I could see him standing on the porch, that shock of hair a distinct, little flame in the distance, obvious and bright against the graying sky. It looked like the sky was about to crack. I knew it was going to rain, torrents stretching over ocean, rushing to land.

The atmosphere did nothing to ebb my anxiety.

A stone's throw from the house I had an idea that he turned his eyes toward me, for a moment, but he didn't move his head. He was staring at the ocean, farther away, I thought, than the horizon. The wind batted at his hair. He looked, in that moment, to me like the ocean-I could see, somehow, in my mind's eye, see that his mind was tossing, but his face remained placid. Not angry, and not at peace. Patient, thoughtful, and waiting. I knew, somehow, that he had been waiting for me, waiting, I thought, as he always had. Without knowing how long we had or how long we would, we had been waiting for each other since the last, and my heart, this new heart, fell flat over its feet when I climbed the porch stairs and moved to stand, maybe 5 feet from him, I couldn't stand to be closer, I thought I would loose my mind.

Smell salt, and wet, and the cool mist off the ocean. I thought, if his hair smells like that I would bury my head into it against his neck and close my eyes. He cocked his face toward me, barely, and asked me casually what was up, as if my coming there only confirmed a comfortable pattern. "Not much."

What a lie. And a bad lie, and we both knew it, but I didn't know how to begin to tell him the thing I needed to tell him, the thing I had needed to say for months and months, and I was guilty and I was greedy. I wanted all of us to stay as we had been, bonfires on the beach at night, carefree summer afternoons, only broken by occasional letters from the King encouraging us to enjoy a long and well deserved "rest" as he put it. And we did. Sea-salt ice cream and trips to Twilight Town. If we weren't laughing we were smiling, and although I went to bed at night knowing there was much yet to say, the unsaid was so easily forgotten between five people so easily comfortable with each other.

Sora noticed it before I did. We were too quiet. We continued to smile, but we said less, and what we did say was punctuated. We were making every syllable count. He caught me one day cutting through imaginary heartless alone and pulled me under the board walk after a good-natured spar. Panting, he asked me, timing typically perfect, what was wrong. I played with the keyblade in my hands for a while, prodding pieces of debris and shells and pebbles, and he waited, and finally, I knew, I had to tell him everything.

"I…don't know how to…and…I can't just tell him…. I. I can't just tell him, Sora, that I'm sorry, I can't just tell him and I don't know how."

Sora just smiled in his knowing way, and he looked ahead for a moment, at the waves rolling under the sun. He said, "Axel…" and he paused, and then, "He knows. He knows you want to but you don't know what to say. But I think, I think he wants you to say it. Not because he needs to hear it, but because it's coming from you."

"Have you talked to him?"

"No."

And his voice and his face were still smiling, and he threw a reassuring arm around me and laughed, the way Donald and Goofy had often done to him. He asked if I wanted him to come along, half of the way.

But I went alone, and now I felt alone, even next to him, and I turned and watched the ocean, and we stood there, like that, face defying the water for I don't know how long. It was excruciating how he let me stand there noiselessly, neither moving nor breaking the silence. When I thought the sound of the waves was going to make my ears bleed, I said quietly, "Axel?" and I don't think he heard it, or he wouldn't let me keep quiet, and so I said it again and he turned toward me. The look which over-spread his face was almost quizzical, and for a moment I thought he did know what I wanted to say.

"Roxas?"

I went back to playing with the hair behind my neck. I felt ridiculous, and I must have looked ridiculous, because I could hear the grinning smirk in his voice when he said, "You never were any good at coming to a point." I sighed, and he turned away again, linking his hands behind his head. "I've been thinking, Rox. I think I'm going to go away for a while."

"What!?" I hadn't meant to say it so loudly, but I hadn't expected to hear what I heard, either. The blood ran out of my hands. "Why?"

"To move around,"

"Where are you going to go?" I cut him off.

"I think I'll world-hop for a while. Visit all the places I didn't have a chance to enjoy…the last time." His tone clouded, just barely discernable, and all I could manage was "Oh" my thoughts blank and racing.

"How long will you be gone?'

"Dunno. Haven't decided yet." This is the part, where all the things I wanted to say, could have tumbled out of my mouth, but I asked instead "Are you…going alone?"

Although I know it didn't, I felt like it took him a full minute to answer. "Who would I take with me, Rox?"

How could I do it? How could I tell him I was selfishly sorry now, when he wanted to be gone, wanted to get away, and my telling him would feel like a final goodbye from someone wanting to clear their conscience before making a delineated break? It would sound like self-justification. It would sound righteous. I couldn't do it. He would hate me.

And then, like he knew I would falter, knew when I would fall silent, I felt that Sora must be thinking of me because his words dripped back into my head, one at a time, and I knew, either now, I make my peace with the looming storm, and watch it wash over me, or wait and never, and loose Axel altogether, all over again. If I did not tell him now, I knew, that although he would say it, he would never come back.

"Axel?" and this time he didn't answer, and I kept my eyes fixed on the break and the turning of the waves, and as definite as I could make my voice, I said, "I'm sorry."

I knew he had heard it, but he didn't turn to face me, didn't flinch, didn't shift. I spoke to the water and my heart felt wet. "I'm sorry, that I left, and I'm sorry that I left you alone. I'm sorry for what I couldn't remember, and for what I said, and I'm sorry, that, when you…when you were going, that I couldn't come back." Funny things, hearts. No one ever told me, ever told us, that having one was far harder than getting one could ever be. He didn't turn around, and I kept going, because I didn't know what else to say. "I've wanted to tell you, all this time, but I didn't know how to say it. It doesn't, after everything, sound like it's enough, to say I'm sorry…. But I am. And I'm glad, that we're both…here." He still hadn't moved, and my heart sank, which I realized only then, hearts could. My cheeks felt cold. I had said enough. I was leaving.

"Did you find the answers you were looking for?"

His voice was quiet, not because he was speaking quietly, it was tonally quiet. I could not decide if the thin edge around what he had said was bitter, or sad, or if he was watching, at a distance, some fading regret, or if it was the voice of a friend who, watching a friend plummet into an unknown journey with an unknown end, really wanted to know the answer to that question. In hindsight I think it was all of those things, and that no one part of that tone dominated the others. The water leapt. We heard the rumble of thunder beyond the horizon.

"Yeah. I did."

Those green eyes are piercing, and when he looks at me I feel like I don't need to say a word, and that I couldn't speak a single word coherent, when his face is staring into mine.

"I never really blamed you, Roxas. You couldn't help who, or where you were, and you couldn't help going. You had a right to an answer. I just…didn't want you to leave."

His voice was confession, and redemption, but I couldn't let him allow me to deserve it. "I don't have the right, to call you my friend again…"

"Roxas," and his voice was kind, and it unnerved me to learn that Axel had learned kindness, or that I had only now become aware that he had known it all along. "You don't need to be, you can stop being, sorry."

I couldn't believe it, that that could be true, and so we fell into silence again, although he continued to look at me for a long moment after I had looked away. It made me feel that the truth of what he had said was inescapable, however much I wanted to escape it. He meant it, and I couldn't protest, knowing a confrontation of the truth was futile.

There was one thing I wanted desperately to know. "Did you? Did you find the answers you were looking for?" Behind my voice I was pleading.

He smiled, a genuine smile, "All but one. Just one."

"And what is that one?"

Sea-salt ice cream and trips to Twilight Town. Summer months and one thousand hints and misses. He was always right behind me if we walked anywhere. He sat across from me in booths and next to me in movie theatres. On the train, I paid for his fare, and I made sure I took the standing room next to him sitting, if the train was crowded. It had poured unexpectedly one afternoon and we all got caught in it, and he had given me his coat because my own was soaked and I was freezing.

And always his eyes.

Bonfires were easy because Axel had retained his ability to create fire from nothing, from that same bottomless well of energy that gifted us with the keyblades. But that was the only time we ever saw him use it; I don't think he liked to, too often. Together, just the five of us, laughing and bright stars spattered across the midnight sky, and always Axel across from me, eyes shining and face quiet. I remember the night I caught his face, once, just once, and I never dared to look after. When fire radiates heat, I never feel that it is natural heat, the heat of burning wood and ash and smoke. It is always Axel, always a projection of his skin and his hands, and I can feel the flame moving, when the wind knocks it, and it leans toward me like Axel would lean toward me, to comment on something we were watching, or some place we were going, or to ask me what I was reading. Leaning, and I felt his eyes on me, as if his eyes were flame, and I looked up, between the red ribbons flickering, and he caught me. Those green eyes were burning, under sky and star, and my breath caught, and I could feel that for one long minute, I couldn't breathe.

Noone noticed, and around me Kairi and Riku and Sora were laughing, but Axel and I sat, the bonfire between us, eyes pressed to one another, and I could have touched fire to touch him, seared away skin to bone to be a part of him.

And then Sora threw his arm around my shoulders, Kairi asked him for a marshmallow, and Riku was fashioning kabob skewers out of sticks, and I never dared to catch Axel's eyes, those green eyes, again.

What is that one? I had to know. Axel slowly walked toward me, movement deliberate. He stopped less than an arm's length, within reach, and my heart hitched. "Were you waiting?"

I did the thing I swore I'd never do. My eyes shot up into his eyes. "Every minute."

He exhaled, a long, quiet sigh, making me aware his breath had been held.

And his eyes were burning.

To say to say to say, pounding heart, a pounding heart. It threw itself against my ribs, exquisite pain we'd never known. The fingers of one hand brushed my jaw. I leaned, and we were burned alive.