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You're warm.
Or, well, you tell yourself you are. You bask in the summer sunlight, the heat magnified by your cloak and gloves. Even up here, the wind still carries the warmth in the air. Suppose it makes sense, physics says that heat rises, right?
It's part of the reason that the clocktower is your favorite spot.
That, and because no one other than Roxas bothers to look for you up here. There’s a sense of privacy to it, even if you're technically dangling above the town. You wonder if anyone down there ever even notices. But everyone you catch glimpses of look like nothing more than specks, so if you had to guess, they probably can't even make out your silhouette. You suppose it doesn't really matter either way.
You lean back with a sigh, kicking your legs up. Warm stone pressed against your back, black cloth absorbing the rays of the sun. Hell, even your hair is just dark enough that it soaks up the heat too.
It's nice, even if you kind of feel like a snake.
You can't remember the last time you had any sembalance of a normal body temperature, only what it was like and that you don't anymore. You'd made peace with it a while back, but since spending time with Roxas… its absence gnaws at you again, as much as your lack of a heart does, and you know that those two things are one and the same. You’re not alive, after all, and you haven't been for a very long time. It’s commonly known, you’d think. Nobodies might as well be animated corpses, the empty vessels of a person who was once living, whole and warm, left missing an integral piece of themselves, cold and uncannily still now; never aging, never growing, never changing. Frozen in time, the perfect snapshot of someone who doesn’t exist.
But it doesn't end all at once. Fresh meat, newer Nobodies; their bodies haven't given up yet. It's like the echo of their heart begging them to go on, clawing fruitlessly to keep living, to keep feeling something. They might lack emotion, but there’s some kind of instinctual desperation.
They’ll lose those instincts soon enough, too. It’s not like there’s a use for any of it, to the Organization.
You're snapped out of your thoughts by the blue eyes staring down at you with curiousity. Or is that concern? Either way, god damn it. You thought he'd be busy with a mission. It crosses your mind that maybe you've just been up here for so long that it doesn’t matter. You blow a puff of air at his face when he leans down closer, grabbing a hold of him so he can't tuck tail too far backwards. He jolts and ends up smacking you across the face. You kind of deserved it.
“Well, I guess that answers my question.” Roxas huffs, and he sits down next to you.
You stretch your arms out from behind your head, where you’ve had them folded for definitely too long now, judging by the aching of your joints. Pressing gloved palms against the balcony floor as you hoist yourself up, raising an eyebrow at Roxas. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He looks back over at you and shrugs, expression neutral. “I was going to ask if you were okay.”
Oh.
You shove down the growing pit in your stomach with an amused snort.
When you adjust to a more comfortable position, still upright, back pressing against the clocktower, Roxas follows. He scoots next to you, leaning into your side. You tamp away your initial panic, and decide to drape your arm around him silently. Your head still buzzes with a hundred scrambled intrusions, but you end up focused on how warm he is, compared to you. Even through your cloaks you can tell; he doesn't lose all heat when he walks under shade, and he can’t keep himself poised completely still like you- you're almost too aware of every micromovement he makes against you, every twitch and tic, subconscious muscle movements of someone recognizably alive. This knowledge threatens to tear you apart.
You’re snapped out of your thoughts by Roxas’s hushed voice, words almost said under his breath.
“You don't have a heartbeat.”
You pointedly ignore the cold feeling that races down your spine, the knot that gets yanked tighter in your stomach. It's fine. Get back on track.
“Of course I don't,” You chuckle, tilting your head back. “I don’t have a heart in the first place.” Just keep the air playful and you don't have to think about this, don't have to explain it to him, to crush what little he has.
Roxas looks at you, his eyebrows furrowed. “But I do,” The curiosity in his voice fills you with an unreasonable dread. “I know I still have a heartbeat, I can feel it, here,” He takes your hand and holds your palm against the center of his chest, and even through the layers of his cloak and your glove, you can faintly feel the patter of his heart. Another knot twists into existence in your stomach, pulling itself taut, and you try to ignore the nauseous feeling washing over you. This is too intimate, you're too close to him; you never wanted to get here, and you never wanted him to learn about this.
He’s staring at you with concern in his eyes, expectantly waiting for you to respond- for you to do anything, say anything; but instead you’re sitting here frozen in place, your expression blank, and your head is spinning. You try to grab for control of your body again desperately.
Fuck.
“It’s- look, Roxas, it’s hard to explain this.” You start, finally, omitting that you don’t want to explain it. You pull your hand away from Roxas, all of your movements feeling far too slow, almost like trying to fight back in a nightmare- your body doesn’t catch up to your brain because it’s pulled some kind of alarm, and now your nervous system keeps misfiring; nothing has happened to you, physically, but you can feel the instincts clawing at you, telling you to run, to fight, that you have to make this stop somehow. You take a breath, lying to yourself that it wasn’t shakey, and try to bury the panic.
Oh god. He’s still looking at you, and you can feel the worry hanging in the air around him. Something inside you is pulled again, that metaphorical rope, and the threads start to snap. Goddamnit. This time you have to think of something to say. You have to figure out how to tell him. The cat’s out of the bag, and it’s ran so far down the alley that you’re hopeless to catch it.
Take another breath in. Out. More stable this time, you think. You mentally ready yourself to not be weak. Can’t pussy out of this. And you can’t bring yourself to lie to Roxas, not about this.
“It’s just part of being a Nobody.” You start, your voice kept level, flat. “We’re not supposed to be alive, put simply- but when you first re-awaken, your body doesn’t get the memo, I guess. You lose your heart, but that stubborn muscle in there that happens to go by the same name?” You try to be playful, jabbing Roxas’s chest with your pointer finger. “It stays. Keeps beating. For a while, at least. It’ll stop eventually, and you’ll lose that last anchor, the shred of humanity.”
You’ve said too much. You shouldn’t have tried to joke. This is catostrophically beyond repair.
His eyes are blank, unreadable, as he stares down at his hands silently, processing what you told him. The regret is clawing at your throat, mixed sharply with bile and you beg yourself not to cough it up. You could’ve avoided this, you’re sure. You should have done better. Shit.
“When did yours stop?”
Oh.
His voice is so quiet, the question hesitant.
“…I barely remember. It was a long time ago, and it’s not like anyone bothered to tell me that it would happen. One morning, I woke up and just felt not-quite-right, y’know? Everything seemed the same, but something was off. I ignored it. Got in a fight eventually, and by the end of it I realized that everything was quiet.” You stretch your neck back, looking up at the clouds with a sigh. “I had known the thrum of adrenaline in my veins well, like a long time friend. It’s jarring to have only stillness and silence in its place, that rush hammering down to your bones.” You look back at Roxas, and he’s listening to you talk, his attention solely on you.
You feel sick, your throat is raw, but you can’t stop yourself from continuing to talk. “I went back to my room and didn’t leave for a while. Didn’t even sleep. I probably spent most of the time processing it, just laying in bed and thinking.”
He stays silent for a while, and so do you.
The next words out of his mouth stab through you like a lance, and yank out with a twist.
“…When will mine?”
The last few fibers holding that fraying rope within you together snap, all at once.
No. No, no no no. You can’t do this. You don’t know how. It feels like you’re choking on your own despair- it crawls its way out of your stomach and out through your mouth, curling tendrils around your neck and constricting you even worse. You’re a dog, and this is your collar. Bound and tugged around on a leash by a feeling you’re all too loyal to; your own guilt.
“I don’t know.”
Your voice catches as you say it. You can’t bring yourself to look at him.
The silence is longer this time, before he breaks through it again.
“Axel?” He asks, and you glance over. “Promise you’ll be there for me when it does.”
You nod.
It’s the least you could do.