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Reawakening as a Somebody was an all around disorienting business, and Lea has held off on poking at his memories to avoid the nausea. But lately Lea's memories are like flotsam in a dark sea, splintered and swollen with salt, bobbing in weak moonlight. They come and scatter at the whims of currents Lea cannot learn to read. Yesterday he brushed a clocktower at sunset, the day before he thought he saw seashells on his pillow in the first moments of waking, and last week a ring of fire encircled him-- gone again before his next sharp inhale.
The currents are relentless now that Lea is back in Castle Oblivion, with its echoes that sound like the spaces between heartbeats. There are thirteen floors and twelve basements, and Sora insists they search them all. The flotsam come in quick succession now, quicker with each step down. Pencil drawings and popsicle sticks and Saix's scars, still fresh, and the long, winding corridors of darkness. The wreckage of his last life like an armada sent from the far horizon. Slithering Dusks and the alleyways of the World that Never Was and the emptiness that took Xion's place, then Roxas's. There's a phantom weight in both Lea's hands, there's a heat in his throat like embers-- and still the pieces come-- how his feet looked dangling off his throne, black heavy on his shoulders, Sora and Sora's heart and those last moments when he thought he could see Roxas in Sora's eyes.
"Are you alright?" Sora is asking him now, his arms crossed behind his head. He has an open, earnest gaze, and though their eyes are so similar, Sora's are without the anger that Roxas used to cultivate in his end days.
The thought that he will never see Roxas again is an incisive pain, cutting through the layers of flesh and bone to reach him where he is soft and vulnerable. He can't bring Roxas back, not from this. Somehow he knows that Roxas would not want him to, but failure still rings true.
"Sure, why wouldn't I be?" Lea lies.
He changes the subject, seeking distraction, "Castle Oblivion is a ridiculous name."
"Is it?"
"It is."
Castle Oblivion, Lea thinks determinedly, is a name that sounds like something he and Isa would have come up with when they were children playing with toy knights and dragons. It sounds like evil trying too hard to be cool, which makes it less ominous as a whole. Lea would have chosen something more subtle, something that implies that the evil knows it needs no introduction because it was-- well, evil enough.
"I think it's alright," says Sora. "What else would you call it?"
"I don't know," Lea admits.
"How about the Mystery Castle?" Sora suggests.
"Jeez, that's worse."
Sora shrugs, unoffended. When Lea was Axel, the other Organization members didn't seem to care either, except for Saix, who was more annoyed at Lea's irreverence than at the name. Said they weren’t children playing anymore. So Lea drops the subject. He doesn’t know what else to talk to Sora about, so he stays quiet, listens to Sora’s tuneless humming, to their footsteps disrupting the vengeful peace of this place.
He had come because Sora had asked, because Sora had turned Roxas’s eyes on him and Lea could never say no. And why not, he had thought. He could play tour guide for a day. And you should never take the voices in your head lightly, especially if you were a Keyblade bearer.
Now it’s been hours, nonstop because Sora is tireless and endlessly optimistic. Each room is a new wave of memories, and nausea. They've reached the very bottom of the Castle, and Lea is having trouble finding his footing. He tries to brush away that sunset on the Destiny Islands, the hard edge of distrust in Kairi's gaze, the crunch of a seashell beneath his boot-- was that the first time he had ever seen the ocean?--the things he did for Roxas, for Xion. He says, louder than he intends to, "Getting any more of those weird signs?"
Sora frowns. "No, nothing. How about you? Don't you know this Castle like the back of your hand?"
Lea-- or Axel, more accurately-- does. He has every alcove and hidden passageway mapped, but he has never come across this Chamber of Waking that Xemnas, and now Sora, was so determined to find. He doesn't know what he would have found inside either. Xemnas had never deemed him worthy of the knowledge.
"I don't know how many times I've searched," he says. "I never found it."
"Hmm.” Sora turns to consider their current dead end, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "I'm sure she said it would be here."
"Well, does your mysterious disembodied voice lady have any more clues? Like what we’d find inside?"
"That's rude," says Sora. "She has a name. It's Aqua."
"Aqua," Lea echoes.
The flotsam are less now that they’ve stopped, only the odd piece here and there, of white walls and his first moments as a Nobody, the sterility of basement labs and the pull of his heart going out of orbit. That's the last of it, Lea thinks, feeling chill. And indeed there is calm, the waves gentle, moonlight rippling on black water. Lea imagines he can see a shoreline, and strange, towering structures, like the skeleton of an ancient beast half sunk under its own weight. Beneath a dark arch, there is a figure.
Lea blinks and there is Sora again, rapping his knuckles on the wall, and it seems the sound has to travel a great, misty distance before it reaches Lea in the middle of his dark sea.
"Sora," Lea calls.
"Yeah?" Sora says, turning around. "Do you feel something?"
"Your Keyblade," says Lea. He sounds faraway even to himself, and there is dread filling his chest like water.
Sora does not hesitate. The moment Sora draws, his Keyblade resonates with something deep and hidden within the Castle. The walls around them glow white-hot. Lea looks down at his hand, where he had summoned his own Keyblade without thinking.
Roxas? Lea wants to call out. But he knows already that that’s wrong. Roxas is gone, and so is Xion and Namine and Isa, gone, gone, gone. There is another name Lea should know, but his heart, still clumsy and slow, can’t recall it no matter how it strains.
He watches Sora reach a hand out, and Lea feels his heart reaching too, yearning. The wall before them dissolving in a shower of light before Sora touches it, the walls all around them shimmering and crumbling, a cascade of stars. A line of light sweeps beneath their feet.
The room they are left in is bright, open and empty but for the throne at the far end. The symbol of the Keyblade Master adorn the new walls, and in the back of Lea’s mind, the figure under the arch on that dark shore flickers. Lea’s Keyblade drops from his hand.
"Look,” Sora whispers.
Lea is looking. It’s impossible, he is thinking.
"Roxas?" says Lea. "Rox--" His voice cracks.
Sora walks past him, and Lea thanks the world for the good that is resilient, unshakable Sora, for Lea’s own feet are leaden and he cannot move. The part of him that's still Axel begins to tremble as Sora crosses the Chamber to the throne. The throne's high back and the high ceilings of the room make the body in the seat seem small and insignificant. How long has he rested here, alone, abandoned, under the weight of silence and an entire world. Lea's knees feel weak thinking about it, from fear or pity, Lea doesn't know. When Sora reaches out to touch, Lea's heart stutters.
A light surrounds them both, Sora and-- Roxas? could it be-- so bright that it hurts and Lea has to close his eyes. When he opens them again, the part of him that is Axel goes static.
The boy stands. "Sora," the boy says.
Axel knows that is not Roxas's smile, that it is not Roxas that fills the Chamber with a sudden thrumming power. But Lea is remembering too. The boy's voice turns warped and thin in Lea's mind. Lea knows they are still speaking, Sora and the boy, because he sees their mouths moving, sees Sora wiping at his eyes and the boy laughing, and something tears inside Lea, though Lea can't hear anything above the rushing in his ears. Lea takes a step forward, and another, until somehow he's on his knees before the throne and Sora's hand is on one shoulder, the boy's hand on the other.
Lea tries, "You're--" but he can't finish. There's something fundamental missing, something that is not Axel and not Lea as he is now-- something that belongs to a before that's been buried for years.
There's are lights now in that dark sea, glowing pieces of his past resurfacing from the depths. Gardens in full bloom, Dilan and Aeleus in their guard uniforms, the square of warm light that is Isa's window across the street. He remembers the curve of his frisbees against his palms, the bruises on his arms from tumbling down the stone steps of Radiant Garden Castle. He remembers a wooden key, a clear sky, defeat and laughter. He remembers.
"You're--"
The boy looks at him, his mouth a gentle curve. "Lea, right?"
After all, we're friends now. A declaration.
Stray puppies, Isa had chastised. Isa, whom Lea misses, whom Lea has betrayed. Isa, who always knew best.
But here, now--
"You remember," says Lea.
"I got it memorized," says the boy, the stray puppy, whose name Lea had not heard again since that first and only day, whose name was lost to Lea along with his heart. But now it's returned to him, along with memories of home, of long summer days and the scratched desks in his classrooms and the old parchment smell of the castle library. Days when his biggest worry was copying Isa's math homework while avoiding Squall's disapproving glare and getting home before curfew. Days that were reassuring in their predictability, until this boy appeared in Garden with his key and his hesitant smile, who had believed Lea when he said they’d see each other again.
Lea doesn't know where he finds the strength, but he nods.
"Ventus," Lea says.
Ventus holds out his hand. Lea takes it, and stands.