A dusk was missing, Xemnas had told him. Axel shrugged. "What do you want me to do about it?" he asked. What did he care if a dusk was missing?
"What you will do is bring it back to us," Xemnas said shortly. Axel knew he was growing annoyed with him.
"Fine," he said, his face dark, but a smirk upon it. "Where is it?"
"A small world called Twilight Town. It's location has been narrowed down to the premises of a mansion there."
A door of swirling darkness opened behind Axel. He turned away from Xemnas and walked through. The door swirled shut.
Another door opened in the courtyard of a mansion. It was dark out, and even darker shadows were cast on the lawn by the trees and other shrubbery surrounding the area. After some searching, he gained entrance through an open window on the side.
He could tell that someone lived here. There was no dust on anything. He rummaged through the place, but to no avail: the night drew on, and came to morning, and still the dusk was no where to be found. Yet he sensed it was here, somewhere. He opened a door to darkness. He would come back later, when it was dark again.
Well, he kept coming back, searching the mansion, night after night for a week, and still couldn't find the dusk. Each search brought him to a new room or two, maybe a few. The fifth night, he found the library.
It didn't occur to him that he was being loud. He didn't care. He just wanted to find the nobody and get Xemnas off his back. So Axel was thoroughly surprised when something hit him in the back of the head. He hissed and wheeled around to see a girl in a nightgown in the library doorway. In the blink of an eye, he had moved to pin her to the wall.
After the initial shock on her face disappeared, she began to struggle to escape his grip. "Let go of me!" she demanded, straining to see his face in the dark. Axel stepped back a little, letting her loose from the wall. Without even a single motion, he lit the lamps in the room.
"Where is it?" he asked, his eye narrowed and frowning.
She stared at him, uncomprehending. "Where is what? Who are you?" she asked in return, aquamarine eyes ablaze.
Axel stared at her a few moments, and crossed his arms. "The nobody you stole."
"Steal?" she scoffed and rolled her eyes. "I didn't steal anything. It didn't have your name on it. Or anybody's, for that matter." She paused. "What is your name" she asked him again.
"Axel," he said. "The nobody doesn't belong to me," he said, annoyed. He stepped closer to her again. "It belongs to the Organization, and they sent me to retrieve it."
She crossed her arms in turn. "It didn't have their name on it, either," she said stubbornly. He wanted to wipe the smirk from her face.
"Listen. If I don't get this nobody back, you know what will happen?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"The Organization will flood your little world with Heartless, who will take your hearts, as well as with nobodies who will take back the one you stole when it's over. Got it memorized?"
She was silent, as though thinking this over. "And if I give the nobody to you now, who's to say you won't do that anyway?"
Axel shrugged. It would most likely happen as she said. "No one."
He didn't expect her to laugh, but she did. "You are terrible at persuasion. You've given me little motivation to give it back." She paused and then sighed. "I'll strike you a deal," she continued. "I'll give back the nobody. . .when you've told me all you know of nobodies and heartless."
He regarded her warily. "I don't know. . ." Xemnas was getting impatient. If it took too much longer, Axel would get in trouble.
"Take it or leave it," she said. "I'm content to take my compromise or your 'hard way'. What'll it be?"
Axel paced, thinking, and then turned back to her, sighing loudly. "Fine," he said with a frown. He didn't like it, but else could he do?
She smiled then, flashing brilliant white teeth at him. "Good," she said, beaming with victory. She yawned. He had almost forgotten it was night. "Find somewhere to sleep. I'm going back to bed, since my rest was so rudely interrupted." She turned on her heel and sauntered away.
He didn't really need to sleep, so Axel went through her library. He found her journal, and read what she thought she knew about the dusk she held captive somewhere in the labyrinthine mansion. When the sun finally rose, he found that he was hungry.
He searched, and eventually found a kitchen area, which he began to tear apart, looking for food. "What are you doing?" came an exasperated voice from behind him.
"You don't have any food," he said, not turning away from the cupboard he was searching.
"Yeah! I do," she huffed. He turned to see her open a door, where inside there was food piled. She waved her arm in front of the pantry, then crossed both in front of her, glaring at him. He shrugged and brushed past her, grabbed a box of cereal, and went to the counter. He picked up a bowl and served himself. "Are you always so noisy?" she asked, biting into an apple.
He shrugged in reply, and ate his cereal.
She mumbled something, he didn't hear what it was, and then said, "You're going to clean this up. And then we'll start in the library."
He frowned. "You're not going to help me?"
"You didn't need my help in making the mess, I don't see why you should need my help is cleaning it up," she said, all high-and-mighty.
Axel clenched his fist around the spoon he was using, but said nothing else.
She took his bowl to the sink when he was done eating, and he got started on cleaning up. Untrue to her word, she helped him. He guessed she was impatient to get started. It was just as well; the longer it took, the more annoyed the Organization would grow annoyed.
When that was all done, she lead him back to the library. He took the big chair at the desk while she went off to get something to write on, and made himself comfortable. Of course he knew it was her chair. When she came back and saw him, he grinned smugly at her. She pulled up a chair and sat down, pointedly ignoring his smirk.
So they talked – well, Axel talked mostly. He became quite annoyed because of the interruptions she made every five minutes. She took notes, making doodles and such, while he talked.
During lunch, she asked him about the Organization. Axel told her a little, but nothing really important. He was glad that she understood the secretive nature of Organization XIII.
When they continued in the library, she became even more annoying. Aside from asking questions, she argued. There were times when things, literally, got heated.
Then, when they stopped at sunset, things mellowed out. The girl, her name was Eeva, became much more endurable, even hospitable. Axel asked her why, and she explained that she lived alone and was never around people, and then apologized for her mood swings.
"Why do you live alone?" he asked her.
She sighed. "It's easy," she said looking at her dinner plate. "Because what I do is dangerous a lot of the time," she elaborated.
Axel arched an eyebrow, wondering if that were really true.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. "If it had been someone else from the Organization, would I still be alive right now? Or would I be a heartless?"
Axel shrugged, but saw her point. "It depends on who."
She nodded satisfactorily. "You don't know, how could I know? I took a risk with the nobody. That's why I live alone," she said heavily, as if she didn't like it but accepted the way things were.
The rest of the meal was spent in silence. When she was finished, Eeva rose. "I'm tired," she rinsed her plate in the sink, and walked to the room's exit. "Good night, Axel."
He didn't reply.