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If Lea had known that having a heart felt like a flower blossoming in his chest every day or like a seashell where you could hear the ocean crashing.
If Lea had known—
He writes it all down in the empty pages of Roxas’s old diary until there aren’t any empty pages left, and when that happens he gets a new journal and another one and another. For every day that passes that Roxas - Roxas and a girl - aren’t there, he writes things down so he doesn’t forget the feeling of it all.
Because so many years ago he’d had a heart. And then he didn’t. And now he does. And who’s to say that won’t change again ten years from now, ten months from now, ten days from now, tomorrow, tonight—
There are other journals, too, where Axel - Lea - ripped pages out. They’re just notebooks with their guts burned to a crisp, edges just left, loud when you listen and sharp when you look but brittle when you touch.
They’re filled with angry feelings and the sad things and the dark things he’d thought would’ve gone away with having a heart. But, they’re there, they’re almost amplified, they almost eat away at him but then—
But, then, Kairi smiles. And Sora yells. And Riku laughs in his quiet, oddly shy way.
And those things wash away those feelings like a wave over writing in the sand. And Lea still hasn’t been to the beach he can’t, not until—
Sora turns to him, feels him watching and he’s caught, afraid he'll be called out, embarrassed that everyone’s looking now, too.
“Soon,” he says. Soon. It was the first promise Sora made and Lea had doubted him at first. But, he knows that boy has the power, the heart, to make the impossible come true.
After all, Roxas had come from his heart, and if there’s one thing that Axel - Lea - is 100 percent sure of, it’s that Roxas with his strong, lithe hands had changed Lea’s world just as easily and stubbornly as Sora has done for all the worlds across this galaxy and the next.
He wonders if everyone feels like they have a stone in their chest, or if it's just him. Wonders if everyone has trouble getting out of bed in the morning under the weight of it all. Wonders if one day, it'll all just come easier and he won't have to hide the way he drags his feet some days, when the emptiness at his sides is just too heavy.
Late at night, Axel - Lea - mulls over the idea of apologizing to Sora. Bygone things. But, given the opportunity - he's almost ashamed at how he isn't ashamed - Lea would’ve sacrificed him just to see Roxas again. Would’ve given all this up. Just for a boy. And a girl.
Early in the morning, when the dawn creeps in, all blue and white and gray and none of the sunset red-orange-yellow he knows, Lea realizes. Sora would say, “You could’ve. But you didn’t.”
He could've. But he didn't.