Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts I, COM, II, and any of the characters do not belong, in any way to the writer of this fanfiction. This fiction is written for non-profit reasons.
I got inspired. I don't really have the attention span to focus on just one story at a time so I'll probably jump between the stories I have every so often.
This fic was started for the pure purpose of artistic expression and was especially fun to write. I live in the very same city I'm talking about so it's almost a first-hand experience for me what these characters are going through and what they face so I think this will be one of my better fics. I've always found it interesting as to how fictional characters might react in real life settings and situations.
This fic is not going to be one of those including Original Characters (OC's). The Kingdom Hearts characters are to stay in character and interact with other characters from the game, not characters from my imagination.
Anyways, this is just the prologue. Expect a lot more to come.
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Axel loved everything about New York City, the city – his city and despite that the city was only a mere 321 square miles, overpopulated at a staggering 8.1million residents and full of nothing but cheap colored lights, empty promises and crime, he loved everything about it.
He loved the brilliant lights, the claustrophobia-inducing tall spires and buildings, the stifling, foul city air and the cheap glamour of it all. He loved the rude natives and the idiot tourists, the garbage in the streets, the movie stars in disguise, the yellow taxis rushing by. He loved sedated calm of Central Park, he loved the rush and glow of Times Square, he loved the holidays at Rockefeller Center, he loved the chic opulence of Fifth Avenue. He loved how he could get anything he needed, or wanted no matter the time of day, whether 3AM or 3PM and even have it delivered to his Upper East Side penthouse apartment with the uniformed doorman to open the gilded glass doors. Talk about the sweet life.
He loved everything about the vivacious metropolis but despite all of the blinding glamour and thin, flaking luster and the deeply rooted insidiousness of City That Never Sleeps, Axel felt that the best thing about New York was the Subway system. There was none other like it in the world.
It was the center for cultural arts. It was for talented graffiti artists and name artists and effervescent dancers and rising musicians. It was also as the city's literal underground crime central and the terrorists' new ground zero. It was everything, all at once. One could either meet their fortune or their doom on a single train ride and that was what attracted and repelled Axel.
But the call of the rumbling tracks and acrid smell of burnt wood and steel and the very exterior of the great, metal worm itself had him mesmerized and unable to pull away, unable to resist and canceled out the deterrence.
Everyone in the city rode the Subway. It didn't matter if you were a tourist lost in the crazy maze of city blocks or if you were a cultured, swearing, carrying-a-gun-in-your-purse native or even if you were at the top of your career on Wall Street and about to be the next Bill Gates. None of that mattered on the train where everyone was simply there, going along for the ride, cramped, tired and grumpy.
The businessmen wished they had opted to wait for a taxi but their most hated colleague had snatched the last one from right under their noses. The mothers' shoulders hurt as the straps of their kids' brightly colored bags cut into their tender skin while their kids wailed and complained about their day at school. The gangsters were quiet for once; even they were lulled into a sense of calm by the steady rhythm of the wheels grinding against steel tracks. The teenagers were weary from a full day of shopping with their girlfriends and boyfriends, too exhausted to make small talk, simply happy to lean back and turn up the volume on their iPods. The senior citizens were grumpier than usual; only to give a grunt in return for a seat that was offered to their shaking, thin legs.
Everyone on the train was always grumpy and tired, especially in the evening rush hour. The only smiles and laughter came from children caught up in their thrill of a first ride and Axel because Axel loved everything about the Subway and how it made his city so unique and beautiful – all on its own in its own way.
He marveled at the fact that he could enter any Subway station, push a few touch-screen buttons and swipe a piece of plastic to enter the huge monstrosity that for him was the 6 Train boarded from the stop at Sixty-Eighth and Lexington. He loved the idea that two dollars could take him all the way around the city and back and that his choices of where to go were limitless.
While everything in New York was disgustingly and ridiculously expensive, a train ride to anywhere in the city was a steady two dollars; four for a round-trip. That was the beauty of the Subway system and he couldn't get enough of it.
The Subway was also one of the only places where Axel could think. He took the train frequently just so he could stare out of the smudged inch-thick Plexiglas windows and get inspired for his newest project and to plan it out completely in his head before he started.
Ideas came to him in the station with the occasional desperate musician hoping for their big break playing in the background. Thoughts plagued him in the starkly lit platforms, whose edge led to the deep black void that no amount of light bulbs could illuminate and from whence his love of the city would peek through and come rushing out with a clatter that shook the entire edifice. Inspiration hit him endlessly like mounds of bricks on the fluorescent car at the very end of the train where he was often surrounded by sweaty, disgusting riders and just as often surrounded by simply the plastic chairs and no one else.
During those times when he was alone, Axel would choose a window seat facing the back of the train so that he went backwards, lean his elbow against the dirty glass and tune in to the voice of his muse.
Axel was an artist and artists were particular creatures of habit. He found that he could only think properly on Subway trains, and specifically the very last car. It didn't matter which train though, the N or the R or the L or the 7 or the 6; just any train and at the very end of it. He could think standing or sitting as long as he was in that last damn car of any damn train and even Axel knew it was a bit odd but that was just the way he worked.
On summer nights, Axel would shuffle down to the station on Sixty-Eighth Street in an old, ragged shirt, sweatpants and Old Navy flip-flops. On winter evenings, he would trek through snow and slush, wrapped tight in bundles of North Face with Timberland boots. It never mattered what he wore because his red, red hair was always salient and his green, green eyes were always on fire as he sailed down the stone steps into the station.
On nights when he couldn't sleep or just wanted some time to think, he would pay his two-dollar fare, turn the metal turnstile and board the giant metal worm that bore its giant hole throughout the city. And on most nights, he would enter something of a trance as he sat or stood there, either leaning against a filthy pane of glass or equally filthy metal pole. Afterwards, he would rush home to his luxurious Park Avenue apartment (bought by years of hard work and award-winning art), and run into his studio, only to come to a skidding stop before a blank canvas which would be filled by no later than the next morning.
He made pots after pots of coffee to keep himself awake while he worked as even the City That Never Sleeps fell victim to slumber. But Axel, the true New Yorker, ran on coffee, inspiration and lack of sleep. And Subway rides.
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Roxas hated the city – filthy, disgusting, ghastly, New York fucking City.
He hated how he could barely breathe as he walked down the street, any street, past its many outdoor vendors pestering him in five languages to buy hotdogs, newspapers, cheap jewelry and fake Gucci. He hated how the pavement was always wet, regardless of the weather because New York City sidewalks were never simply wet because of rain, snow or sleet. He hated all of the bloody, deafening noise that blocked out all of his thoughts and made him feel trapped. He hated how the buildings seemed to close in over him and overshadow the cement; huge spires of concrete and glass that no matter how he looked at them, they never felt like they were what made up his home.
New York was home for a lot of things. It was home to some of the world's greatest museums, artists and art schools. It was home to some of the world's greatest actors, actresses, producers – well, summer and weekend homes, at least. And it was home to some of the world's most famous buildings and just people in general but Roxas could care less. It didn't feel like home for him.
And that was why he liked Brooklyn a lot better, thank you very much.
Brooklyn, at least, felt like home. Brooklyn, although not exactly the epitome of suburbia, at least offered him some peace and quiet. True, it didn't have nearly the glamour of Manhattan, the city, but Roxas was never really a city boy to begin with. If anything, the only aspect of the city that he could stand and even liked was the Subway system.
He couldn't stand the yellow taxis that were viewed upon by other natives as the "symbol of New York." He never understood why they were so great to begin with. The drivers were rude, always smoking and probably drunk when they drove those yellow cabs down the already crammed and extremely small city streets as they charged enough for a ride spanning the distance of five city blocks to feed a small, third-world country.
No, Roxas'd much rather take a Subway. He loved how a Subway ride was only two-dollars and affordable to everyone. It didn't take much to get anywhere in the city with the trains and the buses and two dollars; four if he had to actually get off the train and then take it again to get back home to his Sunset Park, Brooklyn flat.
He loved the mere sight of the Subway trains. They were as filthy and tarnished as every other bit of New York City but these trains had their own personality. The giant steel snakes, to him, were beautiful, just like the city could be but only when he sat on his roof late at night, staring over the tops of the trees across Brooklyn, basking in the silent glow of the incandescent lights that lit every crevice of the tiny islands. He would sit in the dark, sometimes with his twin, Sora, sometimes with Sora and Sora's boyfriend Riku and sometimes alone to simply admire the cheap, colored lights.
Subways, for him, were a getaway that didn't actually exist in reality. While he could not afford to actually get away from the city that he had lived in for all nearly-seventeen years of his life, he could afford to take a ride on the R Train to anywhere in Brooklyn, Manhattan or Queens. Roxas would pay his two-dollar fare, board a train and let it take him around the city and back, just so he could sit and think; on occasions when he was feeling particularly inspired, he took out his sketchbook and drew rough figure studies of the people in front of him.
During those solitary train rides (he'd never take Sora because Sora could not stop talking and his friends just didn't understand), he would think about what he was going to do with his life and the places he would go.
He would delude himself into believing that he was talented enough for art to take him places and that he can actually make a successful career out of his work. He thought of how he would leave New York City, hopefully forever, and go to college in another state. Afterwards, if he was lucky, he would leave the country and live in England or Italy or China. There was nothing worth staying for in New York.
And sometimes, when he couldn't think, not even on a train, he would look around the car, which was usually only half empty (or half full, whichever way you'd like to look at it). He would read the Poetry in Motion put five or six in a row right beneath the roof of the train car and shake his head mentally, and he was awed at how such crap could get published and how little effort it must've taken to write such useless banter. Roxas knew for a fact that even he could do better than that, and he could not write to save his life and his SATs and college essay were true miracles (with a lot of help).
Other times when even the "poetry" would not do, Roxas would take the R train to Times Square, get off and stand right under one of the huge maps posted in the white tunnels, deciding where he wanted to go next. Every so often, he would pause for a bit to enjoy the show the Hispanic man put on with his keyboard piano and dancing dolls or stand with the crowds to watch a group of young rappers do their thing but usually, he simply chose the next train he would want to board and head down to the platform to wait for the next arrival.
Although he didn't actually like New York, Roxas could safely say he knew New York. At the age of sixteen and three quarters, he was no longer a naïve little boy. He knew exactly what went on in the city, in Brooklyn, and he knew better than to wander the Subways but he could not stop himself.
On nights when he couldn't sleep, he would slip out of the house, skateboard down to the train station and hop over the turnstile, ignoring the angry exclamation from the fat agent in the glass cube, too tired and grumpy for landing a graveyard shift to do anything about it.
Roxas knew about all of the crimes, the drugs, the prostitution, the terrorism just waiting to resurface but on the trains, he felt… well, he felt safe. And to him, that was worth the risk of all of the above because it was one of the greatest feelings in the world. And in the city, that feeling was rare enough as it was.
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Review please! Thank you for reading.