Slumped in a chair, hugging Riku to himself, Axel slowly drifted into dream: dark, shapeless whispers. Shadowy hands stroked him from all directions, trailing fire a crossed his skin, illuminating paper like screens with shifting memories painted on the surface. Memories of a time when he had hands to hold and a person to cuddle up next to on frigid nights, echoes of a feather-light voice rippled a crossed his consciousness. Laughter lifted his heart, but something had begun to tug at his mind, no, shake. Reality rushed towards him in pieces, like a mirror shattering in reverse, fragments falling into place to form a picture.
As he roused, a figure convulsed in his lap, tremors raking the bundled form, "Wha--… No!" Riku lay in his lap, shaking violently, lids fluttering, sweat streaking his forehead.
"Holy crap! Don't die now, if you go to, it's all lost!" head whipping wildly from side to side, his eyes settled on a large, hammered bronze bathtub. The type found throughout the fortress, modified to allow for modern plumbing. Hefting the trembling bundle, he strode over to the faucet and cranked the cold handle as far as it would go, clear water gushing into the basin. Nearly a third full already, he cast Blizzara on the tub, hoping to cool the water further. He twisted the knob until the water was choked of, drips still falling from the end of the spout.
With a grunt, he hefted Riku and all into the ice, cold water, gulping for air suddenly as his lung seem to seize, leaving him momentarily breathless.
"Huh, this better work, you feel like you're burning up from the inside, and this is the only way I can think of cooling you down before you cook your brain. Don't you dare give up on me. If you don't make it, and I get a cold, I am so bringing you back to life, just so I can kill you myself." "Don't ask me how I'll accomplish it, though," Axel thought to himself. "If he knew how to do that, Roxas wouldn't be haunting him in his dreams; he'd be helping him with this plan."
Teeth chattering, Axel waited for the platinum blonde in his arms to stop trembling. Minutes passed, seeming to pool around them. After what felt like forever, he realized he was shaking, not Riku's motionless body. He held his hand in front of the boy's nose, sighing when he felt the tickle of breath on his palm.
He relaxed, sluggish in the icy liquid surrounding them, legs and torso feeling fuzzy, almost prickly to touch. "Why get out, I can't feel any of my lower half anyway. At least he's cooled off, he's probably just cozy underneath all the blankets." And time grew more lethargic, seeping though cracks in the wall, dripping down the walls. Moments took years, lifetimes took eons. Water fell from the faucet, sending small ripples across the surface of the water. Silence screamed in Axel's ears, and his eyelids grew heavy. The sandman played tricks on him, making the world slide in and out of focus. The fire crackled in what seemed like an extreme distance.
"Oh dear," he whispered, his voice sounding alien to his ears. "I think I may be in a spot of trouble." His eyes trained on one spot, he concentrated hard, trying to remember something. What, he couldn't quite grasp. And as he blinked, the world around him jerked to a stand still, the fire frozen in place. It seemed to have walked to the edge of a great precept, and now hung there, in mid-leap, smile spread across its face. As he craned his neck, a drop of water hung three inches off the surface of the bath water, waiting. He gasped for the second time the night. All the encompassed him was at a stand still; someone had taken Father Time's rattle and stomped on it, smashing it into little bits.
"Wow, that's a nifty trick." Axel looked at the huddled form in his lap in pure, undiluted wonder. "What was in that syringe?" While he knew the boy wouldn't or couldn't answer, he felt that something had been set into motion, something he couldn't hope to completely understand without hours to study and explanation. This was definitely going to go down as at least a four in his top ten of weird and indefinable events.
"I wish you were here to see this, Roxas. You would've never believed me if I told you about this." With an audible "humph," Axel shifted so he could see more of the room. And, as if someone had flipped the switch on Time's circuit breaker, the hesitant drop fell with a "plip," and the fire crackled as a log shifted under the weight of another branch of timber.
Standing suddenly, with his arms under the youth's, Axel rose out of the bath, and hauled both of them out of the cold. He slowly unwound the soggy blankets from around the still form and dropped them to the floor. His black robe followed suit, leaving him shivering in a pair of black, leather pants, a similarly colored tank top, and a puddle-filled pair of shoes. He deposited Riku on the cushy bed and turned to find more covers for the sleeping form. Taking a new stack of fleece blankets out of the closet, he shook the folds out and draped them across the mattress and all. Finishing with the last one, he shuffled to the walking in closet off to the right of the main room.
Once in side, he slumped against the door, exhausted. Summoning a spurt of energy, Axel stumbled away from the recently sealed portal, and striped of his sodden clothes. They formed a pile on the stone floor, the unfinished granite darken as the water seeped into its many pores.
Fumbling in the drawers along the wall, he fished out a fresh shirt and a pair of pajama pants with a draw-string waist. The bold green t-shirt and the sky-blue pants with wispy clouds drifting all over were and odd couple, but little mattered to Axel beyond the fact that they were warm and dry. Swaying slightly, he managed to exit the closet, trip in an expertly controlled fashion towards the bed, and splayed himself out beside the now silent form of Riku. The teen slept as if nothing had happened and he was just at home, sleeping in his bed, dreaming of impossible feats and unending adventures.
"Lucky bastard," hissed between Axel's lips and he joined the boy in effortless slumber, ghost-like digits caressing endless plains of skin.