Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts.

Warning: Akuroku OR Axel and Roxas as best friends. Either works, as is usually the case. Also, lots of run-on sentences. If you don't know why they're there, read this all out loud.

Other: Yes, I did read it out loud. Several times. So if you spot a typo, tell me. I'll be so embarrassed, it'll be gone almost instantly. Oh, and the italics are for emphasis and the events happening, as well as a single thought towards the beginning. I hope it's not confusing, and tell me what you think.

Burning Alive

"Nah...I can handle these punks. Watch this!" Axel jumped away, and I could feel his power flowing out in waves, only they weren't waves, that would be too much like Demyx, they were columns of fire and darkness and that strange black stuff that Xemnas called nothing but hurt like hell when you touched it, and a little bit of light too, light that I thought was there for me, but maybe it was just because of the fire. And when Sora looked around, I saw that all the Dusks were gone, but there was Axel, and with a sick feeling, I knew that this was it.

It...couldn't be true.

But it was.

Axel... I felt tears gathering in my eyes, and wondered if spirits even had eyes or tears or the ability to feel.

He always came back. Always. When they were sent to Castle Oblivion, he came back...all the others, they were dead, but not him. Never him.

He could take a bullet to the chest, a sword through the gut, I'd even seen him drown once. But he was always alive afterwards, alive and laughing at us for thinking that he could actually die, like it was a silly thing to think, because he was Axel and nothing could kill him.

I couldn't believe that Dusks, mere Dusks, the lowest of the low, the weakest of the pack, the ones that the rest of us scorned almost as much as the instinct-driven Heartless, could bring down the Nobody who couldn't die.

But it was his own attack. His fire, the flames that he loved, that he poured his last energy into...they took it, gleefully destroying the Dusks that we all knew Sora could take on his own. After all, Sora's my Other. Even if he was exhausted...even if he was outnumbered, they were Dusks, and dammit all to hell, Axel didn't have to do that!

I should have known...when I saw him, through Sora's eyes, I was so happy...but I should have known. He was serious when he said that we'd meet again in the next life. And he was going to get there first.

I don't know why he helped Sora, but...I thought it was because of me. I guess that sounds selfish, huh? But...I really did think it was. Until he did that attack, and then I knew...

"You know what I mean?" He was lying there, just lying there, fading away, and Sora didn't know, but I knew, that he was going, going, soon to be gone, and this time, he wouldn't be coming back, because that little fire inside that I had always felt had gone out and that meant that he was dying...

It wasn't about me. It was never about me.

If anything, it had been about us, but that was before, in Twilight Town, when he had been trying to stop me from becoming a part of Sora. But I didn't listen. I never do.

Since then, it's stopped being about me or us or anything like that. It was about Sora, and the Organization, and Kairi and Naminé and Riku and not me.

I guess that that was a blow. But, when he looked at Sora, I knew that he was trying to look at me, and that was a blow too, because this time, he couldn't see me. Last time, he could, but I couldn't remember him, and that had been a blow to him. He had looked so happy, and then so sad, and then angry, jumping around like he always would to hide the fact that he was hurt, and at the time I hadn't been able to see that because I hadn't remembered him. But now I remember, only it's too late to say, Axel, I remember.

I remember meeting him. I remember that I had pretended to get his name wrong, just to see what he did. I remember kicking Vexen's ass when the damned scientist tried to experiment on him. I remember talking to him, listening to him, fighting with and against and for him, and him doing the same with and against and for me.

We were friends, in a group that outright denied any such attachments. We looked after each other, in a place only too happy to get rid of the weak and the strong alike. We were strange, different from the others, not quite people, but not quite devoid of all feeling.

"My heart just wouldn't be in it, you know? Haven't got one." And he chuckled, like there was something funny about what he said, and I almost chuckled too, because it was an old joke and I knew that he had said it for me, but it wasn't my body and Sora didn't know the joke, so instead of laughing, all he did was ask a question.

You could hear it in their voices, the ones who were different. Demyx was one. We looked after Demyx too, but he wasn't our friend. We were each other's friends, but we weren't anybody else's. Naminé was different as well, but she wasn't our friend either.

Axel was my world, and I was his. Me, and fire. I sometimes wondered if Axel would do anything if I was burning alive, but I shook away those thoughts. They were silly and petty and they made me think too much. But they came back, when we were fighting, in the room that was too blue and had too little light, and I knew that, when it came to Axel and light, I had chosen my light.

Sora's walking away now, walking into the place where Axel and I had reigned as princes, been reigned over by kings and gods, where the last of those kings and gods still hid, where the only person who could swallow my light rescued Sora's light, and Axel wasn't there and would never be there again and Sora wasn't acting like I would and that made me angry, at him and at Axel and at everything else.

That's why I was so upset, when he chose my light over himself. I guess he went with my choice. He always told me that I knew better than him, that he would follow my lead, but I never thought that he would go that far.

I knew that if Sora was burning alive, I wouldn't do a thing to help. But it wasn't quite the same.