"The most authentic thing about us is
our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure,
to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering."
-- Ben Okri

Axel x Roxas
The Sacred Somebody

"NO, NO, NO! A thousand times, NO!"

"Aww, come on, Axel!"

"Screw it," Axel snarled, packing his pizza in a styrofoam go box. His fingers tightly gripped the lid; he closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. "I'm not coming back."

Joe's face morphed with desperate panic. "Axel! You gotta come back with me!"

"Says who? You can't make me." Axel crossed his arms defiantly over his chest, eyes shrinking with raw indifference. He narrowed his eyebrows and felt the heat of a partially-formed anger burning a hole through his chest.

It was normal for Axel to feel pain when he should be feeling an emotion of some sort, so this burning was something he sickeningly looked forward to when anger struck him fast. Being a hot-head, anger was an everyday thing; so was pain.

"Dammit!" Joe spat, slamming his fist on the table. "The Boss wants you back. You were on of the best, Mac, and they seriously need some hard-core muscle for the next big mission." His expression seemed more frustrated than angry, more stressed and pained then anything else. He was a desperate man in a desperate situation -- if he didn't bring back Ace, his life and those of his loved ones were in danger.

He gritted his teeth as his mind went to his wife and baby daughter. Being in a gang had always been good for him, but never those closest to him. He loved his wife and child dearly, but The Boss had told him if he didn't bring them back, they were as good as dead.

Joe needed Axel to cooperate. If not for him, than for his family.

"Fuck it," Axel snapped, tone sharp and thin like a bullwhip. "Fuck the mission, fuck the boss, and FUCK YOU!"

Joe had nothing to say. His expression was lifeless, eyes cold and empty like a winter wasteland. He leaned back against the seat, sighing. He looked away from Axel, down to the floor. He swallowed a lump of spit, his heart feeling full of holes and his stomach full of knots. In utter shock, he sat there just breathing and trying to wrap his mind around the situation.

Axel's flared rebellion didn't stop him from noticing that Joe didn't look so good. He was kind of pale and looking like he was about to hurl. He was going to worry, but he stopped himself dead. He twisted his lower-lip with resolve, and he flung himself from the booth, standing up and waiting against the wall.

He couldn't take it.

He was not going to be forced back into the Icarians, no matter what they said or did. He had left that in his past -- it was going to stay there, too. There was no need to bring back the death and regret that reeked from his memories of the city, of the people and their crimes. He just wouldn't do it again, even for an old friend.

Axel closed his eyes as his face screwed up with the painful situation he found himself in.

HE WAS GOING to tell him. Roxas was going insane from the thoughts abusing him thoroughly. He couldn't deal with it anymore. He was going to break, going to break, break. Break, break, break.

BROKEN.

A sudden heat erupted from Roxas' lungs, tearing up through his chest and sucking out all his oxygen. He clenched his heart as pain rushed into him, filling him up and flushing out all other sensation.

"Aggghhh!" He screamed lowly, trying to keep his voice down. He braced himself on the sink, as the fever overcame him. An intensely unforgiving headache blistered his skull, as the agony flogged his every nerve. "Errggh... Dammit..."

The heat ripped through him, gutting him until he barely stood on two legs. As quickly as it came, the pain zapped away in one second.

There was peace, a silence of the literal mind and body.

Roxas, still braced against the bathroom sink, panted heavily, sweating copiously. His mind was purged of all thoughts of Axel, but he knew what had happened.

When he admitted to himself what he feared the most, it hurt. His pride, his mind, his body--all were flung into a state of truth and retribution as he broke the laws of existence by merely acknowledging something that shouldn't be, but was.

It was real; the pain had showed him that.

Roxas hated it, as much as he could withstand the agony starting to rise in lungs. If there was anything Roxas found to particularly annoying as a Nobody, it was the fact that his body would suffer physical pain anytime he needed to feel emotion. When the situation called for any emotion, his body naturally reacted by inflicting pain proportional to the amount of feeling he was needing at that moment.

Now, as he thought about the most powerful emotion, the suffering came again. His every nerve fizzled with electric pulses going haywire--his heart raced painfully in his throat at an illegal speed that would kill him if it sustained--his breathing was sharp and erratic, his vision blurring with tears as he tried to absorb as much hurt as possible.

He couldn't take it much longer. He closed his eyes, wanting to cry out from the pain of the finality of love growing in his inner emptiness.

AXEL NERVOUSLY WAITED around, checking his watch as he began to grown impatient. "Come ooooon, Roxy-boy, hurry up with that business of yours so we can get the hell out of here," he muttered to himself.

He cast a fevered glance at the hallway, his heart giving him a jolt. There was a rumbling of sound coming from the bathroom, a tiger were hollering from its cage from hunger.

His eyes narrowed... "Do you have feral cats here?" Maybe the yowling was coming from cats, either giving birth or mating. He opted for the first one, but figured it was his last option.

Joe was sitting down at the booth, leaning forward. He rested his arms on the table, holding his face in his hands as his fingers threaded through his ginger-red hair spikes. "Nope. Nothing lives in the wild in this part of the city. It's too dirty for anything to live here."

"Huh... you hear that?" A particularly thunderous yelp squealed and strangled out into the dining area.

"Hmm…" Joe didn't recognize it. He never had any problems with pests before, so why would rats or whatever other vermin suddenly infest his restaurant now? He rubbed his palms on his cheeks. "Damn. This just isn't my day." He was seriously considering suicide, but he knew that would be a bit much.

"Yeah," Axel said, still staring at the hallway. His mind wasn't on the sound itself so much as it was on what was making it. He knew what it was, he was sure of it.

I guess he knows, he thought. It hurts to love when you can't, but you do anyway.

There wasn't anything he could do for Roxas; he already went through the same pain, but, again, there was nothing any one could do. It's something only they can do by themselves. They would just have to wait it out… His mind put images of Roxas in anguish, clenching his chest and slumping down the bathroom wall, near to passing out and almost crying.

Axel stood fast at remaining. His chest was stinging with the desire to check on Roxas. Something was telling him Roxas was in danger, but he didn't believe it. He would give Roxas a few more minutes, and then he would check on him. He was not going to be a silver knight charging to save his princess, as much as he wanted to.

The Princess would have to save herself.

IT WAS OVER. The pain, the finality of non-existent emotion passed through him with a sigh, as he lay there, prostate on the bathroom title. Roxas' eyes were blank; he saw nothing. His lungs burned from the loss of oxygen; he wasn't breathing. He couldn't feel a thing, but he was aware.

He lay there, curled on his side, holding himself as the final streams of pain seeped from him, lingering within each cell before spreading to the next and slowly trickling from him in a sluggish gait. His breath rose and fell, his body going through the motions of breathing, and yet there was nothing.

This was a state of in between. Literally, life and death on pause, the space in the middle.

His mind went crazy, clicking furiously with images not belonging to him. His mind flashed with bright colors, and suddenly there were the faces of laughing children, some of them his age, maybe a year or so younger; everyone on a beach somewhere, baking in the sun and splashing in the foamy surf; a bloody tangerine sunset, melting across the horizon as the day came to a close; everybody rowing home in little row boats on the gentle, glowing sea...

Roxas felt that these memories weren't his.

His life was always in the city, and as far as he knew there wasn't a beach anywhere close to his home. He had never been to the beach, never felt the golden sand on his toes or the sea on his skin, never saw the cerulean of the sky or the waves crashing on the shore. He had never been to the ocean, and yet... Who were those people? Where was this place?

The memories kept playing like the fragments of a movie all chopped up and sewn back together again.

The scene shifted to a bright, shining day, with glittering shore and spacious sky. A distant part of Roxas was all warm and fuzzy, remembering the heat of the sea breeze and the scent of salt in his nose and coconut lotion on his skin. These memories weren't his, he knew, because he was never there to make them, and yet all of it was like Deja Vu.

"Come on, Sora!" A girl called to him at the front of the pier, standing against the sun and waving. Her body was silhouetted, and her smiling face was covered with soft shadows that made her eyes twinkle.

Everything sped up for a few seconds, as though the video was on fast forward, and the next thing showed him standing on the pier with the girl. She giggled at him and leaned forward, her hands placed behind her back as she smiled.

"You need to know how to be on time."

"Geez, Kairi," Roxas felt himself saying, "Can't you be a little more patient?"

He was right; these weren't his memories. That wasn't his voice, either. None of this belonged to him, and none of it ever would.

A sudden loneliness, which shouldn't have existed much like his other partial feelings, flowed into him. He didn't bother denying the loneliness, so he continued watching the scene without thinking much of it.

"Where's Riku?" Kairi -- Roxas was guessing that was her name -- asked Roxas, who was some kid named Sora.

Who was Sora? Why was Roxas in his body, sharing his memories? Where was this place? What's going on?!

None of this was making any sense!

"He's in the Secret Place. Let's go get him!" Sora, or Roxas, or whoever said, and Kairi simply nodded before the two of them ran off along the golden sand of the beach.

In an instant everything faded to black. There was an absence of everything else, and Roxas didn't know what happened next. He no longer felt anything with his body -- he could no longer use his five senses, but he was still conscience.

His mind clicked, Who were those people? What just happened? He couldn't help it, but find that it all felt familiar. But how? Was it possible that that was his life before his blank ticket in the city?

Why didn't anything make sense? Roxas was dying to know, but he couldn't figure it out. Not enough information, and certainly not enough energy to put into it. He tried to feel his body, still curled on the bathroom floor, but he was traveling through darkness.

Only thought seemed to exist, nothing else.

His mind was trying to figure everything out, but there wasn't much to go with. All Roxas had was the nagging feeling in the back of his brain that he knew those people, when in fact he didn't. How could that even be possible? Roxas wanted answers, but it was like Axel said: Some questions are only meant to be asked. Could these be just like that? Answerless questions?

It was all so hopeless.

Roxas searched for the sensation of his flesh through the dark, trying to call out to it in a way he didn't even understand. Even without his voice, it seemed like he could still find it. He would think to his body, sending out a stream of light, and it would bounce back to him, reflecting in green. He sent a blue light, recieved green.

Green must be his body, blue must be his mind. If he had a heart, what color would it be?

No time to think about that, Roxas' mind said for him.

He didn't even feel like himself anymore. His mental voice sounded completely different from what he was used to. He was a spirit, traveling through the channels of creation, in search of a new home. That frightened Roxas! What if the green light was somebody else's body? What if someone had gotten knocked out like Roxas and their spirit was out roaming in the sea of conscience, just like Roxas? Could they switch bodies?

All these questions Roxas didn't want answered. He just wanted to find his body, find Axel, and go back home to the Castle so that he could pretend that none of it had ever happened.

Roxas couldn't tell if his spirit had any sort of manifestation, but somehow he could clearly see the blue beam he sent and the green beam he recieved, both communicating in a way Roxas vaguely understood. He thought himself towards that direction, unsure of any sort of orientation. Everything was relative to him, and yet he couldn't tell what was up and what was down; he just knew he was traveling forward, whichever direction that might have been.

Where he was, literally seemed to be the space in-between. There was nothing but darkness, except for his two guiding lights. He wasn't sure what anything felt like; he couldn't experience this in any way dealing with the five senses, and yet he could still see the light in the darkness.

None of this makes sense! Roxas sent loudly. He heard his own mental voice boom in to existence. Every thought was thought aloud. How the hell was any of the happening?!

Woah... I can hear myself... Roxas tried saying something aloud, but he couldn't feel his voice or his throat. He couldn't move his jaw. That's right! Duh! I still need to find my body!

Roxas traveled along towards the green light, holding fast to the hope that that was his body. As he streamed along, there didn't to seem to be any sort of definition of speed. Was he going slow or was this the fastest possible setting? Another thing explained by the theory of relativity?

Let's go faster, Roxas sent to his surroundings, hoping something would listen to him in his distress. There was moment of still, all his movement or the illusion of movement stopped.

Completely still.

Absolutely suspended in space, nothing doing anything.

Um...Faster? Please, I really need to -- WOAH! The darkness around him sped forward so fast, Roxas saw stars tearing into the sides of the tunnel of inky blackness and racing along with him. Then he noticed something: They were orbs of misty light, all going as fast as he was, all of them silver-tailed like comets.

Now the darkness was strewed with swimmers of light, and Roxas was swimming along with them. He felt for them closely, trying to sense them in a way that resembled physical touch, and found them all to be like him -- little souls finding a home.

It was creepy, but Roxas had a sudden stab of freight-- Not only were these souls racing him beside him, they were racing AGAINST him.

They were racing him for his body!

Roxas began panicking, but then thought calmly, What good is that going to do?

Instead of wasting more brainpower on his lousy situation, he focused on sending more messages to the green light of his body. It flickered back at him as rapidly as the messages were recieved, almost flickering like a dying star about to go out.

No other light bounced back as his particular shade of green, but as he traveled along at warp speed, he finally saw that he wasn't the only soul blasting towards home. There were other colors, all of them spanning the brightest rainbows. The souls surrounding him on his journey were rapidly sending towards home, just like him, and home was sending back in beams of red, green, blue, purple, pink, and whatever else.

Soon, all the darkness was flashing with twinkles of rainbow lights. The darkness lay as a blanket across the wide space that went on forever. There were countless sparkles of colored light tossed about. Nearly every inch was covered with speckles of color, and Roxas was astounded at how some of the rocket-souls next him spiraled off at high speeds ahead of him.

They shot towards home like shooting stars across the galaxy, and their home-stars welcomed them by sucking them up, combining as one great white flash, and it was gone. Darkness returned in one spot, and all the other lights continued.

Roxas had never imagined anything so beautiful to exist, but went he thought about it...

It's just like me. It exists without existing... Something can exist without a physical form, without anything to really prove it's there. Wow...

That got him thinking about his partial emotions. He technically shouldn't feel anything, but he still did any way. Feelings don't exist anyway because they can't be proven they do... So, Roxas figured he shouldn't worry about being able to love or to hate or anything like that.

He should merely be grateful that he COULD feel, which is something nearly every Nobody would kill for.

Roxas had never seen so much light and darkness coexisting in such a place, though. It was filled with as much light as there was darkness, but nothing was too much and nothing was too little. It was all equal, and there didn't seem to be any danger. Everything was at peace.

What is this place? It seemed a little stupid that Roxas hadn't asked that question before. Was this the place where stars were born? Where souls were created into existence?

Wait a minute...Am I dead?

Roxas freaked out for just a second, thinking, Well that explains me losing my body and all this light.

A little bit of sadness trailed into him as he started thinking about what he had left behind. He didn't want to leave the world he knew so well. Sure, life had dealt him a hard hand to play, but he was just getting the hang of things. People back home actually cared about him, a place for him where he was actually important, where people noticed he was alive...

But, then... What if everything was just a lie? What if the people he cared for -- Demyx, Xemnas, Axel -- what if they didn't care for him like he thought? What if his home in the Castle was only temporary? What if... life he knew it to be was nothing but a sham?

Roxas thought more about it.

I just wanna go home.

He didn't care if he was useless. He didn't care if Xemnas was going to dispose of him as soon as he got home --

He just wanted to see Axel again, as surprising as it was sudden to think that.

I don't want to start over, he sent loudly. I just want to go home! I want to live my life back home a little more before I come back. Please... send me home. It's all I've ever really wanted.

The movement towards the green light stopped; all signals died out.

Roxas was floating in space for a handful of moments, wondering what was going on. Suspended in motion, there was nothing he could do but watch as all the colored star-twinkles slowly blinked gone one by one, until darkness swallowed everything.

When all the light was gone, there was only darkness. Only nothingness.

Roxas' spirit wilted. Now, I'll never go home...

As soon as he started lamenting, all the way the other direction, across the black space, a new light burst open and sent at Roxas.

Come home. Come home, it echoed steadily in Roxas' mind. The new light was a new color, too. A radiant electric blue called to him.

Roxas sent back, I'm coming. His signal was now a fiery orange, brighter than the sun, and it blazed across the darkness in a smear of fire. Roxas picked up speed again and flashed across the space, vibrating happily as he surged forth.

He gained more speed, more speed. Soon he was a blur of white racing to a blue-star, and he spiraled wildly into the center. Roxas felt the elation of a homecoming arriving as he tumbled in a wide circle and sparkled into home. The blue-star sucked up his light and combined their star-shines.

Home...

A blast of light and darkness prevailed in the space in-between.

IT WAS LIKE slamming into the pavement after falling from eighteen stories, a big crash followed by a large aftershock. Bones rackled into place, guts squelched with a new arrangement; Roxas' body jumped up, arched its back, and snapped all over as his spirit plunged back into it. He writhed as heat warmed his pale, cold flesh. His body trembled as life filled every fiber with a flow of electricity, and he took a huge breath -- a labored gasp of air of life returned.

Roxas' eyes popped open and he sat up straight, clenching his chest as he caught his breath. His vision hadn't regained focus, but he could see he was still in the filthy bathroom of Joe's Pizza Palace and Diner. His forehead was drenched with sweat, and his heart rate pounded out to a dangerous rhythm that made Roxas dizzy as the rest of his body felt jiggled and off-balance. He was feeling light-headed and his brain felt hot and fuzzy. His body was trembling and he shivered from the cold, and then the sudden heat of life.

He tried to get up but he slouched forward, standing on his knees. On his hands and knees he tried to stand, right as the bathroom door swung open and a pair of feet appeared. Before Roxas saw who it was, his vision blacked out, his throat sizzled with steaming vomit as he retched, and he collapsed to the floor once more.

FLOATING... JUST FLOATING... Roxas grew slowly aware of his body, and found himself hovering above the ground, surrounded by a comforting warmth that belonged to somebody else. His legs were dangling, but his knees were folded and supported by strong, caring arms wrapping around him. He was crushed against somebody, being held close and protected by them.

His mind whirred viciously, and came up with the conclusion that he was being carried like a treasured porcelain doll. So gently... So careful...

His body felt battered and limp, fighting back a splitting headache. His stomach was still in knots and he wondered if he was going to throw-up again, hoping that he wouldn't because his throat had been scorched by his stomach acid. When he swallowed, tears surged into his eyes from the great discomfort. In this pitiful bodily state every muscle felt quivery, twitching after having been without life for God-knows-how-long. His innards were tumbling around and feeling bubbly, warming up with life energy, having been practically dead for so long.

Even so, despite all the physical pain, Roxas was grateful to have his body back, grateful to be alive. Feeling pain felt so good now. He felt human again and embraced that life was back to normal... sort of.

Seeking comfort and reassurance that everything was real, Roxas cuddled up to the warmth, and heard the pattering of a worried heart-beat pounding in the chest he was cradled against, a heart beating so fast because of him.

But who could possibly be so worried about Roxas? Whose warmth surrounded him so comfortably? It was familiar, this warmth. He knew it from somewhere... His nose caught a familiar scent, too, one that made him think of spice and heat

Who was it?

Roxas weakly moved his head up slightly and his blurry vision wouldn't allow more than a censored face and a head of fire. From what he could see, it was almost like the face of a hero, of a sculpted god.

He let out a light sigh, and suddenly felt sleepy again, thinking he was even more grateful than before; his wish had been granted.

He closed his eyes as he murmured, "Thanks, Axel..."

Sleep came very easily, a blackout.

--
;I own nothing but the words and situations (and Joey Steele)
Whew! Sorry for the long-time-no-update!
I've had a life lately Oo
I've been working on an original romance novel and dealing with everyday situations.
When I'm published, I'll be sure to tell you.
More updates in the future!
TBC