Chapter Text
Sunsets never looked as nice anywhere else as they did from the top of the train station clock tower. The air was clear and the horizon was the perfect smudge of orange-yellow-red; everything else had its importance put on hold the minute he sat down. Just for now, Axel thought as he drummed one heel idly against the side of the building, he wanted to think about how nice the sky looked, without having to wonder when it was going to fall.
Something blue dropped into his line of vision, hanging so close to his face he could feel the aura of cold hanging around it. He jolted and looked up to see Roxas dangling the sea salt ice cream in front of him as the boy took a bite of his own.
“Thanks,” Axel said, taking it. He felt a strong tug deep in the pit of his stomach that seemed like relief. But he and Roxas met there practically every day; why would today have been any different? Roxas offered no explanation, dropping without comment onto the ledge next to him and continuing to nibble his ice cream. Axel couldn’t help looking at the other boy every few minutes, the wrench in his gut worsening and turning sour every time. It was like he expected him to be gone, but Roxas not disappearing somehow made things worse.
“Sure is red today,” Roxas mumbled halfheartedly. He sounded exhausted and just as lost for words as Axel was.
“Yeah,” Axel agreed. He forced a grin. “Hey. Bet you don’t know why the sunset’s red,” he said.
“Light wavelengths,” Roxas replied immediately. “You told me that one already, smartypants,” he added with his own wooden smirk.
“Oh.” Axel deflated, adrift with nothing to say.
“Would’ve been nice if things could have stayed like this,” Roxas said, apropos of nothing in the hard silence between them.
The twist in Axel’s stomach vanished with a jerk, taking the bottom of his stomach with it. “Wh-What do you…?” he stumbled. This couldn’t be happening. He’d worked so hard to keep things the same as they’d ever been with Roxas, to make sure Roxas didn’t have to find out the things that would ruin it. There was no way Roxas could have found out on his own; and maybe it hadn’t been entirely altruistic to keep it from him but the kid was wrapped up in enough bad stuff on his own without going looking for trouble. Besides that, Axel was sure that everyone in the Organization was too wrapped up in their own circumstances to bother giving Roxas a straight answer if he got too curious. If Roxas wasn’t talking about that, though, what was he talking about?
“Even if we don’t have feelings, it was nice to feel normal,” Roxas went on as if Axel hadn’t broken in. He was letting on nothing, eyes focused on the red horizon as he mechanically ate his ice cream.
“What do you mean ‘was’? Nothing’s changed,” Axel said. His sudden panic was beginning to alchemize into irritation now; he had to put up with that navel-gazing nonsense enough from Saix without his other friend joining in as well. He turned a narrow glare on Roxas and opened his mouth to tell him to stop being so stubbornly obtuse and just come out with it already.
The words turned to a rasp in his throat and he felt his eyes widening on their own when he looked at Roxas. For a just a moment (though it had been a long enough moment to send a horrified jolt down his spine and turn him silent) Roxas had seemed to flicker and fade like static on an old television. Axel gaped as Roxas faded to something vague and translucent, then became roughly solid again as he spoke again.
“Did you really think it was going to last, Axel?” Roxas asked. His voice was still as flat as it had been, but a coldness had seeped in around the edges of the words.
“Don’t call me that,” Axel snapped, his mouth seeming to say words before his brain could figure out why, “I’m not Axel anymore, I’m just Lea now.” He hesitated, giving his head a hard shake. This had spiraled too suddenly away from making any kind of sense.
Roxas shrugged. “Who’s Axel?” he asked. “Who’s Lea? Is there really a difference?” He turned to face Axel for the first time as he said it and the wrongness of the whole thing seemed to amplify. It was Roxas, but somehow not at the same time. There was something indescribably off about the razor-sharp way his eyes focused, the tilt of his head too straightforward. “Sora,” Roxas said, biting off the word like a bad taste in his mouth.
“What?”
“You’re thinking about Sora, not me. You don’t change, you just forget. But who cares, right? It’s not like I was ever supposed to exist.” Roxas got to his feet, standing too straight-backed and serious on the ledge as he tossed the stick of his ice cream to the ground. One end bore a smeared crown and the word “winner” in block letters beneath the melted blue streaks.
“Wait!” Axel scrambled to stand, grabbing Roxas’s wrist before he could leave. “You know that’s not true, Roxas. You’re my best friend,” he said, the sharp stab of desperation in his chest making him sick to his stomach. He’d swore to himself that he’d keep Roxas safe no matter what, but he could feel the shards of that broken promise shredding him from the inside. Roxas let out a bitter snort that seemed to come from everywhere all at once, the boy beside him shimmering into static again.
“Your best friend?” It was Roxas’s mouth moving as the words came, but the voice was hard and hurt and female and seemed to come from directly behind him. It had the same faraway untuned signal quality Roxas kept taking on as it spoke again. “Axel,” the voice said, “how was I ever your friend? You don’t even remember what I looked like.”
“Who—?” Axel whipped around to look over his shoulder.. The voice worried at the back of his mind, as familiar as hearing an old friend talking in the next room over. There was no one behind him, however; just human-shaped smear against the stone side of the building that cast no shadow. He only had a moment to wonder on this, however. Without warning, Roxas wrenched out of his grasp with a burst of strength that caught Axel off guard. Axel stumbled off the ledge and onto thin air as the tower and his best friend and the sunset rushed away from his grip.
Lea landed with a smack face-down on the floor, arms pinned underneath him and aching from the impact. His legs had tangled in the sheets as he fell, leaving him half on the bed and half on the cold floorboards. Biting off a groggy swear he wrestled himself free and sat up against the bed with his forehead in one hand. So it was that dream this time, he thought. His heart was hammering dully against his ribs in fading panic; it wasn’t a feeling he was used to just yet and it startled and sickened him every time he had reason to notice it. Lea closed his eyes and slowly, purposefully, went through The List in his head again.
He wasn’t at the Castle and he wasn’t in Twilight Town; he was in the Destiny Islands, given a place to rest his head through the indomitable charity of Sora—
You’re thinking about Sora, not me.
No, Lea thought, gritting his teeth against the echo in his head. No, he wasn’t there anymore. He was here and he was staying here. He was Lea, not Axel, he’d left all that behind when he’d given the Organization up for good—
Who’s Axel? Who’s Lea? Is there really a difference?
Maybe there wasn’t anymore.
The walls of his room were too close all of sudden, pressing down on him from all sides and choking the air from his lungs. Lea struggled to his feet and wobbled through the door and out of the house. A shiver ran through him as the bracing predawn chill cut right through his thin clothes. It cleared his thoughts like a splash of ice water, though, the crisp clarity of it wiping away some of the nightmarish fog from his brain.
Wrapping his arms around himself to ward off the worst of the wind, Lea set off down the road that led to the beachfront. The pier wasn’t any kind of replacement for the clock tower, but sitting at what felt like the edge of the world still had a funny way of clearing his head. He was willing to try anything right now, if only to banish the voice in his head that was Roxas and not Roxas that kept repeating you don’t change, you just forget over and over again.