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Kingdom Hearts, "All Wrong" (Riku/Roxas)
OHMIGOD WHAT! KAY ACTUALLY POSTED FIC ON HER FIC JOURNAL! Yes I'm still here.
Warnings: Some nonconsensual R-rated misleadingness ahead, so beware. I am so mean to Riku it's not even funny. Of course, Roxas probably deserves some pity here too. Spoilers for Riku in KH2.
.all wrong.
He didn't know how it had all gone so wrong.
The body under Ansem's twisted and kicked out, and eyes so blue as to make him feel like he was drowning were rendered utterly unfamiliar when narrowed in fury and fear. It was almost a relief, but he didn't let relief soften him. He held the boy down mercilessly, using his greater height and weight to its utmost advantage. The boy was strong, all lithe muscle along his slender frame visible now without his coat -- but no match for Ansem. In the end, he was bound to be defeated by his vulnerable position and raw youth.
He was going to be sick.
Ansem gasped as a knee nearly slammed into his side and he had to spare a hand to wrestle the boy's leg down; he held thin wrists in one hand, more than hard enough to bruise, hard enough to wring tears from a lesser person. But the boy never stopped bucking and trying to shake him off, never stopped cursing him, hissing, "Get off of me, you sick bastard--"
In this position, pinned to his back and and arms held rigidly high, summoning keyblades would not help him.
Sora would never forgive him if he knew. Never.
And in every choked, pained sound as the boy aggravated his own injuries -- in every frustrated whimper as another attempt to get loose was thwarted -- he could hear Sora.
Strangled, Ansem barked, "DiZ! Hurry!"
He was shuddering when the door to the chamber finally opened with a sickening screech; the boy's struggles increased, lifting his spine off the ground, and for his efforts Ansem shoved him back hard enough for his head to make a sickening crack. For a moment the boy slumped, dazed and moaning.
In that same heartbeat Ansem was up, backing away. DiZ crouched down next to the boy and stuck a needle into the bare skin of his arm. The boy noticed and tried to tear his arm away, but too late -- the powerful drug swept into his system, numbing his senses. Another heartbeat, three, four, and then the boy slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Even at rest, the accusing lines did not ease from his face.
"Troublesome creature," said DiZ, cold. "It seems we shouldn't have allowed him to be loose. The simulation is nearly fully-prepared, but perhaps I shall have to cut a few corners."
It must have been easy to be analytical, to sneer at the 'creature' on the floor as if it weren't a person, when DiZ wasn't the one who had to restrain it-- Felt the boy writhe and tremble and cry out in some horrible parody of intimacy under him, an unintended echo of the lust he had painted in his mind though he tried to fight it because it was wrong, wrong-- Known unshakably that the 'creature' was as human as he was.
Perhaps moreso.
He was the monster. It was him, had always been him.
Riku, not Ansem, went to sit on the floor in the room where Sora slept, and tried to remember the face of his best friend without looking -- the laughter, the grins, the way it brightened when he saw the older boy approach. But he only kept seeing the twisted rage in Roxas's face, until the odd warmth of the room made him forget about how stained with darkness he felt. He didn't hear her soft footsteps, but he slowly eased into sleep and dreamed memories.
Warnings: Some nonconsensual R-rated misleadingness ahead, so beware. I am so mean to Riku it's not even funny. Of course, Roxas probably deserves some pity here too. Spoilers for Riku in KH2.
.all wrong.
He didn't know how it had all gone so wrong.
The body under Ansem's twisted and kicked out, and eyes so blue as to make him feel like he was drowning were rendered utterly unfamiliar when narrowed in fury and fear. It was almost a relief, but he didn't let relief soften him. He held the boy down mercilessly, using his greater height and weight to its utmost advantage. The boy was strong, all lithe muscle along his slender frame visible now without his coat -- but no match for Ansem. In the end, he was bound to be defeated by his vulnerable position and raw youth.
He was going to be sick.
Ansem gasped as a knee nearly slammed into his side and he had to spare a hand to wrestle the boy's leg down; he held thin wrists in one hand, more than hard enough to bruise, hard enough to wring tears from a lesser person. But the boy never stopped bucking and trying to shake him off, never stopped cursing him, hissing, "Get off of me, you sick bastard--"
In this position, pinned to his back and and arms held rigidly high, summoning keyblades would not help him.
Sora would never forgive him if he knew. Never.
And in every choked, pained sound as the boy aggravated his own injuries -- in every frustrated whimper as another attempt to get loose was thwarted -- he could hear Sora.
Strangled, Ansem barked, "DiZ! Hurry!"
He was shuddering when the door to the chamber finally opened with a sickening screech; the boy's struggles increased, lifting his spine off the ground, and for his efforts Ansem shoved him back hard enough for his head to make a sickening crack. For a moment the boy slumped, dazed and moaning.
In that same heartbeat Ansem was up, backing away. DiZ crouched down next to the boy and stuck a needle into the bare skin of his arm. The boy noticed and tried to tear his arm away, but too late -- the powerful drug swept into his system, numbing his senses. Another heartbeat, three, four, and then the boy slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Even at rest, the accusing lines did not ease from his face.
"Troublesome creature," said DiZ, cold. "It seems we shouldn't have allowed him to be loose. The simulation is nearly fully-prepared, but perhaps I shall have to cut a few corners."
It must have been easy to be analytical, to sneer at the 'creature' on the floor as if it weren't a person, when DiZ wasn't the one who had to restrain it-- Felt the boy writhe and tremble and cry out in some horrible parody of intimacy under him, an unintended echo of the lust he had painted in his mind though he tried to fight it because it was wrong, wrong-- Known unshakably that the 'creature' was as human as he was.
Perhaps moreso.
He was the monster. It was him, had always been him.
Riku, not Ansem, went to sit on the floor in the room where Sora slept, and tried to remember the face of his best friend without looking -- the laughter, the grins, the way it brightened when he saw the older boy approach. But he only kept seeing the twisted rage in Roxas's face, until the odd warmth of the room made him forget about how stained with darkness he felt. He didn't hear her soft footsteps, but he slowly eased into sleep and dreamed memories.
no subject
I love the word "woobie." Partly I think I'm going to have to give in to fanon and say "dammit, we'll never understand their relationship, but if nothing else is true, I firmly believe Axel and Roxas were lovers." Lovers having a wide range of values from admitting feelings to full-fledge horzonital dances. :-)
I think my twitching eyebrow will go into la-la land and claim that Axel is 18 at the oldest and Roxas 15 to keep me from squicking too badly. Though as Kay said, it doesn't really matter about age. However, what has been bothering me is that Roxas looks so old in some of the promo shots but in the game, he looks like a little kid which exagerates the "pedaphile" vibe you could interupt from Axel if you were so inclined.
Kay also pointed out to me that Roxas never remembers Axel beyond a hazy idea of them having hung out and fought before. Which means it must have been puzzling as all hell to Roxas to have some strange guy acting all heart-broken over you. If not creepy. I sorta believe that while all the fandom started *cough*ing like me over Axel's final words, Sora just did not understand any romantic inclination under Axel's words.
no subject
As I'm not sure whether by "other comment" you mean mine or one I've linked you to in the above comment, I'm going to go ahead and send you here (http://community.livejournal.com/figment_tree/37410.html?thread=232482#t232482), where I address the pedophile question. But I reiterate, it really, really, REALLY doesn't matter. Roxas NEVER gives off the childish vibe. Please, take the word of someone who is nauseated by shouta and despites its existence as a genre; Axel is not a pedophile, because Nobody!Roxas is not a child.
Okay, first. I don't buy that Axel and Roxas were lovers pre-game. I think they were very good friends, period. Because when Roxas leaves the Organization (and very obviously Axel), he says that no one would miss him [if he died]. Axel's objection -- "That's not true! ....I would." -- is ignored by Roxas. I don't know if it's been mentioned to you, but in the novels, it states that Roxas HEARS what Axel says but doesn't believe him, because he thinks Nobodies don't have emotions, and thusly, that Axel CAN'T miss him.
This works if they're friends; it doesn't work if they're lovers. Even if they're just having sex with no strings, I can't imagine that, if they were in a Relationship of some sort, it wouldn't at least OCCUR to Roxas that Axel might mean what he says there. So, no. They weren't lovers.
They are, however, extremely, extremely slashy. You really have to play the game to see it for yourself -- the way Axel talks about Roxas, the soft way, is just too compelling. Especially given that Axel, well.
Let's put it simply: Axel is a BASTARD. In Chain of Memories, he takes out or causes others to take out half the Organization, including people who obviously considered him a friend. He and Larxene seem, in the manga, to enjoy each other's company -- and yet he betrays her and gets her killed without a second thought. Indeed, with the most evil SMIRK on his face. He kills Vexen, or so we think, just to gain Marluxia's trust -- even though he claims, when he fights Marluxia, that he's killing traitors to the Organization, and Vexen was loyal.
Axel kills people he likes without blinking.
Then enter KHII. And Axel, this same incredible bastard who actively enjoyed hurting people and playing with their heads, is falling all over himself for Roxas. When he self-destructs to save Sora, it's something he would've done for Roxas. Someone who seemed to find murder a good way of amusing himself sacrificed himself for someone else.
And Axel's evolution of caring for Roxas is very interesting. In the beginning, he doesn't seem to understand exactly what's happened to Roxas, and just wants him to come back. When he returns with this seemingly-blasé, "Why'd you have to resist, now I've got these icky orders to KILL you if you don't come with me," and Roxas asks, "But we're friends, aren't we?," Axel rubs the back of his neck and says sort of awkwardly, "Well, yeah, but I'm not getting turned into a Dusk for--" and then jolts and gets this happy puppy dog look on his face: "You remember?!" When they fight again, and Roxas really does seem to remember SOME things, Axel's too hurt, too bitter, to stop fighting. "I'm so FLATTERED," he says in this angry tone, and then there's fire everywhere and he tries to kill Roxas.
(Also, in the vein of things he says to Roxas that sound vaguely bitter-ex, Axel's battle cry this time around is "Burn, baby." Now, Hades says something kind of similar, and it's clearly mockery, but Axel doesn't say "baby" like he's taunting Roxas. He says it like he'd say Roxas's name. The whole line is ANGRY, not snarky or playful in the least. "'Baby'? Why would that be taunting? Oh, that's just what I CALL you, didn't you know?")
[continued...]
no subject
But Sora isn't Roxas. And the fact that Roxas chooses to duel with Sora some five minutes later gameplay-wise (you go through only two rooms, but they're full of enemies), kind of says something. I think that Roxas was probably struggling against Sora for both of those rooms, and at Memory's Skyscraper he finally wrenches enough of himself out to attack Sora.
Basically, I'm saying, it would be a huge coincidence for Roxas to just DECIDE to fight Sora right after Axel's death if that wasn't part of what motivated him to want to do it.
But I don't think there WAS necessarily romantic inclination in Axel's words, either. I'm not squealing over omg he said HEART it must be LOVE. Because for Axel, for all Nobodies, discussion of the heart means so much more than just "I like you, tee hee."
I think Kay-san's mentioned to you that in the novels Axel does a monologue about how Nobodies DO have feelings; they feel incomplete, and they identify this incompletition as lacking a heart. (And some of them, like Roxas, clearly do feel that Nobodies are incapable of emotion. Axel just isn't one of them. In fact, in the Japanese, he kind of throws feelings around -- intead of "I would [miss you]," what he says is "I would be sad," and instead of "I'm so flattered," he says "I'm so happy.")
So what does it mean that Roxas made him feel as though he had a heart? It means that Roxas made him feel whole. Someone like HIM. Someone who did all of this murdering with this devil-may-care smile on his lips.
It really...it's just stunning.
[continued...]
no subject
But it's not as OOC as you might think for the guy from CoM, either. A lot of Axel's seemingly random decisions on who to kill seem to have been related to Roxas. When he kills Vexen, it's right as Vexen is about to tell Sora about Roxas's existence; when he threatens Larxene, he tells her not to "break" Sora:
Which all sounds perfectly innocent, until you remember that Axel has no intention of "taking" the Organization.
He and Larxene also have a conversation where she notes that he's not interested in the keyblade but in Sora's heart. [The heart that connects him to Roxas.]
Even when he attacks Marluxia and frees Namine so that she can restore Sora's memories, it's all about Roxas. We don't even know Roxas exists yet, but Axel does -- and everything he does, all the people he kills are directly related to protecting Sora, and by extension, protecting Roxas.
You can look at it one of two ways: Either Axel didn't want Sora being brought back into the Organization because then Xemnas would have had no use for Roxas any longer, or he didn't want him being brought back because he suspected that the two would merge if they ever met, and Roxas would cease to exist. Either way, it's for Roxas's sake.
(And, I imagine, he doesn't want Sora broken by Larxene because who the hell knows what consequences that would have for Roxas.)
And you can't really try to argue that Axel did any of this for Sora's sake, either. Axel doesn't seem to like Sora much, and when he does die for Sora's sake in the end, he makes it clear that it's because Sora is partially Roxas. (I like to interpret it as, "You give me the same feeling he does. Therefore, he's still in you somewhere, and hasn't disappeared completely. Maybe he's happy to be whole. So I can let go.")
I guess what I'm wandering around to saying is, it's not fanon. It's very distinctly canon. If you care that much about someone, it's easy to become lovers. Roxas and Axel just never had the chance.
no subject
That might be an interesting spin on things, if Axel just discovered that he has feelings for Roxas which could be leading to all this desperation in KHII.
I am feeling sorta pulled in and feeling sorry for Axel despite all his murdering and misdeeds in COM. He is a bastard, like you said, but still... there's a line in the Read Or Die movie about "You were a bastard, but not even you deserved to die alone" to more or less that effect.
no subject
(And I don't entirely buy Axel's easy use of emotions, either -- I think he does it sardonically. Nobodies feel things, yes, but saying that is a world away from saying they have FEELINGS, you know? And when Roxas leaves and Axel makes his statement about being sad, there's this hitch in him, like he's stunned by it.)
But, hey. Run with it. ^^
(There is ONE romantic implication in the game that really can't be taken any other way -- when Axel tries to kidnap Kairi the first time, he does so by telling her he'll take her to see Sora, and that the two of them have a lot in common, they're both looking for people they miss. I~ don't think Axel thinks Kairi's just Sora's friend.)
They WERE friends, though. And that much was recipricol, even if Roxas never believed Axel would be as loyal as he turned out to be.
And you can't not feel terrible for Axel.