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3am Challenge Day 6
Prompt: #69 - Consciousness Slowed (700 words)
Song: In Fear and Faith - Heavy Lies the Crown
Characters: Axel, mentions of Roxas
His chest heaved, drawing hot, acrid air into his lungs with each rasping breath he took. Hearts, it burned. Everything burned.
He senses felt muted. Colors seemed far too sharp against the way the rest of the world blurred in and out of his vision; the smell of the smoke, the way the relentless, jagged roar of his fire seemed to bleed into angry smears across the heavy air. Red and orange suspended in reality like cooling, dying magma swathed in ice-cold water. Something thick and metallic filled his mouth, coated his tongue black.
How?
How had everything come so far undone? Why couldn't he fix this? No matter how tightly he had held onto the last thing he'd had left to lose it had frayed, unraveled and left him with nothing but the sensation of drowning. He was helpless, useless to stop the events unfolding around him. His final saving thread: turned to ash in his hands.
It wasn't fair.
He'd been so close. He'd had the fight under his control, had felt his hollow victory brush against his aching fingertips for a brief, bitter second, before it sank its fangs into his flesh and fled just beyond his reach.
He sank to his knees, body too heavy with resignation and despair, too tired from over a decade of having everything stripped from him like bloodied scabs to stay upright anymore.
The yellow glow of his fire, once so fierce and comforting, a promise made of fury and passion that he would win, that he would fix this, now turned harsh and glass-like. A prison made of frozen flame. Cold and finalistic and a sap of energy against his already fading form, the kaleidoscope of scalding life force draining away and seeping through the cracks and cuts left carved into his body by a set of giant keys. Metal teeth that had torn out more than pieces of his flesh, taking more than just the black smoke that should have been red and liquid instead.
Blue stared down at him, hatred and betrayal and, worst of all, apathetic recognition blazing like twin imploding suns in ways that shouldn't have been possible. The sound of the fire, the hiss of his own demise, it all garbled together, came to him as if through an ocean's worth of heartbeats. He felt his lips work, felt the hum in his skull, but all he could hear was a shrill, piercing ring. It filled his ears and blocked out everything else, even the voice cracking from his vocal chords as he spoke.
It was funny, so hearts damned funny what he'd been ready to do in his hopelessness just to finally bring this disaster to an end. Funny how he'd been ready to kill. Funny how he'd been ready to murder his friend and then burn himself as well because it was the only thing left he could do, only way to save them from this fake existence, to keep them both from being used any longer. It would have been their last act of defiance; their last act of free will. And it could have worked. It would have. But his fire had failed him and the strength of the Keybearer's wrath and desire to live had proven too much to overpower with sheer desperation. They would have faded together, if only he could have won.
But he hadn't.
He'd lost the final battle for their salvation and now instead of that blistering resolve that had kept him going for countless years he felt nothing but emptiness. True emptiness. Not the kind that came from the hollow cavern where his heart should have been but the bleak, lifeless nothing of a man with nothing left to fight for – not even his own existence.
If he'd had the ability to cry, he would be sobbing right now.
The world dimmed to grey, wiping away even the pain of his wounds as a towering swatch of blue and blond and will stood over him, the only color left in his worthless life. He ducked his head.
Do it, he thought, voice having failed him just like he'd failed his friends. Finish me.
Everything burned.