Following the Captain into his quarters, Roxas is surprised at its décor. He didn't know what to expect, but the rather, décor fit for a noble wasn't it.

Lanterns hang from the ceiling, their candles blown out due to the daylight. The color scheme was red and gold, as it decorates thin burgundy throw rug sprawled across the floor and curtains as well as embroidered pillows on cushioned bay windows seats. The slanted windows elongate the crosshatched design as the sun settles east.

There's one large table along the one side of the room, positioned in front of bookshelves. It has scattered papers, maps, a small tea set, a dagger, a pocket watch and a compass lying atop a stack of old tomes next to a brass dish filled with the ashen bodies of burned incense cones, their stale scent barely detectable. The shelves are stuffed with minimal books yet filled with many trinkets, odd and ends, bottles filled with beads and jewels and marbles and ships and handfuls of expensive jewelry lay sprawled atop the books and necks of the bottles. A short stack of parchment notebooks occupied the opposite corner, several sheets of loose paper sticking our around the edges. A mug full of pens, pencils, charcoal sticks, and paintbrushes say sandwiched between the notebooks and a bin full of multicolored paint tubes. Trunks from big to small trail along the wall, some stacked on one another.

Red velvet curtains expand along with length of the windows, then at the ends drape down brushing against the floor, tied back with gold rope and silks tassels. Antique swords are crossed at the blades and hung on the back wall along with animal heads and rare and beautiful fish. A bed is tucked near the corner against the wall, sheets sloppily draping over the edges; only one of the many pillows on the bed seems to be used, and a candle sits on a small stool next to it. All around Roxas can hear the sounds of a pub hosting the crew.

As Roxas enters, he keeps a grip on his dagger. The wood creaks as the ship slightly leans at the push of waves. Captain Axel goes over to the table, his boots clicking against the floor.

"Your things are in the trunk." He says as he sits down.

"Which one?"

Axel looks over to the lineup of trunks. "The white one." He lazily points.

Roxas looks and at first glance finds the trunk interestingly designed. It's an old white color with gray metal corners traced into exquisite floral curves, the outer rim traced in silver. Its sides and lid covered in bas-relief with delicate rose patterns. Roxas walks over and kneels in front of the trunk. The hinged lid tilted back, held at ninety degrees by two thin chains of steel in either corner.

His eyes spot his black uniform first thing, next to it, his launchers, daggers, sword and belt of throwing knives. His fingers to the launchers first and finds them all still loaded. Sighing in relief, Roxas continues to rummage the trunk and get his things. He pulls out his trousers, boots and cloak.

Axel watches as the boy fishes out all his things, seemingly unfazed by the fact he's alone with the Captain, naked in his quarters. Either he knows he can take Axel down easily, or he has no regards for his pureness. Axel has since removed the dagger from his palm and lazily wrapped it in gauze to suppress the bleeding.

He watches, leaning on one elbow, studying the boy. His back muscles expand and contrast with the movement of his arms as he unfolds the clothes. His back his marked with the same pale crosses in certain spots, as well as a scar that trails from his shoulder blade to the bottom of his spine. Axel can't even imagine what the boy had to have gone through to earn those battle wounds. Whether inflicted by enemy, or perhaps his father, they stand proud, dominating their portion of his skin.

Roxas first steps into his undergarments and trousers, not denying the pleasurable warmth that runs through him was missed, now that his skin isn't exposed. He sighs and tightens his belt, then slips on his boots, feeling the comfortable sole cushion his feet. As he clips the belt of knives to his waist, he looks back and sees the Captain now looking over a map, his cheek resting on the back of his fingers as his other hand traces along a piece of parchment. Roxas pulls on his tunic finally, and secures the light armor around it, adjusting the sleeves and pulling it down to its full length. Once he straps on his weapons, he relaxes, now feeling protected and not so admittedly vulnerable.

Clasping his cloak about his shoulders, he tries to decide what to do next. Does he stay with the Captain or go and join the crew to begin his learning?

He looks down and finds the Captain's hand still bleeding, already soaking through the white gauze, spreading like a fast blooming flower.

"You must stink at first aid." Roxas says as he comes over to the table.

"And why you say that?" Axel smirks.

"Because you'll easily bleed out if you don't treat the wound properly." Roxas points to Axel's hand.

Axel chuckles. "Merely an annoyance."

"But it will be more of a concern if you don't do something." Roxas says. Without waiting for him to remark back, Roxas goes back to the trunks and assumes that one of the smaller ones must hold medicines and first aid supplies.

Surely enough he picks the small box that tops the tower of trunks, and inside are thin vials and jars and creams, varying in color from pale green to white to buttery yellow. Syringes and ampoules and threads and needles litter the bottom. Carrying the box over to the table, Roxas sets it down.

"Thank you." Axel says. Without replying back, Roxas sits down in the next available chair and takes Axel's hand. Axel retracts. "What are you doing?"

"Fixing you up." Roxas vaguely answers.

"I don't need help."

"Your hand speaks otherwise."

Axel furrows his eyebrows. "You don't have to do this."

"I know." Roxas retorts, nearly rolling his eyes as if Axel is avoiding an obvious answer. "I want to. I inflicted the wound, I should fix it."

"Is that some rule among your guild members?" Axel asks, smirking.

Roxas takes his hand again, his face a stern look as if a doctor hard at work. "No," he finally replies. "This is my own doing. The last thing I need is have the Captain of the ship I'm captive on, die because of some stupid infection he didn't bother to fix due to his stubbornness."

The remark makes Axel smirk, but the boy's expression makes him think for a minute that he's serious.

Roxas turns Axel's hand palm up and begins to remove the gauze. He keeps his blue eyes downwards to the hand, they sparkle with a seriousness and sternness that ages him beyond his years. Axel's fingers twitch as Roxas unwraps the last few pieces of gauze. The blood has stained his skin and the cut isn't deep, but has barely stopped seeping blood. Roxas gives Axel's hand an observant glance before opening up the kit and pulling out a small rag and bottle with a pump dispenser.

Wrapping the middle of the cloth around it, he presses down and Axel can see the liquid inside squirt out into the rag. After two the three presses, Roxas then secures the rag around his pointer finger, using the others to hold it in place, and starts to wipe and pat around the wound. Axel's fingers twitch as Roxas pats closer to the wound. He expects the boy to be harsh. Rough, but his touch is so tentative and precise. Once the blood is cleared and Axel's skin clean, Roxas leans down closer to examine the wound. The cut slashes across Axel's entire palm. Thankfully though, he doesn't need stitches.

Roxas rummages through the kit again and pulls out fresh gauze and pats at Axel's palm, pressuring it to stop the bleeding. Axel grunts slightly at the sting, and expects an apology, but the boy says none. Using his thumb to keep the pressure, Roxas fetches another wrapping and begins to secure it around Axel's hand. He weaves it through the groove between Axel's thumb and pointer finger, then working his way around the wrist. Tying it on the inside of the wrist, Roxas cuts the tail with a pair of scissors and dumps the rest into the box.

Axel flexes his fingers, fisting and stretching. There's slight throbbing when applied too much strain, but other than that it won't prevent him from doing his daily duties, nor give him a disadvantage in battle.

"Thank you." says Axel.

"You're welcome." Roxas replies. He puts the kit back in its place and goes to the door, but Axle stops him.

"Hey,"

Roxas stop and turns back.

"Since we're short on men," Axel gently reminds, with a smirk on his face. "You can sleep in the crew's quarters."

Roxas doesn't react; instead he merely nods his head and exits the cabin. As Roxas leaves, he only takes two steps when he spots the other blonde-haired boy come walking up to enter the Captain's cabin. As the boys pass one another, they stop. Ventus and Roxas stop and stare at one another; Roxas keeps his gaze neutral as Ventus narrows his eyebrows. Suddenly Ventus snuffs.

"Don't expect special treatment because of your father." He says.

"I expect the same of you. Don't expect me to be respectful because I'm on this ship. You'll get it when you earn it."

Ventus glares. "If you don't, you can find yourself at the bottom of the sea."

"Do that and you risk the boon you were promised for this affair."

With that, Roxas leaves Ventus glaring and fisting his hands as he navigates himself down to the stern of the deck, then down below into the quarters. As he heads down a set of stairs, the air thickens and the salty sea freshness seems to disintegrate then fill with the exhales of the crew and the smell of mead as he heads down into the quarters. Lanterns here are lit, bathing the hall in a warm buttery glow.

Compared to his room in the mansion safe house back in the Twilight Kingdom, this one is dialed down many times. The beds are bunked atop one another and have only a sprinkling of straw with pelts and blankets and thin pillows. There are three of the bunk beds on both sides of the room, making a total of twelve, though half remain vacant. Most likely the men Roxas murdered on instinct when he first came on the ship.

The men seemed to already be broken off into their groups, and the messy sheets helped Roxas to decipher who sleeps where. One of the men, Demyx, has wrapped himself in his blanket, a part covering his head and draping around his body, looking like a little pig in blanket. At least there are windows dotting between the beds, allowing the sea air to drift out the body odor that would have easily mad Roxas gag. If the men smell this way, it's clear they don't bathe often, let alone when they do, how tainted the water might become.

Thankfully again his father had trained him to live on foul conditions. With his connections around the Kingdom, Roxas was able to experience from sleeping on the cold hard ground, tucked away in the back of an alley with nothing to eat but the scrap farmers' fed their livestock, to sleeping on the finest silks ever to be delivered while dining on nine course meals while watching exotic dancers twirls and spin.

He can handle this. And now he figures out why Demyx had told him about the sea animals supplementing his diet.

Glancing around the quarters, it would seem that there's a vacant bed in the back left corner when facing the room. It was neat and had the sheet lain across like so often seen in taverns. Roxas makes his way over casually, avoiding the gazes and sudden hushed tones of the crewmen. He keeps the hilt of his knife in his grasp should the crewmen try anything, even while he's sleeping. Roxas certainly doesn't have a problem murdering more of the crew.

As he sits down, he hears footsteps approach him. Keeping his head down he sees two black shoes stop in front of him. Roxas looks up and sees Demyx leaning against the wooden frame. Roxas furrows his eyebrows as he sees the bruising on his neck. Demyx doesn't say anything, neither does Roxas. He doesn't feel the need to apologize, despite the dirty blonde trying to make him feel bad.

"At least it'll make you look tough." Roxas says.

"You saying I didn't look touch before?" Demyx asks, and Roxas looks up to see the man smiling. It's something peculiar to Roxas as he has nothing to smile about.

"Yes." Roxas answers.

"Jeez, no holding back from you, huh?"

"There's no point in lying to you. I'm not helping you in sparing your feelings."

"Well would it kill you to try and spare a person's feelings?"

Roxas doesn't answer. Instead he observes Demyx as he still leans against the legs of the bunk bed, his fingers twirling a small dagger. Roxas' eyes flick from the dagger to Demyx.

"I'm not going to hurt you, if that's what you're thinking."

"Not that you could."

Demyx snickers a little and suddenly comes and sits next to Roxas. He sits at the other end of the bed, but still Roxas fidgets, but not from nerves; his motion may appear to the men otherwise, but really his shift aided him in keeping his hand on the hilt of his sword.

"You still didn't answer my question." Demyx says as he leans slightly in.

Roxas looks to the man and stares. He expects Demyx to divert his eyes, but he meets Roxas' gaze and lifts his eyebrows ushering him for an answer.

"I'll ask you again, do you ever think you spare a person's feelings?"

"I'll answer that with this . . . Why do you care?" Roxas narrows his eyebrows.

This time, when Roxas leans in, Demyx leans back, his eyebrows still raised in surprise.

"What?"

"Why do you care? I'm no crewmember, I bruise your next, yet you talk to me. Why?"

Demyx stares at Roxas, his mouth is slightly agape. He swallows before answering. "I'm . . . I'm just curious. I've never met anyone like you."

"What do you mean like me?" Roxas leans more, a predatory gleam growing in his eyes, and suddenly Demyx shifts uneasy as he stares into the eyes of what he soon sees become a tiger.

"I mean, you're still young, granted with the skill and knowledge of a man. I mean, I'd imagine your father couldn't have been easy to grow up with."

Demyx has barely finished the sentence as the world abruptly becomes a blur of images and suddenly his spine is slammed into the hard wood floor. He bangs his head and with the throbbing his eyes go unfocused. Roxas is suddenly pinning him to the floor, the men around the room are all standing, their hands on their weapons, but they wait.

Demyx looks up and sees anger along with a killer instinct inside Roxas' eyes and a chill begins at the bottom of his spine, running up as Roxas brings the tip of his knife to the skin just under Demyx's throat.

"You . . . will not . . . speak ill of my father!" Roxas deeply hisses through grit teeth. "Everything he did made me the man I am today."

Demyx swallows.

"I am on hundred percent sure of that." The movement scrapes his skin across Roxas' blade. The pain is sharp and quick, and a hot trickle of blood slowly snakes its way down Demyx' neck.

"You will not speak ill of him, ever! He is the King of our criminal empire, and since he won't be here to defend his name, I will."

Roxas digs the tip more into Demyx's neck; his blade tip digs into Demyx's chin, and tears sting his eyes. More pain. More blood.

"Any words you keep to yourself, I will cut your lying tongues!"

With that, he suddenly gets up and Demyx gasps, his hand holding his neck. Roxas makes his way back to the bed and sits down, wiping his blade with his cloak.

"I'm sorry." He hears Demyx croak. "It was . . . supposed to be a joke."

"You need not be so uptight boy," says Luxord. "Here we have, not many rules, but loosen up. The boy was only trying to make a friend of you."

As Roxas starts to settle into the bed, he mumbles. "No thank you."


Back in the Twilight Kingdom, in the safe house mansion, Cloud anxiously and angrily paces back and forth in front of the grand fireplace of the study room. His cloak flaps and whips as he whirls and turns back and forth. Lexaeus sits in one of the velvet armchairs, the ankle of his one legs propped on the knee of his other. He nibbles at his thumb nail.

Roxas was extremely late in his return from killing the men who had started the riot in the marketplace. After the first minute, Cloud sent out nearly all the men to scour the streets and check all the spots, his own men check all the spots known to their guild, Cloud not willing to disclose the information of all their guild's hidey-holes to the rest of the guilds. He sent them out nearly forty-five minutes ago, and despite his knowledge of the city, he hasn't sat down for longer than a minute as he waits for the men to return with his son.

His son knows better than to show up late for anything, so he knows, or hopes that for his son's sake, something terrible must've happened. At the same time, his heart hopes that the boy had gotten hold up by something.

"Ring the bells. If you keep pacing up and down, you'll wear through your boots." Lexaeus says.

Cloud doesn't look in his direction, instead he slows his pace but refuses to sit down. "I swear, if another member of another guild laid a single hair on my son . . ."

"Calm, sir." Saix says as he flips through a book he had long since pulled of the shelf. "You're boy is smart and strong."

"All the more reason he should be here."

"You trained him well, Cloud. Whatever situation he might have gotten himself in, I'm sure he's already thinking of ways he can escape and brag about it to the guild." Saix says, flipping another page.

"At this time, I'd like to offer my humblest apologies, Cloud." Lexaeus says. "I should have gone with him."

"No, no." Cloud sighs. "Don't blame yourself. Even if I had sent you, he would've lost you easily, or think that I don't believe in him to handle a few sea shanty men."

"Perhaps he ran into some guards and decided another safe house would've been better." Lexaeus suggests, hoping to ease the Guild master's nerves.

As Cloud stops in front of the fireplace, he places a hand on the marble mantel, the other on his hip and heaves a sigh. Then the door opens and in steps Zexion, Seifer One, Cid and Larxene; each having a face that already tells of their failure.

Zexion is the first to speak. "We've combed all the safe houses and alleys part of our territory, I'm afraid there's no sign of Roxas." He lowers his head as he finishes his sentence.

"Thank you, Zexion. You're dismissed."

Zexion leaves the room, shutting the door noiselessly behind him. Now with Saix and Lexaeus, the guild masters stand in the study.

"You checked all your alleys and houses." Cloud asks as he stares into the fire.

"All of them. None have shown signs of your son's presence." Cid says.

"Did you really check?"

Lexaeus shifts, the tone in his voice rises in agitation.

"I've trained him well, so of course none of you would be able to find him."

"Not like he's know where our safe houses are," Seifer One says suddenly. "Exploration of other Guild territories is forbidden, don't you remember."

There's a moment of silence and Cloud narrows his eyebrows, carefully glancing out of the corner of his eye. "Yes." Cloud says. "Still, perhaps . . . he wandered off."

"You claim your son isn't idiotic to make such an amateur move." Cid says. "Perhaps he was taken."

"Did you not just say that my son is too crafty?" Cloud snarls as he whirls to look over his shoulder. "Never would he lose to such low lives such as pirates."

"And just how much knowledge does he have of the sea men?" Larxene asks.

"Enough on how to kill them should the scurvy-infected men try to make a move toward shim." Cloud sneers.

"Never underestimate your opponent, Cloud." Saix speaks. "Perhaps the boy had too much confidence."

Cloud goes quiet, and so far the only crackling of the fire. "Shit." he whispers. "I thought he could handle it."

"You shouldn't constantly blame yourself for the failure of your son, Cloud." Saix continues. "You wish for him to be perfect, but taking his blame isn't making him any more perfect than a man passing off mead for wine."

"The boy has faults," Lexaeus adds. "Everyone does. But only failure can seemingly put them in check."

Cloud sighs. "Nevertheless, I want my son home and safe. If I lose, him, it will be by my doing, not by some dirtied blade of a sleazy sailor. "You're all dismissed, I will make note of your corporation. Dismissed."

Once the guild leaders leave, Saix stands up and goes over to the bookshelf to put back the book he borrowed. "So, Master Cloud, what will your plan be?"

"I'm getting my son back."

"May I ask how." Saix places his hands on his hips.

Cloud is silent, then turns to Lexaeus, ignoring Saix. "Lexaeus, fetch me the good parchment, and a quill. I'm sending word out to our, acquaintances. I need them all on alert should the pirates decide to stop in their cities."

"Yes sir."

Lexaeus bows and leaves, and when he leaves the door open behind him, Saix looks back and then to Cloud. "Anything I can do, sir?"

"If you or anyone captures the men, inform me, and bring me their captain. No one else must kill him. That pleasure will be mine, and mine alone."

Saix bows and leave the study.

Alone with the crackling of the fire, Cloud watches intently.

"Soon, my son. I will bring you home."

As he peaks, a log in the fire cracks and snaps, erupting a spew of embers.