#spikylocks

  “Roxas!” Xion was already in a running bolt towards him before giggling and hug tackling the poor blond to the ground. She was little yes, but she was quite powerful when she wanted to be.

Well. Here Isa was. 

Lea’d left Isa alone in his house. Keybearer stuff, he’d said. He’d be right back, don’t go anywhere, he’d said. If he hadn’t, Isa would absolutely have gone back to Radiant Garden rather than hang around Twilight Town. It was still...awkward, and they were both still feeling one another out. As much as they both wanted things to return to some form of normalcy, neither of them were quite sure yet what that should look like. So Lea kept house here, in Twilight Town, and Isa rebuilt in Radiant Garden, and they met in one place or the other to sort things out.

And if things were awkward with Lea, they were beyond awkward with Lea’s little friends.

That was why he was still holed up on Lea’s couch, nursing a cup of cooling tea. Lea had assured him that the two teenage Keybearers that lived with him were sure to be out most of the day. He’d hoped to avoid the awkward encounter of running into them by staying put.

Aaaaand then that hope was dashed by the sound of the front door, and then Roxas walking in before Isa could so much as put his cup down. He froze mid-movement, then realized he’d done that and finished the follow-through. Then he cleared his throat awkwardly.

“It’s Riku isn’t it? -GROAN-”

 “N-No!” Xion blushed all the more. 

😢Touch my muse’s shoulder while they are crying in secret

Xion jumped and immediately dashed at her face, trying to hide the fact that she’d been caught crying. A second later, she recognized who’d caught her - too late to keep Roxas from realizing, but she still tried to play it off anyway, keeping her face mostly turned away.

“How dare you!!”

....

Roxas still found it hard to believe that all of this was real.

It wasn’t that it didn’t seem real, of course it did.  But the Organization had been nothing but lies, and Twilight Town…had seemed real, too.  A part of Roxas was waiting for it all to get torn away from him again, unmasked as some new phase of a never-ending cycle of falsehoods.

But there was still the clock tower.  Somehow, no matter who and where he was, the clock tower was a constant.  And these days he wasn’t surprised by the friends he ran into up there, but as soon as he saw Axel alone, tucked so tightly into himself, Roxas couldn’t fail to read the mood.

Axel tried, though, so Roxas returned the smile with a sad one.  “Hey.”  He approached, and was just about to take a seat when Axel came out with that.

At first, he didn’t know how to react.

“I know,” he said finally, petulantly, and then swiveled himself into place on the railing.  So many times he really could’ve used Axel’s honesty, and when it finally came, it was all too late.  But…

“But…I think I get it now.  Why you couldn’t tell me,” he said slowly, because the words were hard to get out.  “It…kinda would’ve ruined everything.  Right?”

Good. At least Roxas knew that.

“That’s what I thought.” He paused, remembering. He’d lied so much as Axel, to himself most of all. Even now it was hard to see past those. “No. That’s what I wanted to think. But really... deep down I knew there was nothing I could do to stop you and Xion from being hurt. I just didn’t want to admit it, even right up at the end.”

He’d wanted to believe that if they never found out the truth, everything would be okay. They would just be Roxas and Xion, his best friends. Not parts of Sora. Not forced to choose which one of them got to exist. But Xion remembered anyway, and he lost them both.

“……………………..”

“…So.  You can be a valentine, and also have a valentine, who’s…a person, and give a valentine, that’s a gift?”

-This sounds complicated.  Holidays are weird.-

“Don’t people get them confused??”

Sigh. Roxas really was sheltered. He supposed there was no one to blame but themselves for that.

Oh boy. Well, Isa supposed it was a good thing if Lea's.... Friends? Kids? Were also coming to Isa for explanations now. One because that clearly meant he'd been accepted into the fold, but two because Isa could never be quite sure how Lea explained these things.

(Isa also hoped Roxas was ready for a lecture. It was the only way Isa knew how to speak.)