[fic] Kingdom Hearts - Equal Parts

[kawree]

It's night, though it could be argued that it's always night in Never Was. The great bulbous Kingdom Hearts moon casts long, silver arms of light on the floor of the lobby, the edges of his shadow almost too sharp and precise against them. There's something eerie about the castle when no one is awake, like maybe time doesn't really exist--like maybe nothing really exists, and the world lives up to its name for one single, silent instant. In the deafening silence of that grey room, Axel can almost believe this is a world where nothing ever was, and nothing ever would be.

The lobby is cold--it's always cold. Even with a full cast of members killing time on the couches, the ambient temperature of the room never seems to crawl above slightly uncomfortable. Well, the cold is rarely a problem for him. Maybe that's one of the perks of wielding the element he does: the thermostat always kicks on before a chill sets in. Tearing his eyes from the window, he glances around the rounded walls of The Gray Area, with its symmetrical couch setup, the perfectly perpendicular lines of the windows against the ceiling, the empty corner where the Moogle usually hovers (Axel calls him Gomoxel, mostly because it irritates the hell out of Saïx. The moogle hasn't lost its heart, after all, so there's no reason to give it such a name, Saïx always insists. Stupid, sempiternally logical bastard). If he had the heart to be disgusted by the perfect balance of white stone floor and great black sky, of straight lines and curved edges, he would be. Equal parts light and dark? Nonsense. Nothing about them or this place is balanced.

He's been awake for over an hour, having barely slept two. He retires to his room at the end of the day, just like the rest of them do, but often emerges again a few hours later to wander the halls, listening to the click of his boots against the cold, white stone of the corridors like the secondhand of a clock that runs slow. Axel doesn't really sleep. For all his efforts at looking like a lazy-ass and stealing naps whenever it's most convenient, it's rare for him to actually sleep more than a few hours at a time. He catnaps sporadically at best and pulls all-nighters at worst, and finds it's plenty easy to just write off the more notable physical repercussions of his abysmal sleeping habits as missed siestas, because certainly everyone expects that sort of excuse from him anymore.

It's not that he doesn't like sleeping--quite the opposite really, he considers it one of his favorite pastimes--he just finds it a little too precarious a hobby to engage in for protracted periods of time. There's a great dearth of safe company in The Castle that Never Was, and Axel's not about to just turn his back and conk out for eight full hours knowing that any of them could just whisper into his room without even using the door. Maybe it's a little paranoid, maybe it's a little silly, but Axel doesn't turn his back to anyone anymore, and hasn't for a long time. He trusts Roxas to cover him if he needs it. He trusts Xion to fight alongside him. He trusts Demyx not to stab him between the shoulderblades at the first given opportunity. Other than that, Axel trusts no one, really, and falling asleep is the ultimate vulnerability, so he never indulges in it for long.

He shifts where he stands, and the rustle of his coat whispers in the air and reverberates off the glass and stone like rumors. Everything echoes in this castle--he can almost swear you could hear heartbeats if you listened hard enough. It's not the usual restless mistrust that drives him from his room tonight, though. Axel can't recall the last time he actually dreamed, let alone about anything that didn't involve wacky dream mechanics or having to go to a meeting naked or other such common nocturnal visions that made no sense and carried no real weight. Tonight, though, the dream was heavy enough to jerk him almost painfully from slumber--something that hasn't happened in years.

Axel hasn't thought of that day in the better part of a decade, and he thinks he could have happily gone another eight or nine years without being reminded. He's pretty sure he knows what brought it on, too. He hates it when Saïx brings up the past. If Axel is capable of hating anything, it's the past, and as much as Saïx wants to think of himself as Axel's superior--his elder, his beloved upperclassman--he'll never be any of the above. Axel only listens to Saïx when it behooves him, when it's conducive, when it keeps his own nose clean, and the rest of the time Saïx's words are in one ear and out the other. He's spent so long planning his next move three steps out, five steps out, ten steps out, that he's probably a better strategist now than Saïx ever was, and he knows that rankles the other man.

And Axel really doesn't care anymore. Maybe he's only been fooling himself into believing he cared in the first place.

Footsteps echo from behind him, soft, uneven, and Axel whirls sharply, defensively. Spying a figure in the ingress he relaxes, his expression shifting quickly from anxious to nonplussed.

"Xion?"

She's barefoot, her hair disheveled and her eyes cloudy with sleep, and he really can't think of a good reason why she would be standing there in the lobby doorway. Despite everything he knows now and everything that he stands to lose, though, he's not sure he can convince himself he doesn't care about this. About her. Even if it's only when he's around Roxas and Xion, something about the way he can laugh during those times makes him wonder if somehow when they're together maybe their fractured existences make up a whole heart between them.

The thought flutters from his mind like paper scattered in the wind as she lifts a hand to scrub at one bright blue eye.

"I didn't think anyone was awake," she says through a yawn she fails to stifle as she pads into the cold lobby and her gaze flicks to the tables between the sofas. "One of my seashells fell out of the pocket of my coat," she goes on, and Axel still can't quite believe that Roxas is the one who's sore with him right now. Xion has every right to be angry with him--she's the one who got knocked out cold and tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes--but she looks at him like nothing's changed, like they're still best friends, and he wants to believe it's true.

He knows it isn't. He knows everything is different now because he knows what she is now, but if he were capable of bliss he might wish he could have held onto his ignorance a little longer. He knows now that there is no place for the three of them, and there never will be.

Shifting where he stands, Axel watches her mince around the tables, stepping gingerly like the floor is too cold for her feet. Maybe it is--he's never walked the halls barefoot.

"You need the seashell to sleep?" he asks, genuinely perplexed, and she blinks up at him, shaking her head.

"No, but if someone else finds it they'll throw it out," she says, frowning. "I had another dream," she goes on after a moment, sounding small, timid, "where I was in the middle of the ocean and something was pulling me down." There's a pause, and Axel lifts his eyebrows as if to ask if there's more, and she lowers her eyes. "I count them when I wake up," she says, "because they remind me that things can exist in more than one place."

"More than one place?" He sits down on the arm of the couch and folds his arms. "Whaddaya mean?"

"Seashells are in the water and on the sand," she says wisely. "You can find them underwater or on dry land and anywhere between the two, and it's okay. It's normal."

"And?" He's not following.

She peers at him in the silver-blue light of the moon, and her eyes pierce the silence like darts. "And so maybe if it's normal for seashells to exist in between, maybe it's okay for us, too."

He's never sure if he thinks she's brilliant or painfully naïve.

She pauses in her searching then to look at him, cocking her head in an almost avian manner. "What're you doing up?" she asks, and there's no accusation in the question.

He shrugs one shoulder. "Couldn't sleep," he replies, and she lets a little laugh dust over her lips.

"You're the last person I ever expected to hear that from," she says, and he's almost sad to realize that if his best friends don't realize his naps are mostly a cover and a defense mechanism, then maybe nobody gets him at all. Then he remembers he can't be sad anyway and he just purses his lips.

"I'd say nobody's perfect, but…" Another shrug and he casts his eyes back to the window. He's a good liar, but he can never look someone in the eye when he's being dishonest. Not if they matter, anyway. Saïx's words still burn in his ears--' Which would you rather suffer the loss of: some make-believe friendship, or a real one?' Why does he have to suffer the loss of either?

He turns when the air in the room shifts, and leans back a little when he realizes Xion is standing right next to him now, her big eyes curious, worried as they search his face.

"W-what?" he asks, frowning. She looks as if she's searching for a spelling mistake or a misplaced comma in his thoughts.

"Did something happen?" she asks, and he narrows his eyes. Roxas seems to think Axel knows everything, but Axel wonders sometimes if girls can just inherently tell about things, because he never has trouble hiding his thoughts from anybody else. It's like she can see he's haunted when he barely acknowledges it himself.

"No," he insists a little too quickly, his eyes skirting off to the right, and she folds her little arms and pops one hip and inclines her chin fiercely.

"You're lying."

She says it so matter of factly that for half a second all he can do is stare, but rather than rebuff he just lists sideways on the arm of the couch and sort of flops down onto the cushions. "Well, my pants ain't on fire yet, so I think I'm still within my allowances," he says, wriggling himself fully onto the couch and toeing off his boots. Shoes on the table is one thing, but never on the couch.

"What happened?" Xion asks firmly, and the concerned look on her face is almost jarring against the stern tone of her voice. That's a combination he hasn't seen since his own mother had yelled at him for breaking his arm when he was twelve.

He closes his eyes and rolls onto his back on the sofa, folding his hands together behind his head and drawing up one knee. "Nothing," he says, and he can lie flawlessly with his eyes closed. "Go back to bed; we can find you a new seashell tomorrow."

There's a beat of silence, and then the couch dips at his thighs and his eyes flicker open to see her sitting defiantly on the couch in front of his legs, her palms on her knees and her shoulders squared and her jaw set as she glowers at him. The anger in her eyes is almost believable. "I'm not going back to bed," she insists, and if he could feel guilty he might. She gave him the same look when she scolded him for lying about Castle Oblivion. He forgets sometimes that she's so stubborn, that once she gets something in her head she doesn't let it go. That's gonna get her in trouble one day, he's sure of it.

Silence stretches between them, and then he shrugs and casts his eyes to the ceiling. "Fine, don't go back to bed," he challenges. "I'm not your boss."

She makes a thin, wordless noise, and there's something pained in it as if his words sting, and then she full-on glares at him. "No, you're my friend," she says, "and that's way more important than my boss."

He barks a helpless laugh at that, because he really can't help but agree. Now if only Saïx got that, he'd be in good shape.

"Fine," he says, "I had a dream too, okay? Happy?" He still doesn't look at her, instead closing his eyes again, crossing one knee over the other and bouncing his socked foot. "Now you know, so go back to bed."

"No, I'm not happy," she says, her voice a little sullen. "What kind of dream was it?"

"The kind that's none of your business," he replies without missing a beat, and he means it in its truest sense. Axel's past is none of Xion's business, and it's not something he talks about. Ever. It's not her fault she's perceptive and can read faces like he can, but she's not getting the story out of him.

She's quiet for a moment, and he opens his eyes again to glance at her, and he's sorry almost immediately, because she's giving him the kicked puppy look, and he hates the kicked puppy look. If he's allowed to feel anything he hates the kicked puppy look because it makes him remember all too fiercely what it feels like to feel guilty, and it's a lousy feeling he's never sorry he can't feel anymore. Sitting up and folding his legs to his chest, crossing his ankles and encircling his knees with his arms, he sighs with a roll of his eyes.

"Let it go, Xion," he says, and absently wonders why this can't be real. He wonders why the fact that she's a replica means she's not real, why the fact that the memories that she borrowed to exist negate the ones she's made while she's been here. She's a reflection, and he knows it--she only exists when Roxas is looking in the mirror and when Sora catches a glimpse of his own shadow on the wall, but that doesn't make either likeness false. "It was a stupid dream, and I'll have forgotten all about it tomorrow."

"No you won't." Her voice is almost dark. "You never forget anything."

Well, she makes a good point.

"If it was just a stupid dream, then why can't you tell me?" she asks, and his eyes find hers, unbidden, in the shadows of the room. "I told you about mine."

"I didn't realize that was an ante-up," he refutes a bit sourly. "I'm really not interested in storytime." She can't out-stubborn him. He practically defines stupid tenacity.

"Please."

Okay, so she's a sub-entry; a connotative addendum. Funny, that's actually not a bad way to describe her, really.

Her eyes are wide and sad somehow, and even Axel--sempiternally unflappable Axel--is not immune to those big sad eyes. Roxas has gotten him with them a few times, too--it just isn't fair! He has a reputation to keep up--how do these darn kids know just how to get him to fold his hand?

No, he is not going to fold this hand. It's too high a hand to just fold it; he is not having this conversation, and certainly not with Xion. Not because he doesn't trust her--really Axel wouldn't have any issue talking openly to Xion... if he were inclined to talk openly to anybody. … Why is he even rationalizing this?

"Look, I really don't wanna talk about it, Xion," he admitted. "It's not important, so just leave it, okay?"

"If it's not important, then why can't you talk about it?"

He draws a slow breath through his nose and exhales silently. She's relentless, and that's not news, and it almost makes him think that maybe she'll find a way to make this whole thing work out after all, if only because she's not the type to just give up.

"Why is it so important to you?" he asks in return, and she frowns.

"Because you look scared," she says, and that surprises him. Er… wait, is surprise an emotion?

"What?"

"You look scared," she repeats. "I can see it. I can tell. I know your face, Axel, and I know this isn't a look I've ever seen before."

Of all the things he's ever asked anyone to memorize, his face had never been one of them, and to think that she's actually paid that much attention catches him off-guard. Why is she being so insistent? It has nothing to do with her--it had happened long before he had even known Roxas. It had happened before he had joined the Organization at all; it has nothing to do with her.

He shakes his head. "It doesn't even concern you, Xion; seriously, just don't worry about it." Another shake of his head, and he absently rubs one arm through his sleeve. Even if he were so inclined to talk to people openly, this isn't something he thinks bringing up with Xion is even appropriate, let alone considerate, and while he rarely concerns himself with other peoples' delicate sensibilities, emotions or otherwise he knows all too well that Roxas and Xion aren't impervious to hurt feelings. "I just don't really think I should talk about it."

"Why not?" she presses, leaning back against his leg. He goes a bit rigid at the contact and he's not even sure why. He isn't tactile by a long shot, and as much as he enjoys being around Roxas and Xion, he never quite knows what to do with physical contact, even when he knows that logically it's for the sake of making him feel better. Heh... 'feel' better. Right. "Don't friends talk about these sorts of things?" she continues, and he flounders a moment.

"Well, maybe, I guess, but--" He cuts himself off abruptly, then glowers, though not really at her, folding his arms, his knees still drawn up to his chest. "Look, this really isn't any of your business. It's just not something you need to know." He supposes there's really no way to say it without coming off like a jerk, so maybe he will just play the part for now. It's easier, he finds, to fill that role than to be honest sometimes.

He's aggravated now, and begins to wonder if the dream--the memory--doesn't bother him more than he acknowledges. Axel has a longer patience than people think--they see him as hot-tempered and short-fused, but really he can bicker and banter for ages without getting exasperated. The fact that he's peeved at all is an indication to him that he's more upset than he wants to admit, but how did Xion see it before he had even figured it out himself?

"Look, don't take it personally, but I just can't... I shouldn't tell you. About it."

"Can't or shouldn't?"

"Why do you care so damn much?" he asks sharply, and her eyes flash like little blue flames as she sits up again, leaning away from his legs, the sudden absence of the warmth of her back against them sending a shiver up his spine in the cold room.

"Because you're my best friend, Axel," she says. "You and Roxas are my best friends, and when something hurts you I want to know about it."

"We can't feel, Xion."

"Then why won't you look me in the eye when you say that?"

"Why does it matter?" His voice is growing tense, sharp, but not loud.

"Because you're lying to me," she insists, and he bares his teeth briefly.

"I'm not lying when I say it's none of your damn business," he snaps, and she shakes her head.

"Can't or shouldn't?" she demands again, and Axel just glares.

"Won't," he replies simply.

She blinks, suddenly looking sad again. "… Why not?"

"Because it isn't fair!" he blurts out vehemently before he can think better of it, unfolding one arm to slam his fist into the back of the couch. She jumps at the sudden movement, the sharp sound of his cry, and his voice echoes in the empty room. He inhales sharply then, like the outburst startled him as much as it did her, and he glances away from her again, now scowling at his hand as it falls beside him, like maybe the whole discussion was its fault.

There is a beat of silence in which he refuses to look at her, and then he sighs audibly--had he been holding his breath that whole time?--and drapes his arms around his knees again before turning to give her a glance.

"I envy you sometimes, if I'm capable of such a thing," he says sourly, "because you and Roxas, you don't remember." He shakes his head. "Talking about my past isn't something I do anyway, but with you guys doubly, 'cuz it's like rubbing your faces in it." A shake of his head. "That's all."

That isn't all, but it's... enough. To make the point, anyway. It isn't that he doesn't want to remember the time he'd spent being Lea all those years ago. It's the moment he stopped being Lea that he wishes he could forget. Sora had released his heart of his own volition, so Xion and Roxas would never have to reflect back on the horror of losing their hearts to the Darkness--even if they could remember, it isn't like it would have given them nightmares. And it isn't like regaling them with his own horror stories will make them any easier to shoulder, and it's equal parts cruel and unfair to the lot of them, in the end.

Axel keeps his past to himself because it's easier that way, because no one can hurt him if they don't know. That's what he keeps telling himself, anyway.