Amnesia: A partial or total loss of memory.
Roxas knows he's crazy. It's difficult not to realize this, when he hears Sora's crying and screaming and hours later examines the white walls around him. So many people visited him but he only recognized some of them.
They lied to him, all of them. They said Sora and Naminé were his siblings but he knew better, he wasn't related to either of them, not really. He told them that, told them Sora was his somebody and they shouldn't be able to be in the same room, fully conscious. That had only ever happened once and that was when he had gone looking for Sora and had been fully prepared for the consequences.
Nobody around him understood, they all told him that he was just a normal kid, that he went to high school in Vermont and they said none of them had ever heard of Organization XIII, he had never meet anyone named Axel or Xion. Even Sora and Namine told him of an entire fifteen years that he had lived with. They told him for weeks that he was just a Roxas, he wasn't the Key of Destiny and Organization XIII didn't exist, it never had. This was just some crazy dream he had made up in his comatose state, none of it was real.
He never really believed them, not once. But eventually, it was easier to just say he did, tell them he thought it was a dream too but he still didn't remember the life they said he had had. No matter how much he told them that it really was nothing, he wasn't sure if they believed him because sometimes every once in a while his would be father would mention something that he would have no memory of and he would look at him like his father didn't know him either. The orderlies and doctors kept him in the hospital, they said that he couldn't function normally being thrust back into society if he couldn't remember anything. The doctors diagnosed him with amnesia and moved him to a more permanent ward.
It was half a year before he showed up. He broke in after hours when all the patients but Roxas were asleep and he slid into his hospital room with the kind of grace Roxas had some trouble remembering by now. No matter how clearly he remembered him, little details like that often got lost in his memory, especially since he hadn't been able to see him for…how long had it been now? 146 days. Roxas marked them all down.
He was tall but younger than Roxas had ever seen him. He walked to the middle of the room and sat down on Roxas' hospital bed. Roxas watched him until he stilled. It was impressive really, Roxas had never seen him this calm before. His nervous energy was replaced with a calm sort of edge, like he finally knew exactly what it was he was doing.
"Axel,"
The barest hint of a smile graced his features, that Roxas was starting to remember vividly, he had wonder sometimes if maybe everything they had said was the truth and he was the one who was wrong. "Remember me this time, do you?"
"You don't exist."
"According to Naminé, neither do you."
"Are you a dream?" After so many months, so many people doubting him, he was starting to doubt himself, too. It was just too probable that he was wrong, to many things against him that made everyone else at least sound right.
He really smiled, then and he looked the same as he always did. With his red hair in the strangest spikes Roxas had ever seen and his luminescent green eyes that he tried so hard to not let betray him.
"It's not a dream, Roxas. None of it, everything you remember, all of it happened."
"Can you prove it?" Roxas challenged, raising an eyebrow. If he could maybe he could convince them. The orderlies, the doctors, his would be family, who didn't believe a tging he said.
"No."
"Can you promise?" Roxas remembered promises. It was too hard to forget them, but so painful to remember every time Axel had promised him and he had done it so often. He wouldn't tell, not anyone but it had nearly broke his heart when it had been Sora's familiar face standing over his hospital bed rather than Axel's.
Axel smiled and started talking but Roxas couldn't hear the words coming out of his mouth anymore, he blinked to clear away whatever it was stopping him from hearing Axel but when he opened his eyes again, Axel was gone.
When Sora visited him as he was wont to do, he had stared at him so ferociously that it almost scared the brunet boy.
"Sora," He had called out before Sora could escape Roxas' room. "Do you ever have dreams?"
Sora just smiled. "Everybody has dreams, Roxas."
Roxas scowled at him. "Don't pretend to be so stupid, Sora. You were never an idiot, do you have dreams like the ones I have?"
Sora looked down at his, shoes. He remembered when he and Roxas were kids, they use to have so much fun together, fake sword fight and eating ice-cream in the cold of Vermont and then Roxas had ended up on a hospital bed, saying he wasn't part of their family any more.
In a way, Sora had started to hate this new Roxas, who looked at him with such animosity and talked about Axel like he was the best thing since sea-salt ice cream. They had never even meet anyone named Axel. Sora would've known, they were twins and before the hospital they never went anywhere without each other.
"Sora?" Roxas asked again, hard and cold. He just stared at his shoes in despair for the brother he wasn't going to get back.
"…Sometimes," He sighed in defeat but walked out of the hospital room before Roxas could respond to him.
He just wanted Roxas back but he felt somewhere that he was gone. Lost in dreams he had created while in a coma and the fictional character that was Axel.
Axel visited Roxas again that night. Neither were surprised to see each other. He laid on the hospital bed with Roxas and played with his little hand. He supposed no matter what life they were in, Axel would always be freakishly tall and almost double the size of him. They remained in silence until Roxas broke it.
"We're best friends?" The way he said it was almost a question and Axel couldn't help but smile because he remembered those words and once upon a time so did Roxas. But finally, instead of yelling and screaming Axel could tell him the truth.
"Not exactly. You love me."
Roxas tilted his head up to look at Axel's face more carefully. He seemed so confident in that assessment. "We don't have hearts, Axel."
Axel took Roxas' hand and placed it over the spot on his chest where a heart should've been. "What do you call this, then?"
Roxas could feel a distinct beating but only scowled back at Axel.
"A fraud."
Axel came every night to see Roxas, sometimes they talked, and sometimes they just sat there looking up at the ceiling or the stars out to the window. Roxas had all the time in the world to sleep and he greatly looked forward to seeing Axel every night.
He never said so, but so did Axel. That was until Sora decided to take matters into his own hands. Axel wouldn't have minded Sora, he wouldn't have cared about him at all, had he not been the sole reason and kept being the reason that Roxas was taken away from him.
Sora, who had been so fucking concerned for his brother, who wasn't his brother called in a therapist. A therapist who spent hours with Roxas in the day and told him all sorts of things.
Axel hadn't been worried really at all, until the day that Roxas came back from therapy and looked at Axel when he walked in like he had so many times before. But not really looked at him. More like looked right through him as if he wasn't important enough to see.
Axel for the first time had felt his face heat up and his hands start to shake, god he hoped he wouldn't stop stuttering. He walked in hesitantly and sat at the foot of Roxas' hospital bed, further away than he had ever been before.
The two of them sat in silence. Axel not daring to break it but counting the number of breathes Roxas took. Roxas in turn was lost in thought until he finally spoke. "I'm crazy."
Axel frowned at him. "No, you're not Roxas," He started to feel himself getting angry. "Is that what the therapist told you? Don't listen to him, he's an idiot just like all the rest of them."
"No, Axel. There not the ones wrong." Roxas told him, the coldness that he remembered from there last life, when Roxas told him he was leaving, the organization and Axel. This night was starting to look just like that one.
It was basic psychology, Axel realized. If the only one believing you, is you, you will undoubtedly want to believe anyone else. No one can stay alone forever. Not even the loneliest kid he knew and that was definitely Roxas, who was stuffed in a hospital room all day and the only visitors were people who told him he was mentally unbalanced. Axel could never voice how much he hated that phrase.
"What do you mean, Roxas?"
"Axel," He said looking straight into his green eyes and ignoring how familiar those tattoos looked under them. It was because he had seen him every night for months, but no one else had. "It's not real, none of it. Everything that I dream about, there all just dreams."
"What? The Organization? Xion? Twilight town? Those are all real Roxas, they all happened!"
"No, Axel, I made them up. I couldn't cope with the accident so I made a new life for myself!"
"I was there I saw all of that happen, Roxas!" They were yelling over each other and while Axel stood on his two feet Roxas could only lean forward on his hospital bed. Roxas was still several feet lower to the ground than Axel was but he managed to glare at him in the eyes and yell with as much force as necessary "You don't exist, Axel!"
"Of course I exist!"
"That's exactly what you'd say if you didn't."
"So if I really did exist, I would tell you I didn't?"
"Yes…no…I don't know Axel!" Roxas told him with an amount of anger he hadn't felt for an unhealthy amount of time. "It doesn't matter, Axel. You're just like an imaginary friend and I don't believe in you anymore."
Axel glared at him. "Fine, I'm not real, then anymore am I? At least not to you."
Roxas gave him no response back.
"Fine, Roxas, then I don't believe in you anymore either."
Axel had left in a rage that night and Roxas hadn't seen him again since. He went to a therapist every week for who knew how many weeks until eventually he was deemed fine. He moved back into the house he was told he had once lived in with his family but they were all dead except Sora, Namine and Roxas himself.
He made a real life for himself, one that didn't include saving the world, or Kingdom Hearts or that one red head that he just couldn't forget (not for lack of trying) and two years later, he had his own apartment, was in a good college and set for a good career and a good life.
Naturally that was when disaster struck.
He came home to his apartment easily, he had done so every day for longer than he could remember. When he settled down though (it was late, he had been at school and at work for so long that the sun had actually already set) a person walking into the apartment almost startled him but he assumed it was just Sora as he liked having surprise visits from time to time.
When he entered the room however, he stopped in his tracks. It wasn't Sora's bright and cheerful although tiny disposition he was expecting to see, but someone tall and lanky but hunched over as if in pain.
"Axel?"
Indeed it was Axel, his hair was a mess, his clothes were shredded and his eyes looked wilder than Roxas had ever seen. He was holding his side and leaning heavily on the counter to stagger toward Roxas.
Roxas wasted no time in running over him to pick him up and try bringing him over to the couch to fix him up but he wouldn't budge. He remained hunched over looking up at Roxas, seeming to disregard his pain completely.
"Axel, what happened?" Roxas worried over him. Axel gave no sort of answer despite a demented smirk.
"Don't bother, Roxas, I'm not real, remember?"
"Axel…" Roxas began and neither of them could tell anymore if he was sad or if he was scared and he had good reason to be, Axel thought darkly.
"Two and a half years ago, you asked me if I could prove it." Axel told him and Roxas could finally feel the wet sticky substance that couldn't have been anything but blood stain his hands where Axel's wound was.
"…Wha-?"
"I finally figured out how, Roxas." Axel was on top of him before he could think, and he was on the floor. A could metal knife on his throat but there was room for him to look at Axel. So, Roxas did because he didn't know what else to do, he stared straight into Axel's eyes. He saw the resolve in them and realized that for Axel maybe this would fix everything at least that's what Axel thought because he wasn't going to stop anymore no matter what Roxas said or did now. Axel was dying slowly in his own twisted way, dying from his hurt, mangled and very real heart.
Nobody's shouldn't have hearts, Roxas thought, he had thought about having a heart before but didn't know what it would feel like so there was nothing he could really fathom about them but now he knew. Nobody's had no place having hearts, they didn't know how to use them probably.
"What's going to happen after word then, Axel?" Roxas asked him "It looks like you've planned everything out, so what happens after we die?"
Axel was silent for a moment. He took the knife away from Roxas' throat confident he wouldn't move and he didn't even though he could've so easily. Roxas could have shoved him off, kicked or punched him but he didn't. Sure he had a nice job, nice career, nice life, but he didn't care about those things. Not really, all he cared about was the man lying on top of him, trying to take away his life, in the hope that it would heal them both. Axel leaned down and kissed Roxas like he had always wanted to and whispered into his ear. "We start over."
Roxas waited for Axel to start tearing him apart with his knifes but as he felt his heart stopping, he realized, Axel had already killed him. Roxas almost found it funny, even know when they had fought the last time he saw him and hadn't seen each other for two years, even with how awful Roxas was to him, in this life and the last, Axel still could bare to hurt him.
Indeed Roxas died that day. It was found in an autopsy that he was poisoned, the redhead that was found lying on top of his dead body, also dead had bleed to death from wounds on his torso that had seemed to be inflicted on by himself.
When the police identified that the man who had legitimately killed Roxas and himself was known as Axel. No one was more shocked or frightened to here this then Roxas' remaining family. It was found that Axel had no family and no friends. It was decided by Sora and Namine that Roxas and Axel's bodies be buried together.
And so they were. They had a funeral and if too many people showed up, that was okay and if that little black haired girl craved 8/13 into their head stones no one said a thing.
"Axel? Where are we?" Roxas asked him looking around wherever they were in awe. It didn't look like any place really, it was just white surrounding them, and there wasn't even a floor.
"Purgatory, maybe?" Axel suggested. Roxas punched him on the arm.
"Not funny, Ax."
Axel walked over and put his arms around Roxas who in turn did the same. "We're in the place we go, before we move on."
"You really did have everything planned, didn't you?"
"Yeah, but I have to tell you this now because we're going to have to go soon. I love you, Roxas."
"I know, I love you too."
"Maybe we can do this right, this time?"
"Third times the charm." Roxas and Axel both shared a tiny smile of amusement.
Roxas interlocked their hands and stared up into Axel's eyes. "You're fading, Axel."
"So are you."
"…I'm scared."
Axel smiled just a little bit. "Don't be scared, Roxas. We'll meet again…"
Roxas smiled too. "In the next life…"
"I promise."
A/N: Happy AkuRoku day everybody. Sorry if this is a couple minutes later, hope you all had a wonderful day, celebrating or not celebrating. I do not own Kingdom Hearts in any way shape or form and I do not make any money off of this.