Ten Ways To Move On - I.

Going Crazy

Warnings: Yaoiiiiii. No like man love? Then please go awaaaay. I'm serious. GTFO. I take flame and set it towards your house. And we don't want to mess up such good paint, yeah?

Disclaimer: OBVIOUSLY I don't own Kingdom Hearts. Unless Tetsuya Nomura is a sixteen year old black American girl...

GO!

Roxas Strife was an ordinary boy beyond all standards. He went to school every morning. He came home every evening. He had both a loving mother and a hard-working father. He had a small group of friends of which he treasured more than anything in the world. He had a sister and a brother, even a small dog. He had average grades and all the teachers who had the privilege of having him as a student adored him. He was a kind, funny, light-hearted gentleman that was the eye of affection for many girls. He never broke rules he shouldn't, never drank, smoked, or gave into any dark temptations. He had a promising future with many paths lined for him, many people who had his back every step of the way. But everyone knows... bad things happen to good people all too often. Roxas Strife is a prime example...

"N-n-n-not my baby... M-m-my poor b-baby...!"

Whenever one thought back in memory of the blonde, only positive, happy memories came to mind. Roxas was never one for trouble or conflict, at least he tried not to be. If anything, his weakness was confusion, but it was always fun to see the blonde so riled up on something so small and nonsensical. Roxas always spoke his mind, and his opinions and thoughts were always entertaining to those who listened. He was such an... innocent soul... no one would have guessed that tragedy would hit such a pure heart.

"It'll be alright, honey... We'll be alright... "

Roxas Strife died on October 31st, 2010. However, it wasn't anything like those horrific deaths where the victim was stabbed eighteen times to the chest or was struck in a crossfire between to people or even from a normal cause, like an illness or a fire. No, Roxas Strife lost his life during peaceful slumber. No bullets, no wounds, no clue as to what led up to his mysterious death. Just a young, harmless boy deprived of any life sleeping eternally in his bedroom on a normal Sunday night.

Died peacefully in my sleep... as if.

Big, lonely blue eyes watched in pure agony as the deathly pale body he'd lived in for sixteen years was lowered into the earth, flowers thrown in after its descent. Roxas crossed his arms with a ragged sigh while he watched his own funeral. It was the worst feeling in the world, the worst sight to ever witness in the world. He hadn't known that, even as nothing more than a mere spirit, his heart could shatter so violently. To see his mother cry, to see his unmoving body put into the ground, to see his life actually end. If he could, Roxas would have vomited.

Please don't cry, mother... I'm still here...

He wanted so badly to comfort her, to tell her he was still and would always be with her... but he couldn't. They couldn't hear him. They couldn't hear, see, or feel him... He was stuck between this life and the next with no real purpose or great life-satisfying, last minute accomplishment. At first, Roxas truly thought it was Hell. When he realized his predicament, when he realized his death, he was so utterly scared and revolted, he hadn't the slightest idea of how to function. But now, as he watched his parents suffer the loss of their son, as he watched his own body being covered by mounds of dirt, he felt undying anger. Why him? How did it happen? Why not some sleazy rapist or some mafia killer? What had he done to earn such a demise? It just wasn't fair and Roxas couldn't bring himself to understand a decent reason or justification on behalf of his sudden death.

It gave the blonde animosity he never knew he could posses.

"Roxas... how could this have... Roxas..."

Roxas clenched his fists. Namine... She couldn't even form a sentence without breaking down into more tears. Roxas hated seeing his little sister so broken. His articulate, intelligent sister who always had known the right words to say, who was always the silver lining in the midst of the darkest clouds, speechless beyond her cries. Even his big brother, stoic and unphased as the pavement that is walked on, looked on the verge of cracking into a rampage of anger and hurt. Cloud... Roxas felt so much strangling guilt, it nearly killed him a second time. Their sadness was because of him, even though he knew he had no control over it.

I'm sorry...

Axel bit at the corner of his lower lip as he waited for the strife family to mourn over their loss. Sad partings like this was never his scene, it made him shifty in discomfort. But being the family's driver for the night - as they were in no condition to drive themselves, even the seemingly put together father - paid a hell of a lot more than any cashier job. The only taxing problem was the overwhelming sadness that seemed to be contagious just from being near the four. For hours, Axel wondered who this Roxas kid was that had so many people bawling their eyes out. The entire churchyard was swarmed with grieving people!

When Axel saw the family finally returning to the car almost an hour after the disperse of everyone else, he quietly opened the backseat door to let them inside. As each entered the car, they all gave him a sad look almost as lifeless as the son they just buried, if not more. The smallest one with blonde, nearing platinum, hair was the last to get in but before she did, she glanced at Axel with an extremely forced smile that looked like it would fall apart any moment. "Thank you for waiting so long, I apologize if we took longer than needed." She said silently, giving a slight bow of thanks before climbing into the car beside her brother.

Axel's head shook in disbelief as his green eyes widened. She had just lost a brother and she was apologizing for mourning over it? If it were Axel, he couldn't imagine the fiery that'd course through his veins. He probably would have knock the living hell out of his driver just because the man had the nerve of looking him in the eyes. What kind of family was this? Even not knowing the people and Axel felt like he knew they had done nothing to deserve the crap they were going through. Just the opposite. In fact, these people were such saints, they deserved the blessing of out living a century with nothing but good fortune.

"Driver...?" A little, timid voice called out from the inside of the car. Axel hummed absently in response before realizing it was his client trying to notify him of his daydreaming. Snapping back to reality, Axel apologized hastily before waving away at his thoughts and closing the door. He made quick work of going around the car and getting into the driver's side. He started the car, the engine rumbling to life and silencing the occasional sniffling in the backseat, before he pulled away from the church. He made frequent glances through the rear view mirror to ensure that the Strife family was okay, but for the main part stayed unheard.

The drive was quiet, the atmosphere in the car was heavy and Axel wanted desperately to make conversation or something to change the mood. He sighed in frustration as he stopped at a red light and ran his fingers through his hair. Suddenly his eyes felt heavy and his body, exhausted. All this silence didn't fit him well and dealing with it reluctantly was such a hassle...

"The light's green..."

Axel's head snapped up in surprise as he searched the passenger seat for the voice that whispered into his ears. Axel's eyebrows scrunched in confusion as he found nothing but an empty space. When he looked back to the road, the green light that had been patiently waiting for him to drive through had turned yellow as if mocking the redhead's negligence. With more force than needed, Axel hit the gas and rushed across the intersection before the light had the chance to turn red again. "Am I flippin' shit or did I really just hear that?" He muttered tiredly to himself.

"Sir?" The father from the back asked dubiously. Axel smiled sheepishly at the man through the mirror, using body language this time to apologize for his second stumble that night.

"Nothing, nothing. Just thought I heard something up here. Didn't mean to speak aloud." The redhead smiled a little bigger as the man nodded in understanding. But as soon as the eye contact was broken, Axel dropped his smile like a poisonous mushroom. He had heard something, crazy or not. But he wasn't about to chance another peek to the passenger side if his life depended on it. Axel was convinced that the Strife family may have brought the ghost of their son or some creepy horror stuff like that.

After almost a half hour of more muted driving, Axel finally dropped off the Strife family, and their freaky ghost son, at their house. They told him that his check would be mailed to him by the end of the week and they all walked inside, each doing whatever they could to hold off their remaining tears until in the comfort of their home. Axel made sure they made it safely into the house before walking back to the driver's side and plopping down in the seat exhaustively.

"Man, what a long night..." The redhead yawned, undoing his tie and shrugging out of his chauffeur coat. It was when he was about to put the car in drive when he heard it again.

"I'm sorry for the trouble, thank you for getting my family home safely. I'd owe you my life if I had one to give..."

Axel's eyes rounded as his head whipped around to the passenger seat again. Though this time, he wasn't met with an empty space, but instead a clearly transparent boy. Axel had never screamed in his life before that night. The redhead hands trembled irregularly as he tried to open the driver's side door, but his hands seemed to touch everything but the handle in his hurried frenzy. "Shit, shit, shit! Open damnit!" The windshield wipers turned on, whipping at the fastest possible speed, the turning signals flashed, the back windows were rolling down and up, the locks in the car locked and unlocked indecisively, and yet the door refused to grant the redhead his desperate wish to leave the car.

"No! Please sir, don't leave!"

Axel's body froze as the ghost boy addressed him. A breath of relief was sighed behind him and the sound made the redhead's skin crawl feverishly. A ghost was talking to him - a ghost was in the car next to him! "This isn't happening. This is not happening. I must have fallen asleep waiting for the Strife family..." Axel tried to reason to himself. With shaky confidence, Axel turned his head back toward the passenger seat and stiffened when that empty space void of any ghosts met his eyes. The redhead sat there dumbly, staring into the naked space he could have sworn a little, blonde boy had been sitting and trying to determine if he was actually awake or if he needed to take a quick visit to the doctor's office.

It was a long, soundless, five minutes before the redhead decided to move again, although every slow move was wary and experimental. Every half second, green eyes would flick back to that empty seat beside him and expect to find the blonde, but never did. The minute he was at his job's garage, he jumped out of the limo and ran to his own Dodge Viper with such cowardly speed, it should have demolished any pride he had as a man. Slamming on the gas and damn near flipping the car to its side with how fast he swerved the corner, Axel sped his way home and away from the possessed limousine.

He didn't waste a minute when he pulled into his apartment complex at getting out of the car and up to the second floor. It took a few tries, but with the turn of his key he was finally home free. "What's up, Axe! How was the funeral?" His roommate, Demyx, called from his upside down position on the couch. But Axel didn't stop long enough to give anything more than a grunt for a reply. After the front door was securely locked, his room was the only thing on his mind. Demyx lifted a dirty blonde brow suspiciously but shrugged anyway, returning to his equally bottom up movie.

The redhead let out a long, deep sigh and shook his head lightly. He still felt fidgety and paranoid, even in his own room. Axel wasn't intoxicated, wasn't dreaming, wasn't flipped out on pills, wasn't hallucinating, wasn't sick. He saw that ghost kid. He couldn't fool himself into thinking that he didn't. He heard that ghost kid. No mistaking it. But... "Ghosts aren't real." He scolded himself. He told himself that while he cleared his mind of any sightings of little blonde boys in his car, he told himself that as he walked into the bathroom, and he told himself that as he stepped into the shower, letting the hot water wipe him down of any remaining paranoia. By the time he turned the shower head off, he felt completely silly for freaking out over something that was nothing more than a figment of his tired imagination.

"Demyx is going to have a field day when I tell him." Axel chuckled while he wrapped a dark red towel around his waist. He reached inside the bathroom closet for the same colored towels but smaller on the top shelf. When he grabbed it, he turned toward the mirror above the sink to watch himself idly as he dried his hair with it. And for the second time in his life, and in one night, screamed bloody Mary at the sight of blonde in the corner of the glass. Axel recoiled back so fast that he fell against the door and slid down it in panic. "I knew it! I knew I saw a ghost!" The redhead yelled, pointing a trembling finger at the see-through figure.

"So you can see me afterall!" The blonde seemed to rejoice, unmistakable blue eyes glittering with hope as they regarded the redhead.

Axel had many urges at once when hearing that same ghostly voice. He wanted to run, he wanted to scream, he wanted his mom, he wanted to lunge at whatever higher power had plagued him with such a nightmare, he wanted to be anywhere than reality. "What do you mean see you!? Of course I can-" Axel hollered again in distress. "Shit, I'm talking to a fucking ghost! This can't be happening to me!" The blonde boy stood upright as if the situation had finally registered. When it did, he began to laugh. Axel's eyes couldn't exceed the size it had widened to anymore, but if they could, his eyes would have rounded to the size of Jupiter. A ghost was laughing at him. "It's gonna eat me..." Axel breathed incredulously. "I'm about to die! DEMYX!"

"No! I'm not going to eat you or harm you in any way, I promise!" The spirit boy pleaded, this time kneeling on his knees and trying to console the frightened redhead by putting a hand on his arm, but his hand faded straight through the redhead's arms as if it wasn't there to start with. The blonde frowned and held his hand to his chest with the hurtest expression in his blue eyes. Axel silently watched, his frantic mind calming the slightest at the sight.

"Axe?! What's going on in there, man?!" Demyx yelled from the other side of the bathroom door. Axel stood abruptly, all ghost-related sympathy aside, and opened the door to reveal a thoroughly disheveled blonde. Standing aside, Axel waited for the blonde to see anything out of the norm inside the bathroom, but after a few looks from the redhead to the bathroom Demyx arched an eyebrow. "What's wrong?"

Axel's jaw slipped ajar as he looked back to the blonde standing right in front of Demyx's face. "You don't see him?" The redhead asked in a higher pitch than he was proud of. Demyx sucked his lips behind his teeth with a confused crease in his eyebrows as he gave the small bathroom another quick sweep with his eyes.

"See who? There's no one except you." Demyx pointed out and Axel glared at the obvious sarcasm laced in his words.

"Don't say that like I'm fucking crazy. There is a ghost in that bathroom that keeps following me around, I swear! Are you seriously telling me that you don't see him!?" Axel barked, getting chills on his skin as he heard his own words.

"Uhh, yeah? That's exactly what I'm saying." Demyx said slowly. "Axe, are you okay?"

Axel put his hands on both Demyx's shoulders. "Demyx, we've been friends since grade school, so please, please don't think I'm bullshitting when I say there is a ghost in that bathroom." Axel spoke with a wavering voice that was near cracking in fear. Demyx eye's rounded a bit as he tried to block the seriousness in his usually playful best friend. Demyx was openminded about most things and ideas, but ghosts? Come on, this had to be a test of friendship or he was getting Punk'd or something!

"Alright, what's the ghost look like?" Demyx asked, scratching at the back of his head habitually. Axel could tell his friend thought he had lost all his marbles and then some with the way he approached the situation and he was about to blow up on him when Demyx's eyes suddenly widened almost bigger than Axel's had earlier. Axel arched a red eyebrow and turned to see what had spooked the dirty blonde when he saw the little ghost kid writing something on the fogged mirror.

'Blonde, short, blue eyes.'

Axel would have thanked the blonde for helping him in getting Demyx to understand his point had the redhead not been as scared as Demyx was at the moment. The dirty blonde stumbled back a few steps pointing at the writing that answered his question. "A-A-Axe! Th-th- It- On th-the mi-mir- Holy shit!" He shouted incoherently. Axel made an exasperated face as if to say "Duh" before he faced the ghost kid again.

"I didn't mean to scare him, it's just that we weren't getting anywhere without proving to him that I was here. I apologize for the fright." The boy said, smiling impishly. Axel couldn't say hearing the ghost kid talk again put his nerves at ease, actually it put them all on end, but Axel couldn't help thinking that he wasn't harmful. Call it a man's intuition or just plain wishful thinking in what could possibly be his last moments of life.

"He says he's sorry for scaring you, Dem..." The redhead whispered, eyes never leaving the blonde. Demyx's eyebrows shot for the roof.

"You can hear it too?! It's a ghost, by the way! What the hell did it think it was going to do?! Make my freaking day?!" Demyx prattled horrifically, purely mortified of the entire ordeal. Axel rolled his eyes, finally breaking eye contact with the blonde. Now that he thought about it, the ghost kid looked a lot like the Strife's son that had been buried today.

Axel suddenly gasped with an urge to pass out. "You're Roxas aren't you?" The redhead questioned, face contorting yet again with unbelieving fear. The ghost's face darkened into a deep sadness as he nodded.

"Yes. I wanted to see to my family's safe return home, but when I found out that you could hear me- and could see me, I couldn't pass up the chance to communicate with the living. Please believe me, I'm not a demon or plan to hurt you or your friend. I'm just scared and confused and you're the only person I can talk to. Being dead is not fun and not passing on is Hell compared to death itself..."

All of Axel's anxiety of the ghost possessing his body or torturing him to literal death melted into pity for the blonde. He was just a kid, ghost or non. And as Axel thought about it, it must be hard for the blonde to go through on his own. Though the redhead didn't fully drop his guard, he did calm down from his minor heart attack. Demyx, on the other hand, was going to take a while.

"Look, Roxas. It's not that I mind helping you... it's just..." Axel began, feeling so weird and abnormal for talking to something that he had thought never existed for nineteen years of his life.

"That I'm a ghost?" Roxas smiled bitterly. "I apologize for the inconvenience."

Axel felt guilty for thinking it as an inconvenience of the blonde's inhuman form, but it really was, for his sake and to his sanity. Demyx stared daringly into the bathroom and shivered with the attack of haunted goosebumps as he still saw nothing. How could Axel see and hear a ghost? It was so unreal, and...

"Completely unfair..." Demyx muttered absent mindedly.

Axel peered over his shoulder at Demyx and snorted just as bitterly as Roxas had smiled. "What is? That I'm the loon who can see ghosts?" Demyx nodded frantically and sighed when Axel glared at him for trying to make a joke of something so bone-chillingly serious.

"I'm just saying that you have an advantage. In my eyes, there is nothing there, but I know it is because it wrote on the mirror- Thanks, ghost, for the prompt of my nightmare tonight, by the way. It's just... It's easier for you to believe this is happening when you can actually see it." Demyx tried to explain, voice level but eyes constantly darting to the inside of the bathroom with hopes and fears of seeing the short, blonde, blue-eyed ghost boy.

Axel saw out of the corners of his eyes Roxas disappearing into the wall and stiffened. Where was he going? Even if Axel knew the ghost wasn't harmful, merging with a wall was going to have to stop tonight. Seconds later, Roxas had returned, but he had to clear his throat to get Axel to realize he wasn't in the bathroom anymore but behind him and beside Demyx. Said dirty blonde figured that if Axel was now looking beside him, the ghost must have moved there. When he looked, he nearly screamed again. The only thing there was a whiteboard floating in midair. Although Axel could see it was Roxas who was holding it, he decided to stay silent as the small blonde began to write another message for Demyx.

'Since you cannot see or hear me, this board will replace my body and the messages on it, my words.'

Demyx looked quickly to Axel who shrugged tentatively then set his glance back on the board as another message was facing him.

'I'm Roxas Strife. I'm 16 and no longer alive. I died on the 31st of October from a cause no one, not even I, could identify.'

The dirty blonde swallowed and waited as Roxas erased the board to write again, only partly noticing that the ghost apparently had Axel's rapt attention as well.

'I promise that I'll try not to scare you again, and I'm sorry for doing so already. I just need your help. I need to find out how I died, then maybe I'll be able to move on.'

Axel blinked before rereading the board. "So if we help you find the cause of your death, you'll be able to go to heaven or whatever?"

"I'm not sure, but it's all I've got at the moment." Then remembering that Demyx was a sitting duck in the conversation, he wrote what he had said on the board for him to read. Then at the last minute, he added something in parenthesis. '(Your towel is starting to lose its purpose.)'

Red eyebrows furrowed as Axel looked down his body to the towel loosely clinging to his waist. He frowned as his cheeks lit with a dim, but still somehow heated flush. The night was just full of ways to screw the redhead over, wasn't it? Axel gritted his teeth in thorough embarrassment as he imagined the blonde watching him getting out the shower and putting the damn thing on without him even knowing. Axel looked dead into Roxas' eyes with a serious glint as Demyx filled the air with light, awkward laughter. The small blonde smiled with a noticeable blush, even for a transparent ghost, and shifted on his heels.

"When I get dressed, we're going to have to establish a few rules."

Fin

A/N BETCH: Firstly, excuse my continuous mistakes. I didn't even bat another eyelash at this story when this chapter was finished. Secondly, this is the third uploaded- submitted or posted or whatever- story so UPDATES WILL BE SLOW AS HELL. I'm so sorry, I just got overexcited and posted- updated or submitted or whatever- every story I deemed worthy. At the moment, I'm juggling seventeen stories, be it oneshot or chapter. It's still a # %$% * lot, right?

Review/Favorite, it's totally your call. I write for fun, not for fame.