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past lives couldn't ever hold me down
lost love is sweeter when it's finally found
i've got the strangest feeling
this isn't our first time around
~ BØRNS, past lives
All things considered, it’s pretty easy to say, I’d die for you.
It’s another thing entirely to actually put those words in motion — to fight against that instinctive hindbrain response to flee in the face of mortal danger instead of run toward it unabashedly. It’s doable, though, and the fatigue running through Axel’s body is one of the most real things he’s ever felt. Well, next to how he views his interpersonal relationships, but apparently that’s an entirely separate beast to tackle.
He made me feel like I had a heart, he’d told Roxas’s Somebody, and it was the truth. It really is a worthy sacrifice to ensure someone else can carry on when he cannot, though Axel can’t claim his motives are entirely selfless.
It’s a necessary evil to save Sora, who looks at him through eyes just as sharply blue as his, though now they’re carrying a weight that never graced Roxas’s irises. Sora being here means Roxas is essentially stuck in a prison, now, but at least he’ll live, in some way or another, and that makes all of this worth it.
Dying hurts like a bitch, though.
When Axel was a kid, he’d made a fatal mistake. It had seemed, at the time, a good idea to set one of his favorite songs as his phone’s wake-up alarm — he liked the song, and wouldn’t the familiar tune serve as a fairly comfortable way to ease himself out of unconsciousness every day?
(Spoiler alert: it hadn’t. He’d grown annoyed by the song’s intro roughly three days after his brilliant idea, but had been too stubborn at the time to change it. It served as an unpleasant wake up call for the majority of his formative years.)
Years later, he still can’t fucking listen to Sweet Child O’ Mine without flinching involuntarily. The first few recognizable bars of it send an uncomfortable chill coursing through his spine, and he’s quick to change the radio station or cycle through a few songs on a Spotify playlist to get the shitty taste out of his mouth whenever it pops up.
He knows better, now, but still can’t bring himself to like the shrill noise of one of his phone’s default alarm tones as it startles him into consciousness.
Hauling himself out of bed is a daunting task in and of itself, and he manages to do so about ten minutes before he has to leave to catch the bus and make it to his shift on time. That’s just enough time to scrub the gunk from his teeth perfunctorily with a toothbrush, tug on some clean(ish) jeans, and swipe an apple from the bowl resting on one of the counters of his tiny apartment’s kitchen before he jams his feet into well-worn Converse and heads out for the day.
It’s also just enough time to distract himself from the way his chest aches every time he wakes up, something caught between heartburn and the dull presence of a bruise when poked and prodded at. He’s been aware of it his entire life, but although it’s a familiar weight at this point, it doesn't mean Axel particularly enjoys thinking of why it exists at all.
Maybe, though. Maybe today will be the day.
It’s not, but the day does come a handful of weeks later, when Axel’s walking to the bus stop to catch his ride to work. (His license’s still suspended from that one time a cop caught him going 120 on the freeway, which is apparently illegal and not just worth a speeding ticket but a “reckless driving” violation, although he doesn’t quite get why. He’s a great driver, and was clearly doing just fine before the police officer had pulled him over.)
Anyway, the bus stop. The bus stop, which currently has a scowling blond staring at Axel with piercing blue eyes and the wrath of God (or whatever deity exists out there, he's not too picky) lurking in their depths.
Axel would recognize that face anywhere.
“Oh, hell no,” the blond snarls before he can get a word in edgewise, and his tone is furious enough that it freezes the words in Axel’s throat. Before his brain can really register it, the blond is spinning on his heel and storming down the sidewalk.
“Hey!” Axel says, voice overloud, but he can’t help it. His heart’s pounding hummingbird-fast in his chest at the encounter, and he has to talk louder than that so he can be heard — but honestly, he’s not even going to give him a chance to explain himself? “Wait—“
But the blond — Roxas, Roxas — has already booked it down the street and fuck, the bus is arriving, and he really can’t afford to be late to work again, and so Axel lets him go reluctantly.
Well. That’s not how he expected the reunion with his soulmate to go.
They’ve been playing a game of cat and mouse for eternity. Reincarnation is a tricky beast, not strictly adhering to things mortals must. It’s a nonlinear mess of different worlds and universes that collide and stray apart from one another, an amalgamation of every form of life that takes death and transforms it once again into the purest possible form: life.
Quite frankly, the entire process seems over-complicated and messy, and as a result, Axel doesn’t remember everything from every life he’s lived. He remembers some of the details, like the delicate bone structure of Roxas’s face and how the way he murmurs, I love you, can make Axel feel like he’s fucking floating on air, but—
All he really remembers, now, is the last time they were together, and then what felt like centuries of darkness. Centuries of floating in a haze of semi-consciousness, knowing there was something missing but not having the tangible emotions, heart, or body to go out and chase it.
So he’s pretty far behind the times, now.
No wonder Roxas is mad.
He dreams of darkness, of the throbbing emptiness in his chest, of smooth leather-clad fingers wrapping around the cold bite of metal weaponry.
He dreams of different worlds, where Roxas is a prince and then an angsty little high school teen and then a filthy peasant that kisses Axel and touches him with calloused hands and dirt underneath the beds of his nails. Every one is perfect, in its own way, and Axel doesn’t regret chasing after him every single time, desperate to see if this life is one where they can intertwine their fingers and love or if it’ll be one of the more challenging ones, where they’ll pass one another on the streets for just an instant and feel that soul-deep connection before it passes and they carry on their separate ways.
He dreams almost every night, and clings to the memories. Their memories.
Axel runs into Sora about a week after Roxas tried to kill him with a glare. It’s like all the pieces are falling back into place, now, which means that things will probably come to a head in the near future. The certainty of that is thrilling, yeah, but it’s also a little bit daunting.
“Do I know you?” he drawls, enjoying his private joke just in case he actually has gone insane and none of what’s crammed into his head is real. They’re inside a coffee shop, Axel’s fingers wrapped around a too-hot paper cup while Sora waits in line to order some live-saving caffeine.
Sora narrows his eyes, and there’s no mistaking his anger for anything but the wrath of a man who’s seen his twin be separated from his other half for a couple hundred years. “Real cute,” he says, crossing his arms. It’d almost be intimidating if Sora wasn’t half his height and the most adorable thing in a ten-mile radius. “Do you know how long it’s been?”
And — Axel does. Of course he does.
The thing about reincarnation is this: it doesn’t always work out in your favor.
Matter can’t be destroyed, not really, but whatever divine beings exist out there sure as shit are trying to give Axel a run for his money. He knows Roxas is his soulmate — that much was obvious, even from his first incarnation. It doesn’t matter that in some of their lives they don’t have souls, or that their names don’t always stay the same, or even that they don’t always end up together: it remains, forever, an unchangeable fact.
Axel and Roxas. Roxas and Axel. Red string of fate, and all that.
There seems to be a common thread (hah, hilarious) in all their lives, though, and it’s that Axel typically ends up sacrificing his everything for the love of his life. He's suffered torture at the hands of their mutual enemies and died thousands upon thousands of deaths to save Roxas's. To be frank, it’s kind of exhausting. Can anyone really blame him for wanting to take a break? He can only die for Roxas so many times before he needs some respite.
(Apparently, the answer is yes. Roxas is definitely begrudging him the decision right now.)
He’s just hoping to break the cycle, really.
“We’ve waited long enough, don’t you think?” Axel says, but Sora foregoes a response in favor of turning to the frazzled-looking barista behind the counter and putting his order in. Fair enough; Axel will try to wheedle some information out of him once he’s gotten a drink.
Sora must’ve become a mindreader since Axel last saw him, though, because once he’s done paying for his coffee — something way too sweet and topped with whipped cream, he’s sure — he waggles a finger at Axel. “No. Nope. This one’s on you, and I’m not helping you out at all.”
“Ouch,” he responds, mostly on autopilot. His mind is already preoccupied with thoughts of how to find Roxas again; if nothing else, Sora’s presence at a coffee shop within walking distance of Axel’s apartment has proven that the handful of them are definitely still linked. Roxas would never stray too far from Sora — they’re even more connected than he and Roxas are, really — so while it may not be easy getting Roxas to open up, it’s definitely within the realm of possibility.
Sora mutters something, and it drags Axel out of his musings. “—besides, I didn’t even know you could do that.”
“Me neither,” he confesses. Skipping a few lives isn’t something he’s heard of happening before, and the experience isn’t one he’s eager to repeat. As cliché as it sounds, life is pretty great — sure, he’s been given a shit hand of cards for far too many of his lives, but that’s part of the experience, right?
Sora grimaces. “I’d kill Riku. You probably can’t even imagine how hard it was for Roxas. I hardly can, and I was there for it.”
Ugh. Even the mention of Riku is enough to sour his mood; it takes a certain brand of person to handle his personality, and Axel’s definitely not on that particular short list.
“You’re still with him?” he asks, though it’s kind of a moot point. The whole… eternally bound soulmate thing, or whatever.
“We’re certainly doing a lot better than you are,” Sora says with something akin to a smirk. Then he’s moving to pick up his drink after the barista calls out his name.
Axel kind of spitefully wishes he hadn’t sacrificed himself for Sora, that one time. (It’s not true at all, not really, but the sentiment remains the same, because somehow over the last handful of lifetimes he’s forgotten just how much of a little shit he can be.)
He supposes he’s gotten enough information out of Sora to move forward with mission Find Roxas And Probably Apologize To Him Profusely, and mock salutes the brunet. “See you around.”
“Maybe,” Sora says before he sips his coffee, and then he’s walking out and leaving Axel alone with the cryptic word.
Hope’s an interesting thing. In one of his lives, long ago, he’d gone for decades without even knowing he was missing his other half. It had been a long life; memories of his previous existences hadn’t even cropped up until he was well into adulthood, always pushing off the ache within his chest as some form of heartburn, too ignorant to find the irony in such a belief.
But running into Roxas in that lifetime had been like presenting a starving man with an endless buffet. They’d had a good run, that time, and the years upon years of living without Roxas had paled in comparison to the handful he’d gotten to spend with him.
Life’s hard, there’s no denying that. In this one, Axel’s been on his own from an age far too early to be considered normal, but there’s no use lamenting the way things turned out. Not when he knows what possibilities lay ahead of him: the future is vastly more important than the past.
And maybe it’s been a couple lifetimes since he’s really lived, but his chest pain flares after his encounter with Roxas. It’s almost like it’s communicating with him, telling him to redouble his efforts so he doesn’t miss his chance.
Hope’s an interesting thing.
Axel can't seem to find Roxas again, no matter how hard he tries.
It hits him, probably too late, that what he’s done is a little… selfish. That maybe Roxas’s anger has a pretty solid foundation, and his actions have actually caused a rift that’s going to take some additional effort to mend.
He hasn’t seen Roxas in months. This has happened before, the two of them crossing paths just once in the entire span of a lifetime, and he prays this isn’t one of those lifetimes. He clings to the memory of running into Sora, hoping their close proximity means the red string of fate or whatever crap-ass thing tying them together hasn’t frayed entirely yet, but as the days pass, his optimism wanes.
It’s one thing to skip a few reincarnation cycles — to exist in the ether as a semi-conscious collection of thoughts for what seems like an endless period of time — but it’s another entirely to live a life without his other half. That’s something he’s not unfamiliar with, unfortunately, but time passes excruciatingly slowly in these lives as the ache in his chest builds up into something akin to physical pain.
He might have actually screwed this one up.
Ah, fuck.
It’s pure coincidence that Roxas walks into the restaurant Axel works at. He’s with his brother and a few of his friends that look vaguely familiar, and Axel knows he had absolutely no idea that this is where his apparently estranged soulmate spends most of his waking hours.
He looks good, decked out in a simple shirt and a tight pair of dark jeans, but even from across the restaurant Axel can tell he looks exhausted. A little too thin, a little too weary as he waits with his friends to be seated.
Axel’s stuck behind the bar for another — hour and seventeen minutes, according to his phone, which is just enough time for them to grab some food and maybe be done with it when he’s getting off work. It wouldn’t do to startle Rox just yet, though, and that’s why he slides to the ground as soon as their hostess starts moving toward one of the booths to seat the party. It wouldn't do to alert Roxas to his presence before they were even seated yet — he'd probably bolt.
“What the fuck,” his coworker says flatly as soon as his ass hits the floor, and Axel shoots her a grin.
“True love, Larx,” he responds. “You wouldn’t understand. Let me know when that blond at the front has been seated.”
“Nobody has any right looking so happy while sitting on the disgusting floor of our bar,” Larxene says, but she keeps her gaze level and nods when Roxas and Sora have been seated.
Axel rises to see they’re just out of his line of sight — he can see the brunette girl Roxas came in with, but the rest of them are in one of the booths that curves around the restaurant walls. Perfect.
Of course, the rest of his shift goes painfully slow alongside his knowledge that Roxas is here as well as Larxene’s knowledge that he’s smitten with “the scowly blond kid,” as she has so elegantly titled him. She entertains herself over the course of the next hour by trying to embarrass him about his "schoolboy crush," which is so far from the truth that Axel almost finds it amusing.
Time can only pass so slowly, though, and when he’s finally off, Axel double-checks the plain white buttondown he’s wearing for any drink stains before moving toward the booth where Roxas is currently seated.
“Rox,” he says, catching them just as they're all making to stand up and head out. “Can we talk for a minute?”
Sora eyes him like he’s a threat, but remains silent. Roxas looks displeased, though not completely hostile, which is as good of a sign as any.
“Is everything okay?” the brunette girl Axel could swear he’s seen before asks, looking between the two of them worriedly. She places a hand on his shoulder comfortingly, and Axel just barely refrains from rolling his eyes — physical signs of comfort have never been particularly effective in placating Roxas.
“It’s fine, Olette,” he says, shrugging her hand off. “I’ll catch up to you.” It's a double-edged sword: he's going to let Axel talk, but he's also implying that he'll be working on a deadline.
“Won’t be long,” Axel promises with a wink, but internally feels about half as confident as he looks. This whole communication thing never gets easier, not even with the person you know without a doubt is the one you’re meant to be with.
Axel’s technically off the clock, but he still leads Roxas into the employees-only area, where they have a handful of lockers to put personal stuff and a private bathroom.
“What do you want?” Roxas asks flatly when they’re finally alone.
“I missed you,” he starts, which proves to be the absolute worst thing to say as Roxas tenses and looks at him with a mixture of disbelief and rage.
“You missed me?” he spits, hands balled into fists at his sides. “That’s really rich coming from you, Axel. What do you think I did for two hundred years?”
Ah, fuck. Somehow he’s forgotten exactly how volatile Roxas can get when provoked. “That’s not — look,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. There’s still gel in it, slicking it back, and his fingers catch on the stiff strands. “I was trying to change us—”
“Glad you saw fit to fuck with our relationship without telling me about it.”
“Jesus, Rox, you know not like that.” Axel’s getting frustrated; nothing’s coming out right.
“Do you know what it’s like?” Roxas asks, and his eyes aren’t meeting Axel’s anymore. “I looked for you, and couldn't find you anywhere. More than once. I thought you were gone. And all I’ve had is Sora, who doesn’t have a s—“ and it’s like he doesn’t even want to say the word, fuck “—soulmate that just fucks off and abandons him, so I felt like I was dying for two lifetimes while you were, what? On your own doing who knows what?”
“I wasn't—” It wasn’t like that. He can't quite think rationally, not face-to-face with Roxas's anger. Why can’t he get that across that existing in nothingness was worse even than this conversation right now—
“No, Axel, I’m mad. And... and you can’t just waltz back into my life — this life — like nothing happened. It doesn’t work like that.”
“You can’t keep me in the doghouse forever,” he tries, but doesn’t quite manage to get out the We miss each other too much before Roxas looks at him, something discernible in his eyes even to the one person who knows him better than any fucking human on Earth, and then he turns to walk away again.
“If that’s a fucking challenge, you’re on,” he tosses over his shoulder, and even through the hurt and the lump in his throat Axel can’t help but think, God, I love him.
Every life, he always wonders if soulmates share the same dreams. If, every night, they’re treated to the same movie of eternal memories, or if it’s something that happens on an individual basis. Does Roxas dream different lives than Axel, or is the thrum of their connection so tightly bound that even when they’re unconscious they see the same memories flashing through their minds?
He’s pretty sure he’s asked Roxas, before, but he can never seem to remember the answer as he jumps from life to life. It’s one of the things that always gets lost in the ether, forgotten as soon as their life-force diminishes into nothing before it spawns anew, like a phoenix from the ashes.
His dreams have always captivated him, serving as reminders of who he was (and is) but they become duller after Roxas rebuffs him. Almost like he’s being punished, he thinks as the memories dim and flicker. He still clings to the good ones, as rare as they are, and they're enough to fuel him as he goes through the motions.
Axel’s not sure how much time passes, in all honesty. Life continues on, as it always does, but Axel feels more like a cog in a machine than a living person. Only the persistent burn in his chest — his heart, really — reminds him of what he doesn’t have and might’ve potentially lost, but the pain’s a reminder that he never really gets used to.
This is the worst part of his lives, sometimes.
The next time it happens, Axel’s not stupid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth. He understands Roxas’s anger on a more visceral level now that he’s been isolated from him for so long, and this isn’t something he can pass up on.
Roxas is walking down the street toward the local college, headphones perched atop his head and hands deep in his hoodie’s pocket. He’s wearing a heavy-looking backpack, and for a split second Axel envisions being hit by it as a result of interrupting what is clearly the march of an exhausted college student. It'd probably hurt, and he knows he risk facing Roxas's ire once again if he catches him off-guard, but...
He has to. There's no question.
Once he's caught up to Roxas's quick pace, Axel tugs the headphones down and off of Roxas’s ears. He turns to glare at him and is halfway through a What the fuck before Axel says, “Sorry, I’m sorry, but — just one more chance?”
He’s basically pleading at this point, but Roxas hesitates for a moment before relenting with a terse nod. “Keep it short, I have class in a couple minutes.”
“I don’t remember everything,” Axel starts, and once he begins there's no way he can stop, not with the feelings that have been festering in his chest for months, “but I remember dying for you more times than I can count. And it’s like, I don’t mind it, Rox, I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t worth it to me, but it gets exhausting sometimes. I want to live for you, live with you. And I don’t know if we’re just perpetually doomed to sacrifice fucking everything for all eternity, but I love you. You know that has to be the only constant we’ve got, and I thought — maybe, if I could take, I don’t know, some kind of break, then we could reset the score. Maybe we could both finally live. Together.”
It’s silent for too long — the only sound Axel can hear beside the thud of his heartbeat is the tinny music coming from Roxas’s headphones. He hopes his word vomit isn’t the last thing he’ll ever get to say to the love of his eternal lives.
“But you didn’t tell me any of this,” Roxas says finally. “Idiot.”
“Shot through the heart,” Axel says, holding a hand up to his chest in a weak attempt at mocking the insult. Calling him names is definitely a step up from not talking to him at all. “I didn’t, ah, really have the time to settle down and have a quick chat with you before my last whole dying thing.”
“At least we have them this time,” Roxas mutters under his breath, and then Axel’s huffing an amused laugh before he can really think about it. He was usually the one to make jokes like that, so it has to be a good sign that he’s obviously rubbed off on Roxas—
“Ugh,” Roxas groans, and there — there’s something other than anger finally peeking through, flooding Axel with the reminder of the fact that this is the man he would die for in any life.
Axel offers a tentative smile.
“Fuck. You asshole, fine—" and then Roxas is grabbing at the fabric of Axel’s hoodie and hauling him in close for a kiss, and suddenly, swiftly, everything’s perfect.
Roxas tastes like eternity. The ache falls away, overwhelmed by a rush of something so powerful Axel is certain it must be the sheer overwhelming amount of love he feels. He kisses back with fervor, and it feels like coming home.
“Don’t you ever fucking pull that shit again,” Roxas murmurs into his skin, weeks after. It’s a weird time of day: too late for them to reasonably get up and pretend to be productive, but too early to consider doing something like sleep for the night. Besides, they’ve done nothing all day.
They should probably get out of bed at some point. Probably.
Axel doesn’t have work today, though, and it’s Saturday, so Roxas is free from the shackles of college classes. Their motivations to move are not exceptionally great.
“Sorry,” he responds, and means it. “I was doing it for us, though.”
Roxas buries his face in the space between Axel’s chest and arm and doesn’t speak for a long time. When he does, it’s soft, breath huffing against Axel’s bare skin. “It’s always worth it, right? Even when it sucks.”
“Every single time,” Axel swears immediately and honestly. Obviously, his corporeal form doesn’t keep the battle scars and the wounds from his previous lives, but being in such close proximity to Roxas helps him remember, and he glances down at his body and sees the phantom injuries he’s sustained over centuries. “But I’d rather live with you than die for you, all the same.”
“Ugh,” Roxas says like he’s off-put by the mushy words, but Axel can see a smile quirking up his lips. “That’s too domestic and boring.”
“Oh no,” he mock-gasps. “Will you leave me if I stop being interesting?”
Roxas opts to blow a raspberry into his stomach instead of responding, and Axel grins in the darkness. This life is starting to feel lucky — like maybe he’s finally broken the stupid curse or whatever that dictates he needs to die some horrible death or make some grand sacrifice to prove that he loves the blond nestled up against him.
They always live their lives to the fullest, but this time around is starting to feel extraordinary.