There's something about going on a journey, isn't there?
There are always hints that humans were never meant to travel in packs. There's a satisfaction, a feeling that comes with making it alone, and with a purpose and a meaning built underneath layers of anger or malice or passion.
Being on the road, however, takes a while. It's a pathway to your destination, but it's also the longest pathway you'll most likely take. In every story there are obstacles to overcome, and the path on a journey is often littered with them.
Axel's obstacles were delirium, desire and death.
And the fact that in Twilight Town, always pulsing with some dim glow that credited its namesake, the walls changed and the sky never moved but the names and positions of places shifted regularly. Even now, when he sat still in some spotless, ridiculous alleyway, the walls were closing in just slightly. It could even just have been the delirium sinking in. Every time he put his fingers near his face, he could see tendrils of black slowly lifting and floating away into nothingness.
The triplet of D's often caught him off guard, making him sway and hypothesize and even wax lyrical at one point, on the day when all the days disappeared.
But somehow, the journey was worth it.
That was Desire.
It always had been, and he found himself musing sarcastically once, trying to remember whether anyone ever knew what they had before it was gone. The delirium burbled and washed over, from the back of his head to the front, and for what must have been days he felt blackness - something must have saved him. He knew not what, or who, but made no effort to thank them.
But pulling through the delirium for once, he made his way. Rehearsed his lines like a pro, saw more than a flash of blonde hair.
Time stopped when he came to the end of his journey.
What he hadn't counted on was memories. Of all the stupid shit he'd pulled in the past; that went past even a sociopath's version of 'teasing', overstepped the boundary into 'grevious bodily harm'. He hadn't counted on guilt, either, and he felt it as pain, ripping through his skull sideways and cutting off the steady flow of delirium.
But there were good things too. Things that didn't even have to include molestation and all the mixed up things he'd done when he felt like he didn't have a heart.
So back to the point.
Time stopped.
But Roxas' eyes were blank, his hair different, his wit insipid and nothing compared to the violent words he used to so easily spit.
And Axel felt death. He'd always known he would; but this was different somehow, and it spilled through the cracks and drowned him in tendrils of black.
It wasn't real, like so many things.
Did they ever have it memorized at all?