TITLE | Skin Disease.
FANDOM | Kingdom Hearts.
PAIRING/CHARACTERS | Roxas/Kairi, Axel, Ansem, Naminé
RATING | M.
NOTES | Look! More science fiction-esque porn! What is wrong with me. Standard disclaimer applies to all chapters, yo.
WARNINGS | Sex. But that's later.
SUMMARY | I'll show you what it means to have a breakable heart. I'll show you how it beats. I'll show you how it starts.

"You died," Ansem is saying to him, staring at the clipboard. Tubes run out of his arms and into the front panel of the glass machine next to the gurney. One line drips red. The other drips black. "Your liver failed before anyone had realized you'd been infected. Hospitals out in the country aren't very efficient."

His mouth feels like sandpaper. He wets his lips, feels the skin crack and split when he speaks. "What's my name?"

"Roxas," he says flatly, "but I have yet to decide if you'll have any use for it."

Roxas rolls his neck – the bones snap and pop back into place. He flexes his fingers, his toes. He feels alive, but the air smells metallic, tangy, and everything is blurred at the edges. He waits for someone to press the focus button. Ansem watches him over the rim of his glasses, intent. "What should I call myself, then?"

"Nothing. Nobody." A pause. "Thirteen."

"Thirteen." He tastes iron when he says it, spits out a mix of blood and something worse. The back of his hand drags over his mouth. He frowns. "You revived me?"

"No," Ansem's voice is tight, quiet control. "I rebuilt you."

He takes a scalpel off the tray next to the chair, touches it to Roxas' knuckle. "Feel that?"

"Yeah," he says, and Ansem slices through, up to where his nail starts. Roxas thinks he should see bone and he does, a little. Mostly, though, he sees flat plates of aluminum and a mess of wires. His hand feels the same as before.

"Actually," Ansem pries apart the skin, touches where the wires tangle up, "you don't."

"Oh." He doesn't know what to say, so he scowls instead. Ansem turns a few valves on the machine pumping liquid through his veins – cords – body and reaches for a roll of bandages on the table.

"Take those out," he points at the tubes, "and come over here. I have to fix your hand before I take you upstairs."

Roxas blinks hard once, twice, and complies. Blood is beginning to bubble inside the cut. Ansem wraps his finger with careful precision, and the gauze is rough - feels rough, at least, but maybe that's not right. "Is all of me like this?"

"No." Ansem clips the loose end to the bandage and looks at him. "Only the parts the infection ate away at before I found you."

Roxas winces. Ansem picks up the clipboard again and flips over a page, ignoring him completely for a while. He feels something fierce pass through him briefly, flicker hard in his chest. It's gone within seconds.

"Well," Ansem finally murmurs, eyes on the stairwell. "I suppose it's time to reintegrate you into society."

Past the sliding metal door that leads into Ansem's lab is a huge foyer and three upper levels. Roxas stands in the kitchen doorway and watches a blonde girl in a white slip wipe the counters. The bend of her arm is smooth and he watches her slow arcs until she drops the rag in the sink and half turns to him.

"Oh," she smiles prettily with no trace of surprise. He's been wandering the past few days, and he's never seen her before. Her eyes are a shade lighter than his own. "Hello. Who are you?"

"Roxas," he pauses, frowns, pushes away from the frame. "I mean, Thirteen."

"Ah," she faces him fully, and he can see the bits of metal along her right side, screws sticking out from the prominent bones in her wrist. "I know you."

His head tips towards her. "You do?"

"Or rather," she continues, pushing her hair over one shoulder and turning towards the fridge. The space between her shoulder blades is a solid piece of copper. "I know of you. Ansem was very excited about finding you in that alley, you know."

Roxas tucks his hands into his pockets and slouches. The ridge of her spine is uneven - she's a mess of sharp pieces hastily tightened together. He looks at his elbow, at the smooth tan skin, then at hers. Pale, with the ridges of a spring showing just underneath. She drops something into a jar on top of the ice box and sighs.

"He spent a lot of time trying to get the process right." She spins on her heels rather gracefully, metal limbs fluid. "You're the only one of us who's so seamless."

"Us?" he echoes. He wants to step inside and stand with her, talk to her properly, but he feels like he isn't allowed. Not when they look the way they do. Not when he looks alive. "He's saved more people?"

Her lips lift in a sad sort of way. "I wouldn't call it… saved, but yes, there are more like me and you. Twelve others, in fact."

Roxas glances out into the foyer, to the base of the winding staircase that leads up into darkness. "Are they up there?"

"No," she says gently. "They died."

He twists. "Died?"

She nods and tilts towards the window just over the dishwasher, eyes dimming. "Or ran away. Most are dead, though."

"How?"

She presses the tips of her fingers together and watches them. The skin between her eyebrows crinkles. Then, she lifts her head and stares at him, right at him, almost through him, and says, "Some things just aren't meant to be touched; death is one of them."

"What does that even mean?"

"It means," she goes, painfully slow, voice calm and even, "that you were never meant to live again, and neither was I. We aren't supposed to exist, Roxas. And so we die, over and over, until Ansem finally gives up and lets us rest."

Roxas swallows until his mouth is too dry. "Am I the thirteenth?"

"Yes," she replies. He steps back.

"What number are you?"

"I don't have one." She sighs, softly. All the pieces of her that aren't razor siding are soft, gentle slopes. Roxas scowls.

"Why not?"

She smiles again, and there is nothing behind it, just a careful blankness. "Because I'm Naminé. His granddaughter."

Roxas chokes. "He-"

"I will never be a failed experiment to him, Roxas," she says firmly. Her eyes meet his and they are dead-dead blue, but determined. "You could be, though. Never forget that."

"I'm not an experiment," he hisses, taking another step back. He feels the shadows pressing against his shoulder blades. "I'm human."

"No," Naminé breathes, "you're his."

He shakes his head, blond spikes falling over his forehead, and leaves her and her iron spine to the counters and the fading sunset. Ansem is in the dining room, buried in paperwork. He sits at the opposite end of the table, ramrod straight.

"I want to be human," he tells him, and doesn't expect the snort her gets in reply. "What?"

"That," Ansem says, monotone, "is a physical impossibility. You are no longer the person you were, Thirteen. You are an abomination, but perhaps one people can learn to accept, should you behave."

Roxas feels that same feeling from before burn hotly in his stomach. He wants to double over, to puke or scream or- or- "If I'm not meant to be human, why did you save me?"

"Science," Ansem deadpans, like it should've been obvious. Maybe it had. "And don't ever think I saved you, boy. That was the last thing on my mind when I pulled you out of the gutter."

Roxas stares at him, expressionless. Ansem picks up his pen and begins to write. "Your room is the first on the right on the second floor. I'll wake you in the morning - we're going to Radiant Garden for a while."

"Why?"

Ansem doesn't look at him. "My granddaughter Kairi's birthday is in a week, and she's graduating not long after that." He pauses, pensive. "This will be an opportunity for you to prove that you can imitate humanity." His gaze is cold and hard and Roxas grits his teeth. "Do not disappoint me, Thirteen."

"Yes, sir," he snarls, and nearly topples the chair when he shoves away from the table.

The hover is a sleek steel. Roxas stares at it for a long time while Ansem throws bags into the back and thinks of the rusted silver of Naminé's angles. The pilot has a wild, bright acid green stare.

"Never seen a hover before, Blondie?" His lips pull back over his teeth and show his canines. His upper gum is jagged platinum. Roxas clenches his jaw and looks away.

"… Number?" he finally asks, but it comes out more an order. The man's smirk falters, then kicks up on one side.

"Eight," he sticks out his hand, half out of the driver's side . "But you can call me Axel. Got it memorized?"

Roxas shrugs and grips his leather covered palm a little too tightly. "Thirteen."

Axel leans in even more, balancing precariously on the edge of the seat. "And before you were that?"

"… Roxas."

"And don't forget it," he shifts away when Ansem steps outside and closes the front door, harsh stare directed at them. "It'll keep you alive, kid. Trust me on that one."

"Uh huh," Roxas mutters, because everyone keeps telling him opposite things and expects him to believe them. Axel shoots him a sidelong glance, and then very quickly reaches out with his skinny arm and ruffles his hair.

It's the most human thing he's experienced in a week, and the thought makes him trust Axel just a tiny bit more. He climbs into the back seat with a well aimed punch at protruding ribs, and smirks.

"You little shit," Axel wheezes. Ansem slips into the passenger seat with a sneer. "Where to, boss-man?"

"It's sir," Ansem hisses with just the right amount of loathing. Axel's chuckle is pure venom. "And we're going to Radiant Garden."

Axel quirks an eyebrow, faintly amused for some reason. "Visiting the princess again, are we?"

"Careful, Eight," Ansem narrows his eyes. "Nicknames might perhaps lead me to believe that you're under the delusion that you can actually care about my granddaughter."

Axel stiffens, and begins punching buttons on the dashboard. Roxas curls into himself as much as he can in the backseat and wonders about the metal bars running in a line down the back of Axel's neck.