Auto de Fé

A/N: I should have posted this months ago, when it was written, but it got lost in the depths of my last laptop and has only recently been retrieved for revision. Sometimes, the plot bunnies are kind to me.

This fic was primarily inspired by the image of burning – in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Girolamo Savonarola was an Italian Dominican priest and, as the leader of Florence, the instigator of many falò delle vanità, or bonfire of vanities, in which various "items of sin" were burned as a sign of religious dedication. From the Wikipedia article, "[t]he focus of this destruction was nominally on objects that might tempt one to sin, including vanity items such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, paintings, playing cards, and even musical instruments. Other targets included books that were deemed to be 'immoral,' such as works by Boccaccio and manuscripts of secular songs, as well as artworks, including paintings and sculpture." The auto de fé, on the other hand, was a religious ritual of public penance of condemned heretics and apostates – not the torture or execution of these individuals, but an "act of faith."

I do not own Kingdom Hearts or its characters, but it does seem as if they named the places just for the purposes of this story. Thanks to OrgLIX for the existence of Zexion's Mardi Gras beads.

Theory, thought Zexion, is a wonderful thing. Theory dictates the actions of every single thing that lives and breathes, as well as some things that do not. Like us.

However, Theory, despite its staunch advocate in the Cloaked Schemer, had clearly deserted the stronghold of the World That Never Was. Zexion ducked yet another piece of flying debris, ever appreciative of the empirical data but wishing he had chosen a more removed vantage point from which to watch the show.

Roxas was gone, and Axel, with blatant disregard for Theory and its dictates and rules, was having himself a combination falò delle vanità and auto de fé in front of Memory's Skyscraper. Zexion could taste the irony in the union of deed and place, of which he rather doubted Axel was aware.

Nobodies, devoid of emotions, were likewise empty of sentiment. There was, therefore, no simple explanation why they, like the people of whom they were but echoes, should feel compelled to collect knick-knacks, souvenirs, and other physical fragments of memory, but each member of Organization XIII did so, nevertheless. Even Zexion himself had obtained some strands of plastic beads on one of his missions that currently hung from one of his bookshelves. But everything that remained from the time Roxas had spent in the Organization, most of which he had gotten while with Axel, he had left behind him.

And all of it was flammable.

Zexion had watched unnoticed while Axel, furious and bereft and inconsolably tear-streaked, flying in the face of all Theory regarding Nobodies' emotional incapacity and more brutally focused than Zexion had ever before seen him, gathered all of Roxas' abandoned belongings and all of his own, similar mementos and carried them outside of the castle and through the Brink of Despair.

The ensuing bonfire was nothing short of glorious.

He wondered, idly, if Axel would throw himself into the fire when the rest had been utterly immolated, as the final reminder of Roxas' nonexistence and current absence. For someone who had no heart to break, Axel was certainly achieving a reasonable approximation.

Hmm – I wonder if he thinks he's even emptier than he was before Roxas came. Zexion did not feel bad for Axel or anything, didn't feel anything at all, but he had carefully observed the pseudo-friendship Axel and Roxas had formed, the faith and reliance Axel had given the youngest Nobody. Why had Axel become so attached to Roxas? Was it a reverberation of the half-forgotten memories Axel had had before he was made into a Nobody? Zexion's cherished Theory decreed that it could not have been for the motive he would have expected of a Real Person – that the two could have been fond of each other, could have enjoyed each other's company, could have felt so many, many things simply impossible for a Nobody. In retrospect, Zexion determined that it was most likely that Roxas had given something to Axel, albeit unknowingly, had given him cause to hope for a life with a heart.

Axel had built his world around Roxas, and Roxas had burned it down. Axel was returning the favor.

And Zexion watched as the final desolate plume of smoke dissipated into the air and Axel fell to his knees in front of the ashes of his shrine to Roxas.