#if u tag this as akrk or think it's akrk

[sollea]

Dolorem et Consolationem Ch9

Ch1, Ch2, Ch3, Ch4, Ch5, Ch6, Ch7, Ch8 Words: 1865 Discussions of identity in the World the Never Was

Tag this as AkRk and I eat your bones.

The sparring hadn’t helped Lea let out any steam, but seeing Isa wield a keyblade got him thinking about weapons… Weapons and their active connection to a person. That train of thought pushed him into thinking about the lesser nobodies, wondering if they were still around and if the poor berserkers were still being pulled around by their hammers. Isa was mostly free of his cursed weapon, dragging him around the room in a rage, but Lea doubted those strong-willed creatures with such a small amount of identity were free. The only real way to free them was to kill them after all.

Then he’d started to think about his own nobodies, the assassins. It had taken him such a long time to get used to being assigned that role, but the creatures that were attached to him quickly formed their identities around fast attacks and hidden movements once he realized his place.

Refusing to tell Isa where he was going after they both sat down together, catching their breath and not allowing themselves to touch each other at all, Lea set off through a dark portal to the find out if the World the Never Was still… was.

The buildings were wrong, streets weren’t where he remembered them being, and there was far too many signs of every battle that had ever taken place in the world. It was still crawling with nobodies.

He wondered if there would ever be a shortage again with how many heartless could travel through and infect new worlds. It was a disease caused by both emblem and pureblood heartless, Lea knew all too well the research showed that it wouldn’t be able to be stopped with the numbers they had. Keyblade wielders were necessary and with Sora and Riku missing, Kairi hadn’t been able to join the teams to fight the heartless. Roxas and Xion were adjusting to life with hearts and didn’t have enough time on their hands to waste it with life-threatening adventures. Terra, Ventus, and Aqua were busy trying to set up a real training area in their homeworld. Lea… didn’t have the guts to face even more things head on.

Or at least, that’s what he had thought about himself for months.

“Hey, Lea!” A voice rang out of the deafening silence, causing Lea to instinctively draw his keyblade and level himself out, ready to fight.

But then he saw who was calling for him and relaxed his stance. It was just Roxas, he was still safe to gaze off into the distance without getting hurt. “Oh, hey, Roxas. Visiting the same world as me. Accident or did you track me down?”

“Uh. I kinda tracked you down? Isa said you’d be visiting here.”

“Oh yeah? What d’you need?” Lea swung his keyblade around, resting it on his shoulder as he waited for a reason for being tracked down. It was odd, he had made it a point to not tell Isa. Maybe Isa really did know him too well. Well, that was the problem with having a best friend from childhood, he supposed. Isa would always just… know things, or he’d at least have guesses. He looked down at the teenager who had gone through multiple words to find him, there had to be a good reason for that.

“I just wanted to hang out alone? You’re always spending your free time with, uh… everybody. It never gives me a chance to ask you questions I want to just ask you!”

“You could just say so instead of tracking me down! I’ve got a phone and you do too, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah, I do.”

“So, what’re the questions?”

“Questions?”

“The ones you wanted to ask me, Roxas. The questions you don’t want to ask around other people?”

“Oh, right. So, everyone else got rid of the Xs in their names, but I can’t do that. What should I do?”

Lea hadn’t expected questions like that. He moved his hands to his hips, letting his keyblade disappear halfway through the motion. Shifting his stance to put more weight on one foot, he realized this was a question he’d have to think about. “Well, names are pretty important. You feel like you’re Roxas, right?”

“Well, yeah, but th-”

“Are you worried enough that you want to change your identity? You identify with Roxas, right? Letters, pronunciation, everything?”

“Yeah.”

“So stay Roxas. Names are important to people, that’s why I want everyone to call me Lea.”

Roxas took in what was said with a pensive face, one Lea knew very well. If there was one thing that really made Lea proud of the kid, it was his ability to try.

“So, you’re saying that no matter what I do, it should just be what I associate with the most? It doesn’t matter if my name’s just Sora’s taken and reshuffled with an X thrown in there for control?”

“Do you really mean ‘just Sora’s name’ or are you just thinking aloud?”

“I’m just thinking aloud. It’s my name and I want to stay Roxas.” The teen paused to look around at the surrounding area. It was incredibly apparent on his face that Roxas was confused by where they were. That conversation was going to come later, Lea could feel it, but he was glad the focus reverted to questions he could answer. “How does someone even come up with a new name for themself that isn’t just stealing someone else’s?”

“Well, I might not be the best person to ask that since I just went ahead and changed some pronunciation.”

“What? Are you still spelling Lea like ‘Axel’? That doesn’t make sense?”

Laughing at Roxas’s earnest question was probably rude, but he couldn’t help it. “No, no. L-E-A’s supposed to be pronounced LEH-a, grabbed the pronunciation of Lee instead, just didn’t change the spelling. I like L-e-a, felt right and felt like me, but LEH-a never did.”

“Oh, so you already had to make people change what they called you?”

“Yeah. Getting told I was suddenly named Axel kinda pissed me off. Then I come back and everyone’s still calling me Axel! I told Kairi to when I was trying to remember Xion, but it’s still frustrating that people still refuse to even try.”

“Sorry that I mess it up sometimes.”

“Nah, Roxas, I get it. The important thing is correct, then move on. It hurts some people more than others, though, so still be careful. I’m not the only one who’s dealing with multiple names right now.”

“Well, thanks for understanding.”

“Of course I do. It’s important to have stuff explained to you. Like the reason I don’t mind getting my name messed up occasionally versus Isa really minding being called ‘Saïx’. Can’t get stuff memorized if we never tell you.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Of course it is. You might not be constantly in need of babysitting anymore, but you’re still learning. We’re all still learning. That’s what living is.”

“Wow, Lea, pretentious.”

Lea rubbed at the back of his head and laughed. He couldn’t deny that he was sound a bit like some kind of know-it-all. “Maybe that’s just what you get for calling me your dad for some reason.”

“I mean, you took care of me when I was totally brainless and new. You kinda are. And Isa’s the dad who was kinda a huge dick to start with, but is trying his best to make up for it.” Roxas smiled up at Lea. The kid really was just that full of love and forgiveness and… everything good, even through things that made him grow bitter.

“Yeah? So you’re sticking to that?”

“Well, sometimes people ask me where my parents are, so I tell them they’re hanging out in a garden. So you’re at least my excuse parents.”

“That I can live with. Always happy to be a way to get out of trouble.”

“Uh, speaking of trouble, I think you’re maybe in some? Isa didn’t seem too happy when he said where he thought you were… And I don’t think I blame him! Why are you out here?”

Lea laughed and ruffled Roxas’s hair, much to the teenager’s chagrin. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m the impromptu dad, you’re the kid. I’m not doing anything stupid. I just came out here to see what became of the place with the Organization completely gone. The lesser nobodies are still people, y’know? We should be helping them out somehow.”

“You came out here to kill a bunch of them.”

“Nah, not by myself, I’m not stupid. Something just happened that made me realize that with some good recon and enough of a group, we could recomplete a lot more people. Free them of this… curse they’ve got.” Lea sighed. “I also wanted to know if I could still do something, but away from everyone.”

“What?”

“Well, y’know how I can still make the dark corridors appear for some reason?”

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re seriously depressed like… all the time?”

“Sure. Whatever.” Lea rolled his eyes at that then brought his fingers together to snap, causing two assassin nobodies to appear before him, swaying back and forth, awaiting an order. “Wanted to know if I could do that.”

Roxas looked at the two nobodies and frowned. “I mean, sometimes dusks show up and still call me weird names? That’s nothing to worry about, right?”

“I just don’t like it. Something about nobodies staying loyal to me seems… bad. I don’t like what it implies, that’s all. And I can’t bring myself to kill the ones I summon either, so I need to come back with friends.” Lea rubbed at the back of his neck and sighed, looking up at the empty sky. “It’s pretty here. Never thought about it, but it’d be a city I’d want to go to if it wasn’t for the dead.”

Roxas continued to just stare at the nobodies that were swaying in front of them. It made more sense why Lea was being so lax about the name change despite it obviously mattering very suddenly. It wasn’t often Roxas knew for sure he was right about something, but the look in his eyes when he looked directly at Lea screamed that he refused to change his mind. “Y’know, you’re not Axel if you don’t wanna be.”

“What?”

“Like I’m Roxas since I want to be Roxas. You’re not Axel. Not even if you can still do some Axel things.”

Lea looked from Roxas to the nobodies then smiled, laughing and calling them off. The assassins vanished into the ground as Lea continued to laugh. “Guess you really do learn fast once you’re told. I knew you used to, but you’ve still got it.” Lea took in a deep breath and shook his head. “Man, I’ve got kids years wiser than me all over the place and I’m still expected to be some kind of adult. This is stupid.”

“But you love us.”

Lea looked down at Roxas and nodded, placing a hand on the teen’s shoulder. He tried his best to look as much like a father as he possibly could as he spoke, “Yeah, but I love you.”