Ill Repute

Note: I know my updates have been much faster than the past few, but I hope you all can understand… I was in London before the last update, and I only came home from England on Friday, which meant that there was a month's worth of life to catch up on with my family. As for what happened to Zexion… Well, you'll find out what happened, if you haven't already realized. It's a kind of situation that, if in a story that is meant to have some kind of believability, would not be fully explained at the moment of discovery. Regardless, it's going to make sense now.

This chapter was one of the hardest for me to write, in all my time writing. I think it is because it was, plot-wise, the obvious end to the story, and I probably knew, but not as well as when I realized it was the end. There WAS going to be a short epilogue to follow this chapter, but it would do absolutely nothing to change what happens at the end of this chapter, so I opted out of it. There is, of course, the sequel… And now I think you will all understand why the sequel presented itself. This was the eventual end of the story as I always imagined it. I'll see you all in the sequel!

"I'm halfway home now. Half hoping for a showdown, 'cause I'm not big enough to house this crowd. It might destroy me but I'd sacrifice my body if it meant I'd get the jack part OUT."—The Dresden Dolls, "Half-Jack"

Chapter Seven: Juxtaposition

The weather was sickeningly cheerful the day of Zexion's funeral: bright, sunny, warm. It was a day everyone would have otherwise enjoyed, were it not for the fact that they were stuck in the stifling chapel where the ceremony was being held. They wouldn't be able to see him one last time, because the casket was closed. There hadn't been much the mortician could have done to make him up to look as though he were sleeping. The dead boy had seen to that himself when he hung himself… with a piano string. The blood from his slit throat had sprayed across the room and when Xaldin had opened the door, he was greeted with the sight of his dead roommate. Now, no one else would see him.

No reason was given for his suicide. Zexion had always been quiet and sad and depressed about his situation in life. No one knew much about what had brought him to the home. Just a fire that had killed his entire family, except him, as far as they knew. No one but Cid, and the boys of the home, and Zexion's social worker were at the funeral, a fact made painfully obvious by the fact that the small group only filled two pews in the small chapel. As they stood around the hole where the casket was about to be lowered into, Roxas looked up at Axel with doubt and pain in his eyes.

"I don't understand why this happened." He whispered just under the sound of the priest chanting.

"You don't have to understand, Roxas. It just does." Axel didn't even look down at the other boy.

"He had no reason to kill himself."

"You say that, but you don't know."

"Know what?" Roxas's voice raised in volume slightly.

No one looked at them to silence either of them. "What he was going through. You couldn't understand everything he thought. Maybe it was best for him, and maybe he had plenty of reason to want to."

"He could have talked to us. Someone. Gotten help."

"It's not that easy, and you know it." Axel still hadn't looked at him.

The priest closed his bible and the group silently crossed themselves and broke up. Cid was silently stoic and some of the boys wandered listlessly toward him. Neither Axel nor Roxas moved from their place beside the grave.

"It's so senseless." Roxas spat, bitter at the world.

"Everything is, Roxas." Axel turned and walked away. It wasn't too far a walk to the home from the cemetery, and Axel would have walked miles home if only to give him time to get away and think. But he had nowhere else to go, and he was too tired to be angry, and too… He wouldn't cry. Axel wasn't sure he knew how to anymore.

Roxas followed him quietly, and after a few blocks, Axel finally found words to speak.

"I just thought I'd make it through my time in that place without having to see another suicide." He kept his eyes focused on the sidewalk that stretched ahead of them. He looked up to the sky as he stopped and leaned against a wall, a hand limply pressed to his forehead, covering an eye. "I was so close to getting away, too."

This bit of information hit Roxas through his misery, and shot like a bullet straight to the very center of his existence. "What are you talking about?" His voice was soft and forced calm.

Axel finally looked at him with a wry smile. "Don't you know? We all get out of the system when we're eighteen."

"How… old are you, Axel?" Roxas's voice was faint.

Axel stepped away from the wall and started walking again. He stopped and looked back at Roxas. "I'll be eighteen in a week."

Roxas's breath was short, even before he caught up with Axel. "Then what?" He demanded.

"I'm going to college in the fall."

"Where at?" Roxas breathed, hardly believing that Axel hadn't even mentioned this before.

"Away from here."

Roxas stiffened, slowing down. "Where are you going when you turn eighteen?"

Axel never turned around. "I've got a place I'm moving into... But sooner than that, I think now…" His gaze looked longingly up to the sky for a moment, but he continued on.

Roxas finally stopped, and shook his head in disbelief. "Axel…"

The redhead kept walking. "What?"

"Is this what you meant when you said you didn't know how long it would last?"

"I hoped maybe I'd get to hold onto you a little longer."

"What do you mean, you'd hoped?"

"I'm never looking back, Roxas. I'm getting the hell out of this place and I'm never, never looking back. I'm done." Axel didn't sound angry, only resigned, and hurt, and pained, and tired.

"But, Axel, I--"

"No, Roxas. You'll get along fine without me. You have memories to recover, and then deal with. You have Sora. You have two years ahead of you before you're getting out of this place… You'll see more of this. Close calls, and the real thing… You'll survive. And then you'll understand."

Roxas, very suddenly, had no control over himself anymore. All his composure over himself was lost with his restraints on his emotions. "Axel!" He cried and collided with the redhead's back very suddenly, crying and pounding on it. "You can't… please…"

An arm shot out and pushed him away. Roxas stumbled away and felt as though Axel had punched him in the gut. It wasn't until years later that he realized that the shove had been as desperate as his hands grasping for Axel… That Axel had been trying gently to push him back so as to hurt him less, as though the psychological blow was enough. The blond was left to stand there in stunned silence until Axel was around the corner.

It was then that it hit him like a bucket of ice water over his head. "I… I… Axel! Axel!" He broke into a frantic run, but when he turned the corner, he could only see Axel's back retreating down yet another street.

"I love you!" He screamed at that back, pursuing it fruitlessly, sobbing all the way through his screams. "Axel! I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you!"

He finally collapsed, no idea where he was, except that he was lost and crying and exhausted and hoarse. "I love you…" He whispered and panted and cried and screamed with his whole body, throat screaming from ill use and his fists fell angrily against the pavement.

"I… love you."

"See Jack run." –The Dresden Dolls, "Half-Jack"

End