Paradise Lost
AU. Zexion, always possessive, is jealous of Demyx's new young charge. Even if he happens to be four times her age. Very angsty.
Rating: M
Pairings: Zemyx, mentioned AkuZeku, AkuRoku, and Axel/Larxene. Sheez, Axel sure gets around.
Warnings: Slash, OC's, abuse, abusive!Demyx, AU, mentions of sex, bad language, first person
Lately these days it seems I've been posting up a lot of "not for the faint of heart" stories.
I've had this for a while, actually. This is a part of a universe, I suppose, in which Zexion and Demyx are college students and are involved in a very abusive, sadomasochistic relationship. It's fun to write if only for a darker view of Zemyx, and I've produced a lot of PWP's for it, but never thought of posting them up here. Maybe I will someday. Eventually, this universe acquired something of a life of its own, and became the basis for an original novel centering around a girl in love with her gay childhood friend (I think I've mentioned this novel a few times before).
The stories in this verse (which I call Sadist!Demyx verse, due to his predominant characterization--I claim canon basis for a sadistic portrayal from that single "Silence, traitor!" line XD) run the gamut from pure PWP's to massive angst fests. This one definitely tilts more towards the "angsty" side of the spectrum. I wrote it as a oneshot, but it was so long I chose to split it into three parts. One principle, I am opposed to first person fanfiction, but I thought to try something different for once. Writing first person in this verse has led me to reconsider my previous opinion on that POV (from NEVAR!!! to "okay in moderation"), as well as the novel being written as a series of alternating first person POV's.
BTW, Tainted is being updated sometime tonight. I'm making slow but sure progress on the twenty-eighth chapter.
Also, to fulfill my quota, I will advertise my fictionpress again. Look in particular at the profile for an upcoming project, Broken Memory, that will be my hugest writing investment yet. So it'd be nice if I could get some crossover readership for it from my fanfiction audience.
Is it wrong to be jealous of a five-year-old? I suppose it depends on how old you are. If you're six, seven, eight, well, it is perfectly all right to be jealous of, say, a five-year-old younger sibling who receives all of your parents' attention. Perhaps it's even acceptable for a ten-year-old. But any older than that...you can't feel jealous of a five-year-old little kid. It's just wrong. For a teenager, it's petty at best, ridiculously immature at worst. After all, you are much older than they are. You are supposed to be the responsible adult, the one who takes care of your cute younger sibling.
Then that makes it all the worse that I have recently turned twenty years old, and I will admit that I am jealous of a five-year-old.
It's entirely stupid. I know it is. But then again...maybe that's the sort of person I am. I never thought of myself as a jealous person before--just someone who had an unusual propensity for seeking out possessive boyfriends. But perhaps we go together. I demand all of their attention--they demand all of mine. It works symbiotically, in the most screwed up way possible.
Perhaps I should have foreseen this. Already, when I'd first heard about Axel's new fifteen-year-old boyfriend, I'd felt a stab of jealousy. I wasn't willing to admit it at the time, because I hated Axel--I still do. We weren't even dating anymore. But against all reason, I felt jealous. Strangely I never felt that way about Larxene, but then again, it was plain as day to even Larxene that Axel hated her. But the high-schooler...was different. I saw him and Axel together, several times, and they couldn't have been more different than Axel and me, or Axel and Larxene for that matter.
If it had been me walking down the street with Axel, he would have been hauling me behind him, his hand tight around my forearm, pressing down on the bruises left from last night and cutting off my circulation, while I struggled to keep up. If it had been Larxene, they wouldn't have been touching at all. They most likely would have been squabbling, jabbing fingers at each other and arguing in shrill voices. It might have even descended into a slapping match, eventually. Axel apparently feels no qualms about hitting girls.
But the high-schooler...each time I saw the two of them walking down the street, or even once in the convenience store, they were holding hands. And conversing in normal, friendly--no, loving--tones. It rankled me, seeing Axel and his high school boyfriend together. Previously I'd thought Axel was cruel to me because he had no idea how to be kind, but seeing Axel and his new boyfriend made me realize with horror that he did first, I almost thought Axel was simply manipulating the boy, but now, after seeing them together so many times...I'm beginning to think that he does love the high school boy genuinely.
Hence, the jealousy. Perfectly understandable, then! you might say. It's perfectly understandable for me to envy the pampered new boyfriend of the man who abused me so horrifically in high school. How? I wonder as I watch the two of them together, holding hands, talking with kindness and mutual respect to each other, how can the person who did all of those things to me--how can he be so kind? So gentle? Why does that boy deserve Axel's kindness more than I did? And that's where the jealousy comes in.
In Axel's case, it's understandable. Not so much in Demyx's case.
This is illogical. This is entirely illogical. She is fucking five years old and if you're feeling jealous of her that way, then you're just a pervert.
You cannot imagine how many times I repeated this mantra, over and over again in my head, watching Demyx play with Maddie, watch him tickle her, hug her, laugh with her, sing to her, pat her affectionately on the head and tell her how much he cares about her....
I tell myself that it is wrong to feel the way I do, standing in the doorway watching the two of them frolic in pure, chaste, completely un-romantic nonsexual happiness. She is five; he is twenty. He just feels like a kind big brother. That is all. He's being nice to her, and heaven knows she deserves it.
Ah, Madison LeFevre, with a sob story to make even Axel choke up a bit. Well, not Axel, but Larxene. I know because Demyx told Larxene about Maddie once when she asked him. Who knew Larxene had a soft spot for sob stories? At least the sob stories of cute, innocent little five-year-old girls with blonde braids and big blue eyes.
The fact that Larxene can choke up at the little girl's sob story seems to suggest that I might be vaguely sociopathic. How is it that I don't feel anything whenever I hear Maddie's unhappy tale? Nothing, no pity, no sadness, not even a stab of compassion or pride that Maddie still managed to come through all that fairly normal. Just a faint hint of annoyance and "great-here-we-go-again" whenever Demyx launches into the same worn old story, over and over again. Yes, yes, I already know. She was born to a mother who had no idea who her father was, who later acquired a succession of boyfriends who all abused poor little Maddie. The mother herself eventually ended up dumping Maddie into a foster care center, where she remained until Demyx found her. I can't remember what we were doing there in the first place--volunteer work, probably (it looks good on the resume). We certainly hadn't come with the intention of becoming...hell, foster parents. Not technically, since this is of course the United States of America, but in all essence that is what we are.
So now I must deal with her. Surprisingly, I don't have to do much. I just cook like usual and try to keep our apartment as clean as possible (impossible when you are living with Demyx. I swear I have found things under Demyx's bed that are probably alive), and Demyx takes care of all the "parent" business. And then some.
I always knew that Demyx was more open than Axel, but....he was still never truly loving with me. And I, just like I had thought for Axel, believed that this was because Demyx was incapableof loving. I didn't mind--the only reason we were together was for the sex. We had a vaguely symbiotic relationship--I needed to be dominated, he needed to dominate. Our relationship has never been one of love, but one of need.
This is logical. This still does not silence the part of me that wishes we had...more.
I used to be able to silence that part by telling myself that no matter how much I wished for it, Demyx was simply unable to give it to me. How could that idiot, that laughing, smiling, perverted idiot, ever be able to love?
I cannot silence this part of me anymore. No matter how much I tell myself that Demyx's love for Maddie is entirely different from what I want from him, I still can't feel that stab of...jealousy, damn it...whenever I see the two of them together. Whenever I see him smiling so freely with her, to see him playing and laughing and telling her that she is loved, that he cares about her...
By the time he starts doing that, I usually depart the room. He never notices--I don't think he ever notices that I am watching him, either.
I wish I could tell him how I feel, but just trying to think of the right words to say makes me cringe. It makes me realize how immature I must be, feeling jealous of someone like her. She is a kind, cute, sweet little girl who deserves happiness and love--this I know logically. I should be happy that she's finally found what she needs with Demyx, but at the same time, I can't shake this jealousy. The envy, the illogical impulse to switch places with her whenever Demyx tells her she is loved.
But of course, being me, I am an expert at suppressing how I truly feel--I can even, to an extent, hide my feelings from myself. This was first taught to me by my father, who impressed on me the importance of never showing any weakness, and later perfected during my days with Axel. I would never have survived if I hadn't been able to hide my emotions--hide myself.
So I keep what I really feel about Maddie locked deep inside, in the churning pit of my deepest most visceral secrets, and get through the days repeating the same mantra, over and over again...
No one can survive doing this forever. Eventually, it will all come out, come out in one awful raging torrent I cannot stop because I have never dealt with emotions like these before.
Which might explain what eventually--inevitably--happened.
Maybe I had just been having a bad day, I don't know. I probably was. I had just encountered Axel, who had done his usual thing--namely, groped me and leered at me and dropped not-so-vague insinuations that he would appreciate it greatly if he had me back. Back in his bed, at the very least. I punched him in the face and stormed off. Rather excessive of me, and I am the last to condone violence, but all the same. Only a few seconds ago I'd glimpsed him leaving the movie theater with his stupid high school boyfriend. I was in a particularly foul mood and I needed to vent.
Needless to say, when I got back to the apartment I was not in the best of moods. Not that I usually am, but that's another story.
Does that excuse what I did? It explains what I did, I'm sure enough. I had just seen Axel with his boyfriend, and seeing Maddie, sprawled so contently on the floor, hard at work with her markers on a piece of paper, caused an irrational curl of rage to snake up within me. I couldn't get the picture of Axel's boyfriend out of my mind, the blonde-haired blue-eyed kid laughing so easily with the bastard. Unbidden, a memory arose in me of earlier that day, of Demyx laughing with Maddie, as blonde and blue-eyed as Axel's boyfriend.
He never laughed with me. He only ever laughed at my pain, at my humiliation.
Perhaps this is what seized me to take one step, then two, then three until I was looming directly over her. Maddie looked up, surprise evident in her wide blue eyes. As far as she could remember--as I could remember--I had never directly spoken to her before. I surprised even me.
"Hello there, little girl," I said with all the harsh sarcasm I could muster. "Are we having fun here?What's that you're drawing?"
"Uh...um..." Maddie stammered. I think she was a little afraid of me--naturally, since I was glaring down at her as if I wanted nothing more than to fry her to a crisp with my eyes. A bit cruel of me especially considering she is five. But looking back, I can't help but cringe at everything I did back then.
At length Maddie said in her sweet, high-pitched voice which was nothing short of aggravating to me at the moment, "I'm drawing a picture. For--for Demyx."
"Really, now," I said, still in that harshly sarcastic tone.
"Uh-huh--it's a picture of me and him--" said Maddie, clearly proud now. I looked down at the paper but all I saw were a bunch of colorful scribbles. I don't have much of an eye for art anyhow. Words have always been much more easy for me to appreciate.
"I see," I said. "How nice."
"Mm-hmm!" agreed Maddie, nodding, her braids bouncing. She seemed completely unperturbed by my increasing coldness--resilient girl. "Demyx told me ta work extra hard on it to make it really pretty! He said if it's real pretty he'll hang it on the wall!"
"Is that so?" I said. Something cold and hard and angry was beginning to rise up within me. Against my will, I remembered an incident where Demyx had gotten angry enough at me (I can't remember why) that he had grabbed my copy of Paradise Lost--the same copy that Lexaeus had given me for my thirteenth birthday--and tore the pages out in fistfuls, berating me, but I can't remember what he said, because I could only stare in transfixed horror at the shreds of yellowish paper flying in the air, seeing my past, my friendship with Lexaeus, go up in the air...
I think, more than anything, it was that memory that prompted me to do what I did next.
"That's very nice," I said, slowly, exaggeratedly, in a voice that did not sound like mine. I had no idea I could speak with such harsh coldness, with such cruel sarcasm, in such a sardonic yet fierce tone of voice. "A picture for Demyx, hmmm? A picture that he'd like to frame, apparently."
I had no idea what I was saying now, and I really didn't care. What I said was not important. It was what I did next. I remember, and I regret now, but at the time, what I did felt like the only right thing to do.
I snatched the paper from Maddie's surprised hands, and, mind whirling, a nameless fury clouding my head and destroying the logic I usually am so proud of, I ripped it in half. It came apart with a very satisfactory tearing sound, and in my head I was envisioning Demyx shredding up Paradise Lost...
Maddie stared, wide-eyed, her lower lip trembling, giving me a look that would make any normal, sane human being feel the urge to give her a great big hug and words of comfort. It just incensed me more. I tore both halves in half again and tossed them contempuously in Maddie's lap.
It felt good, but only for a moment. Because the next instant, Maddie began to is not one of those children who screech and scream and wail insanely, like the bratty kids you must always, always encounter in any public place--the library is the most annoying--and make you wish more than anything to grab them and make them shut up, preferably with a pillow (if you catch my drift). I would never be able to stand Maddie if she cried like that.
No, her tears came slower, welling up in her quivering blue eyes first (a sight to make any decent person melt into a puddle of pity, I'm sure), before streaking down her face and dripping pathetically into her lap. She stared down at the torn quarters of the picture she'd been drawing and unleashed one--one--quavering little sob.
By now, I should have been feeling incredibly horrible and guilty for the awful crime I'd just committed. But seeing Maddie cry just made me angrier. Looking back, I cringe at what I did next--because I had a chance, right then, to salvage the situation. To get down on my knees beside her and pat her on the back and apologize to her, and do my best to make it up to her...
"Zexy, you never make anything easy," is a favorite line of Demyx's. And what I did next, I suppose, is proof.
Because as Maddie began trying to fit the quarters back together--she was stilltrying to salvage her drawing--I bent down and snatched one of them for her. And tore it in half. And tore it in half. And tore it in half. Et cetera ad nauseum. I let the pieces of paper rain down her like snowflakes--they were barely any bigger. By now, I could hear nothing, not Maddie's whimpered little sobs, not Demyx tuning his guitar a few rooms down, not even myself, saying, smirkingly, caustically, and cruelly,"So, you like jigsaw puzzles, don't you? Why don't you try putting this puzzle together?" All I heard was an infernal buzzing in my ears.
"Unh...aahhh...waah...ngh..." gulped and whimpered Maddie, in a very valiant attempt to control her tears. "M-my-my p-p-p-p-pictuuurrre..."
The buzzing still ringing in my ears, I bent down to grab another one of the quarters--but to my shock Maddie leapt up and seized my leg, and screamed, "Nooo! Nooo! Please--no--"
"What the fuck, let go of me," I snarled, too caught up in the heat of my rage to care about either my language or her.I was just filled with the sudden, ferocious urge to destroy something...and that something was Maddie's picture. "Damn it--let go, you damn little brat--"
"Nooo! Nooooo!" Maddie continued screeching at the top of her lungs, holding so tightly on to my leg that it hurt. She didn't seem to much care about my increasingly foul language. "Don't--I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry--I'll be good--please--"
"Let--the fuck--go!" I yelled, kicking as hard as I could, but needless to say that wasn't very hard and that certainly didn't dislodge Maddie. "All right, you little--"
"What the HELL is going on here?"
I froze--and in that instant all of the burning anger left me, to be replaced by a cold sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. I knew that voice even if I didn't recognize it, so twisted with rage and fury and indignant it was. Demyx.
"Waaah--aaaah waaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!" wailed Maddie, immediately running from me to divebomb tackle Demyx. Her attempt was unsuccessful since Demyx ismuch older and stronger than her, so she could only cling tightly to his legs like she had been clinging to mine earlier, sobbing madly. Demyx bent down to haul her up in his arms, and held her, patting her gently on the back and rocking her back and forth while she let loose misery-wracked sobs.
Seeing him hold her made a bit of the old rage and jealousy jump back inside me--but mostly I still felt cold and almost afraid inside. I didn't want to look at Demyx so I didn't. I looked at the floor, at the tatters of Maddie's drawing scattered all over like so many snowflakes.
After some length, while I just stood there and Demyx comforted Maddie, Demyx set Maddie back down on the floor. She had stopped wailing now, though she still looked miserable. Demyx sank to his knees beside her, patted her on the head, and whispered something in her ear, and she nodded and then took a few steps behind him. He then directed his attention to me.
He crossed the room in three quick strides, and then, before I had any idea what had happened, I had fallen hard to the floor, my cheek stinging, my mind whirling in surprise. It wasn't over yet--Demyx then hauled me up by the collar and slapped me, hard, again.
"D-D-Demyx--" I gasped.
"You little bitch. You motherfucking son of a bitch," hissed Demyx, hauling me up so that our faces were only inches apart. I had never seen him get so angry before--I'd thought he'd been mad when he'd been trashing Milton. Well, he was positively furious now. His voice trembled from the force of his anger as he spoke and he didn't seem to care that he was spitting on me as he gave me several hard shakes, his eyes burning.
"What did you do? What the hell did you do? What did you do to Maddie?"
"I-I-I--I d-d-didn't d-do anything t-to h-her--" I stammered mindlessly, and actually, this was the truth. All I'd injured was her drawing, not her body. I'd never stoop down to smacking a five-year-old. That would be too low, even for me. I'd like to think that in at least some ways I'm superior to Axel.
Another slap, harder than the first two. I couldn't help it--I actually whimpered from the pain. It had been a long time since I'd been slapped like this. Demyx did hit me but those times were few and far between and he usually just slapped me once and then dropped on his knees immediately after begging me to forgive him. But hitting me over and over again for the express purpose of punishment...
...it was something Axel would do.
"Little liar," hissed Demyx into my face. I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away, not wanting to look at him--because I knew that when I did, I'd see a smirking green maliciousness shining behind his blue eyes. Demyx got my attention with yet another slap, and a hard shake as well.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you," he snapped, in that voice that was not his, that voice that was corrupted by a mindless fury and rage.
I whimpered in a miserable attempt to appease to him. "D-Demyx--please--I d-didn't--"
"'Do anything wrong'?" finished Demyx. Am I really that easy to read that Demyx of all people can predict what I'm going to say? I could only stare up at him, trembling. I tasted something faintly metallic and warm in my mouth. I swallowed it.
"Don't be such a conceited bitch," continued Demyx, shaking me again. "You hurt Maddie. Look what you did to her! You made her cry, damn it!" He pointed at Maddie, who was cowering behind a potted plant. I suspected another reason for her cowering, though--the Demyx she knew was a kind, gentle, loving big brother figure. He was not the sadist she was seeing now.
Well, I thought he was gentle too, at first, I thought fiercely.
"And then you have the gall to say you 'didn't do anything wrong'," Demyx continued raging, shaking me with every other word. I was starting to become dizzy, and my face stung where Demyx had slapped me. Somehow, dimly, I sensed I was only going to hurt even more when he was finished with me. "You make me sick."
So do I, I thought. Keep shaking me and I'll puke all over you.
I could not believe I was able to still think facetious thoughts in a situation such as this. This, I believe, is the primary divide between Axel and Demyx.
"Maddie..." said Demyx, his tone gentle. He'd even stopped shaking me. Somehow, it made me feel worse--that he was directing that nice, kind, gentle and loving tone at the girl cowering behind the potted plant, not the young man in his arms he'd been shaking and slapping. "Maddie...hey, Maddie, it's okay now. I'll make things right."
How? By tormenting me?
"Was that your picture he ripped? The picture of me and you you were gonna draw?" Demyx continued, still in that awful gentle tone. When Maddie nodded, he turned back to me. The rage in his eyes burned, made them seem almost green and narrowed and malicious, not wide, blue, innocent. He shook me one more time, but then mercifully let go of the front of my shirt. I fell hard to the floor, winded and surprised.
"Ahh--Demyx--" I began.
The next instant, he seized me roughly by the wrist and dragged me after him. I stumbled behind him, remembering that this was the way that Axel had first raped me...
Behind us, Maddie whimpered and hid behind the leaves of her newfound friend, the potted Aloe Vera.
WTF for humorous ending. I find that for a lot of these stories, even the darkest, there ends up being a bit of a humorous aspect anyhow. It fits with Zexion's more sardonic voice in this story, I guess.
Don't be shy, tell me what you think. I'm particularly nervous about, well, Maddie. I don't like OC's in fanfic much, but her existenc is necessary for this fic, and the fact that she kind of has Mary Sue tendencies is intentional (though that definitely doesn't justify what Zexion did, the jerk).
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