All of my trust was given to you

[binarysky]

Who: Axel (?) and Roxas (?)
Where: Twilight Town
When: The indeterminate future
What: Old friends. New faces.

Twilight Town didn't look any different through someone else's eyes.

That's because they're not someone else's eyes, he imagined Sora would say. They're yours, too. But Sora was away now, somewhere near and yet far, sleeping while Roxas had some privacy and a chance to visit what had once been his home.

Sora was probably right, not that he'd admit it. But sharing a body and a heart was still taking some getting used to, and Roxas couldn't help but feel like a guest sometimes, even though this was his life and always had been.

Either way, he wasn't going to waste this chance. He shoved his hands in his back pockets and began walking, no particular destination in mind but angling upward.

Comments

[incensing]

Twilight Town didn't look any different. He hadn't known a place like this when he'd been...younger? When he'd lived a different life? But there were memories, their weight passing through his mind like the clouds streaking the dusk-colored sky. With the edge of a chakram brushing his fingers, he lay on his back and watched the clouds slide across that sky, pinned down by the weight in his chest. He didn't remember the last time it had been there. Not specifically; there were moments flashing by faster than he could process them, words, faces, feelings, worlds worth of them.

He could remember not wanting this. But not why.

He leaned to the side, turning his head, reaching out for the chakram, his fingers curling in between the spokes. It made a scraping sound, dragged across the bricks closer to his side. This was an illusion, a lie, or maybe just a mistake. He knew plenty about all three. But the memories--

He wished they would stop. They were weighing him down, blotting out his knowledge of who he was, who he wasn't.

"Cut it out," he said aloud, to himself, to the sky, to the thing in his chest. "You're not fooling me."

[binarysky]

Eventually Roxas found himself up at Station Heights. He'd always known he would, of course.

Because of the time of day, or maybe the date—what day was it again?—the plaza was more or less deserted, no one heading to or returning from the beach. Reaching into the overly large pouch that Sora called a pocket, Roxas found that he had munny to spare. He could take a train if he wanted, visit the shore he'd never seen. Or he could keep heading up.

He wasn't sure if he wanted that or not. If this town was like home, the clock tower was the most like it. But he'd be home alone, and though he'd come to accept his strange new life, he wasn't sure if he was ready—

He wasn't ready for what he saw next, there on the paving stones. Black coat. Red hair. Axel.

The heart that he was very sure he had now beat painfully in his chest. All he could do was stare.

[incensing]

He dragged the chakram up against his chest when he heard someone's approach, turning his head to the side. The smile that broke out across his face when he saw who stood there was almost painful, the thud in his ribcage feeling like something restrictive to breath. "Weird, isn't it? I was just thinking about you." He hadn't been, really, or if he had, it was too mixed up in things that kept passing through his mind; he was thinking more of the boy that he had been than the boy who stood there in the plaza staring at him, but still, his face...

It had been the last thing he'd seen, hadn't it? Before he changed.

He held the chakram across his ribs like he was guarding something. "Come here. Help me get up." His name would come to him in a moment.

[binarysky]

"You—" He was still capable of words, but just barely. "You were just thinking of me?"

I think about you all the time. I thought I'd never see you again.

And now he was here, alive, acting like nothing had happened.

It figured.

"What are you doing here?" He rushed forward and held out a hand, eager to help him to his feet. "How are you here?"

[incensing]

"Sure. I remember." Did he? There was too much to remember, and half of it seemed to belong to one life and the other half to another, more distant life, one he'd thought he'd left behind the day that he'd woken hollowed and empty and as perfect as a blank slate. I liked that. Not at first, of course, but later on, when he'd understood the possibilities. Before everything became so complicated. He lifted a hand, the one not holding the chakram, and took hold of the boy's. His fingers closed tightly and he dragged himself upright, surprised to find that he could move, after all, with all that extra weight.

"What am I doing here?" The clouds passing by overhead caught his eye again. He blinked up at them, and then climbed slowly, painfully to his feet, almost staggering. "I'm pretty sure I was lying down for a while. Catching my breath." Now he was taller. Now he could look down at the boy, studying the familiarity of his face. "I do know you, don't I?"

[binarysky]

Roxas wasn't so sure that he did. He sounded like Axel, casual and cocksure, but right now he was too casual after all that had happened. Roxas had watched his friend come after him, desperate to bring him home, and then die for him—for Sora—it was all the same.

And then there was the way Axel looked at him—and his last question. Roxas tried not to let the worry and uncertainty show on his face. "Yeah, you know me," he confirmed. "Axel—don't you remember? In the space between worlds. What you did..."

[incensing]

He let the name pass without comment, in spite of how Axel sounded so utterly strange. It was still his name, wasn't it? Or did it not count anymore, did it belong to someone else now, the way his older name had to his other self? "Gimme a sec and it'll come back, I'm sure." He did remember something, vaguely, a moment where there were flames burning so huge and so bright that they were all of him, and he knew then what it was truly like when fire was his substance and nothing else. A fine moment to die, yet here he still was.

But not the same.

"I died. Right?" They were strange words, spoken aloud, but there was no other way to put it. He looked at his hands, the solidity of them. They were substantial things now, but he could still remember what it felt like to turn to ash and smoke.

[binarysky]

Roxas nodded. "You died," he said, gaze dropping to the ground. Funny that it should still make him so sad to think about even when--very clearly--it hadn't been so permanent. "Right in front of me. You saved me."

Saved Sora, rather. But hadn't he still been right there, tucked away in the shadows of Sora's heart? Axel had known.

His friend still seemed more than a little hazy, but maybe things were finally starting to clear. "Do you remember anything else?" he asked. "That was a while ago."

[incensing]

"How long ago?" How much time had passed since he had destroyed himself? It didn't matter, he supposed, but--he was curious. Here the boy stood (Sora, his memories finally whispered) so he supposed it must have been worth it in the end. Or that at least he had accomplished what he meant to when he burned himself to death. He had disappeared utterly and completely, so how was it possible to be standing here again? How could he be what he had been before he'd turned into ashes dissolved away in midair? He had been a nothing, his chest hollow; dissolving had been easy. "What am I now?"

He frowned after he'd spoken. That question--he didn't like it, it felt too vulnerable. "Never mind, don't answer that. I think we should get someplace where we can talk." He remembered some things. Standing out in the open was never a good idea. There were enemies all around and some of them wore familiar, smiling faces. Darkness had been a friend; darkness had been easy to hide in when he was nothing. He wasn't sure how it could ever hide him now when he felt so substantial.

[binarysky]

He wouldn't have even known how to answer that last question if he tried. A former member of the Organization, like me. My best friend. Alive. All true, but still not what Axel really wanted to know. Something was different now, and Roxas didn't know what.

"Yeah, sure," he said. "Are you hungry? There's some quiet cafes around here—or we could just find a back street—" But not the usual spot, never the usual spot. "—or there's always the clock tower." Something inside him twisted at the possibility. It had always been his favorite place, but too many emotions were flying around too fast already. Roxas wasn't sure what he'd do if they got more intense.

SORRY 8(

[incensing]

He was glad Sora ignored the question. Glad, that was strange, that seemed...different. Its existence in him felt too simple, too undeniably present. Rather than think about it, he shrugged at Sora's suggestions, saying, "Any place is good." The thought of the clock tower lingered in his mind. Memory told him he had been there before, not just once, either. But not with Sora. Someone else had been there with him, sitting on the edge, looking into the sunset. 

"Lead the way." He'd let him pick. He didn't care to ask that they go to the clock tower but if that was what Sora wanted, he wouldn't object. Maybe he'd figure something out once he was up there. It was worth looking into, right now when he had nothing else to go on but a confused tangle of memories. 

[binarysky]

"Sure...uh...this way." There had to be a service elevator, right? There had been in the fake Twilight Town, so it must exist in the real world, too. It was just that Roxas and Axel had always traveled to the top of the clock tower through dark corridors.

And that wasn't an option now.

The silence was pressing, awkward as they made their way up, or maybe it was just him. Very rarely had he and Axel not had much to say to one another. When they reached the top and stepped out into the air, the sound of the breeze filled up some of the quiet.

"So...here we are."

[incensing]

"Here we are," he agreed.

Twilight, it seemed, went on forever. Orange and red, purple and gold, long clouds streaked with dark velvet underbellies, it stretched on and on towards the horizon like an untread path. Up here on the clocktower (he was rediscovering) the world was very vast, and the town only a small piece of it. Things felt bigger, wider than they ever had. He looked out at the great gulf opening up in front of him.

"I used to come here a lot, didn't I?" He wasn't sure why he asked it that way, as though Sora ought to know the answer. "Before I died."

[binarysky]

"Yeah, you did," Roxas confirmed, staring out at the town. He took a step closer to the edge. He'd never feared falling. "Every day, with ice cream."

That had been the best time of his day—the best days of his life. And some of the worst. But he wouldn't change a single one of them.

"It was special." He shrugged. "There's no better place in Twilight Town."

[incensing]

No better place, huh? He looked out at the town and the rooftops below them and the sky above them, stretching out to the distance. Up here, things seemed a little clearer somehow, as though the fresh air was good for him. Nothing was settled about who or what he was now, but up here it wasn't hard to think that maybe he'd manage to figure it out.

"It seems like a good place," he agreed almost grudgingly. It was hard to put it in words, these things that he just...felt, innately, as though it didn't matter whether or not he remembered it being a good place because he already knew. He glanced at the boy beside him. "When were you up here?"

It didn't seem right. There had been someone. He had been up here, and there had been someone with him, but it hadn't been Sora.

[binarysky]

Once again, Roxas was reminded of the fact that he for sure had a heart now, because it seemed to stop at Axel's question.

It was funny, sometimes. He could never forget about Sora, or about the special and strange connection they had, the life they lived now—but there were other things he did forget. Like the fact that he no longer looked like himself, for all that their faces were the same.

And Axel didn't recognize him.

He swallowed hard. "I came here with..." You. Every day, it was you and me. "My best friend. To have ice cream."