AN: Ok, I must be crazy!Posting the next chapter so soon after the last one? Yeah, well I just thought I'd remind you what it was like back when I updated like, not between one week, and three weeks after the last chapter. So here it is, even though no one has reviewed. *Sigh* I guess you guys just don't really love me. Not that I don't deserve it. But still, this is my longest chapter yet! YAY!!! So I haven't written the next chapter yet, so I can't promise when it'll be up. Well, here it is, see you on the other side.

Roxas awoke on the couch. She sat up, finding the redhead asleep next to her. She blushed, remembering the things that had passed the night before. What would the redhead do when she awoke? Terror seized her. Would she demand that she tell her everything? What had happened, why she was so upset? What would she do if she did?

Axel had officially moved in, and now paid half the rent. It wasn't that she couldn't keep the apartment. Her brother would pick up the rent again, like he had before Axel had moved in, but she didn't like relying on her brother so much. He already paid most of the half rent she paid. But she didn't want to make him pay anymore than what he already did. She didn't want to owe him anymore.

Sora had insisted she go to college. Roxas didn't mind, she liked it, and welcomed the chance to go, but she hadn't been able to afford it, and Sora knew it. So he had insisted he pay. He had a good job, and he wanted his little sister to get the education he hadn't had a chance to get. He knew it was her way out, that getting an education was the only way for her to ever make a better life for herself. And he wanted to do everything he could do ensure that she would get that.

Roxas sighed. She knew exactly why her brother wanted her to get an education. And she knew it was because he loved her that he was pushing her towards the degrees he saw as fit for a reasonable person, but she still hated feeling like she owed him.

She silently got up, trying not to jostle the redhead, and walked over to the kitchen. She quickly brewed some coffee and stretched as the machine did its thing. The buzzer drew her back to the present as she had spaced out again. She grabbed a mug and doctored it to her taste. She wondered idly why it was that everyone liked there coffee different ways. Sometimes it seemed that no two people liked there coffee the exact same way.

She heard Axel stir in the other room. She snorted. It figured, the smell of coffee would wake the redhead. Sure enough, a few seconds later, Axel stumbled into the kitchen, eyes barely open and already searching for the coffee. "Here." Roxas said, thrusting a cup into the other girl's hands.

If Axel had been more awake, she would have smiled a thank you, but as it were, all she could manage was a faint nod. She too doctored her drink, then took a sip, savoring each moment of it. "God that's good."

Roxas smiled. "Yeah." She said, looking down, the smile was not one of joy, but more one of stalling. She didn't want to have the conversation she knew would begin at any moment.

But Axel surprised her. The redhead said nothing about what had happened the night before, instead she acted like any other morning. "I know you don't have class today, I was thinking we could hang out with Dem and Zex, there's a beach not too far from here." She said.

Roxas stared at Axel for a moment. It took her a moment for the shock to subside and for her to realize that she was staring slack jawed at the taller girl. She quickly shut her mouth and turned away. "Um, yeah, okay." She said, trying to fathom what was going through the older girl's head. Had she forgotten? Maybe she was half asleep last night. No, she had been conscious. She knew what was going on, and she had comforted her. And yet, now, she demanded no explanation.

"Uh, um, yeah. The beach sounds fun." Roxas said, still reeling on the inside. "What time do you want to leave?"

"Um, well its half past nine now, so at ten thirty? I'll call Dem, see if there's anyone else who might want to come." Axel said, thinking aloud.

"Ok, I'll go get ready." She replied, still dazed, but coming back a little. She needed time to think, time to understand. She hurried to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She leaned against the counter, looking at her reflection. She took a deep breath, trying desperately to calm herself. This was so strange for her. She felt naked, like the older girl could see right through her. Was the other girl going to ask her about it later? That fear wasn't easily dismissed. It was making her tense.

She sighed. She couldn't do anything about it right now. She could just wait and face anything that came. It's what Sora would do. Sora was always strong, and had always been there for her, to protect her. No, not always. A small voice in her head said. But she pushed the thought away.

Sighing once more, she splashed water on her face, glanced at her reflection once more and emerged from the bathroom. Axel was in the living room, shoving stuff into a big bag. Roxas looked it over, realizing it was a beach bag. She looked at the clock, and went to her room to change. They left shortly after. Zexion and Demyx were coming, along with another friend called Marluxia. It wasn't a name she had heard before, but shrugged it off. Apparently both Axel and Demyx had been friends with them, until Marluxia had ended up at a different college. But now they were all going to get together again for the day, something that Axel was very excited about.

As they drove over to pick up the three others, Roxas began to understand that the ban on touching had come back into play. Although Axel had touched her last night, held her, comforted her, now she maintained a careful noncontact. The redhead carefully ensured that they did not brush arms as she drove to Demyx and Zexion's house, and maintained that as they got out of the care and walked to the door.

Roxas knocked, and was greeted by the strangest person she had ever seen. A tallish person, shorter than Axel, but then again, everyone was, with bright pink hair stood in front of her. At first she thought she was looking at a girl, but then it seemed that she was looking at a boy. It was very disconcerting, and the fact that the person in front of her dressed very androgynously didn't help.

"Marly!" Axel cried, embracing the figure tightly. "God it's good to see you! How have you been?" She asked, letting go of Marluxia for a moment.

"Pretty good, this must be Roxas, hello. My name is Marluxia, nice to meet you." Marluxia said.

Roxas smiled. She still didn't know if the figure in front of her was a boy or girl, but it seemed that Axel liked this person well enough."Are we going to take two cars? We can't all fit in one." She said, looking over her shoulder at the car they had driven, it could fit four, but not five.

"Yeah. Mars, you going to go with Dem or us?" Axel asked.

"I'll go with Dem and Zexion. Those two need a chaperone." Marly said with a wry grin.

"Ok, they know the way, we'll be able to follow your car there." Axel explained. "Hurry up and make sure they haven't stopped for some . . . er . . . other activity please." She asked, peering behind Marly into the house.

"Yeah, that's a good idea."

Axel and Roxas climbed back into the car they had come in, waiting for the others to go so they could follow.

"So, um, what is um, Marly?" Roxas asked, blushing fiercely.

"Hm? Oh, you mean the gender thing, yeah. Marluxia is gender non-conforming. So Mars doesn't follow the gender binary. It's sort of weird at first, but you get used to it." Axel explained.

"Oh. So um, what do I call her? Him?" Roxas asked, uncertainly.

"Oh, yeah, there are gender neutral pronouns. The proper pronouns for Marly are ze or hir. Both are ok. Um, it's upsetting for hir when people use the wrong pronouns, so please make an effort. I guess I probably should have mentioned that before. Sorry, slipped my mind." Axel said, it was clear that both girls were uncomfortable. Roxas because she didn't know how to behave, and Axel because she was worried how the other girl was going to react to Marly.

Roxas nodded, thinking about that. "That's cool." She finally said, switching in the radio. They had learned they had very similar tastes in music, which made it easy on car trips. No fighting over whose turn it was to pick the song or CD depending on what they were doing.

The song she flipped to was a favorite of the both of them, and she smiled. Both she and Axel began to sing along to it in the same second, which made them both smile.

They were quiet for most of the rest of the drive, but the awkwardness from earlier had dissipated completely.

--

"Hey, can I ask you a question? And if you say I already have I swear to god . . ." Axel said, turning and looking at Roxas, a smile plastered on her face.

Roxas rolled her eyes. "Yeah, okay. What?" She asked.

"Back when we were playing 'I've Never' you said that you had kissed a girl before, I was wondering if you would tell me the story of how that happened." Axel asked. Her voice portrayed only mild interest, but Roxas knew her well enough to know that this was something that she had been wanting to ask for a while.

"Oh, yeah. Um, sure." Roxas said, a blush coloring her cheeks slightly. "There isn't much to tell really, I kissed a girl who was in most of my classes at one of the schools I went to. I went to a lot of different high schools. And I had a friend at one, Amanda, and on my last day before I changed schools, again, I kissed her. We had promised to stay friends forever, you know, I had her number, and was going to call her as soon as I had my new contact information. I kissed her and she flipped out. I called her a few times, but she never called back. Eventually she moved away. Haven't heard from her since. See, nothing really to tell." She explained, looking away.

"And that's the only time you've kissed a girl?" Axel asked, taking her eyes off the road for a moment to look at the blonde.

"Yep. I'm not gay, you know, just experimenting or something." She said, smiling slightly.

The rest of the trip was made in silence.

--

Roxas was aware that at some point she must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew she was waking up to find the car had stopped and they were at the beach. She yawned and got out of the car, stretching.

Marly came over, standing next to the car, ze silently took the bag that Axel handed hir and walked away. "Is . . . ze mad at me?" Roxas asked, looking after the pinklette.

"Nah, probably not. Ze gets a bit nervous when ze meets new people. Ze isn't sure how you'll react to hir. And it scares hir. Ze ran into some trouble with hir gender identity and expression in high school, you know how cruel people can be. It probably didn't help that I didn't' prepare you. You were kind of staring when we first arrived." Axel explained as they followed the others down onto the beach.

It wasn't sunny. Not at all. There was no trace of sun in the sky. The water was dark and angry looking. It looked like late afternoon as opposed to the mid morning it really was. "Wow Axel, you really can pick them." Demyx called, rolling his eyes at how his friend seemed to have a knack for picking the worst days to go to the beach.

"Yeah, well it's not like it's going to keep you from going into the water, is it?" She called back, raising her eyebrows. Demyx muttered something to Zexion, but judging by the glare he threw Axel, she was right.

"I think it's nice, there aren't a ton of people." Roxas said, looking around at the nearly deserted beach. There was a couple a little ways down from them, but as they walked out onto the beach they quickly packed up. Roxas felt more than saw Axel tense up. "What is it?" She asked quietly.

Axel sighed. "Nothing, just forget it." She said, sighing and doing her best to seem like nothing was wrong. Roxas knew better than to believe that, but she let it drop.

As soon as humanly possible, Demyx was in the water. He barely took the time to strip out of his shirt, throw down what he was carrying and then sprint to the water and practically dive in. Zexion walked down to the water, sitting down near the water, but still far enough away so he wouldn't get wet. It looked as if he was going to stay there for a while, probably until Demyx rejoined the dry landed folks.

"Dem loves the water." It was Marluxia, ze had sat down next to Roxas, she was slightly taken aback, she hadn't thought ze would come to near her. She doubted she would have had the courage.

"Yeah?" She said, looking at Marly.

"Yeah. He was on our high school swim team, but then this guy outed him to the en tire school and they kicked him off it, broke his heart too." Marly explained, looking at hir blonde friend swim sadly.

"What? Can they do that?" Roxas asked, astounded. That was so unfair, surely that wasn't legal, it certainly wasn't morally right.

Marluxia let out a harsh laugh. "You're still learning aren't you? They can do whatever they want. Who's going to stop them? Us? We'd get suspended. Our parents? Ha, yeah, right." The bitterness in hir voice scared her. She couldn't deny that what ze had said was true. There was too much truth that rang through hir voice to even think it.

"I'm going to go get a drink." Marluxia said after a few moments of silence. Ze got up, leaving Roxas alone with her thoughts.

"Hey." Axel said, walking over to where Roxas was. "You seem down, are you okay?"

The concern in her voice was touching. It made Roxas feel even worse. How could anyone hate them? The people she had met recently, like Axel and Demyx. Even Marluxia, although she had just met her, had hir charm. Although it was clear ze didn't like new people. No that wasn't quite right, ze was afraid of new people.

"Yeah, I'm ok." She lied, looking out at the ocean stretching before them. It was vast and unchanging. Although on the surface it changed with ever second. It seemed to stretch on forever.

"No, you're not. What's up?" Axel asked, pushing slightly.

Roxas sighed. "Mar told me what happened to Demyx, about his swim team kicking him off? It just doesn't seem right." She looked down, not wanting to show how deeply this upset her.

"No, it's not right. But what can you do? It's the way the world is Rox, there's nothing you can do except learn to live with it." She said, looking out to sea. The pain in her voice was evident. "It may not seem like it, but we're the lucky ones. Dem, Zex, me, Marly, we're all incredibly lucky."

"How can you say that?" Roxas demanded, looking at the other girl full on. "How when there is so much pain that's followed each of you? How is that lucky? How is that fair?" She could feel the tears pricking just behind her eyes, but she fought them.

"Because we are. We survived." Axel answered simply. "The government might not like us, or even protect us the way it should, but it could be a lot worse. At least here it isn't illegal. At least here we don't have to worry about jail time, or worse, death. In some parts of the world, a 'homosexual act' it punishable with the death penalty. We may have gone through stuff, but it's nothing to what we could have had to go through." She sighed. She hadn't wanted to tell the other girl all of this, but it had somehow come out. That was the affect the other girl had on her, she told her everything.

--

The door creaked as Roxas and Axel walked back into their apartment. "Well that was fun. I really like Marly, ze's cool." Roxas said with a smile. Axel grinned at how well the younger girl had gotten used to using gender neutral pronouns. It usually took people more time.

"Yeah, oh hey, we're out of coffee, shit." Axel said, looking in the bin they had designated to coffee.

"Oh, crap! And I have to stay up late studying! How the hell am I going to survive the morning without coffee?" She demanded, panic clear in her voice.

"Hey, chill. I'll just make a coffee run. I'll be back in a bit." Axel said, grabbing her messenger bag. It was her favorite, for her birthday Demyx had sewn on rainbow pride patches. He had even switched the strap for a rainbow strap. It was what the group had proclaimed the 'that's so gay' bag, which had caused them all to laugh heartlessly.

"K, bye." Roxas called, grabbing her laptop and flopping out on her bed to work. She flipped on her iPod and completely tuned out the world.

Two hours later, she heard the door open. She had been worried, terribly so, how long could it possibly take to get coffee? So when she heard that, she rushed out to the living room, prepared to yell at her roommate. What she saw made her stop in her tracks.

Axel. Blood poured down her chin, her lip was split in three different places. There was a gash above her left eye, which was slowly swelling shut, and her nose looked broken.

"Oh my god! What happened?" Roxas flew over to her, wrapping her arms around the older girl. She helped her to the couch, completely aware of the other girl's ever wince. She was limping badly, heavily favoring her right leg.

"Call Demyx." She instructed wincing as the words split one of the cuts on her lip, making it bleed again. Roxas grabbed the phone the number was punched in before she had so much as thought it.

"Dem? Get here. Now. Axel's hurt." Roxas was frantic. She hung up the phone without waiting for an answer. She grabbed all the ice packs they had, and the frozen peas, wrapped them in napkins and handed them to the redhead. "Here, put one of those on that eye. Put the other two where you think the swelling is going to be the worst. I'll set the timer for twenty minutes. When it goes off, take the ice packs off."

Roxas dashed to the bathroom, grabbing the first aid kit she had. She knew enough to know she had to clean out the cuts and bandage what she could. "We have to call the police." She said, looking at Axel desperately. She was terrified for her friend.

Axel laughed. "Who do you think did this?" She managed to say.

Roxas stared at her in shock, unable to move. The door bell rang. "I locked the door, you have to let Demyx in." Axel rasped out, wincing as speaking once again caused some of her wounds to move.

Roxas unlocked the door, and pulled Demyx inside. He had his own first aid kit. He took one look at Axel and declared they had to get her to a hospital.

"No. No hospitals." Axel said, looking straight at Demyx. "Just bandage me up the best you can." She said. "Nothing's broken."

Demyx sighed, but did as he was asked. Half an hour later, Axle was asleep in her bed, bandaged and safe. "What happened?" Demyx asked softly.

"I don't know." Roxas said, looking at the door to Axel's room worriedly. "She just came back like that. Are you sure she'll be okay? Shouldn't we take to a hospital?"

"You heard her, she doesn't want to go. We can't make her." Demyx said, staring sadly at the same door Roxas was.

"She said, earlier today, that she was lucky . . ." Tears threatened to break through Roxas' self control again, but a new thought occurred to her then, shocking her away from tears.

"This has happened before, hasn't it?" She demanded, looking Demyx straight in the eyes.

"Yes. Yes it has." Demyx looked down, unable to meet Roxas' eyes. "There's a reason that we don't go out after dark alone. Even to the safer places. We always go in a group." He took a breath. "There are certain rules you learn, or if you don't, you get hurt, then learn them. After dark, go out in a group only. Don't go to certain places in the city. Unless you have a roommate, don't bring someone home. There just things you learn." Dem said, still not meeting her eyes. "I don't know why Axel was out alone so late."

"Coffee, she went out to get coffee for tomorrow morning. I-We found out we didn't have any coffee left, and I-I was going to stay out late, and flipped out that we wouldn't have any coffee in the morning. She-she went out to get coffee for me." Roxas said, turning away. It was her fault. This was her fault. Axel was hurt because of her. "She had the bag, I didn't think, I didn't know."

"It's not your fault. It's one of the first things the teach you. No matter what happens, it's not your fault. Axel should have known better. Especially after Becka." Demyx said, sighing.

"What happened to Becka?" Roxas asked, staring at the floor.

"Becka was a member of the LGBT, which stands for Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender, group on campus. Anyway, three weeks ago, she went out alone one night, and was attacked. Worse than Axel. They broke three of her ribs. She's still on a coma. Stacy is devastated. She's Becka's partner." Demyx explained, sighing and leaning back. "Axel should have known better."

This was all new to Roxas. She knew things like this happened, but here? In her town? To people who went to her college? She thought she remembered something about a Becka in the newspaper a while back. Had she been attacked because she was gay? She couldn't remember if the newspaper had said that or not. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. It made no sense. How could people do this to each other?

"Hey, I'm going to go to sleep, do you want to stay here for the night?" Roxas asked, yawning and standing up. It was late. She had already decided she wasn't going to class tomorrow.

"No, Zexion's worried. Call me if you need anything." He said, also getting up and walking to the door. "And Roxas, she'll be okay. She's had worse."

"Somehow, that isn't comforting." Roxas muttered, walking into her room and falling into bed. But she couldn't sleep. When she finally did manage to get to sleep, it was hours later, and she was on the couch, closer to Axel's door in case the other girl needed her.

Ending Notes: Hey all. I know this chapter is sad, but yes, that happens. Its called 'gay bashing' and it used to go on alot more then it does now. Its when someone goes out to find someone who is gay and then beat them up. Yay, fun times. Police used to do it alot, you know, rewind after work, beat some kid to within an inch of their life. Ok, I'm pissing myself off.

Ok, so in other news: CONTEST!!!! So I have a contest: Draw a picture of Axel and Roxas how you see them in that story! I know, but please? I really want a picture of them as girls, and I CANNOT draw. So besides me owing you FOREVER your reward will be a character write in! I know, lame and whatnot, but its all I can think of. I can't promise anything big, but there are opporunities coming up. So please send me your entrys, and do an entrys, even if you don't think you're good, you are MUCH better than me. I fail at art. So PLEASE!!! Ok, thanks. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Oh, and I'm looking for an editor, so if you're intereseted, let me know!