Axel is in a foul mood for the rest of the week, and from then on he's never satisfied by anything I do. We argue almost constantly. Sex is a prominent subject in these arguments: "I know you're fucking alright now, you uptight bitch," he says when I explain that I am still delicate; "Nobody takes that fucking long to recover from childbirth even when they have fifty stitches or whatever." Soon enough he doesn't even believe the part about the stitches. Soon I end up with half a mind to let him undress me, because God knows he's a shitty enough boyfriend to deserve finding out that his "bird" has a cock.
I eventually end up talking to Mrs Merryweather about this (well, a somewhat censored version of the story). I tell her that Axel is being grouchy and petty because I don't always want to do the exact same thing that he does. She gives me a hot cup of tea and asks me how serious the relationship is. I shrug and say that most of the time I can't stand Axel either (this is a lie: I can never stand Axel), then she tells me all about how important communication is in a partnership, and how each party has to treat the other person as an equal. I leave for work with a view to breaking up with him then and there. He can have that other girl who thinks he's a good lay. They'd be good for each other: obviously neither of them care about anything other than sex. They could fuck all day and all night, and then Axel would leave me alone.
But then Axel isn't in at work that day and nobody knows what happened to him, so instead of taking the bus from the centre of town out to my bedsit at six o'clock I walk straight to his flat. The evening air is cool and refreshing on my face, the ache in my legs distracting me from the ache between my legs. I'm passing through the tail end of the rush hour, and smart businessmen with briefcases and smart businesswomen with crippling heels march past me as though I'm invisible. As I get out of the First District I spot a few homeless people hunched up against the brickwork of the houses. Maybe I should tell one of them about the car in the warehouse, so at least they can protect themselves from the worst of the elements, but I want the security of knowing it's there even if I get evicted from my room.
The first thing I do when Axel opens the door to me is cough. Smoke is pooling in a thick aura around him, and somehow I don't think it's from cigarettes.
"You took a day off sick just to get high," I say disbelievingly. Axel laughs loudly, ushering me in before I have a chance to protest.
"I'm not high," he snorts. "Just drunk." And he wobbles over to the coffee table where amongst the usual detritus there are three bottles of vodka. Mostly empty bottles of vodka.
"You're disgusting," I say as he takes a swig from one of them and plops down onto the sofa. "Here I am working my fucking arse off trying to keep a roof over my head and you take days off of work just to get pissed off your face."
"Oh, quit complaining," says Axel, "You've only got yourself to blame." And he glances down at my crotch, adding playfully; "whore".
"I could have been raped," I mutter. If only he knew. But he just laughs at me. I think to myself: what if I actually had been raped? Axel won't even entertain the possibility. It's funny to him. God, I hate him.
"Nobody would rape you," he says, turning on the television. "You don't even look like a girl."
I sit down next to him. He's definitely had cannabis at some point today. I wonder what kind of effect that would have on Larxene, and almost subconsciously tuck her face behind my jacket. I'd get up and leave immediately, but my legs need a break and his sofa is comfortable if nothing else. He cracks me open a beer, which I sip at hesitantly. I know I'm not good at being drunk from past experience, back when Larxene was my best friend and not my daughter. At first, she took me along to parties but half the time I would end up sobbing in a corner somewhere, or worse still in a cupboard. Once I even tried to climb into the fridge: from then on we'd go up to the local woods and get pissed in amongst the beeches, brambles and litter, running for our lives whenever the plods came looking for the source of all the screaming.
We drink together in silence for a while. Then Axel says with remarkable clarity for the number of units of alcohol he's ingested; "Do you ever get sick of all this bullshit?"
"I never stop being sick of it," I say, thinking he means work and life and money and lack thereof. But apparently he wasn't, because he leans on me suddenly and says; "We should fuck."
"No," I say, wriggling away, "We shouldn't." When he doesn't desist, I point to my sleeping baby. "Come on, Axel, don't do this in front of Larxene."
So he wrestles Larxene right out of my unsuspecting arms and takes her to the kitchen, swaying on the way, closing the door behind him before I even have a chance to leap up and grab her back. "There," he says; "We're all alone now." And he sits down next to me on the lumpy leather couch, so close the alcohol on his breath pours into my nostrils. He leans in to kiss me, reeking; I shy away. I don't want to kiss him any more.
"Come on," he says, lustily, like he's forgotten that he thinks I look like cheap shit with my charity shop clothes, two-inch-long mousy roots and bags under my gaudy make up, touching my leg. I instinctively press my knees together. I might be stronger than him. I could probably fight him off. But he's made escape difficult: if I try to run for Larxene, he'll just catch me on the way out. So I just push at him, whining that I'm still hurting and I don't want to and he's drunk and he doesn't know what he's doing. But he just grabs my arms and pushes me back down. Suddenly, I am very afraid of Axel, and suddenly, he is very angry.
"Stop being such an ungrateful bitch!" he yells, the vodka slurring his words, "You're such a fucking cocktease, you little bitch,"
"Get off," I try to begin, but Axel doesn't listen, forcing my spine to curve in painful ways against the disintegrating stuffing and cracked surface of the sofa's arm.
"I know you're no stranger to sex, you slut," he snaps, and that's it, that's fucking it: I put up with Axel because he's my only friend, just like I put up with Larxene's charades because she was my only friend, but this is too fucking far. My elbow connects with his stomach, making him groan, and as he staggers away I rush for the kitchen, slamming the door closed and pushing the table up against it before he can follow me. Luckily, Larxene has not rolled off the kitchen table. If she had, I'd have murdered Axel.
I stop suddenly, looking at Larxene, this ugly little creature that exploded out of my uterus one day and has controlled every second of my life ever since, wondering when I became so protective of her. I pick her up with an unexpected tenderness. "Come on, you," I say, stroking her silky hair, "Let's get out of this shithole."
However, there is no escape from the kitchen, unless I want to fall to my untimely death on concrete four storeys below. So take the largest kitchen knife I can find out of the drawer and push the table away. "I'm going home now," I say to a dumbfounded Axel on the other side, "Don't ever fucking talk to me again, okay?"
"Woah, Jesus, Marluxia," Axel says when he sees me brandishing the knife. I hope he's too drunk to notice how much I'm shaking. "Shit, Jesus, there's no need for that." I do not actually want to stab Axel, if only because I don't want to go to prison. So I head for the door, still pointing the knife at him.
"Just go to bed," I say as I turn the key in the lock. "You're drunk off your face, Axel, just go to bed." But Axel is too preoccupied by the fact that his girlfriend is threatening him with a knife.
"Jesus," he says. Axel is not religious in the slightest, like any of us rejects could believe in God, but he says Jesus a lot. I inch backwards out of the door, then toss the knife on the floor at the last minute, slam the door, and run. As I go I hear Axel yell "You just fucking used me for my money, you fucking-!"
Yes. Yes, I did. I catch the last bus home and microwave something or other for supper, then use the packaging for a game of peek-a-boo with Larxene. Now you see me… now you don't! Now you see me… now you don't! And it distracts me from the loneliness and the fear, pretending that I am an adult, a responsible mother capable of raising a healthy, happy daughter. But I'm still a kid. I still make a nest of bedding in the very corner of the room when it's time to sleep, I still bite my fingers and twist my knuckles while Larxene burbles above the sounds of doors slamming elsewhere in the building.
I stay in Traverse Town until November, sticking it out because the rates are cheap and I have the security of a job, but Axel, fucking petty Axel, starts spreading rumours about me that remind me all too badly of my school days, and eventually I can't even stand the other people in the factory looking at me, no matter how disinterested their stares, and I'm pulling my hair out in clumps, and one day one of the lecherous old men slaps my arse and I run away from work right that second, go back to my car where families of mice and trails of ants are feeding at the rotten food in the boot, and sob and sob until I collect enough strength to get the bus to Mrs Merryweather's house, give her the very last three hundred munny and take Larxene away. She gives me a few of Larxene's favourite toys, out of the kindness of her heart (or maybe because my eyes are still red). One of them is a yellow plastic rattle, which Larxene shakes with delight as I pack up our things, oblivious to the fact that her world is about to be totally disrupted, because I can't cope.
I need to stop trying to end every section with some erudite comment about how awful Marluxia's life is. Also, the knife scene was so much better the first time I wrote it.