Sorry, had to edit the first chapter! I haven't really got the hang of the whole fanfiction thing yet! It confuses this simple mind!

Anyway, just a little note of this story…one thing: I am Australian, so I think I might write about what I know, and that's solely Australian. So sorry if you don't understand anything :S let me know if you need any explanation on university, TER, whatever…yes, curse the Australian way!
Point two: I'm actually not really into the whole man-love thing! Gasp! But axel and roxas I love to pieces. They seem to be able to complement each other very well…and I love it…so hence…story…
Point three: it has mixes of final fantasy and kingdom hearts…and real world. Hopefully not in a way that is already confusing with the whole Australian thing, unless you are Australian. Ha ha, Australian shall be mentioned no more.
Point four: before I get into trouble…I don't own anything from square enix blah blah blah…and to be completely stereotypical…I wish I did. They have a thrilling ability of creating very beautiful people!

Point five: sorry for the ending and the reviewer who pointed it out! I has removed it :D

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"Fuck off you got 99! I didn't even think you were a smart kid!" Zexion had yelled at him, his fist striking against his shoulder. That was the general consensus with all his friends, all awestruck and surprised that Axel could even pass his Tertiary Entrance Level exams. Axel didn't get sick of it, didn't even feel offended, didn't even care when his mother blinked at him and asked him when he had started year twelve. What did he expect? This was from a person who didn't react when he came home with tattoos on his face when he was fifteen, a desperate attempt to get her attention. He could have driven nails into his skull and she would have just looked at him absentmindedly.

It took her three days to realise what it meant, and then she promptly burst into tears about how old he was, and how he was going to leave her, like Reno did.

Like their father did.

And so it started.
The letters from prospective universities piled up on the kitchen table, and the smell of burning in the air. Axel could only glance briefly at them before having to throw his bag down on a grey, worn chair and get into the kitchen, a pot of brown waste bubbling dangerously on the stove. Black smoke billowed up to the stained roof, around the fire alarm Axel had long before smashed with a hammer.

"Fuck sake!" he snarled, burning his hand on the metal handle as he tried to pull it off the flames. And he ended up with charred, inedible chicken curry spilling across the bench top, a completely fucked pot and a blistering hand. His fists clenched as he counted slowly to ten, a stereotypical method he had employed over the years to deal with his mum's…issues. He found on the rare occasion that they actually worked for him. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a pack of Peter Jackson Gold, Gold in more ways than one, and lit it on the burning stove before turning off the gas. He shoved the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, smoke curling from his nose and pulled out a sponge to begin cleaning the mess.

"What happened Axel?" his mum asked, shuffling into the kitchen, still wearing her pyjamas at four o'clock in the afternoon around her almost skeleton frame. Her blue eyes were wide and frightened, but she always seemed to look like a startled puppy. "I heard you swearing…"

"You left the stove on," he muttered, dumping curry in the sink and filling the pot with hot water. He closed his eyes when he heard his mother inhale sharply. He could see her, covering her mouth with a thin hand, her eyes filling up with tears, and he wasn't even facing her.

"Oh dear…oh dear…" she murmured. "I forgot! I wanted to make you something nice for your dinner! Fuck, what the fuck is wrong with me?" She muttered something under her breath that Axel couldn't make out, and then sobbed, a harsh choking sound ripping from her body. Axel cursed himself for. He should have been more fucking subtle! He dropped the cigarette in the sullied water, turning around and pulling his mum in his arms before she started striking herself with bony fists.

"It's ok, mum, it's ok," he said, pulling her tighter as she squirmed and whimpered. He shushed her, and rocked slightly. "I'm not hungry." His stomach clenched from hunger at his lie. "I had a big lunch." She smelt like pot and body odour and dirty hair. He hugged her until she quieted, and then stepped away to continue cleaning a kitchen that, no matter how hard he scrubbed with super-power bleach, never looked clean. He threw the sponge at a scurrying cockroach by the fridge.

"What did you do today?" Cassandra asked, frowning at the sponge, her fingers curling in her nightgown methodically until her knuckles turned white. Dark purple shadows under her eyes, which conflicted with skin pale almost to translucency, told him that she wasn't sleeping well again.

"I went to work. Remember I told you this morning."

"Oh of course," she stared, wide eyed and vacant as Axel opened the fridge, eyeballing the mouldy cheese he was so ravenous. There was nothing else except yoghurt looking milk and pumpkin which had grown its own ecosystem. All while the four horsemen of the apocalypse were tearing down his digestive system at the lack of available glucose. Sometimes Cassandra would snap from her reverie, go to the store and buy enough food to feed enough children in one of the Midgar orphanages.

"You have mail as well," his mother continued and pointed towards the door, before shuffling out. Completely at ease again. She was ill, mentally fucked up, and pot made it worse. It left her room stinking of cats and old socks. It left her in a mindless daze where she would reattach the hose to the sleeve of her coat and wonder why there wasn't any water.

Axel watched her, his hunger replaced with a burning he couldn't yet place. He was too young to have to deal with this. Too young to be able to understand despair.

He slammed the fridge door and made his way back to the living room. His fingers reached out towards the letters, fingering through them, coat of arms smugly staring back with their obvious pretentiousness. He scratched at the ink. Midgar University, Adaequatio Intellectus Nostri Cum Re.

"Conformity of our minds to the fact," he quoted. "Sounds like a friggin' cult."

He neurotically stacked them, four letters, four universities, in a perfect collection of destroyed flora, with Midgar University on the bottom.

Before he could regard the symbolism of why he purposely did that, the front door slammed open and his sister filed in, her phone glued to her ear. "No you hang up." Giggle, gush, giggle, bag thrown on the couch, the scent of fairy floss perfume in the air, "Ok bye."

Axel didn't look at her. He didn't like looking at Kairi anymore. Her clothing had become too short for his comfort, afraid that if she bent over he would get a view of her barely-there-underwear. Makeup smudged around her eyes, probably another hickey on her neck from boyfriend number forty seven. Or was it thirteen again? He couldn't keep track. He felt the burning of guilt slithering through his veins for the umpteenth time today, at his prejudices that his sister was becoming a prostitute.

"Axel," she sang, slipping her phone down the front of her shirt. She had cut apart the collar to display the lace of her bra and angled collar bones. Her thin arms wrapped around his waist in a hello, before glancing around him. "The house stinks like rot!" She paused. "What's this?"

"Mail," he answered, screwing his finger into the middle of the stack, the edges of the letters crinkling upwards to engulf the digit. His sister pushed his hand away and picked one up.

Cue: Explosion.

"What the fuck Axel?" she screeched, hell cat, fire and spittle. Even her red hair seemed to stand on end. "Why the fuck did you apply for this? What the fuck am I supposed to do if you go there? Twilight Town? You selfish deadshit, leaving me here with her!"

Guilt- he could just leave her here. Despair- he was never getting out. Self-disgust- he was a deadshit.

"I haven't decided yet," he whispered, reaching out to her to stop the tears that welled up in the corner of her eyes. She had eyes like mum, while his eyes were green like their father's. Sometimes, his mum wouldn't look at him or talk to him for days because of it.

"But you applied! You fucking applied to go somewhere else and leave me here with that crazy bitch! I can't believe you would do that to me!" Kairi continued to rage. She threw the letter at him before he found the words to try and explain it to her, grabbed her bag and marched out the front door, her phone once again against her ear just like the way she had come in.

If he overlooked her egocentricity, he could tell that she was just frightened of him leaving. Or maybe he was just hoping that he heard it.