It was a little while after his death when I began to have the dreams. At first, I wasn't even aware that it was him; I thought it was just a dream about fire.
The dream dawned dark and quiet in a small cabin with a small fire crackling away in the far corner and I thought nothing of it until one night, when the dream came, I saw a coat belonging to one of us hanging on a rack near the door. The lights raised a bit more every night thereafter.
The feeling that he was there didn't come until later, when the room was bright as sunlight. I heard a sound from upstairs and when I rushed to attend to it, I woke up still hearing it; his laughter.
I started sleeping late. I drudged through missions and drudged back to sleep before doing it all over again. It was only during that time that I truly felt like a Nobody. I staggered around the Tower and mostly ignored everyone. I wrote him letters and kept them in my journal until such time came, I thought, when I could finally read them to him. I could someday ask my questions of him frankly and get straight answers. I'd be able to hear him, see him, touch him again.
The dreams progressed. By the time three months had passed since he'd laughed, I was able to get to the top of the stairs and halfway down the hall to his room before I'd wake up.
It was torturous. It was draining me of all my energy. It was making me sick. But, I craved him. I just wanted one more look at him.
To be honest, I didn't even know why yet. I'd never felt this way but then, without him, there was no one to ask. No one would tell me why I felt that way; that, in my chest where my heart never would be, I finally felt the ache of loss.
I kept showing up later and later to meetings until finally, one day, I just didn't show up at all. When my alarm went off, I just turned over and turned it off without thinking. I knew I was shirking my duties to the Organization but I could almost touch the doorknob to his room now and I felt like something was going to give soon.
When the Organization found me, I was punished for insubordination. They threw me in a padded room they called Solitary. I spent three months there, sleeping and pounding my head against the wall to get back to sleep.
Then...
It happened. Finally, I was able to get the door open. Axel had never looked better. He was lying on his stomach on the floor of his room with a comic book in one hand, the midday sun glinting off his hair. His eyes were filled with tears from laughing so hard. He opened his mouth to speak and I woke up again.
Saïx started dousing me with a hose when I'd fall asleep. That was just the sick person he was. It wasn't the others; no, they never approved of it but there really wasn't anything they could do unless they wanted to join me. I didn't think so.
I didn't see Axel again for weeks, until Saïx was destroyed and I was finally able to slink back to my room to recover. When I finally did see him, I was in so much pain physically that it transcended into my dream.
I was lying on my back with Axel beside me, gently sponging blood from my forehead. I ached all over. When he touched me, the pain dissapated immediately. I found I couldn't move when I tried to open my mouth to speak. Axel just shook his head and smiled mysteriously at me.
As time went on, my wounds healed and I was able to leave the crumbling ruins that the Tower had become. I found another ruin, this one a city. I broke into a house and barred myself inside. I had nothing but the clothes on my back and no way of defending myself, should some looter decide he wanted into my desolate living space.
Food was hard to find, at first. At two weeks in, I found a basket of food and supplies outside the hole I used as a door. I silently thanked whoever it was and holed myself up in the shack until it ran out.
I languished there, clinging to life and these pathetic dreams of someone whom I now knew I loved. He wasn't alive anymore, maybe never was, and there wasn't anything I could do about it.
It started to hurt to spend time with him in my dreams. I could never truly feel him against me, never have him reach out for me, never really hear him again. I wished against wish that, one day, I'd wake up and there he'd be, lying next to me.
The food stopped coming. I had to move on. The looters had acquired weapons. I slipped out the hole in the wall and away from the city.
I didn't dream for three months. In that time, I was able to find a more stable place to stay and even someone who was willing to feed me in exchange for a few household chores. I used an assumed name, ditched my Organization gear by the side of the road and just dove into work.
When the dreams returned, I started to drag again. By now, I had decided on a course of action. I was going to go to the Destiny Isles to see Sora. I needed help and there was only one person I could think to ask.
It would be a long journey. I packed up what I could, explained it all away into a cute little package to my employer, who couldn't possibly be shown the pain of the truth. She truly was a good woman. It wasn't my intention to hurt her.
I left that night and started looking for a way to get to the Destiny Islands. My dream-Axel was pacing beside the window when I met up with him in "our room" that night.
"You know this is useless."
He nodded.
"You know you're fucking DEAD, don't you?"
He nodded.
"Can you say anything? Can you make me feel something?"
He looked down at his hands and reached out to try. His fingers were cold in my hair.
He kissed me a few times and wrapped his arms around me but it didn't matter what he did.
I couldn't feel him.
The journey took me through many spheres of life that I hadn't thought to ever visit. I got a tip from a pirate in Neverland that lead me on a wild goose chase that would have made the Family Circus dizzy.
I ended up on a bench in Traverse Town outside the bar. I wept into my hands. When the lights came on inside the bar, I walked inside and asked for a glass of water. I sat in the back of the bar and watched the lights dance outside. I left and went back to my room to sleep, to see Axel again. Maybe this would be it. Maybe this time, I'd die and be able to see him as much as I wanted.
The boat left for the Destiny Islands at dawn. It was cold and rainy and we could barely see in the fog. I'd pickpocketed a man at the docks for the cash to send a telegraph ahead of me to Sora to let him know I was coming.
He and Riku met me at the dock and hurried me back to the house. I laid everything out on the table to them. Sora smiled and put his hand over mine.
"I understand what's going on, Roxas."
I blinked.
"It's the same thing that happened with Riku and I after he shut himself into the darkness. He called out to me and found me."
I hung my head.
"But, Axel died! He isn't calling out to me, Sora."
Sora shrugged.
"Do Nobodies ever actually die, Riku?"
He shrugged, too.
"Not the way Xemnas explained it. Didn't he ever tell you about it, Roxas?"
I knew nothing.
"I know nothing. Nothing at all without Axel. He was always the one who knew everything."
Before I knew it, I was crying.
Riku stood up and rolled his shoulders back a few times to shake off the stiffness of sitting for so long. "Maybe you need a substitute, a tutor to step in and teach you in his absence. I'll tell you what I know about Nobodies." Sora patted the couch next to him.
In the end, I discovered that Nobodies weren't just immortal; they were also recurring. When Axel died, he simply floated back to the Tower to incubate with the other dead Organization members. I both punched Riku in the ribs and kissed him square on the mouth before I left.
Every step I took from the moment I got back to the Tower felt like another eternity. How many more steps were there until I reached him? Just the feeling that my suffering might be over forever starting tonight was exhilirating. I climbed the stairs to the chamber Riku had described. I realized it was the same room where I'd met Axel, lounging on the couch.
There were thirteen huge pods in a circle around the room. I looked for the one marked Number 8. It wasn't hard to locate, since most of the other pods had been destroyed. It was scorched but the Roman numeral on it was still legible. The pod was opened. I lifted myself onto its flat surface and waited patiently for it's owner.
A few hours later, I heard a loud hissing noise that startled me awake. This hissing was followed closely by a very long yawn and I saw the lid to another pod open. I had hardly any time to react when Axel sat up and rubbed the back of his head. His fox-like eyes locked up with mine and lit up, lamplike.
He beckoned to me. I licked my lips and almost fell off his pod. I made my way to him and stopped to stand in front of him.
"What are you doing in my pod, Axel?"
He shook his head.
"It smells like you."
I seriously doubted that.
I reached out with one hand and somehow found myself holding his throat. He smiled up at me. "Your hands are warm, Roxas." His smile still burned my soul but his hands and his kiss burned my body to the point where I thought the flames would engulf me.