Taking Orders From Nobody

(Disclaimed)

OK, never mind plotlines will just randomly get two chapter because screw it I'm really feeling this one. Plus, I've got the flow of time to think about.

Chapter ten:

"I've got no illusions about you." Daxter said once Axel had explained all he needed to explain about Roxas. He had hardly touched his ice cream, it was starting to melt. He was completely aware of it, and held it so that the occasional drop found its way to the cobblestone plaza below them, not on his hands or his cloak. Axel did not particularly mind—he was so small he might get full easily, he might have a low salt tolerance. He had said at one point he had come from a hot climate. Maybe he just did not lose much salt with sweating?

Did he sweat? He wanted to ask—but that might have been a little rude, so he asked instead, "What do you mean, Daxter?"

It felt great to use his name. It reminded him that he was talking to a real, whole person, with a real heart, and that no one else was around. They were completely safe.

"I know you're not the good guy."

"Ouch! Hey!" But it was kind of true. He was not the best person.

There was a long pause. Daxter fidgeted.

"I suppose, we should go now?"

Go where—? Oh. Right. Yeech. Hollow Bastion. "Don't remind me."

"Look—sometimes we've gotta do what we don't want to do."

Daxter wanted to go—that is, he wanted to see if he would remember anything. It was obvious. The fact was, Axel did remember. But it was foggy, like a half-remembered dream, scattered, with missing pieces and gaping holes and sometimes things in the present made things he had pushed back come up again, like flowers growing through cracks in old, weathered pavement. It all sort of bled together, too. His memory was so good, sometimes he remembered things that had could never have happened. There were images in his head he could not fully explain to himself—at least he did not have to explain them to any one else.

He remembered fighting Roxas in a plaza in his hometown, for instance—but he knew for a fact Roxas had never once been there, not even on a mission, and that they had both been fifteen at the time, which was impossible, when he was fifteen Roxas had not been created. He was still safely inside Sora, but Axel had that memory with him and it hung around him like a fresh dream he could not rid himself of. If he went back, he might remember too much, something he could not stand knowing. He was comfortable remembering so little.

"I know. I know. I don't expect you to get it."

"No, I get it—I—" He had an idea, a kind of epiphany, "I forget. How much have I told you about Jak?"

"Not much." Axel replied, "You just said he was a buddy of yours."

"There was one place—the prison he was kept in, tortured for two years—he never wanted to go there again. Not for any reason, he said, never ever again. And I was with him on that. Until we kind of... had to go back. We were ordered to go in there to get some people out. Jak really didn't owe them anything, too. My girl, our boss. He could have said no. But he didn't. I asked him why and he said he knew he was the best man for the job—he knew if anyone else when in there, they get caught, or they'd be killed. It—it wasn't pretty. He actually collapsed a couple of times and I couldn't get him to move. He was not crying or anything. He was just... frozen stiff. I did not know what to do. I had never seen him like that before. I never wanted him to see him like that again."

Axel did not like that. Something about being held in a cell. It just rubbed him wrong. Like a long, sharp fingernail dragging up his spine. He thought of Saix. He had no clue why.

"But after that, he seemed free, kind of. Don't get me wrong. I never got the old Jak back. That place changed him and it won't be undone. The first time he walked out, he was physically freed, but the second time he was emotionally free. It was kind of cathartic for him, I guess. I didn't ask."

Axel wanted to change the subject. He did not like to talk about emotions. It made him remember what he did not have, or it reminded him that there were bad emotions, too, that he did not want to get back, and sometimes that made him think, maybe I should not get a heart back? He did not want to be rude, "So, you got your girl back?"

It was weird to imagine the fluff ball with a girlfriend. He had said he had been human before. Was she human? Did people actually... go for that kind of stuff? Was it common where he came from? Or was she a... what ever he was? Did they get together before or after he was transformed? There was a host of questions, some were grossly inappropriate to ask. Daxter was teenager. He would not ask.

Daxter nodded and said, "Yes. We did. And you know—" but then he stopped, shook his head, and fell silent.

"What had he been in for?"

"What?"

"You said it was a prison."

"Oh that—" he trailed off, thought for a moment, then repeated, "Oh, That. Eh—let's put that under the 'need to know basis' clause."

So will the girlfriend, Axel told himself, and I will never, ever need to know; "Okay, that's fair—but the moment it becomes relevant, you be sure to tell me, okay?"

"Y-yeah, sure."

He was preoccupied. Axel knew what preoccupied looked like. He did not pressure him. His heart would eventually make him say what ever was on his mind. Hearts did that, they catapulted secrets out of the mouth while every other force tried to keep them quiet.

Daxter stood up, "I'm not going to finish this."

Axel sighed, maybe not now, but eventually, he would say it. "Well—" he snapped the popsicle stick in half, burned it in the palm of his hand. He drew himself up. There was not a trash can on top of the clock tower—no one was supposed to be up there. There were actually quite a few signs and fences tactfully reminding everyone that there was significant danger of falling. He looked down. No one was in the plaza.

"Go ahead and drop it."

He dropped it. Axel set it ablaze. The salt in the cream fizzled fantastically, and it burned so quickly it was nothing but ash and steam before it hit the ground. Then, he opened a pathway, thinking to himself, yet again, please don't let this door open up to my old bedroom.

Which made him think about his house, which made him think about Isa.

I wonder what became of everyone?

He knelt down so that Daxter could climb his arm and stretch out over his shoulders, then he walked through the portal. It did not lead to his old bedroom. It head to a stone plaza that might, at one point, been a a fountain, but now the water was just a trickle, a few puddles in the stone, the walls covered with slippery moss and a few ferns that had somehow managed to anchor themselves in the cracks in the mortar.

"Well..." Axel scratched his head, "Here it is."

"You recognize this place?"

He was persistent.

"Sorta?" Axel planted his wrist on his hip and looked around. He could feel Daxter shift, stand on his shoulder and look around too, weave a tiny hand though his hair for balance while his tail swept across his back. It was very distracting. "We're near the south entrance—No, maybe west. Ansem's main gate is near here. And there's a garden somewhere. With a fountain... This is weird."

"What?"

"I thought this part of town was still lost."

"Lost?"

He forgot Daxter had next to no idea what he was talking about; he might as well explain. "Ten years ago, when this place was called Radiant Garden, it was one of the worlds lost to the darkness, about the same time Isa and I became a Nobodies. Over the next ten years, little pieces of it came back, bit by bit, just enough to make an incomplete place, a pit stop, really—As long as are all the same, it will find a way to match... Like a puzzle that's been put together wrong. Sometimes, though, pieces of different worlds find each other and they don't mesh. They bleed together and you get something that doesn't make a lot of sense. The bonds are weak and so pieces break off. You can fall asleep in those worlds and you can wake up just drifting in the nothingness on a spit of land."

Daxter's fur was visibly standing. Fear made him fluffy.

"If you're up high you can see it a little better. I'll show you."

Axel walked to the mostly dry fountain. He remembered it more clearly that he would have liked. He and Saix lurked here on their down time, back when they were Isa and Lea and cutting class, Isa because he knew it all already and Lea because Isa explained it so much better. He was working very hard to make his gait a little smoother for Daxter. The little guy shifted on his shoulders spine and body moving, head completely level, eyes focused, sweeping the landscape. Jak must feel so vulnerable with out him. He was great at keeping his head level as he walked, but Axel had a pretty distinctive swagger.

"Going up."

Daxter braced himself, sliding down his narrow shoulder and sitting in his hood like a pouch. It nearly chocked him. He jumped up, black gloved hands grabbing hold of a ledge, his boot slipping on the smooth tile before finding a little traction and letting him climb up. Axel climbed for until he simply ran out of things to climb. The town just... ended and he stopped, looked down to the ground twenty feet below, a blue chasm with a few residual pipes and pieces of foundations, wide gap, about a mile long, and a moat of heartless, a few more dotting the stone, and another slice of town. Daxter's claws left his shoulder.

Axel pulled himself up, sat on the thin ledge and looked back. The fountain he had climbed up, a little bit beyond, a few houses, half of a plaza, it was just a piece of crust, a crumb, in the middle of no where.

If anyone managed to emerge from the darkness here—they would not last very long.

Daxter marveled. "Woah."

Axel watched him. He crawled out of his hood, slid down his sleeve, stood on the edge, "There are people over there?"

"Yeah. Locals."

"Do you know them?"

He was really determined to chip away at it. Axel did not really mind, "I can't recall. We'll be lurking around them soon enough. I'll let you know if I see anyone."

He he did not know—maybe he did? Isa was the only person he remembered. He had parents. He remembered them pretty clearly. Not any siblings that he could recall, though. There had been a grandmother, too—not his, but someone's. Probably Isa's. Definitely Isa's—there were plenty of other people, too, that had just sort of been there.

"That's the main part of town over there." Axel pointed. It was much larger than their little bit of crust. A large swathe of land, about a mile wide at its thickest, a mile long. "I was aiming for that."

"Weird that we wound up here." Daxter said. He sat down, leaned back on his hands, "You want to try again?"

Axel thought to himself that there must be a reason. He had not been thinking about the fountain. He had been thinking of his old bedroom. That had made him think about the house, which made him think of Isa, which, for just a moment, made him think of Isa's grandmother, barely a blip on the radar. Hardly worth mentioning—was she Isa's grandmother? Yes, of course she was. His grandmother was dead. He remembered attending her funeral. He had been about seven, and he did not really take it well. Still, the more he told himself, Isa's grandmother the more it just... did not seem to fit. Maybe it was because he and Saix had just started staring at each other from opposite ends of a huge rift these days, so that kindly old woman just seemed like the polar opposite of Isa.

Why were they so mad at each other, again? Well, not mad, just not talking like they used to.

Axel scratched his head—that was something he really could not recall. Was it because Saix blamed him for everything? No—no he said he never had. They just... grew apart. No reason for him to get the silent treatment.

He did not want to share any of that with Daxter. "Opening the paths is draining."

"I don't want to walk that."

"I'd be walking it." Axel corrected. He did not want to walk it, either, "Five minutes—then we'll go."

So they sat in silence again. Daxter spoke quickly this time, so he did not start of fidget awkwardly again and spill whatever secret he was holding on too, "So—how exactly am I supposed to be doing any fighting with out a weapon?"

"Oh." Axel had not given it much though. Now he did. He worried briefly, then he was struck with a strange feeling of deja vu, and he felt reassured. Like he had thought of something before, already, in a similar situation, "Well, the Organization had a moogle and one point, but he left. Don't know why. I think Xigbar pissed him off him or something."

Honestly he had no idea—He thought to himself the past year was strangely foggy, considering how recent it had been, but that seemed like something Xigbar would do.

"We'll see what we can scrape together and get something synthesized for you."

"But what?"

Good question. Daxter was a little small for fighting. Maybe they would get him something huge, like a tank, or a giant robot, though that was beyond a Moogle's skill. Axel shrugged, he reached into a pocket, "Let's see what we've got to work with." He pulled out a little black drawstring pouch, opened it up. It was bigger on the inside. A handful of dark shards, a few bright shards, some twilight shards, a mythril gem, and a dense stone. A lucid crystal, an energy crystal, too. That would be useful—some orichalcum would be better—he did not want to go out looking for something that rare—but they would not be making much with out it, "We'll think of something."

Axel took him back down. For old times' sake—really, because he was an idiot—he left the fountain to take a stroll. He did not want to run into anyone anyone. That would be awkward, they might recognize him, and he knew not long after he left, they would just get taken by the Heartless again—or maybe they already had. No one seemed to be around.

"Kind of creepy." Daxter muttered.

"Yeah."

"Lea? Is that you, Lea?"

Oh, the day of reckoning, she has dawned.

Axel cringed, stopped in his tracks. There was no point in trying to not be recognized—it was too late. There was a lot of point in opening a corridor beneath his feet and letting the ground swallow him up, which was what he desperately, desperately wanted. But, at the same time, he desperately, desperately wanted to be found again, too.

"You wait right there, Lea."

Axel looked around, he heard shutters slamming shut and he followed the noise to a second story window, the shutters were painted a rosy pink, the house was red brick, quite the contrast to the blue streets and blue landscape. Daxter took full advantage of the moment and dropped down, sliding down his arm like a fireman's pole, before racing to the nearest bush and diving inside. Axel crossed his arms, "You!"

A little orange hand popped out of the green and gave him a thumbs up, then vanished quickly.

"Lea!"

Axel turned towards the front door of the house and put on the biggest fake smile he could, and tried to recall a name, but he just managed a huge, clearly insincere, "Heeeey."

It looked like a little country cottage crammed into the suburbs. The door opened and a short old woman stood there. She smiled, lifted her hand a little to wave, and Axel though to himself, gosh, osteoporosis hit her hard but then he remembered that he had gotten so much taller in ten years. Her thick gray hair was pulled back into a bun. She was wearing a purple dress, with a brown stole tied around her neck. She looked exactly like she had when he last saw her.

Ten years—there were so many things he could say. What should be the first? Something funny? It was only a matter of seconds before she got upset with him. He should diffuse the tension early. Or, maybe something that could be seen as genuine? How would she react to that? Would she still get mad. He did not want her to get mad. He had never seen her mad before and he did not want to see it now.

"Lea, you certainly have shot up like a beanstalk! Didn't I just see you last week? You look so much older!"

If he had a heart, he would be shocked. She was fresh out of the darkness—not a single day had passed for her. He had not foreseen this. What to say? What to say? "Uuuuuh..."

She had plenty to say. "I haven't seen Kairi in a while—I was just about to head out to look for her. Have you seen her around?"

"K-Kairi?"

Namine's somebody, Kairi? Sora's friend, Kairi? Princess of Heart Kairi? That Kairi?

It could not be that Kairi. No way it was. That Kairi was from Destiny Islands, not Radiant Garden.

Right?

If deer in headlights could speak—they would be stammering like him. Kairi... Kairi... His mind started racing, and some unseen force was jerking on the emergency stop frantically, slamming on the breaks and screaming. He tried searching his mind of any pre-Nobody memories of Kairi. He remembered the old woman, of course, but she wasn't his grandmother and he did remember that, too. She was Isa's grandmother, right? Who else was there? Just Isa. Not Kairi. Kairi had never been to Radiant Garden. Had... had that been wrong? Was Isa related to Kairi? No—no that would have come up immediately. Isa did not have siblings. He had not had siblings.

"Uh... Uh... I—"

She stopped smiling, "Wait a moment, dear, didn't I hear you had gone missing?"

"Oh, well, I—"

"Yes, just two days ago. You had gone missing. You and Isa both. Your mother will be so pleased to hear you're back." she started walking, "Why don't we go tell her, then?"

She could not travel very far with out seeing the heartless—Axel did not want that. He had to stop her, "Wait a minute, uh—" He was drawing a blank, what had he called her? "Uh—" Shit, what had they called her? He could not sound too uncertain about it, what ever it was; pick something endearing and say it, damn you. "Nana."

She turned slowly.

"We should—there's a lot of things you need to know."

She stopped, "What are you talking about, Lea?"

Axel realized he was hunching over, trying to trick them both into thinking he was still fifteen. He straightened up. Her eyes followed him. He cleared his throat, fidgeted with his sleeves, smoothed out his coat. He need to tread on eggshells. To be told that ten years had passed in what, to her was the blink of an eye, it was the shock of a lifetime, but surely she could have just guessed it on her own? He was so tall now, clearly older.

He saw Daxter peeking out of the bushes, "Let's head back inside."

She was confused, but complied, probably because she was starting to realize something was up. "Okay, dear, I'll make lunch."

"I'm not hungry."

He never really was.

"But you're so skinny!"

He was going on ignore that. Black was very slimming.

He opened the door for her, nearly hit his head on the frame, and ducked into her mud room. He glanced down. In his memories, the floor was so much closer. He felt a little vertigo. A small girl's sandals were on the floor, some kid's red sneakers. His? Maybe, but he could not remember how they had gotten there. It looked exactly like it had, or must have had, the day it all vanished. He had... gone missing a few days before the rest of the town had, "What would you like, Lea?"

"Nothing, Nana, I'm not hungry." She had it in her head that she needed to feed him, like anyone would feel guilty and morally obligated to feed a lost, starving mutt. He physically blocked off the kitchen. "You need to sit down."

She looked concerned, but she did as he said, sat down in her rocker by the window. Axel sat down in a chair opposite her and just stared for a while, soaking up every wrinkle in her face and wondering what someone with a heart would be feeling. How they would be acting. She shifted uncomfortably. Axel laced his fingers and pressed them against his lips, resting his elbows on his knees, perfectly still, until he said, "It's been ten years."

He envied the look of disbelief, the near laugh that took over her old face, "It's been a few days."

"Ten years." Axel repeated. He did not break eye contact. That is what people did when they were telling the truth, right? Make eye contact. He lowered his hands, steepled his fingers between his knees. "You've been... Let's say it was asleep."

The pieces clicked in to place all at once and there was horror as she remembered. Maybe she even remembered what happened to Kairi. She placed a hand on her chest, and Axel wondered if she would just keel over right there. She went white. She began to shake, "Kairi!"

Kairi. His eyes flicked around the room. He was looking for a photograph. There were a precious few on a wall. Axel had been given precious little information about her. No one in the Organization really needed to know anything about her, and he had not been very curious before this moment. He knew she, that is, Princess of Heart Kairi, was on Destiny Islands. That was it. He hardly even knew how to get to them. He knew she looked a little like Namine—just red-headed. Namine's face was not one he would forget anytime soon. He stood up, crossed the room in two strides and looked at the photographs on the wall covered in a nauseating yellow-and-lilac paper. There was a red-haired girl that looked a little like Namine sitting with Isa on a low stone ledge—part of the square that had been near by, once, when Radiant Garden was whole. So... she was the same one? Axel folded his hands behind his back, and thought for a moment of how to explain it. He rolled his fingers.

Too tedious, "... Is safe. You do not need to worry about her."

She was going to worry. She was going to worry as loud as possible. "Where? Do you know?"

"Yes." But he did not remember her. There was nothing—not even a Kairi-shaped blank space.

But she looked the right age. She was fifteen now—ten years ago she would have been five, maybe six. She looked around that age. He looked at another photograph. He and Kairi were walking away, towards a school yard. He squinted at it, as if to ask it how dare you exist? How dare you prove me wrong?

"Can you bring her here...?"

"That—" was hard to explain, "Yes and no."

"What do you mean?"

Suddenly, he did not want to explain anything at all. He turned around so quickly she jumped, and he saw an orange and black blur outside the window. Daxter had been spying. Fine. Let him spy.

Fake smile again. He clapped his hands together, rubbed the palms, anything to look casual, "We need to get you to a better place—safer. Hollo—sorry. Radiant Garden is coming back in pieces. There is a bigger piece not far from here. It is better defen—" he did not want to frighten her, "You will be happier there."

How was a more difficult question to answer. She would never be able to travel on foot. Even with the stamina, the terrain was difficult and swamped with heartless which he could night fight off while he carried her. Taking her though a corridor of darkness was out of the question. She would never survive. Now that he had said he he could not just ditch her. Daxter would never let him hear the end of it, and he was heartless, not evil. What to do—what to do? He put his hand on his hip, held his chin.

Fire. Build a fire and get them to come to her. Fire was the answer to everything. The light would keep the heartless away, a big enough blaze could be seen for miles, if the water worked, he could get it to burn low and smoke. He looked at the coffee table, a worthy sacrifice. It was old, been in the family for years. It was not some cheap thing. Good, hard wood, but with a thick lacquer. The old style, not anything synthetic like some worlds had—it would not burn easily, but it would burn clean. No fumes, just fuss. He needed something unfinished, raw. Cheap. Something she would not miss.

"Nana—why don't you get some things together?"

"Yes, alright." she made her slow way up stairs. Axel followed quietly, stopped at the landing, and sprung into action as soon as she vanished. He raced to the door, threw it open.

Daxter wasted no time rushing to him leaning forward, perched on the terracotta window garden and demanding,"Remember anything?"

"I remember you're a jerk."

Daxter laughed, almost manically. He jumped from the window garden onto his shoulder, straightened up and planted his elbow on the top of his head, "That was your moment. You didn't need me butting in."

Jerk with a point. Still a jerk.

Axel went to the house across the street. The door was locked. He jiggled it uselessly while Daxter refused to shut up. "So, who's Kairi? Is she pretty?"

Axel felt an uncontrollable burning. Was this was rage felt like? It seemed so familiar. Had he felt it before? He frowned up at him, twisting his head quickly so Daxter nearly fell off and had to cling to his hair. He felt like chewing him out, but there were more important things that demanded his energy. A signal fire was not going to build itself, so he just grumbled, "I am twenty five and I am not having this conversation with a ferret."

Daxter was all play. He climbed on top of his hair and curled up on his head. "Ottsel." he corrected. Noted. "And don't act like you don't know Kairi. When she said 'Kairi' you said 'Kairi' like the name meant something to you."

"I don't remember Kairi."

"But you remember the old woman?"

"Sure I do."

"Just not Kairi?"

"Nope."

"So, you just knew the name?"

"Everyone knows Kairi—"

"I don't know Kairi!"

"Everyone who's been around Kingdom Hearts or the Door to Darkness knows about Kairi. She's—she's pretty crucial to it. She's one of seven. One of the Princess of Heart. Got it memorized?"

"Do I need to know about that?"

Axel was not really listening. He was focused on jiggling a locked door uselessly, "But there are seven and I've never met any one of them in person that I can remember. I certainly don't know Kairi—I mean I've sort of met Kairi. I've met her Nobody. I was sort of her Nobody's jailer and that wasn't a fun time for me at all. She really gave me this weird feeling and—"

Axel shattered the widow with his elbow. The impact would leave a bruise but it got him into the neighbor's house. He extended his arm, "Get the door for me, will you?"

Daxter got the door. Axel kept explaining, "Go back to Sora."

"Sure." The door swung open and Axel picked Daxter up again and set him on his shoulder.

"Sora has this friend named Kairi."

"Right."

"Kairi was one of the seven Princess of Heart that were required to open the door to Darkness, supposedly where Kingdom Hearts was (it wasn't) so, our Boss's Heartless, who called himself Ansem arranged to have all seven of them kidnapped and brought together so he could pull it off."

Daxter jumped off his shoulder and headed into the kitchen, "See if the water works!" Axel called after him.

He carried an end table to the middle of the street and threw it down so it would break in to pieces that would burn a little easier. Daxter came back. His coat was wet. The water worked. "Sora wasn't too happy about his best friend getting snatched up, so he went after them, and, uh, somewhere in there Kairi put her heart inside Sora's so she lost her heart. I'm fuzzy on the details. She did not become a heartless, and a nobody was born named Namine, and somewhere in there Ansem possessed his other best friend, Riku, Xemnas found out that Sora and the Keyblade wielders were the key to making Kingdom Hearts and we've all been trying to get them on our side ever sense."

Daxter did his part and dropped five wooden spoons on top of it, then hunched on his shoulder again.

"And skip to the part where you jailed this Namine."

"Right. So, I had a mission in Castle Oblivion—keep an eye on Namine, who was manipulating Sora's memories so he'd work alongside Roxas to gather hearts for Kingdom Hearts, (Marluxia had other plans) and I did that job. I did a great job—but something kept eating at me. Every time I looked at her it was just—something."

"Because you knew Kairi."

"But I don't remember knowing Kairi."

Although, at this point, it looked to Axel—probably to Daxter, too—that he was trying very hard not to remember knowing Kairi.

And that's where we leave them because Jak will keep going with Nana.