note; Part deux! New characters are introduced in this one, so there isn't as much Kaixel.
Sorry. I promise that everything will tie together in time. This is only the beginning.
- x -
ii.
- x -
Sitting on an upturned paint bucket in a decrepit opera house, is a boy. A boy with hair the color of sawdust and eyes made of ice that never melts. He owns nothing but the clothes on his back and a crumpled five dollar bill, but that is all he's ever known. It's not what he wants, and he certainly doesn't have what he needs, but his life is the only one he has, so he takes it. He lives it one day at a time, holding onto the fact that it's the one thing that's trulyhis and not someone else's.
And this boy isn't really a boy at all. Living as a squatter in New York squeezes the childhood out of you at an early age, and at sixteen, he has been through more hardship than the average thirty year old. (There are no playgrounds or party hats in the photograph record of his life)
A porcelain doll walks up to the not-boy and kneels, taking his hand into her own. Her white blonde hair falls around her face in tangles, black dye hanging on the underside of the faded locks.
"It'll be okay, Roxas. I promise."
Roxas jerks away from her suddenly, knocking the bucket over with his feet. A yell forms low in his throat, but dies before it hits his lips. His frozen eyes thaw slightly as he looks at her, the water starting to pool around the edges. But he blinks and the blue orbs freeze once more, all signs of weakness gone.
"No, Naminé. It won't." The words are sharp as he flings them at her; a few of the letters scrape the already chipping porcelain of her face. She's a doll that's falling apart at the seams.
Naminé begins to cry the tears that Roxas won't allow himself to have. Her bony hands dig into the worn fabric of her skirt as she dimly registers the sound of sirens outside. (Scurry, hurry little mice; the cat is back to play)
"Hayner is DEAD! Gone! You want to know why?!" Angry hands tear blindly at a moth-eaten curtain, "BECAUSE OF US! BECAUSE OF THIS!" The curtain falls to the floor in a whirl of dust and hatred that Roxas begins to choke on; he coughs violently and falls the same way the drape had before. His body shakes in the dim light. Blood splatters against his palm.
Naminé cries harder than before, but rushes to his side and hauls him up against her. Ignorance dressed in navy blue pounds at the theatre door, signaling the rest of the pack out of hiding. A young man with a camera hanging around his neck helps Naminé move Roxas out of the back door along with everyone else, the 'No Admittance' sign swinging on its rusty nail as the group runs headfirst into the darkness of the alleyway.
- x -
He's a horrible sight – all dried blood and bruised skin. Pieces of asphalt are embedded in his sandy hair; one of his arms is twisted back at an unnatural angle. He has been left here to die.
But when she looks for a pulse, she finds one. It's hidden, but there none the less.
An expensive cell phone is flipped open and a three digit number is dialed. A worried expression dances on her face, and she asks to ride in the ambulance with this beaten stranger, this trampled boy. And when consciousness slips back into him, he sees her and he smiles.
(Because he thinks he's gone to heaven, with the angel and her kind green eyes)
- x -
"You're crazy."
It's a very blunt statement, but what else would Kairi expect from her best friend?
"Probably," she agrees with a shrug of her small shoulders, but grins recklessly at the blue-eyed boy in front of her.
He lets out an exasperated sigh and gives Kairi a pointed look. "Have you told Riku yet?"
The young girl's smile slips onto her designer shoes. Now it's time for her to redirect her friend's statement back at him. "Sora, if you think I'm going to tell Riku, then you must be crazy."
Sora lets out an offended grunt and sits down in one of the many uncomfortable white chairs in Kairi's breakfast room. "If you plan on pursuing this guy, then don't you think Riku is going to find out anyway? You know better than anyone that there's no such thing as a secret in the Upper East Side."
But Kairi wasn't listening to her best friend's self-titled 'wisdom'. She was too busy staring at the name that was blinking up at her from her cell phone.
In-coming Call… Axel.