Axel figures it out the same day he meets her.

She's a tiny, frail thing, with too big clothes and too big eyes, and yeah, maybe her chin is a little too square and maybe her Adam's apple is a little too pronounced, but hey, Axel's good at pretending, so he pretends he didn't notice. Figures the kid's insecure enough if she's here it's obvious she wouldn't want him to have noticed.

(Axel's more than good at pretending—he's been calling himself Axel since Isa got that scar on his face and they were two dumb kids getting themselves in the worst kind of trouble two dumb kids can get, joining up things they shouldn't have joined, following people that shouldn't be followed. Two kids who think they're smart enough they haven't fallen for the old "hey, kids, there's candy in my van, want some?" trick. Kids who are so in over their heads with crazy plots and stupider plans, now, it's kind of

not

funny.)

Roxas is the one who brings her in—Roxas, who is tiny and seriously naïve and definitely shouldn't be here, but who Axel took under his wing because he has a thing for lost puppies, he can't help himself, he just keeps bringing back strays with big eyes and begging to keep it. He can't even keep a goldfish alive, let's get real; who does he think he is, taking on a kid in a place like this?

Taking on two kids in a place like this, shit.

Roxas tells him her name is Xion, pronounced Shi-On; it flows on his tongue when he repeats it with one of his "I am totally 100% confident about all my life choices, yep" grins, and she almost-but-not-quite smiles at the way he says it. She's kept her hood on her head this whole time, trying to hide herself, probably (too big clothes and too big eyes and awkward "I'm still growing" limbs, and unlike Roxas Axel doesn't even wonder what she's trying to escape, it's right in front of his face). Axel doesn't tell her not to bother with it because, hey, whatever she needs, right? This isn't a place of judgment.

It's not a place of anything except bad decisions and bad people.

Axel doesn't ask Roxas where he knows Xion from (family? friend?), just like he didn't ask Roxas where he came from, dragged into a group meeting with the boss's hand on his shoulder and his creepy, self-satisfied smarmy smirk in place while Roxas didn't move a fucking muscle. Axel thought he'd been terrified but it turned out Roxas had just been bored out of his mind and wanted the world to get on with it so he could escape like the rest of them. Axel had laughed and dragged the kid out on ice cream after they'd finished his first job. Roxas had made a face like he didn't get it but he'd smiled and laughed after the fourth, fifth, sixth time. Something in Axel's chest had clenched and he'd thought again about how much of a terrible person he was.

Better than Saïx.

He puts a hand to Xion's shoulder and grins down at her the way he did Roxas; tells her "welcome aboard" like it's anything to be proud of and Xion almost smiles under her hood.

Whatever, he's already going to hell anyway.

Axel's job with the Oblivion crew (could the names get any smarmier?) trips him up for a while. It's not anything he didn't expect; it's a dirty, icky job with even worse people involved, but it takes longer than expected and he meets Roxas's reason for running in the first place.

Or, well. He thinks so, anyway.

The other kid's name is Sora; it's kind of an accident he's there. He looks like he could be twins with Roxas, and a look around told Axel they were definitely related. But back to the accident—the entire Oblivion deal had to do with this girl called Naminé who was related to the kid's … girlfriend, or friend-who-is-a-girl, something vague like that, because she was really good at what she did, and what she did was, well, fall in with the wrong crowd, apparently. Anyway, the girl herself didn't know about it, and Sora had only found out by accident, kind of "I just stumbled upon a gang's dealing and instead of doing the smart thing I'll poke my nose around for funsies" kind of thing, which then turned into "holy shit is that my girlfriend's sistercousintwin thing and also I think that looked a lot like my best friend who's also good at falling in with the wrong crowd" … thing.

It got complicated.

The problem is Axel had just been sent in to take care of two assholes vying for power (you have to do it subtly, asshats, do you guys not like living?) and a couple more assholes who'd be trouble when he and Isa swooped in to take the power. (The only way out of being someone's pet is to become the master yourself.) Instead Axel finds himself torn between helping the kids and fucking up the kids. It's the eyes, honestly, the too big eyes that make him think of starving puppies and Roxas and Xion waiting for him back in that place, and look, it'd just be better for everyone all around if he got to take over, alright? Or if Isa did, whatever. Point being, Axel ends up somehow telling Naminé how to get out (can't even get himself out, what the hell does he know), almost killing her afterwards and deciding to just not intervene when she leaves with the Sora kid and his best friend, happily reunited amidst the bloodshed.

Yeah, he even got time to do his job right in the midst of that. Go him.

(Zexion joined when he was ten, his foster dad killed by Xemnas and nowhere else to go; Axel figures the kid developed some kind of Stockholm syndrome, maybe. Vexen was this old guy who knew how to make the dosages just right. No one really liked him when he opened his mouth, though. Lexaeus was Zexion's silent shadow. Roxas had told him he thought maybe they were friends like they were. Larxene and Marluxia'd been almost as new as this as Roxas and Xion, but old enough to know better. Dumb enough to try to play a game they didn't know the rules to anyway.

In the end Axel only directly killed Zexion and Vexen; Sora, Naminé and Riku set the whole place on fire when they rushed to try to get out alive and the other three get stuck in the blazing inferno. Since he'd been the one to set the chemicals on fire to give the kids a flying chance of survival, he figures it's kind of his fault anyway.)

So, yeah, the entire thing trips him up a little. He closes his eyes now and smells burning flesh, hears Vexen and Zexion's screams, sees that Sora kid's wide eyes and thinks:

No, seriously, he was already going to hell anyway.

Xion and Roxas are so happy to have him back they don't even ask about the others. Neither does anyone else, which is—weird. Fire's always been Axel's signature style.

Xemnas says they count towards "acceptable losses". Saïx smiles one of his not-Isa smiles. Axel figures that's enough creepiness for one day, so he takes the kids out for ice cream after.

Xion doesn't wear the hood anymore; her hairstyle is just this side of too short, more like a boy who keeps it long than a girl who keeps it short. Axel tells her she looks good without the hood and gives her this headband he found in a thrift shop close to Oblivion while it was burning down. It's got this weird seashell-ribbon decoration on the side that made him think of her. She thanks him with such enthusiasm her voice cracks a little, and Axel blushes because it wasn't like a big deal or anything. Roxas asks why he didn't get a souvenir, and Xion laughs that obviously Axel likes her better because she's a girl.

Axel pretends not to notice the near-hesitation when she says the last part. It's easy, because for some reason these stupid kids are making him blush about a dumb present. He decides not to tell Roxas his souvenir burned down with Oblivion, though.

It's the details that make it work, after all.

Saïx gets weird with time. Well. Weirder.

Axel at first figures it's the pressure getting to him; the guy's closer to the boss than ever and their (stupid crazy insane) plans are finally coming to fruition. It's been a long road; if Axel was in that role he'd be feeling stressed, too. And, okay, Axel's been weird with the guy for a while too, but. Axel's allowed to be a bit weird; Axel's the one who went through with the dirty job part of the plan.

Then time goes on and Axel starts thinking it's not the plan or Axel's own behavior, it's the kids Axel is hanging with. It's not super obvious at first, but.

Well, Saïx is enough of an ass to make it obvious and calls Xion "it" to her face.

Axel tells him off while Xion struggles to get her hoodie back up to hide her face, and Isa gets this weird betrayed look on his face, and Roxas looks about two seconds away from punching him and oh. Oh, it's a mess. Axel looks away and just helps Xion with her hoodie, since it kept getting snagged in his stupid headband gift. Saïx doesn't say anything, just walks away as if it's all above him. Roxas snarls after him.

Xion says he's horrible. Axel doesn't disagree.

Isa wouldn't have said that, about anyone.

Axel thinks maybe that's when something breaks.

Time goes on. Saïx and Axel have a few more fights behind closed doors, about this and that and what the fuck it is they're trying to do here, and Saïx calls him Lea like that's supposed to change his mind.

He spends more and more time with the kids, during and after jobs. The kids start to see the not-so-fun part of this life. They ask a lot of questions. Feel a lot of guilt. Axel figures that's the difference between good people and people like him, probably. He tells them half-truths when it's convenient and doesn't even blink. He pretends he makes up for the lies with all the ice cream he's buying them.

Then one day the kids want to go to the beach and Axel thinks why the fuck not. Everyone deserves a day off.

Xion wears shorts and a t-shirt; either in a stroke of luck or of surprising insight, Axel can never tell with the kid, Roxas does, too. Axel himself is wearing pants and a shirt because he's just that kind of douchebag.

They make sandcastles, eat watermelon, pretzels and ice cream until they nearly burst, completely forget to put on sunscreen somehow and Axel just sits on the beach and watches when the kids go in the water.

At the end of the day, the three of them sit on the beach and watch the sun set over the ocean in an array of colours to put the universe to shame, sunburned and full and happy in a way Axel doesn't think he's been in forever. Xion takes out these tacky friendship bracelets, colour-coded for their convenience, and Axel is nice enough to only laugh at her about it a little. He loses it when Roxas decides to outdo her and takes out actual friendship necklaces, their initials carved into them and everything.

He calls them both stupid kids and makes a mental note to find a gift to Roxas to replace that souvenir he never got him. They've gotta match, after all.

He doesn't make a note to get one for himself because part of him knows it's too good to last.

He doesn't

deserve

any of this, after all.

Turns out you can take the kid out of the bad place but you can't take the bad place out of the kid.

Right, context: Riku and Naminé have apparently taken to trying to take Sora's poor little siblings (woops, spoilers: turns out Xion and Roxas are twins, and Sora's their perfect elder brother, or something like that) away from the life. Roxas is pretty bad at noticing when he's being followed. Xion isn't.

Naminé and Riku are apparently way too good at guilt-trips, and they work Xion over and out until she starts doubting herself in the worst of ways.

It all culminates in that one day, Xion stays with them eating ice cream, silent and sad before she says she wishes this could last forever.

She's gone the next, vanished without a trace.

The kicker?

Naminé and Riku can't find her, either.

Roxas starts to want real answers after that. Asks him where Xion is, day in, day out. Axel spends most of his time not being interrogated trying to find her. People don't just stop existing. It doesn't make any sense.

Axel's so frazzled and everyone is so damn amused and pissed, everything starts to unravel. Roxas's face when he figures out all of Axel's little (big, huge, damning) lies nearly breaks his heart.

Roxas quits when he's told to stop looking for her. Axel's there to try to stop him. Roxas doesn't even look back when Axel talks.

Axel doesn't run after him.

He thinks of two kids with too big eyes he'll never see alive again and can't even bring himself to cry instead.

The kicker is Axel had gotten Roxas his souvenir not long before everything went down the drain. It was a ring—for irony's sake, something just as girly as those two kids had fostered upon him—made out of a seashell.

The kicker is Roxas hadn't taken it off, wearing it and his necklace and his bracelet like proof of something that maybe had once been worth a while.

Axel doesn't have the seashell thing as proof of his friendship with them; just some proof that they loved him, a long time ago, in a stupid bracelet and a stupider necklace.

He doesn't need proof that he loved them, anyway: he feels it every time his heart beats and he takes a breath and he thinks for once in his life there's something he wanted more than just living.

He quits the Organization when he hears Roxas's back with Sora. (The kid probably thought if everyone's looking for the same thing, they're bound to find her, right?)

Axel himself figures, if he's ending up in hell either way, might as well be sooner than later. Anything's better than living like this.

Of all the people he meets, it's Sora's little girlfriend, first. Her name's Kairi.

He's not sure why he decides to play the stranger-danger game with her, but he knows he can't have Roxas if he's with these guys, so he lays it on thick. He's maybe panicking a little.

Kairi is pretty like Naminé, but a lot more headstrong than she'd ever been. There's a stubborn tilt to her chin and a wary glare as if she's preparing herself for a fight, and oh, something about her just reminds him of Xion. But Xion's gone, and Kairi has none of her awkward sense of self, or her smile or her stupid stupid tokens of friendship, and all in all Axel really just wants to see Roxas one last time before everything ends. So.

He grabs Kairi's wrist and for all her show she's obviously never taken a self-defense training class once in her life. Xion would've just punched him in the face even though she'd have issues reaching. But Kairi? She can't fight back. He's too big, too strong, too way too used to everyone's fighting style, what was that swing? Pathetic.

He thinks about leaving a ransom note, but please, how cliché can you get? If Roxas doesn't figure out what he wants, he's obviously been keeping the wrong friends.

The thing with Saïx is that he apparently really likes being a fucking life ruiner.

The first thing Saïx does is grab Kairi from him, and this time when she fights back she does it for real, scratching and biting and screaming like she hadn't him. It's both incredible and kind of insulting. What, was he not a good enough kidnapper on top of being a lousy friend?

But Saïx isn't taking any of that, and since Saïx is stronger than Axel and a lot meaner, too, Saïx just knocks her out without remorse and leaves her lying there on the floor. He turns to Axel.

Axel? Axel's still kind of a fucking coward.

He runs.

He only figures out what Saïx wants with Kairi after an inexplicably long time. An embarrassingly long time.

The same thing Axel wanted with her, actually: the Organization wants Roxas. The rest of those kids too, while they're at it. You know, revenge for the bloodshed or whatever. Kairi's just the easy bait Axel pretty much delivered to them on a silver platter.

It turns out Axel's the life ruiner. Who knew, right?

Well. Axel did.

And Axel's going to fix it if it's the last thing he does.

He catches up to Saïx when the Organization is moving to do the "exchange" the kids have agreed too. The kids probably have some kind of stupid back-up plan like the police being there or something; since Axel is the king of stupid ideas, he knows exactly how dumb that one is, which is very.

He's surprised that Saïx is the only one there with Kairi, but pleasantly. He guesses the rest of the Organization was already taken down earlier somehow? Fuck if he knows. He stopped keeping track when he left.

Saïx smiles when he sees him though, and Axel guesses maybe it was a double-layer trap.

Because see: Axel's got a weakness for kids with big eyes, and unfortunately for him Kairi fits that bill too.

Axel barely has the time to think that he's the stupidest idiot this side of the world and yell at Kairi to run find Sora before Saïx breaks his ribs.

He doesn't really notice what happens after that, except that everything hurts and all he can see is red and oh, okay, that's blood, good night.

(You can't just turn on the Organization.)

Someone is swearing at him.

There's the passed-out form of Isa next to him, face first in the pavement, and Axel blinks blearily at the kid who looks like Roxas and Xion but wrong before realizing oh. Guess Kairi did go to get Sora. That hadn't been quite what he meant, but okay.

Kairi is there, too, crouched next to Isa with a baseball bat in her hands, blood still on it. Axel doesn't quite get it.

Sora's still speaking with his not-quite-Roxas, not-quite-Xion voice and Axel can't concentrate on it so he just smiles instead, his best "I'm kind of a shithead" smile, the one that usually makes people stop thinking about him as anything else than what he is.

Which is, if you hadn't realized by now, actually a terrible person.

When he finally registers what he's saying, all he gets is Sora asking him why he did it.

Axel laughs and chokes a bit on the blood coming up his throat. Internal bleeding is fun like that.

"I wanted to see my friend one last time," Axel tells him. He slurs it a bit so he guesses it sounds like friends, but Xion's gone gone gone gone gone and Isa stopped existing when Lea stopped existing, and it turns out Axel was just clinging to a ghost all this time, isn't that funny?

Sora's face makes him think he either said all that aloud, so Axel just tells the kid sorry about everything, and tell Kairi I said that, too—

Kairi's right there saying it's okay it's okay I forgive you I'm right here you moron we get it, Roxas told us, I just wanted to know what you wanted, and the rest of it is just a gibberish mantra because she's crying and kneeling next to Saïx now, her hands shaking around the baseball bat. Funny. Sora doesn't have a baseball bat.

Axel thinks he hears police sirens in the distance, the lullaby of his life. It's sad, he thinks, maybe. Or funny. He's not sure what his life will be told has yet; a tragedy of loss or a comedy of errors. Probably the latter. He'd make a terrible tragic hero.

Sora tells him to just hang on, they're coming, and Axel hopes stupidly that he means Xion and Roxas, but.

He knows better than that.

Axel thinks he's tired now anyway. He might as well nap.

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

Ow.

Axel wakes up in a hospital with Roxas holding one of his hands and Xion holding the other and thinks: that's wrong.

It seems a lot more like heaven than hell.

He falls back asleep after telling them he's sorry he was such a fuck-up friend and that he'll tell Satan they said hi.

It takes a few tries like that for Axel to wake up properly and not still think: okay, this purgatory's fun but seriously getting old.

Surprise: he's not actually dead. Who would've thought?

Axel apparently owes his life to a trio of regular superheroes (or law enforcers/paramedics, something like that) called Aqua, Terra and Ven. They'd been after Xemnas for a while. Turns out Xemnas's real name was Xehanort, and he'd been a whole lot older than he looked. Crime lord from city to city, or something complicated like that. Basically, they were the ones who had taken care of the Organization thanks to Sora and the other kids' tips.

By "taken care of", Axel here means taken into custody. Turns out even the guys from Oblivion had survived the whole ordeal somehow. Axel is confused at first but apparently Aqua, on top of being Police Chief, is also like the world's greatest doctor or something, and Axel himself is living proof that Aqua can bring back people from the mostly dead. So. Whatever. You go, Aqua.

The trippiest part had actually been Ven looking like an eery older clone of Roxas , but then it turned out he was related to Sora, Xion and Roxas too somehow? This was the main problem with small cities: absolutely everyone was related. Everyone.

Axel has a headache.

Roxas and Xion, who have apparently not left his bedside for the extremely long while he was recuperating being beaten to death by a crazy drugged-out-of-his-mind friend (Xemnas strikes again: he'd spent a lot of time feeding Isa drugs to make him get these extreme mood swings that made him … violent on command, or something, Axel is still high off way too much morphine), decided that weeks spent at his bedside were simply not enough and pretty much take up residence there, alternating calling him an idiot and resisting the urge to hug him because his entire torso nearly caved in.

For his part, Axel just stares at them both like he's seeing ghosts.

Roxas is the one who explains that Xion went into hiding so the Organization wouldn't find her (something about witness protection? High off morphine, here) but she came out when Xehanort/Xemnas was defeated. She was also apparently very angry with him for all his stupid life choices.

She doesn't look angry to him, and when Axel mentions that Xion giggles and her voice doesn't even crack. She looks a lot happier; a lot prettier. A lot more sure of herself.

She tells him it's a secret, and Axel pretends he doesn't know what's up.

He also pretends he's high off the morphine when he apologizes again and tells them he loves them, but they don't buy it for a second.

He starts going by Lea again.

It's a process, and cleaning up his act—his life—is a lot harder than he thought it would be, but he gets to stay with his stupid kids and visit his other stupid friend at the hospital until he recovers, and he even gets to apologize for the Oblivion crew about the whole "attempted murder" thing. They take it in stride mostly because they were planning to do him in anyway.

Life's funny like that.

In the end Xion and Roxas buy him a stupid seashell keychain along with a key to their shared apartment.

Lea's happy.

He's kind of confused when Isa wakes up and kisses him full on the mouth, but.

That's another story altogether.

this is the story of the time Zia stayed up all night to write a one-shot real lifeish oddly styled KH!AU when all she meant to do was write a drabble where Xion was trans. IT'S LIKE SEVEN AM NOW, FANFICS

THIS ISN'T EVEN FUNNY

The story vaguely follows the event of Chain of Memories, 358/2 days, Kingdom Hearts 2 and Dream Drop Distance. It also has characters from Birth by Sleep. Also, by vaguely follow, I mean it started out not even following canon and then exploded into ~shut up this is art~ or something like that.

the last part is what I want to happen when everyone defeats Xehanort and Saïx stops being spoilers. And/or just stops being a douchebag, whichever. you can also think of it as a joke ending, honestly, or isa being glad to be alive or whatever. I mean, I hinted at AkuRokuXion too and I don't even ship that. Pairings: not what this is about!

Oh yeah Kairi's the one who brained Mr Berserker with a baseball bat.

finally: what beyblade fanfic?

Apologetically yours,

-Zia

ps: the first person who bashes any character in a review gets to be kicked out of the fandom forever, I swear to god

unless it's like, DiZ, I make a pass for DiZ. and Xehanort(s).