Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts.

AN: The only thing to do is to apologize. I am so sorry I've left you guys hanging for three and a half months! Finishing up my senior year was very stressful, but now that all is said and done, I am happy to say that I have achieved everything I've ever wished for thus far in life. This chapter is especially important to me for two reasons: 1) I put my heart into it so as to convey Axel's persona, and 2) if read in the correct light, this is the story of my growth from age twelve to age eighteen, and it's a wonderful feeling to get words down to meaning. I touch on some darker elements in this chapter, so ready yourselves for that; additionally, the present time will start to pick up in the following installments. Thank you for sticking around, and be sure to drop a review.

Axel Burke - 2013

All I've ever wanted was for Roxas Tripp to leave me alone. Just for a moment - you know, just to give me some damn space. What initiated as a pompy, sort of glomp-and-walk thing with you morphed into a fully raged puppy love, and, Roxas, let me tell you—in grade six, when a specimen, such as myself, runs into a person like you (coated with all those golden sweet layers and slathered in an endless, redolent scent of cheerfulness), the bridge collapses. There's no way in hell that thirteen popsicle sticks could support anything more than thirteen pounds, and science tells that there would always be that additional eight pound unit attached to the thirteen, simply out of habituation, showing the unnecessary extrapolation of evidence that in those godforsaken baker's dozens comes those undesirable flakes of emotion which teeter off in winding trails.

Everything started when my family first moved in the winter of sixth grade. We came from New Jersey. The move to Connecticut wasn't too bad, emotionally speaking, because the New England states were all so small that I could easily visit my old friends. Not that I had any burning will to see them again—no, please don't assume that I did—it is only the fact that my world was still so closely knit together that I could handle the psychological toll of moving from one state to the other. That historic move was about five years ago. And, as a well-versed inquirer of the world, you may ask—why was said move "historic?"

My friends, that is a whole narrative that I will most definitely elucidate in coming words. (Now.) (Sorry, I'm horrible at transitioning into things.) In the dusty fortresses of my mind, there exists a stunningly clear picture of a polished young man who grins salaciously through the glass while expertly moving his eyes toward the general direction of his long-lost-girlfriend's ass. A black fog engulfs his face as he pulls in a succulent breath of smoke, his eyes aflame, his woman with magnificent blonde hair slowly pulling her sky-blue silky thong down her oiled legs. An ear-splitting holler smacks me, violently, my twelve year-old ears ringing, and blood spills down my nose and I only register the now-blackness in front of me and the hurried desperation of skin slapping skin. Shocked to tears, this crystal image clouds over, and my twelve year-old self scurries from the heavy oak door to the confines of my cloudy domain. I grabbed a gray sock from my drawer and plastered it on my face, threw myself into my too-large bed, and bawled.

Some childhood, right?

That… was my brother, Reno. At age twelve, observing the dirty Hyena readying itself to fuck the harlot is not an optimal point of view to see your brother. Innocence creates a subjective reality. Innocence isn't a physical trait, but rather a state of mind – a child-like state of mind. Those children's ignorance creates a solipsistic world in which the idea of adulthood is a far off dream, like a forgotten memory. In this illusion of reality, brothers do not dehumanize their being for the sake of sex. I was once a child who thought the world to be completely fantastical. My innocence took me far beyond the magic of this planet. Inside my mind, I had created a perfect utopia where time had stopped, yet I could live—the perfect Havisham, lost among the stars.

This is the history of me, in all of the overlapping shades of green, jade, and teal—this is the history of Reno and me, a few days before he fucked his girlfriend in front of me, a few days before I turned twelve, and perhaps after I tell you, you'll understand… Well, Me.

Unfamiliar teal walls filtered through my vision as I felt warm skin brush across my shoulder. Short breaths blew over my ear. The sensation engendered a trail of goose bumps prickling down my neck, yet my eyes couldn't bring themselves to surrender to the morning light; I could feel the world churn, my mind lolling in and out of consciousness. The warmth on my shoulder quickly turned cold.

"Hey, Axel, wake up." Still dreaming, I swatted the hand away and attempted to go back to sleep. The cloud-like cushions subdued me as I dreamed of a shining sun, but it soon misted behind a wall of teeming, recluse-like clouds. It was then I noticed something peculiar about the voice that had awoken me.

"Axel, come on," another voice, my cousin, Paine, murmured. I opened my eyes to see greenish-blue walls. It took me a moment to realize where I was. My brother's old room—Reno's old room. Reno, who was some big shot at a high-achieving school, and Me, and Me in Reno's room.

"Reno is waiting for us." She said impatiently. I peered up at my cousin through half-lidded eyes. I couldn't ignore the anxiety gathering in my chest. God, I should have known to ready myself for my world to get fucked.

"Okay," I began, rolling out of bed, "just give me a minute." After sitting up, the bones in my body rattled painfully. I sighed again, reminded of the effects of sleeping on an air mattress. My joints were stiff.

"Hey, Paine, what time is it?" I inquired, nearly finished making the bed. She never did answer me.

"Come on, they're waiting in the living room," Paine tugged my arm and motioned for the door.

"Who's 'all?'"

"Well, Reno and Rikku, and your parents, I guess." She answered, opening the door. The wood beneath my feet was cold.

"Oh," I said lamely, "well, why is Reno here?" I interrogated, sounding a bit too bitter. "And who's Rikku? Rikku from… a long time ago?"

She fell silent for a moment. We continued moving along the wall of the hallway. To myself, I apologized to Paine. I had a tendency of becoming insensitive. In a matter of seconds, we reached the living room, giving me no time to hear an answer from Paine, but I doubt she even wanted to speak to me . As soon as I saw my family sitting in an awkward circle around the thick glass coffee table, I knew that something unsettling was about to unfold.

"Hey, guys," my mom greeted. She looked pristine and put-together as usual, but her eyes betrayed her body, exposing her facade. They had a washed-out look, a filial conflict resonating in her hazel orbs. Reno had his pasty arm wrapped carelessly around the blonde, his hand overtly grappling her ass.

"Morning, everyone." Rikku, Reno's girlfriend, chimed. I smiled at her, but a parasite lingered in the back of my mind, quelling my smile. Her warm voice contrasted darkly with the coldness I saw behind those eyes.

Tension hung heavy, lacing its fingertips through the particles of oxygen, pulling it from my being. I lost my breath, my solar plexus feeling as if it had been nailed. My vision distorted.

I wanted to say something.

"So, what did you guys eat for breakfast?" My mom asked sweetly. I narrowed my eyes, growing infuriated. How were they able to sit and breathe and talk like this?

"What's going on?" I questioned abruptly. I just wanted to know what was going on. How could they be such monsters?

My brother, my kindred brother that I had not seen for two years since he left for college, glanced lovingly at me. He smiled, no teeth, as if he were hiding what he truly felt.

How could they be such monsters? How?

"Rikku and I are getting married, and since she's a business graduate and I'm a mechanical engineer, we're moving to the United Arab Emirates to further both of our careers." Reno announced, his voice steady like a flowing river, smooth, but sitting atop a dangerous current. I shut my eyes for a moment, the swirling blackness confirming my suspicions. The day had finally arrived; he was leaving home. He was no longer my big brother—and just for this girl? My world began to crack, for I realized that pretending that she would never leave could no longer protect my utopia. Life began to seep into my world. The stones that adorned the ground beneath my feet morphed, melting into the dirt, returning to the magma chambers where they originated. My world had been penetrated.

"When are you moving?" My voice sounded assertive, but inwardly, I felt so incredibly weak.

"We're moving on Wednesday. As in two days." Rikku replied curtly, observing me. Her eyes seized my gaze. I expected her to appear sorrowful and apologetic, but her stare sent a wave of irrevocability throughout my body. It was Monday. My brother and his girlfriend held fast in their decision, and knowing that he would soon leave his past (and my future) behind killed me.

"But it's only Monday…" I quietly remarked, stunned. I didn't expect to be choked by overwhelming loneliness.

"Why? Why are you leaving? And so soon?" I asked. The comfort I once found in Reno's eyes vanished. Questions of all depth and color ate at my body, crunching my limbs, sending bone-splintering affliction throughout my physique. I couldn't ignore the painful bites of adulthood breaking through my vision of a perfect world that I had conjured.

"Why not?" Reno replied, seemingly annoyed at my asking. Lovingly looking into his prized girlfriend's gorgeous eyes, he whispered, "It's where we're going to start anew."

Although my mind's eye bled and I shouted for closure, I reached a milestone that day. For my idol of a brother, that fateful day in August established a new empire for him to claim the throne. He began a journey; that journey began with the day he broke off our family union. For him, that hour foresaw a new land full of promises and ambition. As I looked onward, beyond the skyline, I couldn't help but think that anywhere but here would be where my life ended . He left me, and after all, we were much the same, down to the fucking red hair; it was like saying "I am you" in two separate languages. I spoke in choppy, twiddled Spanish sentences while his tongue was graced with flowing French diction. Our message remained identical, and would remain as such until it could become an elegant epitaph, but what mattered most was what was ingrained in our ability to communicate it. That day, I couldn't will myself to say, "Reno, you're my brother, and I love you for it" because what he did was not only breaking me, as a child, but he also tore my mother to bits. She had nurtured Reno, and had made him her prized masterpiece; his glowing intellect was easily groomed into an Ivy League-goer, and he symbolized everything that my mother had wished for in her own self. The sudden leaving-the betrayal-easily hit my mother. Something glowed, bursted, even, in my psyche, and since the day I heard Reno express romantic interest in someone I hated, I, myself, haven't ever had the ability to mix the absolute correct liquids to formulate those three coveted words, romantically.

So, what are you going to name your baby?

(Sweet Jesus. I forgot to mention, in my endless and hopeless narrative, that Reno announced Rikku's expected unexpected pregnancy. Sorry. I'm not a perfect author; this isn't my thing, really).

We're not sure yet. Rikku likes the name Jessica, but I like Lily.

What if it's a boy?

We're thinking Axel.

After… your little brother?

Well, sort of. It's half that and half because an "axel" is what keeps everything together. You know… Mechanic stuff.

Oh. Like the car part.

They stopped talking and all I could register was that my childhood was being taken from me... That black figure, arisen of insecurity and a destroyed solipsism, loomed above me once more. The subhuman figure lowered its body, its eyes peering straight into mine . Changeling eyes. Like living stars, they didn't draw me in but snapped out and seized me with a scrutiny of what used to be considered "infectious." Inside of this monster's optics, a picture of a memory floated into view. Leaning against a bookshelf, I sat in a bookstore with my brother, most likely at the local Bookman's. In his right hand was a sugar-saturated beverage known as coffee , the left, a book. Suddenly, I could smell the pages of the book in his hand; a crisp, dry scent that now triggers a sort of sad rumination in my mind. Trading books, we were able to discuss what we liked and what we didn't. Our minds communicated through these books, and Bookman's inscribed our memories on its shelves.

In my memory, he sat across from me.

In front of me, across the coffee table, with a quick glance at those eyes, I knew I gazed longingly at Reno. I can remember his eye color at that moment, too—mostly green, almost hazel.

"Why are you going?" I implored hopelessly, sadly lowering my hand to the table.

His bow-shaped mouth moved and words stuck to the air, but I didn't listen.

Replaying memories of our times over and over again, a sudden whiplash of knowledge careened into me. Adulthood stood in my path, dark, bold, and conniving, feeling me out, sticking its leg out to trip me. To see if I could handle it. I marched past, refusing to let it bloody my knees. Its black figure disintegrated, and I felt something new, a bit like liberation. Warm tears accumulated in my tear ducts, but I wouldn't allow myself the privilege of crying. Tears would only heighten the sadness of his departure; tears would only assure that crying could fix what words are meant to fix; tears would signal that crying for the past is acceptable. It is not.

Reno began to speak once more, interrupting my inner upheaval. "We're going to Grandma's house," he stated, looking around the room, "do you guys want to come? We're going to tell her we're moving and having a baby. I'd rather her hear it from me than from you." He looked directly at me, somewhat angry, but also a bit remorseful. Rikku started laughing, and her voice sounded uplifted, like a musical instrument playing a lively major chord. Reno's responding, blinding smile rivaled that of the New Jersey sun. And if I remember correctly, the New Jersey sun is no different from the United Emirates' sun. The same sun, with the same people who have the same feelings, shines down on all of us. It floats in the sky, sitting, casting down those fickle phosphorescent lights.

After a quiet moment, I conceded to Reno. "I don't see why not."

Reno, six years my senior, smiled and stood, the winner, victorious. He sauntered, left then right, and I followed him, left then right, the lower, defeated. Paine decided to join us, as well as my mother. My mother retrieved her car keys, slipped her feet into a pair of loose-fitting shoes, and ambled slowly to the garage.

I wish I could end this lengthy anecdote with some uplifting tale or "theme," but I can't. This was the day that numbed me; I cannot express how dull I became after this, how my spark for love and my electricity in life simply died that day, but a definitive change rattled my body, and at age twelve, this story is a little bit depressing. It's life, though—pinnacles and valleys. I loved Reno so much, as much as any younger brother in need of guidance would love their older sibling; I held onto my severed brotherhood up until a few years ago, but I realized that love, brotherly love, even, lacks in ability to mask the fear. In all of my lectures and teachings, I fooled myself into thinking life would be easier if I had someone or something to love—Reno, chemistry, electrons—but that's just not the truth. Still, I remember that honey-yellow smile and those circular orbs that measure out to be the golden ratio from Connecticut, and I have just the slightest inkling that yellow and blue are two divine colors.

-0-

Up until I slept with Kairi, Roxas Tripp had a knack of coincidentally traipsing straight into my chest. I'd gotten used to it, but every time his body met mine, he always turned a deep cherry and mumbled something unintelligible. Now, however, I can't help but hypothesize that Roxas no longer makes it quotidian habit to walk into my body due to the fact that he's actually semi-adultish and can definitely take the hint. It is not that I disdain his very being, because I don't. I only vent so cynically because there has been so many things between us since the day I moved that I just don't know how to handle my emotions around him. From an overly romantic first meeting to emotional betrayal to… well, let's just call them "other events," Roxas knows my habits and life a bit too well, and that discomforts me to the extreme. Odysseus's fatal flaw was hubris. My fatal flaw is independence to a damaging degree; my defense mechanisms force my psyche to reject any closeness when I find myself forming strong bonds with others. I'm that guy who can't handle commitment. I'm that person who would rather do calculus integrations or read a review of Common Sense than go out for a night on the town and maybe meet a pretty girl. I'm… Damaged. That otherwise-confidential information is, unfortunately, within Roxas's domain of knowledge.

The first time I ran into Roxas Tripp was about a week after I moved into the neighborhood. I was twelve years old at the time, and I held a certain affinity for mittens. Mittens were Fluorine and I was Oxygen. At the time, I was intent on wearing my mittens every hour, everywhere. They were a bright red color with dangling antlers hanging from the fingertips. They were cute and childish and ultimately a bit fucking needless and tacky.

I could describe to you the Roxas version of our first meeting, and by "the Roxas version" do I not mean from his perspective but rather the story that is long-winded, boring, loaded with buzz words, and overly emotional. Being that this general range of storytelling does not fall into my computational skills as a speaker or even as a damn human, I will tell you this: that blonde riot tried to call me "Axl Rose," I rejected the name, he tried to call me "Rudolph," then I ran away. The snow was cold and icy, his cheeks swam with cherry-sucking reds, and I might even damn well say that his face matched my hair. Ba-dum, done. How was that for effectio et une paranomasia and double wordplay? Shakespearean enough? Roxas-esque enough for all of you? (I feel no necessary implication to point out that that is a rhetorical question, ahem, hypophora, preceded by Latin rhetorical devices that Roxas utilizes whilst writing.)

Tssssss! Tssss zop!

Well, fuck. Let me apologize - in the midst of recounting to you my oh-so-depressing childhood, I completely forgot about my lab's hot plate burner. See, even though I'm on the second story of my house, my mother - after countless hours of convincing her - let me install a lab station on the balcony of the extra bedroom. I had to build the whole of it! I air conditioned, insulated, and refurnished the lab on the balcony, and I built a greenhouse-like structure to act as the walls and roof of the lab. If I were to treat the lab like any other room - and by that, I mean that if I were to have built wooden walls and made it an extension of an actual room - the place would have been destroyed. I'm a volatile chemist, what can I say. I wanted it, first, when I became a freshman in high school. My involvement in the hard sciences became pretty intense that year, and there was a scholarship contest offered through MIT. In light of the gigantic oil spill that occurred in the New England rivers that year, the professor of chemistry (Dr. Yang, I believe) offered forty thousand dollars to the high schooler that could formulate a concoction that had the ability to isolate oil's nonpolar bonds and pull the compounds to the bottom of the mixture. I attempted to create it, but I never officially entered the competition because of my preoccupation with Roxas. I don't even know if the contest is still valid - it's been years since the scholarship was announced, but no one has satisfied the qualifications of Dr. Yang, even though he, himself, has already created the compound that does what he asked for in the scholarship. My thinking is that he's waiting to find that genius who is truly deserving of that money.

Shit, shit, shit - this shit is hot! I speedily threw on some old-style oven mitts, picked up the hissing glass beaker, and haphazardly threw the mixture into the grass on the side of my house. All the grass is dead on the side of my house. Like I'm pretty sure it's all rubble now. Dead or not, there are definitely no snakes on that side of the house! Roxas may have informed you of my constant laboratory escapades. I'm pretty sure that he has seen me burn myself more than once out here, and he's definitely caught a whiff of the burning chemicals. And is that... Is that blue liquid dripping from the beaker? This stuff is blue? I mean, I've never made this exact mixture before, but I was expecting more of a black-based color because of its nonpolar properties...

I looked across the street from Reno's balcony. I saw Roxas's snazzy sports car toasting in the summer heat, and wow, that baby was dirty. It looked like it had been covered in some type of sticky liquid... I bet I could clean it off in just one usage of my newly-created mixture. I grinned. What was Roxas up to this week?

Anyways. A day that stands out in particular to me was a pinnacle in my adolescence, most likely Roxas's as well, and it was the day I had to tell him I decided to transfer grade levels. I mean, if you look back on it, I suppose it was a pretty shady situation. At the time, we were both in sixth grade. How old were we? Twelve, likely. I, in sixth grade, asked Kairi Stalls to be my girlfriend as a means of avoiding Roxas. I remember the first time he saw us together. Kairi and I were walking down the park - the one at the end of mine and Roxas's street - we were holding hands, and we were smiling, laughing. I didn't particularly like the girl, but I felt like the moment was right, so I kissed her. She squirmed and it was a little awkward, but she burst into giggles afterward which were broken up by the sound of a sharp inhalation of breath. We both peered over our shoulders, and lo and behold, Roxas stood beside Sora; both were dumbfounded, but Roxas's face held a deeper pang of sadness. I saw a small reflection of myself in him.

"Ah! Oh - um, hi!" Kairi giggled out, her hand dancing in my own. I held on loosely, embarrassed that the two brothers had just witnessed me kissing her.

"Kairi," Sora nodded, "Axel." He had an air of the superior older brother surrounding him. A big eighth grader, and an older brother for that matter, Sora probably knew that Roxas was head over heels for me, so it's logical that he regarded me so coldly. His talkative blue eyes narrowed and he moved his foot just an inch forward. A small measurement, it was enough for me to figure out that he was pissed.

"Hey, Sora... Uh, did you know that -"

"I'll walk Kairi home. Her mom just asked us where she was, and we told her, 'at the park,' but we thought she was with Namine. Not you." He started walking over to Kairi, putting his hand out - smiling! "Come on, your mom seemed kinda mad, and I don't want you to get into trouble." The sunlight hit his hair just right so that he looked like a damn angel from a covenant and you just couldn't say no to that face.

Still red, she returned the small grin. "Okay, Sora!" Clear as a bell, her voice rang out, and I knew she had no idea what the hell was going on.

Lamely, I muttered a thank-you to Sora.

"Oh, and Axel? What were you saying before - 'do I know' what?" And what made me more angry then was that he knew perfectly wellwhat exactly it was that I was talking about and that I was just bringing up the subject so I could just say something in such an awkward and uncomfortable situation. He just wanted me to get the bad reaction from Roxas as, what, a... Punishment? He grinned something lascivious and winked, walking off with my girlfriend in the sunset.

So then I turned back to Roxas. I looked at Roxas. I ran away from Roxas.

But fret not; he found me after school the next day. Well, not actually "found" - we walked home together and he trapped me with his words like a damn politician.

His small shoulders drooped sadly, and the usual glimmer about his body faltered slightly. So when we looked up at me and asked me, "Axel, what was Sora talking about yesterday? Did he know what?", I felt guilty.

"Ah, well, Roxas... Mrs. Parsons said that because I performed so well in her math and science classes, I am able to skip to eighth grade."

His eyes dead-panned. If my words had knives, then his corpse would've been a bloody mess.

"You're what."

"Skipping seventh grade."

Silence.

"Rox, you still have Kairi!"

He punched me. I guess I deserved it.

"But... But it's only the last day of sixth grade! Now I'll never see you again," oh, he sounded so sad! Looking up, he started, "but I suppose that we will always be the same age, even though we'll be in different grades... And that's pretty good, too."

"Roxas, I really am sorry." I was. Looking back on it, my situation regarding Kairi and my skipping a grade absolutely paralleled the moment when Reno deserted me. Perhaps not as momentous, my skipping seventh grade was definitely a huge damper in Roxas's persona, and the grade gap did create another gap in between us. An academic gap. Sure, we still spent time together outside of school, but we had a different social circle. We grew new habits, new personalities, even. And when I was twelve, I didn't realize this. I only saw how my actions hurt Roxas for the moment - so I pulled him into a hug. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, and his clang to my stomach. I softly laid my head on the top of his shoulders and stayed like that for a few seconds. Now, as I think about what could have been instead of what is, I get really sad. Roxas and I started off so innocently and full of good intentions, but it seems that our mutual jealousy throughout the years gave birth to this huge, insidious monster that caused us to sabotage one another. I remember, once, that Roxas gave me a Victorian novel to read so that I could "learn myself something," as he put it. It was in sarcasm that he handed me the novel by Bronte, though, because he didn't necessarily "hand" it to me but rather he launched it at my window last year after I called him a pansy ass for not biting my lip in the previous night's "escapades." We had decided to walk home together to "talk," yes, to talk, and he brought up the crazy intense hate-love between Heathcliff and Catherine, and I looked at him like "what the fuck are you talking about" and he started to explain to me their sadistic relationship when, suddenly, the word 'sadism' brought up the previous night's intense "I hate you but still love you" sex brought on by my calling Yale University, and that's when I called him a pansy ass, then ran to my room, and when I got to my floor, I saw shards of glass on my carpet and a fat novel with the title "Wuthering Heights." It was a book, and a book is paper, so I associate Roxas with paper now. I read the book. Novel. What-fucking-ever it was. "Wuthering Heights" actually makes sense, and I was insulted that Roxas actually attempted to liken Heathcliff and Catherine to us because, well, I don't hate Roxas. I really don't. In fact, I wish that that conundrum didn't even exist; I wish association between Roxas and I to be strictly benevolent and in good feeling. No malice or anger or unsettled feelings. But if I were to tell him that, he'd think that I'm all lovey-dovey head-over-heels for him, and really, the last thing I need for Mr. Smug Roxas Tripp to think is that I miss him.

And there you have it. You now know how I grew up, and (I hope) you understand why I act how I do. Mine and Roxas's relationship began complicatedly, so it follows that it progresses with just as much complexity. I'm obsessed with calculus and chemistry but I still love a good read every now and then, especially those by Goethe. My brother, Reno, fucked me over as a child, and I'm still climbing out of the well in which he threw me; the stones are slippery and I fall often, but I know there's that papery rope, close to the top of the well, and I know that if I can climb high enough and grab onto that crisp and delicate thing, it'll pull me to the top, and I'll have changed my own luminarium under the open blue sky.