"Won't you scream my name?"

His leather bound hand gripped the one at his side, clenching tightly.

"For the first time-"

"For the last time."

He nodded affirmatively.

When the shadows rose around them and yellow eyes shot through their soulless bodies, Roxas released Axel's hand and with summoned his deadly weapons, striking a stance back to back with his comrade, snickering flames smoldering in his peripheral vision then fading.

"As I lay down my life before you!"

Axel leapt in time as an enemy struck, roaring his words defiantly, mixing with the sound of steel slashing against damp concrete.

When the horde of enemy faltered and the two had but a second to regroup their poise, blazing green met with subverting blue and his heartless chest steadied, his lungs pushing out the breath to make his lips murmur almost affectionately, as if calling upon a forlorn memory:

"The hiding place where I sought out your eyes, screaming outwards to shoot me back in time."

Roxas could only spare him a hasty glance. But the comfort and compassion that he could give Axel with a mere glisten of his eyes was enough to urge him on further. The shadows grew to a more formidable stature. One's talon like claws lashed at the blonde, fatally close, but not before he could move at critical speed, evading the attack and allowing Axel to torpedo a charring sphere of fire directly at the offender.

"You sent me out in the right field-" he became cloaked in the shadows of a looming skyscraper, the enemy gathering and swelling around him, until he was engulfed completely. Beams of light propelled from within his retreat and from that, he emerged, stepping with intent to slaughter righteously with one gleaming Key Blade, no longer Roxas but Sora. "-Spilled my words and disguise. We're starting a rise."

Axel spun on his heel, distraught at the transformation, for once in his meaningless existence, surely experiencing feeling. It was a wrenching dread disemboweling him from the inside out. "Now it's so true, I can't go on without you by my side." He instantly longed for his companion, hearing his voice faint in his mind, "Every night we die."

He'd die ten times, for him.

The light that altered Roxas to Sora radiated through his Key Blade and annihilated each enemy it struck instantly.

Axel began to lash out at the monsters vehemently, clearing a hellish path towards the once Roxas, the ground starting to smolder under his feet and the air all around getting increasingly hotter.

"Hold my breath, just to see your ghost!"

Sora looked to Axel, jumping back for level, yelling at him, Roxas' voice merging into his vocals. "I hold it in my hand for you!"

A pair of tearing, shredding phantom hands grasped at Axel, he could feel their clutch blistering his skin as hot as the chakrams he wielded.

"Won't you scream my name?!"

Roxas' voice could be heard screaming in his mind, but only Sora could be seen in his vision.

Axel advanced closer to the boy, infiltrating the shadow's best defenses and offenses, searing them into oblivion, rushing to aid his lifeline and obliterate the impostor. He knew that Roxas need not Sora to survive, that the authentic only plagued his dreams and tormented his thoughts.

"For the first time! For the last time!"

Their oath to one anouther.

The shadows were disappearing altogether at once, nothing barring Axel from Sora.

Sora dropped his weapon and fell to his knees, grasping at his skull as if it was being assaulted. Roxas was fighting for freedom. He growled at the Nobody within,

"I regret the moments I gave you!"

Sora despised the Nobodies, their presence haunted him day and night, Roxas' the most persistent, in taking his memories, moments, and thoughts, possessing them under his ownership wrongfully. A parasite to him.

Axel stood in front of Sora, Roxas commanding him to release him. Nothing preventing the pyro, save the tendrils of darkness that sprouted from the ground, encasing Sora as the merged voice between Somebody and Nobody hissed, "Searching for my plans to devour you, I finally found out the truth."

Axel's mouth went agape as the tendrils propelled the body to stand upwards, a shadowy Roxas with piercing yellow eyes screaming at its self, barking at Sora, Sora screaming right back as the outline of his hair shifted from large black spikes to smaller ones, his arms held back and legs planted firmly by the tendrils. One body being fought over desperately by two separate entities.

"You sent me out in the right field!" Shadow Roxas pulled at his restraints, throwing his head back, Shadow Sora overcoming him in his peril to bellow back, "Spilled my words and disguise!" Neither of them wanted to be the one kept behind the mask of the other's face any longer.

"We're starting a rise." Were the last words the shadow form whispered with both voices in unison before it slunk into the ground ominously. Axel's chakrams dropped to the ground, him in a shell shock of sorts.

He immediately began grasping at the ground where the shadow had been, calling Roxas' name, no longer hearing his voice in his mind, or anywhere at all. It wasn't until Axel crept into the pass where Roxas had ducked into and been overwhelmed, he heard Roxas scream, "Now it's so true I can't go on without you by my side!"

He was knocked over back into the open, gasping for air, his skin pricking as if being on pins and needles, and he saw Roxas lying on him with an expression of utter most horror. His faltering voice made Axel quake beneath him. "Every night we die."

"Let go of the wires!"

Roxas' returned shadow howled murderously at him, chained back by the previous tendrils in the darkness.

"Let go of the wires!"

Axel gripped Roxas' body tightly as he went limp when the shadow shrieked the same blood curling words again, being pulled helplessly into the void, reaching for his body rabidly, too late.