I do not own Kingdom Hearts or any characters thereof, and will not be making any money off of them.

He would devour it all, if he could. He burns inside, burns hot-hot-hot, and Fire is forever hungry, the original glutton, so it makes sense that Fire's disciple burns forever on the crater's edge of starvation. Roxas teases him about it, in that halting way of his, watching Axel lick his fingers or wipe his mouth. But Axel eats and eats and eats, and he is still hungry. There is a story, in one of the worlds, of two (or was it three, or five?) Gods going out to the land of the giants, and challenging with the giants. Wrestling with old age, trying to drink the sea, and one of them, one of them was in an eating contest with Fire.

In the story of course, it was all a trick. Fire wasn't Itself, wasn't Fire in all of Its starving crackling glory, for anyone with any sense whatsoever would never, never-ever-ever try to challenge It. Then again, since when are God's known for an overabundance of sense? Sometimes, in those sweet-bitter empty in-between times, Axel wonders if maybe that old Fire was some embodiment of himself. Or maybe he is an embodiment of It? He doesn't know, and he doesn't ask. It isn't a Nobody's place to ask after his (or her, or its) origins. Among the Nobodies, you're grateful to be alive (in a way), to be something more than a floating mindless Dusk.

Losing his heart dulled many of Axel's senses. In order to feel, to really feel, he has to bite and burn and tear at his skin, and even then it only feels like the ghost of what he remembers in that half way that you remember your childhood nightmares. His eyesight suffered the least, and his sight is still keen, his hearing the same. Scent is like touch, only acknowledging the most overwhelming of stenches, and taste, taste is the one most affected. He shovels the little hot peppers into his mouth to feel a brush of flame nibble at the edge of his tongue, crumbles entire blocks of salt onto his fingers, just to get a dream of long-dead oceans. He pours sugar over his palms and licks it off, sticky-sweet, to catch the half-memory of supposed innocence. Axel begs to be sent on missions to new places, begs to taste new things in hopes of sating his ever-strong hunger. The Superior accedes to his will, most of the time. Roxas just watches on, some mockery of confusion reflecting in his empty blue eyes.

Maybe Axel's eternal fire is fed by his hunger; maybe some part of him yearns to devour forests and fields and houses. Maybe it remembers when it was fed human flesh, crackle-burning and blackening in the scream fogged air. But what time does a Nobody have to concentrate on "maybes"? A Nobodies' job is to exist, and to do everything it (or he or she) can to get their true /selves/, with hearts and blood and dreams. So Axel eats and eats and eats, looking forever for the missing piece that throbs in some semblance of feeling, although he hasn't felt anything in eons and ages. He feeds the fire begging to burn the worlds, and he eats and eats and eats.