When the Night is Darkest

Location Unknown

Day 18

Roxas

"What's the matter? Did you never like it when she did this?"

Knives of pain ripped through Roxas' chest when he tried to draw a breath. Not for the first time, his vision shrunk to a hazy pinprick of light in a sea of darkness. Someone was talking to him, he knew, but the voice sounded… and he was so tired… if they would just leave him alone…

He coughed, and felt something warm splatter across his cheek.

"… xas, please stay… some… help…"

He wanted to count the stars. They were so beautiful; why had he never noticed that before?

"Roxas! No, no, don't… your eyes, look… me…"

Blinking seemed to take an eternity.

When he next opened his eyes, the world was shrouded in semidarkness. The soft glow of a candle called to him from somewhere to his right, but the act of turning his head sent a paralyzing jolt of pain racing down his spine. He maintained consciousness only with great difficulty; the effort left him panting quick, shallow breaths, each of which felt like a dagger tearing into his chest.

What happened to me?

He racked his memories for some clue as to what had led to his present condition, but the effort was nauseating. Pulses of pain stabbed at his temples.

"Roxas?"

He instinctively tried to turn his head and immediately regretted the impulse. When he had caught his breath, he managed to croak a faint reply that was all but swallowed up by the darkness. He heard a quiet rustling from somewhere close to his left, and then Xion's face swam into view above his own.

Roxas stared.

Even by the standard of his present condition, he thought that she looked awful. Her face was swollen and puffy; half-healed cuts swept from her left ear down to the corner of her mouth; one eye was ringed with a brilliant purple bruise that shone in the candlelight. Her mouth pulled upward at the corners, but it was faint and pained, utterly unlike her normal smile. Roxas wondered idly how bad his face must have looked.

"Axel… beat us up again?" he managed after a time.

Xion offered no reply. Roxas felt his hair, slick with sweat, being smoothed away from his forehead. "Xion?" he repeated groggily.

He heard her sigh. The hand on his forehead halted.

Something's wrong.

"Roxas…" she began uncertainly, "I'm about to tell you some things… that I'm not sure you're going to understand. I just want you to know that I don't have all the answers and I'm not sure what to… what we need to do next. You need to recover, but… after that…"

"We'll… figure something out," said Roxas awkwardly, puzzled by her uneasiness. "Always do. Where's Axel? Does he know every… everything you're about to tell me?"

"Roxas…"

"Is he… he isn't… is he alright?"

Roxas felt Xion's hand leave his forehead. The gesture made him feel strangely lonely.

"Axel's fine," she replied in a voice that surprised him with its coolness. "He's… doing his own thing for a while, as he phrased it. He seemed to think… well, I'm not really sure what he was thinking. It looked to me like he was just tired of tagging along with us, but he said that that wasn't it at all, and that he just had some things to discuss with Pride... idiot," she added vehemently.

Roxas was dumbfounded. He felt a sharp stab of pain in his heart that had nothing to do with his injuries. "And so he… he abandoned us?"

"… Yes."

"Then these injuries…"

"That happened right after we were separated. He stayed behind in that other world with that Sora… Pride… thing. We were attacked inside the corridor we used to leave. I didn't know that was even possible but… are you sure that you don't remember any of this, Roxas?"

Roxas made a quiet noise of dissent in his throat. "Noth… nothing. I remember Axel shoving me into that corridor, but after that…"

Xion was silent for a time. Roxas wanted desperately to ask more questions, but he felt an odd sense of drowsiness beginning to seep throughout his body; he was shocked about Axel's apparent desertion, certainly, but the pain made it difficult to collect his thoughts. He wondered vaguely how badly he was injured.

"Xion…" he asked faintly, "am I going… to…"

He felt the warm pressure of her hand return to his forehead.

"Silly…" she replied in an unsteady voice. "Of course not… you wouldn't… wouldn't leave me alone again, would you?"

She sniffled, and that was the last thing Roxas heard before sleep found him.

* Rvs: 2.0