He was a fake. This fact was quite literally beaten into him from the moment he came into existence. And fakes aren't people. He was a living doll, a mannequin with a beating heart and a brain filled with someone else's memories. He had Riku's personality, down to the speech patterns - and Riku was prone to bouts of restless angst. On the island, he walked on the beach and hit things with his wooden sword until he was back to normal, but the Replica couldn't do that. Not allowed out of this room (this overlarge, colorless room with nothing but a bed and and a black crayon hidden under the mattress) without supervision.
He paced, mumbling to himself and occasionally glancing at the place he'd stashed the crayon - remnants from the girl he thought he'd loved. There was a loathing slowly settling in his fabricated heart for her, white-blonde hair and eyes the color he supposed the sky was, and the boy she'd broken him for. The original Riku's best friend, savior of everything.
He wrote on the walls. Huge, scrawling nonwords, half-finished scribbles of ersatz and fading memories - a raft, a tree, a door - until his crayon was a tiny sliver of black wax on the tip of his finger. He shoved it into his pillow case and slept.
x
He saw fire when he woke up.
Controlled flames licking the walls, serpents of red and gold tracing over every one of his drawings, making lines into words that seemed like poetry. He watched them with mild interest as they crept towards his bed, half convinced he was dreaming, and closed his eyes when they set his sheets alight.
x
Green eyes.
They were staring at him - no, into him, through his skin to his spurious soul. They didn't blink, didn't move. The face they inhabited was stoic, a mildly downturned mouth and sharp features and tiny blue diamonds on the cheekbones. The hair was a mess of crimson spikes, piercing the air with their pointed tips, defying every law of gravity the clone could conjure into his deteriorating mind.
It was hours before he spoke, his low, rough voice shattering the silence of the room like glass.
"Who are you?"
The Replica didn't know how to answer.
x
He was Axel. Just Axel, no subtext or captions. Axel liked fire and talking and the replica was very soon used to both of these things, though he rarely said more than a few syllables and always shied away from the flames. Axel didn't have a bed - the powers that be hadn't seen it fit to give him one. The replica gave his up, curling himself up in the corner for two nights before Axel had demanded that they share.
Axel was terrifying, tended to fall into manic rage with no warning and set the walls on fire. He apologized afterward, every time, burning hands threading through the replica's silver hair, repeated words pressed against his forehead. It took exactly twelve of these episodes for the replica to move, fingers twitching against Axel's spine, arms held awkwardly in some semblance of an embrace.
x
Axel's smile was sunshine.
They touched constantly. Fingers brushed as they sat beside each other on the bed, noses pressed together after a violent fit that blackened half the room, arms wrapped around each other as they slept. Axel liked his hair, always caressed it in a way that made the replica sigh. Axel took to calling him 'kitten,' stating that the clone was like a cat - curled up all the time, except when he was sprawled on the floor with his head in Axel's lap, humming to the rhythm of the fingers through his hair.
Axel asked his name; he frowned and said he didn't have one. (A defective copy doesn't get to call itself the original.) Axel was silent for hours, absently stroking the replica's hair until his mouth moved to say 'Liku.' He didn't explain, only pressed his lips to the newly named clone's cheek and suggested that they go to bed.
x
Axel was warm.
There was no heartbeat beneath that searing skin.
Liku lay with his ear pressed to Axel's chest, listening for hours until he fell asleep to the silence, and awoke to a mass of red occupying his vision. He could feel the smile against his skin, raised a hand to touch Axel's shoulder. It was a sad smile, when he saw it. It broke his imitation heart.
His fingertips grazed Axel's cheekbones and he kissed every inkling of sadness away.
x
They had grown used to each other. Liku-kitten and Axel - they didn't exist separately, they thrived on touches and inaudible words and mania and melancholy and one without one is absolutely nothing.
Axel's disappearance was devastating.
Liku woke up freezing, desperately searched the greying room for the only color he'd ever seen.
Nothing.
He cried, body-wracking sobs and gasping breaths. Then he slept, cocooning himself in his sheet and curling as close to himself as he could manage, slept for days and days until the anger hit him like an electric shock, propelling him from the empty bed across the room, tearing at the charred walls. He scrawled Axel's name on the little white that remained, the ash on his fingertips more effective than the bit of wax in his pillowcase.
Eventually, the only white left was his hair, and he couldn't taint that - it was Axel's, every strand having been graced with the touch of those gorgeous hands. He couldn't ruin that.
The transition into nonexistence was swift - one thought, one motion, one instant, and he was gone.
xxx
interpret it as you will
because i have no fucking idea.