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The mirror is a constant reminder of what he was, what he can never be again, and what everyone still expects to see when they look at him. Some days, he forgets himself, forgets the ruin they have made of him. Maybe he’s wrong, maybe other people can’t see it, maybe they can’t taste the misery, the loss, the stench of grief, but he can not look at his own face, not anymore. Not when the mirror to it has gone, and will never return.
It is October, after a September which never seemed to end, and the leaves are swirling in the streets, red and yellow and orange, burnt umber, a decorative picture walked over and ignored by all those but the young and the pretentious. Not his words, but those of the brother who will, now, never be coming home again. Everything reminds him of the shadow missing beside him, every word, every movement, every season. The world is a tortured, twisted wreck which may as well be his brother’s body for how strongly it hits him every time he needs to venture outside. But the house is not safe either; constant childhood memories ambush him around every corner, and when he wakes, facing the side of the room which is no longer occupied, he wishes, every time, that it had been him, instead, him in that car, him speeding down the highway too quickly to brake fast enough when he saw the truck. His mother wants to take the posters down, remove the pictures of the two of them together, stop their room looking like a shrine to his lost brother, but he will have none of it. Their room is their room, and always will be – it will never be his alone, not ever. The empty space in the bed across the gap sucks at the eye, the blue carpet between the single beds feels like an ocean he can never cross, and yet, if he keeps these things, if everything stays just as it is, he can pretend his brother is just out late, that he’ll walk in through that door in a moment and everything will be as it should be, that the world will be right again. As long as their room stays the same, his brother will never die.
People look at him with pity at school, and don’t talk to him, preferring to whisper behind their hands and then smile weakly at him when his eyes fix on them.
“Would you like to be excused?” his teacher asks, when he’s staring out of the window at his brother’s class on the sports field. He shrugs and gets up – why stay if no one wants him there?
“This isn’t like you.” someone says, quietly, “It’s more like – ”
“Sora.”
He shakes his head and walks out of the classroom, daring them, just daring them to talk about him now. At least no one had said it, no one had said his brother’s name. Sora shoves his books in his locker and snarls at his reflection in the small mirror in there, and for a moment, for a second, his eyes are blue and angry enough that he almost sees Roxas, just on the edge of his vision, and that makes him slam the door hard enough that he hears the mirror smash. He hates mirrors. They just remind him of what, of who he isn’t, and how he’ll never see that face, so much like his own, again.
“Hey.” A voice comes, from behind him, and it’s one he thinks he recognises, vaguely, so he turns, ready to scream and shout, “Sora, right?”
The boy who stares at him, like he’s seen a ghost, is battered and scratched, arm in a sling, nose clearly having been broken, long red hair limp. He looks tired, so tired, and like he’s fed up of living. Abruptly, Sora remembers that there had been someone else in the car that night, someone in the passenger seat, someone who had lived. He opens his mouth to speak, but closes it when he looks at those eyes, green and wide and all the life gone out of them, just like the blue ones he’s used to seeing in the mirror.
“I miss him so much.” The stranger admits, rasping out the words like they’re barbed wire in his throat, and Sora nods, biting his lip, before the other boy turns away just as the bell rings, and the halls are flooded with students. Sora swallows down the lump in his throat and busies himself with clearing up the shards of mirror scattered around his books. Someone else knows what it feels like to have this yawning abyss open up inside you, to miss someone so much that is makes your soul empty out and twist. He is not alone.
That night, he stares at the peroxide on the dresser and considers it, wonders if he could do it, become Roxas, just for a little while, and then maybe the ache would go away. But that would mean touching it, though, and it is an unspoken rule that he touches nothing which was Roxas’, just in case it ruins everything which is left of him. Their bedroom walls are lousy with photos of Roxas, Sora, Roxas, Roxas, Roxas, with friends, at parties, drinking, laughing, living, and his parents ask him to take them down, but he just snarls at them, closing the door. He will not touch that which belongs to his brother. And the pictures are a reminder, a constant, shining, lit reminder that Roxas was here, was alive, was real. That Roxas isn’t just memories and thoughts, places and things which will never yet be said. Roxas smiles out at him, glares at him from those pictures littered across their shared space, and Sora thinks maybe it heals more than it hurts. And yet as the days go on, the dark circles under his eyes grow larger, he can not remember when he last slept, the empty bed on the other side of the room a torment, but he ignores it all until a firm hand takes his arm and leads him around to the back of the gym, instead of off to English class, where he will stare over and over at the same phrase until the bell rings. He looks up and it’s the redhead again, looking as weary as he does, it’s like staring into a mirror – he’s a burned-out shell of a person, a shade, an echo of what once was.
“I can’t do this anymore.” He says, and Sora remembers, now, where he’s seen this boy before. He features in a lot of the pictures on the bedroom wall, always a sultry sprawl of limbs perfectly at home wherever he is. He doesn’t look like that now; no eyeliner, no cigarette dangling from his hand, and dark brown roots showing at his hairline, ruining the perfect illusion that he would usually cultivate.
“There’s nothing to be done.” Sora says, blankly, and turns to go.
“Did he ever talk about me?” the redhead demands, gripping his shoulders, “Did he talk about me?”
“No.” Sora flatly replies. The hands release him, and he walks away, keeping his head down, like if the redhead doesn’t see his eyes, he won’t know that he’s lying.
“He’s glorious.”
Those were the first words that Roxas ever said to Sora about the redhead with the long limbs and the green eyes and the indolent smile like he owned the world, as he stuck the first picture of him into the ceiling collage of their attic roof, the light shimmering off the photo paper. Polaroids, Roxas would smirk, like a fucking pair of hipster kids sharing an expensive loft mummy and daddy were paying for. It was them, their space, just theirs, alone. And Roxas had brought home this redhead, in picture form, to share their space. He only did that with those who were really important. Until now, that had been Sora, Xion, Naminé, Pence, Olette, Hayner. Sora was allowed Kairi and Riku, on the basis that they were important to him, but Roxas would make sure to sneer at them on principle, just in case anyone mentioned that eighth grade crush he’d had on Riku, where he’d followed him around like a lovesick puppy.
“He’s glorious, and he’s a year older, and he’s just….”
“Got a crush?” Sora teased, grinning at his twin, seeing that glee reflected back from the same eyes, “Sounds like it.”
“Ugh, shut up.” Roxas said, throwing his pillow across the room to hit his brother in the face.
“What’s his name?” Sora asked, eventually, when they had stopped laughing and using everything in the room as a weapon.
“Axel.” Roxas breathed, and just like that, he was a part of their lives.
Sora never met him in person, Roxas preferring to keep people away from their house, because your brother might think the lanky layabout was sexy, but their parents would be more likely to kick him out and give Roxas a long talk on safe sex until he never wanted to try anything involving another person in his life. But he heard a lot about him, Roxas coming back with more photos, until glimmers of red lit up their ceiling collage like licks of flame crawling up to the roof. Axel was as much a part of his life as their room, the familiar carpet, the scent of their mother’s perfume. But he was something more than that, too; something which set him in the same space as the peroxide, the eyeliner, the skinny jeans which decorated the floor on Roxas’ side of the room – they all belonged to Roxas, and Sora was not to touch them.
“He’s mine, you know.”
Sora starts backwards from the mirror, and for that split-second, Roxas is there looking back at him. It’s not unusual, but this time, the vision doesn’t fade. Roxas’ eyes are dark black hollows against sallow skin, his mouth twisted cruelly in a way Sora is not used to seeing directed at him.
“He’s mine.” The apparition repeats, and Sora sees that mouth move when his is stock still. This must be what going mad feels like, or he’s dreaming, or this is some kind of cruel trick, because when he looks up again, Roxas is pressed to the mirror glass like he could just crawl through and lie back down in his bed. And Sora wants that, wants that more than anything.
“Who is?” he asks, instead of moving any closer.
“He’s mine.” Roxas says, one more time, “And he’s glorious.”
The reflection fades, bit by bit, until there’s just Sora, staring back at himself, eyes wide, dark circles marring his face, pale and wan, with tear-tracks down his face where he never even knew he was crying. He looks as though he’s seen a ghost.
This goes on, night after night, Roxas getting closer and closer it seems, or perhaps Sora is stepping closer to the mirror, he doesn’t know.
“It should have been you.” Roxas hisses, spitting out the words.
“It should have been me.” Sora agrees, a sob caught in his throat. His brother, his twin, he’s here, with him – alive or dead, what does it matter?
“It could still be you.” Roxas says, slowly, as if the idea is only just forming, “It could be you instead. Maybe.”
Axel kisses Sora in December, and Sora pushes him away, angrily.
“No. You belong to Roxas.” He snarls, and sees the hurt flash across Axel’s face. Maybe Axel won’t call him crazy if he tells him, “And I know how you can have him back.”
The hope is naked on the redhead’s face, and maybe they’re crazy, maybe they’ve both been driven mad by this, but Roxas talks to him from the mirror every night, snarling and spitting words and Sora just wants this to be a world with Roxas in it again, wants a world where Roxas never went away.
“What do we have to do?” Axel asks.
“What do we have to do?” Sora asks Roxas, later that night, as the blond stares angrily back at him. For the first time, that face softens, the skeletal look fades, and it’s his brother again, his smiling brother who loves him and would never do anything to hurt him.
“All you have to do is take my place.” Roxas whispers, still smiling, “Just take my place, and it will all work out like it’s supposed to.”
Sora sleeps for the first night in two months, his arms wrapped around a pillow, smile on his face, and if he wakes to Roxas still staring out of the mirror, and inscrutable look on his face, he is too far gone to wonder what that means. He has a purpose now, he has a reason for still living. He is going to bring his brother back.
They have to recreate it exactly, Axel says, as he breathes warm air against Sora’s lips and slides cold hands into his pants, stroking him in ways Riku never knew to touch him, bringing him to shuddering orgasm which leaves his pants sticky and damp. Then it’s his turn, sliding inexperienced lips over Axel’s cock, tasting, mouthing – he knows it’s his last chance to do this, has the awareness that Roxas did not, that this will be the last time he touches Axel. Roxas will come back, and Axel will be his. When he finally brings Axel off, he swallows, because he knows Roxas always did, and the redhead pets his hair, cooing, praising him for being such a good boy. He nips at those fingers and purrs, gently, axel pulling him close and holding him, just for a little while.
“It’s now.” Sora says, watching the glowing green numbers of the clock move, “We have to move.”
Axel gives him one last, desperate squeeze before he slides across into the passenger seat, letting Sora settle behind the wheel. The car wasn’t totalled, for all that his brother’s body was, and Axel got it back a week ago. It’s the last thing they have been waiting for.
“We… we don’t have to do this.” Axel says, almost too quiet to hear, but Sora’s looking in the rear view mirror, catching the eyes of his twin, and he smiles, a thin, pathetic smile.
“Yes, I do.” He states, calmly, “I do.”
He peels off the verge and onto the highway, pressing his foot down to hear the engine roar under him, watching the road speed away. He knows exactly where he needs to do this, knows the exact spot, has mapped it a dozen times. He speeds up again, he wants to make sure he’s exact.
“Sora!” Axel screams over the noise of the car, “Stop this, don’t do this, it won’t work, he’s not going to come back, he’s not going to – ”
The wheels hit the ice, a scream of brakes as instinct takes over and Sora tries to stop their spin, before they slam into the side of the truck, the driver taking a break on the side of the highway. There’s a sickening crunch, and for a second, Sora thinks he hears Roxas laughing.