A/N: So, despite all of my previous plans, I've decided that this story is officially going to end after the next chapter. While I can't honestly say that it completes the entire story I wanted to tell, it does complete Roxas and Axel's arc, and I think that's the important part here. There's a slim chance of a sequel in the future, but I wouldn't count on it.

Warnings: Some really badly done violence, because apparently I've forgotten how to write fight scenes. I am a failure.

Disclaimer: Somebody else owns literally everything you see here.

Summary: AU. Axel/Roxas. He wanted an ending. He got Axel instead.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: My Guilt-Ridden Head

Feeling a little irritated about the way Rinoa had tricked him into giving her the message for Axel, Roxas got off at the next stop and decided to spend another night out before returning to Twilight Town. He didn't want to get back in a bad mood and be angry with Sora for something that wasn't even his fault. Of course, whoever had been following him for the past few days was still at his back and got off the train with him, and this only served to increase his agitation. Curious who it could possibly be and itching for a fight, he gathered his bearings and took off for a quiet part of the town he'd found himself in, dodging down an abandoned alley and stopping to glare vaguely at the sky.

"All right," he said, not bothering to yell. "I'm getting sick of this. Just come out already; I've known you were there since I left the house."

"If you knew I was there, why didn't you say anything sooner?" a voice called out, and a second later a vaguely familiar head of black hair appeared in his field of vision as Yuffie landed soundlessly on the pavement in front of him. "You haven't even been doing anything interesting! Though I guess Leon might be interested to know that you snuck out just to have a slushie with your girlfriend."

"She's not my girlfriend," Roxas replied with a roll of his eyes, walking past the girl. Yuffie cheerfully fell into step beside him, swinging her hands with unnecessary force, and Roxas eyed her warily out of the side of his eye. She was pretty much the last person he'd expected to see as his follower; her excitable personality didn't exactly lead him to believe that she'd be able to do anything with the silence and subtlety she'd exhibited while he'd been trying to get rid of her. Despite her talent, though, the effort was clearly starting to wear on her. She looked exhausted, though perhaps not as badly tired as Roxas might have expected of someone who couldn't possibly have slept in days.

"Have you been following me on your own this entire time?" he asked curiously. Yuffie nodded wearily at him, but gave him a bright smile when he made an impressed noise. "There aren't many people who would've been able to trail me even half as well as you have," he complimented off-handedly, impressed despite himself. "And I've had a lot of people try."

"When the Bastion was closed off, I went to live with the ninjas in Wutai," Yuffie replied brightly. "I was a bit older than most of the kids are when they start learning the ways of the ninja there, but they taught me anyway. I used to be known as the Rose of Wutai, but that was years ago. Things haven't been the same since ShinRa fell."

"I guess being trained in Wutai explains it," Roxas said thoughtfully. "But I don't think you could have kept it up much longer, could you? Have you even slept since I left town?"

"I napped here and there," Yuffie shrugged. "Nothing that would really keep me well-rested, but enough to keep me going for a couple more days. You looked like you were heading back to town anyway, so I'd have been fine for at least that long. If you hadn't stopped."

"Well, I'll let you get some sleep tonight at least," Roxas said with a rueful grin. "For a while I was just traveling randomly to see how good you were; I didn't really have a destination in mind to begin with. Might've ended up going somewhere if I'd lost you, but there's no point now."

"So who was that girl, then?" Yuffie asked curiously. "You said she wasn't your girlfriend, but she sure seemed happy to see you. Ex, maybe? Part of the old gang?"

Roxas snorted. "Definitely not an ex. And if she was a member of my gang, do you really think I'd tell you?" Yuffie just grinned at him; Roxas took that to mean that she'd been trying to trick him into revealing something he wouldn't tell Leon and snorted. Either she wasn't as sneaky verbally as she was physically, or she was just too tired to actually be successful at it. "Why are you so set on the idea of her being my girlfriend?"

"Well, we don't know much about you, do we?" Yuffie asked wistfully. "I mean, we know stories of your persona, but how much of that is actually you, and how much of it is just a front for who the Organization needed you to be? Leon thinks you really are the Thirteenth, but Cloud thinks you're closer to the person Sora believes you are. And Sora seems to think you walk on water. So, someone as wonderful as that would presumably have had a significant other in the past three years, shady murderous alter ego or no. That slushie girl was pretty cute, y'know. I wouldn't have been surprised."

Roxas sighed and rolled his eyes again, but didn't justify her nosiness with anything resembling an actual response. As the silence went on, Yuffie starting making faces at him; with years of experience with Sora's antics under his belt, he doggedly ignored her and continued walking. The area they were entering only seemed to grow more deserted, and the buildings more rundown, and Roxas was just considering turning back and heading towards the train station again when several men seemed to coalesce from the shadows and surround them. He came to a sudden halt instead, staring around at the men with narrow eyes as he casually laid his hands on the hilts of his keyblades.

"I think you kids might be in the wrong part of town," one of the men said, giving them a malicious smile. He had a short sword in one hand, but didn't seem to be in any hurry to use it; he probably didn't consider Roxas and Yuffie to be threats.

"We might've gotten a bit lost," Roxas said carefully, not bothering to return the smile. "We were just thinking about heading back the way we came, actually."

"Oh, don't go yet," another of the men said. "We haven't even had a chance to welcome you to our town properly!"

"You might want to welcome some other visitors," Yuffie said sweetly, and Roxas didn't doubt that she was reaching for her own weapon as she spoke. But as tired as he knew she was, he wasn't looking forward to getting into a fight with her at his back, and he did his best to convey this to her. Either she understood his semi-frantic gestures or was looking to avoid a fight herself, because she followed up that sentence by saying, "We're not looking for any trouble. Just a place to spend the night."

"Why don't you stay a while?" the leader asked. "We've got somewhere you can stay right here."

"No thanks," Roxas said coldly. "We were looking for something closer to the station, so we'll just be going now."

"Oh, I don't think you will."

With an irritated sigh, Roxas finally pulled out his keyblades and held them at the ready. It looked like he wasn't going to avoid a fight, which really shouldn't have been that surprising; he'd never been good at defusing a situation to begin with. He could feel Yuffie doing the same beside him; the men in front of them just grinned more widely as they prepared themselves to fight as well.

"You've really picked the wrong people to mess with," Yuffie said in a much more threatening voice than before, but the tone didn't phase them.

"Make sure you grab their weapons when we're done," the leader said, and that was all the warning they got before the fight started.

Fighting with Yuffie at his side was easier than Roxas had expected. She seemed to be a long-distance fighter, throwing her huge shuriken across the alley as Roxas got up close and personal, and it was similar enough to fighting with Axel that he could almost lose himself to the rhythm of the battle. Almost. She wasn't quite up to his standards, and she missed enough openings that Axel would have obliterated that he quickly grew frustrated of covering up weaknesses that shouldn't have been there.

He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised when Yuffie was caught off-guard and fell to one man's swords before he could provide a defense for her. He barely managed to get to her side in time, but did manage to deflect the weapon aimed to kill her before it could even come close to touching her. There was a brief surprised lull as the man caught his breath, so Roxas took a second to check on Yuffie. She was clearly out for the count, too dazed to be of any use, and Roxas had to bite back a terribly inappropriate smile. This was going to make things a lot easier for him.

His opponents barely had time to be surprised after that. He spun away from Yuffie faster than most people could follow, taking down the man who had nearly killed her in one hit, and then moved on to the rest of them. Without having to worry about keeping an eye on his partner, he could allow himself to fight on autopilot, and it wasn't long before he knocked out the last person.

Against his better judgement, he left most of them alive. Stepping back over to Yuffie, he pulled a Potion out of his pocket and helped her drink it, smiling a little when she finally came back to herself and gave him a wide-eyed stare.

"You know, you could have just let me die," she said softly as she retrieved her weapon. "You know I'm alone; you could have gone anywhere you wanted without having to worry about me reporting to Leon—"

"Why would I do that?" Roxas interrupted coldly, putting the keyblades away and turning from her to walk back in the direction they'd originally come from. Yuffie scrambled after him.

"Do you really not want to go back to your gang?" Yuffie asked in disbelief. "It's not like you've never killed anyone before. Letting them get me should be nothing for you."

"Yeah, well, it's not what I do," Roxas said moodily. "I'd kill you if I were actually fighting you, but I'm not. Whether I want to go back to them is irrelevant anyway. I'm not going to abandon Sora again."

"But then why did you leave?"

"Mostly to prove that I could," Roxas grinned at her, trying to lighten the mood a little, but she just glared at him. He sighed irritably. "Look, I know you think you know me because of the stories you've heard. But most of them are just that: stories. You think Sora would be so dedicated to a monster, brother or not? We spread those damn rumors on purpose, Yuffie. I'm not a terrifying person. Hell, most of us aren't. Eight is a dork, Nine is a complete spaz, Six rarely takes his nose out of his books, Two is just plain weird, and the Superior likes to hear himself talk. And to be perfectly honest, most of us are just plain lazy. We spread the rumors so we don't have to do that shit, okay? I didn't want to be the Thirteenth, and I rarely ever was."

A/N: Huh, this wasn't as bad as I remember it being. Go me? Next chapter coming soon! And, finally, an ending.