When the moment comes, he doesn't hesitate. Because really, when has he ever? The empty place in his chest, the one where he imagines his heart once lived, the empty space that is Roxas-shaped…that emptiness tugs uncomfortably when he is near the boy, Sora. He dislikes the feeling, but at the same time the boy draws him inexorably, like a magnet to a lodestone. He thinks he's pieced some of it together now, though he's sure there's a lot he still doesn't understand. Thinking for too long isn't exactly his strong suit. He recalls dimly that it wasn't ever, even when he was Somebody.
So it is that emptiness, and the way Sora pulls at it and makes him feel like his skin doesn't fit around it right anymore, that he acts upon when the nobodies converge upon the boy and his companions. He sees them prepare for battle, sees with sick certainty that they have no idea what they're facing this time. They cannot see the legions amassing around them. The boy's bravery is terrifying. He's so foolish, so naively certain of his own eventual triumph. There is no room in Sora for doubt. He shines so brightly. He reminds Axel of Roxas so strongly sometimes, that much of him wishes to hate Sora. In the end, he cannot.
He isn't even afraid. What would be the point? People feel fear when they have something to lose. He is neither a person nor does he have anything to lose. He's a shell of a memory of a silly boy with bad taste in clothes and the complete inability to know his own limits. Why start showing caution now? He throws himself at the nobodies with the same joyous abandon with which he has always does everything. Including loving a Nobody named Roxas. He thinks he's doing this for him, because Sora reminds him so strongly of Roxas, but he's not exactly sure. He could be doing it just to find out what it's like. Or because he's bored.
It is something he knows the powerful mages whisper about. This last resort. This last-ditch effort which will momentarily cost him everything. He grins fiercely as he snaps into reality near the boy and his companions, as he tells them hurriedly where to find their friend, and as the silvery nobodies jolt and jerk and slide sinuously towards them until they are surrounded. Sora shows no fear, and he feels the empty place where he imagines he remembers his heart seem to resonate as though it recognizes him.
Final Strike. It doesn't hurt. The fire is glorious. He blazes like the heart of the sun, every particle of his being incandescent and fierce and fine and hotter than the hottest inferno. He feels them go up like flash paper by the hundreds, the thousands. He wonders briefly if destroying them this way will take Xemnas one step closer to his goal of completing Kingdom Hearts or if he is truly destroying them once and for all. He thinks he hopes they're just gone. He doesn't think Xemnas has been at all truthful with them, or that he really has any intention of helping any of them get their hearts back. This is better, he thinks. This is better than an endless futile quest under the thumb of someone he's rapidly grown to believe has some other agenda entirely from restoring his followers to their humanity. In this blazing moment when he sets the world on fire, Axel feels more human than he has felt in a very long time.
It doesn't hurt to die when you're Nobody. Not really. He finds he can even joke with Sora about it, as bits of himself drift into the sky like wisps of smoke. When Sora kneels over him, Axel thinks he can almost see Roxas in the boy's eyes. He laughs. He is laughing when he dissolves and becomes Nothing. His name on Sora's lips is the last thing he hears, and he is content.
It's strange, for a Nobody to find himself as Nothing. Honestly, he's a little startled that he's aware of it. He finds himself drifting. He feels strange. The body he doesn't have anymore seems to itch uncomfortably as he floats in darkness. He closes nonexistent eyes and images flash in his memory. He finds the memories strange too. Well, not the memories themselves, but the having of them. He sees Hollow Bastion, he thinks. The whiteness is the same. Surely it must be, because it was the one place where he has felt anything like an emotion in a very long time, and this memory fills him with a joy so intense he almost cannot bear it. Amid the white, which is a little misty and dreamlike in his memory, he sees golden-brown hair and big aqua blue eyes gazing up at him with trust. He feels the body he does not have anymore thrill at the shivering gasp of a young, strong body under his hands. He feels the lips and teeth and tongue he has so recently sacrificed tingle at the uncertain brush of a familiar mouth. Wordlessly his phantom lips shape the name.
"Roxas…"
"WHY ARE YOU HERE?" says a Voice. It is not yelling, this voice, and yet it is so huge that it nearly deafens the ears he hasn't got. Invisibly, he flinches.
"I don't know," he says, or imagines he does.
"WHAT MAKES YOU WORTHY OF CONSIDERATION?" thunders the Voice. It reminds him a little of an old headmaster at a school he once attended, when he was alive. Booming, authoritarian, intimidating. He feels a little exposed under the scrutiny of this voice, and doesn't think he likes it. His response, when it comes, is as heedless as everything he has ever done.
"Consideration?" he says (or thinks, he still isn't sure). "Worthy? Me? Do you know who I am? I'm the Flurry of Dancing Flames, and I am awesome. Got it memorized?"
There is rather a long pause in which he starts to grow a little uncomfortable. Or possibly merely bored. The voice returns. It drills pitilessly into the bits of him he hadn't thought he had anymore, and he feels a bit naked.
"WHY DID YOU DESTROY YOURSELF TO SAVE YOUR ENEMY, LEA?" it demands. He opens his nonexistent mouth to respond in his usual fashion and finds that the flippant words cannot come out. Truth spills from him instead, and the feel of it burns him in ways the flames never have.
"I…ah….I saw Roxas in him. In Sora. I just couldn't let him die, that's….unh…that's all."
"WHY?"
"Buh…uh…because I…loved him."
"YOU ARE NOBODY. YOU CANNOT LOVE," snarls the voice.
"Fuck…ah…fuck that," he gasps, in the grip of whatever is wrenching these painful truths from him. "You don't get to tell me what I…hn…feel. "
"SO YOU CLAIM YOU HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DEFY YOUR OWN VERY BEING TO FEEL LOVE FOR THE KEYBLADE WIELDER?"
"You…gah…you're goddamn right I do," he snarls.
"ENOUGH LOVE THAT YOU WERE WILLING TO DIE FOR HIM?"
"Weh…well for someone who….reminded me…of him, who maybe…holds….part of him," he gasps out. This truth shit kind of hurts.
"DO YOU LOVE HIM ENOUGH TO LIVE FOR HIM?" demands the voice. He hesitates, unsure of what this means, but after all, he's on a roll with this truth business anyway.
"Yes."
The pain is immediate and intense. He feels as though he is dragged backwards through a sky filled with razor wire. It shreds his very existence into nothing, and he shrieks as he is unmade. An image of Roxas floats before him, and he reaches desperate, trembling fingers out towards him in a plea for help. He cannot reach, and Roxas drifts away from him as he howls in despair. Blood and darkness spew from his torn and tormented body. Dimly, behind the agony, he is aware that he is now being forced back together bit by bit rather than being torn apart, but that this reverse of his final strike is nothing at all like that shining moment of glorious unmaking. This fucking hurts. He thinks inanely that the reason people are born without the ability to remember what the experience is like is probably a good thing, or else nobody would ever choose to do it, not if it's anything like this! He thinks he screams for a thousand years, re-forming from the inside out in a welter of blood and bone and torment. He tries to hold to the memory of Roxas's face the last time he saw him in the rain. He tries to see the look on Sora's face when he promises they will see Kairi together and Axel can apologize to her in person. He can't remember them, and he despairs. There is only the endless pain. Then, finally, after a millennia of unspeakable, vile, nauseating pain, he hears a voice come to him from across the void where he is now able to do nothing more than whimper pitifully….
"You promised," it whispers.
"Hnnh?" he grunts interrogatively.
"You promised, Axel…"
"R…roxas?" he whispers hoarsely.
"Remember," it urges.
"I….remember…." he says laboriously.
'"What, Axel? Lea? What did you promise?"
"I….I'll always come for you," he grits out weakly.
"Keep your promise…"
The darkness, when it comes, is peaceful, and blessedly cool. He sleeps, and is aware on some basic level that he IS sleeping, and that when he wakes up, it will be time to get to work, and that it won't be easy. It doesn't matter. Sora needs him, and Axel keeps his promises.