Fire Without Smoke
Roxas and Xion were sitting on the Clocktower Ledge in Twilight Town like normal waiting for Axel to show up. They waited for about an hour, their ice creams having melted a long time ago because they refused to eat without their friend and teacher there with them.
Eventually Xion asked Roxas, "Do you have any idea where Axel is? He should have been here by now."
Roxas turned away from watching the steps to face her. "I don't know where he is. He has never taken this long on a mission before." He added as an afterthought, "Not even when he had a mission with Demyx."
Xion giggled, but stopped when she saw that Roxas had more to say. "But when I saw him this morning he seemed strange, like a zombie almost. He said even less than Lexeus used to."
Xion wondered aloud, "Do you think that something is bothering him?
"Possibly, maybe we should go back to the castle. See if he's there."
"Yeah we should, if something is bothering him we should go. Friends do help each other whenever something is wrong, right?"
Roxas thought as he opened a Dark Corridor then responded, "I don't know, but I think so, but even if it isn't it is still something we should do." With that both young Nobodies walked through the corridor into the castle. When they arrived they ran to Axel's room as fast as they could. Roxas was about to open the door when Xion told him to wait for a second.
"Do you see that glow under his door? What do you think it is," she asked.
"Sometimes good way to learn something is to see it, got it memorized?" Axel said as he opened his door, but his voice lacked the normal warmth. He gestured inside to two chakrams that Roxas and Xion had never seen before. They both were shaped like two overlapping triangles, one was gold and the red of fire, the other was white and blue and they were currently on fire floating above his desk (which was fireproof). "It's just something that I do every year."
"Oh okay. Hey Axel why do your flames never give off smoke?" Roxas asked, noticing the lack of which seeing as this was the first time Axel used his fire abilities when not in battle.
"That, is hard to explain." Axel said rubbing the back of his head, stalling until he decided whether or not to explain it to the two.
"What could be hard about explaining it?" Roxas and Xion asked at the same time, too naïve to realize that it might be personal.
"Ah what the heck, I may as well get this question off of my chest. Back when I was a Somebody two of my grandparents, a grandparent is the mother or father of a mother or father." Axel explained right as Roxas and Xion were opening their mouths. Axel couldn't help but laugh at their faces of shock. "The questions you two have are so predictable, that I've got the pattern memorized. As I was saying, my Somebody really cared for the two of them, but then it happened the night that I became a Nobody. When the Heartless attacked my home world, they died when some fire heartless attacked their house. They weren't killed by the flames, but the smoke killed them."
"How do you know that they died from the smoke?" Xion asked, when she and Roxas got over their shock.
"Because I was there. I was the one who led the Heartless to their house, the Heartless were chasing me. When the Heartless lit the house on fire my grandparents managed to get me out of the window before they suffocated from the smoke. Not that it did much to save me in the end." Axel laughed bitterly before continuing. "So I became a Nobody, those two chakrams were my first ones. I call the blue one Miracle of Lights and the red one is The Eight Day Miracle."
"Why are they shaped that way?" Roxas asked trying (and failing) to distract Axel.
"They are shaped like that because they are both what is called Stars of David, the symbol of my religion. The names come from the holiday when the Heartless attacked, Chanukah."
"What is Chanukah?" "What is religion" Roxas and Xion asked simultaneously.
Axel laughed then began to answer. Saba, Savta is this what it was like dealing with me when I was a kid?
Authors notes
In case anyone is wondering the reason why Axel didn't explain why his fire doesn't produce smoke is because it didn't make the story flow. The reason is because he doesn't let it. According to this fanfic his grandparents died, because of smoke, because of him. Hello mental and emotional scarring.
So this is a pretty sad story, I know but I wrote it for several reasons.
The primary reason is to remeber my deceased maternal grandparents, who both died from lung cancer (they used to smoke). Saba died when I was seven or eight, while Savta died the thursday right after christmas (Saba is Hebrew for grandfather, Savta is Hebrew for Grandmother) which was just after the end of Chanukah.
Also there are absolutely no chanukah fanfictions on this sight that I have seen so I wanted to make one (even if it is way after Chanukah).
My third reason is that I can just see Axel being Jewish and being connected to Chanukah. Think about it Chanukah is an eight day holiday (eight nights technically), about a miracle where fires burned for eight days. Axel is number eight in the organization and his element is fire.