Even though he'd been the one to suggest it a lifetime ago, Lea wasn't really a big fan of the beach. The idea of swimming in the ocean was all well and good until you remembered that the ocean was full of terrors, just lurking in the depths and waiting to kill you in the most horrific way possible. It was a death trap waiting to happen and that wasn't even taking into consideration the fact that Lea had a perfectly healthy fear of jellyfish. Seriously, those things were right up there with Heartless in his mind and one could make a strong argument for them even being worse.
And the only thing that sucked more than getting saltwater in your eyes and throat was getting sunburned; the saltwater aspect made for an uncomfortable couple minutes but the sensation would go away soon enough or at least until the next time a wave broke over your head and you were unfortunate enough to not have closed your eyes and mouth beforehand. Sunburn, on the other hand, could make for the worst week of your life. Lea knew this from painful experience: he had burned rather spectacularly in the past and had to suffer the indignation of looking more like a lobster than a human being for that entire length of time. And that was with him applying SPF 100 like clockwork.
So yeah, the beach wasn't exactly his idea of the best time. But a promise was a promise and he didn't have the heart to go back on it, not when Roxas and Xion were so adorably enthusiastic about the whole thing. The last thing he wanted was to be responsible for putting that hurt puppy dog look on their faces and so he resolved for them to have the best beach experience possible. To accomplish this, he ended up blowing a ridiculous amount of munny on beach crap but it was all worth it for the way their faces lit up, if nothing else.
He figured once they got there that they'd take their respective items and be on their way, prepared to do nothing but sit back, slather his entire body with sunscreen, and watch his two favorite people go off and have the time of their lives.
He had almost forgotten nothing was ever that easy with them.
"I can't believe you're wearing a shirt," Roxas said, frowning like Lea had just committed the greatest faux-pas of all time. "Do you even realize how ridiculous you look right now?"
"What are you talking about? This is a nice shirt," Lea said defensively.
"You're not supposed to be wearing a shirt at all! We're at the beach, not a restaurant."
"Yeah, you don't want to be that guy, do you?" Xion asked, as if Lea was supposed to know what a statement as vague as that meant. He must have given her a blank look because she tugged on the hem of his shirt for emphasis. "That guy," she repeated, and he could hear the silent capitalization this time around. "The only guy wearing a shirt at the beach. It's weird."
"It's not that weird." He felt strangely petulant about all this.
"You're already wearing swim trunks," Roxas pointed out. "You can't do these things halfway. You have to be all in, you know?"
Lea wondered when these two became such experts on beach protocol. Maybe it was a side effect of being a part of Sora?
"Don't make me and Roxas wrestle it off of you," Xion said warningly. Her eyebrows had drawn together, the way they did whenever she was displeased with something, and Roxas nodded in complete accordance with her threat. He even crossed his arms in a semi-threatening manner and really, Lea should not have been half as endeared as he was by all this.
He briefly entertained the idea of letting it happen because wrestling with them really didn't sound that bad, in all honesty. But then he remembered how ridiculously strong the both of them were and spending the whole day aching and bruised because they had hurt him accidentally? Yeah, he'd pass.
There was just no getting out of it it seemed. But rather than grimly accept his face he decided to have a little fun with it. He tugged his shirt over his head with exaggerated slowness, glad it was partway over his face when Roxas and Xion started whining at him to get a move on so he could hide what was probably the world's dumbest smile.
X
The heat was positively sweltering and Lea dragged a hand across his forehead, making a face when his fingers came back sticky with sweat. He wiped them off against his trunks and then popped open the cooler to grab a fistful of ice cubes to chew. He sighed a little at the feel of them melting on his tongue. God, that just about hit the spot right now.
A good half-hour had passed since Roxas and Xion had badgered him into taking his shirt off and he had indulged Roxas by getting in the water with him for a bit before hunkering down in the spot he was in now. He hadn't so much as moved since then. It had only been thirty minutes and he was already all beached out. Roxas and Xion, on the other hand, were as tireless as ever and he couldn't help but smile at their enthusiasm for all things beach, even if he didn't really understand it himself.
Xion had moved a little further down, bending to scoop up whatever seashells she could find and turning them over in her hands, a vague look of concentration on her face before nodding happily and depositing the ones that met her criteria in her pail. Her nose was completely pink by now and he wondered at the way the freckles that dotted it stood out in contrast even as he resisted calling her over to put on sunscreen. It was just like her to bypass applying sun screen and start collecting shells the moment they got to the beach, but he couldn't summon up any frustration if he'd tried. He was too preoccupied with tracing the path of her freckles with his eyes.
They were new; Xion apparently got freckles now if she stayed out long enough in the sun. They clustered mainly on her nose, spanning the entire bridge, but some also lightly dusted the tops of her cheeks. Looking at her freckled face reminded Lea a bit of how he'd try to pick out constellations in the night sky as a kid. He spent some time just trying to connect the dots and a smirk pulled at his lips at the thought of getting a marker and doing it for real.
But it didn't take long for the smirk to fade away and awe to creep up in its place. Truthfully, it hadn't ever really left, not since the moment that his best friends were finally returned to him. They were all together again and he couldn't stop looking at either of them, afraid if he looked away for just one second that they'd disappear into thin air. Roxas was making a sandcastle with all the seriousness and gravitas Lea had ever seen and a smile was gently curving Xion's lips as she dusted sand off a seashell. There should be no one in all the worlds happier than him in this moment, but he couldn't fully enjoy himself, not when he was still filled with so much shame.
Xion - there was joy when he looked at her, deep and dizzying, but he didn't know how she could stand to be around him. She had been gone and Lea hadn't even known or realized because he had completely forgotten her. It was the ultimate betrayal. How could he have forgotten her when she meant so much? When she and Roxas were everything to him?
And it hurt, that Roxas had managed to remember Xion when he himself hadn't. Lea thought that maybe her absence, although not felt on a conscious level, got tied up with Roxas'. Like a sharp pang made sharper, and maybe that was why he poured his entire being in getting Roxas back the way he had. Because he couldn't bear to lose Roxas too, for both his best friends to have faded away and become a part of someone else.
It was a nice thought, but not one he allowed himself to entertain for long; when it came down to it all Lea had was maybe's and he could try to spin it whatever way he liked but the facts were facts. He hadn't remembered Xion and that truth caught uncomfortably in his throat whenever he looked at her. Just another failure in a long list of failures concerning the two of them, another way he'd let them down by not being enough.
But even though he didn't deserve to look at her, Lea found once he started that he couldn't stop. He drank in the planes of her face like a man starved for water, greedily, like every sip might be his last and hell, wasn't that the truth? Lea had never put much stock in happy endings and it was unbelievable to think that he could really have his happy-ever-after with the people he loved most in the world - the people who were, in a very real way, his heart. The two of them, they always had been, and with them around Lea thought that he didn't really need the one now beating in his chest. He knew he'd trade it in an instant for the certainty that this happiness would last. Maybe it was the cynic in him, but it all seemed way too good to be true and he was waiting for the moment where the bottom finally dropped out from under his feet even as he wished with all his heart that it wouldn't.
Xion drifted back towards him, the rattling sound of her pail signaling her approach. She'd been busy; it was practically full to the brim with seashells. It made him happy to see, knowing how precious this small happiness was to her. She and Roxas, they deserved all that and more.
She caught his eye, tilting her head in question. He shook his head at her, grinning and flapping his hand in a 'go on' gesture but Xion stayed where she was. She silently stared him down, her lips pressed in a worried line, and it amazed him how she could read his moods so easily after all this time.
"You're brooding," she said in that matter-of-fact way of hers.
Lea forced his grin to stay in place, even as that sent another pang through him. There were so many things about her he hadn't gotten the chance to miss because he had forgotten all about her until the moment she shimmered into existence and embraced the both of them with a watery laugh. He had wrapped his arms around her instinctively and felt everything click into place the moment her head went under his chin, all his forgotten memories of her flooding through him in that single instant.
Xion, a voice deep inside had supplied and Lea thought it might have been his heart. Like it was seared with a brand over it, only if that were true wouldn't he have remembered sooner?
Xion looked at him like she could see every last thought on his face. Maybe she could; he had never been very good at hiding things from her. That didn't mean he was going to own up to it though.
"Heh, now why would I do a thing like that? It's beach day, not brooding day."
That got a smile out of her, but it was here one moment, gone the next. She set down her pail and settled down next to him in the sand. It was kind of funny, seeing their legs stretched out side by side. She and Roxas were so goddamn tiny compared to him and it made him think back to the early days of the Organization. He remembered how he thought they were a bit like newborn children, wandering through the world with increasing awareness but no less wide-eyed with awe at their discoveries. He'd had to explain things he took for granted or things he didn't even really comprehend himself, but honestly, as much he'd tried to act like a wise in the ways of the world mentor, a lot of the time it felt like they were the ones teaching him. They just had this way of looking at the world, a completely fresh perspective unburdened by cynicism, and it bred a strange protectiveness in him even as he tried to dismiss it as naivety. But he found with each ice cream date and shared mission that he wanted to preserve that innocence more and more. It just figured that that same desire would only contribute to its demise in the end.
He was jerked from his thoughts when Xion kicked him in the leg, none too gently. She then had the nerve to parrot his words back at him: "I thought it was beach day, not brooding day."
"What the hell are you kicking me for!?" he exclaimed, rubbing at his knee. Sheesh, for a girl with such little legs she could kick damn hard. Hardly a surprise, considering how well she could put up a fight, but still. The point was he hadn't expected her to unleash that on him out of nowhere.
"Sorry," she said, not sounding very sorry at all, "but there's only so much brooding I can take from you and you're way past your limit for the day."
Lea's lips twitched upwards even though his knee was still smarting something fierce. "No brooding on your watch, huh?"
"Yup," Xion said cheerfully.
She looked off for a second and he followed her gaze to Roxas, who was looking at what was left of his sandcastle with a hilariously forlorn expression because the tide had just come in and destroyed all his hard work. There was something soft in her eyes when she looked at him and it didn't take long for Lea to recognize that look. She looked at him the exact same way sometimes and he thought that they probably saw that look in his eyes whenever he'd look at the two of them.
He and Xion watched Roxas in silence and then she looked back at him and smiled. She shifted close enough to rest her head on his shoulder and he felt no small degree of amusement at how she was trying in vain to get comfortable. She moved her head this way and that for a couple seconds, her face screwed up in frustration, before huffing and seemingly giving up. He could feel the exhalation of it on the side of his neck, the puff of air that left her lips warming its surface.
"Your shoulders are so bony," Xion muttered. She didn't move away from him though, just curled her little body further into his, and something in Lea just...eased.
He couldn't help but smile into her hair. "I guess you're just gonna have to find someone else to be your human pillow."
"No, I'm good here," she said, and he didn't even need to look at her to know she was grinning; he could hear it in her voice. "Even if it does feel like I'm being stabbed in the neck."
"Ouch," Lea said. "You sure know how to wound a guy, Xion, and not just with those legs of yours."
"You know what's funny? That wasn't even me kicking hard." Her eyes sparkled up at him and really, whose eyes did things like that? He tried to scoff but it was no use; he was pulled in by the blue of her eyes and the way her freckle-covered nose scrunched up when she smiled. Lea had to save face by letting out a low whistle as he looked away, thinking, not for the first or the last time, that these kids were way too cute for their own good.
He was about to open his mouth and say something appropriately flippant when Xion abruptly pulled away. He had to stamp down on the desire to do something ridiculous, like reach out and pull her back. If she got tired of being stabbed in the neck by his shoulder blades then that was fine, perfectly understandable even. And if he felt just a tiny bit colder, well, then that was most likely due to the wind. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the absence of her warmth.
Xion shifted so that her legs were under her and then lifted a hand to push her hair back from her face and he got the uncomfortable feeling that they were about to have a Conversation.
"It's okay, you know," she said, and god, did he wish the universe would prove him wrong once in a while. His shoulders hunched in, just a little, and he had to make a conscious effort to straighten them out. The last thing he wanted was to give her fodder for this conversation, even when that lump was back and worse than ever.
Lea swallowed it down as best he could and forced himself to look at her with a steadiness he didn't really feel. "Yeah, what's that? The fact that you kick like a bull?"
She didn't say anything for a long moment and he almost let himself hope that that was a sign she was going to drop it for good.
"That you forgot," she said, because this was Xion and she never once shied from painful truths in all the time that he'd known her. "Axel, it's okay-"
"No, it's not," he burst out. It was all coming out, all his pent up anger and shame, and Xion looked taken off guard for just a second before her face evened out again. Good, he thought viciously. It just made him angrier, how calmly accepting she was of the fact when the fact sucked beyond belief. He had betrayed her in the worst possible way and that would never be okay, not in a million years. "Xion, I forgot you."
Xion, swear to god, scowled at him. It would've made him smile under any other circumstance but not now, not when he found himself hanging on by a ragged thread. "And I'm telling you it's okay! Everyone forgot, Axel. How can I be mad at something beyond your control?"
"Not Roxas," Lea said bitterly.
Xion closed her eyes and it looked like she was counting to ten. When she opened them she fixed him with a stern glare and he shrunk a little under the sheer force of it.
"It took me turning to ice in his arms to jump start his memory and even that was a freak thing. And you seem to be forgetting that Roxas remembered only to then forget the both of us." She sighed; all her anger seemed to disappear with that loud whoosh of air because Xion touched his hand pleadingly, something raw and aching in her eyes. "I can't make you forgive yourself," she continued quietly, "even if I tell you a hundred times that there's nothing to forgive. Just...don't let that get in the way of the time we have now, okay?"
You had to be one cold bastard to look at Xion right now, Lea thought, and not feel like the shittiest person on the face of the planet. He raked a frustrated hand through his hair but let the other hand - the one Xion was covering with her own - stay where it was. None of it was, or would ever be, okay in his mind, but making the girl who had only materialized into existence again a short while ago be anything but smiles on her beach day? That was so far from okay that Lea didn't even know where to start.
He hadn't been good at apologies in either life and he cursed that fact now more than ever. None of the words rolling around his head seemed good enough so he settled for squeezing her hand, hoping the silent press of his fingers would communicate what he couldn't find the words for.
Xion squeezed back.
"No more brooding about the past, okay? What matters is that we're all together now." She smiled then, a little teasing curve of the lips. "Got it memorized?"
"Yeah," he said. "It's memorized, alright."
She nodded her head. "Good." Her face then lit up; she looked somewhere over his shoulder and her smile took on a sly edge when she finally looked back at Lea. That was all he got as warning and then there was sand everywhere.
But even through the itchy, gross feeling of sand sticking to his neck and back, the thing that cut through loudest to Lea was the sound of Roxas and Xion's laughter, the sound warming him and compelling him to play along. He sighed theatrically and brushed the sand off, looking up at the culprit in question with a mock glare.
Roxas, completely remorseless, just gave him the biggest grin.
"Oh man," Roxas said, as delighted as Lea had ever heard him. "I've been wanting to do that for ages. Now lay down; I wanna bury your whole body.'
"Don't I get any say in this?" Lea asked, even as he moved to lie back in the sand.
"Nope," Roxas cheerily informed him and well, Lea was surprisingly okay with that. The two of them were semi-straddling his body after all, even if it was with the sole intention of burying it in sand.
Their faces blocked out the sun and all Lea could see and feel for a good long while was the two of them, the way their knees knocked against his hips whenever they leaned forward and how it made him sort of want to wince but mostly smile, the way Roxas' bangs were drenched with sweat and how he kept trying to blow them out of his eyes because his hands were busy smearing sand all over Lea's chest, how this close Lea thought that he could make out the lighter brown in the shifting strands of Xion's hair if he just squinted a certain way.
In this moment, with his best friends in the world focused on burying him head to toe in sand, Lea thought that he could really get to love the beach.
X
You would think the beauty of sunsets would have been lost to him after having seen hundreds of them in the unchanging sky of Twilight Town. It just became rote after a while; something you took for granted because you had gotten used to seeing it day after day, a sight that failed to inspire the same wonder it did the first time around. But maybe, just like back then, having Roxas and Xion by his side was what made all the difference. Every moment with them was precious and so each sunset spent in their company was tinged with a faint sort of awe.
It was a different sunset they were looking at now, but it still gave him a feeling of deja vu, remembering legs dangling over the edge of the clock tower, gloved hands wrapped around ice cream, laughter that wasn't as hollow as it should've been because they were more complete than they had ever known and all for the simple fact that they were together.
Nothing lasts forever - those words from a lifetime ago echoed in his head, but so did Xion's words from earlier, about appreciating the time they had together now. So he watched the sun set over the water with a half-smile playing at his mouth, because Lea had seen too many sunsets to even count and still thought that this one just might be the most beautiful one yet.
"Hey Xion," Roxas said softly, and there was something in his voice that sent bells ringing through Lea's mind. Roxas flashed him a secretive little smile before turning his gaze back to Xion, who was looking at him like this was the start of some familiar joke. "I bet you don't know why the sun sets red. Light is made up of lots of colors and out of all the colors red-"
"-travels the farthest," she finished for him, even though she hadn't been there for that little spiel. Lea wondered if this is one of those things she just knew as a result of them being in Sora together. She and Roxas had always had a connection but it manifested itself differently now that they were back. They were on such the same page that Lea couldn't help but wonder sometimes if there wasn't telepathy involved.
Lea's shoulders shook as he laughed. "Isn't that my line?" he asked with a grin.
Xion grinned back. "That explains how hokey it is."
"It was a little random," Roxas added. He peered at Lea thoughtfully but the smile he couldn't stop from touching his lips belied his seriousness. "What made you give me an impromptu science lesson?"
"Well, excuse me for wanting to sharing my vast wealth of knowledge with you," Lea said, crossing his arms over his chest. Roxas and Xion laughed at him, long and hard, and Lea thought that two could play this game. "And impromptu, huh? Someone's been working on their vocab."
"Shut up, Lea," Roxas said, laughingly emphasizing his true name. Lea rolled his eyes.
"Oh, like I'm supposed to be mad one of you got my name right for once?"
"You'll always be Axel to us," Xion said with a happy little smile.
"Yeah, yeah," Lea fake grumbled, but from the way Roxas and Xion were smiling at him he knew that he wasn't fooling anyone. Like always he couldn't bring himself to be mad at this fact.
The sun continued its trek down the horizon, the three of them joking around all the while, and he couldn't help the thought, looking between their beaming faces, that red may travel the farthest of all the colors but their love for each other had definitely traveled furthest of all.