Forever

"Hey..."

"Hey, kiddo..." The world around me seemed to be made of a perfect softness, like floating on a cloud. Could this be what it is like for all nobodies to disappear? Did the others feel this too? Then maybe I shouldn't have been so upset to be leaving; what's there to be worried about if the journey was so comfortable?

"Hey, kiddo, time for you to wake up now." Something hard grabbed my shoulder, and shook, disrupting the softness around me. Inching my eyes open, I found myself surrounded by a while light and immediately shut my eyes again.

"I saw that. Come on, open your eyes, you'll want to see this place." That voice, I knew that voice from somewhere. Was it...? I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out, even as I tried again I could get nothing more than a small noise in the back of my throat. Giving up on speaking, I opened my eyes again, careful of such a light after living so long on a world so covered in darkness.

At first I couldn't see much, just white, and as my eyes moved around a red blur moved closer towards me. Blinking, the blur came into focus more and I could see a familiar smiling face.

"... Axel?" I managed to breathe, which he amazing heard.

"That's me. Get it memorized." My lips curled into a smile as I heard his favourite catch-phase, though it sounded slightly different, if felt like forever since I'd heard him use it, and my heart seemed to flutter with... happiness. Shifting uncomfortable with this sense of emotion, I realized that I really was floating in some kind of cloud type thing. Axel offered his hand to me, as I started to spin sideways, helping me stay up right. "Don't worry about that," he laughed. "It took me a while to get used to that after I first got here."

"Where is here?" I asked, my voice returning, now sounding like a hoarse whisper rather than pathetic-ness. Axel laughed again, and I noticed something different about it; it didn't seem to be the same laugh from before. This one was more... genuine, like a real laugh not the fake ones from someone who couldn't feel.

"You're guess is as good as mine, kiddo." I glanced around the white cloud like place before looking back at him.

"It's like a giant cloud here, is this some kind of afterlife?" He beamed at me when I asked the question like he had been waiting for that the whole time.

"Heaps better than that kiddo, this is just a passage way to something greater."

"A passage way?" I asked as he moved forward and swept his hand over what I guessed to be an invisible door way. The cloud area he'd just touched shimmered for a moment before it visibly extended out into a long corridor. Beyond the corridor there was a lush world of greens and browns and blues. Amazed I started to float forward, past when Axel had stopped, towards the beautiful world at the end of the corridor.

It was a strange feeling, to be so amazed by a place so natural. I wanted to be there and had to wonder what my other half would have thought of it. That was a bit of a stretch though, as I didn't know a thing about my other half, like whether they would have cared for this kind of world or if they had been anywhere like this. And to think that I was amazed at the first world I went to after leaving The World That Never Was.

"Amazing, right?" Axel asked, still floating back where he was before the corridor appeared.

"Yeah..." I thought for a moment. "Where does the passage way lead? And why are you here?"

"Hard to say..." He replied, hesitating for the right words. "This is your passage way, I can't tell you where it leads..."

"... Axel? What's going on here? Why are you here, where are the others, and seriously what is with this passage way made of clouds?" Silence took a tight grip on the place then as Axel glanced around while rubbing the back of his neck. He was avoiding answering my questions, and from the look on his face and what limited knowledge I had of emotions, it was something serious that he was meant to be telling me.

"Oh," I said, feeling sad. As much as I thought that my life had already been pulled away from me before this, I felt even the worst parts rip themselves from me. Like the relationships I had with the other Organization members, it was sad to think that I would never see them again; after being such a permanent part of my life, I felt weird without them. Having everything taken from me, even my hope of rescuing Roxas; I seriously wouldn't mind having those other pain-in-the-neck nobodies back.

"Hey, cheer up kiddo, things aren't that bad. The others should be okay, if they ended up somewhere like here. The passage... the passage is for you to pass through. And I am here... we are both here because of Sora." I cringed at Roxas' somebodies name, remembering my death. There had been a Keyblade master, an explosive Keyblade, and a mysterious boy that held my hand as I disappeared. Shaking the memory from my head, I turned my focus back to the present.

"What if I can't pass through it?"

"... Then you'll be stuck here with me forever," he said smiling that tormenting smile. He used to smile like that when he was trying to cheer someone up, and I couldn't help but smile a little at his pathetic attempt to cheer me up.

"God, I'd hate to have to see you're ugly every day forever," I joked, the same way we used to banter – when it was all just pretext.

"Oh, ouch, that one hurt. I happen to be a damn sight better looking than you kiddo, got it memorized?" He laughed, it really was a nice laugh, maybe because it was genuine or because it meant he was really laughing at my joke – like real friends would.

"Yeah, well at least I wouldn't have to look at myself," I remarked, poking out my tongue. "And don't call me 'kiddo'! My somebody was an adult when they lost their heart." Axel just shook his head and smiled more. There was a long pause of silence which really started to become uncomfortable – and I thought that was just a figure of speech – before Axel spoke again.

"You went after... him, didn't you?"

"I wish I hadn't..." It felt like ages ago that we were laughing and smiling, or even that I saw that weird corridor open up. "I attacked him, to force him to... free Roxas." Axel nodded, understanding when I didn't continue speaking. I'd attacked Sora in a rather ridiculous attempt to return my best friend – which failed miserably ending in my 'death' instead.

"Guess we're both fools..." My head snapped up, my eyes locking with his. When Namine told me where to find Sora, she told me that Axel will have died in battle before then. Exactly what kind of battle did he get himself into? It had to have been a bad one, Axel is one of the toughest guys I know.

The question was, what did that have to do with my attack on Sora? Did Axel go after Roxas too? That had to be it! Axel went to find his friends again, somehow a fight broke out, and... and well, Axel must have lost. We really were a pair of fools, just like the others used to say.

"We defiantly are," I smiled. "So what do we do now?" Axel floated up beside me, grabbed my shoulders and turned me towards the passage way where I could see the lush world beyond. He gave me a hard push then, and I floated several metres before being able to stop and right myself.

"Go." He gestured for me to keep moving.

"But what about you?" I asked, wanting to float back and make sure that he came with me – we had become close friends after all and it felt wrong to leave him behind after everything we went through.

"I'll be fine. Now go."

"Axel, I can't just-"

"Go! I'll be fine, seriously." He smiled as I moved to turn around again, adding one last thing before I headed towards the other end of the corridor. "And the name is Lea. Get it memorized!"

"I will, I'll remember it forever." I whispered disappearing down the corridor as the nobody 'Axel' returned to his whole self, and I... well I finally got back to where I belonged. And I planned to enjoy it, forever.