In Kingdom Hearts, there is no hope.

It's been twisted out of the young and drained out of the old. The granny witches like to preach about it, say it will come back soon enough, but even they know that the words they speak are lies. No one has hope here. This is where hope comes to die.

Ironically, his three brothers take what hope has the will to survive.

Sora is the happiest and speaks the loudest; his hair is brown and spiky while his eyes are sky blue, with clouds and stars in them. He likes bright colors and tries to draw, but can't. That doesn't stop him. He also always steals from the cookie jar, when he is able too, and feels immediately guilty afterwards.

Aro is the sad one, his dark blue eyes always looking down and misty, hair black and drooping, a poor imitation of his happier brothers'. His voice is hardly there but it's beautiful when it is heard. He only recites poetry and it's hard to understand him sometimes, but they make due. All of them have too.

Then there is Roxas.

Pretty, pretty Roxas. Light brown hair- blond, many sometimes say- and eyes that go off like a shotgun. He's angry most of the time but that doesn't stop his oldest brother from teasing him. He never speaks and he's only heard his voice in garbled words and pained noises, but he doesn't mind much. He's special. He wants to be separated and feel the sand beneath his feet. He only knows this because Sora told him, giggling.

His brother's are conjoined triplets.

They share most of their brain, because it's the part that's connected. The skin is tight and pale where they share it, and is bald for only a few centimeters. You can hardly tell if you look up at them.

Axel is their older brother. He can say that they are normal and he loves them with every piece of emotion on his itty bitty heart.

They even have a lover named Larxene- She showed up in Kingdom Hearts one day, dazed and confused. Xaldin, the racist that lived near the swamp, had found her and had tried to help her, demanding he let him fuck her in return.

She stabbed him with a stick. He almost died. Thus, he had taken a liking to her.

Taking her home, she was silent. Taking her into the house, she was silent. Taking her up the stairs to meet his brothers, she was fascinated- her eyes had gone wide, gleamed like their eyes did at night, when the moon was full and they howled at the moon like sirens, and all she said was "So, boys, ever been fucked?".

She's gotten used to their bodies now, the contours, juts, angles, and lines. She slithers behind their backs and they squirm in delight when she does whatever she wants. It's the only thing they can do. Sora doesn't like her much and Aro hates her, but Roxas tolerates her.

He isn't sure if he should be jealous or not. Larxene just grinned at him when he recited (or so he told her) a line of Aro's, about angels and jealousy. She just grinned and told him that the mind likes to play the wickedest tricks.

He had scoffed at her, of course, and then bent her over the table to fuck her while his brothers slept, all the while mumbling in her ear how he loved all three of them.

But Roxas…

He likes Roxas best.

He doesn't know why. It's just a strange fixation, one on his frown, his eyes, his hair. If you look at him in a certain way, his face is awfully odd- in the sense that he isn't happy. An artist would love his face, that's how odd and unhappy it is.

He doesn't know why, and he doesn't know if he should. Aro once said "Oh, the air swirls through my heart and kisses my brain, leaving imprints of tiny gold and blue; And my soul! It is wretched and stinks after three weeks in the trash, and only do I now know what I shouldn't…"

Yes, it's really hard to understand Aro.

But he likes riddles anyway.

---------------(tell me, do you like my riddles?)-

Sora is babbling excitedly when Larxene comes home and announces that there is new flesh in town. A little girl found out on the roof of the old burnt church.

The old church is a building his father tried to make. They didn't have one- everyone was taught about what they were supposed to believe in their homes or by a man named Lexaeus who explored the swamps and always came back with at least five gator skins.

So it was just another project to him, to improve and unleash Kingdom Hearts. Make it a real city, not a dot on the map or a broken sign on the road to a better life.

He should have realized that Kingdom Hearts was- and is- too backwater to have real religion. God, which ever one he was trying to invite to their honky-dory town, probably scoffed.

None the less, he's intrigued and wants to see this girl.

The story is, apparently, that Vexen (an old man who was head of the granny witches- he doesn't speak unless it's between fourth and fifth hour, and he is also a little crazy) had been out searching for roots and bats for some potion or another and had seen a bit of pink on the normally charred church rooftop. He had climbed up there through the fire escape and saw a twelve year old girl with hardly any clothes on.

He had screamed and hawed until Zexion, a crazy little boy who lived nearest, came and then ran away again to find someone.

Handing Larxene the keys, he goes upstairs to tell his brothers that he will be back, and Sora whines loudly. Roxas glares and Aro sulks.

He goes to meet Larxene in the car, and when he turns back, there is a flurry of dancing limbs in the window, either waving at him or shooing him away.

-----------------(do you like my new age car?)----

With a wild look at the blond 'scientist', Axel looks down at the light haired 'little girl' the town has been chattering about.

He wants to say that Vexen really messed up on the age. This girl is at least sixteen. Her breasts are small, but her hips flow out from her waist nicely. Her hair- blonde or a very light brown, he can't say- flows over her shoulders and stops just below her collarbone, while her eyes are a nice blue that caressed his skin like water. Her skin was very pale and that was only accented by the fact that she was wearing a white dress that stopped mid thigh- a customary dress for baptisms, new age revivals, weddings, and the like.

Surprisingly, his cock twitches and an image is conjured in his mind. Of her riding his cock, her small breasts hanging in front of his face invitingly.

She seems to notice his intense stare and blushes brightly, fists clenched and mouth agape with words that buzz around her mouth like dying flies.

Before he can grin at her with facial invitation, his gaze is drawn back to Larxene, who is gaping at Vexen while Olette, his student (though some say his underage lover), holds a little black book to her chest protectively.

"You wan'em 'a wha'?"

"We need a private investigator." Vexen stats sternly. "This little girl needs to go back where she came from. 'is not right for some city girl to stay here in the wicked swamps that belonged to our ancestors!"

Before the blonde nymph can make another sound, miss another 't', he steps in and says "Sure, just give me a few days and I'll get your man."

The whole time he stares at the girl, who has no name yet, and she can't decide whether he's caging her or setting her free.

---------(do you want a better life?)---

When he gets home, his brothers are sleeping. They all murmur in their sleep, taking turns. Aro doesn't recite poetry, Sora sounds pained, and Roxas either grumbles or murmurs words that don't make sense and don't wrap around his ears properly. Either way, they make sounds that he can hear.

Larxene had decided to stay with the little girl, who was named Namine. She babbles incoherently half of the time, inserting random words and letters. Her voice serves purpose enough so that they ask and talk and wonder out loud, where do you come from Namine?

He feels alone, which is a first. Really, he hasn't been alone since… ever. Hasn't even had the notion of it. Never been alone. He scratches his chest, right above where his odd scar is.

The odd scar is his brother. Or sister. But it's a sibling that hadn't quite grown out of his chest when he was born and it's named Deformity. It's very red and white, all scar tissue and frowns.

Deformity is almost his favorite sibling, but Roxas is first.

Roxas will always be first.

------- (cuz I can take us pretty far)---

He deems this guy worthy of liking when he sees him strutting into the sheriff's house like he owns the place, and all Xigbar does is scoff at him and tell him to fucking knock next time, tourist, or I'll blow your pretty fucking head off.

The guy nods and then introduces himself as Riku Catamari, private investigator, top in the nation for finding and locating anyone.

Then he turns to Axel, eyes him, and asks where he's going to stay.

He promptly grins and says in his bed.

Riku isn't amused.

Axel is.

Xigbar doesn't really give a fuck and tells them to get out of his house- it may be acting as the police station, but that didn't mean they could fucking loiter.

------(share a smoke and I'll share my story)---

Riku stares at Sora, who stares up at him with the widest eyes he can muster.

Axel is almost sickened at the love in them, but feels a bit of deceptive glee that Riku won't ever fall in love with his younger brother. The guy looks like he was supposed to be a fucking model instead.

Suddenly, Sora speaks, and the words flowing from his mouth are Aro's words. His blacker brother is silent beside him.

"Spun hair from the moon and eyes borne of the sea, our only deception being our fear of the dark and the isolation in which we rest, away from each other…"

Riku stares at him, and Sora only looks at him hopefully.

Axel almost laughs when Riku turns around and asks him if they can discuss the details of his 'job' downstairs, he'd like to get this over with as soon as possible.

Turning around, he only hears Sora's tears and never sees them.

---------- (I'll tell you, sweet, the only one I know)----

That night, he dreams of his father and his father's wishes.

He's standing at the door, watching him sleep. The thing is, he doesn't know whose watching who- he can see from both angles. It's a very odd sensation, but it's a dream, so whatever.

The one sleeping in the bed moans and the one at the door just watches. The one at the door steps in, reaches for the one in the bed, and just before the one in the bed wakes up-

That's all. When he wakes up, he has an unhealthy hatred of Riku for having the same hair color as his father.

Deformity asks him to go kill him. He tells it to calm down. No one new lives long here. Not with their sanity, at the least.

Instead, he gets up to wander the house. He looks in Larxene's room, if you could even call the walk-in closet that is connected to his room that. He goes and looks in Riku's room (which is directly across the hall, much to the protest of the model-detective), a pristine one that's all dark blues and blacks. He looks in his brother's room and finds nothing.

He doesn't panic. He knows his brother's won't leave the house on their own, even if they could manage it.

So he heads downstairs. Finds Sora crying on the porch, Roxas looking disgruntled, and Aro sleeping.

Being the good big brother he is, he asks what's wrong, even if he does have a slight inkling of what is most likely the reason. Sora doesn't answer, too busy trying to drown himself in the salty mess on his face, and Aro's asleep. That leaves Roxas.

He stares at Roxas. Roxas stares back.

Then his favorite mute stares through the walls and up, and Axel looks. He doesn't know if he's still sleeping because he can see through the walls and, holy shit, under Riku's blanket. The guy is gloriously naked. He knows he won't wash those sheets ever again.

Then, then, then. Bang bang bang. Happens just as fast as bullets and he's not dizzy but he wishes he was.

Roxas says 'shit', Aro lets out a strangled noise and Sora lets out a howl that hurts his ears and his heart.

They, meaning Roxas and Aro, are dragging Sora with them, rushing into the house and he's left standing there, staring after them.

He looks into the yard.

He sees Goofy, Roxas' mutt. Which isn't odd, the damn thing never comes into the house and stays only in the back yard.

What he sees, really, is Donald, Sora's duck. It's hanging between Goofy's teeth and he's chewing on the neck like he doesn't have long to live.

Axel stares at it. And he can't help but let out the loudest laugh he's ever had in the middle of the night.

He laughs continuously, right up until he shoots the dog with the pistol in his pocket.

------------(About a boy who didn't care)---

After dragging the dog by his hind legs to the swamp five miles from their back porch and throwing it to the gators, Axel returns, covered in blood and mud and giggles that shake his frame every now and then.

He treks up to their room, treks up to SoraRoxasAro's room, and stops in the doorway. Roxas stares at him through half-lidded eyes while Aro and Sora sleep soundlessly. It's so dark it looks like their separated, sleeping, rested against each other.

Grinning, Axel slithers (it's the only way to describe it) up to him and gently pries his legs apart, coming to stand in between them as Roxas is now awake, alert.

"So," Axel starts, a perfectly flawed grin on his face, a masquerade. "Tell me, when did you start talking?"

Roxas stares at him.

"Do you, by chance, talk when-" Here he strips off his shirt, it making a wet plopping sound when it hits the floorboards. "Something dies?"

Roxas stares at him.

Axel laughs. "Nothing has died before you before tonight, darling Roxas. Tell me…" Here, he presses his chest to Roxas, Deformity kissing atop his ribcage through his thin shirt and his face pressed to his cheek. "What would happen if I killed three more people?"

Roxas gets it, and so does Axel. He wants three words, three specific words.

Axel gets down on his knees and blows Roxas off, who is silent but breathing hard throughout the whole thing.

Tell me, brother, will you say you love or hate me?

------------(if it rained or if it snowed)---

Days later and Riku turns up, disgruntled and a little less silver than usual. He's been spending a lot of time with Namine, hasn't found shit all. What he has found is that Lexaeus has been molesting the little Zexion boy since forever. Also, Lexaeus hasn't returned from the swamp in days.

He thinks that that is why Zexion is a crazy little guy, but he brushes it off. He doesn't really care. He's too interested in what Riku is saying and too eager to look under those clothes again.

"Saix, the one who makes the moonshine, has taken a liking to Namine. So has Marluxia. He's been offering her a look at the garden he keeps in his basement." Riku looks suspiciously at Axel, who is staring at him like Goofy used to stare at the meat the butcher, Luxord, used to wave in front of him for shits and giggles. "Are all the people in this town starved for sex?"

Axel finally focuses on him. Smirks in the bullshit way he's perfected since he was a kid. "We're all sick of fucking around with each other, anyway. The only ones who are real goody virgins around here are the twins Demyx and Myde."

He pauses for dramatic effect, remembering that he once wanted to be an actor. His smirks widens. "Well, don't you think it would be masturbation if you fuck your identical twin, anyway?"

Riku looks disgusted. Axel likes that face on him.

He can't help but laugh when Riku excuses himself, running off to God knows where.

Shit, he's been laughing a lot lately.

-------------(And, oh my love, it's such a sad one too)----

He can't believe his own ears when he hears Riku talking in his brother's room, soft voice loud enough to break his ear drums and Sora's heart.

Riku is saying he can't love Sora. He wants too, but he was going to leave after this, after finding out who Namine is, anyway. He likes Sora a bit already. Calls him beautiful. Calls him romantic. Calls him sweet.

Is basically killing Sora, who is trying so hard not to cry his lung out.

Axel finally leaves them be, leaves Riku to his bemoaning and Sora to his lamenting. He walks out the back door and heads for the town.

Drinking feels good when you feel like your heart is breaking, too.

-----------(It pulls my heartstrings and makes me cry)

He nurses his drink in standard bar pose, head down and eyes half-closed against questioning gazes and hungry stares. The ones who are hungry for him, wanting to lay with the richest man in town who has history coming out of the coin purse and sex oozing out of his skin like the bog's wildlife, take no shame in their staring- everyone has done it once, many a lot more. The questioning stares are those who have already had him.

Before a heavy built man by the name of Cid can get up off his stool and offer him a look at his fancy new computer, best one in town, Larxene and Namine walk in. They're all sequins and shine and Axel looks up only to do a double take.

Namine has her mouth closed, which is a first. Larxene is grinning wickedly, little red shoes clicking across the wooden floor and he wants to call her Alice (not Dorothy, oddly) so badly it wells up in her throat and kinda chokes him. Instead he grins like a Cheshire cat in love and makes a motion for them to both sit down, right beside him, to surround him with their beauty.

Instead, Larxene sits down and Namine follows her crossed legs with the eyes of an artists high and tugs the frayed hems of her short shorts. Before Axel can blink, Namine is in the pseudo-protective arms of the Melow home's sex toy and has her head tucked into the nape of her neck like some kind of child.

Child, Axel thinks, watching Larxene's hand travel up that bog-normality skirt (which was a quarter down from the hips).

Larxene grins and mouths some words, the only time she can say her ts right. Axel gets the message and laughs loudly.

She knows her tricks well.

--------------(Since every single time I tell it)---

Sex is the last thing on his mind, and both Namine and Larxene are first. It's a pretty sight when the three mix in a murky haze of sweat and oh-oh-ohs.

--------------(I end up wanting to die)---

Riku finds him with his dark jeans cast low around his bony hips, standing in the back porch like a statue that hasn't dreamed in ages.

He grins at Riku's attire, when he finally has the mind to see him properly. Boxers with little black spots on them. How very Hollywood, he wants to say in a sardonic way but his mouth won't let him. Riku wouldn't let him either, because as soon as he is able to bite the tip of his tongue he launches into a new and exciting development that has enabled him to find out who Namine is.

Namine is a prostitute, and her real name is Kairi. She went missing two months ago. She lived in Las Vegas and was born to a man named Xemnas, last name unknown, and Aerith Gainsborough. He couldn't find anything on Xemnas but found out that Aerith was a manager of a popular clothing store. He married her on a whim, he was rich, he was handsome, he was there, I could tell you that-

Axel is stunned to learn he fucked his half-sister.

Riku is nervous when he starts laughing maniacally, and leaves him to fall on the floor, mumbling about incest and how the curse came back again.

------- (oh, my love, I tell you it so)----

The Melow family was famous for inbreeding, anyone can tell you that. They believed they'd keep the line pure and no one would be able to share their wealth and fortune. No one accepted their ways in, oh, where was it, Minnesota?, so they came here and started their own town. They sure picked a prime place, huh?

It was full of deformities and mishaps and suicides, deaths up the river and in it, but people moved in and called it quiet. The Melows themselves named it 'Kingdom Hearts' because the crazy old head-of-the-house at the time, Ansem, had always wanted to be a king some day, and he was a bit of a womanizer, so, voila (Weren't they a bit French, those Melows?). Kingdom Hearts.

Everyone else that came to town were called the Nobodies. The new townsfolk, secretly whispering behind the barscalled them the Heartless. No one who was somebody lived in this town.

Then, one day, a little boy was born, a fifty-so-years after the town was made, and he was named Xemnas. He grew up to be handsome and curse-free, and became the head of the town as soon as his father hit the town's tractor blades.

But the boy had some radical ideas, I can tell you that.

He built a church and a school and tried to build a mill, but it all went kapoot because people who tried to come and work there were always killed or turned into drunkards. The mill failed halfway through being built because a boy named Seifer got caught in cement and became a gargoyle that still lived there today. The church was ruined because the granny witches were much more popular than Christianity and it was left to deplete and be a shadow of a greater thing.. No one wanted their children taught accordingly so the schoolhouse became another bar named Pencils.

So, they found a bunch of body bits and silver hair in the bog where the gators roamed. Lexaeus found him and threw the body away, saying it was Xemnas, no doubt about it.

But, but, the town whispers, a bartender named Sephiroth disappeared around that day too. They say he ran off to somewhere better where his ideals were shared.

All the responsibility of the big town dropped onto little nine year old Axel's shoulders.

The mother, many believed, was disposed of as soon as Axel was born. The grandmother's cousin's niece named Ariel disappeared. That family disappears like moonshine on a Saturday night, don't they?

Axel was left with a big bundle of joy, too. Three of them, all stuck together and left wailing on his bed.

Now, now, no one knows who the mother was because everyone thought Xemnas lived alone in that house. But there they were, Sora, Aro, Roxas, squealing and loud and pissy on Axel's bed.

No time for laments, little Axel had said, picking them up and carrying them out of the room.

Now, no one knows how Axel lived through managing the town and his brothers and himself. Granny witches say supernatural help from Xemnas's mother, Paine. Those who don't believe that say he's demonic, look at that red hair. Some don't even care.

Axel really doesn't remember anything, or so the townsfolk are ready to believe.

He may have been a Heartless at age nine, but he's a Nobody now.

-----------(you'll know how I ended up dying)---

Two months after he fucks his half-sister, a little bump shows through her white dress and Vexen is dismayed to discover she's no longer new flesh, never was.

She's pregnant, he says, with an inbreed.

Before he can say more, five o' clock strikes and his mouth goes ziiiip. Literally, because he sowed a zipper over his mouth after Zexion had kicked him between the legs for trying to get under his shirt and he had yelled 'fuck' like a blessing.

Axel is angry at himself and he swears there is fire around him because he can feel the heat of his anger burning in physical form, he swears.

Larxene laughs at him.

Next day she's found, drowned, many miles down the bog. Axel says he didn't do it because he was fucking his half-sister. Everyone believes it because he's Heartless again.

Riku disappeared months ago. No one knows where he went and Sora cries every night, staring at the moon and through it.

Namine is watching him when he watches his brother cry once more, grinning to himself all the while.

She speaks, and he is so sick of her voice.

"Apple pie red drawings, t shaped like smell i orange want death brother three to my crayons paper y memories Leave."

Axel laughs and grants her wish, in a way.

Roxas, watching his brother leave the premises as his attached brothers sleep silently, says only one word.

"Hope."

----------- (and oh, my sweetness, I am so tired)----

Six months later a little premature baby is born. He has wispy red hair and blue eyes when they open. His skin is stark white against Namine's gown and the conjoined triplets coo in poetry and whispers at him while he sleeps. Roxas only says 'hope' and 'shit'.

They all suggest names for the boy. 'Alex', 'Liam', and 'Elijiah' all come from Namine's, Sora's, and Aro's mouth. They all stare at Roxas for an instant, and a new word is added to his vocabulary.

"Lea." He states.

And so, they say, hope came alive again.

-----(of this goodbye, and yes, I'm lying)---

standard stuff, you know that drill. Add a review and I'll tell you my story ♥.