strange fruit
I am so nervous about actually putting this up.
Title: Cities of the Future
Genre: AU, Kingdom Hearts II/Digital Devil Saga/Final Fantasy VII
Rating: Mature for Macabre
Pairings: Axel + Roxas (albeit one sided)
Summary: His disease. His hunger gets the best of him.
Warning: Drug reference, cannibalism
He’s a little mongrel in a blue and white striped sweater, hanging off one shoulder, and acid green knickers with pretty flamingo pink cherries on them. Not that there are too many flamingos around these days, or cherries, those sorts of natural things have been dead longer than anyone can count.
But, the little fucker, he smirks, pulling a pair goggles down over his eyes and then he just runs.
Running to the cities of the future, Axel bets.
They try to chase him, but it’s too late, the window shatters, as he slams right through it, landing with tenuously un-choreographed precision on the hood of a speeding craft. Instead they shoot, plasma bullet ripping through simulated air.
That little bastard has just made off with a month’s worth of Hearts shoved into his back pocket.
Larxene screams out curses after him, still wasting her endless supply of bullets on a phantom from the future.
Marluxia lights up another joint and settles himself back into his chair to think. Marluxia has been smoking Wreath laced with Soul since before Axel can remember when.
His hair is the color of dried blood and that means something pretty significant when he’s this angry.
“Third time,” he growls.
Axel shrugs, he’s now cowed.
“Third fucking time, Axel.” Marluxia articulates further, flicking ash onto the carpets without a second thought. “It was bad enough that he got in the first time to threaten us!”
That had been a trip in it’s own right. There hadn’t even been a security warning, just some kid with perfectly Bliss blue eyes storming their goddamn Castle, coming right up to their goddamn throne and telling them, in no uncertain terms, that they had to stop selling Hearts, that is was bad for the people.
Marluxia keeps going, “The second time was aggravating, his smug little face and actually trying to ‘give us a chance’. What the fuck was that?”
The kid had come back again when they proceeded with business as usual. He’d given them a warning and they’d ignored it, Axel doesn’t see why Marluxia is so surprised.
“But this? This is a step too goddamn far.”
Hearts.
It’ll give you the highest high you’ve ever had in all your miserable life. It starts out feeling like you’re having a super-heated steel rod jammed down your spinal cord, then it spreads like cotton candy through your veins. For the finale it settles in your gut like spiders and sends you into the most violent killing spree you’ve ever experienced and you laugh the whole damn time.
So, this kid. Who is this fucking kid? Well, this kid, this symbol of resistance, is part of a group called Kingdom Come.
Marluxia thinks he’s the ringleader, but Axel gets the right-hand-man vibe off the boy. He’s tough, but he doesn’t have enough compassion in him, his sharp eyes say he used to be a Bliss junkie, used to be, and that’s why he’s cracking down on Hearts.
That’s what Kingdom Come is all about, once upon a time it was AVALANCHE saving the planet, but that shit has long since been put to right.
Now it’s Kingdom Come, trying to forestall the apocalypse of people, because there’s nothing that’ll hook you like a straight hit of Hearts.
Nothing that will kill you faster than an addiction to Hearts.
But that’s what they want.
The Machine, sweetheart, is always the same.
You can run, run, run to the cities of the future, take what you can, and bring it back home? But the Machine will always be the same.
There will always be tasty patronage jobs and there will always be Bosses. There will always be herders and there will always be sheep and the fodder of the day is living large, indulging fantasies. Going to the brink and laughing at God as you fall down into the darkness.
Axel, personally, doesn’t much dig Hearts. He’s taken it a couple times, as preparation for a fight against those good for nothing Shinras, who still haven’t had the sense to finally die out, even though their line has long since lost any notability.
Sometimes it’s Maleficent, medieval old hag still lingering around with that immortality she gets from fuck knows where. Probably the old rites that people like to pretend never existed because Gods are too damn high above them, or far too close, take your pick.
Axel, personally, knows better than that. But Axel, personally, still doesn’t give a care.
He smiles at Agni in her scarlet gown as she watches over his shoulder and she smiles right back.
Axel, personally, doesn’t need Hearts to enjoy some of the good old-fashioned ultra-violence.
So, the year? No one really remembers it, after the Crisis everyone just kind of stopped counting. They started over at some point, whenever it was, so from that key mark it’s about 1700.
Not any 1700 Midgar has ever experienced before, raging neon colors and everything that can fly, does. Anything people can inject into themselves they do, because anything they don’t need to do they don’t, so boredom sets in upon every man woman and child like some kind of Biblical plague.
And luckily, thanks to the Machine, they only have one place to turn.
The Nobodies own this town.
Every supermarket, every theater, ever strip club, every bar, every auditorium, every school.
They’ve got the goods.
They’ve got the power.
And when a Nobody walks past you in the suspended streets, you better fucking bow down as low as you fucking can.
Prithivi is lingering at Marluxia’s shoulder and Indra floats near to Larxene’s side.
Agni whispers to Axel’s ears.
Delicious, they look, so, delicious.
Axel laughs suddenly, uproariously, throwing his head back.
Agni bites the line of his throat.
Axel, Axel, let me feed, beautiful, sweet, delicious, Axel, let me feed.
Prithivi’s mouth opens and Indra swaggers with power.
I could, Axel, Axel, beautiful, delicious, tasty, Axel, let me feed.
Marluxia flicks his hand out idly, claw-like fingertips stopping mere inches from Axel’s vulnerable throat. There are ten feet between them and Marluxia’s arm stretches like a Wutanese paper yo-yo, his flesh is laced together like an overlong finger trap.
“What are you laughing about, Axel?” He wonders, angrily, tracing the line of Axel’s carotid with the scalpels of his nails. He’s been smoking Wreath again, his nails glow faintly green; so do his eyes.
“Agni thinks you look delicious.”
Larxene is on her feet in seconds, stalking towards him and smacking him across the face with Indra’s heavy appendage. The damn thing looks like a pizza cutter…but then again, their only purpose is to feed.
“What is thicker than blood?” she demands to know, her voice husky and dark, and if she had a dick it would be as hard as a rock, cause Axel’s cheek is leaking blood like a soda fountain.
“And what is deeper than the sea?”
“Hell is, Axel,” Larxene snarls, leaning in and mouthing the wound, reveling in the hot-wet-blood-metal-life-force-sex taste. “And that’s where you’ll be if you betray the Machine.”
Axel shoves her back, every red line in his body alive and Marluxia/Prithivi’s fingers caressing his face.
Axel’s green eyes spark like kindling and he smiles, full of Agni’s fangs, dripping with (should be) LarxIndra’s blood.
Once upon a time, the world came to an end and the Gods came raining down.
They took revenge where they saw fit.
…but the world was so dark, so corrupt, it contaminated even the Gods.
Turned them into demons, into viruses.
The infection spread.
So were born the Tuners.
My loyalty to Marluxia has been taxed overmuch.
Agni snarls, her demon form restless and hungry, and as far from the Junoesque shape she takes when hovering by his side, whispering in his ears about how she thirsts, she thirsts for blood so badly, she’s parched, oh, just a taste?
But if you devour them, Agni, you will only make problems for us.
She snarls again, strong fingers latching onto a tiny screaming demon, ripping off one limb with the sickly sweet snap of sinew and the spew of broken arteries. Axel feels his mind fade away to the thrill of feeding, the flesh just so tender and moist in his mouth, sliding down his throat perfectly, landing comfortably in his gullet.
Let me think, Agni!
She purrs, playing with her food, pinning down the writhing, dying, body beneath one of her great hands. The blood barely shows against her beautiful crimson skin. Her second mouth, nibbles playfully on her prey’s face, while she continues to rip into the piece in her hand, until there’s nothing more than bone and she’s happily sucking out the marrow.
God…so sweet…
Her laughter burbles up from her twin throats, bellowing up from the same huge stomach. She shifts inside their consciousness, making room for him at the table of their fete. He accepts readily, feeling the wet splash of lifeblood against his many sets of gums housing rows and rows of razor sharp teeth.
The hunt tonight has no room for feeding, tonight Marluxia has barked his dog-like orders, let loose his hounds of suspicion and begun the spiral that will lead to Axel’s sudden and inevitable betrayal.
Agni vocalizes her complaints from where he has pushed her to the back of his mind. Every time he jumps, from platform to platform, using hovercrafts as stepping-stones, she raises her pitch just a little higher until her protests have become screams.
No more, Axel! Let us devour them and be done with it!
He ignores her, raising both heads to the sky, trying to pick out a certain scent amongst all the others: smog, drugs, alcohol, garbage, piss, sweat, sewage, sex, animals, musk. He sniffs twice before growling and pushing himself into motion again, forcing a craft down under his weight as he slams onto its hood and then jumps again.
This city is up in the clouds because there’s nothing left on the ground, far below there’s only wasteland of Tuners preying on each other constantly. Here, high up in the city-metallic skyscraper trees, there is debauchery and ruin on a far different scale, carefully crafted into euphemisms of necessity.
Suddenly-it’s like being struck across the face-the smell he’s been searching for meets his noses and he changes his course violently, his shoulder meeting with a steel railing to the end of a burning stinging numbness.
The scent is hume, with that tang of sweat, and the hostile undertone of Bliss and something more that Axel can’t quite put any of his numerous fingers on. This smell is of salt and of water and a distinct lack of blood. It’s like midnight springtime rain to a demon, it doesn’t rouse his lust for flesh and blood, it calms him and he desperately wants (needs) to find its source.
His pursuit takes him to an area of the slums known for clubs and date rapes and illegal concoctions, which, the Nobodies, of course, have their hand in. He lands crouched over, supported like a gorilla on knuckles and hind legs. Not that there are too many Gorillas around now a days, but hey, it’s a metaphor.
Agni laughs inside of his head, her horrible, screeching, angry voice bouncing around within the confines of his skull, conjuring up images of primates long since dead, as a reminder that she is the immortal one in this parasitic relationship. He is a mortal host and, one day, she will move on, leaving behind his rotting body.
“Who do you think you’re kidding, Agni,” he says, and it comes out of two sets of vocal cords as a series of grunts and bestial snarls. “You’ll come back for a taste of me and you know it.”
Axel ignores her the rest of the way, even as she yowls at him like a cat. Instead he follows his trail to the door of one of these seedy little shit-holes, which are so overflowing with the drunken remnants of what once-upon-a-time was man, that Axel can barely keep his nose down to his quarry.
He readies to revert, he knows if he goes inside in this form, the form with the perfect cerise skin and strong hands made for ripping apart helpless bodies, the form with these sharp teeth made to rend the flesh from the bone, there will be nothing but trouble. As he transforms he feels the virus pulling back through his veins, coalescing into a wheel shaped mark kissing the curve of his shoulder. Agni resists, but in the end, she projects her Goddess form at his side, her face pulled thin and vicious with her anger.
Axel straightens himself out, tugging his black clothing back into place and zipping up his coat. Agni has always threatened to return him back to his hume form without his clothing, but she has never followed through. She prides herself in keeping his body all too herself. To show it to the world in that manner would drive her simply mad with jealousy.
“Let’s go,” he murmurs and then coughs to readjust himself to this singular windpipe.
Everything is made of neon and sex inside this bar; music winds its way eerily through the canals of his ears, taking root in his brain until he feels as if he’s swimming.
Agni is oddly silent, only directing him to his prey, still following the scent of rain. Something no one has seen in Midgar since before the Crisis they’ve all long forgotten.
Axel recognizes his search immediately; the boy is still wearing the striped sweater that is far too large for his body. His pants are still those textile lime green things that end just at his knees, exposing legs whiter than milk and heavy black boots.
The boy recognizes him too, Bliss eyes turning to him, body coiling tight and watching him warily, knowing he’s being stalked, and ready to fight if that’s what it comes to.
Agni is oddly silent, even as Axel feels his thirst stirring. He would love to devour this boy. The cannibalistic tendency to only eat other demons and the peace he had felt at the boy’ scent are suddenly overridden and all he wants is to rip his flesh from his bones, leave him in juicy, dripping little pieces upon the dance floor.
He sets out the lure, holding out his hand to the boy, moving his body sinuously in time with the snaking music. The boy comes forward after jamming a black newsboy’s cap onto his head, using the brim to shade his Bliss-junkie eyes from catching the black-light and neon.
Some of Axel’s tenuous sanity returns with that gesture. His senses have come back to him now, albeit heightened beyond bearing. The boy’s hand in his own is soft, unbelievably so, but hard and dangerous and wonderful all at once. Axel yanks, using all of Agni’s goddess given strength to wrench the child’s arm, to warn him that if he doesn’t cooperate Axel will tear his arm off without a second thought.
Will cherish that beautiful appendage…will partake of those victuals…feel flesh and blood between his teeth…
He’s been ordered to bring this prize back to Marluxia. To give this delicious morsel to Prithivi.
He snarls as he drags along the body after him, leaving behind the bright flashing blues and greens and dripping blood reds of the club, choosing instead the tight smog of the open city air.
He must know, something, something about him is gnawing at his brain. “Who are you?”
The boy smiles from beneath the bill of his hat. “Rudra.”
Agni hisses.
He returns to Marluxia empty handed.
Prithivi’s claws rake against his face and Axel grits his teeth, willing himself to have control, to bide his time. To wait for the perfect moment when he can fucking decimate Marluxia. When he can eat every last little chunk of Prithivi’s flesh and bury the rest deep beneath the irradiated ground, millions of miles south of where they stand high up in the clouds.
Agni’s body is aflame beside him, her ethereal beauty is lost to her rage, she’s a terrible beast made only of power and sharp teeth, desperate and unabashedly ready to sink into substance.
“I’m disappointed, Axel,” Marluxia growls, his Wreath tapped eyes glimmering like those neon lights in that club where he had left Rudra behind. Had just…just touched his neck once, felt his pulse, beating quietly, beautifully, through the paper of his skin…and then…let him go.
Axel turns his head, hair like fire falling across his shoulder to burn Marluxia’s questing fingertips. Prithivi laughs at his attempts to resist. Agni is fire and Prithivi is the earth, what does she think she is accomplishing? The two goddesses snap and snarl at each other like she-wolves, saliva and foam drooling from their jowls.
“Sorry,” Axel mutters, at last, with enough insincerity to fill an ocean. “Forgive me, give me another chance.”
Marluxia watches him for a long time, silent and furious, the ground quaking beneath his feet. Larxene hums with electricity, watching them both and smirking, knowing it will take more than just barely-felt apologies to win back Marluxia’s favor.
“All right.”
“What?!” LarxIndra bursts out furiously, like a bolt of lightning. Hir face is livid, fluttering uncontrollably between hir nymph-like, delicate, hume features and Indra’s harsh, unrelentingly masculine power and gnashing teeth.
“One chance more,” Marluxia conditions. Prithivi shifts like an earthquake at his side, her long arms folding over one another in a knot. “But…I will not take the chance of failure again.” He grasps hold of Axel’s chin, turning that face up to meet his. Prithivi and Agni war beside them, a silent struggle, ending with Prithivi leaping back with a yelp, the back of one hand singed and peeling and withering like a leaf.
Marluxia frowns, his pretty petal face paling. “You will take Vexen with you. You will retrieve the Hearts they have stolen. You will bring the boy and any other members of Kingdom Come that you find back to me. I will cleave them limb from limb.”
Not everyone in this world is a Tuner.
Not everyone is a thrice-cursed demon host.
Axel, however, has known Agni since the moment of his birth. It was her milk he drank.
She raised him in the quiet of the upper-reality. A separate plane that left everyone around him with advanced symptoms of motion blindness. Close proximity with his sickness, with Agni, his virus, left them blind to all movement around them.
Axel never felt particularly bad about it, never much cared for his mother or father or brothers, who had all called him by a different name in those days.
He was content to slip away into Agni’s waiting arms, to let her touch him and bring them closer and closer, training his body to be able to accept her form.
It was like sex. It was like a fiery, animalistic joining, that would leave him hard and panting for more, in the days of his training.
Vexen is unpleasant.
Transitions are useless and ineffective when one goes into describing how very unpleasant Vexen is.
Agni grins horribly at Varna.
Fire and Ice.
“Do you have a plan for retrieving this child?” Vexen inquires dully. His eyes are like oil, deep pits of it just simmering within the confines of his eye sockets. His hair is about as flaxen in color as soggy straw.
“Found him once before by scent alone. He won’t slip away if we cooperate.”
Agni wants nothing more than to eat Varna, not even leaving behind bone.
The night is wet from the ground up. It will rain, but not a drop of it will land. There’s a beautiful layer of destroyed ozone and heat that will evaporate ever last drop of moisture within seconds.
Midgar is cold and wet tonight, even if the rain is not for her.
He and Agni jump.
Agni is content to share conscious control, for the time being, her sharper senses are pulling up Rudra’s smell with ease. Vexen follows gracelessly behind them, grappling and stumbling for footing, it is obvious that he and Varna have no such peace between them.
Varna’s form is built for elegance and speed, its is Vexen’s resistance and ineptitude that forces Axel to pause every few leaps and wait impatiently, his blood thrumming with the desire to see Rudra again.
Now that he knows the boy’s name he can’t stop thinking it.
Agni laughs at him for his infatuation.
Axel retorts that it is no such thing.
Infatuation is for humans, hunger is for demons.
It’s a different club. Tiny, quiet, without colors, and smells somewhat like Wutanese tea, but laced with something…possibly a sweet alcohol, but not drugs, not here.
Vexen hurriedly leaves Varna’s dangerous, sharp-ridged form, smoothing out rumpled clothing and casting a venomous glance at Axel when the younger man makes the same transition with unbridled ease.
The air throbs.
The mark on Axel’s shoulder throbs.
He almost opens his mouth to inquire if Vexen is suffering the same painful sensation, but the door opens.
The door to the tiny little café, Chestnut Tree Café…ironic.
Rudra is barely out the door before Axel has killed Vexen, his powerful red arm wrapped around Vexen’s perfectly human throat, crushing with all of Agni’s strength.
While Axel’s own green eyes, perfectly, terribly, predictably, human-
We can fix that little flaw yet, my beautiful, Axel.
-eyes betray just how startled he is with himself.
“It was the right moment,” he acquiesces, to himself, to Rudra.
Rudra’s Bliss blue eyes smile up at him sadly.
“Who are you?” Rudra wonders. His blue and white striped sweater is falling off his left shoulder and his little black hat is clutched loosely in one hand.
“Axel.”
“I could help you out, you know, Axel.” Rudra murmurs. “If you’ll come with me…Kingdom Come isn’t just about stopping the distribution of Hearts.”
His skin returns to its human tone.
Agni…Agni rips at his shoulders, begging him to stop.
Squall Leonhart doesn’t like what he sees.
“R-”
Rudra signals him to shut up, so he does.
“This is Axel, Leon, I’m thinking he’s ready for new alliances.”
“He’s a Nobody, are you kidding me, they don’t betray their own.”
Rudra laughs. “Shut up, Leon,” he says, taking Axel by the hand and leading him into the warehouse.
So, this is where Kingdom Come has been hiding. In some floating warehouse at the center of town. Hiding in plain sight, Axel is suitably chagrined, but there’s something about this place…there are no scents. No smells whatsoever, even Rudra’s beautiful rain-like perfume has disappeared entirely.
That’s how they hid, and it makes sense, and Axel’s nose itches horribly. At least what it lacks in aroma it makes up for in other ways.
The warehouse of the Kingdom Come is the loudest place Axel has ever been, and he quickly realizes he loves it. All those hours and days he’d spent with Marluxia and Larxene, hushed dealings, hits of drugs, shots of alcohol, silent dominations.
He wonders if Marluxia really believed that Vexen would be able to keep him in line.
Agni snarls at the idea of Varna controlling her.
“Are you hungry?” Rudra asks him softly.
Axel stiffens a little out of a surprise, but finds relaxation once more and plasters a big careful grin full of teeth onto his face.
“We Tuners always are.”
“Wait three days.”
“I’ll starve.”
“Just do it.”
Funny thing about Rudra, what he says goes. Even though it’s obvious that Leonhart is the leader of this operation, Rudra still has more power. He’s just never around, Axel quickly learns. He wonders where the little blond bastard goes, but when he attempts to leave the warehouse to find out, Leonhart sticks out his huge gunblade and shakes his head.
Kill them! Kill them! Eat them! Destroy them!
Agni screams and rails and cries, but Axel knows better.
Axel knows Marluxia will be looking and he’s grateful for the place to lay low for a few days, even if his hunger is likely to drive him mad if it goes on much longer.
The only thing he comes to count on during those three trial days, is that, every day, at noon-Axle knows it’s noon because there’s a huge clock that chimes on the hour-Rudra will return to the warehouse. He will approach the ‘bedroom’, which is nothing more than an area of the warehouse set aside by a wall of crates. Inside are bedrolls, one of which Rudra will lie down on and promptly fall asleep. His pretty Bliss-junkie eyes finally slipping shut.
Axel doesn’t know what it is about that vulnerable face of his but-
Eat him! Eat him!
-he finds himself watching the boy for a few moments every day.
On the second day, Leon comes up behind him and says something angry and defensive. Axel just smiles and asks,
“How long has he been off Bliss?”
And Leon just smiles darkly and answers. “His brother was killed by Hearts.”
Axel hasn’t dreamed since he first coupled with Agni.
But that final night, with his stomach crying out hungrily, he dreams.
He dreams about one of those gang battles, the kind they fed Hearts to innocent people for and watched them slaughter each other. It was more entertainment than actual fighting.
Axel wonders which one of those mindless faces belonged to Rudra’s brother.
Axel knows the danger of Hearts, has always known the danger of Hearts.
But he’s also known the power, the basic militant forces, albeit berserkers, and the money and…the few remaining police (vigilante) forces had given up after the first few weeks of Hearts introduction to the city of Midgar, because those psychotic addicts were too violent to be quelled, it was a waste of time to jail them, a waste of lives.
Not to mention the average user died after only a few months, maybe a year, if you were lucky. Hearts dried you out quick, didn’t matter if you snorted it or injected it or smoked it or dropped it. You traded years of your life for a few hours of the most mind-numbingly orgasmic sensation in the entire world.
Warm blood dripping from your fingers, life in your hands.
That warm cotton candy feeling in your gut and the smile on your face.
Agni begs him to stop.
But he dreams.
On the third night Rudra takes him from the warehouse, they get a flying taxi and head to the outskirts of town.
There…there waits a place Axel has only heard rumors about. People, regular humes, penned up like animals and…
“This the buffet?” he wonders, licking his lips.
“Be quick, this is a research facility, so it isn’t as if they’re really here for the taking, don’t be caught,” Rudra replies and Axel doesn’t have to be told twice.
His skin has turned fire red before he’s even fully left the vehicle, his mouth is watering and saliva is dribbling down his chin.
The little pigs squeal as they catch sight of him, calling wildly, desperately, futilely, for the guards. But Axel’s already eaten half of a child, and the warm blood is driving him mad. It’s so hot and so exciting and he’s been so hungry…
Agni joins him after a moment’s hesitation and they lose themselves in the feast.
There’s something intoxicating about abstinence.
Something delicious about feeling the walls of his stomach cave in and then filling them unto bursting.
Something amazing about smelling nothing for days and days and then letting every last putrid scent of the word come rushing in.
Something…or, Axel, reluctantly, realizes, it might just be that when he climbs into the taxi, trying to clear the blood from his face, Rudra’s eyes are always so dark and perfectly wine red.
The first time, Axel paused with surprise and stared at him while Rudra jammed his hat down onto his head, hiding his eyes behind the brim and sharp tufts of hair.
The second time, he didn’t bother, just turned away and told the cabbie to drive.
Agni whines at him insistently, but her voice has gotten quieter over the…over time…
Until at last he’s allowed out.
“The point is, Axel,” Rudra says, he’s perched on top of a crate, and even then he’s still shorter. Axel has learned that Rudra is in fact an adult and fully-grown, but he’s still at least a head and a half shorter. “That we’ll treat you better and ask less of you. The point was to show you that. All you have to do, in return, is help us get Hearts off the streets, help us stop the research on those people you eat for dinner and…”
“Why would I stop it? Then there wouldn’t be-”
“Cause once you do your damn job we you can go back to hunting.”
The offer has its appeal. It’s exactly what he needs right now when he’s on the run from the Nobodies, who no doubt have not forgotten his betrayal, have not forgiven him for putting a dent in their ranks.
“Yeah, okay, I like you well enough.”
Rudra makes a face, he’s not particularly amused.
“I was hoping you’d do it because people are dying.”
“They die by my hand anyway, comes with being cursed, sweetheart.”
There’s a massacre. It’s a proclamation of war from Marluxia.
“They got their new hit of Hearts…” Rudra scowls, watching the blood slowly dribble off the edge of the platform, falling down towards endless cloudscape. Sewers of the cities of the sky.
Axel laughs in reply. “As long as they have Zexion they will always have Hearts. The kid has a lab down off Dog Street.”
Rudra’s eyes light up like fire.
Hearts burn. Hearts burn real good.
Ever since torching Zexion’s lab there’s something about Rudra that’s begun to drive Axel mad.
Mad to the point where he comes back to the cab with blood on his tongue and crushes their mouths together, forcing gobbets and sweet metallic tang past the boy’s lips.
His Bliss-blue eyes turn perfectly red.
Rudra licks his lips once, twice.
“Drive,” he tells the cabbie and shoves Axel away.
He follows Rudra. Wherever the beautiful little creature who smells like rain is going, Axel wants to know. Axel wants to wait for the right time to pin him up against the wall and remind the boy who is a demon here.
So, he stalks, reaching quietly for his demon form to give him more speed.
Rudra’s path takes them deep into town, to some tiny apartment on the twentieth floor.
Axel eases open the door after Rudra has shut it and slithers through the shadows. The room is full of shadows; the only light a thin beam coming from the bathroom. Axel follows, follows, his breath speeding and his blood roaring and Rudra’s beautiful scent is just so damn strong.
Then he sees it. Rudra is stripping off his clothes, pulling the huge blue and white striped sweater up over his head and…between his shoulder blades.
A mark.
A virus.
Two keys interlocking with his flesh to release his virus.
Agni hisses loudly and Rudra turns.
“Oh…Axel…” he whispers, as if he pities him. "I kind of liked you…"
Squall Leonhart turns as Roxas enters the warehouse; the boy is sucking his fingers methodically, one by one.
“Did you send Axel to do something?”
Roxas smiles thinly, his Bliss-blue eyes sparkling. “Axel won’t be around anymore.”
Leon nods and turns back to his task. “So, the drugs worked on him. Great, when do you want to raid the medical facility?”
Food, delicious, more, more, mmm, my sweet, delectable, wonderful, Roxas.
Rudra whispers in his ear.
“Tomorrow.”
end
Note: Uh. This was actually suggested by my *mother* who I am very close with. She was interested in my latest story and suggested an 'O. Henry' ending. -coughs.- If anyone would find it in them to draw Roxas/Rudra with the sweater and the pants and the hat...I would be in your eternal debt.
P.S. I'm horribly aware that Agni is a male God, however, something about Axel just demanded I make her female.
x-posted: khyaoi & axelxroxas & thedancinglight
Title: Cities of the Future
Genre: AU, Kingdom Hearts II/Digital Devil Saga/Final Fantasy VII
Rating: Mature for Macabre
Pairings: Axel + Roxas (albeit one sided)
Summary: His disease. His hunger gets the best of him.
Warning: Drug reference, cannibalism
He’s a little mongrel in a blue and white striped sweater, hanging off one shoulder, and acid green knickers with pretty flamingo pink cherries on them. Not that there are too many flamingos around these days, or cherries, those sorts of natural things have been dead longer than anyone can count.
But, the little fucker, he smirks, pulling a pair goggles down over his eyes and then he just runs.
Running to the cities of the future, Axel bets.
They try to chase him, but it’s too late, the window shatters, as he slams right through it, landing with tenuously un-choreographed precision on the hood of a speeding craft. Instead they shoot, plasma bullet ripping through simulated air.
That little bastard has just made off with a month’s worth of Hearts shoved into his back pocket.
Larxene screams out curses after him, still wasting her endless supply of bullets on a phantom from the future.
Marluxia lights up another joint and settles himself back into his chair to think. Marluxia has been smoking Wreath laced with Soul since before Axel can remember when.
His hair is the color of dried blood and that means something pretty significant when he’s this angry.
“Third time,” he growls.
Axel shrugs, he’s now cowed.
“Third fucking time, Axel.” Marluxia articulates further, flicking ash onto the carpets without a second thought. “It was bad enough that he got in the first time to threaten us!”
That had been a trip in it’s own right. There hadn’t even been a security warning, just some kid with perfectly Bliss blue eyes storming their goddamn Castle, coming right up to their goddamn throne and telling them, in no uncertain terms, that they had to stop selling Hearts, that is was bad for the people.
Marluxia keeps going, “The second time was aggravating, his smug little face and actually trying to ‘give us a chance’. What the fuck was that?”
The kid had come back again when they proceeded with business as usual. He’d given them a warning and they’d ignored it, Axel doesn’t see why Marluxia is so surprised.
“But this? This is a step too goddamn far.”
Hearts.
It’ll give you the highest high you’ve ever had in all your miserable life. It starts out feeling like you’re having a super-heated steel rod jammed down your spinal cord, then it spreads like cotton candy through your veins. For the finale it settles in your gut like spiders and sends you into the most violent killing spree you’ve ever experienced and you laugh the whole damn time.
So, this kid. Who is this fucking kid? Well, this kid, this symbol of resistance, is part of a group called Kingdom Come.
Marluxia thinks he’s the ringleader, but Axel gets the right-hand-man vibe off the boy. He’s tough, but he doesn’t have enough compassion in him, his sharp eyes say he used to be a Bliss junkie, used to be, and that’s why he’s cracking down on Hearts.
That’s what Kingdom Come is all about, once upon a time it was AVALANCHE saving the planet, but that shit has long since been put to right.
Now it’s Kingdom Come, trying to forestall the apocalypse of people, because there’s nothing that’ll hook you like a straight hit of Hearts.
Nothing that will kill you faster than an addiction to Hearts.
But that’s what they want.
The Machine, sweetheart, is always the same.
You can run, run, run to the cities of the future, take what you can, and bring it back home? But the Machine will always be the same.
There will always be tasty patronage jobs and there will always be Bosses. There will always be herders and there will always be sheep and the fodder of the day is living large, indulging fantasies. Going to the brink and laughing at God as you fall down into the darkness.
Axel, personally, doesn’t much dig Hearts. He’s taken it a couple times, as preparation for a fight against those good for nothing Shinras, who still haven’t had the sense to finally die out, even though their line has long since lost any notability.
Sometimes it’s Maleficent, medieval old hag still lingering around with that immortality she gets from fuck knows where. Probably the old rites that people like to pretend never existed because Gods are too damn high above them, or far too close, take your pick.
Axel, personally, knows better than that. But Axel, personally, still doesn’t give a care.
He smiles at Agni in her scarlet gown as she watches over his shoulder and she smiles right back.
Axel, personally, doesn’t need Hearts to enjoy some of the good old-fashioned ultra-violence.
So, the year? No one really remembers it, after the Crisis everyone just kind of stopped counting. They started over at some point, whenever it was, so from that key mark it’s about 1700.
Not any 1700 Midgar has ever experienced before, raging neon colors and everything that can fly, does. Anything people can inject into themselves they do, because anything they don’t need to do they don’t, so boredom sets in upon every man woman and child like some kind of Biblical plague.
And luckily, thanks to the Machine, they only have one place to turn.
The Nobodies own this town.
Every supermarket, every theater, ever strip club, every bar, every auditorium, every school.
They’ve got the goods.
They’ve got the power.
And when a Nobody walks past you in the suspended streets, you better fucking bow down as low as you fucking can.
Prithivi is lingering at Marluxia’s shoulder and Indra floats near to Larxene’s side.
Agni whispers to Axel’s ears.
Delicious, they look, so, delicious.
Axel laughs suddenly, uproariously, throwing his head back.
Agni bites the line of his throat.
Axel, Axel, let me feed, beautiful, sweet, delicious, Axel, let me feed.
Prithivi’s mouth opens and Indra swaggers with power.
I could, Axel, Axel, beautiful, delicious, tasty, Axel, let me feed.
Marluxia flicks his hand out idly, claw-like fingertips stopping mere inches from Axel’s vulnerable throat. There are ten feet between them and Marluxia’s arm stretches like a Wutanese paper yo-yo, his flesh is laced together like an overlong finger trap.
“What are you laughing about, Axel?” He wonders, angrily, tracing the line of Axel’s carotid with the scalpels of his nails. He’s been smoking Wreath again, his nails glow faintly green; so do his eyes.
“Agni thinks you look delicious.”
Larxene is on her feet in seconds, stalking towards him and smacking him across the face with Indra’s heavy appendage. The damn thing looks like a pizza cutter…but then again, their only purpose is to feed.
“What is thicker than blood?” she demands to know, her voice husky and dark, and if she had a dick it would be as hard as a rock, cause Axel’s cheek is leaking blood like a soda fountain.
“And what is deeper than the sea?”
“Hell is, Axel,” Larxene snarls, leaning in and mouthing the wound, reveling in the hot-wet-blood-metal-life-force-sex taste. “And that’s where you’ll be if you betray the Machine.”
Axel shoves her back, every red line in his body alive and Marluxia/Prithivi’s fingers caressing his face.
Axel’s green eyes spark like kindling and he smiles, full of Agni’s fangs, dripping with (should be) LarxIndra’s blood.
Once upon a time, the world came to an end and the Gods came raining down.
They took revenge where they saw fit.
…but the world was so dark, so corrupt, it contaminated even the Gods.
Turned them into demons, into viruses.
The infection spread.
So were born the Tuners.
My loyalty to Marluxia has been taxed overmuch.
Agni snarls, her demon form restless and hungry, and as far from the Junoesque shape she takes when hovering by his side, whispering in his ears about how she thirsts, she thirsts for blood so badly, she’s parched, oh, just a taste?
But if you devour them, Agni, you will only make problems for us.
She snarls again, strong fingers latching onto a tiny screaming demon, ripping off one limb with the sickly sweet snap of sinew and the spew of broken arteries. Axel feels his mind fade away to the thrill of feeding, the flesh just so tender and moist in his mouth, sliding down his throat perfectly, landing comfortably in his gullet.
Let me think, Agni!
She purrs, playing with her food, pinning down the writhing, dying, body beneath one of her great hands. The blood barely shows against her beautiful crimson skin. Her second mouth, nibbles playfully on her prey’s face, while she continues to rip into the piece in her hand, until there’s nothing more than bone and she’s happily sucking out the marrow.
God…so sweet…
Her laughter burbles up from her twin throats, bellowing up from the same huge stomach. She shifts inside their consciousness, making room for him at the table of their fete. He accepts readily, feeling the wet splash of lifeblood against his many sets of gums housing rows and rows of razor sharp teeth.
The hunt tonight has no room for feeding, tonight Marluxia has barked his dog-like orders, let loose his hounds of suspicion and begun the spiral that will lead to Axel’s sudden and inevitable betrayal.
Agni vocalizes her complaints from where he has pushed her to the back of his mind. Every time he jumps, from platform to platform, using hovercrafts as stepping-stones, she raises her pitch just a little higher until her protests have become screams.
No more, Axel! Let us devour them and be done with it!
He ignores her, raising both heads to the sky, trying to pick out a certain scent amongst all the others: smog, drugs, alcohol, garbage, piss, sweat, sewage, sex, animals, musk. He sniffs twice before growling and pushing himself into motion again, forcing a craft down under his weight as he slams onto its hood and then jumps again.
This city is up in the clouds because there’s nothing left on the ground, far below there’s only wasteland of Tuners preying on each other constantly. Here, high up in the city-metallic skyscraper trees, there is debauchery and ruin on a far different scale, carefully crafted into euphemisms of necessity.
Suddenly-it’s like being struck across the face-the smell he’s been searching for meets his noses and he changes his course violently, his shoulder meeting with a steel railing to the end of a burning stinging numbness.
The scent is hume, with that tang of sweat, and the hostile undertone of Bliss and something more that Axel can’t quite put any of his numerous fingers on. This smell is of salt and of water and a distinct lack of blood. It’s like midnight springtime rain to a demon, it doesn’t rouse his lust for flesh and blood, it calms him and he desperately wants (needs) to find its source.
His pursuit takes him to an area of the slums known for clubs and date rapes and illegal concoctions, which, the Nobodies, of course, have their hand in. He lands crouched over, supported like a gorilla on knuckles and hind legs. Not that there are too many Gorillas around now a days, but hey, it’s a metaphor.
Agni laughs inside of his head, her horrible, screeching, angry voice bouncing around within the confines of his skull, conjuring up images of primates long since dead, as a reminder that she is the immortal one in this parasitic relationship. He is a mortal host and, one day, she will move on, leaving behind his rotting body.
“Who do you think you’re kidding, Agni,” he says, and it comes out of two sets of vocal cords as a series of grunts and bestial snarls. “You’ll come back for a taste of me and you know it.”
Axel ignores her the rest of the way, even as she yowls at him like a cat. Instead he follows his trail to the door of one of these seedy little shit-holes, which are so overflowing with the drunken remnants of what once-upon-a-time was man, that Axel can barely keep his nose down to his quarry.
He readies to revert, he knows if he goes inside in this form, the form with the perfect cerise skin and strong hands made for ripping apart helpless bodies, the form with these sharp teeth made to rend the flesh from the bone, there will be nothing but trouble. As he transforms he feels the virus pulling back through his veins, coalescing into a wheel shaped mark kissing the curve of his shoulder. Agni resists, but in the end, she projects her Goddess form at his side, her face pulled thin and vicious with her anger.
Axel straightens himself out, tugging his black clothing back into place and zipping up his coat. Agni has always threatened to return him back to his hume form without his clothing, but she has never followed through. She prides herself in keeping his body all too herself. To show it to the world in that manner would drive her simply mad with jealousy.
“Let’s go,” he murmurs and then coughs to readjust himself to this singular windpipe.
Everything is made of neon and sex inside this bar; music winds its way eerily through the canals of his ears, taking root in his brain until he feels as if he’s swimming.
Agni is oddly silent, only directing him to his prey, still following the scent of rain. Something no one has seen in Midgar since before the Crisis they’ve all long forgotten.
Axel recognizes his search immediately; the boy is still wearing the striped sweater that is far too large for his body. His pants are still those textile lime green things that end just at his knees, exposing legs whiter than milk and heavy black boots.
The boy recognizes him too, Bliss eyes turning to him, body coiling tight and watching him warily, knowing he’s being stalked, and ready to fight if that’s what it comes to.
Agni is oddly silent, even as Axel feels his thirst stirring. He would love to devour this boy. The cannibalistic tendency to only eat other demons and the peace he had felt at the boy’ scent are suddenly overridden and all he wants is to rip his flesh from his bones, leave him in juicy, dripping little pieces upon the dance floor.
He sets out the lure, holding out his hand to the boy, moving his body sinuously in time with the snaking music. The boy comes forward after jamming a black newsboy’s cap onto his head, using the brim to shade his Bliss-junkie eyes from catching the black-light and neon.
Some of Axel’s tenuous sanity returns with that gesture. His senses have come back to him now, albeit heightened beyond bearing. The boy’s hand in his own is soft, unbelievably so, but hard and dangerous and wonderful all at once. Axel yanks, using all of Agni’s goddess given strength to wrench the child’s arm, to warn him that if he doesn’t cooperate Axel will tear his arm off without a second thought.
Will cherish that beautiful appendage…will partake of those victuals…feel flesh and blood between his teeth…
He’s been ordered to bring this prize back to Marluxia. To give this delicious morsel to Prithivi.
He snarls as he drags along the body after him, leaving behind the bright flashing blues and greens and dripping blood reds of the club, choosing instead the tight smog of the open city air.
He must know, something, something about him is gnawing at his brain. “Who are you?”
The boy smiles from beneath the bill of his hat. “Rudra.”
Agni hisses.
He returns to Marluxia empty handed.
Prithivi’s claws rake against his face and Axel grits his teeth, willing himself to have control, to bide his time. To wait for the perfect moment when he can fucking decimate Marluxia. When he can eat every last little chunk of Prithivi’s flesh and bury the rest deep beneath the irradiated ground, millions of miles south of where they stand high up in the clouds.
Agni’s body is aflame beside him, her ethereal beauty is lost to her rage, she’s a terrible beast made only of power and sharp teeth, desperate and unabashedly ready to sink into substance.
“I’m disappointed, Axel,” Marluxia growls, his Wreath tapped eyes glimmering like those neon lights in that club where he had left Rudra behind. Had just…just touched his neck once, felt his pulse, beating quietly, beautifully, through the paper of his skin…and then…let him go.
Axel turns his head, hair like fire falling across his shoulder to burn Marluxia’s questing fingertips. Prithivi laughs at his attempts to resist. Agni is fire and Prithivi is the earth, what does she think she is accomplishing? The two goddesses snap and snarl at each other like she-wolves, saliva and foam drooling from their jowls.
“Sorry,” Axel mutters, at last, with enough insincerity to fill an ocean. “Forgive me, give me another chance.”
Marluxia watches him for a long time, silent and furious, the ground quaking beneath his feet. Larxene hums with electricity, watching them both and smirking, knowing it will take more than just barely-felt apologies to win back Marluxia’s favor.
“All right.”
“What?!” LarxIndra bursts out furiously, like a bolt of lightning. Hir face is livid, fluttering uncontrollably between hir nymph-like, delicate, hume features and Indra’s harsh, unrelentingly masculine power and gnashing teeth.
“One chance more,” Marluxia conditions. Prithivi shifts like an earthquake at his side, her long arms folding over one another in a knot. “But…I will not take the chance of failure again.” He grasps hold of Axel’s chin, turning that face up to meet his. Prithivi and Agni war beside them, a silent struggle, ending with Prithivi leaping back with a yelp, the back of one hand singed and peeling and withering like a leaf.
Marluxia frowns, his pretty petal face paling. “You will take Vexen with you. You will retrieve the Hearts they have stolen. You will bring the boy and any other members of Kingdom Come that you find back to me. I will cleave them limb from limb.”
Not everyone in this world is a Tuner.
Not everyone is a thrice-cursed demon host.
Axel, however, has known Agni since the moment of his birth. It was her milk he drank.
She raised him in the quiet of the upper-reality. A separate plane that left everyone around him with advanced symptoms of motion blindness. Close proximity with his sickness, with Agni, his virus, left them blind to all movement around them.
Axel never felt particularly bad about it, never much cared for his mother or father or brothers, who had all called him by a different name in those days.
He was content to slip away into Agni’s waiting arms, to let her touch him and bring them closer and closer, training his body to be able to accept her form.
It was like sex. It was like a fiery, animalistic joining, that would leave him hard and panting for more, in the days of his training.
Vexen is unpleasant.
Transitions are useless and ineffective when one goes into describing how very unpleasant Vexen is.
Agni grins horribly at Varna.
Fire and Ice.
“Do you have a plan for retrieving this child?” Vexen inquires dully. His eyes are like oil, deep pits of it just simmering within the confines of his eye sockets. His hair is about as flaxen in color as soggy straw.
“Found him once before by scent alone. He won’t slip away if we cooperate.”
Agni wants nothing more than to eat Varna, not even leaving behind bone.
The night is wet from the ground up. It will rain, but not a drop of it will land. There’s a beautiful layer of destroyed ozone and heat that will evaporate ever last drop of moisture within seconds.
Midgar is cold and wet tonight, even if the rain is not for her.
He and Agni jump.
Agni is content to share conscious control, for the time being, her sharper senses are pulling up Rudra’s smell with ease. Vexen follows gracelessly behind them, grappling and stumbling for footing, it is obvious that he and Varna have no such peace between them.
Varna’s form is built for elegance and speed, its is Vexen’s resistance and ineptitude that forces Axel to pause every few leaps and wait impatiently, his blood thrumming with the desire to see Rudra again.
Now that he knows the boy’s name he can’t stop thinking it.
Agni laughs at him for his infatuation.
Axel retorts that it is no such thing.
Infatuation is for humans, hunger is for demons.
It’s a different club. Tiny, quiet, without colors, and smells somewhat like Wutanese tea, but laced with something…possibly a sweet alcohol, but not drugs, not here.
Vexen hurriedly leaves Varna’s dangerous, sharp-ridged form, smoothing out rumpled clothing and casting a venomous glance at Axel when the younger man makes the same transition with unbridled ease.
The air throbs.
The mark on Axel’s shoulder throbs.
He almost opens his mouth to inquire if Vexen is suffering the same painful sensation, but the door opens.
The door to the tiny little café, Chestnut Tree Café…ironic.
Rudra is barely out the door before Axel has killed Vexen, his powerful red arm wrapped around Vexen’s perfectly human throat, crushing with all of Agni’s strength.
While Axel’s own green eyes, perfectly, terribly, predictably, human-
We can fix that little flaw yet, my beautiful, Axel.
-eyes betray just how startled he is with himself.
“It was the right moment,” he acquiesces, to himself, to Rudra.
Rudra’s Bliss blue eyes smile up at him sadly.
“Who are you?” Rudra wonders. His blue and white striped sweater is falling off his left shoulder and his little black hat is clutched loosely in one hand.
“Axel.”
“I could help you out, you know, Axel.” Rudra murmurs. “If you’ll come with me…Kingdom Come isn’t just about stopping the distribution of Hearts.”
His skin returns to its human tone.
Agni…Agni rips at his shoulders, begging him to stop.
Squall Leonhart doesn’t like what he sees.
“R-”
Rudra signals him to shut up, so he does.
“This is Axel, Leon, I’m thinking he’s ready for new alliances.”
“He’s a Nobody, are you kidding me, they don’t betray their own.”
Rudra laughs. “Shut up, Leon,” he says, taking Axel by the hand and leading him into the warehouse.
So, this is where Kingdom Come has been hiding. In some floating warehouse at the center of town. Hiding in plain sight, Axel is suitably chagrined, but there’s something about this place…there are no scents. No smells whatsoever, even Rudra’s beautiful rain-like perfume has disappeared entirely.
That’s how they hid, and it makes sense, and Axel’s nose itches horribly. At least what it lacks in aroma it makes up for in other ways.
The warehouse of the Kingdom Come is the loudest place Axel has ever been, and he quickly realizes he loves it. All those hours and days he’d spent with Marluxia and Larxene, hushed dealings, hits of drugs, shots of alcohol, silent dominations.
He wonders if Marluxia really believed that Vexen would be able to keep him in line.
Agni snarls at the idea of Varna controlling her.
“Are you hungry?” Rudra asks him softly.
Axel stiffens a little out of a surprise, but finds relaxation once more and plasters a big careful grin full of teeth onto his face.
“We Tuners always are.”
“Wait three days.”
“I’ll starve.”
“Just do it.”
Funny thing about Rudra, what he says goes. Even though it’s obvious that Leonhart is the leader of this operation, Rudra still has more power. He’s just never around, Axel quickly learns. He wonders where the little blond bastard goes, but when he attempts to leave the warehouse to find out, Leonhart sticks out his huge gunblade and shakes his head.
Kill them! Kill them! Eat them! Destroy them!
Agni screams and rails and cries, but Axel knows better.
Axel knows Marluxia will be looking and he’s grateful for the place to lay low for a few days, even if his hunger is likely to drive him mad if it goes on much longer.
The only thing he comes to count on during those three trial days, is that, every day, at noon-Axle knows it’s noon because there’s a huge clock that chimes on the hour-Rudra will return to the warehouse. He will approach the ‘bedroom’, which is nothing more than an area of the warehouse set aside by a wall of crates. Inside are bedrolls, one of which Rudra will lie down on and promptly fall asleep. His pretty Bliss-junkie eyes finally slipping shut.
Axel doesn’t know what it is about that vulnerable face of his but-
Eat him! Eat him!
-he finds himself watching the boy for a few moments every day.
On the second day, Leon comes up behind him and says something angry and defensive. Axel just smiles and asks,
“How long has he been off Bliss?”
And Leon just smiles darkly and answers. “His brother was killed by Hearts.”
Axel hasn’t dreamed since he first coupled with Agni.
But that final night, with his stomach crying out hungrily, he dreams.
He dreams about one of those gang battles, the kind they fed Hearts to innocent people for and watched them slaughter each other. It was more entertainment than actual fighting.
Axel wonders which one of those mindless faces belonged to Rudra’s brother.
Axel knows the danger of Hearts, has always known the danger of Hearts.
But he’s also known the power, the basic militant forces, albeit berserkers, and the money and…the few remaining police (vigilante) forces had given up after the first few weeks of Hearts introduction to the city of Midgar, because those psychotic addicts were too violent to be quelled, it was a waste of time to jail them, a waste of lives.
Not to mention the average user died after only a few months, maybe a year, if you were lucky. Hearts dried you out quick, didn’t matter if you snorted it or injected it or smoked it or dropped it. You traded years of your life for a few hours of the most mind-numbingly orgasmic sensation in the entire world.
Warm blood dripping from your fingers, life in your hands.
That warm cotton candy feeling in your gut and the smile on your face.
Agni begs him to stop.
But he dreams.
On the third night Rudra takes him from the warehouse, they get a flying taxi and head to the outskirts of town.
There…there waits a place Axel has only heard rumors about. People, regular humes, penned up like animals and…
“This the buffet?” he wonders, licking his lips.
“Be quick, this is a research facility, so it isn’t as if they’re really here for the taking, don’t be caught,” Rudra replies and Axel doesn’t have to be told twice.
His skin has turned fire red before he’s even fully left the vehicle, his mouth is watering and saliva is dribbling down his chin.
The little pigs squeal as they catch sight of him, calling wildly, desperately, futilely, for the guards. But Axel’s already eaten half of a child, and the warm blood is driving him mad. It’s so hot and so exciting and he’s been so hungry…
Agni joins him after a moment’s hesitation and they lose themselves in the feast.
There’s something intoxicating about abstinence.
Something delicious about feeling the walls of his stomach cave in and then filling them unto bursting.
Something amazing about smelling nothing for days and days and then letting every last putrid scent of the word come rushing in.
Something…or, Axel, reluctantly, realizes, it might just be that when he climbs into the taxi, trying to clear the blood from his face, Rudra’s eyes are always so dark and perfectly wine red.
The first time, Axel paused with surprise and stared at him while Rudra jammed his hat down onto his head, hiding his eyes behind the brim and sharp tufts of hair.
The second time, he didn’t bother, just turned away and told the cabbie to drive.
Agni whines at him insistently, but her voice has gotten quieter over the…over time…
Until at last he’s allowed out.
“The point is, Axel,” Rudra says, he’s perched on top of a crate, and even then he’s still shorter. Axel has learned that Rudra is in fact an adult and fully-grown, but he’s still at least a head and a half shorter. “That we’ll treat you better and ask less of you. The point was to show you that. All you have to do, in return, is help us get Hearts off the streets, help us stop the research on those people you eat for dinner and…”
“Why would I stop it? Then there wouldn’t be-”
“Cause once you do your damn job we you can go back to hunting.”
The offer has its appeal. It’s exactly what he needs right now when he’s on the run from the Nobodies, who no doubt have not forgotten his betrayal, have not forgiven him for putting a dent in their ranks.
“Yeah, okay, I like you well enough.”
Rudra makes a face, he’s not particularly amused.
“I was hoping you’d do it because people are dying.”
“They die by my hand anyway, comes with being cursed, sweetheart.”
There’s a massacre. It’s a proclamation of war from Marluxia.
“They got their new hit of Hearts…” Rudra scowls, watching the blood slowly dribble off the edge of the platform, falling down towards endless cloudscape. Sewers of the cities of the sky.
Axel laughs in reply. “As long as they have Zexion they will always have Hearts. The kid has a lab down off Dog Street.”
Rudra’s eyes light up like fire.
Hearts burn. Hearts burn real good.
Ever since torching Zexion’s lab there’s something about Rudra that’s begun to drive Axel mad.
Mad to the point where he comes back to the cab with blood on his tongue and crushes their mouths together, forcing gobbets and sweet metallic tang past the boy’s lips.
His Bliss-blue eyes turn perfectly red.
Rudra licks his lips once, twice.
“Drive,” he tells the cabbie and shoves Axel away.
He follows Rudra. Wherever the beautiful little creature who smells like rain is going, Axel wants to know. Axel wants to wait for the right time to pin him up against the wall and remind the boy who is a demon here.
So, he stalks, reaching quietly for his demon form to give him more speed.
Rudra’s path takes them deep into town, to some tiny apartment on the twentieth floor.
Axel eases open the door after Rudra has shut it and slithers through the shadows. The room is full of shadows; the only light a thin beam coming from the bathroom. Axel follows, follows, his breath speeding and his blood roaring and Rudra’s beautiful scent is just so damn strong.
Then he sees it. Rudra is stripping off his clothes, pulling the huge blue and white striped sweater up over his head and…between his shoulder blades.
A mark.
A virus.
Two keys interlocking with his flesh to release his virus.
Agni hisses loudly and Rudra turns.
“Oh…Axel…” he whispers, as if he pities him. "I kind of liked you…"
Squall Leonhart turns as Roxas enters the warehouse; the boy is sucking his fingers methodically, one by one.
“Did you send Axel to do something?”
Roxas smiles thinly, his Bliss-blue eyes sparkling. “Axel won’t be around anymore.”
Leon nods and turns back to his task. “So, the drugs worked on him. Great, when do you want to raid the medical facility?”
Food, delicious, more, more, mmm, my sweet, delectable, wonderful, Roxas.
Rudra whispers in his ear.
“Tomorrow.”
end
Note: Uh. This was actually suggested by my *mother* who I am very close with. She was interested in my latest story and suggested an 'O. Henry' ending. -coughs.- If anyone would find it in them to draw Roxas/Rudra with the sweater and the pants and the hat...I would be in your eternal debt.
P.S. I'm horribly aware that Agni is a male God, however, something about Axel just demanded I make her female.
x-posted: khyaoi & axelxroxas & thedancinglight