Axel didn't know life would be like this.
He never thought he would watch his world as it fell apart, get torn down by shadows while falling stars sliced the sky. He didn't think he would have to see his heart being ripped out of his chest- had no idea he would live through it, survive into some phantom existence where he'd wander around with a cavity in his chest.
Lea never thought he would grow up to be a murderer- an "assassin". Not that there's any difference. Two words, same meaning: killer.
If someone had told Lea he would one day be a skilled assassin, Lea probably would have thought that that was cool. Lots of little boys would, he thinks. Daring missions, covert cases, sneaking and hiding and making the kill; silent and clean, untraceable. Assassins were cool. Even Axel thought so.
Until he stood there with the chakrams dripping red and stared at the body, lying there in a mangled shape, a pulpy corpse twisted around a broken wire of a spine, blood pooling out and glinting in the light of the dying flames. Until he stood there, bent over and gasping for air, ghostly tears trying to break free but unable to form (because Nobodies have no hearts, they can't feel, they can't cry, he can't feel, can't cant doesn't, there's nothing there, he is empty), so he chokes on his anguish and he falls.
He falls down like he did when the dark claws sunk in and grabbed his heart, plucked it out like an apple from a tree, shoved it down their mouthless throats and left his body to rot (except it didn't, and he wishes it had). He sets his chakrams ablaze and lets the heat blast his face- and it doesn't even hurt, he hardly feels it, because no fire will ever be as intense as the one he was born from, the one that burnt away Lea so that Axel could break free -and he watches, with a hollow sense of guilt and horror (memories, his conscience is nothing more than memories now) as the fire twists up and devours the dead.
Dead. Dead. He is dead. They are all dead, every last one of them- and if they aren't then they might as well be.
Everything they were has been scooped out. They have been emptied of all but their memories, of the people they used to be (and they wish they could forget, they wish it every day). Darkness has spilled in, filled up all the gaps. It courses through their veins, cycling in the chasms of their chest and pumping through them, cold and sluggish and heavy, heavy, so heavy. They are zombies, and monsters, nothing, nobody. Nobodies.
Smoke curls through the sky, a spiral, and from deep inside Lea screams out. He reaches up through the ashes, grabs his spine and scales his rib cage, pulls himself up into his skull, where his memory has been all but carved into the walls. And he screams. Like a siren, an alley cat, a dying child, Lea wails.
The flames from his chakrams explode and the blood on his hands- that isn't his because he doesn't bleed not any more he is a Nobody and he is made up of nothing -soaks his gloves, because this is his first time and he has not yet learned how to make a clean kill, not yet adjusted to the scent of charred flesh, a burning body.
But he will. And Lea's screams will fade into mumbles of protest, until they're so quiet even Axel won't hear them rumbling in his skull. Eventually, they will go silent, and Lea will be nothing more than a distant dream, a sense of deja vu that plays in his mind when he tastes seasalt.
He will carry out his missions, act on Saix's behalf. He will learn to keep his hands clean, become immune to the taste of blood, the smell of burnt flesh. He will be Axel, Number 8, the Flurry of Dancing Flames.
Nothing more.