Authors Note: Woo! Alright so...I finally got my inspiration back. *Applause* However....People might kill me for this story. I'm sorry. I love Axel it's just...don't kill me. It's just a muse, kay? So read and have fun. This is only the prologue; it was going to be the first chapter, yet it was so pathetically short. The real chapters will be longer than this though. I promise. And if they aren't, you have permission to shoot me. *Bang*But if you like my story, please hit the nice button at the bottom that says "Review this Story/Chapter" and tell me. I'll be posting up the first chapter as well. If you like it, review. If I don't have 10 reviews soon, I may not continue. So, r&r as people used to say but I don't see much of anymore... :)

I don't own any of the characters. I do however, own his parents...

The candlelight danced across everything in the early morning. Way past bedtime for a child of six, but his footfalls padded lightly against the hallway as he crept his way along. He was fast asleep in his bed, you see, and he thought he heard his mother's voice somewhere in the distance. She sounded sad and he wanted to cheer her up so she could sleep too. He remembered that he couldn't sleep well when he was sad. And as he suspected when he reached the end of the hall to the open stairway-something his daddy always said was too dangerous for the little boy, but he seemed to fair just fine over the years. Soon his daddy let it go, just like he always did. When mommy got her way, the child saw, she was much happier. He knew the same was for him, too.

"Mom?" His little voice didn't carry very far down the staircase, and it wouldn't for another two years. He pressed his ear against the hole between the railings, listening for his mommy to tell him to go back to bed, sweetie. When he heard no such thing, he crept down the stairs to try and console his mother. As he rounded the corner, feet scuffing the platform-they always did that, he noticed with annoyance- he saw his mother leaning over the arm of the couch. He wasn't surprised to hear the words coming from her mouth that he was told never to say again after learning those very words from her. He didn't know it was such a bad thing to call that girl a bitch, his mom did it all the time anyway...

"Um...Mom? Why..." He froze as his mother turned. The look on her face was so angry and so sad at the same time. He studied her expression with childlike but morbid wonder. He never saw his mother so emotional.
Her makeup wasn't even taken off yet, and it was almost three in the morning. It was smeared over her eyelids when she blinked from her wide-eyed state he noticed, and he also saw that it was dried on her cheeks. He was a young boy, yes, but he had picked up his keen observation when he was even younger because his parents had the habit of leaving things out. He thought it was because he was a kid. He hated that.

He couldn't get a good look at what she was clutching onto so desperately though. A yell from behind him snapped him from his staring and he whipped around so fast his neck hurt and he had to cover his mouth from screaming in surprise. His father was bounding down the stairs two at a time and pushing the boy out of the way before he could count to whatever number it was he always got stuck on. 7? No, was it 8? He knew he could count much farther than that...

"What the hell are you doing?! You worthless bitch, I told you not to do that when he's home! I don't know why you fucking do it at all!" The boy looked at his father in alarm. That was three words that he couldn't say, one he was definitely not supposed to say. His father was always the one to scold his mother on those words too. But his mother began saying those words over and over. He couldn't get a firm hold of what she was saying because of all those words. But he knew it was bad now. They were bad words, right? It only made sense that you used them when bad things happened. Like that girl at his school he called a bitch. He was grounded after that, too. Shouldn't daddy get grounded now?

That was when he knew it was getting very bad. She was standing now, and he wasn't sure how but at some point his daddy fell. He thought at first he would start laughing and get up like he usually did, but this time he didn't laugh. He continued to say those bad things to the boy's mom, not noticing the small thing that dropped to the floor. But the child did. And when they were too preoccupied arguing and yelling, he snatched it up in his little hand and quickly shoved it down his pajama pants. Mommy would never find it now. Maybe if he left the room and hid, they could play hide-and-seek and everything would be okay again.

They could find him and laugh like they used to. They used to laugh a while ago.

So that's what he did. He turned and ran as fast as his legs could go. He pushed open the cubby hole that he always hid in when they fought like this. He stayed there, pulling out the little bag in his pants and fingering it slowly, looking at it with what little light he had coming from the crack in the cubby hole door. It was a small door and he was quickly getting too big to fit in it, but in cases like this it was just perfect. So he stayed in there. Against what his father always told him since the last time they found mommy like this, he opened the little bag and did exactly what he saw his mother doing. Besides, what could it hurt? His mother did it, so it couldn't be bad. His mom wasn't a bad person...right?

The police were called at three thirty in the morning by concerned neighbors who claimed to hear the parents screaming. At four, the neighbors in the other building next to the apartment called the police as well. They claimed to hear the boy screaming. When they arrived, they had to search the apartment, then haul the wide eyed, screaming child away.

Axel bolted upright in bed, running a shaking hand through his tresses.
He cursed to himself, pulling the sweat covered sheets. The red head pushed himself out of bed, stumbling to the door and whipping it open to reveal his paled cousin about to reach for the door. His hand dropped and he gave a weary smile. Axel scoffed at him, glowering as Reno ran his fingers through his equally tossled red hair.

"Bad dream?" He asked, tipping his head to the side in concern. But that damned smirk was still on his face, Axel realized in irritation.
He thrust a hand out and roughly shoved Reno to the side, mumbling tiredly. When Reno bumped shoulders with him, he turned and shielded his eyes from the sunlight pouring in through the bathroom window. Seriously, why did bathrooms have to have windows? Not like you needed to stare out the window at any point when you're in there.

"Shut the fuck up." Axel bit out at his relative, trudging down the stairs slowly until something dawned on him. "Shit...Today's Monday, huh?"

He received only a chortle from his cousin and jumped to the assumption that it meant it, indeed, was Monday. The teen groaned and turned, making his way back up the steps to trudge into his room. Reno opened his mouth, raising a finger as to indicate he had something to say, but Axel grasped the handle of his bedroom door and whipped it closed. It slammed in Reno's face, muffling his yells of protest to Axel's grouchiness. Damn he hated Mondays now.

"Are you done slouching around and banging cups so I can go to work and not have to worry about you burning the house down?" Reno stood in the doorway, his suit fully intact finally and his sunglasses in one hand, twirling around his finger. Axel gave a nonchalant shrug, nudging past him with a half full tub of strawberry ice cream and a spoon. His guardian shook his head at him, sighing heavily at the teen. He sat in front of the television and soon the picture flickering on his face. His green eyes darted over the scene on the television, hand dipping down to scoop out the ice cream in the tub. He ate at least a whole tub of ice cream in two days or a week, depending on his mood for it, but it always had to be strawberry. Of course, Reno knew about this craving for ice cream, and always wondered why it had to be a frozen treat. So damn expensive, he always said.

"Pickh upbh mbore ishcreme!" The spoon dangling from his mouth still, Axel waved a hand carelessly over his shoulder to Reno, who only sighed in exasperation. Hell, the red head figured he still had half an hour to himself before he had to run to school, even though he really didn't have the energy to spend doing so.

"Axel..." He started, then sighed again and shook his head. "You need to get off the shit, man. You really just..." When he looked at his cousin, the teen only turned his back away and began humming the theme song to himself as a blatant sign that he was ignoring his words of advice. He could take care of himself, after all. He didn't need some asshole who thought he was all that to tell him hat he needed to do.

After all, his mother never listened. When he heard the door slam shut he looked into the tub of ice cream, dipping his spoon in to find it just slid off his spoon into a melted mess on the bottom. He frowned, standing up quick enough to cause him to stumble and sauntered into the kitchen, dumping the sticky mess into the sink before throwing away the carton. No use trying to eat it now.

He took a mad dash up the stairs, two at a time until his chest was hurting and he could barely breathe. He stopped at the top to pant, eyes closed in an attempt to keep them from watering from his dry throat. When he straightened up he pushed through his bedroom door and grabbed his backpack. He slung it over his shoulder but with one survey around the room decided, what the hell? School could wait.

End Note: Yay! So, As you can see that's apparently the end of the prologue. I know. Sucks. And yes, my spoon in mouth language sucks as well. Tell me how to improve that? Much thanks! But, the first chapter will definitely get better. From right at this very second, it may be a few hours before I post the first chapter. I know, you can barely contain your excitement. *Pummeled*