Chapter Three: Advent
Author's Note: Ah, this chapter. I am so, so very keen on it. It's got an inkling of plot, reveals some important clues, and introduces the framework characters. Oh, joy! (Plus, we find out that Roxas isn't going to kick it! Yeah! He'll pull through, Doctor!) Erm…no fun pop trivia in this one, though. Sorry, heh. But there is a lot of mystery to make up for the somewhat absent humor! So worry not. Oh, and yes I know that it takes a really, painfully long time to get anywhere in the ER process (having just recently suffered through same, myself), but I sped it up for the story's purposes. They've got them some fast doctors, man! ;P
Roxas watched the redheaded man – Axel – leave, his mind screaming at him in what seemed like a foreign language. Garbled advice drifted through his consciousness, words like "Go after him!" and "Don't just sit there, stupid!" Dumbly, Roxas sat, unfazed by the coordinated efforts of his psyche and brain.
And then the leather-clad, strange-looking man was gone. For some reason he didn't understand, Roxas almost felt like crying. What the hell? he thought, scrubbing at his eyes. Luxord was about to say something, when another orderly appeared.
In the same deadpan, monotone voice as the one before him, he called, "Wanless, Roxas."
Distracted from his momentary, inexplicable heartbreak, Roxas stood, cradling his ribs gently. Luxord stood, following behind him nervously. Maybe he was afraid Roxas was going to have another dizzy spell. Maybe he thought Roxas was liable to spontaneously combust. Both were possible, neither likely, and the truth was, Luxord was still just internal-monologueing that Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God-I-just-hit-a-kid-oh-shit bit.
"Nature of the injury?" asked the orderly in a bored tone.
"Car accident," supplied Luxord quickly. Roxas wondered if perhaps he had prior experience with running kids over and taking them to the hospital after.
"Are you his father?"
"No…I, ah…" A brilliant flush lit Luxord's tan face.
"He ran me over!" interjected Roxas. The orderly looked up, his attention finally gotten, and stared.
"Ran you…over?"
"Yes! Can we just get this over with so I can get some painkillers?" The ache was making Roxas more irritable, coupled with the man's uncaring attitude.
"Er…right. Well, go in and have a seat in there," he pointed with the hand holding his pen to a small cubicle containing a bed, closed off by curtains surrounding it. "The doctor will be with you shortly."
Groaning, Roxas made a show of limping past the man and laid himself gingerly on the bed.
"Should I leave, or do you need to get my insurance information…?" questioned Luxord, a frown creasing his brow.
"Um…actually, could you stay with me?" Roxas interrupted by calling from behind the curtains. The orderly shrugged.
"If it's okay with the kid, I guess not." He scuttled off to make the next call.
Inside the cubicle, Luxord sat carefully on an unoccupied patch of Roxas' bed. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. Raising just his head, Roxas leveled him with a Look. People did not generally argue with what Roxas said after giving the Look, except his mother, because she had a better Look – and the threat of Grounded For Life, which trumped pretty much whatever Roxas came up with.
"I don't really want you here," Roxas told him flatly, just to make sure they were clear and on the same page. "Hospitals just…creep me out. I didn't want to be alone, even if it's you."
Luxord smiled. "You wouldn't happen to be scared of those strange men in the waiting room, would you?" he asked jokingly. Roxas bristled.
"Of course not! What would give you that stupid impression?"
"You were watching them pretty closely," observed the blonde man casually, leaning back.
This reminded Roxas of Axel, which made him sad again. He began to chew his lip, wondering what the feeling was all about. You're acting like a lovestruck girl, he told himself angrily. You don't even know the guy! What's he got to do with you? He's probably a creep anyway. Of course, Subconscious had something to add to that, too, but the doctor came in before it could be shared.
"Roxas Wanless?" she smiled warmly. Roxas nodded. "I'm Doctor Gordon. And you are…?" The smile faltered a little as she regarded Luxord. Her eye, keener than the orderly's, discerned that they weren't related.
"I was the driver involved in the accident," he volunteered before Roxas could say anything.
"Well." Luxord felt little icicles impale him all over, thrown by the sudden shift in the temperature of her smile, but when she turned back to Roxas her face was kind again. "Where does it hurt? You were able to walk here, I presume?"
"Yeah. Just my ribs. It feels like he sledgehammered me."
Luxord flinched. This was going to be really, really awkward, he thought as the doctor fixed him with another testicle-shriveling glare.
--
In the end, Roxas turned out only to have a cracked rib. It would bruise, and hurt for a while, but nothing serious. Luxord couldn't remember feeling more relieved, except maybe that time when he got locked out of the men's room in college, right after a Sprite chugging contest, and the janitor came along with keys just as he thought he was about to – but that was another story altogether. Roxas was still pretty pissed, but the mild painkillers with which he was presented seemed to help some. The lady doctor had actually been fairly civil with Luxord, grilling him for his insurance details but suggesting to Roxas that he not press charges for something so minor.
Deciding Luxord had probably suffered enough with all the anxiety and offering to pay for the bike and the insurance thing, Roxas went with her advice. In his relief, Luxord offered to drive him back to the school; Roxas was about to accept when he saw a bright shock of red hair emerge from another curtained-off cubicle down the hall from them.
The noise the redhead was emitting was actually more of an indicator of his presence than the hair, but Roxas recognized the latter better. Or would have, if he'd had room in his own head to think. Go up and talk to him, quick! shouted his Brain, relying on Instincts for support. Go up and MACK ON HIM, clueless, argued his Subconscious. Instincts piped up with a chorus of This guy is going to be extremely important to you! Just do SOMEthing, ANYTHING! Roxas sort of wanted to cry again from the pressure. He went with telling everything to just shut the fuck up, and strode purposefully over to the still-shouting Axel who had launched into a verbal assault on one of the nurses.
"I'm the victim here! God, woman, don't you know your ass from your elbow? It was me who got shot, in case you forgot you were just treating the bullet wound!"
"The police still need to speak with you," the nurse argued weakly. Axel's voice got shrill.
"Police? I didn't do anything except be there! Morons with a capital M, all of you bureaucratic, sycophantic –"
He apparently grew fed up with arguing, or too outraged to keep it up, because he whirled around – and bumped smack into Roxas. The cracked ribs gave a shriek of protest and Roxas winced.
"Sorry, kid. Didn't see you there," Axel said grimly, turning toward the door and thoroughly ignoring Roxas. Then he turned, did a double take. His furious expression sort of crumbled like old, badly laid cement.
Their eyes met.
Roxas collapsed onto the floor.
--
Axel gasped, pain exploding behind his eyes. He closed them, quickly, but not before he saw the blonde boy crumple to the floor in front of him like a rag doll. Even as everything went dark and a numbness filled his limbs, he was filled with a strange urge to break the kid's fall, reach out to him somehow, get between him and any harm which deigned to come his way.
I have to make it up to him…Have to do it right, this time… Wait, what? I don't even know him!
Axel wasn't sure how he could think, or why he was thinking what he was, when he was pretty damn sure he'd fainted dead away. But there they were, strange thoughts he didn't understand, and something else, a niggling sensation. He focused on that, and it became a quiet, gentle voice, almost like a hand soothing his forehead during a fever.
It was a young girl's voice, and it spoke to him like a friend:
'Axel. Don't be afraid. You know me, so please just listen and don't try to remember; I will take care of that…'
--
"You are certain? None of them know?" asked the girl softly. She toyed with a strand of long, silvery hair.
"No," the man answered, eyes closed but facial expression showing that he was focused intently on something, as though a screen was laid out before him and he was scrutinizing it. "And none remember. But they will begin, very soon. He has met two of the others. Once they are all together, in one place, and know of one another…" He waved a gloved hand.
"Are you certain we want to do this? I mean…we don't know whether these are the absolute last remnants. We could upset something very great, without destroying what we aim to."
"It is a risk. But is it not one which you are willing to take?"
Her gaze followed the rapid, scanning movement of his eyelids, which seemed as though he was deep in REM, and her lips quirked with thought. "I cannot say, yet."
"Then we must proceed until you can."
She heaved a sigh, her narrow shoulders sagging inward. "Very well. I will get to work."
Author's Addendum: Ooh, mysterious, no? Who are these strange, not-so-masked-or-cloaked people who live in darkness and observe our hero's every move? More pressingly, when will there be AkuRoku lovin'? Well…I know the first answer, but don't ask me about that second one just yet. All I can say is, I'm getting to it!