Beast's Castle, First Visit:
In Which They Assist a Princess (Sigh)
They didn't find a kitchen at the end of the hall.
Instead, they found trouble.
She introduced herself as Belle, and though she was dressed like a poor girl from a small village somewhere, Axel knew better almost instantly. It was a subtle scent, if you didn't know what you were looking for, but once you'd figured out what it meant, you could always pick it out again. That purity, that softly blinding light. Belle, all big brown eyes and unassuming smile, was one of the current Princesses.
Fuck.
But Roxas didn't seem to notice, maybe wouldn't have known what it meant even if he'd still had the ability to smell her unsettling utter lack of darkness, so Axel didn't say anything, just hung back a little while the two of them talked in case the mouse knew what the cats looked like, too, and wondered.
Who had picked this world to invade? Who had been stupid enough to attack one of their homes without getting her out of the way first?
The girl was, of course, extremely sympathetic to their tale of woe -- as a Princess of Heart, she couldn't be anything else. Caught out in a storm and forced to seek refuge in a castle they'd thought abandoned, miserably hungry after a sleepless night spent downstairs? Oh, you poor things. Roxas didn't even have to quite spell out their request before she was heading for the door and leading them back down the hallway, towards what she promised would be an actual kitchen with leftovers fit for human consumption.
"So," Axel began, nicely conversational, as they passed under another sparklingly-clean chandelier, "you do the cleaning around here?"
Belle didn't answer for a moment, and though he couldn't see her face, Axel thought she seemed tense. "No. I mean, I would -- I did all of the cleaning at home -- but this place is a little big for me to do all by myself." Her shoulders slackened, and she went on more softly, "And right now, no one's doing any cleaning at all. In a week or two... this place will probably look as abandoned on the inside as it does on the outside."
Considering they'd found her locked in her room like a prisoner, she seemed awfully depressed by that thought.
Obviously the princess had her own tale of woe. Axel had decided to pretty much ignore it when Roxas took the bait. "You had servants, right?" he asked, and then, almost reluctantly: "...What happened to them?"
There was that tension again in the lines of her body. "They weren't -- just servants," the princess murmured. "They were his friends. And mine. But a few days ago, out of nowhere... he started imprisoning them."
She paused in her story to unlatch a heavy door, and push it gently open. They had taken a few turns from the main hall, but this finally seemed to be a kitchen, and inside--
--it was a mess.
There were dirty pots and cracked dishes littering the countertop. Spilled food had attracted insects, and everything looked faintly greasy. Axel wrinkled his nose instinctively, and raised his eyebrows at the princess's back, but she wasn't looking at him or Roxas -- she was rushing forward to gather the worst of the dirty dishes and move them to an enormous sink. She let her hair fall into her eyes while she filled the sink with water, but what little he could see of her face was pink.
"Don't worry," she said with cheer so forced it was a little painful to hear. "I'll get this done quickly, and then you can eat. I should have expected this."
She probably should have. After all, she'd been locked in her room, but she wasn't going hungry, so someone must have been bringing her food. And if all the servants (friends, whatever) were locked up... well, who did she think had been making her lunch?
Roxas said, "Are you going to get into trouble for coming here with us...?"
The princess opened her mouth, then closed it, looking distinctly unhappy. "I don't know," she murmured. "Before, never -- but..." Belle shot them both a weak smile. "Don't worry. It's worth it to get you two fed. I know what it's like to get caught in a storm. Just -- promise me you'll leave as soon as you're done eating?"
Well, that was a promise easily made, and Axel started to say as much, but the very slightly troubled look on the other boy's face held his tongue. They'd leave, especially now, and he wouldn't have time to go looking for what he'd left here -- as if he would have in the first place -- but better not to make a show of being glad about it when Roxas looked so much less than thrilled at the idea.
She made them chicken, in some kind of brown sauce. It was hot, and nicely filling, so Axel ate until he started to feel full, stopping before sated became heavy and sleepy -- but across from him, he couldn't help noticing that Roxas was much more enthusiastic, finishing his entire plate and then taking seconds.
He shouldn't have been surprised. Eating was another thing Nobodies didn't do all that well. They needed the food, but usually they felt more empty or dizzy than actually hungry. It was a side effect of all that time spent traveling through dark corridors -- the cool smoky darkness filled their senses, slowly corroded them the way it would have eaten their skin if not for thick coats and thicker gloves.
And Roxas couldn't smell the dark anymore.
If he weren't such a selfish bastard, he probably would've been glad for the other boy.
Belle waited until they were both done eating, and she smiled a little at Roxas, though it still didn't quite touch her eyes. "You're welcome," she said, unprompted, and really looked as if she meant it.
"Thank you," Roxas responded immediately, and something flitted across his face; discomfort, or confusion. Like he wasn't sure why he'd said it so quickly, or even at all. He slid down off the counter where he'd settled himself to eat, and hesitated. "The Beast. You said he started acting differently -- just a couple of days ago? Was that... Was that when the Heartless started showing up?"
The princess looked alarmed, and then pensive. "There are Heartless in the castle?" Her gaze on Roxas was, Axel couldn't help thinking, a lot more intent.
If Roxas noticed it, too, he didn't give any sign. "I'll take that for a yes," he muttered, shaking his head ruefully. "Damn it."
"Hey," Axel began, not really knowing what was going to come next. What was he supposed to say? Don't worry about it, there's nothing we can do? Yeah, someone's probably here screwing with these people, but I thought you wanted to wait more than five minutes to start attacking the Organization? Nothing that would sound remotely innocent, or make Roxas feel any better.
But he really wished he'd said something, because in the silence Belle stepped forward, haltingly, and looked Roxas square in the eyes. "You..." She bit her bottom lip, and then she was all hopeful brown eyes and damsel-in-distress. "You're a keyblade hero, aren't you?"
And that was how they wound up tromping through the west wing of the castle, in search of her "cursed" servants and her terrible excuse for a prince C-H-A-R-M-I-N-G.
It was, Axel couldn't help thinking, an awful lot to go through just to rescue the Beast's good china. They'd fought their way through room after room of Heartless, and for what? The opportunity to chaperone a talking decorative clock to see "his" master.
"Some curse," he muttered, quiet but more than loud enough for Roxas to hear, and the smaller boy shot him a bemused look.
"It could be worse."
They had to pause yet again to let the talking clock scramble up the stair behind them, and Axel snorted softly. "Really. How?"
Roxas quirked his lips. "You could be whining the whole time," he suggested helpfully.
"Oh, ouch."
They had reached the head of the stairs now, and the little clock let out a relieved breath as he climbed up after them. "Goodness gracious," he said, mopping his "face" with small wooden arms. "That was quite the trip, wasn't it?"
"If this is anything like the east wing," Axel pointed out, "we're only about halfway there."
The clock made a very distressed noise, and Roxas seemed to take pity on him, bending down to pick him up. "I think this'll be faster, if you don't mind."
"Well," the little clock said, with a great deal of dignity despite his obvious exhaustion, "if it would be faster. Time is of the essence, you know."
And so they made their way through the door in front of them, up another flight of stairs, and finally to a long corridor with a pair of ornate double doors at the far end. They had been through so many Heartless that Axel was starting to lose track of the exact types, but he still paused when they reached the corridor, eyeing the long row of identical gargoyles on either side with instinctive mistrust. They were the same ones he'd seen in the main hall.
"Careful," he told the other boy softly, and Roxas frowned, pausing midstep to follow his line of sight.
From his shoulder, the little clock said dubiously, "I don't remember those being there before," and before either of them could stop him, he had jumped down to investigate.
Even talking clocks must have some kind of heart, because suddenly there were bright yellow eyes everywhere, gargoyles springing to life and reeking of the dark. Axel swore and Roxas moved quickly between their charge and this new threat, keyblades flashing into his hands and cutting swiftly through the nearest stone body.
"This is new," Roxas said tersely.
Axel wasn't sure he agreed -- they'd fought a bitch of a Heartless in the basement, a weird black ghost-like thing that had burrowed its way into the body of a stone carving on a door, and this struck him as being similar -- but there'd definitely been nothing like it back in Never Was. "Just keep hitting them," he replied. "For stone, it's not holding up too well against metal."
Or flame, for that matter.
Somewhere down between their legs, the little clock was murmuring fearful things about having to replace all the ornamentation in the castle. Axel ignored him, sending a chakram whizzing down the corridor and cutting off two gargoyle's heads. Sure enough, for every gargoyle they broke badly enough, a wispy cloud of darkness emerged and faded away -- just like the Heartless in the basement.
"Huh," Roxas said, apparently thinking the same thing. "Maybe it's not so new. But I didn't know Heartless could do this kind of thing."
Neither did I, Axel wanted to say, but as Roxas flung himself at the last Heartless and the stench of their darkness began to clear away, something entirely different stole his breath away. He jerked, head snapping towards the door at the end of the hall, and started towards it, thinking vaguely that he should probably take another whiff, make sure, but breathing had gotten so hard.
Besides, he knew he hadn't made a mistake. Every member of the Organization's scent was unique, and even if some of them were better at distinguishing smells than others, everyone knew enough to tell each other apart.
Xaldin.
Xaldin was right there, on the other side of that door.
"Axel...?" Roxas said softly behind him.
It was one thing to know they'd taken an interest in this world, and another to suddenly be three feet and a flimsy wooden door away from the guy who had almost killed him during what should've been an ordinary strategy meeting.
"We've got company," he forced himself to choke out, but almost as soon as he'd finished his sentence, he tasted the dark corridor on the air, and knew the executioner had gone.
Breathing, ur ramm. Breathing.
He didn't even notice Roxas there beside him until the smaller boy had him by the coat ties. "Who is it?"
Axel swallowed, and glanced at the door again. Xaldin wasn't there anymore, but something else seemed to have taken his place. Something -- strange. "Who was it," he corrected thickly. "And Xaldin. But I think he used a corridor." It seemed impossible, and his rapid heartbeat refused to believe it, but, "Maybe we got lucky, and he didn't notice us."
The expression on Roxas's face was equally skeptical, but then he turned sharply to the door, and for half a second Axel thought he'd noticed the strange something, too. But no, he was just smart enough to put two and two together. "What did he want with the Beast?"
He tried, but he couldn't keep the sardonic smile off his face. "What kind of question is that? He wanted what they always want."
Roxas hissed out a breath, and let him go, moving immediately to the door and shoving it open. "Beast!"
The Beast's room -- if you could call it that -- was a collection of broken furniture and torn hangings. It looked nothing like the rest of the castle, except perhaps for the kitchen. In the far corner, Axel caught a glimpse of something pink and faintly luminous under glass. Was that the same thing he'd been so intent on last night?
He had very little time to wonder. The Beast had turned at their intrusion, and the eyes he fixed on them now were feral, fevered and thoroughly, thoroughly irrational. If he'd heard or understood Roxas's call as anything more than the noise made by tender prey animals, he wasn't acting like it. But though he was positively dripping with the dark, he didn't seem to have lost his heart just yet.
Still, killing the Beast seemed a lot easier, not to mention a lot safer, than trying to talk him down. Briefly, Axel considered just not mentioning it, but the thought of Roxas's reaction, if he ever figured it out, neatly crushed that idea. "He's still in there. We might not be too late."
Roxas gave a very slight nod, but didn't put either keyblade away or drop his guard in the slightest. Good for him. "How're you feeling?" he asked coolly, taking a step towards the Beast. "Up for a chat?"
The Beast snarled.
Oh, yeah. Real talkative. Axel spun a chakram, idle movement to keep his muscles loose and ready, and wondered lazily what all that fur would smell like when he set it on fire.
"We're not here to cause trouble," Roxas was saying now, slowly and clearly. "Stand down."
But the Beast really didn't seem to be getting any of it. He shook his head and then growled, backing up a step, like a defensive animal. Roxas's human words only seemed to be confusing him.
"I don't think he can hear you," Axel pointed out.
Someone else would have been depressed by this news -- taken aback, disheartened, or worse. Roxas only made an irritated noise and said, "Fine then. He'll listen when I'm through."
Axel grinned a little despite himself. Not Sora. "I like the sound of that."
"You would," Roxas said shortly, but not without a hint of amusement.
Then he was moving, launching himself at the Beast, keyblades out and glinting in the dim light, twisting around midair when the Beast roared and shoved him off. It was a neat trick, let him keep the momentum so that he could come right back, slide under the Beast's guard and smack him with the hilt of his white keyblade.
Painful, from the way the Beast snarled, but not exactly a vicious strike, and Axel hesitated. His weapons didn't have flat sides. It was either set the monster on fire, or cut into him.
He was still wondering which would do less damage when Roxas got in another blow and the Beast growled, throwing his arms out with claws extended and sending out a shockwave of something ugly and dark that knocked them both off their feet and -- sent him crashing painfully to the ground, fuck that was a table.
Axel staggered first to his knees and then to his feet, aching in a way that meant he'd be a walking bruise later, and retrieved one chakram. End table, small of his back. Ow. It wasn't the kind of thing that made a guy feel charitable. But he restrained himself like a good boy, and when he sent his weapon slicing through the back of the Beast's cape, he only drew a little blood.
The Beast could've been more appreciative. Instead he made a sound like an enraged wolf howling for backup, and then Axel found himself up against a wall, dizzy and nauseous like he'd hit his head on something hard, and all he could see with his vision blurring was the yellow fire of the Beast's irrational, rage-blind eyes.
Dark-blind eyes.
Far, far in the distance, Roxas was saying his name, and the Beast was growling, releasing him to leap away. Axel slid halfway down the wall before he got his feet back under him, and when he tried to speak there was blood in his mouth, but he had to say something, because this wasn't working.
"Roxas..."
The smaller boy threw him an irritated glance. "Don't let him get so close to you!"
Axel smirked at him, and then closed his eyes because that made his head feel better. "Can't use fire," he said slowly.
"It would probably just freak him out even more."
He was missing the point. Axel wet his lips, and forced himself away from the wall, just a little. "Can't use fire," he repeated, "but I bet light would work wonders."
The rest of the fight was a blur of noise, hard to follow with his eyes closed, but he could still tell when Roxas decided to follow his advice, because even the insides of his eyelids went pale, and then everything got very quiet. Axel thought he heard the little clock's voice, low and rushed, maybe comforting his master. When had he caught up with them? Had he been hiding in a corner of the room the whole time?
Someone slid a familiar glass jar into his hand, and Axel drank the potion without hesitation, opening his eyes as soon as his head stopped hurting.
Roxas was peering down at him, and he looked -- worried. "You okay?"
He smirked weakly. "Fine. Just a little dizzy. Did it work?"
But the Beast was the one who answered that question, with a voice like someone trying to swallow gravel. "I'm sorry."
It can talk, Axel almost said, but Roxas gave him a look and turned to face him. "I don't think this was your fault. You weren't entirely in control of yourself, right?"
The Beast made a rumble that sounded sort of noncommittal, but he had opened his mouth to say something else when his guilty, darting gaze passed over Axel -- and then came back to settle with unnerving fixation. "...You."
Fortunately, Roxas put it together a lot faster than he did. The lack of a concussion probably helped. "Wait," he said, hands up defensively. "Look at this scrawny bastard. Did you never actually pay attention to the guy who's been tormenting you? He's two of Axel and they don't sound anything alike."
"You're a charmer," Axel told him.
The Beast gritted his teeth. "Just because he's not the same one--"
"He's not here to bother you," Roxas insisted. "If it were up to him, we wouldn't even be here. We're here because I insisted -- after Belle asked me to help you." He sighed, and looked at Axel expectantly. "Take off the damn coat."
Some members of the Organization wore layers. They had the coat, and then a vest, and then an undershirt. Axel hadn't really bothered, and thought about objecting along those lines, but it wasn't like he didn't have pants on, and it wasn't like he'd be cold. He shrugged out of the coat and slung it over his shoulder, saying to the Beast as he did so, "It's actually not what you think. I just like black leather."
Maybe it wasn't the best time for jokes. The Beast bared his teeth, and Roxas stepped between them fiercely.
"Cut it out," he snapped. "You just slammed Axel's head into a wall because he didn't want to kill you. He's not out to get you!"
For a long moment, Axel didn't think it was going to work. The Beast was still gazing at them with way too much hostility. But then he seemed to curl in on himself, very slightly. "...Belle. Sent you here?"
"As did I, Your Highness!" the little clock said, and Axel realized it was clinging to the thick fur at the back of the Beast's head. "We've all been deeply concerned. You haven't been yourself! And this young man is a keyblade hero--"
"Roxas," Roxas put in helpfully.
The Beast paused, and then took a step towards him, peering. "Do we..." He shook his head, dismissing that. "Do I know you?"
It was a tense moment. Axel couldn't see the other boy's expression, couldn't tell what he was thinking. Then Roxas squared his shoulders and said, "No. I'm new."
As they left the room and the Beast behind, Axel thought he heard the gruff voice saying, "She probably won't want to see me. Not after the way I've-- Cogsworth. You tell her," and the little clock replying firmly, "I really think it would mean more coming from you, Your Highness."
Roxas looked amused. "Well," he said, "I guess we're out of here. I think there's someone... I should see."
Agreeing with him and leaving would have been so easy. Axel paused at the head of the stairs, and said instead, "Do you mind if I get something first?"
The blond shot him a curious glance. "I guess not. What is it?"
"Well, as much as I like being topless," Axel replied drolly, "I'm thinking maybe I should get some real clothes on before we go. If that's okay with you."
Roxas didn't immediately reply, running amused eyes over his bare chest first in a way that was kind of unnerving. "I don't think I even want to know why you'd leave clothes here," he said, pointing his eyes elsewhere. "But fine. Sora's mentor can wait for you to be decent, I guess."
Maybe he should have just asked for the coat back, or maybe asked what the hell Sora's mentor meant, but Axel grinned. "Won't take long," he said. "Promise."
NEXT >>> Beast's Castle, First Visit (Part 4)