Chapter Nine:
Frozen Feelings
When Raxet was finally able to move, Axel was fast asleep. Raxet hadn't gone to sleep. She had been afraid of drifting away, of Fading. Axel's head rested on her shoulder, the heat from his body almost unbearable beneath the blankets. She slid out from under him, delicately, not wanting to disturb him. His head lolled peacefully back onto the pillows. She smiled. He looked like such an idiot, with his mouth half opened and freezer burn on his cheek. And he snored. Softly, but it was still snoring.
Raxet stared at him for a minute, wondering about this feeling deep in her gut. Was that a feeling? Or a memory of a feeling? Or a pseudo-thought disguised cleverly as an emotion? She had a headache again. A bad one. The room was blurry around her, and it was scary. She needed to scream. Badly. She didn't want to wake Axel, though. And she daren't scream in the hall.
How had he done it? Opened the darkness door? Stuck his hand out…and pulled at nothing….
She felt stupid, sticking her right hand out, clutching at air, while her other hand cradled her head. But after a moment, she felt something. A swirling void, just beyond the reach of her fingers. She didn't know how to get it though, other than to focus on it. And she did, concentrating on it, willing it towards her.
In a way, she must have succeeded in her attempts to open a darkness door. A black void opened around her fist, growing as it slid up her arm. A moment later, she collapsed in a heap of white.
"Snow?" She asked, raising a handful of the white stuff to her eye level, distracting herself momentarily from her victory. She flung it up in the air, allowing it to sprinkle and settle in her wild hair like glitter.
"I did it," She told herself, smugly. "I open—" She stopped in mid boast, pulling her knees to her chest. "Ow….ah….ah…." Her head was about to split open.
She could feel pieces of herself drifting away.
"Raxet…Ra….Raxet….Razer…Razzy….Raz….Raxet…." She screamed, unable to contain the pain any longer. Her chest was heavy and throbbed like fire. Fire….flames….
She stood shakily, her breathing ragged. The seizure had come to an end. Raxet let out a long sigh, leaning against a convenient tree. She looked around her—she seemed to be in the middle of a forest. Interesting. She hadn't been here before.
She walked among the trees, thinking about….thinking. Axel. Flames. Why did it feel like there was something she was missing?
Oh, right. Because she was. Memories.
Her chest panged at the thought of knowing what she had been through before, instead of only what she was living through now. Axel had memories, the lucky bastard.
Being with him…was like being with Xemnas.
No it wasn't.
Xemnas hurt her. With his words, with his face. With his desires. With his lies. Every time she heard Xemnas speak, saw him breathe, felt his skin, pain lanced through her head, as if a memory was trying to escape.
It was almost the same way with Axel. Axel…
It didn't hurt when she saw Axel. It ached. Incessantly.
"Damnit." She bent down to pack a snowball, packing it tightly with angry fists and flinging it behind her. Frustration, anger. These emotions were supposed to be beyond a Nobody, and yet she felt them strongly enough that they were clouding her judgment.
What did it matter the way she reacted to these men's presence? All that mattered was that she regain her heart and become whole. And get her memories back. There was a crunch in the snow behind her, and she spun, flinging the snowball by instinct.
Axel caught it with his nose. He didn't complain, wiping the snow off his face and front with a gloved hand.
"Something wrong, Raz?" He asked, quietly. His unnatural calmness irked her something terrible.
"No. Everything's peachy." She turned around, stalking deeper into the forest. Her feet made no impression in the snow. Axel, however, was halfway up his shins in it. He paused, allowing her a moment to get ahead, then he followed.
"You know, if there was something wrong…"
"There's not."
"We all lost things." He told her ponderously, bending over to scoop up some snow. "With our hearts."
"But you still have memories!" She hissed at him, stopping and whirling around. He flung the snowball at her, but it stopped an inch away from her face—she never even flinched—and dissolved, falling to the ground.
"Is that your problem? Let me tell you something." He got more snow. "My memories cause me more pain every day than I can imagine that seizure put you through. I wish that it was like that for me. I could just bit my lip and take it, then move on. I won't tell you that you're lucky, but you should forget about the pity party." He flung the snow again, and this time, it made contact, sliding off her person like water away from oil.
"….That doesn't make me feel any better." She told him, quietly.
Axel shrugged and threw another snowball. She stopped it with a glance, and it turned around to beam him in the shoulder. "Play fair." He complained, firing again.
"…..I don't feel like it." She made a motion with her hand like orchestrating a crescendo, and a small wave of snow rose up from behind Axel and smothered him.
She half expected him to melt it, but he wasn't that foolish. He dug himself out, spitting snow. She waited for him to get his torso free before flinging another snowball at him and fleeing into the forest.
She heard him curse behind her, and then there was the sound of his clumsy floundering through the snow as he gave chase. She couldn't help it—her mood was shot. She laughed as he tackled her, smearing snow into her hair.
"You suck," She told him, trying to escape. "You've ruined my angst!"
"Serve you right." He told her, straddling her and attempting to shove snow down her front. She squealed in response, and he paused, staring at her his jaw slack.
"You…squeal?"
"N-no!" She wiggled out from under him, brushing snow off her cloak, attempting to regain her dignity.
"Yeah…you did." He pounced her again, his weight pushing her into the snow. This time he was tickling, and her natural response was to squeal.
"Axel!" Raxet sucked her breath in deeply as someone hollered at the man who had her pinned down. Axel turned to look over his shoulder.
"Sora!" He gaped.
"Who is that, Sora?" A large, intimidating, frightening…thing…wearing a purple cloak growled. "What are they doing here?"
"Axel…he's from the Organization."
"The Organization!" A duck, too? "Let's get them!"
Axel chuckled as he recovered himself, "Long time no see, Sora. 'Fraid I can't stay to chat." He pulled a darkness door open in the snow beneath them, and he and Raxet fell laughing to the commons of the Castle Oblivion.
