#akudem

You join Organization XIII with surprisingly little fanfare. With as dramatic as the apparent leader seems to be, you were honestly expecting an uncomfortably invasive amount of attention directed at you. Thankfully this isn’t the case.

Instead it’s almost the opposite. There's a small measure of interest paid upon your initial introduction, but from what you can gather at a glance the entire group – eight, now nine with the inclusion of yourself – seems too focused on their own daily routines to give you much more than a few moments of interaction. You file away what information you can and stay quiet, still unsure how to act around your new coworkers. Better to play it safe, to pretend you’re still disoriented from your sudden transformation from human to Nobody, and form your outward personality accordingly once you know more.

A few of the other members seem friendly enough; the ones called Lexaeus and Zexion are quiet and a little stony, but cordial when they do speak, so you suppose it’s just in their nature to observe rather than interact. You like that, you think.

Then there’s Xigbar, who is handsier than you’d expected and it tinges on unpleasant. You think maybe, had you been given the chance to acclimate a bit more, the over-familiarity might not be so bad. As it stands, you can’t help but tense whenever Number II slaps you on the back in greeting.

The rest of the Organization doesn't interact with you much. Xaldin is… interesting. He has a hidden flair for the melodramatic but, again, he’s relatively personable when he isn’t busy. Vexen is about as arrogant as you’d have expected and you'd been hoping maybe there’d be more to pick apart, but no; he really is as boring as he seems. Xemnas is like a ghost that doesn’t entirely recognize his surroundings, or that there are even other people around him at all. Honestly though, that’s fine, because if he barely pays anyone any attention then it just makes you easier to overlook. You’re perfectly happy staying under the leader’s radar until you know more about what your situation.

It’s Saix, though, that you learn you need to watch out for. He's cold, monotone, and constantly glaring indifferently at whomever is in his vicinity. If there was anyone in the Organization capable of tearing out someone’s throat with their teeth, you’d bet munny it’d be him.

 (You decide to stay out of Saix’s line of sight as much as possible, and respond in nods and single-word answers when he speaks to you directly.)

The last member of the Organization, the one that claims the number directly before yours, you don’t even properly meet until about two weeks after you arrive. They come striding into the common room in a whirl of shadows and ash, darkness trailing off their shoulders like the smoke you can smell all over them, combined with the frigid scent of the Dark Corridors. You’ve taken to watching everyone’s movements when they walk, when they gesture; it’s how you’ve managed to identify them all with their hoods up. You memorized each and every body shape within days of arriving, so when an unfamiliar figure in a too-familiar coat appears in the corner of the room, you tick your eyes over to watch in wary interest.

You observe them silently, taking in as many details as you can before you have to play dumb; a tall build with thin limbs and a skinny torso means they’re probably not a purely physical fighter. Their coat is different, too, with tapered sleeves instead of the usual bell shape – they likely use a weapon that could get caught on loose fabric, or maybe a power that requires more dexterous use of their hands. The bonfire scent hanging around them means they’ve either just come from someplace that’s been burning, or they themself are cloaked in cinders. Fire magic? you wonder briefly, and given that you’ve seen just about every other type of element in this place, it wouldn’t be much of a reach.

The figure stretches their lanky arms over their head, rolling their broad shoulders until you can hear a deep ‘pop’. You stay quiet on the couch and keep your head down as if you’re busy tuning the sitar lying across your lap.

“Ahhh,” the stranger drawls, and the voice is masculine, a nasally tenor, and you’re momentarily caught off guard by how young they sound. Even Zexion, youngest of the group so far, has a way of speaking that makes him seem older. The rest are all older than you are, from what you can tell, but the voice currently huffing out a low sound of amusement seems… almost exactly your age. Then again, none of you are human anymore, you’ve been told, so you’re still trying to figure out how age works in this liminal, lifeless city.

The figure steps closer, rounding the couch opposite you and planting a hand on a cocked hip. He seems to study you for a moment, head tilting, and you look up with your expression perfectly blank. You don’t know him yet – best not to give him anything to work with.

“I heard we were getting a new guy,” he says, and there is clearly a smile in his tone. You don’t know if you like the sound of it, unable to see what sort of smile it really is.

He reaches up with long fingers and finally pulls back the hood still covering his face. You’re greeted by a set of acid-green eyes, framed by hair the color of fire and fresh blood, with inverted teardrops, purple like old bruises, sitting just below his eerily vibrant gaze. He smiles at you, and it’s far too sharp for a smile that isn’t showing any teeth.

“I’m Axel,” he says, with tiny pinpoints of yellow and orange crackling at the edges of his lips like dying sparks. “A-X-E-L. Got it memorized?”

You don’t have a title yet, but you slowly tell him your name is apparently Demyx now, and Axel’s smile widens into a wolfish grin.

---      

Axel is assigned to be your trainer, for lack of a better term. He takes you on missions with him, has you follow him around as he instructs you how to summon your weapon on command, how to control the lesser Nobodies, and all the while he watches you with an appraising eye. You know that he’s assessing you, know that he’s both teaching you how to fight and also reporting back to Saix about your progress. You have no doubt you'll be disposed of should you turn out to be a waste of time, so you listen closely to what Axel tells you and make sure he has something favorable to say about you at the end of the day.

You also make it a point to watch him as much as he watches you, though you keep your observations to yourself unless they’re mission-related, and keep up the act that you’re more naive than you really are. You watch the way he fights, how he moves, his facial expressions as he talks; at first glance he seems friendly, but you don’t yet trust anyone, let alone someone obviously tasked with making sure you’re worth keeping around. You can’t be sure how deep in Saix’s pocket he is, either, and that’s the part that worries you most.

As you observe him you start to notice just how like a chameleon your new field partner really is. In the Castle, Axel is easy-going, languid, all snarky comments and lazy grins. His body language is relaxed and his dialogue bordering on flippant and you wonder just how he manages to get away with it around someone as severe as Saix.

On your missions together, Axel is brighter, more vibrant in his movements and speech. He’s beautiful in battle, as fierce as his fire is hot, and you don't miss the gleam in his venomous eyes as he burns his enemies to dust. The first few times you go up against a handful of Heartless, Axel annihilates most of them with a flourish, leaving the rest for you to practice on. “Show me what you’ve got,” he says.

So you do. You barely have to strum your sitar’s strings for the water that flows through your music to slam into their wriggling, yellow-eyed bodies and rip them apart. You could do more, but you don’t; you keep your real strength hidden. You even pretend not to notice one of the larger Heartless behind you, letting it get almost too close just to make it seem like you’re not as aware as you are. You feign surprise when it swipes at you from the side, flinch appropriately when a flaming chakram comes flying past and slices the Heartless in half. Axel gives you an odd look afterwards and you wonder if you’ve made the wrong move after all.

(During the next few missions he lets you fight them all on your own, never once stepping in to help, and while you don’t pull the same stunt a second time, you do let the battle drag on for longer than you really need to, just to keep up the illusion. You look to Axel for approval once the Heartless are dead; he gives you a quirked brow and a slow, strange grin in return.)

It’s not until about a month into your missions with Axel that you get to see an entirely different version of him altogether – and for all of your careful observations, you’re entirely unprepared.

The mission is a simple one this time. Some of the more intelligent Heartless had been stockpiling items in the train tunnels beneath the world called Twilight Town and you'd both been charged with flushing them out and collecting whatever useful things they'd left behind. You actually find a decent amount of stuff you can take back to the Castle, too, though it doesn't escape your notice that Axel seems more interested in you than the mountain of potions tucked away in a shadowy corner. He lets you stuff everything into a backpack, just watching, until you finish and turn silently to face him.

He smirks. “Come on,” he says, gesturing with his chin back towards the way you'd entered. “I wanna show you something.”

Wary, you follow him up out of the dank tunnels where all the world's rainwater seems to collect, and down the winding streets to the center of town. He approaches the vender in a small shop while you hang back; minutes later, he's reappearing with two blue bars in his gloved hands.

“One more stop,” he says.

You're left with little choice but to keep following.

He takes you up to the top of the massive clock tower that shadows the streets below. From way up near the horizon, almost touching the sky itself, you look down at the ground and see nothing but rooftops shrouded by haze. But it's when you look out and above, over the rooftops and the stretching edge of the world, that you see it. You lose your breath at the sight of the sunset, glowing every shade of warmth and summer that you can name, with vibrant splashes of gold and scarlet painted across the clouds.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?”

You look over. Axel has taken a seat beside you on the rim of the tower, one foot propped up on the ledge with his elbow resting on a bent knee. You frown. It seems entirely unsafe.

He grins up at you and gestures for you to join him. Tentatively, acutely aware that he could easily shove you off and to your probable doom if he chooses, you lower yourself to the ground and sit beside him. He doesn't push you off. Instead, he reaches over and holds out one of the blue bars from earlier.

Taking it, you stare at him in confusion.

“It's ice cream,” he says with an amused chuckle.

You narrow your eyes. “I know what it is.”

His head tilts, catlike, and those green eyes that see far too much stare directly into you. You stare back just as intently, trying to read him the same way he seems to be reading you. He smiles, which unnerves you a little bit because it's a much different kind of smile than you're used to and for a moment you wonder if maybe you've already screwed up, if maybe you've somehow played right into a trap. Because that smile is not one of his usual smirks, nor is it any kind of friendly; it's knowing.  

“Do you now?” he drawls.

You feel the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

Axel chuckles again, leaning back on his hand and finally looking away out across the horizon. “You know a lot, I think. More than you let on.” He takes a huge bite out of his own ice cream and glances back over at you, chewing through his renewed smirk.

You stay silent, stunned.

He turns away once more. “It's alright,” he says with a shrug, the motion, awkward due to the way he's leaning on his one free hand. “Your secret's safe with me.”

You don't trust that. Eyes narrowing further, you drop enough of your act to square your shoulders out of the usual slouch and peer at him with open suspicion on your face. “What do you want?” you ask flatly.

Axel just gives another shrug. “You know, normally I would probably try and blackmail you, but now? Eh. Not really interested.” Another sidelong smirk in your direction. “Why? You got something you wanna offer?”

You scowl at him and he laughs out loud. “No, but in all seriousness, I don't want anything.”

You find that hard to believe; you tell him so.

“Fair,” he replies. “I honestly wouldn't trust me either.”

“Then what are you doing?”

This seems to stall him. He looks out over the town below your dangling feet and nibbles at his ice cream in apparent thought. A full minute passes in silence before he speaks again. “You're like me.”

He pops the rest of his ice cream into his mouth and scrutinizes the wooden stick. Sighing through his nose, he tosses the stick off somewhere behind him before flopping backwards and staring straight up at the sky with his hands folded behind his back. You wait, and your quietude is rewarded when he heaves another sigh.

“How so?” you dare to press.

Axel hums. “You and me? We're both really good at pretending.” Green eyes close. “I'm the Organization's assassin,” he admits quietly. “Everybody has a role to play here, if you don't fulfill it then they cut you out. That's just the way it is. My role is to kill stuff, get things done...” He cracks one eye open and peers at you with a quirked brow. “...Training the newbies, apparently. My point is, all they need me to be is my assigned role. That's it. I get too smart or too good then they can just pile on the workload until I'm too much of a liability to keep around. Gotta find that balance there, walk the line between juuuuust useful enough and nothing more. So I pretend.”

He turns his head to look at you fully, gaze too green and too sharp. You don't know how to react.

It's unnerving, how succinct he is; you never would have expected this from him with the kind of facade he usually wears. But then again you suppose that's the point. Axel has you pegged because he, too, likes to observe, likes to play at being something to underestimate. You can't believe you went and fell for the same trick you've been trying to pull the entire time you've been here.

As if sensing your disturbance, Axel hefts himself back up into a sitting position and nods at the ice cream still untouched in your left hand. “You should hurry up and eat that.”

You blink down at it, having pretty much forgotten its existence, and make a face. “I don't really want it.”

He shrugs yet again – apparently a favorite gesture of his – and holds out his hand. You pass it to him without hesitation.

“Suit yourself,” he says, and proceeds to run his tongue over it to keep it from dripping all over his fingers.

You turn away and find yourself watching the sinking of the sun, red like the heart you’ve lost. As you process Axel's words you realize that, while you should be tensing with fight or flight instincts right about now, you're strangely not. You're wary, yes, and certainly caught off guard, but there's something about the way Axel had said what he did about playing pretend that... sticks in your head. Would it be so bad, you wonder, if there was another member you could relax around? If only just a little. Admittedly, the last few months have left you with a proverbial crick in your neck from constantly being on edge, holding yourself in check so that no one figures you out before you can do the same to them. It's exhausting.

“Alright,” you tell him, still looking ahead. “I'll bite, what are you proposing here?”

Axel full-on grins. “Knew you were smart,” he breathes. “I like you. Well,” he huffs, the sound more sardonic than actually amused; “as much as a Nobody can like anything.” He waves a hand. “Point is, I think you and I are gonna get along, yeah? And I don't particularly feel like being the one getting stuck executing you if you turn out to be something they can't exploit, so! We're gonna find you a role to fill.” He grins wider, and it's nearly feral in its intensity.

“Oh?” you say, because that's all you really can.

Axel nods. “You're observant. You're clever, too, and yeah, you can fight but why waste you on battle missions when they've already got a ton of us to do that anyway?”

“...Like you?”

He scoffs, a bitter, hollow kind of laugh. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Like me. Don't need another one of me around, I can tell you that. Anywaaaaay...”

White teeth flash as he bites off the last of the ice cream bar – once more taking a moment to inspect the stick – and you let yourself pick the action apart. It's casual, almost deliberately so; like he's still playing, still pretending. You realize that he must not trust you either, despite having said everything he has. He could blackmail you probably, but what would be the point of that if it meant throwing himself under the bus as well? And that, that is what makes everything click in your brain about what Axel is up to.

He's tossing himself onto the tracks alongside you – willing to risk personal injury because you know he can hurt you back if you try anything funny. Oh, you think. Well played.  

For the first time since your arrival you feel your face twist into a wide, amused smile. “You need a recon agent?” you ask, allowing your voice to come out unhindered, no longer stifled and purposefully monotoned. “I look, you shoot?”

Axel laughs. “Oh hell yeah.” He reaches out a leather-clad hand towards you, grin stretching impossibly wider, growing more real as you clasp his hand in your own and shake. “Stick close to me,” he says, “and I'll make sure you stay alive, okay, Demyx?”

Something about the sound of your new name on his tongue makes you shiver. All you can do is nod.

---      

He keeps his promise.

Time crawls slowly in the World That Never Was; days and months and years becoming completely indistinguishable from each other in a place without seasons. You think maybe it's been a while, but you can't be sure; you can only mark the passage of, well, anything by the way the sky looks on other worlds.

Twilight Town, though, is liminal in another way. Instead of constant, stagnant darkness, there's an eternal dusk – that sort of heavy amber glow that hangs like a veil over the whole city but is still better than the moonlit void outside the windows of the Castle. It's another place where time seems to stand still, but instead of stifling... Well. You're not sure you can name what it makes you feel.

 Because you do feel, no matter what Xemnas has decided or what Axel seems to believe of himself.

And what you feel in the shadowy, goldenrod light up on the highest rooftops and the longest alleyways of that town, when you sit together after a mission or hide from your duties in the shade of the clocktower for just a little longer, is something good. Time suspended in the Castle is suffocating; time suspended in Twilight Town, with Axel's red hair like fire in the sunset, is something closer to hope, to quietude. It feels like the kind of day that can last forever, a little bubble of something just for the two of you that you never have to give up, never have to leave. Even if you know you only have so long before you have to blink away the dream and report in.

But it isn't the town that makes you feel this, you slowly come to realize over weeks and months of countless extra hours stolen away after missions while you're still pretending to be inept. It's not the sunsets or the quiet moments, it's Axel. Axel, who treats you like a person despite being convinced that none of you are anymore. Axel, who doesn't see you as lazy or stupid, doesn't mock you but teases you with a smirk that sparks a flutter in your supposedly empty chest.

And you think he might possibly think the same, because there are moments when you can't tell if your mind is playing tricks on you or if you really do see him watching you out of the corner of your eye. It's not the same as his original calculating stares; it's softer, almost fond, and maybe it's because he's comfortable enough around you to be like this, but you'd like to believe it's also something more. You can't help but hope – so hope, you do.

Despite the hope, however, you cannot shake the underlying current of anxiety and sorrow. For all the horrible things Axel's done throughout his time in the Castle, (which he slowly confesses as trust between you builds) there is good beneath it. It's obvious that he thinks there isn't, but you fervently disagree. He's seen through your act and knows just how capable you really are; he helps you hide it so that you don't get exploited like he's been.

You don't like what they've made him into. An assassin, a killer, something you with your uncanny observance can see wears him down like river water over stones. It eats at him, chips away at that harlequin smile until the edges are crumbling and you hate, hate, hate the emptiness behind those glass-green eyes every time he comes back from a mission you're not allowed to join him on. And the worst part is that you can tell that he believes it all. Axel believes that he's a monster, that he's inhuman, that the only way to ever be real again is to do what they tell him to, no matter how much it destroys him. You wonder what kind of person he was before this, mourn them as dead inside the Organization's No. VIII, smothered and murdered by Xemnas' hands.

You try to tell him that it isn't true, that he's still redeemable without the Organization, that you both could leave and start over, be anyone you wanted to be, even your old selves.

He just smiles at you with a deep, deep sorrow he claims he cannot feel, and reminds you that he's been sent to annihilate others that had similar thoughts of running.  “You're not the first No. IX,” he admits, choking on the words like they're poison. “And I doubt I'm valuable enough to bring back alive.”

You hold your tongue after that – almost as tightly as you hold his shaking hand.

 ---

One by one by one, your comrades are destroyed. They're beaten, scattered, silenced, until you have no idea where anyone is or who is even left alive to return once their missions end. It's only a matter of time before Xemnas runs out of fighters; only a matter of time before you're deployed as a last resort.

You miss Axel. You miss the whispered conversations, the feel of his gloveless fingers laced with yours. You miss the time spent talking in your room after you'd both come back from separate worlds, now no longer paired together like you once were in days long passed. You miss him, but Axel is gone.

Saix calls him a traitor, though you know that Axel wouldn't run the way they said he has; you know because you've been trying to get him to run away with you for years. No, Axel hasn't run. Instead, he's gone to find the one that did.     It's Roxas that's fled, that's turned against the Organization and disappeared. Axel left to bring him back, desperate to keep the boy alive, to never again have to cover his hands in the proverbial blood of a teammate.

(Axel told you what he'd done in Castle Oblivion, and though he'd claimed it had been easy for him you can see the hairline cracks below the surface as he speaks. More scars on his volcanic-glass heart.)

You cling to the hope – it's all you have now – that Axel is still alive somehow, that Roxas' Somebody hasn't found him and torn him apart. You wish he'd taken you with him, wish you could find him, wish that there were more members left for Xemnas to focus on so that you could get away to actually search.  

But you can't. And by the time you're finally sent out to play the good soldier, you've nearly succumbed to the reality of never seeing your friend again in this lifetime.

I'll find you again, you tell him in your heart, praying he can hear you though you know he likely can't.

You kept your promise, now I'll keep mine. I'll find you.  

 It’s that thought that keeps you going as Sora stares you down.

 ---

You wake up face down in a back alley of Twilight Town, chest aching. You don’t know how you got there or how long it’s been since you died, but you’re not really too invested in finding out. What matters is the weight you can feel behind your ribs, the stuttering, physical beat of a brand new heart where only a phantom one used to be - still capable of emotion but intangible and therefore the perfect collateral to be used against you. But not anymore.

It’s with a feral grin and a hand to your sternum that you stumble your way out into the amber-lit city that holds your best memories, not as Demyx, but as you. The Organization took your life from you for a decade, you name, your identity. Never again.

On instinct you turn over your shoulder to grin at Axel…

only to startle when he isn’t there.

Suddenly your resurrection isn’t quite so joyous. You’re used to the feeling of hollowness, of the dullness inside your chest as your heart grew back in, but this is somehow deeper, stronger. You don’t like it; it hurts in a way you didn’t think possible. It takes you an embarrassingly long time to pinpoint the sensation as grief.                    

Fear comes next, along with desperation as you scour the streets, the tunnels, the woods, everywhere, and still cannot find him. It's not long before panic sets in as well, because once it's obvious that Axel isn't anywhere in Twilight Town you realize that you have absolutely no idea where else to even begin looking. You also realize you don't know which is a worse thought: that he's possibly been destroyed and not reconstructed, or that he isn't destroyed and is still under the Organization's thumb. What do you do then?

You don’t know - and that’s the truly scary part.

You allow yourself a minor breakdown on top of the clocktower, arms wrapped around your knees like you’ve seen him sit a thousand times before. Tears stream hot and salty down your face, the first in a very long time, and as you stare out at the gold-and-red horizon you let out everything that’s been building up inside you for a decade, for a day. You’re exhausted by the time you’re done, but beyond the headache and the stuffy nose you feel a determined sense of calm.

For the past ten years you’ve survived under the guise of incompetence, of naivety - at this point it would be like second nature to you. No one would notice. If anything is left of Organization XIII, who’s to say you couldn’t infiltrate them? Use their resources? Find a way to hack back into one of their computers, track someone down?

You were a Nobody for a long time. What’s a little longer in the black leather coat?

Besides, you think as you stand on surprisingly steady legs; what good is having your heart back if the one you gave it to forever ago isn’t there to give you his?

Wait for me, Axel, you tell him, reaching out with the steady rhythm in your chest as you summon a Dark Corridor and step into it, bound for what remains of the World That Never Was.