Author's Note: Written as somewhat of an alternate reality contemplation.
Sora had told him about the cave, The Secret Place, nestled in a place a person like Roxas wouldn't find so obvious, and yet, everyone on the island somehow simply...did. He supposed it was because the island was small, and that the islanders often had nothing better to do other than to explore the tiny tidbits of their tiny, tiny slice of world. Roxas was wrong often enough.
It had been one of those few, quiet times when Roxas had finally calmed down enough to breathe and listen to his "lighter half." Axel was gone. Why was he supposed to listen to anyone when Axel was gone? Axel was gone. His flaming red hair and dark triangles beneath his eyes and his seemingly dark personality, and, maybe it was a bit, but that was only when you looked at him. But when you really looked at him, really looked at him, you saw his smile and you saw the way Axel had begun to act with and treat Roxas. It was something he never really understood, and yet never really let drift from his mind too far.
There is a Secret Place, a big clearing after some twists and juts of pathways, and on the rock-wall there, there are two faces; childlike, confused and morphed by the mind over time, until, finally, you can't really recognize them anymore, nor can you remember why you put them there. All you can remember is that you thought you really liked this girl then, and for a long time afterwards, but, then...
Roxas plans to make sounds of disbelief, but he doesn't. Together they sit on the cobblestone streets, and it's almost hard for Roxas to imagine this tiny island, this tiny island with this Secret Place. But he does his best. For Axel. He nods his head and bobs his chin a few times to show Sora that, yes, he is listening, and that he is indeed...trying to comprehend.
Sora doesn't tell him about the time he returned to the Secret Place, and ended up finding a piece of chalk to draw a paopu fruit connecting the two faces forever over and against time. However, Sora's voice falls into a drawing silence, and he feels like Roxas can assume...
Roxas hugs his knees and wishes that he and Axel had carved their names into that big clock. Something, anything to connect them over this distance of unknown. Because he doesn't know; he just remembers the big chime of midday, and Axel sighing deeply beside him and waving his feet over the city. He remembers Axel counting down his months, his days, his hours, laughing, and Roxas would laugh, too, because he had no idea. He didn't know it would be like this. He didn't know he'd be really gone. And he would go back to that clock...if he could. If anything, maybe their ice-cream left dye-marks on the pine of the decorative outer-layer, always blue, or maybe their bums left indentations on the short ledge they always sat. The boy wants to return to the place, His and Axel's Secret Place, but he knows he can't.
Not without Axel.
Not like Sora returning to the cave every once in a while to run his fingers over the painful, melancholic bliss he seemed to adore about that girl once upon a time.
No, Roxas knows he could never return to the clock, that big clock in the city, so high up in the sky, dangling your feet over and not knowing where you're going or who you've been, that painful clock...
Not without Axel.
Because Axel is gone.