[CLOSED]

[subtract]

Who: Add, Roxas, eventually Data-Roxas
Where: The Near Shore
When: May 6th, afternoon
What: Roxas and Add have a friendly chat about Axel.
Warnings: Violence!!

It's a bit weird trying to get back into a normal routine after... pretty much everything that happened last week. Add knows he can't hide at the temple forever, though, and surprisingly his boss on the Near Shore hasn't fired him yet. He feels a little better after spending a day berating people about their computers.

It's a brisk walk back to the temple from the repair shop, but Add decides to take a slightly longer route today, winding through a small park. He's been cooped up and stressed for awhile, so it's nice to get out and relax a little. He follows along the path with his hands in his pockets, staring up at the trees.

Comments

[missingache]

Roxas, on the other hand, felt even more stressed than usual. He has had no time to rest since the Axel thing went down other than that day he spent with Sora in Shinagawa. Everything else had something to do with all the negative and heavy things in his life. Always keeping busy to avoid thinking about that.

That is until Raichi came home after Roxas had been asked to let him be borrowed. Of course he could feel something was off, and after getting his shinki to explain everything, he went from stressed to... strangely calm. These past few days he's been letting things go as they may. Visiting and talking with people, the usual stuff. Certainly on the lookout for a certain person. He hadn't dared to go to Chang'e's temple. Add would run. He knows that. It's with luck that he spies his target in the park.

Roxas switches one keychain with the Bond of Flame keychain before using his divine speed to get in front of Add. Then he gives the other only the few seconds it takes to summon the Keyblade before striking him as hard as he could.

Consequences be damned.

[subtract]

Add doesn't get a lot of time to react. He stops, surprised to see the familiar figure appear in front of him, then—

He feels a sharp impact to his side, and the next thing he knows is being slammed into a tree. He crumples to the ground, wheezing for the air that was knocked out of him. It's hard to tell if anything is broken, but pain bites sharply into his ribs when he tries to move, and his whole body aches from the sudden displacement.

His brain eventually catches up with the situation. He's being attacked—he'd completely forgotten about the other Roxas and his threats before. Stupid. How could he overlook something so crucial? Shouldn't have underestimated his resolve—

But it's too late to have regrets. Add snarls, his eyes flicking to a more menacing black, sparks flying as he presses his back up against the tree behind him. It's all a bluff, but it's also a distraction as he discreetly starts to move a hand into his pocket.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

[missingache]

Walking over rather calmly, Roxas jabs the Keyblade into Add's chest, glaring at the man before him. His mind and heart aren't in sync at all as one screams for Add's death and the other for mercy. He's not sure which one he'll listen to at the moment since both are viable options.... but would Axel want someone to die for him?

With a soft growl, he presses the blade deeper before replying. "It was you. You're the one who convinced Axel to ask about his past. It was your fault!" He takes a deep breath as he tries to keep himself from striking Add again. "And don't try and lie! Raichi told me everything you confessed to."

If you think Raichi would have kept quiet, then you clearly don't know how loyal Roxas' shinki are to him. "I had a feeling it was you when you tried to visit Sora that day. And now I know, and you are going to pay for making my best friend do that and forcing Pippa to be the one to kill him!"

[subtract]

Everything is happening way too quickly. He can barely pay attention to what Roxas is growling about because he's too distracted by the wave of pain shooting through his chest, the sickening feeling of something sharp piercing into him, staring down to see darkened blood soaking into his shirt at an alarming rate. A cry escapes the back of his throat as the electric light in his eyes immediately disperses.

He severely underestimated Roxas' reaction to finding out the truth. This is killing intent, and Add is already in a very dangerous position.

If Roxas is hoping for any kind of response besides horrified gaping he's going to be disappointed. Add can't even hope to articulate an answer right now. His attention is completely focused on the wound in his chest and the fact that if he doesn't do something soon he is almost certainly going to die. He lifts a shaky hand to grip the blade stabbing into him, trying to will himself to stay calm and failing. His breathing turns quick and shallow as the panic starts to overwhelm him.

He barely has the strength left to even retrieve the cube stowed in his pocket, but luckily, his own distress has long since passed the point of setting off his companion's internal alarms. An ear-splitting screech fills the park, and in an instant there's an explosion of light and energy as a hurricane of sharp cubes bursts into existence in the space between Add and Roxas, attempting to violently force the attacker away. They converge into a single body—a shifting and pulsating cube of light, spinning restlessly in the air above Add's limp form.

It gives Roxas about half a second to respond before its body starts to shift again, forming an almost blossom-like shape with its core at the center glowing with a white-hot light. It emits another piercing screech as a concentrated beam of energy erupts forward, tearing through everything in its path.

[missingache]

An answer wasn't expected. All there is right now is very calm rage, the sight of the blood not even fazing him. If anything, Roxas feels it's a wound the other deserves. There's no dying from it. In the back of his mind he knows for a fact that the other Roxas is going to feel this. He'd only have to get away before his clone-copy thing showed up. Since Naminé wasn't here anymore he couldn't get himself to care about keeping up a good relationship at this moment.

The screech sends him into defense mode as he jumps away from Add. He summons his other Keyblade, ready to defend himself from whatever that awful noise making thing was. Unfortunately for Add, Roxas now has all of the memories that Sora has, which means he knows to avoid the beam as if his life depended on it. In this case it just might. He does have to wonder for just a second if any Near Shore residents were caught in that blast, but that would have to wait for later. Collateral damage at this point was unavoidable.

Roxas steels himself for an attack before deciding instead to go on the offensive. He doesn't know if that cube thing can match his speed. At least he can try to get a few hits in, and if that doesn't work, he might just have to fall back on using magic. He can guess that Thunder might not be effective since the thing was some kind of computer projection. It wouldn't hurt to try it and he always has other spells to fall back on.

Experimentally he does cast a Thunder spell on cat-cube thing to see just what it would do.

[subtract]

The blast cleaves clean through a tree across the park from them, leaving sizzling black marks in the frayed wood. It doesn't seem to go any further than that, though—the attack range is large, but it's still limited.

Apocalypse twists itself back into its cube shape. When the thunderbolt comes down it doesn't try to avoid it. If anything, the cube centers itself on the spell, absorbing the hit to prevent its master from getting caught in the attack. Its body flickers and wavers for a moment, crackling with electricity, but it steadies itself after only a few seconds.

It takes another moment to reform its body again, this time into a more spread-out shape with a square aiming ring around the central core. It charges up for a second before firing off a round of three narrow energy spikes. Roxas can go ahead and try to dodge like he did with the last attack, but the spikes trade their raw power for homing capabilities—they'll chase him down until they hit their mark and explode.

Add slumps forward on the ground, pressing a trembling hand to the wound on his chest. He's bleeding even more now that the blade has been pulled out, his strength draining away rapidly. Keeping his eyes open is a struggle. If he passes out here, he may never wake up. He'll bleed out and die. He has to stop the bleeding...

But he's too lightheaded, too weakened and afraid to hold his composure. Add's consciousness starts to slip away, all the noise and light blurring into a murky, muffled darkness. He's not going to last much longer.

[missingache]

The only thing Roxas can think of to do when it comes to that attack is to throw a few spells at them before going purely defensive. It's at times like this that he's rather thankful that he honed his defensive capabilities with Aqua and Terra in Koriko. The explosions are not fully deflected and he's sent backwards into the ground. He almost laughs when he gets back up. That was nowhere near as painful as the blight burns had been. That was a rather strange thought. Time to go back to mentally being fully in battle mode.

The damage he's sustained doesn't last long as he uses a Curaga spell on himself before attacking again with a flurry of hits. Roxas knows fire will be ineffective on cat cube, so he tries for Blizzara this time. May as well go bigger with the magic spells.

It's not that he wants Add dead, but the cat cube has him so distracted that the blond doesn't even realize that his initial target was barely moving. Someone has to step in before one more death hangs over Roxas' head.

[cloak]

Roxas is in the middle of a routine errand when pain lances through him. It's a sharp and prominent ache in his chest, accompanied by a flood of confusion and terror. He drops his grocery bags with a grunt, pressing a gloved hand over his chest as he lurches forward. It's less that the sensation is overwhelming to him and more that it's so sudden and intense that throws him off balance, quickly realizing that it means one of his shinki is in danger. Mortal danger.

His surprise soon twists into something heavier, roiling hotly within him as his hands close into fists. Considering who his original is, he knows it immediately for what it is. Right now, it's rage that he's feeling. Although his shinki have been attacked and heavily injured before, this is the first time that he senses it as mortal peril. Someone thought they'd take it upon themselves to kill one of them...

Roxas grits his teeth, frame rigid with anger his small form can barely contain. Keyblades flicker into existence in his waiting hands and he vanishes, leaving his grocery bags abandoned and forgotten.

It feels too long by the time he arrives in the park, even if it's a matter of moments alone, a flurry of zeroes and ones heralding his arrival even in a tangible world like this. His hooded head turns quickly left, then right, before he sees a burst of energy tear through a tree. He recognizes the synthetic screech that accompanies it, and unfortunately, he recognizes the spells that bound through the air soon after.

Growling low in his throat, he vanishes again to reappear between his original and Add. A quick assessment tells him that Add is alive, but the force applied was almost enough to take his heart. Was his original aiming for that when Apocalypse intervened? It appears so to him as he holds Oathkeeper aloft and grits out one word: "Heal!"

In a burst of magical energy, the green light of a Curaga spell showers down on Add's injured form to mend his wound. The spell hasn't even dissipated by the time Roxas pivots to face his original, Keyblade snapping down to point in his direction. "Fire!" He counters that Blizzara with a Fira spell, recognizing its strength for what it is and unwilling to let Apocalypse take on damage that can be avoided.

He stalks forward, moving to station himself beside Add's cat-cube to form a barrier of just one more digital entity between Add and his attacker. For too-long moments he's silent, at once understanding that anger because he's felt it before, is feeling it now, but at the same time unwilling to yield his best friend to it. "So much for the Roxas who detested death," he makes no effort to contain the bitterness those words are saturated with. "Back off."

It's not a warning — it's a command.

[subtract]

Apocalypse handles the ice spell with much less ease, its form shuddering violently and it quickly struggles to pull itself together. Thankfully, the friend-class Roxas arrives just in time to mitigate the damage. It makes an electronic noise of gratitude as it draws itself closer to Add, allowing Roxas to take the lead in handling the situation.

Add has already passed out from the stress and bloodloss, but the healing spell knits up the worst of the damage—the wound is still bad and he's just barely breathing, but he's alive. As long as the wound doesn't reopen, he should be okay for now.

[missingache]

The very thing Roxas had been hoping to avoid was now right in front of him. The word 'death' just makes him grip the Bond of Flame Keyblade harder as he forces a breath through clenched teeth. "I wasn't trying to kill him. It's not my fault you've got a shinki that can't take a hit." How could the other Roxas stand having someone around that was such a physical liability? That even one hit could cause so much damage. Roxas' eyes flicker from Add back to the other Roxas before they narrow. "That's the one you were talking about on the tower." The best friend.

He raises a Keyblade in challenge. Why does the other get to keep his best friend in this place? Why did Roxas have to lose his again and not be able to get him back? It's not fair in his mind. It's not fair, and he wants to have the scales balanced. The only way he knows how would be too cruel, though... no, he's not that vindictive. He already knows the pain of thinking he was the reason Axel died. Forcing the other Roxas to be the one to kill Add somehow left a bad taste in his mouth.

Cruel is not something Roxas could ever make himself be.

"He needs to pay for what he did. He needs to learn that he's an idiot who got someone killed." And he honestly doesn't think you're capable of teaching that lesson correctly. Something like that demanded punishment that wasn't just hollow words or a slap on the wrist.

[cloak]

"You weren't trying...but you took a Keyblade to his chest," Roxas repeats his words, and continues with his own. For all the flat nature of his tone, there's something sharp in it, just as there is in his posture. He won't yield where Add's safety is concerned, whatever that means for him. In a physical world like this he doesn't know which of them would prove the stronger, especially since their experiences and memories have so greatly diverged after a certain point. "You know exactly what that does to a heart."

That was, after all, how his original had been created. Very few were like the members of the Organization, and their existence was marked by longing for what they had lost. They both know this quite well. Sora himself had been a unique case in that he hadn't been completely fragmented into beings that both would have to be destroyed for the threat they'd pose against anyone with a heart.

It doesn't matter if it was reckless impulse — his original should know better. After all, it had been his job to collect hearts from Heartless. Not to mention, it stirs up deeply painful memories of a time when he'd had to put Add through a hard reset in order to save him.

His grip tightens on the hilts of his Keyblades.

"What you don't know is how Add felt...and how many times he's died now," Roxas grits those last words out, because they're difficult to say. But he can say them, here and now, because Add's fear and pain have dulled. He surely isn't conscious right now, which means it's safe to say this much, to try and make his original understand. "What he did was wrong. He knows that, and his guilt nearly destroyed him too."

Nearly destroyed them both, but Roxas doesn't care all that much for his own existence. What gives him meaning and purpose is looking after his shinki. All of them. Because they're the ones he's supposed to protect. Add, of course... As his original has surmised, Add is his first (and until this world, only) friend.

[missingache]

"There's no Kingdom Hearts here, he would have been fine." Or so Roxas hopes. This place doesn't seem like one that would allow for something like Heartless or more Nobodies to be created. Shinki served enough of a purpose that other creatures weren't needed.

This is one of those times he wishes he had been created a shinki. So he wouldn't have the memories of his former existence, his former home, everything that's happened here. Wouldn't have to deal with the sharp pain of continuously losing people that were precious to him. The dull ache when they reappear as someone completely different. These two became so different from each other the moment both were thrown into their respective worlds.

Having admitted to the other Roxas about his constant fear should be enough of an answer as to why Roxas can be so reckless. Fear makes people do stupid things. Fear is why he's so much more self-sacrificing than before. If he could have taken Axel's place... no. These new words he's hearing leave him feeling cold. I don't care how many times someone dies. Not a thought he should voice out loud.

"Just because he felt bad about it didn't give him a right to hide it." He looks right at Add with disgust. "Add had the gall to try and go to Sora, to try and ask him about what happened. That's when I knew... but I needed proof." Does Roxas' willingness to let Raichi help during the ablution make more sense now? "I don't care what happens to him now. Hate me all you want, but the next time he tries to hurt any of my friends, any of them, I won't hold back." It's more or a guarantee than a threat.

[cloak]

"You don't know that... If you'd kept on fighting Apocalypse and I hadn't shown up..." Roxas grits his teeth, finding that something in him hurts sharply with the thought. Feelings are still such an oddity to him, and he so often finds himself unsure what words to attribute to them, or whether they're just very convincing echoes of something real. What is real is his unconscious friend.

Finding that his original had taken calculated steps without even approaching him about it makes his eyes narrow, finding that the actions he's admitted to taking aren't better than what he faults Add for. At least Add hadn't intended the results. On the other hand, the one he's modeled after knowingly took this course. There's a big divide there, in his mind. "But if you're going to argue this world's rules are what matter — you should've brought the issue to me, because I'm responsible for my shinki. It's not your place to play judge, jury, and executioner. And you would've, if I wasn't here."

He very nearly had done just that. Even the fact that he'd gone after Add when he was alone makes Roxas question what the intention was here, because it looks like he meant to kill Add. They both know very well the potency of Keyblades, and most living beings taking a blow to the heart in this world do die, whether it's from a weapon that can extract hearts or not.

"The fact is: Add wasn't trying to hurt him. His curiosity always gets him into trouble. It usually gets him hurt more than anybody else around him. And I tried to tell him that, but I couldn't. This world won't let me." He hasn't been able to voice this frustration before, and now that he does, his hands shake with the force of that repressed anger. "You want to take it out on someone? Then you look for me, because I can guarantee that you'll end up dealing with me one way or the other if you go after him again.

"I know your hurt, although I never wanted it. I was made for that, and I remember more of it than you do... But his pain is worse than you can understand." He feels the pain of loss from Axel's demise more keenly than he wishes. More intensely than he should, when he wasn't the friend Axel had known, and he hates it for the conflict it leaves him with. Strange as it is, if Add were gone, he'd be feeling both the borrowed pain of losing a friend that was never his, and losing the first real one he'd ever had. And he'd rather be destroyed.

For all that, he thinks Add's pain exceeds theirs. A pain that drove him to try and undo his own existence, and so much worse. He's only grateful Add doesn't remember it.

[missingache]

“If I’d gone to you, nothing would have happened. Add would have gotten away without being punished other than the blighting. You’re not his parent, he can’t go hide behind you for things like that.” If someone had a problem for one of his shinki being this reckless, then yes, they could handle it themselves unless someone tried to kill them.

“And I would have healed him if it wasn’t for that killer cube thing! I saw what I did, and I didn’t want him to die!” Roxas just wanted to let Add know he was pissed off because he was the reason Axel even wanted to know about his past. “I just… I just wanted him to feel the same pain I did when I found out that Pippa was the one who had to kill her own shinki in the end. How Sora almost died, Izuku, too. How there was others that could have. I know I’ve got blame on me too for Axel turning into an ayakashi.” But this isn’t about him. It’s about Add. It’s about that idiot.

Roxas waves over to Add. “I’m done with him.” It’s the truth. Add’s already banned from his temple. Asteri and Komitis would attack on sight if Add even tried to step foot onto the grounds. As for the other Roxas? He doesn’t fear that one. “You keep saying you know my pain, but I don’t think you do. Not anymore.”

It’s not just pain from losing a friend anymore. There’s guilt, regret, anger, sadness, and the one that scares Roxas the most: happiness. Happiness that at the end Axel knew who he was and what he was to Roxas. It was awful. His best friend turned into a monster, but at least that monster, even for just a few seconds, remembered him. There is no way the other could know. “You should be happy you don’t know what I’m feeling right now.” He doesn’t want to be called a monster.

[cloak]

"...Like I said. You don't know his pain. You don't know how much that guilt and fear hurt him — but I do." That's a reality of which they're both very aware, no matter what justification is offered. This world is one of gods and shinki, and gods are responsible for the souls that are put in their care, and can feel what they do when it's so steadfastly negative. There is no accounting for ignoring that system and telling him what he would and wouldn't do. "The fact is, you don't know what I would have done. You'll never know what I would have done, because you made that determination for me. So what's that say? If Axel's actions had unintentionally led to the destruction of my best friend, you would have done nothing?"

His original doesn't know him. And he knows precious little of the things that define and set them apart. Though he's an imitation, he's always been aware of it. He's always seen himself as a separate entity, because that's precisely what he is. This Roxas, one wrought of zeroes and ones and so much borrowed and so much lost, doubts his original will ever understand him. Only Naminé had. She was surely the only one from their universe, aside others like him, who ever would.

But he's amazed to be created from a being who'd presume, knowing what he does, that an entity with his memories doesn't know his pain. Might not have yet more of his own. That he'd project what he would do onto him this way. He'd have dealt with the situation were it brought to him. It's true he wouldn't have stabbed Add in the chest, as he'd already been forced to once, but he wouldn't have ignored the situation.

His original didn't come to him, didn't respect or understand him enough to do so. And on top of the rest that makes something in him seethe.

"You're full of yourself if you think your pain is something I, of anyone, can't understand. I had that attachment to Axel, even though those memories aren't mine — weren't ever mine. I felt your loss the first time it happened, and I felt it again when I heard the news. Do you know what that's like? To hurt for something that never belonged to you?" He pauses, scoffing as he shakes his head. "I guess you wouldn't, because you're the original. By association, I've lost your friends, and I've come close to losing mine...more than once. This time, I could feel his terror and his pain. Honestly you should be happy that you don't know what I'm feeling."