This is the final one in the collection! Thanks for reading through. This is also a good time to say this is probably my favourite of the comment fic I did write. What can I say? I'm an AkuRoku shipper till the end.

Prompt: Axel/Roxas - if

If Roxas didn't know anything, Axel figured, it would be okay.

At the start of things, there wasn't any particular reason to tell Roxas anything at all. No reason to tell the secrets that he was keeping, even if they were about him, or were just simply day to day complexities. That was how the Organization worked - you did your job, you came home, you don't ask questions (though even then, Axel had to admit, Roxas was given even less information than anybody else). The questions at the time weren't particularly soul-searching on Roxas' behalf, either - they were childish "why?"'s and often warranted simple answers that most people would laugh at. But Axel - and all the other members of the Organization, he supposed - indulged him. It wasn't exactly pity - they couldn't feel anything of that - but it was probably a form of sympathy. At least they had some form of past life - Roxas couldn't even remember the basics.

But then the deeper questions came, over time. And usually Roxas just asked him. And Axel occasionally had to leave, first to Castle Oblivion, and then, oh, many other missions and meetings that he couldn't share with Roxas, because he was told not to; but all his prolonged absences just begged questions, even if he could weasel out of them for a time. If Roxas didn't ask, they could carry on as normal, laughing and joking and just talking after their missions, Roxas eyeing up Axel's half eaten ice cream like a five year old who had never tasted ice cream before and was absolutely starving, so you should hand it over before he died of said starvation. But sometimes Roxas did ask questions, the ones that Axel wanted to avoid - and if that happened, Axel immediately brushed it off. He didn't give it another thought. He was told not to say anything. So he didn't. He didn't say anything at all.

Then, even, it could all be adverted. If Roxas didn't think about it some more, he wouldn't have concluded and realised that Axel definitely was hiding things - if he hadn't openly voiced and accused him of hiding things, Axel wouldn't have had to grudgingly turn away and openly lie through his teeth that he wasn't.

For the first time in how long, he felt bad for lying to anyone. For lying to his best friend. Roxas trusted him - he had done from the very beginning, even when he knew nothing, and- even now when Axel dashed him away by lying. Why couldn't he just trust him back?

The Organization? Or Roxas? That was the endless question. And Axel didn't have an answer or a response to it. If he ignored it, pretended it didn't exist, it would go away.

But that's a fairytale world, and Axel already knows those kind of worlds don't really exist, even if he visits them all the time.

If things worked out the way Axel wanted them to, there wouldn't be a problem.

If they just had one more day on the clock tower. If there was just one more mission. If- he didn't have a heart, why did his words stab him in recoil, hitting him harder each time Roxas gave him that disappointed, disgruntled face? If he could just say he was sorry and tell him the truth. If they weren't in the Organization. If Roxas knew everything and Axel didn't have to tell him. If Axel hadn't become friends with him in the first place... If there was just one more chance to tell Roxas no, everything was fine, that he wasn't hiding anything, and if Roxas would still believe it to be true and accept it. If, Axel had just realised that Roxas, despite the cliché, was the best thing to happen to him in his nobody existence, the one thing that mattered and that the Organization should go to hell - he should just tell Roxas the truth.

If only he had realised it when he had the chance. Nothing was concrete. Things changed. All the time.

If Roxas stayed, and if he didn't know everything, it would be fine. Axel knew that. But it all depended heavily on one thing.

If Roxas stayed.

But, in the end, he didn't.