thefolder | A New Frontier

[he's leaning on the counter in the hospital, speaking to someone behind the counter, as patiently as he can muster] The keyblades would have been with me when I arrived, so they must be somewhere. Can you just look? They'd be really obvious. They're solid metal keys that are around four feet long. One is mostly black, and the other is mostly white.

[intellectually, Roxas knows that they're going to be useless here. but he also doesn't even slightly care. it's important to him that he have them. and he's perfectly oblivious to anyone else who might be in the vicinity, other than Phascomon, tucked into the hood of his Organization coat snugly and half-dozing]

Thank you. [slightly more muted, and he leans against the counter]

[After the confrontation with the Riku Replica, Axel is grateful to step through the hospital doors, Terriermon at his heels. Admittedly, a hospital wasn't his first choice for accommodations, but beggars couldn't be choosers and anywhere he could get some food and a bed was alright by him at the moment.

However, he only manages to get a few steps inside before a very familiar voice captures his attention, and draws it sharply in the direction of the boy leaning against the counter. Axel's eyes went wide and he almost dropped his chakrams in shock. It couldn't be. But it was.]

...Roxas?

[And sorry, that's all you get, Roxas, until Axel's brain has a moment to reboot.]

[he's almost starting to get used to this place, and so he wasn't expecting anyone else to recognize him -- much less that particular anyone else. Roxas spins around, and he goes still for a paralyzed beat]

[Axel, definitely, unmistakably Axel. and for a moment there's something tight and complicated welling up in him, a not unfamiliar tangle of some sensation -- the way he felt the last time, when Axel disappeared for weeks after everyone at Castle Oblivion was erased, and then just turned up out of nowhere one day. there are so many here who think they know him and no one that he knows, and it makes him all the more nostalgic for things he can't have back]

[but that tangle of feeling isn't entirely pleasant this time, something ugly making him harden. because -- he can't have them back. so Roxas just shifts, standing a little straighter, ignoring a startled-awake Phascomon slowly righting himself in his hood]

Axel. [it's studiedly neutral] --You're here too.

[Roxas looks just as surprised to see him at first, spinning around and just... staring, expression probably very similar to Axel's own. For a moment, all either of them can do is stand there, shocked by the other's presence.

The moment passes quickly, though and Roxas straightens, expression hardening a bit. And after another moment, Axel straightens up too, regaining his grip on his chakrams.]

Yeah... Just got here. [Awkward pause.] So, uh... you been here long?

[Smooth as ever, Axel.]

Edited 2014-02-15 05:20 (UTC)

[these are not pleasantries he wants to have. or a person he wants to have it with. but he's effectively trapped here until the attendant returns with news about whether or not his keyblades are here]

Two days. [so, it's effectively doubled the time since he last saw Axel in the alley in the Dark City. it's not helping his mood that his big show of defiance -- right though he may have been -- feels stupid to him now on a couple of levels] [which prompts him to remind them both coolly] But I found someone to answer my questions, so it's been okay so far.

[he doesn't want to fight with Axel. but even worlds removed from the urgency that drove him to leave the Organization... he can't just make a year's worth of lies go away]

[Axel nods a bit at the knowledge that Roxas has had his questions answered.]

Good. I'm glad.

[And another awkward pause. He knows what he needs to say, but finding the words to say it is easier said than done. He hasn't really apologized for something and meant it in a long time. And he needed to say this now, while Roxas was here, lest he not get another chance.

Finally, he just sighs, shoulders slumping a bit.]

Look... I don't guess an 'I'm sorry' is gonna quite cover it, but for whatever it's worth, I am. Sorry. About a lot of things. Though most of them boil down to me being an idiot.

I just.. wanted you to to know that. In case I didn't get another chance to say it.

[Left said is the question that's really on his mind. Namely, is he going to get another chance? All he can really do now is to wait for Roxas' response and see.]

[it's genuinely the first time Roxas has heard Axel say that word without being flippant or dismissive. is he sorry? ...he doesn't know. he's not sure what to believe from Axel. does it make a difference if he is? ...maybe]

That's good to hear. Because -- I trusted you, and you took advantage of that. [he swallows, and then, more heatedly] But I bet it's easy to be sorry now that someone has told me. I had to give up on my best friend in order to find someone who would actually be honest with me!

So would you be telling me the truth right now if I hadn't already met Sora, or would you keep hoping I'd just lose interest in knowing who I am?

[It was the first time in a long time that the results of an apology had mattered to Axel. Apologizing to Sora for abducting Kairi had been different; he'd gone into that one knowing that he wouldn't be coming back out, so whether Sora accepted it or not was ultimately a moot point. Though perhaps not so much now, since it seemed that Sora was here too, but he'd deal with that later.

He simply nods at he first bit of Roxas' response- that sort of thing, he's been getting called on a lot in the short time he'd been there-, but the rest makes him look sort of confused.]

Given that you'd already found out a good chunk of it- I'm guessing from Namine, but I don't know- the last time I saw you, yeah, I would. Though... to be honest, by that point I'd decided to tell you enough to keep you happy, as long as it meant you'd come back with me and not go running off again. That was a dumb plan too, though, even if it took another couple weeks of chasing Sora around to figure that out. I always was a slow learner...

Though I'm kinda relieved you still consider me your best friend after all this. Given what happened I wasn't sure you would...

[Because Axel totally has to be the best friend he's referring to, right...?]

[he just -- frowns, more and more. Namine? and then as Axel keeps talking, he understands less and less. Roxas assumed, seeing Axel here, fitting so easily into his mental preconception of how things should be -- down to the (not unjustified) comment about not being his best friend anymore -- but the events he's talking about are unfamiliar]

What are you talking about? [after a beat] I met Sora here. I didn't even know who he...

[no, this is like what happened with Sora] You're from my future... somehow. [he can put two and two together]

Edited 2014-02-16 00:32 (UTC)

[Axel frowns too, even more confused now.]

I... am?

[He moves to reach up and scratch his head in puzzlement only to realize that he's still holding his chakrams. In the shock of meeting Roxas again, he'd kind of forgotten.]

Oh, right... [He turns briefly and sets them down on the floor next to Terriermon.] Here. Make yourself useful and take care of these while we try and figure this out.

Gee, thanks. [His Chosen isn't the only one who can be sarcastic, apparently.] Tell me, is everybody we meet gonna react to you this way, or are we just lucky tonight?

Just watch them, huh? I'll explain later.

Yeah, yeah...

[Terriermon dutifully parks himself on top of the chakrams central crosspieces, though, and Axel shakes his head a bit with a sigh before turning back to Roxas and getting back to the problem at hand.]

Anyway, me being from your future would explain a few things, yeah... Like why you're back in your Organization uniform; you had different clothes last time I saw you. Didn't seem quite as mad at me either, though that coulda just been because you'd just thoroughly kicked my ass with those two Keyblades of yours...

Damned if I know how something like that would work, though...

[Pause.]

How long has it been for you, since you left the Organization? Not counting the time you spent here, I mean. And what's the last thing you remember happening before you were brought here?

It's the 360th day today. [he still counts each one religiously. his birthday is coming up!] Three days after I left the Organization, on the 358th day, I heard his voice, and...

[Phascomon is straightened up now, watching around Roxas's head lazily, with apparent disinterest, but beneath his heavy lids he's paying close attention]

[Roxas tries to imagine what might have happened. he knows from Sora that he's... a part of Sora now, but the details of how it happened are still beyond him. what -- Axel might have experienced. but he doesn't want to. "I would have told you anything to make you come back" is a vivid reminder of everything he lashed out against]

Only three days...

Well, I guess that settles the whole future thing. For me, it's been a little over three weeks. Lots of time for me to think... and to screw things up even more, because I still didn't get it.

But I'll get to that. Kind of a long story, so if I try to start in the middle it'd just make things more confusing.

Anyway, to start with, I don't suppose you'd run into a guy named DiZ before you were brought here, did you? Deep voice, red bandages around his face, kind of a pompous asshole? Cause he's where the rest of the story kicks off.

Not sure how, but around the same day you were brought here, he captured you. He stuck you in a virtual copy of Twilight Town and had Namine tamper with your memories. You forgot all about the Organization, and about me. Far as you knew at the time, that was the real Twilight Town, and you were just a kid who lived there.

The Organization sent Dusks into the simulation to retrieve you, but well, you know how hopeless Dusks are without some kind of supervision. As you might've guessed, that didn't work out. That's when they sent me in after you, with orders to either bring you back... or eliminate you.

[slight pause. Those were orders that he'd never wanted to get.]

Needless to say, I was going for the first option. Though that was part of the reason I was so against you leaving; I knew that if you did, I'd eventually get orders like that. And I don't think either one of us really wanted me to have to carry them out. I mean, yeah, I wanted to get you back... but not that way.

[that's a lot of information, and he frowns, taking it in. he doesn't know this "DiZ" or "Namine", but the idea that he might've thought he was just -- some kid living in Twilight Town is completely alien to him. he can't even imagine how they spend their days, much less envision himself as part of them]

Yeah, well. I guess we all have to do things we don't like. [only he chose to fix the situation as best he could the moment he knew it needed to be fixed, and Axel went along with it -- every time]

Why would they do something like that? I don't even know who those people are! I never did anything to them! [frustrated] Why is everyone so personally invested in ruining my life?

[Axel's not denying that. Not now. He doesn't know what he would have done to change things, exactly, but he's becoming acutely aware of how badly he messed them up.]

DiZ wanted to use Sora for his own ends, and for that he needed you. What his ultimate plan was, I've got no clue, other than the fact that he seemed to have it in for the Organization for some reason. Why he needed you to get Sora in the first place, though, that I can tell you, though it's a bit of a long story in its own.

It all goes back to the Castle Oblivion mission. The reason you never met Namine is that that's where she was being kept. Namine is... well, to be honest I'm not sure what to call her. She isn't quite a Nobody, but she isn't quite anything else either. Probably just easiest to call her a unique type of Nobody. She was born when Kairi, the girl Sora loves, lost her heart. But because Kairi was one of seven women whose hearts have no darkness at all in them, there was no Heartless formed when that happened; I think Namine was created instead of a Heartless, but like I said she's closer to a Nobody.

Whatever she was though, she had power over Sora's memories, and the memories of those connected to him. And that was power that the Organization had use for. The original idea behind the Castle Oblivion mission was to lure Sora there, and use Namine to rewrite his memories, inserting herself in Kairi's place. That way, the Organization would be able to effectively control Sora, and his Keyblade, by controlling her.

At least that was supposed to be the plan. The reality was that Marluxia and Larxene were planning to use Namine to take control of Sora's power for themselves and take over control of the Organization with it. Which, for Siax and me, was bad, since we'd been planning on doing the same practically since the moment we joined.

Which is why I got sent along. Officially, I was there to get proof of Marluxia and Larxene's betrayal and make sure they were eliminated. Really, though, the Castle Oblivion team was chosen almost specifically to get any potential obstacles to our plans out of the way without arousing suspicion. It was no accident that I was the only one to survive; that's how we'd planned it from the start.

By the end of it all, though, Namine had pretty well screwed up Sora's memories. In order to fix the damage she'd done, and restore his memories to normal, Sora and his friends had to be put into a deep sleep, not to be woken up until his memories were fully restored. But it turned out that the memory meddling we'd had Namine do had an unintended side effect.

It turned out that your connection to Sora was stronger than anyone had originally thought. That's why you fell into a coma while I was at Castle Oblivion; the time you were asleep was when Namine was working on Sora's memories. Problem was, that at some point in the whole process of re-writing them and fixing them, some of them kind of got lost, and wound up inside you. And without those memories, Sora wouldn't be able to wake up.

That's why DiZ needed you. He needed to capture you and hold you long enough for Namine to get those memories untangled from yours. And then he needed to get those memories back into Sora. And given that you seem to have already talked to him, I'm guessing you can figure out how he planned on doing that...

[you put Phascomon to sleep, face pressed against Roxas's bicep. but Roxas is still listening. and there are a thousand questions he wants to ask, about Namine, about Axel collaborating with Saix, about the casual implication that he's responsible for the deaths of the Castle Oblivion Organization, about his memories of Sora, but Axel's story spills out of him, so he just listens, and tries to make sense of it]

[...and he's left feeling like he still doesn't understand]

So what you're saying is -- it was me or Sora.

[Unlike last time, there will be plenty of time for a Q&A later, assuming Roxas has any interest in talking to him after all this. Axel is done keeping important thing secret, and will be quite willing to elaborate on certain points.]

Basically, yeah. I wanted you, and DiZ wanted Sora. Which meant that he didn't want me to get anywhere near you, and made it as tricky as possible to get into the simulated Twilight town.

The first time I made it in was about three days after you'd been captured. You'd been playing in some kind of play-fighting tournament, and I froze the simulation so I could talk to you. That's when I discovered that your memory had been messed with. You didn't have any idea who I was, or how I knew you.

And since it wouldn't take long for DiZ to notice what I was up to, I didn't really have time to even try and explain. That's why I planned to knock you out and bring you with me; was planning on explaining things once we were both back at the Castle.

That didn't work out so well, though. You, naturally, weren't too fond of that plan and fought back. You might not have remembered all your keyblade skills from your time with the Organization, but you did pretty well on plain old instinct. And since I was pulling my blows, not wanting to hurt you too badly if I could avoid it, the fight only really succeeded in killing some time.

Enough time for DiZ to show up. He tried to tell you that I was lying about knowing you, and not to listen to me, while I tried to tell you that he was full of it and was to trying to screw with you more. In the end both of us started yelling at once, and you kinda freaked out. I got kicked out of the simulation after that, and it'd end up taking me a little while to get back in.

A New Frontier

Didn't even know we had an Axel until just now!! HI

Hi! Hope you're ready for some Nobody brain-break and feels. XD

I live for it!

Zero to awkward in five seconds. X3

Like magic!

Re: Like magic!

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And then at not-3 AM I remembered that Axel had apologised to Sora for the thing with Kairi... X3

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Sorry for long tags. Exposition is a thing and Axel is making up for lost time. X3

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