The Adamant

Cloud watches Sora sleep, and he knows that there is something wrong.

It's only been a week since Sora and Riku arrived back in Hollow Bastion- now renamed Radiant Garden, with some note from the King and a mission that they weren't supposed to tell anyone about. Most had expected Sora to stay on his home world for a while with that red headed girl he'd been searching so long for, but Sora tells them with a cheerful smile that she'll be waiting for them to get back and that he can still help out. He tells them with a smug grin that he's more useful than them all combined, and he's attacked with hugs and jokes that he's getting full of himself.

The boy named Riku has tagged along, and none of the committee members knows how to treat him. He is quiet, rarely speaking to anyone besides Sora, but Sora trusts him so completely that even Leon lets him stay without complaint.

Sora is the same as he's always been during the day, cheerful and positive. He helps out in Cid's shop and cleans Merlin's bookshelves during the morning, and in the afternoon Sora and Riku head to the Maw to fight one another, but Yuffie insists that they mostly talk about things and as of late have rarely sparred.

Cloud doesn't approve of digging into other people's business, but he wonders what they talk about sometimes.

Yet at night Cloud knows something is amiss. He's heard the whimpers through the thin walls, and he's sure a few of the others have too. One could only imagine the nightmares a person would get from literally being torn apart by that inky blackness that resides in people's heart. They are not surprised that even Sora would be scared by such dreams, but Cloud knows that those whimpers can't be caused by nightmares, but by memories.

Cloud's stony blue eyes gaze onto the couch which Sora has fallen asleep on after dinner. He had a blanket tossed over him and his arm is resting under his head as a pillow, but his face is all scrunched up and silent tears of agony are rolling down tan cheeks.

Riku is usually the one to scoop Sora up and wake him gently, it seems that he has a very calming effect on the brunette, but Cloud isn't Riku and it's not his place.

So he stands and watches him suffer.

Hearing the distinctive clop of boots behinds him, he turns and sees Leon in the doorway. Leon is also gazing down at Sora with an unreadable expression. He stands next to Cloud and lets out an exhausted sigh.

They don't say a word, but that's how it's always been between them.

Cloud eventually turns and touches Leon's arm, a signal that they should leave. And as Cloud exits the room, ready to go back to his work and his brooding, he hears it.

"..Axel,"

And that single word is uttered with such despair in a voice that cannot belong to Sora. Cloud's eyes grow wide and he turns around slowly, his fists clenching. Sora is literally shaking now, his head tossing and his teeth gnawing at his bottom lip. Cloud doesn't know what the word means, but he assumes it's a name. A name of someone very important who was lost.

In his own mind Cloud can see Zack's face, what he looked like on that battlefield with blood being washed away by the rain, and the sound of a scream and a promise and so much pain. So very much pain.

And Cloud knows that whoever uttered that name couldn't have been Sora, and that the person who did had somehow became connected to the keyblade master's heart.

Cloud finally does the leave the room, and he finds Riku in the kitchen helping a hyperactive Yuffie make dinner. Riku doesn't see or look at him at first, but once he notices Cloud staring at him ocean green eyes snap onto his. Riku is quiet in the way that Leon is quiet, and without words Riku knows what Cloud is saying.

He leaves the room without a second glance, and Cloud wonders why he feels so cheated.

Riku knows that there is something wrong too, but he sees it much more than the others. Because the house they were currently staying in had tiny cramped conditions, Sora and Riku share a bed together in the evening. And every night Riku ends up holding the tiny boy close to him, his heart aching as whimpers and tears and emotions swallow Sora whole. And when Sora wakes up, screaming the Flurry of the Dancing Flames name… he knows that it wasn't Sora dreaming, but Roxas.

And he also knows that if Roxas knew Riku was the one to comfort Sora… it would hurt even more.

Riku knows that he was unfair to Roxas but he doesn't care. He hates Roxas, and pities him. A nobody was never supposed to exist, and Sora was never supposed to need to give his heart up. Riku knows that nobodies have no hearts and no emotions, and that Roxas was just a pawn for Xenmas, then DiZ. He wasn't supposed to be a separate entity of Sora, and because of it Sora is in pain.

Riku hates Roxas, but he hates seeing Sora in pain even more.

Sora is his everything after all, what he fought and almost died for, what he'd sacrifice anything for. He had been the original person to be chosen by the keyblade, but he'd misused it and Sora hadn't. Sora was the pure radiating light, the heart that beat so strong and so true for all he cared about. Sora would do anything to help other people, and Riku would do anything to make Sora happy.

Sora had saved him, and now Riku wanted to save him too.

So while Sora whimpered out another person's name, Riku couldn't do anything except cradle him closely and enjoy the warmth of the body heat and stroke his spiky hair. He would drop soft affectionate kisses on a sweating forehead and rub his back and treat him like he was made of glass. After doing this for a while Sora would always calm down, and always snuggle right back up to Riku and then Riku would finally go to sleep.

The next morning when Sora woke up he would always blush and be embarrassed, Riku had a feeling Sora thought he was the one to cuddle up to Riku and not the other way around, but Riku didn't say anything.

Sora didn't remember the nightmares and it was better that way, because they weren't Sora's nightmares to have. They were his nobodies. But every so often when they were helping out around the house or doing the shopping downtown, Sora's face would go blank and his eyes would go flat. Maybe it was because his hair had gotten a noticeable shade lighter. Maybe it's because he'd seen that expression before, on a different face, so closely alike but so completely different.

And Riku could see why Roxas was Sora's nobody.

He'd always been able to see it the other way around.

And it was confusing because he loves Sora's beautiful eyes that are always so full of expressions and happiness. But when Roxas had been in Twilight Town and had held the same expression, it was infuriating. It sometimes scared Riku how protective he got of Sora, how it bordered obsession.

But when Sora would snap out of it and smile up at him with a cocky expression and exclaim how he intended to beat Riku later, Riku knew that he would do anything to protect that smile.

And he just wished that Roxas had never existed in the first place.

The dreams always start out the same, and Sora doesn't really understand it at first. There is a castle, and an endless staircase in which he's always running up and Riku is always running down. But then suddenly Riku's eyes get cold and his grip on the cold steel of his keyblade gets heady and his eyes get fierce.

Then there is always black.

Sora knows that during the night he sees what he was never supposed to see- Roxas' memories. He sees how it had all started, how Axel had trained him and Roxas had been scared and angry and lonely. How Roxas had poured himself into endless books in a library, poking and prodding and searching for hell knows what. And how when he hadn't found the answers he'd been looking for, he'd looked inside himself and seen only a hollow body and an empty heart. But he'd been determined to find them, nonetheless.

Sora knew that Roxas had willingly died for him. Well, not died per say, but he'd gone back to Sora knowing that it needed to happen.

Even if in the end it had just been Riku's plan all along. Sora knows that Riku would never want him to find this out, to know just how cruel Riku really was to Roxas. But he is far too kind and would never bring something like that up. And Sora couldn't hold it against Riku because Riku had just wanted to protect him.

And it's as these dreams progress, they get so much worse.

Because, despite what everyone says about the nobodies, how they are without emotions and hearts, he feels Roxas and Roxas feels him. They have only met just that once, but they are connected. Sora isn't sure if Roxas is letting him see his memories, or if he just can't help it. But they always get worse.

As Roxas spent each day living in the Organization, he became happy. Axel had been there, and even if the redhead had been sadistic , sarcastic, and intimidating… his emerald eyes always grew soft for Roxas, and he knew that they were bonded the same way Riku and Sora were.

And Sora can feel that ache.

Sometimes it hurts so bad that he can't breathe, like during twilight when the memories surface and are most prevalent, when he can't prevent Roxas from joining his soul and he knows that Roxas is somewhere, alone, and sobbing. And then Sora is sobbing, and then he wakes up.

When he wakes up he's always in the utopia of Riku's strong arms, always surrounded by the nostalgic smell of the ocean and the fresh island breeze. Sora feels so bad because he just wants to be happy, he just wants to move on and on forward with Riku forever. But then he would be cheating Roxas and Roxas had already been through so much pain. Sora couldn't do that to Roxas.

Sora wonders sometimes what became of the rest of the Organization. He never met many of them, but now that the memories from Roxas' time amongst them are his own he feels he knows them. He understands their personalities, why they did what they did. Like how Demyx had been so afraid of fighting and had hated it, and how he had been so adamant that he did have a heart.

Eventually all these things begin to cripple Sora and he finds it harder to smile.

His guilt is weighing him down, but he knows that the guilt is also not his own.

He knows that it's Roxas again, and he knows what's always on his mind.

Axel.

"He was the only one I ever liked. He made me feel…

like I had a heart."

Weeks pass, and Leon grows worried.

People among the committee joke and say that he's like a 'Papa Bear', always protective and worried about his friends, but in reality it's because they don't take the reality like they should; harsh and unforgiving.

But slowly, the toll that the pain causes people eats their heart away. It happened to him, it happened to Cloud, and now it's happening to Sora. But maybe because Cloud and Leon had always been more quiet that it's most noticeable with Sora.

Leon knows that Riku is doing his best to help Sora out.

Leon had been so unsure of accepting someone who wore and fought under an Organization XIII coat at one point, but he now trusts Riku. He can see the glint in Riku's eyes and the determination in his stance that he'd do anything for Sora. Leon is glad.

Mostly though, the group keeps quiet about Sora's suffering and does their best to cheer him on and keep him in high spirits. The only other person he's talked about it with is Cloud. Leon has a firm companionship with Cloud Strife, both had known war and death. He admires Cloud for his strengths and weaknesses, he goes to him whenever things are bothering him.

When they started engaging in a more romantic affair, both knew that it didn't even need to be mentioned that they would never tell the others. But finding time to reach out to another soul was hard when it was so obvious someone they cared about was hurting.

Sora didn't deserve that. He was so brave for doing all that he had done, for fighting Xenmas and for freeing the worlds. Sora was ready to keep at it, to chisel away at the granite until his tools were chipped and gone. But Leon wouldn't allow it. Not with Sora.

Cloud told him that Sora often whimpered a name, and when Leon had gone to Merlin to research that name and to learn more, he was startled at what he found. He found a picture of someone, and he'd shown it to Cloud. But the look in Cloud's eyes when he'd done so had been so frightening he'd regretted it almost immediately.

Cloud told him that the person in the picture was a man named Reno, and not Axel. He said that he'd known Reno in his old world (a topic untouched by the pair because it was a specific taboo to talk about their past), and that he'd been cocky and boisterous. They had sometimes fought on the same and opposite sides, and they were at equal fault for ruining Cloud's original world.

So when Leon had asked why Merlin would have given him this picture in response, Cloud had given him a grave look. They laced their fingers together and Cloud had rested his blonde spikes onto a leather clad shoulder. And Leon learned for the first time that Reno had died, and his nobody had become Axel.

And how Sora had died too, and his nobody became Roxas.

That had been the reason they'd forgotten about Sora.

For the first time, Leon didn't know how he could help anyone anymore.

The nightmares always got worse.

Now flashes of things Sora knew he was never supposed to see began to surface. Flashes of heated skin flushing, of nails scratching down a lean back, of emerald eyes and crimson hair and sweat and heat. Of forbidden kisses and trysts that were never supposed to happen but did. Of emotions that they weren't supposed to possess but had.

Sora learned the reason why his heart ached for Axel so much.

Because Sora's heart was connected to Roxas and Axel and Roxas had been lovers. For a time, a sweetly short but heartbreakingly happy time, Roxas had felt alive. The pair would be assigned missions and swept away to beautiful worlds and they would laugh and joke together. It had started with a desperate attempt on Axel's part to get Roxas to understand that nobodies did have feelings. Just because they didn't have hearts didn't mean they didn't feel.

And it had been a desperate attempt on Roxas's part to believe him. For a little while, their un-beating hearts had been in unison and their hands had been clasped tightly. But then Roxas began to forget.

It had started with little things. Roxas had always been indifferent and harsh, but to Axel he had tried to be fair. That was the first thing to go. As his emotions slipped away Roxas found himself demanding more masochistic things from Axel, and even though Axel had been so hesitant in hurting Roxas he eventually gotten his way.

Then it became a little more. Axel would reach for Roxas and he would pull away, dismiss him without a second thought. He began to forget why he even fucked Axel in the first place, when originally it had always been about emotions and feelings. Then Roxas became stuck on the idea that he needed to know more about his other, about the keyblade.

He'd told Axel this, and they'd fought.

Axel had known it was almost over when the next day Roxas had been just as apathetic as the week before; because when he had went to apologize, Roxas had been unable to even remember that they had fought in the first place. And something about all of this made Sora hurt, because he knew that now Roxas could remember and Roxas hated himself for how he treated Axel.

He knew that Axel had once told Roxas that he loved him with all the heart he didn't have.

And that Roxas had understood.

But right before Roxas had left to go in search of the truth, it had almost been like they'd never met, like they'd never even been friends at all. Axel had demanded that Roxas stay, there had been screaming, and Roxas had told him that nobody would miss him.

And as he left, the only thing left for Roxas to forget was that Axel had even existed at all.

And remember, Roxas did.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that he should be somewhat happy. He knew that Axel and the others from the Organization were now free. They could have their next life. That it should be considered a good thing. But Roxas found it so hard to accept that.

When Sora slept, Roxas dreamt too.

Ironically, these were not the same dreams.

Instead Roxas would dream that he was holding Axel in their room, kissing him harshly with tongue and teeth and desperation, and that Axel would latch onto his waste, grinding Roxas against him. And Roxas would tilt his head back and Axel would lick down his throat, breathing heady and reckless.

And Roxas would begin to cry, he would murmur like a mantra, "I'm so sorry,"

Axel would always say, "It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter,"

But it did and it always would and how could Roxas be happy when he could never forgive himself for forgetting Axel? He'd left Axel with both of their memories, both of their sins, and he'd been blinded by undeserving happiness in Twilight Town. And sometimes Roxas would be forced to replay his 'death' over and over too. He would see Sora collapse onto the ground of Betwix and Between, and he would feel the last effect of the powerful fire sooth him.

And he would watch Axel die for him.

And it was during these nights that Sora woke up screaming.