Well, the first update didnt take as long as I had expected it to. Hopefully this is a good sign.

After they finished breakfast, Axel and Roxas sat in the hallway for a little bit longer, unwilling to get up just yet. They didn't really say anything, they just sat there, enjoying the silence.

"Roxas," Xemnas said as he turned the corner, reaching their hide away, "I have a mission for you."

"Can I help him with it?" Axel offered.

This made Xemnas pause. Axel always complained when he was forced to go on a mission, why would he suddenly change his mind now and want to go on one. "You, if I am not mistaken, have to help fix the damage that you did to Marluxia's rose bush."

Axel's shoulders dropped. He had hoped that Xemnas would allow him to accompany Roxas. Not only would it have gotten him out of garden duty, but it would have allowed him to stay closer to Roxas. It hadn't bothered him before, but now he hated to be away from the younger nobody, though he could not explain it.

"Roxas. Go shower and get ready for the mission. You can find me in my office when you finish, I'll give you the details there." Xemnas said before turning to leave, intrigued by Axel's reactions.

"Yes sir," Roxas said with a certain amount of distain.

Axel let out a deep sigh and hung his head slightly as he turned towards the gardens. There was no reason to shower before he worked with dirt. He dragged his feet, trying his best to stall the inevitable. This was not the first time he had been forced to help Marluxia in the garden. Every time he burned anything near his precious garden, Marluxia flipped out and complained until he fixed it. For that reason, he didn't burn it to the ground.

By the time he got outside Marluxia was already waiting for him, garden supplies spread out in front of him. The pink loving Nobody was tapping his foot impatiently, glaring at him from the moment Axel walked out of the door.

"Just be glad I even showed up." Axel growled, standing in front of Marluxia and looking down at the garden tools.

"First off, take these and cut off all of the burnt stuff." Marluxia ordered, shoving clippers into Axel's hands. The red haired Nobody grumbled, not bothering to form words. The clippers were cold and wet from being set down in the grass, still fresh with morning dew. He knew that Marluxia had done that specifically because he hated wetness, one of the reasons he never got along well with Demyx. It made sense. His element was fire, fire and water had never mixed well.

"What next, master?" He asked, the sarcasm dripping from his voice. He had trimmed the burn branches, tied the roses to the stupid looking arch that they were supposed to be crawling up naturally, and watered them.

"Well, the tulips need some care."

"I wasn't anywhere near the god damned tulips! You can fix those yourself!" Axel shouted, hurling the clippers straight at Marluxia's chest. To his dismay, Marluxia smacked them out of the air before they could hit their target.

As he stalked off, Marluxia stayed there, picking up the gardening equipment and heading towards his shed. Xaldin, who had come to watch Axel suffer, was leaning on it casually.

"What's with him? He seems like he's worse than usual." He asked, opening the shed so that Marluxia could put his tools away.

"Xemnas sent Roxas off on a mission, and you know how Axel gets when he isn't around." Marluxia said from inside the shed, trying to find the places where everything went.

"So you decided to antagonize him now?" Xaldin asked, breaking his usual calmness, "You aren't turning suicidal, are you?"

"No, Xemnas was near by, watching him. If Axel had tried something, Xemnas would have stopped him." He said, making a mental note to organize the wreck that Saix swore was a tool shed.

"He has been doing that a lot, hasn't he?" the dark haired Nobody said, moving into the shed to try to help his friend. "I wonder what he is up to."

"No idea. I don't even try to understand him anymore, let alone Roxas or Axel. They're all nuts as far as I'm concerned."

Axel continued to storm around the castle, wishing that he could find something to do. Everything that he enjoyed, save for tormenting Demyx, involved Roxas, and even torturing the water-headed Nobody wasn't much fun without someone to laugh with. He told himself that Roxas couldn't possibly be gone too long. Xemnas hadn't sent Roxas out on a long mission in over a month and Axel doubted that he would ever do it again. By the time Roxas returned, half of the castle had scorch marks on it.

He wasn't sure why he lost it when Roxas wasn't around. At first he had just blamed it on the fact that he didn't have anything to do, which made him angry. Also, the more cowardly Nobodies, which included everyone except for Saix and Xaldin, decided that it was a good idea to bug him when Roxas was not around, making him even more angry. They knew that he was more likey to show off his new methods of inflicing pain if he had an audience. Marluxia, on the other hand, just loved to bug Axel when he was already in a bad mood. For Axel, this was proof enough that the flower-brained Nobody was indeed half retarded or possibly suicidal. Even Demyx, who had learned more than once that it was better to stay out of Axel's way, would harass him as soon as Roxas left. Axel swore that the moment Roxas left, the IQ of everyone else in the castle took a dramatic downturn.

But now, Axel was starting to think that it didn't have anything to do with boredom or people harassing him. It was something different, something more difficult to explain. When Roxas was around he just felt, well, different. When Roxas left he felt like he was missing something important, but he could not put a finger on what it could be. A partner in crime? No, he had worked solo before, causing mayhem as he pleased. Doing it alone again wouldn't bother him. A friend? Impossible. He knew that Roxas would return, thus he wasn't losing him at all. A lover?

Axel stood in the middle of the hallway and laughed out loud, gaining a few confused looks from Xigbar. The very though of a Nobody being able to love was so ridiculous that it wasn't even worth contemplating, he had enough things to worry about without thinking about such nonsense. He just shook his head and walked away, not bothering to explain himself to the worried Nobody watching him with suspicion.

By the time he reached his room he was glad that he did. He was already starting to feel a little bit of anger well up inside of him, the kind that came when Roxas was not around. He had never told his friend about this, he thought that it would be better if he didn't know. Pushing those thoughts, as well as the anger, aside, he went to his dresser and started searching through clothes as though he thought he might find something other than a jet black robe.

When he had first joined the organization, he had loved the color black. Now, after being forced to wear it for longer than he had ever imagined, he hated it. Yes, it looked good on him, it complemented his hair very nicely, but he was tired of seeing it, as evident by his room. When he had first joined, everything was either white or black. Now the only black on the walls was the burn marks from the last time he had gotten angry. Everything else was red, orange, or yellow, with a few hints of brown here and there. His walls were a dark red, offset by the light cream of his curtains that hid the only window in his room. The one time he allowed Demyx in here, the moron had said that it looked like the circus had come to town.

Axel shook his head, trying not to think about things that angered him. A shower was exactly what he needed to clear his head. With his new clothes already laid out on his bed, he headed towards the door on the opposite side of the room. His bathroom, like his room, had previously been black and white but was now decorated using the same warm colors as his room. He turned on the shower and waited for it to warm up. He abandoned his robes, throwing them down a chute to the laundry room where the Dusks would clean them.

After taking a deep breath, he stepped into the stream of water, hissing as the hot liquid splattered on his skin. It was burning hot, the only way that he could stand water touching his skin. The hot droplets calmed him for a moment, forcing him to focus on that rather than the emptiness inside of himself.

He stayed in there for as long as he dared, thinking of anything except Roxas's absence from the castle.

...there, the joke at the end is gone because someone didnt like it...