Dedication: ironyofalostkeyword.Because she rocks harder than Evgeny Kissin. That's ridiculously hard to come by. Also, she just needs love. *loves*

I don't own Kingdom Hearts; I don't really care. What would I do with it if I owned it? Munny can't buy happiness; only Hi-Potions. It can be synthesized, but you don't pay for that.

It was something like sunny, seventy-six degrees and a little breezy, and he was just standing there, arms wide and eyes closed, soaking it all in like he'd never seen it before or maybe like he'd never see it again. His hair looked funny, ruffled by the air like that, and he was wearing a shirt with something stupid written on it, but the sound of the surf and the expanse of blue eternity made it all perfect anyway.

I'd always figured he'd hate the beach, afraid of the water like he was. But I knew he liked it, because he always smelled like laundry detergent and sunblock and sea salt when I put my arms around him from behind, like then.

"Hey," I said, and I didn't really expect a response, so I wasn't disappointed when he didn't say anything. He put his hands on mine and it was something like serenity for a minute or two, me and him and waves breaking over the sound of nothing at ten o'clock in the morning.

I could feel the smooth letters on the front of his shirt and feel the soft fabric on my cheek and I figured I could probably stay there for the rest of my life and be okay. He was quiet, quieter than he ever used to be even when he was silent, and I figured he thought the same. His breathing was like the tide, rising and falling, pattern only slightly detectable. It was always like that, but it was softer, calmer.

"I'm going to die," he said, and it was a glass vase falling and breaking, tiny pieces skittering over wooden floorboards and the need to tread lightly.

I said, "So am I," and it was laughter, desperation. I figured he would turn around and give me a smile, and I would probably kiss him, and we wouldn't talk about what he had to be wrong about anyway.

He did turn, but I didn't get to kiss him because he was taller and all he had to do was tip his head back. The look on his face told me I couldn't keep running from the truth, and I hoped mine said yeah? Watch me. It was ten-ten and rain started to fall, and it wasn't bizarre because we were expecting it.

"I hate the rain," he said.

"I hate hearing you say shit like you're going to die," I said, and it was more like a challenge than anything else.

He stood there for a moment, water sort of running down his face but more like just crawling, like amoebae. The rain made him look like he was crying and it was transitory beauty I saw, until he hugged me so hard I couldn't breathe.

"Let's get back," he said, and it didn't take long for us to run to the car we'd rented - the big expensive one, not the little one. The only nice thing about running out of time was the irrelevance of material things, like money, but that wasn't a thought I had until after.

General time in Kihei was relative to us because morning was when we woke up and night was when we went to sleep, unless dark and light were switched. Breakfast was any kind of food and dinner was what we ate before collapsing onto the big bed in the master bedroom.

Kamaole Nalu really did do condos nicely, and as long as we left everything as it was, my older brother wouldn't have to know we sneaked into his summer home in March. It didn't really matter anyway; Sora wouldn't care. I just didn't want to tell him why we were there. I couldn't say it out loud, and I didn't want Axel to say it either.

One day after he was mesmerized by the fire people at the luau, four days after we arrived, we were already tired of running around like eager kids in a toy store, tired of being 'tourists,' but the nice thing about Hawaii was that it was a home, not a resort. When Axel rolled over to tell me good morning, voice soft and eyes still only just waking, I knew we were going to spend all day doing nothing, just because it was written in his movements and on his face like fine print. He was tired.

"I love you," he said, and I bit my tongue as cracks ran across my vision.

And then it was veins of light and the taste of blood, and I didn't want to say, "I love you too."

We took life jackets out of Sora's closet and rented a kayak with the money that didn't matter, and pushed off at a popular spot. There were others there, but the nice thing about popular spots was that they were safe. Axel had little regard for his personal safety, but I wanted to keep him safe, because it wasn't really happening and when I woke up I didn't want to see that I had killed him in my sleep.

I sat behind him because I was the strong one - I didn't have that alarmingly irregular breathing and I wasn't ill and I wasn't tired, except of waiting for what I didn't want. Sometimes he matched my strokes and sometimes he didn't, but if he got tired he'd pull his oar out completely and when I got tired, we drifted.

It was dangerous and stupid but so was sneaking off to Sora's condo in the first place, and if Axel was really going to die, I wanted to go with him. I didn't tell him because he'd get angry, or maybe laugh so hard he started coughing and it wasn't something I could handle without killing him myself.

"You know, I think I want to die at sea," he told me, spreading his hands like eagles flying and the sun made his head burst into flames. "Just look. It's beautiful."

"You're afraid of water." I wanted him to stop talking, but if I told him to stop, he would start talking about truth and acceptance and other entirely overrated concepts. My stomach rose to my throat and I gripped my oar tightly so I didn't push him into the ocean.

"Well, yeah." He leaned back and I could only just see his eyes. "But dying, out here…it would be like drowning in your eyes, forever. An eternity of blue."

"Shut up," I told him. It was flattery and horror and I was flattered and horrified and the beauty of it all built up like calcite and I had to swallow the speleothem made of bile pushing up in my mouth. "You're ridiculous."

"But you love me that way."

"Yeah. I do." The kayak rocked suddenly and he was alert, tense. He wasn't expecting that answer and I had decided never to say it again, but I kept forgetting because the sticky air and sea salt made his hair look like a hedgehog and it was beautiful in a bittersweet way. He was never beautiful unless I looked sideways and he wasn't trying, but those were my favorite times.

"We should probably head in," he said, looking at the flag on the coastline. It was farther away than I'd thought, and for one moment I wanted to tell him to forget it because if he was going to drown I was too, but I started paddling anyway. He was looking at the ocean like it would reach up and grab him, and I knew the only reason he'd wanted to go out at all was because he could never wake up again.

He matched my strokes most of the way and it was too much gravity on my heart, because in the car he started coughing anyway. It was handsaws and a murder of crows saying hello and I wanted to lie down with him for a while, but when we reached it, I realized I had somehow forgotten how long that stretch of the Piilani highway was.

After, I could admit I had been too afraid to take the short way, because I didn't know if Axel would wake up again either, and I wanted to put it off for as long as possible.

"I could live here for the rest of my life," I said, and I was a bird until he put his arms around me and my arms were pinned to my sides.

"So you don't think it's an overly hot tourist stop?"

I could feel his breath in my ear and it was a laugh, but not at me. "I'd never been here. I didn't know it was perfect."

From our secret place we watched the sun set, a marriage of sky and sea, his hands on my stomach and mine on his and his chin digging into my shoulder the way I hated. I didn't tell him because if he pulled away, it would be ghosts flying in circles inside of me, and I would push him off the hill into the sea.

We were lowly humans on Olympus and I wanted to appeal to Apollo before the ocean swallowed the sunshine but the only conceivable bargain we could make was with Poseidon. That was the one I wanted to avoid.

"It is perfect," he said, words bouncing off the skin of my neck where he'd placed them and flowing into my ears. "But only because you're here with me."

"What happened to the asshole I used to live with? For five seconds, can you stop being a romantic sap?" I wanted him to go back to normal, because a change for the sweeter meant he was thinking about all the time we didn't have. He was never sweet unless things were going sour.

It was a good thing he hugged tighter because ghosts swirled anyway when he said, "No."

The second floor of Cheeseburger in Paradise was crowded and noisy, but we could hear the performer and the food was good and it was something every tourist was supposed to do. I didn't know what the burger was called, only that Axel ordered it and it had mushrooms and avocado on it. It tasted like sweet memories but I didn't take a photo, because photos made the experience less real and more real all at once.

"You're quiet today," he told me softly. "Quieter than usual, I mean."

"I've got a lot on my mind," I said. It was true and truth hurt, but every day ghosts swirled in me and the taste of fear had made itself present.

"We should take a walk tonight." He jerked his head forward, leading with his chin, and I knew it was the shops he wanted to reference. "We can go in there. Or we can go home, or to the beach…wherever you want."

"Or we could do them all," I said, and even though I knew he was tired, I wanted to do them all because maybe we could never do them again and the ghosts in me were swirling faster, getting bigger.

At the little marketplace we bought a charm he liked with the money that didn't matter. It was a spiked circle in red and silver and I put it around his neck. It circled a small patch of skin and I wanted to kiss it, but I didn't. I kissed the spot beside it, instead, the skin right over his heart, and he laughed but then he started coughing and I wished I could take it back.

He told me he wanted to see a whale up close, so we decided to go on one of those whale watching boats if we could. We would snorkel and watch sea turtles and white-tipped reef sharks and other sea life, and maybe we'd bring a camera.

We stood by the sea, his arms around me and my arms around him, and we were a circle, eternal and perfect. He said he didn't have any regrets, and I told him he'd better think some up. I said it like joking, but it wasn't a joke. If he had no regrets, there was nothing to keep him from dying except me, and he had me in his arms already. I wanted to hurt him, to kick him or punch him or even just slap him in the face, but I only hugged tighter.

"I'm going to die," he said, and it was into my hair like a puff of magic.

I was too tired of pretending, so I said, "I know."

And somehow, even though it was five o'clock at night and it was raining, even though my stomach hurt because we hadn't eaten, even though we both had wet eyes, everything was okay. I pulled away and we smiled, and laughed until he started coughing.

Then we laughed again and it was a circle inside a circle, a ring drawn on paper by a preschooler with their older sibling's compass; double, eternal, and perfect. I looked at the ocean and used the waves to color it in, color it blue, and put it in my eyes so he would be able to see it too, if he looked.

At sunset on the tenth day he pushed a little box into my hands and told me to hold it, so I did. Then he ripped his shirt off and ran into the waves. It was a little secret beach and it was raining a little, so the waves were bigger and I almost went after him but he turned around and waved.

"Open it," he called to me with his hands and his mouth, and then he started swimming in the water he feared and I did what he wanted.

The knots were hard to untie because he was bad at wrapping presents and because my hands were leaves in the wind, but I got it open and I was angry for three seconds because he put his charm and a note in it. All the note told me was that he loved me, he had no regrets, and not to follow him.

I was going to anyway.

But then I saw a big wave but not Axel, so I put the charm around my neck and the paper in my pocket and went back to the small car instead.

Sora and Kairi met me at the airport and tried to go to the carousel, but I hadn't brought anything back except some clothes and my little tube of toothpaste, which I carried onto the plane. I had wanted to throw everything away, but Axel had liked tasting my toothpaste when we were like starfish on each other, and his shirts smelled like detergent and sunblock and sea salt so I saved those too.

When I gave the key back Kairi said she was worried and Sora didn't say anything, but there was rain in the sky of his eyes, and I wanted to apologize but calcite built up again and I didn't really want to apologize anyway because I wasn't sorry.

I didn't talk on the way home, only watched as LAX became a city and then a road and then a suburb of Downey, and I thought about Stonewood and how Axel hated going to that mall. I figured I should go there because I could. I thought about California beaches and how Axel had never gone to one, and I figured I shouldn't go because it wouldn't be the same.

I sat on Sora's back porch and rocked the swing with my toes, and I still didn't say anything because nothing would come out. The swing stopped and for an infinite second it was the sound of nothing, but the gate opened and the silence broke and suddenly it was Riku in my vision.

He looked at me and his eyes became ovals and he said, "Whoa. It's you. Where's your asshole?"

It hadn't bothered me before because we had both been assholes, only gentle with each other and when nobody else was looking. But it bothered me, so I ran at him and for once punch it was his fault, because we had been best friends before I ran away and met Axel, and if Riku had accepted Axel when I came back things would have been different.

But then I hugged him tight because it wasn't really his fault, and because I didn't have a reason to hate him any more. It was like blankets in the morning or shoes in the grass; I didn't know whether I wanted it or not. But he let me hug him and it really was what I wanted, because he was not Sora or Kairi. He was not a person who would worry about me.

I spent a few minutes wetting his shirt with the waves I'd put in my eyes, and when I stepped back he asked me again, a different way.

"He drowned on purpose," I said. "We went because they told him he was going to die. He said he'd rather die in Hawaii than in a hospital, so we bought tickets and left."

"Oh." It was good because he didn't tell me I was wrong to let him drown. Instead, he asked, "Wasn't he afraid of water?"

"He loved fire. He always thought if he spent too much time in water, it would extinguish the fire in him. But I guess once he knew he would die anyway…it didn't matter so much. He told me he wanted to die at sea."

"What a weirdo." It was nice because he didn't sound sad and he didn't feel sorry for me. "What did he have?"

"I don't know."

"He didn't tell you?"

"I wouldn't let him."

I hugged him again with dry eyes, and when we went in a little later, Sora asked, "Riku…what happened to your eye?"

"I ran into a door," Riku said, like it was casual and something he would do, and it was funny. Sora looked at him like he was an idiot so we looked at each other and laughed, and everything was wrong but it was right anyway.

The sunset always brings a sad smile to my face. When I can't take the sound of nothing when I wake up, I run to the beach and listen to the sound of the waves, sometimes with my eyes closed but mostly with them open. Sometimes if I open my arms wide and it's ten o'clock in the morning, I'm Axel and he's hugging me from behind, being me.

Sometimes it's Demyx behind me, only it's not a half memory. He smells more like pineapple than detergent and he's not skinny like Axel was, but he's warm and he loves the sea as much as I do. If I'm too quiet and I don't turn around, he knows I'm remembering Axel but he understands and loves me anyway, and I love him for that.

Sora never understood why I came back, even though Riku did. But he never lost the person he loved, and he never understood how easy it is to let go of someone who got everything they wanted before they died. Riku had Naminé the same way I had Axel, so he understood that Axel wouldn't have wanted me to miserably hang onto his memory. Because he had no regrets.

I do remember him every day, but I'm not miserable. I work with Demyx as a lifeguard and I learned how to surf, like I'd told Axel I wanted to do. When I'm out there on the water, I'm a part of it, and it's a part of me, and I sometimes say hello to Axel because he's part of it too.

Sometimes, even though I know he won't answer, I ask him what it's like to be the sea, if he's met Poseidon, if he talks to the whales he never got to see up close while he was alive. In those times I'm a bird again, standing on my board, and I can only ask because I'm concentrating on my weight, and not getting caught and pulled under.

Once, Demyx told me he could die at sea. I laughed because he had a big smile on his face, and because Tidus told him he'd better do it on his own time so he didn't have to look bad for not saving a fellow lifeguard. But I smiled at him and after Tidus looked away I whispered, "Me too."

It's true, because someday, I'm going to die, and maybe there's a life after - but if there isn't, I want to be there, forever, drifting with Demyx and Axel in that blue eternity.