Façade (by timydamonkey)
Summary: From having no heart at all to having a simulated heart, Roxas tries to understand the concept of friendship.
Author's Note: First story of the Twilight Town fic collection to be written – a succession of fics exploring different ways of writing Nobodies and/or characters within digital Twilight Town. Feedback on how well this works for you – or, indeed, doesn't work – would be greatly appreciated. :D
He isn't sure when he first realises something is wrong, but he thinks he can trace it back to the Castle Oblivion fiasco.
He hasn't been in the Organisation long, and he's still finding his feet among the populace. Maybe he'd find them strange, but Roxas can't remember anything before he became a Nobody, so this is his first real experience around other people.
They aren't human; they're Nobodies. But then so is he, so that's just how things are.
He overhears the news from the other Organisation members, a whisper of death not necessarily meant to exclude him; he just isn't present. He doesn't care, but he's curious when Demyx tells him, "They're gone."
Demyx's face looks the same as always, bright and alert (though he isn't quite as alert as he manages to appear).
Roxas blinks at him for a moment, then says, "Oh." There's an awkward pause.
"Something bothering you?" asks the other participant of the conversation. It's Xigbar, and his teeth seem to be bared at Roxas. He's never quite been able to work that expression out.
Roxas finds himself squirming – involuntary reaction, he doesn't understand it at all, like the memory of something is strirring up but isn't quite there – but finally brings himself to ask, "What happens to Nobodies when they…" he scrambles for the words, then shaking his head uses the most appropriate that comes to mind, "die?"
"Dunno," offers Xigbar unhelpfully. "Can't say I've ever seen it happen. We go the same way as Heartless, I suppose."
"Oh," repeats Roxas, because that makes sense, he's seen what happens to Heartless. Exterminating them is his job, he's learning. It means nothing to him any more; it's something he sees every day. Before he leaves, though, he manages to ask, "Is it all of them?"
"That's what the grapevine says!" offers Demyx. "Though I can't say it's always accurate…"
Useless information then, Roxas thinks, although he knows that a source is better than none at all.
His legs seem to have lots of pent up energy suddenly, so with a vague goodbye, he moves for the sake of moving. He probably has a mission – when does he ever not have a mission? – and he intends to watch the Heartless as he cuts them down. Because although a part of him feels he's seen it countless times, he wants to see it for his fellow Nobodies.
It's not something he understands, but his lack of understanding is irrelevant. It's just something he has to do, so it's what he does.
Roxas sits on top of the clock tower in Twilight Town, looking down over the city. It fascinates him, how everybody seems to live in such a carefree, structureless manner. In the Organisation, nearly every day there are missions, and those missions involve killing Heartless. It's endless repetition, but it's Roxas' assigned job because he's special. He doesn't rotate like everyone else.
It leaves a bad taste in his mouth, and it's something that makes his face twist downwards. He sticks his tongue out as a sort of protest, hoping the taste will go away.
It's how Axel finds him a few minutes later.
"Hey," Axel plops himself down next to him. He looks searchingly at Roxas, and adds a, "You look ridiculous."
"I thought you were gone," Roxas says instead of directly responding.
"It'd take more than that to down me." Axel is smirking; it's something Roxas has learned to associate with him.
"That?" he wonders.
"Chaos, of course."
He vaguely recognises the cue to change the subject. Axel is the one person he is getting used to. He knows how Axel operates. He isn't quite sure why; he hasn't spent significantly more time with him than anyone else.
Maybe it's the clock tower visits. Axel is the only one to go out of the way to interact with him outside of work hours. He's never quite understood why, but never thought to ask.
Now seems as good a time as any, he supposes. "Why do we come here?"
"Why shouldn't we?" Axel responds.
"That's a non-answer," Roxas states.
For some reason, that makes Axel smirk again. "Well… we're friends. What further reason do we need?"
What kind of reason is friendship, thinks Roxas, but he doesn't say anything and simply stares out into the sunset. It makes him squint, a vision tinged in yellow.
Axel's face gets in front of his gaze and he looks like a blazing inferno. Roxas blinks dumbly. If Axel notices, he doesn't react. Instead, he just asks, "You know what friends are, Roxas?"
A pause.
"Intellectually," he responds eventually. "People who extend cordiality towards each other and are often seen in each other's company."
Axel practically guffaws, but then composes himself. "That's… not entirely true, Roxas."
"What's wrong with it?" he asks instead, as he thinks 'friendship' is a notion he should already have established. But he has no memories, came with no vocabulary or data bank of terminology, so he grasps at what he's given like a child.
Axel seems to be struggling for words. "Well, there's nothing really wrong with it, Roxas, but it's not all there is to it either."
Roxas shoots him a look that he thinks communicates his thoughts quite well: What else could there be to do with it? He's getting a lot better at it with practise, he thinks.
"Hopeless," mumbles Axel. "But you'll get it eventually."
Roxas nods, though he doesn't think of it as a truth. In fact, he almost doesn't remember the conversation until a particularly brutal mission brings it to the forefront of his mind, and then it makes even less sense than it did the first time.
Nobody's more surprised than Roxas when he ends up on a mission accompanied by Saix. His question must show in his stare, since Saix arches an eyebrow and says, "It's to keep you out of trouble."
It's dangerous then, Roxas figures. The Organisation members hadn't been doubling up all that much lately due to its size being unexpectedly cut in half. Axel still won't talk about what had transpired. To be stuck with the second in command was… practically unheard of.
A few hours later, trying to fight a giant Heartless infestation in Atlantica of all places, and Roxas has to begrudgingly admit that sending along Saix was well judged. Roxas is not the most experienced member, but of course the Organisation would send him along… so many hearts. He's the most qualified candidate and the least all at once.
It's his first mission in Atlantica, and he's struggling to move around. He isn't choking on water, tangled up in weeds or totally stationary, but that's about all he can say for himself. Swinging a keyblade amongst water pressure while trying to manoeuvre himself is hard.
Saix, of course, hasn't bothered to warn him of this.
The Heartless are preying on the inhabitants. Roxas can't say he's surprised, but he fights the best he can. He finds himself resorting to magic, which he prefers not to do, but the keyblade really isn't designed for water and weakening the Heartless enough for a solid whack with the keyblade to finish them off, he judges, is the most efficient way of taking them down and obtaining hearts.
The Organisation has taught him to think in terms of efficiency.
He's trying to find where the next set of Heartless are when he's helped to his goal by a noise. Swimming, he comes across a girl with bright red hair and a tail sobbing, her face hovering worriedly over that of a manner. Roxas glances over in evaluation, and near as he can tell the man is sleeping. Some wisps of red seem to be floating in the water around him, so presumably he is injured.
The large Heartlesss, hovering over the area and looking like it's going to relaunch an attack (and is she shielding him?), is intercepted by Roxas, who readies a spell and the keyblade.
The Heartless is deceptively easy to beat; it's a big brute, but ultimately stupid. As it fades into the air around him (like his colleagues, and isn't that a strange thought), he's tempted to talk to her, but the Organisation are taught the value of stealth. He seems to have abandoned the principle today, though nothing seems to be watching him beyond a crab – not somebody who classifies as a threat on any level.
The girl is still wailing, but also mumbling about potions and ethers and fumbling with a strange bag. Her words are all incoherent (he thinks he might hear a "daddy" in there, but the concept means nothing to him), and any semblance of curiosity about talking to him is cut off by Saix's voice berating, "Roxas."
Saix is out of sight, but Roxas manages to locate him based on his voice. Saix's eyes scrutinise him, but Roxas simply says, "My ears hurt", and brings a hand up to rub at them.
Saix opens the Dark Corridor that will return them back to the World That Never Was, and gestures Roxas through, before following himself. As Saix closes the portal behind them, Roxas asks, "Why was she so loud?"
"She's emotional," is all that Saix offers.
"Nobody at the Organisation is like that," Roxas comments.
"That would be difficult without a heart." Saix has a talent for sounding sarcastic.
The principle of Kingdom Hearts has been explained to him, so he finds himself asking, "Would we be like that… after?"
"Who can say?"
He pulls a face.
"You don't find it desirable?" asks Saix, eyes boring into his.
"Not particularly. Seems like a waste of energy really," responds Roxas.
Saix, obviously valuing the notion of being human far more than Roxas does, purses his lips. "You would not understand without having experienced a heart."
You have no memories, is what Roxas gets out of it. You have no memories, so your opinion isn't valid. But maybe, thinks Roxas, he's just the only person with a clear judgement.
Watching children playing in the street below the clock tower, Roxas sighs. He can hear them laughing, mouths upturned in huge smiles doing things that look utterly pointless and time wasting and passing it off as amusement.
He points it out to Axel, who tells him, "They're probably just spending time together as friends."
"What's the point?" he asks.
"There doesn't have to be a point to it. It's being in each other's company, I suppose." A sigh. "You think about missions too much, Roxas. We're not on one now – we're hanging out as friends."
The sound of such emotion still intrigues Roxas. He thinks of the children on the street, of the girl sobbing in Atlantica. They feel, but he is just… blank. He doesn't have the words to explain, and it isn't something he expects his fellow Nobodies would be able to inform him about.
They have memories of lives, of emotions. He's heard it mentioned more than once, mutterings from his colleagues, that they can feel the absence of them. Roxas has no such thing to remember, so there's nothing noticeably gone, but nothing there either. It's an ingrained form of apathy.
"Axel… do you ever think maybe friendship is just for people with hearts?"
Axel arches an eyebrow at him. "If I did, I wouldn't call us friends."
It's a valid point, Roxas concedes. They're both well aware they don't have hearts.
He nods in response, and peers over the edge of the clock tower again. He's made uncomfortable by one of the figures he's surveying turning around and pointing up at him, and then a few other people are too.
Startled, he moves back away from the edge of the clock tower. Twilight Town isn't the worst place to be seen, but it isn't very often that anybody looks up at the clock tower. He'd almost felt invisible.
Axel has also moved away from the edge, though his mouth is turned upwards again. "So graceful, Roxas!"
Roxas stares back, and Axel creates a Dark Corridor during the moment. "We should cut this little trip short," Axel explains, "before they send somebody up here to investigate the kid on the clock tower."
"Why would they?"
"Kids and high buildings don't go too well together in their eyes, Roxas."
Neither do towns and Heartless, Roxas thinks, but that's what they're stuck with. Axel's explanation makes sense though, so he nods again and gets up.
He returns to the castle with Axel. And he is right: Roxas doesn't need a heart to use those words, and thinking it… he thinks maybe it makes it true. Axel, his best friend.
Standing with his best friends, Hayner, Pence and Olette, Roxas is clenching his fists to his side. It's an involuntary reaction. He can feel anger and for some reason, this disconcerts him, bone deep. He's silent. He thinks maybe he's shaking.
Hayner's ranting. "I can't believe you let Seifer do that, Roxas! He's an idiot!"
"An idiot with big muscles," Pence reminds them. "It's only natural that we'd concede defeat."
Hayner pulls a face. "It's about pride! It's about not getting our butts kicked!"
He gestures dramatically, making Pence and Roxas exchange an amused look. Roxas is getting his emotions under control now. He can breathe easy.
"Who cares about Seifer?" Olette has her arms folded, looking bored of the whole conversation. "Do we really want to waste the whole day on him?"
Roxas nods. "Why waste summer? It's not long, right?"
"It seems long, but then there's no time left," Olette laughs. "Maybe they plan it that way."
"The teacher's greatest conspiracy!" Pence laughs.
"How is this a better topic of conversation?" Hayner demands, looking irritated.
It makes him feel relaxed, makes him more able to breathe than the stifling anger of before, but Roxas doesn't say anything. Something tells him it would not be the most socially appropriate thing to say.
"Because it's now suitably light hearted enough to buy some ice cream." Olette grins at them and turns to leave the Usual Spot.
Anger forgotten, Hayner yells, "Race you there!" and despite Olette's protests he runs off out of the door, her close on his heels.
Pence and Roxas exchange an exasperated look, then jog after them.
Roxas hates Seifer. He doesn't like the sensation of anger, but when his name is mentioned it seems to prompt something in him, something like a violent desire to punch him in the face. He's initially alarmed – and that doesn't even make sense – but watching his friends, it seems as if it causes a similar reaction, so he feels less out of place now.
But he still doesn't like it.
It balances out, though, because his friends make him smile, and that's a great feeling. He feels like he's on top of the world.
But something underneath still makes him clench his hands so tightly that his palms are dotted with finger nail marks. It doesn't really hurt, though.
He recognises the feeling more now, because Twilight Town is beginning to seem like an odd place. He wonders, sometimes, if he's just losing his sanity. The atmosphere has a tendency to freeze, even the air around him seeming to still.
Sitting on top of the clock tower with his friends is his favourite place to be. It feels familiar, like it's something he's been doing since he was far too young to remember. He knows that's impossible, though; nobody would take a baby up there.
As they sit eating sea salt ice cream, he watches as it drips and falls over the edge of the building, melting in the high reach of the sun. Twilight Town is always hot, it seems.
"Do you think it'd hurt if it fell on someone's head?" Roxas asks. It's a strange thought, but he finds himself suddenly curious.
Hayner has no such qualms in admitting such oddities, though. "What the hell, Roxas?"
"It's not exactly going to knock someone out cold," Pence contributes with a smile.
"That's not what I meant!" he protests. "But don't things falling from a height hurt more than something that doesn't have long to fall?" The fact seems to be embedded into his brain. He wonders if he learned it at school – it'd certainly meet the 'utterly useless' scale.
Hayner looks totally incredulous, and summarises his thoughts with, "It's practically water. How's that supposed to hurt?"
Does rain hurt? Roxas wonders. He's never been anywhere other than Twilight Town, his memory tells him, and he doesn't believe he's every really experienced the concept of 'rain'. That falls a long way, so wouldn't it hurt? It confuses him, and he doesn't like being confused.
Even Olette looks amused but she sticks up for him. "Lay off, guys." She takes it upon herself to change the subject. "I can't believe next week's our last week of summer vacation. There was so much we wanted to do!"
Hayner waves an arm vaguely. "Ah, a week's plenty of time. We can fulfil our 'to do list' just fine."
"Then let's agree to have the best week ever," says Pence.
"Enough happy memories to get through the months of school before another break." Olette laughs.
"Perfect!" says Hayner. He looks at Roxas. "You in?"
Roxas nods. "Yeah. Sounds great." He smiles.
"Alright!" Hayner raises a fist and holds it out expectantly. The four bump fists.
"To the best summer vacation ever!" cheers Olette. "This'll be great."
Roxas smiles. This is going to be amazing, he thinks, but there's a nervous twinge inside that he's trying to suppress. Nothing can stop the four of them, he says to himself, because they're best friends… and this is part of what friendship is.
Roxas wakes up one morning to his friends staring straight through him, like he isn't substantially there. He'd suspected there was something wrong – the odd cloaked people, the sudden freezing, the strange white creatures had all made it obvious, but the one thing he'd had unwavering faith in was his friends… his friends who have just ran straight through him.
This week… it really hasn't gone as planned. He rubs a hand through his hair. He thinks maybe he has really lost it now, a sort of desperation causing him to follow a voice – really, Roxas, a voice? – in his instructions. Go to the mansion.
And hey, Roxas thinks, everything else has already fallen apart, so what does he have left to lose?
At the mansion, his discussion with Naminé brings the memories charging back at him, and between his memories and Sora's he's left in a foggy confusion.
The Organisation had longed for Kingdom Hearts, for the completeness of a heart, but Roxas is beginning to suspect they have no idea what it's actually like – their memories are too distant, too nostalgic. In reality, it hurts, and he doesn't want to feel it anymore.
Roxas is aware he's stuck in a trap, but there's nothing he can really do about it. He doesn't know who to believe anymore. Fighting his way through the mansion, he wonders if it really even matters anymore. He's deeply unhappy, but he's trying his best.
"Simply amazing, Roxas," snipes a voice, and Roxas looks up. This time, it's somebody he recognises. They've met before in this town, but that's not the first time. In fact, Roxas hasn't been in this town for that long at all. He stares, wide-eyed.
"Axel."
He feels strange. There's a faint something within him, a shadow of a feeling, so faint that Roxas can't identify it. He focuses on it. For once, there's nothing beneath the surface, no creeping doubts. It's real.
(Simulation feelings to counterbalance his lack of heart… and there's something there underneath it all after all, and isn't that ironic?)
He wants to laugh, but he doesn't feel like laughing. Neither does Axel, apparently, who's an expert at showing his frustration.
But it's okay, because underneath the fog, underneath the smouldering anger, Roxas thinks he has an inkling of a feeling, a final understanding of a concept. Friendship.
And despite the circumstances, Roxas smiles internally, even raising his keyblades against his best friend, because the understanding has finally come to him. A treasure to keep in place of his heart: knowledge of friendship.
Author's Note: Oh my God, this is the cheesiest thing I have ever written. I was cringing. I can't decide if the cheesiness is good or bad – it's not something I especially like, but anybody who says Kingdom Hearts isn't cheesy is lying!
Axel and Roxas interaction is very difficult in this particular format. In fact, the whole first half of this was really difficult. I forbid myself from mentioning anything about feelings, and tried to keep to describing expressions more often than actually naming them to make them seem foreign. I never realised how much as a writer I focus on emotional reactions as well as internalisation until I spent a lot of the fic forbidding myself from writing in that way. In that respect, it's a good writing exercise.
My Roxas characterisation needs some work I think, although it was partly influenced by the plot of the fic. I don't think it's drastically OOC, but it's not as in character as I tend to like being either.
Writing the Twilight Town friendship circle was difficult for me as it's not something I've ever experienced, but I've done my best with it.
I think the scene connections worked out fairly decently actually. I was concerned about the sudden shift from the Organisation to virtual Twilight Town sounding unnatural, but I actually thought that came out pretty well considering the huge change. I managed to find a link in the writing.
Any thoughts? I welcome any comments, positive or constructive criticism!