Roxas' mouth twitches into a semblance of a smile, just for a moment, and he shakes his head. No, he doesn't want Axel to beat Riku up, and he's pretty sure Axel knows that. He's also pretty sure that if he did want that, Axel would actually do it, joking or not. But it's not the right thing, and anyway Roxas would do it himself before he'd let anyone do it for him. Those two reasons are about equivalent in his mind.
Actually, there are even more reasons not to give in to the sorrow and pain and rage that still linger in his heart. He'd been desperate to wake Sora up, and Sora would be sad now, and it wouldn't do any good because Riku has literally changed since then and now—and Roxas doesn't hate him. In some ways, it would be easier if he did.
Axel's hand on his shoulder pulls him out of whatever reverie he'd sunken into, and he's grateful for that—a solid point of contact, something he knows for sure is real.
"It's okay," he says. "I'm sorry I didn't know you. Even though I was really mad at you when I left the castle the last time, I didn't want it to be forever. I guess part of me hoped you'd follow eventually. And I would never have wanted you feel forgotten. If it had been the other way around..."
What would that have been like? Axel the normal person with a normal life and normal friends, and not a single memory of the afternoons they'd shared on the clock tower, laughing and being silly and talking about everything and nothing. If Roxas had been the one forgotten? He'd have been devastated. Just in a different way than had happened for real.
"It felt real to me," he says after a moment. "It still does. I'm me again, I was even when I was in Sora's heart, but it's like it all happened in a dream once and I didn't forget it after I woke up."
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Actually, there are even more reasons not to give in to the sorrow and pain and rage that still linger in his heart. He'd been desperate to wake Sora up, and Sora would be sad now, and it wouldn't do any good because Riku has literally changed since then and now—and Roxas doesn't hate him. In some ways, it would be easier if he did.
Axel's hand on his shoulder pulls him out of whatever reverie he'd sunken into, and he's grateful for that—a solid point of contact, something he knows for sure is real.
"It's okay," he says. "I'm sorry I didn't know you. Even though I was really mad at you when I left the castle the last time, I didn't want it to be forever. I guess part of me hoped you'd follow eventually. And I would never have wanted you feel forgotten. If it had been the other way around..."
What would that have been like? Axel the normal person with a normal life and normal friends, and not a single memory of the afternoons they'd shared on the clock tower, laughing and being silly and talking about everything and nothing. If Roxas had been the one forgotten? He'd have been devastated. Just in a different way than had happened for real.
"It felt real to me," he says after a moment. "It still does. I'm me again, I was even when I was in Sora's heart, but it's like it all happened in a dream once and I didn't forget it after I woke up."