Once Upon a Midnight Dream

Chapter 5

"Zexy, why did no one tell me his mom abuses him?!" I asked as I stormed into Zexion's room.

He peeked and angry eye and arched eyebrow over the book he was reading on his bed. "I don't know Axel." He said in a bored voice before returning to his book. Him and his books.

I stomped my way over to Zexion's bed, ripped the book out of his hands and threw it across the room. "You know everything, now pay attention to me!"

"Axel, Roxas is abused in real life; you protect him from heartless in dreams. The two shouldn't mix. I know you're amazing at faking your emotions, and that makes it easier for you to go into the real world, but you weren't supposed to go. His being abused never would have affected you, had you just behaved like the dream guardian you are, and stayed in his dreams." Zexion reprimanded. Then he got up walked across the room, grabbed his book, and sat back down on his bed, disappearing behind his book.

"Zexy, why are you ignoring me?" I crawled onto his bed and pulled his book down.

"Axel, you know you're my best friend, my only friend. I like you, gods know why, but I do. However I can only tell you so many times that you need to keep to his dreams, and stay out of his real life."

"But Zexy, I really, really, like him. And he's adorable, how do I stay away from him. He's such a kind and caring person." I explained, "He's such a strong person to be able to go to school like nothing's wrong and go home to be yelled at and get the crap beat out of him by his own mother. I can't help it Zex, I admire his strength. I want to be there to hold him after his mother beats him, and let him know he's loved…"

"Axel." Zexion grabbed my face in his hands and looked me directly in my eyes. "We cannot love. We have no emoti-," Zexion reached a single finger up to my eye where I felt wetness forming. When he pulled his finger back there was the tiniest bit of water on it.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Holy shit!" Zexion looked at the water, then at me, and back to the water before wiping his finger off, walking to his door, peering out into the hallway, and making sure his door was locked. He then walked back to the bed, climbed onto it and grabbed my face again. If I had emotions, I was sure I could've been nervous because Zexion was staring intently into my eyes without blinking. We were going on two minutes of unfaltering eye contact and silence when I finally spoke up.

"Zexion?" He let go of my face and wrapped his arms around me in a hug. Wow, he never did this anymore. He use to do it when I was much younger after Xemnas gave me lashes for getting in trouble, but he never did it anymore. "Zexion?" I repeated.

"Axel." He said after pulling away from me. "You were crying."

"I'm a dream guardian, I can't cry. We have no emotions." Isn't that what he was always telling me?

"I know." Zexion sighed. "But those were tears. I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"I made you cry. I made an emotionless dream guardian cry, my best and only friend cry. Because I told you that you couldn't love Roxas, but maybe you do." Zexion pondered.

"But you're always saying we don't have emotions. I don't know how to love. I can't love him, just like you always say. You're always right." What is he going insane? He's the one who's supposed to deter me from my crazy ideas, not the other way around.

"And I truly believe I'm right in saying that I may have been wrong about that. I've never thought about it before, but I am now. Axel all of us have been trained to be dream guardians since we were babies, except you. You came here when you were four. And if I think about it, you always showed at least a little bit of emotion. You got in trouble for that all the time. What if we've been trained not to show emotions? What if we have them, but Xemnas beat it, literally, into our minds that we don't. You're so good at 'faking' emotions because you didn't start training until you were four, and you're a rebel so Xemnas' whippings never completely beat your emotions away. And I'm a heartless bastard because I was born here and I follow orders."

"But we don't feel emotions, we can't even imagine them." I repeated what Zexion had been telling me for years.

"We just weren't paying attention because we've been told they don't exist for us. Axel, you feel something with Roxas, maybe it is love. You wouldn't know what that feels like because no one's ever loved you. I'm the closest you've ever come to having someone who loves you but I don't know how to because Xemnas taught me not to. And you feel some form of joy and happiness in terrorizing me. The only way terrorizing me can work, is if I feel annoyance or anger, which I have most definitely shown. You see, we've been feeling this entire time but because we were taught not to feel, we didn't recognize them. But it is obvious that our ability to love is still present." Zexion explained.

"So after three hundred years of telling me we don't have emotions, you're changing your mind?"

"Axel you were crying, and I felt bad for causing it. This changes everything."

"So if you're right, and you always are, what're we going to do?" I asked.

"I don't know." Zexion said.
"You always know."

"Well I don't this time. This is very new to me."

"Music!" We said together, whenever either one of us needs to think we get out the mp3 players. "But I do know this; we can't let Xemnas find out that we know." Zexion finished, casting a glance at his locked door.

oOo

I woke up disappointed that Lae hadn't been in my dreams but was immediately relieved to see that Axel and I had completely finished our project and I didn't have any homework to do today. I quickly put myself together and headed downstairs. I walked into the kitchen to find my mother smoking at the table. I could easily tell she had already been drinking. "Good morning, Mom." I said quietly.

"You're joking, right?" She snarled at me.

"What?" I said nervously as she got up and stalked towards me. I tried to walk backwards but my mom's arm shot out and grabbed the back of my neck, digging her nails in making me whimper in pain. She dragged me to the clogged sink holding my nose inches from the rancid water. "Mom please." I begged.

"You brought that awful boy over yesterday. He humiliated me!" She forced my head into the murky water using all her strength to keep me from escaping her clutches. I tried not to panic and pretend I was swimming in Demyx's pool. But when my lungs started aching in need, I couldn't hold my breath anymore. The filthy water rapidly filled my mouth and lungs, causing me to gag and cough into the water. Then I was pulled out, immediately hacking up all the water and gasping for breath.

"You are never to bring that boy here again? Understand?!" Mom yelled and I nodded, still trying to recover. At which point she slapped her hand painfully across my cheek. "I asked if you understood."

"Yes Mom, I understand. I won't bring him over."

"You won't talk to him in school either. Your friendship with him is over!"

"But…" I was stopped when her palm made contact with my cheek again.

"Over, understood?" She said harshly.

"Yes Mom, I won't be friends with him anymore." I said with tears falling down my already soaked face. "Can I go to Demyx's?"

"I don't care!" She snapped, throwing me towards the sink and storming away. I stumbled up the stairs to my room, gathered some fresh clothes and a hoodie and made my way back downstairs into the bathroom. When I got the hot water running, and stepped under the steady stream, I scrubbed all the filth off my face, and out of my hair and mouth. Then I cried and cried until the water went cold. I just wanted her to love me. But that would never happen.

I dried off and dressed myself, before practicing my public face in the mirror. It wasn't the best but at least it tricked people into thinking things weren't completely awful and just a little bad. When I left the bathroom I walked to the phone and called my best friend. "Demy, can I come over?" I cried into the phone when he picked up.

"Of course Roxas, come over right away."

oOo

"She tried to drown you?!" Demyx stared at me in disbelief.

"Well no, she just wanted to make sure I was listening." I explained. We were sitting across from each other on Demyx's bed in his room.

"You're not going home tonight." Demyx demanded.

"Dem, it's Sunday, tomorrow's a school day, your parents aren't going to let me stay here."

"No, but we can call your aunt." Demyx said handing me a phone. I dialed my aunts number and waited for an answer.

"Hello." My aunt greeted through the phone.

"Aunt Maylee…" I said, my voice becoming shaky.

"Roxas sweetie what's wrong?"

"Can I sleep at your house tonight?"

"Sure honey, do you want me to pick you up?"

"Yeah, but can you wait 'til later. I'm at Demyx's and I want to hang out for a little while."

"I can do that sweetie, we'll see you later."

"Bye." I said before hanging up.

"Is there something else bothering you?" Demyx asked, probably because I was chewing on my lip, and he'd known me long enough to know that means I'm thinking about something. In this case it was about Lae and Axel.

"I've been dreaming about Axel." I confided.

"Ooo, something naughty I hope."

"No! Just normal stuff."

"And that bothers you?" Demyx face contorted in confusion.

"I had dream of him before I ever saw him."

"He's kind of strange. You dreamt up all of that before you ever saw him."

"Pretty much. He didn't have the tattoos, or a name, and he wore fewer clothes." I picked at my jeans as I remembered that first dream.

"Ahh, so it was a kinky dream."

"Nothing happened, I hugged him once, but that's beside the point. How could I dream of him before I met him?"

"Maybe you're psychic." Demyx said thoughtfully.

"Then why am I still dreaming about him?"

"Because he's hot!" Demyx said with a stupid grin on his face looking up at the ceiling.

"Are you picturing him naked?" I asked.

"Mmm, yes, very much so." His grin grew.

"Stop it!"

"Relax, Rox. I'll let you have him if you want him. It's just lust for me." Demyx met my eyes.

"I can't. Mom said I can't be friends with him anymore. Did you listen to anything I just told you?"

"She said you couldn't be friends, she didn't say anything about dating."

"She said no, Dem. But I feel bad about it so you, Sora and Riku have to stay friends with him, okay."

"Okay. But I think you two would be cute together. The way he's always staring at you, and you're always trying to sneak peeks at him from under your hair, it's adorable."

"Demyx, me and dating don't work. Remember Namine, she couldn't handle my secrets." I insisted.

"Well obviously you need some dick." I glared at Demyx, and he held his hands up in defense, "Okay, okay, in all seriousness, Axel already found out your mom's a bitch…"

"Don't say that!"

"So there are no secrets between you and him. Plus, he's scored major points with me by keeping her from smacking you around." Demxy finished.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you Dem, but it's not going to happen. Unlike you, I listen to my mom."

"And then she beats the living shit out of you."

"She's under a lot of stress. My dad left her, and she had to raise me alone. She pays for our house with drugs and prostitution money. Her life is not easy." I tried to explain.

"That doesn't mean she can hit you. Do you really like living with her, honestly?"

"No, I know she'll never love me, and I just wish she'd let me live with Aunt Maylee. I don't know how much more I can take Demy." Demyx gathered me in his arms and allowed me to cry. He was one of the few people I broke down in front of.

AN: I'm trying to get into the interesting stuff. I know it's going slow right now. I just started writing chapter 6, so it will be another long wait before I update the next chapter. Sorry.

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