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“Sit still.”
Throughout his fourteen years of life, no words have drawn as much ire and disgust from Lea as these two, always flung at him during class or haircuts or doctor’s appointments or any other number of semi-regular events that produce an equal amount of frustration. They’re softer now than they usually are, a gentle suggestion rather than a sharp reprimand, but that doesn’t make them any less irritating.
He isn’t in much of a position to complain, perched on the edge of Isa’s couch—his house had been closer—with first aid supplies scattered around him like the world’s most pathetic confetti. Still, Lea makes his displeasure known by scowling and squirming as much as possible.
Isa’s return stare is unimpressed. “I’m trying to help,” he says, pointedly dragging a damp washcloth beneath Lea’s nose to mop up some of the blood accumulating there. “You’ll make it worse if you keep moving.”
“Yeah, yeah,” mumbles Lea. With his usual willful ignorance, he moves to tilt his head back—
—and instantly finds it shoved back down, Isa’s free hand planted atop his head and applying enough force that Lea’s head stays down. He almost chokes at the whiplash, managing to get out, “Hey, what gives?!”
“You can’t tilt your head back when your nose is bleeding.” Isa presses the washcloth against his face twice as hard, though still light enough that it doesn’t hurt any more than it has been. His words are matter-of-fact and steady. The only signs that he’s at all unsettled are the pale tint to his skin and the way he can’t quite hold his hand steady, both subtle enough that anyone except Lea probably wouldn’t notice. “The blood will drip down your throat. You don’t want that.”
“Ugh, gross. Fine.” As Isa’s palm lifts, Lea dutifully keeps his head in place, tapping his fingers against his thigh in lieu of swinging his legs. He’s been going through a growth spurt the past couple of months, to Isa’s chagrin, but he feels small now. “How do you know this, anyway?”
“I read,” says Isa flatly. “Also, we had health class last year, remember?”
“You had health class. I slept through health class for half of the year and skipped it the other half and then cheated off of your exam.”
Isa shakes his head, even though he was there for a solid half of the occasions Lea cut class. Instead of justifying Lea with a verbal response, he presses the clean side of the cold washcloth across the bridge of Lea’s nose—prompting a hiss of “Warn me next time!”—and takes one of Lea’s wrists to raise his hand toward his nose.
“Pinch your nose shut,” he says, using that tone of his that leaves little room for argument even from Lea.
Lea has half a mind to push it anyway, but he obliges, if only because there’s real worry in Isa’s face. He adjusts his arm to make the position about as comfortable as it can get. It’s still an awkward angle, and it’s somewhat uncomfortable to breathe out of his mouth, which hangs open in a way that brings attention to the swelling of his jaw and cheek, to say nothing of the pressure on his nostrils.
“What’s the point of this,” he says, closed nose making him sound like even more of a clown than he feels like.
Normally, the nasal voice would make Isa laugh, but now he only blinks. “Applying pressure will stop the bleeding. You don’t have to squeeze that hard,” he adds. “Just keep your hand there for about, uh—” he thinks for a second “—ten minutes.”
Lea almost lets go in shock. “Ten minutes? Isa,” he complains, on the verge of a whine, “don’t make me do that. My hand’s gonna fall asleep.”
“Better than a nosebleed,” says Isa, shrugging.
Lea wonders, at this point, but, with only a marginal amount of grumbling under his breath (okay, for him), he keeps pinching his nostrils shut. His grip on the progression of time already isn’t great, so in his current state, ten minutes might as well be sixty. At least he still has one hand free.
After what is maybe a couple of minutes, Isa seems to grow tired of standing there, swaying on his feet and glancing between Lea and the clock with his arms alternatively crossed over his chest or hanging limp before him, because he takes a tentative seat. His calf bumps against Lea’s, but Lea manages to angle his still-sore knee away. One mildly apologetic glance from Isa later, Lea is back to drumming his fingers against his leg.
An eternity continues to trickle away, but eventually, Isa says, “Okay, I think you’re good to go now.”
At once, Lea snaps his fingers apart and sucks in an exaggerated gasp of breath that earns him a withering look.
“Come on, Lea. It wasn’t that bad.”
“Oh, sure, for you. I was the idiot with his nose pinched shut for ten whole minutes.” Now that he’s more capable of doing so, Lea shakes off the washcloth draped over his nose.
Isa ducks out of the way of his hair and catches the washcloth before it can hit the ground. “What are you, a dog?” Without waiting for a reply, he takes to cleaning up the rest of the dried blood on Lea’s face, wiping up what’s left under his nose and across his cheeks. In a calm voice that seems more for his benefit than Lea’s, he adds, “It doesn’t look like your nose is bleeding anymore. That’s good.”
Lea gives a noncommittal hum in response, not wanting to discuss his nose any longer. He winces when the washcloth brushes his cheekbone.
“You might have a bruise there,” Isa comments. “And there’s a small bump on your forehead.” He taps the very tips of his fingers against the lump in question, making Lea grimace harder despite the relative lightness of the touch.
“Great,” he mutters.
Isa ignores this. “Hey, what happened, anyway? I walked away for, like, a minute, and when I got back you were face-down on the ground.”
Lea’s first attempt at a response is an incoherent mumble, which gets him an impatient huff. “Tripped over my shoelaces,” he manages to admit, voice still quieter than usual. He has enough sense to be embarrassed, though the existing feeling doubles under Isa’s judgmental look. “It’s not my fault they were undone.”
“It… literally is. You couldn’t have checked?”
Lea looks down and tightens his scowl—he can’t puff out his cheek in his current position—instead of answering. Isa doesn’t seem satisfied with this. He waves a hand in front of Lea’s face, making him jolt to attention again.
“Jeez, what?”
“We need to make sure you don’t have a concussion,” says Isa. “I don’t think your nose is broken, just a little swollen, but depending on how hard you fell—” He shakes his head, cutting himself off, and takes a quick breath before he says, “How does your head feel? Are you dizzy or nauseous at all?”
“Uh, it’s fine? And no to both.” Lea pauses to gauge the air in the room. “If I have to sit here any longer, I might be when I finally get to stand up, though.”
The joke does him no favors. “Stop that,” Isa tells him, eyes immediately sharpening. “You might be seriously hurt, Lea—I know you like the saying that laughter is the best medicine, but I don’t think that will work for brain damage.” When Lea doesn’t respond, abashed but more tempted to make a joke now than ever, Isa folds his arms and looks forward, clenching and unclenching his jaw. He takes on that measured tone again. “Are your ears ringing?”
Lea stares down at his shoes. He should tie the laces now that he’s got the chance, but instead, he says, “Nope.”
“Is your vision blurry?”
“No.”
“Are you tired?”
Already having been chewed out for cracking a joke now of all times, Lea sighs and says, “No.”
Isa exhales through his nose, the relief in it—and how the tension seeps out of his shoulders—obvious. “Okay. You probably don’t have a concussion, then, but we should get you to a real healer after this to make sure.”
Lea tries not to gag—tries being the operative word. “A healer? Are you kidding?”
“Obviously not. Did you miss the word concussion?”
“C’mon, man. I can’t deal with all of this—” Lea gestures to himself, Isa, and the washcloth still in Isa’s white-knuckled fist, water dripping onto the floor “—all over again.”
“You also won’t be able to deal with a concussion.” Suck it up goes unspoken but is present in Isa’s eyes, which cut to the side just long enough to glare at Lea. After a beat of silence—resigned from Lea and contemplative (too tired to be smug) from Isa—Isa asks, tone unreadable, “Did you really just trip?”
“Yeah. What, you think I’d lie about something that embarrassing? Need me to give you the whole play-by-play?” Isa remains silent, picking at the ends of his hair, and Lea frowns, dropping the already faint self-deprecating laughter. “What else do you think happened?”
Isa hesitates, then says, “When I saw your face, I thought you’d gotten punched.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Not like that,” says Isa, scowling, raising his shoulder like he’s about to jostle Lea’s with it before thinking better of it.
“Yeah, I know. You’re not that mean. I was just being a dick.” Lea shrugs and receives another flat look for his troubles. “Punched, huh? Do you really think even I can get in a fight—and lose that horribly—that fast?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Isa doesn’t so much as blink at Lea’s offended look. “Frisbees are your idea of a weapon.”
“Yeah, and your point is?” Rolling his eyes, Lea leans back, careful not to tilt his head back even though his nose isn’t bleeding anymore. “Well, I didn’t get punched. So you don’t have to be so worried, got it?”
If anything, this makes Isa look more frazzled, with how fast his face goes red and how his eye twitches. “I’m not worried,” he insists, unconvincingly, “you’re just—”
“Adventurous? Bold?”
“Careless to the point of danger to yourself and others,” says Isa without a hint of remorse.
“Ouch, Isa. That hurts worse than this.” Lea taps his forehead and proves himself wrong mid-touch, flinching and dropping his hand right away. “Okay, never mind. Still pretty harsh, though.” Since there’s no chance Isa will admit anything now, Lea stretches out his legs—and catches a glimpse of the scrapes on his knees, left bare by the shorts he’s wearing in an effort to combat the heat. “Oh. Can you hand me that washcloth?”
The distraction has already numbed the pain, but it doesn’t look great. Isa hands him the washcloth and lets him clean his legs up himself. A small mercy, granted mostly because, Lea guesses, there’s no way to wipe the blood off of someone else’s knees that isn’t awkward. Pale marks of crisscrossing skin are left behind when the blood is gone, a few more scars to add to the patchwork already covering his body like a breadcrumb trail attesting to his recklessness. Hell, he’s even got a bruise on his elbow from slamming it into the bathroom door yesterday.
Lea wipes everything off and asks for some bandages, which Isa provides without hesitation. “All right,” he announces once gauze is covering his bony kneecaps, to be picked off within the next three hours at most, “that’s everything.” He pauses before he can stand. “I’d be stupid to think you’ve forgotten the healer thing, right?”
“Very,” agrees Isa, finally half-smiling. Lea has a feeling it’s the most he’s going to get out of him for a few more hours.
“Ugh, fine, let’s get this over with.” Lea drags himself to his feet, groaning all the while, and turns back to face Isa with his arms spread. “Well, how do I look?”
It takes a few seconds for Isa, still somewhat pink, to stop blinking, but when he does, he sighs. “Less like somebody punched you in the face.”
“Hey, I’ll take it. I could rock the delinquent look, though. I’ve already got, like, half of it down.” Lea smooths a hand over his hair in demonstration.
Isa visibly bites his cheek to keep from laughing. “All right, rebel, let’s go.”
Neither of them points it out when Isa gives him one last look and swipes a new, unbloodied washcloth over the dried tears left on Lea’s cheeks. It’s appreciated nonetheless.
*
The castle is still and silent when Axel returns, its looming white halls swathed in perpetual darkness. His boots thud against the tile as he emerges from a Corridor of Darkness. He steps out slowly, looking both ways, apprehensive of what lies in wait.
As it almost always is, the answer turns out to be: Emptiness as far as the eye can see. No one in sight, only the pitch-black sky outside contrasted by the brightness of the castle’s interior. A pin could drop down the hall, and it would echo in this room. It must be late, because not even Demyx is snoring or playing sitar on one of the couches.
Axel isn’t sure whether to be grateful or annoyed. On one hand, it allows him to droop forward with a near-inaudible sigh and press his hand to his side without anyone seeing. On the other, it sends a prickling sensation down the back of his neck all the way through his spine. Whenever one is alone in the Castle That Never Was, they have to wonder if they really are, and for how long they will be.
Both instincts are nothing but a whisper of long-forgotten emotions, something a husk of a person like him has no use for, so Axel dismisses them. He presses his palm down harder and lets muscle memory guide him down the hall toward his room.
The world fades to a haze around him while he continues applying pressure through his cloak. He ignores the dampness seeping through his glove, his footsteps ringing in his ears, the dull reminder at the back of his mind that he’s a dumbass for not packing more than a single potion on him and blowing it on a retrospectively minor injury. He’s got time for all of that shit later. Right now, his only goal is getting into bed and sleeping for as long as he can get away with. Just a few more steps, he tells himself, and he’ll be home free.
He’s made it to the end of one hallway when a voice rings out behind him: “Axel.”
He almost jumps out of his skin at the sound—he recognizes it, sure, but it’s still startling to spin on his heel and see a familiar figure lurking down the corridor toward him. Saïx’s steps are steady, his face a neutral mask. Axel looks away with a grimace and drops his hand.
“Look,” he starts, scraping the other hand through his hair, “can we do this some other time? I’ll get your damn report to you by tomorrow, just—”
He stops, cutting himself off with an aggravated exhale. He’s not sure what he looks like, but he can imagine: Face turned almost a ghostly gray by the shoddy lighting, hair even messier than usual, cloak rumpled and stained and torn, obviously favoring his right side. Though he doesn’t look over, he can feel Saïx watching him.
Axel gives up trying to finish his sentence. “Never mind,” he decides, already making to move away, aware that he almost stumbles in the process. “Whatever. Goodnight. Ignore your ten-minute lecture tomorrow.”
He expects any number of responses: Silence, most likely, or if he’s lucky, a hollow attempt at banter like Only ten minutes? You have that much faith in yourself? What he gets is a call of, “You’re injured.”
Shit. Axel doesn’t turn, keeping his eyes forward and his arms stiff at his sides. “What’s it to you?”
He can hear the muscles clicking as Saïx clenches—and unclenches, and clenches again, a nervous habit turned compulsive in the absence of nerves—his jaw. “If you are wounded, you are a liability,” he says, plain and simple.
“Yeah, so I’ll pop a potion before bed. No big deal. Can’t even feel it.” A half-truth—there is a faint burning sensation in the side of Axel’s abdomen if he concentrates hard enough, and the gross feeling of blood on his skin, but he feels nothing but vague distaste. “It’s fine, really. Just gonna go sleep it off,” he says, cut off by a coincidental yawn.
“Axel,” says Saïx again—and just that, a single word spoken in a tone that makes Axel exhale through his nose and wave a dismissive hand, resigned but refusing to give in aloud.
It seems to be enough of a confirmation for Saïx, who says nothing but continues walking. He doesn’t glance over even when he passes by Axel, a couple of arms’ length away, and takes up the lead although it’s clear the only room Axel is setting foot in tonight is his.
Whatever, Axel decides as he keeps pace, lanky physique working to his advantage. It’s not as if they don’t all have the damn floor plan memorized by now. Still a little condescending to be guided to his own room, though.
They walk with a full foot of space between them. The sound of their footsteps echoes off the walls, somehow twice as insufferable when layered—or maybe that’s because of the discomfort now filling the silence.
Against his better judgment, Axel keeps glancing Saïx’s way for no particular reason. It’s not like Saïx looks back. Axel just feels like he has to do something. There’s nothing he can say to fill the quiet nor bridge the developing distance between them, something they have to have both noticed but haven’t acknowledged. A side effect of their nonexistence, if Axel had to guess. They’re not friends because they can’t be like this; they’re accomplices at best, and it’s not like they can talk about that. That’s the thing about solitude in the Castle That Never Was: Even if you think you’re alone, you can never rule out the possibility of someone listening. Diaries and careful conversations every now and then are cutting it close enough. If they fall under even the slightest bit of scrutiny—
Well, then it’s curtains for them both, and after they’ve come this far, that seems more than a little unfair. Especially with whatever’s going to happen with C.O.
So Axel settles for side glances that go unnoticed or ignored. Par for the course, so far as he’s concerned.
Time passes strangely in both Axel’s mind and the castle, and he’s not sure how long they’ve been walking for when they stop at his door. Saïx enters without so much as a glance over his shoulder.
“Oh, yeah, come right in, why don’tcha, thanks for waiting for an invitation,” mutters Axel, going unheard, before he follows.
Saïx has already stepped into the bathroom. Axel can hear him rustling around inside, looking for supplies that Axel has buried out of a lack of necessity—he doesn’t tend to get injured. It’s not like anyone plans to sustain injuries in the line of duty (if that’s what they’re calling it now), but Axel’s current state is all the more embarrassing for how uncharacteristic it is. Not like it does him any good to think about that now.
After a moment, the rustling noises stop, but Saïx stays in the other room, back turned to the doorway. There’s an unspoken expectation to it.
Axel sighs and takes a seat on the edge of his bed. Just because he’s allowing this doesn’t mean he’s not going to be difficult. He unzips his cloak only as far as he needs to, shrugs out of the sleeves, and lets the rest hang around his waist. (The black hides the blood well enough, but he’ll still have to get it washed later. Or burn it. Not like he has any shortage of the things.) He rolls up the side of his shirt as much as he’s willing to, meaning that the wound is barely accessible.
“All right, I’m decent enough,” he calls. “Far from morally, but you know, I’ve still got pants on.”
Without a word, Saïx joins him, a roll of gauze in one hand and a wet washcloth in the other. He sets the former aside and raises the latter with a glance at Axel’s side, as indifferent as if he were perhaps regarding an uninteresting exhibit in a museum instead of a still-bleeding laceration. “Have you been applying pressure to the wound?”
“Duh. I’m no healer, but I know that much. No thanks to you, by the way.” A lie, naturally, meant to knock some deep-seated nostalgia loose. It earns Axel nothing but a blank stare, hammering in the gold tone of those eyes, and he shifts, twisting his head away.
Saïx’s free hand presses down on his hair. “Sit still.”
A decade and the lack of a heart have done little to dull the irritation that those words inspire in Axel, and he grimaces harder than he had upon even being struck by the Heartless (whom he’s glad he put such a harsh end to now, for fucking him up in the first place and for putting him in this situation). Saïx either doesn’t notice or pretends not to. Jaw tight, he leans forward to clean the blood from Axel’s side.
There’s nothing tender about it. Saïx’s motions are clinical and precise, a surgeon’s accuracy combined with a Nobody’s apathy. He cleans and dresses Axel’s wound with such plain detachment that Axel considers waving a hand in front of his face more than once.
He restrains himself, but he does attempt to work his way around the order—because really, what else can he describe it as—by fidgeting in surreptitious ways that don’t cause him further injury. It’s less out of a real urge than the simple need to be as obnoxious as possible. Hunger and fatigue aren’t the only things that fade upon losing one’s heart, but some things never will.
To Axel’s disappointment and dismay, it doesn’t work. Saïx doesn’t lose his focus even when Axel almost kicks him in the shin by crossing and uncrossing his ankles. Another line forms between his eyebrows, and he presses the washcloth into Axel’s side a little harder either on instinct or as punishment, but that’s the extent of his reaction.
Axel gives up, figuring the effort is tiring him more than it is Saïx. He taps his finger against his shirt to occupy himself.
With the silence and purely perfunctory motions, the ghost of a memory is all that remains to soothe Axel—not that he needs comforting to begin with, the very notion making his nose twitch. It doesn’t seem to take long for it to be over with, though it still takes long enough to feel like pulling teeth. Axel’s own machinations and inexplicable discomfort, he’s sure, don’t help.
But regardless, Saïx fixes the last bit of gauze over the wound before long, and Axel sighs in exaggerated relief. He takes the opportunity to stretch as Saïx draws back.
There’s no real atmosphere in the room, but something seems to shatter anyway when Saïx rises, abrupt but stone-faced, cloak swelling out as he straightens back up. He takes a second to steady himself before tilting his head. “You’re welcome.”
Axel rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, thanks. Though I hold that I could’ve taken care of this myself. Hey, get me that potion on your way out, would you?” He gestures to the bottle in question.
Saïx doesn’t respond, expression a reply in and of itself, but he does fling the potion toward Axel with as little effort as possible. Axel has to scramble to catch it. His fingers close gratefully over the lukewarm bottle, but there’s something weird about downing it with Saïx still in the room. It’s not like he can defend himself from Saïx’s flat expression, sitting here half-ready to pass out, either, so he waits for a long moment, not quite meeting Saïx’s eyes but not looking anywhere but a point in space right beside his face.
Without a word, Saïx steps back toward the doorway. Then, for a moment, a single beat in time that feels both like a split second and an eternity, he pauses. He doesn’t linger nor hesitate, but here he is doing both.
Axel raises an eyebrow as he watches him hover in the doorway. Saïx’s back is to him, but there’s something expectant in the air again.
Saïx breaks the silence with a sound somewhere between an exhale and a scoff. “Be careful next time,” he says over his shoulder, quiet and resigned enough that Axel doesn’t dare ask him to repeat himself, even as he struggles to believe he’s heard it right.
Saïx doesn’t look back before he disappears into the hallway, coat and hair trailing after him.
Axel sits staring after him, a tight feeling in his chest where his heart used to be.