Title: Crooked House
Character(s): Demyx and Axel
Warnings: Mentions of abuse, torture and delusion.
Rating: T
Words: 1, 690
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts and make no profit from its name and characters.
A/N: To normal people nursery rhymes inspire thoughts of childhood sweetness. To me it just inspires…well, this. Not sure if that is a good thing or not but…I'm oddly pleased. This is the first of a couple of stories I have in mind, all based on nursery rhymes. Hopefully I will have those done soon. Until then, enjoy and thank you for reading.
The air is acrid with the scent of blood, violence and shadows. He isn't sure why it still unnerves him, the bitter tang of copper that clings to skin, clothes, essence long after the battlefields are strewn with unmoving corpses, lifeless black souls maimed and pacified. It isn't something he's grown accustomed too, not like the others who revel in the scent of dying darkness, carrying it like a decadent cross.
The smell is overpowering, estranging the last remnants of Marluxia's perfumed solarium or Vexen's ammonia coated laboratories, running insipid hands over the fading echoes of the sitar strings like mercury rain. If ever he has left a personal mark on four white washed walls it is gone, swallowed whole in the void of night.
The scent won't disappear.
He closes his eyes but it's already inside. He can ignore it, claw his eyes out, bite his tongue off, bind his hands with thorns and his feet in chains, take a collar and suffocate his pride, drive nails through his wrists until his arm went numb, until he couldn't move or feel or hear…
A quiet rapping on his door, hesitant and distorted. He imagines something like a ghost or the boogey man but he has known worse, seen worse, is worse than childhood fairy-tales. He brings his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and burying his face in his lap, hoping it will go away, a rolling wave crashing into a plethora of jagged rocks in thinning sprays of glass and stones. He closes his eyes and dreams of dreaming, of mothers with honey smiles, sunshine, warm hands and warmer smiles, being able to walk because life is too short instead of running because it just won't end.
'Do you believe in God?'
'Once…and only once…back when there were mornings…'
Footfalls shadow the empty corridor outside and the scent runs thickly, bleeding underneath the doorway and coiling around his bed like a faithful pet. The rapping has stopped but in his mind the doors have fallen, fiends dance on scattered embers lit by gasoline and that smell is all around him, violating, appeasing, destroying…
He unfurls his arms, stretches his legs, raises his head and stands on thin ice, placing bare feet on laden tiles and watching the ice splinter in all directions like errant icebergs. His heart doesn't beat but he breathes out of habit and it sounds like a roar in the silence. He can't stop it without choking and one day it will get him killed.
Quietly he opens the door, allowing slivers of moonlight to slant sideways over scarcely furnished walls and floors, the shadows crafting veiled marionettes teetering on broken strings. A lithe body leans against the doorway, painting it alternating shades of crimson and burgundy with fire red hair and fresh wounds sluggishly seeping blood.
There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile
He is darkness incarnate, the smell clinging to his skin like a forgotten lover until the air is thick with it, making his stomach coil and his throat close. He doesn't know whether to allow him inside or close the door and pretend he's still underneath the covers where the monsters are first to look. Once you open the Pandora's Box all that is left is the ornate chest that was never truly made of gold and pretend becomes just a pretty but meaningless word for all the disjointed half apologies he made to six feet of tilled earthen graves.
His thoughts don't progress any further before the other collapses and his body, perhaps the only thing that can still think without emotional attachments leans in to catch him, kneeling on cold floor tiles he can feel shift beneath him like a pulse.
One breath…two…three…four…
One crack…two…three…four…
Gently he grabbed the others arm, placing it around his neck for added leverage and hoisted both of them up, swaying slightly with the full weight of the others body leaning against him in support. His head lolls, coming to rest in the hollow between shoulder and neck and the words he mindlessly prays ghost over his skin, staccato knives with dull edges that tore skin wide open, gaping cavities you had to be blind to see.
"This is what you get for not listening to me. You only ever listened to Roxas but guess what? Roxas isn't here and he's never coming back. You can pray, wish, dream, scream, bleed and cry but he won't come back because Roxas doesn't turn back for anyone. And you're not an anyone anymore are you?"
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
There is no response, just a blank stare, void and still within shuttered eyes like frozen tinted windows. His arms move around a too thin waist, prone against levels of ribs to clutch the belt of his pants, moving toward the bathroom in erratic lurches and awkward shifts. They stumble inside, turning on the light with an accidental bump of elbows and haphazardly remove blood caked clothing, throwing them in a pile beside discarded shoes and torn gloves. The actions are repetitive, he's done this more time than he can count and more times than common courtesy should allow.
'If you want to break yourself then please leave me out of it. I don't have enough glue for the both of us.'
He fills the bathtub with water, leading the other under the spray and holding him down when his body instinctively jolts, a hitch of breath the only sign of his discomfort. He finds satisfaction in the others pain because he should know better by now. Defying the Organization, incurring their wrath, pretending to be somebody and expecting him to pick up the pieces afterward.
He deserves this and more…
Blood tints the water an unappealing pink, smudging the porcelain edges of the bathtub like paint on a blank canvas. He grabs a bar of soap, lathers the cloth and begins the arduous process of removing encrusted blood from seeping injuries; a stab wound on his thigh, a gash above his breastbone, puncture wounds through the veins of his wrists, lashes on his back running parallel to the knobs of his spine...he is beautiful, even when he is broken. He is beautiful because he is broken and if he has realized this he doesn't stop it.
Sometimes he thinks Roxas knew and maybe that was the reason he pressed the blade to the hilt, his words a double edged sword.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse
"You're pathetic you know that? I could kill you now and you couldn't do anything to stop me…"
He takes the shampoo bottle and coats his hands, washing his hair until the mess sticking there is spiraling down the drain. There is no verbal response and he is grateful for it. Reaching behind him he grabs a towel and dries him off, taking added care with his bruised face, hiding his hair beneath the white cotton so it looks like falling blood.
"…Fuck if you didn't know I can't hurt you…Fuck if you're not using me because of it."
He reaches into the hamper and pulls out an extra pair of pants, helping him to dress like a stilted mannequin. He leaves the buttons undone, decides against a shirt and doesn't pay attention when the towel falls onto the floor; covering the pieces of himself he has yet to drown beneath the spray.
There is still an awkward amount of stumbling and they barely reach beyond the threshold before they fall, one on his knees and the other completely, laid out bare against the white carpeting. He leans back until his legs are stretched out, his back against the wall and he laughs because Nobodies forget how to cry the moment they realized the universe is a double helix and they are stranded on the wrong side of it.
Roughly he grabs the other by the shoulders, positions him so his head will be on his lap and runs ungloved fingers through his still damp hair. The scent no longer clings to his skin except he still cannot breathe. Now he smells like nothing and he isn't sure if he is fine with that or not. He turns toward the window and wonders where all of the stars have fallen.
"Was I wrong?"
He smiles into the darkness, observing a crack in the plaster of the far wall and wonders how long it will be before it crumbles. Maybe then he can finally see what lies beyond the rubble.
"Wrong about what?"
He is silent and they've done this enough times that he knows what kind of answer his silence truly is. He combs through a particularly nasty knot of hair and the other doesn't flinch, instead staring at the corner where the fiends have left their ashes. One day an unborn child will tell him that was the beginning of the end and he will laugh because he knew it too.
"We'll talk about it in the morning."
In the morning number VIII and number IX have never met and never will. Axel will bring down the Organization with a silver tongue and Demyx will play his sitar in the confines of his room, only emerging when he is called to duty and returning when he fails.
In the morning they will not look at each other, will not acknowledge each other, will not talk about what has happened and will probably happen again and again and again until one of them ties the proverbial noose and hangs from the balcony.
In the morning there will be no more bruises. Saix will leave the brandishing whip alone when Axel no longer flinches. Roxas will come back and Axel will smile again. Demyx will finally meet them both by accident, find the courage to leave his dream world behind and flee the Organization, Roxas on one side and Axel on the other.
In the morning he will realize that...
In the World That Never Was...
…morning never comes.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house