If he could, Axel would feel bad for bleeding on Naminé's dress. But he cannot, he does not, he never will. She rests her trembling hands on his neck and whispers apologies into his hair. As the fall from her lips a careless gift he fits a wrong (of hers of his of no one's at all) to each with stunning precision.
I'm sorry
you got hurt.
I'm sorry
I can't help you any more.
I'm sorry
Riku did what he had to do.
I'm sorry
I erased you forever.
I'm sorry
it had to be this way.
I'm sorry
it must end like this, like nothing, like you.
I'm sorry
it's cold, it's empty, and it will never matter to us.
xx.
They look alike, he thinks, but does not marvel because that part of him (the one that plays at imitating life) is dead, dead and gone without a note of mourning save Naminé's shivers, and her "sorries" and her silence.
But Kairi fights him. She struggles and strains her birdbone wrists against his grip, and he vaguely remembers rain in a city that never was.
"We've got something in common, Kairi. You and I both miss someone we care about. Hey, I feel like we're friends already," he whispers in her ear, cold words with meaning, with force and in the brief moment she pauses Axel drags them into the darkness.
xx.
Kairi flees with the words ringing in her ears
take care of him
and she touches her lips softly to ward off the apology.
xx.
It's fitting that it ends here, betwixt and between worlds, because if he dies here there's no witness but Sora, nothing else organic (nothing real) to capture the memory of him as he fades. Axel thinks that it was Marluxia who told him, once, that the earth remembers everything; and it's perfectly fitting that he died within Oblivion's clutches, so far from sun and soil.
And as he looks behind Sora's eyes he realizes for the last, and maybe the first time that Roxas doesn't remember him, that Naminé did her job, that all is in vain. Axel wants to start something, wants to fight, wants to let it burn, because even now he won't just take it; they say when you have nothing left to burn you must light yourself on fire. They don't say what to do when you have, though, what to do while you wait to turn to ash.
So when he says, "I wanted to see Roxas. He...was the only one I liked... He made me feel...like I had a heart. It's kind of...funny... You make me feel...the same... Kairi's in the castle dungeon. Now go," he means you had better have been worth it, kid, don't you dare let me down. But Axel doesn't know what letting him down entails, only knows that Sora isn't worth it, and never was. He's been fooling himself (he does it so well) for a long time now.
If he could, he would be amused. As it is, he laughs.
