-STARS ON FIRE-

Hellfire

The following afternoon (to them it felt like morning only because they'd woken up at noon) Axel and Roxas took a different approach to contacting Ansem.

They marched right up to the man's house and rang the doorbell.

Okay, so it was a little harder than that. The address itself was plastered right on the sheet of information that Xion had given them, but the house was a mansion, with gates and cameras, marble stone steps and giant double-doors. The grass was mowed perfectly, the bushes trimmed into exact rectangles, and there wasn't a spot on any of the three visible and very expensive cars in the drive.

The gate was easy—it was unlocked and unmonitored at the time, so Axel just boldly pushed it open and marched through, a nervous Roxas on his heels. When they reached the door, a maid opened it and asked them to wait in the entrance way while she spoke with the master of the house.


Two floors up, in his study, Ansem was on the phone. The man was hidden behind a huge oak desk covered with papers, and shelves of books and folders lined the walls, a single, tall window nestled between the shelves as if forgotten.

Yuna knocked on the door before entering, her presence not being acknowledged until the master himself saw fit.

"—your whole life, tossed away! How can you even consider—don't bring her into this! Your mother is gone, and that's that! Hang on a moment." Ansem pressed a hand to the mouthpiece of the phone and turned to the maid in the doorway.

Wise of the obvious family issue, Yuna bowed and said, "Sir, you have guests in the entrance hall."

"Send them away, I'm busy." He turned away from her and uncovered the phone, placing it next to his ear again.

"Sir… they mentioned a boy, Roxas."

Ansem breathed in once, sharply, and muttered the name again, as a question that hung in the air, not meant to be answered.

"He looks so much like you."

It was that that finally made Ansem put the phone down. His son, Sora, on the other line, had hung up the moment Ansem had said Roxas's name.

"I shall greet them. Don't prepare any food, they will not stay long."


Axel soon learned that Ansem Weiss was not to be messed with. He was tall, intimidating, and a voice that commanded even when asking to pass the salt.

Roxas was just plain unsure about how he should act around the scary man that happened to be his biological father.

Ansem had stormed into the room with anger and immediately addressed them. "What do you want?"

"You must be Ansem Weiss." Axel said, but Roxas squeezed the redhead's elbow, silently saying that he wanted to take care of this.

"I'm Roxas," the boy said, not sticking out a hand to shake, not making any move to elaborate at all, watching carefully to gauge the reaction of his father.

"You… should not exist," Ansem growled. "Get out of my house. I have no idea who you are, and you are not welcome here. Get out." The entire time, he had not raised his voice once.

Roxas stepped back once, not expecting this, and Axel frowned, displeased with the kind of person Ansem turned out to be.

They left. From the next room, Yuna watched with sad eyes.


Sora was half-way across the continent, likely in another country, but he wasn't sure. The only thing he was certain of was that he had gas, and cellphone reception, so he was able to pick up a call from his father.

His very angry father.

Ansem didn't approve of what his son was doing, and didn't even to bother asking what his son was doing. He just wanted the boy back home, in a fancy suit, and looking pretty for the neighbours.

But there was a disruption on Ansem's side of the world, and he only had to hear the hissed 'Roxas' before making a split-second decision (because we all know by now that split-second decisions get you places).

Sora turned the car around and headed home.

Of course, it would be another day or two before he actually got home, but that was besides the point. In the meantime, he snapped open his cell again and called Riku, then Kairi.


Roxas, of course, was devastated by the reaction garnered from his biological father. He'd expected a bit more of a welcome, some sort of apology for not having found him, for not being able to take care of him as he grew up, but one look around the mansion itself showed that Ansem Weiss had more than enough money to do so if he felt like it.

Axel placed a hand on his shoulder as a silent comfort, and Roxas felt obliged to start talking. Axel, after all, was his only friend.

"I just… don't know what I was expecting."

"You were expecting a family. That wasn't it," Axel replied in confidence.

"…Axel, who am I now?"

"Huh?"

"I mean… Before, I was just Roxas. I didn't really have a last name. Not one that applied to me, because first it was an orphanage, then it was in and out of foster homes for ages. But… Should I refer to myself as Roxas Weiss, or just Roxas?"

"Well, you're not legally his son, not really. To me, all you need is a Roxas to brighten the day." Axel picked his hand off the boy's shoulder and slung it around, giving Roxas a friendly squeezing hug for a moment.

"Just… Roxas, then."

"I'm just Axel. No need for anything else. After all, who needs fancy titles when you go prancing about outdoors in your pjs?"

Roxas laughed, lifted from his depression a little. "You have a point, I guess."

"Don't worry, Roxas, you can stay with me. I'm not gonna kick you out or anything like that, not at this point. Got it memorized?"

Again, Roxas laughed, and Axel grinned down at the kid.

Just one of those moments.


Two days later, Sora arrived in town. He didn't alert his father to his presence, but instead crashed at Riku's flat before dragging all his contacts out to search the entire town for even an inkling of a Roxas. Kairi said a redhead named Axel had asked her about it, but ran off in a sort of hurry, and he didn't provide a last name. Yuffie (a scarily notorious gang leader) hadn't heard anything, but sent messages to Leon and co. at the firestation, and she sent out some of her members as well to search.

Finally, they struck gold when they called Xion's phone at her job.

"Roxas? Oh goodness, Sora, you don't know yet! My friend Axel, he's taking care of the boy. Such a shy kid, too, he looks a lot like you—,"

"Xion, where can I find him?"

"Come to the library. Axel should be popping by any time now."

"Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"

Click. Beeeeep.

Sora was off, weaving the crowds with the ease of one who'd been at it for years, barely brushing the elbows of the people around him, Riku trailing not too far behind until the man got a phone call and said he had to leave for a job. (What, exactly, did Riku do these days? Sora should really touch base with his friends once this whole fiasco was over with.)

Roxas. Gotta find Roxas…


Xion was correct—Axel did, in fact, 'pop by', and it was not fifteen minutes after Sora had hung up. The redhead plopped himself down heavily in a chair behind Xion's desk chair and heaved a tired sigh.

"No dramatic greeting, this time?" She asked, expecting a frantic brunet to burst through the heavy library doors at any moment.

"It's… been an intense few days…" Axel was, for once, perfectly and completely sober as he spoke to his friend. Off to the side, Xion casually wondered if something had happened between Axel and Roxas, but figured she'd get an answer soon enough, as Axel was never one to keep quiet for very long, especially in a space as silent as a library.

"I'm a horrible person, Xion. I keep... I keep thinking, 'what if Roxas never finds his family?' And when the thoughts come up, I know that he'd stay with me, and as much as I want that… I'm being selfish.

"I just… don't want him to go away." He finished, and heaved a sigh again.

"Then tell him that," Xion said. Having turned her chair around once he started talking, the girl was able to stand and place a small hand on his shoulder in a gesture of comfort.

By Axel's expression, he was clearly befuddled, and he dropped his head into his hands and muttered, "what?"

"Heavens, Axel, Roxas doesn't know his family as well as he knows you! I mean, Sora's a good guy and all, but his father was never very pleasant to be around. Rox will probably still stay at your place, at least for another few months, just to get to know Sora."

"But after those few months…"

"Now that I think about it," Xion continued, completely ignoring Axel, "Sora doesn't even have a place of his own. He's probably crashing at Riku's."

That, for some reason, made Axel look up in shock.

"But… doesn't Riku live in town?"

"He does, why do you ask?"

"So Sora's in town?"

"He is. He's on—,"

"Why the fuck didn't you tell me? We gotta get Rox, he's just taking a nap at the pad before he heads to work—,"

As if Beings of Power had orchestrated the entire thing, the doors burst open in a dramatic flow of light, a boy with messy brown hair pushing them open with both hands, looking around as he did so, eyes finally setting on Xion and Axel.

"Xion!" the boy cried, face shining with sweat, chest heaving. He looked more scared than anything, as if his dog had just gotten hit by a car.

The girl in question smiled, and Axel had a brokenly hopeful look. "Xiie, is this…"

"Sora, over here!" She waved calmly to the panicked boy, and he rushed over, about to ask a string of questions before noticing the extra character in the background. "Sora, this is Axel, he's been taking care of Roxas."

That was all he needed to hear, apparently, because Sora turned to Axel and nearly shouted, "You know where Roxas is? Where is 'e? Can I meet 'im?"

"…Sure. You're Sora?"

"Yeah, why?"

"You look a lot like him, that's all. Nothing like…" He was going to say, 'nothing like your father' but Sora's relationship with Ansem was on uncertain grounds, and it wasn't Axel's place to mention it.

Sora brushed off the drifting sentence and tugged on Axel's sleeve until the elder stood up and led the boy off. "See ya, Xion! Until next time, babe!" He called back enthusiastically with a wave.

"Thank you, Xion! Thank you so much!" Sora added, pretending his new companion wasn't freaking out the rest of the library staff.


Half a block away, Sora's phone rang. "Huh? Squall?"

"That's LEON. And I have some news for you."

"What's that?"

"This kid you're looking for. Roxas. He came by the station a couple days ago with a friend of ours."

"Hey, is that Leon?" Axel hurriedly reached over the smaller boy and snatched the neat-looking cell phone away.

"He-ey, Squally!"

"A-Axel? How—what are you doing?"

"Taking Sora to meet Roxas. You?"

"I was going to tell Sora about Roxas, but I suppose you beat me to it."

"On the contrary, Xion beat us both to it. She deserves more brownies."

There was a squeak on the other end of the line, shuffling, then a yelp.

"Okay, I know I heard the word brownies." Zack said, having successfully pulled the phone away from his coworker. "When are you making them and where can I get some?"

"Whoa, Zack, my brownies aren't that good."

"Um, is everything sorted out? I kinda don't want to waste any time…" Whether Sora meant waste his phone bill or waste time that could be spent meeting his long-lost twin brother, was up to the interpreter.

Axel got the gist, said his so-longs, and hung up in the middle of Zack's rant on sugary-chocolate-goodness-in-a-pan.


"Hey… Sora?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not going to… uh, demand you and Rox live together, right? I mean, you don't even know each other yet, and he's been living with me for…"

"Don't worry, I won't take him away from you." Sora had a satisfactory smile on his face for a strange reason, and Axel raised a sceptical eyebrow that asked the question for him.

Sora glanced at him, heaved a sigh, and said, "You're in love with him, aren't you?"

Axel stopped midstep and nearly fell over. "WHAT?"

Sora turned and crossed his arms, feet set decidedly in his path—there were a few tactics he picked up from the people he met while travelling. "You heard me."

"Yeah… Yeah, I heard you. I'm just not sure if I interpreted correctly." The redhead stood up awkwardly straight, one hand on his hip and the other playing with the spikes of hair on the back of his head. He looked off to one side, focused on nothing in particular.

"I—what I mean is…" Sora creeped closer and leaned slightly into Axel's line of sight. "The moment you saw me, you compared me to him. Once you knew for certain who I was, you sized me up, as if making sure I was fit to meet Roxas. And what you just said, you don't want him to leave you, right?"

There was a long, full silence, and neither moved. Softly, as if trying not to interrupt the moment, it began to rain.

Finally, Axel came to a decision.

"Yeah…" He rubbed his spikes once more before letting the hand drop to his side. "I guess I'm in love with Roxas."

If possible, Sora smiled even wider, and the two continued their trek to the apartment. "And 'sides... saying g'bye to Xion like that was totally gay."


"How come you were expecting that?" Axel asked, later, when they were almost at the apartment.

"I picked up a bit of behaviour psychology on one of my adventures. I met a lot of people. And I'm not prejudiced against gays because I am gay. I actually…" For the first time, Sora hesitated in telling a stranger something. "I actually like Riku. He doesn't even know I'm gay."

Axel raised his eyebrows higher, but shoved his hands and kept quiet until they reached the apartment and he had to pull out his key.

Sora, next to him, kept shifting from foot to foot, hesitant again, and nervous. The door opened.

"Roxas?" Axel called, and there was a mumbled, sleepy reply in return.


A/N: Ho boy. Exams are coming up, aren't they? I should be writing my essay right now, but I decided to do something nice and procrastinate. I need to relax more. (I hope I can get to bed early tonight... Haven't been getting enough sleep.)

SHOW OF HANDS, how many were at Anime North in Toronto? I was cosplaying Sora on Saturday (yes, I was at the photoshoot in front of the congress). I want to see if anyone can guess which Sora was me, because there was a lot! Here's a hint- I had a Riku with me, and a few other characters in my group as well. If I tell you them all, it'll give it away, though.

I'm also heading to B.C. at the end of the summer to attend Anime Evolution in Vancouver- anyone going there?

Great Things: Glee (holy crap, season finale was so dramatic)

-HW-