I haven't found a 'how Lea 'dies' and becomes Axel' fic, so I made one. but being honest, I hadn't looked that hard. I think I just wanted to write something with Axel, because I love him a lot. But it came out all drab and angsty-fied. I think it's better that way though ^^;
Oh and forewarning? Meant to be a tad ooc. Because nobodies and their true self are supposed to be almost opposites - right?
t e a r s f o r a f f a i r s —
it's gonna lift me up and take me out of here.
The dull glow from the frosty light bulbs felt like home. It filtered through the smoky hues, the veins of carbon dioxide flirting with all too willing nostrils. Stools creak like old joints, popping in odd places with a lean from its occupant. The bell above the entrance clings together every few minutes, wearing out the clock as it ticked past midnight.
Froth bubbles out of the machine, pushing out false happiness onto the striped countertop. He reaches out as the mug is pushed over to him, holding it up to his lips with a devious smirk.
There's a girl, looking at him with something he knows too well. His smirk turns into a toothy smile, and he puts his mug away on the counter, leaving frothy fermentation tumbling over and forgotten.
And he's gonna make his way towards that girl with sunshine that falls around her face, crossed legs shimmering like silky sand. He's gonna forget about the paled over circle on his tanned finger, the promise ring left in his apartment, with his girlfriend lying in her bed wide awake.
He's gonna forget who he used to be.
-
He had a father once. He had a father, a mother and a sister. They had been close knit, owning a family business that he would help with as he got older, and he would take over as his father would retire it to him. It had been passed down generation after generation, everyone knowing about that place in the chipped, run down city.
Everyone had to go there eventually, whether they wanted to or not.
But as this boy turned the ripe age of eighteen, headlights had collided and rammed the rod of the steering wheel into his father's heart. The windshield shattered into his sister's face without compassion, her beautiful complexion marred as her natural fiery head of red hair peeled away. The shards of glass shot into her skin while the airbag suffocated her lungs.
And all too soon, they were at the doorstep home.
-
"Lea!"
His mother had cried into his shoulder with hysterics wracking her body. It was then that he noticed the arteries of her hands puffing with less dignity, the broken rhythm fluttering throughout her body. The flashing of blue and red across the blinds of their window seemed to break her down more every second.
The carefree, goofy smile that always littered his face was gone now. He was looking at the shiny badge latched across black cotton with outmatched hatred, a brutal sneer stamped in place.
He wanted them to burn. He wanted them to burn in hell for such an awful, horrid joke. They would pay, making his mother crack over like this, making him feel like he had never felt before in his life.
He didn't believe it, not letting death soak into him. He protected himself as best he could, repelling all the rationality from entering his mind. He wasn't going to let himself cry.
It wasn't until he saw them lying across the graying table inside the gagging walls of the hospital. There was a gaping hole in his father's chest, and he could see the table clearly inside of it. There were bald patches on his sister's scalp, beautiful red hair torn away.
He couldn't take it. Not any of it. The especially repulsive fate of his giving, benevolent family shouldn't have happened.
He started to run. Run, run, run.
He felt a rolled lump in his throat, down the street with his breath exploding, as he lost himself in the crossroads of the only city he had ever known. He retched out all the impurities of denial and happiness, of the times he smiled with authentic, genuine laughter.
And as he leaned across the graffiti scattered across the building, he stared at the messiness. He already felt the need of wanting it all back.
But he kicked the rough asphalt, over and over, forgetting about it and pushing it away.
He didn't need it. He could make it, with him and his mom.
Losing himself was just a necessary sacrifice.
-
He didn't know why he kept calling his mother.
A month after the funeral, she kept her distance from everyone, letting her body mesh with the stuffing of the couch in their living room.
At first, he spent time with her at least once every day. There was something inside of him, besides all the singeing hatred, that wanted her to find a solitary space of peace. Because if she could find it, so could he.
An ember of hope had infiltrated his perpetual heartburn, and he kept squeezing her hand. He kept giving her plastic doll smiles to make her hair stop drying out.
The clear lucidity of her sharp green eyes were dulling, dimming through clouds of smoke, much like the bars he kept finding himself in.
Soon, the ember choked out in the midst of no oxygen. He stopped calling her, realizing that the scents of times past had finally gotten to him in that god-awful house.
And then one day, the trees had blown harder than usual. There was a metallic twinge mixing into the atmosphere, and he knew right away that this day was going to drastically fail his already low expectations.
The phone rang. He walked over with a sluggish sway, falling into the office chair and placing the phone receiver up to his ear.
"I love you."
It was uttered and it was gone. His slender fingers tightened around the handle.
"Mom—"
"Please forgive me."
It was then that he knew what was going to happen. This was going to be his last moment of tremendous clarity.
And what was the point of it now?
The line rang out with dead connection and he almost smirked. Dead connection.
He put the phone back down, his hand slightly trembling. But he shook his head, sitting up straighter and staring at the phone.
This should have been more surprising, thinking on it. He should have known it was going to happen sooner or later, but he found he didn't care.
His family had turned out to be so devastatingly weak, and the weakest one was sitting in the office chair living among the dead.
His lips curved mocking, a laugh escaping.
-
At Saint Josephina's Family Mortuary, people were catered with tender care and a loving smile. Everyone would feel as welcome as need be, as welcome as they could with stale, deathly air masked over by potpourri and china vases.
It was a place that was both respected and abhorred.
He had never wanted to have this job. It was one of those unfortunate things about being born into a family with a line of business that wouldn't fail.
"Hello."
He looked up from separating his father's files and payment checks.
He met her when he was sixteen.
He grinned that charming, beaming grin he was so well known for.
"Well, hello there pretty lady. What can I do for you?"
She was that best friend who moved away for life goals he didn't have. Who, after years of school together, was always true.
"I would…" she hesitated, failing to give him back an honest smile. "I would like a burial for my father."
She was the only person he ever looked up to, without a false set of pretenses.
He nodded, sympathy chiseled into his facial structure. "Of course."
-
His father would always ask, Do you know why we do what we do Lea?
And Lea would look up at him, eyes curious and wide, wise with life and death. "No."
Then his father would say, Because we are the transportation to peace in death.
And Lea would ask. "How?"
Then his father would say, We are the hands that push the souls up to God.
So Lea wondered, before he forgot, looking down into the open casket. He had painted color into her face, rich with despair.
Why did this happen?
But the fact of the matter was, he hadn't minded doing his job. She was just another nameless face among the ranks of all the rest, blood relation or not.
So when her face penetrated into his swirling, swirling eyes, he didn't shed a tear.
-
She was on his doorstep on his twenty-first birthday, holding a bottle of champagne with white picket fences secured underneath rosy lips.
"Happy birthday!" She was squealing, jumping up and down, her arms around his neck and fingers twirled through his shaggy, reddish brown hair.
They were sitting on the couch when she started to kiss him. It felt like she was trying to breathe a boyish smile back into his chest. The promise ring was cool against his scorching pulse, still bound to a finger he couldn't remember placing it onto.
In a brief lapse, he wondered if she had taken it off during their time apart and only put it back on for this surprise occasion. He didn't even know it was his birthday. He didn't even know his ring was lost somewhere in the junk drawers of his - home.
But it turned out that he didn't give a shit about all the men she had probably been with, the silver bands that didn't signify anything.
He didn't believe in her truth anymore.
-
"How's your family?"
Inside the car, the air conditioner failed to chill over the sweat that lined his skin. Nothing seemed to get rid of it.
At the question, his lips opened to show bleached, glinting teeth. As much as they glowed, it was very dark.
"Why don't you ask them?"
She let confusion slip over her face like a glove. She looked closely at his face.
"Well, alright. We can swing by your parent's house?"
Her cluelessness made his smirk-smile richer, deeper, darker.
"Oh, of course. They won't mind at the sudden visit." He glanced at her, taking his Christmas eyes off the road.
"In fact, I think they'll just die."
-
"Why didn't you tell me?"
They were inside the funeral home, her looking at him with something akin to betrayal.
He turned toward her, stretching his arms out in front of him, bored.
"It never held a top spot on my list of conversation topics, darling."
Her eyes were welling with tears, watching him not care with the impact of the situation bursting through her.
"But they're your family." She stomped her foot into the floor, wooden panels creaking in protest.
He rolled his emerald eyes, as if he had heard this conversation many, many times before.
"Technically, not anymore."
She crossed her arms, huffing in disbelief.
"You are such a bastard, you know that?"
He smirked at her reaction, reaching out to ruffle her hair.
"More than you'll ever know."
She slapped his hand away, tears streaking her face with shiny lines.
"Just take me back to your apartment."
He feigned a frown. "I think they'd be disappointed in you. They were expecting a goodbye speech."
She stared at the bodies. "Like you give a damn about them."
He chuckled, but to say it was real or fake, nobody could be sure.
"Touché."
-
There would be times he would lay in his bed and count the mountains in his ceiling all the way to his fan in the middle. And once he'd get to it, he'd think about his parents and revel in his smoldering anger and dark humor.
But his thoughts and questions were things his old self never thought about.
Because he was such a good boy who loved his family, who thought bad words were really, really bad. He was the boy that made himself the designated driver in every case of used beer, especially when he would be out with his best friend Isa. He was the boy that had a sweet charming demeanor, never utilizing it to its full potential in the realm of women. He was raised to respect them.
And he still respects them. Really respects them.
He was the boy who smiled and nudged - who made that obscure influence nobody would think back on until he was gone.
He was the boy with the sarcastic wit, biting with fullness. He was the boy who could smirk at everything with a mischievous gleam in his rock solid emerald eyes.
But wait. He still did that. Or did he not do that before and had only forgotten?
-
There was a heavy pressure digging into his chest as he woke up, and he was face to face with the girl whose name he couldn't place a finger on.
She let her fingers drag over his face slowly, touching him, trying to remember a time where his cheeks weren't so hollow and he was fat with sincerity.
"What happened to you?"
She was…Rachael? Renee? Reba…Re-something. Maybe.
He let his eyes swirl into hers and grinned. It was the straight, sharp edge of a knife.
"I think it's called life."
And all at once, he felt two tears simultaneously splash against his cheeks, seeping into his skin right underneath his eyelids, a fierce sensation like a tip of a needle.
The pressure let up, the digging vanishing. She had gotten off of the bed, grabbed her clothes from the chair off to the side, and walked into the bathroom.
Right after the door slammed closed, he heard a strangled sob and the crack of a mirror.
-
When he started to work inside the rooms with stale, pungent air, little Lea didn't like it. It had described sad places, sad faces, sad remembrances of the people who had departed to another era. All the while they would be stuck in a wooden box, trapped forever.
The faces were always impassive, no emotion flecked across their skin. It was unsettling to stand before them. He felt he didn't belong there, his smile and clear evergreen eyes never bereft of feeling.
But now, he would tower over the bodies, complete control driving through his flesh. These people here—they were just like him in a way others could not be.
He walked into the crematorium, the door clicking into its place. The cardboard boxes were lined up just like he had left them, one in front of the other. Thinking back on it he doesn't know why he waited so long to do this.
He wet his fingertips with a lick and slid each box inside the retort. Reaching towards the chamber door, he let his hands graze it before he stopped himself. He backed away and hit the activation switch instead.
He waited and watched, anticipation blooming with impatience. He felt heat starting to build with each passing second, and he saw the heat waves start their mirage in the opening.
And right as the fire struck through the cardboard, he felt it as if it struck through him too.
If his heart was still beating, it would have been rendered speechless. His lips stretched into a manic smile, and he breathed in the smoke and newborn ashes.
He found that cremation was the part of his job that he loved the most.
The rising flames were glowing with unutterable beauty, and this—this—painted his auburn hair a streaked red, orange, red. It made his green eyes swirl and swirl with a sense of urgency.
But the best part was the ashes rising in time with the fire, watching the lifeless shells wither away with an agonizingly slow intensity.
It was death and it was life all at once. And as much as it stung, it was electrifying. He felt himself finally one with them - perhaps for the first time.
When it reached its climax, he unlatched the door and let it swing open to the main room. His smile was much more prominent when he saw her in the room, horror struck upon seeing gasoline containers and smelling dead flesh frying away.
To him though, it was the look she gave him when she turned her eyes upon him. She looked hopelessly lost, mortified, and almost captivated all blended. The eruption of flames behind him completed the picture.
"Lea—" she was dangling on a string and he wondered why she just didn't give it up.
"Princess!" He fanned his arms out in a dramatic gesture. "When I thought today couldn't get any better."
Her eyes were a wet, shiny hue from the lighting. He walked forward, stopping in front of her, and clamped his hands on her shoulders. She flinched.
"Follow me."
He pushed her toward the doorway to the outside, walking over the slippery liquid of the oils on the ground soaked into the wooden boards.
When they made it outside, he promptly turned around and surveyed the building. She turned around with him, shaking from her tears, her once in another life knight, and the shocking coldness in the sky.
"You're going to have to watch very, very closely now."
And she obeyed, watching him as he took out a pack of cigarettes from the back pocket of his jeans and the lighter from his jacket. He set the toxic stick in his mouth, and brought the lighter to the tip. He flicked the switch lighting the paper, and she felt it pierce her skin.
He breathed in with gracious depth, savoring the rough smoke, then blew it and let it rush out in mesmerizing curls. The cigarette sat lazily between his fingers.
"This is vindication." He looked over his shoulder to her, smile reflecting the moonshine.
"Commit it to memory."
He flicked the cigarette into the doorway and in less than a second, the sparks flew and engulfed the interior of the building.
Her tears wouldn't stop, feeling icicles on her back and embers on her front. The moonlight was fading, and something was happening - she didn't realize what was happening.
Lea had his arms wide before his creation. He turned around toward her, showing her the predatory smile that had reigned over his soft lips.
"It's the last thing you'll see," he was looking at something behind her - something was behind her.
"Got it memorized?"
She realized the irony to all this memorization, and the tears turned cold when she figured out he had forgotten it all.
She turned away, not being able to look at him anymore, and saw before her what he must have been looking to.
Underneath the blurred vision of her eyes, there was a beady yellow connected to a certain kind of darkness. Almost a heavy moon in the midst of a starless night sky.
And just like that, she had been swallowed whole, the black sword slicing through her dangling string.
Lea watched the pure, faithful, forever loving heart float up and up and up. And then, just like him and her and the flame of the lighter, it faded from view.
For the first time, Lea felt two droplets leave his eyes. But he stared at the colossal Heartless and smiled.
In the second before his death, he remembers.
And in the second after, he forgets.
so when you finally disappear, it was like you were never here.