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The night after the fight Axel closed his eyes and ears to the crashing of waves on a jagged shore. His voice was harsh and questioning as it was thrown into the salty air.
Where are we?
We. Wasn't he alone?
His mind was surprised to hear an answer. His body wasn't. He remained slouching in the warm sand.
We're at the beach.
What it would look like had DiZ created it?
I guess, was Roxas' reply.
Axel squinted into the sun. There was something very wrong about Roxas being here.
I fought you - you won. Shouldn't you be off somewhere in the mansion finding answers?
Roxas sat in the sand next to him and cocked his head. There was something very wrong with this.
I only found more questions.
Roxas was looking at him funny. Axel could tell this was the Roxas that could remember him. A Roxas that could fill an ocean with his sorrow if he was allowed any. A Roxas that had no path that could be his own.
A Roxas that glowed with the setting of the sun.
Axel could see the painted skyline through Roxas' hair, could see the ripples of the waves at the edge of his cheek.
Axel's chest suddenly felt as empty as it was always described to be.
I could give you answers.
There was a slow smile against the waves.
I'm sorry Axel. It's too late for questioning.
Roxas leaned in close and let his breathing soothe against Axel's chin.
But it was only the salty breath of the ocean that touched Axel's lips and a whisper was carried out by the breeze.
...see you in the next life.
*
Axel watches Roxas asleep at night. His hand curls on Roxas' chest and he swears he can feel the rhythmic beating of that thing which should not exist.
When Roxas turns Axel folds his hand against the dip in Roxas' side. He waits, waits, and waits, and leans, slowly, to brush his lips against XIII's temple. He breathes against a cheek.
"We can feel," he murmurs. "What else could this be?" because there is always a burning in Axel's chest that flares hotter than any heat he could create. A terrible ache that shoots through him.
"God, I hope you can feel this."
"Feel what?"
This is the time that Roxas wakes up. Always only opens one eye.
But then Axel pushes himself off, curls away from him, and turns out the light so he can burn alone. Don't bother Roxas. He only thinks he wants to feel.
In the dark Axel can't tell whether or not his eyes are open. He supposes it's the same swallowing darkness that he feels inside. Roxas never remembers in the morning even though he always wakes up before Axel moves to hit the switch.
In the dark, Axel hopes that Roxas won't one day forget about him all together.
*
The city lights surround them. Stark green through darkness.
"You're not really leaving." It's a statement, confident and harsh.
The glowing burns Roxas' eyes. He shuts them. Breathes.
"There's nothing for me here."
It is an equally resolute statement that does not need a reply. It gets one anyways. Roxas does not open his eyes.
"I'm here."
He will not open his eyes.
"Axel."
"Am I nothing?"
A sigh and then, "We both are."
There is silence now except for the buzzing lights. Roxas remains blind to them. He can't stand that harsh green.
Minutes. Hours. Finally he opens his eyes again but he's turned. The lights play tricks on his hair in the same way that Axel's mind often plays tricks on him.
Axel's voice is rough. "You know that's not..."
"Nothing cannot exist with nothing," Roxas breathes. "Nothing is... all I have here."
The next day Roxas will leave the organization forever and the green lights will finally stop shining.
*
Roxas was always stubborn.
As Axel leaned in close Roxas turned away. It had become something Axel was used to. He could feel his body slacken with disappointment.
"Don't," Roxas said simply. Roughly.
"Roxas..."
"This isn't real," it was one of Roxas' favorite phrases.
It was not one of Axel's.
"You're body's lying to itself. It's lying to me." Sharp words. "I don't like being lied to."
Axel was playful. It was all he could do. "You can't say this isn't real. You can feel it."
"It isn't," Roxas was angry now. Blue eyes flashed. A defense against confusion and to add to Axel's own, Roxas pressed against him.
"You think I can feel? You want to know what I can feel, Axel?"
Axel could say that he did.
He kept quiet and felt the brush of Roxas' hair against his cheek.
"When we're this close does my heart race?"
Axel's own chest suddenly felt like a cage. He figured that must be it.
"Am I light headed? Do I burn for you like every inch of my body wants to belong to yours?"
The burning in Axel told him that he hoped it did.
"Like I could die for you?"
Axel knew he would.
And then Roxas had reached up, pulled down, and slammed their lips together for a short earth shattering moment and Axel didn't have time for another thought before Roxas was pulling away.
"All I feel is nothing. I feel nothing because I am nothing. Do you got it memorized?"
It tore through Axel and left him standing to watch Roxas stalk away. It left him with an ache in his chest and a red lower lip.
Suddenly he was laughing a bitter laughter that hit the buildings and echoed through a deserted street.
"Roxas," he spoke to the emptiness, "How would you have known what to describe?"
*
There is nothing here. Or maybe, there’s just me and I am nothing but Nothing. If anything, I’m a broken piece of Sora’s soul and here I wait – but for what?
For what? But I can’t ask it, there’s no one here to hear me. I’ve broken from Sora’s mind, always a piece of him but a piece lost and unable to reconnect and the worst type of existence is my own.
I see what he sees. I hear what he hears but I cannot touch or taste or feel anything that Sora can and I look at hands that aren’t my hands grasping something that feels like nothing.
Namine said I’d be complete – but this is an emptiness bigger than before. It is emptiness to know you no longer exist.
If I don’t exist, how can I die? Where will I go?
Sora will go to heaven, but where will I go?
Part of me wants the answer but a larger part does not want to know.
When I know, will I know that I know?
Riku and Kairi will go to heaven. I know it as I watch them day after day through eyes that aren’t mine. I know it as Sora watches the sun set across Riku’s face and as the waves roll against a beach I cannot feel.
Where will Roxas go?
Where has Axel gone? Is he waiting for me in a place where Nothing goes?
One day, Sora just stops. I have been here for eternity and now he lies down and his eyes shut and he stops. Somewhere, I feel something like the anxious cracking of a glass jar that, for so long on the edge, had waited and waited to crash. I open my eyes, my eyes in my body with its own cracks and broken edges to a darkness brighter than the one before.
Where am I? I ask and, conditioned to know there is nothing here, I expect no reply.
There is Nothing here but not the same nothing I’ve felt before. Nothing replies, This is where Nothing goes to become Something.
And then we are at the tower and Axel is here with his ghost of a smirk and red dashes under green eyes under red, red hair and he pulls my cloak roughly as he pulls me and asks, What took you so long?
Sora has gone to heaven and I know where Roxas has gone. This isn’t heaven but I don’t really care that there aren’t white gates to greet me.
There is Something here.
*
Sora wondered, often, where his home got its name. He wondered too who had been around in the beginning, when first a set of eyes beheld the beach, to name it so. He sat and wondered on the arch of a peculiar shaped palm tree.
His toes bothered with some sand.
Nowadays when the heartless weren't attacking he was left with quite a bit with which to wonder.
He'd also wondered upon the changes he'd experienced since he came back to Destiny Islands. There was something, a soft something, that had settled itself inside of Sora. A soft, wondrous creature. It was no Roxas, he knew.
It felt different.
It felt special.
It was like love, maybe, but nothing had changed between him and Kairi. He hadn't quite felt this before. Hadn't quite felt that warm wondrous flutter.
He pushed the sand around with his feet, watched the sun sinking into the crashing waves. He tasted salty air on his lips and felt, more than heard, Riku coming up to sit next to him on that arching palm.
It was quiet for the longest of times and Sora wondered who would speak first.
He wondered if they even needed to.
"Shouldn't you be off creating havoc?" Riku grinned and that feather soft feeling seemed to spread to Sora's toes. The cool sand rooted him back to the world.
"Oh shut up, Riku. That's your job."
He acted normal. He didn't feel normal.
He wondered what it was.
There was silence but for the flapping wings of a passing gull.
Sora couldn't get his head away from that cloudy feeling.
"I saw a paopu fruit in your room," Sora started tentatively, quietly, and rubbed his palm on the rough wood. "Were you planning on..."
"It's not to share with Kairi, if that's what you're thinking."
"Oh."
Sora was wondering again on weird thoughts that made his stomach soar. The waves lapped against the beach.
"Then who..."
Riku smirked and gave him a sidelong glance. "Who else?"
"Oh."
Oh. The feathering in his chest was like a bird needing to be set free. He needed to test it, let it stretch its wings.
He needed to see if this was okay.
His hand brushed with Riku's leg. Almost on accident and almost on purpose. He looked towards the skyline.
And then he heard a soft laughter and felt Riku's hand come down over his and his rough fingers pushed in between Sora's.
"You know," Riku said. "I don't even think we'll need it."
Sora smiled and watched a bird overhead take off in a glorious display of feathers. That night, under the changing sky, he learned where the islands got their name.