As they search for a homeland to call their own, they walk side by side across a great concrete bridge. The light is glorious, a solstice flare. The world is brightly saturated and deeply contrasted in the green of the grass which peaks from beneath the fallen leaves; in the waxy pomp of pomegranate and pumpkin painted in splotches wherever the gnarled limbs of the trees can reach; and in the indefinable darkness where the shadows lay ominous lines across the earth. The light is so bright as to bleach the sky white, optic and painful to gaze at and yet so very cold. The light is thin, and when Roxas gazes up at the sun, the lights string lazily across his eyelashes, flexing daintily, appearing very much like the moth wings of the inferno sun.
This is the first and the last of such days, an explosion of vibrancy with which to celebrate the coming season of death. A festival of the senses, illusory and fantastic: for the light penetrates nothing.
Axel is staring at the river as they walk. The lights glitter from its contours like molten silver in places, but in others it is a deep and stalking slate and Axel hates it. He hates the way it ripples, ebbing and flowing like a sinuous creature.
"Well?" Roxas wonders, curiously, expectantly
Axel spits over the railing of the bridge. "At least it isn't raining," he comments acerbically
Roxas' smile is faint.
❀
The real worlds are painful to survive in. The bones in their chests flex and crack in their futile attempts to accommodate those ever unfamiliar emotions. The dream worlds, the nightmare worlds, accommodate them with sickening aplomb.
"Sanity is for somebodies…" Roxas murmurs disappointedly as he observes the darkest and most dangerous corners of Halloween Town.
"You make wonderful dead," Jack assuages, smiling his raggedy toothless smile.
Axel breaths in deeply. The air smells of dust and musk. "At least it isn't raining," he notes, his tone sardonic.
Roxas balances his chin in his hand thoughtfully for a moment. There is no sunlight, he feels weak and formless in the shadows and even Axel is beginning to burn out without the deadly heat of high summer. Live in pain or fade away to shadow? Are those to be their only choices?
"No," Roxas decides. When he exhales, the ghosts of his past tremble across his lips, drawn forth by the mirth of this terrible town of the dead. "I don't like it."
Jack Skellington seems disappointed, there is empathy within his monstrous naivety. "Good luck to you fellows." He had wanted to offer them a home.
Two pairs of Nobody eyes widen at him a fraction out of surprise. His affection is strange and unexpected, but after a moment they realize that they would have accepted it wholeheartedly, if they could have.
❀
"I just want…" Roxas murmurs thoughtfully as they perch above Hades. "I just want to live somewhere where my body doesn't ache all the time and where people aren't always screaming."
Axel's mouth is pouting, he blows smoke rings out into the sulfuric atmosphere. "I hear there's a place for all things."
Roxas leans against his side and closes his eyes. Axel wraps an arm around him and hums in time with the shrieking of the damned.
"You know," Roxas continues. He's always been like this, Axel reminds himself, despite his frustration Roxas has always thought about things too much, cared too much. It's that fragment of Sora's heart digging in to his organs, slag and splinters slowly killing, slowly torturing him. "I never feel cold."
The man he's chosen to be in love with nods. He presses his palm against Roxas' face and the flesh is cold, they register but do not feel.
"If we got cold enough our vitals would shut down, just like any of those weak fleshy somebodies," Axel mocks quietly.
Roxas smiles peacefully and leans into his touch.
❀
And perhaps that's why they seek out the warmth. They seek out the sweltering jungle heat and the deadly jungle viruses. A place of verdant green and thick thick loamy brown. A place that screams with life, a constant rustle of tortured breath. A place that writhes with shadows and with nightmares.
A garden of poisonous flowers and deadly creatures.
"Marluxia would have loved this place," Axel exhales. The heady perfumes remind him of the days when he was under that plant-bitch's spell, panting like an animal in heat for a taste of Marluxia's seductive honey. He is, perhaps, wary about returning to such an addiction.
Roxas knows—but does not say—that a spirit like Marluxia's is always alive in places like these. Such noxious flowers never die.
Roxas breathes in deep, feels his pores clogged with sweat and his body lively, his muscles warm and fluid. He stares up through the pattern of leaves and fronds, stares up into the sun for a moment and drowns in his own element.
"Axel," he whispers, tastes the fire in that name, in the air. "Axel, I think this is a nice place."
The man who has chosen to love him breathes in the sticky humidity, feels the moisture in everything around him, but more than that, is aware of the overwhelming inferno that is at the thick sweaty heart of the jungle.
"We might be able to live here," he concedes. "We'll see what the rain does to me."
❀
The rain makes him sluggish, makes him irritable, makes him nauseas. The rain makes Roxas wild, skittish, something Axel would have expected from Demyx, if he were still here, but not from Roxas.
When the rain first begins to fall, the jungle stutters to a hush, to a sibilant rustle of raindrops on the canopy. This white noise drives Roxas to distraction, like fingers tickling up and down his vertebrae. It makes his skin prickle, makes his eyes dilate.
"Axel," he begs.
Perhaps they shouldn't live here. Perhaps they should keep looking for the place where they belong.
"Axel!" Roxas moans, writhing slick and eager. His body steaming with arousal, his breath pollen-sweet.
Even sick, even aggravated by the persistent drip-drip-drip of the rain, Axel cannot find the means to refuse such beauty. Such brilliance, such burgeoning livelihood.
They end up rutting desperately in the mud. Axel knows he should not stay here, but knows Roxas will never leave. A place for all things, he had once glibly observed. A place for all things…
❀
And that is how the jungle becomes their home, their paradise. The cruel trees do not welcome them, the cruel beasts who live in the shadows have no love for them. There is only the oppressive heat, the game of hunting, and the music of the afternoon rains.
"Was our mistake," Axel whispers as his eyes follow the swinging gait of his soon to be dinner, "striving for humanity?"
Roxas, pressed against his side, flesh sticky and enticing, makes a low whistling noise.
"Humanity," he remarks coldly after a moment, "is for somebodies."
Axel inhales deeply and feels the sting. "I had hoped for better, you know?"
With sunlight glittering in his blond hair, Roxas smiles like a jungle creature and replies, "There is a place for all things, and we have molded to ours."
❀
Axel doesn't know how long they've been inside the jungle. Time is strange and unnecessary in this green Eden where every day is the same expression of verdant perfection. Axel does not know how long they have waited before the pulsating heat he had first felt deep within the jungle finally begins to spit its liquid fire.
He and Roxas wake to the rumbling of the earth early one morning and they watch as the white-hot lava spills forth from the earth in concert with the peach-and-yellow rising of the sun along the coast. There is a raucous of fire and death, followed closely by the gray stillness of ash.
Axel breathes deep of the sulfur. Feels it inside of his lungs, feels it feeding his inner fire. The urge to be a part of this power is overwhelming. He goes running to meet the burning wave.
"Axel!" Roxas calls after him. Roxas dares not follow him and he wonders if even Axel will survive such force.
All he can do is flee and try to hold a shield for as long as possible. The weight of the lava is immense, like the pressure of the ocean and he is buried beneath the onslaught. The suffocating heat slowly drains him until he is unconscious, just barely managing to breath from beneath the lava as it cools around him.
Axel comes back for him later, to dig him free of the residue. His thick red hair is still on aflame, his sharp green eyes are still rolled up in his head like a sleepwalker. Roxas is spent after the exertion of such a prolonged spell. His head lolls back as the fire demon gathers his limp body into its burning arms.
Axel takes him to a glade deep within the jungle. He lays his charge out on the spongy moss and lets him sleep beneath the bright white flowers of a great tree. As he cools, he too is drained of energy. He slumps down beside Roxas and descends into a warm murky sleep.
❀
The next morning, the world is covered in dew and sparkles. Roxas watches sleepily as each diamond glints against the rising sun, he does not know if he is dreaming or awake. However, his lips tingle and when he touches them… he knows he wants nothing more than to drink from the flowers scattered above him. He wants nothing more than to share them with Axel.
He wakes the man he's chosen to love. He motions wordlessly to the splendor above them and Axel looks around dreamily. The word is liquid and flowing in the brilliant morning light, the branches of the great tree sway smoothly in a slow breeze. The thin petals of the white flowers ripple gently, exposing a pale and alluring vein of vermillion inside of them.
The two drink from the white flowers of paradise together and it comes to Axel in an epiphany why they are here. He and Roxas both take their turns, drinking with slow relish and then kissing their salvation from one another's mouths. The dew poured forth from these petal cups tastes as sweet as honey. Perfect and timeless.
"We all could have lived here," Roxas whispers as immortality and a deep sense of fealty spreads through him. "We all could have guarded this place in peace."
Axel shakes his head, he reaches up and strokes Roxas's jaw with his thumb. "There is a reason we are the only two to survive."
They both look up at the tree, at its willowy branches and at its white flowers.
"If only they had known a flower could heal our sickness…"
They did not come looking for the tree of life but now that they have found her, they will not abandon her. They will love her and protect her. They will belong to her as they belong to nothing else.
❀
The heartless come eventually, unstoppable scourge that they are. They want to corrupt the tree, its power and its purity. Axel and Roxas are waiting for them, paragons of life and heat, unstoppably consumptively alive.
Sometimes Roxas wonders if being alive and having a heart are the same thing. When he wonders, he feels his blood surge and his hearing heighten and suddenly he can pick out the distinct sound of Axel's slightly rasping breath. His throat and lungs have been damaged by the ashes of the past. Reflecting on this, Roxas wonders what his own breath says about his memories.
The more he feels this characteristic of 'distinctness', the more he wants to keep it and he screams when he fights the heartless. He ululates against all that he remembers of the blackness (the sameness, of Sora, and of emptiness). There is a kind of darkness, an eventide, in the jungle, but it is dotted by the phosphorescence of the lizards and the insects. Little earth spirits that bob between the trees like little stars, wards to beat back the shadows.
Between the two of them, they drive back the heartless. They do not let the beasts harm their tree: their mother and their savior. They rend the tacky pitch piece by piece and let the land eat it all up.
"Well?" Roxas asks breathlessly as the sun explodes into lithium shades in its sinking. There are still those who believe the whispers of the red moon, Roxas has never been one of them. The branches of the great tree waver in the wind, its words speak to Roxas far more deeply than the whispers of lunacy.
"Well," Axel reflects, shaking tar from his long tangled hair. "It will be a good year."
He smiles at Roxas in the gathering night, his teeth and his eyes glinting. He sheds his sweat-sticky clothes and goes to wash the last of the heartless from his flesh. Roxas remains behind a moment, breathing deeply, listening to the dangerous sounds of the jungle-alive. The stirrings of all the creatures around him fill him with life. He sheds his own clothes and follows after the man he loves.
❀
They've forgotten the outside world by the time Kairi comes upon them. She is hurt, she is bleeding and she is afraid. She doesn't know where her white knight has gone and she's not strong enough to face the horde alone. Sora is her champion and he should be here to help her, but he is not.
Instead, the Nobodies find her curled up in a ball at the dark end of the jungle, sobbing and half-conscious. Axel and Roxas spend most of the day arguing about what they should do with her. She is not part of this world. She and her warriors and her Cause are things of the past.
"She is no threat to the tree." Roxas finally seethes as he sues to offer her sanctuary. He cannot help but remember how it felt to love her. At his words, Axel purses his lips contritely.
"I'm only thinking of you, Roxas," he says from between grit teeth. He knows her presence can cause only pain.
The tree of life suddenly pulsates in time with their hearts. They are left breathless with the palpitations. They pause to look at each other once more, a long moment of confusion. They are not becoming less human, the emotions they share between them become more perfect every day. The great tree's message to them is clear. At last, they go to gather the princess and hide her at the heart of this world.
She does not wake again until the hottest part of the day. She wakes screaming. She screams and then she shudders back into silence, clutching desperately at her legs, fetal and afraid.
Axel is the first to reach out for her. At the feel of warmth around her, Kairi lunges forward, weeping into his shoulder, against his skin.
❀
She does not calm down enough to recognize them until much later that night. They hunt for her, bring her a selection of fruits and meat and do their best to take care of her. When she has left her desperation behind, she stares at them in naked curiosity, recognizes their faces but cannot believe that it is them. Back from the dead, she thinks.
Axel still frightens and intrigues her, sly, whereas Roxas inspires an almost incapacitating guilt.
"How are you here?" she wonders. Her voice is even but her body trembles with fatigue, there is no story to tell.
The two men look at each other, wide-eyed, somewhat stricken. They do not know what to say. Axel had never existed. He had visited Death though. Its many faces had each looked at him, but not a one of them had wanted him.
Axel speaks up first, "I won a life of my own by being inconvenient." He tries to smile, glancing briefly at Roxas, but his voice is thin. The joke holds no mirth for him, only reminds him of what he is. "And I offered to split it with Roxas, if they would give him to me."
Kairi considers the implications of his words. His passion had been great enough to win him life and to win him love? She wonders if he is lying, though she recalls that he has never lied to her.
"Congratulations," she says, breathing shakily. She feels relieved: they have seen death, they will not leave her to the heartless for her sins.
Roxas shrugs at her words and offers her some fruit to eat. She is starving, but as she picks at the gleaming garnet seeds, her eyelids grow heavy. She glides effortlessly towards sleep. Relaxed, at last (at last!), she truly rests for the first time since her escape.
❀
And she dreams. She dreams about Roxas's beautiful face, about Sora's blue eyes. It's been a long time since the Organization fell. None of them are children any longer.
Yet, she'd never imagined Roxas as a man before. He had been dead to her for so long, so pure and eternal in his martyrdom. Sora has long since grown into a man. He has grown tall, he has grown powerful and over the years he has grown only more gentle.
Roxas is lithe, is dangerous and graceful.
"Like a knife, slid between Sora's ribs." She hears his voice hiss through the blackness that is her dreams. It is a writhing blackness and from its depths the figures of the Nobodies emerge.
They stand side-by-side, men as she has never seen them before. Their bodies are defined, their musculature is powerful, their eyes are curious and cruel and they watch her, stalk her. The living darkness wraps them in its arms, holds them and emanates an overwhelming heat. It says nothing to her. It only blossoms and moves around her, does not welcome her to its breast.
Roxas's mouth moves. He is speaking to her, but his words ring out like the squawking of a bird. Axel puts a hand on to his shoulder, nodding in agreement. His mouth moves. She hears only the crashing of a waterfall, the running sound of liquid.
❀
Kairi wakes in the growing light and she dreams she has returned to her islands of destiny, but she is alone in the glade of the great tree. Above her, like a concurrence of jewels the sunlight glitters in the branches of the great tree. She watches as the gleams of quicksilver dance flirtingly in the breeze, followed by the movements white-flower skirts.
She is terribly thirsty. Her throat only grows dryer as her eyes trace the patterns of the dew. She crawls slowly to her feet, where she wobbles from fatigue and prolonged terror, but she keeps her balance. She approaches one of the low-hanging flowers and reaches for it as if it were offered to her. When she touches it, liquid drips onto the tip of her finger. She stares at the clear sheen of it, mesmerized by the way it cleanses the dirt and the mud from the grooves of her finger.
She does not hear the chittering approach of the heartless.
She only feels the hungry rasping of their breath on the back of her leg. She turns, dreading the army that follows her, but she only finds a pair of scouts. She screams in anger and fear and begins to bludgeon them hysterically with her blade until they are slime and pulp to be digested by the earth. These scouts will make no report, but the others will follow their molasses trail to her and to this place.
She drops down into the soft moss, hugging herself and crying bitterly. Why is she always asked to face the heart of darkness alone? They may save her, but do they not realize how she suffers alone? Immersed in the heartless, feeling their every feral thought, feeling their lust for warmth; their hunger for blood and for hearts.
❀
She remembers that, like great insects, they fought for a queen. A great black goddess ravenous and destructive. As the war had raged on, as more and more of her endless warriors were slaughtered, their queen had sent for Kairi. Her eminence had her kidnapped in a whirlwind of darkness and had dragged to her dank halls carved into the ruined core of a desiccated world.
She stood waiting. The heartless queen in her hall of dirt and bone. She looked down at Kairi imperiously from her inhuman height.
"Am I not beautiful?" she wondered, flexing in her skin, in her human mockery. She was very beautiful, black skinned and yellow-eyed, her features perfect and terrifyingly alien. Her body was naked, supple, curving and alluring. Her dark hair was twisted up into elegant knots all around her head.
When she motioned Kairi—(trembling, Kairi tried to be strong, but the heartless twitched their antennae and licked at the air, and those with philia wiggled those as well, all of them tasting and feeling her there in the room, all of them eager to devour her, to use her and steal her strength and draw her holy warriors here to this very room where they would be conquered in a flood of black)—closer, Kairi noticed that she had no fingers, only lengths of black claw.
Soldiers pushed Kairi closer to the throne, pushed her to her knees before the queen.
"Do you know who I am, little princess?" she wondered, licking at her own lush lips. Her voice rang melodic and ethereal throughout the darkling hall.
Kairi shook her head and tried to quiet the way she shook, she reminded herself she was a woman now. She was heir to the Kingdom of Light (daughter of Kingdom Hearts) and she could show no fear in this place.
"Selma," the dark queen smiled. "I am Selma and I am queen of all those with broken wings and broken hearts. I rule the heartless and they love me for it."
"I thought," Kairi broached hesitantly, "I thought the heartless had no hierarchy but power. What of Maleficent and her convocation?"
Selma laughed softly, drew closer and tickled her claws across Kairi's skin. "Fools, pawns… there are few who know of me, little princess. You are very privileged to be invited into my presence."
"And what do you want from me?" Kairi demanded bravely, though she shied from the coldness of those claws.
"Join me or perish, little one. I am weary of your foolish game. For every world saved by your champion, I conquer another innumerable thousands." Selma held her gaze, stared deep in to Kairi's fair blue eyes, just as Kairi looked into the unholy depths of her golden stare.
"Never," the princess whispered. "Never, and if you ever had a heart you would know why."
"I had a heart," Selma promised gently. She leant forward and kissed Kairi softly on the mouth, the feeling of her lips burned like fire and Kairi jerked away. "I had a heart and it was ripped to pieces by a man I did not love."
"You would punish every living creature for your sadness?" Kairi rebuked, pulling away from the dark queen entirely. She stumbled back to her feet and stood defiantly before the throne.
Selma watched her curiously, a thin smile on her lips. She did not draw closer to Kairi again, only circled her, like liquid, like shadow, like a graceful adder.
"It is my… nature," she replied. "It is my hunger and it is my place. My heart suffered and so I was born as queen to all this darkness. With every heart we rend, I grow stronger and if you cannot stop me then you must submit to me. Give me your heart or set me free, little princess."
But Kairi could do nothing. She hesitated because behind the golden greed of Selma's eyes she thought she had seen life: She thought she had seen the woman Selma once was. Kairi loved and cared for her and desperately wished she could ease her pain.
With a wave of her hand, Selma threw her across the room, smashing her into the dirt walls. Bones of centuries past crunched beneath her and pricked at her like needles.
"I will not steal your heart yet, Kairi," Selma intoned. "I will give you time to think, to escape my machinations, if you can."
And Kairi had. But not before her heartless guards menaced her and stalked her nightmares, not before Selma tormented her with visions of apocalypse and heartbreak.
No one had come for her. No one had rescued her. Selma had promised no one would come for her, not this time.
❀
Kairi had escaped from Selma. She had stolen a piece of dark material and used it to open the corridors of darkness. She had escaped and she had been hunted from world to world. The feeling of helplessness, of being toyed with and preyed upon had been…
"Kairi?"
She looks up. There is a scratch along her cheek, one of the scouts had drawn blood and she had not noticed.
Roxas wipes away the blood gently and looks at the great tree, as if listening to it.
"Kairi… are they chasing you?" he asks her softly. "Will your presence bring them here?"
Her eyes widen, her heartbeat becomes swift and erratic. They will abandon her to Selma to protect their world, it is their right. She begins to sob uncontrollably, she collapses against the ground and wails out her terrors.
"You won't help me," she moans to herself. "You have no reason to help me, all we've ever done is hurt you. We destroyed you and we used Axel up like a tool and then discarded him. You won't help me, you won't save me."
Roxas tries to comfort her, lifting her up and letting her cry against him. He says nothing.
"Roxas," she hiccups. "Roxas, I'm so happy you're alive. I'm so happy for you and I'm so sorry I came here, I'm so sorry."
"It's all right, Kairi," he tells her, at last. "It's all right, I don't blame you and neither does Axel. We know you have been alone and afraid for a long time, we will do what we can for you."
❀
When Axel returns from his time in the jungle, he and Roxas talk briefly and decide to take Kairi out to the coast for the afternoon. They lay her out on the sand beneath the warmth of the sun. Axel sits with her, unwilling to get any closer to the ocean and Roxas goes to collect clams and fish for dinner.
Kairi naps for the better part of the high afternoon. Axel nudges her occasionally to move with the shade or to roll over, but they do not speak. There are things she has to tell him, but she is exhausted.
Roxas wakes her to watch the sunset as it descends beneath the sea. It looks to Kairi like a great pink pearl cast away over the horizon. This world is so beautiful, so consumptive and uncultivated. There is no winter here and the new plants simply kill the old and life continues on. It gives her much to think about.
Axel makes a fire on the beach in the growing darkness, while Roxas guts and cleans the fish, preparing the food. Kairi watches them in silence, eats what she is offered and only when her thoughts have been collected does she speak.
"Should I… leave by morning?" she asks.
Both men look at her coldly in the dark. It is obvious from both their expressions that she is a dire threat to their happiness here.
"If you stay here, we will protect you," Axel answers. "We will protect the jungle."
"But, you can't stay here, Kairi," Roxas murmurs, there is something more behind his words, but he seems unable to tell her the rest. "You want to go home."
She nods. She thinks of Sora, of Riku and of home.
"We can't help you with that," Axel sighs. He seems exasperated more than anything else, not angry, not fearful.
"We can't leave, Kairi," Roxas seems to apologize. "You will have to continue on by yourself."
❀
The days in the jungle are full of splendor and rejuvenation. She no longer wakes up alone, Axel or Roxas guard her and the tree at all times. They bring her food, they show her clean water to drink and a pool to bathe in. They are curiously cold to her, however.
She reminds them of… humanity, she thinks. She reminds them of pain and if she would only leave this place they would return to being one of the animals, one of the plants. They are very kind, very human, but in them she sees a restlessness, a restlessness to see her gone and to return to paradise.
"How did you find this place?" she asks them curiously. She's lying on her back in the spongy moss, watching thin wisps of cloud creep across the beautiful blue sky.
Roxas is up in the canopy at the edge of the clearing, Axel is leaned against the trunk of the huge tree.
"We looked in many places," Roxas muses. Axel is quiet, mouth pinched. "Some of them were hot and some of them were cold. Some of them teemed with people and some of them didn't. But only this world's heart could welcome us despite what we are. We owe our souls and our happiness to the kind heart of this world."
Kairi smiles. She looks like herself again, strong and gorgeous. She is recovering her health and her spirits in this glade. "Sometimes I wish I understood my place in the world so well."
"And… how did you find this place?" Axel wonders. Kairi hesitates, but from the pocket of her tattered clothes she pulls out the dark bangle. It glints in the sunlight, onyx and obsidian and cold even in the midday heat.
The tree inhales deeply and the wind rustles its branches in agitation.
"I do not like the smell of that," Axel grumbles, reaching out to examine it. Kairi lets him hold it in his hands and turn it over in his fingers. Roxas is alarmed by its stench, he comes closer and as he des begins to understand the nature of the item, he frowns.
"You cannot keep that here."
Kairi reaches for the bangle protectively. She tucks it back into her pocket and lowers her eyes. If they cannot guard her from the scourge, she will need it again.
"Will you take me home then? Will you use your powers as Nobodies and open the doors to darkness?" she asks them. They say nothing. "Will you take me home?"
"Kairi," Roxas begins, again sounding frustrated with himself and with the world.
"We can't leave, Kairi," Axel says in the stead of the man he has grown to love. It is the first time he has used her name since they met on the beaches of Destiny Island a long time ago.
"I'll keep it then and I'll leave soon."
Axel smiles, the expression tense and unsure and it quickly fades. He spots something amongst the trees and alerts Roxas to it without a world. A heartless raiding party blazes up out of the jungle, destroying and ravaging and blighting as they go.
The two men draw their weapons from the between worlds, feel the steel sliding into their hands through the rift. They say nothing to her before attacking the creatures, ripping them apart with efficient brutality. None of the beasts escape to warn others and when Roxas turns to look at her again he says,
"You cannot keep that here much longer. They can track it and they will find you."
❀
Kairi hears them argue in the evenings. They think she is asleep. They argue about her, about her artifact, about Sora, about love and about pain. There are breaks in their arguments, moments where the tree makes some noise that they listen to.
She does not understand the tree. She can feel its power and its allure, but she does not understand it.
More than that, their fights make her feel guilty, make her heart clench in her chest. She's destroying their happiness again. Just like when they asked Roxas to disappear for their Cause, when they let Axel burn himself out for their sake. These two have already given so much. Her guilt is only somewhat assuaged in that they seem to reconcile by the morning. She tries not to think about or get in the way of their sex life, but she can't deny its existence either. When she wakes alone in the morning, she knows they have gone elsewhere for privacy.
The time alone is not as unwelcome as it once was. She takes her time in waking, enjoys the warming of the sun and the sweet smell of the early morning breeze. However, very quickly her attention is once more drawn to the great tree, to its swaying branches and the way the dew glitters on its flowers and leaves.
It calls to her, she can almost hear its voice. She can almost feel the coolness of the dew on her lips and before she really knows what she's reaching for, she's stood and held out her hand to cup one of the white flowers.
Another hand reaches from behind her and gently brushes hers away.
"Don't," Axel says in her ear. "Don't drink that, Kairi. If you do, you'll never see home again."
Unaccountable petulance fills her. "I want it. I don't need to return home, not if I can have it."
Axel breathes in deeply, she can hear the way he closes his eyes, the way he tries to be strong. "I know," he admits. "And I have no right to tell you not to. Roxas and I drank it, but we have no home to go to, Kairi. We have nowhere else to belong."
"I would be safe here," Kairi murmurs. She does not reach for the flower again. "If I destroyed the bracelet, I could disappear."
"You might never see Sora again."
"Isn't Roxas close enough?" She doesn't know why she says something so heartless. It must be her hunger for the tree's gift and perhaps Axel understands that, because he does not strike her down for it.
He only tells her, "No. He isn't and he never will be. This isn't your home, Kairi. If the universe were a different place, without Kingdom Hearts and without heartless, you could live here, if you wanted. But it isn't and you can't stay here."
She swallows, conquers her lust and her greed. She is a princess of heart. She can purge the darkness and reawaken only to the majesty of the jungle.
"What will you do?" she asks quietly, pushing back her fear and sadness.
Axel takes her hand in his and they walk towards the crystalline bathing pool.
"We will guard this world, forever, for as long as the tree allows us to drink its elixir of life."
Kairi smiles at him. "Congratulations," she says.
Axel laughs and she likes the warm sound of it.
❀
She lingers in the jungle too long. The temptation is too strong and her fascination with thelovers Roxas and Axel have become is too stirring. She lingers too long and Selma's army comes to bring her back.
A full compliment of heartless spills from the depths of the tarry portal. Thousands of foot soldiers, thousands of lancers and dragoons and wizards. It had taken Sora a team of warriors to defeat a number half this size and here they are: three.
She has lingered too long and she knows she should run now, but she cannot in good conscience leave Axel and Roxas to their deaths.
"What will you do?" she asks them as they retreat towards the heart of the world where the great tree will offer them what shelter it can.
Roxas is grim and silent, but Axel just laughs: "We'll destroy them, every last one."
The ground shakes beneath them, Kairi imagines the footsteps of giant heartless with gaping maws.
"How?" she wonders, breathless and overwhelmed by her helplessness in the face of such great evil. "There are so many of them."
The shaking of the ground is not the heartless. It is the volcanic heat at the center of the world and as they near the glade, flames begin to crawl and writhe from Axel's flesh. The leaves he brushes past combust, the fire spreading. He remembers this power, and he is ready to channel it.
Roxas opens a portal for her in front of the great tree. The glade is ripe with the cloying scent of Elysium, the tree bids her its farewell.
"You should go while you can," Roxas prompts. "Only use that charm when you have to. They can feel it when you use their power. You should go."
Kairi hesitates, she is watching Axel. His attention is directed towards the volcano, watching the smoke with laughter in his eyes and howls and heat—babbling delirium on his lips. She can feel the power of him from here, his incendiary nature is building. She fears for him. She fears he will burn too brightly and will lose his life again.
"What about… what about the jungle, what about Axel?" She grips Roxas's hand and looks into his eyes. She won't let him lie to her and she won't accept a sacrifice.
Roxas, the man he has become, smiles at her gently. "Axel will be fine. He can control this power and the jungle will grow back. Now go."
"I love you, both of you," Kairi promises.
"Hmm," Roxas hums and smiles. The tree rustles it branches insistently and Kairi begins through the doorway to darkness. When she pauses and looks back, she sees Roxas clambering up into the tree for safety, she sees Axel wreathed in flame and lava pouring over the beautiful jungle, leaving it dead and grey.
No heartless follow her. She runs like a fox.
❀
By the next full moon, the jungle is teeming with life again. Axel's body hair has grown back and Roxas has only just begun to feel the sting of Kairi's words. The humanity she has tainted them with.
"This is our place," Roxas murmurs, looking for reassurance, cradled in Axel's arms. Their bed is the moss beneath the great tree, their blanket is the stars.
"This is our place," green-eyed Axel asserts and buries his nose in Roxas's wiry hair. He breathes in his scent: honey, sweat, and green mint.
"She said she loves us," Roxas continues quietly, sadly. His chest hurts.
"She does love us," Axel answers. "There's finally something to love."
Roxas falls quiet, breathing in and out uncomfortably. At last he ventures, "Is she all right?"
Axel hesitates to answer. "She's… indelible. She is a part of everything and even if Kairi dies, another spirit like hers will be born into the world and will love us."
Roxas can't stop the tears that drip from his eyes onto Axel's forearm. No, he does not like the way that thought feels inside is heart. He remembers her smiles as they were when backlit by the tropical sun of the Islands, by the constant ebb and flow of the ever-blue ocean.
"I wish I could have helped her more."
Axel sighs. He presses his cheek against Roxas's temple and looks at the tree, the way the moon sits in its branches like a lover.
"I wish she'd never come here," Axel says honestly.
The glade is quiet except for Roxas's tears and the tree's gentle nighttime rustling. It speaks to them of peace, of eternity, of heartbreak and of love. It opens its heart to them, even in this weakened state of theirs. They had come here harried, cold, and bitter, barely alive at all. Yet now they carry sadness, hurt, and loss for the mortality they once shared.
"Yes," Roxas agrees when he has no more tears to shed. He wipes his eyes and looks at Axel, who he has so come to love.
The pain will ease, the tree promises them and they believe. They are snug and welcome in this place that is theirs. Roxas kisses Axel briefly on the lips before settling back in to sleep.
In the morning, all across the jungle, new life will grow and they will destroy any blight-bearing heartless who come this way. They will wipe Kairi's trail clean.
It rains in the early afternoon. Axel sits in the downpour, his mouth open to it, and listens to the unhappy creaking of his bones. When Roxas comes up behind him and touches his shoulders, Axel leans back into his warmth. He reflects on how he hates the rain, reflects that he will never escape it: on us all a little rain must fall.
Yes, their happiness will return, perhaps sooner than they know.
Roxas smiles down at him lovingly, his eyes curiously electric. Axel returns the expression tiredly; he revels in his lover's touch.
"Axel," Roxas whispers, dropping down beside him. "You are the most important thing in my life," he promises.
Those words warm Axel to his very bones.
Standard Disclaimers.