Thirteen Verses

By mocha

Disclaimers, Warnings, and Whatnot: KH2 belongs to others. Axel/Roxas, gen to BL, angst, somewhat set in chronological order.

Axel remembered an old saying not long before his shell became a Nobody, an ancient one that claimed that "an empty vessel makes the most noise." He felt it was too true when Roxas was invited - dragged? - to the Organization, and it didn't take the Superior long to burden missions on the boy's back and toss him like a tool into swarms of Heartless. It wasn't because Roxas spoke much or regarded each member throughout the Castle - goodness knows what could get a reaction out of such an apathetic face - but the noise that came from his daily battles against the thirsty Heartless, with the squelching sounds that formed from each slice of a blade that tore off their skin, the glass-shattering echo that erupted as one after another fell to the mercy of a righteous weapon that wasn't truly the current wielder's, and whatever other terror Roxas imposed upon them to make them scratch their sharp nails against the wall and the constant noise of keys striking whatever they deemed fit to strike, because in their current hands, that was the only thing they knew how to do.

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II

VIII was naturally friendly - a nice characteristic that went back from when he was still Somebody - though he would've preferred that the new XIII reciprocated some kindness back, because no one liked talking to a stone wall, especially the ones that had a pair of lethal weapons that promised bruises in the morning (of which Axel had already gathered a generous collection).

"Why are you even doing this?" the boy finally inquired, all while uneasily edging away from the Nobody (whom he was certain was the most insane in the group).

Axel went with "Because you act as if you have a stick up your ass and it's my job to personally take it out," and slightly regretted it when Roxas pursued him with his Keyblades, eventually having to jump out of the Castle five stories high to prevent another set of bruises.

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III

Nobodies in human form were definitely the most dangerous of all, for the emptiness inside them would often become too filled with strange emotions that they could never handle, and that emptiness would inevitably burst. Roxas was a firm believer in this theory, saw it practiced and proven with the Organization members who met their capacity in Castle Oblivion, but he couldn't help but get drunk upon the swelling power of endless rows of Nobody warriors - his Nobody warriors - free to his command and will and insanity. He swore he felt something pump erratically in his chest when they bowed on one knee to him or when he practiced and trained with them to be the best, only the best, perhaps because as Nobodies, it was the only praise available.

After a month of intoxication, Axel approached him, a few Assassins dancing in his wake, and asked "Feels great to manipulate, doesn't it?"

"We can't feel anything," Roxas growled out, but the false pump in his chest told him that the manipulation he held over his fighters would one day turn like a compass a full one hundred eighty degrees.

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IV

The Superior made Axel the guardian of XIII, claiming that the pressure would too easily build up upon the shoulders of the young boy, but it was obvious that the last thing he wanted Roxas to do was to abandon the Organization and take nothing but the precious keys with him. So after every mission, Axel set out to find XIII, and just like after every mission, he found Roxas slumped against a wall, sometimes with black and red smears along the ground or heavy keys, usually with the boy taking shallow breaths from overworking himself more than necessary (but did anyway because it gave an illusion of a hidden purpose behind everything he did). And always, when Axel would come to drag him back to the dark corridors of the Castle, Roxas would cling to Axel's cloak like a child and cry out "Hate this, hate this, hate this!"

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V

One time, Roxas was chasing Axel down the hallways of The Castle That Never Was with both Keyblades in hand ready to splatter blood and guts, only because Axel was a dork and kept sneaking into his room at inappropriate moments (on purpose, he was sure!), but in those times when he was chasing the laughing Nobody, he felt like he was running through fields of sunny yellow flowers and occasionally stopping to smell them, and despite the fact that he would never be able to feel the sweet pollen fill his lungs and expand an invisible heart, he felt that so long as he was pursuing something worthwhile in that field, everything he did in his life would make sense.

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VI

Axel first kissed Roxas between the silent enclosures of the buildings in the Dark City. Roxas was strolling aimlessly that day, bored with the weapons weighing down his hands, and without a companion except for the clear rain dripping off his black hood. They took brief refuge in an alleyway, just to talk, just to ease their minds of all these tragedies, and it was then when Axel felt a tug somewhere in his body and pulled back Roxas' hood to lightly brush off the rainwater on his blue lips. Roxas, his posture stiff, let him do this once more, thrice more, and when Axel finally evaporated all the water away, Roxas could only shake his head and laugh at all this nonsense, laugh at himself for thinking that he felt a tremble echo between his ribs when Axel smiled against his lips, laugh in merriment when he saw a brief glimpse of something worthwhile standing in front of him.

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VII

Upon later reflection, when Roxas was confined between his bedsheets and imprisoned by a muscled arm across his chest, he concluded that perhaps he was willingly walking in Axel's footprints because Axel had something different than the others, something that promised something worthwhile, but as long as that something remained nameless, he tried to keep on his toes, alert for any disturbances that would distract him from that something. It would have been easier to keep focused, though, if Axel wasn't that something.

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VIII

It didn’t make sense, their strange attachment to each other, and whenever Roxas tried to question it, Axel would laugh it off and declare it pointless to try to dissect it and piece it back apart. What they had was something that Somebodies had, and to doubt its existence was dangerous to them both because this was the closest they could get to feeling, to understanding, to maybe even love, though they both accepted that such a concept would be forever out of their reach.

Roxas couldn’t help but bring it up again when he was tossed onto Axel’s back, arms wrapped around his friend’s neck and legs hoisted on his hips, slightly delusional from a rough mission, and personally carried back to the Castle. He was created in a land without knowing or understanding anything. He had every right to be curious and frustrated and sick of it all.

“But the Superior says that whatever we think is only a lie,” Roxas argued breathlessly. (Was it him or did it seem that more Heartless were appearing whenever he felt that the end was coming closer and closer?). “And that we can’t assume anything until we get Kingdom Hearts or whatever and…” He finally gave up and dropped his face into spiky red hair. “My head hurts.”

“Bring a potion next time, will you?” Axel pushed him up further on his back and groaned when a joint cracked. “Lose some weight while you’re at it.”

He earned a kick in the thigh. “Listen to me when I’m talking. What happens once we obtain Kingdom Hearts? What about the Keyblade? You honestly don’t expect this to go on forever, do you?”

When Axel kept silent to that, Roxas lifted his head and tried to stretch to see his friend’s face. “Axel?”

He still said nothing, but he often did that, and Roxas had accepted the fact that Axel was keeping hundreds of secrets from him that would surely cause Roxas to turn his back on the 13th Order, turn from his missions and purpose, and turn away from the man carrying his beaten body who was trying so hard to protect him from the most painful truth of all.

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IX

He knew the end was coming - heck, he could feel it! - but instead of greeting it with unwilling arms, he spent all his efforts denying his fate because right now, he could say that Roxas was his companion, his best friend, his something, and despite the fact that such a statement inevitably had a dead end, he was still convinced that there would be no end to this madness if they didn't have hearts. And yet, he was also convinced since the very beginning that they could have and handle emotions without stealing petty hearts from the all-knowing Kingdom Hearts.

When he tried to explain this to Roxas, the boy got mad - no, absolutely infuriated - because Axel refused to listen and acknowledge the fact that they were all destined to be doomed without a capsule to hold feelings, but Axel felt that Roxas was scared, because perhaps they were fated to destruction, and in that moment when he was Axel's most precious something, perhaps he wanted to lengthen what little time they had left together before he brought the end to them all.

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X

Roxas left without telling anyone in the dead of the night. Axel was lucky enough to notice the strange glaze over those blue eyes while gazing at the sky that always blocked the sun, but not lucky enough to fully capture the emptiness in the boy's chest and make it into something worthwhile.

When asked later about why he didn't pursue Roxas, Axel simply said, "He wouldn't believe me if I said my heart told me to go after him."

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XI

Demyx remembered a time when he found Axel hunched over the library window on a green velvet stool, a pile of books stacked behind him, all about the formation and separation of Nobodies from Somebodies, and the most particular item of all was the burgundy lighter he had in his hand, held just over the window but close to his passive face. His thumb flicked the wheel, and it lit, and he released it and the minuscule flame was extinguished. Again he did this process, kept repeating it in a slow pattern: back on, back off, illuminating his cheekbones and flat green eyes but then flushing them out in darkness. Click on, click off, bright light, no light.

Demyx watched his friend continuously extinguish the only light in the room, and couldn't help but ponder if that Nobodies were doomed in the beginning like Roxas believed, not because they didn't have hearts, but because they could never mentally handle any emotion given to them and would simply collapse when it became too much.

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XII

When Roxas remembered everything again, he was angry, not because the only valuables he had - his short-lived memories and a pair of keys to protect them from greedy fingers - were taken away, nor because he never asked for any of this and was forcibly drawn into it anyway; he was angry because everything to him had been a nonexistent lie. The town he once believed was his true home was only data recorded in numbers, the friends he once loved so dearly were actually empty spaces upon which he wasted endless conversations, and each event he could pull from his mind from his stay in the town were all worthless. More than anything, he did his best to avoid worthlessness, but he should have known that his fate was inevitable as a Nobody.

When Axel came back and brought the memories they once shared, Roxas chose not to go with him because Axel was nonexistent too, and Roxas knew all too well that those without existence were all being pulled on a rope to a dreadful fate. Following it would be the end of them both, and he was tired of being without someone real and without something worthwhile and just wanted it all to end.

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XIII

Axel tried to tell himself that Roxas was technically not gone forever, because technically he had hidden himself in Sora's heart and was technically just waiting for the right moment to rejoin his Nobody self with his Somebody, and all these technicalities that Axel desperately clung upon because technically Roxas was lost to him forever and Axel could no longer remember why he was wasting his false existence chasing Kingdom Hearts so he could truly love someone when that purpose was now worthless.

He liked to think that Roxas was the one keeping him from breaking, and that he was the one keeping Roxas from breaking, but when he felt - actually felt - his body breaking away from whatever kept him onto the earth, he realized that perhaps Roxas had been right the whole time, that Nobodies were all doomed to fade away because they had no right to live and no purpose and no inner feeling in their empty hearts to guide them.

But when he saw Roxas' eyes flash behind Sora's just before he fully faded away, Axel thought for just a moment, just before everything went bright with light, that maybe Roxas had been wrong, and perhaps now that he had a heart with which to connect from Sora, he could feel an unknown shattering inside his chest when he watched his best friend turn into smoke. But that was only a facade, because Axel and everyone else were doomed to fall to the strength of those with hearts since the very beginning, and they just weren't lucky enough.