Now all that was left was for Axel to disappear in a few weeks. Maybe make a show of it- make it look like he'd been killed by some kind of Heartless. Not paying attention to where he was going, he ran right into someone that had just turned the corner of a hallway he's been passing.
"Ugh!" Axel grunted as he hit the other person. Both nearly fell, but stayed standing.
"Sorry about... that." Axel said, recognizing the person he had run into. "Sir." he added, a mite sarcastically.
Xemnas glared stonily at him.
"You ought to be more... careful. You will one day end up making the wrong person angry with you." Xemnas told him with more than a hint of threat in his voice. Xemnas turned on his heel, walking down the hall. Axel glared at the retreating back of his superior.
"Keep making that face, and it could stick like that." a voice said from behind him. Axel turned to see Saix, a cruel smile on the blue-haired man's face as always. "And it would be wise not to glare at your betters." Saix followed after Xemnas. His good moode shot after those little exchanges, Axel sighed and headed to his room, flopping down on his bed with hands folded behind his head.
'I can't wait to get out of this place.' Axel thought. It's not like he had anything really important here- maybe one friend, but then again, Demyx hardly knew Axel. It wouldn't be hard for Axel to disappear- he just had to make sure he stayed hidden.
POV Change
Saix walked quietly next to Xemnas until they reached the latter's office. Once inside, Saix closed the door and waited for Xemnas to tell him why Xemnas had wanted to talk to him.
"Axel has been getting... uppity of late. I don't trust his loyalty anymore." Xemnas said. He looked directly at Saix, though he still retained his aloof air. "I want you to make sure that Riku is indeed dead."
"As you wish." Saix nodded his head in a sort of bow, then turned and left. He quickly exited the castle, sprouting his light blue-feathered wings and quickly flew to Destiny Islands- the last known location of the dangerous and presumed deceased criminal.
Saix flew quickly through small rifts in space he created, arriving at Destiny Islands not an hour after he had left Castle Oblivion. He landed gently on the soft sand. As his mission was to collect information and not to fight, he retracted his wings and began walking along the shore towards the town.
Voices to his ahead of him and coming closer alerted him to humans approaching him. Recognizing one of the voices, he quickly hid himself in the forest he saw not ten paces off. There, he climbed into a tree, gaze focused on the small group walking just feet from him. His eyes narrowed at the sight of long silver hair.
'Riku. So Axel was indeed lying.' Saix smiled maliciously, slipping down the tree and deeper into the forest. There, he spread his wings again and flew away from the Islands, the information even easier to pick up than he had expected.
POV Shift!
Riku shivered feeling a strange set of eyes on him. He glanced around, wondering if it was one of the stalker-ish fangirls that had latched onto him once he had returned to the island.
Somehow, he knew that it wasn't. The eyes he felt on him watched him with more cruelty- something was wrong.
A sense of forbodeing came over him.
The feeling of being watched left, but the sense of dread didn't.
"Riku! Come on- I want a rematch of our last race!" Sora called out. Shaking the feeling off, Riku turned to face Sora and his friends, forcing a smile onto his face.
"Coming, Sora- don't be in a hurry to lose." Riku tried to ignore the uneasy feeling he had, but it wouldn't leave him alone.
'I wonder what happened- something's wrong, but what?' Riku wondered.
Scene Change!
Axel frowned as Saix walked up to him and told him to come with him to Xemnas' study. Very rarely was anyone invited to that area of Castle Oblivion- for assignments Xemnas would just call them into his office.
Not liking Saix's smirk- crueler than usual, with something like twisted delight- Axel followed slowly.
'It can't be that I glared at the guy, could it? I mean, that was hours ago.' Axel reasoned. Sooner than Axel liked, they came to the small library Xemnas had taken as his study.
"I found him." Saix announced, stepping into the study and pulling Axel not-so-gently behind him.
Axel resisted the urge to glare at Saix for the harsh treatment of his arm, instead contenting himself with rubbing the brusied area. He glanced around- Xemnas was seated in a plush chair across the room, at his desk. A few bookshelves lined the walls, filled with ancient-looking books. The floor was bare hardwood.
"Well, to what do I owe the honor of being invited in here?" Axel asked, stepping forward a foot or two with forced casualness. He had his arms at his sides, ready to summon his weapons in a blink of needed.
"Summon your wings." Xemnas said. Axel blinked, confused. When Axel didn't do as told immediately, Xemnas repeated.
"Summon your wings. Now." Not liking the order, but unable to refuse, Axel called on his red-feathered wings, their weight comfortably balancing him.
Suddenly, someone grabbed his wings at their topmost point, placing a leg in between the sesitive and delicate appendages and pushing Axel down to the floor. Axel hissed, eyes shutting from the intense pain caused by the dislocation of his wings.
"Wha... what the hell!" he asked, craning his neck to glare at Saix. Saix just smirked, amused, it seemed, and gently pulled on the wings in his hold. Even though Saix had not pulled hard, it still hurt like hell. Axel cried out, eyes closing as he turned his neck to look at the floor.
"For aiding a criminal in hiding, and lying to your superiors, Angel Axel, you are to lose one wing. Remember this." Xemnas told him.
Axel laughed.
"And not because your science experiment found out he was a lab rat?" As soon as the words left his mouth, Axel felt like kicking himself. Damn him and his 'speak-first-and-think-later' nature.
"What did you say?" Xemnas demanded, standing from his chair and striding over to where Axel kneeled on the floor, helpless.
"What? We're not supposed to know how you fucked with our souls? Well, forgive me!" Axel said sarcastically, figuring that so long as he had said it already he may as well go for broke. The constant paralyzing pain of his wings messed up his thought patterns, making it impossible to think straight.
"Saix." Xemnas commanded coldly. Saix must have looked at Xemnas in acknowledgement, for Axel didn't hear a sound.
"Both of them. Slowly." Axel felt his blood go cold.
"Yes, Xemnas."
"No- don't-!" Too late. His words were swallowed by an ear-piercing shriek as Saix took a firmer grip on his wing and pulled so that Axel could feel each muscle as it was pulled apart, each blood vessal snapping, each ligament and sinew ripping. Axel wasn't sure how long it lasted- it could have been anywhere from ten minutes to ten hours.
Darkness swam in the redhead's vision, but a sudden sharp, stinging pain in his face drove away unconciouness.
"You will stay awake for all of this." Xemnas' voice sounded from above him. There was slight relief from the pain suddenly- Axel heard a sickening 'thud' as something fleshy and wet was thrown to the ground a few feet from him. Against his better judgement, he looked.
Axel felt like being sick, whether from the sight or the horror and despair he felt he wasn't sure.
Perfectly in his line of sight was his ripped off wing, his sharp eyes able to see exactly where it had been ripped off. Blood trickled slowly from the ragged edge.
"We do not allow traitors in our midst- and you had the foolishness to come here after letting that criminal live." Axel coughed, feeling warm wetness come up and trickle out of the corner of his mouth. He something metallic and coppery in his mouth, disgusted by the flavor and feel of his own blood.
"Are you listening?" Xemnas asked. Saix yanked hard on Axel's wing, not enough to tear it away from Axel's body but enough to hurt.
"Aughh!" Axel screamed, biting his lip in pain. He bit so hard he drew more blood, it running faster from his mouth now.
"We won't kill you, not yet. Do you know why we don't kill the banished right away?" Xemnas asked cruelly. Axel yelped as Saix pulled on his wing, clearly indicating that he was to answer.
"N- no..." Axel said, coughing again. More blood came up, as well as more pain as the shaking movements that came with the coughing caused more yanks on his wing.
"Because we need to give them time to recover, to be at their peak as well as the height of despair when we finally kill them. And..." Xemnas leaned closer to Axel's ear, as if confiding a great secret. "... because half the fun is in the chase." Whatever else might have been said as Saix responded to a nonverbal signal to tear away Axel's other wing. Axel screamed again.
Unwanted, a tear fell from each eye as he began coughing again, more blood coming up each time he coughed. He couldn't count the times he had nearly fallen into unconsciousnss, only to be brought cruelly back to reality to a sharp kick to his ribs or face. But, as the last threads of flesh holding his second wing on were torn away, even the harshest kick from Xemnas couldn't keep the redhead from falling into unconsciousness.
"Get rid of him. Put him somewhere in the human world- let him run for a week before sending someone to kill him." Xemnas said dismissively. "And get someone to clean up this mess." he added, indicating the beautiful red wings, now deeply stained with blood. Orders given, Xemnas left, heading to his room for a few moments of peace and quiet from all the fools he had to deal with.
"As you wish." Saix said to Xemnas' retreating back. He roughly lifted Axel, stopping the first angel he could find in the hall to take Axel somewhere in the human world. At first, the blonde angel had seemed surprised, but had quickly taken the bleeding once-angel and had left the castle to drop Axel off somewhere in the human world. Saix looked down at his clothing, frowning when he realized how much blood had gotten on his clothes.
"Hey, you- clean the mess in Xemnas' study." he ordered, stopping another angel. The angel nodded, giving a slightly fearful glance at Saix's bloody clothes. Saix walked the rest of the way to his room, coldly ignoring any other angel that gave him a strange glance and quickly stripping off his robe when he got to his room. He tossed it casually into the hamper, making a mental note to get a lower angel to clean it soon. It was a waste of a good robe, as far as he was concerned.
Trying not to dwell on the loss of his new robe, Saix instead concentrated on the noises of pain Axel had made when his wings had been ripped out. The noises creating a symphony in his mind, he lay down and fell asleep.
TBC
AN: So- how did we like this installment of Love of Fallen Angels? I hope that everyone stayed IC!
We only have 7 more chapters to go- and that includes the epilouge! Please stick with it! (And if any of you know someone who was reading it but stopped because I wasn't updating- could you please inform them that I'm posting again? I'll be updating regularly now! Yay!)