A/N: Thank you to those who've reviewed so far. You guys seriously made my day, and I hope the story continues to entertain. Also, welcome to part two. Shit's about to get surreal. xD

"Where does the time go? I don't know

It's moving underneath me

Like I'm moving in slow-mo(tion)

I reach out though

It passes too quick to see me."

"Time Go" - Caught a Ghost

Part II: Tremors

"Morere in igni, filius canis…"

He was floating, drifting somewhere between consciousness and someplace far darker. He heard the unfamiliar words, muttered in an exasperated tone, with only the vaguest interest in discerning their meaning. Everything felt so far-removed. Insignificant.

"Triginta secundis, Marluxia? Vere?!"

Thirty seconds? Seriously?

That voice. Deep, resonate. He remembered how it had made him feel when whispered close to one ear. It was starting to come back to him, albeit slowly. That voice, and the person who came with it. By now he thought he might recognize them anywhere.

Roxas blinked, forced his eyes to remain open, suddenly intent on searching for the speaker — or at least figuring out where he was at the moment.

His surroundings were silvery, translucent enough to make out the shadowy figures nearby but not much more. Still seated where he'd fallen, Roxas reached out, pressed his fingers against the nearest part of the enclosure. It was still warm to the touch. Out of curiosity, he increased the pressure until his entire hand was laid flat against it.

Yeah, he noted, definitely still solid.

"Hoc uestrum, non mea," came a reply to a question that was already receding into the depths of his memory. The voice was emotionless, calm, its message indisputable. This is your doing, not mine. It made Roxas think of pink, of vodka and dance clubs, an unyielding grip, and the madness of a smoking, dying building in front of him. It took him a moment longer to realize the foreign words were blending together with those more familiar to him, into something that he could actually understand.

"Tempus fucking maledicetur. When did Twenty-One Century become such an utter trainwreck?"

The first voice, irate and tense, rang painfully in his good ear. Still unable to hear anything out of his left, it rendered him effectively deaf on one side, requiring Roxas to tilt his head in a particular direction to get a better sense of what was being said. At the same time, his enclosure was beginning to lose its silvery sheen, allowing him to take in more of his surroundings through bleary, unfocused eyes.

What he saw wasn't particularly striking. They were in a room, dimly lit. No windows and unadorned walls, everything nondescript. Axel and the pink-haired man stood off in the distance, at the opposite end of the space, on either side of a large desk, the room's only notable piece of furniture. It was ornate, seemed ancient, made of what looked like a single piece of dark-ringed wood.

Behind it, feet propped up on the desktop, arms bracing the back of his neck, sat…

…Demyx, hair still buzzed on the sides but the tresses a whole lot longer than Roxas remembered.

"Aww, c'mon," he said mildly. "It wasn't all that bad. They had okay music. And decent food. I kind of liked it."

Roxas saw Axel shoot the blond a dark look. "Yeah, well, you didn't have to wear the torture devices they call contact lenses. You weren't almost blown to pieces in a time-forsaken act of domestic terrorism."

As they continued their back-and-forth exchange, Roxas slid from his seated position onto his knees, then pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, using the shimmering walls of the enclosure for balance. He noted the circlet still secured to his wrist, remembered the anxiety it had induced when it had started to pulsate before everything else around him had gone to complete hell, the details of which were still fuzzy in his mind. It was like he was trying to remember a far-off dream but was still groggy after having just woken up.

No, he told himself. It hadn't been a dream. It was more like a memory, just scattered, out of reach from the distracting pounding in his head.

The circlet was still pulsing now, but it was a gentle, soothing rhythm, rather than the heated, insistent blue he remembered from before.

The pulses seemed to be fading by the second now, in tandem with the silvery confinement all around him.

Axel reached for the band keeping his dark hair in place at the back of his head at the same time that Roxas' enclosure dissolved completely. Two pairs of eyes turned toward him, but Roxas found himself fixated on the one person who hadn't noticed him yet, on the man who'd just released his hair from its banded tie.

Axel shook his head once, then again. Roxas gaped as with each passing movement the man's hair color changed, as if every successive shake of the man's head was giving it newfound life. Starting from the roots and working on down, it brightened, color initially morphing erratically until the whole of it filled out, from recognizable brown to a lurid, almost violent looking shade of red.

"Ah, you made it!"

Roxas might have ignored the words entirely, if Demyx hadn't followed them up with a staccato clap of his hands. The sound rang in Roxas' head, vision blurring out of focus as his temples began to throb in a way that was becoming increasingly familiar.

Swinging his legs off the desk, Demyx stood, straightening the long coat he was wearing, details an indistinct blur of black fabric and silver accompaniments in Roxas' current state. It looked out of place, strange and ominous, on someone who seemed suited to jeans and a t-shirt, or other more laid-back attire.

His eyes moved away from Demyx, over to the pink-haired man, then came to a rest on Axel. Bright green eyes returned his gaze, sharp tattooed marks beneath them drawing his attention as though pointing up at hair he knew should have been dark brown. Hair that had been the right color just few seconds earlier. For a moment, the pair regarded one another in silence, Axel sedate, Roxas subtly swaying, off-balance and still completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of unknown variables about the current situation. Red hair blurred in and out of focus, the color reminding him of a long-forgotten childhood toy. Green eyes seemed to dance, emerald orbs unencumbered by the physics of gravity as they flickered oddly at the creases along both sides.

And the tattoos… the tattoos reminded him of…

Glittering purple diamonds.

Oblivious to Roxas' internal musings, Demyx took a few steps toward him, offering the newcomer a wide, happy grin.

"It's seriously an honor," he said, forcing Roxas' tenuous grasp on something even remotely resembling focus away from Axel, away from the nebulous imagery of dreams recurring. Despite his disorientation, despite his increasing fear, as Demyx approached and reached out an arm as though intending to shake his hand, Roxas couldn't even muster the energy to flinch.

"Welcome home, Sora," the blond said, expression open, blue eyes dancing with apparent excitement.

Sora…?

There is so very much to learn.

No longer fully cognizant of his surroundings, Roxas began to shake, body trembling under the strain of all he'd experienced that day. Demyx's smile warped, altering from friendly to increasingly uncertain. Maybe even a little worried.

Then everything melted out of focus around him, lights dimming further, until only Roxas was left, alone in darkness.

Alone with that one, persistent voice at the back of his mind, and he was slipping away. Roxas was falling again.

Feckless boy. You understand so little.

o - o

Half-conscious, he felt himself lifted…

Strong, sure arms. Pulled away from the horror. Long, slender fingers. A soothing voice. Murmured tones.

Shimmering silvery silence, all around him. Something completely new.

Eyes still closed, Roxas groaned, sore muscles tightening, then releasing at uncomfortable, involuntary intervals.

He felt so vulnerable, so small in the man's arms. Still, he found himself anticipating the foreign words of the savior who was holding him.

"Pax, custos," the man said. This time, Roxas opened his mouth and finished the sentence for him, even though the words remained meaningless, their sentiment still unknown.

"Veniet tempus, veniet…"

"Interesting."

The voice seemed to be talking about him, if not directing itself specifically at him. It pulled him away from the haze, made him acutely aware that he was once again conscious and, if not totally mistaken, unrestrained but lying prone on his back.

Above him, Roxas heard a quiet sound, as though someone was considering something carefully. Speculating.

With considerable effort, he opened his eyes — and found himself only inches away from another man's face.

A reasonable reaction would have been to jerk away. After what he'd gone through, it wouldn't have been totally irrational to lash out, maybe scream for help.

The man was exuding such an air of calm that Roxas found himself simply returning the gaze, mute as he took in the single blue eye just inches from his own. The other half of the man's face was concealed by thick strands of purple-blue hair long enough in some places to occasionally brush up against one shoulder of the man's black coat. It wasn't all that dissimilar to the one Demyx had been sporting, Roxas took time to note.

The eye moved to one side, as though looking somewhere beyond Roxas. A moment later, the movement was followed by a few precisely spoken words.

"You didn't tell me he speaks Latin."

There was a faintly reproachful quality to the man's tone, as though he was displeased by the revelation.

"I didn't know. Maybe cut me a bit of slack here," a voice replied, tone immediately identifiable as Axel. Against his wishes, Roxas' heart fluttered, breathing increasing a noticeable margin as dueling impressions of the man seemed to war within his thoughts at a pace he couldn't even hope to keep up with in his current condition.

Except… yet again, there was something somewhat off. This time, in his present state of confusion, Roxas just couldn't quite put his finger on what.

"Is he gonna be alright?" another voice asked, entering the conversation. Roxas recognized it as Demyx, sounding as worried as he'd looked before everything had gone black in the room with the desk. Judging from a quick glance at his surroundings, Roxas surmised he'd been moved to someplace else, making him wonder just how long he'd even been out.

The man closest to Roxas turned, eyeing him with the scrutiny of a doctor.

Or maybe a juror. Was his fate in the process of being decided?

"Yes, of course," he said after a pause. Then, shooting off another admonitory look in what Roxas could only assume was Axel's general direction, he turned back to Roxas. "He's simply suffering the after-effects of being narcotized."

Roxas blinked, tried rather unsuccessfully to sit up. He managed to prop himself up onto quivering elbows before conceding that he wasn't going to manage anything further at the moment.

But… what had just been said? Was the guy saying he'd been drugged?

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Axel scowl, then cross his arms over his chest. "Go ahead and judge my methods," he said, tone cutting, eyes narrowed. "Feel free to pretend your abundant, omniscient wisdom would have helped at all given the situation I was put in. I'm an assassin, for fuck's sake, not a bloody babysitter."

Assassin?

Roxas' eyes widened at the same time that the man by his side raised one visible eyebrow. He let out a quiet scoff, clearly unimpressed, but didn't comment further.

The response seemed only to stoke Axel's ire. "You weren't there, Zexion," he said, each word clipped, sharp. "His schedule changed without notice and I had to come up with something. You should be thanking me that I managed to get him here in one fucking piece."

Roxas felt himself shudder at the fury behind Axel's words, an involuntary reaction as he remembered the vice-like grip that man had recently employed in an attempt to restrain him by the arm. Even Demyx had started inching slightly away from Axel, closer to Roxas' bedside, eyes darting between the other two men with obvious nervousness.

Roxas could only stare, attempting to process the words flung back and forth around him, while trying not to shake too visibly in the process. Holding his upper body's weight on trembling arms was proving to be a formidable challenge.

Who…who were these people? And why did he have the distinct feeling that it wasn't even English they were speaking?

"You want me to thank you." Roxas glanced at the man, Zexion, next to him. The words were more a quiet statement than an inquiry.

Nearby, Axel said nothing, but didn't drop the sullen expression.

"You brought him here in one piece, yes, Axel. For that I commend you." Zexion's voice remained steady although Roxas thought he noted a slight emphasis on the final two words, a subtle sign of sarcasm. "And in so doing," he continued, apparently not yet done, "he has arrived with bruises, cuts, completely roughed up, and suffering a rupture in his left tympanic membrane. And time only knows how much emotional damage he's sustained as a result of your methods, as you call them."

Zexion paused for a breath before launching back into his lecture. "That's not to mention necessitating the use of a time band." Here, the man's gaze traveled down to the metallic circlet still sitting snug against Roxas' wrist. "I shouldn't have to remind you of the limitations on their continued availability."

Axel dropped his arms, furling his fingers into fists at his sides. "That was Marluxia's doing."

Turning his back on Axel entirely, Zexion reached out a hand, gently pressing Roxas back into a lying position on the bed, expression reassuring, benign. "No, Axel." He let out a sigh, hand moving to the side of Roxas' face, toward his impaired ear. "That was you and your inability to keep the boy out of harm's way in the first place."

Although he could no longer see Axel, Roxas heard the man move. A moment later, the acrid, burning scent of smoke teased at the perimeters of his clouded senses.

"He was not supposed to have woken up until well after the Towers event." The words were spoken quietly, but there was a dangerous edge to them, one that made Roxas tense beneath the hands still moving in gentle motions over one side of his face.

Towers…something about the reference seemed vaguely upsetting, somewhat nauseating to consider. Roxas ran Axel's words back through his mind, trying to organize his muddled thoughts into something that made an iota of sense.

Suddenly, it came to Roxas, what else was different about Axel. And Demyx.

Axel's words… or, actually, not the words themselves. It was the way he was speaking them.

"Your accent," he said, voice cracking, straining to make itself audible after inhaling so much dust, after screaming his throat practically raw.

Above him, Zexion paused, turned back toward Axel and Demyx with a questioning expression. Making up the final few steps of distance between them, Roxas saw Demyx come into view at the edge of his line of sight.

"Sorry, what now?"

Roxas tried again. "Your accents," he said. "You're… they're just... different." In actuality, despite the unsettling feeling that no one here but him was speaking English, all three men sounded exactly like him. Like Americans.

"Oh. Yeah." Demyx leaned slightly forward, fingers thrumming the edge of Roxas' bed like he was playing an instrument. "About that…" He shot a guilty look upward, first to Zexion, then over to Axel who sometime in the interim had moved closer, expression more schooled into neutrality rather than furious, much to Roxas' considerable relief.

"Now that definitely wasn't me," Axel said. For a moment, his gaze dropped to Roxas who looked back, still in a daze, not wholly sure what his current expression was conveying, just entirely convinced this was a man it was worth the effort being frightened of. His only saving grace was how cloudy his mind still happened to be. If Axel had flustered him when he was in his own element, among friends and familiar settings, there were no words for what this red-haired, green-eyed veritable demon of a man was making him feel now.

That, coupled with the fact that, oh yeah, he was pretty sure he'd been abducted, that he was being held captive for reasons unknown. The realization certainly didn't help settle his nerves any, even if he wasn't currently being restrained.

"Yeah," Demyx said, still looking sheepish. An arm reached back, fingers running through the longer strands of blond hair at the back of his head. "I might've been a few years off when I programmed the accents into our interioria."

Roxas felt Zexion pause, his hands going still at the side of his face. Although he couldn't see Zexion's expression as he turned toward Demyx, Roxas found himself imagining the man's one visible eyebrow rising in response.

"How many years off?"

Shuffling in place a little, Demyx looked down at his feet. "Er, like, uh…hundred. Maybe a bit more."

"And once we'd made contact and realized the error, it wouldn't have made much sense to change it," Axel said, jumping in. "So, we became foreigners, said we were tourists, and a few other half-truths." One corner of his mouth turned slightly upward as though he found the situation humorous.

Another sigh, then Zexion turned back to Roxas. "You're lucky anyone was able to understand you at all." Then, directing his next words at Roxas for the first time during this entire affair, he said, "take a deep breath in. Let it out slowly."

As much as he wanted to protest, as much as Roxas wanted to push himself up and get the hell out of here, he found himself complying with the instructions. It was partially since he didn't know enough about his situation to competently plan his next move as much as it happened to be the feeling that he wasn't in anywhere near the physical condition to be able to even just sit up for longer than a few minutes at a time. Making an attempt to escape at the moment? Laughable, at best.

Plus, he didn't really want to test Axel's assertion that he was, in fact, some kind of assassin… which, by the way, what the actual fuck? It was like a line out of some poorly written B-movie action flick.

Or a scene from a dream he had never seemed able to totally shake...

As Roxas exhaled, Zexion's fingers moved again, palm pressing against the ear that had been injured. An odd sensation began to build up. Zexion's hand, though still warm, seemed to be producing cold air. The chill spread from his ear into the side of his face, before going deeper, into his nostrils, finally settling far in the back of his throat. Roxas sucked in another breath, then swallowed, tasted the lightest hint of peppermint.

"What did you just do?"

The question was quiet, Roxas still uncertain how his interjections into their conversation would be taken.

Zexion seemed nonplussed. "Your ear is in the process of healing. It should be fine in a few hours. What you're sensing now is a mere illusion to your central nervous system. Consider it a temporary reprieve from the pain during the internal process of reparation."

Reparation. Roxas blinked, a little confused. The meaning of that word fell closer to an atonement for a wrongdoing, rather than medical terminology related to healing. It was an odd choice of phrasing, he thought, to say the least.

Then again, what wasn't odd about this entire fucking situation he found himself in now?

It was possible that Zexion noticed Roxas' confusion, but he didn't acknowledge it further. Instead, he stood, scrutinizing Roxas as if surveying his work.

"The muscle soreness and bruises will remain," he said, albeit not unkindly. "I find they're a good reminder of one's mortality." He regarded Axel with a sharp look. "And an intimation of what continues to be at stake."

If Axel's expression changed in response to Zexion's pointed comment, Roxas ended up missing it, for at that moment, a fine mist seemed to permeate his surroundings in the wake of Zexion's retreat. The lighting dimmed, seemingly of its own volition. Without any inclination of his own that he wanted to go back to sleep, Roxas felt his eyelids become heavy.

He was vaguely aware of Demyx's continued presence nearby, clear blue eyes regarding him, concern still coloring his expression. "Just take it easy, Sora," the blond said. "Zexy is great at what he does. You'll be feeling more like yourself in no time."

The name made him bristle, half-cleared the fogginess from his mind as he acknowledged the discomfort he felt at being called it. Truth be told, Roxas wasn't entirely sure he wanted to be feeling more like himself if these people didn't even seem to know who he was to begin with.

"I'm not…" Roxas started to speak, but Demyx had already skipped away to the far end of the room, coming to a stop by Zexion. Nearby, a door slid open as though sensing their presence, and the pair departed without a further word.

And then there were two, Roxas realized with a sudden hike in anxiety: an injured, defenseless college student and, apparently, an assassin, even if just self-professed.

Too physically exhausted to lift his head, Roxas couldn't so much see Axel as sense his continued presence in the room. Without the constant pain in his ear and head, numbed by whatever it was Zexion had just done, there was far less to ground his thoughts. He was also far less freaked out than he probably should have been, as though his mind was in a state of enduring inertia. Not comfortable actually attempting sleep with Axel still so close, Roxas nevertheless closed his eyes. It helped keep the room from spinning, warping, twisting continually out of focus. Out of sight, out of mind, as well, he could only hope. As illogical as the thought was given the treatment he'd just apparently received, Roxas couldn't help but find himself thinking that if Axel was going to kill him, at least he wouldn't be forced to see it coming.

He heard Axel approach his bed, footsteps soft but audible. Unlike Demyx and Zexion in their long, dark coats, Axel still remained dressed in what Roxas last remembered of his New York street clothes.

Then nothing. Utter silence for a pregnant moment, until Roxas was tempted to open his eyes. At the same time, he was afraid of what he might see, what the man might be considering doing now that they were alone together while he was too incapacitated to defend himself.

Instead, Axel spoke, voice soft.

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way, you know. I was just following orders."

Did that sound like a hint of ...regret?

Surprised, Roxas opened his eyes before he had a chance to consider what he was doing. Red hair assaulted his vision. Having difficulty focusing, it almost looked like Axel's face was framed by a wild ring of fire. He tried to give the statements that had just been uttered genuine consideration, knew he should be attempting to parse their meaning. Yet his thoughts kept spiraling back to what had been said before they'd been left alone, how he felt every time he returned to that one name in particular.

"You've got the wrong person," Roxas said, only vaguely aware of the laborious, slurred nature of his current speech pattern. "You know that what Demyx called me… that's not my name."

Expression unreadable, Axel simply returned his gaze. One arm reached out, brushed the back of Roxas' hand. Before Roxas could pull it away, Axel had already taken a step back. "I need to head out," he said, rather than addressing Roxas' assertion. "Zexion will have my head if he so much as thinks I'm preventing your recovery. So get some rest, will ya?" Axel's eyes seemed to be looking through Roxas now as he spoke, like his thoughts were somewhere else entirely. He smiled to himself, the expression wry, more than a little knowing. "Believe me, kid, you're going to need as much of it as you can get." He made his way toward the exit, which slid open at his approach.

Craning his neck to keep the redhead in his line of sight, Roxas watched Axel retreat, mind still telling him he needed to be wary, should be observing everything in case it might be useful later. Axel stopped at the door. He paused before turning halfway back toward Roxas, taking one last look in his direction.

"And welcome to Time City," he said. Roxas noted the faint flicker at both sides of Axel's eyes as the man looked back his way. His smile was thinner now, seemed almost as though he was holding back something more akin to a grimace. "Or the hollow bastion of what once was Time City, if you wanna be technical."

Then Axel was gone, door clicking quietly shut in his wake. Head clouded, eyes still too unfocused to see with any real clarity, Roxas found himself alone once again. Alone and exhausted beyond measure, mind and body, both.