[Fic] Axel/Roxas - we were here before you fell, you will be here when we rise
Title: we were here before you fell, you will be here when we rise
Series: Kingdom Hearts/Coraline fusion
Pairing/Characters: Other!Axel/Roxas; Axel/Roxas
Rating: R
Total length: 4,122
Warnings: choppy writing, mild gore and violence, and people who have buttons for eyes
Summary: Sometimes he gets curious about the real Axel- whether his cheeks curve the same way when he pretends to smile, if his heart (real heart, real, not fake and stuffed with goosefeathers) pounds double time when Roxas smiles (whether Roxas even smiles around him). But most of all, he wonders what his voice sounds like, without the slashed threads of his cotton voicebox.
Author's Note: I highly recommend you listen to the Coraline soundtrack as you read this, because it's creepy and awesome and sets the mood. Obviously you don't have to be familiar with Coraline to read this, but it definitely helps things along. Happy Halloween~
---B E C A R E F U L W HA T Y O U W I S H F O R---
Every horror story starts the same way. A murder. An old wives tale. A creepy old crone in the woods. Some sorority girl failing to notice the creep in the ski mask behind her.
Well, this story starts with something else.
It isn't too far from the usual standards- like comparing a gull to a hawk- they're different enough from far away, but in the end, both still have wings.
A different kind of tale, but quilted from the same fabric.
This tale starts with a threadbare doll, a sealed door, and a boy who isn't really a boy gasping to life with sawdust in his lungs and a monster grinning down at him.
.
The move is supposed to be a good thing, their parents tell them. Fresh air, trees, and snow that doesn't go gray within seconds of hitting the pavement. A new start, their mother grins from over the kitchen table.
Sora looks at him and shrugs. Says, how bad can it be?
.
Axel's never had any delusions about his existence. He knows what he is. That he's not real. Well, of course he does. It's kind of hard to miss the fact that you don't really exist when a monster with a razorblade smile is stitching your skin together- sewing the buttons in, asking, "While black is traditional, don't you think you'd rather go green?" When she pets his fake hair and strokes his cotton cheek with her needle thin talons and breathes, "oh yes, Roxas will love you."
He tries to tell her that fifteen year old boys don't play with dolls, anymore. It's a core part of the other Axel's personality that's carried over to him- the sarcasm and this knowledge of things that he will never know. He smiles at her and tells her that she'd have better luck enticing the shiny new fly into her web by dangling an enchanted Xbox over his head. A television with surround sound. Maybe a jet ski.
With a growl, she sews his mouth shut.
He probably should have seen that coming, but hey. He's got buttons for eyes. He can't see much of anything. (Except for how he can.)
.
The first thing he notices about the house is the picture hanging in the dining room- a little boy, with his ice cream a splattered mess all over the ground. Roxas observes it wryly for a moment, listening to his mother shouting for Sora down the hall. The kid is blonde, with blue eyes and a little blue suit, a pout on his mouth.
The house is old, creaky, and pink. Predictably, Sora loves it- managing to shove all his grief over losing his friends to the side in favor of exploring the ancient apartment. Equally predictable, Roxas hates it.
It's not just the fact that the house is boring, gray, and smells forever of mothballs- it's the fact that his new home is in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. No sneaking boys home for Roxas, oh no. Though he supposes that this may have been his mother's point.
No boys, no friends, and not a cigarette in sight. Instead, Roxas is left with a skateboard that he can't use, a brother who thinks he's still twelve, and parents who also seem to think that they're still children.
The sad blue boy in the picture glowers down at him.
"You and me both," he tells it.
.
Sometimes he can hear whispers through the cracks and creases that seals their worlds so close together, louder if he presses his ear to the door. The Other Mother keeps track of her new fly through these cracks. She lets him listen sometimes too, when she's sick of the Other Father's company and wants someone who isn't half so cheerful next to her.
Axel- because that's what she says he's called, taps a foot against the creaky floorboards and pretends that he isn't intrigued by the way the boy's voice sounds when he's irritable.
After the Other Mother retires for the night, Axel presses himself down into sheets that are designed to look like the fly's- a mirror to the very sheets that the boy is sleeping in right this minute. If he concentrates very carefully, the sheets warm with body heat that isn't his, and little hitching breaths will sound right next to his ear.
The world's slither around each other's- the fake and the real one, and sometimes the creases press together. Sometimes, between the folds, Axel can almost feel this boy- this unwitting fly that he was created to entice away from his world.
He listens to the boy sigh, hears the rustle of cloth as he rolls over, and wonders what he looks like.
.
Roxas hates the rain sometimes. His mother says it's cathartic, that it cleanses and replenishes- nature's way of purging all the bad shit from the world.
Another rain drop spatters against the tip of his cigarette, knocking the cherry to the mud in a flurry of quickly stifled embers. Cursing, he grabs for another one.
.
"Not yet, Axel," she tells him through gritted teeth. With a sigh, he edges away from the brick that's sealing off the worlds.
The Other Mother gives him a smile full of razor wire, purrs-- "The key, my sweet. We must wait for him."
Axel wonders if the other him is a patient person.
Somehow, he thinks not.
.
Sometimes, when Roxas decides to get out of his creepy ass house and make an attempt at having a little privacy in the even creepier woods, he can feel someone watching him. At first, he's sure that it's some hick serial killer- the true story in all those slasher flicks. His imagination runs away from him, and before he knows it he's on his third cigarette and pondering the trees around him in the case of a zombie apocalypse. He's fairly sure that he'd be able to scale at least one of these trees, though getting down might be more of the problem.
He's tapping some ash free against the side of an old pine when someone steps out of the woods from behind him.
Red hair, green eyes, smarmy grin, and weird tattoos.
Oh yeah. Definite serial killer.
He's going to die in the woods.
The serial killer grins at him, and Roxas frowns down at the dirty hand that's been thrust towards him. Maybe this is a thing here. Maybe all the serial killers want you to shake their hand first.
"The name's Axel. Figured I should probably introduce myself since I've been stalking you through these woods for a couple days."
Oh yes, because that's definitely supposed to make him feel better.
There's a cat at the serial killer's feet, and though it's purring as it winds itself around the guy's ankles, it hisses the second it catches sight of Roxas.
Comforting, but what the hell.
"Roxas," he says, and takes the guy's hand.
.
The Other Mother created him as the bait, sure, but it's his thirst for blood that really endears him to the monster. The thrill of the hunt that must have seeped out of her and into him. He sits on the fly's bed, and he waits.
.
Axel isn't a serial killer, but he sure as hell isn't normal either.
Roxas thinks, that if he's being completely honest with himself, he kind of likes the guy.
.
He takes to smoking, uncaring when the monster who created him hisses about the smell getting caught in the curtains. The smell permeates through the worlds sometimes, whenever the fly feels foolish enough to sneak a smoke in the bedroom. Axel presses himself close to the walls and inhales- listens to the click of the boy's lighter and the way he curses at himself when he gets ash all over the bed. So he makes her create some for him, just to feel the smoke warming his sawdust insides, threaten to ignite the wool. He prowls the house, growling whenever the Other Father tries to get him to listen to some song that he's been dillying with, shrugging off the Other Mother's attempts to show him how to knit.
Bait, bait, bait. He's a trap that's yet to be sprung- no purpose until the moment that stupid fly finds the key.
Then, finally-
.
There's a door hidden by the wallpaper. A door that opens with a strange key. A door that is bricked off.
"Interesting."
.
show time.
.
And then of course he meets the boy. The fly whose intestines the Other Mother wants on a stick, whose soul she wants to suck the life from until he's just another husk of thought in the attic- and immediately, any and all hunger he'd felt is gone. Snuffed out like a candle flame, gone the fantasies of prying the boy's chest open and seeing what a real heart looks like.
Now he just wants to press his wrist up against the boy's throat- feel the thrum of blood beneath his skin and delight in the warmth.
The Other Mother has already started her game- feasts and shows of love that are a bit too outdated to really use on a boy his age. That's the tricky part of getting one this old, she tells him. Teenagers just don't have that same enthusiasm that children do. "But don't worry, sweetling," she grins, patting his head. "He'll be tasty all the same."
But that there- that's the trouble. He doesn't really want to eat the boy anymore.
She seems disconcerted when Roxas proves to be immune to her tricks, nodding distractedly at the Other Father's songs and picking at the glorious meals she presses upon him. She only sighs when he retreats to his own world, and in the silence of the house she brightens a bit, her glee shining through in the way the dingy wallpaper gleams as if new, and whispers, "ah, but that is where you come in handy."
Because it's true. As disinterested as Roxas is in her petty tricks, the one thing that seems to intrigue him is Axel. He seeks him out the moment he crosses the worlds- laying out with him on the roof and watching the moon above them with their sides pressed carefully . Taking him into the forest and showing him all the places the real Axel has taken him.
The Other Mother is furious half the time, irritable with how much extra she's had to create. All those trees and rivers stretched across her loom, and she doesn't even get to soak up his presence.
.
When Roxas is gone, things are worse. He can still almost feel him, can hear half formed questions and the shouts of angry parents and occasionally, what must be Sora- the brother he's never met. Sometimes he wonders why Roxas doesn't laugh like that, but then Roxas is with him and there are bruises beneath his eyes and sallow skin, like half-hardened wax, shadows digging crevasses into the fine hollow of his throat. Roxas lies with him in the attic, talking about dreams and hopes and the stars, but when his parents are brought up, his mouth thins and the air goes silent and still. Axel doesn't have to wonder much, after that.
.
Sometimes he gets curious about the real Axel- whether his cheeks curve the same way when he pretends to smile, if his heart (real heart, real, not fake and stuffed with goosefeathers) pounds double time when Roxas smiles (whether Roxas even smiles around him). But most of all, he wonders what his voice sounds like, without the slashed threads of his cotton voicebox.
"You're better than him," Roxas tells him one night, fists clenched at his sides and something hollow and angry in his voice. Roxas reaches out for him and yanks him across the tiles of the roof and into a bruising kiss.
It's something they haven't done before, and for a moment Axel freezes. Roxas starts to pull back, a scowl around his lips and a furrow between his brows, and Axel doesn't stop to think- just yanks him back up- where he belongs.
He wonders, briefly, what the Other Axel could have possibly done. Why he would even think to give this up, and then Roxas is pressing against him, bearing him down onto the roof, and the thought is erased from his mind.
.
Roxas starts visiting more and more often, skipping school in his world for jaunts through the forest with Axel. The Other Mother purrs, and presses a pair of buttons into the palm of Axel's hand. She's frustrated, always frustrated by the lack of acknowledgement that Roxas has given her- a short, clipped greeting when he arrives and then he's off to find Axel.
"But not to worry," she says, making him curl his fingers around the buttons, "if you ask, he won't be able to say no."
He gestures furiously to his throat, and she giggles, the sound like cobwebs.
"Oh darling, you don't really need words to ask him."
.
She's right.
He doesn't.
(He leaves the buttons in his pockets, and tries to forget them.)
.
"It's time," she hisses, and it feels like the world collapses around him.
.
"It's time-" she hisses-
.
"It's tim-"
.
She sits them down for dinner- pries the buttons away from him and growls in his ear- "I thought you were better than this."
She turns a smile on Roxas, ignoring the way he's sending Axel helpless little smiles of confusion.
"Now sweetie, I think it's time we welcomed you into this family for real."
She sets the buttons before him.
.
Predictably, Roxas doesn't react well.
.
She snarls at him when Roxas has retreated to his room in a panic, her true face bleeding through the mask. Talons wrap around his throat, and he chokes, her magic rising inside of him- threatening to tear through his stitching. Pinpricks of pain, and he starts to worry as the smell of sawdust permeates the air.
She releases him; hisses- "fix it."
.
When he crawls beneath the sheets with him, Roxas rolls just out of reach- curling into a ball along the far wall. His breathing is coming fast and choppy, heart pounding double time beneath his thin t-shirt, and his pillow is damp with the smell of salt. Axel lets his fingers brush up beneath Roxas' shirt, ghosting them along sharp hip bones and through the faint dusting of hair low on his belly.
"Do you want me to let her sew buttons into my eyes?"
Roxas' voice comes out shaky, and Axel would close his eyes if he had any.
He presses his face closer to Roxas' curls, and slowly, shakes his head. Back and forth, back and forth- his lips dragging against the back of Roxas' neck. His fingers curl in Roxas' hair, and he cradles the boy's head, presses kisses to his skin.
No no no no no no no no no-
When Roxas turns into his arms and kisses him, it feels like goodbye.
.
He wakes in the night to talons dragging him away from Roxas' warmth, out of the bed and down the hall, all the way to the Other Mother's room. She lets him go, and paces away from him, grinding her teeth together angrily.
When she turns, there's needle and thread in her claws.
"I think it's about time we fixed that sad face of yours."
.
When Roxas wakes up, he's alone.
.
"Where's Axel?" he asks, feeling along the floorboards with his toes as if he can navigate this world through feel alone.
The Other Father gapes at him, drool dribbling down his chin to pool at the gaping neck of his bathrobe. The grin he gives Roxas is demented- mad, but not as frightening as his voice.
"He pulled a long face, and mother didn't like it."
.
"I want to go home."
.
"Where is Axel?"
.
"Let me go home."
.
The Other Mother grins.
"No."
.
"You may come out when you've learned to be a loving son," she hisses, like she hasn't just thrown him straight through a mirror- like the room he's in isn't pitch black and smelling of blood and sawdust.
It's cold, colder than the rest of the house, and if things weren't creepy enough, there's a little girl standing in the corner- little white dress, her skin gray and peeling off her bones.
"Who are you?"
The little girl smiles- "Don't remember," she singsongs.
.
"She said she loved me, but she locked me in here. Ate up my life. Stole my soul."
The little girl looks at him, and he can see every tooth she has through a gaping hole in her cheek. She smiles, and the hole stretches. "Won't you find my soul?"
.
At first, he thinks the hands on him are hers, and he fights. His elbow comes into contact with something, and the person behind him lets out a soft oof as he's pulled the rest of the way out of the mirror. But no, it's just Axel- Axel, whose lips are stitched up into the parody of a smile, thread peeking out through his cheeks. The skin around it looks red and swollen, and it takes him too long to remember that it's the magic that makes his skin look real- magic that makes kissing him feel like he's really kissing another person.
But he doesn't care. It's Axel- Axel coming to his rescue, so Roxas takes a minute to yank the threads out, helping Axel massage his cheeks once the last of it has been pulled free.
He kisses him, breathes the smell of sawdust through his nose and lets his hands tangle in Axel's hair.
Axel pushes him away after a breath, finger to his lips.
.
Go go go go go go! You have to get out of here. Please. Get out, please. I love you, I'll miss you, I can't bear the thought of being without you.
Good thing I won't live long enough to miss you very much.
One last kiss, and he pushes Roxas through the door. Already he's crumbling away, his left hand falling to dust in Roxas' hair.
There's no time for sentiments, no time for soft I-love-you's in darkened hallways, because the monster has already realized she's lost him. She can feel him going, and howls it to the rafters. There isn't any time to thank Roxas, to wish for speech this one last time so he can whisper his secret into Roxas' curls- that for a while, this boy, he made Axel feel. That he made Axel feel like he was real- like he had a heart.
He watches Roxas go for a minute, the boy trying to snatch frantic glimpses of him even as he crawls away from this hell. He can hear the Other Mother at the end of the hall, and his world is ending, but it won't matter. Roxas is beautiful, and for a brief time, this ramshackle collection of spare parts felt what it was like to love.
She howls and hisses when she sees him blockading the door with his body, and when her talons dig in, his eyes are open.
.
No one would miss me.
I would.
.
She has his brother- his real mother, real father. She has his twin brother, half of Roxas, and she still has Axel. Roxas listened to her shriek through the door afterwards, listened to wet rending sounds that dissolved into something softer, like the tearing of cloth once the magic that made Axel real wore down.
Axel sacrificed himself to get Roxas through this door, and Roxas hates to waste that. He hates it the same way that he hates the wetness that gathers in his eyes for a creature that probably wasn't even real. A creation of hers designed to make him say yes.
The doorbell rings, and when he answers it, it's Axel- real human Axel with real human green eyes and lips that part to say, "hello goldilocks, I need to ask a boy about a doll."
It's too soon- too soon, the sounds of Axel, his Axel, being ripped apart fresh in his ears, and it's all he can do to just sag against the door and sob.
.
Axel thinks he's crazy. Real Axel, not his Axel. It had been in his eyes as Roxas had rambled on and on about Other Mother's and sawdust and the absence of his brother, and isn't that something- how expressive the real Axel's eyes are when his Axel hadn't even had any.
He remembers the way his Axel had curled close to him beneath the covers, wrapping his arms around Roxas and mouthing sloppily at the slope of his shoulder blade.
That's gone now, and he's left with a doppleganger who had freaked out all those long weeks ago when Roxas tried to kiss him. Who thinks he's insane, and had edged out of the house so warily that Roxas had thrown a shoe at his head.
The house is too quiet, and he hugs his pillow close. Tries to pretend it's Axel.
He wakes in the night to paws kneading his chest, and feline eyes glinting at him in the darkness.
.
The cat accompanies him to the Other World, and once they're there, says, "you know this is a trap, don't you?"
When Roxas jumps, the cat looks at him slyly and purrs, "oh, don't look at me like that. You were a bit too preoccupied for a conversation before."
.
She's left Axel near the door like a warning, ripped up like a mauled teddy bear- the stuffing spilling all over the floor. Roxas takes a step away and something clinks beneath his foot. A button. Green, and not traditional at all.
He stuffs it into his pocket and keeps going.
.
"I want to play a game."
The Other Mother's hands freeze on a dish, soap suds dusting her wrists. She turns, and smiles.
"A game, you say?"
.
The Other Father howls, drowning itself even as it presses a little girl's soul into Roxas' palm.
.
"You cheated," the Other Mother says, and snarls in satisfaction as her web collapses- snaring him inside. The crawl out is excruciating, made harder by the fact that she makes the husk of what was once Axel lurch to life, jaws gaping. For a moment, there's a desperate fear catching around Roxas' heart- just another of her dolls, not Axel at all-
The moment passes when Axel, spilled insides and all, brushes what's left of his hand down Roxas' side and charges right past him, into the waiting jaws of the Beldam.
Roxas takes the snow globe and goes, paying no mind to the mechanical claws left on the ground of the tunnel behind him.
.
She follows him. Of course she does- her claws a vice grip around his throat as he's dragged kicking and screaming away from the well. He chokes, and wonders if she'll drag him all the way back like this- if he'll be a corpse by the time she gets the key to the door.
Bright lights and a wail that pierces through the night, and he's so relieved to see red hair that he forgets to look for the button eyes. Together, they smash her claws- toss them down the well with the key, and are left blinking and dirty in the moonlight.
Axel looks good in the moonlight, but then, Roxas already knew that.
"I think an apology may be in order," he whispers, face still turned towards the well- carefully not looking at Roxas.
Roxas silences him with a shake of his head, and digs a hand into his pocket.
Moonlight reflects off the button, and Roxas presses it into the palm of Axel's hand- makes him curl his fingers around it.
He smiles.
"I think this belongs to you."
.
Most horror stories end with a slow panning scene to some new unknown horror, even as the heroes live on, happily unconcerned. A piece of the puzzle that they've forgotten, some fragment left behind. A legacy, and someone to carry on the terror.
This story ends with something else.
It ends with a boy who is finally an actual boy gasping into a kiss. A boy who shudders once- twice- and remembers. It ends with the destruction of a key, a doll, and a door.
It ends with a smile, and the sounds of the boy's first word.
"Roxas."
Series: Kingdom Hearts/Coraline fusion
Pairing/Characters: Other!Axel/Roxas; Axel/Roxas
Rating: R
Total length: 4,122
Warnings: choppy writing, mild gore and violence, and people who have buttons for eyes
Summary: Sometimes he gets curious about the real Axel- whether his cheeks curve the same way when he pretends to smile, if his heart (real heart, real, not fake and stuffed with goosefeathers) pounds double time when Roxas smiles (whether Roxas even smiles around him). But most of all, he wonders what his voice sounds like, without the slashed threads of his cotton voicebox.
Author's Note: I highly recommend you listen to the Coraline soundtrack as you read this, because it's creepy and awesome and sets the mood. Obviously you don't have to be familiar with Coraline to read this, but it definitely helps things along. Happy Halloween~
---B E C A R E F U L W HA T Y O U W I S H F O R---
Every horror story starts the same way. A murder. An old wives tale. A creepy old crone in the woods. Some sorority girl failing to notice the creep in the ski mask behind her.
Well, this story starts with something else.
It isn't too far from the usual standards- like comparing a gull to a hawk- they're different enough from far away, but in the end, both still have wings.
A different kind of tale, but quilted from the same fabric.
This tale starts with a threadbare doll, a sealed door, and a boy who isn't really a boy gasping to life with sawdust in his lungs and a monster grinning down at him.
.
The move is supposed to be a good thing, their parents tell them. Fresh air, trees, and snow that doesn't go gray within seconds of hitting the pavement. A new start, their mother grins from over the kitchen table.
Sora looks at him and shrugs. Says, how bad can it be?
.
Axel's never had any delusions about his existence. He knows what he is. That he's not real. Well, of course he does. It's kind of hard to miss the fact that you don't really exist when a monster with a razorblade smile is stitching your skin together- sewing the buttons in, asking, "While black is traditional, don't you think you'd rather go green?" When she pets his fake hair and strokes his cotton cheek with her needle thin talons and breathes, "oh yes, Roxas will love you."
He tries to tell her that fifteen year old boys don't play with dolls, anymore. It's a core part of the other Axel's personality that's carried over to him- the sarcasm and this knowledge of things that he will never know. He smiles at her and tells her that she'd have better luck enticing the shiny new fly into her web by dangling an enchanted Xbox over his head. A television with surround sound. Maybe a jet ski.
With a growl, she sews his mouth shut.
He probably should have seen that coming, but hey. He's got buttons for eyes. He can't see much of anything. (Except for how he can.)
.
The first thing he notices about the house is the picture hanging in the dining room- a little boy, with his ice cream a splattered mess all over the ground. Roxas observes it wryly for a moment, listening to his mother shouting for Sora down the hall. The kid is blonde, with blue eyes and a little blue suit, a pout on his mouth.
The house is old, creaky, and pink. Predictably, Sora loves it- managing to shove all his grief over losing his friends to the side in favor of exploring the ancient apartment. Equally predictable, Roxas hates it.
It's not just the fact that the house is boring, gray, and smells forever of mothballs- it's the fact that his new home is in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. No sneaking boys home for Roxas, oh no. Though he supposes that this may have been his mother's point.
No boys, no friends, and not a cigarette in sight. Instead, Roxas is left with a skateboard that he can't use, a brother who thinks he's still twelve, and parents who also seem to think that they're still children.
The sad blue boy in the picture glowers down at him.
"You and me both," he tells it.
.
Sometimes he can hear whispers through the cracks and creases that seals their worlds so close together, louder if he presses his ear to the door. The Other Mother keeps track of her new fly through these cracks. She lets him listen sometimes too, when she's sick of the Other Father's company and wants someone who isn't half so cheerful next to her.
Axel- because that's what she says he's called, taps a foot against the creaky floorboards and pretends that he isn't intrigued by the way the boy's voice sounds when he's irritable.
After the Other Mother retires for the night, Axel presses himself down into sheets that are designed to look like the fly's- a mirror to the very sheets that the boy is sleeping in right this minute. If he concentrates very carefully, the sheets warm with body heat that isn't his, and little hitching breaths will sound right next to his ear.
The world's slither around each other's- the fake and the real one, and sometimes the creases press together. Sometimes, between the folds, Axel can almost feel this boy- this unwitting fly that he was created to entice away from his world.
He listens to the boy sigh, hears the rustle of cloth as he rolls over, and wonders what he looks like.
.
Roxas hates the rain sometimes. His mother says it's cathartic, that it cleanses and replenishes- nature's way of purging all the bad shit from the world.
Another rain drop spatters against the tip of his cigarette, knocking the cherry to the mud in a flurry of quickly stifled embers. Cursing, he grabs for another one.
.
"Not yet, Axel," she tells him through gritted teeth. With a sigh, he edges away from the brick that's sealing off the worlds.
The Other Mother gives him a smile full of razor wire, purrs-- "The key, my sweet. We must wait for him."
Axel wonders if the other him is a patient person.
Somehow, he thinks not.
.
Sometimes, when Roxas decides to get out of his creepy ass house and make an attempt at having a little privacy in the even creepier woods, he can feel someone watching him. At first, he's sure that it's some hick serial killer- the true story in all those slasher flicks. His imagination runs away from him, and before he knows it he's on his third cigarette and pondering the trees around him in the case of a zombie apocalypse. He's fairly sure that he'd be able to scale at least one of these trees, though getting down might be more of the problem.
He's tapping some ash free against the side of an old pine when someone steps out of the woods from behind him.
Red hair, green eyes, smarmy grin, and weird tattoos.
Oh yeah. Definite serial killer.
He's going to die in the woods.
The serial killer grins at him, and Roxas frowns down at the dirty hand that's been thrust towards him. Maybe this is a thing here. Maybe all the serial killers want you to shake their hand first.
"The name's Axel. Figured I should probably introduce myself since I've been stalking you through these woods for a couple days."
Oh yes, because that's definitely supposed to make him feel better.
There's a cat at the serial killer's feet, and though it's purring as it winds itself around the guy's ankles, it hisses the second it catches sight of Roxas.
Comforting, but what the hell.
"Roxas," he says, and takes the guy's hand.
.
The Other Mother created him as the bait, sure, but it's his thirst for blood that really endears him to the monster. The thrill of the hunt that must have seeped out of her and into him. He sits on the fly's bed, and he waits.
.
Axel isn't a serial killer, but he sure as hell isn't normal either.
Roxas thinks, that if he's being completely honest with himself, he kind of likes the guy.
.
He takes to smoking, uncaring when the monster who created him hisses about the smell getting caught in the curtains. The smell permeates through the worlds sometimes, whenever the fly feels foolish enough to sneak a smoke in the bedroom. Axel presses himself close to the walls and inhales- listens to the click of the boy's lighter and the way he curses at himself when he gets ash all over the bed. So he makes her create some for him, just to feel the smoke warming his sawdust insides, threaten to ignite the wool. He prowls the house, growling whenever the Other Father tries to get him to listen to some song that he's been dillying with, shrugging off the Other Mother's attempts to show him how to knit.
Bait, bait, bait. He's a trap that's yet to be sprung- no purpose until the moment that stupid fly finds the key.
Then, finally-
.
There's a door hidden by the wallpaper. A door that opens with a strange key. A door that is bricked off.
"Interesting."
.
show time.
.
And then of course he meets the boy. The fly whose intestines the Other Mother wants on a stick, whose soul she wants to suck the life from until he's just another husk of thought in the attic- and immediately, any and all hunger he'd felt is gone. Snuffed out like a candle flame, gone the fantasies of prying the boy's chest open and seeing what a real heart looks like.
Now he just wants to press his wrist up against the boy's throat- feel the thrum of blood beneath his skin and delight in the warmth.
The Other Mother has already started her game- feasts and shows of love that are a bit too outdated to really use on a boy his age. That's the tricky part of getting one this old, she tells him. Teenagers just don't have that same enthusiasm that children do. "But don't worry, sweetling," she grins, patting his head. "He'll be tasty all the same."
But that there- that's the trouble. He doesn't really want to eat the boy anymore.
She seems disconcerted when Roxas proves to be immune to her tricks, nodding distractedly at the Other Father's songs and picking at the glorious meals she presses upon him. She only sighs when he retreats to his own world, and in the silence of the house she brightens a bit, her glee shining through in the way the dingy wallpaper gleams as if new, and whispers, "ah, but that is where you come in handy."
Because it's true. As disinterested as Roxas is in her petty tricks, the one thing that seems to intrigue him is Axel. He seeks him out the moment he crosses the worlds- laying out with him on the roof and watching the moon above them with their sides pressed carefully . Taking him into the forest and showing him all the places the real Axel has taken him.
The Other Mother is furious half the time, irritable with how much extra she's had to create. All those trees and rivers stretched across her loom, and she doesn't even get to soak up his presence.
.
When Roxas is gone, things are worse. He can still almost feel him, can hear half formed questions and the shouts of angry parents and occasionally, what must be Sora- the brother he's never met. Sometimes he wonders why Roxas doesn't laugh like that, but then Roxas is with him and there are bruises beneath his eyes and sallow skin, like half-hardened wax, shadows digging crevasses into the fine hollow of his throat. Roxas lies with him in the attic, talking about dreams and hopes and the stars, but when his parents are brought up, his mouth thins and the air goes silent and still. Axel doesn't have to wonder much, after that.
.
Sometimes he gets curious about the real Axel- whether his cheeks curve the same way when he pretends to smile, if his heart (real heart, real, not fake and stuffed with goosefeathers) pounds double time when Roxas smiles (whether Roxas even smiles around him). But most of all, he wonders what his voice sounds like, without the slashed threads of his cotton voicebox.
"You're better than him," Roxas tells him one night, fists clenched at his sides and something hollow and angry in his voice. Roxas reaches out for him and yanks him across the tiles of the roof and into a bruising kiss.
It's something they haven't done before, and for a moment Axel freezes. Roxas starts to pull back, a scowl around his lips and a furrow between his brows, and Axel doesn't stop to think- just yanks him back up- where he belongs.
He wonders, briefly, what the Other Axel could have possibly done. Why he would even think to give this up, and then Roxas is pressing against him, bearing him down onto the roof, and the thought is erased from his mind.
.
Roxas starts visiting more and more often, skipping school in his world for jaunts through the forest with Axel. The Other Mother purrs, and presses a pair of buttons into the palm of Axel's hand. She's frustrated, always frustrated by the lack of acknowledgement that Roxas has given her- a short, clipped greeting when he arrives and then he's off to find Axel.
"But not to worry," she says, making him curl his fingers around the buttons, "if you ask, he won't be able to say no."
He gestures furiously to his throat, and she giggles, the sound like cobwebs.
"Oh darling, you don't really need words to ask him."
.
She's right.
He doesn't.
(He leaves the buttons in his pockets, and tries to forget them.)
.
"It's time," she hisses, and it feels like the world collapses around him.
.
"It's time-" she hisses-
.
"It's tim-"
.
She sits them down for dinner- pries the buttons away from him and growls in his ear- "I thought you were better than this."
She turns a smile on Roxas, ignoring the way he's sending Axel helpless little smiles of confusion.
"Now sweetie, I think it's time we welcomed you into this family for real."
She sets the buttons before him.
.
Predictably, Roxas doesn't react well.
.
She snarls at him when Roxas has retreated to his room in a panic, her true face bleeding through the mask. Talons wrap around his throat, and he chokes, her magic rising inside of him- threatening to tear through his stitching. Pinpricks of pain, and he starts to worry as the smell of sawdust permeates the air.
She releases him; hisses- "fix it."
.
When he crawls beneath the sheets with him, Roxas rolls just out of reach- curling into a ball along the far wall. His breathing is coming fast and choppy, heart pounding double time beneath his thin t-shirt, and his pillow is damp with the smell of salt. Axel lets his fingers brush up beneath Roxas' shirt, ghosting them along sharp hip bones and through the faint dusting of hair low on his belly.
"Do you want me to let her sew buttons into my eyes?"
Roxas' voice comes out shaky, and Axel would close his eyes if he had any.
He presses his face closer to Roxas' curls, and slowly, shakes his head. Back and forth, back and forth- his lips dragging against the back of Roxas' neck. His fingers curl in Roxas' hair, and he cradles the boy's head, presses kisses to his skin.
No no no no no no no no no-
When Roxas turns into his arms and kisses him, it feels like goodbye.
.
He wakes in the night to talons dragging him away from Roxas' warmth, out of the bed and down the hall, all the way to the Other Mother's room. She lets him go, and paces away from him, grinding her teeth together angrily.
When she turns, there's needle and thread in her claws.
"I think it's about time we fixed that sad face of yours."
.
When Roxas wakes up, he's alone.
.
"Where's Axel?" he asks, feeling along the floorboards with his toes as if he can navigate this world through feel alone.
The Other Father gapes at him, drool dribbling down his chin to pool at the gaping neck of his bathrobe. The grin he gives Roxas is demented- mad, but not as frightening as his voice.
"He pulled a long face, and mother didn't like it."
.
"I want to go home."
.
"Where is Axel?"
.
"Let me go home."
.
The Other Mother grins.
"No."
.
"You may come out when you've learned to be a loving son," she hisses, like she hasn't just thrown him straight through a mirror- like the room he's in isn't pitch black and smelling of blood and sawdust.
It's cold, colder than the rest of the house, and if things weren't creepy enough, there's a little girl standing in the corner- little white dress, her skin gray and peeling off her bones.
"Who are you?"
The little girl smiles- "Don't remember," she singsongs.
.
"She said she loved me, but she locked me in here. Ate up my life. Stole my soul."
The little girl looks at him, and he can see every tooth she has through a gaping hole in her cheek. She smiles, and the hole stretches. "Won't you find my soul?"
.
At first, he thinks the hands on him are hers, and he fights. His elbow comes into contact with something, and the person behind him lets out a soft oof as he's pulled the rest of the way out of the mirror. But no, it's just Axel- Axel, whose lips are stitched up into the parody of a smile, thread peeking out through his cheeks. The skin around it looks red and swollen, and it takes him too long to remember that it's the magic that makes his skin look real- magic that makes kissing him feel like he's really kissing another person.
But he doesn't care. It's Axel- Axel coming to his rescue, so Roxas takes a minute to yank the threads out, helping Axel massage his cheeks once the last of it has been pulled free.
He kisses him, breathes the smell of sawdust through his nose and lets his hands tangle in Axel's hair.
Axel pushes him away after a breath, finger to his lips.
.
Go go go go go go! You have to get out of here. Please. Get out, please. I love you, I'll miss you, I can't bear the thought of being without you.
Good thing I won't live long enough to miss you very much.
One last kiss, and he pushes Roxas through the door. Already he's crumbling away, his left hand falling to dust in Roxas' hair.
There's no time for sentiments, no time for soft I-love-you's in darkened hallways, because the monster has already realized she's lost him. She can feel him going, and howls it to the rafters. There isn't any time to thank Roxas, to wish for speech this one last time so he can whisper his secret into Roxas' curls- that for a while, this boy, he made Axel feel. That he made Axel feel like he was real- like he had a heart.
He watches Roxas go for a minute, the boy trying to snatch frantic glimpses of him even as he crawls away from this hell. He can hear the Other Mother at the end of the hall, and his world is ending, but it won't matter. Roxas is beautiful, and for a brief time, this ramshackle collection of spare parts felt what it was like to love.
She howls and hisses when she sees him blockading the door with his body, and when her talons dig in, his eyes are open.
.
No one would miss me.
I would.
.
She has his brother- his real mother, real father. She has his twin brother, half of Roxas, and she still has Axel. Roxas listened to her shriek through the door afterwards, listened to wet rending sounds that dissolved into something softer, like the tearing of cloth once the magic that made Axel real wore down.
Axel sacrificed himself to get Roxas through this door, and Roxas hates to waste that. He hates it the same way that he hates the wetness that gathers in his eyes for a creature that probably wasn't even real. A creation of hers designed to make him say yes.
The doorbell rings, and when he answers it, it's Axel- real human Axel with real human green eyes and lips that part to say, "hello goldilocks, I need to ask a boy about a doll."
It's too soon- too soon, the sounds of Axel, his Axel, being ripped apart fresh in his ears, and it's all he can do to just sag against the door and sob.
.
Axel thinks he's crazy. Real Axel, not his Axel. It had been in his eyes as Roxas had rambled on and on about Other Mother's and sawdust and the absence of his brother, and isn't that something- how expressive the real Axel's eyes are when his Axel hadn't even had any.
He remembers the way his Axel had curled close to him beneath the covers, wrapping his arms around Roxas and mouthing sloppily at the slope of his shoulder blade.
That's gone now, and he's left with a doppleganger who had freaked out all those long weeks ago when Roxas tried to kiss him. Who thinks he's insane, and had edged out of the house so warily that Roxas had thrown a shoe at his head.
The house is too quiet, and he hugs his pillow close. Tries to pretend it's Axel.
He wakes in the night to paws kneading his chest, and feline eyes glinting at him in the darkness.
.
The cat accompanies him to the Other World, and once they're there, says, "you know this is a trap, don't you?"
When Roxas jumps, the cat looks at him slyly and purrs, "oh, don't look at me like that. You were a bit too preoccupied for a conversation before."
.
She's left Axel near the door like a warning, ripped up like a mauled teddy bear- the stuffing spilling all over the floor. Roxas takes a step away and something clinks beneath his foot. A button. Green, and not traditional at all.
He stuffs it into his pocket and keeps going.
.
"I want to play a game."
The Other Mother's hands freeze on a dish, soap suds dusting her wrists. She turns, and smiles.
"A game, you say?"
.
The Other Father howls, drowning itself even as it presses a little girl's soul into Roxas' palm.
.
"You cheated," the Other Mother says, and snarls in satisfaction as her web collapses- snaring him inside. The crawl out is excruciating, made harder by the fact that she makes the husk of what was once Axel lurch to life, jaws gaping. For a moment, there's a desperate fear catching around Roxas' heart- just another of her dolls, not Axel at all-
The moment passes when Axel, spilled insides and all, brushes what's left of his hand down Roxas' side and charges right past him, into the waiting jaws of the Beldam.
Roxas takes the snow globe and goes, paying no mind to the mechanical claws left on the ground of the tunnel behind him.
.
She follows him. Of course she does- her claws a vice grip around his throat as he's dragged kicking and screaming away from the well. He chokes, and wonders if she'll drag him all the way back like this- if he'll be a corpse by the time she gets the key to the door.
Bright lights and a wail that pierces through the night, and he's so relieved to see red hair that he forgets to look for the button eyes. Together, they smash her claws- toss them down the well with the key, and are left blinking and dirty in the moonlight.
Axel looks good in the moonlight, but then, Roxas already knew that.
"I think an apology may be in order," he whispers, face still turned towards the well- carefully not looking at Roxas.
Roxas silences him with a shake of his head, and digs a hand into his pocket.
Moonlight reflects off the button, and Roxas presses it into the palm of Axel's hand- makes him curl his fingers around it.
He smiles.
"I think this belongs to you."
.
Most horror stories end with a slow panning scene to some new unknown horror, even as the heroes live on, happily unconcerned. A piece of the puzzle that they've forgotten, some fragment left behind. A legacy, and someone to carry on the terror.
This story ends with something else.
It ends with a boy who is finally an actual boy gasping into a kiss. A boy who shudders once- twice- and remembers. It ends with the destruction of a key, a doll, and a door.
It ends with a smile, and the sounds of the boy's first word.
"Roxas."