Summary: Why was Axel so hell-bent on getting Roxas back after he left the Organization? Where did those ink-drops beneath his eyes come from? Axel's journal might shed some light on the subject... The original Number XIII...

Disclaimer: I don't own Square Enix or Disney. If I did, I would be a very, very rich woman, even richer if I lent out men like Axel, Leon, and Sephiroth to people willing to pay the price for a period of time with them. I do, however, own all rights to the OC in here.

Queen's Quornor: I had originally thought to end this with Riku reading through the journal and then reflecting upon the enigma that was Axel, but then this idea hit me. Hope you all enjoy it, because this is the final chapter. Oh, and due to the fact that I think Axel is the Nobody of Reno, and since Yuffie, Aerith, Cid, and Cloud (presumably Tifa, as well) all came from Radiant Garden/Hollow Bastion in the game, I'm making it the new name of the FFVII planet, Gaia. It underwent a name-change after Ansem became the leader. So just keep that in mind and don't come after me with pitchforks and torches when you find out exactly where Axel is. To those of you who haven't seen FFVII: Advent Children, please accept my deepest apologies. Much fluff in this chapter.

Eternal Fire and Shadow

Damn... Anybody get the number of the gummi ship that hit me?

Axel opened his eyes slowly, but immediately shut them again as light pierced his aqua orbs, rocketing straight into his aching brain. He raised his hands to try and massage away the pain, but of course, it failed. He finally just dropped his hands back on the ground below him and lay there, trying to figure out where he was.

Let's see...

Kicked Nobody ass...

Put everything I had into that last attack...

Talked with Sora...

Apologized about Kairi...

Talked about Roxas...

Opened a path...

Faded...

So where the hell am I? Aren't I supposed to be...non-existant?

The idea made him chuckle. Wouldn't it just figure if, having not really existed in 'life,' he existed in 'death?'

He moved a hand up to his chest, trying to feel for a heart-beat.

Yep, it's still there. Organ is, anyway.

Emotional heart... Naaaahhh.

Even in death, he was denied his heart. If that wasn't enough to give it back to him, then what was?

"Axel?"

The voice made his heart skip a beat. It was a woman's voice, silky-smooth and melodious, soft as velvet. Black velvet. He knew that voice...

He'd wanted to hear it for two years now, more than anything else.

"Onyx?" He turned his head in the direction her voice had come from, still unwilling to open his eyes. The pounding in his skull wouldn't allow that.

"Flamer, what the hell happened to you? You look like shit." Gentle fingers stroked along his cheekbone and forehead, smoothed his hair away from his face. "I know you were eager to see me, but come on. You didn't have to tear yourself to pieces to get here."

"Nice to 'see' you too, Shad. Not that I can, but it's still nice. And anyway, where is 'here?'"

"This is the Lifestream. Our homeworld, a world called Radiant Garden, once known as Gaia, is nestled in it's all-encompassing embrace. It brings life to the planet, and gives life to her inhabitants. When those same inhabitants die, they return to the Lifestream, waiting until they are reincarnated and born again. It is a never-ending cycle, birth, death, rebirth. I've been waiting for you, ever since Xemnas transformed me." Warm coolness spread throughout his body, soothing his aching head and healing wounds he wasn't even aware he had incurred. "There. That should make you feel better."

Axel sat up, putting a hand behind him to stave off the sudden vertigo, and opened his eyes. He was surrounded by a white light, lying in a field of pink and yellow flowers. Everything seemed light and misty, not really there.

He turned his head to the side. Onyx, his woman, was kneeling beside him, still clad in the black robes of the Organization. Her purple eyes were alight with some powerful emotion, something he had never seen in them before, visible even through the curtain of midnight hair that covered the right eye. She was as perfect as he remembered. Even though she seemed a bit...transparent.

Wait a minute... Emotion?

"Onyx... Did you get your heart back?" he asked.

She smiled. "Yes, Flamer. I am whole again. Or I will be, once I get back in Saleeda's body. Oh, and I like what you've done with your eyes. Makes a statement."

He blinked. "Um... Thanks. Who the hell is Saleeda?"

"My original self. Your heart is with her, Axel. Once you recieve that, you'll be whole again too." She reached out and hugged him tightly, burrowing her head into the base of his throat. Despite her see-through state, she was still as corporeal as before. "I have my Axel back, and she will have her Reno."

"Yeah, you have me back. Just like I have my Onyx back." They stood, and he tipped her chin up, gazing into her wine-dark eyes before devouring her mouth in a heated kiss. For long moments they stood there, absorbed in each other and all that they could share, before he broke off the kiss. "Out of curiosity, once I get my heart back and become this 'Reno,' will I still be able to get out of him and be Axel?"

She smiled up at him. "Am I not Onyx? It seems we can indeed get out of their bodies, out of their souls, whenever we want. But unlike before, we will not be Nobodies. Separate entities who must return to them, but now we will be able to feel. Our hearts cannot be taken away from us again. Ever."

"To be able to feel real emotions again..." Axel smiled and held her, nuzzling his cheek against her silken hair. "You know, I always thought that when I saw you again, I would immediately throw you to the floor and have my filthy, perverted way with you. But now..." He drew back to look into her eyes. "I think I want my heart back first. There's something I want to tell you, but I need my heart for it."

"To be 'heart-felt?'" She grinned, and took his hand, their fingers entwining in the manner of lovers. "Come with me, then. Saleeda and your heart are waiting for us."

He followed her easily, just happy to be with her again. At last, he would be able to tell her what he had wanted to tell her the first time he had fucked her, the emotion he had known he would have for her if he could feel. The emotion all the other members of Organization XIII had dreamt of feeling, but wept because they could not.

That reminds me...

"Have any of the other members arrived here?"

Onyx snorted. "Yeah, some of them have. Demyx, Zexion, and Marluxia have all come back here. As for the rest, I don't know. I have heard that the original six members of the Organization were from this world, but Zexion is the only one I've seen. Surprisingly, now they they've got their hearts back, none of them are really all that bad. Marluxia is actually kinda nice to hang around with."

"Been doing anything with him, Shad? 'Cause if you have, I'd have to burn his ass." Axel's fingers tightened on hers possessively. Mine.

But Onyx was already shaking her head. "No, we're just friends. Demyx, too. Zexion's still not someone I'd want to be alone with, but we haven't been doing anything. Marluxia spends most of his time tending the flowers." She gestured at the blossoms surrounding them. "You know how he was about his garden in Castle Oblivion. Harm a single bloom, and he'd kill you. But he's lightened up now. Demyx helps him some, but he mostly just plays with his sitar."

"And what have you been doing?" he asked.

"Nothing, really. Just sitting around, waiting for you. I've also been watching people try to restore Radiant Garden to its former glory. It's been tough for them, but they're succeeding." Onyx removed her hand from his, and wrapped the arm around his waist, leaning her head against his shoulder. "I've really missed you, Axel."

"Same here, Onyx," he drawled, his arm snaking around her slim waist. "Same here."

They continued on for a while, just enjoying each other's company, and at last Onyx spun out of his grasp and pointed to a ghost-pale tree. "They're up there."

Axel looked at the tree, his aqua eyes skeptical. "I don't see anybody."

As soon as the words left his mouth a woman jumped out of the tree, landing lightly in front of them. She looked almost exactly like Onyx, but for a few small differences. Her eyes were a deep, deep blue in place of the former Nobody's amethyst-purple, and her hair was significantly shorter, only shoulder-length. She also lacked Onyx's topknot and eye-flip. But apart from that, the two women were physically identical.

She was wearing a pair of low-riding leather pants, black leather boots, and a shiney blue corset that displayed her cleavage very well indeed. Axel noticed that there was a black choker with a blue stone around her neck, too. If he wasn't infatuated with Onyx, he would have definately wanted to bang her. She smiled and held out her hand.

"You must be Axel. I am Saleeda, Onyx's original self and Reno's steady. Youngest member of the Turks." She brought her other hand out from behind her back and casually tossed something circular and shiney in the air, catching it and tossing it again. "I think this belongs to you."

My heart... He shook her hand, and held out the other one. "I think it does. May I have it back?"

Her lips quirked again. "I suppose. I do want my Reno back, after all. Here, catch." She threw it at him.

Axel just stood there, watching while the orb approached him, touched him...

Sank into his chest.

Feeling exploded throughout his body, filling his mind with images he had never seen before, but knew he had. People he had never known, places he had never been, things he could not remember ever doing. Emotions spread throughout his being, forcing out the coldness, the half-recalled memories he had lived with for so long. Fire spread in his soul, in his chest, burning away everything, changing his very being...

And a soul, both new and old, rose from the ashes.

AOAOAOAOAOAOAOAOAOAO

Onyx watched as Axel was consumed by the fires he controlled, burning away the Nobody she had longed for, the man she loved, into someone she had only met in the realms of Saleeda's memories. A lanky man with green-blue eyes, his orange-red hair cut short and spiky around his face and hanging in a long ponytail down his back, twin scars of red on either side of his face.

Saleeda whispered his name as he stretched, his untucked shirt rising to reveal his muscle-ripped stomach as he rose on the balls of his feet, his arms reaching for the sky.

"Reno..."

His head snapped forward, goggles sliding forward to cover his eyes. Cursing softly, he shoved them back into their proper place on his head and looked at the blue-eyed woman. A grin spread wide as he realized who she was. "Saleeda!" She just about knocked him over as she leapt onto him, arms and legs wrapping tightly around his body while she kissed him. Onyx just watched, her heart aching as the long-separated couple tried to climb inside each other's body via their mouths.

Axel...

"You called?"

Her head whipped around to see her man standing behind her, transparent as she was, the usual cocky grin twisting his lips. He held his arms out.

Unlike his original self, the former Nobody didn't remain upright when his woman barrelled into him, kissing him for all she was worth. He didn't seem to mind, however; he simply fisted his hand in her hair to hold her in place and kissed her right back, with all the passion he could possibly convey.

"Baby-girl, what happened to you? I remember telling you to run, but..." Reno finally got out, still holding onto Saleeda. She sighed and lay her head on his shoulder, still clinging to him so as not to lose him again.

"I did run. I hated myself for obeying, but I was just too scared to stop and go back to help you." Her arms tightened possessively. "I grew to hate myself, because I knew you had been killed. There were just too many of them for you to have a chance. So consumed was I, in fact, that the next time the Heartless attacked me, I didn't resist. I let myself be killed."

"And that's when I came into being." Onyx sat up, pushing the unbound half of her hair out of her face. "So... How exactly did the advent we know as Axel come about, anyway?"

Reno reached around himself and unlocked Saleeda's legs, letting her slide down to stand on her own feet but leaving her arms exactly where they were. He was equally loathe to let go of her just yet. "Like she must have mentioned before, Baby-girl here was the youngest member of the Turks, the elite group of fighters and shooters I belonged to. I was in charge of her training, and at first we absolutely couldn't stand each other. But one night that all changed."

"He had been out drinking, and got jumped in an alley. I found him there, torn up pretty badly. Took him to my place and used a Curaga on him. I saw him at his most vulnerable, and he saw me as something other than a wannabe who could potentially take his job. We were fuck-buddies a few days later."

"And steadies about a month after that." Reno smirked at the ex-Nobodies. "Moved in together and spent most of our time in bed...on the floor...in the shower...up against a wall..."

"Same as you did, from what I gather." Saleeda slipped her hands beneath her red-head's jacket, turning her head so she could look at the other couple. "We only had about half a year together, from our introduction to the very end, before our homeworld was overrun by Heartless."

"We were in bed when we got the call to get dressed, grab our weapons, and get out on the streets. It was not a pretty sight. People getting chased down and dog-piled, their hearts stolen away, kids dying, parents screaming..."

"I never really forgot that night. Black shadow-things running amok through the streets, taking out the best warriors we had. SOLDIERS fell left and right, gunmen died in droves. Even we Turks couldn't escape the nightmare." The woman buried her face in Reno's chest, taking comfort in his closeness.

"Elena went down first. I think Tseng died shortly afterwards. Don't know what happened to Rude; he got separated from us. And then they started chasing us. We held them off as long as we could, but..."

"Reno told me to get the hell out of there, that he'd cover my back. I didn't want to leave him, but he told me he'd be fine. And I'm ashamed to admit it, but I was terrified. So when he yelled at me to go, I didn't argue. I just ran, and never looked back."

"I went down fighting, I remember that much. I had an incendiary grenade in my pocket, last-ditch resort I had grabbed from somewhere. After I was certain Saleeda was out of range, I pulled the pin and let the fuckers come to me." His eyes fell, and one hand stroked his woman's back and hair. Nervous touching. "One of 'em got lucky. Stole my heart right before the timer went off. I went down in flames, but my heart was gone."

"So that's why I got control of fire," Axel muttered. "Consumed in flames, born out of fire. God, you made me a fuckin' phoenix..."

"Not intentional, yo!" the other redhead protested. He started to say something else, but Saleeda yanked his head down and shut him up with lips and tongue.

"And you already know how I was brought about. Saleeda died in darkness, in shadow. So I came into being, the Maiden of Darkest Shadow." Onyx rolled off her man, letting him sit up. "It seems we all have control of that which killed us, or at least had some influence in how we lost our hearts."

"If that's so, then I'd really like to know how Luxord and Sa'ix lost their hearts." His grin mirrored that of Onyx.

"Or Larxene."

"Especially Marluxia."

"Yeah. He probably got nuked by one of those plant-type Heartless," she snickered.

"Sooo..." Reno let go of Saleeda and sauntered over to where Axel was getting off the ground, looking at his alternate self with unreadable eyes. "You're my Nobody."

"Yeah. I guess I am." Axel had the same look on his face. Critical, unconsciously superior.

A round of female snickers made them break gazes and look at the women, who were hanging onto each other and trying very hard to keep from laughing.

"What's so funny?" "What's so funny, yo?" The phrases, said at the same time, made the women lose what little grip they had on their mirth and bend over double, laughing their heads off.

"You both..." Saleeda began, but failed to continue due to insane cackles.

"Look like you're having a cock-measuring match..." Onyx managed to get out.

"With yourself!" they howled together.

The redheads simply looked at the females, then back to each other, sharing identical smirks.

"Think we can officially label them insane, yo?"

"I think we'd better not, unless we don't want to get laid ever again."

They considered each other for a heartbeat longer, then went to collect their women. "I'm still the handsomer one, yo."

"But at least I'm grammatically correct."

"Flame-assed wannabe."

"Dye job."

"Girly boy."

"Four eyes."

Onyx and Saleeda stared at them, then dissolved into another round of rib-cracking guffaws. "I can see that this is going to be the beginning of a bee-YOU-tifal relationship!"

"I second that observation, Other."

"Hey, do you think you could give us some time alone here?" Reno asked Axel, prying Saleeda away from herself. "It's been too damn long since I've had her to myself, after all. Gotta make up for lost time."

"Same here, actually." Axel bodily hauled the purple-eyed woman away from her blue-eyed original. "I'm sure I'll be back in your body soon, dude."

"That just sounds wrong, yo," Reno said, a disgusted-but-amused look on his face.

Saleeda turned her attention completely to her redhead, yanking his head down with a fist in his hair. "Still the same perverted Reno. Damn, how I missed you!"

"Same here, Baby-girl. Now hold still for a moment while I get these off you..."

Onyx and Axel made their escape quickly, trying not to laugh. Reno sounded like a far more juvenile version of the Flurry of Dancing Flames.

AOAOAOAOAOAOAOAOAOAOAO

They came to a stop in a grove of ghost-white trees, laughing hard. "I never would have thought that my original self was such an immature pervert!" Axel snorted.

"Believe me, Saleeda is the same way. Those two were definately made for each other, no doubt about it." She slinked closer to the redhead, her eyes darkening to the shade of fine wine. "As you were for me."

"Don't you mean it the other way around?" He reached for her, yanking her close to him and leaning back against a handy tree trunk.

"Does it really matter?" She kissed his jawline, fingers playing with the cords hanging from the neckline of his robe. "I really missed you, Flamer."

"Same here, Shad. And I gotta tell you something, so stop that for a moment. You know it makes my head spin."

"Maybe I like seeing you completely undone." She flashed him a naughty grin and placed another kiss on his jaw, making him shiver.

"Onyx... Wait a minute." Axel pushed her out to arm's length, where he could look at her and she couldn't do anything to make him lose his train of thought. "Look, I know we really cared about each other before, but now that I have my heart back, I just wanted to tell you..."

She fought her way forward and placed two fingers against his lips, silencing him. "Axel... I know. I feel the same way. You don't have to tell me something I already know. I've known ever since we were in the Organization what we had, what we still have. You know it as well as I do..."

"We don't need hearts to be in love." Axel smiled, and drew her back into his arms. "Glad we had this little talk, Shad. Can we move on to bigger and better things?"

She reached to his waist, beginning to work the black robe upwards, just as he was to her robe. "Thought you'd never ask, Flamer."

Together forever. Partners in death as in life.

Fire and shadow, forever entertwined.

The Flurry of Dancing Flames...

And his Maiden of Darkest Shadow.