who i am from the start

[pullsheavendown]

Who: Roxas (pullsheavendown), Sora (happylocksmith), Axel (icingonthecake) & Riku (dreamprotector) in varying combos
What: Meetings & reunions
When: Day of the latest pod awakenings, pre-Nadril
Where: Thesa Station
Warning(s): Kingdom Hearts lore is stupid

[So, he's awakened in space with the knowledge that his worlds is gone, found his other half, and had a conversation he always wanted to have but never thought he'd be able to. What next?

Go to Disney World

Get dragged along the corridors of Thesa Station, apparently.]

Comments

[pullsheavendown]

Roxas knows that look and gestures, the way Axel acts when he starts to feel out of his depth or too many complications begin to arise. But honestly, he can't blame him; he does know how Sora is, but Riku's another matter. Even without every detail of what happened while he was sleeping, and even knowing that Axel had never truly been as loyal to the Organization as Xemnas wanted,

for a long time they'd been the opposte of allies. He understands now that Riku had been the imposter, skulking around the worlds dressed like one of them, and then there had been that rainy night outside the castle...

"I'm not disappointed. I wouldn't be," he says, and if he's not sure that's 100 percent true, it's close enough. "Even if you didn't. Cuz it's your next life. You decide what to do with it."

No more Organization, no more boss, no more threats of being turned into Dusks. No more striving for Kingdom Hearts in a quest no one completely understood. His gaze drifts to the ground, and once again he wishes they were high up, with so much more space to look into.

"I don't know what I think about Riku," he quietly admits after a moment. "I understand who he is now, and why he did what he did. I can't even say any of it was wrong." His left hand flexes, fingers spread and then balling up in a fist and back. "But he also took me to that man. He helped keep me in that town."

[icingonthecake]

Axel realizes belatedly that the connotations of his words had been misleading. Saying that Roxas would have been disappointed put the blame on Roxas for finding fault, but that isn't what he meant.

"Ah, lemme rephrase that," he says, shaking his head, and he looks a little embarrassed. "I more meant... I wanted you to be proud'a me. You know, for making the right choice for once."

And then the sentimental sheepish look is gone as Axel heaves a sigh and threads his hands together behind his head.

"Ahh, but if it's my life anyway," he says, flopping backward onto the bed dramatically, "then maybe I'll just swear off all this good guy baloney and take a nap for like a month. That sounds way more in line with my long-term goals."

He opens one eye and gives Roxas a grin that makes it obvious he's just messing around.

When Roxas gets quiet then and speaks of Riku, the playful posture vanishes and Axel sits upright, drawing one knee up and giving his friend a curious look. He's not surprised to see Roxas sort of working through his thoughts on Riku--Axel of all people knows that when you're on opposing sides, even if you don't really want to be, it can be complicated to acknowledge the actions of your opponents, however justified they may or may not have been. He actually makes a startled noise, though, when Roxas concludes his thought, and he reaches over to take the kid's shoulder.

"Wait, hold up," he says. "'That town', that fake Twilight Town?" he asks. "Riku is the one who dragged you into that mess?" Okay, maybe he still trusted Riku to not physically stab him in the back, but this news is deeply troubling. Axel had wondered how Roxas had wound up in DiZ's talons, but to think that Riku had been the one to hand him over made Axel's stomach twist with anger. "How the hell did that happen?" he asks, shaking his head. "I mean, you've kicked the asses of half the Organization--you tore Saïx up good on your way out--and Riku carted you off behind enemy lines?"

That isn't to say Axel doesn't respect Riku as a combatant--Riku's kicked his ass once or twice--but Roxas is about the strongest person he's ever met, and especially before Riku really got a handle on himself, it's hard to imagine the younger man taking Roxas out.

[pullsheavendown]

Because Axel's not looking directly at Roxas, he might miss it when Roxas' eyes go a little wider and his expression softens. Nothing his friend had said before was bad, but what he says now gives him an entirely different angle of looking at things, and it makes his chest feel warm and a little squeezed at the same time.

He'd meant what he said. He wants Axel to live his life and be free from others' expectations, all the way. But if this is how he sees it, then Roxas can't help but be glad. He already knew that he matters to Axel; he just didn't realize that what he thinks of Axel matters so much, too.

But all the warmth goes away when Axel sits up sharply, like Roxas told him something shocking instead of acknowledging an uncomfortable truth that wasn't a secret. Roxas thought he'd been doing the latter.

"Yeah," he says, blinking in surprise. "I thought you knew."

He doesn't know all the details of everything that had happened between Axel, Sora and Riku, here or back in their worlds, but he'd assumed that was something they all knew and had dealt with. And why not, if it was mostly DiZ's doing? Riku had been out to help his best friend, not to hurt him. It had just happened anyway. They should all be able to put it behind them.

It's just that some things are easier said than done.

"He came after me, to take me to Sora," he continues, remembering that night, the way he'd been confused about the stranger's motivations but not his crystal clear sense of purpose. "We fought. But he couldn't beat me. So he changed—he called the darkness and he wasn't him anymore, he looked like Xemnas' Heartless."

Xehanort's, he supposes, but Xehanort is a concept and a name, and had been neither of those things to him at the time. Roxas hunches over slightly, shoulders curling in. "The next thing I knew, I was waking up in my bed in Twilight Town, and everything I ever heard about Sora was just some weird dream I'd had," he says, quieter now. "They made me forget."

[icingonthecake]

Axel knows, honestly. He knows that Roxas wouldn't want him to shoehorn his life into something he didn't want it to be just to make someone else happy, that would have been the ultimate hypocrisy. But that doesn't change the fact that he does want to be someone Roxas can be proud of, and be the good friend he always deserved.

The way Roxas' expression falls at his reaction to the news makes Axel feel a little guilty (or at least remember guilt. He remembers guilt very well). He shakes his head and lowers his eyes.

"No, I didn't know," he says. "I mean I knew that something must have happened, because you'd never have gone to DiZ on your own, but I didn't know it was Riku." He gives him a weak smile. "You want I should beat him up for ya?"

He's kidding, and figures Roxas can tell that much. He and Riku aren't quite friends yet, he thinks, but there's a mutual respect and amicability, and ultimately, he knows that Riku's motivations couldn't have been too different from his own, when he'd kidnapped Kairi. They had both been willing to do something awful to someone else for the sake of their best friends, and while he couldn't say it was a laudable sentiment, he could at least relate to it.

"Ah, I had wondered why he looked like that creep," Axel says then, and gives a snort of laughter. "I met up with him a couple of times, after that had happened. He helped Naminé get away from DiZ, eventually, and I didn't recognize him the first time I saw him wearing that face. He told me his name was 'Ansem', and I just about died laughing." He shakes his head, still chuckling. "He couldn't have known that I actually knew Ansem and knew damn well he wasn't him, but it was hilarious in the moment."

The laughter dies quickly when Roxas folds in on himself, though, and Axel's chest aches for him at his words. He remembers very clearly the conversation he'd had with the kid once upon a time, about having things you couldn't bear to lose, how Roxas had confessed that losing his memories of him and--

--?

'And'? What 'and'? It had just been the two of them. Weird. Maybe he was still groggy from having been in stasis again.

As painful as it had been to find Roxas in that digital town and be treated like a stranger, Axel couldn't imagine what it must have been like for him to realize his entire life had been erased, and everything that he thought he knew was a lie. At least he'd gotten those memories back.

"I know, kiddo," he says, putting a hand on Roxas' shoulder again. "I was too angry at the time to really appreciate how awful that must have been for you, so I guess... sorry I just kind of exacerbated things, back then."

[pullsheavendown]

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."

[icingonthecake]

If Roxas legitimately wanted Axel to [attempt to] beat Riku up, Axel would absolutely [attempt to] beat Riku up. He does understand where Riku was coming from, so he doesn't actively want to beat Riku up, but he owes Roxas that much, if that was what Roxas wanted, really.

He smiles a little and shakes his head then.

"It... it's okay, kiddo," he says. "I mean, yeah, it sucked, and I was hurt and angry about it, which was bizarre because I shouldn't have been able to be those things in the first place, so I was just kind of a mess, myself. Besides, it wasn't your fault." He stares at his hands and gives a wistful sort of sigh. "I wanted to follow you, I really did. And not in the creepy stalker way I wound up following you." He looks at him again. "The fact is, I knew so long as I was still there working for them, they'd send me after you instead'a someone else, because they knew if anybody could get through to you, it was probably me." He pauses a moment, then shakes his head again. "If I left to go with you, who knows what they might have been driven to do to try and get you back," he says. "I was nervous about what they'd do to me if I'd tried to leave, back then, but... I think I was more worried about what would happen to you if I wasn't there to be the one to go after you."

He gives him a mildly encouraging look.

"It was real, in a way," he assures him. "Even if the world itself was fake, the experiences you had there were real. Whatever you said and felt, it was real enough, I think." He nudges Roxas' shoulder. "Maybe one day, you'll get to go be those kids' friend for real," he says, and then looks at him very sternly. "So long as it doesn't cut into our hangout time too much."

[pullsheavendown]

Roxas wonders about that. You can banish a heart from a body and it will try to replace it, for as many times as it takes to get it back, Sora had told him. He's still processing some of what he's heard about the future, about what Xemnas—Xehanort—had really wanted, and he probably will be for a while. But if that part is true, when does it start? How long does it take? How much of a heart could Axel have had then?

It makes him happy to be certain that the good times they had up on the clock tower were real, not just two empty beings' imitation of friendship. But the heart that Roxas is sure he has aches at the way the Organization used it against them.

At least they still have it. They could leave this place and go back to Twilight Town today, if the storm hadn't taken it, and he'd have to start all over with the other people he remembers as friends.

"Maybe," he says, and it's nice to think about, even if he's not sure if it could really happen. "But you know it wouldn't. You're my best friend, no matter what."

Once, he'd thought they'd lost that. Now that he knows they haven't, he's determined to never let go of it again, no matter what world they're in.

[icingonthecake]

Nobodies were never supposed to exist, but that didn't stop them, and Axel isn't about to believe that what they experienced wasn't real simply because they were never meant to experience it. They did, and that's that, and no one can take that away from them.

He had been mostly joking with his jab, but Roxas' assurance makes him feel warm, anyway. After everything that tried so damn hard to come between them, here they still are: a little older, a little wiser (a little sorrier), but still best friends. For everything he's lost in his life--his home, his heart, his childhood friend--getting Roxas back now, and being given the chance to make up for all the stupid mistakes he made before, maybe it all really did accomplish something. He had never grieved for his home, for his family, for his heart, because in losing them, he'd lost his emotions as well. Even if he had wanted to grieve, he had been incapable--or at least impressionable enough to believe that was the case.

He reaches over and bumps the bottom of his fist against Roxas's shoulder, smiling more sincerely in that moment than he may have since the fall of Radiant Garden.

"Right back at'cha, partner."

Maybe Axel had simply spent so long caring about nothing at all, that it took losing the one important thing he'd found in twelve years to remind him of what it felt like to grieve in the first place. And maybe, just maybe, that had been enough for a change of heart, however absent or fledgling that heart may have been.