Disclaimer: This is an experimental fic, oneshot, whatever and I just like using this format. Just a little sad story on what could happen to the fish that flows against the stream. It's pre-CoM and explains the other reason Axel hates Marluxia so much. Here you go.

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It was done. It was finally done. The operation was a success.

Roxas yelled at me. He said I was kind enough without it.

That I'd be a pompous jerk that bragged all day, but still his jerk.

Larxene yelled at me. She said that it wasn't necessary. Love was always with me.

Did I care? No, not in the least. My most coveted item was with me.

The missing piece that left that hole in me.

A heart.

Vexen said it could be done. He did the surgery, the placement, whatever. It was mine.

All mine. No one else's. Mine for love, mine to be loved, to be a Somebody.

I thought Vexen hated me. Marluxia too, but he aided the academic. Maybe I redeemed myself.

I could barely stand up. My legs wobbled off of the table and I swung the double-doors open.

Roxas was leaning against the tacky painted walls and shook his sandy blonde mop.

"You're an idiot, you know that? Are you too good for me now?" he smiled.

He smiled again. That smile, like ecstasy and poison blended together.

The only one of two I could somewhat stand in the house. My affection.

"Everyone's too good for you, Number XIII," I joked. He punched me on the arm.

"Hey, watch it! I just got out of a life or death situation!"

"Any time alone with Vexen and Marluxia is life or death! What did they do to you?"

"I don't know, I was knocked out!"

"Well," he turned away in worry "if anything bad happens I'll skewer them with my keys, got it?"

"Yeah, sure. And Roxas?"

"What now?"

"I can mean it when I say I love you."

I screamed in my head "I love you I love you I love you!"

There was always time to tell him later.

---

"I can't believe how wrapped up you get in these things. You know it doesn't matter."

I don't know why the other part of me found comfort in Larxene.

More like she tacked herself onto me, damned lightning pixie.

She was good to vent to sometimes, and to scheme on others.

Pawning Demyx's rusty guitar in the slums of Twilight Town was the best idea ever.

"Well deal with it. The heart is staying."

"No, but what have I been telling you for all these years? It won't matter.

Hearts are just a fundamental part of the human being,

not the reason you can't screw your boyfriend with meaning." She began to snicker at that.

"Hey, that…what are you saying? Just be happy for me, okay?"

"Fine, but if Vexen botched it he's getting a rude awakening tomorrow okay?" she laughed.

It was rare to see her laugh out of happiness than out of other's misfortune. Very rare.

She actually looked…pretty with her unslicked blonde waving in her face.

After leaving the room, I realized I forgot something very important.

I popped my head back in the library.

"I'm not screwing Roxas, thank you very much!"

---

Nothing bad happened. Nothing bad ever happened.

No swirling black hole, no monster, no possession. It didn't fail me.

I went for months without any incident. That spring in my step and voice never left.

Luxord stopped asking why I was such an ass to him all the time.

Saïx stopped slithering his way in and out of my room to "borrow" things.

Marluxia agreed to do my dirty work for once. People started caring about me. Less than him.

Superior even thought I was different. I deserved a new rank, to knock Saïx or Zexion off their pedestals.

Roxas loved the new me. Sometimes he would hold his head to my chest just to see if it was real.

Thumpthump…

Thumpthump…

He still didn't trust it though.

"Vexen's an evil sleaze ball," he used to preach "and you know there's gonna be a price someday!"

I'd ignore it. Every word. I was too happy to believe I wasn't a Somebody.

Somebody. Not just anybody. A Somebody.

Larxene gave the same long monotonous speech to me. I still didn't listen.

I was never so naïve in my life, but that feeling.

That feeling of such warmth and pleasure was hypnotizing me into a deep sleep.

I couldn't let go. Not then. Never

---

One afternoon Xaldin knocked at my bedroom door. He said it was important.

That dragoon had a mini-collection of Heartless in his quarters, or as he said, "experiments."

He'd learn various skills off of them and perfect them with his lances.

"As the mischievous pyrotechnic you are I'd expect you're the one who let it go."

"Whatever you're talking about, I didn't do it."

I was tossing a small ball of flames up and down, up and down in the air on my bed.

I barely paid attention to the whirlwind anyway, and he never respected me.

"Then why are one of the specimens missing?"

"What, you're little lab rats you like to torture? What would I need one for?"

He slammed me against my headboard and pierced me with his stone dragon glare.

"Tell me why that Neoshadow is gone from its cage and what you did to it."

"I…don't know, I…let…go!"

He finally relaxed his choke and I coughed back to the mattress. "Where is it?"

"I told you, I don't know! The only other crazy-ass around here is Vexen so find him."

He claimed it believable, but before he left, asked another question.

"Is a heart as overrated as it seems or was it worth it?"

"Every fragment of it"

He half-smiled and walked out. "Good luck with that."

---

All those times I ignored them. All those times I was so stupid.

I wanted to cry. I honestly wanted to cry. I wasn't a Somebody. I never was.

And he was losing his life in front of me because of me. The Nobody. Me.

But Nobodies couldn't cry.

It was a day, another normal day. Roxas came to my room to talk. Talk about everything.

We'd always just sit at my windowsill and stare at the sunset and talk. It was our ritual.

It was just like Christmas except it ended with more love than usual.

"If you quit the Organization XIII, what would you do?" he asked.

"I'd hide in a mountain or something so I wouldn't get the punishment."

"Seriously! What would you do?"

"Fine…I'd go wherever you'd like to go."

"Really Axel, you're so spineless around me. It doesn't take much does it?"

He leaned over and lightly kissed me with his lips like drugs.

So addicting, so beautiful. I'd melt in his arms like a true flame if I could.

I grasped the hair on the back of his sandy blonde head and leaned inwards.

Feeding more passion into the fire.

Everything was burning down already. I might as well have gave in more.

"Roxas…" I hissed "I love you…"

He tugged at the front of my cloak and drew me into his web, further, deeper.

"I love you too," he somewhat audibly said, through the smacking of our lips and moans.

"I'll go anywhere…as long as it's with you…"

I slipped my hand under his shadowy jacket, caressing his chest, feeling every curve and tensed muscle.

He moaned louder in my ear and began to nibble at my right lobe.

"At least you have a heart…you can feel everything now…"

"No, only if it's—"

I stopped feeling. I stopped kissing. This strange air blew through me.

Then it happened.

This sudden surge of pain went through my body, my head, my heart.

I ceased our spasm and fell on my knees, to the ground, clenching my heart.

I was in pain, pain I've never felt before. It was…indescribable, almost bringing me to tears.

If Nobodies could cry, that was.

Roxas looked at me from underneath, shouting my name, asking me what's wrong.

I couldn't speak, I was paralyzed by that pain in my heart that I could only scream.

In my heart. In my heart.

Roxas saw me gripping my chest and this flame of fury sparked in his eyes.

He still wouldn't leave my side, but whispered like it was him like me.

"I wish you would have listened to us, Axel. They did do that, didn't you?"

Everything was flashing in my brain again:

………

I was kind enough without it.

"Any time alone with Vexen and Marluxia is life or death! What did they do to you?"

"Tell me why that Neoshadow is gone from its cage and what you did to it."

A heart.

"I can mean it when I say I love you."

………

No, no no no no no No! It couldn't have been true, no, none of it.

But everything was coming together so perfectly that it would be wrong to deny it.

I was never happy. Only when someone else was in danger. Roxas was always in danger.

Vexen and Marluxia were always against me. Always.

Roxas and Larxene were always right. Always.

"Axel, please, you're gonna be alright, just hold on a minute!" he kept reassuring.

I wasn't going to be okay. Never.

The darkness in me was taking me over. I was losing touch with him.

"Axel…your eyes…" He looked hurt, watching me suffer. We really had become one.

Even I could see a bright yellow tint glazing my eyes, like a real Shadow.

I didn't need a heart to say "I love you" to you, Roxas.

Finally I was gone, my soul out of my body completely.

I couldn't think, I couldn't move, I was trapped in tangles of pitch black.

The only thing I wanted to do was cry, but Nobodies couldn't cry.

They weren't anyone, that's why.

---

I woke up a few minutes later. I couldn't remember a thing.

My vision was hazed and I tried to focus, seeing the window we were staring into.

It was raining now, with deafening claps of thunder and blinding lightning cracks.

Like Larxene on a bad day.

My eyes drifted back to the carpet, the striped beech and olive, with smudges of red.

Blood. Blood red.

My sight fully came back to me with panic and they rushed and glided to where most of the blood was.

"N-no…Roxas…Roxas!"

I could have sworn he was dead. No, he was slipping away from me.

His stomach, the bronzed stomach I had been touching earlier was stained.

A cut was driven from end to end. Blood red was dripping everywhere.

He was breathing heavily, coughing and wheezing and I couldn't do anything.

I was too spun, too flustered, to do anything, and I was frozen in the red.

All I could do was cry. Cry real tears that flooded the Heartless they put inside me.

I guess Nobodies could cry. We didn't need hearts to love, did we Roxas?

I was just being selfish, wasn't I?

Too damn selfish for our own damn good.

---

Larxene pushed open the oak double doors to the crime scene.

"Hey Axel, I heard you scream and I though you and your boy toy—"

She finally saw it. The blood everywhere. Me crying. She was speechless.

"What did they do? What did they do to you?" Seemed as logical as anything else to say.

I still wasn't talking. Just sobbing. Crying like a Somebody.

"Axel, what happened!" She went to Roxas's withering body and inspected the wound.

"What's inside me," I finally mustered. "What's inside me."

"Axel, work with me! What's inside you?" She tried shaking me back into reality.

Reality threw me out with two suitcases and a kick in the ass.

"The Neoshadow…"

"Stop talking nonsense! What's inside you?"

"The Neoshadow. Xaldin's Neoshadow. They didn't give me a heart. They put a Heartless in me."

She stopped shaking me. She finally understood. She knew it would come to this.

She felt obligated, maybe, to hug me. Out of pity maybe. Or heartfelt sympathy.

I didn't want it. I wanted Roxas to be alive and kissing me again.

"I told you they would mess with you," she whispered in my ear, still salivated.

"We didn't want you to get hurt, Axel."

Demyx followed Larxene in and immediately saw Roxas on the ground.

And me, the huge wreck.

"Axel," the nocturne began, but Larxene cut him off.

"Demyx, get Roxas to Xemnas immediately. Vexen might be the doctor but he'll do the same."

"What do you mean?"

"Just take him to the Superior!"

He gently lifted his bleeding body and carried him out the door.

He was so close, I just wanted to be with him again, to be near him, but I was a monster.

A regular Heartless. A regular monster.

---

I wouldn't leave my room for days.

Larxene told me that the Superior was treating Roxas and had learned what Vexen did to me.

He wasn't surprised. He even offered to remove the Neoshadow from that vacant black hole.

I sat at the windowsill all day, watching every sunrise, sunset, and moon.

And I cried.

I was constantly shaking. Nothing in me was stable.

I annoyed myself by shaking too much.

And that bastard had the nerve to come in to see my pathetic state.

"Hello Pyro." Marluxia grinned from the doorway. "Has your condition gotten any better?"

I met his glare with fiery emerald, drowned in aqua.

"I don't want to see you Marluxia."

"Fine, fine, but Demyx made me tell you that Roxas is awake now. He's asking for you."

He turned to leave, but I just had to ask.

"Why did you do it?"

He laughed.

"You found out about the coup d'etat, Axel. Not that we won't try again. You were too dangerous."

"But why did you put a Heartless in me? Are you crazy?"

"No, Vexen's crazy. Me? I would have just killed you on the spot.

It'd be better than what you're going through right now. Now get downstairs, you mope."

"Thanks…I'll be there soon," I sniffled.

---

"There Axel, it is completely removed."

Roxas was fine. He always acted fine around me so I wouldn't be so worried.

I cut him open. I cut him open and I wasn't supposed to be worried.

He said he wished our love wouldn't bring such horrible things.

I told him it was me, not us. It was always me.

Superior did pull the Neoshadow out of me, thank holy hell.

If it happened again…I'd die. Just die.

Leaving that cold operating table made me feel like a bomb. A giant ticking bomb.

We're sorry, this message will explode in 3…

Larxene saw me teetering back to my room.

"Do you still hate the flower boy?"

"Why, he wants to put a Heartless in Vexen? Be my guest."

"No, there's a plan for an overthrow. All lower ranks will rule the Organization.

I'm…thinking about going in on it."

She lost all my respect. That comforting embrace that night? Nothing.

Sleeping with the enemy as they say. Exactly. Couldn't put it better.

2…

Xaldin passed me in the east wing.

"Are you stupid enough to join them? The rebels?"

"Never in a million years."

"Good. They've stolen some of my experiments again. Make sure they don't shove another one in you."

"Thanks for the warning Xaldin."

"And they say the Heartless ruler is still alive…wonder what she's planning."

"Whatever Xaldin."

1…

While unlocking my quarters Roxas saw me in recovery.

He quickly ran to me and wrapped his arms around me like the old days.

The nice days when a creepy shadow was pounding at my ribcage like a heartbeat.

He was crying. Crying sweet salty tears like what I shed for him.

"Roxas, what's wrong?"

"It's for the best okay? I have to!" He made motions to kiss me again, with ferocity.

With a passion like it was ending. The world.

"Roxas, what are you talking about? What do you have to do?"

"I don't want you to sacrifice yourself to keep our love safe!"

"Roxas, please, calm down and spit it out. What's th worst that could happen after that?"

"Axel, we can't keep doing this! I love you and I don't want you to get hurt anymore!

It's all because of me! I have…I should…I have…

I have to leave the Organization!"

0. Goodbye.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

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Well that's what happens. Axel always has it rough. Damn you fate. Okay, thanks for reading and R and R please!