A/N: Hi. Final chapter, ahoy. If you enjoyed this random little piece of fluff, please do comment and let me know. It was my first multi-chapter story in the KH fandom so, even if it's a little odd-ball compared to my other stuff, it'll always hold a special place in my heart (insert other sappy sentiments here).

I've considered an epilogue to this piece. I'm still considering it. We shall see if I ever actually get around to it.

Glossary of referenced terms:

1) "Sheket" (Hebrew, noun/command): "Quiet" or "Be quiet".

2) "Shalom alecha" (Hebrew, phrase, also greeting/farewell): "peace to/for you".


The day of St. Peter's welcoming ceremony dawned bright and clear. Days like these always did.

Amid the fuss and the noise of the musician's dressing chambers, a petite blond angel stood silently, brushing gold dust into his hair.

No expression. No feeling. Just a numb, numb sense that he'd been broken, and only one other person in the universe could understand.

A gentle hand dropped to one of his shoulders, causing Harp to look up. Above him, Sitar gave an encouraging smile. As with anything Sitar seemed to do, it was infused with good nature. The sly expression would come just a moment later.

"Ready for the big day?" Sitar asked, moving in alongside Harp to check his own appearance in a nearby mirror.

Sitar's words rushed past him before they'd even registered. Harp didn't respond.

For his part, Sitar glanced down, noted the stoic expression on the young angel's face. The only assumption he could make was that of nerves.

"This will be no different than any of Peter's other welcoming ceremonies, you know. The new arrivals will hardly notice we're above them," Sitar said, apparently trying to assuage any uncertainties Harp might have had. "Remember how their caretakers were joking last year that some thought music just played nonstop past Heaven's gates?" He grinned.

On any other day, Harp might have laughed, or at least smiled.

Not today though. Not after last night.

That's when Sitar tried a different, slyer tactic. He moved away from the mirror, standing behind Harp. Sitar was over a head taller and, with far broader shoulders and wings as well, his entire figure framed Harp's own in the mirror they were both now standing directly in front of. Sitar raised both hands to Harp's shoulders, squeezing gently.

"Someone told me a certain violist is using a certain harpist as her muse now and that it kept her from getting expelled."

The news caught Harp off-guard enough that his blank expression wavered, curiosity forming behind gold eyes as they began to focus for the first time that morning.

"What?"

Sitar grinned, knowing he'd successfully caught the younger angel's attention.

"Fourteenth Viola," he said, his voice back to its usual sing-song tone. "I hear tell from one of my fellow sitars that Viola thought of you during her evaluation."

Harp stared directly into Sitar's eyes via the mirror.

"So…she likes me?" His voice was soft, still holding the youthful tones of an angelic childhood that was not yet very far behind him.

Sitar shrugged. "Maybe," he said, ruffling his wings a little as he stretched out his arms and fingers. In Heaven there wasn't much of a concept of physical or emotional attraction among nameless angels, although at least some were aware of concepts such as 'like'. And 'love'. Actually acting on the feelings, however, was a privilege enjoyed by angels of higher stature alone. Those El had blessed with names and other privileges.

"It's more likely someone told her about muses and gave her a little…inspiration."

This time, Sitar did laugh, and it elicited an image in Harp's mind of someone else laughing, a human, as his face nuzzled into the crook of his lover's shoulder.

Taking a shuddering, unnecessary breath in, Harp's vision swam before him. He was going to break today, he just knew it. And then everyone would see. Everyone would know what he'd done…

A cherub approached them, fluttering about erratically near Harp's face.

"To Sorael!" it chirped almost anxiously. "I am to take you to the angel Sorael."

Harp didn't move until Sitar nudged him, the action gentle but firm.

"Go on then," he said. "Play us something we've never heard before, will you? These things can get tedious after awhile."

Before Harp could protest or even think to, the small angelic creature before him took hold of one arm, tugging urgently toward the dressing room's entrance. Sorael would not prepare here among common musicians. Even Harp knew that. He would have his own private quarters in which to dress and prepare.

Dodging and practically skipping over other frantically bustling angels in his path, Harp followed the cherub as best as he was able, across the dressing room and out into sunlit sky. Sorael's private dressing quarters were set up even higher for privacy among the clouds. While the inner layers were made of sturdy, thick material, the outer layers of these tents all billowed in Heaven's pleasant winds with colorful material as light as gauze. Each performing angel of this calibre had their own cloud, their own quarters. As the cherub led him forward, Harp looked on with a sense of awe.

The noises were soft, almost inaudible, but up here in the protective shelter of cloud cover, Harp could hear just well enough. A soft sound of surprise here. A contented sigh there. They reminded him of Axel, of Roxas. Of happiness.

He hadn't realized he was still approaching the structure until his cherub guide fluttered almost directly into his face. Harp jumped back a little, startled.

"You will wait!" the cherub said, its tone a shrill yet somehow still tentative order. Anxious, queer little things, cherubs were to Harp.

So, as the cherub made its way somewhat apprehensively into the confines of Sorael's dressing quarters, Harp waited. Harp remembered.

Almost at once, the entrance to the tent was flung open. To Harp's surprise, it was Rikuel, not the cherub or even Sorael, who stood on the other side. His expression still hard, Harp found it difficult to connect the severe looking choir director to the sounds of gentle intimacy he'd just overheard.

No words, just a scrutinizing expression, and Rikuel was gone, his raven wings spreading outward in an impressive span as he alighted.

When the cherub reappeared, it looked utterly panicked. "Go, go," it squeaked. "Not much time. Not much time at all!"

Then it too was gone, and Harp entered Sorael's quarters without further preamble.

The angel rose to greet him, expression delighted, cheeks rosy and flushed. Had Rikuel caused that, Harp wondered. If so, how could someone so hard and unyielding handle someone as sweet-natured as Sorael?

Harp bowed his head. "In peace, Sorael," he greeted the angel who looked so much like himself, who was blessed with so much more than he even dared to imagine. But the angel's arms were wrapped around him before Harp could even straighten, lips finding his mouth in a warm, brief welcome. This was a greeting among named angels, among equals. Eyes open wide in surprise, Harp stared back as Sorael released him.

"Just Sora, please. We are brothers now, of course." The boy's voice still held a childlike androgyny that Harp had not long ago grown out of himself. Sorael — or Sora now, perhaps — would remain like this forever, if he'd understood the angel's purpose for existing at all.

"Sora." Harp tried the shortened name on for size, marveling at its simplicity, at how he'd never have otherwise considered calling the angel anything other than his official title before now. Sora. Not El's Sky. Just Sky itself.

The brown haired angel looked him over, beckoned him forward toward his dressing mirror, and Harp complied in wordless fashion. With a careful hand, Sora brushed a light powdering of silver dust across Harp's cheeks before he'd managed to get his bearings at all.

Eyebrows furrowed, Sora scrutinized his work. "Better, except…" His tone was still uncertain until a moment later his expression lit up. "Close your eyes please, harpist. This should complete it."

Harp did as he was told, felt Sora's gentle fingers brush against one eyelid at a time. "Much better," Sora said, and Harp could already hear the smile in his voice. "You can open your eyes now again."

The figure that stared back at him from Sora's mirror was himself, of course, but altered, somehow brighter. The silver across his cheekbones made them stand out more sharply, adding a defining quality to their usual soft roundness. The gold on his eyelids accentuated the color of his actual eyes even more superbly. As Harp stared, his companion patted down his unruly hair just slightly to match his own brunet tresses.

"Perfect, right?" Sora clapped his hands a little, expression delighted. "We will impress them in every way this morning. Perhaps even El will find pleasure in our mixed medium."

Harp said nothing, simply swallowing hard and bowing his head deep in thought. El would not be present, he knew, but the Creator sensed everything, heard all sounds of Heaven and Earth, knew everyone's true heart without doubts. If true, El knew his heart even now, and how much it ached. El knew the lies he had told, the deception in which he had played such a pivotal part.

Axel

A hand grasped his own. When Harp looked up, it was Sorael he saw though. Blue eyes instead of green. Brown hair, not red.

"Let's go then, harpist. We can set up early. Maybe even get a view of the arrivals before they cross the gates."

And Harp complied, allowing himself to be led off Sora's cloud, flying listlessly only a few wing beats behind. They arrived on another private cloud, prepared specifically for them. It was situated below where the other members of the orchestra would play, in full view of the arrivals as they passed into Heaven's realms.

Roxas

Harp shook his head, as though denying it now would change anything back then.

Your eyes

"Look there," Sorael pointed, seating himself into a comfortable position on the cloud assigned to them.

Harp looked, and saw the myriad wingless masses below them, just beyond Heaven's gates. Humans. His mouth opened a little in awe. From his vantage point last year, he hadn't been able to see anything other than his own fellow musicians.

Sora settled into the cloud, shifting onto his stomach, small bare feet flexing in the air a little above him before he hooked one foot behind his other ankle comfortably. "They're just so interesting, humans," he said, his high voice now a wistful sigh.

Harp couldn't disagree, but found himself stuck on one human in particular. In the end, his thoughts always returned to Axel.

"I know Riku thinks very little of them," Sora continued, "but they're just so fascinating, with their free choices and all the dramas. Just, everything. They make Heaven seem so dull at times."

Sora lapsed into silence, and Harp followed suit, content simply to look at the seemingly unending numbers of recently departed milling around below them. Some were speaking with one another. Others were simply looking around in wonder with open, expectant expressions. It was the ones who stood still, faces blank, and eyes haunted that attracted Harp's attention the most though. Although they looked nothing physically like his Axel, there was something familiar in their hollow expressions.

Sometimes humans bring their troubles with them after death, Sitar had once explained to Harp. Sometimes they don't even yet realize they've died, isn't that fun? Harp had agreed at the time, an amused smile on his face. Now, he honestly couldn't be so sure it was funny in the least.

His eyes were trained on a small group of somber looking humans who seemed to have gravitated to one another in their own unknowable miseries, when the crowd shifted slightly, and wild, messy blond hair came into view. Harp knew that hair, and he knew the face it was attached to. Unconsciously, he felt his body begin to quiver, despite the cloud's comforting embrace.

~ o ~ o ~

Unseeing green eyes had regained their focus in a split second as Harp felt a cold trickle of terror run down his own spine. Mouth open slightly, eyes wide with fear, his wings spread and he lifted off to flee for his safe place, his home. Where voices were never raised in anguished shrieks, and blond hair was never matted with crimson blood.

Axel's screams had been terrible, the way Harp just knew they were tearing his throat raw as he had struggled to reach the unmoving blond in the seat beside him. Even after Harp had been pulled free from the dream, the overwhelming sound of it all still rang in his ears, the indescribable feeling of panic and physical pain making his body tremble uncontrollably.

He would have left it all, returned to Heaven where he belonged — if not for Axel's quick motion, hands closing over Harp's wrists. For a moment, Harp struggled, wings thrashing, almost pulling the red-haired human entirely out of his seat as Axel fought to keep his grasp on the panicking angel.

Although more physically compact, Harp was stronger, could have broken free and perhaps even caused Axel harm with his frantic movements, if not for the soft words that followed.

"Please," Axel said, with neither volume nor force. It sounded simply like the plea of someone who had lost everything, of someone who was drowning in emotions too deep to ever surface from again. "Please stay," Axel said, and Harp's body reacted, calmed immediately, even as his mind remained a storm of fear and overstimulation at everything he'd just witnessed.

The thrashing, jerky movements of his wings stilled as Harp drifted back toward the floor in an almost defeated manner, and Axel wasted no time pulling him closer. In one smooth motion, one hand still clasping onto Harp's wrist as though he was afraid to let go, Axel reached for Harp's waist. Long, slender fingers touched the fabric of Harp's thin robe near his stomach, then snaked around gently to his side.

With a determined look, Axel pulled Harp in, back over him onto the chair he'd just been sleeping in. He released Harp's wrist in favor of a full-out hug, both arms wrapping almost longingly around Harp's thin waist. Before he knew it, Harp was kneeling, legs between Axel's, as he stared up into wondering green eyes.

"…Roxas?"

No, Harp wanted to explain. Not Roxas. Not human, but I still want to be important…to you.

One word. One simple word so painful to hear coming out in such an anguished tone. Harp found himself doing just the opposite of denying, nodding tentatively instead in the affirmative.

Yes, Roxas. I can be Roxas for you. For now…

The tension in Axel's shoulders seemed to release entirely as the human drew in a breath, pulling Harp closer to him as well.

Before the young angel knew what was happening, Axel's lips were on him, tender and longing, his tears smearing against Harp's cheek as the kiss intensified. And Harp found himself returning the kiss, his first in a world not made up of dreams and painful memories.

Kissing wasn't just about the lips, Harp came to learn, for as Axel pressed him closer, his fingers slid upwards, from Harp's waist to his back, all the way to the curve of his shoulder blades, where Harp's wings originated. With trembling fingers, Axel traced their feathered base, making them twitch a little in a pleasurable way with every passing caress.

The kiss ended as Axel moved to Harp's cheek one more, tears mingling with a light dusting of gold on the young angel's face.

"Roxas…" This time the word was said with a reverence Harp had only ever heard spoken in relation to the Almighty himself. And yet this human was saying it about the one he loved. The one he had lost. It set off a sharp fluttering in Harp's stomach that, try as he might, he couldn't quite succeed in calming.

Then Axel's body was wracked with tremors of an entirely different nature as he curled inward, head resting against Harp's own small chest.

"I'm sorry. It was all my fault." His voice was muffled within the folds of Harp's robe, making the angel strain to hear every anguished word. "Making partner wasn't worth it. Losing you wasn't worth it."

Again, the image of Roxas formed in Axel's mind and materialized a moment later across Harp's vision too as their physical connection deepened through emotional ties. Blond hair, pale, bloodied skin, blue eyes that would never open again. The last Axel had seen of his husband was a limp, bleeding form, twisted within the frame of his ruined sports car at an unnatural angle as a rescue team worked to cut the metal off of and out of the red head's own trapped legs.

"Shh," Harp intoned, his voice low, arms encircling the openly distressed human. Sheket…shalom alecha.

At that moment, in that mundane space, Harp innately knew that if only he'd been blessed with free will, he would never leave Axel alone again.

~ o ~ o ~

"The orchestra is arriving," Sora exclaimed, abruptly pulling Harp from his thoughts. "We should set up."

With a silent nod, Harp rose numbly to his feet, eyes still never straying from the place blond hair had attracted them to in the first place, mind still more on his Axel on Earth than his impending performance in the clouds.

He had lied, lied to his muse about his own identity, and Harp wasn't convinced the ends of providing Axel with the only comfort he knew how justified the means of doing so in the slightest. But Axel had been so willing to believe, and Harp had been so eager to offer solace. What else could he have done?

Roxas, your eyes…

Axel had called them beautiful, had slid tentative hands over Harp's wings, probably the most sensitive area of the angel's small body, with an expression of wonder on his face. For centuries to come, Harp would relish that moment, keeping it selfishly to himself and returning to it whenever he needed to remind himself that once, for even just a little while, he had been loved.

Roxas, those wings…my God.

"Someone is waving to you, harpist," Sora said, his childlike voice a sharp contrast to the voice Harp had just been replaying in the privacy of his own thoughts.

Tearing his eyes away from the humans for the first time since he'd spotted that one in particular, Harp looked up, saw Sitar smiling on back. The older angel put his hands to his lips, blew Harp a good luck wish, and retreated back into the angelic masses in short order.

You've been here all this time, watching over me…I knew I felt it.

Harp blinked, vision suddenly blurred. A gentle hand on one arm turned him back as Sorael brushed his high cheekbone with one tender hand.

"We're about to begin, brother. The orchestra will follow after our first piece, of course." Sora was looking at him questioningly, a softly concerned expression gracing his own youthful features. Harp was quick to nod, move toward the chair provided for him, and summon his instrument.

Stay with me…please don't leave. Just for tonight.

And Harp had complied, curling up in Axel's lap, his wings forming a feathered shelter above them both. For one night, he had stayed. For one night, he'd been human enough to be loved, even though deep in his heart he'd known it was an imperfect deception, perhaps even an affront to Creator himself. He'd pretended to be something, someone, he was not.

Rikuel appeared before them, great raven wings remaining extended even upon landing. The look he gave Harp was as severe as always, but it hardly registered with the stunned musician before him anymore. It was momentary at best anyway, as the choir director turned his attention to his pupil, drawing Sora's eyes to him almost immediately. Harp now very easily recognized the look of adoration on the young singer's face.

I love you, Roxas. Always…just please forgive me.

Maybe it was possible. Maybe angels could love too. Through blurred vision and overwhelming memories of his time with Axel on Earth, Harp truly did want to believe.

And then Rikuel's arms rose and a most lovely, jubilant voice rang out by his side. Below them, an overwhelming amount of heads were raised, eyes opening wide, in awe at the sound. Almost immediately, Harp focused on one set in particular, on cerulean blue that looked somehow out of place without those of sharp green by their side.

No, Axel, Harp thought, eyes locked on the young blond's gaze below him. It's I who needs to ask for forgiveness…and one day you'll know why.

Sitting, tears running down his immortally youthful face for the first time in his existence, eyes never looking away from the one who'd been the subject of Axel's affections even after death in a way he never could be, Harp steadied his hands, took a breath in, and began to play.