Summary: "He saw himself in the darkened ember-flaked ash that floated away from his body." [[The death of the somebody that would become the nobody that was Axel
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Sorry, nothing clever here.
A/N: I wrote this in school, and didn't plan on putting it up on FF. But after a few days, I found myself a bit fond of it, and changed my mind. Now, since it's blindingly late, I just want to leave off with a hope that someone wrestles some enjoyment out of this.
He was burning. The flames were dancing around him, touching his sides and turning him gently.
The redhead felt like he was melting, and not a knee-buckling swooning sort of melting either. His blood became molten dripping mercury and the thoughts crowded in his mind were choking smoke trails. Licking fingertips seared his skin through the thin barrier of his clothes and reached up to reclaim his hair, leaving the boy standing white, free and unfettered.
Lazily watching the grey curls fall into a circle around him the bare boy realized slowly that anything so easily lost must not have been worth having in the first place. The fire had stolen a taste of his skin and now it devoured the pale expanse in earnest, faster than before but oh, it seemed so slow. This moment was agony but the next blazing heaven, the pain that had been rising in tumbling crescendos finally peaking in a glorious rush. He could feel himself crumbling away.
So close…
He saw himself in the darkened ember-flaked ash that floated away from his body.
Polluted air, thick and without oxygen, crawled into his mouth and coated his throat. He collapsed to his knees, hacking the smoke out of his lungs but to no avail, all of the air was the same. He seized violently, trapped in the ferocious burning in his chest. Flames raced over his face, tears were ripped from his eyes in a poor attempt to rehydrate his charred skin. Red, there was only red.
All of the jumbled cracking ripping sensations transformed with the ticking of the clock to form lightning that stabbed and fuzzily embraced his mind. Now he was dizzy. Where was he again?
His eyes could no longer see, his tongue could not taste. He has lost his ears in the beginning, and his nose had been stuffy from a cold for days before this all started. Without his primary senses, the boy was unsure whether the smell of burning and the sounds of sobbing were real or if his feverishly screaming mind was forcing it upon him. All that remained to him of his previous faculties was his sense of touch, and even that faded, the false hands of red waned to warm and then towards cool.
It felt like years between the beats of his heart.
THUMP. Thump.
THUMP. Thump.
And with the next slam he was thrown into a spiraling world of fire racing from the inside, from deep within to meet the harsh scraping of tongues around his body, piercing past his skin and cutting into muscles pulled tightly over a thin frame. The boy was being eaten alive and he felt like a martyr. He felt like he was a witch, he felt the wracking pain of every dying cell in a flash and then it too faded away.
A stranger's hand pressed to where his chest must still be, though he had no sense of his own proportions now. The touch reignited sparks that had grown still and scarred him farther. He almost coughed, but there was no longer any strength in his lungs or throat to contract. This was nice, this was a 'welcome home', this…
Belonged?
The fire, after devouring him now held him close. Somehow the heat no longer hurt, merely caressed. Lips brushed somewhere near, moving in what must have been words that he just could not hear, but he felt his heart stutter.
Heart? No… he knew now… there was no heart. He felt the space where it was no longer beating, felt it more than when the red organ had still been pulsing within him. Out of all his wounds, that empty space caused the strongest ache. But, hadn't he just realized that anything easily lost must not be worth having? Surely that applied here as well.
If he could have managed it, the redhead (no, red-haired no longer) would have smiled before the blackness morphed into darkness. Similar but oh it felt different. Now he was no longer somebody, but he was everybody and he was anybody, but most of all, he was nobody.
And that really was the key. The key to it all, the key of destiny.
Yeah, he liked the sound of that.
Fin.
I simply could not resist ending with that line. Thanks for reading!
fullmetalguitar