Unfortunately for Axel, the security guard in the sunglasses dragged them past the infirmary first. On the other hand, however, he was rid of Roxas, and on top of that, Zexion wasn't on duty, so he only had to face a scathing look from Vexen.
The security guard dropped him off in the hallway outside the dean's office and went inside. Axel stared at the door for a few seconds before giving up and sitting in one of the old, falling-apart chairs in the hallway. He regretted the decision immediately, since the springs hidden in the chair cushion prodded him in the backside, but he sat there anyway and sulked and decided it was his punishment for punching Roxas in the face like a regular drunk.
He looked down and examined his fist—the very fist that he'd used to slug the stupid blond. His knuckles were red and already swelling up. Damn, the kid had a hard head.
Tired of staring at the damage he'd done to his hand, he glanced around at the dean's choice of decoration. Of course, the painting hanging on the wall across from him had to be a depiction of a battle, with the man in the very center of the foreground getting run through by a spear. Axel imagined Roxas standing in that man's place, and himself right in front of him flinging a fist through the air, rather than a spear.
The rest of the office looked like it hadn't been renovated or cleaned in years. A spider crawled down the wall above the painting, and ugly wallpaper blanketed the walls, peeling at the bottom, just like the dread wall coverings of an old haunted house. Axel leaned his head back against the wall. For all he knew, he could be waiting in hell right now. Maybe that was it. Once he stepped through the door with the dean's nameplate next to it, he'd step into the depths of hell, where he'd get to watch each and every one of his many wrongdoings again, a cinema of death.
The door opened, and the security guard stepped out. He jerked a thumb toward the door that swung closed behind him and walked away without a word.
Catching the door before it closed, Axel stepped into the dean's office. The man himself sat behind his desk. He was a broad-shouldered man with excessively long silver hair. The nameplate on his desk read "Dean Xemnas."
"Axel?" he asked.
"That would be me."
"I hear you've committed assault against another student?" Dean Xemnas said.
"Well, my fist and his face had a meeting, if that's what you mean." Axel shrugged.
"And why was that?"
"What are you, a shrink? Is everything you have to say to me a question?" Axel demanded, taking a step forward.
"Please," Xemnas prompted. "Answer."
Axel hesitated before doing so. "Why was that? Well, maybe because he called me an addict."
Xemnas's expression betrayed his understanding. "Ahh, so you're the one I'm always hearing about from Vexen."
"Wha—Vexen's been telling you about me?" Axel shouted.
"Keep your voice down," Xemnas told him. "Axel, I am assigning you a week's worth of volunteer work, an hour per day, in the library, for what I have heard from Vexen and for assaulting another student. The coordinator there will know whether you show up or not, and if you do not, you will once again have to report to me."
"Fine," Axel said. "Sir."
"Good," Xemnas confirmed. "You are dismissed. Please return to class. I would not want to hear that you had caused any more trouble."
Axel left the office without saying anything. Once he'd cleared the door, he let out a long sigh.
An hour per day.
In the library.
With Xion.
This volunteer job could go either very well or very badly.
"Axel," a voice said from the other side of the divider the next afternoon, and Axel looked up, surprised to see Xion's face looking down at him. "Did he mean what he said? You know—Roxas."
Axel bit his lip and looked away. "Um—about that."
"What?" Xion asked, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Axel, what did he mean? Why would he call you that?"
"Because," Axel began. But he couldn't bring himself to continue.
Xion sighed and leaned against the edge of the desk, crossing her arms over the top of the divider and resting her head on them. "If it's hard for you, you don't have to tell me. I just thought . . . I mean, I wanted to believe he was wrong."
Axel sat up straight and slammed his foot into the side of the desk, causing Xion to jump. After a second he reached down and clamped a hand around the offending foot. "Ow."
Even that simple gesture didn't pacify Xion. She still stood several steps back, looking worried.
"I'm sorry. If I deceived you, I'm sorry. It's just something I didn't want anyone to know about," he explained under his breath. "That's how I know your brother. It's landed me in the infirmary a number of times."
"But . . ." Xion began. "What is 'it'? What do you mean? What did he mean?"
"It's prescription," Axel answered. "Painkillers. And the like."
"Oh, Axel," Xion breathed, tears pooling in her eyes.
"I'm sorry," Axel said for the third time. "Don't cry, okay? Don't waste your time on me. I'm obviously not good enough for you."
Xion shook her head, sniffed, and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her black sweater. Axel put a hand on her arm and attempted to push her away from the desk. "Xion, I'm serious. Go." In response, she shook her head again. "What?" Axel asked.
"That's just it," she said, her voice shaking. "The reason I—It's because you—I wanted—" she stammered, but before she could finish her sentence, she squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head for the last time, and turned tail. She ran through the library and disappeared around a corner at the other end.
Axel stared at his notes again. "Why did I even try?" he muttered.
As it turned out, when he returned to the library several hours later to start his volunteer work, Xion wasn't there. He didn't dare ask his supervisor, an upperclassman with bright blue hair, whether she was working that shift. He wasn't high enough or stupid enough to think that she would skip even one. More likely, Xemnas had given him the slot during which Xion wasn't working at all. Just his luck.
"Just my fucking luck," he muttered, shoving a book into the shelf a little too hard. It shook three more books loose, and they tumbled from the shelf, falling down over his face one by one. Groaning, he bent to pick them up.
"You all right?" a voice asked. Axel glanced up to see Demyx standing at the edge of the shelf. "I dunno if this is a bad time, but you, uh, never gave me my notes back."
"Damn," Axel muttered, rubbing his face and picking up the fallen books. "I forgot about that. You didn't need them, did you?"
"Well, considering we're supposed to be studying them . . ." Demyx rubbed the back of his neck with a hand. "Hey, man, you don't look well, like at all. What's up?"
"I don't wanna talk about it," Axel muttered. He stood up again and shoved the books back onto the shelf.
"Girl trouble?" Demyx asked with a grin.
"That and other things."
"So my notebook . . . ?"
"It's in my backpack. I can't get it out until I finish this goddamn work shift." Axel turned to the library cart next to him and snagged a few more books from the top. He scanned the shelf markers to see where they were supposed to go.
"Work shift? Since when do you work here, dude?" Demyx demanded.
"Since today."
"What the hell? Why?" Demyx continued. "Split-second decision? Or did you think about it?"
"It wasn't exactly my decision." Axel reshelved the books and turned back to the blond. "Look, I'll talk to you after my shift is over. I'll give you back your notebook, and you can hear about all the crazy shit that's gone down in the past few days."
"Deal," Demyx said, looking slightly bewildered but more than a little curious. "When do you get done?"
Axel bent around the edge of the shelf to look at the clock. "Half an hour."
"Try not to die before you're done."
The redhead muttered something incomprehensible in reply before turning back to the bookshelf. Demyx wandered off toward a table in the middle of the library.
Half an hour later, Axel had stared at enough bookshelves to make his head swim. Thankfully, though, none of the books occupying those bookshelves had hit him in the face. The blue-haired upperclassman—whose name Axel couldn't quite remember—came to relieve Axel of his duty on the hour.
He abandoned his library cart and sat down across from Demyx. Immediately the blond looked up from his homework and speared Axel with a stare.
"All right, let's hear it. What happened?"