Phantom Touch
Note: So, I cringe at the fact that I've let this sit for over a month while my imagination has been going haywire over Avatar. I think I expected this story to be longer than Ill Repute, and a lot of things I imagined including kind of got shoved to the side (I had planned on including the side plot line about Roxas and Sora's father earlier, and somehow making it a story-long thing, instead of one more thing complicating Roxas's life). However, the story has pretty well written itself all the way from the beginning of Ill Repute, and I'm happy with how it's come out. The first story was very emotionally charged, frightening, shocking, and a way for me to step out of the box and take on a much more violent and challenging subject matter. When I began the story, I stated that undertones from Ill Repute were going to be the overtones of this story. The issues the boys have in the first aren't really forgotten, just not as important as the fact that they are in love and have to sort through that, which is a tough thing, even without their pasts and whatnot. Phantom Touch is an exploration of the things that make them normal, given their abnormal circumstances. This chapter, in particular refers back to Ill Repute, and particularly the end of chapter three of that story. Thanks to everyone who's been patient with me while finishing this story. It's going to be wrapping up soon!
"I'm sick of shaking, never waking from the hell I achieved. I never knew you till you left me with the crying disease. Another curing, reassuring way to buckle the knees So mistreated, I repeated, never blessing your sneeze. Now deleted and defeated I will stand on my own. Yeah your memory that punches me has broken the bone. Give me recipes for sorry I'm admitting I'm wrong. Still your memory that punches me has broken the bone." –Blue October, "X Amount of Words"
Chapter Seven: Halfway
Cid had shown up to check on me for the first time since my breakdown in his last visit. He had sat down on my couch and asked how I was doing, filled me in on his life, and told me he had news he wasn't sure I would like. He had brought Sora and Riku, and asked my twin to sit next to me. He sat in a chair, leaning forward and looking serious. My heart sank at this, knowing it couldn't be good news.
"There's no bett'r way to put this," He began slowly, as though he were choosing his words very carefully. "Yuh'r father's in the hospital… He's probably not gonna make i', and he wants ta see his boys again."
Sora looked as though he'd been gut-punched, and I kept very still. Sora still didn't know that I had recovered a few memories. From what I'd seen, I didn't much care for my father or past life. I inhaled very slowly, touching Sora's shoulder. "Do we have to go?" The words were quiet and barely floated across the room.
Riku looked angry at the very idea. "No, of course you don't. Neither of you." Riku knew our story. He knew that Sora suffered from guilt and had endured only the occasional smack before I could intervene on his behalf. He knew what I had survived, and while Sora was his lover, we were like brothers.
Cid looked uncomfortable. "Ah can say tha' there's no one who worked tha case that'd wan' tha two of yuh to go." He shifted and looked at his hands. "But he is yuh'r father, an' tha two of yuh are ol' enough ta choose."
Riku frowned, moving to hold Sora, who looked positively terrified. I tried to breathe, but the sharp rap on the door drew me out of the reverie that was leading me to the conclusion I knew I would have to reach eventually.
"I'll get it." I stated, rising and walking to the door. There appeared to be no one at the door, and I opened it quizzically. My heart rate leaped at the sight waiting for me on the other side of the door. I began seething inside, heart pounding against my chest and blood rising into my face. I panted heavily, my body going numb as the edges of my vision blacked out, fading in and out of clarity. Before thinking, I pulled back my fist and slammed him in the face, wishing I could do more than broken ribs and wrists, glaring furiously at Axel. I wanted him to know the agony I'd had to endure in his absence; the months that became years of my worried yearning and loneliness. How could my life have transformed so completely in a matter of moments? Half an hour before I was still recovering from my last encounter with Axel and Cid's words that had stripped me to the rawest pain I could feel, and now those wounds weren't even reopened, but ripped anew.
Cid remarked something from behind me, but I couldn't move. "You…" My breath was shallow, and I was shaking, trembling in a vengeful fury I didn't know I could feel.
Axel pulled himself up, standing before me unabashedly. He looked beyond me to address Cid. "I threw away all that stuff you brought me…" He rubbed his nose and looked me square in the eye. "I thought it might be time to get over all that…"
I shoved him back, angrily pushing him back over and over. He caught a hand on the railing and frowned, letting me get all my frustration out. Riku was the one who came to the door, watching the scene unfold with crossed arms. After Axel had left, he told me that he believed in justice and Axel getting whatever he got for my pain. I didn't know if I believed that, or even if he had believed it, but he made no move to intervene until Sora stepped out of the apartment and bellowed for me to stop.
He had been really shaken about Dad, and that moment he was too weary and shaken to care about my battles with the past. Cid stepped past him and pushed us apart. "If tha two of yuh can' settle this properly, than Ah'll settle i' for yuh."
I backed off a few steps, glaring at Axel, anger and pain licking at my chest. "Fine."
Axel allowed himself to be led into my apartment by Cid, who was trying to mediate between two of his former charges with justice. He understood the both of us equally, and was trying desperately to keep me from taking Axel apart limb by limb in my emotional fury.
I followed grudgingly, sitting silently on the couch while they arranged for Axel's lodgings in Destati. He had business to attend to, including what I could only presume was an attempted patch job on my relationship with him. I now had my father's approaching death to grapple with. Knowing what I knew, could I handle seeing him again?
I tuned out the rest of the conversations, hardly caring where Axel would be, or if I would even see him again. He looked hurt when I didn't spare him even a side glance, staring blankly at my coffee table, thinking about all the choices being presented to me. I had so many different directions I could choose, and knowing which one to take was impossible at that point. When Cid left with Axel, Riku and Sora stared at me quizzically.
"Roxas? Are you okay?" Sora leaned over and stared at me.
I nodded numbly and stood. "Yeah…" I shook my head and paced a little, before heading for the door. "I'm going to go see Dad."
Sora looked stunned. "You are?" He paused, realization dawning on him. We didn't really need to talk about the memories I had been steadily recovering for him to suddenly grasp what I knew. "Are you sure?" His voice dropped.
I nodded slowly, then a little faster as I cemented my choice in my mind. "Yeah," I opened the door. "Yeah, I'm going now."
Sora nodded. "I'm sorry… I can't go. But… You're strong. Don't get down by anything he says." I left, closing the door behind me. Sora would lock up when he left with Riku, and would probably leave food in the microwave.
It wasn't a particularly long walk to the hospital, attached to my university, and I was breathing slowly and carefully. My heart hadn't completely stopped pounding since seeing Axel, and now I was going to see my dad again. It was like everything was collapsing in on itself in a mish-mashed jumble of past, present, and future.
"Fuck you, Axel." I whispered under my breath as the automatic doors to the hospital opened for me. I told the nurse at the desk what I was there for, who I was trying to see. She nodded and told me the room number and wing. When I walked off, I could feel her eyes watching me sadly, as though feeling sadness for me and the dying man I was going to see. She didn't know anything, but I didn't bother correcting her.
I rapped on the door once, then twice, before a rough voice called for me to enter. I pushed it open and took a few steps in. The smell of hospital made me slightly nauseated, reminding me of worse days, and of violence I didn't much care to remember.
"Who's there?" The rough voice called, then coughed.
I didn't respond, simply came into the main area of the room, where my father was laying out in a hospital bed, looking pathetic. Regardless, he still inspired fear in my gut, which wrenched at the sight of him.
"Roxas." He looked stunned at seeing me. "You got the message, then?"
"Yes," I lowered myself into a chair. "Cid told me today."
"Who's Cid?" He demanded.
"My caretaker." I answered stoically, barely moving a muscle in my face to show one emotion or another. Everything (painfurywearinessterrornostalgia) was blurring in my head, and it was hard to pick one emotion out without dragging along the others.
"Why didn't Sora come?" His voice was raising with anger, and a machine started beeping angrily at him.
"He didn't want to."
The machine gave off a shrill alarm, attracting a nurse, who burst in and looked at the two of us. "Sir, you need to keep yourself in check!" She rounded on me. "What were you doing in here?"
"He's my father," I explained slowly, tasting the words for myself, and finding that they left a bitter taste. "We were talking. He just got a little over-excited."
She left with a huff, after shutting off the machine and checking my father's pulse and blood pressure.
"What do you mean, Sora didn't want to come?" He had his teeth clenched with fury, trying with obvious effort to keep calm.
"Precisely that," I told him coolly. "And, given our history, I can't say I blame him." I tapped the side of my head. "Lucky you, I still can't really remember all that much, so I still have a sense of curiosity and remorse."
He seethed outwardly, and opened and closed his fists. "You all, and those damn investigators… Just exaggerated the situation. Everything would have been just fine if you hadn't wandered off."
I forced myself to breathe slowly, keeping calm as he was not. "I've lost a lot of things, and people, over the years. I wanted to offer you forgiveness before you died, too." I closed my eyes and stood. "I've got a lot of shit going on in my life… I didn't want you to be one more regret." I walked to stand beside his bed, staring down at him with searching and piercing eyes. I was looking in his soul for some, any, hint of guilt, or apology. I didn't find one.
I started toward the door. "I'll come back and visit you soon." He hadn't bothered to answer me once, and simply watched as I left the room silently.
Years before, I had realized in Cid's halfway house that in order to get by in that world, I was going to have to put in my share of the effort. In order to get by in this world of normalcy, the same rules applied. I had gotten beyond the hurt and pain of my father's abuse and living my life without him by putting in the effort, and everyone meeting me halfway there. Now, I would have to put in the effort to forgive what had hurt me. I had to just wait at the halfway point and wait for my Dad to accept forgiveness and what he had done to need it.
When I walked home, staring at the sky, I stopped suddenly. It occurred to me that the same rule applied with Axel, and forgiving him for what he had done. In that case, however, Axel had already started heading for the halfway point, and was waiting for me to reach that realization. We were about to meet there, and I wondered vaguely exactly where we would go from there.
End Chapter Seven
