People don't change

Title: Change

Rating: K

Summary: Roxas can't change himself, but he can change that around him.

Notes: Drabble, written for the drabble community on livejournal. The prompt was "if only."

People don't change. Circumstances do. Reasons and motivations do. But not people.

There's nothing different in the way he moves, or the way he runs his fingers through his eternally messy hair. They do what they're supposed to: they collect hearts, they find the weak, they masquerade around and call each other names and sit on top of the clock tower and ask questions and poke holes in the very fabric of existence itself. That hasn't changed, not after the mess that happened in the Castle, not after the worry and the suspicions and the increased questions that tear, little by little, into the sky they've painted.

He hasn't changed, he's still the same person, he's still the same one that wakes up in the middle of the night dreaming about being buried alive in the belly of a giant beast and falling from the canopies of magnificent trees. He's still the person who can't name why he's sad, why he's lonely, and why he doesn't feel right. He's still the person who doesn't exactly remember why stabbing things with black, spiky red symbols on them will make this already tattered existence any more complete.

There's nothing different in the sky tonight, there's nothing different in the dark monsters of buildings, and there's nothing different in his head, except for that fact that he knows he's never coming back. There's someone sitting on the sidelines, and he's telling him that he's going to be killed, that he can't betray the façade of the home he's had. He shouldn't, and that always hasn't changed, and he hasn't either, but he needs to know.

Nobody would miss him. Who he is, at this moment, walking by, is still the same person who walked by this building yesterday, and the day before, and three months before that. His friend, standing there, telling him to not go, he's been here before to. They've not changed.

And tomorrow, and the next day, and three months from now, he's still going to be the same person. Waking up dreaming of being buried alive and falling. The person who can't name exactly why he doesn't feel right, why he's lonely, and why he's sad. The person who lo-lo-loves the friend telling him not to go, the person walking by this building and wondering that if only something were different, he wouldn't be like this. Dreaming of being buried in some suffocating darkness. Dreaming of falling off the edge of the world and out of the painted sky they'd ripped holes into sitting on the clock tower, watching the sun set.

He's not going to change. He can't change himself, but he can change his circumstances and his reasons and he can try to find the mold that will repair the ruins they've made out of their very existence.