up his arms and legs, then faster, and faster, pushing into his nose and mouth so roughly he chokes and falls to his hands and knees.
He knows it all, then, sees everything and for the first time something stirs in his chest and he chokes again, tears and god knows what clogging his throat as he sobs apologies in the still air and hears them die. He could stay here forever, here in his heart, and press "I'm sorry" into the silence again and again, and, still, it would not be enough.
xx.
Roxas's brain, because it is the vilest of organs, decides that the first memory Roxas manages to drag out from under the deluge will be of him and Axel. Of him and Axel touching. Kissing. Having sex. Saying that hadn't bothered Roxas at the time, he remembers. If anything, it had been just another logical move in Roxas's apparent decision to burn all of his bridges as fast as he possibly could.
Now he's flushing before it's even started. Neither of them really sought out the other; Roxas had opened his door just to get out and Axel had happened to be walking by, and Roxas's coat had maybe slipped down along his shoulder and maybe Axel had been walking extraordinarily slowly, but at the time they seized on those excuses and clung to them for dear life.
Now, now Roxas is pretty sure that Hayner, in his callous if occasionally well-meaning way, would have pointed out that Roxas was kind of asking for it. Really, though, he has a hard time smashing those two worlds together: one where he's a teenage boy, happy if moody, and the other where he's this dead-eyed, dead-souled yearner who's now
being pressed against the wall by Axel, legs locked around that skinny waist!
Roxas is familiar with arousal, he was, even for a few days, a fifteen year old boy, but only now does he remember the long slow burn of lust and he's so embarrassed by that heady rush that he squeezes his eyes shut against the onslaught, but it doesn't stop.
In between Axel maneuvering them towards the bed and Roxas immediately straddling Axel, Roxas takes a moment to feel bad for Sora, who may or may not be getting flashes of this as he goes about his day. He won't stop it, of course, because he's transfixed, both by Axel, who's incredibly long and lean and—well, he's also mesmerized by himself, by the body he had forgotten, how aggressively it moved.
And then there's another burn in his chest, in the center that he's slowly learning is his heart. Something of it is sorrow, which he supposes is justified, since he is somehow ruining his own innocence, but mostly it's sorrow for Axel, who is gone—wells up in his throat, pours out his eyes, Roxas has never cried before—but there's something more in it.
Now they're actually doing it, having sex, and Roxas finds himself unable to look away. The faces he's making, are, well, he supposes that they were appropriate for the moment, but he's more concerned with this feeling. Intellectually, really, he knows what it is, but the obvious is too surreal. Maybe it's anger, misdirected but in character, or fear, or, or, a thousand other things. But it's not, and, really, Roxas is in this position because he no longer wanted to be lied to, so he might as well, uh, man up, which is some horrible double entendre given that he and Axel are still going at it.
A deep breath, and Roxas lets feeling sweep over him, carry him into the memory. Of course he's still got a tinge of prudish shame, but this is almost his second chance. They could have been something, the two of them, he thinks, as he sees the crescents he scores into Axel's back and the purpling marks blooming on his collarbone. They could have been amazing. He knew it then, in the back of his mind, but now, now he feels it.
He's only just found his heart, and already it is broken.
xx.
Luxord, actually, found Roxas. For whatever reason he had been sent to scope out the dead beach, possibly because he got on fantastically with pirates, due to his own propensities for drinking and gambling and violence. His hand was the first touch Roxas felt, or at least the first he remembers, Luxord's hand cold and dry like most Nobodies' were. Once Roxas woke up Luxord handed him a bottle of rum and Roxas nearly choked on the stuff. To this day the thought of rum makes him gag a little.
As soon he wiped the last dribble from his chin Luxord hauled him up by the armpits and forced him into a darkness portal. Three days later his skin was still smarting, rough and raw especially around his elbows and knees. That body had carried small scars there, that Axel had found oddly fascinating.
Roxas remembers mostly the confusion, his weakness and impotence in the face of what he had thought was Luxord's immense strength. Once he had gotten his bearings, of course, Number Ten was the first he challenged to a practice match, and the first of his superiors he beat to a pulp. That's when Axel had first started looking at him like he mattered. That's also the day Roxas told Axel to fuck off, because he wasn't interested in intra-Organization politics.
He also remembers not knowing who he was, only that his name was Roxas, and not how he knew. Luxord had hauled him in front of the Superior as soon as he had some clothes on. They were Zexion's spares, and Roxas knows now that the man only parted with them because of the potential importance of Roxas to their experiments. Xemnas had commended Luxord first, and then dismissed the gambler with a wave of his hand. He had studied Roxas as Roxas stood dumb, and he said nothing.
That silence haunted Roxas for all of his life. He defined himself by it, by his search to fill it, to know who he was and why. Even with a heart, he's still not sure, but he seems to have all the time in the world to figure it out.
xx.
Sora shows up while Roxas is learning the meaning of fear at the points of Larxene's little knives. His first reaction is to kick Sora out, but Roxas is only squatting, really, so he pushes the memory to the back of his head and starts to stand up. Sora beats him to it, though, and sinks to the ground across from Roxas.
"I, uh, figured we should talk," he begins, rubbing the back of his head.
"Naminé tell you that?" Roxas asks.
"Maybe. But she's right. I mean, we're kind of, you know, sharing real estate, here."
"True. What are we going to do about it? Did she tell you?"
"No," Sora sighs. "She said we had to figure that out for ourselves."
"She would," Roxas mutters in a voice thick with affection. Then, "Am I bothering you?"
"No!" Sora exclaims. "Not at all. I barely notice you here, not of course, that I forget you exist, but you're not really intrusive, except for this once…" Sora trails off, and Roxas finds himself going through seven stages of red on the way to total embarrassment.
"So, uh," Roxas clears his throat a couple of times, "do you think I could stay here for a bit? I haven't really gotten to go through all of these memories yet."
"Yeah, that'd be cool. It's nice having you around. Sometimes, pretty rarely, I can hear your opinions. It's kinda like having Riku in your head only less apologetic afterwards." Sora's smile really is the most incredible thing, Roxas thinks. If he has to share a heart with someone, well, Sora's not a bad choice.
"You know, I'm going to tell him you said that."
"Roxasssss," Sora whines.
"Nope, too bad. You shouldn't have compared me to him."
"I was just kidding! Besides, there's nothing wrong with being compared to Riku."
Roxas only laughs. "We didn't get on extraordinarily well, back when he was looking for me."
"You fought?"
"He didn't tell you?"
"He did," Sora admits, "but he never talks about it."
"That's because I kicked his ass."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Ask him about it and I won't tell him what you said. Deal?"
"Deal." Sora vanishes then, and Roxas settles back and waits for Riku to find out.
xx.
"You're a lunatic," Riku tells him, biting back some sort of grin.
"What? I'm pretty sure that's you, "
"You're renting space in someone's mind."
"You jumped off of a building. Blindfolded. While fighting."
"For a reason!"
"I'm doing this for a reason, too!" Roxas exclaims and Riku's face softens into understanding.
"I suppose," he admits. "So, do you remember everything?"
"Yeah, everything. Even you." That's dangerous to say, Roxas admits to himself, but he wants to see Riku's reaction. True to form the muscles in Riku's arms grow tense and his eyes are bright and he is very still, and very silent.
Then: "Everything."
"Everything. You were kind of a dick, you know." Roxas smiles, warm and lopsided. "Not," he continues as Riku moves to speak, "that I don't understand what you were doing. I won't say there's nothing to forgive, because there's a lot, but I do. I do forgive you."
"I," Riku trails off and starts towards Roxas, before stopping himself.
"Is 'thank you' really not part of your vocabulary? I thought Sora was exaggerating."
"Thank you," Riku spits.
"There. Was that so hard?" Roxas smirks and raises his eyebrows even as he's horrified by his own behavior.
"You tell me. I seem to recall that you were even more obnoxious."
"I wasn't," Roxas protests, "and if I was, it was for a good reason. You try having an existential crisis of that magnitude!"
"You try," and Riku stops. Roxas isn't entirely sure where he was going, but he has a vague idea. For the first time in his life Roxas feels bad about something he's done, or, well, something he just did. Roxas moves, too, towards Riku and then they're almost touching, just a breath apart but Roxas reminds himself that his is not a body. He's only a strange will o' the wisp and Riku already has a light to follow. Except, except, they're too close for Roxas's comfort. The Nobodies never got close to one another unless they were fighting. Only he and Axel ever—
Then Riku touches his face, and recoils when there's the sharp sensation of skin on skin, sudden and unexpected, but Roxas follows his retreating hand. "I'm not," he chokes out, "you know I'm not Sora."
"And I'm not Axel," Riku taunts, and yes, okay, Roxas admits that he may have been a bit out of line.
"This isn't—"
"I know." Then they kiss—Roxas doesn't know who moved first, if it was the tilt of his head or the twitch of Riku's lashes—and some fire flares up in the pit of Roxas's stomach. He wishes he had known how to feel back at the beginning with Axel, but Riku's hands are large and warm on his face and Riku himself is pliant and submissive, or maybe Roxas is just aggressive.
This isn't, though, and they both know that; Roxas is even starting to fade, his time outside Sora running out, but they clutch and pant and hope that, maybe, if they believe hard enough this will mean something.
xx.
"Sora, look, I'm sorry." When Roxas finds himself apologizing for what was absolutely, completely, no two ways about it, Riku's fault, he wants nothing more than to go back to his old life, to either of his old lives.
"No, Roxas, it's fine." Except, of course, Sora doesn't sound like he's fine. He's been quiet and withdrawn and just, well, sort of sad. Indentifying emotions isn't exactly Roxas's strong suit.
"Clearly, it's not. Stop pretending, Sora."
"I'm not, Roxas," Sora's grinding out his sentences and, even though Roxas can't see him, he knows his fists are clenched.
"Believe it or not, Sora, I know a thing or two about pretenders, so drop the act and get angry with me. Unless, of course, you don't want to admit that you're angry." Roxas takes a page, or ten, out of Axel's book of manipulation, but it works, and next thing he knows, Sora is there next to him, sitting with his face in his hands.
"We didn't," Roxas starts but Sora looks up at him with fury in this bright blue eyes and Roxas backtracks. "It, Sora, I can't explain. We, it was an ending, an apology." He laughs at how stupid he sounds.
"It's not that I don't appreciate the effort, Roxas, I really do, but you're not helping." Sora sounds utterly miserable, but Roxas can't stop his mouth from running.
"Riku's yours, Sora, he always has been, he always will be. And Kairi's, I suppose, but that's for the three of you to work out, which I'm sure you will since Naminé says Kairi already has things figured, though she is the smartest, really, and," Roxas breaks off, because Sora is laughing.
Before he can help himself Roxas has Sora by the shoulders. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Sora says, wiping away tear since Roxas apparently made him laugh so hard he actually cried. "You just sounded so scared that I was upset. It's okay, Roxas. Actually, it's better than okay if you're telling the truth about what Naminé said."
"Neither of us are liars," Roxas says, and even as he does so he knows it's not true. "At least, not anymore."
"I know," Sora all but trills. "You're living in my head, dummy."
"That just makes you crazy," Roxas teases. "Now go on. Hurry up and fix things. You're no fun when you're sad."
xx.
Naminé usually has the answers, tucked away in her little sketchbook. She dances around them, plays coy, maybe because Marluxia had been cruel to her and Larxene more cruel, or maybe because Naminé, too, had lived without a heart. Roxas still adores her, despite the shiftiness in her smiles and behind the blue of her eyes. He's probably being unfair, but, well, Roxas feels, still, after these long months, that the world has been unfair enough that he can get away with a little of his own.
He wouldn't have asked her if they hadn't been here, with Sora and Kairi, and, inevitably, Riku. The three of them look so happy, bright silhouettes against the sea while he and Naminé dally on the shore. She's drawing indistinct figures in the sand and Roxas is picking up sticks and stones from the tide mark. Roxas's question stretches between them, slow and long, wrapped around their necks. For a terrible moment it seems like Naminé will ignore his question, go on with her pictures, but finally she sighs and Roxas abandons the sea at once to stand beside her.
"I don't know," she admits, scratching in the sand with a pointed piece of driftwood. She's drawn five people, all holding hands. Roxas can't tell which is which, though. He can see the two girls and three boys but they all look the same aside from that.
"You have to know," he pleads, and startles Naminé while she was putting on the finishing touches to what looks to be Kairi's dress.
"Do I, Roxas?" She asking him. She's honestly asking him with her big blue eyes, always too large for her face, and her sweet yellow hair, bleached almost white by the sun. Roxas has never dared to ask if she found her heart but he thinks that if she didn't she wouldn't still be here.
"I wanted you to," he whispers, "I wanted you to know." They've been getting better, gradually, at interacting with the physical world. He can see the strength in her fingers curled around the stick as she completes Sora's wild nest of hair.
"Me too," she says, soft and low and broken, and the twig falls beside the sketch of Riku, and she brings her small, pale, shaking hands up to her face.
An arm around her paper crane shoulders and Roxas tucks her against him; she's frail, yes, but very warm, filled with the same life that spills over Kairi's edges, bright and sweet. Her nose leaves a bruise of frost on the side of his neck that the sun takes too long in drying. He hasn't touched someone like this, intimate and unhurried, ever, he thinks. He and Axel had no time. He and Riku wanted no time. Maybe this is what he's been looking for, all wrapped up in one moment, Naminé pressed against him, smiling thinly now, but smiling still, while Riku and Sora and Kairi make fools of themselves where they think they can't be seen.
Something in the white heat isn't right, a lingering bitterness, a tiredness, a complacency. He has a part but not a whole. Naminé's fingers on his wrist ask why this is not enough, but Roxas's mind and Roxas's heart cannot stay still, the darker half of Sora's boundless energy.
xx.
The next time he comes to Naminé with his hands cupped gently as though around another question she's somehow not there. When Kairi tells him he first thinks that she means Naminé is gone, gone forever, swallowed back into the void that first birthed them. No, Kairi assures him, Naminé simply doesn't have enough energy to manifest separately.
"She was teaching me how to draw yesterday," Kairi explains, and the image is fed into Roxas's mind: the two of them kneeling on Kairi's soft carpet, sketchbook sprawled out before them, filled with Naminé's pictures and Kairi's crude attempts.
"I, I can come back later, if you want," Roxas offers, but Kairi just laughs and tugs him through the door.
"It's impressive that you can stay outside of Sora for so long."
Roxas just shrugs. He's always been the anomaly, but he can't find a way to say it without sounding too vain. Kairi shrugs and gestures for him to sit. "Now, what's on your mind, Roxas?"
"Could I maybe talk to Naminé?"
"You are," she reminds him, gently. "Don't you trust me?"
"I do, it's just," he trails off.
"You trust me less than Naminé."
"Yeah," he confesses. "I've been thinking recently."
"About?"
"This," he waves a hand around, "all of this."
"Your situation?" Kairi prods. "Naminé and I have been talking about the same thing."
"So she understands?" Roxas hates the little edge of eagerness in his voice, the trembling neediness.
"Maybe. I don't know what you think of it, yet." If she herself weren't so much the princess Roxas knows her to be, he would be angry at her questioning.
"I just," Roxas pauses and holds in a breath, thinking, "I don't understand why. Why we're still here, why you and Sora haven't consumed us. It should have happened, you know. We're a part of you."
"I know," she says.
"We have no purpose, no bodies, nothing but pasts. And we weren't even alive for those."
"Not being able to feel doesn't mean you weren't alive." Roxas can see the ghost of Naminé edging at Kairi's angles, coming to lie over Kairi like a second skin.
"That wasn't life," he spits, "I wasn't alive. All I wanted was this, Naminé, all I wanted was this heart."
"I know," she says.
"And what am I supposed to do with it?"
"Feel," Naminé tells him.
"I have, I've felt, I've gone through every memory I've ever had, but that's all I have."
"You have us," Kairi tells him.
"Sora has you."
"You have me," Naminé says, soft and low. She already knows Roxas's response so he spares her.
"Why do I have this heart, now, after everything?"
Naminé, and Naminé alone meets his eyes. "To love."
xx.
It takes time for him to understand. There's love in arriving, and in returning, but there is also love in leaving.