Title: Petite Mort
Characters/Pairings: Axel, Marluxia, Roxas; Marluxia/Roxas/Axel
Author's Notes: Written for my trio post at KH Request (on LJ), for llama-sama, with the prompt: "Merciless Cult" by Dir en Grey. Went with the line the pessimistic you / the merciless you / and the self-loving you because it described all of them together, while all of them separately. Awesome. Playing around with second person perspective. Implicit adult themes!
In the dark, the real dark, the dark outside your hollow ribs, it's different. It's clotting and woven thick. And you can't see a thing, though your eyes may strain and narrow and water with the effort. After a while, you wonder if they're even open.
Up and down becomes relative. Gravity pulls you one way, euphoria another. You can tell which direction you're facing only from the smell of burning linen, of the press of hot fingertips and the silent sizzle of your skin. Down is hellfire, is lips tracing a path along your bubbling black flesh – or is it the chariot, drawing the sun there? Which came first?
There is no empty space or sky. The ceiling is the boughs of trees, arcing overhead and bracing together to squeeze out the daylight. Vines tangle down around your neck, around your wrists. Smooth, cool, slick with dew. Thorns sprout from them, growing slowly in some places, jumping forward and serrating in others. Blood trickles down, little steaming rivers where hell has burned too hot.
Down is merciless, bursting like sap in a fire. Up is loving, so loving, but not of you – never of you. And you really can't choose one over the other, because they're both just as bad.
Just as bad.