Roxas's keyblades moved seamlessly. The ebb and flow of his movements were so natural, and it was only expected of him to be so experienced wielding the two keys in his hands. One was bright and the other was dark, so it seemed as if Axel was being hit with a barrage of night and day. He tried his best to weave his body between the attacks since he knew how Roxas moved; he had been on enough missions with him to understand the way his friend attacked. This time was different. There was no familiarity in Roxas's eyes, and the anger and grief that bubbled in Axel's stomach was something that could not be contained. He wanted to scream at Roxas, to burn scars on the boy's skin to remind him that Axel had been there, that there was some piece of the redhead that he needed to remember. At the same time, he wanted to smeer away the confusion and anger that he could read on his friend's face. Axel wanted nothing more than to return to the clock tower. Throughout the fight he was hoping that Roxas would dismiss his blades and laugh, cuts and burns still on his face as he smiled and told Axel that the fun was over, that they could return to the clock tower and watch the sunset. Instead, Axel was slammed to the floor. All hope of that happening diminished along with the flame wall surrounding the two. He got up just in time to have another keyblade smashed against his diaphram.
"Roxas.." He groaned. His eyes met Roxas's gaze and he knew that his friend was lost. He could see that there was no hope of things ever returning to the way that they were. He stumbled backwards, breathing heavily as he tried to figure out if his lung was punctured or not. Across the room from him, Roxas stood with his unforgiving gaze. He looked guilty, as if he wasn't supposed to have hit Axel this way, though he knew that it was what needed to be done. Axel slumped over. His chakrams were dangling at his sides. One of them was stabbed into the ground so that he could support his body weight. Besides the redhead's breathing, it was quiet in the basement of the manor. Axel dropped his head, staring down at the drips of blood that were dangling from his lips to the floor.
"Axel.." Roxas's eyes widened slightly as the name registered in his memory. With difficulty, Axel lifted his head, breathing heavily all the while.
Let's meet again," He said, "In the next life."
Roxas nodded his head. "Yeah. I'll be waiting." A sad smile donned Axel's face as he turned his face away from Roxas's. How could the boy be so dense after all this time? Axel turned back to the blond and exhaled a dry chuckle.
"Silly," He breathed. Darkness was beginning to form around him, welcoming him in its gentle arms. "Just because you get a next life..." Roxas began advancing toward him as the darkness continued to grow. His hand lifted, reaching for Axel until there was nothing but darkness. Roxas's face was gone and left scorched on the backs of Axel's eyelids, forever to stay in his memories.
Axel sat up in his bed, heart weighing his chest down as if it were an anchor. In the darkness, he squeezed his eyes shut to try and grasp everything that had happened in his dream. Instead he saw blue eyes and blond hair and lips with Sea Salt ice cream pressed up against them. He opened his eyes again and rubbed them as he turned on his side. His arms reached out over the edge of his bed and pulled up a journal. He clicked on his bedside lamp and began writing a new entry into it. His writing was scribbled and quick, matching the rest of the entries. When it was finished, he looked over it, remembering just how vivid the dream was and how burdened and grief stricken he was during and after he woke up form the dream. Axel looked at the last entry he had written, recalling how hurt he was when the boy in his dreams couldn't recall his boss's name. Why had it hurt so much? Why had he felt so betrayed? Deciding to not dwell on the thoughts so much, Axel closed his journal and clicked off his lamp. He slumped back onto the mattress and took in a deep breath. Staring up at the his ceiling, he could only imagine the boy in his dreams and his name that was drawn from Axel's lips as involuntary as a blink: Roxas.
The next morning, Axel woke up sore. His side and diaphragm were aching terribly, though he always felt banged up when he dreamt of violence heavy dreams. He could never explain why, and if friends were to ask he'd just say that he went a little too crazy at the gym the night before. They looked at him skeptically, but there was no other way that Axel could keep his figure the way it was so it was a passable story. Barely. He poured a cup of coffee and opened his fridge to find that there was no food in it at all. In his mind, he tried to figure out if he could make anything with just butter and tuna, but decided against it. He made a mental note to just go to the grocery store later in the day and went about his morning routine.
Once he was spick and span, Axel headed to his couch and began to watch the morning news, lacing his shoes up as he watched another tragedy unfold right before the news team asked the viewers if their child was safe from plastic toys. Rolling his eyes, Axel clipped his television off and tucked in his shirt as he made his way out of the door. It wasn't a terrible routine. He got up, got ready, went to work where he would weld panels onto buildings for twelve hours with a one-hour lunch break in the middle. He was paid a fair sum an hour, so he wasn't too upset at his working days. Besides, he was used to it by now. In total, there were twelve workers on this particular site. There were the two foremen, the three apprentices, and then the seven men that were actually doing the work. Axel was just a basic worker. He took orders, got coffee, swept; he did whatever it was he was ordered to do, though that didn't stop him from being a sarcastic twit and doing things in his own time and in his own way.
"As long as I get the job done," He told one of the apprentices, "It shouldn't be a problem as to how the job gets done, right?" The guy would just roll his eyes and stalk off.
"You better not get on his bad side," One of the apprentices would walk up to Axel, laughing. It was usually one of the foremen with his clipboard and hard hat. "He could just let you off and find someone else that'll take your job."
"Oh please," Axel snorted, "There's no way they could replace me. Nobody in the Union sweeps shavings as well as I do." As an example, he slid some of the metal curly-q's into a pile. "Bam, beautiful." The apprentice rolled his eyes and slunk away.
During lunch, Axel religiously stopped at the ice cream shop. His co-workers would ridicule him as he stepped out with a scoop of the blue sea salt ice cream he disliked. They continued to ask him why he got the ice cream if it wasn't his favorite and he never came up with a good enough answer that would please them. After a while, they just stopped waiting for him at the shop and would meet him back at the work site when he was finished. Axel couldn't explain why he got sea salt ice cream. He just did. He knew that it had something to do with the boy in his dreams, though he couldn't tell his co-workers that. They would think he was nuts. Axel took a bite of the cone his ice cream was sitting in and stared off down the street. The ice cream made him feel happy. It reminded him of laughter and happiness. It reminded him of a boy with really blue eyes and grain colored hair. He would eat the sea salt ice cream so that he could hear the boy's laughter and see his smile in his mind's eye. He ate sea salt ice cream because that's what Roxas did. How could he explain that to his co-workers.
The dreams began a little over six months ago. At first, the dreams weren't really anything important. The furthest one that Axel could remember was being in a room full of his co-workers. They were all wearing matching black cloaks and sitting on tall white chairs, each one at a different level than the next. Another person with a black cloak walked in and was introduced as "the Keyblade's chosen one."
"Number thirteen," Axel wrote down in his journal a few weeks later, "Roxas." The dreams were beginning to happen every other week. Each time, it was something about Roxas. One of them, they were in the middle of the ocean, zooming over the waves. The water was kicked up by their speed. Roxas was in the lead and his water would graze Axel's face, splashing his skin with the cool ocean water. He remembered how excited and happy he was that Roxas had shared the power of flight with him. He remembered them being reluctant to go back home. They wanted to stay out and glide through the waves for the rest of the day, but duty called. They had to report back home. Wherever that was. In another dream, Axel was standing in a castle, facing another boy with eyes jsut as blue as Roxas's. He looked angry and confused. He too had a keyblade, though this one was different from Roxas's. He was in a stance ready to fight and Axel was happy to oblige him with one. That boy appeared several times in Axel's dreams, though he never could memorize his name. The only one that seemed to burn itself into the back of Axel's mind was Roxas. There was no one more important to him than Roxas was, whoever he was.
"Uh, hello?" One of the foreman waved his hand in front of Axel's face, "You're supposed to be working on those panels, remember? We don't pay you to just loaf around, drooling over your ice cream." Axel blinked several times before his mind registered that he was not, in fact, at the top of the a clock tower. He looked down at his hand to see that the ice cream had melted onto his fingers and was now dripping on the tips of his shoes.
"I wasn't drooling," He answered.
"As if," The foreman rolled his eyes, "Now get back to work before I make you sweep some more shavings."
"Hey, that's you paying me fourty dollars an hour to sweep," Axel said, pulling a wadded up napkin out of his pocket, "I don't have a problem with that, at all." The foreman shot Axel a glare, but he just chuckled it off. Even if he lost the job he was set for a good while. He never did anything recreational besides bonfires every now and then so he had a lot of money. Enough to maybe last him a couple of months, anyway. Still, Axel continued to work, his mind wavering between angles and how mad Roxas would have been if he knew he let his ice cream melt.
On his way home from work, Axel stopped off at the grocery store like he had planned to do. He weaved through the store, aisle after aisle, fickly deciding what he did and did not want to take home with him. Most of the time, he bought quick-fix things like macaroni and spaghetti items, things that he could make in a half hour or less. He wasn't cooking for anyone else, so he could buy things that were on sale in bulk as they would last longer for him. When he was finished shopping, he moved to one of the lines. Normally, he would have gone to aisle eight as it was his favorite number, but a quick flash of blond in the corner of his eye kept him sold on aisle thirteen where a young cashier checked people out. He stood in line, his eyes never elaving the blond as he slowly got closer. He couldn't believe it. It was him. It was Roxas! Axel's heart began pounding loudly. He was afraid that he was going to have a heart attack at the rate that it was going. He held his breath as Roxas quickly glanced at him, but seemed to do it without a second thought. Axel clenched his jaw as he placed his items on the converyor belt. Again, his eyes never left Roxas.
But how, he thought to himself, How could something like this even be possible. For months, he was dreaming of this boy with eyes bluer than.. God, they were just so blue! From his dreams Axel could tell how luminnescent they were, but his dreams didn't do them justice. Roxas's eyes were full of joy and hope. He looked as if he had nothing to be afraid of, like the world was at his fingertips and he was going to do whatever he could whenever he could. His smile was genuine when he spoke to people. He was interested in them without being to pressing. He wanted to keep these people happy and seemed to be curious about who they were. Axel inhaled the breath he wasn't aware that he was holding. His heart sped up as Roxas grabbed the first item he had placed on the converyor belt. When he was asked how his day was going, he just nodded, staring wide-eyed at, quite literally, the boy from his dreams. His hands were shaking and his palms were sweating. How was this possible?
"Roxas?" Axel gasped.