CHAPTER NINETEEN
Axel became gradually aware of the world coming back into focus. It started with sound, voices nearby locked in debate. He opened his eyes and blinked several times to clear his blurred vision, finding himself still in the sub-basement with all the monitors. The overhead lights were off, but the lighting from the monitors and candles gave the room a strange, shadowy, flickering quality. Every other possible observation was pushed away quickly by an intense wave of dizzying heat.
He rolled over, apparently shoved unceremoniously to the side while everyone else tried to figure out what the fuck was going on, and rose with a groan to his hands and knees. Interrupting the conversation taking place, everyone turned to him as he pushed unsteadily to his feet. He swept the hair from his eyes and stood, swaying, blearily taking in the group, seeing Yuffie, Riku, Leon, Aerith, and… Roxas. Who looked… bruised, and angry. Axel's memories swirled into place in his skull, and he sagged a little, lowering his gaze.
"…How are you feeling?" Aerith asked cautiously, Axel dragging his eyes back up as he shifted unsteadily in place.
"Really… warm," he said, distantly.
He heard Roxas mutter, "Useless," which stung for as long as it took for Aerith to come over and place a chilled hand on his forehead, Axel leaning gratefully into the coolness.
"Your fever is lowering, slowly. For now." By the light of the monitors, she went and got him a cup of water. Axel, upon seeing where she had got it – a small kitchenette in the corner of the room – promptly stumbled past her and stuck his head under the running tap. Again. God, he hoped this was one of the last times. Letting it pour over his face and head, not just into his mouth, he cooled himself off, eyes clamped and mouth gulping.
When he finally drew back, satiated, cooler, slicking his wet hair back over his head, he turned, chin dripping, to see everyone… staring. He recovered his breath, leaning against the sink, and apologised hoarsely, "Sorry about that." He could see that everyone else was also feeling the effect of his heat, their faces looking a shiny, flushed, clothing at the minimal level while still maintaining modesty. Roxas was merely… glaring, so Axel, finding it hard to maintain eye contact with him, glanced instead at the others. "Um. Did I miss much?"
"Well, that depends on what you recall," Roxas delicately answered, and again, Axel wilted.
"I… I remember it all," he mumbled, standing awkwardly in place and just… feeling like shit.
"That's something," Aerith said, encouragingly, from beside Axel, where she had come to supervise his… head-dunking. Was it, though? He'd have kind have preferred some good, old-fashioned amnesia right about now. Roxas's long look only cemented this, as Axel proceeded to try and avoid his accusing gaze.
"So, uh. Where are we at?" Axel asked, rubbing the water from his eyes.
Leon was glowering, but for once, this wasn't about Axel. "We need to get to Cloud, immediately."
"You know that's a bad idea," Riku argued. "It's exactly what he wants."
"What… Cloud wants?" Axel asked, still off-kilter, crossing the room, body aching, to join them around a series of monitors, some of them showing the rooms of the building in infrared, while others were awash with static.
"Not Cloud," Aerith said quietly, reminding him, "Sephiroth."
"How… how do you know it's Sephiroth and not Xehanort again?" he asked, pressing a thumb and forefinger against his temples, which were hot as shit, and throbbing. God, what he wouldn't have given for a good blast of AC.
"Technically, we don't," Yuffie volunteered, earning a refreshed glare from Leon, "but we're making the assumption, since Sephiroth is kinda. Possessive."
"Of his toys," Leon clarified, acidly. "And what we need to do is stop caring about what Sephiroth wants, and start actually thinking about Cloud."
"Be sensible," Riku urged him. "If we go charging in, both Sephiroth and Xehanort get exactly what they want."
"Where's Ansem in all this?" Axel asked, throat already dry again, the pounding in his head only growing.
"…We don't know," Aerith said, with concern.
"Cid, too," Yuffie murmured. "We haven't located him yet."
"Yuffie and I were already in this room," Leon impatiently told him. "You were with Roxas, Aerith, and Riku. The ones currently unaccounted for are Ansem and Cid."
"There was that explosion, though," Yuffie pointed out. "Cid might have blown the entrance to his workshop."
"It is… very Cid," Riku admitted grimly, "but we can't contact him, because somebody has managed to jam all the communications within the building."
"That's gotta be ShinRa tech," Yuffie mumbled.
"And where's… Cloud?" Axel hesitantly asked. Leon pointed at one of the screens, Axel peering through the occasional static to see, in black and white, Cloud in Ansem's office. Just… sitting there, at his desk. Not moving. A great blade leaning against the shelf behind him.
Waiting.
"Well, that's… not not concerning," he remarked, uneasily.
"It's fucking Sephiroth, is what it is," Leon scowled, Axel hearing a thread of distress amidst his anger.
"And… why does Sephiroth do this to Cloud?" he asked, perplexed.
"To torment him," Leon grunted. "To make him hurt the people he cares about."
Drawing back at this, Axel turned first to Roxas, who wasn't talking to him, then to Aerith, who was probably more in the know anyway. "Why? Why would anyone...?"
"It's… just how they are," she wearily replied, Leon shaking his shaggy head and slamming a fist into the console of the closest monitor, making the entire setup shake.
"That's bullshit, and I don't accept it. I don't give a fuck about what happened in the past," he angrily ranted, the monitors glinting off his eyes, "we are in this cycle now, and Sephiroth needs to fuck off."
"They were also lovers for a while," Yuffie stage-whispered from behind her hand.
Leon glowered. "I don't think it's jealousy to not want to see Cloud used like a puppet again," he snapped at her, the girl falling guiltily silent. Leon looked back at the screen of Ansem's office, Cloud's black-and-white form at the desk with steepled fingers. He looked quite comfortable and relaxed, which itself was fairly… un-Cloud-like, Axel had to admit. He was starting to see the master behind the strings.
"Okay," he said slowly, "so what's the plan?"
"That's… what we've been discussing for a while now," Riku sighed. "We can't reach an agreement."
"This floor isn't going to stay safe forever," Leon stated. "They'll get through those doors if they want to."
"Which means," Riku frustratedly responded, "that they're waiting for us to give up and go to them. We could be fighting right here in this room, so why aren't we?" He looked around, his pale face lit eerily by the mingled artificial and natural lighting. "They want us to take the fight to them. They're planning something."
"And where's Ansem?" Yuffie asked, this one evidently an old question that no one had an answer to.
"…He knows we're watching him," Leon muttered, still glued to the screen showing Cloud. "He knows we can see him. We should just go to him, and get this over with."
"But it's not just Sephiroth," Aerith argued, worriedly.
"That's right," Riku agreed heavily. "It's a dual-pronged attack. We will be facing both Sephiroth, using Cloud as his proxy, and Xemnas's people."
"One of which is definitely Vexen," Roxas remarked with some bitterness, touching the red line on his face. Goddamn. The closeness with which that great, frozen spike had come to just… eradicating Roxas's fucking head was making Axel feel suddenly weak again.
"We have Axel this time, to try and counter Vexen."
Leon only got that far before Roxas cut him short. "Not an option."
"Why?" Axel croaked, and everyone's focus swung to the pair of them.
Roxas glared. "Because you're not reliable enough," he harshly answered. "You can set your hands on fire, well done. What else have you done, besides set a couple things alight you didn't really mean to, and slam my head into a wall?" Into the stillness that followed, he sniffed, "Not to mention the fact that you become useless immediately afterwards," and now Axel was starting to take exception.
"Hey," he started, finger rising.
"'Hey', nothing," Leon bit off between them, cutting the fight short before it could begin. "I don't care if he's useless afterwards, or whatever else he's done. We have more pressing matters right now." He held Roxas's gaze until the kid looked sullenly away. "If Axel is useful against Vexen," Leon went on, this time without argument, "we will utilise him, and we will be grateful to have a weapon against him." He met Axel's eyes. "Rest up while you can. We will be taking the fight to them." He looked pointedly at Riku, adding, "And we'll get Cloud back while we're at it."
Riku grimaced. "You don't even know what we'll be facing," he said, bleakly.
"Then we'll find out once we get there." Leon went to where his own great blade lay, waiting for him on an unused console. Picking it up, his thick arms accustomed to the weight and balance, he turned to the rest of them. "Prepare yourselves. We're not waiting for them to lose patience and come turn this into a death trap."
Riku sighed, as Leon's word became law and everyone started getting ready. From the end of her staff, Aerith took a small, dangling pouch and handed it to Yuffie. "I grabbed what I could from my locker," she said, apologetic over the fact that it was such a random assortment, "but use whatever works." Yuffie immediately squealed and hugged her.
"Spoiler!" she gasped, before emptying the pouch out onto the console in a collection of brightly-coloured packets. As Axel watched with some confusion, she said to him, "Aerith makes everything I use, and it's all from what she grows downstairs!"
"And… what do they do?" he asked, peering over her shoulder. Each of the packets was just a small, folded piece of paper containing – powders, by the looks of it. Yuffie was unwrapping, checking them, then rewrapping them so fast Axel barely had time to see.
"What don't they do?" the girl muttered, before her eyes glittered at the sight of a particularly dark-blue paper. "Ooh, a sleeper!" To Axel, she explained, "One of these from out of nowhere, and pow, your victim's asleep for hours."
"Uh… huh." Axel tilted his head as she tucked that one into her bra. The rest similarly vanished into various pouches, pockets, or tucked-away areas of her outfit, the console empty again in a second, with an excited Yuffie bouncing in place.
"Where do we think the other Nobodies could be?" Riku was asking Leon in a low voice, holding his own smaller, regular, but still lethal sword with its point resting on the ground.
Axel didn't get to hear his answer, because Roxas was beside him, suddenly bitching, "Gee, I wish I still had my blades."
Axel exhaled slowly, tiredly trying to conserve the total lack of strength he currently possessed. "I don't know what to tell you," he said, "except that, again, I am so sorry. It wasn't me. It was…"
"Lea, sure, I was there," Roxas tautly replied.
"And he was an asshole," Axel earnestly added. "I do not condone the actions of my… God Me."
Roxas was scowling, but he'd been the one to initiate the conversation. Axel waited. "…My whole head hurts," the blond eventually complained, Axel dipping his face. "Like, you could have fractured my skull with that shit. And your god said some really mean stuff to Demyx. Really mean."
At this, Axel shrunk in on himself a bit. "I know," he whispered, the shame and pain of it striking deep. Roxas glanced over, then sighed.
"At least he didn't die," he grudgingly allowed, Axel lifting his head slightly and looking at him. Roxas looked… pissed, still, but not necessarily with Axel… personally. And he was correct, for now. Demyx hadn't died. But Leon and company were about to head upstairs somewhere, with the apparent intention of ending the siege. That meant that Demyx wasn't necessarily out of harm's way yet.
One last time. Just for today.
He closed his eyes, breathed slowly, and carefully pulled the fire through his veins, more practiced at it now, controlling the way it radiated, keeping the temperature close to his body. Maybe he hadn't impressed Roxas much with his powers so far, but he was going to change that. He exhaled a single, hot breath, and the group briefly quietened, looking his way. Even Roxas was looking at him differently. It was one thing to be Lea; another thing to remember what he felt like in Axel's body. And that was a sensation that Axel remembered, along with all the nasty shit that had gone along with it.
"…I'm ready when everyone else is," he said, a slight huskiness to his voice, like the flames were in there, somewhere down inside him, and they were – only this time, it was Axel who was in control.
They all climbed the staircase to the elevators, the one that Axel and Roxas had arrived in holding steady with its card still inserted. The doors of the other shaft had been welded shut and wedged in place. The group piled inside, Leon hitting the button for Ansem's office. They travelled up in dead silence, knowing, as they went, that the enemy could clearly track their rise from the light-up counters above each set of elevator doors. Cloud, too, would know the moment they arrived, from the cheerful ding that accompanied each stop. There was no element of surprise, in addition to which they were playing right into the enemy's hands. Everyone knew it. They knew that the enemy knew it. The enemy knew that they knew. It was… one of those truths, maybe, that Aerith had mentioned. Maybe it was a song he could compose someday; the element of futility.
With a ding, the elevator car stopped, and opened its doors.
This room, unlike the others, was perfectly lit. It also… appeared to be empty. Ansem's desk was out of sight, beyond the water feature, and last they had seen Cloud had been sitting back there, but the rest of the room – it was vacant.
"This Sephiroth," Axel muttered to Leon, "he got an ego on him?"
"Fucker'd put Ansem to shame," Leon growled back, and the group cautiously spread out, making their way through Ansem's office a step at a time. Rounding the water feature, they found…
Nothing. Nobody was there.
Then Leon was rushing Axel with his gunblade, and he shrieked and ducked just as a bus-fucking-sized blade passed overhead, several sliced red hairs dropping to the ground. The strike would have cut him in half. As Axel froze at this realisation, Leon was roaring, parrying the sword that Cloud had swung before the man leapt back, crossing half the room in a single motion. The group spun to face him, Axel slowly standing from his crouched position, trying to convince his body to un-clench. He turned jerkily to see Cloud regarding them cockily, with smugness, yes, but also… hunger for their pain. He held the gigantic sword over his shoulder like it was nothing, those guns apparently not just for show.
Then Cloud's focus ticked to Axel's right, and he looked across to see – Roxas, who had evidently also rolled out of the way of Cloud's blade and was now singled out a short distance from the rest of them. Cloud considered him like you might look at a particularly bloody steak. Roxas, unable to shift through space in Ansem's sanctum, was already ducking as Cloud lunged for him.
And time.
Slowed.
Down.
Axel, his gaze on Roxas, changed from horror to wonder. He looked at Cloud, who had slowed almost to the point of standstill, then lifted his hand, and it – moved at normal speed, but seemed to shift, or blur, a minute flickering in and out of existence. He looked around at the others, who were still affected by – regular time. Everyone but… Roxas.
"I can't hold it long," he whispered into the void between time. It echoed through Axel's head, so he tried to take a step, and… he could move. Just a bit. Just for a moment. Just enough so that when he was returned to real time, Cloud was fucking floored by a superheated punch to the face. Axel then howled and also fell to the ground, not having accounted for the reverse momentum, his entire shoulder feeling like he'd run fist-first, straight-armed into a brick wall.
"That fucking hurts!" he bellowed from the floor, while Cloud rolled around and gurgled in a pool of his own blood. Everyone but Roxas was startled into stillness, the blond darting to Axel's side and hauling him up enough to loop his head under his uninjured shoulder and drag him away from Cloud. Was it Cloud? Or was it not Cloud? Axel was… he was in a lot of pain, and it was pissing him off. Expectantly, he looked at Leon and demanded, "Well?"
That did it. Everyone else snapped into action, responding and… adapting… to the new situation. Axel meanwhile started gasping for breath, eyelids fluttering, choking like he was going to vomit but having already given it all from Roxas's earlier kick, he just coughed up stomach acid. Roxas grabbed him by the shoulders, steadying him. "Axel?" Then, as his eyes rolled back, alarm growing, Roxas gave him a small shake. "Axel?"
He was clinging to consciousness. Clinging hard, because he was sick of this, he was sick of passing out like some fucking Victorian diva every time the god shit cropped up. But damn it, he was pretty sure he might have just travelled somewhere around the speed of light, and it was fucking him up pretty hard. He was dry-heaving, shivering, shaking, feeling like… like this was what disintegration must be like. Like he was everywhere and nowhere and all the spaces between, at every possible point in time. It was… gutting him.
"Help," he managed to pleadingly whisper, lips numb, losing himself fast. "Pixie… dust…"
Yuffie was panicking, sticking her hands into all sorts of places Axel didn't want to think about, but it was… losing meaning… thinking, that was. Thinking. Being. Existing. Someone was saying a word. Two syllables. Weird. One-two. One. Two. One.
Two.
One.
One.
One…
…No-
Roxas clapped sharply in his face, and Axel gasped like he'd surfaced from the deepest trenches of the planet's oceans, flailing for purchase, gripping Roxas so tightly it would leave bruises.
"You got hit by the butt of Cloud's sword," Roxas was saying steadily, Axel frantically trying to thread the words together into some semblance of understanding. "It knocked you out for a second. You got hit by the butt of Cloud's sword. It knocked you out for a second. You got hit," Axel was starting to calm down, starting to breathe slower, something about that voice… that voice…
And then he was hissing in pain, holding a hand over his head. He couldn't bring himself to touch it. All he knew was there had to be one hell of a lump there, because he had been slammed by the butt of Cloud's sword. He blinked around, and found that he was sitting up, Cloud was lying on his side, Leon temporarily binding his wrists and feet with their belts, Roxas and Aerith were crying, and some chick he'd never seen before was thundering towards them. Black hair, black eyes, she slammed to a halt when she reached them and demanded, "Is everyone all right?!"
The conscious members of the group stared at her. Then Aerith sobbed, "Tifa?" and went to hold her tightly.
"How'd you make it past the Nobodies?" Leon demanded, from beside the unconscious Cloud.
"There were only three guys there," she told them, eyebrows high. "You know, you totally could've taken three of them if you'd tried."
"We already know that at least one of those guys was down for the count," Leon told her flatly.
"So, I came across these two guys in the lobby," she amended, "and I was all like 'hey, what's with the lights, am I right?' and then I punched Vexen really, really hard, and he went down like." She made a small whistling sound and bent her forearm, crashing at the end like a tree completing its descent. Or a small bomb, perhaps. Axel blinked, as did everyone else. The woman shrugged. "Then I let the last one drag his buddies out, kicked him square in the ass for good measure, and tried to find you guys. But the sub-basement was blocked? So then," she flicked her hair, having to reach around Aerith to do so, Axel staring with some awe as she went on, "I started to get concerned, you know? Lights off, Nobodies in the lobby, usual sub-basement blocked off. That's pretty bad news, right? So I went to level two to check the locker room, and I found blood? Like on the wall, on the floor, so now I'm starting to panic, because everyone's cells are being jammed, but the only one I'd know who think to do that is Sephiroth, so then I got really worried, which is when I came up to Ansem's office, because, like, where else would Sephiroth be," Leon muttered it at the same time as Tifa said it, "right, exactly." Tifa nodded, her long hair swaying as she paused for breath. "And, well, that turned out to be right on the money." She swung her arms wistfully, apparently somewhat disappointed that she hadn't had a turn at Sephiroth while the chance had existed.
They all looked over at Cloud, who had yet to regain consciousness. "I'll get some rope," Leon muttered, and strode off.
"Um," Axel croaked, wondering why his voice felt so rough, "can I ask what just happened?"
Roxas was with him in an instant, checking him over. "Oh, no, don't tell me the hit gave you amnesia? Shit. Okay, first, how many fingers am I holding up?"
Axel squinted. "…Three?"
"Correct!" Roxas told him positively, Axel nodding along confusedly. He wasn't exactly…sure what was going on… but if Roxas was happy, then he was happy. "All right, Axel?" He pressed Axel's face so they were staring into one another's eyes. Speaking clearly, Roxas told him, "You were able to knock Cloud out, but not before he swung at us. Remember that?"
Axel closed his eyes and saw – a flash. A felling of hairs. "I remember that," he confirmed.
"When Cloud did that," Roxas told him, each word deliberate, "he also managed to hit you with the butt of his sword. Remember that?"
"I…" He hesitated.
Riku, listening in, interjected to say, "I saw it, too. Sephiroth, using Cloud, hit you with the butt of his sword." His expression turned sympathetic. "It must be painful." He darted a regretful glance Roxas's way, which Axel missed as his hand lifted back up.
He was muddled, but agreed , "Y-yeah. It hurts. A lot."
"Don't touch it!" Roxas warned him sharply, Axel nodded carefully and lowering it back down.
"After you've slept, the swelling on your head will have gone down," Roxas instructed. "When that happens, the pain will shift back to its original source in your shoulder. Axel, do you understand me?"
Axel winced as he did so, but he nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I understand." He lifted up his arms, frowning suddenly, wondering why they were streaked with sweat. Roxas hesitated, then placed his lips directly on Axel's ear and whispered, "I never said you were useless. You're not useless. You saved everyone. I'm sorry. I love you."
The ceiling was spinning, but Axel nodded, smiling slightly through his heavy breathing. He held that in his mind, the warmth, the affection, the yearning, the adoration. "I love you… too," he breathed, fighting for consciousness as his temperature skyrocketed.
Mercifully, the next word out of Roxas's mouth was, "Sleep."
The recently pixie-dusted, highly-suggestible Axel sagged in his arms, Roxas clinging to his deadweight form, kissing him shakily on the head. He rested his cheek on Axel's head, gazing at the others, listening to their murmurs, their mutters, and, ultimately, their whispers. The question which mustn't ever be erased.
Where was Ansem?