No excuses for inactivity.

I know it's short. It's supposed to be like an inbetweeny kind of chapter... plus I'm ultra busy. I'm going to Tokyo on Friday and I came back from Germany on Sunday so the past week has been a whirlwind of unpacking and repacking and money issues and whatnot. Plus I have been inundated with relatives because I'll be turning 21 whilst in Tokyo and they all want to give me my presents and stuff before I go :/

Song is "Something" by Escape the Fate.

We get to find out about Squall this chapter, as you all pretty much guessed who Roxas was gonna call :P

Kiss and I Will Surrender

Twenty Three

Something

Roxas had left Xion and Axel in the lounge and gone into his bedroom. He sat down gently on the blood red bedspread, his cell phone in his hands, scrolling slowly through his address book for the number he was looking for. He pressed the green button and raised the device to his ear, staring around the room with a surprisingly calm mind, though his heart had become a jackhammer in his chest and his fingers felt like they were going to explode at the rate his blood was being pumped through them.

Squall answered on the first ring.

As usual, he sounded annoyed. By this point, Roxas was quite accustomed to that and it didn't even phase him.

As if he had a sixth sense that pertained purely to the safety of his little brother, the first thing that Squall said was "What's wrong with Sora?"

Roxas didn't notice this, but his long pale fingers had fisted into the scarlet sheets, looking like he was clutching at an expanse of silky blood. His mind became less calm.

"Seifer got him." There was no need to explain how bad this was. If Roxas was right about his suspicions, Squall would know exactly how bad this was.

True to his expectations, Squall swore. "Shit. I knew I'd seen you before. You were his little junkie friend, weren't you?"

"Don't call me a junkie!" Roxas hissed into the mouthpiece, all calm in his mind now soaked in the red hot rage that had been building in his gut. "You know as well as I do that I've been clean for years. You were the one who fucking pushed the drugs, after all."

There was silence. Not a stunned one, Squall was too sharp for that. It was more like Squall had nothing to say to that particular comment, and not even because he had no defence, but because he didn't particularly care.

After a long pause, Squall spoke. "I trust you're already looking?"

Roxas scoffed. "Of course. Do you think I'm stupid?"

Squall ignored this last comment. "I'm coming now; I'm in Midgar at the moment. Give me your address."

Roxas rattled it off. "When will you be here?"

"Two hours. One if I drive fast."

"Bring weapons. I know you have them. We need as many as we can get, there's only so many that ShinRa can supply for us."

That caught Squall's attention. "ShinRa's involved?" His voice was sharp enough to make Roxas scrunch up his face, as though he had swallowed a particularly ripe lemon.

"Well, yeah. They drove Seifer out last time, remember? My brother works for them and so does Zack."

Squall made a noise of irritated thoughtfulness. "I don't trust ShinRa," he said bluntly, "and I don't want them butting in on my business."

"This isn't just Sora's safety we're talking about!" Roxas had stood up and was pacing frantically around his white room. "Seifer's taken three of our friends, all of which are female, one of which is heavily pregnant. As in, due in five weeks. Whether you like it or not, ShinRa is involved and they're gonna help us get back our loved ones!"

"God, do you ever stop whining?" Squall snapped, and Roxas bared his teeth even though he knew the older man couldn't see it. "Shut the fuck up, calm down and go make sure your little ShinRa buddies find wherever Sora's been taken by the time I get there."

There was a click. Roxas pulled the phone away from his ear with and snarled at it before slamming it down on the bed. "I don't whine!" he screamed into the empty room.

"Yes you do!" Xion yelled from the lounge.

Squall was pounding on his door ninety minutes later.

Roxas let him in and offered him tea, eyeing the huge black bags the man was carrying under his arms and over his back. Rinoa followed in, offering Roxas a small smile as way of consolation for Squall's stroppy attitude.

Roxas had just been about to put the kettle on for his grumpy guest when Cloud, Zack, Reno and Rude all returned. Zack had a fire in his eyes that made Roxas want to reach for the nearest extinguisher, though he didn't know whether he'd need water or carbon dioxide to put out a Zack-induced inferno. Probably both plus some sort of super power, he thought as he ended up making tea for nine people.

Reno and Rude produced a map with a red circle on a desolate looking part of the deserts surrounding Midgar. They had scoured through satellite images and used their Turk sources to trace Seifer's hideout to within a hundred square metres, which Squall seemed sort of satisfied with. Zack happily announced that he had a unit of twenty ShinRa troops as well as four captains waiting for his instructions.

Squall opened up his black bags, and the chatter died instantly.

"Whoa," Reno muttered, staring as Squall produced several high-calibre rifles, "Where the fuck do you live, yo, an armoury?"

Squall just looked at him, and rubbed at the scar on his face. Roxas noticed this, and he was fairly sure that Cloud, Zack and Reno had noticed too.

"So who are you?" Zack demanded, eyeing the semi-automatic pistols that came out next.

"Squall is Sora's older brother," Rinoa explained. "He also has... connections to Seifer which could be of use to you."

"What kind of connections?" Reno stipulated, one eyebrow raised. He crouched down next to the weapons and began to pick through them, his eyes getting wider and wider as Squall continued to produce not just guns but knives, swords and explosives.

"He used to push drugs for the Yakuza," Roxas elaborated with blunt tones, watching Zack and Cloud and hoping to high heaven that they wouldn't kill Squall. He could live with them maiming him a little, but he didn't think Sora would be too pleased if Squall got ripped in two. Plus, he kind of liked Rinoa and didn't want to upset her by being the cause of his brother and Zack tearing her boyfriend into a million pieces.

Predictably, Cloud and Zack stiffened.

"So you're saying that I'm looking at the guy who turned you into a raving lunatic junkie?" Cloud asked, his voice extremely low and quiet but perfectly audible in the deathly silent room.

"Pretty much," Roxas shrugged.

"Hey, I didn't force you to buy 'em," Squall shrugged. "If you wanna lay the blame anywhere, blame yourself for being so weak that you couldn't survive without popping the fucking needle."

Zack stood up and before anyone could move, the cool head of a pistol was kissing Squall's forehead. Blink a second time, and there was a long dagger held to Zack's stomach.

"You sold him the stuff?" Zack spat, his trigger finger twitching as if itching to squeeze and blow Squall's brains out. "You turned Roxas into that drooling, pathetic little addict I had to rescue from a hospital after he nearly died?"

"Like I said, I only sold him the stuff. What he did with it was his own fault."

"HE WAS SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD FOR FUCKS SAKE! THE SAME AGE AS YOUR BROTHER WAS!"

In a flash, Squall had knocked the pistol away and was on his feet, his knife at Zack's throat. "You leave my brother out of this," he snarled, his eyes narrowed and one hand fisted in the black haired man's shirt.

Roxas swallowed. "Tea's ready?"

Time seemed to become a lost concept within the dark room of that abandoned warehouse. Sora had no idea how long he sat there, propped up against the wall and barely clinging onto life and sanity. He measured it at first in times of waking, but eventually had to stop when he began to slip in and out of consciousness with the rapidity of someone blinking. There was only one window in the massive room, right at the other end, but there must have been another building directly adjacent to theirs because it never seemed to let in any light.

He was growing weaker with every moment, and he knew it. They had only given him a few slurps of water and no food, although the girls got a little better treatment. They at least were regularly given water (partly because Kairi complained so much). But Sora was fairly sure that if this kept up for much longer, he would be dead from thirst or starvation before Roxas could even attempt to save him.

Not to mention that Seifer was well and truly keeping to his word and only hurting Sora. The girls remained unharmed, at least physically, but they had to go through the harrowing process every couple of hours of watching Seifer's men taking out their frustrations on the weakening brunet. Sora ached everywhere, especially his gut, and had been winded more times in the last week than he could remember being in his entire life.

Somehow though, he knew it could be much worse. After all, look what they had done to Roxas in that parking lot. Sora was more than aware that he could be sexually abused and raped if Seifer so desired, but for now it seemed like the dirty blond maniac hadn't stepped quite that low. Sora was grateful. Not that he didn't love taking it up the ass every now and then, but that was a privilege purely reserved for Roxas, and he was fairly sure that Seifer's men wouldn't be so kind as to use saliva or lube before they had at him.

Tifa had estimated their imprisonment to have lasted two days at most. Aerith was leaning more towards a four and Kairi had as much concept of time as an amoeba so she didn't even attempt to guess. Sora frankly didn't care, nor did he really have the capacity to. Thinking was difficult in his state. When he was awake, his head lolled forwards and he often found himself staring into his lap, tracing lines of blood on his jeans and wondering if he would ever get the chance to worry about getting the stains out.

Even thinking about Roxas was getting difficult. With every hour that passed, Sora was sure that Roxas's face became a little more blurred in his imagination, or more shadowed as though Roxas was walking away deep into the recesses of Sora's mind. More than once, he had caught himself crying silent hot tears that riveted down his nose and then plopped onto the bloodstains of his pants. He was thankful then that his hair hid the tears from his friends, though he was more than certain that Aerith knew everything, knew every thought that passed through his struggling brain.

On what Tifa insisted was the third day but could have been more according to Aerith, Seifer's men came into the room as usual, just when the grey light spilling through the window began to fade to the colour of unwashed sport socks. A few were carrying food and water, which they gave to the girls, and someone grabbed Sora's jaw and yanked his head back. They pried his mouth open, not needing to use much force because by now Sora was so exhausted he was having trouble just keeping his eyes open. The cobalt depths had dulled and stared half-mast up at the dark, muscled guy he was fairly certain was called Rai.

"Damn, he looks dead," someone behind Rai commented. "Better give him some water, Seifer'll kill us if he dies before the ransom is arranged."

"I was already doing it!" Rai snapped, stupid as a snail as per usual, and then he produced a litre bottle of water and sloshed some of the contents into Sora's parched mouth.

Sora began to choke immediately but the dried insides of his mouth and throat soaked up the moisture like a sponge, and his stomach jerked wildly as a few trickles of water made its way down his oesophagus. Rai poured some more water into his mouth, still messy enough that the front of Sora's shirt got soaked, but this time Sora managed to swallow a bit more. He gasped raggedly between gulps as Rai steadily fed him half the bottle before the man screwed the lid back on and set it down next to Sora.

"Still looks dead," he mused, more to himself than to his thuggish companions. A girl who had been passing out clumsily made sandwiches to the females turned around, her eyes sharp. Sora thought her name might be Fuu, which was a damn stupid name when he thought about it.

"He's not," she said simply, before turning and practically stuffing the turkey sandwich she was holding down Kairi's throat, and then she stood up and brushed off her pants.

Rai leaned down and checked the ropes holding Sora's arms above his head. Sora wished he would undo them, just for a moment. His triceps were screaming with pain and his shoulders needed a good crack from being held in the same position for days. But Rai simply wiggled the knots, and when he was satisfied that they were still holding fast, he grinned and slapped Sora across his already black and blue face.

"Good little faggot," he commented as if he was talking to a dog which hadn't tried to paw off its muzzle. He straightened up and moved to the back of the room to talk with some of the other thugs, whilst more came forwards to give Sora his daily kicking. They must have been more frustrated than usual, or maybe they thought that because he had been given water he could withstand more of a beating today, because they carried on for longer and kicked a lot harder than usual. Sora didn't know when they stopped, because he lost consciousness halfway through, but when he woke up they were gone and it felt like his elbow was broken.

And as usual, Kairi was crying. Sora clenched his fists and teeth, his eyes closed but images of Seifer with a bullet through his brain emblazoned on the backs of his eyelids. If he ever got out of this, he would make sure that Seifer got what was coming to him for making Kairi cry. He would make sure that he would give Kairi no reason to ever shed tears again.

But he wondered if he would ever get the chance to make good on these promises.

Yeah, it's lame and short. Sorrrryyyyyy. Have some cabbages.