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Fallen	By : crystalwind Category: Final Fantasy VII > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 544 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts, or any of their characters, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Fallen
- 2-Ch. 1 - Boiling Water
- 1
- 2
Warnings: None, really…
NO, this is not going to be a primarily KH fic – no matter how much Axel dominates the story in the first few chapters.

Chapter One – Boiling Water

491 Gaian Calendar, 744 Twilight Calendar
The streets of Twilight Town were dark as night fell, and wet from the rain that had fallen that afternoon. A blur of pale skin and red hair flashed through the darkness, their owner reflecting in the puddles briefly before he splashed through them, the sound of his frightened footfalls loud in the darkness. The chill air tore at his throat and lungs, the muscles in his sides burned as badly as the ones in his legs as a result, but he didn’t dare slow down, didn’t dare stop to try and catch his breath. They were coming for him, even if he didn’t really know why. He was always such a good kid.

He had never been liked very much at the orphanages. Oh, the adults liked him well enough when he was still tiny, but as he grew, that all changed. It wasn’t really that he was a bad kid, per say, he was just… adventurous. And loud, and perhaps a bit too smart for his own good. “A handful,” as some of the adults would say, shaking their heads before leaving him to sit in the dreaded Time Out all alone.
Most of the kids didn’t like him right from the start. His hair was a bright, vibrant red, and that instantly made him a target for teasing and bullying, which in turn made him a quick outcast. Add that to the fact that he really was smart, and by the time he and the other children were enrolled in classes, most of the others actively hated him… which might be part of the reason why he was always concocting new “adventures” to try out.
His wild behavior led to a distinct lack of eager foster parents to take him home, and so Axel found himself shuffled to and from several different orphanages by the time he was 11. He was told that he originally came from Midgar, but the orphanage there had burned down shortly after his arrival, and he was sent to Traverse Town (and the other kids who knew the story always made sure to suggest that the orphanage burned down because he was there). He was transferred between four different orphanages in Traverse Town, and finally wound up being shuttled off-world again and sent to Twilight Town, where the adoption agencies hoped that a new population of people, coupled with the town’s close proximity to Hollow Bastion, would finally ensure that the youth would finally leave his reputation behind and find a home. Regardless of their wishes, it still took almost a year before the Leonharts showed up.
Axel was 12 by the time he met Leon (Squall, really, although he never liked to admit it) and Aerith (who was the very definition of “mother”, if only Axel had had any idea what such a thing was). They didn’t seem to care that he was already 12 years old (far past the typical adoption age) and that he had a reputation as a troublemaker. Leon, as Axel later discovered, had grown up in an orphanage himself, alone and unwanted, and was determined that nobody would grow up in such a place until they were simply too old to stay if he could help it. Aerith had no such sad history, but she was a rarity in that she believed that all people deserved a second chance (or in Axel’s case, a seventh, which was a lucky number anyway and might have had something to do with it). Axel found himself going home to Hollow Bastion with the only family he could ever remember having, his only possessions a few changes of clothes provided by the orphanage and a small envelope with Axel written on it in a child’s handwriting.
He never lost his spirit for adventure, although the adventures turned into real explorations instead of the pranks that he used to pull on the other children and adults, who had been fairly awful to him for the majority of his life. He was a good kid, so grateful that someone had adopted him and loved him that he would do anything at all for them – and thank the Gods that Leon and Aerith were good people (quiet and surly in Leon’s part, but warm-hearted in spite of it).

But it didn’t matter how good he was now. Maybe it was because he was so different from everyone else in spite of it all. Maybe it was because he kept an envelope under his pillow, holding a photo of another boy with red hair and blue eyes, along with a note that read in a 6-year-old’s scrawl, “I luv yu – Jimmy,” or maybe it was for nothing, and he wasn’t really lucky after all, but Axel ran, and the shadows chased him.

Some people said the Heartless were a bunch of miscreants from Traverse Town who had gotten in trouble with the law and wound up in Hollow Bastion. Others said that the gang was actually comprised of magical constructs, as truly heartless as the shadows they worked in. Whatever or whoever they were, everyone agreed that they were looking for something. Some said money, others said virgins to sacrifice; Axel wasn’t sure about any of that, but he was pretty damned sure that right now, they were looking for him. Unfortunately there were only so many places he could run, and when he hit the edge of the lake on the edge of town, he knew he was in trouble. He was a fairly athletic teenager, but now that he was out in the open, he didn’t have a chance of continuing to outrun his pursuers. He had gotten winded a while ago, and had only kept ahead of them because of his knowledge of the town’s streets and alleyways. Now that the Heartless were upon him, he finally gave up and turned to face them.
They melted out of the shadows almost as if they had been born from them, and Axel couldn’t help the shudder that worked its way through his body. They looked human enough at first glance, although they were much darker skinned than he was used to seeing. Their eyes, however, gave them away. They were all yellow, and practically glowed in the darkness. Axel had read stories about the Soldiers back in Midgar having glowing eyes, but he was relatively certain that if these people were Soldiers, they wouldn’t be terrorizing the town or chasing after him like hounds might chase a rabbit. When they all smiled simultaneously at him, he was doubly certain that they weren’t Soldiers; he was pretty sure that the books would have mentioned Soldiers having pointy teeth. One of them stepped forward from the group, and Axel instinctively stepped back, flinching when his shoes immediately soaked through as he splashed into the lake.
The creature’s voice was dry and whispery, reminding Axel uncomfortably of what a snake might sound like if one had the power to speak. Its words didn’t make any sense either, and Axel was filled with a growing sense of dread when it finished. “You… the younger one. Paid for, but never delivered. Run wild for too long, too late for the experiment now… Time to be finished.” All five of them lunged forward before Axel could even begin to ask questions or try to comprehend what the creature’s words might mean, and before he could recover from his shock at their movement and begin the struggle, he was underwater, cold hands wrapped tightly around his neck.
At first he panicked, kicking and clawing at the hands before the other grabbed his arms and legs and held him still. Then he was upset, wondering why anyone would want to kill him. Then he was just pissed off. What the hell did these monsters think they were, to creep into his town, chase him all over the place, and then spout off some nonsensical bullshit right before they drowned him? No. Fucking. Way. His anger fueled itself, and instead of his vision fading into black spots as he ran out of air, everything turned red. He didn’t feel the water begin to boil around him, didn’t register when the hands suddenly let go and jerked away, didn’t hear the dying screams of the creatures or the hissing of steam as the water surrounding him boiled and evaporated. Fire filled his vision, was the air rushing through his lungs, the blood in his veins, the only thing he could hear or see… and then it was gone, disappearing into the night with a whoosh. When his eyes finally readjusted to the night sky, he realized that he was alone now, and dry, and unharmed somehow – even though everything around him was charred, the water in the lake boiled and evaporated in the intense heat, the sand of the lakebed now a solid pane of black glass, several feet thick beneath his feet.
He stared down at his hands for several long moments, too numb to really register what he had just done. The first coherent though that flitted across his mind was ‘Leon.’ Leon would know what to do, and Aerith. Turning away from the glass lake, he ignored the wailing of fire sirens that were progressively growing louder, pointed his feet back towards the dark alleyways that would lead him home, and he ran.

A/N: This is probably a short chapter, but I’ve decided to alternate chapters between Axel and Reno for this first little piece of the story, instead of combining them like I’d originally planned. The chapters will be shorter as a result, but the transition to Reno’s “POV” will be a lot easier this way. That said, look for Reno’s part the next chapter :) There actually won’t be many more of Axel – probably only one or two parts just to get the timeline to where it needs to be (and of course to explain where Axel is going to go from here, because it’s not every day you find out that you can create flames so hot that they burn water, right?)
Umm, pretend that the lake is a sufficient distance away to not set the town on fire, while still sufficiently close enough to reach it before the Heartless caught him, and to get back into town before the fire trucks spot him.
Also obviously took some liberties with what the Heartless actually are. Yay for AU-ness :) I really torment these boys with water, don’t I? (and yeah, it paralleled Reno’s near-drowning with dear old mom on purpose)
That said, usual blurb about grammar and spelling and such (although a lot of my sentences aren’t technically grammatically correct, and I do that on purpose – I’ve been trying to write the way I tend to think or speak, to try and keep the stories in a more “conversational” tone). Aaanyway… sitting in a hold for flight school right now (whoo, finally made it here!), so hopefully the excessive down-time will mean more story updates ;)
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