Part Thirty-Six: Apnea
I didn't know what woke me up.
One minute I was deep asleep in dreamland and in the next, I was jolting up in bed and biting my lip to keep from screaming. My heart pounded. Something inside of me was wrong. There was something wrong. I could feel it, I could feel something inside that had to be wrong.
Ba-dump, ba-dump, something's wrong, something's wrong.
I was being silly. I knew I was. But there was an old memory, an old feeling that felt just like this when I was just a little kid.
Ba-dump, something's wrong.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, deep breath, just like my first counselor had told me to do. Breathe in, Roxas, breathe out... My body stilled and all I could hear was my heart. Ba-dump, something's wrong.
Ba-dump, ba-dump, something's wrong.
The words echoed inside of my heartbeat as I slowly pulled the covers off and as my feet swung over the edge of the bed. Like my head was being forced, I turned to look at something at the foot of the bed, a little further than where Selphie and Kairi were sleeping.
A little black figure was kneeling next to a still man, its head hunched over Axel's hair as it whispered to him in his sleep.
My blood immediately turned to ice inside of my veins. My brother. Sora's shape shimmered in the faint moonlight coming through the curtains on the window. He looked transparent, like he was about to disappear right as I watched him. His head turned until it was almost touching his shoulder and he paused.
Sora glanced over his shoulder, up at the bed.
I could barely see him at this angle, but I knew he was looking at the bed. From the little I could see of his head, I knew it was tilted at a confused angle now. He always did that whenever he got confused, put his hand on his chin and tilt his head like he was a little owl. It'd always made our dad laugh; that's why I remembered it.
After a moment or two of staring at the bed and apparently not seeing me, my brother's ghost turned back to my best friend and bent over him again.
I crawled to the foot of the bed as quietly as I could, peeking over it secretively. Man, I felt like a five year old looking down at a monster. No, wait, this was just...
I blinked in surprise, gaping at my brother.
His arm was flickering. One minute, it was completely solid, like there really was a little boy
sting down there on the floor. The next, it turned transparent again. What... the hell...? Wh... at the hell was this? Why was he...?
The two intertwined ribbons, one gold and the other dark blue, were the only things on his arm that stayed completely solid. His shirt, his hair, and everything else kept flickering back and forth. The ribbons, tied together in a makeshift bracelet on his wrist, were the only solid part about him. He didn't seem to notice it. All he did was keep on whispering to Axel, though I couldn't hear what he was saying. If Axel could, he stayed fast asleep or just kept his eyes closed. Sora didn't seem to notice that, either.
As I watched my brother's body shift from see-through to solid and then back again, I suddenly noticed that Axel had stopped breathing.
To not give away the meaning of the title, my comments are here on the bottom. With that... Ahem, med student here...
Apnea: suspension of external breathing, achieved for example by sleep or mechanically induced means such as choking or strangulation. :3 This emoticon is completely inappropriate.
Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts is not mine, but the Ribbon is!
Future chapters are going to take a while longer to make, as I want to make them over 1,000 words apiece. Like I jokingly said to some of you lovely readers, it's not going to take another 30 chapters to find out what happens to Axel. As I only have Sora (say hi, D-Sora!) the tablet, this is going to take quite a bit of time... So until then, please speculate all you'd like and have a lovely day, everyone!