Tainted But Beautiful

Part 1: The Hunters

4. Roxas

Pairings: AkuZeku, Zemyx, AkuRoku, AxDem

Rated: M

Warnings: Vampires, vampires, vampires...uh, yaoi, AU-ish-ness, abuse (if it has AkuZeku, it has abuse in it), noncon, graphic scenes, CHARACTER(S) DEATH, overall weirdness.

Summary: Axel is a powerful vampire slayer who's captured Zexion, a vampire, as his pet. What Axel doesn't bargain on is Demyx, his former student, developing a strong attraction to Zexion...

Notes: Another fairly quick update. I'm really on a roll with this story, and I'm quite happy for it. :) Keep the reviews coming, please.

This chapter is a bit (a bit) shorter than the others, and it does a complete one eighty in that there's no Zexy at all and it doesn't directly pick up the "mastering" angle (that shall be the next chapter). Instead, this chapter focuses more on just what vampire slayers do in the first place, and also introduces Roxas. I'm really quite fond of this chapter and I don't know why (since there's no vamp-Zexy in it), but I feel it's the best display of the society I've built up (if that makes sense) so far.

Oh, and you're all gonna hate me by the time you're finished reading. Because there's CHARACTER DEATH! And you will hate me for who I kill. In the meantime, enjoy (at least until you find out who dies...)

Demyx should have known better than to trust Axel. "Soon", in Axel's parlance, was just another way of saying "later".

That is to say, that night when Demyx felt well enough to crawl out of bed and find Axel in the upstairs study, Axel said absolutely nothing about the little "Zexion" problem. Instead, the redheaded slayer had spread out several sheets of paper on his desk (the rest of the clutter had been unceremoniously shoved to the floor), and was scrutinizing them intently. Demyx recognized what they were in a flash.

"Hunter announcements...?"

"Sharp, Dems," said Axel, though he didn't look up from the papers. "Looks like a new gang of vampires arrived in the city."

Demyx sighed out loud. The gangs were a relatively new development in vampire society--previously (as in, back in the days when Axel's parents and Xigbar had been running around slaying vampires), the presence of regular "grunt" vampires tended to indicate that a pureblood had moved into the city and was employing them as his (or her) servants. But these days, more and more made vampires were showing up who weren't under the control of a lord--presumably their lord had been killed or had left the area. As more "masterless" vampires appeared, more and more of them started banding together into loose gangs. They might not have much beyond low animal cunning, but this same cunning directed them to gather in groups and work in a hierarchal, almost pack-like structure. It wasn't a development Demyx--or any hunter, for that matter--liked much, because it meant that if they killed one vampire there was no guarantee its fellow gang-mates weren't going to show up and exact retribution.

At times, Axel allowed that the rise of gangs just might have something to do with the fact that slayers were slaughtering more and more purebloods these days and leaving more and more made vampires without lords...but never let this line of speculation go any further.

"All right, all right..." Demyx glanced at the papers again. They were a jumble of blurry digital photographs, wanted posters, and images of the vampires' victims. "How can you tell, though? What if it's just one of the previous gangs--"

"Don't be a fucking idiot, Demyx," snorted Axel, his tone derisive. He brandished a paper in front of Demyx, still hot from the printer. "Here's the gang's latest victims. Recognize the pattern? I didn't think so."

Demyx had to stifle a gasp when he saw the pictures--even after his two years as a slayer, he had never seen anything quite like...this. The victims hadn't just been scratched a little bit and bitten on the neck: They were mutilated, torn nearly to bloody pieces. Even through the blurry black-and-white photograph, Demyx could see the gory mess the vampires had left behind.

"That's horrible," he said quietly.

"Yeah, horrible," said Axel, sounding as if he didn't really mean it. "This gang seems to like to target kids, too. Real public menace, hmm?"

Only Axel could make light out of something like this...but that was just like him. To him, killing vampires wasn't serious business, something he did to keep the city safe for its human inhabitants. It was just something he did out of a mix of obligation and fun. It was something he owed to his parents; but it was also a game, a sport, something to keep his adrenaline pumping.

In way, slaying was like that for Demyx, too. But only in a way.

"So it looks like we have to go," Axel continued. He was still bent over the computer, his eyes fixed on the screen, and didn't seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere--but Demyx detected the edge in Axel's voice. The anticipatory edge, the eager edge, the impatient edge. His blood was getting pumped for the hunt.

"'We'?" said Demyx, catching on to the plural.

"Yeah, we," said Axel, straightening from the computer. He reached to hit a button on the keyboard that turned the entire screen black--Demyx didn't know which, being the hugest technophobe alive. "Me and you. What, you thought that you were just gonna get a free ride here, that I was gonna give you food and a place to stay and you wouldn't have to do anything? Like hell, Dems. You're working for your keep, got it memorized?"

Ouch. There he went again with the catch phrase...a small and irreverent part of Demyx wondered if Axel even realized he was saying it. But most of him, however, was intent on the larger meaning of Axel's words. Work for your keep...

"You mean--you're going to let me--"

"I'm not your teacher anymore, you idiot," said Axel, striding to the door and not looking back at Demyx. "You don't need my permission for anything. And as they say--two slayers are better than one."

Despite himself, Demyx's heart leapt to his throat and he flushed pink--pleased. Was this the first ever proof that Axel thought of Demyx as more than a weak annoyance, a hopeless case he'd decided to train solely out of charity...? Was it proof that Axel thought of him as an equal? A fellow slayer?

But no. He was just getting his hopes foolishly up...and he'd spent enough time around Axel to know that the last thing he wanted to do was get his hopes up about the redhead. The instant he did, Axel would do something to send them crashing back down again. This much Demyx knew, and accepted for the truth--no matter how much it hurt.

"Hurry up, Demyx. I'm not waiting for you," shouted Axel from the hallway. Demyx jerked out of his reverie and quickly followed Axel, shaking his head like a punch-drunk dog.

"So how do you know where to go?" said Demyx, falling in step with Axel as they headed down the stairs--presumably to the armory (because hell, if Axel had a dungeon it stood to reason he had an armory too!).

Axel rolled his eyes as if the answer was obvious. "Google Earth is a slayer's best friend, kiddo." King of condescension... "But I doubt you've ever heard of Google Earth before, have you, you poor technophobe?"

"Whatever. Let's get to the hunt," growled Demyx through clenched teeth, not wanting to deal with Axel's condescension right here and right now.

"Hmm?" Axel cast Demyx a sidelong glance, looking curious, but then his green eyes hardened, became serious, burning with the firm conviction characteristic to all vampire hunters. The conviction that there was nothing better than the thrill of the hunt, nothing better than chasing down and then sticking a stake into the heart of a snarling undead demon of the night.

When he spoke again, his voice was law, taut, completely devoid of any good-natured taunting. "Yeah. You're right. Time to start the hunt."

It was twilight when they left the house, the last bloody rays of sunset giving away to the dark majesty of night. They set out a brisk pace from the genteel, well-cultivated part of town Axel lived west towards the tenements--where until yesterday Demyx had made his home. The only sound was the steady thud of their steps on the street, matching the steady beating of Demyx's heart in his chest. Neither slayer spoke, too wrapped up in his own thoughts as he was.

Demyx was aware of his weapons inside his coat, clanking clumsily against his waist. Two handguns, tucked into holsters on opposite sides of his belt. Extra magazines of silver bullets. Axel, iconoclast slayer that he was, chose to disregard conventional slayer practice and favored guns above all other weapons, even the traditional silver-tipped stake. This earned him the enmity of traditionalists, who were sour about the son of one of the greatest vampire slaying families turning his back on centuries-old tradition, but Axel maintained that guns worked better because you could attack the vampire at a long range, thus ensuring you were safer. No pesky having to get right up to the monster to stab it in the heart. A well-placed shot would take care of all of that.

However, Demyx suspected another, somewhat more worldly reason for Axel preferring guns over stakes--he was close friends with Xigbar. In fact, every gun that Axel used was one manufactured by Xigbar's company. Like an Olympic athlete's endorsements, or a Nascar racer, thought Demyx sourly. Although the usage of guns had yet to catch on amongst the tradition-bound lot that most vampire slayers were.

Still, despite Axel's antipathy towards close-range weapons, Demyx had a few--two silver-edged steel knives, a silver-plated baton for physical subduing, like police did to criminals (and Demyx had had plenty of opportunities to watch police in action, growing up in a tenement as he did). No stakes, though. And there was a reason for all the silver--vampires abhorred the substance. Once again, Demyx found himself flashing back to Axel hitting Zexion across the face the previous night...to the stark red burns standing out on the vampire's pale face from where the silver rings on Axel's hand had struck him...

Demyx shook his head to clear it. It wouldn't do to get lost in his thoughts, not now...especially thoughts about Zexion.

They had now arrived in the more "disgraceful" part of town, where the streets dissolved into long and narrow alleyways and the well-to-do manors became rickety, falling-apart, graffiti-scarred public housing complexes. Men in dirty, ragged clothes perched outside buildings, cigarette smoke surrounding them in lazy curlicues, while women in too much makeup and revealing clothes paraded up and down the streets. One woman, with a pile of peroxide blonde hair and a partly see-through shirt that exposed practically all of her cleavage, approached Axel and Demyx, a smile that might have been seductive gracing her lips if it weren't for the fact that she was missing half her teeth.

"Heelloo, boys," she purred, in a miserable attempt to sound seductive. It didn't work quite so well because her voice was hoarse and grating, as if she smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. She certainly smelled it. "You look like you could do with...a bit of entertainment." With that, she reached out and patted Axel on the shoulder.

Axel, stony-faced, threw her hand rudely off. "Fuck off, lady," he snapped, and started stomping in the opposite direction.

Demyx was about to call Axel on his rudeness--she might have been a prostitute, but still, you didn't treat girls like that!--but then he noticed that the woman was staring, wide-eyed, at her hand as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Demyx caught the briefest flash of a wadded-up bunch of bills in her hand--and realized what Axel had done. At the same time he'd thrown her hand off his shoulder, he'd slipped her a wad of money. Clever bastard.

"Hey, you might wanna be careful," Demyx called to the prostitute as he and Axel slipped down another alley. "Vampires are out tonight." Like they are every night.

"Yeah? What d'you think I care more about--vampires, or my john--" she called after them, but Demyx had to run to catch up to Axel and didn't make out the rest of what she said.

The night grew steadily darker as Axel and Demyx prowled through the alleyways, not just because of the setting sun but also because of the steadily decreasing amount of electrical lights on inside the tenements. Demyx shuddered slightly; this would be a good night for vampires to hunt. The clouds were thick and dark in the sky, and the moon was but a thin sliver whenever it was visible through the stars. A faint breeze blew, stirring the hairs on the back of Demyx's neck.

"Nothing's out, yet," he muttered out of the side of his mouth to Axel.

"That's 'cause it's early," replied Axel in just as low a voice. "We'll scout a bit and then we'll find more."

Demyx had nothing to say in reply to this, so he nodded. Axel was right.

The two of them said nothing else for more than an hour, focused on nothing but hints of their quarry. Vampires--at least the brutish, made vampires--were not a sneaky lot. They tended to leave obvious signs of their presence--bodies, most often. Axel paused at a few splotches of blood on the walls, but must have decided they were innocuous--just signs of the typical tenement instability, or else too old to care about--and passed them by.

Demyx was started to become impatient--though he'd never voice this to Axel. Still...they'd gone deep into the alleys and still hadn't encountered a single vampire yet, even though on a typical night, they would have encountered at least one vampire already. A part of Demyx wondered if Axel wasn't just scaring the vampires away with his presence, but that was stupid; made vampires did not have the intelligence to recognize individual slayers.

And then, suddenly, Axel stopped dead in his tracks--and turned pale. Demyx, too, stopped, his eyes following where Axel was staring at until he was staring at the dirty alley before him...at...

"Blood," said Axel, his voice barely above a fierce whisper. "Bingo."

Only Axel could be so cavalier at the sight of countless thick, dark splatters of blood all over the alley and the walls. Demyx shivered a bit, feeling a faint tremor of nausea, but he managed to keep it down. He was long past fainting at the sight of blood--he could stand it now. It was a part of being a slayer.

"Seems to be forming a trail..." said Axel, sliding his hand into his coat as he followed the blood splatters. Sure enough, the dark splotches seemed to be forming a zigzagging trail, as if someone--no, several people--had been staggering to safety even when crippled by fatal injury. And as the slayers followed the blood trail, Demyx started to feel a faint quivering in the air, an oppressive heaviness pervading the quiet night--a feeling he could only describe as dark.

"Vampires," he mumbled to Axel. "Um...one, right...?"

"One," said Axel, with a firm nod. He was always so accurate about sensing vampires, something that annoyed Demyx to no small degree. He'd spent years under Axel's tutelage, trying to hone his vampire sensing skills, but he could never do it with the same precision that Axel could. Axel could name exactly how many vampires there were, and even their relative levels of strength and skill. Demyx...Demyx could tell if there were a few or a lot. That was about it.

"Seems like--" Demyx opened his mouth to speak--but the words died in his throat. He could only stand where he was, his every nerve frozen, a chill spreading slowly from the base of his neck down his spine.

The vampire's victims lay on the ground before him.

Not "lay", exactly. It'd be more accurate to describe them as twisted, hunched, caught in their last throes of agony. There were three of them, and they all seemed to be young. Two boys--one lanky, one stout--and a girl, but their bodies were too mutilated to tell anything further about them. Deep gashes oozed dark blood that contrasted violently with their death-pale skin, and some of them had arms and legs not so much hacked off as torn off, leaving behind torn, bloody, and mangled stumps. Their clothes were nothing but shreds of fabric, dyed red from blood, scattered like autumn leaves around their grotesque corpses. And on their necks--the unmistakable sign of a vampire's fangs, two bright and bloody holes right over where the children's jugular veins had throbbed in their lifetimes.

Demyx had been a vampire slayer for two years and had trained as one for ten years before that. All the same...he'd never seen a kill so bloody before. And he felt sick, sick to his stomach, sick enough to want to bend over and retch all over the garbage-strewn alley--

"Shit on a shingle," mumbled Axel, but he sounded--delighted. A strange part of Demyx wondered that instant if Axel was even human, but he quickly banished such idiotic thoughts. Of course Axel was human. He was just callous. To him, it didn't matter that three young lives had been cut tragically short. All that mattered was that they were close to their quarry...

"Close," mumbled Demyx dryly, seizing on this thought with the desperation of a drowning man clinging on to a lifeline. "Close, it must be close--"

"Not must be," said Axel, his tone scathing. "It is. What the fuck are you waiting for, Dems? Get out your weapon. Let's go."

He started forward, clearly prepared to just stomp right through the poor dead kids. Demyx held out a hand, wanting to stop Axel--but Providence answered him in the form of a scream, high with terror, shattering the silence of the night sky.

"The fuck--?" Axel whirled around, his coat flying, clutching one of his guns tightly. "It came--that way! The roofs. C'mon, Dems!"

Demyx had no time to think. Now, all conscious thought had been banished from his mind, replaced only by pure animal instinct, by adrenaline racing through his veins and causing his heart to slam against his ribcage at a hundred twenty beats per minute. He didn't think twice about scampering after Axel up a rickety fire escape, towards the roof of the building--

An answering scream, but not quite a scream--more like a roar, a deep and guttural roar that shook Demyx's bones and rang with familiarity. It was a sound he knew all too well--the sound of an angry vampire.

He doubled his speed, following Axel across the roof so quickly he felt like he was flying. The two slayers leapt from roof to roof with reflexes born from years of training, their guns drawn, their coats flapping in the wind. The roars rose in volume--so did the screams--but they sounded different, no longer high-pitched hysterical shrieks of terror, but sounding more like bellows and snarls, like the victim was fighting for his life, running on nothing but his animal instincts--

And then they cleared another roof, and saw the vampire.

The vampire stood tall and strong on the opposite end of the roof, its ragged clothes stained dark with blood, roaring and snarling all the while it descended on its victim. The victim was a boy who appeared to be in his mid-teens, scampering backwards across the roof, clutching a length of lead pipe in a shaking hand. His clothes were torn and bloodied, but Demyx instinctively knew it wasnt the boy's own blood, and his eyes were huge with horror.

But he was fighting. As the vampire lunged at him, its blood-stained claws gleaming, the boy lashed out with the pipe and hit the vampire on the arm. The vampire bellowed, sounding less hurt than annoyed, and its pasty face twisted into an unpleasant snarl, saliva and blood dripping from its fangs. It tried to grab the boy again, but he rolled out of the vampire's way and again swung the pipe, catching the vampire's ankle. The vampire stumbled but did not fall, and unleashed a roar of not just bloodlust but frustration, a roar that seemed to cause the clouds themselves to tremble.

The boy's face was whiter than Demyx thought humanly possible, his lips trembling soundlessly, but he still clutched his pipe with a fierce resolve--even as the vampire backed him to the very edge of the roof. He didn't seem to notice where he was at first, still focused on only defending himself, but then he glanced down--and his eyes became even wider.

A sudden, overpowering feeling of deja vu struck Demyx that moment. It was just like that time, more than twelve years ago--when he'd teetered at the roof of a tenement building and had been forced to choose between death by falling or death by vampire. He'd ultimately chosen to fall, but had been saved from death entirely by the slayer, redhaired and smirking, standing beside him--

Two shots rang out, their sound reverberating in the still air and overcoming even the vampire's roars. The vampire stood where it was for a moment, its every limb trembling, two bright round spots of red standing out on its back. Then, slowly, it turned around to face Axel and Demyx.

The vampire's snarl became even more feral, if possible--it had recognized the greater threat posed by the two slayers. Demyx felt no fear as he met the vampire's dark and soulless eyes--only the rush of adrenaline he felt whenever he embarked on a kill. This vampire wasn't so tough. It was just another one of the mindless monsters, slave to its overpowering urge to drink blood, who prowled the streets at night and had enough conscious thoughts to fill a teacup. So Demyx found it all too easy to lift his gun--and fire.

He fired at the same time that Axel did, and both of their shots sought the same target--the vampire's heart. The vampire didn't stand a chance. For a moment, a look of near-surprise came over its pallid face, but by the time it had registered what had happened it was too late. The vampire let out a great, sighing exhalation, and then slumped to the floor, hitting the roof with a bang several times too loud for its size. It did not get up.

"Burn, baby," said Axel quietly, as he always did after a kill.

The two slayers stood where they were, side-by-side, watching the vampire's fallen corpse, for several seconds that dragged on into an eternity. Then, with a cough, Axel sheathed his gun, pulled away from Demyx, and strode across the roof, his steps ringing loud in the suddenly-silent night--heading straight towards the boy.

Demyx had almost forgotten about the boy, so caught up in the thrill of the kill he'd been. Now he cast a glance over at the boy, crouched near the edge of the roof and staring at the dead vampire with a transfixed and disbelieving expression on his face. He was young, even younger than Demyx had thought--maybe no more than fifteen. His hair was a messy and blonde halo above brilliant blue eyes, his face streaked with dirt and blood. He was trembling, the lead pipe dangling loosely from his hand tapping with an erratic rhythm on the surface of the roof.

The poor boy--he was probably traumatized for life. Demyx doubted that anyone who'd escaped a vampire attack so narrowly could ever be sane again. Which put in question his own sanity, but...

Axel approached the boy slowly, with a caution that was almost--gentleness. Not that Axel could ever be gentle... The boy tried backing off when he saw Axel heading towards him--perhaps thinking Axel would hurt him too--but Axel stopped several paces before the boy, and held out his hand in a beckoning gesture.

"Hey there," he said, his voice low but friendly. "Looks like you need some help, huh?"

What the hell! This was the kindest Demyx had ever seen Axel behave. Once more, he was wildly reminded of that night, of Axel stopping before him and holding his hand out...

The boy seemed to struggle to find his words, shaking his head and moving his lips without any noise. At length, he managed in a cracked voice, "Th--thank--you--"

"No problem," said Axel, still acting irrationally kind, and he took a step closer to the point. "Can you stand? Here--I'll help you--" The boy accepted Axel's hand, and Axel helped haul him up to a standing position. He was trembling so badly, though, that he seemed ready to fall over again.

"I'm Axel," said Axel. "He's Demyx." He jerked his thumb behind him, in Demyx's direction, and Demyx nodded in acknowledgment. "We're vampire slayers."

"I--" The boy's throat seemed stuck; he coughed to clear it. "I--I can--I can see that."

"Ha ha ha." Axel laughed, but it was not one of his sardonic chuckles--it was a dry laugh, a gentle and sympathetic one. Demyx's head had begun to spun; why was Axel acting so odd? "You're lucky we were here."

"Yeah...I guess...I am lucky..." said the boy. Words were coming more quickly to him, and his voice was steadily becoming more natural, less hoarse and cracked. He took a shaking step forward, and Axel encouraged him with a smile. "Thanks...both of you..."

"No need," replied both Axel and Demyx automatically. They had rarely ever saved people from killings, but whenever they did they responed by proper slayer etiquette--denying the need for thanks, denying any payment. Not that the boy in torn and ragged clothes was going to pay them...

"So what's your name?" said Axel, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder and guiding him towards where Demyx stood. Axel was, Demyx noticed, making sure to keep a wide berth from the vampire's corpse. Again, being unusually thoughtful...

"R...Roxas," said the boy. "And, uh...nice to meet you..."

"Ha, yeah," said Axel, laughing again, but again it was that oddly good-natured and out of character laugh. "But hey, you weren't doing so bad yourself. I mean, fighting the vampire? Most victims just scream and run or shut down completely. But you...you were putting up a pretty good fight."

"Wh--what? Really?" Roxas flushed slightly pink underneath the dirt and blood. "I don't--I didn't--I was just...he...it..." An extra note of fury suddenly entered his voice. "It k--it killed my friends. Hayner...Pence...Olette...I just wanted a little..." He scuffed the roof with his shoe, and seemed to be glaring at something intangible, something in the distance. "...payback."

"Your friends?" said Demyx, remembering the three mangled corpses they'd discovered earlier.

Roxas turned to face Demyx, looking slightly surprised--this was the first time Demyx had spoken to him. But then he composed his expression again and said, the slight hint of anger still to his voice, "Yeah. It--I saw what it did and I--I just wanted to--I wanted to kill it." A violent shudder coursed through his body at those words, and he had to turn away for a second to compose himself. "I really did. I just--I wanted to hurt it so that it wouldn't hurt me again. Wouldn't ever hurt anyone again."

When he was finished, he glared off to the side.

"And you were gonna do it with this?" Axel, Demyx noticed, had picked up the length of lead pipe Roxas had been using as a weapon. He twirled it in his hands, examining it intently. "Tough luck, kiddo. Lead won't even slow a vampire down. Only silver can stop a vampire."

Demyx didn't know why he felt so relieved to hear the old, familiar, patronizing teacherly tone back in Axel's voice. Roxas, for his part, whirled around to face Axel, his eyes wide and expression eager.

"Then--then will--then would it be all right if--would you teach me to be a vampire slayer?"

Demyx took a step back, shocked--not just by the proposal, but by the complete, dead earnestness burning in Roxas's eyes as he spoke. He'd never seen that kind of seriousness before...no, he'd seen it, but only in Axel's eyes before Axel committed a kill, and even rarer, on his own face in the mirror before he set off on a hunt...

The seriousness of a hunter.

Axel, too, seemed startled, but only for an instant. He quickly composed himself, straightened his shoulders, and met Roxas's gaze, with just as much earnestness--though a little more jocularity--shining in his eyes. "Do you really mean it?"

"Yes!" shouted Roxas, the word cracking like a whip across the silence. "That--that monster--it killed my friends! It almost killed me! I want--if I become a slayer--I want to make sure these monsters don't ever hurt anyone again. That's why I--and I can only do that if I'm a vampire slayer!"

The words were raw with pain, burning with rage-from-sorrow--and entirely earnest. Roxas meant everything he said. This startled Demyx beyond anything--he had never yet met a slayer who actually did it for the express purpose of keeping the streets safe, even though that was what their job was supposed to be about.

But Roxas didn't want the job for glory, for money, for fun, or out of obligation. He wanted it because he truly wanted to protect people.

It was, Demyx supposed, noble in a way.

If Axel felt any of Demyx's surprise, he wasn't showing it. He was surveying Roxas dispassionately, his hands in his pockets, head tilted. At length, he spoke: "It's not easy."

"I know--I know it isn't," said Roxas, his words fierce.

"You can't just swing a pipe at a vampire and expect it to crumble to dust. You've got to train. Train your body, your mind. It will take years, and it will be immensely difficult," continued Axel, his words still as level as before.

"I know, I know," said Roxas, his words tripping over each other and sharp with frustration. "I know! And I'm willing. I'm willing to do all that. I don't know how to--how to fight now. But I want to learn! If I learn--I'll be able to fight--won't I?"

His voice rose and shook near-hysterically--and then he fell silent. He never once removed his eyes from Axel's face, his jaw set, his eyes fierce. Roxas's intent was more than clear--he was going to stand there for as long as it took for Axel to give him an answer. An answer in the affirmative.

"Hmm...that is a very good point," said Axel, folding his arms and returning Roxas's gaze just as steadily. "But--are you serious about this? Because if you are, kiddo...there's no turning back. You know you don't have to do this, that you can just go back to your ordinary life and--"

"Like hell I can!" shouted back Roxas, balling his hands into fists. "I haven't got anywhere to go back to! Hayner--Pence--Olette--my friends are all dead! There's no way I can go--I can go anywhere."

With a flash of sympathy, Demyx realized he understood what Roxas was talking about. The boy was a stray, cast away from any home or family, with only his three friends to depend on, to guide him. And now that they were gone...he had no place to return to. Just as Demyx hadn't.

"Axel..." he began, wanting to put in a good word for Roxas. Axel, however, stopped him before he could continue.

"Be quiet, Dems, I'm thinking," he said--not rudely, but in a teacher's quiet command. He then turned back to Roxas. "You're serious."

"I am," said Roxas fiercely.

"All right, then," said Axel with a sigh, shaking his head in a resigned--but mischeivous--way. "I guess I don't have a choice...and you know, I'd really love to have a student again."

As if you haven't stopped treating me like your student, thought Demyx darkly, but Roxas's reaction was just the opposite--his entire face lit up, and for the first time he smiled. Not a real smile, just a faint upward pull on the corners of his lips, but it was enough, and both Demyx and Axel saw it. It was amazing how much that tiny little smile made Roxas's face light up, made him look so much younger...

"You'd really--" choked out Roxas, sounding overcome. He had started swaying again, and seemed dangerously close to falling. The adrenaline that had been keeping him steady must have been wearing off. "I'd really be--"

"Yeah," said Axel, and then he turned to Demyx, still smiling. "So? What d'you say, Dems? Shall we take in another in our house?"

Our house, Axel had said. He really was in a good mood. Demyx decided to take advantage of this anomalous good mood for as long as it lasted, and jerked his head in a nod.

"Yeah, sure. I'd be more than glad to have you in--our house," said Demyx, flashing Axel a smile that Roxas returned weakly. What--he wouldn't mind Roxas's presence. It'd be interesting, seeing as Roxas was almost exactly as Demyx had been when Axel had taken him in...though a little older.

And there was something about the way Axel was smiling at Roxas...at the almost-gentle way he was speaking to Roxas...it was nothing like the way Axel had treated Demyx. Demyx wondered if that bothered him, and wondered if the faint unpleasant feeling churning in his stomach was because of that, or...or something else, like his lunch. But why should he be bothered? It didn't matter...Axel was just his friend, his former-teacher, and now his landlord, apparently. He was--

--nothing else.

The churning sensation increased. Demyx decided to distract himself from it--or make it even worse for some arcane reason, he didn't know--by striding around Axel and Roxas towards the vampire corpse. The smell of blood rose in fumes from the body, and he had to hold his nose to prevent it from sending his stomach into spasms. He reached out a foot to turn the corpse over, so that it was face-up, and then fumbled one-handed in his coat pockets, searching for the larger of his two silver-edged knives--he found it, and then knelt down by the corpse (removing his hand from his nose because he needed it; he just made sure not to inhale), and started working on slicing its head off. They'd need to present it to the slayer's office as official proof of the kill.

"Hey, you're taking the intiative, Dems?" called Axel from across the roof, his tone joking. Demyx cast a brief backwards glance at Axel and Roxas--to see that Roxas was now shaking so badly that he had to slump against Axel for support. Axel, helping Roxas along, had draped his arm over Roxas's shoulder. A charitable thing to do, Demyx suppposed...

But since when had Axel been one for "charitable"? Again, that disquieting churning sensation...Demyx sighed, and worked harder on severing the vampire's head. The blood fumes were probably getting to him, making him think weird thoughts and making his stomach upset.

When Demyx was done, he shoved the vampire's head into a plastic bag he'd kept folded inside one of his inner pockets, and headed back to Axel. His stomach was cramping, doing all sorts of uncomfortable twists and turns. These, he could genuinely chalk up to smelling the blood.

"Thanks, I'll take that," said Axel, snatching the bag without ceremony from Demyx. Roxas's eyes flickered over to the bag.

"We're to take this as proof of kill to the slayers' office," explained Axel to Roxas, once more in his "teacher voice". He was having all too much fun doing this... "Normally, we'd keep hunting through the entire night..."

"'Normally'?" said Demyx, raising his eyebrows.

"Yeah, normally," said Axel, tightening his grip around Roxas's shoulders--churn, churn. "But you know, I figure you're liable to pass out any second now, huh, student? So I guess we'd better get home."

"Home," mumbled Roxas. He seemed half-asleep, but even half-asleep, when he said "home" it sounded like he was trying out a foreign word, one he had never used before in his life. Demyx felt a slight twinge of pity for the boy, which was an odd sensation indeed when mixed with the angry churning in his stomach.

"Yeah, home," echoed Axel, and he started for the roof's fire escape, one arm around Roxas and the other clutching the bag with the vampire's head in it. Demyx followed a split second later, and together the two slayers, and the boy-to-be-student, slipped through the dark alleyways of the tenements, heading towards Axel's villa. Towards--home.

It wasn't, the slayer reflected, too hard thinking about Axel's place as his home now.

Ha ha ha...yeah, I'm aware I need to be castigated for I did to Hayner, Pence, and Olette. Even I feel that was a bit excessive and evil...but hey, it gives Roxas plenty of motive to really hate vampires. It gives you all motive, of course, to hate me. But no flames, por favor.

To distract yourselves from your anger at me, I promise you that the next chapter, "Mastery", will contain all sorts of AkuZeku and Zemyx goodness--even two sex scenes in quick succession! I'm really nervous but I feel like I'm bad at writing dirty scenes, so we'll see...anyway, take a look at the preview:

And as much as Demyx tried to deny it, as much as he fought against the knowledge--he was succeeding. He was mastering Zexion. He didn't like to think of it that way...because truth be told, Demyx liked Zexion. It was strange for a slayer to be thinking of "liking" a vampire, but he did. He liked Zexion's sardonic and dry personality, his aloof indifference, his confident seductiveness. True, the last two times Demyx had experienced Zexion--the real Zexion--the vampire had tried taking advantage of him, but that was Demyx's fault for being stupid and unobservant.

See? Zemyx-y goodness!

Anyway, make sure to send a review if you read this, even if it's just to scream at me for killing Hayner, Pence, and Olette. I take all responsibility. But review!