This particular story was inspired by several tumblr conversations between myself and PSIDontKnow, who originally came up with the whole AU. They drew some adorable artwork corresponding to the AU as well; links to which can be found on my Ao3 posting of this story and PSIDontKnow's art tag on their tumblr.
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or .hack/SIGN, no any of the characters/locations therein.
Axel disappeared for over a month after the final battle against the Xemnas AI.
It wasn't like before, either, where there were still faint traces of his activity hiding in the code if you knew where to look. That was how they had managed to find him the first time, but even the remaining AIs still loitering around the World after the false moon's collapse could give them no information.
"It's like he's just… gone," Demyx had said when they went to ask if he knew anything. The musical AI had given them a shrug in apology, a sympathetic wince ghosting effortlessly across his features. He'd been Axel's friend, too.
And it wasn't as if Axel had been derezzed. He'd lived through the battle and none of the other AIs that had been attached to the false moon had disappeared – though they had all quickly sought out a way to back up their coding since they were now essentially free-floating and vulnerable.
In fact, Axel had celebrated with the two of them upon their victory and had even exchanged a couple of emails with them a few days later. Granted, he'd seemed pretty off, his electronic 'voice' seeming sad and distracted in his messages, but he had also just had to help destroy the rogue code that had created him. He'd had to choose a side; anyone would be exhausted after that, even an AI.
…Right?
Yet time continued to pass and soon Roxas and Xion had to admit that their frustration was now bordering on downright dread.
If Axel hadn't been leaving behind any kind of activity feed and he wasn't responding to any of their messages and if no one could even say they'd seen him, then… what did that leave?
Six weeks went by and just as the resignation set in that the Gunner might actually be gone, there came the message.
Hollow Bastion Memorial Hospital, downtown Radiant Garden. Next Saturday 2PM. Rooftop.
It had been sent to both of them; copy-and-pasted from Axel's account, but when they went to check – hearts pounding with renewed hope - there had been no player log-in. Just the email without even a voice recording attached like there usually was.
They tried to respond, of course, to get Axel (because they refused to believe that it was someone else impersonating him,) to talk to them, to explain the message, anything. For two days there was nothing. Then, finally, somewhere around 10:00 in the morning on the third day, there came a reply.
Please come.
Nothing else.
Roxas and Xion met in person for lunch that Friday. As they sat on top of the clock tower they debated on what the message could have meant. Obviously Axel was asking them to go somewhere, but why? For what purpose? They exchanged a handful of theories but nothing they came up with seemed to make any sense. They went quiet for a bit after that, just sitting and eating and thinking.
Eventually it was Roxas who pointed out that the train tracks running off into the distance could take them to Radiant Garden in a little over an hour.
Xion was already looking up ticket prices by the time he'd finished talking.
Eventually the two of them – though no closer to an explanation – decided to follow the email's instructions. They each shot off a response before they headed back down the tower steps, both saying they would be there at the appointed time and place the next afternoon. Roxas walked Xion home after that, promising to meet up with her the next day at the station.
They met at the ticket booth at noon to make sure they got their tickets in time. After that it was simply a matter of waiting until the train came, then waiting to board, and finally waiting until the train made its last stop in Radiant Garden. The two of them stuck close together as they wandered into the city, stomachs both in knots but neither mentioning it to the other.
Mercifully, Hollow Bastion Memorial was close to the train station, so there wasn't much of a chance of getting lost. Still, by the time they'd managed to find the correct building and convince the lady at the front desk to show them the way up to the roof, the 2:00 deadline was nearly upon them. With shaking hands and racing hearts they pushed their way out through the door and onto the little fenced-in rooftop courtyard.
…Which was disappointingly barren.
Roxas took a look around the space while Xion checked her phone to see if any new messages had miraculously appeared without her noticing. There were none. Loathe to come all this way just to wind up empty handed, she shot off a quick message of her own – just a simple, We're here – as Roxas took out his frustration with a kick to the nearby fence.
She had tucked her phone away and was about to pull her blond companion back from the admittedly beautiful view when there came the sound of an email notification. Xion hastily tugged her phone back out – only to frown down at the screen when no new alerts were displayed. It was only after there came a shuffling sound from somewhere behind them did she realize it hadn't been her phone making the noise.
"Shit. I must have dozed off, I'm sorry," came the tired, scratchy, impossibly familiar voice. There was a pause, more shuffling. "You guys… you actually made it…"
They both turned – Roxas like a bolt of lightening and Xion like molasses – to stare back at the stairwell door. There was a nice little corner, hidden in the shadow of the wall itself, where a person could easily tuck themselves away and not be seen unless someone were looking directly at it. It was from this shadow that the speaker stepped; slowly and carefully, as if moving was difficult.
A pair of jaws dropped in perfect unison as Axel – flesh and blood and real – hobbled over to them from where he'd been curled up and hidden away against the wall.
He was tall, just as tall as his in-game model, and with hair the exact same shade of fiery red. But he was different, too, sickly, pale like he'd gone far too long without seeing the sunlight. His mane of crimson was gathered messily behind him in a ponytail; green eyes bright and happy above a set of deep purple bags and gaunt cheeks devoid of flame symbols. He stood hunched with his hands in the pockets of his loose-fitting sweatpants and shivered slightly as the wind blew straight through his thin white t-shirt.
But then he grinned and it was like two overlaid images had finally fit themselves together.
"Man, you two look just like your avatars."
Xion was the first to find her voice. "Axel?" she whispered.
He chuckled, shook his head with a smile. "Name's Lea, actually." He looked back up at them and despite how frail he appeared there was a definite glint of joy behind his eyes. "I mean, you can call me Axel if you want to. Might be easier."
Roxas spoke next. "I… I don't understand… how…?"
"How am I here?" Axel – Lea finished for him.
They both nodded.
"Ah. Funny story." Lea shrugged. "It turns out I was human all along, I just didn't know it." He gave another shrug as if unsure of what to do with his body. Looking at him properly it was easier to see how he carried himself – like he wasn't used to his own parts.
"You were a Lost One," Xion stated, because it was the only explanation she could come up with.
Lea's face twisted into something like comical disagreement and he looked off to the side, out over the rooftop and past the fence. He was silent for a moment, thinking, before turning back to the pair in front of him. "I don't… think so? I guess it would make sense that I was, but I didn't remember." Skinny fingers finally emerged from his pants pocket and raked through his hair. Now freed from its hiding spot, the bandage over his hand became visible, as well as the plastic ID bracelet adorning his wrist.
Roxas took a hesitant step forward – probably still as much in shock as Xion was. "Anything?"
Lea sighed, dropping his arm. "Nope, nothing. I didn't remember my name, I didn't remember being human, none of it. All I knew was waking up as an AI and completely believing that's what I was."
There was silence for a time as no one could think of anything to say. Lea went back to hunching against the wind while Xion and Roxas shared a glance between themselves, still unable to fully comprehend the situation.
"I'm sorry." Lea fidgeted as the others looked back to him curiously. He kept his eyes trained just over their heads at the brilliantly blue afternoon sky. "That I disappeared again, I mean." He sighed – long and deep and exhausted. "I honestly didn't do it on purpose this time, I just… I started remembering."
Xion swallowed. "Was it after the fight?"
Lea nodded. Green eyes flicked down to meet hers for just a second but he quickly averted them again. "Yeah. After we took out Xemnas and the Lost Ones started waking up. It didn't happen right away, though."
The ghost of a smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth as he shifted his weight awkwardly. Once more, he brought his hand out of hiding to rub over the lower half of his face. "God, I could kill for a cigarette right now…" Raising his voice back up above a mumble, he continued. "It all kinda started coming back in pieces – and at first I thought maybe I was glitching out or something, absorbing random user data – but then I remembered being me and, well…" He made a vague gesture along the length of his own body with both hands, as if to say 'ta-da.'
"You woke up." Roxas' eyes grew wide with understanding as Lea nodded an affirmation "That's why you weren't online and we couldn't find you, because you woke up."
The redhead hummed. "Woke up right here, actually," he said, tapping at the concrete of the rooftop below him with his foot to indicate the hospital itself. "They told me I'd been in a coma for almost a year with barely any brain activity. Said they would've given up on me forever ago if I haven't had the occasional little blip on the monitors."
That made sense then, the pair realized. If he'd been found unconscious because of the World, then he wouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a console after he'd woken up. Not until they'd decided he was stable.
His lopsided grin told them he knew what they were thinking. "I had to bribe a nurse to let me use her phone just so I could email you guys."
Xion hadn't noticed when she'd started to shake. A quick peek at Roxas though her peripheral vision told her the blond was holding together about as well as she was, with his fists clenched at his sides to try and keep steady. This was all too much. Too much to take in all at once, too much to comprehend. They'd thought Axel to be just like them – a person on the other side of a glowing screen – until they'd seen him fizzle and turn partly into code. After that had followed the panic and frustration as they hunted the AI down to get their friend back. They had come to terms with the fact that they could never meet him in real life; it wasn't entirely fair, but they could all three live with it as long as they continued to accept one another as friends. As partners. But then he'd disappeared again and there had been the very real fear that he was gone.
Now he was standing in front of them, not as a Gunner, but as a person, and it was like something out of a cybernetic dream, a false reality implanted in their heads and the two briefly wondered if they weren't all still stuck in the World.
If they were, neither could say that they cared.
It was Lea who finally broke the silence, voice soft and genuine in its blatant fatigue. "I'm… I'm really glad you guys came. I wanted to meet you in person…"
Movement. Even if asked later, neither Roxas nor Xion would be able to say for certain who had moved first, but one moment they were standing still as stone and the next they had both flung themselves at the odd copy of their teammate and wrapped their arms around him.
"We missed you so much!"
"We were worried, you asshole!"
They talked over each other, not caring if they were understandable or not because this was Axel – regardless of his name change or sudden awkwardness so very different from his in-game persona. They held on even as he stumbled backwards and only marginally loosened their hold at his breathless protests.
"OW! Come on, you two, I'm still recovering from a coma here!"
The three of them hugged for what seemed like hours. At some point Lea had draped his own arms around their shoulders and pulled them in tight, despite his earlier grumblings. They each took turns murmuring to one another; muffled apologies and empty insults layering over and over until no one was sure who was saying what anymore.
Hours later, as the sun was starting to fade from the sky, the trio made their way down from the roof and back to the room where Lea had been staying after being deemed fit enough to be moved. They stood beside the bed and enveloped each other in another hug – their farewells tinted with a new kind of hope.
Over the next few weeks, Roxas and Xion made frequent trips out to Radiant Garden to visit as Lea finished his recovery. He'd been a programmer, they learned, and that had been why he'd made such a suitable candidate for the Xemnas AI's plans. Lea finally got the go-ahead from the hospital staff to use the computers in the waiting area in order to exchange emails with his friends when they couldn't come see him, but his presence online was limited and logging into the World was still strictly prohibited. Little by little they all got to know one another anew.
Somewhere around the ten-week mark, Lea was released from the hospital. He'd bounced back surprisingly quickly for someone stuck in a coma for nine months, and since he didn't show any signs of permanent damage, they were letting him go. Roxas and Xion couldn't make it to Radiant Garden the day he checked out, but Lea surprised them by showing up in Twilight Town instead. The three of them celebrated with ice cream atop the clock tower.
That night, after Lea had gone back to his own city, the other two members of the trio found a message waiting for them in their inboxes – sent from Axel's account by a fully logged-in player.
Steam Gunner, looking for group. You guys need a third? ;)
They'd never logged in so fast in their lives.
The bit about Axel disappearing prior to the events of the story was based off another conversation over on tumblr. The general gist is that Axel, still thinking he was an AI but having kept it a secret from his teammates, was forced to reveal his "true" AI nature. He panicked, fled, and hid from them for a period of time before Roxas and Xion were able to track him down. Roxas then proceeded to punch him out for making them worry. XD