As the story ended, Ophelia started to get up and tell everyone it was about time to go. Roxas didn’t complain at all he was just as ready to leave as she was. It had been a busy and rough day. With the werewolves then him passing out and now the parents. Anyone would be exhausted. She went ahead and told everyone to go on ahead of her. Must be wanting to help out or talk to her parents alone for a bit. Roxas just smiled and nodded, leaving then waiting by the door. Once Ophelia had come back, and they all made their way to the hotel.
Everyone seemed like they wanted to pass out by the time they made it back. Ophelia on the other hand, made a move that surprised even him. It happened all so fast as she opened the door to her room then dragged him in and pushed Jax out. She closed then locked the door on her sister. Jax was pounding on the door for a few minutes yelling at Ophelia, telling her she would be in a lot of trouble. All Roxas could do was laugh at this.
“I don’t think she’s too happy right now. You think that was a good idea? You could have waited and just stayed with me when we got home tomorrow.” He laughed again then walked up and wrapped his arms around her.
“Not that I’m complaining though.” He smiled then leaned down to kiss her.
Ophelia stretched slightly before Roxas pulled her into his arms, and she looked at him. “I didn’t do it for me, I did it for Jax. She needs to talk to Morthos, and is being secretive about something else. I heard her talking to my parents when we were talking alone. I won’t pressure her to tell me, but she should at least give Morthos a little more information on why she is the way she is.”
Her voice sounded tired, and again she found herself wishing she could sleep, even for a little bit.
Roxas let go of Ophelia only to slide his hand into hers as he took her over to the bed and sat down. “I don’t know too much about your sister or Morthos for that matter, but they seem to be getting closer by the day. If she’s as comfortable with him as I think she is, she’ll tell him. I’m not going to pry though. It’s not my business. I’m sure when she’s ready she’ll tell you too.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him. “Are you okay though?” He asked mostly because of her outburst at dinner. “I’m not going to pry into your past if you don’t want me to, but I at least want to know if you’re okay?” He looked at her gently.
Ophelia relaxed slightly when they sat down, and she listened to Roxas’ voice quietly. She simply nodded in response, and looked down at their hands for a moment. She felt weird, and shook her head ever so slightly to try and shake it off.
“Yeah, I’m okay. I had just had enough of her. I’m sure things will mend themselves now, though. One day maybe I’ll know why she treated me that way. But I’m not really worried about that right now, I’m just hoping that Jax is alright.”
She could feel his eyes on her face, but she kept her gaze down. She wanted to feel happy that she got a moment alone with him, but something was looming just outside of her ability to understand what it was, and it was bringing her mood down.
“I’m excited to go home soon,” she said, hoping to change the subject.
Roxas nodded then looked towards the door. “I couldn’t tell you why. I never had parents so this was kind of my first experience with them. As for Jax, she’s a strong girl. Whatever has her down now will go away soon. It’ll make her feel better if she tells Morthos too so let's hope for that.”
He could tell something was bugging her right now, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Right as he was about to ask, she changed the subject. Obviously she didn’t want to talk about it.
“Yeah tomorrow it’ll be nice to be home. Like I said earlier, you’re more than welcome to come stay with me for a bit if you want. My door is always open for you.” He looked back at her again and smiled. She was still looking at the ground though and this bothered him a bit.
“What’s wrong? I can tell something’s on your mind. If you don’t want to tell me that’s fine, but I’d hope you would eventually.”
Ophelia finally looked up at Roxas, her eyes slightly dark. She considered his words for a few moments, then took a couple more to gather her own thoughts. Finally she began to speak, her voice still gentle and kind, but stubborn in a way as well.
“You need to tell me more about what happened with your friends. With Celti. I understand the thing with Ifrit, but I don’t understand why you haven’t even tried to move on from it. All that’s doing is poisoning you…” She let her voice trail off slightly, and then waited for his response.
Roxas figured this was going to pop up at some point tonight. He did say he was going to tell her everything that had happened. It was his turn to look at the ground now. He wasn’t really ready for this talk, but there was no time like the present. After taking a deep breath, he looked up and opened his mouth to speak.
“15 years ago I joined the SPA hopping that I could start moving ahead in my life. I was only 13 at the time so my chances were slim. I grew up without parents and I had fought for everything I owned. Every meal, every place to sleep, things like that. I looked up to hunters from SPA and wanted to be just like them. It’s silly sounding I know, but for a kid like me it was the greatest thing ever. Well like I had said I had fought for everything so I was pretty strong for a 13 year old and very well rounded. I could use just about every weapon efficiently. So going in I thought I had really good chances. The only thing I was lacking was intelligence, but that could be changed if I got it. Well I went through all the tests they had for me to enter and I passed all but the written ones. That was to be expected, but they let me in anyway. I was so happy I signed up for classes as soon as I could. Each one of them trying to make myself better as a person and smarter. I wanted to know everything I possibly could. As soon as classes started, I got to know a few people and they all seemed pretty great. In one of my classes I met just about everyone from my team. All but Celti. I didn’t meet her until a year later.” He shifted a bit.
“When I was 14, I was taking this history class and there was a girl sitting in front of me. She was reserved and didn’t seem to have many friends. So one day I came up to her and asked her if she wanted to study with me. At first she shut me down, but eventually she said yes. Now that was weeks of asking. We only just started as study partners, but then we started to get closer and become friends. She told me her name was Celti and I gave her mine. She laughed at first when she heard my name. ‘Roxas? That’s a funny name. I like it.’ She told me that she had never heard a name like that before. Well coming from where I did. I thought that she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Now we were both 14 at the time and it had turned out that she was a lot like me. How she grew up and all that. Skipping ahead a few years, at the age of 16 we had grabbed the strongest and best friends we had and decided to form a party. We wanted to be the Phantom Thieves of Heart. So we signed up for a few missions and pulled them off with ease. Now Celti was like Jax in the sense that she was an exorcist too. On one of our missions we went out to take on a few demons. That’s where I found this mask. It looked really cool and I had no idea what its actual power was. So until then I just kept it to look cool. All of us were very close, but not like Celti and me. We both really like each other, but didn’t say anything. That was mostly for the team though. We didn’t want to make anything weird if we broke up or anything. So we just stayed friends. Throughout the time we were in the party together, our fame became more known. We were the strongest party in the guild for a while and we were only made up of two 18 year olds and a few 20+ year olds. We worked our asses off on everything.” Roxas smiled thinking about it all then his mood switched as if it was a light switch.
“One day the guild masters came to us and told about this large threat coming our way to the guild. The god of hell Ifrit was on the prowl and coming to destroy everything in his path. Celti knew what to do about it and told up all that we had to use one of us to imprison him for awhile while we transport him back to the guild. It was going to be a rough fight and we all knew it. We were prepared for what could happen and we all tried to stay positive even though we knew a few of us were going to die. The day of the mission was here and we all made our way to the location given to us by spy’s. Ifrit was there just like we were told, but he was nothing like what we prepared for. 20 feet tall and stronger than any of us could imagine. The first of us to go was James. He got stepped on and crushed. Wrong spot at the wrong time. The second was Agitha, she was burnt alive right in front of me. It should have been me, but she pushed me out of the way. Third was Crash, he was ripped apart while he was trying to weaken him. Fourth was Yusuke, I don’t want to talk about what happened to him. Last was Celti…” He paused for a second. A tear rolled down the side of his face.
“Remember how I told you she was an exorcist right? Well she was also a spellcaster. The plan was to weaken Ifrit as much as we could so she could use a spell in imprison him into her while until we got back to the guild. Well that didn’t work out like we planned. While the others died I was to make sure Celti didn’t get hurt while she made the spell. The other’s weakened him down so that it would work. They died in the process, but it worked. Ifrit could see what was happening and shrunk down to my height. I was unable to keep him at bay and he flung me to the side. I almost blacked out, but didn’t only to watch as Ifrit plunged his hand into Celti’s chest. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t, the wind was knocked out of me. As she was falling to her knees, Ifrit laughed and started to come after me. Before she hit the ground, Celti finished the spell and used it on me. Ifrit was sucked into my soul and imprisoned within me. As that happened all my wounds healed and I could walk again. I ran over to her and rested her head on my lap. She was wheezing and didn’t have much time left. There was no way that I would be able to bring her back to guild for them to save her. She died seconds later in my arms. I was surrounded by my dead friends and the woman I loved in my hands. I returned to the guild only to be told there was nothing they could do to help me. I was going to be stuck with Ifrit for the rest of my life. It’s been ten years since then and I still haven’t been able to get over it. I guess I figured if I forgot about them than their sacrifice would have been forgotten too. It haunts me everyday and I still dream about it like it was yesterday.” He looked at his hands for a bit then closed his eyes seeing the last few seconds he had with Celti. More tears started to flow down his face, but he didn’t acknowledge them.
Ophelia moved and leaned back against the headboard of the bed while Roxas told her everything that had happened in decent amounts of detail. Some things he left out due to the nature, but she knew what had happened. From a lovers perspective, she wanted to be jealous. But instead, she knew that wasn’t appropriate and spoke gently.
“You don’t have to forget about them. You just need to accept what happened, and move on. You don’t need to remember them in a bad way, Roxas. I know it takes time to move on from something like that, but you need to try… Otherwise your new future will be ruined by things you are holding onto from your past.”
She tried not to sound insensitive, but wasn’t sure how well at that she was doing.
Roxas only sighed and laid down on the bed. He wiped his face then looked over at Ophelia and smiled softly.
“I know and I’m trying. I’m just glad I could tell someone about it.”
He looked back up at the ceiling then moved over closer to Ophelia. At this point he just wanted to be close to her. In that second he forgot all about Celti and thought about his new love. The one that was alive and right next to him. He made a promise to himself right there that he would never let anything hurt Ophelia an he would rather die first then let her die. But this was a new time in his life and it was time to move on. Maybe talking about it helped, he felt better about it all and just wanted to be happy. In that final moment of thought, Roxas said goodbye to Celti then opened his eyes and kissed Ophelia deep and passionately.
“I love you.” He said gently then kissed her again.
She wasn’t sure how to respond at first, so instead turned onto her side so she was facing Roxas. He was quiet for a few moments, lost in thought she figured. It was understandable given what he had told her. He moved closer to her and then kissed her, and despite being exhausted, she kissed him back.
“I love you too… Everything will be okay.”
