Existence Persists by xXxItsDarkOutsidexXx
Disclaimer: I clearly don't own any of the Kingdom Hearts characters, or Reno. And also, the bags around their necks, I believe that idea came from Dragon's Blood, which is a great book, you should all read it.
Summary: It was all his dad's fault. Every bad thing that happened to Axel in his life could be traced back to his dad. There was nothing he could do about it now, though, nothing but live with everything life threw at him. And maybe the bad stuff had caused the good stuff, so maybe it wasn't all that bad.
Author's Note: I'm apologizing beforehand how out of character everyone is. My excuse is that they're a lot younger in this story but the real reason is that originally this was a back story for a book I was working on and the characters in it are all loosely based on Kingdom Hearts characters. I've pretty much scraped the story but I liked this and I figured I could make it into a fanfiction with some tweaking; maybe I'll even build off this oneshot and make it into a story of its own. Who knows? Probably not though.
And also, I did minimal editing… so sorry for that as well.
August 2410
Karsiv Valley wasn't a real valley in any respect. It stood with two great hills—mountains even— called Haliwage and Ashwick, only on one side with the wide glossy stretch of ocean that seemed to go on forever, as it wound itself away from the northern peninsula that you couldn't see from the valley even if you stood on the beach, on the other. Karsiv Valley was the largest city of the western part of the world, naturally The Road started here, between the two hills, it was the only passage into the city, and then ended in Lilitum—this city is now abandon but that story is something else entirely. As cities on Kalendae went, though, it was big enough for six Pack-Crawlers and a collage but small enough for a failing fish industry, a single market square and only one straight cobblestone-like street of shops. Inside the city limits was winding road after winding road, everything leading to everything else and sometimes nothing, secret places no one knew about and tiny little garden parks hidden among houses and between buildings and in the strangest places; the houses were of various sizes but all were made beautifully and all were of similar styles and colors (usually creams, silvers, pale blues, yellows and whites) and they glittered in the moon light. During False-dawn they lit up like a second sun. On the other side of the sagebrush covered hills were miles and miles of wasteland so vast and the color of blue ash that it seemed to trap the city on an island between two oceans.
Axel lived in a small, two-bedroom house that, if you didn't know it was there it was quite possible to miss it entirely. The house was squished between Whicker's Minds, a one-room school for grades 1-3, and a basilisk ranch all backed up against a flat side of Haliwage Hill (this hill was more of a plateau than anything else and had a sheer cliff overlooking the ocean). All three buildings were made of the same creamy red stone and had similar dark tiling on their roofs with specks of what looked like crystal sprinkles. They were so close that they could have been easily mistaken for a single building.
There wasn't much space in the way of empty land in Karsiv Valley, because it was walled up on all sides every single space available was covered in either a house or a shop or the city's trademark cobbled roads. Only one stretch of land was completely empty, owned by some rich tradesman, and was left untouched. In his words it was to "preserve the wonder and majesty of their vale before human-kind came to ruin it." It sat on the other side of the school and went on until it reached the ocean where the little stone path lead the only safe way up Haliwage Hill to the Temple of Sevda.
In this field, where the grass and weeds were high and brittle, you could walk and a cloud of miniature grasshoppers would spread to either side in your wake, quick to escape the impending crash of bare feet on their heads. In the summer Axel would go through the field to the ocean just to get away from his home and watch them fly, flutter-buzz of wings all around, sandy-blue insects to match the withered vegetation and the land surrounding and lay down in the azure grass and watch the ocean waters lap at the hoary stone shore; dead heat of the sun on his head and a plastic bottle of jadefruit juice sweating in his hand.
It was one such afternoon in the dead of August while Axel was lounging on his back in the graying grass with the sun beating on his eternally pale skin that his brother, Reno, came looking for him.
Looking at Reno was like looking in a mirror. They had the same burgundy hair and the same pastel skin; they were both tall for their ages but while Ash was thin and boney with angled features Reno had a strong, lean appearance. Reno's sharp, blue-green eyes flashed dangerously and caught his own green, dull and soft in comparison, and stared.
They watched each other for what felt to Axel to be hours and hours until Reno nodded toward the house with his chin. Axel, understanding, got to his feet as he began to move away from his patch of grass just as Reno reached out and snatched the juice from his hand. Before Axel could protest he threw his head back and downed what was left in the bottle and then, in a wide arc, tossed the thing into the sea. Scowling Axel shuffled back through the field with his hands in his pockets. He walked as slowly as he could, fearing that when he got home father would be waiting with a whipping for a forgotten chore or failed grade. Or maybe he was drunk again and Reno wanted to save himself the beating by sending Ash home first. Whatever the reason Reno didn't follow him and when he got home everything was still.
He pushed the door open as silently as he could and tip-toed into the dark family room, from there he could see a thin line of light under the door in the kitchen. He could hear the hushed voices of people who didn't care if the people home heard them but were trying to not be heard through the walls, even though no one could hear you outside the house anyway.
Happier now that he could hear no yelling, therefore his father was not drunk—which was a feat within itself—he went over to the kitchen door and tapped lightly. The whispered voices stopped for a moment and then his mother's voice came, hesitant at first.
"Reno, is that you?"
"No it's me," he said, she would know.
"Honey, come in."
Axel pushed the door open and came face to face with a strange man. He was weathered to the point that he looked much older than he probably was and even Axel could see the underlying sadness behind his smile. He stuck his hand out and Axel hesitantly took it.
"Cadence, this is my other son, Axel. Axel, this is Cadence. He's a fisherman."
"Hullo," Axel mumbled dropping his hand to his side.
"Honey," Axel looked into her eyes, the same brown as his but somehow on her they looked much more sweet and less dreary, "Honey, daddy… he isn't coming home anymore."
"Why not?" Axel looked up at Cadence sharply, "…Is-is he your boyfriend?"
"No. Honey, daddy isn't coming home because he… he had an accident."
Cadence had found the body floating in the water near the docks. He had plunged head first off the dock and into the deep waters on his way home from his favorite liquor store (that was usually where he went after he got kicked out of his favorite bar next to it); floundering in his bungling drunken state he had attracted a frill shark. It was gruesome, only bits and pieces were recognizable.
Axel's father wasn't coming home. And then everything was different.