DISCLAIMER: Oh, how I wish I owned Kingdom Hearts. But I don't. Pity me.
Author's Note: I have a notebook and a lot of free time on my hands, what can I say? If you read this and can understand the ending, then congratulations. This story was written for you.
It is neither sight nor sound, but a presence that flutters across his mind like some ghastly spirit. Malachite eyes crack open, bright, so bright, even in his haze. He is not the easiest person to wake, normally greeting the sunlight by diving under the comforting suffocation of the sheet and giving a bullet-wound groan for an objection. But now he bids lady Mab a hasty good-bye and sits straight up, every primitive instinct ready to deal with danger.
He knows they've come for him.
A soft, marble moonglow chases away some of the shadows in the room. The only other light emits from the digital clock beside the bed, old, cracked, missing its plastic skin around the back. 15 munny to take it off the curb. A pathetic thing, but it tells time well enough, and right now its painfully phosphorus numbers flash a 3 and two zeros. They say that 3 am is the hour when demons come out to search for new victims, bubbling over with life, their mortal souls just waiting to be torn and bled and raped, to be chewed into a fine pulp.
He pulls on a pair of pants left over from the previous day (or was it the one before that?) A small mental command, so familiar that he couldn't explain how to perform it, and his chakrams settle into his palms with a puff of flame. Ornate circles, their metal light and perpetually warm, forged in some unknown inferno. They are as much a part of him as his blood and organs and now, even shirtless, he feels less naked.
There is no time to descend the castle. Another vague thought conjures the swirling, vertical pool of black and purple. Sound doesn't carry through its magic, and yet he can almost hear their banshee calls.
With one last sweeping glance of the room he might not return to, he steps in, feeling nothing but a prickling stillness.
Nothing. Dark, dark, and then--
Stars.
A thousand glittering points.
The night has come alive, forming a writhing semicircle around him, illuminated with fallen stars. But there are no stars in this city that mimics life, sandwiched between an illusion and a lie. No, the things milling about around him are eyes, their irises reflecting the false lights. The voices, however, are very, very, real. They don't combine into one as the massed sounds of a proper crowd do, but rise into a gruesome, high-octave chorus, the hunting cry of hounds who have just sighted a fox.
Said fox adjusts his twin weapons, stares down the pack until the din subsides.
". . . . . ."
"So nice to see your pretty faces again."
". . . . . ."
"Really? Is that so. And tell me, what are you going to, quote unquote, 'feast' on tonight?"
". . . . . ."
"Aww, blush blush. You flatter me."
What is vulpine becomes serpentine, muscles going limber as he sways in a deceptively relaxed battle-dance. "Come on, who wants a cuddle?"
A few separate themselves from the mob, rushing forward, claws flexing to drag their quarry into a pervasive hold. A chakram collides with each one, zip, zip, back. The hunters retreat into the crowd, hissing their defeat.
One voice rings out alone and suddenly all his cockiness is gone. The game is over, the line has been crossed.
"Like hell you will!"
His eyes are fire and his limbs are fire and his voice is fire and there's not a shred of doubt that, if any figure comes close, it too will be fire. No creature wants to touch hell.
And so they melt back into the night, taking their sharp little claws and hungry eyes with them. He relaxes at last, exhales, though not going so far as to send the chakrams away. They'll be back some night; any grade school child can tell you that a drop of light won't scare the monsters away forever.
Behind him, the castle door opens, and it is not razor-sharp eyes that greet him, but soft blue ones.
"Axel? What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?"
The boy leans on the archway, speaking through a squeaky yawn, his hair wild and nothing covering him but a sheet wrapped loosely around his waist. Sleep always hides Roxas's rough edges, warms his guarded coldness, makes him cute, but don't tell him that. Axel smirks, finally letting his chakrams go. Back into the castle, his arm around Roxas's waist like it belongs there.
"Just the fangirls again."
END