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"Axel?"

Axel blinked in the semi-darkness. He was lying on his back, on a bed, feeling like he'd been run over by an elephant, and somebody - or Nobody - with blond hair and blue eyes was standing over him. "...Demyx?"

"What?"

"Demyx, you sound funny."

"That's because I'm Roxas."

"...Oh..." As the lights came up, Axel squinted in the sudden brightness. He could see where he was now...he was back in his room...at the Castle that Never Was...and... "Yeah, you're definitely Roxas."

Roxas's face barely twitched. He just handed Axel an ice cream. "Here, eat this."

"Um, thanks," he said as he accepted it, "but...how did I get here?"

The younger Nobody shrugged helplessly."Lexaeus carried you down here before he left - that's all I can tell you. Last I knew, you'd left on a mission with Demyx, and suddenly Vexen hauls me up and tells me you got overheated and once you woke up I was supposed to feed you cold stuff until your temperature went back down. I don't want to think about how many fires you set off while you were still out of it."

Axel stifled a laugh by stuffing the ice cream in his mouth. "Ah wanna wah oo ah ehin oh oh."

"...Come again?"

He tried again without the ice cream."I wondered why you were wearing your cloak."

"You burned a hole in my shirt, that's why! And here I thought having to feed you ice cream was going to be easy.I guess I must not have figured on you setting me on fire. In your sleep."

Axel grinned and tried to swallow alaugh. "In my sleep? I'm good...Ah, well, I intend to make the part about feeding me ice cream as easy as possible. Speaking of which, do you have more handy? I'm nearly done with this one already - and are you allowed to have some too?"

"It's impossible to keep them in your room for long; they just melt, you know that from experience...but I do know where I can get more. And Vexen didn't say anything about me not being able to have any..." Roxas portaled away and returned a minute later with ice cream for both of them.

"Roxas, if you ever get sick, Iwant this job. Got it memorized?"

Roxas snorted. "When I have afever, bringing it down isn't such a priority, because I don't make things catch fire."

"Then maybe I should get sick more often..." Axel relaxed, enjoying the taste of the ice cream. "How's Demyx?"

Roxas looked blank. "He hasn't come back yet - it's only been overnight. How long was your mission supposed to last?"

The ice cream nearly hit the floor."He didn't come back?"

"Well, no...was he supposed to? And how much trouble did you two get in so fast? Vexen said he couldn't get any sense out of you - what exactly happened?"

Oh...shit. Axel didn't answer, just leaned back and closed his eyes with a sigh. "I shouldn't be telling you this first, but...the mission was doomed before we even got there. Demyx and I...landed in the middle of the worst storm I have ever heard of. It- there was so much water - it seemed like the whole world was flooded, and the wind was blowing hard enough to tear your skin off. I almost died," he added in a small voice. "And Demyx...idiot that he was, he told me to come back while he - stayed there."

Roxas's jaw dropped. "What? Why would he do that? I'd think he would have just...run away."

"I didn't ask him," Axel said softly. "To be honest...I was freaking out, and he was the calm one. Or, calmer, I guess. He and his water clones saved my ass - if he'd chickened out, I'd have drowned, I know it. I don't think I'll ever pick on him for being acoward again...assuming I get the chance." He lapsed into silence, watching his ice cream melt onto his fingers.

Roxas shifted uncomfortably. This wasn't the bold, self-assured Axel he was familiar with, and he didn't think it was solidly an improvement. "Axel...if it'd make you feel better...well, not'feel better', I guess, but...do you want me to check the Proof of Existence for you?"

Axel hesitated. I don't know if Ireally want to know... "Would you please? Wait..." Roxas stopped mid-stride and turned back to look at him. "I...don't know. I mean, if he's alive, I want to know, but..."

Roxas rubbed his forehead. What was going on? A subdued, uncertain Axel - who'd let good ice cream melt rather than eating it, no less - talking about an heroic, self-sacrificing Demyx? "One of us has gone crazy...Forget it, I'm just going to go check." He shook his head and stepped through the portal.

Axel stared at the gooey ice cream stick, as if the answers to all his questions were written on it if he just looked hard enough. Why did I freak out so badly? How did he stay calm? Isn't he the one that's supposed to yell "Run! Run away!" at the first sign of danger? Why did he stay behind? He mentioned something about the world being full of music - but he wouldn't sit on a rooftop in the worst storm my nightmares could have cooked up until he froze to death or blew away just for the music, would he?

He whipped his head in the direction of the sound of a portal opening. "Roxas? Is he...?"

"I haven't checked the Proof yet. Istopped to get you more ice cream. Your closet door is smoking; you might want to change that."


Come Hell or high water,they say.

But sometimes, Hell comes as high water. That's how it came to the Big Easy.

Hell and high water came to take away -take away lives, take away hope, take away families and friends and everything a person ever had. There wasn't a sole survivor who didn't have some sort of tragic tale to tell - parents who couldn't hold on to their children in the raging flood, children whose parents' hands had been torn away from theirs, husbands and wives losing track of each other never to find each other again.

But some survivors had a stranger tale to tell, one that seemed more fantastic than tragic. The people who were pulled out of Hell and saved from the high water by the Brown Men.

The Brown Men never said a word, not to the people they saved, not to the people they handed them over to. There were ahundred of them,or a dozen, or just one; they walked on the water, or they were made of water - but one thing everyone agreed on was that they were the same all-over brown as the water, and all of them alike. They just went silently over the flood, pulling people out of wrecked houses or out of trees or out of the water and carrying them away to someplace safe. Most every hurricane shelter in the city got a visit from at least one of them, but the Superdome collected more than its fair share.

And, they found out when someone decided to ask around, they seemed to have a decided preference for musicians.

The last one the Brown Men carried in, before they all seemed to disappear at once, was a teenage boy with dirty blond hair cut in what could only be called a "mullhawk" and eyes someone said looked like a Caribbean sea, clutching an odd-looking sitar like it was his last tie to this world. He was barely conscious, chilled to the bone and shaking like a leaf, but as long as he was still breathing all right and wasn't obviously on the brink of death, they just handed him an old blanket to cover his soaking trenchcoat and let him take care of himself - there were too many other people around who'd just been through Hell to worry about one more lost, lonely kid. Nobody spent much time worrying about him; they certainly didn't bother to check his pulse.