Disclaimer: I own nothing. Everything belongs to Square Enix and Disney.
Sometimes, right before Axel goes to sleep, he lies in bed and closes his eyes and then, after a few minutes, he opens them again.
His closet door will be open. And through that tiny, tiny crack, Axel will see two eyes peering at him. They are large, wide, unblinking yellow cat's eyes. He goes still, pretending to be asleep, and he feels the burn of those eyes staring at him throughout the night.
When he dreams, he dreams of strange little white creatures, always squirming and moving and searching for something. Axel is one of those things, and he is so close -so close!- to finding something important when suddenly, he is one fire. He wakes up feeling like he has forgotten something.
A voice says to him "Of course, you silly silly boy! You're a Nobody, a body and a no. You have a body, but you're nobody, you know?" The voice comes from the closet. Axel pretends he hears nothing.
The next day, Axel buys a lock. He goes to sleep peacefully. When he wakes up, the lock is gone. His door is covered with angry scratches from what looks like claws.
He tries moving out. But it doesn't matter how many apartments, condos, houses, buildings, or cities he moves to. The eyes will always follow him. Actually, Axel notices with great disquiet, the door seems to actually be opening just a bit wider and wider every day. Axel thinks he can see the moonlight reflecting off of cold, cruel claws. He pulls the covers tighter over himself and shivers.
One night Axel dreams, and he dreams of blonde and blue. Something inside of him is breaking.
His closet says to him, "No need to cry, little nobody. Take heart, at least you haven't got a heart. You can't really feel anything, you-"
"SHUT UP!" He throws his pillow at the door and feels vicious satisfaction when the closet door closes with a harsh thunk.
His closet lets a disgruntled hiss, but that is the only other sound it makes for the rest of the night.
II.
This is it, Axel thinks. This is it. There is no way in hell Axel is going to take this shit anymore. He's too old to be scared of a fucking monster in his fucking closet.
His room is filled with dead birds. There are bloody paw prints on the carpet. Loose feathers rustle gently from the hot breeze coming in through the open window. His pillow is ripped and the closet door is wide open.
Axel has no idea how he is going to explain this to his landlord.
He stares at the debris of his room and he thinks to himself, this is it.
II.
"Axel," Demyx says, peering at his face. "You look sick!"
Axel mumbles something about cats.
III.
He buys pillows and covers them with blankets, places them on his bed and then hides in a crouch behind his desk. Hours later and the closet door opens, bit by bit, and Axel runs.
There is no cat inside the closet. There is no monster, with sharp gleaming claws and teeth and a horrible voice that never shuts up. Instead there is a boy. A young boy with blonde hair and blue eyes, and Axel- Axel wants to kill that motherfucking cat that is doing this to him. Axel wants to cry and scream and burn, and the very last thing he ever wanted to do is remember.
He jumps back and slams the door shut. Then he cries out and opens it again only to find it-
Empty.
A quiet corner of his mind wakes up from its long, peaceful sleep. It whispers the words, "Roxas."
IV.
Demyx asks him what's wrong.
Nothing, Axel wants to say, except that he is remembering things that never happened, there is a sadistic cat-monster-thing in his closet that won't go away, and Axel isn't a pedophile. He isn't.
Axel can't think of anything to say that won't make him sound crazy so he shrugs.
Demyx gives him a concerned look, and then hands him books on how to take care of cats, a flea brush, and cat food.
Sometimes, Axel thinks Demyx is retarded.
V.
The cat isn't even trying to hide now. It waits for him in his room. The moment Axel comes back, it starts talking and it never shuts up. It asks him annoying questions. It pokes and prods him as he tries to sleep. The cat makes Axel feel like he is on drugs. There are stripes of magenta and purple burned into his eyes; his head is about to explode.
One day, Axel comes home and the cat is in the form of the blonde and blue boy. Roxas, he thinks. For the first time in many days, Axel begins ignoring it again.
"I see! You are pretending you can't see me. But who am I? Who are you? How can you, a Nobody, ignore me?"
Axel says nothing.
The cat makes his eyes narrow, small slits of bright blue. His expression turns angry and sad and something in Axel thinks yes. This is him. This is Roxas.
Without thinking, Axel reaches out. Roxas' face distorts into a wide grin, and Axel flinches away.
"He's gone, you know. You can pretend you have a heart all you like, but what's the point in all that? I can help you."
The cat smiles mysteriously, and Axel knows, without a doubt, that he is lying.
"Please," he says anyways, "make me forget."
VI.
Whenever Axel comes home, Roxas is always sitting in the middle of the bed. He smiles up at Axel, and Axel smiles back.
Slowly, Axel remembers how to control fire. He lights a match and makes it dance across his palm, all the while his mind is mind teetering on things that never were.
"Don't burn yourself," Roxas warns, smiling.
Did Roxas always have such wide grin?
VIII.
Axel remembers. Roxas likes sea-salt ice cream.
"It's your favorite," he says, holding up the bag. Roxas looks up from where he was napping on the bed. The sunlight highlights his irises, making them look gold and feral.
"Is it?"
Axel joins him on the bed and kisses him.
Later, Demyx comes up to him smiling and tells him that he is looks happier now.
Is he happier? Yes, Axel thinks. It's only sometimes that he feels empty. Fake.
IX.
It happens when Axel is working the late night shift. He looks up from scrubbing floors and glances at the television in the waiting room.
Alice in Wonderland.
His world comes crashing down as he stares at the screen.
He doesn't even remember running home but suddenly he's there, ripping open his bedroom door.
"What the fuck!" Axel yells. He grabs the cat by its hair and he screams in its face. "What are you doing? Just what the fuck are you?"
Roxas' face looks at him with wide eyes and a wider smile and the thing says to him, "I am helping you, of course. I look just like him, see?"
Axel sees. He sees hair that has a purple tint to it, eyes that are too vicious and yellow, a smirk that is too wicked and selfish.
This thing is not Roxas. Roxas is-
Roxas is-
Who is Roxas?
XVIII.
Axel is turning into ash. His skin is on fire; he's burning, burning, and behind him, the Cheshire Cat laughs.
Axel: Simply amazing, Roxas.
Roxas: Axel.
Axel: You really do remember me this time? I'm SO FLATTERED.*
*That last bit is actually game dialogue.
-Fat Bandit