Author's Notes:
I'm very aware that I should be working on finishing the still unfinished outline for the fifth 'book' in the Valerian series but I came across this idea in my folders tonight and felt the need to write it out.
It's kind of depressing, which is strange because I'm actually dragging my lowly carcass out of a depressive episode.
Maybe this is a healing thing.
Anyway, I don't own Kingdom Hearts or any of their characters, which is likely for the best because that crock of shit where you kill off a charismatic character that you've fallen in love with for two games (or on a partially related note, six fucking seasons) would never have flown if I was part of that decision-making crew.
::shrugs:: Let me know what you think because I threw it together in like twenty minutes and I'm not sure I like it yet.
WISHFUL THINKING
Sora was certain that he'd known pain before this moment.
When Riku disappeared into the darkness.
When he'd found Kairi only to lose her.
To regain Kairi at the cost of Riku.
But as he turned and saw the redhead lying on the ever-shifting blue-green of the between worlds, it all seemed to somehow pale in comparison to what hammered into him at that moment.
It surprised Sora, given that he barely even knew Axel, but it would have taken a great deal more to have kept him from dropping to his knees beside him.
"Axel!"
Pain pressed hard and desperate against Sora's heart, and he clenched a fist over it to try and make it stop.
Tears welled in his eyes.
"What were you trying to do?!" he asked, hand hovering over the fading flecks of shadow.
Useless, his heart battered angrily. Useless again!
Axel stared up into the abyss above them.
"I wanted to see Roxas…." He murmured.
Donald and Goofy ran the length of the strange between-world they were in but came to an abrupt and respectful stop when they realized what Sora was paying witness to.
Denial pushed up from Sora's heart and the agony was swamped blissfully by the softer emotion, but it was barely the beat of a heart.
Pain swamped back in, far worse than mere seconds earlier.
Desperation battered at its edges, but it only fueled the agony in Sora's chest, and he clenched his fist tighter.
He desperately wanted the stabbing pain, like taking the Reverse Keyblade through his essence all over again but worse, to stop, but he couldn't even figure out why watching Axel die was hurting so damn badly.
The brunette was barely aware of his freehand weaving in desperate circles, trying to force the disintegrating form back into flesh and leather.
Pleasepleaseplease his heart thumped.
Begged.
If anything, his efforts only made the destruction happen faster and he felt tears well in his eyes as he desperately tore his hand from his heart to try and keep the redhead in the herenownotgone.
He froze when Axel tipped his head and met his gaze.
#
For a moment, the Nobody was certain that he saw desperation and pain in familiar blue eyes.
The same desperation and pain he'd only once seen in Roxas' eyes when his best friend had begged for the truth from him.
He'd watched that same supposedly false emotion fade from those mirror-eyes then, when Roxas realized that there was nothing Axel planned to tell him.
His best friend had become unreadable then.
The pain of being burned to nothingness by his own residual flames suddenly seemed weak in comparison to that moment so many months ago.
Pale against the pain of knowing that he had driven Roxas beyond the considerable patience he had in his partner with his silence.
Beyond the even greater trust Roxas had once had in him.
That his attempts to keep Roxas with him had ensured that he'd given him up.
He'd known then that Xemnas was wrong.
That their emotions weren't false.
Because there was no way he'd have ever been able to feel that level of despair, remember it, and have survived it as a Somebody.
As his eyes went hazy and mind darkened, Axel allowed his surely hallucinating mind to believe that there was no brunette kneeling beside him, desperately trying to put him back together – like he hadn't been broken for months and his non-heart was just now starting to catch up.
There was only sunshine blond and eyes bluer than the sky.
End