"Hey buddy," I say, as I usually do when I enter this room. It's a routine now, a play I put on for only myself. I'm sure Hayner would appreciate all the effort I put in to making myself feel better, but he's been in a coma for the last year and cant quite open his eyes enough to see me jump through all the hoops.

I drew him a get-well card in my spare time, as if I don't think about him being here enough. I put it with about sixteen others all lined up on his bedside table. This one is unelaborate and very lame compared to the amount of time I put into some of the others. I drew an alarm clock buzzing on the cover and inside its simply says wake up.

I brush back the hair from his forehead, before sitting down. "You used to gel your hair every damn day." He also used to sit up by himself, he used to smile, and get angry too quickly and be a normal kid.

It's useless. I pull my hands away when it's only his breathing machine that answers me with the cold shhh ahhh of forced breath. That noise is the stuff of nightmares, or well, my nightmares anyway. Hayner just lays there, paler then he used to be, thinner too. I swallow. Sometimes, if I'm honest with myself I forget what he was like before. I forget exactly how he used to punch me in the arm, or that look on his face when he got some hair brained idea in his head.

Those things are all true, they're there, in my memories but even those thoughts remind me of this.

He's a potato, and he'd kick my ass if he knew I was the coward who kept him alive.

I'm the only one who still visits him. I'm sure Pence and Olette would if you know, they weren't dead.

I wonder sometimes what they would say to me. What we would talk about all around him. I wonder if he's waiting for them to come so that he can wake up. It's why I decorated this place with mementoes of them. Pence's polaroid's and Olette's knitting as if somehow they're proper substitutes for the real thing.

I'm so numb to these kinds of thoughts I can't even get upset about them anymore. I used to cry. Shove my head into his side and beg him to wake up, move, or to do anything.

I did a lot of crying in those days. Poor Sora, eventually he learned to just leave me to it, and I got all cried out. The guilt's still there, buried to the hilt in my gullet, a wound I've just grown around.

I muse for a moment, speaking out loud just for kicks. "Olette would fuss, she'd pull your blankets tight around you and make sure your tubes were all correctly laid and she'd get so sad that you no longer call her Omelet jokingly. That you cant.

Pence would do what Pence does. He'd crack jokes, none of them very thought out, then he'd make one about you being in this coma, Hayner, and none of us would laugh. Pence would hold his camera like a life line, looking at a scene he'd rather forget all together then capture forever."

I shake my head, its haunting being without them. I can remember them with such clarity, but not Hayner, maybe its because those memories are all I have left of them. They're dear. I wish, for the millionth time that Hayner would wake up. Even if I would have to explain it all, and know that he'd hate me more with every word.

"Hey," I say, putting my bag down and rustling through it. "I brought you the new issue of Struggle." Struggle, its this fighting tournament we were going to enter together, Hayner and me, and Hayner, well, that was his biggest dream. Not to fight in the little backyard fight that's a shadow of the real thing but to go pro. Now it's me trying to make that true.

I pull out the magazine. There's this new hot shot, cocky fighter who smiles like he's the epitome of struggle and they put him on the front cover. "See this guy," I put my finger right over his perfect face. "He's got spikey red hair and super green eyes and he's a damn giant. His names Axel, he's a decent fighter but he is one son of a bitch. We'll never be in the same division though." I say flipping through the magazine.

I read out an article here or an interview there. "They did a whole spread on the guy. Calls himself the Flurry of Dancing Flames. Can you believe that? I wish I could fight him if only to knock that smug ass grin off his face."

'Why do I dislike him so much?' Hayner would ask. 'Think he's cute or somethin'."

To be fair, he's got some great assets, but who could love that mouth? To which Hayner would roll his eyes and say something dirty, probably about blowjobs or 69ing. I laugh to myself. The way Hayner executed his jokes was hilarious. Not because they were particularly funny, but because he always had to act them out. No matter how vulgar or socially unacceptable, and he always committed.

Also, he never really cared that I'm gay. He'd make cracks about it, sure, when I came into practice limping or had to do some extra stretching but he never cared who my partners were, just if they were hot.

He was, I mean is, my favorite asshole.

"I miss you," the words echo around me because there's no way Hayner can answer me, but its true, a weight bearing down on my heart. The always feeling of being with him but without him all at once. I can only cling to the idea that he'll wake up, and get at least some semblance of his life back and die when he's old.

Only there's never any guarantee. The doctors just don't know. He could wake up any day now, or be in the coma forever, or just flat line for no reason.

I take his hand. I will let him go, I think I'll be able to do it once what I promised him comes true. If only it didn't scare me so much, what if I'm a day to soon? What if I switched him off and he would've woken up the next day?

I'd give anything to switch him places, anything for it to be me lying there, but everything I have apparently the Gods don't want.

The magazine lays open on his bedside, like he took a moment to jerk it to one of the hot half-naked ladies holding the balls. Like he would have once. "I'll leave this for your perusal." I say, setting it on the pile I've left for him. There's twelve now, he'd be so pissed he was so behind.

"Well," I stand picking up my backpack. "I'll see you tomorrow."

When I walk through the door there's a crash bang with smaller bangs as if a cart is being knocked over. I don't see anything but I hold in the doorway paralyzed by the loudness in an otherwise quiet part of the hospital. They wouldn't come for him would they?

Then, I see him running, a line of blood coming through his medical gown. I have to blink away my surprise. Its Axel, the asshole from the Struggle cover.

He spots me and I have half a mind to duck back into Hayner's room, but he'll just pass me by right? Wrong. He skids to a halt right in front of me, panting, holding his wounded side. What. The. Fuck.

Axel holds up a finger, bending to catch his breath, even hunched over he's still just a little taller then me. Jerk. I narrow my eyes at his finger.

"Is there a way out of here?" He asks, his breath a little labored.

"You could try the elevator, and take it down to the first floor."

"No. I cant. See, I cracked a rib. Axel, by the way." He holds out his other hand, I don't take it. "Pleasure." It's a sarcastic comment but he has this dumb-ass grin on his face. "See. Okay. They'd never let me leave and I can't be here anymore."

"There's a balcony through those double doors. You could jump."

To my surprise, he laughs. I really wasn't trying to be funny.

"Its certainly would be the fastest way, but I'm not so good with heights either."

I look him up and down, he's not even wearing shoes, makes me think he jumped out of the hospital bed first chance he could and ran this way of all ways. "If you've got cracked ribs why do you want to leave anyway? And look, you're bleeding everywhere."

"I've got a physician at home." He says, dodging the question. "They took me here when I was passed out."

"You got knocked out," I say, smiling a little.

"No. Passed out. Not knocked out." His expression lights up like a city at night, and then I realize. I gave it away. I told him that I know who he is. I can just die now, thanks. Way to feed his ego Roxas.

I clench my fists at my sides, anger pooling in me and I might go off like a mad dog so I say. "There's stairs here. If you take a left at the bottom you'll miss the front desk, take another left and there's a side entrance."

"Know your way around, huh?"

"I'm here a lot." Axel looks into the room behind me. I wonder what he sees there. Just some kid, just some vegetable, not Hayner. Whatever he sees he keeps his face neutral about it.

"Well, I am sure glad I ran into you Mr. I'm-here-a-lot." He drags this part out. Tough luck, dude, my names my own.

There are more footsteps coming up the hall. "Aw, well, gotta run." And he winks at me.

Gross.

He takes off down the stairwell, and four more people I don't recognize run past me, but I'm sure are his managers and bodyguards. "Wait!" I call to them. They stop just long enough to give me the stink eye. "He went down the stairs."

"Thank you." One of them says before they all follow Axel into the stairwell.

I smile to myself before walking to the elevator and pushing the down arrow so it lights up green. Good thing I wont ever have to see him again.

~.~

I love writing sarcastically. So. Get ready for a lot of that. ^^