Title: Yellow
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: Teen
Length: 726 words
Content notes: Implied major character death and references to suicide.
Summary: Roxas doesn't understand why it's happened—just like he doesn't understand why he's felt this same grief before.


They won’t tell him why it happened. It’s nothing new. They never tell him anything. Xigbar laughs like it’s funny and tells Roxas there’s nothing they can do about it, anyway, so what does it matter why it happened?

“Because he was my friend,” Roxas bites out. If you know why something’s happened, it can be easier to understand it. Right now, Roxas doesn’t understand it at all. “He was my friend. Why would he do something like that?”

“Look around.” Xigbar waves an open hand at the rest of the Grey Area. There’s no one else here but the two of them. Even Saïx isn’t around for once. “It’s not like Axel was the first one to go,” says Xigbar. “Our ranks started dwindling a long time ago.”

Roxas hates that Xigbar isn’t wrong. It was Vexen first, wasn’t it, back at Castle Oblivion. Larxene, and Marluxia… Zexion… and Lexaeus… and someone else, too, Roxas’s brow furrows with the effort of trying to remember their name. But he can’t remember, and he’s—he’s angry that he can’t remember. Didn’t he promise to remember? He knows he promised he’d never forget, but it’s gone, the memory he promised he’d keep, gone like so many other things have just gone.

Xigbar doesn’t need to see him cry. Roxas doesn’t shove him aside like he wants to, what’s the point. Roxas just turns and runs instead. He runs. He keeps running and he runs until the cold steel flooring of The Castle That Never Was gives way to the tiles of a plaza beneath his feet and the warmth of evening floods his skin. Here, of all places. He wasn’t even thinking about where he’d run to, but it makes sense he’d end up here.

The day they met, he and Axel sat right here and watched the sun set. Axel told him that once. Roxas doesn’t remember that day, but he remembers every other time he and Axel sat here, at the top of the station, above the clocks and beneath the bells, watching the sun set, the icing on the cake, just the two of them.

This ache that Roxas feels in his chest as he climbs up the bell tower, he’s felt it before, and not that long ago, either. …He’s sure it was always just the two of them—Roxas and Axel. Surely Roxas wouldn’t forget if someone else had been here with them all that time? You’d think he’d remember something like that. This isn’t the first time Roxas has felt this burning in his cheeks, this sting of tears in his eyes. It’s so familiar, this pain. When, though. When has he feel it before today? Why can’t he remember?

All his memories have to fade so fast, don’t they. The two of them, sitting up here at the end of each day, the merry ringing of Axel’s laughter, his smile. The way Axel’s hand would sometimes brush against Roxas’s, the way Roxas wouldn’t mind it at all. How happy they’d be together at the end of each day, no matter how hard their missions were, or how frustrated they were with the other members of the Organization. No matter how tired they were—all of these things would melt away faster than their ice cream, whenever they came here together like this, everything that was wrong with this world would fade away faster than the sun could set.

The setting sun meets Roxas again now, as he stands in the usual spot where he and and Axel used to sit. Once a gentle orange, the light now falls yellow and lonely upon his face.

With a sniff, and a smile like the one he gave her when he said goodbye, Roxas wipes the back of his hand over his eyes and lets the breeze of twilight pass over him one more time.

This place isn’t supposed to feel like the end of the world. And Roxas shouldn’t feel like Axel is right around the corner, on his way up with three bars of ice cream in hand, like nothing's changed. Roxas shouldn’t feel like Axel’s still here, here, as if he isn't gone. Roxas himself isn’t supposed to even feel, none of them are. But not everything works out the way it’s supposed to, you know.