A/N: It certainly took me long enough, didn't it? For a while, I lost the thread entirely. Then life, as per usual, got in the way. To cut it all very short and pass all the angst and self-pity and misery of the past weeks, I'll say this: enough is enough, where is the final chapter of that damned thing?! XD

This is officially the first fanfiction I have ever, truly, finished. And when I began it I made a promise to myself that if I finished it, I would get to post the playlist of music that originally inspired this (i was listening to random of all songs on my ipod and these were the ones that stood out). Silly, huh? Nevertheless, a promise is a promise and my psyche and muse both need the indulgence. Kindly ignore it if it pleases you to do so. (I hope I can post a playlist in an A/N, the rules are quite different here than they are on DeviantArt.)

Whispers in the Dark by Skillet
Imaginary by Evanescence
Wrapped in Your Arms by Fireflight
Driving With the Top Down by Ramin Djawadi (from the Iron Man soundtrack)
Carnival of Rust by Poets of the Fall
Leave Out All the Rest by Linkin Park
Only the Strong by Flaw (this might in truth be a Nine Inch Nails song, my iTunes has never been clear about this)
Ready and Waiting to Fall by Mae
La Journée Est Finie from Les Misérables: The French Concept Album (the only place to find this is on , I warn you)
Shall Never Surrender by Jason "Shyboy" Arnold of Hyonogaja (from the Devil May Cry 4 Special Original Soundtrack - this song is awesome, though tricky to find)
Photograph by 12 Stones
The Hand That Feeds by Nine Inch Nails

I am sorry, again, for OOC, a sense of being rushed, or a short chapter. And also for run-on sentences and over-description, the battle against these is ongoing. I'm a bit more content with this as it is now than I was with it when I posted Chapter 6. I hope it leaves you well.

Whether it comes as a relief or a disappointment, I must say that I won't be working on anything new at least until this summer. I am moving! There is a convention! I have to get a new job before I have to apply at my current position for a fireproof uniform because mine is not withstanding the temperatures that HELL has risen to of late. *runs screaming into a wall*

Without any further ado, thank you to all of you~! Your notices of favorites and helpful comments and constructive criticism have all been very helpful. I hope that you will find in this chapter that I have improved the work. As much as circumstances and consistency would allow, anyway (after all, I started this fic with a heavy sense of flippancy).

So, thank you all! For sticking around, for clicking a few extra buttons on the page. =D And now, if it is possible, please enjoy the final installment of "Fireflies."

When the sorcerer's apprentice came just days later, it was in the middle of the night and without ceremony.

The Nihilia attacks spiked after the night they claimed each other and their fates, leaving them exhausted even when they set out that final night to re-light the lamps and defend the city. It took Axel longer than usual, leaving him too taxed and sluggish to even light half of them. Once he'd lit up the city enough to be defensible, he found Roxas on the Tower and settled in close to the boy, leaning into his shoulder for support. Not much was there, the slim shoulders doing leaning of their own. He tugged the blond close to his chest and kissed his hair. Roxas burrowed his face against him.

"I have a bad feeling, Axel."

Since the night of Roxas's new dream, he'd dreamed of nothing else but intangible, eternal darkness and sheer, patient terror. He was more exhausted than Axel from the strain of nightmares and their work and Axel was determined to ward off the Nihilia on his own. So far tonight, he'd not had opportunity. For all their fervor the night before, the monsters might not have existed now, the silence of the city almost believably peaceful.

"I have a really, really bad feeling, Axel," Roxas reiterated, fingers curled in his friend's shirt.

"Is it the Nihilia?" Axel asked, trying to sense them."

"That's part of it – they're not anywhere. And look—" He pulled out of Axel's arms then and rose, summoning his swords. The paired blades, once shining and elaborate wonders of steel and filigree, were dull, the details lost and simplified and the structure cracked and crumbling.

"What happened?" Axel exclaimed, unfamiliar with all the wear and tear that had occurred. He hadn't thought the Nihilia had been that hard on them.

"I don't know. They were normal last night, but tonight… And you!" The boy sagged. "You won't like me saying it, but you look mortal tonight."

"Mortal?" Axel asked.

Roxas shrugged. "You always… feel otherworldly to me, ethereal or something, a presence I could discern from any other. Now I don't think I'd know you from one of the guards in a pinch."

Axel scraped a hand back through his red spikes, swearing. "That's bad. Should we go talk to Sinclair?"

"She can't help us."

Axel began an optimistic protest and froze, giving his lover a dark look of realization. "You think the apprentice is here, don't you?"

Roxas turned his face away. "The thought had crossed my mind."

"So you're just giving up?"

Rage soured the boy's features then, and he held up the obsolete Keyblades. "What's left for us, Axel?" He snapped. "The Nihilia aren't even here! Even our weapons know we're not needed anymore!"

"You don't know that."

"And neither do you!" Roxas snapped, biting his lip. "You don't know anything."

Axel snarled, and thought better of it. Instead he stood and embraced the boy, whether he liked it or not, and held him close. "That's not true and you know it. You're the one who taught me to read."

"I can't face it, Axel," Roxas shook his head, burying his face in Axel's warm chest. "I don't want to die."

Axel sighed. "I thought you wanted to escape what's in store for you."

"I do! I want to run away! Find the beaches like in the books and hide out there for a hundred years!"

A deep-throated vibration shook in the air, surrounding them and drowning out all sense of self and power in the flash of a second.

Come.

Then it was gone, leaving them weak and shaken.

Axel knelt before the boy, mind spinning with memories of joy as he ran the city under an open sky of stars, lighting the lamps and leaping from building to building for the sheer pleasure of it. It was all he'd known. Before him, Roxas trembled, eyes gazing out over Axel's head, unseeing. The beckon call had only justified his apprehension and now he was pale with fear.

"No more tears, beloved," Axel murmured, finding the strength to rise and wiping the trails of warm wetness from Roxas's cheeks. "Didn't you say you would try? Come on, to the very end. Let's see it through. We've nothing to fear."

Roxas bit his lip against more tears, scowling at the redhead before him. "What inspired this burst of bravery?"

Axel found a smile and offered it. "I don't belong to anyone but you, and you're no one's but mine. 'Til the very end. You promised, and so did I. There's nothing to do now but to face it." He took Roxas's hand and rose. "Shall we?"

Even as another beckoning thrummed through the air, Roxas stared long and hard at Axel, gaze clear and unwavering. Finally, he squeezed Axel's hand. "Fine. Why not? Let's spit in their faces and go out with a bang."

Grinning, Axel squeezed his hand back and they set out for the Gatehouse. "That is exactly what I had in mind."

***

Deep in his chest, Axel had a bad feeling too. He hadn't noticed it, being brave for his lover and bringing that smile back and the sardonic fight to his eyes, but he noticed it now as they walked a familiar route along unfamiliar, firelit streets. At first, it only felt small; an echo of what ailed Roxas in dreams and precognition. As their feet moved them at a mortal's pace along the cobbled streets, the dread grew into a pulsing, nauseating urgency deep in his gut.

The urge told him to run, far and fast, regardless of running from a sorcerer and a city with no world outside its walls.

Nasty and squirming, the feeling erupted into smaller needs; take his hand and take him on your back, run!

Shaking his head, Axel captured Roxas's hand for a brief, tight squeeze, and released it again, defying screaming instinct. Dawn, he decided. At dawn I'll take him into the next world with me. And until then, he'd take orders from nothing and no one, not even his own will to survive.

***

It took most of the night to reach the Gatehouse. The air had pulsed twice more with the beckon call while they walked, and Axel had only needed to exchange a brief look with Roxas to know the younger man had no intention of hurrying. Axel had smirked and stopped to press him hard against a nearby wall, crushing a bruising kiss against Roxas's willing mouth. They tangled tongues there at their leisure, caressing and squeezing and pressing close all the while.

As far as Axel was concerned, the sorcerer could go fuck himself while he waited. They would give him plenty of time to do so. With a final kiss, Axel pulled away and they began wordlessly to walk again, both knowing their cell was no longer theirs for when dawn came. An arm around Roxas this time, Axel found himself looking around the city in the last of the night's blackness, eyes drinking in hungrily the curling, tossing flames in their bowls and lamps and buckets and pitchers and the firegold cast of light against tumbling and tumultuous buildings where people yet slept. The dread rose in his belly again, a realization that he marched to his death and that every leisure he spared himself now would make leaving the world that much harder.

Not to mention his promise to Roxas.

All this coiled in a rigorous lump of twisting and turning in his torso, just beneath his heart, so that when the Gatehouse loomed into sight, a veritable stone of bad feeling and will to live and sorrow and shame and regret fell, heavy and hard, into the pit of his belly.

All around the sky had turned to slate. Sinclair and her troupe of night guardsmen had assembled outside the Gatehouse, at attention and in formation, silent and staring. Only Sinclair moved her eyes as the pair approached from an adjacent street, and in the stony gaze Axel thought he saw a divided loyalty.

Shit, he thought, realizing what she felt, she got attached to us, in her own way.

The sorcerer himself was nearby, attended by a few plainly robed youths hidden by black cloaks and black cowls with silver drawstrings. The apprentice himself was a grander affair, a dark-skinned man with a young face and a chastely spiked array of silver hair. His eyebrows were also silver, and angled compassionately, but beneath them his gold eyes were hard and calculating. His coat was a vivid white, traced with unfamiliar and elaborate silver patterns. When he spoke, his voice was deep and flowed at a gentle rate, a cloak of tenderness and understanding.

Axel put an arm around Roxas's shoulders, to soothe the younger man's trembling if not to hide it, as the words met them.

"Ah, at last you have arrived, Demon of Light and Creature of Darkness. I've waited so long to meet you."

I bet, Axel thought sourly, forcing his face to blankness. No sense in picking fights here.

"Come, certainly my master left you capable of speech."

"Axel,"he grunted of himself, and tilted his face toward Roxas. "This's Roxas."

The man smiled, giving his cold eyes a predatorial gleam. "I am Xemnas, apprentice of Ansem, who is no more."

Oh yeah, Axel thought to himself, when I die, I'm going to beat the shit outta him while I'm there.

"I am here," Xemnas continued in his deep, soothing voice, "to bring peace to your city at last. No doubt you've already noticed the effects."

Roxas twitched under Axel's arm, voice expressionless but to Axel's carefully honed ears; the redhead caught undertones of anger and curiosity. "You destroyed the Nihilia?"

"No, I cannot do that," Xemnas replied. "I've only set up better protection against them than what my master left in his place. Master Ansem had something similar up before he died, but… well… the residue of his magic in you two was not enough to keep them functioning, it seems. No doubt he left you capable of battling the Nihilia should this happen."

Roxas drew the Keyblades then, the dull flash of their appearance upstaged by their crumbling skeletons. Within moments, they were powder and dust at his feet.

Xemnas smiled. "It is good I came, I see."

By the shifting of his lover's jaw, Axel guessed Roxas had some very searing things to say to that and was grinding his teeth instead of letting the apprentice have it. He squeezed the younger man's shoulders gently, trying to impart that he understood and felt the same, but that it would compromise their final mission. We can neither fight him nor embrace him. Axel shifted his hand and kneaded the back of Roxas's neck, needing the distraction as much as the blond did.

Xemnas stepped closer then, eyeing both studiously as he circled them. It was a slow rotation, and Axel felt his blood heat up impatiently; he disliked being stared at and evaluated like a cut of meat. It was to him that Xemnas spoke first.

"I'm afraid I'll have to split you up," he said at last, eyes on Axel first. "You, Demon of Light, are far too tricky to maintain – sensitive to sunlight, feeding only on moon and star light. I'll be keeping you," he said smoothly to Roxas, "to observe exactly what my master created before he died. He seems to have left no record of either of your creations, and I am curious to see if I can replicate the process."

Beside Axel, Roxas was very pale. His trembling could not be hidden now. Xemnas acknowledged it with a curling smile, amusement lining his deep tones. "Really, it's not as if you're so human you can know true fear. Stop that."

From grey, the sky was changing to a muted cobalt – the color of Roxas's eyes in the warm, deep darkness of their cell and their bed. Judging it was time, Axel did then something he'd never done before. Under his tongue, he conjured the smallest of fireflies, giving it every spark and ribbon of power he could manage until a searing, tiny bomb sizzled hidden beneath his tongue, burning even him. He hoped it was enough.

Turning to Roxas suddenly, he grabbed the collar of the boy's shirt and kissed him hard, shoving the firefly hard into the back of his throat and guiding it with the last of his magic down his esophagus and into his body. Though he still trembled, Roxas's body revealed none of this, but his eyes burned with pain. Axel wrapped his arms hard around him, clutching him close one last time and feeling the familiar body rise to unnatural temperatures. Grunting, the boy wrapped his arms tight around Axel, smoldering flesh warm against Axel's back where they burned away his shirt. Out the corner of Axel's eye, Xemnas stepped rapidly closer, arms raised and face burning disapproval, shadowed deeply by the first shimmering rays of the rising sun.

Roxas's voice was the last thing Axel heard, the boy's hoarse whisper half-realized as he formed it with ruined lips and died halfway through the sentiment.

Thank you.

Vivid gold in the center and firey, bloody red around the edges, the sun rose over the wall and cast golden, warm beams of light down upon them.

In that instant, he forgot Roxas burning in his arms and searing his clothing. He forgot Xemnas, and the pulse of forming magic around the sorcerer, cubes of power taking shape about him. He forgot Sinclair and her squad and their faces identically agape and horrified.

He forgot arms, legs, shape, form, voice, breath, and body until all he knew was sunlight, and all he was could be sunlight, warm and floating-free and glowing softly, burning brightly and heating the world. This he remembered, and wondered how he could have ever forgotten the sensation of touching every dark corner and bringing it illuminating warmth or glinting off dust motes afloat in the air – sweet air, all around, fueling everything he was…

Like Roxas.

He wrapped himself around the boy now in ways he never could before, when he'd been trapped in that dark, awkward, limited body. Here he searched the ashes for it and found it at last – the final spark.

Firefly?

No. Deeper, bigger and smaller, brighter and darker. Simply more than a firefly. Fireflies had only been a part of his sunlight-splintered, moon-fed soul. This was a soul, the whole thing, and he cradled it in all he could recollect of himself, carrying it high into the brightening sky.

Not the sun?

No. To the last of the darkness lingering in the zenith, to the stars he was sure lingered beyond. There were dark corners yet to be lit there, by the sunlight, and the warm soul nestled in a swath of golden dawn and what remained of him, would guide him there.

It was all he'd ever needed.