A/N: Whewwwwwwwwwww – it's taken me a while, yes? And may well continue to do so, life being a busy creation, but you guys can take this as proof that I *am* still thinking and plotting and planning and occasionally scribbling. First chapter update in a *long* time (which reminds me to apologise for my sucky review responses for the last posting – I actually have half of them replied to in Word, but never managed to complete the task ^^; Oops!) Hope you guys enjoy it :)
.o.O.o.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The first indicator Axel received that something wasn't quite right was the sudden tensing of the smaller body tucked under his right arm, a stillness sweeping over Roxas that moments ago hadn't existed. The boy's head twitched to look out at the barren, whipping landscape of the Wastelands for a long heartbeat, hands clutching once, convulsively, at the plastic bag of groceries sitting in his lap, Axel leaning down with a frown to try and read his expression.
The second indicator was Roxas' elbow smashing into his nose.
Axel's head rocked back, face cupped with a muffled shout, more surprised than particularly injured. Beside him, Roxas thrashed, the bag weathering his bouncing knees for only a few seconds before one of the tins of condensed milk toppled out, leading the rest of the groceries in a plummeting bid for freedom. They all scattered and bounced across the SUV's floor, Cid letting out a bellow comprised of shock and anger, jerking to the side to keep from getting smacked by the sudden jostling. "What in the damn hell - ?!"
"Bastard!" Roxas' briefly voice soared above the other man's, hoarse and filled with panicked rage as he kicked and struggled, trying to punch off Axel's advancing hands as they came stabbing in to grab him. One managed to snag his wrist, grip tightening, the redhead shouting with alarm, "Calm down, Roxas!" Their grunting breaths ricocheted around the vehicle, elbows pistoning back and forth as with clasped hands each attempted to overpower the other, the seatbelt that held them both in place snapping in and out with the swell of their motions.
As Axel began to gain the upper hand a frantic few moments later, the blond bared his teeth, blue eyes wild, and again spat, "Bastard! What the hell do you think you're doing? What did you do, drug me?" He tried to force his knees in under the redhead's stomach, the vehicle swaying alarmingly on the road as the man at its wheel tried to keep an eye on the action, Axel snarling and forcing himself down as hard as he could on the smaller male. "Did you drug me?" Roxas demanded savagely. "And who the fuck is that guy, your kidnap buddy?" He twisted in Axel's increasingly powerful grasp, letting out a loud growl of frustration. "Let – go – of – me!"
Astounded by the ferocious outburst, Cid echoed in amazement, "The heck? Kidnap buddy?"
Urgently, Axel threw a look over his shoulder, desperately explaining, "My friend – he's sick. He doesn't – " He gave a winded grunt as one of Roxas' bare knees connected with the side of his ribcage, the sentence dying in his throat, and in the next breath responded by viciously crushing Roxas' wrists, the blond shouting, "OW! That hurts!"
"He doesn't realise what he's doing," Axel finished, face contorted menacingly as it hung above the boy's, the words growling from his chest while he shoved Roxas down hard against the seat, pinning him, all his limbs trapped beneath the redhead's weight and strength. As the blond gasped for air, he lowered his voice, snapping quietly, "Roxas, what are you babbling around? I didn't drug you. You met Cid in the parking lot, remember? He's our ride, for Christ's sake!" He grabbed Roxas' chin with the free fingers of one hand, steadying his face forcefully, making him meet his gaze with growing consternation. "What's wrong with you? You can'thave forgotten!"
"I can tell you what I remember," Roxas said wildly, angrily, "and that's last night, the way you tried to –"
Axel's hands jumped, remaining in place on the boy but his shock registering physically, quickly cutting him off, asking, "What about this morning?"
"There was no this morning! I was unconscious this whole time, since then!"
The redhead stared, even Roxas himself hesitating in that moment, as though realising that what he was saying wasn't adding up in the man's mind. "That doesn't make sense," Axel edgily told him. "Roxas, of course there was a this morning. You were there; you bought flip-flops."
Roxas echoed in disbelieving bewilderment, "Flip-flops! What the hell are you –?" Axel cut him off, jerked him up by the hair, seizing the back of his head in one hand and shoving it down so that he could see his feet. It took a few seconds for the boy to recognise what he was supposed to be focusing on, at which point his eyebrows rose. "You got me –?"
"You chose them," the man said heatedly. Over on his side of the car, Cid was torn between avid staring and glances at the road, the SUV swaying from side to side. His tone sobering, coming away from its angry edge, Axel went on, "Don't tell me you don't remember, Roxas. You were there the whole time. You don't really think you were asleep all morning, do you?" There was a long pause, Axel studying him closely. This was more than disorientation. He might have attributed it, at a pinch, to Roxas having maybe… fallen asleep in the car, and waking up confused, but the thing was, he was pretty sure the kid had been conscious this entire time. He'd been watching him. He hadn't noticed Roxas even looking sleepy, let alone dozing off… and then, virtually from one instant to the next… it had become like this. He lowered his voice intently. "Roxas, listen to me. Just calm down for a second and think it all through. You do know where you've been today, you've just…" He trailed off in his attempt to find a way to finish the sentence with some viable excuse. He was – he was trying, but he couldn't think of anything sane and rational; nothing that wouldn't call the blond's state of mind into question. After a hanging moment, he instead turned to their driver, grimly apologetic. "I'm – sorry, sir. He isn't dangerous, he's just… sick."
Casting him a sceptical, sideways look, Cid commented through his toothpicks, "No kiddin'."
Slowly, the boy began to shake his head. "…No," he muttered, eyes darting about the interior of the car, out the window, correcting Axel's previous statement like he hadn't heard the aside, "I don't know. You're lying to me." He looked to be thinking hard, before leaning forward in his seat with a frown, studying Cid in silence. Axel tensed at the look on his face. It dawned on him slowly that – this was the first time that Roxas had been near another person properly, not to mention that it was someone who seemed more than capable of handling himself in a fight. He wasn't handcuffed, and Axel was weighed down by the big black duffel – this might be his one and only chance to actually change their situation to his advantage. He hadn't shown signs of it earlier in the day, but now that he was claiming no memory of that far-off time, all its threats and assurances included…
Sure enough, something shifted in Roxas' expression, blue eyes narrowing, voice sharply determined as he started, "Hey – mister. Mister, you've got to listen to me –" Axel moved without thinking, wrapping his free arm back around the boy and sinking his fingers into his side with every ounce of strength he could muster. Roxas gasped, faltered, the words dying in his throat. He grunted faintly, face pale, Axel's features belying his actions with a calm, level expression.
Cid, although watching, didn't notice the exchange, seeing only that Roxas was looking fainter than he had a second ago. Brows coming together, he asked after a moment, "Yeah, what, kid?"
"…Was I awake when I got into your car?" He managed to choke it out sounding semi-normal; however, the tone of his voice, abruptly dimmer, had little to do with the pain he was feeling, Axel could tell. Roxas had been planning something rash, and changed his mind at the last moment, the warning savagely delivered. Obviously, having him undergo a shock of any kind was enough to erase his every ounce of sense; the man would need to be careful of that in future. But… how could he be careful of it if he didn't even know when he was supposed to be expecting it? He looked down uneasily at the boy, who gazed straight ahead with lips pressed thin. How could Roxas not know whether he'd been asleep or awake the entire morning? Was he wondering that himself, inside his own confusion?
"…Yeah, kid." Cid's voice was wary, gruff, eyes now staying on the road. "You were awake. Told me the two of you have been having 'a lot of a lot of fun' when you got into the car." Roxas' face could not have been blanker in incomprehension. Axel felt a stab in his chest, a sickening mixture of different sharp feelings all vying for attention, the dominant of which could only be fear. Cid continued in afterthought, "And you asked me about the deadline I've got coming up."
Roxas said nothing for a minute, before asking quietly, "…What kind of deadline?"
Cid threw over an incredulous look, his wonder painfully apparent. He didn't answer, instead focusing on his driving, forehead sporting a crease down the middle. Roxas was silent for a while, Axel's grip on him loosening, his heart tight as he considered the reality of what the hell was going on.
Roxas evidently actually had no memories of the morning. As far as he was concerned, after falling asleep during the night, nothing had happened that he was aware of until the last couple of minutes, at which point he'd freaked angrily over the thought of having been drugged. He'd honestly thought Axel had done something to him… and who could blame him? The redhead swallowed as he realised that Roxas' last coherent memory of him had to be from their struggle the previous night. As far as Roxas knew… Axel had sexually assaulted him, forced him to sleep handcuffed to his side, and then somehow the next time he'd become conscious of the world around him, it had been in a foreign car being driven across the Wastelands with the sun high in the sky. But – how in the hell was that possible? They'd held full conversations, Roxas had been eating candy bars and sloshing alongside Axel through the rainfall, had bought flip-flops, and…
…had acted strangely the entire time; just ever so slightly out of character. Maybe it was nothing anyone else might notice, but to Axel, who knew Roxas' every thought and breath so intimately that he virtually sensed them before they occurred, a fact which the blond had yet to fully comprehend, it had been like a part of Roxas' personality had been transplanted for a while. At the time, he'd just figured Roxas was acting out after the events of the night, was trying to make life difficult with his own special passive-aggressive brand of revolt… but now it was all suddenly put into a new perspective, the culmination of which was: if Roxas hadn't been aware of anything going on around him, then who the hell had Axel been talking to? Had Roxas suffered a shutdown of memories a few minutes ago, in which the morning had been spontaneously erased, or had he really not been there? The kid had already demonstrated that he was more than capable of rewriting his mind – the new Roxas was nobody that the old Roxas would have even looked at. So if that was the case, who the fuck had Axel been talking to, that slightly more confident, less aggressive yet somehow abrasive personality the blond had adopted throughout daylight's first hours? What section of his bleeding mind had manifested it? Was this – yet another version of Roxas being contrived right in front of him, piece by piece?
God damn everything, he wasn't equipped to deal with this sort of thing. He took his head in his hands, Cid glancing over as Axel gazed through the break in his fingers, staring at the floor and wondering just what on earth he was supposed to do next.
.o.O.o.
They stopped at nightfall to get something to eat, Cid buying a newspaper and taking himself off into a corner of the bright truck-stop diner, the signifier of the approaching crust of the Wastelands, just a few more hours' drive away. Axel, left with Roxas, found the two of them a booth next to a darkened window, handing one of the laminated menus to the blond, who opened it without a word and gazed unseeingly at the listed items. There was a glassiness to his blue eyes, a slowness of motion that denoted heavy exhaustion weighing him down. Axel was unsurprised, and longed with every fibre of his being to be able to wipe some of that devouring fatigue away from the boy's bones. Roxas had barely spoken a word since the fracas in the SUV, since Cid had confirmed Axel's story.
Axel… didn't know whether to let his anxiety increase or not. On the one hand, Roxas acting oddly was something he was familiar with, a personality trait, or perhaps absence, that was as recognisable as the smell of cut grass. It soothed him, somewhere inside, to see that Roxas was just as messed up as ever – it meant that nothing had changed, on a deep level. But on the other hand, Roxas… was sick. Axel knew he was sick, had known it for a long time, even when the blond been pretending he was some innocent and well-adjusted kid from sleepy, sunny little Twilight Town; and as much as a mentally unstable Roxas was like coming home to Axel, it was that sickness that they'd been battling so hard in the months before the boy had vanished. All those visits to Naminé, all the prescription drugs, and the fear – the relentless, oppressive fear that the Organisation would write Roxas off as too great a liability, the volatility that had worked so well for them in the past becoming too much a risk as it persisted, that they would just order him dead.
In that final regard, little had changed.
There was only so long that they could keep dodging the Organisation before someone caught up with them, especially now that they were moving around together, with Roxas an involuntary part of this couple. Axel had taken him out of a desire to keep him safe… but now that he had him, he was discovering more and more that despite his obsessive hunting and planning, all the fundamentals had stayed the same, that it had all merely been for the acquisition of Roxas. Because honestly, what the hell sort of strategy was driving around and staying at motels?When Roxas had acted normally, that had been fine, it had fired up the redhead's re-education zeal, that burn to make the boy remember who and what he was – but when that behaviour became erratic, not just in the way it had once been but erratic for this Twilight Town version of Roxas… how could he possibly keep going this way? He had imagined, in his own delusional little world, that simply getting Roxas back would make everything okay again, that he could reprogram the kid back to what passed for normal before the Organisation tracked them down, and present him to them with the hurried promise that Roxas wasn't going to cause them any trouble. 'See? He's fine, he's Roxas, he's still part of the Organisation, you don't need to kill him.'
But it seemed like he wasn't going to have the time to make that go according to plan. Long before the Organisation came to get them, Roxas might have already lost his mind, or worse, disappeared again. Axel had allowed himself to be seduced by the 'Twilight Town' Roxas into believing that the sanity he exuded was something real, and that the only thing needing fixing was his memories and personality.
Idiot.
This latest mental hiccup was nothing particularly big or bad, a loss of memories was on par with Roxas' track record to date after all, but Axel knew from experience that he had been given a glimpse of the mere tip of the iceberg. It didn't seem like much on the major scale, but in the end it was – a loose thread. If held onto, Axel knew he would be able to follow it into a darker, more fractured part of Roxas' mind, and then deeper still into chaotic turbulence. The Roxas that acted like a normal person was like the deceptively still surface of quicksand, and a single misstep would lead them both into unmitigated disaster. Now was… not the time to be trying to fool himself into thinking he could control this on his own. He couldn't keep making mistakes. Instead, it was time… to make a decision. Maybe a bad one; maybe a terrible one – but maybe also the only choice that Axel had available to him. He glanced over at Roxas, the blond running a hand through his hair with a scowl of weariness, determinedly not looking Axel's way, seeming for all the world like any other somewhat grumpy young man out for dinner. But there was a split in there, somewhere behind the skin and bone and eyes, and if Axel didn't take steps to seal it up, nobody would.
"…Hey." His voice was soft – like he was talking to a skittish animal, scared to spook it. Roxas didn't react, continued struggling to blearily read the menu, but the redhead couldn't help but notice a faint tightening at his jaw. "Roxas, I…" He wanted to apologise again for last night. Roxas, as he was now, had no recollection of the earlier one, and he felt that that was contributing at least in part to the current cold silence radiating from across the table. Of course it was, it had to be. But he was suddenly wary of just blurting it out, afraid that the response would be exactly the same as it had been in the morning – or, maybe worse, different.
"I think I'll just have the salad." Roxas was ignoring him, the waitress had arrived, she was writing down his order and turning to Axel, who had no appetite to speak of.
"…A glass of water, please. And an espresso." He would need the caffeine to stay awake until they reached Edge, he couldn't trust Roxas alone with Cid, who knew what whispered conversations might take place over his bowed head? When they found some place to sit down and think this all through, that would be when he would have the chance to rest.
Everything was going to be okay. Axel was going to make it so. It just – it had to be.
.o.O.o.
Although he hadn't meant to, Roxas slept for most of the rest of the journey. He didn't know where exactly they were, didn't know where they were headed, and that anxiety should have kept him awake, but – his body, it felt like it was going to crumble from under him. He had been so tired during dinner, barely able to keep his head up, or the salad down. His mind was telling him he had been asleep for half the day, that this shouldn't be happening, but… apparently, that was incorrect.
With a cool wind rushing against him, the SUV's windows all down to get rid of all the accumulated heat and tension of the day's traverses, he couldn't have stopped himself falling asleep even if he'd stuck his eyelids open with matchsticks. For a while, he had dreamless nothing – no thoughts, no concerns, not a single, lingering doubt.
When he did wake, it was to Axel's face hovering over him, pale light reflecting off the man's skin in an artificial way, the air actually a little bit cold for once. Roxas inhaled and smelled car exhaust, noticing at the same time that the SUV was no longer rumbling and vibrating. He could hear traffic noises quietly in the distance – some screeching of tires, the honk of a horn, the persistent alarm of a railway track boom warning of impending trains. His eyes blinked out of sync, feeling gummy, grainy, and in the next second Roxas sucked in a hard, wet breath, struggling to sit as everything from the last several days slammed back into place. Rubbing his knuckles across his face, glancing around and finding himself still in the car, he forced himself more alert, rasping tensely, "Where are we? What's happening? What – time is it?"
Axel, he noticed, was standing back a bit – already out of the car, the man had been leaning over him, but far enough away so as to not startle and cause chaos. Even as he asked, Roxas noticed that his voice sounded jarringly loud in only the way a voice can in the dimmest hours of a new morning. Nearby, crickets were rattling out their shrill song.
Axel spoke in a cautiously low tone, straightening, stepping away. "We're there. Edge. It's four a.m., Rox. Roxas." There was a pause, after which the redhead started to ask, "Do you remember - ?"
"I'm fine," Roxas interrupted curtly, pushing the hair from his face, blinking hard several times as he came fully awake, looking hard past the man's shoulder to try and identify where he was. "What is this place?"
Axel, his hands in his pockets, turned around to gaze at their surroundings, a dull expression in place as he twisted back. "It's a motel, Cid's dropping us here. He's gone to book us in, I said I didn't want to just leave you here." He gave a small, thin-lipped smile which dropped away in a heartbeat. "Maybe you're frustrated, I don't know, but this'll probably be our last motel for a while, so just enjoy the cardboard-style sheets while you can. I'm thinking of finding us a bolt hole. What do you think?"
Roxas looked at him with bewilderment. "What do I – what do I think?" Anger flashed across his features, Axel observing it flatly. The blond pushed himself out of the truck, onto the pavement, flip-flops snapping against his heels as he landed. Axel continued to watch him, lazy body language tightening slightly. His eyes narrowed, but he made no immediate move to restrain the boy – Roxas figured it was just that bit harder to completely trap and control him when at any minute the guy Cid could appear and catch him at it. Then again, Cid had obviously thought Roxas was out of his mind – he'd probably believe anything Axel told him now, would probably believe it was all for his own good.
In a low, heated voice, Roxas demanded, "What does it matter what I think? You're going to do whatever the hell you want anyway. What I think is what I've always thought – that you're a psychotic kidnapper who needs to let me go. I want to go home, damn it. Don't you dare ask me what I think!"
Axel gazed at him for a moment longer, before letting out a sigh, lifting his shoulders minutely. "Sorry. My mistake. In that case – we're going elsewhere after this. Get used to it. There, does that make you feel better?"
Roxas hissed, "Go to hell."
In the midst of this, Cid returned, his heavy, crunching steps breaking through the tension as he came stumping over from the direction of a small, brightly-lit building. Roxas dragged a hand through his hair, the other on his hip as he twisted and glared around at their surroundings, observing that yes, this was another motel, so much like the others. He moved away from Axel, leaning against the car with his arms tightly knotted, not knowing whether to try and run for it, or alert Cid, or what the hell to do. Axel had already made his point – painfully – clear, reminding the blond that there weren't many lengths he wouldn't go to to keep him around. He could feel the fingertip-shaped bruises on his hip every time he shifted, had pulled up his shirt in the bathroom at the diner to inspect the damage and winced at the sight of it. He didn't want – to put this guy in danger. But at the same time, neither did he want this to continue. The longer he remained with Axel, the less likely it seemed that he would ever break away.
Cid didn't glance at Roxas as he reached them, instead holding out a dangling keychain towards Axel, saying gruffly, "Got you kids a room, hope it's okay, it was the only two-person they had left." Roxas scowled as the redhead took the key with a clink of metal against the plastic accessory proclaiming the motel's name and the room number.
Smiling gratefully – that same, thin-lipped affair – Axel said, "We owe you a lot, thanks, Cid."
The man waved a dismissive hand, grunting, "You paid your share of the gas, that makes us even. Take care, kids." He went around to the other side of the SUV, opening the driver's side door and climbing in, Roxas jerking away from the cool metal with surprise and small amounts of panic – Cid was leaving? Already? Wasn't he staying here, too? He might have believed everything Axel had said, but he was still a nice enough guy, and the one person Roxas had thought could possibly make a difference, if they could have just managed to be alone together for five minutes, for five fucking minutes –
Axel's cold hand wound around Roxas' upper arm, drawing him out of the way as Cid started up the vehicle noisily. The boy opened his mouth, uttered breathlessly, "No – wait!" He surged forward, jolting in Axel's grip, the redhead muttering a curse and grabbing hold of him with both hands now, holding hard as he squirmed and tugged. Over Roxas' shoulder, he threw a tight, grim upward curving of lips and a sharp nod – and Cid, damn him to hell, who watched the entire thing happened, returned the nod with an identical expression, pulled out of the parking bay, threw a wave out the window – and drove the fuck away. Roxas shouted furiously, "No! God damn it!" continuing to struggle, hope existing as long as he could still see the SUV's taillights through the darkness. But then the orange indicator light flickered, Cid turned away, and they were gone. It happened so fast, Roxas could still hear the engine, could hear it accelerating through the night, growing distant. He went still in Axel's grasp, rigidly watching the space where the vehicle had been at the end of the parking lot, expression briefly cemented in place.
So, Cid was gone, then.
The emotions of the day came roaring up almost too suddenly to comprehend, all the rage and confusion and now this bitter disappointment turning themselves onto Axel in an instant. The boy twisted in his grasp and started attacking, wrenching, punching, kicking, losing his flip-flops in the process, and most infuriatingly of all, Axel didn't try to stop him. The man leaned back slightly, turning his face away to protect it from harm, and simply allowed the blond's apoplexy to find focus and wear itself out. He gave an occasional grunt, but otherwise didn't react, and this, more than anything, drove the absolute futility of it all home for Roxas with the piercing quality of a nail. He couldn't even fight his way out. He couldn't do anything to help himself. He bellowed, the sound echoing all the way up and down the motel property, "What did you tell him?!"
Axel once again tightened his grip to the point of pain, Roxas silencing with a sharp breath. Their room key was digging straight into his wrist. "Voice down," the man quietly commanded. "People are sleeping." As if he actually cared about people being woken! "What I told him," Axel went on patiently, "is the truth. I told him everything about you while you were sleeping. I told him about all the medication, all the sessions with the psychiatrist, I even told him about how dangerous you can be."
Momentarily shocked, eyes wide, Roxas said, "Bullshit. What a load of bullshit, I can't believe he believed you."
"Why not?" the redhead asked expressionlessly. "Like I said, it was the truth."
Roxas started up again, angrily, "What the hell do you think –"
Axel's patience abruptly ran out, his hand clamping tight as he gave the boy a sharp, rattling shake while hissing, "Shut up! Jesus Christ, Roxas, what do you think happened this morning, when you were supposed to be awake but weren't?"
"I don't know, you tell me," the blond snarled back, breaths intermingling with the closeness of their contorted faces. "Maybe it was trauma from last night, maybe I blanked out because of what you did."
Axel's body jolted, his expression showing his desire to thrust Roxas away and smack him straight across the face just as he had when he'd started yelling in that first motel… but it passed, the man obviously swallowing the urge down like bitter medicine, instead giving short, sour nod, as though conceding the round. He released one of Roxas' arms, the key moving blessedly away, the tip having dug so far into his flesh that the skin had started to break. Using his free hand to scoop up their bags, Axel, without any further discussion, led the way over towards their room, yanking the blond along with him.
"Hey – my flip-flops!" Roxas pulled back hard, looking over his shoulder at the red foam he'd left behind on the bitumen. Axel didn't stop, nearly dragged him over onto his knees, ignoring his protest and simply continuing on until he reached their room and unlocked it, swinging Roxas forward and pushing him into the darkness. Before the boy could let out a noise of any kind, Axel's hand snaked up onto the wall, flicked the light switch, letting the dull wattage flood the room. Dropping the plastic and duffel bags into the corner by the door, the man planted a hand in the middle of Roxas' back, resumed pushing him, the boy stumbling over his own feet as he moved against his will until he knocked into the bed, a familiar sensation by now, Axel bringing out the instantly recognisable handcuffs and clicking one around one wrist, the one that got cut by the key, while snapping the other around the metal frame of the bed. Still without speaking, he then turned, marched back towards the door, and slammed it behind him as he exited into the night.
Roxas was left feeling distinctly windswept, sprawled half on the bed, half hanging off it, knees bent awkwardly down towards the ground. Silence beat a pulsing rhythm in his head as he wondered where the man had got to, but almost immediately, within thirty seconds of having left, Axel once again returned, carrying the flip-flops in one hand. Before Roxas could comment, he threw them across the room ungraciously. "Here." They hit the boy before falling to the floor, Roxas flinching away slightly before glaring over at him. Axel eyed him as he crossed the room to open the door to look into the small bathroom. "No thank you? No gratitude at all? I should've left them out there."
"You're the reason –" Roxas, starting off loud, cut himself off sharply, biting his lower lip. Axel paused in the doorway as the halogen lights flickered on above the toilet and glanced back, an eyebrow raised enquiringly. But the blond said nothing further – how could he possibly accuse the redhead of being the cause of his losing his flip-flops, like it was some big event? Axel was the root of everything terrible; some cheap, red foam getting kicked off shouldn't have even registered as an offense. Instead, the boy closed his eyes, trying not to see, again and again like some repeating movie reel, the moments in which Cid had driven away. His one big chance, his one possibility of a chance – gone before he even had the time to breathe life into it.
Axel. It was all Axel's fault. What – what the hell were they doing here? What did he think he was doing? Kidnapping, wild stories, assaulting Roxas on a regular basis…
A flashing whiff of cigarette smoke invaded the boy's nostrils, blue eyes flashing open to find green gazing steadily back. Axel looked grimy, layered with old sweat and fatigue, his pores visible and rough at this proximity – and he was close, crouched right in front of him, their knees nearly knocking. Roxas jerked back against the bed, handcuffs rattling, Axel inhaling through his nose and planting a hand on either side of the blond on the mattress' edge… but only to use to lever himself up onto his feet again.
"It's fine, don't wet yourself." The redhead's voice was dull, coolly detached. "I was just checking you were still with me." He stared down at the boy from under hooded lids, quiet for a long minute, their positions once again horrendously unbalanced in Axel's favour in terms of body language and vulnerability – the man standing right over him, his knees now level with Roxas' face. The blond forced himself to crane his neck and keep a lock on his eyes, refusing to glance away, pouring every ounce of his burning resentment into his pupils to go like laser beams up into the other. Axel, unaffected, said, "So you were really planning on using him somehow, huh? Even though you could have killed him."
"The only person to make the decision to kill would be you," Roxas quietly responded. "Even if I told him everything, if I dragged him into it – it would have been your decision to kill him, not mine."
Axel tilted his head to one side, studying the boy through narrowed eyes. "…Jeeze, Roxas. You say that like you've never killed a guy before." At that moment, Roxas would have been hard-pressed to believe that there was any love or even lust in the redhead towards him – a second of pure dislike spiked through Axel's features, inspiring a reverberating thump in Roxas' chest; it was an unnerving experience, to have such a look directed his way, delivered by someone so obviously amoral.
Collecting himself, drawing a deep breath, the boy evenly replied, "I never have. Obviously, you're confusing me with someone else."
Axel curled a lip. "Oh, that's right. You're a cute little Twilight Town kid, aren't you? Just like the ones in the photograph." As though reminded of it, from one hip pocket he pulled the picture out, the picture Roxas had all but forgotten about. There was a flash of Hayner, Pence and Olette in his field of vision, Roxas half-rising before the redhead flicked it up and away, taunting him.
Roxas' eyes went cold. "…You're a real bastard, you know that?"
The 'real bastard' just smiled, walking slowly around Roxas, giving him a wide berth, and going around to the other side of the bed, which the blond now noticed was a single – there was another single bed on the other side of it, and a nightstand between the two with a lamp and telephone sitting on it. He felt a burst of pure, distracted relief – he wasn't going to have to share another bed with Axel, not this time. The mattresses were small, they couldn't both fit on one even if they twisted every limb together. Cid might have ended up disappointing Roxas, but at least he'd left a parting gift.
Axel stopped at the nightstand, its single drawer sporting a brass keyhole with the key poking out of it. Opening it up, he first slid the photograph inside, then, after briefly inspecting the telephone, unplugging the cord and putting the clunky instrument in on top of it. Deliberately meeting the boy's blue eyes, he slid it shut again, locking it with an audible click, pulling free the key and tucking it into the back pocket of his jeans. "They can stay safe in here for a while. Your little friends." Roxas bit down on his tongue, the handcuffs rattling as he picked himself up from his awkward position and climbed more securely up onto the bed, legs crossing, knees lifting defensively. Axel watched with alert eyes, but when the boy did nothing more than settle carefully against the metal bars, he at last relaxed a little. "Well, then." He sounded less challenging this time, more like his usual self, whatever passed for normal with this man. "Are you hungry at all? I still have some of those sea-salt bars."
Roxas' gaze flickered, an element of interest entering his eyes before he could halt it. He thought about his stomach, and found that perhaps a salad wasn't enough to sustain a person in the middle of an elongated abduction. Axel noticed the pause, smiled faintly. Drawing a breath, the boy shortly nodded, and, nodding in response, Axel went over to where the bags had been dropped and dug out a couple of candy bars. Bringing them over to the captive on the bed, he said, "Don't worry about trying to share this time, okay?"
"Share?" Roxas shot him a hard look.
Axel stopped as he dropped them into the blond's lap, thinking for a moment before muttering, "Of course, forget it. You thought you were asleep. You don't remember."
"Forget remembering." Roxas picked up the first bar, tore off the top half of the wrapper with sudden hunger. "I don't share these things, is all." He took a sharp bite, jaws working as he chewed, scowling across the room and deliberately not looking at the man beside the bed – he didn't want Axel to know he was actually pleased about the sea-salt bars. On top of that… he didn't want to know how Axel knew to buy them for him. It was a thought that didn't exist – it was forbidden from his mind.
He didn't see how Axel stared down at him, didn't notice the slight widening of his eyes, lowering of his brows. A long moment later, the redhead stepped away from the bed. Moving across the room, he picked up the black duffel bag, slowly carried it into the small bathroom. As the sound of the shower running suddenly sprang into being, Roxas froze, lips parted with a smear of chocolate, heart locked in place in his chest. His head swung around before he could stop himself, fear cold in his eyes as he gazed over to where Axel stood in the bathroom's doorway, watching the boy. At the sight of his reaction, the man gave a bitter quirk of his lips. "I'll be showering now." He made no reference to Roxas also needing to shower, mentioned nothing of their last encounter alone in a motel room with naked involvement. "Be good," was all he tacked on, before closing the door, blocking out a portion of the noise and the steam.
Carefully, Roxas waited, listening to make sure the redhead was in fact climbing in. He heard the slight change of sound between water beating against tiles and being broken by a body, and swallowed a lump of chocolate, heart fluttering hard now. Three minutes. Head swivelling, he stared over at the nightstand, the keyhole of the drawer glinting. Three minutes was all that felt safe. Axel might have deprived him of his opportunity to alert Cid, but hadn't realised what the close chance and the day's events had ignited within the blond. Simply sitting and obeying was no longer good enough. Being good would have to return to being a farce, rather than a tactic.
Come hell or high water, Roxas was getting hold of the phone in that drawer. He groped around for a moment, wiping his mouth with one wrist and abandoning his candy bar, legs swinging over onto the floor on the other side of the bed. Handcuffed arm stretching to full length, he crouched down at an angle, briefly inspecting the keyhole. The whisper came from deep inside, like another person speaking: "I can deal with this." It was a dummy lock, the sort that could have been jimmied open with a pair of toothpicks, the likes of which Cid had had in excess but hadn't thought to share with his hitch-hikers. That was all okay, though, because Axel, in his weariness, hadn't noticed Roxas pocketing the fork from his salad at the diner. It had been a blank moment of instinct, the sort he had succumbed to without a second thought. Slowly, grand plans had formed, thoughts of stabbing the red-haired man playing violently through his head, little realising its more practical potential. The time for jamming fork tines into the soft, giving parts of Axel's body would come when it came, he would need to control himself and choose his moment carefully.
For now, it would get him access to the one thing he had been denied all along: the chance to cry for help.