They always say that you can never leave Oblivion, but the trick is figuring out how it keeps you. This is not a fairy-tale castle, where the spell must be broken or the guards defeated for everyone to live happily ever after.
Axel tried the last one, and all he got was a bloody house and twelve counts of manslaughter. Weirdly enough, people didn't start howling for his blood--the jury must have bought his insanity plea. Besides, who would've missed twelve nobodies living at the edge of the island?
They didn't even care about Roxas after all was said and done; their parents made a show of mourning their dead son, and being so extremely grateful to Riku and Sora "for at least saving Naminé," but when the cameras stopped rolling they shut up and stopped visiting his grave.
-
"Do Roxas a
favor," he says when he encounters them at the cemetery, ten years
overdue for a visit. They are genuinely startled, and Naminé's
mother steps back. "Stop pretending you care."
"Who are you to say that about my son?" Naminé's father asks indignantly.
"He never talked about you two for a second," he informs them. "Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days--not a single mention of Mommy and Daddy and what they'll do to that mean scary Ansem."
"Roxas was never that talkative in the first place," Naminé's father feebly argues, but stops when Axel clearly doesn't buy it.
"Yeah, well--even I knew when he just didn't care about something."
"You're one to talk," Naminé's mother says, and he can hear a prototype of Roxas' voice in her clipped bitterness. "If you knew him so well, then why did you kill him?"
It stumps Axel for a moment, but he flashes an achingly straight-razor grin. "Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief--for the rest of us, death will be relief."
He'd always liked Sweeney Todd, but Naminé's parents bolt as fast as their bright clothes will let them.
-
As usual, Roxas' grave is unattended. The flowers are so dead that they're crumbling in the wispy breeze of his trenchcoat. If it were anywhere besides a cemetery, Axel bets that even the grass would be wild and unmanaged.
"Hey, man."
No answer. He can't even feel Roxas' presence--he's probably still at Oblivion, worn-out and halfhearted like Axel.
"So, I wanted to go out for something besides groceries or beer," he continues easily, "and even if you're still pretending not to care, I just want you to…" The rest of the words stick in his throat for some reason.
"Know…" Ten years--ten fucking goddamn years and he still can't say it.
In typical rub-it-in fashion, Roxas finally comes over. There is a long, awkward silence as Axel struggles to keep going, with failed starts and stuttering like a teenager on a first date.
"No," he finally sighs. "Never mind."
Why the hell did you want me here if you chicken out on actually saying it?
"Shut up, you fairy," he snaps, as defensive as a threatened dog, but that doesn't make it any easier.
And Roxas' scornful disappointment hurts more than anything he's ever thrown at him.
-
Note: I hope this isn't depressing my readers as much as it is me. Beloved, in my opinion, had this running undercurrent of resentment vs. sadness underneath all the freaky ghost stuff--I've attempted to capture that feeling via Axel and Roxas' dynamics. Is it working?