[Fic] Axel(/Roxas) -- C'mon Angel, C'mon Darling
Title: C'Mon Angel, C'Mon Darling (Let's Exchange the Experience)
Series: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing/Characters: Axel; Axel/Roxas
Rating: R
Total length: 1,014
Warnings: space assassins, minor gore
Summary: Ten short glimpses into the life of Axel, the Organization's famed Flurry of Dancing Flames.
Author's Note: Another fic set in the C'mon Baby, C'mon Darling (Set Ourselves on Fire) and push the shift to overdrive verse, this time with Axel's backstory/future rather than Reno's. Or, in other words the return of the entirely too long 10-things-headcanon meme drabbles. Requested by the lovely tenonthedot about four months ago. Way to procrastinate, Heather.
o1.
Once upon a time, Axel was a normal boy with normal little boy interests and normal little boy clothes. His name wasn't even Axel. Lea liked playing with his friends down the street near the space docks; making a game out of who could get through the machinery without getting caught. He remembers that time that Isa had gotten tangled in the wires of the new shuttle, Vesuvius-how he'd panicked, tossing and turning until half the wires were ripping out of their ports. And he remembers afterward, when the news had talked about the sabotage of one of their new up and comings for weeks.
He wasn't always interested in piracy, and he certainly had never had a thought about being an assassin. He wasn't like Larxene, who even as a child was showing a bit to much interest in ripping the wings slowly off of butterflies. He didn't enjoy it. He didn't-really.
o2.
When he was ten, his village was ransacked by a raiding party of Heartless. He watched one of the men dig out his mother's heart-as they laughingly fed it to his sister, even as they were hiking up her skirts.
Getting away wasn't something he'd planned. He was supposed to be in the kitchen with them that night, eating supper. Instead he was sulking in his room when they blew the door in, giving him enough time to rush out the door when he saw the red of his mother's blood painting the walls, heard the wet rending sounds as they tore chunks of his sister's flesh away from her skeleton.
The rest of the village was in a similar state-places that he'd grown up in covered in flames. He was at the docks in minutes, looking for someone-anyone still living.
The man who took him in was on the slighter side, shiny bald head wet with blood, eyes wild with terror. It was lucky enough that he'd seen Lea, much less stopped for him. He'd ushered Lea onto his shuttle, screaming when the sounds of the Heartless started creeping closer. "Hurry it up, kid! Don't think I won't leave your ass!"
He finds out later that Isa had been on the ship too, stowing there when his father was ripped down in front of his eyes. They huddle together, and watch the man flick switches and curse at the controls until the shuttle lifts away from the water, it's hull dripping brackish yellow lake water.
Together, they watch their home burn.
o3.
They hop planets together for a while; sometimes separating for weeks at a time before finding each other again. They teach themselves the way of the stars-how to hijack their own means of transportation, which planets to stay away from and which they'll make the most bounty on. They grow up little more than thieves and scoundrels, making the most they can off of what little they've been given.
Isa is fifteen when the Organization finds him. It's on one of their off weeks, where they've lost each other in the star dust between galaxies.
It's a year before Lea finds him again, and by then, he's not Isa anymore.
o4.
Three months later, he's not Lea anymore, either.
o5.
What most people don't get is that the fire thing was an accident. He'd never set out to master it; same as how he never really meant to get those tattoos spanning the length of his entire body, or how he'd never really meant to start that one war.
Fire was never really his thing.
And then he went and mastered an ancient art that no one in thousands of years had even attempted without fatalities, and no one let him forget it.
Fire.
One starless night on a planet that the worlds have forgotten, Axel lets himself burn, just to see what it's like.
The planet burns with him.
He doesn't repeat the experiment.
o6.
Axel doesn't know how old he is when he loses his heart. He doesn't even remember what century it was, or the name that he was using when he did it.
He does, however, remember what he did to achieve it-immortality. Stealing the Time Lord's secrets was actually the easy part, but even they don't have complete mastery over time. They cheat death for hundreds of years, but even Time Lords die.
Time hurts. The void is maddening. They claw inside of themselves and rip everything out-leave something behind so they may receive their gift.
This is what the Time Lords decided was too important to give up. What they'd deemed too irreplaceable to lose, even for the sake of eternity.
Axel wishes he'd known it then; how much he would come to regret it.
When he wakes up two months later, his heart is gone.
He won't know it, but the last thing that Axel ever truly felt was regret.
o7.
He does help Reno steal the painting, and doesn't once think about the file he has on him. The one that says Reno will one day have a daughter and a lover-that he'll never stop stealing, and will never stop taking jobs that might go bad. He won't think about the memory of an older Reno-one with lines on his face and gray at his temples who says, "I remember you. Paris, right? Am I going to finally find out what I haven't done yet?"
He won't think about how he'd closed his eyes, and muttered, "make it quick, yeah?"
How he'd whispered, "don't let my family find the body."
He won't think about the simple gunshot, or how Reno's corpse had looked as it burned.
So he steals a painting with a redheaded man in Paris, and tries to remember if this is what guilt feels like.
o8.
There's a new recruit that the Superior has his eye on; a kid in some backwater town with blond hair, blue eyes, and a sword that's shaped like a key.
o9.
The kid's name is Roxas.
1o.
(Axel remembers everything about the day that he gets his heart back.)
Series: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing/Characters: Axel; Axel/Roxas
Rating: R
Total length: 1,014
Warnings: space assassins, minor gore
Summary: Ten short glimpses into the life of Axel, the Organization's famed Flurry of Dancing Flames.
Author's Note: Another fic set in the C'mon Baby, C'mon Darling (Set Ourselves on Fire) and push the shift to overdrive verse, this time with Axel's backstory/future rather than Reno's. Or, in other words the return of the entirely too long 10-things-headcanon meme drabbles. Requested by the lovely tenonthedot about four months ago. Way to procrastinate, Heather.
o1.
Once upon a time, Axel was a normal boy with normal little boy interests and normal little boy clothes. His name wasn't even Axel. Lea liked playing with his friends down the street near the space docks; making a game out of who could get through the machinery without getting caught. He remembers that time that Isa had gotten tangled in the wires of the new shuttle, Vesuvius-how he'd panicked, tossing and turning until half the wires were ripping out of their ports. And he remembers afterward, when the news had talked about the sabotage of one of their new up and comings for weeks.
He wasn't always interested in piracy, and he certainly had never had a thought about being an assassin. He wasn't like Larxene, who even as a child was showing a bit to much interest in ripping the wings slowly off of butterflies. He didn't enjoy it. He didn't-really.
o2.
When he was ten, his village was ransacked by a raiding party of Heartless. He watched one of the men dig out his mother's heart-as they laughingly fed it to his sister, even as they were hiking up her skirts.
Getting away wasn't something he'd planned. He was supposed to be in the kitchen with them that night, eating supper. Instead he was sulking in his room when they blew the door in, giving him enough time to rush out the door when he saw the red of his mother's blood painting the walls, heard the wet rending sounds as they tore chunks of his sister's flesh away from her skeleton.
The rest of the village was in a similar state-places that he'd grown up in covered in flames. He was at the docks in minutes, looking for someone-anyone still living.
The man who took him in was on the slighter side, shiny bald head wet with blood, eyes wild with terror. It was lucky enough that he'd seen Lea, much less stopped for him. He'd ushered Lea onto his shuttle, screaming when the sounds of the Heartless started creeping closer. "Hurry it up, kid! Don't think I won't leave your ass!"
He finds out later that Isa had been on the ship too, stowing there when his father was ripped down in front of his eyes. They huddle together, and watch the man flick switches and curse at the controls until the shuttle lifts away from the water, it's hull dripping brackish yellow lake water.
Together, they watch their home burn.
o3.
They hop planets together for a while; sometimes separating for weeks at a time before finding each other again. They teach themselves the way of the stars-how to hijack their own means of transportation, which planets to stay away from and which they'll make the most bounty on. They grow up little more than thieves and scoundrels, making the most they can off of what little they've been given.
Isa is fifteen when the Organization finds him. It's on one of their off weeks, where they've lost each other in the star dust between galaxies.
It's a year before Lea finds him again, and by then, he's not Isa anymore.
o4.
Three months later, he's not Lea anymore, either.
o5.
What most people don't get is that the fire thing was an accident. He'd never set out to master it; same as how he never really meant to get those tattoos spanning the length of his entire body, or how he'd never really meant to start that one war.
Fire was never really his thing.
And then he went and mastered an ancient art that no one in thousands of years had even attempted without fatalities, and no one let him forget it.
Fire.
One starless night on a planet that the worlds have forgotten, Axel lets himself burn, just to see what it's like.
The planet burns with him.
He doesn't repeat the experiment.
o6.
Axel doesn't know how old he is when he loses his heart. He doesn't even remember what century it was, or the name that he was using when he did it.
He does, however, remember what he did to achieve it-immortality. Stealing the Time Lord's secrets was actually the easy part, but even they don't have complete mastery over time. They cheat death for hundreds of years, but even Time Lords die.
Time hurts. The void is maddening. They claw inside of themselves and rip everything out-leave something behind so they may receive their gift.
This is what the Time Lords decided was too important to give up. What they'd deemed too irreplaceable to lose, even for the sake of eternity.
Axel wishes he'd known it then; how much he would come to regret it.
When he wakes up two months later, his heart is gone.
He won't know it, but the last thing that Axel ever truly felt was regret.
o7.
He does help Reno steal the painting, and doesn't once think about the file he has on him. The one that says Reno will one day have a daughter and a lover-that he'll never stop stealing, and will never stop taking jobs that might go bad. He won't think about the memory of an older Reno-one with lines on his face and gray at his temples who says, "I remember you. Paris, right? Am I going to finally find out what I haven't done yet?"
He won't think about how he'd closed his eyes, and muttered, "make it quick, yeah?"
How he'd whispered, "don't let my family find the body."
He won't think about the simple gunshot, or how Reno's corpse had looked as it burned.
So he steals a painting with a redheaded man in Paris, and tries to remember if this is what guilt feels like.
o8.
There's a new recruit that the Superior has his eye on; a kid in some backwater town with blond hair, blue eyes, and a sword that's shaped like a key.
o9.
The kid's name is Roxas.
1o.
(Axel remembers everything about the day that he gets his heart back.)