[KH] - Equal & Opposite Reactions (Part III)
The usually-aggravating confusion of Betwixt and Between provided a welcome haven to Vexen. He leaned heavily against a wall, trying desperately to collect his thoughts. Everything that had just happened continued to make his mind reel. What was there to do now?
About ten feet away stood Xigbar. Unlike Vexen, he was standing straight and showed no sign of bewilderment at all. In fact, the fact that his hands were slack and twitching at his sides and that his eyes stared with an eerie intensity at nothing at all should have gravely concerned Vexen. Under normal circumstances, it would have. But right now the Academic was too preoccupied to notice the warnings signs.
“The most vital thing is to remain calm and consider the next action logically.” Vexen had recovered and was beginning to pace. He ticked thoughts off on his fingers as he muttered them aloud. “The creature is still alive in there. Of course, it isn’t alive in the usual sense, but medically speaking… None of the other members of the Organization yet know about this. Aside from Xigbar. Xaldin’s dead - no need to worry about him, but Xigbar might pose a problem…” Vexen didn’t even bother to lower his voice as he spoke. He didn’t consider Xigbar aware enough to be a threat.
But at the sound of Xaldin’s name, a great tremor went through Xigbar’s body. He turned slowly to face Vexen, his lone eye wide and not a trace of a smile on his sewn mouth. His face twitched uncontrollably. Vexen didn’t notice Xigbar walking up behind him as he continued to muse to himself.
Within a second, the Freeshooter’s hands were around his throat and squeezing with a strength that defied his long, brittle-looking fingers.
“What are you doing?!” Vexen clawed at the strangling hands, but he was powerless against Xigbar’s powerful grip. He felt fear claw its way up his back and a cold sweat break out all over his body. Fear was technically an emotion, yes, but the gut instinct of fight-or-flight was centered deep in an organism’s brain, not their heart. Right now, every fiber of Vexen was screaming at him to get away.
Was Xigbar faking his cold, palpable rage or was it real? It was impossible to tell either way. It certainly looked real - the madness in his otherwise empty eye certainly was. He dug his fingers into Vexen’s throat, tilting his own head down until his stitched lips were just brushing Vexen’s cloaked shoulder. But he didn’t bite. He didn’t bite. He didn’t growl. He didn’t laugh or even speak as his fingers dug deeper into Vexen’s throat. Breaking the skin was the difficult part. Once penetrated and ripped open, Vexen stopped struggling. But he remained alive for a little while longer - long enough for Xigbar to begin silently peeling his skin off.
The cannibal started at the throat. With his long fingers, he tore the skin from Vexen’s throat in a circular motion, like peeling the skin from an apple. Vexen gurgled as the color drained from his face and the air that he so desperately gasped escaped through his throat without ever getting to his lungs. Once he had removed all of the skin from the throat, Xigbar held Vexen’s corpse up by the hair, studying him. His head lolled on his skinned neck like a baby bird’s. His lifeless eyes were glassy. Xigbar touched them, sliding his fingertips over the still-slick surface of the eyeball. When Vexen didn’t even blink, Xigbar dropped him. He was of no interest now.
Xigbar turned away from Vexen’s body and stared into nothing. Xaldin was dead. Dead and gone. Dead as a doornail. His head was sitting ten feet away from his body. He wasn’t going to wake up. But there were others. Vexen had already been punished, yes… The others needed to be punished too. He reached into his sleeve and found a scalpel that he had hidden there earlier. With it, he carved the number V into his throat. The wound was clean and bloodless, but it still gaped horrifyingly. Xigbar put the scalpel back into his coat. That was one. Now to find some of the others.
~
“Hey.”
Axel was roused none-too-gently from a deep sleep by a sharp kick to the ribs. Combined with the pain already in his stomach from all the vomiting and dry-heaving he had already done earlier, it was an incredibly rude awakening. He groaned and curled around the dull ache. He was too dizzy and sick with pain and grief to wonder who was waking him or even how he had fallen asleep in the first place.
The kick came again. “Get up. I’m talking to you.”
“Stop fucking kicking me!” Axel snapped. He pushed himself up with a grunt and glared blearily up at whoever had woken him up.
He found himself looking up at a guy wearing a black cloak. This wasn’t unusual since everyone around here wore black cloaks, but Axel was still surprised. This guy wasn’t one of theirs. Axel could tell each and every one of the other Organization members even with their hoods up just because of their build and posture and bearing. This guy, whoever he is, wasn’t in the Organization.
“The fuck are you?” Axel wished he had time to summon his chakrams. More importantly, he wished that his head and his stomach would stop trying to rebel against him.
“You’re not the one to be asking questions.” The hooded figure held a strange sword to Axel’s throat. It was shaped like a bat’s wing, but colored red and blue. “What are you doing down here?”
Everything suddenly came flooding back. The horror of what he had seen behind that door. The room of rubble and blood. The headless body. The… the monster that had called his name. Axel turned away again, afraid that he was going to be sick. A gloved hand seized his hair and yanked him back.
“Look at me. What are you doing down here?” The cloaked man repeated the question.
“I… I opened the door… Lemme go, I’m gonna be sick.” Axel shoved the hands away and leaned against the wall. He felt completely pitiful.
The cloaked man let him go, disgusted.
“You’re Axel, right? You’re the one that DiZ told me to be worried about? That’s pathetic.
“Hey, you’d feel the same way if you saw the shit I did,” snapped Axel.
“I’m more interested in why you’re down here. And what you know about Sora.”
Axel glanced up at the guy in black. Something sparked in his memory and he blinked as understanding dawned upon him.
“Wait a minute… You’re that Riku kid! The one that’s been lookin’ all over for Sora.”
Riku pushed back his hood. It wasn’t surprising that Axel had recognized him. After all, all of the Organization had become intimately familiar with Riku over the course of brutalizing him. The faint outlines of a few bruises still marred his jaw and a shiny white scar on one of his temples served as a reminder of the experience.
“If you know anything about Sora, tell me now. I’m not interested in you.”
Axel’s face twitched. The thing… It had been Sora too, hadn’t it? In his horror, Axel hadn’t even thought about it being anything other than some kind of awful Roxas monster.
“Just forget about him. You don’t wanna know.” In a rare moment of seriousness, Axel stared up at Riku with hollow eyes. Riku was the enemy, but Axel wouldn’t have wished his experience in that room on anyone, not even his greatest rival.
“Easy for you to say, Nobody. You don’t have a heart. You don’t even know what it feels like to miss someone.”
The words should have cut Axel to the bone. Well, they would have if he had a heart. Either way, Axel watched as Riku walked over to the door that held the horror. The lock had been melted off and Axel had broken one of the hinges in his attempt to get away.
“What happened here?” asked Riku.
“I already told you that you don’t wanna know.”
With effort, Axel pushed himself up and walked over to the door. He placed a hand on the door as if to hold it closed. In reality, he didn’t even want to get near it.
“Look, I’ve seen some seriously messed up shit in my lifetime, but you really don’t wanna open that door. Hell, I don’t even know why I’m still down here. I want to be as far away from this thing as I can.”
Riku pushed Axel away roughly.
“I’ve got no reason to listen to anything you say,” snapped Riku. “You’re probably not even telling the truth anyways. You’re a Nobody. You’re nothing but a lie.”
Axel’s face hardened. “Hey, if you wanna open that door, you be my guest. I just don’t want it to get out and come after me again. I don’t give a damn what happens to you.”
“Then get out of my way.”
The Flurry was only too happy to oblige. He pulled away from the door and began to walk down the hall. Fuck if he cared about what happened to Riku at this point. Let him get ripped apart. It was one less person for Axel to kill later on anyways.
Riku studied the door. The lock had been melted off and the hinges broken (both Axel’s handiwork, if his guess was correct), but it had firmly been shoved back into the doorframe. He didn’t doubt that there was something behind that door that Axel had wanted to get away from, but he had a dim view of the Nobody’s sensibilities. After all, Riku had seen the depths of darkness. He was sure that there was nothing behind that door that could scare him.
The reek of decaying flesh and festering vomit assaulted Riku’s senses the instant that he entered the room. His hand went automatically to cover his nose and mouth and he squinted through watering eyes. The smell made them burn horribly.
Some old experiment must be rotting in here… Riku wrinkled his nose and looked around.
The interior of the room was nearly pitch black, but that wasn’t a problem for Riku. After all, part of being a creature of darkness was being able to see in it. The room had been utterly demolished by someone or something. Furniture, shelves, bottles, books were strewn everywhere, all of it destroyed. Countless machines and tools were gutted and mangled and scattered about as though in celebration. One of the lights overhead flickered on and off at random intervals and sent a shower of sparks below.
“This place was destroyed for sure, but there’s nothing in here. Nothing that Axel should be afraid of, anyways.” Riku kicked at an overturned table.
The resounding silence was so loud and so eerie that Riku felt chills run up his spine. He shifted his weight and looked around again, beginning to feel a touch of nervousness. Maybe Axel hadn’t just been talking crazy.
“What the HELL is going on here?” He finally yelled out of sheer anxiety.
There was another moment of silence, then there was the sound of something moving… slowly… in the dark.
“Reeeeeeeee… kuuuuuuuuuu?”
~
Axel had started walking and had gotten several corridors away after Riku had walked into the room. He had warned the kid not to go in there, hadn’t he? That was the most he could be expected to do. Hell, Axel was surprised that he’d even done that. It wasn’t like him to try to warn someone against walking into their potential doom, especially not someone like Riku. Riku was the enemy, right?
But a sudden distant sound made Axel stop in his tracks and listen. The sound of running, then a grinding shriek, like metal against metal. Then silence.
“Kid?” Axel turned around and stared down the empty hall. When there was no answer after several long seconds, he called again. “Hey. Riku!”
Yet again, there was no answer.
“Mother fucker.”
Before Axel even knew what he was doing, he was half-running down the hall back towards the door that he had vowed never to return to. He skidded to a stop as he rounded a corner and came face to face with yet another sight he had never expected to see.
Riku was crouched outside of the door with one shoulder still pressed hard against it. His back was to Axel but it was easy to see that his shoulders were heaving. His arms were up, as though he were holding his face in his hands. There was something… sunken about Riku’s posture. He seemed as though he had heavy weights chained to him that were pulling him down.
“…Kid?” Axel stopped several paces away, reluctant to get even that close to the door. Riku did not move nor respond.
“Riku?” He used Riku’s name this time, hoping that it might get an answer.
There was nothing at first. Then Axel gradually became aware of a soft sound, a low rush of air. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck as he realized what it was - the sound of a scream forced through a throat too hoarse to utter it.
Shoving his horror into the pit of his stomach, Axel walked forward the few paces that separated them and circled around to face Riku.
“Oh fuck,” he breathed low.
Blood was trickling from Riku’s eyes - no, it was pouring. It cascaded down his cheeks and dripped off his jaw and some of it ran in red rivulets down the curve of his throat to disappear beneath the collar of the black coat. He was holding his hands to his eyes in an attempt to staunch the blood, but it flowed unchecked through his fingers. His mouth was open in the silent scream.
Axel stood paralyzed for a moment, his body reeling as though he had been the one to see the horror for the first time. The memory of it turned his stomach sour and it lurched as though he were going to dry-heave again, but he forced it to settle.
“Riku, listen to me.” He crouched down and grabbed the kid’s wrists. Blood was pooling on the floor around the two of them - Axel could feel it soaking through the knees of his pants. “I’m gonna try to help you, okay? Holy shit this is so much blood. Okay, Riku, listen to me. You have to let me see your eyes. Okay? Put your hands down, kid.”
“I saw...” Riku finally stopped screaming and found his voice after taking several long, shuddering breaths. It was little more than a ragged whisper. “I saw…”
“I know you saw, kid…” Axel was incapable of sympathy, but he softened his voice anyhow. His grip around Riku’s wrists tightened. “Trust me, I know. But look, you’re gonna fuckin’ bleed to death unless we fix this, so listen to me. You have got to show me your eyes.”
Slowly, Riku allowed Axel to pull his hands away from his face. Immediately, the outpouring of blood somehow doubled, although Axel could scarcely believe that there was any more blood in Riku’s body at all.
“Look up, kid.” Axel put a hand under Riku’s chin and forced his head up. He immediately wished that he hadn’t.
The kid’s eyes were utterly white - no iris nor pupil or any color at all save for the bright red veins that splintered across the surface of the eye like cracks in a mirror. His sight had been shattered. Blood continued to gush.
“Fuck.”
It wasn’t the most original thing to say, but Axel’s mind was incapable of thinking of anything else to utter. He stared at the sight for a few moments before he got his wits back enough to react.
“Okay, we’ve gotta get you some help. You’re gonna bleed to death if we don’t do something abou tall that blood.” He hesitantly took Riku’s gloved hands in his own. This was the enemy, the logical part of his brain screamed at him. I shouldn’t be helping him. I have no obligation to.
But he and Riku were linked now. Inescapably so. Whether they wanted it or not, they were linked by the fact that they had both looked behind the door and seen what was behind it. Neither one of them was going to be the same again.
Just thinking about the door made Axel shudder. That was another thing…
“…I don’t know if you did anything to… uh… it… but we should probably get out of here. Away from it. As soon as possible.”
Axel was babbling. He knew he was babbling, but it made him feel better to hear a voice, any voice, and Riku was obviously in no condition to talk.
But at the mention of the door and what lay behind it, Riku’s expression melted and reformed into something that resembled determination. He tightened his grip on Axel’s hands.
Axel pulled him up, trying not to look at the blood that was still gushing from Riku’s eyes. There was no way that the kid was human - he’d lost enough blood for two people already and he was still standing.
“I dunno if I’ve got the energy to get us out of the castle, but I can get us to a different floor… That ought to be good enough unless that thing knows how to portal.” Axel shuddered just thinking about it.
Summoning a portal was usually just second nature to all of the members of the Organization XIII, but by the time Axel pulled Riku through the other end of the portal into a new hallway, he felt exhausted all over again. Sweat poured from his face and dripped onto the tile floor.
“Okay so… not quite where I wanted, but close enough, I guess.” Axel sank down to his knees, half-dropping Riku in the process. “Fuck… I shouldn’t be feeling like this.”
Either way, a huge surge of relief flooded through Axel. They weren’t out of the woods yet, but at least they were comparatively safer here than just one wall away from that fucking… thing.
“First thing’s first. We’ve got to do somethin’ about those eyes. The infirmary’s around here, but this’ll work for a quick fix…” Axel ripped a long strip of fabric from the hem of his coat and tied it around Riku’s eyes like a blindfold. Blood continued to trickle from beneath the makeshift bandage, but at least it wasn’t as disconcerting that way. “Whenever you start talkin’ again, you and I are going to have a conversation about why your eyeballs exploded. I guess it’s not too surprising considering that you saw the… the… thing, but…”
“What is it?”
The first words out of Riku’s mouth were low and hushed, his voice cracked and hoarse. The sound made Axel jump badly. His nerves were still shot from earlier, but he was glad that Riku was awake now.
“Fuck, kid. Don’t do that to me.” Axel moved to sit back, but Riku grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t,” he croaked. “I can’t see. Don’t move away.”
Axel stilled and let Riku hold onto him. It was weird. He wasn’t used to being depended on and frankly he wasn’t sure if he liked it. There was no reason for him to like it - he and Riku weren’t friends or anything. But they had a bond now whether Axel liked it or not.
“What is it?” Riku asked again, tightening his grip. “What was it?”
Axel was unable to answer right away. What could he say? He didn’t even want to think about it, but he couldn’t just imagine it out of his memory, just like he couldn’t ignore Riku’s calloused fingers around his wrist.
“It…” Uncertainty made him hesitate. “I think it was Roxas. And Sora too,” he added as an afterthought. “They… it was a monster.”
“Who made them like that?” Riku’s voice lowered and practically throbbed with anger. The force in it caused Axel to actually draw back. It had been so long since he had been able to feel real anger that Riku’s surprised him.
“I don’t-”
The Flurry cut himself off as a new thought washed over him. Vexen’s lab. Xaldin’s head. They must have been the ones to do this.
“Vexen. Xaldin. And probably Xigbar too. He and Xaldin do everything together.”
“Friends of yours?” Riku hissed.
Axel glared at him. “After this? What the fuck do you think?” He stood up, leaving Riku on the ground. “Xaldin’s dead. You probably saw him in there. I don’t know what happened to Xigbar and Vexen. They could be anywhere by now. If they’re alive, anyways.”
“Where are you going?” Riku pushed himself to his feet, keeping one hand against the wall. It was the only thing that grounded him for now. “You can’t leave.”
“The fuck I can’t. I intend to get the hell out of here as fast as I can.”
The Soroxas creature had horrified Axel in ways that he hadn’t been in years. Decades. Lifetimes. Not since childhood when the threat of monsters under the bed and in the closet had seemed so terrifyingly real. The very notion of seeing it again filled him with a dread so physical that it surpassed his heartless condition. His head knew that his heart couldn’t feel fear, but the rest of his body didn’t. He had no intention of staying in the castle where the potential of encountering the moster again was even a remote possibility.
Upon hearing this, Riku shook his head violently, splattering the still-dripping blood across the wall and Axel’s coat.
“You can’t leave,” he repeated.
“Watch me.” Axel didn’t realize how cruel his words were, but he wouldn’t have cared even if he had.
“No, you can’t.” Riku stared in the direction of Axel’s voice. “That thing isn’t just a monster. It’s Sora and Roxas. You can’t just leave it here. We have to do something.”
“Yeah? What exactly do you propse we do?” Axel snapped.
“Put them out of their misery. Kill them.”
The words stopped Axel dead. He thought about them for a long moment, his memories of having a heart battling with his sense of self-preservation.
“You realize that there’s a hell of a good chance that we won’t live through this.”
“You don’t have a fucking heart. What have you got to live for anyways?”
Axel almost smiled at Riku’s venomous tone.
“Nothing, I guess.”
~
Lights flickered haphazardly over the twisted wreckage that had once been the lab, throwing crazy, contorting shadows up on the walls. Fluids seeped across the floor, some actually eating through it.
The air was still, almost ominous. The only sounds were the slow drip of fluid, the low buzz of electricity and lastly - the sound of low, choked breathing.
“Aaaaaaaksssllllllllll…” Roxas’ voice hissed the name, low and acidic. A lone, sky-blue eye opened and narrowed in the dark.
A second eye, this one a darker blue and shot through with red, opened beside the sky-blue one.
“Reeeeeeee... kuuuuuuuuu…” Sora’s voice now broke the silence, more of a moan than Roxas’ furious hiss.
The Soroxas began to move in the dark, crawling across broken glass and blood and vomit without even noticing. They passed Xaldin’s body and then his head without even a glance.
They were looking for a door.
They had been abandoned. They had reached out… called out… but they had been abandoned. Axel and Riku. Riku and Axel. Both men had abandoned them… Abandoned them to the dark, like a monster.
They had to be punished. And Roxas and Sora were going to make them pay. There was no escape.
They found the door, stitched fingers feeling for the knob in the dark. It was locked, bolted from the outside. They were locked in, but not for long.
The Soroxas held out a hand and a keyblade appeared there. In general size and shape it resembled the Kingdom Key, but it was twisted and corrupted. The colors were darker, the blade tarnished and rusted. It seemed to be soldered together roughly of other keyblades, just as Sora and Roxas were now one.
They pointed the keyblade at the door. With a flash of rusty blue light, the door creaked open and the Soroxas pushed it open. They stepped out of the darkness and into the light. And onto the hunt.
~
About ten feet away stood Xigbar. Unlike Vexen, he was standing straight and showed no sign of bewilderment at all. In fact, the fact that his hands were slack and twitching at his sides and that his eyes stared with an eerie intensity at nothing at all should have gravely concerned Vexen. Under normal circumstances, it would have. But right now the Academic was too preoccupied to notice the warnings signs.
“The most vital thing is to remain calm and consider the next action logically.” Vexen had recovered and was beginning to pace. He ticked thoughts off on his fingers as he muttered them aloud. “The creature is still alive in there. Of course, it isn’t alive in the usual sense, but medically speaking… None of the other members of the Organization yet know about this. Aside from Xigbar. Xaldin’s dead - no need to worry about him, but Xigbar might pose a problem…” Vexen didn’t even bother to lower his voice as he spoke. He didn’t consider Xigbar aware enough to be a threat.
But at the sound of Xaldin’s name, a great tremor went through Xigbar’s body. He turned slowly to face Vexen, his lone eye wide and not a trace of a smile on his sewn mouth. His face twitched uncontrollably. Vexen didn’t notice Xigbar walking up behind him as he continued to muse to himself.
Within a second, the Freeshooter’s hands were around his throat and squeezing with a strength that defied his long, brittle-looking fingers.
“What are you doing?!” Vexen clawed at the strangling hands, but he was powerless against Xigbar’s powerful grip. He felt fear claw its way up his back and a cold sweat break out all over his body. Fear was technically an emotion, yes, but the gut instinct of fight-or-flight was centered deep in an organism’s brain, not their heart. Right now, every fiber of Vexen was screaming at him to get away.
Was Xigbar faking his cold, palpable rage or was it real? It was impossible to tell either way. It certainly looked real - the madness in his otherwise empty eye certainly was. He dug his fingers into Vexen’s throat, tilting his own head down until his stitched lips were just brushing Vexen’s cloaked shoulder. But he didn’t bite. He didn’t bite. He didn’t growl. He didn’t laugh or even speak as his fingers dug deeper into Vexen’s throat. Breaking the skin was the difficult part. Once penetrated and ripped open, Vexen stopped struggling. But he remained alive for a little while longer - long enough for Xigbar to begin silently peeling his skin off.
The cannibal started at the throat. With his long fingers, he tore the skin from Vexen’s throat in a circular motion, like peeling the skin from an apple. Vexen gurgled as the color drained from his face and the air that he so desperately gasped escaped through his throat without ever getting to his lungs. Once he had removed all of the skin from the throat, Xigbar held Vexen’s corpse up by the hair, studying him. His head lolled on his skinned neck like a baby bird’s. His lifeless eyes were glassy. Xigbar touched them, sliding his fingertips over the still-slick surface of the eyeball. When Vexen didn’t even blink, Xigbar dropped him. He was of no interest now.
Xigbar turned away from Vexen’s body and stared into nothing. Xaldin was dead. Dead and gone. Dead as a doornail. His head was sitting ten feet away from his body. He wasn’t going to wake up. But there were others. Vexen had already been punished, yes… The others needed to be punished too. He reached into his sleeve and found a scalpel that he had hidden there earlier. With it, he carved the number V into his throat. The wound was clean and bloodless, but it still gaped horrifyingly. Xigbar put the scalpel back into his coat. That was one. Now to find some of the others.
~
“Hey.”
Axel was roused none-too-gently from a deep sleep by a sharp kick to the ribs. Combined with the pain already in his stomach from all the vomiting and dry-heaving he had already done earlier, it was an incredibly rude awakening. He groaned and curled around the dull ache. He was too dizzy and sick with pain and grief to wonder who was waking him or even how he had fallen asleep in the first place.
The kick came again. “Get up. I’m talking to you.”
“Stop fucking kicking me!” Axel snapped. He pushed himself up with a grunt and glared blearily up at whoever had woken him up.
He found himself looking up at a guy wearing a black cloak. This wasn’t unusual since everyone around here wore black cloaks, but Axel was still surprised. This guy wasn’t one of theirs. Axel could tell each and every one of the other Organization members even with their hoods up just because of their build and posture and bearing. This guy, whoever he is, wasn’t in the Organization.
“The fuck are you?” Axel wished he had time to summon his chakrams. More importantly, he wished that his head and his stomach would stop trying to rebel against him.
“You’re not the one to be asking questions.” The hooded figure held a strange sword to Axel’s throat. It was shaped like a bat’s wing, but colored red and blue. “What are you doing down here?”
Everything suddenly came flooding back. The horror of what he had seen behind that door. The room of rubble and blood. The headless body. The… the monster that had called his name. Axel turned away again, afraid that he was going to be sick. A gloved hand seized his hair and yanked him back.
“Look at me. What are you doing down here?” The cloaked man repeated the question.
“I… I opened the door… Lemme go, I’m gonna be sick.” Axel shoved the hands away and leaned against the wall. He felt completely pitiful.
The cloaked man let him go, disgusted.
“You’re Axel, right? You’re the one that DiZ told me to be worried about? That’s pathetic.
“Hey, you’d feel the same way if you saw the shit I did,” snapped Axel.
“I’m more interested in why you’re down here. And what you know about Sora.”
Axel glanced up at the guy in black. Something sparked in his memory and he blinked as understanding dawned upon him.
“Wait a minute… You’re that Riku kid! The one that’s been lookin’ all over for Sora.”
Riku pushed back his hood. It wasn’t surprising that Axel had recognized him. After all, all of the Organization had become intimately familiar with Riku over the course of brutalizing him. The faint outlines of a few bruises still marred his jaw and a shiny white scar on one of his temples served as a reminder of the experience.
“If you know anything about Sora, tell me now. I’m not interested in you.”
Axel’s face twitched. The thing… It had been Sora too, hadn’t it? In his horror, Axel hadn’t even thought about it being anything other than some kind of awful Roxas monster.
“Just forget about him. You don’t wanna know.” In a rare moment of seriousness, Axel stared up at Riku with hollow eyes. Riku was the enemy, but Axel wouldn’t have wished his experience in that room on anyone, not even his greatest rival.
“Easy for you to say, Nobody. You don’t have a heart. You don’t even know what it feels like to miss someone.”
The words should have cut Axel to the bone. Well, they would have if he had a heart. Either way, Axel watched as Riku walked over to the door that held the horror. The lock had been melted off and Axel had broken one of the hinges in his attempt to get away.
“What happened here?” asked Riku.
“I already told you that you don’t wanna know.”
With effort, Axel pushed himself up and walked over to the door. He placed a hand on the door as if to hold it closed. In reality, he didn’t even want to get near it.
“Look, I’ve seen some seriously messed up shit in my lifetime, but you really don’t wanna open that door. Hell, I don’t even know why I’m still down here. I want to be as far away from this thing as I can.”
Riku pushed Axel away roughly.
“I’ve got no reason to listen to anything you say,” snapped Riku. “You’re probably not even telling the truth anyways. You’re a Nobody. You’re nothing but a lie.”
Axel’s face hardened. “Hey, if you wanna open that door, you be my guest. I just don’t want it to get out and come after me again. I don’t give a damn what happens to you.”
“Then get out of my way.”
The Flurry was only too happy to oblige. He pulled away from the door and began to walk down the hall. Fuck if he cared about what happened to Riku at this point. Let him get ripped apart. It was one less person for Axel to kill later on anyways.
Riku studied the door. The lock had been melted off and the hinges broken (both Axel’s handiwork, if his guess was correct), but it had firmly been shoved back into the doorframe. He didn’t doubt that there was something behind that door that Axel had wanted to get away from, but he had a dim view of the Nobody’s sensibilities. After all, Riku had seen the depths of darkness. He was sure that there was nothing behind that door that could scare him.
The reek of decaying flesh and festering vomit assaulted Riku’s senses the instant that he entered the room. His hand went automatically to cover his nose and mouth and he squinted through watering eyes. The smell made them burn horribly.
Some old experiment must be rotting in here… Riku wrinkled his nose and looked around.
The interior of the room was nearly pitch black, but that wasn’t a problem for Riku. After all, part of being a creature of darkness was being able to see in it. The room had been utterly demolished by someone or something. Furniture, shelves, bottles, books were strewn everywhere, all of it destroyed. Countless machines and tools were gutted and mangled and scattered about as though in celebration. One of the lights overhead flickered on and off at random intervals and sent a shower of sparks below.
“This place was destroyed for sure, but there’s nothing in here. Nothing that Axel should be afraid of, anyways.” Riku kicked at an overturned table.
The resounding silence was so loud and so eerie that Riku felt chills run up his spine. He shifted his weight and looked around again, beginning to feel a touch of nervousness. Maybe Axel hadn’t just been talking crazy.
“What the HELL is going on here?” He finally yelled out of sheer anxiety.
There was another moment of silence, then there was the sound of something moving… slowly… in the dark.
“Reeeeeeeee… kuuuuuuuuuu?”
~
Axel had started walking and had gotten several corridors away after Riku had walked into the room. He had warned the kid not to go in there, hadn’t he? That was the most he could be expected to do. Hell, Axel was surprised that he’d even done that. It wasn’t like him to try to warn someone against walking into their potential doom, especially not someone like Riku. Riku was the enemy, right?
But a sudden distant sound made Axel stop in his tracks and listen. The sound of running, then a grinding shriek, like metal against metal. Then silence.
“Kid?” Axel turned around and stared down the empty hall. When there was no answer after several long seconds, he called again. “Hey. Riku!”
Yet again, there was no answer.
“Mother fucker.”
Before Axel even knew what he was doing, he was half-running down the hall back towards the door that he had vowed never to return to. He skidded to a stop as he rounded a corner and came face to face with yet another sight he had never expected to see.
Riku was crouched outside of the door with one shoulder still pressed hard against it. His back was to Axel but it was easy to see that his shoulders were heaving. His arms were up, as though he were holding his face in his hands. There was something… sunken about Riku’s posture. He seemed as though he had heavy weights chained to him that were pulling him down.
“…Kid?” Axel stopped several paces away, reluctant to get even that close to the door. Riku did not move nor respond.
“Riku?” He used Riku’s name this time, hoping that it might get an answer.
There was nothing at first. Then Axel gradually became aware of a soft sound, a low rush of air. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck as he realized what it was - the sound of a scream forced through a throat too hoarse to utter it.
Shoving his horror into the pit of his stomach, Axel walked forward the few paces that separated them and circled around to face Riku.
“Oh fuck,” he breathed low.
Blood was trickling from Riku’s eyes - no, it was pouring. It cascaded down his cheeks and dripped off his jaw and some of it ran in red rivulets down the curve of his throat to disappear beneath the collar of the black coat. He was holding his hands to his eyes in an attempt to staunch the blood, but it flowed unchecked through his fingers. His mouth was open in the silent scream.
Axel stood paralyzed for a moment, his body reeling as though he had been the one to see the horror for the first time. The memory of it turned his stomach sour and it lurched as though he were going to dry-heave again, but he forced it to settle.
“Riku, listen to me.” He crouched down and grabbed the kid’s wrists. Blood was pooling on the floor around the two of them - Axel could feel it soaking through the knees of his pants. “I’m gonna try to help you, okay? Holy shit this is so much blood. Okay, Riku, listen to me. You have to let me see your eyes. Okay? Put your hands down, kid.”
“I saw...” Riku finally stopped screaming and found his voice after taking several long, shuddering breaths. It was little more than a ragged whisper. “I saw…”
“I know you saw, kid…” Axel was incapable of sympathy, but he softened his voice anyhow. His grip around Riku’s wrists tightened. “Trust me, I know. But look, you’re gonna fuckin’ bleed to death unless we fix this, so listen to me. You have got to show me your eyes.”
Slowly, Riku allowed Axel to pull his hands away from his face. Immediately, the outpouring of blood somehow doubled, although Axel could scarcely believe that there was any more blood in Riku’s body at all.
“Look up, kid.” Axel put a hand under Riku’s chin and forced his head up. He immediately wished that he hadn’t.
The kid’s eyes were utterly white - no iris nor pupil or any color at all save for the bright red veins that splintered across the surface of the eye like cracks in a mirror. His sight had been shattered. Blood continued to gush.
“Fuck.”
It wasn’t the most original thing to say, but Axel’s mind was incapable of thinking of anything else to utter. He stared at the sight for a few moments before he got his wits back enough to react.
“Okay, we’ve gotta get you some help. You’re gonna bleed to death if we don’t do something abou tall that blood.” He hesitantly took Riku’s gloved hands in his own. This was the enemy, the logical part of his brain screamed at him. I shouldn’t be helping him. I have no obligation to.
But he and Riku were linked now. Inescapably so. Whether they wanted it or not, they were linked by the fact that they had both looked behind the door and seen what was behind it. Neither one of them was going to be the same again.
Just thinking about the door made Axel shudder. That was another thing…
“…I don’t know if you did anything to… uh… it… but we should probably get out of here. Away from it. As soon as possible.”
Axel was babbling. He knew he was babbling, but it made him feel better to hear a voice, any voice, and Riku was obviously in no condition to talk.
But at the mention of the door and what lay behind it, Riku’s expression melted and reformed into something that resembled determination. He tightened his grip on Axel’s hands.
Axel pulled him up, trying not to look at the blood that was still gushing from Riku’s eyes. There was no way that the kid was human - he’d lost enough blood for two people already and he was still standing.
“I dunno if I’ve got the energy to get us out of the castle, but I can get us to a different floor… That ought to be good enough unless that thing knows how to portal.” Axel shuddered just thinking about it.
Summoning a portal was usually just second nature to all of the members of the Organization XIII, but by the time Axel pulled Riku through the other end of the portal into a new hallway, he felt exhausted all over again. Sweat poured from his face and dripped onto the tile floor.
“Okay so… not quite where I wanted, but close enough, I guess.” Axel sank down to his knees, half-dropping Riku in the process. “Fuck… I shouldn’t be feeling like this.”
Either way, a huge surge of relief flooded through Axel. They weren’t out of the woods yet, but at least they were comparatively safer here than just one wall away from that fucking… thing.
“First thing’s first. We’ve got to do somethin’ about those eyes. The infirmary’s around here, but this’ll work for a quick fix…” Axel ripped a long strip of fabric from the hem of his coat and tied it around Riku’s eyes like a blindfold. Blood continued to trickle from beneath the makeshift bandage, but at least it wasn’t as disconcerting that way. “Whenever you start talkin’ again, you and I are going to have a conversation about why your eyeballs exploded. I guess it’s not too surprising considering that you saw the… the… thing, but…”
“What is it?”
The first words out of Riku’s mouth were low and hushed, his voice cracked and hoarse. The sound made Axel jump badly. His nerves were still shot from earlier, but he was glad that Riku was awake now.
“Fuck, kid. Don’t do that to me.” Axel moved to sit back, but Riku grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t,” he croaked. “I can’t see. Don’t move away.”
Axel stilled and let Riku hold onto him. It was weird. He wasn’t used to being depended on and frankly he wasn’t sure if he liked it. There was no reason for him to like it - he and Riku weren’t friends or anything. But they had a bond now whether Axel liked it or not.
“What is it?” Riku asked again, tightening his grip. “What was it?”
Axel was unable to answer right away. What could he say? He didn’t even want to think about it, but he couldn’t just imagine it out of his memory, just like he couldn’t ignore Riku’s calloused fingers around his wrist.
“It…” Uncertainty made him hesitate. “I think it was Roxas. And Sora too,” he added as an afterthought. “They… it was a monster.”
“Who made them like that?” Riku’s voice lowered and practically throbbed with anger. The force in it caused Axel to actually draw back. It had been so long since he had been able to feel real anger that Riku’s surprised him.
“I don’t-”
The Flurry cut himself off as a new thought washed over him. Vexen’s lab. Xaldin’s head. They must have been the ones to do this.
“Vexen. Xaldin. And probably Xigbar too. He and Xaldin do everything together.”
“Friends of yours?” Riku hissed.
Axel glared at him. “After this? What the fuck do you think?” He stood up, leaving Riku on the ground. “Xaldin’s dead. You probably saw him in there. I don’t know what happened to Xigbar and Vexen. They could be anywhere by now. If they’re alive, anyways.”
“Where are you going?” Riku pushed himself to his feet, keeping one hand against the wall. It was the only thing that grounded him for now. “You can’t leave.”
“The fuck I can’t. I intend to get the hell out of here as fast as I can.”
The Soroxas creature had horrified Axel in ways that he hadn’t been in years. Decades. Lifetimes. Not since childhood when the threat of monsters under the bed and in the closet had seemed so terrifyingly real. The very notion of seeing it again filled him with a dread so physical that it surpassed his heartless condition. His head knew that his heart couldn’t feel fear, but the rest of his body didn’t. He had no intention of staying in the castle where the potential of encountering the moster again was even a remote possibility.
Upon hearing this, Riku shook his head violently, splattering the still-dripping blood across the wall and Axel’s coat.
“You can’t leave,” he repeated.
“Watch me.” Axel didn’t realize how cruel his words were, but he wouldn’t have cared even if he had.
“No, you can’t.” Riku stared in the direction of Axel’s voice. “That thing isn’t just a monster. It’s Sora and Roxas. You can’t just leave it here. We have to do something.”
“Yeah? What exactly do you propse we do?” Axel snapped.
“Put them out of their misery. Kill them.”
The words stopped Axel dead. He thought about them for a long moment, his memories of having a heart battling with his sense of self-preservation.
“You realize that there’s a hell of a good chance that we won’t live through this.”
“You don’t have a fucking heart. What have you got to live for anyways?”
Axel almost smiled at Riku’s venomous tone.
“Nothing, I guess.”
~
Lights flickered haphazardly over the twisted wreckage that had once been the lab, throwing crazy, contorting shadows up on the walls. Fluids seeped across the floor, some actually eating through it.
The air was still, almost ominous. The only sounds were the slow drip of fluid, the low buzz of electricity and lastly - the sound of low, choked breathing.
“Aaaaaaaksssllllllllll…” Roxas’ voice hissed the name, low and acidic. A lone, sky-blue eye opened and narrowed in the dark.
A second eye, this one a darker blue and shot through with red, opened beside the sky-blue one.
“Reeeeeeee... kuuuuuuuuu…” Sora’s voice now broke the silence, more of a moan than Roxas’ furious hiss.
The Soroxas began to move in the dark, crawling across broken glass and blood and vomit without even noticing. They passed Xaldin’s body and then his head without even a glance.
They were looking for a door.
They had been abandoned. They had reached out… called out… but they had been abandoned. Axel and Riku. Riku and Axel. Both men had abandoned them… Abandoned them to the dark, like a monster.
They had to be punished. And Roxas and Sora were going to make them pay. There was no escape.
They found the door, stitched fingers feeling for the knob in the dark. It was locked, bolted from the outside. They were locked in, but not for long.
The Soroxas held out a hand and a keyblade appeared there. In general size and shape it resembled the Kingdom Key, but it was twisted and corrupted. The colors were darker, the blade tarnished and rusted. It seemed to be soldered together roughly of other keyblades, just as Sora and Roxas were now one.
They pointed the keyblade at the door. With a flash of rusty blue light, the door creaked open and the Soroxas pushed it open. They stepped out of the darkness and into the light. And onto the hunt.
~