I'll Be Waiting (Roxas, Open)

[Demyx]

He had to be missing something.

It shouldn't have been this hard. He should have found someone -- err, no one, else by now, if what Riku had said was accurate. But this was a big city, and Demyx had absolutely nothing to go on; he didn't even really know whether the Organization members Riku had seen had even been with the Organization in the first place. Maybe Riku just assumed they were, and this was all some wild goose chase, and...

Well, no -- he'd run into Xigbar, as brief as that meeting was, and he'd heard that Vexen was around somewhere. He had rumors to go on, if nothing else, and if Xigbar survived, he had no reason to give up hope yet. He had to keep looking. But even so...

Just what had given him the impression that it would be as easy as spotting a cloaked figure in a crowd, anyway?

In the rain?

Stupid.[/color] It wasn't very likely that any of them would even be wearing their Organization cloaks, anyway -- they'd probably be trying to blend in after everything that went down, especially if their killers were still around. And in the rain? Pffft. No one went outside when it was raining. Except me, apparently.

He was exhausted. The bridge was too damn long a walk, and besides...

Well, wait. If any of them had business at the school, they'd have to walk this bridge, right? Any pedestrian traffic coming in or out would have to pass him by, so...so this was as good a place as any, right? And he was wearing his cloak. If he didn't spot them first, they'd spot him, and --

Just in case.[/color]

Arpeggio morphed into existence in his hand, strings already tuned to his favorite key. Someone might miss a cloaked, hooded figure in the rain, but they weren't going to miss a cloaked, hooded figure with a big blue sitar. He gave it a strum, letting the notes ring out one by one before doing a quick scale up its neck.

Besides, jamming in the rain was the best kind of jammin', and they'd definitely recognize his music.

Ignoring the strange looks he got from what little traffic there was, he slid his fingers along the frets and began to play, loud and fast.

[Roxas]

It seemed like Roxas was always just a minute too late, and in this case it was for the bus. And of course it happened to be the only bus home, and of course it was raining. He was running anyway, because he was good at it and he knew it'd cut down on the hour of walking that was the bridge back to Chocolat'. There weren't that many people walking there, anyway, so he saw them long before he had a chance to collide with them.

He wished he'd had the foresight to bring his cloak, even if the forecast for t0day was supposed to be sunny. And it had been, up until he'd split from his small group of city friends and walked out into a light drizzle. (Sora befriended everyone, but Roxas found himself with little trinities or quartets of friends wherever he went.) That said, though, running from the dark city in the cold, wet blackness and encased in leather would have been...too reminiscent. Even now he was thinking of it. If he listened, he thought he could hear the strains of Demyx's sitar above the rain and his own haphazard footsteps.

His foot skidded on and annihilated a piece of soaked cardboard--someone's package ten, twenty, thirty hours ago--and with a sharp cry he hit the concrete, fire exploding in his hands where he caught himself and his knee where it hit the ground. He waited for just a minute, a habit from battle--just long enough to ensure that nothing serious had been done to him, and then he rose with a pained grunt. No one had said anything, but not because they didn't notice--apparently the rain and the hour had chased almost everyone off the street except for the cars still whizzing past. Limping a minute until the pain in his knee grew dull, he started off again at an average pace, annoyed more at the fact that he'd have to walk the rest of the way than the fact that he'd fallen. He'd half expected that to happen, on top of everything else...

Wait. That sitar stuff...was just an illusion, right? A little dream memory happening inside his head because this was so similar...

There was darkness up ahead, not just due to the timing but due to darkness, a shadow like a hole punched in reality, and it was cradling an unmistakable shape.

Demyx.

He knew Demyx was dead. He'd been inside Sora--he'd seen it happen, and yet...he'd also known that about Axel.

As far as the Organization went, the two of them had never been "friends" so to speak (but could Nobodies really have friends in the first place?), but Demyx hadn't seemed to fit in with the rest of the Organization and Roxas was sensitive to that. He'd always had Axel and Xion, not that Axel and Demyx didn't get along, but he just hadn't been a part of the group. Despite the fact that it seemed to Roxas like he was alone, Demyx was always all right. Roxas was never sure if that was because he was a Nobody or because he was Demyx.

Now, though, he headed for the figure with a clannish feeling of security, shielding his eyes from the rain just to make sure. He knew it was Demyx, no one else would sit in the rain and play a sitar, but he still had to see it in case someone else was with him. Not to mention he wasn't sure that Demyx would necessarily accept him back with open arms, after what Sora had done...Roxas hadn't exactly been a part of that, but in the sleep-state he fell into while a part of Sora he certainly hadn't done anything to stop it.

"...Demyx?"

[Larxene]

Rain. It was RAINING of all things. An irritated sound came from the woman's glossed lips as she threw her hood over her head. Her slim form made it's way around with almost ghost-like ease. Her heeled boots gently clicked on the wet pavement as she made her way to the bridge. Her blue eyes momentarily widened in surprise at the sight of Demyx and Roxas.

"Can't be" Larxene murmured under her breath. She knew Demyx was gone..and what was Roxas doing here? She had sworn he had dissapeared for good. She masked her confusion under the shadows of her hood, stopping just before the bridge, watching the two. Larxene, even to this day was faithful to the Organization, but the sight of Roxas and Demyx, had completely blanked her mind for some reason. Why were they here of all places?
She decided to just sit back and wait, to see if they'd see her. There was a good chance they wouldn't but, Larxene knew better than to put herself into fate's hands.

[Demyx]

Y'know...this totally isn't gonna work.

Demyx played on in spite of his doubts, running though different tunes he'd learned and just playing whatever came to his fingers. If nothing else, it was kind of therapeutic; how could he not enjoy getting stuck in the rain? Watching the cars go by, the way the pitter-patter of the shower provided the perfect tempo for his music -- it was like a stage built with him in mind. Except...nobody was listening.

Ah well. It was kind of a crazy idea anyway.

Actually, he was kinda starting to get second thoughts about this whole gig. It occurred to him that if the other Organization members -- if indeed they were here -- weren't wearing their Organization coats, it was probably for good reason; drawing attention to himself was a good idea for attracting his prior comrades, but it could very well attract a certain kind of people that he didn't want to draw attention from. Namely, the guys that wanted them dead. Now it wasn't as if he expected to run into Cerberus in the middle of a bustling city, but he had seen his share of freaks at the academy, and the whole concept of drawing attention didn't exactly feel right to a guy skilled in wetworks and reconnaissance...

Yeaaaah, no, maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

"...Demyx?"

Scratch that, this was a totally awesome idea and he was a genius for thinking it.

"Rox--?" Demyx whirled to face him, hood falling off halfway. Roxas's diminutive form was recognizable despite being obscured by the rain, but it still took a second for him to come to terms with the idea that he was not, in fact, tripping on acid and hallucinating the Organization's keyblader: it really was Roxas! Holy crap, it totally worked -- he was some kind of pied piper or something, a few more hours in the rain and maybe he'd find Luxord or Xaldin or Ax-- no, not Axel, he wouldn't be caught dead in the rain -- who cares, he'd found Roxas!

Arpeggio was hurriedly dismissed with a splash, and he quickly jumped off the railing -- nearly slipped and fell on his ass, but his waterlogged boots caught enough traction to prevent that -- and made a beeline for Roxas, bounding across the puddles like some ecstatic puppy greeting its master. In his imaginary joy, he totally missed the cockroach-haired nymph that crossed his line of sight.

"Roxas, my man! It's really you!" For a moment, he really had the urge to pull the kid into a bearhug and ruin his already ruined hair with a noogie, but his common sense reined that little inclination in; it wasn't as if they had been particularly close, after all -- Demyx tended to use him as a scapegoat more than anything else, and that was why Roxas was valuable -- so the keywielder might see it as an unwelcome or even hostile gesture, and that'd suck. Demyx did not want a keyblade to the gut. Because keyblades hurt.

Demyx settled for an awkward pause specifically intended to express his confusion as to how to greet him, and then took on a very familiar pose.

"You're looking lively!"

[Roxas]

He wasn't sure what he was expecting, really--maybe a sitar to the face, ow--but Demyx seemed happy to see him. Jubilant, even, almost as if he'd skip the hellos and get straight to the playful roughhousing, but Roxas had never really been close enough to him for that and Demyx seemed to realize that. So...maybe they were cool? Now that he thought of it, whenever Demyx had approached Sora, it was only to ask for Roxas back. Roxas hadn't thought Demyx was actually that attached to him, that maybe it was an act, but for the musician to be doing it even now when everything was back to normal...

"Uh, heheh. Yeah, I...guess." He didn't mention Sora. Demyx probably already knew that Sora had been looking just as lively, at least last Roxas heard, but he still hadn't forgiven his other for the falling out at the summer ball and he wasn't sure anymore if he ever wanted to go back. Life was emptiness without Sora, yeah. Without a heart, things were hard again. But he was Roxas again. Even when he was merged with Sora, he couldn't just stop being Roxas. It wasn't that simple. And watching life happen from behind Sora's eyes without ever being a part of it...

Roxas knew he wasn't supposed to hurt, but that sure felt like it did.

"But--so are you! I mean, I thought..." Finishing that sentence would be hard. But then, he'd also thought Axel was dead, and yet he'd seen him again. "...What happened? It seems like people are just kind of. Showing up again," he murmured a bit awkwardly, knowing that he was either directly or indirectly responsible for most of their deaths in the first place depending on how one looked at it. "Have you dropped by the school yet? Because that's where the most..."

Roxas stopped dead.

That girl.

He didn't actually remember too well who all had gone off to Oblivion to die. There'd been that...whatsisname, the creepy scientist with the high-pitched laugh (Gexen? Blitzen? Vixen?), that Zexsomething who was always reading, Lexaeus (he remembered Lexaeus alright), Marsha or Marusha or something, Axel of course, and the blond girl he'd just spotted farther down the bridge. He couldn't tell from this distance, but it looked like she might be wearing the school uniform.

Where is everyone COMING FROM?