CHAPTER NINE: THE FEAR
"Oh, my, my, cold-hearted child, tell me how you feel
Just a grain in the morning air, dark shadow on the hill
Oh, my, my, cold-hearted child, tell me where it all falls
All this apathy you feel will make a fool of us all."
"The Fear" - Ben Howard
The emergency room waiting and exam area was a stark, uninspiring place to spend the better part of six hours. Two hours in, Roxas had already exhausted all conceivable positions to sit in a rigid chair without so much as an ounce of built-in lumbar support.
At first, he'd sat upright, under the assumption that the position would better serve to keep him more alert despite his fatigue. Soon after, he'd begun bouncing his legs, nervy little jerks of movement starting at his ankles that dwindled to almost infinitesimal by the time the actions reached his knees. His ease of natural movement had resulted in a guilt-ridden realization that the simple physical activity wasn't something his brother could even remotely manage in his current state. He'd consequently dropped his upper body forward, resting his chin on the upturned palms of both hands and supported by elbows rising up like the trunks of arm-sleeve-clad trees, if foliage ever could realistically exist in a color scheme of checkered white and black.
By the two-hour mark, Roxas had inverted the position, slouching back to match his spine with the severe, concave curve of the waiting room chair as much as he could physically manage short of performing an act of cringe-worthy contortion.
All the while, Sora sat in a wheelchair beside him, stock still with shoulders slightly rounded, exhaustion written plain across the slack muscles and downturned eyes that made up the totality of his present expression.
He hadn't been able to sleep, albeit not for lack of trying. Trying had involved laying out flat on his back, eyes closed and fingers of both hands intertwined atop the flat plane of his bare chest. It'd included deep breathing through the humidity, measured breaths, and an honest attempt at keeping his mind unencumbered of worries about family and friends. Because, really, the last thing he wanted to think about was failing out of school and becoming the self-fulfilling prophesy picture of a teenage drop-out his brother was so constantly inclined to warn him about.
When none of these efforts proved effective, Roxas had turned to a plastic baggy, to sky blue pills ensconced within it, specifically.
He'd heard the buzzing of a notification on his phone but didn't connect it enough to himself to consider checking it. Opting to ignore the irritant vibration in favor of staring at nothing, he wondered if the girl would reappear in much the same way he considered the possibility of a surprise quiz in Physics — not necessarily opposed to the idea in theory, but without overt enthusiasm for its impending presence just the same.
The girl hadn't come to him, and the momentary drone of his cellphone was soon forgotten amid the thickening fog of a rising narcotic influence.
"What's taking so long?"
Roxas looked over at Sora and considered the question that his brother was usually too polite to ask. Sora's voice sounded strained, and Roxas couldn't help but note how quick pain was to strip away pretense, couldn't avoid recognizing how it so effortlessly exposed a rawer form of self. He knew enough to hate the realization just as expeditiously as he'd first connected it as being relevant to himself. He despised what it had done to him, a gradual flaying of everything good and affable about his erstwhile self.
Even more than what it'd done to him, he loathed what a physical manifestation of the same agony was doing to Sora now, what it continued to do with cyclical frequency every time they had to take an unanticipated trip like this.
Disinclined to get lost in his own dark thoughts, Roxas rose up and out of his chair. All around them, people idled, expressions dull, postures hinting at uncomfortable. He turned to Sora.
"I'll see if I can get an update."
His brother remained still, no longer responsive, eyes trained on the floor in front of him.
In his current frame of mind, he couldn't say precisely when the phone had gone silent on his bedside table, just heeded the familiar sound of crutches and their erratic but steady approach with considerable disconnect as to how they might be relevant to him.
And another sound. Low and miserable, it was cut off by a choked interlude of silence he ultimately identified as his brother's shuddering inhale, no more than a room's length away from him, out in the upstairs hall.
Making a beeline over to the reception area, Roxas stepped up behind another person who it soon became clear was just about at the end of a very short tether.
"Can I get a ballpark estimate for when we'll be called in? We've been here almost two hours. This is ridiculous."
Yeah, Roxas thought. You and everyone else, pal. Welcome to non-life-threatening ER waitlist hell.
He listened to the receptionist's explanation about a multiple car pile-up something-or-another that was throwing off an already short-staffed ER. They were doing the best they could to accommodate everyone, but those more seriously injured were being examined first.
Translation: Nothing doing, y'all. Move along, and sit your impatient asses down.
Glancing at the clock above the reception desk, Roxas noted that not only had school already started almost an hour ago, he'd also forgotten to leave a note for Cloud asking that he call the admin office so he and Sora wouldn't end up marked as truant. At least Sora could probably afford one unexcused absence, he figured. Roxas, on the other hand...yeah, not so much.
This day just kept getting better and better.
Pulling out his phone, Roxas glanced at Sora still seated and unmoving across the room, then trudged over to a nearby hallway in search of a private place out of earshot where he could make another attempt at getting ahold of Cloud.
Crutches and owner both paused outside his door. For an indeterminate length of time, Roxas heard nothing but the sound of his own sweltered breathing, until he found himself blanking entirely about Sora's impending appearance. It could've been ninety seconds or an hour and a half for all he could discern before the door swung inward on protesting hinges without even the intimation of a knock to announce the room's newest presence.
Roxas sat up, tried to blink away the double vision of indistinct shapes and edges of his room's currently perceived makeup.
What's wrong?
He stared at Sora, expression vaguely expectant, not realizing he hadn't actually spoken out loud as his gaze fixed on the pained look his brother wasn't wholly capable of suppressing.
"Can I sleep here for the rest of the night?"
He couldn't remember saying yes, didn't much recall Sora's labored approach. One moment he was watching his brother, brown hair and narrow shoulders delineated by the worn wood of his doorframe, the next his back was pressed against the cool surface of his bedroom wall and Sora was curling up at the edge of the mattress, crutches laid out length-wise on the uneven floor in front of them both.
The rest came in flashes, in an offer to move to Sora's room to make use of a mattress with considerably more support, of Sora's quiet refusal with one shake of his head, cheek against sweat-dampened pillow and jutted shoulder bones lightly pressing against Roxas' sternum.
Despite his fatigue and dazed mental state, Roxas was still awake by the time Sora's breathing slowed, indicating that one of them had fallen asleep, at least.
Eventually, he must have slept some too, because eventually he woke to the sound of his brother's troubled murmuring. It wasn't until then that Roxas realized something truly was wrong, wasn't until the better visibility of Monday morning light that he got his first glimpse of the swollen discoloration running up nearly half the length of Sora's right leg.
The landline rang. And rang and rang, until the answering machine no one in his family bothered to check more than once a week clicked on. Two words into the recorded message, Roxas dropped the call, then flipped through his contact list to try Cloud's cell phone. Again.
He was sent to voicemail after one ring, just like it'd done when they'd first gotten to the ER, just like when he'd tried to contact Cloud before leaving home a few hours prior. Damned if Roxas knew where his brother was, although he could probably hazard an accurate guess. Damned if he usually cared when Cloud wasn't around on weekday mornings usually anyhow. Now though, he made a frustrated sound as he let out a breath, then left his first voice message of the day to go along with the handful of texts he'd been shooting off at random intervals all morning.
"What the hell happened?"
There was a moment of silence, Sora's shuddered breaths the room's only minor auditory disturbance beyond Roxas' lingering inquiry. "I stepped on it wrong trying to get to the bathroom. Twisted, maybe. I don't know." Sora's voice was low enough to be a whisper, eyes down, thin arms curled around himself. "I thought I just tweaked it earlier..."
Fighting exhaustion, cursing himself for poor pill-associated judgment, Roxas climbed over Sora, careful not to jostle him as he got out of bed. He reached for the nearby lamp, turned it on, and surveyed the injury in more concentrated light, tired eyes assessing, scrutinizing, until they came to one ineloquent but undebatable conclusion.
"Shit."
Shit, shit, shit, if he wanted to be exactly accurate.
Forcing down his increasing frustration, Roxas pocketed his phone and returned to the waiting room, schooling his features into as close to a stoic neutral as possible. Winding his way around chairs and other waiting room patrons, Roxas passed Sora, then lowered himself into the chair next to him.
Sora turned, his movements sluggish, eyes hinting at unfocused, and Roxas felt a rising swell of guilt. He tried to weigh that particular compunction against the likelihood that his brother would otherwise be in unmitigated pain.
It didn't make him feel any better knowing he'd done the best he could with the resources he'd had at his disposal.
"Soon now," he said, making a quick decision to aim for partial candor instead of hashing out unnecessary details. Glancing at Sora, noting the light tremors traveling the length of his body, Roxas' expression tightened. "Are you cold?"
Sora's features didn't change. "I don't know. I feel…"
Brows rose in expectation as Roxas waited for Sora to complete the sentence. The pause seemed to endure far longer than it should've while Sora searched for an appropriate word.
"Weird."
Yeah, Roxas surmised. This was definitely worth feeling guilty about. Because, at least as it related to Sora's current mental fog, this was one hundred percent his fault.
"Can you stand?"
The look of utter dismay Sora shot him was the only answer Roxas needed. Maybe if he'd gotten adequate sleep, maybe if he weren't as much under the influence of his own self-medicating habits, he could've held Sora's weight well enough to carry him down the stairs.
Or, maybe…
"Don't move." The directive was practically barked as Roxas sped out of the room, sprinting down the hall on surprisingly nimble feet, spurred on by a pang of worry for one of the bare handful of people he actually cared about.
Cloud's room was empty. A few steps downstairs and a peek into the lower level revealed it to be much the same: curtains drawn and dark. Devoid of any human presence. The same went for his mother's room, which was unusual considering she tended to sleep in until a little past their customary weekday departure for school.
What the hell time was it anyway?
With a heightened sense of misgiving, Roxas returned to his bedroom. Wide-eyed, Sora watched him from the bed as Roxas moved past him, reaching for his phone on the bedside table. He clicked it on, noting the early morning messages from Sora that he'd failed to answer and a few more recent texts from Hayner, not bothering to read any of them. He was more focused on the phone's digital clock, which listed the time as…
Fuck.
Without a word, Roxas leaned forward, chest pressing against his knees as he rummaged through the backpack he'd at least had the presence of mind to fill with a few supplies he thought might be useful for their journey. A moment later, he straightened, the oversized sweatshirt Sora'd been wearing out at the marshes a few days prior gripped in both hands.
"Here." Roxas extended his arms, transferring the soft material into Sora's lap.
Sora glanced down, his reaction time so much slower than Roxas was accustomed to. He uttered not a single expression of thanks, didn't have a witty return about Roxas acting too much like their mother. Sora just looked at the material, brows slightly furrowed as if trying to place where he'd last seen it.
It was in that instant that Roxas felt the urge to curl into himself, knees to chest, face buried in the folds of his arm sleeves, and just let himself give in and cry over the unfairness of all of this.
Unlocking his phone, Roxas shot off a brief message to Hayner, quickly apologizing for bailing on their ride that morning. He glanced at Sora who still hadn't moved or said another word, taking in his partially dressed state with a scrutinizing gaze.
"I'll be right back."
He exited his room, headed down the hall to Sora's, then angled his way toward the dresser, dropping to his knees and reaching for the lowest drawer. Unmindful of the neatly folded underwear and undershirts, Roxas rooted around until he found a pair of pajama bottoms. Grabbing a pair of socks and a white t-shirt for good measure, he paused only long enough to catch a glimpse of a sweatshirt hanging half off his brother's bed, one of its arms swaying in a light breeze from the window, a UC Berkeley logo half visible across its front.
Without a second thought, he made a quick swipe for the hoodie, then exited the room as he made his way back out into the hallway.
Once back in his room, he noted with a jerky, approving nod that Sora had managed to sit upright on his own. His expression was tense as he watched Roxas move around the room to grab his backpack, dumping out its academic contents to make room for the clothing he'd gathered. Roxas stuffed the extra fabric into his bag, then turned, pajama bottoms in hand as he made his way back over to Sora on the bed.
The pajama pants transferred hands, Roxas looking on just long enough to confirm Sora didn't need help before he turned back to his own dresser and set to work making himself marginally presentable.
It was nothing short of a relief when Sora slid the sweatshirt over his head. Roxas watched as he fiddled with adjusting the over-long sleeves into a comfortable position on his forearms, the cotton cuffs wide enough to fit an arm almost twice the narrow circumference of his brother's.
Noting the way the fabric bunched mid-way up his back, Roxas slid a hand over Sora's shoulders. "Lean forward a little."
Without a word, Sora complied, just enough for Roxas to tug the hoodie down to a more comfortable position on his brother's back before returning to his previous position in his own chair. Pulling his phone out, Roxas scanned the lock screen for messages. Then, seeing none, he took in the time and made the mental note that they were inching toward the three hour mark of sitting here doing nothing.
"Thanks."
He looked up, at first thinking the word had filtered into his awareness from a nearby conversation. Sora was looking at him, eyes still glassy but a lot more lucid than he'd been earlier. The smile, tired but discernible, greeted Roxas' own bleary eyes. A sudden tightness returned its vice-grip to his dry throat.
He looked down first, then shrugged.
"You should've told me you were hurt last night." His voice was curt, tone gruff. Out of the corner of his eye, Roxas noted Sora's enduring smile though, and knew his brother understood the underlying sentiment of a veiled 'you're welcome' when he heard one.
Even after Sora cleared the last step onto the first floor of their house without incident, Roxas wasn't convinced he hadn't imagined it out of sheer wishful thinking. But Sora was resourceful, and not above scooting down in a seated position step by individual step while Roxas paced the room, seeking out car keys, Cloud's emergency debit card, and anything else he thought might make the journey a little more manageable.
The mere fact that it was the keys to Cloud's old Chevy sedan that he'd found rather than those to the flatbed gave Roxas some idea of where his brother had likely gone after work. Not that the additional knowledge did shit-all to help him or Sora now. At the very least, the sedan would be a more comfortable ride on the forty mile journey to the nearest hospital that boasted even close to a knowledgeable medical staff.
And reliable. Driving the flatbed in an emergency was like playing a game of Russian roulette with a failure rate inching more toward fifty percent.
Once downstairs, Roxas helped Sora stand, propped the protesting screen door open with a coat stand while keeping one eye on his brother's teetering, unbalanced form. As he returned to Sora, Roxas bent his knees and braced himself to hold his brother's weight the distance it took get to the car, not willing to risk rolling the wheelchair over the uneven dirt and gravel of the Strife family's makeshift driveway. He felt trembling arms wrap around his neck and shoulders, Sora's thin legs dangling beneath the forearm Roxas was soon holding them up with.
He'd left Sora in the passenger seat only long enough to retrieve his wheelchair from its place nestled between the dining room table and a far corner wall. Making sure to lock up the house, Roxas returned to the car, hopped into the driver's seat, and forced himself to blink any lingering vestiges of somnolence from his mind as he mentally prepared himself for the hour long drive they both had ahead of them.
It wasn't until a solid twenty minutes later that he realized he'd forgotten to pack Sora's pain meds.
The first phone notification came from Hayner, and Roxas was half-tempted to ignore it in favor of continuing to stare off into space. With the added warmth of the sweatshirt and lingering influence of unauthorized sedatives, Sora had been dozing for the last few minutes. Roxas hardly noticed the weary glance his brother shot him as he pulled up his phone and scanned the short text message, before letting go of a harried sigh.
It was only after he got himself up that Roxas noticed Sora was awake, expression more dynamic and inquiring than it'd been an hour ago.
"I'll be right back," Roxas said. "Gotta make a call."
Teeth just visible as they worried over his bottom lip, Sora's eyes followed Roxas' rising movement. "Cloud?"
Shaking his head, Roxas looked back down at his phone. "Hayner."
"Oh." Sora's expression fell. "Please don't say too much about what happened?"
He knew this routine so well by now, Roxas had to bite back a sarcastic remark that wouldn't've served either of them under the current circumstances. "Wasn't gonna."
Making his way back out into a nearby hallway, Roxas had already clicked through and placed his call. Hayner picked up two rings later.
"Dude, what's up?" His voice crackled with the weak signal made worse by thick hospital walls, forcing Roxas to move the phone a few inches away from his ear with an aggrieved frown.
He wasted only few words in response. "Sora. I had to take him to Gardens."
There was a short silence, a shuffling static as though Hayner was moving the phone, and Roxas reminded himself to keep things brief lest his friend get caught making a call on school grounds and ended up having his device confiscated by an overzealous teacher.
"Is he okay?"
Roxas sighed. "I don't know yet. We've been here three fucking hours and haven't even been called into an exam room."
Roxas heard Hayner whistle under his breath. "That totally blows. Keep me updated?"
"Yeah, will do." Shooting a glance back over to check on Sora, Roxas nodded to himself, distracted. "Hey, let Kairi know what's up so she's not wondering about the ride situation. Pence is okay too. Otherwise, keep quiet. He doesn't want to make a scene, as usual."
"Right." Roxas could imagine the definitive bob of his friend's head. "Ping me when you know more. I've gotta get to lunch."
The call dropped at the same moment that Roxas heard Sora's name called in an inquiring feminine voice from near the reception area.
Fucking finally.
Face flushed, breaths increasingly shallow, it was becoming obvious that Sora's pain was escalating. Internally, Roxas berated himself for having made such a glaring oversight prior to heading out.
Of all the times not to have those goddamn pills on his mind.
He glanced at his brother. "How're you holding up?"
"I'm okay."
The car passed over an uneven section of the worn county road on the heels of Sora's words, and an involuntary, shuddered gasp sounded, despite a concerted effort at full-out suppression from the looks of it.
"The hell you are." Surveying the rearview mirror to make sure the road around them was clear, Roxas pulled over onto the dirt shoulder. The additional jostling from concrete to gravelly earth elicited another muffled whimper from the passenger seat, and Roxas silently cursed himself for contributing to Sora's rising discomfort.
He switched the car into neutral, pressed his foot onto the brake, then shoved his hand into his pocket, unmindful of the stinging his own finger injury induced at the unforgiving action. Chest heaving with the effort to keep quiet and calm, Sora watched as Roxas pulled out a ziplock baggy, eyeing the handful of blue capsules in it without apparent awareness of their significance or purpose.
Unbuckling his seatbelt, Roxas twisted, reaching for his backpack on the seat behind him. He pulled the bag toward him, unzipping it and grabbing a half-filled plastic water bottle at the same time he removed two of the pills from their plastic confines.
He offered both to Sora who looked back at him, brows quickly furrowing.
"Where'd you get those?"
"Does it matter? You obviously need 'em." Roxas shot his brother a pointed look.
When Sora didn't initially move, eyes still traveling between Roxas and the pills in his hand, Roxas made as though to drop them into his lap, leaving Sora scrambling to cup his hands and catch them.
"C'mon. They'll tide you over 'til we get to Gardens."
Expression still uncertain as he looked down at the unfamiliar medicine in his hands, Sora finally followed Roxas' directive, placing the capsules into his mouth. A moment later, under Roxas' watchful observation, Sora lifted the water bottle to his lips, tilted his head back, and swallowed.
"Sora Strife?"
"Here. We're here," Roxas called, passing the reception attendant with a slight wave on his way toward his brother. Sora had been making an attempt at maneuvering over to her, but an amalgam of pain, exhaustion, and the labyrinthine mess of still seated waiting room patrons had been an effective impediment.
Able to weave much more effortlessly between everyone on his two good legs, Roxas met Sora around the halfway point between where they'd been seated and the place the attendant was waiting. He offered Sora small smile and laid a hand on his brother's shoulder. Sora, in turn, reached up, sweatshirt sleeve sliding all the way down to his elbow as he clasped onto Roxas' hand, keeping it in place on his shoulder as he squeezed it lightly. Without a word, Roxas began to one-handedly navigate the wheelchair around the waiting room toward the young woman, completely oblivious to the hesitant expression she was shooting at both of them.
By the time they reached her, she was looking downright uncomfortable, eyes darting between both boys, then back down at the medical chart in her hand.
"I'm sorry." She offered a polite but uncertain smile. "Only immediate family members or legal spouses can accompany a patient into the exam room." Her voice was unnaturally high, the forced smile only adding to the increasing awkwardness of her words and posture.
Roxas stared at her, not following. In front of him, he could just make out a crease forming at the bridge of Sora's nose.
The attendant clasped her clipboard more tightly to her chest, then looked away from them both.
"You can just wait out here," she gestured past Roxas back to the waiting room, "until your…friend," she stumbled over the word, tone rising on the last word as though asking a question, "until his exam is over."
Eyes narrowing, still not wholly understanding what this woman was going on about, Roxas fixed his eyes on her. "Thanks, no. I'm going in with my brother."
"Your brother," she repeated, this time affording them both a closer look. By the time they came to rest on Sora, he was nodding, both sides of his mouth quivering with the effort to keep a level expression. "His name should be in my file's visitation list," he offered.
Looking down, she flipped through the first few pages, eyes traveling downward as Roxas watched with an increasingly perturbed expression. "Cloud?"
He shook his head, lips thinning.
"Oh." Her gaze dropped back to the paperwork. "Ventu—"
"Roxas," he interjected. If Sora hadn't still been holding onto one hand, he'd've been tempted to cross both arms over his chest in outright frustration. God as his witness, these people were a full load of useless.
The woman's face flushed an impressive shade of rosy red, which Roxas noted with increasing annoyance. Before he could think of anything biting to say in response, she turned away from him. "This way," she said, her words resuming the same strained, over-optimistic pitch. "Your room's the third door on the right."
Following, Roxas pushed Sora's chair forward, pace slower, eyes traveling over his brother's widening grin.
They were shown into a standard hospital exam room and told someone would be in to see them shortly. In the meantime, Roxas watched as the reception attendant made a hasty exit, shutting the door so quickly the sharp sound of wood against metal induced a startled flinch, the reaction wholly involuntary on his part.
Sora's laughter reached him a second later.
Turning and dropping without ceremony into a plastic chair just about as uncomfortable as what had been out in the waiting room, arms finally afforded the opportunity to cross over his chest, Roxas made a genuine attempt at assessing whether Sora's laughter was an underlying effect of Xion's pain meds.
"Okay, clue me in here. What exactly's so funny about any of this?"
It took Sora another few seconds before he was calm enough to answer.
"She thought we were partners."
Roxas quirked his head, then echoed the word, expression blank. "Partners…?"
"Yeah." Sora grinned. "You know, like boyfriends."
Then, as if to further illustrate, Sora bunched his sweater sleeve up to mid-bicep, curled his fingertips until they rounded out to touch his thumb, and raised his hand to his mouth. He gave his wrist a few rhythmic flicks, tongue pressing in the same measured motion against his opposite cheek.
"Oh, for the love of…." Roxas stared, realization finally dawning. "Christ."
As Sora dissolved into another fit of helpless giggles, this time it was Roxas who hid his face in the cupped palms of his hands. It was Roxas who couldn't quite manage to stave off the rising flush of color as it crept with deliberate persistence from his neck and into both mutinous cheeks.
o - o
By the time Cloud called, Roxas was in the hospital cafeteria, burning time while Sora was off getting his leg x-rayed. Thanks to his brother, his finger sported a real splint of medical-grade materials, with new stark-white tape securing it in place. Leave it Sora to insist that the nurse attend to Roxas' injury first before he'd agreed to change into a hospital gown and get wheeled up to the radiology department.
Roxas supposed he also had Sora to thank for the quickly devised explanation as to why he had unprescribed narcotics in his system. The nurse hadn't been particularly happy about that admission while performing intake, had fixed him with a scrutinizing look the moment it'd been Roxas who'd had to provide the name of the drug when Sora had been unable to do so. Her natural line of inquiring follow-up had been to ask where he'd gotten the drugs in the first place.
While Roxas' mind had gone tabula rasa blank, it had been Sora who'd pointed toward his finger, then explained his gym accident and the reason Roxas had painkillers for him to use in lieu of his own.
Something told him he wasn't going to enjoy the inevitable conversation about where he'd actually gotten the meds when Sora was in a better position to call him out on it.
His phone vibrated right around the time he was disposing of his finished cup of watery hospital coffee, right about precisely after he'd gone and shoved the last bite of a shit and sawdust mulch-esque power bar into his mouth. Still chewing with barely contained revulsion as he waited in line to pay for a bag of crackers he planned to hand over to Sora, Roxas pulled out his wallet along with the phone, shrugging the latter up to his ear to balance it on one hunched shoulder.
"I just got your message." The tension in his brother's voice was unmistakable, but Roxas glossed over it without comment.
"Mmphook wou lugged nuft."
"Excuse me?"
With an eye roll aimed at no one in particular, Roxas swallowed the remainder of the half-chewed protein goo, then repeated himself.
"I said, it took you long enough."
A moment of uncomfortable silence passed between them during which Roxas envisioned a dark glower on Cloud's end before his brother spoke again.
"Where are you?"
Eyes idly passing over the Twilight Gardens logo emblazoned on a napkin he'd snatched from the condiment bar earlier, Roxas stepped up to the register and dropped the bag of crackers in front of the cashier.
"TG Memorial."
"What?"
"That'll be $2.99," the cashier said, eyeing Roxas with a bored look.
"Hold on a sec." Unable to keep the phone up to his ear and rummage through his wallet at the same time, Roxas dropped his shoulder and let the phone slide into one hand. He just vaguely heard words of muffled protest across the line, which he ignored as he passed a debit card emblazoned with Cloud's name on over to the cashier.
"This is highway robbery, I hope you know. The packaging says it's a buck less than that."
She swiped his card down the metallic payment strip, then turned to him, sliding the card back across the counter. "It's capitalism, honey, at least while you're on hospital property." She shot him an insincere smile. "Have a nice day."
Yeah, easier said than done on that last one. Curbing the urge to flip her off, Roxas ambled his way back into the cafeteria, finally starting to feel a nice jittery kick from the coffee. It might've tasted like distilled swamp muck, but he supposed caffeine was caffeine as long as it jumpstarted his idling mental faculties.
"Roxas!"
From the distance between the phone in his hand and his nearest ear, the word sounded like it'd been uttered in a low, angry hiss. Considering that same distance in practical terms, however, it was much more likely that Cloud had yelled, voice a deep, frustrated baritone.
He brought the phone back up to his ear.
"Hmm?"
"Why in God's great name did you take him all the way to Gardens?!"
Roxas jerked the phone away from his ear, wincing at the volume of his brother's voice. With a sigh, he waited a good long beat to make sure Cloud was finished before bringing the phone back up closer to his face.
"Because," he said, shoving a shoulder and hip up hard against the double doors that led back down toward the ER exam rooms. "I thought he might need an MRI and Traverse U doctors are shit for brains when it comes to orthopedic anything."
Expecting another ringing string of words, Roxas kept the phone a few inches away from himself, but his explanation seemed to have hit home with Cloud. For a moment, there was only silence on the other end.
"So," Roxas continued, holding the phone screen up in front of his mouth as he traipsed down one hall after another, avoiding patients in wheelchairs and nurses scurrying around like their hair'd been set on fire, "Mom was gone by the time I found out he was hurt, and as far as I could tell, you never came home after work so I was effectively stuck for alternatives."
The observation was stated in a level tone, without an ounce of accusation. Just the same, Roxas could hear the contrition in his brother's voice when he next spoke.
"I went to the workshop to meet with Leon. Stayed the night at his place because we lost track of time."
"Of course." Roxas' voice turned sage. "Young love. We all know how it goes. I hope you had the foresight to use a condom."
This time Cloud sputtered, a handful of unintelligible words meeting his ears as Roxas found himself unable to fully suppress a smug grin.
"You've got a comeback for everything, boy, don'tcha?" Cloud's voice was low, tone in no uncertain terms implying mere distance alone was the only reason Roxas was getting away with half of the snark he was doling out at present.
Before Roxas could dig himself deeper by calling his brother's inherent heterosexuality further into question, Cloud changed the subject.
"It was that serious though?"
Biting his lip as he thought through the best way to reply, Roxas balled his free hand into a fist, vaguely aware of the plastic crinkling that followed, a direct result of the bag of crackers he'd forgotten he was still holding.
"Dunno," he finally replied. "It looked bad enough to be broken, but you know how he is about admitting to injuries. I didn't wanna play twenty questions with him so I packed us up and took off quick."
"Right." He heard a long exhale on the other end of the line. "That was probably for the best, yeah."
Good. With that cleared up, it was time to talk practicals. "I can wrangle us both doctor notes, but you'll need to call the school so we don't get marked truant."
"I can do that." Cloud's voice sounded tired. Resigned. Roxas didn't bother to comment on it.
As he passed the waiting and reception area, Roxas slowed to a stop at the corner of the hall a few doors down from the room where Sora had been assigned. The door was cracked open, just as they'd left it, indicating Sora hadn't returned yet.
"And by the by, I pinched your emergency debit, 'cause we're gonna need to fill up the car when we head home. I hope you didn't spend your last paycheck all on smokes or shitty light beer six packs."
"There's plenty in there for gas." Cloud's tone held a hint of warning, and Roxas found himself assessing just how many caustic remarks he had remaining before the next day's newspaper headline was destined to report on a creative form of long-distance fratricide perpetuated by an overworked 20-something on his little shit of a high school senior teen brother.
"How much longer until you two can head home?"
"Dunno," Roxas said again, scooting close enough to his brother's exam room to officially confirm it actually was empty. "He got taken up to radiology about twenty minutes ago. Could be hours before an actual medical professional shows up."
"Then I'm coming to get you. I can drop you off at school and stop by the admin office at the same time."
If Roxas had still been sipping coffee, he'd have done a spit-take. "What? No!"
"What, yes." Cloud's voice was firm. "You're a few months out from graduating and we're not giving those people any reason to hold you back."
"I want to stay here with Sora. He needs me." His voice was inching toward a full-out whine, but Roxas didn't care. It wasn't about missing school this time. Cloud should've known that outright.
"What he needs is a doctor. Quit your complaining. I'll make sure someone's here with him after we head out."
"Who? You've got work tonight."
Cloud didn't respond immediately. Instead, Roxas heard the muffled sounds of two people speaking, as though his brother had covered the phone's speaker with his hand.
When he came back on the line, Cloud offered an answer. "Leon'll come with me so I can get you to school. Said he'll make sure Sora's comfortable and drive him back when the doctor's through examining him."
Roxas momentarily balked but recovered quickly enough to fire off an irate response. "Oh, you are not subjecting him to an hour car ride with Leon after the day he's had. Why not just send him to Gitmo if you feel like torturing him?"
"Keep bitchin', I'll call in to work and make sure it's you Leon drives home. Want that instead?"
At that moment, Sora and a nurse came into view from around the hall's far corner, and Roxas clamped his mouth shut, turning to shoot an irritated look at no one in particular.
"I'll have you know this is grade-A bullshit no matter how thick you try'n slice it," he hissed back into the phone. "I've gotta go though. Get here quick, the both of you, how about?"
He dropped the call before he could get another earful from Cloud, this time for the overt subversion in his tone. Slipping the phone back into his pocket, Roxas sucked in a breath, then willed himself forward, down the hall, and back into the exam room.
Sora was being helped up onto a hybrid exam table-hospital bed, his leg wrapped in what looked like a larger version of the splint Roxas had recently acquired for his hand. Once situated, the attendant lifted a metal support bar on either side of him, Roxas watching as it clicked into a locked position. From the look on Sora's face as he tried to get comfortable, Roxas had a decent hunch that Xion's pills had already long past lost their effectiveness.
Just the same, Sora offered a polite smile in response to the murmured apology about the current wait-time to see an orthopedic specialist. Meanwhile, Roxas said nothing. At this point, he was too tired for niceties, had been for the better part of a year, come to think. He was also still irritated about the turn the conversation with Cloud had taken.
"Dr. Kimura will see you to go over the results of your x-rays as soon as she's available," the attendant continued, Roxas only half-listening as the woman gathered her paperwork and shuffled out of the room.
This time it was Sora who didn't respond. Roxas, in turn, took another breath in, then dropped his shoulders on the heels of a deep sigh. "I got ahold of Cloud. He should be here in about an hour or so with Le-" Finally noticing the stricken look on Sora's face, Roxas stopped mid-word.
"What?"
Sora swallowed and Roxas watched the rise and fall of his prominent Adam's apple as the muscles in his throat tensed up, then released in tandem. "I want a different doctor."
Roxas blinked, taken aback by the authoritative nature of his brother's statement. "Why?"
Sora shook his head but didn't elaborate. "Just, please, Roxas. Can you ask them to assign me someone else?"
Fingers rising to pinch the bridge of his nose, Roxas closed his eyes, trying to make sense of the request. His brain was slow, sluggish from an ongoing lack of sleep. Sora was usually so polite to whoever he got saddled with in these frequent ER scenarios, and he'd never made so much as a peep of complaint about anyone he'd been assigned to before.
Taking a moment to try to summon the words the attendant had spoken prior to her departure, his brain performed the mental version of a remonstrative flail.
Think, think, he goaded himself. He was trying to recall a couple fucking sentences of standard information, not an hour-long US history lecture; this shouldn't be so hard.
She'd mentioned the longer wait time, maybe, his mind offered. Okay, that was something.
Brought up the car pile-up, right? Yeah, definitely.
Something about the results of Sora's x-rays, too.
And, he finally realized, she'd given a name. Something that sounded vaguely familiar but foreign. A name too unpronounceable for him to have bothered committing to long-term memory a single week prior.
Eyes narrowing, Roxas fixed his brother with a critical look. "It's that new guy, isn't it? The transfer. That doctor is one of his parents."
Although he didn't speak, Sora seemed to shrink into himself, looking down, fingers curling into fists around the fabric of the UC Berkeley hoodie he'd apparently been holding onto since Roxas had first passed it to him in the waiting room.
"I just don't want him to know. At least not yet. Not secondhand."
The snide comment tickling the back of Roxas' throat dissolved in the face of Sora's increasingly wretched expression. He looked so small, seemed so vulnerable.
"You know, anyone who'd give two shits about this isn't worth even a minute of your time."
Sora shook his head again. He opened his mouth and Roxas waited for an additional explanation that never ended up coming. His eyes traveled over his brother, from the leg that was temporarily splinted but still visibly swollen to prominent kneecaps that peeked out from beneath an off-white hospital gown. He noted knobby elbows curling around the sweatshirt he'd pulled so close to his chest he had it nearly in an all-out hug. And a face, so much like his own, exhausted and slack, resigned to the physical discomfort he was likely still enduring this very second.
"Alright, fine." Roxas ran a hand through his hair. His fingers curled around a snarled cowlick. Frustrated, he tugged at it before turning toward the door. "I'll see what I can do."
Not waiting for a response, Roxas exited the exam room, heading in the direction opposite the cafeteria and intake area.
It'd been a few months since his last visit to Gardens' ER, but he was still adequately familiar with the hospital's layout, knew well enough that the nurses station would be his best bet at obtaining a doctor swap-out. There was also the added bonus of not having to overhear irate waiting room patrons closer to reception.
The nurses station was an oscillate wave of hospital scrubs, of blue and sea-foam green in equal numbers. Various medical professionals were present, some congregating around the raised counter, others rushing about, checking their schedules, passing clipboards back and forth, and answering persistently ringing internal phone lines. Roxas made his way up to the counter and sidled over to a seated woman with a nurses badged pinned to the chest pocket of her scrubs.
She hardly looked up at his approach.
"Reception is down the hall to your left."
Ignoring the implied directive, Roxas propped his arms up on the counter and took care to keep his tone relatively neutral. "We've already been assigned a room."
The woman glanced up, brows rising, as if silently telling him to get to the point. Curbing the urge to roll his eyes at the curt treatment and mentally bemoaning the waste of hard-earned taxpayer dollars when it came to county hospital customer service, Roxas quickly tried to figure out the best way to word his request.
"I'm trying to see about switching the doctor assigned to handle my brother's ankle injury today."
The woman looked back down, shuffling through a short stack of papers in front of her. "This isn't Pokemon cards, sweet-pea. You don't get to make trades."
Eyes slightly narrowing, Roxas tried again. "My brother's a regular. His usual attending should be examining him."
A flickered glance and the woman was looking up again. "And his name is…?"
"Sora." Now they were getting somewhere, Roxas ventured to hope. "Last name's Strife."
Pushing back from her chair, the woman rolled it over to a nearby computer, her hands a rapid-fire blur of typing a moment later. She looked up only once, to verify the name's spelling, before returning to the screen, a ring finger tabbing through so many screens of straight-up black background on blinding white text that Roxas' eyes were at risk of remaining permanently crossed by the end of it.
"His primary care physician isn't in today. Your brother was assigned to Dr. Ayumi Kimura who's performing ER rounds for orthopedic cases today."
Suppressing a frustrated sound before it could make its way out his mouth, Roxas offered a sharp nod. "I know. I'm asking if you can change it to someone else."
With a bored expression, the woman shrugged. "I can check. You should know that we're understaffed today because of the accident outside of Traverse though."
Considering these apathetic jackholes wouldn't let him forget it, he was well aware already, yeah.
Through sheer force of will and an unforgiving grind of teeth against the interior of his cheek, Roxas withheld his terse response. Personally, he didn't care if it'd been half of Cœur Paroisse that'd disappeared into a sinkhole at this point. He was tired, irritable, and just wanted to get this over with, knowing this request was the only modicum of comfort he could extend to Sora in their current situation.
At least potentially, anyway.
Watching as she disappeared into a back area, Roxas thrummed his injured finger hard against the plastic counter, trying to jog some sense into the sludge between his ears that had the audacity to pass itself off as brain matter at present. The new splint held up, was reinforced enough that he hardly felt anything from the action.
Awesome.
Despite his best efforts to keep his mind a level blank, he couldn't help but think that life wasn't meant to be this god-awful hard. Not for him, or Cloud. Not for Sora especially. His brother deserved this least of absolute all.
He's sick, frèr. That's all. Çé ça mo yê osi.
Roxas froze, wrist against the counter, fingers extended mid-thrum in the air.
God Almighty, please not now. He really didn't have the mental resources to deal with the girl on top of juggling myriad medical personnel.
Tensing a little, Roxas looked around, bleary eyes scanning the area for a flapper dress, for hair that toed the line between blonde and opaline white.
The hospital color scheme was similar to her usual attire. With vision already blurring the edges of objects even only a few feet away from him, and countless patients moving around in billowing off-white gowns, it would've been easy to miss the girl. In that sense, even though he hadn't seen her, Roxas wasn't convinced she wasn't somewhere nearby, possibly watching him, maybe waiting for the right moment to speak again.
"Are you there?" The question was whispered, but Roxas knew she'd be able to hear it. Knowing whether she'd reply was another matter entirely.
"Sir?"
Roxas heard the word, even marginally processed that it might be directed at him. Just the same, he didn't turn, still lost in the fog of thoughts about the girl, about Sora. Of how it seemed that his mere existence was ruining just about everything he came into contact with on such a consistent basis.
The tap on his shoulder caught his attention in a way that the salutation effectively hadn't.
Starting something noticeable, Roxas whirled, half-convinced the girl had somehow manifested corporeally.
Instead, it was another woman who stood before him. Nearby, on the other side of the counter, the nurse he'd first spoken to returned to her seat. A light tinkling of adolescent laughter reached his ears, its cadence otherworldly but familiar.
Neither woman was smiling at him, not even slightly. Yet Roxas felt as if he was being viewed with considerable ridicule. It left him nervy, more liable to snap at the smallest perceived provocation.
He shot both women an impatient look.
The newcomer stepped forward, introduced herself by her name and title. She was an interim administrator, in charge of patient scheduling something-or-another. "I was informed you'd requested a change in doctors?"
Roxas nodded but said nothing, wondering how many times he was going to have to repeat himself before the day was through.
"Unfortunately, the primary physician overseeing your brother's care here is out today. Dr. Kimura is a well regarded orthopedic specialist, however, and I can offer you personal assurances that Sora will be in excellent hands…"
While the woman continued extolling the virtues of his new classmate's mother, Roxas was quick to come to the conclusion that he was ultimately going to be screwed in being able to grant Sora's request if he didn't do something fast. Something possibly drastic.
"Look," he said, effectively cutting her off mid-sentence. "I don't care what third world country that woman got her degree from."
As the woman's face morphed from polite into an expression of caught off-guard surprise, Roxas bit back the urge to frown at the vitriol laced in the sentiment he'd just uttered. He may not have been one hundred percent amenable to outsiders showing up unannounced in Radiant Hollow but his full sum concern about where they'd moved from was less a positive integer than an outright, unequivocal zero.
But if being outwardly antagonistic was the path that'd get him closer to his ultimate goal and keep Sora happier in the process, Roxas was determined to barrel his way on down it, unmindful of the potential for third party collateral.
"Oh, she's not from-"
"And I frankly don't give a shit about her fancy, big city credentials," he continued, speaking over her explanation calmly but in a firm enough tone that the woman didn't seem inclined to talk above him. Drawl thickening as he got more into character, Roxas briefly wondered what Hayner would say if he could see his friend perpetuating such an overt stereotype of redneck-belligerent in such a public setting.
Oh well. Whatever.
"I don't want her anywhere near my brother," he said, tone leaving no room for argument. "Now go do the job you're gettin' paid for, how about, and reassign him to a white doctor."
He considered tacking on a comment about Aryan pride just for good measure, but from the looks of increasing discomfort on both women's faces, what he'd already said seemed to be having the desired effect.
Well, Roxas mused. If there was a hell, he was pretty sure he had already met its entry requirements long ago for any number of minor offenses. Might as well seal his fate this afternoon and add a dose of unbridled racism to his growing list of outright transgressions against the South's vision of a more egalitarian version of humanity. Kumbaya, motherfuckers.
He just hoped Sora never got wind of this, because in no uncertain terms, Roxas knew this wouldn't go over well with his brother, no matter how much he wanted to avoid seeing his friend's mother.
The scheduler cleared her throat, eyes traveling just about everywhere in the vicinity except to Roxas in front of her. "We'll, um. I'll see what can be done."
Yeah, Roxas thought. Thanks. You do that.
With one last uncertain glance his way, the woman retreated to a back office and Roxas was finally able to breathe a sigh of something akin to relief.
The girl's laughter filtered in around him again but this time Roxas accepted it, giving it purchase to engulf his auditory senses as he trudged on back toward Sora's exam room.
At least someone was finding humor in this situation, he thought darkly. It was just unfortunate it didn't happen to even remotely be him.
o - o
Six hours of waiting, half a dozen medical professionals cycling through at bare minimum, approaching near to thirty straight hours without adequate sleep, and Roxas was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything beyond the most crucial of happenings in the exam room around him.
There was the doctor (conspicuously not a new classmate's orthopedic specialist mother and very much a white guy), his resident assistant (who kept eyeing Sora like he was Christ's second coming of medical enigmas), and the X-ray results themselves (a dislocation rather than outright fracture). There was also the buzzing in his head, the sound of fluttering within his ears. The off-kilter sense that if he shifted even slightly from his place beside his brother's bed the floor might crumble away under his feet and leave him flailing, free-falling indefinitely.
There was also the relief when Sora was finally put on an IV, when the expression of physical discomfort ceded back to something more undefined and glassy-eyed, although the way his fingers rubbed nervous little circles against the cuff of the hoodie still in his possession wasn't lost on Roxas. He supposed he should just be relieved that holding onto that sweatshirt seemed to be providing some form of comfort and leave it at that.
Because this wasn't Sora's first dislocation; by extension, this scenario wasn't new for Roxas either. They understood the upcoming procedure, were both aware of its potential for added physical torment. The sedative would keep Sora calmer, at least. It'd help ensure he didn't tense as much during the resetting process.
It wouldn't keep him from avoiding the pain of a drawn-out recovery though. And it didn't do shit-all to soften the blow of knowing there was a very real chance this could happen again.
And again and again, just like Sora had been contending with for the past eighteen years — and, by necessary extension, the Strife family as a whole kept getting taken along for the ride as well.
Roxas watched the proceedings around him without really processing the doctor's explanation to Sora, without registering the presences of new assistants entering the room. At one point, he stood, probably at the request of someone on Sora's medical team. Later, he'd have no memory of who had spoken or if he'd moved into position by Sora's right shoulder out of residual habit. He saw his brother's splint removed, and he eyed the swollen, purpled skin of Sora's ankle without an ounce of squeamishness.
Through it all, Roxas couldn't help but wonder why it had to be Sora. Why did these sorts of insurmountable trials always end up happening to the people who deserved them least of all?
Or, even, why couldn't it have been him dealing with all this instead?
We're sick, mokin frèr. You're not.
He belongs here. You don't.
Roxas already knew. This time, in his current detached frame of mind, he didn't jolt, made no indication he'd heard her at all. He was resigned to let the girl speak her truths, to let them settle and spread through his limbs until they were just as much a part of him as the scars that prickled his war-torn skin.
A light touch brought him out of his thoughts, fingers brushing against the back of his hand, then twining themselves into his. Roxas looked down, studied the olive skin and compared it with the pale surface of his own. Eventually, his gaze moved to Sora, and blue eyes locked on their genetic match. Sora's were slightly unfocused but Roxas knew his brother was cogent enough to know what was going on. The tightening grip against his own hand that accompanied a soft joint-popping sound was further evidence of that vexing lucidity.
The sound was so subtle, it almost didn't seem worthy of association with the pain it brought along with it. It forced Roxas back to the afternoon he'd reset his own finger while waiting for the nurse in the school's admin office. He remembered the intermittent heat that spread up his forearm then back on down, recalled the growing knowledge that it should have hurt a hell of a lot more than his nerves had bothered to interpret for his mind to throw back at him.
As Sora squeezed his eyes shut, as he swallowed back a choked moan only half-successfully stifled, Roxas found himself wishing he'd moved to the other side of the bed. At least then his brother would've been gripping onto his own injured digit so they could in some way share this moment of unadulterated physical misery.
"Almost there," the doctor said, voice a low murmur. "You're doing great."
Exhaling a long, shuddered breath, eyes still closed, Sora's expression fell at the realization that they weren't done yet. His grip on Roxas' hand started to go slack.
It was Roxas who kept Sora's hand from loosening further this time, Roxas who offered a squeeze of supportive reassurance.
Running his tongue across dry lips, he took a breath in and forced himself to regain some of his wandering focus.
"Hey." The word rang unnaturally loud in the relative silence of the exam room, and Roxas momentarily faltered at the sound of his own voice. Annoyed with the current state his own high-strung disposition, Roxas forged on with increased purposefulness.
"Remember the keyblades?"
Sora's eyes fluttered at the question and Roxas saw oceans in them, shades deeper than Gulf Coast teal. He saw blue undulating, a gentle swell of shimmering waves that rose and fell in tune with the trembling that reverberated from Sora's body into Roxas' arm via the connection of their hands.
It's okay to cry. I know it hurts.
These were words he should be offering his brother, calm and encouraging. Instead, Roxas heard them in Sora's voice, remembered a time not so long ago when their positions had been effectively opposite. Back then, hardly a year ago, it'd been him holding in tears from the pain of a dislocated elbow. It'd been Roxas who'd had to grapple with a newfound understanding about how little IV sedatives truly ebbed the physical agony of a bone resetting into its proper, jointed position.
"Do you remember them?" Roxas asked again, determined to keep Sora's attention on him rather than directed at what was happening at his feet. "Do you remember the other worlds?"
Sora was looking at him, brows slightly furrowed as though trying to render the question into consequential meaning.
Slowly, he nodded. "Your favorite was Neverland."
"Yeah. And you thought that was a boring choice." Despite himself, Roxas' lips twitched into a slight grin.
Beside him, the corners of Sora's mouth rose into an attempt at a responding smile, quivering a little with the effort. Another soft pop and the expression dissolved. Blue eyes closed. This time, Sora didn't let go of his brother's hand, despite the strangled sound that worked its way up and out from the back of his throat.
The doctor sat back, surveyed Sora's ankle. "All done, although I'm going to put in an order for an MRI to ensure there's no soft tissue damage."
A nurse moved forward, new splint in hand, as the doctor stepped back and began a series of questions associated with the procedure that his resident was posed to answer. TG Memorial was a teaching hospital, Roxas knew. Generally, he was fine with it too. Right now though, he didn't want his brother hearing a play-by-play walkthrough of what had just occurred.
Reaching forward, he slid his free hand through Sora's hair, gently rubbing a soothing motion into an area of his brother's scalp. He noted the tremors as well as the tears, twin trails running down either side of his brother's face, but said nothing to bring attention to them.
"You were always more into the Pridelands, right?"
Sora's shaking slowed at the sound of Roxas' voice, his tremors gradually subsiding, although he didn't initially speak. A flash of movement and Roxas looked up in time to see a nurse swapping out the IV bag with another, probably a stronger sedative that would finally let Sora get some true rest until he got called up to orthopedics for his MRI. She took her leave from the room a moment later along with the rest of the attending ER staff.
"And Atlantica."
The words were quiet, voice soft but sure of itself. In that moment, Roxas wanted nothing more than to slide into bed with his brother, to curl up next to him and listen to his breathing become increasingly deeper, to feel the lingering tension start to drain out of his body.
Even though they were alone now, Roxas knew it wasn't realistic, that it'd just increase the likelihood of disturbing Sora when he inevitably had to get up and leave with Cloud.
He bent forward, the motion a little awkward with the metal bar of Sora's bed rising between them. Placing a light kiss against Sora's temple, Roxas inhaled his brother's familiar scent. It was sweat left over from his labored exertions earlier, and salty tears with just a hint of lavender, a reminder of their mother's body wash that Sora favored over the bar soap both of his brothers trended toward using during showers instead.
"I hate this…"
The words were quiet, the register in which they were spoken so genderless that Roxas hardly heard them, at first thinking the girl might have returned to him. He moved his face a few inches away, enough to see that Sora's eyes were cracked, slivers of blue against long lashes and flushed skin.
Roxas swallowed, emotion thickening the muscles in his throat. "I know."
I hate it too.
He straightened, saw Sora's eyes open a margin further as his brother fought against encroaching lethargy.
"I'm not leaving yet," Roxas said, his voice soothing, smooth. He turned, reached for the chair and slid it closer, then looked back at Sora. His brother's eyes were already closing again, their focus steadily abating before shutting completely.
Roxas pushed his chair as close to his brother's bed as possible, then saw Sora reach out, arm sliding between the metal grate, searching. Seeking completion.
He took his brother's fingers, guided them closer to his lap, held them between both of his hands as he rested his head on the bar that separated them. Only then did he allow himself to close his own eyes, to breathe a little easier and let his consciousness start drifting.
This was the scene Cloud entered into by the time he and Leon arrived at TG Memorial, both siblings sleeping in different positions, hands entwined together. This was the position from which he woke Roxas, his younger brother blinking himself back to awareness, expression speaking volumes more than any snarky remark could ever hope to. Without a word, Cloud followed Roxas' movement, watched as his brother reached for his school bag and transferred Sora's cell phone to Leon. Roxas turned back to Sora only once, to spread out an unfamiliar college logo hoodie from his neck down to his waist. In enduring silence, the two of them left Leon to watch over Sora, one mentally preparing to take on high school admin bureaucracy, the other resigned to try his best to get through the final two periods of school in as close to one mentally sound piece as possible.