Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts
Mostly Rock n' Roll
For LalaHachi
Larxene was sweating all over. She couldn't stop shaking either. She was looking around for a friend but there was no one there. She was sure that she had a vague idea as to where she was. She was sure that Namine would come and pick her up. She was always a good about these kind of things.
"What's up with her?" Said a sneering voice.
"She looks shit-faced." Said another voice.
"Can't say its much of an improvement." Cackled the first voice.
"Not that it wasn't a lost cause to start with." Said the second voice and they both burst out laughing.
She sat up to see who the Hell it was she needed to beat the crap out of and saw it was some girl called Selphie whose Dad owned a car company and some other friend of hers whose name escaped her mind.
"You better watch your mouth one of these days, Princesses. One of these days someone might want to punch those perfect teeth out of them." She threatened.
She couldn't stand Selphie. Just being around her made her see red. If she heard her voice even when she wasn't there it just made her want to make a hole in the wall. She knew from the first moment she met her in pre-school that she was going to hate her for life and that she was going to be one of those people she was going to be constantly walking into whether she liked it or not. At that age she had adopted an accurate sense of intuition about these things. She walked around like she was God's gift and that everyone wanted to be like her when in actual fact everyone hated. Her even the people who hated Larxene more could at least agree with her that Selphie was a bigger bitch than she was. She was always buying the latest fashion and spending millions on useless shit she was going to make her father go bankrupt one of these days. She wondered why she hadn't been stuck into rehab yet. Larxene could admit to having a few problems but none of them went as far as Selphie's. Shen they were at school together she walked into a class room with their English teacher lying on his desk. Larxene knew she slept around but she didn't go beyond the legal boundaries. She was fourteen at the time when Larxene didn't loose her virginity until she was seventeen which she thought was pretty reasonable.
The girls laughed in response. "You? Drugged out of your mind? I bet you couldn't even-"
Before Selphie could finish her sentence Larxene punched her square in the face and watched her crumble down to the follow screaming out in pain.
"You fugging bwitch." She screamed. "Yow boke my jao!"
Larxene staggered forward and drunkly raised an eyebrow. "Sorry I didn't quite catch that." She replied sarcastically.
"I'm gonwa ge my dafee to tay yow to cowrt." She mumbled.
She stepped forward and towered over her and her friend menacingly. "Don't count on it." She growled.
The two shrank away and she was about to consider kicking her in to the point where she bleed. She was wearing some nice, spikey heels which would do the trick nicely. Then she shook her head and waved a careless hand before walking away. Axel was waiting outside leaning against the wall.
"Finally! You got out there. Wha- Larxene?" He grabbed her by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. He could see the signs of illegal substances taking over her body. "Larxene you said you were going to stop this."
Even though he was gay, Axel loved Larxene. He cared about her. There was nothing that he wanted any more than for her to be okay and to get off these damn drugs. A few months ago some sleezy guy gave them some at some party they went to. Axel couldn't even remember whose party it was. Since then she had been hooked on them. She had been asking, begging for a couple off any street seller. At first he thought she was just bored and doing the usual thing that most rich brats were doing these days but then he began to realise the real reason why she was taking them. Axel had known Larxene since they were at pre-school, he knew almost every little dirty secret about her. Even the one secret she had told no one. When she told Axel, that exact moment he knew why she distanced herself from others. He knew that was the reason why she was so angry at the world. He found it amusing at first but when he discovered the reason why he knew it was no laughing matter. When he looked back at it on this day he knew that this was just another method she was trying out to let out all her anger for the way she had been treated by the wrong man in her life. He deserved that fucking heart attack before he could do any further damage.
She scoffed. "Speak for yourself."
"Well I don't get fried up every day, Larx. I thought you were going to stop doing this shit!" He snapped.
"Don't be stupid." She said lazily pushing him away to no avail. Axel grabbed her arm and headed for the door.
"I'm taking you home." He said decidedly.
"I was going to call Namine...Ask her to pick me up."
Axel closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. "Larx, Namine is twelve. I hardly doubt that she would be able to handle the responsibility of getting you home let alone driving here to pick you up."
"I can still call her." She slurred.
"No, Larxene-"
"You can't tell me what to do. FAG!" She screamed.
There was a moment of silence between the two friend and then Axel burst out laughing. "God, you try to bruise my ego by making fun of my sexuality? Larx, we both know you can do better than that if you really wanted to insult me."
~ (***) ~
Larxene stared up at the ceiling as she thought about tearing it down. She wanted to destroy something perfect. She liked making this slightly damaged or less perfect. She hated it. She just hated it. She had been locked in her room for days. She hated that she couldn't go out but she knew she had been sent to bed-rest for days as she got through the few stages of rehabilitation. Well they said few but it seemed to her now as she getting through it like it was going to take years. Sometimes it did. Why couldn't they just let her take the drugs? She liked taking the drugs. They made her forget things which were better left forgotten. Some things were better left in the past the only problem with it was that there was a way that it could claw itself out of the ground. Therefore you needed to fight against it. You needed something to drive it back in to the ground, even for a little while. Then she would go back to using the same method again if it came back again and again. Until there was nothing left. She would prefer to having nothing left rather having anything there at all. It was always better having no memories rather than having bad memories. Even though you ceased to know whether you existed or not it was always better to suffer from indifference rather than nightmares.
What she hated the most was that she couldn't see anyone. She couldn't go out. It was more or less like being imprisoned. They couldn't send her to an actual prison so instead they put her in another one. It was the cheaper options but it was ten times worse. She couldn't even see Namine. She could see her but they wouldn't allow her to see her. They told her that she couldn't see her like the way that she was. A sweating, angry mess who was hallucinating all day long. That girl was the only thing which had kept her going. She was the only perfect thing in this world that she didn't want to break. The next morning after she had been at the party she found out she had been charged with assault but thanks to her family's lawyer she had been let off lightly. Or relatively lightly in consideration of what else could have happened to her. She just had to go to rehab and due to this not being the first occurrence of her publicly displaying her slightly aggressive behaviour she had been ordered to go to anger management as well. Great. Just what she needed. It sounded like a barrel of fun. Cue the cheesy, happy music when she walked out of rehab with a hopeful smile on her face after she was 'cured' if that was the word they were using these days. Another person also wanted to invade her privacy and nosey into a place where it was none of their concern or their business to delve into: her personal history.
She didn't like talking to anyone about anything. She remembered when her school councillor tried to get something out of her after she had a fight with someone in the cafeteria. When they mentioned her parents, considering that they knew about the death of her mother which was soon followed by her father they suddenly presumed that was something which always set off some problem in an individual like anti-social behaviour or homosexuality. People with parents were just as likely to be either or both of those as much as someone in her own situation. When she responded to the 'psychiatrist' with this answer he more or less threatened her which led her to threaten him herself. She was expelled the next day with no options other than getting a job, which never really stuck either. Just showed how much she didn't like opening up to people. The only person who had been allowed to go there was Axel but that was because she could trust Axel. He wasn't going to throw any Freudian crap at her or trying to pat her on the shoulder and say 'there, there'. He was like a brother to her. He was someone who was going to give her a nougie to cheer her knew everything about one another. She probably even knew that he was gay before he did. So rehab was obviously going to be a lot of fun...
~ (***) ~
Thank God they didn't send her to some meetings or someone who she would be seeing three times a week or something. Instead there was this guy called Xigar. Apparently he was an unqualified but still an official councillor. He specialised in cases such as hers, which was pretty much the polite way of saying that he was more likely to help with a young, angry individual such as herself who had got herself mixed up with drugs. When they gave her the address she frowned and asked if she had got the right place and nodded. She didn't know much about counciling but she was pretty sure that it was quite unorthodox to have it at a local gym for up and coming boxers.
She smirked wondering if she could then get away with not going to the sessions but then the woman gave her a look and told her that her councillor would hunt her down like a blood-hound and drag her to the ring himself. She reconsidering this notion and knew that Axel was probably going to be pissed if he found out that she had skipped on her session. Whether it was unusual or not in comparison to other sessions. She walked into the gym and asked whether Xigar was. The guy at the desk told her that he was in the main training room.
She tentatively walking down the corridor. It was cold but there was something homely about it. She pushed the door open and peeked around the door.
"So, you're here. Finally."
Larxene narrowed her eyes at him. So this one's sarcastic...
Even though she didn't dare to make a comment about it out loud but that was probably because she was grateful that she hadn't been sent to some Bible bashing hippy like the majority of the councillors back at the rehab centre. They were all so crazy. She couldn't believe that there could be so many ignorant individuals cooped up in one place. She never thought that they could even survive into this day and age.
The tall, bulky figure standing on the edge of the ring turned around and Larxene's eyes widened. That is one ugly-
"You must be Larxene." He growled, as if he had read her thoughts.
He looked like he had picked up a few scars over the years and glared at her in such a menacing way even she felt a little frightened to be in the same room with him. She could now see what that receptionist meant when she saw for a moment that she might have skipped out on these sessions. She had to admit she was almost scared into running away now and never coming back but she was pretty sure that he would be close behind her. She knew for sure now that she wasn't going to be missing too many sessions.
"Obviously." She snapped.
He glanced up at her with an eyebrow raised and jumped off the ring. "Sarcastic...A form of humour which I actually prefer...but if used in these lessons then you're out."
She narrowed her eyes at him again and was wondering whether he was behaving like this because he could easily spot a patient who was going to be a problem or whether he was just doing this to follow the-tough-councillor cliché.
"Glad to have an easy ticket out of here, then. Since it comes so naturally to me."
"The councillors told me at the centre you have a bit of a temper." He noted.
If this was his attempt at making conversation while also steering in the direction of her 'problems' this guy was neither skilled nor subtle...
"Yeah...Hence why I'm here." She said smiling with her arms outstretched.
He nodded. "And because of the drugs."
She felt herself go cold for a moment, of course he was going to know about that. They wouldn't be doing their jobs if they didn't tell her everything about her 'case'. She hated those words. Patient. Case. It made her sound like she should be in a mental asylum. She knew if this outfit didn't work out she knew that was the next place she was going to be heading she knew the last place she wanted to be was in the looney bin.
She let her hands fall to her sides. "Didn't leave anything out did they?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "They really can't afford to. In these situations a councillor needs to know about all these kinds of things."
She smirked cynically and nodded. Yep, he was professional, despite the fact that he technically wasn't a councillor...
"You're not a councillor." She retorted. There was an uneasy pause between the two. "I mean you don't look like one."
She added this considering the guy looking like he could hurt her pretty badly all things considering and would prefer to keep herself intact and also without having sent back to that place.
"Well I am so you better get used to treating me like one. Another you could start doing is giving me a little respect."
She crossed her arms and glared across at him sending him the message loud and clear that she wasn't one to be scared that easily. Or at least she wasn't going to make it that obvious that he was able to scare her easily. She was going to start with giving him a little bit of a taster of her sarcastic abilities.
"And you don't sound-" She began to mutter to herself before she was interrupted.
"I didn't mean to ask you to do the opposite." He snapped.
"Well you are starting to sound like some trainer out of a boxing movie." She retorted.
She had to admit she loved those movies, but when people started behaving like they were in one in real life is just annoyed the Hell out of her. She thought it was them either taking the piss, they were being disrespectful or they thought themselves as such tough guys they had to copy some Hollywood stereotype. There was nothing tough about lacking in originality. It was like seeing a white guy pretending to be black.
"Well technically I am your councillor and you trainer." He replied.
"So whose suggestion was this?" She asked grumpily.
"Mine."
She blinked. "Come again?"
He sighed and picked up a pair of boxing gloves. "I know what its like to be angry, Larxene. A few years ago I was in the same situation as you and now I know where I fell short."
"And where was that?"
"That I was angry and I just wanted to let it out on the world rather than confront the problem which caused me to be so frustrated."
She looked down at the ground avoiding eye-contact.
"And I can see that may be a similar problem you're having as well."
She glared up at him. "Don't expect me to have an out-pour of emotion and a huge confessional any time soon."
~ (***) ~
She hated him. She hated Xigar. He just thought he knew everything about what was going through her head. She had been with him for months now and he thought he knew everything now because of that. He had been dealing drugs a few weeks back and used to have a bit of a temper himself so therefore he knew the same reasons why he was angry and got into drugs applied to her. It just didn't work like that. If he was going to keep this up he was never going to figure it out. Not that she wanted him to. He had every waking moment a living Hell. She was tired as fuck when she got home. She collapsed onto her bed as soon as she got through the door and slept until she had to wake up for dinner. Then it was back to sleeping. Then Namine would come running in asking her about everything and then she would go back to sleep and wake up the same morning to go through the same thing all over again. He strained her muscles and she left the gym with bruises all over her arms. He was never a man to hold back regardless as to whether you were a boy or a girl. During this he would ask her about what she was thinking about. He would teach her about the good technique to have if you were a professional boxer which was one thing to think about but he was wondering whether she was bringing her personal problems into it? Well of course she was but that was never going to be his concern.
She practically kicked the door down when she came into the house. She had been looked after by the housemaid since they were children. She had an aunt and uncle through her mother but they would never be able to financially support them considering her uncle was hoping to become a writer and her aunt an artist. Even with their daughter it would never be that stable in the first run.
"Larxene is that you?" Cordelia called.
Larxene sighed. "Yes, Cordelia. It's just me."
She knew this was going to result in some argument which would similar to one if her father had been around. Minus all the beatings and other things which she told no one except Axel. She knew it would probably be relevant to what she was in rehab for but lets face it, would it make a difference? He was dead now. That had all stopped now, there was nothing to deal with. If he was still alive she would have probably mentioned something by now considering the danger Namine may have been in if he was still alive. That was all over now...
"Sometime one of these day I think you gonna knock down that door like a hurricane." The middle-aged Jamaican woman called.
Larxene surpressed a smirk until Cordelia looked away. She liked that she had been compared to a hurricane. That was quite cool actually. It made her think of the fake names wrestlers and boxers gave themselves and she knew now that she would give herself a name with the word hurricane in it. She would at least be able to give a reason and a story behind the name, even if Cordelia would come after her with her wooden spoon and give her a beating for it.
Larxene smirked. "I am a hurricane." She murmured to herself, almost as if she was humming a song to herself.
Cordelia gave her a look, one which expressed concern when someone they loved said something which was merely meant in jest when they didn't realise the actual repercussions of the serious side to that statement.
"Sometime I worry about you, Larxene. You too much like a hurricane."
Larxene loved how Cordelia talked. She had been around for long enough now that she would never make fun of it since she was used to it. And if she did make fun of it, she knew Cordelia would make sure that she would never do it again the moment she found out she was being ridiculed. Even if it scared her, that no-bullshit side to Cordelia was something Larxene admired. She suspected that may be a reason why she was so aggressive herself.
"What's bad about being a hurricane, Cordelia?"
"Many thing. First off, they destroy everything in its path." Cordelia pointed at her accusingly with wide eyes filled with experience and knowledge beyond Larxene suspected to ever know. "Do you not know what you have here? Do you not realise your luck? Not so many people are lucky. Do you want to destroy all that?"
"Luck isn't everything, Cordelia. It's wealth you're mistaking for luck. The wealth of my father and that's hardly worth anything considering the way he went..."
Not that he didn't deserve it, she thought to herself but she knew it was better to keep such thoughts to herself when Cordelia was around.
"What about Namine? Would you destroy her too? Would you risk that?" She accused.
Larxene threw her a dark look, something which she never did all that often due to Cordelia's iron fist and her occasional fierce temper.
"I would never do that."
"Well then, Miss Larxene. You must be very careful then. Because sometime the hurricane can be too wild to control itself. The second thing why they are bad. Probably the worst thing too. They too wild."
Larxene tilted her head to the side. Sounded like her. "That's not always too bad."
"It always bad. They lose control. I fear for you, Miss Larxene. I fear one day you will stir such a storm that you won't even be able to come back to us. All storms end eventually, but then the hurricane disappear...as will you."
~ (***) ~
Twenty-One. She couldn't believe that she was finally she was twenty-one. She had been waiting for this since her father died. She knew that she had lived her life reasonably well considering that she wasn't carted from relative to relative since there were no living relative save the underpaid writer uncle and artist aunt. She still had to go to therapy but she was twenty-one now. Those two numbers being clustered together meant more to her than they did to thousands of other people. She didn't have to answer to anyone else any more, she might even be able to get out of this damn rehab situation. Maybe she could get her own place? She had the money to get her own place, not that she needed one. She had inherited this house when her parents died and she imagined that it would always be in her name she figured that she had been her long enough to not want to get rid of it. Despite all those principles she tried to live by and as big as it was and as much as she was against the privileges upper class this place was her home. Period. It was Namine's home as well. It would be cruel to take that from her. They had both been here their entire lives and there was no other home which they knew. Even if it was a home which was filled with more skeletons than people thought.
She sat on the sofa as she listened to the family lawyer drone on about all the details which basically meant that she had to tick a few boxes and sign her name in about thirteen different places and then everything would be sorted. It was amazing that something like this could be so easily resolved by writing down your name somewhere so many times.
"Here is the letter your father left you. It...Well, he was adamant about it and firmly requested that you got this letter before he died. Almost like he knew..."
This disconcerted Larxene a little bit as well and even though she had nothing more to say or hear from her father she took the letter out of respect. Besides, the lawyer didn't have to know whether she had any intention of reading the damn thing.
"Thank you." She said quietly.
He saw that she had signed everything and nodded to her silently before he made his way out. She heard him exchanging a few words of thanks to Cordelia who was insisting that he stayed a little longer, probably thinking that Larxene had scared him out of the house but assured her that he had another client to see. For the entire time Larxene was staring at the sealed envelope wondering what was inside it. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to know what was inside it.
"Larxene?"
She jumped at the sound of Cordelia's voice. "Yeah?"
"I was going to make some coffee would you like some?"
She nodded. If she was ever to have any coffee she was always going to have it made by Cordelia. She always made it rich and strong. That was the real way coffee was to be made. She turned back to the letter unsure whether she sound read it. She shook her head and scrunched it into a ball and shoved it in her pocket.
~ (***) ~
"How did it go today?" Xigar asked after their session. Larxene stared at him wondering why he wasn't even panting. She was exhausted.
"What do you mean?"
"You told me the lawyer was coming today." He replied. "How was it?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "It was fine. All I did was sign a couple of papers."
"That's it?" He asked not sounding or looking convinced.
She stared at him and almost considered telling him about the letter she was yet to open. Just to rub it in. She was sure if he knew he would encourage her to read it since it would be her way of letting things rest between them. He knew that there was some anger being thrown at her deceased father but he just didn't know the reason why.
"Yeah."
When she got out the showers she noticed that her scrunched up letter had fallen out of her pocket and had un-scrunched itself like a flower blossoming in the sun. She glanced from side to side before picking it up and ripping the damn thing open.
Fine, fine. I'll read the damn-
Her heart stopped, or felt like it had stopped when she read the letter. Even with the simple way he began the letter made the world seem like it had fallen out of sight. She felt her mind blur over. Her face felt hot and wet. She had just gotten out the shower so that didn't seem like a surprise to her but the sound of someone calling to her made her realise that there was another reason.
"Larxene?" She looked up and saw Xigar there. "Are you okay?"
She knew she was crying. That was the only reason why he was asking, so there was no point in lying.
"My Dad wrote me a letter. I'm not crying because he- Because I miss him. I don't. I'm glad he's not here any more. Even if he wasn't dead and was somewhere else I would be equally as glad as I am now. He didn't need to be dead, he just needed to be gone."
Xigar slowly walked up to her and shrugged his shoulders. "So why are you crying?"
"Because this letter is like a big kick in the balls." She replied shakily. "I mean if you knew about the things that he did to me you would understand the reason as to why I'm being like this."
"So why are you being like this?"
"BECAUSE HE RAPED ME!" She screamed.
She had never used the word 'rape' out loud before. When she told Axel the truth about her father she didn't even use that word. Not even Cordelia knew. Her father made sure of that. After her mother died one night it just happened. It was just his way dealing with it she supposed. It still didn't mean that he wasn't wrong in doing it...
"He...It was after my Mom died and apparently it was because he missed her and that he was so sad that he couldn't find any way of dealing with it...Then before he died he realised what he was doing to me was wrong and he wanted to stop himself from doing the same to Namine so he did the only thing he could do to stop himself...The only reason why he happened to have a heart attack or that was what they suspected due to his terrible diet. He just overdosed...He must have decided to write this fucking letter before he died. He must have written this knowing that...It's just...Why didn't it occur to him that what he did was wrong before he actually did it? Huh?"
"I can't tell you that Larxene." He replied calmly.
"Oh you can't? Oh. I thought you were supposed to know about all these kinds of things 'Mr-I-had-an-abusive-Dad'. I mean you do realise its written all over your forehead." She retorted sarcastically.
She knew that she was going to regret those words one day. Maybe. She had no idea what it was that he had been through. For all she knew he could have been through the exact same thing as her or could have been through something worse. She knew she wasn't going to regret them now though. Right now, it felt damn good saying it to his face.
"No one can answer the question as to why people do terrible things to each other. No one can explain another persons actions. No one can give that to you. The only thing I am here to do is help you not your Dad. I'm only here to make sure you're going to be okay."
She smiled cynically. "Am I going to be okay, Doc?"
"I think so."
She raised an eyebrow. "You think so?"
"I can't predict the future but...I think I can see that you want to get better. I hope you want to get better."
"Ain't that sweet." She replied dryly. She eventually smiled at him and looked back down at the letter. "You know, other girls got flowers and sunshine childhoods, silver-spoon upbringings and fairy-tale endings. Some would think I was supposed to get that but I never did. It's not real but on the very few occasions that does happen but the ironic thing is I'm glad."
"Why's that?"
"Because its made me that a little bit more tougher. I know that whatever is thrown at me next I know I will probably be able to take it. Other girls got roses, diamonds and fairy-dust. I got something else."