voidtreckerexpress | THE FIGHT

Entry tags:

THE FIGHT - Locked

Who: Xion and Lea
Where: Their cabin
When: Orchestra 18 - a while after the message from Anan
What: Xion and Lea have been heading for an argument for a while. The time has come.
Warnings: KH, angst, probably talk about past abuse though probably without the word. drama. Typing in all caps may happen. You have been warned.

Another day of wandering the train, taking notes on the different cars, because Axel wanted her to. Xion was thinking about some of the stuff Vexen said the other day also. She needed to order bowls from the train. And about notes to Roxas. She wasn't sure what to write, though. She had been heading back to the cabin to think some more about it, away from people, when she saw....

The fridge was gone. Her cold box full of ice cream for Roxas was gone. Her eyes went huge under her hood. Why was it gone?!

"The... the train took Roxas' ice cream?" she asked, in a voice she hardly recognized as her own. It was oddly thick but at the same time... pained. Why would the train take Roxas' ice cream away? Because of the bowls?!

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Lea had been bent down putting some food into the little bowl in Smoke's cage, which now sat where the mini-freezer had been. He heard Xion enter, but didn't look up til she spoke. After quickly closing the cage and leaving Smoke to his meal, Lea stood back up, setting the little bag of mixed nuts and seeds on his bunk for now.

"The train didn't do anything," Lea said with a bit of an exasperated sigh. "I took the freezer out because it was taking up too much space in the room, and because Vexen told me that you were hoarding half the train's bowls in there again full of extra ice cream; which took forever to properly clean out, by the way. Those aren't just for ice cream, you know; other people need them for stuff too."

"I told Vexen I'll use points to buy more bowls! So it's okay. So we can get the freezer and Roxas' ice cream back...." They had to. HAD TO.

"We can't get the ice cream back," Lea said. "There was so much jammed in there that much more would have started gumming up the parts that made the freezer work, so I had to clean it all out. Most of the ice cream had to be thrown away and the rest washed off the inside of the freezer. It's gone. And the freezer will be staying gone too, to keep it from happening again."

"Besides, I don't even know why you were saving all that. Even if Roxas does show up here again, you really think he could've eaten that much ice cream? And we can make ice cream bars on demand now anyway, which makes saving it even more unnecessary."

She stumbled back, shaking her head, tears falling down her face. "I have to save the ice cream for Roxas... you can't just... I..." she bought that with her own points. For Roxas. He was Roxas' best friend too! Why didn't he understand? They NEEDED that freezer...

She was shaking badly and part of her - a large part - wanted to just run away. Run from car to car until she found the freezer again. and then hide with it somewhere...

But where could she even hide on the train?

"Why do you need to save it?", Lea asked, exasperated. Part of him wanted to reach out and comfort her, wipe away those tears. But the rest of him? The rest of him was very short on patience lately and not in the mood to be particularly comforting. And that part of him was emboldened by the fact that Xion was actually talking back for once. "Why do you need to stuff a whole freezer full of ice cream when you know as well as I do that Roxas wouldn't be able to eat it all? When we could very easily just make him an ice cream bar on the day if we needed to? Why is it so important to hoard all that ice cream, huh?"

"So... So that he knows we didn't forget him! Or replace him!" she said, shaking badly. She wanted to run. Wanted to find the freezer. "I can't get him shells here...." More tears fell and she was shaking badly.

"If that was the point you could have just saved him one ice cream and kept it handy," Lea said. "Or, you know, you could just tell him you didn't forget him if he turns up. Not that he wouldn't figure it out anyway when we went to meet him and welcomed him back, since Roxas actually has some common sense."

Pain flared in her chest. She didn't... she... she didn't know why it hurt but it hurt. Why didn't he understand? He always understood.

She needed...

She turned for the door. She needed to get away, to escape. To run. To find the freezer. To...

To find Roxas.

Even if it was impossible. She had to try. why wasn't she trying...?

Lea caught her shoulder, sensing she was about to run off. As usual. But she wasn't going to escape from this one so easily. Now that he was finally able to give voice to his frustrations, he wasn't nearly done. "Oh no, you're not running off this time," he said. "Not til you actually explain to me why you needed to stuff the freezer full of bowls of ice cream that Roxas wouldn't eat. I can't freaking understand why you do stuff like that. Leaving shells and stuff on the bed when you or he was asleep is one thing; that's something you can keep. But no matter what happened we wouldn't have been able to keep all that ice cream. So why?"

"You just... you say and do stuff all the time and just expect me to understand the thought process that got you there, but a lot of it doesn't make any sense to me. You never explain any of it! You clam up and get upset instead of just telling me what's going on in your head, and then I have to try and guess and even the simplest conversations end up taking forever."

She hunched in on herself as he yelled at her. The tears wouldn't stop and her chest hurt and she just...

Just...

She screamed in frustration. She hadn't meant to. She tried to pull away, jamming her back into the door. She hardly noticed.

"HE NEEDS THE BOWLS!" she found herself yelling. Even as she wanted to claw the words back. "It's the only thing I can do for him!"

Lea wasn't yelling, really. Not yet. Not by his own definition of such at least. But the volume of his voice had been creeping up as more and more frustration bubbled to the surface. And as much as part of him knew he would feel terrible for upsetting Xion later, it was firmly silenced by the part of him that relished the confrontation. Finally, finally they might be able to deal with some of this directly.

"No he doesn't!", he said. OK, that might have been a yell. He made the effort to tone it down just slightly, if only because the room was so small. "People here need the bowls. People who'll actually use them, not hoard them."

"For Light's sake, you just... You don't think before you do stuff like this! But when doing stuff would actually be helpful, it's the total opposite. Most of the time all you do is think. You just sit around and worry everything to death and don't actually try to do anything about it; no, you just wait around for someone else to tell you what to do or do it for you, usually me."

"You don't want to go out and try anything or learn anything for yourself. Instead you just use me as a human encyclopedia and expect me to have all the answers to everything. Even on missions! You don't pay attention to the briefing or what's going on around you half the time because you're so busy waiting for me to give you directions. You realize how dangerous that could be, right? For both of us?"

Edited 2021-12-07 07:49 (UTC)

"He does," she whispered, shaking terribly. "I do think! I think all the time about..." About Roxas. Axel. What she can do to actually be useful.

She tried to pull away from him, shaking so hard one might half expect bits of her to go flying off. "I do try to learn things," she whispered. "I do..." Was something even worse wrong with her than she thought? Was she supposed to be able to learn faster? How much would a Somebody her age be learning> How much catching up did she have to do to learn that much?

But the end of what he said...

Her head snapped up. "I....I'm putting you in danger..." she repeated. Something could happen to Axel... because of her? She could... she was hurting Axel by being here? Her knees went weak under her and she tried again to pull away.

She had to leave she had to go somewhere... somewhere.. somewhere she couldn't put him in danger anymore...

He should stop. He really should. But 'should' had never played much of a role when his temper came out like this. At this point he felt as though he was holding her as much to keep her on her feet as to keep her from escaping, given how badly she was shaking, but he wasn't quite done yet.

"Why does Roxas need half the bowls on the train?", Lea said. "Seriously, tell me. What will hoarding bowls of ice cream for him accomplish? He wouldn't even be able to eat it the way it was; it was just a big sticky mess."

"And yeah, you could be putting me, yourself, and others in danger by not paying attention on missions and expecting me to do it for both of us. And you've gotta stop putting me on a pedestal in general. I'm not this amazing, perfect person you think I am! I'm not someone who can do basically anything with no effort! I'm good at some things, but that's because I've worked hard to get good at them. I know some things, but that's because I've learned them either by being taught or by experience. This all powerful, all knowing guy you seem to think I am? That's not me. Never was, never will be."

Edited 2021-12-07 08:23 (UTC)

"BECAUSE HE LIKES TO COUNT!" she found herself yelling without knowing why. It was like all this pain inside her needed to escape and her voice was the only what that it... or she.. could run away. "I... I can't tell hum how many..." her voice fell away as she put her hands over her face. "I can't tell him how many days he's missed..." she whispered. "He'd want to know. But with the ice cream... he can count. Can know how many ice creams he missed. That we missed him each and every time..."

The rest she couldn't speak to, couldn't respond to yet. Because the thought of all the bowls and sticks being gone... she had no way to... she couldn't remember how many there were. She couldn't remember the number. She didn't know how many days she'd slept through, but the ice creams, the times they sat to talk together that he should have been there... she had been saving that for him... so he'd know...

And now it was gone.

She'd failed in the only thing she could do for Roxas. Like Axel, Roxas had done so much for her. And she couldn't even do this for him...

Her knees gave out under her.

Lea let her sink to her knees, finally releasing her. "There are other ways to mark off days without making a giant sticky mess!", he said. "And Roxas would know you missed him, cause he'd miss you too. Because we're best friends. We'll never not miss each other when we're apart. You don't have to do anything to prove that you deserve that, because just being you is enough."

"But even as I'm saying this I know you won't believe me. No, everything that doesn't fit into your little mental narrative you find a way to brush off. You believe everything I say except when doing that would actually be helpful. If I were to tell you that the sky is green and the grass is blue, you'd believe me, despite it being blatantly obvious that that wasn't true. But when I try to tell you anything that conflicts with how great you think I am or how broken you think you are? 'Oh no, he must be lying to protect me again'. Even if that makes no freaking sense at all."

"No matter how many times or how many ways I try to get it through your head that I care about you, that you have value, not because of anything you can do, but just because you're Xion, it doesn't stick." He turned his back and threw up his hands in sheer frustration. "Just... what the heck am I doing wrong, huh?! What can I say or do to help you understand why I care about you so much?! Because I don't have a freaking clue any more."

"You both forgot me!" she cried out, staring at the floor between her gloves. "I had to go away and be forgotten! I never want Roxas to think he was forgotten!" It hurts too much. "Being me wasn't enough! Because I was supposed to be Sora! I'm still..." she gasped, sinking further. "I'm still supposed to be Sora.." she whispered. Shaking.

"I don't even know what caring is!" she cried out, but her voice was quiet, shaking. Broken. "I don't know how to answer you!"

"You were never supposed to be Sora!", Lea said. "The only reason that mess happened was that Marluxia screwed with Sora's memories. The only thing you were supposed to be was an extra Keyblade for the Organization, but you became something so much more than that! Not being what the Organization wanted is a good thing because the Organization was terrible."

"You're so much more, so much better than you think you are, and we could never forget you. I could never forget you. Even when I couldn't remember anything about you, I still remembered you. But again, I know you won't believe me on most of that."

"And you do know what caring is! Not it your head, maybe, but in your heart. Because yes, you have a heart! You feel things! You have emotions! If you didn't, you wouldn't be upset right now! Vexen wasn't able to make a Replica without a heart, and the only reason you think you don't have one is because the Organization was terrible an Xemnas was a liar. And you just keep fooling yourself with that same lie, because you're so scared of having an actual life that you'll do anything to not have to face it, even if it hurts you."

"I still had to go back to him! And I still have to do that again otherwise I break the future Roxas remembered! I have to be forgotten again! And I have to... have to forget..." her voice broke and she sobbed. "Roxas said we never talked about Diatu, he didn't know about any of this... so... so I have to forget everything when I go back. This... this me... has to vanish..." she sobbed into her hands.

"Then we'll find a way to fix that!", Lea said. That bit of information honestly explained a lot, but it would have been so much more helpful if she'd just told him before now. "We'll talk to Vexen, something. He created you; if anyone can figure it out, it's him."

"And we could have been working on it before now, if you'd just said something. To me, to Vexen, heck even to Taiki. We want to help you with your problems, but we can't do that if you don't tell us when something is bothering you!"

Her head came up, and she stared at him from under her hood. She didn't understand what hope was, didn't even know the word... but it was shining through her eyes as she looked up at him from under her hood.

"How... can could we... without...." Wouldn't it just break everything? Wasn't it just her thinking about what was best for her rather than what was best for everyone?

"I don't know!", Lea said. "That's why we'd have to talk to Vexen. He's the genius scientist, not me. I barely understood enough of his notes to figure out you were actually a Replica back when we were with the Organization." Which may have had as much to do with Vexen's handwriting as the contents of those notes, but the result was the same.

"And it would really help, if when we talk to Vexen, that you actually talk to him. You can't just hide behind me all the time and have me do all the talking when we're together. Especially for things like this; this'd affect you more than anyone else so Vexen'd really need you to be more involved than just standing there being poked and prodded."

She shrunk back again at his exclamation. She curled in on herself, shaking badly. She wanted to think it could happen it could be fixed. Somehow she could be allowed to remember. To still be.

But she knew that couldn't be the truth. She knew what Riku had told her. That she had to pick the choice that was best for everyone, not just herself. But she couldn't. She couldn't. She knew she had to leave again but all she wanted was to stay...

And if they did talk to Vexen... and he said it was impossible. Worse... What if he said she had to be taken apart to even try. Or tried to push her into going back sooner? She didn't want to stop existing. She didn't want to forget. Roxas had counting and she had memories... But talking to Vexen would just be proof that she had to lose those. That the man in the bandages had been right. That Riku had been right...

"I'm scared..." she whispered, so quietly she barely even heard herself. She put her hands over her face. She was terrified. Afraid of what Vexen would say if they did talk to him. Afraid of the answer. Afraid of leaving.

She knew that what she wanted didn't matter. It never mattered. But when they had been in diatu.... she had almost thought that maybe... maybe...

But no. Now she and Axel were here, but no Roxas. And she had to go back.

She wanted to stay. She wanted to be with her friends, wherever her friends were. Why couldn't they just be together?

Lea took a deep breath, fighting the urge to raise his voice again. That wouldn't help anything. It probably hadn't helped before either. But now enough of his frustration had been vented that the part of him that was angry could no longer overrule the part that didn't want to hurt Xion. But there was still danger of it swinging back that way.

"I know," he said. "I know. But you can't let fear keep you from the chance at a better life. You can face down a Darkside like it's nothing, you can talk to Vexen about this. I'll be there with you, but you've gotta learn to speak up for yourself about important stuff like this. You gotta at least be able to function on your own, you know?"

He wanted to say more, to stay and try to offer comfort. But he knew he wasn't in a state for it right then. So instead he took another deep breath, and exhaled. "Listen.... I need to go cool off for awhile or I might end up yelling again. I'll talk to you a little later, OK? Once I'm sure we won't just be repeating this whole mess..."

But how was she supposed to explain any of this to Vexen when she couldn't even find the words to explain it properly to Axel? And what would Axel do if Vexen said she did have to go back? Even Axel couldn't fix that, right?

"You're leaving?" she whispered in a tiny voice which broke in the middle.

But... but he said he'd be back... so... so it was okay, right? But why would he need to leave? She knew why she had wanted to run away but... he was Axel. He wasn't scared of anything. She closed her eyes and gave a small nod, trying to move herself across the floor so she wouldn't be in the way.

Well didn't that sight just make him feel like the biggest jerk in the worlds. Unfortunately, the feeling only mingled with his still heated temper, threatening to make it flare up again, this time at himself as much as her. He took yet another deep breath, exhaled in a sigh, then wordlessly bent down, helping her up to at least sit on her bunk.

He didn't actually answer until he turned his back, stepping over to the door. "Yeah... for a little while. But I'll be back. Promise." And with that, he opened the door and stepped out of the room. He wasn't quite sure where he was going, but he knew that... he needed to get away from the situation. Maybe the training gym. Or the Quiet car. Maybe both, one after the other. He just... needed to let himself cool down. Then he'd be back. After all, he'd promised.

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THE FIGHT - Locked

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