Introductions to Be Made

What if I told you, that when you look in the mirror, you aren't actually looking at yourself? Would that scare you? Would you believe me? The standard answer is 'probably not' on both occasions, but it is some food for thought. For me, I know for a fact that when a person looks in a mirror they aren't seeing themselves. They see a thing that looks like them, but isn't really 'them' as far as humans understand it.

Myself, me, I, all of these words allude to being one singular being. One person. One self. Humans think they have it all figured out. They think they're unique. They're special. There isn't anyone else in the world quite like their one self no matter what. No matter how much they look, they will never find someone just like them.

They were half right. No two humans are exactly alike, which is all well and good. However, that understanding only makes sense if they believe they are one self. One being. One person. The truth of the matter is that people have two parts: their physical self and their spiritual self. Everyone tends to believe that these things are one in the same; that their spiritual self helps define who they are as a physical self. That's not necessarily the case.

The reason I know all this is because I am that spiritual self. I am a Soul.

I am what you see when you look in the mirror. I am that thing on the other side that copies you and moves around with you. I can be your shadow, I can be your conscience, and I can be that feeling you get when you think you're being watched. Well, not me specifically because I'm not actually your Soul. But there are billions like me; one for each human on the planet.

There are a finite amount of Souls in the world, just like there are people. Not all of us have another self to walk the Earth with, but there are only so many of us all the same. Our ultimate goal during our existences is to become pure. Once we're pure, we can transcend to the afterlife. What the afterlife is, I have no idea. I don't even know why I am what I am and where I came from. I know in my mind that I'm probably going to end up being part of some greater purpose, but I have no idea what that is or who is orchestrating it. I just know what I need to do and how to get there.

We become pure by learning all of life's lessons; whatever those lessons may be. Good or bad, we need to know all of them before we can be called 'pure' and be allowed into the afterlife. We achieve this by acting as the Souls for humans. We die and are reincarnated again and again, through eons and eons, living a new life each time. We take on the corporeal form of whatever our human counterpart happens to be. We are born with them and we die with them. Once they're finished, we move onto the next person we've been assigned.

We call our fleshy selves Incarnates. We watch and learn from them every moment of every day, following them through life and all its happenings. It's not a very exciting job most of the time, but it has its moments. I've seen a few wars, been on many sides of the world, and know many cultures. I've seen humans at their best and at their worst, but thankfully the 'worst' is always temporary.

Nowadays, things are dull. It's the twenty-first century – 2013 to be exact – and my Incarnate hasn't done much of worth. He's an okay kid, I suppose, but he really makes me wish it was a hundred years ago because things were much more entertaining, if a lot more stressful. He has a routine where he wakes up in the morning, eats as much as an elephant can, masturbates in the shower, and then goes to school. Day in and day out, he does the same damn thing. I'm tired of it.

His name is Lea. I guess I shouldn't say he's too boring because he's actually lived a pretty full life. He's filled his time on the planet with dumb things that would make any teen drama audience shed a few tears. There have been some mistakes and some successes, but it's all calmed considerably over the last couple years so I've found myself to be quite bored.

His childhood was fairly white-picket-fence. His mom and dad were always very happy together and life was pretty quiet. They lived in a tiny house in the suburbs and they had a couple of dogs and some birds. Lea had a lot of friends and he was very outgoing with the kids around the neighborhood for a long time. There weren't a lot of stressors around to give him an idea of how harsh life could really be.

Lea's first real-life eye opener came when his mom passed away from breast cancer when he was eleven. Rhia had been a very beautiful and kindhearted woman, and even I shed a couple of tears when she finally drifted off. I had become pretty good friends with her Soul and I was sad to see her move on to her next life. So, now it's just me and Lea's father's Soul hanging around, watching this broken family gimp through life.

Lexaeus is an alright guy, I guess; he's just not very exciting. Just from the way he presents himself I can tell he's a very old Soul, one fraught with a lot of life's lessons I have yet to learn. He's very stoic and quiet. He rarely talks about his past lives and the things he's seen, but I don't take it personally. Not everyone has to be as much of a social butterfly as I am. I just wish he would smile more; he's sort of a downer some days.

Aeleus, Lexaeus' Incarnate, went from being a very extroverted and happy dad to a depressed and overworked introvert. Once Rhia passed away, he was crushed, and was forced to be a single father when his career wasn't fit for paying the bills by itself. Manufacturing isn't exactly a growing business in America - what with all the outsourcing - so Aeleus had to get another job to make sure he and Lea could eat and have a roof over their heads.

That left Lea without much of a support system. He spent his time when he wasn't at school with his aunt who was more or less just a warm body that was there to make sure he didn't kill himself. She lived a few streets over from Lea and Aeleus' home but it was far enough away to where the neighborly demographic changed considerably.

Auntie Mae had a lot of boyfriends but no children. She paid her bills on her back and from disability checks from the government she didn't rightfully need to take. She didn't come around very often during Lea's childhood so when Aeleus suddenly decided she was a good idea for a babysitter, I was concerned. Rightfully so. She wasn't the best choice.

I was never really sure on what her relationship to Lea's family was, but he called her 'Auntie' like he knew her so I figured I must have missed something somewhere. I don't think she was Rhia's or Aeleus' sister - she looked nothing like them – and her Soul refused to talk to me so I couldn't get a straight answer there, either. Regardless, she still wasn't a very savory individual despite how many clients she had visit her in her bedroom.

Whenever he was with her, Lea was kept in the basement. There was a television and a few things for him to occupy himself with as well as a bathroom, so it was livable, but not very exciting. He did his homework when he got there and then would zone out in front of the TV for a few hours until Auntie Mae decided she needed to feed him. She usually gave him some sort of take-out food, and shortly thereafter Aeleus would come get him and they'd go home.

The routine stayed that way for several years until Lea started to get older and he could start working. He lost the friends he made when he was younger, he gained a lot of weight from all the horrible food he ate, and he learned how to keep to himself and stew in his own mind. It was overly obvious to me how much he was hurting because of his mother's death, but life had brushed him to the side and ignored the problem. I didn't blame Aeleus for how chaotic things had gotten for him as a father, but I still wasn't happy for his son.

Lea got a job working the stock room at the local Mega-Mart when he was fifteen. After school he would take the bus and go straight to work so he could avoid Auntie Mae's and do something productive. He would then go home and do his homework and go to sleep. Between the ages of eleven and seventeen, Lea didn't do much socializing. He had classmates he sort of paid attention to, and coworkers he occasionally talked to, but there was no outside interaction otherwise. He became a very solitary person until he graduated high school.

Aeleus never asked Lea for any money even though his teenage son had no bills to pay. Lea wasn't very privileged, though, and didn't have a lot of the luxuries I see a lot of other kids his age have. He had a pre-paid flip phone for emergencies that he barely used, and their house only had basic cable and internet that was hardly a half-step above dial up. They lived on the bare minimum, and even when he had money, Lea didn't buy himself things.

The poor kid was teased constantly all throughout middle school and high school. After Rhia's passing, he became the quiet kid that was easily picked on. His weight gain, orangey-red hair, lack of shiny luxuries, puberty, and quiet awkwardness made him a fast target for all manner of relentless taunting. He was beat up, kicked around, stalked, mocked, and humiliated on a regular basis which further perpetuated his misery.

Once he started working, things didn't improve, but it seemed to distract him some. He graduated in 2006 and took his savings and put it towards college. Because of how little his father made, he was easily granted financial aid and was able to use his own money to buy himself a few things so he wasn't a complete outcast at college like he was when he was in high school. It was around that time when Lea started to change.

By the time he was most of the way through high school, Lea had lost a decent portion of the weight he had gained years earlier. Moving boxes around for a living as well as his lack of appetite due to crippling depression made him slim down and become 'socially acceptable' again. So, when he started to change himself for college, it was mostly just surface changes that he worked on. His orangey-red hair was dyed a proper fire engine red (that was a little much for my tastes), he got a prescription face wash to clear up his skin, and he started plucking his eyebrows. A new wardrobe, new amenities for his dorm, and a few pieces of shiny technology chewed through almost all of the money he had saved during his adolescence, and he was finally able to leave the nest.

Aeleus had a hard time letting his son leave. He and Lea had grown apart since Rhia's passing, and there were a lot of loose ends that he felt needed to be tied. It didn't matter much to Lea, though. He was doing all of this himself so he didn't have to rely on his father to give him permission to leave. As soon as he was able to, he bid his farewells and hopped a bus across town to the local university where he started going to school.

Lea didn't really know why he was going to school, I found out. He just was because that's what one did after high school. He had no goal, no focus, and his first year was absolutely miserable because of it. He floundered through his classes, his attention somewhere off in the clouds, and barely passed them. He kept to himself in his dorm and made no friends. He slept in his free time and spent most of his non-class hours in the bed staring at his television which was hardly ever turned on.

However, things started to change again during his second year. I don't know exactly what he was thinking, but Lea decided to go to school part-time and start working again. I like to think he thought it as a way to get him out of his funk and get him moving around. The only problem was that was where he was living. Part-time students weren't allowed to live in the dorms so he had to find an apartment where he could afford it. Unfortunately that meant he moved to a rather sleazy part of town and took up roost in a dumpy studio apartment with barely any security.

Enter Braig. He lived down the hall from Lea and took notice of him within a week of Lea moving in. He was an older guy and had a cocky attitude that rubbed me the wrong way as soon as I noticed him. Tall, lanky, with facial scars and an eye patch, the guy looked like bad news from the start. I could tell Lea was suspicious of Braig at first, too, but the kid was lacking life experience when it came to meeting new people and allowed the guy to chat him up.

"What's a good looking kid like you doing in a dump like this?" Braig had asked, pushing his waist length salt-and-pepper hair over his shoulder.

"Going to school," Lea said bluntly, unable to keep eye contact. The kid was a real charmer when he wanted to be.

"Huh. Don't got many students livin' here."

"Well, I'm here now," Lea said, pushing the door to his apartment open. He made to leave and close it again but Braig stopped it and easily pushed it open again.

"I can see that," he said.

"Please leave," the redhead said.

"But I want to know why you're here."

"I told you. I'm a student. Living inside places is nicer than living on the street."

"Yeah, and I said there ain't many students here. As in, we don't got none."

"So?"

"I don't believe yer a student."

"…But I am."

"I think you're here to cramp my business."

"What?" Lea asked, sounding genuinely confused.

"You're in the wrong place, kid. If you're smart you'll leave. Tonight," Braig said, the obvious anger in his voice spreading to his sharp facial features.

"But I have nowhere else to go. I'm not leaving," Lea protested, furrowing his brows.

"This is my building. You're leaving," the man continued, stepping further into the apartment. Lea took a few steps back, fear making his emerald eyes wide. Before he could get very far, Braig launched forward, tackling Lea to the ground. The kid screamed in surprise and let out a loud grunt when he made contact with the floor. I immediately covered my eyes, unable to watch as my Incarnate got the ever living snot beat out of him, his cries of pain stinging my ears. He started sobbing after several seconds, causing Braig to hesitate.

Peeking through my hands, I could see Lea on the ground with Braig on top of him, the kid's arms up as he attempted to cover his face. His nose and lip were bloody and his voice was hoarse with frightened blubbering. The older man stopped his abuse and stared at him for a moment, confused. Lea wasn't trying to fight back and just stayed on the floor, waiting for him to finish what he started. Eventually, the crying slowed and my Incarnate was able to muster enough courage to look up at his attacker.

"W-what do you want f-from me?" he hiccupped meekly, his face partially skewed by his arms still.

"Who are you working for?" Braig asked.

"What? No one! I didn't even k-know this place was yours! I'm sorry!" Lea squeaked. Braig stared at him for a long minute, thinking.

"Either yer telling the truth or yer a really good actor. I can't decide."

"I'm not working for anyone!"

"You swear?"

"Yes! Let me go!" Lea pleaded. The man continued to think for several minutes before he pushed himself up and stood. He held his hand out for Lea to take, but when the redhead didn't do anything, he volunteered himself to grab Lea's wrist and haul him to his feet. My Incarnate let out a yelp and faltered, but Braig was there to steady him. Once the kid was standing, the older man started to push him out the door again and into the hallway.

"Stop fightin'," he said as Lea tried to get away from him.

"Please! Stop! I was serious when I said I don't have anywhere else to go!"

"Shut up! You'll wake the neighbors," Braig barked, opening his own apartment door and shoving Lea inside. Once they were both in, he closed the door behind them and closed it.

"What do you want from me? Money? My stuff?" Lea asked, backing away from the door and further into the apartment. The blood on his face was starting to dry.

"I don't want nothin' from you, kid. Not yet," Braig said, turning and taking Lea by the arm. He pulled my Incarnate through the apartment into a tiny bathroom and pushed him into sitting on the toilet. He started digging through his cabinets, producing a first aid kit and a few bottles I couldn't read the labels of.

"I don't understand."

"Just be quiet," Braig said, taking up a wad of gauze. He doused the cloth in what I assumed was antiseptic and turned to Lea. Cupping the redhead's chin, he started to dab at the other's lip. Lea tried to pull away, but the man let out an almost animalistic growl and scared him into staying still. It only took a few minutes for him to clean the kid up and make him mostly presentable again. Lea sat on the toilet awkwardly, staring at the floor.

"Can I go, now?" he asked quietly as Braig cleaned up the first aid.

"No. What do you do fer money?" he asked.

"Um… I wash dishes at—"

"Not anymore you don't."

"I don't understand."

"You want to stay here, yeah?"

"I'm not so sure, now."

"Well, for as long as you stay here, you're going to work for me. This is my building. My business. Everyone here works fer me and earns their keep. It's not so bad. I even give you a choice of what you want to do."

"I'm sure that's awesome and everything but I don't want—"

"Yer not listenin'. You. Are. Going. To work. For me," Braig said, stretching the last sentence out so it was very clear.

"No, I don't think I can—"

"Too bad."

"If you just give me a month so I can save some money, I'll leave."

"Not an option."

"But—"

"Look, kid, this is just the way things are. If you don't listen, I'm gonna beat the shit out of you, take yer stuff, and then kick you out on the street. That's yer other option," Braig explained, turning to Lea and giving him a very matter-of-fact expression. My Incarnate stared at the man for several minutes but eventually relented and nodded, finally understanding that he didn't have any choice.

"…What am I going to do?" he asked dejectedly.

"Sales," the other man said simply, leaving the bathroom. Lea sat for a few seconds before reluctantly following behind Braig. He was led through the apartment again until they reached the other side. Braig pushed the door open to what I presumed used to be a bedroom and my, as well as Lea's, jaw dropped.

Braig had an indoor garden of sorts in the room. There was a massive skylight supplying dingy sunlight to hundreds of potted plants. The room was filled to the brim with the foliage and there were a couple of people in the back corners doing something at small tables. Lea was beyond shocked and he walked up to one of the plants and looked closely at the leaves.

"Is this… pot?" he asked nervously.

"And some tobacco," Braig said simply with a tiny shrug. Lea backed away from the plant, shaking his head.

"Oh no. I can't sell this to people for you. It's not right."

"Well, you don't have to sell this if you don't want to."

"Oh… good," Lea said, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Getting' on yer knees and selling yourself is another option."

"…Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"I… what…"

"There's two things that sell in this neighborhood, kid. Smoke and sex. Both are very good ways to make a lot of money, and I like money."

Lea was pale, but he eventually nodded. He didn't have many viable options available to him, and Braig wasn't letting him budge until he made a decision. In the end, he decided on selling pot to the other kids at the university. Braig set up most of his customers, letting his contacts know that Lea was the go-to man for the business in that particular area. Apparently, pot and college went hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly because it didn't take very long for Lea to comprehend the fistfuls of cash he suddenly had.

Braig was very good at what he did. It was eventually made known to Lea and myself that he didn't actually own the building they were staying in, but he did have control over it and all of its inhabitants. Everyone worked for him and his 'sales' company, giving them a cut of their profits plus whatever money they needed to pay the bills. The landlord was paid by Braig, and kept his distance from the place. If there were any maintenance issues, Braig handled them so that outside parties were kept away from his operation.

All-in-all, I suppose it could've been worse. Pot wasn't the most heinous of things Lea could be peddling, and at the very least he kept himself safe from disease and abuse by not selling himself. Braig only took twenty-five percent of whatever money his employees made after the bills were paid so there was more than enough money for Lea to do whatever he wanted to. After a couple months, my Incarnate was fully immersed in the tiny community Braig had created, and they even became decent friends.

For a drug dealer and pimp, Braig turned out to be an okay guy after a while. He made sure all of his people were safe and that they had what they needed, and even started encouraging Lea to come out of the meek little shell he tried to live in. Throughout the rest of that year, my Incarnate started to change again. His fashion sense started to resemble the grunge trend from the 1990's and he started to get tattoos. His hair grew out, and he was very meticulous about keeping his natural gingery hue covered up and hidden. He became so obsessed with getting rid of his carrot top that he even went so far as to dye his eyebrows whatever color he happened to be wearing at the time. Despite what he was trying to hide, he seemed rather fond of red, so that's what I found myself staring at most of the time.

Lea stopped going to school when he finished his second year. He couldn't decide on a major and he had finished his pre-requisites so there wasn't much else for him to do. He spent the better part of the next two years hanging around Braig and his friends. It was only a matter of time before he started smoking with them, drinking with them, and doing the things they did. He was mostly harming himself and didn't get in trouble doing it so I couldn't complain too much.

However, Braig started getting more and more interested with him the more time they spent together. I didn't really know what to think of it at first; Braig's Soul kept himself hidden to me so I couldn't talk to anyone else and get an inside opinion of what was going on in his head. Eventually, their group get-togethers in Braig's apartment dwindled until it was just the two of them more often than not. They talked a lot, shared some stories, and became very close.

A little too close for my tastes, really. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't against my Incarnate being happy. Lea was becoming more and more of a human being and less of a recluse the more he and Braig hung out, which I was completely okay with. The problem was that Braig, or rather Braig's Soul, wasn't the one. He wasn't the right person for Lea.

How did I know that? Because… well, it's a little selfish of me, but I'm looking for someone. My someone. Roxas and I met in the eleventh century during the Crusades in Jerusalem. There was an instant connection, one that made me feel like a complete being. The long and short of it is that I've been able to find Roxas through every existence I've had since we met and it's been such a fulfilling feeling every time we've been together. Roxas is my Soul Mate. We're in agreement on that. We strive to find one another, and every time we do with some semblance of permanency, our Incarnates are happier for it. It's a great feeling; one that keeps me motivated even through the lonely patches.

Braig's Soul is not Roxas. Braig isn't right for Lea. He was okay for the interim but I still needed to keep an eye out for Roxas and whatever form he may have this time around. Braig did help me a bit in that regard, though, I will admit. He was the first clue I had ever gotten about Lea's sexuality once they started to get closer.

For years and years I had been subjected to Lea masturbating by himself and taking a pathetically long time to finish while watching the standard heterosexual pornography fare. He didn't attempt to find a significant other while he was in school and after a while I began to wonder if he was asexual or just not interested in companionship. However, Braig changed that.

The first time Lea and Braig had sex, I sat as far away as I could and cringed. They were both completely tanked and Lea was still very much a virgin. He didn't seem to enjoy himself very much and Braig didn't seem to care that his partner was almost in tears the entire time. The next morning, it was obvious that Lea understood what happened between them, but I never got the impression that he was upset about it. He avoided Braig for a couple days and sat around in his dumpy apartment thinking.

He started searching around on porn sites more and made the marvelous discovery that watching two guys fuck each other was much more enticing and got him off substantially faster than any heterosexual porn had in the past. Personally, I didn't care what Lea was into, but the confirmation of what his sexuality was made my search for Roxas a lot narrower. I knew I was looking for a man now, instead of wondering if every face I saw was the one I was supposed to be looking for.

It's really difficult to keep track of one's Soul Mate when the other party functions on so many different frequencies than one's own Incarnate. For all I know, Roxas' Incarnate could be ten years younger than Lea. He could be tall, dark skinned, could be a bus driver or a hooker, could be someone completely out of Lea's radar, or the perfect fit for him. Even when we find one another, it's not a guarantee that we're together for the rest of our Incarnate's lives. They have to make a connection of some sort before Roxas and I can even make contact. Even if it's just exchanging names, it's enough for the invisible barrier between us to break so we can be together whenever Lea and Roxas' Incarnate are near one another.

I'm getting impatient. It's hard for me to imagine that Lea is coming out of his shell enough to even talk to strangers outside of his little commune of an apartment building. I'm afraid that it'll be too late for Roxas and me to spend much time together if Lea doesn't take the reins and start moving forward with his life. I may not see Roxas until Lea is on his deathbed for all I know, and what if Lea is my last Incarnate before the afterlife? What if Roxas still has a million more lives to live before he can come and be with me on the other side for eternity? I don't know if I can handle that sort of loneliness.

Then again, what would stop me from feeling it? To my knowledge, I don't even know if I can die. I don't know what the afterlife is, or if it's even anything good. There are so many questions surrounding my existence that I can't answer. It's almost as frustrating as looking for Roxas, but at least I know that when I find him again, we can sit and talk about it. So, for now, that's my goal.

My name is Axel.

My Incarnate is Lea.

I'm looking for Roxas: my Soul Mate.

Hopefully I can find him again before I cross over and finally figure out what the afterlife and my purpose is.

A/N: I don't expect to update this with any sort of frequency (like the rest of everything I do apparently) and I honestly have no idea where I'm going with this so expect the tags and parings and all that to change as the story goes on. The idea I have about how all this works is pretty convoluted, so give me a few chapters to explain before you ask too many questions. Also, fuck editing.

Thanks, lovelies.