Chapter Seven: Quicker

"Come here, stay with me

Stroke me by the hair

Because I would give anything, anything

to have you as my man"

It's early.
The sun hits the bed I've been cocooned in for what feels like years. The rays hit my flesh and sink there, deep within my bones and for once I feel motivated, some form of excited and determined to go and do something with this day, with every day.
My feet hit the floor and I stare out the window, my window. I'm just me in this moment, this moment where the sun is kissing my skin and I'm swimming in warmth and acceptance.
Summer.

"Come back to bed..."
A groan from my bed, belonging to those whose locks that look like they're on fire in the glitter of light. Axel hoists himself up a little, rubbing around his eyes and then through his hair. His skin wrinkles as he strains to safeguard his eyes from the intense light I've let loose in the room from throwing the curtains open, but it doesn't seem to help him much. He holds out his arms to me, something I've never really seen him do and out of curiosity I gaze at myself in the mirror on my wall. Am I still me?
The memories flash back to me as I gaze at the sick person staring back at me in the mirror. The sun doesn't feel as nice. In fact, maybe the heat is making me sick. My stomach lurches and I dreadfully close the blinds.
I don't recognize the emaciated figure looking back at me.

"Sleep'll help you," Axel's still trying to convince me, oblivious as he always is in the morning. "You can be a ray of light later in the day."
"Okay."

I don't bother now. I don't know what I'm getting help with. I'm so lost. I wonder how many years I've wandered through like this, and who has wandered through them. I'm glad Axel is here. I'm thankful. Even though I'm in this apartment, that's written under my name, it doesn't feel like it's mine. The clothes I'm wearing don't feel like they belong to me. The air I breathe is borrowed.
But Axel is my anchor.
As I slip into his heated embrace, listen to his calm and steady heartbeat, I just try to forget that I'm forgetting and I retrace what I think I know. Without asking, Axel runs his fingers through my hair, comforting me without even knowing I need it. I listen to his heavy breathing until I fall back to sleep, no matter how much I willed myself to stay awake.
For once, I wanted to just stay awake.

I don't know how long I was wandering through the maze of memories that felt they were anything but mine. As I slept and slept, and grew more and more comfortable in the steady dream that became my life, I grew to accept it as reality. I learned things about me, about who I was and who I'd hoped to be- ideas and concepts I'd worshiped for years were broken down until they meant nothing. What were countries? What right did some person have over me, regardless of uniform? What really separated me from anyone else? Why did anyone do anything that they did? Why would a God even matter?
There was such a sense of belonging there, deep inside of myself. I could feel life swell around me, the growth and decay of my cells, slowly letting go from the concrete that cemented me to the material world. I drifted through a sea of my own personal colors, in a language only I knew how to speak. Time bowed before me. I willed it to re-experience and to re-imagine, until my play toys and imaginings almost seemed better than anything I'd ever known.
From time to time, events would cycle to the surface of my consciousness, and I would become aware of things I was supposed to know. I started to become lucid at this point, although I was unsure as to why- I was completely happy locked away, with my imaginary Axel, the Axel who would never let go of my hand and we explored ourselves and we slept alongside each other until we nearly melted, became a single entity.
I would pretend and imagine the feeling of his hands scaling me and understanding me, finally, to be close to him in that way, the way I'd desired him to be for so long. We'd become so close, so close, but not close enough and I'd just crave until it was impossible to let go.
In my lucid moments I would cry. I was alone and in the same hospital bed. It was green. There was no one for me but that bed, that bed and the silence of over thought thoughts. I learned that if I readjusted the IV, I could be knocked out again and re invited to my intimate gathering that never-ended.
Some days, I could hear the wind trash against the window, embroided in the sound of my own heartbeat on the monitor, and my mind would turn against itself. I would go back through soggy moments of me and my mother until the one I'd tried so hard to forget- but was the only one I couldn't- floated in the surface like her corpse, along with questions : "Did you kill your mother?" "Are you sure?" "You're going to need to tell me the truth." "We can't charge him if we don't have anything against him." "The kid's just turned nineteen for Christ sake, you can't expect to send him to jail now, can you?" "There's no doubt he did it." "He isn't my brother! He's a killer!"
And I would feel my body writhe for the warmth of Axel or his soft voice that would tell me it was okay. The voice that could quell the flames that tore a part my insides, could direct my attention to him and only him. The sounds of rain slamming the window wouldn't be relevant. We could co-exist and we could be all we needed.

Other days I could hear his soft voice, the voice that would drag me to the surface. He would whisper me stories, the adventure stories we'd read when we were kids and sometimes he would collapse and just cry. I would try to touch him but I was always numb in his presence. I would become lucid and he would have gone, with nothing to show for it and I was left wondering if he was there or if it was another thing I was forcing myself to imagine. A new idea I'd made up to make myself happy, to try to exist in the world that didn't want me.
Sometimes He will talk to me and try to tell me what He knows. I'm the thirteenth player in His game, 'the unlucky one'. When He arrives I never have any strength left to question it. He tries to tell me that I've done things, that I've done all the things. He will flash me memories and make my skin crawl, and then calm me and lull me back to the confident ignorance, begging me to 'reach my full potential' and to 'realize that you have no heart'. I wonder if He is the source of this, but He pushes the thought away by distraction. He likes to call Axel eight, but who would have come after him to reach me, the Thirteenth? How many others could there have been? He tells me what He thinks I would know and nothing else, but the Eighth, 'Axel', isn't mine. From the stories He tries to tell me, this Axel has to be someone completely different.

Finally, I'm able to maintain wakefulness long enough to hold conversations with the two male nurses, both of whom commend me and hug me each time I seem to understand their thoughts. The blonde mulleted one brings me cupcakes and tells me about all the times 'that redhead' shows up and how he never had the heart to make him leave me. The bluenette who is never far from his side is quieter but kind. He's careful and calculated, yet, he seems a little bit freer when he sits with me and his close friend, the blonde. Together they ask me questions about the same things, then different, and back to the same. I can tell when I get the answers right when the blonde grins against his will.

Whenever I mention my mother, the blonde looks obviously concerned and the other frowns. They try to steer the conversation in different directions. I don't try to understand.

I can hear Axel from the nook where Demyx catches up on patients paperwork. Zexion is nearby, I can hear the soft click of Zexion's shoes as they hit the clean floor. He leans his head in to check on me and grins. I smile back. Over the past while, I'd been telling them everything about me without any qualms, and in return they'd told me everything about themselves. When I thought I was friendless, they'd walked in and now I had more close friends than I'd ever had before.
Zexion puts his index finger to guide me to be completely quiet and I know what he's thinking. I can hear Demyx bantering away to Axel, and both me and Zexion put our hands over our mouths and try not to burst out laughing from excitement and nerves as Axel nervously listens and makes short comments on whatever Demyx tells him.
"He's lucid?"
"Better than he was when you first brought him here, that's for sure."
"Is he happy?"
"He misses you."
There's a pause.
"You know he really cares about you, right?"
"I really care about Roxas, so that's good."
Now Demyx sighs a childish sigh. I can almost see his face.
"No, he really cares about you."
Again, Axel is oblivious. Zexion takes this as his cue and wanders towards the cramped office. I can barely hear his voice.
"Roxas seems to be almost awake now, Sir, if you'd like to go on in and see him."
And with that Axel is in my room in nearly a second flat. I've closed my eyes so it doesn't look suspicious and I try to be very quiet. I control my breathing, soaking in Axel before he even sits down in the orange colored plastic chair beside me. He's holding something in his hands, plastic or a balloon, that crinkles every time he moves. Then he settles into the chair and takes my hand in his.
"Roxas, it's over, it's okay, please, wake up."
I don't say anything out of curiosity. I wonder how many times he's said this to me.
"Roxas, I'm here. I'm always here." I can smell flowers that he's holding in his spare hand. He strokes his finger down the slopes of my fingertips and tries again. "I need you to wake up now. I need you."
I wait, unsure. I can feel my heart beating a mile per minute and I'm glad that they don't have me connected to the monitor at this very moment.
"The trials over, Sora's gone, you'll never see your dad again, it's all over."
He chokes, his tears hit the clean sheets of my bed as he continues, "I promised I'd take care of you, I promised. Our hearts are connected, remember? We're like stars."
That's it. I open my eyes, leap up, and pull him into my arms. The IVs snap out of my arm and pinch against my skin, since they're taped under thin band aids for movements like these. Axel doesn't breathe or speak or hug me back or anything, and as I let him go he pulls my face to his and he kisses me.
There's a mixture of shock and utter disbelief on his face as he pulls back quickly, and I'm sure I look the same way. He tries to speak but instead he reaches up to touch his own lips.
"I'm... you're...you..."
He stares at me, exhaling but never inhaling and I'm scared he's going to have a panic attack. Instead of doing the same, I show no restraint in not letting this moment be the moment that haunts me forever. I grasp his tie and pull his face closer to mine desperately. Our foreheads touch and I just whisper I know, I know, I know, and close my own eyes before our lips meet the second time.

So yeah, I apologize in advance for how messed up this chapter is. I hadn't written this fic in a long time and I got a lot of ideas as to where to take this when I had time to think about it. It'll make more sense sooner, don't worry. And yes, zemyx is going to happen. As well as GenesisxSepiroth, LarxeneXNamine and ZackXCloud. Give it time though, they'll probably end up being hospital staff or something, if anyone has any ideas I'd greatly appreciate them! Thanks again to everyone who reviewed, it makes my day. I hope you don't hate this chapter. :c 3 I love you all! THIS WHOLE STORY WILL PROBABLY ALL MAKE SENSE SOON... i hope...