Work Text:
“Roxas, today you’ll be working with Quaxa,” Saix said.
Roxas staggered to a stop before Saix, caught in his surprise. He turned to the woman standing next to Saix—Number XV in the Organization, she was tall, with a kind face and dark blue hair cropped messily around her shoulders.
“R- really?” Roxas asked, a little star-struck. He’d always wanted an excuse to talk to the only other Keyblade wielder in the Organization, but had never gotten one before now. It didn’t help that she didn’t ever hang ‘round the Grey Area for long.
Quaxa smile shyly and waved a small wave. Roxas smiled and waved back.
“I expect to see plenty of Hearts collected today,” Saix told the both of them, and then sent them off.
Unsurprisingly, they were sent to Twilight Town. Roxas had yet to see another World. He knew there were others, despite having never been to one, but…
“Come on,” Quaxa said, now with a bright smile. She nodded to the nearest exist of the alleyway, which Roxas regarded initially with a jolt of surprise. Every other time he’d been here, it’d been blocked off. It was strange to see it without the crooked x-pattern across it.
Quaxa started heading for it, but Roxas quickly tugged her back by the sleeve of her cloak.
“Wait a sec, don’t you think we should go over our mission orders, first?” he asked, pulling out the papers Saix had given him.
Quaxa paused, and blinked down at him. “Oh.” She sounded… surprised? What, did she not get these, or something? “Yes… of course,” she said.
Roxas raised his eyebrows at her, then sighed and looked down at their orders. He skimmed through the words, squinting more and more with each passing second. The orders were significantly longer than he’d ever gotten before, a whole handful of pages instead of the usual one or two he got. Trying not to be intimidated by its size, he started by locating the heart quota… There! Wait—
It felt like his stomach bottomed out, as he took in the number. “What the heck!?” he yelped.
Quaxa leaned over his shoulder to peer at the paper. “Hmm?”
“This heart quota, for starters!” Roxas said, angrily flicking its spot on the page. “Do you see how much they’re expecting us to collect?” It was at least three times his usual quota. “We’ll never mange that!”
Quaxa considered it a moment, and then shrugged. How could she be so unbothered!
“Mm, I’ve probably collected more than half that, before,” she said. “Since they paired the two of us together, that’s probably why it’s so—”
“Wait, you’ve collected half that before!?” Roxas interrupted, spluttering. Even half was more than he’d ever collected.
Quaxa nodded. “More than half, actually,” she corrected.
Roxas let out a low moan.
“Ohhh, no wonder Saix is so hard on me…” If this was what he was competing with, then…
“I’m… sorry?” Quaxa said, haltingly. “Is… is me collecting so many Hearts making it harder for you?”
“I mean…” Roxas made a face, realizing now how that must have sounded. “Saix has never tried assigning me this much, but he always acts like I could’ve somehow done better no matter what I do!”
“I think he’s just like that,” Qauxa said. “He acts the same to me…” There was a frown on her lips, but she didn’t sound too discouraged, overall. “I’m sure the numbers are just scaled to our abilities.”
That certainly made Roxas feel better about Saix, though he didn’t feel any less bull-dozed by Quaxa’s apparent abilities.
“You can really kill this much Heartless?” he asked, still having trouble believing it.
Quaxa nodded. “Mm-hmm! Together, we’ve definitely got this covered.” She gave him a reassuring squeeze of his shoulder, then started moving. “Come on, let’s go!”
Roxas hastily shoved their mission papers in his pocket.
“Got it!”
All things considered, Roxas was a fine partner. He was good with the Keyblade, and alright with magic. (Though, Quaxa supposed her definitions of good with magic were probably a little skewed. It wasn’t like she had yet seen anyone with magic strength that rivaled hers.) Roxas was more cautious than any other Organization member, and better company, besides.
Roxas talked, and he actually seemed invested in the conversation. Most others she had worked with had no interest in small talk, and even less desire to talk about themselves. Roxas didn’t have much to say about himself personally, but he did have a lot to say about Twilight Town, and a lot of questions to ask, too.
“So you don’t remember anything about your past?” Roxas asked, as they exited the Sandlot and headed into Tram Common.
Quaxa shook her head. “No,” she answered. “I don’t remember anything before—before joining the Organization.” She’d been instructed not to speak of the circumstances she’d woken up in, so. She didn’t. (Before Xemnas woke me up, was how she still thought of it, but no matter.)
“Oh, so you’re like me then!” Roxas said, chipper. (Familiarly so…?) He grinned up at her as they walked, excited at having found they had this in common. “I don’t remember anything before I joined, either. Axel and everyone else acts like it’s weird, but I think we’re doing okay, right?” He laughed and nudged her playfully.
Quaxa couldn’t help but laugh a little back. “Yeah, I think so too.”
Something tugged a little bit in her chest, something that felt like guilt, or maybe regret. Not that she could feel those emotions. She was a Nobody. (Or, so she’d been told, but there was no reason to distrust Xemnas.)
She hadn’t exactly told Roxas the whole truth, though. She did, sort of, remember things from what she assumed was her past. She remembered fragments, and notions—but that wasn’t the other Organization members described. They all acted like they remembered everything from their pasts, not just fragments. So perhaps she was more like Roxas, in the end.
“Wonder why we’re different…” Roxas mused. “Like, what’s the deal?”
Quaxa could only shrug at him. She had about as much of an idea as he did.
“I don’t understand enough about being a Nobody to know why I’m different,” she said, and Roxas laughed, nodding in agreement.
It was then that the Keyblade tugged in her mind, and the familiar sense of nearby Heartless pressed against her skin. Quaxa stopped and let her Keyblade come to her hand. They were in the open area of Tram Common, just past the accessory shop, at least. An alright place to fight Heartless. And a good thing, too, because it was a large wyvern-shaped creature that dropped from the sky.
“Yikes!” Roxas yelped, scrambling backwards. “That thing is huge!”
“We’ll be fine!” Quaxa told him, sending him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. They’d fought a whole horde of Heartless in the Sandlot, and that had gone well enough. Roxas didn’t look convinced.
Quaxa didn’t wait for him, she just raised her Keyblade and prepared a Blizzard spell. (Blizzard magic had always come easier to her, for some reason…) She shot the spell at the Heartless. It was no use.
With a flap of its large wings, the Heartless dodged the ice blast. Then it dived; not at her, but at—
“VEN!” Quaxa shouted, throwing herself between the Heartless and Roxas. A barrier burst forth around her, and the Heartless hit it and bounced back, doing a loop in the air to recover.
Quaxa took the barrier, shattered it, and threw all the shards at the Heartless. Then she leveled her Keyblade for one, two, three blasts of Firaga, digging her heels into the ground to steady herself from the recoil. (If she let herself be pushed back, she’d land on Roxas.) All three Firagas hit home. Quaxa followed up with Thundaga Shot, and the Heartless went down.
The leftover energy from the spells bristled under her skin, and she knew if she tugged it just the right way she could do something with it, though she didn’t know what. She let the energy fade, though. There was no use for it now.
Taking a deep breath, Quaxa turned to Roxas.
He was on the ground, eyes wide up at her. She offered a hand to help him up.
“Are you okay?” Quaxa asked, as she pulled Roxas to his feet.
He nodded and dusted himself off. “Uh, yeah,” he said. His eyes were narrowed deep in confusion. “What did you just call me, though?”
Quaxa blinked.
“Hmm?”
“You called me… Ven,” Roxas said, his face only scrunching up further. “Who’s Ven?”
“I… I don’t know,” Quaxa answered, slowly. Her eyes went unfocused, as she tried to remember what had happened only ten seconds ago. She couldn’t remember shouting anything when she jumped in front of Roxas.
“Someone from your past, maybe?” Roxas suggested. He sounded excited about the prospect. “Maybe I remind you of him!”
“Maybe…” Quaxa agreed.
She admitted, when she thought of the name Ven, some of those memory fragments bubbled up inside her. She got the sense of warmth in her chest, and the vision of a bright smile drawn across a face that—no, no, that was just Roxas’s face. Whoever this Ven was, her memories of him can’t have been clear at all if she couldn’t even recall his face properly.
“Well?” Roxas looked up at her expectantly, and Quaxa let her eyes snap back to him. She shook her head.
“I don’t really remember anything about him,” she said. “I can’t even remember what he looks like. It’s just… feelings.”
Roxas pouted at that, a sight which stirred something else familiar inside Quaxa’s chest. “It’s more than I get,” he grumbled. “Man, I wish I could remember anything from my past!”
Quaxa shook herself, trying to get rid of the feelings inside her. “Come on, let’s just finish the mission,” she said. “The last thing we need is Saix on our tails because we got sidetracked.”
At this, Roxas made a noise between disgust and horror.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming.”
They set off again.
Roxas had said he had somewhere to be after the mission, so Quaxa had let him go and reported to Saix for them. Saix was displeased about something, but, it seemed he was displeased every time Quaxa talked to him, so Quaxa did her best to ignore it.
That done, Quaxa headed to take care of her own things.
It would have been faster, never mind easier, to simply use a dark corridor to get where she wanted to go, but she wasn’t a big fan of them. She hated the queasy feeling they gave her, and the way the darkness seemed to cling to her skin afterwards. The cloak protected her mostly from that, but… Still. She avoided using them if she didn’t have to.
It was a long climb up the castle tower, but Quaxa couldn’t say she minded it. It sparked a feeling of nostalgia within her, climbing through winding hallways, past rooms that she didn’t even know the contents of. A few memories tried to attach themselves to the nostalgic feeling, but the memories were vaguer and even more fleeting than the ones she usually got. Oh well.
She reached her destination soon enough—a balcony at what Quaxa figured was the highest possible point of the Castle. It was well secluded from everything else; so much so she was a bit surprised there were other ways to get here than a dark corridor. It was a small balcony, just large enough to comfortably hold two people.
She hadn’t been summoned or anything, but nonetheless Xemnas was waiting for her.
It had become something of a habit, to speak with him after her missions. She wasn’t sure why. But there was a certain… comfort in it, she supposed.
He was technically her superior, but he never seemed to mind the company. And there was something about spending time with him that tugged at Quaxa’s memory fragments, something that stirred more nostalgia within her chest. (Of course, she really couldn’t feel the nostalgia, seeing as she was a Nobody. She guessed she just remembered what it was supposed to feel like.)
Xemnas wasn’t looking at the city that sprawled out below them, which was the most interesting thing to look at, in Quaxa’s opinion. Instead, Xemnas’s eyes were fixed at a point in the dark sky above. As if he expected to see something there.
He turned around when he heard Quaxa approaching, though, smiling and greeting her pleasantly. Quaxa did the same in return. The smile on her face came easily.
“You had a mission with Roxas today, didn’t you?” Xemnas asked, as Quaxa joined him on the balcony.
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the railing, and her chin in her hands. She nodded. “I did,” she answered, as her eyes swept the skyline below. She didn’t think she’d ever get tired of it, the way neon lights lit up an otherwise dark city. It was mesmerizing.
“What do you make of him?” Xemnas pressed.
It seemed like a strange question, but Quaxa shrugged.
“Well, he’s a fine Keyblade wielder,” she said, voicing her thoughts from earlier. “He handles Heartless just fine. And he…” She paused here, closing her eyes and breathing deeply, as she thought about it. She didn’t see the need to keep it a secret, though. “He’s familiar, somehow.”
She wouldn’t say he reminded her of anyone, because it wasn’t like she could remember the boy he supposedly reminded her of. (The name Ven still floated in her mind, but she still only got Roxas’s face when she tried to think of him.) Sighing, she continued:
“There’s something about spending time with him that’s… I’m not sure.” She didn’t know how to put words to the familiarity of it; how spending time with him was like something she’d done before, even though she knew she hadn’t. “But he’s familiar. Like I know him. Like…” She stopped here and shook her head, resigned—there really wasn’t another way to put it after all. “I guess he must remind me of someone I used to know.”
Quaxa turned to Xemnas, and saw that he was nodding, slowly.
“Often,” he said, “I feel the same way.”
“Really?” Quaxa asked, surprised.
Xemnas laughed, a short laugh, and put his hands on the railing, leaning forward. He cast his gaze up to the sky. “I’ve felt that way about Roxas ever since I recruited him for the Organization. The feeling that he reminds me of someone who used to be dear to me.”
Quaxa raised her eyebrows. She wondered if they found Roxas similar for the same reasons. She started to ask Xemnas if the name “Ven” meant anything to him, but she’d just opened her mouth when he turned to her again, a warm smile on his lips.
“I find I often get the same feeling around you,” he said.
“O- oh!” Quaxa gasped, the question dying in her mouth. She wasn’t sure how to answer, but gears started turning in her head. Maybe the sense of familiarity she felt when spending time with Xemnas wasn’t so strange, after all. Oh how she wished her memories were just a little clearer.
She considered asking Xemnas about her foggy memories, but… no. She doubted he had any answers. Perhaps another time, if they were still bothering her, she’d ask.