-Just a short fic I felt the urge to do.
“Always like you to keep an old friend waiting…”
The anonymous warrior, wielder of the great archaic keys, Sora, paused in his footsteps. The white mansion on the outskirts of twilight town remained isolated to his venturing eyes but even if he didn’t find any visual image of his speaker- who, with strained ears could only detect it as a feeble whisper- he knew someone called out to him, just like each and every night he tried to settle into sleep. There was always that haunting voice, weak as it was, trying to reach out for his attention. He heard through many moons back, four years that remained of his life, but never once was he baited into reacting until it became more than just a soft ringing and became more of a haunting cry that visibly distorted his life.
If Sora had to hassle his fragile mind to pinpoint when it all began, he would recall through the many series of his youth that the cause was first invoked five months into his return home. He couldn’t detail the events that unfolded that day, except that one minute in his life when something out of the ordinary happened, he first shared his kiss with Kairi- that’s when it jolted out to him, that voice broke through the threshold of his mind. Soon, even the smallest thing could draw out its cries, a sea salt ice cream, the soft blankets of his bed, that smell of burned wood and even the soft cracking sounds from the fires that licked at the charred corpse. Finally, he would end it. Even if life dragged on with his years of youth to leave him, Sora could now count on ending the eternity of nuisance.
There were no powers left in him granted by the keyblade so Sora guided his hard worn legs, heavy as they were, up one step after another until he wrestled pass the door and into that dust riddled lobby that had every mark of age branded to it. Time was a decease; that was the first thing that Sora thought when he gathered everything in his sights. The wood that once stood to decorate the wealthy estate of marvel, rotted idly away and some had even collapsed under that perpetual weight that was time and termites. The loose curtains that tried to block the light limped listlessly over the large windows and the stairs… As he walked up one of the flight of stairs he could hear that same creak of wood groan just ready to give way to Sora. He had half the sense to descend back down and leave the last remaining memories of his other half, Roxas, behind. Bury whatever else was left of his former life but that voice persisted and there was that renewed eagerness that he once heard since he last visited the neglected mansion.
“Sora,” it said, the ominous voice had gained strength in the most unlikely place but he knew all along what was to come, he acknowledge the forces that drew him forward up the flight of stairs regardless of all signs of danger. Forward he went, making sure held on the railing with a quivering hand. There was no particular direction to go; the voice did not know anything but his name so he had to listen carefully at any high pitch that resonated strongly to his choice of direction. There were two ways to go, one led to a secret chamber underground of the mansion, and another one was a private room where Namanie, Kairi’s nobaby, had resided in. From his memories he could only dig so far and remember so much with little accuracy as to what had happened forty-two years ago when he was once fit enough to obliterate the darkness that roamed freely in each individual world. Nonetheless the images came to him as fresh as they could be by Sora’s limited mind.
“I’m coming.”
The room that drove him to carry himself against his labored breaths and that ache that throbbed in his heart, was that of Namine’s, he knew and acknowledge what would happen next. After all, he had waited far too long for that occasion to come. When he barged in without the effort to break the door off its hinges, Sora found the most unsettling sight that bore down on his insides. Everything looked untouched even by that fiend, time. The room gave off the impression that someone had been living inside it for quite a while, the simple furniture was polished clean, the table freshly new and the pictures…They were all removed from the blaring white walls and in its absence only one material mounted the center of the wall that caused Sora’s heart to stop a second longer than it should have at his age.
“Axel,” he in return whispered but it wasn’t his voice that carried that name, there was another one behind it, awe-struck by the sight Roxas saw through Sora’s eyes. It was an unexplainable feeling that soon overcame the withering form of the keyblade wielder, something within him stirred such as the feelings that laid dormant, raw combinations of sadness.
Dead center a black leather coat rested on a wooden chair and cushioned on top of the material was Axel’s trade mark weapon of choice, his chakram. Sora knew from his years of battle that each weapon told a story, this one had its tips chipped and charred black from the edge of its blades and understood that Axel survived countless battles. Even then it struck him too late the idea that bore more comprehension to him when pieced together, that it was Axel who cried for help, who called out to Roxas rather than Sora. Drops of tears trailed down the uneven folds of wrinkles. He was once a nobody and now nothing.
He could just hear him…
“Sora.”
And he did, with a jump the keyblade wielder turned awkwardly on his heels to catch the fabric of his imagination standing before the doorway. The organization member known as Axel, donned the black coat, and bared that smirk that pulled considerably close into a genuine smile.
“I knew you’d come,” he finally said.
