"So aren't you curious?"
Axel's eyes widened, caught off guard. "But--"
"Oh, but what?" Demyx said, leaning forward with his hands on his hips.
"But," he said, slightly glaring, "it's her room. And she's asleep! I mean, do you know how that looks? Can you imagine if Xigbar or -- or Larxene sees me walking into her room in the middle of the night, knowing that she's asleep?"
"So they'd call you a pervert for a few weeks and get over it. At least you'd have successfully seen it," Demyx said, smirking.
"Are you kidding?" Axel said, laughing incredulously. "They would never let me live it down. Not to mention they'd be talkin' about it to Xemnas, and then I'd lose all respect."
Demyx sighed, a careless hand in the air. "Fine, be a baby. But you're missing out -- you might never get another chance to see her face." He gave the redhead a dry glance, eyebrow cocked, and rolled his eyes as he walked off. "'Night."
Axel was left alone in the middle of the courtyard, arms crossed, brows stitched together, and internal battle raging.
He's right, he thought. I may never get to see Nalax's face if I don't sneak in there right now and take a look myself. But it's not fair to her -- I told her myself that we wouldn't push her into showing us anything she's hiding. I told her to take her own pace, and now here I am contemplating on whether or not to break that privacy and rip the hood off while she's out. But… then again… that time when I faked her out, she didn't really seem to mind all that much that I was grabbing at her hood, and that was even after I told her we weren't rushing her into it. And besides, how mad could she get at me? We're Nobodies -- we don't feel anything, right? Still… would she still trust me if she found out I looked without asking her? …Ugh…. Axel straightened up in resolve. Screw it. I hafta' see.
Axel headed in the direction of Nalax's room, which was on 'Floor Zero' as Zexion kept calling it -- it was the floor under the ground floor, with one side full of nearly empty storage rooms and pointless hallways, the other side being the Castle Dungeons; Nalax's room was somewhere in the midst of all of it. He knew how to get there from taking the staircase to the side of Larxene's room (the only staircase on which he preferred to watch the night sky when he was bored), but he couldn't give directions to it for the life of him.
He kept his head down and his hands in his pockets as he reached Floor Zero and began to navigate through the empty hallways there. Down there, it was always silent, always still -- the kind of still silence that was deafening to Axel's ears and blocked all completed thought from his brain. It gave him an empty sense of sleepy focus, a strange combination for Nobodies like him. Although, he couldn't help but distantly think that it was a good thing, for it kept him from second guessing himself and starting a second internal battle with himself.
The deafening silence dispersed, however, when he arrived in front of Nalax's door. With a deep breath, he reached for the door handle, halting when the cool of the knob reached his hand through his glove. Is her room really that cold? he thought, and gripped it tighter. These gloves are supposed to be too thick to react to temperature changes, aren't they? He shook his head, dismissing the trivial thoughts of his gloves, as the reality of what he was doing set in to his mind.
This is not fair to Nalax. Why am I doing this?! He scrunched his eyes closed, shaking his head again. No! You already resolved to doing this, dolt, so do not turn back now! Demyx was right, remember? You might never get this chance again. Which was a ridiculous assumption, his conscience thought somewhere far off in his mind, as she did retreat to her bedroom for sleep every night, so he had plenty of other chances, didn't he? Okay, that doesn't matter. You've come this far, Axel. Just walk in, take a quick peek, and scram like hellfire. Go!
And with that thought, he closed his eyes and silently, but sluggishly, turned the doorknob and slinked into her room. When he opened his eyes, he took a deep breath and let them adjust to the darkness.
This is stupid, you already see a little more than half of her face every day, is the other half really that important in the grand scheme of things -- argh! Shut up! I'm looking, and that's final! He shook his head one last time, to clear his head of the battle once and for all.
He took a slow step forward, looking around her room. A fairly large bed sat in the very center of the room, with a watercolor bedspread and a peaceful sleeping figure beneath it. On both sides of the bed were oak nightstands, a glowing pink and blue lamp atop one and a quietly ticking clock atop the other. A matching desk stood in the corner of the room to his right, sheets of paper and notebooks scattered around on its top.
Distracted, Axel walked lightly up to the desk. One of the notebooks was labeled "Heart Studies", another labeled "World Notes", and yet another labeled "Heartless." Each one appeared to be nearly filled. He touched a piece of paper titled "Org. XIII: Memb. Notes", with scribbled and fragmented sentences about various Nobodies littering its white front. Peaking out from beneath this seemed to be the same notes continued, and there were many pages of them.
Axel let out a low whistle at the sight. She had all kinds of notes spread out upon the desk, and just from reading a few sentences off the visible ones, he concluded that they were very extensive and detailed. Is she really that dedicated to the Organization, to be studying all of this so much? he thought, eyebrows raised. I'm not even that dedicated, and I've always been one of the few actually loyal ones, according to Xemnas. Geez.
A particular open journal caught his attention then: on the revealed page was a beaten up photograph of Nalax, and beside it was a drawing of her daggers and a line of different colored hearts (and beside each heart was a scrawled emotion.) Under these visuals were lines of information, beginning with the short description, "Nalax, Numberless, Guider of Hearts; tool, weapon, not actual memb."
Axel's brows furrowed. 'Not actual member'? But then, why…? He stopped these thoughts with a small click of the tongue and rounded on Nalax's bed, determined to just get his "mission" over with, and to stop distracting himself. Her desk shouldn't be any of his business.
With a calming breath, he stepped up to the side of her bed, taking in the scene.
Her head was under the covers, but her arms were above her on the pillows, and he could tell she was on her back with her head turned towards him from the silhouette in her blanket. All he had to do was pull the covers down and he could be on his way -- but still something held him back from just simply doing so and leaving. His hand reached gradually towards the top of the blanket, and he held his breath.
"Mm," she mumbled from beneath the sheets and his hand recoiled quickly as if bitten. Her arms disappeared under the covers and she turned on her side, curled into a ball. Axel cursed under his breath. Another murmur came from her direction. "Axel…."
At this, his eyes widened, and a fog in his head seemed to have been replaced with a deafening silence that made Axel lay his head in his hand.
Can't. Just isn't fair, came his broken thoughts, and he turned sluggishly to leave.
"Axel?"
He froze and turned back to Nalax. She wasn't breathing in the deep, steady pattern of sleep anymore, but instead seemed to be barely breathing at all, as if from fear.
"Axel?" she muttered again, hesitantly. "Is that you?"
He cleared his throat a little. "Yeah. It's me."
She seemed to sigh deeply before asking him, "What are you doing in here?"
"I…" he began, and quickly thought of something to tell her. He didn't want to tell her the truth. "I… wanted to see if you were awake, because I needed to ask you something. But… I… forgot what it was now, so… I'll be going. Uh, goodnight."
"Oh -- wait," she said, and sat up with her back to him, blanket held over her shoulders. "I had this dream… about Marluxia and Larxene. Do you… do you think they're really trying to overthrow Xemnas?"
Axel was taken aback. "Well," he started, quietly. "I'm not sure. But I don't think it's anything to get worked up about." Why would she even worry about something like that?
"…Okay." She pulled the blanket tighter around her. "It's just… well… nevermind."
Axel's brow stitched together, but he decided not to press the matter. He sighed. "Goodnight, Nalax."
"…Goodnight."