After Mission

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

He heaved a sigh of relief, his hand was starting to hurt.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

How long had he been sitting at that desk, filling forms and correcting reports?

Why the hell was it necessary to have that chaos of papers and documents? And why it had to be him to take care of it?

Under his gloved fingers slipped a sheet of paper, a sheet of which writings made him lift is upper lip in scorn. It was without a doubt from IX, that idiot.

That guy had half of a brain and was able to use it badly.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

He spent the next half hour correcting the spelling and syntax errors of IX's report, and the next forty minutes recovering from the spelling and syntax errors of IX's report.

When he finally lifted his head from the desk, the sky out of the window was darker and thicker than ever. Not that it changed during the day, but now, after a long time, he was able to identify the little changes in the colors. Maybe it was just a sensation, maybe it was due to the fact that living in an everlasting night was starting to make him crave the sunlight, maybe he had spent too much time staring at the void and not focusing on his mission.

It must have been the middle of the night, he realized, not only because of the intense black of the sky, but also because of his body's biologic need to lean his shoulders over the bed to rest. A couple of hours, he didn't demanded more.

Lately, by the way, he was suffering from insomnia. He could have got mad with the reason of his insomnia, because it complied with a name and a physical body, but that was the problem: it was his absence that was depriving him of his sleep.

Another breath and...

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

How much work he still had to do.

He started to feel the tiredness and his attention decreased. The signatures it the footnote of the documents were getting more and more incoherent, he barely read the subject of the pages.

Why bother, they were all useless, long, ungrammatical reports.

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

Enough. He signed the last paper and was about to get up, when his gaze, tired and blurry, fell on something unlikely. If he had a heart he could have heard its beating in his temples.

He had to bring the paper close to his nose to be sure it wasn't a blunder due to his exhaustion.

It was a barren paper, a paper about VIII's return to the Castle, no report attached, not a line written by his hand. Nothing at all.

He's back.

He took a second or two to calm down and for the first time getting up from that chair was exceptionally easy.

He reached the room with the number VIII written on it, in few, rapid strides. It wasn't specified in the document if VIII had headed back without wounds or damage, it didn't say anything about his health, it just said that he had been back for days and he, busy with is work, didn't even realize it.

Not that he blamed himself, it was his fault: he should have written a report. He should have come to him.

He sensed a feeble pain in his chest, but he didn't have time to investigate it, because he got into the room. Without knocking: he didn't have to announce himself, not to him.

He found him standing in front of the window, with the surprised expression he was hoping to see on his face.

<Why didn't you report in?>

Even if he was boiling over, his voice was calm, relaxed, deep as always.

VIII, for a moment, hesitated. Oh, but he was not the guy to stay quiet for too long.

<Wow, not even a little word of appreciation for my work?> a mocking smirk appeared on the redhead's lips.

Axel. Associating him with a number could never cease hurting him, causing him long, horrible shivers to run through his body. Axel.

Saïx restrained his desire to rip into him.

Could he be happy to see him again even without a heart? Could he say that verifying that he was not wounded, and safe and sound made him heave a sigh of relief?

<The only thing I heard about your work is that Namine has gone missing.>

No, it's not what you really wanna tell him. Stupid.

Saïx's threatening expression didn't impress Axel at all. It never did.

<There one minute, gone the next!> The redhead shrugged in a dramatic way. Oh, he certainly didn't have anything to do with what happened to Namine. <I don't know how she got out.>
Saïx felt his jaw clenching in a spasm. <Did you search every room?>

<Are you kidding?> The redhead restrained a laughter. He was tense, defensive. When did talking to him has become a situation so uncomfortable? <You know as well as I do that searching through every room there is impossible.>

<And the chamber?> stop it, stop it Saïx. <Did you find it?>

That conversation could have finished in few lines, if only he hadn't been so in need of prolonging it.

For a moment he grasped something in Axel's eyes, the glimmering of the betrayal he was hiding in his chest. But he was so far, so unreachable.

How did you get so far.

<Come on, I would have told you that much.> He avoided his look, those shining green irises moved away.

What was he keeping from him, and most of all why. <I gotta hand it to you...you know, about Marluxia being one of the traitors. You knew exactly what was up from the start.>

< Mfp. > he looked at his profile, following the shape of his nose, the one of the lips, the chin, the neck. He forced himself to not feel anything. <I merely rounded up and sent off the ones who were getting in the way.>

The Axel turned around. This time he couldn't help but laughing, not in his voice. <Whoa there, was I one of those you wanted to erase?>

Saïx felt the pain, but he didn't understand his source.

The distance between them grew a little more, just a little more. But it still wasn't alarming enough to make him to run for cover, no? No?

He turned, he couldn't stand that sight anymore. <Good to see you made it back safe.> and he could have never been able to say those words looking at him in the eye.

<I disposed of Zexion, by the way.> Axel tried. Was he also trying to prolong that conversaion? Maybe he wanted to resew with invisible filament the gash that had opened between them?

Saïx looked at him just for a moment, then he looked again in front of himself. And got out of the room.

You're gonna lose him, and it's gonna be only your fault.

<No. We have a mission. We're gonna complete it, together, as expected.>
The voice inside of him, though, had nothing to retort.